Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

  On February 1 we had supper with Bob Chetwyn and Howard Schuman. It was a happy evening. Don took to them at once, and they to him. Bob and Howard now seem much more definitely a pair.

  On February 2, we finished our work on “Frankenstein” and took the final batch of pages to the Universal office, where we ran into Hunt and Dick Shasta; we have seen almost nothing of them during this visit. Then we went around to the dirty little flat in Reece Mews near South Kensington station where Francis Bacon lives. He has a beautiful old house on the river in Dockland but says he can’t paint in the studio there, it’s too big. His studio here is tiny and dark. Fruit-juice cans full of brushes; a shambles of squeezed paint tubes; the walls smeared with blazing brush-wipings (which Francis calls “my abstracts”). The disorder is extraordinarily violent, like a battlefield. On an easel, two blurred figures which might be trussed-up demons. Francis has tied their legs into knots: they are writhing furiously.

  The studio seems as intensely “charged” as a shrine, but its atmosphere isn’t in the least shrinelike; it doesn’t calm you. This is the battlefield; the awe-inspiring scene of Francis’s desperate victorious struggles to “get down to the nerve”—I can never forget that phrase of his.46 What he must have gone through! You see it reflected in the wildness of his eyes. And yet his youthfully fresh skin makes him still look strangely pretty, despite his pouchy cheeks.

  He told us about his gangster friends. Some of them once stole one of his paintings. He was ready to prosecute them. They came to visit him. Nothing was said about the painting. No threats were uttered. Indeed, they kept asking him reproachfully why he didn’t come to see them as he used to. But Francis understood that he would have to drop the charge or else get beaten up. So he dropped the charge. (I think these gangsters may well have been Ronnie and Reggie, the Kray twins.)

  Francis appears to live in a no-man’s land between the criminals and the police, persecuted by both sides. The police he regards simply as legalized crooks. Once they raided his studio and planted a packet of hashish there. He was only able to clear himself after expensive court proceedings, in which he brought medical evidence to prove that his health made it impossible for him to take the drug.

  We had supper at the Old Compton Street Wheeler’s. On the way there, Francis told us about [a friend] who has just returned [home]. As they were driving to the airport, [the friend] burst into tears and confessed that he is homosexual. Francis said, “Why on earth didn’t you tell me sooner? I’d have found someone for you.” He thinks [the friend] is sure to become an alcoholic if he stays on his [. . .] farm—out of sex frustration.

  Francis said of David Hockney’s work, “She’s no good.”

  On the 3rd, we went with Mo to have tea with Celia and Ossie Clark. Celia was leaving next day for Los Angeles, to join David Hockney. Perhaps it was just because I know that Ossie sometimes beats her, but her eye shadow seemed exaggerated to me, as if she had two black eyes. Ossie seemed gentle as a lamb, very frail and skinny and stoned out of his mind. But I saw cruelty and rage in his face. Don agreed with me.

  Later we saw Leo Madigan and his friend Sean [O’Brien] at James Pope-Hennessy’s flat, where Leo is staying and working on his new book. Leo is Leo, not Larry, since he published Jackarandy; he seems much more assured and more “literary” than when I saw him in 1970;47 but his charm has increased too. We both liked him very much. Sean used to be in the Irish Guards but resigned from them when the troubles began in Ulster, lest he should be sent there and have to fight against his countrymen. His skin is very white and his hair blond. I find him much sexier than Leo. We went out to supper with Leo and Sean and Waris Hussein the film director and then on to a bar, where Sean gave me a great big wet-tongued long-lasting kiss—maybe to assure me that I wasn’t too old to be still in the running. This was a drunkenly pleasant evening. But the food at the (gay) restaurant, the Masquerade, was bad and expensive.

  On the 4th, we went down to see the Beesleys at their cottage. Alec met us at Audley End station, looking as ruddy faced as ever. But he has had pneumonia and wasn’t allowed to get out of the air-conditioned car, the weather being damp and chilly. The pneumonia came on quite suddenly after he had had a cold. He became breathless and finally just sat down and gasped, until the ambulance arrived bringing an oxygen mask. The doctor told Dodie later that Alec would certainly have died within a few hours if they hadn’t got him under oxygen. Nevertheless, Alec made an unusually quick recovery, of which he is proud.

