Lost Years. A Memoir 1945–1951

Rupert had to sleep together in one large room which was shared by the other rangers; their only means of privacy was a screen. Anaïs was obviously enjoying herself as the queen of this male community, and Christopher admired the style and charm of her behavior and her foreign gaiety. The other men all seemed respectfully impressed by her and also amused by the naughtiness of her presence among them.

But Christopher suspected that Rupert was horribly embarrassed.

Not that that made any practical difference to the situation, for Rupert was humbly and lovingly under Anaïs’s thumb.

From July 21 to July 23, Christopher stayed at Trabuco with John van Druten. At this period John was wondering if he shouldn’t perhaps become seriously involved in Vedanta. He never did,

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because Vedanta didn’t really “speak to his condition,” and because Swami didn’t altogether appeal to him as a guru. (He once outraged Christopher by remarking, quite innocently, that he was sure Swami was “a very good little man.”) Although John had formally broken with the Christian Science Church, he remained a Scientist at heart and he was deeply infected by the heresy that goodness is more real than evil––meaning that there is no reason why a human being

shouldn’t enjoy an unbroken spell of health, wealth and success throughout his life. The kind of guru John was drawn to would usually be a Christian Scientist who had broken away from the Mother Church, such as Joel Goldsmith, whom John already knew (I’m almost sure) at that time and with whom he was in constant correspondence, even while he was discussing Vedanta with Swami.

I have only one memory which may be related to this Trabuco

visit––or did it happen later? John van Druten gave Michael Barrie money to buy an organ for the choir he had organized at Trabuco.

But Michael then left Trabuco without having bought the organ and John asked for his money back. He got it, of course, but a slight coolness had been created. People at the Vedanta Center felt that John should have told them they could use the money for something else. Swami ruled that henceforth no gifts would be accepted which had conditions attached to them.

On July 25, the day-to-day diary notes that Christopher has

finished his review of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Sometime earlier that month, Christopher had run into Ray Bradbury, whom he knew only slightly, in a bookshop. Bradbury promptly

bought a copy of the Chronicles and presented it to Christopher.

According to Bradbury (in a letter written twenty-three years later to Digby Diehl, the book editor of The Los Angeles Times), “His face fell.” As well it might! How often in a whole lifetime does an author give you a book of his, unsolicited, which you can honestly say you love? This, however, was one of the times. Furthermore, by a blessed coincidence, Christopher was wondering what should be the first book he reviewed for Tomorrow––and here was an ideal choice, a discovery, a near masterpiece (well, why not say boldly a masterpiece) produced by an almost unknown author! In his 1973 letter, Bradbury says handsomely, “His review turned my career around, that year.” I would love to think this is true but I doubt it, because Tomorrow didn’t have that kind of authority or circulation.

On August 11 Christopher set out with Peggy Kiskadden and her baby son Bull on a drive to New Mexico, to visit Georgia O’Keeffe.

Caskey, meanwhile, was planning to drive down south and join a 248

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party of friends––including Jay Laval, I believe, and Lennie Newman. They were going to Baja California.

The New Mexico trip is partly covered by entries in the

journal––two big ones and a much shorter one, made on August 13, 15, and 19.

They spent the night of August 11 staying with Bob and Mary

Kittredge at their house in Oak Creek Canyon. The Kittredges were from the East but they had lived out in Arizona for twenty years, on and off. Jim Charlton was living with them while he and Bob built a house Jim had designed. They were doing it all themselves, including the plumbing. For Jim, this was a secular-monastic “retreat” from his life in Los Angeles.1

Did Christopher and Jim make love that night? Apparently not, since Christopher writes in the journal: “I have no right to feel hurt or slighted, and I really don’t. I shall keep his friendship if I endorse this venture, wherever it may lead him.” Looking back on this episode, it seems to me that Jim was cockteasing Christopher outrageously. And the cockteasing was most effective, for Christopher found himself getting an absurdly violent crush on Jim, all over again.

I think the romantic pioneer setting had a lot to do with it. In Oak Creek Canyon, Jim became The Whitman Nature Boy, almost as

good as new.

Peggy, meanwhile, was disapproving of the Kittredges and of their way of life.2 Christopher caused a crisis in the middle of supper by remarking that he had always longed to visit Monument Valley. Bob Kittredge was ready to close the house and leave next morning on a three-day trip there and back. (He had taken a strong fancy to Peggy, partly sexual, partly sentimental, because he had discovered that they 1 “Jim lost no time in telling me that he misses nothing and nobody in Santa Monica, is perfectly happy here, and looks forward to staying through the winter. ( Just the same, he was obviously very pleased to see me, and had even bought a special bottle of rum for us to drink after we went to bed at night in the house where he sleeps.) . . . Jim is now drinking very little, having no sex, making no trips to Flagstaff, even.” [For this and ensuing quotes from journal in text and in notes, see D 1, pp. 427‒31.]

2 “Peggy was pained by the untidiness in which the Kittredges live. . . .Mary Kittredge, Peggy pointed out, is a typical slovenly Southerner, and, said Peggy, there is a far wider gap between New Englanders and Southerners than between New Englanders and British. . . .

“. . . (They gave us venison for dinner. Peggy heroically ate some.) . . .

“Peggy says Bob Kittredge is the type of Easterner who was born one hundred years too late. He should have been an Indian guide; and now, though he comes out to the West and learns all about camping and hunting and wild life, he is really lost and isolated in the middle of the twentieth century.”

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were distant cousins.) “But Peggy was greatly alarmed. She wanted to get on to Georgia’s, she disliked haphazard camping, she was somehow jealous of the Kittredges’ Arizona as against Georgia’s New Mexico.” So Christopher, of course, had to decline the invitation.

Jim urged him to stop off on the way home and make the trip with them then.

Next morning, August 12, Peggy, Bull and Christopher set out on the second half of their drive via Gallup and Santa Fe to Abiquiu, the village where Georgia O’Keeffe lived.1

Abiquiu is northwest of Santa Fe, on a road which branches off the road to Taos, at Española. In those days, Abiquiu was an almost entirely Spanish-speaking community and it might as well have been in the heart of Old Mexico, except that its plumbing was probably superior. It would have been safer in Old Mexico, however. Here, 1 Christopher later described the psychological atmosphere of this drive, in the journal: “Peggy’s guilt at having been allowed to get her own way—” i.e., by refusing to visit Monument Valley––

(and I see she will get nothing else throughout this trip) occupied us with the most elaborate self-justifications and generalizations during most of yesterday’s drive. But I didn’t really care. I was . . . in a fairly well-balanced mood of happiness–unhappiness . . . thinking of the misery of the mess at Rustic Road . . . and of the slowly maturing war situation; and, at the same time . . . happy to be out on the endless blue levels of the plateau. . . .

What Christopher doesn’t mention in any of these journal entries is the ambivalence of the relationship between himself and Peggy. On the one side, he is observing her and criticizing her rather bitchily. On the other side, he is playing the protective elder brother, looking after her and little Bull––who, incidentally, behaved like an angel throughout the trip. Even at this late date––they had known each other for more than ten years––their brother–

sister relationship was slightly incestuous––that is to say, flirtatious. They would remind each other that they made a handsome couple and that they looked young for their ages. When they stopped that day to eat at a roadside restaurant, it amused and pleased them both that the waitress took Christopher for Bull’s father. (Why in the world shouldn’t she have?) Peggy had the impertinence to assure Christopher that nobody would ever suspect him of being homosexual, because he seemed one hundred percent masculine. And no doubt, in the innocence of her arrogance, she sincerely believed she was paying him a compliment!

In the journal, Christopher notes that,

Peggy is much concerned with the change of life and anxious not to try to be attractive any more. (She will, though.) She is transferring her sexual vanity to her children, as bankers transfer money from a city which may be bombed. . . . Peggy goes on and on about her children until one could scream.

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it was less than thirty miles from Los Alamos and therefore presumably in danger of some atomic accident which could devastate the whole area. Los Alamos––referred to locally as “The Mountain”

––employed thousands of people and had made Española a

boomtown.

In the journal, Christopher describes Georgia O’Keeffe as “that sturdy old beautiful weather-beaten cedar root.” He admired her

––even liked her at times––but they were natural enemies from the moment they met. Maybe Georgia would have been the natural

enemy of any man who was escorting Peggy, and maybe the

knowledge that Christopher was queer merely added contempt to her hostility. I’m not saying that Georgia was a dyke––I mean, yes, sure she was, but that wasn’t the point about her. She was first and foremost an archfeminist, a pioneer women’s libber. According to Peggy, Georgia had had a very handsome, much-spoilt elder brother and had thus begun telling herself, “Anything you can do, I can do better.”

Georgia had perhaps had a crush on Peggy once. Now she was

certainly very fond of her still, but in a spirit of grown-up amusement. One evening, Georgia and her secretary, Doris Bry––just arrived back from New York––had an argument with Peggy about

women’s rights. Peggy, needless to say, was antilegislation and in favor of women getting their way through men. Later, Georgia and Doris told Christopher that Peggy simply didn’t understand such problems, because she had always been so attractive and had never had to earn her living. Christopher describes Doris Bry as being

“pale, tall, thin, exhausted; just a trifle murderee.”

Georgia, says Christopher, kept “apologizing, half humorously, for being ‘cruel.’” She was certainly masterful. Her house represented a way of life which you just had to adopt as long as you were living in it.1 You ate what Georgia ordained––sternly simple vegetarian fare. You got up at dawn. You had supper before it was even dark and were then supposed to retire to your room.2 There were also 1 “Georgia O’Keeffe’s house. The massive adobe walls––big round pine beams with cross rafters of aspen or cedar. In some rooms, old cedar has been used; it looks like bundles of firewood. The pastel colors of New Mexico––pinkish brown or grey of adobe, pale green of sage. The black modernistic chair sitting like a spider in a corner of the hot patio.”

2 It was then that Christopher wrote in his journal and read F. M. Ford’s Parade’s End, another book he was reviewing for Tomorrow. The character of Sylvia Tietjens made him think of Caskey and the quarrels at Rustic Road: We cannot settle anything by bargaining. We have to live this through, with great patience, but without any of that “neither-do-I-condemn-thee”

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various compulsory and somewhat sacramental amusements––quite aside from the outings which Georgia organized daily. For example, she would call her guests out in the middle of the afternoon to watch the almost invariable summer thunderstorm over the Sangre de

Cristo mountains; she had already arranged the chairs on the patio as if for a theatrical performance. Or she would sit Christopher down in front of a portfolio containing a couple of hundred classical Japanese paintings of bamboo, every one different but all nearly identical. Acutely conscious of Georgia standing over him and sardonically watching his face, Christopher examined each painting with care and tried to find a comment for each, or at least a special appreciative grunt.

Visiting an art guru such as Georgia is like visiting a monastery. In both cases, you are being forced to slow down your normal life tempo, to concentrate your usually scattered attention and renounce your habitual distractions. This experience is painfully uncomfortable while it is going on. You merely long for it to be over. But later

––years later––you find yourself recalling it vividly and with satisfaction.

(I should mention that Georgia wasn’t at all eager to show her own paintings; indeed she seemed touchingly modest about them.)

Another sacramental amusement––far easier to enjoy than the

bamboo paintings––was looking at the photographs taken by Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia’s late husband. Stieglitz and his theory of photography1 were certainly impressive and Christopher could have been far more enthusiastic about both if only Georgia had presented them to him less sacredly. (As for Peggy, she had known Stieglitz too, and she used him to put Christopher down whenever Christopher ventured to praise Caskey’s talent as a photographer.) Chiefly to placate Georgia, Christopher bought three numbers of the magazine Camera Work which Stieglitz had published in the early 1900s. They were then already collectors’ items. As I remember, Georgia charged him quite a lot for them.

On August 13, Georgia took them up to a ranch she owned in the stuff. Oh, I shall never, never get out of this rut until I do that, once. The funny thing is––it’s exactly the subject of my novel (which looks promising, at present).

1 Stieglitz used to maintain that the artist only needs a minimum of subject matter to work with. A vast number of his best pictures were all taken within a radius of a few yards, inside and outside his house on Lake George, New York––the interior, the exterior, the view from the porch, the poplars, the clouds.

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hills, The Ghost Ranch. All I remember about it is a collection of strangely colored and shaped stones on a table outside the front door.

And the emptiness of the uplands, the parklike clearings, the hills covered with piñon and weeping cedar (not that I even recall what a weeping cedar looks like, but Christopher liked the name for its own sake and wrote it down). My actual memory is of the feel of the emptiness––quite a different feel from that of a countryside which has been recently deserted; this was really, utterly empty. It made Christopher uneasy.

On the 14th, they visited the Indian cliff dwellings at Puye.

Christopher had been rather dreading this and had tried to resign himself, since at least one cliff dwelling is a must for the tourist in New Mexico. As far as Christopher was concerned, cliff dwellings meant ladders; tall, vertical, vertiginous. The Puye ladders were probably not nearly as tall as some others, but they were quite tall enough for Christopher. Indeed he was surprised that the forest rangers let visitors of all ages scramble up and down them unaided. Georgia, though in the pink of condition, was nevertheless a woman in her sixties; little Bull was too young to be able to climb alone; Peggy, girlish as she looked, was no chicken. And here was Christopher, condemned to be the Man of the Party. Half heartedly, he offered to carry Bull, but Peggy wouldn’t hear of it. . . . They got up to see the cliff dwellings without trouble. Christopher felt giddy at moments but he didn’t freeze on the rungs. His chief concern was that he knew it would be much worse for him going back down. Georgia, becoming unexpectedly feminine, declared that she had hated the climb. Wasn’t there some path which would bring them over the hill and around to their car by a safe ladderless route? There wasn’t, it seemed. So Georgia said she would climb down last, with Christopher immediately below her to catch her if she slipped. This put Peggy in the lead, with Bull riding on her shoulders. She too was nervous but tensely brave. A strong breeze started to shake the ladders and blow sand into their faces. Bull, clinging around Peggy’s neck, announced:

“I’m frightened!” . . . When it was all over, Christopher felt fairly pleased with himself. At least he hadn’t panicked.

On the 15th, Georgia drove them up into the hills behind

Abiquiu. Here they saw, from a respectful distance, the shrines which were visited by the local Penitentes on their Holy Week processions.

Each shrine represented one of the Stations of the Cross. Georgia, as a respected resident of Abiquiu, even though non-Spanish and non-Catholic, was always invited to join the procession, but only as far as the third or fourth station––I forget which. At that point, she was expected to turn back and go home, while the rest of the procession ¾ 1950 ¾

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moved forward, station by station, until it reached a secluded place where the crucifixion ritual was performed. (Georgia said that this ritual wasn’t as bloody and dangerous as some of the rituals

performed in Old Mexico. The Christ actor was whipped but he

wasn’t beaten nearly to death; his hands weren’t nailed to the cross, he was tied by the wrists.) The only Spanish Catholic in Abiquiu who didn’t take part in the procession was the priest. He was ordered not to do so by his bishop, who regarded the Penitentes as heretics.

So the priest tactfully left the village that week. Officially, he didn’t even know that the ritual was being performed.

On the 16th, Carl Van Vechten and a friend of his named Saul

Mauriber came to lunch. The day-to-day diary, as so often, expresses itself ambiguously, but I deduce from it that Christopher then drove Carl and Saul back to Santa Fe in Peggy’s car. (But, if they hadn’t got a car of their own, how did they reach Abiquiu?) In Santa Fe, Christopher had drinks and/or supper with Witter Bynner and his friend Bob Hunt. Plenty of drinks, certainly, for he left Santa Fe drunk, late at night. As he swung off the Taos road and whizzed through Española, two cops stopped him. For a moment, things looked serious.

The cops put on stern faces. Then one of them said, “Do you want to stand trial, or settle this right away?” When Christopher told them meekly that of course he wanted to settle it, they took him into a smallish wooden hut at the side of the road. Inside the hut was a desk.

One of the cops produced a gavel from a drawer in this desk and struck the desk with it three times, saying, “The Court of the State of New Mexico is now in session.” He then told Christopher the amount of his fine––I think it was thirty dollars––and Christopher paid him, without even venturing to ask if he might have a receipt. No doubt the cops kept the “fine” for themselves. I suppose they had noticed that he had sufficient ready money on him when he took out his billfold to show them his driver’s license.

(I don’t remember anything about Christopher’s conversations

with Van Vechten and Bynner, except that they were pleasant.

Maybe he and Bynner talked about Bynner’s book on Lawrence.

Journey with Genius. When it was published, the next year, Bynner inscribed a copy to Christopher as “its godfather”––which probably means that Christopher read it in manuscript sometime in 1950 and made some encouraging comments on it. It now seems to me an

extremely interesting but rather bitchy, envious book.)

On the 17th, Georgia, Peggy and Christopher drove to Taos,

where they saw Frieda Lawrence, her husband Angelo Ravagli and Dorothy Brett. With Brett they went up to the Del Monte Ranch and spent the night. Next morning, they came back down to Taos, 254

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met Mabel Dodge Luhan, then returned to Abiquiu. All this is

described in the journal.1

On the 21st, Peggy, Bull and Christopher started on the drive 1 “Shrill, blonde-white witchlike Frieda, who is very sympathetic, and Angelino, who is rather too sleek and suave. Also, his Latin sex act bores me.

He picked Peggy up in his arms, and this excited little Bull so much that he bit her in the buttock––‘the haunch,’ Peggy calls it.”

Christopher says in the journal that the Del Monte ranch was “exactly as Lawrence described it in St. Mawr.” But he contradicts himself immediately by referring to the new house which Angelo had built since Lawrence’s death, blocking out the view from the old Lawrence house behind it; from jealousy, probably. It has a very squalid atmosphere, whereas the older house seems strangely joyful. The dead bees on Lawrence’s bed, and the yellow santo [saint’s image] and the string mat Lawrence made to sit on by the fireplace. A reproduction or small copy of the awful Lawrence painting Frieda has down in her house––the great tortured German frau dragging a factory after her by a harness of ropes and straining up towards a bearded Lawrence figure, who is rolling his eyes with horror and apparently fighting off another frau with a sword, maybe, or a radioactive rolling-pin. . . . Brett says she and Lawrence did all the work, while Frieda lay on the bed smoking cigarettes. But you can’t believe a word these women disciples say of each other.

Christopher took to Brett very strongly (was this partly because of her utter Britishness?): “I really love her, with her hearing aid and her enormous ass and absurd bandit’s jacket. I said how good I always feel in the mornings, and she said, ‘Yes––but by the afternoon one has worried oneself into a fit.’ ”

Christopher admired Brett’s Indian paintings––and also “a very beautiful Union Jack, faded to rose pink” which she had on the wall of her house. (On her garage door she had painted the arms of her family.) But he thought her portraits of Stokowski were ridiculous and rather like the original paintings by Van Meegeren––the ones that aren’t forgeries.

That night, up at the Del Monte Ranch, Brett and her dog slept in Angelo’s new house, while Georgia, Peggy, Bull and Christopher lay out of doors under the pines. Brett’s dog set up a howl of the kind that dogs are supposed to utter when their master or mistress dies. So Christopher went into the house to investigate (playing the Man in Charge again) and found Brett peacefully snoring. Then Georgia told Christopher to recite poetry to put them to sleep but Christopher could only remember his basic repertoire of murder and ghost scenes from Macbeth and Hamlet. Bull loved every minute of it, because he was going to bed at the same time as, and with, the grown ups. They slept fairly well but awoke looking frowsy and crumple-faced. Christopher said, “Bull looks six, at least.” Georgia got up and went striding off through the morning woods, “walking the ditch” (as she called it), to keep the irrigation ditch clear of undergrowth. She triumphantly found that some animal had died in the tank, making the water stink. Christopher meanwhile visited Lawrence’s tomb, which he describes as “amateur-dauby.” Nevertheless, this place was for him ¾ 1950 ¾

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home. I have a vividly unpleasant memory of a thunderstorm which was moving in the same direction and bombarded them for at least fifteen miles. The lightning kept striking quite close to the road, now on one side, now on the other, now behind them, now ahead. Peggy got really scared and finally screamed at Christopher not to drive so fast, when he wasn’t driving fast at all. Their route led them through Oak Creek Canyon, and of course Peggy had to start urging

Christopher to stop off at the Kittredges’ and make the trip with them and Jim to Monument Valley while she and Bull drove on to Los Angeles alone. Christopher knew perfectly well that this was one of Peggy’s tests of his character. If he did stop, he would never hear the last of it and Bill Kiskadden would never be allowed to forgive him. A Real Man never under any circumstances deserts the women and children. Peggy’s bitchery annoyed him so hugely that he told her with shameless frankness how much he loved Jim and how

bitterly he regretted––and would regret for the rest of his life––

having missed this marvellous experience. At the same time, he kept repeating that nothing would induce him to leave her. This reduced Peggy to a temporary state of meek submission.

