Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

by Christopher Isherwood

  There was a further step to be taken, however. Christopher feared that Harold might tell Andrew about Christopher’s pass, to punish him by making him feel that he had been just another in a long line of Christopher’s lays, chosen merely because he had been easy to get. Therefore Christopher had to talk to Andrew as soon as possible—preferably before Harold told him—and explain why he had made the pass at Harold. In fact, it was several days before Christopher got this opportunity. When he did, he was relieved to find that Harold hadn’t told Andrew anything. Christopher’s fears had been founded on a knowledge of his own character—“man imputes himself,” as Gerald Heard was so fond of saying. But Harold wasn’t Christopher. If Harold had been in Christopher’s place, I’m sure he would never have boasted to his friends, as Christopher later did, about the affair and the tact he himself had shown in handling it.

  At this time, Lincoln Kirstein was going through a phase of tremendous enthusiasm for the sculpture of Elie Nadelman. On August 5, he drove Christopher and Caskey out to a house in the Bronx (maybe it was Nadelman’s former home) in which a lot of the work was stored. Lincoln had filled the living room with a selection of the pieces and he came every day to dust and rearrange them, like a priest taking care of a shrine. Indeed, this art cult was Lincoln’s religion. And how beautiful and noble his half-crazy passionate devotion seemed, compared to the prim knowingness of the ordinary “art lover.”

  Next day, Christopher and Caskey were initiated into another of the mysteries of Lincoln’s religion. He took them down to Washington to see a collection of paintings which had been brought over from Germany. I’m vague about the details, but I think that the paintings had been hidden in a salt mine for safety during the war and that Lincoln himself had been partly responsible for discovering their hiding place. I assume that the paintings had been appropriated from their original owners by high-ranking Nazis like Göring, so that they were now technically stolen property; for Lincoln explained that their presence in the United States had to be kept secret lest the new German government should protest and demand their instant return. The room in which they were hung was guarded by military police, and Lincoln, Caskey and Christopher were escorted into it by an official of the State Department. I remember the thrill of this contact with the world of Classified Material—but not, unfortunately, anything about the paintings themselves, except that they were all by famous masters. Caskey and Christopher were proud of this privilege Lincoln had obtained for them. They bragged about it to their friends and were therefore disgusted when the State Department changed its policy soon afterward for some unknown reason and allowed the paintings to be taken on tour around the U.S. and exhibited publicly in various cities, before being sent back to Germany.

  Christopher and Caskey were now beginning to get shots and visas, in preparation for their South American journey. Their last month in New York became increasingly social. At Ollie Jennings’s house, Ben Baz had been joined by his brother Emilio and by Luis Creixell from Mexico [. . .]. Then Berthold Szczesny arrived from Buenos Aires with Tota Cuevas de Vera.43 Then Stephen Spender appeared; he had been teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Then Chris Wood paid a visit from California. Through him, Caskey and Christopher met John Gielgud. Through Stephen, they met Frank and Nan Taylor. Through Berthold, they met Victoria Ocampo. And, as if all this wasn’t enough, Bill and Peggy Kiskadden happened to be attending some medical conference in New York, and Caskey’s mother came up from Lexington, Kentucky, to help him and Christopher get packed. The day-to-day diary mentions several other encounters—notably with Mina Curtiss (Lincoln Kirstein’s sister), Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jean Stafford, Harold Taylor (the president of Sarah Lawrence), Jinx Falkenburg, John Hersey, the Countess Waldeck, John Home Burns.

  Christopher’s first impression of John Gielgud (September 10) wasn’t favourable. Gielgud talked bitchily about Dodie Smith—or rather about Alec Beesley, whom he disliked. This put Christopher off him—which Christopher evidently showed, for Gielgud said at a later meeting (in 1948 in London) that he had been aware he had offended Christopher and that he was sorry for it. Thus they became friends. Perhaps Christopher had been too hard on Gielgud to begin with. But it is still my opinion that Gielgud got nicer as a person—and better as an actor—as he grew older.

  Frank Taylor was a publisher—I think, at that time, he was still with Random House. Nan was his wife. I won’t describe them yet because Christopher didn’t really get to know them until they came out and lived in Hollywood in 1948 and after. This year, Christopher met Frank only twice. I seem to remember that he had a violent crush on Stephen and that they’d been to bed together.

