Liberation (114 page)

 

August 17.
Supper last night with Marguerite [Lamkin and her companion]—just the four of us—at La Scala. There is something snug about that place, even when it's crammed. And I felt a real affection from [her companion]. (He confessed, for no particular reason, that he suffers terribly from vertigo.)

We've received a joke present from Jim White—a broken cup which is inscribed: “I got smashed in Texas.”

 

August 19.
I found a piece of paper slipped in between the pages of one of my journals: “Why
ever
do anything you don't want to? The moments of joy are life in the present—no matter with Auden or Heinz. The rest is apprehension, guilt—which helps absolutely nobody. When Christopher went off with Heinz he should have constructed an absolutely self-contained world and lived in it. One thinks one is atoning for something when one is miserable and guilty. Actually one is just a bore.”

On the other side of the paper is written: “Just as people poured their superior scorn on Christopher's homosexuality so they scorned his belief in Vedanta.”

My guess is that these two statements are notes for a book I was writing—most probably for
Christopher and His Kind
. Both statements seem crude and flat and obvious—the second even more so than the first. That's partly perhaps because some kind of psychological block often seems to prevent me from setting down
exactly
what the point is of the note I want to make. (Why should this be so? Because of an ingrained secretiveness, which makes me subconsciously regard such notes as “classified material” which has to be obscurely expressed because it might possibly fall into “enemy” hands?)

And yet there are insights here—not very extraordinary but quite valid, I think.

One of the dangers that threaten me as a writer is of lapsing into self-accusation. Self-accusation is often necessary and valuable as long as it confines itself to answering the question: “What did I do wrong?” A gym-instructor who has fallen off a trapeze may make his slip educational for his pupils by explaining to them exactly what the mistake was which caused his fall. And one may analyze literary slips in the same manner.

 

August 20.
How I love our flowers on the deck! Never before have we had so many, so beautifully blooming—cineraria “Dusty Miller,” yellow and orange French marigolds, chrysanthemums, “Busy Lizzie,” scarlet sage, sweet alyssum, and the coleus, which are my favorites. I feel a strong communication with them—as if they were animals rather than vegetables. I feel that they are aware of my presence.

 

September 1.
Just back from a walk in the park, which I love. The park always makes me aware of old age—probably because there are so many old people walking there. And the sea makes me think of death, but without terror—this is death in the aspect of an element which receives—takes you to its bosom soothingly. It nearly always brings Edward Upward to mind, because he, too, lives by it. I say to myself: “We're two old men looking at the sea.” (He sent a cassette of himself reading some short stories—his voice still so clear and strong, with that same melodious subtly ironical Mortmere tone—a tone which seems to be always between quote marks.)

 

September 12.
Am starting to struggle out of a sloth block—I let myself get into the usual jitters. Nothing new in that. But I do detect the possibility of a more serious senile state. It's absolutely necessary that I refuse to recognize any excuses based on old age. I must get on with my work
for the sake of getting on.
No other reason is required. My health is improved, actually.

Both Don and I were instructively impressed by an evening at David's house, the day before yesterday. He seems to be less than himself. He continues to work but it's somehow forced—a token demonstration—not up to his standard. The place seems full of spongers. Don thinks he's taking quite a lot of cocaine.

Of course I know the unreliability of such subjective impressions. David has his characteristic kind of strength—quite different from ours. He has never minded living in a crowd. And he seems to suffer spongers gladly—well, anyhow, he suffers them. None of this is really dangerous, no doubt. He is immensely strong and probably he's relaxed inside of himself in a way I can't even imagine.

 

October 1.
I can't record that my sloth block has been struggled out of. I have messed a little with my book but I still haven't given myself the decisive order to pull myself together and get the hell on with it. Very well—that order has now been given. Really, I have no excuses. I can't pretend that I am sick or incapacitated in any way. Sure, my back hurts a bit, but not when I'm sitting down.

Death thoughts hover around continually, but I only feel fear now and then. Darling keeps me going—sometimes by his sweetness, sometimes by his scolding—he is always a massive support. I know that he is terribly rattled by Ted, who is indulging in what Ted calls a “high.” A short while ago—with infuriating self-indulgence—he attacked an elderly woman and got himself locked up. His trial for this is to take place soon. One simply can't take him seriously as a madman, although I realize that he just possibly might get into a crazy state in which he would harm Darling.

