Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  2. Tallulah met a young man at a party who wanted to go to bed with her. Unwilling to turn him down but feeling that maybe she’d find something better later, she gave him her latch key and said: “I have to go on to another party, darling; but you go back to my place, and if I’m not home by two o’clock, just start without me.”

  Eddie has what I call “a treasure-hunt complex.” He contrives to leave pairs of shoes, valuable books, etc., lying around half-hidden in unlikely corners of your house—always wrapped in tissue paper. If you don’t find them in time and return them, he later accuses you of stealing them. He is constantly being stolen from.

  May 28. A week ago, on the 21st, I left Laguna and came here to the foundation.66 I moved because life with Billy had become unbearable. It doesn’t matter just how, or why; and it is certainly no use passing moral judgments.

  I am very unhappy, of course. And the danger is that I’ll waste my time flapping around in a state of feverish disturbance. Part of me is still living with Billy—and all Speed’s plans for me, for my “success,” are no consolation; though he’s a good boy and really generous and affectionate. It’s wonderful, of course, that Johnnie [van Druten] is doing Sally Bowles, and that there are prospects of selling The Vacant Room; but I am nevertheless worried and scared. It seems as if I’m completely cold on my novel. I feel an utter lack of interest in it. But it seems quite clear that I must go on with it and try to find some solution. I will never get any place by despairing and wringing my hands. Stop flapping, old hen. Sit down on the nest and lay your eggs.

  July 3. I am writing this from—of all unlikely places—room 839 of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Johnnie asked me to stay the night here as his guest, so we could make an early start down to Trabuco this morning. He, Starcke and I are going there for the puja and dedication of Vivekananda’s statue (done by Malvina Hoffman) tomorrow.

  It’s just on 7:00 a.m.—grey and cold. There’s a big view from my window, way out over the south part of the city to the hills. It is surprising, how many trees you can see—almost as if the town were in a wood.

  Am writing this—just putting down any old thing—to test myself. Ten days ago, I gave up smoking; and now, with my actual nicotine disintoxication well advanced, I’m up against the same old problem: can I write—I mean create—without getting the jitters? I’m scared of this—because last time I quit I ran into what seemed a hopeless block—I had to get the article on Klaus Mann finished, and I just couldn’t. So I restarted smoking, and it came like magic. Now I have the “What Vedanta Means to Me”67 and the Patanjali to do—and I’m way behind the schedule, and this bothers me.

  Increasing worry about Billy. Where is he? Why hasn’t he written? What is going to become of the house? Well—we shall have to wait and see.

  I’m really very grateful about the smoking—this includes release from “making faces” and other nervous tricks—and I do hope I’ll be able to go through with it.

  Saw Cocteau’s Orpheus, last night. (Also his Beauty and the Beast last week.)68 Much moved and impressed by both.

  August 22. Still off smoking and other manifestations of tension. That’s something. The novel goes very slowly, but I do see my way through it. No news yet from Johnnie about casting Sally Bowles. He gets back with Starcke from England, France and Germany, today. Catherine [Caskey], Bill’s mother, is staying with us.69 This isn’t easy to take. I hope she leaves before I’m rude or unkind to her. She and Bill are spending the day in Los Angeles.

  Today I had lunch at Trabuco. Swami urged me, more strongly than ever before, to go up and live there. He said: “It must happen. I’ve wanted it and prayed for it so much.” I answered evasively, as usual.

  Gerald Heard and Chris [Wood] came up later; and I returned with them to Laguna and had tea. Asked Gerald what he thought I should do about Trabuco. He said without hesitation that I should obey Swami and go to live there. He said that he knew Swami was “deeply disturbed” about me; and that he was disturbed himself. If I didn’t do as Swami told me, something terrible might happen to me. I asked—what? And Gerald said that I might lose my faith entirely and cease to believe that Vedanta was true. He also told me that he thought I was being followed by something that was trying to possess me. I answered that I felt Ramakrishna would surely protect me from anything of that kind. He agreed.