  As for Dodie, she’s a little old lady. We felt that our visit was almost more than her nerves could bear but at the same time quite welcome. This latest dalmatian causes more distraction than any of the others. When leaving a room, it makes a beeline, jumping straight over any furniture which happens to be in the way. So there are very few places where it is safe to leave anything. And tension is permanent.

  Aside from telling our news about “Frankenstein,” our play, etc.—which took up most of the time—we talked about Ada Leverson, because I am reading one of her novels, The Limit, which I found in David’s library. Dodie knows them all and is about to reread them. She also still reads Henry James every day. And, as usual, she is at work on a book which is a deadly secret—in fact, she and Alec are already discussing possible revisions. We left early, so Alec could get us to the station and return before dark; he isn’t allowed to be out at night. Dodie’s face, as we said goodbye at the cottage gate, was suddenly tragic. I wondered if she was fearing that we would never see each other again. If she was, it can only have meant that she thought I looked sickly. I’m sure she can’t, daren’t believe that she will die, poor darling.

  In the evening, we visited Amiya, whose present flat is much larger than her others, though in a dreary neighborhood north of Kensington High Street. She seemed almost or entirely sober, didn’t ramble on, didn’t indulge in her usual display of jewels of her spiritual and worldly wisdom. Instead, she told us about a man who is staying in her flat because he is completely broke and about his handsome boyfriend who sends him money from the States, where he is on a singing tour. When we left, Don said that he had never before realized what a good woman Amiya is.

  On the 5th, we had lunch with Ivan Moffatt at Don Luigi’s. He looked florid and a bit older but was as entertaining as ever. His entrance line (does he make them up in advance?) was, “I feel very bad because I’ve just done something I never did before in my life—I smacked a girl this morning—” (a chuckle) “not hard, though—” (chuckle, chuckle) “but she cried.” Later he revealed that he had smacked the girl because she had irritated him by asking what he was going to do that day—that she was Jewish, and therefore sensitive to ill-treatment, even if mild—that she had been available for smacking because she had been spending the night with him at his flat. Throughout the rest of lunch, Ivan took occasion to mention two or three other girls he was going with—as though he wanted us to be reassured that he still cuts the mustard.

  Aside from this, he talked about the film he has been working on—the Last Days of Hitler,48 with Alec Guinness as Hitler. Without ever saying anything damning, he contrived to tell us what an utter disaster this had been. He was wildly funny, imitating the Italian director, hardly able to talk English and hopelessly at sea in this Kraut drama, and Guinness himself, arrogant and sensitive, feeling that his great performance wasn’t being appreciated, and the technical adviser, a former officer in the German army, even more arrogant than Guinness and despising the whole lot of them. Oh yes, I forgot—right at the end, Ivan did make one damning admission; that they had had to keep cutting chunks out of the film because they were so boring!

  Around teatime, we saw Peter Viertel and Deborah at their flat. Peter had already been urging us to come and stay with him in Switzerland, so that we could see Salka. Now we told him definitely that we’d go. Peter had obviously felt certain that we would. He at once got his secretary to work and within twenty minutes we had a complete schedule drawn up for us—the plane to Zü
rich, the train to Landquart (where Peter will pick us up in the car and drive us to Klosters), the train back from Klosters to Zürich, a choice of train or plane to take us to Rome (where we’ll stay with Gavin), the plane from Rome to London which will connect with the plane that takes us back to Los Angeles. I had never realized before, or had forgotten, what a manager Peter is. While we were with him, we put through a call to Adelaide Drive; I’d been getting mildly worried because a couple of efforts to contact Charles Hill had failed. Didn’t get him this time, either. Meanwhile, Deborah was being interviewed in the sitting room by a woman journalist. We were both impressed by the ease and naturalness with which she handled this; never for a moment did she make like a star.

