Lost Years. A Memoir 1945–1951

Christopher Isherwood

L O S T Y E A R S

A Memoir 1945–1951

Edited and introduced by Katherine Bucknell

Contents

Introduction

v

Textual Note

xxxii

Acknowledgements

xxxiv

Lost Years

January 1, 1945–May 9, 1951

August 26, 1971

3

1945

7

1946

52

1947

79

1948

141

1949

175

1950

224

1951

275

Chronology

289

Glossary

299

Index

365

About the Author

Other Books by Christopher Isherwood

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

On his sixty-seventh birthday, August 26, 1971, Christopher

Isherwood began to write the autobiographical memoir which is contained in this volume, about his life in California and New York and his travels abroad to England and Europe from January 1945 to May 1951. He called the work a reconstructed diary, and he intended it to recapture a lost period following World War II when he had all but abandoned his lifelong habit of keeping a diary. He based the reconstructed diary on his memories and on what he called his “day-to-day diaries,” the pocket-sized appointment books in which he regularly noted the names of people he saw on a given day and sometimes, cryptically, what they had done together.1 He also drew on the handful of diary entries he did make during the lost years2 and on letters he had written at the time (he asked for some letters to be returned to him for reference), and he consulted a few friends for their own recollections. The reconstructed diary, never completed by Isherwood but also never destroyed, is now published for the first time as Lost Years: A Memoir 1945– 1951.

Like his earlier autobiography about the 1920s, Lions and Shadows (1938), Lost Years describes the relationships and experiences which gave inner shape to Isherwood’s life during the period it portrays, but in contrast to Lions and Shadows, the memoir begun in 1971 is based as closely as possible on fact. Unlike Isherwood’s other diaries, kept contemporaneously with the events they recorded, the manuscript of the reconstructed diary shows many alterations, often using white-1 He had lost his pocket diary for 1946, and he noted in his diary on September 2, 1971

that during the postwar period even his pocket diaries were not kept up every day.

2 All of these entries have already been published in Christopher Isherwood, Diaries Volume One 1939– 1960 (D 1), ed. Katherine Bucknell (London, 1996; New York, 1997).

In the reconstructed diary, Isherwood usually calls these diaries “journals,” thereby distinguishing them from his day-to-day diaries.

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Introduction

out. Moreover, it is heavily annotated with Isherwood’s own footnotes, which comment, correct, and elaborate on his narrative. With a scholarly precision he might have mocked when studying history at Cambridge in the 1920s, he sharply scrutinized and questioned his memories, trying to establish exactly what happened and to understand why.

Lions and Shadows had aimed to entertain and was prefaced by

Isherwood’s disclaimer that “it is not, in the ordinary journalistic sense of the word, an autobiography; it contains no ‘revelations’; it is never ‘indiscreet’; it is not even entirely ‘true.’ ” Isherwood goes on to say, “Read it as a novel.” But Lost Years is the second book in a major new phase––roughly the final third of his career––in which Isherwood moved away from semi-fictionalized writing towards

pure autobiography. It does contain revelations; it is highly indiscreet; and it foregoes deliberate artifice in order to try to recapture actual past events. It should not be read as a novel, although its aspiration to be true is partly reflected in its effort––deeply characteristic of Isherwood––to record and account for the way in which mythological significance arises from real events. In the reconstructed diary, as elsewhere in Isherwood’s work, the play of fantasy and emotion is recognized and incorporated as a dimension of real experience.

Isherwood completed Kathleen and Frank, his detailed historical book about his parents, in the autumn of 1970. Having spent several years in prolonged meditation upon the heterosexual bond between his parents––they shared a late-Victorian, upper-middle-class marriage which was perfectly happy until devastated by Frank

Isherwood’s death in World War I––he seemed to need to react by writing about the very different affinities which shaped his own life.

He was no longer motivated by the spirit of rebellion that governed his youth, but certainly, at first, by a spirit of relief and light-heartedness. On Thanksgiving Day 1970, thankful that he had

completed Kathleen and Frank, he wondered in his diary, “What shall I write next?” He considered a book about his relationship with his spiritual teacher Swami Prabhavananda––a book he would only

begin half a decade later––but he knew already that such a book could not be a novel:

Surely it would be better from every point of view to do this as a factual book? Well of course there is the difficulty of being frank without being indiscreet: but that difficulty always arises in one form or another. For example, it is absolutely necessary that I Introduction

vii

should say how, right at the start of our relationship, I told Swami I had a boyfriend (and that he replied, “try to think of him as Krishna”) because my personal approach to Vedanta was, among

other things, the approach of a homosexual looking for a religion which will accept him.1

For Isherwood, a book about his religious life, when he came to write it, would have to begin by addressing the question of his sexuality. So he went on to propose to himself that he write a book expressly about his sexuality and sketched out a plan for the reconstructed diary which he would, in fact, begin on his birthday the following August:

Then there is the fairly big chunk of diary fill-in which I might do, covering the scantily covered period between January 1, 1945

and February 1955––or maybe February 1953, when I met Don

[Bachardy], because that’s the beginning of a new era. This would be quite largely a sexual record and so indiscreet as to be un-publishable. It might keep me amused, like knitting, but I should be getting on with something else as well.

The project which he compared to “knitting”––recreating the

sequence and sense of his life during the late 1940s in little, unimportant stitches––did more than just keep Isherwood amused as he had at first imagined. It proved both challenging and absorbing, and for several years he attempted no other work of his own––

although during the first half of the 1970s he collaborated with Don Bachardy on a television script of Frankenstein (1971), and on three other scripts which were never made: The Lady from the Land of the Dead, The Beautiful and Damned ( both for television), and a film script of Isherwood’s novel A Meeting by the River (1967), which they had already successfully adapted for the stage. Moreover, Isherwood’s

“knitting,” somewhat like the flow of unselfconscious, free-

associative talk in psychoanalysis, evidently set his mind free to delve more directly than ever before into his private life. The very insignificance and confidentiality of the task opened new avenues to self-reflection. And so perhaps without at first realizing it, Isherwood embarked on an entirely new episode of his life’s work.

In his Thanksgiving diary entry he had gone on to ask himself whether he would ever again write fiction:

Have I given up all idea of writing another novel, then? No, not 1 Christopher Isherwood, Diaries 1960–1983 (unpublished), November 26, 1970.

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Introduction

necessarily. The problem really is as follows: The main thing I have to offer as a writer are my reactions to experience (these are my fiction or my poetry, or whatever you want to call it). Now, these reactions are more positive when I am reacting to actual experiences, than when I am reacting to imagined experiences.

Yet, the actuality of the experiences does bother me, the brute facts keep tripping me up, I keep wanting to rearrange and alter the facts so as to relate them more dramatically to my reactions.

Facts are never simple, they come in awkward bunches. You find yourself reacting to several different facts at one and the same time, and this is messy and unclear and undramatic. I have had this difficulty many times while writing Kathleen and Frank. For

instance, Christopher’s reactions to Kathleen are deplorably complex and therefore self-contradictory, and therefore bad drama.

On the one hand, Isherwood was restating, and perhaps redis-

covering, something he had long known: that his reactions to real experience were more vivid, more intense than anything he could invent. On the other hand, he conceded that writing accurate history was a more severe discipline than writing fiction, because he could not alter the facts to conform to his artistic intention. As early as 1953

he had described in his diary his “lack of inclination to cope with a constructed, invented plot––the feeling, why not write what one experiences from day to day?” Then, in 1953, he had attributed the feeling to the fact that he had fallen in love with Don Bachardy:

“Why invent––when Life is so prodigious?” And he had added,

“Perhaps I’ll never write another novel. . . .”1 Yet he had gone on to write several of his best novels over the twelve or thirteen years following 1953. But eventually the fiction did stop. Isherwood wrote his last novel, A Meeting by the River, in 1965 and 1966; by the time it was published in 1967, he was already hard at work on Kathleen and Frank, which is based so closely on his parents’ letters and diaries that it incorporates long passages from them, “brute facts,” which he could not rearrange and which forced him to struggle with the complexity and contradiction of real life. As soon as he finished correcting the proofs of Kathleen and Frank, he began reconstructing the lost years of his own life, 1945 to 1951, according to a similar version of the newly established method.

In September 1973, Isherwood at last began to get on, as he had envisioned in the Thanksgiving diary entry, with “something else as well.” This was to be an autobiographical book, about his life in 1 D 1, pp. 455–6.

Introduction

ix

America, in which he planned to tell, according to an inspiration derived from Jung, his “personal myth.”1 It would share publicly some of his wartime diaries as well as the fruits of the “knitting” he had done in the meantime, and it would be for him a new kind of book. By late October the American autobiography began to

undergo a metamorphosis, because Isherwood realized that he could not explain why he had emigrated to America without first telling about the personal crisis which had occurred when his German

lover Heinz Neddermeyer had been turned away from England by

an immigration official in January 1934. So he shifted the book’s focus backward to the decade of the 1930s, in order to tell the story of the events which drove him away from England in search of what he called “my sexual homeland.”2 Isherwood and Heinz had been forced to wander through Europe in search of a country where they could settle together, safe from Hitler’s persecution of homosexuals and from his conscription; finally, Heinz was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1937, just inside the German border. When

Isherwood at last published this autobiography as Christopher and His Kind in 1976, he overnight became a hero of the burgeoning gay liberation movement. The book sold faster than any other he had ever written.

Isherwood conceded in interviews and letters that he had moved beyond the brute facts in writing Christopher and His Kind, because he wanted it to read as a novel rather than a memoir.3 In earlier works, as the book itself makes clear, he had moved away from facts not only to heighten dramatic effect but also to avoid writing about his homosexuality. But in Christopher and His Kind he no longer wished to avoid writing about his homosexuality; on the contrary he wished to tell about it in detail. This new impulse, to reveal rather than to conceal, is a continuation of the impulse according to which he had begun the reconstructed diary in 1971 (indeed, Christopher and His Kind incorporates whole passages from the reconstructed diary), and Isherwood’s ability in the 1976 autobiography to deal forthrightly with his sexuality, as the underpinning for the trajectory of his life, grew directly out of the confidential and, as it had once seemed, insignificant work he had already done recapturing his postwar life from 1945 to 1951. Christopher and His Kind was a relatively shocking book, even as late as 1976. The reconstructed diary is far more 1 Diaries 1960–1983, September 14, 1973.

2 Diaries 1960–1983, October 29, 1973.

3 Interview with W. I. Scobie and letter to Isherwood’s U.K. publisher (at Methuen) quoted in Brian Finney, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography (London, 1979), p. 282.

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Introduction

shocking; even now, some passages have been altered or removed to protect the privacy of a few of Isherwood’s friends and acquaintances who are still alive.

Isherwood’s reconstructed diary is sexually explicit partly because, for the first time ever, it could be. In 1971, seven years after the publication of his assertively homosexual novel A Single Man (1964), two years after the Stonewall riot in New York, and well into the cultural and sexual revolution spawned during the 1960s, he was comfortable committing to paper (though not necessarily for

publication) details of personal relationships such as he would for years previously either never have written down or otherwise felt compelled to destroy. Since the end of the 1950s, censorship laws in the United States had been gradually relaxed; court decisions had increasingly required the post office to deliver magazines formerly ruled obscene and had permitted publication and sale of books that might once have attracted a ban. Even the Hollywood Code,

governing censorship of films, gave way during the 1960s. Although some of the sex acts which Isherwood describes in the reconstructed diary were still widely illegal, he could without much risk of penalty record the true habits and attitudes of the homosexual milieu in which he had long lived in semi-secrecy.

Lost Years, the reconstructed diary which began for Isherwood as a task of personal recollection and amusement, can now be seen to have a more general significance as a work of social history. For it aimed to recapture the mood and behavior of a little recognized group which was soon to make itself known to the popular

consciousness. Isherwood had studied history with enthusiasm and panache as a schoolboy; later, his revulsion from the dry, academic discipline he encountered at Cambridge propelled him toward

literature as if it were an alternative to history, and in his case a mightily preferred one. But his autobiographies, travel books and novels––even the early, most genuinely fictionalized ones––all bear the mark of his historical outlook. He had a journalist’s instinct for knowing where to go and who to observe and talk to, and he

rendered his vivid personal impressions with a historian’s sense of the interconnection between the popular psyche and the facts of social and political change. In his best work, Isherwood consistently achieved the task laid out for literature by his schoolmate and lifelong friend, Edward Upward, who believed that imaginative literature could not escape its relation to material reality and that the socially responsible writer ought to portray the forces at work beneath the surface of material reality which will shape the future of society.

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Upward became a dogmatic Marxist in the early 1930s, and he

explained in a 1937 essay that:

For the Marxist critic . . . a good book, is one that is true not merely to a temporarily existing situation but also to the future conditions which are developing within that situation. The

greatest books are those which, sensing the forces of the future at work beneath the surface of the past or present reality, remain true to reality for the longest period of time.1

Isherwood first became seriously involved with political ideas during his years in Berlin; he had strong communist sympathies in the 1930s, but he never joined the party. His regret, and moreover his sense of guilt, at not having been able to commit himself like Edward

Upward to the revolutionary cause of the workers in Europe and England, contributes to the bitter tension of his slim masterpiece Prater Violet (1945); related feelings about being away from England during the war fuelled his ingenious and somewhat brittle arguments about emigration and pacifism in his wartime diaries and in his next novels, The World in the Evening (1954) and Down There on a Visit (1962). For most of his life, Isherwood was not politically committed.

As an artist, he abstained, and he bore the guilt of turning his back on worthy causes about which he thought and wrote but in which he took no active role. But as he was finally able to write in his reconstructed diary, “Christopher was certainly more a socialist than he was a fascist, and more a pacifist than he was a socialist. But he was a queer first and foremost.”2

Gay liberation was the only movement for social change to which Isherwood ever felt personally and entirely committed. In July 1971

he noted in his diary that he felt compelled, now, to mention his homosexuality to everyone who interviewed him, and just a few months earlier he had confessed that he was attracted to the idea of himself as “one of the Grand Old Men of the movement.”3 His later work fulfils Upward’s principles in a way that Upward could not have foreseen in 1937 (though Upward read and admired virtually all that Isherwood wrote in the 1970s). Upward had written in the same 1937 essay:

A writer, if he wishes at all to tell the truth, must write about the world as he has already experienced it in the course of his practical 1 “Sketch for a Marxist Interpretation of Literature,” The Mind in Chains: Socialism and the Cultural Revolution, ed. C. Day-Lewis (London, 1937), pp. 46–7.

2 P. 190.

3 Diaries 1960–1983, April 19, 1971.

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living. And if he shares the life of a class which cannot solve the problems that confront it, which cannot cope with reality, then no matter how honest or talented he may be, his writing will not correspond to reality. . . . He must change his practical life, must go over to the progressive side of the conflict. . . .1

For Upward, the struggle was a class struggle, and the progressive side of the struggle was the side of the workers. He divorced his own class to join the workers, and even gave up his writing, for a time, to do communist party work. For Isherwood, the struggle proved to be a sexual struggle, and he was already on the progressive side, the side of the homosexuals; but that side had yet to assemble itself. And it took Isherwood several decades to find the way to acknowledge his side openly, both in his life and in his work.

Isherwood never gave up his writing as Upward did; for he was a writer above all, not an activist, even when it came to his homosexual kind. By writing in explicit sexual detail about his intimate behavior and that of his close friends and acquaintances in the years immediately following the war, he was portraying the hidden energies and affinities of homosexual men all over the United States who during that period were gathering increasingly in certain, mostly coastal cities as peace and prosperity returned to a country much altered by vast wartime mobilization. This hidden social group, whose consciousness of itself as a group was intensified by the demographic shifts brought about by the war and then extended throughout the 1950s, was to emerge in its own right as a significant force of change in America and in western culture generally during the final third of the twentieth century. Much of this change began in southern

California, and Isherwood was living at its source. His personal myth is part of, and in many ways emblematic of, the larger myth of the group to which he belonged; and his reconstruction of his life during the postwar years foretells much of what was to come.

In The World in the Evening, the novel he was working on during the lost years of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Isherwood wrote more explicitly and more sympathetically than ever before about homosexual and bisexual characters. And he manipulated his publishers and compromised with convention just enough to succeed in getting into print two unsensational homosexual love scenes and a few somewhat more subversive ideas and psychological insights. The sentiments he recorded in his reconstructed diary in 1971, about his sense of 1 “Sketch for a Marxist Interpretation of Literature,” pp. 51–2.

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xiii

political commitment to queers, were already articulated clearly in The World in the Evening by his character Bob Wood, who remarks on joining the army, “I can’t be a C.O. because, if they declared war on queers––tried to round us up and liquidate us, or something––I’d fight. I’d fight till I dropped. I know that. I’d be so mad I wouldn’t even feel scared. . . . So how can I say I’m a pacifist?”1

Possibly Isherwood felt emboldened to write more candidly about homosexuals after reading Gore Vidal’s novel The City and the Pillar, which Vidal had sent to him in manuscript before its 1948 publication. Three other books which he mentions in the reconstructed diary as having made an even stronger impression on him around the same time, and which have forthright and unsettling passages about homosexuals, were John Horne Burns’s The Gallery (1947), Calder Willingham’s End as a Man (1947), and Willard Motley’s Knock on Any Door (1947).2 American attitudes to homosexuality were changing generally in the postwar period in any case, and 1948 also saw the publication of Alfred Kinsey’s massive volume of research, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male––begun in 1938 and based on countless interviews which suggested that as many as thirty-seven percent of men had at least one homosexual experience after the onset of adolescence.

Closer to his heart, Isherwood was almost certainly influenced by the defiant personal style of his companion of the late 1940s, the photographer William Caskey, who was fully capable of the sorts of remarks Isherwood put into the mouth of his character Bob Wood.

Wood is partly modelled on Isherwood’s later lover and longterm friend Jim Charlton, but Isherwood writes in the reconstructed diary that, “Bob Wood isn’t a portrait of Jim, however; he is described as a crusader, a potential revolutionary––which Jim certainly wasn’t and isn’t.”3 Caskey, on the other hand, “declared his homosexuality loudly and shamelessly and never cared whom he shocked. He was a pioneer gay militant in this respect––except that you couldn’t imagine him joining any movement.”4

1 The World in the Evening (New York, 1954), p. 66; (London, 1954), p. 79.

2 Isherwood met Burns in 1947, and records in the reconstructed diary that he wished he had had time to know him better. End as a Man he called “an exciting discovery and the beginning of Christopher’s (more or less) constant enthusiasm for Willingham’s work” (p. 176, n.). Of Knock on Any Door he writes, “Christopher was much moved . . .

when he read it; this was his idea of a sad story. He fell in love with the hero and wrote Willard Motley a fan letter” (p. 140, n.2). Motley’s hero, a heterosexual petty criminal who hustles as trade part time, personifies the absolute defiance of authority which so often captivated Isherwood in his real-life acquaintances.

