Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  (Even now, I feel satisfaction at having written nearly a whole page of pensées!)

  July 16. Another Monday morning. Glorious weather. The garden too dry. I feel guilty about this, but never seem to get it properly watered. Chores, chores, chores. And yet I’m happy. It’s so good to see Don go off to school really pleased with his work and eager to learn more. We’re worried about Ted, though. It seems possible he may be getting up steam for another attack. Right now, he’s all alone except for us—Bob Hoover away in Europe for another month or more. Even Mr. and Mrs. Bachardy away on a trip to Las Vegas, Yellowstone, etc. (This is truly a remarkable decision, because Mr. Bachardy is so stingy.)

  Harry Brown visited us yesterday with his girlfriend, June [de Baum]. He seems in good spirits and doesn’t look drink-sodden. She seems nice, but playing it careful, as well she may! Rather a piss-English accent; actually she’s from Rhode Island.

  Everybody remarks on Don’s physique. Two months at the gym have really built him up extraordinarily, especially the arms and pectoral muscles.

  Meeting our neighbor Roy Parry—the MGM scene painter—on the street the other day: he said to me, “When I was young, I never knew when Christmas was until I saw the pantomime posters.” What is one supposed to answer to such a remark?

  On the beach yesterday. Jo and Ben with hangovers after a luau. (It’s interesting what an intense aversion they both now express toward teenagers; as if they really feared them.) Jim Charlton cheerful again because he has a house to do and a remodelling job promised by Fred Zinnemann on a ranch house near Nogales. It’s noticeable how good Jim looks now. His figure is still like a boy’s, and he must be going on forty. Also Speed (whose figure is, on the contrary, a bit bulgy!) lamenting because I told him van Druten is going to write First Love30 as a movie for Hecht-Lancaster.31 That rather unpleasant person, Ted Schultz, reports that Bill Stroud showed up at his apartment yesterday and asked if he might stay. This is very mysterious because Michael Barrie assured us—on Saturday—that Bill was in the East visiting relatives and wouldn’t be back till September 1! Our rapprochement with Michael followed a tea with Gerald, on Saturday afternoon. (Gerald and Michael have now left for a week’s seminar in the redwoods near Santa Cruz.) Michael proved to be rather dull, however. He got drunk very easily and became snail tongued and sententious. It’s amusing to see what puritans Don and I have become, since we stopped drinking. We serve drinks, but scowl at the drinkers.

  Swami called yesterday, much worried because Willie Maugham had sent him an article on the Maharshi, and all the philosophy in it was wrong!32 Now we have to concoct a tactful reply.

  No novel yesterday or Saturday. But I still have several days in hand. I only need eight days to reach page 100. The anthology is dragging, though.

  July 18. Fred Zinnemann has just been here, to talk about the possibility of our doing The Narrow Corner33 together. I rather doubt if anything will come of this—we shall see. At any rate, I’d far rather work on that and with him than go for any of the other possible offers.

  Every day is a scramble—to get my stint of the Ramakrishna reading and of my novel done—to water some of the garden—to buy what’s required from the market. It’s a very happy time, though.

  The day before yesterday, we met Perle Mesta at the Duquettes’. Speed had brought her there. He seemed to be turning quickly into a television impresario.34 But Mesta herself wasn’t nearly as vulgar or silly as I’d expected—indeed, she seemed shrewd and competent. She talked about the extraordinary behavior of the Russians—now hot, now cold—when they invited her to come to visit the country. She still doesn’t know exactly why they asked her.

  Today I rewrote a page of my novel—the poetry parodies. This is a dangerous practice. I must drive blindly forward.

  Zinnemann’s face, as he grows older, is becoming severe and eccentric looking. There is something aristocratically birdlike about it. He looks like an autocratic old lady of good family, or her grimly beaked parrot. Yet he is kind, helpful. You feel he is the servant of everybody—darting hither and yon, like a waiter, in obedience to the commands of his own conscience.

  He says Montgomery Clift has the same urge to self-destruction as James Dean had.

