An indispensable memoir by one of the most prominent writers of his generation
Originally published in 1976, Christopher and His Kind covers the most memorable ten years in the writer's life—from 1928, when Christopher Isherwood left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to 1939, when he arrived in America. His friends and colleagues during this time included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and E. M. Forster, as well as colorful figures he met in Germany and later fictionalized in his two Berlin novels—and who appeared again, fictionalized to an even greater degree, in I Am a Camera and Cabaret.
What most impressed the first readers of this memoir, however, was the candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, a German man named Heinz, from the Nazis. An engrossing and dramatic story and a fascinating glimpse into a little-known world, Christopher and His Kind remains one of Isherwood's greatest achievements.
CHAPTER 1
There is a book called Lions and Shadows, published in 1938, which describes Christopher Isherwood's life between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four. It is not truly autobiographical, however. The author conceals important facts about himself. He overdramatizes many episodes and gives his characters fictitious names. In a foreword, he suggests that Lions and Shadows should be read as if it were a novel.
The book I am now going to write will be as frank and factual as I can make it, especially as far as I myself am concerned. It will therefore be a different kind of book from Lions and Shadows and not, strictly speaking, a sequel to it. However, I shall begin at the point where the earlier book ends: twenty-four-year-old Christopher's departure from England on March 14, 1929, to visit Berlin for the first time in his life.
Christopher had been urged to come to Berlin by his friend and former schoolmate Wystan Hugh Auden — who is called Hugh Weston in Lions and Shadows. Wystan, then aged twenty-two, had been on a study holiday in Germany since taking his degree at Oxford.
While in Berlin, Wystan had met the anthropologist John Layard — Barnard in Lions and Shadows. Layard had once been a patient and pupil of Homer Lane, the American psychologist. He had introduced Wystan to Lane's revolutionary teachings, thus inspiring him to use them as a frame of reference for his poems. Wystan had now begun to write lines which are like the slogans of a psychiatric dictator about to seize control of the human race: "Publish each healer ... It is time for the destruction of error ... Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response ... Harrow the house of the dead ... The game is up for you and for the others ... Love ... needs death ... death of the old gang ... New styles of architecture, a change of heart."
According to Lane-Layard:
There is only one sin: disobedience to the inner law of our own nature. This disobedience is the fault of those who teach us, as children, to control God (our desires) instead of giving Him room to grow. The whole problem is to find out which is God and which is the Devil. And the one sure guide is that God appears always unreasonable, while the Devil appears always to be noble and right. God appears unreasonable because He has been put in prison and driven wild. The Devil is conscious control, and is, therefore, reasonable and sane.
Life-shaking words! When Christopher heard them, he was even more excited than Wystan had been, for they justified a change in his own life which he had been longing but not quite daring to make. Now he burned to put them into practice, to unchain his desires and hurl reason and sanity into prison.
However, when Lions and Shadows suggests that Christopher's chief motive for going to Berlin was that he wanted to meet Layard, it is avoiding the truth. He did look forward to meeting Layard, but that wasn't why he was in such a hurry to make this journey. It was Berlin itself he was hungry to meet; the Berlin Wystan had promised him. To Christopher, Berlin meant Boys.
At school, Christopher had fallen in love with many boys and been yearningly romantic about them. At college he had at last managed to get into bed with one. This was due entirely to the initiative of his partner, who, when Christopher became scared and started to raise objections, locked the door, and sat down firmly on Christopher's lap. I am still grateful to him. I hope he is alive and may happen to read these lines.
Other experiences followed, all of them enjoyable but none entirely satisfying. This was because Christopher was suffering from an inhibition, then not unusual among upper-class homosexuals; he couldn't relax sexually with a member of his own class or nation. He needed a working-class foreigner. He had become clearly aware of this when he went to Germany in May 1928, to stay with an elderly cousin who was the British consul at Bremen. He had no love adventures while there, but he looked around him and saw what he was missing. The Bremen trip isn't even mentioned in Lions and Shadows because Christopher was then unwilling to discuss its sexual significance. It is described in a novel written many years later, Down There on a Visit, but with too much fiction and too little frankness.
* * *
Christopher's first visit to Berlin was short — a week or ten days — but that was sufficient; I now recognize it as one of the decisive events of my life. I can still make myself faintly feel the delicious nausea of initiation terror which Christopher felt as Wystan pushed back the heavy leather door curtain of a boy bar called the Cosy Corner and led the way inside. In the autumn of 1928, Christopher had felt a different kind of nauseated excitement, equally strong and memorable, when, as a medical student, he had entered an operating theater in St. Thomas's Hospital to watch his first surgical operation. But the door of the operating theater, unlike that of the Cosy Corner, led him nowhere. Within six months, he had given up medicine altogether.
