Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

by Christopher Isherwood

  Sometime in 1939 or 1940 Berthold managed to return to Argentina. And then Tota and [a male friend] (another of his lovers) set him up as part owner of a factory. Shortly after Christopher and Caskey visited Buenos Aires in March 1948, Berthold got married to an Argentine girl of good family with some money of her own—thus trading in his own myth in exchange for a future of middle-class respectability.

  [44 Athene Palace Bucharest: Hitler’s “New Order” Comes to Rumania (1943); Waldeck was a Rumanian journalist settled in the USA from the end of the 1920s. Returning to Europe in wartime, she found that in Bucharest she could intimately observe the Nazi style of establishing power. As she writes in Athene Palace, “she had nothing to gain and everything to lose from the victory of an order of which anti-semitism was an integral part” (p. 6). She felt semi-protected by her status as a U.S. citizen, and reveals that she was sometimes duplicitous in order to achieve friendships useful to her journalism. She gave her book an epigraph from Stendhal to protest her underlying integrity: “Shall I be accused of approving these things because I describe them?”]

  [45 On Long Island.]

  [46 In the Baltic Sea, during the first two weeks of July 1931.]

  47 The day-to-day diary’s list of books read in 1947 includes: Back, Henry Green. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford. The Shadow Line, Joseph Conrad. Knock on Any Door, Willard Motley. The Gallery, John Home Burns. Kaputt, Curzio Malaparte. Le Livre blanc, Cocteau. [Attributed to Cocteau who did the preface and illustrations for this anonymous book.] Williwaw and The City and the Pillar, Gore Vidal. The Member of the Wedding and Reflections in a Golden Eye, Carson McCullers. The Rock Pool, Cyril Connolly. The Stranger, Albert Camus. Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote. Manservant and Maidservant, Ivy Compton-Burnett. (There are a number of others—including some quite distinguished works: On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Juenger, Dirty Eddie by Ludwig Bemelmans, Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare, The Moonlight by Joyce Cary, The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen and The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West—about which I can remember absolutely nothing.)

  I remembered nothing about Back when I opened it just now (December 6, 1972), and yet I find that it has an ending in Henry’s best and most characteristic manner; no one else could have written it. The Good Soldier (since reread) has left nothing in my memory but its claim to be “the saddest story I ever heard”—which seems to me absurd and perhaps even deliberately campy; Ford’s disingenuousness is part of his charm. The Shadow Line is another unmemorable work by a beloved writer; Conrad combines startlingly realistic moments of physical experience (the tropical raindrop falling on his face in the midst of the spooky calm) with the artificiality of a cultured foreigner talking English at a literary tea. Christopher was much moved by Knock on Any Door when he read it; this was his idea of a sad story. He fell in love with the hero and wrote Willard Motley a fan letter. The Gallery has left me with a strong sense of the Italian wartime atmosphere, which is certainly something—but that trashy, traitorous liar Malaparte has left me with a series of myths about the war which still haunt me as though they were great art. Le Livre blanc? Christopher had heard about it long before he read it, and was a bit disappointed. Cocteau’s love act with the boy through the transparent mirror is the only image which has remained with me. Christopher wrote a blurb for The City and the Pillar, but he didn’t really like it, even then; he much preferred Williwaw. Capote’s books have always seemed to me to be mere skillful embroidery, unrelated to himself and therefore lacking in essential interest. Christopher never truly appreciated McCullers until he worked on a screenplay based on Reflections, in the sixties. It is, in many ways, like a French novel and owes a lot to Faulkner. But McCullers has something that Faulkner and the French haven’t—fun. The Stranger is a French novel and nothing but a French novel; one of the classic bogus masterpieces of this century. Christopher had been put onto Compton-Burnett by the Beesleys, who adored her. Christopher admired her then as I admire her now—neither more nor less. It is delightful to visit her in her elegantly, ironically furnished literary mansion; but she never lets you see what’s outside it. Christopher had hated The Rock Pool when he first read it, in the thirties. Rereading it in 1947 he loved it, and has loved it ever since. His early dislike of it was probably due to left-wing snobbery. He was quite certain that he knew what kind of a book Connolly ought to write, and this wasn’t it. It wasn’t socially conscious—or rather, it didn’t deal with the kind of characters you were supposed to be socially conscious about.