3 P. 159, n.1.

4 P. 54.

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Isherwood makes clear in the reconstructed diary how greatly he admired Caskey’s outspokenness about his sexuality. Sometimes Caskey’s belligerence was too abrasive. For instance, he became bitterly angry with the Chilean painter Matta and his wife, when Matta well-meaningly said that he himself had tried sex with men, and Isherwood and Caskey never saw the Mattas again. But on other occasions Caskey was killingly witty about his homosexuality. To Natasha Moffat’s friendly insult that she was glad to be seated next to

“a pansy” during a dinner party at Charlie Chaplin’s house, he replied: “Your slang is out of date, Natasha––we don’t say ‘pansy’

nowadays. We say ‘cocksucker.’ ” Natasha Moffat had a reputation for energetically offbeat behavior, and her sophisticated Parisian past as an intimate of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre made her tough enough for such repartee. Isherwood recalls in the reconstructed diary that her remark was loud and silenced the group; Caskey’s more shocking reply restored the balance. And Isherwood goes on to write of his younger self, “Christopher, who truly adored Caskey at such moments, sat glowing with pride in him.”1 His own good manners would never permit him to behave as Caskey did, and he was capable, personally, of feeling embarrassment. “Caskey never suffered from embarrassment. He didn’t give a damn what anybody knew about him.”2 Isherwood was immensely attracted to Caskey’s bold insistence on the truth, his impatience with social nicety, his willingness to startle and disrupt. He recognized a need for such behavior and privately he identified with it.

The rebelliousness in Caskey which Isherwood so adored was

among the chief things, in the end, which drove them apart. Their relationship was a constant struggle for power. Neither Caskey nor Isherwood was ever able to admit to the other that he was in love; each held back––guarded, suspicious, unwilling to trust. They often fought violently; Caskey could make Isherwood lose his temper so badly that Isherwood would shout and sometimes hit Caskey,

especially when they were drunk. And Isherwood recalls in the reconstructed diary that drunkenness became a prevalent, destructive necessity: “drinking was a built-in dimension of their relationship; while sober, he felt, they never achieved intimacy.”3 With the drinking came bad moods and lethargy, so that Isherwood worked less and less. The psychological conflict in their relationship was mirrored and underpinned by growing sexual incompatibility, and in 1 P. 235.

2 P. 182.

3 P. 53.

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xv

contrast to Isherwood’s earlier love affairs, they shared no mythology about one another. They lived continually in the plain light of day, with no natural indulgence in fantasy, no artless playfulness, no imaginative games or magical naming. This made Isherwood feel the relationship was more grown-up than his others, but it also made the relationship harder to sustain. Through their mutual distrust and inability to yield, the pair were confined to a routine of selfconscious passion and relied upon forced playacting to fuel their lovemaking.

Isherwood gave way to Caskey’s aggressiveness almost out of

politeness, but eventually certain tasks of role playing grew wearying.

He admits that he would have split from Caskey sooner had he not feared to live alone; and indeed his fear of being alone shaped his romantic behavior throughout his life.

Nevertheless, the years with Caskey were Isherwood’s first longterm domestic arrangement with a man close to his own age and emotional maturity. He felt genuinely proud of Caskey’s social charm and included him entirely in his own social life, introducing Caskey to his various circles of friends––emigré artists and intellectuals like the Viertels, the Huxleys, and the Stravinskys as well as Greta Garbo and other film people in Hollywood; Swami Prabhavananda and his devotees at the Vedanta Society; literary friends like E. M.

Forster and Stephen Spender in England, W. H. Auden and Lincoln Kirstein in New York; new friends like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal; and many others. Introducing Caskey so widely contributed to a new and more open sense of himself as a homosexual. During the war years, when Isherwood lived among

the Quakers and refugees in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and later when he tried to become a Hindu monk, he kept his sexuality quarantined from his everyday life. In Haverford he had concealed it; as an aspiring monk at the Vedanta Center he had tried during months of celibacy to rise above it. But once he fell in love with Caskey, everything changed; for a time he allowed his sexuality to shape his life as a whole.

During the same period, he became increasingly at home in a

circle of close California friends of whom many were homosexual and most were at ease with homosexuality, so that his identity became established with solidity in the community around him. He was at first troubled by the consistency and honesty this began to require of him. As a young man, he had enjoyed the fragmented life which resulted from living in different countries among discrete groups of friends––shuttling between London and Berlin; fleeing through Greece, Portugal, Denmark and elsewhere with Heinz;

shipping out to China with Auden; tasting Manhattan on the return xvi

Introduction

journey. Travelling had afforded him semi-secrecy and any number of escape routes from commitment and from himself. He had

engaged in simultaneous love affairs and played freely with several personalities and social strategies, just as he played with the characters in his books. But his postwar life in California permitted him no hiding places. As he writes in the reconstructed diary: “Christopher found that his life had become all of a piece; everybody knew everything there was to know about him. In theory, he saw that this was morally preferable; it made hypocrisy and concealment impossible. In practice, he hated it.”1

The unification of his life and identity brought to the fore with a new seriousness the question of who he really was and wanted to be.

Now he could not escape the results of his actions, and he would be forced to live more deliberately, with a new sense of self and responsibility. But it would take some years before he could achieve coherence between his moral outlook and his day-to-day behavior, and even longer before such coherence would be reflected in his writing. At first the fact that he no longer needed to guard his identity from his separate circles of friends and colleagues simply fed the growing undiscipline of his life in the late 1940s. He may have stopped bothering to write in his diary partly because he no longer needed to keep up a private, unifying narrative about his true self, the self at the controlling center of his various, sometimes less than genuine, social lives. But over the longer term, he would continue to need his diary to understand himself, and by the time he began writing in it again––occasionally in 1948, then gradually more often by the early 1950s––he would already be writing about a different person. In the 1970s he would still be trying to achieve, in his reconstructed diary, a coherent account of the changes which had taken place in him during the dissipated personal aftermath of the war.

In August 1949, Isherwood attended an all-night party at the house of Sam From. The other guests whom he mentions in his 1955

outline of the period2 and in his reconstructed diary were Evelyn Caldwell, Paul Goodman, Charles Aufderheide and Alvin Novak.

These were members and friends of The Benton Way Group, a

bohemian ménage, mostly from the Midwest, sharing a house in

Benton Way, in Los Angeles. They were intellectuals, generally highly educated, and predominantly homosexual. Goodman was a

1 P. 182.

2 D 1, pp. 389–94.

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philosopher, social critic, published poet, and novelist whose work Isherwood later came to admire; Aufderheide a movie camera technician who read widely and wrote poetry on the side; Novak a

philosophy student at UCLA. Sam From himself was a successful businessman. Others who were part of The Benton Way Group at

various times––including Isadore From, David Sachs, Edouard

Roditi, Fern Maher—were psychoanalysts, philosophers, scholars, social workers, artists.

Evelyn Caldwell, soon to marry and change her name to Evelyn

Hooker, was the psychologist specializing in Rorschach techniques who was about to begin what became her life’s work: studying the homosexual community in Los Angeles. She attended many homosexual parties where she joined in the revelry but also engaged in long, personal conversations with the other guests, and within a year of the party where she and Isherwood met, she started to circulate extensive questionnaires and conduct scores of interviews and psychological tests. In 1956, at a professional conference in Chicago, she was to challenge widespread opinion among her colleagues when she presented the first results of her research, which demonstrated that expert psychologists could not distinguish homosexuals from heterosexuals on the basis of then standard, widely used personality tests. In fact, her results from these types of tests showed that as high a percentage of homosexuals as heterosexuals were psychologically well adjusted. She, like Isherwood, was to become a hero of gay liberation.

The conversation at Benton Way parties was friendly but also

highbrow and wide-ranging, addressing literature, social change, and, as Isherwood recalls of the all-night party in 1949, the nature of homosexual love. That night the “Symposium,” as he calls it,

“continued until dawn.” Then Isherwood returned home with Alvin Novak, the young man he deemed to be the Alcibiades of the group.

In the reconstructed diary Isherwood exposes his mixed motives of passion and idealism and even recalls an element of farce: a drunken Sam From came along with Isherwood and Novak, evidently hoping for sex, then politely passed out, eliminating himself from competition. Isherwood writes in the reconstructed diary that “he later looked back upon that night as having been highly romantic. It was unique, at any rate. Christopher never went to a party that was quite like it.”1

In The Benton Way Group Isherwood had found a small intellec-

tual community seriously and capably examining the predicament of 1 P. 198.

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the homosexual in modern society and at the same time pursuing an experiment in living that offered them some of the benefits of conventional family life without oppressing their sexuality. In a sense, he had found a new version of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) where he had, as he put it in Christopher and His Kind, first been “brought face to face with his tribe”1 in Berlin in late 1929. According to Christopher and His Kind, Hirschfeld’s respectable, scientific approach to sexuality had at first offended Isherwood’s puritanism, but in the end

Isherwood was captivated by Hirschfeld’s persona as a “silly solemn old professor.”2 Over the years he came to honor Hirschfeld and his personally dangerous campaign to revise the German criminal code so that homosexual acts between men would be legal.

Hirschfeld was homosexual, Evelyn Hooker was not; and yet there are obvious parallels in their work and in their practical style of approach. Isherwood became close friends with Evelyn Hooker, and just as in Berlin he had rented a room from Hirschfeld’s sister immediately next door to the Institut f ür Sexualwissenschaft, so at the beginning of the 1950s he rented the garden house at Evelyn Hooker’s property on Saltair Avenue in Brentwood. His interest in the study of homosexuality was far from superficial, and he evidently wished to involve himself with it both officially and personally. For Isherwood, and for his close friend W. H. Auden, sexual emanci-pation in Berlin had resulted partly from their anonymous access, as foreigners, to willing boys they met easily in bars and on the streets, and partly from the newly dawning self-understanding which

resulted from conscious study of homosexuality and, in Auden’s case, from a brief attempt at psychoanalysis. At Hirschfeld’s institute, sexual love in all its strange and familiar forms was classified, codified, categorized. Along similarly analytical lines, Isherwood and Auden talked endlessly between themselves and with other friends about their relationships, and they read and also talked about Proust, Gide, Corvo, Freud, Jung, Georg Groddeck, Edward Carpenter, and many others. None of these literary and psychological texts offered them a satisfactory account of who they were. In their own work, throughout their careers, each of them continued to consider and address the question in any number of ways––veiled and indirect at first, then, in Isherwood’s case, increasingly overt as the years went by. The earnest scientific thoroughness with which Evelyn Hooker, like Hirschfeld, approached her research, lent Isherwood’s way of life in California a 1 Christopher and His Kind (C&HK) (New York, 1976), p. 16; (London, 1977), p. 20.

2 C&HK, U.S., p. 17; U.K., p. 20.

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reassuringly dull legitimacy and probably contributed to his increasing openness about his homosexuality in his writing as well as in his personal life.

In the early 1950s when he was living next door to Evelyn

Hooker, Isherwood agreed to write a popular book with her about homosexuality. The plan came to nothing, in part because when Don Bachardy moved into the garden house with Isherwood,

Hooker’s husband became anxious that Bachardy’s youthful appearance would cause a scandal, and the Hookers asked Isherwood to move out. This left Isherwood and Bachardy homeless––a tiny echo of the crisis Isherwood had experienced when Heinz Neddermeyer was refused entry to England in 1934––and it caused a terrible strain in Isherwood’s friendship with Evelyn Hooker. Two decades later, in December 1970, just as Isherwood was wondering what to write next after Kathleen and Frank, she reminded him of the project. But the idea made him anxious, and his reaction was perhaps still colored by resentment at her failure to stand by him in his relationship with Don Bachardy. On December 11 he wrote:

Saw Evelyn Hooker yesterday. She wants me to work with her

on a “popular” book on homosexuality. . . . I am doubtful about the project. It seems that I shall have to read through sixty case histories and then write about them––which really means retell them, and what the hell is the use of that? Non-writers never understand what writers can and cannot do. They think they can tell you what to say and that you will then somehow magically resay it so it’s marvellous. However, I didn’t want to refuse straight away. I’ll read some of the stuff first and try to find out exactly what it is that Evelyn expects. She is a very good woman and her intentions are of the noblest and I would like to help her, if I can do so without becoming her secretary.

Isherwood read through just two of the case histories and felt certain that the language of psychology was not his own language. In

February he wrote:

This morning I also finished the second of the two files I

borrowed from Evelyn Hooker. What a plodding old donkey

Psychology is! Evelyn’s questions are full of phrases like, “his own processes of sexual arousal are on an ascending incline,” “I don’t have a very clear picture of how much mutual stimulation is going on,” “the primary stimulation is on the head of the penis, would that be true?,” “while I have asked you many questions about

sexual preferences and gratifications, I have not really asked you xx

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questions couched in his terms of the basic mechanics of sex.” I really can’t imagine myself working with Evelyn on this sort of thing; it would be like having to write a book in a foreign

language. But I mustn’t prejudge the issue. I must wait until we have had a talk and I have found out just exactly what it is she wants me to contribute.1

By March he had decided against the project:

Yesterday morning I saw Evelyn Hooker and told her that I

can’t write her book with her. I think I explained why I can’t quite lucidly and I think I convinced her. The analogy of Kathleen and Frank was very useful, in doing this, because Kathleen’s diaries can be likened to Evelyn’s files of case histories. The diaries, like the case histories, can be commented on, they can be elucidated and conclusions can be drawn from them; but they can’t be rewritten because nothing can be as good as the source material itself. What is embarrassing––and what I think sticks as a reproach against me in Evelyn’s mind––is that I told her, in the Saltair Avenue days, I was prepared to write a “popular” book about homosexuality

with her. Of course I was always saying things like this, quite irresponsibly, subconsciously relying on the probability that I wouldn’t ever be taken up on them. To Evelyn yesterday I said,

“Well, you know, in those days I was nearly always drunk”;

which, the more I think of it, was a silly tactless altogether second-rate remark.2

Indeed, it was during the Saltair Avenue days that Isherwood had made an analogous promise to Swami Prabhavananda: that he would write a biography of Ramakrishna. Swami persistently reminded Isherwood of the promise, and Isherwood fulfilled it, taking more than a decade to write Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965). He had to submit each chapter of the biography to the order for approval, and the project made him into a quasi-official historian of the Ramakrishna movement. Likewise, through his later works and his diaries, he was to become a historian of the homosexual movement, but without professional psychology or any other “official” involvements; instead, he was to tell its history through his own experience.

Although Isherwood slighted the idea of rewriting Evelyn Hooker’s case histories, he was already reflecting upon a similar project on his own terms. Later that same month he records that he has begun to 1 Diaries 1960–1983, February 22, 1971.

2 Diaries 1960–1983, March 2, 1971.

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take notes about the private behavior patterns of Don Bachardy (“Kitty”) and himself (“Dobbin”). Despite his outcry against

psychology, his description of his plan is technical, as if he intended to produce a special kind of case history of his own:

On the 17th, I started a sort of notebook on Kitty and

Dobbin––I’ll try to write it rather like a study in natural history; their behavior, methods of communication, feeding habits, etc. I had very strong feelings that I ought not to record all this, that it was an invasion of privacy. But where else have I ever found

anything of value? The privacy of the unconscious is the only treasure house. And as a matter of fact, Don is always urging me to write about us. I have no idea, yet, what I shall “do” with this material after I’ve collected it. I’ll just keep jotting things down, day by day, and see what comes of it.1

Like all of Isherwood’s work, this project was to begin with external observation and recording. By invading his own privacy, by being frank to the point of indiscretion, he could unlock what he calls “the only treasure house,” the unconscious. Ordinary habits, the routine of daily life, accurately noted, would reveal the inward, original activity of the mind in its rich, dreamy, nonpersonal, eternal existence. Thus, like a scientist––or perhaps like a spy or a thief––

Isherwood set out to make himself and Don Bachardy the subject of a domestic field study.

But the notebook of Kitty and Dobbin was also abandoned, and

in the end Isherwood left no specific account of his intimate life with Bachardy. Although his diaries from 1953 onward comprise an episodic narrative of their years together, he never fully analyzed their relationship nor explained its mythology. The names alone, Kitty––suggesting a creature soft and vulnerable, quick to purr and quick to claw––and Dobbin––old, strong and steady, but stubborn and a little boring––tell a great deal. None of the other intimate mythologies which Isherwood describes in the reconstructed diary draws upon animal imagery. They are generally more rivalrous and combative––some derived from wrestling and boxing––or more

intellectual and literary––for instance, rooted in Whitman’s poetry.

Isherwood observes in the reconstructed diary that an animal myth can sustain a relationship when there is conflict: “in the world of animals, hatred is impossible; [they] can only love each other. They focus their aggression on mythical external enemies.”2 Moreover, 1 Diaries 1960–1983, March 19, 1971.

2 P. 60, n.2.

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animals have no language; their world of nestling warmth is based upon physical trust, is inchoate, and inaccessible to outsiders. In the great love relationship of his life, Isherwood, a writer, evidently surrendered to a mythology that did not depend upon language; its parameters could not be declaimed, enforced, or justified by words.

They simply had to be acted out. For Isherwood, the relationship may well have been too mysterious or simply too important to

dissect. In any case, it was still taking shape at the time of his death, and this, too, may have made it, for him, untellable. Isherwood said in his Thanksgiving diary entry of 1970 that he could not write a book about his friendship with Swami while Swami was still alive because “the book couldn’t be truly complete until after Swami’s death.”1 Swami died in 1976; My Guru and His Disciple was

published in 1980. Despite Isherwood’s own death in 1986, the story of his relationship with Don Bachardy is even now

unfinished.

Although he did not continue in the spring of 1971 with the study of Kitty and Dobbin, Isherwood circled around the idea of a factual, explicit record of his most private life until he at last began the reconstructed diary which, through the gradual accumulation of detailed, intimate, and sometimes trivial, day-to-day memories, gained access to the treasure house of the unconscious and its store of mythology. As he repeated in each of his diary entries about Evelyn Hooker, Isherwood was convinced he must write about homosexuality in his own language. The language of psychology was foreign. His “kind,” his tribe, were homosexuals; his kind were also writers. And he asserted that a non-writer, like Evelyn Hooker, could not understand this. He identified with writers, admired writers, socialized with writers. In his reconstructed diary, as in Christopher and His Kind, his identity as a homosexual is portrayed as being inseparable from his identity as a writer. And he incorporates in both of these personal histories an account of how he drew on his real-life experiences of the 1930s and 1940s for his fiction, telling how he adapted the facts of his life to suit his artistic purpose. Thus, Lost Years and Christopher and His Kind reveal not only how he had secretly lived as a homosexual, but also how he had secretly lived as a writer, continually reshaping the truth in his work. In both books, he recalls the works he hoped to write as well as the ones which came to fruition, and so measures himself, ruthlessly, against his unfulfilled ambitions as well as his actual achievements.

1 Diaries 1960–1983, November 26, 1970.

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In Lost Years, the reconstructed diary, Isherwood tells how

throughout the late 1940s he started and restarted the book he at first called The School of Tragedy and eventually published as The World in the Evening. He recalls that he was never sure of his subject, never sure how to tell his story nor how to give life to a narrator of whose identity and sexuality he was uncertain. In a sense, Isherwood had come to a deadlock with himself because, for a time, his identity as a writer and his identity as a homosexual were at odds. He had

introduced Caskey to his friends, so that his life became more unified than ever before, but he was unable to achieve the same unity in his work. Although he put homosexual and bisexual characters into his novel, and portrayed them sympathetically, he was not writing from the center of his own homosexual sensibility. In his diary at the time he argued that his main character “has got to be me . . . it must be written out of the middle of my consciousness.”1 But in the

reconstructed diary he ridicules this younger aspiration: “How could he write out of the middle of his consciousness about someone who was tall, bisexual and an heir to a fortune?”2 There was a kind of apartheid in his work between the writer and the man, and it was stopping all progress.

