The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  February 6. I forgot to mention that, a couple of days ago, Dr. Allen taped up my right side, saying that I may have a cracked rib. He was very relaxed about this, didn’t seem to want it x-rayed or to think that it mattered much if it’s cracked or not. Maybe today it is a bit less painful; but the tape makes me itch and feel dirty and unappetizing.

  This morning, Don made it quite clear that he does want to go to New York, so I suppose we’ll go. I feel unwilling because of the flying and because this means I can’t start the new draft of my novel until nearly the beginning of March. However, I must anyhow first read through my diaries for possible bits I can use. I have started doing this. Oh my God, it is so depressing! The sheer squalor of my unhappiness.

  Am getting into a flap about the Don-Bill situation. Last night I had two, if not three, dreams about them. This is so utterly idiotic. And meanwhile Don—no doubt largely because of this—remains quite unusually sweet and affectionate. I ought to be grateful, really. Oh—idiocy!

  February 9 [Saturday]. Every night this week, except Tuesday, Don has been out with Bill. Today it is pouring down rain and they have gone to Santa Barbara to see about his exhibition. Bill is living alone now in his own apartment, and Don took him some of our plates; admittedly, not ones we use any more. I am wildly miserable, but only in spurts. What I am miserable about is the feeling that Don is gradually slipping away from me. To go to New York with him at this time, especially in order to “celebrate” our anniversary, seems grimly farcical. I don’t feel I have the heart for it. Also, to make matters worse, I have been reading through all these diaries and feel absolutely toxic with their unhappiness.

  I have written this down, but with misgivings. Maybe I should stop doing this. Wystan in The Dyer’s Hand says, “Most of us have known shameful moments when we blubbered, beat the wall with our fists, cursed the power which made us and the world, and wished that we were dead or that someone else was. But at such times, the I of the sufferer should have the tact and decency to look the other way.”500

  Actually, under the misery, I feel almost glad, that the screws are being put on me like this. It is the only way I can ever hope to get through to “the ending of sorrow.”501 One thing is vividly clear to me: there is no question, here, of finding any kind of a solution to the situation on the personal level. I can only find a solution through prayer and japam. What will actually happen, as between Don, Bill and me—that’s really quite beside the point.

  So, courage, Dobbin.

  Jim Charlton is being a help. Quite unconsciously, because he knows nothing of any of this. I saw him again last night.

  February 16. Poor old Jo just called. She is terribly worried because she has had dizzy fits and now the doctor says her jaw is badly infected. She is sick. She is dropping behind. Oh—I do feel for her so.

  Not that I am sick. My ribs seem better. I have stripped off the plaster and I’m just off to the gym for a mild workout. We are not going to New York, thank God. I would have hated the cold, not to mention the other rat-race aspects of the trip.

  Since our tenth anniversary celebration the day before yesterday (Don cooked meatloaf and we showed several of our old home movies for the first time in years) I feel much much better about everything. Not only because Don says he would never under any circumstances live with Bill but because I realize I was quite wrong in thinking that he is becoming alienated from our life together. Indeed, Bill is quite probably the best thing that could possibly have happened. Much more about all this later.

  On the 11th, I started the second draft of my novelette. This is going ahead quite briskly, but oh, the work ahead!

  A nice placid evening at Dean Campbell’s yesterday. He is a terribly gracious liver, but sweet and naturally generous.

  Here’s a joke I made which I want to record because it’s topical and I wonder how much sense it will make in, say, five years. Someone told me that they are making a film called The Fall of the Roman Empire and added, “They’ve left out The Decline and.” I said: The Decline is directed by Antonioni; And is directed by Buñuel.

  February 24. Jo’s jaw is better, but she has headaches every night. Don is getting over a cold. He still has a cough. Most of this last week, he has been around; so I asked him, “Aren’t you seeing Bill nowadays?” He said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” “If you and Bill have split up,” I said, “I’m sorry—because, after feeling all sorts of different ways about this, I now realize that it’s probably the best thing that could have happened.” This pleased him, I could tell. And now today they have gone off together to the beach. Sooner or later I suppose I shall find out just what the score is, was.

  In a day or two, he will be driving up to Stanford to get his show opened. And then he’ll be going to Phoenix,502 and to New York. I’m just as glad. We are quite harmonious, by and large, but I need a little rest from him. Long enough, at least, so that I’ll miss him.

  To Jerry Lawrence’s today. The last two days have been glorious, and I thought I’d have a beach day of agreeable youthful atmosphere. But tiresome Jerry had invited old Louis Untermeyer,503 who’s a sententious bore, and a boring couple (John Weaver and his wife;504 maybe not boring really but silenced by Untermeyer). And then Mrs. Untermeyer505 had a raging toothache, which old Untermeyer blandly disregarded, leaving Weaver to organize an emergency dental visit.

  In the can, Jerry has arranged books with “suitable” titles, such as You Can’t Take It With You,506 and two copies of Charles Lindbergh’s book, to spell out We We.507 How I hate that picture of the line of sailors peeing off the dock into the sea!508

  At Vedanta Place last Wednesday, Swami retold me the story of how he met Brahmananda, with the various stages of his involvement. There was one episode which, he told me, he has never told anyone else: one time he went to see Brahmananda at someone’s house (Balaram’s?509) in the days before he became a monk and was still a student in his late teens, he suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to go and sit on Brahmananda’s lap. This made him ashamed, so he ran out of the room without speaking to Brahmananda.