  Then we went to see Robin Dalton, who is the agent for our play in London. (She gives an impression of efficiency but I doubt if she’s much good.)49 On the way there, I was nearly hit by a car which came at me as I was crossing the street—neither Don nor I can ever quite get used to their driving on the “wrong” side. Because I was startled and also because I wanted to startle and worry the driver—he didn’t give a shit—I let out a great yell, which merely had the effect of first startling and then infuriating Don. So he yelled at me. Our nerves are badly strained by the tension of all this work under uncomfortable alien conditions and the wild running around pursuing our social duties in the interim.

  Later we had a dullish drunken supper with well-meaning Paul Dehn and his friend Jimmy Bernard at a bad pretentious restaurant, The Minotaur. But it was truly thoughtful of Paul to buy back for me a watercolor by Frank which his sister (I think) had seen in a shop at Disley; and it was in Frank’s best manner, well worth having.

  On the morning of the 6th, I went alone to the Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center. Phil-Buddha-Yogeshananda opened the door to me. My first impression was that he was lopsided, perhaps crippled by arthritis, very skinny but jolly. However, as we talked, he gradually straightened himself and when, later, I questioned him tactfully about his posture he said he was maybe a bit stiff because he and a few of the others have weekly classes with Bhavyananda on yoga asanas. Yogeshananda said it was astounding how limber Bhavyananda is, although he’s so fat; he absolutely refuses to go on a diet. They ate their lunch early, so I sat with them before I left. I think most of the boys were the same as in 1970—anyhow, I got a very good feeling from them and from the whole place. Yogeshananda seemed quite radiant with joy—much more so than when last I saw him—a bit crazy too (as Swami always says he is) but in the right way. “I never want to leave here,” he told me, “I never want to go back, I’m so happy here.” I left the house feeling genuinely uplifted, calmed, reassured. Yes, thank God, it is we, the worldlings, who are mad. People like this are the only sane ones. I am mad, but not altogether, because I know this all the time—and sometimes, as today, absolutely for certain.

  I felt uplifted by Wayne Sleep too, in a different way; Don and Peter Schlesinger and I had lunch with him at the Old Compton Street Wheeler’s. How marvellous and admirable he is! He was radiating physical genius, I don’t know how else to describe it. Not long ago, he was being interviewed on a T.V. show, describing and demonstrating various ballet movements. The interviewer explained what entrechats are, adding that Nijinsky had been able to do ten of them during one jump, an entrechat dix. (Actually, I forget what numbers Wayne mentioned when he was telling the story; the number ten is reported by Lincoln Kirstein in his Ballet Alphabet, with the caution that this is “contemporary myth”—but that’s unimportant.) The interviewer then called upon Wayne to demonstrate the step. Anxious to please, Wayne took off with the biggest jump he could manage—and executed an entrechat douze. Sensation! Since this had been televised, his feat was incontestably confirmed. The press publicized it as a sporting event: Sleep breaks Nijinsky’s record!!

  Nevertheless, Wayne seems to regard himself already as an almost-has-been dancer. He is busy transforming himself into an actor, so that he will be able to support himself in his old age. He had just been appearing in Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters. He was very funny about this, telling us he has learnt that, from a dancer’s point of view, stage acting consists in overacting. He was training himself to over accent his lines.

  After lunch, Peter, Don and I went to the British Museum. First, we looked at the mummies—from a sense of duty, since we have just shown Hunt Stromberg our “Lady from the Land of the Dead” script, and he vows that he will get the Egyptian government to finance the production. They (the mummies) were both impressive and exceedingly depressing. What a dead culture! I felt such a fatal, inhibiting obsession with death—which sounds like a naive remark, considering that we were looking at coffins. Perhaps I’ll react differently if we ever do go to Egypt and work some more on the picture. Hunt’s latest notion is that he wants the entire story set in Cairo, instead of London—just because he finds that the Egyptians are all excited at the prospect of having a Hollywood film set in modern Egypt; it would be a smack at the Israelis and a betrayal of them by the Hollywood Jews, I guess, from Egypt’s point of view!