Paralleling his difficulties in writing as a homosexual were his difficulties in writing as an American. Prater Violet, though written in California, is a book about England and Europe, and it is written in Isherwood’s prewar style. The World in the Evening shows that even by the early 1950s, Isherwood had not yet discovered an American style. And despite his work for the American movies, his ear had not yet adjusted to the American speech patterns he tried to use in The World in the Evening; he managed only a phoney blandness. When Isherwood first visited home after the war, in 1947, some of his English friends commented that his accent had changed. To them, he sounded American, though to Americans he sounded English. He

had certainly begun to spell words in the American way, a gradual transformation which would continue for many years. But in the late 1940s the change was not yet fully wrought.

By the time he wrote his last three novels––Down There on a Visit, A Single Man, and A Meeting by the River––the wit of the young Christopher Isherwood––the edgy, embarrassable voice, the controlled mania, the half-acknowledged hyperbole––had begun to give way to a plainer, more sedate tone, relying for its humor on circumstance and narrative point of view more so than on heightened mood 1 August 17, 1949, D 1, p. 414.

2 P. 200.

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and temperament. He could still achieve comic tension; for instance, his description in A Single Man of George preparing, like a magician, to teach his morning class, is bursting with the old, barely restrained glee, and even surpasses the similar, earlier descriptions of his own teacher “Mr. Holmes” in Lions and Shadows. At the same time, the underlying polemic of A Single Man is more prominent than in

Isherwood’s earlier works. In A Meeting by the River the structure and implied argument of the novel, though subtle, are even more

prominent, and the epistolary characterizations of the two English brothers seem stiff and unnatural, as if Isherwood could no longer write in the English idiom that had once been his own. In his maturity, Isherwood seemed increasingly impelled to write in his own authentic voice, to write about real events, and to express his opinions and judgements; the transparent, styleless style he cultivated in America was better suited to truth-telling than to fiction. And this was the style in which he would begin to untangle and explain the impulsive, excited, and even neurotic commitments and crises of his youth.

For his autobiographical works of the 1970s, Isherwood’s style became even plainer. It was not even noticeably American (as, for instance, it had been in A Single Man). It was contemporary,

cosmopolitan, without striking local color. When he was struggling to get started with Christopher and His Kind, he fretted in his diary that his style had changed for the worse, but he was confident that his subject matter was weighty and worthwhile: “When I reread my

earlier work, I feel that perhaps my style may have lost its ease and brightness and become ponderous. Well, so it’s ponderous. At least I still have matter, if not manner.”1 In fact, he was noticing the transformation which had begun many years before, and which had continued along the lines of his personal development and according to the needs of his subject matter. Now, he was no longer in the business of making myths, but rather of trying to explain how he had made myths in the past. Despite the explicit sexual revelations in the reconstructed diary, Isherwood’s purpose was not, as it had been, for instance, in A Single Man, to outrage the procreating middle classes with his portrayal of homosexual anger and the paranoia he felt was characteristic of minorities. The reconstructed diary is neither angry nor apologetic in tone (Isherwood had come to feel his wartime diaries were unduly apologetic). Instead, it has a kind of anthropological matter-of-factness––describing his work, his social life, his memories and fantasies, his many sexual liaisons with friends, strangers, and occasionally lovers much as he might have described 1 Diaries 1960–1983, November 2, 1973.

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them for the benefit of a sex researcher like Evelyn Hooker, but in the plain, literary language he had evolved for himself.

His flat, explanatory, almost pedagogic prose in some ways

resembles the mature social realism of his friend Edward Upward whose prose models included John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Cowper, and George Gissing. And the transformation in Isherwood’s style corresponds to a similar change in Upward’s. It can also be compared to changes in Auden’s poetic style. All three of them abandoned the fantastic brilliance of their youth for a more earnest style in maturity. The abundance of quasi-mystical imaginative energy in their early writing disappeared as each converted to a set of beliefs which absorbed that energy on a different––higher––plane.

Their writing became more understated and more cautious as they became aware they were writing in relation to what they held to be absolute truths. This happened earliest to Upward when he converted to Marxism; he wrote one last feverishly mystical piece, Journey to the Border (1938), about his conversion, and then fell silent altogether for several decades. It happened more gradually to Auden after he returned to Christianity and to Isherwood after he took up Vedanta. For the same reason that Isherwood wrote his biography of the mystic Ramakrishna from the point of view of a skeptic and in the short, reiterative cadences of the King James Bible, he wrote his late autobiographical works in heavily ordinary modern prose and incorporated into them whole passages from his diaries, un-embellished: he wanted the experiences to shine through the

writing rather than to seem to be created by the writing. This unpretentious late prose style was for him the most convincing medium in which to recount, in My Guru and His Disciple, the story of his reverence for Swami Prabhavananda, and it differs little from the style of his diaries in which he tells the episodic story of his love for Don Bachardy.

Just as the reconstructed diary tells of Isherwood’s repeated failure to get on with his novel, so it also tells of his repeated failure to get on with his life. As with his work, so with William Caskey: Isherwood started and restarted the relationship, never certain whether Caskey loved him, never able to impose order on their increasingly drunken domestic life. Some of their most tender moments were brought on by their shared sense of guilt over how cruel they were to one another; yet guilt also appears to have been a main stumbling block to progress between them. Isherwood observes that “both Caskey and Christopher were entering upon their relationship with powerful feelings of guilt. . . . Neither of them would admit to their guilt, xxvi

Introduction

except by the violence with which they reacted against it.”1 Caskey felt guilty that he was not a good Catholic, that he had not had an honorable discharge from the navy, that he did not love his family.

Isherwood felt guilty that he had failed to find a way for Heinz to escape permanently from Germany, that he had failed to be a committed social revolutionary, that he had failed to return to England during the war, that he had failed to become a monk. How could either one of them conduct a successful love relationship while shouldering such burdens? Gradually Isherwood became promiscuous with countless others, and as it progresses the reconstructed diary increasingly becomes a Proustian catalogue of all the relationships in which he tried and failed to find, or to be, the ideal companion. Without self-defense, the narrative obliquely reveals, again and again, Isherwood’s further guilt over having loved and left so many.

As a form of confession and expiation, the reconstructed diary is presided over by the ghost of E. M. Forster. In the 1970 Thanksgiving diary entry in which he first mentioned his plan to write it, Isherwood had commented: “I have also had the idea that my

memoir of Swami might be published with a memoir of Morgan,

based on his letters to me. So that the book would be a Tale of Two Gurus, as it were.”2 Forster died just a year before Isherwood began writing the reconstruction, and in the interval Isherwood supervised the publication of Forster’s own explicitly homosexual work,

Maurice, which had lain waiting many decades to reach print.3 The publication of Maurice in 1971 may have been a spur to begin the reconstruction when he did and to make it as explicit as he did.

While Swami gave Isherwood unconditional love, Forster judged.

And it was Forster’s moral character which made Isherwood feel the need to judge himself. Isherwood writes in the reconstructed diary that “he thought of Forster as a great writer and as his particular master.” In the late 1940s, even though he had already known Forster for a decade and a half (since 1932), he was still in awe of him.

Somewhat surprisingly, he was not in awe of Forster as a writer: “It was as a human being that Forster awed him. Forster demanded truth in all his relationships; underneath his charming unalarming exterior he was a stern moralist and his mild babylike eyes looked deep into you. Their glance made Christopher feel false and tricky.”4 Forster let Isherwood know, for instance, that he disapproved of the way

1 P. 55.

2 Diaries 1960–1983, November 26, 1970.

3 Written 1913–1914; revised 1959–1960.

4 Pp. 94–5.

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Isherwood handled his 1938 affair with the ex-chorus boy Jacky Hewit, and by 1971 when Isherwood wrote the reconstructed account of this prewar episode, he openly conceded that he felt guilty about promising to bring Hewit to America and then never sending for him.

Forster’s moral influence can be seen reaching forward into many areas of Isherwood’s life, providing a standard against which Isherwood implicitly measured other actions, even the many about which Forster knew nothing. By the time he wrote the reconstructed diary, the intensity of guilt had abated, but the need to judge his youthful self as Forster might once have judged him persisted.

If Forster demanded of Isherwood that he come to terms with past actions, Isherwood’s other guru, Swami Prabhavananda, offered a style of thought that looked to the future. Swami’s unconditional love existed in the context of a philosophy where guilt had no role.

The spiritual aspirant in Vedanta aims to leave the concerns of the world behind, and in meditation, which Isherwood practiced every day for many years, to remember was not as important as to forget.

By the end of the 1940s, it was time for Isherwood to leave his past and his burden of guilt behind him. The years of turmoil and waste were to be followed by tremendous new achievements.

A new American friend, Speed Lamkin, helped him to find a way forward with The World in the Evening by cutting out the part of the book that was most closely connected to Isherwood’s old European life and his former, English successes. Oddly enough, Lamkin seems to have hit on his solution through a lack of historical awareness and perhaps even without recognizing why his advice was so useful. He read the manuscript during the spring of 1951 and told Isherwood,

“The refugees are a bore.”1 They were based on the real-life refugees, mostly German and Austrian Jews, to whom Isherwood

had taught English in Haverford, Pennsylvania, during the early part of the war. Isherwood’s determination to write about the refugees––

demonstrated by vain years of effort––was evidently fed by the power of his social conscience and by the allure of his former success in writing about the German middle classes. After all, his descriptions of his Berlin acquaintances, to whose shabby and trivial lives he had once been able to give a bohemian glamor of complete originality, had made his reputation. And the moral viewpoint associated with E. M. Forster and with Isherwood’s friend Edward Upward, as well as Isherwood’s own puritanism, might have urged him to persist with such a socially worthy subject.

1 P. 284.

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Speed Lamkin’s moral viewpoint––if he had one at all––was the opposite of Forster’s or Upward’s. He was unabashedly, vulgarly ambitious. He was a clever boy from a small town in the South who had come to Hollywood to become rich and powerful and famous.

He shared none of Isherwood’s guilt or anxiety about social revolution, the cause of the workers, pacifism or the war. He was shallow and ruthless, and his ruthlessness was something which Isherwood desperately needed at this point in his life. As with his novels, so with his life: certain themes had to go. The refugees had to go; guilt had to go; and as Isherwood knew and Lamkin kept reminding him,

Caskey had to go. Isherwood recalls of Speed’s comment on the refugees: “Speed with his ruthlessness had disregarded Christopher’s feelings and expressed his own. Christopher could never be grateful enough to him.”1

Lamkin was quintessentially American, and he beckoned

Isherwood forward into Isherwood’s chosen new culture, with its easy rewards and its endless appetite for change. For the Isherwood of the 1930s, immersed in and obsessed by Germany, the refugees would have been an ideal subject. But Isherwood was now immersed in and obsessed by America. In Christopher and His Kind Isherwood explains that he had learned to speak German “simply and solely to be able to talk to his sex partners.” This had given German a powerful erotic significance: “For him, the entire German language

. . . was irradiated with Sex.”2 From the start of the 1940s he wanted to have sex with American boys, and it was the American language which became charged for him with erotic energy. As he observed in his Thanksgiving diary entry of 1970, his poetry, his fiction always consisted of his reactions to real experience; with the refugees, he was trying to force himself to write about something that was no longer intensely real to him. He observes in the reconstructed diary that even Berthold Viertel––a refugee and mentor once commanding the quality of attention from Isherwood which resulted in one of his finest novels, Prater Violet––became unimportant when Isherwood’s sense of personal identification with the German diaspora faded: “As Christopher became increasingly detached from his own German-refugee persona (which belonged to the post-Berlin years of travel around Europe with Heinz) Viertel had lost his power to make

Christopher feel guilty and responsible for him.”3 And some of the Haverford refugees had themselves begun to lose interest in Germany. In contrast to the German and Austrian artists and intellec-1 P. 284.

2 C&HK, U.S., p. 21; U.K., p. 23.

3 P. 148.

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tuals Isherwood knew in Hollywood, who were proudly nurturing their native cultural heritage until they could return home after the war, the more ordinary refugees in Haverford, despite their sophistication and cynicism, wanted and needed to learn English and to learn what Isherwood’s Haverford boss, Caroline Norment, called the “American Way of Life.”1 Unlike many of their Hollywood

counterparts, they had lost everything and, in some cases, suffered great physical deprivation and pain. They wanted to forget about their European past, assimilate into American culture and get on with their lives. Many of them did this rapidly and successfully; they virtually evaporated into America. Isherwood needed to do the same.

His decision to drop the refugees from The World in the Evening is emblematic of his shedding of his old continental affinities along with his burden of guilt; finally he began to accept his new homeland and his unknown, solitary future.

But Speed Lamkin did not persuade Isherwood to abandon his social conscience altogether. The reconstructed diary grinds to an un-cadenced, almost shapeless halt in 1951, stranded tellingly upon Isherwood’s account of his dealings with a friend of Speed Lamkin, Gus Field. Field is a minor character in Isherwood’s narrative, but a minor character whose fate compares suggestively with the fate of the refugees and even with the fate of Caskey. Lamkin and Field, with Isherwood’s permission, wrote a stage adaptation of Goodbye to Berlin.

Isherwood liked it, but his friends Dodie Smith and her husband Alec Beesley (rich through Dodie’s talent as a playwright) did not. So the Beesleys connived that John van Druten should undertake the same project. Van Druten’s adaptation, I Am a Camera, would eventually place Isherwood on the road to fame and relative fortune, despite wrangles when van Druten took the largest share of the royalties.

When the time came to make clear to Lamkin and Field that van Druten’s version of Goodbye to Berlin was to receive Isherwood’s imprimatur, Lamkin accepted the new situation cheerfully and offered no recriminations, thereby abandoning his own script and ingratiating himself successfully with the little group behind van Druten’s version.

Field, though, who behaved just as well as Lamkin, was excluded and ignored. Isherwood writes in the reconstructed diary:

As for Gus Field, he took the news well, too. Which was more

admirable, since he got very little gratitude from Christopher or anybody else for doing so. If he was invited to the Beesleys’, it was only once or twice. Speed dropped him. Christopher only saw

1 D 1, April 28, 1942, p. 220.

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him occasionally. He was treated as a bore and an outsider––and that, from Christopher’s point of view, was what he was.1

Speed had called the refugees boring; Isherwood calls Gus Field a bore. To be boring was an unacceptable crime in Isherwood’s new Speed Lamkin-style drive for success. Perversely, Field became the scapegoat himself for the ill treatment meted out to him by

Isherwood and the Beesleys. As with the refugees and Caskey, Field and the guilt he inspired in Isherwood and his friends, had to go.

And yet part of Isherwood brooded over the excluded, marginalized figure of Gus Field, resulting in the strange non-ending of the reconstructed diary. For Isherwood, the Field episode was closed but not resolved. He had originally planned, at Thanksgiving 1970, that the reconstructed diary might carry through to 1955––or at least to 1953, when he met Don Bachardy. But by March 1974, as he was

writing about the end of 1950, his ambition had shrunk: “I would like to record the winter of 1951–1952, even if I go no further.”2 In September the same year, advancing slowly, he had again reduced his aims, “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.”3

Finally, in January 1977, with Christopher and His Kind already published, he had made only a little further progress, though he still planned to continue: “. . . thus far, I’ve reached May 1951 and I would like to carry the narrative on until at least the end of 1952.”4

But he never returned to the task, and in the end he never got beyond the shadow of Gus Field––the necessary victim of Isherwood’s success. From time to time, Isherwood also mentions in his diary the idea of returning to the subject of the refugees and writing a novel solely about them. But he never did; they, too, were part of the past of which he had to let go. Their story survives only in his wartime diaries, an adequate and important historical account. As for Caskey, his story is contained in the reconstructed diary.

Isherwood would never cease to be aware of the way in which all success, and indeed all art, excludes or marginalizes somebody. In a sense, his art tries to do the opposite, but whatever is brought to the fore must push something else aside. As a schoolboy he had written to his mother: “I have an essay on ‘omission is the Beginning of all Art’ which it may amuse you to see.”5 And as he explains at some 1 P. 286.

2 Diaries 1960–1983, March 28, 1974.

3 Diaries 1960–1983, September 11, 1974.

4 Diaries 1960–1983, January 2, 1977.

5 February 13, 1921, to Kathleen Isherwood, in Christopher Isherwood, The Repton Letters, ed. George Ramsden (Settrington, England, 1997), p. 14.

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length in Christopher and His Kind, much of the difficulty he had with his work, throughout his career, can be understood as his struggle with the question of how the artist decides what to leave out of his art. The subjects not chosen, the themes not addressed, haunt the imagination with the pain of their rejection; for the novelist who feels a strong loyalty to historical fact, the necessity to omit is like the burden of original sin, a crime of neglect which must precede the possibility of artistic creation.

Isherwood was fascinated throughout his life with marginal figures and with minorities. He himself was a member of what was for

centuries one of the most oppressed and anonymous minorities in human society: during the first half of his life, the society which raised and educated him also told him that he was a criminal. Thus, he willingly and with eager curiosity associated with others who, for various reasons, were called criminals and were pushed like him to the margin of society. The shady figures of the Berlin demi-monde

––Mr. Norris and the like––had once offered him fruitful ground for his art. But Isherwood was not prepared to live his whole life in the shadows. As a writer and a man he wished to move into the main-stream and forward into the future.

Looking back in the 1970s, recalling the struggle to focus his life and his artistic energies by cutting away the boring, the unglamorous, the unsuccessful, he still reflected upon what had been pushed aside.

Gus Field, personifying as he did the guilt from which Isherwood wished to free himself, is a figure well suited to claim not only Isherwood’s but also the reader’s final attention in the reconstructed diary. With Isherwood’s mature success as a writer had come the confidence to unveil both those aspects of his character and his past actions of which society disapproved and also those aspects of his character and past actions of which he himself disapproved; they were not generally the same. By reconstructing them explicitly in Lost Years he was able to make some of the differences clear. In its portrayal of Isherwood’s sexuality, Lost Years is a boldly political book. Perhaps much more surprising, it is also implicitly and persistently moral, describing and judging––often with harsh self-criticism––even the minutiae of daily conduct, in order to try to redefine what is genuinely good and genuinely evil in human

relationships.

Textual Note

This diary describing the years 1945 to 1951 was written by Christopher Isherwood between 1971 and 1977. It fills a gap of about half a decade following World War II when Isherwood had kept his diary very irregularly. He wrote nothing about his day-to-day life from January 1945 until September 1947 when he began a travel diary––published as The Condor and the Cows (1949)––about his trip with his companion of the late 1940s, William Caskey, through South America. After the South American trip, Isherwood began occasionally to write in his diary again, but not until the early 1950s did he reestablish his old routine of writing several times a week. The entries that he did make during the late 1940s and early 1950s are printed in his Diaries Volume One 1939– 1960, along with an outline he made, probably in 1955, showing some of the main events of those years.

American style and spelling are used throughout this book. English spellings began to disappear from Isherwood’s diaries by the end of his first decade in California, although there are exceptions which I have altered in order to achieve consistency with the general trend. However, I have retained idiosyncrasies of phrasing and also spellings which have a phonetic impact in order that Isherwood’s characteristic Anglo-American voice might resound in the writing.

I have made some very minor alterations silently, including

standardizing passages which Isherwood quotes from elsewhere in his own writings, from other published authors, and from letters. Also, I have spelled out many abbreviations, including names for which Isherwood sometimes used only initials. Otherwise, square brackets usually mark emendations of substance or possible interest. Square brackets also mark information I have added to the text, such as surnames or parts of titles shortened by Isherwood, and editorial footnotes. And square brackets indicate where I have removed or Textual Note

xxxiii

altered material in order to protect the privacy of certain individuals who are still living.

