Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  January 16. Philadelphia in mid-January and wartime is a kind of nightmare Manchester, drearier than the grave, and full of naval and military drunks. To Benjamin Britten’s concert.121 Benjy and his friend Peter Pears met me afterwards. They are leaving soon for England, where Benjy has decided to register as a C.O. We all got sadder and sadder and drunker and drunker. Cold drizzling thaw.

  January 20. Mr. Kaplan left today, for a teaching job. In the evening we had a meeting of the workshop committee, which included several local Quaker ladies. They discussed Naomi Maiden. (She’s the colored woman who does house cleaning for us: she has a twisted arm and naughty bulging eyes. The first time Caroline met her, she said, “You’re no maiden,” and Naomi agreed that she wasn’t; she has five or six children.) One of the old Quaker hens piped up, “Is it true that Naomi—drinks?” I said: “Of course Naomi drinks. And from what I’ve seen of her, she carries her liquor very well—much better than most people.” Minor sensation.

  January 21. Went to see Teddy le Boutilliere at the bookstore. He told me he’s volunteered to go to Libya with the American Field Service. He may be leaving quite soon. He wants me to come too. I’d like to, in a way; but you have to be a citizen.

  January 22. With Caroline to the Foreign Service Meeting of the AFSC. Paul Harris spoke very dramatically about the Mennonite colonization project in South America. But John Rich (our next-door neighbor) says that the Mennonites are simply making a nuisance of themselves by settling in an area which is practically uninhabitable for white men, and then having to have special equipment rushed to them and airplanes to take their sick back to hospital.

  Peter Amann was wrestling with a friend and got pushed through a window, badly cutting his arm. The other boy applied a tourniquet. If he hadn’t, the doctor says, Peter would have bled to death in a few minutes.

  January 28. We had a kind of commencement celebration at the Meeting House, with speeches by Furtmueller, Jurkat, Mrs. Sheldon, Hannek, Hermann Eberhart, Stern and Amann. Hermann’s speech was much the best.

  Hermann is still being melodramatic: I can’t feel sorry for him because he’s so sorry for himself. He’s constructed a tragic triangle, in which everybody is in love with somebody else. All that is lacking, as Gretl pointed out, is that I should be in love with Hermann.

  Caroline knows. She’d noticed something, after all; and the other day she asked Gretl right out, was it true? Gretl didn’t deny it. The awful result is that Caroline has become super motherly with Gretl, and keeps getting her into the office at odd moments for weeping bees, varied with sly hints that, after all, Christopher is only human, and if Gretl really wants him—well, somehow, some day, it can be fixed.

  Worse still, Caroline also knows about Carl Furtmueller and Leah Cadbury. They have been to Rufus Jones and told him they want to get married, and Rufus has given his blessing. Caroline is absolutely beside herself. She’s horribly jealous—not so much of Leah because of Carl, but of Leah because she’s caught a man. The form her jealousy takes is that she’s turned herself into an unofficial watchdog over their reputation. The world mustn’t know, because the world would misjudge them and be shocked. But the world will know very soon, because Caroline has told so many people, each time as a deadly secret. And then, of course, she’ll start “defending” Leah and Carl—particularly Carl. I feel so humiliated for her. Thank God I’m getting away from it all for a while. It’s a great pity the workshop can’t come to an end with this semester, as originally planned. But we’re to have a new lot in, and start again about the middle of February.

  January 31. Drove into Philadelphia with several of the group, to see about travel permits. Mr. Amann has a study fellowship at Yale, Peter is going to some friends of Caroline’s at Yellow Springs, Ohio, Mrs. Amann and Eva will get hospitality around here. Caro is to go to Pendle Hill for a term as a guest. Gleisner has a job in Philadelphia, teaching dancing: he’ll adapt more easily than anybody, in this land of extroverts. Goetz has gone back to his wife in New York: she has a small job and can support him. Haas has been given work with the Philadelphia Museum. Jurkat will work with Wroe Alderson, doing research for a book on marketing which Wroe has to revise. He’ll live with them, here. Tanya Korbett has a job somewhere in New England. Picard has been invited to stay on a farm, by a clergyman who likes taking in literary refugees. Mrs. Robinson has a domestic job in the neighborhood, and Mr. Robinson may live in the house with her: he’s merely required to play pinochle with her employer. Mr. Rosenberg also goes back to his wife in New York: he has a teaching job waiting for him in the fall. Mrs. Schloss is staying with us: she’ll study at Bryn Mawr. So is Mr. Seidemann. The Sheldons have a job at Columbia University. The Walchers are to go to Long Island, with the prospect of a job there.

