Liberation: Diaries 1970–1983

By Christopher Isherwood and Edmund White

Candid and revealing, the final volume of Christopher Isherwood's diaries brings together his thoughts on life, love, and death. Beginning in the period of his life when he wrote Kathleen and Frank, his first intensely personal book, Liberation: Diaries 1970–1983 intimately and wittily records Isherwood's immersion in the 1970s art scene in Los Angeles, New York, and London—a world peopled by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and David Hockney, as well as his Broadway writing career, which brought him in touch with John Huston, Merchant and Ivory, John Travolta, John Voight, Elton John, David Bowie, Joan Didion, and Armistead Maupin. With a preface by Edmund White, Liberation is a rich and engaging final memoir by one of the most celebrated writers of his generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9780062084750

Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was born outside of Manchester, England. His life in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 inspired The Berlin Stories, which were adapted into a play, a film, and the musical Cabaret. Isherwood immigrated to the United States in 1939. A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, he wrote more than twenty books, including the novel A Single Man and his autobiography, Christopher and His Kind.

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January 1–March 2, 1970

January 1. We got up very late and have been fussing around, chiefly engaged in destroying old manuscripts; the early Meeting by the River material for instance. Now we have to go out and see people, including Margaret Leighton whom I like and Marti Stevens who bores me.

Bill van Petten called to wish me a happy New Year and to tell me that the new (sixteen-year-old) generation calls itself the Jam Generation. It relates to its parents, whereas the previous generation (twenty-year-old) didn’t. It believes in pilgrimages; hence these huge gatherings as at Woodstock. Bill also says that the newsmen on the Los Angeles Times are very pessimistic about the seventies. They expect organized violence by the blacks.

Last night we saw the New Year in with Jack [Larson] and Jim [Bridges]. Several people connected with Jim’s film¹ were there; he starts shooting on Monday. We both feel that the prospects of the film look dubious because Jim doesn’t seem to have really thought through the material and found out what it’s about. Surely it isn’t about this girl at all, but about the weird married couple who decide that the husband must father the baby? The girl is just a human appliance, but it looks as if Jim is going to sentimentalize her. However, Jim feels he has got a very good cast. Sam Groom,² who plays the husband, was there last night. I liked him. We talked about Hemingway, on whom he’d written a thesis. He looks awfully young for the part, though, but Jim says he’s a marvellous partner for mad Collin Horne.³ One could see them as a wayout Macbeth and Lady. The girl who plays the girl (Barbara Hershey)⁴ and the boy who plays her boyfriend Tad (Scott somebody)⁵ and a boy who is a friend of his and a girl who is Scott’s girlfriend were also there, utterly ambushed in lank shoulder hair. I sure hope the Jam Generation will decree crew cuts. Don says that this is the most unflattering period for women in the whole of history. When Jim announced midnight and a toast in champagne, the young folk barely responded; it was too square for them.

Incidentally, Bill van Petten told me that, if you don’t have any particular plans, this is now called being unstructured; in the sixties it was called hanging loose. Bill is desperately in pursuit of all the very latest slang, the latest attitudes, the last word.

January 3. I saw Swami yesterday. He doesn’t seem sick, only tired. And of course there is a little bit of policy somewhere in it; for now Asaktananda has written a drastic appeal to Belur Math to send someone to be second assistant without delay!

Swami told me that when the palpitations, or whatever they were, came over him in Santa Barbara he felt quite detached, as if his body belonged to someone else. I felt a flustering in my chest, and I was like an observer. He also told me he had a dream that he was swimming in the Ganges. He wasn’t at all afraid of being drowned, he didn’t know if he had clothes on or not, he couldn’t see the banks of the river.

Yesterday we had lunch with Alan Searle. He is very red in the face (hinting at apoplexy) and very plump. He made big protestations of affection but the fact remains that he has been here eleven weeks and has only now made a move to see us, just before leaving! He says he’s thinking of coming to live here. He drinks a lot. He says that Willie [Maugham] told him never to write his life, and that Kanin’s book is made up of stories he told about Willie; that Kanin never really knew Willie as well as he makes out.⁶

1969 was actually a very happy year for me, mostly because of Don, and this despite the fact that it was a year of frustrations. We wrote the Cabaret treatment and got turned down by Tony Harvey and the Claudius screenplay and got turned down by Tony Richardson. Black Girl got very disappointing notices. Ray Henderson’s Dogskin production fizzled out after looking most promising, because Burgess Meredith deserted us. True, all these projects could easily be revived this year or later.⁷

I did quite a lot of work but not nearly enough. Only six chapters of Kathleen and Frank; that’s disgraceful. The other chores were all for the Vedanta Society except for a foreword to Hockney’s book of drawings, which I wrote with extraordinary difficulty, unwillingness and boredom, as a gesture of friendship, and for which I’ve never even been thanked, much less paid!⁸

The best event was Irving Blum’s decision to give Don this show. The most memorable days were the two on Tahiti and the day of our visit to Stevenson’s grave—but altogether, that trip was really the best of my whole life, I think.⁹ The chief disaster was the collapse of our hillside during the rains on February 25; this may well lead to much more serious slides nearer the house. The most boring thing that happened was John Lehmann’s visit. The most interesting new person I met was Jim Gates (with Peter Schneider a runner-up); the most intriguing celebrities, Michael York and Jeanne Moreau. Relations with friends haven’t been very intense; we have kept ourselves even more than usual to ourselves. When I ask myself who I’ve felt particularly drawn to, amongst people in this town, I’m rather surprised to find it’s Leslie Caron—although I still don’t dig her husband Michael [Laughlin]. I have been very regular in going to the gym but alas have gotten progressively heavier. I bulge with gas.

Never mind, it was a good year, with much beautiful quiet joy in it and loving snug closeness of Kitty and Dobbin.¹⁰

January 11. It’s dripping rain and I have a cold lurking which I’m trying to keep at the back of my throat with Coricidin D. How I hate my huge belly! A lot of it is gas and I can dislodge it if I do stationary trotting; haven’t been out today except up to the trash cans.