  July 21. A bad evening. After quite a long period of the happiest relations, Don flew into a rage with me as we were going to the beach this morning, because I wanted to cross the road by the underpass—if you dodge through the traffic you’re liable to get a ticket. He sulked on and off all afternoon. Now he has gone out to spend the evening on his own—as why in the world shouldn’t he? The bad thing is that he has to make all this fuss to lead up to doing what he might do so easily and pleasantly. He said: “I’m getting so much older and nothing is happening.” I take this to mean that he wants some kind of sex adventures—since quite a lot has certainly happened to him in other ways. Well, that’s only natural. And my part of the deal is somehow to get it through his head that all this can take place without ugliness. Oh dear, it’s so fatal to be spiteful and sulky! It destroys everything.

  So now I’m sad and depressed, and facing a lonely evening of dull work. Just the same, I shall be glad to have gotten the work over with—if I do it. It’s the corrections Swami wants me to write Willie Maugham on his Maharshi article.

  What’s so disconcerting, when something like this situation with Don takes place, is that I realize how insecure my “home life” is. Of course, my “home life” isn’t the whole of my life, thank God—but I feel the insecurity, just the same. It’s inside myself. At the least setback I feel wearily, Oh, what’s the use, why did I buy this house, why do I make any effort at all?

  July 22. What actually happened was that Don came back, after seeing Juarez at the Coronet, and we had supper together at Ted’s [Grill]—and now all is peace. Armistice, rather. This isn’t settled, perhaps won’t ever be, except by time. Don says he gets this terrible sense of loneliness—the inability to communicate with anyone, even me.

  Met Speed and Paul Millard on the street after supper last night, and had a drink at the Friendship. It has quite lost its atmosphere. Instead of the long narrow crowded room, you have a big empty space behind your back as you sit at the bar—the wall has been taken out, and this is what used to be Doc Law’s drug store, completely empty now—except for the old photographs of Santa Monica bathing beauties, and a pool table and the shuffle board.

  Speed talked about Hedda Hopper35—how amusing she is. I’m afraid corruptness is going to prevent Speed from ever becoming the sort of American Balzac he could possibly be. This tolerance of what is rotten and evil is very dangerous for a novelist. Or I should say “tolerance” period. Because the actual moral standards the novelist has are quite unimportant, as long as he does have some standards. No standards, no indignation. No indignation, no steam pressure. No steam pressure, no drama. You can’t be Balzac on a wry ironic smile.

  July 24. I have the yawns. Just slept an hour but still tired. Am slightly worried that this may be a relapse. Yesterday I had a high stomachache all day. I eat and eat and eat. Soon I shall be really fat again.

  But today I got to page 100, by dint of doing four pages, so I’m well on schedule, or rather, well ahead of it. Getting on with the introduction to the anthology, as well.

  Grey all day long at the beach. Terribly hot in town, they say. Yesterday, Don was praised by his figure-drawing instructor, and his drawing was held up for the admiration of the whole class.

  July 26. Have just finished Basilissa by John Masefield. There are about half a dozen of his later books in the Santa Monica library. I want to read all of them. I sometimes think I’m the only person in the world who admires him. What is his charm, for me?

  “Theodora, the cast mistress of Hekebolos …”

  “She was dressed in black, and wept as she went.”

  “… a Syrian woman, with a pale, ugly, clever face …”

  “Most theaters are flower shows,” he said, “displaying youth in flowe
r.”36

  I can’t explain why I like this kind of thing so much. Perhaps it is just a sense of personal contact with Masefield himself that I get—and he is such a lovable man.

  Other books I have to read or finish off:

  Dante, Don Quixote, John Inglesant,37 The Lion and the Fox,38 The Sorrows of Young Werther,39 The Bachelor’s House,40 The Devil,41 The Quest for Corvo,42 An Outcast of the Islands,43 Practical Criticism44—to name a few!

  Zinnemann just called. The Narrow Corner deal is definitely off. But there’s still the possibility of David Brown’s Japanese picture.45 And I suppose Joshua Logan will return from Japan some day.

  Don is skirting along the edge of a bad mood. I do wish something nice would come up for the weekend, to make him feel better.

  Now I have to rewrite the Maugham corrections, which were not correct. Swami has just been on the phone about this.

