Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Caskey and I got drunk and threw the chamber pot out of the porthole. Later we felt very ashamed of ourselves; especially as he had to use one of the water glasses. The smell of urine gets worse and worse.

  April 14. One is never alone, not for an instant. Our only protection is our language. We have very private conversations in the midst of the crowd in the fumoir. This morning, we saw a whale. Its spouts looked like small bombs bursting on the sea, and the thin cloud of spray afterward is like smoke blowing away in the wind. As it came nearer, you could see its black shining body heaving out of the water.

  Four Senegalese stowaways were caught this morning. A freighter on its way to Dakar was radioed, we stopped, and the boys were transferred in one of the lifeboats. Everybody took photographs. It was unpleasant: not because we gloated but because the general smugness of our lives seemed exposed by this incident. The boys will go to prison. Nearly every voyage some stowaways are discovered. I longed to be a millionaire and pay their passage, first class.

  Our consciences have been relieved in another direction, however. The old man has managed to get another chamber pot. He has never referred to the loss of the first.

  April 17. The couple who have the dog are the only people in the second class who have a cabin to themselves—God only knows what they did to get it. He is the type of baby husband, somewhat peevish. She peels his fruit for him at table. Yesterday I saw the two of them going in to take a bath together; she probably scrubs him.

  Early yesterday morning, we passed the Canaries. I was still asleep; a disappointment. I’d looked forward to seeing Tenerife again. Since Dakar there has been a fairly heavy swell, but it’s calmer right at the moment.

  Last night and the night before, Mike, Fatty, the bearded painter, the son of Bernanos3 and the boy from Tahiti fooled about on the deck, ballet dancing, imitating animals, talking mock Russian. There were complaints. We pulled a rope down, acting the Volga Boatmen.4

  The homely girl with the glasses whom they call La Marquise has gotten herself a beau. He is a very small and somewhat villainous-looking soldier. He sits all day long on deck with his arm around her, occasionally whispering in her ear or feeling her breasts. She is a bit embarrassed, because she keeps catching the eye of one of her former gang: the boys are a bit reproachful and a bit hurt in their masculine vanity—they talk about Love from morning till night, Love with a capital L, Love in poetry, Love in philosophy etc.—and here comes this coarse little character and just grabs her. They pretend much concern that she will lose her honor. She now wears lipstick.

  Never, never again—unless I am escaping from a plague-stricken (and/or a blazing) town—will I travel like this. My privacy has been raped. It will take days for me to be able to think again. I only hope I will get through this voyage without doing something childish. Yesterday I was suddenly furious because the steward always brings fruit to the couple with the dog to compensate them for not liking cheese, and he always omits to bring me any until I ask. So I said very loud: “Does one have to be French?” This produced a painful impression, as it does in anti-Semitic circles when a Jew calls attention to the discrimination against him. I am really deadly bored with myself at present. I’m so spiteful, so touchy, so resentful—and hence so stupid, such dull company. I really must try to pull myself together. Had better retire to my bunk and sleep or read a book.

  This business of the revolt in Colombia is still, as far as I’m concerned, wrapped in mystery. The day we were in Dakar, the local paper carried a report of it which for vagueness might as well have come out of a Kafka novel. Firing had almost ceased, after four days. Most of the center of Bogotá was in ruins. All the documents relative to the Bogotá conference had been destroyed. General Marshall was safe, outside the city, under the protection of the army. The new coalition government had restored order. The conference would be resumed either in Lima or Mexico City. Not one word of real explanation: who had revolted? why? Now our radio bulletin tells us quite blandly that conditions in Bogotá are practically normal and that the conference has been reopened. This radio bulletin, issued by a French news agency, couldn’t be stupider. We are treated to such thrilling items as: “Yesterday M. Vincent Auriol received the Argentine Ambassador.” “The government has made an important pronouncement on the international situation.”5

  This evening, Franco-American relations further deteriorated. Caskey was ordered out of the lobby in front of the purser’s office because he wasn’t a first-class passenger. (Everybody always uses the lobby and anyhow it was empty—this being 11:30 p.m.) When he didn’t understand, the officer who had spoken to him sent for a waiter. Caskey was furious—especially as it later appeared that the officer spoke quite adequate English and could easily have asked him to leave in a polite manner. Caskey yelled insults: “America grand, France très petit … Piss.”6 (Luckily this is the worst word he knows. I shall be careful not to teach him any more till we are safely out of the country.)

