Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir (4 page)

In these letters he gives a vivid description of their life on the island:

Here, amidst the flowers, our Rousseau life goes on.

Heinz has just got me to cut off all his hair. He now looks like one of the boys in a Russian film. Every morning we retire to our tables in the banana grove. H. writes letters, making at least ten copies of each. Indeed, calligraphy is dignified by him to the position of an art. One is reminded of the monks in the Middle Ages. This place is a sort of monastery, anyhow. It is run by a German of the Goring-Roman Emperor type and an Englishman who dyes his hair. The Englishman loathes women so much that he has put a barbed wire entanglement across an opening in the garden wall, to keep them out. The celebrated peak is very seldom to be seen for clouds. We have to go up it before we leave, I suppose. Heinz wheedled me up to the top of an exceedingly high mountain on Grand Canary, from which we not only saw all the kingdoms of the world, but nearly fell into the middle of them. However, for the moment, he is 
domesticated to a degree, and almost refuses to leave the garden, where he plays with the cats and dogs. As well as English we also study geography and I lecture him on the last fifteen years of European history out of Cole’s
Intelligent Chaos. 
We both eat a great deal and are immensely fat.

I have a photograph of Heinz and Christopher in the garden, among the banana trees and the hibiscus and the flowers. They look very contented. Christopher is sitting cross-legged on the grass, smiling at something Heinz is leaning out of his deck-chair to show him among papers on the ground. And I think Christopher was happy at this time, working steadily at
Mr Norris Changes Trains
(which was still at this time called ‘The Lost’), once he had forced his landlord to agree not to play his gramophone until four in the afternoon.

Mr Norris
was finished on 12 August. They immediately set forth on a voyage of exploration among the smaller islands, then visited Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco, then by slow stages back to settle in Copenhagen. Christopher says he can’t remember why they chose Denmark, but it seemed to be a good choice as it was close to England, and most of the Danes spoke German, which made it easier for Heinz. They reached Copenhagen at the beginning of October, and there met Stephen Spender’s elder brother Michael and his wife Erica, who helped them to find a lodging and proved altogether good and sympathetic friends.

A new development now occurred in Christopher’s literary career. Wystan Auden sent him a play they had both worked on in the past, and which seemed likely to be put on by the Group Theatre. He and Wystan now began a collaboration on the play through letters, until Wystan himself suddenly appeared by aeroplane, and they were able to work side by side. They agreed to call it
Where is Francis?
though the eventual title
The Dog Beneath the Skin
appears to have been the suggestion of Rupert Doone, the producer.

The Auden-Isherwood plays do not, however, concern me in this narrative, as I never had anything to do with them, nor did the Hogarth Press. I enjoyed and admired
Dog Skin
(as we used to call it telegraphically amongst ourselves),
The Ascent of F. 6 
rather less, and
On the Frontier
scarcely at all.

___________________________

3
   The novelist, author of 
The Constant Nymph.

W
hile in Copenhagen, Christopher worried himself to distraction about the danger of war. This worry was enormously heightened by Hitler’s declaration in the middle of March that conscription was to be introduced in Germany in defiance of the Versailles Treaty. The result was that if Heinz remained abroad without registering he became automatically a criminal in the eyes of German law; and if Christopher encouraged him to remain abroad he was making himself responsible for his criminality. Heinz was an Aryan, and could not therefore throw himself on the mercy of the various organizations that were trying to help the Jews who were fleeing from Germany. It was in this situation that Christopher began seriously thinking of finding a way of Heinz changing his nationality. Unfortunately the only person who appeared to have the right contacts to explore such possibilities was Gerald Hamilton.

Meanwhile difficulties cropped up about staying in Denmark. They moved to Brussels. The acute stage of their retreat from one European country to another had begun. 
Owing to the problems of having Heinz’s
permis de sejour
for Belgium renewed while he was actually in Belgium, they moved over the border into Holland and found acceptable lodgings in Amsterdam, Emmastraat 24, where Heinz had stayed after the Harwich debacle. There was something about Amsterdam that calmed and reassured, and they seem to have been happy there - or at any rate as happy as people in their situation could be.

