The Animals Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy

IN 1956, Christopher Isherwood wrote from Cheshire, England, to his partner, the artist Don Bachardy. It is the first entry in a 14-year correspondence: a brief, eccentric document that mentions, in a short space, Alexander Korda's memorial service, incest between two cats and Courbet's "Diligence in the Snow." "I think about you all the time," he writes in closing, "and about times I might have been kinder and more understanding, and I make many resolutions for the future - some of which I hope I'll keep." Their relationship began on Valentine's Day of 1953 and was in an important sense defined by its many periods of separation. The world of the letters lived inside the broader, coded world of midcentury homosexuality. Within it, Isherwood and Bachardy were able to express themselves through a more personal kind of code, in what would become the prolonged metaphor of the Animals. Bachardy was Kitty, and Isherwood was a horse called Dobbin. In this collection of the existing letters, edited and introduced by Katherine Bucknell, it never becomes quite clear why two grown men would want to write to each other in the guise of a horse and a cat. But if we don't get a sense of how the Animals came to be, we do see how they endured through the years, and in such embarrassing variations as "Beloved Catkin," "Angel Sweetcat," "Dearest Raggledub" and "Worshiped Glossyhoof." It's a far cry from the madness of kisses, but then it's not exactly fair to judge: Isherwood's love letters may be the only things he wrote without a broader readership in mind. "The Animals" gives us a half-glimpse into the 33-year relationship that would end with Isherwood's death in 1986. Most of the correspondence takes place in the 1960s, a fertile decade for two artists at almost diametrically opposed points in their careers. For the much younger Bachardy, they were years of doubt, existential crisis and extramural activity. For Isherwood they were professionally prolific, and saw the development of his Berlin stories into the musical "Cabaret"; the writing of "A Single Man," "Down There on a Visit" and "A Meeting by the River" ; and the research and development of "Kathleen and Frank," his book about his parents. The years 1956-70 found the two often on separate coasts engaged in separate projects, usually at Bachardy's instigation and in service of finding his own voice. When he received his first serious commission - to draw lobby portraits for the American production of "A Taste of Honey" in 1960 - he gained entry into the dazzling world of artists, entertainers and expats in which Isherwood was already something of an institution. This world was what they shared, and also, as Bachardy's ambition and Isherwood's anxiety make clear, what kept them so often apart. The letters provide the best and worst of what we've come to expect from Isherwood's diaries of the same period, offering the same cast of characters showcased in the same, usually unflattering light. Isherwood's well-documented anti-Semitism, for instance, reaches its nadir in a bizarre remark about Lincoln Kir stein: "Every time he says I'm an American, I'm a Harvard boy, I'm a Bostonian," he writes in 1965, "I think No you aren't, you're a Jew." We get fresh portraits of Paul Bowles and Cecil Beaton (who, in a surreal moment, offers to take Bachardy to see "Mondo Cane"); E.M. Forster, who, according to Isherwood, "still thinks" of sex at age 88; and Frank O'Hara, whose erotic entourage provokes Bachardy's disdain ("Their world is quite a tight circle made up of people who reinforce each other's standards and beliefs"). Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero are dismissed by Bachardy as "pod-born replacements for real humans," while Charles Laughton at one point loses visiting privileges at the house of Isherwood because he "sits and sits." But this is de rigueur for the Animals, for whom cruelty is often the better part of honesty. The stories they tell each other usually come at the expense of others, as the two lovers illustrate in writing what a mocking, ridiculous spectacle the world becomes when the loved one is missing from it. In 1958, Bachardy gives a lengthy report of the attempted suicide of the father of Marguerite Lamkin, a mutual friend. Isherwood responds by saying he enjoyed the report so much that he "quite forgot to feel sorry for anybody. Honestly, this is literature!" The letters feed on such reports from the frontier: In them, weight is fixated on, bisexuality disparaged (there's no trusting Tony Richardson because of it), lives and deaths are constantly under review, and newspaper clippings of cats frequently enclosed. "The Animals" is marketed as a collection of love letters, yet to define them in only this way might be putting too fine a point on it. The language is not forthrightly amorous and hardly ever beautiful, and the letters at times are dull and listlike. For what is ostensibly a private and intimate correspondence, it's surprising how little of anything emotional, inconvenient, intimate - indeed private - comes across. Though perhaps surprising isn't the word. In fiction, a type of self-imposed distance is Isherwood's forte - the trick of his