Lost Years (31 page)

I don't remember anything worth recording about Cartier-Bresson, Jean Stafford, Harold Taylor, Jinx Falkenburg (whose guest Christopher was on her radio interview show) or John Hersey. The Countess Waldeck was a friend of Jimmy and Tania Stern, an amusing vivacious attractive little woman with (I suspect) a deeply shady side to her character, a sort of female Mr. Norris. I think she was some variety of Balkan Jewess but she had been tolerated by the Nazis and even entertained by a few of them. Under the name of R. G. Waldeck she had written an extremely perceptive book of memoirs centering around a hotel in Bucharest (?) called
Athene Palace
.
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John Home Burns was then quite famous as the author of
The Gallery
, a book which Lincoln Kirstein admired extravagantly and even Hemingway had a kind word for. A faint darkish cloud hangs over the memory of this meeting; my impression is that Burns got drunk and became hostile and tiresome. But he and “Rosie” Waldeck remain in my mind as two people I wish Christopher had gotten to know better.

Caskey and Christopher went out to the beach fairly often, during this period. There was Long Beach,
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where they met up with Ollie Jennings and Ben and Emilio Baz. There was a beach I don't remember the name of, where people fucked quite openly in the dunes—Christopher once had to step over a couple who were doing it right across the footpath. (You could go to this beach by bus; the driver, when he stopped at the entrance to it, would shout: “All out for Fairyland!”) And there was Fire Island—a long drive plus a ferry crossing but you could do the round-trip in one day.

One of their visits to Fire Island was on Christopher's birthday. Christopher had got drunk the night before and passed out. He woke to find himself in the car, with Caskey driving. They were already a good distance out of New York. “The last thing you said last night was, ‘Take me to Wystan,'” Caskey told him. “So I'm taking you.” Christopher was delighted. This was Caskey in his aspect as the perfect nanny.

There is an unusually vivid memory attached to one of the Fire Island visits, probably this one. In the late afternoon, as the time approached for them to leave, a storm was building up. After a heavy stillness, the first gusts of wind began whipping the dry grass of the dunes. These gusts were uncannily strong, they made the grass hiss with a sound exactly like drops of water falling on a very hot skillet. Christopher remembered the stories he had heard about the hurricane and was apprehensive. Auden, calm as usual in this sort of situation, insisted on playing a literary guessing game; one of them had to quote a line of verse or prose and the other had to identify its author. I remember that Christopher surprised himself by doing well at this, although his attention was elsewhere. I don't think there was a storm after all, certainly not a big one.

Their final visit to Fire Island was on September 13. They went down there for one day only, with Lincoln Kirstein, Stephen Spender, Chris Wood and Berthold Szczesny. Caskey took a lot of pictures of this historic occasion, including a trio of Wystan, Stephen and Christopher posed just as they had posed for Stephen's brother Humphrey on Rügen Island, fifteen or sixteen years earlier.
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This was probably the first time that Wystan had seen Berthold since the Berlin days. It was certainly the first time that Wystan, Stephen and Christopher had all been together since 1939. I remember that Chester took a great fancy to Berthold. They were able to communicate fairly well, because Chester could speak Yiddish.

At least two of the group photographs shot that day cannot be Caskey's, since he is in them; they may have been taken by Stephen, since he isn't. This would explain the ridiculous and yet (I am sure) characteristic pose in which the photographer has caught Christopher; Stephen's malicious eye would have been quick to notice and take advantage of it. Eight of the eleven people in the picture are lying on the sand, all fairly relaxed. Caskey stands behind them, smiling and striking a campy attitude. Next to him stands Chris Wood, looking down, lost in his own thoughts. Next to Chris stands Christopher. His legs are apart, his fists are clenched, his plump little figure is rigid with self-assertion. He looks at the others as if he were demanding their submission to his will, but in fact no one is paying him the smallest attention.

When one glimpses Christopher off guard like this, it seems astonishing that more people didn't find him totally absurd. I do remember that there was a boy—a friend of Ed Tauch's—who burst out laughing at Christopher when they were on the beach together. Christopher asked him what he was laughing about and he answered, “It's the way you keep
strutting
!”