At the Cosy Corner, Christopher met a youth whom I shall call Bubi (Baby). That was his nickname among his friends, because he had a pretty face, appealing blue eyes, golden blond hair, and a body which was smooth-skinned and almost hairless, although hard and muscular. On seeing Bubi, Christopher experienced instant infatuation. This wasn't surprising; to be infatuated was what he had come to Berlin for. Bubi was the first presentable candidate who appeared to claim the leading role in Christopher's love myth.
What was this role? Most importantly, Bubi had to be the German Boy, the representative of his race. (Bubi was actually Czech, but that could be overlooked since German was the only language he spoke.) By embracing Bubi, Christopher could hold in his arms the whole mystery-magic of foreignness, Germanness. By means of Bubi, he could fall in love with and possess the entire nation.
That Bubi was a blond was also very important — and not merely because blondness is a characteristic feature of the German Boy. The Blond — no matter of what nationality — had been a magical figure for Christopher from his childhood and would continue to be so for many years. And yet I find it hard to say why ... John Layard would have encouraged me to invent an explanation, never mind how absurd it sounded. He would have said that anything one invents about oneself is part of one's personal myth and therefore true. So here is the first explanation which occurs to me: Christopher chose to identify himself with a black-haired British ancestor and to see the Blond as the invader who comes from another land to conquer and rape him. Thus the Blond becomes the masculine foreign yang mating with Christopher's feminine native yin ... This makes a kind of Jungian sense — but I can't by any stretch of the imagination apply it to the relations between Bubi and Christopher. Bubi had been, among other things, a boxer, so he must have been capable of aggression. But with Christopher he was gentle, considerate, almost too polite.
In addition to being able to play the German Boy and the Blond, Bubi had a role which he had created for himself; he was the Wanderer, the Lost Boy, homeless, penniless, dreamily passive yet tough, careless of danger, indifferent to hardship, roaming the earth. This was how Bubi saw himself and how he made Christopher and many others see him. Bubi's vulnerability, combined with his tough independence, was powerfully attractive and at the same time teasing. You longed to protect him, but he didn't need you. Or did he? You longed to help him, but he wouldn't accept help. Or would he? Wystan wasn't at all impressed by Bubi's performance as the Wanderer. Yet, largely to please Christopher, he wrote a beautiful poem about Bubi, "This Loved One."
Throughout Christopher's stay in Berlin, Bubi spent a few hours with him every day. For Christopher, this was a period of ecstasy, sentimentality, worry, hope, and clock-watching, every instant of it essentially painful. Christopher wanted to keep Bubi all to himself forever, to possess him utterly, and he knew that this was impossible and absurd. If he had been a savage, he might have solved the problem by eating Bubi — for magical, not gastronomic, reasons. As for Bubi himself, he was the most obliging of companions; but there was nothing he could do, in bed or out of it, to make Christopher feel any more secure.
They went shopping together and bought Bubi small presents, mostly shirts, socks, and ties; he refused to let Christopher be extravagant. They ate wiener schnitzels and whipped-cream desserts at restaurants. They went to the zoo, rode the roller coaster at Luna Park, and swam in the Wellenbad, a huge indoor pool which had a mechanism for making waves. At the movies, they saw Pudovkin's Storm over Asia and Pabst's Wedekind film, Pandora's Box.
The latter was highly educational entertainment for Christopher, as Wystan unkindly pointed out, since it shows the appalling consequences of trying to own someone who is naturally promiscuous. Christopher did indeed start to make a scene when Bubi broke a date with him. After being coached by Wystan, he painstakingly repeated a short speech which began: "Ich bin eifersuechtig" (I am jealous). Bubi listened patiently. Perhaps he even sympathized with Christopher's feelings; for he himself, as Wystan found out later, had a weakness for whores and would pursue them desperately, giving them all the money he had. He then answered at some length, laying his hand on Christopher's arm and speaking in a soothing tone. But Christopher's German was still scanty and he couldn't understand whatever lies Bubi was telling him.
All was soon forgiven, of course. When Christopher left for London, Bubi pulled a cheap gold-plated chain bracelet out of his pocket — probably an unwanted gift from some admirer — and fastened it around Christopher's wrist. This delighted Christopher, not only as a love token but also as a badge of his liberation; he still regarded the wearing of jewelry by men as a daring act, and this would be a constant reminder to him that he was now one of the free. When he got home, he displayed the bracelet challengingly. But his mother, Kathleen, wasn't shocked, only vaguely puzzled that he should care to wear anything so common.
Despite his preoccupation with Bubi, Christopher had found the time to see John Layard in Berlin. Under any other circumstances, he would have been fascinated by Layard's X-ray eyes, his mocking amusement, his stunning frankness, and his talk about Lane. But Layard's theory had seemed academic, just then, compared with Bubi's practice.
