Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1
Page 80
September 21. Yesterday I went to the Beverly Hilton which is the ugliest hotel I’ve ever seen, and had drinks with Frank Taylor, and Nan, and her brother Joe, who’s an intern at UCLA, where they have a marvellously equipped hospital, with remote-control cobalt radiation for cancer and a reactor—the only one of its kind in the West. Frank was very funny about his efforts to leave the hotel in shorts—since wearing them is forbidden in the lobby. Joe Scallon seemed a very sweet-natured, dedicated person. He has switched from surgery (chiefly brain) to radiology because he thinks it’s so neglected in this country and just as important.
After this cancer talk, it was a rather ghastly coincidence that I went round to Gore Vidal’s apartment at the Chateau Marmont and found that Tinker (Howard Austen) had just been told he has a cancer on his ear. Tinker was quite carefree about this. Gore is very worried. I recommended Dr. Sellars.
A very drunken supper at Romanoff’s with David Miller and his wife—what is her name?—ostensibly to discuss his doing The Vacant Room.
September 22. Supper, last night, with Jo and Ben turned into a sort of love feast. Quite spontaneously, we found ourselves saying how much we liked each other. “What we always say about you, Chris,” said Ben, “is you’re so damn honest.”
Ricky, the seventeen-year-old blond lifeguard, was there for a few minutes, shivering cold, in nothing but his trunks. A few weeks ago, he won a paddleboard race from Catalina to the mainland, in thick fog, thirty-some miles—which took him most of the day. Then he went out with his girl, took her home, stopped in to see some friends, played a game of basketball, got back in the small hours, and got up early next morning—a Monday—to go to school!
September 23. Tinker’s cancer scare seems over. I don’t yet know about his ear, but Dr. Sellars says his lungs are definitely all right. And the other wouldn’t be at all serious, even if it is cancer.
Had supper with Michael Barrie last night. Gerald and Chris were there. Gerald very gay and playful. He told me that he had felt—and that “someone” (he couldn’t remember who) had confirmed it—our new house is haunted. After this I went back there and slept alone—Don’s mother was sick and he stayed the night with her—somewhat nervously. It is very creaky, and certainly thick with “atmosphere”—but I don’t feel anything evil.
Today Knopf and I have been revising The Wayfarer script. I also told him I hate the ending of Gaby, and now it may be changed. On the set228 to watch Leslie Caron and John Kerr act. I must say, they are adorable together—although I know what a cold little bitch she is.229
Betsy Cox is leaving for her vacation, so I doubt if I’ll see her again. I’m giving her a bottle of Tabac Blanc perfume. Jo and Ben leave tonight by plane for Hawaii. We’re taking them to the Trader’s Restaurant at the Beverly Hilton. My passport has arrived. Violent departure jitters.
September 29. It’s bad that I haven’t kept this record day by day lately—because there have been quite a lot of minor developments, and changes of mood now lost.
Two days ago, for example, I was quite blue, with acute travel jitters—the feeling that life is really too much trouble. I walked around some movie sets with Gore, who looked at the books to see if any of them were by him. Being with Gore depresses me, unless I’m feeling absolutely up to the mark, because Gore really exudes despair and cynical misery and a grudge against society which is really based on his own lack of talent and creative joy.
Another reason for feeling blue was that on the evening of the 26th I broke off my capped tooth (and swallowed it) as the result of biting violently into a piece of saltwater taffy—due to my indignation at having to watch The Farmer’s Daughter and reflect that Loretta Young got an Oscar for it. (We had to sit through the film in order to see Notorious, in which [Ingrid] Bergman, after all these years, seemed better than ever.)
But now I have a good recap job, and today the doctor (one of Jessie’s sidekicks) examined me and declared that my heart, lungs and blood pressure were better than his own. And yesterday I stayed home with Don and we had one of the best days we’ve had in this house—walking on the beach in the marvellous afternoon light and watching a dog chase the gulls. Again it was there—le bonheur.
Today the whole studio has been buzzing over the victory of the Yankees over the Dodgers. And I’ve been fidgeting because of the time slipping by and the endless delays caused by Bob Andrews’s230 scruples and warnings about the possible reactions of the Buddhists.231 I’m scared they may possibly foul up our going away on the 12th. But they won’t if I can help it.