It now seems almost definite that we’ll go to London on February 2, after a stopover in New York, and that we’ll seriously consider Clifford Williams as director¹¹ and, if okay, start casting and then rehearsals and then open, all being well, sometime in March or April. But Don’s show is still set for the beginning of March, so he’ll probably have to go back for it and then return for our opening. All this sounds as unreal to me at the moment as the plans to go with David Hockney and Peter [Schlesinger] on the trans-Siberian railway—except that Don and I have pretty well decided to back out of that.

We had supper with Jo [Lathwood] last night and yesterday afternoon I saw Elsa [Lanchester]. Much as Elsa would hate to admit it, she and Jo are now sisters in bereavement, because of Ray Henderson being about to get married.¹² Yesterday Elsa was giving a party too and her attitude was just like Jo’s: all alone I’m doing it, poor little me, it seems so strange without him, etc. etc. Jo described to us how she had been given a surprise birthday celebration by her girls at the factory. Her slogan is, They all love me. And Elsa described how she had gone to some celebrity dinner the other night and been applauded for five minutes; she said that this made me feel worthy of my friends. Oh, the false pathos of these unhappy old girls! It doesn’t move you in the way they intend, but it is genuinely, heartbreakingly squalid.

January 30. It’s five fifteen a.m. and I’m up before dawn because today is the Vivekananda breakfast puja.¹³ Shall be off there in a short while. Peter Schneider and Jim Gates will meet me there and afterwards we’ll all drive to Claremont, where Jim will have the stitches taken out of his neck. He was operated on, messily, by a Dr. Joseph Griggs who is the brother of Phil who is now Buddha and a monk at the London center. The swelling is huge and looks nasty and Jim thinks it is maybe infected, but he seems serenely unworried. He told me that right after the operation, when it started to hemorrhage, and he really thought he was dying, he felt suddenly blissfully happy. Maybe he is Alyosha Karamazov—but oh wow man the pitfalls! Anyhow he is sort of dear to me and so is Peter. Peter is now coming up from behind, in racing parlance, I mean he had an interview with Swami, too, his second, yesterday and Swami told him to sit up straight and look after his body and Peter told Swami that his father had only told him to look after his mind and Swami had said but they are the same. (This from Swami himself, when I went to see him yesterday afternoon.) Anyhow, in a word, Peter isn’t going to be left out of the Atman race. He is keenly competitive and quite jealous lest Jim should somehow get a bigger slice of me than he does; not that he wants me, or even maybe the Atman, but that’s his character. And at his age it’s lovable. He is therefore coming along with us to Claremont.

This evening I take off for New York, leaving Jim to house-sit here. He is rather thrilled at the idea of being alone in this (to him) vast palace. It is funny and interesting that there is very little involvement between the boys, seemingly; conscious involvement, that is. They are involved of course. And their life in that little shack beside the canal with the ducks and the kitty and the meditation hut at the back in the grassy yard is so idyllic, hippie in the best way and far more genuine and unpretentious than most hippies’ lives are. I told them, they will look back and say they never had it so good, later on. People come to see them in droves and food is prepared and they eat, or else there is no one and they don’t. They wander off to college or their jobs at these restaurants and it all seems so simple.

From New York, Don and I are to go to London on the 4th and then find out if the play is really going to happen. About all this I feel at present only the dislike of leaving the nest and the hate of flying and of the impending icy weather, etc. I called Don this morning, just to say hello, but I guess he is spending the night out; no answer.

Gavin [Lambert] just got back from Europe, last night. He says he’s still ill and he looks it; he really seems quite fragile and his hands shake like an old lady’s. He seriously considers buying a house in Tangier, in the kasbah, and spending several months there every year, chiefly amongst the Arabs. When he talks of this he is Lesley Blanch. He’s also quite a wonderful person, so much style and courage. Style is a kind of courage, always, I suppose.

Am rambling to pass the time. Now I must call the boys and tell them the car will start ( just tried it) so they needn’t come around and pick me up.

8:07 p.m. A very quick goodbye. Charlie Locke called to say his wife is dying of terminal cancer and can I do something to arrange for them to spend her last weeks in Cornwall. But Jim Gates does not have anything serious the matter with him. So hurrah for that. Goodbye.

England, March 2–April 30, 1970

We arrived in England on February 5, 1970, from New York, where we had stayed since leaving Los Angeles on January 31.

All through the rest of February, Don was with me in London and we did a good deal of rewriting on our play, A Meeting by the River. On March 2, after Don had gone back to Los Angeles because of his show at the Irving Blum gallery, I decided to start this diary and try to keep it every day until he returned or I left England to rejoin him in California.¹

March 2. I’ll try and write this entirely at odd moments. Am now waiting for Bob Holness of the BBC radio program Late Night Extra. (Long before that sentence was finished, he arrived, interviewed me—How is your play getting along? How do you feel about Cabaret?—and left within twenty minutes.)

Don left this morning for New York and Los Angeles. There was a nasty little snowstorm, then it cleared, then it snowed again. It’s horribly cold. I rushed out and bought books—as people rush into pubs to get drunk for the sake of getting drunk: the script of Lindsay Anderson’s If,² Frederick Brown’s Cocteau biography,³ Aldous Huxley’s letters, The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew,⁴ Richard Neville’s Play Power.

The heat is on and it’s still cold. Clement Scott Gilbert and his secretary have taken away the new pages we did since the reading of the play on Wednesday last; they’ll xerox them. Clement said that John Roberts and Clifford Williams have been meaning to ask me if I minded having all reference to the cubes removed from the version of the play which will be sent round to the actors when they start casting. I don’t like their attitude, it seems sneaky. Are they so scared of me and, if so, why? What is Clifford up to? We have heard nothing from him since the reading and apparently he has gone to New York to see Oh! Calcutta! which he is to work on before he directs our play. I said, it’s not that we’re wild about having the cubes in, but how can you explain to an art director that he must devise a substitute when you haven’t shown him what the substitute is a substitute for?

A BOAC plane with that terribly insecure-looking tail has just flown over. Like the one we flew here in. Thoughts of Don, flying in it today. Is he in New York already? He should be nearly, if not quite. Wish he would ring me from there.