This book includes many footnotes written by Isherwood himself.

His practice in making the reconstructed diary was to write on the rectos only of his black ledger books, and to add information on the facing versos. He numbered almost all such additions as footnotes.

Had Isherwood himself prepared the diary for publication, he almost certainly would have incorporated all of his footnotes into the text, rewriting as necessary. I have not attempted to do this on his behalf, but have deliberately retained the rough, two-layered effect of the text he left, although I have sometimes moved his footnotes

(especially the long ones) to the end of the phrase, sentence or paragraph in which they appear, in order to help readers arrive at a suitable pause, where they might more easily shift their attention. All footnotes in brackets and footnote symbols in brackets are added by me, as mentioned above.

At the back of the book, readers will find a chronology of

Isherwood’s life and a glossary of people, places, institutions, and terms which he mentions. In contrast to his other diaries, kept contemporaneously with the events they describe, Isherwood generally introduces friends and acquaintances and explains episodes in detail in this reconstructed diary; therefore my notes and glossary only undertake to fill gaps. Many central figures require little or no mention at all in the glossary, and readers should use the index to find Isherwood’s own descriptions of them in his text. (Sometimes

Isherwood offers his own cross-reference when someone appears again after a long absence.) The glossary gives general biographical information and also offers details of particular relevance to Isherwood and to events or concerns he mentions in the text. A few very famous people––for instance, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin––

are not included in the glossary because although Isherwood knew them quite well, he knew them essentially in their capacity as celebrities. Others who were intimate friends––such as Aldous Huxley, Igor Stravinsky––are included even though their main

achievements will be familiar to many readers.

Hindu terminology is also explained in the glossary, although unfamiliar non-Hindu words appearing only once are usually glossed or translated in a footnote.

Acknowledgements

I could not have prepared this book without the constant support and collaboration of Don Bachardy. Isherwood’s luck in finding such a partner continues to grow more evident, and I feel privileged to share some of that luck.

Many friends of Isherwood have taken a great deal of trouble to answer questions for Don Bachardy and for me, and we are

extremely grateful for their tenacity and their forthrightness: George Bemberg, Walter Berns, Stefan Brecht, the late Paul Cadmus, the late Jim Charlton, Robert Craft, Jack Fontan, John Gruber, Michael Hall, Betty Harford, the late Evelyn Hooker, Richard Keate, Robert Kittredge, Gavin Lambert, Jack Larson, the late José Martinez, the late Ben Masselink, Carlos McClendon, the late Roddy McDowall, Ivan Moffat, Alvin Novak, Fern Maher O’Brien, “Vernon Old,”

Bernard Perlin, Rupert Pole, Ned Rorem, Paul Sorel, Walter

Starcke, Barry Taxman, Curtice Taylor, the late Frank Taylor, Edward Upward, Gore Vidal, Swami Vidyatmananda, Tom Wright,

Russ Zeininger.

A number of other people have helped with challenging and

sometimes eccentric queries as well as practical matters, and I thank them all: Terry Adamson, Robert Adjemian, Peter Alexander, Alan Ansen, John Appleton, Roger Berthoud, Michael Bessie, Vernon

Brooks, Sally Brown (Curator of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library), Peter Burton, Sheilah Cherney, Patricia Clark (The British Council), Gerald Clarke, Michael De Lisio, John D’Emilio, Renée Doolley, Philippa Foote, Christopher Gibb, Joyce Howard, Don Howarth, Nicholas Jenkins, Brian Keelan, Jim Kelly, Judy

Kopec ( Johns Hopkins University), Fredric Kroll, Tanya Kutchin-sky, the late Lyle Leverich, Glenn Lewis, Lloyd Lewis, John

Loughery, Jeffrey Meyers, Jean Morin (Directorate of History and Heritage, Ottawa, Canada), Karl Müller, Ed Parone, Susan Peck, Acknowledgements

xxxv

Stuart Proffitt, Andreas Reyneke, Dean Rocco, Jennifer Ruggiero, David Salmo, Suzelle Smith, Willie Walker, Robert Weil, George Wilson ( Johns Hopkins University).

For permission to quote part of a letter from Dodie Smith Beesley to Isherwood, I would like to thank Julian Barnes; for permission to quote from E. M. Forster’s letters to Isherwood, I would like to thank the Society of Authors as agent for the Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge; for permission to quote part of a letter from John Goodwin to Isherwood, I would like to thank Anthony Russo.

A project like this one is not easy without the continual and thoughtful involvement of editors, agents, and nowadays even

lawyers; I am grateful, for each of their efforts, to Helena Caldon, Roger Cazalet, Caroline Dawnay, Jim Fox, Daniel Halpern, Douglas Matthews, Anthea Morton-Saner, Harvey Starte, Stuart Williams and especially Howard Davies, Michael di Capua, Alison Samuel, and Geoffrey Strachan.

To friends who spent more time than they should have spent

chasing will-o’-the-wisp details, I am, as ever, very much in debt: Thomas Braun, Axel Neubohn, Peter Parker, Polly Maguire

Robison, Margaret Bradham Thornton. I came to depend especially on Christopher Phipps, who is as cheerful as he is meticulous; his resourcefulness has contributed many things to this book. Lucy Bucknell and Edward Mendelson have loyally helped me with small questions and big problems, and above all by reading––with

characteristic generosity and strictness––anything I asked them to.

At home I have had unconditional support from Jackie Edgar,

Vivian Galang, and Michelle Hatfield, and from a merry and inquisitive little gang who worked hard not to disturb me at my desk: Bob Maguire, Bobby Maguire, Lucy Maguire, Jack Maguire. I could not do without them.

Lost Years

January 1, 1945–May 9, 1951

August 26, 1971.

I am writing this to clarify my project to myself, not actually to begin work on it. Before I can do that I shall have to read through my day-to-day diaries for 1944 and 1945, to find out how much explanation is going to be needed before I can start the narrative itself.

This is the situation: I have day-to-day diaries ( just saying what happened in a few words) from 1942 to the present day, except for the 1946 diary, which is lost. I also have journals which begin in 1939

and cover the same period.[*] All have time gaps in them. But the biggest gaps occur in one particular area––there are no entries whatever for 1945, 1946 or 1947 (though my life from September 20, 1947 to March 1948 is covered in The Condor and the Cows). The 1948 journal has rather less than twenty entries, 1949 around fifteen, 1950 about the same number, 1951 about twelve, 1952 about

fourteen. (It’s interesting to notice what a small variation there is for these years––my journal keeping seems to follow a predictable wave-movement.) 1953 is perhaps the worst year of all, about eleven, and 1954 isn’t much better. Then the journal keeping picks up frequency and has remained fairly adequate ever since.

So this is my project: I am going to try to fill in these gaps from memory––up to the end of 1952 at least and maybe up to the end of 1954.

I shall write, to begin with, on the odd-numbered pages, leaving the even-numbered facing pages for after-thoughts and notes.

Because the “I” of this period is twenty years out of date, I shall write about him in the third person––working on Kathleen and Frank

[* Elsewhere, Isherwood also calls these journals “diaries,” and they are published under that title. Readers may find Isherwood’s references to them by date in his Diaries Volume One 1939– 1960, ed. Katherine Bucknell (London: Methuen, 1996; New York: HarperCollins, 1997), cited hereafter as D 1.]

4

Lost Years

has shown me how this helps me to overcome my inhibitions, avoid self-excuses and regard my past behavior more objectively.

The last entry in the 1944 journal makes it fairly obvious that Christopher has already decided to leave Vedanta Place (on Ivar Avenue, as it then still was––the name was changed only after the freeway was built). Christopher doesn’t admit this, but he emphasizes the importance of japam,[*] rather than the importance of being with Swami,[†] or of having daily access to the shrine, or of living in a religious community. You can make japam under any circumstances, no matter where or how you are living.

In the 1944 journal, Christopher says that he finished the revised draft of Prater Violet on October 15. In the 1944 day-to-day diary he says he finished revising Prater Violet on November 25––so this must have been a revision of the revised draft.1 Anyhow it must have been finished and sent off to the publishers before the end of that year.

In the journal, November 30, Christopher says, “The X. situation is beginning again.”

“X.” was Bill Harris.2 Denny Fouts[‡] met him first. He had been in the army but only for a short while and was now going to college.

1 In the 1944 journal, it says “the final polishing” of Prater Violet was finished on November 24.

2 Bill was the younger of two brothers––the sons of an engineer. Their father had worked in the USSR and had had to leave with his family at a few hours’

notice––the Russians accused the American and British engineers of trying to sabotage a dam which they had been hired to construct. Later, they moved to Australia, where Bill and his brother became expert swimmers. Bill’s brother was very attractive, an all-round athlete and a war hero in the U.S. Air Force.

Bill was the ugly brother (so he said); homely and fat up to the age of fifteen.

Then he made a “decision” to be beautiful. After the war, his brother married and became fat and prematurely middle-aged.

Bill was well aware of being feminine––his resemblance to Marlene Dietrich was often remarked on––but he refused to get himself exempted from military service by declaring that he was homosexual. He wanted to be a model soldier.

He worked very hard to keep his equipment clean. Then, after he’d been in the service for a week or two, he was bawled out at an inspection, and this discouraged him so much, after all his good intentions, that he burst into tears.

The inspecting officer, amazed at such sensitivity, sent him to the psychiatrist, which resulted in his getting an honorable discharge!

[* Repeating a sacred Hindu word; Isherwood used a rosary. For this and all Hindu terms, see Glossary.]

[† Isherwood’s religious teacher under whose guidance he had been living at the Vedanta Center and training as a monk. See glossary under Prabhavananda.]

[‡ A close friend since 1940; for Fouts and for others not fully introduced by Isherwood see Glossary.]

1943‒1944

5

The 1943 day-to-day diary, with the maddening vagueness common to all the early day-to-day diaries, records that, on August 21, Denny came down to Santa Monica to visit Christopher, who was staying for a few days at 206 Mabery Road, opposite the Viertels’ home, 165––accompanied by “little Bill” and “blond Bill.” I don’t

remember who “little Bill” was. I am almost certain that “blond Bill”

was Harris. His blond hair was then the most immediately striking feature of his beauty, especially when he had his clothes on and you couldn’t see his magnificent figure. Aside from this, Christopher used to be fond of describing his first glimpse of Bill Harris––how the erotic shock hit him “like an elephant gun” and made him “grunt”

with desire, and how, at the same time, he felt angry with Denny for bringing this beautiful temptation into his life, to torment him.1

Christopher first saw Harris through the window of the bathroom of 206, just as Harris was arriving with Denny in the car. This in itself fixes the date if my memory is accurate, because Christopher never stayed in that house again.

However, Bill Harris has nothing to do with the sex adventure referred to in the 1943 journal as having taken place on August 24.

Christopher had gone into the ocean and was swimming with his trunks off; he was wearing them around his neck, as he often did. A man came along the beach––which was almost deserted in those

wartime days––saw him, took his own trunks off, came into the water and started groping Christopher. What made the situation

“funny and silly” was that the man was deaf and dumb. They both laughed a lot. Christopher refused to have an orgasm but he had been excited, and he jacked off later, when he had returned to the house.

The other sexual encounters referred to in the 1943 journal were with a boy named Flint,2 whom Christopher met on the beach on September 20, and with Pete Martinez, a few days later.

It is odd that “X.” (Harris) isn’t referred to at all in the 1943

journal. It seems probable that Christopher saw very little of him after their first meeting on August 21. In the 1944 journal (March 13) Christopher writes, “A few days after this entry, I started to fall in love, with someone whom I’ll call X. . . .” etc. etc. The 1944

1 Christopher even accused Denny of deliberately trying to seduce him from his vocation by introducing him to Harris. According to Christopher, Denny didn’t want Christopher to become a monk because it made him, Denny, feel guilty.

2 [Not his real name.] Flint tried to do a blowjob under water and was quite indignant when he began to drown. He seemed to blame the Pacific Ocean, assuring Christopher with apparent seriousness that you could blow someone beneath the surface of the Atlantic while drawing air into your mouth through his cock!

6

Lost Years

day-to-day diary doesn’t mention Bill Harris until April 5, when Christopher saw him in Santa Monica. (He had previously been

living out at Pomona or someplace in that area; perhaps he had now moved to the beach.) After this, the day-to-day diary mentions him from time to time––not often, because Christopher was sick quite a bit and in bed. They had sex for the first time while they were both staying at Denny’s apartment, 137 Entrada Drive. They were alone together there from June 26 to 29. Denny had gone off to San Francisco telling Bill to paint the living room before he returned.

(Denny always saw to it that his guests made themselves useful.) In the 1944 journal, Christopher pays a tribute to Harris’s

“decency and generosity.” Well he may––for he treated Harris not merely as a convenience but as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, which had to be overcome by temporarily yielding to it. “Let me go to bed with you so I can get tired of you” was basically his approach. Then, later, when Vernon [Old*] reappears on the scene, Harris gets told, in effect, that he, The Carnal Love, is to stand aside because The Spiritual Love is taking over. (Christopher was going to bed with The Spiritual Love too, however; and The Carnal Love was well aware of this!) Finally, when Christopher has first satisfied and then sublimated and then temporarily lost his lust for Vernon, he reopens his affair with Harris. This he ungraciously refers to as “the X.

situation beginning again.” (There is a faint memory that the two of them had to stand very close together in a crowded trolley car going downtown, and that this was how it started.) What was Harris’s attitude to all of this? Just because he wasn’t emotionally involved, he probably found it easy to accept Christopher’s on-again, off-again, on-again behavior. Besides, he liked sex––the more of it the better––and must have found Christopher quite adequately

attractive, as well as amusing to be with. If this relationship had been represented in a ballet, the dancer playing Christopher would be repeatedly changing costumes and masks and his movements would be artificial, inhibited and tense; the dancer playing Harris would be naked and usually motionless––the only sort of tension he would display would be an eager puzzled smile as he reacted to his partner’s contortions.

In the 1944 journal, Christopher writes, “I know quite well that I shouldn’t feel guilty if I were not living at Ivar Avenue. That being true, my guilt is worthless.” Nevertheless, Christopher certainly did feel guilty––or at least embarrassed––throughout the rest of his stay at the Vedanta Center. His position was false, and several people

[* Not his real name.]

¾ 1945 ¾

7

knew this––Denny, Bill Harris, the Beesleys, John van Druten, Carter Lodge, etc. The Beesleys probably found the inconsistency of his life as a demi-monk merely amusing and cute––it seemed

“human”––it excused them from feeling awed and awkward in the presence of his faith. But for Christopher, their tolerance was humiliating.

Should he have left the center much sooner than he did? Looking back, I find that I can’t say yes. It now seems to me that Christopher’s embarrassment and guilt feelings were of little importance and his

“spiritual struggles” trivial. What mattered was that he was getting exposure to Swami, that his relations with Swami continued to be (fairly) frank, and that he never ceased to be aware of Swami’s love.

Every day that he spent at the center was a day gained. That he kept slipping away to see Bill Harris wasn’t really so dreadful. That he had lost face in the eyes of various outside observers was a good thing––or anyhow it was a hundred times better than if he had fooled everyone into thinking him a saint.

(Remembering Christopher’s position at that time makes me feel great sympathy and admiration for Franklin [Knight] at Trabuco nowadays and for Jimmie Barnett at the Hollywood monastery. Their position is, or has been, far more embarrassing and humiliating than Christopher’s ever was. And they haven’t run away from it.)

1945

Day-to-day diary, January 1, 1945: “Started work on my story.”

What story? Perhaps an early attempt to do something with the material from the journal about Christopher’s stay at the Friends Service Committee hostel at Haverford, 1941–1942. Or perhaps

another attempt to write about the character called “Paul”1 (in those days, he wasn’t yet altogether Denny Fouts) and his adventures on the Greek island, which later appeared in “Ambrose.”[*]

1 My original Paul character had nothing to do with Denny––indeed I thought of him long before Denny and I met. So what I have written [above] is misleadingly phrased. I never, as far as I remember, planned to put Denny into the Greek island story. On the contrary, I cut Paul out of it and used his name for a portrait of Denny in Paul. (An unfinished novel featuring the original Paul character is described in Christopher and His Kind, chapter eleven.)

[* In Down There on a Visit (1962).]

8

Lost Years

On January 2, Christopher took the manuscript of Vedanta and the Western World to be published by Marcel Rodd. Evidently they were still on good terms with Rodd at the Vedanta Center. Marcel is first referred to on June 20 in the 1944 journal, when he took over the distribution of the Gita,[*] which had already been set up by the printer who printed the magazine. Christopher knew him in a sort of backstairs way, as one of Vernon’s many former admirers, and Christopher flattered himself that he could do satisfactory business with Rodd and not get cheated, despite Rodd’s character. I can’t remember that Rodd ever actually cheated the Vedanta Society, but he caused a lot of annoyance and inconvenience in later years––

failing to republish but refusing to give up his rights and ignoring the letters written to him by the society’s lawyers. And for all this Christopher was responsible because he had introduced Rodd to Swami. (Though I think it was Denny who had suggested that he should do so. Denny’s advice was so often sensible but mischievous.) In the 1944 journal, it is said that Rodd “is terribly anxious to become a respectable publisher.” This suggests that Rodd had already been in trouble as the result of his dealings in pornography––maybe while he had the bookshop and was selling it under the counter. But I remember that he was prosecuted, some time after this, for

publishing or distributing sex books––one of them was called We Are Fires Unquenchable. The judge said, “I understand, Mr. Rodd, that you also publish religious literature? I strongly advise you to stick to that line in future.”

On January 3, Swami’s nephew Asit [Ghosh] was finally released from the army. (The circumstances of his induction and the legal proceedings which were taken to release him are described in the 1944 journal.) Asit came back to the center and stayed there for a while. Then he left for India.1

1 I have a vivid mental picture of Asit saying goodbye to Swami, after coming out of the temple where they had prostrated before the shrine. Right then, in full view of the street, Asit bowed down and took the dust of Swami’s feet. It is my impression that I had never before seen anyone do this. Pranams weren’t part of life at the center in those days. What makes the picture more exotic is that Asit is in U.S. Army uniform––which seems most improbable, if he had already left the army!

(Note, made June 16, 1977: As I have just discovered from rereading the journal, my memory referred to September 18, 1944, the day Asit was inducted into the army, not the day he was discharged from it. If he hadn’t yet been inducted, would he have been wearing uniform? Surely not.)

[* I.e., the Bhagavad Gita, which Isherwood and Prabhavananda had translated; see Glossary under Prabhavananda.]

¾ 1945 ¾

9

The Vivekananda Puja was celebrated on January 4, this year. (In 1944, it was on January 17.) The 1944 day-to-day diary mentions it, but I can find no reference to it in the journal. This puja––or rather, the breakfast puja which is the first part of it––became the only ritual worship which Christopher really enjoyed. This was chiefly because he had an important role in it––Swami had decided that he should be the one to read the Katha Upanishad aloud while Swamiji’s[*]

breakfast was served. He loved doing this; indeed it was (and has remained) for him the highest imaginable act of sacred camp––a little genuine devotion, a feeling of the absurdity of himself in this role, a sense that the performance is a joke shared with Swamiji, and of course his enjoyment of the sound of his own voice––all these elements are combined in the experience. But, quite aside from this, the breakfast puja had a beautiful domestic significance as long as Sister[†] was alive and could personally pour Swamiji’s coffee during the ritual. Because Sister was (almost certainly) the only surviving person who had actually served breakfast to Swamiji while he was in the U.S. He had been a guest in her home, at the beginning of the century.

