As George liked to point out, controversy was good. Decision continued to enjoy a generally positive reception, with “subscriptions and flattering comments pour[ing] in,” Klaus wrote. Yet he himself was not yet satisfied. The big names he had enlisted to attract public attention now threatened to suffocate the journal, he felt, under the weight of their ponderous arguments and predictable views. To keep the debate alive, he needed to involve the younger generation, who would soon be required to defend democracy with their own lives. Klaus had been impressed by Erika’s reports of the constructive passion that had overtaken the young British intellectuals she had met in London, many of whom had taken an apathetic approach to the conflict until it reached their shores. If Decision could be used to promote communication between these committed young British fighters and the undecided young Americans, he felt, a true, effective forum could be achieved.
Raising money for the creation of Decision, Klaus Mann had been much encouraged by the founding in London of a similar magazine, Horizon, by the poets Cyril Connolly and Stephen Spender. They were prime examples of the new activists Erika had described, having moved from a studied avoidance of politics during the Chamberlain era toward an acknowledgment, after the shock of Dunkirk and the fall of Paris, that the war was their concern. It had been easy, and quite gratifying, for Klaus to follow in the journal the writers’ increasing determination to take action. Now, in its January 1941 issue, the Horizon editors wrote that the first issue of Decision seemed—“oddly enough, to English eyes”—dated, as it continued to quibble over philosophical issues that the British considered moot. Americans—and even British expatriates whom they knew well—struck the British as disengaged. Connolly complained that “no American letters get written” by Auden, Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley, and “to ask for them is like dropping pebbles down a well.”
The editorial continued angrily,
This is regrettable, for Horizon has suspended judgment on the expatriates, holding that the wisdom of their departure can only be eventually judged by comparing their work in America with their potentialities, and with the work which is being done here. It is the personal opinion of this editor, however, that . . . they have missed their creative opportunity by not coming back . . . We are where we are because we believe what we believe . . . and we would not change places with them for the world.
Klaus, in Decision, pled neutrality in what he called “a row among old pals,” but he pointed to the pride and pugnaciousness with which the British salvo had been released. “For it must be a tough job,” he observed admiringly, “to produce a literary monthly under the constant shower of bombs and without encouraging mail from Beverly Hills or Brooklyn.”
If Klaus sounded apologetic for Auden and the other British expatriates, it reflected his own frustration over Auden’s continuing focus on the moral experience of the individual rather than on political issues. Klaus understood his friend’s position—that it is not the poet’s duty to tell people what to do but to present them with ideas that enable them to make their own rational and moral choices. This attitude was all well and good in peacetime. Yet even Louis MacNeice, who held similar views, had decided that the moment had come to stop writing about “choice” and finally make one.
Klaus’s attitude toward Auden’s perceived inaction was mild compared to his sister’s. Erika was fed up with the British artists who pled pacifism in California or holed up in Brooklyn for the duration. It was too late for Isherwood, who would turn thirty-six in February and was thus ineligible for that year’s American draft—and who in any case had declared himself a conscientious objector. But other well-known artists had set aside their work to commit themselves more fully to the fight against Hitler. Why couldn’t Auden?
Auden might have pointed out that he had helped raise money for refugee aid organizations, contributing his own money to evacuation programs for British children and his talents in speaking at Aid for Britain functions—in addition to his written condemnation of the events in Europe and his work with Decision. But he was not in the habit of defending his actions to his friends. He had his own opinion of Erika’s approach to politics: he had long felt that a less hectoring tone in her speeches would prompt a better response from American audiences. But he understood that, unlike himself, Erika was one of the breed of “politicians” or public people, as Auden had described them in “The Prolific and the Devourer.” It so happened that she expressed herself through action in the world rather than creatively, on the page. Erika had “no use for mercy and compassion: she was incapable of forgiving sinners.” Her judgment of Auden was irreconcilable and unbending.
Golo Mann, now living in the attic at Middagh Street and often hanging about the kitchen with his siblings, believed Erika’s anger to be at least as much personal as political. Since their marriage in 1935 to secure Erika’s British citizenship, she and Auden had developed a kind of courtly friendship sprinkled with jokes about their status as man and wife and punctuated by “family” visits to the senior Manns’ Princeton home. The pair “liked each other decidedly,” Golo later recalled, and by now their relationship had developed into a “serious friendship with even—believe it or not—a slight erotical touch.” And just as Erika had not hesitated to use emotional blackmail with her famous father—threatening in the early 1930s to end their relationship if he did not speak out publicly against the Nazis—so she was willing to use her relationship with Auden to try to influence him politically.
On any other issue she might have succeeded, but Auden’s resistance to the straitened intellectual life associated with political commitment outranked his fondness for Erika. Isherwood wrote in his diary that month: “If I fear anything, I fear the atmosphere of the war, the power which it gives to all the things I hate—the newspapers, the politicians, the puritans, the scoutmasters, the middle-aged merciless spinsters . . . I am afraid I should be reduced to a chattering enraged monkey, screaming back hate at their hate.” Auden couldn’t have agreed more.
