Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

  On December 20 and 23, Christopher sat for the artist Nicolai Fechin. Fechin lived in a big dark old redwood house which was rather like the inside of a sailing ship—at the back of the Canyon. He was a friend of Jo Lathwood and Ben Masselink; an amiable Russian genius. He drew Christopher in charcoal. At the end of the first sitting, the drawing looked so wildly romantic—a kind of Nordic hero—that Christopher protested. When it was finished it had become one more in the series of Fechin’s anthropological portraits—a typical specimen of Intellectual Man—angry looking but also flattering, in a different way. I still have a photograph of it. I don’t know what Fechin did with the original.

  On December 30, Christopher had supper with the Stravinskys and Robert Craft at their house. Aldous and Maria Huxley were there. I have a memory—which, I believe, belongs to this occasion—of Christopher lying on the floor, dozy with drink. Christopher looks up and sees Aldous towering skyscraper-tall above him—ignoring Christopher with English tact, as he talks aesthetics to Igor in French.34

  * * *

  1 The day-to-day diary’s list of books Christopher read in 1948 includes:

  The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, The Bostonians (James), The Mint (T. E. Lawrence), Nostromo (Conrad), Le Sabbat (Maurice Sachs), The Loved One (Evelyn Waugh), Hindoo Holiday (J. R. Ackerley), End as a Man (Calder Willingham), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (Dylan Thomas), Ape and Essence (Aldous Huxley), I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith), Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton), The Seven-Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton), The Plague and Caligula (Camus), The American People (Geoffrey Gorer), No Exit (Sartre), A Treasury of Science Fiction (edited by Groff Conklin). There are more thrillers listed this year than usual, probably because Christopher did so much travelling and therefore required travel reading.

  Christopher got interested in Steffens through knowing Ella Winter and her terrifically sexy son Pete Steffens. He found the Autobiography very curious; there is something a bit fiendish and inhuman in Steffens’s personal liking for the men he exposed and ruined. The Bostonians is still my favorite long novel by James—indeed, the only one I really like. Christopher read The Mint while staying with Victoria Ocampo at Mar del Plata (see The Condor and the Cows [chapter ten]); it hadn’t yet been published. It was a bit of a disappointment to him, since he had been expecting something prodigious, but it left many vivid new impressions of demure, humble-arrogant, masquerading Lawrence—about whom Forster, after hours of reminiscence, had sadly delivered the verdict, “One didn’t altogether like him.” Christopher found Nostromo noble and masterly but unmemorable. Le Sabbat, which he noticed by chance in a Buenos Aires bookstore, appealed to him as sex gossip about people who interested him. He had never heard of Sachs before and liked his shamelessness. He read the book in French; there was then no English translation. He passionately hated The Loved One for its condescending attitude toward California. Later readings, while working with Tony Richardson on the film, have convinced me that this is a mean-minded, sloppily written production, probably Waugh’s worst and utterly unworthy of his talent. Hindoo Holiday must have been a rereading. I wish I could remember what Christopher thought of it in the light of his now increased knowledge of things Indian, but I don’t. End as a Man was an exciting discovery and the beginning of Christopher’s (more or less) constant enthusiasm for Willingham’s work. He loved Portrait of the Artist, particularly the chapter called “One Warm Saturday.” He was shocked by Ape and Essence, feeling that Aldous’s besetting distaste for the world and the flesh had gotten quite out of control here and produced something cheap and nasty. Against his will, he had to agree with Peggy Kiskadden on this. Peggy, as usual, had no qualms about expressing her opinion unasked for; she told Aldous exactly what she objected to. Christopher kept his mouth shut. But he was forced to say something complimentary to Dodie Smith about I Capture the Castle, though it seemed to him mere magazine writing. Cry, the Beloved Country was recommended to Christopher by James Stern. The opening seemed so technicolored that Christopher nearly put the book down, but he read on and was tremendously moved. In the November 6 journal entry, Christopher says that he is reading The Seven-Storey Mountain and that he is repelled by Merton’s Catholic arrogance. But he was also attracted by the very grimness of the Trappist death to the world—which is admittedly far more terrifying but also perhaps easier than trying to be a monk at the permissive Vedanta Center. Christopher admired The Plague; it seemed to him altogether different from Camus’ fakey Stranger. He read into it an antiheroic, anti-Hemingway message—that suffering and death are not romantic and that even a brave and noble doctor would much rather not have to fight a plague. Caligula is dimly remembered for one funny scene in which the emperor holds a poetry competition. Christopher thought No Exit as phoney as L’Étranger. He was delighted with Gorer for saying that, while the European male fears that the homosexuals will seduce his children, the American male fears that they will seduce him. Groff Conklin’s science fiction anthology was recommended, I think, by Gerald Heard. (Gerald’s story, “The Great Fog,” is in it.) The Conklin anthology Christopher read first was the one published in 1948; later he got an earlier one, published in 1946. The story which made the greatest impression on Christopher was Lawrence O’Donnell’s “Vintage Season.” These books were his introduction to the new school of science fiction writers.