I'll try to describe—just as a psychological observation—something which I've experienced several times lately, while doing my morning “sit.” I pray to Swami, as usual, to “be with me and take away my fear when I am dying.” At first, when I'd said this prayer, I felt reassured and soothed. Then doubts began. The doubts scoffed at the prayer. “Why do you assume that Swami is present and can answer your praying?” But then I knew how to answer the doubts: “Swami really
is
present within me because I remember him. Why shouldn't I remember him when I am dying and get strength and reassurance from that memory? In the last analysis, strength and reassurance are all I'm asking for. Looked at from this point of view, my problem doesn't have to be solved by “faith.” I just have to relive one of those powerful experiences of reassurance which I quite often had in his presence while he was still alive. My memory of this reassurance is gradually getting dimmer, of course. But it is right here inside me, just as vivid as my memory of Auden or Forster, or any other inspiring human being. By dwelling on it, I think I can make it last my time.

 

October 23.
The last few days have been astonishingly hot. Nearly no wind. I'm not in a good state. Death fears—that's to say, pangs of foreboding—recur often. They seem to be part of a quite normal physical condition; the pangs of a dying animal, thrilling with dread of the unknown.

Darling is probably under greater strain than he has ever been. I'm so dull witted and forgetful and often so sulky—and then he has to cope with his senile mother in the nursing home, and with Ted who is busy having a “breakdown”—partly self-advertisement, partly jealousy of Darling. He bashed on the carport gate so hard that he cracked its wood. This rattles our nerves of course, until we long to have him taken away and locked up some place for the rest of his life. There is very little I can do to help Don, even when I'm in a relatively unselfish mood. I just try to keep assuring him how much I love him.

 

1983

 

January 1.
Yesterday I was in one of my lousiest negative moods. A boy named Dan Turner sat for Don. He carried on about the treatments he'd had for cancer and created a quite powerful death gloom, which he thickened by showing us two lesions on his legs.
⁵⁶
I allowed myself to get into a kind of sulk, in which I hated him for doing this and felt that this whole vital and decisive New Year's Eve was being hexed. We went on to a couple of parties, at which 1983 was drunk to and I sulked and said to myself that we'd gotten off on the wrong foot, just because of this jerk. (Only I don't seriously believe that.)

 

February 7.
Heavy rain, depressing and yet work inspiring. Darling has gone out and there is no reason why I shouldn't get my book restarted, having wasted one whole month already. He is so good—urging me to work and setting me such an example by working so tirelessly himself—he seems never to be idle.

 

April 14.
This is a mere token restart.

What have I been doing? Failing to get on with my work. Old age, viewed from this angle, is nothing but an excuse for laziness. I'm not feeble or fragile. I walk in the park with vigor and enjoy my walks and thoughts. I adore my Darling and feel the keenest interest in his thinkings and doings. I'll only be seventy-nine in August—there's a whole year tucked away in there, inviting me to show the wonders I can perform before I'm eighty. Even my tendency to senile melancholia seems to have weakened. All right, come on, you idle Naggin, gee up!

Now a bit of senility—just for laughs. I picked up the torn-off top part of my ballot ticket for the April 12 primary elections, printed in English and Spanish, and dull-wittedly took the Spanish—
elecciones primarias
—to mean “prime ribs”!

 

July 4.
Yes, it's that certain day. Don's with a sitter in the studio and I'm at the table on the deck, having decided to waste my time doing something which at least belongs in the category of work—writing in this book.

It's classic Canyon summer holiday weather—grey skied, warm, blah. Hardly a firework heard so far. Only one flag visible.

The joy of being with Darling remains almost constant, nowadays—expressed by huggings, kisses, loving jokes. There is a constant sense of communication between us. What we communicate to each other is that we're sharing a day-by-day experience of life; everything happens to both of us. This is, of course, far from being true, but it's true
enough
.