Besides, he had begun to feel that he was beginning to make progress in developing a new approach, a new way of thinking that might function effectively even in the changed circumstances of this rapidly evolving world, and that it might give these terrible current events some meaning and significance. Golo, not a particularly popular member of the household because of his tendency to lurk, ghostlike, in the halls (he had been accused, too, of drinking all the cream off the milk bottles), was nevertheless among the most observant residents of 7 Middagh Street. It was he who finally asked Auden where he went early each Sunday morning. Auden confessed that he had been attending communion, but he preferred that no one else know. He was still working out the precepts and implications of Christianity in his mind and wasn’t ready to discuss them with others.
He was more than willing, however, to talk over his ideas with Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian whose book he had reviewed. Niebuhr had liked the review enough to contact Auden, and the two quickly became friends—along with Niebuhr’s wife, Ursula, who was British. The three could now occasionally be found in the Middagh Street parlor, listening to British gramophone records and exchanging jokes about England.
It was Niebuhr who, through his own interpretation of Christian dogma, seemed to offer Auden a way out of his difficulty in placing his faith in God. Like Auden, Niebuhr was more interested in the personal experience of Christianity than in an abstract understanding of its philosophy. The politically active theologian helped convince Auden that Christianity’s essential precepts, as opposed to the unwieldy structure of centuries of dogma, might provide the basis he sought for moral action.
In June 1933, when Auden was teaching at a boarding school in England, he had experienced what he considered a fleeting vision of true agape, or Christian love. He and several colleagues—none of them lovers, some not even particularly close—had been sitting out on the lawn at night, chatting casually, when “quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a p
ower which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine.” For the first time in his life, Auden felt that he knew what it meant to love one’s neighbor as oneself because that was the feeling that had overwhelmed him. He believed that his three companions were having this experience, too.
“I recalled with shame the many occasions on which I had been spiteful, snobbish, selfish,” he later wrote, “but the immediate joy was greater than the shame, for I knew that, so long as I was possessed by this spirit, it would be literally impossible for me deliberately to injure another human being.” He knew, too, that this feeling would eventually fade—and it did, gradually, after a couple of hours, although vivid memories of it continued to linger for several days.
This pure, redemptive love—an experience that instantly revealed all in clear, objective, moral perspective—was one form of faith that Auden believed he could embrace. Pledging allegiance to an unembodied force was against his nature, but seeking the sacred through the love of another individual made absolute sense. The choice of the individual was random—any single human being could represent, in all his foibles and faults, the universal. But Auden, of course, chose Chester Kallman. Theirs could become a sacred marriage in which each would seek the God in the other. Through this Christian love, correct action in all aspects of life would become apparent, and that knowledge would be incorporated into his work.
“To be saved is to have Faith, and to have Faith means to recognize something as the Necessary. Whether or not the faith of an individual is misplaced does not matter: indeed, in an absolute sense, it always is,” Auden wrote in a review of Kafka’s works for February publication in the New Republic. He added, as Niebuhr no doubt agreed, “There are many places of refuge, but only one place of salvation, yet the possibilities of salvation are as many as all the places of refuge.”
On January 7, Chester Kallman turned twenty; he was one year closer to manhood and would soon, presumably, begin an independent adult life. Despite Auden’s advice not to publish anywhere but in students’ journals until he was thirty, he had sold a poem to Decision for $10. Appearing in the March issue, it would make him a professional poet—his only other publications to date being essays for Columbia’s literary journal and a short piece on American music for Harper’s Bazaar.
Auden decided to organize a birthday feast followed by a party. He sent out the invitations and made lists of the necessary supplies; Chester’s father and grandmother, “Bobby,” cooked the dinner at Bobby’s Brooklyn apartment and took it to Middagh Street. By now, Auden had spent so many evenings at Bobby’s apartment, gossiping in her kitchen and petting her cat, that she considered him part of the family. Having been raised in the anti-Semitic environment of 1920s England, Auden valued this acceptance by Chester’s Jewish family—despite Dr. Kallman’s warning never to let Bobby know the true nature of his relationship with Chester.
Several of Auden’s friends had also gotten to know various members of Chester’s family. Lincoln Kirstein, who attended the party, was much drawn to Dr. Kallman’s cheerful, urbane manner and his ability to tell a good bawdy story. As the dentist mixed sidecars for everyone after dinner, he kept Kirstein and Marc Blitzstein howling with laughter. Later, Pears serenaded Chester with “Make Believe,” from Show Boat, and Kirstein cornered Britten to discuss the possibility of his composing the music for a short ballet. As the party grew raucous, Auden recited a poem that he had composed especially for the occasion:
There’s wine on the table, and friends and relations
From all over the city collected here;
So, Chester, let’s open our gay celebrations
By wishing you luck in your twentieth year.
What is the first thing I’d get for a poet
If I could importune the gods, which I can’t?
A technical gift? But you have that, and know it.
The first thing I ask is an adequate rente . . .
Stalin and Ford are strangely united
In a common scorn of the rentier;
Yet could I become one, I should be delighted;
So hurrah for the small private income, I say . . .
