Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  We crossed to London on August 23–24, spent one night with John Lehmann, then up to Wyberslegh.

  John, more bloated, red faced and silver haired than ever, is in a good mood. He really likes “Mr. Lancaster.” (Rereading the proofs, I like it much less than I thought I did.) And he has decided that I’m in the process of making a comeback.

  The visit to Wyberslegh was truly shocking. Not on M.’s account. She really does seem to have recovered largely from the stroke. The worst that has happened is that she has lost the sight of one eye, but the other is perfectly all right. She has a remarkably strong grip in her hand, even though the arm is still slightly paralyzed. And her speech is sometimes a bit indistinct; that’s all. But Richard looks terrible—he has a wild look of dismayed despair which I have never seen before, also he has lost more teeth and is dirtier than ever, and unshaved, with greyish stubble. Both he and M. smell bad—M.’s urine leaks out of her.

  And the house! Black sooty cobwebs everywhere. The walls cracked. The wallpaper hanging in tatters. The carpets stiff with greasy grime. The kitchen and scullery so dirty that you didn’t dare look at them. We had one meal—supper on the first night—fixed by Richard. There were sickeningly fatty chops warmed up, and I could smell them on the sheets when we went to bed. As for the larder—well, it is also the coal cellar; and its two functions are becoming less and less distinguishable.

  Saying goodbye to M.—probably for the last time—didn’t bother me much, because of course I won’t admit it’s the last time. I know I shall mind when she dies—more than I can now imagine.

  One very good thing about this horrible and distressing visit was that we took a marvellous drive through the Peak District—Glossop, the Snake [Pass], Castleton, Miller’s Dale, Buxton; and the weather was perfect. It was like that sinister summer passage in Wuthering Heights, when they go up to Penistone Crag and it is so lovely, but the shadow of the oncoming winter and death is over everything.

  On the 28th, we went to Stratford and stayed with Laughton. His Lear wasn’t so good as the performances he gave in Hollywood, but still I cried twice; it was wonderful on the heath, with the Fool clinging to his enormous skirts, and wonderful at the “Never, never, never, never” end. Olivier as Coriolanus was witty and somehow Jewish, but I do like him. Charles is a megalomaniac. He quite seriously believes that he is more of a success than Larry. He has fantastic dreams of masseurs. He imagines he is too famous to go into bars—even in Hamburg. I am fond of him, though. I do like monsters. Charles says he is a monster. And that I am one, too.

  Stephen was very sweet to us in London, as always—though Don still suspects him. A ghastly cocktail party at which Sonia (ex-Orwell) Pitt-Rivers113 debated logical positivism with Colin Wilson—who is a doll, but a dumb doll. The Australian boyfriend of Sandy Wilson114 struck Sonia’s hand and said, “What does that prove?” And Sonia said, “It proves I’ve been struck by a drunken little queer.” So fuck her—though I must admit he was hard to take.

  William Plomer like the Rock of Gilbraltar, as always—if the Rock of Gilbraltar were also adorable.

  Stephen, poor dear, reading aloud the letter from Pasternak, in an effort to stop the discussion. It was absolutely incomprehensible; and everyone said, “How marvellous.”115

  Since yesterday, we are here, at the Villa Mauresque, with darling Willie [Maugham] and Alan [Searle]. More of that tomorrow.

  September 3. What a bad bogus painter Marie Laurencin is! Two of her pictures are in this bedroom. It is luxurious, almost more so because the luxury is rather old-fashioned; the toilet seat is quite crudely made and hurts your ass. I have shooting nerve pains in my shin, knee, thigh and groin. They have been bad for several days, now.

  Last night we sat up drinking and talking to Alan. He is worried because Willie’s memory is going. But Willie seems well. He can still walk. We went through the rue Obscure down in Villefranche harbor. Alan says he [Willie] is writing autobiography—about his marriage, etc.

  Willie is rather deaf, and shouting at him is an effort. He reads a great deal, and is full of interest in new writers.

  He says of the drawing-room carpet: “It’s the only thing in the house which I actually know to be stolen.”

  Typical Willie remark: “Don, if you can persuade Christopher to come down, you’ll be offered a cocktail.”

