Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Taken Tom Wright’s car back to him.

  Walked home—my only exercise.

  Done two pages of the Ramakrishna book.

  Put a new calendar in the container.

  Had a three-quarter hour conversation with Fred Shroyer (speaking on the State of California’s money from college) about [John] O’Hara, Van Vechten, etc. He says, “One of the happiest events of the year was getting to know you.” What was I to say?

  Now I’m hastily cooking—heating up the last of the stew for lunch—at 3:05!

  I still have to shave and wash, write three pages of “Ambrose” and a letter to Tennessee Williams, thanking for the fern he gave us. Don is at the studio, painting. He restarted painting this week.

  At six, Hal Greene and Dick Lee for drinks. Gavin to supper. An evening at Jerry Lawrence’s.

  No time for any New Year’s resolution except GET ON WITH IT—FASTER!

  Here are some of the chief events of 1959:

  January 19.

  We finished our play The Monsters and sent it to Dodie and Alec.

  January 29.

  We went to New York.

  February 16.

  Returned home.

  February 19.

  Got the offer to teach at L.A. State.

  February 21–24.

  Spenders stayed with us.

  March 10.

  Rory and Marguerite got married.

  March 17.

  Started writing “Mr. Lancaster.”

  March 19.

  The party at Olivier’s.

  March 21–23.

  We went to Taliesin West with Jo and Ben.

  April 5–7.

  Stephen visited.

  April 13.

  Finished “Mr. Lancaster.”

  April 18–23.

  Trip to New York alone to see Auden about Sally Bowles.

  May 1.

  Started “Ambrose.”

  May 4.

  Don started work at May Co.

  May 9.

  Stephen to stay.

  May 11.

  Stephen left.

  June 9.

  Don laid off at May Co. Started “Afterwards.”

  June 16.

  Don got work on California Stylist.

  June 25–30.

  Lincoln to stay.

  July 4.

  Cottens’ party.

  July 7.

  Don started in his studio.

  July 15.

  Virginia Viertel’s divorce.

  July 31.

  Finished “Afterwards.”

  August 18.

  We left for New York, England, South of France.

  Sept 9.

  Returned.

  Sept 22.

  Started teaching at L.A. State.

  September 30.

  We moved to 145 Adelaide Drive.

  October 16.

  Don to work at Broadway.139

  October 25.

  Don drew hats for LeMaire.

  December 13.

  The living room in working order.

  December 17.

  On the Beach premiere.

  December 26.

  Life magazine lunch at the Huxleys’.140

  1960

  January 3. Two days spent in getting drunk, recovering, getting drunk again, recovering. I won’t write “wasted” because I’m going to try to give up puritanism for the sixties. I enjoyed quite a lot of it, so why not? It is probably inevitable that such enjoyment becomes increasingly compulsive. You want to prove you can still do it. Well, why not? Why not be silly once in a while, if you must. Only what matters is to get back to work.

  I have mountains of work ahead of me. I should be delighted and thankful that this is so—because it’s all work I believe in and want to do. (Or at least want to get done.)

  I’m in good health. (Worried, however, about a lump in the pad of my left thumb.)

  Relations with Don are perfect. (Admittedly, this varies from day to day. But at least I can say this: I sincerely believe that I am good for him, or at worst much more good than bad. I do not feel that either of us is the prisoner of the other.)

  So—forward! Attack the job, anywhere. I’ll begin by paying bills. That’s the chief worry at the moment—our lack of money.

  January 13. Yesterday—my last day but one of the semester at L.A. State—my voice went right out during the evening class. Today I can only whisper.

  Have had the whole day alone. Terrible sloth. A bright beautiful windy day after the heavy rain. I had to walk to the store on 7th and Montana to buy stuff and phone the company that our phone was out. My throat is swollen up big.

  A dream, the night before last: Auden and I were talking—apparently after a lecture. (Don was present, too; but played no part.) Wystan and I were in great spirits, laughing. I said, “When you talked about the future, I thought you’d give the whole show away.” “No—” said Wystan, “they didn’t notice anything. I knew they wouldn’t—” (Obviously he was referring to the audience.) Then I laughed some more, and kicked at a long electric light cord that lay on the floor. (In my workroom, here?) “My god,” I said, “Why don’t we drop this whole farce?”

  Now the amazing thing about the dream is this: I am sure that in the dream, Wystan and I were dead—but no one knew it. (Except Don. Was he dead too? Somehow, I think not. I feel he shared in the joke but was to a certain degree excluded.)

  January 14. Jo and Ben hurried back from Florida because their agent told them he’d sold The Crackerjack Marines. Now they find that the whole thing seems to be a trick—Warner’s will only buy it if Ben will work on it now, during the writers’ strike. Ivan Moffat strongly urges Ben not to do this, lest he gets himself forever blacklisted by the Screen Writers Guild, which he is sure to want to join, sooner or later.

  A talk with a young man on the phone who was sure I was his girlfriend disguising my voice. (I can’t speak above a whisper.)

  Jack Lewis has given me expensive medicine, but my voice is as bad as ever.

  January 15. A tremendous sunset, between rainstorms.

