On New Year’s Eve, we went to a bar called the Fiacre and met Ray Ohge, jammed into a crowd so dense you could only sway with it like seaweed in water. He has been in Copenhagen and was travelling with what he described as a Danish princess. We also saw Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer—we went with them to the movies on New Year’s Day. And Mel took us out to the St. Maurice Studio in Joinville, where he is making a film with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais.276
Bergman didn’t recognize me—I’ve aged so much since 1940, when we did Rage in Heaven. She still looks wonderful, and she has a warmth and naturalness which are quite unactressy. She enjoyed herself enormously at lunch, telling the old story of the man who had the robot wife.
Jean Marais, foxy and bedroom eyed and much more intelligent than I’d expected, told me about his first meeting with Denny [Fouts]. Denny came into his dressing room in pajamas, explaining quite casually that he had been sick and his friends had taken his clothes away to prevent him from going out, but that he’d made up his mind to come, anyway. Last year, Marais came to Hollywood, to visit some friends who were in The Glass Slipper with the Roland Petit Ballet. He saw no agents, gave no interviews and spent his time at a little apartment near Culver City, marketing and cooking while his hosts were working at the studio.
Mel talked a lot about U.S. gangsters, particularly those in the gambling racket, and pointed out that they are still just as ruthless, though not so spectacularly—instancing the murder of Bugsy Siegel. Siegel’s daughter now lives in Klosters and Irwin Shaw knows her well. But […] she never talks about the murder. [Also, she never travels back to] the [United] States.
Talking of Irwin Shaw reminds me that we hear that Bettina Graziani, Peter’s ex-girl, is about to marry Ali Khan.277
The studio was astonishingly tacky—holes in the sound proofing of the ceiling. And Renoir always refuses to say which scene is coming next, so the actors have to stick around all day.
January 6. Today we went to Versailles in a thick fog. The chateau seemed utterly dead, deserted even by its ghosts. And the park was bitterly cold with loudly dripping trees, although it wasn’t raining.
Another day of deep gloom. We shall be glad to get out of here.
One of the greatest disappointments of this visit has been the food. Restaurant after restaurant failed us. And all so expensive.
January 10. Fred Ditis remarked on this very point while he was driving us to the Gare du Nord (on the morning of the 7th) to catch the Golden Arrow to England. He said that it’s a myth that all Parisian restaurants are good. There are many good (and even cheap ones) but one may spend a long time in Paris without finding them.
Fred is a Swiss, a publisher of crime fiction, rather attractive looking and really quite intelligent. We met him through Gielgud. He has been very kind.
Throughout the journey to England I was in an absurd state of jitters lest anything should go wrong at the passport office and customs. Actually, it couldn’t have been easier, but I never can forget that traumatic experience with Heinz.278
And maybe it wouldn’t have been so very unfortunate if we had been turned away from the white cliffs. For our stay here has opened disastrously. After two days at John Lehmann’s, Don announced that he just couldn’t take it any more—he even thought we’d have to stop living together—because my friends all treated him like dirt, or worse.
I’m bound to admit that this is true. John Lehmann couldn’t have been stuffier if he’d been John van Druten. Alexis [Rassine] was pissy and grand. Stephen, even, was very off-handed in his manner. Even William Plomer, the affable, took very little trouble to make Don feel at home.
On the other hand, however, Don will have to realize that being accepted by my friends would be no solution of his difficulties. He has to find his own world.
Now we have moved to the Cavendish Hotel—got here this morning—and the strain is eased. I’m sick—a cold and the shivers—and have gone to bed. Don went out to see Peter Pan.279 He has piles, but they are yielding to treatment.
It’s snug here, like an Edwardian country house. Such a nice old housekeeper brought me mulligatawny soup. It’s snug being in the large back bedroom, with awkward furniture, mirrors in the wrong places, electric lights ditto—so quiet, yet right in the center of the city.
John and Stephen both look terribly fat in the face—round swollen red bladders. I’m still sorry for John—perhaps it would be friendlier not to be—but oh God he is such a square! So stupid. And their little world is so tiny. And his life in that house with Alexis seems really suffocating.