  2 Gerald Heard used to tell how, while he was visiting the Kiskaddens, Bill had noticed a wart on his finger and had told him, “I can cure that right away.” He had then produced several needles and had stuck them into Gerald’s wart. Then he had heated the needles with a match. The pain, Gerald said, was extreme—adding that Bill had watched his face all the time, waiting for him to betray his suffering. But Gerald, being Gerald, didn’t—so Bill was foiled.

  Bill must have had much more fun when he cut out Christopher’s pile (see the journal entry of April 24, 1944) because Christopher “yelled clear around the block.”

  3 No, says Carlos McClendon (December 8, 1972), he wasn’t at the Ouija board party, though he does remember Caskey telling him about it. However, Carlos describes an experience he had which was very like Chris Wood’s. Approaching the house, one day, he looked up at the glassed-in porch and saw a woman. Bill Harris was downstairs—this must have been in January 1950—and Carlos asked him who the woman was. Bill was alone in the house.

  4 For example, on May 19, 1948, while Christopher and Caskey were up at Wyberslegh, staying with Kathleen and Richard, they visited Lyme Hall and went round the house on a conducted tour. They managed to keep ahead of the main body of sightseers and thus got an independent first impression of each room before they were caught up with by the others. When Christopher and Caskey went into one of the rooms, Christopher exclaimed at once that it had a horrible atmosphere and must surely be haunted. A few moments later, the guide arrived with the rest of the party and announced that this was The Haunted Room. (Of course it’s quite possible that Christopher had been told about this room when he came to Lyme as a boy.)

  But this reminds me of a far stranger experience which, for some reason I failed to record in the 1939–1944 journal. It must have happened sometime in 1939 or 1940, during one of the trips that Christopher and Vernon Old took up into northern California—I am sure Vernon was with Christopher at the time, though he wasn’t involved in the experience.

  They were in their car, driving through the Sequoia forest. It was late afternoon, always a time which Christopher found rather sinister in the big woods—the feeling that night is about to fall seemed to him far more menacing than night itself Suddenly, the road led them around the edge of a large clearing—a cup-shaped hollow which was grassy and swampy. In the middle of this clearing stood a shack. It was a store, and it looked like the stores of pioneer days; maybe it had survived from the period before Sequoia became a national park and private dwellings were forbidden. Anyhow, there it was—and Christopher was happy as well as surprised to see it. He wanted to buy some cigarettes and
had despaired of being able to until they were out of this area.

  Vernon stopped the car and sat at the wheel waiting while Christopher ran down into the hollow and entered the store. He found the store empty. It wasn’t dark inside and it looked quite as he had expected it would look—stocked with all the usual goods. After Christopher had waited a short while, a man came out of a room at the back. He asked, “What can I do for you?” Whereupon, Christopher ran out of the store, dashed up the slope to the car and jumped in, gasping to Vernon to drive away quick.

