Christopher and His Kind

by Christopher Isherwood

  Forster must have been favorably impressed by Christopher; otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone on seeing him. And Christopher made a good disciple; like most arrogant people, he loved to bow down unconditionally from time to time. No doubt he gazed at Forster with devoted eyes and set himself to entertain him with tales of Berlin and the boy world, judiciously spiced with expressions of social concern—for he must have been aware from the start that he had to deal with a moralist.

  Forster never changed much in appearance until he became stooped and feeble in his late eighties. He was then fifty-three but he always looked younger than his age. And he never ceased to be babylike. His light blue eyes behind his spectacles were like those of a baby who remembers his previous incarnation and is more amused than dismayed to find himself reborn in new surroundings. He had a baby’s vulnerability, which is also the invulnerability of a creature whom one dare not harm. He seemed to be swaddled, babylike, in his ill-fitting suit rather than wearing it. A baby with a mustache? Well, if a baby could have a mustache, it would surely be like his was, wispy and soft … Nevertheless, behind that charming, unalarming exterior, was the moralist; and those baby eyes looked very deep into you. When they disapproved, they could be stern. They made Christopher feel false and tricky and embarrassed. He reacted to his embarrassment by trying to keep Forster amused. Thirty-eight years later, a friend who was present at the last meeting between them made the comment: “Mr. Forster laughs at you as if you were the village idiot.”

  I suppose that this first meeting took place in Forster’s flat, and that, on the wall of its living room, there hung Eric Kennington’s pastel portrait of T. E. Lawrence’s bodyguard, quarrelsome little Mahmas, with his fierce eyes and naked dagger. This was the original of one of the illustrations to the privately printed edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence had given copies of the book away to his friends, including Forster. Christopher left the flat clasping this magic volume, which Forster had lent him.

  * * *

  Toward the end of Christopher’s visit to London, his long-impending showdown with Stephen Spender took place. Stephen gives an account of this in World within World. He writes that Christopher showed irritation with him so clearly, when they were together at a party, that he went to visit Christopher next day and suggested that they should see nothing, or very little, of each other when they returned to Berlin. Christopher replied in “accents of ironic correctitude” that he wasn’t aware of any strain between them. At this point, I have a memory of my own. Stephen, annoyed by Christopher’s evasiveness, exclaimed, “If we’re going to part, at least let’s part like men.” To which Christopher replied, with a bitchy smile, “But, Stephen, we aren’t men.” I can only assume that Stephen’s challenge caught him unprepared and that he was playing for time to prepare a self-justifying case. Later that day, he wrote Stephen a letter. Stephen paraphrases it as follows:

  If I returned to Berlin he would not do so, that my life was poison to him, that I lived on publicity, that I was intolerably indiscreet, etc.

  Stephen thinks that Christopher was annoyed because he had reached London before Christopher and had told their mutual friends all Christopher’s favorite stories, including several which he didn’t want to have broadcast indiscriminately. This is true, no doubt. But Christopher’s deeper motive in quarreling with Stephen was to get him out of Berlin altogether. I don’t think he consciously knew this at the time. It is obvious to me now. Christopher regarded Berlin as his territory. He was actually becoming afraid that Stephen would scoop him by writing Berlin stories of his own and rushing them into print!

  Stephen and Christopher met again and made up their quarrel even before Christopher returned to Berlin. Now that Christopher knew that Stephen wouldn’t be coming back there, he was eager for a truce. He needed Stephen’s friendship fully as much as Stephen needed his. Christopher tended to make friends with his moral superiors. It was only with Stephen that he had faults in common—which was relaxing and created a special kind of intimacy, when it didn’t provoke competition.

  * * *

  From the middle of August onward, Christopher had begun work on what was to be the very first draft of his fiction about Berlin. This was a short story or the outline for a novel; its subject matter was Jean’s adventures combined with Christopher’s encounters with the Nowaks. It was as crude as his first drafts always were. But it accomplished the enormous feat of making this shapeless blob of potential material emerge “out of the everywhere into here.”