  Later. 8:05 p.m. The papers full of the sinking of the Andrea Doria.46

  Don is out with Ted, and I’m here alone. For no reason except that I want to be. Rod Owens, whom I drove up to see this afternoon, warmly invited me to supper. He really is nice. I do wish Don didn’t feel so resentful against him, but I guess this will all be cleared up, sooner or later.

  Have just discovered a parking ticket issued against the Sunbeam by the Beverly Hills police. Should I pay it and say nothing? If I do, then Don will feel I’m treating him like a child. If I mention it, however, he will feel guilty and rebuked. Perhaps I’ll lead up to it by telling him that I was stopped for speeding today. The cop asked me how fast I thought I was going. “About fifty,” I said. “Exactly,” said the cop, “in a thirty-five mile zone. But you’re the first honest man I’ve met today. I’m letting you off.”

  I worry so much about Don. Can he gradually ease himself out of his insecurity without deciding that I’m to blame for it and revolting against me? Things do seem better, but he’s often unhappy and dissatisfied. What he needs are friends of his own. But he won’t make them. Presumably there must be plenty of potential friends at the Chouinard and the gym.

  July 27. But Don came home happy, because the professor had praised his design above every other in the class. “Why do I want so terribly to be liked?” he asked me.

  I should have said yesterday that Rod Owens made a very good impression on me. And I didn’t think he looked so fat, at all. (Speed had viciously described him as “a spayed cat.”) Their place is really beautiful, now. All the trees are growing up. Two beautiful rice-paper trees, on either side of the front door, give a real jungly effect. Rod says Caskey still owns the lot on the hilltop. He has paid off all the installments on it, and it’s cost him $10,000! No more news of him, it seems.

  This morning, I drove into Beverly Hills and paid the ticket, because in one place on the ticket it said you had only five days’ grace. On the envelope, it said ten. The woman clerk told me that actually it’s two weeks! I’m always scrupulously careful where the law is concerned. I think of myself as a serious criminal who can’t afford to get caught out on trifles. (Caskey, Rod says, has let all kinds of payments slide, with the result that they might easily find out about his property and attach it.)

  July 29. The night before last, we had supper with Jo and Ben. They fixed Japanese food. Afterwards we had a potentially interesting discussion: Why, said Jo, don’t we get around more—have more contacts with other people? It was only potentially interesting, because nobody quite spoke his mind. What did Jo mean by “getting around?” Apparently just a very quick peek at other people’s lives and then a hasty retreat, lest one should get seriously involved. What did Ben mean? He quoted a remark of Peter Gowland’s (made, it seems, in the presence of his wife and therefore, somewhat sadistically) that he didn’t care to go to parties because he couldn’t make passes at girls and lay them—and that was all that parties were for. Ben expressed, perhaps, a tacit agreement; but he didn’t dare say so. As for Don, he’s still in the midst of the great problem: Why won’t people be interested in me? And yet he already half knows his own answer: Because I’m not sufficiently interested in them.

  Last night, supper with Johnnie and Starcke. Starcke talked about the Joel Goldsmith reading room he has set up, and about his own healing work. He was trying to find out, through me, why Swami disapproves of the healing. And of course I know why. Because, whatever you may say, it’s wrong for Starcke: whenever he talks like this, you see “salesman” written all over him. His metaphysical talk may be perfect sense, but one hardly bothers to listen to it, because he is false, false. By this, I do not mean repulsive. As a matter of fact, I rather like Starcke; and in a curious way, he makes a very sympathetic fake.

  As for Johnnie, we think he’s bored by Starcke’s spiritual flights but also intimidated. He doesn’t dare utter a word; but maybe he longs to exclaim: “Get you, Mary!”

  August 1. Last night, Johnnie and Starcke came to have dinner with us. The Bracketts had been invited and called it off at the last moment, because (they said) Charlie had to preview his new picture with Zanuck. Whether this was true or not, Johnnie and Starcke were relieved, and so were we, and it was really a nice evening, despite the behavior of our movie projector, which mysteriously speeded up in the midst of showing our Europe trip film, and couldn’t be made to slow down.

