An outline—made from my pocket diaries—of events between January 1, 1945 (when my first set of U.S. journals end) and February 19551 (when the entries in this journal get more or less continuous).
1945. January 2. Asit released from army. 8. Sudhira enlisted in navy. 19. The kite accident with Bill Harris.2 22. Harris and I tried to hitchhike north. 28. Met Katharine Hepburn at Beesleys’. 31. Scene with the soldier at Harris’s. February 3. Saw Robeson-Ferrer Othello3 with Denny and Harris. 4. Last lunch with Harris at Beesleys’. 5. Harris left for New York. Visited AJC Ranch and Idyllwild cabin, returning 12th. 17. Lunch with Beesleys at their new house, 19130 Pacific Coast Highway. 21. Started at Warner’s on Woman in White. March 12. Studio strike began.4 April 8. Albert Brush took us to see the Arensbergs.5 May 25. First supper with Stevie [Conway]. 28. Left Warner job. June 2. Caskey’s birthday—party at Jay [de Laval]’s. 3. With Stevie to Lake Sherwood. 4. Back to Warner’s on Up at the Villa. 6. Shots from Dr. Zeiler.6 7. Party at Rex Evans’s7: Maugham, Ethel Barrymore, Ronald Colman, Edna Best,8 Cukor etc. 18. Supper with Swami and Maugham at Players. July 6. Party at Cukor’s—Swami, Maugham, Ethel Barrymore, Hepburn. 8. Denny started work at Bel Air Bay Club. 21. Slept on beach with Caskey. 29. Roland Culver9 at Beesleys’. August 6. Corrected proofs of Prater Violet. 14. Peace declared. 23. Moved into Beesleys’ chauffeur’s apartment. Caskey visited. September 21. Finished script of Up at the Villa at Warner’s. Bought Lincoln-Mercury.10 29. Finished at Warner’s. Denny left for New York. Caskey and I moved into his apartment (137 Entrada). October 1. Caskey and I left by car for Santa Barbara. Thru to San Francisco, Fresno, Yosemite, Sequoia, Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Phoenix, El Centro, John Goodwin’s ranch, Palm Springs, Laguna Beach, returning to Santa Monica 19th. Hayden Lewis stayed with us. 27. Glen Lewis11 to stay. November 11. Caskey and I helped Beesleys move to Malibu house. 17. Tommy Tittle12 to stay. 22–25. Caskey, Hayden, Tittle and I visited Goodwin’s ranch. December 21. We gave a party: Boks, Huxleys, Beesleys, Peter Viertel, Pitoeffs.13 25. With Caskey to Beesleys’ for Christmas.
1946. This pocket diary has been lost. Sometime early in the year, I was operated on at Santa Monica Hospital for a median bar. Moved from Denny’s apartment to stay in apartment over Salka Viertel’s garage (165 Mabery Road). We remained there the rest of the year. During the summer and fall I revised my 1939–44 journals. Caskey studied photography. On November 8, I became a U.S. citizen. From Christmas to New Year’s, we made a trip by air to Mexico City.
