Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

Gerald sees, in this epoch, the steadily increasing destruction of “the ultra-clay of consent” which binds society together. Now there is hardly any more left. The Anglo-French battle at Oran destroys forty years of work on the Entente Cordiale.70 As technical efficiency increases, consent diminishes, and the structure falls apart. The day of Germany is perhaps already nearly over. France is already disintegrated. Now it is Russia’s turn. This will be the theme of his new book.

  The problem of the future—to create new “ultra-clay,” new force. Because, when this war period is over, people will have lost all faith in an earthly utopia. The question is, how shall the new force be organized—by setting up self-supporting communities on a monastic plan, or by working through existing institutions, such as Baptist seminaries, which are at present bankrupt of ideas? This will be discussed next Sunday, by Gerald, Allan Hunter, Huxley, Daily and others. Gerald asked me to come and listen to them.

  War, says Gerald, seems to have begun as a form of dance. The Chinese character for “war” is the character for “dance” with one radical added. Perhaps the “warlike instinct” can be developed backwards again to its harmless, embryonic form, through competition in sports.

  All evil is in time. Like animals, we cannot see a thing when it is moving slowly. We can’t experience horror at evil until its movement is speeded up. If ten people die within six months, each in a different manner and in a different place, we don’t care much. If ten people die within six seconds, all together in an automobile accident, we are shocked.

  I came away from him feeling so calm and happy, as I usually do. I wish I could live in a temple where he was a monk, and just sweep the floor and listen.

  A party at Salka’s. Vernon came under protest and got drunk. Later, he poured out his resentments and fears. I don’t treat him as a grown-up person, an artist—he says. I lost my temper, argued, talked of “affection” in a voice cold with dislike. What a mess it all is! I am simply being confronted by myself at the age of nineteen. There is so much in Vernon to admire and respect, and he is struggling so hard. How often I forget this! What if he is priggish and humorless sometimes? Can’t I supply enough humor and understanding for both of us? If I can’t, what is the use of having been through all those quarrels with M.?

  July 11. A postcard arrived for Happy Bayley this morning: “Men of Tomorrow. Business meeting and beans. At Dr. Brown’s. 777 Fiske Street. Please show up. Chuck.”

  Lunch with Robert Stevenson,71 at RKO. He wants me to write an episode for the film they’re doing in aid of the British War Relief fund.72

  July 12. A cable from M. to say Uncle Henry was buried yesterday. I often used to wonder just when this would happen—and I always half knew that when it did, when Marple and all the money became mine, it would be too late. It is too late now—not merely because of the war, but because the absurd boyhood dream of riches is over forever. It is too late to invite my friends to a banquet, to burn the Flemish tapestry and the Elizabethan beds, to turn the house into a brothel. I no longer want to be revenged on the past. Several weeks ago, I wrote to M. that Richard [Isherwood] is to have everything, house and money. It’s his, not mine, by right, because he loves the place and is prepared to live there. I confirmed this by cable today.

  Poor Henry—he must be glad to get free of all this mess, at last. I’m glad he died in comparative comfort, with his housekeeper and valet at his elbow. I was fond of him, and he of me, in our different ways. No doubt he always thought of me as being after his money—as indeed I was. But this seemed to him perfectly natural and proper. He had the eighteenth-century conception of the relation between uncle and heir.

  He had nothing whatever to do with 1940. He spoke another language, which has long since become obsolete. He thought in terms of “places” and family relationships, entails and mortgages. He would say contemptuously that a man wasn’t “worth a penny piece,” meaning that he had no unearned income. He belonged to a ninetyish world of smart Catholicism—in which scandal was sniggered over at the end of dinner, and one’s confessor was like a rich man’s lawyer—paid to get you out of awkward spiritual jams. He said that “certain kinds of sin can be very beautiful.” He burnt incense in the drawing room, preferred memoirs to fiction but was a great expert on Dickens, whom he called “delicious.” Sex, in his late middle age, he found “extwornrally soothin’.” Italy was his spiritual home: he spent every winter in Rome and always approved of Mussolini, who had made the trains run on time. Once, when he was young, he entered a monastery, intending to give up the world—but, after a year, he got rheumatic fever and left. The rest of the family always sneered at him for this.

