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The Discreet And Conspiratorial Convention: The Autobiographical Writings Of Christopher Isherwood
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The Discreet And Conspiratorial Convention: The Autobiographical Writings Of Christopher Isherwood
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I
3
74-21,456
BORETZ, Marianne Stanley, 1942-
THE DISCREET AND CONSPIRATORIAL
CONVENTION: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
WRITINGS OF CHRISTOPHER I SHERWOOD.
University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1974
Language and Literature, modem
University Microfilms, A X E R O X Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
The Discreet and Conspiratorial Convention
The Autobiographical writings of
Christopher Isherwood
by
Marianne Stanley Boretz
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
June 1974
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
Ma r ia nne .S t a nley Boretz
under the direction of h £ £ ... Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R OF P H IL O S O P H Y
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairman
to C, D, & E
without whom this dissertation
would have been written either
sooner or not at all
Acknowledgements
To James H. Durbin, Jr. for his patient direction.
To Christopher Isherwood for a valuable and delight
ful conversation.
To Tom Wolfe for telling me to stop reading and
start writing.
To Evy Warshawski for her heroic typing.
To Helen Jaskoski and Edward Finegan for their
friendly moral support.
To Allan Casson, whose thorough, prompt, and excellent
advice caused me to work all the harder and made the
dissertation experience worthwhile.
Table of Contents
int roduct ion
X. Lions and Shadows;
"Censorships and Compensations"
II. The Berlin Stories:
"The Hidden Life of Forbidden Wishes"
III. Prater Violet:
"Between the Needless Risk and the
Endless Safety"
IV. Down There on a Visit:
"The Insult of Each Other's Presence"
V. Kathleen and Frank:
"Chiefly About Christopher"
Selected Bibliography
Page
1
10
65
123
152
209
249
Introduction
. . . wishing to speak as straightforwardly as
Wordsworth they found themselves talking in a
language fully understood only by friends. . . .
Only connects but always with the desire to
communicate went the contrary wish to preserve
the precious seed of individuality.1
Critics, literary historians, and participants alike,
looking back on the movement precipitated by the so-called
Auden Group of the 1930's, are struck by the inner con
flicts tormenting its members. Apparently only Auden him
self emerged unscathed, showing "none of the fence strad-
dling awkwardness his friends displayed." Although
Christopher Isherwood declined to show a move toward Marx
ism in his novels and stories,^ he shares the characteris
tic indecision and frustration Symons writes of and a
world view common to the "Auden Group." Justin Replogle
has formulated it as a dialectical vision deriving from the
two groups of "warring cousins" Freudians and Marxists.
According to Replogle's admirable synthesis, the two sides
consist of the social establishment/super-ego repressing
the natural man/id. The more the latter is repressed, the
more he desires to revolt against this unjust hierarchy.
Conversely, as Freud writes, "fear of a revolt by the
1
supressed drives it [society, but we can easily read 'the
super-ego* as well] to strict pre-cautionary measures."^
Thus the struggle of the individual is two-fold,-^gainst
the repressive society itself and against the internaliza
tion of society's authority embodied in the super-ego. A
frequent dilemma besetting those who see the world this way
is in deciding which struggle ought to have their primary
allegiance— the war against society or the war within the
individual, and here Freudians and Marxists part company.
This choice between political commitment and individ
uation is only part of the dilemma isherwood's works
embody. The rest of the problem involves choice between
the two antithetical sides. Many leftist writers came from
bourgeois backgrounds and found it difficult to cut them
selves off from their origins. Many were profoundly
ambivalent. Isherwood's attempt at rebellion is marred
continually by lack of full emotional conviction, a desire
for acceptance by the very forces he revolts against.
It is helpful here to turn to Freud's assessment of
the dilemma in Civilization and its Discontents, a work
appearing in 1931 and if not read by Isherwood at least a
part of the intellectual climate. Seeking resolution to
the conflict between primitive instincts and social die-
tates— as well as to the inner torment inflicted by the
super-ego— modern man, Freud says, may turn to a number of
pseudo-solutions directed at alleviating the problem at
either source— within either the repressing society or the
individual. He may isolate himself from social conscious
ness or from personal relationships; conversely, he may
seek fulfillment in action which attempts to remedy the
portion of the conflict caused by civilization or in a
love-relationship. If the love of an individual proves
unsatisfying— and Freud predicts that it will— he may de
cide to love mankind as a whole. He may try to resolve
the conflict from within, escaping pain through fantasy,
ignoring the objective world and refashioning it in accord
with his inner life; he may embody the conflict in art,
finding a sublimated if temporary relief firom pain. Or he
may renounce the instincts altogether in an attempt at
transcendence.
Christopher Isherwood is just such a being as Freud
describes. Torn by painful conflicts, he seeks the peace
of resolution, trying every remedy Freud suggests. Earlier
works explore the escape-routes of fantasy and isolation,
often castigating his ambivalence. He achieves self-
acceptance, in the later books viewing the conflict not
only as inevitable but as necessary for growth. Vedanta
provides him with belief in the possibility of ego-
transcendence. At first taking the position of the pri-
mitivist, that man's innately good instincts are repressed
by an evil society, he comes to share in the world-view
set forth in Civilization and its Discontents that civili
zation exists to protect man from his innate capacity to
harm other men.
But what precisely do I mean when I say "Christopher
Isherwood"? Do I refer to the narrator of these five
novels and two autobiographies or the author who stands
behind that narrator, claiming in interviews that his
narrator is a device, "a ventriloquist's dummy, nothing
more" or "Not a whole person" since he exists solely for
the purpose of presenting other characters to the reader.^
In his enlightening study of Isherwood, Alan Wilde broaches
the rocky problem of distinguishing narrator from author:
The Williams and Christophers of the books . . .
are, one comes to feel, projections of Isherwood's
own uncertainties. They are not only artistic
ends but also the means to the discovery and
stabilizing of the self. . . . "My work is all
part of an autobiography" Isherwood has admitted;
and his protagonists can be viewed as so many
points which, joined, form the line of his
development from the anger of his first novel
through the increasingly ironic scrutiny of his
several alter egos during the 1930's . . . to
the gradual discovery . . . of the real self,
the Atman, the final answer to the claims of the
ego.6
Wilde's book traces that development with skill and in
sight. Implicit in the assessment quoted above is one of
Freud's solutions to the pain of being human— sublimation
through art, and, more, art as a sort of therapy, as part
of a process of self-definition. Isherwood's friend,
Stephen Spender restates this in his autobiography:
"everything . . . men make and invent is symbolic of an
inner state of consciousness." Autobiographical fiction
in Spender's view not only "extends our knowledge of the
human personality," it also offers "avenues of escape
from the glaring light of consciousness of him who says 'I
am I.' The writer of fictitious autobiography offers the
truth about himself within the decent and conspiratorial
convention of contemporary fiction" (p. 86). By fictional
izing the events in which he took part or the people he
encounters, the artist asserts a control over his social
environment which no one can have in real life, still
another remedy for the primal human pain.
Christopher Isherwood has written four novels whose
narrator bears his name (in one case, half his name—
William Bradshaw). His two autobiographies— separated by
6
thirty-four years— deal with the earliest part of his life !
and provide a key to the rest of his work. Lions and
Shadows (1937) lists the obsessive myths which underlie the
novels; Kathleen and Frank (1972) traces Isherwood's
immediate family history and early childhood for the ori
gins of these obsessions.
Though neither autobiography indulges in much psy
chological explanation, the reader is often thrust into
the role of psychiatrist: psychoanalysis provides the
world-view which Isherwood endorses at the end of Lions
and Shadows. It permeates both this work and the novels,
a world view made more explicit in Lions when the narrator
refers to certain material as "my modest exhibit in the
vast freak museum of our neurotic generation."8 In Lions
and Shadows Isherwood reveals that he sees the novel
"essentially in terms of technique, of conjuring, of chess/'
(p. 259), a philosophy implying that candor and direct
revelation will rarely be a feature of his work. The
reader in Lions and Shadows is teased with hints, invited
to guess not only at the identity of Isherwood's famous
friends, but at the nature and origins of his problems.
The teasing is so pervasive that one critic writes in
frustration:
7
Lions and Shadows is a key that at first glance
seems to unlock some doors that most people
keep firmly shut. We turn the key, the door
opens. It is disconcerting to find that we are
not in a room at all, but in a long corridor. . . .
We hurry along the corridor . . . to find another
door at the end of it. And this door resists
our key. (Symons, p. 23)
By itself, Lions and Shadows is incomplete— the life set
down there continues in the novels, the narrator in each
emerging a little more from the shadows until the brightly
lit candor of Kathleen and Frank. But here too the
teasing continues; it is not until the end that we are
told directly what we suspected all along— this book is
"chiefly about Christopher."^ We are then invited to
piece together the puzzle, to look back to Lions and
Shadows and the novels, understanding Christopher from the
carefully selected fragments he has given us. He has, as
Spender says, offered us "the truth about himself within
. . . conspiratorial convention." For no matter what
Isherwood claims the proper subjects of the books may be,
the reader stubbornly remains fascinated by the mystery of
the narrative voice.
Notes and References
1Julian Symons, The Thirties (Londons Cresset Press,
1960), p. 174. "Symons" and page number in parentheses
will identify subsequent references in the text. Addi
tional references to Replogle and Spender (see notes 2 and
7 below) will be made in this manner.
2
Justin Replogle, Auden’s Poetry (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1969), p. 41.
3
Justin Replogle, "The Auden Group," Wisconsin
Studies in Contemporary Literature, 5, (Summer 1964), 150.
4Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents.
trans. and ed. James Strachey (New Yorks W. W. Norton,
1961), p. 51. Subsequent references will be given in
parentheses in the text with the abbreviation "Civ."
5Arthur Bell, "Christopher isherwood: No Parades,"
New York Times Book Review, Mar. 25, 1973, p. 12.
^Christopher isherwood (New Yorks Twayne, 1971), p.
55.
7World Within World (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951),
p. 281.
8Lions and Shadowss An Education in the Twenties
(New York New Directions, 1947), p. 217. After initial
citation, subsequent reference to all Isherwood works will
be given in parenthesis in the text. In cases where the
name of the work is not clear from the context, I have
used the following abbreviations:
L&S Lions and Shadows
GB Goodbye to Berlin
MN The Last of Mr. Norris
FV Prater Violet
DTV Down There on a visit
K&F Kathleen and Frank
Exh. Exhumations
Approach An Approach to Vedanta
Ramakrishna Ramakrishna and His Disciples.
^Kathleen and Frank (New Yorks Simon & Schuster,
1971), p. 510.
/
I. Lions and Shadows: "Censorships and Compensations"
Clouds and lions stand
Before him dangerous
And the hostility of dreams
W. H. Auden
In a later novel Isherwood claims that there are
many Christophers separated one from another by the years
between them: "what I am has refashioned itself through
out the days and years, until now almost all that remains
constant is the mere awareness of being conscious."^ More
than one Christopher has spoken out on the subject of Lions
and Shadows. In his prefatory note to the book he warns
the reader that it is not an ordinary autobiography: "it
contains no 'revelations'; it is never 'indiscreet'; it is
not even entirely 'true'. . . . Read it as a novel" (p. 7).
In a 1965 interview, another isherwood contradicts his
1937 preface, claiming that the work is, as far as he
knows, "pretty much all true" (p. 51): "The only changes
there are drastic simplifications. For instance, I left
my family out completely because there didn't seem to be
any particular reason for bringing all that up. No, I
would say that's pretty much autobiographical. It's just
10
11
that one or two people . . . objected to being named by
their real names. . . . I suppose I was trying to cover
up a bit in case people would think it was indiscreet in
some way." The older Isherwood defines Lions and Shadows,
then, as "true" autobiography, which he once felt had to
be disguised by code names for all his friends and oblique
references to the psychological problems that drove him.
As if self revelation were bad form, his 1937 preface
justifies so much attention to self with a statement of
purpose which broadens the scope of the book: "Its sub
title explains its purpose: to describe the first stages
in a lifelong education— the education of a novelist." To
this he adds the modest disclaimer, "that the young man
happens to be myself is only of secondary importance"
(p. 7). Lions and Shadows, then, is a study in selective
self-revelation, intricately structured. Seven chapters
break the years into units. But Isherwood weaves a more
careful web than chronology; certain motifs recur. Since
the book ostensibly concerns the education of a novelist,
3
each chapter presents a new theory of novel writing.
Isherwood dwells on influential figures from whom he
learns. In the course of the narrative, the novelist him
self undergoes change: isherwood the Artist is an elitist,
12
a self-declared snob. The persona hides a withdrawn young
man who comes to realize that art and life cannot be
separated, that his success as an artist will be propor
tionate to his success as a human being. Hence, one of
the reasons he departs for Berlin at the book's end is to
seek psychiatric help. Each chapter examines the creative
process at work, the struggle to turn fantasy into art and
sometimes— with appalling consequences— into life as well.
To read Lions and Shadows as "true" autobiography,
however, is to discover more complexities than these.
Underlying the sociological study of a novelist's educa
tion in the 1920's are themes which recur in all isher
wood's work. He characterizes himself as caught between
rebellion and conformity. To avoid this conflict he
escapes into fantasy or sublimates conflict through his
art. At the same time he searches for someone who can
show him how to integrate the warring demands of society
and self. He is the passive recipient of influence,
deliberately setting about to imitate those he admires.
But he despises and resists his passivity. Although the
book traces his growing independence, phases of abject
passivity alternate with his emerging individuation, and
the conflict is by no means resolved at the book's end.
13
The causes of the conflict are never clear. Isher
wood's father was killed in 1917. , In the epilogue to
Kathleen and Frank (1972) the older Isherwood tells us
that he didn't really miss his father: "all he really
required was his idea of a father— if you are in temporary
need of an advisor/ an inspirer or a hacker, a willing
substitute father can usually be found; it is a mutually
agreeable relationship, easily terminated. No, to be
honest, he hadn't needed Frank" (p. 506). Another Isher
wood speaks here, a little too easily. Lions and Shadows
presents young Isherwood's encounters with certain "tempo
rary fathers," and the quality of these relationships
suggests needs far from the casual substitution described
above.
In Lions and Shadows Isherwood does not mention his
father, choosing not to dwell on personal family history.
His family, however, is glimpsed indirectly in his rela
tionship to two substitute families, the Easts and the
Cheurets. Polly East and Madame Cheuret are the only two
women in the book described in detail: "Polly had a
trick . . . of attending not to what you said but the way
in which you said it. 'You're ever so funny, you know,
Bisherwood,' she would tell me, at the end of a long and
13
The causes of the conflict are never clear. Isher
wood's father was killed in 1917. ( In the epilogue to
Kathleen and Frank (1972) the older Isherwood tells us
that he didn't really miss his father: "all he really
required was his idea of a father— if you are in temporary
need of an advisor, an inspirer or a backer, a willing
substitute father can usually be found; it is a mutually
agreeable relationship, easily terminated. No, to be
honest, he hadn't needed Frank" (p. 506). Another Isher
wood speaks here, a little too easily. Lions and Shadows
presents young Isherwood's encounters with certain "tempo
rary fathers," and the quality of these relationships
suggests needs far from the casual substitution described
above.
In Lions and Shadows Isherwood does not mention his
father, choosing not to dwell on personal family history.
His family, however, is glimpsed indirectly in his rela
tionship to two substitute families, the Easts and the
Cheurets. Polly East and Madame Cheuret are the only two
women in the book described in detail: "Polly had a
trick . . . of attending not to what you said but the way
in which you said it. 'You're ever so funny, you know,
Bisherwood,' she would tell me, at the end of a long and
14
serious conversation between Roger and myself. 'Do you
always flap about with your hands, like that? Hasn't any
body ever told you how funny you are?'" (p. 203). At the
Easts' wedding the clerk at first thinks Polly is to marry
Christopher. After the ceremony she muses, "quite seri
ously, 'how awful it'd have been if I'd married Bisherwood,
by mistake'" (p. 219), Ostensibly Polly is Isherwood's
friend, one with whom he feels "perfectly at home"
(p. 203), yet every remark of hers he records is insulting.
The incident is apparently chosen for its humor, but it is
humor at Isherwood's expense. That he describes himself as
at home with her suggests he is used to such disparagement.
He admires Madame cheuret who always "radiated ease
and calm." With the cheurets he finds a naturalness
"entirely unlike anything I had ever seen before" (p. 149).
He is forthright in acknowledging that they are a surrogate
family (p. 153). One can deduce his own family life by
inference as he watches Cheuret with his sons: "Sometimes
he got angry and shouted; he was never cold and biting, and
he didn't try and trap his sons into promises, obligations,
confessions. If somebody said something subtle and
cutting, he was curiously helpless: he couldn't speak that
language" (p. 150). Isherwood mentions his own family's
reaction to his job with Cheuret and though he employs his
usual reticence when speaking of them, in their contrast
with the cheurets lies unarticulated resentment: "Even my
relatives were intrigued— though they didn't fail to point
out that this was probably only an interim occupation,
that it 'led' nowhere, that it wasn't very well paid"
(p. 141). Thinly disguised here is the characterization
of his family as anxious for the eldest son to "get some
where." His family appears briefly again as his inner
conflict worsens. Melodramatically he buys a gun and tells
them about it often, but they "showed no undue alarm."
They knew him "too well" (p. 196). Now his self-hatred
reaches intense proportions: "In my journal, I raged
extravagantly against myself, as the fawning spaniel, the
born parasite, the masochistic self-confessor, the public
lavatory that anyone might flush" (p. 196). He treats his
own feelings, which must have been intensely painful and
deserving of compassion, with self-mockery and contempt.
He decides that in order to escape his "familiar, tiresome,
despicable self" (p. 197), he must leave home. Although
his younger self is the ostensible target of criticism, he
implicitly condemns his family who reduce this desire,
however melodramatic, for individuality and a life of his
own to "the mildest and most respectable of domestic
adventures" (p. 198). They fail to take seriously either
his desires to leave or his threats of suicide, insensitive
to the pain that prompts such extreme self-expression.
They are not monsters like the villainous oppressive Mrs.
Linsay in All the Conspirators who attempts to prevent
Philip's departure and is perfectly willing to sacrifice
his emotional development. They are "reasonable, sympa
thetic, prepared to be helpful" {p. 198), but they do not
understand him. Whatever went awry in his relation to them
is buried by the time period of Lions and Shadows. It is
visible however in his self-concept— in the "familiar
despicable self" which fails continually to measure up to
some unarticulated expectation, in the fantasy families of
All the Conspirators and The Memorial, and in Isherwood's
reaction to established authority of any sort.
At the beginning of the book he describes this
attitude: "I had arrived at my public school thoroughly
sick of masters and mistresses, having been emotionally
messed about by them at my preparatory school, where the
war years had given full license to every sort of dis
honest cant about loyalty, selfishness, patriotism, playing
the game and dishonouring the dead. Now I wanted to be
left alone" (pp. 12-13). This is selective reporting; he
will explain the situation and its causes more fully in
Kathleen and Frank. Vftiat is important here is that some
sort of constant harrassment by the established authority, ;
here the school, has already formed the young man who, in
order to assert his own individuality, will need to fail at
every significant attempt to please the representatives of
this authority.
Isherwood reports that in contrast to the masters,
"The boys I could deal with, more or less, as long as I
kept ray wits about me" (p. 13). "Getting along" is an
important value which will recur through all the novels.
But the little boy who wants to "get along" paradoxically
chooses as his first friend a potential criminal named
Dock* "Through knowing him, I ceased gradually to believe
that I was— as my preparatory school headmaster had done
his best to persuade me— greedier, lazier, more selfish,
less considerate and in general more unpleasant than any
body else. I certainly wasn't lazier than Dock, nor such a
liar, nor half as greedy" (p. 13). Significantly his self-
image here is not that of rebel— of one who finds his
sense of validity apart from or in opposition to the
established order. He is closer to the headmaster's ideal
18
than Dock. Though he claims he wants to be left alone,
his choice of Dock enables him, by the contrast between
them, to think well of himself.
But he needs to play both sides. In the Officers'
Training corps, he vicariously participates in Dock's sub
version of the established order. Dock is “one of a group
of saboteurs whose influence was out of all proportion to
its numbers. Alone, he was capable of demoralizing an
entire platoon. Because of Dock, I never disliked OTC
parades" (pp. 13-14). Isherwood's need for rebellion is so
strong that vicarious participation in Dock's exploits is
not enough. It is not Dock the "black-haired Liverpool
boy with a plain goatish face" (p. 13) but the romantic
intellectual Allen Chalmers, "a pale silent boy . . .
strikingly handsome" (p. 18) who provides him with a model
for a silent intellectual rebellion, an alternative way of
coping with school life and one to which he is more suited
than to Dock's loud, disruptive, and perhaps dangerous
pranks. Chalmers' influence is crucial: "Never in all my
life have I been so strongly and immediately attracted to
any personality before or since. Everything about him
appealed to me. He was a natural anarchist, a born roman
tic revolutionary? I was an upper middle class puritan"
(p. 18). Chalmers here and often throughout becomes an
ideal in contrast to which the narrator mocks himself. He
is impressed by Chalmers' "natural hatred of all establish
ed authority" and feels he is weak for not sharing it, for
being "guilty, indeed, of having sometimes kissed the rod"
(p. 19). At Cambridge, Chalmers disapproves of Isherwood's
friendship with the Poshocracy, "the highest of our social
circles," consisting of the "nicest" people from the "best"
schools. Isherwood reiterates that here too he can "get
by," that in truth he "really enjoyed society" (p. 57).
He identifies with his class and needs to get along with
it. But because he also needs to reject it, he is again
driven to subterfuge, to an attempt to serve both camps.
When he and Chalmers are alone, he "mimicked and sneered,
hypocritically describing . . . [his] sayings and doings
as a spy's ruses in the midst of the enemy camp" (p. 57),
accusing himself of sham and employing the "spy" fantasy
to alleviate anxiety, to hide a feeling of not belonging.
The wish for the masters' approval, for acceptance by
the Cambridge Poshocracy, conflicts with the desire to be
left alone, to share in the rebellions of Dock and
Chalmers. Isherwood, veering continually between the poles
of rebellion and conformity, seeks someone who has himself
resolved the conflict, in Kathleen and Frank he will give
this wish a name, the Anti-Heroic-Hero. He is a fantasy
father, an artist posing as a soldier, a figure whose
striking characteristic is the protective masquerade which
enables him to survive in society and, through mocking it,
retain his individuality (pp. 502-503). in Lions and
Shadows Mr. Holmes is such a figure. The book opens with
his name. Clearly one of Isherwood's substitute fathers,
he dominates the first chapter and hovers like a benevolent
deity behind the rest. Repeatedly described as an actor,
he is the civilian version of the Anti-Heroic-Hero. The
rest of the school staff have "genuine mannerisms" (p. 10)y
Mr. Holmes is a master of artifice, always in control of
the situation, never entirely a part of it: "Quiet,
astute, disconcertingly witty, he was never widely popular.
His brand of humour, and indeed his whole personality, was
an acquired taste" (p. 11).
It is not until the second paragraph of the book that
Isherwood mentions himself and then only as the reporter of
Holmes' conversation— "I can hear him now" (p. 9). He con
firms his admiration for Holmes: "As for myself, I
accepted Mr. Holmes' influence" (p. 12). The choice of
words articulates a recurring motif, Isherwood's pro
21 j
nounced passivity in relation to his various "substitute
fathers."
In contrast to Dock, Mr. Holmes is an aristocratic
individual fighting against a majority which he subdues by
his cleverness. Isherwood, in describing Mr. Holmes as
"an acquired taste," reinforces the distinction between
the cultivated few and the conforming many, and, by his
understanding appreciation of Mr. Holmes' art, squarely
places himself in the camp of the cultivated. He extends
this distinction in describing the school library where,
with the exception of the idlers who sleep, the boys are
polarized between the rowdy— foreshadowing the Cambridge
Hearties— "those who simply ragged" (p. 15), and the
disapproving remainder "We, the quiet ones . . . the
studious few who were always busy, but for the wrong
reasons" (p. 16). Although he has now explicitly placed
himself as a member of an elite rebel group of would-be
intellectuals, his exact role within that group remains
cloudy. Having established his admiration for both Chal
mers and Holmes, Isherwood is free to keep himself in the
background while they enact the conflict within him. Hiey
are at first antagonists: "Mr. Holmes can only have viewed
with impatience his pupil's [Chalmers'] contempt for the
school system: he himself belonged to the system body and
soul" (p. 19). But through his cunning, Mr. Holmes
secures Chalmers as proteg€. Holmes coaches Isherwood and
Chalmers for the Cambridge entrance examinations. Sup
posedly having "friends at court" Holmes possesses "an
almost uncanny knowledge of the examiners' mentality" and
"as usual" plays "the frankly cynical charlatan" (p. 22).
He is successful with the established order because he can
outwit it. By his cynicism he allows his intelligent and
sensitive proteges a means of fitting with a minimum of
discomfort into the educational establishment. The credit
for their accomplishment goes to Mr. Holmes. Isherwood
feels that it is by virtue of his power and example that
they are able to deceive the enemy successfully (pp. 24-
25) .
Isherwood's adulation of Holmes and Chalmers is not
unqualified; both come in for gentle but important criti
cism. As subservient to and torn between their con
flicting values as Isherwood is, he still makes several
attempts to define himself apart from them. When he meets
Chalmers in France, Isherwood's first impression of him is
somewhat critical: "He had grown a small moustache and
looked exactly my idea of a young Montmartre poet, more
23
French than the French. . . . [He] greeted me with a
slight wave of his hand, so very typical of him, tentative,
diffident, semi-ironical, like a parody of itself" (p. 27).
The emphasis is on Chalmers' pose; the tone mocks him
gently. But old habits swiftly take over. Isherwood is
drawn in again to Chalmers' world: "Chalmers glanced at
me with a faint mysterious smile and I had the feeling, as
so often, that we were conspirators" (p. 27). in spite of
Isherwood's strong susceptibility to father figures, it is
apparent that he also partially resists Mr. Holmes who is
"enthusiastic about the prospects of eating brioches again.
I thought they tasted of cardboard" (p. 26). Later, how
ever, this growing individuality and his failure to assert
it result in some genuine self-criticism: "The Sainte-
Chapelle I privately thought hideous, but Mr. Holmes told
us that it is one of the wonders of Europe, so I dutifully
noted in my diary (needless to say, I was keeping a diary
of our tour; how I wish I had put down in it one interest
ing, one sincere, one genuinely spiteful remark): 'A
marvellous example of the colouring of medieval cathe
drals'" (p. 28). He is once again the young boy attempting
to please the "establishment" and despising himself for it.
Mr. Holmes has become the authority figure for whom
24 ;
f
Christopher has to deny his own individuality, a denial
that will lead in turn to further rebellion.
In a crucial matter, Mr. Holmes can be no help. Al
though he attempts to continue their education "in yet
another direction,“ he is notably ill at ease when talking
of "the opposite sex," a characteristic Isherwood
attributes to English public school morality: "he
couldn't, as a respectable master in an English public
school, have taken us to a brothel. Yet how I wish he had I
His introduction to sexual experience would, I feel sure,
have been a masterpiece of tact? it might well have speeded
up our development by a good five years" (p. 34). Holmes
is thus a failure in one important aspect of the father-
role, the crucial task of sexual initiation, a problem here
openly discussed and underlying many later circumlocutions.
Chalmers' fantasy world provides a refuge from sexual
problems: "For Chalmers, thanks to Baudelaire, knew. . . .
Sexual love was the torture-chamber, the loathsome charnel-
house, the bottomless abyss. The one valid sexual pleasure
was to be found in the consciousness of doing evil. . . .
Needless to say, Chalmers and myself were both virgins, in
every possible meaning of the word" (p. 35). But this is
temporary respite only. Later, the sexual differences
25
between them will become so pronounced that they will "jar
on each other's nerves" (p. 119) and avoid each other's
company. Before Cambridge, however, in the inner struggle
projected upon Chalmers and Mr. Holmes, Chalmers the
romantic rebel wins the day as he will later win Isher
wood 's allegiance against the Poshocracy. Chalmers per
suades Isherwood to read English literature at Cambridge
rather than history which Mr. Holmes recommends. The older
narrator admits that while Mr. Holmes was right "Chalmers'
voice kept whispering in my ear" (p. 47) .
Isherwood finds that success in the "great treacherous
flattering world" of Cambridge is not easily won. Without
the imaginative tactful guidance of Mr. Holmes, he admits
he is "A hopelessly inefficient lecturee" who "couldn't
attend, couldn't concentrate, couldn't take proper notes"
(p. 62). As the dynamic of the conflict carries him
further into debilitating fantasy, he returns for a day to
his public school. Mr. Holmes, he reports, was not there.
His absence prevents Isherwood from seeing a realistic way
to live his life through Holmes' example where cunning,
intelligence, and the clever playing of a careful role can
compensate for feelings of unworthiness. Isherwood re
treats even further into fantasy. Again at medical school,
Mr. Holmes' absence is important: "Brought up on the
methods of Mr. Holmes, I expected all kinds of instruction
to be condensed into epigrams, aphorisms brilliant simpli
fications. Instead of which, wandering about in a fog, I
stumbled upon signposts marked cryptically 'Aluminnium
Hydroxide,' or 'H2S04'" (p. 285). The absence of this
father leaves him guideless in his journey. Mr. Holmes
suggests a possible solution to Isherwood's inner con
flict— a possibility of striking a balance between rebel
lion and conformity. But because Holmes "belonged to the
system heart and soul," he becomes at times representative
of that system and must be rebelled against. Further, his
example does not provide Isherwood with enough sustenance
to enable him to mature, for instead of taking Mr. Holmes'
example with him into the world, he is unable to function
without Holmes' guidance.
Similarly, remaining at Cambridge without Chalmers is
unthinkable (p. 125). His absence during the General Strike
leaves Isherwood caught more painfully than ever between
the two worlds and unable to join the rebels. Alone at the
Bay he wishes for Chalmers' help in satirizing the
tourists: "his command of invective was so much greater
than my own" (p. 243). Chalmers continually encourages
Isherwood*s rebellion. He rejoices delightedly in Isher-
wood's plan to fail the Tripos and his decision to enter
medical school. He approves of the departure to Berlin
"as of every other anarchic irrational act" (p. 308).
Championing rebellion in every form, he clings to the
Mortmere material after Isherwood has outgrown it, and
eventually he joins the Communist party. But his rebellion
is from first to last intellectual. At the time of
Isherwood's departure for Berlin, Chalmers is a school
master and this he remains. Though Isherwood continually
compares himself unfavorably to Chalmers, it is apparent by
the end of the book that Chalmers does not have the courage
of his convictions. It is Isherwood who repeatedly rebels
and takes the consequences of rebellions Chalmers can only
4
encourage.
Another father substitute is M. Cheuret, with whom he
needs no "semi-defensive explanations" about his conduct:
"Here was a man old enough to be my father, to whom I
could talk openly as if to a friend of my own age"
(p. 140). Cheuret takes his place with Holmes and Chalmers
as an important figure in Isherwood*s pantheon, a "salutary
object lesson to 'Isherwood the Artist'" (p. 149). He
admires Cheuret for conducting his business "without any
complaint or posing or fuss." Like Holmes he is success
ful at what he does, an artist who has "made good" both
with his art and in pleasing the establishment. His lack
of pose is significants Cheuret is a corrective influence,
offsetting the role-playing of Holmes and Chalmers which
Isherwood has imitated to an extent almost pathetic. But
Cheuret too is no help during the General Strike. Detach
ed, the cheurets "remained calm, regarding, with civilized
amusement, the antics of their circle" (p. 178).
Two thirds of the way through the book, Isherwood
abruptly introduces Hugh Weston. This, of course, is
W. H. Auden, and many critics draw extensively on this
portion of Lions and Shadows for information on the young
poet. Significant in Isherwood’s autobiography are the
qualities that Isherwood notes: "I remember him chiefly
for his naughtiness, his insolence, his smirking tanta
lizing air of knowing disreputable and exciting secrets.
With his hinted forbidden knowledge and stock of mispro
nounced scientific words, portentously uttered, he enjoyed
among us . . . the status of a kind of witch doctor"
(p. 182). The imagery marks Weston too as rebel. Com
pulsively sloppy— like Chalmers, the Cheurets, and the
Easts— Weston is quite the opposite of Isherwood who
29
reports that Weston embarrasses him "furiously" in public
places by his dress and demeanor. Again Isherwood com
pares himself unfavorably with a friend, implicitly
condemning his puritanical "Kensington manners" (p. 151).
Isherwood is explicit about the difference between
Weston and Chalmers: "When Chalmers and I were together
there were . . . certain reticences between us. . . . But
Weston left nothing alone and respected nothing: he
intruded everywhere? upon my old-maidish tidyness, my
intimate little fads, my private ailments, my most secret
sexual fears. . . . I had found myself answering his
questions. . . . And, after all, when I had finished, the
heavens hadn't fallen? and, ah, what a relief to have
spoken the words aloud!" (p. 195). Weston is what others
cannot be— a true father-confessor. Mr. Holmes was unable
to assist in Isherwood*s sexual initiation? though Chalmers
and Linsley pretend to sexual expertise, they are as
virginal as Isherwood. On the other hand Isherwood reports
that "Weston's attitude to sex in its simplicity and utter
lack of inhibition, fairly took my breath away. . . . I
don't think that, even in those days, he exaggerated much:
certainly, his manner of describing those adventures bore
all the marks of truth" (p. 195). In his lack of reticence
and in his healthy attitude toward sex, Weston is a marked
contrast to both Chalmers and Holmes, providing the help
they could not.
The effects of this long looked-for kind of attention
are traumatic. Isherwood feels "acute mental discomfort,"
like "a patient who has been deserted by his psycho
analyst in the middle of the analysis" (p. 195). Mr.
Holmes, Chalmers, and Cheuret, however, were truly not
there. There is no evidence to suggest that Weston's de
sertion is actual. It is instead now isherwood who deserts
all his friends— "I couldn't bear to see anybody— either
Chalmers or the Cheurets; and Weston least of all"
(p. 195). This is evidence of a simple psychological
phenomenon! early relationships perpetuate themselves.
The father is absent at a crucial time in isherwood's
life— therefore every father following is absent; if he
persists in being present, Isherwood will absent himself,
escaping, in this case, to "a cottage in Wales," the first
of a series of such abrupt escapes through travel.
It is during such escapes that Isherwood makes the
first motions to resist the strong influence of his
friends. On the Walking Tour he became critical of both
Chalmers and Weston, if only temporarily. Shortly after
the journey to Wales, during a summer alone at the Bay,
another walk becomes an imagistic meditation on his
relationships with his friends and substitute fathers.
The setting appeals to him. He details its great potential
for violence and recounts briefly some of its more famous
adventures— a shipwreck, a great storm, a murder marked by
an obelisk. He reveals previously unarticulated hostility
for Weston who "would know the names of the different
species of gull— and, by naming them, would dismiss
them. . . . One bestows a word of commendation upon them
in passing . . . and then goes on to speak of something
more interesting, something out of a book" (p. 236). He
wishes for Chalmers with whom he could have recreated
their shared fantasy world but finds him, too, inadequate:
"the Bay would have become yet another annexe of Mortmere,
and the real Bay, as the tourists and the fishermen saw
it, would gradually grow invisible to my eyes. That's the
disadvantage of travelling with Chalmers, I thought;
wherever we are together is always the same place" (p. 236).
He concludes, hollowly, that he is not sorry to be alone:
"I said to myself: I am happy. Perfectly happy, I
repeated, as my eyes roamed wide over the brilliant deso
late sea and the empty contours of the land" (p. 237).
None of his friends has been sufficient to his needs— the
landscape mirrors his isolation.
In the course of the meditation, the way he sees him
self changes: he is first an actor capable of being seen
from all windows, enjoying the center stage. But there is
no one to see him— earlier as he arrives at the Bay he
states with a deceptive matter of factness, "Nobody recog
nised me" (p. 231). By the end of the walk, the impersonal
vastness of the natural world— with its desolate seas,
savage storms that can cause shipwrecks, and its enormous
sky— seem to have subtly disturbed him. That the human
world is disturbing too is suggested not only by the
friends whose presence would ruin the experience but also
by the obelisk marking the mysterious murder, hinting that
gratuitous cruelty is possible in the human world as well.
