Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Jim Charlton has at last passed his architect’s exam.

  August 15. This rush of work is becoming quite compulsionistic, but it’s good, I guess. My three objectives, before we leave for our trip north on the 24th or 25th—get to page 150 of novel, finish the anthology, finish the Saradananda book. That’ll really be a big chunk of stuff accomplished.

  Heavy, misty heat, smog in town. The radio full of the Democratic convention. Am still stalling on the two jobs at Fox—the Townsend Harris story and Lawrence’s The Lost Girl. But I’d prefer working on the Lawrence and with Wald—or rather not with Frenke.54

  Don is absorbed in his design for the week. This’ll be a late night. He’s looking tired—so late to bed, getting up early and dashing out half asleep, and then slaving at the gym in this heat; but he’s in a very good sweet mood. I hope the blues are leaving him for a while.

  Vernon Old called me today. He wanted me to put a girlfriend of his, an actress named Joanna Merlin, in touch with Starcke and Johnnie. She’s going to New York shortly, looking for a job. So is Michael Hall. Vernon is very, very grown-up nowadays, not to say elderly. I noticed that he has an excellent accent when he pronounces French words. His son Chris is six. Patty his wife remarried.

  August 20. Got off to a good start today in finishing my pre-birthday chores. Wrote forewords to three stories for the anthology—Forster, Katherine Mansfield, Graves.

  Don got an A at school for life drawing, with a special commendation.

  Ben’s book of stories55 has been definitely accepted by Methuen.

  John van Druten is greatly upset because Hecht-Lancaster doesn’t like his screenplay on First Love.

  This evening we had supper at The Cock ’n Bull, as guests of William Marchant. Barbara Baxley, who played Sally Bowles on Broadway while Julie was filming Member of the Wedding was there. I doubt if Baxley can have been right for Sally—she looks too much like Bette Davis. But I like her, and I really quite like Marchant. He reminds me greatly of Tony Duquette, but is much nicer. “Light” but amusing dinner talk about Forest Lawn posters, books, plays, etc.

  This last weekend, we drove down to Coronado, stayed at the wonderful wooden seventy-year-old hotel, then up to La Jolla to see Viveca Lindfors in Miss Julie—not very good, chiefly because Stephen Bekassy56 was so stupid. But we had some nice swimming at Coronado, La Jolla and San Onofre Beach—on the way home. Don in very good spirits, and so was I, except for a background anxiety about the Suez crisis.

  August 22. Another late night for Don. I open this chiefly to report progress.

  I now have an almost all right draft of the foreword to Ethel Mayne.57 Which means I can get that fixed tomorrow. Then there’s only Dylan Thomas.

  Still about thirty pages of the Saradananda book to read.

  Still three and three-quarter pages of my novel to write—or a bit more, if necessary, to get through to the end of part three, which will be a good place to stop.

  Possible obstacles: an interview at Fox with Brown on the Harris story and/or with Wald on the Lawrence novel.

  This evening I finished Johnnie’s manuscript, The Widening Circle. So dreadfully sententious.

  Got my driver’s license renewed, with four mistakes. The chief one: I didn’t know or remember that a car coming out of a cross street from your right has the right of way. But that’s easy: if he’s from the right he is right!

  A man from Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door and argued with me for nearly half an hour. He seemed to think it very important to find out from the Bible what God had foretold would happen to the world. I said I didn’t see it mattered if the Kingdom of Heaven came here on earth or somewhere else. Then, of course, he started in about the destruction of the wicked. Told him I don’t believe in it.

  To the public library to find out what I could about Ethel Mayne. Apparently there was an article about her death by Rebecca West in the May 3, 1941 issue of The New York Herald Tribune. Must get this. Got two issues of The Yellow Book with her pitiful fluttery little stories. She improved almost incredibly, later.

  August 25. Thursday I finished Saradananda’s Ramakrishna book and the third part of my novel, to page 151. Yesterday I finished the anthology with a piece on Dylan Thomas, and sent it off to Frank Taylor.

  This morning, Kinsey58 died, of a heart attack. I found that some kind of dark mold had started in the remaining mescaline capsules, so I flushed them down the toilet.

