Lost Years

by Christopher Isherwood

  On May 29, 1949, Catherine Caskey arrived, to begin a visit which was to last into the middle of August. The day-to-day diary entries make it seem clear that she didn’t sleep at 333 East Rustic, even to start with. But she had a room somewhere nearby, and Caskey and Christopher felt a constant obligation to entertain her.

  Christopher could afford not to mind this, because Catherine had no power to embarrass him, and because Caskey resented Catherine’s presence so violently that Christopher was obliged to play the opposite role and be her advocate. It was Christopher who suggested that the U.S. edition of The Condor and the Cows should be dedicated to Catherine; the British edition was being dedicated to Kathleen. This put Catherine and Kathleen into a relationship with each other, of which Catherine was coyly aware. They were an unsanctified pair of mothers-in-law. The dedication delighted Catherine. It gave her a share in this South American project which had launched Caskey as a photographer—a thoroughly respectable career, of which the whole Caskey family could approve. Whether any of them can possibly have approved of the Caskey-Christopher relationship is more than doubtful, but Catherine was determined to pretend that they did. She even quoted a male relative as having said, “It was a lucky day for Sonny when he met Christopher Isherwood.” (“Sonny” was a family nickname for Caskey which Catherine persisted in using; it made Caskey wince and grind his teeth.)

  On May 30, Christopher had a visit from a young Canadian named Paul Almond. I suppose he was an admirer of Christopher’s work. Paul was blond and apple cheeked and tall, an all-Canadian boy who played championship ice hockey and belonged to a rich family. He returned to the house three or more times during June, and was exposed to the camping of Caskey and the double-meaning jokes of Stephen Spender (who came to stay two nights, June 14 and 15, bringing with him the young writer Bill Goyen, on whom he had a crush, and Goyen’s friend Walter Berns). But Paul was either very innocent or very self-absorbed; he saw only what he had come to see, a nice middle-aged celebrity and his charming friends. Later that same year, Paul went over to England, taking with him a letter of introduction from Christopher to John Lehmann. John, on the make for Paul, started dropping arch hints about Christopher’s way of life—as Christopher had fully expected that he would. Paul was incredulous and indignant. He wrote to warn Christopher that John Lehmann was a false friend who was spreading horrible lies, accusing Christopher and his companions of being “homosexualists.”

  (Many years later, Paul married the actress Genevieve Bujold and directed her in a film, Act of the Heart. They are now divorced.)

  On June 1, Christopher bought a Tarascan statuette, dug up in the Mexican state of Colima; a seated figure with its right hand covering its mouth. Christopher paid Stendahl’s (an expensive dealer who sold a lot of pre-Columbian art to Charles Laughton) about eighty dollars for it; it would probably now cost at least a thousand. The statuette was a present for Caskey, on his twenty-eighth birthday, next day. But Christopher ended by owning it, when he and Caskey split up and divided their possessions, a few years later.

  On June 11, Christopher and Caskey, the old actress Aileen Pringle, Jay Laval, a friend named Leif Argo, Catherine Caskey and Jo and Ben Masselink all drove down to have supper at Charpentier’s in Redondo Beach. (This is the first time that the day-to-day diary mentions a meeting with the Masselinks but they, Christopher and Caskey had become acquainted long before this, probably at The Friendship bar.) Charpentier was a famous old French chef whose reputation was such that he cooked suppers by appointment only and always had a long waiting list. He lived in a small ordinary house on the Pacific Coast Highway and the room where you ate was just a typical, rather depressing parlor. Charpentier received you with a fulsome spiel about the cuisine of la belle France. You had to bring your own wine. The food was no doubt excellent—Jay thought it was—but Christopher never got to taste it. He was drunk already when they arrived, and went to sleep in a hammock on the front lawn. They woke him when it was time to leave.