  I must admit that I’m suddenly much disturbed and concerned. It is so terribly hard to know what’s best to do. On the one hand, it is evident to me that I’ve passed through an acute phase of alienation from the grace of God—the last three years have been pretty bad, with occasional very bad spots, like that dreadful party on May 20, when I decided to go to the foundation.70 I can’t find any answer to the proposition that man’s aim here is to know the Atman. I have to admit that I’m not meditating properly—hardly at all—in this house, and that I would do far more at Trabuco. But, on the other hand, Trabuco is what I shrink from. I dread the boredom of the place and the isolation. I shouldn’t be a good companion for the “boys.” I remember all the difficulties of my life at Ivar Avenue. Could I possibly go through with it?

  Suppose I don’t go to Trabuco? What are the alternatives?

  (i) Continued life with Bill.

  Possible, provided I can see Bill sub specie aeternitatis, cease to feel possessive toward him, develop a positive spiritual life and cut out this drinking, sex, bar lounging, etc. etc. A very very big if. In the event of my failure, there is nothing to look forward to but more frustration, guilt and fairly frequent outbursts of hate and mutual opposition of wills.

  (ii) Life with Jim (now back from Arizona).

  A better idea in some ways. But he doesn’t really want it. He fears being tied down. There would be other people in his life, and scenes about them. The very real and strong affection between us is better left as it is and fed on frequent meetings.

  (iii) Life with Speed.

  Not to be considered seriously—though he’s a sweet, intelligent boy, and he understands me pretty well and likes me, I believe.

  (iv) Life with some old friend or group of friends—Peggy? Beesleys? Chris Wood? Jo and Ben? Evelyn Caldwell and Ed Hooker, her new husband? The Froms?71 Wystan? Lincoln? All these suggestions have grave objections; and, in general, I’m afraid life with any of them would lead to loneliness, isolation, etc.

  Well, I must think about it all very seriously and pray for a sign. I do still firmly believe in the power and grace of the guru. I know that he can give me strength if I truly want it. And I don’t believe that he ever will, or can, desert me.

  Gerald is still much excited about the flying saucers.72 He now allows that there may be man-sized creatures in them, because he thinks they move within their own magnetic field and therefore aren’t subject to the pull of gravity which would tear apart the bodies of airmen making such turns in ordinary planes. He says, “Liberation is my vocation. The saucers are my avocation.”

  9:30 p.m. Dodie just called. She heard from Johnnie in New York. He is still determined to go ahead with Sally Bowles.

  August 23. This morning, on a sudden impulse, I drove to Trabuco and saw Swami and talked to him about the possibility of coming to live up there, or at Ivar Avenue. I was careful not to commit myself, but of course Swami takes it for granted I’m coming. He told me that both Gerald and Aldous had come to him and told him things about the way I was living and asked him to remonstrate with me. So Swami had answered: “Why don’t you pray for him?”

  August 29. Catherine left this morning, for Kentucky

  I got back yesterday from a weekend in Los Angeles, during which Jim definitely offered to live with me. I said no—and I’m glad I did; and he later said I was right.

  What I now dimly begin to see is that there must be no more categorical relationships. I believe that’s what went wrong with Bill and me, and Ivar Avenue and me. Trying to fix a situation and ensure security by involving yourself, is no good. No good saying: “Now I’m married” or “Now I’m a monk
”—and therefore I’m committed. It is simply weakness to talk that way.

  Memories of the weekend:

  Speed saying, “My screams will bring the Jews.”

  Aldous saying, “Peggy thinks she’s St. Jeanne de Chantal.”73

  Frank [Taylor] and Van [Varner]’s great farewell scene.

  August 30. When I woke this morning, I simply couldn’t figure out how old I was—I thought, about nineteen or twenty. It was a shock, and yet rather farcical to realize that I’m forty-seven. I’m afraid I think too much about my age, right now. It is disconcerting to see this body getting so ugly.

  An appalling confession: during the past six years, I’ve very very very seldom prayed for Bill.

  Without some awareness of God or some movement of the will toward him, everything is madness and nonsense. It’s far better to feel alienated from God than to feel nothing. I shrink from “the spiritual life” because I immediately visualize the circumstances which usually surround it—the “seeking” women coming round to ask questions after lectures, the pujas, the dreadfully harmless table humor. All this is aesthetic snobbery—and unnecessary. If you don’t like gymnasiums don’t go to them: you can exercise anywhere. Yes—but mind you do exercise.

