#expo63

[spocks-got-a-glock]

Reblogging this because it's another great point

When you get so irked by someone saying that "Clive and Maurice were the better romantic pairing because they truly loved each other while Alec and Maurice's relationship was based on nothing but sex" that you end up writing a small essay in a Pinterest comment section (which had to be broken up into 500 word chunks because of Pinterest's word limit).

Anyway, I actually like what I wrote so I wanted to share it here. I didn't say everything I wanted to in the exact way that I wanted to due to the word restrictions, but I think it did the job.

[expo63]

Maurice (James Ivory, 1987) set photography: Rupert Graves as Alec Scudder waiting at the boathouse.

I’ve always loved this shot, but for many years I only had a microscopic newsprint copy. There’s also a gorgeous variant (impatient Alec in profile).

[hawleywilby]

[batri-jopa]

Introduction to Forster's Maurice by David Leavitt:

So should we assume Maurice looking less like this...

...and more like this?🤔

[expo63]

This scene is genius (and invented for the film). Simcox laughs derisively (and trolls Alec by tying his boots and not letting him past) ... but he’s just given Alec the greenlight to try it on with Maurice

I never noticed, but Simcox totally cut Alec off in the “Mr. Hall’s a gentleman” scene

[clarasteam]

Last Line Challenge:

Rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or however many you'd like)

I was tagged by the lovely @panzercat - thank you Red! gah, the last fic writing I did was at the end of January, part of an unfinished GO/Harlots crossover sequel with Nancy Birch and Crowley getting drunk and talking about their impossible loves.

[they're drinking the Bedford's best claret (Crowley refused gin*) and it's better than usual. Nancy's starting to relax, but not so much that she's going to accept his offer of tobacco - who knows what's in it?]

"Take a fill of mine," she tells him. "Make yourself at home."

tagging: @owl-by-night @codswalloping @expo63 and @theletteraesc if you haven't done this and would like to.

*this may or may not emerge in the course of the fic, but Crowley has found that gin makes him maudlin (shades of Julian and Sandy in Round The Horne: OUT IT ALL COMES ABOUT BOGNOR)

[expo63]

Dang, life is so horrible that I forgot about James’ 66th birthday. :((

So:

Happy 66th Birthday, James Wilby (b. 20 February 1958)!

And have a classic(?!) thing I made back in 2017 for Maurice’s 30th anniversary restoration & re-release. :-)

[hawleywilby]

Sorry @expo63 but I do think it's mine. Here's the link from my gifset:

Pining 💚

publicity still Samus Swag Pinterest

gif @hawleywilby I think, pm if not

[angleshades]

Clive's house got done up at last...

...but they are obviously lacking a good gamekeeper

He can sort out your mole issues no problem

Filming location Wilbury Park after restoration - photo Peregrine Bryant Architects. Thanks @expo63 for link - is that the grotesque announcement gazebo on the right?

Alec photo - filmweb.pl

[aconissa]

I made a hoop in honour of E. M. Forster’s Maurice 🌼 Because the novel positively depicted love between men it was not published until 1971, a year after Forster’s death. His signature is stitched in light blue, and the flowers are evening primroses which feature in the final scene of the book.

[clarasteam]

catching up

I was tagged by @theletteraesc ❤️

Last song: You Fascinate Me So, sung by Mabel Mercer, from my Flambable playlist

Currently watching: a lot of Father Brown episodes

Three ships: Grant/Strange, Kurt Weill's My Ship ("and of jam and spice there's a paradise in the hold"), Flambeau/Felicia/Monty

Favourite colour: purple? I am bad at colours

Currently reading: @owl-by-night's lovely Father Brown OT3 fic, To Catch a Thief (see ship category above)

Currently consuming: last thing eaten = raspberries and vanilla ice-cream; last thing drunk = rose, lemon verbena and lemon balm tea

First ship: idk - Orsino/Viola|Cesario?

