Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  A boy who had come down to sit for Don brought his dog with him. The dog began by putting its paws on a wet painting. Then the boy tied it to the gate just outside the front door, and it pulled the gate down!

  Elsa’s house next door has been robbed. The thief forced the back door but left no mess. He simply took the color T.V. set and two Polish statuettes. The police think it was an inside job, and Elsa suspects one of [her] gardener’s stepsons, who has a record as a juvenile delinquent.

  Mike Laughlin (on Gavin’s advice) offered Don a job on his latest film, as a sort of art director. Don is asked to see that the sets have “a forties atmosphere.” Don feels that Mike doesn’t know his own mind, and the script is simply awful, and poor Leslie is to be in it. Don’s instinct is to refuse the job—yet it just might be a lead-on to similar but much more promising assignments.

  We watched a very good English T.V. film about George Eliot.95 I found it painfully touching when she spoke of her happiness with George Henry Lewes and how she treasured it because she knew it must be short. That’s exactly how I feel now about Don; I grudge every one of these beautiful snug evenings together at home, watching T.V. and eating eggplant or hamburgers on the bed. We have never been happier together.

  A very sad confused rambling letter from Lee Prosser, who set forth from Missouri to come back west and then abandoned the trip to San Francisco, and has now returned home—chiefly, as far as I can judge, because, while there, he got the news that Mary his ex-wife has been killed in a head-on auto collision. From the way Lee writes, he seems to be on the verge of a breakdown.

  May 1. Vera is back in New York and we have spoken to her and she says she would like to see us. Probably we won’t go until after the 10th, however, as we have to be available to make whatever rewrites the front office at Universal demands.

  Michael Barrie wants to know the exact time of Igor’s death. Because between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. on the night of April 5, Gerald became excited and worried in a quite uncharacteristic way and began to talk a lot, though unintelligibly. Michael believes that Igor, realizing he was about to die, sent out telepathic distress signals and that Gerald picked them up and was therefore trying to tell him not to be afraid. The three hours’ difference between Los Angeles and New York time would fit in with the fact that Igor died early on the 6th.

  On the 29th we went to a supper at the Bel Air Hotel to be talked to by James Fox about his conversion to Jesus. It happened in Blackpool—James had come there with a touring company in an elsewhere successful comedy, and it flopped. He met a man who said that he’d come to Blackpool “to spend a day with Jesus.” The man opened his Bible and read texts and showed Jimmy that the wages of sin is death and that he, Jimmy, was dead but could be alive in Christ. And Jimmy realized that this must be true and ever since then he has “lived with Jesus,” and he has been in Australia and New Zealand lecturing about this.

  It is important not to sneer, not to be superior. Indeed, when I first heard of Jimmy’s conversion, I was pleased and excited and I never doubted that it was genuine. I don’t doubt that it is genuine now, up to a point. But certain things Don and I saw that evening were very disturbing.

  James looked marvellously young, at first glance, and very slender. But when he began to speak, he seemed frantic and his face became tortured. Don said he was like a confirmed stammerer. His mouth kept pulling sideways. The first part of his talk was all about his career; I suppose he intended to reassure us that he was a normal sane successful actor, but he merely seemed to be bragging in an embarrassing way. And then he is such an out-and-out fundamentalist; everything is backed up by Bible quoting. He has absolutely no use for our Vedanta, or any other religion. It all has to be through Christ—no other way is possible. And that was sinister, especially in view of the people who had arranged the supper, his new friends. Pasadena people, with money. They call themselves The Nagivators, because the movement began in the Navy. They are smiling people, with self-assured little in jokes, but underneath they are fanatical [. . .]. And we felt James was captured by them. After supper he pleaded with us tearfully to live with Jesus. It was almost as if they’d told him to go get us. No use my pointing out that we had a religion already that suited us, or that Swami had written a book about the Sermon on the Mount. Finally Don said, “If you’ll read the Gita, I’ll read the Bible.”

  Richard Chamberlain was at the party. There was no opportunity to ask him why. But he looked embarrassed and I don’t believe that he shares James’s views.

