He was therefore coldly polite to Ross when he met her. Ross
melted him somewhat by her intelligence and considerable charm but he didn’t altogether relent, even when he found that she was one of his fans and had brought a book of his to be signed. He wrote in it, “For Lillian Ross, on condition that she never writes about me.”
This startled, hurt and also intrigued her. Later they talked about many things and got along well together. But she kept returning to the subject of the profile and defending herself energetically. Finally, at a party given by Tim Durant on October 8, Christopher got drunk and condemned her in the words of the St. Matthew Gospeclass="underline" “. . . it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!”[*] They parted as fairly good friends, however.
On October 21, after visiting Caskey at the Santa Ana jail,
Christopher drove with Donald Pell to stay at the AJC Ranch (I imagine John van Druten must have been there, though the day-today diary doesn’t say so); the next day, they visited the mud pots on the Salton Sea (these are described in Down There on a Visit) and returned to Los Angeles via Julian and Mount Palomar. Christopher was taking Donald Pell around with him quite a lot, just then, so I suppose he must have found him an amusing companion. But I
remember nothing that Donald did or said. The only incident which remains with me from their trip happened on the road to Lake
Elsinore, en route for the AJC Ranch. A dead sidewinder was lying across the road. Christopher stopped the car, got out and was about to pick the snake up by the tail and toss it into the ditch––chiefly to impress Donald, who was timid. But now another car stopped and a young man and a girl got out. The young man––probably wanting to impress her––picked up the sidewinder by its neck, squeezed its poison glands so that the poison squirted out onto the road, then produced a pocket knife and removed its fangs from its jaw, wiping them clean on his pants leg, then put the fangs into his billfold, remarked to Christopher and Donald, “They bring good luck,” got back into his car followed by the shuddering girl, and drove away.
The Sadler’s Wells Ballet was then in town. Christopher went to see it on October 19, with Iris Tree and Ivan and Natasha Moffat.
On the 23rd, Moira Shearer, Freddy Ashton, Alexis Rassine and
[* Matthew 18:7.]
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Moira’s husband, Ludovic Kennedy, came to see Christopher, and then they all went to a party given for the ballet by the van Leydens.
I think this was the season the ballet did The Sleeping Beauty, in which Freddy played the Wicked Fairy in marvellous drag. He was carried onto the stage in a sedan chair, by two dancers dressed as mice.
Freddy told Christopher that it never mattered how drunk he
was––as soon as the mice had helped him out of the chair and onto his feet, he could always get through his dance. If he fell down, the audience loved it and laughed all the harder. And, if he showed signs of passing out altogether, the mice would simply bundle him back into the chair and remove him. Freddy was a wonderfully happy person. He loved his life.
On October 27, Caskey was released from the Santa Ana jail.
Christopher drove down there and brought him home.
Two days later, Christopher became ill. He was sick in bed for seven days––from October 30 through November 5 (when Swami
visited him). At that period of his life, prolonged illness was very unusual for Christopher––so unusual that I suspect a psychosomatic cause. Was Christopher trying either to punish Caskey for his past behavior or to appeal for sympathy to Caskey’s nanny persona?
Maybe both. I can’t now even remember what his physical symp-
toms were, but I think one of them was a numbness in the legs.
John van Druten had suffered from a similar numbness and had
been told by his doctor that he had “senile polio”––that is to say, a variety of polio which only afflicts elderly people and is never severe enough to cause paralysis. Christopher was a copycat with regard to his friends’ ailments. Later on, he used to reproduce Jo Masselink’s.
Before taking to his bed, Christopher had seen Dr. Kolisch on October 24, and Kolisch came to see him again on November 1.
It may have been on one of these occasions that Kolisch gave
Christopher the most memorable piece of medical advice he has ever received: “You have the kind of constitution which is capable of simulating every species of pathological condition. So I would urge you, never consult a doctor again, as long as you live. It will only be necessary once––and then it will be too late.”
On November 7 and again on November 10––after spending
another day in bed in between––Christopher went househunting
with Caskey. I suppose that Mrs. Strasberg had refused to renew the lease of 333 East Rustic Road. Evidently they didn’t like any of the houses they saw in the Santa Monica area. I can’t remember how it came about that they decided, later that same month, to leave Los ¾ 1950 ¾
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Angeles altogether and settle in Laguna Beach. On November 25, they drove down to Laguna and were shown houses by Alan Walker, a friend of theirs, who was a real estate agent. I think they must have made up their minds about one of them, that same day––for they signed a lease on it three days later.
On November 30, Speed Lamkin and Gus Field came to talk
about their Sally Bowles play. Later, Speed took Christopher and Caskey to have dinner with Marion Davies. This visit is described in the journal. Christopher was impressed by the prisonlike atmosphere of the house––your drinks were served to you by uniformed, armed cops; by the gold plate on the sideboard; by the heavily felt presence of nonpresent Hearst, now bedridden and referred to as “the Man Upstairs”; by the paranoid-fascist conversation of two men from the New York headquarters of some Hearst publication; by the little office dominated by a portrait of General MacArthur––from which, according to Speed, the whole Hearst empire was controlled; and also, most of all by Davies herself.1
After supper, when the New Yorkers had been called upstairs to see Hearst, Davies took Christopher, Speed and Caskey into the office.
She was very drunk now and wanted to dance. She did the splits, over and over again, to the music of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Her legs parted without effort, like an open banana skin, but, once down on her sacrum, she was helpless and had to be hauled giggling to her feet by her partners. They kept this up until 3:30 a.m., when her nurse, who had been reading, all this while, in a dressing room adjoining one of the downstair toilets, appeared and led Davies off to bed.
Speed revelled in all this. Christopher says in the journaclass="underline"
He adores this smell of power, in a sort of Balzacian way. With his vulgarity, snobbery and naive appetite for display, he might well become a minor Balzac of Hollywood. There is something about
him I rather like, or at any rate find touching. He is so crude and vulnerable, and not malicious, I think. He reminds me of Paul Sorel, but he is much more intelligent; and he has energy and talent.
On December 5, Caskey and Christopher drove to Laguna and
spent their first night in the new house. It was in South Laguna, actually––number 31152 on Monterey Street, which wound around 1 “Marion Davies, thin, pink, raddled, with luxuriant dead-looking fair hair, very innocent blue eyes, came in drunk. One wanted to say, like a Shakespearian character: ‘Alack, poor lady. . . .’ She stumbled a little and had to be helped to her chair; but she made a lot of sense, and talked seriously to the two men about business.” [D 1, p. 432.]
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