Yesterday I started the novel, but only as a token. It will perhaps be weeks before I get on with it.
March 9. Every morning, the sense of the flight ahead makes me chill with foreboding, like the prospect of a surgical operation.
M. and Richard arrived the day before yesterday—Richard rather drunk, M. worried because she has a prolapsed womb and the doctor wants to operate. “I’m sitting on it at this moment,” she says. “It’s like a rubber ball.” Don has met them both and was a success.
Also saw Salka, who tells me that Charlie Chaplin absolutely refuses to see me. It must be because someone has made mischief between us—but I can’t imagine what kind. The humiliating thing is that I didn’t particularly want to see him at all—only to amuse Don.
Last night we went with John Gielgud to see some films—a TV of [Edward] Murrow’s interview with [Robert] Oppenheimer,310 a couple of documentaries and a very badly edited story about two deaf-mutes called Together. The Oppenheimer film was extremely interesting, because it exposed every facet of the great man’s famous charm—its genuineness (about ninety percent) and its falseness. What a tricky, strange, vain, humble-proud, crafty-simple man! What an utterly Jewish Jew! I was much reminded of Hans Viertel, but that was the genuine part.
John and Peter Brook311 exchanged some rather irritating dialogue about the Americans having no sense of humor and the British having one. Peter Brook had made a travelogue about his visit to Russia with the Paul Scofield Hamlet production, and he was very scornful about some CBS executives who had seen it and been scared to exhibit it in the States. They had wanted him to make changes. For example, Peter in his commentary had said: “We were received by a fat smiling Russian,” and the CBS people had objected that Russians don’t smile. He had said: “We were sad to leave Russia,” and this had shocked them. All this annoyed me, because of the facile equation of fat slimy and probably European Jewish television executives with average Americans—by Peter Brook, himself a Russian Jew (with a changed name, probably) taking it upon himself to speak for the English and John Gielgud, a Pole, agreeing with him. Am I being chauvinistic? Yes. But so were they. My annoyance splashed over on to poor little Mrs. Brook, another Russian, who was doing no one any harm and just recovering from TB. For some reason, I found her irritating.
Later. We have just returned from a day with William Plomer and his friend Charles at Angmering312—“bungalow land” William calls it, and “the bungalow belt.” Why does he live there? and why does he live with Charles, who seems no longer quite “all there,” though certainly amiable enough? William is harder to understand than anyone else I know. His easy bantering manner hides some kind of austere devotion to a code of duty which is so utterly mysterious as to seem perverse. We walked in the keen wind and winter sunshine on the beach, which is still spiky with the rusted remains of wartime tank traps.
March 11. In two hours we’re due to start on our flight to New York. As always, I’m scared and miserable. Also I have a deadly hangover from an evening with M., Richard, Amiya, Peter Watson, Norman Fowler, Stephen and Natasha.
This morning we went on Dorothy Tutin’s barge and took pictures of her. She is really very sweet. I feel we could become great friends—indeed, I feel for her in rather the same way as I feel for Julie. It seemed so strange to be talking to her about Julie and to know that, all being well, we should be talking to Julie about her tomorrow!
Don has been very sick, too. He and Stephen had some kind of a showdown at the end of the evening, but it wasn’t an unpleasant one. Indeed, we all came away better friends. I fear, however, that I mortally offended John Lehmann by not going to see him.
A very mysterious scar on my lips, caused by some fall or blow that neither Don nor I can remember.
Amiya is delighted with Don. She finds him so “mature.”
March 12. I’m still under the spell of the journey—it happened so smoothly. Amiya took us out to the airport in a hired car and filled us with whisky. I could hardly stay awake to eat my supper. Then there was Gander, where Don lost his gloves. Then New York and Julie and Manning and the baby. The shaving lotion leaked out of its bottle, because it had been put in a briefcase in the baggage compartment, which isn’t pressurized.
Lunch today with Wystan and Chester. Chester very tactlessly forced us into buying a deluxe copy of his poems313 (twenty-five dollars). This probably embarrassed Wystan but he didn’t show it.
Later. Wet snow, this evening.