An underground train rumbles below, shaking the house, as trains have been shaking it for exactly a hundred years.* This part of the inner circle is older than this street.

The girls on the street with their very long maxi coats which open to show madly indecent glimpses of miniskirts and endless leg beneath.

How relaxed the English are! As we were driving back from the Rodin exhibition yesterday, an anti-Vietnam-War procession came up Whitehall. So all traffic was halted by the police until it had gone by. The cars must have been backed up halfway down the Strand. Never mind. They just had to wait.

March 3. Sylvain [Mangeot] last night seemed quite middle-aged, slowed down, slow spoken, his deliberately told stories have almost no point because he goes into no details, They had some incredible adventures, There was an absolutely ludicrous scene. This little household, the moustached Portuguese twenty-two-year-old student of theatrical design named Juan Melo and the Finnish girl, rather beautiful in her pale Arctic way, whose name I can’t write (something like Kick-kicke-kee) help Sylvain look after André [Mangeot], who now can’t use his legs or do anything for himself. He is downstairs and I didn’t see him. Up to the age of eighty he was still playing tennis! Hilda [Hauser] died soon after Olive [Mangeot]. Sylvain thinks she just decided to, there was nothing for her to live for, so she stopped taking the pills the doctor had given her to keep down her blood pressure and died in the kitchen after getting home from a movie. Sylvain and Juan cooked. We had two kinds of wine, also sherry and brandy. (Sylvain told at great length how cognac is called cognac after the place called Cognac, because the original Hennessey had the idea, so all brandy became cognac, although lots of other villages were making it.) A happy evening.

Terribly cold today. Last night I had to wear an undershirt and my bathrobe in bed. And to think a tiny kitty could keep Dub so much warmer!

It was cold at the Ramakrishna-Vedanta center too, where I’ve just lunched. Buddha looks starey-eyed, a little crazy, but doesn’t seem so. Swami Bhavyananda is fat and laughing, a bit like Vishwananda. He is a jnani, so Buddha does all the pujas.⁵ Four other men were there; they made an unusually good first impression—a Chinese, an Australian, an Englishman, a German; they all seemed genuinely friendly.*

March 4. Thick fluffy snow fell this morning. May it clear before I go north! A man from the BBC came to interview me, arriving more than half an hour early, just as I was in my bath. (The bath is one of the few appliances that really functions; you can have as much warm water as you like.)

Had supper with Robert Medley last night. He is planning to write a book about the Group Theatre and wanted my memories. We talked a lot and then found that his new tape recorder wasn’t recording.* Later, Gregory Brown came in and made it work. Robert was chiefly interested in the friction that developed between himself and Rupert on the one side and Wystan and me on the other. I said I really didn’t feel hostility to Rupert (aside from the fact that he was one of the most infuriating prima donnas who ever lived) and even liked him. Wystan—as Robert agreed— really disliked Rupert because he was jealous of him.

Gregory is a silly billy, I think; a white goose with a strange look of a homely Hope Lange. Why am I being so nasty? Because he’s married and yet comes around and smugly accepts the devotion of Robert—who told me he looked ravishing. Is that my affair? No.

Robert is now painting hard-edge squares and other shapes. They looked a most awful lot better after some scotch—though it didn’t take much, I admit, and I didn’t get the least drunk. But liquor does help me to look at art, it always has. When sober, my eyes dart about so restlessly. That’s why nowadays I find it a terrific effort to read anything.

Later. Still blasting this wretched snow. Have just come back from lunch with Gore [Vidal] at the Connaught. He looks thinner, hollow-cheeked but in a boyish way; terrifically attractive. He says he feels attractive, and he charmingly recalled that I was his present age when we first met and how attractive I was then. Indeed we were very pleased with each other. I love his consciously aggressive careerism. (Careerism is only loathsome when people are hypocritical about it, as they nearly always are.) Gore is now casting off the U.S.—as, he says, he threatened to if the Vietnam War continued six months longer after Nixon took office. But he also says the Nixon administration is out to get him, through income-tax audit. So he’s planning to become a citizen of the Irish Free State, and leaving for Dublin tomorrow to buy a house. I urged him to go into politics there. Yes, he said, de Valera’s about had it.⁶

The usual pronouncement that Truman Capote is a birdbrain. Gore has finished a novel called Two Sisters in which he admits that he and Jack Kerouac went to bed together—or was that in an article? (Gore told me about so many articles he’s written and talks he has given that my memory spins.) Anyhow, Gore now regrets that he didn’t describe the act itself; how they got very drunk and Kerouac said, Why don’t we take a shower? and then tried to go down on him but did it very badly, and then they belly rubbed. Next day, Kerouac claimed he remembered nothing; but later, in a bar,* yelled out, I’ve blown Gore Vidal!

Talking about books, Gore recommended The French Lieutenant’s Woman [by John Fowles] and said he likes everything by William Golding. He is to make a film called Jim Now which is to bring The City and the Pillar up to date and is set in Rome. Howard [Austen] will be the producer, and Gore says he’s really doing it because he feels Howard needs something to occupy himself with.

Quite a flap over the play. Clement [Scott Gilbert] wants to get rid of Clifford Williams because he feels Clifford is trying to do two jobs simultaneously—this and Oh! Calcutta! John Roberts supports Clifford, but Clement believes he’ll get a shock when he hears what a lot of money Clifford is demanding—the contract with him hasn’t been signed yet.

Clement, Clifford and Roberts agree that, when our revised version of the play is typed up, all mention of the cubes shall be taken out of it. They say the idea of the cubes will scare off prospective actors! I say, if the cubes aren’t mentioned, how can we explain what we want the art director to do about replacing them? (I’ve just realized that I have written all this already, which shows what a preoccupation it is with me at present!)