  The journalist, Cruzeman, who came to tea today buttering up Willie: “If I may say so, Sir,” “If this doesn’t sound like the most terrible flattery”… etc. Willie deliberately glanced at his watch, so Cruzeman should see him doing it and leave. He had come to find out if the rumor was true that Willie was writing a novel set in Venice. Willie said: “It’s the most utter balls.”

  September 11. Back home since the day before yesterday.

  I have this ache in my left testicle, not bad, a kind of bruised feeling. Dr. Lewis thinks it may be a kidney stone. I don’t know. I can’t help remembering that man Donald Ritchie116 told us about, in Japan, who got sensitive testicles and then it was cancer.

  The escrow postponed, thank God. So we have a breathing spell.

  Don and I were both so scared on the jet flight home that we resolved never to fly again.

  Very hot weather, but cool in comparison to New York.

  What I liked on the trip:

  Stratford, Villa Mauresque, Roots,117 our visit to Gore’s house on the Hudson, last evening in New York with Tom Hatcher. Yes—and that wonderful drive around the Peak [District].

  September 13. Still the pain, neither more nor less. And still the heat—rather less. But on the beach it looks steamy with tropical clouds. Big thunderheads over the mountains.

  Today I restarted “Ambrose.” In my blindness, because I don’t really know what I’m going to do with it. But the opening, about leaving Berlin with Waldemar, seems good and gives me a running start.

  Even if there is no serious outcome of these ailments, I have a mountain of work ahead of me. The move. College. “Ambrose.” Ramakrishna. And now maybe this Suzanne Valadon118 film with Salka. No! From that I revolt. Yet I’ve promised to go with her and see the director tomorrow.

  September 15. Frank Taylor is a compulsive idiot. Gavin and I had supper with him yesterday. His droolings over Marilyn Monroe, and some wonder-hack who for $3,500 rewrote for him the whole of Peyton Place Revisited. The Monroe-Miller film119 sounds too corny for words. These men want to rape her in the desert and she looks up at the moon and says, “Help!” Gavin couldn’t get any promise out of him for his Vanity Fair musical project. Meanwhile, Frank is dead set on taking Monroe up to the Positano Coffee House next Saturday night.

  No word from the escrow about our house; or from Douglas Sirk120 about the Valadon film.

  Good progress in planning “Ambrose.” I must get ahead with that now as the top priority.

  Jack Lewis doesn’t seem alarmed about my pains, so I won’t be for a while—though they’re just as bad today. But yesterday the hot weather let up and we have the proper glorious fall sunshine. In the water with Don today; it was quite warm.

  Relations with Don very good since our return.

  September 17. A cool beautiful day of sane autumn weather. We went in swimming. The ocean still warm.

  I still have the pain on and off.

  At work on “Ambrose.”

  No word from Sirk.

  The money for Mrs. Perls’s escrow is said to be coming tomorrow. We can’t possibly move till next week now.

  Swami leaves for India next Tuesday. Thank God I’m not going anyplace. All I ask is my health, for working. And some money—preferably not at the cost of writing a movie. But how else?

  Don busy at school.

  September 18. This morning, Mr. Cabral121 called me to say that if the escrow goes through on Tuesday or Wednesday next—as it now almost certainly will—then he’s prepared to let us move into Adelaide Drive on Wednesday, September 30. Mrs. Perls is fit to be tied, but there’s nothing she can do. It’s her fault anyhow, for cau
sing the delay.

  Geller called to say that Douglas Sirk had told him Lana Turner doesn’t want me for the Suzanne Valadon film, because of Diane. Maybe this is a big fat blessing in disguise. But I do want some money.

  The pains quite bad today. I just have to wait and see how they develop.

  A wonderful clear day of sunshine, but with black storm clouds all around the horizon, even out to sea. The water still warm. We went in swimming again.

  Elsa Lanchester to supper last night. Not a success. Don had fixed shrimp jambalaya and Elsa immediately said she couldn’t eat garlic and implied a reproof because I hadn’t remembered this. She ignored Don, who got mad and washed the dishes while she was still here. She is an underdog herself, a slave—and, as I pointed out to Don—slaves are never very nice. Her venom against John Hayward, because he was jealous of T. S. Eliot’s new wife.