On January 8, the day-to-day diary records that Sudhira[‡] enlisted in the navy. She may actually have done this, or it may have been one of the tall stories she told Christopher. If she did really enlist, I’m pretty sure she was never called up.

Also on the 8th, a journalist named Felton visited the center; he was doing a story for Time magazine in connection with a

forthcoming review of the Prabhavananda–Isherwood translation of the Gita. On the 11th, he came again and sat in on Swami’s evening class; and on the 15th he sent a photographer to take pictures of Swami, Christopher, the temple, etc.[§]

Day-to-day diary, January 19: “To Santa Monica. Saw Bill and

Denny. The kite accident.”

When Christopher arrived at Santa Monica that morning, he

found Denny Fouts making a tail for a kite out of his Christmas decorations. (This sort of play project, undertaken on the spur of the moment, was characteristic of Denny.) When the kite was ready, Bill Harris and Christopher took it out on the beach to fly it. (I don’t remember that Denny was with them––perhaps there were two kites and Denny was flying the other one.) The wind was strong but not

[* I.e., Vivekananda’s; see Glossary.]

[† An American disciple of Vivekananda; see Glossary.]

[‡ A disciple of Prabhavananda; see Glossary.]

[§ The article by staff correspondent James Felton appeared on February 12, 1945; see p. 22 and n. below.]

10

Lost Years

steady. Bill and Christopher got the kite aloft, quite high over the Canyon. Then Christopher said, “We ought to tie a banner to the tail, with ‘Vernon is a big queen’ written on it!” (The point of this remark was that Vernon happened to be staying somewhere in the Canyon at that time so he would perhaps have seen the banner and been embarrassed. Christopher was being bitchy about Vernon

because he still harbored a grudge against him for the failure of their life together up at Santa Barbara. In any case, jokes against Vernon were frequent in Denny’s circle.)

Christopher had barely finished making this joke when the kite, as if to punish him for it, took a sudden dive––so sudden that he and Bill Harris had no time to save it by running toward the ocean, pulling the string. In less time than it takes to tell, the kite fell limply onto the power lines along the side of the highway. Then, as

Christopher watched incredulously, the tail of the kite began to smoke, there was a flash, a dull puff of sound, like air being expelled, and two of the cables parted and fell across the road. (No doubt they were spitting sparks, but Christopher couldn’t see this from where he stood.) Cars which happened to be passing swerved wildly. Brakes squealed. Luckily, there were no collisions. The accident, though minor, was awe inspiring. It belonged in the category of disasters and was as disconcerting to watch, on its own tiny scale, as the air raids Christopher had seen in China. You felt that the order of things was being upset. (And indeed, as Christopher heard later, the electric power was cut off throughout the neighborhood.)

Bill Harris was so horrified that he simply ran away, fearing arrest.

Christopher didn’t resent this; it rather flattered his own vanity that he was left to play the man while Bill panicked like a girl. And he knew Bill would admire him for his behavior, later. Christopher was a bit scared, of course; he fully expected to be arrested. But he was also shrewd enough to know that nothing very bad would happen to him, provided that he admitted his responsibility without delay.

Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered and the police had arrived. But the police merely took charge of the traffic; they didn’t attempt to find out who the culprit was. Christopher joined the crowd. Several people in it had undoubtedly seen him flying the kite. Christopher made up his mind to keep quiet for the time being and wait until questions were asked. But nobody asked any questions.

Then the repair truck arrived. The repair men asked no questions, either. But one of them said: “Whoever was flying that kite, he sure as hell was lucky”––and went on to explain that, if the kite string had been wet, the person holding it would have been electrocuted. The short circuit had been caused by the tinsel ornaments in the kite tail.

¾ 1945 ¾

11

Christopher later used this incident in The World in the Evening.1

Day-to-day diary, January 20: “Supper with Carter (Lodge), Don Forbes, Dave Eberhardt[*] and Chip.[†]” I think Chip was a boyfriend of Carter Lodge. He may well be the boy about whom I dimly

remember the following story: When the boy was young, his parents were alarmed because he was so effeminate and they felt sure he would turn out to be homosexual when he grew up; he also had a wretched physique. They consulted a doctor, who advised some sort of hormone treatment. The treatment produced dramatic results; the boy became a virile youth without a trace of effeminacy, with a powerful well-made body and masculine good looks––a well-adjusted, one hundred percent homosexual.

Don Forbes was a newscaster on radio; I think his program was sponsored by Richfield Oil. He was quite a star in the news

world––maybe he had done some reporting from the battlefronts. I remember being amused by a photograph of him, enshrined like an oracle amidst flags, bursting shells, whizzing planes and bombarding warships. He was handsome, temperamental and very much of an

actor.

Dave Eberhardt was [. . .] just discharged from the navy––a pale husky joli laid with a crew cut. Soon after Dave and Christopher met, Dave told Christopher that he found him “powerfully attractive.”

Christopher reciprocated more than sufficiently, and they would neck whenever they were alone together, sometimes for long spells.

Since they always had to do this at the apartment which Don and Dave shared––because Christopher was still living at the Vedanta Center––they never went to bed together, however; Dave thought it was too risky. When they did finally make love, years later, at the AJC Ranch, I seem to remember that it wasn’t a success.

Dave Eberhardt was a photographer. He later took some

exceedingly flattering photographs of Christopher.

Day-to-day diary, January 21: “With Bill to Beesleys’. Saw

Barrymore house.” January 21 was a Sunday. Sunday lunch with the Beesleys had become a more or less fixed engagement. John van Druten and Carter sometimes came––though Carter was secretly

unwelcome because he was allergic to dogs, so the dalmatians had to be shut away somewhere during his visit. (Dodie, of course, disbelieved in his allergy––like many Britishers of her generation, she dismissed allergies as an American superstition, with the single 1 See chapter six, part two.

[* Not his real name.]

[† Not his real name.]

12

Lost Years

exception of hay fever. In her opinion, Carter simply hated dogs, which was a permanent bad mark against him.)

The Beesleys were then living in a magnificent house on a hill above Tower Road––much too big for them. It had lawns, a garden, a tennis court and a pool. I think it rented for four hundred dollars a month, which seemed huge, in those days.

I can find no mention of Bill Harris having had lunch with the Beesleys before January 7, 1945; this was probably his second visit.

The Beesleys liked him and on later occasions made opportunities for Bill and Christopher to have sex, by going out and leaving them together, or even by suggesting to Christopher, “Wouldn’t you like to take a bath?” (This suggestion wasn’t quite as shameless as it sounded, because it was a long-established custom that Christopher should be offered a bath when he came to see them. It was like offering a bath to a serviceman who is in camp. At the Vedanta Center, the bathroom was shared by several people, and an unhurried soak in a spotless tub was a real luxury for Christopher.)1

The house which had once belonged to John Barrymore was

somewhere in that neighborhood. Its most remarkable feature was a very tall totem pole in the garden. My memory is of a building like a cloister, with a row of dark small cluttered rooms which stank; the place was then unoccupied. It may have stood empty since

Barrymore’s death in 1942. I remember tales of the filthy state it had been in during his later lifetime––the rooms like sties full of drunken guests snoring amidst their shit and vomit. Maybe Alec Beesley had got permission to look around the house by pretending he wanted to rent it. Or maybe they were simply trespassing.

Day-to-day diary, January 22: “Tried to hitchhike north with Bill, and failed.” Bill Harris and Christopher waited on the Pacific Coast Highway, at the Channel Road entrance to Santa Monica Canyon, 1 When Christopher later told John van Druten and Carter Lodge about his lovemaking with Bill at the Beesleys’, Carter professed to be shocked. He said something to the effect that it was “turning your friends’ home into a whorehouse” to do such a thing. Coming from Carter, this seemed a most mysterious piece of hypocrisy, since Carter himself had taken a shower at the Beesleys’ with Christopher, only recently, after swimming in their pool, and they had played around together––as they often did when they happened to be alone. Their relationship was intimate but casual––they had been going to bed together at long intervals ever since they first met in 1939. John knew about this––Christopher had told him––and he didn’t mind at all.

Why did Carter say he was shocked? Perhaps he resented the fact that the Beesleys would never have invited him to behave as Christopher behaved. He probably felt (and with good reason) that they didn’t really treat him as a friend––only as John’s friend.

¾ 1945 ¾

13

for several hours, trying without success to thumb a ride. The war was still very much on, despite increasing prospects of peace––

gasoline rationing was in force and nonmilitary traffic, other than local, was greatly reduced. Bill and Christopher were presumably hoping to catch a car which would take them to Santa Barbara at least, if not to San Francisco; and these were rare.

I find this episode (or non-episode) curious and puzzling. It doesn’t seem to belong to the style of the Bill–Christopher relationship. To set forth impulsively on an unplanned indefinite hobo trip is something which the Christopher of six years earlier might have done with Vernon Old. Their journey across the U.S. by bus was a modified version of the hobo trip––Whitman, “We Two Boys

Together Clinging,” the “Song of the Open Road,” etc. The

Vernon–Christopher relationship aspired to be Whitmanesque––at least, Christopher certainly felt that it was or could be. He fell in love with Vernon as an embodiment of The American Boy.

But now, with Bill Harris, as a forty-year-old lapsed monk,

Christopher is attempting a different, more mature style. Why did he suddenly decide on this boyish elopement? Was he trying to prove to Bill how young he still was? Was he running away from the

Vedanta Center, or from Denny Fouts? If so, how long did he plan to remain out of town? I simply cannot remember.

It is also possible that Christopher already knew about Pancho Moraturi, Bill’s Argentine friend, who was urging Bill to come and live with him. In this case, Christopher may have planned the trip up north as a last fling. He can’t have wanted to carry Bill off from Pancho permanently. He must have known then what became

obvious to him when he was rewriting his journals a year later, that his intentions toward Bill were not and never had been really serious.

On January 23, Christopher and Bill Harris were down in Santa Monica again. (I suppose they made these trips by bus. Christopher cycled sometimes, but only when he was alone.1 Bill was now living on La Cienega Boulevard; more about this later.) That evening, at Denny’s apartment, there was a party—Chris Wood came, and Stef Brecht ([Bertolt] Brecht’s son) and Paul Fox, a friend of Chris’s, who was a set designer and worked, appropriately enough, at

Twentieth Century-Fox. Christopher and Bill spent the night in one of the back rooms of the 137 Entrada Drive building. I

1 In Santa Monica, he sometimes cycled with Denny. Denny had begun to compose a cycling song with Christopher, to the tune of “Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes,” but they had got no further than the first couplet: “Just a pair of cycling queens / No longer in their teens . . .”

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Lost Years

remember Stef, in his formal European way, nodding toward Bill and then saying politely to Christopher, “I congratulate you, he is extremely attractive.”1

I see from the day-to-day diary that John Goodwin was also there.

It is odd that I don’t have more memories of him, for he was often with Denny. My impression is that Christopher didn’t really like John but was hardly aware of this. Christopher and John were

outwardly friendly. John had actually encouraged Bill to have an affair with Christopher. And Christopher himself was, not very energetically, on the make for John––John pretended to be flattered by this, but didn’t encourage him to go ahead. Nevertheless, I feel that Christopher was constantly being repelled by John’s rudeness, selfishness and arrogance. Christopher hated little rich boys in his deepest heart, no matter how talented they were, or how physically attractive.

On January 24, the day-to-day diary records that Bill Harris “had date at Selznick.” Probably John Darrow the agent and ex-actor had arranged that Bill should see the casting director at the Selznick Studios. ( John Darrow had had an affair with Bill, shortly before Christopher.) Nothing came of the interview, however.

On January 24, it is also recorded that there was Ram Nam in the evening and that Swami returned to the center from a stay at the ashram in Santa Barbara. Christopher still showed up to take part in these ceremonies, still spent time with Swami, but almost no memories remain of his life at the center during this final period. He was obsessed by Denny’s Santa Monica world and by Bill Harris; and that is what has left its mark.

On January 27, Christopher went with Bill and Denny to the

Follies and the Burbank, two burlesque shows. Here are some notes he made, either about these performances or some others he saw at that time:

The hard round bellies, the clutching gestures, the bumps, the grinds, the splits. The hair shaken over the face, to suggest lust and 1 I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but the story went around that Stef, with his Germanic thoroughness, decided to find out what homosexual sex was like. So he went to bed with one of his friends. It didn’t convert him, but he is supposed to have remarked later that the experience was “extremely pleasant”––or, more likely, “wirklich ganz angenehm [really quite agreeable].”

(Stef sometimes made you think that Thomas Mann should have been his father, rather than Brecht; he had the sort of urbanity that goes with pince-nez.

And yet he was really sexy, in an odd way. I think most of us would have liked to go to bed with him.)

¾ 1945 ¾

15

shame. The gesture of masking the eyes––as if afraid to look at her own body. The brutally aggressive forward-jerking G-string. The secret smile as the dress is loosened. The presentation of the breasts. The final sexual challenge.

The horrible toothless old male comics. A world of triumphant women––in which the men are impotent and hideous.

January 28: “Lunch with Beesleys. Katharine Hepburn came in.

Vigil 9–10 p.m.” Hepburn lived quite close to the Beesleys. She had walked over to see them. They didn’t know her well. A link between them was the Swedish married couple who had once worked for

Hepburn and now worked for the Beesleys. This man and his wife were nice looking, youngish, spotlessly clean, demure, lazy, expensive and devoted to vicious gossip. They told Dodie and Alec how

eccentric, ill-tempered and domineering Hepburn was as an employer.

They claimed that she walked about in the woods naked. I myself have no memory of Hepburn at this time, except that her freckles were very prominent and that she seemed friendly and pleasant.

January 29: “Drove with Bill to Robinsons, to leave Gitas. Spent the evening at his place.” This is a good specimen day to represent this period in Christopher’s life––with one foot in the Vedanta Center and one foot out of it. These were newly printed copies of the Gita, which Christopher was taking to Robinsons department store. (I think there was a devotee employed in their book

department who was going to push the Gita.)

The rest of the day was spent at Bill’s La Cienega apartment. It seems to me now that La Cienega was perhaps the most romantic street in Los Angeles, in those days. It had an un-American air of reticence, of unwillingness to display itself. Its shops were small and unshowy; its private houses were private. Also––and this was what really appealed to Christopher—it seemed to have a bohemian, self-contained life of its own. It was a “quarter,” which didn’t make any effort to welcome outside visitors. Many of its dwellers were hidden away in odd little garden houses and shacks, within courtyards or on alleys, behind the row of buildings which lined the street. It was in one of these that Bill lived.

I suppose Christopher was now very much aware of Bill’s

impending departure and wanted to perform an act of sexual magic which would, as it were, stake out a permanent claim in Bill even after he “belonged” to Pancho. Anyhow, Christopher told Bill that he wanted to fuck him in every room of the apartment. (This

probably consisted only of bedroom, living room, kitchen and

bathroom.) Bill was quite willing––the idea of “staged” sex excited 16

Lost Years

him. They had often talked of unusual places where one might

make love. On this occasion, their only daring move was to go outside the house––the apartment being on the ground floor––and fuck one more time in the courtyard, in the rain. The neighbors may well have seen them doing this. If they did, there were no complaints. When it was over, Bill and Christopher felt very

pleased with themselves and each other. Bill even went so far as to say, “You know, if you were three or four inches taller, you might quite easily be Heathcliff.” “Heathcliff ” was Bill’s name for the ideal sex partner. But “Heathcliff ” had to be at least a couple of inches taller than Bill.

(The word fuck in the above paragraph is perhaps misleading. I don’t mean that Bill and Christopher had five distinct orgasms on this occasion; only that there were five stickings-in and pullings-out. Bill later paid Christopher another compliment indirectly, by telling Denny all about it and saying how it had hurt. I think this was Bill’s kind of politeness. Bill was a veteran fuckee, and getting hurt is usually due to inexperience.)

January 31: “With Bill to the framer’s. He washed shirts, etc. The soldier came in.”

I have forgotten to mention that Bill painted, in those days. (Later, he retouched photographs and made various kinds of art objects.) He had done a self-portrait, I believe, that Christopher wanted as a keepsake––perhaps it was this that was being framed. But then again it seems to me that Bill was dissatisfied with the self-portrait and repainted it as a woman, whom Christopher decided to call Santa Monica. It is Santa Monica’s picture, anyhow, which we have here in the house today.

I forget what the soldier’s name was. He was one of Bill’s lovers and he showed up with the obvious intention of getting some sex.

Finding Christopher there, he sat down to wait until Christopher left. But Christopher wasn’t about to leave. He glared jealously at the soldier and the atmosphere became tense. Suddenly Bill jumped up and ran out of the apartment and into the street. Christopher followed him. The scene was dramatic, because Bill was barefoot and had nothing on him but a bathrobe––however, no one on the boule-vard appeared to pay much attention to this. When Christopher caught up with Bill, Bill was rather cross. “All this love—” he exclaimed, “I can’t stand it!” As far as I remember, Christopher and the soldier ended by leaving the house together and going up to the soldier’s place for a drink. By this time, Christopher was definitely interested in him, for he was sexy. But the soldier wasn’t interested in Christopher, and nothing happened.

¾ 1945 ¾

17

February 3: “Down to Denny’s. Tom Maddox,[*] Jeff [†] and

Curly[‡] were there. With Denny and Bill to see Othello. Bill and I slept at Bobo and Kelley’s.”

Tom Maddox was a very good-looking young actor, of the type

which is classified as “rugged.” His career looked promising at that time, but he never amounted to much. He was having a dangerous and exciting affair with Roddy McDowall, who was then in his

teens.1 According to Tom, Roddy was the one who had started it.

Tom said Roddy was insanely reckless and got a thrill out of having sex with Tom in the McDowall home, while Roddy’s parents were in the next room.

Jeff and Curly were two of Denny’s sexual playmates, a pair of highly untrustworthy teenagers who liked pot and blue movies and who would have been quite capable of turning nasty at any moment and resorting to blackmail. This, for Denny, was a large part of their charm. I think they were brothers.2

The performance of Othello (downtown at the Biltmore) starred Paul Robeson, José Ferrer and Uta Hagen. Robeson looked

marvellous in his costume, indeed he was perfectly typecast, but I don’t remember that he was more than adequate; he sweated

profusely. José Ferrer was a newcomer then, and he probably seemed better than he was. I remember him being tricky and showy in the

“Put money in thy purse” speech to Roderigo and getting a lot of applause. I think we were all grateful, out here in the sticks, for any halfway stylish Shakespeare productions. Such events were like signs that the cultural blackout of the war was coming to an end.

Wallace Bobo and Howard Kelley, always referred to as Bo and

Kelley, had another of the upstair front apartments at 137 Entrada Drive. So they were constantly in and out of Denny’s apartment and were at most of his parties. They were ideal neighbors, easygoing, helpful, ready to go along with any of Denny’s schemes; difficult as he could be, he never quarrelled with either of them. Bo was perhaps 1 The Information Please Almanac says that Roddy was born in September 1928––in which case he would have been only sixteen at this time. Since writing the above, I have been reliably informed that Roddy was eighteen when he had the affair with Tom––which means that it can’t have happened until the fall of the following year. I still trust my memory as far as Tom’s statement is concerned, but no doubt he was bragging a little to impress Denny, that tireless chicken hawk. Tom would want to make Roddy seem as young and as wild as possible, because that would make him more desirable in Denny’s eyes.

