Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  We have just heard that Otto Leichter’s wife died in the Austrian concentration camp, two months ago. Caroline left for New York today, to see him and the boys.

  April 29. Not far from here is a J.P. who sells marriage licences and calls his house “Wits’ End.”

  Mr. Yarnall frequently sees hands and figures outlined by the folds of the curtains, the clothes hanging in the closet, the shadows cast by the streetlamp. This is really a functioning of his artistic capacity: he used to paint. He isn’t exactly afraid of them, but he doesn’t altogether like them, either. This evening he detected, amidst the sofa cushions, the face of a one-eyed Negress wearing a white hat and grinning at him. These fancies make Mrs. Yarnall humorously impatient, because she has to keep moving things to dispel them. Mr. Yarnall tells me about them with one eye warily on her, like a little boy naughtily alluding to a subject Nanny has forbidden.

  April 30. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the AFSC. We all went over to Swarthmore, with box suppers. There were to have been movies of the AFSC work in Russia, but nobody had bothered to find out (a) whether the Meeting House could be sufficiently darkened, and (b) whether the projector was strong enough for a full-sized screen. The answer to both these questions was found to be in the negative, so the movies were cancelled. Rufus Jones spoke, and Clarence Pickett, and others. Everybody knew everybody. It was noisy and friendly, with lots to eat—like the poultry yard on a prosperous farm.

  May 1. Leah Cadbury, reading Shakespeare with Mr. Schindler the other day, came on a word she wasn’t sure how to pronounce, because she’d never heard it spoken. She thought it was something like “whurre.” Today, however, she came back beaming to Mr. Schindler and announced: “I’ve made enquiries and I find I was wrong … It’s ‘whore.’”

  Rachel Garner has announced definitely that she’s going to be married at the beginning of June, to a young minister of her church. Caroline sheds more tears and is reproachful, because she feels Rachel is deserting her before the workshop closes. Caroline is always being “deserted.” She now talks a great deal about Otto Leichter, and it’s all too apparent what’s going on in her mind. But Gretl (who came out today) tells me that Otto already has a girlfriend, quite young and attractive. Gretl also says that Stern and Elizabeth are seeing more and more of each other, and that Stern is beginning to talk about marriage.

  May 2. With the group to Valley Forge, to view the notorious dogwood. Caroline gave us a nature lesson, pointing out the tulip poplar, which she says is called “the queen of the American forests,” the hickory, the judas.

  Edward Newton, the late bibliophile, in one of his books appeals to the reader to visit his grave at the chapel in Valley Forge and whisper the latest prices of rare editions into the ground. Mr. Jacoby announces that he actually did this, today. “But I didn’t mention the price that was paid for his First Folio Shakespeare. Mr. Newton would have been so disappointed.”

  May 3. Carved in the wall of the Meeting House, near my usual seat, is a heart, with the initials R.D.B., J.L.R.

  After Meeting, one of the neighbors, Dr. Wilson, introduced me to an elderly gentleman who has the job of inspecting any cargo of birds or animals which arrives at the port of Philadelphia. His last assignment was a thousand monkeys from South Africa. He is very proud of his new harbor permit, issued since the war began, with his photograph and fingerprints. An Ibsen character.

  Elizabeth and Ruth, after dark, destroying the nests of tent caterpillars in the big apple tree with a kerosene flare at the end of a long bamboo pole.

  May 6. The sweet gum tree in Mrs. Williams’s garden. The azaleas in bloom, making a background for the American flag: the clash of reds gives you a strange, almost insane feeling; rajasic.

  Caroline’s use of the word “difficulty”—to denote sickness. “While in Cuba, she had some subtropical difficulty.” Her expressions: “Hot as hinges” (i.e. the hinges of the gates of hell), “Trig” (tidy, shipshape, in order), “A double distilled duck fit” (state of hysterical collapse), “Serving Joseph John’s” (serving extra good food which is left over from a big banquet or celebration: this because, when Joseph John Gurney, the brother of Elizabeth Fry, came to the U.S., he was entertained so lavishly that every Quaker household had enough left over to eat for weeks after his visit).