Don and I went to see Jimmy and Tania Stern—with what success, it’s hard to tell. Don went off in a sulk to a movie. I went into a delicatessen and ate a liverwurst sandwich. At 11:30 this evening—it’s now barely 9:00—there is to be a party for us. I shall be glad when it’s over. This has been a long, long day.
March 13. New York at its starkest, this morning. In the raw spring light, the city looks dilapidated, almost ruined. All along Third Avenue, now that the El314 has disappeared, they’re tearing up the roadway.
Last night, Julie and Manning gave a party. It was vaguely supposed to be for us, but it wasn’t. And the guests somehow got off on the wrong note. Marian Winters315 was far too noisy in her delight to see us. Joan Elan underplayed it so that she seemed like an iceberg. Maureen Stapleton316 began crying toward the end, and this led me into a curious conversation with Julie. Julie said Maureen was unhappy because, in spite of all her talents, she couldn’t succeed. “That’s something you and I can never understand,” I said kiddingly, “we who know what it is to have the crowd at our feet.” But Julie didn’t laugh. She said very seriously: “I used to think I had guts. Now I know I haven’t. I get so terribly scared. Sometimes, in the middle of the play, I think I’ll never make it. I just want to give up and walk off.”
I don’t know how much of this was said alcoholically: she seemed to mean it. I asked her if she was happy in her home life and she said yes, with great conviction. I think she is, too. I’m sure the chief trouble is in her relations to her father and mother. But, anyhow, she is certainly much more neurotic than I’d suspected.
March 19. We’re in the midst of a blizzard. It’s lying so thick that there’s hardly any traffic in this part of town. The parked cars are disappearing into deep drifts along the sidewalk. How I loathe weather extremes! And heaven only knows if we can possibly leave New York on Thursday. I only wish we were safely back in California.
Manning has fixed up a microphone in the baby Peter’s room, so Julie and he can hear him all night.
Julie often gets letters asking her what it was like to be kissed by James Dean.
I’ve been neglectful about writing of the people we’ve met: Lincoln, who seems not quite himself, maybe getting ready for another breakdown—Wystan, somehow a bit alienated from us this time; he’s never the same when Chester’s around—Jimmy and Tania Stern, very sweet and quite their old selves, though both are plumper, now—Glenway [Wescott], on the contrary, looking thinner and handsomer; much occupied with sorting and identifying George Lynes’s nude photographs and seeing himself as a great social historian of his times—Marian [Winters] and Jay Smolin,317 very hospitable, but suffering under a big black mark from us because Marian failed to pass on an invitation to an exciting party given by Siobhan McKenna,318 where we should have met Shelley Winters, Michael Redgrave, Shirley Booth, etc. The reason for this: Marian didn’t want us to leave her party, at which we were being bored by drunken James Farrell.319 Farrell talked about his virility and his greatness as a writer. I can’t say I disliked him—I didn’t. One can be an egomaniac and still make a relatively pleasant impression, in short spells.
March 22. We are leaving this morning by plane for the Coast. Don is packing. Going through the chest of drawers to find if he’d missed anything, I came upon a homemade doll, of black chiffon, I think, with a sort of pincushion head. I’ve seen it before—Don usually kept it stuffed into an overcoat pocket, during this trip—but he doesn’t know I’ve examined it. When I seemed about to discover it, he go
t excited and cross. I suppose it is some very private kind of magic, and I mustn’t ask him about it for several years at least.320
The sun is shining brightly this morning and the snow is more or less cleared away, after the big fall. It has made an astonishing mess and the city seems short of shovellers to deal with it.
Last night we were round at the Kirsteins’ again. Lincoln got up in the middle of supper and walked out. Fido didn’t seem much surprised. She discussed with Paul Cadmus the question of Lincoln’s sleeplessness and overtiredness. “Or was it just that I got on his nerves by talking too much?” she asked, very objectively: “No—I don’t think so.” Fido does ramble on, in an inconsequential way that sometimes seems silly. She has a sort of compulsion to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. But on the whole I think she’s much saner. Probably Lincoln’s breakdowns have compelled her to be.
March 25. Well, this is quite a solemn moment. A new start.
