The Postcard
A National Series postcard that was published by Millar and Lang, Art Publishers, of Glasgow and London.
The card was posted in Chatham using a ½d. stamp on Friday the 26th. August 1904. It was sent to:
Mrs. Winterflood,
41, Roman Road,
Chelmsford,
Essex.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"Dear M,
Got B.B.'s and letter. I am
not able to get home this
weekend, I will write on
Sunday.
Just had a letter from
Herb, he is on 7 days'
leave."
When the Gentle Breezes Blow
The card is probably based on a work for voices and piano/organ by Johann Strauss Junior entitled 'Gentle Breezes, Softly Blow.'
The words were by Kay Foster.
Incidentally, 'Gentle Breeze' is now a technical term for a light breeze of force three on the Beaufort scale, blowing at 8–12 miles per hour.
Strauss Junior's work may also have inspired an anonymous poem:
'It's winter in Minnesota,
And the gentle breezes blow
Seventy miles an hour
At twenty-five below.
Oh, how I love Minnesota
When the snow's up to your butt
You take a breath of winter
And your nose gets frozen shut.
Yes, the weather here is wonderful
So I guess I'll hang around
I could never leave Minnesota
'Cause I'm frozen to the ground!!!'
The poem is not confined to Minnesota - people who live in an area with a cold winter tend to slot their own town or state into the poem.
Christopher Isherwood
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 26th. August 1904 marked the birth in High Lane, Cheshire of Christopher Isherwood.
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.
His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret; A Single Man (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement.
Christopher Isherwood - The Early Years
Isherwood was born on his family's estate in Cheshire near Stockport in the north-west of England. He was the elder son of Francis Edward Bradshaw Isherwood (1869–1915), known as Frank, a professional soldier in the York and Lancaster Regiment, and Kathleen Bradshaw Isherwood, née Machell Smith (1868–1960), the only daughter of a successful wine merchant.
Christopher was the grandson of John Henry Isherwood, squire of Marple Hall and Wyberslegh Hall, Cheshire, and he included among his ancestors the Puritan judge John Bradshaw, who signed the death warrant of King Charles I.
Isherwood's father was educated at the University of Cambridge and Sandhurst Military Academy, fought in the Boer War, and was killed in the Great War.
Isherwood's mother, Kathleen, was, through her own mother, a member of the wealthy Greene brewing family of Greene King, and Isherwood was a cousin of the novelist Graham Greene, who was also related to the brewing family.
Christopher Isherwood at Repton School
At Repton, Christopher's boarding school in Derbyshire, Isherwood met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom he invented an imaginary English village called Mortmere, as related in his fictional autobiography, Lions and Shadows (1938).
He went up to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as a history scholar, wrote jokes and limericks on his second year Tripos and was asked to leave without a degree in 1925.
During Christmas 1925, Christopher was re-introduced to a prep school friend, W. H. Auden. Through Auden, Isherwood met the younger poet, Stephen Spender, who printed Auden's first collection, Poems (1928).
Edward Upward, Isherwood, Auden, and Spender were identified as the most exciting new literary group in England in the 1930's. Auden dubbed Isherwood the novelist in what came to be known as the Auden Group or Auden Generation.
With Cecil Day-Lewis and Louis MacNeice, Auden and Spender later attracted the name 'the MacSpaunday Poets' (a composite of parts of their surnames), with which Isherwood is also associated.
After leaving Cambridge, Isherwood worked as a private tutor, and later as secretary to a string quartet led by the violinist André Mangeot while he completed his first novel. This was All the Conspirators, published in 1928, about the struggle for self-determination between children and their parents.
In October 1928, Isherwood enrolled as a medical student at King's College London, but he left after six months.
In March 1929, Isherwood joined Auden in Berlin, where Auden was spending a post-graduate year. The ten-day visit changed Isherwood's life. He began an affair with a German boy whom he met at a cellar bar called The Cosy Corner, and he was "brought face to face with his tribe" at Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science.
Sojourn in Berlin
In Berlin, Isherwood completed his second novel, The Memorial (1932), about the impact of the Great War on his family and his generation. He also continued his habit of keeping a diary.
In his diary, he gathered raw material for Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1935), inspired by his real-life friendship with Gerald Hamilton.
Christopher was also making notes for Goodbye to Berlin (1939), his portrait of the city in which Adolf Hitler was rising to power—enabled by poverty, unemployment, and increasing attacks on Jews and Communists. These changes were being ignored by the defiant hedonism of night life in the cafés, bars, and brothels.
Goodbye to Berlin included stories published in the leftist magazine, New Writing, and it included Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles, in which he created his most famous character, based upon a young Englishwoman, Jean Ross, with whom he briefly shared a flat.
