Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Scheler, Max. German photographer. Isherwood and Bachardy were introduced to him by Herbert List in Munich during their 1955 European trip.

  Schley, Edna. Isherwood’s Hollywood agent during the early 1940s, recommended to him by John van Druten. She worked with her husband Dan Leonardson. In 1944 she had a brain hemorrhage and never recovered.

  Schwed, Peter. Isherwood’s editor at Simon and Schuster. In 1957, Isherwood moved from Random House to Simon and Schuster in order to work with John Goodman. When Goodman unexpectedly died, Schwed became Isherwood’s editor, but Isherwood never felt that Schwed liked or understood his work. After several changes of heart, Isherwood nonetheless remained at Simon and Schuster until the start of the 1970s. Simon and Schuster published Down There on a Visit, A Single Man, A Meeting by the River, Kathleen and Frank, and Exhumations.

  Scott-Kilvert, Ian. Isherwood had been tutor to Ian Scott-Kilvert for a short period beginning in January 1927 when Scott-Kilvert was eight; they renewed their friendship in the late 1930s. Scott-Kilvert was a pacifist at the start of the war and served in a Friends Ambulance Unit in Africa, but afterwards fought behind German lines in Greece. He married an American woman called Elizabeth. He appears as “Graham” in Lions and Shadows.

  Searle, Alan (1905–1985). Secretary and companion to Somerset Maugham from 1938 until Maugham’s death, and Maugham’s heir. They first met in 1928 in London when Searle was in his early twenties. Searle was the son of a Bermondsey tailor and had a Cockney accent; when he met Maugham, he had already had relationships with older men, among them Lytton Strachey. At the time he worked with convicts—visiting them in prison and helping them to resettle in the community when they were released—but told Maugham he wanted to travel. Maugham purportedly invited him to do so on the spot, but for a decade they met again only when Maugham was in London. Eventually Searle devoted his life to Maugham.

  Selective Service. Under the Selective Service and Training Act signed by Roosevelt October 16, 1940, men aged twenty-one to thirty-six were required to register for the draft. The first two selective service registrations, in October 1940 and July 1941, signed up men aged twenty-one to thirty-five, and both drafts were conducted by lottery. But the draft age, at both the youngest and oldest ends of the spectrum, went up and down throughout the war, depending on the requirements of the military. On August 16, 1941, men aged twenty-eight and over were relieved from training and service, while, on August 18, the period of service for younger men was extended to eighteen months. But then on December 20, 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the liability for service was greatly enlarged to include men aged twenty to forty-four, and all men aged eighteen to sixty-four were also required to register. At roughly the same time, the duration of service was again lengthened—to six months after the end of the war, however long it lasted. The third registration occurred in February 1942, and the third and final lottery in March; afterwards registrants were called by their birth dates, the youngest and the oldest last. Forty-five to sixty-five-year-old men were registered in the fourth registration, in April 1942, but only for occupational classification. The fifth registration, for men eighteen to twenty, began in June 1942. In December 1942, drafting of men over thirty-eight was discontinued for good, while in the same month the sixth registration signed up eighteen-year-olds and those who would reach eighteen after December 31. From April 1, 1944, the military asked for men under thirty, preferably eighteen to twenty-five year olds. The draft continued after the war in order to supply men for international reconstructive and peace keeping commitments, and later for Korea.

