2 This may not have been due to Christopher’s laziness. It’s possible that the gym was closed during the summer.
[* 939 Eighth Avenue.]
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householder to please try to remember God for at least one moment during each day.
It was also on May 5 that Christopher saw Forster for the first time in New York. He came to the apartment with Bill Roerick, with whom he had become great friends during the war, while Roerick was in England as a G.I. Caskey cooked supper for them, and the next night he cooked supper for Forster again. The day after that, he drove Forster and Christopher down to Bryn Mawr, where Forster had to give a lecture. Thus Forster came under the spell of Caskey’s charm and efficiency as a nanny. He remained fond of Caskey for the rest of his life.
On May 8, Christopher started what he describes as: “The School of Tragedy. First draft of a novel.”1 This fragment––nearly twelve pages 1 I have discovered (September 1973), since writing the [above] paragraph, an entry in another diary notebook [6w × 81⁄8w, also containing diary “Holland 1935”], dated Good Friday, April 4, 1947. This begins by stating that Christopher has already worked out a draft of a novel called The School of Tragedy sometime during 1946, in Santa Monica. However, Christopher continues, this draft won’t do at all. Its central character is Paul (Denny Fouts?).
The anecdote is “too funny, too clever, too trivial for the subject matter.”
(I don’t know what this means, unless Christopher is referring to an idea he had of writing a story about Caroline Norment’s curious involvement with accidental fires. See the journals, March 1, 1942 [D 1, pp. 212–14].) Christopher goes on to describe a new story line for the novel, moving around the partners in three love affairs. Two of these couples survive in the published version of The World in the Evening––Stephen (called Charles in this notebook) and Gerda; Charles (called Stephen) and Bob (called Roy). The third couple was to have been Sarah (Caroline Norment) and Dr. Kurt Traube (Carl Furtmueller, on whom, in real life, Caroline had a violent crush, until he got engaged to and married one of the American Quaker helpers at the Haverford hostel––his own wife having died a few months earlier). This
“Sarah” would obviously have been very different from the later Sarah!
Stephen–Charles is actually working at the hostel. He has given up his life to social work after an unhappy marriage (to a character like Jane). He has a friendly sex relationship with Gerda, to get her through the period of anxiety and waiting until her husband escapes from Germany and rejoins her.
Stephen–Charles and Gerda then part as loving friends.
Charles–Stephen is a doctor who has a boyfriend, Bob–Roy, in the navy.
Bob–Roy is killed––he never appears “on stage.” Charles–Stephen joins the navy too. (Incidentally, it’s curious to note that Christopher was planning to make Bob–Roy an architect in civilian life––about fourteen months before Christopher met Jim Charlton (see page 159 [and note 1]). I suppose that, when Christopher chose that profession for Bob-Roy, he was thinking of Bob Stagg (see [page 123]). But, before he met Jim, he had never been interested in a young man as an architect. Sarah’s romance with Dr. Traube is the only one 122
Lost Years
of a large (101⁄2w × 131⁄2w) thin notebook––consists of descriptions of the refugees at the Haverford hostel taken from the 1941–1942
journals and given fictitious names. Its title also comes from the journals. On June 24, 1942, Christopher records that the Schindlers left their room so untidy that Mr. [ Josef ] Stern remarked severely:
“Such people are not fit for the school of tragedy.” Christopher had been delighted by this phrase and had probably been intending to use it for a title, ever since he heard it.
This fragment is just flat-footed reporting and its attempts at humor strike a note of smug condescension; no wonder Christopher soon got bored with it. His second draft, begun on June 17, does at least contain a spark of possible interest; it is in the form of Stephen’s mental dialogue with Elizabeth during the Quaker meeting, in The World in the Evening. But this dialogue, unfortunately, is with the Narrator’s Better Self, or God; it must have made Christopher feel queasy, for he dropped it after two and a half pages. After this, he doesn’t seem to have done any more work on the novel for nearly two years.
These two fragments are written very neatly; they must be fair copies. I remember the little room at the back of the apartment where Christopher’s writing was done, and how he had to keep
wiping the side of his sweaty hand (the weather was hot and humid) to stop it from smearing dirt over the page. Dirt fell unceasingly all over everything, even when the windows were shut. Christopher hated having dirty hands when he was writing. He hated the heat, too. The filthy city with its noise and its horrible climate soon began to get on his nerves. He couldn’t settle down to his novel so he blamed his surroundings and the life he was leading. How could he work in this apartment? He couldn’t even create a literary nest for himself by having his books around him; when they arrived by boat from England, late in May, he had to store them in the cellar of the building because the bookshelves in the apartment were crammed with the Sterns’ books. And how could he work, he said, when he was surrounded by so many friends and going out to so many parties and drinking so much? Christopher often enjoyed seeing individuals with a conventional happy ending. They get married after Traube’s wife dies.
Frau Traube has some lingering disease. Charles–Stephen, who is her doctor, finishes her off and later admits to Stephen–Charles that he has done so.
Christopher made at least three more entries in this same diary notebook––including synopses, lists of characters and seating plans for the hostel dining room. The last dated entry is on June 9, 1947, so they overlap the entries in the large thin notebook.
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––parties he never liked unless they were sexy––drinking was his social anesthetic but hangovers were the destruction of his precious private mornings.
Within three or four weeks––at the very most––Christopher had made up his mind that he couldn’t, wouldn’t settle in New York.
His decision dismayed him, for it seemed to threaten his whole relationship with Caskey. Coming to New York had been chiefly Caskey’s idea. He was at home there, it suited him perfectly and its discomforts he took in his stride. To attack New York was to attack the values he had grown up with.
But Caskey, to his surprise and relief, took Christopher’s decision quite calmly; saying that he was beginning to feel much the same way. Since they were now planning to leave for South America at the end of the summer, they agreed to stay on at the Sterns’
apartment till then and put off discussing where they should live until they had returned from the South America trip, sometime in 1948.
Looking back, I doubt if Caskey was being quite sincere when he said he no longer liked New York. I think he said it to please Christopher. He certainly enjoyed himself there that summer––
much more than Christopher did.
I feel a strong disinclination to write about Christopher’s social life that summer. With a few exceptions, which will be dealt with
separately, it’s just a pattern of names with very few memories attached to them. Well, to be brief––
They saw something of Lincoln Kirstein and Auden, Berthold
Viertel, Paul Cadmus, Tony Bower and van Druten1––Christopher’s friends––but a good deal more of Ed Tauch, Jack Coble, Bob Stagg, Bernie Perlin, Horst, Ollie and Isa Jennings, Ben Baz and Bill Bailey––Caskey’s friends. This was because Caskey’s friends tended 1 On May 25, Christopher records a meeting with John van Druten’s boyfriend Walter Starkey, whom Christopher and Caskey had already met in January (see