The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  Today is almost chilly, after a very hot day yesterday. Just my luck. Yesterday I spent in Hollywood, and had to listen to poor old Larry Holt going on about Tommy [Thom]. How he bullies that boy and blackmails him emotionally is not to be believed. Oh, how sad.

  Renewed interest in filming A Single Man, by a producer named Bruce Stark.fn732 At first I rejected this idea, but it occurs to me that it just might be a good opportunity for setting up a collaboration with Don. I shall phone Don and ask him about this when I call him on Saturday evening to wish him a happy Easter. “The Christmas Carol” is said by Robin French to be about to roll again. And Ray Henderson and I are to have a talk with Burgess Meredith about the finale of Dogskin.

  Today I got to the end of 1905 in Kathleen’s diary.

  A letter from Stephen. He met Senator McCarthy on the plane and they talked and Stephen was driven home in one of his cars, and has contributed one hundred dollars to the McCarthy fighting fund.fn733 Stephen says, of his visit, “I don’t think we’ve had a time which was so like old times that I can remember. Somehow Peter and David contributed a lot to the atmosphere. They are both quite new and at the same time something which we have known all those years reborn and able to carry on a conversation like equals, I mean in age.” This is a perfect specimen of Stephen’s literary incoherence, but I sort of know what he means and it makes me happy because I felt the same.

  Yesterday I saw Gerald. He was pretty much the same; his voice may be a bit more distinct. The curious thing was, it seemed they’d been expecting me last week. But, when I didn’t show up, Michael never attempted to get in touch with me. I had failed them, and that was that. This is the perfection of silent bitchery; it needs nothing added to its silence. I can appreciate it because I sometimes practise it myself.

  April 15. Easter Monday. I didn’t do much in the way of a resurrection yesterday as I was busy reading a sex paperback called Caves of Iron.fn734 Also Don Coombs came to breakfast and then visited Elsa with me; she wanted him to help her find magazines from his department at the library with articles about Charles. And then in the afternoon Tito [Renaldo] came by and brought a friend named Nelson Barclay(?)fn735 who wanted me to appear on a T.V. show—called, I’m afraid, “Boutique”! Said I would if I could do it with Laura Huxley (he suggested her). Tito again seemed terribly shaken up; his jaw worked nervously and it was an effort for him to get his words out. Before [Barclift] arrived, he spoke very movingly about his mental breakdown, and his loss and recovery of faith. He told me that he once burned his rosary and his copy of the Gita! You do feel that religion matters to him passionately, to the point of agony. And that is a great grace, of course. A grace almost entirely denied to gross unspiritual fleshly old Dubbin.

  The last three days, I’ve met with Jim Bridges and talked about his play version of Meeting by the River. We have really made quite a bit of progress, I think, and the dialogue seems to work, it is exciting. I was quite wrong to suspect Jim of dragging his heels on this project. Actually he has done an amazing lot of work, typed out practically one and a half drafts, despite all the movie writing he’s had to do.

  As always when we’re alone together, he’s quite a different person. He admits that Jack silences him. He adores Jack but feels he must get away from him. He says he is terrified of me, but I don’t think he is, really. He says he knows he has no culture. Maybe not, but he is very quick and perceptive, and he knows this too. He isn’t really a bit humble. In fact, he says he sees himself as a great producer, doing several jobs at once, writing, directing, making all sorts of decisions about music, sets, etc.

  At the gym on Saturday, Lyle told me that he is probably giving up the business in June. For the last year they have been losing money steadily. I haven’t the heart to tell him that this is because he has been so damned lazy. Anyhow it will be a terrible loss. I only hope someone else takes it on. Poor old Lyle, what will happen to him? All he seems to care about is making model racing cars.

  Don called on Saturday and said he will be back on Thursday next, the 18th, unless I get a last-moment telegram. Well, I am longing to see him of course. If only he doesn’t return disappointed and depressed!

