And that, during 1924 and 1925, Gerald had spent several months in various French and Italian prisons, charged with swindling a Milanese jeweler out of a pearl necklace.
But now Gerald betrays himself into admitting that he has a double standard. While condemning The Times for employing a notorious traitor and thief, he maintains that he was really neither the one nor the other. Gerald wasn’t a traitor, because he wasn’t British—well, technically, perhaps, but not in his heart, which was Irish through and through. Call him an Irish rebel, if you like, and a potential martyr to the cause of Irish freedom. He had proved his loyalty to Ireland by corresponding with Roger Casement, when Casement was in Berlin trying to get German help for a rising against the British. (Gerald must have expressed himself with extreme caution, for no evidence of his participation in this plot had ever been produced against him.)
As for the pearl necklace—that accusation was really just another technicality. If the jeweler hadn’t sent in his bill so much earlier than Gerald had expected him to, and if Gerald himself hadn’t delayed so long in taking care of the matter (“My usual inclination towards a policy of laisser aller”), all the resulting unpleasantness could have been avoided. At worst, it was merely, as you might say, robbing Peter to pay Paul—and, anyhow, Gerald would never have become involved in the affair if he hadn’t wanted to oblige a friend who was in financial difficulties … Gerald had the art of talking like this without showing any genuine indignation and without exactly defending himself. He was well aware of his own double standard and he couldn’t help giggling in the midst of his solemn sincerities. Having giggled, he would skip to happier themes: the many royal and titled ladies and gentlemen he had known; the palaces, castles, and chateaux he had been a guest at; the exotic meals he had eaten and the now extinct wines he had drunk.
It seems to me that Christopher “recognized” Gerald Hamilton as Arthur Norris, his character-to-be, almost as soon as he set eyes on him. When William Bradshaw (the I-narrator of the novel) meets Mr. Norris on a train, their encounter seems remembered, not imagined, although its setting is fictitious. In these first sentences, Hamilton and Norris are still identical:
My first impression was that the stranger’s eyes were of an unusually light blue … Startled and innocently naughty, they were the eyes of a schoolboy surprised in the act of breaking one of the rules … His smile had great charm. His hands were white, small, and beautifully manicured. He had a large blunt fleshy nose and a chin which seemed to have slipped sideways. It was like a broken concertina. Above his ripe red cheeks, his forehead was sculpturally white, like marble. A queerly cut fringe of dark grey hair lay across it, compact, thick, and heavy. After a moment’s examination, I realized, with extreme interest, that he was wearing a wig.
From Christopher’s point of view, Gerald was enchantingly “period.” He introduced Wystan, Stephen, and other friends to him, and soon they were all treating him like an absurd but nostalgic artwork which has been rediscovered by a later generation. Gerald vastly enjoyed this new aspect of himself and began to play up to it. No doubt he realized that these naïve young men who marveled at his wig, his courtly mannerisms, and his police record were unconsciously becoming his accomplices. They were making him acceptable in circles which he had never entered before—the circles of modern bohemia, which would welcome him because of his shady past, not in spite of it. Not all bohemians are poor. Gerald could look forward to establishing fresh contacts which might be advantageous.
(This reminds me of a charming young man who was briefly welcomed into those same circles because he admitted frankly to being a cat burglar and seemed therefore “pure in heart,” according to the Lane-Layard creed. The homes of some of his admirers were subsequently burgled, but nothing was proved against him.)
Gerald therefore didn’t really mind when he found that his new friends were referring to him as “a most incredible old crook”; although he would always protest, for form’s sake. On one occasion, a fellow Hamilton connoisseur remarked to Christopher, “It seems that Gerald has had a moral lapse”; to which Christopher replied, “Gerald having a moral lapse is like someone falling off a footstool at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.” Christopher was pleased with this mot and repeated it to Gerald, who giggled, wriggled, and exclaimed, “Really!”