  My voice is still bad but has begun to come back in blurts, like a radio working badly.

  Ben decided not to accept Warner’s offer. He has decided that he owes everything to me. He said on the phone that he felt “cleansed” and “like Christ.” He didn’t use these expressions ironically, but obviously he didn’t mean them quite as they sounded. Is this just lack of feeling for words? Or was he drunk?

  Jill Macklem has been told by her doctor that she may live on “indefinitely,” but that she had better do everything she wants to do. So she is telling me how fond she is of me. Do I accept this at its face value? I can’t—not quite. I can’t help remembering what Jill herself told me—that she used to be violently neurotic and tried to kill herself. Is this the story of Sudhira’s cancer all over again? Is she just trying to make herself interesting?

  (Jo just called to tell me Warner’s are buying the book anyhow. Ben can work on it after the strike is over. Jo says, “This is what comes of doing the right thing.”)

  January 21. Voice quite all right now. I read the Katha Upanishad in the shrine this morning at the Vivekananda puja. Then I went to Peschelt and had the root of my tooth pulled out, plus an abscess. It hurt so when he injected the Novocaine that I yelled. Came home and took a pain pill, which hit the spot.

  Then Hal Greene came in to tell us he has an offer for his house and land. Do we want to buy the balance of the lot next to us for $7,500? Don is in favor of this. It would mean taking all of the Simon and Schuster money and then some. And this just for the negative sake of privacy.

  It would be utterly out of the question if I hadn’t just had this offer from Don Murray, to work for a week on his Sardinian film. It still seems crazy, but I guess we’ll do it.

  January 28. Things are rather better.

  I did the work for Don Murray—the Sardinia treatment—in four days, Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tues
day—fifty pages; and got my $1,250 for them. And Don and Walter Wood141 were delighted.

  Today I have just finished the rough draft of chapter seven of the Ramakrishna book.

  Hal Greene says that this woman’s offer has fallen through—so we are in the clear for the moment.

  Much ado about the Huxleys—

  A few days ago, Aldous called and asked me to read his novel—the first two-thirds of it—in typescript. Yesterday, Jerry Wald writes me he’s interested in doing Point Counter Point—have I any suggestions? The night before last I dreamed (1) that Aldous was dead, (2) that Maria came to see me. (This was a visitation, I feel—not a dream. Maria looked younger, around thirty, and plumper than when I saw her last. She seemed very happy and smiling. I knew quite well that she was dead, and she knew that I knew. This seemed perfectly natural. I asked, “Have you been up to see them at Deronda Drive?” And Maria answered, “Oh, no!” Not bitchily, but with a certain amusement—exactly the way she would have said it.)

  I told Aldous my dream about Maria (omitting my question and the “Oh, no!”) when I went up to see him yesterday to get the manuscript. I felt that he was very glad. Later I saw some tears running down his cheeks.

  January 29. Ted seems like he is getting ready to have another of his breakdowns after all this time. We are worried about this, and about a new breakdown of the Sunbeam, last night: the gears are all grinding together and it just won’t go at all. So we seem condemned to another week on the one-car plan, which is such a nuisance. Don began carrying on at breakfast about how he ought not to be living in Santa Monica—his studio, his school, his gym are all in town. I try to let this go over me, but the whine of neurotic selfishness is irritating. Oh well—moods. What does it matter? What does this house matter? Why not move, or not move, or do anything the Lord wills? Don may be maddening at times, but he is far, far, oh infinitely better than the others. I mean, I would far rather be with him than the others. And I’m terrible, I know—a real old bastard, obstinate, spiteful, jealous, sly. No use blaming him. Try to be better. Make japam. Offer it all up. Get on with my work.

  The wonderful weather—wasted on me. I don’t go out. I should be on the beach, every day. I should exercise. Don complains that I stand around, watching him and not helping. And he’s right.

  A young man with a shovel, quite attractive, sitting on the hillside looking down on the cars coming up the hill below. He told me he’d just seen a woman in a convertible with her skirts up to her knees and no pants on—jeez!

  February 1. Jigee Viertel died yesterday morning in hospital.142 If she had lived, she would have been horribly scarred. Salka thinks she would have ended by killing herself anyway. She had no breasts left.

  Yesterday was a bad bad day. Don was increasingly furious because Thom Gunn didn’t take any notice of him. He got drunk, and after Thom and his friend Bill Webster and Bill Inge and Mike Steen and Gavin Lambert had left, he blew up and screamed at me. It’s as if Ted’s craziness is affecting him. Ted is skirting a nervous breakdown. It is pouring down rain. Again, the Sunbeam is out of action, so I’m stuck here. I do hope Don isn’t going to sulk tonight. Well, shit anyway.

  February 3. I was unfair to Don. This breakdown of Ted’s—which threatens but doesn’t quite explode—is hell for him. Altogether, he is having a rough time. Of course it is partly his fault. He rushes compulsionistically around, from art school to gym to studio, nearly knocking himself out. But he is so poignantly eager to do his best, to fulfill his dharma!

  Drizzly today. Have worked on the Ramakrishna book. Strange how even that becomes easier and more fun if only I will make the effort! I must finish this chapter and get “Ambrose” finished.

