Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Now I await Don’s reading it.

  The Stravinskys came to my lecture yesterday, on Kipling. Igor very shaky. He complains of constriction and cramps, following his stroke. We ate an expensive lunch at Lucy’s. I felt his sadness, and need to rally and be gay. It’s really heartbreaking.

  A list of projects which might come off, if—

  Don Murray’s projected play.

  Laughton’s projected Socrates play.

  Shelley Winters and Tony Franciosa’s projected TV or film documentary on Gandhi.

  Peter Viertel’s film of Cakes and Ale.148

  Lincoln Kirstein’s Sleeping Beauty film.

  Jerry Lawrence’s TV series.

  The Vacant Room, which Gavin is seeing about, in New York.

  The projected TV show with Aldous.

  Bob Craft’s idea that I should narrate something for a Stravinsky composition—in 1962!

  If even one of these goes through, I’ll be amazed.

  March 19. Well—since writing the above—what has happened?

  It seems Hope and Don Murray are trying a trial separation; so no prospects of the play for the present.

  This girl, Phyllis English, is deciding whether she wants to do the Socrates play for us or not. If not, I must find another translator.

  No word from Shelley Winters, Peter Viertel, Lincoln Kirstein, Jerry Lawrence.

  Aldous has gone off to lecture at the Menninger Foundation,149 so that’s all postponed.

  Today, Jed Harris150 brought a play about William Herschel,151 on which he wants me to work, so they can make a movie.

  Crowds on the beach, which has more rocks washed up on it than I’ve ever seen. Don is drawing Marguerite, trying to get a better likeness for The Paris Review. All his other pictures are done; really excellent.152 I’m so proud.

  And last night, when they came to dinner, Bob Craft suggested Don should draw him and Stravinsky together as a jacket for their third conversation book.

  I still have this problem with “Ambrose.” Am trying hard to finish it off this weekend. But it’s not easy.

  March 20. Thick sea fog in the Canyon all day; very hot in town. I worked on “Ambrose”—I think I may finish tomorrow. Alas, this play that Jed Harris wants me turn into a movie—The Miles of Heaven by David Hertz—won’t do. It’s just another cute little triangle.

  Don was here all day, drawing with Marcia King, who leaves tomorrow for New York.

  Laughton came by, blowing and wheezing and puffing. He’s an old fusspot, but at least his project is something worthwhile.

  Every morning I have bad anxiety dreams before waking—because of my vagus nerve trouble. And I wake with a sense of depression which has to be promptly analyzed away.

  March 21. Well, today I finished my revisions of “Ambrose.” Don approves. Shall show the manuscript to Gavin—who is starting his new novel today.

  Have practically decided not to take on the play The Miles of Heaven for Jed Harris. But I didn’t call him. Why should I pay for a long toll call? Why not be the Jew for once?

  Jewish behavior, deliberately practiced, is a cure for anti-Semitism.

  We ate home tonight—a delicious “peasant” supper, made of bits and leftovers: Ala153, mushrooms, squash, eggs, baloney, etc.

  Last night, Don said, “Why are the animals so happy, nowadays?”

  Fog again.

  I have quite a project, watering plants—the pulla, the anthericum, the ruffled Boston fern, the philodendron, the two palms in the living room. The air roots of the anthericum have to be dowsed in a cup of water every Monday.

  Homework for the class—Forster.

  Laughton called. He is hot after the Plato project. Going away for a few days. Who with? “None of your damned business!” But he loved being asked. I think his chief reason for wanting to work with me is so he can talk freely about his private life. And why not?

  March 23. Today I mailed a copy of “Ambrose” to Stephen Spender.

  Gavin has read it. I think he likes it very much.

  Don had a terrific row with his mother on the phone, because she said he had offended his uncle by only staying there two hours.

  Yesterday, Marvin Laser said I might be invited to stay on at L.A. State. What would I feel about this? Said I’d consider it very seriously.

  Walked with Jill Macklem in the park. Last weekend, she had the worst of all her heart attacks. She thinks the doctor is experimenting with her.

  March 25. Read Balzac’s play Vautrin this morning, because Gide in his Journal says that it is there that Vautrin “confesses himself most significantly.”154 Maybe he does, but I didn’t find it very thrilling.