  There is very little to be said about the rest of June. The day-to-day diary records three parties given by Frank and Nan Taylor—one for Stephen Spender (on another of his visits), one for Robert Penn Warren, and one which included Penn Warren, Chaplin and Edgar Snow. I can remember nothing of interest about Warren, except that Christopher and Caskey both liked him a good deal and that Caskey photographed him. I can remember nothing at all about the meeting with Snow—whom, I suppose, Christopher hadn’t seen since the late thirties. Christopher’s chief occupations during this period: working with Lesser Samuels on their new film story, The Easiest Thing in the World; drinking; lying on the beach. Christopher must also have been working on his novel occasionally, for he records that he finished chapter one on June 27. He still called it The School of Tragedy.

  On July 5, the proofs of the U.S. edition of The Condor and the Cows arrived from Random House. The proofs of the British edition arrived from Methuen’s on July 12.

  On July 6, the day-to-day diary mentions Jim Charlton’s mother. She was then staying with Jim in Santa Monica and Jim took Christopher to visit her. I can’t remember what she looked like. Jim thought her half crazy and an obsessive hypochondriac. Mrs. Charlton was convinced that she had cancer and kept going to doctors for examinations and tests. At that time, the tests always proved to be negative. Nevertheless, she died of cancer, not long after this.

  On July 9, Caskey and Christopher set off by car at 7:00 a.m. to visit Carter Lodge at the AJC Ranch. (John van Druten wasn’t there.) Their car broke down in Redlands, with radiator trouble. They didn’t get to the ranch until 6:30 that evening. On July 10, Carter’s friend Dick Foote12 came down to see them for the day. On the 11th, Caskey and Christopher returned home.

  On July 20, Christopher drove up to Santa Barbara by himself, to see Sister (Mrs. Wykoff) who had been seriously ill with pneumonia and an attack of uremia. She then seemed to be recovering. But she died on the 23rd. On the 26th, Christopher went to the Vedanta Center to attend her funeral. This and his visit to Santa Barbara are described in the 1948–1956 journal. Christopher was much moved by Swami’s description of Sister’s death and his statement that “she was a saint.” Christopher writes that he arrived at the temple in a bad state of mind, because “I’d been horrible and unkind to Caskey before I left the house, because I’m worried about our money and I keep feeling he ought to help us earn some more.” But the effect of the funeral (or rather, the part of the ceremony which was held at the center) and of talking to Swami about Sister, was that he came away “in a calm happy ‘open’ mood which lasted for several days—and I felt a real horror of my unkindness to Caskey—or of any unkindness to anyone.” (This latter quote is from the journal entry of August 17.)

  On August 6, Caskey made one of his weekend trips to Laguna Beach (probably with Lennie Newman). Christopher went to have supper with The Benton Way Group (see page 24 [note]) at the house on Benton Way. Sam From, his friend George [Bill], Charles Aufderheide, Paul Goodman, Evelyn Hooker (who, in those days, was still Evelyn Caldwell), David Sachs and Alvin Novak were there. Paul Goodman was the Socrates of the group. (At that time, he had already written The Breakup of Our Camp and many articles and poems. I don’t think Christopher had a high opinion of his work, however. It wasn’t until fifteen years later that Christopher was greatly impressed by Paul’s novel Making Do.) That night, Goodman, David Sachs and Christopher probably did most of the talking. I think that the nature of homosexual love was discussed at enormous length, and that they quizzed Evelyn on her knowledge of gay slang and kidded her, saying that they were going to smuggle her into a gay male bathhouse.13 Evelyn had begun her researches into the social structure of the homosexual subculture, and she was an energetic and daring fieldworker who had ventured into many rough bars and orgiastic parties.

  Sam From had been among the first who volunteered to answer Evelyn’s exhaustive questionnaires. He and Evelyn had also been to bed together.[14] At the moment, Sam had a slight crush on Christo
pher. But Christopher wasn’t interested. Besides, he was dazzled by Alvin Novak, the Alcibiades of that evening’s Symposium, whom he was meeting for the first time. Alvin was a dark handsome boy. Christopher immediately decided that he resembled Titian’s painting of the young man with the glove.[15] No doubt he told Alvin this repeatedly. Alvin must have felt flattered, for his eyes gave Christopher encouraging signals. In true Platonic style, the Benton Way Symposium continued until dawn, and then Christopher drove back to Santa Monica with Alvin Novak. Sam From came along too, perhaps hoping to get into bed with Christopher. My impression is that Christopher either avoided this altogether or that he played around with Sam until Sam, who always got very drunk on these occasions, passed out. Anyhow, Christopher ended up making sex with Alvin, and he later looked back upon that night as having been highly romantic. It was unique, at any rate. Christopher never went to a party that was quite like it.

