We were all very silent at breakfast next morning. Only Jeanette crowed and chuckled. Carl didn’t come down. Leah Cadbury volunteered to take him out to lunch, for which we were grateful. Caroline had tidied up everything the night before, and we agreed that the room should be occupied again as soon as possible, before a death atmosphere had had time to form. The cremation was held next day, and a very moving Quaker meeting at which Rufus Jones spoke, saying exactly the right things. Otto Leichter, Carl’s greatest friend, came down for it. Otto’s wife was in a concentration camp in Austria. He only got news of her indirectly; she was having a very bad time. He was a stocky little man, with a big head and hurt eyes like a dog’s. Somehow, he had made peace with himself and gotten over his hatred. He was one of the best of them all.
At the beginning of December, I took a trip to New York, and saw Berthold Viertel. I got home just as war was declared with Japan. Of course, our group was wildly excited—which surprised me, in a way, because I had seen it coming so long, and anyway I could never relive the days of August and September 1939. Then came news that San Francisco had been bombed: a journalistic rumor. A stout belligerent woman in the Haverford drugstore opined, “Well—I guess we can take it.”
Toward Christmas, Rachel Garner’s cooking, never spectacular, got worse and worse. It was so bad that Mr. Rosenberg and sometimes Mr. Goetz took to going into Ardmore, to Horn and Hardart’s restaurant, for a second lunch. My meals at the workshop were particularly dreary, anyway, because I was vegetarian all this time, and Rachel had no idea of preparing vegetables, much less fish.
Mr. Seidemann developed a stone in the bladder and had to go to hospital to have it removed. When Caroline and I visited him, he talked with the utmost gusto about his operation, and even wanted to show us his penis. His interest in his body as a phenomenon appeared to be entirely nonattached.
Hannek—whose only positive accomplishment was his skill as a chess player (he had once edited a chess magazine in Vienna)—got a Christmas job carrying boxes at the co-op. The Dunckers left, to live with an old lady in Media[, Pennsylvania]. Dr. Duncker resisted this move violently. He wanted to work, he said, and here he was being treated as an old man. It was horribly pathetic.
And then, to balance our tragedies, Mr. Robinson’s wife and plump, sloe-eyed daughter Maria arrived from Sweden, perfectly safe. We all joined in the rejoicing. Caroline decided to approve of Mrs. Robinson, who was calm, smiling and efficient: she even described her as “beguiling.” But little Robinson, that master pessimist, went right on pessimizing. The day after the family reunion, I found him standing in the hall, looking very glum. “Why, Herr Robinson—what’s the matter? All your troubles are over now, surely?” “Ah—” Robinson shook his head, but I could see he was enjoying himself quite a lot, “Now the real troubles start.”
The Christmas Eve celebrations were really charming. We sang German carols around the tree. Then Mr. Caro appeared at the door, dressed as the ghost of an early German settler, and made a speech, in verse, welcoming the new immigrants to Pennsylvania. It had been composed by Mr. Amann. Peter Amann dressed up as a girl and flirted cutely. And Otto Leichter’s two sons, who were with us for the vacation, acted a very funny playlet, which they had written themselves.
Nevertheless, gloom wasn’t lacking. Gretl Eberhart told me that Hermann wouldn’t come downstairs, he was sick. She was obviously much upset, and finally admitted that, as a matter of fact, he was drunk. He was drunk because he had just discovered something unpleasant. What? Gretl didn’t want to say.
Later that night, after the party, Gretl and I walked up and down the lanes in the dark, and it all came out. Hermann had gotten the offer of a job for Gretl and himself, looking after boys’ clubs and an infant school at the college settlement on Christian Street, in Philadelphia’s Negro district. When he had told her about it, she had begun to cry, and he had realized that she was so upset because she didn’t want to leave the workshop: she was in love with someone here. “Someone in the group?” I asked. Gretl shook her head. Then she said, “Do you really mean you didn’t know?”