They stayed the night at the Hassayampa Hotel in Prescott. About this, I have an odd memory. Having washed himself in his room before supper, Christopher went into Peggy’s adjoining room still naked to the waist, with the towel in his hand. There was something he wanted to ask her, but it’s possible also that Christopher was in a macho show-off mood. Anyhow, he realized at once that Peggy was displeased and slightly shocked. She had seen Christopher seminaked dozens of times, a very sacred shrine––perhaps the most sacred of any in his literary myth world.

When he later happened to mention to Peggy that he had signed the guest book in the chapel, she was shocked; she found this touristy. So he didn’t tell her that he had also taken two red flowers from the hillside in front of the chapel and pressed them in his billfold for relics.

When they had returned to Taos, Peggy and Christopher visited Mabel Dodge Luhan

––a great disappointment, after all the stories about her witchlike fiendish-ness, jealousy and ruthless egotism. Such a dowdy little old woman––as Peggy said, “She’s reverted to Buffalo.” She looks like a landlady. And her house is full of the stupidest junk. It was very sad; the feeling of the old days gone––John Reed gone––Lawrence gone––and this old frump stuck with her fat Indian man, building houses and drinking whiskey in the morning.

And yet the stories persist. The woman who lent Mabel a jacket. Mabel wore it all summer, then returned it. One night, the woman was out riding in the jacket, and a bullet whizzed past her. She dismounted, ran to the nearest bush, where a young Mexican, whom she knew, was crouching with a gun. “Forgive me,” he gasped, “I thought you were Mrs. Luhan.”

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in the days when he stayed at her house. But this was different. Here they were together in a hotel. Someone might come in and suppose that they were unduly intimate. Or was Peggy afraid that little Bull might talk about this later to his father? Who could tell? Peggy’s reactions on such matters were absolutely unpredictable.

She was in for a much greater shock next day, and so was

Christopher. It must have been late in the afternoon of the 22nd that they reached Los Angeles. Peggy made a detour into Santa Monica Canyon to drop Christopher off at 333 East Rustic Road before going home. Together they entered the living room and stopped short in astonishment.

Evidently, Caskey had given a party after Christopher had left.

There were glasses all over the room with the remains of drinks in them and plates with the remains of food. The place was in a wild mess. But what made this mess special and a bit spooky was its antique appearance. There were spider’s webs on some of the glasses and drowned insects in others. The food, in that damp atmosphere, was already furred with mold. And there was an odor of decay in the air.

After the first moment of surprise, Christopher considered the situation fairly calmly. It was clear that Caskey had given this party before leaving for Baja California, since the mess must be at least several days old. It was very unlike him to go away without tidying things up, but Christopher could understand why he had done so; he had expected to return before Christopher. . . . Well, he must have changed his plans, that was all. No doubt he was enjoying himself and had decided to stay on.

But Peggy was horrified. Since she equated dirt and disorder with Evil, she shuddered at the sight before her. It must have appeared to her as a physical manifestation of what was spiritually rotten in the Caskey–Christopher relationship––like the transformation of Dorian Gray’s picture. “Let’s get away from here, darling,” she said urgently and in a hushed voice, “you can come and stay with us––for as long as you like.” Christopher thanked her, but said, no, he’d be all right.

“But you can’t stay here!” she cried in dismay. It took him a long time to convince her that he was in earnest. After she had gone, he called Jo and Ben Masselink, telling them what had happened. They came over at once and the three of them soon got everything cleaned up, laughing and joking as they did so. Jo and Ben’s complete, affectionate acceptance of Caskey, along with all his exploits and outrages, made Peggy’s puritanism look sick and silly. Henceforth, Christopher began to regard Jo and Ben as intimate friends in whom he could confide and with whom he felt at home. As for Peggy, this trip to New Mexico had finally convinced him that he couldn’t ¾ 1950 ¾

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afford to be intimate with her. At least, not as long as he was living in any kind of homosexual relationship. She would always try to undermine it and make Christopher feel guilty. She couldn’t help herself––she was a compulsive ball cutter.

Next day, when Christopher went to pick up the mail which the post office had held for him while he was away, he found a letter from Caskey. It was written from the Santa Ana jail.

This, as well as I can remember, is what had happened to him: On August 11, approximately, Caskey had given the party of

which Christopher and the Masselinks had had to clear up the

remains and had then set off alone and drunk, fairly late in the evening, to drive down to San Diego or wherever it was that the others were waiting for him. At San Clemente, he had stopped at a filling station, where they had filled his car with gas, accepted his money, let him go on his way again without any protest or warning––and then called the police, giving his number and telling them to watch out for a very drunk driver. San Clemente, in those days, was a notorious traffic trap; the community needed all the fines it could collect. The judge who tried Caskey offered him the option of a fine.

When Caskey refused this, the judge turned nasty and sentenced him to three months.

When Christopher saw Caskey in jail on August 26––the next

permitted visiting day––and heard the details of the case, he wanted to hire a lawyer at once. Even now, he said, Caskey could almost certainly get himself released, with the aid of some discreet bribery. But Caskey wouldn’t hear of it, saying that he refused to let Christopher throw his money away on such crooks. He was so vehement about this that Christopher finally gave way. By then, it had become obvious that Caskey actually wanted to stay in jail and serve out his sentence. His Catholic conscience imposed this penance, to some extent; he felt that it was time for him to be punished for his drunkenness. Also, he wanted to keep away from Christopher for a while, knowing that Christopher’s martyred forbearance would make him feel more guilty, as well as hostile. Also, he was quite enjoying being in jail; the life brought out his good-humored toughness, which Christopher always greatly admired. He could hold his own among his fellow prisoners, amusing them by drawing sex pictures and telling them sex stories, while making it clear that he wouldn’t let himself be pushed around.

When a prisoner had accused a weak timid youth of being queer, Caskey had told him sassily, “Well, honey, it takes one to know one,”

and had nearly got into a serious fight.

Christopher and Caskey parted affectionately. Christopher promised 258

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to come down and visit him every Saturday (which he faithfully did, until Caskey was released). Then he drove over to have tea with Chris Wood in Laguna. Though Christopher didn’t admit this to any of his friends, he felt a great deal of relief. The Caskey problem was shelved for at least two months––assuming that Caskey would get time off for good behavior. And Christopher didn’t have to feel guilty; he had done what he could. So, since this was his birthday, he decided to celebrate the rest of it with Mike Leopold. They had supper and spent the night together, very happily, and Christopher gave him one of the red flowers he had brought back from the Del Monte Ranch.

And now began a social, sexy period, during which Christopher enjoyed himself a good deal and I suppose got on with his novel. He also at last finished work on Patanjali’s yoga aphorisms (October 5).

And he started writing a review of Antonina Vallentin’s H. G. Wells, Prophet of Our Day for Tomorrow.

In addition to Mike Leopold, he had several sex partners, old and new––Russ Zeininger, Don Coombs, Peter Darms, Brad Saunders,

Keith Carstairs,[*] Barry Taxman, Bertrand Cambus,[†] Donald Pell,[‡]

Mitchell Streeter.[§]

Brad Saunders had reappeared in the Canyon. I think he had been in Korea. Christopher found him more interesting than before––

partly because he had written some quite talented, self-revealing poems;1 partly because he had become altogether more attractive.

1 The Self-Sufficient Seagull

There was a wounded bird,

Who, like an awkward aeroplane,

Flew with one gear down.

It was a smooth-feathered seagull,

Swimming in slow circles,

Limping when aground.

He was no fishing frolicker,

Screeched not nobly

Reached no mate.

He made no cackling congress

At the prancing place, just

Sat in state,

Or swooped softly,

Quietly, along the leeshore––

Lonely.

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

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It seemed natural that the two of them should start going to bed together and they both enjoyed it greatly. As Brad once remarked in the middle of a sex act, “It’s a hell of a lot nicer doing this when you really like the guy!” But Brad’s true love was Jim Charlton. This love affair developed later, after Jim had returned from Arizona, and it lasted a long time. Brad was very serious about it, and Jim was flattered that Brad kept suggesting they should set up housekeeping together. Jim had no intention of doing so, of course, though he admired Brad and was fond of him; they both belonged to the

fraternity of crazy pilots and had much in common temperamentally.

Brad was far crazier than Jim had ever been, however.

Keith Carstairs was just a very nice boy with a very sexy body. He and Christopher met from time to time and always made love. There was no drama about it. Keith and Christopher weren’t at all involved emotionally; Keith had a steady boyfriend he saw on weekends.

They made love because they liked each other and were compatible.

It was a contact sport; good wholesome exercise. I still remember Christopher holding Keith in his arms and thinking, “How can anybody call this unnatural––it’s the most natural thing in the world!”

Mitchell Streeter and Bertrand Cambus were both one-night

stands, but for different reasons––Streeter wasn’t interested in repeating, Bertrand would have been interested but his visit to Los Angeles was over. Streeter had the kind of physique you see in magazines; not heavily muscled but almost perfect. He displayed it when he first came to the house wearing nothing but his swimming trunks. (I forget who he came with and why.) Christopher was

suitably impressed and hinted that he should return, alone. This he did, fully dressed but obviously ready for action. They had a couple of drinks, kissed and went upstairs. Christopher fucked him and then blew him. Satisfaction seemed mutual. When they next met, however, something was wrong from the start. Streeter sat there without giving the go-ahead signal, so Christopher, not wanting to make a pass and be rebuffed, invited him to come out to a

restaurant––only to find, when they arrived, that he had brought too little money with him. They had to go Dutch. Streeter showed that he thought this was a cheapskate trick. Christopher couldn’t blame him, but resented his thinking so, nevertheless. They didn’t see each other again.

Christopher met Bertrand Cambus through a Texan queen [. . .]

who liked to be called by his initials D.J.[*] After their first meeting, D.J. acted as go-between, telling Christopher that Bertrand found

[* Not his real initials.]

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him very attractive and had particularly admired his legs. Christopher was flattered and delighted––for Bertrand was a dark handsome charming boy, athletically built and quite unlike Christopher’s image of a wispy French faggot. (He was on a business trip to the States, representing one of the French automobile firms.) Christopher told D.J. to assure Bertrand that his lust was reciprocated. With the result that Bertrand and Christopher had supper and spent the night of September 3 together. Bertrand then had to return to France, whence he wrote Christopher a politely affectionate note, saying,

“Happy times won’t let themselves be forgotten.” Speed Lamkin later told Christopher that he and Bertrand had been having an affair during Bertrand’s stay in Los Angeles, and that it was he who had encouraged Bertrand to go to bed with Christopher.

Donald Pell was so pretty that Christopher was dazzled into

thinking him sexy. Actually, he wasn’t quite Christopher’s type.

They went to bed together without either of them really wanting to. Donald was busy pretending to himself that he wasn’t queer, but only, as he put it, “trade.” This pretense (which he later gave up) forced him to do his best to ignore the sexual aspects of his relationships. So he was apt to say things which made you stare at him incredulously. For example––one day, Donald and Christopher were eating a meal in Christopher’s kitchen and Donald, who hoped to become a professional actor, was telling Christopher about the director of a play he had been in. This director had kept dropping into Donald’s dressing room and giving him advice about his part.

“But,” said Donald, “I don’t think it was my acting he was interested in––” and he gave Christopher a playful nudge in the ribs, “if you get what I mean, Chris.” Donald wasn’t trying to be funny. He was perfectly, squarely serious. No one who heard him could have

suspected that Donald and Christopher had been having sex with each other, only half an hour before.

On August 27, Don Coombs telephoned to ask if he might bring

two friends down with him, when he came to supper with

Christopher, that evening. Christopher agreed, ungraciously. He had been expecting to have Coombs to himself, in bed, and he didn’t want to sit up talking to strangers. However, when the three of them arrived, Christopher was placated, because both of the friends were attractive. One was called Fred;[*] I don’t remember anything else about him. The other was a Jewish composer and teacher of music named Barry Taxman; very good-looking, slightly queeny, in his middle twenties.

[* Not his real name.]

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As soon as they had arrived, Coombs took Christopher aside and asked if Fred and Barry might spend the night together in the back bedroom. Ordinarily, this would have annoyed Christopher, who hated being pressured into hospitality which he hadn’t been prepared for. But, under the circumstances, he was amused, because he saw through Coombs’s plan. Fred was obviously an ex-lover whom

Coombs was planning to win back in one or both of two ways––

(A) by making Fred jealous of Christopher, and/or (B) by making Barry take a fancy to Christopher and walk out on Fred.

Christopher would have liked the plan better if it had included getting him into bed with Fred, whom he fancied most, but that wasn’t to be hoped for; Fred ignored him. So he concentrated on making Fred jealous. When Christopher woke with Coombs in the front bedroom next morning, they united in an energetic fuck––

both of them grunting and moaning with pleasure but neither

admitting to the other that this was mostly noisy playacting meant to be heard by the couple in the back bedroom.

Before long, Barry came out, without Fred. Coombs, now

contentedly fucked, pretended to be asleep. Barry suggested to Christopher that they should go down and take a prebreakfast

swim. Christopher agreed. On the way to the beach, Barry said,

“Last night I kept wishing you were in bed with me, instead of Fred.” Christopher was surprised, and also pleased, for Barry looked unexpectedly masculine, as well as handsomer, in trunks.

They agreed to meet again, alone, at the earliest opportunity.

So Coombs’s Plan B had succeeded. And also, as it later turned out, his Plan A. When Christopher and Barry got back to the house, they found Fred and Coombs deep in intimate conversation––no

doubt assuring each other that they didn’t, respectively, give a damn about Barry and Christopher.

Barry and Christopher finally got together on September 4. (The delay was due to Christopher’s wooing of Bertrand Cambus.) When Barry arrived, all dressed up in his somewhat faggy best,1 they were 1 When Barry had a date with Christopher––or any other sex partner, presumably––he would bathe, shave, shampoo his hair and dress with extreme care. Christopher used to kid him about this, saying, “Five minutes after you arrive, you strip all those clothes off and toss them on the floor, and then we roll around till we’re slippery with sweat and stinking like pigs, and then you, having carefully brushed your teeth and washed out your mouth with antiseptic, lick my ass and get shit on your tongue, and then I fuck you till my cock’s smeared with shit which afterwards gets rubbed off on your belly––so why take all this trouble with your toilet?” [Taxman states that this passage is of doubtful authenticity and is extremely offensive and distasteful to him.]

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both awkwardly conscious that this was a sex rendezvous. There seemed nothing else to talk about, and the atmosphere of embarrassment thickened, until Christopher said, “Look, why should we wait?

Let’s get into bed for a little while. Then we can have supper, knowing that everything’s okay and there’s going to be more sex later and so we needn’t be tense about it.” Barry agreed.

As they undressed, Barry told Christopher that he could get a hard-on but that he was unable to come; he hadn’t had an orgasm in a long while. Christopher answered that Barry was to relax and not worry. Privately, he felt confident that he could get Barry over his inhibition. Christopher knew from experience that boys who told you this were often subconsciously challenging you to arouse them.

This challenge excited Christopher, and he did his best to bring Barry to a climax. But he couldn’t. Aside from this, their lovemaking was a success. Barry wanted Christopher to fuck him and he was very exciting to fuck, he really loved it.

(A few months after this, Barry fell in love with someone.

Immediately, he was able to have orgasms again, not only with his lover but with anyone he found physically attractive. He was so delighted that he went around having sex with all his former

partners, to prove to himself and them that he had been completely released. It was at this time that he had his first orgasm with Christopher.)

That first evening in bed together, Barry said, “How extraordinary this is! Here am I, a Russian Jew, making love with Christopher Isherwood!” His remark jarred on Christopher; it seemed indecent, masochistic, sexually off-putting. But, as Christopher got to know Barry better, he found a different significance in it. When Barry thus called attention to his Jewishness, he wasn’t really demeaning himself. He wasn’t at all a humble person. Indeed, he had that Jewish tactlessness, argumentativeness and aggressiveness which always aroused Christopher’s anti-Semitic feelings. Only, in Barry’s case, Christopher’s anti-Semitism quickly became erotic. It made him hot to mate Barry’s aggressiveness with his own, in wrestling duels which were both sexual and racial, Briton against Jew. Barry’s aggressiveness became beautiful and lovable when it was expressed physically by his strong lithe body grappling naked with Christopher’s. As they struggled, Christopher loved him because he was a pushy arrogant Jewboy. But he never talked to Barry about his feelings. They were too private.[*]

[* Taxman finds this passage to be apocryphal and extremely offensive and distasteful to him.]

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Barry soon desired these duels as much as Christopher did, though for a different reason––at least, that is my guess. Barry had never wrestled with any of his other lovers. And his approach to sex had been from the yin side only; he wanted to be possessed. But now Christopher had, without consciously meaning to, made him aware of his yang self. When he wrestled with Christopher, he was all boy and he seemed to delight in his own virility. Switching back to yin again, after the fight, was a new sensation for him; the contrast between the two selves may well have made him enjoy being fucked more than ever. He and Christopher were always hot for each other.

At this time, Christopher saw a good deal of Gerald Heard1 and Michael Barrie, also of Frank and Nan Taylor––of Frank rather than Nan, because Frank turned his queer friends into sexual conspirators against his own marriage, telling them all about his affairs with other men, and Nan hated them for it. It was at the Taylors’ house that Christopher saw a showing of the semiprofessional film of Julius Caesar which had been shot on locations in and around Chicago, with Charlton Heston, then almost unknown, as a beautiful Mark Antony. As far as I remember, the scenes of Caesar’s murder were played in a neoclassical bank building and the battle of Philippi took place among the sand dunes of Lake Michigan. On September 6,

1 I wish I had at least some record of Christopher’s talks with Gerald at this period. I remember only that his chief interest was in the many sightings and alleged sightings of Unidentified Aerial Objects––flying saucers. Gerald believed in them wholeheartedly and would soon publish Is Another World Watching?, in which it is stated that June 24, 1947 (the Kenneth Arnold sighting near Mount Rainier) “may prove to be one of the most important dates in history.” Gerald told Christopher that, “Liberation is my vocation, the saucers are my avocation.” He expressed the wish that one of the objects would land and require a human go-between to explain the ways of earth men to their people and to be instructed in their own culture, as far as that was possible.

Gerald longed to be this go-between. I think he had elaborate fantasies about the role he would play––including the brilliant, epigrammatic lectures on Earth history he would deliver and maybe even the splendid space costumes he would wear. I remember Gerald as being very cheerful in those days. Yes

––now a memory comes to me. It belongs to August 30, when, according to the day-to-day diary, Gerald, Michael Barrie and Christopher, “Picked up Harold’s Rolls.” The Rolls belonged to Harold Fairbanks––that much I’m sure of––but how Harold had acquired it, where they were taking it and for what purpose, I don’t know. It was a handsome old car, and Gerald enjoyed its faded grandeur. They were all three laughing and chattering, and suddenly Gerald exclaimed, “What good talk!” I can still picture his face as it looked at that moment, lit up with the vivid pleasure of a connoisseur. And I can hear the tone of his voice, so melodiously Irish. At such moments one glimpsed him as he must have been when he was young and unholy.

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Frank and Christopher had supper at the Hartford Foundation with its manager, Michael Gaszynski, a Polish nobleman who also had a cheesecake concession at the Farmer’s Market. Michael was all smiles and politeness in those days––later on, when Christopher became a trustee and began staying at the foundation, they were forced into being enemies.

On September 5, Christopher drove with Sam From to spend the

evening in Santa Barbara. I think this was the occasion on which Sam was so drunk that he made a swerve off the Pacific Coast Highway just after they had left the Canyon and very nearly turned his open convertible right over. Christopher was lucky––for Sam was a

frequently drunk driver and this might well have been a fatal wreck.