In 1951, Goodbye to Berlin was adapted for the New York stage by John van Druten using the title I Am a Camera, taken from Isherwood's opening paragraphs. The play inspired the hit Broadway musical Cabaret (1966), which was later adapted to film as Cabaret in 1972.
In 1932, Isherwood started a relationship with a young German, Heinz Neddermeyer. They fled Nazi Germany together in May 1933, traveling initially to Greece. Neddermeyer was refused entry to England in January 1934, launching an odyssey in search of a country where they could settle together.
They lived in the Canary Islands, Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Sintra, Portugal, while trying to obtain a new nationality and passport for Neddermeyer. In May 1937, Neddermeyer was arrested by the Gestapo for draft evasion and reciprocal onanism.
During this period, Isherwood returned often to London where he took his first movie-writing job, working with Viennese director Berthold Viertel on the film Little Friend (1934).
He also collaborated with Auden on three plays – The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). He also worked on Lions and Shadows (1938), a fictionalized autobiography of his education — both in and out of school — in the 1920's.
In January 1938, Isherwood and Auden traveled to China to write Journey to a War (1939) about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England the following summer via the United States, and decided to emigrate there in January 1939.
Christopher Isherwood in the United States
While living in Hollywood, Isherwood befriended Truman Capote, an up-and-coming young writer who was influenced by Isherwood's Berlin Stories, most specifically in the traces of the story "Sally Bowles" that surface in Capote's famed novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Isherwood also befriended Dodie Smith, a British novelist and playwright who had also moved to California, and who became one of the few people to whom Isherwood showed his work in progress.
Isherwood considered becoming an American citizen in 1945 but balked at taking an oath that included the statement that he would defend the country. The following year he applied for citizenship and answered questions honestly, saying he would accept non-combatant duties like loading ships with food.
The fact that Christopher had volunteered for service with the Medical Corps also helped. At the naturalisation ceremony, he found he was required to swear to defend the nation, and decided to take the oath since he had already stated his objections and reservations. He became an American citizen on the 8th. November 1946.
Christopher began living with the photographer William "Bill" Caskey. In 1947, the two traveled to South America. Isherwood wrote the prose and Caskey took the photographs for a 1949 book about their journey entitled The Condor and the Cows.
On Valentine's Day 1953, at the age of 48, Christopher met the teenager Don Bachardy among a group of friends on the beach at Santa Monica. Reports of Bachardy's age at the time vary, but Bachardy later said:
"At the time I was probably 16."
In fact, he was 18. Despite the age difference, this meeting began a partnership that, though interrupted by affairs and separations, continued until the end of Isherwood's life.
During the early months of their affair, Isherwood finished—and Bachardy typed—the novel on which he had worked for some years, The World in the Evening (1954). Isherwood also taught a course on modern English literature at Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles) for several years during the 1950's and early 1960's.
The 30-year age difference between Isherwood and Bachardy raised eyebrows at the time, with Bachardy recalling:
"I was regarded as a
sort of child prostitute."
Nevertheless, the two became a well-known and well-established couple in Southern Californian society, with many Hollywood friends.
The novel Down There on a Visit, which was published in 1962, comprised four related stories that overlap the period covered in Christopher's Berlin stories.
In the opinion of many reviewers, Isherwood's finest achievement was his 1964 novel A Single Man, that depicted a day in the life of George, a middle-aged, gay Englishman who is a professor at a Los Angeles university. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009.
During 1964 Isherwood collaborated with American writer Terry Southern on the screenplay for the Tony Richardson film adaptation of The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh's caustic satire on the American funeral industry.
The Association with Vedanta
Gerald Heard had introduced British writer Aldous Huxley to Vedanta (Hindu-centered philosophy) and meditation. After migrating to America in 1937, Heard and Huxley became Vedantists attending functions at the Vedanta Society of Southern California, under the guidance of founder Swami Prabhavananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order of India.
Heard and Huxley introduced Isherwood to the Swami's Vedanta Society. Over time, Isherwood developed a close friendship with Huxley, with whom he sometimes collaborated. Isherwood became a dedicated Vedantist himself and was initiated by Prabhavananda, his guru.
The process of conversion to Vedanta was so intense that Isherwood was unable to write another novel between the years 1939–1945, while he immersed himself in study of the Vedanta Scriptures, even becoming a monk for a time at the Society.
For the next 35 years Isherwood collaborated with the Swami on translations of various Vedanta scriptures, including the Bhagavad Gita – The Song of God, writing articles for the Society's journal, and lecturing at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara temples.
