The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  The day before yesterday we had supper with Jennifer, just the three of us. Jennifer has been doing a “marathon” (either at Big Sur, or one of their other centers787) during which between fifteen and twenty people are shut up together for twenty-four hours. Jennifer just loved it. Obviously she had had a truly significant experience. But neither Don nor I could quite envy her or want to do likewise. We asked her, of course, if many of the people had been aware that she was Jennifer Jones. She answered that only a few were and implied that this was unimportant. But surely it isn’t? Surely being Jennifer Jones is a very important part of being Jennifer? It’s all very well to talk about getting down to basic humanity, but, if you really can do such a thing, it must mean that the layer of being Jennifer Jones has to be broken through. Otherwise Jennifer remains a masked woman. She may be accepted by other members of a group as a woman, a mother, a middle-aged beauty, a hysteric, a would-be suicide, an elegant lady with money in the bank, etc. etc., but the mask is still on. And, as far as we could guess, this was what in fact happened. As for me, I don’t believe I could feel I was “relating” to such a group until I’d read them at least half a dozen extracts from my books!

  Jennifer admitted to us, with evident satisfaction, that her suicide attempt has made this doctor-lover788 of hers much more in love with her. But he still won’t leave his wife and family for her.

  I forgot to mention a beautifully tactful act of Don’s as we were leaving the Bracketts’. He kissed Charlie. So of course I did too. And Charlie was delighted. He said, “That’s the nicest thing that’s happened to me in weeks.”

  April 1 [Monday]. Three-thirty in the afternoon and raining hard in heavy gusty showers. The sea grey, the trees drinking, the slides sliding. Just the right weather for the situation in this house, which is that Don took off at noon for London. We neither of us quite knew why he was doing this. Chiefly because David Hockney has lent us his apartment and since I still have no reason to go there it seemed as if Don had better use it.

  After I’d seen him off I noticed that time seemed to slow down, to an uncanny extent. It apparently took me only twenty-five minutes to get home from the airport although I stopped at the bank on the way!

  Ronnie Knox, seeming goofier than usual, came by to pick up Don’s car, which Don has lent him. All he talks of are his quarrels with the manager of the hotel where he works.

  The radio full of yesterday’s big news: Johnson’s resignation (which is called either nobility or tactics) and the bombing pause (which isn’t expected to do much for peace).789 Gore had supper with us last night. He is gleefully looking forward to the rat race of the convention and election, both of which he is to cover on television, with his enemy [William F.] Buckley.

  While I was writing the above, Stephen called, en route to Santa Barbara. I shall see him on Friday-Saturday.

  Rain, rain, rain coming down harder and harder. Jack and Jim have got Leslie Caron coming to stay with them, and now their roof will be leaking again, and they’ll have to drive out to the airport in all this shit, poor bastards.

  Am sort of lonely already and yet I don’t really want to see anyone. I would just as soon watch telly, eat from the icebox (there’s still some of the moussaka Don made) watch more telly, sleep.

  April 4. So now they’ve shot Martin Luther King in Memphis and he may not live. Just heard this.

  It’s unfair, but I can’t help remembering Jack Larson’s patriotic carryings-on the other night (because of Johnson’s speech and the bombing halt). He kept repeating excitedly, “This country works!”—meaning that the marvellousness of our constitution and the ultimate wisdom of our masses make everything work out all right in the end. Caron listened to this with French polite cynicism, as she sat eating a snack supper and taking sleeping pills in a mini skirt with her hair down her back, looking still so young. I do like her, but she is quite sour and no wonder. She found much fault with Vanessa Redgrave for her political attitudes. Since she had just arrived from London she was exhausted . . .

  Just before six, I heard that King has died. Oh fuck them all. How blood-horny this’ll make the killers on both sides. The one good thing about this evening is that I’m going to spend it with Gavin, so shan’t have to listen to a lot of phrases and duty attitudes.