Sam finally got killed in a collision which was agreed to have been entirely his fault.

On September 14, the day-to-day diary records that Bob Craft, Eduard Steuermann (Salka Viertel’s brother) and someone named Dahl “went through” the text of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire with Christopher. I do remember that Bob had proposed to Christopher that he should speak the “speech-song” at a performance somewhere, and Christopher had agreed. But the performance never took place. Maybe the musicians decided that Christopher’s voice wasn’t right for the part.[*]

On the night of either September 16 or 17, one of the sycamore trees near the house suddenly fell. I remember that Christopher woke abruptly, about half a minute before this happened. Later––maybe in order to intrigue Gerald Heard, who loved all things extrasensory

––he ascribed his waking to precognition; but it is more likely that Christopher had been woken by a preliminary cracking sound; such a sound, in the dead of night, could be quite as loud as a gunshot.

The tree narrowly missed the house. If it had hit, it would probably have staved in the roof.

Mentioning the fall of the tree reminds me that the sycamores quite often dropped their limbs and occasionally did serious damage.

It must have been about this time that Christopher happened to be looking out of the window when a big branch fell from one of the trees on the other side of the road. Its fall was broken by some lower branches, otherwise it would have hit the house below it. Even so, it was a serious menace, because the next strong wind would almost

[* Robert Craft conducted Pierrot lunaire in New York the following October, but recalls asking Isherwood for help only with possibly improving the translation made by Ingolf Dahl (1912–1970), a composer and refugee who was a close friend of Stravinsky.

According to Craft, the speaking part for Isherwood would have been in Stravinsky’s The Flood, much later, in 1962.]

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certainly shake it loose. Christopher therefore immediately crossed the road and rang the doorbell of the threatened house. The woman who lived there opened the door and he explained to her what had happened. This was the first time he had ever spoken to her. She didn’t seem at all grateful to him. On the contrary, her manner was hostile and suspicious, as if she were thinking, “Why is he telling me this? What’s he really want?”

Some weeks later, Christopher was visited by one of his

neighbors, who told him that this woman was psychotic and a threat to the whole community. “I’m going to get something on each one of them,” she was alleged to have said, and she kept reporting her suspicions to the police. She had gone all the way down to Balboa in the hope of discovering that a man she knew was keeping a

sailboat there without a license. She had accused Mrs. Macdonald of running an unauthorized insane asylum, because Mrs. Macdonald had a son who was mentally retarded. She had complained that an orgy was going on in a nearby house; when the police arrived, it turned out to be a child’s birthday party. “As for you, Mr.

Isherwood,” Christopher’s informant added, giggling nervously,

“she claims you are a homosexual! There was a police car watching your house for a couple of hours, the other night.” “They’ll have to watch a lot longer than that,” Christopher said, grinning feebly but turning very pale. He willingly signed a petition which the

neighbors had drawn up, appealing to the district attorney to ignore this woman’s accusations.

Not long after this, she suddenly left the neighborhood.

On September 18, the day-to-day diary makes its first mention of a project undertaken by Speed Lamkin and Gus Field; an adaptation of Christopher’s Sally Bowles for the stage. Gus Field was a screenwriter.

I think Christopher had met him while they were both working at MGM. He was youngish, curly haired, and not bad looking; Jewishly self-assertive, full of stories about himself in the air force and himself in bed with girls, but anxious to be friendly and helpful. He was a fairly competent writer, but he cluttered his scripts with instructions about shots and camera angles which were nothing but show-off and must have irritated his director. He and Speed made an odd couple.

Probably Gus, who must have been snubbed by many of his

colleagues, liked associating with queers because he felt that they were lower than himself in the pecking order. He could treat them with indulgent amusement. But he was also smart enough to realize that Speed was smarter and that Speed could introduce him to some celebrities. As for Speed, he had accepted Gus as a professional who 266

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could teach him the tricks of dramaturgy. Aside from this, he looked down on Gus as a kike.

The two of them now came to Christopher to discuss their ideas about the play. Speed, of course, did most of the talking and assumed credit, without actually claiming it, for all the ideas. Of these, I remember only two––one of them truly daring and symbolic in the best theatrical sense, the other minor but amusing. Christopher was amazed when he heard them. He hadn’t been taking the Lamkin–

Field collaboration seriously; now he was forced to respect it and encourage it.

The major idea was as follows:

When the curtain rises, Christopher is discovered in his Berlin room. It is a narrow set occupying only the front part of the stage.

From behind the wall at the back of this set we hear the sounds of a large noisy party. They annoy Christopher, who is trying to work.

Then Sally, whom he hasn’t met before, comes in, introduces herself as the party giver and his next-door neighbor and asks if he can lend her any glasses. Christopher is quickly charmed out of his hostility.

They are joined by some of Sally’s friends. Christopher is given drinks. Then Sally points out that her room and his room are actually the halves of one big room which has been divided by a somewhat flimsy partition wall. There’d be more space for them all to dance, she says, if they could have the whole room as it originally was.

Christopher is getting drunk by this time and he declares that he’ll tear the wall down. Sally and her guests volunteer to help him and they start to do so as the curtain falls.

In the next scene, Christopher wakes out of a drunken sleep to find that the wall is down; nothing is left of it but a pile of rubble.

Sally lies in her bed on the other side of the big room. Christopher is horrified at first, then amused. Sally tells him that they’re both going to be much happier this way and Christopher accepts the fact that he is now irrevocably involved in Sally’s life.

The minor idea was that at some point well along in the first act, after Sally and most of the other important characters have been introduced and a dialogue between several of them is in progress, there is a knock on the door. Christopher crosses to it and opens it.

A girl stands there. We haven’t seen her before. Christopher looks embarrassed. “Look,” he tells her, “I’m terribly busy. In fact, I’m going to be busy for quite a while. I’ll give you a call, as soon as I can.” The girl nods and turns sadly away. Christopher shuts the door. “Who was that?” Sally asks. “Oh––that’s my girlfriend.” “But, Chris, I never knew you had a girlfriend! Why didn’t you tell me?

You’re so mysterious. You never tell me anything about yourself.”

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Christopher smiles: “I’ve never had a chance to. You’ve been telling me about yourself ever since we met!” Throughout the rest of the play, the girl never reappears. She isn’t even referred to.

Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo had arrived in town and

were staying at the Bel Air Hotel, because Tennessee was polishing the script of A Streetcar Named Desire which was about to start shooting, with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. Christopher saw Tennessee and Frank several times––they came by for drinks on September 17, they gave a party at their hotel on the 21st, Frank Merlo went with Christopher to visit Caskey at the Santa Ana jail on the 23rd, they came by for drinks again on the 24th, they gave a supper on the 26th which included Kazan, Brando, William Saroyan and Christopher. The next day, Christopher drove them to the

airport. This was a visit of which I have very happy memories.

Tennessee and Frank were at their best. The party at the hotel was wildly lavish, because Tennessee had contracted with the studio to do this polishing job for expenses only. The studio probably ended by regretting its bargain. Not only did the drinks flow in torrents but each guest was urged to take whole cases of liquor away with him.

Christopher also enjoyed meeting Brando, although his first

impressions were bad. Brando seemed to Christopher to be just another young ham giving himself airs. He was talking about Vivien Leigh, with whom he’d spent the whole afternoon, waiting to be called onto the set for a take. And now he gravely announced: “I don’t think she’s very sincere.” This was too much for Christopher.

“My God, Mr. Brando,” he exclaimed, “how sincere do you think you’ll be, when you’ve been in this business as long as she has?!” But, to Christopher’s surprise and pleasure, Brando wasn’t either offended or crushed. He grinned at Christopher appreciatively, as much as to say, “Good for you––we understand each other!” What Christopher understood at that moment––or thought he did––was that Brando was capable of high camp and that most of his public behavior was probably camping. As for Brando’s private behavior and his private self, I’m no wiser about that now than Christopher was then; I’ve never gotten even a glimpse.

Brando did confer a mark of his favor upon Christopher––or

maybe it was merely a test. A few days later, Christopher returned home to find Brando sitting in the living room with a girl; they were eating sandwiches they had made from food in Christopher’s kitchen and drinking his beer. Christopher was astonished but also flattered by this bold act of intimacy, and he did everything to make them feel at home. But the visit wasn’t repeated, and it was quite a long time before he saw Brando again.

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On October 3 and again on October 6, Christopher went with

James Agee to John Huston’s ranch in the San Fernando Valley

where Huston was directing The Red Badge of Courage for MGM.

On the 6th, Frank Taylor and Donald Pell came along too. Audie Murphy was starring in the picture. Christopher got to say only a few words to Murphy but watched him a lot of the time. Murphy

fascinated Christopher, not only because he was still boyishly attractive but because he appeared to be such a mixed-up and

potentially dangerous character. Christopher liked to imagine that Murphy had won all his decorations for bravery as the result of his fury and shame at being The Prettiest Boy in Texas. No doubt his buddies had kidded him about his baby face, and Murphy, being too small to lick them, had gone into action and killed every German within sight. But this, and the subsequent honors, hadn’t made him feel any better, apparently; for he was still amazingly aggressive.

Whenever he wasn’t actually in front of the camera, he kept playing practical jokes on his fellow actors. These jokes weren’t fun, they were full of hostility and the object of them, clearly, was to provoke their victims to fight. Since Murphy was The Star, and also smaller, the other actors were unwilling to tangle with him; but he usually managed to annoy them into doing so. When they did, Murphy

fought back in deadly earnest. His face was grim, and he looked capable of pulling a knife. Most people seemed a bit afraid of him.

Christopher got the impression that he was thoroughly unpopular.

John Huston was Murphy’s opposite––large, charming, popular,

relaxed. (He was also a far greater and deadlier monster than Murphy could ever be.) On this picture, Huston was so relaxed that he actually sat chatting with Christopher under a tree while his assistant director shot one of the battle scenes.

Everybody agreed that he was wonderful with the actors, espe-

cially the bit players. Christopher himself witnessed an impressive demonstration of his patience with one of them––I have probably got the circumstances of the script story wrong here, but this is what happened: The troops have just succeeded in driving the enemy from a position on a wooded hill. They are feeling very pleased with themselves, especially those of them who have been in action for the first time. And then a soldier comes out of the woods. He is dazed and shaken. They tell him that he just missed the battle. He answers that the real battle was on the other side of the hill. They are amazed and disappointed.

When Huston directed the first take of this scene, everything went well until the actor who played the soldier appeared. He blew up on his line. Huston told him not to worry, to take his time. They ¾ 1950 ¾

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shot the scene right through again. Again the actor blew up. He apologized profusely. Huston said never mind, they had the whole morning. He suggested a simplified version of the line. The actor assured Huston that he could do it. He was trembling and sweating.

He blew up for the third time. Huston remained imperturbable.

They did a fourth take. The actor managed to get the line out correctly, though in a strangled, unnatural voice. Huston put an arm around his shoulder and led him away, soothing him as though he were a frightened horse.

As an expert horseman, Huston had a specially close relationship with the stunt riders on the picture. They were extra eager to please him. Christopher was standing at Huston’s side, near to the camera, when one man had to mime being shot dead at full gallop. The

cameraman had drawn a smallish circle with a stick in the dirt, only a few yards away from where they were standing; this was where the stunt rider’s body was to hit the ground. It was a breathtaking performance. Christopher had to restrain himself with a conscious effort of will from instinctively jumping aside as the horse came thundering toward them. Then Huston gave the signal. The rider registered the impact of the imaginary bullet and rose in the stirrups, clutching himself; his well-trained horse swerved to avoid the camera. The rider crashed from the saddle and landed with stunning force––only just outside the circle. The next instant, he had jumped to his feet, breathless and apologetic: “Sorry, Mr. Huston––it won’t happen again––I slipped!”1

In addition to Audie Murphy, there was another famous war veteran acting in the picture: Bill Mauldin the cartoonist. Like Murphy, Mauldin was still boyishly cute, in a charming monkeyish way. Unlike Murphy––perhaps because he had never had to be a hero––he was relaxed and friendly. He spent most of his free time with his wife.

When he was looking for her, after a take, he wandered around exclaiming, in a theatrical southern accent, “Where’s ma bride?”

Christopher watched a big scene in which Murphy and Mauldin

were in the center of the front line during an attack. The whole area over which they were to advance was mined with small explosive charges wired for detonation. It was the assistant director’s job to see that these explosions occurred as near as possible to the actors without injuring them. (If you were right on top of an explosion 1 Someone, I forget who, recently told me at a party that stunt riders often make bad falls deliberately, because they are paid a prearranged amount for each fall, good or bad. Huston undoubtedly knew this. He probably tolerated such cheating good humoredly, unless the stuntman overdid it.

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you could get burned.) When the cameras started to turn, Murphy and Mauldin, with the caution of seasoned soldiers, advanced very slowly, keeping their distance from the mini-mines which were bursting ahead of them. The nearest extras on either side naturally followed their example. But, meanwhile, the extras out on the wings

––not near enough to the stars to realize what they were doing and aware only that they themselves were attacking under the eye of John Huston––rushed forward recklessly. So the front line became an in-curving crescent. This annoyed the assistant director. He yelled to the center to catch up. Murphy and Mauldin ignored him. The assistant director was obliged to detonate charges immediately behind the two of them, as near as he dared, to get them running.

(The memory of this absurd situation didn’t prevent Christopher from being moved deeply and shedding tears when he saw the

photographed and edited scene, long afterwards, on the screen.) Jim Agee, big, handsome, sentimentally alcoholic, terribly anxious to be liked, was around most of the time. He made a hero of Huston and eagerly, indeed desperately, tried to keep up with Huston in any activity or amusement which he proposed. It was said that Huston would be the death of Agee, who had a weak heart and a poor

constitution generally; Huston was always getting him to come riding or play tennis or sit up drinking half the night. Actually he didn’t die until 1955.

Also present at the filming during Christopher’s visits was Lillian Ross, a journalist on the staff of The New Yorker who had come out to California to cover the production of the picture. Christopher was already strongly prejudiced against her because of the profile of Hemingway she had written for her magazine, earlier that year.

Rereading it now (March 1974), I find it only mildly distasteful––it was an early specimen of a style of journalism to which I have since then become accustomed. Lillian Ross, in her preface to the profile when it was published in book form, says that, “I attempted to set down only what I had seen and heard, and not to comment on the facts or express any opinions or pass any judgements. . . . I liked Hemingway exactly as he was, and I’m content if my Profile caught him exactly as he was during those two days in New York.”[*] What Ross means by catching Hemingway exactly as he was is that she has attempted an absolutely faithful reproduction of Hemingway’s dialogue, gestures and physical appearance. But the written word is inadequate if you try to use it in this way––writing is impressionistic, subjective, conceptual––and the effect that Ross was trying for can

[* Portrait of Hemingway, 1961.]

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only be achieved with a movie camera. What I get from her profile now is boredom, irritation. Everything she tells about Hemingway is irrelevant. She never comes near him. But Christopher, reading it in 1950, felt that Hemingway was being sneered at and cheapened by a creature of the New York gutter.

He was therefore coldly polite to Ross when he met her. Ross

melted him somewhat by her intelligence and considerable charm but he didn’t altogether relent, even when he found that she was one of his fans and had brought a book of his to be signed. He wrote in it, “For Lillian Ross, on condition that she never writes about me.”

This startled, hurt and also intrigued her. Later they talked about many things and got along well together. But she kept returning to the subject of the profile and defending herself energetically. Finally, at a party given by Tim Durant on October 8, Christopher got drunk and condemned her in the words of the St. Matthew Gospel: “. . . it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!”[*] They parted as fairly good friends, however.

On October 21, after visiting Caskey at the Santa Ana jail,

Christopher drove with Donald Pell to stay at the AJC Ranch (I imagine John van Druten must have been there, though the day-today diary doesn’t say so); the next day, they visited the mud pots on the Salton Sea (these are described in Down There on a Visit) and returned to Los Angeles via Julian and Mount Palomar. Christopher was taking Donald Pell around with him quite a lot, just then, so I suppose he must have found him an amusing companion. But I

remember nothing that Donald did or said. The only incident which remains with me from their trip happened on the road to Lake

Elsinore, en route for the AJC Ranch. A dead sidewinder was lying across the road. Christopher stopped the car, got out and was about to pick the snake up by the tail and toss it into the ditch––chiefly to impress Donald, who was timid. But now another car stopped and a young man and a girl got out. The young man––probably wanting to impress her––picked up the sidewinder by its neck, squeezed its poison glands so that the poison squirted out onto the road, then produced a pocket knife and removed its fangs from its jaw, wiping them clean on his pants leg, then put the fangs into his billfold, remarked to Christopher and Donald, “They bring good luck,” got back into his car followed by the shuddering girl, and drove away.

The Sadler’s Wells Ballet was then in town. Christopher went to see it on October 19, with Iris Tree and Ivan and Natasha Moffat.

On the 23rd, Moira Shearer, Freddy Ashton, Alexis Rassine and

[* Matthew 18:7.]

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Moira’s husband, Ludovic Kennedy, came to see Christopher, and then they all went to a party given for the ballet by the van Leydens.

I think this was the season the ballet did The Sleeping Beauty, in which Freddy played the Wicked Fairy in marvellous drag. He was carried onto the stage in a sedan chair, by two dancers dressed as mice.

Freddy told Christopher that it never mattered how drunk he

was––as soon as the mice had helped him out of the chair and onto his feet, he could always get through his dance. If he fell down, the audience loved it and laughed all the harder. And, if he showed signs of passing out altogether, the mice would simply bundle him back into the chair and remove him. Freddy was a wonderfully happy person. He loved his life.

On October 27, Caskey was released from the Santa Ana jail.

Christopher drove down there and brought him home.

Two days later, Christopher became ill. He was sick in bed for seven days––from October 30 through November 5 (when Swami

visited him). At that period of his life, prolonged illness was very unusual for Christopher––so unusual that I suspect a psychosomatic cause. Was Christopher trying either to punish Caskey for his past behavior or to appeal for sympathy to Caskey’s nanny persona?

Maybe both. I can’t now even remember what his physical symp-

toms were, but I think one of them was a numbness in the legs.

John van Druten had suffered from a similar numbness and had

been told by his doctor that he had “senile polio”––that is to say, a variety of polio which only afflicts elderly people and is never severe enough to cause paralysis. Christopher was a copycat with regard to his friends’ ailments. Later on, he used to reproduce Jo Masselink’s.

Before taking to his bed, Christopher had seen Dr. Kolisch on October 24, and Kolisch came to see him again on November 1.

It may have been on one of these occasions that Kolisch gave

Christopher the most memorable piece of medical advice he has ever received: “You have the kind of constitution which is capable of simulating every species of pathological condition. So I would urge you, never consult a doctor again, as long as you live. It will only be necessary once––and then it will be too late.”

On November 7 and again on November 10––after spending

another day in bed in between––Christopher went househunting

with Caskey. I suppose that Mrs. Strasberg had refused to renew the lease of 333 East Rustic Road. Evidently they didn’t like any of the houses they saw in the Santa Monica area. I can’t remember how it came about that they decided, later that same month, to leave Los ¾ 1950 ¾

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Angeles altogether and settle in Laguna Beach. On November 25, they drove down to Laguna and were shown houses by Alan Walker, a friend of theirs, who was a real estate agent. I think they must have made up their minds about one of them, that same day––for they signed a lease on it three days later.

On November 30, Speed Lamkin and Gus Field came to talk

about their Sally Bowles play. Later, Speed took Christopher and Caskey to have dinner with Marion Davies. This visit is described in the journal. Christopher was impressed by the prisonlike atmosphere of the house––your drinks were served to you by uniformed, armed cops; by the gold plate on the sideboard; by the heavily felt presence of nonpresent Hearst, now bedridden and referred to as “the Man Upstairs”; by the paranoid-fascist conversation of two men from the New York headquarters of some Hearst publication; by the little office dominated by a portrait of General MacArthur––from which, according to Speed, the whole Hearst empire was controlled; and also, most of all by Davies herself.1

After supper, when the New Yorkers had been called upstairs to see Hearst, Davies took Christopher, Speed and Caskey into the office.

