daughter. Mrs. Monkhouse was now getting senile and losing her memory. Patrick had a high-up post on The Manchester Guardian and was probably one of the half dozen most distinguished-looking men in England. (Glancing into a mirror at the age of seventeen, he had once joked to Christopher, “No one could call me handsome, but I think I might be described as brutally impressive.”) Mitty (Elizabeth) was the youngest member of the family; she had been a small child during Christopher’s adolescence, so he had never taken much
notice of her. Now she seemed to him to be an unusually intelligent and charming girl. He wanted to get to know her better. I don’t remember that he felt the same curiosity about Patrick, the friend of his youth. Patrick and he still had a great deal to talk about, they were cordial and respectful of each other’s achievements; but Christopher (and no doubt Patrick also) was aware of a gulf between them. Quite aside from Christopher’s desertion of England, and of the North Country which was still Patrick’s home, there was the embarrassing memory of their confidences, in the days when Christopher had told Patrick about his feelings for Mr. Honeypot, and Patrick, who was then an ardent though chaste boy-lover, had shown Christopher his homosexual sonnets. Patrick and Christopher could agree in their liberal politics, but Patrick belonged to the Establishment. Patrick certainly knew about and doubtless accepted Christopher’s continued homosexuality––from a distance. But he was solidly a family 1 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.)
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man. He might have hesitated to let Christopher meet his sons (if any) unchaperoned.
On February 27, Christopher got a cable from Lesser Samuels in Hollywood to say that his agent Meta Ries(?)[*] had sold their movie story, Judgement Day in Pittsburgh, for $50,000.1 This news seemed all the more marvellously improbable because it came to him from the tiny stone post office in High Lane village. Christopher plodded down through the snow to send his reply. “Kiss Meta passionately from me,” he wrote. He was aware, as he handed in the cable form, that he had wanted to amuse the people in the post office, just as much as Samuels. They smiled as they read it, but were they really amused? Christopher’s joke was in an idiom quite foreign to them.
What made them smile, probably, was their pleasure in the glow of wealth and success given forth by Mr. Richard’s Brother––who was, after all, still their property, a local boy born within the village bounds, despite his eccentric self-exile amongst the weird two-dimensional creatures of the cinema screen.
On February 28, Christopher travelled down to London. After being shut up in Wyberslegh for more than a month, the prospect of
spending two weeks in London––even a ruined and frozen London
––seemed wildly exciting. It was like the beginning of the holidays, when he was at school.
Christopher stayed the night of the 28th with Stephen and Natasha Spender. They saw Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist and had supper at The White Tower. I remember that the performance, with Ralph
Richardson, was excellent. The White Tower, known in prewar
days as The Eiffel Tower, had been a favorite haunt of Christopher’s; his memories of it went back to the time when he was the Mangeots’
secretary, and Augustus John used to eat there and draw on the tablecloths. It was crammed, now, and expensive and chic. The food was probably of inferior quality but the restaurant was still cheerfully brilliant with lights and mirrors––and Christopher was anyhow in a mood to enjoy himself to the utmost.
Stephen was immensely entertaining, as always, and bitchier than ever––an amused spectator of Christopher’s social comeback.
Christopher was very much aware of his own role and he played it with enthusiasm. Even the cold merely gave an edge to his appetite 1 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.
[* Meta Reis, wife of film director Irving Reis (1906–1953).]
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for company. I think most of the people he met were sincerely pleased or at least curious to see him. The wartime military
Americans had long since gone back home. There were almost no tourists. Christopher was a New Face. They could tell him their old air-raid stories and he listened goggle-eyed. He admired or was suitably shocked by everything they showed him. Toward the end of his visit, Stephen told him, with typical malicious hyperbole,
“You’re the most popular man in England.”
March 1. Christopher had lunch with Jack Hewit at the Café
Royal. Then he met Forster and shopped for books. He had supper with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. He went to stay with Forster at his flat in Chiswick.
Christopher’s lunch with Jack Hewit must have been embarrassing
––at the beginning, at any rate. Christopher had behaved very badly to Jack in 1939––going off to the U.S. and leaving him under the impression that he would soon be sent for. It’s impossible now to be quite certain, but I would say that Christopher never had any intention of sending for Jack. I think Christopher had grown tired of him before leaving England and was merely afraid to tell Jack so because Jack was so much in love with him and so emotional and potentially desperate. At most, he thought of Jack as a kind of understudy who might conceivably be called upon in the event of a highly improbable crisis––that is to say, if Christopher was unable to find himself an American boyfriend. But Christopher had Vernon Old already waiting for him in New York. And, very soon after his arrival, he and Vernon became seriously involved with each other.
This was partly because Christopher realized that Vernon had taken it for granted that they would live together as lovers, whenever Christopher returned.[*] He couldn’t possibly disappoint Vernon, who was so young and pretty and who thrilled him sexually. It was much easier to disappoint not-so-young, not-nearly-so-pretty, tiresome, devoted Jack––who was now on the other side of the
Atlantic and whose steamship ticket would cost a lot of money. So Christopher felt guilty but let the months go by––either not writing to Jack at all or writing evasively. In May he travelled out to California with Vernon on a bus. In June, they moved into a house in the hills, 7136 Sycamore Trail. It was here that a shameful long-distance phone call with Jack took place. I think Christopher must already have hinted to Jack in a letter that he must stop expecting to
[* 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.]
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join Christopher in California. Anyhow Jack called Christopher, in tears. I can remember that Christopher took the call lying on the bare floor––the house was scantily furnished––writhing about in guilty embarrassment. Jack sobbed that he was frightened, that there was going to be a war, that Christopher had made him a promise, that Christopher had got to help him. And Christopher told him no.1