  The truth is, we get along with Johnnie and Starcke and feel comfortable with them and like them, despite all the bitchy things I say about them in this journal. Johnnie described Charlie coming down to lunch absolutely exhausted, to meet a guest he didn’t want to see, and then, at the last turn of the staircase, pulling himself together and exclaiming: “Where’s my favorite woman?”

  Yesterday I got a letter from a professor at the University of Mississippi (wanting to quote from the Gita). On the envelope was stamped—with a rubber stamp, in red ink: “With a tradition of Quality, Integrity and Progress”—as though this were a meatpacking firm.

  Have bought a new pen—a Shaeffer Snorkel. The old Parker covers my fingers with ink even after it has been immersed in water and washed out. Almost miraculous—like one of those sacred pictures that bleed.

  August 6. Oh dear, Don is depressed again! After working all yesterday evening on a design problem and failing to solve it, he became terribly gloomy, said nothing was fun, he wasn’t really enjoying art school, he’d been desperately scared that his youth was slipping away from him and that there would be no future, etc. If only I knew how to handle him! But I don’t. Deep down, I’m selfishly resentful because I want to get on with my own work and this mood of his weakens me and makes me unhappy, but this is mere selfishness, and I wish I knew the answer. If only Don would make friends of his own and go out more. He says he wants what Speed calls “glitter.” Well, why not?

  Me, I only know that I must go on working. And making much more japam.

  We saw Evelyn Hooker on Saturday—just about to leave for the High Sierras with Edward. Then she’s going to read a startling paper to a congress in Chicago which will state (1) that there are exactly as many well-adjusted homosexuals (percentually) as heterosexuals (2) that homosexuality may, in certain cases, be regarded as psychologically as well as biologically “normal.” All this was arrived at by getting a great expert to examine a large batch of ink-blot tests.47 The expert arrived at these conclusions very unwillingly and against his own theories. Maybe this will be celebrated one day as a great historic event—Hooker reading the Declaration of Adjustment.

  August 9. Rush, rush! I’m always in a hurry, it seems.

  Right now, I’ve just managed to catch up on my novel, haven’t done my anthology work, haven’t worked on Ramakrishna, haven’t read The Lost Girl,48 haven’t answered letters, haven’t shaved. Haven’t had enough sleep, because we keep staying up late. And all this rushing is in order to have time to rush down to San Diego—well, anyway La Jolla—the weekend after next, and then maybe rush up to San Francisco the weekend after that! What do I really want to do? Lie flat on my back and relax. T
hen why don’t I—it only takes fifteen minutes. Because the rushing bee is in my bonnet.

  August 14. Another entry just made in order not to break my record. This is definitely not a good diary-keeping time for me. I really am busy, no kidding about that. This morning we woke late—7:50—so I had ten minutes to get breakfast, make Don his sandwiches. Don left shortly after 8:00 for school, as usual. Then I listened to the news (Suez seems “better” at the moment, but is still dangerously “sick”49) while I washed up the breakfast things, read what Wystan has to say about heroic couplets50 while I was shitting, worked on the Ramakrishna book (a double portion, to get it over with) till 10:00. Since then I’ve written four pages of my novel (because I’m rushing to finish the 150 pages this week), watered most of the front garden, talked to Jo and a travel service (about motel reservations at La Jolla) on the phone and read mail from Tito (verging on suicidal despair in Mexico) and a lady from New Zealand (wanting to know what happened to Sally Bowles). I now have to do at least one of the prefaces to an author for my anthology; two would be desirable. And, if possible, write some letters. And, if possible, get my driver’s license renewed.

  Since Saturday afternoon, a great improvement in Don’s morale. On Sunday we cycled up the coast to the beach house Shelley Winters has rented. A typical Jewish chaos of elderly female relatives and young kids. Not enough to eat. A very ineffective barbecue. Don and I had to cook the hamburgers by lighting bits of paper under them. The water was good for swimming, though, and I felt nostalgic because the house where Dodie and Alec used to live was only a few doors away.

  Ivan Moffat said Patrick Kinross51 looked like the summer number of Punch—his baldness and his potbelly.

  The girl who stayed on the telephone all afternoon.

  William Marchant, who wrote The Desk Set,52 taking pictures with his Polaroid camera—one of me coming out of the ocean decked in seaweed—and being cured of a headache with Miltown.53