Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  April 14, 1956–May 25, 1958

  APRIL 14. THOUGH tired, I want to make an entry today so as to keep continuity with the volume I finished yesterday. I’m up at Santa Barbara with Swami, staying at the house of one of his devotees, Mrs. Wright (a lady with only one leg) because the convent is full.

  The convent is full because Tarini (Mrs. Nixon) has been moved up here to die of stomach cancer. It is supposed to be painless, but she did have pain today and Dr. Austin was called. She looks skinny and tired and a bit older, but is not shockingly changed—in appearance, that is. John Yale (whom I have to remember to call Prema) and Swami tell me that she is startlingly changed in character. She used to be a shrew and a bitch, now she is all sweetness, and consideration for others. “When I saw how she was turning into a saint,” said Swami, with his giggle, “I just knew there was something seriously wrong with her.”

  Swami seems tired, and was noticeably quiet throughout the evening, while the girls questioned me eagerly about Amiya. Sarada and Barada were very lively. I thought I detected a good deal of friction between them and Prema. He is quietly bossy. More than ever an eminence, but no longer a grey one; working on the landscaping around the new temple has made him look tanned and healthy.

  The temple has a lovely smell of Douglas fir. The pillars and arches are all natural, unsmoothed, unpainted wood, full of cracks and axe marks. It is really much the nicest of the Vedanta temples; just the right mixture of rugged simplicity and oriental camp—the curly-carved gold shrine is under a palanquin quite like the one Tony Duquette used in Kismet.

  And then the location is magnificent, with the long downhill view to the sea and the islands. The landscape around here is, to all intents and purposes, unchanged since I lived here twelve years ago.

  Before we left Hollywood to drive up here, we had to go to a meeting at a women’s club near Vermont and Wilshire, where Swami had to speak for twenty minutes to open a prayer-discussion group. Swami in a grey suit with a pearl-grey tie. He always seems, at first sight, so much less “religious” than the sort of people who introduce him on these occasions. More like a doctor or even a bank manager than a minister.

  The stage hung with blue velvet curtains. On one side, the flag. On either side, unsteadily arranged branches of rhododendron, somewhat wilted. In the center, a flower piece, featuring daffodils. The audience is chiefly composed of women in very small hats, many of them with folded-back veils in which tiny spangles sparkle.

  April 15. A few notes, half an hour before lecture time.

  I forgot to mention yesterday that I sent a pot of caladiums to Peggy (it being her birthday) with a note, more or less as follows: “Several mutual friends tell me you say I have ‘dropped’ you. Needless to say, I’m convinced it’s the other way around. But my birthday wishes are absolutely sincere because I know that, if we both have enough ‘happy returns’ we’re certain, in the course of nature, to come together again.” This is a little bitchy, I admit, but it’s as forgiving as I can manage under the circumstances.

  The clouds are low on the hills, this morning, but it’s palely bright out on the water. The garden is heavy with after-rain colors. I took the manuscript of the new pamphlet on the Vedanta Society up to the temple, and read it in the office at the back. Also I told my beads in front of the shrine. Krishna ran back and forth, muttering some unintelligible holy sounds into the microphone at the pulpit, then playing them back on the recording machine by the entrance. But this didn’t bother me. The family feeling here is so strong that it absorbs such disturbances and even makes them seem charming and sympathetic. And the temple itself grows on me, more and more. Partly, I think, because it’s made of wood. It seems so much more alive, so much more an organism, than a stone or plaster or brick building would.

  April 18. This afternoon, I went with Hal Greene to put the two houses, 434 Sycamore Road and the one he’s going to buy, into escrow. A solemn moment. The first time I ever bought a house. The thought of the tying up of all my savings scares me. It seems strange that I won’t any longer be able to be extravagant. But Don is pleased and excited—and eager to contribute his thousand dollars to our fund.

  Yesterday we went to the airport and brought Jo and Ben home. They had been with Jo’s family at Yakima, Washington, and enjoyed it, apparently, though the visit sounded just ghastly—people putting on funny masks and roaring with laughter. Ben, however, provided a clue to the stimmung by telling me (so Jo shouldn’t hear) that personally he’d been either drunk or hung over from beginning to end. All the men, he said, were sneaking drinks behind their wives’ backs. One time, Jo had very nearly caught him fixing himself a shot of whiskey in the kitchen; he had had to gulp it down so fast that he had somehow strained his throat and could still feel the effects.

