Lost Years

by Christopher Isherwood

  Alexis spoke English without any trace of Polish accent—I think he had spent much of his boyhood in South Africa—but he had a graciousness which seemed foreign. He was very much mistress of the house. He didn’t appear to be what is actually described as effeminate but rather to belong to a third, intermediate sex. He and Christopher got along well together from the start and even flirted a little, in a polite heterosexual way.

  [8 “Parnell’s Funeral.”]

  [9 Le Boulestin, Southampton Street, Covent Garden.]

  10 In the “Letter from England,” Christopher quotes some miscellaneous prices: Twenty cigarettes—2 shillings 4 pence. A hairbrush—38 shillings. A rubber sponge—1 shilling 9 pence. A natural sponge—22 shillings. A pair of lady’s walking shoes (very good quality)—39 shillings. A first edition of R. L. Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston—10 shillings 6 pence. One hundred sheets of carbon paper—20 shillings. He adds, “In other words, some things are very expensive, others are more or less normal.” Presumably, the expensive items are the hairbrush, the natural sponge and the carbon paper.

  11 In 1947, Rachel’s eyes were still reproachful with frustrated love—no longer for Christopher but for Wyberslegh. Rachel had lived there as a tenant with her husband, sometime toward the end of the thirties. Then her husband had gone to the war and she had had to move to a cheaper and smaller home. The house had been let (or maybe sublet by Rachel) to an elderly lady who was still there when Henry [Isherwood] died in 1940 and Christopher made it and the rest of the estate over to Richard. I forget exactly what complications followed, but I believe Rachel encouraged the lady to refuse to leave, hoping thereby to make it easier for herself to move back into the house when the war was over. “She behaved as if she owned it,” Kathleen told Christopher indignantly. Rachel had no legal case whatever. Richard, as the owner, had merely to wait until the elderly lady had found another place to live. In 1941, he and Kathleen took possession of Wyberslegh. But the feud with Rachel continued. (This may explain why she wasn’t at the tea party.)

  12 The film was made by RKO and released in 1949, with the title: Adventure in Baltimore. Its leading players were Shirley Temple, Robert Young and John Agar.

  [13 Meta Reis, wife of film director Irving Reis (1906–1953).]

  [14 Vernon Old calls this a convenient but inaccurate memory. He says that he never assumed, nor even thought, that he and Isherwood would live together on Isherwood’s return to New York.]

  15 When Christopher first met Jack Hewit—or Jacky, as he was usually called—Jack was having an affair with Guy Burgess. Jack flirted with Christopher and Christopher responded and suddenly found that Jack was very serious about it. He ought to have pulled out then but he didn’t. Instead, he committed himself to taking Jack with him to Brussels, where he and Auden were spending the Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 1938–1939. Guy Burgess made a show of minding about this—Christopher was sure he didn’t really, for Guy was surrounded with boys. (Christopher himself found Guy attractive and would have preferred him to Jack Hewit as a sex partner, any day, but Guy didn’t reciprocate.) Guy asked Christopher if he was in love with Jack, so Christopher had to assure Guy that he was—though he doubted it, even then. (Although Christopher was a born flirt—like Kathleen, but with the difference that he always followed through sexually—and although he was vain of his conquests, the experience of finding himself loved without being able to respond always reduced him to panic.) I remember that he felt this panic in Brussels about Jack, and confessed it to Auden. Nevertheless, he let himself be nudged and coaxed by Jack into promising, or more-than-half promising, that they would live together in America. Auden greatly approved of Jack as a lover for Christopher, saying that Jack had a “truly feminine soul” and would make Christopher settle down and be properly domestic. I think Auden identified with Jack, a little. For he too had been in love with Christopher.

  16 Dearest Christopher.

  At a Cambridge commemoration dinner this week, Guy Burgess, supported by Anthony Blunt, came fussing me because you had behaved so badly to Jackie. As I dare say you have, and they then wanted me to read a letter from you to him which they had brought to the banquet. This I declined to do, to their umbrage. I could not see why I had to, when neither you nor J. had requested me to do so. G.B. was insistent I should write to you, which I should have done in any case. He is a most cerebral gangster.