  To top it off, Don got mad at me for snoring and went upstairs. But today peace is restored. Now he’s been rereading our play The Monsters. Says it’s awful and an utter bore. I’ve only read one act. On that I agree with him. Whatever possessed us to write this crap?

  September 25. I started at L.A. State last Tuesday. Two classes that day, and another yesterday. It’s fun, but I feel dissatisfied with myself. I feel the courses lack direction. In my evening class there is a nun, who sat prune faced while another student asked what I thought of Lolita. I said: “I don’t like it because I don’t feel the hero really likes little girls. I feel it’s all an affectation. In my opinion, lust should be taken seriously.”

  The pains have been much less, these last few days.

  Wonderful weather. The beach deserted. We were in swimming again yesterday. We both have suntans, and my weight has dropped to about 147. Steady work on “Ambrose” and on the revision and typing of “Afterwards.”

  Perfect harmony and happiness with Don.

  Now at last it seems settled that we’re to move on September 30, next Wednesday. Escrow is closed. We only got $1,235 out of the deal. This means we have only about $4,600 altogether. But there will be my earning from State College. And there is the Simon and Schuster money to fall back on.

  Marilyn Monroe said to Khrushchev: “I hope we can be friends.” She told me this at a party Frank Taylor gave for her, on the 19th. The next day, Jo and Ben Masselink flew to Chicago and New York. And Swami and the five sannyas girls took off for Tokyo on the 22nd, en route for India.

  Last night, Don and I had supper with Gerald Heard and Michael. Gerald looked marvellously well. He held forth on the usual themes—mostly to Don. “You are an iceberg, of which Don Bachardy is only the part above the surface. This submerged part—that never dies. You are its experiment. Its novel written in protoplasm. For some reason of its own, it has chosen to project you, like an instrument, into space-time. When the experiment has been completed, it will withdraw you.” His usual bitching of me: “One can always tell the people who are afraid of death—they react badly to nitrous oxide.” I think he was annoyed because I had referred to lysergic acid as “a drug”; he describes it as a sacrament. If you partake of a sacrament with the right attitude, in the right frame of mind, you get something out of it.

  September 26. [The monk who wanted to marry] is going to Mexico, but he quite frankly admits that he is considering ditching this woman. He talks about it with curious cold-bloodedness. Swami’s view is, why not have an affair with her, leave her and go to India and be a monk again. [The boy’s] place is open for him, as long as he doesn’t get married. But if he returns, he’ll go to India, not back to Trabuco.

  Doris Dowling, Len Kaufman and Gavin to supper last night. I like Len. He’s already as good as married to Doris and he accepts us as family friends. He even tried to get Don a job, and has a scheme for getting me a TV program. But when I suggested that Russia’s treatment of homosexuals was a valid reason for not being a communist, he was sincerely amazed. So I pointed out that Russia is also anti-Semitic. Then he got the point.

  September 28. Pains bad yesterday and again today—brought on maybe by heavy drinking at the Richard Burtons’. I do like them. There was a stolid bucolic brother and his wife.122 You felt the relationship between the brothers was very good; no condescension and no criticism.

  Gladys Cooper123 had never heard of either Edward Thomas or Edmund Blunden. The subject came up because I am about to discuss them with my class, and Richard said he had read selections from Thomas, and I asked him which he had chosen and he said he’d be glad to read for the class—but this proved impossible because he is filming all day.

  Last night I went to Elsa Lanchester’s. Oh the horror of TV! It is so utterly utterly inferior, yet just enough to keep you enslaved, entrapped, on the lower levels of consciousness—for a whole lifetime, if necessary. It is a bondage like that of Tennyson’s Lady of Shallot.

  October 2. The day before yesterday we moved here—to 145 Adelaide Drive. We are both still in the first delight of being here. Principally, it’s the view—being able to see the sky and the hills and the ocean. We can see the hills from our bed. Don is so delighted, it warms my heart. But this is a real house, a long in-and-out place of many rooms and half-rooms, passageways and alcoves. And, in spite of the power pole and power lines and TV aerials, there really is a hillside privacy and snugness—something that suggests a run-down villa above Positano.

