The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  As always, I can help him by being more satisfactorily what I am and therefore more independent of him or of anyone. Oh God, when I look around this room! At the very least, fifty, maybe a hundred books I haven’t read! And then I should read all through my boxes of letters, diaries, etc. There is so endlessly much material for hours of recollection and meditation. And then japam!

  I believe more firmly than ever in Don. I believe in his talent and his character, and I believe he will evolve into the kind of person we both want him to be. I believe, furthermore, that he has taken giant steps in this direction already; and that therefore these outbursts mean much less than they meant three or four years ago. He is becoming more and more independent in the only way that matters—inside himself.

  During the night, my nose bled quite heavily, all over the sheet. At the time, I thought it was just mucus from the sinus. There was a pleasant feeling of easement, afterwards.

  November 19. Yesterday morning, at Santa Barbara, I got up early, not drunk—for almost the first Thursday of this semester—after a ghastly restaurant dinner and evening at the home of Dr. Girvetz, as guest of the philosophy department. (Dr. Girvetz is the victim of Douwe Stuurman’s bitterest scorn, because, after establishing himself as one of the liberal hopes of the campus, he married a rich wife and sold out. And, as a symbol of his depreciated spiritual condition, he has gotten fat, says Douwe, and become a drunken glutton.)125 The get-together at Dr. Girvetz’s home was, like all such functions, far too large. Everybody’s wife had been brought along, and also, said Douwe scornfully, the secretaries. (This was an obvious slap at poor Peg Armstrong,126 of whom Douwe seems curiously jealous; chiefly, I can’t help feeling, because he feels she is muscling in on our relationship!)

  Well, anyhow, I got up early and drove along the shore, because I had time to spare before the classes—at which I had to speak on (1) E.M. Forster (2) children’s literature. I stopped the car and got out and took out my beads and made japam. And I made a resolution—the words came into my mind—“From now on, I’ll make japam every day until I die.”

  At Mrs. Haight’s class on children’s literature,127 I rather surprised myself by holding forth in the most authoritative manner, as though I had been considering the subject for years. In effect I said: “The books I liked best as a child were mostly fantasies which I could relate to my actual surroundings. I liked [Beatrix] Potter because I lived in an old house where there were rats; and where I could easily imagine little doorways and tunnels leading into ‘the universe next door.’ This, in a different way, was the appeal of H.G. Wells; science fiction based on very prosaic everyday settings. Then, in the case of Ainsworth, there was the real, twentieth-century Tower of London, where it was easy to find a doorway to the sixteenth-century Tower of Lady Jane and Bloody Mary. . . .128 H.C. Andersen is The Artist as Child. His account of life is written in terms of the fairy tale, but it is absolutely valid; the stark truth is told about suffering and love and death. The Little Mermaid must be considered in the same category as Anna Karenina. . . . This idea that children are pure and uncorrupted and that grown-ups have somehow lost their spiritual vision is just sentimentality. There are lots of children who are just as corrupt and insensitive and spiritually blind as the worst grown-ups, and children’s literature is simply literature which speaks to the child’s condition; relates to his known environment. Auden’s fantasies were connected not with houses but with landscapes . . . We cannot get back to the child’s innocence. But the sophisticated adult can achieve another kind of simplicity which is maybe better . . . etc. etc.”

  Because the Dangerfields wanted me to, I went to a Dr. Walter Graham in Santa Barbara, who is a famous bone specialist. He told me to take off the elastic bandage and never mind if my ankle does swell up. He predicts that it will be all right in another six weeks.

  A beautiful brilliant day today. Don and I had hangovers after an evening at Doris Dowling’s. She infuriated Don by treating him as so often—as my appendage. So we had the old fuss once more when we got home; I was blamed, for not protesting and for secretly liking Doris’s flattery. But today all was well, and we walked on the beach—and my ankle has swollen very little, if at all. Tonight there are strong gusts of wind, and the bushes scratch squeakily against the panes of my workroom window; sometimes they seem to be furiously struggling to get in.

