Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir (13 page)

Meanwhile his anxiety about his finances was removed by an offer that came out of the blue in January 1954 from MGM for him to write a filmscript on the theme of Henri II of France, Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici, which occupied him until September. This windfall was increased by the sale of the reprint rights in
The World in the Evening
, and a bumper cheque for the smash hit of
I am a Camera
in London. During the years that followed, he was much occupied with what he described in his letters as his Mexican novel, the idea for which came to him on a brief trip to Mexico he made in the winter of 1954-5.

This eventually formed the basis of
Down There on a Visit
, though much altered in scope and scene; in fact little remained of his original ideas except the title. He had also made several new friends, one of whom became of major importance to him: Igor Stravinsky. It took Christopher, not a very musical person at the best, some time to appreciate Stravinsky’s compositions, but he was immediately attracted by the man’s natural warmth. In an interview on one occasion, he observed:

I always think of Stravinsky in a very physical way. He was physically adorable; he was so cuddly - he was so little, and you wanted to protect him. He was very demonstrative, a person who - I suppose it was his Russian-ness - was full of kisses and embraces. He had great warmth. He would be fearfully hostile and snub people and attack his critics and so forth, but personally, he was a person of immense joy and warmth.

He was also a frequent drinking companion of Christopher’s, being especially fond of a drink called Marc de Bourgogne, which was dangerously strong for Christopher’s rather low level of alcoholic tolerance, while Stravinsky’s own level seemed beyond reach.

In the early fifties he continued to see Bill Caskey in between his voyages, but in spite of the remarks I have quoted from his letter to me in September 1952, Bill’s so frequent absences at sea undoubtedly put a strain on their relationship, especially for a person of Christopher’s wayward sexual habits. At the end of their South American journey, after the visit to Paris, he had brought Bill to London with him, as was natural. Their stay at Egerton Crescent was a delight, short though it was, and gave me the only opportunity I ever had of seeing them together. On Christopher’s third trip to England, at the end of 1951, Bill didn’t or couldn’t accompany him, but as the trip had as its main object Christopher’s long-meditated but often postponed and rather dreaded visit to post-war ruined Berlin, which he obviously had to make alone, it was inevitable. It so happened that I had just started
New Soundings
, my ‘magazine on the air’, and Christopher arrived in London in time to take part in the second of the series. 
He gave a highly characteristic performance in reading a script on six up-and-coming young American writers: he chose Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, William Goyen, Speed Lamkin, Norman Mailer and Calder Willingham. He was very confidential in manner, serious and yet managing to give the impression that some of the information he was giving his audience was peculiarly funny, so that he could hardly refrain from chuckling. I can still hear the mischievous relish that gradually came into his voice as he spoke about Capote and the Southern school of writers that seemed at that moment to dominate the American literary scene:

There are, in fact, two Souths that people write about. 
One is the real contemporary South, a land where industrialization is increasing, education is spreading and considerable progress is being made towards solving the Negro problem. The other is the gothic-romantic, macabre South of decaying mansions, degenerate families, despair, drink, Spanish moss, sexual atrocities and lynchings. Truman writes about this second kind of South, and makes it just as gothic, funny and macabre as he knows how. I must confess that this second kind of South bores me utterly - its cult can in some ways be compared with the cult of a romantic Ireland which flourished at the beginning of this century - and the greatest tribute I can pay to Capote’s talent is to say that nevertheless I sincerely admire his two novels (this was before the publication of
In Cold Blood)
…. He can be very funny and very touching. But I can’t help feeling that he is often guilty of playing with the reader, as if trying to see just how much weirdness he can get away with ….

This second programme ran into a crisis. The script was ready, the performers all booked, when the news came through of the death of King George VI. All scheduled broadcasting programmes were immediately cancelled, even on the Third Programme. Nevertheless we recorded it at exactly the same time that evening as if it had been going out, and Christopher departed for Berlin, with an assignment for the
Observer
to write two articles about his impressions and reactions. He returned about a fortnight later, very eager to hear all details about the King’s funeral. He was particularly entranced by the gush some of the newspapers

had indulged in, which I had kept for him; especially the
Times
reporter who wrote of a blackbird ‘trilling its sweet requiem’ in the silence of Hyde Park Corner as the procession passed by.

Christopher told us with some emotion of his reunion with Heinz, whom he found living in East Berlin, happily married and with only pleasant remembrance of the times he and Christopher had spent together wandering across Europe before the war. He also described his visit to his old landlady, Fräulein Thurau, whose shrieks of excitement could be heard throughout the block when he rang at her door, and how they danced together in the street. A day or two after his return he fell into one of his Fits of despair, burnt all his unanswered letters, told the BBC he couldn’t do a talk he had promised them and gave them their money back, and got out of the second article for the
Observer. 
He felt beleaguered and embittered by the journalists.

Before he left for Berlin, I put on a party for him, only fifteen of us in all, to meet again some of the people he had got to know while staying with me, including Henry Green,
³
Walter Baxter, of whose
Look Down in Mercy
^§
I had become a tremendous admirer, and some of the younger artists Christopher had grown specially interested in. The party had a relaxed, intimate atmosphere; but the best part of the evening was the dinner at the Brompton Grill Christopher and I had afterwards, tête-à-tête, when he talked of his emotional life and its relationship to his writings, and its difficulties, more frankly than I could remember him doing since the old days in Europe; and he urged me to talk of my life in the same way. It was a real opening of our hearts to one another. We had so much to tell one another that we continued it over a lunch a few days later: I thought how close we had become on this visit, with whatever tension had existed since the war wiped right away. I had just had a crucial interview with the Harveys, who now owned my firm, at Paulton, and he agreed entirely with the attitude I was determined to take. He said: ‘In Hollywood one starts by saying Yes, but gets to the top by saying No.’ He lent me the war-time journal he had kept 
after reaching California: I couldn’t but find it fascinating as it filled in the long blank in my knowledge of his life when Europe was fading in his mind; though as I read on, I found it more and more concerned with people I knew nothing of, except here and there the name of a film-star. But what astonished and even perplexed me about it was the sort of schizophrenia it revealed between the new Vedanta beliefs he was adopting and what seemed to me the entirely unrelated, unchanged, uncoordinated life of the old Christopher which went on at the same time. I was also struck by how terribly little he had recorded about his preoccupations as a writer, as if he wanted to try and fulfil himself in every way except as a writer, as an artist.

