Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir (17 page)

I
n 1969 I started several years of lecturing and visiting professorship, at various American universities, starting with the University of Texas at Austin, which had a special attraction for me as it housed the Humanities Research Center, in which all my
New Writing
and
London Magazine
papers were collected. During the course of the seventies I also did seminars or terms at the University of California, San Diego, University of California, Berkeley and Emory College in Atlanta. As a result, and owing to the fact that Christopher was frequently visiting England during these years, the letters between us became much rarer, but I have been able to supplement them with occasional diary entries. By 1980 Christopher had developed a strong aversion to writing letters except when he had to for business purposes, and almost all the communications between us were by telephone, speedy and reliable if a little more expensive.

Adelaide Drive, 24 January 1968 (letter from C.I. to J.L.).

I am still working on the preliminary copying and cutting of the mass of my Mother’s diaries and Father’s letters. There is a book in them, maybe two books when all the other material is included; neither of them novels, of course. If I do write another novel, it will be something deliberately unsensational and rather sentimental; all taking place on the silver wedding-day of two late-middle-aged queens, one of them working at the telephone company and the other at the gas company; they live in a dreadful little home in some dreadful part of Los Angeles and have a spaniel named Jeanette Macdonald and are very dull and happy ….

Incidentally, as regards
Cabaret
, I dearly wish I was making a fortune out of it; but so many cuts are being taken out of the pie that my slice is small indeed. If Auden and I had written the book, as originally planned, maybe we’d have made a fortune! …

Cornwall Gardens, 14 May 1969 (letter from J.L. to C.I.).

The ceremony of unveiling the memorial to Byron in Westminster Abbey, last week, put me in mind of that dinner in March at your house, which I enjoyed so much. I felt I must write to you about it. William
³
made an excellent oration, very much to the point, not too solemn at all: afterwards, in the Jerusalem Chamber, when I told him about Vergil Th. and his opera,
^§
he said he thought perhaps his speech ought to be included as the final aria …. The Dean was very funny, unconsciously: he kept on saying (at least if you listened between the lines) that he and the Chapter knew that Byron was a very licentious fellow, that they had no intention of giving in to the ‘promiscuous society’, but after all in 1969 one ought to be grown up enough to distinguish between the life and the poetry, etc., etc. The ghost of the Noble Lord stalked out with a great guffaw of rage at that moment. If I hadn’t been such a hopeless coward, I would have got up and recited one of Byron’s poems to his boy-friend, the ‘To Thyrza’ poems perhaps.

I must thank you for sending on that great fat letter from my marvellous young friend in Austin, Texas. You may be amused to hear what he wrote: ‘Please give my affectionate good wishes to Christopher Isherwood. He would not be surprised to hear that to me - and to many of my friends -he has, for a number of years, been “Christopher” - a first-name basis.’ And lots more. There. He is only 24.

Do please write to me, and tell me how all your dramatic projects go. And give my fondest love to yourself, and to Don, as always.

You remember that epic Indian book you let me read? Well, Kenny Martin* the other day produced the second volume, about the cowboys. I chuckled myself silly. But he told me that a young American friend of his had told him,
perfectly seriously
, ‘Do you know who is really the author? It’s a poet, by the name of W. Auden . .
Honi soit.

* Kenneth Martin, the novelist and a friend of John Lehmann.

Adelaide Drive, 1 June 1969 (letter from C.I. to J.L.).

… Don sends his love. We are very busy on the film story of
Cabaret
and hope they will see it our way. Other projects, such as our play adapted from
A Meeting by the River
and our proposed trip to Australia, aren’t definite but look somewhat hopeful. The
Black Girl
adaptation had a very successful run but hasn’t yet found any other offers.
⁴
The musical version of
The Dog Beneath the Skin
looks as if it may get a tryout in San Francisco before too long. In our spare time Don paints and I crawl along with my Family book - that will become more fun in later chapters but oh God I am
praying
for the end of the Boer War!…

[Christopher had discussed the part in his book about the Boer War with me because my father - who became a Liberal MP in 1905-6 - had been politically involved in the controversies.]

