Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

by Christopher Isherwood

  At the end of the house was Igor’s studio, doubly a sacred place, since it contained an icon to which he prayed. One wasn’t forbidden to enter it, but Christopher seldom did more than peep in, respectfully, from its threshold. At the back of the house, steps led up to a small overgrown garden which was often invaded by neighborhood children. Christopher was enraged to think that the wealthy thick-skinned hog neighbors should allow their children to disturb Igor in the midst of his composing—but Igor didn’t seem to mind the noise they made. All he complained of was that they would turn on the garden hose and flood the hillside, making mud. He remarked mildly, “They are not always prudent.”

  On August 24, Christopher paid his first visit to Birmingham Hospital alone. He was terribly self-conscious. It seemed tactless and tasteless to have brought his relatively able body into this retreat of the disabled. His self-consciousness was soon cured, however. The day was hot and the hospital passages were very long. By the time he had reached his first patient’s bedside, Christopher heard himself exclaim (to his subsequent huge embarrassment), “My feet are killing me!”

  Christopher soon found that he could do what was required of him easily enough. Some of the patients were indeed interested in writing; others just played along with it out of politeness, because Christopher had taken the trouble to come to see them and because this was the official purpose of his visit. What all of them wanted was to have visitors who would gossip with them about the outside world, and specifically sports and show business. Christopher was no good at the former but better than average at the latter. It was also important that the visitor should be reliably regular, so that his visit could be looked forward to without fear of disappointment. Christopher wasn’t quite regular, but he did manage to visit Birmingham Hospital at least once and nearly always three or four times a month from then on until the end of May 1950, when the patients were transferred to a hospital near Long Beach. Sometimes he went alone. Sometimes he took friends with him—either attractive young actresses or people who could talk easily and amusingly. (Caskey was marvellous at this.)

  The paraplegics weren’t sentimental about themselves. Their humor when speaking to each other was brutal. They said “cripple” in the tone that blacks say “nigger.” They had no use for the sympathy of able-bodied outsiders, though some of them were probably prepared to exploit it. A visitor was on dangerous ground if he referred to the war. All these men were technically veterans, but that didn’t mean that they had all got their injuries in battle or even that they had seen combat. Those who had been paralyzed as the result of a car wreck in the States or of diving into an empty swimming pool at night while drunk were not charmed if you treated them as heroes or suggested that they had sacrificed themselves to save democracy.

  The quadriplegics were, I guess, all hopeless cases; there was nothing they could do to alter their condition. But the paraplegics could do a lot, provided that they persevered—laziness was their deadly sin and living death. Christopher talked to patients who had been developing their upper bodies doggedly, day by day, for years—first merely imagining the movement of a finger and sending out commands to it from the brain, again and again and again; then making the finger actually bend; then, months later, achieving a clenched fist; then, after more months, the raising of an arm. They had produced beautifully muscular golden-skinned torsos which Christopher often felt a lust to touch and kiss. They could swing themselves lithely into and out of cars and wheelchairs; cars with specially designed hand controls enabled them to drive around town independently. Sometimes they would even regain their sexual potency; this had been known to happen when a patient started to go to college and found himself amongst girls who attracted him.

  Nevertheless, beneath all this brave activity there lay the squalid basic fact of paralysis. You might move out of the hospital into a home of your own but you couldn’t move very far. You had to go back to the ward for periodical checkups, and you might need to be rushed there if you had a sudden relapse due to some toxic condition which could easily be fatal. And then came periods of depression, when you thought, “Who’s kidding who?” and were apt to drop your bodybuilding and studying and drink a lot and grow fat and dull. I remember that there was an American Indian boy who decided that he couldn’t endure this state of medical slavery any longer. His family came for him and took him back with them to their reservation. The doctors at Birmingham warned him that he was probably going to an early death, but he didn’t believe them or didn’t care. I never heard what became of him.