Have just finished a draft of a letter to Stephen, congratulating him on having been knighted. He hasn't written to me about this but he let me find out about it through his friend Br[y]an Obst.
⁵⁷
I think I entirely understand Stephen's feelings. I had to be told, and yet he felt apologetic, maybe remembering how he'd smirked and sneered when Wystan was awarded the King's Gold Medal for poetry and had to go to the palace to receive it.
⁵⁸

(Edward Upward, in a letter, made us roar with laughter by quoting Banquo's line: “Thou hast it now. . . .”
⁵⁹
)

 

[
Isherwood made no more diary entries. He died of prostate cancer on January 4, 1986, after many months of illness. Bachardy gave up his other sitters during the last six months of Isherwood's life, and he drew Isherwood almost daily. He was with him, drawing him, when Isherwood died, and he drew several more drawings after he was dead.
]

Glossary

Abedha.
American disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, born Tony Eckstein. He spent many years at Trabuco and at the Hollywood Vedanta Society, but never took sannyas and eventually left to work for Parker Pens.

Ackerley, J. R. ( Joe) (1896–1967).
English author and editor; he wrote drama, poetry, fiction, and autobiography. He is well known for his intimate relationship with his Alsatian, described in
My Dog Tulip
(1956) and
We Think the World of You
(1960). Other books include
Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal
(1932) and
My Father and Myself
(1968). 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 1930s. Their friendship was sustained in later years partly by their shared intimacy with E.M. Forster. Ackerley was also close to his sister, Nancy West, who was a great beauty and a drunk, as Isherwood records. Ackerley appears in
D.1
and
D.2
. and is mentioned in
Lost Years.

ACLU.
American Civil Liberties Union, non-partisan, non-profit organization founded in 1920 to protect and preserve individual liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments.

Addis, Keith.
Hollywood agent, educated at Columbia University. When Isherwood first mentions him in 1977, he was working with Bobby Littman at The Robert Littman / Keith Addis Company. In 1980, he founded his own agency and later, in 1989, co-founded Industry Entertainment, which manages major film and T.V. stars and produces films and T.V. series.

Adjemian, Bob (b. 1947).
American monk of the Ramakrishna Order, also called Nirvana after he took his brahmacharya vows. He has a B.A. in communications and oversees the Vedanta Press and the retail mail order department for the Vedanta Catalogue. Isherwood first met him in 1969 or 1970, when Adjemian came to Adelaide Drive to talk about living in a monastery. As Isherwood mentions, he is a committed runner; he has completed nine 100-mile mountain trail races.

Albee, Edward (b. 1928).
American playwright, educated at Lawrenceville, Choate, and Trinity College in Connecticut. He had his first success with
The Zoo Story
off-Broadway in 1958, won Pulitzer Prizes for
A Delicate Balance
(1966),
Seascape
(1975), and
Three Tall Women
(1994), and is best known for
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(1962).

Albert, Eddie (1906–2005).
American actor, on Broadway from the mid-1930s. his films include
Carrie
(1952),
Roman Holiday
(1953),
Oklahoma
(1955), and
The Heartbreak Kid
(1972), and he played Oliver in the T.V. series “Green Acres,” which first aired in 1965. He appears in
D.2.
His wife of forty years, the actress and dancer Margo (1917–1985), was born in Mexico City as Maria Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estel Bolado Castilla y O'Donell. She had a brief first marriage. Her films include
Winterset
(1936),
Lost Horizon
(1937), and
Viva Zapata!
(1952). She sat for Bachardy in 1973.

Albert, Edward (1951–2006).
Actor; son of Eddie and Margo Albert. He appeared in his first film when he was fourteen. Later he went to UCLA and Oxford. He starred in
Butterflies Are Free
(1972), as Isherwood records, and eventually became a photographer. He sat for Bachardy in 1973. He appears in
D.2.

Aldous.
See Huxley, Aldous.

Alec.
See Beesley, Alec and Dodie Smith Beesley.

Alexander, Clytie (b. 1940).
American artist, from Kansas, educated in Quebec and Dhaka, Bangladesh. She was an architect's apprentice and studied art and engineering at Antioch College in Ohio and at San José State College in California before focusing on fine arts at UCLA. Much of her work—abstract, minimalist, linked to colorfield—evokes the light and landscapes of southern California. Since the 1970s, she has exhibited in countless solo and group exhibitions on the West and East Coasts, Europe and Japan; her work is held in many public and corporate collections, and she has received numerous grants and awards. She was married to Peter Alexander for more than fifteen years, until the mid-1980s, and had two daughters with him: Hope, later an architect and designer, and Julia. For a number of years she was Bachardy's closest woman friend. She divides her time between New York and Los Angeles.

