The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  Last night we had supper with Chris Wood, who seems to be seriously considering returning to England. He says however that he would never leave here until after Gerald’s death (Gerald has had another stroke and couldn’t be visited at all, last week). Also, he doesn’t want to take Paul Sorel to England and he doesn’t want Beau [his dachshund] to go through their quarantine. We talked a lot about Joe Ackerley, of course. It seems almost certain that Joe didn’t suffer at all. He was certainly very lively at Coventry, drinking a lot but not excessively. He had complained to his sister Nancy of pains in the chest; but when she found him it was in the normal attitude of sleep, he didn’t seem to have tried to get out of bed.

  A letter from Richard; he says that he doesn’t think the cute Danish son-in-law will leave the Bradleys’ house for some time, so they are all very crowded. He was taking them over to Wyberslegh “where there is more room to move about”—but I’m quite unable to picture what they would actually do there. Richard tells amazingly little in his letters. For instance, I suppose he has gone back to drinking. All the time I was with him in Disley he didn’t drink a drop, and neither did I; but not one word was said about this.

  Speaking of Disley reminds me of another happy day, or rather morning. It was on May 29—there was a break in the rainy weather, just for a few hours, and I walked up to the Bowstones,fn652 probably only a four or five mile walk but a long one for me after all these years in nonpedestrian Los Angeles. I was exhilarated by my own energy. “Such bloom rose around and so many birds’ cries, / That I sang for delight as I followed the way.”fn653 But was I really attending to the scenery? No. I was mostly thinking about Don—wishing, in a way, that he was with me, but even more that he could see me striding along and laugh at old Dobbin feeling the Spring in his bones. I laughed to myself, picturing him laughing at me.

  June 22. The prospect of these letters and diaries is quite discouraging, though I enjoy actually reading them. Today it was far more of an effort to get Granny Emmy’s letters into (more or less) chronological order than to read through Kathleen’s diary for 1891, as far as September 2, when her ex-beau, Anthony Thornhill, got married and Kathleen kept the leaf of the quotation calendar for that day: “Who seeks, and will not take when once ’tis offered, / Shall never find it more.” No doubt this seemed extra tragically ironical to Kathleen because it’s from Antony and Cleopatra (II.vii)!

  As for the texture of Kathleen’s life as a girl of 22-23, it seems to be made of dances, country house visits, gallery going, lecture going, church going, cricket watching, novel reading, letter writing, shopping—all somewhat compulsive. Most compulsive of all is a trip abroad, with catalogs of “sights.” But then, who can write of such trips but D.H. Lawrence? Nevertheless, all this while, Kathleen was getting on with her drawing and sketching and watercolors.

  Poor Bill van Petten is in St. Joseph’s hospital again with his detached retina. He seems wonderfully cheerful, says that he sees visions with his bandaged eyes, a vast ebony dome scarred by fires, perhaps sacrificial torches. But now he can’t go on the trip he had been so greatly looking forward to, with Artie and another teenager, to Outer Mongolia.

  Last night I read from the Gospel at Vedanta Place, for the last time till fall. A very big audience and the feeling of the end of the season and the hammy performance of a classic, like an old singer singing Carmen; everybody knows it by heart and enjoys it simply as an occasion.

  Richard Charlton, Anita Loos’s friend, took us to lunch yesterday and offered Don a show at the Phoenix Gallery and me two movie jobs, on a story about Suzanne Valadonfn654 (for Bardot!) and an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Does Charlton really mean business? We shall see. Am about to reread the Lewis book, which intrigues me, rather.

  The checks from Cabaret are now stopped until Getrude Macy has been paid off. Robin French says this will only take three and a half months—provided the show keeps doing huge business, as at present.

