Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir by John Lehmann Read Free Book Online Page B

and proof-correcting and what not. Then I’d like, if possible, to write all the remaining fragments of ‘The Lost’ before we sail, so that my Berlin life is finally tidied up, all ready to be audited before the Judgment Seat. You shall certainly have some of it for New Writing. Then there are my lectures to be prepared, on the New Drama (!). And I really ought to try and earn some more cash, with the films. So you see ….
         
    Meanwhile, in that autumn of 1937, delicate moves were being made both by myself and the Hogarth Press to rejoin forces. I was anxious for New Writing to find a new home, as my contract with Lawrence & Wishart had run out, 5 and Leonard and Virginia were fed up with all the work that running the Press by themselves had landed them with. Approaches of a friendly and forgiving nature were made on both sides, with the result that it was decided that I should start with them again, and become a partner in 1938. I kept Christopher informed of the progress of the plan, and he was delighted to think that the Press might once again present itself as the publisher of our books. He had managed to persuade Leonard and Virginia to publish Edward Upward’s novel, Journey to the Border , and they were going to have his now fully revised and completed Lions and Shadows.  What was more important, Virginia made belated advances to him to wipe out the largely imaginary neglect he had felt before, and he was completely conquered. He wrote to me from Pembroke Gardens in November:
    Edward’s book is being published by the Hogarth in early spring. This after a terrific putsch on my part. There was a wonderful dinner party given by the Woolfs to the Upwards, a great success. Virginia is really the nicest woman I know: she was so nice to Mrs U. Elizabeth Bowen came in afterwards, so Edward got a real glimpse of Bloomsbury, and quite enjoyed it, in his chilly way.
    Am in the middle of ‘The Landauers’ and hope to have it for the date we fixed, but, at present, work is held up by letter-writing and lecturing. I have just got back from Oxford, that doleful town.
         
    1       
    Editor of Chambers’s Journal, Chambers’s Encyclopaedia etc., a distinguished literary figure in Edinburgh life at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
    3
    Two anthologies edited by Michael Roberts. New Signatures: Poems by Several Hands was published in 1932 and included work by the ‘Oxford poets .  New Country (1933), an anthology of poetry and prose, included some poems by John Lehmann.
    4
    The novelist William Plomer. His contribution was called ‘Notes on a visit to Ireland’.
    § The French novelist Andre Chamson.
    5
    The publishing of New Writing had been transferred from The Bodley Head to Lawrence & Wishart.

VI
     
       
    T he plan for Christopher and Wystan to write a travel book together about some Far Eastern country had been worked out between Faber and Random House, the publishers of their plays in England and America, before the invasion of Manchuria by the Japanese. But the outbreak of war between China and Japan gave the whole project a new angle. A war of their own! That was now the bait. Not the front stalls of the Spanish War, so crowded already with celebrities, from Malraux and Hemingway to their own English friends. Wystan had been there already, and had returned to England with mixed feelings, his deep-seated Christian convictions offended by the burning of churches on the Republican side. They were nearly coralled into a visit just before they set off for China, but the visas did not arrive in time and they had to catch their boat. After a noisy farewell party in London attended by most of their friends, they caught the boat-train for Dover on 19 January, and after spending that night in Paris, embarked two days later on the  Aramis in Marseilles. There was a great deal of publicity about  their departure, with cameras at Victoria,