I must be very careful not to let the next months slip through my fingers. It would be easy to do so. For, most likely, the work at Santa Barbara won’t be so difficult and yet it could easily fill the rest of my week with mild fussing. I must get on with the revision of my novel. Would it be too much to try to have it done by the New Year? That sounds frantic—well, we’ll see—
First, I must think seriously about my first lecture. The second is more or less set already, because it will be the same as the one I gave at USC last spring.fn18 The third one is perhaps the most difficult—“The Nerve of the Novel”—but that’s a long way off.fn19
Rory Harrity is back with Marguerite. There has been no communiqué issued and no one dares go see them and find out what the score is. I simply couldn’t care less.
Mr. Gardner is painting the garage this weekend: that’ll be more or less the end of our home decoration for the year. We look very handsome now, on the hillside, seen from the street below; a proper subtropical palazzo, with our blue shutters in the big window and our fringed white shades in the bathroom and our yellow slat-blinds in my workroom. As we walk along Maybery Road, Don points up at our dazzling white frontage and says, “Just look—there—that’s where the animals live—!”
Ronny [Frost], the monk from Trabuco who is “on loan” to Hollywood while [ John Markovich] is away seeing his family, came down and drove me into Beverly Hills yesterday, because the Simca is still being fixed. Ronny was just starting to be a concert pianist before he became a monk; a Texan boy with a pretty soft face and hair, a sort of Van Cliburn.fn20 I daresay he had a sex problem. Anyhow, here he is, and terribly anxious to be reassured. His piano playing unsettles him. At Trabuco he practises, and this is obviously his great joy in life. But then, from time to time, he told me, he gets invitations to play at concerts; and he knows he mustn’t, but nevertheless, he feels terrible. After all, he has been practising—
I realized that Ronny wanted to ask me about my time up at Vedanta Place: how come I went there, and why I left. I tried to tell him about it in a reassuring way—pointing out that I didn’t start out specifically as a monk, that it all grew out of the Gita translation project, and that when I decided to leave, I did so quite gradually, that there was no dramatic break, that I remained in constant touch with Swami,fn21 etc., etc. “So really,” Ronny said, “it’s just the same now as if you’d stayed there?” But I couldn’t let him think that, so I owned that there had been a “jazzy” (the words I sometimes pick!) period right after I left, and that, indeed, people had often come to Swami and told him I was going to the dogs—and that Swami had charmingly shut them up. So then I got the conversation off on to Swami and how marvellously he had changed since I’d known him—and Sarada too—and Krishna—all proving that the spiritual life did work.… I hope Ronny was satisfied. Just when I was warming to the theme, we reached Beverly Hills.
September 20. Yesterday I started work on the revision of “Waldemar”fn22—the Munich crisis episode in London which I originally called “The Others.” I now realize that there’s a good deal wrong with it—at least, at the beginning. For now the question of my own state of mind becomes important: it has to be clearly defined so that it can later be contrasted with my state of mind in 1940, in the final episode. At present, I seem to be way off the mark.
The day after tomorrow, I start at Santa Barbara, and of course I have mild stage fright about this, although I know it won’t actually be nearly such an ordeal as my first day at L.A. State,fn23 and anyhow, I have no lecture the first week.
We have been much involved with the cast of Taste of Honey; said goodbye to Mary [Ure] and Joan [Plowright] on Sunday night; now they’re both in New York.fn24 As I was driving Joan back to Tony [Richardson]’s house, a cop gave me a speeding ticket and as it was within the Sawtellefn25 grounds I have to go clear downtown and settle it.
Last night we had Nigel Davenport, Billy Dee Williams and Andrew Ray to supper, with Hope Lange. This was a great success. Hope got quite drunk. Nigel, who is very intelligent, took Vedanta for the Western Worldfn26 off with him. I gave Billy Dee a copy of The World in the Evening. When he’d had too many drinks he got on the Negro question and was a little tiresome.fn27 Andrew got nicer and nicer. He is a great boxing fan. You feel in him the sort of mad towheaded recklessness which I associate with RAF pilots. A very strange boy. He couldn’t be anything but English.
Don now has a truly admirable set of drawings of all five of the cast. I am very proud of him. And one day last week he made seventy dollars!fn28 His maximum so far.