For many years he would come to the Hollywood temple on Wednesday nights to read the Gospel of Ramakrishna for a half an hour, then the Swami would take questions from the devotees.
From 1950 to 1978, Isherwood gave 53 lectures at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta Temples. He mentions in his diaries and the book, My Guru and His Disciple, that he feels unqualified to preach, so most of his lectures were readings of papers written by others, primarily Swami Vivekananda.
Isherwood was also very involved in the production of the bi-monthly journal of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Vedanta and the West. From 1943 to 1945 he was Managing Editor, from 1951 to 1962 he was an Editorial Advisor. From 1949 to 1969 he wrote 40 articles for the journal.
Christopher Isherwood and War
Isherwood's father, Frank Bradshaw-Isherwood, was a colonel in the British Army. He was killed during the Battle of Ypres, France in May 1915, at the age of 46. Isherwood was 10 years old at the time.
His father's death deeply affected him, not only in his perspective of his father and how he would relate to his mother, but in his attitude towards the military and war itself.
Isherwood's second novel, The Memorial, published in 1932, describes the impact on a family from the death of the father in the Great War. The Memorial was the first of what would become the trademark for Isherwood: reflecting his life experience into the plot of a novel.
After being asked to leave Oxford, he lived in Berlin and witnessed the rising power of Fascism, the Nazi Party, and Hitler. Isherwood describes the times in his autobiographical novels The Berlin Stories.
Back in London, Isherwood's sympathies were with the left, but although the Anti-war movement flourished after the Great War, it was fractured into opposing ideological groups. Some wanted to join the fight in the Spanish Civil War, others wanted to just let the Germans in, rather than go to war.
Still others advocated non-violent resistance, all of which had the effect of weakening their political power. The fighting in Spain was savage, and the left tore itself apart with squabbling and paranoia. Veterans came to feel that the idealism of the cause had been exploited, and many resented being policed by shadowy Communist enforcers.
In 1937, two of the largest peace groups joined forces; the No More War Movement merged into the Peace Pledge Union. The members attested to the following pledge:
"War is a crime against humanity. I renounce
war, and am therefore determined not to
support any kind of war. I am also determined
to work for the removal of all causes of war".
Some of the leading authors and intellectuals of the time gave speeches and lent their names to the cause, including Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, and Bertrand Russell.
When Isherwood and Auden decided to emigrate to the United States in January 1939, Isherwood wasn't clear about his own anti-war beliefs.
On the way to America, he realized he was a Pacifist, as he would be unwilling to kill his friend Heinz:
"Heinz is in the Nazi army. I wouldn't
kill Heinz. Therefore I have no right
to kill anybody".
By then Christopher had lost his political faith:
"I couldn't repeat the left-wing slogans
which I had been repeating throughout
the last few years."
After moving to California, Isherwood applied for American citizenship and registered as a Conscientiousness Objector. In Pennsylvania, he worked in a Quaker Hostel, helping to settle European Jews who were fleeing the Nazis.
In 1944, the translation of the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita – The Song of God, that the Swami and Isherwood had been working on was published. In the appendix, there is an essay by Isherwood titled, The Gita and War. There Isherwood explains the Vedantic view of war and duty.
The plot of the poem is that the whole of India is drawn into a great battle, and on the eve of the fight, Arjuna, the hero warrior of the epic poem, The Mahabharata, is taken between the two armies and sees friends, family, and worthy people on both sides. He throws down his weapons and says:
"I will not fight."
The Death of Christopher Isherwood
Isherwood and Bachardy lived together in Santa Monica for the rest of Isherwood's life. Isherwood was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1981, and died at the age of 81 of the disease on the 4th. January 1986 at his Santa Monica home.
Christopher's body was donated to medical science at UCLA, and his ashes were later scattered at sea. Bachardy became a successful artist with an independent reputation, and his portraits of the dying Isherwood became well known after Isherwood's death.
The Legacy of Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood's Nollendorfstraße residence in the Schöneberg district of Berlin bears a memorial plaque to mark his stay there between 1929 and 1933.
Isherwood is mentioned in Susan Sontag's Notes on "Camp" (1964):
"Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in
Christopher Isherwood's novel The
World in the Evening (1954), Camp
has hardly broken into print."
The 2008 film Chris & Don: A Love Story, chronicled Isherwood and Bachardy's lifelong relationship.
A Single Man was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009.
In 2010 Isherwood's autobiography, Christopher and His Kind, was adapted into a television film by the BBC, starring Matt Smith as Isherwood and directed by Geoffrey Sax.
The annual Los Angeles Times – Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose was established in partnership with the Los Angeles Times in 2016.
