Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  I was nervous too, of course. I felt sure that Dylan would disgrace himself at the reading. But I was entirely wrong. When Dylan got on the platform, no one could have told that he wasn’t sober. He gave a masterly performance, not only of his own work, but of Hardy and many others. (I wish I had the program.) The marvellous beauty of his voice in the more serious poems can be heard on records, but I do wish I also had records of his comic reading. He was a brilliant comedian and mimic. The audience loved him—the students, that is. I got an impression of sourness among most of the faculty members who were present.

  The moment Dylan was through, he was eager to get away—as eager as I was. We hurried across the campus to my car, laughing gleefully with a conspiratorial feeling of escape. I congratulated him on his performance and we talked about Hardy. He knew most of Hardy’s work, far more than I did, but it so happened that I quoted a poem he didn’t remember. “Whenever you meet someone who likes Hardy,” he said, “he always quotes something you haven’t heard before.”

  Dylan was now in the best of spirits—all ready for the fun which he trusted me to provide. As it happened, I was lucky. I had gotten hold of Ivan Moffat, and (I think) Frank Taylor. Dylan had told me he wanted to meet Chaplin, and a movie actress. Chaplin was willing—I guess Frank arranged this—and Ivan provided Shelley Winters. We ate at The Players Restaurant, on Sunset.

  Shelley was a good choice, because she is a naturally easygoing girl and the situation intrigued her. When Dylan started to stare at her breasts, and asked, “Are they real?” she laughed and told him, “Sure.” “Let me feel them,” said Dylan. “All right,” said Shelley, “but only with two fingers.” This wasn’t enough for Dylan, however. He pawed her and reached across to grab her—he was like a very rough baby with its mother—and finally they both fell off the[ir] chair[s] onto the ground. A waiter arrived and fussed somewhat, but Shelley laughed it off, and we weren’t asked to leave.

  Of course by this time I was very drunk too, so I don’t remember much of our visit to Chaplin. Ivan says that Dylan was rude to him, and that Chaplin (who was a bit of a Blimp himself, especially in his own home and Oona’s presence) was offended. But the visit went off quite well, and I’m sure that Dylan didn’t mean to offend Chaplin. He admired him enormously.

  The last phase of our evening was at the Café de Paris restaurant on Sunset. By then, everything was very muddled. I don’t think Shelley was with us anymore. Some man came in—maybe a movie writer or director. Anyhow, he was a reader of my work, and he told me, quite courteously, that he hadn’t liked my last book as much as the others he’d read. Whereupon Dylan—bored, maybe, because there were no girls and no action—yelled, “Don’t you insult my friend, you fucking etc. etc. etc.” and threw himself on the man, who was big; nearly twice his own size. The man pushed him off, good-naturedly. So Dylan walked over to the wall, took a run of several yards, and attacked again. This time we all helped repel him. And he turned and ran out of the bar into the street. We thought he’d come back, but he didn’t.

  Next day, there was a crisis, because it seemed that Dylan had left some of the books he read from at my house. Majal Ewing’s secretary rang up to tell me this. It was apparently expected that I should take them over to UCLA to be given to Dylan before his next reading, in Santa Barbara. I was busy and this enraged me. I told the secretary that Professor Ewing certainly must have some student who could come and pick them up. Nothing was done about this, however. I believe Dylan gave his reading as best he could, without the books, and that he came by for them very briefly, before leaving for the East. Anyhow, this started some bitchy gossip to the effect that I’d tried to steal some of Dylan’s manuscripts. I retorted in kind, and no doubt my remarks about Ewing and the English department got right back to them.