Department of sweetness and shit: this beginning of a letter from Walter Starcke in Tokyo. “I had always heard how hard the Japanese were to know, but when I arrived and found such giving-ness, such affection, and such ease, the rug was really pulled out from under me and I felt adrift in a way I had not expected—not with treasures just outside of reach, but rather choaked (sic) with treasure closer than touch.”
September 21. This morning, I went downtown to settle my speeding ticket. It was just a formality, after all, aside from the tiresome drive; a nice judge in a small room all by himself fined me fifteen dollars and that was that. He told me that the Sawtelle hospital grounds have to be strictly patrolled even at night because crazy patients hide in the bushes ready to throw themselves in front of cars. Hence also the strict speeding regulation.
At the Pickwick Bookshop later I ran into Wilbur Flamfn29 and we had quite a long talk. Admittedly, his marriage is chiefly kept going by his and Bertha’sfn30 interest in their children—how wonderful it is when they first walk, talk, etc. He hinted at nostalgia and restlessness,fn31 but said nevertheless that he and Bertha never bore each other. We agreed to meet again and discuss all of these problems more fully. Oh God—how glad I am that I’m me and not him!
Lunch at Vedanta Place with Swami, and a Hindu publisher whose name I already forget, and Mr. Watumull, the Honolulu clothing manufacturer. The publisher had silver hair and a black coat and was a bit like an ugly Nehru. He talked and talked; telling one interesting thing—that Warren Hastings,fn32 in giving permission for the publication of the first translation of the Gita into English, said (in effect), “This book will continue to have an influence upon the English for many years after they have all left India.” Mr. Watumull was more likeable, however; he reminded me of Morgan [Forster].
This afternoon, I have been trying to analyze the psychology of Chris in the four episodes of my novel. The results are quite fairly encouraging. It does add up to something, and make a pattern. I don’t want it to make too much of one. But I think there’s more work to be done on “Paul” from this point of view.
Tomorrow, Santa Barbara. It really is quite an adventure; and I’m tense and excited at the prospect of it. The last few days, my pain, elusively in the intestines, has recurred. Will try to ignore it.
September 28 [Wednesday]. Damn it, my work is on the skids again! Since Santa Barbara, I’ve just futzed around and really done nothing to my novel, and tomorrow off I go up there again. Well, I’ve got to pull myself together, starting Saturday.
Tomorrow will be my first lecture up there and of course I’ve got a certain amount of stage fright about it. But I do believe I have the materials for a good and amusing lecture. As for last week, it was quite pleasant, though I don’t feel that I did more than scratch the shell of shyness-aggression which some of my seminar students were wearing. However, there was a pleasant drunken evening with Douwe Stuurman and the Warshaws. I really like Howard. And when I asked him if I might show him some of the work of a young artist I knew, he answered, “Was that the same one who drew Vera Stravinsky?” I started defensively, “Yes, but—” meaning to tell him how terrible the reproduction was. But Howard said he thought it was excellent and very interesting.fn33 Then, the next morning, a boy named Frank Wileyfn34 came who wanted to get into my seminar and he showed me part of a novel he’s written. It’s all about the Santa Barbara campus and exclusively (so far) a ho
mosexual love-story! But, oh, so rambling and long-winded!
Now—since yesterday, really—there has been a dramatic development: Don is almost certainly going to New York to supervise the framing of his drawings of the Taste of Honey cast; they are to be exhibited in the foyer or outside the theater and he is to get $250 for them if the play is a hit! I don’t want to go; much as I shall miss Don and much as I should like to see Olivier in Becket.fn35 I cannot rush around as I’m involved in all this work. I must try to stay very calm. And, also—though Don is scared at the prospect—I know it will be wonderful for him to have this triumph, however big or small it turns out to be, alone.
Yesterday afternoon, at Tom Wright’s, we met John Rechy, who wrote “The Fabulous Wedding of Miss Destiny.” I liked him. He lives downtown, in the midst of his “world,” and dresses exactly like a Pershing Square hustler; shirt open to the navel with sleeves rolled to the armpits, skintight jeans, a Christopher medal. He is rather charming. Not at all aggressive or sulky.