At the beginning of July I went over to Amsterdam to stay with them, not only because Christopher was always urging me to visit them, wherever they were, but also because I had urgent business to discuss with Christopher. We had for some time been planning a literary magazine, and had talked about it whenever we met and in our letters. The main idea was that it should be the magazine to publish the writings of our generation and our sympathizers, i.e. the contributors who had appeared in
New Signatures
and
New Country
,
³
but should also be international. I was convinced that in many countries of Europe there were new writers who felt just as we felt about the rising tide of fascism that seemed to be threatening the whole Continent, and had a similar desire to bridge the gulf between the well-educated middle classes and the still less articulate, less privileged working classes. I had met many of them in my wanderings, and already knew and admired their works. I even entertained the hope that such writers could be found in Soviet Russia, green as I was about the stifling conditions under which modern Russians worked. But I wanted to avoid writing whose whole point was to prove a political moral, such as was already appearing in
Left Review. 
Christopher agreed with me whole-heartedly about this: it was a new imaginative literature we wanted to find. We also agreed that our magazine should provide a place for those long short stories, too long for magazines such as the
London Mercury
, which were often published on the Continent but were at the same time too short for English publishers of novels. It was here in particular that Christopher himself was to come in, as he was already toying with the idea of breaking up what remained of ‘The Lost’ into separate incidents or character studies. All these points were eagerly discussed during our walks together through Amsterdam. I remember one walk which took us alongside a field where schoolboys were (in my recollection) practising football. Christopher gives a slightly different and comic account in 
Christopher and His Kind:

Among these [teenage boys] were a few types of exotic beauty, products of Holland’s colonial presence in the East Indies - nordic blond hair and peach skin with Indonesian cheekbones and liquid black equatorial eyes. At one corner of the field was a boxing-ring. The boys didn’t fight, they only sparred, with a sportsman-like restraint which verged absurdly on politeness. But it was just the caressing softness with which their big leather gloves patted each other’s naked bodies that Christopher found distractingly erotic. His attention would stray far from literature, and his voice, though continuing to talk about it, must have sounded like a programmed robot’s: ‘Oh yes, indeed I
do
agree - I think he’s quite definitely the best writer in that genre, absolutely - ’

As soon as I got back to London I tackled the negotiations which I had already begun with Allen Lane of the Bodley Head before leaving. We debated whether the magazine should be a quarterly or appear twice a year in hard covers like the
Yellow Book.
Eventually we decided on the latter scheme, and the name 
New Writing.

I wrote at once to Christopher to tell him the good news and that I had a contract in my pocket.

Your own contribution can be anything between 3,000 and 12,000 words long. However deeply Wystan A. may have involved himself with the Empire-builders and their film-hacks, he must not be allowed to leave for our far-flung territories without producing something. He will probably write it while you stand over him one evening. My homage to him when he comes. I think the moment has arrived for me to write to

Edward Upward myself, now that you have prepared the way. Can you give me his address? And will you find out from Stephen whether his contribution is finished, or nearly finished? Put the pen in his hand if not.

I enclosed in my letter a draft of the ‘Manifesto’ I wanted to appear at the beginning of the first number. On 2 September he replied from Amsterdam:

So glad the prospects for
New Writing
are so good. Do you really think paragraph four of your Manifesto is necessary at all? I only ask this tentatively. It seems to me merely the same as saying the ‘vital creative work’
will
be vital. And, anyhow, the aims of the paper will be self-evident already in the contents of the first issue. It seems to me that to make any statement of your aims at all lays you open to attacks from the further and hither Left. Surely it is enough to say what you say in your other paragraphs and leave the names of the contributors to suggest the nature of the contents?