  Shortly before Christopher began visiting Birmingham, the paraplegics had been involved in the shooting of a film about themselves. This was The Men. Its script had been written by Carl Foreman. Fred Zinnemann directed it, Stanley Kramer produced it; its stars were Marlon Brando and Teresa Wright. Quite a lot of the paraplegics appeared as extras in the film and one of them, a beautiful young man named Arthur Jurado, had a speaking part, as “Angel.” The head doctor of the paraplegic section, Dr. Bors, gave Zinnemann technical advice and was represented in the film by a character called “Dr. Brock,” played by Everett Sloane.

  The actors who played paraplegics—Brando, Richard Erdman, Jack Webb and maybe a few others—all had to learn the techniques of getting into and out of their wheelchairs and of steering and propelling the chairs at racing speed along the hospital corridors. They also used to visit the bars in their chairs with the genuine patients and pretend to be paraplegics throughout the evening. Christopher longed to know how the patients themselves felt about this (to him) slightly indecent playacting. As far as he could tell, they regarded it as merely amusing—with perhaps an underlying pleasure in being, for once, on terms of physical equality with able-bodied young men who were celebrities into the bargain.21

  On September 4, Christopher went to a party given by [. . .] a visiting French journalist who had already interviewed him.[22] The party (all boy) was in a shacky old house in the Canyon. After things had got going, a young man danced nearly nude to a record of Ravel’s Boléro. His writhings and yearning gestures seemed ridiculous to Christopher, who rudely laughed. At the end of the dance, the young man announced that he was going into the bathroom and that all were welcome to join him there—“Except that old bag,” he added, with a venomous glance at Christopher. Most of the guests did go into the bathroom, where (presumably) they lined up to fuck the dancer. But the orgy was brief. Something went wrong with the water heater. There was an explosion, followed by yells from the scalded guests and their reappearance in various states of nakedness.

  On September 6, Lesser Samuels and Christopher checked a final typescript of The Easiest Thing in the World before handing it over to be mimeographed. During the next week, copies were sent out to the studios—to be rejected by all of them.

  On September 7, Christopher went down to Trabuco for its official opening as a monastery of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. The day-to-day diary says that Christopher drove there with the van Leydens and drove back with Iris Tree and Ford Rainey. I have no memories of this occasion.

  I can skim over the next two months fairly quickly. There are few outstanding events:

  Christopher did very little work during this period. Right at the end of it he notes, in the journal, that he has only got as far as page eighteen of his novel. He was steadily but very slowly revising Swami’s commentary on the yoga aphorisms of Patanjali. According to the day-to-day diary entry of September 12, he wrote a foreword on that day to Swami Vividishananda’s A Man of God, which is a life of Swami Shivananda. (Considering the slowness of Christopher’s writing, it’s hard to believe that he finished this job in a single day, even though it only runs to two and a half pages—but maybe Swami was pressuring him.) In the day-to-day diary there are also four references to talks about unspecified movie stories—with Lesser Samuels on October 7 and 24, with Lesser and Aldous Huxley on October 20 and with Aldous on November 3. These were almost certainly just discussions, without anything being pu
t down on paper.23

  Meanwhile, Christopher saw quite a lot of people, with or without Caskey. These included Iris Tree and Ford Rainey, the Beesleys, Jim Charlton, Hayden Lewis and Rod Owens, Jay Laval, Jo and Ben Masselink, Gerald Heard, Michael Barrie, the Huxleys, Chris Wood, Salka Viertel, Frank and Nan Taylor, Peggy Kiskadden, John van Druten. In the day-to-day diary, there is no mention of the Stravinskys; they were probably out of town a good deal.

  Christopher and Caskey were still having sex together, despite their strained relationship. But Caskey often went out for the night and he spent weekends at Laguna Beach. Christopher would then spend the night with Jim Charlton or with a young man named Russ Zeininger. Russ had originally been picked up by Caskey, late in August. But Russ didn’t at that time want to be fucked, so Christopher took him over—at first out of mere politeness. Later Christopher became quite fond of Russ, who was a friendly, intelligent person. Their sexual relations weren’t thrilling but were adequate. Russ had an unusually small cock. Christopher was no size queen and this didn’t bother him unduly. Russ has remained a friend to this day—though seldom seen.