Alexander, Peter (b. 1939).
American artist; born in Los Angeles, educated at the University of Pennsylvania, the Architectural Association in London, at Berkeley, at the University of Southern California, and at UCLA. His murals, posters, and sculptures—mostly landscapes and figurative work—are in many public venues in California, including Disney Hall, and he has exhibited all over the United States. Collections holding his work include the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; the Getty Museum, Malibu; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena; the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. His first wife was the painter Clytie Alexander, and he later married Claudia Parducci, a painter and musician. He first sat for Bachardy in 1969, and Isherwood met him around that time.

Allen, Alan Warren.
Isherwood's general practitioner from April 1961 until the mid-1970s; he was about forty when they met, tall, handsome, soft-spoken, easygoing, and married. As Isherwood tells in
D.2
, his first wife committed suicide.

Allen, Edwin (Ed).
American librarian, at Wesleyan College; once a salesman for Oxford University Press. He met the Stravinskys in 1962, when he was about thirty, and catalogued Igor Stravinsky's library. He also helped with errands and domestic tasks in California and New York, becoming a weekend fixture in the Stravinskys' Fifth Avenue apartment when they moved permanently to New York. He appears in
D.2.

Altman, Dennis (b. 1943).
Australian academic, author, gay activist. He did graduate work at Cornell in the mid-1960s and published one of the first accounts of the gay liberation movement in the U.S.,
Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation
(1971), followed by many books on sexuality and political culture. Later, he became a politics professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne and President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific. He appears in
D.2.

Amaya, Mario (1933–1986).
Canadian curator and art critic. He founded the London magazine
Art and Artists
and is credited with bringing Yoko Ono's work to London. He was a member of Andy Warhol's circle, was with Warhol the day Warhol was shot in 1968, and was himself also shot. In 1972, he became Director of the New York Cultural Center where he staged a show of Bachardy's drawings, February 15–April 7, 1974.

Amendt, Rudolf (Rudi) (1895–1987).
German actor, in Hollywood from the 1930s, at first sometimes using the name Robert O. Davis. He played small parts in thrillers, dramas, war and horror movies—often as a Nazi—before moving into T.V. in the 1950s and 1960s.

Amiya (1902–1986).
English Vedanta devotee, born Ella Sully, one of ten daughters of a handsome Somerset farm laborer whose well-born wife chose scandal and poverty in order to marry him. Amiya travelled to California in the early 1930s with an older sister, Joy, who married an American artist called Palmerton. She was hired by Swami Prabhavananda and Sister Lalita as housekeeper at Ivar Avenue. By the time Isherwood met her at the end of the decade, she had received her Sanskrit name from Swami and become a nun. She became a particular friend of Isherwood's when he lived at the Vedanta Society during the 1940s. Amiya had married in the late 1920s, becoming Ella Corbin, but the marriage failed; in the early 1950s she met George Montagu, Earl of Sandwich (then in his sixties), when he visited the Vedanta Society. A few weeks later Swami gave them permission to marry, and Amiya returned to England, divorced Corbin, and became Countess of Sandwich. She grew close to Isherwood's mother and his brother Richard. She was also close throughout her life to her younger sister, Sally Hardie (1906–1990). Bachardy drew Amiya twice. She appears in
D.1
and
D.2.

Amohananda.
American monk of the Ramakrishna Order. Until he took sannyas in 1971, he was called Paul Hamilton.

Anamananda.
See Arup Chaitanya.

ananda.
Sanskrit for bliss or joy; an aspect of Brahman. It is used as the last part of a monk's sannyas name in the Shankara Order, for example, Vivek
ananda
, “whose bliss is in discrimination.”

Anandaprana (Ananda).
See Usha.

