Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir Read Online Free PDF

in particular that Christopher himself was to come in, as he was already toying with the idea of breaking up what remained of ‘The Lost’ into separate incidents or character studies. All these points were eagerly discussed during our walks together through Amsterdam. I remember one walk which took us alongside a field where schoolboys were (in my recollection) practising football. Christopher gives a slightly different and comic account in  Christopher and His Kind:
         
    Among these [teenage boys] were a few types of exotic beauty, products of Holland’s colonial presence in the East Indies - nordic blond hair and peach skin with Indonesian cheekbones and liquid black equatorial eyes. At one corner of the field was a boxing-ring. The boys didn’t fight, they only sparred, with a sportsman-like restraint which verged absurdly on politeness. But it was just the caressing softness with which their big leather gloves patted each other’s naked bodies that Christopher found distractingly erotic. His attention would stray far from literature, and his voice, though continuing to talk about it, must have sounded like a programmed robot’s: ‘Oh yes, indeed I do agree - I think he’s quite definitely the best writer in that genre, absolutely - ’
          
    As soon as I got back to London I tackled the negotiations which I had already begun with Allen Lane of the Bodley Head before leaving. We debated whether the magazine should be a quarterly or appear twice a year in hard covers like the Yellow Book. Eventually we decided on the latter scheme, and the name  New Writing.
    I wrote at once to Christopher to tell him the good news and that I had a contract in my pocket.
         
    Your own contribution can be anything between 3,000 and 12,000 words long. However deeply Wystan A. may have involved himself with the Empire-builders and their film-hacks, he must not be allowed to leave for our far-flung territories without producing something. He will probably write it while you stand over him one evening. My homage to him when he comes. I think the moment has arrived for me to write to
    Edward Upward myself, now that you have prepared the way. Can you give me his address? And will you find out from Stephen whether his contribution is finished, or nearly finished? Put the pen in his hand if not.
         
    I enclosed in my letter a draft of the ‘Manifesto’ I wanted to appear at the beginning of the first number. On 2 September he replied from Amsterdam:
         
    So glad the prospects for New Writing are so good. Do you really think paragraph four of your Manifesto is necessary at all? I only ask this tentatively. It seems to me merely the same as saying the ‘vital creative work’ will be vital. And, anyhow, the aims of the paper will be self-evident already in the contents of the first issue. It seems to me that to make any statement of your aims at all lays you open to attacks from the further and hither Left. Surely it is enough to say what you say in your other paragraphs and leave the names of the contributors to suggest the nature of the contents?
          
    Following this piece of sound advice, I amended the ‘Manifesto’, though I now think not enough. Originally my idea had been that there should be a fairly informal advisory committee to assist the editor, but Christopher didn’t seem very keen. In the same letter he wrote: ‘Certainly I will be most honoured to sit on the advisory Committee, if you don’t think my absence from England disqualifies me? But let me urge you once more to take as little notice of us all as possible, and be very autocratic. I’m sure it’s better. Need you, in fact, have a formal committee at all? Why not just consult people informally, whenever you want an outside opinion?’
    The rather American idea of a committee was more or less dropped. Perhaps, when he urged me to be ‘very autocratic’, his instinct told him