  1948

  THE 1948—1956 JOURNAL[1] begins with an entry on April 11, 1948, written on board the Groix, the day before they landed at Dakar. It is a pity that Christopher didn’t begin earlier and include a description of April 1, the day they spent ashore in Rio as the guests of [some acquaintances]. I still faintly remember the first glimpse of that fantastic coastline—Christopher’s delighted incredulity as the harbor mouth and the Sugar Loaf came into view and he said to himself, “It’s not true, I don’t believe it!” (Five years later, Christopher felt the same thing when he got his first sight of Monument Valley.2) [One of the acquaintances] was an obsessive sexualist; he kept a chart showing the number of boys he had sex with each month and how many orgasms he had with each. He and [his companion] were superhosts; after driving Caskey and Christopher all around the city and giving them a magnificent lunch, they brought them back to [his] apartment where an incredibly handsome youth was waiting. I think he was Japanese-Irish-Negro, such blends being fairly common in Rio. Christopher and Caskey had a hasty conference, since it was obvious that good guestmanship required one of them to go to bed with him. Caskey said Christopher should do it. Left alone with the boy, Christopher was embarrassed at first, chiefly by his fixed though not necessarily hostile scowl and his disinclination to talk even Portuguese (of which Christopher remembered anyhow only a few words). Christopher tried to excite him by sucking, licking and biting but without apparent success—until the boy suddenly turned Christopher over, greased his ass, got an entirely convincing hard-on and fucked him slowly and most satisfactorily.

  The journal entries of April 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, and 20 describe the increasing discomforts of the overcrowded ship and Caskey’s and Christopher’s consequent Francophobia. Caskey was even more emphatic than Christopher about this; his attitude was so evident that the French passengers didn’t dare kidnap him, as they did Christopher, to take part in the line-crossing ceremony and get daubed with flour and water and dunked.[3] But Caskey nevertheless condescended to go up on the boat deck every night with a French beau. They only kissed, because the Frenchman was so afraid of being caught if they started any serious sex making.

  On April 22, they disembarked at Le Havre and went on by train to Paris, where they stayed a week—visiting Denny Fouts, running into Auden and Chester Kallman and also meeting Gore Vidal for the first time, quite by chance. These happenings are pretty well covered in the journal. Relations between Denny and Caskey were adequately polite but tense underneath—I dimly remember a semi-quarrel between Christopher and Denny on their last evening (the 29th); I think it was because Denny had casually suggested that Caskey should take some money and pick up a packet of opium from a “connection” who was waiting outside the restaurant. Christopher found this outrageous and refused to let Caskey go, saying that the police might well be watching the pusher, in which case Caskey would get arrested. If my memory is correct, Denny’s suggestion was an entirely characteristic act of aggression. (An altogether different but recognizable version of this scene appears in “Paul.”[4]!)

  This was their last meeting with Denny; he died at the end of that year. Shortly after Christopher had left Paris, Denny sent him one of his sour-sweet little letters, saying, “I hope you and Billy will go on being as happy as you seem to be.” Denny obviously didn’t hope it.

  Christopher’s journal entries don’t betray the fact that he found Gore Vidal sexually attractive, and that Gore was flirting with him. On
April 29, Gore asked Christopher to come and have breakfast with him at his hotel. (I don’t remember how Gore avoided inviting Caskey but he did, and this was probably one of the causes of the hostility which soon developed between them.) Just as Christopher was walking along the corridor toward Gore’s room, its door flew open and a young man ran out, collided with Christopher and dashed past him to the staircase. Gore laughingly explained that there had been a misunderstanding. When Christopher’s arrival was announced on the house telephone, Gore had told the young man—with whom he had spent the night—“Mon ami vient.”[5] The young man had taken it for granted that the “ami” was an enraged lover, so he had jumped into his clothes and tried to escape. Gore received Christopher sitting in bed in his underclothes. Later, when he got out to go to the bathroom, Christopher saw that he had very sexy legs. They flirted all through breakfast, but neither was about to make the first move, so nothing happened.