  A grey day, clouds down on the hills.

  Jim Charlton called. He’s leaving soon for San Francisco.

  I reread my diaries of 1935–38, to see if there is material for a Munich crisis episode for my novel. God, I was unhappy, then. Or does it only seem so?

  Last night, at the Stravinskys’, Don did excellent drawings of Igor and Bob. Bob has hepatitis. He feels awful. He assures us that he dreads the South American trip (Mirandi [Masocco] claims that he is the one who’s determined it shall go through!) and that Vera dreads it, and that only Igor wants it.

  Igor had taken something to stop the pain in his arm. He was quite lively, and showed Don the Russian-character typewriter given him by Diaghilev. But later he complained of his headache. I rubbed the back of his neck. He exclaimed affectionately “Ah, you are so gentle! You know just where to touch the nerves.” Bob showed me the rest of the proofs of their new book of conversations. He’s afraid Chester will resent the way they make it clear that Wystan was alone responsible (with Igor) for the outline of The Rake’s Progress libretto. Altogether one of our pleasantest and most “family” evenings together.

  I’m becoming what Caskey used to call a “plant queen.” I feel, when I water the anthericum and douse its air roots, as if I am feeding a live pet.

  March 27. Cloudy and rainy—the Canyon full of dripping mist. I called Gavin (who has just started his new novel) and said “novelists’ weather.” He answered “English novelists’ weather, and I’m sick of it!”

  Read Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister yesterday evening and this morning. Also Where Angels Fear to Tread.155

  Tried to have supper with Jim Charlton, who’s leaving for San Francisco very soon. But he couldn’t. So stayed home. I wish I were better at staying home. I get jittery. Maybe I bore myself. Don in town.

  March 28. Just got a cable from Stephen: “Thank you for your story which is marvellous. Will be writing this week.” But of course he may still be going to beg off publishing it156—or at best may want to cut it.

  Last night we went with Gavin to see Agnes Moorehead.157 She has a real palazzo of a house—overgrown doorway, cloudy mirrors, draped beams, chandeliers, colored sanctuary lights, a toilet set in an old chair. She leaves tonight for a film festival in Cartagena. She described Ginger Rogers’s incompetence in The Pink Jungle: “Whatever she does, it’s as if it were for the first time. You give her a glass of champagne: she squeals, ‘Ooh, champagne! For me!’” Agnes calls Mrs. Rogers Senior “Mother Barracuda.”

  Ken and Elaine Tynan came and we went on with them to Chasen’s. Larry Harvey was giving a party there. He got up and embraced me in front of everybody. That’s the kind of thing which sets him apart from most actors. Olivier would do it. Almost no American.

  Ken and Elaine are very strange. One feels an absolutely desperate insecurity. And yet, they don’t merely run around with the famous. Ken had been making an apparently quite serious investigation of communists and beatniks in San Francisco. And he visited San Quentin without asking to see Chessman.

  April 1. Dorothy Miller is here to clean. As usual she abounded in gleefully pessimistic information: there is a shop in Los Angeles where you can buy bombs to throw at people; a nurse she knows, driving near La Brea, was hit by a bit of radioactive fallout and received a burn which gets b
igger and bigger. Dorothy’s landlady has said she won’t let the census takers inside her house.

  The last three days I’ve been feeling rather lousy. A repressed attack of flu.

  Charles Laughton called to say he’d almost decided to do a Billy Wilder film (“a Laughton film”) rather than Falstaff at Stratford. (“Because one wants, as one gets older, to belong to one’s own day.”)

  Jed Harris is still wooing me to do the Herschel film. He really is very intelligent and charming, even if a monster. He may buy Hal Greene’s house next door.

  April 7. This morning, Guyer and Laser, with many compliments and apologies, broke the news to me that I couldn’t be employed next semester—though probably they can take me back in the spring, if I like.158

  Still haven’t started on the next episode of my novel; partly because Stephen has never written to say if he really is going to publish it as it stands—only cabled that it’s “marvellous.”

  Still haven’t signed any contract with Laughton.