  I wrote not long ago to J. suggesting a meeting, but had no answer and now understand why and am glad he did not answer. I guess the situation and feel very sorry for the boy. This much I will say, that now you know you can miscalculate, you will be more careful another time. Have you to provide for him at all?

  17 The first of Forster’s letters in my collection is dated October 12, 1932. Forster and Christopher must have met while Christopher was in England that year—between August 4 and September 30. I think they were introduced by William Plomer. In the first letter, Forster calls Christopher “Isherwood,” adding, “we do drop ‘Mr.,’ don’t we?” But it isn’t till 1935 that Forster starts calling him “Christopher.”

  18 I forgot to mention that Christopher had supper, that evening, with Bob and May Buckingham. This was probably the first time that they had an opportunity to talk much, although Christopher had seen Bob and possibly also May immediately after his arrival in England. I remember Bob, with tears of laughter running down his cheeks, describing how funny May had looked, being blown down the passage of their house by bomb blast during an air raid. May laughed too, though in a more ladylike way. Their fun about this, and other such experiences, was beautiful. Bob himself had won some decoration for his bravery in saving people, at the time of the Blitz. He was a hero of the most lovable and admirably no-shit sort.

  [19 Lys Lubbock; see Glossary under Connolly.]

  20 Mr. Norris and I says that Hamilton had considered escaping to Ireland with a party of Catholic sisters, disguised as a nun. Ronald Searle made a drawing of him in nun drag for the book.

  21 In answering Christopher’s letter, Forster wrote (on March 2i): “I saw that wisp(?) in the distance, Guy Burgess. His meeting with you seems to have gone as I expected it would.” (If Forster did indeed write “wisp”—the handwriting is unclear—his description of Burgess seems so unfitting as to be perhaps ironical. Burgess was solidly built, even sexily plump. But perhaps Forster meant that Guy’s nature was treacherous and capricious, and therefore like a will-o’-the-wisp.) [The question mark is Isherwood’s, but his reading, “wisp,” appears to be correct.]

  In the same letter, Forster refers to the gigantic volume of Don Quixote with illustrations by Gustave Doré which Christopher had just given him. It was so bulky and heavy that it couldn’t be mailed; it had to be sent to Cambridge by railway express (or whatever that service was called in England). Forster had remarked to Christopher that he admired these particular Doré pictures, but Christopher’s gift of it to him was really a kind of practical joke. It was accompanied by a note which began: “As a souvenir of our last meeting, I am sending you this tiny volume. . . .” I suspect that Forster found the joke just a trifle vulgar. Christopher’s extravagance didn’t amuse him, as it amused Christopher’s other friends. On another occasion, he mildly reproved Christopher for overtipping at a restaurant.

  Forster himself was just about to leave for the United States on the first visit of his life. He ingeniously used the Don Quixote to evade the currency regulations, making Christopher the following proposition: “Can I give you a cheque for fifty pounds? . . . The fifty pounds would be, you understand, payment for a copy of Don Quixote, illustrated by Gustave Doré, which you sold to me.” Christopher must certainly have agreed to this, and given Forster the equivalent of fifty pounds in U.S. dollars when they met again in New York.

  22 First published by John Lehmann in New Writing and later as part of Goodbye to Berlin and The Berlin Stories.]

  23 Particularly at the end of act two, when he reduces the Winslow boy to tears by cross-examining an
d bullying him, and then tells the Winslows: “The boy is plainly innocent. I accept the brief.” [The play is by Terence Rattigan.]

  24 Christopher had first met Ian in 1927, when he was hired by Ian’s mother as Ian’s private tutor. Ian was then eight years old. Ian had an elder brother, Derek, who was a much prettier and duller boy; he was already at a boarding school and only came home for the holidays. And they had a little sister named Pam who later (I think I was told) became beautiful and wild. Ian’s mother had recently remarried. Her husband’s name was Lang. Soon after Christopher started work at the house, Mrs. Lang discovered, by means of private detectives, that Mr. Lang was queer. This caused Mrs. Lang to speak her first great memorable line: “Oh, Mr. Isherwood, beware of men!”