Aside from Gerald’s temperamental extravagance, which drove him to run up bills he knew he couldn’t possibly pay, his wrongdoing seems to have been almost entirely related to his role as a go-between. If you wanted to sell a stolen painting to a collector who didn’t mind enjoying it in private, to smuggle arms into a foreign country, to steal a contract away from a rival firm, to be decorated with a medal of honor which you had done nothing to deserve, to get your criminal dossier extracted from the archives, then Gerald was delighted to try to help you, and he quite often succeeded. All such transactions involved bribery in one form or another. And then there were Gerald’s operational expenses. And certain unforeseen obstacles which arose—probably with Gerald’s assistance—and had to be overcome, at considerable cost. All in all, a great deal of money would pass from hand to hand. The hands in the middle were Gerald’s, and they were sticky … Of course, in so-called legitimate business, there is a phrase to describe and justify what Gerald did; it is called taking a commission. And if, in order to practice his trade, Gerald had to hobnob with buyable chiefs of police, bloodthirsty bishops, stool pigeons, double agents, blackmailers, hatchet men, secretaries and mistresses of politicians, millionairesses even more ruthless than the husbands they had survived—well, that is what’s called being a man of the world.
Like all deeply dishonest people, he made the relatively honest look hypocritical and cowardly. Only a saint could have remained in contact with him and not been contaminated. And, by associating with him, you incurred some responsibility, even if it was only one tenth of one percent, for the really vile things which many of his associates had undoubtedly done. I remember a man, he was connected with French counterespionage, whom Christopher met through Gerald; he had the most evil face I have ever seen in my life.
Gerald didn’t look evil, but, beneath his amiable surface, he was an icy cynic. He took it for granted that everybody would grab and cheat if he dared. His cynicism made him astonishingly hostile toward people of whom he was taking some advantage; at unguarded moments, he would speak of them with brutal contempt. In Christopher’s case, Gerald’s cynicism was justified. He would certainly have let Gerald tempt him into serious lawbreaking if he hadn’t been so cautious by nature.
Looking back on Gerald’s career, I find his misdeeds tiresome rather than amusing. His dishonesty was tiresome because it was so persistent; he was like a greedy animal which you can’t leave alone in the kitchen, even for an instant. And yet, what did all his intrigues obtain for him? He used to boast coyly of his coups, to hint at having netted “a cool thou” or “a positively glacial sum”; but when you pressed him for details, he became evasive. Probably he was ashamed of the self-indulgence with which he squandered whatever money he had grabbed. Throughout his life, he was pestered by creditors. The strange truth is that he was an amateur, hopelessly unbusinesslike, romantic, and unmodern in his methods. Crime, as he practiced it, doesn’t pay. It is as demanding and unrewarding as witchcraft.
Nevertheless, despite the anxieties amidst which he lived, Gerald genuinely enjoyed himself. And he shared his enjoyment with his friends. When the weather was dull and life was gloomy, he cheered you up by the charm of his absurdity. He would dress for some humdrum gathering as if for a brilliant social event and thus almost manage to turn it into one. He could make you feel you were at a banquet when, in fact, you were supping off scrambled eggs and vin ordinaire. He laughed at your jokes, he flattered you, he was sincerely delighted when you were pleased. He was therefore liked by many people who thoroughly disapproved of him. Others, including Frl. Thurau, adored him without any reservations. He referred to her as La Divine Thurau.
Gerald h
ad an Irish genius for embracing causes with passion and taking sides furiously in a dispute. The passion and the fury were often temporary, and he felt no embarrassment in changing his convictions later. At one time or another, he was a pacifist, a crusader for Irish independence (no matter what that might cost in the blood of others), a near-Communist, a right-wing extremist, a critic of the Vatican’s foreign policy, a devout Catholic. Not unnaturally, he was suspected of having ulterior motives; often, no doubt, he had. But it is difficult to find anything sinister in the hard work he did for the Fight the Famine Council and the Save the Children Fund, after the First World War. And he often wrote letters to the press, in favor of legalized abortion, prison reform, and the abolition of capital punishment, which were admirably outspoken and lucid.
Mr. Norris fails to reveal what was the most enduring bond between Gerald and Christopher, their homosexuality. When it came to breaking the laws which had been made against the existence of their tribe, Christopher was happy to be Gerald’s fellow criminal.
