Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  August 26. Yesterday, Nick Wilder looked through the fifty paintings which Don had picked out for possibles, for his show. On the whole, he approved of them and was just as enthusiastic as ever and the show’s opening has been set for November 5. So Don is enormously relieved. He had been so afraid Nick would cool off. As for me, as I told Don, Nick’s approval of the paintings was the best birthday present I could possibly get.

  I wasn’t there during Nick’s visit, because I had to go to Vedanta Place and read one of Vivekananda’s lectures to the congregation (it was “Maya and Illusion”) so that the assistant swamis could get a bit more of a holiday. This time I saw Swami. He seemed weak but he gave me such a sweet smile. No talk of Maharaj. He told how he soiled two pairs of pajamas every day in the bathroom . . . I suppose he meant his sphincter muscle is weak.

  WE INTERRUPT THIS REPORT FOR A NEWSFLASH: 5:35. EDWIN SHERIN, MICHAEL MORIARTY’S DIRECTOR AND ADVISER, HAS JUST PHONED FROM NEW YORK TO TELL US THAT HE LIKES A MEETING BY THE RIVER VERY MUCH AND WANTS TO DIRECT IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

  So there’s Dobbin’s second super birthday gift. But now I must get ready to go out with my darling, so the rest must wait till tomorrow.

  August 31. The first of the three days of the Labor Day week-end—and then the beautiful autumn begins. I have just got off the phone talking to Paul Millard (“Jemima Puddleduck”) who quacked away about the kites which he and Rob Matteson fly and sell on the beach. They drive around with them in a royal hearse bought in England and painted yellow.

  Every day I have meant to write something here and every day there have been other things to do. I keep on with my book, but at such a crawl. It seems that I simply cannot write a sentence straight until I have done it over half a dozen times. And I have so little energy. The “shutter” of my brain is only open for about three-quarters of an hour in the morning—I mean, really open. Nevertheless, I continue to feel that this book is one of the most challenging and potentially marvellous projects I have ever undertaken.

  To get back to some of the things I have been meaning to write about—

  On August 25, we had a very nice, really well-planned supper at Jennifer and Norton Simon’s house—Hope Lange, Nick Wilder, Leslie and Michael Laughlin. Nick arrived informally dressed—as we’d all been told to do—whereas Michael seemed dressed for a wedding and Leslie was every inch la Parisienne in a long white formal. Hope was jolly, plump and a bit boozy. Michael got into a big dialogue with Norton about gold—Michael rejoicing that he had bought so much and Norton kind of dubious—as far as I could hear; it seemed funny to hear someone bragging about his wealth to a multimillionaire! Afterwards, Jennifer told me that Norton had said he wanted to talk to me about politics and get my point of view, as something I had said had interested him. I can’t imagine what.

  My chief birthday present from Don is a silver bracelet, of very good design; he found it at Tiffany’s. He wants me to wear it always, as he does the gold one I got him at Bulgari’s for our twentieth anniversary last year. At first I didn’t want to; I find I have an absurd prejudice against bracelets as being faggy—for me, not for anybody else! But now I have worn it since my birthday without taking it off and already I’m so pleased with it that I keep letting it slide down my wrist onto my hand, to look at it. The only time I do feel still faintly embarrassed is when I go to the beach in it.

  Nick Wilder gave me a brass paper knife, kind of art nouveau with a floral pattern, French, signed by the maker, whose name looks like “A. Terler” or “Tezlet.” It is handsome and nice to hold but so blunt that I sometimes can’t cut paper with it! Leslie and Michael gave me a big illustrated book called Farm Boy, which is a reportage about three generations living on a farm in Illinois, by an ex-Look photographer named Archie Lieberman, over a period of twenty years. I’ll try to remember to write about this when I have finished it.

  Ismail Merchant has called to say that he has talked to Edwin Sherin and that Sherin wants to do our play in London in April. We await confirmation of this.