Adelaide Drive, 19 September 1969 (letter from C.I. to J.L.).

I am only just beginning to answer letters after our trip to Tahiti, Samoa, New Zealand, Australia, Honolulu, which was one of the happiest and most fascinating trips I have ever made in my life. In fact we both loved it … . We rendezvoused with Tony Richardson, watching him making his film, met and adored Mick Jagger - he is a very unusual person with great style, the perfect balance of introvert-extrovert, very funny, perfectly serious when he is serious, a ‘gentleman’ according to my mother’s rating, almost entirely without affectation and, it seems, vanity. You would never guess, meeting him, all that he publicly is. Well, anyhow, as a result of our talks with Tony, we are now engaged in producing a screenplay of
I, Claudius 
which Tony wants to film next. It is about the hardest thing I have ever worked on in movies, but very stimulating. That’s why I haven’t been answering letters. And there are many weeks of work ahead …

(The film of
I, Claudius
was eventually given another script-writer and another director.)

Diary entry: San Diego, Tuesday 3 November 1970.

On Friday at lunch-time, suddenly Christopher was there, with Don (silky silver hair in page-boy cut, a new development) beside him. My friend Morris was immensely excited to meet them, C. at his sweetest with him; in fact all three got on wonderfully well together, in spite of Morris’s obvious shyness and anxiety. Don had brought with him photo-reproductions of some of his drawings as a present to me: I chose one of C. himself (a very good full-length standing one), one of Morgan, and a head of Wystan (both looking rather serious, even fierce - as Don’s portraits are apt to be). He also brought some nudes of boys as a special present; but can I put them up on my walls?

C. talked a great deal about his new book on the subject of his father and mother, which whetted my appetite. Still no news of his play being put on in London
⁵
, a disappointment he bears bravely. We gave them goulash, jointly prepared. We all went off to the zoo, watched the lemurs, walked through the fantastic aviaries, wondered at the aardvark (the ant-eater), and the pygmy hippopotamus. Then they took us home, and off they went back to Santa Monica. C. on the waggon entirely. Not a drop of alcohol. We discussed E.M.F.’s will, and the plans for publishing
Maurice.
And the fate of the destroyed Mortmere stories: C. said the fact was they weren’t nearly as good as ‘The Railway Accident’, so one shouldn’t grieve overmuch.

On Sunday evening, as Sue hadn’t seen the aquarium and Morris wanted to be beside the ocean, we drove down to the Scripps Institute,
⁶
 and then on to Anthony’s by the waterfront, where we gave Sue a sea-food dinner; and so home. In the aquarium, I, laughing at some of the fish who seemed to stare at us, sitting on their fins like race-goers on shooting sticks, said: ‘They’re exactly like my students.’ And Morris, quick as a flash, said, ‘That’s why they’re called a school.’ Much telephoning between Christopher and myself, and writing between Mark Schorer
^§
 and myself; the result of which is that I am going up to lecture at Berkeley on Monday 23rd, and will spend the night with C. and Don at Santa Monica on the way.

___________________________________

 
^§
 The American writer and critic.

___________________________________

Diary entry: 26 November - Thanksgiving.