  February 1. Left for New York. Saw Berthold Viertel, who may be going to organize a series of broadcasts to Germany. He seemed well and vigorous; full of projects as ever.

  February 2. To stay with Johnny Dickinson, Tony Bower’s friend. He is in an apartment in the east sixties, near the park: Tony and he had barely rented it and moved in before Tony was drafted back into the army, because of Pearl Harbor. Johnny is feeling lonely and wanted company. He is a nice, friendly boy, very easy to get along with. His home’s in Ontario, California, the little town near La Verne.

  Eugene Exman, Denver Lindley and the rest of the New York ex-La Verne members hold a meeting every Monday with others who are interested, at the downtown Quaker Meeting House just off Gramercy Park. We switched off the lights and sat in the dark. In the next room, someone began to sing, in a giggly falsetto. Suddenly the door flew open and the singer frisked into the room. When he saw us, he uttered a scream of embarrassment and fled. It was Hugh Chisholm. I talked to him later. He is working with the Quakers on a projected alternative to compulsory civil defence, for the benefit of C.O.s who don’t want to join anti-aircraft units etc.

  February 4. Posed for Paul Cadmus, who’s making a drawing of me. Although we’ve only met three or four times, I feel he’s an intimate friend: we have so much in common—chiefly our love for Forster, whom Paul has never met. Perhaps Paul should have been a writer; he’s far more sensitive and intelligent than his pictures. The sensual pleasure of being drawn or painted: this isn’t a question of ordinary vanity: you command, as at no other time, somebody’s total attention: every touch of his pencil on the paper is like an exquisite kind of massage. It is intensely intimate and yet impersonal: there are really three people present—the artist, yourself, and yourself as the model. And you find you can talk to the artist in a particularly frank, natural way. The ego doesn’t interfere. It is far too busy posing.

  February 8. Drove with Johnny Dickinson and Jean Connolly to Camp Upton on Long Island, to visit Tony Bower. A landscape of dwarf conifers and howling, wind-driven mist. It was so cold we had to sit in the cars with the engines running; there was nowhere else to go. We drank wine and whisky out of paper cups, and ate bits of greasy chicken which Jean had brought. Tony was heroically gay, but we could see how he loathes it all: the raw misery of the army, the awful crowded loneliness. Later I wandered off stupidly drunk into the miniature woods to vomit, and was nearly shot by a sentry. It was like a visit to purgatory. The poor windbitten boys, huddled in huge coats, with their red hands and ears.

  February 9. With Lincoln Kirstein again to Camp Upton, to take Tony his typewriter. After hunting everywhere, we found him, by the merest chance, in a tent. He was almost shockingly grateful. Like a starving man.

  On the way home, we talked about Pete Martinez. He volunteered for the navy and they wouldn’t take him, apparently because he’s Mexican. Now he has nothing to do until he’s drafted. Lincoln wants him to come and work with us at Haverford for a while. Said I thought it was a marvellous idea. Lincoln calls the workshop “Humble Hall.”

  February 13. Back in Haverford since the tenth. Caroline returned two days ago. Today, Pete Martinez arrived. I’d prepared the staff for him as well as I could. I
was very nervous what kind of an impression he’d make but I needn’t have been. He charms everybody. Pete acted the perfect little gentleman during the introductions and supper. Later, we ran most of the way to Ardmore—to see Garbo in Two-Faced Woman—screaming hysterically with laughter and release from tension. It is wonderful, having him here.

