Waking up in the morning at the Alans’, to the anxious voice of the radio. It would drive me absolutely nuts, and they don’t even listen to it.
From Wyberslegh, I went down to Stratford and joined Don, and we saw Gielgud in Othello and stayed the night with him and drove back to London with him on the 13th. John was really no good at all as Othello; not even as “noble” as I’d have expected. The sets by Zeffirellifn225 weighed literally and visually tons; they crushed the play.
I do respect John, though. I even respect his vanity, because it is the humble vanity of a real honest to goodness professional.
Well, and now here I am, with lots and lots to do—restart the Ramakrishna book, get the Virginia Woolf article ready for Encounter, see if I can make a short story out of the hashish episode from my novel. I am stoking myself full of Tiger’s Milk and vitamins. Am going to the gym again, and very stiff from the first visit. Worried about the muscular ache and stickiness in my jaws. If anything, it’s getting worse.
October 24. Today a colored man named Mr. Bayless, recommended by the Mr. Gardner who painted the house, recommended by Dorothy, came with a truck and three others and started clearing the hillside. I had to drive him to a place whe[re] he could rent a saw for the cypresses. The saw was gasoline driven, instead of electric to which Mr. Bayless is accustomed. This bothered him greatly. Just as we got home, he exclaimed that we had forgotten to rent an extension cord for the saw. I reminded him that the saw wasn’t electric. He cried, “Ah’m slippin’.” But he didn’t seem to be. He is nearly seventy-one but he rushed about all over the hillside and reproved one of his assistants, a young Hercules, who was a lazy nigger and kept drinking water from the hose. Within three quarters of an hour, all the trees were down. It is sad to see the old Casa so bare; but it really made no sense, keeping the couple which were alive. Especially as Don still wants us to have a balcony. I heard from him yesterday, a very sweet letter of loneliness and not much news. But he seems to have lots of commissions.
Finished correcting the American proofs of Down There on a Visit and sent them off this afternoon. I keep worrying that maybe Tony Bower will object to the character of Ronny; but really he is quite sympathetic and merely a necessary advocatus diaboli.fn226
October 25. This morning, the saw Mr. Bayless had rented broke down. We had to take it back. The people were quite nice about this and indeed admitted that the saws were subject to defects. But still, I said to him, that didn’t alter the fact that they were going to charge him for the time he had lost, bringing the saw back to be exchanged. Said Mr. Bayless, “That’s what I’m harmonizing about.” He will make some perfectly simple statement, like that it’s a fine day, and then ask me, as if I had been puzzling for hours, “Now d’you get it?” He has a sort of wolf whistle which he repeats constantly. Poor old thing, today he couldn’t even stand up straight, he had tired his back so much by working.
The removal of the scrub on the hillside reveals a number of empty pint bottles which have been tossed up there from the roadway over the years.
Worried about the Berlin situation, which looks nasty. I shan’t have any rest until Don is back here from there. And then I shall worry about something else.
Saw Ted Bachardy and Vince [Davis] last night. They live in the midst of a sort of junk shop, largely composed of things Vince has made or painted. It is snug. But there was still a lot of strain and politeness between us. We aren’t nearly at ease with each other. The conversation could only subsist on movie talk.
Missed the gym, on Tuesday. That’s something I must never do. And now the field is clear. I have finished the proofs and have no other really pressing work; nothing I can’t do in small stages. My next job is to rewrite the Virginia Woolf article.
October 28. A high wind, searching everywhere and causing unease and dryness. I’m depressed. My jaw still feels uncomfortable and worries me. (Russell McKinnon, whom I talked to the day before yesterday, tells me [his wife] Edna is dying of cancer of the jaw.) I miss Don more each day. Russell thinks he ought to stay on in Europe and study art in France and Italy. I don’t want to stand in his way but I don’t want to live without him, either. And now I feel disinclined to write the Virginia Woolf article. I simply do not have enough to say about her. But it’s hard to make up my mind to tell Stephen this—when I am only too aware that part of this decision comes from laziness and part from a desire to get back at him for accepting and then rejecting “Ambrose”!
I love this house, though. And the calm of being here, among my books and belongings. Mr. Bayless finished the clearing of the hillside yesterday. It looks terribly bare and will probably erode badly in the first rains.
