Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

  While I was seeing Morgan, after lunch, Peter went into town with Bob and bought a boater for himself, a real old-fashioned hard straw hat, now back in style. Bob bought me a tie and a scarf with the Corpus Christi colors, they are quite a pretty red.

  Before this, we all went for a walk over the bridge and into the Fellows’ Garden.* Paul Wheeler had read in Lions and Shadows how I left Cambridge and he told me he felt just the same; he longed to get out. When indirectly flattered like this by a beautiful boy (well, he doesn’t even have to be beautiful) I feel overweeningly pleased with myself and hastily pray to be released from vanity. But, really, it is satisfactory to walk these paths again amidst the prison-past and feel that I escaped in time and that Edward and I were right!

  We got back in time for me to rendezvous with Robert Chetwyn and Howard Schuman and drive with them to the Polish Mime Ballet. In the intermission we met [an English boy I used to see in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. He was] at the bar, drunk. He is coarser looking, thick necked, getting plump; his nose is now definitely much too short. But I mustn’t forget all the fun we had together. (I remember asking, “Does it hurt?” and him saying, “I want it to hurt.”) Howard Schuman knew him and Norman Prouting says I actually came to visit [the boy] in this house, when he was staying here in 1961! I dimly connect this with another memory; [the boy] wearing nothing but a leather jacket. But last night he was just rattling on tiresomely and name dropping and being loud.

  The Mime Ballet was unforgettable—at least Gilgamesh was; the other one, Baggage, wasn’t quite so exciting and showed more of the negative or minor qualities of the Polish approach; rigid stances, capricious body-jerks, poses with open-fingered hands, eccentricity, distortion, campy-macabre satire. Gilgamesh really does convey an epic archaic quality and at the same time its psychology is altogether modern. The hero-brothers wrestling naked, falling in love, sleeping with hands clasped, becoming involved in and escaping from the snares of women, dying with desperate spasms, wandering into terrible underworlds or dreams where a huge bird flutters its wings with a most intense menacing vibration. I have no idea what this ballet was about, except that it was about all of us. Pawel Rouba and Stefan Niedzialkowski (the one Dicky Buckle likes) are savagely beautiful, Pawel dark and Stefan blond. Pawel’s body is dark brown, hard and faultless, Stefan’s is white and voluptuous, all the more so because he has just a tiny bulge of flesh above the flat, sometimes concave belly with its deep navel—he’d better watch it.

  I went on to Odin’s for a farewell supper with David, Peter, Ron Kitaj, Melissa(?) and Chaik(?).86 Peter Langan tried hard to make me drink. David ordered champagne. But I meanly wouldn’t—I even slipped my champagne to Peter while pretending to sip it.

  Kitaj drove me home. He is furious with Nigel Gosling87 for saying in The Observer that, “Kitaj lacks the gift (often granted to lesser artists) of catching a likeness.” Not, Ron explained to me, that he wants to get a likeness, but he always could, any real artist could. So he rang The Observer and spoke to Gosling and told him that he had no right to write this because he’d never seen the originals of the portraits. Gosling is to be brought down to the gallery and made to eat his words—“like you rub a puppy’s nose in its shit.”

  Becoming less upset, Ron said that David is the greatest artist of our time, or his generation; I forget which. When we said goodbye, Ron said, “It’s been a good time.”

  This morning, Clement told me that Tom Courtenay has turned the play down.

  3:00 p.m. Here I am, out at the airport. Packing was difficult, because the bag I bought in exchange for the one that got damaged coming over here is smaller than the old one. I talked to Bob Chetwyn before leaving the house and tried to encourage him to take a personal interest in casting—that is, see prospective actors and talk them into taking the part before their wives or agents can talk them out of it. Clement came round to see me and really I must admire the way he bounces back from all these disappointments. But I think he is now beginning to think in terms of a production which won’t be in the West End. So much the better, probably. Richard Schulman also called. So did Richard Shone. And I called Patrick Woodcock, Marguerite and David Hockney and Peter to say goodbye. “You cheered me up,” Peter said.