  He dictated the draft to Richard. This was a supreme act of intimacy. It is immeasurably more embarrassing for a writer to invent crudely in someone else’s presence than to confide to him the most shameful personal revelations. He could have done it with no one else he knew. I think Richard himself valued this intimacy. He patiently wrote the whole thing out in longhand, only regretting that he couldn’t typewrite, because it made the dictation slower. They worked mostly in the mornings and had finished in about four weeks.

  Their collaboration brought a feeling of subdued excitement into the household. Something—no matter exactly what—was going on upstairs, behind Christopher’s closed door. Elizabeth the cook was aware of it. Nanny the house parlormaid was part of it. She, who had been nurse to both brothers in succession, now rejoiced that she was once more allowed to join in their games; she brought them cups of tea and answered the telephone, telling callers that they couldn’t be disturbed. As for Kathleen, what mattered to her was that Christopher was functioning as a writer under her roof; this was a solid respectable fact which she could report to her friends. Kathleen felt a need—though she would never have acknowledged it—to reassure herself by looking at Christopher through the eyes of the outside world. In this connection, the few good reviews of The Memorial were like references and Christopher’s newly acquired literary colleagues were like sponsors who guaranteed his competence. Thanks to them, Christopher the Writer had now begun to seem real to Kathleen; before them, he had never quite existed. (Wystan, Edward, and Stephen didn’t and would never count as Christopher’s colleagues, from Kathleen’s point of view; they were merely school friends.)

  Christopher found Kathleen’s attitude ridiculous; but he himself was enjoying his enhanced status. It was fun to be both the self-exiled mysterious “Man from Berlin” and the socially welcome novelist whose next book was “awaited,” even if not very anxiously, in Bloomsbury circles. However, a Man from Berlin should be talked about rather than seen—the mystery is solved by overexposure. And a next book is best awaited in its author’s absence. Christopher left England again on September 30.

  SEVEN

  From Forster, October 12, 1932:

  Dear Isherwood—we do drop “Mr.,” don’t we? I was very glad to have “All the Conspirators.” I don’t like it as much as “The Memorial,” but that is not the point, and there are things in it I do like very much … I hope you found your friend better than the news suggested. It is an awful worry, that illness at this time of the year. I’m very sorry you’ve got this on you, and annoyed with Life generally for being so often just wrong. Again and again the wonderful chariot seems ready to move …

  The people Forster approved of were those who were capable of devotion to a friend and of suffering when he was sick or in trouble. Forster took it for granted that Christopher was such a person. Christopher tried hard to live up to this image of himself. But Forster’s faith in him would often make him feel guilty of coldheartedness.

  Edward Upward reported:

  Back today from lunch with Richard and Ma. I noted that she hadn’t yet heard of Heinz and I said nothing to enlighten her. But even if I had I don’t think she would have protested—it’s quite astonishing how you have educated that woman. I foresee a time when, like the son who was sent to Australia for stealing, you will be able to do nothing wrong.

  Otto had had the power to make Christopher jealous and anxious. Heinz didn’t yet have this power. While Christopher was in London, he had
never worried that Heinz might leave him; so he had never felt the need to talk about Heinz to Kathleen. He was already closer to Heinz than he had ever been to Otto, but their relationship wasn’t painful. This he was learning to be grateful for—as he told Stephen Spender:

  In the old days I was obsessed with the idea of a high tension!, extreme danger! relationship, which gave off ten-foot sparks and electrocuted everyone in the neighborhood. Now I see that there’s something to be said for decency and a little mutual consideration and pleasantness. Thanks to Heinz.

  Christopher’s tone is ironically apologetic. He is aware that his love life has ceased to be gossip-worthy. Christopher himself was a keen matchmaker for his friends; but he quickly lost interest if the match turned out to be harmonious.

  * * *

  On November 3, Christopher wrote to Stephen, who was now in Spain:

  Here we are very wet and chilly. And this morning Berlin has woken up to find a general strike of trams, buses, and U-bahn. Nobody seems to know how long it will last. Probably till after the elections, I should think, on Sunday. Nazis and Communists are assisting each other on the strike pickets.