genius. The letters present us with an aspect of Isherwood's life that must have felt, at times, a bit further out of his control than he would have liked. Both men sought sex outside the relationship; for Isherwood this was more a concession to Bachardy's needs than a desire to satisfy his own. When it comes to calling each other to account, the letters offer up a strange silence, at best a slight passive aggression on the older man's part. "None of the Isherwoods feel things much," he writes at one point, quoting his mother. When he later refers to himself - rather, to "Dobbin" - as "a thing that can't feel," one imagines it is wishful thinking. If truth is what these letters are in search of, it is often at the expense of feeling. At one point Isherwood suspects Bachardy of being "franker than I am. Is that because you can afford to be? Am I scared of you? Yes, in a way. But I really almost wish I could be more scared. How can I explain that?" In the world of "The Animals," the charge of truthfulness could sometimes seem like an accusation. Bucknell has been exhaustive in her quest to present us with the complete Isherwood, having brought forth all four volumes of his diaries in recent years, now capped off with the letters. But the complete person, when it comes to a writer who so famously wrote as if he had nothing to hide, is still very much a construct: Isherwood as created by Isherwood and determined by the expectations of his audience; in the case of the letters the most important audience of all, his life partner until death. If nothing else, "The Animals" gives us a stranger and at times more accessible point of entry. There is, after all, something nice about seeing the cleareyed Christopher Isherwood as yet another person whom love makes inscrutable and even a bit unbearable, a lover sending pictures of cats in the mail to the one other person who will understand their true significance. Why would two grown men want to write letters in the guise of a horse and a cat? HENRY GIARDINA has written for The New Yorker online, New York magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications.

This collection of letters between famed writer Christopher Isherwood (1902-1986, author of Goodbye to Berlin), and his partner of over three decades, Don Bachardy, a 30-years younger portrait painter, offers considerable insight into the life of this extraordinary couple. An astute introduction by Bucknell (editor of Isherwood's Diaries) sets up the correspondence, which spans February 1956 to April 1970. Throughout the chatty exchanges, the lovers drop names, discuss projects, shows, and collaborations, dish, commiserate, and even bitch. What emerges is a remarkable portrait of love in exile. Bachardy often wrote to Isherwood to discuss insecurities, doubts, and despair; both men gave each other much-needed support. The book's title comes from their imaginary identities as "the Animals": Don being the cat to Chris's horse, which prompts the lovers to open and close their letters with romantic mushiness and cutesy terms of endearment-for example, "Dearest Silkmuzzle Adored Pinktongue" and "Most Treasured Plug." A little of this affection, however, goes a long way. The copious-and perhaps too comprehensive notes-detail everything and everyone, including affairs. Most of the correspondence is chaste; the raunchiest entry concerns "an intravenous [dose] of horse essence." This worthwhile volume may be best suited for Isherwood completists. 52 b&w illus. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Wednesday [February 1, 1956] High Lane, Cheshire1 Dearest Donny, I wonder so much what you are doing, and I hope so much that you're having fun and interesting adventures. Wednesday! And when you get this it will be Thursday--and then there will only be Friday, Saturday, Sunday ... But I mustn't get rattled. I keep looking out anxiously at the snow which fell last night and wondering if more will fall and block the roads. But I'll get through somehow--like in that Courbet at the National Gallery.2 This house is as damp as a sponge, and cold --you can see your breath even when standing by the fire--and the sheets are damp like graveclothes and the books on the shelves smell of corpses. And in the kitchen and scullery there are very old smells of dried fat in skillets and old old black rags that are quite frighteningly filthy in a 19th century way, like something out of Oliver Twist . I don't say all this just in complaint. A lot of it is hilariously funny, or very touching, and I'm glad I came alone because it's really easier to take. I spend a lot of time scrubbing things. If only the pipes don't freeze! My mother3 is absolutely marvellous--sharp as a needle, sees well, hears perfectly, remembers everything, talks all day long. Poor Richard4 is turning rapidly in[to] a prematurely aged freak--his face around the nose is dark purple (bad circulation, I guess) and he has lost several of his teeth in front and he walks with a stoop and keeps his head down. But he is so kind and gentle and anxious to help. He fills my bed with hot water bottles, leaving marks on the sheets because his poor hands are chronically covered with coal dust. He is forever building fires or making tea which is pure liquid