March 5. Last night, Norman Prouting and I saw The Way of the World at the Old Vic. It is depressing, how little Congreve’s lines mean when they aren’t spoken with style. Behind this shoddy clowning the old performance by Edith Evans and the others, the one I saw in 1927, kept appearing, their voices came through; I hadn’t realized how well I remember their readings of many speeches.⁷

Norman Prouting is touching, kind, vulnerable—maybe he appears to be more vulnerable than he actually is. He says he has put his whole life into this house; that’s conscious pathos, of course; but I don’t see him as a tiresomely pathetic person. He fixed us a little supper up in his flat after the theater. We talked about [ J.M.] Barrie’s plays.

March 6. A lady named Rosemary Ellerbeck⁸ came to interview me. She was nice, and had written an article on lesbians. We talked about why they were lesbians and why I am a heterosexual[.] And why are you? I found I had absolutely no idea. She says that the lesbians told her they hate male homosexuals and indeed all men. As she was leaving she was speared by one of the very sharp little horns on the back of the armchair in the living room. It made a hole in her dress, but she didn’t complain.

I had lunch with Bob Regester. Neil [Hartley] is quite sick, he has a bloodclot in his leg. He returns from New York today. Tony [Richardson] has quarreled with Henry Geldzahler about Larry⁹— not for the obvious reason but because Tony invited Henry and Larry to come down to the Caribbean and then told Henry he wasn’t wanted. Bob was dieting, so we ate beefsteak tartare, at a swanky club called dell’Aretusa.

With Peter Schlesinger to see Hadrian VII; almost incredibly poorly constructed.¹⁰ Peter kept getting the shits. Patrick Woodcock thinks it’s psychosomatic, and Peter certainly has homelife problems. The flat is always full of people, which he hates, and yet he can’t go off alone much because David wants the two of them to go around town as a couple. Also different sex patterns—shall they do it evening or morning? So they end up hardly doing it at all. [. . .]

Peter says [Don’s friend] asked him to find out if I’d see him. I said no—I wasn’t a bit angry with him (this isn’t absolutely true), I would be polite if we met socially, but I did not see any point in our getting together.

This morning Clement Scott Gilbert called to tell me that Clifford Williams wants the play rewritten; Penelope to come with Patrick to India, the Swami to be alive, Tom to be dropped and the mother too. John Roberts supports him in this; thinks the play as is isn’t box office. Clement and Richard Schulman¹¹ declare their loyalty, however. I called Don, who is already in Los Angeles. He was rather depressed, said that Clement and Richard are amateurs and that Clifford and John are the pros; but of course he agrees we can’t consider reconstructing. (I see [Don’s friend]’s shadow lying darkly over this. He didn’t like the play either.) There is to be another meeting on Monday, and then the situation should be clearer at least. Nicholas Thompson maintains that Clement is experienced and professional and says he isn’t at all disturbed.

Am just off to see Richard [Isherwood] at Disley. This gruesome cold! But no more snow, thank God.

March 7. Just before I got the taxi to Euston I rushed into a shop in the King’s Road to buy some pajamas. Grabbed some rather sickening pink ones with stripes, paid for them and rushed out. Only later, in the taxi, I realized they had cost me ten guineas! Felt so disgusted I considered stuffing them into some trash can, lest Don should see them when he returns. But of course I shall tell him. I always do.

The electric train ride to Stockport was much smoother than the old steam ride used to be. Richard met me, looking a bit heavier but somehow much more distinguished and indeed, if one can use such an expression, more like other people—though he still twists his head about and blinks. Dan and Mrs. Dan [Bradley] looked the same, both blooming with health. Dan talks more than ever, plays the stereo for background music and has a little curly damp-looking Yorkshire terrier named George which barks and drives one slightly crazy. But the Bradleys are really lovable animal-people, cozy to be with.

An amazing father and son comedy act, Steptoe and Son, on the telly, (Wilfr[i]d Brambell, Harry H. Corbett). They were so good it was even funny as intended, but moving, like Chekhov. The story anyhow wasn’t in the best of taste; an old horse dies and is made into cat food.*

This morning I woke, and there had been a quite heavy snowfall during the night. I leaned out of the window to breathe in the beautiful pure Brontë air, and saw dark drops on the snow along the windowsill—BLOOD! I was having a profuse nosebleed, my first in I don’t know how long. And what a Wuthering Heights thing to do! Cathy bleeding into the snow!

Am reading The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. Also brought The Autobiography of Malcolm X here with me. Trollope goes down easily; Solzhenitsyn as tough as his name.

March 8. Woke with such a feeling of the hills all around in the heavy snow. They are so powerfully present, so aloof and yet so suburban, and really so small; but I have never experienced any hills like them. And there comes a sense of how Kathleen [Isherwood] saw them, from the Wyberslegh windows, and how her wish was granted, to end her long life amongst them and die amongst them, grumbling but finally contented.

What I actually see from my window here at the Bradleys’ are seven minigarages, some brick council houses, and a shed, a little tree with large very black rooks (from the churchyard rookery) in it, and the hillside of small gardens under heavy snow, black sticks sticking out of it. The air of the hills smells strongly of cow.

Richard really does seem much less bizarre; perhaps I am comparing him with a fright-Richard of my imagination, but I don’t think so. We drove over to tomb-chilly Wyberslegh and came back with Kathleen’s news cuttings album, her diary for 1924 (for details of Granny Emmy’s death) and the Marple-Wyberslegh book,¹² which Richard will let me take to London and get xeroxed. Also he has told me quite a number of valuable extra details—such as that Emily, at the end, would only eat food that was yellow.*

Later: 10:40 p.m. Don is running around somewhere in Los Angeles, getting ready for his show later in the afternoon; it’ll be about 2 a.m. tomorrow, English time. I mustn’t pray for his success, only Swami can do that, but I can give thanks that I know him and love him. How amazing he is!