Following this piece of sound advice, I amended the ‘Manifesto’, though I now think not enough. Originally my idea had been that there should be a fairly informal advisory committee to assist the editor, but Christopher didn’t seem very keen. In the same letter he wrote: ‘Certainly I will be most honoured to sit on the advisory Committee, if you don’t think my absence from England disqualifies me? But let me urge you once more to take as little notice of us all as possible, and be very autocratic. I’m sure it’s better. Need you, in fact, have a formal committee at all? Why not just consult people informally, whenever you want an outside opinion?’

The rather American idea of a committee was more or less dropped. Perhaps, when he urged me to be ‘very autocratic’, his instinct told him that ‘John the Editor’ would be that anyway. But he was always full of ideas for contributions, particularly from Auden. In October, he wrote from Brussels: ‘Wystan was here last week-end. He showed me some lyrics and oddments he had written for films, which I liked. And he said you should have them if you wanted them. Although some have already appeared in a film called
Coal-Face
, even the producer himself admitted that they were quite inaudible, so unless they are printed, they will be lost to mankind. I am getting on with my contribution as fast as I can.’ This first extract from what remained of ‘The Lost’ was originally to be called ‘The Kulaks’. In November a postcard arrived; ‘The Kulaks are coming, hurrah, hurrah. Hope you’ll like them.’ I certainly did like them, very much indeed. On 16 January 1936, he wrote from Sintra, when they had moved to Portugal with Stephen and his friend after Heinz’s
permis de sejour
in Belgium had run out: ‘About the Kulaks: it occurs to me that maybe, if the book is to be read at all in Russia, the title conveys quite a wrong impression. Do you think I should change the family name? I could do this, of course, in proof: or maybe it could be done before the MS goes to press. What about Nowack? “The Nowacks” - Nowak, perhaps is better? Yes: “The Nowaks”. (I have just been to ask Heinz, who thinks it can only be spelt Nowack: maybe you could check up on this?)’ Surprisingly enough, the story
was
read in Russia, where it appeared in a little paperback all by itself, titled (in Cyrillic) ‘HOBAKN’. In the same letter, he went on: ‘What are you writing now? Am very busy on my novel. I will try and do something for number three. There is another section of “The Lost” ready - about an English girl who sings in a Berlin cabaret, but I hardly think it would suit the serious tone of 
New Writing.
It’s rather like Anthony Hope: “The Dolly Dialogues”. It is an attempt to satirize the romance-of-prostitution racket. Good heter stuff.’

This was, of course, the genesis of the eventually far-famed
Sally Bowles.
He was not, however, satisfied with it. When he had only seen the contents list of the first number of
New Writing
, he wrote from Sintra: ‘we are all very much excited about
New Writing
… .I’m afraid I couldn’t get the proposed story ready for the
next
number. It is finished after a fashion but there’s something radically wrong with it at present: it must be thought over.’ More than that, he wanted to see what Edward Upward thought about it. And there was also, crucially, the need to get the approval of the real-life Sally Bowles (Jean Ross).

By the end of April,
New Writing
No. 1 had arrived in 
Sintra. Christopher hailed it with enthusiasm:

I must say, I think it is very handsome and one of the best six shillings-worth I have ever seen. I haven’t read everything yet, of course. Yours, which I turned to first, seems admirable. One of your most successful works …. I liked also very much Plomer’s contribution
⁴
and that brilliant story by Chamson
^§
(‘My Enemy’), which makes one feel that a real artist can write about absolutely anything and still produce all the correct reflections about fascism, nationalism etc. in the reader’s mind: a very trite observation, but it always comes as a fresh surprise.

He urged me to publish Edward Upward’s ‘The Railway Accident’ in No.2, as he thought it ‘one of the most magnificent pieces of narrative prose produced since the war’, and would need very little bowdlerization; but this plan fell through, chiefly, as far as I remember, owing to the author’s then reluctance. And he went on: ‘Look here, if you’d like some stuff for Number Two, I could send you some of my Berlin Diary. About five thousand words. But don’t have it if you don’t want. It is only mildly (heter) dirty and chiefly about my landlady, fellow-lodgers, pupils, etc.’