On September 16, Caskey's mother had supper with Caskey and Christopher. (I'm not sure if this was their first meeting; it's possible that Mrs. Caskey had been out to California to visit them in 1946, but I don't think so.) Catherine Caskey was very like her son Bill in certain ways; she was pretty, flirtatious, campy and quite unshockable, and she had the South in her mouth. She was also a nonstop, indiscreet irrelevant talker, and this embarrassed Bill and drove him into rages. Catherine never thought about what she was saying and she would often repeat reactionary ideas she had picked up in Kentucky and didn't even believe in. For example, she once told Bill that one of his sisters was refusing to have sex with her husband because she didn't want any more children and wouldn't use contraceptives. “Poor little Catholic wife!” Catherine kept repeating fatuously, until Bill hit the ceiling. That Catherine was an utter hypocrite as far as Catholic morality was concerned was proved by her acceptance of Bill's relationship with Christopher. She and Christopher got along together splendidly.

On September 19, Christopher and Caskey sailed for South America on the
Santa Paula,
of the Grace Line. Mrs. Caskey, Matthew Huxley, Chris Wood, Tony Bower, Berthold Szczesny and Paul Cadmus came to see them off I believe it was Tony Bower who brought them a big bottle of champagne. For some reason, they didn't get around to drinking it, and, after a couple of days, when the
ship was rolling, the bottle exploded like a bomb. Christopher narrowly escaped getting his face cut.

Caskey and Christopher had had a heavy night of drinking before they embarked, and had left the apartment looking as if it had been searched by the police. Mrs. Caskey spent a couple of days tidying up after them and packing up the things they hadn't wanted to take with them on their journey.
⁴⁷

And now
The Condor and the Cows
takes over. The doings of Christopher and Caskey are described in it, more or less, up to March 27, 1948, when they left Buenos Aires on a French ship called the
Groix
, bound for France, via Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro and Dakar.

¹
Phyllis Morris, an English character actress, was a friend of the Beesleys. They had invited her to come over and stay with them, to recuperate from the wear and tear of the war years. Phyllis was eager to come but she dreaded the journey because she was subject to seasickness. Finally, she decided to fly, reasoning that her agony would be much shorter than on a boat. Once airborne, she discovered however that she was capable of an airsickness so acute that it made the Atlantic flight seem longer than a voyage. When they put down at Gander she was beside herself and felt she could go no farther. So she ran away and hid behind a hangar. They found her there before takeoff. Phyllis begged them hysterically to let her stay where she was and freeze to death, or else to give her a general anesthetic to knock her out for the rest of the journey. Refusing to do either, they dragged her back to the plane. Needless to say, she survived, but I believe she was later trainsick, all the way from New York to Los Angeles.

²
On one of their visits to Romanoff's bar, Christopher had met John O'Hara. As I recollect it, the bartender pointed O'Hara out to Christopher and Caskey, and Christopher rashly decided to introduce himself and offer O'Hara a drink. O'Hara was gracious at first and even paid Christopher some compliments on his work; then, turning suddenly aggressive, he snarled, “I suppose you're going to write about us—and you'll get it all wrong—you people always do—” (“You people” may have meant The English, or possibly The Queers.) Thus unfairly glimpsed, O'Hara seemed a very usual sort of red-faced alcoholic Irishman, spoiling for a fight. Christopher sincerely admired
Pal Joey
but it's possible that O'Hara found his praise somehow patronizing, especially since it was offered with a British accent.

³
The goodbye was extra tragic for Salka because Christopher and Caskey had already decided to settle in New York, for a while at any rate, when Christopher returned from England.

⁴
31 Egerton Crescent.

⁵
Or do I? Strangely enough, the day-to-day diary doesn't record that
anyone
was at John Lehmann's to greet Christopher, on January 22. A meeting with Forster is mentioned on the 23rd and a party on the 24th, to which Peter and Jigee Viertel did come, as well as Henry “Green” Yorke, William Plomer, Alan Ross, Keith Vaughan, Joe Ackerley, William Sansom, William Robson-Scott and no doubt many others. Also on the 24th was a lunch party, which included Rupert Doone, Robert Medley and Louis MacNeice—who presumably weren't able to be at the cocktail party later.

    My guess is that Forster, Bob Buckingham, Joe Ackerley and William Plomer really
were
there on January 22, but that the Viertels maybe weren't—in which case, my memory could easily have transferred them from the party on the 24th and superimposed them on the earlier scene. Anyhow, Peter Viertel was greatly impressed by the welcome that Christopher got from his old friends, and he later told Berthold Viertel so. Had Peter been half-expecting that Christopher would be spurned by them? Ridiculous as this sounds, it's just possible that he did expect it—as a Jew and as a disciple of Hemingway (who had repaid his devotion by fucking Jigee, so it was said) Peter had an exaggerated view of the shame and horror of being a “deserter” from your tribe. I think he really liked and even admired Christopher, but that he also felt, deep down, that Christopher was “dishonored.”

