Lost Years

by Christopher Isherwood

  On March 3, Christopher went with Forster to supper at the sadly down-at-heel Reform Club and then saw Les Enfants du paradis, which was having a big success. I can’t remember what either of them thought then of this hateful film.

  On March 4, Christopher moved to John Lehmann’s house. He had lunch with Brian Howard and Sam Langford, Brian’s lover. Brian had met Sam during the war, so Christopher hadn’t seen him before this. (Brian’s previous lover Toni, whom Christopher had seen such a lot of in the thirties, in Holland and Portugal, was now in the States, married to a rich woman.) The lunch was lively and drunken. Christopher nearly always got along well with Brian; and he found Sam cute and refreshingly uncomplicated, after sulky Toni. I’m pretty sure that this was the occasion on which Brian impulsively decided that he must give Christopher a precious stone—or at least a semiprecious one; I remember it as being golden yellow, so it may have been a topaz. The gift seemed princely and somehow characteristic of Brian’s Jewish-Oriental persona. Since their lunch had been late and long, they arrived at the jeweler’s just at closing time. The iron curtain-gate was being lowered in front of the door. But Brian ducked under it and insisted, with his usual high-handedness, on being served. Christopher had no earthly use for the stone; later he gave it to Caskey, who carried it around for a while in his billfold. I don’t know what finally happened to it.

  That evening, Christopher had supper with Cyril Connolly and his wife—this was his second wife I suppose, the successor to Jean; anyhow Christopher hadn’t seen her before.[19] Not one word remains to me out of what must have been a brilliant display of Connolly talk, literary in-jokes, literary scandal, and the latest literary ratings of contemporary writers. No doubt Christopher was drunk as usual. What I do remember, that night, is a blizzard. (There must have been some snow all the time Christopher was in London, but the memory of it is attached only to two or three events.) Christopher had great difficulty in finding a taxi, and, when he did, the driver announced that he refused to venture north of Regent’s Park; Christopher got the impression that the center of the city was surrounded by a vast snowdrift. Luckily for himself, he wanted to go south. I remember he later described to John Lehmann how the taxi driver had burst forth into a sort of Shakespearian soliloquy, addressing the blizzard and defying it to do its worst—but I don’t remember the taxi driver actually doing this. It was probably one of Christopher’s fantasies. Lehmann was very easily entertained by such talk—which was one of the reasons why Christopher liked being with him, despite his phases of pomposity.

  On March 5, Christopher went to look at Keith Vaughan’s paintings, which were in a gallery where Keith had just had a show. Christopher admired them greatly and was planning to buy one. In the evening, Lehmann took him to see Alexis Rassine dance in Les Patineurs at Covent Garden.

  On March 6, Christopher had lunch with Gerald Hamilton. This was at a flat which Gerald had rented in Glebe Place. Their reunion was strange and comic. When Christopher entered, Gerald embraced him hastily and said, “Before we talk, I want you to read those—”and he indicated a pile of papers set out in the middle of the dining table, “It’s all in there—you’ll see when you read them—I’ve been accused of being favorable to the enemy—it’s the most utter libel and I was able to prove it—the first casualty in any war is Truth—all I did was try to stop the war—“

  I forget how much Christopher knew about Gerald’s case beforehand. The facts (according to Gerald’s book, Mr. Norris and I) were that Gerald had tried to leave England without an exit permit in 1941 and go to neutral Ireland in order to persuade the Vatican through its representatives in Dublin to negotiate a peace.20 His letters were intercepted and he was arrested and interned by the British, in the same prison (Brixton) as Sir Oswald Mosley the fascist leader. After a few weeks, he was released, however, because the authorities decided that the terms he had suggested as a basis for a peace conference were not “favorable to the enemy,” and that he had therefore not been guilty of “an act prejudicial to the defense of the realm.”

  I’m sure Christopher only pretended to study the case for Gerald’s defense. In his eyes, Gerald was always guilty—and the seeming nobility of his motives on this occasion only made his behavior look more suspicious. Christopher didn’t care whether or not Gerald had intended to commit high treason—if you were going to associate with Gerald at all, you had to wink at much worse crimes than that. So Christopher declared himself convinced of Gerald’s innocence and made only one reservation—he refused absolutely to meet Sir Oswald Mosley, who was now at liberty and Gerald’s good friend. Gerald found Christopher’s scruple quaint. When Christopher called Mosley a fascist, Gerald said gaily that he hadn’t heard that word in a long while; it was now only used by Pravda, when attacking British liberal left-wingers.