  (A lady here at the airport just asked me if I was Christopher Isherwood and then explained that her father, a New Zealander, is an Isherwood. Did we come from Lancashire, or where? She then asked, “What’s David Hockney like, is he as mad as a hatter?” I said, “He’s super.”)

  Have been having lunch at the Vedanta Center. Swami Bhavyananda was wearing a sort of smoking jacket over his gerua— it made him look like a very good-humored gangster. Buddha is skinnier than ever. He has now fixed up the shrine on a proper pedestal and was very pleased when I commented on this. I ate some deadly fattening little cakes at lunch because they were prasad; Buddha then told me, “You didn’t have to.” The swami had been giving a talk in Liverpool, at a college. They had asked him if it wasn’t selfish to retire from the world and become a monk who no longer does anything useful to help others. The swami retorted that pure scientists were also engaged in research which didn’t help others, yet nobody criticized them. I must say, I found this argument somewhat specious.

  Buddha and another monk, the big English boy, drove me to the Pan American terminal. I was grateful to Buddha when he said he couldn’t stay and chat; he had work to do. Buddha says that when he’s a swami he hopes to be allowed to stay here at the London center. He has a horror of India, says the centers are all too hot or too cold, and he’s always getting sick there.

  April 30. Safe back here in the beautiful casa, with the sun getting slowly ready to set after a perfect day. It is chilly for California but so warm and heavenly after England, which now seems every inch of its six thousand miles away. As for this time yesterday, it’s like something which happened a month ago.

  The flight was deadly dull and the plane crammed. This is one of the most uncomfortable periods of travel we have had, probably, during the past seventy years. The seats are squeezed together so tightly that you can barely get in and out of them, and your briefcase or bag takes up half of your legroom. No doubt, in a few years, these old-fashioned jets will have become quite spacious again. I read in a magazine article that they will redesign the interiors and take out a lot of seats in order to offer a counter-attraction to the jumbo jets.

  To make matters worse, Jean-Louis Barrault88 and his entire company were with us, flying out to San Francisco to give their Rabelais show there. The Frogs were aggressively noisy and jokey and they walked up and down the aisle and stood over us, gossiping. At one point they got so noisy that some member of the crew switched on the “Fasten Seat Belts” sign to make them return to their places and sit down—at least, I can’t think of any other reason for switching it on; the air at that time was totally calm.

  At last, at last, after about eleven and a half hours, a movie (The Molly Maguires) a terrible meal and a worse snack, and around fifty pages of The First Circle, we saw the shining sea and the vast constellation of the city and bumped to earth (the Frogs clapped) and as I came out of the plane I looked at the big window and there was Don, standing just where I’ve so often stood waiting, his face dark golden and his hair parted in the middle and more silvery than ever, smiling that marvellous smile that every human being must wish to see on the face of someone waiting for him—what happiness that was! Even the passport examiner was pleasant this time, he knew who I was and said it was a pleasure to have met me, and the customs inspector hardly poked into my bags at all and I got out quite quickly and there was Don himself, no longer behind glass, and I was home again and the luckiest old dobbin of them all.

  (The funny thing is, I wanted to fill this notebook exactly and I have; I dislike having half-filled notebooks lying around. Yet I didn’t make any effort to work out the number of pages to be written per day. I couldn’t have, until very near the end, because I didn’t know exactly when I should be
leaving—even at the last moment the acceptance of a couple of actors could have changed our plans. It just happened like this.)

  May 27, 1970–August 26, 1972

  May 27. This is to launch another volume of diary. It’s exactly four weeks since I got home from England. During my time alone there, after Don had come back here for his show, I kept a diary every day; oddly enough it was only a short while ago that it occurred to me I’d kept it in handwriting—which means that my much-complained-of arthiritic thumb must either be much better or so much a part of my normal experience that I don’t notice it any longer! I do still prefer handwriting for a diary, this typing is an obstacle and makes you self-conscious, and I seriously considered going out and getting a notebook and writing in it this time too. But somehow that seems infantile here. When I’m away and haven’t a typewriter it’s necessary. Here, it’s just a caprice. Handwriting gives me a sense of privacy, but who’s kidding who[? N]othing I write will be permanently private unless I burn it; and I can just as easily burn a typescript.