  April 22. This morning I got a call. Don postponed for the second time; he was to have come today and now it won’t be till next weekend. I feel very sad. But it’s good, actually, because he’s done this job for the Royal Court and now the whole trip is justified. So I must stop moping and not be so lazy. The last four days I have had a bad stomach, but it’s better now, apparently because of some pills Dr. Allen gave me. He has married again, a German girl. He said to me, so ingenuously, “As you get older you begin to find there isn’t as much choice as there used to be.” I don’t [think] he can have meant this quite as crudely as it sounded. He added, “We’re very happy.”

  Jim and I have finished a very rough draft of the first act of A Meeting by the River. Jim doesn’t seem very inventive, but perhaps I make him shy. Anyhow, once again, I find myself doing most of the work. He sits and types, agreeing with nearly everything I suggest. I took him up to Vedanta Place last Wednesday for the reading, and he went to the temple for the Sunday lecture, quite of his own accord. He has also been reading An Approach to Vedanta. I tell him we’ll make a Hindu of him, but he says he is still fixated on his childhood religion, southern nonconformist, with lots of hymns. He has started to meditate, however!

  April 24. The weather is fine but with a nasty cold searching breeze which chills my back and makes my fingers quite numb even in the sunshine. Am depressed and sick again, with gas and stomach pains and the shits, but I don’t want to admit this to Dr. Allen for fear he starts a lot of tests. I feel I might get better if the wind dropped and it got warmer.

  It is clear that Jim doesn’t want to write this play, only direct it. He even said the other night that he wanted to give up writing altogether. He irritates me quite a bit, and yet he is truly good-natured and quite sensitive in many ways. He said, “I love Jack for his faults, the faults are what I love.”

  Am rereading Michael Campbell’s Lord Dismiss Us. Am not sure how I feel about it yet. It is very well written and well constructed, but sometimes there’s a nasty taste.

  I long for Don to come back—so I can love and think and feel and be a human being again. At present I’m just a dull old dying creature. I really do not find my own company amusing, and yet I often prefer to be alone. I wish God were nearer, and yet, in a dull way, I know he’s there.

  April 26. Stomach still nervous but very little gas and none of that stuffed up feeling.

  Having finished Lord Dismiss Us, I am impressed all over again; though the breakup of the love affair seems arbitrary. What the book chiefly leaves me with is a sense of the pricelessness of love. Anyone who shares it with anyone is to be envied beyond billionaires. And that brings me again to Don (whom I haven’t heard from yet as to arrival). He wrote such a wonderful letter yesterday, and I realize more than ever that this is IT. Not just an individual, or just a relationship, but THE WAY. The way through to everything else. This seemed to be obliquely confirmed by Swami this morning. He is after me to find a title for a volume of Vivekananda’s letters in English, and he called me because he thought he had found a clue to it in a quotation from one of the letters. Vivekananda writes, “Religion is the practice of oneness with the infinite, the principle that dwells in the hearts of all beings, through the feeling of love.”fn736 If you are tuned in on personal love, then you are on the same wavelength as infinite love. There may be terrific interruptions from the static of egotism and possessiveness, but at least you are on the right wavelength and that’s a tremendous achievement in itself.

  Yesterday night, Gavin and I went to the opening of Marlene Dietrich’s show here. It was really a wonderful experience. Not because of her singing, that was uneven and often spoiled by her mannerisms and too often repeated tricks; but because of the relationship which developed between her and us. The Ahmanson Theater (which is actually too big
for an intimate show of this kind) was packed, the applause was like a thunderstorm which was always in the air throughout the performance and kept exploding and even interrupting the beginnings and ends of songs; and then there were several occasions when people rose and applauded standing. All this wasn’t any the less moving because it was probably led by a claque. Because what one felt was that this was essentially a rite. A rite of enthusiasm. It was the enthusiasm itself, and our capacity for experiencing it, that we were celebrating; and she was the priestess. We were carried out of ourselves because we were moved, and moved because we were carried out of ourselves. We applauded our own applause. And Dietrich seemed to understand this so beautifully. There was so much humility in her reception of our emotion. She was so moved by it herself that she seemed quite beyond mere vanity.

