The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  December 4. I have decided to go right ahead with the novel and finish this draft; it’s the only way I shall find out more about the inwardness of the story. Am also trying to make up for lost time on the Ramakrishna book.

  The last three days have been beautiful and peaceful, outdoors and in. The last two evenings we have spent at home, reading; a thing we haven’t done in a long while. Mexico is still on; and I feel better about it now, because I believe that Don means to make it a success.

  There isn’t anything else of interest to report. We met two nice boys, both painters, who are friends of Jo and Ben: Paul Wonner and Bill Brown. They have studios on the vast empty top floor of an old building in Ocean Park, and their work is influenced by Francis Bacon and (a little bit) Keith Vaughan. More about them later, I hope. Frank Wiley came by to be drawn by Don and left the first part of his new novel and his journal, on the title page of which is written in rather beautiful script: “Herein is contained the journal of the sentimental education of Franklin Evelyn Wiley Jr., Ensign in the United States Naval Reserve; appended by extracts from a forthcoming work of purest fiction.” (I suppose that last ungrammatical bit is to guard against snoopers; but just the same the thing is much better lying around here than on that aircraft carrier. So fictional it isn’t.)

  December 8. Swami, when asked about prayer, said that it is good both for you and for the person you pray for; and he added, “You see, when you are speaking to God like that, there are not two people, it’s all the same.” He also said that all that was needed was faith that the prayer would be answered. You didn’t have to be a saint. If you had faith, then it would be answered. He said this with that absolute compelling confidence of his. He made you feel he was quite quite sure of what he was saying.

  Don is definitely to be initiated on the 18th ([Holy] Mother’s birthday) before we leave for Mexico.

  Last night we went to supper with Michael and Gerald, and got drunk. Don says he watched me and was aware how determined I am to get drunk. He said, “I got the feeling that the alcohol wasn’t even really necessary.”

  Gerald has insisted that if the magazine takes his essay on death it must be anonymous. I can’t help feeling this is some kind of malice against the Vedanta Society—testing them to see if all they want is his name on the cover. Meanwhile, he doesn’t at all insist that I shall take his name out of my manuscript which I think will be published by the society as An Approach to Vedanta.472

  Talking about drinking with Don gave me an idea for my novel. William should be an elderly man in the morning, a mature man at noon, a youth in the late afternoon, a baby at night. You could say that about me. I wake feeling definitely my age. I get working, drink coffee, take Dexamyl and feel much more alert and creative. I go to the gym and often develop quite surprising energy; I am almost youthful. And then, at night, there’s this urge to get drunk, to let go altogether and let the others look after me, like a baby.

  The novel is actually going quite well. I do wish I could rattle off some kind of a rough draft of the whole thing before we leave, but I fear that’s quite impossible. There’s amazing richness—or rather, amazing opportunities for discovering richness—in the material.

  The Stravinskys are back. Talked to Vera this evening. Haven’t called Elsa for several days, and feel guilty about this. Charles is back home.

  December 14. The American Express, which was supposed to get the Mexican train tickets, has goofed (Don hates that word) and so now we shall have to fly direct from here, on the 23rd, which is hateful but at least gives more time. I might even really be able to get the draft of my novel finished. I have already reached the scene at the gym, which leaves only the supermarket, the supper with Charlotte, the meeting with Colin in the bar, and whatever else follows that. If the finished novelette is to be as long as Prater Violet, that would be approximately 120 pages. This draft wouldn’t be more than seventy, I should think.

  Charles is said by Elsa to be right on the brink. He nearly died last night, of some infection in his lungs. She is anxious that I shall be present and read at the funeral. Am going to see them this afternoon.

  The 11th and 12th we spent up at Santa Barbara. Don drew Thomas Storke, the editor who got the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the John Birch Society,473 and Judith Anderson (I mean, Don drew her, not that Storke exposed her!); we also saw Douwe Stuurman, Geo Dangerfield, and stayed with the Warshaws and got even drunker than usual. Next day we had lunch with Wright Ludington and saw around his mausoleum of a house. It seems almost incredible that he should deliberately have designed a gallery for his paintings which has to be lighted at all times by electricity. Indeed, it seems incredible that he could live in that building at all. Yet the stillness of the hillside is magical. And the view of the mountains and the ocean. And the safety of the sun-trap wall by the pool. And the secrecy of the little stone garden among the olive trees. Oh God, he is so dull. But very well-disposed toward Don.