  Jo’s father, who is seventy-five, has two photographs of naked women in his bedroom.

  April 19. Don had his first shot of polio vaccine yesterday. It came to me very strongly that he ought to do this, and so I urged him to. The strange thing is, I’ve seen so many references to polio in the newspapers, etc., during the last few days, could it also have been a subconscious suggestion from Jacob’s Hands? We’ve heard nothing more, so far, of [Ernest] Borgnine’s alleged interest in it, and I’m beginning to lose hope again.

  Don also went to see Evelyn Hooker about his state of mind and problems. Evelyn seems to have reassured him, insofar as the state of mind was concerned. She didn’t think it neurotic of him to be upset, under the circumstances. In other words, she thinks that our life together constitutes a genuinely big problem. Now of course I quite see this. And yet I can’t, in my weakness, help feeling hurt when I’m treated as a sort of classic monster—a standard monster, almost—out of a textbook, like a dragon in a fairy tale. Don, on his side, cannot understand that I mind. I ought to accept my monsterhood humbly, he thinks.

  But isn’t all this the purest justice of karma? Go back twenty years. For Don, substitute Richard. For Evelyn, John Layard. For me, my mother.

  Glorious weather, this morning, after days of dull greyness. Jo and Ben leave on their trip to Florida next Sunday. I’m in pretty good spirits, because I’ve been working steadily—reading for the Ramakrishna book, getting on with my novel, keeping my letter writing up to date.

  The lack of a desk here has forced me to sit on cushions on the floor, with no back support, and write at the low teak table. I have gotten to like doing this, because it’s so good to have to keep a straight back again, after all this while. Maybe I’ll go on working like this at our new house.

  April 22. A baddish, dull patch. We’re suspended in midair, waiting for the house, waiting for money to pay for it, waiting for Don to find out what he’s going to do. He was depressed yesterday, because of all this; and then we went to see The Prisoner1 (in which Alec Guinness gives the worst performance of a cardinal I’ve ever seen) and that made him feel worse. And then, in the middle of the night, Bob Hoover rang up blubbering-drunk because Ted had gone off on a date without him.

  Apparently they made it up, because Ted and Bob showed up this morning. And Bob actually referred to the scene he’d made—in front of Ted. He’s quite shameless—quite utterly selfish in the snugness of his self-pity.

  It was foggy and grey down on the beach, so we drove out to the Simi Valley, where it was blazing hot. Jim Charlton came with us. He showed up uninvited and unannounced, and there was nothing to do but ask him. The crowd of cars—herds of hot ironmongery—made the valley hideous. But when we got out into the backcountry, it was so beautiful, with the hills still yellowish and bluish green—not yet baked golden by the summer.

  April 24. Right after the drive mentioned above, Jim called and asked me to come over. He wanted to know why I’d bought a house instead of having him design one. Replied that we needed a house in a hurry, and cheap. This is 99.99% true, but of course I was also glad to avoid the inevitable personal clash with Jim. I can never forget his basic dishonesty about money.

  Ho
wever, that wasn’t the point. Jim wanted to know did I believe in his talent as an architect—and to that I can unhesitatingly answer yes, anytime. Jim is very depressed, because, he says, he has failed over and over again, at the last moment, to secure apparently certain assignments. And the reason for this I cannot explain to him. I don’t know what it is—unless simply that most everybody loathes and fears anything original. But, on the other hand, Jim isn’t all that original. Plenty of architects are quite successful who build in his general style.

  I, myself, was quite badly depressed this morning and still am, a bit. I’m worried about Don. He isn’t well, and he’s frankly disinclined to do anything except read (which would be perfectly okay except that he feels guilty about it). And I’m worried about money. When we’ve paid everything off, we’ll only have about $3,000 or $4,000 if I let Don contribute. Of course, I’ve been lower far than this before, but it worries me now because I see expenses ahead and no great hopes of a job. Also, I don’t really want a job. I want to get on with my novel—which is utterly crazy but still somehow alive. And I must not stop it. Have reached page fourteen.