  After an unusually long spell of sanity, Don’s brother Ted seems to be flipping again, and Don of course is terribly upset. But I think perhaps not quite so much as he has been before, because he has gained in self-confidence as an artist. He says that he now no longer wonders if he’s one or not; he knows that he is and that he’ll go on working, whatever other people may think of his work. That’s my great cause for rejoicing, now. Whatever happens to me, I know he’s “all right.”

  The day before yesterday, I saw Evelyn Hooker. She has been in a lot of pain because of inflammation all around the vagina, due to something wrong with her blood. Because of the pain she has been drinking a lot of wine, and this has made her fat. But now she has met a doctor she believes in; his name’s Thomas Hodges and he lives at Malibu. So she has stopped drinking because he told her to. She kept repeating that she needs discipline. She wants to go to Vedanta Place and have another interview with Asaktananda. (Which reminds me that Tom Wudl is having an interview with him too, on the 5th.)

  Evelyn gave me a cushion with late-nineteenth-century embroidery on it; Santa Claus carrying some toys. It looks very German. Her reason for giving me this gift was that she had misremembered something I say in Kathleen and Frank about my name—that I hate it in some combinations, like it in others: “Christopher Marlowe yes, Christopher Robin no!” Evelyn thought I had written that I like Christopher Robin, and the cushion had reminded her of him!

  I saw Swami yesterday, still weak, but he does get out a little. He had told me at first that he couldn’t see me, then sent a message that he could. So I drove right into town for ten minutes with him. He asked me if I was still thinking a lot about Holy Mother and was very pleased when I told him I keep praying to her. He said how Brahmananda had bowed down before her “and trembled,” and how he had said that she was the gateway to knowledge of Brahman. About his health, he said that he sometimes gets discouraged. But then he said that he hopes to take the question period when we restart our Wednesday night readings. Also he mentioned the lecture he is due to give in September. And for the second time he told me how, after Sudhira had sat up with him for two nights in a row, he had discovered that she had been working throughout the day on those two days. Sudhira had had to sit up in a chair because she was in such pain from her arthritis.

  September 11. This diary keeping is being done in a mood of desperation, nowadays—or perhaps I should say intense nervous irritation. There seems to be no time for it, and yet here I am sitting at my desk for at least five hours out of the day, often more. There is always something else; the book, now in chapter 4, and then a huge batch of letters which is being added to faster than I answer them, and then a sort of symbolic task—turning Swami’s taped reminiscences into an orderly narrative—the value of the task is symbolic because all of this material has been written down already and much of it is in print; I am only doing it because Swami asked me to and because I can guess how frustrating it must be for him in his old age to keep worrying about such matters and being put off again and again by the lazy, excuse-making nuns. Oh yes, and there is also the reconstruction of my 1945–1953 diaries; a job I really enjoy but haven’t worked on in a long while. Right now, I’ve reached January 1951. I would like, at least, to get the rest of that year recorded, particularly the production of I Am a Camera.

  Well, now Nixon is pardoned179 and Evel Knievel is alive after failing to jump the Snake River Canyon on his rocket.180 Newsweek says that, in eight years, when all the planets align themselves on the same side of the sun, there will be major earthquakes, particularly in California.

  Last night we had supper with Anita Loos, who is in town to promote her new autobiographical book, at that horrible restaurant in Century City, Señor Pico. Her big silly niece181 was there with a rather dreadful decorator friend, Dewey Stengel(?),182 who was loudmouthed and drunk and quarrelsome. Anita is truly amazing. She had had four interviews that day and had also appeared on a T.V. talk show
. She didn’t seem a bit tired. She said, “The only thing that really impresses them about me is that I’m over eighty and that I get up at 4 a.m.” She also told us that “Miss Moore”183 has become boy crazy and is a bore. Anita is very successful and very very tough and seemingly quite unsentimental. She said that she wouldn’t dream of living anywhere except New York. Her niece Mary disagreed, saying how horrible New York is. Mary’s example of New York’s horribleness was that she had seen, from the window of Anita’s apartment, a huge black pimp wearing a fur coat and a diamond brooch drive up in a limousine to check up on his girls, who were working someplace opposite Anita’s building.