For the moment I was embarrassed, flattered and alarmed; but we soon got used to the situation. This confession altered my relationship with Gretl entirely. I had always liked her, but now we became indecently frank with each other, and thicker than thieves. There was nothing we couldn’t discuss. Not only did Gretl tell me all about her marriage with Hermann—it had already gone wrong, as far as she was concerned, in France, though she’d resolved not to show it and to continue living with him—but she took the lid right off the workshop. I was staggered to find how much had been going on right under my nose. Gretl told me that Tanya Korbett was having a very serious affair with Jurkat: they both had a bad conscience about his wife, but were resolved to get a divorce and marry as soon as she’d arrived safely in the U.S. Stern and Elizabeth Porter had been having a romance, and maybe an affair, for ages. Gretl said Caroline was worried about this, though she didn’t know the half of it. Leah Cadbury and Carl Furtmueller were also getting very fond of each other: developments might be expected soon. And Gretl thought that Rachel Garner’s bad cooking might be due to a love affair, too.
The final touch was put to this Quaker Decameron by Klaus Berger who’d been away for Christmas and now wrote announcing his marriage to a schoolteacher, an American girl he had met last summer at one of the vacation seminars. She was quite presentable looking, too. Caroline was a bit indignant at not having been told before (I wondered what she’d do if she knew all I knew) but also amused and grudgingly admiring. You had to admit that the little runt had taken care of himself better than any of them. At one stroke, he got a wife, solved his citizenship problems and found someone to support him. He must be a hypnotist—with that face!
On Christmas Day, I got a message from Vernon, just arrived in New York. I took the train there to see him. We got very drunk. Vernon wanted me to live with him again: he seemed curiously unaware of everything that had happened in between. The evening ended in a quarrel. I felt rather disgusted with myself, and returned to Haverford next day.
The New Year’s celebrations, also, were a success. They were organized by Carl Furtmueller—which was as much as to say that we needn’t any of us be afraid to enjoy ourselves, if he set the example. We all admired him for this. The group was holding together well, now: Mrs. Furtmueller’s death and the arrival of the Robinsons had provided the ultra-clay. This was our best period. We never quite achieved it again.
1942
January 1. Drove Hermann and Gretl Eberhart over to lunch at the Stonorovs’. He’s an architect who lives in a super-modernistic house beyond Phoenixville, which is absurdly unsuited to its rustic surroundings. Had an argument with a young Quaker who has decided, like so many others, to join the army. His case against pacifism is simply that his parents are pacifists, and that he knows his parents are hypocrites. It makes a lot of sense.
Am embarrassed at being with Hermann and Gretl together. Not because Hermann is mad at me—quite the opposite. According to Gretl, he sentimentally protests that I’m far better than he is, no wonder she loves me, etc. etc. So far, he and I haven’t discussed this business.
Tomorrow, partly because of my persuasion, they are going to live in Philadelphia and start work at the Christian Street Settlement.
January 2. Vernon came for the day, from New York. He was in his most negative mood. He’d arranged to stay the night, but later announced that he must be going home after tea, because Haverford was “too depressing.” Actually, I think he was mad at me because he’d suggested settling in the village and painting—me to support him, of course—and I’d pointed out that this wouldn’t work, unless he was ready to help out at the workshop and make himself generally agreeable. Vernon announced that he wouldn’t be able to stand the refugees for twenty-four hours. He certainly didn’t see them at their best. And Mr. Haas, who never misses anything for want of trying, asked Vernon to send him several different kin
ds of seaweed, if and when he returned to California. As Vernon was getting into the train, I said: “Please remember, every minute you spend sulking and groaning, you’re adding to the sum of misery and hatred in the world and making life more horrible for everybody—yes, and even prolonging the war.” Excellent advice. I must remember it myself.
January 3. With Teddy and Una le Boutilliere to have supper at the Bertrand Russells’ farm. It is tucked away in one of the lonely valleys out beyond Paoli, which so much resemble the Derbyshire Peak District, especially in winter.
(Russell, at that time, was working for the eccentric millionaire [Alfred] Barnes, as a kind of tame philosopher. He had to waste his lectures on a small and pretty stupid group of Barnes’s friends. Not long after this, they quarrelled, and the Russells went back to England.)