She was very drunk now and wanted to dance. She did the splits, over and over again, to the music of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Her legs parted without effort, like an open banana skin, but, once down on her sacrum, she was helpless and had to be hauled giggling to her feet by her partners. They kept this up until 3:30 a.m., when her nurse, who had been reading, all this while, in a dressing room adjoining one of the downstair toilets, appeared and led Davies off to bed.

Speed revelled in all this. Christopher says in the journal:

He adores this smell of power, in a sort of Balzacian way. With his vulgarity, snobbery and naive appetite for display, he might well become a minor Balzac of Hollywood. There is something about

him I rather like, or at any rate find touching. He is so crude and vulnerable, and not malicious, I think. He reminds me of Paul Sorel, but he is much more intelligent; and he has energy and talent.

On December 5, Caskey and Christopher drove to Laguna and

spent their first night in the new house. It was in South Laguna, actually––number 31152 on Monterey Street, which wound around 1 “Marion Davies, thin, pink, raddled, with luxuriant dead-looking fair hair, very innocent blue eyes, came in drunk. One wanted to say, like a Shakespearian character: ‘Alack, poor lady. . . .’ She stumbled a little and had to be helped to her chair; but she made a lot of sense, and talked seriously to the two men about business.” [D 1, p. 432.]

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the hillside above the Coast Highway, looking down on Camel

Point and the beach below it. You could get to the beach much more directly on foot, by a narrow downhill trail. High above was the modernistic house built for Richard Halliburton, the madcap

explorer, shortly before his death. This part of Laguna was sleepy and sparsely inhabited in those days especially during the winter months.

Number 31152, like its neighbors, was built in country-cottage style, with a disproportionately long garden sloping down rather steeply to the road. (The houses on the opposite side of Monterey Street stood so much lower that you could see right over them, out to the ocean horizon.) During World War II, several whores had lived at 31152 and had entertained service men there. Caskey felt that this had given the place “a party atmosphere.”1

The rest of December was spent in moving into the Monterey

Street house. This required several trips back and forth. On

December 15, they brought Christopher’s books down to Laguna in the station wagon; the books were so heavy that a tire blew out, near Newport Beach. On the 22nd, they rented a truck and brought

down the furniture. (This was chiefly furniture given to Caskey by his mother. 31152 was partially furnished by its owner, as 333 had been.) After this, Caskey made two more trips to Santa Monica, on the 27th and the 29th, to collect the last of their belongings from 333.

So they weren’t completely established at 31152 until just before New Year’s Eve. Hayden Lewis and Rod Owens came down to

spend it and New Year’s Day with them.2

1 Christopher wrote in the journal on December 11:

I like this house, despite its knotty pine walls, because it fits into a picture I have of the atmosphere of “Old Laguna”––the original colony of third-rate watercolorists, mild eccentrics, British expatriate ladies who ran

“Scottish” tea shops, astrologers, breeders of poodles, all kinds of refugees from American city life. Also, this whole area of small houses, gardens of flowering shrubs and sheltered winter sunshine, sandy lanes winding up and down the steep hillside, takes me back to early memories of Penmaenmawr

[Wales] and Ventnor [Isle of Wight]. I have an agreeable feeling of having come to the very last western edge of America, looking out over the pale bright Pacific––much cleaner than at Santa Monica––with nothing between me and Catalina but mist and a huge telephone pole.

(The islands of Catalina (opposite) and Clemente (to the south) figured largely in the seascape. You could also see the Palos Verdes headland (to the northwest) on a clear day, and beyond it, on a clear night, some of the lights of Los Angeles.)

2 Among the books Christopher read in 1950, I chiefly remember the ones he reviewed and/or was reading for the second time: The Martian Chronicles; ¾ 1951 ¾

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1951

The December 11 journal entry, from which I’ve already quoted [in note 1, page 274], contains resolves by Christopher to make a new start with Caskey. And Caskey himself was working hard to fix up the house. I have one endearing memory of him at this time: they had brought down an icebox from somewhere and there it stood

outside the back door, seemingly too large to be moved into the F. M. Ford’s Parade’s End (he had read only part of this before); [Spender’s]

World Within World; H. G. Wells––Prophet of Our Day, by Antonina Vallentin; Masefield’s Multitude and Solitude. Out of the rest of them, Calder Willingham’s Geraldine Bradshaw made a dazzling impression, it seemed a masterpiece of comedy, but I haven’t yet reread it. Nothing, by Henry Green, isn’t among my absolute favorites; I prefer Living, Loving and Doting. Eliot’s [The] Cocktail Party slightly nauseates me, good as it is. I find Venus Observed––and the few other Christopher Fry plays I’ve read––piss-elegant posing. Christopher enjoyed

[Thor Heyerdahl’s] The Kon-Tiki Expedition, but mostly because it is about the South Pacific. Homage to Catalonia (which I think Christopher must have read before) is certainly a noble book; I honor grim old Orwell far more than I enjoy him. The same with Lowell Naeve’s A Field of Broken Stones. Miss Lonelyhearts––that’s a different matter; I neither honor nor enjoy Nathanael West. William Goyen’s The House of Breath and Donald Windham’s The Dog Star are both of them remembered as crypto-queer trifles, though I believe Christopher wrote blurbs for them. James Barr’s Quatrefoil is at least honest fag-trash. [Tennessee Williams’s] The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is trash too, but of the sort which can only be produced by a great dramatic poet. A Drama in Muslin is very minor George Moore, but I love Moore now as Christopher did then, dearly. I remember liking William Cooper’s Scenes from Provincial Life quite a lot but not quite enough; it was typical of the sort of novel the Beesleys really loved. They had recommended it to Christopher. Christopher admired Gerald Sykes’s The Quiet American [sic, Sykes’s book was The Nice American; Graham Greene’s more famous title appeared in 1955] and wrote a big blurb for it—but something tells me I’ll never reread it. And then there was Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave—this must surely have been Christopher’s second reading of it. Connolly’s most maddening, snobbish book and, for that very reason, his most fascinating and self-revealing. And it contains a passage which I keep quoting to myself:

. . . the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece . . . no other task is of any consequence. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it, or having made the admission, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of iridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their next book is going to be their best, for they will not acknowledge that it is their present way of life which prevents them from ever creating anything different or better.

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house through that entrance. Caskey sent Christopher away, saying,

“I have to get furious with it before I can do it.” He looked very small and the icebox looked very big. But, when Christopher returned half an hour later, there it was in position, inside the kitchen.

During the first two weeks of January, Christopher worked on a review [for Tomorrow] of the Robert Louis Stevenson omnibus published by Random House. On January 12, they bought a Ford Anglia and sold their station wagon. The Anglia seemed cramped at first, but it was sturdily built and never gave them any trouble. Christopher later described it to Iris Tree as “a very loyal little car.”

On January 13, [a friend] came down to stay, bringing with him an actor [. . .] with whom he was having an affair. [This actor’s] chief claim to fame was that he looked very much like [a certain film star].

When [the star] died [. . .] leaving his role in the film [he was then making] unfinished, [the little-known actor] was used to represent

[the star]––mostly with his back to the camera––in the scenes which remained to be shot.

That evening they probably all drank a lot. Hangovers often gave Christopher a kind of feverish vitality. Waking up early, he ran down to the beach and swam in the ocean for the first time that year. When he got back to the house, he went into the guest room and found [his friend] and [the actor] naked in one of the bunk beds, making love.

[The friend] suggested that Christopher should strip and climb in too.

The ever-randy [friend] was all ready for more sex, although he had just had an orgasm with [the actor]. [The actor] excused himself, saying that he was pooped and couldn’t come again. He was very much in love with [Christopher’s friend], so maybe he was jealous that [the friend] should want to have Christopher. [The friend], no doubt, was just showing off. Christopher found [his friend] unattractive but he fancied [the actor] and it made him wildly excited to do this in [the actor’s] presence. The bed was narrow, and Christopher, as he writhed naked in [his friend’s] arms, kept managing to rub against [the actor’s] naked body lying beside them. (I don’t quite trust this memory. I suspect that it may be partly fantasy.

It’s much more probable that [the actor] retired to his own bed before [Christopher and his friend] started doing whatever they did to each other.)

On January 17, the day-to-day diary notes that Caskey and

Christopher “got air raid information.” I don’t know exactly what this was. Instructions for taking shelter, cutting off the gas at the main, laying in a supply of food suitable for sustaining life during a period of fallout? Anyhow, it is a reminder of those H-bomb-minded, Russian-menaced times.

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On January 21, Speed Lamkin and Gus Field came down for the

day. They and Christopher discussed their play Sally Bowles. The first draft of it was finished.

On January 28, Christopher finished his review of Spender’s World Within World for Tomorrow.

On February 1, Christopher drove to Los Angeles for the day and had another discussion with Speed Lamkin and Gus Field about the Sally Bowles play. During the next eight days, Christopher worked on his novel, lay on the beach, helped Caskey entertain various visitors, was painted by Paul Sorel (so was Caskey) and went to Camille’s, the chief local gay bar. On February 10, he drove to Los Angeles, had another play discussion with Speed and Gus and then spent the night at the Hartford Foundation. The day-to-day diary mentions that Mike Leopold, Chester Aarons, Dick LaPan and

Leonard Culbrow were there. No doubt Christopher took the

opportunity of going to bed with Mike. Next day, Christopher saw his boyhood friend Patrick Monkhouse, who was in Los Angeles on business, probably, for The Manchester Guardian. (See pages 90‒91.) I don’t remember anything about this encounter except the mood of it, which was polite embarrassed goodwill. . . . Oh yes, it comes back to me that Paddy made some remark which he evidently thought was tactless because it might seem to refer to Christopher’s homosexuality. He blushed and tried to excuse himself. Christopher, who hadn’t detected any such reference, didn’t know how to reassure him.

On February 18, while Christopher was in Los Angeles for the

weekend, he had lunch with Dodie and Alec Beesley and they

discussed the Lamkin–Field Sally Bowles play. Dodie wasn’t much impressed by it. She felt that the breaking down of the wall, which Christopher so much liked, would be unworkable in actual performance. It was perhaps at this time that Dodie and Alec began to feel that something must be done to set Christopher free from his commitment to Speed and Gus.

The large thin notebook has its first entry for the year on February 20. Christopher has now written a rough draft of the first four chapters. The opening of the novel is more or less what it will be in the finished version, but Christopher is still planning to include a big group of refugee characters and is still worrying about how he shall relate them to each other and to Stephen Monk.

On February 25, Christopher drove to Los Angeles and spent the night at the Hartford Foundation. Next day, he had tea at the Vedanta Center with Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts. The meeting between Watts and Swami Prabhavananda wasn’t a success––at least, 278

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not from Christopher’s point of view. My memory of it is vague however and Christopher’s disapproval of Watts at that time––later, Christopher got to like him––is expressed by a mental picture of Watts’s yellow teeth, flavored with bad nicotine breath.

Christopher’s first journal entry of the year, on March 6, consists of self-reproaches and complaints. “I’m dull and wretched, so weary of my stupid aging slothful self in its alienation from God. It comes to me, again and again, how I have deteriorated into a dull-witted selfish useless creature. . . . Swami stands ready to help me if I’ll even raise one finger. But I won’t. I won’t go to live at Trabuco.”

(However, despite this talk about sloth, Christopher had finished chapter four of his novel a few days earlier.) These moanings are followed by the old complaints about Caskey––how he comes home at all hours, brings people home with him and disturbs Christopher’s work.

In the middle of March it turned warm and they went swimming, which no doubt temporarily relieved the tension. (Talking of swimming and warm weather reminds me of an incident which I can’t date. It happened on a cold day––during a weekend, probably––

when Christopher, Caskey and a party of friends had a big drunken lunch and then went for a walk on the beach, fully dressed.

Christopher was in a characteristic, half clownish, half hostile mood.

He let the others go on ahead, sat down on the sand and stared at the ocean. Then an idea came to him––it might have been inspired by an illustration to some nineteenth-century novel: a shore in winter, cold rough waves, deserted beach, a clothed, drowned body rolling in the surf. . . . When Caskey and their friends returned, Christopher was awash, face downward in the water, in his leather jacket and shirt and corduroys. The guests were suitably startled, but Caskey said with his comical grin, “Ignore him,” and led them up the path to the house, leaving Christopher to follow in his drenched clothes. He was warm with alcohol and didn’t catch a chill.)

On March 14, Christopher mentions that he is working on a

“story about Basil Fry”; this was maybe his first attempt to write what became “Mr. Lancaster” in Down There on a Visit. On the 17th

Christopher finished chapter two of the annotated translation of Patanjali’s yoga aphorisms. On the 18th and 19th, he was in town, staying the night at the Hartford Foundation, where he saw Speed Lamkin, who had just arrived. I think that one of Speed’s chief motives for coming to live at the foundation was that he wanted to get to know Christopher better and adopt him as his Elder Friend, which indeed he quickly did.

On the 24th, Christopher and Caskey went to a party at the

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Chaplins’. This was the first time they had visited the Chaplins in nearly ten months. It was to be their last meeting. (See pages 233‒234.) On the 25th (Easter Day) Christopher and Bill were back in

Laguna. Steve (see page 32) came down to see them with his

latest lover, Jack Garber.[*] Steve didn’t seem much changed and Christopher still felt affectionate toward him. Jack Garber was a good-looking blond boy, whom Christopher found attractive but a bit pretentious. There seemed to be tension between him and Steve; the relationship didn’t look as if it would last long.

After supper they left, to drive back to Los Angeles. Then, very much later, Lennie Newman arrived. By this time, Bill was snoring in bed, drunkenly asleep. But Christopher, also in bed (have I ever mentioned that he and Bill had separate beds in the same room?), heard the knocking and got up to let Lennie in. Christopher had been drinking all evening. Lennie, no doubt, was drunk as usual. As usual, they hugged and kissed. But then the unusual began to happen.

Kissing prolonged itself into tongue kissing. Their hands moved down each other’s bodies and started to grope buttocks and loins and cocks. Christopher, who slept in the raw, was naked already underneath the bathrobe he had put on to greet Lennie. He merely had to throw it off.

Meanwhile, when already well on his way to Los Angeles, Steve had found that he must have left his wallet behind at Monterey Street––I forget how or why. Back they had to drive. Getting no answer when they knocked, they came in––to find the lights on in the living room and bedroom, Caskey still asleep in one bed,

Christopher and Lennie lying naked on the other––Lennie on his belly, with Christopher on top, fucking him. Christopher and Lennie talked to them while they looked for and found the wallet, but Christopher didn’t withdraw his cock from Lennie’s asshole and continued the fuck in low gear, with deep slow thrusts which Lennie countered with movements of his buttocks. When Steve and Jack Garber had left again, the fuck gathered speed to its climax.

(Christopher’s exhibitionism, in making love to Lennie in the presence of Steve and Jack Garber, is strangely paralleled––now I come to think of it––by the party at Denny Fouts’s apartment on June 3, 1945 (see page 35) at which Willy Tompkins and the lieutenant had sex in public and [one of the guests] urged

Christopher to do likewise with him. I don’t know how Steve was affected, if at all, by seeing Christopher fuck Lennie. Jack Garber was rather turned on. He later wrote to Christopher, telling him that he

[* Not his real name.]

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was “a Triton amongst the minnows”––which was certainly in-

tended as a compliment and not as a reference to the line in

Coriolanus III: i.[*])

Lennie was so agreeably surprised by Christopher’s performance as a sex partner that he told Caskey and other friends about it.

Christopher was equally pleased, but not particularly surprised, to find that Lennie was a marvellous lay. All his natural sweetness, his wholesomeness, even the positive aspect of his Mormon upbringing was expressed in his sex play. As a fuckee, he couldn’t have been less passive; he was yin with the maximum of energy and cooperation.

He had developed such control of his sphincter muscle that he could massage and milk his partner’s cock most excitingly.1

Christopher had had a motive for going to bed with Lennie, but he only became aware of this after he had done it. He had always been a bit jealous of Lennie, much as he liked him, because Caskey’s friendship with Lennie seemed so exclusive. Lennie was the companion whom Caskey usually chose when he wanted to get away

from Christopher and go off on a binge. By going to bed with

Lennie, Christopher cured himself of his jealousy in the best possible way. Now Lennie and he had a relationship of their own. This didn’t mean that they had to keep having sex together––they only did it once again––or even that they saw much more of each other than before. But now there was a real lasting warmth between them.

Caskey didn’t in the least resent this.

On March 31, Bill Caskey started a gardening job, according to the day-to-day diary. I don’t remember anything about this.

April was a seemingly uneventful month which nevertheless

brought Christopher much nearer to the climax with Caskey. He struggled on with the novel––“this horrible bitch of a book,” as he 1 In connection with this, I have a memory which is very vivid but which I suspect slightly, simply because I can’t find any reference to it in the day-to-day diary. Jim Charlton came to spend the night at Monterey Street, not long after Christopher’s fuck with Lennie. In the morning Jim walked into Christopher’s and Caskey’s bedroom, naked, with a hard-on. Caskey was asleep. Jim grinned at Christopher, lifted him naked out of bed and carried him out of the room and into the guest bedroom. This was a typical specimen of Jim’s he-man camp; Christopher found it funny but also sexually exciting. He wanted Jim to fuck him, and, when Jim started to, Christopher began flexing and unflexing his sphincter muscle in imitation of Lennie Newman. It was an amateur performance but it impressed Jim. “Where did you learn that whore trick, for Christ’s sake?” he growled. The fuck was a huge success.

[* “Hear you this Triton of the minnows?” with which Coriolanus scoffs at the people’s tribune, Sicinius.]

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calls it in the large thin notebook on March 28. He drove to Los Angeles on April 21 and stayed two nights at the Huntington

Hartford Foundation. He saw the people he usually saw––Jo and Ben Masselink, Peggy Kiskadden (with whom he still maintained a surface friendship although, underneath, they thoroughly disapproved of each other), Dodie and Alec Beesley, Frank Taylor, Speed

Lamkin. Caskey, meanwhile, went off on his own. I seem to re-

member he had a particular buddy amongst the marines and was

actually able to spend nights at Camp Pendleton. Maybe they had guest rooms for relatives and friends.

As usual, various acquaintances and sex mates (of Caskey chiefly) came by for drinks or meals or to stay the night. The nicest of the sex mates was a herculean boy [. . .], a navy frogman, stationed at San Diego, who had been over to Korea several times, where he had taken part in dangerous underwater missions, attaching mines to enemy ships in harbor, etc. He had an unusually sweet, gentle nature.

His way of introducing himself to you was to get you into bed with him. When he came to the house he went to bed with Bill,

Christopher and any of their guests who were available; and he made them all love him a little.

Talking of love––it was probably during this month that Caskey made a declaration to Christopher. I can only recall that it was made in their bedroom. As so often, the memory of Christopher’s emotional reaction is related to an object or objects. In this case, Christopher is looking at the bureau and the mirror above it while he hears Caskey say, “I’m not in love with you anymore. I’ve been in love with you for a long time, but now it’s over.”

I suppose Caskey meant by this that he no longer felt romantically toward Christopher. He probably said so in order to counteract Christopher’s tendency to express insincere sentiments. Christopher, at that time, really rather hated Caskey but he wouldn’t admit to it.

Whereas Caskey, I think, never wavered––never has wavered––in his love for Christopher. He wanted Christopher to admit, now, that he wasn’t any longer in love with Caskey. I don’t believe he made his declaration in order to cause a permanent break between them, or even to stop Christopher wanting to have sex with him now and then. Caskey, as he later proved, continued to want to have sex with Christopher when he was in the mood. Quite possibly, however, Caskey was beginning to feel that he would like to get right away from Christopher for a longish spell. (Not long after they split up, he decided to go to sea.) After that, he was ready to resume a loving friendship, unromantic but occasionally sexual, for the rest of their natural lives.

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I don’t remember if Christopher made any reply to this. Most

likely he just looked hurt and sulked.

And now a new chapter in Christopher’s life opened. That is to say, during May 1951, two of Christopher’s immediate problems began to solve themselves. Also, something happened––quite unplanned, unforeseen by him––which was to make a big difference to his

literary career and economic future.