  Preparations for leaving on our trip, tomorrow morning. We’re going up to see Brad Saunders first, at Fairfield.

  Who should turn up on the beach but Dick LaPan. He lives down in Guadalajara now and teaches English. He says he much prefers Mexico to the States; people are kinder. He even tolerates the Catholic Church.

  After a week of marvellous weather, we had a light fog most of today, but the water was warm and the surf quite big.

  August 26. Twenty of eleven, and we haven’t even begun to pack—so no time for philosophical birthday statements. Am too fat but in good health.

  Johnnie van Druten called me in the middle of the night to tell me how wonderful he thought War and Peace was as a film. He and Starcke were leaving later for Honolulu to consult Joel Goldsmith—partly, I guess, because of Johnnie’s disappointment at Hecht-Lancaster.

  August 27. Hasty notes before starting—7:25 a.m.—from a motel in King City. We drove up here yesterday, along a back road which was marvellously uncrowded considering this was a Sunday—via Ojai, Maricopa, Coalinga. The pale lion-furred landscape, with soft looking hills—actually they’re prickly with dried grasses—soft and rather indecent, with hollows like buttocks have or dimples in shoulders. The oil country around Maricopa, almost absurdly ugly, especially as billboards congratulate you on travelling this “fabulous” route. Maricopa was very hot. The two skinny old women in the Texaco station. They came from Oklahoma. One of them spat. And the derricks all around.

  Keefer’s restaurant, where we ate in King City—would do as a setting for the first chapter of my novel; his last night in the States. Oz-land furnishings. The beaten copper bar. The nursery mural of rooftops, rather German. The crazy up and down shelf with bits of china on it. Oh, I can’t describe it, but I shall remember.

  August 28. At the Solano Motel outside Fairfield. We drove up here yesterday, via Salinas, San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, arriving around 2:00 p.m. We called Bradley Saunders and he came over for us right away and drove us out to the Travis airfield. Brad is attached to MATS, Military Air Transportation Service; but the base is also used by the Strategic Air Command, which has B-36 bombers ready to deliver “thermo-nukes” anywhere, anytime.

  Brad took us over his plane, a C-124. It is enormous. In the air it looks like a dirigible, its body is so thick and heavy. It can carry a tank, or 200 men or 17,000,000 ping-pong balls. The shabby looking pilot’s cabin, reached by a ladder, about thirty feet above the ground; dozens and dozens of dials. The sanitary toilets behind a curtain, with sanitary towels for women. Brad said: “You don’t pilot a B-36; you command it.” Later we saw a jet landing (only the latest models have to be stopped by parachute), and another taking off, and a B-36 landing, and part of an A-bomb being wheeled past, like the Blessed Sacrament, under a tarpaulin.

  Last March, Brad’s roommate Jim was about to take off in a C-124. But they had put the elevator flaps on backwards, so it went straight up into the air and turned upside down and burst into flames. Three were killed, three, including Jim, were saved but badly burned. The civilian employee responsible for this was censured but not fired.

  Jim is still going to hospital every day for treatment but he has returned to share Brad’s apartment. He is badly scarred but not actually disfigured. Now Brad is making up his mind if he shall set up housekeeping with his Aunt Lavinia and her daughter. Jim is going to get married.

  The life on the base sounds acutely depressing. They all drink gallons and watch television and Brad rates as the intellectual. Almost everyone is married and the wives are mo
stly waddling-pregnant and jokes are made about this; and you can’t go into the officers’ club without uniform. And the Catholic chapel broadcasts its services all over the base by loudspeaker. And there is a strong prevailing wind from the ocean.

  But still, I can see that Brad loves being a big, or at least a medium-sized wheel in this great machine. And he loves flying. He talked about Ultima Thule, the base in Greenland which is mostly underground, except for one huge hangar, which has to have a refrigerating system under it, lest the heat of the interior should melt the ice on which it stands. He may leave shortly on a twenty-five-day journey—Alaska, Japan, Hawaii and home.

  7:30 p.m. We’ve just installed ourselves at the Sempervirens Motel on the northern outskirts of Eureka—after a long drive through the redwoods. Don went swimming in Russian River. The weather was fine and hot. This would have been delightful if the highway hadn’t been so narrow and so terribly crowded.