  Since the 11th, I have been working steadily on the second draft of the novelette. I’m afraid I may be overwriting it a bit, but it certainly has much more meat this time and is expanding without my having to pad it. The only snag is, I don’t see how I can possibly finish it before I have to go up to Berkeley, and that will be a very serious interruption.

  February 28. The day before yesterday, Don went up to Santa Barbara in his car. He was planning to stop the night there, with William Dole,510 and then go on to Stanford yesterday. Haven’t heard from him yet.

  Meanwhile the weather is heaven and I am quite happy, especially as I am having “great openings” on the novelette. Probably for this same reason I feel a disinclination to write anything here.

  No news about Berkeley yet. Have just identified a quotation Gerald wanted from Pope:

  Tired of the scene Parterres and Fountains yield,

  He finds at last he better likes a Field.

  It’s from Epistle IV of the Moral Essays, to the Earl of Burlington, on The Use of Riches. Why Gerald wanted it, I don’t know. I neglected to ask him; and that is precisely one of my defects which I can do something about: I’m not nearly curious enough. I didn’t ask John Zeigel (whom I saw the same night Don left, at Pasadena, where he’s living now) nearly enough about his present feelings toward Ed Halsey. And this was inexcusable, because he told me a fascinating thing, that he has willed Ed to appear; and that Ed has appeared, two or three different times. Although he willed it, John doesn’t feel that this was any kind of autohypnosis. Because Ed appeared within light, and John, going counter to his will, felt afraid of the light and didn’t try to penetrate it. If he had done so, he feels he could have seen Ed more clearly; but he was afraid of being swallowed up by it. (Or is this an interpolation of my own?) His chief impression, however, was that Ed is very happy. (Gerald says that there seems very little evidence, according to the best bel
ief of the psychical research people, for unhappiness after death. No signs of the Catholic purgatory. But, says Gerald gleefully, no doubt the Catholics themselves suffer in it. They don’t realize it’s all made of cardboard and mirrors.)

  An extraordinary tale told me by Prema. Two members of the Vedanta congregation were both drunkards. The other night, the wife called in hysterics that her husband had come home drunk and she had strangled him in self-defense with a judo hold, after he had attacked her. Prema went around and the police were there. The wife wept and took Prema into the bedroom and confessed all over again, even offering to demonstrate the judo hold. The police certainly know all this; but they haven’t even taken her down to the station for questioning and it doesn’t seem there will be any prosecution! Of course, they may be convinced she is lying. . . . Prema was quite thrilled, and subtly pleased to have had such an adventure. He talked to the police photographer who was taking pictures of the corpse—it lay right there on the floor. “You must see some ghastly sights as a police photographer,” Prema said; and the photographer answered, “Yes, and I bet you see a lot of things as a church secretary!”

  Last night, Swami warned us strongly against making japam while you are feeling any kind of resentment toward anyone. He even seems to think it might harm that person, after the manner of black magic. I shall have to watch this—indeed, I have been getting horrifyingly careless about my thoughts during japam. This morning, instead of trying to stick to Ramakrishna, I thought all the time about Swami—sitting up in his chair, meditating in the shrine, etc. This worked quite well.

  March 6. Splendid weather. Mood ditto. This is one of the famous-last-words periods when it seems as if Don and I had it made for the rest of our mutual life. (If we really had, it would be two other guys, and a bore.) He said yesterday, “Dub used to be my jailer, now he’s Kitty’s convict.” The Henry Kraft511 situation, into which I never probe, seems to make him permanently happy and at the same time much fonder of me—in all ways. Well, good while it lasts!

  Novelette progresses steadily, though not fast enough. Berkeley is fixed. My rib seems all right, but now I have a curious condition like varicose veins in my calf.

  Forgot to mention that someone (a woman) gave Swami a book about the trials of Oscar Wilde. Pagli asked him what the book was. He said, “You see, in those days, people were sent to prison for homosexuality,” and then he added, “Poor man!” And to Prema he said, “All lust is the same.”

  March 20. I am making another entry here, after this long long lapse, out of a feeling of duty. I don’t really want to. Partly on account of Don. This is a strange period, and I feel I don’t want to make any statement about it until it is over. Seriously, it is possible we might have parted by the summer. And yet our frankness with each other might equally well lead to a much better relationship. It is very good, in any case, that I am going away to San Francisco so soon, in about three weeks.

  Wystan has been staying with us. He arrived on the 16th, left today to continue his lecture tour. Of course he was an awful nuisance and stank up the place with smoke and had us drinking pints. But he is marvellous and strong. I don’t think I could possibly undertake a tour like his.

  I keep on at the novel. Slowly but fairly surely. Only external accidents will prevent me from finishing this draft, at least. What I have written so far—thirty-four pages—I quite like.

