Some years ago Edward Mendelson published an essay about Auden’s secret acts of kindness — sorry about the paywall — and someoine who studies Auden keeps stumbling across his generosities. Just today, for example, I happened to read that (a) when James Schuyler had his first psychotic breakdown Auden paid for his hospitalization, and (b) when Joseph Brodsky was forced out of the Soviet Union Auden arranged for him to have a job at the University of Michigan. One favorite anecdote from Mendelson’s essay:
At times, he went out of his way to seem selfish while doing something selfless. When NBC Television was producing a broadcast of The Magic Flute for which Auden, together with Chester Kallman, had translated the libretto, he stormed into the producer’s office demanding to be paid immediately, instead of on the date specified in his contract. He waited there, making himself unpleasant, until a check finally arrived. A few weeks later, when the canceled check came back to NBC, someone noticed that he had endorsed it, “Pay to the order of Dorothy Day.” The New York City Fire Department had recently ordered Day to make costly repairs to the homeless shelter she managed for the Catholic Worker Movement, and the shelter would have been shut down had she failed to come up with the money.