  Yesterday afternoon was grey, and we walked on the beach and clambered on the rocks by the lighthouse café and then came home to a muffin tea. The feeling between us is very good, right now. Very gentle, as if we were both invalids—of different kinds—and didn’t want to hurt each other. A sort of nursery-sickroom atmosphere, which reminds me of the last scene in O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun. Kittycat and old Dobbin.

  Yesterday night we showed our travel film up at Margaret Gage’s. Don was infuriated, because she used the occasion to invite all sorts of guests and we also had to see George Huene’s two films—about Toledo and the Bosch in the Escorial,2 with Hugh Chisholm’s shamingly bogus commentaries.

  This morning was grey, and I spent hours at Peschelt’s, to get my front tooth recapped. But this afternoon the sun is shining. So cheer up, old horse.

  Contemporary joke, heard last night: “There’s to be a Bridey Murphy TV program—from nine to eight.”3

  Before 8.00 a.m. this morning I got a wrong-number call. The voice of a seemingly very old, very hoarse woman said, “I feel as grey as the weather.”

  April 26. Yesterday morning Don still felt bad, so I told him to see Dr. Sellars, who said he had hepatitis and must be hospitalized at once. This meant the Cedars of Lebanon, because Sellars is on the staff. So I drove him there. He has quite a nice private room, and I hope and think that his isn’t a very bad attack. He’s being fed glucose intravenously.

  It seems that Michael’s Bill Stroud had left for the East—I don’t know how many days ago—but this afternoon Michael remarked quite casually that he was going to meet him—so he must have changed his mind and returned.

  Yesterday evening I had supper at the Knopfs’. Joshua Logan was there, and greatly raised my morale by saying how much he had admired the script of Diane and how tragic it was that Lana Turner had ruined it. He also asked me if I’d like to do a picture with him and said he’d send me a copy of Mistress Masham’s Repose by E. H. White(?)4 to see if I could see a script in it.

  Mrs. Logan, meanwhile, raved about Marilyn Monroe, whom Logan is directing in Bus Stop. Monroe, she says, is so misunderstood, so fundamentally simple, so starved for affection. When she [Monroe] was hospitalized the other day, she was asked was she a Catholic? A Protestant? “No—I just believe in God.” She came in one morning with cold cream on her face. Asked did she always put it on at night, she said: “No—only when I sleep alone.” She may marry Arthur Miller, the dramatist. She is now studying the last section of Joyce’s Ulysses.

  I just report all this. No comment.

  I miss Don terribly, already. But my job now is not to feel sorry for myself. I have to get us moved into 434 Sycamore. I have to avoid getting hepatitis myself (it’s infectious). I have to earn some money, quick. (Don’s hospital bill will be at least $350.)

  Later. I spent the evening with Gerald—just got home. Not a very interesting evening, because Margaret Gage was present and there were only four of us (with Will Forthman) altogether—so Gerald was inhibited from cozy gossip and deprived of an audience worth dazzling. Yet it was pleasant—the feeling of our being together was good. Topics: the cowardice of Napoleon, the government’s decision to release the flying saucer films, the uses of various sedatives such as Seconal, the character of Peggy Kiskadden compared with that of Amiya.

  Have started reading Arnold Bennett’s Journals again. He says, “I constantly gloat over the number of words I have written in a given period.” And well he might! He wrote over 100,000 words in the first quarter of 1908! And I? My absurdly modest schedule calls for writing a minimum of two pages on my novel and reading forty pages of the Ramakrisna book—a week! And yet—such has been my former sloth—I can legitimately congratulate myself that I have at least kept to this and bettered it a little—four pages a week, so far, on my novel. And that I’ve answered all my letters to date. And that I’ve kept up with this journal.

  Talking of Peggy Kiskadden, she answered my note as follows: “It was good to hear from you—and it gives me an opportunity to assure you that I’m always ‘right there’—as little Bill used to say—and sending good wishes to you as ever—lovingly Peggy.”

  No—this isn’t the answer I wanted. It says, in effect, “No, I don’t yield an inch. You have to come to me and surrender. I’m the holy one—the one in the right.”