The Caskey problem began to solve itself when Christopher

left Monterey Street and moved, for the time being, into the

Huntington Hartford Foundation. The problem of Christopher’s

novel began to solve itself, thanks to Speed Lamkin. The unforeseen happening was John van Druten’s decision to make a play out of Christopher’s character Sally Bowles and some other parts of his Goodbye to Berlin.

The domestic break with Caskey was inevitable, I suppose. Yet Christopher will hardly admit this to himself, even in the last of the journal entries (May 6) preceding it. The furthest he will go is to write: “There is absolutely no doubt, I really ought to leave Bill. I am only plaguing him. And yet, somehow, to leave––just like that––as the result of a ‘sensible’ decision––or in a towering rage; both seem wrong.”

Writing in the journal, on May 28, about his move to the

foundation on May 21, Christopher merely states that, “I moved because life with Billy had become unbearable. It doesn’t matter just how, or why; and it is certainly no use passing ‘moral’ judgements.”

In other words, Christopher refuses to discuss what happened, even with himself. Later, in another journal entry (August 22), he alludes to “that dreadful party on May 20 when I decided to go to the foundation.” But what was so dreadful about the party?1 From the day-to-day diary I see that [the herculean navy frogman] was there, not to mention Peter Darms, of whom Christopher had always

remained fond. It’s probable that it was Christopher himself who behaved badly, not any of the guests; he must have been in one of his ugly sulking moods and made a scene with Caskey, later––perhaps bringing up old grudges and threatening to leave. If so, Caskey, who 1 Referring to an earlier party (April 27–28) Christopher writes [on May 6]:

“All sorts of people came down for the weekend, and I was cheerful and it

‘went’ very well. But afterwards I felt––well, sort of disturbed in my inmost nest. It was hard to settle down on the eggs again. (The eggs, this week, were a rather stupid review I did of a book on Katherine Mansfield.)” [Sylvia Berkman, Katherine Mansfield: A Critical Study for Tomorrow, reprinted in Exhumations.]

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never gave way to threats, would have answered: okay, suit yourself.

Caskey’s attitude was negative, almost neutral. He would never have urged Christopher to leave him. Neither would the Masselinks or the Beesleys or Jim Charlton. They merely stood ready to help, if needed––which was, indeed, all that Christopher expected of them.

He had had quite enough attempted interference in his life, already, from Peggy Kiskadden and others. Early in May, he had written a letter to Jim––“a cry for help”––and then burned it.

And yet, Christopher was open to interference––by the right

person. And that person proved to be, astonishingly enough, Speed Lamkin. Speed could influence Christopher because Christopher didn’t take him, or his concern for Christopher’s future, seriously. It all seemed camp––yet, of course, camp itself must have, according to Christopher’s definition, an underlying seriousness. What was one to make of this niggery, flirty, shrewd, frivolous, perceptive young person? Did he mean anything he said? Even when he was talking obsessively about himself, boasting of all the things he would accomplish in the world, he couldn’t help giggling. And now he had made Christopher one of his projects. Christopher had to leave Billy––with whom, however, Speed was on the best of terms––and come to live at the foundation and put his future in Speed’s hands. If he did that, Speed guaranteed to make him a Success, the success he ought always to have been. (Speed was unimpressed by Christopher’s literary career to date. Christopher had never been properly appreciated, Speed said, because he hadn’t known how to promote

himself.)

As I shall have to keep repeating, the power of this extraordinary tempter was in his absurdity––combined, of course, with intelligence and considerable sex appeal. An aspect of Speed’s camp was to let it be supposed by everybody at the foundation that he and Christopher were having an affair. Well, weren’t they? No––not exactly. But they were clowning an affair, and the clowning sometimes became nearly realistic. Occasionally, it climaxed with the two of them naked in bed together; tickling, biting, groping, laughing, kissing. (I don’t remember that they ever actually had an orgasm.) Or else, embracing in Speed’s parked car, they would imagine a glamorous love life, with a New York apartment and a Bel Air home with two swimming

pools. Certainly, Christopher never seriously considered living with Speed for one instant. But he did enjoy their intimacy, and mentally playing house with him.

I think Speed was already working on his second novel, The Easter Egg Hunt, although it wasn’t published until 1954. They must have talked about this. But Christopher was preoccupied with the

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difficulties he was having with his own novel. And Speed was eager to deal with them––for this would strengthen his influence over Christopher. Speed had already read and greatly admired the first chapter (which would be published next year in New World Writing); now Christopher showed him the rest of the manuscript. Next day, May 29, Speed delivered his verdict: “The refugees are a bore.”

The sentence was like an axe stroke, cutting the novel in half; but the operation was life-giving, not destructive. Because, as Christopher now saw, the novel had been two novels, self-destructively, chokingly intertwined––the story of Stephen, Elizabeth, Sarah and Jane was one novel; the story of Sarah and the refugees was the other. They would never form a whole. (It now seems that the second will never be written.)

Nobody had condemned the refugees before. The Beesleys were

probably dubious about them but hadn’t wanted to upset

Christopher by upsetting the applecart. Speed with his ruthlessness had disregarded Christopher’s feelings and expressed his own.

Christopher could never be grateful enough to him. And how

quickly everything now fell into place! The large thin notebook has an entry for June 1 which shows that, after a series of discussions with Speed and the Beesleys, the main outlines of the novel in its final form have already been decided on.

Yet the revised manuscript of The World in the Evening didn’t go off to the publishers until November 30, 1953!

Meanwhile the Beesleys had been working on Christopher’s behalf in a quite different area.

As has been recorded, neither of them liked the Speed Lamkin–

Gus Field play based on Sally Bowles. Now, while they were driving together to visit John van Druten at his ranch in the Coachella Valley, Alec got the idea that John should be persuaded to take on the project.

Dodie writes (August 25, 1975): “I have such a vivid memory of Alec (by arrangement) putting his head out of John’s swimming pool and saying, ‘Why not make a play out of Sally Bowles’––and then diving down again, leaving me to get John going.”

(Dodie’s letter was written to correct my misremembered or,

rather, invented version of the facts in my introduction to The Berlin of Sally Bowles,[*] published in 1975.)

Once John’s inventiveness had been challenged, the rest was

predictable. John quickly produced a first draft. And now the news

[* Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin reissued in one volume by the Hogarth Press.]

¾ 1951 ¾

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was told to Christopher. On May 28, John, Starcke and Christopher had supper together and John read his play aloud. It was then still called Sally Bowles.

I have no memory whatsoever of the impression made on

Christopher by that first reading. I think he disliked the character of Christopher Isherwood from the beginning and never changed his opinion. I think he also objected to most of the speeches about the persecution of the Jews which John had written in, and to several of John’s jokes. But what mattered to him chiefly was that this play would almost certainly be performed and would probably make

money. And, already, he saw the glitter of footlights ahead of him and felt the thrill of escaping into the New York theatrical world.

Christopher was obviously the person who had to tell Speed

Lamkin and Gus Field––since it was he, after all, who had to accept the responsibility of deciding to authorize John van Druten’s play and reject theirs. Speed could not have behaved better. He assured Christopher that he quite understood the situation. In Christopher’s place, he would jump at this chance. He was happy for Christopher and knew that the play would be a terrific hit. As for Gus, he would explain everything to him. It would be easier, Speed said, for him to do it himself than for Christopher to do it.

So Christopher felt more warmly toward Speed than ever––as did the Beesleys, partly perhaps because they were suffering from slight guilt. They invited Speed to their house, several times, with Christopher. And Speed charmed them; he had nice southern

manners which he could use when he wished. Also, he continued to create a most peculiar relationship with Alec Beesley. Declaring to Christopher, in private, that Alec was one of the handsomest men he’d ever set eyes on and that he’d bet Alec wasn’t that hard to get, he began flirting quite openly but inoffensively with Alec in Dodie’s presence. Neither Alec nor Dodie could object to this because Speed was such an avowed faggot that his behavior seemed no more than natural. But it amused Christopher to realize that Alec was not only slightly embarrassed by it but also coyly pleased. Alec even tried to learn Speed’s language––that is to say, he tried to get Speed to explain to him what “camp” is. But Speed’s teasingly misleading definitions left him nowhere. Alec ended by deciding that camp is any kind of irresponsible unmotivated behavior. Therefore, one morning when Speed and Christopher had been invited to lunch, they found that Alec had prepared for their arrival by throwing all the garden chairs into the pool, where they were floating. “It’s a camp!” Alec explained, obviously pleased with himself, like a proud pupil expecting praise.

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

Chronology

1904 August 26, Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood, first child of Frank Bradshaw Isherwood and Kathleen Bradshaw Isherwood (née Machell Smith), born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire, on the estate of his grandfather, John Bradshaw Isherwood, squire of nearby Marple Hall.

1911 October 1, Isherwood’s brother Richard Graham Bradshaw Isherwood born.

1914 May 1, Isherwood arrives at his preparatory school, St. Edmund’s, Hindhead, Surrey; August 4, Britain declares war on Germany and Isherwood’s father receives mobilization orders; September 8, Frank Isherwood leaves for France.

1915 May 8 or 9, Frank Isherwood evidently wounded at Ypres, probably killed.

1917 January 1, Isherwood begins keeping a diary; he records walking with W. H. Auden at school.

1919 January 17, Isherwood arrives at Repton, his public school, near Derby.

1921 Winter, Isherwood joins G. B. Smith’s history form, where he meets Edward Upward, at Repton; November, Kathleen Isherwood moves with her mother to 36 St. Mary Abbot’s Terrace in West Kensington, London.

1923 October 10, Isherwood goes up with an £80 history scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he renews his friendship with Edward Upward.

1924 Isherwood and Upward start keeping diaries and begin to invent a fantasy world, Mortmere, about which they write stories.

1925 June 1, Cambridge Tripos exams begin; June 18, Isherwood is summoned to Cambridge to explain his joke Tripos answers and withdraws from university; August, takes job as secretary to André Mangeot’s string quartet; December, meets W. H. Auden and renews prep school friendship.

1926 Easter, Isherwood begins writing Seascape with Figures, which is the first version of All the Conspirators and his fourth attempt at a novel.

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1927 January 24, takes first job as private tutor.

1928 May 18, Isherwood’s first novel, All the Conspirators, is published by Jonathan Cape; May 19, he visits Bremen; June 22, Auden introduces Isherwood to Stephen Spender; October, Isherwood begins as a medical student at King’s College, London, and Auden moves to Berlin.

1929 March, Isherwood leaves medical school at the end of spring term; March 14–27, he visits Auden in Berlin where he meets John Layard and begins an affair with Berthold Szczesny; November 29, Isherwood moves to Berlin.

1930 December, Isherwood becomes tenant of Fräulein Meta Thurau at Nollendorfstrasse 17; during 1930, his translation of the Intimate Journals of Charles Baudelaire is published.

1931 By early 1931, Isherwood meets Jean Ross and soon afterwards he also meets Gerald Hamilton; in September, he begins teaching English.

1932 February 17, The Memorial is published by Isherwood’s new publisher, the Hogarth Press; March 13, Isherwood meets Heinz Neddermeyer while living at Mohrin with Francis Turville-Petre; August 4–September 30, Isherwood visits England and meets Gerald Heard and Chris Wood; September 14, he meets E. M. Forster; October, works as translator for a communist workers’ organization, the IAH (Internationale Arbeiterhilfe), in Berlin.

1933 March 23, Hitler achieves dictatorial powers; April 5, Isherwood arrives in London with his belongings, preparing to leave Berlin for good; April 30, he returns to Berlin and on May 13, leaves for Prague with Heinz; they travel to Greece for the summer and return to England in September; October, Heinz returns to Berlin and Isherwood begins work as Berthold Viertel’s collaborator on a film script for The Little Friend.

1934 January 5, Heinz is refused entry into England; January 20, Isherwood meets Heinz in Berlin and takes him to Amsterdam, returning alone to London; February 21, filming starts on The Little Friend; March 26, Isherwood joins Heinz in Amsterdam and they travel to Gran Canaria for the summer; June 8–August 12, Isherwood writes Mr. Norris Changes Trains; August 26, The Little Friend opens in London; September 6, Isherwood and Heinz set off for Copenhagen.

1935 January, Auden visits Copenhagen to work with Isherwood on The Dog Beneath the Skin; February 21, Mr. Norris Changes Trains is published by Hogarth; April, Isherwood moves Heinz to Brussels; May 9, The Last of Mr.

Norris (U.S. edition of Mr. Norris Changes Trains) is published by William Morrow; May 13, Heinz receives a three-month permit for Holland and they settle in Amsterdam, lodging next to Klaus Mann; also in May, The Dog Beneath the Skin, or Where Is Francis?, written with Auden, is published by Faber and Faber; September 16, Isherwood and Heinz return to Brussels; December 21, they move from Antwerp to Sintra, Portugal, where Spender and Tony Hyndman join them.

1936 January 12, The Dog Beneath the Skin opens at the Westminster Theatre Chronology

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in London; mid-January, Isherwood completes a draft of Sally Bowles; March 14, Spender and Hyndman leave Sintra for Spain; March 16–April 17, Auden visits Sintra to work on The Ascent of F 6; July 25, Heinz is ordered through the German consul in Lisbon to report for military service, but does not; September 11, Faber publishes Auden and Isherwood’s play The Ascent of F 6; Isherwood works on Lions and Shadows.

1937 February 26, The Ascent of F 6 premieres at the Mercury Theatre in London; March 17, Isherwood takes Heinz from Brussels to Paris; April 25, he joins Heinz in Luxembourg; F 6 successfully transfers to the Adelphi Little Theatre; May 12, Heinz is forced to leave Luxembourg and goes to Trier, in Germany, where he is arrested by the Gestapo; July 16–August 4, Isherwood works for Alexander Korda on the film script of a Carl Zuckmayer story; August 12–September 17, he works with Auden in Dover on their new play, On the Frontier; September 15, Isherwood finishes Lions and Shadows; October, the Hogarth Press publishes Sally Bowles (later incorporated into Goodbye to Berlin).

1938 January 19, Isherwood and Auden leave for China to write a travel book, Journey to a War; during the spring “The Landauers” appears in John Lehmann’s magazine, New Writing; March 17, Lions and Shadows is published by Hogarth Press; July 1–9, Isherwood and Auden, returning around the world from China, visit Manhattan where Isherwood meets Vernon Old; September 19, Isherwood begins writing Journey to a War, using his own and Auden’s diary entries; September 26, The Ascent of F 6 is televised; October 1938, Faber publishes Auden and Isherwood’s last play together, On the Frontier; November 14, On the Frontier opens at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge; mid-December, Isherwood works with Auden in Brussels on Journey to a War, completed December 17; Jacky Hewit accompanies Isherwood in Brussels through the New Year.

1939 January 19, Isherwood sails for America with Auden, arriving January 26

in New York where they settle; March, Goodbye to Berlin is published by the Hogarth Press and in the U.S. by Random House; the same month, Journey to a War is published by Faber and by Random House; early May, Isherwood applies for U.S. residency; May 6, he sets off for California with Vernon Old; June 9, Isherwood gets quota visa; July, Isherwood begins working with Berthold Viertel again and meets Swami Prabhavananda; early August, Isherwood begins instruction in meditation; October, Isherwood’s new story,

“I Am Waiting,” is published in The New Yorker; November, Isherwood gets his first Hollywood film job writing for Goldwyn Studios.

1940 January, Isherwood begins his first writing job at MGM, on Rage in Heaven for Gottfried Reinhardt; July 9, Uncle Henry Bradshaw Isherwood dies, Isherwood inherits the family estate and gives it to his brother, Richard; November 8, Swami Prabhavananda initiates Isherwood.

1941 By January 11, Isherwood finishes working on Rage in Heaven and then

“polishes” other MGM scripts; February 17, he breaks with Vernon Old and, in mid-March, moves next door to Gerald Heard; early May, Isherwood finishes his first year’s contract at MGM and leaves the studio; by mid-June, 292

Chronology

Denny Fouts moves in with Isherwood; July 15, Kathleen Isherwood returns to live at Wyberslegh with Richard; August 22, Isherwood flies east to visit Auden and meets Caroline Norment at the Cooperative College Workshop, a refugee hostel in Haverford, Pennsylvania; October 11, he moves to Haverford to work in the hostel; also during 1941, Gerald Heard begins to build his monastic community, Trabuco.

1942 June 30, Isherwood has a medical exam at the draft board; July 6, the Haverford refugee hostel closes, and Isherwood returns to California; July 13, he receives his draft classification, 4-E, and applies to Los Prietos Camp to do civilian public service; by October 12, Isherwood begins working on a translation of the Bhagavad Gita with Swami Prabhavananda; October, another story, “Take It or Leave It,” is published in The New Yorker; November 30, Isherwood starts work at Paramount on Somerset Maugham’s The Hour Before Dawn; December 31, Isherwood writes “The Wishing Tree” for the Vedanta Society magazine.

1943 January 29, Isherwood finishes at Paramount; February 6, he moves into the Vedanta Center, Ivar Avenue, in preparation for becoming a monk; May, Isherwood begins writing Prater Violet; August, Denny Fouts introduces Isherwood to Bill Harris.

1944 February and again in March, Isherwood stays with Aldous and Maria Huxley in Llano where Isherwood and Huxley work out a film story, Jacob’s Hands; April 17, Isherwood decides he cannot become a monk; during June, Isherwood spends a few days with Bill Harris at Denny Fouts’s flat in Santa Monica; Isherwood and Huxley complete draft of Jacob’s Hands; August, Isherwood and Prabhavananda’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita is published; September 25, Isherwood moves to Ananda Bhavan, the new Santa Barbara Vedanta Center in Montecito; November 17, Isherwood leaves Ananda Bhavan and moves to Laguna; late November, Isherwood returns to the Hollywood Vedanta Center on Ivar Avenue.

1945 February 5, Isherwood’s affair with Bill Harris ends; February 21, Isherwood starts three months’ work on Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White for Warner Brothers; June 2, Isherwood attends Bill Caskey’s twenty-fourth birthday party; June 4, he returns to Warner Brothers to work on Maugham’s Up at the Villa for Wolfgang Reinhardt; during the summer, Prater Violet appears in Harper’s Bazaar and New Directions publishes The Berlin Stories, containing The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin; August 23, Isherwood moves out of the Vedanta Center into the Beesleys’ chauffeur’s apartment; he begins translating Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination with Swami Prabhavananda; September 25, Isherwood and Bill Caskey move into Denny Fouts’s empty apartment, 137 Entrada Drive, Santa Monica; November, Prater Violet is published in the U.S. by Random House; towards the end of the year, Vedanta for the Western World, edited and introduced by Isherwood, is published by Marcel Rodd.

1946 January 12, Isherwood undergoes surgery to remove a median bar inside his bladder; April, Caskey quarrels with Denny Fouts, and Isherwood and Caskey move into Salka Viertel’s garage apartment, 165 Mabery Road, Santa Chronology

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Monica; May, Prater Violet is published in the U.K. by Isherwood’s new English publisher, Methuen; during the summer, Isherwood revises his wartime diaries, 1939–1944; November 8, he becomes a U.S. citizen; towards the end of the year, Isherwood works with Lesser Samuels on a film treatment, Judgement Day in Pittsburgh.

1947 January 19, Isherwood sets out (via New York) on his first postwar trip to England; March 28, he signs deed of gift passing on Marple estate, including Wyberslegh, to his brother Richard; April 16, returns to New York; during the summer, he lives with Caskey at James and Tania Stern’s apartment at 207 East 52nd Street, Manhattan; in August, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination is published; September 19, Isherwood sails with Caskey for South America to write a travel book, The Condor and the Cows; September 28, they arrive in Cartagena, Colombia; October 28, Isherwood and Caskey travel south via Bogotá; November, they continue through Ecuador and reach Lima, Peru, by year end; also in 1947, the first U.S. edition of Lions and Shadows is published by New Directions.

