Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  December 23. I have decided to write this diary only during the periods when I am waiting for one or other of my friends to get ready. Nearly everybody I know habitually keeps me waiting. Today it was Berthold—for nearly two hours. I said to Frankie, the Filipino houseboy, “The only thing we learn in this life in waiting.” “Yes, Mr. Isherwood,” he answered, “we are all waiting for the last commencement.”

  Last night, Vernon and I went with Chris Wood to a big party at the Huxleys’. Their place is like a house in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, where a murder will be committed. It stands back from the road, completely hidden—a large bungalow built and furnished in baroque-log-cabin style. It used to belong to a rich doctor, one of the founders of the Uplifters’ Club, who gave huge parties here during the prohibition epoch. (The Uplifters’ Club seems to have started as a sort of retreat for unfaithful, married business men. Now it is a mildly artistic, respectable colony—down in the canyon below the Huxleys’ home.)

  The walls are hung with semierotic, fetishist pictures of “cruel” ladies in boots, and with romantic photographs of nudes. The lighting is dim and sexually inviting—like an old-fashioned Berlin night spot. In fact, the living room was so dark that a lady—the first person I spoke to—said: “Will you please light my cigarette, so I can see your face?” This was Benita Hume, the actress, rather drunk. I liked her. She was hunting everywhere for Ronald Colman, her husband. He proved to be standing just behind her—the perfect tailor’s dummy of a “man of a certain age,” with gracefully grey temples, bright handsome dark eyes, an exquisitely discreet little moustache. He seemed modest, gentle and kind—but now Aldous swam forward out of the warm gloom, like a great, blind deep-sea fish, to introduce me to his brother Julian, just arrived from England for a lecture tour. Julian disappointed me. I had expected him to be more human than Aldous, warmer, less pedantic. Actually, he seemed prim, severe and schoolmasterish, and Aldous, by contrast, appeared much more sympathetic. Julian was very much the official representative of England at war. Behind his sternness, I thought I could detect a certain puritanical sadism—a satisfaction that the lax peace-days were over, and that we’d all got to suffer. Perhaps I am being unjust to him. Perhaps he was only unhappy and tired. But I didn’t like the triumphant ring in his voice as he declared that “everybody was agreed” that the Hitler menace had to be removed for ever—it suggested a pleasure in totalitarianism for its own sake, and woe to the dissenters. Somebody asked him if he had come to make propaganda for aid to Britain. No—he was absolutely opposed to propaganda: “We are opposed to it” (meaning the British Foreign Office). “We” actually hoped America wouldn’t come into the war; because America’s function was to help with economic reconstruction, afterwards. “One’s got to make that clear to the people here.”

  Just to hear what he would reply, I asked him if he thought I should return home. No. If you had a job in the USA, and were earning American money, it was your duty to stay. Not for propaganda, but to represent “the British point of view.” Nevertheless, Julian added, it would be a good thing to get into touch with the British in New York. They liked to have reports on the state of opinion in different parts of the country.

  The British and French, he assured us, had no intention of attacking on the western front. If the Germans attacked, so much the better. He added that the war would produce an economic revolution in England. The small rentier class would disappear entirely. (Again the grim gleam of satisfaction.)

  I turned from him in relief to George Cukor, who was gaily boasting that he had lost sixty pounds by dieting. Then Matthew Huxley took us out to drink champagne secretly in the kitchen. Maria is an absurdly bad hostess—she was so busy with her particular friends, Salka and Anita Loos, that she forgot to make introductions or produce the drinks. When it was finally time for us to leave, she was nowhere to be found.

  Berthold, meanwhile, was going after Bertrand Russell, who had adopted Julian’s phraseology: “I hear we sank a German submarine yesterday.” Berthold’s eye gleamed. “I am surprised,” he said, with deadly courteousness, “to hear you say ‘we,’ Lord Russell. In the last war, your ‘I’ made history.”

  Then old Bob Flaherty, whom I haven’t seen since London in 1934, wandered into the house by the wrong door, carrying his big stomach uneasily under his clothes, like something he had stolen. He is working on a U.S. Government film about land erosion. He talked to Julian, who at once became nicer, discussing the habits of gannets and basking sharks.

