Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  In the evening we saw Diane. It is a hideous mess—so badly cut and directed and (for the most part) acted. But now I quite clearly know that I’m not in the least ashamed of the script. Many of the scenes are still excellent. But of course no one else has noticed or will ever notice this.

  Have just finished Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, which I don’t like nearly as much as his That Uncertain Feeling. But there’s one phrase I like very much: (The hero has just landed a dream job, quite unexpectedly.) “What noise could he make to express his frenzy of hilarious awe?”

  Finally, I’m happy to record that it’s just a year since I made my vow to write in this book more regularly, and I’m proud that I’ve done much better than my minimum target. The same resolution is hereby made for another year—acts of God and man permitting.

  And now—I can get down to my big news. Yesterday, I finally took mescaline.

  I’d been intending this for some days and had already set aside Friday [the] 24th as M.E. Day;306 but I didn’t mention that here out of superstition—I was afraid an obstacle might arise at the last moment.

  I swallowed the capsule at a few minutes before 10:00 a.m. I was a bit scared, of course, and the reason I didn’t wait till exactly 10:00 was that I was beginning to get jittery and wanted to have it over with. Then I got back into bed. I had eaten a light breakfast around 9:00—a cup of tea, unsweetened; a boiled egg and some dry toast.

  After about half an hour, I began to shiver and feel chills. This is a known symptom. (Pat Trevor-Roper couldn’t get warm even with hot-water bottles, and his temperature went up above 104—I should have taken mine but didn’t.) However, it must be noted that the room was cold anyway, the weather outside was freezing, and I may well have been shaking with nervous excitement. Presently, I began to feel nausea. This wasn’t acute and I never seriously expected to vomit. Otherwise, my mood throughout the entire experience was cheerful. Not the least trace of fear—although I was expecting it, after the reaction to the hashish.

  Around 11:00, the first heightening of color perception was noticeable. Very delicate. I admired the shadows on the ceiling—seeing greens and blues in them—and felt that the black inner frame of the gilt mirror somehow perfectly completed the effect of the reflected wall: it seemed to express the entire mood I would describe as “Regency.” But these were not very remarkable sensations. I might easily have had them at any ordinary meditative moment.

  Between 11:00 and about 12:30 I got up. The intoxication was now definite. I was a bit unsteady—especially when managing the hot and cold water faucets. But I felt exhilarated. Indeed, I was strongly tempted to take another capsule—just as one is naturally tempted to take more drink when drunk, in order to be drunker. I didn’t take another capsule, though; deciding I’d better go easy, this first time. I knew I ought to record my sensations, but I didn’t want to—I even felt that writing might bring back the nausea. (The few notes I did make are legible but the handwriting shows effort—like the drunk’s extra effort to speak distinctly.)

  Don had to have his lunch. I had decided to eat nothing, for fear of weakening the effect of the drug. (I thought Gerald had told me that food would do this.) So I gave him time to go out and start his meal—at Andrew’s Restaurant around the corner. Then I followed him. This was between 1:00 and 1:15. I walked carefully, without swaying or stumbling. I don’t think I behaved with noticeable strangeness.

  It was bitterly cold outside, and this heightened the shock of coming into the warm restaurant—but it would have been a shock at any temperature, because the place was wildly gaudy with color. The drug was now working at full power. I was chiefly conscious of everything red—a poster on the window, women’s sweaters, the leather-bound menu: all challenged the eye like flags—scarlet, vermilion, rose, crimson, and a pink that was literally shocking. Also, I remember the outrageous prettiness of a little boy’s dark blue jersey seen against the light blue of a parked car in the street outside.