  When I told him and Elsa about Vedanta Place and how we spend the evenings I go there, Charles said: “I rather envy you.” This hurt Elsa’s feelings. She is terribly touchy, just now.

  April 8. I realized again today how terribly I fool around and waste time. I could easily do three times what I do do.

  However, I got along with the Ramakrishna chapter. And I read the adaptation of Plato’s account of Socrates’s death. At present, it’s hopeless. As Laughton says, Socrates simply isn’t made alive enough to be worth killing. But I think Charles has really made up his mind to go ahead with the project.

  April 9. Gavin and the Masselinks to supper last night. It was rather a bore. They didn’t quite get along. Don says he thinks most people dislike Gavin, because he is ugly and unchic and not quite talented enough. But that he will nevertheless (or because of this) become powerful, and perhaps feared […].

  We slept eleven hours last night! It is almost alarming, this indulgence. I had some very subtle dreams—dreams which made me feel how gross my mind ordinarily is, nowadays. Can’t remember them, except for one, of two ugly middle-aged women fighting, because of a man. (During the fight I was shitting, in what I had believed to be a toilet and which turned out to be a projection room or small theater which had several extra doors I had neglected to lock. So lots of people came in. What was subtle about this dream was a sense of universalized horror-compassion at the ugliness of the fight. But I can’t really explain. Tried to, to Don. His half serious pique because he hadn’t been in my dream. Read him Whitman at breakfast. He shed tears over “As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap, Camerado” and “Vigil Strange…”

  April 15. Yesterday, I performed a real feat of rush work. Got chapter eight of the Ramakrishna book finished in a tremendous burst.

  This morning, I went on the beach for the first time. The sea too cold to swim in. Felt a great surge of energy.

  April 16. What’s this—a glass of Scotch on the desk! And you told Prema and Arup yesterday, quite gratuitously, that you never drink alone.

  Well, I’m depressed—so much so that I really wonder if maybe the hepatitis is coming back. Because all that’s happened is that I got a letter from Stephen saying that “Ambrose” is unsatisfactory in its present form. One of the things that upset me about the letter was that it seemed chiefly concerned with what other people think of the story. It seemed written (or rather, dictated—another sore point!) in haste and carelessly, and I don’t feel he is saying what he really thinks.

  Well, to hell with all that. I mustn’t lose heart. I must push ahead. Am writing to ask Stephen to send the manuscript to Edward Upward.

  Don has gone into town tonight. He didn’t want to go, seeing me so upset, but I wouldn’t ask him not to. He really could not be sweeter, and I have never felt closer to him. We went on the beach today for the first time in a long long while.

  Carter Lodge came to supper last night with Jo and Ben, and they talked Tahiti. All about people who were awful or “good”—Ben’s favorite word. We felt that Carter is very much disillusioned about Dick Foote, who went wild about the island social whirl.

  April 18. Yesterday, after the amazingly violent dip on Saturday, I manic-depressively zoomed up again, started the next episode of my novel The Others, and also another chapter (nine) of the Ramakrishna book. True, this was partly due to a Dexamyl tablet.

  I believe that Don probably loves me more than anybody else ever has. But that’s not surprising; he needs me more. And sometimes I think I need him more. Our life together right now is really a joy. But it will have its ups and downs, as always.

  A lovely, snug Easter lunch at the Stravinskys’—with wonderful Russian dishes. Igor, Don and I drank up a whole bottle of some special old Scotch—General Grant—without ice or mix. Igor was adorable, as usual.

  About “Ambrose”: I just know that I must leave it until I have the whole book finished and can relate the parts to each other.

  April 25. Don was away this weekend—the first time in a long long while. It was rather funny, how I got to know about it. I’d just been laying down the law, pompously, about how one should never never break any engagements—and so Don had a most marvellous cue. He said, “I’d been meaning to tell someone who asked me to go away with him for this weekend that I’d changed my mind. But you’re right, I guess I shouldn’t.”

  Actually the going away was a success. Because I had a nice evening with Jim [Charlton], and another with Dean Campbell159 and Jerry Lawrence and Jack Larson and Jimmy Bridges. Also, Don came back full of warmth and we were delighted to be together again. And now we have a nice evening ahead of us—going with Jo and Ben to see Sons and Lovers at Fox.

