Forrest Reid and Stephen Gilbert: A Fresh Perspective

Abstract

A recently discovered collection of manuscripts and typescripts offers remarkable new insights into the literary friendship of Forrest Reid (1875–1947) and his protégé Stephen Gilbert (1912–2010). These documents were found in Gilbert’s private study after his death in June 2010, and passed to Queen’s University Belfast in March 2011 by Tom Gilbert, the author’s son, where they have since remained uncatalogued and unread.1 This collection constitutes a wealth of unpublished material produced by Gilbert over a period of at least sixty-five years, including various drafts of novels, plays, poems, short stories, as well as fragments, notes, and synopses of unfinished work.2 Most revealing are the accounts of Gilbert’s own life: a journal written between October 1998 and November 2000; an undated typescript fragment containing private reflections on Forrest Reid; and an extensive four-volume pseudonymous autobiography, also undated, in which Reid is referred to throughout as ‘Webster Moore’.3 Critics have long known that that the sixteen-year association between these writers was characterized by periods of emotional turbulence. In The Green Avenue Brian Taylor suggests that in all likelihood ‘the fault lay with Reid’, that he ‘responded too eagerly’ to Gilbert’s friendship.4 More recently, Michael Matthew Kaylor has argued that in spite of ‘their compatibilities in personality and interests, and their clear affection for one another’ the two men were ‘destined to repeatedly, perhaps even permanently, fall out’.5 In the light of the recently uncovered autobiographical material, it is now clear that these ‘compatibilities’ have been overstated. Reid, although tactless and occasionally childish, was cripplingly sensitive, and his passionate love for Gilbert caused him great distress.6 By contrast, in these documents Gilbert presents himself as opportunistic and unsentimental, a young man who was willing to tolerate his mentor’s affections for the sake of his literary career.