  May 2. To the Cedars today. Found Don in a fuss about the huge hospital bill—he wanted to leave at once. We talked to Sellars and he agreed (rather unwillingly) that Don could leave tomorrow. But he’ll have to stay in bed for several days.

  Yesterday and the day before I moved everything into 434 Sycamore Road, and have already slept two nights there. What with that, and seeing Don and keeping up my novel and work on the Ramakrishna book, I’ve seldom been under greater pressure. But I think I shall manage now.

  Yesterday night I saw Jim Costigan, the plump young actor-writer who is Julie Harris’s friend. He says the young actors all complained that John van Druten is a bad director and that he didn’t understand his characters in the Checkered Shade. I think the truth is that John is wonderful at controlling old bitch prima donnas like Gertrude Lawrence and Margaret Sullavan—but he quite probably doesn’t understand boys and girls from the Actors’ Lab.5

  Of all the people who helped me move—Jim [Charlton], Michael, Bill Stroud and Tom [Wright]—the best and most hardworking was Tom. He really seems to enjoy it. He plodded back and forth, always sweet tempered, never lazy or temperamental.

  May 4. What a week of work! Today I’ve been running around since I got up, cooking, shopping, unpacking, doing whatever came to hand. And I’ve managed so far to keep up with my chores, and indeed quite enjoyed it all. Don has been home since yesterday, and we have never been happier together. My only worries are that he’ll have some kind of relapse, and/or that we won’t get any more money. But still this is a happy time, oddly enough—and I shall remember it as such.

  Madge MacDonald and her sister Renée Rubin were in to see us. Madge has given Don his B1 shot. She is aggressive toward Dr. Sellars and is secretly taking the hypodermic needles with her to UCLA Hospital, to have them sterilized her fashion; boiling, she says, is worse than useless against hepatitis infection.

  Don’s eyes are no longer noticeably yellow, and his urine is light again. But Hayden Lewis, whom I met yesterday, told me that Rod has had this disease, on and off, for nearly three years! All because he got up too soon.

  May 7. Well, we plod along. Sellars came today and told Don he could get up. Actually he’s been wandering around the house for several days already. In a week, he may be allowed outdoors. But he mustn’t drink any alcohol for a year!

  Actually, I have been very happy cooking for the two of us, and I haven’t in the least missed seeing other people. It’s so nice here, and the weather has been windy, but so beautiful—quite smogless even do
wntown.

  News from Santa Barbara, via John Yale, that Tarini is sinking.

  If only I could get some money without having to go back to work in the studios! I’d like to spend the entire summer writing this first draft of my novel. At present it’s flowing with such magic smoothness, I hate to think of interrupting it.

  The days are far too short—cooking, shopping, watering the garden. I’ve unpacked all my books now, and my workroom is really snug.

  Such happiness, this past week.

  May 11. Worried about Don, who felt tired this morning. He didn’t sleep well. He was upset yesterday because, as he confessed, he’d read two letters I wrote to Caskey while I was in England in 1947—the letters were in one of the boxes of Caskey’s photographs which we’ve been sorting—and it hurt him to find that they were exactly like the letter I wrote Don from Wyberslegh this trip. I didn’t know what to say to this: there is nothing I can say. It’s probably true, and I know exactly how Don feels, and how can I prove to him that he’s wrong to feel that way? He is—and yet it’s so natural.

  Also, quite abruptly, he yesterday announced that he is going to UCLA this summer. And we went there, and he registered.

  But work goes excellently. Two and one-third pages today. John Lehmann has cabled, wanting the article I’m to write on returning to London in 1947.6 And there is the short story anthology for Frank Taylor. But I rather like being rushed like this. I feel equal to the demand.

  Today I went to MGM and saw Knopf. But he’s going away to France to make this picture and obviously there’s no prospect of any job for him before the late fall, at the earliest. Well, we shall manage somehow.

  A symbolic incident I forgot to record. After all this while—during the time Don was in hospital and I was moving into this house—Jim Charlton brought round Lefty—the paper “Judas” baseball player Jo and Ben sent us from Mexico. We left it with Jim while we were in Europe—telling him to explode it on the beach. But he hadn’t. So now we opened it. And there were no firecrackers in him, after all; only a heavy fragment of earthenware crockery—I suppose what they call a posada.7 Another menace proved to be harmless!