  Am now really plugging away at Kathleen and Frank. My objective is to finish the three chapters covering the Wyberslegh period before my birthday, three months from now. Well, one chapter is roughed out already. But now there’s this prospect of maybe working on this film for Dean Stockwell.1 More about that after I’ve talked to him tomorrow.

  No more news from London. Clement Scott Gilbert writes saying why don’t we send the script to Richard Burton, who’s actually in town here at present. Robin French discourages me from doing this, perhaps because he has other plans for Burton. Anyhow neither Don nor I feel Burton would be any good, even if he wanted to do it. Clement has nobody else in prospect— except Albert Finney! Chetwyn hasn’t written at all to say what he thinks of the rewrites we’ve done since I’ve been home. Clement thinks it’s wrong for Tom to speak directly to the audience at the end and wrong for him to dance with Penelope and Mother. I’m sure we’re in the right about this. In fact, I think the idea of their dancing together is brilliant!

  May 28. I went into my workroom after breakfast this morning and, after a few minutes, I heard Don talking to someone and he called to me and I came out and there was David Hockney. I could hardly believe my eyes. David had just flown over nonstop from London. He looked younger and sprucer, although his jacket was stained, and he smiled in a self-contained manner. He seems to have left England quite suddenly. Don feels there is something wrong between him and Peter. David merely said he felt he had to get away and draw. He is staying at the Miramar.

  Dean Stockwell called to say he can’t come and see me today.

  We had Evelyn Hooker and Jo Lathwood to supper last night. While we were fixing the food, Evelyn and Jo had a big heart-to-heart. That was the point of the evening; Evelyn had said, rather rashly, that she’d like to give Jo some advice as a psychologist. So of course Jo needed no prompting to pour forth her woes. I heard Evelyn saying, “But why do you torture yourself with such thoughts?” At the end of the evening she had to concede that she didn’t think she could help Jo at all. At least not as long as Jo maintains her present attitude. When Evelyn reminded Jo that she too had lost someone, Jo implied that that wasn’t at all the same thing and not nearly so bad—in other words, better Ben [Masselink] dead like Edward [Hooker] than married.

  I have made a resolve, to read the rest of Dante before my birthday. Paradise or bust.

  May 29. Last night we went to a lecture by Shirley, Irving Blum’s wife and my former colleague at U.C. Riverside, on modern American art. It was very disappointing, deeply infected by that dreary heresy which regards artworks as automobiles which keep rendering earlier models “obselete.” Thus, Monet’s waterlilies were made obsolete by Jackson Pollock and his haystacks by Larry Bell’s glass boxes—that was the implication. Shirley is a really very sweet girl, though. We had supper with her and Irving and David and Brooke Hopper (who had gatecrashed the party) afterwards. The evening was originally designed as a gesture toward the Blums, a sort of thank-you for Don’s show. Don is mad at Brooke because she told him she’d buy the drawing he did of her if it was in the show and then she backed out and pretended that it wasn’t flattering enough! She is terribly stingy.

  Meanwhile, David has already started working. Asked what he would draw at the Miramar, he said everything in the room, the furniture, his clothes, the view from the window. How simple he makes life seem! Still no hint that there is anything wrong between him and Peter.

  A nice businesslike letter from Bob Chetwyn this morning. He is quite pleased with the rewrites and he mentions again the possibility of trying the play out in a small theater without any stars. We favor that too, of course.

  May 30. Am depressed, because it’s a grey morning and a public holiday, Memorial Day, and because Don is depressed about his work. In moods like this I always feel acutely the nervousness and instability of the life everybody is leading here. I don’t mean just the war2 and the recession3 and all the other political tensions—I mean the jitters of nowadays, the strain of living now and here. Partly, of course, this rattles me because I’m getting old; I feel I can’t keep up with it all. Why do things have to change so fast? It no longer seems exhilarating that they do. For instance, I mind enormously that they finally are going to put up this monster apartment building at the end of the street, two twenty-floor towers. And yet, why not? Why shouldn’t we have to move? We’ve been here ten years, already.