  Tennessee Williams came to Los Angeles at the end of September, to talk to Irving Rapper and others at Warner Brothers about the forthcoming filming of The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee had Frank Merlo with him. Christopher and Caskey saw them on the 23rd and again on the 25th. Christopher was certainly meeting Frank for the first time. I have an idea that Caskey had met him already, sometime in August or September of 1948, while Caskey was still in the East. Caskey liked Frank from the start, he indeed said that he liked him even better than Tennessee. Christopher also took to Frank at once and soon became deeply fond of him—as nearly all of Tennessee’s friends were. Frank’s racial background was Sicilian. He was small, lithe, muscular, sexy, with a long pale face and black hair. You could imagine him taking part in a vendetta; he was capable of rage, loyalty to the death, enduring passion. And, at the same time, he was campy, funny, gay, quite as ready to dance as to fight. Frank looked after Tennessee in every way, arranging his travels and his parties, cooking, coping with hustlers, agents and unwelcome callers, giving him shrewd business advice. He was the ideal nanny; the truest friend and lover Tennessee could ever hope to have. Tennessee was well aware of this. He loved Frank dearly, though he often behaved badly to him. They had shattering Latin quarrels which were usually short.

  On October 3, an FBI man named Roger Wallace[24] came to talk mto Christopher about Agnes Smedley. (FBI men are apt to visit in pairs and I have the impression that Wallace had a colleague with him. If so, his name isn’t mentioned in the day-to-day diary.) Wallace had read Journey to a War and knew of Smedley’s meetings with Auden and Christopher in Hankow, in 1938. He asked if Christopher could add any details to that account. Christopher could remember none. Then Wallace put a question which seemed to Christopher so ridiculous that it must be a joke: “Do you think Agnes Smedley is a communist agent?” Christopher retorted: “Do you think Stalin is a communist agent?”—and went on to say that the word “agent” suggests undercover activity; how could it be applied to Smedley, who bombarded the U.S. government every week with public denunciations of its crimes against the people of the communist world? Wallace smiled at this, and the interview was soon concluded in the most friendly manner, without the faintest hint of any accusation against Christopher himself for having associated with a notorious Red. (Christopher thought he could detect, in Wallace’s attitude, the sophisticated contempt of an FBI professional for the crude standards of the McCarthy amateurs—but maybe this was wishful thinking.) Then why had Wallace taken the trouble to visit Christopher at all? Christopher was inclined to believe that his name had been merely one of many on a list of routine checkups to be made, and that Wallace had chosen him because he lived near the beach and could therefore be used as an excuse for Wallace to spend a couple of extra hours away from the office, sunbathing and swimming.

  On October 10, the day-to-day diary records that Christopher went with Jay Laval to court—this would have been the West Los Angeles police court—to be present at Caskey’s trial. Since Jay accompanied Christopher and since the 10th was a Monday, I assume that Lennie Newman was also involved and that their arrest was the result of some offense they had drunkenly committed during that weekend. Whatever it was, they didn’t get sent to jail. No doubt they were fined.

  Also on the 10th, Christopher went to the Vedanta Center to say goodbye to Swami. He left for India next day, taking three of the nuns with him—Sarada, Barada and Prabha. This was Swami’s second return visit since his arrival in the States in 1923. His first visit, with Sister, had been in 1935.

  On November 8, after a lapse of nearly three months, Christopher made an entry in the journal. After noting that this is his personal Initiation Day—initiation by Swami in 1940, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1946—he resolves to keep up the journal more regularly, to write three articles he has promised, to get on with the Patanjali book and with his novel.25 “This summer has been really disgraceful. I don’t think I can ever remember having been so idle, dull, resentful and unhappy. . . . I feel sick, stupid, middle-aged, impotent. . . . I bore myself beyond tears.”