  Judith Anderson is rattling around in an even less habitable house, in a valley back from the sea along the Ojai road. The country is marvellous; a pocket of the old California. But she lives there in such an uncomfortable grim British way. And she hardly seems capable of fixing even a cup of tea. Don did two wonderful drawings of her. We drove back to town and saw Gavin’s film, Another Sky. It rather haunts me. It is far too long, but photographically beautiful and it has a kind of unemphatic relentlessness, like [Antonioni’s] L’Avventura or La Notte.

  The Stravinskys came to supper on Monday evening, along with the Huxleys. Bob Craft told us that Igor and Vera were quite transformed while in Russia.474 They were so happy to be speaking the language in which they were really fluent. All their pride in Russia emerged—especially, of course, Igor’s. Igor, like Picasso, is still really a tolerated exception in the arts; the authorities still don’t approve of what either of them stands for. Igor was chiefly pursued by young people, to whom he is an avant-garde champion. But more of all this, I hope, tomorrow night, when we have supper with them, at their house.

  December 17 [Monday]. On the 14th, I saw Elsa and Frank [Laughton], but Charles was unconscious. Frank says he said, during a brief lucid interval, “I’ve fucked my whole life away.” That evening, I was to have met Don at Musso Frank’s. He didn’t show up until hours later. I got very drunk. We finally had a late supper down in the Canyon and I told him that I wasn’t going to Mexico if I had to fly. I also told him that I was psychic and that I could see he had a nun as his familiar. He was rather impressed by this. I simply cannot remember or imagine what made me say it.

  On the 15th, Don said he was going away out of town for the night, with a friend. Vera had called and asked if we would bring Gavin to supper. So I went with [Gavin] alone, after telling him that I wasn’t coming to Mexico. He was sad, but very nice about this. I got terribly drunk again. After we’d returned from the Stravinskys’ (I can’t remember anything they told us!) Elsa called to say that Charles had just died, about half past ten.

  Yesterday I saw Elsa and Frank and it is all fixed that I’m to be the speaker at the funeral on Wednesday. I had supper with Frank Wiley and got drunk again. I really must cut this out; my hands have started to shake.

  Today, Don has decided that he doesn’t want to go to Mexico without me. So here we shall stay. I look forward with appetite to getting a lot of work done. Tomorrow is Don’s initiation.

  December 20. Don’s initiation duly took place. It imposed the usual states of aversion and boredom on him that nearly everyone goes through under the circumstances: the long boring puja first, the devout women, the reek of Sunday religion. He didn’t stop for the end of the homa fire, or lunch. And now, like I did, he has forgotten his mantram and must go up to Vedanta Place to check it with Swami! Never mind. The deed is done, and of his own free will. And that’s all that matters for the time being—maybe for years to come. It will catch up with him.

  Yesterday was Laughton’s funeral. Ray Bradbury wrote Elsa a letter which could be
nominated for the all-time slime-and-honey prize. I hope to get a copy of it later. But these are my impressions:

  Dear Elsa—I am a writer, but today I have no words. This morning, my second daughter came into my room crying, and told me that Charles was dead. And now all I have to offer you is my daughter’s tears—

  I’m sure Ray thought this was exquisitely beautiful. And, indeed, you have to be a very very good writer to produce such horror.

  Elsa said that she wanted the Mitchell Boys Choir475 to sing in Latin, “Because English is so full of repetitious words, like God.” As a matter of fact, by barring the Catholics, she merely let the Protestants in through the back door. She asked for a “nondenominational” service and got the usual Episcopalian thing.