  Vernon was enjoying himself, getting drunk and lecturing a fat, stupid man about art. “He was so dumb,” Vernon kept repeating to me, later, “I had to tell him everything.” Vernon had violent stage fright before this party, and was so relieved to find someone he could talk down to. I am usually listening to him with half an ear, when we go out together, to hear how he is making out. When he gets on to familiar ground, and is able to hold forth familiarly on Suetonius, or Leonardo, or Picasso, I feel pleased and proud, like an uncle.

  Heavy rain this morning. At last, the summer-autumn seems definitely over. Wild wet ocean, sands, mountains and sky. Even the hardiest of the sun-pickled veteran swimmers have deserted the sodden beach.

  Talk with Berthold, about last night. He was very pleased with his retort to Russell. Actually, I feel sorry for Russell. He is a very honest man, and it can’t be easy for him to abandon his pacifism—especially now that he is laid open to the usual sneer, that it is easy enough to support a war when you are in a neutral country and over military age.

  We read Wickham Steed’s article on the war aims.47 Germany, he says, must be forced to recognize “the rule of law.” But isn’t British imperialism “the rule of law,” according to Steed? If you carry his arguments to their logical conclusion, Prussianism’s only fault is that it has so far failed. If it had succeeded, it would be respectable, like the Empire. The Steed mentality builds a world in which the ultimate law is “nothing succeeds like success.” A nasty new upstart government has the bad taste to recognize this law and state it openly, without diplomatic trimmings. So it becomes “the enemy of civilization.”

  Steed apparently says: “Carry through this war with all the ruthlessness necessary to its success. Then, at the peace conference, suddenly start behaving like Jesus Christ.”

  The Finns claim that the Russians are retreating in the far north. Finland is now America’s Public Sweetheart Number One.

  Had Bud Mong to dinner. His brain tinkles with radio tunes. His lazy, half-joking ambitions to earn fifteen hundred dollars a week, and then go back to his home town and make the Girl Who Didn’t Care eat out of his hand. Although he is chronically short of money, and sometimes doesn’t have enough to eat, he won’t give up his beautiful Buick convertible, because, he says, it gives him “background.” Again and again, one meets this figure—the gay, pathetic little hero of An American Tragedy.

  Only the true sage, the advanced yogi, really knows what things are for, and never forgets it. He can own a car and not be hypnotized by the idea “car.” He never forgets that a car is simply a convenient piece of mechanism which will take him from one place to another. The Tragic American, on the other hand, sees his car as a symbol. Different makes of automobile, in ascending order of luxury, are the punctuation marks in his success story.

  “House,” “Bank balance,” “Swimming pool,” “Beautiful wife,” “European cruise,” “Son who rows for Yale”—these are like bank notes in a hopelessly inflated currency. They are only unreal counterparts of the things and people they represent. They are no longer important, primarily, in themselves—but only as symbols in a scale of imaginary social, erotic, autohypnotic values. This state of autohypnosis—in which my possessions have value as possessions, not as intrinsically serviceable objects—is called “Real Life.” One may recognize this absurdity—but it is all too fatally easy to slip back into the autohypnotic condition. Every advertisement, every radio commercial, every popular movie or magazine story potential
ly resembles the small bright object which the hypnotist uses to focus his patient’s attention. The rest—granted the patient’s passivity—is very simple.

  During the past weeks, I have found myself repeatedly slipping into the “Real Life” trance. This was because I was earning a lot of money in a ridiculously easy way—for work which I knew to be third-rate. The process was all the more effective because the hypnotic object was unfamiliar—I am not accustomed to having five hundred dollars a week. I even spent a great deal of this money for autohypnotic reasons. Very symptomatic was the trip Vernon and I recently made to Palm Springs. Because “Palm Springs” isn’t just a place; it’s a symbol. It’s the movie world’s idea of a chic winter weekend. However, we accidentally woke ourselves up in the middle of the “Palm Springs” trance—acting on a sudden impulse, we got out of the car and wandered on foot up a narrow canyon blocked with bushes and rocks. This hot, tiring scramble, without any “object,” in a place not registered as a “beauty spot,” did not belong to the idea “Palm Springs”—and so it recalled us for a little while from our trance. For this very reason, it was the only part of the trip either of us really enjoyed.

