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- E. M. Forster's New Year's resolutions, written 31 December 1904

Sweet Moments Between Maurice and Alec That You Have Not Seen Before (From E.M. Forster's 1st Draft for Maurice)

Context: Forster's first version of Maurice, finished in 1914, has a rather different ending than the final published version (no hotel scene, and no boathouse reunion). See here.

Forster's first draft for Maurice is, in my opinion, the rawest in terms of boldly displaying the love shared between Maurice and Alec. This version shows much more of Alec's emotion and tenderness, as well as of Maurice's sentiments and affection towards Alec. It is definitely not as subtle as the final version, with quite a few straightforward declarations of love.

Hence, I'm disappointed that Forster did not manage to integrate at least some of these 1914 texts into the final version: it would've made the love between Maurice and Alec much more pronounced and convincing, as well as made Alec a character with more depth and feelings.

Having read Forster's first draft for Maurice, I share below some of these moments between Maurice and Alec that are not in the final version (ordered on how lovely I think each moment is. Bolded texts are the highlights).

1. After running into Mr. Ducie in the museum and Maurice bursting out to Alec.

M: "I'd possibly have blown out my own brains."

A: "Why?" he asked, stopping dead.

M: "I should have known by that time that I loved you."

A: "You can't, sir, you couldn't."

M: "I love you, sir be damned."

A: "Maurice"—never before had the word been spoken—"you're an angel."

M: "I don't want to hear that."

A: "Maurice, Maurice" his voice failed also; he had once said the rest to a woman. "Maurice - what you've said I feel. Understand?"

M: "I think so, but I want to be sure. Remember those rose bushes in the other rain? - Look at me hard - That's right. That'll do. It's settled." (Maurice is referring to the moment when Alec ran in the rain across the rose bushes at Penge just to see Maurice's face.)

2. The conversation after Maurice refuses to stay the night with Alec—a scenario that only happens in the first draft in 1914. Be prepared for tears.

A: "Come just for a little to me."

M: "If I came it would be for ever."

A: "Ever's the best."

M: "Why, man, you sail Thursday."

Alec found no answer.

... (here's when Maurice explains in a long paragraph why they can't be together because of their class difference and the fact that they're both men)

M: I thought from that letter of yours you might want me to come. But, Alec, come where to?"

A: "I'd know if you weren't a gentleman," Alec said. "We'd a' found work together as mates."

M: "Yes, and if you were a gentleman, I'd take you this minute to my home.

A: "I'd a' been what young Clive was to you, then."

M: "He's a saint and we aren't. Leave out him."

A: "I'd a' been yours till death, then." ("I would've been yours till death, then")

M: "Out there if you get a chance to marry, take it. That's what I wish.

A: "Maurice, what'll you do without me, dear? Have you no other friends?"

Maurice dared not look forward to his own future. He rushed on the parting.

M: "And if there's ever a child, I shan't ever have that, so remember me."

A: "I'll remember you, child or none. God bless you. O God bless you, and be with you if I can't."

3. Right after Maurice puts his hand on Alec's back in the museum

"Yes, awfully serious," remarked Maurice, and rested his hand on Alec's shoulder, so that the fingers touched the back of the neck, doing this merely because he knew that he loved Alec, that he loved him not as a second Dickie Barry, but deeply, tenderly, for his own sake, beneath weakness and vulgarity.

4. In the museum, Alec in pain and acting cute

[Alec] had bitten his lip, his eyes were red too; face and body were cramped with pain.

M: "Alec -"

A: "Alec am I?"

M: "I'm sorry I used that other name of yours."

A: "Don't speak to me," he growled, "let me go, you calling me Alec when I"

M: "Did you give me away then on purpose?"

A: "You're correct.

M: "Was it to get money - or only to do me harm?"

A: "I couldn't say."

M: "Come, let's get away where we can finish our talk."

A: "What? What do you say?"

M: "Come along, Alec."

A: "Do you call me that still?"

M: "Come away, man, don't break down for God's sake...." He took hold of [Alec's] arm. The touch was not reminiscent; it hinted at a relation to come.