  A card from Bob Regester this morning. He is now in the South of France, apparently with Neil. He has already been in Turkey, which he says was “interesting.” I suppose the shooting on Light Brigade must be over by this time.fn655

  Being with Bob this time in London wasn’t such a success. No doubt because Neil wasn’t there, he was inclined to be bossy, and he showed a kind of possessiveness by harping on the theme that I am a hopeless alcoholic. If I did drink rather a lot it was because I was so depressed on first arrival—and of course the drinking led to deeper depression. I made a bad beginning by drinking heavily on the plane as well as taking Librium and Dramamine; in fact, I was so dazed on arrival that I walked right past the customs inspection, unchallenged! Then I drank all that day, but nevertheless woke up at 4:30 a.m. So I got a bus to Covent Garden and roamed around and ate three breakfasts, one of raw bacon and tea at the Garden, one of sausages at the West Kensington Air Terminal, and one of fish cakes at South Kensington Underground Station—all these from nostalgia rather than greed. The result was that I was so utterly exhausted that I slept right through a visit from Jeanne Moreau, whom I would like to have met, the next evening. She and Bob put on the record player in the living room and danced for hours without waking me.

  At a dinner party at Patrick Woodcock’s on the following evening, much fun was made of Stephen and his indignant statement about the CIA and Encounter; the general feeling is that he knew all the time.fn656 Rosamond Lehmann said that Stephen “does everything double,” he knows and he doesn’t know, simultaneously. She also said that John Lehmann’s autobiography is no good, because it isn’t frank. Lionel Trilling said that he doesn’t like Forster’s work as much as he used to.fn657 Rosamond, looking like a delicious suet dumpling covered with powder, said that Forster is not a great writer because he is prim and schoolmasterish and doesn’t know about Love. She is such a cow. I like Mrs. Trilling better.fn658 She had been to one of Timothy Leary’s sessions and had reacted much the same way as we had. Patrick Woodcock ( just off to watch them making The Charge of the Light Brigade) looked at my tongue and said there were no signs of cancer. Nevertheless, it bothered me all through my visit to England, and still does. Was rather surprised to find that Bob does not like Patrick, says he is a terrible bitch and gossip, never to be trusted.

  July 8. We just heard that Vivien Leigh is dead. Don is very sad, and I am sad too. She was curiously lovable—I mean, as a mere acquaintance. I suppose it was because she seemed so vulnerable.

  On one of the walls of the Canyon channel is written: “Good morning Sandy. Have a nice day today and every day.” This part of the wall is right opposite the back of an apartment house. What makes the inscription charming [is] that it must surely have been written one night to surprise Sandy when he or she looked out of the window next morning.

  When I saw Jo yesterday she said that she doesn’t much care now if she does leave Ben, everything has been ruined between them. I wish I had written an account of the scenes on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, right after they happened; now I’m disinclined to go into great detail. But it is a marathon sulk on Jo’s part and a marathon drink-in on Ben’s. Don says that of course if Jo had any sense she would allow Ben to spend two nights a week away from home, visiting Dee [Hawes] or any other girl he wanted. This would be the way to torpedo the Ben-Dee affair. But, as we both know, poor old Jo hasn’t any sense. She is playing outraged American womanhood, at sixty-five (or more). She actually said to me, “What do guys think they are, that they can treat girls like that!” What is so dreadfully sad is that Jo is really being confronted with her own old age and oncoming death; Ben’s behavior has merely caused this to happen and it’s not what she is ultimately upset about. Naturally, Don identifies more with Ben and I with Jo. And yet Ben’s act as the youthful prisoner of marriage in love with a girl of his own age is pretty grotesque too, in its own way; after all, he is well into the change of life. He is grotesquely self-conscious and literary about the affair, even when drunk (as he certainly wa
s when he talked to us on Thursday). He has chosen, after months of reflection, apparently, two adjectives: famous, to describe Dee’s personality, and precise to describe her physical movements in bed and elsewhere. (She is a dancer.) Jo was astonishingly indiscreet about her relationship with Ben—in a way I cannot imagine being to her—saying that they hadn’t had any sex in years and that anyhow he was “a lousy lay.”

  Tomorrow they are coming to supper together. Will they talk about it? And if they don’t talk about it, what shall we talk about?