  The Nazis had forced themselves into this uneasy temporary alliance because they couldn’t let the Communists take credit for being the sole supporters of the striking transport workers, just before an election. The strike resulted in widespread public violence against strikebreakers and others. Christopher himself got a glimpse of it, which he describes in Goodbye to Berlin: a young man being attacked on the street by a gang of Nazis returning from a political rally. The Nazis were carrying rolled banners with spikes on their ends. They stabbed the young man in the face and left him with one eye probably blinded. Half a dozen policemen stood a few yards away, ignoring the incident.

  Christopher goes on to tell Stephen that Gerald Hamilton has been to Coburg to be present at the wedding of the eldest son of the Crown Prince of Sweden and Princess Sybilla of Coburg. During the marriage sermon the preacher said: “A people which has deprived its from-God-appointed rulers of employment must not wonder if the Heavenly Powers condemn its working classes to unemployment also.” This was a graceful reference to the various deposed royal persons who were in the congregation. One of these was the exiled Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria, with whom Gerald was staying. The tsar was fond of Gerald and bestowed various decorations on him, from time to time, which he later sold … Gerald, who seemed able to change worlds without the least discomfort, had descended from these aristocratic heights to Berlin and his proletarian boyfriend, an actor who was just then appearing in Gorki’s The Lower Depths. Christopher describes the boyfriend as being “more Communist than Lenin.” He used to reprove Gerald for counterrevolutionary laxity and self-indulgence.

  Christopher’s letter concludes:

  Heinz is spotty and his moustache is quite luxuriant. To annoy me he refuses to shave. We see each other three times a week and it is always very nice. My novel creeps on and on. Otto is going to have another child. And the Pound. And this strike. And the rain. And no fire. Never mind, this afternoon I shall go to the cinema.

  In the elections of November 6, the Nazis lost two million votes and thirty-four seats in the Reichstag, while the Communists gained three quarters of a million votes and eleven seats. Many leftists, including some expert political observers, believed that Hitler would never recover from this setback and had ceased to be a menace. Christopher, wild with joy, wrote to his friends that Berlin was Red. It was—in the sense that the Communists had a majority there of 100,000. But the fact remained that the Nazis were still the largest party in the country.

  * * *

  About this time, Stephen must have written to tell Christopher that he wasn’t going to dedicate his book of poems to him, as originally intended. This letter has been lost, but I suppose Stephen argued that, in view of their imperfectly patched-up quarrel, the dedication would be insincere. Christopher answered (November 14):

  Of course I quite understand about the dedication. In fact, I’d half thought of writing and suggesting it to you myself.

  This afternoon is sad brilliant autumn sunshine, the sort of afternoon we might have chosen for a walk in Grunewald, the sort of afternoon on which Virginia Woolf looks out of her window and suddenly decides to write a novel about the hopeless love of a Pekingese dog for a very beautiful maidenhair fern.

  (Despite Christopher’s admiration for Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, and To the Lighthouse—which was considerable, though not nearly as great as mine is, today—he sometimes used Virginia as an enemy image of the ivory-tower intellectual. For instance, after he and Stephen had been to see Kameradschaft, Pabst’s film about the coal miners, in 1931, Christopher told Stephen that, when the tunnel caved in and the miners were trapped, he had thought: “That makes Virginia Woolf look pretty silly.” Stephen replied that he had been thinking something similar, though not specifically about Virginia.)

  Heinz and I wistfully looked up Malaga on the map and decided that “some day” we would travel—yes really—perhaps even as far as Munich.

  (There is some mild bitchery here and in the next paragraph. Stephen is about to leave for Málaga—wandering through the warm lands of escape while Christopher remains shivering and penniless at his post on the Berlin battlefield.)