London looks much smarter, these days. Lots more restaurants. Lots of travel agencies. Everything pretty expensive. The people extraordinarily friendly and polite. I notice that, whenever I go into a shop, I’m taken for granted as an American—though my accent seems British to anyone in the States.
Getting back to John Lehmann—I suppose his stupidity really consists in this: he has no curiosity. He dismisses Vedanta, Gerald Heard, California, the United States. He isn’t prepared to listen to anything I tell him about the life I lead in Los Angeles. He thinks I’m quite simply “in movies”—and therefore temporarily lost. He hasn’t enlarged his ideas one little bit since the thirties. He still talks like the silliest kind of publisher about someone’s book “showing an advance.” But why am I getting so heated? I knew all this twenty years ago.
January 14. In a bad mood this morning. It’s raining. The hotel people have deserted the switchboard. Don is in his most tiresome helpless mood—furious because the old-fashioned bath plug won’t work, and blaming me for it. And yet, by and large, we’re having a good time here in London. Don has met a young American with whom he’ll be able to go around. We have seen several interesting films and plays, and I really enjoy being at this absurd hotel.
Don had a very nasty attack of stomach cramps the night before last, and maybe that accounts for his behavior—although he seems quite recovered now. There has been a situation today because he refuses to have lunch with Stephen, Natasha and Peter Watson. I can’t blame him, and yet I resent this because ultimately I’m burdened with all the explaining that has to be done.
January 16. Well, now I’m really mad at Don. He walked out of a party at John Gielgud’s which I only went to to amuse him—Martita Hunt and Edith Evans were there.280 He is too tiresome with his neurosis, and I’m weary of being tied to all this fuss, when there is so much fun to be had.
Had lunch with Stephen and Natasha, the other day. Stephen said: “The trouble with the Lehmanns is, they think they’re the Brontës, when actually they’re the Marx Brothers.”
Stephen said how tired he is of England: “There’s nothing here but personal relationships and maneuvers—and I’m tired of both.”
The thing is this. Does Don want to be regarded as crazy? If so, I’ll be patient with him. If not, he’s just being insufferable.
January 19. It’s no use getting mad, and I wouldn’t have written as I did above if I hadn’t been drunk. This is a tough time for Don—especially so because we’d both hoped he’d have a lot of social success here—and we shall both have to be patient.
Amiya arrived at the hotel yesterday for two nights, with old George281 in tow. We had supper alone together and got very drunk, and she told me hair-raising tales of his lechery and miserliness. She also told me that Franz Dispeker is dead, which made me cry in the restaurant. In spite of all Amiya’s complaints, I feel she has a pretty good time. Shouting at George and bullying him takes up most of her surplus energy. She is full of asides at every remark he makes, like a comedian in a patsy act. If George says: “I got a surprise this afternoon,” Amiya comments behind his back: “You’ll get another one when you see the fur coat I bought.”
Yesterday morning, their butler got on to the train to help them with their luggage. The train left before he could get off it again—and, as it was nonstop, he had to come with them to London.
George doesn’t look at all like dying. He has a wi
ry strength, resembling the old ravens we saw, yesterday morning, on Tower Green.282
Later. To lunch as Stephen’s guest at a lunch club which meets at Bertorelli’s, on Charlotte Street. The twenty or so members mostly seemed shrivelled, lopsided, thin haired or otherwise stricken by middle age. Kenneth Tynan, one of the few who looked youngish, had been in Russia and seemed greatly excited. Questions were asked. “Russia has done away with nostalgia,” he told us—meaning that Russians think only of the future. (Nevertheless, they produce Shakespeare and Wilde.) He quoted a Russian as saying, “King Lear couldn’t happen here—we look after our old people.” Edward Crankshaw, the puckered Russian expert, was less enthusiastic. When I asked if there weren’t some people who were against the government just for the sake of being against the government, he said that in Russia the feeling against the government is so basic that people take it as a matter of course. Nevertheless, Tynan’s enthusiasm was rather touching. He was making the point that, in the West, modern movements are only carried on by individuals in revolt against the mass. In Russia, modern movements are carried on by the mass. To me, this sounds exceedingly phoney.
Alas, under the influence of the lunch wine, I spoke very incautiously to Stephen about John, saying what an idiot I think he is.
