Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  June 13. Finished my work for Selznick yesterday. Today I’m at a loose end, rather. Don leaves Sunday night. I shall have all of next week free.

  The tragedy of Tom Wright. His father phoned to say his mother was sick in hospital, then died himself that same night. And the mother is found to have advanced cancer and is a hopeless case. She had been one of the foremost workers in the local cancer society, putting around the leaflets which tell you of cancer’s danger signals. But she had disregarded her own symptoms, having decided that they were of something else quite minor. What a parable!

  June 17. At 1:05 a.m. yesterday morning Don took off for Louisiana, to stay with Marguerite and her family at Monroe and maybe go on to New York later.

  Have bought Chris Wood’s Simca and sold the Ford—mainly because Don had a mysterious grudge against it. But the Simca is quite nice, although I was against it at first and sulked.

  On Monday I found I weighed 155 lbs, an all-time high. So I have gone on a proper scientific calorie-counting diet, plus giving up all alcohol. I am to get back down below 145.

  Am also trying to produce a version of the first forty pages of my novel I can send to Edward, soon.

  Salka Viertel is back here. She and I had supper together last night on the pier. She was tired and shaky with nerves, because she hasn’t got a job, and Virginia is making difficulties about divorcing Peter and is herself near-alcoholic and therefore most unsuited to looking after Christine.

  Salka says she loves Christine as much as she ever loved anyone.

  I gave her several Miltown tablets and a strong suggestion that they would make her sleep. This morning she told me that they had.

  June 21. Am just below 150 lbs—maybe 148. The diet works all right and one doesn’t even feel particularly hungry.

  A gruelling session with Gerald Heard and Michael Barrie at Vera Stravinsky’s opening of her show of paintings. I still only like the earlier ones. The strangest people were there: “Father” McLane’s son, firing off champagne corks in the backyard like rockets, the boy who runs the Canyon laundromat, Mr. Lee the builder, a Russian lady of eighty who could stand on her head, another who was about three feet high and couldn’t, and of course lots of musicians. Many people greeted me with respect because of my appearance on the Oscar Levant show—it is my only claim to fame.

  Paul Millard called to tell me that Marguerite’s father shot himself. Don must have been there. No direct word from them yet. Paul says Don is going to New York at once.

  Lunched with Clifton Webb7 and Ray Stricklyn.8 Clifton asserting, a little peevishly, his rights as a major star. While he was away from the studio—two and a half years—because of pictures abroad, he is careful to add—they took the record player out of his dressing room.

  Michael Barrie had a papilloma removed by a Russian Jewish surgeon named Max Cutler who described (he came with us to Vera’s show) how he had won a seal for his daughter at the Beaumont cherry festival by bouncing ping-pong balls into a bowl. He says that even malignant skin cancers are always curable if taken in time.

  Jennifer Jones came with me to see Swami yesterday. The family watched her from behind the blinds. The meeting was apparently a success, but who knows? What are the chances of poor Jones entering through the needle’s eye?

  And this morning Swami tells me “one bad news”—Jimmy [Barnes] is leaving, “because of sex.” “We are all very sad—and now who is to cook for me in Laguna?” When I told him that Jennifer had asked me about Tantra, he said: “What for does she want Tantra? She has her husband!”

  I record all this mess of facts to try, somehow, to convey the strangeness. Is it all, all a dream? My life seems always bearable, often pleasant, sometimes delightful—but it is just a few inches apart from me. Swami, I suppose, is the reallest person in it. But do I want to spend all my time with him? Even three nights a week? Even stay with him in Laguna? No. Why not? Because of the Vedanta Place group (whom individually I like) and the strained social atmosphere around him. I would like to be with him often—quietly, without speaking, like his dog.

  And Don? He fills a deep need in me. Could anyone else fill it? Theoretically yes, I guess so. But there never has been anyone who filled it as he has—and why change, when the chances of finding anyone better are astronomically tiny? And anyhow, this could also be said of Swami.

  Besides, there is love. When I think “love,” the idea of getting a new Swami or a new Don seems insane. It is insane. But still, on another level, love is bound up with the concept of myself. And who is myself? Not the consciousness which watches me writing down these thoughts.