  On August 9, Lesser Samuels and Christopher finished the rough draft of the treatment of The Easiest Thing in the World.16

  On August 10, Christopher had lunch with Igor and Vera Stravinsky, Aldous and Maria Huxley and Robert Craft at the Farmer’s Market. This was Christopher’s first encounter with the Stravinskys and Craft. Craft has described it at length, in Retrospectives and Conclusions. I myself remember little or nothing about it; my first distinct memories are of our second meeting. Craft uses the surprising adjective “lovelorn” to describe Christopher. Can he have meant that Christopher somehow showed that he was unhappy in his homelife? If so, this doesn’t jibe with Craft’s statement that, “His sense of humor is very ready. He maintains a chronic or semi-permanent smile . . . supplementing it with giggles,” etc. Craft goes on to relate how Christopher told them “a story of why he is no longer invited to [Charlie] Chaplin’s: ‘Someone had said I had peed on the sofa there one night while plastered.’” This one detail makes me suspect that this alleged diary entry may in fact have been reconstructed by Craft quite a long while after the event. For Christopher was actually still being invited to the Chaplins’. He went on seeing them for another ten months.17

  On August 14, Catherine Caskey finally left—for San Francisco, on her way back to Kentucky. Christopher writes about her on August 17, in the 1948—1956 journal, saying that Caskey has admitted that “his drinking and neurotic laziness [were] largely due to her being here.” Christopher adds that Catherine is determined to regard Caskey as a model son and that “her obviously excessive (and insincere) praises” make him “frantic with guilt.” (Christopher suspects that Catherine is subconsciously trying to spite her husband by praising her son.)

  In this entry, Christopher states that, “All [that] stuff I wrote about leaving him is beside the point. I can’t. I must not. At least not now. The day may come when I ought to. I don’t know. I certainly don’t want to.”

  There are also some “good” resolutions. Christopher counts his blessings and reminds himself that, “Prayer, meditation, thought, creation are the only refuge and stronghold. Without them, I am nothing. Without them, life is really an agony.” (I have no right to sneer at Christopher’s soul searchings, just because they were conducted amidst bottles and boys—but they do embarrass me.)

  Then Christopher refers to his novel, which he is trying to restart, and to its chief character, whom he calls “Stephen Monkhouse.” “Stephen Monkhouse has got to be me—not some synthetic Anglo-American. The few circumstances can so easily be imagined—his ex-wife, his Quaker background, etc. But it must be written out of the middle of my consciousness.” These remarks now seem astonishingly naive to me. Didn’t Christopher realize that what he calls “the few circumstances” must of necessity alter everything? How could he write out of the middle of his consciousness about someone who was tall, bisexual and an heir to a fortune? Christopher’s trouble (which he never recognized until it was too late) was that he was trying to create a fiction character with three dimensions and a life of its own and then use it as the observer figure Christopher Isherwood is used in the Berlin stories and elsewhere.

  A journal entry on August 18 merely describes a visit to the Down Beat Café on Central Avenue. Christopher was taken there by Bernie Hamilton and his girlfriend Maxine, on the night of the 17th. I can’t remember who Bernie was, except that he was black. I can’t remember anything about the evening, except the embarrassment Christopher felt when Bernie took him into an all-black restaurant for supper before they went on to the Down Beat. It seemed to Christopher that he ought not to be annoying these people by his presence, since there were hundreds of restaurants in this same city where their presence would be unwelcome.

  On August 19, Christopher went with a screenwriter named George Bradshaw to visit Birmingham Hospital in the San Fernando Valley. At that time, it was an armed services veterans’ hospital and a lot of its patients were paraplegics and quadriplegics. Bradshaw had started a project; he wanted to get some of the patients interested in writing stories and articles, and to find fellow writers who would give them professional advice. After this visit, Christopher agreed to join Bradshaw’s project.