[
⁶
As Isherwood retitled the piece for Lehmann's book.]

⁷
I don't know if Alexis Rassine had been at the party, the night before. The day-to-day diary only mentions him on the 23rd, when he, John and Christopher went to see the film of Gide's
Pastoral Symphony.
Alexis was living with John; he had the top floor of the Egerton Crescent house as his own self-contained flat. John was fond of telling how, when Alexis came to see John there for the first time—they had known each other for at least five years before this—he had looked around and declared, “I want to stay here always”; “And, as you see,” John would add, leering at his audience, “
he has!
”

    Alexis spoke English without any trace of Polish accent—I think he had spent much of his boyhood in South Africa—but he had a graciousness which seemed foreign. He was very much mistress of the house. He didn't appear to be what is actually described as effeminate but rather to belong to a third, intermediate sex. He and Christopher got along well together from the start and even flirted a little, in a polite heterosexual way.

[
⁸
“Parnell's Funeral.”]

[
⁹
Le Boulestin, Southampton Street, Covent Garden.]

¹⁰
In the “Letter from England,” Christopher quotes some miscellaneous prices: Twenty cigarettes—2 shillings 4 pence. A hairbrush—38 shillings. A rubber sponge—1 shilling 9 pence. A natural sponge—22 shillings. A pair of lady's walking shoes (very good quality)—39 shillings. A first edition of R. L. Stevenson's
Weir of Hermiston
—10 shillings 6 pence. One hundred sheets of carbon paper—20 shillings. He adds, “In other words, some things are very expensive, others are more or less normal.” Presumably, the expensive items are the hairbrush, the natural sponge and the carbon paper.

¹¹
In 1947, Rachel's eyes were still reproachful with frustrated love—no longer for Christopher but for Wyberslegh. Rachel had lived there as a tenant with her husband, sometime toward the end of the thirties. Then her husband had gone to the war and she had had to move to a cheaper and smaller home. The house had been let (or maybe sublet by Rachel) to an elderly lady who was still there when Henry [Isherwood] died in 1940 and Christopher made it and the rest of the estate over to Richard. I forget exactly what complications followed, but I believe Rachel encouraged the lady to refuse to leave, hoping thereby to make it easier for herself to move back into the house when the war was over. “She behaved as if she owned it,” Kathleen told Christopher indignantly. Rachel had no legal case whatever. Richard, as the owner, had merely to wait until the elderly lady had found another place to live. In 1941, he and Kathleen took possession of Wyberslegh. But the feud with Rachel continued. (This may explain why she wasn't at the tea party.)

¹²
The film was made by RKO and released in 1949, with the title:
Adventure in Baltimore.
Its leading players were Shirley Temple, Robert Young and John Agar.

[
¹³
Meta Reis, wife of film director Irving Reis (1906–1953).]

[
¹⁴
Vernon Old calls this a convenient but inaccurate memory. He says that he never assumed, nor even thought, that he and Isherwood would live together on Isherwood's return to New York.]

¹⁵
When Christopher first met Jack Hewit—or Jacky, as he was usually called—Jack was having an affair with Guy Burgess. Jack flirted with Christopher and Christopher responded and suddenly found that Jack was very serious about it. He ought to have pulled out then but he didn't. Instead, he committed himself to taking Jack with him to Brussels, where he and Auden were spending the Christmas and New Year's Eve of 1938–1939. Guy Burgess made a show of minding about this—Christopher was sure he didn't really, for Guy was surrounded with boys. (Christopher himself found Guy attractive and would have preferred him to Jack Hewit as a sex partner, any day, but Guy didn't reciprocate.) Guy asked Christopher if he was in love with Jack, so Christopher had to assure Guy that he was—though he doubted it, even then. (Although Christopher was a born flirt—like Kathleen, but with the difference that he always followed through sexually—and although he was vain of his conquests, the experience of finding himself loved without being able to respond always reduced him to panic.) I remember that he felt this panic in Brussels about Jack, and confessed it to Auden. Nevertheless, he let himself be nudged and coaxed by Jack into promising, or more-than-half promising, that they would live together in America. Auden greatly approved of Jack as a lover for Christopher, saying that Jack had a “truly feminine soul” and would make Christopher settle down and be properly domestic. I think Auden identified with Jack, a little. For he too had been in love with Christopher.