  Ian appears in Lions and Shadows; he is called “Graham.” Strangely enough, Christopher had just finished correcting the proofs of this book when he met Ian again, after a ten-year interval, on November 20, 1937.

  That meeting and some of the others that followed it are described in my 1937 diary. But a few important details are lacking, including the letter which Ian wrote Christopher on November 21. Christopher calls it “astounding,” but adds that he “can’t make out, or daren’t make out, what it really means.” It must certainly have been some sort of a declaration of love, but no doubt it was written in an involved, ambiguous neo-Jamesian style—ambiguity was lan’s way of flirting. The sincerity of the letter itself was never questioned by Christopher, despite its tone. However, I suspect that Ian had fallen in love with a situation, rather than with a live person. To meet your boyhood tutor, whom you’d thought of as a senior if sympathetic adult, and find that he’s really not that much older than you are, still lively and sexy and famous into the bargain, and quite prepared to be that groovy incestuous elder-brother figure you’ve been looking for—wouldn’t that seem wildly romantic? Wouldn’t the meeting itself seem somehow fated—the work of some power “stronger than either of us,” to which you could only surrender? As for Christopher, he must have felt the same way, for he was reminded of James’s story “The Pupil.” He was also tremendously flattered. I don’t think any previous boy had so appealed to his sexual snobbery. Ian was The Blond. He belonged to Christopher’s social class (even if his mother was vulgar as shit and maybe even a Jewess), he was adequately intelligent, he was an athlete with beautiful legs (he had actually, or very nearly, got a Cambridge blue for running), he was the younger-brother figure Christopher had been looking for since he had lost Heinz. And this young public school and university Adonis had actually fallen for Christopher and made the first move! Christopher’s first reaction was: how shall I ever rise to such an occasion? I think he meant this sincerely—and yet—when I ask myself: “Would Christopher have fallen for Ian if Ian hadn’t written that letter?” I find, to my surprise, that I doubt it. For Christopher, Love was essentially “the art of the possible.” He seldom wanted what he couldn’t get, and never wanted it for long.

  In the 1937 diary, there is no description of Christopher’s visit to Mrs. Lang. He was invited to dinner and Ian assured him that it was very important he should show up in a dinner jacket; Mrs. Lang expected it. Christopher hadn’t owned a dinner jacket in years, he regarded them as the livery of the bourgeoisie; but he now overcame his leftist prejudices and bought one for the occasion. (This dinner jacket he later took with him to China, to wear at the British Embassy and elsewhere. Then, in 1941, a Quaker helper at one of the work camps for Okies in the San Joaquin Valley asked Christopher if he knew of a tuxedo they could use for amateur theatricals. So it was there that Christopher’s last dinner jacket found its last home—the few he has had to wear since then have always been rented.)

  Mrs. Lang received Christopher graciously but rather as though he were a former servant of hers who had since pulled himself up in the world by his bootstraps and almost become a gentleman. Her opinions hadn’t changed and her heavy makeup didn’t look a day older. Christopher was as charming as he knew how to be. He avoided looking at Ian, taking it for granted that he must be half dead with embarrassment. I don’t remember that Christopher and Ian ever really discussed Mrs. Lang, at any time during their relationship.

  Christopher went with Ian on a honeymoon trip to Paris, from December 9 to 14. The trip was sanctioned and partly financed by Mrs. Lang, who regarded it as a resumption by Christopher of his duties as Ian’s tutor—Paris was educational. Mrs. Lang even telephoned Kathleen, perhaps to find out what her attitude was toward their sons’ friendship. Kathleen certainly realized by this time that Christopher didn’t accompany young men to Paris just to show them Notre Dame. And when Mrs. Lang cooed, “After all, your Christopher was the first man in my Ian’s life,” Kathleen must have smiled somewhat sourly—as she did later, repeating the remark to Christopher himself. This was Mrs. Lang’s second, and last, great line.

