Talk about Evelyn Waugh, with whom Yorke was at Oxford. The other day, Yorke met Waugh in deep mourning and asked the cause. “It’s for the King of Denmark,” Waugh explained: “You see, I feel I have to—I was in the Household Cavalry during the war.” Yorke has great arguments with Waugh about Catholicism, and kids him because the Pope holds shares in the Casino at Monte Carlo. Waugh explains that gambling isn’t a sin unless you lose more than you can afford.
Yorke also told some good stories of the Blitz and the Fire Service. He says he got the characters of the Irish servants in Loving from Irishmen he met in the service. One of them told him that life’s greatest pleasure is to lie in bed in the morning “eating hot buttered toast with cunty fingers.”
May 11. Lunch with Connollys, Rose Macaulay,15 Raymond Mortimer. Talk about the Sitwells—their despotism. Everybody is scared of them. They never forgive an attack—or, at any rate, as Cyril said, not for seven years. Edith has just forced Oscar Williams and the publishers of a modern verse anthology to print the following apology: “We deeply regret that by an oversight two poems by Miss Edith Sitwell have been included in this anthology without her permission. We appreciate that the inclusion of two poems only is entirely inadequate to represent her.”
May 17. Have been up here at Wyberslegh since the 13th. Caskey is supposed to arrive tomorrow—he has been staying on in London and then with Morgan at Cambridge. Glorious weather. The landscape, which I last saw under deep snow, summery and vivid green. Streams of cyclists in shorts along the Buxton Road. M. looking even younger than last year—at seventy-nine! Richard is at Marple. I haven’t seen him yet. M. says he has worked himself into a fit of jealousy about me as the Favored Son. It is pitiful. I suppose he has to hate someone. I keep wondering what Caskey will make of all this.
May 29. From The Daily Mail:
Scotland Yard … received a letter purporting to have been written by John Edward Allen, the “mad parson” who escaped from Broadmoor last July. It said: “You might tell the police that I have hidden the new notes in Heath’s sports coat in Madame Tussaud’s.” The two detectives each took a section of the chamber of horrors. Mr. Reginald Edds, an official of Madame Tussaud’s, took a third group of waxworks. Nothing whatever was found in the pockets of Neville George Clevely Heath, no. 63. He was not in fact wearing a sports coat, but a replica of the neat grey pinstriped suit in which he was sentenced to death in September 1946.16
It was the “mad parson’s” boast that he had stolen £300 from a brass foundry.
The Cheshire police were last night investigating a report that a man answering the description of the “mad parson” had been seen “cycling furiously in the Sandbach area.”
From The Daily Telegraph:
Mr. R. T. Paget K.C.,17 commentating on the 69% vote in favour of retaining capital punishment in the Telegraph’s Mass-Observation survey, said: “If we are to hang people because the crowd wants it, then we follow a precedent set by Pontius Pilate.” (He’s Socialist member18 for Northampton.)
(It’s too bad I let this diary lapse, and didn’t describe the rest of our visit—the Aldeburgh Festival, the time at Cuthbert Worsley’s, the parties, the arrival of Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams, Morgan’s doings and sayings, and the sudden call from Gottfried Reinhardt to come back to Hollywood and work on The Great Sinner for MGM. Too late for that now, and too late even for the period which followed—my drunken, restless life at the Hotel Kanan, the meeting with Jim Charlton, the trip to Ensenada and the wonderful drive around Mount Palomar, which was one of the happiest days of my life.
Never mind, we’ll start here, established with Caskey in the little house with the broken bridge over the creek—333 Rustic Road.)
November 6. Another beautiful day. Caskey and I lay on the beach. Later, we more or less deliberately let the canaries (which Hayden [Lewis] and Rod [Owens] brought as a present to our party two nights ago) fly away into the trees. We now both have a bad conscience about this. They’ll probably die tonight, when it gets cold. There’s also a gull on the beach with a broken wing. Should we have brought it home? We didn’t. Oh dear—I am getting like dear Dodie.
