Christopher and His Kind (10 page)

*   *   *

The story of Bernhard Landauer ends with the news of Bernhard's death. “Isherwood” overhears two men talking about it at a restaurant in Prague, in the spring of 1933, just after he himself has left Germany for good. One of them has read in a newspaper that Bernhard has died of heart failure and both take it for granted that he has really been killed by the Nazis.

The killing of Bernhard was merely a dramatic necessity. In a novel such as this one, which ends with the outbreak of political persecution, one death at least is a must. No other major character in
Goodbye to Berlin
has been killed, and Bernhard is the most appropriate victim, being a prominent Jew. The timing of his death, so early in the persecution, is unconvincing, however—unless he was murdered by mistake. The Nazis would surely have waited long enough to prepare some false charges against him. The liquidation of such an important figure in the business world would have caused a lot of bad publicity abroad. Wilfrid himself survived for years, despite his defiance. The Nazis did kill him in the end—but that, one can almost say, was by accident.

Having settled in England, Wilfrid devoted himself to helping his fellow refugees. After the French defeat, many of them were temporarily interned. When Wilfrid visited the internment camps he used to say, “This is where I ought to be, too.” But, as a British subject, he was free. He enlisted in the Civil Defence.

By 1943, there were many Jews who had escaped from Germany and Austria and found their way to Spain and Portugal. In March of that year, Wilfrid flew to Portugal to arrange for some of the younger refugees to emigrate to Palestine. Within two months, he had done this. On June 1, he boarded a plane to fly back to London. Among his fellow passengers was the famous actor Leslie Howard.

Over the Bay of Biscay, three hundred miles off Cape Finisterre, their plane met eight Nazi fighters. It is almost certain that the fighters came upon them by chance, while returning from an unsuccessful attempt to locate two of their own U-boats. Unarmed airliners flying between Lisbon and London were very seldom attacked, though they often carried important people. But, on this occasion, the Nazis had some reason to suspect that Churchill himself might be on board; they knew that he would be flying back from a conference in Algiers at about that time. There were no survivors.

*   *   *

Christopher first met Gerald Hamilton in the winter of 1930–31. At that period, Gerald's social position was solidly respectable; he was the sales representative of the London
Times
for Germany and had his office in Berlin.

In
Mr. Norris and I,
one of Gerald's several autobiographical books, he describes how he obtained this job:

This serves to show with what ease anybody can today obtain a responsible position, no matter what his past life might have been. I was able to provide the usual references; I did not have to tell a single lie, and I found myself suddenly launched into this most respectable and responsible post. The ease with which I obtained it is only another illustration of the vast scale of hypocrisy upon which the standards of our civilization really depend.

Good old, bad old Gerald! One can't help admiring his tactics. He asks
The Times
for a job.
The Times
gives him one and is promptly denounced for its hypocrisy. How dare it pretend to have standards of right and wrong if it hires people like Gerald, who outrage those standards? How dare it pretend ignorance of, for example, these two facts?

That, during the First World War, Gerald had been imprisoned and later interned in England because of his “openly expressed pro-German and anti-British sentiments” and “enemy association.” (This had inspired Horatio Bottomley to write an article entitled “Hang Hamilton!”)

And that, during 1924 and 1925, Gerald had spent several months in various French and Italian prisons, charged with swindling a Milanese jeweler out of a pearl necklace.

But now Gerald betrays himself into admitting that he has a double standard. While condemning
The Times
for employing a notorious traitor and thief, he maintains that he was really neither the one nor the other. Gerald wasn't a traitor, because he wasn't British—well, technically, perhaps, but not in his heart, which was Irish through and through. Call him an Irish rebel, if you like, and a potential martyr to the cause of Irish freedom. He had proved his loyalty to Ireland by corresponding with Roger Casement, when Casement was in Berlin trying to get German help for a rising against the British. (Gerald must have expressed himself with extreme caution, for no evidence of his participation in this plot had ever been produced against him.)