1947. January 1. Returned from Mexico—hold up at Mazatlán because of engine trouble. 4. Worked with Lesser Samuels on Judgement Day in Pittsburgh. 5. Supper at Salka’s with Cyril Connolly and the Chaplins. 11. Finished Judgement Day in Pittsburgh. 13. Made my will. 17. Got visa for England. Goodbye party at Salka’s—Huxleys, Kiskaddens, van Druten, Garbo. 19. Left by air for New York. Grounded at Buffalo. Took train. Stayed night of 20th with Wystan. Left 21st by air for England. Arrived Bovingdon14 5:00 p.m. 22nd. To stay with John Lehmann—saw Forster, Buckingham, Doone, Medley, MacNeice, Peter Viertels, Henry Green, Plomer, Alan Ross, Keith Vaughan, Ackerley, Robson-Scott. 25. To Wyberslegh, where the blizzards started. February 1. Tea at Monkhouses’—Mrs. Monkhouse, Paddy, Mitty. 27. Heard Judgement Day in Pittsburgh was sold. 28. To London, stayed with Spenders, saw The Alchemist.15 March 1. Lunch with Jack Hewit, supper with Britten and Pears. To stay with Forster in Chiswick. 4. Moved to Lehmann’s. Lunch with Brian Howard and Sam [Langford]. Supper with Connollys.16 6. Lunch with Gerald Hamilton. 7. Stayed with Jack Hewit. 8. To stay at Oddenino’s Hotel. Supper with Guy Burgess and Peter Pollock.17 9. Day with the Upwards. 10. Saw The Winslow Boy.18 11. Moved to John Lehmann’s. Bought Keith Vaughan painting. Saw Ian Scott-Kilvert. 13. To Cheltenham to stay with Olive Mangeot. 14. Saw Hilda [Hauser], Amber, Jean Ross, Sarah. With Wogan and Cristina Philipps to POW camp. 16. Big wind. With Olive and Jean to movies. 17. Back to Wyberslegh. 28. Signed deed of gift of Marple. 30. Walk with Mitty Monkhouse on Whaley Moor. April 14. Left for London. Stayed with Lehmann. 15. Saw Now Barabbas—19 16. Saw tapestry exhibit and The White Devil.20 17. Saw Neville King-Page. 18. Embarked on Queen Elizabeth, met John Holmes. 19. Sailed. 25. Docked at New York. With Caskey to stay at the Park Central Hotel. 26. Moved into [James and Tania] Stern’s apartment (207 East 52nd Street). May 5. Started at Pilates’ gym.21 Forster and Bill Roerick to supper. 17. To stay with Ollie Jennings, Ben Baz and Bill Bailey. We had supper and a quarrel with the Mattas. 27. Borrowed two-sided Edward Burra painting from gallery.22 29. Drove to Montauk Point on Long Island. June 1. To Fire Island, stayed with Wystan. 12. Books arrived from England. 13. With Forster. 15. To Quaker Meeting; met Caroline Norment again. July 11. Drove to New London. 12. To New Bedford. 13. Steamer to Nantucket, where we stayed with Capote and Arvin at Siasconset. 20. We left Nantucket. 21. Arrived, via New Bedford, at Provincetown, to see Cadmus, George Tooker, the Jared Frenches, Sandy Campbell, Don Windham. 26. Back to New York. August 3. Party at Horst’s: Garbo, Noël Coward. 4. Lunch with Andrew Lyndon.23 5. Kirstein took us to see Nadelman sculpture. 6. Kirstein took us to Washington to see the German pictures found stored in the salt mine. 15. Drove with Kirstein to visit Mina Curtiss near Williamsburg[, Massachusetts]. 17. Back to New York. 18. Saw Berthold Szczesny. 26. Drove to Fire Island to see Wystan and Chester. 27. Back to New York. 31. We went to Fairfield [, Connecticut] to see Spender, who was teaching at Sarah Lawrence. September 1. Back to New York. 10. Peggy and Bill Kiskadden, Chris Wood, John Gielgud for drinks. 13. With Berthold Szczesny, Chris Wood, Kirstein, Spender to spend day on Fire Island with Wystan and Chester. September 19. We sailed at midday on the Santa Paula for South America. 23. Curaçao. 24. La Guaira. 27. Landed at Cartagena.
See The Condor and the Cows for diary of trip.
