The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  Fred Shroyer was busy licking Dorothy’s ass, trying to get her to collaborate with him on an anthology of short stories. He has quite abandoned me, I think. I suppose I haven’t come across as far as his own work is concerned.

  When I got home, around 1:30 a.m., there was poor Don sitting up working on a statement of his 1961 expenses for the income tax declaration.

  This morning, I paid off the Russian gardener and his wife [. . .] who the Stravinskys recommended. I just coldly said I didn’t want them any more. Vera—who ended by admitting that she wasn’t satisfied with them, either—had told them we were going away to Europe. But I didn’t want any lying. The wife is very snoopy and would certainly have found out the truth. It’s just that I had taken a violent dislike to them. They were charging us fifteen dollars more a month than the Stravinskys. The wife seems always to go along on the job and stick around, snooping. She has a dishonest face. A bad pudding-face. And when they were here, they killed a lizard, a poor little thing, for no reason. My stupidity in hiring them in the first place cost us nearly forty dollars. And the stuff they have planted looks as if it were dying already.

  April 5. Thick coast-fog tonight; you can barely see the lights in the bottom of the Canyon. It is snug being down here in the fog, cut off by it from the rest of the city. Los Angeles seems very far away. And, to add to the snugness, we are going out to supper with Jo and Ben, so won’t be leaving the fog-pocket.

  This morning, on waking, Don told me he had had a dream. He was trying to draw Lotte Lenya, and all sorts of people had come in, and also some dogs, and Lenya had started saying that she was tired, and Don became more and more frustrated, and then I arrived, and he “screamed at” me.

  Yesterday, Michael Barrie drove Gerald, Joe Ackerley, Don and me to Laguna Beach and San Juan Capistrano. We were supposed to look at the flowers. Certainly, the hills around Laguna Canyon were a beautiful bluish green, with thick patches of lupines, and mustard, and white flower-clumps, like streaks of late snow, which Gerald and Michael call elyssium—I can’t find that name in the dictionary, however; only alyssum. But the rest of the drive, down through Long Beach, was a wretched cavalcade of billboards, telegraph wires and poles, fluttering pennants on used car lots, gas stations, hot-dog stands, etc. etc., and I could feel Joe thinking, “This is their America, is it—well they can keep it.” And the Capistrano Mission was drab and sordid in another sort of way: you felt the sordidness of the cynical reverence of all the millions of tourists. As the result of this drive, Don is inclined to feel he doesn’t want to go away at Easter. I don’t care—indeed, I’m quite glad.

  As we were driving back, a woman in another car shouted at us and we stopped and she told us that we had dropped an envelope, back on the outskirts of Laguna. This was an envelope addressed to Dr. Gerald Heard, and it came from an institution called The Spiritual Frontier Fellowship. It contained several copies of One and the Mattachine Review.355 Needless to say, Gerald was quite eager to get it back; he had brought the magazine to lend to Joe. Well, we drove back into Laguna and there the envelope lay, having been run over by dozens of cars already. The moral of this story is, don’t say horrid things about women, as Gerald had been doing throughout the drive, with our approval.

  In the evening, I went to the gym. It was empty, except for an elderly (my age) man with thin red hair. When he was through in the steam room he went over to a mirror and rubbed his face carefully with some kind of cream. “I can’t afford to get old,” he told me.

  Then I joined Don and we went downtown to see an indifferent French film about vampires. Downtown Los Angeles seems to be getting more and more squalid. The hash joint where we ate was full of hustlers and boys dressed as gangsters. The movie theater was chiefly a flophouse for snoring bums; it stank sour. You felt this was really a potentially quite dangerous part of town, and yet it was one block away from the Biltmore.

  April 7. Hot yesterday and even hotter today. Don and I went on the beach. Today I feel lousy—a big pyloric flap. I’m exhausted, want to lie down all the time. Sick to my stomach and yet can’t throw up.