Yesterday I saw the Picasso exhibition at UCLAfn227 with Jo and Ben and Dana Woodbury. It is truly marvellous, and I don’t think there is any artist who has so fully explored High Camp. In the evening, I had supper with Jo and Ben[,] and Anne Baxter and Ranny Galt her husband were there. For them, Australia is obviously a purely subjective love nest. But we all three felt that, unconsciously, they gave one the most horrible picture of the Australians. For example, Anne was sick and couldn’t attend her own birthday party. So Ranny presided and she stayed upstairs. All the women guests knew what had happened and no one went up to see Anne or tried to help her, because that wouldn’t have been the thing to do. Anne does all the cooking for the two of them, but they never have the rest of the people on the “station” in to meals with them, because that isn’t done.
The day before yesterday, I saw Gerald Heard, Michael Barrie and Chris Wood for supper. I forgot to mention that, when I met him alone, before this, Gerald told me that he feels an important change has come over him. I couldn’t quite make out what this was, but it was apparently some kind of liberation. He feels he is becoming more and more prepared for death. He also repeated the story he told me before I left for England, that he saw a committee of drab schoolmasterish-looking men and they had just finished reviewing his case and had decided that he wouldn’t have to be reborn; though he had only just scraped through the test. Gerald says he had this vision right after the automobile accident on Oahu.fn228 He added, “I’ve never had an hallucination before in my life.”
Chris was Chris, as always. He has grown another “benign” cancer on his shoulder. Gerald says, with a certain satisfaction, that this is the price you pay for years of sunbathing.
October 29. Yesterday was devoted to Colin Wilson, who came over yesterday noon with a colleague from Long Beach, where he has been lecturing. (He leaves California today.) He at once started drinking beer and talking about his own books. Few enough people can be honestly egoistic in this way, and most of those few are bores, because they have nothing to say and because they are vain in the wrong way. Vain about their mere success. Colin isn’t a bore, because he is really intelligent and because, though he certainly is interested in success, you feel his interest is objective; it’s in success as a phenomenon. (He spent a long time discussing the question: is there such a thing as bad publicity? He had once posed for photographs with Huxley on the steps of the Athenaeum Club.) Also, he has some mad, half-serious ambition to become “the literary dictator.” While in the States, he has spent $1,200 already on phonograph records of operas. He doesn’t understand why one should travel, believes in roots, dislikes America because there is too much space, etc. etc. An opinion every ten seconds.
He wanted to meet Henry Miller and Huxley. Miller came around to the house, with his thirteen-year-old son Tony, a very cute tough little blond boy with blue eyes. I liked Miller at once. ( Jo and Ben had met him a few weeks ago, and again only a few days ago. They complained—or rather, Jo complained—or rather Jo and Alice Gowland complained—that Miller used such dreadful language and demanded so much to drink and also (said Jo) he looked at Ben “in a funny way.” This last I simply cannot believe, but never mind—) Yesterday, either because his son was present or he didn’t know us, he behaved beautifully and didn’t drink a drop. But what mattered w
as that he was so naturally sweet and really wise. Of course, there are traces of a pose: the homespun crackerbarrel philosopher who doesn’t understand intellectuals. But he is genuinely intuitive and plainspoken and he has digested his experience. I like his narrow squinty eyes and his bald head.
We drove up to see Huxley, who is living in a house Laura’s friend Mrs. Pfeiffer bought after her own was burnt in the great fire.fn229 It is even higher up the same hillside; in fact right at the top of the lower ridge of hills, with a splendid view of the Hollywood lake-reservoir a short walk away. It’s one of those old Hollywood houses, with a garden rising from ramparts out of the surrounding scrub; something secret about it. Only you can’t help wondering why there shouldn’t be another fire right there; there is a very considerable wild area between it and the lake. At this time of drought, the hills are a somber brown-black or green-black, like the landscape of a much colder climate; Colin was reminded of Cornwall.