1948. March 27. Sailed from Buenos Aires on the Groix. 28. Montevideo. April 1. Rio: saw René Berger and Jorge de Castro. 8. Crossed the equator. 12. Dakar. 22. Le Havre—Paris, Hotel d’Isly. Saw Denny Fouts. Bill’s traveler’s checks stolen. 25. Met Gore Vidal. 28. Day with Wystan, Chester and Denny. 29. Breakfast with Gore. 30. We left for London. May 1. Moved to 31 Egerton Crescent to stay with Alexis Rassine. 6. Saw Peter Grimes.24 7. Moved to Tudor Court Hotel. Party at Horizon office. 8. Saw The Rake’s Progress ballet.25 13. To Wyberslegh. 18. Caskey joined me. 22. Returned to London. 23. Back to Wyberslegh. June 6. Back to London. 7. We went to Aldeburgh for festival. Saw Albert Herring.26 10. Left Aldeburgh. Stayed with Cuthbert Worsley. 18. Party at Lehmann’s: Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams. 17. Lunch with Cliff Gordon.27 July 2. To Wyberslegh. 6. Visit to Graham Sutherland. 9. Sailed for U.S. in the Queen Elizabeth. 14. Landed New York. 15. Left for Los Angeles by train. 18. Arrived Los Angeles. Stayed at El Kanan Hotel, Santa Monica. 19. Started work at MGM on The Great Sinner. August 14. Supper with Jim Charlton. September 4. With Charlton to Laguna Beach. 5. To Mount Palomar and Warner Hot Springs. 6. Back to Los Angeles. 11–14. With Charlton to Laguna Beach, Ensenada, Coronado. 20. Caskey arrived. 28. We moved into 333 East Rustic Road. October 6. Started filming The Great Sinner. 9. Finished work at MGM. 16. Spender stayed the night. November 5. Vernon Old and Patty O’Neill28 married. December 16. Denny Fouts died in Rome. 20. Our furniture arrived from New York. 22. Ben Bok and Coral got married. 28. Party for the end of The Great Sinner, at MGM, Stage 15.
1949. January 4. My books arrived from New York damaged by flood. 6–13. Worked with Gottfried Reinhardt at MGM. February 21. Watched Bill Kiskadden operate at Good Samaritan Hospital. March 12. Glenway Wescott arrived to stay in the Canyon. 18. Glenway left. 22. Sneak preview of Great Sinner, Criterion, Santa Monica. April 2. Finished The Condor and the Cows. 19. Visited Dodie and Alec Beesley, just settled into Cove Way house. May 29. Mrs. Caskey arrived. June 11. Supper at Charpentier’s, Redondo, with Caskey, Mrs. Caskey, Jay Laval, Aileen Pringle,29 the Masselinks. 14–16. Spender, Bill Goyen and Walter Berns visited. July 20. Drove to Santa Barbara, to see Sister who was dying. 26. Sister’s funeral. August 6–7. All-night party a
t Sam From’s—Evelyn Caldwell, Paul Goodman,30 Charles Aufderheide, Alvin Novak. 9. Finished draft of The Easiest Thing in the World, with Lesser Samuels. 10. Lunch with the Huxleys, Robert Craft and Stravinskys. 14. Mrs. Caskey left. 19. Visited Birmingham Hospital for first time with George Bradshaw, to see the paraplegic patients. 27. Met Russ Zeininger. September 7. To dedication of Trabuco as Ramakrishna Monastery. November 11. Caskey left for Florida. November 26–28. Charlton, Ben Britten, Peter Pears and I drove to Palm Springs, Palomar, Oceanside, stayed night with Chris Wood at Laguna Beach, and home. December 1. Wrote article on Klaus Mann. 4. With Charlton in police raid at the Variety. 9. Don Coombs stayed. 20. Posed for drawing by Fechin.31 26. Michael Leopold stayed, until 29th.
1 In fact the outline stops in 1949.
2 See Glossary under Harris.
3 Paul Robeson, José Ferrer and Uta Hagen at the Biltmore.
4 Members of the Writers’ Guild were allowed to cross the picket line to work.
5 Brush, a friend of Jay de Laval, took Isherwood and Denny Fouts to meet Walter Arensberg, an art collector and a devotee of the Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon.