  June 23. This is a sort of turning point, because today I found that Selznick isn’t going on with Mary Magdalene—at least, not at present—or not with me. So now I have no excuse—I must get on with the rewriting of the first part of my novel—and with the Ramakrishna book.

  Don’s account of the attempted suicide of Mr. Lamkin is really a marvellous document. Particularly when Marguerite says, of the blood on the carpet, “We’ll never get it out again!”

  Supper with Jack Larson yesterday evening was simply and solely a bore. I was bored. He probably was, too. But he’s a nice boy.

  Today a visit with Jo and Ben to the Thurlows, who make hooked rugs in Venice. Mr. Thurlow is eighty-two and has received an illuminated address from the City of Los Angeles, congratulating him on being one of Venice’s oldest inhabitants. His house used to stand on the edge of a canal. It was filled with fresh seawater every day. Now the canals are drained—Mr. Thurlow voted for this but now feels he made a mistake. The house smells of age and cat piss. Both cats are fourteen—one is crippled, the other has extra toes.

  The daughter is turning grey but still is plump and virginal. One feels a tragedy. She never married. The mother works only till 2:00, but the daughter keeps going till 4 a.m. and rises early to start work again. The rugs are huge—they are shaped to cover whole floors of houses and also form stair carpets; and there are appropriate designs. Signs of the zodiac, animals, locomotives. Big stars buy them.

  To make them, dozens of old coats are torn up, into long strips.

  June 24. The day began badly because I flew out and shouted at the kids, who were spraying water from the Hines’ hose over the Simca. Not much water—that didn’t matter—but the noise! It not only disturbs me when I’m working, it threatens me with not being able to work if I want to. I heard Mrs. Hine reproving the kids later. Of course she thinks I’m an old prissy ill-natured queen, and let her, with all my heart, if it makes her keep her children away!

  Also—after a mild debauch yesterday: a glass of sugary lemonade (no, two!) and a tiny rock cake at the Thurlows’, a glass of wine at Jo and Ben’s and a cookie and a large helping of fish—I was back to 150. All that self-denial wasted!

  But, courage! The children left me fairly alone all day. I rearranged the whole sequence of the restaurant scene in my novel, reopened my unemployment insurance claim, and kept the calories low.

  Bart Lord called up with a long tale of woe. He must break with Ted, who continues to shoplift and who isn’t interested in Bart’s new house—which he’s going to buy in the Valley, to get “security.” Of course, Bart is shallow […] from one viewpoint. But the fact remains that only a St. Francis of Assisi could handle Ted. You’d have to sacrifice everything—maybe get yourself arrested for shoplifting. Whereas Bart doesn’t even want to give up listening to classical records, which Ted hates. And am I any different?

  June 25. Today (8:30 a.m.) is grey and muted—with the children muted also as if in obedience to the mood of the weather—after the hot bright mornings of the last few weeks. This is the kind of weather in which I love the Canyon best. I am working cross-legged on cushions, typewriting at the low teak table, which keeps the back erect and is far less tiring. Why don’t I always do this?

  I feel a great appetite for, and joy in work. I have the money now to go ahead for months without worrying. Clouds on the horizon—the Leba
non crisis,9 my weight refusing to drop (only 149 lbs this morning, in spite of my efforts yesterday!).

  Had supper with Kent Chapman and his girl, Nancy Dvorak. Kent talked a lot about the Beat Generation and Venice West. What most interests me is Laurence Lipton’s attempt to go along with them, which has seemingly failed: the older man learning the younger generation’s jargon, “Man, the scene is here!”10 Kent is sort of between the camps. He got sick the only time he smoked “pot.”11 But according to these Venice West boys you’re a square if you don’t. Kent wants me to come and see them, but I know they would reject me utterly, on the charge of being rich. They are all poor and they help each other. They’ll see that you have a “pad,” and they’ll steal milk for you, from doorsteps. It’s a kind of Assisi-like ideal, plus marijuana. They reject the commercial arms-and-business race. They are pacifists. They also mingle with the motorbike gangs—“The Venice Rats”—with the result that some of the rats now write poetry.

