They did not suffer from lack of recognition in England . . . nor have they gone to America to animate the masses, for Auden has been teaching in a New England school and Isherwood writing dialogue in a Hollywood studio. They are far-sighted and ambitious young men with a strong instinct of self-preservation, and an eye on the main chance, who have abandoned what they consider to be the sinking ship of European democracy. . . . ”37
Isherwood incorrectly attributed the commentary directly or indirectly to Stephen Spender and in a letter to him, defends himself against what he sees as an unjustified attack. Isherwood maintains that his relocation to American was not a sudden flight but rather something he had considered doing for several years. He explains: “I am quite aware, of course, that it seems unpardonable, nowadays, that anybody should be living in safety, in a beautiful climate, earning money. And I often feel guilty about this.”38
This admission of guilt is absent in his letters to Forster—but undoubtedly felt particularly during the height of the bombings—possibly because Forster assured Isherwood that he was doing the right thing by staying out of England. Lehmann attempts to mollify the attack by telling Isherwood that his critics could be divided into two groups: “those who were jealous all along (like [J. B.] Priestley), and those who can’t forgive themselves for not having got across in time (like Cyril [Connolly]?).”39
The attacks on Isherwood and Auden did not end with the Horizon commentary. In an article appearing in the Spectator in April 1940, Harold Nicolson chastises not only Isherwood and Auden but also Huxley and Heard for distancing themselves from the war: “How can we proclaim over there [i.e. in America] that we are fighting for the liberated mind, when four of our most liberated intellectuals refuse to identify themselves either pal-zeik-00intro 4/21/08 10:23 AM Page 11
INTRODUCTION
11
with those who fight or with those who oppose the battle?”40 In June of that same year the following epigram appeared in the Spectator:
‘This Europe stinks’, you cried—swift to desert
Your stricken country in her sore distress.
You may not care, but still I will assert,
Since you have left us, here the stink is less.41
Forster responded on behalf of his absent friends in a sharp letter of approach published in the Spectator on July 5, 1940. He reprimands not only the writer of the epigram but also those who have been “snarling at absent intellectuals.” Forster suspects that the motivation for these attacks are not only patriotism and moral outrage but rather “unconscious envy,”
like that of a schoolboy being punished when all his classmates are out playing. He goes on to warn that such attacks divert attention from those wealthy, influential Englishmen who from their position within “the City and the aristocracy” pose a greater threat to the country.42
Forster’s wartime letters to Isherwood are an invaluable record of a sensitive yet indefatigable writer’s survival during unnerving, exasperating, and dangerous times. In January 1940, Forster confides in Isherwood: “I don’t expect to behave well when the trouble starts, shall be offended and maybe go mad, running slowly in large circles with my head down is the way I see myself.” Yet when the “trouble” does begin, he holds up quite well, maintaining his accustomed life of social engagements and beginning a regular stint for the B.B.C., broadcasting weekly or bi-weekly talks about literature to India. As bombings continue and restrictions on travel take effect, Forster bemoans to Isherwood about being isolated from the rest of the world: “We get very provincial. Since the war started, I have not even seen the sea. Our lives are interned without being spiritual.” There are poignant moments as well. In the midst of the Blitzkrieg, Forster lists a dinner menu cooked by Bob in order to reassure Isherwood that they do in fact have enough to eat; at an another time, he sends Isherwood a postcard signed by Isherwood’s friends who had gathered together for Christmas dinner.
Forster’s guarded optimism comes across in his failure to give in to doomsday scenarios, even when the windows in his West Hackhurst home are rattling from bombs dropping nearby. In the darkest days of the war, he expresses his hopes for the future in a letter to Cecil Day-Lewis: “Well, let’s hope something acceptable will come along—not that Better England which can only last ten minutes, but the better world which will make our lanes and fields again habitable.”43 Forster sees his role as a writer unchanged by the war. He writes in his Commonplace Book in 1942: pal-zeik-00intro 4/21/08 10:23 AM Page 12
12
LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
“Function of the writer in wartime? Same as in peace time.” He goes on to note that “We are fighting for self-preservation and can’t know what we shall be like until we have won. When we have won we shall arrange this planet in accordance with our characters. Planning now is merely a game.”44 Forster appraises societies of the past and visualizes a better future in an eloquent essay, “The New Disorder”: “Viewed realistically, the past is merely a series of messes. . . . And what I hope for and work for to-day is for a mess more favourable to artists than is the present one, for a muddle which will provide them with fuller inspirations and better material conditions.”45 Forster maintains that artistic creativity can survive the dark, horrific times they presently live in: “even when we are universally hurt and frightened, even when the cause of humanity is lost, the possibility of aesthetic order will remain and it seems well to assert it at this moment and to emphasize the one aspect in which the artist is unique.”46
Meanwhile, Isherwood was coming to terms with his self-imposed exile in California, as a writer and declared pacifist. In a letter to Lehmann in the fall of 1941, Isherwood writes “It’s no use—I shall never write anything till this war’s over. My voice is changing, like a choirboy’s, and I can’t find the new notes. But I am more certain than ever that something is happening inside . . . and there will be something to show for this exile.”47 He also attempts to articulate his understanding of pacifism. In another letter, he tells Lehmann, “I am not, and never shall be, a pacifist in the militant, political sense. . . . Pacifism, as I see it, is only helpful when it is part of something much bigger—a whole philosophy of life and a technique of behaviour, and a belief—otherwise it’s just tiresome obstructionism.”48
Isherwood’s declared pacifism led him, via Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley, to study and practice Hinduism under the tutelage of Swami Prabhavananda at the Vedanta Society in Los Angeles. In 1943, with the end of the war nowhere in sight, Isherwood informs his agnostic friend, Forster: “I honestly believe that I now believe in ‘God’”—although he admits that he cannot actually define what he means by “God.” He does, however, “rely on Him, and will turn to Him next time things get tough.”
Forster replies, “I do not understand your feeling that God will help you—
i.e. I don’t ever feel that I shall ever be thus helped myself.” He claims that he gets through his emotional difficulties on his own. Each one, nevertheless, respects the other’s position and the wartime letters focus more on the pleasures, fears, and anxieties of their markedly different daily lives rather than differences in their religious beliefs.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Forster and Isherwood continued to discuss ways to change the ending of Maurice into a happy, optimistic one. Since Forster insists that the last chapter as written must remain, Isherwood proposes pal-zeik-00intro 4/21/08 10:23 AM Page 13