exception; a teenage boy fell for him and Bill used to fuck the boy, telling Denny and Christopher that it made him (Bill) “feel like a man.”) Bill set great store by having what he called “a perfect orgasm”––both partners coming simultaneously. This happened the first time he and Christopher went to bed together, which Bill took to be a very good sign of compatibility.
No memory remains of their sex acts, other than fucking. I
suppose they sucked cock and rimmed[*] each other. What I do clearly remember is a remark Bill once made: “Really, it’s ridiculous how some people think it’s unhygienic to share a toothbrush, and yet
[* Stimulated the anus with the tongue.]
¾ 1945 ¾
21
they’ve been licking each other’s shitty assholes!”––meaning that he was in favor of doing both. (But I’m sure that Bill’s asshole, and everything else about him, was always kept thoroughly clean.) February 5: “Bill left for New York. Drove down with John van Druten and Tamara to AJC Ranch.” Tamara was a Russian lady who worked for a while as John’s housekeeper; I think she was, or claimed to be, a duchess or princess in the old Russian aristocracy. John was fascinated by her at first––he would have had the same reaction if she had been a well-known ex-actress, and indeed her behavior could not have been more theatrical; she was full of archness and corny temperament. Later, the relationship soured, I seem to recall, and Tamara left them, feeling rejected and deeply offended.
Christopher stayed at the ranch until February 12, when he drove back to the Vedanta Center with John van Druten and immediately went to bed with one of his inflamed throats. The throat infection had started two days before this, but the visit was probably very enjoyable otherwise. Carter had a birthday on the 7th, and on the 8th they all drove up to the cabin near Idyllwild.
Christopher always enjoyed the climate of the ranch, its dry
relaxing heat. He and John would chatter away together, exchanging their British jokes, making up bits of verses, looking up half-remembered quotations in books, lying by the pool or floating in it, under the palm trees, with the flat cultivated fields all around, dotted with Mexicans at work. They entertained each other charmingly, affectionately, like two no longer young ladies, and complimented each other on their writing. Meanwhile, Carter Lodge came stamping in and out, in boots covered with dust, very much the man of the house, and full of ranch problems and local gossip.
Evidently trying to recapture some magical moment of this visit, Christopher wrote in a notebook––the same one in which he made the notes about the burlesque show: “The sun went down behind the mountain in a reek of chicken fertilizer.” Also in this notebook, there is a quotation from Proust which must have been written down about this time: “I was not unhappy––save only from day to day.”
This, Christopher chose to interpret as: I was not unhappy
underneath, only disturbed on the surface by temporary unpleasant-nesses––which he felt was a good description of his own mental condition, I suppose. He later made a resolve to read right through Remembrance of Things Past before 1945 was over. John Collier was probably responsible for this.1
1 John Collier was an ardent Proustian.
22
Lost Years
The February 12 issue of Time magazine contained a review of the Prabhavananda–Isherwood Gita translation, combined with an
article about Swami, Christopher and the Vedanta Center.1 As was to be expected, Time got several of its facts wrong––the statement that the Vedanta Society had an “alabaster temple” became a
household joke for months, as did the ten-minute meditation and the
“dispassionate ceremony.” But Christopher found the article more embarrassing than funny––and especially the photograph of Swami and himself which illustrated it; the two of them standing on the steps of the temple, captioned, “In their world, tranquillity.”
As for the story that Christopher was the model for Larry, Time may not have invented it, but it was certainly responsible for the letters Christopher now began to get, asking was this true. He wrote a letter to Time, denying it, and Maugham himself denied it later, but the story lived a long while.
If Christopher had indeed been solidly settled down at the Vedanta Center, resolved to become a monk, he could have taken all this 1 Extracts from the Time article:
Ten years ago Christopher Isherwood was one of the most promising of younger English novelists, and a member of the radical pacifist literary set sometimes known as “the Auden circle.” Now, thinking seriously of becoming a swami (religious teacher), he is studying in a Hindu temple in Hollywood, California.
Much-travelled author Isherwood’s early novel, The Last of Mr. Norris
. . . was a grisly eyewitness account of British pro-Nazis in Berlin. His Journey to a War (with verse commentary by W. H. Auden) was a stark, unromanticized look at embattled China. Now this rebellious son of a British lieutenant colonel lives monastically with three other men and eight women in a small house adjoining the alabaster temple of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He shares his income and the housework with his fellow students, and daily ponders the teachings of his master, Swami Prabhavananda.
. . . Three times each day Isherwood repairs to the temple, sits crosslegged between grey-green walls on which are hung pictures of Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, other great religious teachers. The Swami enters bareheaded, wearing a long, bright yellow robe that sweeps the floor. He too sits crosslegged, pulls a shawl around him and for ten minutes meditates in silence. Then in a ringing bass he chants a Sanskrit invocation, repeats it in English, ending with the words “Peace, Peace, Peace!”
This dispassionate ceremony is the ritual of a mystical order of which slight, agreeable, cigarette-smoking Swami Prabhavananda is the Los Angeles leader.
. . . Larry, the dissatisfied young hero of Somerset Maugham’s current bestselling novel, The Razor’s Edge, whose search for faith ended in Vedanta, is said to be modelled on Isherwood.
¾ 1945 ¾
23
publicity in his stride, as part of the process of dying to the world. But here he was, just about to leave! Time made his position false––
before, it had been merely insecure. Now he seemed to be posing as a monk and a saint.
On February 13, Christopher notes that he has started to read Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, which Warner Brothers
wanted to make into a film. My impression is that they had had various producers and writers working on it already––indeed, it seems to me that John Collier had been on the script for a time, gotten tired of it and suggested Christopher as a replacement.
On the 13th, Christopher was still in bed with his inflamed throat.
The 14th was Ramakrishna’s birthday celebration, that year.
Christopher, who hated pujas, remained in bed and only got up for vespers, after a visit from Dr. Kolisch. Kolisch’s attitude toward Christopher was friendly and hardboiled, which Christopher found ideal. (On one occasion, while Christopher was still living at the center, his penis developed a painful constriction around the middle.
Although Kolisch had every reason to suppose that Christopher was observing chastity, he said the constriction was due to excessive sex intercourse. He always made such diagnoses with a perfectly straight face and matter-of-fact manner.) After seeing Kolisch, Christopher usually got better at once. Next day, the 15th, he went off to Warner’s, to interview James Geller, who was then the story editor, and Mr. [Louis] Edelman, who was to be his producer.
February 17: “Lunch with the Beesleys at their new house.” The Beesleys had moved into a house on the Pacific Coast Highway, belonging to Anatole Litvak; it was number 19130, between Santa Monica and Malibu. Like nearly all the houses in this area, it was built to look only one way––straight out to sea. The beach was rocky and narrow and the tide came right up to the house––and under it, if I remember rightly. But the house was fairly attractive inside, somewhat nautical in design, with a circular staircase(?)