Howards End

by

E. M. Forster

Leonard Bast Character Analysis

Leonard Bast is an idealistic young man who works as a low-paid clerk for an insurance company. He is estranged from his family because of their opposition to his relationship with Jacky, a former prostitute. He scrapes together money for books and concerts because he wishes to improve his life with a knowledge of art and culture. He meets the wealthy sisters Helen and Margaret Schlegel at a Beethoven concert, where Helen accidentally takes his umbrella. They cross paths again over time, and he impresses them with his tale of once walking the whole night long. He dreams of preserving an intellectual relationship with them, and is unhappy when they pry into his professional life. He ends up losing his job after he takes their well-intentioned advice, and loses his idealism in turn, becoming resigned to never rising above his miserable station. Feeling very guilty, Helen tries to get him a job with Henry Wilcox, Margaret’s fiancé, but Henry refuses once he realizes that Leonard’s wife, Jacky, is his former mistress. Helen, distraught at her failure, sleeps with Leonard before running away. Leonard, feeling great remorse, seeks Margaret at Howards End to ask her forgiveness for his conduct with her sister. Before he can talk to her, Henry’s son Charles Wilcox attacks him for causing Helen’s scandalous pregnancy, and Leonard’s feeble heart stops, fatally weakened by a life of pollution and poor nutrition. He tragically dies without ever knowing that Helen was about to have his baby.

Leonard Bast Quotes in Howards End

The Howards End quotes below are all either spoken by Leonard Bast or refer to Leonard Bast. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Class and Privilege Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

It will be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man…you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings. It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen’s Hall, dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel, Leonard Bast
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

And the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping melodiously of Effort and Self-Sacrifice, full of high purpose, full of beauty, full even of sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow eluding all that was actual and insistent in Leonard’s life. For it was the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed successfully what dirt and hunger are.

Related Characters: Leonard Bast
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 34-35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

…[Leonard’s] outburst ended in a swamp of books. No disrespect to these great names. The fault is ours, not theirs. They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination. And Leonard had reached the destination. He had visited the county of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night. Every twelve hours this miracle happens, but he had troubled to go and see for himself. Within his cramped little mind dwelt something that was greater than Jefferies’ books—the spirit that led Jefferies to write them.

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel, Helen Schlegel, Leonard Bast
Related Symbols: Cars and Walks, Books
Page Number: 85-86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

“It is so slurred over and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking…so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means. Money: give Mr. Bast money, and don’t bother about his ideals. He’ll pick up those for himself.”

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel (speaker), Leonard Bast
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

[Leonard] understood his own corner of the machine, but nothing beyond it…To him, as to the British public, the Porphyrion was the Porphyrion of the advertisement—a giant, in the classical style, but draped sufficiently, who held in one hand a burning torch, and pointed with the other to St. Paul’s and Windsor Castle. A large sum of money was inscribed below, and you drew your own conclusions…A giant was of an impulsive morality—one knew that much. He would pay for Mrs. Munt’s hearthrug with ostentatious haste, a large claim he would repudiate quietly, and fight court by court. But his true fighting weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of the commercial Pantheon—all these were as uncertain to ordinary mortals as were the escapades of Zeus.

Related Characters: Leonard Bast
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“I shall never get work now. If rich people fail at one profession, they can try another. Not I. I had my groove, and I’ve got out of it. I could do one particular branch of insurance in one particular office well enough to command a salary, but that’s all. Poetry’s nothing, Miss Schlegel. One’s thoughts about this and that are nothing. Your money, too, is nothing, if you’ll understand me. I mean if a man over twenty once loses his own particular job, it’s all over with him. I have seen it happen to others. Their friends gave them money for a little, but in the end they fall over the edge. It’s no good. It’s the whole world pulling. There always will be rich and poor.”

Related Characters: Leonard Bast (speaker), Margaret Schlegel
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“You shall see the connection if it kills you, Henry! You have had a mistress—I forgave you. My sister has a lover—you drive her from the house. Do you see the connection? Stupid, hypocritical, cruel—oh, contemptible!—a man who insults his wife when she’s alive and cants with her memory when she’s dead. A man who ruins a woman for his pleasure, and casts her off to ruin other men. And gives bad financial advice, and then says he is not responsible. These men are you. You can’t recognise them, because you cannot connect… Only say to yourself, ‘What Helen has done, I’ve done.’”