  April 7 [Sunday]. Such a beautiful day, though windy and a bit misty. Out on the bay, the flash of the water-skiers is like an appeal to get with it, to participate, to live in the moment, to make the scene, to be where the action is. Here I am, sitting up on the balcony with the typewriter plugged in, determined to witness, to record, rather than to run down to the beach and wander around looking for—what? Not sex. Just for the sense of being there. (But there, I remind myself, can just as well be here.) This isn’t senile silliness even. I was just the same when I was young. The Beach and the Balcony—that’s the story of my life.

  Don just called from London, terribly disappointed and inclined to come right back home. He has left Marguerite’s, where he quite liked it and where [she was] sweet to him, and moved into David Hockney’s flat, which fills him with horror, it is so dirty and messy and cold and far away. [Marguerite] has suggested he shall come back to [her], but he doesn’t like to accept. And nobody else has shown much enthusiasm on seeing him. . . . Well, I said of course come home any time, just play it by ear—but I hope very much he won’t come home now because he will feel guilty for having wasted good money on this fruitless trip. God, how symbolic life is! Because why in hell shouldn’t a trip be fruitless? And what is fruitless, anyhow? It’s all equally a part of The Dance.

  Perhaps, though, the very act of making this call to me has already relieved some of the tension. Perhaps Don will have a reaction and decide to wait a while and see what happens, secure in the knowledge that he can come home at any instant. . . . Even as I write this, I have a feeling that maybe I ought not to write it, because as soon as I have written it he will know. When two people are as psychologically interlocked as we are, telepathy becomes an absurdly inadequate word to describe what is probably going on between us.

  Well, anyhow. . . .

  I enjoyed Stephen’s visit. The morning of the day before yesterday, which was gloriously beautiful, I drove up to Santa Barbara to fetch him from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, where he has been attending a conference (on communication—or am I making that up, because it’s such a typical nowadays theme?). The center is a lordly building on a hilltop within a large estate with noble trees and a vast view of the coast. The obvious sneer would be to say that nothing could possibly look less democratic. But, after all, this is a laboratory of sorts, and therefore demanding some seclusion from the outside world. And I can well believe that these conferences, futile as they may sound, have powerful, long-term effects, after the participants have returned to their respective campuses or other institutions. Stephen (white-haired, paunchy, jowled, but looking essentially the same as when I first met him) took me in to hear the end of the last conference. The tone of it was an agreeable surprise to me; beneath the necessary politeness there was real passion and the disagreement seemed of intense importance. One delegate was attacking the views of another and their confrontation had something at once theoretical and deadly about it, like the confrontation of prosecutor and accused at a state trial for treason. Until Hutchins790 stopped them and made his smoothing farewell speech. (Stephen says Hutchins is getting terribly bored by the center and its doings.) Afterwards we had a nice lunch with wine, out on the terrace overlooking the ocean. Elizabeth Mann Borgese791 and Howard Warshaw ate with us. Howard seemed a little out of his element and I didn’t feel that he and Stephen really hit it off anyway. Elizabeth was sympathetic in a cranky European way; she told us she had a dog which typed poems.

  Then I drove Stephen back to Santa Monica. The weather was still beautiful, the shore looked quite magical in spots between billboards, and the drive, with not too much traffic, was a perfect situation for talk. So what did we talk about? It
is maddening that I don’t remember more—because, after all, here we were, veteran intimates who understand each other’s language and tricks, and who had been separated a long time and had much to tell each other, and much to communicate subliminally. Let’s see. . . . Stephen was worried of course about the riots and burnings in Washington792 because he had to go back there next day, and because the house where he was staying was in the danger area, and because he had Lizzie793 with him—though luckily she was in New York this weekend. Stephen seemed attached chiefly to Lizzie. About Natasha he said that she is the bravest person he has ever known; she was so brave about her cancer, which now seems defin itely cured. (But in Stephen’s anecdotes Natasha usually figures as the person who mustn’t be allowed to suspect about his latest affair.) As for Matthew, I feel they have rather lost contact. He has married this boyhood girlfriend of his. [. . .] Stephen added that he hoped Lizzie would [. . .] marry someone rich. (According to him, she is having huge social success in Washington and has several admirers with money.) One thing I did get strongly from Stephen is his weariness of poverty and the need for doing wage-earning jobs. There is this Jewish combination of the desire for children—he said, “A marriage without children isn’t a marriage at all”—and the underlying resentment against them as dependents.