Anderson, Judith (1898–1992).
Australian-born actress; she made her first appearance on the New York stage in 1918 and played major roles throughout the 1930s and 1940s, including the lead in
Mourning Becomes Electra
(1932), Gertrude to Gielgud's Hamlet in 1936, Lady Macbeth twice, and Medea twice. She also had many movie roles, including Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's
Rebecca
(1940) and other often chilling parts. She took the lead in the brief Broadway run of Speed Lamkin's play
Comes a Day
at the end of the 1950s and toured with Bill Roerick in 1961, performing snippets from her most famous shows. She appears in
D.1
and
D.2.

Anderson, Lindsay (1923–1994).
British director; born in India and educated at Cheltenham College and Oxford. After World War II, he founded the British film magazine
Sequence
with Karel Reisz and Gavin Lambert, a friend since school; he wrote film criticism for it, for
Sound and Sight
, and for
The New Statesman
. He made documentaries as well as features and was at the heart of the British Free Cinema Movement, which gave rise to the new realism in British films in the early 1960s. Many of his stage productions were at The Royal Court where he was an artistic director from 1969 to 1975. His films include
Thursday's Child
(1954),
This Sporting Life
(1963),
If. . .
(1968),
O Lucky Man!
(1973),
Britannia Hospital
(1982), and
The Whales of August
(1987).

Anderson, Paul.
American would-be actor and singer; as Isherwood records, he was a boyfriend of Roddy McDowall, who supported his efforts to establish himself professionally, bringing celebrity friends to Anderson's nightclub performances. As well as singing at The Little Club and appearing in a production of Pinter's
The Homecoming
, he had a few tiny movie parts as Adam Anderson. But his career never took off.

Andrews, Oliver and Betty Harford.
California sculptor, on the art faculty at UCLA; American actress, his wife until the 1970s. Andrews knew Alan Watts well and travelled with Watts to Japan. Harford was a close friend of Iris Tree and acted at Tree's High Valley Theater in the Upper Ojai Valley. She also worked for John Houseman in numerous stage productions, appeared in a few movies, including
Inside Daisy Clover
(1965), and had numerous T.V. roles from the 1950s onward, including Professor Kingsfield's secretary, Mrs. Nottingham, in “The Paper Chase” (1978–1986) and the cook, Hilda Gunnerson, in “Dynasty” (1981–1989). They had a son, Christopher, born in the 1950s and named after Isherwood. They are mentioned as a couple in
D.1
and
Lost Years
, where Isherwood called her Betty Andrews, and separately in
D.2
. After they split, she lived with Hungarian actor Alex de Naszody until he died in the early 1980s. As Isherwood tells, Andrews died suddenly of a heart attack in 1978, while still in his forties.

Anhalt, Edward (Eddie) (b. 1914).
American screenwriter. He wrote war, crime, and spy thrillers but also adapted
Beckett
(1964),
The Madwoman of Chaillot
(1969), and many others. He began writing with his first wife, Edna Anhalt, during the 1950s and later worked successfully by himself. His second wife, whom he married later in the 1950s, was called Jackie George. In 1958, Selznick hired Anhalt to work on
Mary Magdalene
, replacing Isherwood, but the film was never made. He appears in
D.1.

the Animals.
Isherwood and Bachardy. Also, homosexuals in general, as against human beings or heterosexuals. Isherwood and Bachardy called their Adelaide Drive house La Casa de los Animales (The House of the Animals). See also Dobbin for Isherwood in his identity as a horse and Kitty for Bachardy.

Apollo
13.
The third lunar landing attempt was launched April 11, 1970; on April 13, 200,000 miles from earth, an oxygen tank blew up, causing the other to fail; the three astronauts had to evacuate from the command module into the lunar module, and travel back to earth in near-freezing temperatures with little food and only six ounces of water a day. They splashed down safely near Samoa on April 17.

Arizu, Betty.
The daughter Jo Masselink had with Ferdinand Hinchberger. She appears as a grown woman in
D.2.
and in this diary, married to Fran Arizu, a Mexican, with whom she had two children.

Arnoldi, Charles (Chuck) (b. 1946).
American sculptor, painter, and graphic artist; born in Ohio, educated briefly at the Art Center in Los Angeles and at the Chouinard Art Institute. He became recognized in the early 1970s for his wall reliefs and objects made of sticks, rope, and bamboo. His works are in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the National Gallery of Australia, among others.