  Now that I have this Thanksgiving vacation, I hope to do a lot on “Waldemar.” Made a start this evening.

  November 23. Have made quite good progress with “Waldemar.” I ought certainly to be able to finish it during the holiday, except that it is getting longer and longer. Well, I won’t force it. I think something quite good is emerging.

  Laughton and Terry are back and spend a lot of time in the house next door. But Terry is to go back to England because Charles refuses to “ruin his life”; i.e. he won’t keep Terry unless Terry can get work here; and that’ll only be possible in T.V. or movies—the modelling jobs are all in New York. Terry bows his head when this is said and looks sad but acquiescent. Charles plays it very big, enjoying the drama. Elsa, with her tour over and Ray Henderson about to get married, sits up at the Curson house and dares Charles to desert her. This, he agrees, he can’t possibly do. “She’s too old.”

  Iris Tree is taking off for Italy tomorrow or the next day. We saw her last night at Oliver and Betty Andrews’s. She looked wonderful but seemed drunk and foolish, holding forth against the provincialism of Los Angeles. What she obviously meant was that she has found the atmosphere of Ivan’s house provincial, as it certainly is. I think both he and she are relieved that she is going. And yet I feel sad. Iris has represented a bright flash of gaiety out here, none the dimmer for being ridiculous. Her ridiculousness is the most lovable thing about her. But then one thinks of her whole life, with all its flashy flutterings, and feels sad. Why? Not because she’s what’s called a failure—if she is and whatever that means. No, I guess just because this is one of those lives which put such an emphasis on youth. Still, I would hate it if Iris stopped dyeing her hair. When we said goodbye, she looked at me and said, “I do love you,” and I know she does. I love her too. I am always glad to see her again after a separation; but I don’t find I miss her very much.

  News in the papers of poor Norman Mailer’s breakdown. One headline said, “Author Mailer Stabs Wife.” Don misread this as, “Arthur Miller Stabs Wife” and said to himself, “Why don’t they mention Marilyn Monroe?” We agreed that, if it had really been the Millers, the headline would have been, “Marilyn Stabbed by Mate.”

  November 24. Have been working all day on the novel; still in my bathrobe at six p.m. Don is eating Thanksgiving lunch with his parents. He’ll return for Thanksgiving supper with Jo and Ben. I haven’t eaten all day—for the third day in a row. I have breakfast and then get along on coffee and a Dexamyl. My weight is down to 150 again, but I’m resolved to get much lower. And every day when possible I want to exercise.

  No problem what to give thanks for, this year. Don. His success—even though that makes new problems. Having a novel to work on. Being in good health. Having this house. Having a job and the prospect of future jobs. (I think UCLA will work out).129 So I do give thanks. And I will earnestly try to keep at my japam.

  December 4. A gap, due partly to having had the typewriter serviced; partly to mere laziness.

  On the 29th, I finished revising “Waldemar” and sent it off right away to Edward [Upward]. It isn’t perfectly all right yet, but it’s as good as I can get it until I have the whole book and can go through it relating all the parts to each other.

  On the 1st, Don and I drove up to Santa Barbara with Jo and Ben, in their car. It rained heavily that day, which cut down the lecture audience and generally depressed us. However, the next morning, there was a marvellous after-rain clarity and all of the islands appeared, and the view from Douwe Stuurman’s was at its best.

  The evening before, we invited Douwe, Fran and Howard Warshaw to have dinner with
us at a restaurant, with Jo and Ben. I got very very drunk, so did Don and so did Fran. Don complained next day, after we had gotten back home, that it was terribly inconsiderate of me to have brought Jo and Ben up with us, especially to be present at his first meeting with the Warshaws and Douwe. (Douwe had had a glimpse of him down here at Adelaide Drive, but not a proper introduction.) Jo is such a frump, Don said, and she must have shocked Fran, who’d been expecting me to have much more stylish friends. And then he accused me of aggressive, masochistic indifference. I had known perfectly well, he said, that Jo would make a poor impression on the Warshaws and Douwe—and yet I had brought her, largely for my own convenience. . . . This is at least half true. I did have misgivings about Jo and Ben and how they would fit in, and it is true that I dismissed them and thought, in effect, oh what does it matter? And of course there is my usual aggression of thinking: if they’re my friends then they’re good enough for anybody else in creation. It is also true that I knew the Don-Warshaw meeting would have gone off better without Jo and Ben. He would have had more opportunity to make an impression on them. . . . And yet I swear I didn’t mean any harm!