2 The day-to-day diary entry of February 24, 1945, refers to “the twins”; these were probably Jeff and Curly.

[* Not his real name.] [† Not his real name.] [‡ Not his real name.]

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Lost Years

more “the man of the family”; he was the good-looking one, he worked at an outdoor job (it was either landscape gardening or a nursery garden), he was butch (though not excessively). Kelley (I have forgotten what his job was) made most of the decisions and was altogether more practical; later, when Bo became somewhat

[unwell], Kelley looked after him. I don’t know how long they had already been together––I think they had both been in the service; but you felt that they would never part. They were both full of fun and gossip and took great interest in everything to do with show business.

They both loved to get into drag.

February 4: “Swami had lumbago, van Druten lectured. With Bill to Beesleys’. They went to see house. Van Druten to supper. Said goodbye to Bill.”

John van Druten’s lecture at the Vedanta temple that Sunday

morning was probably a version of the article by him called “One Element” which later appeared in our magazine Vedanta and the West and was then reprinted in our anthology Vedanta for Modern Man. I remember that John wanted to quote directly from Androcles and the Lion and wrote to the Shaw estate for permission to do so. This permission was refused; so, in the article, he has been obliged to paraphrase Shaw’s dialogue.

Since this was Christopher’s last day with Bill Harris, the Beesleys found an excuse to leave them alone together after lunch. This is the significance of, “They went to see house.” (The Beesleys really were about to move, however; their house hunting wasn’t fictitious.) It was one of those warm California winter days, and Bill and Christopher were able to have sex out on the lawn, near the swimming pool.

Thus their affair ended. When they met again, it was as

friends––by which I mean chiefly that their relationship had ceased to be tense, reproachful, embarrassing. Had they ever been lovers?

Not really. I much doubt that Bill was ever anything but friendly in his feelings toward Christopher; also a bit flattered, perhaps, by all the fuss Christopher made over him. He found Christopher sufficiently attractive, sexually––but then, he found all manner of people sufficiently attractive. I don’t think he was really turned on by anyone who wasn’t taller than himself.

As for Christopher, I don’t think he was in love with Bill. I think what Christopher felt was a sort of compulsive craze. While

Christopher was still intending to become a monk, Bill represented The Forbidden. Also, he was The Blond, an important myth figure in Christopher’s life––Christopher had a strong belief that he was, or ought to be, automatically attracted to spectacular blonds. (No ¾ 1945 ¾

19

reason for this occurs to me at the moment; if I think of one, later, I’ll insert it as a footnote [below].)1 Also––and this is very important––Bill was introduced to Christopher by Denny. For

Denny was another myth figure at that period; he was Satan, the tempter, the easy-as-an-old shoe friend who is so comfortable to be with because he knows the worst there is to know about you; the captive audience which holds its entertainers captive, demanding relentlessly to be surprised and amused. Christopher’s Satan held Christopher in his power by provoking Christopher to indiscretion.

Having dared Christopher to start an affair with someone––“I bet you can’t get him,” Satan says––he wheedles and flatters Christopher into talking about the new lover. So Christopher finds himself giving a blow-by-blow and word-for-word description of their affair; and thus the affair turns into a theatrical performance. (When the other person involved knows that this is going on, he will object violently 1 May 14, 1973. An explanation has just occurred to me. It sounds ridiculous, but then psychological insights often do, according to the psychologists. (I realize it’s possible that I got this out of one of their books and have chosen to forget that I did.)

Is The Blond maybe an archetype peculiar to the British Collective Unconscious? (I’m not using “archetype” in its strict Jungian sense, of course, because the Jungian archetype “can . . . manifest itself [spontaneously]

anywhere, at any time.” [“A Psychological View of Conscience,” Civilization in Transition, Collected Works, volume 10.] But it’s the most descriptive word I can think of.) The Blond, in relation to a primitive Briton, would be the blond Norseman or Saxon invader of his homeland. The Blond conquers, plunders, rapes. He is the masculine yang to Britain’s feminine yin. As an individual Briton, you are free to deny that you are feminine, to fight him and get killed––but that’s your own affair. The Blond is unalterably yang. As for Christopher, he was quite ready to be yin.

So much for the archetype theory. It may account for Christopher’s feelings about blonds as a group. But the fact remains that many of the blonds in Christopher’s life were definitely un-yang––pretty, feminine boys who wanted to be fucked. This compels me to theorize further: maybe Christopher unconsciously took over the role of Invader when he went to live in Germany and later in the States? He couldn’t become The Blond (though he did, occasionally, dip his forelock in the peroxide bottle) but, as The Invader, he could fuck yin boys even if they happened to be blonds. If the blond boy was yang, Christopher merely had to stop being an invader and think of himself as a yin Briton!

Still, I can’t believe that Christopher literally thought of himself as an invader––that is such a Jewish fantasy. Certainly, he wanted to “possess”

Germany and the United States; not by conquering them, however, but by exploring them and learning to love them. He tried to do this by looking for an ideal German and later an ideal American Boy, through whom he could explore and love these countries.

20

Lost Years

––if he really cares for Christopher. Bill did know and didn’t object.) But why did Christopher need a Satan in his life? The answer can only be that the affair in itself didn’t satisfy him; he could neither enjoy it nor even believe in it until his Satan had helped him turn it into a theatrical performance. On the rare occasions when

Christopher did become seriously involved, he lost the desire to talk about it, even to a Satan. So the expected performance was cancelled, and Satan’s feelings were hurt. (This happened to Denny, when Christopher met Bill Caskey.)

I even suspect that Christopher wasn’t greatly attracted to Bill Harris sexually. From Christopher’s point of view, The Blond had to be possessed “because he was there.” His possession was a status symbol, like owning a Cadillac. And the mere fact that a lot of people envied you––or so you liked to believe––was in itself sexually exciting, up to a point. Nevertheless, The Blond, if he was a perfect example, was too beautiful to excite Christopher for long. Christopher was like a Cadillac owner who really wanted a quite different make of car but wouldn’t admit it to himself. (Vernon Old continued to excite Christopher partly because his figure wasn’t perfect.)

Furthermore, Bill Harris was too feminine for Christopher’s taste.

I write the word and reject it immediately. “Too smooth” suggests itself as an alternative, but that doesn’t explain what I mean. Let me put it that Christopher was certainly able to feel violent lust for a feminine type of boy, provided that he had also a certain grossness, coarseness about him––thick curly hair on his chest and belly, for instance; even a roll of fat could be exciting. . . . Enough about this for the present; the subject will keep coming up.

Auden says that it’s important, in considering a sex relationship, to say exactly what the partners did in bed. Christopher used to fuck Bill, belly downwards. Bill never fucked him. (In general Bill only liked to be fucked––but on one occasion at least he made an

exception; a teenage boy fell for him and Bill used to fuck the boy, telling Denny and Christopher that it made him (Bill) “feel like a man.”) Bill set great store by having what he called “a perfect orgasm”––both partners coming simultaneously. This happened the first time he and Christopher went to bed together, which Bill took to be a very good sign of compatibility.

No memory remains of their sex acts, other than fucking. I

suppose they sucked cock and rimmed[*] each other. What I do clearly remember is a remark Bill once made: “Really, it’s ridiculous how some people think it’s unhygienic to share a toothbrush, and yet

[* Stimulated the anus with the tongue.]

¾ 1945 ¾

21

they’ve been licking each other’s shitty assholes!”––meaning that he was in favor of doing both. (But I’m sure that Bill’s asshole, and everything else about him, was always kept thoroughly clean.) February 5: “Bill left for New York. Drove down with John van Druten and Tamara to AJC Ranch.” Tamara was a Russian lady who worked for a while as John’s housekeeper; I think she was, or claimed to be, a duchess or princess in the old Russian aristocracy. John was fascinated by her at first––he would have had the same reaction if she had been a well-known ex-actress, and indeed her behavior could not have been more theatrical; she was full of archness and corny temperament. Later, the relationship soured, I seem to recall, and Tamara left them, feeling rejected and deeply offended.

Christopher stayed at the ranch until February 12, when he drove back to the Vedanta Center with John van Druten and immediately went to bed with one of his inflamed throats. The throat infection had started two days before this, but the visit was probably very enjoyable otherwise. Carter had a birthday on the 7th, and on the 8th they all drove up to the cabin near Idyllwild.

Christopher always enjoyed the climate of the ranch, its dry

relaxing heat. He and John would chatter away together, exchanging their British jokes, making up bits of verses, looking up half-remembered quotations in books, lying by the pool or floating in it, under the palm trees, with the flat cultivated fields all around, dotted with Mexicans at work. They entertained each other charmingly, affectionately, like two no longer young ladies, and complimented each other on their writing. Meanwhile, Carter Lodge came stamping in and out, in boots covered with dust, very much the man of the house, and full of ranch problems and local gossip.

Evidently trying to recapture some magical moment of this visit, Christopher wrote in a notebook––the same one in which he made the notes about the burlesque show: “The sun went down behind the mountain in a reek of chicken fertilizer.” Also in this notebook, there is a quotation from Proust which must have been written down about this time: “I was not unhappy––save only from day to day.”

This, Christopher chose to interpret as: I was not unhappy

underneath, only disturbed on the surface by temporary unpleasant-nesses––which he felt was a good description of his own mental condition, I suppose. He later made a resolve to read right through Remembrance of Things Past before 1945 was over. John Collier was probably responsible for this.1

1 John Collier was an ardent Proustian.

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Lost Years

The February 12 issue of Time magazine contained a review of the Prabhavananda–Isherwood Gita translation, combined with an

article about Swami, Christopher and the Vedanta Center.1 As was to be expected, Time got several of its facts wrong––the statement that the Vedanta Society had an “alabaster temple” became a

household joke for months, as did the ten-minute meditation and the

“dispassionate ceremony.” But Christopher found the article more embarrassing than funny––and especially the photograph of Swami and himself which illustrated it; the two of them standing on the steps of the temple, captioned, “In their world, tranquillity.”

As for the story that Christopher was the model for Larry, Time may not have invented it, but it was certainly responsible for the letters Christopher now began to get, asking was this true. He wrote a letter to Time, denying it, and Maugham himself denied it later, but the story lived a long while.

If Christopher had indeed been solidly settled down at the Vedanta Center, resolved to become a monk, he could have taken all this 1 Extracts from the Time article:

Ten years ago Christopher Isherwood was one of the most promising of younger English novelists, and a member of the radical pacifist literary set sometimes known as “the Auden circle.” Now, thinking seriously of becoming a swami (religious teacher), he is studying in a Hindu temple in Hollywood, California.

Much-travelled author Isherwood’s early novel, The Last of Mr. Norris

. . . was a grisly eyewitness account of British pro-Nazis in Berlin. His Journey to a War (with verse commentary by W. H. Auden) was a stark, unromanticized look at embattled China. Now this rebellious son of a British lieutenant colonel lives monastically with three other men and eight women in a small house adjoining the alabaster temple of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He shares his income and the housework with his fellow students, and daily ponders the teachings of his master, Swami Prabhavananda.

. . . Three times each day Isherwood repairs to the temple, sits crosslegged between grey-green walls on which are hung pictures of Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, other great religious teachers. The Swami enters bareheaded, wearing a long, bright yellow robe that sweeps the floor. He too sits crosslegged, pulls a shawl around him and for ten minutes meditates in silence. Then in a ringing bass he chants a Sanskrit invocation, repeats it in English, ending with the words “Peace, Peace, Peace!”

This dispassionate ceremony is the ritual of a mystical order of which slight, agreeable, cigarette-smoking Swami Prabhavananda is the Los Angeles leader.

. . . Larry, the dissatisfied young hero of Somerset Maugham’s current bestselling novel, The Razor’s Edge, whose search for faith ended in Vedanta, is said to be modelled on Isherwood.

¾ 1945 ¾

23

publicity in his stride, as part of the process of dying to the world. But here he was, just about to leave! Time made his position false––

before, it had been merely insecure. Now he seemed to be posing as a monk and a saint.

On February 13, Christopher notes that he has started to read Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, which Warner Brothers

wanted to make into a film. My impression is that they had had various producers and writers working on it already––indeed, it seems to me that John Collier had been on the script for a time, gotten tired of it and suggested Christopher as a replacement.

On the 13th, Christopher was still in bed with his inflamed throat.

The 14th was Ramakrishna’s birthday celebration, that year.

Christopher, who hated pujas, remained in bed and only got up for vespers, after a visit from Dr. Kolisch. Kolisch’s attitude toward Christopher was friendly and hardboiled, which Christopher found ideal. (On one occasion, while Christopher was still living at the center, his penis developed a painful constriction around the middle.

Although Kolisch had every reason to suppose that Christopher was observing chastity, he said the constriction was due to excessive sex intercourse. He always made such diagnoses with a perfectly straight face and matter-of-fact manner.) After seeing Kolisch, Christopher usually got better at once. Next day, the 15th, he went off to Warner’s, to interview James Geller, who was then the story editor, and Mr. [Louis] Edelman, who was to be his producer.

February 17: “Lunch with the Beesleys at their new house.” The Beesleys had moved into a house on the Pacific Coast Highway, belonging to Anatole Litvak; it was number 19130, between Santa Monica and Malibu. Like nearly all the houses in this area, it was built to look only one way––straight out to sea. The beach was rocky and narrow and the tide came right up to the house––and under it, if I remember rightly. But the house was fairly attractive inside, somewhat nautical in design, with a circular staircase(?)

February 21: “Went to work at Warner’s.1 Lunch with Matthew

Huxley. Supper with Sam.” Matthew Huxley had a job in the

readers’ department at Warner Brothers; he had to read novels and make reports on them, so producers could decide if they were

suitable for filming. Matthew scorned this work and made apologetic jokes about it. He was full of fun and very popular with his colleagues––his pinkness and freshness and his British accent appealed to a lot of the girls. Christopher went to visit him sometimes in the 1 I see from the day-to-day diary that Christopher was earning six hundred dollars a week.

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Lost Years

office and they played what Christopher refers to as “the category game.” I don’t remember what this was.

Sam was Sam From.1

February 22: “Cycled to and from Warner’s. Talk with Edelman.”

I think Christopher usually hitchhiked to work at that time;

cycling took longer and car drivers were mostly very cooperative––

picking up riders was regarded as part of the war effort. Christopher soon found himself taking these rides for granted, as a form of public transportation; once, he heard himself saying curtly to a driver, “Be as quick as you can, I’m late!”

He must have been working alone on The Woman in White––if he

had had a collaborator, I should remember. Edelman was a pleasant, easily pleased producer, but I don’t think he was much help.

Christopher greatly enjoyed working at Warner’s. The writers

welcomed him warmly. The Writers’ Building was very much a

club; very conscious of its importance and very ready to defend its rights. It was said that Jack Warner and the other front office executives were afraid to venture into the building. When James Geller got into a fight with the front office, because he was supporting the writers’ point of view, and resigned from his job, the writers signed a strongly worded letter approving his action and pinned a copy of it on their bulletin board.

When a writer left Warner’s at the end of his assignment, he would give a party to his fellow writers and their secretaries, during office hours, complete with liquor (which was officially forbidden) and dancing. There would be a party almost every week.

Christopher’s particular friend at Warner’s was John Collier. (I think maybe they had met sometime before this––perhaps at Salka Viertel’s.) Everyone who tried to describe John ended by using the same image: a toby jug. He was small and square, with close-cropped 1 Sam and Eddie From were twins, but they didn’t look much alike, because Eddie had kept a huge Jewish nose and Sam had had his bobbed. Both of them were little and skinny and lively. Christopher had met Eddie first, I think, sometime in 1944.

Sam was in business and had made a lot of money. Eddie was inclined to sneer at him for this. Eddie’s role was that of the outspoken brother who preferred poverty to selling out; later he became an amateur psychiatrist. (For all I know, he now has a degree.)

Sam and Eddie had friends in common––Charles Aufderheide, who worked at Technicolor, and Sam’s lover, George [Bill], and Evelyn Hooker, and an older woman called Fauna(?) [probably Fern Maher], and David Sachs, the baby-faced professor of philosophy. They sometimes called themselves The Benton Way Group, because Sam owned a house there in which most of them lived, on and off.

¾ 1945 ¾

25

hair, a bright red face and round bulging blue eyes. His expression was humorous and yet oddly ferocious; in his youth he had been a boxer. He was British, through and through.1

Here are some items from the before-mentioned notebook:

At Warner’s Studio: Gordon Kahn (one of the writers) very

erect and dapper, with his air of an implacable little district attorney. His stories of the executions he witnessed as a newspaper man.

His barter: He owns a valuable statuette which he got in trade for a telescope which he got in exchange for a pig costing four or five dollars.

I lose my shoe and can’t find it for ten minutes. We hunt

everywhere. “Did you notice if I had it on at lunch?” Collier said:

“This is the way men laugh in concentration camps.”

Kahn, seeing me with my weekend bag: “There goes

Isherwood with his dunnage.” Collier: “Oh, valuable Kahn!”

I think Collier was then working on a screenplay of Wilkie

Collins’s The Moonstone. Later, he switched to a picture which was called Deception. Christopher used to consult him whenever he had a problem with his own script. One of Collier’s favorite techniques was to fill up his scripts with absurdly detailed and beautifully written stage directions (which charmed and awed his producer), all leading up to a couple of lines of the flattest dialogue: “Where is he?” “I don’t know.”

Collier said that he did all his script writing at night; he couldn’t work in the daytime. Since the writers were required to keep office hours (Monday through Friday, and half-day Saturday) Collier passed the time in gossip and occasional drinking. This made him a per-petual temptation to Christopher, to drop work and join him. Collier said that he never worried when his producer required “a new angle”

on the story; he relied absolutely on spur-of-the-moment inspiration and would only begin to think about the problem after he had started walking from his office to the producer’s.

Collier believed that one should never economize; if you found that you were spending more money than you earned, you must find a way of earning more. Collier lived expensively, and he was paying 1 His view of England and English politics was thoroughly realistic, however.

After the English elections of July 1945, he won hundreds of dollars because he had bet that Labour would get in. His American colleagues were all so sentimental about Churchill that they refused to believe he could lose.

Christopher also refused to believe it but for a different reason––he wanted Churchill’s defeat so badly that he didn’t dare think it was possible.

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Lost Years

a great deal of alimony to his ex-wife; although she had a good job as an agent and [. . .] was young, healthy and very attractive. Collier didn’t seem to begrudge her the money at all. They met often and were on the best of terms. Collier told Christopher that he wanted to get married again. (Later, he did.) And he added, “I propose to breed extensively.”

Collier was modest. He almost never mentioned his own work––

as opposed to his movie writing. His favorite author was Proust. He used to say jokingly that he wanted to rewrite the ending of the Recherche so as to give the story an entirely different slant. After having been led to believe that Charlus, Saint-Loup, Jupien and the rest of them were homosexuals, the reader would discover that he had been deceived––their real guilty secret was that they were all in show business. They could never admit to this because, in their social world, show business was regarded as the vilest possible way of life.