  June 26. Talk with Swami last night. He told me that he feels the presence of the Lord almost continuously; he no longer has to make much of an effort. When he wakes up in the night—which he has to do, two or three times, to go to the toilet because of his prostate—he feels the presence. Sometimes it is Ramakrishna, sometimes Holy Mother, Maharaj or Swamiji. I asked if it made any difference that he had known Maharaj and seen Holy Mother in life, but not the others. No, he said: they were all equally real.

  Swami says he never prays directly for problems to be solved. He only asks for more devotion to the Lord.

  Later I went on to see Salka, who was alone. We talked about Garbo. Berthold had said: “She lives by rejection.” When young, she was eager to learn—watched Salka for hours playing out her old roles. Garbo was so inadequate in the last scene of Camille that Salka had them give all the lines to Robert Taylor. Garbo had only to say “Yes” and “No,” and it came out great.

  Salka is sick of movie writing. She would like to become a story editor.

  She doesn’t mind being alone, I think. But she is very worried about Christine.

  July 3. Don got back last Sunday morning, the 29th.

  Life closed over us immediately—hardly making a splash. I’m so much in the midst of it that my diary-keeping mood is nil. But—

  I’m getting ahead with my novel and the Ramakrishna book: That alone is le bonheur.

  The back bumper of the Simca has been dented by an old Jewess in a Cadillac.

  I’ve met Phil Burns again. Not only is he very cute looking but he has become amazingly self-sufficient. He designs country clubs, stores, bars, and lives alone but not alone. He rather impresses me. It’s as if he’d discovered just the right mixture of selfishness and concern for others. But of course I don’t seriously believe this. It must be some kind of bluff.

  July 5. Fatigue! I guess I’m undernourished, although I seem to eat plenty. But I cannot get the weight down below 148. Working hard—getting on with novel, Ramakrishna book and today I finished a new foreword for All the Conspirators.

  A big party yesterday at the Selznicks’. Louis Jourdan so worried because his little boy wouldn’t mix. Mel Ferrer’s son worried because he let his dad down at tennis. Selznick worried because he couldn’t get everyone to play games all at once. Jennifer’s younger Walker son12 is a really artistic drummer. Collier Young annoyed Joan Fontaine by harping on anti-British jokes.13

  July 9. Keeping steadily—but too slowly—along with Ramakrishna and the rewrite of my novel. Ramakrishna is at page sixty-three, with maybe two to three more pages to go till the end of chapter three. This will be the end of the introductory part. Chapter four will lead into my visit to India and so the beginning of Ramakrishna’s life. That should make a proportion of three chapters of introduction to twelve chapters of Ramakrishna’s life.

  The novel is on page twenty. I have no idea how long the whole of this draft will be. My first whole draft is 251 pages. I can scarcely believe that I shall ever get through it. And yet this new draft does, so far, seem far superior to the old.

  My weight has gotten down to around 146. I need to make one last big push to get it below the 145 mark, where I want to keep it.

  A girl named Liz Murphy and a rather older but much more attractive woman whose name I forget—she was Chinese—came by this afternoon to interview me about the Beat Generation. So I repeated more or less what I have just written in my new foreword to All the Conspirators. Also I suggested that the Beat Generation is rejecting the pairs of opposites, as in Zen, and going out for satori. Both of the women were delighted when I attacked Time, and Newsweek—for which they were interviewing me. They seemed to be repressed leftists.

  July 11. Foggy along the coast, hot and smoggy inland. Tristeza y soledad.14 Because Don apologetically announced this morning that he’d quite forgotten but he had a dinner date tonight. Well—so what? It really is better, I guess, since his “freedom” has been officially recognized. Anyhow I know it’s the right thing and I’m in favor of it unshakably—in principle.

  No, I’m merely sad because I’m in a rut, low vitality, rather bored by my novel. Under these circumstances there is nothing on earth to be done but go on.