There seemed to be a lot of people living in the house. Bertie himself—that monkey-gland lobster in a woolly, toy-sheep wig; Peter Russell; a son of Bertie’s by a former marriage, whose name I forget; one or more small children of Peter’s; a daughter, also by a former marriage; a governess; and Julian Huxley, who is over here for a few weeks on some British propaganda mission. Julian looked very tired; quite an old man. He and Bertie were anxious to hear the latest news of Aldous—that was chiefly why I was invited. Grey Eminence had alarmed them both. “Did he—I mean—er, that is—do you mean to say he actually, er, really—prays?” “And why,” asked Bertie, “does Aldous talk about Ultimate Reality? Surely one kind of reality isn’t any more or less real than another?” I feebly tried to argue, and fell into a number of traps, while Peter protested that I shouldn’t be heckled. We were talking different languages: they spoke theirs with the fluency of natives, I stumbled over mine. We couldn’t communicate at all. Seeing this, they relented. “You mean”—Julian was helping me out, now—“that what Aldous is after is actually some kind of psychological adjustment?” “Well, yes,” I said, “if you like to put it that way: everything’s a psychological adjustment: marriage, for instance, or learning Spanish, or becoming a fascist.” But they only nodded indulgently. “A psychological adjustment—” they murmured to each other, no longer giving me their full attention, “Well, in that case, of course, one quite sees—” The formula had been found. The affair was disposed of, pigeonholed. The slight alarm which had flickered in their eyes—the alarm of two weary, disillusioned men sensing a challenge to their way of life—a way which they know isn’t very good but which seems infinitely preferable to any sort of change—died down; and they returned to the academic shop, the London gossip and the schoolboy dirty stories which they’d been exchanging throughout dinner.
But, just as some more guests were arriving and the evening was about to become purely social, Julian Huxley got me into a corner by the fireplace and asked abruptly, in a low voice, so as not to be overheard: “And you—you do this thing too?” “Yes,” I said, “I do.” “And you believe in it? It really helps you?” “I believe it’s all that really matters,” I told him, and felt ashamed that I had a glass of whisky in my hand. Julian scanned my face—I was touched and almost shocked to see how desperately eager he had become: “You know,” he told me, “you look quite different from when I saw you last. It’s an extraordinary change.”
I like Peter Russell. So do Una and Teddy. No doubt she’s terribly tactless and difficult. She hates America and says so. She likes to be called Lady Russell. She is curiously jealous of Bertie’s fame, and is apt to interrupt and contradict whenever philosophy is discussed: she knows a lot about it, too. But underneath her disagreeable, aggressive mannerisms, she seems extraordinarily kind and decent. Peggy Rodakiewicz once told me how good she has been with Bertie’s grown-up children. It can’t be easy to be married to a man forty years or more older than yourself; even though Bertie is so incredibly vigorous, mentally and physically, for his age. And Peter is a very attractive, sexy woman. Teddy says he’d love to go to bed with her. They flirt a lot.
When we opened the door to go, it was like a theatrical transformation—the garden and the hills were deep, luminous blue-white in the darkness, and the night was full of falling snow. Teddy ditched the car a couple of miles down the lane in a drift, and we’d have been there till morning if a neighbor hadn’t miraculously appeared, towed us out and helped us put the chains on our wheels. The marvellous beauty of the sharp ruby tail-light, surrounded by a pink halo in the whirling snowstorm. Slept at the le Boutillieres’ house.
January 4. Peter and Bertie Russell and the son and daughter picked me up in their car after breakfast. They were driving into Philadelphia, where Bertie was to deliver a lecture, explaining why he supports the war. The son asked me if it was true that I intended to register as a conscientious objector. Peter intervened: “I’m sure you hate talking about it.” I assured her that I don’t. “Bertie does,” she said. I felt very touched.
The red barns in the snow, around Valley Forge.
Mrs. Yarnall’s mouth, when I told her I’d had supper with the Russells, contracted to the size of a small o. “I suppose,” she said very primly, “that their chief topic of conversation is companionate marriage?”
Finished reading A Winter’s Tale—for the first time in my life. Because Wystan sent me a postcard the other day saying it was “his best.”
January 7. To Lael Kelly’s house. (The widow of Tom Kelly, who wrote The Testament of Devotion.) A meeting of Tom Kelly’s group: all Haverford College boys. They are growing up now, and about to leave. They have continued these meetings since his death. I often join them.