  February 8. Phyllis Kirk143 called this morning, saying that they definitely want Aldous, Steve Allen144 and me to fly to Sacramento and see Governor Brown about Chessman, next week—just before his scheduled day of execution. It seems crazy, and I cannot believe it will do any good; but it might be amusing.

  It has rained all day, and I feel rather depressed. But have been pushing doggedly ahead with “Ambrose,” and thank god chapter seven of the Ramakrishna book is finished!

  Igor and Vera and Bob Craft to supper last night. Igor seems a bit shaky. He limps—presumably as the result of his stroke. He seemed sweeter and tinier than ever.

  Ted Bachardy is now in a sanatorium; he agreed to commit himself. Don is furious with him, for the things he said to their parents about Don and me. So we have a blockade: we don’t answer any calls, leave them to the answering service. Ted has called several times. Now he has given up.

  February 10. Ted just called; he ran away from the sanatorium. It seems there was trouble later with his family, Bart Lord and the police. Could he stay here? No, I said, very firmly. He’s going to Vince [Davis]’s.

  Yesterday, I restarted at L.A. State. One class—the evening one—is nearly eighty! I have this character Kahn, Chester Kallman’s […] crazy cousin, in it.145 Already he held up the class for about five minutes, saying how he is going to send home for a photograph of people being executed by Franco troops: he’ll blow it up, he says, and show it to us.

  The flight to Sacramento is off. Brown won’t see us.

  On Monday, Don said he’d like to have an apartment near school and spend about four nights there a week. I think this was largely a sort of test of my reactions. Anyhow, it ended well; because I managed to convince Don that I really care for him. And that still seems to be what really matters to him.

  February 14. 6:30 p.m. We are coming to the end of what has been a really happy day—our seventh anniversary. Don has been painting the insides of the windows in my study and I have been writing away at “Ambrose.” I’m now about a dozen pages from the end. But many problems are still to be solved.

  What shall I write about Don, after seven years? Only this—and I’ve written it often before—he has mattered and does matter more than any of the others. Because he imposes himself more, demands more, cares more—about everything he does and encounters. He is so desperately alive.

  Shall I call this novel The Others? Thought of it just now. Not bad.

  Ted is still crazy and at large—staying with Vince, who it seems will put up with absolutely anything. He [Ted] called me yesterday. “This is Eve Black,”146 he said; and he announced that he’s going to change his hair to platinum. He has been fired from his job. He plans to paint and act.

  Started to read Don the introduction by [T. E.] Lawrence to Memoirs of the Foreign Legion. The Stravinskys lent it to us.

  February 17. Ted finally caught Don at home, on the phone, this morning. Don told him off, and said he didn’t want to talk to him again for a long time. But Don hated doing this. He is deeply upset and will remain so until Ted recovers. I know that.

  Am at last approaching the end of “Ambrose”—about ten more pages.

  The people at the L.A. State College library, without saying a word to me in advance, have made an exhibit: “Christopher Isherwood—Man of Letters,” with the foreign translations of my books which I gave them, plus newspaper articles, etc. etc. I was really touched and pleased and surprised.

  February 26. When I was up at Vedanta Place on Wednesday, Swami said, “I saw Maharaj the other night, at Santa Barbara,” but he wouldn’t tell me any more—maybe because Krishna was there and might have taken it down.

  Tonight our car broke down for lack of water and had to be pushed.

  I got all the books back on the shelves.

  The Screen Writers Guild are indignant, because they caught Don Murray offering our story to Columbia. He doesn’t seem the least bit worried about this.

  March 3. At the beginning of the week, Don was sick and in bed. On Monday, I fixed food for him. This situation—of waiting on him when he is sick—I found strangely saddening, because the strength of the love between us and our dependence upon each other makes us seem an isolated pair, threatened by all the ills and evils of the world. How poignant love is! What a ti
ny island! And yet one wouldn’t wish it any different. Do I feel this simply because I have a spasm in my vagus nerve, and can therefore only experience everything—even what is called happiness—in terms of dread and guilt? Would I be “happier” if I could legalize the guilt by making it theological—by believing, for instance, that my relationship with Don is a mortal sin? I don’t know. In any case, I should then be a different person. And I should also be a different person, I guess, if I had my vagus nerve cut.

  Don interests me more and more. How he ventures further and further, deeper and deeper, into the jungle of his life! It is terribly moving, and exciting, to watch him.

  Right now, he is just finishing Alan Watts’s The Wisdom of Insecurity. He says he’ll never be quite the same again, after reading it.

  I cannot say that I find it either moving or exciting to watch myself. Aside from my life with Don, I am a rather dreary aging creature, much given to paranoia and self-pity; always groaning about how hard my daily task is.

  But at least this afternoon—after getting back from State College—I’ve got my work restarted. If only I could finish “Ambrose” this weekend—in draft at least! This slowness is unhealthy, and shows there is something wrong.

  March 11. Today I finished the draft of “Ambrose.” Went for a walk on the cliffs at sunset, quite elated. I still don’t know what, if anything, it adds up to. But it is another job done.