As for the party, it was a massacre. I had a terrible hangover—very unusual for me—yesterday, and had to drag myself to Vernon’s wedding with Patty O’Neill. Allan Hunter married them, in his living room. He made the threadbare words of the ceremony sound friendly and sincere. I think Vernon cried. Afterwards, we had a “reception” down here—consisting of Peggy Kiskadden, a huge cake she had bought, and three bottles of champagne. Peggy was very bright, and kept the atmosphere at the right temperature. She still disapproves of Vernon, though, and the way she kissed Patty suggested the deepest sympathy. Later, we went to see Salka, who held forth about the elections. One thing we all agree on—we are delighted that those infuriating pollsters and experts were dead wrong about Dewey. It restores one’s faith in the American capacity to disregard the newspapers.19
Am plugging along at the South American book. Ah—how boring! The truth is, I am bored by the very mention of the place, and feel ashamed that I’m bored. I must finish it, however.
Caskey is endlessly busy, home building. It is really a deep instinct of his nature. He never ceases to carpenter, sew, paint, cook. Sometimes I ask myself uneasily, what will happen when the home is built? But I don’t think I really need worry. It’s just that I’m being confronted, at last, with the problems of the Householder—and who ever dares to say they are less than the problems of the Monk? Which reminds me, I’m reading Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain.20 Merton is now a Trappist. It is very interesting, and even inspiring, but I keep being repelled by his Catholic arrogance. They’re so very sure that they, and nobody else, have all the answers.
No doubt the life in Santa Monica Canyon is empty, vain, trivial, tragic, indigent of God. But that’s no reason not to live here and try to do the best you can. I always think of William Plomer, who makes existence less odious wherever he goes.
Lincoln writes that Wystan is going to settle in Italy.
Master, be with me specially at this time. Help me to remember you constantly and let me feel your presence. You aren’t shocked by the camping of the publicans and the screaming of the sinners. You too got into drag, and you didn’t condemn—you danced with the drunkards.21 If I could be clear and happy and funny—that at least would be something. What would you like me to do now? Tell my beads, and then wash the dishes? Okay—I’m off.
November 7. Yesterday we saw Steinbeck’s film The Pearl. Wasn’t much impressed. The photography is good—if you aren’t tired of filter shots of cirrus clouds. But the grouping of the figures was much too consciously artistic—it smelled of ballet—and the mildly pinkish story contains all kinds of quite arbitrary tragic twists. It’s just what I wrote about Steinbeck when I reviewed The Grapes of Wrath: he kills off characters right and left, and then blames the economic setup. All—or nearly all—the players were Mexican and they were handicapped by having to talk English: this made the dialogue sound ridiculously clumsy. I’ve heard that Armendariz22 speaks fluent English. If so, he deliberately faked a thick Mexican accent to fit in with the others.
On the beach with Caskey, Bill Bailey, Jim Charlton. I told how a boy on Franny’s23 island in Greece had killed a chicken by screwing it. Bill wouldn’t believe this. “I wouldn’t die if I were screwed,” he said. “Ah, Bill,” Caskey instantly replied: “But you’re no chicken.”
Still grinding out the Bogoá chapter. I feel, if once I can get through that, I have a clear run ahead—at least till after Quito.
1949
February 20. Another lapse. Let’s start with an attempt at a new deal. It is absolutely useless and self-destructive to get mad at Caskey about his all-night record playing. Never mind why he does it, either. I must simply take precautions and try to stay away whenever a party of this kind seems to be forming. The great problem is—where to go?
Oh dear—it’s Asit with his
radio, all over again. Not to mention the days at Entrada Drive just after the war.