  Anyhow, after Jo and Ben had gone off to their motel—poor things, they got gypped into paying eighteen dollars for the night, and damaged a muffler on the car, backing down the narrow El Bosque Road because I hadn’t stopped them in time to make the sharp turnoff into the Warshaws’ driveway—Howard asked to see Don’s drawings and praised the portraits very highly. He did not like the nudes, and this was extra impressive and indicative of his perception because we had chosen to take them along to show him believing that they would especially appeal to him, being more like his own kind of work! Howard advised Don to practise working from old masters, in order to find out how they approached their subjects. But Don says that this idea is meaningless to him and that he can’t follow it.

  Don is going through a deep depression, with all his masochism in full play. After the success in New York—nothing. And the fear that there won’t be anything. And the anxious feeling that he ought to be back in New York, angling for another job. Maybe he ought. It’s impossible for me to make the decision for him. I only know that I don’t want to go there, and indeed can’t go there, at least not for more than a short visit. I must get on with the novel.

  There’s nothing to be done about all of this but wait and see and meanwhile sweat it out.

  December 7. Don seems a bit better, though he still says he is “sad.” I can’t help recording this with a certain resentment, because the effect of it is a reproach aimed at me. I have somehow made him sad or allowed circumstances to make him sad or, at best, failed to prevent circumstances from making him sad. He, on his side, would cry out—has often in the past cried out—against my egotism in relating this to myself. It has nothing to do with me, he would tell me. At least—not very much. Well, we are both to blame. He does use his sadness—however much he may protest that he doesn’t—to make my life as well as his own just that little bit more difficult. I say that we should try to make each other’s lives more bearable, even if we have to pretend a cheerfulness we don’t feel. But do I act up to this belief ? Very often not. And my resentment against Don’s sadness is of course selfish: it interferes with my comfort and forces me to stop being preoccupied with my own affairs and start being anxious about him. It is true that I want a smiling contented purring kittycat.

  Yet—though I like to let off steam by writing a paragraph such as the one above—I also know that I do not really want the contented pussycat as a permanent companion; he would bore me to death. I want Don just as he is—but I also want him to be happy all the time. And that’s impossible.

  Tomorrow I go to Santa Barbara. On Friday with Douwe I drive up to San Francisco, where I’ll read from Down There on a Visit. (I have just today decided to call the novel that, after all.) Saturday, I’ll spend in San Francisco. Sunday we’ll drive back and I’ll come on back here—a long long haul.

  Edward writes saying that he’s satisfied with “Waldemar.” Not really enthusiastic, I feel; but satisfied that its style is right for its contents. He can’t be expected to say much more, until he has read “Paul.”

  Charles is in a great state about Elsa; she continues to be hysterical and obstructive. She wants to run Terry off the range, and yet she must know that, if the two of them were left alone together, she and he would only make each other more miserable than ever.

  The last two days very windy, which makes me nervous and on edge. We still have no Christmas plans. Gavin may or may not return here before then; now that the Italians won’t allow Mrs. Stone to be filmed there, he is obliged to stay on in England for rewrites. Tony Richardson is also a possible arriver. He may show up at any moment.

  December 13. The San Francisco trip was really a great success, all except for the Writers’ Conference itself.130 That was a fiasco. To begin with, they had planned a banquet in honor of Sir Charles and Lady Snow, and the bastards went off to New York and didn’t return for it or even write or wire excuses. When the British noblesse oblige, which is quite nauseating enough in itself, breaks down, then that’s truly squalid. And all the worse in the case of the Snows, who are posing as aristocracy, waving his knighthood in the faces of the naive Americans, and glorying in having dragged themselves up out of the lower middle class.131 (Why so heated, Dobbin? Do you want a knighthood? No, it’s not as bad as that. But I suppose I even now resent these inflated reputations. The truth is, I want the English snoothood to break down just once and admit that, all kidding aside, I am the—greatest? best? no—just most interesting—writer alive today.)