As for the pearl necklace—that accusation was really just another technicality. If the jeweler hadn't sent in his bill so much earlier than Gerald had expected him to, and if Gerald himself hadn't delayed so long in taking care of the matter (“My usual inclination towards a policy of
laisser aller
”), all the resulting unpleasantness could have been avoided. At worst, it was merely, as you might say, robbing Peter to pay Paul—and, anyhow, Gerald would never have become involved in the affair if he hadn't wanted to oblige a friend who was in financial difficulties … Gerald had the art of talking like this without showing any genuine indignation and without exactly defending himself. He was well aware of his own double standard and he couldn't help giggling in the midst of his solemn sincerities. Having giggled, he would skip to happier themes: the many royal and titled ladies and gentlemen he had known; the palaces, castles, and chateaux he had been a guest at; the exotic meals he had eaten and the now extinct wines he had drunk.

It seems to me that Christopher “recognized” Gerald Hamilton as Arthur Norris, his character-to-be, almost as soon as he set eyes on him. When William Bradshaw (the I-narrator of the novel) meets Mr. Norris on a train, their encounter seems remembered, not imagined, although its setting is fictitious. In these first sentences, Hamilton and Norris are still identical:

My first impression was that the stranger's eyes were of an unusually light blue … Startled and innocently naughty, they were the eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules … His smile had great charm. His hands were white, small, and beautifully manicured. He had a large blunt fleshy nose and a chin which seemed to have slipped sideways. It was like a broken concertina. Above his ripe red cheeks, his forehead was sculpturally white, like marble. A queerly cut fringe of dark grey hair lay across it, compact, thick, and heavy. After a moment's examination, I realized, with extreme interest, that he was wearing a wig.

From Christopher's point of view, Gerald was enchantingly “period.” He introduced Wystan, Stephen, and other friends to him, and soon they were all treating him like an absurd but nostalgic artwork which has been rediscovered by a later generation. Gerald vastly enjoyed this new aspect of himself and began to play up to it. No doubt he realized that these naïve young men who marveled at his wig, his courtly mannerisms, and his police record were unconsciously becoming his accomplices. They were making him acceptable in circles which he had never entered before—the circles of modern bohemia, which would welcome him
because
of his shady past, not in spite of it. Not all bohemians are poor. Gerald could look forward to establishing fresh contacts which might be advantageous.

(This reminds me of a charming young man who was briefly welcomed into those same circles because he admitted frankly to being a cat burglar and seemed therefore “pure in heart,” according to the Lane-Layard creed. The homes of some of his admirers were subsequently burgled, but nothing was proved against him.)

Gerald therefore didn't really mind when he found that his new friends were referring to him as “a most incredible old crook”; although he would always protest, for form's sake. On one occasion, a fellow Hamilton connoisseur remarked to Christopher, “It seems that Gerald has had a moral lapse”; to which Christopher replied, “Gerald having a moral lapse is like someone falling off a footstool at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.” Christopher was pleased with this
mot
and repeated it to Gerald, who giggled, wriggled, and exclaimed,
“Really!”

Aside from Gerald's temperamental extravagance, which drove him to run up bills he knew he couldn't possibly pay, his wrongdoing seems to have been almost entirely related to his role as a go-between. If you wanted to sell a stolen painting to a collector who didn't mind enjoying it in private, to smuggle arms into a foreign country, to steal a contract away from a rival firm, to be decorated with a medal of honor which you had done nothing to deserve, to get your criminal dossier extracted from the archives, then Gerald was delighted to try to help you, and he quite often succeeded. All such transactions involved bribery in one form or another. And then there were Gerald's operational expenses. And certain unforeseen obstacles which arose—probably with Gerald's assistance—and had to be overcome, at considerable cost. All in all, a great deal of money would pass from hand to hand. The hands in the middle were Gerald's, and they were sticky … Of course, in so-called legitimate business, there is a phrase to describe and justify what Gerald did; it is called taking a commission. And if, in order to practice his trade, Gerald had to hobnob with buyable chiefs of police, bloodthirsty bishops, stool pigeons, double agents, blackmailers, hatchet men, secretaries and mistresses of politicians, millionairesses even more ruthless than the husbands they had survived—well, that is what's called being a man of the world.