Early this morning, a dream.
Hard to describe its setting. There were a lot of people—Don not among them—in a small town or village; I can’t be more precise about the architecture. What we were all doing there, I don’t know. The action started when one of us, a man, went mad—not noisy but deadly berserk. He had a tommy gun and he was going to kill as many of us as he could. He protected himself from us by forcing a group of women to stand around him as a screen, so he couldn’t be shot at. The women were wearing print dresses rather like pioneer women of the covered wagon period.
For a while we all scattered and were scared, awaiting the attack of the madman. At least, I was scared; but it didn’t occur to me to run away altogether. Maybe it was somehow not possible. I kept on the outskirts of the crowd, moving around, with others, to various places where we could take cover when the shooting started, but always deciding that each place was unsuitable because it had no proper exit or way of quick escape.
It had seemed that the crowd was quite disorganized; but suddenly I realized that a part of it had gotten together and formed a clear plan of resistance. And just as I realized this, some gates opened in the wall of a building on the other side of the square, and the madman came out, protected by his screen of women. But the opposing force went to meet him, and they also were surrounded and screened by women. Only, I now saw that the “women” were men dressed in women’s clothes and that they carried guns. The two groups advanced upon each other and mingled; there was no struggle of course, because everybody except the madman was on the same side.
A terribly tense pause. Then a shot. The madman had been shot. He was dead. And everybody was congratulating the woman who had done it. She was a real woman; not dressed like the others but wearing a black evening gown. She was handsome and blonde, and I knew she was a lesbian. She accepted congratulations with a harsh laugh and said something, probably ironic, about being “an old member of the shooting club.” I was hostile to her. I was the only person in the crowd who disapproved of the shooting of the madman. She understood this and made some cutting remark about my being “a silly little man.”
The dead madman was lying there. His head looked more like a big square block of ice which is starting to melt. The features were already becoming indistinct. I wanted to pray for him. I knelt to do this, feeling somewhat embarrassed because there were people all around and I thought they would think I was showing off. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they were paying much attention to me. As I knelt, the floor collapsed under me—it was a house floor, although we were out of doors; but I only sank through about a foot onto another floor which was firm. So I went ahead and said my prayer, asking Ramakrishna to protect the madman. And then I woke up.
This was a nightmare, in that I was badly scared. The curious thing was, however, that I didn’t wake up in the midst of my fear, as one usually does, but quite a while after it had passed.
Have just been talking to Charles Laughton on the phone. Terry [Jenkins] is arriving back here next Wednesday, and on Saturday he and Charles will fly to Japan! I am still anxious about Charles, for he seems still very shaky and depressed by his illness. He says the doctor told him that his relapse was far more serious than the operation itself. And he is so desperate to get well.
October 2. No work done. Largely because of hangovers but also outside interruptions. More about these in a moment.
Don is in New York. He phoned this morning from Julie [Harris]’s, where he’s staying. He still hasn’t been able to see the producer and get the exhibition of his drawings outside the theater definitely agreed on. But he has met Cecil Beaton, who loves his drawings and is going to recommend him to Harper’s Bazaar. So he’s delighted and feels the trip was worthwhile even if the other thing falls through.
Yesterday I had a phone call from Charles Laughton next door, to say he has had two violent attacks in which he tried to kill himself. They were both in the Curson Road house, and somehow connected with Elsa.fn36 (She thinks he is trying to ruin the beginning of her tour! And she claims that she is shattered. Really, the fuss these vain old hams make! What a temperament I could have thrown over my first lecture at Santa Barbara last Thursday! As a matter of fact it was a truly smashing success.) So I told Charles I felt the attacks were disguised mystical experiences. (“Oh, how wonderfully tactful of you!” Don exclaimed, when I told him this morning.) And I certainly did please and reassure Charles, who now says that he was trying to reach infinity. Anyhow, to protect him from doing himself violence, he has two male nurses and Bill Phipps, who actually sleeps with him in the same bed. Now Charles feels fine and lolls around the house, whispering so as not to be overheard by the male nurses, whom he is already trying to get rid of. And now he has a new worry: he thinks Elsa may be preparing to have him certified. I assured him that this would be impossible under the circumstances. But I suspect Bill Phipps is an alarmist […]. He has told Charles that Elsa said she wished he was dead as he had nothing left to live for. Even if she did say this, there was no mortal need to repeat it.