  Also at the museum was an exhibit of master drawings through the ages. A wonderful collection, but Peter and I could take them only in small doses; we kept retiring to a bench to rest. (Peter questioned me with great interest about my visit to China in 1938; I forget why.) Meanwhile, Don moved slowly from drawing to drawing, tirelessly and minutely inspecting them. It is at such moments that I realize how deeply artistic he is—how he reacts to and compares different techniques, making them part of his personal graphic knowledge. I also realize that this wouldn’t surprise me in the least, if it weren’t for Don’s endlessly repeated declarations that he isn’t really an artist at all. This self-denigration makes me furious with him sometimes because I feel its power—perversely trying to destroy my belief in him. Not that it ever could. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

  From the museum we went on to the Hayward Gallery, where there was an exhibition of paintings of England done by French Impressionists. They had Monet’s marvellous Waterloo Bridge series, dating around the beginning of this century. Sometimes the bridge seems brutally dark and heavy, laden with toiling traffic, a ponderous lifeless heartless commercial contraption, seen before a hideous background of factory chimneys and drab clouds—like a political cartoon directed against Victorian capitalism. Then, again, the scene is transformed into weightless magic, flashes of light on the water, golden gleams on the bus tops, the bridge and the factories melted into mysterious indications amidst fiery vapors.

  Finally we all three went to the Roundhouse, where Stomu Yamash’ta’s Red Buddha Theater was performing. The Japanese actresses and actors were lithe and cute and eager to entertain us—even a bit too eager, they seemed more like airline stewards and stewardesses. The best parts of the show were the least modern and even these weren’t remarkable; an uninspired reference to the Kabuki tradition. Oddly enough, I was only really turned on by the skullsplitting noise of the orchestra, though I usually hate electronic music. Maybe this proves that Stomu Yamash’ta is something special. The program said he is a supergenius.

  Eric Boman joined us. We met John Houseman, with a girl. I was glad for him to see me escorted by three such striking and varied examples of the beauty of the tribe. The Roundhouse has strangely contrived to preserve the squalor of its railroad days. You get the impression that everything—the chairs, the tables and the food in the restaurant—must be filthy—though actually it isn’t.

  On the morning of February 7, John Lehmann came by to see me. (I neglected to mention that he’d already given us drinks at his flat on the evening of January 29.) He wants very much to publish the letters we exchanged about the contributors to New Writing, during the late thirties. I agreed to write notes to be added to the text, if the publishers decide to accept it. Now I’m sorry I did this. I fear that the letters must be a thundering bore and that all comment on them will be superfluous. John is also writing a sex memoir, in the third person and und
er an assumed name. He showed me part of it. It is commendably frank but not really all that interesting. John has a besetting blandness in his writing which persists even when he becomes pornographic. Each boy gets his compliment—he is attractive, handsome, muscular, or what have you—and I feel that this is essentially the same tone which John has used so often in his autobiography, when he bestows literary compliments on a group of writers, making them all alike and equally mediocre.

  In the afternoon we saw Crown Matrimonial,50 a play about the abdication of Edward VIII. At first, I was astonished that the royal family would permit such a play to be performed. Then I understood why they did; it is most ingeniously inoffensive, the candid camera has a filter attached to it. You don’t see either Mrs. Simpson or Baldwin,51 and anyhow Mrs. Simpson and Baldwin are lavishly excused and even praised behind their backs. Edward is impetuous, boyish, rash, but he never behaves like an arrogant fascist cad. Queen Mary is marvellously absurd—Wendy Hiller impersonates her stunningly—but she is never revealed as a domineering old cunt. We both found the whole thing immensely entertaining and could have gone on watching Hiller for hours.

  After this we had a drink with my new agent at Curtis Brown, Peter Grose, an Australian. He seemed energetic and intelligent and made a very good impression on both of us. In fact, I think I’m going to like him better than Richard Simon—who, incidentally, has been rude and cool during this visit. Obviously he isn’t interested in seeing me, now I’m no longer a client.

  Then we saw the first act of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers—pretentious double-talking shit which everybody here is lapping up. We left at the intermission and had a delightful supper with James Pope-Hennessy, Leo Madigan, Sean [O’Brien] and Waris Hussein. We both think James is a really good person. Leo and Sean are fun to be with—especially now that Leo has gotten over his star-struck attitude toward me, which was probably partly playacting anyhow. Waris is complicated, hypersensitive and a show-off, full of oriental jealousy and indiscretion, but he can be very entertaining.