At the end of his walk, he is standing near the obelisk, no
longer an actor watched by multitudes, but seen only from
afar: "A tiny obstinate figure by the dwarf obelisk under
an enormous sky" (p. 237). He thus identifies himself
tacitly with the murdered boy. Some sort of betrayal is
inherent in his relationships with the world of men. Often
passive, filial in these relationships, he now resents the
power these figures have over him: Weston and Chalmers
33
can even change the nature of reality, can keep him from
seeing the real world he once didn't want to see. A few
pages later he acknowledges that at least seventy-five
percent of his "personality" consists in "toad imitations"
of his friends (p. 239). But here at the Bay he is alone,
prepared to write his book. His friends are not there to
shield him from the battering waves or vast sky? he may be
dwarfed by it as by them, but he seems to be developing a
new determination— he is, at least, "obstinate."
Later he implies that he despises the vacationing
Poshocrats because he is like them. They are afraid of the
sea as they are "afraid of all the great natural forces"
{p. 245). He too is uneasy in the presence of the ocean,
sky, and bleak countryside. He is aware that his hatred of
them is feigned, originating in his isolation, "the old
sense of exclusion, the familiar grudging envy. . . . Why
didn't I know— not coldly from the outside, but intuitively,
sympathetically, from within— what it was that made them
perform their grave ritual of pleasure?" (pp. 246-247).
He h a s c h a n g e d s i n c e h i s d a y s a s o n e o f " th e q u i e t o n e s "
(p. 16), the rebellious intellectual elite who alone could
appreciate Holmes. He now identifies himself, somewhat
sadly, as the member of a group of whose limitations he is
well aware. In his lonely summer at the Bay he has had to
draw back from this group in order to define himself. The
friends who were once such reassuring consolation will
serve no longer. Momentarily past his adolescent period
of rebellion, he now realizes that contact with society is
vital to him as an artist: "I wanted . . . to find some
place, no matter how humble, in the scheme of society.
Until I do that, I told myself, my writing will never be
any good . . . it will remain a greenhouse product? some
thing, at best, for the connoisseur and the clique"
(pp. 247-248). He feels he will never fit in: "The most
I shall ever achieve . . . will be to learn how to spy
upon them, unnoticed. Hence foreward, my problem is how to
perfect a disguise" (p. 248).
Lions and Shadows is the trying on and casting off of
many different disguises. Isherwood has repeatedly defined
himself through his often conflicting masquerades— the
schoolboy (one of the "quiet ones"), the rebel spy in the
enemy camp (an image recurring here), the Poshocrat, the
Hearty with the motorbicycle, the Artist. Having isolated
himself from external sources of conflict, he no longer
wishes to become a copy of Chalmers or Weston. The values
he endorses suggest those of Holmes and the Anti-Heroic-
35
Hero, the finding of a place in society through cunning
and disguise.
These values, however, will not long remain in ascen
dancy. For at this point he encounters another in the
series of substitute fathers, a war veteran he names
Lester. Far from the ideal Isherwood has just mentioned,
Lester embodies the complex that prevents Isherwood from
maturing. He is a grim reminder of where a "place in
society" can lead, for his society sent him to war and his
experience in the trenches has left him psychologically
maimed. He has lost his place: "Lester had no world.
With his puzzled air of arrested boyishness, he belonged
for ever, like an unhappy peter Pan, to the nightmare
Never-Never-Land of the War. He had no business to be
here, alive, in post-war England. His place was elsewhere,
was with the dead" (p. 256). In his permanent adolescence
he is like Isherwood, a war victim by proxy. The account
of Lester, living "on the fringe of society" (p. 257), fits
well in a chapter where Isherwood has examined his own
isolation. He comes to regard Lester as "the ghost of the
War." He turns to him as if to a father: "Walking beside
him, at midnight . . . I asked him the question which
ghosts are always asked by the living: 'What shall I do
with my life?'" (p. 257). He is "vaguely aware" of
Lester's "benevolent presence, just out of sight, through
out the day," a feeling like Mr. Holmes' ghostly presence
during the Cambridge entrance exams (p. 25). The result
of such paternal attention is "a renewed interest" in his
novel. It begins to "double and treble" his "daily out
put" (p. 258). But when Chalmers and Isherwood spend
another summer at the Bay, Lester, in the manner of all
Isherwood's father substitutes, is gone— nobody knows
where (p. 275).5
Isherwood cannot easily win his place in society. The
need to define himself through rebellion is still too
strong. The conflict is within Isherwood, and to deal with
its contradictory and painful demands, he embodies it in
fantasies which he attempts to render into both art and
life. As students at Cambridge, Isherwood and Chalmers
create a rich fantasy world which will endure in their work
and that of their friends for years to come. It is an out
growth of Chalmers' conspiratorial glance, of the repeated
metaphor of the spies in the enemy camp— the young men's
attempt to glamorize their isolation, isherwood enumerates
its features: the central metaphor of "'the two sides',
'the combine' directed expressly against outselves"
(p. 66). This is the established order at Cambridge con
sisting of the Dons and "Poshocracy," against whom
Chalmers and Isherwood evolve a battery of private jokes,
dignifying their hostility by the familiar claim that they
are exposing sham: "Our enemies . . . knew that we alone,
of all the undergraduates in Cambridge, had seen through
their tremendous and imposing bluff. Therefore, in due
time, we should be dealt with" (p. 67) . The world every
authority figure tells them to aspire to is a "bluff."
Middle class values are here reversed— the "good" world is
really evil. They create an alternative world— a counter
force they call The Other Town, "a way of escape from
Cambridge" (p. 68). The Other Town contains within it all
the trappings that the respectable establishment regards
as evil but they designate "good." Here they relish the
decadent and bizarre and joltingly incongruous. They
evolve a whole atmosphere, a "special brand of medieval
surrealism." Their cultivated tastes have precedents in
18th century Gothicism and the 19th century decadence.
But unlike some of their literary predecessors, these
young men do not take themselves quite seriously. The
Other Town is their "burlesque cult of the sinister." They
use their humor to avoid real confrontation with the con
sequences of anarchism, while also mocking the predilec
tions of established literary ancestors.
The older Isherwood, looking back on all this,
acknowledges that they were "exactly like two children"
playing "a sophisticated kind of nursery game" (p. 68).
The maintenance of this fantasy is more important than
coming to terms with success in the real world. The fan
tasy world expands, becoming "more absorbing, more
elaborate, sharper and richer in detail and atmosphere, to
the gradual exclusion of the history school, the Poshocra
cy, the dons . . . the whole network, in fact, of person
alities, social and moral obligations, codes of behavior
and public amusements which formed the outward structure
of our undergraduate lives" (pp. 64-65). Isherwood and
Chalmers avoid contact with the dons in order to preserve
the fantasy where the dons play the role of "bogies in a
child's book" (p. 60). Their withdrawal from reality is a
clinging to childhood.
However adolescent, Chalmers and Isherwood are also
artists. The Other Town does not long remain a product
borrowed from children's books but becomes inhabited by
created characters. The first of these is Laily, the Worm
"an ideal imaginary don, the representative of all his
kind . . . the typical swotter, the book-worm, the
academic pot-hunter; but, at the same time, being eager to
succeed with and be accepted by the Poshocracy, he was
careful to pretend an enthusiasm for athletics and the
team spirit" (pp. 66-67). Here Isherwood mocks his pri
vate ideal, the wish to fit into society. The playing of
both sides, once admired in Mr. Holmes, is scorned during
this period.
I s h e r w o o d a n d C h a lm e r s m ake s e v e r a l a t t e m p t s t o t u r n
t h e i r f a n t a s y i n t o a r t . T h ey g i v e T he O th e r Town a nam e,
M o r tm e r e , a n d a c a s t o f d e c a d e n t a n d e c c e n t r i c c h a r a c t e r s .
When t h e y t r y t o w r i t e M o rtm ere a s a " c o n n e c t e d d r a m a t ic
s t o r y " ( p . 1 1 2 ) t h e e n d e a v o r s e e m s t o r e p r e s e n t a s u b
l i m i n a l a t t e m p t t o e x o r c i s e t h e f a n t a s y , f o r i n t h e p l o t
o f t h e n a r r a t i v e M o rtm ere i s d e s t r o y e d b y M r. c h a r d e s ,
"who hates and fears the eccentric freedom of Mortmere
life" (p. 112). But they cannot write the story, and
surrender their fantasy world: "as long as Mortmere re
mained unwritten the alternative possibilities were
infinite" (p. 113). When I. A. Richards, "the prophet
. . . [they] had been waiting for," changes them from
"devil worshippers" and "anarchists" to "behaviourists,
materialists, atheists" pledged as artists "to reflect
aspects of the world picture," they are plunged "into the
profoundest gloom" (p. 122). Escape from reality is no
longer permissible but there is nothing which can yet take
the place of Mortmere. Fantasy and reality are equally
untenable. In their second attempt to unify the Mortmere
material, a neurotic narrator imposes "imaginery charac
teristic freak vices and miraculous attributes upon his
mildly eccentric but really quite normal village neighbors.
He thus creates Mortmere for his own amusement: it exists
only as long as he wills it to exist. When he is tired of
it, it disappears" (p. 164). In Isherwood's later version
(cribbed, he says, from Gide) the power of the novelist-
narrator's imagination alters and eventually destroys
Mortmere and its inhabitants, an implicit recognition that
the playing out of this anarchic fantasy is destructive.
Though Isherwood here leaves Mortmere to Chalmers, it will
pervade his work as well in other forms.
Isherwood does not attempt an analytic explanation for
fantasy in Lions and Shadows, and none is forthcoming.
This is, after all, the "education of a novelist," and
that this novelist is Isherwood is only "of secondary
importance." We are, no doubt, meant to see this as the
genesis of a literary imagination; out of this fantasy,
41
Isherwood and Chalmers will write novels, much as
Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre came from the shared
Bronte fantasies. The themes of isolation, of rebellion
against middle class values embodied in a guest for The
Other Town, of the refusal to "grow up" are of paramount
importance in Isherwood's work.
Isherwood's life is not lived entirely with Chalmers
and The Other Town. He has been writing a novel about his
generation which he views as plagued by guilt for not
having taken part in the war. In Lions and Shadows the
source of Isherwood's personal guilt goes unnamed, for he
never mentions his soldier-hero father. He tells us only
that War has for him a personal meaning: "’War,' in this
purely neurotic sense, meant The Test. The test of your
courage, of your maturity, of your sexual prowess: 'Are
you really a Man?' Subconsciously, I believe, I longed to
be subjected to this test? but I also dreaded failure"
(pp. 75-76). In his novel, which he calls Lions and
Shadows (after a passage by C. E. Montague, "mighty hun
ters of lions or shadows"), the Test is embodied in
Leonard Merrows* wish for a public school career. Confined
by illness to his home, he is, at first, heartbroken, then
"comes to have a sneaking feeling of relief that he didn't
go to 'Rugonstead' after all: 'it is so comfortable at
home, and then— perhaps he would have been a failure!"'
(p. 77). The novel is realistic, a sad if unremarkable
study of a neurotic young man, a precurser of Philip in
All The Conspirators and a type recurring in Isherwood's
fiction. But Isherwood's private fantasy life takes a
bizarre turn. He evolves, he tells us, a whole "cult of
the public school system," in which heroic exploits
substitute for the forbidden Test of War: "the central
figure, the dream I, was an austere young prefect, called
upon unexpectedly to captain a 'bad' house, surrounded by
sneering critics and open enemies . . . grimly repressing
his own romantic feelings toward a younger boy, and
finally triumphing over all his obstacles, passing the
Test, emerging— a Man" (pp. 77-78). Not only courage is
being tested. The sexual test here involves the "grim"
repression of homosexual feelings, the unspeakable secret
that could not be told to Chalmers. Isherwood is plunged
into this fantasy of proving himself. Hidden in book
shops he guiltily reads boys' adventure stories.
The shared and private fantasies embody his conflict.
They are in every way antithetical. Rather than the
romantic rebellion against the evil establishment seen in
the perpetual struggle of Laily and his forces against the
Rats Hostel, the private fantasy is, as Isherwood openly
admits (p. 83), a betrayal of The Other Town. The dream
hero proves himself to Laily and the Dons. Of the two
fantasies, the private one is unquestionably the more
deadly. isherwood is so convinced of this, so anxious
that his readers understand, that he momentarily suspends
the time sequence of his narrative to interpret the psy
chological and political significance of this private
fantasy:
It is so very easy, in the mature calm of a
library, to sneer at all this homosexual romanticism.
But the rulers of Fascist states do not sneer—
they profoundly understand and make use of just
these phantasies and longings. I wonder how, at
this period, I should have reacted to the preaching
of an English Fascist leader clever enough to
serve up his "message" in a suitably disguised and
palatable form? He would have converted me, I
think, inside half an hour— provided that Chalmers
hadn't been there to interfere (p. 79).
Chalmers, of course, is not told of the private fantasy:
"I don't think he would have understood." Chalmers, who
needs only "to find a woman with whom he could fall in
love and go to bed" (p. 120), does not have to battle with
homosexuality and its attendant guilts. Later Isherwood
w i l l b e a b l e t o s h a r e t h e p r i v a t e f a n t a s y w i t h P h i l i p
£
Linsley, Hugh Weston, and Stephen Savage, but here he is
44
frightened and isolated and tries repeatedly to pass the
Test. He buys a motorcycle: "Isherwood becomes a
hearty— here was a quaint new pose" (p. 83). He does not
have the courage to ride in traffic and must walk the
machine to an unfrequented side road, failing this Test
"almost before it had begun" (p. 84).
In a second attempt, he has a motorcycle accident in
which a young lady riding with him is hurt and Isherwood
himself is humiliated, although his comic manner makes
light of the incident. He has fulfilled his expectation
(perhaps even a desire) to fail the Test, and, like Leonard
Merrows, the hero of the original Lions and Shadows, he
describes himself as "comfortably and ignobly resigned"
(p. 96). This Test is made more explicitly sexual by the
presence of the young lady to whom, by his mastery of the
motorcycle, he might have symbolically "proven his man
hood . "
In flight from failure, abandoning the guise of
Isherwood the Hearty, he takes up a new role, Isherwood the
Artist: "an austere ascetic, cut off from the outside
world, in voluntary exile, a recluse. . . . He stood apart
from and above 'The Test'— because the Test was something
for the common herd, it applied only to the world of every-
45
day life. Isherwood refused the Test— not out of weakness,
not out of cowardice, but because he was subjected, daily,
hourly, to a 'Test1 of his owns the self-imposed Test of
his Integrity as a writer" (p. 97). That the Test can be
passed through art is later suggested by his description of
the novel as "a contraption . . . like a motor bicycle"
(p. 259). Again aping Leonard Merrows, he becomes "a kind
of invalid," anticipating Philip in All The Conspirators
and a host of hypochondriacs in his later fiction who
escape the Test with illness. With '"Isherwood the Artist*
now in full temporary ascendancy over 'War'" (p. 123),
Isherwood hatches the plot of another novel, Christopher
Garland;
The story opens with the arrival of the young man
after his last term at school. . . . Then comes
Cambridge, with its terrible stupefying effect on
the brain and spirit. In the vacation, the young
man, cut off from his friends by his perceptions
but not yet fully initiate, drifts into a dismal
struggle with the personality of the aunt with whom
he lives. A love affair with a friend's fiancee
brings him to himself, and, with its renunciation,
he enters upon a period, if not of peace, at least
of courage and assurance for the future (p. 123).
As the narrator is well aware, the inventing of a plot
which ends with the "monastic renunciation of all life's
pleasures— and of all life's difficulties as well" (p. 123)
is a last-ditch effort to escape reality. Though Garland
46
is a fictional embodiment of the "Isherwood the Artist"
persona, Garland passes one segment of the Test, "proving"
his "masculinity" by the affair with the friend's fiancee.
In sorry contrast to Garland is his creator, who failed
the Test through injuring a young lady in a motorcycle
accident.
The Northwest Passage— a novel, like the Mortmere
epic, which is never written— again embodies Isherwood's
inner conflicts; it is a sort of psychomachia. Here Isher
wood develops the complex of the Test into a myth:
The Test exists only for the Truly Weak Man: no
matter whether he passes it or whether he fails,
he cannot alter his essential nature. The Truly
Strong Man travels straight across the broad
America of normal life, taking always the direct
reasonable route. But "America" is just what the
Truly Weak Man, the neurotic hero, dreads. And
so . . . he prefers to attempt the huge northern
circuit, the laborious, terrible north-west passage,
avoiding life; and his end, if he does not turn
back, is to be lost for ever in the blizzard and
the ice (pp. 207-208).
L e o n a r d , t h e n a r r a t o r , i s a C a m b rid g e p o s h o c r a t ; R o g er
Garland, secretary to a string quartet, is, "all the
while . . . a worthless sham" having "funked [sic] the
high dive in his prep school swimming bath" (p. 209).
Roger becomes "fascinated by the personality" (p. 211) of a
young man named Tommy. The motif of the "love affair with
a friend's fiancee" familiar from Christopher Garland
47
reappears, all its homosexual overtones now fully explic-
7
it. Roger and Katharine, a cello student, begin "a kind
of love affair by proxy, " drawn together by their mutual
interest in Tommy. When they attempt to consummate the
union, "they discover that they aren't interested in each
other as lovers at all. They have an all night talk"
(p. 212).
When Katharine reveals this to Tommy, he rushes out
of the house, jumps on to his "appallingly powerful motor
bicycle, " rides away "at full speed" and is killed. Isher
wood analyses his own plot according to the Northwest
Passage schema: "both Roger and Tommy are The Truly Weak
Man— but, while Tommy will . . . be lost in trying to force
the North-West Passage, Roger will never even dare attempt
it" (p. 211). Roger apparently fails the sexual component
of the Test, while Tommy attempts the "War" segment on his
motorcycle. Katharine indirectly causes Tommy's death by
telling him about the would-be affair, thus joining the
gallery of unpleasant or destructive women characters in
Isherwood's work. But Roger feels "it is people like my
self who are the real destroyers, " a condemnation of those
g
who do not dare. Roger is most like the everyday
Isherwood— secretary to a string quartet, able to mix in
Poshocrat circles, but all the time carrying with him his
secret burden of failure, here reduced to the absurdity
of failing a high dive test. He is also an extension of
Isherwood*s earlier "dream self" who passed the Test by
"grimly repressing" homosexual feelings. Isherwood is
beginning to see that such repression, though demanded by
society, is useless and destructive, since if Roger could
have faced his feelings and not remained "a sham," he would
not have desired vicarious closeness to Tommy through
Katharine. Tommy in turn might not have needed the
"appallingly powerful motorbicycle" as requisite proof of
his masculinity. Tommy, too, is a romantic fantasy self.
His death is a justification for the motorbicycle's
abandonment— it is dangerous. The novel is an interesting
reworking of material of the young artist's psyche.
Variations of the Truly Weak Man and the North West
Passage will reappear throughout Isherwood's fiction.
Failure of the Test becomes increasingly literal.
Isherwood decides to fail the Tripos Examination deliber
ately because he "hadn't the nerve" to follow the example
of "certain legendary heroes" who "had jumped out of win
dows or thrown themselves downstairs, deliberately breaking
an arm" (p. 125). Again he excoriates his inability to
measure up to what he will later call his Hero Ancestors.
Even his own creation, the Anti-Heroic-Hero, ultimately
triumphs over the institutions he mocks by getting himself
killed in battle (K&F, p. 503). But Isherwood is a
double failure: he cannot even fail the examinations in a
manner to live up to his and Chalmers' expectation (p.
130). Though he touches up his answers for Chalmers who
"danced gleefully around the room, exclaiming that
Mortmere was revenged, " he feels that most of what he
wrote was "dreadfully stupid" (p. 132). He has tried to
circumvent the Test by the deliberate championing of a
negative value, failure, but has failed at failure because
of his underlying wish to do well. Mortmere cannot be
superimposed over reality for long. The spell breaks
when he confronts his tutor: "failing the Tripos had
merely been a kind of extension of dream-action on to
the plain of reality. How was I to tell the tutor that we
had often plotted to blow him sky high with a bomb? . . .
The tutor wasn't the tutor: he was a kindly but aggrieved
middle-aged gentleman with whom I now sat face to face for
the first time in my life" (p. 134).
His appointment as Cheuret's secretary compensates to
some extent for the Tripos fiasco, but even in these warm
family surroundings with the status of a job, Isherwood
cannot quite succeed and is not free from either the Test
or Mortmere. A tour of girls' schools is presented with
familiar comic self-deprecation. When he arranges the
music on the stands, he feels people are laughing at him.
When he glances at a girl, "she turned her head away and
gave a loud scornful snigger" (p. 158). Although the cause
of the eventual uproar is not Isherwood's ineptness but a
mouse under his chair, his feelings about the incident
indicate his own nightmarish conviction that he is somehow
a failure, an object of ridicule, somehow to blame. That
the humiliation comes from women recalls the girl injured
on the motorcycle as well as Polly East's teasing dispar
agement.
Following this comic humiliation which recalls
previous failures of the Test, the escape fantasy of
Mortmere becomes available. The language describing the
trip home from the concert suggests Mortmere: fog, the
sudden appearance of men who "certainly seemed to have been
waiting" for them and stand around them in a "vaguely
threatening semicircle." "An easy target for a blow on the
back of the head" (p. 159), Cheuret, who embodies the
potential for "masculine" achievement in society without
loss of individuality, is threatened by a group of gentle- |
men who might have come directly from The Other Town.
Reliance on the Mortmere fantasy brought failure of the
Test represented by the Tripos; failure of the Test at the
girls' school has in turn brought about the Mortmere
fantasy.
Again during the General Strike the private and shared
fantasies merge. Although Isherwood never explicitly
connects the strike to Mortmere, what is the strike but the
"powers of the hostel" at last attacking Laily and his
class? The mythic war between the two sides becomes a
reality as the lower classes refuse to serve the Poshocracy.
Isherwood's "female relative"— a term which surely reflects
a great hostile avoidance--declares "of course I take
sides." According to the Mortmere myth in which he and
Chalmers were thoroughly on the side of the eccentric
denizens of The Other Town, Christopher should rush to the
aid of the lower classes. His refusal to do so is under
standable only in terms of the personal myth from which
The Other Town provides a compensatory escape: "'War' was
in the air: one heard it in the boisterous defiant
laughter of the amateur bus drivers, one glimpsed it in the
alert sexual glances of the women. This was a dress
rehearsal of 'The Test,' and it found me utterly unpre
pared" (p. 179). The two fantasy worlds collide and he is
powerless. Boisterous men and sexually alert women are
part of a world of sexual and social aggressiveness in
which he cannot participate. He remains neutral, loathing
himself, attempting the inadequate defensive posture of
the intellectual who "belonged to some mystical Third
Estate, isolated above the battle" (p. 180). All fathers
are absent: "If I had known a single person connected with
the Labour Movement? if Chalmers, even, had been with me—
I might have been able to get my ideas into some kind of
order" (p. 180). The "female relative" is present, how
ever, vampire-like, "made fresh and alive by the occasion,"
an influence against which he is unable to prevail. He
finally volunteers for duty on the side of the Poshocracy,
asking, in an extraordinary manifestation of self-hatred,
to be allowed to work on a sewage farm. He covers his
masochism by a convenient evocation of Mortmere, "reflect
ing that this, at any rate, had a sort of spurious Mortmere
flavour: as so often, I had an instantaneous picture of
myself writing about it to Chalmers" (p. 180).
At the Bay he compensates for his betrayal of Mortmere
by befriending the local proletariat and describing the
53
Poshocrat tourists with loathing. His defensive isolation
is again apparent in his pose: he is now a scientist
observing a strange life form (p. 244). Sexual isolation
adds to his loneliness. He comments that many of the male
bathers "were secretly embarrassed at finding themselves
practically naked in the presence of a lot of semi-naked
and (presumably to them) attractive girls" (p. 246). The
parenthetical material clearly indicates the speaker's own
lack of interest. Ironically it is his supposed sexual
prowess that finally earns him the esteem of Tim, a young
fisherman: "my very inhibitions made me extremely
daring— up to a point. . . . Once or twice, having pushed
things farther than I intended, I was scared to find myself
committed to a midnight walk over the downs" (p. 251). To
extricate himself from the situation he employs a sort of
reversal of a familiar device— the affair-with-the-
friend's-fianc§e: "But on these occasions, I always
discovered an excuse for passing my girl on to Tim"
(p. 251). In the light of the Test, it is easy to under
stand Isherwood's attraction to the proletariat. Contrast
Weston's analytic probing into Isherwood's "secret sexual
fears" with Tim's naive acceptance. To Tim, it is a fore
gone conclusion that Isherwood has already passed this
.............................. 54
crucial part of the Test. The "proletariat" thus provide a
temporary escape. Tim's ease and naturalness in sexual
matters also contrasts with the embarrassment of the more
"cultured" Poshocrat bathers. Isherwood in preferring Tim
to the Poshocrats wishes to break away from his class whose
instincts have been stifled by civilized mores.
The two fantasies continue in conflict. A new friend,
Bill Scott, becomes an important drinking companion for
"Mortmerian" reasons: "his pictures excited me more than
any other modern landscapes I have seen. He painted trees
as monstrous, terrifying vegetables. . . . Two of them
would confront each other, like vast mysterious personages
between whom all speech is unnecessary" (p. 262). Bill has
another mark in his favor: "a big car which he drove
expertly, at terrific speeds" (p. 265). We recall the
motorcycle out of control and the Renault slowly creeping
home through the fog under Isherwood's faltering hand. But
Bill has passed the Test as both artist and man. When
Scott and Isherwood undertake a sudden drunken journey to
Scotland, Isherwood declares melodramatically "My life is a
journey. I can never go back" (p. 266). This is a persona
as yet unnamed, new for Isherwood but as old at least as a
host of eighteenth and nineteenth century exiles wandering
55
the earth carrying in their hearts their terrible secrets.
Isherwood*s longing to escape through travel has been
present from the excursion to the Continent with Mr.
Holmes, in the journey to Wales, in summers at the Bay, in
the walks through London with Philip, and in numerous
fantasies he describes as "my place-romanticism and my
boundless dreams of travel" (p. 95). Underlying the
escape syndrome is the fantasy of The other Town— that
somewhere there exists a counterforce to the conformities,
the conventional pieties and the obligations he finds so
oppressive, a place where the Test need not be taken. But
the escape fantasy is at the same time the dread North West
Passage, the course from which the neurotic Truly Weak Man
will have to one day ignominously turn back or perish "lost
forever in the . . . ice.” The trip to Scotland ends:
"One always has to go back, I thought, at the end. . . .
You may give your familiar everyday self the slip easily
enough. . . . But sooner or later you will come to a halt;
sooner or later, that dreary governess, that gloomy male
nurse will catch you up; will arrive, on the slow train,
to fetch you back to your nursery prison of minor obliga
tions, duties, habits, ties" (p. 269). Here the conflict
between the wish for individual liberty and the social
world of "obligations, duties, habits, ties" has been
internalized. The male nurse is a fitting description of
the super ego, that split in consciousness whereby society
ensures the individual's cooperation. By the designation
"nursery prison" Isherwood implies that these habits and
duties stifle individual development. While the Mortmere
escape fantasy is a "children's game" preventing maturity,
conformity is equally inhibiting of growth.
As if in preparation for the actual journey from
England with which the book ends, the medical school
experience, itself a sort of escape, is described in a
journey metaphor. Here also he is not yet an adult, for it
is "like starting school all over again." It is "setting
out, alone, into an unknown country" (p. 284), recalling
his last-minute attempt to study for the Tripos which was
"like starting to walk across Siberia" (p. 125) as well as
the myth of the North West Passage. In a science class he
"wanders around in a fog" (p. 285) and his friend Platt is
"the unlucky Sinbad whose broad back was doomed" to carry
him "through the trials and ardors" (p. 290). He defends
his decision to become a doctor with inverse Mortmerian
logic: "the idea seemed as absurd as ever; and— for that
reason— attractive" (p. 270) . The experience, however, is
57
the familiar repetition of a pattern# and he consigns
medical school to the grave of other failed fantasies*
"This was Cambridge again# but worse. Worse# because this
time# I was honestly trying, seriously doing my best. I
couldn't flatter myself with conceited lies about my Art:
my Art was a flop# a declared failure in the open market.
And I couldn't hide myself in Mortmere: Mortmere had fail
ed us# dissolved into thin air. The brutal truth was: I
should never make a doctor. The whole thing had been a
daydream from the start" (p. 288). Medical school is not
only Cambridge but the Test. Isherwood reveals himself as
weak in the stereotyped "masculine" courses of study—
science and mathematics— and is as consistently inept in
any study requiring mechanical aptitude as he was in the
handling of the motorcycle or the Renault. His decision to
go to medical school seems a deliberate attempt to try
something he knew from the start that he must fail at# a
field for which by temperament and training he is totally
g
unsuited. The choice of the medical profession however
does represent an unconscious attempt to deal with his
problems# to learn the secrets of healing in order to cure
his own psychic sickness.
What Weston learns in Berlin is nearer the mark, the
doctrines of "the great psychologist, Homer Lane":
There is only one sin: disobedience to the inner
law of our own nature. . . . the disobedience is
never . . . our own fault— it is the fault of
those who teach us, as children, to control God
(our desires) instead of giving Him room to
grow. . . . God appears 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.
(p. 300)
This is the Mortmere myth as psychology. As in Mortmere,
conventional notions of good and evil are reversed. The
real evil is not the "Other Town" of "our desires" which
"appear unreasonable," but the authority figures Laily and
the dons, "those who teach us." This conscious control
appears "reasonable and sane." Disease, the body's attempt
"to kill off the offenders," is a microcosmic attack on
Laily and his forces by the powers of Mortmere. According
to Lane, civilization and the super ego repress man's
innately good instincts.
At the Bay, Isherwood articulated his desire to fit in
to society by perfecting a disguise. Now, at the book’s
end, he decides that honesty with self, even in the face
of conventions demanding dishonesty, is more important. He
realizes that "isherwood the Artist" is a Byronic fraud
and decides that for the sake of himself and his writing he
doesn't want to be a sham (pp. 304-305). The inner voices
59
contend, the conflict that we have seen within him since
the book's beginning— the desire to fit in versus the
desire to follow his own irrational bent at the rest of
society's disapproval. Hovering about him now, instead of
Holmes the Anti-Heroic-Hero whose example he has temporar
ily rejected, are two new "ghostly presences," Lane and
Barnard, exhorting him: "the way to salvation always lies
through acts of apparent madness and folly . . . What you
call the voice of Reason is only the voice of Fear. You're
afraid— afraid . . . to take the plungei Don't flatter
yourself even, that the world is on your side. The world
really despises those who conform to its standards"
(p. 306) . The warring demands merge. The only way to be
come accepted by "the world" is to "take the plunge," to
risk the world's scorn. The nature of the "acts of
apparent madness and folly" is never revealed? instead
they are hidden in the words of childhood: "We know what
you want all right. . . . You want to commit the unfor
givable sin, to shock Mummy and Daddy and Nanny, to smash
the nursery clock, to be a really naughty little boy. . . .
If you stick to your safe London nursery-life, you never
will grow up. You'll die a timid shrivelled Peter Pan"
(pp. 306-307). Peter Pan evokes Lester who was described
60
in the same way, like isherwood a victim of the "reason
able world." The metaphor recalls his return from
Scotland to "the nursery-prison of minor duties and
obligations." To conform at the price of individuality is
to stay a child. Isherwood reports that Barnard and Lane
were aware of this: "Conventional education . . . inverts
the whole natural system in childhood, turning the child
into a spurious adult. So that later, when the child grows
up physically into a man, he is bound to try to regain his
childhood— by means which, to the outside world, appear
ever more and more unreasonable" {p. 300). The book ends
as Isherwood sets out to join Weston in Berlin. He has
chosen to act out fantasy at the cost of respectability.
He has chosen Mortmere over the world of the dons and
Poshocrats. In terms of the private fantasy, the journey
to Berlin is a shirking of obligations, of the class and
country where he has yet to pass the Test and prove him
self a man. It is the avoidance journey of the Truly Weak
Man.10
But the private fantasy is a creation of Isherwood's
11
tyrant super-ego. Isherwood's Berlin journey can also be
regarded in the light of the Mortmere myth. It then be
comes a journey to The Other Town, to liberate those vital
impulses which society has repressed.
Like Stephen Dedalus trying to leave behind the
forces confining him and inhibiting him from maturing,
Isherwood goes in search of a f;«':her— in this case Weston,
Barnard, and Lane. But unlike Joyce's hero, this journey
is not an assertion of freedom or self-hood: "I should
meet Weston, and, perhaps, Barnard himself. These two,
between them, would take care of everything. I was in
their hands, and content to be" (p. 312). The very motion
of the train that speeds toward Berlin echoes the
passivity that has permeated the book: "For the moment I
was only a traveller, given over, mind and body, to the
will of the dominant, eastward-speeding train; happy in
the mere knowledge that yet another stage of my journey
had begun" (p. 312).
Notes and References
~ * ~ Down There on a Visit (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1962), p. 14.
2
George Wickes, "An Interview with Christopher Isher
wood, " Shenandoah, XVI (Spring 1965), 50-51. Subsequent
references will be given in parenthesis in the text
following the shortened title "interview."
^Isherwood's tastes change from Gothic to realistic.
Influences upon him range from the Brontes and Baudelaire
to I. A. Richards and E. M. Forster. Allen Chalmers de
clares: "We ought to aim at being essentially comic
writers. . . The whole of Forster's technique is based on
the tea-table: instead of trying to screw all his scenes
up to the highest possible pitch, he tones them down until
they sound like mothers' meeting gossip. . . In fact,
there's actually less emphasis laid on the big scenes than
on the unimportant ones" (pp. 183-184). Chalmers' analysis
of Forster's technique serves as an adequate description
of Lions and Shadows itself, with its predominantly comic,
though self-disparaging, tone, and the "tea-tabling" of
the possible "big" scenes that the narrative seems to be
preparing for— Mr. Holmes' subduing of the sixth form (pp.
11-12), the motor bicycle accident (p. 96), and Isher
wood 's confrontation with the tutor (pp. 134-135).
^Cf. Wilde, p. 22: "The major character contrast of
Lions and Shadows is between Christopher and his close
friend Chalmers, and its point is to show that the former
is, in his personal relations as in his writing, the more
facile, the more flexible, and the more successful in
blocking awareness of his problems. Less ironic and more
intense, Chalmers moves from Mortmere . . . to communism;
and he exposes by the seriousness of his concern the com
promises, and the 'more complex psychological mess' (p.
120) of the protagonist."
^Kathleen and Frank further explains Lester's role as
father figure. "As long as the War went on, Kathleen must
have had some lingering hope that Frank might after all be
63
in a German prison camp. And even when it was over, one
couldn't say with absolute certainty that a missing man
was dead. Throughout the nineteen-twenties, tales were
told of shell-shocked men who had lost their memory and
were identified years later, living in England under other
names" (p. 482). The young isherwood must have been aware
of this: no doubt he had been reminded of it by Kathleen.
It is no surprise that Lester intrigues him and becomes a
substitute father.
6Philip Linsley is mentioned briefly in the first
chapter as the enterprising young novelist— one of the
"quiet ones" in the library— who, in contrast to Chalmers,
shows his work to his cohorts. He is an appropriate com
panion for isherwood. As he lives much of his life in
fantasies of sexual conquest, he understands the Test.
His own sense of inadequacy enables him to comprehend The
Other Town. Together they walk through night-time London,
upon which they quickly impose a suitable fantasy setting
(pp. 94-95). Philip is much that Isherwood can't be.
Near the book's end he is a successful medical student,
ably assisting in an operation. Isherwood bids him a warm
farewell, promising him, with the benefit of hindsight,
success in career, art, and heterosexual love.
Stephen Savage is somewhat different. He has written
a novel in which the hero is "almost incredibly shy,
gauche, tactless, and generally neurotic"; among the
Poshocracy he suffers "tortures of humiliation— culminating
in an extraordinary scene, in which, being unable to
understand the simple mechanism of a folding card-table,
he breaks down altogether and bursts into tears" (p. 280).
