Christopher and His Kind: A Biography by Christopher Isherwood

Author:Christopher Isherwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2013-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

TEN

On March 26, 1934, Christopher left London to rejoin Heinz in Amsterdam. Thus he symbolically rejected Kathleen’s England. But this short journey was to be only the first phase of his rejection. To remain in Amsterdam would be like lingering undramatically backstage after making your final exit. No, Heinz and he must go much farther away—far enough to impress that audience, partly real, partly imaginary, of which he was always conscious.

Tierra del Fuego? The Seychelles? Tristan da Cunha? Lhasa? These were attractive chiefly because of their remoteness. If he could spend only one day in each, his place snobbery would be satisfied. He would be able to say, I have been there.

Much more compelling were the two names which had haunted him since boyhood—Quito and Tahiti. The magic of Quito had almost nothing to do with Quito the place; Christopher had then no idea what it looked like. What excited him was the concept of a city poised at ten thousand feet above the equator, with days and nights of eternally equal duration and the round of seasons repeated every twenty-four hours: spring in the morning, summer at noon, autumn in the afternoon, winter at night. An earthly model of paradise—or of limbo, according to the way you thought of it.

Tahiti was no mere concept to Christopher. He had seen many photographs of it and of its opposite island, Mooréa, whose wildly, magnificently scrawled skyline has the authority of a famous signature, guaranteeing this to be the world’s most dreamed-of landfall. Tahiti also offered you a dreamed-of manner of life; you could be a beachcomber there, like Gauguin.

Quito would be rather difficult to reach. Tahiti was easy. A French boat could take you all the way there from Marseilles, via the Panama Canal. The ticket wasn’t too expensive. But, when Christopher inquired further, he was told—incorrectly, I now suspect—that there was a limit on the length of your stay, unless you were a French citizen. Also, that beachcombers were being deported.

And where would Heinz and he go, after Tahiti? There was Western Samoa, with Stevenson’s home and grave; there was the bay in New Zealand where Katherine Mansfield spent her childhood summers; there was Thirroul in Australia, where Lawrence wrote Kangaroo. All these were sacred shrines for pilgrimage and also places where one might settle down and work. But Australia and New Zealand belonged to the Commonwealth, and Western Samoa was administered by New Zealand. Mightn’t they exchange lists of undesirable aliens with the British? Christopher’s fears were probably groundless, but he was now overanxious about such dangers.

Then somebody suggested the Canary Islands; a compromise but an attractive one. They weren’t very far away but they did (in those days) seem adequately remote. At least Christopher would be able to think of himself as having escaped from Europe; politically the islands belong to Spain but geographically they are part of Africa.

Early in April, Christopher and Heinz sailed on a Dutch boat from Rotterdam, by way of Vigo, Lisbon, and Funchal, to Las Palmas, the chief city of the Canaries, on the island of Gran Canaria.

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