  February 14. New arrivals: Mr. and Mrs. Reisner, an elderly ex-lawyer with a shabby little wife who plays the piano beautifully; Mr. Ganzel, who looks rather like Lloyd George, with silver hair and moustache, a teacher and a member of the Wider Quaker Fellowship; Mr. Lippman, a big handsome middle-aged lawyer from Leipzig, who is one of Europe’s leading Esperantists; Mr. Buchs, a fiery little Pole who was a schoolmaster at Grenoble and is Frencher than the French; Madame Alguadiche, a great beautiful huge big Frenchwoman, who speaks no other language, and is like a lovely shy cow. They are all Jews, I think.

  February 15. In the evening, the whole group went to one of Hertha Kraus’s soirees. Pete was wonderful. He talked to everybody, saying exactly the right things, with exquisite politeness, and occasionally winked at me across the room. Life at the workshop, since he arrived, has turned into a kind of private game between us. It is like a parody of itself. Everything that happens seems startlingly funny. I keep fearing he’ll leave on the next train, but it all seems to amuse him as much as it does me.

  February 16. Pete has started teaching English to the two weakest members, Mrs. Reisner and Madame Alguadiche, whom he dearly loves. At five o’clock, I happened to meet him in the hall and asked him what kind of a day he’d had. “Darling,” he exclaimed, for the benefit of several people who were listening, “if you don’t kiss me I shall scream!” Pete is certainly an unusual figure for Haverford—with his fluttering black eyelashes, flashing white teeth, ballet gestures, and the scarf which he winds around his mouth like a yashmak—but Haverford takes him very well. The Yarnalls are devoted to him. Caroline is still watching him, however: she says guardedly that he’s “a graceful kid.” Pete doesn’t like her. He says she hates him because she recognizes a rival actress.

  February 17. Dorothy Bloch arrived: a pretty little Polish Jewess, an economist. She has neat little black velvet shoes and washed-out blonde hair. Speaks excellent English.

  February 18. Mrs. Abel arrived: a bedraggled Russian psychoanalyst in the last stages of exhaustion. Caroline had to put her to bed at once.

  February 23. The other day, I wrote to the Swami asking should I join the Quakers. When I first came to Haverford I had every intention of doing so. But today he replies and more or less advises me not to: “You as a follower of Ramakrishna would have full sympathy with the Friends and all other religious orders who are seeking the truth of God. But the question is, will the Friends fully sympathize with you and accept you as a member of their order knowing full well that you belong to Ramakrishna and are an initiated disciple of a Hindu monk?”

  This, I now realize, is what I wanted him to answer. I no longer feel I could become a Quaker. Not so much for his reasons as for purely social ones. I can’t belong to a religious group which would be shocked by even many comparatively innocent features of my private life—by my novels, by the conversation of my friends, by my literary and artistic tastes. They are admirable but fundamentally stuffy, and a lot of their “plainness” is just provincialism, middle-class prejudice. Pete’s being here has made this more obvious than ever. Instinctively, we spend our time trying to shock the Quakes, just because they are so shockable.

  Pete now teaches Mrs. Abel, as well as Mesdames Reisner and Alguadiche. “Now girls,” he tells them, “you know you can do better than that!” Mrs. Abel has disgustingly bad breath: Pete says she has swallowed a dead mouse. We have all kinds of jokes, and our behavior in front of Caroline and the others is getting worse and worse. At table, he will turn to me and say seriously, in a conversational voice: “Remember that time you played Carmen at Cedar Rapids?” “Do I remember!” I play up to him: “Why, wasn’t that the night you fell through the big drum?” “Yes, dear,” says Pete, “and I have a pretty good idea who it was that pushed me.”

  The other Sunday, as we were all coming out of the Meeting House, Pete said very loud, pointing to an engraving of Elizabeth Fry, “You know, Chris, I never did like that picture of you. It makes you look so old.”

  Then we have an insane game which began with singing, “Sailing, sailing—over the bounding main.” We now have a rule that when either of us interrupts with the word “main” the other has to break off immediately in the middle of whatever he’s saying, and change the subject. As soon as we leave the house after supper, we go completely mad. Pete dances down the lane, waving his arms and crying, “Oh, l’Amour, l’Amour!”