Therefore they pretended to be homosexuals––since homosexuality was tolerated as a harmless eccentricity. When Charlus took a handsome young man into another room at a party, he would want the other guests to believe that this was the beginning of a seduction. But the disgusting truth was that Charlus was offering the young man a part in a Hollywood Western. . . . Fantasies like this one never sound very amusing when they are described in brief. But Collier and Christopher had a great deal of fun with it, and kept inventing new scenes and telling them to each other.1

March 12: “The strike began.” This strike involved some

employees at Warner Brothers, but not all. After conferring with the strikers’ representatives, the members of the Writers’ Guild were told that the union didn’t object to their crossing the picket line; so Christopher and his colleagues continued to go to their offices every day––to their disappointment, for nearly all of them would have 1 Another favorite subject of their conversation was the German language.

Collier, being a Francophile, found the sound of German funny. Christopher humored him in this, and read him German aloud, making it sound as absurd as he could. Collier laughed till the tears poured down his scarlet face when Christopher read lines from Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz, which were meant to be funny, or from Liliencron’s poems, which weren’t. Collier adored Busch’s use of ejaculations and onomatopoeic words––such as

“Schnupdiwup!” “Knacks!” “Plumps!” “Rums!” “Schwapp!” [“Whoops!”

“Crack!” “Splosh!” “Bang!” “Whoosh!”] But he was just as much amused by Liliencron’s perfectly serious line: “Zum schlanken Fant in blauen Puffenwams.” [“To the slender coxcomb in the blue puffed doublet,” in “Una ex hisce morieris” (“One of You Here Will Die”).] “Puffenwams” became his favorite joke word.

¾ 1945 ¾

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rather worked at home. Matthew Huxley and the reading depart-

ment were among the strikers, however. Matthew was a militant socialist and took an active part in union meetings and picketing.

Months later, after Christopher had left Warner’s for good, the strike situation, which had been dragging quietly on, became violent.1 The pickets tried to stop people entering the studio, and the picket lines were charged. Jack Warner and the other studio heads were turning from reproachful fathers of ungrateful children into frankly ruthless bosses dealing with their wage slaves––communist inspired, of course.

March 22: “Talked to Swami about leaving.” This is one of the most infuriatingly reticent entries in the day-to-day diary. What was it that Christopher said to Swami on this occasion that he hadn’t said several times before? Had some crisis arisen, which made Christopher feel he couldn’t stay at the center any longer? Had there been some gossip about the life he was living? Had some other members of “the Family” objected that he had no business staying on there when he wasn’t planning to become a monastic? I can’t remember anything at all. But it is obvious that Swami answered any scruples that Christopher may have had by urging him to stay a little longer. Swami must have said (as he had said on other occasions), “Why do you want to go away? This is your home. We all love you here. I don’t want to lose you.” And Christopher must have protested, “But you won’t lose me, Swami, I’m your disciple, I know this is my real home, and of course I’ll keep coming here to see you––” All of which was perfectly sincere on both sides. Swami didn’t want Christopher to go away (I believe) because he hoped that Christopher, if he stayed, might gradually begin to feel that he had a monastic vocation, after all.

Perhaps Christopher suspected that this might happen to him––hence his instinctive animal desire to escape. But he can’t have been seriously afraid of getting caught. Otherwise he wouldn’t have lingered on at the center, as he did, for another five months.

1 Aldous Huxley (see Letters of Aldous Huxley) wrote to Anita Loos on October 13, 1945: “Matthew was fortunately absent when the violence broke out on the picket line, but he got arrested and spent some hours in jail on the following day. He is going north to Berkeley in another week or so, to take some courses at the U. of C. . . . The reading job is a dead end . . .” Matthew may not have been involved in the worst violence, but I remember a newspaper photograph of him, dodging a car which was being driven to break through the picket line. Matthew had narrowly escaped being hit and was curving his body over the car’s fender with considerable grace, like a bullfighter. I am also pretty sure that Aldous himself came to the studio one day and walked with the pickets, as a gesture of solidarity.

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Lost Years

(I still think it is possible––just possible––that, if a proper monastery like Trabuco had suddenly come into being at that time, Christopher would have agreed to join it and at least given the monastic life another try. What he wanted, then, was either complete freedom or much closer confinement, far away from Los Angeles, Denny, the Beesleys and the studio. Life at the Hollywood center had nothing whatever to offer him––except Swami’s presence; it was so bohemian and permissive that its few rules and restrictions were merely irritating.)

March 26: “Supper with Wolfgang Reinhardts and Iris Tree. To

Thelma Todd’s with Jay. Stayed night with Denny.”

I forget when it was that Christopher first met Wolfgang

Reinhardt––it may well have been soon after he got to know

Gottfried. But this get-together was probably due to the fact that Christopher was now working at Warner’s, where Wolfgang was a producer. No doubt they were already discussing the film Wolfgang wanted Christopher to work on with him, as soon as The Woman in White was finished––Maugham’s Up at the Villa.

This is the first mention of “Jay,” who called himself Jay de Laval.

(His real name was said to be Earle McGrath.)[*] But Christopher must certainly have met him before this. He was a friend of Denny’s and very much a part of the Santa Monica Canyon circle. I think he may already have opened his restaurant on the corner of Channel Road and Chautauqua, but perhaps not.

Jay had a vague reputation for being crooked. Later on, it was said that he had had to leave California to avoid arrest; this was after he had settled in Mexico. But, when you tried to find out exactly what he had done that was illegal, it seemed that he hadn’t gone much beyond running up big bills and then failing either to pay them or return the merchandise. He was also, obviously, a bit of a con man.

It was easy to imagine him using his considerable charm to get money out of rich old women; his role as the Baron de Laval was probably related to this.

Jay was large and well built, though inclined to plumpness. He was very blond (maybe artificially) and he had big blue eyes. His eyes didn’t sparkle like Collier’s, they stared. Despite their seeming bold-ness, they revealed nothing inward. Jay was all on the surface, all smiles and gossip and camp. It was only when he laughed loudly that you got a hint of madness.

He was not only a very good cook but a marvellous host. He could

[* A mistake; Earl McGrath is the name of a different person, who was living in Santa Monica during the early 1950s. See D 1, p. 454.]

¾ 1945 ¾

29

take you into the kitchen and fix a meal for you both without ever losing the thread of the conversation or making you feel awkward because he was doing all the work. He was also, it seems, a

marvellous seducer. Christopher knew of this only at second hand, of course; he wouldn’t have dreamt of going to bed with Jay and Jay certainly didn’t want it. But the testimony of half a dozen boys who had had sex with Jay and then talked about it to Christopher was quite impressive. Most of them had been literally seduced––they hadn’t wanted to do it but Jay had made them like doing it. “It was crazy,” one of them told Christopher;1 and another2 said, “He made me feel beautiful.” Jay himself, when congratulated by Christopher on his conquests, said modestly, “It’s quite simple––you just have to start doing all kinds of things to them, all at once, before they realize what’s going on.”

Thelma Todd’s was the restaurant up the coast, just north of the Sunset Boulevard turnoff, which had once belonged to Thelma

Todd and was the scene of her murder. It was a kind of hideout rendezvous for Hollywood executives who wanted to meet show

girls in secret; the tables were in alcoves which could be curtained off. Perhaps Jay went there to do some business in connection with his own restaurant project and took Christopher along as a drinking companion. Denny and his friends all regarded Thelma Todd’s as a place for special evenings, celebrations and treats. The food was very good, but it cost more than they would usually pay.

On April 3, Edelman left or was taken off The Woman in White and a Mr. Jacobs[*] became its producer in his place. I can remember nothing whatever about him. I don’t think he gave Christopher any trouble.

On April 8, Albert Brush, who was a friend of Jay and also of the Laughtons, took Denny and Christopher to visit Walter Arensberg the art collector and Baconian. After this, Christopher paid several visits to him. Arensberg’s house was crammed with pictures and art objects, including the boxes and toys made by Marcel Duchamp.

Every inch of wall space was covered, every table was laden, and there were stacks of unhung pictures in every corner.

Arensberg remained a charming enthusiastic sane host until you got onto the subject of Bacon; then he became wild-eyed and

rather incoherent, with ruffled hair and gestures of frenzied excitement. I forget what Arensberg looked like but I can remember his 1 Bill Caskey.

2 Don Coombs, see page 218.

[* Writer and producer William Jacobs.]

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Lost Years

manner at such times––it was that of a madman as he reveals to you the existence of international conspiracies and speaks with smiling scorn of the enemies who are trying to outwit him.

Arensberg’s enemies were all those scholars and other members of the Establishment who were concealing from the world the truth about Bacon. And what was the truth? That Bacon was a rein-carnation of Jesus Christ. (I don’t think I can be making this up.) That he was the son of Queen Elizabeth. And that he had written all the works attributed to Shakespeare. (My impression is that Arensberg thought this last item was of minor importance. He saw Bacon as the great prophet of the Modern Age, a teacher and

philosopher who amused himself with literary composition only in his spare time.)1

On April 12, President Roosevelt died. That morning, while

Christopher was in his office at Warner’s with his secretary, there was a phone call from his secretary’s husband, telling her the news. On hearing it, she burst into tears, instantly. Christopher was astonished by the quickness of her reaction––it was as if she had been

subconsciously expecting the news and was therefore half-prepared 1 Arensberg believed that Bacon had been secretly buried in the chapter house of Lichfield Cathedral. In 1924 he had published an appeal to the dean and chapter of the cathedral to admit publicly that this was so and that they were all of them members of a secret society founded by Bacon himself. Arensberg had visited Lichfield in 1923. His suspicions were confirmed when the verger showed him a picture in Ogilby’s translation of Virgil, with the remark,

“Curious, isn’t it?” For the picture––which showed Aeneas plucking the golden bough that gave him the right of way into the abode of the dead––was marked with the Rosicrucian motto “Ex Uno Omnia” [All from One]. And Arensberg recognized “Omnia” as an anagram of the Spanish word iamon, which means “a gammon of bacon.” [Correct Spanish would be jamón.]

However, in spite of the verger’s apparent hint and other clues that Arensberg imagined he had found, he was unable to get the dean (the Very Reverend H. E. Savage) to admit that their secret society had been covering up the facts.

He even accused the dean of obliterating certain signs by which the location of Bacon’s grave had been formerly marked. His statement ends: “I have put the truth on record and the truth will make its way.” (Arensberg took it for granted, of course, that the grave, if opened, would be found to contain proofs of Bacon’s divine nature, his authorship of Shakespeare, etc.) The dean obviously thought Arensberg was crazy. I’m fairly sure Arensberg showed Christopher a letter which the dean had written him, breaking off all further communications––“After the events of last Thursday, there can be no friendly relations between us.” In telling the story, Christopher used to claim that Arensberg had been caught in the act of digging a tunnel under the road between his lodgings and the chapter house; he was trying to get at Bacon’s grave. But this was probably just Christopher’s imagination.

¾ 1945 ¾

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for it. But Christopher’s own reaction was equally quick. He said to himself, “Good––that means we’ll get the weekend off.” (The 12th was a Thursday.)

Christopher had never felt any personal liking for Roosevelt.

(Even back in 1933, when he had first seen Roosevelt’s photographs in the European press, Christopher had mistrusted him and found his face repulsive––the face, as John van Druten had later said, of a “faux bonhomme.”[*]) But Christopher had to keep his reaction to himself, as long as he was at the studio. Even hard-boiled outspoken John Collier was deeply moved.

The next month passed without any remarkable incidents, as far as I can judge from the day-to-day diary. It sounds crazy to say this, when, in fact, Mussolini and his mistress were killed on April 28, Hitler’s death was announced on May 1, Berlin fell on May 2 and the Nazis surrendered on the 7th! No doubt Christopher shared in the general excitement; probably he was better able to picture the destruction of the Third Reich than were most of his friends. But the day-to-day diary merely records that, on the 28th, he took a taxi to the beach and spent the night at Denny’s; that, on May 1, he “tried to write Auden article” (don’t remember what that was); that, on May 2, he saw Devotion1 in a projection room at the studio and had supper with Vernon Old; and that, on May 7, he had drinks with John van Druten, Dave Eberhardt and Don Forbes, and then had

supper with Aldous Huxley.2

On May 16, Henry Blanke took over as producer on The Woman

in White. Beside this, he was producing the picture Collier was working on––Deception.3 He was neat and smiling and military looking; he might have been a German officer; if he was a Jew he didn’t look like one. He had a reputation for getting things done and 1 Devotion was a film about the Brontës, with Ida Lupino as Emily and Arthur Kennedy as Branwell. Christopher was able to see it in the projection room because he was friendly with Keith Winter, who had worked on the script.

2 It may well be that Huxley made some memorable remarks on this historic evening. Perhaps he repeated what he had written to Julian Huxley earlier that same day (see Letters of Aldous Huxley): “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again––and when they [have]

succeeded, more or less, his name will be Humpsky Dumpsky and his address, poste restante Moscow.”

3 It was released in 1946, with Bette Davis, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains.

Collier got first credit, with Joseph Than. Produced by Henry Blanke, directed by Irving Rapper.

[* Hypocrite.]

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Lost Years

was certainly far more efficient than Edelman and Jacobs had been.

Perhaps rather too efficient for Christopher, who had got into lazy ways. Unlike Collier, he wasn’t prepared to work at night and, under Collier’s influence, he did very little work during the day.

Collier’s influence––that is to say, Collier’s demand to be

amused––even made itself felt in Christopher’s sex life. Christopher had of course told Collier that he was homosexual. Collier, as a good Proustian, had to take this in his stride; he only maintained that women had better characters than men––aside from this, he wasn’t shocked by boy love, it was merely not his cup of tea. At the same time, as a Proustian voyeur, he was curious to get a glimpse of Christopher in actual pursuit of sex; and Christopher was delighted to oblige him. As with Denny, Christopher now prepared to give a theatrical performance for Collier’s benefit, and his own.

It conveniently so happened that the mailing department at the studio was just then the center of a lot of gay activity, and had several attractive messenger boys. One of these was having an affair with Helmut Dantine. They were very discreet about it; they had to be––it was risky for an important actor to get involved like this, right under the noses of the front office. Helmut Dantine’s messenger was a nice boy, not much to look at, actually, but lively and full of Jewish fun. Christopher got to know him, and he helped Christopher get acquainted with a boy named Steve, whom he fancied.

Steve was dark and pale, with a long bony El Greco type of face.

He was altogether an admirable and lovable character, both physically and morally courageous, lively, amusing, honest and capable of strong affection. If he had found an absorbing interest in life he might have achieved something; as it was, he just plodded along from job to job. He did have some ambition to become an actor, but it wasn’t strong enough, and he was too small and slight for leading roles, also a bit queeny in his manner. Denny, who rather liked him, pronounced the verdict: “I think he’s quite beautiful, but let’s face it, he’ll always be a department-store queen.”

Steve had changed his name, probably for show-biz reasons [. . .].

He called himself Steve Conway at the time Christopher met him.

Later, he called himself [something else].

Steve and Christopher had supper together on May 25. This was their first date, I think. Steve told Christopher about his life in Las Vegas, before he came to Los Angeles; he had worked in one of the casinos, and also, as I seem to remember, on a ranch; he loved riding horses. At that time, he was studying acting with some local group, and working on the part of Branwell Brontë in a play called Moor Born, which contained the unsayable line, “You are moor born.” He ¾ 1945 ¾

33

and Christopher used to repeat this over and over, but it always sounded absurd.1

Collier, Steve and Christopher all enjoyed the dramatic aspects of this affair, from their different viewpoints. Collier found it thrillingly Proustian to look out of his office window and watch the discreet flirtations of the messenger boys––the glances and conspiratorial exchanges of dialogue––which Christopher had now taught him to observe and interpret. For him, it was like the discovery of a secret society; he was now prepared to believe that nearly the entire studio was queer. As for Steve, he certainly loved walking briskly into Christopher’s office with a big envelope in his hand and telling Christopher’s secretary, “These are for Mr. Isherwood to sign, they said for me to wait, they want them back right away”––which was Christopher’s cue to shout from the inner office (grumpily, as if interrupted in his work), “Okay, tell him to bring them in here.”

Then Steve would come in, closing the door behind him, whisper,

“Hello, darling,” kiss Christopher a few times, whisper, “See you this evening,” and make a brisk exit past the secretary, flourishing the envelope with its dummy contents. . . . Christopher enjoyed this playacting too, of course––but probably not as much as Steve did.

Steve was quite shameless, in word and in deed. Christopher realized this was admirable but it embarrassed him.

If they went to bed together that first night, it must have been at Steve’s apartment. Otherwise, they had no place to go but Denny’s, and they didn’t visit him together until May 29. Perhaps they drove up into the hills and made love in Christopher’s newly acquired car.

This was a Packard convertible, old and noisy but still very sturdy, which had recently been given him by Yogi (Mr. Brown), Yogini’s husband. Yogi no longer needed the Packard because he had just bought himself a new car. (I think that he and Yogini had already decided to separate––that is, to accept the fact that Yogini really was a nun.) The first mention of the Packard in the day-to-day diary is on May 19.

1 Moor Born is a play by Dan Totheroh, first performed in New York in 1934.

It must have remained a favorite piece for amateur actors all these years, for when I asked about it at the Samuel French library today ( January 13, 1972) they recognized the name at once and produced a copy.

BRANWELL: I didn’t want to go to my grave unsung . . . obscure . . . a nobody. . . . It’s too late now . . . too late for me.

EMILY: Perhaps not too late. Strange things can happen to you, for you are moor born, Branwell. Yes . . . moor born . . . and what the moors took from you, they may return.

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Lost Years

On May 28, Christopher stopped working at Warner’s for one

week. I believe that this break marked Christopher’s switchover from Henry Blanke and The Woman in White to Wolfgang Reinhardt and Up at the Villa. I have an impression (but a very dim one) that Christopher felt that Blanke was dissatisfied with his work, but maybe not. Somehow, I don’t believe the script they had worked on was finished. I don’t know if Blanke dropped the project at that time, or hired another writer.1

Christopher spent most of his holiday week staying with Denny.

Steve joined him on the 29th and left early on the morning of the 31st––he must have taken two days off from work.

June 2: “Bill Caskey’s birthday party at Jay’s.”

This is the first mention of Caskey in the day-to-day diary, but Christopher must certainly have met him weeks or even months

earlier. This was another case in which Denny had played Satan

––daring Christopher to start an affair with someone. When Caskey and his friend Hayden Lewis first showed up in the Canyon, Denny had told Christopher that Caskey had been the boyfriend of “a rich old man” (Len Hanna) and that he had been so disgusted by this affair that he had made a vow never again to go to bed with anyone older than himself. No doubt Denny had told Christopher this in such a way as to challenge Christopher’s middle-aged vanity. Anyhow, Christopher had met Caskey and had found him attractive, but

hadn’t done much about it. They had talked at parties and gone for walks together on the beach; that was all.

Meanwhile, Jay Laval had done something about Caskey. They

had been to bed together––which meant that Caskey had broken his vow––and now Jay was giving Caskey a party for his (twenty-fourth) birthday. This party made the affair official, from Jay’s point of view; he was very possessive and unwisely apt to display his new conquests to his friends. No doubt it was the party which aroused Denny’s spirit of mischief; he must have egged Christopher on to make a pass at Caskey. That afternoon, Christopher was going shopping and he asked Caskey to come along for the ride. They went into a clothing store and Christopher bought Caskey a shirt, as a birthday present. At the party, Jay drank a lot and fell asleep, as he often did. Christopher returned from the party to Denny’s apartment and told Denny that Caskey had promised to follow him as soon as he could get away.