September 30. Don has been with his parents, so I spent last night in the house alone. It was rather enjoyable for a change, waking up and reading The Books of Charles Fort232 in bed. This is a grey-blue morning, probably clearing later. Iron lights in the sea and a big rough dangerous surf. The useless yellow machine is noisily raking a perfectly clean beach, untrodden for days except by the gulls.
Last night I had a nice supper with Ivan Moffat at Frascati’s on Wilshire. He is always so pretty and bright eyed and clean—he has to be, for I imagine his evenings usually end, if they don’t begin, visiting some girl. He has the slightly guilty grin of the accepted lover. I ate excellent roast chicken and we drank Löwenbräu beer and talked easily and intimately—pleasant relaxed heterosexual conversation, with no strings. Ivan said Harry was terribly drunk at the Bracketts’, after leaving us last Sunday—and Kenneth MacKenna was there: Harry will gradually build up a reputation that will make every studio hesitate to hire him. Then Ivan talked about Joan [Elan] and what a marvellous girl she is—but how he could never marry her because she’d become too clinging. He talked about the girl he is probably going to marry. She is clinging too, it seems—but not in the same way: “wifely” was the word he used, I believe. When she was married to an astronomer, she used to polish his lenses for him.233 We talked also about life, and I said if I had mine to live over again I would try to live without fear. And Ivan said that was just exactly how he felt too. Then he told me that he’s dissatisfied with his studio work at present—because he is pouring out the “dearest secrets” of his feelings about the last war into a trashy film story. He feels all of this is waste. Talking of that evening we spent with Dylan Thomas at Charlie Chaplin’s (see here of this diary). Ivan says that Dylan was describing how he’d met an English professor here who had described himself as “a refugee from the Labor government.” “And so,” said Dylan, “I gave him the only possible answer. I said: ‘Go and fuck your bloody eyeballs.’” This greatly displeased the Chaplins—especially Oona, who is prudish. This was also the evening on which I allegedly urinated on one of their sofas while I was asleep. But I shall never believe I did this, because I’ve never done such a thing before or since.
October 1. In view of our many complaints, it’s worth recording that Don said this morning: “Here we are, having breakfast out of doors on this marvellous beach, with the sun shining and that terrific white surf, and the lifeguards playing ball to amuse us—really, I ought to be flogged when I forget things like that and make a fuss—” We both agreed that we somewhat dread leaving.
October 5. All dressed up in my suit and the Speed Lamkin Club tie, I’m waiting to go off to the preview of Diane, in Burbank. I saw it yesterday in the projection room—the beginning was slow, and neither Lana nor Marisa are really much more than amateurs—but it takes hold toward the end.
A shameful weekend of drinking with Don, Jim [Charlton], Michael [Barrie], Tom Wright, his friend Scott Poland, and Jimmy Daugherty. We sank right to the depths of Rustic Road, and I was mean to Don. Next day I had an almost paralytic hangover—the kind which makes you fear you’ll lose your nerve in the middle of the street and have to park the car and scream for help. In the midst of this I had lunch with Aldous—thin and pale but lively and full of talk. He urged me to get him some mescaline in New York, spoke of his play, and discussed money—practically asking me outright how much I have. I told him at once, of course. He has $80,000.
Predeparture misery. Chris Wood leaves for New York tomorrow by plane—his first in about twenty-five years. He is terrified. Gerald has become dressy again. He sports a tailor-made waistcoat.
MGM has also ruined Kismet, by photographing it so poorly.
A story of Vera Stravinsky’s—a very dumb wife is warned by her husband not to say anything during a dinner party. At length the hostess says: “Shall we have coffee in the library?” The wife inquires innocently: “Is it still open?”
October 9. Woke up in the middle of the night and thought: “God is a Being whom my whole life insults.” But this was largely a phrase. I don’t really feel so alienated.
Ted and his friend Bob Hoover are here, and Don is fixing banana waffles, and there is the usual fuss with our very inefficient wiring. The telephone is out of order since yesterday, because some of the party-liners have taken it off the hook. This afternoon, Michael will come, and Jim, and Brad Saunders, and this evening we go out to supper with Marisa Pavan. Lots of fuss-fuss-fussing about last-minute arrangements.