  He wasn’t quite as bitchy as usual about Wystan. However he did say that Wystan is obsessed by his fame, and will go anywhere to make a public appearance or receive an honorary degree.

  He said that being in Germany today is like being with a cured alcoholic; the bad part of them, which was also the source of their energy and individuality, has been removed and now they are rather empty and blank.

  He told how Mary McCarthy794 had said of one of his lectures that it was hopelessly above the heads of ninety-five percent of the audience and hopelessly below the heads of the other five. (Telling stories against himself has always been one of the modes of Stephen’s bitchery—the most attractive and the most deadly.)

  Must stop here and go over to see Ray Henderson and Elsa. Ray is probably in “a state” and well he may be. Burgess Meredith delayed so long in getting in touch with Wystan that they failed to make a date with him to listen to the Dogskin tape before he left for Europe. Burgess blamed this on the play he is producing, but actually he found time to go over to England in the middle of it, to watch the Grand National. Elsa exclaimed in exasperation, “Oh, these horselovers!”

  April 8. To continue . . . Stephen and I had supper that night with Gavin, David Hockney and Peter Schlesinger. I really do like David a great deal, he is so good-natured. He even seems quite affectionate, in a shy way—which I had never thought before. Stephen loves both David and Peter, but he and Gavin didn’t get along. They just didn’t connect. (Gavin admitted he had felt this, when I talked to him next day.)

  After much watching of T.V. scenes of riots, Stephen finally decided to take off for Washington as planned. He had meanwhile called Lizzie in New York and told her to stay there for a day or two. As I drove back from the airport I put on the lights of the car, having heard on the radio that this was the way the Negroes were showing respect for King. But I saw only very few other white drivers doing this and several drivers warned me, thinking I had them on by mistake!

  I have spent several hours of today on the beach. I decided to walk to the pier, and so I met Eddie Albert and his pretty son Edward who comes to our gym. And Edward told me all about the film 2001, making me long to see it more than ever.

  No work for days, now. I must get back to it.

  April 9. I forgot to say that, at David’s the night before last, I met a sculptor named Walter de Maria who wants to find a place in the desert where he can erect his artwork, two walls that run parallel for a mile.795 He seemed more than somewhat square and somehow not of the party. However I think he may have made it with Andee [Cohen]—who told me that she is still madly in love with James Fox, although she sleeps around a lot. Today I got a postcard from James from Bolivia; he was going on to the Amazon.

  Beautiful warm weather. Today I sat out writing letters on the deck. Yesterday afternoon, around six-thirty, we had an earthquake. I was in the car on my way back from the gym, and didn’t feel it. But Larry Holt says it was so strong that he began to say his mantram. When I phoned Don in London last night and told him about the earthquake he was so disappointed that he hadn’t been there. He still says that he’s coming back soon but I sensed a slight brightening of mood, although he hasn’t left David’s flat.

  King’s funeral today. More cars with their lights on, but only a few. Mr. Garcia is disgusted with “The Black Man” because of the rioting. He feels that The Black Man missed his big chance to prove that he isn’t a savage. Now Mr. Garcia doesn’t want to live next to him.

  Last night I had supper at Gavin’s. Leslie Caron was there with Jack and Jim, and Camilla Clay and Linda Crawford. She is rather a magic person, so gay, almost affectionate, but with a welcome dash of lemon in it. Jack leaves for New York today. Jim told me that he has made up his mind to finish the play of Meeting by the River this month—or at least the first draft.

  April 11. Out of respect for Dr. King, the casinos at Las Vegas (or at least many of them) were closed for two hours at the time of his funeral!