  May 8. The neighbors are already “quilting” for Leah and Carl. Before a wedding, quilting parties are organized at the Meeting House, to make a quilt for the bride. Eight to ten ladies can work on a quilt simultaneously. They bring a box lunch and take turns. It is quite a social event.

  Remark from a speech made at a ladies’ luncheon, quoted by Mrs. Yarnall: “As for old women, you never can tell when they’re going to die. They’re like stewed owls—kind of tough.”

  Douglas Steere lectured to us on Quakerism, this evening. Talking about Quakerism and the arts: “Those old Philadelphia Quakers—most of them can’t carry a tune in a bag.” In 1880, they seriously considered putting Pliny Chase out of Meeting, because he had a piano in his house.

  Quaker expressions: “I have a stop in my mind about this.” “Friends, I am not easy for this to go forward.”

  He also spoke about the Quaker theory of meditation: contact with the Inner Light. “The Quakers,” said Steere, “have only one dogma: God is available.” Of course, the connection between this and Vedanta is obvious. To hear what he’d say, I asked him, “Does a Quaker necessarily have to be a Christian?” Steere looked very sly and mysterious: I think he realized what I was driving at. “Well,” he answered, after a moment’s hesitation, “perhaps not necessarily. No.”

  May 9. To stay with John Judkyn and Dallas Pratt at their home, Brandywine Farm, out beyond Paoli. Judkyn is English. His friend is an American doctor. Judkyn interests me because he has become a Quaker without giving up his urban chic, upper-middle-class tastes: he is still the kind of elegant, well-tailored youngish man you meet at New York cocktail parties. The Quakes are puzzled by him, no doubt, and by Pratt, but they accept them because Pratt is a doctor and Judkyn is very efficient at organizing relief work. Nevertheless they don’t fit in at all. They are still really outsiders. Socially, Judkyn would only make sense as a Catholic.

  Their dining room is decorated with early nineteenth-century French wallpaper, bought for a stiff price at a New York auction: John and Dallas have a standing argument, because Dallas insisted on papering the room with the pineapple frieze upside down. Their court cupboard. Their Crown Derby. Their pseudo-Chinese chairs from the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.

  May 10. Went over to Caln, where a small group, mostly young married couples, have started holding meetings in the grounds of the deserted Meeting House: it hasn’t been used in years. The place was littered with picnickers’ whisky bottles, soiled handkerchiefs, girls’ panties. We collected them before sitting down to our outdoor meeting, on rugs, and along the burying-ground wall. A member of the group had died, only a week or so before. One boy made a speech about him. It was very moving; with the atmosphere, somehow, of pioneer America.

  May 15. The snowballs are in bloom. Tent caterpillars have stripped two small trees in our garden quite bare; now they are crawling all over the ground. The lane is littered with dry winged seeds, maple keys.

  Christopher Sharman, an English Quaker on his way home from working with the Friends Ambulance Unit in China, lectured at the Meeting House. He has fair curly baa-lamb hair and a charming gay silly laugh: just my idea of a real hero. John Rich is organizing an American Friends Unit to go to China, also. I’ve volunteered.

  (This fell through, because John Rich finally said they wanted only doctors or trained automobile mechanics. However, Bill Rahill got accepted, to my enormous disgust, by means of charm and string pulling.)

  May 19. Went into Philadelphia with Caroline, to hear paunchy Arthur Dunham read his report on the refugee section of the AFSC. The workshop is to be discontinued; partly for financial reasons, partly because no more refugees will be coming
over, partly because Caroline isn’t in very good odor at 20 South 12th Street. She, I and the rest of the staff were all complimented off the stage with much flowery jargon. Hertha Kraus, who has made many enemies by her high-handed energy, is also being politely gotten rid of—to write a book. Gosh, they’re demure and cunning—these Quakes. Specimen of Dunham social-work jargon: “There is an actual decrease in the migration case load.”

  When Mr. Seidemann is through drying the dishes after breakfast, he invariably exclaims, “Erledigt die Sache!” And “Das ist der Rest vom Schuetzenfest!”129

  May 21. Lunched with Teddy le Boutilliere to say goodbye. He’s off to Libya very soon, now.