January 20. This is just to record that the Don crisis has broken out again and hit a new peak. I’m alarmed, because I see, in back of it all, an ugly dangerous psychotic will-to-unhappiness. He is in a bad state, and probably in need of treatment. Oh, how I wish, wish, wish we were safely out of England. I dread going up to Wyberslegh and leaving him alone to his hysteria and self-pity.
The devilish thing is—his complaints are partially justified. There is no question: many people treat him (and indeed all young people) as if he were a small mess made by the cat. What is sickly is his determination to take all these insults to himself exclusively.
Oh—it’s really a problem. And the only way through it, as far as I’m concerned, is to offer the whole thing up continually in prayer. Try to get my ego completely out of the picture.
Have just realized that I’m writing this with just the faintest suspicion that Don might read it.
January 25. It’s late and I feel disinclined to write anything, especially as Don is waltzing around the room. But at least he is waltzing. His mood has been ever so much better since our visit to Dodie and Alec [Beesley] last weekend. Indeed, it was truly touching how he responded to their kindness—which, actually, wasn’t so kind after all, because why in hell shouldn’t they like him—he is (and was particularly on this occasion) charming.
Dodie and Alec made altogether a very good and reassuring impression. Dodie didn’t seem at all crazy—as John Gielgud and Emlyn Williams had hinted. She even said that she and Alec wouldn’t have any more dogs for a long time. (Folly is dead, Buzz dying of old age, and Dandy already stiff in the joints.)
She also remarked that she had found no friends in England to be compared with John van Druten, Charlie Brackett and me. And yet she seems perfectly happy in the cottage, and so does Alec, though he talks a lot about California. Their cottage is thatched, like most of those in this part of Essex283—thatch with TV aerials on it, and the contrails of U.S. planes overhead. The cottage seems half-submerged, like a boat, in the heave of the land. Saffron streaks of sky over leafless trees and rough brown ploughed fields. The roof of the barn sags between its oak beams like the canvas of a tent. There are fires everywhere and conveniently placed oil lamps and candles. As always, I felt Alec’s amazing flair for organization and comfort.
Much talk about John van Druten. Indeed, the reading aloud of a letter from him spoiled our last hour together. “As usual,” said Dodie, “John has monopolized the conversation.” John is still fooling around with Joel Goldsmith, and Starcke is actually going out to Hawaii to see Joel. And yet I feel Johnnie knows that Joel is a fake. Joel had had the gall to write and tell Johnnie that he should never have published his novel284—it was utterly unspiritual. It’s really clever of him, the way he takes the offensive with Johnnie and anticipates attacks. But Johnnie will never be able to resist trying to use religion to win with—and the flops he has never seem to teach him. As if Starcke wasn’t bad enough, Carter is at his other elbow, telling him the stars are against him.285
Today I had a drink with John Lehmann, Graham Greene and Henry Yorke. They told me about Evelyn Waugh’s nervous breakdown. He went into a bar in Cairo, and the bartender said, “Good afternoon, Sir,” and Waugh just grunted. And a voice said to Waugh: “You’d have spoken to him if he’d been a Lord.” Graham looked quite sleek and handsome—much younger than his photographs. He said that this was because he is always photographed when he has a hangover.
Much talk about Cyril Connolly’s famous marital troubles, which he broadcasts all over Europe.
January 28. A grey morning. Sitting up in bed waiting for breakfast, I feel utterly depressed. I’m old and fat. I overeat. I have something wrong with my leg—might be varicose veins. Don is frankly miserable and helpless because I’m going away and leaving him alone—and this makes me mad at him, and mad at M. for dragging me up there. I have to leave on Monday.
Diane is in town, at the Empire, Leicester Square. And I actually mind because it is having bad notices and is a flop.
What I want is to get back to California and get my things around me and work. I’m sick with guilt at all this idling.
An amusing lunch, two days ago, with Emlyn and Molly Williams, Dorothy Tutin and Michael Gwynn. Laurence Harvey appeared suddenly sitting at another table in the restaurant. It was like the banquet scene in Macbeth.286
Also saw Rupert Doone and Robert Medley. Rupert seemed very old and very fat—almost Falstaffian, but tragic.
Morgan Forster, on the other hand, is full of life and good humor, though he has lumbago.