6 Penicillin, for the gonorrhea Isherwood had caught from Steve Conway.
7 British actor and art gallery owner.
8 British actress, in Hollywood from 1939 onward.
9 British actor, of both stage and film.
10 A Lincoln-Mercury Zephyr convertible; he gave the Packard he already owned to Hayden Lewis.
11 Possibly Hayden Lewis’s brother.
12 A blond naval officer who had fought in the Battle of the Pacific.
13 The actress Ludmilla Pitoeff and her daughter, Anita, then having an affair with Vernon Old.
14 Military airfield near London.
15 Ben Jonson’s play.
16 Cyril Connolly and Lys Lubbock; see Glossary under Connolly.
17 Burgess’s lover since 1938.
18 Terence Rattigan’s play.
19 Another play, by William Douglas-Home.
20 The tapestry exhibit was at the Victoria and Albert Museum; The White Devil is John Webster’s play.
21 On the West Side of Manhattan, run by the German, Joseph Pilates (b. 1880), who emigrated to the U.S. by way of England. The exercises he invented, called the Pilates Method, are still widely used.
22 Isherwood borrowed but decided not to buy two paintings, framed back to back, by the English painter Edward Burra (1905–1976), who visited New York in the 1930s and 1940s chiefly to paint subjects in black Harlem.
23 A young naval officer from Macon, Georgia, met while visiting Capote on Nantucket.
24 Britten’s opera.
25 Choreographed by Ninette de Valois to Gavin Gordon’s music.
26 Britten’s new opera, previously performed at Covent Garden.
27 Radio and nightclub entertainer.
28 Not her real name.
29 Silent film star (1895–1989).
30 American novelist, poet, and social critic (1911–1972).
31 Nicolai Fechin (1881–1955), the Russian artist, lived in Santa Monica Canyon and was friendly with Ben and Jo Masselink; Isherwood sat for a charcoal portrait on December 20 and 23. Its whereabouts are unknown.
April 11, 1948–April 13, 1956
1948
ON BOARD THE Groix
April 11. Tomorrow, we are scheduled to land at Dakar. Maybe we’ll stay there overnight. From there to Le Havre should take ten to twelve days. The weather has turned much colder since we crossed the equator. The old gentleman in our cabin is much worried by the prospect of an extra passenger joining us—and so am I; the old gentleman, with his bad leg, takes up enough psychological room for two, already. He always seems to be washing when you want to use the bowl. At night he groans—Ah, Madre!—and gradually fills a chamber pot. Caskey fears he will put his foot into it one morning, getting out of the upper bunk.
But our second-class cabin (troisième supérieure) is luxury compared to the third class. They sleep six or eight in a room—either without a porthole or with one which won’t open. Our cabin has formed a cabin cabinet: president, vice-president, minister of the fine arts, minister of supply, foreign minister, etc. They are a very sympathetic group: much the nicest and liveliest people on board. Mike, who reads the Gita, Fatty the ballet dancer, the bearded painter who imitates a singing Cossack, the negroid boy from Tahiti, the Belgian, the Breton whose French nobody can understand, the Russian boy who rolls up his shorts. Less sympathetic are Steve, the fussy Argentine journalist, and the tall dark Parisian who doesn’t like the English. More about all of them in due course.
But I’m not unhappy here and neither is Caskey. I’m working on the travel book—still don’t know what to call it. Today I finished chapter two. Caskey is writing a novel based on the life of Bill Harris. The rest of the time we sunbathe, read (Nostromo, which was published the year I was born, is still a marvellous picture of Ecuador, Peru or Bolivia), or drink. The Pernod has run out, so we have to make do with cognac. One jigger of crème de menthe and one of cognac, on ice, does for a predinner cocktail. There is no place to drink except the fumoir, which is usually crowded—third-class passengers and crew use it too. They play cards or dice or checkers, try to read amidst the din, teach each other languages. Caskey is learning French from a tall sad Pole, in exchange for lessons in Kentucky.