  My other meeting with Dylan was on March 6, 1952 in New York, at the Chelsea Hotel. I’d arrived there the day before, on my return from a visit to England, and discovered that Dylan and his wife were also staying there. At this time, New York was full of talk about the violent behavior of the Thomases, their drunken fights at parties and the valuable objects they had smashed in the drawing rooms of rich hostesses. The Chelsea is a huge old gloomy place, and its charm is a quality of apartness. The dark passages are almost always empty, however crowded the building may be, and few sounds reach you from other guests. Each room is a separate world and not, as in most modern hotels, a place which you seem to be partly sharing with your next-door neighbors. And this gives you the exciting sense of possibility—the neighbors seem all the more exciting; they might be absolutely anybody.

  I saw Dylan very briefly, because I myself was in a rush of engagements, and he was soon leaving New York. I met and got little impression of his wife—she seemed shy and rather homely. Dylan and I (and I think Bob MacGregor of New Directions) went downstairs to the bar for a drink, and Dylan said, “This is the hottest bar in New York,” which may have been literally true; because the steam heating seemed to be built right into the bar itself. Alas, that’s all I remember that he did say. He looked paler and fatter; otherwise as before. I never saw him again.

  December 17. I’m writing this at Saltair Avenue, on the morning of our departure—Don’s and mine—to spend Christmas and New Year’s in New York. As always before flying, I’m in a state of acute nervous apprehension. I really do loathe it. And at the same time I’m aware that this is only a mental symptom of the pyloric spasms I had last month. I’ll try not to let Don see how I feel. He is just radiant with joy and excitement—letting out little cries like a bird.

  This place is really all the home I have anywhere—despite the behavior of the Hookers, and I always leave it with regret. There is a good smell of work here, despite much lazing and mooning around.

  A couple of days ago, Gerald Heard read the novel and seemed to like it enormously. I don’t know why I write “seemed”—I’m sure he did. He raised all kinds of points, had obviously studied it most carefully—and yet he kept referring to Elizabeth as “Margaret”! I’m so very happy that he likes it, and so happy that we are friends, now; real friends, like we used to be.

  Gerald urged me to write about Don and myself—“for the record.” I probably will, if we go on together. And, barring accidents, I think we may, for quite a long time.

  Chris Wood had dinner with me alone last night, much depressed. He feels that his life will end soon, and that it has been wasted. He blames himself for overindulging Paul [Sorel] and giving him so much money. He feels certain of reincarnation and dreads it, because of the way he has lived. Of course there is some masochism in all this, but, just the same, Chris’s sincerity impressed me, as it always does. He is a very frank person, and he doesn’t whine. He is far far better than he thinks himself.

  Chris is saddened because, he says, his relations with Gerald are so superficial nowadays. They never talk intimately about anything. Chris thinks that the rift caused by Paul still remains between them, and that that is the reason.

  Last night, I dreamed that I was helping Swami get undressed and ready for bed, in some large house or hotel. This was a sort of “companion piece” to my other dream about him. I felt eager to attend to all his wants and was very respectful. As I helped him into his dressing gown, we found that it was entangled in mine—the sleeves of my gown were pulled down into his. Swami said, “Oh, so you have a dressing gown? I was going to give you mine.” And I said, “But I can throw mine away.” This was a good dream.

  Well, so long now. Wish me luck. And if my presentiments are right for once, and we get killed, well, it isn’t at the worst possible moment. At least, this book is solidly finished. And, as for what happens next, I believe in mercy and the guru’s grace. And Ramakrishna will be sure to love Don.

  Now I must go.

  1954

  January 12. I ought to write all about New York, of course. But I shan’t. I just don’t want to. It happened, according to schedule, and for me—apart from the strain and anxiety of making it
happen—it was a huge success: that is to say, Donny really loved it.

  Oh, yes, and I did too. But there’s more real solid happiness in sitting here in the garden house with the rain raining outside, and thinking about it, and being full of plans for the New Year, new work, and I hope a more intentional life.

  I’ve started going to the Physical Services gym at Westwood and Santa Monica, and already the exercise makes me feel good. I needed it so badly. That’s a good habit started. I must keep it up.

  Now this anthology.100 I have to ask myself a lot of questions—why do I like the things I’ve put in it?