brass. They have two white cats. The female has a black smudge over one eye and she is fat with kittens, fathered by the other cat, her son. She is one of the best-looking cats I have ever seen, and she doesn't give a shit about any of us. If I didn't hate the cold so, I'd admit that this place is marvellously beautiful. Cobden Edge, the first ridge of moorland behind the house, is all white and there is a strange orange light on the snow; the bare trees are so black against it. Cheerful stamping men in mufflers bring milk and newspapers--from which I see that Emlyn Williams and Charlie Chaplin were both at Korda's funeral. Maybe Molly will fix for you to meet him--and/or Lady Olivier, who was there too?!5 Unless I send a telegram to the contrary, I will arrive at Euston Station Monday afternoon at 1:55. No need to meet me if you have something else to do. I just tell you so you'll know approximately when I'll be at the hotel--about 2:30. Leave word for me there if you're not coming to the station. (But I hope you do!) Imagine--this is the first letter I ever wrote you! I think about you all the time, and about times I might have been kinder and more understanding, and I make many resolutions for the future--some of which I hope I'll keep. In any case, all my love, Chris. [ Autograph letter on printed letterhead of Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Stockport, Cheshire ] February 1, 1956 [London] Dear Chris, It is freezing here. It snowed most of yesterday, and even began to lay on the iron steps outside the window. But today it is all gone, and though clear & sunny, it is much colder. I am still in bed (it's past 12) because it's the only warm place. I have been reading, and working on my play! I am amazed--I worked three and a half hours yesterday morning and three hours this morning, and now I have eight pages of solid notes and, I think, a very good outline for the first two acts! I've managed to think up a surprisingly well-constructed plot (although there is not much of a story) and already I know roughly what the third act will consist of. I feel quite silly, especially in the afternoon and early morning, when I think of writing this play, but nevertheless it is going well and it is fun. It's a very heavy drama--I hope this isn't a mistake--and not very original, but with a few surprises. As of yet, you have not appeared. It may very well be a thing of the past by next Monday--I really haven't written more than just a few snatches of dialogue yet.1 John (I don't even know his last name yet--Cuthbert's friend2) called yesterday morning and took me to Fresh Airs last night. I thought it was dull and trivial, and very poorly organized and produced. Too much really amazingly trashy sentiment. I thought a revue was essentially based on gags and laughs, but right in the middle of supposedly funny skits were very serious, straight-faced sentimental numbers with nothing but the corniest lyrics. There were endless sets and costumes, all ugly, and the most amateurish dancing and pantomiming I've seen out of high school. Here and there were a few amusing gags, all very proper except for a terribly shocking skit about a Paris pissoir and some "asides" from Max Adrian (who got in drag, too), but the funniest thing was a political skit making fun of America doing her all to make Germany happy.3 John and I got along well--he's really very nice and has a lot of the same difficulties that I've got, so there's quite a bit for us to talk about. I took him to dinner at the Comedy and we had drinks at the hotel before dinner. He even invited me to spend a few days with him and Cuthbert, but I firmly refused--for various reasons. I think he is interested in me, but I most definitely don't reciprocate any kind of similar interest. No one else has called and I haven't made any calls myself. Yesterday I saw The Constant Husband with Rex Harrison and Margaret Leighton (it was very boring) and A Life at Stake with Angela Lansbury and Keith Andes, a quickie thriller made on location in L.A. with a weak, silly story but still interesting. She was good. You don't have to bother with either film, though.4 The day before I saw White Cargo , which was mild fun, and Moulin Rouge , which was still beautiful but unbelievably trashy and pompous and self-consciously chic, and in places really foul. Huston gives himself away in this.5 I saw The Boyfriend in the evening. It's not nearly as good as in New York and seemed very "joke's over" this time after one act. But I had a seat in the front row and flirted unmercifully with the chorus boys all through it.6 But I miss rides through London on old Dobbin (especially in the snow yesterday) and think a lot about him, sleeping in a strange stable, eating cold oats out of an ill-fitting feed bag and having no cat fur to keep him warm. And don't let them put any frozen bits in his mouth. And tell him an anxious Tabby is at the mercy of the RSPCA and counting the days till his return. P. S. Don't forget about the movies.7 [ Autograph letter ] Copyright © 2013 by Don Bachardy Introduction and notes copyright © 2013 by Katherine Bucknell Excerpted from The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy by Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.