The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  No news about the play yet. So Australia is still up in the air. I haven’t talked this over with Don; he’s out.

  The day before yesterday we went to the ballet but at the last moment they couldn’t give us seats, so we stood in the wings, which was tiring but far more interesting. [Rudolf ] Nureyev and [Margot] Fonteyn were so near sometimes that you could see every line on their faces, which was plenty. As Don said, there was a terrific pathos in Fonteyn’s absolute determination to look nineteen—which she doubtless succeeded in doing, from the viewpoint of the audience. Nureyev seemed very cold to me, and his smile reminded me so strongly of Cyril Connolly, it is subtle and mocking and essentially hostile. Don found him so extremely feminine. Don was altogether convinced that this sort of richly costumed mime isn’t ballet at all but acting;883 he says it’s ridiculous even to speak of it in the same breath as Balanchine. Anyhow, we both enjoyed ourselves greatly; and Wayne especially was so sweet and considerate, very carefully inserting us into the best vantage spots and steering us out of the way when props had to be moved on to the stage. We ate with him and Graham and had drinks with Freddy Ashton afterwards. And Freddy was charming. We didn’t get home till nearly four which is late even for us.

  On July 2, I went to Dr. Ashworth who said my contracture is no worse, so no operation is needed right now. There is some trace of its beginning in the right hand as well!

  One of the best dramatic touches in the ballet was that, when Juliet recovers consciousness lying on top of the tomb, she thinks she is still in bed and tries to pull the bedclothes up over her. Fonteyn was also truly marvellous in her power of making that old tired face express the most brilliant, innocent joy.

  July 12. Three days ago, I drove down to Trabuco and returned after supper. The San Diego freeway goes right through now, fusing with the Santa Ana, all you have to do is get off it at the road to El Toro. But when I did, I didn’t even know where I was at or which way I should turn, all was tract houses, gas stations, wires, wires, wires, and smog. You couldn’t even see the hills. However, within a mile or two, the old countryside reappeared and the view from the monastery itself has hardly changed yet; there’s only the church and one house overlooking you from the ridge above.

  The whole place looks beautiful, better cared for than I’ve ever seen it, no doubt because there are now so many monks to look after it. The new building is rather like a glorified motel, certainly, but it will look all right when it’s overgrown with creepers.

  Swami, Vandanananda, Asaktananda were all three there. Vandanananda was very much muted, as always in Swami’s presence. We kept exchanging glances but he didn’t say anything at all confidential to me; how could he? He knows I am on Swami’s side. Swami says Vandanananda is very sad to be going. Certainly he now seems much more sympathetic, because he is the naughty one. Asaktananda seems much less sympathetic for the same reason; he is the good little pig. I really am beginning to get bad vibrations from Asaktananda. Probably he doesn’t like me. He seems haughty and even potentially spiteful. What is shocking is that nice big cute Bob884 has left the monastery. According to Swami, he has been undermined by Vandanananda so that he has taken a dislike to Asaktananda. So he left in protest against Vandanananda’s going back to India. At the same time, Swami says Bob was “in very bad company” before he came to the monastery, “That’s why I took him in at once.” “Bad” must mean queer. I suppose good old sex was just reasserting itself, disguised as righteous indignation—don’t I know its tricks!

  While I was at Trabuco I went into the shrine all by myself and sat in the dark, saying, “speak to me.” It didn’t. In fact I couldn’t possibly feel drier than I do now. And yet, somehow, it’s all right. I ought to be frantic, I know. But I am not. How can I be? I have known Swami. He sits there and shines. He is the beacon which shows the way out through the reef. I know I ought to steer for it but I don’t. It’s enough to know that there is a way. What I keep wondering is, when I get gravely ill or am in some great danger, shall I suddenly be able to steer towards the beacon?

  We are now definitely planning to go to Australia in about ten days’ time. As soon as the visas arrive we shall get reservations.