  The view from this motel isn’t inspiring: a pool with ducks, a huge vacant lot scattered with tin cans and bricks, the highway crossing a bridge nearby with much whining and rattling of trucks. But hills in the background with bare redwoods on them; the tree tops mere sticks after some vast fire.

  September 1. In a rush again. Why is one always in a rush on holidays? The only time to write this seems to be while Don is getting shaved.

  On the 29th, we drove further north, as far as Klamath, which has a bridge with stone bears on it, over the river. All along the way through the woods, there was the smell of sawdust from the mills, and we kept passing the mills themselves, with their nub-shaped furnaces. The beaches are scattered with huge logs, very grey and dead, like cadavers. We looked into one of those miserable menageries—a baby bear circling a tiny cage and uttering cries of distress, a very bored looking cobra, a stinky gila monster underneath the desk at which the teenage girl in charge of the place was sitting.

  Back down through Eureka and out of the redwoods at Leggett over the pass that leads to the coast. We wanted to stay at Mendocino but there seemed to be no accommodations. So we went back to Fort Bragg.

  Next day, a winding drive to San Francisco. The fog rolls over the sea and up the face of the shore—but the beaches in the distance are a pale line of light shining under the overcast. The water is scattered with great rocks and streaked with long scribbles of foam. Woods of laurel, cedar, cypress, manzanita. The faces of the hills are bare, but between them, filling the many creeks and lagoons, you see the redwoods, coming nearly down to the shore. The thick, brambly hedgerows, reminding me of an English lane.

  We’re rather at a loose end here, and may leave tomorrow. The truth is, we know nobody here we really want to see, and there isn’t much to do except go to movies. We’ve seen most of the sights.

  September 4. As a matter of fact, we stayed through Sunday—having suddenly contacted Vincent Porcaro, who seemed very nice—nicer than before—and had a pleasant but short visit with Jim Graham—and flown over the city in another little seaplane, as on the previous visit—and seen Jack Dempsey—and Brad Saunders again.

  Yesterday we drove down to Santa Maria, via Big Sur—not much fun because the weather was gloomy with fog along the coast.

  Today we drove down here, arriving shortly after midday, to find the house in one piece and the garden not quite dead.

  There now seems a possibility that I will work on [Romain] Rolland’s Jean-Christophe for Jerry Wald.

  Geller is going into hospital to be operated [on] for cataract next Friday. Lennie Newman has had some kind of an attack—heart or otherwise—caused by fatigue. Ben Masselink is going over to Catalina on Thursday in a civilian submarine.

  Spent the afternoon watering the garden and tearing out the morning glories that were strangling the loquat tree.

  Frank Taylor wires: “We are most enthusiastic. It is a superb job.” But meanwhile Don read the manuscript of the anthology prefaces while we were on our trip, and made several criticisms which I shall have to consider. I want to get these attended to before I start working at Fox—and I want to begin on part four of my novel. I thought a lot about this while we were away. I see—more than ever—that this first draft is like a shot fired blindfold, in the vague general direction the book must take. But I’m very much excited. I see it opening out in all directions.

  One key phrase: “Hell, nowadays, is a hospital.”

  September 7. I must train myself to live always in the presence of my death. The waste of time in my life is simply criminal—and by waste of time I don’t mean that I should attempt a sort of executive efficiency. No. Only that I must try to be more aware of the day-to-day experience and keep seeing it in the perspective of the inevitable end. It’s just terrible, the way I let time slither by.

  I missed an opportunity to gain Don’s confidence more completely and give him a greater reassurance of freedom. We were in San Francisco, and he went “on the town” as they say, with Brad Saunders. I sulked about this a bit, which led to an explosion as we drove home through Big Sur. But it’ll be all right now, I think. I’ll just have to be more on my toes the next time it happens. Right now, Don couldn’t possibly be in a sweeter mood.

  Yesterday I had a sore throat and today I felt exhausted, which alarms me a bit as I fear it may be a relapse due to the hepatitis. Don has gone to the movies with Ted.