Underlying the conduct of Savage's hero is a syndrome
analogous to the Test: a "mechanism," like isherwood's
motorbicycle symbolic of the whole scientific "masculine"
world, brings defeat. Like Isherwood, Savage is passive,
"the slave of his friends," and Isherwood reacts to him as
if to a competitor in abjectness: "His kindness was so
touching and disarming that it sometimes made me quite
irritable. I was cross with myself because I couldn't
hope to compete with it; because it somehow made me feel
myself an inferior, unworthy moral, a traitor to his
friendship" (p. 282)•
^Variations of the motif are present in the first
version of All the Conspirators recounted in Lions and
64
Shadows (pp. 174-176), in Edward Upward*s novel in the
Thirties (London: William Heinemann, 1962) in which two
men love the same woman, and in Isherwood*s story "An
Evening at the Bay" where Philip strolls with the girl
Allen walked with on the previous night (Exh., pp. 200-
207). In All the Conspirators (New York: New Directions,
1958, first published 1928), Philip's sister Joan is
attracted to Chalmers though she becomes engaged to Victor,
a Poshocrat. The recurring motif is an acceptable outlet
for the homosexual feelings whose "grim" repression is
demanded by society.
O
°Isherwood will develop this theme in later novels.
In The Last of Mr. Norris. Bradshaw might have prevented
the death of Kuno Von Pregnitz as Isherwood in Goodbye to
Berlin could have saved Bernhard Landauer. in Prater
Violet isherwood depicts the "insular" Englishmen's lack
of involvement and daring, then identifies himself among
them, in the first three episodes of Down There on a
Visit similar non-involvement results in one death and two
abandonments.
9Cf. other failures of the Test, pp. 196, 215, 222,
250, 261.
lOAuden's "Witnesses" call this journey "The empty/
Selfish journey/Between the needless risk/And the endless
safety." Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (London: Faber
and Faber, 1966), p. 64.
f
II. The Berlin Stories: "The Hidden Life
of Forbidden Wishes"
When I was a little boy in prep, school during the
first World War, if I took an extra slice of
bread and margarine some master was sure to say—
"I see Auden you want the Huns to win"— thus
establishing in my mind an association between
Germany and forbidden pleasures.
W. H. Auden1
. . . a great city is a kind of labyrinth within
which at every moment of the day the most hidden
wishes of every human being are performed by
people who devote their whole existences to doing
this and nothing else. . . . the hidden life of
forbidden wishes exists in extravagant nakedness
behind mazes of walls.(p. 109)
Stephen Spender
In his view Germany, because of defeat and ruin,
has escaped from the mortal sickness of Western
civilization, and there youth had started to live
again ... a life without inhibition. . . . He
talked a great deal about Auden, who had shared . . .
so many of his views, and also about a certain
young novelist called Christopher Isherwood,
who . . . had settled in Berlin in stark poverty
and was an even greater rebel against the England
we lived in than he was.
2
John Lehmann
65
66
The feeling of unrest in Berlin went deeper than
any crisis. It was a permanent unrest, the
result of nothing being fixed and settled.
Christopher and I, leading our life in which
we used Germany as a kind of cure for our personal
problems, became ever more aware that the care
free personal lives of our friends were facades
in front of the immense social chaos.(p. 117,
p. 120)
Stephen Spender
When the first of The Berlin Stories appeared in
1935, critic Cyril Connolley classified Isherwood as among
the "new realists," those writers influenced by journalis
tic and cinematic techniques and writing "for the
3
masses," a description that undoubtedly would please the
"reverse snob" at the Bay. Isherwood first expressed his
fascination with the cinema in Lions and Shadows; "I was,
and still am, endlessly interested in the outward
appearance of people— their facial expressions, their
gestures, their walk, their nervous tricks, their infi
nitely various ways of eating a sausage. . . . The cinema
puts people under a microscope; you can stare at them, you
can examine them as though they were insects" (pp. "'85-86) .
The narrator turned cinematographer is detached from that
which he observes. An enjoyment of examining people "as
though they were insects" implies a feeling of detachment
from humanity and recalls the "scientific" Isherwood who
coldly observed the tourists at the Bay. The rest of the
autobiography explained the complex reasons for such
detachment, the painful sense of inadequacy isherwood
masked by compensatory fantasies. Although the narrator of
Lions and Shadows flew to Berlin at the book's end, hoping
there to follow bayard's and Lane's imagined exhortation to
"commit the unforgiveable sin," his position in this new
environment is once more that of passive observer.
Accordingly, the narrator of Goodbye to Berlin defines
his role in the second paragraph of the novel: "I am a
camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not
thinking" (p. 1). He describes the economic desolation
surrounding him, then emphasizes his isolation. Young men
stand in the street whistling to their girls to let them
into "warm rooms where the beds are already turned down
for the night." Isherwood adds: "Because of the whistlings
I do not care to stay here in the evenings. It reminds me
that I am in a foreign city, alone, far from home. Some
times I determine not to listen to it. . . . But soon a
call is sure to sound, so piercing, so insistent, so
despairingly human, that at last I have to get up and peep
through the slats of the Venetian blind to make quite sure
that it is not— as I know very well it could not possibly
4
be— for me." He is an outsider both to the city and to
sexuality. Though he reveals later an increasing
familiarity with the inhabitants of the district who even
tually know him by sight, his sexual isolation continues
throughout the novel. Here he notes that "At the street
corner, after dark, the three whores no longer whisper
throatily as I pass."
In Lions and Shadows, Isherwood1s account of parts of
London, "the great lost decaying districts, where the fly
blown respectability of the lower middle class clings to
its dreary outposts against the slums" (p. 94) applies as
well to Frl. Schroeder's section of Berlin where street
leads into street "of houses like shabby monumental safes
crammed with the tarnished valuables and second hand furni
ture of a bankrupt middle class" (p. 1). In London "Chance
meetings, faces seen for an instant . . . a voice calling
at night from a darkened house could pigment the whole
neighbourhood: henceforward, that square was indelibly
evil? always I should experience a slight but delicious
nausea of sexual desire" (Lions and Shadows, p. 95). The
faces seen for an instant, the voices calling at night echo
69
the mournful whistles of the men# the whispers of the
whores of Berlin. In both instances, the narrator is
fascinated by the romantically unconventional, by what he
elsewhere calls "those individuals whom respectable society
5
shuns in horror." Whether he walks through "the lost
decaying districts" of London or stands at his window at
Frl. Schroeder's, he is only a passive observer, drawn
toward but not participating in the air of "indelible
evil."
That he sees Berlin as Mortmere is evident in frequent
characters and images which might have come from The Other
Town— the Nowaks' courtyard, the sanatarium, the approach
to Bernhard Landauer's flat. Similar imagery appears in
The Last of Mr. Norris. William Bradshaw is guided by
Norris to "the deepest corner of the night" where Olga's
establishment is housed in a "narrow and deep" courtyard
"like a coffin standing on end," a place "where the rays of
the sun could never penetrate" (p. 81). This description
too evokes the sinister ambiance of Mortmere.
The older Isherwood is most critical of The Last of
Mr. Norris: "It is a heartless fairy-story about a real
city in which human beings were suffering the miseries of
political violence and near-starvation. . . . the mon-
70
sters . . . were quite ordinary human beings prosaically
engaged in getting their living by illegal methods. The
only genuine monster was the young foreigner who passed
gaily through these scenes of desolation, misinterpreting
g
them to suit his childish fantasy." He castigates the
narrator, William Bradshaw (his two middle names), for
superimposing "a fairy-story"— the Mortmere fantasy— over
the reality of Berlin.
In one of the plans to write Mortmere as a novel, the
narrator-observer Hearn, a "somewhat fantastically minded
young man who has had a nervous breakdown and goes to this
remote village for a rest, " also "for his own amusement"
imposes "imaginary characteristics . . . upon his mildly
eccentric neighbours" (L&S, p. 164), much as the "heart
less" narrator of Mr. Norris, in search of fantasy, sees
"ordinary human beings" as "civil monsters." A similar
increase in violence structures both the would-be
Mortmere novel and The Berlin Stories, and the endings too
are similar. In the Mortmere epic the narrator escapes as
the village destroys itself; both Berlin novels end with
Hitler in power, Berlin a moral and economic ruin and the
narrator on his way to the safety of England.
Isherwood's journey to Berlin is, then, a symbolic
act, an attempt to embody the Mortmere fantasy, a young man
rebelling against conventional morality and attempting to
re-define for himself notions of good and evil. Against
the backdrop of Hitler's rise, the stories implicitly
measure the progress of the narrator in his personal
rebellion. An acting out of a fantasy, Isherwood's Berlin
experience is also, paradoxically, a criticism of that very
fantasy and the role of fantasy in human life. More than
one character comes to grief, comic or tragic, through an
attempt to live out daydreams. A direct connection is
established between such proclivities and the Nazi take
over.
The novels develop other themes found in Lions and
Shadows; The Last of Mr. Norris continues the search for
the Anti-Heroic-Hero while Goodbye to Berlin examines
Lane's belief that civilization (reason) exerts a destruc
tive force against which man must rebel. In Berlin where
instincts are given free reign, Isherwood tests the truth
of this hypothesis.
The shared and private fantasies which originate in
the time period of Lions and Shadows, reappear in the
Berlin novels, embodied in two broad character types which
belong to the demi-monde. One is the flexible, uninhibited1
demi-mondain, the other a constricted rigid antithesis:
the over-civilized exile# hypochondriacal Neurotic Hero,
Truly Weak Man who is drawn to the demi-monde by his wish
to rebel. Upon close examination, however, these types
are not as antithetical as they first appear.
Sally Bowles and Otto Nowak belong in the first
category. Both are proud of their lack of sexual inhibi
tion. Sally sees herself as partaking in instinctual
experience. Her lover Klaus is "so marvellously primitive
just like a faun." He makes her feel "like a most marvel
lous nymph . . . in the middle of a forest" (GB, p. 39).
During her pregnancy she again feels she has recaptured
primal urges: "Having babies makes you feel awfully
primitive, like a sort of wild animal or something, de
fending its young" (p. 55). Otto Nowak is apparently un
spoiled by civilization, a "cruel elegant animal" (p.
78), "naturally and healthily selfish" (p. 87). He is the
"Natural Man," animal in his exuberance, forthright in his
use of people for his own advantage, direct and "primitive
in his cruelty. Like Otto who blatantly uses his attrac
tiveness for economic gain and boasts of his male and
female conquests in terms of their wealth, Sally looks to
love to solve economic problems: "if only I could get a
really rich man as my lover. Let's see . . . I shouldn't
want more than three thousand a year, and a flat and a
decent car. I'd do anything just now to get rich" (p. 44).
Love for Sally can be a means to an end and people can be
used. Throughout, she exhibits no knowledge of or interest
in the German political situation and little loyalty to
friends. The abandoning of civilization's restraints then,
does not uncover sweet-natured noble savages but amoral
self-seeking ones.
Both Otto and Sally are revealed as sham. Little
about Sally is genuine; she is constantly described in
terms of the stage (pp. 27, 35, ff). Her self concept is
composed of selected cliches from cheap romances. In
reality, Sally is a rebel from the English upper class
trying to escape her origins. The "primitive" Klaus is an
egotistical cad who deserts her, and her pregnancy culmi
nates not in the "primitive" act of giving birth, but in an
abortion, she lives in fantasies of success in her singing
career but isherwood notes "She sang badly, without any
expression, her hands hanging down at her sides" (p. 25).
Early in their relationship Isherwood notices that her
desire to shock and her promiscuity mask an extreme
naivety: "For a would-be demi-mondaine she seemed to have
surprisingly little business sense or tact. She wasted a
lot of time making advances to an elderly gentleman who
would obviously have preferred a chat with the barman"
(p. 26) . Far from the shrewd sophisticate she likes to
imagine herself, she is gulled by Klaus, Clive the wander
ing American, and the con-man George P. Saunders. She is
so anxious to enact her fantasies that she is oblivious of
reality.
Otto too is often described in terms of pose: "Otto
as usual had begun acting at once. His face was slowly
illuminated by a sunrise of extreme joy. His cheeks
dimpled with smiles. . . . His voice became languishing,
reproachful" (p. 103). Like Sally he is conscious of his
physical appeal, flexing "his muscles" for Isherwood's
admiration (p. 112). He too enjoys romantic self-
dramatization. The Gothic strain in his character appears
in his maudlin suicide attempt, his melodramatic fears of
insanity, and his story of The Hand which he recites for
"Christoph": "Otto's face had gone quite pale during this
recital and, for a moment, a really frightening expression
of fear had passed over his features. He was tragic now:
his little eyes bright with tears: 'One day I shall see
the Hand again. And then I shall die'" (p. 113). His
melodramatic fantasies reveal, as Alan Wilde has noted,
his decadent preoccupation with death. ^ Lack of civilized
mores has not made this "natural man" any healthier than
other characters. Instead, he shares in the death wish
that infects the over-civilized. His treatment of Peter
verges on the sadism, which, according to Freud, is a
visible sign of the death wish:® "Presently Otto got
Peter down on the ground and began twisting his arm:
'Have you had enough?' he kept asking. He grinned: at
that moment he was really hideous, positively deformed with
malice. I knew that Otto was glad to have me there, be
cause my presence was an extra humiliation for Peter" (p.
87) .
Arthur Norris is like Sally and Otto in his amorality
and affectation; the real Mr. Norris is never directly
visible. He is, at every moment, thoroughly sham,
his artificiality emphasized by his physical appearance—
his wig, make-up, perfumes, and finery, it is also
apparent in his language, characterized at all times by
euphemism, a "constitutional dislike for laying his cards
on the table" (MN, p. 127). Like Sally and Otto he is
an actor, but not a good one: "His voice rang false;
high-pitched in archly forced gaiety, it resembled
the voice of a character in a pre-war drawing-room comedy”
(p. 7) . His attempt to con the establishment is almost
betrayed by his nervous ineptness. Like Sally, another
refugee from the English upper class, Mr. Norris, in trying;
to survive, is hindered by his class background as Otto is
not. Norris is plagued by an unvoiced guilt which is most
obvious in his sexual masochism. Like Sally who is gulled
by those she would deceive, Norris is not the master-spy
he would like to be; he fools no one. While Sally's
exploits are comic, Norris's are immoral, even criminal:
political betrayal, personal disloyalty, swindling and
fraud. He refuses to be honest with Bradshaw, shrinking
"from the rough healthy modern catch as catch can of home-
truths and confessions" (p. 165). Mr. Norris, then, who
appeared at first to reject established values— a sort of
aesthete Robin Hood swindling the rich to aid the communist
party— is secretly in sympathy with the established world
whose ceremonies and circumlocutions hide the fundamental
hypocrisy which so angered Chalmers and Isherwood at Cam
bridge .
Arthur Norris is, in fact, a version of the Neurotic
Hero:
As a boy he was delicate and had never been sent
77
to school. An only son, he lived alone with his
widowed mother, whom he adored. Together they
studied literature and art; together they visited
Paris, Baden-Baden, Rome. . . . Lying ill in
rooms with a connecting door, they would ask for
their beds to be moved so that they could talk
without raising their voices. . . . Convalescent,
they were propelled side by side, in bath-chairs,
through the gardens of Lucerne, (p. 40)
He is reminescent of Leonard Merrows whose heart condition
kept him from public school and Philip Lindsay in All the
Conspirators. In all cases the smothering love of the
mother leaves the son a hypochondriac with an exaggerated
sense of self importance, totally unable to adjust to the
world where one works for one's livelihood and lives with
in bourgeois conventions. Unlike other Neurotic Heroes,
Mr. Norris possesses a saving streak of toughness. Since
civilization has rendered him unable to get along through
ordinary conformity, he becomes a criminal.
Set against the apparent free spirits are the victims
of civilization— Peter Wilkinson, Bernhard Landauer, and,
in Mr. Norris, Kuno Von Pregnitz, those whom Auden
calls "all . . . those whose death / Is necessary condi
tion of the season's putting forth" ("1929,” CSP, p. 34).
Otto and Peter are opposites in background and personality.
Isherwood devotes some time to a superbly comic rendition
of Peter's "expensive twisted upbringing" (GB, p. 83).
Peter, like Sally and Norris, is a rebel from the English
upper class; like Norris he is a version of the Neurotic
Hero, pampered and protected by his mother whom he hates,
subject to all kinds of psychosomatic illnesses. He
comes to Berlin, like Isherwood, to seek psychiatric help,
f
In contrast to the Nowaks' flat, in the Wilkinson house
hold "there was always too much to eat," and the family
"was slowly falling apart like something gone rotten"
(p. 80). Otto and Peter are repeatedly contrasted, in
games "it is Peter's will against Otto's body. Otto is
his whole body; Peter is only his head. Otto moves
fluidly, effortlessly; his gestures have the savage uncon
scious grace of an animal. Peter drives himself about,
lashing his stiff, ungraceful body with the whip of his
merciless will" (p. 78). That Peter is "only his head"
indicates the extent to which civilization has robbed him
of his instinctual life. Their relationship is a constant
struggle for domination: "[Peter] . . . wants to force
Otto into making a certain kind of submission to his will,
and this submission Otto refuses instinctively to make.
Otto is naturally and healthily selfish like an
animal. . . . Peter's selfishness is much less honest,
more civilized, more perverse" (pp. 87-88). The over
civilized are victims of their own desire for death; their
aggressive impulses, stifled by civilization, have been
turned upon themselves. Peter is reading Beyond the
Pleasure Principle, the work where Freud first proposed
the death wish as instinctual. Isherwood finds the note
from Otto hidden in its pages, a further suggestion that
the two apparently opposite character types are linked—
Otto shares Peter's neurosis.
Bernhard Landauer too is the end product of a doomed
civilization. The most intelligent and self-aware
character in the novel, he combines Jewish, English, and
perhaps even Prussian strains in his ancestry. More
articulate than Peter, he can perceive himself as "a quite
unnecessarily complicated piece of mechanism" (GB, p. 172)
He lives as a virtual recluse surrounded by rare books
and art objects. As if in rejection of the civilization
about to destroy him, he turns to the Orient (p. 170).
His interest in things Oriental is everywhere evidenced,
and he has become like the objects he treasures: "His
over-civilized, prim, finely drawn beaky profile gave
him something of the air of a bird in a piece of Chinese
embroidery. He was soft, negative, I thought, yet
curiously potent, with the static potency of a carved
ivory figure in a shrine" (p. 154). Appropriately, he
flees in fantasy to the oldest civilization in the world.
But he cannot escape what he is. The world-wide conflict
about to occur is played out in miniature within him.
Isherwood notes, "his face was masked with exhaustion:
the thought crossed my mind that he was perhaps suffering
from a fatal disease" (p. 155). That he is one of civi
lization's dead-ends without the will to live is implicit
in his pervasive feeling that he does not exist (p. 180).
He hardly tries to escape his fate and perishes like an
extinct life-form.
Kuno Von Pregnitz also is a member of a decaying
order about to be destroyed, the German aristocracy.
Like Peter he is a victim: at Olga's, Otto forces beer
down his throat, and the young men he invites to his house
mistreat him cruelly. When his government post bars him
from the society of young men, he is driven to fantasy:
"'I make up a story to myself that we are all living
on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. . . .' He
had acquired a small library of stories for boys . . .
which dealt with this particular kind of adventure" (MN,
p. 116). He dreams of greater freedom away from civi
lization, an escape fantasy Peter acts out by his
81
meeting with Otto on Reugen Island. Prohibited by social
mores from following his inclinations, he is an example of
the damage done to those who deviate from social norms.
He is harmed by society which, as Freud has said, requires
"that there shall be a single kind of sexual life for
everyone" and, disregarding "the dissimilarities . . . in
the sexual constitution of human beings . . . cuts off a
fair number of them from sexual enjoyment” (Civ, p. 51).
The two conflicting character types have their
counterparts in the German political dilemma. Norris pro
claims himself a communist sympathizer. But nothing could
be more incongruous than Mr. Norris on his way to give a
speech at a rally: "'Mine is a sensitive nature. . . . To
see me at my best, you must see me in my proper setting. A
good table. A good cellar. Art, Music. Beautiful things.
Charming and witty society. Then I begin to sparkle'"
(p. 46). The speech itself provides a comic contrast, as he
calls for an end to "'the futile chatter of diplomatists
and the strains of dance bands in luxurious hotels, where
the wives of armament manufacturers finger the pearls
which have been brought with the price of the blood of
innocent children'" (p. 51). Publically he condemns the
luxury he lauds in private. He plays the new role to the
hilt, insisting on beer instead of brandy in the celebra
tion after the speech. But he chokes on his beer (p. 52),
and his apologia to Bradshaw is suspect: "Class distinc
tions have never meant anything to me; and hatred of
tyranny is in my blood" (p. 53). On the contrary, class
distinctions are ever on his mind: he gargles every
morning to ward off the microbes of the proletariat (p.
98) .
His secretary Schmidt is, to all outward appearances,
his antithesis. While Norris's "delicate sensibilities"
make it "painful . . . to say certain things to certain
individuals," Schmidt is "quite prepared to say anything to
anybody" (p. 42). He is unsympathetic to the communist
cause, in seeking to carry on his master's criminal
activities rather than to overthrow the system and insti
tute a new egalitarian order, he is closer to the right
than the left wing. Schmidt is not as he appears the
antithesis of Norris but the reality beneath Norris's
veneer. Norris, a traitor to the communist party, sells
its secrets to the French police, allying himself with the
forces of repression he says he despises. Bradshaw men
tions him several times in a telling juxtaposition with
fascists: "People said that the Nazis would be in power by
Christmas. But the Christmas came and they were not.
Arthur sent me the compliments of the season on a post
card of the Eiffel Tower" (p. 86). When Bradshaw returns
from a short trip to England he finds "several Nazis in
their new SA uniforms, now no longer forbidden" (p. 89)
and Arthur Norris living at Frl. Schroeder's. Norris and
the uniformed Nazis enter Berlin at the same time. After
Norris flees Germany, his epistolary comments on the Nazi
take-over are outrageous: "’It makes me positively tremble
with indignation to think of the workers delivered over to
these men, who, whatever you may say, are nothing more or
less than criminals. . . . It is indeed tragic to see how,
even in these days, a clever and unscrupulous liar can
deceive millions'" (p. 189). That Norris too can deceive
crowds is apparent in the cheers that greet him at his
speech on the eve of the communist victory. Ironically,
Otto, the communist, makes him a legendary counterforce to
Hitler: "'He's working for us out there, making propaganda
and raising money; and one day, you'll see, he’ll come
back. Hitler and the rest of them will have to look out
for themselves'" (p. 184).
N e u r o t i c H e r o e s i n b o t h n o v e l s h a v e s t r o n g l e a n i n g s
to w a rd f a s c i s m . I n G ood b ye t o B e r l i n , t h e f i r s t N a z i,
Frl. Mayr, is introduced in the opening "Berlin Diary."
Her masculine unattractiveness is reinforced comically by
her militant chastity:
"1 suppose some of those managers must be
devils? (Have some more sausage, Fr. Mayr?) "
"(Thank you, Frl. Schroeder; just a little
morsel.) Yes, some of them . . . you wouldn't
believel But I could always take care of myself.
Even when I was quite a slip of a girl. ..."
The muscles of Frl. Mayr's nude fleshy arms
ripple unappetisingly. She sticks out her chin
(p. 9).
Her prudish rigidity masks a frustrated sexuality turned
vengeful and sadistic. She is gleeful when she hears Frl.
Glanterneck being beaten black and blue by a prospective
husband: she has, in fact, caused the uproar by writing
an anonymous letter. Though this incident is slapstick
comedy, it strikes a note which will become increasingly
serious: Fr. Glanterneck is Jewish and Frl. Mayr is an
"ardent Nazi" (p. 10).
A Nazi known only as the Doctor intrudes into the
hellish relationship of Peter and Otto. He approves of the
strong-willed Peter and calls Otto, the natural man, a
degenerate who should be confined to a labor camp (p. 89).
When Peter, Otto and Isherwood join a game with him, he
harps to the point of tedium on correct procedure and
adherence to rules, insisting repeatedly that "What people
need is discipline, self-control” (p. 87). Isherwood and
Peter are glad when the doctor leaves and they are
"free . . . to loll in the sun as unatheletically as we
wish” (p. 94).
Added to Frl. Mayr’s fierce chastity, a characteriza
tion of Nazism begins to emerge: it is identified with
athleticism and, more serious still, it is repressive of
natural instincts, representing the same rigid discipline
which Isherwood disliked in school and which occasioned the
fantasy of The Other Town. Otto in his naturalness, how
ever flawed and unprincipled, is preferable— like Dock, an
attractive symbol of rebellion against authority.
Bernhard Landauer tells Isherwood: "'I believe in
discipline for myself. . . . I . . . must have certain
standards which I obey and without which I am quite lost'"
(p. 160). in the next breath he links this need for
discipline to his German heritage: "'You, Christopher,
with your centuries of Anglo-Saxon freedom behind you . . .
cannot understand that we . . . need the stiffness of a
uniform to keep us standing upright'" (p. 160). His
reliance on discipline is reminiscent of the Nazi doctor.
As a German he becomes paradoxically a living symbol of
the German need for Nazi discipline, while as a Jewish
merchant he will be one of Hitler’s victims. Bernhard's
priestlike devotion to his work masks a guilt deeper than
that of wealth. Does he sense within himself the latent
sensuality and self-indulgence of an Otto Nowak or a Sally
Bowles? We are told only that in his youth he wanted to be
a sculptor, it is as if by discipline he wills away all
irrational impulses as the Nazi doctor recommended the
banishing of Otto, the natural and anarchic man, to a
concentration camp, and as Mr. Norris derived sexual
satisfaction from the "discipline" of Anni's whip. Appro
priately, it is the disciplined Nazis, Bernhard's own
innate rigidity turned outward, who destroy him. Bernhard
Landauer represents the dangers of rigid discipline as a
method of dealing with instincts and emotions, implicit
in his destruction is a plea for flexibility, for rebellion
against habit and convention, for the honoring of uncon
scious impulses.
Like the Neurotic Heroes, the demi-mondains have their
political counterparts. Otto Nowak is seen in brief but
vivid contrast to his serious, responsible brother Lothair,
a staunch Nazi. When Otto exclaims, "'What we want is a
good Communist Revolution,'" Mrs. Nowak counters: "'The
communists are all good-for-nothing lazybones like you,
87
who've never done an honest day's work in their lives'"
(p. 109), a stereotype examined and substantiated toward
the end of the novel, isherwood describes Rudi, a young
communist who shares romantic illusions worthy of a Sally
or an Otto: "He was dressed in a Russian blouse, leather
shorts and despatch-rider's boots, and he strode up to our
table with all the heroic mannerisms of a messenger who
returns successful from a desperate mission. He had,
however, no message of any kind to deliver" (p. 194). The
childish rituals that structure Rudi's club (p. 198) reveal
the inadequacies of these young communists to counter the
growing power of the Nazis. Like Rudi, communism has "no
message of any kind" to deliver to the German people for
Rudi and his games contrast with increasingly brutal scenes
of Nazi terrorism. The similarity between Nazis and
communists is apparent in the communists' attention to
ritualized discipline, to denial of instincts: "There
were half-a dozen other boys in the room with us: all of
them in a state of heroic semi-nudity, wearing the shortest
of shorts and the thinnest of shirts . . . although the
weather is so cold" (p. 198). Further, Rudi hates women:
"'Women are no good. . . . They spoil everything. Men
understand each other much better when they're alone to-
gether. Uncle peter (that's our Scoutmaster) says women
should stay at home and mend socks. That's all they're
fit fori'" (p. 195). A similar attitude is implicit in
Bernhard's asexual isolation, and explicit in Peter's
violent jealousy over Otto's girlfriends. Uncle Peter's
attitude echoes the Nazi belief that women should be con
fined to home and children. The only organized remedy to
Q
the Nazis is, then, as rigidly sterile as fascism itself.
Further description links both organizations with the
forces of authority isherwood came to Berlin to escape. He
has described schoolboy games at Rudi's clubhouse; and a
Nazi demonstration is "like a naughty schoolboy's game"
(p. 203). He depicts Berlin newspapers in identical terms:
"The newspapers are becoming more and more like copies of
a school magazine. There is nothing in them but new rules,
new punishments, and lists of people who have been 'kept
in'" (p. 203). He implies that the Nazis too act out
fantasies of their own.
In L io n s a n d Sh adow s I sh e r w o o d r e v e a l e d how h e h i d i n
b o o k s h o p s and r e a d b o y s ' a d v e n t u r e s t o r i e s , c a m o u f la g in g
h i s s e n s e o f in a d e q u a c y ; i n f a n t a s i e s h e r e p r e s s e d h i s
h o m o s e x u a l f e e l i n g s a n d p a s s e d t h e T e s t . T he c o n f l i c t
b e tw e e n h i s h o m o s e x u a lit y an d p r o h i b i t i v e s o c i a l dem an ds
89
made, he said, people like him vulnerable to fascist
dictators (L&S, p. 78). In The Berlin Stories we see
examples of this vulnerability in the fates of Rudi and
Kuno.
Kuno's desert island fantasy is similar to Rudi's
communist clubhouse. Kuno tells Bradshaw that the young
Nazi Piet, another believer in ritual and discipline,
should be one of the boys on the island. Society permits
Kuno no outlet for his sexuality but the secret forbidden
encounters which, because of his government post, make him
a prime target for blackmail. He is trapped on one side
by Mr. Norris selling him to the French police and on the
other by Schmidt's blackmail attempt; once again Norris
and Schmidt function as two parts of a whole. Like the
fascist dictators mentioned in Lions and Shadows, they
play upon the Kuno's "homosexual romanticism" (L&S, p. 78)
which they too use for their own sinister purposes.
As Isherwood takes his last morning walk through
Berlin he thinks fleetingly of Rudi: "... poor Rudi,
in his absurd Russian blouse. Rudi's make-believe, story
book game has become earnest; the Nazis will play it
with him . . . they'll take him on trust for what he
pretended to be" (GB, p. 207). Rudi, the political
90
counterpart of the demi-mondains who also play out make-
believe rebellions, sublimates his homosexuality in a
fantasy world of male camaraderie. Fantasy is an inade
quate escape from the repressive civilization that brings
Rudi and Kuno to their deaths.
The dangers of fantasy are reinforced in Mr. Norris by
William Bradshaw himself. Lions and Shadows ends on a
train to Berlin, forming a link to Mr. Norris which begins
with Bradshaw on the same train. It is ironic that the
narrator— in search of a wise father in Lions and Shadows—
instead encounters Arthur Norris. Bradshaw draws upon
school experience for metaphor, describing Norris' eyes as
"the eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking
one of the rules" (p. 1) . Bradshaw has the same fascina
tion with rule-breakers that Isherwood first manifested in
his friendship with the irrepressible Dock.
We first see Norris in a delicate situation, attempt
ing to re-enter Germany. Like Holmes, Norris is first
described as an actor, though unlike Holmes he is not a
good one. With his many masquerades he is a sort of inept
Anti-Heroic-Hero, and a key motif in the novel is Brad
shaw' s attempt to elevate him to this stature. Though
Bayer and the French police see through Norris, he is able
91
to deceive Bradshaw who, from the outset, is intrigued by
Norris' guilty air, and embarks upon a precarious course of
attempting to second-guess him. In this first encounter,
he is quick— too quick— to assume that he has "arrived at a
satisfactory explanation of . . . [Norris's] behaviour"
(p. 4). His complacent confidence that he has in a flash
figured Norris out is important for it will characterize
their relationship throughout the novel, a constant game
where Bradshaw attempts to force Norris to some sort of
candour and Norris holds up another mask.
Three people warn Bradshaw against Norris. Helen
Pratt tells him, "if you take my advice, Bill . . . you
won't trust that man an inch" (p. 34). She shrewdly
appraises Bradshaw's character: "'You're soft, like most
men. You make up romances about people instead of seeing
them as they are'" (p. 34). Fritz Wendell gives him a
second, more serious, warning; '"we've got other people to
consider besides ourselves, haven't we? Suppose Norris
gets hold of some kid and plucks him of his last cent?'"
( p . 36). T h e c o n s e q u e n c e s o f B r a d s h a w 's f r i e n d s h i p w it h
N o r r i s w i l l b e w o r s e t h a n r o b b e r y . B u t B r a d sh a w ’ s r e p l y i s
a c o l d , s a r c a s t i c "How d r e a d f u l t h a t w o u ld b e , " a n d t h e y
p a r t " p l e a s a n t l y " ( p . 36).
92
His determination to champion Norris causes him some
anxiety, for, looking back, he must admit that Helen was
right :
Stage by stage I was building up a romantic back
ground for Arthur, and was jealous lest it should
be upset. Certainly, I rather enjoyed playing
with the idea that he was, in fact, a dangerous
criminal; but I am sure that I never seriously
believed in it for a moment. . . . And if . . .
1 sometimes referred to him as "a most amazing old
crook," I only meant by this that I wanted to
imagine him as a glorified being; audacious and
self-reliant, reckless and calm. All of which, in
reality, he only too painfully and obviously
wasn't.(p. 36)
Although the voice is named William Bradshaw, the tone and
content are Isherwood*s, the predilection for the sinister
mocked by an older self. Isherwood describes his attitude
toward his Berlin experience much later as like a child's
dream of the jungles "he hopes to meet tigers and pythons
there, but doesn't expect them to hurt him" (Exh, p. 86),
reflecting his counterpart's sentiment that although he
enjoyed the idea that Norris might be a "dangerous
criminal," he had "never seriously considered it for a
moment." Discernible here also is the need for a substi
tute father: Bradshaw plainly wants to put Norris on the
pedestal of the Anti-Heroic-Hero, "a glorified being,
audacious and self-reliant, reckless and calm" (p. 36).
Norris and Bradshaw share many affinities. When
Norris theorizes that the richer members of society "should
contribute to the upkeep" of people like himself, he turns
to Bradshaw for approval, and Bradshaw agrees, "Not being
one of the richer members . . . yes" (p. 39). As in his
conversation with Fritz Wendell, Bradshaw reveals again a
chilling amorality: as long as Norris's swindling doesn't
involve him, he approves— with considerable amusement.
Norris and Bradshaw are fellow travelers, refugees from
the middle class who abandon bourgeois morality as well.
Of the same class and secretly of much the same temperament
as Norris, Bradshaw's own delicacy balks at any overt
representation of the nature of Norris's activities. His
violent dislike of Schmidt as well as his anger at the
friends who warn him away signal his refusal to confront
Norris's criminality. He rejects and despises what he
doesn't want to see, like Norris, preferring "the
sophisticated guessing game" (p. 121), the genteel world
of masks and appearances.
The rally gives Bradshaw cause for introspection as he
watches the Berlin workers applaud Bayers "Their passion,
their strength of purpose elated me. I stood outside it.
. .. I just sat there, a half-hearted renegade from my
own class, my feelings muddled by anarchism talked at
Cambridge, by slogans from the confirmation service, by
the tunes the band played when my father's regiment marched
to the railway station, seventeen years ago" {pp. 48-49).
This is like the narrative voice of Lions and Shadows,
ambivalent, torn between rebellion and conformity, and
here in the midst of rebellion unable to break with the
past. Outward gestures mean little; the problem is within
the narrator. Here his memories are vivid and confusing,
and he remains, as Isherwood at the General Strike,
incapable of commitment.
Just before the passage quoted above, Bradshaw de
scribes the party chief Ludwig Bayer: "His gestures were
slight but astonishingly forceful. At moments it seemed
as if the giant energy stored up in his short, stocky
frame would have flung him bodily from the platform, like
an over-powerful motor-bicycle" (p. 48). Bayer's strength
and commitment contrast to the narrator's lack of these
qualities. As if to emphasize the contrast, the familiar
masculinity emblem, the motor-bicycle, reappears. It is
Bayer and not Norris who is the ideal father. Engaged in
the overthrow of the establishment, he is a variation of
the Anti-Heroic-Hero. His skill and stature intimidate
95
Bradshaw. When he brings Bayer the manuscript he has
translated, he is "humiliated, " feeling that Bayer does
not take him seriously and has given him the manuscript
"like a toy to play with, hoping, no doubt, to be rid of my
tiresome, useless enthusiasm” (p. 66). The toy simile
implies the nature of their relationship. Like a good
father anxious to protect his son, Bayer explicitly warns
Norris not to "entangle this young Mr. Bradshaw" in his
"distress" (p. 65).
Although Bradshaw is confident that Norris will "care
fully" avoid involving him "in possible . . . unpleasant
ness with the authorities" (p. 80), when the time is right,
Norris does not hesitate to use him. At the ski lodge,
Bradshaw, unwittingly aiding Norris in his victimization
of Kuno, is again blind to reality. Attempting to spot
"Margot, " he concentrates on a personage who could have
come from a Mortmere story: "About his whole appearance
there was some thing indescribably unpleasant and sinister.