  Une vie:885 J.B. has been a lawyer all his life in a small town where everybody knows him. So he has never dared to have a friend to live with him. Now he’s my age and he has met a doctor aged sixty-nine and they like each other a lot, and J.B. feels he must experience domestic love before he dies. But the doctor is living with an eighty-year-old friend who has a couple of million and if the doctor leaves him (as he wants to) he won’t inherit the money. I said, why doesn’t the doctor kill him? J.B. replied, perfectly seriously: “You’re the second person who’s said that. But, you know, Chris, if he was the sort of person who was capable of doing a thing like that, then I wouldn’t like him the way I do.” So I had to hasten to explain that I was kidding! J.B. is a very good simple innocent person. His sexuality is that of a fourteen-year-old boy. This in itself makes him almost attractive, or at least nonrepulsive.

  Incidentally, J.B. has had Dupuytren’s Contractures in both hands! The doctor cured him with cortisone, not surgery.

  Thundershowers yesterday, today beautiful weather. Jim Gates came and went on the beach with us; then Don drove him into town as he had to try to sell his violin to raise some money. Jim and Peter seem to be drifting apart, rather. Oddly enough, Peter has changed from an agnostic into an ardent Vedantist, but this makes him disinclined to talk about religion to Jim. Maybe he has this Jewish possessive thing; he has to disown something or own it personally. Furthermore, Peter is getting much involved with girls again and this brings up the sexual difference between him and Jim. They have had several different people staying with them in their tiny shack—they entertain as if they lived in a palace!—and in each case Jim has felt that Peter and the guest were getting together and that he was left out. (I must admit that this is more an impression I have received than what Jim has told me in so many words.) Because of all this, Jim feels strongly that he must get a job as soon as possible, so he can contribute to the household; he doesn’t like the fact that Peter’s mother is paying their rent (seventy a month). Putting on swimming trunks revealed that Jim has terribly thin legs, which is a real shame, when he is otherwise so beautiful. I said, “Maybe he’d better become a monk, after all.” Don laughed and said, “Worldly old Drubbin!”

  July 17. Now suddenly it’s upon us, we’re to fly down to Tahiti at midnight, next Sunday the 20th. Thus we skip out from under Nixon’s Moon Day,886 though that wasn’t intended.

  A terrible fuss is on with Beckerman, who wants to pay us less or nothing for our treatment of Cabaret because Tony Harvey has told him it isn’t what he told us in advance he wanted. This is such a barefaced lie that it makes Tony seem psychopathic.887

  Meanwhile we hear that Christopher Gable loves our play and longs to be in it, thinks it the best play he ever read and a perfect expression of how he himself feels about life! Anthony Page is getting together with Jim Bridges socially but at the same time (Don thinks) dimly hinting that he himself would like to direct the play.

  As for Tony Richardson, down there, unimaginably far off in the Australian outback, we have absolutely no guarantee that he seriously wants us to work on the Claudius film. So our attitude must be that we are off to enjoy a holiday and that any resulting benefits are fringe benefits.

  The worst of these projected travels is that they utterly alienate me from even the vaguest thoughts of God. Those travel jitters! They get stronger, not weaker, with experience. It was quite inspiring to talk to Jim Gates, who is humbly happy to have found a job as busboy at a bar-restaurant on Washington called The Black Whale. How truly sweet he is.

  July 20. I’d better sign off now, although it’s only three in the afternoon, because there may well be distractions later.

  Anthony Page called this morning to tell Don that Cherry, Larry was a disaster at its London opening and that Jim and Jack are both c
rushed and that he, Anthony, doesn’t feel Jim is much of a director and that the Royal Court wouldn’t want to do our play with Jim directing it. We have decided not to get involved in any of this. Let them all fight it out.

  The moon landing took place a couple of hours ago. Oh the horrible falseness of the commentator we heard, and the way the thing was built up into being somehow a rebuke to the indifference of the Young. The emotion they tried to whip up was so false, and this in spite of the moment being genuinely dramatic. The English, with their tight-lipped terseness, understand so much better how to create drama.

  It still seems quite unthinkable that we shall either be in Tahiti or in the drink by tomorrow morning. Don says this is the first trip he has really looked forward to in years, because we’re making it together. Yesterday we went and got Swami’s blessing; he shone upon us.

  No more, unless there are last-moment bulletins.

  We left for Tahiti by UTA plane888 shortly before midnight, July 20. Arrived 4:50 a.m., July 21. Stayed at Hotel Maeva. Drove around island.

  July 22. Took a boat over to Moorea.

  July 23. By plane to Bora Bora, 10–11 a.m. Stayed at Hotel Maitai.

