Years later, on a wet November evening, I took lodging at a hotel in Cambridge, very much like a Chaucerian inn, meant for stout pilgrims and loud links of gaiety. A Bible lay on the table, and a rustic, bright-buttoned waiter dragged up my luggage and promised to look after my needs. There must have been a lot of beer round the corner, but I do not drink beer. In the yard the stagecoach might have emptied its contents—of men and goods and fat ladies—and you could, if you so wished, still smell the acrid grass from the stables below.

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage

To Caunterbury with ful devout corage

And made forward erly for to ryse . . .

A pilgrim, I wrote to E.M. Forster, saying I was in Cambridge and could I come to see him. I think it was the Chaucerian waiter who took the letter to King’s College. Next morning, with breakfast, came the reply. (Forster’s handwriting is so medieval, its corners more important than its girth). He would see me that very afternoon. The chapel of King’s College chanted Latin articulations for the reception of pilgrims. Forster was the saint in residence for the pilgrims to see. He did not say the beads. He spoke so softly, it was as if syllabled in prayer. For Forster, to speak to a friend is prayer.

I believe in aristocracy . . . Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition . . . their temple, as one of them remarked, is the Holiness of the Heart’s Affection, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is a wide-open world.

(What I Believe)

Forster poured tea into my cup.

‘Have you any news of Ahmed?’ I asked.

‘I am so happy that you speak of him,’ Forster remarked affectionately. India and Pakistan had divided Ahmed Ali and me, old friends from Aligarh, both with literary ambitions and both deeply devoted to Forster. ‘The last time I heard from him he was in Peking. But I have so few letters. He must have had a hard time.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘politicians decide the fate of man. But man—but man—’ I hesitated. ‘Man belongs to the cowless world. I knew Ahmed’s grandmother in Delhi. “What,” she said, “a real Brahmin to come to stay with us Musalmans.” And she gave me, the good lady, spinach to eat. You see—the cow.’

Forster smiled. ‘How did she see you?’

‘Of course, so as to feed me with fresh green grass.’