  April 29. The evening was nice—though Sons and Lovers wasn’t so hot; actually it should end (as the book doesn’t) with meeting Frieda.

  Paul Kennedy went off to New York yesterday. This certainly didn’t break my heart—in fact, I am a bit relieved. But I felt sad for him because the prospect of his ever getting anywhere with anything, or ever being anything but mildly frustrated, mildly unhappy—seems slight. Oh, the sadness of these half-lives!

  Don painted the front bedroom, a kind of blood orange. It’s beautiful.

  Phyllis Kirk called this morning—will I fly with her and Brando to Sacramento on Sunday, to see Governor Brown? Said yes.

  Party for Doris Dowling and Len [Kaufman] tonight.

  May 2. Phyllis called our flight to see Brown off, because it seemed to be useless.

  And now, incredibly, this morning, Chessman was executed. We listened to the bulletin in the front bathroom, because the radio wouldn’t work from the other plug. And then Dorothy [Miller] called to tell us, in case we didn’t know.

  May 4. Jill Macklem told me yesterday that, at ten o’clock on Monday morning, a lot of students cheered because Chessman was executed. I hope they were police students. We have a whole bunch of them on campus, studying narcotics, homicide, etc.

  May 11. Carter Lodge, whom we had supper with last night, seems so lonely. He talks with eager fatherliness of Dick, who is cutting up in Australia, Singapore, Bali—but there is a streak of resentment in it all; maybe now, he says, Dick will learn to look after himself while travelling and not leave everything to Carter. A sad aftermath somehow it all seems—as if the little cozy fire of fun which Johnny kindled has now died down to nearly nothing. How desperately the many depend on the few to amuse them!

  One sees Carter, rich and alone, growing old in a good second-class hotel where he knows the manager and gets a special price.

  Edward Upward wrote last week to say Ambrose “moved me to the core” and that the novel “promises to be the best, the most moving, you have done yet.” So my morale is almost restored.

  Also, Santa Barbara seems about to make an offer; and L.A. State is making terrific efforts to underwrite me for the fall semester. So I feel “wanted.”

  Lovely weather, but smoggy in town.

  May 13. Friday! May it bri
ng luck!

  One can never be sufficiently grateful for the great mercy of sleep. Don was away last night in town, and I slept on the old hard Saltair Avenue bed in the back room—the bed on which so many of the best things happened—and woke, beside the open window, so refreshed and happy.

  Yesterday evening, there was a symposium at State College, in which Jack Rathbun,160 Wirt Williams,161 Wright Morris162 and I took part. Wright Morris did nearly all the talking; one of those little men with a tight-clipped white moustache and wavy artist-hair. He made a lot of sense, though. But how dull it somehow all was!

  Got home to find a letter from Dr. Stuurman, apologizing to the earth, because the chancellor has turned down my appointment for next fall.163 Well, my heart isn’t broken. It would have been fun, in a way, but an awful rat race, commuting.

  Dorothy, who has come this morning to clean, feels that she was “protected” from coming to cook for us last week, when we asked her. Because, that night, her toilet overflowed and if she hadn’t been at home it would have flooded the whole place.

  Dorothy was very pleased because, at the corner of Adelaide and 4th, she saw a gentleman in one of the houses being served his breakfast by a real butler!

  She was conned into buying a beige telephone, believing there was no extra charge for a colored one.

  Wednesday night, Swami told me Vandanananda is having trouble with lust—specifically, lust for the woman who owns the Camel Point Drive house at Laguna.164 However, she didn’t encourage him. Swami wants Ritajananda to take over the French center. He says Prema admitted to him that he, Prema, was going through “a bad time.” I’ve noticed for some weeks when I go up there that he acts strangely—very cagey.

  May 18. Don’s birthday—not much of one for him, I fear. The day before yesterday, he had this bad accident which wasn’t his fault, wrecked the car and hurt his knee. Today he has to fuss with insurance forms. However, we had a nice breakfast at the Monica Hotel. Now he’s writing letters of introduction for Paul Millard to take to England. Paul has earned these by lending Don his car until the Sunbeam is repaired or we get another.