Have accomplished a good deal while here, but today was pretty trying. It was Dan Bradley’s birthday, he was sixty. He is wonderfully vigorous and so truly honest and courageous, and Richard certainly should give thanks for him and Mrs. Dan, who is adorably good-natured and looks absolutely marvellous for her age, unless she’s far younger than I think she is.* But today the children were here, in two shifts most of the time, and this produced maximum schizophrenia—the attention torn seven ways at once by grownups, kiddies, the little dog, Dan’s memories of being buried by a bomb at Plymouth during the war, Mrs. Dan bringing in food, the telly or radio played nearly full strength and Richard coughing just when you were trying to listen to anyone or anything else. Finally, glutted and dazed and slightly asphyxiated by the gas fire, I went out for a walk, just up the hill as far as the turn off of the road to Macclesfield. Snow was falling lightly but it was thawing. The air was so pure and full of strength. The snow hills with the dark crests of copses and the blackish-green stone walls and the black telegraph wires and barbed wire and fence posts. The farm where I stayed when the Monkhouses were at Meadow Bank and I had a crush on Johnny and Rachel had a crush on me. I’m glad people have had crushes on me, glad I used to be cute; it is a very sustaining feeling. Of course I often behaved like a little faggot bitch, but no tears need be shed over that. I too have been bitched—more than once.

The most interesting members of Dan’s family are the Danish boy, Bent Nilson (Nilsson? Neilson?) and his wife, Dan’s daughter Elizabeth. She met him in Australia, fell in love with him and had a child. She told him he didn’t have to marry her; she didn’t want him unless he wanted her. But he did marry her and they had another child after returning to England—both sons, both called by Danish names, Nils and Bjorn (this maybe proves something). Elizabeth adores him. [. . .] He is really quite powerfully sexy, with his smooth sulky face still boyish, his pretty carefully arranged fringe of wavy brown hair, his broad shoulders, thick wrists, tall lithe body, straight athletic legs with big knees and sturdy thighs. [. . . T]hey are soon leaving for a visit to his family in Denmark by ferry and car through Belgium and Holland and Germany.

Heard Richard laughing in the kitchen with Mrs. Dan. He sounded just as he used to, long ago, when he was laughing with Kathleen.

March 9. Back at Moore Street after a slow train trip during which I read myself a little more deeply into The First Circle and continued to enjoy The Eustace Diamonds.

Clement Scott Gilbert came by: Clifford Williams is definitely out. Now he’s eager to get Alec Guinness (and I suddenly remember how Guinness wrote me that fan letter about Meeting). Am to talk to Don in the morning. He sent a handsome announcement of his show, says he has several commissions already.

March 10. Have been talking to Clement, Don and Nicholas Thompson (in that order) about the play etc. John Roberts will stay with us if we can cast it. (I remarked to Clement that this was like the Los Angeles City Council, which took a pledge of allegiance to the flag on V-J Day¹³). Now I’m to dictate the necessary changes to a typist, who will then type up the copies to be sent around. Clifford Williams has sent a note of apology to us; so that’s that.

Don’s show seems to have been a success, whatever that means. Don was as cagey as usual about it. Mrs. Blum told him Irving thought this was the best opening he’d ever had. (How utterly unimportant this play is to me, compared with the prospect of Don’s achieving something like this, all on his own!) So we’ve decided to stay each of us where we are, for the present, and await developments.

Don says Evelyn Hooker has emerged into the light of social intercourse. She called, after having been all this time in the funny ward at Mount Sinai! She had been suffering for two years from depression because she couldn’t write her book; now she has resolved not to write it at all and go into private practice. Don says her face has quite lost its deathly terminal look. Is she a demonstration of Homer Lane’s statement that you can cure yourself of cancer by going mad?

Don has seen Jim Bridges’ film, still dislikes the story but thinks it really remarkable and Jim has got a great performance out of Collin Wilcox. The question now arises, should Jim direct the play after all, if he’s willing? I said well, you ask him and, if he’s free and wants to, let him get in touch with Nicholas Thompson at once, but meanwhile we’ll be looking elsewhere.

Talking of performances, Don says my T.V. talk about homosexuality¹⁴ was thought very highly of by Evelyn, Gavin and—George Cukor!

P.’s confidences at supper last night about poor D.* make D. seem terribly like an image of me and my past (I hope) behavior. P. says that whenever he tells D. he’d like to get away on his own and have more freedom, sexual and otherwise, D. always reacts by saying, You hate me. P. wants to have his own place and go on visiting D., without all this social involvement. Another point of similarity is the money question; D. is completely generous and wildly extravagant, but P. is nevertheless shy of behaving as if D.’s money really is his, as well. P. has only a small allowance from his family, doesn’t earn anything. [. . .]

I think it very likely that P. will end up by marrying.

March 11. Last night—oh Kitty forgive me!—I got very drunk with a young man named John Byrne. He wrote to me several months ago because he’s working with Alan Clodd on a bibliography of me.¹⁵ He has a job with an antiquarian and first edition bookseller called Bertram Rota in Savile Row (I went there today and we had lunch and I was given a copy of Romer Wilson’s The Death of Society because I said I wanted it, largely for nostalgic reasons; I’m sure it isn’t good). I’m not particularly thrilled by him and certainly not attracted—the poor boy has bad scars on his face, due to an accident with a heater, I think—but he’s good company (or should I say a good audience?). We stayed up till the small hours and today I’ve had a terrible hangover, which made me visit a Turkish bath, the one in Jermyn Street, and have my hair cut. It’s been raining on and off, which is depressing. Today Clement came by and went through the script of the play, now that the cubes have been removed. It will be typed up again as soon as possible. Only one alteration; I have added the two final lines spoken by Patrick and Oliver. I think they help a lot.

A note from [Don’s friend] asking if we can meet. Now I must write and tell him no. I only hope he won’t be at Tony Richardson’s tonight!

March 12. He wasn’t. And now I’ve written him saying that I don’t want to see him. He should get my letter tomorrow; so that’s that.