  The most advertised, and the most fantastically inflated and distorted values in “Real Life” are “Sex” and “Love.” D. H. Lawrence knew this, and warned his readers, over and over again, not to “use” sex. How many men, for example, could go to bed with Lana Turner and honestly say that they’d enjoyed it only because she is an attractive girl? And the extraordinary importance which the autohypnotist attaches to the orgasm—like cutting your name on a rock at the top of a mountain. By autohypnotic love-rules, unless both names are carved on the rock you don’t count as having climbed the mountain at all.

  Day in the life of an autohypnotist: “Got my paycheck, got a Renoir, did the sights, did a matinee, had supper, had my wife.”

  December 24. At half-past three, last night, Vernon came home with a baby duck which he’d bought in a drugstore. The duck was wearing a kind of harness of brightly colored ribbon, and a little hat.

  This morning, I went into the ocean—autohypnotically, in order to be able to say, “I swam on Christmas Eve.” The water was cold, but the sun was still quite warm.

  Lunch with the Bayleys—including Bud, the elder son, who works with his father, Mrs. Bayley’s divorced husband, at Carmel, and is staying with us for the Christmas holidays.

  (Mr. Bayley left Mrs. B. for her best girlfriend, married the girlfriend, divorced her, wanted to remarry Mrs. B., was turned down, and finally married the girlfriend for the second time.)

  Mrs. Bayley’s mother, Mrs. MacCabe, in her invalid chair—she has sprained her foot—talked about her late husband, an Englishman from Crewe. Happy was persuaded to play “Silent Night” on the piano. Mrs. Bayley brought in hot cups of Tom and Jerry;48 Mrs. MacCabe faintly disapproving. Bud was kidded by his mother for “going with” a lady of thirty-five.

  Stories of Happy’s wisecracks. The teacher once asked him, “Happy, what’s the matter with you? Are you hoarse?” Happy: “I’m so hoarse I could saddle me and ride home.” Bud, getting a bit high, described a drunken woman farting at a party: “She let go with all she’d got.” Mrs. MacCabe was shocked but indulgent: she adores her grandchildren. Mrs. Bayley and Bud discussed the behavior of a mutual friend, who had caused a scandal at somebody’s house: “She’d just lost her husband, but I guess the champagne sneaked up on her.”

  After the turkey came the presents. Vernon and I got handkerchiefs; Happy a windbreaker, sweaters, ski boots, a key chain; Bud a bathrobe; Mrs. MacCabe framed photographs of her father and mother, over which she shed a few tears, somewhat dampening our spirits. The duck, which we’d put on the balcony, fell down the drainpipe, and ran around the garden, quite unhurt.

  Evening party at the Viertels’. We sang “Stille Nacht” and “Tannenbaum,” before the lighted tree. Etta, as usual, had to organize everything—building up the ceremony to the great moment when Salka’s presents were opened. Bodo Uhse lit the candles himself, at his own request, because, “I like to set fire to things.” Mausi played the piano, beautifully. Peter gave Berthold and Salka the bound manuscript of his novel The Canyon. Salka embraced him and wept.

  If only Salka wouldn’t invite so many people, all so ill-assorted, her parties might be more of a success. But no one I know here has the first notion of how to entertain. When I think of the fun we used to have at the Mangeots’, in the old days! Where shall I find another Olive, another Bill Lichtenberg? It’s not merely that the times have changed. I don’t feel that the kind of men and women I meet at Salka’s ever knew how to be really gay. They are too mental. Their wit is all spikes and sharp edges. And so competitive: each one wants to hold the floor. There is a lot of embracing and sentimental fuss, but so little genuine warmth. That cosy feeling, “I am among friends”—how seldom I get it, nowadays!

  December 25. Christmas Day lunch at the Rodakiewiczs’. Chris and Gerald were there. Ben and Derek did conjuring tricks. Chris, with his specially English brand of rudeness, complained that the room was too hot and left abruptly on his bicycle in the middle of the performance. When he is like this—just a spoilt little boy—one wants to smack him. But Peggy laughs it off; and Henwar, after a good lunch, is too placid and porcine to care. As usual, I felt very fond of them both.

