Guy Burgess As I
Knew Him
BY MR. NORRIS* [Gerald Hamilton is able to publish the text of a recent letter from Arthur Norris to Christopher Isherwood]
MY DEAR CHRISTOPHER.
I have much to thank you for, no doubt. Who, indeed, would ever have heard of Arthur Norris had you not written a best- seller about him? And although, together, of course, with that charming Miss Bowles (with whom, I regret to say, I have altogether lost touch), I May justly claim to have had no small share in the foundations of your fortunes, this letter is in no way intended as a reproach. I merely wish to draw your attention to one of those amusing discrepancies between fact and fiction, the piquancy of which has been underlined by recent events.
In the novel you insisted, in your humorous way, that it was I who had introduced you, all unwitting, to a master-spy. In fact, of course, the only real—or (should I say) really suc- cessful—spy whom I ever met was introduced to me by you— in, of course, the best of faith.
Do you remember the time you first introduced me to Guy Burgess? I do. It was in Brussels, which was our next stop after Berlin—not South America to which you exiled me in the novel. Burgess, then in his middle twenties, was showing signs of the dissipation for which he afterwards became notorious. Stephen Spender, with those ever-lofty standards of his, was already openly disapproving. You, and Wystan Auden, were rather more tolerant, if I remember right.
Though dissipated, however, Burgess was never violent; he could drink the whole night through without becoming aggressive. I remember one Sunday morning he turned up, very early indeed, at the villa which I occupied at Uccle, looking, even for him, peculiarly grubby and dishevelled; he told me, so I understood, that he had just come from Mass. I remarked that I was surprised and delighted to hear it. After talking at cross purposes for some time, I realised that he was referring not to Holy Mass but to Maas, a singularly louche night haunt near the Gare du Nord in Brussels.
Soon after, when I was paying one of my then infrequent visits to London, Guy Burgess invited me to luncheon with him at the Reform. He received me with his usual hearty aplomb, but as we sat drinking sherry in the somewhat over- whelming grandeur of the entrance hall, his spirits seemed to take a sudden downward turn. 'This club depresses me terribly sometimes,' he said. 'There are no page-boys. Have you ever noticed that, Arthur?"Come, come, dear boy,' I said, 'you mustn't crab your own club. Try to enjoy such solid mid- Victorian amenities as it does provide. Take another sip of this excellent Waterloo sherry.'
At luncheon our conversation turned to Soviet Russia, which I was then proposing to visit on my way home from Shanghai, where I was bound as a member of an international * Of Mr. Norris Changes Trains. humanitarian delegation. (This, you must remember, Christo- pher, was during my regenerate, fellow-travelling period. before my final conversion to the sacred cause of Absolutism.) Burgess was positively naive in his envy of my good fortune in being able to visit the Communist holy land, the Mecca of the proletariat. He was most eager that we should meet as soon as I returned, so that he could share my impressions.
The details of my journey—it was a veritable global tour-- have little relevance. In Moscow, where I stayed for a few days only, I met Andr6 Gide and travelled back with him as far as Paris. He was openly voicing the dissatisfaction with the Soviet paradise which he afterwards expressed in print al Retour a l'U.R.S.S. Later, in London, at a second luncheon with Guy Burgess at the Reform, I myself felt compelled to say, in all sincerity, that I had not been so favourably WI: pressed as I had hoped to be by our Russian comrades and their milieu. I half-expected an outburst of indignation, and was most surprised, I remember, by Guy Burgess's seeming indifference, particularly when I went on to stress the pre' vailing intolerance of the Soviet regime towards certain modes of behaviour, tendencies, tastes, aberrations—call them what you will—which both he and Andre Gide had in common. I thought, at the time, that I was witnessing one of those triumphs of political zeal over personal predilection. Little did I.realise that I was in the presence of a professional paid agent, an dine damtzee of the Kremlin! Came the war, so long feared and awaited, yet so utterly unlike anything any of us had expected. While you, my dear Christopher, were far away, meditating in California, Your, poor friend Arthur Norris—ever, no matter what the apparel"; changes in his ideological allegiances, a sincere friend of Peace—found himself (for the second time) a detainee under that iniquitously repressive regulation. 18B. I refer, of course, tp my attempt—unsuccessful but praiseworthy, I think you will admit—to bring about a cessation of hostilities via the intervention of His Holiness. . . .
It was not until some years after peace had actually been signed that I again encountered Guy Burgess. He was now ,a professional diplomate de carriere. We bumped into caeu other in the Christmas rush at Fortnum's. Guy had a tin uncle', his arm. I said, 'Caviare, I suppose?' but it turned out to be Elvas plums. We agreed to meet for dinner.
The evening developed along markedly saturnalian Guy was accompanied by a friend who enjoys, among mall major claims to fame, the distinction—one which I, naturellYi appreciate--of having sat for the portraits of some of the most popular characters in the fiction of our time. He may not be the only 'begetter of 'Miles Malpractice,' 'Ambrose Silk' anii `Anthony Blanche,' but he is, at any rate, the only one Wort, knowing. I will call him, for the purposes of this letter, Mr. 11 Guy Burgess had lost none of his tastes for the lower rail, haunts. After dinner he and Q. guided me to a basement du': in Soho so manifestly louche that it reminded me, with, I °0,,rie fess, a slight pang of nostalgia, of the closing hours of t1' Weimar Republic, which you, dear Christopher, have s0 brilliantly portrayed. While we were there, the place bs raided ! The police approached, our table. Q., who was this time very drunk indeed, on being asked for his name an address, gave his name, and added : 'I live in Mayfair. 1; doubt you come from some dreary suburb.' I remarked 1, Guy Burgess that, in my experience, this was a most tactics' way of receiving the attentions of the civil arm. Guy. OW ' ever, for his part, behaved with such assured nonchalance' giving his own name, address, and occupation, in stentorlal: tones, that I could only conclude that a new—and how W0 come !—spirit of tolerance was prevailing in Whitehall. A few days later, we all met in another club—one of the respectable kind : no less respectable, indeed, though rather more modest, than the Reform or the Atheneum. There was an unfortunate scene when the elated Q. insisted on tweaking the nose of .a distinguished cleric who was sipping a cocktail in the billiards-room. 'Oh!' he cried, in the grips of one of those strange fits of idealism which, as you may have noticed, beset the most unlikely subjects, 'so you're one of those jolly, hail-fellow-well-met padres, are you, my dear?' He was im- mediately requested to leave, and to take his guests with him. A gallant suggestion by Guy Burgess that we should all adjourn to the Travellers' was vetoed by myself as inviting too much hubris for any one day.
The very last time I saw Guy Burgess was a week or so before his final disappearance. I need hardly tell you, my dear Christopher, that I had no notion whatsoever of his real intentions, else I should not have hesitated to take steps, to— shall I say—sublate, if not indeed actively to frustrate them. We met in yet another of those nachtlokals to which we both—though, as I now begin to suspect, for rather different reasons—seem to have been so addicted. Burgess remarked : `Surely, Arthur, you're too old now to wear a wig!' To which I exclaimed : 'My dear boy! You should get your eyesight tested! This is no wig! It is septuagenarian stubble!'
Soon after, the inexorable machine of international politics swept him away. With all—and I am fully conscious of what is meant by all—his faults, I cannot help regarding his memory, at any rate, with a certain affection. I often wish he and Frl. Schroeder could have met. She would, I am sure, have called him 'Herr Doktor' almost at once.
Believe me, my dear boy, Your ancient, and indeed, I might say, almost indestructible friend, ARTHUR NORRIS.
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