Aldous looked rather withered. Colin was very brash and rather embarrassing. And Aldous’s reticence made his blunt analysis sound like an attack. Colin kept saying, “I dealt with your novels at some length in my book,” and asking, “Why couldn’t you and Mr. Hemingway have understood each other?” And Aldous was just pained. It simply isn’t in him to defend himself. What Colin was saying was that Aldous and Hemingway put together would have made one really great novelist, and this, of course, sounded rude although I knew that Colin, in his own ungracious way, was paying a sincere compliment—a greater compliment than I could honestly pay Aldous myself, because I don’t think that either Hemingway or Aldous could have produced the wherewithal to create one really great character, even if they had pooled all their resources.
Laura was nicer than I have seen her before; good-humored with Colin and playful but not patronizing.
As we drove back down the hill in the car, Tony Miller said, “When all of you intellectuals get talking, you never listen to each other and you never stop to think what you’re going to say next. When we kids talk, sometimes we won’t say anything for maybe five minutes.” But then he added, “I guess that’s maybe because we don’t have much to say.” Henry Miller was delighted at this. He told us that Tony hates books and writing and only cares for football and surfing and that he wants to be an engineer. He had made Tony write a hundred words on “Why I Hate Books.”
Later we went to see Charles and Elsa, who were at the next-door house. Charles rather drunk, recited a scene from Advise and Consent; his accent wasn’t quite good enough.fn230 Then we had supper with Gavin and Tom Wright, just back from their trip to Arizona and New Mexico, and we went on to see Gavin’s new house on Sumac Lane, which is really quite something. Colin was taken back to Long Beach by a not-quite-sober female friend, attractive.
Today I had lunch with Howard Warshaw, who was in town clearing up various matters after his mother’s death. He had drawn a wonderful picture of her on her deathbed, in a notebook of colored sketches he is keeping; mostly studies from Rembrandt. I felt more than ever that he is a remarkable artist.
He told me that his mother kept, from his earliest years, a book written to him, addressing him as “You,” even when he was still a baby and speaking always of his future and then of the impact of his various doings on her life. The whole thing was written on the assumption that he wouldn’t get to read it until she was dead, and indeed he didn’t. Wouldn’t this be an excellent framework for a novel? Howard’s mother kept a similar book for his sister.
Something I’d forgotten to record. The satisfaction with which Aldous told us how Corbusier built a large glass structure for the Indian government which looks marvellous but heats up to 140 degrees in the hot weather and is continually busting its air-conditioning.fn231 This was to illustrate the architect’s contempt for the people who have to live in his houses. (Aldous leaves for India shortly.)
Colin Wilson said one shouldn’t learn to speak any other language but one’s own. He had been thrilled by the photograph of Henry Miller’s daughter Valentine, in the paperback called The Intimate Henry Miller. Although we were late for the Laughtons, he insisted on stopping off at the Millers’ house in Pacific Palisades on the way back from the Huxleys’ and seeing her. She was a pale little girl in curlers. Rather embarrassed by the admiration of the “elderly” Colin.
Today I have written to Stephen and told him I can’t do the Virginia Woolf article. I think I am being quite honest about this.
Worry about my jaw. Depression after reading the Los Angeles Times, which is full of fallout shelters. I must lay off the newspapers. The newspaper reader dies many times before his death, the nonreader not nearly so often.
A story told me by Michael Barrie: Jesus and the Blessed Virgin go out to play golf. The Blessed Virgin is at the top of her form, drives and lands on the green. Jesus slices and lands in the bushes. A squirrel picks up the ball and runs off with it. A dog grabs the squirrel, which still holds the ball in its mouth. An eagle swoops down, picks up dog, squirrel and ball, and soars into the air. Out of a clear sky, lightning strikes the eagle, which drops the dog which drops the squirrel which drops the ball, right into the hole. The Blessed Virgin throws down her driver and exclaims indignantly, “Look, are you going to play golf or just fuck around?”
October 31. Very sad. It’s a grey day and cold. And no word from Don. Of course I know he’s busy but I can’t help feeling anxious just the same. This is one of the days when you feel all of the six thousand miles between here and London.
In Russia they’ve exploded the biggest bomb ever and taken Stalin out of his tomb.fn232 There’s a brush fire near Pasadena. And it’s Halloween, which means moppets.
