In March, 1899, E. M. Forster, twenty years old, at King’s College, Cambridge, won a half share of a College prize of four pounds for Latin verse. He spent the money on books: Browning’s poems in two volumes, Jebb’s edition of Sophocles, a history of Italian painting in two volumes, and, best of all, ten volumes of Jane Austen. He had one pound left. Later that year he won two prizes, and more books were purchased: Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, Bryce on the Holy Roman Empire, Seeley on the growth of British policy, a history of King’s, and five of Meredith’s novels. He had nearly three pounds left after that. The purchases are intriguing. No one in Cambridge today could do half so well, even if all the books were Penguins. The very remoteness of the prices, and the atmosphere they suggest, might serve as an emblem of that vanished world where a fellowship at King’s could be three hundred pounds, or a lectureship a hundred and fifty pounds, and life would be agreeable, while a working-class wage hovered “round about a pound a week,” with luck. The young Forster had considerably more than a pound a week, although he was not rich. He didn’t need to be rich; it was enough to be there, in Cambridge. King’s was small—one hundred and thirty students in 1897—but its chapel was tremendous, its Palladian and Victorian Gothic buildings poignant, and its riches extensive.

The image of the Kingsman