  Gerald Hamilton had a young man with him, as usual. [. . .] He seemed charming and simple and quite devoted to Gerald. Christopher said to Gerald, “I always say to myself there must be some good in you, or you wouldn’t be able to get such nice boys.” Gerald was delighted; he loved being talked to in this tone. He repeated Christopher’s remark to [his companion], who grinned.

  John Hayward lived in a flat in a house on Cheyne Walk, which is only a short distance from Glebe Place. Christopher went on there after his lunch with Hamilton. John Hayward had been at Cambridge at the same time as Christopher, but I don’t think they had met then. Christopher knew Hayward as a friend of Auden. Shortly after coming down from Cambridge, Hayward got some rare paralytic disease. The doctors told him he would die of it within a year or two, but he didn’t. The paralysis somehow arrested itself, leaving Hayward in a wheelchair, very thin, with twisted limbs, a rigid torso and spasmodic puppetlike movements. Just the same, he had his own charm and dignity; he was distinguished looking, despite his big slobbery lips, because his large grey eyes were so intelligent. He was a scholar (among other things, he had edited a book of selections from Swift), a critic, a great talker and a close friend of T. S. Eliot, with whom he was then sharing this flat. When he went out to dinner parties, as he often did, he would be lifted into a taxi seated in his chair. He was said to be quite a ladies’ man and heartless in dealing with his girlfriends, jilting them one after the other. It was supposed that he managed to fuck them somehow.

  This was the first of Christopher’s postwar visits to John Hayward. Thereafter, until Hayward’s death, they met whenever Christopher came to England. Hayward was very good company and loved exchanging gossip. He had one extraordinary and embarrassing characteristic; he nearly always spoke of himself as though he were a normally able-bodied person. He once told Christopher, “Well—at least you and I can congratulate ourselves that we’ve kept our figures.” Telling a story, he would begin, “As I was strolling down Bond Street—“ Talking about the flu, he said, “And then, after feeling miserable for weeks, there comes that marvellous morning when you wake absolutely tingling with health and you jump right out of bed—”

  On March 7, Christopher had lunch with William Robson-Scott, his close friend in the 1930s—especially during the miserable time in 1937 after Heinz’s arrest and imprisonment. (It was in gratitude for his moral support that Christopher had dedicated Lions and Shadows to William, the following year.)

  But now, to everybody’s amazement, William had gotten married; his wife had several children by a previous husband. I’m assuming that this had already happened before Christopher’s return to England, although I can’t be certain. I only remember that people later said of Robson-Scott that he had started to avoid his former friends—maybe because his wife disapproved of queers. So the conversation between him and Christopher was probably constrained; Christopher longing but not daring to ask: “Does she whip you like your boyfriends used to?” No memory of it remains.

  That evening, Christopher had supper with Jack Hewit and then went to stay with him at his flat. My recollection is that Jack wanted Christopher to spend at least several days there, and that Christopher,
because he still felt guilty about his treatment of Jack, had agreed to do so. But, as it turned out, Jack’s flat had only one bed and it was very small. Christopher had made up his mind to have sex with Jack, if Jack wanted it; and Jack did. I can’t actually remember what happened that night. I’m almost certain that Christopher managed to get an erection and to fuck Jack. But Jack didn’t excite him at all, now, and he was well aware that Jack would get a crush on him all over again if he stayed around. So he made the excuse that he couldn’t sleep with another person in such a small bed—actually Christopher could sleep anywhere, in the right company—and told Jack he was moving into a hotel. To make up for this, he saw Jack as often as he could manage, during the rest of his stay in London.