Like all deeply dishonest people, he made the relatively honest look hypocritical and cowardly. Only a saint could have remained in contact with him and not been contaminated. And, by associating with him, you incurred some responsibility, even if it was only one tenth of one percent, for the really vile things which many of
his
associates had undoubtedly done. I remember a man, he was connected with French counterespionage, whom Christopher met through Gerald; he had the most evil face I have ever seen in my life.

Gerald didn't look evil, but, beneath his amiable surface, he was an icy cynic. He took it for granted that everybody would grab and cheat if he dared. His cynicism made him astonishingly hostile toward people of whom he was taking some advantage; at unguarded moments, he would speak of them with brutal contempt. In Christopher's case, Gerald's cynicism was justified. He would certainly have let Gerald tempt him into serious lawbreaking if he hadn't been so cautious by nature.

Looking back on Gerald's career, I find his misdeeds tiresome rather than amusing. His dishonesty was tiresome because it was so persistent; he was like a greedy animal which you can't leave alone in the kitchen, even for an instant. And yet, what did all his intrigues obtain for him? He used to boast coyly of his coups, to hint at having netted “a cool thou” or “a positively glacial sum”; but when you pressed him for details, he became evasive. Probably he was ashamed of the self-indulgence with which he squandered whatever money he had grabbed. Throughout his life, he was pestered by creditors. The strange truth is that he was an amateur, hopelessly unbusinesslike, romantic, and unmodern in his methods. Crime, as he practiced it, doesn't pay. It is as demanding and unrewarding as witchcraft.

Nevertheless, despite the anxieties amidst which he lived, Gerald genuinely enjoyed himself. And he shared his enjoyment with his friends. When the weather was dull and life was gloomy, he cheered you up by the charm of his absurdity. He would dress for some humdrum gathering as if for a brilliant social event and thus almost manage to turn it into one. He could make you feel you were at a banquet when, in fact, you were supping off scrambled eggs and
vin ordinaire.
He laughed at your jokes, he flattered you, he was sincerely delighted when you were pleased. He was therefore liked by many people who thoroughly disapproved of him. Others, including Frl. Thurau, adored him without any reservations. He referred to her as La Divine Thurau.

Gerald had an Irish genius for embracing causes with passion and taking sides furiously in a dispute. The passion and the fury were often temporary, and he felt no embarrassment in changing his convictions later. At one time or another, he was a pacifist, a crusader for Irish independence (no matter what that might cost in the blood of others), a near-Communist, a right-wing extremist, a critic of the Vatican's foreign policy, a devout Catholic. Not unnaturally, he was suspected of having ulterior motives; often, no doubt, he had. But it is difficult to find anything sinister in the hard work he did for the Fight the Famine Council and the Save the Children Fund, after the First World War. And he often wrote letters to the press, in favor of legalized abortion, prison reform, and the abolition of capital punishment, which were admirably outspoken and lucid.

Mr. Norris
fails to reveal what was the most enduring bond between Gerald and Christopher, their homosexuality. When it came to breaking the laws which had been made against the existence of their tribe, Christopher was happy to be Gerald's fellow criminal.

FIVE

Edward and Wystan had read
The Memorial
in manuscript, shortly before or after the New Year. Both had praised it, each in his own peculiar language—to which Christopher was so accustomed that he never reflected how bizarre it would look on a book jacket:

Upward:
All the trumpets spoke and a man with gray ears wept in torrents of sulphur over Charlesworth, Lily and the attempted suicide of Edward Blake.

Auden:
You alone have had the courage and the reagents to bring out the Figure in that carpet. May I also utter a word of praise for Isherwood's weather.

Christopher didn't doubt the sincerity of their enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he was still worried. These were his closest friends. The relation between them and himself was essentially telepathic. Mightn't they have understood telepathically what it was that he had wanted to express in this book and thus overlooked the fact that he had failed to express it? And, if this was so, how would the book seem to untelepathic Jonathan Cape? Cape had published Christopher's first novel,
All the Conspirators,
in 1928. Now, in March 1931, he was making up his mind whether or not he should publish
The Memorial.
Christopher left for London on March 10, to be on the spot and get the news of Cape's decision with a minimum of delay.