  Even at the time, Christopher found it impossible to explain his panic. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. It has never happened to him since. His impression was that his panic had nothing to do with the atmosphere of the place; it was caused by the man himself. Trying to give Vernon some idea of how he had felt, Christopher said that it was as if that man had been in the midst of doing something unspeakably evil in the back room when Christopher’s arrival had interrupted him. Part of the horror was that he was able to come straight from that unspeakable act and ask a customer, “What can I do for you?” in a quiet ordinary voice. Christopher was certain that he hadn’t been frightened by the man’s appearance; indeed he couldn’t remember anything definite about it. So the man must have somehow projected the terror which Christopher felt. Either that, or the man himself was only a projection of an evil ambience in the store—that is to say, not a man at all.

  [5 I.e., not snug, not comfortable.]

  6 Christopher’s relations with Ava Gardner, Walter Huston, Melvyn Douglas and Robert Siodmak had been good, too—partly because they were all left-wing liberals. He would have liked to know Gardner better—but that would have meant taking her out in the evenings, and Christopher always avoided tête-à-têtes with beautiful well-known women—either they thought you were making a pass or suspected you of only seeing them because you yourself were trying to pass. (Incidentally, one of the camera crew remarked about Ava to Christopher—“You wouldn’t believe it, but I hear she stays home most evenings, longing for the phone to ring. Seems like she’s one of the gals that guys never try to date, because they’re sure she’s all booked up.”)

  Robert Siodmak was the friendliest of them all. Several people told Christopher that Siodmak was queer. Christopher never saw any definite evidence of this, but he did sometimes wonder if Siodmak fancied him.

  7 Although Christopher had complained so much about the boredom of this project, he began to enjoy himself while working on the final chapter and was later rather proud of the purple passage with which it closes—particularly: “. . . Atahuallpa baptized and strangled, Alfaro torn to pieces, Valencia translating Wilde above a courtyard of violets—” The rhythm of this seemed to him extraordinarily exciting and he made excuses for quoting it to his friends—in a tone of humorous apology for its melodrama. But no one ever protested that it was beautiful.

  8 Some extracts from Christopher’s letter:

  Strict pacifism is total and neutral. . . . You do not pretend to be total pacifists, and I’m not going to try to convert you to that position. What I am now concerned with is your neutrality. . . . I am . . . basing my opinion . . . on your own leaflet, your “call” to the conference . . . a whole paragraph is devoted to Washington’s misdeeds and mistakes. I agree with much of what is said. . . . But where is the paragraph which ought, in fairness, to follow it . . . dealing with the misdeeds and mistakes of Moscow? You imply or seem to me to imply—that the “cold war” . . . must be blamed entirely on the U.S. government. This is simply not true. . . . If we invite guests from overseas, we should not greet them with accusations. We should be humble and dwell most upon our own shortcomings. I take this to be your intention. Nevertheless, I must suggest that such politeness hopelessly confuses the issue . . . by refraining from criticism of Soviet militarism and aggression, you imply that your guests are associated with it and that, therefore, you mustn’t hurt their feelings. Isn’t this . . . an accusation? A well-founded accusation, I fear. Consider the facts. The greatest police state on earth permits some of its prominent citizens to come over to this country and take part in a peace conference. Such a conference . . . ought to imply a condemnation of all the governments whose nationals are involved[,] since these governments have failed to establish peace. . . . If these Russian delegates had come with genuinely neutral, pacifistic aims, they would be condemning Soviet militarism. Their lives would be in danger. They could never return to their own country. . . . I am forced to believe that the Russian delegates were permitted to come . . . because the Soviet government intends to exploit . . . your whole conference for propaganda purposes. . . . I fear that its findings and resolutions . . . will inspire militarists within the Soviet Union with the most dangerous confidence that the intelligentsia of the United States are actually on their side; that the cold war . . . should therefore be pressed to the uttermost. . . . Such confidence . . . might well lead to the outbreak of armed hostilities. . . .