  Every day I say in my prayers: help me to know that you are my only resource.

  After all this long time, Don decided to put a piece of plywood under his half of the bed; I’ve had one under my half since the beginning. It is a great success; he says he sleeps much better and it helps his back.

  David, Jack [Larson] and Jim [Bridges] to supper last night. I barbecued swordfish steaks. Don and I definitely do not have the art of casual cookery; we always make such a production out of it and I’m sure this gets on our guests’ nerves. Jim is deep in rehearsals of a lot of short plays, including two of Jack’s; he only brought part of himself to the house. And David wasn’t entirely present either; at least, I felt he wasn’t, having become accustomed to seeing him always with Peter. Jack rattled on about Nixon and the students.4

  He feels a better age is at hand, when all the old conservative farts will have died off.

  May 31. Soon after I finished writing the above, Swami called on the phone and read me a passage from a letter Swamiji wrote to the Hale sisters on July 31, 1894. Swami said, “I was reading it this morning and it made me cry”:

  Say day and night, “Thou art my father, my mother, my husband, my love, my lord, my God—I want nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee. Thou in me, I in Thee, I am Thee. Thou art me.” Wealth goes, beauty vanishes, life flies, powers fly—but the Lord abideth for ever, love abideth for ever. If here is glory in keeping the machine in good trim, it is more glorious to withhold the soul from suffering with the body—that is the only demonstration of your being “not matter,” by letting the matter alone.

  Stick to God! Who cares what comes to the body or to anything else! Through the terrors of evil say—my God, my love! Through the pangs of death, say—my God, my love! Through all the evils under the sun, say—my God, my love! Thou art here, I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not of the world’s but Thine, leave not then me. Do not go for glass beads leaving the mine of diamonds! This life is a great chance. What, seekest thou the pleasures of the world?—He is the fountain of all bliss. Seek for the highest, aim at that highest and you shall reach the highest.5

  While Swami was reading this, I kept saying to myself: He is telling me this because he knows I need spiritual instruction. I am being instructed by a saint. Even if I can’t feel much, I do believe that things like this are being stored up inside me and that they are valuable, in a way I can’t yet imagine.

  Don says he is more depressed when he’s with me because I’m so optimistic. When he’s alone
he knows he can’t afford to let himself get depressed. But you can’t help that, he says. It’s just role playing.

  In the afternoon we went with David to Griffith Park, where there was a Gay-in. Only it wasn’t very gay or very well attended. The police had been by, earlier, harassing them because they were distributing leaflets without a permit. Nobody got arrested but it scared a lot of people off. Lee Heflin was there, and a friend of his stamped our hands with the sign of a hand in purple ink, denoting some gay-liberation front group; they took a lot of scrubbing to get off. Lee introduced me to an elderly man named Morris Kight(?)6 who was wearing a silk dressing gown and a funny hat and who appeared to be directing the proceedings. He married two pairs of girls, explaining that this wasn’t a marriage but a “mateship.” We had to join hands and chant something about love. Kight also introduced me publicly and called on me to speak, so I said, in my aw-shucks voice, “I just came here because I’m with you and wanted to show it.” There were several journalists with cameras and quite possibly Don and I will appear in the Free Press or The Advocate or elsewhere. Well, at least it was a political gesture of sorts. David was taking photographs too, as usual, and a black boy came up and protested that he didn’t like his picture to be taken without his permission. I thought maybe there was going to be trouble but there wasn’t. The black boys were almost the only attractive ones there. There were lots of dykes, black and white.

  Then we went to see a film about Vietnam, [In] the Year of the Pig. The most damning parts of it were simply clips of various politicians, making speeches. It was being shown at the Bay Cinema in the heart of Republican Pacific Palisades, but the audience was strongly in favor of the film, quite big and mostly young.