I’m sitting cross-legged on cushions at the low teak table, because we have no proper table or desk, yet, to write at. And here we are, installed amidst cartons of books, in the front part of the little house Michael Barrie has bought on East Rustic Road—number 322, almost directly across from 333, where Bill Caskey and I lived in 1948. So, after six years and maybe 30,000 miles of travel, I’ve shifted my base about one hundred yards!
It’s a grey Pacific morning, and my sinus is giving me perpetual sniffles. But I feel well and quite energetic. There is nothing to stop me from getting on with the novel except my own neurotic laziness and anxieties. The same applies to Don and his future work. He thinks, at present, that he’ll join an art school.
Our flight was uneventful, but I hated it as much as ever. When I look down on beautiful snow-mountains from a plane, my attitude is that of a child who’s nervous with animals: “Nice doggie! Doggie’s my friend, isn’t he? Doggie won’t bite me, will he?” Jo and Ben met us at the airport, with a bottle of champagne which we drank in the car. It was so wonderful to see them again and be enfolded into their snugness. We had supper with them, and later Michael and his friend Bill [Stroud] (of whom more later) and Gerald Heard and Chris Wood came in. This was a mistake, because we only wanted to be snug and drunken—and Gerald made me self-conscious, but I don’t think it mattered. That night (the 22nd) we stayed at the motel on Entrada Drive. It was five dollars for two—although the sign said six dollars. The landlady explained, in the most matter-of-fact tones, that she was quoting the higher price, “In case there’s another war. I don’t want to get stuck under one of those price ceilings.”
The next morning we drove into town to see Geller and collect our mail. (Quite a lot of my books, and Don’s movie magazines, haven’t shown up yet and we’re beginning to be anxious.) But it was a lovely morning and we were both in a daze of joy to find ourselves back here in this lovely place—this hideous dump of a city with its beautiful gardens and balmy air, and foul smog.
After Easter, we tell ourselves, we will start in earnest. But much has to be done first. And we shall begin right away looking around for a place to buy, since this is anyway much too small.
Later. Have talked on the phone this morning to Edward Hooker, Aldous, Swami, Speed. We are going over to the Hookers’ this afternoon to pick up the frame of the bed I used to have in Saltair Avenue, to use for a living-room couch. Aldous married (last Monday) an Italian named Laura Archera who used to be a concert violinist. She is an old friend of his and of Maria’s. They were married at a wedding chapel drive-in at Yuma, with “a broken-down cowboy” as witness. Aldous was quite his old self describing this, and the leakage to the press that followed. Nevertheless, he seemed deeply happy and in a most benign state of mind. “Really,” he exclaimed, “there are so many delightful and intelligent and unusual people in the world!” Then he added: “And so many unspeakably awful ones!”
Swami is going to New York on Wednesday, to say goodbye to the visiting swamis from India. Speed we shall see this evening.
March 28. Last night I drove home fairly drunk, enough drunk, apparently, to be weaving a bit. This enraged another driver so much that he followed me all the way home, bawled me out, threatened to hit me and/or call a cop. I said mildly that I’d much rather he hit me, which was the psychologically correct answer, because it made him get into his car and drive away. Don thinks the man was psychopathic and says he was actually foaming at the mouth. (The man told me he was a doctor—and of course I now regret I wasn’t sober enough to think of answering with mock-earnestness: “Well, if you’re a doctor you should be sorry for me and try to cure me.”) But all the same, it was a well-timed warning, because I always need to be brought sharply to my senses at the beginning of each new driving season.
I was drunk because I wanted to relax (at the Duquettes’) after a big crying scene made by Don—not directed against me—because he felt Marguerite had been cold and unfriendly. She had asked him to what looked like a cozy tête-à-tête, and then produced her lover, Emmett Blow—a fat rich man with whom she has been in Las Vegas. Furthermore, she had spent the short time before Emmett’s appearance in bitching Joan Elan, whom she and Speed now accuse of being a tramp and sleeping with Harry, Blow, the producer of The Lark etc. etc. Don felt excluded and therefore unhappy, because he counts on Marguerite as a friend.