  March 23 [Saturday]. Ben Masselink has had a second book accepted! Some thing to do with Tahiti,512 which I haven’t read yet. He much admires Jim’s half-finished stories. Talking about them on the phone today, he said how Jim simply regards them as a means of making money, in order that he can go back to Japan. Deploring this, Ben said, “That’s the only reason you’re writing, for sort of a source of love.”

  We saw Dorothy Tutin yesterday. Jerry Lawrence brought her by to see the house; then we went to his house for lunch. Don really loathes Jerry and perhaps this colored his attitude to Tutin; he says he dislikes her. She is false, and looks “like a stale bun,” and her accent is wrong, “She is no more U than they are.” Oh yes, of course she is false, poor wretched little thing. I felt sorry for her, though, with her alcoholic father and her leaky barge on the Thames. She longed to stay here, but she has to go back to England tomorrow—she has been touring in The Hollow Crown— and get ready to play in The Beggar’s Opera.

  Since the 20th, we have both given up drinking; we plan to stay on the wagon until Don gets to Phoenix and I to San Francisco. Or approximately. It is really much better. You are bored more, but the pain stops when you leave the bores; you don’t hate them next morning for causing your hangover. And, with me, it also automatically means quitting smoking—I still have this strange thing of only wanting to smoke when I drink. And that is even more valuable.

  I want to get this (eighteenth) chapter of the Ramakrishna book done before I leave; and reach page 50 at least of the novelette. Not at all impossible.

  Last Wednesday, Swami remarked quite casually that he is seventy. It came as a big shock to me; somehow, I’d been playing around with the idea of his being only 68–69. He looks marvellous, however. I can quite clearly remember a similar shock, at the end of the thirties when I realized that M. was seventy. And look how much longer she lived! May it be a good omen!

  Yesterday, while Dr. Stevens the dentist was drilling, I experimented with the music you can listen to through headphones. There is also a kind of jarring noise which masks the noise of the drill and has been found to be partially anesthetic in its effect. You can control the volume of the music and switch on the noise yourself. I found that, by bringing in the music (which was “light classic al”) very loud at certain moments, I could create the atmosphere of a silent-movie love scene which was so absurd in relation to the drilling that it made the drilling itself absurd. It also turned the down-looking faces of Dr. Stevens and his cute nurse into a pair of medical lovers from a television serial. This game amused me so much that I was laughing all the time—with my eyes only, of course, because my mouth was full of instruments. I tried to begin to explain how I felt to Stevens and the nurse, but realized they just weren’t going to understand. Stevens is backing two of my upper jaw incisors with gold; otherwise, he says, they will grind themselves down and crack up.

  Have just been out on the deck to watch the sunset. This evening, the sun is already setting almost “offstage,” at the landward end of the headland. All summer, it will go down behind the mountains.

  April 1 [Monday]. We went off the wagon after a week. Never mind, it was valuable while it lasted, and I think has made us both a bit more aware of the messiness of alcohol.

  Don has decided not to have the show at Phoenix. He is still in a terrible state about his work, but keeps right on after it. He’ll never show me anything.

  This morning he left for San Francisco, planning to stay with Stanley Miron and pick up his drawings from Stanford tomorrow. I’m planning to leave for San Francisco a week from next Friday, the 12th.

  Meanwhile I plug on at Ramakrishna and hope to finish the eighteenth chapter before I leave. After this will be a chapter on M.’s Gospel513 and Ramakrishna’s teachings. A chapter called “The Last Year,” which I hope will cover everything till the death. And a final chapter about the doings of Vivekananda, the founding of the Mission and Math, and what (very briefly) has happened since, down to the present day.

  The novelette is at page 41. I know I am off on a digression about Huxley’s After Many a Summer, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll just keep writing until I write myself out of it again. My target is to reach page 50 before I leave; but this isn’t so important as I mean to take the manuscript with me and work on it up there, at least enough to keep the pot simmering.

  April 7. Have finished the eighteenth chapter of Ramakrishna, ma longue et lourde tâche.514 As for getting to page 50 of the novelette, I’m not going to sweat for that, just see if it happens or not. Right now, I have five more pages to go.

  And five more d
ays to go, here. Don and I are sort of quietly waiting it out, until I can leave. I don’t know all that’s happening to him and maybe I shan’t find out until much later, if at all. Don brought back the bed to his studio, yesterday. He doesn’t appear to be seeing Bill. I am miserable about all of this, but not very. I am resting from being miserable. I wish I didn’t have to go away and yet I know it will be good for me. I need a thorough change of scene and spirits. I have been in this house too long.

  Yesterday afternoon, we went up the coast to see Renate Druks and Ronnie Knox. Anaïs Nin and Rupert Pole were there; a pair of November-May couples, to which Don and I made a third. Rupert lectured us interestingly about the different kinds of chap-arral on the hillside above the house. Sumac grows back quickest after a fire; it grows from its roots, which seldom get burned. The forestry people plant mustard after a fire to hold the hillside together. Then there’s sage, and pea vine and yucca and Indian paintbrush. These plants have to do with very little water, so they cover their shoots with wax to hold in what they get for as long as possible. But this wax is highly inflammable; when there is a fire, it makes it burn all the more easily.