March 1. Ramakrishna’s birthday puja at Ivar Avenue. Almost all the old faces, including Webster. At first, he was a little awkward and on the defensive with me. Then we settled down into the mood of old alumni, and joked about the new building schemes—the temple is to have enlarged wings, and already the boy named Henry [Denison], who has money of his own, is paying to have a big carpentry shed put in the garden. The old place certainly has changed—with the girls all up at Santa Barbara, and the new monks—Ben, John [Schenkel], Kenny [Critchfield] and Henry. George has become more of a privileged eccentric than ever. He now takes flashbulb photos throughout the puja, whenever he feels so inclined. The other worshippers hate it, but they can’t do anything, because Swami permits it, so as not to hurt George’s feelings. George now goes in for monster enlargements. He has found some commercial studio which will blow pictures up to billboard size. Swami still keeps a room in the other house—the one behind 1946—which he says is for me. It rather scares me—the way he waits. Shall I ever find myself back there? It seems impossible—and yet—
While he was in Arizona the other day, staying with Mrs. Maury, Swami was taken to Taliesin West, and met Frank Lloyd Wright. Swami, who had never heard of Wright—and whose ideas of architecture were previously limited to domes and lots of gold—was greatly impressed. “Mr. Wright,” he said, “you are not an architect—you are a philosopher.” And he added that, at Taliesin, you felt yourself “not in a house, but protected by nature.” Needless to say, Wright was enchanted. And I’ve no doubt that he will end up doing something at Santa Barbara.
Web wants to become a probation officer. I said I thought he’d make a very good one.
A party at the Manns’. A Franco-Russian named Sasha24 sang songs with a guitar. The French songs were treated with the greatest respect. But Erika urged him on to sing “Ein kleiner Gardeoffizier,” just to sneer at it. It was very ugly and tasteless—this silly hate against their own old world. And, actually, these songs—which admittedly are trash—were written mostly by Jewish refugees. As for myself—I don’t give a damn—they moved me to tears. Because of what they brought back with them—the dielen25 and the boys I used to know, and the Berlin streets. When we arrived at the party, Erika took me aside and told me: “Christopher—I want you to know—I love the Germans.” I don’t know what she meant by this. She doesn’t.
Later, Caskey and I took Peter Watson to the Gala, because it was such a haunt of Denny’s. It was almost empty, and very sad.
From the local paper: “In Santa Monica Canyon” by Nell Jones.
One stands a long while looking
At the curve of the canyon rim,
The exquisite contour of the canyon
With a growing awareness of Him.
Our Creator was careful of hand.
Take freely of the miracle set,
The varied trees, green clad slopes,
Chaparral and the wild violet.
Oh live here with your eternal self,
Emerge not from the wonder of it,
Walk these roads that you know and love
Gathering beauty bit by bit!
March 2. Trying to get started with chapter ten—there’ll be this one and another on the Argentine, and then some sort of epilogue; and it all has to be finished by April 15. Also, I have to get on with the translation of Patanjali. Swami’s way ahead of me.
Caskey painted the bathroom floor, and finished Light in August. I’m reading Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day. Quite exciting—and some good characters. But I hate her little bits of fancy writing, such as: “… away on the mound each ilex stained with a little night of its own the after-death shining of the day.”
Went shopping with Jimmy [Charlton], who is away from work with a bad cold. We got a ticket for jaywalking. I think Jimmy is beginning to feel the strain of sharing an apartment with his mother.
I’m apparently under a strain too, because I keep bleeding from the rectum. Probably nothing serious—but I worry a little, as I always do. Kolisch is going to look at it if his salve doesn’t work.
March 3. Paid my fine at the City Hall—two dollars. The other people who had fines to pay were all automobile drivers, and each one of them argued with the stenographer—as though she were the judge. She was very patient, but with a playful air of reproach, like the nurse in the office of a doctor who handles V.D. patients. “Well, perhaps you’ll be a good boy now.”
Tim Brooke and Nicky Nadeau to supper. Despite his charm, I don’t really like Tim. He has a tiresome masochistic air of complaint. He is always hard up, always being badly treated. He smiles bravely under it—but Society, you are given to understand, owes him an unpayable debt. Whatever it may offer him, it can never really console him, never quite make up for the years of neglect. He showed me a newspaper clipping from an Oxford paper, dated 1933, reviewing The Memorial and his own book Man Made Angry. Tim’s novel was much more favorably reviewed than mine. And the moral of course was: look how the second-rate always wins out in the end and patient merit is forgotten.
Nicky is dancing for television now. He is in coarse good health. He is a vulgar boy and I find his pose of indifference very tiresome. And yet he’s nice to have around, simply because he doesn’t complain—although he has certainly been through some hard times.
Tim says Vernon isn’t getting along at all well with Patty.