  April 19. Yesterday was really quite rough. We skidded sideways over big rollers. The boat rolled like a barrel but didn’t pitch. We neither of us felt sick but the constant physical adjustment makes you tired and sleepy. Lay in my bunk and read Capricornia7 and Boswell. Capricornia disappointed me; it’s very superficial and amateurish, and the author really doesn’t like the natives as much as he pretends, in spite of all his raving against race prejudice.

  Now we are somewhere off the coast of Portugal. Late yesterday, it got much calmer, but now we’re beginning to roll again and Biscay will probably be bad.

  April 20. Biscay; only medium swell so far. The Pole keeps telling us that this is part of France—“We are in France,” he exclaims delightedly. The professor has changed his shirt, for the first time since he came on board. Last night, as always, we got drunk, sitting facing each other like a row of convicts and prison visitors across the two tables in the jammed fumoir. Oh, I am weary of them all—even the nice ones. Mike rambling on about mysticism, the Breton painter Ray Borel talking incessantly about his book, the son of Bernanos making his literary jokes, Fatty getting dressed up to dance in the first class. Steve popping in and out with his face of an unhealthy moon. The Russian touching everyone for small loans.

  Mike’s story of Brazilian touchiness: In the midst of a passionate affair, a man brought flowers to his mistress. She shot him dead—she thought he was trying to pay her. According to Mike, it is absolutely fatal to get the least bit involved with any girl in Rio. In a second, you belong to her—and to her family. If you leave her she’ll stab you. He makes the whole place sound like utter hell. The jealousy, the violence, the fatal inertia. The code of honor and appearances, and the dishonesty underneath, rotting away the foundations of life.

  April 24. We disembarked at Le Havre on Thursday, two days ago, and came straight here, to Paris. This was our last sight of our fellow passengers—I trust; although, actually, they started to seem much more sympathetic as soon as we were off that damned boat. Old Rognoni, his wife and Fatty rejoiced to be in France again. As we passed Rouen Cathedral, everyone stood up to look. “Hideous,” said Caskey, who has already decided he doesn’t like Gothic. There were many traces of the war—small military graveyards, smashed houses, provisional half-rebuilt bridges over which the train moved cautiously. The countryside was very green—with that light uncanny greenness of northern spring—and thick with fruit blossom. Caskey said he had expected it to be quainter. I suppose he expected sabots and peasant costume.

  From the Gare Saint Lazare we drove straight to the Hotel Voltaire—nostalgic for me because of so many visits, with Wystan, Heinz, Johnny Andrews—but it was being redecorated. After several tries, we landed up in the Hotel d’Isly on the rue Jacob, which is clean, quiet and cheap.

  Round to see Denny that same evening, at his apartment on the rue du Bac. It is a huge shabby place, with traces of the splendor of his pre-1939 period, in which he leads a nocturnal Proustian life with the tattered curtains always drawn. He lies most of
the day in bed, with Trotsky8 and the pipe at his side, reading and dozing, often eating nothing but a plate of cooked cereal. When he can’t afford opium, he drinks a kind of tea made of the dross, which gives him stomach cramps. He is as pale as a corpse, but quite unchanged, slim as ever, and with a sort of waxen beauty. He did not seem at all vague or stupefied, as Harris had told us—and he welcomed us both warmly. He is liable to be thrown out of the apartment before long, and doesn’t know where he’ll go.

  Caskey and I went on to the place Pigalle, where I left him, as he had decided that he wanted to talk to some very old Toulouse-Lautrec whores. He found them all right, and didn’t return till midday yesterday, much battered, having woken that morning to find himself in a police station with all his traveler’s checks stolen and owing a taxi driver one hundred francs for the fare.