Place of birth: a suburban hospital, so my papers say

Current location: at my kitchen table, comme d'habitude

Last movie: A Canterbury Tale by Powell and Pressburger, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Currently working on: surviving my current state of exhaustion and grief; holding on to whatever moments of joy I can; showing up when I absolutely have to

tagging @owl-by-night @expo63 @idlesuperstar @moonwest @codswalloping if any of you would like to play and haven't done it already

[expo63]

Masterpost for folk who might like to read fuller extracts from these beautiful passages (and some wider 1914 Maurice/Alec) for free (shared by me in 2012–14): https://expo63.tumblr.com/post/142741502252

I love the Alec of the Maurice 1914 manuscript soooo much. It frustrates and slightly puzzles me that Forster misleads about these changes in his 1960 ‘Notes on Maurice’, the endnote written for the novel-as-finalised-for-posthumous-publication. (6, the ‘Christ you’re fussy’ fragment, of course dates from the early 1930s, not 1914. Between the two dates, Forster had ‘parted with respectability’, as he put it, and started to actually have sexual encounters and relationships with other men.)

The Forster of 1960 claimed: ‘the additions to the novel (there were scarcely any cancellations in it) are all due to him [Alec]’. But, in reality, so many passages in the 1914 ‘Greenwood manuscript’ (the earliest known surviving version of Maurice) give us the opposite: more Alec: a really raw, emotional Alec, also a sexually bolder, even ‘unmanageable’ [x] Alec.

I crave raw, emotional Alec and all their untempered passion in the published novel. But, having seen how nasty and homophobic many of Maurice’s 1971 reviews were, I can also understand what reaction Forster feared if he’d kept all of that raw emotion in the text. We can see in those reviews how even the more restrained, pared-down writing of Maurice/Alec was treated cruelly by many critics. Another possible factor is that Forster never quite felt confident that he had captured Alec as a writer. (‘I can’t hear Alec’s voice in the dark’, he wrote to Isherwood.) Perhaps the published novel’s more minimal approach to Alec was Forster’s perceived ‘solution’?

Further mindblowing examples: in 1914, Forster literally had Maurice use the word ‘marriage’ to Alec [x], and when Alec’s arm ‘gains’ Maurice’s, ‘the feeling was queer’ (not the later ‘strange’) [x].

Sweet Moments Between Maurice and Alec That You Have Not Seen Before (From E.M. Forster's 1st Draft for Maurice)

Context: Forster's first version of Maurice, finished in 1914, has a rather different ending than the final published version (no hotel scene, and no boathouse reunion). See here.

Forster's first draft for Maurice is, in my opinion, the rawest in terms of boldly displaying the love shared between Maurice and Alec. This version shows much more of Alec's emotion and tenderness, as well as of Maurice's sentiments and affection towards Alec. It is definitely not as subtle as the final version, with quite a few straightforward declarations of love.

Hence, I'm disappointed that Forster did not manage to integrate at least some of these 1914 texts into the final version: it would've made the love between Maurice and Alec much more pronounced and convincing, as well as made Alec a character with more depth and feelings.

Having read Forster's first draft for Maurice, I share below some of these moments between Maurice and Alec that are not in the final version (ordered on how lovely I think each moment is. Bolded texts are the highlights).

1. After running into Mr. Ducie in the museum and Maurice bursting out to Alec.

M: "I'd possibly have blown out my own brains."

A: "Why?" he asked, stopping dead.

M: "I should have known by that time that I loved you."

A: "You can't, sir, you couldn't."

M: "I love you, sir be damned."

A: "Maurice"—never before had the word been spoken—"you're an angel."

M: "I don't want to hear that."

A: "Maurice, Maurice" his voice failed also; he had once said the rest to a woman. "Maurice - what you've said I feel. Understand?"

M: "I think so, but I want to be sure. Remember those rose bushes in the other rain? - Look at me hard - That's right. That'll do. It's settled." (Maurice is referring to the moment when Alec ran in the rain across the rose bushes at Penge just to see Maurice's face.)

2. The conversation after Maurice refuses to stay the night with Alec—a scenario that only happens in the first draft in 1914. Be prepared for tears.

A: "Come just for a little to me."

M: "If I came it would be for ever."

A: "Ever's the best."

M: "Why, man, you sail Thursday."

Alec found no answer.