He concluded:
And a message to all in the States where they’re apt to
Believe in the Tough and The Real—I say NERTS:
Considering the world that we have to adapt to
We can thank our stars if we’re introverts.
The birthday feast was a success, with Kallman more voluble and amusingly sarcastic than ever and Auden beaming with pride for his star pupil. A number of housemates and friends at 7 Middagh Street had noticed the new recklessness with which Kallman reached for a laugh, even if it meant cruelly mimicking his partner. Auden was rarely “Wystan” now—more often referred to, depending on the situation, as “Miss Mess” or “Miss Master.” But then, Kallman made fun of everyone—even his father.
Kallman’s position as Auden’s chosen one was not the only reason for his flushed cheeks and bright eyes that evening, however. He could hardly contain the secret he was concealing: he had fallen in love.
It had happened the month before, at a party that George had given that was attended by a number of officers from a British merchant ship docked in Brooklyn that week. One of the officers, an almond-eyed, fit young Oxford graduate named Jack Barker, had hiked up the hill the day of their arrival to present a letter of introduction to Auden, and as a result he and his friends were invited to the festivities.
Barker later compared the experience of arriving in New York City—having crossed the Atlantic, filled with U-boats, on a camouflaged merchant ship from blacked-out Britain—as being shot out of a cannon into a circus of light and noise. It was no less exciting to enter the crowded house at 7 Middagh Street to discover Pavel Tchelitchew laughing with the painter Paul Cadmus, Klaus Mann arguing earnestly with the writer George Dangerfield, Marc Blitzstein with Benjamin Britten, and Cheryl Crawford with George Balanchine. To Barker it was like opening a door to find an entire generation of Western culture hidden away in this rickety old Brooklyn parlor. He was especially thrilled by the chance to interact with Auden, whom he idolized, and was relieved to find that the poet was quite approachable and pleased to talk with a fellow Englishman. He even invited him to stay at the house while he was in Brooklyn. Soon, Auden would give Barker an introduction to Malcolm Cowley, who would hire him to write an article for the New Republic.
If Jack Barker was fascinated by Wystan Auden, Chester Kallman was even more interested in Jack. By now, he had a decided preference for an English accent, and Barker’s Oxford tones, excellent physique, and perfect manners inevitably attracted the Brooklyn boy. Jack admired Chester’s sharp, witty conversation, and Chester basked in Jack’s admiration. Once the seaman had moved into the house, it didn’t take long for Chester to lure him into bed. He didn’t realize that Kallman and Auden had a relationship, and Kallman was careful not to tell him. The affair had been brief—Barker had already shipped out by Chester’s birthday—but he was expected back in about a month, and the glow from their encounter remained.
It was not by any means the first time during his relationship with Auden that Kallman had been attracted to another man. For years, Kallman and his friend Harold Norse had regularly cruised Central Park. “We rarely, if ever, went home alone,” wrote Norse. “There was an endless parade of youth in the city, some as young as fourteen and fifteen . . . refugees from the Depression or from Nazi oppression. They were castaways, throwaways, runaways. Auden used to say, ‘Sex is no problem. There are boys on every street corner.’ This was true.”
Auden meant to say that sex was no problem for those who wanted it, but he did not seem to fully acknowledge that Chester Kallman wanted it as frequently as possible with an endless succession of partners. It was perhaps the real reason that he insisted on living in his father’s Manhattan apartment rather than with Auden: he had the opportunity to spend his evenings elsewhere when he was in the mood. And he often wa
s, as Auden’s sexual style bored him. The previous summer, after several weeks with Auden and his friends at the home of Lincoln Kirstein’s sister, Mina, Kallman wrote to Norse in desperation, “When I do get back to the city I expect to spend % of my time flat on my stomach biting into pillows, listening to the music . . . of the bedsprings.” Auden was not the partner he had in mind.
A number of Auden’s friends were astonished that he seemed unaware of Kallman’s betrayals. Kirstein joked with Kallman about Manhattan’s subway tearooms—the toilets where men congregated for sex—and George often talked about the boys who could be found under the bridges and along the waterfront in Brooklyn. Whether Auden knew of Kallman’s behavior and preferred to look the other way or he truly failed to see what was before his eyes, no one but he and Kallman knew. Of course, Auden was in no position to criticize, considering his own youthful adventures, and may have felt that Kallman was only quite naturally experiencing that first, self-indulgent, “aesthetic” stage of experience Kierkegaard described, as was appropriate for his age.
In the end, as Auden had implied in his remark about the boys in Central Park, casual sex, if painful to the betrayed partner, was really not so important, so Kallman’s trysts had not damaged their relationship in any serious way. The affair with Jack Barker, however, promised to be different. Kallman was entranced by the handsome Englishman who dreamed of becoming a writer—who was, in a way, with his English manners and Oxford accent, a physically idealized if intellectually inferior version of Auden himself. With Barker, however, Kallman perceived the opportunity for one significant difference: for the first time in years, he held all the cards and would direct all the plays. He was drunk with love for Jack Barker—or at least he believed he was—but he was also drunk with the sense of being completely in command.
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