I felt a curious thrill pass through my nervous sys
tem. . . . I was as certain of his identity as if I had
known him for years" (p. 144). He is as wrong here as he
has been about Arthur Norris, for the man with the sinister
air is not Margot. The wise father Bayer brings Bradshaw
96
knowledge of his distorted vision and he is once again
humiliated. Bayer leaves him with a gentle warnings "*1
think that now you will be more careful with whom you make
a friend'" (p. 158).
In the ensuing confrontation with Arthur, he realizes
at last that they do not hold the same values: Norris's
world is one of dog-eat-dog with no place for personal
loyalty. There can be no real communication between them:
"The moment of frankness, which might have redeemed so
much, had been elegantly avoided. Arthur's orientally
sensitive spirit shrank from the rough, healthy, modern
catch-as-catch-can of home-truths and confessions. . .
Here we were, as so often before, at the edge of that deli
cate, almost invisible line which divided our two worlds.
We should never cross it now" (p. 165). The values Isher
wood learned from Weston, Lane, and Layard now make
themselves felt in Bradshaw's evaluation of Norris, inter
personal honesty may be "rough," but it is both "healthy"
and "modern." Arthur in contrast can only rely on a polite
facade: "We drank ceremoniously, touching glasses. Arthur
smacked his lips with unconcealed satisfaction. He
appeared to imagine that something had been symbolized: a
reconciliation, or at any rate, a truce. But no, I
97
c o u l d n ' t f e e l t h i s . The u g l y , d i r t y f a c t w a s s t i l l t h e r e ,
r i g h t u n d e r o u r n o s e s , a n d n o am ou nt o f b r a n d y c o u ld w a sh
i t aw ay" ( p . 165). B ra d sh a w , who h a s , a l b e i t u n w i t t i n g l y ,
a id e d N o r r is i n h i s s c h e m e s , now s u n d e r s t h e l i n k b e tw e e n
th em ( s i g n a l l e d t h r o u g h o u t t h e n o v e l b y t h e r e c u r r i n g
p h r a s e " in y o u r p l a c e I w o u ld h a v e d o n e t h e s a m e " ). Un
l i k e N o r r is who p r e f e r s n e v e r t o lo o k b a c k on h i s p a s t ,
B ra d sh a w o p t s f o r f r a n k n e s s . He w i l l n o lo n g e r h i d e t h e
f a c t s w i t h c e r e m o n y .
The process of finding out Norris's game has been for
Bradshaw not only a course in self-knowledge but also a
process of further separating himself from the world of his
ancestors, the pre-war generations which have brought
things to their present state of chaos in Europe. He still
feels a great deal of ambivalence toward Norris, and
several times questions his new values: “I blushed. It
was astonishing what a cad he could make me feel. Hadn't
I, after all, misunderstood him? . . . Hadn't I, in some
obscure way, behaved very badly?" (p. 177) . The older
generation still exerts a considerable amount of influence
over the narrator. As he leaves Berlin, Norris is fully
reinstated in his role as lovable rogue: "He was out
rageous, grotesque, entirely without shame. . . . At that
98
moment, had he demanded it, I'd have sworn that two and two;
make five" (p. 178). In contrast is the grim plain
clothesman who has been following them, who does not even
smile at Bradshaw's greeting (p. 178). Arthur Norris is at
least preferable to the humorless forces of authority.
The narrator of Mr. Norris has learned that schoolboy
fantasies of evil are no match for the reality. He is able
to resist the overtly unconventional inducements of Kuno
and Olga (p. 84, p. 108) but falls prey to Norris's decep
tive charm. The truly sinister exists in The Other Town
not in variations of sexual behavior but in the blatant
disregard for human life signalled in Norris's willingness
to betray his employee Schmidt, Kuno Von Pregnitz, the
communist party, and an innocent young man who admires him.
That one cannot simply observe evil without somehow
partaking in it is explicit in Bradshaw's increasing
involvement in Norris's schemes. The consequences of
seeing life in terms of Mortmere is the death of at least
one human being for if Bradshaw had not been gulled by
Norris, Kuno would not have been forced into selling
secrets to the French police.
Years later in castigating the "heartlessness" of
William Bradshaw, Isherwood wrote that his increasing
awareness of the dangers of superimposing "childish fan
tasies" over reality rendered "my second book about
Berlin . . . at least somewhat better than my first" (Exh,
p. 87). In Goodbye to Berlin, he names his narrator
"Christopher Isherwood" and in a preface to The Berlin
Stories declares the virtual identity of the two narra
tors.'*'® "Christopher Isherwood" differs from "William
Bradshaw" in a greater detachment, as if his complicity in
Norris's doings had made him determined to avoid further
participation. Though such withdrawal proves as deadly as
active involvement, he is at least no longer the passive
tool of his friends.
Although Chris and Sally's relationship is defined by
them both as non-sexual, tension between them occurs at
several significant points. When Sally is involved with
Klaus, Isherwood reports that "Klaus and I were a little
shy of each other. When we happened to meet on the stairs,
we bowed coldly, like enemies" (p. 38). Sally, who claims
Klaus is primitive (p. 39), turns on "Chris" with a subtle
vengeance: "'Of course, Chris, I don't suppose you really
understand. . . . It's awfully hard to explain. . . .'
Sally's tone was slightly defiant" (p. 37). Until her
abortion, they are constantly together in a sort of pseudo-
marriage. E v e r y t h i n g described by "Chris" is in terms of
"we." And Sally now includes him in her copious fantasies
"I suppose we shall look back on this time when we're
driving around in our Mercedes" (p. 44). When they meet
the wandering American, Clive, isherwood is characteristi
cally suspicious: "I thought I could detect odd sly
flashes of sarcasm. What did he really think of us?" (p.
46). Clive is indeed too good to be true, Sally's fan
tasies in the flesh. No matter with what indulgent
laughter Isherwood has reported Sally's childlike dreams,
it becomes increasingly clear that he has been drawn into
them:
I b e g a n s e r i o u s l y t o b e l i e v e t h a t h e m ea n t t o
d o i t . W ith a m ere g e s t u r e o f h i s w e a l t h , h e
c o u ld a l t e r t h e w h o le c o u r s e o f o u r l i v e s .
What would become of us? Once started, we
should never go back. . . . Sally, of course,
he would marry. I should occupy an ill-defined
position: a kind of private secretary without
duties.(p. 48)
Such removal from reality into fantasy becomes frightening
Their dreams are about to be realized, but Isherwood
speculates: "Perhaps in the Middle Ages people felt like
this, when they believed themselves to have sold their
souls to the Devil. It was a curious, exhilarating, not
unpleasant sensation: but at the same time, I felt
slightly scared. Yes, I said to myself, I've done it, now.
I am lost" (p. 49). The acting out of this fantasy, while
exciting, is clearly terrifying. Here for Isherwood it
suggests a certain loss of an already tenuous sense of
identity, his "position" in the future Sally-clive house
hold admittedly "ill-defined."
When Clive departs suddenly leaving only a note— the
first in a series of abrupt desertions or departures in the
novel— Chris feels relief and a certain sympathy: "I
imagined him leaving every new town and every new set of
acquaintances in much the same sort of way. I sympathized
with him a good deal" (p. 50). Isherwood creates a brief
fantasy about Clive, an embodiment of the "boundless dreams
of travel" reported in his autobiography. That he envies
Clive's non-involvement suggests that, in spite of his
camera persona, he is as vulnerable to domination in Berlin
as he was in England.
When Sally has her abortion, he again plays his
pseudo-lover role, protective, jealous of the doctor who
pinches her arm. Sally in turn has told the nurse that
Chris is the father (p. 54). As in her affair with Klaus,
just after her abortion there is an inexplicable tension
between them. She tells him, "'if you were to go out into
102
the street now and be run over by a taxi. . . . I should
be sorry in a way, of course, but I shouldn't really care
a damn''' (p. 55). Both "primitive" experiences, so direct
ly involving her female sexuality, serve to repel him. He
reports that "partly as a result of this conversation" he
decides to leave Berlin (p. 56). Since meeting Sally, he
"had hardly written a word" (p. 56). Sally too is "rather
relieved" at this. It is as if they both perceive a
certain sterility in a relationship that, in spite of their
shared fantasies and mutual affection, has brought forth
neither child nor career for Sally, no novel from Chris.
They part, Sally declaring her intention to "probably stay
on here" (p. 56), one more in the series of false promises,
for when he gets back, she is gone.
When he sees her again, she attacks him. Centering
first on his literary abilities, she compares him unfavor
ably with another novelist friend (pp. 62-63) and finally
enters the familiar arena of sexuality: "'You must
remember I'm a woman, Christopher. All women like men to
be strong and decided and following out their careers. A
woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak
side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can
respect. . . . If you even care for a woman, I don't
103 1
advise you to let her see that you've got no ambition.
Otherwise she'll get to despise you'" (p. 63). She has
unwittingly stumbled across his worst fears, doing away
with Isherwood the Artist in one blow and with the next
subjecting him to the Test of his manhood which in her eyes
he has failed. It is no wonder that Chris, angry and
ashamed, speculates with most non-camera-like subjectivity:
what an utter little bitch she is. I'd flattered
myself that she was fond of me. . . . I was
furious with her; nothing would have pleased me
more . . . than to see her soundly whipped. . . .
It was the cheapest, most childish kind of
wounded vanity. Not that I cared a curse what
she thought of my article— well, just a little,
perhaps, but only a very little; . . . it was
her criticism of myself. The awful sexual flair
women have for taking the stuffing out of a man.
(pp. 64-65)
Isherwood the Artist is only a mask for Isherwood the man,
and Sally becomes explicit representative of Woman, like
Helen Pratt in Mr. Norris or Polly East in Lions and
Shadows, possessing the dangerous power of virtual castra
tion.***' His relationship with her has made him part of
those he wanted to observe: "I only knew that I'd been
somehow made to feel a sham. Wasn't I a bit of a sham any
way . . . with my arty a talk to lady pupils and my newly
acquired parlour-socialism?1 ' (p. 65) . But he ends his
tirade wishing only that he could have been a more con
104 ;
vincing sham and impressed her with his maturity. Here as
in Lions and Shadows the wish to rebel against the sham in
society conflicts with the wish to beat society at its own
game and win its approval, becoming a Man— "convincing,
superior, fatherly, mature" (p. 65).
Through the swindler "George P. Sandars," Isherwood
has his opportunity for revenge, though he tells us coyly
that he doesn't know why he did it (p. 67). Eager to
accept any walking embodiment of her fantasies, Sally is as
vulnerable to this con-man as she had been to Klaus and
Clive. Her comic humiliation at "Sandars1" hands evens
the score. Chris, who cannot fulfill any of her fantasies,
proves to her again that her dreams are futile and poten
tially dangerous. Though they are temporarily reconciled
and laugh about the past, the relationship apparently
cannot withstand such mutual humiliation; they never see
each other again.
Isherwood is never again as vulnerable to anyone as to
Sally Bowles. In "On Ruegen Island" his relation to Otto
and Peter involves a constant struggle not to be drawn in.
Though he keeps Peter company while Otto is out dancing,
he angrily refuses to discuss their relationship {p. 96).
His presence can often halt an argument, and he feels
"selfish" for his many discreet withdrawals. Since he has
gone to considerable lengths to describe the precise
quality of selfishness displayed by both Peter and Otto,
his own selfishness links him again to the strange crea
tures he observes. The episode ends with Otto's leaving
Peter suddenly in the manner of Clive and "George P.
Sandars" but concealing a note for Isherwood. The defeat
ed Truly Weak Man, Peter returns to England never sugges
ting that Isherwood write him, and Isherwood follows Otto
to Berlin. The last line of the episode, "And now even
Otto's dancing partners have stopped lingering sadly in
the twilight under my window" (p. 100), recalls the window
at Prl. Schroeder's under which young men whistle for their
girls, reminding us again of his exclusion from human
rela tionships.
Otto's family, the Nowaks live in poverty. Isherwood
himself is both intrigued and repelled by the squalor, his
language tinged with a thrilled horror recalling strolls
through The Other Town. The courtyard is "clammy and dark,
although the sun was shining. . . . Broken buckets,
wheels off prams and bits of bicycle tyre lay scattered
about like things which have fallen down a well" (p. 104).
Later it is "a murky pit where the fog . . . never lifted"
and strolling singers, a father and his little girls sing
"with the energy of fiends," "like demons of the air re
joicing in the frustration of mankind" (p. 116). As he
lies in bed, the sounds around him become increasingly
ominous. At first they are close-by and identifiable but,
as they become less distinguishable, the atmosphere is
charged with terror: "Lothair's bed creaked as he turned
over muttering something indistinct and threatening in his
sleep. Somewhere on the other side of the court a baby
began to scream, a window was slammed to, something very
heavy, deep in the innermost recesses of the building,
thudded dully against a wall. It was alien and mysterious
and uncanny, like sleeping out in the jungle alone" (p.
121). The experience of tenament life is here transmuted
into an adventure worthy of Mortmere. The narrator is
again isolated from his environment which has become
mysterious, primitive— a jungle— and, hence, frightening to
his civilized mentality. Much as he might envy Otto's
animality, he can in no way imitate it. The young man who
wished to be free of civilization's constraints now finds
that, as Freud says, civilization exists to keep men safe
from the hostility of nature and other men {Civ, pp. 33ff).
I n f i t t i n g c o m ic c o n t r a s t t o t h e s q u a l o r o f t h e Nowak
flat is the novel he is writing there? "it was about a
family who lived in a large country house on unearned in
comes and were very unhappy. They spent their time
explaining to each other why they couldn't enjoy their
lives; and some of the reasons— though I say it myself—
were most ingenious" (pp. 121-122). The family he writes
of is the antithesis of the Nowaks, a family of the sort
that breeds Neurotic Heroes like Peter, Kuno, and Norris.
However, neither Isherwood's created family nor the Nowaks
are content. The latter is oppressed by poverty in a
time and place where social structures have all but
collapsed and can no longer shield them from natural forces
like weather or disease. The former reaps the benefits of
civilization but its detriments as well. In return for
material comfort, they sacrifice instinctual life. That
their rational faculties— "the dead end of life" (CSP, p.
46)— are no help to them is apparent when their "ingenious"
explanations for their unhappiness do not effect that
condition and, for all their analytic powers, they remain
miserable. Isherwood finds himself "taking less and
less interest in my unhappy family: the atmosphere of
the Nowak household was not very inspiring" (p. 122) . The
probing of neurosis becomes meaningless away from civiliza
tion. Confronted with the ugliness of the Nowak's lives,
Isherwood is less inclined to excoriate the over-civilized.
He leaves the Nowaks because they are breaking down his
"powers of resistance.” He is worried "about an unpleasant
mysterious rashs it might be due to Frau Nowak's cooking,
or worse" (p. 125). This reaction to his environment
recalls not only Peter Wilkinson's hypochondria but Isher
wood 's own invalid-syndrome in the autobiography. Having
escaped the over-civilized world, he is now quite
literally contaminated by his primitive surroundings. He
departs.
German civilization is diseased to the point of
disintegration. Otto's mother Fr. Nowak is also contami
nated, a victim of tuberculosis. Elements of subjective
horror intrude when Isherwood visits her in a sanatorium.
Again unable to deal with the ghastliness of his surround
ings, he withdraws: the horror is "without impact"; his
senses are "muffled, insulated, functioning as if in a
vivid dream" (p. 134). Besides the illness of the inmates,
what adds to the nightmare is their femaleness: "Women
being shut up together in this room had bred an atmosphere
which was faintly nauseating, like soiled linen locked in a
cupboard without air" (p. 135) . The experience intensifies
Isherwood*8 fear of contamination and engulfment to the
p o i n t o f n ig h t m a r e . E rn a , o n e o f t h e p a t i e n t s , h a s e y e s
w h ic h " f a s t e n " o n t o h i s " l i k e h o o k s , " and h e im a g in e s , "I
felt them pulling me down" (p. 136) . When she draws him to
her, his reaction is typical and revealing: "My mouth
p r e s s e d a g a i n s t E r n a ' s h o t , d r y l i p s . I h a d n o p a r t i c u l a r
sensation of contact: all this was part of the long,
r a t h e r s i n i s t e r s y m b o lic d ream w h ic h I seem ed t o h a v e b e e n
d r e a m in g t h r o u g h o u t t h e d a y " (p. 137). H is f e a r s o f t h e
possibility of disease and death evident in previous
musings and of the engulfing power of the feminine (what
12
he will call in a later novel Woman the Enemy ), all in
volve a loss of ego, a surrender to what is to him a
nightmarish and overpowering force. His only possible
escape is the isolation of non-involvement. As he leaves
the weeping ghostly inmates he feels "an absurd pang of
fear that they were going to attack us— a gang of terrify
ingly soft muffled shapes— clawing us from our seats,
dragging us hungrily down, in dead silence" (p. 139).
Again he fears loss of self, engulfment by those he
observes. That these pathetic dying women symbolize inner
fears is suggested when they draw back and he sees them for
what they are, "harmless, after all, as mere ghosts" (p.
n o i
139) .
The refreshing comedy of Natalia Landauer provides
momentary respite. Here at last perhaps is someone
admirable. Her home with its "cheerful sitting room" is a
striking contrast to the Nowaks'. She is forthright in
declaring her love for her family. Unlike the other young
women in the novel, she is aware of political realities,
and her view of sex and marriage, if idealistic, is a
pleasant contrast to the crass materialism of such as
Sally: ’ "If I want . . . I shall go away with the man I
love and I shall live with him; even if we cannot become
married it will not matter. Then I must be able to do all
for myself, you understand'" (pp. 145-146). In her rela
tionship with Isherwood, however, Natalia is remote and
stand-offish. She avoids "all contacts, direct and
indirect." She won't stand and talk to him "on her own
doorstep"; she prefers to have a table between them if they
sit down (p. 146). She will not share his spoon, declining
"even this indirect contact" with his mouth (p. 147) . In
spite of his chagrin, he keeps on seeing her. Like Sally
and unlike Erna, Natalia is "safe." She poses no threat of
engulfment, and in her avoidance of intimacy she is like
Isherwood himself who can now allow himself to pout at such
Ill
rejection.
Again like Sally, Natalia eventually oversteps her
bounds and, in much the same way, hits him where he is
vulnerable. She tactlessly blunders into the realm of
Isherwood the Artist in a comic scene played out in front
of her whole family. She forces him in a mood Isherwood
terms "really devilish malice" to tell her family about
the failure of his first novel (p. 152). With such bully
ing, the relationship has gotten out of hand. The Artist
persona is Isherwood' s chief way of circumventing the
Test, of proving himself to the world and compensating for
feelings of inadequacy. Isherwood leaves Natalia for the
more somber encounter with her uncle Bernhard, returning
only for one last scene in which he strikes back by intro
ducing her to Sally. Again he claims innocence— he has,
after all, warned Sally to be careful in front of
Natalia— but it is hard to believe his shock when Sally
gushes, "I've been making love to a dirty old Jew producer.
I'm hoping he'll give me a contract" (p. 161). Though he
claims to be disgusted with them both (p. 162), it is
entirely in keeping with his character that he leaves the
restaurant not with Natalia but with Sally. He masks the
choice in passivity: "In my cowardly way, I glanced at
112 I
Natalia, trying to convey my helplessness. This I knew
only too well, was going to be regarded as a test of my
loyalty— and already I had failed it" (p. 162). His choice
parallels his parting with Peter when he followed the
reprobate Otto back to Berlin or Bradshaw's preference of
Mr. Norris to the grim policeman. Here again, as always,
ambivalent, he throws in his lot with the demi-monde, the
amoral, which is, in the last analysis, the more flexible.
For Natalia's set ideas and cold prudish judgments are the
antithesis of what brought him to Berlin.
From this juncture he reports "a change in the temper
ature" of their friendship (p. 164). He is deliberately
unkind to her and his relationship with Natalia too sinks
into oblivion. When next they meet, briefly, at the family
party, she is in love. Having virtually brought the
friendship to an end, he can once again allow himself a
moment of self pity: Natalia is "always smiling, always
dreamily listening, but not to me" (p. 175). Unlike her
13
uncle, Natalia has a will to live. Her aversion to
Isherwood suggests she, too, sees in Isherwood a component
of her own personality, the rigidity which destroys Bern-
hard and against which she struggles by leaving Germany.
Appropriately, her lover is a doctor, one who can heal the
113
disease which, isherwood wrote, comes to "kill off" those
who offend against the life of the instincts (Lions and
Shadows, p. 300).
In her comic rigidity, Natalia paves the way for the
more serious presentation of her uncle Bernhard. Bern
hard's ironic detachment inspires in Isherwood both
admiration and a mild paranoia verging on anti-semitismi
"His gestures, offering me a glass of wine or a cigarette,
are clothed in the arrogant humility of the East. He is
not going to tell me what he is really thinking or feeling,
and he despises me because I do not know. . . . and
because I am not as he is, because I am the opposite of
this, and would gladly share my thoughts and sensations
with forty million people if they cared to read them, I
half admire Bernhard but also half dislike him" (pp. 158-
159). The narrator's description of himself as the open
honest individual ready to share his intimate thoughts
with millions is belied by the relationships described in
the stories, in which he seldom says what he really thinks
and never accepts closeness without embarrassment or fear,
and by the stories themselves. If they are to any extent
the opening of his heart, much craft has masked frankness,
as if candor were bad taste. Isherwood's conflict over
self-revelation is as ambivalent as his relationship with
Sally where he disliked her phoniness but when the chips
were down regretted that he could not match it. Here in
his "half admiration" for Bernhard, he partially regards
his own impulse toward confession, however hidden, as a
weakness. He happens also to be wrong in his analysis of
Bernhard who does eventually "open his heart." But Bern-
hard too must protect himself. He describes his confession
in terms of "an experiment," a gambit that enrages Isher
wood as only the unexpected sight of a mirror image can.
We remember equally cold if comic "experiments" Isherwood
performs— his deliberate introduction of Sally Bowles to a
con-man masquerading as a movie producer, his arranged
meeting between prudish Natalia and the promiscuous and
irrepressible Sally, both experiments having painful if
comic consequences. After his self-revelation, Bernhard
reacts to Isherwood with identical and perceptive hostil
ity: "'You are very polite, Christopher. You are always
very polite. But I can read quite clearly what you are
thinking. . . . You are a little shocked. One does not
speak of such things, you think. It disgusts your English
public school training, a little— this Jewish emotional
ism. ’" His introspective powers provide a temporary
115
resolution to the conflict: '"there is some quality in
you which attracts me and which I very much envy, and yet
this very quality of yours also arouses my antagonism.
Perhaps that is merely because I also am partly English
and you represent to me an aspect of my own character'"
(p. 172). Truly a mirror image, he shares Isherwood's
ambivalence, recognizing and despising their similarities.
After this thwarted attempt at communication, the
familiar drama plays itself out but in a graver mood. As
in the case of Sally, Peter, and Natalia, after confronta
tion comes deterioration. Bernhard and Isherwood somehow
fail to call each other. When they meet for the last time
they both know Bernhard is in danger. With characteristic
detachment and irony, they spar, and a Clive-like
situation ensues with Bernhard offering Christopher a trip
to China as his guest provided they leave that evening.
Isherwood, again dreading domination, remains aloof from
even joking acquiescence in this temptation, realizing
later that this was "Bernhard's last, most daring and most
cynical experiment." His offer was "perfectly serious"
(p. 182). He has allowed another relationship to lapse,
but here the consequences are far more deadly. He feels
a correspondingly more intense guilt, which he rapidly
116 ;
excuses: "I blame myself now— one always does blame one
self afterwards— for not having been more persistent. But
there was so much for me to do, so many pupils, so many
other people to see1 1 (p. 182) . On his way out of Germany
he hears the news of Bernhard's death.
Bernhard looked to Isherwood for aid, first asking
him to listen, then to escape with him. But isherwood, too
similar in temperament, was unable to respond, in an
effort to avoid identification or involvement with Bern-
hard, Isherwood has linked himself to the Germans who
passively acquiesce in Hitler's rise.
Isherwood has been offered two chances to escape
Germany neither of which have materialized; he must play
out the fantasy to the end. In Winter 1932-3, he concludes
his diary. Darkness and cold prevail: "To-night, for the
first time this winter, it is very cold. The dead cold
grips the town in utter silence" (p. 186). He describes
Berlin's two centers: "the cluster of expensive hotels,
✓
bars, cinemas, shops round the Memorial church, a sparkling
nucleus of light, like a sham diamond in the shabby twi
light of the town; and the self-conscious civic centre of
buildings round the Unter den Linden, carefully arranged"
(p. 186). He has depicted throughout two broad types of
.... 117
character, by his reaction to them evolving a morality he
gradually defines: the glamorous, attractively "naughty"
denizens of the demi-monde— Bobby, Frl. Kost, Sally,
Otto— and their rigid, disciplined antitheses— Frl. Mayr,
the doctor, Peter, Natalia, and Bernhard. Here these
extremes are embodied in architecture— the hotels, bars,
cinema, shops a "sparkling nucleus of light" but "like a
sham diamond in . . . shabby twilight" and "the carefully
arranged, self-conscious civic centre." The reason for
careful arrangement, massive solidity now becomes apparent:
the ostensibly substantial cathedral "betrays in its
architecture a flash of that hysteria which flickers always
behind every grave Prussian facade" (p. 187). The rigid
"self-conscious" solidity of German architecture signals
the over-civilized inflexibility of the Prussian character
which has been a defense against underlying "hysteria."
Hitler has come to power to direct that hysteria to
destructive ends and to repress any good that might come
from freed instincts. The demi-monde which permitted an
outlet for these instincts will be crushed by Nazi
rigidity, because the demi-monde does not represent
genuine liberation? dwelling in a "shabby twilight," it is
a desperate, decadent "sham diamond." The familiar note
118
heard so often in regard to character is struck now in
relation to the city itself. Like its inhabitants, it is
a sham. Isherwood reinforces the idea of deception as he
describes the appeal of the city to farm boys who are
driven by the cold into the city: "But the city which
glowed so brightly and invitingly in the night sky above
the plains, is cold and cruel and dead. Its warmth is an
illusion, a mirage of the winter desert. It will not re
ceive these boys. It has nothing to give." Isherwood,
another outsider, as driven to Berlin by emotional needs
as the boys by physical circumstances, has penetrated
Berlin's disguise.
The balance between civilization and instincts has
been fatally tipped. Instinctual man ran rampant as civi
lization deteriorated in the last years of the ineffectual
republic. Hitler's victory is the triumph of the forces
of repression; absolute evil is suggested by the Dantesgue
cold, the appropriate symbol for isolation and estrange
ment, the rigid, loveless discipline of absolute authority.
The novel has been an account of the forces that
helped Hitler into power. That it is the story of a
personal defeat as well is suggested in the first paragraph
of the Winter Berlin Diary, as Isherwood adds an explicit
identification of the city with himself: "Berlin is a
skeleton which aches in the cold: it is my own skeleton
aching. I feel in my bones the sharp ache of the frost in
the girders of the overhead railway, in the ironwork of
balconies, in bridges, tramlines, lamp-standards, latrines'
(p. 186). Coldness triumphs within the narrator as well.
Although through his camera persona he has been able to
expose sham, unmask Berlin, and achieve some knowledge of
his own limitations, he has not gained the object of the
journey which he set out upon at the end of Lions and
Shadows. His journey to The Other Town has not been a
liberation from the rigid conventions that bound him. It
has been a series of distanced photographs: he has con
sistently resisted the strong pull toward involvement in
the scenes he has witnessed, with the people he has known,
his camera persona, in the last analysis, a handy excuse.
The attractive Mortmere fantasy world has proved finally
too frightening. Like the Truly Weak Man, he has pre
ferred "to attempt the huge northern circuit, the
laborious terrible north-west passage, avoiding life, and
his end, if he does not turn back, is to be lost forever
in the blizzard and the ice" (L&S, p. 208). Rather than
remaining lost in the symbolic cold of the Berlin
w i n t e r , h e d o e s in d e e d t u r n b a c k . In t h e m id s t o f a l l t h e :
s o r r o w f o r h i s f r i e n d s , t h e ca m era t a k e s a s e l f - p o r t r a i t :
"I c a t c h s i g h t o f my f a c e i n t h e m ir r o r o f a sh o p a n d am
s h o c k e d t o s e e t h a t I am s m i l i n g . " He i s s u f f i c i e n t l y
i s o l a t e d fro m t h e d i s a s t e r t o s m i l e , s u f f i c i e n t l y u n aw are
o f h i m s e l f t o b e s h o c k e d a t h i s m ir r o r im a g e . L ik e B e r n -
h a r d who w ith d r a w s from r e a l i z a t i o n o f h i s g u i l t b y
d e n y in g h i s own e x i s t e n c e , t h e n a r r a t o r o f G oodb ye t o
B e r l i n s u n d e r s h i m s e l f fro m t h e p o s s i b i l i t y o f r e a l i z a t i o n ,
w i t h t h e l a s t l i n e o f t h e n o v e l c a s t i n g th e e x p e r i e n c e b a c k
i n t o t h e r e a lm o f f a n t a s y . The l a s t l i n e i s a d e n i a l :
"No. E v en now I c a n ’ t a l t o g e t h e r b e l i e v e t h a t
a n y o f t h i s h a s r e a l l y h a p p e n e d ."
Notes and References
^In "Going to Europe"— Symposium II, Encounter 20,
January 1963, 53.
Autobiography: I The Whispering Gallery (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1955), p. 176.
3Cyril Connolley, Enemies of Promise and Other Essays
(New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 20.
4Goodbye to Berlin, p. 1, in The Berlin Stories (New
York: New Directions, 1945). This edition contains both
Berlin novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to
Berlin. Hereafter I use the abbreviations MN and GB when
it is necessary to distinguish between them.
■'Preface to The Berlin Stories, p. iv.
^Preface to Mr. Norris and I by Gerald Hamilton, in
Exhumations: Stories, Articles. Verses (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1966), p. 87.
7Cf. Wilde, pp. 70-71.
^Beyond the Pleasure Principle: A Study of the Death
Instinct in Human Behavior, trans. James Strachey (New
York: Bantam Books, 1959), p. 95.
^In The Last of Mr. Norris a similarity between the
two opposing political groups is also suggested. Bayer
declares that "the Nazi of today" can easily become "the
communist of tomorrow" (p. 114). Unfortunately the
reverse is more the case. Anni, who applauds enthusiasti
cally at the communist rally, six months later leaves her
communist boyfriend for his Nazi rival.
l°"Note, " preceding Goodbye to Berlin in The Berlin
Stories (New York: New Directions, 1945).
^Isherwood portrays Helen Pratt as a teller of grim
truths. It is she who first warns him of Norris and
122
scornfully tells him of his propensity to romanticize.
Throughout she is harsh and unpleasant. That her blunt
truth-telling is meant to contrast to Norris's charming
lies is most apparent in the one encounter between them
when she ‘ "brushed aside all the little polished polite
nesses which shielded his timid soul" (p. 33). Bradshaw's
onw judgement of her is obvious toward the novel's end
where he depicts her as not much better than that of
Bayer's murderers in her disregard for human life (p. 180).
Single Man (New Yorks Simon & Schuster, 1964),
p. 96s "I am Woman. I am Bitch-Mother Nature. The Church
and the Law and the State exist to support me."
13Cf. Wilde, p. 76: "it is clear that she has turned
as surely toward life as Bernhard has toward death: her
study of art, her love . . . above all, in a book meta
phorically ridden with disease, the fact that she is to
marry a doctor— all point to her salvation at least."
III. Prater Violet: "Between the Needless Risk and
the Endless Safety"
Isherwood describes Prater Violet as a "portrait":
"a painting of somebody and everybody looks at it and says,
'yes, yes' and then you say, 'No, wait a minute, you think
you've looked at this picture, but you haven't. Allow me
to point out certain things about it.' And by successive
stages, the viewer is encouraged to look deeper and deeper
into the picture, and finally it looks completely different
to him."1 Prater Violet gradually reveals its portrait of
Friedrich Bergmann, much as The Last of Mr. Norris pro
gressively exposed Arthur Norris. Like the Berlin novels,
Prater Violet also reveals its narrator, as Isherwood him
self has said:
I'll tell you where Christopher Isherwood really
worked best in my opinion, is in my little Prater
Violet, because there he was up against a real
talker, a tremendous dynamic behaver. . . . because
Bergmann is such a dominating character it doesn't
matter that the narrator-observer . . . is not
allowed to emerge. I think a great and amusing
feature of the book is that right at the very end
you discover that Christopher had a life of his own
which he never even mentioned to Bergmann. ("An
Interview," 48-49)
The novel continues many now-familiar themes— the encounter
123
124
with the substitute father, the revolt against established
values which makes of the rebel an outcast at once trium
phantly smug and bitterly envious, the experience of
fantasy. The novel plays the fantasy world of the film
where a Viennese flowergirl falls in love with a Prince-
in-disguise against personal and political reality. In
Prater Violet Isherwood no longer proposes escape through
fantasy rebellion. He tests instead two other ways of
dealing with civilization's constraints— political action
and personal love.
Bergmann himself diagnoses Isherwood's dilemma as
that of the leftist intellectual caught between the "bour
geois dream of the mother" and "the paternal revolutionary
tradition." The conflict plays itself out in the novel.
Isherwood is first seen at home with his mother and
brother, back in his "safe London nursery life" (L&S, p.
307), where his family know how to placate him. He
is the spoiled child who must be approached "with extreme
tact."
Bergmann is another father-substitute who shatters
that safety. When the telephone malfunctions at his first
call and no one answers, Christopher has a sort of tantrum,
and Bergmann's tone of voice is, appropriately, "as if to a
125
3
child." Isherwood reacts to Bergmann as to Chalmers,
Weston, or Holmes, quickly picking up many of his manner
isms (p. 45) and comparing himself unfavorably to Bergmann
throughout the novel. When he finds he is unable to write
a single word of the script (p. 45) he is the petulant
child whom the fatherly Bergmann must cajole into working.
As in Lions and Shadows where he wished to define himself
apart from those who have influenced him, Isherwood here
struggles to maintain his independence against Bergmann*s
power as if he were secretly ashamed of his passivity. He
succeeds in keeping his personal life from Bergmann who
"seemed determined to possess" him "utterly" (p. 50): to
avoid one of Bergmann's "elaborate and perhaps disagreeably
personal interpretations" (p. 73), he does not tell him his
dream.
But, although Isherwood enjoys these small gestures of
rebellion against this powerful paternal figure, he cannot
cope with any sustained notion of his own independence.
Bergmann calls Isherwood his Virgil, his guide through the
inferno of the London film industry (p. 35), but Christopher
soon sees that Bergmann is the guide and he the tourist.
When the Austrian uprising incapacitates Bergmann, it is
Isherwood who must placate and console. Bergmann refuses
126 I
consolation: "You cannot know what it is like to be an
exile, a perpetual stranger" (p. 121). Isherwood, who
customarily sees himself as the outcast, cannot stand this
role-reversal for long, and can only admit Bergmann's need
of him in a manner disparaging to himself: "he needed my
presence, as a lonely man needs his dog." For Isherwood
deeply admires Bergmann. He constantly describes him as an
actor playing a part; in this and in his opposition to
established values he is another Anti-Heroic-Hero, that
idealized artist-father who masquerades his way through
life, defying the establishment, maintaining individuality,
and through his art winning society's approval. Bergmann
has already passed the Test of his integrity as an artist
described in Lions and Shadows (p. 97). He has passed all
other Tests as well: he is happily married; unlike Isher
wood, he is politically committed to the left. These
personal and political commitments are at first a striking
though unstated contrast to the narrator's notable lack.
Bergmann also sees Isherwood as symbolic of more than
himself: "'You are not married.' It sounded like an
accusation. . . . He was like a doctor who finds his most
pessimistic diagnosis is confirmed. 'You are a typical
mother's son. It is the English tragedy.' "I laughed.
'Quite a lot of Englishmen do get married, you know.1
"'They marry their mothers. It is a disaster. It will
lead to the destruction of Europe. . . . I have written
the first chapter of a novel about this. It is called The
Diary of an Etonian Oedipus'" (pp. 39-40). This recalls
Truly Weak Men like Arthur Norris and Peter Wilkinson,
the neurotic products of a decaying civilization. Domi
nated by yet in revolt from their indulgent mothers, they
feel a need for discipline which often finds expression in
fascism. Bergmann's prophesy that the English tragedy will
lead to Europe's destruction gains in significance as he
discusses another member of Isherwood's class, Ashmeade.
