Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Good progress again this morning on “Paul.” I must drive and drive to the end of that. Then the summer won’t have been wasted.

  Disappointed by the last section of Passage to India. It seems “setup,” mechanical, and curiously trivial. The rest is so marvellous. I love it more than ever.

  Calder-Marshall’s Occasion of Glory very unpromising so far.

  Don spent the night in town. Supper with Leo Castillo.208 He seemed very artificial and bored me with his chatter, except about politics. We walked and looked into stores on Robertson, and I was embarrassed at having to disagree with his taste so often, so I lied. But he did pay his share of dinner. And all of Will Wright’s209 bill!

  Still hot—but a breeze.

  July 23. Last night we had supper with Chris Wood at the Red Snapper and went with him to see Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners at Warner’s Studio. A “wholesome” picture—by no means bad and containing some real insights into Australian life—but never in any way memorable.

  This morning, the painters—Mr. Gardner and his brother—arrived and went to work at great speed. The kitchen is a shambles, with displaced pots and pans everywhere. And then Charles Laughton arrived, with Terry Jenkins and Bill Phipps. Terry is handsome, unexciting, and, I really think, a very nice boy. Charles sent him and Bill out driving while we finished off the Republic. When they returned, it developed that Terry had read it; he has studied philosophy. He seems to be quite unvain and not dumb. I do hope Don likes him. Charles is in a dither, of course. And I’m the only one he can fully confide in. Elsa seems to be playing it cool—having Terry in the house and praising him greatly afterwards. But always on the lines of, “Why—you could take him anywhere!” Well, we shall see how it all develops.

  Finished Occasion of Glory this morning. Oh dear, it is a dog! Magazine Hemingway. How could Calder-Marshall have written anything so trivial? I don’t see how I can possibly take it on. And yet I hate to lose this contact with Hugh French, because I really would prefer working with him to most of the jobs one’s offered.

  July 26. Today I finished page forty-nine of “Paul.” I guess something is emerging, though I am just scrambling from handhold to handhold, working my way up. I hardly dare hope the entire draft will be ready for my birthday.

  Last night, Don spent the night in town and I, on the impulse, invited Terry Jenkins to have supper with me—Charles being busy. He really is a very unusual boy. He likes working as a model, and loves buying clothes—and yet he seems almost without physical vanity. He is very easy to talk to, and he reacted with enthusiasm to our evening—I drove him up into the hills to look at the lights of Hollywood and of the valley. He has been around a lot in London, but he never drops names. He isn’t a sulker or the least superior or stupid, and yet he doesn’t come forth to meet you; he is simply waiting for you, as it were, whenever you want him. One sees him as an ideal male nurse.

  Now I must go and get some liquor for tonight—Gerald Heard, Michael and Chris are coming.

  Much cooler today.

  July 28. Gerald Heard, Michael Barrie and Chris Wood came to supper on the evening of the 26th. Gerald and Michael have been in Hawaii. They got in a car accident, a pileup of four cars, coming down from the Pali.210 Gerald was quite badly hurt but he seemed in the highest spirits now. He described a married couple they met who seemed concerned to tell everybody that they always took their morning shit together. Furthermore, they took it sitting side by side on the edge of an extinct volcano. Furthermore, one morning while they were taking it, they looked down and saw, in the abyss below them, an unidentified aerial object. Furthermore, this object, after remaining motionless for a while, zoomed right up high into the sky above their heads, and disappeared!

  Chris, with his usual obstinacy, brought Penny211 with him. She fussed and snuffled about and irritated me a good deal and interrupted the conversation.

  Mike had taken many pictures of Gerald, flirtily leggy in shorts and a great sun hat, under palms. In some of them, he looks astonishly young. No more than forty-five.

  Charles Laughton and I are now getting to the point at which we’ve almost decided what material goes into act one of our Plato play. Yesterday he was here, after staying with Terry out at their house on Palos Verdes. Terry remains as mysterious to me as ever. He is so pleasant, so relaxed and yet not stupid or calculating. However, being with him and Charles together is less easy than being with him alone. While I made conversation about Los Angeles, Charles just sat there heavily and let me get on with it. Terry has his own (rented) car now, and delights in driving around to men’s clothes shops.