October 11. Brad Saunders told us how a whole squadron of bombers had to be grounded because they became infested with rats. The rats chewed through wiring, and in one instance, very nearly caused a crash.
Brad used to room with James Dean in the days when he worked on a car lot. He always wanted to be an actor. At parties he sat in corners. Brad would introduce him as “Hamlet.”
Sandy Roth was following Dean in his car at the time of the accident, because he was going to cover the auto races that Dean was to take part in. We met Sandy at Marisa’s party, which was a bore, despite the excellent food and the elegance of Marisa’s lively young mother. I quarrelled hotly with Salka about the French.
Yesterday we buzzed hither and thither. The cap came off my tooth again, so Dr. Dickinson stuck it on and gave me a do-it-yourself kit, including spatula, dental mirror and cement, in case it comes off while we’re away in Europe. We bought $4,000 worth of traveler’s checks. I suddenly feel poor. All our money is leaking away.
Last night we had supper at the Stravinskys’. Igor seemed old and pale and shrunken. He was doing a jigsaw puzzle—Newlyn Harbor.234
Don and I both wish Michael wouldn’t talk so glibly about God—he’s coy, as if it were a slightly daring secret. At supper, he asked us all to define Love. The Stravinskys were embarrassed.
After dinner, I smoked one of Igor’s cigarettes—the first in fifteen months—because it smelled so nice. It’s a truly strange thing—I noticed it before when I wasn’t smoking—I could always smoke when drunk without restarting the addiction.
October 12. 1:00 p.m. The living room is still full of cartons with books, clothes, etc. We have far, far too much of everything and it’s almost incredible to think that most of our possessions are already in storage. Don, who has a bad cold, is packing diligently but I know we’ll be late. We always are. At 9:00 this evening we take off for New York. I don’t feel any sense, yet, of the journey ahead—and I won’t, until we’re on that boat.
Saw Speed yesterday, who advised me to write a play. And [Hans] Rameau, who showed me photographs—bringing them out of carefully tied envelopes in a suitcase like a connoisseur showing rare wines to a guest. While in Europe, he fulfilled a great ambition—to have sex in Hitler’s bedroom at Berchtesgaden.
October 15. Well, we’re safely here, and staying with Julie Harris and Manning Gurian at their nice little house on East Fiftieth, nearly over to the river. It’s not such a little house, either. Four floors and very steep stairs. The baby, Peter, is teething; but he’s away up at the top and you don’t hear him at night, you hear everything else, though. What a brutally noisy city! People seem to spend the night shovelling gravel, collecting tin cans, or just beating the sidewalk with spades. The weather is muggy and dirty. You keep busting out into a sweat, and the sweat has grime in it. Yesterday it poured and we both got wet through.
Julie seems happy. She adores the baby, Manning obviously protects and encourages her at every turn, and she’s hard at work on rehearsals of The Lark.235 She doesn’t seem as lively, quite, as in the old days. But then she isn’t as tense, and she probably no longer has her moods of despair.
We’ve seen Chris Wood and Hugh Wheeler, Wystan, Lincoln. Wystan looks awful—so ravaged and weary. He’s lecturing on the sonnets—they were written, he has decided, to several different boys. Chris begged me to be forgiving toward Peggy. But I can’t sincerely say that I am until she makes a gesture toward Don. It’s not enough to invite him to the house in a big party. She has to understand that she’s a common middle-class bitch pretending to be a lady, a shrew who has driven her husband and her children away from the house. She despises Don because she thinks he’s cheap and unpresentable, and she isn’t fit to lick his boots. But I mustn’t give way to the rage I feel against her. I’d like to see her humiliated and thrashed.
October 20. Yesterday, at noon, when the great ship thundered goodbye to the echoing towers of Manhattan, I could hardly told back my tears—it was so beautiful—the Hudson full of fussing tugboats and brimming with silver light—the thought that it was Don’s first voyage, never never to be quite duplicated for him—and then there was the brandy we’d drunk with Frank Merlo, who saw us off, bringing with him an inscribed copy of Ten’s Kingdom of Earth236 and a big bottle of champagne.