He finds Ashmeade's ever-present umbrella symbolic of
“British respectability, " all those traditions which seem
to protect the English from Hitler. When Hitler “declines
rudely to disappear,“ the umbrella will become a shield
against a “rain of bombs and blood" (p. 42). It will be,
of course, an inadequate shield against such a rain, but
the "Etonian Oedipus" won't know that until it is too late.
Awareness and involvement might have forestalled Hitler's
growing power; non-involvement will bring about destruc
tion.
In The Berlin Stories while attempting revolt against
"British respectability," Isherwood showed himself given to
the same lack of involvement Bergmann here finds typical
of Isherwood's class. Although he is the only character
who understands Bergmann*s reactions to political events,
he has much in common with Ashmeade. The glib columnist
Patterson proves Bergmann correct in his assessment of
English insularity: "'After all, Mr. Bergmann,' he said
defensively, with his silly, teasing, insensitive smile,
'you must remember, it isn't our affair. I mean, you
can't really expect people in England to care . . .'"
(p. 130). Isherwood is again caught between two sides:
"My only emotion, as always in such moments, was a weak
resentment against both sides; against Bergmann, against
Patterson, and against myself. 'Why can't they leave me
alone?' I resentfully exclaimed. But the 'I' that thought
this was both Patterson and Bergmann . . . islander and
Continental, it was divided and hated its division" (p.
131). He extends his dilemma beyond himself to analyze
his generation who have spread their feelings "over the
whole world." These feelings, consequently, are now
"spread very thin." Like Bradshaw at the communist rally,
Isherwood here simply does not care as much as he would
like to (p. 132). Again he equates himself with insular
129 j
Englishmen like Patterson and Ashmeade. Allegorizing the
film plot* Bergmann restates Isherwood's dilemma as "the
dilemma of the would-be revolutionary writer or artist,
all over Europe. . . . His economic background is bour
geois. He is accustomed to comfort . . . the care of a
devoted slave who is his mother and also his jailer" (p.
64). His relationship with the proletariat is only a
"flirtation" as he is often unable "to cut himself free,
sternly, from the bourgeois dream of the Mother, that
fatal and comforting dream" (p. 66). "The Great English
Tragedy" of "The Etonian Oedipus" is a problem facing all
of Europe, just as in Isherwood's Berlin the Truly Weak
Men were not all English. Corruption pervades the whole
civilized western world. The dilemma of the revolutionary
artist embodies Isherwood's personal conflict over
rebellion and loyalty, as Bergmann is aware: '"This
symbolic fable . . . represents your deepest fear, the
nightmare of your own class'" (p. 65). Isherwood's dream
recasts this "fable" in political terms with psychological
ramifications. A surreal muddle of communists and
fascists, the political surface is a thin facade concealing
personal truths. The evil characters are older women:
"The State Prosecutor was a hard-faced middle-aged blonde
130
woman. . . . She stood up, gripping one of the accused
men by his coat collar and marched him down the room
toward the judge's desk. As they advanced, she drew a
revolver and shot the communist in the back" (p. 71).
Another old lady "dressed in a kind of uniform ...
sniveling and cursing to herself" has shot off a Jew's
hands (p. 72). These evil women objectify the repressed
hostility felt toward the kind and placating mother seen
in the opening chapter, reinforcing Bergmann's description
of the mother who is both slave and jailer (p. 64).
Implicit again is the link between the over-civilized and
the fascists; in the dream older women— infantile symbols
of all-powerful authority— have extended their power to
the state as well. A group of young fascists "tired and
dispirited" (p. 72), themselves victims, ignore Isherwood.
He is neither threat nor enemy. Typically he does not
join the battle but flees to the British Embassy. Both
Bergmann's allegory and Isherwood's dream recall the
General Strike in Lions and Shadows. Isherwood's flight
from and return to "the bourgeois dream of the mother" was
prefigured earlier by the myth of the Northwest Passage.
B ergm ann e x p l a i n s I s h e r w o o d 's c o u n t e r - r e v o l u t i o n
a g a i n s t t h e v e r y f o r c e s h e o n c e e n d o r s e d : t h e " d e c la s s e d
intellectual . . . hates the paternal, revolutionary tra
dition, which reminds him of his duty as its son. . . .
He now prefers to join the ranks of the dilettant
nihilists, the bohemian outlaws who believe in nothing,
except their own ego, who exist only to kill, to torture,
to destroy, to make everyone as miserable as themselves"
(pp. 64-66). Isherwood earlier admitted he found movie
work difficult because he knew no speech but that of
"schoolboys and neurotic bohemians" (p. 46). The school
boys spoke in Lions and Shadows; the neurotic bohemians
were his associates in Berlin where he was unable to come
to grips with the "paternal revolutionary tradition" in the
person of Otto Bayer. In The Berlin Stories, the dilet
tant nihilists" were linked to their ostensible enemies
the fascists. Isherwood now strengthens this link with
his laughter: "In other words. I'm a Nazi and you're my
father" (p. 66). That Bergmann represents the "paternal
revolutionary tradition" then, explains Isherwood*s "be
trayal." The revolt against the established society which
demanded that he pass the Test to prove his worth was once
embodied in the Mortmere escape-fantasy and continued in
Isherwoodas leftist sympathies. But by now he has found
that this "paternal revolutionary tradition" demands a
132.
Test of its own, "duties" that culminate also in War, that
violence which he most fears. To stand firm with Bergmann
(or Bayer) would mean the risk of confrontation with
Chatsworth (or Hitler), representative of the authoritative
establishment.
As artists Bergmann and Isherwood are immediate
allies against the philistine Chatsworth. Association with
the bourgeois capitalist world of motion pictures— where
Art is reduced to economic profit— is contaminating for
both director and writer. Each sees the experience in
terms of his own values: Bergmann, who will later pro
claim the sacredness of heterosexual love, compares the
experience to prostitution: "I feel absolutely no shame
before you. We are like two married men who meet in a
whorehouse" (p. 32). isherwood sees Bergmann as "an
emperor taken captive and guyed by the rebellious mob" (p.
30), a metaphor implying an unconscious concern— in spite
of his parlor socialism— with the captivity of the artist
by the uneducated, and therefore inferior, masses.
Bergmann is "the slave who wrote the fables of beasts and
men" (p. 26), hired to turn Chatsworth's mediocre ideas
into art.
B ergm ann i s n o t a p e r f e c t em b o d im en t o f t h e " p a t e r n a l
revolutionary tradition" but a flawed human being, caught
in a dilemma similar to Isherwood's. His portrait con
tains many ambiguities. Their meeting is a "recognition"
and Isherwood calls Bergmann "the face of central Europe."
Spender said that, for isherwood and himself, "Central
Europe" represented their own conflicts; appropriately,
the initial metaphors describing Bergmann indicate a cer
tain division in his nature. He is a "tragic Punch" (p.
24), both grave and ridiculous, with "the face of an
emperor, but the eyes . . . of his slave" (p. 25). Though
he once made honest films, the economic and political
situation in Austria has forced him to betray his ideals.
He now receives a handsome salary from Imperial Bulldog to
make a film that is neither good art nor good political
propaganda; in fact, as he and others explicitly state, it
is frankly reactionary. Bergmann the artist left to his
own devices might never produce. He too, like Bernhard
Landauer and other Truly Weak Men, needs discipline.
Isherwood admits he "couldn't altogether blame Chats
worth . . . No doubt, Bergmann's methods were leisurely."
He is afraid that "Bergmann would soon reach a state of
philosophic equilibrium, in which all possible solutions
would seem equally attractive or unattractive" (p. 76).
Chatsworth's right hand man, Ashmeade, is cut of the
same effete cloth as Isherwood: they were at Cambridge
together. Ashmeade has clearly sold out to the Enemy#
"His light golden eyes smilingly refused to admit anything,
to exchange any conspiratorial signal" (p. 30) . isherwood
too loses his artistic scruples in the face of economic
pressure. The capitalistic establishment is not all bad;
Chatsworth is, in Isherwood's eyes, not a Mortmerian em
bodiment of evil. It is instead Bergmann who melodramati
cally designates Chatsworth as "the secret police" (p. 74,
77, 78, 81, 82). Like Ashmeade, Isherwood is concerned
about his pay check (p. 76).
When the Austrian civil uprising occurs, Bergmann—
who could enact the drama of the Reichstagg Fire Trial and
alleviate isherwood*s war-fears with his melodramatic pro
nouncements— is helpless: "Bergmann raged in his despair.
He wanted to write letters to the conservative Press,
protesting against its studied tone of neutrality" (p.
124). Isherwood has to persuade Bergmann not to send the
letters as "He had no case. The papers were being per
fectly fair, according to their own standards. You
couldn't expect anything else" (pp. 124-125). Once again,
he is tacitly, helplessly, on the side of the establish-
135 [
merit.
Artists, the intellectual elite, find themselves
powerless when dealing with political realities. It is
Chatsworth who wins the day: "Bergmann was so angry he
couldn't answer. He turned on his heel and made for the
door. I stood undecided, watching him. "'Listen,' said
Chatsworth, with such authority that Bergmann stopped"
(p. 145). Isherwood reacts somewhat predictably. He
stands "undecided, " and in spite of his "parlor socialism, 1 1
he is impressed with Chatsworth's authority: "My opinion
of Chatsworth was rising every every moment" (p. 145). He
approves of the man who can do what he cannot and command
Bergmann in his anger. It is Chatsworth who delivers the
pragmatic pronouncement that ends Bergmann's recalcitrance:
'"I can't throw away the studio's money because of your
private sorrows, or mine, or anybody else*s'" (p. 147).
Bergmann is placated and the film is finished, subordinated
to a cause greater than personal anxiety— the saving of the
studio's money.
tfhe idea of the artist's powerlessness is reinforced
in Isherwood's conversation with Lawrence Dwight the film
cutter. Dwight blames the artists for the quality of their
films: '"If you so-called artists would behave like
136
technicians and get together, and stop playing at being
democrats, you'd make the public take the kind of picture
you wanted. . . . Still, it’s no use talking. You'll never
have the guts. You'd much rather whine about prostitution,
and keep on making Prater Violets'" (p. 90). Bergmann the
artist is still "the slave who wrote the fables of beasts
and men" (p. 26), and only the tasteless chatsworth, the
self-made capitalist, has the strength and shrewdness to
effect change. Who then can educate the Chatsworths? Not
the aesthete Ashmeade nor the more sensitive, less insular
Isherwood who both sell out for their paychecks and for
their secret admiration of authority. Though Bergmann's
powerlessness occasionally provokes him to rage against
political and economic forces, he adapts, like Dwight, by
finally taking pride in his ability to do a job well.
Isherwood himself would prefer to consider the worth of the
job (p. 89). To Dwight "the only people who really matter
are the technicians" who want "efficiency" for the purpose
of fighting anarchy, "reclaiming life from its natural
muddle" (p. 89). Dwight suggests art as a way to give
meaning to life. Isherwood rejects this and will propose
another solution.
In the epilogue, an earnest Red tells Dwight that
137 I
"Prater Violet" is counter-revolutionary (p. 160). It is
a lie, a placebo, ignoring ugly reality to picture a world
where the peasants are all shrewd and charming and a flower
girl can easily marry a prince. Princes, in turn, lose
their kingdoms only to regain them in the end. A Russian
film, Dwight reports, is "'the usual sex triangle between
a girl with thick legs, a boy, and a tractor. . . . It's
technically superior to anything Imperial Bulldog could
produce in a hundred years'" (p. 160). Stripped of all
beauty in the interests of grim reality, the Russian film
deals in cliches of its own. Though Dwight has claimed
that only technicians matter, the public doesn't want the
technical superiority of the Russian film: it plays to
empty audiences while "Prater Violet" with its pretty lies
is a success. Chatsworth's taste is economically vindi
cated, and a world in which economics determines artistic
worth has been both described and deplored.
No alternative is viable. The world of conformity
where Isherwood is engulfed by the Bourgeois Dream of the
Mother is one where the individual must endure the
humiliation of being cajoled and humored and never given
the chance to grow up, the shame of betraying his education
and taste, isherwood the Artist who thought he could
138
circumvent society's Test through his art is forced to
|
betray that art. Political action presents no solution.
The individual is powerless against the gigantic forces
controlling civilization.
But the novel suggests a third possibility, one of
the central concerns of the film itself— love. Bergmann is
curious about Isherwood's personal life: "What did I do?
Whom did I see? Did I live like a monk? 'Is it Mr. WH
you seek, or the Dark Lady of the Sonnets?' But I was
equally obstinate. I wouldn’t tell him" (p. 50). To
Bergmann, Isherwood*s secret life presents possibilities
that make the mundane boy-meets-girl formula romance of the
film a sorry clich6 indeed. Where Isherwood is secretive,
Dorothy opens her heart. "Younger and less experienced,
she was no match for his inquisitiveness" (p. 50).
Dorothy's story— of the sordid-affair-with-married-man
variety— affords a marked contrast to the sentimental
Prater Violet plot, but it could be a grade B movie sce
nario or a soap opera (p. 51). Bergmann brings to their
"self-contained world" his unpretentious love for his
family and his worldly wisdom in matters of women and love:
" 'When a woman is awakened, when she gets the man she
wants, she is amazing, amazing. You have no idea. . . .
139 |
You see . . . women are absolutely necessary to a man;
especially to a man who lives in ideas, in the creation of
i
moods and thoughts. . . . one needs their aura, their
ambiance. . . . Women always recognize a man who wants
this thing from them. They feel it at once, and they come :
to him, like horses'" (p. 52). This tribute is as far from1
reality as Toni the flower girl herself. It is laden with
adolescent romanticism and prejudice of the sort that fails
to consider the humanity of the object eulogized, as the
ending simile indicates. In his thoughts on love, Bergmann
again shows himself a divided man. However much he might
sentimentalize woman in the abstract, he is happily married
and, during the uprising, overtaken with worry for his
family. Like the public who need escape from political
realities by watching pictures like "Prater Violet,"
Bergmann needs his fantasy version of "woman."
The studio crew forms part of the "proletariat"
audience "Prater Violet" is being made for. They like it
because it is "'high class'" (p. 114) or "'old fashioned'"
(p. 109); it serves the same function in their lives that
Bergmann's view of women does for him, a fantasy compensa
tion. Par from the romantic impulsiveness displayed by the
film characters, Teddy is willing to wait five years to
marry the girl he loves because '"a chap's got to be able
to offer his wife a proper home'" (p. 110). in a "man to
man" session on the availability of the film's star Anita
Heydon, another member of the crew changes the sentimental
lyric "Flowers must fade and yet/ One I can't forget/
Prater Violet" (p. 110) to "Just the same. I'll bet/ You're
not hard to gets/ Prater Vi-o-let" (p. 113). The romantic
notion of one true love that will win out over all odds is
overturned by the crew's lusty cynicism— and, ironically,
by the star Anita Heydon herself. Totally unlike the
virginal heroine of the film, Anita is divorced and, by
turns, outrageously temperamental or coldly business-like
(p. 99).
Lawrence Dwight and Roger, the sound recordist (p. 93)
are a bit more intellectual than their fellows. Their talk
of sexual love is not the brittle boasting of Timmy or
George nor the solid plodding domestic economics of Teddy.
Both have lost love but with a curious twist. Dwight's
wife died in a car accident a month after their marriage.
He has, however, steadfastly refused to sentimentalize her:
'"We'd just had time to find out that we couldn't stand
each other. . . . I was driving. I suppose I really wanted
to murder her'" (p. 85). When Isherwood asks Roger why he
141 i
has never married, he answers, '"Oh, I tried that, too.
When I was a kid . . . She died’" (p. 116). He, too,
i m p l i c i t l y r e j e c t s t h e s e n t i m e n t a l w o r ld o f t h e f i l m : "'It
wasn't so ruddy wonderful. . . . She was a good girl,
though. . . . You know what have been the best things in
my life? Good, unexpected lays'" (p. 116).
It is only at the end of the book that we learn Isher-
wood's views, as he divulges to us something of the secret
life he has gleefully kept from Bergmann. His views are
s i m i l a r t o D w i g h t ' s a n d R o g e r ' s , p r o v i d i n g a c o u n t e r p o i n t
to both Bergmann*s elitist romanticism and the film's
sentimentality. After the cast party, Isherwood's thoughts
rephrase the question asked earlier by Roger, "'You know,
sometimes I wonder just what all this is for. Why not
peacefully end it?'" Roger has answered his own question
w h en h e t e l l s I s h e r w o o d t h a t t h e b e s t t h i n g s i n h i s l i f e
have been "good, unexpected lays" (p. 116). isherwood
makes a similar connection:
There is only one question which we seldom ask
each other directly: it is too brutal. . . .
What makes you go on living? Why don't you kill
yourself?
Could I answer that question about myself:
No. Yes. Perhaps . . . I supposed, vaguely, that
it was a kind of balance, a complex of tensions.
Y ou d i d w h a t e v e r w a s n e x t o n t h e l i s t . . . .
It seemed to me that I had always done
142 j
whatever people recommended. You were born; it
was like entering a restaurant, tfie waiter came
forward with a lot of suggestions. . . . The
waiter had recommended teddy bears, football,
cigarettes, motor bikes, whisky. . . . Above all,
he had recommended Lovei a very strange dish.
(pp. 154-155)
For him also there is no "true love" just a succession of
lovers: "Love at the moment was J. . . . After J., there
would be K., and L. and M., right down the alphabet."
Love is, however, only a means to an end which Auden also
describes, "Body reminds in him to loving,/ . . . But takes
no part and is unloving/ But loving death" (CSP, p. 36) :
"J. isn't really what I want. J. has only the value of
being now. J. will pass, the need will remain. The need
to get back into the dark, into the bed . . . where J. is
no more J. than K., L., or M. Where there is nothing but
the nearness, and the painful hopelessness of clasping the
naked body in your arms. The pain of hunger beneath every
thing. And the end of all love-making, the dreamless sleep
after the orgasm, which is like death" (p. 157). As in
his political or artistic life, in his personal life isher
wood pictures himself caught between a number of alterna
tives, all equally untenable. Life is unthinkable without
love. Love is little more than a string of impersonal
initials— a momentary warding off of death which, para-
143
doxically, in "the dreamless sleep after the orgasm," re
calls just what he has always dreaded: "Death, the
desired, the feared. The longed-for sleep. The terror of
the coming of sleep. Death. War. The vast sleeping city,
doomed for the bombs" (p. 157) . We are back to the fear
of death explicit in Lions and Shadows as "the complex of
War and The Test" (pp. 75-76). Here Isherwood realizes
that death is not only feared but also desired, "that
loving wish" (CSP, p. 36).4
Isherwood sees one way out of the dilemma, phrased
in the familiar terms of a journey. It is a "way that
leads to safety" (p. 158), and it involves a certain
transcending of his debilitating fears and desires. The
way is clear to him for an instant, but imagery straight
from the Northwest Passage intrudes with all the familiar
horror of a recurring nightmare: "Then the clouds shut
down and a breath off the glacier icy with the inhuman
coldness of the peaks, touches my cheek" (p. 158). Like
the fear of being "lost for ever [sic] in the blizzard
and the ice" (L&S, p. 208), or the dead cold of Berlin
which "grips the towh-in utter silence" (GB, p. 186)—
the terror of uncharted territories where one may become
lost— this is the fear of annihilation of the ego,
144 i
implicit in the characterization of the cold as "inhuman”: I
"'No,' I think, 'I could never do it. Rather the fear I
know, the loneliness I know. . . . For to take that other
way would mean that I should lose myself. I should no
longer be a person. I should no longer be Christopher
Isherwood. No, No. That's more terrible than the bombs.
More terrible than having no lover. That I can never
face'" (p. 158). He fears the loss of that sense of self
which was so vulnerable to Bergmann's determined posses
siveness, Chatsworth's commanding strength, and the tactful
manipulation of his mother-jailer. But the fear is itself
a paradox— for Isherwood does not even know precisely what
his identity is: "Perhaps I might have turned to Bergmann
and asked, 'Who are you? Who am I? What are we doing
here?'" (p. 158). identity does not reside in surface
appearances; these are merely actors' roles: "We had
written each other's parts . . . and we had to go on play
ing them. . . . The dialogue was crude, the costumes and
make-up were more absurd . . . than anything in Prater
Violet; Mother's Boy, the comic Foreigner with the funny
accent. Well, that didn't matter" (p. 158). Their
original "recognition" was incomplete: Bergmann is much
more than "the face of Central Europe." Something unnamable
lies beneath the illusory surface where "beneath outer
consciousness, two other beings, anonymous, impersonal,
without labels, had met and recognized each other, and had
clasped hands" (p. 159). Having recognized each other,
they part. The network of paradoxes remains unresolved:
there can be in Isherwood's fear-filled world only these
temporary recognitions of a bond beneath the surface. To
prolong a close relationship is somehow again to risk ego
annihilation through a certain merging of identities—
hence isherwood*s staunch resistance to Bergmann through
out the novel, his refusal to tell him about J. since "He
would have taken possession of that, as he did of every
thing else. But it was still mine, and it would always be.
Even when J. and I were only trophies, hung up in the
museums of each other's vanities" (p. 156). Any intimacy
other than temporary or physical usurps individuality and
threatens him with loss as surely as war, or the briefly
glimpsed transcendence.
Though the novel takes place in 1934-1935, it is
written ten years later from the safety of America near the
end of the war. As in his other novels, the older wiser
author exposes limitations of his younger fictional self,
limitations which are nowhere more apparent than in this
final scene. Examined in the light of Isherwood's subse
quent interest in Vedanta, the scene takes on a new
dimension: it closely follows Isherwood's description of
a Vedantist meditation in his 1963 apologia An Approach to
Vedanta. ^ The correspondence is first signaled by Isher-
wood's description of the evening: "... that hour of
the night at which man's ego almost sleeps. The sense of
identity, of possession, of name and address and telephone
number grows very faint" (p. 153). This frame of mind is
one of the conditions essential for meditation, a process
Isherwood later describes as
the process of becoming aware of your real
situation. The day to day space time "reality"
(as it is reported to us by our senses and the
daily newspapers) is, in fact, no reality at all,
but a deadly and cunning illusion. The practice
of yoga meditation consists in excluding, as far
as possible, our consciousness of the illusory
world, the surface "reality," and turning the mind
inward in search of its real nature. Our real
nature is to be one with life, with consciousness,
with everything else in the universe. (Approach.
p. 20)
He is here temporarily able to see through the illusionary
reality. In the 1963 pamphlet, he describes meditation as
having three stages. In the first, one sends one's
thoughts "outward to the surrounding world" (p. 28). Just
147
after his description of the time of night, Isherwood does
"send his thoughts outward" to Bergmann: "I was aware of
Bergmann, my fellow-traveler, pacing beside me: a
separate, secret consciousness, locked away within
itself, . . . "What was he thinking about? . . . .How
did it feel to be inside that stocky body, to look out of
those dark, ancient eyes? How did it feel to be Friedrich
Bergmann?" (pp. 153-154). Here at the onset of the medi
tation, Bergmann is seen as a separate entity. Isherwood
now draws his thoughts inward upon himself— the second
stage ( Approach, p. 28)— and at each successive shift in
thought approaches closer to the Vedantist goal, the loss
of the illusion of separateness. Asking himself first
"Why go on," he moves from the more superficial reasons for
living ("You did whatever was mext on the list.") to
thoughts of love and death, to the realization that the
arch-fear he carries with him has no objective correlative
but is his own. He goes, in a sense, as far inward as he
can— a fleeting contact with the part of the self that has
access to the infinite (Approach, p. 20)— and glimpses the
possibility for transcendence, it is similar to his 1963
description of his first consciously attempted meditations:
"It was most exciting to sit . . . in the darkness of early
148 ;
morning or evening, and feel that one was face to face
with the unknown that was oneself. This was a sort of
flirtation with the unconscious" (p. 23). In prater
Violet, however, the "flirtation" becomes frightening since
he surpasses for an instant the limits of personality. He
cannot endure the "non-attachment" demanded by the
experience. At this immature stage of development, his
egotism— which he later describes as his "obstinate belief"
that he is "some particular somebody" (Approach, p. 61)—
makes him view transcendence as "the breath off the gla
cier, icy with inhuman coldness" (FV, p. 158). Later in
the pamphlet, he reviews this difficulty as one encountered
by any westerner undertaking Hindu thought: "Non-attach
ment . . . has misleading associations. It suggests
coldness and indifference and a fatalistic outlook. . . .
In general, mankind almost always acts with attachment—
that is to say, with fear and desire" (p. 61). It is
precisely this fear and desire that he briefly saw a way
of overcoming— "the way that leads to safety. To where
there is no fear, no loneliness, no need of J., K., L.,
or M." (PV, p. 158). In spite of his rejection of Non-
Attachment, he completes the final stage of meditation,
sending his thoughts "outward again, but with a difference
. . . no longer thinking of . . . fellow creatures as mere
individuals but as temples containing the Reality"
(Approach, p. 28). He has perceived the Vedantist truth
that "personality is a mere mask" (Approach, p. 53) when
he "turns his thoughts outward" to Bergmann and thinks of
them both as actors playing the parts each other had
written. The performer metaphor# an image appearing in
all his work# here takes on a new and profound signifi
cance. The world of the film# "Prater Violet"— which he
presents here as less absurd than the roles he and
Bergmann play and which has been seen at various points as
a contrast to "real life"— now becomes truly an allegory
for "reality." Both are illusions. But beneath the
"apparent, outer self" resides "an invisible inner self"
which is "unchanging and immortal? it has no individuality
for it is equally within every human being, living
creature" (Approach, p. 20). It is this universal reality
that he and Bergmann have recognized in each other. In
Bergmann Isherwood finds the father he has been seeking:
"He was my father. I was his son. And I loved him very
much" (p. 159). But their closeness is temporary.
No father's love can resolve his dilemma. The
personal# the political# and the artistic are inextricably
bound together. Political commitments necessitate action;
personal relationships demand it, but this is precisely
what the Truly Weak Man, whose timidity rests on his
paralyzing fear Cf annihilation, cannot undertake, isher
wood in Prater Violet creates a universe of grim despair
on all fronts. He is left trapped by his lack of daring.
A world that presents in all its particulars so many pain
ful and impossible choices— between rebellion and con
formity, communism and fascism, father and mother— can only
be rejected as illusion.
151
N o t e s a n d R e f e r e n c e s
^•Stanley Poss, "A Conversation on Tape, " London Maga
zine I, New Series (June 1961), 43, hereafter referred to
as "Conversation" with subsequent references in paren
thesis in the text.
2
James T. O'Farrell in "When Graustark is in Cellu
loid, " in Literature and Morality (New York: Vanguard
Press, 1947), pp. 125-142, develops the idea of Prater
Violet*s contrapuntal structure.
•^ P r a t e r v i o l e t (N ew Y o r k : Random H o u s e , 1945) .
4Cf. Wilde, pp. 96-97.
^An A p p r o a c h t o V e d a n ta ( H o lly w o o d , Ca. : V e d a n ta
P r e s s , 1963), p . 21, h e r e a f t e r r e f e r r e d t o a s A p p r o a c h .
w i t h s u b s e q u e n t r e f e r e n c e s i n p a r e n t h e s i s i n t h e t e x t .
IV. Down There on a Visit: "The insult of
Each Other's Presence"
In a 1965 interview, isherwood insists that Down
There on a Visit was to be his last first person novel,
since the created character "Christopher Isherwood" had
gotten "too big for his britches" ("An Interview," p. 46).
Isherwood apparently did not consciously intend his narra
tor to turn the focus of the novel so directly upon him
self. Down There on a Visit is, like Goodbye to Berlin, a
series of four portraits. But the earlier novel starts
with the camera narrator proclaiming his detachment; in
contrast. Down There on a Visit begins with Isherwood say
ing that to present the first portrait, "Mr. Lancaster,"
entirely, he must show how their meeting was "the start of
a new chapter" in his life (p. 11). Here it is Christopher
himself, and not a country or a time period, who provides
unity: it is through him that "all these people are in
volved with each other. . . . And so they are all going to
have to share the insult of each other's presence in this
book" (p. 11).
As in the other autobiographical novels, the narrator
152
153
again looks back on a younger self, but here a greater
time-span separates the two. Speaking in his older, wiser
voice, he tells us directly that calling “this young man
'I'" is only a convention: "he is a stranger to me. . . .
We still share the same skeleton, but . . . its outer
covering has altered so much that I doubt he would recog
nize me on the street" (pp. 13-14). Reflecting the conver
sion to Vedanta with which the latter half of the book
will be concerned, he touches upon what he elsewhere calls
"the mystery of consciousness" (Approach, p. 23): "We
have in common the label of our name and a continuity of
consciousness; there has been no break in the sequence of
daily statements that I am I. But what I am has refashion
ed itself . . . until now almost all that remains constant
is the mere awareness of being conscious. And that
awareness belongs to everybody; it isn't a particular
person" (p. 14). Echoing the meditation at the end of
Prater Violet, this reflects the Vedantist concept of
identity: "We have identified our consciousness with a
seemingly fixed form— a structure of memories called 'I.'
We discover that this structure is impermanent.^ "The
real self is unchanging and immortal; it has no individu
ality, for it is equally within every human being"
154 " j
{Approach, p. 20). This concept, however, is known only
to the older Isherwood; the younger will prove he has no
inkling of the identity of all life as manifestations of
Brahman, "the One and Only Self" who "periodically loses
himself in the creative illusion that he is all of us."
The young Isherwood, still tenaciously clinging to identity
and fearful of usurpation, is unable to give of himself.
He cannot regard Mr. Lancaster, for instance, as a human
being because he would then hate him for his bullying (p.
40). His identity at this point, as in Prater Violet, is
a fragile thing he must protect against all encroachments.
To love or to hate equally risks enslavement.
The first three encounters follow similar patterns:
each takes place between isherwood and a despairing human
being who to some extent lives in fantasy. Though each
reveals something of himself to Isherwood, he can regard
none of them as human. Since his concern with defining
and defending his own identity is paramount, all are mirror
images. He is left with a sense of having been betrayed
by them and with a feeling of guilt for having failed them
as well. Seeing the effects of fantasy upon those he en
counters, in each episode isherwood is himself less given
to fantasy. He must come to terms with the real world the
155
fantasies once defended him against.
Isherwood describes this as a book about hell ("Con
versation, " p. 46). The image recurs in each section. To
Mr. Lancaster, hell is Berlin— the city ruled by the "devil
without a face." But Mr. Lancaster speaks of himself like
"the dead . . . in Dante" and his own personal hell is more
negative and life-denying than Berlin. To Geoffrey, hell
is Ambrose's island; Dorothy calls it England; Augustus and
Paul say it is within. Always it must first be experienced
and then escaped. Only the last story, "Paul," presents
the possibility of transcendence.
Although the narrator of this novel presents the
least disparaging portrait of his youthful self, even
sketching for us some positive virtues which the earlier
novels do not mention (p. 14), he repeats the concerns
that informed the earlier works, reminding us of the con
tinuity of his identity in spite of his many selves. The
conflict between rebellion and conformity continues; the
shared and private fantasies underlie this novel as well.
Like his earlier counterparts, this young man dislikes the
older established generation; knowing he is "quite naive
about most kinds of experience," he dreads the future.
But the past is even more dreadful— "its prestige, its
traditions and their implied challenge and reproach." His
156
strongest motivation is "ancestor-hatred," caused partly
by his sense of inadequacy and partly by a wish to mature
independent from coercion: "He is genuinely a rebel. He
knows instinctively that it is only through rebellion that
he will ever learn and grow" (p. 14). Here Isherwood ex
plicitly sees rebellion as necessary for growth. His focus
on the "challenge and reproach" of tradition recalls the
complex of the Test, reinforced by Mr. Lancaster who in
vites him to Germany with unwitting tactlessness: '"let go
of your Lady Mother's apron strings for once, and come over
to visit us on one of the company's boats. Show us you can
rough it. It might just possibly make a man of you'" (p.
12). As in Prater Violet he is the Etonian Oedipus, still
bound to his mother and not yet a "man." The portrait of
Mr. Lancaster is Isherwood's answer to his challenge. In
the course of the narrative he will pass several Tests de
scribed as ironic initiation rites.
Since Isherwood fears and is at the same time eager
for experience, his older counterpart tells us that "to
reassure himself he converts it into epic myth almost as
fast as it happens. He is forever playacting" (p. 14)*
This Christopher is the same young man who helped dream up
Mortmere. He sees the simple trip as "an immense and
157 !
mysterious voyage" (p. 13). The older author, at all times!
conscious of the disparity between fantasy and reality,
parodies the "dangerous journey" of escape-literature.
Isherwood has two secrets to help him bear the
journey— one, "like a talisman," the knowledge that yes
terday his first novel was published, the second a sea-sick
remedy. The secret of his novel loses its power when Mr.
Lancaster maneuvers him into an impulsive confession of
its existence (p. 25). During the voyage a repeated warn
ing against seasickness takes on an air of Mortmerian
ominousness (p. 17). When he confronts the "vulture"
steward with the news that due to the secret seasick reme
dy, he "slept like a log" (p. 18), this feat too proves to
be an empty victory. He discovers the "prosaic truth":
the crew are not epic characters (p. 18).
The second Test occurs at the banquet of shipping
executives. Isherwood and Chalmers at Cambridge would
have relished the banquet, for Parrot-Shark and his friends
might be from Mortmere: "It was as if they were all mem
bers of a secret society, and their talk was full of pass
words and smilingly acknowledged countersigns" (p. 32).
When the waiter brings Isherwood an unknown drink and the
"fellow-conspirators" move in close, intently watching him,
........ 158
he at last seems on the brink of true epic adventure— a
decided contrast to the prosaic seamen who are unimpressed
by his magic resistance to seasickness, and a contrast to
Mr. Lancaster who ignores the talismaic novel. Hitherto
he has been afraid of Mr. Lancaster (p. 25); now when
Lancaster magically appears and warns him not to drink (p.
32), he defies him. By this act he appears to have joined
Parrot-Shark and the "conspirators" against the establish
ed world of conventional values.
But this Mortmere lacks forcefulnesss "Parrot-Shark"
is "not a maneater, certainly" (p. 29) and the conspirators
"didn't look very formidable" (p. 32). Parrot-Shark's
offer to "steal" him to an "amusing bar" breaks "the spell"
(p. 53) and isherwood realizes that his would-be seducer
is a "Poor timid creature" who "couldn't have abducted a
mouse" (p. 33). Isherwood here throws in his lot once
more with the Enemy, preferring Mr. Lancaster's solidity to
Parrot-Shark's timid decadence. But now he is able to
command the man he has once feared: "'Take me home,' I
told him, in a commanding voice. It must have been com
manding, because he instantly obeyedI" (p. 34).
At the banquet, Lancaster and Parrot-Shark play off
against each other as representatives of the Enemy and The
159
Other Town. Once again Isherwood refuses to commit him
self to Mortmere but he does act out another fantasy,
defying the Enemy by deliberately doing the opposite of
what Lancaster tells him. He maintains a tenuous balance
between the two sides, giving in to neither in spite of a
wish to be seduced by Parrot-Shark (p. 33) and a desire—
as we shall see later— for Lancaster's approval.
The third test also involves defiance. It is a mock
man-versus-nature adventure, another one of the experiences
Mr. Lancaster hopes will "make a man" of Isherwood; a
deep sea fishing expedition. It too proves decidedly un
romantic and tedious (p. 49). As in his unsuccessful
refusal to attend the banquet (pp. 25-26), his hostility
to Lancaster is again suppressed: "I think if I'd had a
knife I'd have whipped it out right there and then and
finished him. As it was, I merely mentally shouted:
'Touch me, again, you old goat, and I'll throttle youl'"
(p. 50). Far from the bold dramatic encounter he fanta
sizes, this is only a mental shout. He carries out his
revenge in a more indirect way, vfaen he causes the motor to
fall into the sea (p. 51). Once again, though he fails to
live up to Mr. Lancaster's expectations, in defying him he
pleases himself, an act which "discharged all [his] . . .
160 j
aggression, like a great orgasm" (p. 52).
Appropriately, the event is accompanied by creation.
