Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

by Christopher Isherwood

  Quite soon after they moved into 333, Christopher talked to Paula Strasberg (on the phone, I think). In the course of their conversation, she said, “It’s a very lonely house.” At the time, her choice of adjective seemed merely odd to him—how could 333 be described as lonely, when the next-door house on one side nearly touched it and when there was a continuous line of houses facing it from across the road? However, by the time he next talked to Mrs. Strasberg, eight months later, he thought he understood what she had meant. He said to her: “When you told me that this house is lonely, were you trying to warn me that it’s haunted?” Mrs. Strasberg denied this emphatically, she laughed aloud at the very idea. But Christopher wasn’t impressed. He told himself that this old Jewess would naturally refuse to admit to a ghost, since it was one of those disadvantages which lower property values. Then why had she let drop that word “lonely”? It must have been a slip—perhaps she had been badly scared at 333, and the impression had remained so strong that she had referred to it in spite of herself. Christopher never found out the truth about this. And now Mrs. Strasberg is dead.

  Chris Wood, always a highly credible witness, told how he decided to drop in on Christopher and Caskey, one morning, unannounced. When you crossed the bridge over the creek, the house was on your right. Downstairs were the living room and the kitchen, upstairs were a bathroom and two bedrooms. One of these bedrooms opened onto a glassed-in porch which Christopher used as a workroom. Chris Wood crossed the bridge and approached the house. As he did so, he saw a figure upstairs moving behind the windows of this porch. Taking it for granted that this was Christopher, Chris went to the front door and knocked. No answer. Chris then opened the front door and entered. No one in the kitchen or living room. Remembering the figure he had seen upstairs, Chris wondered if it could be a burglar. But he nevertheless bravely climbed the staircase and looked in all the rooms. They were empty. And there was no other exit from the upper floor.

  One evening, Caskey, Carlos McClendon and a few others tried using a Ouija board in the living room of 333.3 At first the board spelled out words like fuck, cunt, shit—probably with a good deal of encouragement from Caskey. Then they began to question it—“Who are you?” It gave a woman’s name. “Are you dead?” “Yes.” “How did you die?” “Murdered.” “Who murdered you?” “Myself.” “Where did you die?” “Here.”

  On January 1, 1950, Bill Harris came to stay with Christopher (Caskey was away in the East). Bill slept in the bedroom adjoining the glassed-in porch; Christopher slept in the other bedroom, beyond it. One night, Bill woke and saw someone he took for Christopher, in the nearly total darkness, come out of Christopher’s bedroom, cross the bedroom Bill was sleeping in and start going down the staircase—which led directly out of that bedroom to the ground floor. Lying in bed, you could watch a person go downstairs until his head sank below floor level. Just as this was about to happen, the someone who seemed to be Christopher turned and looked at Bill and said, with intense hatred, “You son of a bitch!” Then he disappeared. At first. Bill was merely astonished. “Chris must be terribly mad about something,” he said to himself Then he reflected that he had never seen Christopher get mad like this before. Then he began to wonder, “Was that Christopher?” Then he got out of bed, went across to Christopher’s bedroom and looked in, to find Christopher in bed, snoring peacefully. Then Bill was scared. Nevertheless, with a considerateness which was typical of him, he didn’t wake Christopher.

  In themselves, these happenings made no great impression on Christopher. He didn’t have to be convinced by any more evidence that “hauntings” (whatever they essentially are) do occur. What did impress him was the intensity of the unpleasant psychic atmosphere at 333. Ever since his boyhood at Marple Hall, Christopher had taken it for granted that one’s awareness of such an atmosphere is just as valid as one’s awareness of a strong unpleasant smell. He believed that he himself was particularly sensitive to it,4 and he was rather proud of this. However, his experience at 333 was different from any of his others, not only in intensity but in kind.