1948 January, Isherwood and Caskey travel in Peru and Bolivia; February, they leave La Paz, Bolivia, for Argentina and depart from Buenos Aires by ship in late March; April 1, they stop in Rio, then continue direct from Brazil to North Africa and France, arriving in Paris on April 22; April 30, they proceed to London; late May, Isherwood visits his family at Wyberslegh; June 9, Isherwood and Caskey sail for New York; June 15, Isherwood returns alone to California and on July 19 he starts work on The Great Sinner at MGM; mid-August, he meets Jim Charlton; that summer, Isherwood begins translating Patanjali’s yoga aphorisms with Swami Prabhavananda; September 20, Caskey returns; September 28, Isherwood moves with Caskey into 333 Rustic Road; October 9, Isherwood finishes work at MGM; November 12, Isherwood’s nanny, Annie Avis, dies; December 16, Denny Fouts dies in Rome.

1949 January 6–13, Isherwood works for Gottfried Reinhardt at MGM; April 12, he completes The Condor and the Cows; he begins to work intermittently on his proposed novel The School of Tragedy; by May, he begins working with Lesser Samuels on The Easiest Thing in the World; August 6–7, Isherwood meets Evelyn Caldwell (later Hooker); August, he finishes draft of The Easiest Thing in the World with Lesser Samuels; August 10, meets Igor and Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft; also in August, he works on Below the Equator with Aldous Huxley and Lesser Samuels; September 7, Trabuco is dedicated as a Ramakrishna monastery; November 11, Caskey leaves for Florida; also in November, Methuen publishes The Condor and the Cows; December 1, Isherwood writes a memorial article on Klaus Mann; during 1949, Isherwood is elected to the U.S. Academy of Arts and Sciences.

1950 Isherwood works on a film script, The Vacant Room, with Lesser Samuels; late April, Caskey returns via Kentucky to Rustic Road; June 29, Bill Kennedy proposes that Isherwood begin reviewing regularly for Tomorrow; August 11, Isherwood and Peggy Kiskadden leave for Arizona and New Mexico by car; December 10, Isherwood moves with Caskey to 31152 Monterey Street, Coast Royal, South Laguna.

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Chronology

1951 May 21, Isherwood leaves Caskey and moves to the Huntington Hartford Foundation, 2000 Rustic Canyon Road, Pacific Palisades; he works on The School of Tragedy; during the spring, John van Druten writes the play I Am a Camera, based on Goodbye to Berlin; by August 22, Isherwood is back in South Laguna with Caskey; mid-September, he decides to break finally with Caskey and returns to the Huntington Hartford Foundation; October, Isherwood goes to the East Coast for rehearsals of I Am a Camera, directed by van Druten; November 8, I Am a Camera opens in Hartford, Connecticut; November 28, I Am a Camera opens successfully on Broadway at the Empire Theater; December, Isherwood sails for England where he spends Christmas with his mother and brother in a London hotel; Caskey joins the merchant marine.

1952 February 10, Isherwood returns to Berlin after eighteen years and sees Heinz Neddermayer for the first time since Heinz’s arrest by the Gestapo in 1937; February 27, Isherwood sails from England for New York; by April 8, he returns to California with Sam Costidy; May 4, Isherwood settles at Trabuco where he completes Patanjali translation and part one of his novel, still called The School of Tragedy; May 21, he moves alone to the Mermira apartments in Santa Monica; also during May, Isherwood resigns from the board of the Huntington Hartford Foundation and the first chapter of his unfinished novel is published in New Writing; June, Isherwood begins fixing up Evelyn Hooker’s garden house at 400 South Saltair Avenue in Brentwood and moves there in late summer; during 1952, Vedanta for Modern Man, edited by Isherwood, is published in U.S. and U.K.; Isherwood completes “California Story” (later reprinted as “The Shore” in Exhumations) to accompany Sanford Roth’s photographs in Harper’s Bazaar.

1953 January 6, Caskey leaves for San Francisco and ships out again; February 14, Isherwood begins relationship with Don Bachardy; February 20–26, Bachardy’s brother Ted has a nervous breakdown and is committed; April 25, Bachardy moves out of his mother’s apartment and into his own furnished room in Hollywood; May 16, Bachardy moves into Marguerite and Harry Brown’s apartment in West Hollywood; August 5, Isherwood completes The World in the Evening; September, Isherwood moves out of Evelyn Hooker’s garden house, at her request, and stays at the Browns’ apartment with Bachardy; September 19, Isherwood and Bachardy move together into their own apartment; during October, Isherwood’s article on Ernst Toller appears in Encounter; also in 1953, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, translated with Swami Prabhavananda, is published.

1954 January, Isherwood begins editing an anthology, Great English Short Stories, and plans a biography of Ramakrishna as well as various new pieces of autobiographical fiction; January 25, he begins work for Eddie Knopf at MGM

on Diane; June, The World in the Evening is published in the U.S. and the U.K.; August 25, Isherwood completes script for Diane; August 26, Isherwood turns fifty; during the spring and summer, John Collier writes a screenplay based on John van Druten’s play, I Am a Camera, and Julie Harris accepts the lead; November, Isherwood and Bachardy visit Tennessee Williams in Key West to watch filming of The Rose Tattoo in which Isherwood plays a bit part; Chronology

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December, they travel to Mexico with Jo and Ben Masselink and Isherwood has an idea for a new novel which will eventually be called Down There on a Visit.

1955 Isherwood gets more work at MGM on Diane and writing The Wayfarer, a script about Buddha; February 10, Bachardy starts his junior year at UCLA; February 12, Maria Huxley dies; March 18, Ted Bachardy has another breakdown and is hospitalized again; May 2, Diane starts filming; May 18, Bachardy’s twenty-first birthday party; May 28, Isherwood begins writing his new novel first conceived in Mexico; June 8, he meets Thom Gunn; June 22, Isherwood sees preview of film, I Am a Camera; October 12, Isherwood leaves with Bachardy for New York City and on October 20, they sail from New York for Tangier; October 30, they sail for Italy and in mid-December continue on to Somerset Maugham’s house in France; by Christmas, they are in Munich; December 28, they arrive in Paris.

1956 January, Isherwood and Bachardy arrive in London; January 30–February 6, Isherwood stays with his mother and brother at Wyberslegh and sees Marple Hall for the last time (it will be demolished in 1959); March 6, Isherwood begins writing his new novel, calling it, for the moment, The Lost; March 11, Isherwood and Bachardy leave England for New York and California; during April, they buy 434 Sycamore Road; July 2, Bachardy enrolls at Chouinard Art School; September 24, Isherwood begins work on Jean-Christophe for Jerry Wald at Fox.

1957 February 12, Isherwood discovers a lump on the side of his belly; February 15, the tumor is successfully removed and proves benign, but ill health and depression persist; April, Isherwood prepares an introduction for a new edition of All the Conspirators, to be published in U.K.; early July, Isherwood and Gavin Lambert begin television project for Hermione Gingold, Emily Ermingarde; August 15, Jean-Christophe is shelved by Fox; October 8, Isherwood and Bachardy begin around-the-world trip, via Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali, Bangkok, and Angkor; November 30, they fly to Calcutta and in December continue on to London.

1958 January 30, Isherwood and Bachardy reach Los Angeles (via New York); February 2, Bachardy returns to Chouinard Art School; February 11, Isherwood renews work on his novel and on the Ramakrishna biography; February 25, Bachardy begins taking painting classes from Vernon Old; mid-March, Isherwood begins work on Mary Magdalene for David Selznick, until late June; July 5, Isherwood completes a new foreword for U.S. edition of All the Conspirators; October, Isherwood and Bachardy begin writing a play, The Monsters; during the autumn, Isherwood and Lambert begin revising the film script of The Vacant Room.

1959 Mid-January, Isherwood and Bachardy complete The Monsters; March 7–April 13, Isherwood writes “Mr. Lancaster,” the first part of the final draft of his novel; March 20, he signs on to teach at Los Angeles State College; April, the first installment of Ramakrishna and His Disciples appears in the March/April issue of the Vedanta Society magazine; May 1, Bachardy takes his first job as a professional artist; Isherwood begins writing “Ambrose,” the second part of his 296

Chronology

novel; mid-June, Isherwood and Bachardy undertake to buy 145 Adelaide Drive; July 31, Isherwood finishes writing “Afterwards,” a homosexual short story; August 18, Isherwood and Bachardy travel to New York and then England where Isherwood visits Wyberslegh and sees his mother for the last time; September, they visit France and return to New York and Santa Monica; September 22, Isherwood begins teaching at L.A. State College; September 30, Isherwood and Bachardy move to 145 Adelaide Drive; October, “Mr.

Lancaster” appears in The London Magazine.

1960 L.A. State mounts exhibition on Isherwood; during the spring, Isherwood begins working with Charles Laughton on a play about Socrates; April 18, begins writing part three of his novel; May 25, he accepts a job at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) for the following autumn; June 10, begins writing “Paul,” the final part of his novel; June 15, Kathleen Isherwood dies; August 26, Isherwood completes his last handwritten diary; September 22, he begins teaching at UCSB; also in 1960, Great English Short Stories is published by Dell.

1961 January 23, Bachardy leaves for London to study art at the Slade; April 6, Isherwood joins Bachardy in London; he works with Auden on Berlin musical, but they abandon it when Auden leaves London in mid-June; October 2, Bachardy’s first show opens at the Redfern Gallery; October 15, Isherwood returns to Los Angeles alone; December 11–12, he travels to New York to meet Bachardy.

1962 January 2, Bachardy’s first New York show opens at the Sagittarius Gallery; January 25, Isherwood returns alone to Santa Monica and on January 28 begins teaching again at L.A. State; he plans a new novel called, at first, The English Woman; February 17, Bachardy returns; early March, Down There on a Visit is published by Methuen in the U.K. and by Isherwood’s new publisher, Simon and Schuster, in the U.S.; Isherwood’s UCSB lectures are broadcast on radio; Isherwood and Bachardy begin remodelling their garage as a studio for Bachardy; Isherwood’s novel, The English Woman, begins to evolve into A Single Man.

1963 During the winter and early spring, Bachardy considers living alone; October, Isherwood finishes draft of Ramakrishna and His Disciples; October 21, Isherwood sends final draft of A Single Man to both his U.S. and U.K.

publishers; November 22, Aldous Huxley dies; December, Isherwood travels via Japan to India with Swami Prabhavananda and thinks for the first time of writing A Meeting by the River.

1964 January, Isherwood returns from India via Rome and New York and begins final draft of Ramakrishna and His Disciples; February, he starts to gather material for Exhumations; March, Isherwood begins working on The Loved One with Terry Southern; meets David Hockney; during the summer, Bachardy travels to North Africa, Europe, and London; July–September, Isherwood works on screenplay of Reflections in a Golden Eye; A Single Man is published in the U.S. by Simon and Schuster and, on September 10, in the U.K. by Methuen; September–December, Isherwood works on screenplay of The Sailor from Gibraltar.

Chronology

297

1965 January 6, Bachardy leaves for a further long spell in New York, visiting several times during the year; Isherwood finishes The Sailor from Gibraltar and Exhumations; early February, Isherwood takes up post as Regent’s Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA); spring, he begins writing A Meeting by the River; April 8, Ramakrishna and His Disciples is published by Methuen and appears in the U.S. during the summer; November 1, he begins Hero-Father, Demon-Mother (Kathleen and Frank).

1966 Spring, Isherwood is visiting professor at UCLA; Gerald Heard has the first of many strokes; Exhumations is published in the U.S. and the U.K.; May 31, Isherwood completes third draft of A Meeting by the River; July, he agrees to work on Silent Night with Danny Mann for ABC television, travels with Mann to Austria in September for filming; October, Isherwood visits England and stays with his brother at Wyberslegh where he reads his father’s letters; November, Cabaret, Fred Ebb and John Kander’s stage musical based on I Am a Camera, opens in New York, produced by Hal Prince.

1967 January, Isherwood begins working in more earnest on the book which eventually will be called Kathleen and Frank; spring, he corrects proofs of A Meeting by the River which is published in April in the U.S. and in June in the U.K.; May, he returns to England to look at family papers at Wyberslegh for Kathleen and Frank, carrying some back to California with him; also in 1967, Isherwood works with James Bridges on a play of A Meeting by the River.

1968 Isherwood adapts Bernard Shaw’s novella The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God for the stage, and also adapts Wedekind’s Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box; Bachardy again spends time in London and in New York; spring, Hockney begins work on a double portrait of Isherwood and Bachardy; October, Isherwood again begins writing Kathleen and Frank; also during 1968, Isherwood and Bachardy work together on the play of A Meeting by the River.

1969 The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God opens at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; July, Isherwood and Bachardy travel to Tahiti, Bora Bora, Samoa, New Zealand and Australia and begin work on a screenplay of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius and Claudius the God for Tony Richardson; also in 1969, Essentials of Vedanta is published.

1970 February–April, in London together, Isherwood and Bachardy continue to work on stage version of A Meeting by the River; Isherwood sends final draft of Kathleen and Frank to U.S. and U.K. publishers; also in 1970, E. M. Forster dies, leaving Isherwood the rights to Maurice.

1971 Isherwood completes revisions to Kathleen and Frank; February, Isherwood and Bachardy start work on a TV script of Frankenstein for Universal Studios; April 6, Stravinsky dies; August 14, Gerald Heard dies; August 26, Isherwood begins writing reconstructed diary of the “lost years,” 1945–1951; October, Kathleen and Frank is published by Methuen; also in 1971, Isherwood undergoes hand surgery for Depuytren’s contracture.

1972 January, Isherwood sees preview of film Cabaret, based on the musical, and the U.S. edition of Kathleen and Frank is published by Simon and Schuster; Isherwood and Bachardy undertake another TV script for Universal, The Lady 298

Chronology

from the Land of the Dead; April, the Los Angeles premiere of James Bridges’

production of A Meeting by the River; also in 1972, Isherwood receives an award from the Hollywood Writers’ Club for a lifetime of distinguished contributions to literature.

1973 Isherwood and Bachardy travel to London for the filming of Frankenstein; they visit Wyberslegh and afterwards go to Switzerland and Rome; summer, they work together on a screenplay of A Meeting by the River; Jean Ross dies; September 29, Auden dies; October, Isherwood begins a new autobiographical book eventually titled Christopher and His Kind; December, Isherwood and Bachardy’s screenplay, Frankenstein: The True Story, is published by Avon Books.

1975 Isherwood works with Bachardy on a TV script adapted from Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned.

1976 May, Isherwood completes the final draft of Christopher and His Kind; July 4, Swami Prabhavananda dies; November, Isherwood’s new U.S.

publisher, Farrar Straus and Giroux, publishes Christopher and His Kind; Frankenstein: The True Story wins best scenario at the International Festival of Fantastic and Science Fiction Films.

1977 March, the U.K. edition of Christopher and His Kind is published by Methuen.

1979 May 15, Richard Isherwood dies of a heart attack; Isherwood and Bachardy collaborate on October.

1980 My Guru and His Disciple is published in the U.S. and the U.K.; July 16, Isherwood hears that Bill Caskey is dead; October, with drawings by Bachardy, is published.

1981 October, Isherwood learns that he has a malignant tumor in the prostate.

1983 July, Isherwood makes his last diary entry.

1986 January 4, Isherwood dies in Santa Monica.

Glossary

This glossary does not include entries for people adequately introduced by Isherwood himself in his text, nor does it incorporate information from the text. Readers should use the index to locate Isherwood’s own descriptions.

Ackerley, J. R. (1896–1967) . English author and editor. Ackerley wrote drama, poetry, and autobiography, and is known for his intimate relationship with his dog, described in two of his autobiographical books. He was literary editor of The Listener from 1935 to 1959, and published work by some of the best and most important writers of his period; Isherwood contributed numerous reviews during the thirties. Their friendship was sustained in later years partly by their shared acquaintance with E. M. Forster.

Adorno, Theodor (1903–1969) . German philosopher. In 1933, he emigrated to Oxford and then to the U.S. where he became friends with Thomas Mann; later, he returned to his academic career in Frankfurt. Adorno was a critic of phenomenology, existentialism, and neo-positivism. He also wrote about music, language, and literature.

Agee, James (1909–1955). American poet, novelist, journalist, and screenwriter; born in Tennessee and educated at Harvard. Agee’s first book was a 1934

volume in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He became famous for his collaboration with the photographer Walker Percy on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), about Alabama sharecroppers during the Depression (an assignment rejected by Fortune magazine). Later he wrote two semi-autobiographical novels, The Morning Watch (1951) and A Death in the Family (1957), the second of which was published posthumously and won a Pulitzer Prize (it won another Pulitzer when adapted for the stage as All the Way Home). Agee was on the staff of Time as well as Fortune, and he became widely known as a film critic.

His screenplays included The African Queen (1951, with John Huston) and an adaptation of Stephen Crane’s The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (1953).

AJC Ranch. Carter Lodge, John van Druten, and the British actress and director Auriol Lee (who had directed several of van Druten’s plays) bought the ranch in the early 1940s. They named it “AJC” for Auriol, John, Carter.

Lee died in a car accident not long afterwards. Van Druten also owned a forest cabin nearby, in the mountains above Idyllwild.

300

Glossary

Allgood, Sara (1883–1950) . Irish actress. At the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Allgood created the part of “Juno Boyle” in Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey. Isherwood evidently saw the first London run of Juno and the Paycock between November 1925 and May 1926. Allgood repeated the role of “Juno”

for Hitchcock’s 1930 film, and later settled in Hollywood where she made numerous films.

Almond, Paul (b. 1931) . Canadian director, producer, screenwriter; educated at McGill University and at Oxford, where he was president of the poetry society and edited the undergraduate literary magazine Isis. On leaving Oxford, Almond joined a British repertory company before returning to Canada in the early 1950s to work as a TV director and later in film. He made Isabel (1967), Act of the Heart (1970), and Journey (1972) starring his first wife, Geneviève Bujold. His second wife, Joan, is a photographer. With a life-long literary friend, Michael Ballantyne, Almond published a memoir, High Hopes: Coming of Age at the Mid-Century (1999).

Andrews, Oliver. California sculptor, on the art faculty at UCLA. He died suddenly of a heart attack during the 1970s, while still in his forties.

Angermayer, Ken (Kenneth Anger) (b. 1929) . American filmmaker and author. His films include Fireworks (1947), Eaux d’Artifice (1953), and Scorpio Rising (1964). Angermayer grew up in Hollywood. His sensationalist book, Hollywood Babylon (1975), exposes the habitual excesses of many stars and the ruthless way in which some stars were exploited.

Arvin, Newton (1900–1963) . American literary critic and professor of literature; born in Indiana and educated at Harvard. Arvin taught at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and published biographies of Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whitman, and Melville. The Melville biography (which he was working on in Nantucket when Isherwood visited in the summer of 1947) won the National Book Award in 1951. He also contributed to scholarly journals and to The Nation, The New Republic, and, later, Vogue and Vanity Fair. He was unsuccessfully married for eight years, from 1932 to 1940, to a former student, Mary Garrison. Arvin met Truman Capote at Yaddo in June 1946, and they began an intense love affair which lasted several years. In 1960, Arvin was arrested when his large collection of erotic photographs and stories was discovered by the police; he informed on a number of colleagues and close friends, then had a nervous breakdown and lost his job at Smith. Not long afterwards, he discovered he had terminal cancer.

Ashton, Frederick (Freddy) (1906–1988). British choreographer and dancer, born in Ecuador, raised in Peru, and educated in England from 1919. Ashton studied with Léonide Massine and Marie Rambert. She was the first to commission a ballet from him, in 1926. In the late 1920s, he worked briefly as a dancer and choreographer in Paris. Then in 1935, he joined the Vic-Wells (later Sadler’s Wells) Ballet where he spent the rest of his career. The company gradually evolved into the Royal Ballet, and in 1963 he succeeded Ninette de Valois as its director. Sadler’s Wells had its first New York season and U.S. tour in the autumn of 1949, with The Sleeping Beauty as its centerpiece, and they toured again the following autumn.