(Tom Kelly was on the staff of Haverford College. Everybody regarded him as the white hope of Quakerdom, the future successor to Rufus Jones. One day, not so very long ago, he fell dead of heart failure while washing the dishes. He seems to have been very outspoken and tactless in his criticism of the orthodox Quakers. Gerald often used to talk about him—managing to insinuate that the Joneses had had him poisoned.)
The leader of the group is Phil MacClellan, a big husky footballer and wrestler. He has a perpetual half-smile, rather conceited. He and his friends are so very certain that Kelly gave them the exclusive lowdown on the spiritual life, and that Rufus Jones is an old dope. We bring books with us, sit silent for quite long spells, then read aloud, discuss a little. I quite enjoy it. Wroe Alderson comes too, sometimes. But he’s going to be increasingly busy in Washington: a very important job under Henderson,120 price fixing. He has a bad conscience about this, and keeps trying to reassure himself by telling us it’s purely theoretical work. “That’s all very fine,” I kid him, “you supply the blueprints, and the horrid practical men put them into operation with tear gas and rubber hoses.”
January 9. Gretl came out from Philadelphia with Jeanette. Caroline has arranged that they shall come to us every weekend, so Jeanette can get the country air. Gretl is in despair over Christian Street. She says their rooms are miserably small and dirty, no place for a child, and the nearest park is half an hour’s trolley ride away. Also Hermann is acting up, making scenes, being theatrical and tiresome and tragic. He says he doesn’t understand Gretl. She is false, she’s never loved him, etc. Then he threatens to relieve his feelings in a whorehouse. Go ahead, says Gretl. He tells her she’s heartless.
Stern is living there, too. He manages the bank for the boys’ clubs. The boys’ clubs have very fancy names: one of them is called “Golden Nights.” Their favorite game is “Murder”: they simply switch out the lights and have a free-for-all in the dark.
January 10. Much discussion of the new regulations for the movements of so-called “enemy aliens.” Our group violently resents the title, and no wonder. Ernst Jurkat is particularly bitter. He got mad at Karel Sheldon. That fat tactless fool had said, “What do we care? We’re Czechoslovaks.” Ernst asked him what he’d ever done against the Nazis. There was very nearly a fistfight. Many of the others are lapsing into pessimism. “It’s France all over again,” they say: “The next thing will be the concentration camps.”
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p; And, in fact, if the District Attorney’s rulings are to be literally applied, our German and Austrian members will be confined to a ridiculously small area, in which there is no post office, no drugstore, no movie theater—nothing except the college campus and a residential district with a golf course. But Caroline is determined to protest—if necessary to the D.A. in person. On occasions like this she is at her best and most lovable. She made a speech to the group, assuring them that there was no reason to get rattled, the regulations were certain to be modified. “And if,” she concluded, “we make such a mess of bureaucracy in this country, it’s because we’re not used to it.” She suggested that we shall spend the next day or two exploring the boundaries of our area. On Monday, she’s going into Philadelphia to explain to the D.A.’s office why we must have more room.
(Caroline was entirely successful. The people in the D.A.’s office were charming and sympathetic, and immediately lifted nearly all the restrictions. After this, our group could move freely anywhere in the Philadelphia area. Only if one of them wanted to go to New York, he had to get permission—and this was always granted.)
January 14. Rachel Davis DuBois, whom I haven’t seen since La Verne, lectured at the workshop yesterday. This evening she held a “festival” at the Watsons’. Only three or four of our lot came, including Caro and Martin Gleisner: the rest weren’t interested. There was a party from Pendle Hill and another from Sleighton Farms—including a French, a Spanish and a Japanese girl. And there was a very cute Chinese student from Haverford College. Rachel had her friend and assistant with her—a dancer, whose name I forget. We were all asked if we could remember bits of ritual or old customs connected with New Year’s and Twelfth Night. Then the dancer mimed them. She was terribly arty. Several of the Jews present were offended because she introduced some of their religious ritual: they thought it blasphemous. Afterwards we danced the Virginia Reel, with Martin Gleisner bossing us around and shaking the floor with his stomping. Rebecca Timbres did a Russian peasant dance which was like one of Disney’s comic elephants come to life. The party was quite a lot of fun, but I don’t think it proved anything at all, from Rachel DuBois’ point of view.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 36