It was quite fun at Tony Richardson’s, because David was so sweet, as usual, and adorable wriggly little Wayne Sleep was there, and [Rudolf ] Nureyev, with his current friend* and some other guy. I think Nureyev had a sort of suspicion of me or thought I was some obsolete old Establishment fart. Anyhow, after dinner, while we were talking, he suddenly twisted my wrist with really cruel violence and in order not to let him hurt me I had to swing around with the result that I lost my balance and fell across the cocktail table, providentially not breaking anything. Actually I did skin my shin and drew blood but I made like it was nothing and apologized for my clumsiness. The others were aghast for a moment. Immediately, Nureyev’s manner changed, he became mock-affectionate, hugged me to his cold breast, covered my face with vampire kisses. He really is a macabre absurd nineteenth-century vampire, but at least he has great style and he dresses most elegantly. I felt quite warmly towards him, but it was much nicer to cuddle with Wayne, who has an admirer from New York who owns nineteen ships and has given him a gold watch. Peter defied Tony, when Tony said that Andy Warhol is no good at all; but Tony didn’t seem to mind a bit, and we are all to visit him for Easter in the South of France. The house is full of rather terrifying masks he has brought back from New Guinea. Also he has a construction of colored lights which flash on and off in turns and varying combinations, made by an artist named [Vassilikas] Takis.

This afternoon I got Kathleen’s manuscript book xeroxed.

March 13. I feel a sudden black depression. This weather is so wretched and the play is dragging its feet (not even ready to be typed till Tuesday) and I have just talked to Don and he hasn’t sold any pictures from his show and has hardly any commissions. He also says that Jim Gates has got his call-up and now will soon have to leave, unless he can get approved C.O. work near home. Also, to be frank, I minded because Don seemed quite casual about my returning or not returning—yet I know so well how easily one can give that impression without meaning. . . . Well, fuck all that. Courage! Now I must go out in the drizzle and visit Hermione Baddeley. And tomorrow Cambridge and Morgan [Forster].

Edward [Upward] came up to see me today, which ought to have left me cheerful because his visit was really all that our meetings are at their best. He seems fatter and speaks with half-closed eyes, sometimes sleepily, sometimes excitedly and inaudibly. One always has a tremendous sense of his vocation as a writer. Nothing else matters to him. (This actually isn’t true; he is devoted to Hilda and the children.) But this intellectual passion is immensely stimulating and we rattled away, hardly noticing the hours pass.*

Last night I had supper with Phillip Foster and his Finnish wife Eija, a tiny blonde with hair hanging down.¹⁶ I couldn’t help feeling a tiny falseness in her—or is it merely a hardness? Yes, she is hard, has probably had to be. Phillip is sleak, well fed, quite fat with a jowly face but still fat-sexy. Everything is Finland—he is learning the language and the flat is full of Finnish fabrics and artifacts. A very snug little couple; there seemed almost no difference in their sex.

Gerald Hamilton came on on T.V. and was quite marvellously himself (now eighty-two) so polished and gross and charming and hideous. He rolls up his eyes until you see nothing but the whites; it’s almost as terrific as the picture of Dorian Gray.

March 14. Another little nosebleed this morning and it’s raining and cold weather is forecast and I’m off to Cambridge, but my mood is good—partly because, after a very short visit to a bash given by Hermione Baddeley, at which I knew no one except Victor Spinetti,¹⁷ I went to supper with Patrick Woodcock and met a really beautiful boy named [K]arl Bowen who kissed me, in the nowadays style, in front of the taxi driver as we said goodnight. I do wish I could stop drinking though. I do hate it so.

March 15. When I got to Cambridge I saw Mark Lancaster; we met in the middle of the grass of the main court, joking about whether or not Mark was a senior member of the college and thus entitled to walk on it. Mark has Lowes Dickinson’s¹⁸ old rooms; they are above the archway through which you see a view of the Backs¹⁹ and therefore look straight across at the college gate, commanding a view of everyone who goes through—also, at present, of two monster cranes in the background. Cambridge is being rebuilt but not nearly as fast as most places.

Morgan looked almost exactly the same in the face, the clear blue eyes, the long nose, the pink complexion, the mussed-up hair (except that it’s white) but he is fatter and more stooped—he looks almost as if he had a hump—and much shakier. He moves insecurely with a stick; but he does move and the sight, at least of one eye, is actually better. In Coventry, when I last saw him,²⁰ he was being read to; now he reads to himself. In Coventry—probably partly because of more drink, more comfort and it being a less chilly time of year, he seemed drowsier, lazier and less mentally alert than now. Today, most of the time, he was obviously able to follow all that was said and join in the conversation whenever he wanted to.

His affection, as always, was touching, childlike. He loves being hugged and kissed. How extraordinary! he kept saying; and I took this to mean that because he sees me so seldom and therefore keeps me as a creature of his memory, the fact that I actually exist in the flesh seems extraordinary to him. I asked him if I had changed a lot. A bit thicker, that’s all. He made me turn around to look at me. While we were embracing I felt a sort of fake, because I was consciously going through the motions, wishing only to do what would please him and also very much aware of Mark looking on. But actually I’m not faking, on such occasions, it’s only that I take so long to come to a boil. I only felt the emotion of this meeting when I was in the train going back to London.

Of course it was hard work. I reached sweatily for scraps of news, anecdotes, questions about mutual friends. And he reached too. Do we embarrass each other a bit? Yes. Have we always? Somewhat, maybe. But oddly enough that has little to do with affection. And isn’t the same thing true, to a much smaller degree, of me and Edward?

Talking about his health, Morgan said, I have been a little displeased with myself lately. But he made it clear he was only referring to his physical health. (I wondered if he has a skin cancer problem; there seemed to be something growing in his cheek.) I reminded him of how he had said to me long ago: I hope I shan’t get depressed—no, I don’t think I shall. And he told me that, on the whole, he hadn’t. I also reminded him of a letter he had written in which he said that he was staying with [Leonard and Virginia Woolf ] and must therefore be careful to seal it up at once, not leave it lying around open. "I’m glad I wrote that," Morgan said, and this was one of the few times he showed any resentment. Speaking of Vanessa Bell he said she was much easier to get along with than her sister, and how Virginia would suddenly turn on you and attack you.

Morgan said he had liked getting the Order of Merit. I said, It’s the only decoration really worth getting, and he said, I’ve come to feel that—now I’ve got one. He said he had been rereading some of his early writing (I should have asked him what, exactly, but like an idiot I didn’t) and he had liked it very much. He added, The creative power has gone now, but I don’t mind. He has a marvellous flair for saying such things without the least pathos— merely with mild surprise. He then said that he hoped he’d pop off quickly when the time came.