  May 2. My lump in the gut is back again after quite a long remission. Don’s foot produced some more growths, new ones. Dr. Kafka still doesn’t seem worried but he put on much stronger medication and poor darling Kitty has been limping around. He’s to see Kafka again tomorrow.

  We spent the evening with Gavin yesterday, without Mark, which was nice for a change. Gavin says that Natalie Wood no longer sees him. Gavin thinks it’s because of Mark, and because her husband doesn’t approve. That’s so typical of The Others— they just love bachelor queers but find it distasteful when they find a steady and bring him around; as long as the bachelor is playing the field that’s fine, and even cute and amusing. Also, as long as the queer is a bachelor, they can be sorry for him and reflect on the tragedy of his life.

  Have just finished reading Dracula. It really tells you little or nothing about how it feels to be a vampire. What turns the author on is the predicament of the two beautiful bitten women. Of course they both remain perfect ladies, except at moments when they are “not themselves.” Poor Lucy! “Her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. . . . There was something diabolically sweet in her tones—something of the tingling of glass when struck.”96 Mina never sinks that low, but you feel she rather loves having the vampire scar on her brow, and being oh so brave, and having these good-looking guys running around protecting her: “Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money! What can it not do when it is properly applied; and what might it do when basely used. I felt so thankful that Lord Godalming is rich. . . .”97 (This last remark refers to the fact that Lord Godalming could afford a steam launch to pursue Dracula’s coffin up the river. What might it do is exquisite. Was Bram Stoker making fun of Mina? Maybe so. He was Irish. I would like to read his life, if there is one. Also his Dracula’s Guest and his memories of Henry Irving.98

  Ackerley’s We Think the World of You, just reread, seems as excellent as ever. This is the very best kind of realistic writing, so bluntly unsentimental and funny and understanding and unapologetic. Then, quite suddenly, comes that strange final paragraph which begins with a humorous description of the dictatorship of the dog and the author’s masochistic enslavement to her, and ends on the brink of an abyss:

  Not that I am complaining, oh no; yet sometimes as we sit and my mind wanders back to the past, to my youthful ambitions and the freedom and independence I used to enjoy, I wonder what in the world has happened to me and how it all came about. . . . But that leads me into deep waters, too deep for fathoming; it leads me into the darkness of my own mind.

  May 11. Don left for New York last night. I’m to join him there on the 14th, unless Vera has a relapse and is too ill to see us. Now I’m in a mad flap, getting things done.

  All I want to record now are some things about Swami. When I saw him on the 5th, he told me he had just initiated a woman who he thought was slightly crazy. He did it because her husband begged him to. But he didn’t like doing it. He said she smelled of garlic all over her body! (Could she have decided he was a vampire, I wondered.) During the initiation the figure of Krishna fell off the shrine and broke its pedestal, and Swami was so upset he couldn’t think of a mantram to give her; at least, not for a long while! And she didn’t know what chosen ideal to have! He told me a story I don’t remember having heard before, ab
out Maharaj. Maharaj, when he was president of the Math, had to sign some important document. He kept putting it off, until the deadline day arrived. His secretary urged him to sign and gave him the document and a pen. But Maharaj hesitated. Then he said, “I’ve forgotten my name,” and the secretary knew that this was because his mind was absorbed in God.

  At the end of the question period after the reading, Haridas, who is always trying to provoke Swami, in his complicated masochistic-hostile Jewish way, asked: “Does the Guru ever withdraw his love from his disciples?” And Swami answered: “I don’t know yet.” The lazy good-humored get-you-Mary tone of voice in which he said this was absolutely adorable. It was like Jesus kidding with Satan in the wilderness. It came out of his mouth so spontaneously, with such perfect timing, that everybody laughed and a lot of us clapped. But what exactly did he mean? Did he mean that he wouldn’t be able to answer the question until after he had died?

  May 13. So I’m off to New York tonight at 11 p.m. Don is already in Maurice Grosser’s flat, so we’ll be quite on our own. I dread the trip, as always, but maybe it’ll give me a needed shaking-up and I will try to make my darling Kitty’s birthday fun for him and me both.