Lunch today with Eugene Exman. He hasn’t changed. Cautious and prim, but shrewd. I could see he was thinking that I’ve coarsened. I suppose I have. To all these people, I’m a sad backslider.
Caskey went out late, and we had another mild scene about the record playing in the middle of the night. It is a most curious deadlock—arising, apparently, out of an emotional blind spot in Caskey. He absolutely cannot understand why I mind being kept awake. And I absolutely cannot understand how he can keep me awake, even if he doesn’t understand why. However, I freely admit that I am kept awake by a kind of obstinacy—just as it is obstinacy which makes him play the records.
Oh, if only he could find something he really wanted to do! Yet no one could complain he is idle. Today he painted the front porch.
Tim and Nicky warmly praised his pictures and photographs. This pleased him.
May 22. I turn to this book after another too-long lapse. Perhaps it will help.
I’m in a strange condition—highly toxic, I feel—and really verging on some kind of a nervous breakdown. Only I probably won’t break down as long as I keep hold of some threads of reason. The depressing thing about my state of mind is that it so closely resembles the mood of 1940, in which I was bubbling with resentment against Vernon. Now Caskey is the victim. And, of course, I have built up a rational case against him as well-documented as the prosecution’s case in the Nuremberg Trials. He is lazy. He won’t earn money. He won’t even try to draw his pension. He stays out late. He is cold, bitchy, selfish, etc. etc. I rehearse bits of this great accusation as I lie in bed in the morning, until it seems as if my thoughts would wake him up, they are so loud. Sometimes, I actually tell him what I am thinking—but I never do this in the right way: either I’m cold and spiteful, or I shout and thump my fist. I don’t think it makes much impression.
Now, it is absolutely essential that this state of affairs shall stop. And the only question is: how?
Well—there are two alternatives: either I leave Caskey, or I don’t.
Leaving Caskey—quite aside from being terribly painful—wouldn’t really solve anything. Unless there were someone else to go to—which there isn’t. Or unless I were prepared to return to Ivar Avenue—which I’m not.
Therefore we have to stay together.
Now, this much is clear: staying together means accepting Caskey exactly as he is. I must remember this. I must renounce all attempts to change Caskey’s attitude, behavior or habits. I must accept him, and thereby renounce my whole possessive attitude towards him.
>
This does not mean that I shouldn’t give my honest opinion and advice—if asked.
And it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t insist on a few simple rules—like the business of making a noise at night. That’s all right, because it’s no more than anybody would ask, even in the most casually polite relationship.
I must stop trying to subdue Caskey, to shame him, to make him feel guilty.
Oh dear—is this possible?
It is not possible if it’s done as an act. It is not possible if you are all the time watching to see the effect of your new technique on Caskey. It is possible if you build up your inner life of prayer, meditation, artistic creation, physical exercise and routine, and simply let Caskey do as he pleases—always welcoming any advance on his part.
Well—go ahead. You have plenty of work: your novel,26 the story with Samuels.27 Take it easy. Don’t get tense.
July 26. Today I went to Ivar Avenue, to attend Sister’s funeral—or rather, the part of it, the little ceremony, which took place up at the temple.
Sister died last week—Saturday [the] 23rd, I think it was. In Santa Barbara.
I was up to see her there on the 20th. I drove up for lunch. She had had pneumonia then, and an attack of uremia, but she seemed better that day. The dark plum-colored rash which had broken out in several places on her body was clearing. She apologized for it, with her usual courtesy. She didn’t want me to touch her hand, which was smeared with salve. She knew me as soon as I came into the room. “It’s so nice to see old friends,” she said. But she drowsed off again. Amiya and Swami told me that, much of the time, she thought she was in Honolulu. However, she really seemed better, and I somehow felt she’d recover. (Swami told me that she was able to urinate after he gave her a drop of Ganges water.) We were all quite cheerful; and I sang those silly songs I wrote while I was living at Ivar Avenue—about Ramakrishna, and Jesus and the turkey, and “Never smoke before the Swami”—and George (who’s now called Krishna, since he took the brahmacharya vow) made me record them on his machine.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 64