  Dorothy came to clean house this morning. She told me she had lived in a very bad neighborhood (in New York?) among West Indians and that she had learned to defend herself. The best weapon is a bottle. “A man will go up on a knife but he will not go up on a bottle.” A bottle half full of hot water is good, because it breaks easily over your opponent’s head. Or else a coke bottle with the bottom smashed off, because of its weight.

  Am now reading through Frederick [Machell Smith]’s letters to Emily for my book. Otherwise the year 1906 is finished. (These will be included there because Emily read them through shortly after she moved into the Buckingham Street flat, and mentions this to Kathleen in a letter.) What a huge task this is! Yet, as a matter of fact, I have now worked through twenty of the diaries and have only(!) twelve more ahead of me.

  May 3 [Friday]. Something I forgot to mention about Dietrich. When we went round afterwards to see her—which was merely a formality, for she seemed hardly to know who we were—there was a man there from Time. He wanted to get some sort of statement from her. She refused. He giggled in that sick teasing bitchy way such creatures do, and asked, “Don’t you want to be in People?” Dietrich cried out, so everyone around could hear her, “I am not People!”

  I have been very sorry for myself and sad, these last few days. So terribly longing for Don, and also with an upset stomach, vagus nerve or whatnot. Dr. Allen thought perhaps it was the gallbladder, so yesterday I went through all the dreary jazz of X rays with gulps of barium. But now he says my gallbladder and stomach are functioning normally—as well they may, considering all the muscle massage I give them. So I will just have to ignore the whole thing. Probably it will get better as soon as Don gets home. He said, in a letter yesterday, that he’ll most likely return on Monday.

  Meanwhile, according to Robin French, George Schaeferfn737 has definitely been hired to direct “Christmas Carol.” He’s supposed to call me this weekend to start our work together.

  May 6. Don called last night, postponing his return. I talked to him again this morning, because I had made him feel guilty by telling him about my stomach pains and I wanted to reassure him. He had been worrying, and I’m glad I called again; we both felt very loving after our talk. It is so silly of me to mind his absence so much. I don’t during the reasonable daylight hours, and yet I keep reverting to the rather horrible feeling that this is a kind of illness, his not being here, from which I may not recover. Suppose he died, over there. I wouldn’t have any reason to go on living. That thought is simply terrifying.

  My pains are much much better.

  No call from Schaefer.

  Shall I go to England if they want me to? Not if I can help it. Shall I fly to New York for this medal presentation ceremony at the Institute?fn738 I may wriggle out of that, too.

  Some personal ads from the Los Angeles Press (May 3):

  Virgin guy (23) good looks but shy lonely sensitive & sincere seeks beautifully minded and empathetic girl to learn ecstasy of love’s ultimate experience.

  Warm sincere gay seeks him who too is sick of casual affairs and meaningless moments.

  AC/DC girl wanted by extremely sensitive couple for quiet (?) threesomes.

  2 well built young guys want 3rd well built stud for fun and games.

  Gay sincere goodlooking 27 with insatiable desire seeks same for fun.

  ENNUI?? Discreet M.D. will be personal photographer to uninhibited couple.

  Nice looking bi guy 21 like to hear from groovy people M & F no color hang-ups. Please pix if poss.

  Goodlooking yng prof man 28 is just a country boy at heart. City living is tolerable and a practical necessity but I don’t feel completely in touch with myself unless I’m grooving with the natural beauty and excitement of the great outdoors. I wonder if there isn’t another physically rugged but sensitive and intelligent yng man who might want to join me some weekend and who wouldn’t be afraid of a possible close friendship that sometimes develops in such an environment or of something even more beautiful if the magic is there.

  Eccentric scientist 28, would like to meet a girl who can understand him.

  Jim pointed out that at least eight of the ads in this issue are from the same address, 406 South 2nd Street, Alhambra!

  May 13. Stomach pains have switched to back pains. I have been very miserable and sorry for myself, and the ache of not having Don has been acute. And yet I know I mustn’t get him back by telling him too much about my ailments. How I hate being sick and lonely and old. No, I don’t mind being old, only the other two. I am miserable for Don. And there is absolutely no substitute. Am reading the transcript of some of the talks Elsa and Ned Hoopes have been recording for their book on Charles,fn739 and it’s all so grim, the cancer and the keen-eyed wife, eternally on the lookout for Charles’s loveboys.… At the same time, relations between Elsa and me couldn’t be better—the night before last I actually had supper with her and Ray and she fixed some delicious steaks!