  I really don’t care to dwell on the streamlined horror of the cere mony itself; at the Hollywood Hills branch of Forest Lawn. They have constructed an Early American church with a tall steeple (copied from the one at Portland, Maine, where Longfellow went as a boy, the brochure tells us) right in the midst of this San Fernando Valley scenery: pylons, Warner Brothers, the T.V. station on top of Mount Hollywood, and a fine dim view of the mountains through smog. A whole crew of attendants, with white-topped caps, looking rather like the crew of a yacht; they take off their caps to a funeral procession as though the owner were coming aboard. Miles of electric cables. Flowers arranged as if in a florist’s shop. The truly obscene contrast between the nicey-nice church behavior and all the cameras and newsmen outside, sticking their lenses practically down Elsa’s throat, even while the service was still going on. The coffin was surprisingly heavy, though there were experts to aid us official pallbearers: Raymond Massey,476 Taft Schreiber, Lloyd Wright,477 Jean Renoir,478 Bill Phipps and me. I think Bill Phipps was the most genuinely upset one present. But when I got a little weepy over the “I am the Resurrection and the Life” speech, there was a movie camera whirring away at me instantly, like a rattlesnake. Elsa said later, “I wish it had been a grey day, it softens the face in the newsreel shots.” She was really very nice, though, and extremely professional and brave. Frank said she had broken down violently the night before.

  I said some “words of appreciation” and read three bits out of The Tempest (“rounded with a sleep,”

  “I’ll drown my book,”479 and the last half of the Epilogue). The acoustics were excellent, and I know I was good. At my very best, Don said; and Elsa was genuinely delighted. So I feel I didn’t let Charles down.

  Do I miss him, Don asked me. Yes, I do indeed—or rather, I will, now that all this evil fuss is over. Funerals are deadly for flattering your vanity. I am actually still preening myself over my theatrical success, and a little disappointed that I haven’t been called by anyone and complimented!

  An argument with Don yesterday because of his mania for making up his mind at the very last moment: he wouldn’t say whether or not he wanted to go to the funeral, and of course it was I who had to do the arranging about this. So Don said—more to punish me than anything, I think—that he still might decide at the last moment to go to Mexico with Gavin on Sunday. Well, if he does, he does. I shall make out all right. . . . And, despite this, I must say that the last three weeks or so have been quite unusually harmoni ous. I think we are gradually discovering a new way of living together which might work almost indefinitely.

  Ted is showing signs of going mad again. He is full of hysterical enthusiasm, even about the weather, which is still wretched; and will not go to bed at nights. Don says he looks terrible.

  December 26. My encounter with the Bill Bopp situation, and the subsequent quarrel with Don on the way to the party next evening, the 22nd, are not things I want to dwell on yet. Maybe all will work out for the best—but I don’t know that, and I don’t even want to think it. When I suffer, I suffer as stupidly as an animal. It altogether stops me working. I am ashamed of such weakness. . . . Well, that’s enough of that. The only thing worth recording is the (not at the time, though) farce of our losing our way, simply because I was so rattled, on the new freeway over Sepulveda and having to go right back to Sunset and do it all over again.

  Christmas (which I seem to hate more every year) was placid and almost joyous by comparison. The last two days have been cold but very beautiful. Don and I lay on the beach and talked affectionately. I think he would really love it if he could discuss everything with me. But, alas, I am neither the Buddha nor completely senile. I have my limits. I cannot help minding. When I finally stop minding I also stop caring. I don’t give a shit.

  Don forgot his mantram. But today we went to Swami’s birthday party and Swami wrote it down for him. Don hates to destroy the paper it was written on, but Swami told him to.

  A Dr. Jim Lester called me. “Mr. Isherwood, I heard The Ascent of F6 on the radio. It interested me very much—perhaps not quite for the usual reasons. You see, I am a psychologist who is going along on the Everest expedition to observe the effect of hardship and tension on the climbers at high altitudes”!!480

  I am slowly getting started up again. Both on the novel and Ramakrishna.

  Swami looked absolutely radiant. He told us that his best birthday present had been “a visit from Maharaj.” He had woken at five this morning, gone to the bathroom, gone back to bed and had an (apparently) long visitation dream of Maharaj, between then and seven o’clock. He couldn’t say where the encounter had taken place, here or in India. He had been dressing Maharaj. The wearing cloth was crumpled. He was impressed by the beauty of Maharaj’s skin; it was golden and shining.

  I never knew before today that Swami suffers from feelings of sickness quite often after initiating people. “But,” he told us, referring [to] the last initiation (Don’s) on the 18th, “I didn’t feel anything bad that day; they must have been all good people.”