1 The Woman in White was finally made and released in 1948, with Henry Blanke credited as its producer. Stephen Morehouse Avery got sole credit as its writer.

¾ 1945 ¾

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Denny bet Christopher that Caskey wouldn’t show up––but he

probably wasn’t either surprised or displeased when they heard the sound of Caskey’s sneakers bounding up the staircase. Christopher, of course, was grinning with gratified vanity from ear to ear.

Caskey and Christopher spent the night together and found themselves sexually compatible; Christopher came in Caskey’s mouth, which he was very seldom able to do with anyone. But this didn’t lead to instant infatuation––for, according to the day-to-day diary, they didn’t see each other again for a week. Jay was very cross and hurt, when he discovered what had happened. He accused Caskey of ingratitude, feeling that the guest of honor at a birthday party ought to stay in his host’s bed––even if the host has passed out. As for Christopher, Jay said that his behavior was “hardly what I should have expected, after all his talk about Ramakrishna.” But Jay didn’t bear grudges; he was basically very good-natured. There was a peace meeting, apologies were made, drinks were drunk, Jay soon found another boy and he, Caskey and Christopher became good friends again.

The next day, June 3, was a Sunday, so Steve was able to come down to Denny’s. Steve and Christopher drove to Lake Sherwood.

When they got back, Denny was giving a party. I am nearly certain that this was the occasion on which a pretty blond naval officer named Willy Tompkins[*] and an army lieutenant were persuaded by the other guests to take off their clothes and have sex on the couch, with everybody watching. This excited [one of the guests] so much that he wanted to do the same with Christopher, but Christopher was embarrassed and wouldn’t. (Willy Tompkins and the lieutenant later retired to Jay’s apartment and made love in private.)

On June 4, Christopher went back to work at Warner’s––almost

certainly on Up at the Villa, with Wolfgang Reinhardt.1

1 Wolfgang wanted to stick close to the Maugham story. His chief deviation from it was to have Rowley plant some clues around the corpse so that the Italian police are tricked into thinking that Karl (called Paul in the script) has been killed by the Gestapo, which makes them hastily drop the case and announce that death was due to heart attack. This was Wolfgang’s idea and I think it works very well––culminating in a good cross-purpose comedy scene between the Italian chief of police and the German consul, in which they both deplore the carelessness of the Gestapo’s murder methods.

The code prevented Wolfgang and Christopher from making it clear that Mary and Paul actually have sex together before he shoots himself. Rereading the script today, I can’t be sure just how much of a disadvantage this would have been, if the film had been made. (It never was.) The scene as Maugham

[* Not his real name.]

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Lost Years

This must also have been the day on which Christopher first

discovered, or at least suspected, that he had caught the clap. On June 5, he went to a Dr. Zeiler to be examined and on the 6th he spent the day at Dr. Zeiler’s office, being given shots of penicillin. The shots cured him right away––he only saw Dr. Zeiler once more, on the 11th, for a checkup. This was Christopher’s second dose of clap and its cure was a happy contrast to the first––those burning douches of potassium permanganate which the Brussels doctor squirted up Christopher’s smarting urethra, day after day, in December 1938.

The very atmosphere in the offices of the two doctors was quite different. The Brussels doctor was breezy but brutal and his office had a certain grimness, appropriate to those days, when even gonorrhea was a serious business and syphilis was sometimes incurable. Whereas Dr. Zeiler’s office seemed bright with the dawn of the Penicillin Era, the doctor gave the injections as casually as if they were flu shots and his nurse, when they had finished, smiled archly at Christopher and said, “That’ll teach you to be a good boy, won’t it?” No, not good, Christopher thought, but careful. Here was yet another situation in which he felt ashamed of himself and, at the same time, contemptuous of his shame. It was shaming to return from a V.D. clinic to a monastery, but only shaming when he imagined Swami somehow

finding out. Once again, he told himself that he must abandon his false position by leaving the center at the first possible opportunity.

It wasn’t Steve’s fault that he had infected Christopher; Steve was quite unaware that he had the clap, it was in his rectum, so there was no burning and no discharge. When they first went to bed together, Steve wanted Christopher to fuck him but added that this probably wouldn’t work, someone else had tried to and hadn’t been able to get inside. Christopher tried and succeeded. It always excited him to fuck a virgin and he felt pleasantly superior to the “someone else.”

But the joke was on Christopher, because the “someone else” had had clap and he had at least gotten in far enough to give it to Steve.

Steve was very apologetic. He expressed fears that Christopher would now stop wanting to see him. No doubt Christopher was

anxious to assure him that this wasn’t true––they met four times in the next seven days––but the clap really did draw them closer wrote it is more convincing, but not entirely so. It might have got some wrong laughs. And Maugham’s dialogue is hardly to be believed––he makes Karl say things like, “You have shown me heaven and now you want to thrust me back to earth”!

Christopher once summarized the plot to Collier as, “Humped, bumped, and dumped”––referring to the fate of the Karl–Paul character.) ¾ 1945 ¾

37

together, for a short while at least; they had something in common, a shared experience. (Christopher couldn’t resist telling Collier about it, however. Collier was delighted. He rolled on the floor, laughing.

Thereafter, when Christopher came into his office in the morning, Collier would ask, “Well, my boy, what have you to report––of grave or gay?”) Steve was treated by a different doctor––a woman, I think––and quickly cured.

On June 7, Christopher went to a party at Rex Evans’s apartment; among the guests were Maugham, George Cukor and Ethel

Barrymore.

It seems to me that this must have been at the beginning of the time when Willie was staying with George Cukor and working on a script of The Razor’s Edge.1 It was quite possibly at this party that Christopher witnessed a truly classic display of unabashed ass licking.

Someone––I’m nearly sure it was Charlie Brackett––was talking to Maugham about a film they had watched together, a short while before. This someone said: “Mr. Maugham, I don’t know whether you remember––I certainly shall never forget it––as we were coming out of that theater, you made one of the most penetrating, one of the most profound criticisms I have ever heard in my life––you said, It’s not dramatic!” Willie didn’t reply, but he looked at the speaker with his old old black eyes––and the look said all that was necessary.

This was the first time that Christopher had seen Willie since January 1941, when Willie visited Los Angeles with Gerald Haxton.

Christopher had lately been told by Bill Caskey that he had been having an affair with Haxton in those days, and that Haxton had invited him to come out to California with him and Willie. Caskey had refused, for some reason, although he had liked Haxton very much. And now Haxton was dead; he had died in 1944. The day-today diary doesn’t record that Caskey ever went with Christopher to see Willie during his visit. Perhaps Caskey felt Willie wouldn’t want to see him, because of the association with Haxton.

June 9: “Saw The Letter in projection room. Helped Steve move his things to Rose Garden Apartments.”

This was the Bette Davis film version of the Maugham play, with its punishment-murder of Mrs. Crosbie tacked onto the story as a 1 According to Garson Kanin (Remembering Mr. Maugham), Willie didn’t begin work on his screenplay until November. Kanin says that Willie asked Cukor to show him the existing screenplay and was so horrified by it that he offered to write one himself, for free. I am almost sure Kanin is wrong about the date, however.

( June 24, 1977: Kanin was wrong. I have just seen the revised final draft of Maugham’s Razor’s Edge screenplay. It is dated July 25, 1945.) 38

Lost Years

concession to the censorship code. Maybe Christopher and Willie saw it together. Anyhow Willie did see the film about this time and, on being asked how he had liked it, made the famous answer, “I liked all the p-parts I wrote.”

The Rose Garden Apartments was where Christopher and

Vernon Old had stayed for about a month in 1939––their first

Hollywood home. Perhaps Christopher had recommended it to

Steve for this reason. But the room Steve got was dark and depressing, down in the basement, with walls so thin that you could hear whatever was said next door. Sex making was embarrassing and

therefore apt to become defiantly noisy or to break up in selfconscious giggles.

June 18: “Supper at Players with Swami and Maugham.” This was probably the first of Maugham’s conferences with Swami about his screenplay for The Razor’s Edge. There were other meetings later at which Cukor was present. Maugham and Cukor wanted Swami to

tell them exactly what Shri Ganesha would have taught Larry. So Swami wrote it out for them, as concisely as he could. And

Maugham put it into his screenplay––presumably.1

The Players Restaurant on the Sunset Strip was in those days

1 When Maugham was about to publish The Razor’s Edge, in 1944, he had written to Swami for an exact translation of the verse from the Katha Upanishad on which the title of the novel is based. Swami (or maybe Christopher) had replied, explaining carefully that the image of a razor’s edge is used to suggest a narrow and painful path (the path to enlightenment) and that therefore one should not say, “It is difficult to cross,” as some translators do, but rather, “It is difficult to tread.” Maugham ignored this piece of advice, however. The translation he used in his novel was, “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over,” which is almost as ambiguous as “to cross.”

I don’t remember that I ever saw a copy of Willie’s screenplay. It was never used. Cukor left the picture and it was finally directed by Edmund Goulding, with a new script (or perhaps a revised version of the original one) by Lamar Trotti. Christopher, at Swami’s suggestion, wrote to Trotti, offering free technical advice on the Indian sequence. Trotti never answered. And when the picture was made the Indian scenes had several mistakes in them. Shri Ganesha’s teaching was idiotically distorted.

Cukor’s choice for the role of Larry was a young unknown amateur named John Russell, who had just left the Marine Corps. He was good looking, and Cukor still ( June 1972) maintains that the test they shot of him was excellent.

Some of the studio executives thought him too tall, however––he was six foot four––and this was one reason why he didn’t get the part when the film was taken over by Goulding. John Russell afterwards worked quite a bit in films and in television, but he never really made a hit. Cukor remembers that he met Russell later and that he was drunk and looked terrible.

Prabhavananda doesn’t remember that Cukor ever brought Russell to see ¾ 1945 ¾

39

almost a club, as the Brown Derby had once been. Christopher went there quite often––particularly with van Druten, who used to refer to it as “our place.” He also often saw Keith Winter there, very drunk and inclined to be weepy about his life and sorrows. (Not long after this, Keith had a breakdown and then stopped drinking.)

Steve had started going to dramatic classes at Ouspenskaya’s

school––this is first referred to on June 12. As far as I remember, the classes consisted largely of learning to sway like corn in the wind and to break like sea waves. I don’t think Steve persevered in this for long.

At this time, Christopher was interested in consulting clairvoyants.

His motive was partly a wish to know what was going to happen to him, but it was also, and to a much greater degree, scientific curiosity. He was, he said to himself, at a point in his life at which the future seemed altogether obscure––all he knew was that he would soon leave the Vedanta Center, and he had no idea what would

happen next. Therefore his was an ideal test case for the powers of precognition which a clairvoyant is supposed to have.

I forget who the people were that Christopher consulted––the

unfamiliar names which occur in the day-to-day diary at this time give no definite clue. All I remember is one curious episode: A clairvoyant (who otherwise told Christopher nothing memorable) said, “Quite soon, in a few hours, a close friend of yours will get into serious trouble, he will be arrested––but don’t worry, everything will come out all right.” That same evening, Steve was walking along the street when he was stopped by the shore patrol and asked to identify himself. This happened all the time, for there were a lot of

servicemen going around AWOL in civilian clothes. Steve had been in the navy (in an office in Utah or Nebraska) and had received an honorable discharge. He was supposed to carry this discharge with him at all times, but he had left it at home that evening, which was an offense. So he was under arrest for a while, until the discharge had been produced. He was then cautioned and set free. Christopher knew nothing of this until Steve called and told him, next day.

him. But Edmund Goulding did bring Russell’s successor, Tyrone Power.

Swami was, and still is, scornful about Power. He says that he asked Power if he understood what Larry is supposed to believe, and that Power admitted that he didn’t. Some versions of the story of their meeting state that Swami said,

“Mr. Power, you are not worthy to play Larry!”, but Swami denies that he said this. Seeing Swami must have scared poor Power out of whatever wits he possessed, so it’s no wonder he made a bad impression. In the last analysis, Power’s lack of understanding was the fault of Trotti and the stupidities of his script.

40

Lost Years

The day-to-day diary records two more Swami–Maugham

meetings; on June 29, Willie came to supper at the Vedanta Center and on July 6 Swami and Christopher went to supper at George Cukor’s with Ethel Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn also present.

I can recall nothing of these. But I do remember, with impressionistic vividness, another, daytime occasion when Christopher was

summoned to Cukor’s house because Maugham wanted to speak to

him. I have a picture of Christopher making his way through a succession of rooms like Chinese boxes, each one smaller than the last and all crammed with paintings and souvenirs and treasures, into the innermost sanctuary, where Willie sits writing and looks up from his work to say, “I think, C-Christopher, you’d b-better warn your friend Denham that his apartment is b-being watched by the p-police.” (What I do not remember is, how Willie had heard this bit of information. It seems to me that Denny had been reported to the police because of his association with minors, including probably Jeff and Curly. But nothing serious came of it. Denny was very impressed and pleased that Willie had taken the trouble to warn him.)1

On July 26, Christopher had lunch with Miss Dicky Bonaparte,

the immigration counsellor who had helped him get his quota visa and take out his first citizenship papers in 1939. This must mean that they were discussing the steps he must take to get his citizenship; he was now eligible for it. At that time, no conscientious objector could become a citizen because no exceptions or reservations were allowed in taking the loyalty oath; you had to swear to defend the country, no matter what your age and sex were. Christopher had been advised that he should apply for citizenship, however––because soon the regulations might be altered and because, if he didn’t apply, his application might be refused later. So he applied, and went downtown to talk to someone in the immigration bureau. This official was not merely understanding but really friendly; it happened that he had liked some of Christopher’s books. He even urged Christopher to take the oath anyway, “After all, it’s just a form of words.”

Christopher was charmed by such civilized cynicism, but he wasn’t about to commit himself to a public lie which might be used against him sometime in the future by a less friendly bureaucrat. So, with an air of modest nobility, he refused.

■

1 I don’t remember that Denny and Willie ever got together during this visit; but it seems to me that Denny used to brag that he had been admired by Willie––at any rate from a distance––when he was in Europe before the war.

Curiously enough, Denny and Willie were to die on the same day, December 16; Denny in 1948, Maugham in 1965.

¾ 1945 ¾

41

All through July, Christopher had continued to see Steve. The day-to-day diary mentions only one meeting with Caskey––they had

spent the night on the beach, July 21. But at the beginning of August, a change is evident. Christopher sees Steve on the 1st and has supper with him on the 3rd. On the 4th, Denny is away in Mexico and Christopher stays at his apartment with Caskey. After that, Christopher and Caskey begin seeing each other regularly and there are no more meetings with Steve––except for a supper with Steve and his mother, probably a duty date, on August 22.

My memories of this switchover are very dim; perhaps incidents and conversations have been censored by Christopher’s feelings of guilt. Christopher’s guilt, if any, is uninteresting. The only important question is, did Steve mind being dropped? I think he probably did, much more than he showed; but I don’t believe he let it upset him for long. He was very self-reliant. It seems to me that Steve once said, “If I had a lot of money and could invite you out, everything would be different.” This (if he did indeed say it) was touching but quite untrue. Christopher never minded paying, as long as he was sure his guest wasn’t a gold digger––and never for one moment did he suspect Steve of that. Caskey didn’t have any

money, either.

Caskey or no Caskey, Christopher would have left Steve before long––because Steve didn’t fit into the rest of his life. Steve embarrassed him in every way, not only when they were in company but even when they were alone together. When Steve told

Christopher that he thought him much better looking than Gary Cooper, Christopher was amused, of course, but he also felt

depressed by the absurdity of the comparison. This was the wrong myth, the wrong kind of playacting; he couldn’t go along with it.

Even while they were screwing, Christopher often felt it was like a scene out of True Confessions.[*] And, when other people were there, Christopher always was aware of being on the defensive. He was watching to see how they would react to Steve. Would they

decide, like Denny, that Steve was “a department-store queen”? If Christopher had reached any real intimacy with Steve, he would have been ready to defy everybody. But he hadn’t and therefore he wasn’t. He wasn’t prepared to quarrel with his friends if they looked down on Steve, so he avoided taking the risk; he didn’t introduce Steve to the Beesleys or to Peggy Kiskadden or to Salka Viertel or to John van Druten.

All this sounds as if Steve swished, lisped, wriggled, wore makeup,

[* The American magazine.]

42

Lost Years

elaborate hairdos and flaming costumes. But he didn’t. He was quiet, pleasant, unsulky, well behaved. It wasn’t that he was, socially speaking, too much, he wasn’t enough. Christopher was a sexual snob––like most other people––and he needed a lover who could impress his friends.

Bill Caskey, on the other hand, was socially presentable––indeed, to a remarkable degree, if you considered how wildly he could misbehave in public, when he chose. “Earthy,” outspoken, crude, vulgar, violent as he could sometimes be, he was also able to project a southern upper-class charm to go with his Kentucky accent. Red-eyed, drunk and unshaven, he looked every inch a Eugene O’Neill Irish lowlife character; washed and shaved and sober, dressed in a Brooks Brothers shirt and suit, he was fit for the nicest homes.

Caskey really was a social amphibian, and Christopher was hugely impressed and attracted by this quality in him; he was––as he was later to prove––equally at home talking to the famous, or to little old ladies, or to fellow prisoners in jail, or to shipmates on an oil tanker; and, unless he was in the mood to pick a fight, nearly everybody liked him.

He was small––smaller than Christopher––very sturdily built, with square shoulders and the slightly bowed legs of a horseman. His brown hair was curly and he wore it very short to conceal this as much as possible. (“A crop-headed rascal” was Collier’s description of him.) His grey-blue eyes looked sleepy and his voice had a lazy sound. His over large but well-shaped head and his thick lips both had that Negroid quality which is so often apparent in the white Southerner. His body was sexily covered with a close fuzz of curly hair; there was even quite a lot on his back. He had very bad teeth (which he had the knack of hiding even when he smiled), a biggish cock and only one testicle.

Although Caskey was still so young, he wasn’t in the least boyish.

He had an impressive air of having “been around”––as indeed he had. He was quite without shyness, even in the presence of the old and the wise; it was this freedom from shyness which made him able to treat them so unaffectedly, and to charm them. (Both Stravinsky and Forster were delighted with him; Stravinsky said of him, “He’s my type.”) He had a domestic quality which made Christopher feel cozy and looked after, in the periods between their blazing home-wrecking rows. From this aspect, Christopher often reacted to him as if to a woman of his own age; he used to say that Caskey and he were like a sophisticated French married couple, the kind who address each other as “dear friend.” He also saw Caskey as a kind of nanny.

¾ 1945 ¾

43

Caskey had been in the navy for a while, but not overseas. He had avoided military service as long as he could and had got into some fairly serious trouble with the draft by failing to register or report. His lover, Len Hanna, an elderly and very wealthy man, had used his expensive lawyer to straighten things out. But the navy––in Florida or New Orleans or both––had turned out to be a bore, with lots of office work, which could only be relieved by parties and sex. Caskey had slept around a great deal, and then came one of those big homosexual witch-hunts; a few boys were caught and they named names. Caskey was implicated and so was his friend Hayden Lewis.

(Hayden was a civilian employed by the navy in some clerical job.

He and Caskey shared an apartment during several months of

Caskey’s service––they were what used to be called “sisters,” not lovers.) As Hayden was a civilian, he was merely fired. Caskey got a

“blue discharge,” neither honorable nor dishonorable. When he met Len Hanna again, he realized that he didn’t want to live with Hanna anymore, so he and Hayden decided to come to California.