  September 14. On the eve of great changes—I hope.

  No word yet about the play. If that falls in the water, I won’t quite know where to turn; but, in a sense, it doesn’t terribly matter because something will happen.

  Aldous, much better, and playing happily as a child with his book about nymphomaniac nuns,74 advises me never to travel without Terramycin tablets, and maybe some Chloromycetin as well—just in case the Terramycin leaves some bugs alive. Iris Tree recommends Pangamityn, which is made of rice polish. Jo Lathwood, who has just been very sick, says they’re all junk. Nowadays, no one has any known disease: you simply pick up the fashionable bug (a different one each year) and attack it with a miracle drug. You run high fever, have dysentery, wish you were dead, don’t die.

  Projects before leaving for New York.

  Finish part one (first three chapters) of novel.

  Finish book three of Patanjali, and translate a Sanskrit prayer Swami gave me.

  Review The House of Breath and The Dog Star75 for The Observer.

  That’s an awful lot of work. I just might be able to do it.

  September 22. Sad as mud, stuck out here at the foundation while Bill entertains the U.S. Marine Corps, plus Jim [Charlton] and Don Pfeiffer, the fat boy who looks like Bill Harris. No news from New York about the play.

  But, though sad, I’m sort of elated because at last I have been forced to a decision. I cannot possibly go on living with Bill. As long as I do so, he is forced to behave in the way he does: there is a head-on clash of wills. We have to separate—certainly for six months or a year; almost certainly for always.

  So now it’s up to me to get on with my life.

  Jim said, the other evening, “I want to be lucky and carefree and gay.” This statement depressed me profoundly, because it is the kind of thing that is only said by the weak, the hopelessly hopelessly weak.

  November 8. Anniversary of my initiation by Prabhavananda in 1940 and my getting my citizenship in 1946 is also, it seems, to have a third kind of memorableness in my life—tonight, here in Hartford, Connecticut, we open I Am a Camera. I’m not particularly excited by the event itself. This isn’t my own child.76 But it certainly is a milestone. Here I am, in this gloomy New England town; and there are Billy and Jim out there on the Coast. Bill is getting ready to leave for San Francisco and ship out with Harold [Fairbanks]. Jim may be going to Japan. I seem headed for England.

  Mannish Gert Macy77 with her poodle, Scottish Monica McCall,78 Johnnie the spoiled but hard working and sometimes wonderful pussycat, Starcke oh so bossy and religious—yes, I’m on good terms with them all—quite good. But they are not my people, and this dishonest overstrained theater world is not my world. I’ll be glad to get back to New York and see Wystan, who is very great, glad to see Lincoln tomorrow night, glad even to see Steve Jackson and Pablo Rocha of Bogotá, who are coming this evening. I must be very careful to behave well, and not let any of this throw me, however it turns out.

  Remember what it is that matters. There is nothing else.

  1952

  March 4. On the Queen Elizabeth.

  This evening, we’re due to dock in New York.

  Another woeful failure to record all that’s happened.79

  And another opportunity to make a fresh start (how many hundreds have I thrown away?). My plans are quite fluid, and my objectives very definite: to get on with the novel, to finish the Prabhavananda translation, to do the text to accompany Sandford Roth’s pictures of Los Angeles.80 No more journalism till all that is finished.

  What’ll happen about Bill? What about Jimmy? Never mind. All that will arrange itself.

  I should spend a good deal of this summer with Swami; that’s certain.

  My two deadly weaknesses: dullness and the jitters. My greatest vice: an increasing, really horrible vanity. I’m eaten up with it.

  And yet, there is no reason to despair, no cause not to rejoice. I am still one of the luckiest people I know. And there is still some love and joy somewhere in this old pincushion of a heart. And something I still want to say in my writing—oh, I haven’t even started. Fear not. Cling to what you know is real.

  The great joy of the past months has been the discovery that my real friends are still as wonderful as ever. Wystan, Lincoln, Morgan, Stephen, Edward, Eric [Falk]—these are people anybody should be proud to have as friends. And there are at least a dozen others. Surely I shouldn’t feel discouraged as long as such people believe in me and love me? I have no right to.