  This atmosphere made itself more strongly felt on the upper floor and particularly in the front bedroom around the top of the staircase, but Christopher was aware of it everywhere. The smallness of the house seemed to compress it and thus add to its power. 333 was dark in the daytime, because of the neighboring hillside and the overhanging sycamore trees; at night, a guest who saw it brightly lit and full of people would often describe it as snug. But it never seemed snug to Christopher. It seemed secret, unhomely, unheimlich.[5]

  Often, when he was working in the glassed-in porch (where there was at least plenty of daylight) he would feel, almost catch a glimpse of, someone at his elbow and turn quickly, but never quickly enough to confront the shadowy presence. At night, when Caskey was out and he was alone in the house, he would sometimes wake thrilling with fear. For a few moments after waking, he would be afraid but not panic stricken. His very belief in the objective existence of the phenomenon reassured him—for him, it wasn’t The Unknown. It was a manifestation of the psychic world, and the psychic is always subject to the spiritual. Christopher was a devotee (despite all his backslidings) of Ramakrishna. So how could any psychic phenomenon possibly do him harm?

  However, Christopher’s experiences in this house did differ from all the others he had had elsewhere, because they had a second aspect or dimension—so it seemed to him. The longer he lived there, the more he felt that its psychic atmosphere was both something which had belonged to the place before he came there and something which was a projection of his own disturbed, miserable, hate-filled state of mind.

  On February 24, Christopher finished chapter nine of The Condor and the Cows, and on March 15 chapter ten.

  On March 12, Glenway Wescott arrived and spent a week in the Canyon. He didn’t stay at 333 but at a motel on Entrada Drive, perhaps because he wanted privacy to work. However, he was with Caskey and Christopher most evenings. He was wonderfully cheerful, silly and energetic, and brightened everybody up. He cooked meals for Caskey and Christopher, read Christopher’s 1939–1944 journals and praised them to the skies, and went to bed with Jim Charlton. He left in a glow of popularity.

  On March 22, there was a sneak preview of The Great Sinner at the Criterion Theater in Santa Monica. Christopher had long since given up trying to convince himself that the film was any good. Peck was awful. He did his best but he was hopelessly miscast. In the big emotional scenes he made an ass of himself. Ava Gardner looked beautiful but she was as completely un-Russian as Peck, her voice was ugly and her acting was awkward—they were an uninspiring pair. Walter Huston, as her father, made every scene come to life in which he appeared; but his part was far too small. Ethel Barrymore was excellent in her two gambling scenes. Melvyn Douglas behaved with charm and discretion as Armand de Glasse, the unconvincing character who runs the casino. And the total effect was mediocre, Hollywoodish, saccharine. The preview cards were lukewarm.

  Gregory Peck took his failure deeply to heart; it must have hurt his vanity. As a result of this, he developed a distaste for Christopher—having decided, I suppose, that Christopher’s script was responsible for his humiliation. Although they had gotten along well during the shooting,6 Peck henceforth avoided talking to Christopher when they met at parties. It wasn’t until years later that he became gracious again—and even helped Christopher become a member of the Academy.

  Fodor may well have been partly responsible for Peck’s attitude. As soon as it became evident that The Great Sinner had laid an egg, Fodor started a subtle propaganda campaign to convince all who were concerned that it was Christopher who had spoilt the script by his revisions. I’m sure Fodor didn’t convince Gottfried Reinhardt, and I doubt if Fodor managed to do Christopher any serious harm professionally, but the ill will must be taken for the deed.

  On March 26, Christopher went with Tito Renaldo to see Swami. I don’t know if this was the day that Tito first met Swami—it may have been much earlier.
But I think that Tito probably asked Swami on this occasion if he could go and live at Trabuco as a monk, as soon as it was opened as a monastery. Gerald Heard had already talked the trustees into handing over the property to the Vedanta Society. Trabuco opened officially on September 7, 1949.

  On April 2, Christopher finished writing The Condor and the Cows.7 On the 4th, he and Caskey mailed the manuscript and the photographs—two copies of each—to Methuen and to Random House.