  Saw Swami yesterday evening. He said that he had expected to die, the first day of his illness. I asked him if he had been worried about leaving the Vedanta Center. He said no. He said he had seen Maharaj twice during his illness, but he was unusually uncommunicative about this. He just said, “I saw him coming towards me.” Then he said that he had decided, while he was in the hospital, that if he got better he would spend much more time in meditation; that was what he wanted to do now. He said that he had lost all desires. I thought he meant desires for the success of the work of the Ramakrishna Order, but he said no, he meant personal desires. This surprised me, because I never think of him as having any. I should have questioned him further, but I didn’t. He looked absolutely marvellous—a little thinner in the face but not at all sickly; his face seemed to shine with love and lack of anxiety. I thought to myself, I am in the presence of a saint; and I asked Ramakrishna to help me “through the power of my guru.” (I don’t exactly know what I mean by this, though the phrase has come to me many times, but it’s something like asking to have money paid to you through a particular bank, because you have absolute confidence in that bank.)

  Today is almost chilly, after a very hot day yesterday. Just my luck. Yesterday I spent in Hollywood, and had to listen to poor old Larry Holt going on about Tommy [Thom]. How he bullies that boy and blackmails him emotionally is not to be believed. Oh, how sad.

  Renewed interest in filming A Single Man, by a producer named Bruce Stark.796 At first I rejected this idea, but it occurs to me that it just might be a good opportunity for setting up a collaboration with Don. I shall phone Don and ask him about this when I call him on Saturday evening to wish him a happy Easter. “The Christmas Carol” is said by Robin French to be about to roll again. And Ray Henderson and I are to have a talk with Burgess Meredith about the finale of Dogskin.

  Today I got to the end of 1905 in Kathleen’s diary.

  A letter from Stephen. He met Senator McCarthy on the plane and they talked and Stephen was driven home in one of his cars, and has contributed one hundred dollars to the McCarthy fighting fund.797 Stephen says, of his visit, “I don’t think we’ve had a time which was so like old times that I can remember. Somehow Peter and David contributed a lot to the atmosphere. They are both quite new and at the same time something which we have known all those years reborn and able to carry on a conversation like equals, I mean in age.” This is a perfect specimen of Stephen’s literary incoherence, but I sort of know what he means and it makes me happy because I felt the same.

  Yesterday I saw Gerald. He was pretty much the same; his voice may be a bit more distinct. The curious thing was, it seemed they’d been expecting me last week. But, when I didn’t show up, Michael ne
ver attempted to get in touch with me. I had failed them, and that was that. This is the perfection of silent bitchery; it needs nothing added to its silence. I can appreciate it because I sometimes practise it myself.

  April 15. Easter Monday. I didn’t do much in the way of a resurrection yesterday as I was busy reading a sex paperback called Caves of Iron.798 Also Don Coombs came to breakfast and then visited Elsa with me; she wanted him to help her find magazines from his department at the library with articles about Charles. And then in the afternoon Tito [Renaldo] came by and brought a friend named Nelson Barclay(?)799 who wanted me to appear on a T.V. show—called, I’m afraid, “Boutique”! Said I would if I could do it with Laura Huxley (he suggested her). Tito again seemed terribly shaken up; his jaw worked nervously and it was an effort for him to get his words out. Before [Barclift] arrived, he spoke very movingly about his mental breakdown, and his loss and recovery of faith. He told me that he once burned his rosary and his copy of the Gita! You do feel that religion matters to him passionately, to the point of agony. And that is a great grace, of course. A grace almost entirely denied to gross unspiritual fleshly old Dubbin.

  The last three days, I’ve met with Jim Bridges and talked about his play version of Meeting by the River. We have really made quite a bit of progress, I think, and the dialogue seems to work, it is exciting. I was quite wrong to suspect Jim of dragging his heels on this project. Actually he has done an amazing lot of work, typed out practically one and a half drafts, despite all the movie writing he’s had to do.