A: "Oh but you must, I want it." Alec yielded.

5. Maurice at night thinking about Alec's letter

He tried to forget the treacherous letter, but it stole back to his mind, and he suffered most during moments in bed, when it masqueraded as a real love letter, and offered him the completeness that Clive enjoyed with Anne.

(This is brilliant writing because we, as readers, know that Alec's letter is a love letter, yet Maurice's "muddles" prevent him from seeing it as a love letter, and it is only at night, when he's craving Alec's presence, that he's able to allow himself to see the truth and succumb to his feelings for Alec.)

6. One version of Maurice's and Alec's first night together

A: "Good evening - sir, said the low voice. Was you wanting something? Couldn't you sleep?" It was the gamekeeper.

On your rounds? gasped Maurice, trying to sound natural, and felt corduroys. Their touch disconcerted him. Whither was he tending from Clive into what companionship?

A: "Just wait till I've set down my gun - eh aren't you trembling?"

M: "So are you - ah don't."

A: "Don't you like that?"

M: "I don't know."

A: "Christ you're fussy. Don't you like me to touch you."

M: "That's you lad."

A: "Yes."

Side notes: hopefully these will shut all the detractors (of the relationship between Maurice and Alec) up—namely Clive apologists, Clive+Maurice shippers, and all of those dark academia classist out there.

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Masterpost for folk who might like to read fuller extracts from these beautiful passages (and some wider 1914 Maurice/Alec) for free (shared by me in 2012–14): https://expo63.tumblr.com/post/142741502252

I love the Alec of the Maurice 1914 manuscript soooo much. It frustrates and slightly puzzles me that Forster misleads about these changes in his 1960 ‘Notes on Maurice’, the endnote written for the novel-as-finalised-for-posthumous-publication. (6, the ‘Christ you’re fussy’ fragment, of course dates from the early 1930s, not 1914. Between the two dates, Forster had ‘parted with respectability’, as he put it, and started to actually have sexual encounters and relationships with other men.)

The Forster of 1960 claimed: ‘the additions to the novel (there were scarcely any cancellations in it) are all due to him [Alec]’. But, in reality, so many passages in the 1914 ‘Greenwood manuscript’ (the earliest known surviving version of Maurice) give us the opposite: more Alec: a really raw, emotional Alec, also a sexually bolder, even ‘unmanageable’ [x] Alec.

I crave raw, emotional Alec and all their untempered passion in the published novel. But, having seen how nasty and homophobic many of Maurice’s 1971 reviews were, I can also understand what reaction Forster feared if he’d kept all of that raw emotion in the text. We can see in those reviews how even the more restrained, pared-down writing of Maurice/Alec was treated cruelly by many critics. Another possible factor is that Forster never quite felt confident that he had captured Alec as a writer. (‘I can’t hear Alec’s voice in the dark’, he wrote to Isherwood.) Perhaps the published novel’s more minimal approach to Alec was Forster’s perceived ‘solution’?

Further mindblowing examples: in 1914, Forster literally had Maurice use the word ‘marriage’ to Alec [x], and when Alec’s arm ‘gains’ Maurice’s, ‘the feeling was queer’ (not the later ‘strange’) [x].

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I'm ready for Maurice's Bday with precious my babygirl..

