Of Nazis, Poles, and Henry Wilcox

Henry at his “best” — forgiven (Still courtesy of Roger Ebert collection)

There are worse things than to be stuck in the past.

“As is Man to the Universe, so was the mind of Mr. Wilcox to the minds of some men . . . No Pagan he, who lives for the Now, and maybe wiser than all the philosophers. He lived for the five minutes that have past, and the five to come; he had the business mind” (Forster, Howards End, 260).

I suppose you could say that Mr. Henry Wilcox lives in the here and now, at least in the pages of Forster’s novel, written almost 100 years ago. “Be Here Now,” the catchphrase goes. “Live in the moment.” Yes, yes, good words, and perhaps they are true — certainly desirable when practicing yoga. Yet I think they let us off too many hooks. Consider Mr. Wilcox again, whose first wife died a few years previous to this passage:

“Margaret [his new wife-to-be] had heard a certain rumour…Charles and Evie [his grown children] had not heard it, and must never hear. Over his children, he felt great tenderness, which he did not try to track to a cause: Mrs. Wilcox was too far back in his life. He did not connect her with the sudden aching love that he felt for Evie” (260).

The greatest theme of Howards End, of which there are many I think, is “Only connect,” and readers may interpret and find instances of “connection,” or the lack of it, throughout the novel. For me, the most potent…