  It was too exciting in the restaurant. I was afraid I’d attract attention by my excited comments to Don, especially as a stranger was sitting opposite us. So I went out and walked around St. James’s Square. I would have enjoyed this hugely if it hadn’t been so cold. Indeed, I felt an almost equal interest in anything or anybody—provided they were alive. I could have loitered there for hours, if I hadn’t been shivering so. Now I began to notice the faces of the people. It is hard to describe what had happened to them. Their features had been, as it were, “Breughelized.” Not caricatured, but more deeply engraved; treated with a sort of Flemish realism which brought out all their funny tricks of expression—making them unromantic but far more interesting. I saw them now very much as “folk”—rather animal—each one going about his business intently, like winter creatures who must hunt for food. Each had his secret problem—which, I was pretty sure, I could find out if I paused to look closely. But I knew I mustn’t do this. I had no right to pry. And I was rather absurdly afraid of attracting attention. I had caught sight of my eyes in a shop mirror and seen how much the irises were enlarged. Surely, anyone who looked directly at them would notice? The oddity of these people’s faces didn’t repel me in the least. Indeed, I felt for them a good-humored, amused friendliness. That, but no more. I was a detached, though benevolent observer. Absolutely no cosmic feelings of oneness or universal brotherhood. Indeed, the whole mescaline experience was, for me, quite unspiritual—just aesthetically and physically pleasing. I was, as I say, detached. And, in trying to describe my state of mind, I thought of Priestley’s title An Inspector Calls. Returning to the restaurant, I wrote in my notebook: “The inspector examined all the arrangements that had been made to cope with the situation, and reported that they seemed admirable.” When I showed this to Don, he commented: “But they were only temporary arrangements, weren’t they?” This was very apt. Because, certainly, “the arrangements” weren’t eternal. I had had no glimpses of nature’s law or God’s will.

  I did, at this point (about 1:30), however, think of God. I felt a sudden desire to go to Westminster Cathedral. (Instinctively, I felt that a Protestant church would be useless: they aren’t really sacred buildings, at all.)307 But when we got to the Cathedral, God definitely wasn’t at home, as far as I was concerned. So we walked along the street to the Abbey, for want of any better place to go. Don hadn’t been there before. The Abbey was very funny—a charmingly absurd little antique shop, full of ridiculous statues. (Sir Cloudesley Shovel was specially pleasing.) Its little old black rock-ribbed carcass seemed shrunken; I felt I was inside a dead and dried-up animal. Maybe a whale. No God there. No life at all—even the poppies around the Unknown Soldier were artificial. So we walked out into the icy afternoon again. Having been told by John Goodwin and others that I must be sure to get close to nature, I could think of no place to go except a flower shop. When we found one, I immediately seemed to see a great difference between the cut flowers and the ones growing in pots. “This one,” I told Don, “is just as alive as a snake.” And looking at a pot of azaleas, I could see the petals moving all the time, the stamens making constant tiny phototropic adjustments toward the light coming through the shop window. But did I really see this? I would have had to buy the flowers and bring them home and set them down on a table and study them closely—to be sure. We returned to Piccadilly Circus by underground. I got a lot of amusement and pleasure from the other passengers. Two or three of them moved so quaintly that I had to hide my laughter. And there was one little Negress in a red coat who was as natural as a small dog. (Most of the time, I merely found my own reflected face funny, like other people’s. But there was a moment when the ears drooped and stuck out horizontally, while my nose became very long and thin and sour. That was repulsive to me.)

  We were back at the hotel by 3:30, and already the effects of the drug were noticeably wearing off. But I spent some time studying Don’s face. Amazing, how it changed from minute to minute! There was the bright-eyed, sharp-nosed bobcat or fox at one
end of the scale, and at the other a hollow-cheeked, wearily composed mask that might have been taken after death. Also, I glimpsed a handsome Latin gentleman in his late thirties, with a moustache. And, aside from this, there were increases and decreases of flesh on the bony substructure, tightenings of muscles around the nose and the mouth. (For an instant, I saw a trick of Dick Foote’s!) And yet—it was always a mask. I couldn’t penetrate it. I felt that the person inside was playing a game with me, mockingly smiling.

  Then we looked at some reproductions of Ingres. These were wonderful—better for me than ordinarily—but I felt, impatiently, that this was predigested experience. I didn’t need a great artist to show me how to look at people. I wanted to choose my own subjects and look at them myself.