  Christopher and Ian certainly had sex during their stay in Paris, and I suppose they had had it in Cambridge before that. What is significant is that I can’t remember anything about it, what they did or how it felt. These memories must have been censored because Christopher found them distasteful, they didn’t fit into the love story. I suspect that Ian was passive and rather frigid. I’m sure Christopher never got to fuck him. I even think I recall that Ian admitted that his feeling for Christopher wasn’t primarily physical—implying that his feeling for Nik Alderson [a previous lover] had been. . . . This is not to say that Paris was a disappointment to either of them. Quite the opposite. The 1937 diary contains the following bit of dialogue (which took place in the bus on the way home from Croydon Airport): “He said that he didn’t believe Paris was an episode. ‘You’ve domesticated me already.’ I said I hoped so—but that during the next nine months things might change. ‘Why should they?’ he said. ‘They haven’t changed in ten years.’”

  After they had been back in London for a short while, Ian reported to Christopher that Mrs. Lang had been quite shocked to learn from him that he and Christopher had shared a room at the Hotel Quai Voltaire. The very fact that Mrs. Lang had questioned Ian about this suggests that she was beginning to suspect that Christopher was having sex with him. (Earlier than this—or was it maybe later?—she had found a love letter from Nik to Ian or from Ian to Nik which had upset her terribly. Finally, Christopher became convinced that Ian’s carelessness and indiscretion about his sex life must be partly deliberate, motivated by a subconscious urge to confess everything to his mother. So Christopher asked Ian to destroy all his letters, promising that he would destroy all Ian’s. Christopher kept this promise—to my great regret.) From then on, Mrs. Lang began raising obstacles whenever Ian and Christopher tried to arrange another trip together.

  (Another detail omitted from the 1937 diary is the fact that Christopher had at least one, perhaps several meetings alone with Nik Alderson. Unfortunately I can’t remember anything about this—except that the atmosphere was fairly friendly. Nik could hardly blame Christopher for what had happened. And indeed he and Christopher couldn’t be regarded as ordinary rivals in love, they weren’t competing; what they were and what they had to offer differed too widely. As for Christopher, he was sad to have caused pain, even indirectly, to such a beautiful creature. If he could have soothed Nik’s hurt feelings by going to bed with him, he would have done so most enthusiastically.)

  The 1937–1938 diary stops on December 30 and the next entry is on July 30, after Christopher’s return to England from China and the U.S. So there is no record of Christopher’s final days in London or of the huge party given on January 18, the night before his and Auden’s departure (at which Brian Howard got into a fight with somebody or other, exclaiming, “I refuse to have my friend insulted by the worst painter in England!”). I don’t remember when, or under what circumstances, Christopher and Ian said goodbye to each other. But I know that Christopher was playing it very big indeed as the departing hero. Christopher had been a departing hero throughout most of the previous autumn. On November 19 he had wr
itten: “I must recognize the possibility (quite apart from any pleasing romanticism) that I may die in China. I must live these next two months as if I were certainly condemned to death, quietly, sensibly, working hard, making my preparations. . . .” It was as a departing hero that Ian met him and was able to fall in love with him—which only goes to show that the posturings of which one is later most ashamed can seem endurable or sympathetic or even lovable to another person. On November 29, Christopher agreed to go with Auden to Spain, before going to China, as members of a delegation of writers and artists. But this visit was postponed, so they couldn’t take part in it.

  In the 1938 diary there are several descriptions of Christopher’s feelings about the cooling-off between Ian and himself. Christopher seems to think that their attitude toward their relationship was at fault: “We built a wonderful sham cathedral around our friendship.” He also blames the influence of Mrs. Lang. And he writes, “I must remain free, I must be ready for Heinz if he needs me”—which sounds like rank hypocrisy, considering how large Vernon Old already loomed on the horizon. No, the simple truth was, Christopher had realized that Ian wasn’t the right lover for him.

  Presumably, Ian was making the same discovery about Christopher, though more gradually, because he was young and inexperienced. Suppose he hadn’t made it? Suppose he had been there to meet Christopher on the dock at Southampton and had convinced Christopher that he still loved him? Would Christopher have been so dazzled that he would have silenced his own doubts? Would they have remained together through the Munich crisis and the next eleven months, right up to the outbreak of war? It’s improbable but just possible. In those days, Christopher’s plans were all provisional. If he had had someone to stay in England for, he might never have gone to America.