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Oh My Word. I was the screenwriter for Maurice, and I have only just stumbled upon this treasure trove. Scenes we filmed 35 years ago, and I feel like Herod, rediscovering the slaughtered bodies of the Innocents. Jim Ivory is still alive, so I must choose my words carefully. Please remember that Maurice's screen adaptation was opportunistic. Jim Ihad a window unexpectedly. We wrote in haste: less than two months from green light to first day of shooting. Another couple of drafts, and we might have had an editable structure which would have made room (in a movie languid and long) for some of these dead babies that had in the edit to be flushed out with the bathwater. Which, coming upon them with so much hindsight, are (for me ... ) YES, YES, YES, there should have been space for that astonishing final scene between Maurice and Clive. I cannot from this distance remember why it had to go. But the way that Hugh and James played it, Jim directed it, and Pierre shot it, is magnificent. I'll say it unequivocally, a great loss. I miss Adrian Ross-Magenty's wonderfully understated vulnerability and innocence, as Dickie, but yes, the sub-plot sullies our sympathy for Maurice. I think we might have isqueezed in the Maurice-Gladys smoke-ring-blowing scene somehow: it tells us so much, and Serena Gordon conveyed every heartbeat of it. And Clive's self-loathing before Greece, the bed-share that turns sour, and Maurice's dawning unease, is played with such extraordinary and telling truth by Hugh in particular: acting of the first order, which deepens Clive's character spellbindingly. Maybe we could have telescoped the two hypnotism sessions into one, and saved outselves some time? Lost the Dirty Old Man on the Train? What do you guys think? (I am so glad, btw, that after all this time, 'Maurice' has garnered its much-delayed recognition ... Thank you). PS I hope that you enjoyed my own cameos as Clive's chum toasting 'The Ladies'. Ismail couldn't afford extras, so dragooned me to wear a fetching moustache and eat with my mouth full. And to be High's stunt-rider. Ah, my beauty past compare ...

I always appreciate Kit Hesketh-Harvey's comments whenever I go to YouTube to watch Maurice's deleted scene. This is the precious last relic, gift, and pleasure that he left us four months before he died in February 2023. This short comment from him is so valuable since we don't have a Blu-ray with commentary. Each one, even if not a lot, is really important. He was the husband of Catherine Rabett, who played Pippa Durham (they divorced in 2022), and he wrote and even made a cameo appearance in Maurice. He was pretty good and cute. Thank you for shared with us fragments of a beautiful time. Rest in peace.

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‘Jim Ivory is still alive, so I must choose my words carefully. Please remember that Maurice's screen adaptation was opportunistic.’ Jim had a window unexpectedly. We wrote in haste: less than two months from green light to first day of shooting. Another couple of drafts, and we might have had an editable structure which would have made room (in a movie languid and long) for some of these dead babies that had in the edit to be flushed out with the bathwater...’

‘Dead babies’?!

KHH was right to draw attention to the timescale and ‘opportunism’. But it’s on the record that the Maurice screenplay went through rather more drafts than was usual for Ivory’s films. And Ivory’s Maurice as we know it was made in the editing suite.

As for ‘languid and long’, the released cut of Maurice, at 140mins, has the same running time as Howards End. What increasingly strikes me whenever I rewatch Maurice is that the film actually whizzes through its 4 years of story events at a cracking pace. If anything, there are many shots/scene ends which could have been held for a few beats longer than they are.

I also can’t agree that the two hypnotism sessions – Before Alec/After Alec – could have been ‘telescoped ... into one’. (There’s already deleted material from a longer version of Hypnotism 1.)

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Maurice girlies (gender-neutral) it's my duty to inform you that a Vietnamese LGBT movie channel have made a fan reconstruction of the 1987 movie, by adding all deleted scenes (which include establishing wayyyy earlier that Alec works at Durham's, establishing Alec's bisexuality, Maurice's beautiful ending monologue to Clive, and many more) resulting in a movie that's almost 3 hours long, and uploaded it to youtube (with English subtitles!) here!

#viva viet fans!!!!#maurice 1987

youngroyalsascats

Young Royals as Cats s2 countdown (3 days) : Young Royals as cats Raccons!!

simon

wille

felice

sara

madison

august

sara and simon

Wilmon ❤️

bonus: fandom @ wille for season 2

Once more, I should thank @lovelylittlelosers’s genius, mwah θέρος ❤️

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The best supporting actor award for Young Royals goes to

👑Wilhelm's Desk👑

This desk has supported Wilhelm when he was having a breakdown. It supported Wilhelm when he was being dragged away. And it supported Wilhelm when he needed to pin down Simon so that he can eat his face. Top tier quality desk, I tell you. They need to let us know the brand. Who am I kidding, it's probably IKEA!

#omg yesss