  On April 30, Caskey and Christopher crossed to England. In London, they stayed first at John Lehmann’s house and later in a Kensington hotel, the Tudor Court. The journal describes a big champagne party given at the offices of Horizon on May 7, at which they met Arthur Waley and Lucian Freud, a supper with Henry and Dig Yorke on May 9 and a lunch with the Cyril Connollys, Rose Macaulay and Raymond Mortimer on May 11. On May 13, Christopher went up to stay at Wyberslegh. Caskey remained in London, where he had already made himself popular with several of Christopher’s friends, particularly the Yorkes, Keith Vaughan, John Minton6 and Alexis Rassine. Later, Forster invited him to come and stay at Cambridge.

  In the journal, on May 17, Christopher remarks that he hasn’t yet seen Richard, who had gone off to stay with the caretakers at Marple Hall, just before Christopher’s arrival. According to Kathleen, Richard had worked himself into a fit of jealousy of Christopher. I can’t remember that Richard had shown any signs of jealousy during Christopher’s 1947 visit, but he undoubtedly did remain jealous of Christopher as long as Kathleen was alive.

  On May 18, Caskey came up to Wyberslegh. He was on his best behavior and helped Kathleen in the kitchen. His easy southern manners impressed her favorably, but I don’t think she really warmed to him. She was shrewd enough to be suspicious of his campy politeness, which now and then became a send-up of everything female. When Richard returned to Wyberslegh on May 20, Caskey tried hard to make friends with him too. Richard responded, up to a point; but he too was suspicious, merely because he regarded Caskey as Christopher’s ally.

  Caskey and Christopher were at Wyberslegh until June 6—except for a two-day trip to London (May 22–23) to see Truman Capote, presumably because Truman was in England only on a brief visit. Caskey took a lot of photographs during his stay—of Lyme, of Marple Hall, of Wyberslegh and of the Stockport viaduct, which he greatly admired. One day he went into Stockport alone and began shooting the viaduct from various angles, running up and down flights of steps which lead to the river that flows beneath it. His movements must have seemed eccentric—photographers do often behave very oddly when they are at work—for he was stopped and questioned by police officers who were on the lookout for an escaped criminal lunatic. This was probably John Edward Allen, “the mad parson.” Christopher’s journal refers to him on May 29, but without mentioning Caskey’s adventure.7

  On June 7, the day after their return to London, Christopher and Caskey travelled down to Aldeburgh in Suffolk for the festival. This was the first year it was held. Forster and William Plomer lectured and Celia Johnson and Robert Speaight gave a poetry recital. But the stars were Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Ben played the piano, Peter sang, and Ben’s opera Albert Herring had its first performance.[8] This was their hometown and they were putting it on the map.

  Christopher still felt warmly toward both of them and would continue to do so. No doubt Ben was already beginning to assume the airs of royalty, even then, but Christopher had spent so much time among musicians that he took their grandeur for granted—he would have been far less tolerant of such behavior from a fellow writer. Did he regard musicians as a slightly inferior artistic caste? Maybe. He certainly claimed the right to be friends with them without showing any particular interest in their work. And, in Ben’s case, Christopher’s attitude had been very much that of an elder and wiser being, when they were both young, although the difference in their ages was only nine years. Perhaps Ben had always resented this condescension. If so, he took an awfully long time to show it. During their days together at Aldeburgh, Ben made himself charming to Christopher and to Caskey whenever he had a spare moment amidst his many responsibilities.

  Aldeburgh itself left vivid impressions in Christopher’s mind: the embattled look of the houses along the pebbled beach, confronting the menace of the sea which will one day swallow them; the rugged old martello towers, built to confront Napoleon, a menace who never materialized; the strong smells of boats and fish and the hard brightness of the flat land in the windy east-coast sunshine.

  On June 10, Christopher and Caskey returned to London and went to stay with Cuthbert Worsley. They were there for the rest of the month, meeting friends and going to parties, plays and films. On June 16, Caskey went down to Brighton and spent the night; someone had probably invited him. Christopher had supper with Tony Hyndman and this was most likely the night (or one of the nights) when they had sex together. The sex was as enjoyable as it had been in the old days, only now it was Tony who fucked Christopher. On the 16th, Christopher also saw Gore Vidal, who had just arrived in England, at John Lehmann’s. Lehmann was publishing an English edition of The City and the Pillar and was trying to get Gore to agree to some expurgations—which he finally did, under protest.