  Paris seems hardly to have changed at all. It is wonderfully beautiful in its outward aspect—the chestnut trees all in blossom, the buildings elegantly shabby. The food in the restaurants is as good as ever, but very expensive. The Louvre has been thoroughly tidied up, the junk hidden away and the good pictures spaced out and properly hung, so that the place no longer looks like the residence of a megalomaniac millionaire collector who bought everything he could lay hands on. But Caskey doesn’t really like it. He finds it lacking in character. I know what he means—there is a displeasing overall slickness in the effect, rather like the fashion photographs in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Maybe the whole place has just been overpublicized.

  April 27. Two days ago, while Caskey and I were sitting in the Deux Magots, up came a young man and introduced himself as Gore Vidal. Since then, we’ve seen a good deal of him—two evenings at dinner and today an expedition to Versailles. He’s a big husky boy with fair wavy hair and a funny, rather attractive face—sometimes he reminds me of a teddy bear, sometimes of a duck. Caskey says he’s typical American prep school. His conversation is all about Love, which he doesn’t believe in—or rather, he believes it’s Tragic. He talks about “peeing machines” and “mice,” and says things like, “We looked at each other and our tails started to wag.” He asks questions like, “What did Frederick the Great do in bed?” But he’s also a pretty shrewd operator—or would like to be. He wanted advice on “how to manage my career.” He is very jealous of Truman [Capote], but determined not to quarrel with him because he feels that when a group of writers sticks together it’s better business for all of them. (He drew this moral from the Auden-Spender-Day Lewis-MacNeice-Isherwood gang, he says.) He has written enough books already to see him through to 1952. What I respect about him is his courage. I do think he has that—though it is mingled, as in many much greater heroes, with a desire for self-advertisement.

  Last night, while we were all three having dinner, a man at the next table sent a note over to us, saying that he’d heard our conversation and might he come and talk—he had something of interest to tell us. He turned out to be a slightly crazy Englishman who announced that he’d been “hunting communists up and down the Limpopo.”

  Denny treats Gore with the slightly sarcastic tolerance of an elder uncle. He let us all take puffs at the pipe, scolding us for our awkwardness and saying we should never make real smokers. It tasted like incense and had no apparent effect whatsoever.

  Versailles was rather a disappointment—too big and barracklike, despite the decorations and statues. But the woods were wonderful. Marie Antoinette’s sham cottages were the first film sets. After all this time they still look fakey and new.

  April 28. Yesterday evening, while we were sitting at the Flore, we saw Chester [Kallman]. We didn’t even know he and Wystan were in Paris, and this was really a piece of luck, because they were only stopping the night and leaving today for Florence. Later, they are going down to Naples. They plan to see all available operas during the summer. Chester and Wystan have already finished the libretto of The Rake’s Progress and now Stravinsky is writing the music. Wystan insists that Chester did a good half of the work, and that you can’t possibly tell where the joins come.

  I get to like Chester much more as he grows older. He must be around thirty now, and he looks all of that, with stooped shoulders and big pouches under his eyes. Indeed, he is getting to look more and more like Wystan. He is very funny, and so anxious to be friendly that it is quite touching. We all got a bit high; and Chester said to me: “I feel at last that you really don’t disapprove of me.”

  As for Wystan, he’s quite middle-aged, with a thick waist and such a sad anxiously lined face. We sat together this morning on the boulevard in the sunshine, and suddenly it was like a scene from Chekhov. I thought: “Here we are, just two old bags—and only a moment ago, it seems, we were boys, talking about our careers. Like Truman and Gore. How sad.” Wystan still fusses and rags anxiously at Chester, and screws up his eyebrows when he fears that Chester will say or do something tiresome or upsetting to his plans. Chester teases him, of course. But, watching them, you feel: “They’re together, now, till the end.”

  Denny joined us for cocktails at the Ritz—like Dorian Gray emerging from the tomb—death-pale and very slim in his dark elegant suit, with black hat and umbrella. He looks like the Necropolitan ambassador.