However, today all has been happiness. Lovely weather, and we shopped for a lamp, a bureau and various other things. Speed thinks Don should get a job in television. The Duquettes were using all their charm to get him to come back and work for them, but he doesn’t intend to.
Swami, with his usual persistence, has brought up the question of the Ramakrishna book again. So now I really shall have to start work on it. Also, there are Frank Taylor’s two projects—the anthology of English short stories, and the Maugham anthology. Also there is my novel. I really ought to stick to these and not fuss about any movie jobs for the present. We can certainly afford to.
March 31. Another hangover, because I was at Jim’s last night and got drunk waiting for supper. Betty Andrews was there, and Oliver [Andrews], grown squarely fat from the chill of skin diving, and Jack Hillmer, Jim’s colleague, who is said by Jim to be the best architect in the country, and sleepy sly Tom Wright who acts so amiable but is really quite a bitch. He and Jim are catty about Michael Barrie. They accuse him of having urged the landlady to raise the rent when he left. “Christ would have got her to raise the rent when he moved in,” Jim commented. Jim has decided to give up architecture and try writing.
Yesterday I had lunch with Speed, who is glowing with triumph over his play.321 He strongly hinted that he wants to dramatize The World in the Evening—which, he says, “is still the best novel written since I’ve been around.” He is also much preoccupied by the scandalous history of the Charlie Brackett family. I think he must be planning to write about it.
We are very seriously considering buying Hal Greene’s house on Sycamore Road, number 434. It’s the most attractive place I’ve seen around here, a real snug nest, and just the right size for us.
April 1. Easter morning. We got up early and went on the beach. But, around ten o’clock, clouds gathered and it got very windy. Now, just after 12:00, it’s still windy but the sun’s shining. We have to go to lunch at the Bracketts’.
This morning I restarted The Lost, also made a token start on Saradananda’s life of Ramakrishna.322 My resolve is to do something on the novel at least twice a week, and some reading on Ramakrishna at least four times a week. That’s a good minimum.
Later. Easter lunch at the Bracketts’. The almost incredible bad taste of James Larmore, who told Speed—for an April Fool’s joke—that Harry was drunk outside with a gun, wanting to kill him. Marguerite in a big hat, and Ivan slyly grinning. The terrible service—the food took hours and there wasn’t enough of it. Don much upset because he felt Marguerite had treated him bitchily again—and in front of “Ivin” Moffat, as she calls him.
April 3. Yesterday I worked some more on The Lost.
The dream at the beginning hasn’t come right, yet, but it will. Don went to see about art classes at the Chouinard,323 and returned terribly depressed, and suffering from psychosomatic stomachache—because the Chouinard had depressed him or scared him, and because he’d seen his mother and she was in such a mess. Don’s father won’t give her any money, so she sits home and mopes.
I intended to write something about Michael’s friend Bill Stroud—but he still remains mysterious. Very broad shouldered, almost rectangular, he digs his thumbs into his side pockets, tenses his back and says nothing. There is something very sweet and sad in his face. Chris Wood has heard that he’s an epileptic.
April 7. Last night, we had supper at the Stravinskys’—Michael Barrie, Bill Stroud, Chris Wood, [Gerald Heard,] Aldous and Laura Huxley were also there.
On first meeting (actually I met her first the day before yesterday, when I went around to the house to talk to Aldous and Bill Froug, the writer who is adapting Jacob’s Hands for a radio performance) I find I don’t altogether like Laura. She’s good-looking, smart and stylish in a “sensible” way and adequately intelligent; but she has a curious tactlessness—[…]. She tries, I think, to be friendly and man-to-man, and only succeeds in being rather rude. However, Aldous seems very happy with her. He was wearing a twenty-year-old tie (from Paris?) which he described as looking like an early Rouault.
Talk about dreams. Igor had once dreamed a passage of music which he was able to use. Also a whole lot of pastiche Beethoven—a sort of Tenth Symphony, as Aldous said.
I detect a slight snootiness toward my mescaline experience on the part of both Aldous and Gerald. I suppose they regard it as hopelessly unscientific. I don’t really resent this—indeed, it’s quite true. Both Aldous and Gerald agree that you get more out of the mescaline each time you take it; that is to say, you go in deeper.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 88