  The men who registered for the draft were divided into four main classes: class 1 designated men available for military service and training; classes 2, 3, and 4 designated men deferred for various reasons. Each class had subclasses, and the definitions of the subclasses were continuously though slightly revised throughout the war, especially since the draft age went up and down. There were several classes for conscientious objectors, and Isherwood mentions many of them in describing his own experience and the experiences of his friends and acquaintances. 1-A-O, the classification Matthew Huxley took before being drafted into the Medical Corps, designated C.O.s who were prepared to serve in noncombatant roles in the military and who were fit for general service (1-A-O was thus a subclass of 1-A, the main group of men fit and available for general military service). 4-D designated a minister of religion or a divinity student; Isherwood applied for this in September 1942 while making up his mind to try to become a monk, and others associated with the Vedanta Society also applied for it. 4-E designated a C.O. who was not prepared to serve in the military at all, even in a noncombatant role. 4-Es were fit and available for “civilian work of national importance,” an employment category Roosevelt established for them in February 1941 (4-E-LS designated the same sort of C.O., but one fit only for limited service). Denny Fouts went to CPS camp as a 4-E in the summer of 1941, and Isherwood, too old for the draft at this point, tried to volunteer to a camp the same summer but was not wanted. Then after Pearl Harbor when the draft age went up, and through much of 1942, Isherwood waited to be drafted to camp as a 4-E, but the call never came. The deferment 1-A-H (later sometimes called simply 1-H) existed initially for men who had already reached their twenty-eighth birthday without being drafted; by 1942, 1-H designated men deferred generally by reason of age—at first twenty-eight to thirty-seven year olds, later thirty-seven to forty-five year olds. By analogy, 4-E-H was, initially, a C.O. opposed to a noncombatant military role and who had reached his twenty-eighth birthday without being assigned to a task of national importance. By 1942, 4-E-H (also sometimes simply called 4-H) designated men deferred from work of national importance by reason of age. In fact, these age deferments applied to George Fitts and to Isherwood through most of the war, except the period just after Pearl Harbor when age limits were greatly extended. 4-F designated men who were physically, mentally, or morally unfit for military service—in addition to ill-health, disqualifying “crimes” ranged from treason, murder, and rape to sodomy and sexual perversion. Benjamin Bok, who had a rare, progressive arthritis, and W. H. Auden, who did not conceal his homosexuality from the draft board, were both disqualified from service under this class. A decade later, in 1954, Don Bachardy was also classified 4–F after revealing he was homosexual. The classification 4-C, for aliens who had not declared their intention to become U.S. citizens, should have deferred Swami Prabhavananda’s nephew Asit Ghosh from the draft, but did not. Tony Bower had completed his military service and was designated 4-A, but after Pearl Harbor, this class was closed and Bower was drafted for a second time.

  Selznick, David O. (1902–1965). Legendary American producer; most famous for Gone with the Wind (1939). Among his many other well-known films are Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1934), A Star Is Born (1937), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Rebecca (1940), Spellbound (1945), and Duel in the Sun (1946). Selznick worked for his father’s film company from adolescence until its bankruptcy in 1923; in 1926 he went to Hollywood where he began as an assistant story editor at MGM and worked for Harry Rapf. He then joined Paramount, and in 1931 became the first studio head at RKO—where he hired George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn, among others. In 1933, he went back to MGM, but left in 1935 to form Selznick International Pictures with John Hay Whitney. Selznick’s aspirations were monumental: he was obsessed with detail, and tried to control every aspect of the pictures he was involved with. Despite the success of many of his films, he went increasingly into debt, and by the end of the 1940s he had to close his companies. He was married to Louis B. Mayer’s daughter Irene from 1931 to 1945, and to Jennifer Jones from 1949 onwards. He took Jones to live and work in Europe intermittently during the 1950s, and her career absorbed Selznick almost entirely at the end of his life. Selznick traded his rights in A Star is Born to get the lead for Jones in A Farewell to Arms (1957); the film failed and proved to be his last. Isherwood worked for Selznick in 1958, developing a script for a propos
ed film, Mary Magdalene, and they became friends, often meeting at Selznick’s house both for work and socially. The French Dominican friar, Father Bruckberger, evidently felt Selznick was drawing inappropriately on Bruckberger’s 1952 biography of Mary Magdalene, but Selznick seemingly had ideas of his own for the script as well as a melodramatic novel about Mary Magdalene, The Scarlet Lily, by Edward F. Murphy. Murphy’s novel, though, was only published in 1960; perhaps Selznick read it before that in typescript. Selznick replaced Isherwood with another writer, Eddie Anhalt, then abandoned the project altogether when a panel of statesmen and scholars in Tel Aviv told him the script was anti-Semitic.

  Selznick, Jennifer. Second wife of David Selznick; see Jones, Jennifer.

  Shankara. Hindu religious philosopher and saint of roughly the sixth to eighth centuries A.D., widely recognized as an emanation of Shiva. Shankara wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the principal Upanishads and other religious texts, as well as philosophy, poems, hymns and prayers. Much of his work is not attributed with authority. He probably organized the Hindu mendicant orders.

  Shenkel, John. A novice monk at the Hollywood Vedanta Center from about 1949; by 1952 he was living at Trabuco. He became Ananta Chaitanya in 1954 and then at the end of the 1950s went to live in India.

  Shroyer, Fred. A faculty member in the English department at Los Angeles State College and Isherwood’s colleague. He was responsible for Isherwood being hired to teach there in 1959 and became a friend. In December that year he appeared with Isherwood on a half-hour TV program about The Sun Also Rises, the novel that made Hemingway famous in 1926.