  Okay—now you’ve had your customary spiritual douche. But now, listen to me. We have come back here to work, and to learn self-discipline, and to regain what we lost in those messy years of unhappiness since 1948. This place is a jungle, a wilderness—it isn’t venerable and traditional and mentally cozy, like King’s College.81 One can only live here by being strong and standing alone. And how does one get to be strong and stand alone? By opening the heart to the source of all strength and all love and not-aloneness. Stop posturing and idling and thinking of yourself. Don’t strain. Don’t plan. There is always something to be done, at any given moment. Do it. Go among others as the vehicle of joy. If you’re tired, lie down and rest.

  I shall expect you to keep this journal regularly—to revive the faculty of observation. And to remind you of your job. And I mean observation. Not personal moanings. Don’t flatter yourself: you are neither as good nor as bad as you think.

  Tell me about somebody on this boat—just for exercise.

  Mr. Kinsley (don’t know his first name). Around twenty-seven. Dark eyes, dark brown hair, tallish, skinny. A nice looking weakish face. An engineer. Works as chief on a tanker. Is bringing home a French wife to his folks’ home in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She was sick at first till I gave her my Dramamine pills. She was born in the Saar, is vehemently French, loathes the Germans. When the U.S. consul told her she was technically a German, she sat down and cried.

  Kinsley has a little of the usual American virility fetish. He told me he had lost weight making love so often to his wife (Yvette). He wears the tiniest moustache, which is slightly crooked. He likes to drink with me at the bar. Perhaps he feels socially a little out of his depth among all these nonprofessional passengers. He describes the voyage as a busman’s holiday.

  There is something about him that’s truly nice and gentle—chiefly because he’s in love. But he is a dog person, anyway; ready to attach himself.

  March 20. Bermuda, where Sam Costidy and I arrived last night.82

  Today we cycled about eighteen miles and swam from a cove. What shall I say about it? There is nothing to say—directly. Except to state that this has certainly been the happiest day of my life since 1948, when I went to Ensenada with Jim.

  The great mystery
of happiness. What is it? As far as I can tell, just absence of pain. The moment the bandages are relaxed, joy spurts out of the heart.

  And then, how wonderful, after this corrupt city-winter, to feel the ocean sunshine and see the blue of the Gulf Stream and the clouds puffing over the still innocent (or relatively innocent) island! What joy to sweat up the hills and drink Coke and swim in clear water!

  As for Sam, I will really truly and sincerely try to give him an experience of happiness—however he wants it—without intrusion of my dreary old show-off ego. Surely, for five days, that’s possible?

  I’m beginning to respect and like him so much. And I feel a certain identification with his problems, which helps. But I find it impossible to write more about this when he’s sitting on his bed beside me in our hotel room, writing his journal—which he has just started. Also a letter to [James] Thurber, whom we may see before we leave—if he’ll see us.

  About Sam—he would do very well, in many ways, as a partial model for Bob Wood in my novel. He’s about the right age, twenty-four. He is a tall skinny boy with short untidy dark hair, wide shoulders and a stoop. His face is pale and scarred with old acne marks, and he has large uneven rabbit teeth. And yet, quite often, he looks touchingly and innocently beautiful, with his small sensitive rabbit nose and clear brilliant blue eyes. His voice is rather deep, and the general impression he makes is extremely masculine, though boyish. I think he has a tremendous capacity for affection. He thinks he has a disgustingly weak will. We both agree that, just because of his shyness, he is all too apt, when drunk, to switch on an indiscriminate Irish charm which is dangerously facile. He pulls his mouth sideways at moments—when he is making self-conscious, deprecating remarks—into an ugly, disfiguring grimace. Standing alone—and in this, particularly, he resembles Bob Wood—he looks like the last lone Irish immigrant, utterly utterly abandoned by life, the predestined victim of all the wickedness of the world. Yesterday, we were out in the pouring rain in New York; and Sam wore my elegant raglan. By the time he was through with it, it looked like a garment which might be worn by a modern Oliver Twist.