  It seems to me that I love some writers, and therefore the examples of their work are really examples of what I love in them. And other writers give me a world, and that’s what I love. And others have a kind of tone or note they strike, and that stirs and excites me.

  For example, I love Chekhov, and Hans Andersen and D. H. Lawrence. I love the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and Conrad. I love the tone of Tolstoy and Proust, and Kipling.

  But perhaps I’d better not generalize. Best to get down to writing about each piece individually.

  I have a tremendous lot of work ahead of me, if I can only get around to it—this anthology, the Ramakrishna book, the Los Angeles letter for John Lehmann, the story about the refugee hostel (the other part of the material for The World in the Evening), the stories about Basil Fry and Francis Turville-Petre, and the rewrite of my 1939–44 journal in the form of a book.

  July 20. Well—that last entry reads oddly—because none of the things I mentioned got done.101 I started working for MGM January 25102 and am still here.

  Just about four weeks ago, I quit smoking. Still a lot of nervous tension.

  The novel is sort of a flop,103 both here and in England, but with some good notices, much discussion and fair sales.

  Don and I are still living at 364 Mesa, very happily—and we have no idea what will happen after September 1.

  Now you’re up to date—

  As you get older, it’s as if a sort of film covers your perceptions of the outer world, most of the time. But there are faces which have a sharpness, a vital sharpness, like that of an instrument, which cuts through this film—so that they seem more real than anything else.

  August 27. Made it! Fifty—the unimaginable age. And now comes what might be the most interesting part of life—the twenty years till seventy. What shall I do with them? I want to talk to Gerald, and others, about this.

  Am still not smoking.

  Yesterday was bad, like most birthdays. Don and I squabbled most of the day. But then we went out and bought a movie projector and had fun running it with Jo and Ben. Rod Owens and his friend Jimmy the Texan showed up later, drunk.

  Today I’m back in the studio. The script was finished on the 25th, but already Eddie [Knopf] and I are taking it apart, fussing with it. Jane MacIntyre’s104 off on her vacation. I may get Gottfried’s Toppy.105 Gave Jane a blue sweater embellished with Caskey’s beads.106

  Worries. Don and the draft. The Curtis Harrington case. (His lawyer now demands $600.)107 What to do about England.108

  But I’m truly thankful that I’m not smoking and that I’m living in less of a daze. Perhaps I can gradually calm down and get my life more into order.

  Needless to say, one of my resolutions is to keep this book up again. Shall try.

  September 5. Up at Ladera Lane109—came yesterday, leave today. Last night, watching the sun go down among the islands, with their long smears of fog, and hearing the whirring of the quail, and seeing the big motionless flowers, the roses still full of the draining light—I remembered so clearly the mood of 1944, up here in the fall, looking at this same view and feeling the aloneness and the sadness. I’m not particularly sad, now. Anyhow, not for myself which is good. I was sad for Billy, who behaved so badly to Connie110 and John Mace111 at the party, and then called Ed Tauch112 and found he was just dead of a heart attack: Billy in tears, drunk and lonely—and pitiful in the way that a woman of sixty-five is pitiful—her life over. But Billy’s life is by no means over. It may even be really beginning. It’s just what one glimpses. Ed Tauch believed that the millennium had started. Don said I’d talked to Billy about On the Waterfront in a way in which I never talked to him. All these impressions we get of each other—so partial and wrong. In view of the whole nature of life, one can never be sufficiently kind and thoughtful. The utmost is too little. We are all wretchedly exposed to pain. Skinless.

  Swami is Swami. No need to say more about him. The girls wanted to know all about Marlon Brando. He talked to Swami at Merle Oberon’s.

  September 8. I keep meaning to write here—every day I’ve meant to—but time slips past. Tonight we’re going to a sneak of Richard Brooks’s film based on Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited. Going with Salka, who’s still around, but apt to be leaving soon. Peter [Viertel]’s Bettina [Graziani] has already gone to New York to take a job as a model. Gerald Heard left yesterday, to lecture. Jo and Ben are with Kady Wells113 in New Mexico.