  July 13. Vernon has a terrible cold. He copied a Renoir head of a little girl, and produced the face of a murderess, with bulging corpse-cheeks and a stolid pout of hatred, all in a deep, luminous mucus green. When he had finished it, we both laughed a great deal.

  July 14. This morning, Aldous, Maria, Matthew and three of his college friends came with us to Allan Hunter’s church, to hear Starr Daily speak. To my dismay, it was quite a function. I hadn’t expected so many people in disturbing, flowery hats. Evans Carlson (whom I haven’t met since China) was there. And Glen Clark—the track coach who uses psycho-spiritual methods to train his runners. Also, of course, Gerald.

  One’s beliefs lead one into some funny places! I wonder what M. would think—seeing me sitting in the front pew of a Congregationalist church? Parts of the service moved me, because they were so informal. Allan behaved much more like the chairman of a meeting than like a minister. Daily still has a prison grimness about him which is very impressive; but he’s got too much of the professional pulpit manner. He talks too glibly about “Lerv.” Glenn Clark is stout and funny. Only Gerald, Aldous and Carlson seemed entirely above suspicion.

  Nevertheless, this service, and the picnic meal afterward, and the discussion in the crypt, and the fundamentalist jargon of Mrs. Daily, and the quotations from the prophets were all very good for me. The dainty little Ego shrinks back, oh so fastidiously, from all this middle-class “togetherness.” It wants its religion to be socially and intellectually chic. It would much prefer to talk about God at a smart cocktail party.

  Carlson was very sympathetic—like a strange, weatherbeaten, prophetic buzzard. He described how he first discovered, while working in Nicaragua, that you could handle the native police by nonviolent methods. Two former police chiefs had been shot by their own men, in the back. So he made a point of always walking in front of them to show his confidence. He never used an interpreter, lest he should lose personal contact with the prisoners he was trying: if he couldn’t understand or make himself understood, he laboriously looked up the words in the dictionary. He never condemned anyone until the prisoner had first confessed his guilt.

  Aldous’s speech was much the best. He pointed out that power comes into the organism from above and from below—up through the animal level and down through the spiritual level. But it can’t circulate, because it is checked by the Ego—the level of self-consciousness which is in the middle. “Animal grace” is the functioning of the organism in accordance with the laws of its physical being: the lilies taking no thought for the morrow. “Spiritual grace” is the functioning of the organism in accordance with the laws of its spiritual being: we are all a part of absolute Reality. “Human grace” is pseudo-grace. It is only a projection of the Ego—into patriotic nationalism, for example. It may seem selfless, but it never really is. The whole problem of spiritual life is to keep the self-conscious Ego quiet. To stop it from interfering on the two other levels and allow them to function naturally.

  The Ego wants to interfere. It commits original sin—the setting up of its own self-conscious power against the natural powers of body and soul. On the animal level, this interference produces physical disease; on the spiritual level, spiritual disease. So you have, on the one hand, the so-called psychologically induced diseases—TB, duodenal ulcer, etc.; and, on the other hand, the spiritual di
seases—such as Pride. If you can only quiet the Ego, soul and body begin to function of themselves, in spiritual and physical health, and the aim of yoga is achieved. The Ego is the eternal wise guy, the Mr. Fix-It. It dances about in its impatience at the slowness of Nature—and yet, with its fussing, it holds up everything.

  Beware, says Aldous, of confusing Spirit and Public Spirit. The most diabolical people are often the most public-spirited—e.g. Hitler.

  Carlson is returning to China within a week or two. He wants to get back to the Northwest and spend more time in the communist communities—where, he says, communism is really working, without egotism and without the establishment of a power-aristocracy. How I envy him! One should live one’s life as near as possible to the fountainheads of the New Force. This force is always striking up fresh wells—now in one country, now in another. There was a well in Spain, but it dried up. Perhaps there is a little spring here, but it’s very small, as yet. Maybe, today, it grew a little larger—despite the cakes and the hats, which so disturbed Vernon and the boys that they left early. As Gerald says, a spring is always muddy around its source.