  Yesterday, Don drew Evelyn Hooker. She said to me on the phone this morning that it had been, “A very strange experience, like having one’s own Rorschach test made.” One of the drawings is brilliant.

  July 31. Yesterday I got on to page sixty-two, and I hope to finish page sixty-five today. This will mean that I may aim at writing at least one hundred pages before my birthday. These compulsive writing plans sound silly, but they are very important when you are doing a first draft.

  The weather here is heavenly, yet I seldom seem to get out into it, and almost never go on the beach, or in the ocean. I hope to do so this fall, when the beach crowds thin out.

  But what a happy time! What joy to have one’s work always asking to be continued! This house has a lot to do with it, too—just because of its view and sense of space. But most of all there is Don. I do feel that he is at least more happy than not, right now. Though he did say yesterday that he wished he could “get more out of being young.” What he seems to mean by this is, he wishes he could be in a group, as I was, and be violently pro and con in his opinions, and have at least some people who believed in him, and called him important. That, of course, is the lack, in this place. And, of course, it would anyway have to be done by Don’s contemporaries. I can’t praise him too much, or even, in a sense, root for him beyond a certain bound, because I am so absolutely concerned for his overall development. I have to be ready to “absorb” his possible failure as well as his success. The thought does occur to me that he might be better off without me—at least at some future date. But it’s no use getting too noble about this. Much better to admit that I’m a monster of possessiveness but try to be a relatively benign one. I shall never surrender him willingly.

  What did occur to me this morning as I sat down to write this was that it’s just during “seasons of calm weather”212 such as this that I have to remind myself of the inner resource, make japam and try to remember God. Well, I try. Not often enough.

  Yesterday evening we had supper with the Stravinskys—they took us to The Oyster House. Igor is so childlike in his greed; he was gobbling down all kinds of canapés and then feeling nausea. It is not very cheering to see what a mess of minor ailments his old age is. And yet he is so wonderful still—bright and sharp and full of warmth—so considerate, for instance, of Don. And setting forth, tomorrow morning, on this new musical safari—Mexico City, Bogotá, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio, Brasília, Trinidad, New York, Venice! He spoke of his happiness in The Rake’s Progress—they’d heard it again in Santa Fe with a very good, young cast. “A great opera!” Igor exclaimed delightedly, but added that he was speaking just as much of the libretto.

  Dear Vera drives worse than one could think possible, especially as she does so much of it. She terrified us utterly coming to and from the restaurant. We said goodbye at the gas station where they were fixing the Simca; it developed a leak in the pipe to its radiator. I do love them both so much.

  The painters are to finish the house today, we hope.

  August 2. A beautiful day. Don has been putting up shades all morning, and they won’t roll. Geller is back. I sicked him on to Laughton’s lawyers, who still haven’t produced our agreement or any money. Meanwhile Laughton, busy learning lines for “Wagon Train,” calls to say that Taft Schreiber213 advises him to devote the rest of his life to serious projects—which means, at the moment, Pla
to! God, how public-spirited these characters get—with other people’s time and efforts! Laughton does remind me of Johnnie so often; he takes himself just as grandly.

  Yesterday Prema drove Don and me down to Laguna Beach to see Swami and the others, including Pavitrananda, on vacation here from the East. The sunshine, the ocean, everything seemed brighter and newer than up here. We went swimming and I lost my false front tooth—the sea just swallowed it in a single gulp. Don drew Swami, but was dissatisfied—too many people around. My knee hurts from climbing (twice) all those steps to the beach.

  As of yesterday evening—supper at Tom Wright’s—I have decided to cut out drinking entirely or almost. I feel so much better without it.

  Now I have to make a big drive to get my last episode finished. My target is one hundred pages by my birthday.

