“If you tell grown-ups, ‘I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof…,’ they won’t be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, ‘I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.’ Then they exclaim, ‘What a pretty house!”
It struck to me when I was reading through the book that it is this same conversation that the pilot had with The Little Prince — that as we grow up, we tend to lose track of the substance of things, and instead, have the value of things in mind. Whether this value is defined by a dollar value, convenience or a personal motive is a different question entirely. Howards End is about the immeasurable value of sentimentality compared to the measurable value of worth.
The fibre beyond the bricks and mortar
Howards End kicks off with three letters between two sisters — Helen and Margaret. Helen is staying over at the Wilcoxes in Howards End, a family they met during a holiday. The third letter is the most curt — that she had decided to marry Paul Wilcox, the vagabond son of the Wilcox heir. This surprise triggered Aunt Juley, who took a train to try and prevent the marriage only to find that it had been broken. It certainly left things rather awkward between the two families.
It would even get more awkward when the two families collide in London when the Wilcoxes decided to take up accommodation just across the road from the Schlegels, virtually within viewing distance of each other. However, this struck an odd friendship between Margaret and the Wilcox matron, Ruth. Although the two were never intimate, they hit a chord when a discussion started on Howards End. Ruth Wilcox was born there and lived her whole life there, it is her spiritual home and the home for her sentimentalities. Margaret understood this, beyond the fact that its made up of soil and bricks and mortar.
When Ruth Wilcox surprisingly passed away, she wrote a letter to her husband to bequeath Howards End to Margaret. Incensed, confused and betrayed, the surviving Wilcox clan put their heads together to decide whether to grant their matron’s last request. In a logical turn of events, they burned the letter and the Schlegels were none the wiser.
The Wilcoxes and the Schlegels remained amicable. When the lease for the Schelgel property expires, they had to find a place to move to. Unfortunately, their procrastination doesn’t really help either — nobody could really make a decision. These events led to Margaret being proposed to by Henry Wilcox, the widow of Ruth Wilcox. It’s all a bit messy I know, but this is early 20th century we’re talking about here.
Say what you want. Howards End is a glorious mess
You will seldom find a novel more beautifully written than Howards End. Forster pens his words beautifully — his sentences are long and he instills himself as a narrator almost as another character through his voice. His prose is pensive, opinionated, but insightful. You may or may not agree with him, but it does make you stop and think nonetheless, which is why it took me quite a while to finish Howards End. For example:
To trust people is a luxury in which only wealthy people can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.
In my personal experience the poor is more trusting than the rich. I find wealthier people to be more mistrusting of their money than the poor. But I do come from an Asian background where in general, everybody is tight with their money anyway, and perhaps this is an English attitude. In any case, I don’t find this statement hitting the target, but it made me underline the passage and made me reflect.
And another gem:
She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
Call them truisms if you will, but the novel doesn’t suffer for it. In fact, these observations are the very essence of the novel.
It exposes the hypocrisy of the upper classes in their attitudes to money, the poor, property rights and in a more grim note, life and death. The novel is rich with juxtapositions, as great novels often are. The Schlegels represent the old gentry, money is taken for granted but they value art in any form above all else. We can go as far to say that it is central to their existence. The Wilcoxes is not necessarily new money, but they are commercially-minded. Cold hard facts, science, politics and finance are the air they breathe. The two contrasting families joust and towards the end, we find a sort of compromise.
We should also take note the lower middle-class Leonard Bast, who’s wedged into the story. Though his presence may be a little out of place, we see through him the callous altruism of the Shlegels and the sheer apathy of the Wilcox to the lower classes. When Henry Wilcox gave an offhand remark which Margaret interpreted as an intelligence which could save Leonard’s career, she told him and he consequently left his job to move to another lower-paying position which subjected him to poverty. His initial company did just fine, Henry made a misjudgement, but so did Margaret. Her hastiness cost Leonard his livelihood.
Leonard’s character is tragic in a way. He aspires to be cultured, not to be on the same level as the upper classes but to be respected by them. To some extent, he managed to achieve this, but not because he attained culture, but through pity. He is unable to keep up with the readings of the leisure class, though he tries to scramble for the bits and pieces of knowledge of arts and literature. He is ready to quote from books he read, keen to showcase his knowledge, but all this seems a little sad. He’s trying too hard. But there is a little to admire about this man who’s practically a fish out of water in wealthier company, that he is trying his best to make a living and attain culture, that is, to be respectable. Maybe there is a touch of a misguided arrogance to it, but don’t we read for the same reason?
A glorious mess, but still a bit of a mess
Howards End is a book with plenty of turns and surprises. Even in the first few pages, we are surprised by Helen’s brief third letter which we assume will drive the story — the relationship between Paul and Helen. But as the story unfolds, this just petered out. We assume that Margaret and Mrs Wilcox will have a patchy but ultimately fruitful friendship until the end of the book, but the latter suddenly dies. The twists and turns of this book are more unexpected than the punch of most mystery novels.
But it makes for an inconsistent read. We are thrown off our rockers so much that we don’t know what to expect anymore, we don’t know where it’s going. Will Howards End ultimately fall to the hands of its spiritual owners? What’s going to happen to the wayward Helen? But I would argue that the plot is secondary to the form and substance of the novel. The wealth of the novel is in Forster’s meditations on the characters and the larger questions that envelop them — the questions of gender roles, the English character, ownership, filial relationships, class differences, art. The novel is full of rabbit holes that you can dive deep if you select any of the themes aforementioned, and then some.
But most importantly, read it for the masterly prose. Read Forster’s meditation on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the goblins that lurk within its melodies — the same goblins which scheme the twists and turns of the characters’ decisions. Read Forster’s description of Howards End, the sentimental residence of his own Rooksnest. Read the entire thing. It’s a fucking orchestra.