  Goodness, this thing is difficult! New snares at every step. Daily went through the most ghastly experiences—the aperture of his consciousness was literally blasted open—and now he’s exposed to all kinds of new risks. You become a teacher, a healer, and woe betide you—unless, every day, you can prostrate yourself in utter humility. The Ego, like a lazy collaborator, steps in when it’s time to claim the credit. Throwing his arm around the shoulder of the Holy Ghost, he beams: “Well, old boy, between us we did a pretty nice job, didn’t we?”

  Prayer for writers: “Oh source of my inspiration, teach me to extend toward all living beings that fascinated, unsentimental, loving and all-pardoning interest which I feel for the characters I create. May I become identified with all humanity, as I identify myself with these imaginary persons. May my art become my life, and my life my art. Deliver me from snootiness, and from the Pulitzer Prize. Teach me to practice true anonymity. Help me to forgive my agents and publishers. Make me attentive to my critics and patient with my fans. For yours is the conception and the execution. Amen.”

  Stop trying to use the conscious will. Free the Ego from its attachments with expert gentleness, like a surgeon. Remember that the strangulated Ego is everything you hate in others—so how can you hate anybody? You are only hating yourself. The surgeon doesn’t hate the hernia: he simply reduces it. This is what Homer Lane meant when he said: “You must love yourself.” But I thought he meant “You must be complacent with your present condition.” Forgive yourself, absolutely: then operate.

  July 15. This morning, I picked up two hitchhikers, who had been waiting a long time on the road, thumbing without success. When I stopped, one of them exclaimed: “Hot dog! A gentleman at last!” And the other added: “A gentleman and a scholar, unless I’m mistaken.”

  We were summoned to a mass meeting at Metro, in aid of the American Red Cross. Stage Thirty—draped with flags and crammed with four thousand employees; actors in makeup, writers, stenographers, electricians, propmen, cameramen, carpenters—looked like Democracy’s Nuremberg Rally. Miss Jeanette MacDonald, in pink frills, wearing a little girl’s bow in her hair, sang “The Star Spangled Banner” with piercing sweetness. Robert Montgomery, just arrived from France, spoke out from the shoulder, in the clipped boyish tones of terse hysteria popularized by the war correspondents. Louis B. Mayer made a rambling, sentimental speech which Salka described as “Capitalism licking Labor’s ass.” God forbid, said Mayer, that we should fear him. He pleaded with us to believe that he was a nice guy. Even if he did have a lot of money, he gave most of it away in taxes. And if he gave a lot to the Red Cross he was only giving the government’s money. So we should all give, too. No man would be forced to give, but Mayer pitied anyone who didn’t because his conscience would hurt. And wasn’t it better to be on the giving end than on the receiving end? Didn’t it feel better? Especially when the receiving end was being bombed. He finished by saying that he hoped we’d often get together like this in the future and “talk things over.”

  Lying by Mrs. Dietz’s sky blue swimming pool, Hugh Chisholm held forth on the war. Of course, he was opposed to rescuing German children. He only wanted to win. Humanitarianism was very nice, but not for him. And he coquettishly stretched his legs in their pink Hawaiian swimming trunks. But Bridget disagreed. She has a baby inside her.

  July 16. To invent a new kind of grammar for writing about the Ego: “During the spring of 1940, I worked at the MGM studios. It left the house every morning in its car, at 9:30. People who knew me at this time noticed that, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, it returned home early … etc.”

  All this while, the Nazi attack on England has threatened but not begun. Today, the papers are full of rumors that Hitler will make another peace offer.

  Vernon urges me to get a house. He is going through a violent reaction from his social life. He wants to stay home more, and study and work. I must say, I simply couldn’t imagine living with anyone else at this time. Vernon does at least understand what I’m driving at. He is serious and honest—not a cocktail sipper.