Later. Just been out in the rain to see Frank Auerbach’s show at the Beaux Arts Gallery on Bruton Place. He creates a sort of bas-relief effect by building layer upon layer of paint. There are some big pumpkin-shaped heads which are “effective” in the sense that they would make you scream if you saw one of them looking at you through a window at night. But the total impression was one of cruddy gloom. Meanwhile, Auerbach himself was up in a gallery with a woman, listening to our remarks—and this created an atmosphere of churchlike tension, with corresponding feelings of revolt. Don in a very bad mood—but he has let off some steam by now, I hope, as he has been writing his diary.
Worry about money—ridiculous, really, since I have, for the first time in my life 15,000 dollars saved and a further 10,000 in the bank. But the more you have, the more you want.
January 29. Raining stolidly this morning. And now I hear from Bob [Buckingham] on the telephone that Morgan has lumbago and a swollen toe and won’t be able to have lunch with us. Only barrier against total depression—the vitamin pills given me yesterday by Patrick Woodcock, who thinks a vitamin deficiency is all that’s wrong with my leg.
Yesterday afternoon we rode out in the drizzly fog to Dalston, to see San Francisco.287 It was nostalgic, because it brought back all my pilgrimages of thirty years ago to the outlying suburbs to see and resee American films—and all the nostalgic blurring of U.S. urban ugliness (known to me only from these films) with the ugliness of the London setting. The U.S. ugliness was infinitely romantic, for it symbolized escape from Home. The English ugliness was the ugliness of my prison.
There was nothing nostalgic about the Franco-Irish ugliness and stupidity of Waiting for Godot,288 which we saw last night.
February 1. The day before yesterday, I came up here, to Wyberslegh, by train from London. I’m planning to stay until next Monday, the 6th. Don is in London.
I’m worried about him, of course. And yet this was obviously the only possible thing to do. I had to come here alone. And maybe this week will make Don feel more independent and freer and perhaps he will find out some useful things about himself, and us.
Richar
d met me at Stockport station. At first, his appearance gave me a shock. Stooped over, with head bowed, he came toward me, looking down and away. Then he threw his head back, and his eyes closed as if he were blind as he turned his face to the sky. His cheeks are rough red and his nose quite purple—probably because of bad circulation. Several of his front teeth are missing. His thick curling dark hair shows no sign of grey. His hands are nicotine stained, chapped and usually covered with coal dust, since he is constantly building fires. There were marks of coal dust on the sheets of my bed, where he had put the hot-water bottle. His blue eyes are still innocent and charming, and he is constantly eager to serve my wishes. He apologizes for the cold, begs me to accept extra blankets and overcoats. During the day, he wears a sport jacket so dark and stiff with grease that it might belong to a garage mechanic. But only a real hobo would accept his shirt. He laughs loudly and explosively, startling and annoying M., as always.
M., at eighty-six-eighty-seven, seems hardly any older. Her hair is still plentiful. Her cheeks are pink, not yellowish. She sees well, hears perfectly, remembers not only the distant but the immediate past and seems keenly aware of the present. Amiya is quite right in describing her as “pretty and feminine.” Her knees are a little stiff and she sometimes has to be helped out of her chair. But she still cooks the meals, counts the laundry and attends to all kinds of chores.
I arrived in mild damp weather, and this little old stone house, standing amidst its sodden fields, was sponge wet. The books in the shelves smelled of corpse, the bedclothes were like shrouds, you smelt stale smells everywhere of old fat in unscoured skillets. The two white, black-patched cats eat food all over the kitchen floor. The rugs are dark with grime. In buckets you [find] very old, frighteningly foul black rags, reminiscent of the labor conditions of the nineteenth century and Oliver Twist. But last night the snow fell. It is very cold. Even standing in front of the fire you can see your breath—but the smell of damp and the stink of dirt are less noxious. The countryside is beautiful under the snow. Cobden Edge crisscrossed by black stone walls; Kinder Scout pure unbroken white. And then, this morning, the snow had a strange orange light on it from the weak sunshine. Only a few scattered handfuls have fallen during the day, but it looks as if there’ll be more tonight. I walked with Richard up to the mailbox on the corner to post a letter to Don—he might as well be back in the States, he seems so utterly remote.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 84