  Sister Lalita (“Sister”) (d. 1949). Carrie Mead Wykoff was an American widow who met Vivekananda on one of his trips to America and became a disciple of Swami Turiyananda (another direct disciple of Ramakrishna). Turiyananda gave her the name Sister Lalita. She met Swami Prabhavananda when he opened the Vedanta Center in Portland, Oregon, and in 1929 invited him to live in her house in Hollywood. By 1938 they had gathered a congregation around them and they built the Hollywood temple in her garden. She had a collie dog called Dhruva.

  Smith, Dodie. See Beesley.

  Soldati, Mario (b. 1906). Italian novelist and film director. In the summer of 1955 Soldati evidently proposed that Isherwood write a screenplay based on Soldati’s The Capri Letters. Isherwood decided not to, and when he nevertheless visited Soldati while in Italy later that year, Isherwood decided to turn down other projects as well.

  Sophie. See Moulaert, Sophie.

  Sorel, Paul. American painter, of Midwestern background; his real name is Karl Dibble. Sorel was a close friend of Chris Wood, and lived with him in Laguna from the early 1940s. Sorel moved out in 1943 after disagreements about money and in 1944 went to New York for a time. He painted portraits of Isherwood and Bill Caskey in 1950. Chris Wood continued to support him for the rest of Wood’s life, though they did not live together after 1953.

  Speed. See Lamkin, Speed.

  Spencer, Roger. A young devotee evidently living at the Vedanta Society during 1943 and afterwards. Probably this is the same Roger Spencer whom Isherwood met at Trabuco in the summer of 1942 and who served at the Los Prietos CPS camp as a C.O. later the same year.

  Spender, Stephen (1909–1995). English poet, critic, autobiographer, editor. W. H. Auden introduced Isherwood to Spender in 1928; Spender was then an undergraduate at University College, Oxford, and Isherwood became a mentor. Afterwards Spender lived in Hamburg and near Isherwood in Berlin, and the two briefly shared a house in Sintra with Heinz Neddermeyer and Tony Hyndman. Spender was the youngest of the writers who came to prominence with Auden and Isherwood in the 1930s; after Auden and Isherwood emigrated, he gradually replaced them in the London literary world, successfully cultivating the public and social roles they abjured. He worked as a propagandist for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War and was a member of the National Fire Service during the Blitz. He was co-editor with Cyril Connolly of Horizon and later an editor of Encounter. He moved away from his early enthusiasm for communism, but remained liberal in politics and later founded and contributed to Index on Censorship. His 1936 marriage to Inez Pearn was over by 1939, and in 1941 he married Natasha Litvin, a concert pianist, with whom he had two children. Spender’s literary and social prominence gave him enormous influence over the reputations of Isherwood and Auden in England; latterly he used this mainly to their benefit. He appears as “Stephen Savage” in Lions and Shadows and is further described in Christopher and His Kind. He published an autobiography, World Within World, in 1951, and his Journals 1939–1983 appeared in 1985.

  Spender, Natasha Litvin. English concert pianist; she married Stephen Spender in 1941 and had two children with him, Matthew and Lizzie.

  Spigelgass, Leonard. American screenwriter and playwright. He was about Isherwood’s age, and wrote two musicals at MGM during the 1950s when Isherwood was working there. Spigelgass also wrote a play, a comedy titled A Majority of One, which was produced on Broadway and later filmed in 1961. His most widely known screenplay was for the 1962 film version of Gypsy. In the mid-1950s, Spigelgass was friendly with Brendan Toomey, whom Isherwood also met.

  Stanley, Leonard. Interior decorator, born and raised in Hawaii. He was a close friend of Tony Duquette. When Isherwood and Bachardy visited Hawaii in 1957, Stanley arranged for them to stay with his mother, Geneva, in the house where Stanley and his sister, Pat Stanley Delpesh, had grown up.

  Starcke, Walter. American actor and theatrical producer; he altered the spelling of his last name to Starkey, but returned to his real name, Starcke, when he gave up acting. He starred in an unsuccessful play of John van Druten’s in the late 1940s, then became van Druten’s producer. He also became van Druten’s longterm boyfriend. Van Druten’s previous lover, Carter Lodge, and Lodge’s new lover, Dick Foote, never liked Starcke, resulting in complicated rivalries among the four of them; van Druten and Starcke finally split up in 1957, not long before van Druten died. Isherwood first met Starcke in January 1947, and tended to enjoy his company. Starcke was a Joel Goldsmith devotee.

  Steen, Mike. American stuntman with acting ambitions. Steen was from Louisiana and was friendly with Speed Lamkin, Tom Wright, and Henry Guerriero; Lamkin introduced him to Isherwood in the early 1950s. Gavin Lambert became romantically involved with Steen during 1958, and Steen also had relationships, perhaps sexual, with Nicholas Ray, William Inge, and Tennessee Williams. Steen worked as a stuntman in Ray’s Party Girl, and he did stunts or played bit parts in other movies in the late 1950s and 1960s, including a tiny part in the 1962 film of Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth.