  July 17. John van Druten and I are working together on an episode for the British War Relief film. Murder of an old lady by her housekeepers, with slow poison, in the Dickens style. It is all Johnny’s idea, and I can hardly contribute anything to it. Johnny is so inventive, anyway. He’s always three jumps ahead of me. His mind is agile and graceful, like a nimble monkey. It takes naturally to parody and pastiche. Johnny really loves to write: there seems to be absolutely no struggle, no effort involved. It is all play, and he approaches it without inhibitions, like a child. Yet, at the same time, he is the shrewd, experienced professional, deliberately creating theatrical effects and very conscious of how his audience will react to them. He is charming and polite to me, but I don’t feel that I’m being of the slightest use to him.

  July 18. With Gerald and Vernon to the Swami’s weekly lecture on the Upanishads. As at Allan Hunter’s, the flowery hats were predominant. The Swami was dressed in his beautiful golden yellow monk’s robe, which he only wears in the temple. Seated on a cushion, he smilingly exposed the ignorance of his class. He is gentle, persuasive and humorous. He speaks quietly, with an absolute, matter-of-fact authority. To him, spiritual truths are unanswerable facts, like the facts of geography. You don’t have to get excited about them, or argue, or defend. You just state them.

  I notice that he has a taste for very elegant, pointed shoes.

  Western philosophy always views the Self as a subject. Berkleyism: the world exists in my own brain. The Upanishads say that the Self is neither subject nor object. The apparent paradox: that mind can be transcended with the help of mind—like a ladder, which helps you to “transcend” it and climb through a window.

  On the way home, Gerald remarked that, since the whole of our physical world is an electric pattern, there can equally well be other worlds on other wavelengths, just as “real” to their inhabitants, and occupying exactly the same position in space and time as ours does. Where I am sitting, a man may be drowning in an ocean—unaware of me and my surroundings as I am of him and his. Hence the possibility of a “scientific” explanation of so-called psychic phenomena. Perhaps there are beings all around us who are too “unsubstantial” or too “solid” for us to perceive them. Except at rare moments when the other “wavelength” starts, for some unexplained reason, to “come through,” like another program on the radio.

  July 19. Vernon and I had lunch with the Manns. Klaus and Erika are much alarmed lest Hitler’s peace speech should find a response in England. Later, an agreeably pedantic lecture by Thomas on the use of the German prefix er. Klaus is planning a magazine. It is to be called Zero Hour, a symposium of European and American culture.

  Dinner with Chris, who was much excited by a visit from [Starr] Daily. When Daily was a boy, he met a tramp who taught him the whole art of
begging—always insisting that the only effective force in the world is hatred. You have to hate in order to be tough; and you have to be tough because everyone in the world is against you. They stayed together until Daily was eighteen. The other day, in downtown Los Angeles, Daily met the tramp again, with another boy. The tramp asked what Daily had been doing, all these years, and Daily told him the whole story, including his conversion. “Well,” he concluded, “it was a long road.” And the tramp, with a very strange smile answered: “Yes—but you got there in the end.” The suggestion is, of course, that the tramp was really a kind of Zen Buddhist saint, who taught love by insisting on its opposite.

  I suppose I believe this story. I don’t know. There’s something about Daily, despite his impressiveness, which I don’t altogether trust.

  July 20. Worked all day with Johnny on the story.

  As we were having supper, Vernon said he believed the time was coming when we should both be very happy. “I hope you’re right,” I said, “but first I’ve got to overcome fear.” This is true, but how ridiculous it sounds! Like saying: “First I’ve got to build a range of mountains.” To redirect, to concentrate all that waste energy—what engineering project could be vaster? It’s much easier to turn hate into love than to turn fear into love, because fear is more diffuse. It saps one’s strength in so many different places. You must search out your fear in its most secret corners. It has a genius for disguise.

  The radio: “If you ever become an expert bowler—well, you can tell people you’ve lived; because it’s just about the greatest thing in the world.”

  July 21. Vernon and I dined at the Huxleys’. Maria served cold supper to a crowd of boys and girls—Matthew’s friends. Aldous and I talked in a corner about Lengyel’s73 dramatization of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He wants us to help him with it. The boys gaily bullied Vernon for liking Picasso. For some mysterious reason, the party was a success: the psychic currents were flowing harmoniously.