  Victoria Ocampo appears in The Condor and the Cows. She is described fairly, I think, though a bit too politely. What a bullying old cunt!

  It was probably in the latter part of August that Berthold Szczesny told Christopher the ghost story which is printed in The Condor and the Cows. “Told” isn’t the right word; it would be more accurate to say that Berthold performed it. He hammered on the door of the apartment early one morning, staggered in and dropped limply into a chair, muttering that he had been lying awake all night, too scared to be able to sleep. Then he let Christopher draw the story out of him, bit by bit—how he had walked into the El Morocco and seen a young man who looked vaguely familiar, a young man in a dark blue suit, rather pale-faced but quite ordinary; how this young man had come over to him from the bar and Berthold had said, “I believe we know each other,” and the young man had answered, “Certainly we know each other; you buried me in Africa”; how Berthold had recognized him then, as a shipmate on a German boat, who had died of malaria and been buried on the bank of the Gambia River; how the young man had added, “But don’t tell anyone, because I’m here on leave,” and how Berthold had felt as cold as ice all over and had run out into the street.

  Berthold certainly did look badly shaken that morning, but he kept smiling apologetically, as much as to say that he didn’t expect Christopher to believe all this. The smiles were curiously convincing.

  He then told Christopher that he had made up his mind to go back to the El Morocco that evening. “If he’s there I’ll walk right up to him and hit him as hard as I can, right in the face. And if he’s got a face—if there’s anything there, you understand—then I’ll pay damages, a hundred dollars, five hundred dollars, a thousand dollars—what does it matter? Only I have to hit him—to be sure . . .”

  The next day, Berthold reported what had happened: “I go back to El Morocco and there he is. Just the same as last night, sitting at the bar. And so I come up, all ready to hit him. I think he doesn’t see me. But just when I get quite close, he turns around and I see that he’s very angry. He says: ‘I told you already—I’m on leave. I don’t wish to be disturbed.’ He says that very quietly, and he sits there looking at me. I can’t do anything. My arms are weak, just like a baby’s. I turn around and go out of the bar . . .”

  After this, Berthold told Christopher that he had visited El Morocco several more times but that the young man was never there.

  I’m not sure if Christopher ever fully believed the story. I think he did almost—though he knew that Berthold could lie with great inventiveness. (The story as Christopher tells it in The Condor and the Cows is itself faked, up to a point—that is to say, it is presented as a single unbroken narrative, because Christopher couldn’t be bothered to explain to the reader that he had heard it in installments.) Some years later, Christopher learned from Maria Rosa Oliver that Berthold had confessed to her he had made up the whole thing. Christopher was hugely impressed by all the trouble Berthold had taken; his playacting seemed to show a genuinely disinterested wish to entertain, which is the mark of a real artist.

  I don’t remember anything worth recording about Cartier-Bresson, Jean Stafford, Harold Taylor, Jinx Falkenburg (whose guest Christopher was on her radio interview show) or John Hersey. The Countess Waldeck was a friend of Jimmy and Tania Stern, an amusing vivacious attractive littl
e woman with (I suspect) a deeply shady side to her character, a sort of female Mr. Norris. I think she was some variety of Balkan Jewess but she had been tolerated by the Nazis and even entertained by a few of them. Under the name of R. G. Waldeck she had written an extremely perceptive book of memoirs centering around a hotel in Bucharest (?) called Athene Palace.[44] John Home Burns was then quite famous as the author of The Gallery, a book which Lincoln Kirstein admired extravagantly and even Hemingway had a kind word for. A faint darkish cloud hangs over the memory of this meeting; my impression is that Burns got drunk and became hostile and tiresome. But he and “Rosie” Waldeck remain in my mind as two people I wish Christopher had gotten to know better.

  Caskey and Christopher went out to the beach fairly often, during this period. There was Long Beach,[45] where they met up with Ollie Jennings and Ben and Emilio Baz. There was a beach I don’t remember the name of, where people fucked quite openly in the dunes—Christopher once had to step over a couple who were doing it right across the footpath. (You could go to this beach by bus; the driver, when he stopped at the entrance to it, would shout: “All out for Fairyland!”) And there was Fire Island—a long drive plus a ferry crossing but you could do the round-trip in one day.

