E. M. Forster Letters, Chaise Longue, and Washstand Under the Hammer

Personal letters and books that mark the deep relationship between author E. M. Forster and policeman Bob Buckingham and his family come to auction this month. 

The cache of more than a dozen autograph letters and over 160 books come to sale from the Buckingham family at Chiswick Auctions as part of a rare book sale on November 29. The collection will be offered as a single lot with a guide of £4,000-6,000.

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) had a long-term relationship with Bob Buckingham (1902-1975) for 40 years until his death. They met at a party on the day of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race in 1930 when Buckingham was unmarried. Buckingham was 28 and Forster 51. The recent film My Policeman starring Harry Styles was inspired by the story.

The author of Howards End and A Passage To India was best man when Buckingham married his wife May Hockey in 1932, was godfather to their son Robin (who was given Morgan as a middle name) and in 1949 bought the Buckinghams their family home at Salisbury Avenue in Coventry. 

The collection of autograph correspondence includes letters from Forster to Buckingham’s son Robin Morgan Buckingham (1933-1962) dated between March 1950 and July 1962 and his grandson Clive Morgan Buckingham. In one letter written from Aldeburgh in February 1957 he writes: “Here I am stopping with [Benjamin] Britten. I have just been taken to the theatre here – Donald Wolfit in The Master of Santiago – not a good play and he not suited to the part of an ascetic Spaniard." On a postcard to Clive he says: “I wonder whether you read my hand writing easily. It is said to be rather difficult.”

The library of books and pamphlets includes many presentation and signed copies. Many, such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1930) and Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon (1932) were gifts from Forster to Bob Buckingham. Others were books sent by a range of 20th century writers and poets to Forster himself. A copy of Rose Macaulay’s Life Among the English (1932) in its original dust jacket is inscribed 'E.M. Forster from R.M.'.

Towards the end of Forster’s life, Forster lived with the Buckingham family with May acting as a nursemaid, until his death at the age of 91. She later wrote: “I now know that he was in love with Robert and therefore critical and jealous of me and our early years were very stormy. Over the years he changed us both and he and I came to love one another, able to share the joys and sorrows that came.”