We had tea with Mark in his rooms. A gaunt, long-haired rather attractive [. . .] geneticist from Caius named Richard Le Page was there. Morgan remarked three times to me how pale he looked, seeming quite concerned; He must be ill.

Our meal in hall in the evening was bad; the meat was tough. Morgan got quite enraged. "How awful that I should have brought you here to eat this filth." There one saw a characteristic flare-up of senile, childlike rage, and he sulked a bit during the rest of the meal. There we did seem out of the picture. Term is just over and the only remaining dons were young—they seemed to be mostly mathematicians with Ban-the-Bomb attitudes. (The cutest of them, Denis Mollison, volunteered to drive me back to the station and was charmingly friendly and genuinely concerned about Morgan’s health.) The two estates of the college are now divided in a different way. The undergraduates don’t have to stand when the dons come in. They eat between certain hours as they like, with self service. The high table is down on their level, moved to the other end of the hall. In a year or two there will be coeducation. And the lady dons will move the high table back and reintroduce all the protocol and ceremony, no doubt.

This visit to Morgan was really very moving. Yes, he has survived, he is past ninety and he functions. But at what a price! How slow and how alone! It is his speed that isolates him, for he is surrounded by people. He has fallen out of the running. I think he would really like to stay with the Buckinghams all the time and be made comfortable. But perhaps not. He looks after himself with amazing doggedness, taking ages to switch off the light, pick up clothes from the floor, shut the door of his rooms. He is under sentence of death, just as visibly as if he were lying on his deathbed. And yet he enjoys conversation, affection, food, sherry. He told me he had put his homosexual stories out of his mind (I think he only meant, had ceased to think of them) but when I talked about Maurice he showed pleasure and he told me he was glad to think of all this again and wished he could write another such story.

March 16. A girl named Catherine Cook came to see me about a thesis she is writing on my work. She wore a maxi coat or robe or whatever, which looked like a tacky black velvet you’d get from the Goodwill.²¹ She was pretty, quite intelligent, but overly gushy. I was just too informal for words—served her coffee in the kitchen and we sat at the kitchen table. Her father and mother (a Belgian, and even gushier on the phone than Catherine) were waiting in a car several blocks away, up towards Sloane Square; maybe they had instructions to call the police if she didn’t return before nightfall. Anyhow, it made her seem helpless and coddled—which she didn’t at all have the air of being. I talked volumes, chiefly about other people, and she never tried to bring me back to the subject. Perhaps she merely wanted to meet me.

Then I went to see Nick Furbank. I have met him before but I didn’t in the least remember what he looked like. He is pale and he stammers. Am not sure what I feel about him. His face isn’t altogether a face one trusts. I told him right away that I don’t want Morgan’s letters to me to go into the book he is writing. I said they were too personal and really much more about me than Morgan; but of course what I mean is that I would like to turn them into a book, myself. Nick seemed rather surprised when I said I felt we couldn’t publish Maurice without Bob [Buckingham]’s permission. And perhaps I am being overconsiderate about this; because Bob’s objections, if any, would really be May [Buckingham]’s. ( Joe Ackerley told me, during that meeting in Coventry in 1967, that May was now declaring that Bob had never known what homosexuality was until quite recently, when Morgan had told him—and Nick says she takes the same attitude now.) But Nick also says that Bob has so far raised no objections to his book, in which Nick intends to be absolutely frank about sex.

He lent me two of Morgan’s later stories, the one which takes place on board ship and one I haven’t read before, called Dr. Woolacott.²²

Then I had supper with Bob Regester and Neil Hartley at a Greek restaurant just below the Post Office Tower. So Bob and I went up the tower, mildly drunk and daring each other, but it really isn’t very giddy making—especially at night—unless you stand right up against the railings at the open section. Bob is fun to be with on such occasions but I feel I’m apt to overdo the aged schoolboy role. Also my conscience is pricking me because I haven’t been working at anything but just pleasuring myself, as Don calls it. I keep thinking about him and hoping he’s all right. Sometimes I wonder, is he unwilling to come back here because of [his friend]?

Last night I dreamt of being in an earthquake. Wasn’t really scared.

March 17. 6:45 p.m., have just finishing talking to Don on the phone. This time it was much more cheerful and it seems he got a very good notice and also Irving Blum wants to take the show to San Francisco and New York. But Don wants to come back here soon, so maybe he’ll join us all on this trip to the South of France for Easter.

Yesterday David and Peter and I had lunch at Marguerite [Lamkin]’s. I’m really fond of her but this lunching is ghastly. She cannot resist inviting lots of other people and stuffing us with food and creating an anti-oasis in the midst of the day.

Then we went to the Richard Hamilton show at the Tate and Peter and I went to Zabriskie Point* and had supper together at Odin’s, and Patrick Procktor came in, fresh from India, and covered me with effusion. I didn’t snub him but it was embarrassing, after the vile way he behaved to Don.

Today Clement brought the newly typed scripts around. Very few typos and I think it reads well. He still wants it lengthened, but I said not until we are going into rehearsal. The play is now being sent to Alec Guinness and to Donald McWhinnie and Peter Gill as possible directors.

March 18. Peter Gill is out of it, I just heard from Clement. He’ll be working in Canada until much later.

Have been lunching with Bob Regester. Vanessa and Corin Redgrave† and their daughters were there. Also Rory Cameron, whom I met at Marguerite’s lunch. He’s rather a nice man, writes travel books, lives on Cap Ferrat. Vanessa seemed quite ridiculously large and thick thighed and hoydenish and she sort of mother-handled the little girls, like a great big tactless nanny. We went ice skating, which I enjoyed greatly, though I thought old Drub’s shaky ankles would never survive. Have been so hugely fat, lately, what with enforced drinking, bread eating and rich desserts.