  Today I am moving into the big front room. It is lighter for the winter months and, for some reason, easier to heat. Frl. Thurau is very reproachful because I insist on turning out all her potted plants. Their moist stink when the oven is alight is probably as near as I shall ever get to a tropical forest. I do envy you your winter in the sun. I imagine you bursting into blossoms of health, while here in Berlin I get uglier and more shrivelled every day. My hair is scurfy and drops out, my teeth are bad, my breath smells. However, I do see that it’s absolutely necessary for me to stay on here at present. The last part of my novel requires a lot more research to document it.

  Please understand, Stephen, that there is nothing for you to apologize for about our time in Berlin. I am an entirely impossible character; unstable, ill-natured, petty and selfish. I don’t say this in a mealy-mouthed way. I have the virtues of my defects. But I can’t imagine that I ever could or should be able to live intimately with an equal for long.

  Christopher may have explained himself further; the next page of the letter is missing. The final page contains a few items of news. Frau Nowak is being sent back to the sanatorium again. Christopher hardly ever sees Otto because he has cut off Otto’s money entirely—this may mean that he refuses to contribute to the abortion of Otto’s illegitimate embryos. However, he has applied to Wilfrid Israel, who may be able to get Otto a job as errand boy to a publisher. Christopher has been translating a report on the work of the I.A.H, a Communist organization with which Gerald Hamilton was involved. Christopher tells Stephen that he thinks he will become a member of it—“it’s the next nearest thing to being a Communist.” Christopher never did join the I.A.H, much less the Communist Party. This was the only time in his life when he came anywhere near to doing so.

  * * *

  John Lehmann’s sister Beatrix was now in Berlin and she and Christopher saw each other often. They were much alike in temperament, a natural elder sister and elder brother. Both thought of themselves, rightly or wrongly, as strong people weary of guarding the weak. Both were comedians who made each other laugh continually: Beatrix with her gallows humor, Christopher with his melodramatic clowning. Both, at that period, saw eye to eye politically. Both sincerely admired each other’s work. Christopher was astonished by Beatrix’s talent as a writer and he loved to watch her act. (A character actress with looks which enabled her to play romantic leads, she was equally capable of becoming Juliet or Juliet’s nurse; there might, however, be occasional eerie glimpses of the one within the other.) Both Beatrix and Christopher were psychosomatic types, prone to sudden sicknesses. But here there was a difference between them. While Christopher stayed in bed, Beatrix would go on stage, blazing with feve
r or nearly voiceless with laryngitis, and soar to her greatest heights.

  My last memory of Beatrix in Berlin is that she and Christopher spent New Year’s Eve together at a French restaurant, eating Sylvester carp, the traditional New Year’s Eve dish. They were so engrossed in their talk that they were unaware of the moment at which 1933 came in. Someone remarked that this would bring them bad luck in the year ahead.

  * * *

  In mid-January, Christopher wrote to Stephen, who had now returned from Spain to England:

  I have put off answering you because of the really terrifying reports of the revolution in Barcelona. Did you see much of it? I gathered that the posts and all other communications were suspended, that there was no light and that the streets were full of machine guns. So it seemed useless to write.

  (This refers to the rising of Anarchists and Syndicalists which began early in January in Barcelona and spread to other cities. It was suppressed by government troops. Stephen hadn’t referred to it in his last letter, being preoccupied with a personal problem. He had been trying to keep the peace between some intensely neurotic individuals, one of whom was an alcoholic. He later made their feuds and agonies well worthwhile by distilling from them his hilarious story, “The Burning Cactus.”)

  Beatrix Lehmann leaves on Monday for England, via Hamburg, where she is engaged to appear with some English players, in the title role of Candida. As for Heinz, we get on very well indeed. At the moment, we’ve just parted for ever, but that is neither here nor there.

  Frl. Thurau has a new lodger, a Norwegian film actor with incredibly beautiful blond hair. He plays a card game called Black Peter with Frl. Thurau and the two whores. The loser has some kind of indecent picture—a cunt or penis or bubs—drawn on his cheek with an eyebrow pencil. By the end of the evening they are all black-faced.