Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir (19 page)

He was definitely encouraging, in sober fashion, about Jack Marlowe, and urged me to press on as hard as I could. At the same time, he made several shrewd and valuable comments; most of which I agree with.

_____________________________

* In the Purely Pagan Sense
,
published by Blond and Briggs in 1976.

Cornwall Gardens, 18 July 1975 (letter from J.L. to C.I.).

The star of Christopher Isherwood is in the ascendant!

No sooner do I have a letter from William McBrien, editor of
Twentieth Century Literature
, to say that he’s planning an Isherwood special number for next year and wants me to contribute, than another letter arrives from someone called Jonathan Fryer to say that he’s writing a biography of you and wants to have a talk with me about it.
¹⁰

Please let me know just as soon as you can whether Mr Fryer is a biographer who has your approval, and to what extent I am to be discreet/indiscreet.

As for Mr McBrien, it occurred to me that I might produce a piece for him on the genesis of
Goodbye to Berlin
, with extracts from all your letters referring to the preparation of the stories - quite a lot I think.

Would this be OK by you? And should I withhold your letters from Mr Fryer? If you don’t mind him seeing some of them, perhaps you’d let me know those you
do
mind him seeing (or the other way round) - you have all the copies. I shan’t be a bit surprised if you’d rather he didn’t see them at all.

Do let me have a word as soon as you can, as they’re practically knocking on my door. And of course let me know at the same time how near you are to finishing your book.

Longing to know. Someone told me you had been working on a Fitzgerald script? Alexi and I send much love to you and Don. And Tommy,
^§
still looking after me excellently, adds a word of greeting too.

My Virginia Woolf book* comes out over here in September, but the Harcourt Brace edition not till the New Year. Wish I could see Don’s paintings. Santa Barbara’s off till late 1976.

_____________________________

* Virginia Woolf and Her World
was published by Thames and Hudson.

Cornwall Gardens, 6 August 1975 (letter from J.L. to C.I.).

Very glad to get your letters, as they have already started to bombard me. I will use my discretion, and perhaps show very few letters indeed, apart from those in Texas
{New Writing 
files) which can anyway be studied (but not of course quoted) by any bona fide student. Mr Brian Finney
¹¹
is upon me next week - he rather took my breath away by asking me to spare ‘one or two hours of my time’ …. I think you’ll find Jonathan Fryer rather sweet. A tall slim boy, camouflaging a sensitive and slightly feminine face with a large droopy moustache. Very shy, so much so that his voice becomes like the gnat’s voice in
Alice
when he first talks to one. He has a sense of humour, and giggles a lot.

I will write that piece on the origins of
Goodbye to Berlin
, if Bill McBrien (who is extremely nice, and actually gave me lunch!) wants it after he reads my review of the Sally Bowles omnibus in the
Financial Times -
a sudden request by the literary editor after I’d spoken to McBrien. I loved your new introduction - masterly.

A reason for replying at once is that I have given your address to an extremely nice girl, Gillian Freeman, who is going to be over in Hollywood this month, perhaps with her husband, Ted, who’s a ballet critic. Rather a good novelist (she wrote
The Leather Boys),
very intelligent and amusing, loves Los Angeles where she has done work. She wrote the script of the Virginia Woolf TV film on which I collaborated with her. I do hope you won’t mind; but I think you and Don should enjoy meeting her. A great fan of yours. About your book. My own instinct is to say: publish the part up to 1939 separately, as soon as you have finished it. Not merely because the American part may, as you suggest, upset the balance, but because it will make it a very long and tremendously
expensive
book. Why shouldn’t there be three volumes? It seems to me an excellent idea.

We are in the middle of a heat wave, incredible. Tea, lunch, breakfast on the lawn at the Cottage. Alexi, browner and browner every day, sends love, as I do, to both of you, and Tommy sends more greetings.

Cornwall Gardens, 6 September 1975 (letter from J.L. to C.I.)