At the moment when the engine falls into the water the
donn£ of The Memorial flashes into his mind. The fact of
his first novel's publication was a talisman, a secret pro
tecting his identity against possible usurpation, recalling
that only Isherwood the Artist could circumvent the Test
(L&S, p. 97). Due to his ambivalence, his wish to define
himself apart from the older generation warring with his
desire to be accepted, he betrayed the secret. Now, by
pretending to obey, he effectually defies Mr. Lancaster
and is once again able to reassert individuality through
his art. Significantly, both products of that art— All The
Conspirators and The Memorial— deal with the struggle be
tween the younger generation and their incapacitatingly
possessive elders.
The fantasy-ridden pseudo-adventures— perilous sea
voyage, banquet of conspirators, and mettle-testing fish
ing expedition— successfully completed, isherwood's real
initiation-into-manhood can now take place, appropriately
entirely without either Mr. Lancaster or fantasy trappings.
On the trip to Germany the prosaic Captain Dobson gives
Isherwood a pornographic novel, The Bride of the Brute.
161
and Isherwood admits that he and his "sophisticated"
friends in London would have dismissed it as ridiculous
but here it excites him "hotly" (p. 19). On his way to
Mr. Lancaster's flat, the warm humid weather "disturbed
and excited" him: he enjoys being "pressed up close
against the bodies of young Germans . . . boys and girls"
(p. 22). A sculpture of Laocoon and his sons "writhing in
the grip of the snakes" is "lazy and sensual" (p. 23).
Mr. Lancaster, in contrast, disapproves of sensuality:
'"Tolstoy was dirty. . . . He couldn't look at a peasant
girl without thinking of her breasts under her dress'"
(p. 38); with this he places himself firmly in the re
pressive moral framework Isherwood despises. If Mr. Lan
caster sees sex as dirty, he romanticizes love. Like
Bergmann lecturing on love-and-women, he attempts to
extend his self-appointed role as Isherwood*s initiator:
"'Love hasn't come to you, yet. But it will. It comes to
all of us. And it only comes once. Make no mistake about
that. It comes and it goes. . . . Be ready for the
moment, Christopher. Be ready— '" (p. 42). Mr. Lancaster
again expresses the clichfe sentiments of the older genera
tion, meaningless to the Christopher who as an older more
experienced individual will say that "After J., there
162
would be K. and L. and M. right on down the alphabet" (PV,
p. 156). To Isherwood*s delight, as the ill-fated fishing
boat is being towed home by a pleasure steamer, a man and
woman in the stern of the steamer "made love with abandon"
(p. 51). That the lovers are "neither slender nor young"
circumvents any possible romanticization of the incident.
Isherwood defies Mr. Lancaster again when, instead of
touring art galleries as Lancaster expects, Isherwood and
Waldemar go swimming, then to the flat of Oskar's "braut"
where Isherwood's sexual initiation is, one presumes,
accomplished {p. 54). The difference between Lancaster's
generation and Isherwood's is implicit in the two meanings
of the word braut itself. No longer used by young people
for its conventional approved designation of bride or
fiancee, in their slang it is "any girl they happened to
be going with" (p. 54).
Isherwood now plans to visit Berlin, another defiance
of Mr. Lancaster who inveighs against its "'You couldn't
find anything more nauseating than what goes on there,
quite openly, every day. That city is doomed, more surely
than Sodom ever was. Those people don't even realize how
low they have sunk. Evil doesn't know itself there. The
most terrible of all devils rules— the devil without a
163 !
face'" (p. 35). To Mr. Lancaster, sexuality is diabolical.:
Ironically, Isherwood*s mother reveals Mr. Lancaster's
short-lived marriage, ended because "'Cousin Alexander
wasn't— so one was given to understand— at all adequate as
a husband'" (p. 55). Mr. Lancaster, who claimed he would
"make a man" of Christopher, is, in terms of the Test, not
much of a "man" himself. His puritanism stands revealed
as a thin disguise for his impotence, in contrast to his
young cousin who here passes a crucial component of the
Test.
But the Test has two parts— it is not only proof of
"masculinity" through sexual encounter but through bravery
in war. Isherwood's hatred of Mr. Lancaster grows as he
discusses his war experience: "I barely had to mention the
word 'war' to start him intoning: "'Loos— Armetieres—
Ypres. . . .' His voice had gone into its ecclesiastical
singsong and I had begun to wonder if he would ever stop"
(p. 37). He even fancies himself a war poet (p. 38). But
the line of poetry he quotes is not his own. Mr. Lan
caster, who warns Isherwood of the "devil without a face,"
is living in his own inferno. His immersion into fantasy
is worse than the unbridled lusts of Berlin. He has
falsified his experience: impotent, he calls sex diaboli
164 I
cal; a would-be war poet, he steals others' poetry. Cut
off from the world, he is appropriately described as
speaking like the dead in Dante (p. 38). The denial of
reality plunges him into the hell of fantasies that can't
sustain him.
Mr. Lancaster unavoidably reminds us of the narrator
who spends much of his time composing hypothetical press
reviews of his novel (p. 14) while, in reality, the re
views are worse than he expects (p. 55). Mr. Lancaster
also claims that as a writer he can look at human experi
ence "with absolute objectivity" (p. 38). His young
relative has the same idea, having resolved "to study him
scientifically" (p. 38). There are, fortunately, impor
tant differences between them: while Lancaster is impo
tent, Isherwood has passed the sexual Test. Isherwood has
had a novel published whereas Mr. Lancaster is a total
fraud, passing off someone else's poetry as his own.
Isherwood also is eventually able to learn from experience,
realizing later that "My would-be scientific study of him
was altogether unscientific, because I was sure in advance
what I was going to find. . . . I was sure he was a bore"
(p. 44).
The love-war-art motif reaches its apex in their most
165
dramatic confrontation, when Isherwood hides Lancaster's
I
love poem and grabs the gun (p. 43). The love poem and
gun are emblems of the Test. Mr. Lancaster, who has fail
ed at sexual love and has falsified his experience in war,
has expressed love vicariously in art. Leaving the key in
the desk is, Isherwood speculates, "A deliberate if sub
conscious attempt" (p. 44) to share that art with another
human being, his "last attempt to establish relations with
the outside world" (p. 57). But Isherwood, too self-
centered and fantasy-ridden to respond, copies the poem in
order to laugh at it and then pretends not to see it.
When he hears Lancaster returning, he hides the poem and
seizes the gun. Six months after he returns to England,
he learns that Mr. Lancaster has shot himself.
This forces him to re-examine their encounter: "I
wanted to make a saga around Mr. Lancaster. I wanted to
turn him into a romantic figure. But I couldn't. I
didn't know how" (p. 56). As he has been unable to roman
ticize any part of this journey for long, he is here too
left with reality. Ironically, Mr. Lancaster had success
fully constructed a fantasy around him: "Waldemar had
heard him say that I had written a book, that it had been
a failure in England because the critics were all fools,
166 j
but that I should certainly be recognized one day as one
of the greatest writers of my time. Also he had always
referred to me as his nephew" (p. 57). Lancaster's fan-
tasy-Christopher is Isherwood the Artist who, in his own
moments of fantasy, shares Lancaster's perception of the
critics and his future. Mr. Lancaster suicides because
"He had lived too long within his sounding box, listening
to . . . his epic song of himself. "Then suddenly . . .
he ceased to believe in the epic anymore. Despair is
something horribly simple" (p. 57). Though Christopher
himself no longer quite believes in his own epic, he has
not yet fallen prey to Lancaster's despair since he has
real experiences to remember and Berlin to anticipate.
But Mr. Lancaster's fate stands as a warning to the young
Isherwood whom we saw at the story's beginning rapidly
converting his life into "epic myth." Fantasy as in other
novels again brings isolation and death. Locked in their
mutually exclusive fantasy worlds, Isherwood and Mr. Lan
caster have been totally unable to communicate and Isher
wood is left with a vague sense of responsibility echoed
sentimentally and siraplistically by Waldemar: "He never
had a son of his own. . . . Who knows, Christoph, if
you'd been there to look after him, he might have been
alive todayl" (p. 57).
"Ambrose" begins five years later and is linked to
"Mr. Lancaster" by two things— the fact that this is
"another journey" (p. 61) and that Isherwood is accompa
nied by Waldemar. The Berlin adventure has come and gone.
He has changed in his attitude toward Berlin: it is no
longer a symbol of liberation from the sexual repression
enjoined by civilization. Experience has glutted him and
made him at the same time more compassionate: Berlin
night life is no longer glamourous but "pitiful" (p. 69).
Again he is conscious of a continuity in identity, asking,
"But have I really changed underneath?" (p. 70). He
echoes a problem voiced in Prater Violet and implicit in
"Mr. Lancaster"— the question of responsibility: "Aren't
I as irresponsible as ever, running away from the situa
tion like this? Isn't this somehow a betrayal? "Who
tells me to be responsible for Germany? Who has the right
to?" (p. 70).
Waldemar, reminiscent of Otto Nowak, is "one of at
least half dozen young men with whom I had an intimate but
casual relationship." He is a sort of younger self, pre
serving through his inability to learn from his experi
ences, the innocence Isherwood has lost: "He has no
conscience which forces him to take attitudes and hold
opinions. . . . I love him— but somewhat as you love an
animal. I don't want anything from him, except that he
shall remain young and fearless and silly. In fact, I
want the impossible" (p. 70). He is well aware of Walde-
mar's limitations; it is only coincidental that Waldemar
is anti-Nazi: "if he had ever been exposed to the influ
ence of a personable big-brother type of Nazi youth
leader, I wouldn't care to answer for the consequence" (p.
68). Elsewhere he has said the same thing of himself. He
faults Waldemar and other young boys of his kind for their
"rather sinister instinctive acceptance of sadism, "
referring, as in Mr. Norris, to the link between "the
'cruel' ladies in boots . . . and the young thugs in Nazi
uniforms who are out there nowadays pushing the Jews
around" (MN, pp. 68-69). Throughout this episode, Walde
mar is not shocked by the depravity on Ambrose's island.
Like Otto he is the "natural man"; he doesn't suffer from
the scruples which torment Isherwood.
Ambrose takes his place with all the Neurotic Heroes
and Truly Weak Men of Isherwood's early novels. Over
civilized and effeminate, he suffers from psychic wounds
incurred at Cambridge where the "Hearties" wrecked his
rooms. Like Mr. Norris, his tastes are those of the
nineteenth century aesthete, and although he displays no
predilection for ladies with whips— loathes women in
fact— he must hire a bodyguard to protect him from his own
innate masochism; he has a penchant for getting beaten up
in bars (p. 102). The bodyguard he hires is Hans, a pro
fessed sadist (p. 63).
Ironically, Isherwood sees Ambrose first as martyr
and saint: "his dark-skinned face was quite shockingly
lined, as though life had mauled him with its claws. . . .
There was a kind of inner contemplative repose in the
midst of him. It made him touchingly beautiful. He could
have posed for a portrait of a saint. . . . None of his
clothes were clean, and I didn't get the impression that
he was, either" (p. 71). We are first asked to accept
Ambrose as victim of the world's scorn who has renounced
the world and his personal possessions for the contempla
tive life, though a note of caution is introduced in the
epithet "unclean." Isherwood constantly pictures Am
brose's detachment, his non-involvement, ideal qualities
not only for Christian saint but Vedantist. He is even
Christ-like. They are on a boat, and Isherwood tells him,
"'I can quite imagine you getting out and walking on the
water"' {p. 88). A lot of ambivalence resides in this
analogy: one need only recall isherwood's portrait of
Christ in the Vedanta pamphlet published in the same year:
"Who wouldn't detest his Son, who had come to us— like a
vice squad officer bent on entrapment— wearing a hypo
critical mask of meekness in order to tempt us to murder
him" (Approach, p. 13).
In its dirt, discomfort, and the swinish customs of
its inhabitants, the island represents the complete rejec
tion of upper middle class English values. Ambrose is not
saint or Christ in the usual sense, but only in this
Mortmere where values are reversed. Although he has
suffered scorn and abuse for being different, he rewards
abusers and admirers alike not with love but with hate. He
encourages the rivalry between Hans and Aleko with "the
coquetry of the benevolent despot." Lives are nearly lost
and Hans is crippled due to Ambrose's refusal to interfere.
Though, Christ-like, he has renounced the world, it is not
for the purposes of contemplation, but to establish his own
little kingdom, his perverse little paradise, where his
will can reign. On his own island, supposedly passive and
masochistic, free from social restraints, he can exercise
his own innate tyranny and take his revenge on the society
171 I
which has abused him. That he is cruel and despotic is
indication of the interchangeability of masochist with
sadist.
When Ambrose tells his story, Isherwood identifies
with him: "all my undergraduate hostilities came back to
me; I was grinding my teeth in fury against those
hearties . . . Ambrose has made me aware of feelings I'd
forgotten I was capable of" (p. 114). Isherwood and Am
brose share hostility toward those who would exact con
formity at the price of individuality. Both try to escape
the conflict by isolation, by abandoning the stifling
civilization for gratification of instincts.
But, once again, the abandonment of conventional mores
brings Isherwood face to face with man's innate depravity.
Ambrose's island proves to be a microcosm of the world
situation where human irrationality and cruelty are domi
nant. Ostensibly a homosexual paradise of the kind
fantasized by Kuno Von Pregnitz in Mr. Norris or by isher
wood himself in Lions and Shadows, it is clearly hell long
before the appearance of the obligatory snake— a woman
ironically named Maria— changes it from Eden to inferno.
The journey to the island is described as "faintly
nightmarish," a mood which becomes steadily more intense.
While the world situation worsens, Isherwood finds him
self drawn increasingly into Ambrose's world until it be
comes, in fact, the world (p. 97). In his quest to "dis
cover some basis of genuine feeling, 1 1 he at last escapes
the guilt he "ought to feel" about the external world; "I
am beginning to live . . . in Ambrose's world. When I
admit this to myself I feel I ought to feel guilty. But I
don't" (p. 97). Ambrose's world is timeless: "I know
almost nothing but now and here; even this body . . .
might as well be that of a teen-age boy or a healthy old
man— myself at seventeen or seventy" (p. 97). Geoffrey
refers to Ambrose's "bloody minions" as "devils" and
humorously explains that the boys can swim unharmed in a
sea full of jelly-fish because "'this place is unmitigated
and utter hell as far as normal human beings are con
cerned. . . . Well— what sort of creatures are at home in
hell? Devils, obviouslyl'" (p. 98). Isherwood concurs in
Geoffrey's assessment: "The boys are swinishly dirty,
inhumanly destructive and altogether on the side of the
forces of disorder" (p. 106). The experience becomes a
literal descent into animality as Isherwood narrates the
"rat pogrom" and the "chicken rape"; although he is not a
participant, he finds himself "grinning" as he writes and
173
asks himself, "What is this island doing to me?” (p. 109).
Ambrose populates his island with a very strange
group of guests, The obnoxious Englishman, Geoffrey, with
the "beefy good looks of the Anglo Saxon athlete," is a
one-time Hearty. Geoffrey, pro-fascist and heterosexual,
appears at first to be the antithesis of Ambrose. But
Isherwood reports that Geoffrey depends on Ambrose "for
his continued vitality, almost for his very ability to go
on living. Their seriocomic conflict, which can never end
and in which neither can ever be the loser, recharges him
and gives him strength" (p. 94). As Isherwood needed his
defiance of Mr. Lancaster, Geoffrey and Ambrose need their
enmity. Again,conflict is inevitable and necessary
giving strength and definition to the individual.
Geoffrey and Ambrose are alike in their opposition to
the Hearties: Geoffrey bested them by climbing the chapel
spire— passing a Test of his own (p. 187) ; Ambrose, unable
to pass any Tests, became their victim. To do what the
Hearties demand and climb the tower, passing the Test,
brought Geoffrey no satisfaction (p. 187) . At the end of
the episode it is suggested, though never confirmed, that
Geoffrey may have partaken in the wrecking of Ambrose's
rooms, to further prove himself ”a man." Maria believes
174 ;
that Geoffrey, plagued by an unknown guilt, has destroyed
himself (p. 125). By revolting against the established
society— robbing his father's business— he has doomed him
self to perpetual exile, playing a sort of Wandering Jew
to Ambrose's strange Christ.
Ambrose and Geoffrey invent a fantasy homosexual
kingdom which parodies heterosexual society in its insis
tence on conformity. It rivals Hitler's regime in its
inhumanity: "'women will be much better off, actually,
then they are now. They'll be beautifully looked after on
the breeding farms, as wards of the State. And, surely,
most of them would greatly prefer artificial insemination,
anyway?"' (p. 101). Both men, though their sexual predi
lections are opposite, hate women, the symbols of the
society which has constrained them. But there is no
escape. Civilization comes to them in the person of Maria.
She is the unpleasant reality who brings their fantasies
to an end, an ironic contrast to their plans for women in
the fantasy homosexual society. Far from the docile
asexual creatures they would inter in a breeding farm, she
refuses to accept the role society has meted out to her.
While Ambrose's rebellion necessitates he remain passive,
hers requires aggressiveness: '"They say it's a man's
175 !
world. Well, that suits me as long as there are plenty of '
men to carry things for me. . . . I am not one of your
helpless females. I shall not be any trouble to you. . . .
Only, please forget I am a woman 1 '1 1 (p. 119). With her
love of "pretty boys" she lures Ambrose's "minions" to her
bed and in a few days is "absolute ruler of the island.”
She destroys Ambrose's paradise, for after she leaves,
Waldemar and the other boys soon follow, reminded by her
of some of the benefits of heterosexual civilization.
While Maria represents to Ambrose and Geoffrey the society
they are escaping, she herself has successfully defied
that society and is able to control t h e i r s .^ she is a
powerful force, able to surpass Ambrose in tyranny, to
literally abduct Geoffrey, and to tell Isherwood an un
pleasant truth about himself; like her, he is a monster
who feels no compassion, only curiosity toward those he
observes. While he denies the similarity, we recall that
following his moment of anguished sympathy at Ambrose's
story, his next reaction was to hurry "straight back to
the tent to write it all down" (p. 114) .
Left in possession of the island, Isherwood and Am
brose do not confide in one another: "I seldom thought of
Ambrose as a person. ... Most of the time he was simply
a consciousness that was aware of me, a mirror in which I
saw my reflection. . . . There were no revelations, no
confidences" (p. 130) . With Ambrose he is once again face
to face with a mirror image whom he cannot perceive as a
person. Again the encounter with another shows him aspects
of himself. As Maria had guessed, he is curious: and
doubtless thinking of Geoffrey's "secret, " he asks Ambrose
about the one Hearty who came to his room to apologize
after the wrecking of his rooms (p. 130) : Ambrose tells
him only that "things never do quite make sense" (p. 131).
That this event directly precedes the gradual return of
his longing for civilization suggests the truth of Maria1s
analysis. Knowing he will get no answers from Ambrose,
his curiosity ends. Disappointed at Ambrose's lack of
response as he was at Mr. Lancaster's indifference, he
makes one final attempt to elicit emotion: afraid to ask
"don't you care if I stay or not," instead he says "Don't
you mind being alone here with nobody but the boys?" And
Ambrose answers gently, "But one's always alone. Ducky.
Surely you know that" (p. 134).
Isherwood, torn between conflicting desires to rebel
and to be accepted, is afraid of the extreme isolation to
which Ambrose condemns himself. He emerges, a Dante or
177
Marlow, from this "inferno" with greater self-knowledge;
confronting a mirror he is startled at his appearance:
"there was also a look in my eyes which hadn't been there
before. . . . I caught glimpses of that look now and
then. . . . I would think of Ambrose out there alone. He
was right. . . . I didn't belong on his island. But now
I knew that I didn't belong here, either. Or anywhere"
(p. 135) . He is unable to accept, as Ambrose has, the
fundamental aloneness of each human being. He abandons
his ideal of isolation, of finding "a basis for genuine
feeling," to rejoin society.
Ambrose, anti-Christ as he may be, has paid for his
over-reaching egotism with a life-denying isolation. In
the end he is seen as possessor of a saintly self-knowl
edge, uttering truths which epitomize a whole modern
world view— nothing makes sense; one is always alone.
Ambrose epitomizes the difference between himself and
Isherwood early in their relationship when he says, "I'm
dead and you aren't" (p. 75). He, like Mr. Lancaster,
belongs to his solipsistic inferno while Isherwood is a
visitor. Although Isherwood participates in Ambrose's
world enough to suffer a loss of identity— "I ceased being
myself" (p. 129)— he needs here as in the other novels to
178
be part of the social world.
In "Waldemar, 1 1 Isherwood returns to England to face
the old fears of War and the Test. All of his social
efforts have one purposes to prove he can play the Others'
game. He used to refuse to play it but now he has "accept
ed their challenge . . . and . . . won# even according to
their own rules." He is "a success" (p. 141). Isherwood
the Artist has won the day, yet here the familiar fears
recur# intensified as never before# no longer hidden by
fantasy. With his "real friends" he is notably insecure#
afraid "to make any serious demands on anyone" because he
trusts no one (p. 141). The Test must be passed again and
again in every social encounter: "Sometimes I meet people
who intimidate me because I feel they can see through me.
With them I'll nearly knock myself out at first. . . .
But— if they're still not impressed— then . . . I'll get
bored and just brutally snub them" (p. 141) . The con
tinuous proving of worth is not enough. As in "Ambrose"
where he ceased being himself (p. 129)# here he again
raises the possibility that he is "not really a person at
all" (p. 142), returning to England will-less# "passively
spinning back on the return arc# like a boomerang" (p. 141).
This idea has certain unpleasant consequences: "If I'm
179 :
merely the boomerang— then what's going to happen when I
stop spinning? What about the future?" (p. 142). This is
the same fear voiced in Lions and Shadows (pp. 304-305),
The Berlin Stories (GB, pp. 5-6), and most explicitly in
Prater Violet (p. 157). As in the other novels Isherwood
defines himself by a passive rebellion— he cannot act, only
react, propelled by unseen forces.
Isherwood1s diary continually returns to his fear,
focussing on all his old dread of War. He fears, he says,
an intensification of control, the buildup of those forces
against which he has rebelled, represented by the public
school: "I have a terror of uniform and all that it
implies. . . . I've only been under authority . . . during
one period of my life, my schooldays. So it is English
authority that I dread" (p. 173). He dreads this even
more than the Nazis, enough to consider the alternative of
flight. Three diary entries mention the possibility of
America (p. 158, p. 174, p. 177). The time and place are
for Isherwood most hellish, a neutral zone somewhere be
tween peace and war which like Ambrose's island is time
less: "We might conceivably live in this one for the rest
of our lives" (p. 176) ; it too is a place where "we are
all mad" (p. 177). Here Dorothy provides the clue as
" 180
Geoffrey did earlier, appropriately naming the epoch,
i
"... isn't life hell nowadays?" (p. 149).
Although he has learned that the uncivilized life of
both Berlin and Ambrose's island is one of depravity,
England presents no better alternative. In England abso
lute conformity is demanded: "How compactly the English
sit, confronting their visitors: here . . . this is
where you'll do things our way, not yours" (p. 140). To
this complacent mentality, EM Forster— designated simply
"EM"— provides a contrast: "my England is E.M.: the
antiheroic hero. . . . He and his books and what they
stand for are all that is truly worth saving from Hitler;
and the vast majority of people on this island aren't even
aware that he exists" (p. 162). EM derives strength from
love (pp. 175-176) and from his gentle humor. Though seen
so dimly, he is a positive force. In contrast to EM's
England is England in general where Chamberlain is
respected because hs is "a gentleman standing up to a non
gentleman" and where Czechoslovokia is gradually betrayed
for the sake of peace. The disintegration of relationships
on the international scale is echoed, as in "Ambrose," in
personal relationships.
Dorothy, an upper middle class rebel turned Communist,;
181
sees Waldemar as a working class hero: . . . and he's
intelligent. . . . I don't mean in the highbrow way of
course. But he feels things. He has a wonderful way of
understanding people"' (p. 145). In her scorn for her
origins and "the highbrow way" she is like Isherwood. Her
appraisal of Waldemar*s innocence and animality show the
same longings Isherwood has expressed to shake off the
restraints imposed by the over-civilized Others, an idoli
zation of the primitive which implies that the non-civi-
lized is automatically superior, isherwood at this stage,
however, has confronted this particular fantasy in Berlin
and on Ambrose's island.
He notices that Waldemar has suffered a certain loss
of innocence— as Isherwood foresaw in "Ambrose" (p. 70) —
and his "instinctive acceptance of sadism, " once uncon
scious, has surfaced. For the first time he appears
"capable of hurting another person. There was a shade of
ugliness over his face" (p. 147). Dorothy implies that
there is an element of sexual sadism in their relationship:
"'When we first made love, he treated me . . . as if I was
an old whore. . . . It fascinated me. . . .My young men
before I met him had always been, well, so damned respect
ful. But with him— oh, I can't describe it: it certainly
wasn't respectful. . . . I cried with joy, literallyl'"
(p. 149). In her craving for the "natural, " Dorothy allows
herself to be degraded, relishing the relationship as if
in expiation for having been bom with money. Isherwood is
explicit about the cruelty and lovelessness in Waldemar's
treatment of her (p. 155 ff) and betrays his own growth in
compassion: "I watched Dorothy watching his sullen-captive
face, watching it anxiously and with just a hint of
timidity— and I thought, as I had so often thought before:
really, in spite of all their bluffs and double bluffs, how
utterly defenseless women are; and how badly most of us
treat them, most of the timel" (p. 147). This is quite
different from his attitude toward Maria the absolute
ruler (p. 119) and is perhaps explained by the fact that
Dorothy is timid, defeated, and plain, and therefore no
real threat— woman as civilization's powerless victim can
be pitied. Dorothy, like a younger Isherwood, sees
Waldemar as innocent (p. 149). But isherwood is beginning
to view innocence not as an enviable quality but as a lack
of mental capacity. Waldemar complains that Dorothy is no
fun anymore: "'She worries so much, she makes me miserable.
Nothing's worth getting so miserable over. If there's a
war, there's a war'" (p. 168). Immediately following is a
183 |
diary entry recording a conversation with a girl calmly
planning a pleasure voyage in the shadow of war. Isher
wood is at first outraged: "How dare she. . . . She
hasn't even enough imagination to be aware of the shadow.
Just plain stupid" (p. 170). The same could easily be
said of Waldemar, and the juxtaposition of Waldemar's com
plaints with this "stupid" girl's thoughtless plans implies
their similarity.
Dorothy is right about Waldemar's innocence in one
sense. Like Mr. Lancaster, he has been living with the
fantasy that he will be adopted by Dorothy's family. He
has as yet no comprehension of the English class structure.
Dorothy's family of course does not accept him; he learns
to his surprise that because he is not a Jewish martyr
there is no place for him in England; because he has been
born into the wrong class, he will never be anything but a
servant. While Isherwood realizes that the people will
unite to drive off the Nazis— "They care with their own
kind of passion, which neither the Nazis nor any other
foreigners will believe in until it's too late" (p. 160),
Dorothy's mother suggests Waldemar go back to Germany:
"He'd probably be much happier there" (p. 168).
Like Mr. Lancaster and Ambrose, Waldemar is alone (p.
184
166). He is eventually unwelcome even to Dorothy who re
veals her feelings indirectly, asking: "Isn't it wrong to
have personal relationships nowadays? Shouldn't you keep
yourself unattached— in case, suddenly, you're needed?"
(p. 179). She professes envy for Christopher's non
involvement .
But Christopher is "involved," though not with
Dorothy's ardor. He mentions two lovers "B" and "G"— the
latter repeatedly described as "sweet" but "so unbearably
passive": "I couldn't bear to be alone with G . . .
who'd insisted throughout supper on discussing our 'rela
tionship. ' As though we were characters in a Henry James
novel" (p. 172). He is an obvious contrast to "B" whom
Isherwood prefers: "We satisfied each other absolutely,
without the smallest sentiment, like a pair of animals.
And that's what I want now. Not poor, dear, tiresome,
helpless G" (p. 177). He defines himself and B as without
innocence— "cruel, tragic, desperate." It is this quality
of cruelty that draws him to Waldemar when they meet again
on the ship: "because of this he was more sexually
attractive than ever before" (p. 147). Both Waldemar and
Isherwood have changed: Waldemar has not remained "young
and fearless and silly" and the innocence isherwood found
185''
in the afternoon with Waldemar and Oskar's braut has
evaporated. In the world before the war sexual relation
ships become twisted and cruel. By the time he and Walde
mar meet for the last time, Isherwood's off-handed con
fessions have subtly reinforced the similarity between
them in their inability to love, recalling his description
of Waldemar as a younger self.
Waldemar begs Isherwood to take him to America. But
Isherwood has seen the cold manipulativeness Waldemar is
capable of with Dorothy as well as himself, and no longer
enjoys being manipulated. Like Parrot-Shark's decadence,
Waldemar's animal innocence is no longer appealing, and
Isherwood describes his return from fantasy to reality in
similar terms: "how weak the poor little spell was— how
easily broken. . . . I saw his face change, become older
and harder" (p. 187). But he is aware always of the link
between them: "Waldemar* s decision had somehow related
itself to mine." Neither belongs in that society. Isher
wood too decides to leave an England always unbearable in
its tolerance, grown more shrill in its fear. As at the
end of Prater Violet he has nothing to cling to. He has,
as he said, lost "his political faith" (p. 161). Despair
ing, unlike Dorothy, of salvation through communism, he
186 ;
tells her he sees "No meaning at all” to life (p. 180).
Waldemar goes his way lacking Mr. Lancaster's capacity
for despair or Ambrose's talent for resignation. There is,
as with Lancaster and Ambrose, a moment for action on
Isherwood's part— for the assuming of responsibility— but
he cannot act; "I got a sudden violent feeling that it
was my duty to stop him. . . . But if I ran downstairs and
shouted after him, naked except for a small bath towel,
what would the taxi driver think? . . . My hesitation had
been only momentary, but it had been sufficient. For now
I heard the taxi driving away" (p. 188). He abandons
Waldemar to whatever corruption and destitution Nazi Ger
many may hold.
We have seen that the adolescent myth of the Test
still underlies Isherwood's work and that there is no way
to pass it and be done with it. Though he passed the
Test— in mock epic terms— in the "Mr. Lancaster" episode,
it still informs his life as he tells us in "Waldemar"
when he says he constantly plays the Game of the Others.
His anxiety over the coming war is no doubt attributable
to it and in this light the sojourn to America is an
attempt to escape the nightmarish world situation which
promised to make real his most vivid fears. It, like the
187
journey to Ambrose's island, is the compensatory avoidance
4
journey of the Truly Weak Man.
That the conflict is within and not a product of the
world situation and that change of place will be no help
is foreshadowed in "Waldemar" when Isherwood admits that
". . . if you ran away to some land where there is sanity
and joy, you couldn't help bringing your madness with you"
(p. 177). In the last episode, "Paul," he brings his mad
ness to America. Here the game of the others is useless.
In England it shielded him from "nothingness" (p. 233) and
from "thinking and feeling" as well: "But now I was
forced to think and feel. The game could be played here
of course but not by me. The American Others . . . had no
relation to me. They weren't even my enemies" (p. 233).
Since in America there appears to be no Test, Isherwood
has no wish to rebel. Though once he reveled in the
anarchy of Mortmere and fled to Berlin to experience it,
now, sated, he wishes to guard himself against it. As he
once journeyed to Berlin to learn about himself from
Barnard and Lane, now he has travelled to California to
sit at the feet of Augustus Parr. The Isherwood who
rebelled against authority and discipline now seeks it out:
"What impressed and attracted me was Augustus' tone of
authority. He seemed ready to give me absolutely specific
instructions. . . . And that was just what I wanted just
now. I longed for discipline" (p. 233) . in the beginning
of "Paul" we learn he is a Vedantist. His new religion
represents a turning inward to deal with his conflicts at
their source within the psyche. He attempts a truce in
the war between instinctual and social demands. Here he
tries to rid himself of conflict by renouncing instincts
altogether according to his perception of Vedantist
teaching. But this new conformity will occasion a new
rebellion, for the Test has not really vanished.
As in the other portraits the imagery of hell con
tinues. Here it is neither life without conventional
restraints nor the world situation but, explicitly, the
hell within the self. Augustus Parr tells Isherwood of
Paul's life, "There were moments when one was almost re
minded of the Inferno" (p. 240). Parr sees within Paul:
"'A certain vortex forms at a very deep level; and as it
swirls around, something takes shape inside it— something
rather terrible— which isn't answerable to the individual's
will. It has a life of its own. . . . You remember the
great scene in Lear— "beware my follower?" That was what
I saw behind our friend'" (p. 237). It is the satanic
189
“follower" who rules at the desert retreat, appropriately
described as a "hellhole" (p. 272). Here too the most
undesirably human traits take over: the Vedantists reward
Paul's spiritual struggle with profound lack of trust;
Isherwood himself is overtaken by a subversive "hostile
and malign" (p. 237) being within himself. A long way now
from the Natural Man upheld by Lane and Barnard, Isherwood
confirms through direct experience that man by nature has
great capacity for evil. While the social world may be
unpleasantly repressive, what lies within each person is
more to be feared.
"Paul" begins with the words "Another look in a
mirror, 1 1 an image that has recurred throughout this novel,
signal of the problem of identity.^ In his encounter with
Paul he will face still another mirror image. Paul de
scribes his own spiritual crisis: "*1 caught my own eye
in the mirror and I looked at myself— not the way you
usually do— really looked. The bar was crowded, but I
might just as well have been alone on a desert island. . . .
I knew this must be the end, because I saw that now I'm
not good for anything— anything at all'" (p. 217). Paul's
anguish parallels Isherwood's despair in New York (p. 233).
But there are profound differences between them. Augustus
Parr characterizes Paul: "'. . . There's a very curious
expression in the eyes— you see it sometimes in photo
graphs of wild animals at hay. But one also saw something
else— which no animal has or can have— despair. Not help
less, negative despair. Dynamic despair. The kind that
makes dangerous criminals, and, very occasionally, saints11'
(p. 237). Aldous Huxley re-states this paradox in a
Vedantist essay: "This is a world in which nobody ever
gets anything for nothing. The capacity to go higher is
purchased at the expense of being able to fall lower.
Clearly Paul is presented as someone of unusual capacity,
and Parr's analysis poses a key question which the remain
der of the novel explores. It also distinguishes Paul
from the other "portraits"— from the "helpless negative
despair" that leads to Mr. Lancaster's suicide or the
passive isolation that keeps Ambrose on his island. In
some strange way innocent (p. 194) like Waldemar, Paul is
differentiated from him by Isherwood's careful sketching.
Waldemar, constantly described as an "animal," lacks Paul's
capacity for self-knowledge. In contrast to Waldemar's
animal vitality Paul has "the wrong kind of body," and
Isherwood reports that ". . . it repelled me slightly; it
was slender in the wrong way, and somehow too elegant, too
............. 191
wearily sophisticated in its movements. ... Perhaps it
had lost its unselfconscious animal grace in the process
of acquiring the negligent arrogant art of being looked
at" (p. 207). This recalls Isherwood's own world-weary
self-consciousness at the end of Prater Violet and through
out this novel. While younger selves attract, those who
share Isherwood's over-civilized world-weary tedium are
not material for sexual response. One is reminded again
of the Peter-Otto situation where Peter's overtures are
rejected and Christopher follows Otto, the animal youth,
to Berlin. Paul too is one of the over-civilized, those
who have lost their "unselfconscious animal grace."
Paul has the same saintly martyr air as Ambrose. He
too is implicitly compared to Christ when Isherwood remarks
that everyone always ends up Judas to Paul (p. 291). But
Isherwood's Christ is tarnished by the psychoanalytic
possibilities Isherwood suggests in the Vedanta pamphlet,
his self-sacrifice no sacrifice at all but a predilection
for pain, masking a sadistic desire to entrap his murderers
in gu-.lt (Approach, p. 13). Like Ambrose, Paul perhaps
derives covert pleasure from punishment: "'He said I'd
insulted his mother. . . . Told me to stand up and
fight like a man. I said, "Mary, your aunt is not a man
192 ;
and would never stoop to act like one, and you are just a
little male impersonator who's starting to be a great big
bore." So then he lit into me'" (p. 215). By the end of
the novel Paul has become even more like Ambrose: he too
is beaten up in various bars but without benefit of body
guard, for Paul lacks Ambrose's will to live.
Like Mr. Lancaster, Paul contemplates suicide but
confronts Isherwood directly with the fact. He too is
impotent— but it is a temporary state and not a way of
life. His interest in Vedanta is the antithesis of Mr.