  The peonies are in bloom. We went over to Sleighton Farms for the May Festival. It’s a reform school for girls, run on modern lines, without guards or bars, and only mildly dreary. The girls danced folk dances; the Durham Reel, Wind Mill, Fandango, the Hatter, Jarabe Tapatio. By this time, I know half Quakerdom, and am perpetually bowing and grinning and shaking hands, like any curate at a tea party, perspiring with goodwill. When Caroline and I go out together, we are exactly like an old respectable married couple: we never monopolize each other publicly, but now and then we meet in the crowd and exchange critical asides about the other guests. If I were fifteen years older, I should be in serious danger. As it is, I’m told by Rachel that Caroline vowed to see me married before the workshop closed, and is now becoming sadly disappointed.

  May 24. Now that the warm weather has come, the ladies at the Meeting House use leaf-shaped fans of cardboard or basketwork. The lady who sits in front of me has a fan with a picture of Frances E. Willard, the nineteenth-century temperance crusader. I asked the Yarnalls about her, and Mrs. Yarnall, sensing my opposition, said very sweetly and almost apologetically, “You see, Chris, in those days the whisky in this country was very bad quality.”

  May 28. We all went over to Martin’s Dam and swam and had lunch under the trees. Helene Wilson had arranged a really charming table decoration—all the paper cups and napkins in shades of green, to blend with the leaves and the shadows. When we were all seated, it was like living in a painting by Renoir.

  Peter Amann came back last Monday. He has grown enormously, and turned from a child into a big husky youth, very strong for his age. The other day we were wrestling on the lawn. When I finally threw him, Mr. Jacoby exclaimed, “That’s a good omen! England has beaten Austria!” How typical of their mentality that remark is!

  May 30. Yesterday, I came up to New York for the night and stayed at the Kirsteins’ apartment. Fidelma and Pete Martinez were there: Lincoln is away in South America on a cultural government mission, picture buying mixed with politics. Pete and I got very drunk and had a wonderful time.

  Lunch with Vernon. He now plans to go into the Holy Cross Monastery, up the Hudson. Eugene Exman arranged it. I certainly hope he can make a go of it. The Holy Cross people are Anglicans. They sound quite sensible. They have a psychologist to examine applicants and discourage cranks and freaks. Certainly, Vernon is very unhappy and unsettled in his present state. He could live with his mother, but doesn’t get along with her new husband. Two or three times, he has tried to join the Merchant Marine, but there are difficulties—probably of his own making; he forgets to fill out some form, or oversleeps and misses the boat. He talks aggressively about art, and snubs people at parties, but he doesn’t do much actual painting. As he says himself, he needs discipline.

  June 1. John Rich’s birthday party. He is such a timid-looking, pop-eyed little thing, but the rabbit has teeth. Though he’s a pacifist, he gets wildly excited at any military success of the Allies, and he shoots and fishes “for sport.”

  We had a practice blackout. (A lot of people seem to believe that this part of Pennsylvania, with all its war plants, is in real danger of air attack.) I walked down the road. Mr. Severinghaus, who is chief air-raid warden, saw me and called out jocularly, “Don’t lose your nerve, Isherwood! Don’t stampede!” Then René Blanc-Roos came round for me in his car and we drove back to his apartment. Esther was there, and a man I didn’t know. We were introduced to each other in the dark and sat talking for an hour before the blackout was over and the lights could be switched on. I kept trying to guess what he’d look like, from the tones of his voice, which sounded interesting. I was quite wrong. A good situation for a story.

  June 11. Mrs. Rich had a long talk with me about her children. She feels she hasn’t been a good mother to them. What should she do? Told her to be a good mother.

  June 13. Day of the Furtmueller-Cadbury wedding. In the morning, sitting outside on the porch, I heard Caroline say to Mrs. Levy, “Mrs. Levy—that’s a thing which it’s absolutely impossible to say in America. It just couldn’t, under any conceivable circumstances, be said.” Later, I found that Caroline’s dog Pete (whom we often refer to as “Peter Norment”) had made a mess under the piano. Mrs. Levy had asked Caroline quite seriously if someone had put it there “to bring luck.” This certainly gives you a glimpse of her background. It’s a little bit frightening, because it reveals certain basic assumptions she must have about life: something primitive, witchlike. I’ve had this feeling about Mrs. Levy before. For instance, in her weird way she is an exhibitionist. She’ll undress and change her clothes behind the thin screen door while I’m giving Mr. Levy a lesson on the balcony of their room. She must know perfectly well that I can see her. They are queerly dirty, furtive, greedy little animals, both of them. But I don’t dislike them. Mr. Levy has a rather sympathetic habit of making very bad puns.