David Plante really is a darling. I’d forgotten how dark-eyed and vulnerably American he is. I spent a lot of yesterday skimming at top speed through his novel, which I’d tactfully bought. And then he brought me a signed copy.* We had supper together. Nikos [Stangos] didn’t come, because an aunt of his has died. David said that the aunt was a wonderful woman but her death (cancer) had been long expected and he couldn’t quite understand the tremendous upset it caused Nikos. We agreed that Mediterranean people use grief as a ritual to somehow propitiate the spirits of the dead— that there’s this always in addition to what the mourner naturally feels. David is eager that we shall all get together, but I have a hunch I won’t like Nikos so much, this time around. He sounds so domineering. David says of himself that he is very jealous—so much so that he never wants to do anything to make Nikos jealous of him, for fear of reprisals! Stephen [Spender], that old monster, has been urging David to marry—telling him that if you don’t you miss a great experience. The boys see through him but adore him.

March 19. It turns out that Rory Cameron was the driver of the car which wrecked and so severely injured Norman Prouting, years ago, on the Riviera. Like the other passengers, all rich people, he apparently neglected Norman completely while he was going through the subsequent operations—Norman still limps slightly— and never offered to help him with money. At least that’s what I infer, because of Norman’s reaction when I mentioned Rory’s name to him last night; he froze up solid.

We went together to see [Shaw’s] The Apple Cart. John Neville was really excellent as King Magnus. He could play Patrick, but his face is wrong, there’s a dryness in it, hard to imagine him being physically vain.

This morning Clement told me that two other German theaters are interested in our play. The script is now with Alec Guinness and Donald McWhinnie.

I’ve just had lunch with Moore Crosthwaite, at his house near Clapham Common. He has much of the style of a former British Ambassador to Stockholm and Beirut but this merely modifies what might otherwise be a too screaming queenishness; it strikes a balance and makes him human. He’s got an American friend living in the house and old Herbert List staying there for a few days. Herbert, increasingly pouchy and full bellied, is keener than ever on collecting prints. Much was spoken against Warhol’s films and in praise of Hockney’s pictures.

Speaking of Hockney reminds me that he told me today on the phone that he had just called Don to try to persuade him to come to France with us. I don’t quite see how Don can do this unless he takes off tomorrow, since he wants to use an excursion ticket and that is no good for weekends. I’ll probably hear from Don himself in the morning. He had told David that he would first have to ask Irving Blum if he was needed in Los Angeles, but maybe this was an excuse. David had told Don to come and draw French food, and then show his drawings in the States to attract American gourmets to France. This is the sort of superficially silly sounding remark which actually reveals the shrewdness of David’s character, because one can quite imagine him literally doing that and making money out of it. (Indeed, the other night, when I was having supper with Peter at Odin’s, the proprietor Peter Langan asked me to contribute to a pornographic cookbook he is preparing, and said David has promised to illustrate it!)

March 20. Talked to Don this morning. I don’t think he really wants to come back here, and not particularly to come with us to France, which seems set for Monday. We had one of our best kind of conversations; everything we said, even the details about calling the Maltins²³ to see about the second payment on the property tax, was full of love. I can truly say, with Patrick in our play, How lucky I am!

Last night I took Nancy [West], Joe Ackerley’s sister, out to supper at The Hungry Horse, along with Nick Furbank and a quite nice young artist who knows Mark Lancaster, named Richard Shone. Nancy was very lively and seemed quite contented with her life, though she talks about Joe continually. She really is an amazingly handsome woman, for her age. Shone, who’s about twenty, is a great talker and all went merrily. We even got the desirable table in an alcove. But Nancy is a demon pourer of drinks—I had the wits to resist them, but Nick Furbank turned clay pale in the restaurant, said he had to get some air and then fainted. However, this morning on the phone, he sounded all right again.

March 21. Shortly before eleven this morning, I decided to dial Tony Richardson in London and ask him what his number is in the South of France, so I could give it to Nicholas Thompson and Clement, in case of emergencies. When I called the number there seemed to be a lot of confusion, a foreign voice answered, I asked was this 536 6933 and the voice said yes. I asked for Tony and the voice said, "Have you seen the paper this morning? I suggest you look on the front page of the Daily Mirror—there’s a picture of him. I tried to ask more questions and he repeated, I suggest you look in the paper."

Well then of course I thought, Tony’s been killed in a car wreck—or at best he’s been involved in some gruesome scandal, and I decided it must have been the voice of Jan [Niem], Tony’s Polish chauffeur, telling me this. But then I rang Peter Schlesinger and he got a Mirror and there was no picture of Tony and nothing about him, and he rang Tony’s number and the housekeeper told him Tony is expected back today, so the whole thing seems to have been a false alarm. Maybe I got a wrong number and the man who answered was a malicious practical joker, or drunk or high on something.

Now we have air tickets for Monday, with a stop in Paris. We’re supposed to arrive in Nice late, around ten or eleven, and find a hired car waiting for us in which we’ll drive off somewhere without delay. Obviously these arrangements may well break down and so I’m somewhat dreading the trip but at the same time looking forward to travelling with David and Peter.

Yesterday Bob Regester and I had lunch on the Post Office Tower. The outer part of the dining room, on which the tables are, revolves; the inner part doesn’t, which is somewhat sick making. Also, there is one phase of the revolution which is unpleasantly bumpy. The food is terrifically expensive; our meal cost six guineas. The overall prospect of London has been largely spoilt by all these towers. St. Paul’s, Tower Bridge, Westminster Cathedral, the Abbey and Parliament are now completely dwarfed. Afterwards we joined an attractive young Australian, John Hopkins, who helped me buy a Burberry. Hopkins worked on the crew of Ned Kelly and we met him in Australia, though I didn’t remember him exactly.²⁴

A very happy supper with David Plante, Mark Lancaster and Peter Schlesinger at the Carrosse. We had a table downstairs, half a long Victorian desk-table in fact. It was divided in two by artificial plants and a rampart of leather-bound books, including [Willard] Motley and Montaigne, so that you could hardly see

Reviews for Liberation

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The concluding volume of Isherwood's diaries shows him continuing to be creative on many fronts. One admires the breadth of his interests and his own unique experience of the literary and art world in the seventies and early eighties. This along with the previous diaries complement his fiction and provide insight into one of the leading writers of the twentieth century.