Just a line, to say that your press-cutting agency may send you a copy of a review I wrote about ‘The Berlin of Sally Bowles’ in the
Financial Times
, in which you may be surprised to find mention of a character unknown to you -
and to me -
called ‘Marge’! This extraordinary misprint/invention is due, I am told, to the Head Reader’s confusion in the
FT’s 
office as the page went to press. They send their profound apologies, and no doubt a little note will appear under my next review. Maddening. I hope it will make you laugh rather than cry; but I boiled. With a name like that, I don’t think she can have been a friend of Sally’s, do you? …

Adelaide Drive, 31 July 1977 (letter from C.I. to J.L.).

You ask about the progress of the book - but I think maybe you don’t know that I’m working on a memoir of my life in the nineteen forties, in California.
(That
is very thoroughly documented in my diaries.) However I decided to do my memories of life with Swami Prabhavananda first -which runs from 1939 to 1976, when he died …

Adelaide Drive, 13 March 1978 (letter from C.I. to J.L.).

The Lear book
¹²
, which I’ve meanwhile received, is absolutely beautiful,
and
beautiful to look at. I suppose he had his fun, one way and another, but it is nevertheless a poignant story, don’t you think, despite all his genius and successful career? You tell it excellently. I greatly look forward to 
Thrown to the Woolfs
^§
! Yes, of course, quote anything you want from my letters - copies are unnecessary.

My book about the Swami is at least in a rough draft, plus 50 pages rewritten, but it’s still hard work, and will offend many. There is also a project to publish a book of Don’s drawings, with a commentary on the sitters by both of us. This seems nearly definite ….

     
___________________________

§ 
Thrown to the Woolfs
was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1978.

Cornwall Gardens, 21 November 1983 (letter from J.L. to C.I.).

I’ve just been sent some clippings about the Auden celebrations in New York, which seem to have become a rather memorable occasion. And a clipping (from the
NY Times)
about an interview with you personally, which has fascinated me. I congratulate you on receiving the Award from the Modern Languages Association: I wish you could receive something similar over here.

I long to hear that you have completed the book you are at work on at present. Alexis is as eager as I am to read it.

My book on
Three Literary Friendships
has come out over here
¹³
, but won’t be out on your side of the ocean until the New Year. I will have Billy Abrahams
^§
 send you an early copy. I long to know what you think of it. I am now at work -rather slowly - on my final volume of Memoirs - haven’t got a title for it yet.

I had rather a nasty fall a few weeks ago. Very stupid, and mostly due to the uneven pavements just round here. I am much better now, but it was a bit of a shock.

When are you coming over? We all miss you very much, and are pining to see you. Do write me a line or two about your work and your plans. A happy Christmas to you and Don - with much love.

_______________________________

§ An editor at the American publishers Holt, Rinehart, also a biographer.

Abrahams, Billy, 142 

Ackerley, J.R. (Joe), 123, 124rc 
Address Not Known
(projected Auden/ Isherwood book), 49 

‘Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God’ (Shaw), 117 

‘Afterwards’ (Isherwood), 98-100 

‘Alfred’, 65

All the Conspirators
(Isherwood), 2, 8, 9, 46, 108

‘Ambrose’ (part of
Down There on a Visit
) (Isherwood), 64, 96, 97 

Ample Proposition, The
(Lehmann), 107 Amsterdam, 20, 24-5, 26 

Ascent of F. 6, The
(Auden/Isherwood), 22, 32, 51 Atlanta, 113

Auden, Wystan H., 19, 61, 116,

119; early friendship with Isherwood, 1, 46; in Berlin, 8,

12, 15; description of Isherwood, 10; play writing with Isherwood, 22, 32, 47, 51; and
New Writing, 
25, 26; and Spanish Civil War, 35, 36, 40; in China with Isherwood, 38, 40-43, 47; in New York, 43-4, 74, 93, 142; publishing plot, 48-9; emigration to America, 48, 50; drift from Isherwood over Yoga, 53-4; vilified as ‘deserter’, 54-5, 72; continuing friendship with Isherwood, 108; early affair with Isherwood, 129