FIVE
Edward and Wystan had read The Memorial in manuscript, shortly before or after the New Year. Both had praised it, each in his own peculiar language—to which Christopher was so accustomed that he never reflected how bizarre it would look on a book jacket:
Upward: All the trumpets spoke and a man with gray ears wept in torrents of sulphur over Charlesworth, Lily and the attempted suicide of Edward Blake.
Auden: You alone have had the courage and the reagents to bring out the Figure in that carpet. May I also utter a word of praise for Isherwood’s weather.
Christopher didn’t doubt the sincerity of their enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he was still worried. These were his closest friends. The relation between them and himself was essentially telepathic. Mightn’t they have understood telepathically what it was that he had wanted to express in this book and thus overlooked the fact that he had failed to express it? And, if this was so, how would the book seem to untelepathic Jonathan Cape? Cape had published Christopher’s first novel, All the Conspirators, in 1928. Now, in March 1931, he was making up his mind whether or not he should publish The Memorial. Christopher left for London on March 10, to be on the spot and get the news of Cape’s decision with a minimum of delay.
During their separation, Christopher had made peace with Kathleen by default. She was a passive fortress and he had stopped attacking her. What was the use? She was impregnable, anyway. They had exchanged a few letters, in which their differences were never referred to.
The day after Christopher’s arrival, Kathleen wrote in her diary: “We sat talking in my room till nearly one A.M. It was almost as it used to be long ago.” But, a day or two later, she had become anxious:
Fear the state of things is worse than ever and he looks so far from well, in a way he is glad to be back but is restless and not happy, and absorbed in Otto who is more a cause of misery than happiness.
It seems extraordinary to me, now, that Christopher would have so far exposed himself as to let her see that Otto was “a cause of misery” to him—thus admitting to a failure in his homosexual life and confirming her prejudice against it. Even in his late twenties, he still had a childlike urge to confide in her which he seemingly couldn’t control.
On March 14, Jonathan Cape turned down The Memorial, firmly and politely: “I realize that there is a risk in letting you go, as you may make a connection elsewhere which will endure. It certainly should be published.”
The rejection of your second novel—quite a common experience—is more painful than any number of rejections of your first; at least, Christopher found it so. As long as no publisher had accepted a book by him, he could regard all publishers as the Others, mere merchants whose literary judgment was worth nothing, except money. But Jonathan Cape couldn’t be thus dismissed. He had shown himself to be a man of rare taste, a non-merchant and other than the Others, when he had accepted All the Conspirators after two publishers had rejected it. Christopher’s self-confidence was shaken.
In the event of a refusal by Cape, Stephen Spender had advised Christopher to leave the novel with Curtis Brown, the literary agents, and let them try to place it elsewhere. He now met with a representative of Curtis Brown and was given an expensive lunch, from which he rose with his hopes irrationally raised.
Meanwhile, Stephen was loyally awaiting him in Berlin. Christopher wrote telling Stephen to “hold the fort a little longer.” Holding the fort evidently included coping with some kind of trouble which Otto had got himself into. Kathleen records that Stephen wired back: “All well Otto.” Christopher returned to Germany on March 21.
* * *
In June or early July, Christopher, Stephen, and Otto went to Sellin on Ruegen Island for a summer holiday. Here Wystan joined them, rather unwillingly. Unlike Christopher, who felt indecent until he was darkly sunburned, Wystan had no use for the beach and the sea. His white-skinned body, when exposed, became painfully pink. He preferred rainy weather. During much of the day, he shut himself up in his bedroom with the blinds pulled down, ignored the summer, and wrote. I suppose he was working on The Orators.
Stephen was writing too, though he spent much of his time out of doors, keeping Christopher and Otto company. He was recording their holiday with his camera. This had an automatic shutter release, so Stephen himself wasn’t necessarily excluded from the record. In a recent letter to me, he recalls that:
with a masturbatory camera designed for narcissists I took—or it took—the most famous photograph in the history of the world, of US THREE.