  On the 21st, Don’s car was stolen. He had left it outside a restaurant in Hollywood with the key in it. The police say there’s an eighty-five percent chance of getting it back. But no news yet.

  Don (last night): “I love Dobbin’s muzzle when it isn’t a crossword muzzle.”

  December 29. Don’s car was found yesterday. Last night, after the Stravinskys had had supper with us and left, we drove downtown to pick it up (as we hoped) and found it all smashed up in a garage. Someone must have had his head banged forward right through the windshield. The lid of the trunk is sprung so Don couldn’t get the framed drawing out of it which he has already sold, but he could feel that the glass was broken. The garage people said maybe it will cost 250 to 300 dollars to repair.

  The Stravinskys and Bob arrived full of flu shots and in the mood to get drunk. They did, especially Igor. During supper, he kept rubbing his hand first on the white coral on the table, then on Mirandi [Levy]’s skin, as if for contrast. After supper, he fell down but did not seem to have hurt himself.

  It was the Stravinskys who asked if they could bring Mirandi with them. She is terribly worried, poor thing, because she has a tumor, her second, which can’t be removed till next week. The first one was nonmalignant, however. Oh dear, she is so vulgar though and really such a bore.

  Don drew King Vidor yesterday and Dr. Myron Prinzmetal, the heart specialist.481 King wanted to be made handsome, because he’s a vain old Hungarian lady-killer. Prinzmetal wanted to be made ugly because he’s a Jew. Prinzmetal said to Don, “I’m the most important person you ever drew.”

  Arlene [Drummond], when she came in to clean yesterday and heard about the recovery of the car, said to me, “You worked that through your Masters, didn’t you?” She is wild for spiritualism, theosophy, and, no doubt though she doesn’t admit it, voodoo.

  Saw Gerald, yesterday afternoon, just back from Christmas with the Luces in Arizona. He talked exclusively about cancer, which is really a comedown after flying saucers and lysergic acid.482 The day before yesterday, Frank Wiley brought his much-described stepmother Alexandra483 to visit us; they stayed on and on, drinking throughout the afternoon. I was terribly disappointed in Alexandra, so
was Don. The usual pretty-pug spoiled American girl face. She is awkwardly tall and the legs are too thin and she has no style whatever. Oh, los ricos!484 I felt about her as I feel about so many Americans with money who are neither Jews nor Negroes nor any kind of a minority, that they are the real White Trash. Trash in the sense of worthless; they hardly exist. The minority members are so much more alive, however hateful or charming they may be is beside the point, than they are. Alexandra had, as she put it, “stolen” one of the drawings Don did of Frank. It never occurred to her to ask to pay for it. So I had to call Frank yesterday and be rather icy, reminding him that Don is a professional. (Alexandra seemed to think, anyway, that this drawing was just a rough worthless sketch for a finished portrait!) Frank went off with our book on Miró the other day, and he hasn’t returned that, either. And now I have to tell him that his new novel is a frost, at least the way it is now.

  December 31. Goodbye to this frightening and tragic year. Not that I ought to complain personally. My health has been good. I have published a successful novel. And inherited all this money from M. Also, I have got this idea for a new novel which will keep me busy a long while.

  But oh, the cancer creeping all around! And the rockets rattling. And always the feeling: there’s worse ahead.

  A bad year with Don. And yet, despite all omens, I still believe we may get through this phase to some new kind of happiness together.

  At least one marvel has been achieved. His initiation. Yesterday he said: “Today I made so much japam I’m slitty-eyed.”

  I wish my reader a significant 1963.

  1963

  January 3. Don left this morning by jet for Phoenix, where he’s to draw Mrs. Luce, Mrs. Wright485 (whom Gerald goes on calling Mrs. Wrong so persistently that the joke seems ugly and senile) and in general prepare Phoenix to be aware of his show. He hated flying, poor pet, and went off very subdued. I suspect some complication with Bill [Bopp]. Don’s sudden revelation about the Bowles experience in Tangier is also a bit mystifying to me.486 He was so very anxious I shouldn’t tell anyone and said he even regretted having told me. But this I find impressive, on the whole, and a good attitude to take. “Hide it as you would hide the news of your mother’s unchastity.”