  On March 8, Christopher got a room at Oddenino’s Hotel, just off Piccadilly Circus. That night, he had supper at the Reform Club with Guy Burgess. What actually happened during their meeting will remain a mystery—unless Christopher’s letter about it to Forster survives and is produced by his executors.21

  All I remember of the evening is that Christopher was very drunk—so drunk that he had no idea how he finally got back to his hotel. After the Reform Club, he and Guy and a young man named Peter Pollock went to several pubs and nightclubs. My impression is that Guy was friendly at first and then hostile—I don’t know if this had anything to do with Christopher’s treatment of Jack Hewit or not; probably it was just plain hostility. Maybe Guy saw Christopher as a potential convert to communism who had lost his nerve and sold out to pacifism and religion. (When Christopher had met Guy in 1938, Guy had admired Christopher as an orthodox revolutionary writer—on the strength of “The Nowaks”![22] As for Christopher, he had never taken Guy seriously as a communist, and was even more amazed than most people when the Burgess—Maclean scandal broke, in 1951.) Sometime late that night, Christopher fell down a fairly high flight of stairs when leaving an upper-floor club. He told Forster that he suspected Guy had pushed him, but I don’t think he believed this. Anyhow, Christopher was drunk enough to fall properly and avoid getting hurt. Burgess and he never met each other again.

  On March 9, Christopher had lunch and supper with the Upwards. This was an altogether happy reunion. With Edward and Hilda, Christopher and Kathy, Christopher felt completely accepted. He was their friend, and that was that. What Christopher valued in both Edward and Hilda was their simplicity; Hilda was certainly intelligent, Edward had one of the subtlest, clearest, most perceptive minds that Christopher had ever come in contact with. But what made Edward different from most of the other people whom Christopher would have described as intelligent was that Edward lacked a certain fashionable urban sophistication; down in their drab little home on Turney Road in Dulwich, he and Hilda seemed quite out of the swim, like country cousins. When Edward talked about London literary figures and their writings and sayings, he seemed to be viewing them from a great distance—although, as a matter of fact, he went into town and met some of them, from time to time.

  The Upwards’ political life was also an expression of their simplicity. They didn’t advertise their activities, didn’t use left-wing jargon, didn’t make a show of righteous indignation or enthusiasm; they just went ahead with dull routine jobs, attending meetings, selling the Daily Worker, etc. (I’m not sure just when it was that Edward and Hilda got into an argument with the British communist party and decided to leave it, but I think they were still party members in 1947.)

  Their married life was equally simple, or seemed so. They had grown middle-aged together; Hilda was pleasant looking but in a take-it-or-leave-it style and her toilette certainly never went beyond keeping herself tidy; as for Edward, he was losing his hair and had a complacent belly. Edward was a devoted father, but not in the exhibitionistic possessive way that many people are. Christopher and Kathy appeared to be healthy, happy and fond of their parents.

  And here was Christopher, their guest and their polar opposite—or so he seemed to himself; queer, Peter Pannish (Peggy Kiskadden’s adjective), individualistic, exhibitionistic, liberalistic, fickle, promiscuous and an incurable gadabout. And they didn’t condemn him—far from it, they wanted him to be exactly what he was. They were intrigued by his friendship with Garbo, his association with the Quakers and even his adherence to Vedanta. They found nothing to disapprove of in his clothes or his appearance. When Christopher took off his jacket after lunch to help with the dishes, Edward remarked that Christopher still had “a wasp waist,” and he did so without the least hint of bitchiness.

  And when, after lunch, Edward and Christopher were alone in front of a dim gas fire in the baldly public sitting room (totally visible to everyone who walked by along the street), Christopher lost awareness of everything but their relationship, which hadn’t changed in any important respect since Cambridge. What their relationship was and had always been about was the writing of books. They had been writers then, they were writers now. Edward was worried now about his work-in-progress. So was Christopher. Both had reason to be. Christopher’s amorphous idea for a novel wouldn’t take final shape for another five years; Edward’s In the Thirties would give him trouble for fourteen, bringing him to the verge of a nervous breakdown. But, as long as they were together, these problems seemed fascinating and exciting; discussing them was an unmixed pleasure.