Then, also yesterday, a boy named Erik Kalnfn37 came to see me. He had been at Tom Wright’s the other day, with a good-looking boy named Bill Small.fn38 After Don and I had left, this Bill Small got very drunk, kissed everybody in the room, then became violent in the car as they were driving away and yelled and wanted to kill himself. Since, he has been perfectly all right and has written an incredibly gooey article for the [paper] on which he works […]. Erik Kaln is Bill’s roommate, and he had called me saying he wanted advice on how to handle Bill, with whom he’s going to Europe in a short while. But actually he talked almost entirely about himself and how he was suffering—until I told him he was a monster and was manipulating the whole situation. This he took well and we got along splendidly and laughed a lot. He is a blond Jewboy of twenty-two, with a bottle nose and rather wonderful green eyes.
Tomorrow Jill Macklem is coming with her husband, and later John Rechy, so that day will be shot, too. Well, hell—these are all people who had to be seen sometime. Presumably Charles will get out of my hair as soon as Terry arrives.
October 3. More about Santa Barbara. It was very funny to see how sincerely relieved and somewhat surprised Chancellor Gould was that my lecture was such a hit. Later, I got drunk at the house of a nice man named Geo Dangerfield and fell over a barbecue bowl outside on the beach in the dark and hurt my shin. Frances Warshaw put Mercurochrome (?) on it and it won’t wash off.
With Bart Johnsonfn39 to see Elsa Lanchester last night, in Royce Hall.fn40 The trouble is, she isn’t quite first-rate. She fusses too much with her hands and she is scared of the audience; and she’s often dirty in the wrong way. The advertising says that she has “a world.” She doesn’t. There is no magic in any of this. Maybe because it’s so unspontaneous. Charles says that she has to learn every word she says on the stage—all the asides, everything—by heart. “She couldn’t even say, ‘Hello, Santa Barbara,’” says Charles, “because if she
learnt that line, she’d have to say it in Stockton and Miami as well—all over the country.” Wicked old Charles was half pleased that I didn’t really like the show. At the same time, he was delighted because it appears to have been a smash hit. Or rather, Elsa thinks it was a smash hit.
Bart Johnson, nicey-nice in a suit, was terrified of Charles, who ignored him. We ate warmed-up stew and the gravy was burnt and shreds of meat got into our teeth.
A rather ridiculous fuss with Glade Bachardy about the Examiner.fn41 While I was at Santa Barbara, just before Don left, Glade entered some contest which necessitated her getting a new subscriber to the Examiner. So she gave my name. It was Don’s fault, of course—he should have known how strongly I’d object. The idea of having this paper around is obscene to me; and I hate the little boys who throw it all over the garden. So I called her today and told her I wouldn’t take it. And she immediately got tearful, like a child who has been told it mustn’t do something. So then I have had all the bother of having to call the local distribution office and tell them to send the paper elsewhere. I refuse to feel the least guilty about this. Why should one pander eternally to the swinish reactionary attitudes of women like Glade and my mother? They have to be told that the paper is utter filth and that decent people won’t have it around. And, on top of that I shall have to pay for the subscription.
October 10. And now I’ve missed some really important days—notably Don’s triumphant return from New York—and it’s too late to describe them properly. Actually, this was relatively speaking the greatest triumph Don will ever have in his life, perhaps—because it was the first and because it’s doubtful if the praise of any two people will ever again mean quite as much to him as Beaton’s and Bouché’sfn42 did. Now he’s about to return to New York again—on a much more dubious enterprise; designing posters for Tennessee [Williams]’s Period of Adjustment and the play Julie will be in, The Little Moon of Alban.fn43 Don doesn’t really know how to do this, and maybe it will be a flop; but we agree that it’s still better for him to go and make the attempt than not. The worst of it is, yesterday and today he has had a really cruel attack of tonsillitis. This evening he says it’s getting better, and I only hope this isn’t grim autosuggestion which will lose its power once he’s on the plane. Well—let’s hope for the best—
The Sixties Page 6