  Yesterday, we went to the movies with Ted and Vince. Ted has just confessed to Don that he has been sentenced to a three-week prison term, for shoplifting. This was the third time he’d been caught. He went to the market, got a lot of groceries, then saw there were long lines waiting at the cashiers’ desks so tried to leave without paying. Unfortunately, the market had just installed shoplifter-watchers. Poor Ted is trying to find some excuse for asking for a leave of absence which will fool his employers.

  Vince told me that he has a friend in my twentieth-century British literature class named Thomas Pierson who says he likes my way of teaching but that most of the students are puzzled and bored. I find that this hurts my feelings very much. In fact, I find myself far more sensitive to criticism, lately, than I’d supposed I was. I am really depressed by all the niggling sneering notices of my book, although I know only too well that this is just what I should have expected. I hit The Others with everything I’d got, and now I expect them to love me! As for the hostile critics on “my” side, well—let cowards flinch and traitors sneer.

  Don, as we were having supper at the Casa Mia last night, looking sadly at Tom Calhoun,356 “A thing of beauty is not a boy for ever.”

  Don is still being an angel. As far as our relations are concerned, this is a time of great happiness. But he still hasn’t solved his problem about painting. And now, over the phone, he has agreed to do another show this year—at Larry Paxton’s gallery in New York,357 next December!

  April 8. Another beautiful day, though a bit hazy, and since it is a Sunday the beach is crammed. Don has gone down, to meet Ted and Vince; I’m staying up here in the house. I must work—at the Brontës, at Ramakrishna, and at my letters. Also, I’m sick. This morning I woke up to find I have a discharge. This is probably some trifling infection and I won’t do anything about it for a day or two, in the hopes it’ll go away, but it is a nuisance. Also my jaw is very sticky again and aches dully, especially when I wake in the morning.

  Ivan and Kate Moffat came last night to supper. We barbecued lamb chops with kidneys on the barbecue, the first time we’ve used it in more than a year. It took much longer than I’d expect-ed—about thirty-five minutes.

  The party wasn’t a success. It’s strange, a meeting of this sort; four people who could become quite intimate, and in fact know far more about each other than they’ll ever admit, and yet they meet as if they were going to play bridge. They play as partners, hiding their cards. Ivan and Don—or rather, the Ivan team and the Don team—got into the most boring argument about Judgment at Nuremberg, and I made a needlessly sweeping statement that Stanley Kramer358 was “worse than Louis B. Mayer,” and altogether the atmosphere got disagreeable. It improved later, however, when Don showed his portraits of Kate to Ivan, and a photograph of the drawing of Iris, over which Ivan raved. And then Don offered the drawing of Kate which Ivan had liked best, as a wedding present.

  How compulsively Ivan talks! He feels that Hollywood is done for. And indeed America, too. The Common Market359 will lower the standard of living here, labor will try to combat automation without success, unemployment will mount, and people will get increasingly disgusted and turn to the reactionary Right. Ivan and Kate seem to be considering a move to Europe.

  At breakfast this morning Don said that he thinks his mother is already adjusting herself to the prospect of his father’s death. His father has begun acting old, and he has had (apparently) this skin cancer and now believes he has had a heart attack. He is a year younger than I am.

  At last we have found a gardener who seems satisfactory. His name is Mr. Edwards and he works for Gavin Lambert. Yesterday he cleared the flower beds on the terrace and planted junipers and cypresses. It looks very tidy and nice, but the tidiness accentuates the cracks in the cement and makes the place look alarmingly dilapi dated.

  April 11. The day before yesterday, I went to see
a doctor who Gavin recommends, Dr. Alan Allen. Simply because I cannot face the fuss and long-drawn-out ritual of a checkup by Dr. Lewis. Dr. Allen’s office is on a very tacky part of Pico, and although it is new, in a small apartment-house building, it has the kind of newness which turns almost instantly into slum-shabbiness. I was interested to find how strongly I react to this. However much I realize that all this front in Beverly Hills is only front, it’s nevertheless hard to believe that any doctor who doesn’t have it can be good. And yet Dr. Allen did seem most efficient. He says I have a prostate infection, which is, in a way, much more tiresome than clap; harder to get rid of. I have had to lay off drink, which depresses Don, because he doesn’t like to drink unless I do.

  Tomorrow will be the last day at L.A. State before the Easter vacation. I hope to make a start on a rough draft of The Englishwoman. Also, I must get on with the Ramakrishna. More shameful and needless delays.

  April 16. The day before yesterday, Don made another of his declarations of independence. He has got to have a studio of his own, here at the house, and his own telephone, and his own money and his own friends. I’m making him sound tiresome, but actually this outburst wasn’t hostile; was even full of love. And he quite realizes that he has to do nearly all of the getting himself. He only asks of me that I shall understand. Well, I do—and I sincerely believe that things would be much better if he could achieve all these objectives. The trouble is, some of them are really opposed to other deeper wishes, or perhaps one should rather say fears, in his nature. For example, he would do much better to have a studio away from the house altogether, though conveniently close. Why not in Santa Monica? When I ask this, he says jokingly that he wants to keep an eye on me. And I suspect that this isn’t entirely a joke. He is afraid of leaving me too much alone. He doesn’t want my independence.

  Oh, but what do I care? He was out last night, for instance, and really I am just as glad as long as I have plenty to do, as I have just now. I have been getting ahead with the Ramakrishna book, and I hope to make a start on a rough draft of The Englishwoman this week. Maybe on Easter Sunday—an auspicious day for such starts.

  For days and days there has been thick sea-fog in the Canyon, with only a little hazy sunshine in the late afternoon. This suits me for working. The rest of the city swelters.

  Saw Dr. Allen again last Saturday. The infection still hasn’t cleared up, which is really tiresome. He has given me more pills for it.

  April 19. Another foggy morning. I can hardly remember the sunshiny ones any more. Don was out last night; haven’t heard from him yet. Yesterday, I finished chapter 13 of the Ramakrishna book, the one about Keshab Sen and the Brahmo Samaj.360 I feel a desire to get on and finish it now. Maybe when the young disciples start to arrive it will bore me less.

  Dorothy Miller has just called to say that she “blacked out” in the market, and the doctor says it’s high blood pressure so she’s going east to Atlantic City to stay with her sister for several months and have a good rest. Poor darling old Dorothy, she sounded scared, and yet you had the feeling that she was making up her mind to die. Luckily she fell on a basket of toilet paper so she didn’t hurt herself.

  The Stravinskys left yesterday—for Seattle Fair,361 Toronto, New York, Paris, South Africa, Germany—all in ninety days! Igor seems very gentle and tiny and smiling and old; but Vera says he has been frantically irritable about everything, these last weeks. The latest book of his conversations with Bob Craft has infuriated the critics, whom it attacks. “We have so many enemies now,” Vera told me on the phone. “We are in such a revolt—like young people.” Igor, when Don and I went around to say goodbye to them, talked about Form and Content—which is more important? No one can tell. I got a picture of him very carefully looking up words in the dictionary and meditating on their meaning. T.S. Eliot had asked him to set “The dove descending breaks the air. . . .” to music. Igor found this very flattering; I was surprised how pleased he was.362

  I have already bought the pink paper—to differentiate the manuscript from the blue on which I roughed out my novel and the yellow for the Ramakrishna book—so I can start The Englishwoman on Easter Sunday. I haven’t an idea in my head; but that’s all right.

  Reviews of my novel continue to come in. I don’t really like any of them. None are intelligent. And I am shocked to find how vindictive I feel toward Stephen, Angus, Kingsley Amis, etc. I am a mass of resentment, nowadays, and getting steadily worse. And it is resentment for the sake of resentment. I like to chew on it. For example, last night I dreamt that I had a violent outburst against Edward Teller, the physicist. Now I certainly disapprove of Teller, who is, or seems, pro-bomb, but I don’t disapprove of him that much. And even as, in my dream, I was ranting against him I was also aware of my ignorance; I was aware that, if challenged, I wouldn’t be able to say exactly why I disapprove of him!363

  What can I do against this? Japam. There is no other remedy.

  Don is reading How to Know God.364 I don’t know what significance, if any, this has. No doubt he’ll tell me later.

  A decision: before I go on with the Ramakrishna book, I’ll read the rest of the material over again. I must do this in order to be able to organize it better.

  Aren’t you lucky, you stupid complaining old thing? You have a dharma. How would you like to be a retired bank employee, condemned to die slowly of “security”?

  April 22. Well, happy Easter. At least I have done something to make it a productive one. Today I started a draft of The Englishwoman and another chapter, the fourteenth, of the Ramakrishna book. Nothing to be said about The Englishwoman yet—and probably not for a long time. The opening is nothing but a barrage to “soften up” the main enemy positions. Then comes the attack itself; and only then shall I know if the positions can be captured.

  Marvellous weather and consequently the Canyon is overrun. How I hate public holidays! Don has gone to lunch at the Bracketts’—we were both asked. His motive is to get an introduction to Alice Faye.

  Am worried about my jaw. I have kept forgetting to mention it, but it really seems to have become quite chronic. It’s all around the back of my neck too and I feel a pressure on the sides of my temples. As for the prostate infection, Dr. Allen seems to think that’s cleared up, but he still doesn’t want me to drink. Privately I am just as glad that I can’t, but I sulk about it and tell Don that if I can’t drink I can’t endure to see the people who bore me—and that means nearly everybody. How truly boring I am getting! I feel that I bore Don and I really want to see him go out and enjoy himself, so he won’t become sick of living here. I am unfit for company most of the day. I should just work and work.

  Yesterday we got up early and drove Jo and Ben to the plane for their week in New York. Don remarked that whenever Jo fixes herself up she only makes herself look that much older. She had streaked her hair light and dark blonde. It is amazing what a peevish tone she allows herself when she is crossed over trifles. Because they hadn’t got seats by the window she really behaved as though it were Ben’s fault.

  Yesterday I read Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair for my class. It depressed me deeply. Such a sense of varicose veins! The British sex-gloom, and then the cruel Catholic puritanism. Don got home late and noticed my sadness; and then after supper we were trapped by Mike Steen into going to the house where he is now staying with friends, by the steps at the bottom of the Canyon, and seeing two films they had shot: outings at Yosemite and Morro Beach of a San Francisco motorcycle club. Oh the joylessness of the camping! It was the other half of the Graham Greene joylessness. Between them, they unmade my day. Don says we offended Mike Steen and his friends. He says that, when we are not being amused, we are very grand and feminine and distant. Probably true, and if true how tiresome of us!

  Perhaps I have been very unfair to Graham Greene. I reread the end of the last chapter just now and, after all, it is beautiful, and the whole book is, at worst, marvellously ingenious and at best, I guess, very touching. It’
s ridiculous to claim that Sarah is a great character. She is only a mold into which a greater writer could have poured greatness. But to have made the mold, even—that’s quite something.

  April 25. Grey again with only faint gleams of sun. My jaw bad the last two days. I’m worried and yet I don’t want to go into a medical fuss about it. Yesterday I felt really toxic and miserable but I went to L.A. State nonetheless and did quite a good day’s work—particularly a good rendering of my version of Tolstoy’s Father Sergius and a description of how the “reassuring” type of writer takes you by the hand and leads you step by step from a familiar into an unfamiliar situation. (Cf. Hemingway, leading you into a game hunt or a battle; and, if he’s in a place you don’t know, he tries to persuade you that you do know it—“You know how it is there early in the morning in Havana, etc.”)

  Mr. Kimball Haslam the builder came this morning and I went with him to apply for a permit to build our balcony, but we were told we must have an engineer’s drawing of it first. The officials at the building department employ a technique of extreme distaste. You hold out your form to them. They glance at it with aversion; they don’t want to touch it. Then they take it with a prefabricated frown of discouragement—“Let’s see what’s wrong with this one.” Their movements are very very slow. But Mr. Haslam’s Mormon patience is not to be ruffled. He merely winks at me. When he is describing what he’ll do, he always puts it impersonally, “A person might cut a door in this wall. . . .”