  Swami seemed radiant, yesterday; and all of them—Vandanananda, Ritajananda, Krishna and Pavitrananda—are being stuffed with food like pussycats. Only Tito, who cooks for them from morning till night, looks worried and exhausted. He is obviously on the verge of a breakdown.

  A card arrived from Heinz, black edged, with “Aufrichtige Teilnahme”214 printed on it. On the card, Heinz has written, “Deeply depressed that your mother has gone forever poor Chris.”

  August 4. Today I reached the end of page seventy-six. Another difficult part is approaching, and I’m not at all sure where I go from there—but it’ll be all right. I’m sure I can get a first draft out—the only question is, can it be before the start of the fall semester? I still have little or no idea how long it will take.

  This afternoon, Don drew Chris Wood, rather wonderfully, and then we drove down to look at the Monet exhibition,215 which is simply terrific—the haystacks, Rouen cathedral, the poplars, the water lilies. Two of the poplar paintings—the one with the sunlight on them, the other when it has moved and they have turned purple. Don said, “That’s really shocking!” and it was. A public scandal.

  August 5. Monet was an art saint, in the Japanese-Chinese tradition. I felt, before everything else, his love for the environment—particularly the north of France. The Riviera and the London paintings are, from his viewpoint, somewhat Arabian Nights—tropic magic and fog magic. I wish one could be great like that in prose, getting variations out of a theme. You could in poetry, of course. But the novel is so scattered.

  Geller is engaged excitedly in trying to extract the signed contract, plus five thousand dollars from Laughton’s lawyers. Charles himself I haven’t seen. He is busy learning his lines for “Wagon Train.” Then, when it’s over, I guess he’ll suddenly need me and expect me to pop to it. Never mind, I keep steadily on at “Paul.” Finished page eighty-one today and saw several new handholds ahead of me, up the precipice. Just keep right on steadily climbing and I’ll get to the top.

  I still don’t see how our Plato play is to open. The opening of the Republic is messy, because it arises out of this discussion of old age. The opening of the Timaeus is better, because it purports to take place the day after the Republic dialogue, and Socrates recapitulates the argument. But at present it looks as if we really must have some stuff of our own, to introduce Socrates in a suitably theatrical manner.

  A very strange synchronicity—just as I am writing about “Ronny” in “Paul”—just the very day, yesterday, when I was thinking about the character and seeing its importance—Tony Bower216 calls long-distance from New York! I wasn’t home and he hasn’t called back. What did he want? I haven’t heard from him in ages.

  August 6. Just back from Tony Richardson’s, having drunk three Bloody Marys and listened to a frustrated love affair of Tony’s. John Osborne meanwhile was interviewing an ex-girlfriend—he knew her when he was eighteen in Brighton. Since then, both of them have gotten fat.

  Last night, when they came to supper and I undercooked the shish kebab, I didn’t care for Osborne—thought him conceited and grand; now I like him better. Mary’s relation to him is undoubtedly masochistic. He doesn’t take much trouble to be nice to her, but I suppose she likes it.

  August 7. Just reached the bottom of page eighty-five—all I shall do for today. But I do earnestly hope I have a good day tomorrow: even to ninety-five if possible. This sounds insanely compulsive but it’s the only way to get a first draft written. And I realize more and more how very rough this draft will be. After all, I’m just merely scratching the surface.

  I’m hoping, of course, not merely to reach page one hundred but the end of the draft itself, by my birthday. This will be an awful lot more pages—perhaps even fifty or sixty—but quite a lot of it I know. My hope is based on a conversation with Elsa Lanchester on the phone this morning. Poor woman, I can’t dislike her, she’s so desperate with bitchy fear.

  She now takes the line that probably she will move into the house next door. Charles should never have bought it. She says Terry is helpless—she even describes him as “retarded.” Charles has to cook for him down at Palos Verdes—where they are now, learning the lines of “Wagon Train.” It seems that the “Wagon Train” episode won’t go on until just before Charles’s operation starts—so there’ll be no time for our Plato work. So much the better! I can get on with “Paul.”