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel (speaker), Helen Schlegel, Henry Wilcox, Leonard Bast, Ruth Wilcox, Jacky Bast
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

Here men had been up since dawn. Their hours were ruled, not by a London office, but by the movements of the crops and the sun…They are England’s hope…

At the chalk pit a motor passed [Leonard]. In it was another type, whom Nature favours—the Imperial. Healthy, ever in motion, it hopes to inherit the earth. It breeds as quickly as the yeoman, and as soundly; strong is the temptation to acclaim it as a super-yeoman, who carries his country’s virtue overseas. But the Imperialist is not what he thinks or seems. He is a destroyer.

Related Characters: Leonard Bast, Charles Wilcox
Related Symbols: Cars and Walks
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:
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Leonard Bast Quotes in Howards End

The Howards End quotes below are all either spoken by Leonard Bast or refer to Leonard Bast. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Class and Privilege Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

It will be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man…you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings. It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen’s Hall, dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel, Leonard Bast
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

And the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping melodiously of Effort and Self-Sacrifice, full of high purpose, full of beauty, full even of sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow eluding all that was actual and insistent in Leonard’s life. For it was the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed successfully what dirt and hunger are.

Related Characters: Leonard Bast
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 34-35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

…[Leonard’s] outburst ended in a swamp of books. No disrespect to these great names. The fault is ours, not theirs. They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination. And Leonard had reached the destination. He had visited the county of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night. Every twelve hours this miracle happens, but he had troubled to go and see for himself. Within his cramped little mind dwelt something that was greater than Jefferies’ books—the spirit that led Jefferies to write them.

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel, Helen Schlegel, Leonard Bast
Related Symbols: Cars and Walks, Books
Page Number: 85-86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

“It is so slurred over and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking…so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means. Money: give Mr. Bast money, and don’t bother about his ideals. He’ll pick up those for himself.”

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel (speaker), Leonard Bast
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

[Leonard] understood his own corner of the machine, but nothing beyond it…To him, as to the British public, the Porphyrion was the Porphyrion of the advertisement—a giant, in the classical style, but draped sufficiently, who held in one hand a burning torch, and pointed with the other to St. Paul’s and Windsor Castle. A large sum of money was inscribed below, and you drew your own conclusions…A giant was of an impulsive morality—one knew that much. He would pay for Mrs. Munt’s hearthrug with ostentatious haste, a large claim he would repudiate quietly, and fight court by court. But his true fighting weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of the commercial Pantheon—all these were as uncertain to ordinary mortals as were the escapades of Zeus.

Related Characters: Leonard Bast
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“I shall never get work now. If rich people fail at one profession, they can try another. Not I. I had my groove, and I’ve got out of it. I could do one particular branch of insurance in one particular office well enough to command a salary, but that’s all. Poetry’s nothing, Miss Schlegel. One’s thoughts about this and that are nothing. Your money, too, is nothing, if you’ll understand me. I mean if a man over twenty once loses his own particular job, it’s all over with him. I have seen it happen to others. Their friends gave them money for a little, but in the end they fall over the edge. It’s no good. It’s the whole world pulling. There always will be rich and poor.”

Related Characters: Leonard Bast (speaker), Margaret Schlegel
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“You shall see the connection if it kills you, Henry! You have had a mistress—I forgave you. My sister has a lover—you drive her from the house. Do you see the connection? Stupid, hypocritical, cruel—oh, contemptible!—a man who insults his wife when she’s alive and cants with her memory when she’s dead. A man who ruins a woman for his pleasure, and casts her off to ruin other men. And gives bad financial advice, and then says he is not responsible. These men are you. You can’t recognise them, because you cannot connect… Only say to yourself, ‘What Helen has done, I’ve done.’”

Related Characters: Margaret Schlegel (speaker), Helen Schlegel, Henry Wilcox, Leonard Bast, Ruth Wilcox, Jacky Bast
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

Here men had been up since dawn. Their hours were ruled, not by a London office, but by the movements of the crops and the sun…They are England’s hope…

At the chalk pit a motor passed [Leonard]. In it was another type, whom Nature favours—the Imperial. Healthy, ever in motion, it hopes to inherit the earth. It breeds as quickly as the yeoman, and as soundly; strong is the temptation to acclaim it as a super-yeoman, who carries his country’s virtue overseas. But the Imperialist is not what he thinks or seems. He is a destroyer.

Related Characters: Leonard Bast, Charles Wilcox
Related Symbols: Cars and Walks
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis: