The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  An Indian astrologer told Swami a few days ago, “You saw your guru in a dream; soon you’ll be seeing him in person.” He added that this does not mean Swami is going to die. Of course, Swami has seen Maharaj in person already, in a vision in the shrine.

  Threatening phone calls to the girls in Santa Barbara: “You bitch—tell your Swami to get out of this country in twenty-four hours or we’ll burn the temple to cinders!” They have called in the police, who take the matter quite seriously and have even been patrolling the area by plane. Swami, telling this story, said, “You beech—”!

  On New Year’s Day, we saw Lawrence of Arabia, which is one of the most marvellous films I have ever seen. Both of us kept bursting into tears at the sheer visual daring of it. Gerald and Michael came to supper in the evening. Gerald, despite the senile “Mrs. Wrong” joke, was anything but senile. Have seldom seen him with such vitality. He says he has lived under three cultures: the Christian anthropomorphism, with sin and hell; the Freudian revo lution, which “put psychology back sixty years”; the new ecologic al culture, which understands that knowledge does not depend merely on taking things apart, because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts—this culture, he says, goes beyond tragedy to meta-comedy.

  New Year’s Eve at Glenn Ford’s: a $500,000 house in which there is absolutely no privacy. The master bedroom is so big that you would feel you were on a raft in the midst of the Pacific. The pool room is so small that the players can’t take proper shots. The imaginary holiday warmth of people you will see only once in your life. But we got to the Stravinskys’ in time for the midnight toast, so I hope the New Year started propitiously.

  Don, before leaving this morning: “I ought to say to Henry Luce, Time must have a stop!”

  A fascinating question (which only occurs to me since he has left): Is he conscious of any relation between the Tangier experience and his decision, seven years later, to get initiated by Swami?

  January 8. Don got back yesterday disgusted by the small-town pretensions of Phoenix. Mrs. Wright had behaved like an empress, Mrs. Luce like a duchess. Still and all, he brought back some very good drawings, plus the feeling that, by and large, Dub is necessary. Our reunion was very happy.

  It is nothing against him to say that, while he was away, I had a sort of Indian summer of fun. Unfortunately, this also involved far too much drinking. The weather became suddenly perfect—tonight we are told to prepare for small showers; on Sunday, which I spent mostly at Jerry Lawrence’s, we all stood watching the sunset with a kind of awe—it was like the beginning of a new and golden age. As for that midnight swimming escapade on State Beach,487 it was only curious because it paralleled the scene in my new novel. Otherwise it belongs to the how-silly-can-you-get department and we were certainly lucky the cops didn’t come.

  Two letters. One in the would-be grand manner, from Herbert Samuel Crocker, 282 Camino al Lago, Atherton, California:

  You may recall that early last year you were kind enough to inscribe a book I sent down to you and later send me a card. In reviewing my correspondence sent and received in the last year (which I find, in several ways, a telling guide to my progress and attitudes), I again find your card. As I may have said at the time, this was the first time I had written an author personally unknown to me to ask this favor. I shall keep your card and remember the considerate attitude it showed.

  Also, a near-hysterical letter from Phil Griggs, taking me to task for writing that the relation between Rakhal488 and Ramakrishna was “even closer” than that between Ramakrishna and Naren.489 He tells me this is going to be “misleading to millions of future readers,” and adds, “Now I think you surely know that I have no wish to dim in the least the glorious status of Maharaj—I am myself his grandchild, and my head is forever at his feet. But I have it from many swamis of the Ramakrishna Order (some of the oldest) that Swamiji, far from being just ‘a chief disciple of Sri Ramakrishna’ as I have seen it put, was the darling of his heart.”

  Ashokananda undoubtedly put him up to this. Phil asked me not to tell Swami and I won’t. But I wrote him a come-off-it-Mary letter I dearly hope he will show to Ashokananda.

  Ted and Vince are definitely splitting up. Ted is crazy again. He suddenly showed up this afternoon, carrying a kitten he has named Angel. Don wasn’t there. Ted said Don is afraid to see him at present—he can tell. We were watching the sunset and he suddenly said, “Is this the twilight zone?” and pretended to throttle me. But I just laughed. Ted says he left his job today. He is going to be a dancer and/or an artist like Don. I got rid of him as soon as I could.

  January 12. Terrific wind. The plants on the deck taking the usual beating. All the paper in the house curling up at the ends. The cattails by the front door starting to seed and blowing about the living room. Gavin home from Mexico, coming to see us this evening; which is very good. And very good that I have done another fairly extensive day’s work, on Ramakrishna and the novelette (which really begins to excite me now).

  Evelyn Hooker’s trial began today, but only with legal formalities. Her attorney appealed to the judge to dismiss her case because of lack of evidence, but she won’t know anything until February 1.490

  Ronnie Knox came in to see me the day before yesterday about this story he wrote. But his own story is much more interesting. His real name is Raoul Landry Junior; his father is French, an atomic chemist (I’m sure that’s not the right term) who puts some kind of coating on rockets. His mother left Landry for Knox who is a snappy dresser and who convinced her, quite wrongly, that he was going to make them all rich. Knox is very possessive, and insisted on Raoul calling himself Ronnie and taking his name. (It is significant that Ronnie hasn’t switched back to his real name, and that he still keeps slipping up and calling Knox “my father” instead of “stepfather.”) Knox decided, when Ronnie and his sister (a year and a half older) were in their teens, that the sister should become a movie star and that Ronnie should be a star athlete. Ronnie succeeded, and ended up in pro football. The sister didn’t succeed, though she got a contract with Howard Hughes. Even after high school, Ronnie told his stepfather that he didn’t want to play football in college, but this was ignored. The other day, he went to see the doctor who attended him when he got a concussion playing football in high school. The doctor told him, “If you had been my boy, I’d never have let you play football again, with the injury you had; but it wasn’t my responsibility—I told your stepfather all about it and he made the decision. And I guess I was wrong, because here you are. You survived it.” This is one of the things Ronnie can’t forgive. In due course, he threw up his football career and broke with his stepfather and mother (who said, “Ronnie, you’re so cold”). The sister broke with them later. Then Ronnie took up with Renate [Druks], and the sister married a cripple. (Just to show them, I can’t help feeling!) Now Ronnie has very little money, except that he sometimes gets jobs in T.V. He is going back to school, UCLA, to get his degree and be able to teach.

  Phil Griggs has replied to my letter; much more calmly.

  January 15. Cold but beautiful weather, and every day seems to be getting a little warmer. Jo and Ben are back from Florida—so Ben can start work on a T.V. story. We are going to have supper with them tonight; so snugness is reestablished in the Canyon.

  Today I finished that wearisome chapter on the direct dis ciples of Ramakrishna; twenty-four pages! And I have snapped into my novel again. I should get the first draft finished sometime in February.

  Things pretty good with Don. Bill Bopp is somewhere in the background. I don’t ask about this. He will tell me when he’s ready to. Last night I dreamed he read this diary. I hope he won’t, because it would upset him.

  Gerald and Michael came to supper last night. Afterwards, Michael showed his photos of Italy and France. God, what a bore! He is the most conventional kind of photographer. View over Florence from Fiesole; view of St. Peter’s from our hotel, etc. etc. The only amusing shots were of Gerald in a gondola in Venice,
wearing dark glasses and looking madly incognito. The worst of the evening was that Gerald got no opportunity to talk. It is so tiresome that you always have to invite Michael too. And he simply enrages Don.

  Al Spar has sent us a bill for legal and accounting services—$720.17. He really is insane. And now I have all the hateful embarrassment of confronting him and making a fuss.

  The day after tomorrow, I shall be reading the Katha Upanishad once more at Swami’s prebreakfast puja. That makes it nearly a year (except that last year it fell on the 28th) since I returned to Los Angeles from New York. I haven’t been away properly since then. And it hardly seems to have been a moment. During this time, I have written only five chapters of the Ramakrishna biography! What excuse have I to demand that my life shall be prolonged—while Paul Kennedy dies at twenty-eight—if that’s the most use I can make of it? Still, objects the Defending Angel, he did write 126 pages of draft on his new novelette. . . . True—but by this time I ought to have finished a complete first draft of it, and finished the biography.

  January 21 [Monday]. A slight cold has transformed me into a senile sniffling invalid. Hope I shall snap out of it as quickly as I started it.

  Swami has been sick—nothing serious, it seems—but it meant that I had to give a talk on Vivekananda yesterday at the temple. I think it was one of the best I’ve ever given anywhere on anything; at least, that was my illusion. I shocked them in the right way. My main thesis: “A saint must always be judged guilty until he is proved innocent.” Hence the immense importance of Vivekananda: he was by far the severest test to which Ramakrishna was ever subjected. In order to believe in Ramakrishna’s faith, we must first believe in Vivekananda’s doubt. Etc., etc.

  Two worlds department: While I write this, a very attractive young guy of the Will Rogers type491 is pruning the eucalyptus tree outside my window—for Elsa. He keeps seeming about to fall; though only to the length of his safety rope.

  Much as I often don’t like it, the Bill [Bopp] situation certainly does seem to make Don behave better around the house. At the same time, Don was quite displeased by my evening with Bill Brown on Thursday last! I am waiting to see if he’ll make a fuss when I suggest framing and hanging the drawing Bill gave me.

  Later. I feel strongly moved to add something to what I wrote about Don; it sounds so cold and unkind. My unkindness is a sort of senility, really; a lack of juice. Because I do love him dearly, which means that I sometimes hate him also, but almost never, in all my memory of our ups and downs, have I seriously planned to get rid of him. He is terribly complicated, nervous, talented, affection ate, frank yet quite capable of telling the most drastic lies—and, let me face it, I like him that way. I think I want someone to look after me and humor me and wait on me hand and foot—but I don’t; or I should get one—it isn’t difficult. So, I really should make it a rule never to complain in that cold elderly way because he won’t do just exactly what I want. I’m allowed to hate him, yes—that’s human.

  There are only two prayers that I keep wanting to pray, and do pray when I think of them. I pray that Ramakrishna may come into Don’s life, more and more; so that, when he starts losing his looks and getting older, he will have something that really supports him. And then I pray—and this I ought to do increasingly, because it is horribly important—that I may be helped to leave the body when the time comes, to let go, and none of that Laughton horror.

  It was a beautiful sunset, but now it’s cold as hell. Although I feel bunged up, I have worked on the Ramakrishna book and my novel; so let us rejoice. Now I am going down to Ted’s [Grill] to eat alone. Don is with his folks. When he gets back here, we are supposed to spend the evening addressing envelopes for the announce ments of his Santa Barbara show.

  Oh, and speaking of Ted’s reminds me that Ted [Bachardy] has been passing bad checks. They caught up with him and threatened to prosecute, so Glade had to make the money good.

  January 29. Got back yesterday afternoon after a night spent at Wright Ludington’s at Santa Barbara. A horror dinner party, with the Warshaws and the Austrian woman called Ala, and the fat woman she lives with.492 But it is not good enough to moan about how boring they were, or how I saw that Fran Warshaw is really no different from Peggy Kiskadden. No—the truth is, I must not go on drinking like this: I fell down in the garden on our way to the absurd guest bedroom which is about a hundred yards long and two yards wide. I had already strained my side somehow, I guess by a fall I don’t even remember. No excessive self-castigation about this, just a resolve: I will stop smoking when I drink. That alone, I know, cuts down the toxic effects amazingly. Also, it will stop this cough.

  Don just phoned that he will be back tonight but not until eight o’clock, and as we are eating with Jo and Ben there’ll be some moaning at the bar about this, I fear. He stayed on in Santa Barbara for the opening of his show today.

  Gavin feels hopeful about this man Oderberg493 he went to today about his attacks of panic and tears. Meanwhile he relies on a new drug which takes them away whenever they start to come on. Last night, we had supper together and he told me that he heard from some New York girl that Gore has started feuding with Bobby Kennedy.494 He wrote an article about Bobby which Esquire(?) was supposed to publish, and then along came Salinger495 and told Gore that he must warn him, if the article was published, his income tax returns would be drastically re-probed for the past fifteen years! I don’t know how much of this I believe. In any case, I’m sure you can’t go back fifteen years, because of the statute of limitations. The girl also said that Gore, in disgust, is retiring to write novels in Rome.

  Robert Frost died today.

  Apparently, the Brahmananda puja the day before yesterday was a rare occasion. Prema says that Swami seemed to be filled with power. “He kept blessing people,” Prema told me, “and you felt he could really do it!”

  February 1. Light rain, yesterday and today. Put the plants out on the deck. Everything got a good drink. My novel is racing along, although this last part is in some ways the most difficult. I have written nearly ninety-five pages. Will probably finish this draft with 110. Oh, the joy of having a project! However much you may say it’s not really important—and even believe that it obviously isn’t, sub specie aeternitatis—who cares? It’s marvel-lous—just the joy of invention. It’s the joy of finding yourself not yet impotent.

  Last night, the Stravinskys took us, with Bob Craft, to Jerry Lewis’s restaurant.496 To find a good restaurant on the Sunset Strip is as much of an achievement as to find a good hamburger joint. This place is furnished most ornately with hangings of blackish-plum color and dangling baroque cherubs. The manager actually kissed Igor’s hand, and of course every other word was Maestro. We drank champagne. Not smoking turns drinking for me into a real pleasure. I must never do it any more. Igor talked about having schwarze Gedanken,497 but admitted that they could be taken away by Librium(?). (Question: Should one do this?) When he was composing in the twenties, he drank wine from southeast Spain. Now he says two double scotches are his limit. There was some under current disagreement between Vera and Bob about the next volume of Stravinsky-Craft conversations, because they are being held up to include memoirs of the Russian visit last year, and Vera claims that Bob is misrepresenting what Igor says and feels about it. . . . Oh yes, I know what the Jerry Lewis restaurant reminds me of, the paintings of Francis Bacon, both have approximately the same background color. It gives an atmosphere of elegant horror; almost unthinkably sophisticated for this town. Alas, we hear the restaurant is already folding.

  When I was driving to Vedanta Place the day before yesterday, I thought I’d turn off Sepulveda on Mulholland and drive through the hills down on to the Cahuenga Pass. This would be fun by daylight but it was getting dark, and I ended up turned all around and having to go down Laurel Canyon into the valley and come laboriously through to the pass along Ventura Boulevard!

  Swami has a new project which excites him: to get some young swamis from India, train t
hem at Trabuco and then send them as assistants to the various American centers. I see definitely that he does not want to produce U.S. swamis to head U.S. centers. He seems to feel that Americans wouldn’t take them seriously.

  Don is going through another desperate struggle to paint. But, although he is under such strain, he couldn’t be sweeter.

  February 5. After the rain, we’ve had glorious weather, beginning with a baby heatwave the day before yesterday; the temperature going up to nearly eighty by nine in the morning.

  On the 1st, we went to a party at Glenn Ford’s, at which the clairvoyant, Peter Hurkos, gave a demonstration. He wasn’t specially good but we felt he was absolutely on the level. An awkward bulky Dutchman who sweated profusely. Glenn mismanaged the party by inviting 150 people and making an asinine speech describing himself as Hurkos’s “disciple.” There were speculations about Linda Christian and Hope—would they fight? Neither Linda nor Hope was about to, of course—they couldn’t care less: Glenn should be so lucky. (A day or two later, Don drew Linda, who told him Glenn had asked her to marry him. Don thinks she will, if he’s serious.)498

  On the 2nd, I had supper with Frank Wiley, who has now departed for the Orient on his carrier. My God, he is stingy! Again he let me pay. And I had to go around to the apartment next day to collect the Miró book he borrowed.

  On the 3rd, I finished the first complete draft of the novelette. I have made notes about this elsewhere. But I do think I’ve got something there. Don, as always, was very helpful. He finished it today, and talking to him showed me a lot of things that are wrong. I said I would like to get started on the rewrite immediately, whereupon he said then why didn’t we give up our trip to New York. Of course I can’t help thinking to myself that this is at least partly because he doesn’t want to leave Bill. Don said that he doesn’t want to interrupt his efforts to paint, and I’m sure that’s true too. Well, I suppose it means we won’t go. I was actually rather hating the idea of going, stay-at-home that I am—and then it will be so cold there. But I have been looking forward to seeing Wystan—on whom Time is doing a cover article. Their Bob Jennings interviewed me for it yesterday, and I told him I thought Time’s corporate image is that of a neurotic woman so full of venom that she’s incapable of praising anyone or anything even when she sincerely wants to; the bitchery just slips out. However, I did manage to promote the idea that they should use one of Don’s drawings of Wystan. It can’t be the cover unfortunately; Bouché is doing that.499