"Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence? Could he adapt it to the needs of daily life? Could he introduce it, with modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his brother?"

Leonard Bast on reading Ruskin

Howards End, E.M. Forster

Dear Harry,
A belated Happy New Year to you and Kate and the kids! Please, please, please tell Kate not to despair. Mom is sending her a care package of 4 dozen bagels from Balducci's and the cappuccino maker we gave her last Mother's Day.

ANYWAY, our New York contingent broke fast last Monday at Joanie's home. Our conservative sister changed her standard fare from vegetable lasagna and green salad to tofu dogs, baked beans and baby carrots. The latter ruined my dining pleasure by loosening a temporary crown on my eye tooth, and I traded in my nitrates for a week's supply of Jimmy's school lunches (5 dwarfed cups of applesauce, Yoplait yogurt and lime Jell-O).

ANYWAY, just past midnight, the decayed porcelain jacket dislodged from its post and somersaulted out of my mouth, touching down on my umpteenth index card covered with notable quotes from Howards End.  As I searched the bathroom cabinet for a tube of Fixodent, I reflected upon my first (and only) overseas flight in 1977.

In retrospect, my maiden arrival at Heathrow Airport also marked an ostentatious departure. Flanked by a well-renowned dermatologist, a former feather-weight champion, and Teddy Kennedy's cousin-once-removed, I returned an overabundance of hugs and produced my own alligator tears as I waved good-bye to the collection of well-endowed men I'd entrapped on the tedious flight.Akin to Forster's poor bank clerk, Leonard Bast ("It was not by any means the first time he spoke intimately to strangers"), I dismissed my self-indulgent habit as a pleasurable pastime, and released authentic sobs at the sight of Anne's signature Sassoon at the far end of the terminal. I pressed our bosomless sister against my once-upon-a-time Jane Fonda breasts as the last chorus of "Don't-do-anything-I-wouldn't-do" faded into oblivion.

ANYWAY, I miss the spirited girl who charged up to Barbara Barrie in a bathroom stall at the National Theater, slicing London's fog with her earsplitting acclamation, "I just LOVED you in One Potato, Two Potato, Miss Barrie!" But I also embrace the adult "me" who can read the back flap of Howards End and answer Lionel Trilling's question, "Who shall inherit England?" (WHO CARES!!!) Forster's London may not be the city I recall, but the language in Howards End is more provocative than Anne's ex-husband in a Speedo bikini.

ANYWAY, my dearest brother, I must leave you now and get ahead on my school work. Like Margaret Schlegel, I pretend to an inexperience that I don't feel. I have kept house for over twenty years; I have entertained, almost with distinction; I have nurtured a dying husband, and am bringing up a charming daughter. Surely, if experience is attainable, I have attained it.
Love,
Bess