Glossary

301

Auden, W. H. (Wystan) (1907–1973) . English poet, playwright, librettist, critic. Perhaps the greatest English poet of his century and one of the most influential. He and Isherwood met as schoolboys at St. Edmund’s School, Hindhead, Surrey, where Auden, two and a half years younger than Isherwood, arrived in the autumn of 1915. They wrote three plays together

––The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F 6 (1936), On the Frontier (1938)––and a travel book about their trip to China during the Sino-Japanese war––Journey to a War (1939). A fourth play––The Enemies of a Bishop (1929)––was published posthumously. As well as doing several stints of schoolmastering, Auden worked for John Grierson’s Film Unit, funded by the General Post Office, for about six months during 1935, mostly writing poetry to be used as sound track. He and Isherwood went abroad separately and together during the 1930s, famously to Berlin, and finally emigrated together to the United States in 1939. After only a few months, their lives and interests diverged (Auden settled in New York while Isherwood went on to California), but they remained close friends until Auden’s death. Auden is caricatured as

“Hugh Weston” in Lions and Shadows and figures centrally in Christopher and His Kind. There are many passages about him in D 1.

Aufderheide, Charles. American technician, from the Midwest. Aufderheide came to Los Angeles with Ruby Bell and the From twins. He began working on cameras at Technicolor soon after he arrived, and he continued there for about thirty years. According to a friend, Alvin Novak, Aufderheide’s personal qualities were largely responsible for the longterm harmony of The Benton Way Group: he had quick insight into the needs and motives of his circle of acquaintances and friends, liked to entertain, and was able to talk practically on a wide range of sophisticated subjects. The Benton Way Group became a special haven for certain intellectuals who belonged neither to the Hollywood film world, nor to the continental high culture of the refugee community. The Benton Way Group were almost exclusively Americans, apart from the Egyptian-born scholar and intellectual Edouard Roditi (who was evidently attracted to them precisely because they were unlike himself ).

Aufderheide also wrote poetry, and after he died his friends collected some of his verses in a book.

Avis, Annie (d. 1948) . Christopher Isherwood’s nanny, from near Bury St.

Edmunds, in Suffolk. She was employed by Isherwood’s mother in October 1904, when Isherwood was two months old and Avis herself was about thirty, and she remained with the family for the rest of her life. She never married, though she had once been engaged (her fiancé died). Isherwood and his younger brother, Richard, were close to Nanny and, in childhood, spent more time with her than with their mother. When Richard started school as a day boy at Berkhamsted in 1919, he lodged in the town with Nanny, and his mother visited only at weekends; Isherwood by then was at Repton. Richard later felt that Nanny had made a favorite of Isherwood. Isherwood wrote in Kathleen and Frank that he loved Nanny dearly; in adolescence he had bullied her, but he had also shared intimate secrets with her. And he recalled that Nanny never criticized him.

Bachardy, Don (b. 1934) . American painter; Isherwood’s companion from 302

Glossary

1953 onwards. Bachardy accompanied his brother, Ted Bachardy, on the beach in Santa Monica from the late 1940s, and Isherwood occasionally saw him there. They were introduced in November 1952, met again in February 1953, and began an affair which quickly became serious. Bachardy was then an eighteen-year-old college student. He studied languages and theater arts at UCLA, then attended Chouinard Art School and, later, the Slade School of Art in London. His portraits have been widely shown, and he has published his drawings in several books including October (1980) with Isherwood and Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood (1990). Bachardy figures prominently in D 1.

Bachardy, Ted (b. 1930) . Elder brother of Don Bachardy. After a number of breakdowns, Ted Bachardy was diagnosed as a manic-depressive schizo-phrenic. When well, he worked at various jobs: as a tour guide and in the mail room at Warner Brothers, as a sales clerk in a department store, and as an office worker in insurance companies and advertising agencies.

Bacon, Francis (1909–1992) . British painter, born in Dublin. Bacon worked as an interior decorator in London during the late 1920s and lived in Berlin in 1930, around the time that he taught himself to paint. He showed some of his work in London during the 1930s, but came to prominence only after the war when his controversial Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion made him suddenly famous in 1945.

Barada. A nun first introduced to the Hollywood Vedanta Center by Sarada Folling in 1943. Her original name was Doris Ludwig; later, after taking final vows in the Ramakrishna Order, she was called Pravrajika Baradaprana. Barada was interested in music and composed Vedantic hymns. Eventually she became a senior nun at the Sarada Convent in Santa Barbara.

Barnett, Jimmie. American painter and metaphysical teacher. Isherwood knew him when Barnett was a devotee at the Hollywood Vedanta Center; later Barnett settled in the Southwest.

Barrie, Michael. A one-time singer with financial and administrative talents; friend and secretary to Gerald Heard from the late 1940s onward. Barrie met Heard through Swami Prabhavananda and lived at Trabuco as a monk until about 1955. Later, Barrie nursed Heard through his five-year-long final illness until Heard’s death in 1971. Isherwood often mentions him in D 1.

Barton-Brown, Monsignor. British papal chamberlain; an acquaintance of Isherwood’s friend Gerald Hamilton from just after World War I, when Barton-Brown was attached to the Vatican. Barton-Brown was Hamilton’s priestly counterpart in an attempt, at the start of World War II, to avert the conflict by arranging a meeting between Axis and Allied diplomats on neutral ground (the Vatican was proposed). Barton-Brown and Hamilton contacted various highly placed Catholic officials, and when Hamilton was refused an exit permit to travel from England to Dublin––where he hoped to be able to communicate more easily with Rome––Barton-Brown arranged for him to travel in disguise as a member of a party of Irish nuns. But Hamilton was arrested at Euston station before he could depart, and as Isherwood tells, spent six months in Brixton prison.

Glossary

303

Beaton, Cecil (1904–1980) . English photographer, theater designer, and author. Beaton photographed the Sitwells in the 1920s and went on to photograph the British royal family, actors, actresses, writers, and many other public figures. From 1939 to 1945 he worked successfully as a war photographer. He was a dandy and a creature of style, and his numerous costume and set designs for stage and screen were widely admired. In Hollywood his most celebrated achievements were Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964), for which he won two Academy Awards. Isherwood and Beaton were contemporaries at Cambridge, but became friendly only in the late 1940s when Beaton visited Hollywood (with a production of Lady Windermere’s Fan which he had designed and in which he was acting).

Beesley, Alec (d. 1987) and Dodie Smith Beesley (1896–1990) . She was an English playwright, novelist, and actress, known professionally as Dodie Smith. He was a conscientious objector and an unofficial legal advisor to other conscientious objectors in Los Angeles during the war; he also managed her career. The Beesleys spent a decade in Hollywood because of Alec’s pacifist convictions, and Dodie wrote scripts there for Paramount and her first novel, I Capture the Castle. They returned to England in the early 1950s. Isherwood met the Beesleys in November 1942, through Dodie’s close friend and confidant John van Druten. Some details for the marriage between Stephen Monk and the writer Elizabeth Rydal in The World in the Evening are taken from the Beesleys’ professional and domestic arrangements, and Elizabeth Rydal’s correspondence with her friend Cecilia de Limbour resembles the voluminous letters continually exchanged between Dodie and John van Druten. Isherwood dedicated the novel to the Beesleys. In the summer of 1943, the Beesleys mated their dalmatians, Folly and Buzzle, and Folly produced fifteen puppies––

inspiring Dodie’s most famous book, The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956), later filmed by Walt Disney. See D 1 for more passages about the Beesleys (and about their dogs).

Bennett, Ronald. American actor, born in New England. A member of Michael Chekhov’s Chekhov Theater Studio. Bennett taught drama at Brown University as well as at The High Valley Theatre.

Berns, Walter. American academic. He met Bill Goyen in the navy when they served on the same battleship, and after the war they built an adobe house together in Taos, New Mexico, near Dorothy Brett and Frieda Lawrence with whom they became friends. Frieda Lawrence introduced them to Stephen Spender when Spender visited Taos in 1948 with Leonard Bernstein. At the time, Berns hoped to become a writer, but in 1949, he left Taos to study at the London School of Economics and for a few months he and Goyen lived at the Spenders’ house. Berns went on to the University of Chicago where he got a doctorate in Political Science; in 1951 he married, and he and his wife had three children. Berns taught at Yale, Cornell, the University of Toronto, and finally, Georgetown University. When he retired from teaching in 1994, he became a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He has published numerous books and articles.

304

Glossary

Bill, George. American engineer; he worked in the aerospace industry in Los Angeles, possibly at Lockheed.

Bill, also Billy. See Caskey, William.

Bo. Wallace Bobo; see Index and see also D 1.

Bok, Ben. Eldest son of Peggy Kiskadden and Curtis Bok, a Philadelphia lawyer and judge. Ben became a wolf breeder near Llano, California.

Bower, Tony. American friend of Jean and Cyril Connolly; Isherwood met him in Paris in 1937. Bower’s accent and manners gave the impression he was English; his mother became Lady Gordon-Duff through a second marriage, and his sister, Jean Gordon-Duff, was a great beauty. He wrote about film for a New York paper and was drafted into the U.S. Army twice during the war.

During the late 1940s he worked at New Directions and eventually became editor of a New York art magazine. He was murdered in his Park Avenue apartment in 1972, evidently by a young man he picked up in a bar, possibly The Klondike, on Fifth Avenue in the West Forties. Bower was the model for

“Ronny” in Down There on a Visit and there are passages about him in D 1.

Brackett, Charles (1892–1969) . American screenwriter and producer; from a wealthy East Coast family. He began as a novelist, then became a screenwriter, and later a producer, often working with the Austro-Hungarian writer-director Billy Wilder. Brackett was one of five writers who worked on the script for Garbo’s Ninotchka (1939). He won an Academy Award as writer-producer of The Long Weekend (1945), and he produced The King and I (1956), as well as working on numerous other films. When Isherwood knew him best during the 1950s, Brackett worked for Darryl F. Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox, where he remained for about a decade until the early 1960s.

Brackett appears in D 1.

Brecht, Bertolt (1898–1956) . German writer, poet, and dramatist; he was closely associated with the German communist party from the late 1920s onwards, though he never joined it. Brecht used the theater to promote his socialist beliefs, but only a handful of his plays are explicitly didactic, and he theorized and wrote at length about his radical approach both to theme and treatment. He worked for two years in Berlin in Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater and collaborated with the composer Kurt Weill on The Threepenny Opera (1928) and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929). Among his best known and most widely appealing plays are Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), The Good Woman of Szechwan (1943), The Life of Galileo (1943), and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1948). Forced to flee the Nazis in 1933, he spent part of his exile in California, from 1941 to 1947; in 1949 he returned to East Berlin where he founded the Berliner Ensemble. Isherwood and W. H.

Auden were youthful admirers of Brecht, and Isherwood translated the verses for Desmond Vesey’s 1937 English version of Brecht’s Dreigroschenroman, A Penny for the Poor. In D 1, Isherwood records that in August 1943, Berthold Viertel introduced Isherwood to Brecht and his wife, Helene Weigel, and their son, Stefan. When they next met, Brecht harshly criticized Isherwood’s spiritual convictions and denounced Aldous Huxley, enraging Isherwood.

Glossary

305

They continued a tentative friendship, and in April 1944 Brecht asked Isherwood to translate The Caucasian Chalk Circle; Isherwood declined partly because he had come to dislike Brecht for his ruthless and somewhat hypocritical obsession with his own beliefs and ambitions.

Brett, Dorothy. English painter. A daughter of Viscount Esher and sister of the Ranee of Sarawak, she studied painting at the Slade. Brett became friends with D. H. Lawrence late in 1915 and was the only one of his circle to accompany Lawrence and Frieda to America in 1924 to found his utopia, Rananim. The plan soon fell apart, though Brett remained with the Lawrences in Taos and travelled with them in Mexico until she was banished by Frieda.

She then lived on her own in Taos, returned to Europe where she saw Lawrence one last time in Italy, tried in vain to consummate their long restrained love, and finally settled back in New Mexico. As he mentions in his diary of the time (D 1), Isherwood read her memoir, Lawrence and Brett (1933), in 1940.

Britten, Benjamin (1913–1976) . British composer. At W. H. Auden’s instigation, Britten composed the music for The Ascent of F 6, and Isherwood perhaps first met Britten at rehearsals in February 1937. By March 1937, the two were friendly enough to spend the night together at the Jermyn Street Turkish Baths, though they never had a sexual relationship. Britten also wrote the music for the next Auden–Isherwood play, On the Frontier. He went to America with Peter Pears in the summer of 1939, but, as Isherwood notes in D 1, returned to England halfway through the war, registering with Pears as a conscientious objector. A major figure, Britten composed songs, song cycles, orchestral music, works for chorus and orchestra such as his War Requiem (1961), and nine operas including Peter Grimes (1945), Albert Herring (1948), Billy Budd (1951), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960), and Death in Venice (1973). Don Bachardy recalls that Britten withdrew gradually from his friendship with Isherwood, and Isherwood sensed it was because Britten associated Isherwood closely with Auden, against whom Britten harbored more particular griefs. But there was a reunion between Isherwood and Britten in 1976, in Aldeburgh, not long before Britten died. Pears had visited Isherwood and Bachardy while performing in Los Angeles and was able to bring about the rapprochement. Britten was frail by then and wept when he saw Isherwood.

Brooke, Tim. British novelist; a contemporary of Isherwood at Cambridge, he later spent time in Los Angeles. His novels, published under the name Hugh Brooke, include The Mad Shepherdess (1930), Man Made Angry (1932), Miss Mitchell (1934), and Saturday Island (1935). He was a close friend of the dancer Nicky Nadeau.

Brooks, Richard (1912–1992) . American novelist, screenwriter, film director and producer. Brooks was a sports writer and radio commentator before he began writing screenplays in the early 1940s; he then went on to direct and produce. His films include The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960, for which his script won an Academy Award), Sweet Bird of Youth (1964), Lord Jim (1965), In Cold Blood (1967), and 306

Glossary

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). One of his novels, The Producer, is about Hollywood.

Buckingham, Bob. British policeman; the longtime friend of E. M. Forster.

Buckingham’s wife, May, was also friendly with Forster.

Burgess, Guy (1910–1963) . British diplomat and double agent. Burgess became a communist while at Cambridge, and he was secretly recruited by the Soviets during the 1930s. He worked for the BBC until joining the Foreign Office in the mid-1940s and was meanwhile employed also by MI5. In May 1951, having been recalled from his post in Washington under Kim Philby, Burgess was warned by Anthony Blunt that he was suspected of espionage. He disappeared with Donald Maclean, also a double agent, and it eventually became clear the pair had defected to Moscow (their presence there was announced in 1956). Isherwood first met Burgess in 1938 in London, where Burgess was also friendly with W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, and Burgess introduced Isherwood to Jacky Hewit. Hewit had been Burgess’s lover until Burgess met Peter Pollock that year. After roughly a decade with Pollock, Burgess lived with Hewit again intermittently during the three years leading up to his defection. See also D 1.

Burra, Edward (1905–1976) . English painter and ballet and theatrical designer; he studied at the Royal College of Art. Burra sought out scenes of low life in French cities and ports during the late 1920s and visited New York in the 1930s and 1940s chiefly to paint subjects in black Harlem. He was somewhat influenced by the surrealists and from about the time of the Spanish Civil War he began to introduce into his paintings masked figures such as Isherwood mentions, along with soldiers, skeletons, and bird-men.

Bynner, Witter (1881–1968) . American poet. Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke launched a spoof literary movement, “Spectrism,” to parody Pound’s Imagism. Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments achieved wide recognition, and Bynner went on to write more seriously under the identity he adopted for the hoax, Emmanuel Morgan. Afterwards he translated Tang poetry from the Chinese with the scholar Kiang Kang-hu. He had a tortured friendship with D. H. Lawrence and disliked Lawrence’s characterization of him as Owen Rhys in The Plumed Serpent, which paved the way for his own bitter book about Lawrence, Journey with Genius (1951). Bynner lived in Santa Fe with his friend Bob Hunt, and also had a house in Mexico, at Lake Chapala.

Cadmus, Paul (1904–1999) . American painter of Basque and Dutch background; trained by his parents and at the National Academy of Design in New York. He worked briefly in advertising, travelled and painted in Europe at the start of the 1930s, and joined the U.S. government Public Works of Art Project in late 1933. Lincoln Kirstein became interested in Cadmus’s work after they met in New York in the mid-1930s, and Kirstein later married Cadmus’s sister, Fidelma, also trained as a painter. Cadmus drew Isherwood in February 1942

in New York, where Cadmus lived, and the two became friends as Isherwood tells in D 1. Eventually Cadmus settled in Connecticut with Jon Andersson, continuing to paint into his nineties.

Glossary

307

Caffery, Jamie. American journalist and landscape designer. Caffery’s family was from Louisiana; he worked as a researcher for Fortune magazine and also had jobs with Time and Life before moving to England where he took up gardening. In 1950 he went to Tangier with David Herbert and became garden columnist for the Tangier Gazette. Eventually Caffery settled on the Costa del Sol as a landscape designer. The uncle Isherwood mentions, Jefferson Caffery (1886–1974), was ambassador to Paris from 1944 to 1949 (he had previously been ambassador to Cuba and Brazil and afterwards was ambassador to Egypt).

Jefferson Caffery married at fifty but had no children.

Campbell, Sandy (d. 1988) . American stage actor; educated, for a time, at Princeton. He appeared with Tallulah Bankhead in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and published a book of letters about the production.

Campbell was also a fact checker at The New Yorker and worked with a number of well-known writers including Truman Capote, who especially requested his assistance in 1964 with In Cold Blood. He was Donald Windham’s lover for many years, and eventually set up a specialist publishing business with Windham in Italy.

Capote, Truman (1924–1984) . American novelist, born in New Orleans.

Capote worked at The New Yorker in the early 1940s and contributed to other magazines. In 1946 he won the O. Henry Prize for his short story, “Miriam,”

and then he began to write longer works, including Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), and the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood (1966). In later years, Capote travelled extensively and sometimes lived abroad; drink and drugs accelerated the end of his life.

Isherwood also writes about him in D 1.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri (b. 1908) . French photographer. He studied art and literature before starting to take photographs at the beginning of the 1930s, and much later in his career, during the 1970s, he returned to painting and drawing. He also worked in film, as an assistant to the French filmmaker Jean Renoir, towards the end of the 1930s. After the war, around the time Isherwood met him, Cartier-Bresson helped to found Magnum Photos, the independent photographic agency.

Caskey, William (Bill) (1921–1981) . American photographer, born and raised in Kentucky. Isherwood and Caskey met in June 1945 and by August had begun a serious affair. They split for good in 1951 after intermittent separations. Later Caskey lived in Athens and travelled frequently to Egypt. As well as taking photographs, he made art objects out of junk and for a time had a business beading sweaters. There are many passages about him in D 1.

Cerf, Bennett (1898–1971) . American publisher. Cerf was the founder of Random House, Isherwood’s (and W. H. Auden’s) first American publisher.

He had persuaded Faber and Faber jointly to commission Journey to a War, and in early March 1939, when Isherwood was newly arrived in New York, Cerf gave him a $500 advance on his next (unwritten) novel. Cerf founded the Modern Library and held senior posts at Random House until his death. He is popularly known for his books of jokes and humor.

308

Glossary

Charlton, Jim (1919–1998) . American architect. During the war, Charlton flew twenty-six missions over Germany including a July 1943 daylight raid on Hamburg. From 1948 he and Isherwood shared a friendly-romantic attachment that lasted through a number of years and a number of other lovers.

Isherwood tells more about Charlton in D 1. Towards the end of the 1950s Charlton married a wealthy Swiss woman called Hilde, a mother of three, and had a son with her in September 1958. The marriage ended in divorce.

Afterwards he lived in Hawaii until the late 1980s before returning to Los Angeles. He wrote an autobiographical novel called St. Mick.

Cockburn, Claud (1904–1981) . British journalist; educated at Berkhamsted and Keble College, Oxford. After a stint as New York correspondent for the London Times, Cockburn joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in the early 1930s and began producing a weekly newsletter, The Week, about the political state of Europe. He was also diplomatic correspondent for the Daily Worker. Later, he became a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph and contributed to various English journals. He wrote a novel, Beat the Devil (1953), and published half a dozen volumes of autobiography.

Cockburn, Jean. See Ross, Jean.

Collier, John (1901–1980) . British novelist and screenwriter. Best known for His Monkey Wife (1930), he also wrote other fantastic and satirical tales.

Isherwood admired his short stories. Collier was poetry editor of Time and Tide in the 1920s and early 1930s and came to Hollywood in 1935. In 1951 he moved to Mexico, though he continued to write films, including the script, deplored by Isherwood in D 1, for the film version of I Am a Camera.