  May 1. Yesterday, we crossed to England on the Golden Arrow. It was a bad arrival: France in sunshine, Dover cliffs veiled in rain, no reservation at the Regent Palace, so we had to spend the night in an unsavory annex of the Grosvenor Hotel. We went to see Eric [Falk] in his rooms in the Temple. He is really one of the most human, decent people I know: there is real goodness in his face. I love the way he talks, getting terrifically excited about some play or movie: “You haven’t seen it? Oh, but my dear man … Well … It’s absolutely stupendous … If ever you see it’s on anywhere, just drop everything and make a beeline for it. …”

  Today we have moved to Egerton Crescent (John [Lehmann]’s still away in the states) at Alexis [Rassine]’s invitation. The crescent has been repainted since I was here last year; in fact all this part of Kensington has been spruced up a lot. Alexis is as gracious as ever, wearing his honors with perfect dignity. I don’t think he cares for anything except the ballet, and working in the back garden, which he has already made much prettier than any of the neighbors’. He is an odd character, so very self-contained, so adult in a way which is curiously feminine without being in the least effeminate. He looks forward to coming to New York next year and buying “everything in the shops.”

  May 8. Yesterday, as John is coming home today from the U.S., we moved to the Tudor Court Hotel—a stuffy expensive place originally inhabited by old ladies, where the staff is cruelly overworked and the service is very bad in consequence. We have seen all sorts of people—Jacky [Hewit], fatter than ever, who has been in Pakistan, Cyril [Connolly], Peter Watson, Edward [Upward], Brian [Howard], Sam [Langford], Morgan [Forster], Keith Vaughan, John Minton, and Benjy [Britten], looking mortally weary and beset with financial troubles for his opera company. Caskey has decided that London is far more interesting than Paris, and that it is full of lesbians. (We certainly have noticed a very large number of them in the streets.)

  Last night, there was a big party at the new offices of Horizon in Bedford Square. Nothing but champagne was served—about one hundred bottles—of which Caskey and I got our full share. Met Desmond MacCarthy9 and Arthur Waley.10 MacCarthy was interested in the Gita. Waley told me that the Chinese translator of Prater Violet, Mr. Pien Chihlin, is in England and wants to meet me. William Plomer was imperturbable and funny, as always. The man I would most like to be with in an air raid. Lucian Freud11 arrived with a famous Evelyn Waugh character named Scotty Wilson,12 and adroitly left him on our hands—he hadn’t been invited, but, “Dear Lucian is so vague.” Peter Watson helped us cart him around north London in a taxi, maudlin drunk and occasionally vomiting, but refusing to give us his address. We searched his coat and found an identity card with several addresses, all of which were out of date. Finally we took him to a police station, where
the sergeant sympathetically but firmly insisted on the truth. I think Scotty had been ashamed because it was in a very poor street. He is a touching character, a drunken painter, who has been victimized, I suspect, by heartless snobs who exploit him for laughs. Later, Brian joined us and we ate supper. Brian and I made a drunken nuisance of ourselves trying to remember the A. E. Housman poem which begins: “Crossing alone the nighted ferry.”13 After about two hours, we succeeded.

  May 10. Saturday evening, two nights ago, we went to the ballet. Alexis danced in Les Patineurs and The Rake’s Progress. Technically, he is excellent, but one doesn’t feel much theatrical presence. He is satirically elfin. Probably he needs a larger part—I’d like to see him in Giselle. The Rake’s Progress is really first-class: I never saw the horror of the eighteenth century so well captured and conveyed on the stage. Again and again, Hogarth’s line seemed actually to have been animated, translated into movement. Robert Helpmann is perfect, especially in the whorehouse and the madhouse scenes. His death, with that last convulsion, was one of those effects which succeed so brilliantly because they are on the extreme verge of being funny.14

  Supper last night with Henry Yorke (“Henry Green”) and his wife. I met him at the Horizon party. He came up to me and said: “Don’t suppose you remember me. My name’s Green. I write.” He is really very nice and so much fun; and so is she. They were very pleased because Caskey told them their American nightclub records were valuable. Yorke is really an extraordinary character. He is the typical businessman, with a dash of the Old Etonian. He loves football matches and blondes. He poses as an amateur—a “Sunday writer.” He does a lot of business with the Russians and has many stories of their cagey mentality. (At a dinner, he met a Mr. Z., member of a Soviet trade delegation. Yorke told funny stories, which an interpreter translated into Russian. Mr. Z., as soon as the jokes had been translated, laughed until he coughed and shed tears holding his sides. Some days later, Yorke met another Russian and complimented him on his English. “Ah,” said the Russian, “that is nothing. We all wish we could speak as perfectly as Mr. Z.”)