E. M. Forster on Desmond MacCarthy (Published as a Pamphlet in 1952, by the Mill House Press)

I have not many recollections of the early Desmond MacCarthy, but fortunately I can clearly remember the first time we met. It was about fifty years ago, in Cambridge, and at one of those little discussion-societies which are constantly being born and dying inside the framework of the university. They still continue, I am glad to say, and I know that he too would be glad.

This particular society was called the Apennines. Its invitation-card displayed a range of mountains, and there was also a pun involved, upon which I will not expatiate. I had to read a paper to the Apennines, then I was pulled to pieces, and among my critics was a quiet, dark young man with a charming voice and manner, who sat rather far back in the room, and who for all his gentleness knew exactly what he wanted to say, and in the end how to say it. That was my first impression of him, and I may say it is my last impression also. The young man became an old one and a famous one, but he remained charming and gentle, he always knew his own mind, and he always sat rather far back in the room. Compare him in this respect with that trenchant critic Mr. So-and-So, or with that chatty columnist Sir Somebody Everything, who always manage to sit well in front. I do not think it was modesty on Desmond’s part that made him retiring. He just knew where he wanted to be. Some years after the Apennines, when he was doing literary journalism, he chose for a pseudonym the name “Affable Hawk.” Nothing could have been more apt. He was affable to his fellow writers, whenever possible. But if a book was shallow or bumptious or brutal, then down pounced the hawk, and the victim’s feathers flew.

He and I were always friendly and I stayed with him in Suffolk in those far-off days, and elsewhere later on, but all my vivid memories of him are in a group with other people. So let us now move from Cambridge to London. There, in the early years of this century, I remember a peculiar organisation which had been formed for the purpose of making Desmond write his novel. He wanted to write his novel. He could talk his novel – character, plot, incidents, all were fascinating; I recall a green valley in Wales where a famous picture had got hidden: but he could not get his novel on to paper. So some of his friends thought that if a society was formed at which we all wrote novels and read a fresh chapter aloud at each meeting, Desmond would be reluctantly dragged down the path of creation. Needless to say, he eluded so crude a device. Other people wrote their novels – which usually began well and fell to bits in the second chapter. He – he had forgotten, he had mislaid the manuscript, he had not the time. And he did not write his novel. And after the first world war the group was reconstituted: not to write novels but to write reminiscences.

Here Desmond was supreme. “Memory,” he often said, “is an excellent compositor.” And in the midst of a group which included Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Maynard Keynes, he stood out in his command of the past, and in his power to rearrange it. I remember one paper of his in particular – if it can be called a paper. Perched away in a corner of Duncan Grant’s studio, he had a suit-case open before him. The lid of the case, which he propped up, would be useful to rest his manuscript upon, he told us. On he read, delighting us as usual, with his brilliancy, and humanity, and wisdom, until – owing to a slight wave of his hand – the suit-case unfortunately fell over. Nothing was inside it. There was no paper, no manuscript. He had been improvising.