  Worries—the Formosa situation,114 and Don’s draft. Otherwise I’m well, and have plenty of dough—over $16,000—with more coming in. The script drags on, but I quite enjoy working on it. And I get on well with Knopf.

  September 9. The chief trouble is acute nervous tension—so acute that sometimes I feel as if I’d just stopped smoking. Maybe this endocrinologist, Larry Weingarten’s wife,115 will be able to do something about it.

  The parody of me in Punch hurt my vanity, of course.116 I suppose that I do seem a completely bogus figure to people who dislike me—a preacher of sloppy uplift, a self-obsessed, weak-kneed, whining bore. And yet I know, quite solidly and finally, that the uplift is neither bogus nor sloppy—however unconvincingly I may preach it. And I don’t honestly think that I’m given to self-pity. Inside, I’m really not in the least sorry for myself.

  My besetting fault is the same as it always was—a vanity which is hypersensitive to criticism. I just can’t bear to see one member of the audience yawning—even if it’s someone I’d ordinarily despise as a dolt.

  (I was interrupted in the midst of all this by the whine on the gears of the garbage collectors’ truck. Grabbed the garbage can and ran down to the street, but too late. Now I’ve lost my glasses, and have had to fetch the spare pair from the car.)

  Actually, when I think of almost everybody I know, I find them heroic in one respect at least—the way they face loneliness. Salka in her tiny smelly apartment on Wilshire, Peter taking Lauren Bacall to that awful preview last night. And, I suppose, Lauren Bacall going with Peter. … It’s not just a matter of being alone, physically—no, far worse, it’s the being exiled among people who never, in a million years, could understand anything you said or did.

  The problem: what to do with the next twenty years—H-bomb permitting—remains unsolved. I haven’t even found any hints, yet. Everything is conveniently shelved until the film is finished. The one real responsibility I have is Don. Everything revolves around him, at the moment.

  September 20. Last night, Don and I had supper with Shelley Winters. Doris Dowling and Ivan Moffat were there. Ivan is full of alarm: he has heard that the atom scientists are pressing for a preventive war at once, because, even by next year, Russia will be too strong. So he is sure we shall take the first opportunity to strike—and if we lose 20,000 of our own civilians in the bombing—well, that’s tough.

  I can’t altogether believe this, but I’m nevertheless depressed and alarmed. And my pylorus is busy manufacturing anxiety in case it’s needed suddenly in gigantic quantities. I wake, most nights, around 3 a.m., fairly shaking with terror. I convince myself that spies or thugs are coming up the stairs from the street.

  Ivan, who rather revels in these warnings of doom, has a plan—half fanciful, half serious—to go to Brazil and found a “family”—not a real one, but a group of people—all talented or beautiful or charming or efficient—who will stick together under all circumstances, act in comple
te obedience to the will of their leader, and pool all earnings. Within five years, says Ivan, the family would run Brazil. He’s probably right. The head of this family is to be—Ricki Huston!117

  Shelley had been grand marshal at a rodeo, and had also made a speech at the ball of the makeup artists’ union. The speaker before her had dwelt enthusiastically on the advances the union had made in the past years. “The days are gone forever,” he said, “when each actor had to carry his own makeup box.” When it was Shelley’s turn to speak, she was already rather high. She said, “I’m so glad I don’t have to carry my own box.” The audience laughed and applauded for five minutes. But Shelley was worried, because she’d been so indiscreet. For example, when she was asked what she thought of Grace Kelly, she replied, “Oh, she’ll crumble.”

  On the set of The Prodigal. Thorpe118 hunched up in a chair, utterly exhausted, like a man who has been drilling for oil in the jungle—and hasn’t found any. Watched two actors practicing a sword fight. One of them was smoking a cigar which he never removed from his mouth.