  Caskey had worked really hard on the photographs, developing, enlarging and cropping them himself and making a dummy of the illustration pages which showed the exact relative sizes for each picture to be printed. He had also designed a photographic montage for the jacket—the two ceramic bulls they had brought back from Pucará in Peru superimposed on a view of the marble column topped by a carved condor (in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela) which commemorates the foreigners who came to South America to fight for Bolívar. And he had done a pen-and-ink drawing of Cuzco as a frontispiece for the book.

  On April 5, David Kidd (one of Christopher’s [friends]) brought Sara Allgood to the house. Christopher had the advantage of being one of the few people in Los Angeles who had seen her in the original London production of Juno and the Paycock. So he was able to delight her by saying (ninety percent sincerely) that her “Sacred Heart o’ Jesus” speech was one of his favorite theatrical memories. She loved his flattery, and the little onions which Caskey kept for the martinis—indeed, she ate nearly a whole jar of them. Christopher loved her ladylike airs and her wonderful rich voice—indeed, he found himself talking to her with a slight Irish accent. Their meeting was a huge success and was repeated.

  On April 6, Caskey photographed Thomas Mann—this was one of his best sets of portraits.

  On April 7, Christopher sent a reply to an invitation to take part in a conference for world peace which was being held in Los Angeles under the auspices of the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. He refused to attend, on the grounds that this wasn’t a genuine peace conference but a political demonstration with a pro-Russian slant. Christopher’s letter is very well constructed, it makes telling points and its main accusation is really unanswerable.8 (Before sending off his letter, he had gotten in touch with the local Quakers and found that they entirely agreed with his stand.) What makes me a bit uncomfortable, rereading it today, is to remember that it was written in the midst of the McCarthy era. The senator and his committee were attacking these people for holding the peace conference, and what they were saying against it was more or less what Christopher was saying—that it was red. Christopher loathed the Soviet government for disowning the attitude toward the private life prescribed by Marx, and for persecuting its homosexuals. He somewhat disliked the Jewish parlor-communist intellectuals who were members of the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. But he also loathed McCarthy and the red-hunters—and it is humiliating to reflect that they might have approved of his letter or at least decided that it showed he was rather more on their side than the other. (Christopher was certainly more a socialist than he was a fascist, and more a pacifist than he was a socialist. But he was a queer first and foremost. I remember a discussion he had with Caskey and some others around that time on the question: “If you could produce positive proof that McCarthy is queer—would you use it to ruin his political career?” Their unanimous verdict was, “No—because all queers would be harmed if it became known that he was one.”

  On April 8, Christopher and Caskey had a birthday party for Jim Charlton. And Christopher restarted The School of Tragedy for the third time, after an interval of twenty-two months. This opening is perhaps the most promising one he ever made. Stephen is writing a letter—or maybe a journal in letter form—addressed to someone called Edward. I have no idea, now, if Edward was to have been a major or a minor character; but the tone of voice of this extract suggests the literary tone of Edward Upward, and Stephen seems to be much livelier, more amusing, less sentimental and self-pitying than the character he will later become.9

  On April 11, Christopher worked at MGM on what the day-to-day diary describes as “retake changes.” I can’t remember what these were.

  On April 19, Christopher saw Dodie and Alec Beesley, who had recently moved into a house on Cove Way, behind the Beverly Hills Hotel, just off Benedict Canyon. This was to be the last of their Californian homes.

  On April 29, he drove with Swami to Trabuco, for the day. This probably means that some monks from the Hollywood Vedanta Center were already living there, cleaning the place up and getting it ready for its official opening.

  On May 3, the day-to-day diary notes that Rita was “released.” I think this refers to Rita Cowan’s release from prison—for I dimly remember that her husband or boyfriend, a black man, was shot dead by the police and that Rita regarded this as a murder and made some kind of [. . .] protest scene which ended with her being locked up.