Connolly, Cyril (1903–1974) . British journalist and critic; educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. Connolly was a regular contributor to English newspapers and magazines. He wrote one novel, The Rock Pool (1936), followed by collections that combined criticism, autobiography, and aphorism: Enemies of Promise (1938) and The Unquiet Grave (1944). Further collections appeared after the war, displaying his gift for parody. In 1939, Connolly founded Horizon with Stephen Spender and edited it throughout its publication until 1950. Connolly was married three times: first to Jean Bakewell, who divorced him in 1945, then to Barbara Skelton from 1950 to 1956, and finally, in 1959, to Deirdre Craig with whom he had a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Cressida. From 1940 to 1950 he lived with Lys Lubbock, who worked with him at Horizon; they never married, but she changed her name to Connolly by deed poll. He also appears in D 1.

Coward, Noël (1899–1973) . English actor, playwright, and composer; he also published verse, short stories, a novel, and two volumes of autobiography.

Coward became famous in his twenties in his own play, The Vortex (1924), and went on to write the witty and sophisticated comedies for which he is known best, including Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1930), Design for Living (1933), Blithe Spirit (1941), and Present Laughter (1942). He put together musicals and revues for which he wrote his own scores and lyrics and sang with stylish nonchalance. One of Coward’s wartime films, In Which We Serve (1942), won an Academy Award, but his reputation declined after the war. He occupied Glossary

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himself with cabaret appearances in London and Las Vegas until a revival of interest in his earlier plays began in the 1960s.

Craft, Robert (Bob). American musician, conductor, critic, and author; colleague and adopted son to Stravinsky during the last twenty-three years of Stravinsky’s life. Craft lived and travelled everywhere with the Stravinskys except when professional commitments forced him to do otherwise.

Increasingly he conducted for Stravinsky in rehearsals and supervised his recording sessions, substituting entirely for the older man as Stravinsky’s health declined. After Stravinsky died, Craft married, had a son, divorced, and later married again. He published excerpts from his diaries as Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship 1948– 1971 (1972, expanded and republished in 1994), and he often appears in D 1.

Cuevas de Vera, Tota. Argentine rancher. She was married to a Spanish count with whom she had several children, and she managed an 86,000-acre estancia, El Pelado (The Bald One), near Buenos Aires. Isherwood and Caskey visited her there early in 1948, and in The Condor and the Cows Isherwood describes El Pelado as a business large enough to send an entire trainload of produce from its own railway station to Buenos Aires each week.

Cukor, George (1899–1983) . American film director. Cukor began his career on Broadway in the 1920s and came to Hollywood as a dialogue director for All Quiet on the Western Front. In the thirties he directed at Paramount, RKO, and then MGM, moving from studio to studio with his friend and producer David Selznick. He directed Garbo in Camille (1936) among others, and Hepburn in her debut, A Bill of Divorcement (1932), as well as in Philadelphia Story (1940). Other well-known work includes Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1934), A Star Is Born (1954), and My Fair Lady (1964). As described in D 1, Isherwood first met Cukor at a party at the Huxleys’ in December 1939.

Later they became friends and worked together.

Curtiss, Mina. American writer. As a young woman, she lived in London on the fringes of the Bloomsbury group; later she taught French literature at Smith College and published books on French subjects, including a biography of Georges Bizet and a translation of Proust’s letters. She married Harry Curtiss in 1924, and after his death she was the longtime lover of Alexis Saint-Léger (St.-John Perse). Like her brother, Lincoln Kirstein, Curtiss was extremely wealthy. She divided her time between Manhattan and her husband’s farm, Chapelbrook, in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Davies, Marion (c. 1898–1961) . The Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl taken up by William Randolph Hearst, who financed her movies and tried to make her into a romantic star. Some of her films were successful, though Charlie Chaplin, with whom she also had an affair, noticed that Davies’ real talent was for comedy. Her relationship with Hearst is the basis for the story in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), although Welles’s heroine is not a close portrait.

She lived with Hearst at San Simeon and at houses in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica until he died in 1951. Ten weeks after Hearst’s death, she married Captain Horace Brown, whom she had known for many years.

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“de Laval, Jay” (probably an assumed name). Chef; he adopted the role of the Baron de Laval. In the mid-1940s he opened a small French restaurant, Café Jay, on the corner of Channel Road and Chautauqua in Santa Monica.

As Isherwood tells in D 1, another restaurant was established in the Virgin Islands, and in 1950 he was briefly in charge of the Mocambo in Los Angeles.

Eventually he left California, settled in Mexico, and opened a grand restaurant in Mexico City in the early 1950s. There he also planned interiors with the Mexican designer Arturo Pani, and advised airlines on food, creating a menu for Mexico Air Lines and crockery for Air France. He divided his time between Mexico City and a condominium in Acapulco. De Laval was a friend of Bill Caskey before Isherwood met Caskey, and also of Ben and Jo Masselink.

D 1. Christopher Isherwood, Diaries Volume One 1939– 1960, ed. Katherine Bucknell (London: Methuen, 1996; New York: HarperCollins, 1997). In Lost Years, Isherwood usually calls these diaries his journal, as distinct from his day-to-day diaries.

Doone, Rupert (1903–1966) . English dancer, choreographer, and theatrical producer. Founder of The Group Theatre, the cooperative venture for which Isherwood and W. H. Auden wrote plays in the 1930s. The son of a factory worker and originally called Reginald Woodfield, Doone ran away to London to become a dancer, then went on to Paris where he was friendly with Cocteau and met Diaghilev, turning down an opportunity to dance in the corps de ballet of the Ballets Russes. He was working in variety and revues in London during 1925 when he met Robert Medley, who became his permanent companion. Doone died of multiple sclerosis after many years of increasing illness.

Dunphy, Jack (1914–1992) . American dancer and novelist; born and raised in Philadelphia. Dunphy danced for George Balanchine and was a cowboy in the original production of Oklahoma! For a time he was married to the Broadway musical-comedy star Joan McCracken. From 1948 he was Truman Capote’s companion, although in Capote’s later years they were often apart.

He published John Fury and The Nightmovers.

Durant, Tim. American tennis player and actor. Durant was a tennis star during the 1930s and afterwards worked as an agent for United Artists. He played the part of the general in The Red Badge of Courage (1951). He was good looking, wealthy, and bisexual, and he married and became a father. His athletic prowess never deserted him; he rode race horses well past middle age, and finished the gruelling Grand National when he was in his early seventies.

Edens, Roger (1905–1970) . American film producer, born in Texas. During the 1950s, Eden supervised musicals at MGM, sometimes working with Arthur Freed. He won numerous Academy Awards––including for Annie Get Your Gun (1950)––and later produced Funny Face (1956), Hello Dolly (1969), and others.

Erdmann, Charles (b. 1909) . Longtime companion of William Plomer.

Erdmann was born in London of a German father and Polish mother. At the outbreak of World War I, the family went to Germany where Erdmann was Glossary

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raised from about age five. He returned to England as a refugee in 1939, and worked as a waiter and a pastry-cook (for which he was trained in Germany) and at other things. He met Plomer in 1944 while working as a cloakroom attendant in a Soho restaurant and lived with him for the next twenty-nine years, until Plomer’s death.

Evans, Rex (1903–1969) . British actor working in Hollywood from 1930

onwards. He also ran an art gallery.

Falk, Eric (1905–1984) . English barrister. Falk, who was Jewish, met Isherwood at Repton, where they were in the same house together, The Hall, and in the History Sixth. He helped Isherwood to edit The Reptonian during Isherwood’s last term. Falk grew up in London, and often went to films with Isherwood during school holidays. He introduced Isherwood to the Mangeots, whom he had met on holiday in Brittany. He appears in Lions and Shadows and in D 1.

Falkenburg, Eugenia ( Jinx) (b. 1919) . Spanish-born actress, raised in Chile.

She began her U.S. career working as a model and then made comedies and musicals in Hollywood in the late 1930s and early 1940s before becoming a radio personality and hosting her own radio show.

Firbank, Ronald (1886–1926) . English novelist; educated for a time at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His grandfather’s railroad contracting fortune enabled Firbank to travel and pay for the publication of his own novels and stories. He was a Roman Catholic and a dandy and his writings are witty, fantastic, and somewhat artificial. Among his best-known novels are Vainglory (1915), The Flower Beneath the Foot (1923), and Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926).

Fontan, Jack (b. 1927) . American actor and painter; educated at New York University. After his appearance in the original New York production of South Pacific, he settled in Laguna Beach where he made collages with his longtime companion Ray Unger. The pair worked as professional astrologers during the 1970s and afterwards owned and managed a gym. In 1994 their house was destroyed by the widespread fire which devastated the area, and they resettled in Palm Springs.

Forster, E. M. (Morgan) (1878–1970) . English novelist, essayist, and biographer; best known for Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924).

His homosexual novel, Maurice, was published posthumously in 1971 under Isherwood’s supervision. Forster had been an undergraduate at King’s College, Cambridge, and one of the Cambridge Apostles; afterwards he became associated with the Bloomsbury group and later returned to King’s as a Fellow until the end of his life. He was a literary hero for Isherwood, Edward Upward, and W. H. Auden from the 1920s onward. He remained supportive when Isherwood was publicly criticized for remaining in America after the outbreak of war in 1939. He is mentioned often in D 1.

Fouts, Denham (Denny). Son of a Florida baker, Fouts left home as a teenager and travelled as companion to a series of wealthy people of both sexes.

Among his conquests was Peter Watson, who financed Horizon magazine.

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Fouts helped Watson solicit some of the earliest contributions to Horizon, and Watson gave Fouts a large Picasso painting, Girl Reading (1934). The painting was loaned to the Museum of Modern Art under Watson’s name for the exhibition Picasso––Forty Years of His Art, November 1939–January 7, 1940, and Fouts later sold the painting in New York (evidently to the Florence May Schoenborn and Samuel Marx Collection, whence it became a gift to MOMA).

During the war, Watson sent Fouts to the USA for safety. Isherwood met Fouts in Hollywood in August 1940 and, although Swami Prabhavananda would not accept Fouts as a disciple, Fouts moved in with Isherwood in the early summer of 1941 in order to lead a life of meditation. Isherwood describes this domestic experiment in Down There on a Visit, where Fouts appears as

“Paul,” and there are numerous passages about Fouts in D 1.

Fouts, a conscientious objector, was drafted into Civilian Public Service Camp part way through the war; after he was released, he got his high school diploma and then studied medicine at UCLA before settling in Europe.

Fowler, Norman. American boyfriend of Peter Watson from 1949 onward, and heir to most of Watson’s estate. He had been in the navy and possibly was an epileptic (he was subject to unexplained fits or seizures from which he sometimes had to be roused); he was evidently psychologically disturbed.

When Watson drowned in his bath in 1956, Fowler was in the flat; the police dismissed foul play, but the death remained suspicious. After Watson’s death, Fowler bought a hotel, called The Bath Hotel, on Nevis, in the British Virgin Islands, and lived there until he himself drowned in the bath in 1971, within weeks of the fifteenth anniversary of Watson’s death.

Fox. See Twentieth Century-Fox.

French, Jared (d. 1988) . American painter, from Princeton, New Jersey. He met Paul Cadmus at the Art Students League in New York, became his lover, and travelled with him to Europe in 1931. They lived and painted together in Greenwich Village until French married the painter Margaret Hoening in 1937; afterwards the three continued as close friends and artistic associates, styling themselves the PAJAMA group, for PAul, JAred, MArgaret. French died in Rome.

Freud, Lucian (b. 1922) . German-born British painter; grandson of Sigmund Freud. He emigrated to London with his parents at the start of the 1930s, studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, and became a British citizen in 1939. During the war, he was invalided out of the merchant navy and turned to art full time, establishing a reputation by the early 1950s. His work is figurative and strikingly realistic; he specializes in nudes and portraits.

From, Eddie and Sam. Twin brothers at the center of The Benton Way Group. Eddie’s real name was Isadore, and some of his friends called him Isad.

The Benton Way Group began when Ruby Bell, a librarian from the Midwest, inherited some money and encouraged a group of her friends, mostly homosexuals and including the Froms and Charles Aufderheide, to move with her to Los Angeles. There she used her inheritance to acquire the house in Glossary

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Benton Way where they settled together. The house was called The Palazzo because it looked like an Italian villa, and the name later accompanied the household to other settings. Some of the group were able to find work in the film industry, and Eddie From worked for Technicolor before taking up psychotherapy. According to Alvin Novak, Eddie was once picked up by the police for an offense related to his homosexuality, and Isherwood made a lasting impression by coming to his aid. There are more passages about the Froms in D 1.

Furtmueller, Carl. Viennese school inspector. Isherwood met Furtmueller and his wife in October 1941 at the Quaker refugee hostel in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and describes them in D 1. The couple had been interned in a Spanish prison on their flight from Vienna, and Mrs. Furtmueller was mortally ill with lung cancer by the time she arrived in the U.S. She died in late November 1941. The following June, Furtmueller married Leah Cadbury, a Haverford spinster in her fifties who worked in an office during the daytime and volunteered as an English teacher at the hostel during the evenings.

Gage, Margaret. A rich and elderly patroness of Gerald Heard. She loaned Heard her garden house on Spoleto Road to live in from the late 1940s until the early 1960s.

Garrett, Eileen (1893–1970) . Irish-born medium. During World War I, Eileen Garrett ran a tearoom in Hampstead which was frequented by D. H.

Lawrence and other intellectuals; later she ran a labor hostel in Euston Square, and then a children’s soup kitchen in the south of France. In 1941, with the fall of France, she went to New York, founded a publishing firm, Creative Age Press, and launched Tomorrow, a monthly review of literature, art, and public affairs. Assisted by Bill Kennedy, she was able to commission work from the likes of Robert Graves, Klaus Mann, Aldous Huxley, Lord Dunsany, and Isherwood, among others; she knew many of the emigré intelligentsia, and Isherwood met her in the late 1940s or early 1950s through the Huxleys.

Geller, Jim. American film agent. Geller was a story editor at Warner Brothers during the 1940s and expressed interest in Isherwood’s work, especially the film treatment written with Aldous Huxley, Jacob’s Hands. Later Geller abandoned his studio career, and by the early 1950s he had become Isherwood’s agent. Isherwood moved on to Hugh French about a decade later.

Both relationships are traced in D 1.

Ghosh, Asit. Bengali nephew of Swami Prabhavananda. Ghosh was a student at the University of Southern California and hoped to become a film director. He was a devout Hindu, and lived at the Hollywood Vedanta Center during the early 1940s, but he was not preparing to become a monk.

Isherwood tells about this in D 1. In September 1944 Ghosh found himself inducted into the army even though he was not a U.S. citizen. He was released the following January as a conscientious objector, and soon afterwards he returned to India.

Gielgud, John (b. 1904) . British actor and director. Gielgud achieved fame in the 1920s acting Shakespeare’s tragedies; he also performed Wilde and 314

Glossary

Chekhov before Chekhov was well known to English audiences. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked with contemporary British playwrights, but throughout his stage and film career he returned to and extended his Shakespearian repertoire. He was late to adapt his career to film, but became a ubiquitous success. Isherwood also tells about their friendship in D 1.

Goldsmith, Joel (1892–1964) . American spiritual teacher and healer.

Goldsmith came from a Jewish background in New York, turned to Christianity as a teenager, and was drawn to Christian Science when his father miraculously recovered from a grave illness. He was a Freemason for most of his life, and during the 1930s he took up meditation and studied eastern religions. As a marine during World War II, he had a vision calling him to pray for the enemy. He never saw combat. After the war, the family business collapsed and Goldsmith fell ill with tuberculosis, but like his father he made a miraculous recovery––through Christian Science. After failing as a travelling salesman, he became a Christian Science spiritual reader, advisor and healer, sometimes seeing as many as 135 patients a day. He taught Bible classes in California and gathered students and devotees around him, including John van Druten and Walter Starcke. Van Druten wrote the introduction to The Infinite Way (1952), the first of Goldsmith’s twenty or so books. In the early 1950s Goldsmith resigned from the Christian Science Church, asserting that healers become so by their own authority. His movement, known as the Infinite Way, was funded partly by the donations of wealthy followers; he also circulated a monthly newsletter to paying subscribers. He urged believers to live by grace alone; his own experience taught him that material success would naturally flow toward those who were spiritually “centered” or “on the path.” He was married three times.

Goodwin, John. American novelist. A wealthy friend of Denny Fouts; Isherwood met him probably during the first half of 1943 and often mentions him in D 1. As well as his ranch near Escondido, Goodwin owned a house in New York. He published The Idols and the Prey (1953) and A View of Fuji (1963).

Gottfried. See Reinhardt, Gottfried.

Goyen, William (1915–1983) . American novelist, playwright, teacher, and editor; born in Texas, where much of his work is set. His novels include The House of Breath (1950), for which Isherwood wrote a blurb, and In a Farther Country (1955); he also wrote many short stories.

Grant, Alexander (b. 1925) . New Zealand-born ballet dancer and director.

He spent his whole dancing career with the Sadler’s Wells, later the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden.

Green, Henry (1905–1973) . Pen name of Henry Yorke, the novelist. Yorke came from a privileged background, was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, worked for a time in a factory belonging to his family and then made his way up through the firm to become managing director. His novels draw on his experience of both working-class and upper-class life, and also on his time in the National Fire Service during World War II; best known Glossary

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among them are Living, Party Going, and Loving. Isherwood also mentions Yorke’s wife, who was known as Dig.

Greene, Felix. A half-German cousin of Isherwood, on Kathleen Isherwood’s side. Greene worked for the BBC in New York, then with Peggy Kiskadden’s second husband, Henwar Rodakiewicz, in Rodakiewicz’s documentary film unit, and, during the war, for the Quaker Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia. He had a genius for administration and practical arrangements and made himself indispensable to Gerald Heard in founding Trabuco. Greene decided to move to California in the summer of 1941 to be Heard’s disciple, and by the following summer he had already completed the building of the monastery, large enough for fifty. Isherwood tells about this in D 1. Towards the end of the war Greene upset Heard by deciding to marry.

Halliburton, Richard (1900–1939) . American explorer and adventurer; educated at Lawrenceville Academy and Princeton. During the 1920s he climbed the Matterhorn and swam various famous bodies of water (the Nile at Luxor, the Hellespont, most of the Sea of Galilee, the Panama Canal). He also flew from Paris to Manila in his airplane, The Flying Carpet, in 1931. In 1934

he attempted but failed to cross the Alps on an elephant. He wrote a number of bestselling books about his adventures and lectured widely. After selling the movie rights to his first book, The Royal Road to Romance (1925), he settled in Hollywood where he narrated and co-directed a travel film about India, India Speaks (1933). Halliburton was homosexual and had relationships with the film stars Rod la Rocque and Ramon Novarro. He was lost at sea in the Pacific.

Hamilton, Gerald (1890–1970) . Isherwood’s Berlin friend who was the original for “Mr. Norris” in Mr. Norris Changes Trains. Hamilton’s mother died almost immediately after his birth in Shanghai, and he was raised by relatives in England and educated at Rugby (though he did not finish his schooling).

His father sent him back to China to work in business, and while there Hamilton took to wearing Chinese dress and converted to Roman Catholicism, for which his father, an Irish Protestant, never forgave him. He was cut off with a small allowance and eventually, because of his unsettled life, with nothing at all. So began the persistent need for money that apparently motivated some of his dubious behavior. Hamilton was obsessed with his family’s aristocratic connections and with social etiquette, and lovingly recorded in his memoirs all his meetings with royalty, as well as those with crooks and with theatrical and literary celebrities. He was imprisoned from 1915 to 1918 for sympathizing with Germany and associating with the enemy during World War I, and he was imprisoned in France and Italy for a jewelry swindle in the 1920s. Afterwards he took a job selling the London Times in Germany and became interested there in penal reform. Throughout his life he travelled on diverse private and public errands in China, Russia, Europe, and North Africa. He returned to London during World War II, where he was again imprisoned, as Isherwood records, for attempting to promote peace on terms favorable to the enemy. After the war, Hamilton posed for the body of Churchill’s Guildhall statue and later became a regular contributor to The Spectator.