I was able, before he left, to take him down to Sussex in the car, and show him the cottage I had acquired only a couple of years before, the garden not yet completely finished. He was enchanted, and, I thought, a little envious. Alexis* and I did much work potting bulbs and planting primulas while he dozed by the fire. In the car he confessed to me that his friends in England had become a sort of mythology for him, so that even if they died while he was away in America, they would still be there for him, talking in his mind. And he repeated how unforgettable an event his first landing in England in 1947 had been for him.

Last farewells were said to Christopher in the library at No.31 the evening before he left for America. He said: ‘I really think of this place, of this room, as home in England.’ We were all rather sad and moved at the goodbyes: it was curiously as if we were saying goodbye for ever - though that wasn’t the case at all, for Christopher came back to London several times in the next few years. But there was one significant difference: Bill Caskey no longer came with him, for Christopher had started a new relationship. In 1953 he met two young men by the name of Bachardy, Ted and Don, and found himself falling in love with the younger brother, Don, who looked even younger than his eighteen years. The gap between Don and Christopher was thirty years, and many of Christopher’s friends were of the opinion that such a gap would have been great even in Ancient Greece; in 
twentieth-century California they felt he was taking a serious personal risk and jeopardizing his whole life-style. However, the feeling between them grew and developed, and became a permanent loving alliance. In
My Guru and His Disciple
Christopher writes that he didn’t feel guilty about the difference in their ages, ‘but I did feel awed by the emotional intensity of our relationship, right from its beginning: the strange sense of a fated, mutual discovery. I knew that, this time, I had really committed myself. Don might leave me, but I couldn’t possibly leave him, unless he ceased to need me. This sense of a responsibility which was almost fatherly made me anxious but full of joy.’

______________________________

*  Alexis Rassine, the dancer.

³
The novelist.

^§
Look Down in Mercy
was Walter Baxter’s first novel.
    

[1]
Vol.l of Lehmann’s autobiography,
The Whispering Gallery
, was 
published by Longmans in 1955.

The publisher of
New World Writing
-
an American paperback series in imitation of
Penguin New Writing.

# John Lehmann’s dog Carlotta.

A
t the beginning of their relationship. Don had not decided what career he wanted to pursue, but by 1956 he had started going to art school, and soon discovered that he had a special talent for portrait drawings. He drew a large number of portraits of Christopher in all moods, and began to do drawings of Christopher’s friends. They were popular, and he had very soon accumulated a large number of commissions, which were increased by his exhibitions in Los Angeles and in New York. He was a hard worker, and his energy and application were a stimulus to Christopher. In the autumn of 1955 they went on a trip together to Europe, with a visit on the way to see Paul Bowles
⁴
in Tangier, where Christopher first tried kif, with shattering results. He wrote about this experience in his ‘Visit to Anselm Oakes’, which was originally planned as part of his next novel, but was eventually cut out and published by itself in
Exhumations.
Oakes himself was supposed to be a study of 
Alisteir Crowley [
The notorious satanist.],
 not Paul Bowles. In England Christopher introduced Don to all his English friends and relations, who, unlike some of his Californian friends, showed no prejudice or hesitation in welcoming a relationship that was obviously making Christopher so happy.

Unfortunately, soon after they returned to America Don went down with hepatitis, and while nursing him Christopher caught it himself. Neither of them had a serious case, but they had to abjure alcohol for the whole of a year. As soon as they could they began to look for a more permanent home. Christopher first of all bought a house - the first he had ever actually owned - at 434 Sycamore Road, Santa Monica, at the bottom of the canyon. They lived there for three years, but then changed it for a house further up the side of the canyon, 145 Adelaide Drive, where they lived for the rest of Christopher’s life. I first saw it in 1969 when I began my connection with the University of Texas, and stayed there several times in the seventies. It consisted of a large, welcoming sitting-room cum dining-room with a balcony looking out over the canyon and a glimpse of the ocean beyond on the left. Behind the sitting-room, hung with pictures that Christopher had begun to collect, were bedrooms and Christopher’s study where he kept his books and worked most mornings or dictated to Don when they were working on a script together. Outside the house, as you came in, was the garage, part of which had been converted into a studio for Don. It was a quiet house, as there was not much traffic on Adelaide Drive, and the atmosphere restful for a writer and an artist to live in. The next house along the Drive belonged to Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, and Christopher, always an admirer of Laughton’s acting talents, struck up a close friendship with them. In 1960 they planned to work on a theatrical version of Plato’s dialogues which was intended to be essentially a life of Socrates; unfortunately Laughton developed gall-bladder trouble in the middle of the work, and suffered a heart attack as well. He was never well enough to pick up the work again properly before his death in 1962, and so the Socrates 
script had to join the by now rather numerous projects, plays and films Christopher had worked on but which never came to anything, mostly through bad luck or stupidity on the part of the film moguls.