The evening before, John Goodwin gave us a party in his art nouveau house. He has procured me seven tablets of mescaline—six at the price of twelve dollars each, the seventh a gift. Tennessee and Frank came, and Paul Cadmus and Bill Miller looking fat but not older, and Bill Harris looking older, but not fatter. Also a lot of young men, including some cute twins called Barth. Someone offered me a cigar. I bit the end off, and broke my capped tooth again. Julie and Manning’s nice dentist, Dr. Theodore Cohn, put on another, quickly and cheaply. I only pray that it holds.
This visit to Manhattan has been more than usually gruelling—what with dashing to Philadelphia to see A Hatful of Rain237 with Frank and Ten and not getting back till 5:00 a.m.—and then a party at Harold Clurman’s,238 at which Michael Redgrave mistook Oscar Hammerstein for John Steinbeck—at which Hammerstein countered by saying, “Hello, Mr. Olivier.”
Sometime yesterday, or maybe it was the evening before, I started to form the project of making a play out of The World in the Evening. (Once more, following Speed’s advice!) I see it essentially as a dialogue between Stephen and Elizabeth—though using other characters, of course. Don and I discussed this excitedly during supper last night, drinking a wine called Barolo.
This boat, the Saturnia, has an old-fashioned grandeur—somewhat art nouveau. It was launched in 1927. There are very few people in the first class, and most of them seem uninteresting. We have a cabin with a veranda, and it is so snug.
October 21. Two whole days at sea completed—this is the third evening. But it won’t be till the 26th that we arrive in Lisbon, and that only for a couple of hours.
Today the sun shone and the swimming pool was filled and we went in. The swell was strong but smoothed away to nothing. I finished Norman Mailer’s awful book239—such trash—and am now in the doldrums of John Lehmann’s autobiography—The Whispering Gallery. All accounts of childhood are boring, except the very greatest, and his is not the very greatest or the greatest or even the very.
It’s dull on this boat but pleasantly so. We know no one—have barely talked to a soul, except for a boy going to join a seminary in Rome, and a fat lady from Florida—and the captain’s cocktail party and the get-together dinner left us isolated. I have a nasty cold and cough and have taken Tabcin. Don is reading Stephen [Spender]’s The Burning Cactus.
October
23. The tense spuffle of the steam and the tearing noise of the foam. Today the sea is black, the sky overcast, a strongish wind from the southeast but very little rolling. Yesterday and the day before were sunny and warm. This morning we slept very late—till after 11:00 a.m.—after getting quite drunk. We met a boring young man from Chicago, who explained that he was with his mother who had had a nervous breakdown and went to bed early. We had decided he was a fortune hunter with an elderly wife, so this was a disappointment. He bored us so much that Don pretended, very convincingly, to be seasick.
This is perhaps the dullest boat trip I’ve ever taken, but it’s quite enjoyable as a rest cure and I think Don feels the same way. But I wish I could get rid of this tickling cough.
October 25. Last day at sea before Lisbon. Yesterday there was strong wind and rain and quite a nasty roll. But neither of us felt worse than slightly queasy.
Today we’ve come to a decision—to leave this boat at Gilbraltar, the day after tomorrow, go over to Tangier, where we hope to see Paul and Jane Bowles, return to Gibraltar after two days and pick up the Andrea Doria to take us on to Naples, which we’ll explore first. Then on to Rome. Then to Venice later. This seems a much better plan.
I do wish I didn’t feel so fat—but that can be remedied. I do hope my capped tooth won’t fall out before I’m within reach of a dentist. I lost a bit of bridgework down the washbasin last night, but the steward unscrewed the trap and recovered it. My fingers are all blue from fixing the ribbon on the Olivetti.
October 27. Yesterday, at 8:15 in the evening, we docked at Lisbon. (We made the landfall about four hours earlier, when the hills around Sintra appeared over the horizon, while we were drinking tea to the accompaniment of “Claire de Lune.”) It was too dark to see much, but we went into the town and walked around, through crowds of dark homely runty but charmingly polite Portuguese. Chief impression: a beautiful tower with an elevator in it, leading to a covered passage high above the street, by which, apparently, you could reach an upper level. Immense numbers of taxis, nearly all empty, darting back and forth. Cafés occupied almost entirely by men. The beautiful old houses with tiled facades and the narrow lanes.