  Tennessee Williams must have arrived at almost the same time. Christopher and Caskey saw him and Gore at John Lehmann’s on June 18. This is the only mention of Tennessee in the day-to-day diary for that month—yet I have a memory of Tennessee, Caskey and Christopher together in a cab at night; it is foggy, and Tennessee exclaims, “We are the dreaded fog queens!” and utters his screaming laugh. Whereupon, all three of them begin to elaborate on the fantasy—how the respectable citizens shudder and slam their shutters and cross themselves as the dreaded fog queens ride by, and how one darling little boy disregards their warnings and looks out of the window and sees the fog queens and they are absolutely beautiful, so he shouts to them and begs them to take him with them, and they do, and he is never heard from again.

  A day or two later, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal decided to pay a visit to Forster at Cambridge. Neither of them had met him. In a letter to Christopher, dated June 25, Forster writes: “Tennessee Williams got up too late to reach Cambridge. Vidal arrived and I wish hadn’t, as I disliked him a lot.” It appears that Forster took great pains to show Vidal the sights of Cambridge and that Vidal, far from displaying the proper enthusiasm, seemed totally uninterested; all he would talk about was his own career and his rivalry with Truman Capote. The climax of Forster’s indignation was reached in the Great Court of Trinity, when Vidal glanced around him and condescendingly commented, “Pretty!”[9]

  Caskey and Gore Vidal had their inevitable clash. It was at a party. Caskey got drunk and told Gore that he was a lousy writer—which was unfortunate, because Gore naturally suspected that this must be Christopher’s private opinion which Caskey was merely echoing. I’m not sure what happened next. Caskey certainly said many other nasty things. I think Gore hit him.10 The quarrel was patched up, but the ill feeling remained.

  On June 20, Cuthbert Worsley gave a party. I am only guessing but I believe it was during this party that Christopher got a phone call from Gottfried Reinhardt at MGM. Gottfried wanted to know if Christopher would be willing to come back as soon as possible and work on a film about Dostoevsky called The Great Sinner, which he was producing. Christopher said yes; the only condition he made was that he wanted to travel by boat and train, not by plane. Gottfried agreed to this extra delay. What I can clearly remember is Christopher’s enjoyment of the
dramatic moment when he returned to the room in which the party was being held and casually told Cuthbert and his guests: “That was Hollywood. They’ve offered me a film job.” Sensation!

  A genial but basically unpleasant society queen named David Webster took up Christopher and Caskey in a big way; I think he was the business director of the Covent Garden opera house. He invited them to two parties and a lunch within the space of five days. At the first party, on June 27, a cute radio and nightclub entertainer named Cliff Gordon gave a really brilliant black comedy act: Churchill’s speech on the day England lost the war. (Christopher had met Cliff Gordon about ten days previously and gone with him to the steam bath in Jermyn Street, where they had had exhibitionistic sex in front of an excited old man; on another occasion they had fucked at Gordon’s flat—after which Gordon, who was a hypochondriac, had become worried because Christopher didn’t take regular syphilis tests, as he did, and had talked Christopher into being examined by his doctor. This doctor, who was the coy type, later informed Christopher of the negative result of the test by cabling to him in Los Angeles the single word, “Congratulations.”) Webster’s second party, on July 1, was a very grand affair, full of theatrical and ballet stars. Introducing Christopher and Caskey to Alicia Markova, Webster said, “I don’t think you’ve met the Isherwoods?” which was characteristic of his would-be-daring vulgarity. But he failed to amuse or startle Markova; she behaved as if he had said nothing unusual. (Or did she merely assume that Caskey was Christopher’s son?) Further along in the evening, Christopher was sitting on a couch holding forth to a couple of fellow guests about Anton Dolin’s performance in the ballet Job, which he had seen the day before. Dolin, said Christopher, was amazing—nearly stark naked, he had executed great leaps up and down a flight of steps; he was as agile as a boy and his body looked magnificent—“And to think,” Christopher added, “he was born the same year as me!” At the other end of the couch, slumped and silent and seemingly in deep depression, was a grey-faced withered man who might easily have been in his sixties. Looking at him closely now for the first time, Christopher recognized him with a shock of embarrassment. It was Dolin himself.11