  Christopher also records that, “My life with Bill has reached such a point of emotional bankruptcy that he is leaving, by mutual consent, in a day or two, to hitchhike to Florida to see his sister.” What Christopher calls “emotional bankruptcy” was actually boredom on Caskey’s side and frustration on Christopher’s. They were weary of being together—though Christopher, as usual, wouldn’t quite admit this and left it to Caskey to make a move. One symptom of their weariness was that they had stopped quarrelling. No doubt most of their friends thought they must be getting along quite well together, and were surprised by Caskey’s sudden departure. In the journal, Christopher comments: “Will this solve anything? It didn’t with Vernon. Well, anyhow, we have to try it.” I don’t think that either of them regarded this as the beginning of a permanent separation. But maybe Christopher was half-consciously hoping that now they might gradually drift apart, painlessly and without fuss.

  Caskey left on November 11. I can’t remember any details of a parting scene; no doubt it all happened very quietly. What I do remember is that that night, after Christopher had returned from a party and gone to bed, he was wakened out of a doze by Jim Charlton. Jim came bounding up the stairs in the darkness, stripping off his clothes, and jumped naked upon Christopher, panting and laughing. Christopher was amused, sexually aroused and deeply touched—the dog had sensed that his master would be needing him. Their lovemaking was the perfect prelude to a happy holiday from Christopher’s domestic life.

  On November 15 there is a journal entry, complaining of a spell of hot weather which is making Christopher lazy, of a sore throat which sometimes almost prevents him from swallowing, and of the cost of entertaining people in restaurants while making “infinitely cautious overtures to prospective affairs.” The only “prospective affair” I can identify was [. . .] a very good-looking young actor, who flirted with Christopher over a considerable period but never put out. Christopher’s complaints about wasting money in restaurants are actually an indirect compliment to Caskey. For Caskey—despite all his wild outings—had remained a strictly economical housekeeper and a fairly regular provider of excellent home-cooked meals.

  The next journal entry, November 18, is mostly about Jim Charlton. Christopher had spent the previous night sleeping at Jim’s apartment, down on the beach near the pier. This was a domestic, not a romantic evening. Christopher, who had just given up smoking, felt “somewhat dumb and dazed” and his sore throat “was closed, it seemed, to an aperture the size of a pinhole.” After supper (and plenty of drinks, no doubt) both he and Jim dozed off, waking at 3:00 a.m. just long enough to get into bed. In the morning, Christopher felt happy and peaceful. He adds that his thoughts about Caskey are still resentful “—with a kind of wondering horror: how did I ever stand it? The great thing, now, is to relax
.”

  Here, for the first time, Christopher tries to describe Jim as a character. I have quoted some of the description already (see here).26 Its tone suggests that Christopher is still rather in love with Jim—and yet this romantic, sexy, amusing, intelligent and considerate lover—friend evidently isn’t enough for Christopher. He complains that Jim can’t be exclusively loved, because he is a Dog Person and therefore everybody’s property. But the truth is that Christopher found Jim too restful, too easy to be with, too predictable to be all absorbing. Sometimes, by way of a change, Christopher would deliberately provoke Jim to anger and once or twice Jim even hit him. But there was never any real tension, never any deep jealousy or clash of wills between them. And Christopher’s nature needed tension, much as he hated it when Caskey created it for him.

  On November 18, Christopher had supper with James Whale, the film director, his friend David Lewis, and two young makers of “underground” films, Ken Anger and Curtis Harrington. Christopher could remember Whale as a young cute redheaded actor in a revue at the Lyric, Hammersmith, back in the twenties, but I don’t think they had ever met before, either in England or in California, although Whale lived near the Canyon, on Amalfi Drive. Ken Anger (whom Christopher had known since he was a strikingly attractive boy named Angermayer, fancied by Denny Fouts) showed his soon-to-become-famous film, Fireworks, which was later praised by Cocteau. Christopher didn’t like it and said so, after getting aggressively drunk on Whale’s strong martinis. He thereby offended Anger and also (to his great regret) Whale. Curtis Harrington—also destined for celebrity, if not fame—[. . .] had made a short film called Fragment of Seeking, which Christopher called Fragment of Squeaking.