  By this time, the color perception had returned to dim normality—my last flash of it had been the black telephone on the pink directory—and my integral view of people (or whatever you call it) was only very occasional and momentary. So, at 5:00 we had tea with fruitcake. I ate greedily, feeling sharp pleasure in my appetite. (Later, at Pat Trevor-Roper’s, I drank three scotch and waters with equally keen enjoyment.) Indeed, all my faculties for sense enjoyment seemed stimulated, including the sexual. Throughout the whole experience, my mood was extra cheerful and relaxed and I felt ready for almost anything anyone might propose—from going to a party to going to sleep. This morning, I have no hangover whatever.

  Of course, in many ways, this first experiment was disappointing. I had no drastic adventures, gained no spiritual insights, went neither to heaven nor to hell. I think next time, I should take a double dose. But not in this town, in this weather. I’d like to experiment in the country or on a beach—to listen to music—to try to meditate—oh, well—at least it was a start.

  February 27. Yesterday I saw Edward and told him about The Lost. He is definitely impressed, I think, by the idea of it. He says it excites him much more than The World in the Evening did. (But then I didn’t tell him about that until it was a quarter written, so he could hardly have been expected to be frank with me. What could he say except, Go ahead?)

  Am I being frank with him about his novel?308 Well—ninety percent. I think and hope it’ll work out—what I fear is a suburban thin wanness and dullness, a grey Dulwich lighting. But I know I have really succeeded in encouraging him. And that, surely, is good.

  Talked to Stephen, this morning in his office. He repeats that he would like to get out of England because it’s so dead and everybody wants to avoid doing any extra work. Fears the competitiveness of the States, hates the political situation in South Africa, says Australia is like Lyons’ Corner House—the people are so obstinately British that they make all their houses face south although they live south of the equator. On the whole, Stephen favors Canada. Or Brazil.

  Hans Viertel and his wife, with whom I had lunch, also say that England (and indeed all Western Europe) is bad for writers. They think things must be much better in Asia. But they admit that England is still an important meeting place of ideas; an East-West exchange, much more tolerant than the U.S.

  Salka is in Munich, writing a film called The Volga Boatmen!

  I forgot to mention that Edward said World in the Evening reminded him most of my first unpublished novel, Lions and Shadows. He said the dialogue was too ordinary and flat. He read out some samples, to prove this—comparing them unfavorably with passages from Prater Violet.

  February 28. Yesterday I saw two invalids—John Hayward and a boy named Paul Taylor—a stranger who wrote me a fan letter last year, and then wrote again to tell me he had TB, so amusingly and charmingly and unsentimentally that I long ago made up my mind to go and see him in hospital when I got to London.

  John told me how young I still looked and went on to deplore his own fatness and baldness. It’s positively uncanny to hear him, as he sits grotesquely twisted up in his wheelchair, making remarks like: “You know, after bronchitis a morning always comes—though one never can believe that it will—when one wakes up and suddenly one’s legs belong to one again and one leaps out of bed like a two year old.” (Does he say these things from bravado, or to make his hearer uncomfortable, or does he will himself to think like a normally active person?) Actually, he was referring to [T. S.] Eliot, who has been very sick and still doesn’t care to see anyone. John says Eliot ought really to go away to the West Indies every winter, but there’s no one he can go with. He has no close friends but John, who can’t travel.

  Paul Taylor had just had a bitter disappointment. His doctor (in the Brompton Hospital) has told him he must spend another three months lying on his right side with his feet higher than his head—to drain the cavity in his lung. (He got it as the result of breathing in coal dust while he was a miner during the war.) Yet he was most cheerful and even flirtatious. He told me how he’d gained weight in hospital and was no longer “a skinny thing,” and how he hated having to lie there instead of showing himself off on Brighton Beach! I promised to write to him sometimes.

  In the evening, we saw The Rivals,309 which Don really enjoyed—a bit to my surprise. I was fearing he’d find it boring. It was well done, certainly, especially John Clements as Sir Anthony Absolute.

  Today it’s really mild at last, with the temperature up in the forties.

  March 3. Yesterday we saw Dodie and Alec and had a longer talk about The Lost. Some further ideas emerged.