  One of their visits to Fire Island was on Christopher’s birthday. Christopher had got drunk the night before and passed out. He woke to find himself in the car, with Caskey driving. They were already a good distance out of New York. “The last thing you said last night was, ‘Take me to Wystan,’” Caskey told him. “So I’m taking you.” Christopher was delighted. This was Caskey in his aspect as the perfect nanny.

  There is an unusually vivid memory attached to one of the Fire Island visits, probably this one. In the late afternoon, as the time approached for them to leave, a storm was building up. After a heavy stillness, the first gusts of wind began whipping the dry grass of the dunes. These gusts were uncannily strong, they made the grass hiss with a sound exactly like drops of water falling on a very hot skillet. Christopher remembered the stories he had heard about the hurricane and was apprehensive. Auden, calm as usual in this sort of situation, insisted on playing a literary guessing game; one of them had to quote a line of verse or prose and the other had to identify its author. I remember that Christopher surprised himself by doing well at this, although his attention was elsewhere. I don’t think there was a storm after all, certainly not a big one.

  Their final visit to Fire Island was on September 13. They went down there for one day only, with Lincoln Kirstein, Stephen Spender, Chris Wood and Berthold Szczesny. Caskey took a lot of pictures of this historic occasion, including a trio of Wystan, Stephen and Christopher posed just as they had posed for Stephen’s brother Humphrey on Rügen Island, fifteen or sixteen years earlier.[46] This was probably the first time that Wystan had seen Berthold since the Berlin days. It was certainly the first time that Wystan, Stephen and Christopher had all been together since 1939. I remember that Chester took a great fancy to Berthold. They were able to communicate fairly well, because Chester could speak Yiddish.

  At least two of the group photographs shot that day cannot be Caskey’s, since he is in them; they may have been taken by Stephen, since he isn’t. This would explain the ridiculous and yet (I am sure) characteristic pose in which the photographer has caught Christopher; Stephen’s malicious eye would have been quick to notice and take advantage of it. Eight of the eleven people in the picture are lying on the sand, all fairly relaxed. Caskey stands behind them, smiling and striking a campy attitude. Next to him stands Chris Wood, looking down, lost in his own thoughts. Next to Chris stands Christopher. His legs are apart, his fists are clenched, his plump little figure is rigid with self-assertion. He looks at the others as if he were demanding their submission to his will, but in fact no one is paying him the smallest attention.

  When one glimpses Christopher off guard like this, it seems astonishing that more people didn’t find him totally absurd. I do remember that there was a boy—a friend of Ed Tauch’s—who burst out laughing at Christopher when they were on the beach together. Christopher asked him what he was laughing about and he answered, “It’s the way you keep strutting!”

  On September 16, Caskey’s mother had supper with Caskey and Christopher. (I’m not sure if this was their first meeting; it’s possible that Mrs. Caskey had been out to California to visit them in 1946, but I don’t think so.) Catherine Caskey was very like her son Bill in certain ways; she was pretty, flirtatious, campy and quite unshockable, and she had the South in her mouth. She was also a nonstop, indiscreet irrelevant talker, and this embarrassed Bill and drove him into rages. Catherine never thought about what she was saying and she would often repeat reactionary ideas she had picked up in Kentucky and didn’t even believe in. For example, she once told Bill that one of his sisters was refusing to have sex with her husband because she didn’t want any more children and wouldn’t use contraceptives. “Poor little Catholic wife!” Catherine kept repeating fatuously, until Bill hit the ceiling. That Catherine was an utter hypocrite as far as Catholic morality was concerned was proved by her acceptance of Bill’s relationship with Christopher. She and Christopher got along together splendidly.

  On September 19, Christopher and Caskey sailed for South America on the Santa Paula, of the Grace Line. Mrs. Caskey, Matthew Huxley, Chris Wood, Tony Bower, Berthold Szczesny and Paul Cadmus came to see them off I believe it was Tony Bower who brought them a big bottle of champagne. For some reason, they didn’t get around to drinking it, and, after a couple of days, when the ship was rolling, the bottle exploded like a bomb. Christopher narrowly escaped getting his face cut.