  Read Disraeli’s Endymion today. I like his high camp irony: “I think now we have got rid of Liberalism forever.” Maybe it is his oriental quality—I don’t know—but he somehow succeeds in making London seem a bit like a city of Asia Minor, mysterious, with inner sanctums within sanctums, and weirdly magnificent female powers behind the scenes—like Zenobia.15

  July 14. All day I’ve been useless for work, because I got drunk last night. So I slept a lot and took Miltown and went in the ocean with Don—and it was pretty nice. All except for the beginning of this crisis in Iraq, which looks really ugly.16

  We were drunk because we had the Stravinskys to dinner; in a week they will be leaving on one of their long European tours, and of course the thought always occurs: shall we ever see Igor again? Actually he seemed in fine form last night. He and Vera both drink far too much though, and it seems as if Bob were getting shaky too; something with his liver.

  A great sense of love and rapport between us and them. Vera and Igor talked about Diaghilev. He used to tell Vera all about his boyfriends. Vera thinks he killed himself by excessive dieting. Igor said that Diaghilev surrounded himself with people who were inventive. “And inventions,” Igor added, “are the only things worth stealing.”

  Laura Huxley told me on the phone that during the thunderstorm in her production of The Giaconda Smile,17 she had the word “passion” in big letters across the window. The word couldn’t be consciously read because the flashes of “lightning” were so brief: but a subliminal mood is supposed to have been created.

  Gerald Heard yesterday at Michael Barrie’s cocktail party wore grass-green slacks, so thin he says he can’t stand against the light.

  July 16. Crisis blues. Yesterday I was sleepy and miserable, because of the Miltown I’d taken. Today, I prefer not to be sleepy. The kids are being particularly noisy. I ground out a page of the Ramakrishna book, remembering all the other times like this, when writing seemed a futility. Yes, but one must write. Don is worried and edgy, but he has made himself paint this morning. So it goes. I hardly even want to listen to the radio and get more bad news.

  July 20. Today we haven’t heard any news at all—which is symptomatic of our modern delusion that there can’t be news on Sunday because the newspapers wouldn’t allow it.

  Last night to the Huxleys’. An Irish lady slaughtered the government for getting us into danger for the sake of oil. Aldous pointed out that the Arabs must ultimately sell their oil to the West—Russia doesn’t need it. It was a very fourth-rate party, badly managed. Laura and Aldous both sat at the same table, and Laura served sherry as a dinner wine.

  I am utterly disgusted by my own laziness. Only one page of my novel today. And now I’m starting to negotiate with Roger Edens about doing another film.

  July 24. The crisis is
passing, unless we have a flare-up.

  Oh, why do I write in the diary, when there seems nothing to report but deadened vitality, slowed-down reactions? All my energy goes into resentment nowadays, mostly against the noisy kids on this street and hence their parents. Today I walked home from the unemployment bureau through the park, and it was so beautiful but somehow I was dead to it. And my novel isn’t right, and the Ramakrishna book is wordy and pompous. Don is very sweet most of the time—but as he said himself the other day, why does living together have to be so terribly painful.

  Which reminds me, my thumb is giving me hell—trying to stop me from writing this as usual. I’ll soon have to keep a typescript diary.

  August 1. I meant to start typing this, but I haven’t—so I’ll write something here to keep the record going.

  By and large, all goes well here. Don and I are getting along very well on our design for living, even though it is a design. Time will show.

  I have been bad and lazy about my two books. The novel crawls and the Ramakrishna book sticks because I now have to make the transition to the actual biography.

  The Roger Edens deal looks like it was falling through. No word from him.

  Down to Laguna with Prema last Saturday, to see Swami who has been staying there with Swami Vandanananda and Krishna. Prema told me how he hates Usha—called her a bitch—because she is attempting to sabotage an article he has been writing about the bramachari vows. Usha thinks they should never be made known to anyone who isn’t a brahmachari. Prema says that after all any Catholic novice is encouraged to read the vows over and over—every day for a year, before he takes them. Usha’s method is to organize support among the girls and then go to Swami and make a fuss.

  Prema feels that there is a perpetual struggle going on between the women and the men. Also that the boys at Trabuco are all so selfish and this explains the bad atmosphere there is there. Prema thinks that I’m “idealistic” about spiritual devotees and therefore have to be disillusioned!