substitute whom Allan would have condemned as the vilest sort of seducer and emotional blackmailer!
I don’t think Mitty needed Christopher’s advice. She had already made up her mind that she wanted to be with her lover, whatever might come of it. But Christopher’s sympathy pleased and impressed her greatly. Perhaps it surprised her too; she knew he had never been married and may have supposed him to be frigid or pure or both.
Christopher soon found himself confessing to Mitty that he knew a great deal about the hazards and problems of unlawful sexual unions, from his personal experience. This intrigued her, of course. She wanted details––still, apparently, not guessing that he was homosexual. Christopher then began to get cagey, which I now regret, because his caution prevented him from introducing Caskey to her on his next visit to England and thus becoming really intimate with her. After these walks and talks on the moors, they seldom saw each other again. I never knew, or have forgotten, if Mitty and her lover ever did go off together.
I don’t think there was much snow during this visit, because
Christopher went for many walks. He and Kathleen shopped in
Manchester and saw movies. Christopher also arranged to have his books (which he had left at Pembroke Gardens in 1939 and which Kathleen had brought to Wyberslegh) crated and shipped over to the U.S.
On April 14 he returned to London and went to stay with John
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Lehmann. John gave a party for him next day––Cecil Beaton, Rose Macaulay, V. S. Pritchett, William Plomer, Rosamond Lehmann and Ian Scott-Kilvert were among those who came to it.1
On April 16, Christopher went to an exhibition of tapestry at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was astonished to recognize one of the pieces as being identical with the Gobelins piece which had hung in the drawing room at Marple Hall. He wondered if it could
possibly be the same, on loan from the museum in the North to which it had been sold. But the curator whom he asked explained to him that the Gobelins state factory in the seventeenth century had turned out many copies of each design. Christopher in his ignorance had supposed that every piece of tapestry must be an “original.”
In the evening, Christopher went with Jack Hewit to see
Webster’s The White Devil. I think of this as having been one of the most remarkable productions of a non-Shakespearian Elizabethan play I have ever seen––but I can remember hardly any details. My overall impression is of roughhouse lust and gleeful cruelty. The miming of the lust would probably seem nothing unusual, nowadays.
But there must have been something truly memorable in Flamineo’s glee and ferocious laughter, after he has tricked his sister Vittoria and her waiting woman into trying to kill him with pistols which have no bullets in them.2 I also remember Vittoria literally spitting in Flamineo’s face––which was strangely exhilarating.
Christopher and Jack Hewit had supper afterwards with Tony
Hyndman. This must have been the first time that Tony and
Christopher had met, since the war. My memories of Tony are
disarranged, but I’m fairly sure that he and Stephen Spender were now no longer on speaking terms. Stephen had told Christopher that Tony was drinking heavily and that he was somehow involved with criminals. (Do I remember that Stephen’s house had been robbed and that he suspected that Tony knew who had done it?) Tony had been to Australia, as stage manager of a theatrical company, I believe, and had made a mess of the job.
Anyhow, Christopher’s meeting with Tony was certainly a happy 1 This may have been the party referred to in Christopher’s “Coming to London” article, at which “an animated discussion of existentialism was interrupted by one of the guests exclaiming piteously: ‘Oh, I’m so cold!’ ” I seem to hear Rosamond Lehmann speaking the line. If she did, this may have been a bit of sisterly bitchery, implying that John, with his well-known stinginess, was depriving his guests of coal which he actually had in the cellar and blaming the temperature on the fuel rationing.
2 Robert Helpmann played Flamineo, Margaret Rawlings Vittoria. [In fact, the play is Jacobean.]
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one. They had been on the best of terms when Christopher left for the United States and nothing had happened to disturb their relationship in absence. Tony looked hardly any older and he was cheerful and affectionate as always. Christopher still found him attractive, but I don’t think they had sex together that night or indeed until Christopher came back to England in 1948.1
1 Stephen Spender started living with Tony in 1932 (I think) and Christopher must have met Tony soon afterwards. They saw a good deal of each other during the next few years––especially in 1935–1936, when Christopher, Stephen, Heinz and Tony went to Portugal together and took a house in Sintra. As long as Christopher was with Heinz and Tony was with Stephen, relations between Christopher and Tony were apt to become strained. In his journal, Christopher accuses Tony of being a born prig and of taking it upon himself to judge Heinz because he sulked. But, in fact, Tony was only priggish because he was imitating Stephen, and Heinz was only sulking because Christopher was being so gloomy about the political outlook. Left to themselves, both boys had quite happy natures, especially Tony.
In the summer of 1937, Christopher went to stay with Stephen at a house Stephen had taken in Kent, near the coast. Inez Pearn, whom Stephen had married in the previous year, was there; and so was Tony. To Christopher, the marriage seemed absurd; it was the sort of relationship Shelley might have had.
Stephen would embrace Inez and then go across the room and embrace Tony.
Tony said laughingly: “You’re like a man with a couple of spaniels,” but he resented Stephen’s behavior; and so did Inez, I guess. Christopher didn’t care what Inez felt; he found her repulsive. Stephen was aware of this, and he slyly encouraged Christopher and Tony to bitch her. I remember a walk they all took together among some sand hills. Inez slipped and fell in the sand, and Christopher exclaimed, “Stephen, your wife’s down!” The tone in which he said this made Stephen giggle maliciously. (Two years later, Inez fell in love with a spotty-faced poet named Charles Madge and left Stephen.) During this visit to the house in Kent, Christopher and Tony naturally found themselves in alliance. Christopher felt that Tony was being humiliated and therefore tried to build up his ego. Tony felt that Christopher was lonely for Heinz, who had been arrested in Germany that spring, and therefore tried to cheer him up.
One day, the four of them were driving home from the beach in their swimsuits. Christopher and Tony were sitting in the back of the car. They were laughing a lot, a bit drunk maybe, and then they started to become conscious of each other’s naked bodies. They groped and jacked each other off.
I don’t think Stephen and Inez were aware of this. But, that night, Tony came to Christopher’s room, and they had sex properly, and next morning Tony told Stephen about it. Stephen couldn’t very well object, but he was surprised and displeased––which was, no doubt, exactly how Tony wanted him to react.
Christopher and Tony later agreed that something very odd had happened––two people who have known each other intimately for nearly five years suddenly find themselves taking part in a seemingly unpremeditated sex act. But the act itself now seems easy to explain; it was a spontaneous ¾ 1947 ¾
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On April 17, Christopher saw Tony Hyndman again in the