  Later in the afternoon, I made rather a fool of myself, attacking Huxley’s novels. Why do I always do this? It isn’t mere jealousy. I think he represents the English academic tradition—or my idea of the English academic tradition—which I still violently hate.

  Peggy had a new game—finger painting. Like all her games, it is really an intelligence test; you emerge from it higher or lower in her estimation. Gerald did the sign of kundalini. Vernon produced a very fine design of spirals. I tried to use all the colors at once, and created only dark grey mud. Peggy says it is of great psychological interest to notice if people use only their index finger, all their fingers, or the whole palm of the hand. She laughed at Gerald’s ladylike delicacy—not wanting to get dirtier than was absolutely necessary. “Yes,” Gerald agreed, shaking his head sadly, “I’m afraid it’s an Aversion.”

  He then began to talk to us about a woman he knows, a passionate liberal humanitarian, who has devoted her life to working in the Far East. She is doing everything possible to mobilize public opinion against the renewal of the U.S. trade agreement with Japan. Another friend of Gerald’s—equally passionate, liberal and humanitarian—is doing everything possible to support the renewal. “What I want to know,” said Gerald, “is: can one lead the political life at all, and hope to keep one’s integrity?”

  Having done his day’s quiet little deed of sabotage, he turned on his rubber soles and vanished into the darkness, silently and rapidly ascending the steep hill behind the house. “And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them …” The timing was perfect. I thought of him walking home along the firebreak road, to his lonely room, his meditations, his single bed. Even the mildest kind of austerity affects me, sometimes, like a cold breath from the grave.

  Henwar and Peggy remind me of the humble peasant and his wife who acquire merit by entertaining the holy man on the road. Chris doubles the parts of Judas and the Young Man with Great Possessions. Vernon for a while was starred as St. John, but couldn’t hold the job down. I am any of the more cowardly disciples. Berthold is perhaps developing into St. Paul. He has started to read Pain, Sex and Time with enormous enthusiasm.

  Christmas shopping in Hollywood has been on a mammoth scale, this year. Norma Shearer49 is said to have spent a thousand dollars on handkerchiefs alone—as presents for the entire studio staff.

  December 26. A morning of pathological sloth. What brings on this disgraceful, paralytic laziness? It is always dangerous, of course, not to dress before breakfast. I spent nearly two and a half hours reading Life magazine. Then I got shaved, collapsed again into a chair. Then I washed. Another relapse. Then, at last
, I dressed. It was now two o’clock. The beautiful, intact morning, which might have been used for all kinds of valuable purposes, was wasted—as vulgarly, as meaninglessly as a millionaire wastes ten dollars on a flower which he will immediately throw away.

  The duck has been given to one of Happy’s friends.

  Walk with Wiggs, the Bayleys’ spaniel, along the shore. The gulls stood among the foam-suds, in crowds. Cormorants swam out and dived under the waves. Brown sandpipers, with tall legs and long beaks like chopsticks. And the tiny birds (called knots?) which look like white mice. They dart in as the water ebbs, peck rapidly at the wet sand, then turn and scurry uphill before the next wave, so fast that you can hardly see their legs. They move as if by clockwork. You can imagine them whirring.

  Berthold and I went to dinner with Cedric Belfrage and his wife. They have a nice house they built themselves, just off Mulholland, at the top of Laurel Canyon. Flaherty was there, and Theodore Dreiser. We both liked Dreiser, with his buck teeth, and heavy head and hands and humor. But Flaherty did most of the talking. He talked about the Russ cotton-picking machine, the smuggling of Mexicans over the border to work—they are called “wet Mexicans,” because they have to swim the Rio Grande—and about a super-cheap automobile driven by a spring, which the Japanese are trying to introduce into India.

  Belfrage has changed very much since I knew him at Cambridge. He is no longer the adroit social circumnavigator, the man-about-Europe, the born columnist. He is now a cut-and-dried Stalinist, conventionally cynical, a little sour. He has just finished a book about the South—showing how Negro evangelism has become a symbolic revolutionary language. According to Belfrage, when the colored preacher says “revelation” his congregation understands that he means “revolution.” Not of course that this has much political significance, as yet; but it is preparing a state of mind.