  On May 20, Christopher had another contact with the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. The writer Paul Jarrico had previously written him about the blacklisting of Albert Maltz, who was under prosecution by the U.S. government for refusing to testify before the Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result. Twentieth Century-Fox had decided not to produce a film based on Maltz’s novel The Journey of Simon McKeever. Jarrico had asked Christopher to write a letter in support of Maltz which could be read aloud at a meeting of the film division of the council on May 25. Christopher wrote and sent them a letter—he couldn’t do otherwise.10 But, as before, his anti-Soviet sentiments showed between the lines. Also, his resentment at having been made to read Maltz’s boring and insipid novel—why did the vast majority of these literary martyrs have to be without talent?

  On May 21, Klaus Mann killed himself in Cannes. I can’t remember how soon Christopher got the news; probably almost at once, because of being in touch with the Mann family. I do remember that Christopher had to tell Harold Fairbanks, and that Harold was obviously much more upset than he would admit.

  The day-to-day diary records that Christopher finished writing, on that day, a foreword to Luise Rinser’s novel Die Stärkeren. I think he did this for an English translation of the book which Bill Kennedy was trying to get published in the States—as far as I know, it never actually was. Although Christopher did the job for money, he really liked the book, partly because it made him feel nostalgic. He very seldom read anything in German, and the language itself brought back unexpected memories.

  On May 22, there is another isolated entry in the 1948–1956 journal. And in it, for the first time, Christopher discusses the possibility of leaving Caskey. This possibility he rejects because (1) there is no one else to go to and (2) he isn’t prepared to return to live at the Vedanta Center. In other words, Christopher is definitely not prepared to face the prospect of living alone.

  After writing this, Christopher makes resolutions:

  . . . staying together means accepting Caskey exactly as he is. I must remember this. I must renounce all attempts to change Caskey’s attitude, behavior or habits. I must accept him, and thereby renounce my whole possessive attitude towards him.

  This does not mean that I shouldn’t give my honest opinion and advice—if asked.

  And it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t insist on a few simple rules—like the business of making a noise at night. That’s all right, because it’s no more than anybody would ask, even in the most casually polite relationship.

  I must stop trying to subdue Caskey, to shame him, to make him feel guilty.

  Oh dear—is this possible?

  It is not possible if it’s done as an act. It is not possible if you are all the time watching to see the effect of your new technique on Caskey. It is possible if you build up your inner life of prayer, meditation, artistic creation, physical exercise and routine, and simply let Caskey do as he pleases—always welcoming any advance on his part.

  Well—go ahead. You have plenty of work: your novel, the stor
y with Samuels. Take it easy. Don’t get tense.

  There is one sentence which exposes the futility of Christopher’s resolutions: “It is not possible if it’s done as an act.” But how else could it possibly have been done? Relations between Caskey and Christopher could only have been improved if one of them had made an unconditional surrender, and left it up to the other to be as generous or ungenerous as he chose. But Christopher didn’t dream of surrendering. He was merely proposing to adopt a strategy, and a strategy must necessarily be some kind of an act; it can never produce behavior which is spontaneous.

  Christopher and Caskey still loved each other, up to a point—but not nearly enough to make their relationship work. In this May 22 entry, Christopher compares the state of affairs between them to “the mood of 1940, in which I was bubbling with resentment against Vernon.” This calls attention to a weakness which Christopher showed on both occasions—he found it almost impossible to break off a relationship even when it was making him miserable. It was Vernon who finally had to leave Christopher (on February 17, 1941), though it was Christopher who had prodded him into doing so. And it was Caskey who finally had to force Christopher to leave him; Christopher always hesitated to take the decisive step. He was to go on hesitating for two more years.

  How about Caskey? Was he miserable too, at this time? He certainly didn’t seem so, to Christopher. But then I am only now beginning to realize how little Christopher knew—bothered to know—about Caskey. Caskey wore a mask of frivolity, camping and wisecracking, which Christopher never saw behind. Their occasional drunken scenes of emotional contrition and forgiveness actually revealed nothing. Christopher never got a glimpse into Caskey’s reverie or his fantasies. I don’t believe he ever tried to find out what Caskey was thinking about, what kind of myths he was celebrating, as he drank and danced for hours, alone, in the dead of night, to his favorite records.