  9 Christopher made another start on May 2—this, like the first three, was set in the refugee hostel. On May 9, he tried again—beginning, this time, with the flight east from Los Angeles following Stephen’s breakup with Jane (Anne, as she was then called). This may have been another false start—it is certainly very bad; it reads like inferior Scott Fitzgerald—or it may have been revised and then added to later; for the day-to-day diary entry of June 27 records that Christopher finished chapter one of The School of Tragedy on that day. I dare say the manuscript of this chapter is stored away somewhere, but I can’t be bothered to look for it now.

  May 20.

  10 Dear Mr. Jarrico,

  Thank you for your letter about Albert Maltz [one of the Hollywood Ten]. I’m sorry that I can’t be with you on the platform on May 25 when you hold your meeting, but I shall certainly be there in spirit. I loathe all censorship—no matter whether it comes from the Right or the Left. Luckily, as a rule, it defeats its own object.

  As for The Journey of Simon McKeever, it seems to me a charming novel, which couldn’t hurt a baby, politically or otherwise. If anyone could possibly object to it, I should have expected the communists to do so. Isn’t it what they call “liberal romanticism”?

  With best wishes for the end of this, and all other witch-hunts,

  Sincerely. . . .

  [11 Here Isherwood came to the end of his manuscript book and began a new one.]

  12 I don’t know when Carter Lodge and Dick Foote first met each other, but I do remember that Carter described their meeting more or less as follows: Carter was waiting somewhere (on a street corner, I think) when a young man walked past him. The young man looked so miserable that Carter found himself saying, “Cheer up!” The young man walked on a little way, as though he hadn’t heard; then he turned and came back to Carter and asked him, “Did you say what I think you said?” Thus they became lovers. Dick had been a complete stranger in town, lonely, jobless and desperate—and Carter’s kindness so overwhelmed him that he fell for Carter then and there.

  This sugary story was all the harder to believe because Dick himself seemed so full of baloney. He was an incurably absurd character. Even his powerful body and his nice-looking face had a quality of caricature about them. His big muscles didn’t go with his professed vulnerability and neither did his sentimental dark eyes with his impudence. He was a singer of throbbingly mournful cowboy ballads and a payer of outrageous compliments. He would sidle up to Christopher and mutter: “Jeez, that sexy little ass of yours makes me hot! I’d like to fuck the living shit out of you!” This was his approach to most of the queers and many of the women that he met. He claimed that he had talked like this to Garbo and that she’d loved it. Christopher never knowingly heard Dick utter a sincere word. And yet it was easy to enjoy the silly cheerfulness of his company and even to become fond of him, for he was quite without malice. Christopher became fond of Dick, and so did the Beesleys, up to a point. Alec described him as looking “like a coal heaver.”


  Christopher and Caskey probably met Dick Foote for the first time on February 5, 1949. This is the first mention I can find of Dick in the day-to-day diary. On that day, Christopher drove down to the AJC Ranch to stay with John and Carter, and remained till February 8. The day-to-day diary doesn’t actually name Caskey or say “we drove,” so it’s possible Christopher was alone.

  What did John van Druten think of Dick Foote? Most of the time, he probably accepted Dick because he felt he had no right not to, as long as Starcke was around. But Dick certainly got on John’s nerves. As for Carter, he loathed Starcke and used his always powerful influence upon John to undermine Starcke’s position and get rid of him—which he ultimately succeeded in doing.

  13 On June 8, 1974, Evelyn Hooker reminded me of an extra detail in this story. Christopher and the others said that they would smuggle her into the Crystal Baths, a notorious old bathhouse which then stood on the edge of the beach in Ocean Park. This building had several floors and on the top of it was a sun deck for nude sunbathing. Evelyn says that Christopher told her that he could get her onto the ground floor and maybe the second but that she’d undoubtedly be caught if she ventured higher, and that the queers would then put her to death instantly. (A typical specimen of Christopher’s antiwoman fantasies!)