  July 24. Waited all day on airfield for plane back to Papeete. Left 7:20 p.m. Got Pan American plane out of Papeete at 9:45 p.m., arriving Pago Pago, Samoa, 11:55 p.m. Stayed Intercontinental Hotel.

  July 25. Left by plane to Western Samoa, 4:45 p.m., arriving 5:30 p.m. Stayed at Aggie Grey Hotel, Apia.

  July 26. Saw R.L. Stevenson’s house and his grave.

  July 27. At Apia.

  July 29. Left Apia 9:30 a.m., arrived Pago Pago soon after 10 a.m. Left by Pan American plane 3:30 p.m. (Crossed International Date Line.)

  July 29. Arrived Auckland 5:55 p.m. Stayed at Great Northern Hotel.

  July 30. Drove around Auckland harbor.

  July 31. In Auckland.

  August 1. Left Auckland by Air New Zealand plane at 9:00 a.m. for Sydney. Arrived 10 a.m. Flew to Canberra at 11:50 a.m., arriving 12:45 p.m. We drove with Neil Hartley to Ned Kelly location, where we met Tony Richardson and Mick Jagger. We stayed with them at Palerang.

  August 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. At Palerang. Worked on outline of Claudius. Visited location, etc. Marianne Faithfull and her mother arrived on 6th.

  August 7. Left Canberra 3:25 p.m. by plane for Sydney, arrived 4:00 p.m. Stayed at the Chevron Hotel. Saw Dennis Altman and his friend Reinhardt Hassert.

  August 8. We moved to the Florida Motor Inn on MacDonald Street. We had supper with James Fairfax, a friend of Robin Maugham. To Manly Beach.

  August 9, 10. At Sydney. On 10th, Dennis Altman drove us out to Thirroul (where D.H. Lawrence lived). Don called [his friend] in London and arranged to go over there.

  August 11. We left by QANTAS plane at 8:00 p.m., via Nandi, arriving Honolulu at 10:30 a.m. (It was still August 11 because we had recrossed International Date Line). Don went on by United Airlines plane to Los Angeles at 12:15 p.m. I saw Jim Charlton. Stayed at Park Shore Hotel.

  August 12. Spent the day with Jim. Stayed the night at his apartment.

  August 12. Left Honolulu by United Airlines plane at 8:30 a.m. Arrived Los Angeles 4:15 p.m. Don met me.

  August 20. Above is the time scheme of our trip. I’ve written it down because I realize that I can’t (don’t want to) carry out my original intention, which was to fake an account of the trip from my notes and memory. That’s such a bore and so untrue, because you can’t put yourself back in thought and feeling, even a few weeks.

  Don is now in London. He left two days ago. Haven’t heard from him yet. He is staying with [his friend] and will probably go to Algeria with him next week, then return here to work on the screenplay of Claudius; we settled this with Tony Richardson while we were in Australia. But there’s also the possibility that our Meeting by the River play may be done in London quite soon; then of course I should have to go over there.

  Meanwhile, Ray Henderson and Burgess Meredith are rehearsing parts of the Dogskin musical at a theatrical workshop in Hollywood. I went for the first time yesterday. The lead is played by a black actor, Booker Bradshaw; he’s clever and effective but a bit slick. A boy named Ricky Drivas889 seems really good. And there is a sexy young man with a terrific voice named Peter Jason, who is very funny as the lover in Paradise Park. The feminine lead girl is good too: Julie Gregg. She has something touching about her, a bit like Alice Gowland. Altogether it’s an astonishingly good group.

  Last night I had supper with the Stravinskys. Igor is “better” but he looks terribly thin and his eyes are really tragic with anxiety. He hardly speaks. Vera has just discovered that they have relatively very little money. All their investments have been sold by the lawyer without asking their permission, to pay debts. Their house is devaluated because the hippies on the Strip have made people unwilling to live anywhere in that neighborhood. Their chief resource would be to sell Igor’s manuscripts at auction. Otherwise they just have his royalties. And his nurses alone cost more than forty thousand dollars a year! Vera and Bob are determined to get out of Los Angeles and find some small place where they can live. Vera is resentful against Igor’s children, who have behaved ungratefully, she feels.