In our class, a group has been formed by the hunchback lady, the old professor and the big man who is, I believe, a German and a poet. They hold a nonstop talkfest throughout the day. The professor is a Jules Verne character. He can tell you the exact number of plums, apples, grapes, etc. he has eaten during his life. Indeed, he remembers everything; he has total recall. The others listen to him with great respect but kid him along. They encouraged him to take a photograph of the equator. The big man played Neptune when we had the ceremony of crossing the line.1 I got nearly all the flour and water in my hair. It isn’t really clean yet.
There are a lot of nuns on the boat, and some extremely gloomy and drab Dutch missionary priests. They read crime stories and smoke small cigars. The nuns are much more devout. They tell their beads all day long.
How the French chatter! Especially at meals. They start the second they sit down to breakfast. “How did you sleep?” the hunchback asks the professor. “I slept perfectly, madame. I always sleep perfectly. I can sleep perfectly anywhere. I can sleep in the rain, in the sunshine, in the mud, in the snow, in the forest, in the great city.” And then he goes into anecdotes of how he did, and where, and when. If one of them utters a word which is going to be the keynote of a discussion, they all take it up, repeating it with different modulations, singing it, shouting it in chorus. They discuss everything—politics, art, food, South America, love, the war (“J’ai fait la guerre”2 is said repeatedly, to back up and authorize some opinion)—and all from the French angle. They are incredibly provincial. Is a little personal resentment entering here? Well—yes. They know I am a writer, but they don’t show the faintest curiosity about my work. I’m English—or worse, American—so I can’t possibly be any good. I resent this—but I’m only too thankful not to be involved in their discussions. And I couldn’t follow them, anyway. I have almost lost whatever ear I had for French. Caskey says he is preparing a great impersonation of the French at meals, to amuse the Canyon on our return.
It is very easy to get into a state of Francophobia which stops you working or even thinking about anything important. Must guard against this, reminding myself that after all nobody forced me to sail in one of their ships or go to their country at all. Also, on a long voyage like this, I dare say I’d get almost equally exasperated by a shipload of Germans, Swedes or Finns.
April 12. Dakar—the town is much less “African” than I’d expected. Instead of dazzling white buildings, palms, grass huts, there were shabby streets of nondescript yellow houses—few sidewalk cafés or planted boulevards; little of the charm of, say, Saigon. But the Senegalese make up for everythin
g. They have a kind of nonhuman, birdlike beauty. Mostly very tall, with the long legs of herons, and very dark, almost blue-black. They wear long flapping robes, and sometimes turbans of dark heavy material. Some have long horizontal nostrils like Donald Duck; they hold their heads back and look at you along their noses with eyes three quarters closed. The salesmen (and nearly everyone has something for sale; crocodile bags and billfolds, chiefly) seem more sleepy than sly. Wearily they ask huge prices and accept half almost without argument. Toward evening, they grow somewhat impatient: “Give me five hundred francs. Come on. I have to go home.” The women are amazing. Even taller than the men, wonderfully elegant, in loose white garments with many bangles and all kinds of gaudy bows and scarves, they look like female impersonators who have put on everything they could find in their mothers’ bedrooms, including the sheets and the curtains. They billow slowly along, veiling and unveiling their faces, tying and untying the scarves around their solid cakes of black hair, with coy graceful movements. They are very shy of being photographed. Caskey could get no decent pictures.
Meanwhile, of course, there are the French. Some are muscular and handsome, but all—fat or thin, old or young—wear very short shorts. Among these tall swaying dreamy bird-people, they seem almost indecently physical, hairy and solid.
April 13. The boat is now very crowded. The fumoir is crammed with people. We are no longer allowed to use our little dining room to work in. There are two services for meals. Quite a lot of French soldiers on board. The weather is already much colder.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 62