  May 15. The weather is warmer and there is less wind, but my back is still bad, although I pretended to Dr. Allen that it is better because I am getting so sick of it. My belly and groin are shot with nerve pains.

  Nothing yet from Don and now I feel certain that he isn’t coming home for his birthday and in a way I am glad because I don’t want him to find me like this.

  Am reading the Lanchester-Hoopes transcripts. Parts of them are truly horrible. I even find Elsa’s frankness revolting; she has no business to be telling this to a gushy sob-sister like Hoopes, who is also a stranger. (Not that I’d be surprised if he has been making love to her.) Here are two extracts:

  They went out in cars … As they went, they waved to me, Hulterfn740 and Charles and Terry. Although I had no inkling of cancer, it didn’t cross my mind, I knew that Charles was dying. You know, one can have flashes that one is not going to see a person again. He had a heart condition, had a gallbladder operation by then, and I knew that I was a “free woman.” That’s a terrible thing to say in a way. I haven’t said it before, but that’s the way I felt.

  It was really like a sort of Ariel, being freed from Prospero. I knew that I was free of something. I didn’t know what I was in for, because missing a giant later is a terrible gap … Whenever a phone rings you wonder, “Is it for Charles or me?” but he’s not there anyway. And it’s still there, you know. Not unpleasant. Sort of a compliment that he does remain.

  May 18. Don’s birthday and he isn’t here. Talked to him after midnight last night—early this morning his time—and wished him a happy birthday. He said he had no date to go out to a birthday lunch or supper. His voice was so beautiful; it seemed full of tears and yet perfectly happy. (I don’t know really what I mean by this, but it was the impression I got.) He says he will stay on for the opening of the John Osborne play in Londonfn741 and then leave and be here this next weekend.

  I wish I understood life better—could see more clearly, I mean, what is happening to me. It is all a sort of vague dream, governed by compulsion. I go out to supper, like last night, and immediately know that I would rather be by myself at home. I want to be alone and just think about Don, brood on him, rather. And why do I like doing this? Because brooding on
Don is love, and as long as I am tuned in on love I am happy, or at peace, which is infinitely better and the same thing. I wish I could brood on Ramakrishna in the same way—then I’d really have it made. But Don is love too, and perhaps I must somehow understand that this is enough, and indeed the same thing. But meanwhile I am grim and compulsionistic. I drive myself to perform chores, be it writing this diary, or working on Kathleen’s diary, or copying bits out of Vivekananda’s letters, or reading the Laughton transcripts, or whatnot. I hate writing this diary but I make myself do it because I know from experience that I will gradually relax while doing it and let something inside me speak. At least, I occasionally will. I ought to write every day, just making myself.

  I still feel lousy and of course the thought arises that maybe I am perhaps seriously ill, that this indigestion and the pains around the groin etc. are beginnings of cancer. But I must keep reminding myself (instead of saying, Oh nonsense) that cancer is just another word. So I do have cancer? Lots of people have had it before, including poor wretched vulnerable terrified Charles, who had to face it with no one to help(?!) him but Elsa and Terry.

  (Part of my compulsionism is the way I keep carefully erasing and making corrections while writing this. As if an inspector were about to arrive and look it over.)

  May 19. The shits last night and now everything is out of whack again—my guts, groin, back, in addition to pains in the left knee and a sore throat on the left side. Had nothing for breakfast but tea and toasted honey-muffin without butter or jam. Am taking Festalanfn742 and Maalox. Have given up alcohol, the past three days. This morning the pain in the pyloric region was so acute that it woke me. My head feels dull. When I got out of bed, my stomach was enormous with gas … This isn’t fussing, you understand, just a medical report. My next appointment with Dr. Allen isn’t until the 23rd. Let’s see if this yields to treatment.