  On August 20, Christopher and Caskey had supper with the Stravinskys at their house on Wetherly Drive. (It was probably Bob Craft who got Caskey included in the invitation, for he had visited Rustic Road alone on the 17th and had met Caskey there.) Stravinsky welcomed Christopher by saying: “Shall we listen to my Mass before we get drunk?”18 By the end of the evening, Christopher was very drunk indeed and utterly enslaved by the Stravinsky charm, by Vera’s quite as much as Igor’s.

  Here are Christopher’s earliest impressions of Igor and of Vera, insofar as I can recapture them: His cuddly animal smallness,19 his spontaneous warmth and unembarrassed kisses, his marvellous multilingual conversation, his wit (which sometimes seemed wry Jewish, sometimes epigrammatic French, sometimes punning German), his joy in eating and drinking, his Russian-peasant devoutness and superstitiousness, his royal dignity, his aristocratic humility, his accurately and deeply cutting contempt for his enemies, his beautiful modest love for Vera, his acute nervousness.

  Her great beauty and her even greater poise. Moving and breathing so easily within the atmosphere of worldly fame, she was Igor’s only imaginable consort. And yet she often seemed as vulnerable as a child. She too loved the best of wine and food, but she didn’t demand that it should be served to her; she was capable of shopping at the market and cooking delicious meals, herself. She also found time to paint pictures and to help run a boutique. She complained constantly of her troubles and problems, always with charming humor. Everything she did and said seemed simple and spontaneous. She was naturally hospitable and extravagant.

  (The word “extravagant” reminds me of a characteristic for which Igor was well known, his avariciousness. Auden, who had had business dealings with him when writing The Rake’s Progress, complained of it often. Christopher was never exposed to it, which is why it isn’t mentioned in the above list of Christopher’s impressions. It always appeared to him that Igor accepted and enjoyed the considerable luxury in which they lived. But Vera certainly was extravagant, and maybe this was compensatory role playing, to balance Igor’s penny pinching. As Bob Craft’s influence in the household increased, he came down heavily on the side of extravagance, encouraging the Stravinskys to spend their money lavishly—not on him but on themselves.)

  Bob Craft, when Christopher first met him, was about twenty-five—he had then been associated with the Stravinskys for less than eighteen months. He appeared to Christopher to be an outstanding specimen of the American disciple type. He obviously adored the Stravinskys and was quick to show off his knowledge of every aspect of The Master’s music. He was pale, boyish, eager, pedantic, cute [. . .]. Christopher was later flattered to discover that Bob also knew a great deal about his work. Bob even asked a book collector’s technical questions about different editions of The Memorial—questions which Christopher himself couldn’t answer. He was in fact a whiz kid by nature. Once his mouselike sh
yness had been overcome, he would get smart-alecky and tactless. On one occasion at least, he went so far as to correct a statement made by Huxley. And he was right!

  Craft’s cleverness didn’t annoy Christopher, because they weren’t in competition. Christopher had an entirely different set of pretensions—to intuition, psychological insight, sensibility, etc.—which Bob was prepared to respect. At that period, Bob greatly admired Christopher’s work.20 Christopher felt drawn to Bob and would have liked to become his close friend. But the circumstances of Bob’s life apparently didn’t permit this. In the years to come, they very seldom met each other alone, outside of the Stravinsky household.

  Christopher was charmed not only by the Stravinskys themselves but also by their house—or rather, by the atmosphere they had created in it. The Stravinskys had a number of valuable pictures, including several Picassos. Any art gallery or wealthy individual can own such artworks, but Igor’s pictures had their own different kind of value and magic because they were all related to his own life, they were souvenirs of people he had known, not just items in a collection. Being souvenirs, they didn’t seem out of place amidst the many photographs by which they were surrounded—groups of to-be-famous young faces on the beaches and in the concert halls and restaurants of the nineteen hundreds, the tens, the twenties.