  (Meanwhile, Hal Greene’s mother really is on the point of death. If she had died earlier, Hal might never have sold the house to Charles.)

  Elsa talked darkly about how Charles would certainly victimize me—he can’t be alone for a moment. (Elsa claims that she can be alone, but she admits that Charles infuriates her by suddenly leaving for the evening at around six, without having warned her or given her any time to invite someone to watch TV with her.) I replied that I am a monster and quite able to take care of myself with other monsters such as Charles. This brought us to the interesting revelation that Enid Bagnold217 (who used to be very thick with Charles and is hurt because he has dropped her) is writing a play called The Monsters. So then I told Elsa that I had worked for a while on a play with that title—I didn’t mention Don’s part in it, for fear of Elsa’s bitchery. “But,” I added, “monsters are very loyal in their own way.” So Elsa and I laughed a lot and I felt I had cheered her up.

  Don and I got up very late this morning because we were very late going to bed, after supper at the Selznicks’, where they showed three one-hour films of interviews with Jung. The interviews couldn’t have been worse presented—just one shot held on Jung throughout. And the interviewer, a sweaty-faced humorless Jewish-American doctor, who kept cutting in, “—But, to be specific—” Nevertheless, Jung was adorable; you saw how very cute he must have been as a young man. Like all great men, he spent most of the time disentangling himself from the net of formalization which the questioner kept trying to throw over him.

  His most interesting (to me) statement: as early as 1919, he began to realize, in studying the unconscious of his German patients, that something catastrophic was shortly going to happen to the psyche of the German people as a whole.

  Aldous and Laura were there. Aldous very wan and shrivelled, but very animated and friendly. Laura definitely hostile to me.

  And that ass David Susskind. He claims psychoanalysis is not a science and believes that he proved this in an argument with a group of analysts on his latest TV open-end show. He asked me to be on one of them. I agreed. Wish now that I hadn’t. It’ll be nothing but baiting and aggression.

  Don has left to spend the night in town. We parted lovingly, but after mutual exasperation over the sending off of a letter to Frank Taylor with specimen photostats of Don’s drawings—so Frank can make up his mind if he wants Don to come to Reno and draw the principals in The Misfits. (They’re already filming.) Don gets absolutely hysterical over these small chores—typing the letter, choosing which photos to send, etc. etc. And this rattled me because I was frantic to start work, after missing yesterday because of a hangover.

  August 10. Am now on page 104 of “Paul” and have come to the end of what one might call the second act. How much longer it’ll be, heaven
knows.

  Last night we went to see Three Sisters at UCLA—poorly acted and directed, but how marvellous! It is all about happiness—as a reality and/or as an illusion. It is the most perfectly sub specie aeternitatis work imaginable. It is also a great classic of “tea-tabling.”218 Although firearms figure importantly in three of Chekhov’s major plays, they are always “tea-tabled.” In Uncle Vanya, the shooting is farce. Yet it is always poignant, too. It is the shooters who are really suffering—Vanya, Solyony219 and of course Treplyov,220 who shoots himself. Technically, it is very interesting how Chekhov blends the exterior dialogue with the interior monologue—in other words, how he introduces soliloquies into the scene, on full stage, and keeps them realistic: i.e. a character is talking to himself and to anybody else who wants to listen. But usually no one wants to. For Three Sisters is about the preoccupation of people with themselves and their consequent inattention to others.

  Yesterday we had lunch with Tony Richardson and later went to Fox to watch him direct Sanctuary. Tony says that—the last evening we spent together—Mary and John Osborne were having a desperate quarrel over his mistress, and that Mary went out and rolled sobbing on the bathroom floor. I feel so ashamed of myself because I never noticed anything was wrong—partly of course, because I was drunk. There’s an example of “basic inattention” for you!

  On the set, Tony is quite wonderful—so perfectly calm. He told me he loves directing—would like to direct all the time, without even bothering what became of the pictures. They had a fine set, a speakeasy, with a fan dancer. Lee Remick looked as if she’ll be very good in the part.