However, the next year, during a visit to England, Christopher met Layard again. They became friends and Layard taught him a great deal. He even cured Christopher — or, rather, made him cure himself — of an intimate physical shame. Christopher had been ashamed of the patch of hair which had sprouted out of an old acne scar on his left shoulder blade. Layard explained that this was a conflict between instinct — the hairy left shoulder — and conscious control — the hairless right one. God and the Devil were at it again. "You see, your instinct's trying to get your animal nature out of jail, trying to force you to recognize it. So it's growing fur! I like it, it's beautiful!" And Layard actually kissed the hairy shoulder, to show he meant what he said. Christopher giggled with embarrassment. But gradually, from that day on, he stopped being conscious of the hair, even when he had his shirt off in public.
* * *
Soon after getting back from Berlin, Christopher had a more than usually severe attack of tonsillitis. In those days, he was subject to sore throats. Wystan called them "the liar's quinsy" and reminded him that Lane had said they are symptoms of a basic untruthfulness in one's life. Christopher was quite willing to admit that his life in England was basically untruthful, since it conformed outwardly to standards of respectability which he inwardly rejected and despised. But Lane had also said, "Every disease is a cure, if we know how to take it," and Christopher was now sure that he knew how to make his life truthful again. He studied German hard — from Hugo's German in Three Months without a Master. He wrote letters in German to Bubi, which Bubi answered with tactful requests for money. And, as soon as he could afford the trip, he went back to Germany. This was in early July.
Wystan was now at a village called Rothehuette in the Harz Mountains, surrounded by forests. The air smelled of resin and echoed romantically with jangling cowbells. At the end of the day, when the cows came down from the high pastures into the village, they would separate from the herd of their own accord and find their ways to their respective farms. It was easy to pretend to yourself that they were human beings bewitched, for the whole place could have been a setting for one of Grimm's fairy tales, except that it had a railway station.
Wystan was staying at the inn with a cheerful, good-natured youth he had brought with him from Berlin. He had already made himself completely at home. His room was like every other room he had ever lived in, a chaos of books and manuscripts; he was reading and writing with his usual impatient energy. He welcomed Christopher as one welcomes a guest to one's household; he had the air of owning the village and the villagers. Certainly he must have been the chief topic of their conversation. He entertained them by thumping out German popular songs and English hymn tunes on a piano in the refreshment room of the railway station and intrigued them by wrestling naked with his friend in a nearby meadow.
At Christopher's request, Wystan had phoned Bubi in Berlin and told him to come and join them the day after Christopher arrived. But two days passed and he didn't appear. Christopher became frantic. He decided to go to Berlin and look for Bubi. To help Christopher in his search, Wystan gave him the address of an Englishman he knew there, named Francis. And Francis did help, by coming with him to the Cosy Corner and other bars and translating when he questioned boys who knew Bubi. Thus Christopher found out that Bubi was wanted by the police and that he had disappeared.
So Christopher returned mournfully to Rothehuette. And, the next day, the police arrived. They must have been tipped off by somebody in one of the Berlin bars that Bubi might be expected to join Christopher at this mountain hideout. While the police were questioning him and Wystan, a letter was handed to Christopher by the innkeeper. It had a Dutch stamp on it. It was from Bubi. Christopher read it under their very noses. Bubi wrote that he was in Amsterdam and about to ship out as a deck hand on a boat to South America. Could Christopher send him some money as quickly as possible, poste restante? Bubi added that he wasn't giving the address where he was staying because he was in Holland illegally and this letter might fall into the wrong hands. As for the money, Bubi had sworn to himself never to ask for any more, because Christopher had been so generous already. But now here he was, amongst strangers, all alone. There was no one he could trust in the whole world. Except Christopher, his last dear true friend ... The letter thrilled Christopher unspeakably. As he read, he began to feel that he himself had become an honorary member of the criminal class. Now he must be worthy of the occasion. He must respond recklessly. He must leave for Amsterdam at once and see Bubi before he sailed.
Meanwhile, the police, not wanting to go away empty-handed, were checking up on Wystan's friend. They asked for his identity papers — and, alas, his papers were not in order. (Boys would say, "My papers aren't in order," and "My stomach isn't in order," in the same plaintive tone, as though both were ailments.) The police soon made him admit that he was a fugitive from a reform school. Then they took him off with them.
Release Date: March 19, 2011(BBC TV)
Release Time: 90 minutes
Director: Geoffrey Sax
Cast:
Matt Smith as Christopher Isherwood
Douglas Booth as Heinz Neddermeyer
Imogen Poots as Jean Ross
Pip Carter as W. H. Auden
Toby Jones as Gerald Hamilton
Alexander Dreymon as Caspar
Tom Wlaschiha as Gerhardt Neddermeyer
Issy Van Randwyck as Fräulein Thurau
Gertrude Thoma as Lili Neddermayer
Lindsay Duncan as Kathleen Isherwood
Perry Millward as Richard Isherwood
Iddo Goldberg as Wilfrid Landauer
Will Kemp as Bobby Gilbert
Stuart Graham as Passport officer
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Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was one of the most prominent writers of his generation. He is the author of many works of fiction, including All the Conspirators, The Memorial, Mr. Norris Changes Trains, and Goodbye to Berlin, on which the musical Cabaret was based, as well as works of nonfiction and biography.
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