  I shall never, as long as we are together, be able to fully feel or describe to myself all that our love means; it is much much too close to me. Don tells me from time to time that I should write about it, but how? Even my attempt to keep a diary of the Animals has failed. I can’t see any of this objectively. Any more than I can really grasp what Swami means and has meant to me, in an entirely different way. If prayers are answered—and I believe mine have been, in almost every respect, throughout my long indecently lucky grumbling life—that doesn’t mean that you can always be fully aware that they have been answered. Just at moments you’re aware that they have been, but the enormousness of the answer is beyond your grasp.

  The day before yesterday, I finished correcting the proofs of Kathleen and Frank and mailed them back to Simon and Schuster. What a huge undertaking that was! When I think of all the reading and copying and cutting I had to do, before I even started writing anything of my own. I ought to give thanks that it got done as quickly as it did. And yet I realize that I merely crawled along, when compared with the working habits of an Allen Drury.

  Jim Gates is going to house-sit for us. I saw him and Peter last night for a short while after the reading at Vedanta Place. They both remarked on the fact that we have seen so little of each other lately. “You’re elusive,” they said. Oddly enough, I feel a stronger affection from Peter than from Jim, though Peter is the cool one. Poor Jim, I had to read a letter from Selective Service which arrived for him here this morning, saying that he couldn’t be granted a transfer from the Goodwill to Vedanta Place, and from C.O. to Theological Student status. Jim took the news very well; he is good at adjusting to things, very strong, I think. Because he had been looking forward to becoming a monk at once, and last night he told me he felt certain it was going to be all right; so this was a severe disappointment. Now he is going to ask around and find out what the prospects are for making an appeal.

  (I’m hiding this diary and my two previous diaries in the closet, lest Jim should find them while I’m away and read something in them which hurt his feelings!)

  (The visit to New York, written after getting back to Los Angeles on May 22:

  May 14. The flight was uncomfortable, although the plane was empty, because I was on the wrong side of the aisle, where there were only three seats instead of four, so I couldn’t stretch out. Maurice Grosser’s flat wasn’t as dirty as I’d feared, but it was beset by outside noises: a barking dog, belonging to some nuns who ran a children’s school; the children themselves; hammering by workmen in the house next door; piano lessons and a mysterious public address system which was apt to produce utterances at any hour—for example, “Someone on the third floor has left his phone off the hook,” repeated over and over. I at once forgot my good resolutions and began sulking about this and about the general squalor of New York, which was indeed hideous. Don was very patient, sweet and apologetic. New York is his “property” rather than mine, because of all his previous visits there alone, so he feels responsible for it.

  We had lunch with tiny Anita Loos, who always seems to have her life under control and to be amused by it, and who never looks a day older. Her tensions, if any, are all down below the carefully-made-up surface. Then we saw Joe Brainard’s show of cutout paper grasses and flowers, framed in plastic, and bought one (five hundred dollars) for Don’s birthday present. Also the Andy Warhol show at the Whitney, which is slightly like the Tower of London in its grimness and, for that very reason, all the more striking as a setting for this vast area of blazing flowers and faces; when you come out of the elevator you are staggered by the emptiness of the huge room with its flaming scrapbook walls.99

  Supper with Glenway Wescott was quite spoilt by the fact that he had invited a bunch of white-collar faggots we scarcely knew; so all was leering sneering politeness.

  May 15. We had lunch with Vera [Stravinsky] and Bob Craft and Ed Allen at their apartment on Fifth Avenue, 920, looking out on the park. It was astonishingly like earlier meals at times when Igor was sick in bed, and, after the first five minutes, not in the least embarrassing. Both Vera and Bob spoke freely and in great detail about the last days of Igor’s life and about the funeral. Bob seems anxious to define the nature of his grief. The chief impression I got was that they and Ed now made up a working team which was still full of potential energy but lacked any immediate project. Vera’s eyes looked yellow and tired and she seemed a bit shakier and older, but after all she had only just recovered from the flu. She was sweet and affectionate as always.