  Pains bad on moving day. I think I must cut out drinking. I worry about the pain, and then don’t. But it’s always there.

  Usual moving-day shocks. The bill was $142, when we’d had an estimate of $81. (But there will be some refund.) Don’s traveler’s checks got lost; but I found them this morning in his wastebasket with the rope lion Marguerite gave us.

  October 4. Pains bad yesterday, perhaps a little better today. It is hard to tell if anything specific brings them on. I vaguely resolve to tell Jack Lewis if they don’t stop soon.

  Tonight Don has gone into town to spend the night.

  Today (as yesterday) we went in swimming. While we were in the water, I asked him if he foresaw any big change in our future relations. “Oh no,” he said. “At least, I feel that it’s up to me now to do the adjusting to Dobbin. I think I’ve become much more mature about all that. I see now that I was wrong, a lot of the time, when I blamed Dobbin for things. He’s really quite first-rate.”

  That miserable Coleman from the van company never came back to put the bookcases together. Or even called. So this evening I’ve had nothing to do but read. (I could have restarted “Afterwards.”)

  11 p.m. Carter Lodge and Dick Foote have finished supper on Tahiti. Tennessee and Lincoln are having five o’clock tea tomorrow afternoon. Swami is getting ready for lunch tomorrow in Calcutta. Stephen is probably still asleep but getting ready to wake up, for tomorrow’s breakfast.

  October 9. Pains off and on. I minimized them to Jack Lewis when asking him if I could conscientiously say I was in perfect health for the new screen writers’ insurance application. “You are, you know,” Jack said firmly; and I realized he thinks me a hypochondriac. Well, let him.

  The heartrending squalor of Fred Shroyer’s home, where he took me yesterday. And yet he has made this marvellously snug womblike library in the garage, with stacks to the ceiling. I do like him. And I respect him greatly for collecting science fiction. But oh, the horror of those sad brown dusty hills covered with “homes” and telephone poles!

  As for this house, it continues to be a joy. How marvellous it is to see the sky. And the silver light on the water. Don seems very happy—all is well between us.

  Restarted “Ambrose” today. Now I have to pull myself together and get ahead with all the projects.

  October 14. Don has been having what I cannot help thinking of as a relapse. I mean—I know I hurt his feelings because (in my irritation because he was nagging at me to agree to spend hundreds of dollars immediately on the house) I said, “In that case you’ll have to get a job.” But the fact is that his reaction was still utterly hysterical.
But god how cunningly it camouflages itself! Next day, yesterday, he makes me a speech about how I am taking away his identity. And—concealed threat—he doesn’t feel resentful when he’s with any of his other friends.

  Well, I know I am far from guiltless. It is perfectly true that I want him to be sweet and pleasant so I can get on with my work unworried.

  Is that so sinister? Doesn’t he demand the same?

  Most of the time, I’m ready to go three quarters of the way to meet him. Tonight I’m a bit worried about my pains again.

  But today was so beautiful. I cycled down to the beach and swam, and met Marguerite and Rory [Harrity].

  Tonight I’ve been revising “Afterwards”—nearly finished; and reading up about the Spanish Civil War for my class tomorrow.

  Today Shroyer called to ask me officially if I would like to teach again next semester. I’m not sure. But I’m pleased to be asked.

  October 20. New worries: did I send “Afterwards” off properly this morning? Won’t they open it, and prosecute me?

  Are the income tax people going to charge me for overestimating my expenses? (As a matter of fact, that was Freedman’s fault.)

  John Lehmann writes from England that people are “in raptures” over “Mr. Lancaster.”

  Dick Foote has had notepaper printed: “Dick Foote. Tahiti.” Jo and Ben showed me some.

  Don made another scene, Sunday night. All well now.

  The house is horrible, stripped bare, with the staring uncovered windows at night, and the stink of paint.

  I am so tired. The pain just sits there. Oh I am weary. All I want is to be made snug, and to sleep, sleep, sleep.

  October 21. Today I restarted “Ambrose.” I now have a fairly clear story line to the end. Don, who is in school all day, called for news and was mad at me because I’d let them bring the sofa (which has just been recovered) back. It was stupid, admittedly; but I rather hate him when he screams.