  After supper I wanted to get a copy of Genet’s Funeral Rites which has lately been published in translation. So I stopped off at a bookshop on Ventura Boulevard which advertises itself as the only all-gay bookstore in town. It looked very snug, with light shining through its screened windows (so as not to give offense, I suppose; this was close on midnight) but when I got inside they didn’t have the Genet and indeed had very few books—mostly beefcake photos, magazines and some huge pink plastic dildos. I would have examined the stock at some length but was embarrassed by the cool eyes of the goodlooking boy in charge and left feeling like a very dirty old nag.

  I fear I notice that my contracture is increasing; I can no longer completely straighten the little finger of my left hand. It’ll be too tiresome if I have to have this operation just now.

  Heard this morning that Rudolf von Strachwitz, Barbara Greene’s husband, is dead. One of Hitler’s deadliest enemies; and he has been living and will be buried in Berchtesgaden!890 Leslie Caron told me on the phone that the murder of Sharon Tate and the others in Benedict Canyon, followed by the two other murders at Silver Lake and Marina del Rey,891 created a tremen dous panic. She and Michael actually moved to the Beverly Hills Hotel for a few nights, feeling that a murder epidemic was about to break out.

  Psychologically speaking, the flight to Tahiti was incomparably the most significant part of our journey. Ben Masselink said in an article that he had thought of Tahiti every day of his life. I probably had too. I had thought of it as utterly alone (disregarding the thousands of other islands) on a vast blue empty map; the most distant point. And the fact that nowadays you can take a plane to it several times a week from our huge roaring mobbed airport only made it more remote, more romantic. There was, so to speak, amidst the tiresome popular vulgarity of departing for London, Rome, New York or Tokyo, this one unobtrusive alternative. To make a genuine departure, to the one place on earth which wouldn’t be exactly like all the others.

  Then it seemed (though we hadn’t planned that) the perfect night to depart—right after the moon rape. (Oh, how sad it was to look up at the poor violated thing and know that it was now littered with American junk and the footprints of the trespassers!) It was right to be going.

  The flight took place entirely in darkness, which added to the effect of its being a teleportation rather than a gradual progress. All those thousands of miles entirely over water! I woke a few hours later, somewhere near the equator, and how awesome and all encompassing the star dome was, millions more of them out there, great burning misty blobs of light right down to the ring of the ocean. And then I kind of thought or felt that now we had entered the other world, within which Tahiti really exists; we had almost already arrived.

  The darkness eased us through the crowded Tahiti airport and the Fr
ench and the customs and our arrival at the too-luxurious hotel (the Maeva). We got right into our room and it was still dark and we lay down on our beds and waited for the sun to rise and it did, and here we were in Tahiti, looking out at a grove of tall palms surrounding a parking lot. But that didn’t spoil anything. We moved at once to a more expensive room on the beach side; and there was Moorea, towering up with its jagged pinnacles under clouds beyond the lagoon. It was absolutely there and we were beholding it, and for this fact alone the entire trip was justified in advance.

  August 22. It’s silly to say that Tahiti has been spoilt, just because there are hotels and tourists. The life in Papeete was probably corrupt long before Gauguin’s arrival. Quinn’s892 kind of loudness isn’t really that much more romantic than an old-fashioned rough trade bar in San Francisco; it’s just that a lot of foreigners find it kicky to get drunk and pick up Polynesians in their native surroundings. The waterfront appears to be in the process of rebuilding and I personally wouldn’t be bothered if it developed luxury shops like Palm Springs.

  Because there is the rest of the island and the interior of it which is still virgin jungle and there are all the surrounding islands, some of them nearly a thousand miles away and still only to be reached by schooner after a week of sailing. And anyhow I felt that the charm of Tahiti isn’t at all a sense of having entered another culture, an innocent Garden of Eden. To me the most romantic spot was the tomb of the last king, Pomare V, with a brandy bottle on top of it, a monument which has the gravity of a nineteenth-century European graveyard amidst the untidiness and irresponsibility of tropical vegetation. Another thing Ben Masselink said came back to me often: the sense of the ocean all around you, brimming full and seemingly ready to flood you at any moment. How beautiful it was to sit at the restaurant near the Gauguin museum and look out across the pale leaf-green water of the lagoon to the reef on the horizon, where you see the waves bursting huge into the air and the dark blue dangerous ocean beyond.