Lancaster's sad and secret attempts to establish contact
with the outside world. His "greater capacity" is obvious,
for he extends himself both outward— to Christopher in an
obvious appeal for help— and inward: "'I've been right
down into the inside of myself with dope two or three
times— and I know one thing for sure: if, by some wildly
unlikely chance, there is any afterwards, and I swallow
those pills in the state I'm now in, then I'm going to
find myself in a mess which'11 be a million times ghastlier
than anything that could possibly happen to me here. Be
cause there I'll really be stuck with myself'" (p. 218).
It is this wish for self-knowledge that ultimately distin
guishes Paul from the other portrait subjects, but the
problem is more complex. One Is never sure that Paul is
in earnest. He is too sophisticated to take up just any
belief and maintains an almost constant and protective
cynicism. He never totally loses his mocking air, remain
ing capable of the pettiness antithetical to Non-Attach
ment. Yet at times he displays a saintly humility that
neither Isherwood nor any of his observed characters can
match. Like Isherwood who could grow only by defying Mr.
Lancaster and like Geoffrey and Ambrose who each need the
other's opposition, Paul too has to act against someone (p.
303). Again rebellion is necessary for growth.
Paul'8 negativeness is a type of Vedantist non-attach
ment. When Isherwood sees him in Europe he is addicted
to opium: "his face looked as though it had the firmness
of hard wax and was semitransparent. There was an air
about him of being somehow preserved, and, at the same
time, purified; his skin seemed to be absolutely without
blemish. Indeed, he was marvelously, uncannily beautiful"
(p. 312). The description suggests a state akin to
blessedness. Surprisingly, he cures himself and apparently
reaches his goal which he earlier defined: "I want to find
out all I want to know" (p. 306). When Paul talks with
"some young intellectuals" about the possibility of life
after death, Ronny reports that he speaks "with such an
air of authority; it was as if he actually knew something"
(p. 317). He dies quite suddenly in the middle of a party
with his face showing "no pain" (p. 318). The story sug
gests that Paul is a Vedantist saint— one who truly comes
to grips with the self, attaining such knowledge only
through a painful struggle. He experiences the true dan
gerous journey mocked in "Mr. Lancaster, " the direct en
counter with anarchic instincts prerequisite to any
experience of the Atman/Self/God within.
Isherwood's self-portrait is thrown into relief by
Paul's greater heights and depths. It is Paul whose
negativity at every turn confronts Isherwood with his own
pretentious piety, as in an early discussion of Vedantist
teachings where he reports that "a certain falseness in my
own tone jarred on me; it was a shade too 'direct,' too
'sincere.'"
All Isherwood's autobiographical novels consist of a
series of sketches in which a created self encounters
others. Hitherto— with the exception of Lions and Shadows.
where he was passive recipient of the influence of great
numbers of people— his increasing fascination with his
subject ends due to a sudden reticence, most often in
response to an admission of need. But the Isherwood of
"Paul" is changed. When he realizes that Paul has left,
possibly to commit suicide, he runs after him and pulls
him back (p. 220). This is a striking difference from his
behavior in "Waldemar," explicable in some measure by
Isherwood's new belief, which, although it might be too
ardently embraced, at least has given him some kind of
foundation, a belief in the possibility of Self from which
he can reach out to others. Between the time of "Ambrose"
and "Waldemar," he has reached Ambrose's conclusions— life
has “no meaning at all." Now belief in nothing has been
replaced, however tenuously, by belief in the possibility
of "This Thing” (Augustus' euphemistic term for Brahman/
Atman— the God/Self). He saves Paul from suicide, almost
as if in expiation for his fatal neglect of Mr. Lancaster
or his abandonment of Ambrose and Waldemar.
The course of the story reveals Isherwood's mistaken
perception of the nature of Vedantic practice. The tenu
ousness of his hold on this new reality is measured by the
over-zealousness with which he sets about to help Paul as
well as by certain ambiguities inherent in the act itself.
His offer of money to Paul and his thoughts about it pre
sent a curious paradox. For though the act has its origins
in the love a Vedantist should feel for mankind and thus
presents a striking contrast to cold desertions by pre
vious selves, it is not strictly in keeping with Vedantist
ideals. At the fatal retreat when Paul tells him of his
attraction to Dee-Ann he reacts, as he says, like "a
jealous husband” and speculates, "we were tied together,
too, not by sex, but by that money I'd given him. God,
what ivy-binding insidious stuff it isi" (p. 265). The
Vedantist must work toward a love of all life as manifesta
tion of Brahman and not cling to specific human beings.
Of the three forms of imperfection— addiction, pretention,
and aversion (p. 230), relationships are addictions, ties
that bind one to the illusory world and thus obstacles to
self-knowledge (Approach, p. 21). Money too is a form of
addiction.
Imperfect man and not saint, Isherwood is guilty not
only of addiction, but pretention as well. He writes in
the pamphlet: "Pretentions were the worst, because when
you are free of all sensual attachments and all your
superfluous belongings . . . — then, and only then, are
you liable to fall victim to the spiritual arrogance which
can become the worst obstacle of all" (Approach, p. 22).
We recall his self-congratulatory air at being appointed
Paul's savior (p. 240). The act of generosity is only
ostensibly one of Vedantist renunciation. The final proof
is the "little voice" (p. 252) and the sudden pangs which
illustrate a Vedantist distinction between false and true
renunciation: "If you break off relationships and give up
belongings for the sake of playing the saint or out of a
perverse desire for self-torture# you will be filled with
bitter secret regret for what you have done, and the
renunciation will be false and will bring you no enlighten
ment" (Approach# p. 60) . Thus, however nobly motivated,
the act brings with it not enlightenment (no "orgasm of
emotion, " p. 251) but further bondage.
The paradox is contained in the narration. We have
here not only Isherwood-character but Isherwood-narrator
reporting to us with great scrupulousness the imperfections
of a younger self. But the very fact of reporting these
limitations ensures him against the spiritual pride
Vedanta and all religions warn against„ As Huxley writes:
"It is fatal to boast of achievement or to take satis
faction in an experience which, if it genuinely partakes
of enlightenment, is a product of grace rather than per
sonal effort" (Huxley, p. 63). By recording his ignoble
thoughts Isherwood declines to boast. His misgivings and
198 !
his conscientious reporting of them held up to the mirror
of Huxley's words take on intonations of the truly saintly.:
Huxley continues: "Progress in spirituality brings con
trition as well as joy. The enlightenment is expressed as
joy; but this bright bliss illuminates all that, within the
self, remains unenlightened, dispelling our normal blind
complacency in regard to faults. ... on the way to . . .
consummation, contrition must alternate with bliss" (p.
63). In perceiving and reporting the flaws he sees in
this act of non-attachment, Isherwood displays the contrite
humility requisite for sainthood.
Guilty of both addiction and pretention, Isherwood
strains at the Retreat to overcome his aversion— the third
imperfection— to his fellow Vedantists. Meanwhile he
unconsciously aids in a scheme to horrify the community:
Chalmers and all the denizens of Mortmere would have re
joiced. He unconsciously sets about to ensure Paul's
failure as a Vedantist. Looking back on the experience, he
sees the situation in terms that ring of Ronny's "precious
psychoanalysis" (p. 268) rather than Vedanta. Fully ac
knowledging that he had "staked his faith on Paul and that
"any failure of his would be my failure" (p. 276), he
further describes his self-duplicity: it is "an attempted
putsch. Part of me— the minority, certainly, but desperate!
and quite ruthless— wanted to precipitate a scandal in
which everything— the entire life I had been leading— would;
come to an end. The minority neither knew nor cared
exactly what the long term results of its counterrevolution
would be. It simply hoped to find some advantage and
opportunity for itself among the ruins" (p. 277). Paul
does not even have to succumb to temptation— the implica
tion of guilt alone is sufficient and Chris like everyone
else assumes that Paul is guilty. Lack of trust— not
love— triumphs. The instincts cannot be subdued; their
suppression leads only to rebellion and moral anarchy.
Auden said, the heart hides motives which "like stowaways/
Are found too late" (CSP, pp. 63-64), and Vedantists warns
"Never let pride delude you into thinking that you have
gained control of the passions. For if such becomes your
belief, you will soon experience their sharp aliveness.
. . . .Only a hero can conquer the senses and go beyond
n
them to the superconscious plane."' Neither Isherwood nor
Paul is as yet a hero.®
When isherwood attends the holy "humorless" meeting
(p. 297) called because of Paul's behavior at the labor
camp, his dislike for the pious Quakers and Vedantists is
200
most strong (p. 298). But as he leaves# he reflects that
"If Paul found out that I'd been present here at all he'd
never forgive me" (p. 299). Once again he is caught be
tween the two sides, The dilemma he thought he could
escape, indeed declared he had escaped, is still present.
The English establishment of school-masters, government
officials, relatives— all the Others whose Tests he
attempted to pass— has simply been transplanted. He came
to Augustus feeling "a need for discipline, " but discipline
is precisely what he cannot stand. The rules he tried to
observe are those suggested by Augustus, not from within,
and the Vedantist and Quaker "establishment" takes over
the function of the Others against whom he must rebel. By
his very presence at the meeting, however, he admits he is
afraid of displeasing them. His attitude to Paul once
these feelings have surfaced is even more ambivalent, be
cause while hating the Conscientious Objectors for their
priggishness, he doesn't want Paul back (p. 300).
Paul, while rejecting a practice unnatural to him, is
clearly to be seen as pursuing "this thing" in his own way,
not Christopher's, as he says: "You only believed I could
do things your wav" (p. 302). Paul's experience illumi
nates an important dimension of the search for God-Self in
contrast to which Isherwood's enthusiastic piety seems
shallow indeed. In one of their early conversations,
Isherwood describes Parr's belief in "'this thing that's
inside of us and yet isn't us. . . . He believes . . . we
can get in touch with it.'" Paul's quick response is "'If
you want to get in touch with it'" (pp. 208-209). Paul's
struggles once he leaves their Vedantist practice and
really begins the guest imply that self-knowledge is some
thing not to be undertaken lightly. Clearly their
"spiritual farm" oversimplifies an arduous process. But
Isherwood remains unaware of this, not understanding what
Paul is attempting. In Europe when Chris asks to try an
opium pipe, Paul makes the contrast between them explicit:
‘ "You're exactly like a tourist who thinks he can take in
the whole of Rome in one day. . . . I bet you're always
sending post cards with "Down here on a visit" on them.
That's the story of your life. . . . I'll tell you what’d
happen if you smoked one pipe: nothing! . . . . It's
absolutely no use fooling around with this, unless you
really want to know what’s inside of it. . . . And to do
that, you have to let yourself get hooked. Deliberately!'"
(pp. 315-316). Isherwood is again the person unable to
"get hooked," unable to make any lasting commitment. In
202
capable of Paul's choice of self-knowledge, again he is
the Truly Weak Man trapped in the blizzard and the ice,
the perpetual tourist-exile. Nevertheless, the Christopher
who visits Paul is certainly more admirable ("You always
stood by me," Paul writes— p. 306) than the Isherwood who
encountered Mr. Norris, Sally, Bernhard, Mr. Lancaster,
Ambrose, and all the rest. This older Isherwood— in con
trast to his younger self in Prater Violet and "Walde
mar"— believes at least that life has meaning, that people
like Augustus and EM are keeping the world alive in a way
that he doesn't understand.
His limitations are dramatized in one last encounter
with Waldemar, now a family man, no longer in possession
of that one time "animal grace." He has settled down,
found a good job and a "good woman" who cured him of his
roving ways. It was Waldemar who earlier had inspired
Isherwood's pacifism: "Suppose I have in my power an army
of five million men. I can destroy it instantly by press
ing an electric button. The five-millionth man is Walde
mar. Will I press that button? No, of course not. ...
Once I have refused to press the button because of Walde
mar, I can never press it. Because Waldemar could be
absolutely anybody" (p. 201). Though Isherwood can spare
203
Waldemar the symbol of life's unity, he cannot help walde
mar the actual human being. Waldemar and his family want
to come to America but isherwood refuses: "It wasn't that
I grudged the money. But I utterly refused to have a
family. . . . And yet, I felt guilty because I refused"
(p. 311). Although his refusal to have a family is good
Vedantist practice, he is still plagued by the old ques
tions of guilt and responsibility. He is not so dramat
ically altered by Vedanta as he would have liked to be
lieve.
Down There on a Visit is finally a self-portrait—
Isherwood seen at four different times through four
different mirror-images, through experiences in four
worlds, in none of which he can remain. The change in his
personality is in the direction of greater compassion and
love: he abandons Mr. Lancaster, deserts Ambrose and
Waldemar, but saves Paul, tinged as this act may be with
egotism. He is not a monster; no one, except perhaps Paul
and poor "G," cares much about him either. It is as if the
portraits represent alternative courses of action, possi
bilities of what he might have become, ways that are firm
and committed but ultimately deadly. Mr. Lancaster re
flects Isherwood's egocentricity and his tendency to build
up his self-esteem with fantasy. Ambrose, in flight like
Isherwood from the values of the Hearties at Cambridge,
initiates Isherwood into the hell of a society where these
values are destroyed. Isherwood learns again he cannot
escape the social world and that one is "always alone."
In "Waldemar," now fully initiate, he returns to England
to face the old fears of war and the Test and we see still
another self in Waldemar's one time innocence which has
become grasping selfish cruelty. The myth of the superior
natural man is again shattered. Waldemar is abandoned
with a touch of his own cruelty to Nazi Germany where he
belongs. The alternatives to Waldemar, Dorothy's intoler
ant upper class parents or Dorothy herself with her belief
in salvation by communism, offer no solace either. There
is no alternative but further flight. Isherwood proclaims
his belief in the nothingness which Lancaster and Ambrose
have always known.
Paul proclaims a similar belief— but as question not
answer: "'What makes you think . . . [life's] for any
thing? Why can't it just be a filthy mess of meaningless
shit?'" (p. 210). isherwood, believing now in This Thing,
attempts sainthood and fails while his alter ego succeeds
in an unorthodox way and pays for the quest with his life.
Pace to face with Paul, Isherwood encounters more of his
limitations: he will not plunge himself into a drug-
wrought inferno; he will not follow Augustus' ascetic
rules. He will continue to be himself, however limited,
"down there on a visit" and trust to something vague— per
haps at last the “basis for genuine feeling" sought in
Ambrose— which he is "embarrassed" to call love (p. 301)
though EM is not (p. 175), and in the faith that Augustus
Parr and those like him by their greater self-sacrifice
will sustain the world (p. 288). Paul with his greater
capacity for both good and evil ultimately serves as
another landmark in this faith, for Paul died secure in
the knowledge that there was something knowable— perhaps
even loveable— "down there."
Notes and References
•*-Alan Watts, "The Negative Way, " in Vedanta for
Modern Man, ed. Christopher Isherwood (New York: Collier
Books, 1962), p. 37.
5
Alan Watts, "One for all, all for one," Book Week,
July 4, 1965, p. 3.
3In her avid promiscuity and outspokeness Maria might
be an older Sally Bowles— or perhaps she is the genuine
article Sally could only imitate, for she lacks Sally's
charming gullibility as Ambrose lacks the appealing help
lessness of his earlier counterpart Mr. Norris.
4Isherwood's journey to California is explained again
in his autobiographical pamphlet An Approach to Vedanta.
The picture Isherwood gives of himself there differs from
that in the fiction only in subtleties. Unlike the
politically passive narrator of the novel who looks askance
at Dorothy's idealistic communism and proclaims his faith
in nothingness, Isherwood presents himself in An Approach
as discovering "that I had been too much involved in
politics, or involved in the wrong way" (Approach, p. 112).
The ommission of this information in Down There on a Visit
is in line with Isherwood's purposes in the novel— the
characterization of a narrator-self virtually incapable of
involvement of any sort. In the essay Isherwood dwells
explicitly on the war-fear which pursued him to New York.
Once he is no longer a tourist, however, fears and
anxieties beset him. "I was paralyzed by apprehension.
The high cost of our living scared me. So did the European
news, which got steadily worse; until war seemed almost
inevitable" (Approach, pp. 14-15). The questions of
identity plaguing him at the end of Prater Violet and
throughout Down There are here most acute:
The hospitality of friends and strangers couldn't
reassure me, for I felt that I was accepting it
under false pretenses. The Christopher Isherwood
they wanted to see was no longer myself— for he
represented those very attitudes and beliefs I had
just abandoned. (Approach, p. 15)
Isherwood's account of this period in "Paul" differs only
in the addition of more personal details. Here we learn
that "V" in New York turned out to be "only another one of
those quick looking glass affairs" (p. 232). The reason
for his emotional crisis is thus loss of love, not change
of political conviction: "My new life had been built on
the foundation of the supposed love and automatically
collapsed with it." He is faced in the novel and pamphlet
alike with a profound sense of meaninglessness. In both
works, the old need for a father-figure reasserts itself.
In the pamphlet he describes how he decides to seek advice
from Gerald Heard, who has turned Hindu and thus, like
him, pacifist: Heard "sounded authoritative and encour
aging, even if somewhat vague. I certainly knew that I
needed discipline of some kind in my own life" (Approach,
p. 16). Gerald Heard is, as Isherwood acknowledges in
interviews, Augustus Parr. Although different in minute
particulars, the broad outlines of character are the same.
^Isherwood glanced long and hard into a mirror pre
ceding the banquet at which he resisted the advances of
Parrot-Shark and the domination of Mr. Lancaster; he noted
at the time that he personified Youth. At the end of the
journey to Ambrose's island he looked again into a mirror
and saw his loss of innocence and his isolation. Both Mr.
Lancaster and Ambrose have been types of mirror images—
as has Waldemar— each revealing to Isherwood more of his
own confusing nature (V in New York is appropriately “just
another looking glass affair").
6"Further Reflections on Progress, " in Vedanta for
Modern Man. p. 62, hereafter referred to as "Huxley" with
page references in parentheses in the text.
7
Swami Turiyananda, "Spiritual Talks," in Vedanta for
Modem Man, p. 77.
®In his biography of Ramakrishna (Raxtvakrishna and His
Disciples. London: Methuen, 1965) Isherwood explains the
Vedantist concept of Dharma— the work one must do, his
duties in the world imposed on him by his own nature (p.
7). In the Bhaqavad Gita “great stress is laid upon the
importance of following your own dharma and not trying to
208
follow the dharma of another" (p. 7). Swami Prabhavananda
warns that "Any rule imposed from without on the basis of
authority which takes away our freedom of thinking and
acting, even though it may be the right rule, does not
inspire man to carry it into practice" (Vedanta for
Modern Man, p. 30). In the caste system of ancient India
only the Brahmins actively sought enlightenment (Rama-
krishna, p. 7). Others belonged in the social world.
Isherwood illustrates his own performance of dharma at the
beginning of "Paul" when he recounts his day at the
studio: "I know exactly what the front office and my pro
ducer want, and how to give it to them. . . It is a job
to be done, as expertly as possible" (p. 202). He
follows the injunction to value the work for its own sake
without becoming attached to it. This non-attachment
reveals itself also in his attitude toward his residence
where nothing seems to belong to him (p. 200) . Early
scenes show him resisting drink and sex— both forms of
bondage. Without a doubt all this changes and "Paul"
traces his return to a more worldly life but not before he
has gone "whole-hog" and tried to live a monk-like life.
He presents himself as failing through lack of self aware
ness, sabotaged by unconscious destructive impulses. He
has undertaken a way of life indeed not suited to his
nature.
V. Kathleen and Frank: "Chiefly About Christopher"
Lions and Shadows ends with the young Isherwood in
full flight from all the formative influences of his youth,:
attempting to establish his identity against powerful
pulls to conform. These forces, which he only partially
escapes, are seen as abstractions like country, religion,
school, social class. He is silent on the subject of his
family, but constantly seeks an understanding authority
figure. The autobiographical novels which follow trace
the course of his flight.
Throughout these works, Isherwood has maintained a
certain duality, a division between his younger self—
seriously flawed and naive— and the older narrator who
reports these adventures, with a self-concept that is most
loathsome in Lions and Shadows and most tolerant in Down
There on a Visit. The movement of the novels is toward a
self-understanding and forgiveness which reaches its cul
mination in Kathleen and Frank, a book of atonement which
attempts no answers other than the fitting together of
fragments of the author's life like the pieces of a puzzle.
Bringing Isherwood's work back to Christopher as infant, it
209
attempts to re-examine and forgive those very forces which
caused him.
Lions and Shadows claims to be a study of a novelist's
education in the twenties, and the first person novels are
ostensibly portraits of the unconventional people Isherwood
has encountered. Kathleen and Frank, too, is at first
glance something other than autobiography. The title
refers to his parents' names; the book contains extracts
from Kathleen's diary, Prank's letters, and other records
of family history. One of Isherwood's purposes is to
follow his parent's wishes: his mother said of her diary
"Perhaps someone will be glad of it someday," and his
father wrote "What a pity your husband's life will never be
written" (p. 510). As editor, Isherwood had a great body
of material on his hands and his selectivity is determined
by his wish to give a full picture of his parents, of the
time in which they lived and the social forces that shaped
them. But his ultimate purpose is to explain the causes of
his flight from the institutions which stifled him in his
youth, demanding that he undergo the Test. Much as he
embodies his Cambridge rebellion in the mythology of The
Other Town, so he creates mythic figures out of his parents.
The older editor-narrator attempts a more dispassionate
211
presentation than he was capable of in his youth. But
although he tries to be fair to his parents, the mythic
figures can from time to time be glimpsed behind the veil
of objectivity.
Isherwood presents a montage of selected extracts
which embody certain recurring ideas. In italicized
editorial comment, an impersonal narrator intrudes to in
terpret, give proper emphasis, or guess at an explanation
of mysteries, often indulging in what appear to be digres
sions about the effects of Kathleen and Frank Isherwood
upon their older son, Christopher. It is only in the
Afterword that the reader sees the pattern as a whole and
learns that what appears to be digressive is in fact the
major concern of the book. Here isherwood describes his
initial perusal of the material, documents which, because
of his aversion to "the Past," he had ignored: "While
reading through these, Christopher saw how heredity and
kinship create a woven fabric? its patterns vary, but its
strands are the same throughout. Impossible to say
exactly where Kathleen and Frank end and Richard and
Christopher begin; they merge into each other. Christo
pher has found that he is far more closely interwoven with
Kathleen and Frank than he had supposed or liked to be-
2 X 2 \
lieve" (p. 509). The book is the setting forth of the
strands of that fabric which is Isherwood's life.
The early history of Kathleen and Prank is a
Victorian romance on the Barrett-Browning model, if less
dramatic. Isherwood first examines Kathleen's parents
Frederick and Emily Machell Smith, showing how the time in
which they lived has formed them. Born at the start of
Victoria's reign, Frederick grows up as "something of a
Byronic hero" and becomes "a tamed and chained but still
dangerous Victorian Samson, a martyr moralist, fettered to
his duties as son, husband, father, businessman, citizen,
and Christian" (p. 15). Emily fulfilled the other half of
this complex, being what Isherwood terms "a Martyr Wife"
and what Emily herself called an "angel" (p. 21), a con
cept fashionable in the period, "the submissive wife whcse
whole excuse for being was to love, honor, obey . . . and
amuse— her lord and master and to manage his household and
bring up his children."1 But this is an external sub
mission only, as Isherwood remarks, "Martyrs are not sub
mitting to you when they let you tie them to the stake"
(p. 18).
Isherwood implies that marriage is a conflict in
which one member is forced to capitulate. He tries to be
213 ;
fair to the hardships women suffer under this system, but
his sympathies lie with men: they are the more damaged.
Of his parent's marriage he will say that "One can't help
feeling . . . that Kathleen had the best of the bargain' 1
(p. 267) . Here he returns to an attitude expressed in
Lions and Shadows: civilization stifles and corrupts. For
as Frederick moves from his "rough aggressive outdoor life"
in Australia (where he had emmigrated in flight from his
own father) to his married life in provincial Bury and
finally to London, he becomes increasingly frustrated. He
is "fettered" to his responsibilities. The damage done to
Emily is the stifling of her artistic temperament: "If
Frederick should perhaps have become an Australian, she
should certainly have become an actress. She had the
temperament and stamina for it" (p. 18). Her repressed
creativity becomes destructive: she "was forced, for want
of any other outlet, to express her temperament through
the medium of illness. . . . She was no imaginary invalid,
but a great psychosomatic virtuoso who could produce high
fevers, large swellings and mysterious rashes within the
hour" (pp. 18-19). She uses her poor health as a weapon,
forcing Frederick to leave Bury where he has been happy
and move to London (p. 18). Here she has the freedom to
214
please herself. Kathleen's diaries record endless rounds
of lectures, concerts, plays, visits to museums. But
Frederick, Isherwood implies, is humiliated by the move
and his own confinement causes him to express his resent
ment of his wife and daughter by "increasingly tyrannical
behavior" (p. 24).
Both Frederick's frustrated tyranny and Emily's mani
pulative illnesses in turn damage Kathleen. As she sees
more and more of Frank Isherwood, her mother increasingly
demands her attention through illness (p. 114). She is a
loyal, dutiful daughter. When Emily is sick Kathleen
writes she is "out to everyone [including presumably Mr.
Isherwood], as Mama does so hate my being called away when
with her" (p. 50). When Emily, here and elsewhere, refuses
to permit a maid or nurse to tend her, Kathleen's response
is not criticism but self-castigation: "I feel so dis
tressed I can't manage by myself as I know she hates
nurses" (p. 51).
Frederick is the Victorian stern Father, a Barrett
figure (which Frank seems aware of in his letters to “Dear
Elizabeth") who has power enough to delay their marriage
several years. Isherwood reports that after capitulating,
Frederick "sulks himself to death," unlovable, but in
...... 215
Isherwood's view, oppressed and pitiable, even suffering a
possible castration which "Christopher . . . going through
a phase of Freudian myth-making , . . loved to . . . in
terpret . . . as the vengeance of the female on the tyrant
male, a ritual act subconsciously willed by Emily and
Kathleen" (p. 191). In the pitched battle between Emily
and Frederick, Emily wins the final victory, not only
joining the couple after two days of their honeymoon but
seeing Kathleen often during her marriage and spending the
last years of her life at her daughter’s side.
Kathleen herself will not tolerate much criticism of
Frederick from Frank (p. 119, p. 212). She displays great
reluctance and anxiety about leaving "Darling Mother" to be
married and after Emily's death is struck with guilt: "I
feel how little she realized how deeply my life is bound
up in hers. I might have been so much more loving to her
and now it is too late. If one only felt sure she could
understand and forgive" (p. 485). Isherwood speculates
that this is guilt over having "left Emily in the first
place" to be married. Kathleen's guilt, however, could
well mark unconscious hostility toward her mother. She
writes Frank that "Mama reduces me to submission" (p. 120)
and although Isherwood often describes her as a feminist,
21-6
her attitudes toward other women are at best ambivalent.
She does not seem to have any close women friends.
She manifests jealously toward two possible rivals, both
more independent than she: Maud Greenaway who acts in
theatricals with Prank (p. 125) and a woman referred to as
Venus, an Irish authoress Frank corresponds with. Earlier,
her flirtation with "Mr. G.B." is given "zest" because
"the Sister evidently was not keen" for her "to stay on"
(p. 67). She is pleased at Richard's birth: "I begin to
think how much nicer a son is than a daughter, who would
probably have been very modern and not what I like!" (p.
360). Her relationship with the children's Nanny is
"stormy" and she feels a guilt at Nurse's death similar to
her feelings at the death of her mother, a self-reproach
for not having "been and done all" that she might (p. 496).
Although Isherwood several times describes Kathleen
as a born feminist, he also calls her, probably more
accurately, a transitional figure, "caught between the
Martyr-Wife and New Woman" (p. 60). He seems to equate
her "feminism" with a hatred of men caused primarily by
Emily's example (p. 61). This hatred is the result of a
true dilemma: Kathleen is caught between two alternatives,
equally unattractive— loss of reputation or a tyrant-slave
217
marriage. An early diary entry contains two quotations
which Isherwood says are not "much use as a guide to con
duct. " advising little other than caution and patience.
The first is the famous quotation from Don Juan; "Love is
of man's life a thing apart/ 'Tis woman's whole existence"
(p. 22). As Isherwood says, it is a warning: "Bvron can
only advise women to watch out, for his intentions are
dishonorable.1 1 Reputation is a tenuous thing in Kathleen'
world, and fear of compromise permeates her relationships
with all men, even Prank.
One alternative to loss of reputation is marrying,
but here Kathleen certainly has no viable models. The
Byron who boasts of his dishonorable intentions and might
leave his woman for his wanderings can also settle down
and become Frederick the Victorian Tyrant. Although Kath
leen copies down some advice to the Tyrant's counterpart,
the Martyr Wife that counsels total abnegation of
personality (p. 43), she rejects this notion and insists
on her individuality, often surreptitiously through her
reactions to novels and plays (p. 133, p. 232).
She perceives most men, then, as Byronic figures—
heartless would-be seducers or enslavers— and employs
several tactics to fend them off. One is flirtation, a
218 ;
technique Isherwood describes as "essentially defensive,
a kind of skirmishing which was designed to keep the Enemy
at a distance rather than challenge him to engage" (p. 22).
The second defense is a mental attitude, a demeaning in
status of the feared and desired Enemy. By her condescen
sion she hopes to shame man into giving up his wanderlust
and honoring his committments. Her suitor Mr. T. is
designated "The child" by Kathleen and Emily; Frederick is
"Mr. Puppie." This underlying scorn becomes explicit in
her comments about more famous men: Goethe who "never
married the one he admired most, 'the idyll of his life,'"
instead indulging in "an endless tangle of love affairs,"
is a "stupid idiot" for whom Kathleen has "no sympathy or
admiration" (p. 38). General Buller has "a stupid heavy
dummy air" (p. 130).
A solution to her dilemma is implied by the second
quotation which she copies into her 1891 diary: "For
every created man there is a created woman who stands to
him as the only true wife he can have in this life or any
other. . . . Those created for each other may not meet or
come together in this embodiment, but they assuredly will
in another" (p. 22). This is the popular idea of elective
affinities, a direct contradiction to Byron's linesHere
219
the woman is no longer self-sacrificed prey ready to de
vote herself to that little piece of her man's life
allotted her. Love becomes important to men and women
alike, important enough to wait out several lifetimes.
When Kathleen meets Prank, her record of the event is
marked by no special notice. It is far from the "critical
moment" of meeting one's affinity, though the concept of
soul-mates is not far distant from their romance in its
later more confident stages. Frank's attitudes on the
proper relations between men and women show the same
ambivalences revealed by Kathleen's copied quotations. He
has a Byronic streak. Early in their courtship he is un
able to see her because he is saving his money for a trip
to the Continent (p. 66). He often refers to himself as
a gypsy (p. 99, p. 175) and can be as momentarily conde
scending as any Victorian Tyrants "Another little way of
yours that I think of very often is when you hum. . . .
It's generally at breakfast that you do this. However, as
in our menage we are not to have breakfast . . . you must
learn to do it at other times. I shan't dispense with any
of your little ways" (p. 176). Frank shows a reluctance
to marry which is in part traceable to his Byronic wander
lust. Telling Kathleen of his "gypsy streak," he knows
220 |
she will not share it and asks her if she would mind a life
of wandering: "Don't you think it would be heavenly or
does your love of 'things' come in your way?" (p. 99), He .
realizes marriage means loss of freedom. Convalescing
from a fever contracted in South Africa, he dreams of a
winter in Germany, writing Kathleen, "I forgot, though,
you hate German. My fellow invalid, who was brought up at
Frankfurt, has infected me with a longing for a winter
there. You wouldn't approve?" (p. 107). Later— like
Frederick— family obligations keep him from following his
bent; he wishes he could be a professional artist although
"It would be a bad look out for you and William [Christo
pher] " (p. 286). His wife's second pregnancy almost
forces him out of the army and into a regular job (p.
245 ff).
But when Frank tells Kathleen that her forgiveness is
“sweet and womanly and divine," he is some distance from
the Martyr-Wife ideal of Emily’s generation.4 Woman is
now a moral force, as Ruskin wrote in "Of Queen's Gardens":
"a companion who will raise the tone of his mind from
. . . low anxieties and vulgar cares."5 It is in this
light that Frank often addresses Kathleen. She is a girl
who "can do a lot for a man when she chooses" (p. 143).
221 |
When she smiles she is "a star," and he asks her to be his i
star, something for him "to steer a straight course by"
(pp. 181-182). He tells her that a letter reveals "the
nature of a good kind woman . . . a lesson from which a
man can never do enough in return" (p. 245).
As Kathleen is not a Martyr Wife, she has no need to
repeat Emily's strategems, nor does Frank need to be
maneuvered into complying. Their relationship is mutually
supportive. He reassures her about her capacity as mother
and later praises her for her level-headed attitude during
the war. They have, as he writes her on their twelfth
anniversary, been happy (p. 444).
Their happiness is due to their friendship, supported
by their mutual interests and complementary psychologies.
The repeated details isherwood chooses with which to
characterize Frank are fully in accord with the concept of
Kathleen as man-despising, for Frank has much about him
which is not typically male. As an actor in amateur
theatricals he prefers female roles (pp. 36, 44, 49). He
writes Kathleen many lines which must have won her trust,
telling her "I am rather like a woman in many ways" (p.
74) and again, "In a way I am afraid I am not manly (or
manlike?) and that is— I know it's not what I ought to
222
say— I like to be wooed, and you did woo me a little bit
in that letter" (p. 177). He is an atypical soldier.
Isherwood describes him as "not the kind of man one would
expect to make a career of soldiering" (p. 37), and Frank
himself says he is "not really built for a warrior" (p.
95). He often wishes he were "an artist not a soldier"
(pp. 230, 286). In the trenches he knits socks (p. 435).
He is shy with women (p. 36), does not care— with a few
exceptions— for "female society" (p. 189), and values male
friendship highly. He says of a friend, "I don't know why
I am so fond of him, but I really like him more than any
other man I know, a sort of instinctive fondness more than
liking. The sort of feeling one is supposed to have for
one's brothers, and— as a rule— hasn't" (p. 189).
Isherwood admits in the Afterward that as he grew up
he created another father to take the place of the War Hero
left him by his mother, the Anti-Heroic-Hero. He did this
by selecting only "certain of Frank's characteristic doings
and sayings (which meant censoring the rest)" (p. 503).
Here, in this biography of his parents, he attempts to
present the real Frank— recording without comment the
facts that belie the mythic figure. We are witness to
Frank's horror at a female impersonator (p. 134), his
223
jealous demeaning of his homosexual brother Henry (p. 229),
his championing of law and order (p. 357), and his bravery
in combat (pp. 408, 419, 423).
The Anti-Heroic-Hero, on the other hand, is a rebel,
a precurser of Mortmere characters. His uniform is only a
disguise: "he isn't really a soldier. He is an artist
. . . [who dedicates] his life to an antimilitary masquer
ade. He . . . crowns his performance by actually getting
himself killed in battle. By thus fooling everybody (ex
cept Christopher) into believing he is the Hero-Father, he
demonstrates the absurdity of the military mystique and its
solemn cult of War and Death. . . . All his behavior is
intentionally subversive" (p. 503). In spite of all Isher-
wood's efforts to be fair to Frank, this concept underlies
the selection of details Isherwood chooses to include in
Frank's characterization. Even the way he describes a
photograph is telling: "In the background are two second
lieutenants . . . both hold themselves erect and square
shouldered, very conscious of their military status. By
contrast. Frank's attitude as he leans against a pillar is
relaxed and casual, disrespectfully so. considering that
he is in the presence of two senior officers. His fancy
uniform and absurd helmet seem to amuse him? he may
224
actually be grinning underneath his thick moustache" (p.
84). The mythical Anti-Heroic-Hero can be glimpsed in the
photograph— in Frank's "disrespectful" attitude, in the
possibility that his "thick moustache" hides a rebellious
grin.
Kathleen of course prefers the more traditional hero,
and it is her worship of conventional values which even
tually leads her son to espouse the unconventional. Her
husband too manifests occasional rebellious stirrings as
when, in a Byronic mood, he asks her if her "love of
things" will "get in the way" of her sharing his gypsy
dream. Here he is hitting out at her as belonging not only
to the sex that ties men down but also to an upper middle
class which has achieved status through industry or
commerce, not from birth, and hence values "things" highly.
A wine merchant's daughter, Kathleen frequently joins the
ranks of the Philistines. Diary entries at many a New
Year contain lists of "Things I Want" (p. 44, p. 64).