Austin (Texas), 113, 124-5, 127

Bachardy, Don, 2, 80; permanent alliance with Isherwood, 84-5, 86-7, 93, 95, 108, 120, 121, 122, 127, 128, 129, 130, 137, 138,

141; artistic career, 86, 95, 102, 106, 117; as portraitist, 86, 106, 119, 141; work on film scripts with Isherwood, 117, 129, 135 

Bachardy, Ted, 84 

Baxter, Walter, 83 

Beesley, Alec, 51, 78

Bell, Julian, 7

Berkeley College, San Francisco,

113,    120

Berlin, 8, 9, 12-15, 47, 81, 83 

‘Berlin of Sally Bowles, The’ (Isherwood), 140 

Bhagavad-Gita,
63-4, 68 

Blanc-Roos, Rene, 66 Bodley Head, The, 25, 39
n 

Bowen, Elizabeth, 39 Bower, Tony, 35, 68 

Bowles, Paul, 86, 87 

Bradbury, Ray, 82 

Bradshaw, John, 107 

Brussels, 23, 26, 29, 31, 35, 36,

37-8, 47

Buenos Aires, 76 

Byron, Lord, 115 

Bubi, 12, 44, 76 

Burford, Roger, 2

Cabaret
(musical and film), 109,

114,    117, 134 

Calcutta, 104 

Cambridge, 1, 2, 47 

Canary Islands, 20-22 

Canton, 41

Cape, Jonathan, Limited, 2, 8 

Capote, Truman, 82 

Carver, David, 134 

Caskey, Bill, alliance with, 67, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81 

Chambers, Robert, 4 

Chamson, Andre, 28 

Chaplin, Charlie, 59, 67 

Chaplin, Oona, 67 

Cheltenham, 72 

Chesterton, G.K., 93 

Chinese-Japanese war, 38, 40-43 

‘Christ the Hunter’ (Lehmann), 104 

‘Christopher Garland’ (Isherwood), 2 
Christopher and His Kind
(Isherwood), 12, 15, 32, 43, 129; quoted, 11, 25, 29, 47

Christopher Isherwood, A Critical Biography
(Finney), 138n 

City and the Pillar, The
(Vidal), 77

Clark-Kerr, Sir Archibald, 42, 43 

Coal-Face
(film), 26 

Cockburn, Claud, 16 

Cocteau, Jean, 44, 79, 107 

Collins, Wilkie, 67 

‘Coming to London’ (Isherwood), 69-71, 73

Condor and the Cows, The
(Isherwood), 67, 78

Connolly, Cyril, 35, 55, 66 

Connolly, Jean, 35, 66 

Conrad, Joseph, 93 

Copenhagen, 22, 23 

Cornelius, Henry, 92 

Crowley, Alisteir, 87 

Cukor, George, 131, 133 

Curtis Brown, 8

Davis, George, 43 

‘Day at La Verne, A’ (Isherwood), 57-8, 65 

Daylight
, 41

Diane de Poitiers
(film script), 80, 92 

Dog Beneath the Skin, The
(Auden/ Isherwood), 15, 22, 32, 117 

Donat, Robert, 59 

Doone, Rupert, 22 

Dostoevsky, Feodor, 77 

Down There on a Visit
(Isherwood),

48, 66, 94; origin and episodes of, 64, 81, 94, 95-7; autobiographical element, 95-6; Lehmann’s opinion of, 96-7, 103; disappointing reviews, 101 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 93 Duras, Marguerite, 105

Edward Lear and his World
(Lehmann), 141

Edwards, Fallon, 132 

Eliot, T.S., 49 

Elizabeth II, Queen, 134 

Emory College, Atlanta, 113 

Empson, William, 42 

Encounter
, 53n, 123 

English-Speaking Union, 131, 133 

‘Englishman, An’, original title of 
A Single Man
, 102

Estoril, 31, 34 

Evening Standard
, 78