  On March 10, Christopher saw Mr. [Alan] White at Methuen’s (with whom he was to become very friendly during the next years) and then had lunch with William Plomer and his friend Charles [Erdmann]. This was the first time Christopher had met Charles, and now I can’t remember just what William told Christopher about him. My impression is that Charles came from somewhere abroad, was in fact a refugee. William’s attitude toward him was humorously protective; he conveyed the impression that he had somehow got stuck with Charles and must make the best of it, since Charles couldn’t take care of himself. And yet it was clear that he was fond of Charles in his own strange way; they had jokes together and sometimes scuffled like children. Charles was small and dark and strongly built, with an odd ugly-attractive face; probably he was very lively in bed. William suggested by the way he treated Charles that he was mentally retarded and I guess he was (is), though I can’t remember Charles actually saying or doing anything to demonstrate this. I am deeply fond of William—though I haven’t seen him in years. He seems to me to be one of those people who make life more bearable for everybody around them; he would be wonderful in a lifeboat with the survivors of a shipwreck, adrift and uncertain of rescue. What is unusual in William isn’t his strength only but his humor, it is the humor of a person who is capable of intense suffering. You are aware of this always, and therefore his fun never jars on you or seems trivial and out of place, no matter what the circumstances are. Some of William’s friends complain of his secretiveness, and particularly of his tendency to keep his public and private lives in two clearly marked compartments. This may explain his choice of a lover (or however one should describe him) like Charles, who isn’t presentable and doesn’t anyhow want to be presented.

  At that time, Charles was doing a little private business, dealing in watches—which were then hard to come by. Christopher bought a watch from him, as a present for Christopher Upward. When Christopher was born, Edward had asked Christopher to be a godfather—or the equivalent of one; Edward, as a staunch leftist atheist, refused to use that word.

  That evening, Christopher went with Stephen Spender to see The Winslow Boy. I still remember it because of Emlyn Williams’s magnificent performance,23 and because of the icy coldness of the theater. The audience was small, and it huddled together in the middle of the stalls, wearing overcoats, mufflers and gloves.

  On March 11, Christopher moved from Oddenino’s Hotel back to John Lehmann’s. He had lunch with Brian Howard and Sam Langford and the three of them went afterwards to look at Keith Vaughan’s paintings at the gallery. Christopher had already picked out the one that he thought he liked best, but he wanted a second opinion, so he asked Brian which one he would choose. Th
ere were (I think) more than twenty paintings available. Brian took his task very seriously—he could be passionately serious about any game, and this was one, because Christopher hadn’t told Brian which his choice was. After nearly an hour and many hesitations and changes of mind, Brian pointed to Christopher’s chosen picture. It was a moment of triumph for them both, and one which somehow strengthened their friendship. Christopher immediately bought the picture. (It was very small—a painting of two bathers (I think that was the title), one of them powerfully masculine, the other a woman perhaps, their bodies lit by an odd apricot light with green shadows.)

  After this, Christopher had a drink with Ian Scott-Kilvert[24 and then supper with Jack Hewit. Ian was regarded by several people as being a victim, like Jack, of Christopher’s heartlessness—but Christopher himself didn’t feel at all guilty about Ian. When Christopher got back from China in July 1938, Ian hadn’t been waiting eagerly, as Christopher had expected, to pick up their affair at the point where it had been interrupted—despite all the long romantic letters Christopher had written him during the journey. In fact, he had gone off for a holiday in Greece. Ian remained lukewarm until the late autumn, when he suddenly regained his interest in Christopher and wrote to him, quoting from the poem by Yeats, “Oh! Solomon! let us try again.”25] But Christopher wasn’t in the mood. He had met Jack Hewit, for one thing; for another, he was still thinking about Vernon Old in New York and including him in plans to return to the States. When Christopher went down to visit Ian at Cambridge, shortly before leaving to spend the 1938 Christmas holidays in Brussels with Auden and Jack Hewit, he had definitely decided not to get further involved. Ian may have sensed this, for he came on very strong, rolling about with Christopher on the sitting-room floor and urging Christopher to come up with him to bed. Christopher wouldn’t, and I don’t think they had sex again. Perhaps Christopher did tell Ian some love lies before he sailed for New York in January 1939, or perhaps he didn’t. Anyhow, after Christopher had gone, Ian seems to have played a big public scene as the deserted heartbroken lover. And, since he was so young and pretty, he got a lot of sympathy from various people, including Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears.