Where Joy Resides by Christopher Isherwood

Author:Christopher Isherwood [Isherwood, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2020-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

KATHLEEN AND FRANK

(1971)

[Isherwood chose and commented on selections from his mother’s diaries and his father’s letters in Kathleen and Frank, a chronicle of their Edwardian courtship and marriage. His father, a professional soldier, was reported missing in action on April 28, 1915. This afterword follows a description of the death of his mother in 1960.]

WHEN CHRISTOPHER came back to St. Edmund’s in September 1915, after his summer of convalescence, he wore a black crape band around his sleeve. He had now acquired a social status which was respected by everybody in wartime England, including the Crown, the Church and the Press: he was an Orphan of a Dead Hero. At St. Edmund’s there were only two or three others who shared this distinction, and at first he was vain of it; it made you, or rather your mourning armband, slightly sacred. The band mustn’t on any account be torn or even rumpled, and therefore you yourself couldn’t be attacked as long as you were wearing your jacket with the band on it. This taboo had been established by the boys, not the staff. They had done it without any discussion, instinctively, for they had the psychology of primitive tribesmen and could recognize a numen when they saw one. What they couldn’t understand was the grown-up concept of grief as a continuing state of mind which had to be maintained, inwardly and outwardly, over a long period; to this they merely paid lip service. When Christopher reappeared amongst them he was greeted with “Bad luck, Isherwood!,” which was their formula of condolence and excused them from further sympathy. If Christopher, or any other bereaved boy, happened to remember his loss and was moved to shed a few tears over it, that was something he had to cope with by himself, like an attack of hiccups. If, on the other hand, he felt like ragging, all he needed to do was strip off his jacket and join in the fun; none of his schoolfellows would think this improper.

However, Christopher soon found that being a Sacred Orphan had grave disadvantages—that it was indeed a kind of curse which was going to be upon him, seemingly, for the rest of his life. Henceforward, he was under an obligation to be worthy of Frank, his Hero-Father, at all times and in all ways. Cyril and Rosa were the first to make him aware of this obligation. Later there were many more who tried to do so: people he actually met, and disembodied voices from pulpits, newspapers, books. He began to think of them collectively as The Others.

It was easy for these impressive adults to make a suggestible little boy feel guilty. Yet he soon started to react against his guilt. Timidly and secretly at first, but with passion, with a rage against The Others which possessed him to the marrow of his bones, he rejected their Hero-Father. Such a rejection leads to a much larger one. By denying your duty toward the Hero-Father, you deny

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