  Julie Harris (who we also saw, in a poor play called And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little100 and then had a snack with at Sardi’s) was worried about her son Peter, who keeps running away from school; now he’s to be put on a training ship which sails round the world. This was just a symbolic meeting. We hurried away from it to see Mishima’s dreadful arty but disgustingly realistic film about a Japanese army officer disembowelling himself and his wife stabbing herself in the throat.101 The morbidly interesting thing is that Mishima made it not so long before he really killed himself.

  May 16. It rained a bit. We went to the Lincoln Center to see the New York [City] Ballet in Jewels. Don was in raptures; ballet really gets to him as almost nothing else does. And I was happy he was happy; it left me impressed but cool. A stylish dancer we hadn’t either of us seen before, Robert Weiss.102 Handsome and romantic.

  Supper with a man named Ron Holland, who’s J.J. Mitchell’s latest date. Virgil Thomson came, and Joe LeSueur. I hadn’t wanted to come and I rather hated it; and Don rather hated the situation, which was that Holland, who is rich, was being bribed to give us all a meal in exchange for having Virgil and me at the party. Or, to put it in another way, J.J. was working off his “obligation” to us (being taken to Disneyland) by making his lover buy us a meal. I don’t much like either Joe or J.J. Joe is so unattractive and J.J. is silly in the wrong way. Furthermore, the restaurant was tiny, French, pretentious, and crowded, and a cap came off one of my teeth.

  May 17. Saw Peter Schwed at Simon and Schuster’s—also Michael Korda, who looks like a Jewish queen in his mid-twenties. Liked him; felt embarrassed as always by Peter. They showed me the design for the jacket of Kathleen and Frank and, lo and behold, side by side with a photo of Frank was a photo of—Emily! That’s the sort of mistake which only seems possible in publishing, and it shows a fundamental lack of interest.

  I was then interviewed by Daniel Halpern, the editor of a magazine called Antaeus; this was arranged by Andreas Brown of the Gotham Book Mart[. T]he two of them seem to be great buddies, maybe lovers, for Halpern is quite attractive, a big fresh-faced Jewish boy with sort of Afro hair. I was slightly but not entirely charmed by him; I suspect him of being a teaser, a climber and a hustler. He has certainly collected a lot of people to contribute t
o his magazine and presumably for free—Paul Bowles, Lawrence Durrell, Thom Gunn, Tennessee, Gore, Roditi, Kosinski, Burroughs, Böll, etc. etc.103 He came with me and waited while a nice old-fashioned New York Jewish dentist put the cap back on my tooth for only five dollars. Then I met Don and we saw Garbo in As You Desire Me—a miserable adaptation,104 but she and von Stroheim were marvellous. And then we had supper with Vera and Bob at Romeo Salta’s. When we went there, we had the right street but the wrong number; and the cabdriver shattered the myth about the rudeness of New York cabdrivers by cruising up the street on his own, after we’d paid him, looking for the restaurant and then running back to tell us when he’d found it! This restaurant visit was sheerly symbolic; we felt obliged to spend as much money as we possibly could. In fact we’d offered them the Colony and Vera had accepted it with pleasure, but thank goodness it was closed, this being a Monday! As it was, our bill came to over a hundred dollars. But Bob was so helpful, talking Italian to show off and ordering everything, just as if he was the host. I forget what we talked about, but it was a snug evening. They struck both of us even more than usual as being innocents. They seem hopelessly extravagant. But maybe if they really find themselves poor they will innocently accept that too.

  May 18. We had lunch with Jens Yow, who really is a very sweet good-natured person. We picked him up at the Morgan Library where he works; it is like the inside of a pyramid, so massive and seemingly theft- and dirt- and bombproof, and packed with treasures. Jens still sees Lincoln [Kirstein] a lot, so I complained to him of my sadness at the utter rejection of the two of us by Lincoln and his refusal even to answer the peace note I left for him last February. Jens said he couldn’t understand it. According to him, Lincoln isn’t at all crazy at present.