... (here's when Maurice explains in a long paragraph why they can't be together because of their class difference and the fact that they're both men)

M: I thought from that letter of yours you might want me to come. But, Alec, come where to?"

A: "I'd know if you weren't a gentleman," Alec said. "We'd a' found work together as mates."

M: "Yes, and if you were a gentleman, I'd take you this minute to my home.

A: "I'd a' been what young Clive was to you, then."

M: "He's a saint and we aren't. Leave out him."

A: "I'd a' been yours till death, then." ("I would've been yours till death, then")

M: "Out there if you get a chance to marry, take it. That's what I wish.

A: "Maurice, what'll you do without me, dear? Have you no other friends?"

Maurice dared not look forward to his own future. He rushed on the parting.

M: "And if there's ever a child, I shan't ever have that, so remember me."

A: "I'll remember you, child or none. God bless you. O God bless you, and be with you if I can't."

3. Right after Maurice puts his hand on Alec's back in the museum

"Yes, awfully serious," remarked Maurice, and rested his hand on Alec's shoulder, so that the fingers touched the back of the neck, doing this merely because he knew that he loved Alec, that he loved him not as a second Dickie Barry, but deeply, tenderly, for his own sake, beneath weakness and vulgarity.

4. In the museum, Alec in pain and acting cute

[Alec] had bitten his lip, his eyes were red too; face and body were cramped with pain.

M: "Alec -"

A: "Alec am I?"

M: "I'm sorry I used that other name of yours."

A: "Don't speak to me," he growled, "let me go, you calling me Alec when I"

M: "Did you give me away then on purpose?"

A: "You're correct.

M: "Was it to get money - or only to do me harm?"

A: "I couldn't say."

M: "Come, let's get away where we can finish our talk."

A: "What? What do you say?"

M: "Come along, Alec."

A: "Do you call me that still?"

M: "Come away, man, don't break down for God's sake...." He took hold of [Alec's] arm. The touch was not reminiscent; it hinted at a relation to come.

A: "Oh but you must, I want it." Alec yielded.

5. Maurice at night thinking about Alec's letter

He tried to forget the treacherous letter, but it stole back to his mind, and he suffered most during moments in bed, when it masqueraded as a real love letter, and offered him the completeness that Clive enjoyed with Anne.

(This is brilliant writing because we, as readers, know that Alec's letter is a love letter, yet Maurice's "muddles" prevent him from seeing it as a love letter, and it is only at night, when he's craving Alec's presence, that he's able to allow himself to see the truth and succumb to his feelings for Alec.)

6. One version of Maurice's and Alec's first night together

A: "Good evening - sir, said the low voice. Was you wanting something? Couldn't you sleep?" It was the gamekeeper.

On your rounds? gasped Maurice, trying to sound natural, and felt corduroys. Their touch disconcerted him. Whither was he tending from Clive into what companionship?

A: "Just wait till I've set down my gun - eh aren't you trembling?"

M: "So are you - ah don't."

A: "Don't you like that?"

M: "I don't know."

A: "Christ you're fussy. Don't you like me to touch you."

M: "That's you lad."

A: "Yes."

Side notes: hopefully these will shut all the detractors (of the relationship between Maurice and Alec) up—namely Clive apologists, Clive+Maurice shippers, and all of those dark academia classist out there.

[oldfilmsflicker]

ICYMI: MAURICE is on Criterion Channel right now

[expo63]

More Dalíland (Mary Harron, 2022) / More of my gifs

[oscarwetnwilde]

expo63 replied to your photo “I paid 18 dollars for this photo of Rupert Graves and I need an excuse...”

Was that $18 with Simon Callow & Denholm Elliott included? They’re in the original shot (it was a press still) but I like the idea of a big Rupert/Freddy with them cropped off. :) My equivalent obsession used to be a long thin grainy press photo of Alec Scudder which I blew up on a photocopier to make him into a poster, waay back in the day...

That’s the one. I think I have the full image stashed away, but I hate how Tumblr tends to shrink the image, and the original file I have is so large. XD

[hayaomiyazaki]

MAURICE (1987) dir. James Ivory