Lost Years (54 page)

What I do know is that Anaïs had sometime previously sent Christopher a copy of her novel
Children of the Albatross
, inscribed: “Our mutual friend Bill Kennedy tried to have us meet but you were not home. This is a preface to a future meeting. Anaïs.” Christopher had read the novel and been seriously impressed. Nevertheless, he had laid it on far too thick in his note of thanks, telling Anaïs that she had made him feel, as never before, what it is like to be a woman—and adding, “Since one could hardly say more than this to Flaubert about Bovary, I conclude that your novel also is a masterpiece.” Anaïs, being regally accustomed to courtly language from her admirers, took this tribute quite as a matter of course.

On July 13, the day-to-day diary notes that Christopher went to the Huntington Hartford Foundation for tea. I think that Frank
Taylor was probably with him. Frank did go with him to see the Hartfords on July 19 at their house in Hollywood—this is recorded in the day-to-day diary—and the reason for their visit was that Frank was urging Christopher to become one of the trustees of the foundation. My impression is that Frank himself had already become a trustee and no doubt he wanted to control the board through his nominees. Although Frank was for the time being a film producer at MGM, he still kept up his connection with the New York publishing world, and it is advantageous for a publisher to be in a position to promote literary fellowships for his authors. Hartford was full of conservative artistic opinions but fundamentally lazy and gullible; an operator like Frank could manage him easily and charmingly, without ever having to get tough. As for Christopher, he was intrigued by the idea of becoming a trustee. This was a new role for him, and the foundation, as he increasingly discovered, could be an ideal place of escape from his homelife with Caskey.

It was a ranch house surrounded by a good deal of land, near the end of a dirt road which straggled along part of Rustic Canyon, north of Sunset Boulevard. The canyon was very hot in summer and an obvious firetrap, but it had the charm of sleepy old-Californian remoteness, although it was so near suburbia; and Hartford had fixed up the swimming pool and had several attractive cottages built in the surrounding woods, all ready to be filled with writers, artists and composers.

On July 15—Caskey having gone off to Laguna Beach with Lennie Newman—Christopher drove up to the top of Mount Wilson with Peter Darms. On the way back, they stopped at the Clear Creek Forest Station, where Rupert Pole was living and working as a forest ranger. Anais was staying there with him—in defiance of the regulations, since no wives or girlfriends were permitted and there was no accommodation for them. Anaïs and 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,
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
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.
¹⁸

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.
¹⁹
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
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.
²⁰

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,
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
²¹
. 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.
²²
There were also
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 photography
²³
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
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. Halfheartedly, 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.