  July 11. We did talk about it, but only in twos, Jo and Don in the kitchen while he was cooking, Ben and I out on the deck while we were barbecuing swordfish steaks. As soon as Ben began to talk, it was obvious he was very drunk; I hadn’t noticed it before. He burst out into a tirade against all the women, Dee and Jo included, who were nagging at him for drinking; “Hell, I’ve been drinking for twenty years, they never even knew I was drinking until I told them so myself!” He told me that there had been a terrible scene the night before, because Jo had found something he had written about her a year ago, discussing the difference in their ages. Ben’s constant complaint was that non-writers don’t understand “us writers”; “God damn it, when we write, that’s how we keep ourselves from having to go to a psychiatrist and pay twenty dollars an hour.”

  Then, toward the end of supper, while I was talking to Jo, she suddenly began to tremble and then stiffen, and then, sobbing, she told me in a low voice, “Something’s happening to me, I can’t hear what you’re saying.” Ben jumped up and stood over her, with guilty concern. Then they went out on to the deck together. Jo came back very brave, smiling. It was nothing, she said. But soon they left. Next day, Jo called and said she must have been a little drunk, she thought; and she added that she really ought not to drink at all, “in the state I’m in now.”

  It is so horrible, being with them. Jo’s jealousy and general despair is like a terminal disease. I guess it really is terminal, for she can’t snap out of it. And [she has a friend], apparently, [who] is in pretty much the same state about [her husband]; the only difference is, [the friend’s husband] has been having these affairs since they married.

  I keep thinking, what a lesson to me. And I needn’t preen myself on having cured myself of the disease. The Henry Kraft days aren’t so far behind.

  Total happiness in the Casa right now. Three nights ago, we had supper alone together, out on the deck, for the first time this year. (Maybe that’s partly why I have a snivelly cold.) A very thin new moon showed itself over the hill for about fifteen minutes, just as we sat down to eat. “That’s a good omen,” Don said.

  Last night we had supper with Jinny Pfeiffer and Laura Huxley. Laura had a whole lot of criticisms of her bookfn659 from the publisher, so I found myself promising to read it through again and consider each of them carefully. Jinny is concerned about Juan; he is bitter because he feels the anti-Mexican prejudice in his school. Jinny thinks he feels the lack of a father. Juan was even impressed by the political success of Julian Nava, just because he’s a Mexican and has been elected to the L.A. Board of Education.fn660 She says Juan murmured to himself, “He’s my dad.” So now she wants to get Nava to come to the house. This sentimentality makes Don indignant. “What the hell does it matter if someone has a father or not?”

  We got home to find a red toy fire chief’s hat in the mailbox. Round it was a paper ribbon inscribed: “Far bright. Star light. Bright land. Over hand. (When the moonlight falls upon the water). Ian Whitcomb’s birthday tranquil, from Nancy.” And another: “Happy birthday Ian Whitcomb. Happy birthday. You are a picnic. Happy birthday from Nancy Jane.” This is “flower children” talk. On July 6, the day Ian Whitcomb was coming to us to have supper and see [the movie] The Kid from Spain at Royce Hall, this girl Nancy called. (Ian must have told her that he was coming to us, but he denied this.) So I told her he was coming at seven, and she suddenly appeared, from the desert, with two or three other “flower children” including a middle-aged man. They had a skillet and they had come to cook hominy grits specially for Ian—because I suppose they thought that he would never have eaten them, being British. Ian was much embarrassed and told them to come and see his show and cook the grits on the stage, so it would be a happening.

  July 19. Alarmist reports are issuing from the radio—10,000 or maybe 100,000 hippies are expected to descend upon California in the near future; and this, say certain doctors, may start a series of epidemics, because the hippies have syphilis, gonorrhea and hepatitis!

  Have just written a letter to Glenn Porter (Chandala, as he now calls himself) saying that I won’t endorse the Vietnam Summer antiwar project.fn661 I rather hate to do this, but I have such a deep-down feeling that the whole Vietnam antiwar movement is something I must keep away from. Why do I feel this? On the rational level, I’m opposed to the kind of “just you hit me!” attitude which is designed to put the police more and more hopelessly in the wrong. (The latest idea is to use only mothers and children in these demonstrations.) I suppose it may have been better justified in India, where the population was subject to a foreign power, the British, and just dumbly obstructed that power as a last resort. But in this country the obstructors aren’t the helpless victims of imperialism. If the police push them around they are damn well going to sue. God knows, I hate the police as much as anyone could; but I also know in my calmer moments that this is no way to deal with them, this will only alienate them more completely and drive them to identify themselves with the forces they represent—the money interests which actually want the war to go on. Whereas the police, and other such agents of authority, should ideally be seduced from their allegiance to the war-making forces; that’s obvious.