  February 27. Lunch with Douglas Steere. He’s on the staff of Haverford College, and one of Quakerdom’s leading philosophers. He’s off to California to see Gerald, and visit Trabuco, Gerald’s newly established center. Steere’s a bit of a wetleg, I think; there’s something greasy about him. He acts so monklike, and all the time one knows he’s having sex with his wife hard—but somehow not quite hard enough. He’s writing an essay on immortality, but refuses to read the reports of the Society for Psychical Research, dismissing them as nonsense.

  March 1. Yesterday evening, Pete and I went into Philadelphia and met Lincoln Kirstein, Paul Cadmus and Fidelma (Lincoln’s wife, Paul’s sister). We all got very drunk. The others went back by a late train to New York: Pete and I spent the night at our favorite haunt, the Camac Baths.

  (It has always seemed to me that there is in fact only one Turkish bath—an enormous subterranean world, a delicious purgatory, a naked democracy in which the only class distinctions are anatomical. And that this underworld merely has a number of different entrances and vestibules in all the cities of the earth. You could enter it in Sydney and emerge from it to find yourself in Jermyn Street.)

  When it was time to go home, we found that Pete had lost our locker key, presumably in the pool. We had to leave our money and valuables behind and borrow just enough to ride home breakfastless. As we got out of the train at Haverford Station, dazed and wan, with hangovers to our ankles, we met the Robinsons, who were just getting into it. Mr. Robinson was delighted to see us, for he had some bad news. He shouted something about a “terrible disaster at the workshop,” almost inaudibly, above the noise of a passing freight train. Before it had gone by, the Robinsons had had to board their train, and were carried away, leaving us bewildered on the platform.

  The nightmare atmosphere was only heightened when we got back to the Yarnalls’ house. Our latchkeys were in the locker at the Camac Baths, so we had to ring the bell; whereupon a completely strange man opened the door, exclaimed, “No, no—not at home!” in a thick German accent, and tried to slam it in our faces. We had to force our way in. To cap it all, Mr. Yarnall mysteriously told us that Caroline had left a note for me, and then telephoned Mrs. Yarnall not to let me read it—so Mrs. Yarnall had hidden it. We begged him to tell us what had happened, but he shook his head: “You’d better go round to the workshop. Caroline will want to tell you herself.”

  We ran down the lane to the workshop and found it empty: everybody was out at the Meeting House. But the nature of the “disaster” was sufficiently obvious. A great hole has been burnt in the roof. The Walchers’ old room (which they left such a short while ago) has been destroyed almost entirely; there is a hole in Caroline’s bedroom ceiling and many of her books have been spoilt by water and debris; the Reisners’ room (where Mrs. Furtmueller died) has been slightly damaged; and the firemen have bored holes in the living room ceiling to prevent the weight of water breaking it down.

  We hurried to the Meeting House and got there just as everybody was coming out. Caroline embraced me publicly and wept on my shoulder. I shan’t even attempt to reproduce her account of the accident: it has only once been equalled in the theater—by Sara Allgood’s “Sacred Heart of Jesus” speech.122 And Caroline’s lasted half an hour.

 
; Very briefly—the fire (cause still unexplained) broke out late yesterday afternoon, while Caroline was away, and Elizabeth Porter was alone in the house with a refugee named Ruth Fales. They were both asleep—resting after housework—and might easily have been burnt alive. Some neighbors saw the smoke rising from the roof and called the firemen. The noise of their arrival woke Ruth and Elizabeth. Two rival fire departments answered the call (I think because Buck Lane forms some kind of local boundary line between areas) and a fight developed between them: one department accused the other of turning the hoses on them, and there were blows. This gave the fire additional time to spread.

  When Caroline returned, and found we were out, she left me a note to await my return. Then, as it got late, she very considerately decided not to have me upset in the middle of the night, so she telephoned Mrs. Yarnall. I think also she wanted to be quite sure that nobody else should tell me the story and steal her thunder. As for the mysterious man at the Yarnalls’, this was a professional violinist named Mr. Philip who has just joined the group. He is very selfish and hates talking English if he can avoid it; and so, as Mrs. Yarnall had gone to Meeting, he was anxious to get rid of us quickly without explanations. He didn’t know we lived in the house.