Last week-end was a big break in my routine here. First of all to Los Angeles, where C. met me, and I stayed the night at their Santa Monica home. Before going to the canyon, we lunched in the town, and talked again of C’s new work about his parents, and the discoveries about L.S.W. [Leonard Woolf.]
 Then to the canyon, where Don emerged and immediately dragged me off to be drawn before the light failed. Afterwards he went out to dinner, and C. and I were left to talk endlessly together, though this was broken by a visit to Elsa Lanchester - a few yards away down the canyon - very affectionate and gentle (‘on her best behaviour’ said C.) and reminiscing much about the early days with Beatrix. C. and I talked a great deal about E.M.F.’s literary remains, the edition of
Maurice
which is to come out under P.N. Furbank’s editorship - C. very irritated by the failure of communication with England, with Furbank’s hopeless copies, and the difficulty of persuading him that E.M.F.’s notes to
Maurice
should be published with it. I gather that Morgan re-wrote it once more
after
he had shown it to me (and others) in the early fifties. C. then showed me an extraordinary long short story Morgan had written between twelve and fifteen years before his death, also on a homosexual theme, of quite extraordinary power and depth (‘The Other Boat’). I was, I must admit, overwhelmed. Later, as I was looking through the books on Morgan in Christopher’s library, he said: ‘Of course all those books have got to be re-written. Unless you start with the fact that he was homosexual, nothing’s any good at all.’

The next day, C. and Don insisted on driving me up to Santa Barbara, to have lunch with two artist friends of theirs, Bill and Paul. A delicious occasion, with marvellous ham pie and asparagus cooked by Paul, and much viewing of artistic works …. Bill gave me a drawing, and the generosity of the gesture compelled me to embrace him for it … . Owing to a muddle C. had made about airlines, we had to drive back to Los Angeles for me to catch my plane to San Jose, Don driving like a demon along the crowded freeways, between the sombre barren mountains in the gathering twilight - we reached it with twenty minutes to go. C. confessed he could hardly bear to answer letters nowadays. And also told me that all his affairs would be in Don’s hands after his death.

Diary entry: 16 December.

I do not really believe in these ‘Creative Writing’ courses as they are taught and so popular now in the USA universities.

I felt doubts at the beginning, and now that my course is completed here I feel my doubts confirmed. I
cannot
see what is gained by the most popular way of handling them: all the students reading out their own poems in class, a sort of mass confessional, and then tearing one another to pieces. It is somehow ridiculous, even if the ‘teacher’ steers the discussion. I have spent so many years of my life discussing with authors
one by one
, and privately, where I think them good, where I think they go wrong, what line to pursue; and I am certain that’s the only way. What is possible
in class
is to take a well-known poem, group of poems, or a short story, and ask each student to analyse, give reasons for liking or disliking, and discuss with the others, the ‘teacher’ finally developing (and arguing) his point of view. In that way certainly we have had the most successful general sessions.

I take away the feeling that the young in this country are bitter, unsatisfied, disaffected from the way things are run, the way things are going in their huge, unsettled country, that has so little to anchor it to life - traditions, history, the slow evolution of settled communities ….

On the long journey by air from London to Austin (January) I read P.N. Furbank’s article in
Encounter
on E.M.F. How odd to present such a fascinating character so dully. He is critical of Joe’s article, and yet Joe is nearer the truth, and brings out one wonderful side of Morgan: his habit of writing, out of the blue, to his friends, praising and encouraging. I have been the lucky recipient of more than one such letter. And if I think, in recollecting, of Morgan, the pictures that always come to mind first are of his gaiety. I see him sitting on my sofa, in my library at Egerton Crescent, convulsed with merriment at some absurd joke or situation.

It is extraordinary, how I have felt a wonderful lift of the heart at being back in Austin. There is something about the air (not merely the warmth for mid-winter) - there is something about the light - which stimulates me and flushes me with happiness, almost inducing euphoria. I found a class, scheduled to consist of forty-six students, awaiting me for my ‘Nonsense
⁴ 
course, with at least a dozen more trying to get in. Two or three of them complained out loud that they had been refused enrolment, told that the class was full. At which I said without thinking, ‘What nonsense! The class is full when the room is full’ - to be greeted with thunderous applause. And their responsiveness to the preliminary, testing examples of nonsense I gave them was enthusiastic and immediate. My graduate seminar was equally delightful in quite a different way: a group of a dozen students in a small room, all intelligent and - so it seemed to me - intensely interested in the subject, especially the Bloomsbury Group and Virginia.