But now, to everybody’s amazement, William had gotten married; his wife had several children by a previous husband. I’m assuming that this had already happened before Christopher’s return to England, although I can’t be certain. I only remember that people later said of Robson-Scott that he had started to avoid his former friends––maybe because his wife disapproved of queers. So the conversation between him and Christopher was probably constrained; Christopher longing but not daring to ask: “Does she whip you like your boyfriends used to?” No memory of it remains.
That evening, Christopher had supper with Jack Hewit and then ¾ 1947 ¾
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went to stay with him at his flat. My recollection is that Jack wanted Christopher to spend at least several days there, and that Christopher, because he still felt guilty about his treatment of Jack, had agreed to do so. But, as it turned out, Jack’s flat had only one bed and it was very small. Christopher had made up his mind to have sex with Jack, if Jack wanted it; and Jack did. I can’t actually remember what happened that night. I’m almost certain that Christopher managed to get an erection and to fuck Jack. But Jack didn’t excite him at all, now, and he was well aware that Jack would get a crush on him all over again if he stayed around. So he made the excuse that he couldn’t sleep with another person in such a small bed––actually Christopher could sleep anywhere, in the right company––and told Jack he was moving into a hotel. To make up for this, he saw Jack as often as he could manage, during the rest of his stay in London.
On March 8, Christopher got a room at Oddenino’s Hotel, just off Piccadilly Circus. That night, he had supper at the Reform Club with Guy Burgess. What actually happened during their meeting will remain a mystery––unless Christopher’s letter about it to Forster survives and is produced by his executors.1
1 In answering Christopher’s letter, Forster wrote (on March 21): “I saw that wisp(?) in the distance, Guy Burgess. His meeting with you seems to have gone as I expected it would.” (If Forster did indeed write “wisp”––the handwriting is unclear––his description of Burgess seems so unfitting as to be perhaps ironical. Burgess was solidly built, even sexily plump. But perhaps Forster meant that Guy’s nature was treacherous and capricious, and therefore like a will-o’-the-wisp.) [The question mark is Isherwood’s, but his reading, “wisp,”
appears to be correct.]
In the same letter, Forster refers to the gigantic volume of Don Quixote with illustrations by Gustave Doré which Christopher had just given him. It was so bulky and heavy that it couldn’t be mailed; it had to be sent to Cambridge by railway express (or whatever that service was called in England). Forster had remarked to Christopher that he admired these particular Doré pictures, but Christopher’s gift of it to him was really a kind of practical joke. It was accompanied by a note which began: “As a souvenir of our last meeting, I am sending you this tiny volume. . . .” I suspect that Forster found the joke just a trifle vulgar. Christopher’s extravagance didn’t amuse him, as it amused Christopher’s other friends. On another occasion, he mildly reproved Christopher for overtipping at a restaurant.
Forster himself was just about to leave for the United States on the first visit of his life. He ingeniously used the Don Quixote to evade the currency regulations, making Christopher the following proposition: “Can I give you a cheque for fifty pounds? . . . The fifty pounds would be, you understand, payment for a copy of Don Quixote, illustrated by Gustave Doré, which you sold to me.” Christopher must certainly have agreed to this, and given Forster the equivalent of fifty pounds in U.S. dollars when they met again in New York.
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Lost Years
All I remember of the evening is that Christopher was very
drunk––so drunk that he had no idea how he finally got back to his hotel. After the Reform Club, he and Guy and a young man named Peter Pollock went to several pubs and nightclubs. My impression is that Guy was friendly at first and then hostile––I don’t know if this had anything to do with Christopher’s treatment of Jack Hewit or not; probably it was just plain hostility. Maybe Guy saw Christopher as a potential convert to communism who had lost his nerve and sold out to pacifism and religion. (When Christopher had met Guy in 1938, Guy had admired Christopher as an orthodox revolutionary writer––on the strength of “The Nowaks”![*] As for Christopher, he had never taken Guy seriously as a communist, and was even more amazed than most people when the Burgess–Maclean scandal broke, in 1951.) Sometime late that night, Christopher fell down a fairly high flight of stairs when leaving an upper-floor club. He told Forster that he suspected Guy had pushed him, but I don’t think he believed this. Anyhow, Christopher was drunk enough to fall properly and avoid getting hurt. Burgess and he never met each other again.
On March 9, Christopher had lunch and supper with the
Upwards. This was an altogether happy reunion. With Edward and Hilda, Christopher and Kathy, Christopher felt completely accepted.
He was their friend, and that was that. What Christopher valued in both Edward and Hilda was their simplicity; Hilda was certainly intelligent, Edward had one of the subtlest, clearest, most perceptive minds that Christopher had ever come in contact with. But what made Edward different from most of the other people whom
Christopher would have described as intelligent was that Edward lacked a certain fashionable urban sophistication; down in their drab little home on Turney Road in Dulwich, he and Hilda seemed quite out of the swim, like country cousins. When Edward talked about London literary figures and their writings and sayings, he seemed to be viewing them from a great distance––although, as a matter of fact, he went into town and met some of them, from time to time.
The Upwards’ political life was also an expression of their
simplicity. They didn’t advertise their activities, didn’t use left-wing jargon, didn’t make a show of righteous indignation or enthusiasm; they just went ahead with dull routine jobs, attending meetings, selling the Daily Worker, etc. (I’m not sure just when it was that Edward and Hilda got into an argument with the British communist
[* First published by John Lehmann in New Writing and later as part of Goodbye to Berlin and The Berlin Stories.]
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party and decided to leave it, but I think they were still party members in 1947.)
Their married life was equally simple, or seemed so. They had grown middle-aged together; Hilda was pleasant looking but in a take-it-or-leave-it style and her toilette certainly never went beyond keeping herself tidy; as for Edward, he was losing his hair and had a complacent belly. Edward was a devoted father, but not in the exhibitionistic possessive way that many people are. Christopher and Kathy appeared to be healthy, happy and fond of their parents.
And here was Christopher, their guest and their polar opposite––
or so he seemed to himself; queer, Peter Pannish (Peggy Kiskadden’s adjective), individualistic, exhibitionistic, liberalistic, fickle, promiscuous and an incurable gadabout. And they didn’t condemn him––
far from it, they wanted him to be exactly what he was. They were intrigued by his friendship with Garbo, his association with the Quakers and even his adherence to Vedanta. They found nothing to disapprove of in his clothes or his appearance. When Christopher took off his jacket after lunch to help with the dishes, Edward remarked that Christopher still had “a wasp waist,” and he did so without the least hint of bitchiness.
And when, after lunch, Edward and Christopher were alone in