  Then they had failed to distribute the material which was to be discussed among the student delegates; so the discussion broke down. And they had failed to announce my reading, so the hall was only three-quarters full. Well, that didn’t matter. I chewed the scenery just the same, nearly cracked the mike during the fishing scene from “Mr. Lancaster,”132 and made Mark and Ruth Schorer really roar with laughter.

  I like them both. Douwe says they’re always fighting; but they were very friendly to us. We drank a lot. They have a kind of miniature funicular railway up the hillside from the garden gate to their house. Mark is that very lean type with thin glossily brushed black hair and a liquor-reddened face. And the half-amused, half-challenging gleam in the eye which recognizes you as One of the Gang.

  A delightful drunken rainy Saturday, far from the sodden dreary groves of Berkeley’s academe, with Ben Underhill.133 I felt enormously reassured to find that I can still enjoy this sort of thing so much. Douwe was impressed, when he picked me up at Ben’s apartment on Sunday morning, to find me so cheerful and wide-awake. He is terribly intrigued and thrilled by my goings-on, and longs to hear even more than I’ll tell him.

  Both our drives were in beautiful weather. On the way home, we again passed the young peace-marchers, still headed south and apparently still in the best of spirits. We resolved to find out about them, by calling the Santa Barbara newspaper office. I rather excited Douwe by saying, “Those kids must have a leader; maybe it’s someone whose name will be famous one day all over the world. Maybe biographers will look back to this march as his first notable teenage exploit.”

  I must say, I really do like Douwe. I’d been worried a bit at the prospect of this long drive with him, but there was no strain at all. We communicated very pleasantly. His bitchery gave just the right spice to the conversation. He was full of the debate they held sometime last week, “Is there a rational proof of the existence of God?” He had spoken against the motion and caused quite a scandal.

  In fact, one of the letters I got on my arrival last week referred to this:

  I like your lectures very much, but you should not swear. Do not use the word God at all, if possible. Dr. Stuurman said in front of an overflowing audience: “God is nothing but a good word to swear by.” He said it is embarrassing to talk about God in any other way in the twentieth century. You, of course, know that Stuurman
is divine (He only identifies Atman and Brahman a little negatively). You are the man who could help him a lot.

  This letter was written by Eleanor Pagenstecher, a well-known local crank.134 It is related of her that she once went into one of the college offices and happened to hear someone refer to a self-addressed envelope. “What nonsense!” she exclaimed. “How can an envelope address itself ?”

  After leaving Douwe, I drove right on home and went with Don to a party at Walter Plunkett’s,135 for Hope Lange, her sister and brother-in-law,136 and Glenn Ford. This was a terrible mistake. Glenn’s welcome was more than embarrassing. And I insulted the sister and brother-in-law, who are psychiatrists, by refusing to play a silly game in which you have to say what certain things make you think of—a wood, a building, a stream, etc. “I just don’t know you well enough,” I said. “The wood, to start off with, reminds me of female pubic hair.” Don was very angry with me for this, later.

  But this morning he said, “I simply don’t know how you stand me sometimes.” And he told me that now, at last, he is beginning to feel real confidence in himself. It began quite suddenly last week. . . . Well—let’s hope and pray.

  December 19. Today, I read through “Paul” again. I think it’s all right basically, but there are long boring stretches in the middle.

  In the midst of my reading, Cindy Degener called from Curtis Brown to say that Lewenstein really wants to do the musical of Goodbye to Berlin, and that she was seeing Auden, getting in touch with Carter Lodge, etc.137 Don says that I was extremely snooty and rude to her on the phone, and I fear this is true. Partly because it was the phone; partly because I hate being bounced into any project; chiefly because I just plain do not want to work on anything but my novel. I want to get money, yes—lots and lots of it; but not work.