Stephen, in the middle, has his arms around Wystan and Christopher and an expression on his face which suggests an off-duty Jesus relaxing with “these little ones.” Christopher, compared with the others, is such a very little one that he looks as if he is standing in a hole.
Stephen also took pictures of Otto—some absurd, some animally beautiful: Otto in a loincloth, strumming on a guitar and pretending to be an Hawaiian boy; Otto caught unconsciously taking the pose of a Michelangelo nude on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. How delighted Otto would have been to know that in 1974 several of these pictures would be displayed, as part of a television documentary, before an estimated five million British viewers! And how delightedly—and wrongly—Stephen, Wystan, and Christopher would have assumed, on the basis of this single fact, that the England of the nineteen-seventies would be an earthly paradise of love and liberty.
All in all, this Ruegen visit wasn’t a success. Wystan soon returned to England. Christopher and Otto squabbled, because Otto spent his evenings dancing with beach girls at the local casino and didn’t come home until the small hours. On the last day, Christopher cut his toe on a sharp bit of tin while wading into the sea. The cut festered and he was a semi-cripple for several weeks after his return to Berlin.
Meanwhile, Stephen had been in Salzburg. When he wrote that he would like to rejoin Christopher and asked if there was a room free for him, Christopher replied:
I think I could find you something cheaper two doors away. I think it is better if we don’t all live right on top of each other, don’t you? I believe that was partly the trouble at Ruegen. Anyhow I’m resolved not to live with Otto again for a long time. Because, these last days, when he’s been in to see me for quite short periods, have been absolutely wonderful …
This is the first indication that Stephen has been getting on Christopher’s nerves. Christopher only mentions Otto because he is embarrassed to have to admit that he doesn’t want Stephen living in the same apartment with him. Stephen took the hint. Instead of returning to Berlin, he went back to London.
* * *
Curtis Brown had been unable to find a publisher for The Memorial; it had been rejected by three more of them, Davies, Secker, and Duckworth. Stephen now took the manuscript personally to John Lehmann, who was managing the Hogarth Press for Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Stephen had already praised The Memorial to Lehmann as one of the masterpieces of their generation. Stephen’s extravagant enth
usiasm could sometimes be a danger to its object, but Lehmann wasn’t deterred. He read the manuscript, decided that he liked it very much, and promised Stephen to do everything he could to persuade the Woolfs that they must publish it. When Christopher heard this news, he felt ashamed of himself for having rebuffed Stephen and wrote to him warmly, thanking him for all his efforts on behalf of The Memorial: “If the Hogarth do take it, it will be entirely because of you.”
Not long after this, Christopher reported to Stephen:
I had a letter from Curtis Brown to say that the Hogarth wants to read All the Conspirators before deciding about The Memorial. I’m afraid that’ll be its deathblow, but am writing to my mother to forward a copy. If you are writing to Lehmann do implore him not to be put off by the Conspirators. Tell him I’ll write my next book in any style they like—even that of Hatter’s Castle.
(This was A. J. Cronin’s first novel. Christopher hadn’t read it yet; he despised it simply because it was a bestseller. When he did read it later, he was surprised to find that it moved him.)
If the Hogarth (or Blackwell or the Universal Press or the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for that matter) would only take my novel I feel I could put up with anything that’s billed to happen to me this winter … There is always the possibility of the Prussian government being overthrown next Sunday by the Nazis and all foreigners expelled.
(Christopher liked to play the front-line alarmist for the benefit of stay-at-home civilians; he was apt to forget that Stephen had been in the front line too. He refers to a referendum which was to be held on August 2, to decide the fate of the Bruening administration. On this occasion, it was saved; but, in any case, there was no real danger of a Nazi takeover that year.)
Jean talks of going to America in the winter. Hamilton has openly declared for Russia. Otto is a champion athlete.
(Jean never did go to America. She may have got the idea of doing so from an American whom she and Christopher had recently met, the original of Clive in Goodbye to Berlin. Like Clive, the American thrilled them by inviting them to come with him to the States and then dashed their hopes by leaving Berlin abruptly, without saying goodbye.