  Caskey and Christopher had had a heavy night of drinking before they embarked, and had left the apartment looking as if it had been searched by the police. Mrs. Caskey spent a couple of days tidying up after them and packing up the things they hadn’t wanted to take with them on their journey.47

  And now The Condor and the Cows takes over. The doings of Christopher and Caskey are described in it, more or less, up to March 27, 1948, when they left Buenos Aires on a French ship called the Groix, bound for France, via Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro and Dakar.

  * * *

  1 Phyllis Morris, an English character actress, was a friend of the Beesleys. They had invited her to come over and stay with them, to recuperate from the wear and tear of the war years. Phyllis was eager to come but she dreaded the journey because she was subject to seasickness. Finally, she decided to fly, reasoning that her agony would be much shorter than on a boat. Once airborne, she discovered however that she was capable of an airsickness so acute that it made the Atlantic flight seem longer than a voyage. When they put down at Gander she was beside herself and felt she could go no farther. So she ran away and hid behind a hangar. They found her there before takeoff. Phyllis begged them hysterically to let her stay where she was and freeze to death, or else to give her a general anesthetic to knock her out for the rest of the journey. Refusing to do either, they dragged her back to the plane. Needless to say, she survived, but I believe she was later trainsick, all the way from New York to Los Angeles.

  2 On one of their visits to Romanoff’s bar, Christopher had met John O’Hara. As I recollect it, the bartender pointed O’Hara out to Christopher and Caskey, and Christopher rashly decided to introduce himself and offer O’Hara a drink. O’Hara was gracious at first and even paid Christopher some compliments on his work; then, turning suddenly aggressive, he snarled, “I suppose you’re going to write about us—and you’ll get it all wrong—you people always do—” (“You people” may have meant The English, or possibly The Queers.) Thus unfairly glimpsed, O’Hara seemed a very usual sort of red-faced alcoholic Irishman, spoiling for a fight. Christopher sincerely admired Pal Joey but it’s possible that O’Hara found his praise somehow patronizing, especially since it was offered with a British accent.

  3 The goodbye was extra tragic for Salka because Christopher and Caskey had already decided to settle in New Yor
k, for a while at any rate, when Christopher returned from England.

  4 31 Egerton Crescent.

  5 Or do I? Strangely enough, the day-to-day diary doesn’t record that anyone was at John Lehmann’s to greet Christopher, on January 22. A meeting with Forster is mentioned on the 23rd and a party on the 24th, to which Peter and Jigee Viertel did come, as well as Henry “Green” Yorke, William Plomer, Alan Ross, Keith Vaughan, Joe Ackerley, William Sansom, William Robson-Scott and no doubt many others. Also on the 24th was a lunch party, which included Rupert Doone, Robert Medley and Louis MacNeice—who presumably weren’t able to be at the cocktail party later.

  My guess is that Forster, Bob Buckingham, Joe Ackerley and William Plomer really were there on January 22, but that the Viertels maybe weren’t—in which case, my memory could easily have transferred them from the party on the 24th and superimposed them on the earlier scene. Anyhow, Peter Viertel was greatly impressed by the welcome that Christopher got from his old friends, and he later told Berthold Viertel so. Had Peter been half-expecting that Christopher would be spurned by them? Ridiculous as this sounds, it’s just possible that he did expect it—as a Jew and as a disciple of Hemingway (who had repaid his devotion by fucking Jigee, so it was said) Peter had an exaggerated view of the shame and horror of being a “deserter” from your tribe. I think he really liked and even admired Christopher, but that he also felt, deep down, that Christopher was “dishonored.”

  [6 As Isherwood retitled the piece for Lehmann’s book.]

  7 I don’t know if Alexis Rassine had been at the party, the night before. The day-to-day diary only mentions him on the 23rd, when he, John and Christopher went to see the film of Gide’s Pastoral Symphony. Alexis was living with John; he had the top floor of the Egerton Crescent house as his own self-contained flat. John was fond of telling how, when Alexis came to see John there for the first time—they had known each other for at least five years before this—he had looked around and declared, “I want to stay here always”; “And, as you see,” John would add, leering at his audience, “he has!”