  By lunchtime, the house was full of arrivals. Many of last year’s group, and some members of an earlier group (before my time) including Mr. Adler, the man who shot the Austrian prime minister Stürgkh, during the last war:130 he is shock-headed, gentle and serious—not unlike Einstein. Jeanette, as usual, dominated the party. Her walking is getting much better.

  The latest bit of gossip among the Haverford ladies is that Leah has Jewish blood: this is supposed to explain her insanity in marrying an elderly penniless refugee.

  The wedding was in the Meeting House, shortly after lunch. John Rich and I were the ushers. We had to bring Leah and Carl the little table on which lay the marriage certificate, with blotting paper and pen. Carl announced his intention very slowly and carefully; Leah was very decisive, perhaps a shade defiant. Afterwards, we all signed our names. I wore René’s best jacket and white flannel pants.

  Our reception at the workshop was planned for five o’clock. I had bought some bottles of wine, and these were smuggled up to the Amanns’ room, as we couldn’t have any drink downstairs. Chosen friends were asked to come up and partake. There wasn’t enough—but Leah and Peter Amann both got high—Leah noticeably so. She danced about among the guests, laughingly wildly and kept sidling up to me and whispering, “Oh, Christopher—I feel so giddy!” However, nobody noticed, except perhaps Rufus Jones, who pardons all. Later, we drove the bridal pair down to Bryn Mawr station: they were to spend the first night in Philadelphia. (I didn’t envy them, it was stifling hot.) We arrived very late, and there was much baggage to register through, but Leah was superbly calm. She asked the ticket collector to have the train wait—and it did, for nearly ten minutes. The passengers all hung out of the windows to see what was the matter, and our send-off couldn’t have been more public.

  June 17. Today, I sent off form 47 to the draft board, applying for 4-E classification as a conscientious objector. When you write these things down for official consumption, they sound horribly priggish and false—because you are presenting yourself as a strictly logical, rational human being with “principles,” a “philosophy of life” etc. Whereas I, personally, am much more like a horse which suddenly stops and says, “No. That’s going too far. From that pond I won’t drink.” I have reasons, of course, and a philosophy. I can explain them—quite lucidly, if necessary. But how dry and cold they would be without the personal factor behind them: the simple equation which no draft board could ever underst
and. Heinz is in the Nazi army. I wouldn’t kill Heinz. Therefore I have no right to kill anybody.

  Everything else, as far as I’m concerned, is just talk. Perfectly sincere, as far as it goes, but theoretical. Of course, there are a dozen ways in which you can come to the pacifist decision. And I don’t doubt that there are many people who honestly arrive at it on general principles: they simply know that it is wrong for them to kill. But I have never been able to grasp any idea except through a person. For me, Vedanta is primarily the Swami and Gerald. I once shocked a communist friend by admitting that I should only understand Marxism if I’d met Marx. Tolstoy really says the same thing in A Confession, when he describes the public execution he saw in Paris: “When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I.”131

  June 19. Lunch with Teddy le Boutilliere, who’s back here again. The boat in which he was sailing for Africa got torpedoed, and he was in a lifeboat for five days before they were picked up. His feet were badly sunburnt but they’re getting better now. He’ll sail again soon.

  I asked him how he felt when the ship was hit. His only thought was God damn that bastard Stimson132—because Stimson made a speech only a day or two previously, declaring that the Atlantic was now free of Nazi U-boats.

  The Briens gave a concert at the workshop—he accompanying her on the piano. What truly nice people they are! Brien sang a few songs, too: he later described this as “strange interlude.”

  June 23. The Levys left yesterday; Jacoby left today. It is amazing that these people, who have been chased from country to country, are still overburdened with baggage. Somebody else always has to carry it. Just as the train was starting, Jacoby’s ninth bag burst open, covering us with talcum powder and showering the station steps with toilet articles. His flabbiness made me horribly sadistic.