Yesterday, Prema and his friend Ram from British Guiana and Swami Ritajananda came to tea. A purely symbolic act; but Ritajananda wanted to come and he is so sweet and going away soon to preach to the ghastly French. Then I had supper with Gavin at La Mer, who told me that Speed [Lamkin] once said to him that his Jimmyfn233 was the only person he’d ever lived with “of my own class”!
Sunday night, I had supper with the Bracketts. Xanfn234 wore black. It was like Mourning Becomes Electra. And then Ilka Chasefn235 and Dorothy Parker and the boy who plays Dr. Kildarefn236 and rather nasty Jack Gratefn237 and others showed up, and turned it into a very old and creaky drawing-room comedy. Watched The Power and the Glory on T.V. Olivier was awful and I could barely recognize Julie Harris. Then I was alone with Charlie and he began to tell me that [his friend]’s brain wasn’t really affected—only one lobe—and he could be cured, and the woman was going to recover, and the whole thing had been greatly exaggerated, etc. etc.fn238
November 2. Still nothing from Don. I had so hoped there’d be a letter today. I’m worried, although I know how hard it must be for him to find time to write. And this morning Russell McKinnon called to say that he and his wife are going over to Europe almost at once and that he’ll be seeing Don. I sort of fear that they may persuade Don to stay on indefinitely, which is what Russell wants.
I miss Don more and more every day; without him, life seems really quite meaningless. And I’m increasingly anxious about my jaw. The dull ache continues and there is a sore right up in the back, apparently caused by my bridgework. Yet I don’t want to go to either Dr. Lewis or Dr. Sellers; they are so gloomy and hospital minded. Patrick Woodcock would cure me if anybody can.
And now I’m feeling a kind of horror of California—though I remind myself that I was horrified by London too. The California horror has to do with the advertisement life which is lived here. The smiles, for instance, of the women in a bank this morning in Pacific Palisades; smiles that advertised Courtesy and Customer Handling and Financial Integrity and Friendliness. Oh, I am sick at heart.
Saw Gore Vidal last night. He is in town for a few days only. He keeps visiting at the White House. He thinks Kennedy is the most normal president we have had this century. That he is calm and undismayed and that he still enjoys his job, despite all the headaches. Kennedy wan
ts him to be his Minister of Culture, if Gore can figure out what a Ministry of Culture should do. Kennedy is well aware that Gore’s private life might be brought up—but, as Gore says, really there is nothing concrete to bring up except his novels. So maybe it will go through.
Gore doesn’t think there will be a war over Berlin, but he greatly fears the growth of fascism in this country and its victory in a few years. Meanwhile, he has written a play about the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus. And he was busy writing a scathing review of the military novels of Evelyn Waugh.
November 5. A glorious day. I feel absolutely sick with misery. No word from Don. It’s not so much that I really think anything awful has happened to him as that I long for a word. Without him my life is pointless.
Jaw still bothering me. And I have the shits. I am at the lowest ebb, despite the vitamin pills which a man at the gym sold me for ten dollars a hundred.
This afternoon I have to go off to Trabuco for two days. I hate leaving this house, simply because a letter might come from Don tomorrow. I am a mess.
November 8. Got back from Trabuco yesterday. Came down here to see the extent of the fire—L.A.’s biggest ever—which has been burning all through the surrounding hills from Bel Air to behind the Pacific Palisades. (There is ash everywhere, and if you open any of the windows it begins to drift in. This morning the World War II bombers kept swooping over the ridge which backs the view from my workroom window, dumping borate on the flames. They fly daringly low. Once I saw a great tongue of fire shoot up and lick at one of them. It is moving to see them being used for such a sane purpose.) Then, yesterday evening, I went back up to Hollywood and attended Kali puja, for no reason in the world but to please Swami. I hate the puja itself as much as ever—no, not hate, but it is quite meaningless to me, with all these posturing women fixed up in the saris. Even Sarada, with her hair loose on her shoulders but oh so elegantly arranged, seemed theatrical. Sat next to Jimmy [Barnett], now down at Trabuco, and gossiped cozily in whispers, waiting for Swami to asperse us with Ganges water. This he did vigorously, looking as if he were ridding a room of flies with DDT.
The Sixties Page 20