  “Virgil” is Denny Fouts, I think. I see him as a Mr. Hyde to my Dr. Jekyll, and this is excellent, because, in Denny’s half-kidding, half-seriously-reproving attitude toward me, I can mirror my faults without the pomposity of serious confession. If Dante has been taking himself too reverently, if he has been addressing meetings of businessmen on the Perennial Philosophy—well, Denny can puncture him. Denny, I think, is confined to The Shades—i.e. he can’t enter the United States because of some offense—probably something with little girls.

  What is the symbolic nature of the United States and what is the symbolic nature of Mexico? The U.S. is the real, everyday world. And “Dante” is someone who believes in it, who swims in its success, who has the philosophy of a successful person: that it’s God’s will he should succeed. Therefore, he is wrong about the real world—because he thinks it exists for his pleasure, instead of for his spiritual exercise.

  Mexico is The Shades—the place of retreat for those who have made the denial of the real world. Therefore, the inhabitants of The Shades (the expatriates—not the Mexicans, who are perfectly at home in their land) are all lost—temporarily, until they decide to return to the States and face the implications of the real world (which include the spiritual implications—the true ones, as opposed to the false, Christian-Scientist rationalizations of “Dante”). Denny is lost. He came to The Shades because of his search for the mystical concept of ‘Pleasure’. Naturally he wants “Dante” to like The Shades and stay there. So we have the paradox—that The Shades are seemingly pleasant. Denny should kid about the original Dante, saying that he only saw torments and flames because he was such a dreary old paranoiac.

  During the hashish episode, it should become clear that Dante and Denny are two halves of the same person. They are said to resemble each other. There’s something spooky about Denny. He looks far too young. Dante is never quite sure how old he is.

  A great question still remains—what relation exists between Dante and the three set pieces—the refugees, the consul, the archaeologist? I’m tempted by the idea that Dante might be different ages when he goes to see these different people. For instance, a young man when he sees the consul. Or could it be that the consul treats him like a young man? I don’t know this yet.

  During the past two to three days, Don has been very much upset; but in a new and, I feel, much more constructive way. Instead of moaning over the neglect and indifference toward him of the people we meet, he is sincerely disgusted by his own laziness and alarmed because of the way he has been wasting his time, failing to educate himself, etc. He is also very contrite beca
use he feels he has behaved badly to me.

  It’s difficult for me to know quite how to handle this problem; because much of what Don feels seems to me to be quite healthy. As he puts it, it’s as if he’s at last breaking out of an egg. And yet, on the other hand, Don’s manner of feeling—this too easy yielding to depression—is certainly neurotic and shouldn’t be encouraged. Today, after a talk this morning, he’s much better—despite the weather which is rainy and gloomy.

  On the 28th, we went to the Old Vic and saw Burton as Iago. He was quite a revelation to me; I’d never imagined the character like that. He was like a tough, attractive, dishonest American G.I. The kind who did black-market deals in Europe at the end of the war. Not the least sinister, but perhaps a little crazy. Obsessed by his me-first philosophy.

  Later we had supper with Terence Rattigan, to whom Cuthbert Worsley introduced us. He seemed very pleasant. Quite reckless about money—and probably living well beyond his huge means. The flat was full of pictures he’d bought.

  March 5. On the evening of the 3rd, we had supper with Morgan—probably the last time we’ll see him this trip. And maybe—the thought is unavoidable—the last time ever. … Though, indeed, he seems very well and hardly changed since our earliest meetings. Sweetly affectionate, as always. He said how he felt lost, now that his latest book is finished and he can’t think what else to write about. “I hope I shan’t get depressed,” he said thoughtfully, looking into the future. Then, reassuring himself: “I expect not. I’ve been cheerful so long, I’ve got into the habit.”

  Well, now we begin our last week. We’re due to fly to New York on the 11th, where Julie awaits us. And then Jo and Ben, and Michael Barrie, and Gerald, in California. I’d like very much to start my novel before I leave.

  March 7. A horrible week of pretravel jitters. Awful insoluble problems about excess baggage and airfreight, which will nevertheless somehow be solved. And this afternoon, M. and Richard arrive, to stay at one of those ghastly Kensington residential hotels, until we leave.