  Nick Wilder came down yesterday afternoon and took four of Don’s paintings away with him, so he can try them out in various frames to see what kind of frames will be best for the show. Don has been working without models, this last week; and he has produced at least two paintings which seem to me as good as the best of his model work. Altogether, he does seem to be making a breakthrough. My only prayer is that Nick doesn’t get himself jailed, doesn’t have a heart attack, doesn’t do anything to upset the applecart before November 5.

  September 22. This morning, we had gotten ourselves pledged to go to Vedanta Place, hear Swami lecture and have lunch with the nuns—which I almost never do, nowadays; and meet Sudhira there. Don got so upset at the thought of all this that his stomach became upset and I begged him not to come. He said that he has no role at Vedanta Place and that even I don’t want him with me when I’m there. This is untrue, but I understand absolutely what he means about the role. I wouldn’t have a role either, if I didn’t read in the temple and do literary odd jobs for them. Probably even my visits to Swami are resented by some people. . . . Well, anyhow, I said okay and Don turned the car around and we started back home for me to get my car, and then Don turned around again and we went there and it was even worse than either of us had feared. It was a blazing hot day. And Swami gave a long talk about Holy Mother, and was heartbreakingly sweet at moments but often incoherent, not finishing the stories he told and leaving out the point. And then we were informed that Sudhira had called off coming to lunch because her old patient is sick. And then one of the nuns (Dipeka?)184 took us around the half-built convent compound and, as Don rightly said, she was so cunty that it was almost unbelievable. She kept saying over and over again that the nuns would have privacy and that they wouldn’t be intruded on by visitors and that the new arrangements would save them from having to carry things—it was all so self-pampering, as though this place were a health resort instead of a convent. She sounded almost like Merle Oberon.

  Larry [Miller] has left the monastery and gone back to his parents to be treated there. No doubt it’s his mother’s influence—anything to get him away from the monastery. Jim Gates wrote me a letter about it which was more or less a confession that he was in love with Larry:

  Then he came, and without realising how deep it was, that kind of friendship grew, so easily that I hardly noticed it in a way. Now I’m really amazed and appalled at the grief that strikes me almost whenever there is a pause or quiet moment. . . . I was alone in the puja hall trying to do something, suddenly I actually started to cry. I haven’t done that for a long time. . . . Well, obviously no one (maybe not even Swami) would understand this unnatural behavior of one monk upon the departure of another; I think you will and do and I already feel relieved to have been able to tell you this.

  Bhadrananda says that, in his opinion, Larry won’t recover.

  September 28. Since then, I have had a few words alone with Jim Gates—on the 25th, when I went up there to do the first reading of the fall season. Jim says he is feeling better about the situation. Nothing has been heard from Larry, yet.

  Nature notes: On the 22nd, that irritating girl Dip[i]ka (I’m still not sure how to spell it) told us that the snakes have been very bad up at the Montecito convent this year. One rattler actually attacked two of the nuns, running them up onto a wall where they had to wait until help arrived. This sounds improbable but possible, I guess. She also said that rattlers can strike their whole length, which surely isn’t so. They lie out on Ladera Lane, in the evening.

  On the 25th, I finally heard from Michael Moriarty, after I’d called his answering service and left a message. He told me that he doesn’t want to do our play until either the fall of 1975 or the fall of 1976, because of Richard III, filmwork and a musical based on Merton of the Movies. Furthermore, he doesn’t want to promise to do the film after he’s done the play. I fear this means a breaking off of relations between us. We’ll just have to try to go ahead with the film. Ismail now says The Wild Party will be released in December.

  Am now over a month into seventy. I am very much aware of this. At the same time, my health remains good—except for my bad left foot, which I don’t want to have examined, for fear it proves to be something serious—and I am in good spirits, most of the time. Great happiness with Don. Steady work on the book. Today I finished chapter 4—a tiresome one, because it is just studies of the principal characters in my Berlin books. I’ll be glad when the part about Germany is finished, but that’s two more chapters ahead.