  September 10. Second day of a heatwave. I have to confess to criminal laziness. While Don went to art school, to begin the fall semester, and everybody else worked or at least swam, I went to bed and slept all afternoon. Now I am scribbling this before Max Scheler and Marcel Fischer59, the eager beaver camera boys we met in Munich, come around for supper.

  No novel done, but I made a restart on Saturday and wrote a page yesterday. No restart, as yet, on the Ramakrishna work.

  I have a bad sniffle and sinus infection. Geller has had his cataract operation but complains of a throat infection caused by the anaesthetic. I’m supposed to hear definitely from Jerry Wald tomorrow, about Jean-Christophe.

  Ivan Moffat has suddenly left for Greece to do a movie rewrite.

  The Suez situation continues serious but is played down in the papers here.

  I don’t think Don has ever been more angelic than he was over the weekend. (It seems stupid to record this, but if I don’t it simply means that I only mention the comparatively rare times when he isn’t.) He is certainly in a much happier mood nowadays. He said repeatedly that he was looking forward to going back to school. He is at present delighting in Pride and Prejudice, which surprises me a little. Before that he read Lady Windermere’s Fan, which I knew he would like. Mrs. Erlynne is absolutely “his kind of person.”

  Nearly seven in the evening and it’s still breathless. How I hate heat—and cold!

  September 11. Still struggling against this heat and my weakness. I really begin to fear that the hepatitis has exhausted me more permanently than I’d realized but it’s hard to be sure—laziness has so many masks.

  Yesterday evening Max and Marcel came. Max I rather liked, though he’s a bit of a snob. Marcel hardly spoke. They had been in Monument Valley and had met [Adlai] Stevenson. Max says he’s for the Democrats. We went up to Jim Charlton’s. Speed was there. Never has he been ruder. He passed around a clipping about himself and the Perle Mesta film. He played the phonograph so loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves talk. One day he will get himself very painfully kicked.

  September 14. All this week we’ve had cold nights and fine days—since the end of the heat wave, that is. Don has gone to school in the Ford, because the Sunbeam suddenly refuses to reverse. The Suez situation looks bad, but I’m not seriously alarmed because I don’t think our dear government will get into a war just before the elections; and I hope it will manage to restrain that enraged rabbit Eden.

  I’m plugging ahead with the novel. Bored but dogged. Have reached page 164. Nothing matters except to get on and on and on. This may all be wrong, every word. Never mind.

  Had supper with Joh
nnie last night. He confessed that he doesn’t like Joel Goldsmith but nevertheless feels that he is capable of getting “on the beam spiritually.” In other words, Johnnie sees him as a rather unpleasant person who frequently sheds his personality and becomes possessed by the spirit. Starcke, however, objects to this distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary Joel. He tells Johnnie that the two are one.

  Johnnie is going to Santa Barbara for the weekend with Carter. He is looking forward to this because he feels they have lost touch. Carter has been very unhappy about Dick Foote and very near a nervous breakdown, but Johnnie thinks he is better now.

  All this Johnnie told me quite sincerely; and, in a way, his character is most transparent, innocent and guileless; but that doesn’t prevent him from playacting and hamming it up outrageously. He is full of little arts—side glances, coy gestures, flickers of the eyelashes. This is the feminine side of him.

  The almost incredible dishonesty of Hecht-Lancaster. They are now trying to get out of their watertight contract with Johnnie—brazenly asking his agent if he’ll sue them unless they give way.

  I also saw Gerald last night. He talked mostly mescaline, as usual. He has just finished a book about it.60

  Geller calls this morning to tell me that the delays on the deal with Wald are merely due to legal formalities—the Fox lawyers must assure themselves that Wald really does have the rights of Jean-Christophe, since Fox now has to assume responsibility for making it. I wonder? I trust nobody in this business. They offered me five thousand for the treatment. I’ve asked for six.

  Gerald showed me Mars last night, blazing white it seemed, not reddish, and bigger than Jupiter. It has been passing relatively close to the earth. Astronomers have observed the spread of its vegetation.

  September 16. Yesterday we went on the beach, and there was Eddie James, just returned from Mexico to deal with his income tax. He looked fatter and had shaved the beard from his cheeks so that it was just a fringe along the jaw. Noticed how yellow his teeth are.