  Stephen. See Spender, Stephen.

  Steve, also Stevie. See Conway, Steve.

  Stern, James (1904–1993). Irish writer and translator. Educated at Eton and, briefly, Sandhurst. In youth, he worked as a farmer in Southern Rhodesia and a banker in the family bank in England and Europe, then travelled until settling for a time in Paris in the 1930s, where he married. Isherwood met Stern in Sintra, Portugal in 1936 through William Robson-Scott, and for some months Isherwood and Heinz shared their house, Alecrim do Norte, with Stern and his wife. There, Isherwood introduced Stern to W. H. Auden with whom Stern became an intimate friend, later, in America. Stern eventually returned to England. His books include The Heartless Land (1932) and Something Wrong (1938)—both story collections—and The Hidden Damage (1947), about his trip with Auden to postwar Germany.

  Stern, Tania (1906–1995). Tania Kurella, the daughter of a German psychiatrist, was a physical therapist and exercise teacher, exponent of her own technique, the Kurella method. She fled Germany in 1933 to escape persecution for the left-wing political activities of her two brothers, already refugees, and lived for a time in Paris where she met James Stern. They married in 1935. She collaborated on some of his translations and she also shared his close friendship with W. H. Auden. Isherwood found her warm, unaffected, and beautiful. In later years, the Sterns disapproved of Isherwood, believing that he exa
ggerated his poverty and also imagining (wrongly) that Auden might have married and become essentially heterosexual were it not for Isherwood’s influence.

  Steuermann, Eduard. Polish-born concert pianist; Salka Viertel’s brother and briefly a member of her extended household during the war. He re-established his career in the U.S., achieving wide recognition as an interpreter in particular of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Among his students was Alfred Brendel. Steuermann married twice, and had three daughters, including “Mausi,” who lived with the Viertels during the war. His second marriage was to his student, Clara Silvers, thirty years his junior.

  Steuermann, Frau. Salka Viertel’s mother. Frau Steuermann fled Poland during the war and arrived in California via Siberia. She lived with the Viertels and died in Santa Monica in June 1953.

  Steuermann, Margeret (Mausi). Salka Viertel’s niece, eldest daughter of Eduard Steuermann. Mausi was part of the Viertel household during the war, studied acting and played the piano. At twelve or thirteen she was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was committed to a clinic; eventually she improved enough to lead an almost normal life.

  Steuermann, Sara Salomé. See Viertel, Salka.

  Stravinsky, Igor (1882–1971). Russian-born composer; he went to Paris with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1910 and brought about a rhythmic revolution in western music with his The Rite of Spring (1911–1913), the most sensational of his many works commissioned for the company. In youth he was greatly influenced by his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, but Stravinsky’s originality as a composer derived partly from his ability to borrow and rework an enormously wide range of musical forms and styles. He remained continuously open to new ideas, even into old age. Many of his early works evoke Russian folk music, and he was influenced by jazz. Around 1923 he began a long neo-classical period during which he drew on and responded to the compositions of his great European predecessors. After the Russian revolution, Stravinsky remained in Europe, making his home first in Switzerland and then in Paris, and turned to performing and conducting to support his family. In 1926 he rejoined the Russian Orthodox Church, and religious music became an increasing preoccupation during the later part of his career. At the outbreak of World War II, he emigrated to America where he settled in Los Angeles and eventually became a citizen in 1945. Although he was asked to, he never composed for films. His first and most important work for English words was his opera, The Rake’s Progress (1951), for which W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman wrote the libretto. Isherwood first met Stravinsky in August 1949 at lunch in the Farmer’s Market in Hollywood with Aldous and Maria Huxley and others. He was soon invited to the Stravinskys’ house for supper where he fell asleep listening to a Stravinsky recording; Stravinsky later told Robert Craft that this was the start of his great affection for Isherwood. The two became warm friends and were often drunk together. During the 1950s, with the encouragement of Robert Craft, Stravinsky began to compose according to the twelve-note serial methods invented by Schoenberg and extended by Webern—he was already past seventy. Toward the end of his life, he wrote a number of sacred cantatas and musical epitaphs, including In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954), which Isherwood heard but did not like. Despite his self-professed inability to appreciate Stravinsky’s music, Isherwood was clearly impressed by the seriousness and depth of purpose with which Stravinsky approached his work, and he evidently found Stravinsky’s company not only comforting but also inspiring.