  Elsa Laughton seems almost well again, after her operation. Old Jo grouses but gets around on a crutch. The weather is grey, foggy, dead. So is my meditation.

  October 3. On October 1, Don went to teach his first class (life drawing) at the Art Center College of Design. They offered him the job and I urged him to take it because I thought—and still think—that it was an opportunity for him to realize a whole side of himself he doesn’t believe in; the side which could teach and be instructive and inspiring and marvellous. Well, he bitterly opposed me for getting him into the situation; and, as it turned out, the situation was impossible, because they had lied to him that he would have experienced students and then they gave him beginners. So his faint faith in himself was destroyed and he gave up the job. This was a disaster, from my point of view. But it was entirely their fault. I doubt if he will ever try anything like that again.

  Now I’m worried about the Nick Wilder show because he has heard nothing from Nick and the framer has told him that Nick owes him a great deal of money and Don doesn’t want to tell Nick that he has been told this. Nothing makes me more scared and savage than the thought that someone may destroy Don’s self-confidence. It’s like what Jesus said about causing the little ones to stumble.185 At the same time I’m sure that, as far as Don’s painting is concerned, he really has come to believe in it, at last—but, oh my goodness, what we went through, and how Dobbin was blamed for being insincere and mealymouthed because he kept praising it!

  Today, Edward sent me a cassette, with his voice reading the first chapter of his new novel, Alan Sebrill.186 I haven’t a machine to play it on, so I must rent one and then record it on tape. But my little Uher recorder doesn’t work properly, it seems, although Don’s father tinkered with it. I have been experimenting with it all afternoon.

  Strange half-mad Abedha (Tony Eckstein) has finally blown a fuse. He kept saying that the Hollywood monastery was a fake and full of hypocrites and that Asaktananda was “a bastard” (I don’t know exactly why). So it got to Swami’s ears and he came up to the monastery and called all the monks together and talked to Abedha and told him that he must go and live at the Vivekananda House in Pasadena and that the society would go on supporting him until he gets a job. Jim Gates says that Swami was most impressive; very firm and very sweet and full of love. He said to Abedha: “What I am doing is the best thing anybody could do for you. But you won’t understand that until you reach the moment of death.” The remarkable thing is, Swami doesn’t seem at all exhausted by the effort of conducting this showdown. Yesterday, when I saw him, he talked for half an hour or more, correcting the transcripts I had made of his tapes.

  Jim Gates has heard from Larry. He has made himself a shrine and is meditating three times a day and feels very bad about leaving the monastery; but he didn’t say anything about his physic
al condition.

  A letter from John Lehmann, today, says, “Alas, I’m going to be away when Wystan enters the abbey next week.” I don’t know if this means that he’ll be reburied there, or have a memorial tablet, or what.187

  October 11. I borrowed a Japanese tape recorder from Bill Scobie (an Hitachi) and played Edward’s cassette on it. Edward’s voice sounded weird, and yet I’d have known it at once. There is a bit of British waffling—vague wah-wah sounds—and then Edward announces the title and the author. The way he says “Edward Upward” is so deprecatory, so charged with irony, that he might be that actor in the television commercial who says, “I’m Granny Goose.”188

  I find it extraordinarily hard to get the flavor of the writing as I should while reading it. In one sense, Edward reads very badly; that’s to say, apologetically. You are so conscious, throughout, that he has written this. On the other hand, his voice sometimes rings with the consciousness of the beauty of a phrase which makes it marvellously memorable. For example, the way he reads the words “my everlasting death.”

  What is wonderful about this style of his is its reticence. He tells you everything in his own time. He isn’t one bit worried about your possibly getting impatient. His deliberation is remorseless. He builds the structure of matchsticks with maddening patience. But it gets built, and what’s more, the matchsticks are magnetic. They can’t be blown over—no, not by a hurricane. They are locked together.