Isherwood is careful to record them, risking repetition to
demonstrate the point. She delights in pouring out
examples of ill-bred behavior (p. 39, p. 41). She has many
prejudices— the French (p. 410), especially the peasantry
(p. 63), Roman Catholics (p. 122), soldier's wives (p.
225 !
340). The lower classes should maintain proper respect:
she admires her Aunt Kelley for showing a maid her place
(p. 203) and is furious at the Marple locals who don't
defer to "The Squire" (p. 2 6 0 ) In other matters Kathleen
also shows herself unremarkable, rarely questioning what
she reads in the papers. During the Boer War she is at
first patriotic (p. 79). When the first rumors of war are
heard, she is displeased that Frank may be kept away from
action by a desk job. isherwood interpolates: "She
doesn't want Frank to get hurt, but she does want to be
able to think of him as heroic" (p. 74). She apparently
expresses this to Frank who responds, "I didn't altogether
like your assuming that I chose to go into an office in
stead of into the 'Seat of War.' I never had a chance of
the latter" (p. 74). Thus, Kathleen caught by the glamor
of war, perhaps eager to experience vicariously some
relief from the confinement of her life, wishes Frank to
become a hero, overlooking the possible cost. A few days
later she seems to have gone to the other extreme and
voiced too much concern for his safety for Frank implies
that she has been melodramatic (p. 76). If not thrilling
to patriotic heroics, then, she indulges in sentimental
exaggeration of war's horrors. It is to Kathleen's credit,
226
however, that when reports of slaughter grow, her avid
patriotism wanes (p. 86). During the World War, her
diaries reflect no trace of this earlier morbid strain,
but are filled with concern for Frank's safety.
The last part of the book is permeated by irony as
Frank in the trenches writes repeatedly of his plans for
after the war, and assumes he will soon be home. The gulf
between men and women's worlds is nowhere more apparent
than in the juxtaposition of Kathleen's diary entries
which repeat each day the familiar comfortable routines
with Frank's letters which reflect the increasing night
mare in the trenches, a grim contrast to their first
separation in the Boer War where he had time to paint sun
sets. Their apprehension of the overwhelming irrationality
of this war is apparent in their more serious tone. Frank
writes: "I cannot think myself that the God whom modern
religion visualizes has anything whatever to do with it"
(p. 436). Even Kathleen suffers a temporary loss of faith:
"It seems to me that God is very cruel. If it is all for
some big wise end, why can't we see it— why all this
agony— why, when one is happy, is it snatched from us?"
(p. 470). Such perception of the universal absurdity of
things cannot sustain her after Frank's death and she takes
refuge once again- in conventional sentiments. The notion
of elective affinities finds its fullest expression in her
often voiced hope that she and Frank must meet in the next
world. She will not admit the idea of a meaningless
universe: there must be an afterlife where she and Frank
can be together, otherwise "the whole thing would be too
monstrously unfair" (p. 499). Her commitments to the
institutions she once questioned— family, country, church,
class— are intensified. But Isherwood has shown that this
is only the out-growth of pre-existing tendencies. All her
life Kathleen has worshipped "the Past."
She is first characterized by mention of this obses
sion. In the first chapter Isherwood gives a brief history
of her diary keeping, ending with a picture of her as an
elderly woman re-reading old volumes which "brought back
happier days" (p. 9). Consistently, even in her adoles
cence, she morbidly anticipates the changes which will
make her mournful (p. 11, p. 13). As Isherwood says in
this first chapter, Kathleen "saw her own life as History
and its anniversaries as rites to be celebrated" (p. 10).
She records anniversaries of all sorts of mysterious
Important Events through which she marks time (p. 24, p.
26, p. 30, p. 40). Characteristically, she expresses
228 j
disdain for Dante's heaven since "I suppose they have for- I
gotten the past altogether" (p. 45), and a design for a
bookplate reads "GLAD MEMORIES NEVER FADE" (p. 330). Her
intense pleasure with her own home, Wybersleigh, is marred
(or perhaps increased) by her preoccupation with the know
ledge that it is only temporary, and she grieves long
before they must leave (p. 262), designating the move the
"passing away of Youth and Romance" (p. 333). She records
details in her children's lives with the same meticulous
ness (p. 340, p. 351, p. 388)P
For Kathleen, behind every happiness are the Fates.
She anticipates Frank's return from the Boer War: "Felt in
so happy a mood. It is a pity the Fates always discover
it and never allow it to last long" (p. 110). Her fatalism
is justified at last by Frank's death. Isherwood ends the
diary as he began it— with the tolling of each year's sad
commemorations:
May 9, 1916: The longest saddest year of all my life.
May 8, 1917. Two years ago this morning the Regiment
left their billetts. . . .
May 9, 1917. Two years ago today. . . . Only two
years!
May 8, 1918. Today and tomorrow are the third
anniversary days of the second battle of Ypres, and
this morning I dreampt so vividly that he came in at
the Marple gates.
229
May 9, 1919. It is four years today since my dear
Frank was missing. . . . (p. 481)
It is a stark and bitter contrast to the diary's beginning
the girlish anniversaries of rejected and rejecting lovers
can now be seen as foreshadowings of this "final unanswer
able argument" (p. 10),the embodiment of Kathleen's
deepest fears and expectations. She mourns, Richard esti
mates, until the 1930's (p. 489) when Isherwood reports:
"... her vulnerability and even her grief were modified
by a saving toughness: the toughness of an organism which
has decided to survive" (p. 486). Isherwood describes her
adaptation in terms that recall his own attempts in Prater
Violet to survive through routine (p. 154) : "You run a
house because it has to be kept going. Life has to be
kept going. You have had twelve years of happiness; now
you are paving for them. The price is simply outrageous,
but you were warned about that in advance" (p. 488).
This has been a retrospective view of Kathleen by an
older Christopher who has had many struggles himself and
now feels only an "affectionate exasperation" with his
mother for the grief which he deems her "sulking1 1 (p. 10) .
But the effect of her world view upon him in his childhood
and adolescence is enormous.
230 |
His mother’s firm commitment to institutional
values— those of church, class, country, and family— and
her apparent pressure on Christopher to subscribe to their
perpetuation of the Past cause his rebellion. The After
ward ennumerates the forms this rebellion takes. The first
chapter begins this motif, a recurring though understated
theme throughout the book: "Christopher . . . revolted
early and passionately against the cult of the Past ....
it threatened to swallow his future. . . . Today he finds
it hard to explain to himself why he never asked Kathleen
to let him read her diaries while she was alive— perhaps
he was still superstitiously afraid of getting entangled in
the spider’s web of her memories" (p. 10) . The metaphors—
being swallowed, entangled— recall the unflattering de
scriptions of Erna in the sanatorium in Goodbye to Berlin
O
and of women characters in other novels. The fear of
engulfment appears in all Isherwood*s work— the incredible
power possessed by all he comes into close contact with.
Here perhaps we see the origin of these pervasive fears.
Kathleen's obsession with the Past has other effects
upon Christopher. At first her diary is full of his ex
ploits. After Frank's death all mentions of her family are
saturated with her grief: "Uncle C. was very kind and we
231 !
talked of the future, the sad hopeless future and the boys.
Thank God I still have them and Mama. But all the happy
days are gone when we felt so young together" (p. 471),
and again, Christmas 1915, seven months after Frank's
death: "I think the children enjoyed it all but to me it
seemed additionally sad and lonely, and so cruel to feel
all the children are missing, which made one's own loss
the harder to face. No one can ever make up to them for
Frank" (p. 480). The children's enjoyment of this Christ
mas is surely marred by Kathleen's insistence that they are
missing something. Her immersion in the Past denies any
future happiness for herself or her sons.
The school term following Frank's death contains only
one mention of Christopher: "Had to write a 'heavy' letter
to Christopher, whose half-term report spoke of inattention
and not taking enough interest in some of the subjects"
(p. 48). She records no awareness that Frank's death
might have affected him. in her grief, then, Kathleen
withdrew support from Christopher at a time when he most
needed it; hence, he perceives the past as "swallowing"
his future. Kathleen's cult of the Past robs him of the
emotional sustinence he needs in order to mature, individ
uated from his parents.
232 :
Her obsession with the Past has another effect on him, i
made explicit in the Afterward: "He [Christopher] had also
been jealous of Frank when he came between him and Kathleen
by dyincr and thus monopolizing her emotions" (p. 503).
Though this reaction is expressed in a flat statement of
fact, the original emotions must have been— if psycho
analysts are accurate in their description of the strength
of early Oedipal feeling— utter rage and frustration, re
pressed from consciousness but triggering much behavior
that is otherwise inexplicable.
In this Oedipal struggle it appears that Christopher's
-v
goal is the winning of his mother's love. But even before
his father's journey to the front he must have felt a
certain inattention. For in his early years, his closest
attachment was not to Kathleen but to Annie Avis, "Nanny."
Though Isherwood attempts to be fair to Kathleen by saying
that this was not unusual in upper-class homes during this
"Age of Nannies," he extends his discussion of Kathleen's
neglect: "in this case Emily and Frank were chiefly to
blame. . . . Between them, they took her away from home a
good deal; she had to be a wife and daughter first, a
mother second" (p. 278). Nanny delights Christopher by
standing up to Kathleen. "Sufficiently a bitch to enjoy
233
family discord," she allows Richard and Christopher to
bait Kathleen by "showing favor to Nanny" (p. 278). She
is the accepting, understanding female figure who makes no
attempts to mold Christopher into a pattern— "a familiar
with whom he could be shameless and at ease . . .a ser
vant with whom he could league himself against his own
class" (p. 279).
Early in Christopher's life, then, one impulse is
clearly toward rebellion against his mother's authority
and the other is a desire for acceptance, the conflict
which recurs in all his work. Christopher seems to have
tried in subtle semi-conscious ways to win Kathleen for
himself and away from her primary allegiances to Emily and
Frank. In order to gain her approval he becomes as much
like Emily and Frank as possible. He had witnessed Emily's
great power over Kathleen through illness and it is not
surprising that as Kathleen's anxiety over Frank grows,
and Christopher is increasingly ignored, he falls ill (p.
456). One of his earliest fantasies is particularly
telling: "When Christopher began to masturbate . . . his
fantasies weren't about Frank. He imagined himself lying
wounded on a battlefield with his clothes partly torn off
him, being tended by a woman? Kathleen, no doubt, in
234"";
i
disguise1 1 (p. 350) . Here he assumes the identity of both
Emily and Frank— being ill and tended by a woman as Emily
is tended by Kathleen, but a soldier on a battlefield like
Frank. Another fantasy is contained in his short play La
Lettre: “A lady enters holding a letter which she has just
received. She opens it and reads it. with increasing
horror. It tells her that someone has died— the audience
is expected to guess that it is her son. . . . She falls
to the ground in a swoon. End of play. Christopher
scrambles to his feet and bows* 1 (p. 373). Surely this
expresses a wish to punish Kathleen for her neglect and to
prove to himself her love by her grief at his death. Like
Emily and Frank he enjoys acting, and, like his father,
takes women's parts: "Kathleen didn't discourage this at
all; she draped him in a silk petticoat and let him wear
her furs and necklaces" (p. 372). He sees himself as in
heriting a love of traveling from Emily, though it must be
remembered that Frank and even Kathleen share this quality.
Given the many possible causes of his wanderlust to choose
from, it is significant that he selects Emily as the
ancestor from whom he decides he inherits it. Emily be
comes for Christopher an Anti-Mother; he implicitly com
pares her to Kathleen: "Since Emily's co-star Frederick
235 !
was unavailable, Christopher never saw her in her greatest ■
role. the Martyr-Wife. Despite her ailments and fatigues,
she was now quietly gay, indeed her life was entirely de
voted to pleasure, in her presence he never felt awed or
bored, as young people are by woe; she stimulated and
interested him and was quick to respond to his interest1 1
(p. 394). Her lack of mourning over Frederick, her life
lived for pleasure, and the attention she gives Christopher
form an obvious contrast to Kathleen's woe. His attempt to
style himself after Emily is to some degree successful. By
her old age, Kathleen "had long since given up attempting
to understand Christopher's doings. Now she accepted them
as she had accepted Emily's" (p. 488).
By imitating Emily and Frank, he is doing what he
intuits Kathleen wants. If his mother dislikes men, he
will be like the woman closest to her and will imitate the
"non-masculine" qualities of the man she loves. Becoming
like the two people who have power over her, he can per
haps share in that power, a wish he admits explicitly:
"He wanted her . . . to forget Frank and submit to him.
Christopher, in all things, so that they might be friends"
(p. 507).
A confusion in sexual identity ensues— he remembers
236
instances of sexual attraction toward his father (pp. 349-
350). Kathleen, seeing the results of her unconscious
attitudes embodied in Christopher (but not having read
Freud) misunderstands the causes: she sends him to a boys'
school hoping the other boys will provide him with models
for imitation, the first of many attempts to make "a Man1 '
of Christopher. She expresses guilt to Frank who quickly
reassures her that "if he has got any airs and graces
from being at home these will soon disappear at school" (p.
396). At St. Edmunds, however, the early fantasy repeats
itself in other terms— the nurse of the battlefield is re
placed by an older friend Eddie: "Eddie said that if a
fire were to break out he would take Christopher on his
shoulders and carry him to safety. . . . This boast must
have charmed and thrilled Christopher particularly, since
he chose to remember it" (p. 381). At St. Edmunds he
begins to rebel, the start of attitudes traced more fully
in Lions and Shadows. He refuses to work to his capacity,
to be what authority figures want (p. 415). In this light
his refusal to study after his father's death is perhaps
another version of La Lettre, both a manifestation of
hostility turned inward and a plea for Kathleen's atten
tion.
237
It is Frank who seems the most accepting of Christo
pher, wanting him to remain himself and develop "along on
his own lines" (p. 445). He is not intent on making
Christopher "like other boys": "When all is said and done,
I don't know that it is all desirable or necessary and I
for one would rather have him as he is" (p. 450). These
are sentiments which could have been expressed by the Anti-
Heroic-Hero himself. Isherwood admits that only these
statements live in his memory and not important qualifica
tions like "you ought to sit on him for being lazy— that is
our big weakness . . . it just makes our cleverness come to
nothing" (p. 445). He also speculates that Frank in all
probability would not have accepted his homosexuality or
his Marxism or pacifism (p. 506). Kathleen, in contrast,
did accept him: "When he defiantly told her he was homo
sexual, she didn't seem at all upset. But this, he
suspected, was because she simply didn't believe that a
relationship without a woman in it could be serious, or
indeed anything more than an infantile game" (p. 508).
Once again he perceives her as reducing a grown man— this
time himself— to the status of child. It is everlastingly
to her discredit in his eyes that though she knows he is
homosexual she is sure he will one day have children, "her ;
238
grandchildren— never mind what became of the wretched
cheated wife" (p. 508) . This "arrogant demand* * is a fur
ther reflection of Kathleen's hostile attitude toward
other women as well as her preoccupation with the perpet
uation of the Past. The institution of marriage is
desirable since it carries on the Past through progeny.
Christopher rebels against her power by refusing to live
q
out her wishes.
Christopher's embracing of Vedanta is also rebellion
against Kathleen. Frank too rebels against her in this,
professing several times interest in esoteric religions
(p. 238, p. 269)t Richard becomes a Rosicrucian. During
their last meeting, she asks Christopher if Vedantists be
lieve in an afterlife and Christopher, by now secure
enough to empathize, replies yes: "it would have been
pedantic and cruel to qualify his yes with doubts about
the degree to which the individual personality survives.
Kathleen then told him she believed that she and Frank
would be together again. She said this with conviction"
(p. 499).
Christopher's rebellion against his mother's Ancestor
Worship and class prejudices starts with Nanny and con
tinues into his political days of worker worship (p. 266).
He does not wish to fulfill Kathleen's dream that he
inherit Marple. When he hears from Richard that vandals
are destroying it he feels they are living out his secret
fantasies to shame him (p. 323). Though he rebels against
Kathleen's social snobbery, he admits he substitutes a
hierarchy of his own: "he declared a private aristocracy
of the arts and proceeded to create his own peerage" (p.
266). From this perspective he is delighted to depict his
mother as among the lower orders, quoting her various
literary judgments and letting them damn her: "Mama and I
read out loud The Brothers Karamazov . . . the women
apparently go in for hysteria and the men simply low
beasts" (p. 448). Twice he holds up her remarks in direct
juxtaposition to Max Beerbohm's: "June 2. Sarah as Ham
let simply genius personified, never enjoyed a Hamlet to
compare to it. (It was about this performance that Max
Beerbohm wrote, 'Her friends ought to have restrained
her.')" (p. 67) and at Pell^as and Melisande. "Jennie and
I laughed so, we quite shocked our neighbours!" to which
Isherwood adds, "One of these might well have been Max
Beerbohm. He took the play most seriously and complains
in his review of these asinine titterers" (p. 112).
Literature is a constant bone of contention between
240
mother and son. When she writes to Frank that Conrad's
Youth is "cleverly described," Isherwood must step in to
interpret: "Conrad is a producer of escape literature,
therefore he cannot be treated as an adult writer? Kathleen
tells him as woman to child that he has described things
'very cleverly.' ('Oh. of course I can see that it's
desperately clever, ' she would say twenty years later,
when putting down the 'modern* writers whom Christopher
admired.')" (p. 237). As a young man he believes she has a
"subconscious contempt for all literature" (p. 32), another
of her defenses which has great effect upon him. Unfortu
nately, she uses her contempt as a weapon, treating him,
like "the child" or "Mr. Puppie," as infant. He notes that
her book The Baby's Progress ends with the acceptance of
his first novel by the publisher, an event which seems to
be "just another prize awarded by the publisher instead of
the headmaster. Note that Kathleen doesn't find it
necessary to mention the novel's name? what matters to her
is that it is the first novel and thus in the same cate
gory as the first step alone, the first word and the first
tooth1" (p. 282). His resentment at being placed in the
infant class, hence not a "real man," is obvious. Kath
leen's contempt is a clear forerunner to the Test which
241
necessitates that he prove himself "a Man." His lifelong
attempt, he says in the Afterward, is to "seduce her1 1 into
liking his writing. But this is "never quite achieved"
(p. 508).
He rebels against Kathleen's patriotism and against
her version of the Hero Father by leaving England alto
gether and traveling to Germany "the Fatherland which had
killed the Hero Father" (p. 508). if the way to Kathleen
is to become like Frank, then Christopher had before him
an insoluble problem. For to become Kathleen's version of
Frank is to go to certain death. Best reject women alto
gether since they make such dangerous demands. Woman
becomes the Enemy who oppresses man with the crippling
responsibilities of wife and children, taunts him with the
epithet "Child" if he refuses her, and then sends him to
death in battle as a further test of his manhood. Women
still possess incredible power seen through the eyes of a
son who has defiantly refused to grow up.
But the Kathleen whom Isherwood rebelled against— and
the version of Frank handed down to him— was the one he
knew in his adolescense. Now he sees that by then Kathleen!
had been thoroughly socialized— "Kathleen was sometimes
pressured by The others . . . for she too was intimidated
242 I
by them* 1 (p. 505) . The book has revealed how The Others
formed her and how she in turn attempted to form Christo
pher.
Children, however, frequently embody the unconscious
inclinations of their parents. Isherwood is aware of this
when he describes the Anti-Heroic-Hero as saying to him:
"Don't follow in my footsteps1 Be all the things I never
was. Do all the things I never did and would have liked
to do— including the things I was afraid of doing, if you
can guess what they were! Be anything except the son The
Others tell you you ought to be. . . . I want an Anti-Son.
I want him to horrify The Others and disgrace my name in
their eyes" (p. 505). Thus Christopher sees himself as
living out Frank's fantasies— he is homosexual, a wanderer,
a woman-hater, and artist, a Vedantist, who, rejecting the
conformity that led to Frank's death in the trenches,
refuses to do what The Others ask.
He also feels it his duty to rescue the Holy-Widow-
Mother from the power of The Others (p. 504). in rejecting
the traditional male role, he fulfills Kathleen's fantasies
as well. In refusing to marry, he agrees with her uncon
scious contempt for women and marriage. He knows he has
inherited Kathleen's worship of the Fast, becoming "a.
recorder, too, and so. willy-nilly, a celebrant of the
Past? he began to keep a diary and to write autobiographi
cal novels" (p. 10). Kathleen writes books mostly unpub
lished but done with a great deal of care: with Emily a
travel guide to London; by herself ffhe Baby*s Progress;
and a family history, with Christopher A History of My
Friends. Isherwood has duplicated these in his travel
books and novels which are indeed "histories of his
friends." In Kathleen and Frank he resolves the dilemma
that plagued him. He sees Kathleen as "the counterforce
which gave him strength" (p. 507), a necessary antithesis
of the kind found in Down There on a Visit. Rebellion
against the oppressive mores of civilization— and against
the woman who embodies those mores in her values and
insists that her son do the same— is necessary for growth,
but Isherwood is a social animal with a need "to find
a place, no matter how humble, in the scheme of society"
(L&S, p. 247). He has found that place in America. It
is ironic but perhaps appropriate that Isherwood once
past his youthful rebellion embraces a religion which
asks him to surrender that individuality he has
fought so long to define, a religion where fulfillment is
found in loss of individuality and a merging with Brahmin,
244
the universal consciousness.
The final joke on Christopher is that while he has
lived a life attempting to rebel he has come full circle:
"For once the Anti-Son id in perfect harmony with his
Parents" (p. 510). Christopher’s first solo book The
History of Mommy and Daddy is first described by Kathleen
as mainly about himself. Xsherwood ends the Afterward
with an unusually direct statement of intention which could
be said of most of his work: "Perhaps, on closer examina
tion. this book too may prove to be chiefly about Christo
pher " {p. 510).
Frank hoped that Christopher would one day forgive
his parents (p. 287). The book has been his reconcilia
tion with them, and he has tried to present them
objectively. He has admitted who he is— from his unapolo-
getic rejoicing in his homosexuality (pp. 379-380) to his
good-humored admission that rebel is conformist, bio
grapher is autobiographer, that Frank is not altogether
the Anti-Heroic-Hero and Kathleen through her unconscious
attempts to rob him of individuality gave him the
"necessary counterforce" (p. 509) to guarantee that indi
viduality, which— paradoxically— through his study of
Vedanta he is now prepared to surrender. He has surely
245 ;
j
come to terms with himself, making of his life a positive
achievement rendered into art.
Notes and References
^-Walter Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), p. 348, hereafter
"Houghton" in parentheses in the text.
2Since sex is de-Byronized and raised to a supra-
rational plane which surpasses even mortal life and time,
the knowledge of this "true love" may theoretically come
in a moment's illumination: . . the critical moment
when the lover meets his soul-mate, the one person in the
wide world who was made for him or her, made to be loved
forever, here and hereafter. After finding one's affinity,
to draw back . . . out of timidity or apathy or any con
sideration of 'the world's honours,' is failure in life"
(Houghton, p. 373). The young Kathleen seems to subscribe
to this view and fears at least once that "The Moment"
has come and gone: "Answered in joke what it appeared he
meant in earnest and then could not explain somehow. I
never thought till it was too late it was all serious on
his part or realized how much I care" (p. 31). For years
afterwards she observes the anniversary of this event:
"... it is only two years ago today since I did what I
have never ceased to regret. If only I had the chance
again" (p. 40). She is later to learn of Mr. T's secret
marriage— which was probably a fact or promise at the time
of his declaration. Thus whatever intuitions kept her
from perceiving his serious intent on "that day" were
fortunate. She avoided heartbreak or possible scandal.
2Frank writes comparing Youth and a book by Venus and -
the contrast between the two echoes the two quotations
from the 1890 diary: "Venus's book so very much the
woman's point of view and his so very much the man's. She
with her implication that love, and all that, is the solu
tion of the secret, while he seems to find it work and
adventure and a sea life. There's one side of me that
thrills in response to all that. . . . Do you understand?"
(p. 236).
^In his study of Victorian attitudes, Walter Houghton
credits Ruskin for this change of thought first articu
lated in "Of Queen's Gardens" in 1865. Here Ruskin sees
Woman's proper place as between the Martyr Wife and New
Women. According to Houghton, Ruskin rejects "the notion
both that woman is 'the shadow and attendant image of her
lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience,' and
that she has a feminine mission and feminine rights that
entitle her to a career in the world like man's. Her true
function is to guide and uplift her more worldly and
intellectual mate" (Houghton, p. 349).
^Sesame and Lilies, The Works of John Ruskin ed.
£. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London: George Allen,
1905), XVIII, p. 111.
Frank comes from a class which considers itself
superior to Kathleen's— the landed gentry. Kathleen is
appropriately angry at Henry for his "snobbish attitude"
toward the family of a young woman he is courting, pro
claiming to Frank "I wish you would remember that I have
absolutely no sympathy about 'the best people' and that
sort of thing" (p. 126). But she herself is guilty of a
similar condescension, remarking of Lady Curzon whose
father is American, "They say her father is a quite rough
unpresentable old person" (p. 64). Naturally enough, to
Kathleen, manners count more than birth or fortune.
Frederick also protests to Frank that he is not suitable
as mate for Kathleen as he has erred morally.
Frank in turn is equally spiteful in his description
of Lord Newton: "Poor man, his manners leave much to be
desired, if you can call them manners. S. (the lawyer),
who was also playing, seemed an extraordinarily well-bred
charming person beside him" (p. 265). As Isherwood
comments, these remarks "seem aimed at proving that a lord
isn't necessarily a gentleman." They are, besides, "un
kind to the memory of Lord Newton" (p. 265). Frank joins
with the rest of the family in disapproving of his sister's
husband Joe Toogood who, they feel, is "a nearly penniless
nobody" (p. 154).
?She prefers as well the historical Past, full, as
Isherwood notes, of "loyal retainers while the Present
houses the independent" (p. 125), a pejorative term in her
vocabulary as is "modern." The Isherwoods suit her
predilections, possessing, unlike her own family, a Past,
and noble, if scandalous, ancestors. Like Lily Vernon in
The Memorial she wants old John Isherwood to be The Squire
in an age when Squires are no more (p. 260).
Q
See Chapter II, note 12.
^The isherwood family contains ample precedent for
rebellion: Henry Isherwood is homosexual; Moey-— Frank's
sister— never marries and has several close female com
panions. Uncle Jack is, in his youth, a bohemian with a
double life (p. 231). The only other Isherwood besides
Frank who bows to social pressures, marries, and has
children is Esther who marries a man of whom the entire
family disapproves. On Kathleen's side there is Uncle
Walter who delights Christopher by his defiantly out
rageous practical jokes (pp. 335-336).
Selected Bibliography
Works by Christopher Isherwood
A complete list of other works by Isherwood— transla
tions, editings, short stories, articles, etc.— is
available:
Westby, Selma and Clayton M. Brown. Christopher
Isherwood: A Bibliography 1923-1967. Los
Angeles: California State College at Los
Angeles, 1968.
The bibliography covers secondary sources as well, in
cluding a thorough listing of reviews. Here I have select
ed only the criticism and reviews I found especially
valuable in my study.
Date of original publication is given in parentheses
when it does not coincide with date of the edition used.
1. Autobiographies and Novels
All the Conspirators. New York: New Directions, 1958
(1928) .
The Berlin Stories. New York: New Directions, 1954 (The
Last of Mr. Norris, 1935; Goodbye to Berlin. 1939).
Down There on a visit. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1962.
Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties. New
York: New Directions, 1947 (1938).
A Meeting by the River. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1967.
The Memorial: Portrait of a Family. New York: New
Directions, 1946.
250
Prater Violet. New York: Ballantine Books, 1967 (1945) .
A Single Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964.
The World in the Evening. New York: Random House, 1954.
Kathleen and Frank. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971.
2. Collaborations with W. H. Auden
The Ascent of F 6 (1936) in Two Great Plays by W. H. Auden
and Christopher Isherwood. New York: Random House,
n.d.
The Dog Beneath the Skin. (1935), in Two Great Plays.
Journey to a War. New York: Random House, 1939.
On the Frontier. New York: Random House, 1938.
3. Other books
An Approach to Vedanta. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1964.
The Condor and the Cows: A South American Travel-Diary.
New York: Random House, 1949.
Exhumations: Stories. Articles, Verses. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1966.
Ramakrishna and His Disciples. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1965.
Vedanta for Modern Man. Ed. Christopher Isherwood. New
York: Collier Books, 1962 (1951).
Vedanta for the Western World. Ed. Christopher Isherwood.
New York: Viking Press, 1960 (1945).
Other Works Consulted
251
Alsop, Kenneth. '"Everywhere on a visit*: Christopher
Isherwood talks shop to Kenneth Alsop,“ Books and
Bookmen, 11 (March 1966), 5, 81.
Auden, W. H. "As It Seemed to Us," New Yorker. 3 April
1965, p. 190.
______________ . Collected Shorter Poems: 1927-1957.
London: Faber and Faber, 1966.
______________ . Collected Longer Poems. New York: Ran
dom House, 1969.
______________ . The Dance of Death. London: Faber and
Faber, 1935.
______________ . "Going to Europe: Symposium II." En
counter, 20 (January 1963) 53.
______________ . Look Stranger1 London: Faber and Faber,
1936.
______________ . The Orators: An English Study. New York:
Random, 1967.
Bell, Arthur. "Christopher Isherwood: No Parades," New
York Times Book Review, 25 Mar. 1973, p. 12.
Bloomfield, B. D. W. H. Auden: A Bibliography. The Early
Years Through 1955. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of
Virginia, 1964.
Connolley, Cyril. Enemies of Promise and Other Essays.
New York: Macmillan, 1948.
Dempsey, David. "Connolley, Orwell and Others." Antioch
Review, 7 (March 1947), 142-50.
Dolbier, Maurice. "Out of a certain Foreigness." Herald
Tribune Books, 11 Mar. 1962, p. 5.
Fleming, Anne Taylor. "Christopher Isherwood: He is a
Camera." Los Angeles. 9 Dec. 1972, pp. 14-16.
252
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle: A Study
of the Death Instinct in Human Behavior. Trans.
.James Strachey. New York: Bantam Books, 1959.
_. Civilization and its Discontents. Trans.
and ed. James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton,
1961.
_. The Future of an Illusion. Trans. W. D.
Robson-Scott. Rev. and ed. James Strachey. Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964.
Groddeck, George. The Book of the It. New York: New
American Library, 1961.
Hamilton, Gerald. Mr. Norris and I. London: Allan
Wingate, 1956.
Hawes, Henry. "Christopher Isherwood's Snapshots,"
Saturday Review. 12 April 1952, pp. 38-40.
Heilburn, Carolyn G. Christopher Isherwood. New York:
Columbia Univ. Press, 1970.
Houghton, Walter. The Victorian Frame of Mind. New Haven:
Yale Univ. Press, 1957.
Huxley, Aldous, "Further Reflections on Progress." Vedanta
for Modern Man. Ed. Christopher Isherwood. New
York: Collier Books, 1962.
Lehmann, John. Autobiography: I, The Whispering Gallery.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955; II, I Am Mv Brother.
New York: Reynal 1960; III, The Ample Proposition.
London: Eytre & Spottiswoode, 1966.
Lewis, Cecil Day. The Buried Day. London: Chatto and
Windus, 1960.
_______________. The Friendly Tree. London: Jonathan
Cape, 1936.
Leyland, Winston. "Christopher Isherwood: An Interview."
Gay Sunshine: A Newspaper of Gay Liberation. Sept./
Oct. 1973, pp. 1-3.
253
Mayne, Richard. "The Novel and Mr. Norris." Cambridge
Journal, 6 (June 1953), 561-70.
Moore, Geoffrey, "Three Who Did Not Make a Revolution: A
Critical Study." American Mercury, 74 (April 1952),
107-114.
O'Farrell, James T. "When Graustark is in Celluloid,"
Literature and Morality. New York: Vanguard Press,
1947, pp. 125-142.
Plomer, William. At Home. London: Jonathan Cape, 1958.
Poss, Stanley. "A Conversation on Tape." London Maga
zine I, New Series (June 1961), 41-58.
Replogle, Justin. "The Auden Group," Wisconsin Studies in
Contemporary Literature. 5 (Summer 1964), 133-50.
______________ . Auden’s Poetry. Seattle: Univ. of
Washington Press, 1960.
______________ . "The Gang Myth in Auden's Early Poetry."
Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 61 (July
1962), 481-95.
Ruskin, John. Sesame and Lilies. The Works of John
Ruskin. Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn.
London: George Allen, 1905. Vol. 18, pp. 5-187.
Spears, Monroe K. The Poetry of W. H. Auden: the disen
chanted island. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963.
Spender, Stephen. The Trial of a Judge. London: Faber
and Faber, 1938.
______________ . World Within World. London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1951.
Symons, Julian. The Thirties. London: cresset Press,
1960.
Turiyandanda, Swami. "Spiritual Talks." Vedanta for
Modern Man. Ed. Christopher Isherwood. (See Huxley,
above)
Upward, Edward. In the Thirties. London: William
Heinemann, 1962.
_________ . The Railway Accident and Other Stories.
London: William Heinemann, 1960.
Viertel, Berthold. "Christopher Isherwood and Dr.
Friedrich Bergmann." Theatre Arts. 30 (May 1946),
295-98.
Warner, Rex. The Wild Goose Chase. London: John Lane.
The Bodley Head, 1937.
Watts, Alan. "The Negative Way," Vedanta for Modern Man.
Ed. Christopher Isherwood. (See Huxley, above)
_. "One for All, All for One," Book Week,
4 July 1965, 3.
Wickes, George. "An Interview with Christopher isherwood,
Shenendoah, 16 (Spring 1965), 23-52.
Wilde, Alan. Christopher Isherwood. New York: Twayne,
1971.
Whitehead, John. "Christophananda: Isherwood at 60,"
London Magazine. 5 (July 1965), 90-100.
Reviews
Amis, Kingsley. "A Bit Glassy." The Spectator. 208 (9
Mar. 1962), 309. (DTV)
Anon. Times Literary Supplement. 23 May 1952, p. 344.
(GB)
Auden, W. H. "The Diary or a Diary." New York Review of
Books, Jan. 1972, pp. 19-20. (K&F)
Bliven, Naomi, "The Rueful Cameraman." New Yorker, Sept.
1962, pp. 77-80. (DTV)
Coffey, Warren. Ramparts 1 (Sept. 1962), 88-90. (DTV)
255
Davenport, Basil. "Atmosphere of Decay," Saturday Review.
15 April 1939, p. 14. (GB, MN)
Dienstfray, Harris. "Personal, Secret Journey," Commentary
34, (October 1962), 360-63. (DTV)
Deutsch, Babette. "The Unrealities of Movie Life." New
York Herald Tribune Books. 11 Nov. 1945, p. 3. (PV)
Grigson, Geoffrey. New Verse, New Series, 1 (May 1939),
54. (GB)
Hampshire, Stuart. "Isherwood's Hell," Encounter 19 (Nov.
1962), 86-88. (DTV)
Jebb, Julian. London Magazine, 2 New Series (April 1962),
87-89. (DTV)
Kazin, Alfred. "Christopher Isherwood, Novelist," New
York Times Book Review. 17 Feb. 1946, pp. 1, 33.
(GB, MN)
__________ . "Leaves from the Lindens. " New York
Herald Tribune Books, 12 Mar. 1939, p. 10. (GB)
Mayne, Richard. "Herr issyvoo Changes Trains." New
Statesman and Nation, 9 Mar. 1962, pp. 337-338. (DTV)
McLaughlin, Richard, "isherwood*r Arrival and Departure."
Saturday Review, 27 Dec. 1947, pp. 14-15. (L&S)
Pritchett, V. S. "Books in General." New Statesman and
Nation, 23 Aug. 1952, pp. 213-14. (GB, MN)
Rosenfeld, Isaac. "Isherwood's Master Theme," Kenyon
Review. 8 (1946), 488-92. (PV, MN, GB)
Spender, Stephen. "Isherwood*s Heroes," New Republic. 146
(16 Apr. 1962), 24-25. (DTV)
Trilling, Diana. Nation 161 (17 Nov. 1945), 530-32. (PV)
Trilling, Lionel. "The Wheel," Mid-Century, July 1962,
pp. 5-10.
256
Wilson, Edmund. "Isherwood's Lucid Eye."
91 (17 May 1939), 51. (GB)
New Republic
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The Discreet And Conspiratorial Convention: The Autobiographical Writings Of Christopher Isherwood
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