  Oh, I know very well the arguments on both sides of this. You can say, a peace demonstration of this kind is always used by those who merely wish to shake the foundations of the administration in any way possible—that is to say, by the extreme Right and the extreme Left, in all its aspects. And to this you can answer, what do I care who uses this demonstration? Its aims are aims I believe in, and if I suddenly find myself with allies I don’t trust that doesn’t invalidate the aims.

  But, below the rational level, I am aware of another feeling; as a pacifist I must deny the rightness of every war, even the most apparently righteous ones. This war is too obviously unrighteous—indeed it is even politically deplorable, a mistake to be corrected as soon as possible, even from the point of view of the administration. Therefore objection to this war is primarily a political objection … Is that mere dainty mindedness or indeed utter double-talk? I really don’t know. I only feel … And I will add this, I believe Aldous would have agreed with me. And Gerald Heard.

  (Gerald is still alive but very weak. Chris Wood sees him, and Peggy Kis[k]adden. Michael never suggests my coming but maybe I ought to try to see Gerald again anyway; it is so hard to know if he really wants to be visited, any more.)

  Jo is now concentrating on Ben’s alcoholism. Dee has gone behind Jo’s back and told a member of Alcoholics Anonymous to call Ben on the phone. Jo is naturally furious. […]

  We saw Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus last night again. No film creates a greater air of magic than Beauty; particularly the dining room where human hands hold the candles and the beautiful dark faces of the live statues on the fireplace breathe thick smoke and follow Beauty with their eyes. And then there is that unforgettable last long shot in Orpheus, with Death and her assistant Heurtebise being led away among the ruins by the two motorcyclists, under arrest.

  July 31. Herb Compton, the young librarian from Sydney, Australia, who came to see me on the 28th, told me how happy I seemed. I said, I have every reason to be happy, and that is true. This time with Don, these last few weeks, have been among the happiest I have ever spent with him. Enough of that, I’m superstitious.…

  These are the projects which I might conceivably be involved in, sometime in the nearer or farther future: a film about Rimbaud and Ver
laine for a producer named Kenneth Geist, an adaptation of A Meeting by the River which Jim Bridges thinks he wants to make and wants me to help him with, a film version of Tennessee’s “One Arm” with Jim Bridges directing, The Adventures of the Black Girl (which now seems a little more likely to be okayed by the Shaw estate) and the expanded musical version of Dogskin made by Ray Henderson and to be directed by Burgess Meredith—oh, and I forgot the Lulu adaptation which I have now promised to do with Anthony Page, in London next year.

  Dogskin is a bore, because Meredith and Ray want me to take the responsibility for it, and I don’t want to because after all it is really Wystan’s creation and I am very dubious about the lyrics which Ray has written and fairly dubious about the music. (Meredith seems to like it, however.) I have just written to Wystan trying to get him to at least listen to a tape or record of the music, so I don’t have to be the one to say yes or no.

  I do like Meredith. His story of how [Tallulah] Bankhead made a date with him at her apartment and received him naked. So he dutifully went ahead and “pumped her to the best of my ability” until she hastily warned him, “Don’t come inside me, darling, I’m engaged to Jock Whitney.”fn662 He also says he told Michael Arlen, “There’s nothing wrong with your stories that penicillin couldn’t cure. fn663

  Last night Don got a traffic ticket, the first in a long while. He was terribly upset, simply because it brought him into contact with a cop and he feels that cops are evil. At the same time he remembers that Vivekananda said that there is no such thing as evil. What can one do in order to understand this truth and live by it? Most of us, when bitten by a poisonous snake or spider, would be inclined not to feel hatred, saying that it was the creature’s nature. Should one try to feel this about cops? But then one is denying their status as human beings.