Todd and was the scene of her murder. It was a kind of hideout rendezvous for Hollywood executives who wanted to meet show
girls in secret; the tables were in alcoves which could be curtained off. Perhaps Jay went there to do some business in connection with his own restaurant project and took Christopher along as a drinking companion. Denny and his friends all regarded Thelma Todd’s as a place for special evenings, celebrations and treats. The food was very good, but it cost more than they would usually pay.
On April 3, Edelman left or was taken off The Woman in White and a Mr. Jacobs[*] became its producer in his place. I can remember nothing whatever about him. I don’t think he gave Christopher any trouble.
On April 8, Albert Brush, who was a friend of Jay and also of the Laughtons, took Denny and Christopher to visit Walter Arensberg the art collector and Baconian. After this, Christopher paid several visits to him. Arensberg’s house was crammed with pictures and art objects, including the boxes and toys made by Marcel Duchamp.
Every inch of wall space was covered, every table was laden, and there were stacks of unhung pictures in every corner.
Arensberg remained a charming enthusiastic sane host until you got onto the subject of Bacon; then he became wild-eyed and
rather incoherent, with ruffled hair and gestures of frenzied excitement. I forget what Arensberg looked like but I can remember his 1 Bill Caskey.
2 Don Coombs, see page 218.
[* Writer and producer William Jacobs.]
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Lost Years
manner at such times––it was that of a madman as he reveals to you the existence of international conspiracies and speaks with smiling scorn of the enemies who are trying to outwit him.
Arensberg’s enemies were all those scholars and other members of the Establishment who were concealing from the world the truth about Bacon. And what was the truth? That Bacon was a rein-carnation of Jesus Christ. (I don’t think I can be making this up.) That he was the son of Queen Elizabeth. And that he had written all the works attributed to Shakespeare. (My impression is that Arensberg thought this last item was of minor importance. He saw Bacon as the great prophet of the Modern Age, a teacher and
philosopher who amused himself with literary composition only in his spare time.)1
On April 12, President Roosevelt died. That morning, while
Christopher was in his office at Warner’s with his secretary, there was a phone call from his secretary’s husband, telling her the news. On hearing it, she burst into tears, instantly. Christopher was astonished by the quickness of her reaction––it was as if she had been
subconsciously expecting the news and was therefore half-prepared 1 Arensberg believed that Bacon had been secretly buried in the chapter house of Lichfield Cathedral. In 1924 he had published an appeal to the dean and chapter of the cathedral to admit publicly that this was so and that they were all of them members of a secret society founded by Bacon himself. Arensberg had visited Lichfield in 1923. His suspicions were confirmed when the verger showed him a picture in Ogilby’s translation of Virgil, with the remark,
“Curious, isn’t it?” For the picture––which showed Aeneas plucking the golden bough that gave him the right of way into the abode of the dead––was marked with the Rosicrucian motto “Ex Uno Omnia” [All from One]. And Arensberg recognized “Omnia” as an anagram of the Spanish word iamon, which means “a gammon of bacon.” [Correct Spanish would be jamón.]
However, in spite of the verger’s apparent hint and other clues that Arensberg imagined he had found, he was unable to get the dean (the Very Reverend H. E. Savage) to admit that their secret society had been covering up the facts.
He even accused the dean of obliterating certain signs by which the location of Bacon’s grave had been formerly marked. His statement ends: “I have put the truth on record and the truth will make its way.” (Arensberg took it for granted, of course, that the grave, if opened, would be found to contain proofs of Bacon’s divine nature, his authorship of Shakespeare, etc.) The dean obviously thought Arensberg was crazy. I’m fairly sure Arensberg showed Christopher a letter which the dean had written him, breaking off all further communications––“After the events of last Thursday, there can be no friendly relations between us.” In telling the story, Christopher used to claim that Arensberg had been caught in the act of digging a tunnel under the road between his lodgings and the chapter house; he was trying to get at Bacon’s grave. But this was probably just Christopher’s imagination.
¾ 1945 ¾
31
for it. But Christopher’s own reaction was equally quick. He said to himself, “Good––that means we’ll get the weekend off.” (The 12th was a Thursday.)
Christopher had never felt any personal liking for Roosevelt.
(Even back in 1933, when he had first seen Roosevelt’s photographs in the European press, Christopher had mistrusted him and found his face repulsive––the face, as John van Druten had later said, of a “faux bonhomme.”[*]) But Christopher had to keep his reaction to himself, as long as he was at the studio. Even hard-boiled outspoken John Collier was deeply moved.
The next month passed without any remarkable incidents, as far as I can judge from the day-to-day diary. It sounds crazy to say this, when, in fact, Mussolini and his mistress were killed on April 28, Hitler’s death was announced on May 1, Berlin fell on May 2 and the Nazis surrendered on the 7th! No doubt Christopher shared in the general excitement; probably he was better able to picture the destruction of the Third Reich than were most of his friends. But the day-to-day diary merely records that, on the 28th, he took a taxi to the beach and spent the night at Denny’s; that, on May 1, he “tried to write Auden article” (don’t remember what that was); that, on May 2, he saw Devotion1 in a projection room at the studio and had supper with Vernon Old; and that, on May 7, he had drinks with John van Druten, Dave Eberhardt and Don Forbes, and then had
supper with Aldous Huxley.2
On May 16, Henry Blanke took over as producer on The Woman
in White. Beside this, he was producing the picture Collier was working on––Deception.3 He was neat and smiling and military looking; he might have been a German officer; if he was a Jew he didn’t look like one. He had a reputation for getting things done and 1 Devotion was a film about the Brontës, with Ida Lupino as Emily and Arthur Kennedy as Branwell. Christopher was able to see it in the projection room because he was friendly with Keith Winter, who had worked on the script.
2 It may well be that Huxley made some memorable remarks on this historic evening. Perhaps he repeated what he had written to Julian Huxley earlier that same day (see Letters of Aldous Huxley): “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again––and when they [have]
succeeded, more or less, his name will be Humpsky Dumpsky and his address, poste restante Moscow.”
3 It was released in 1946, with Bette Davis, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains.
Collier got first credit, with Joseph Than. Produced by Henry Blanke, directed by Irving Rapper.
[* Hypocrite.]
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Lost Years
was certainly far more efficient than Edelman and Jacobs had been.
Perhaps rather too efficient for Christopher, who had got into lazy ways. Unlike Collier, he wasn’t prepared to work at night and, under Collier’s influence, he did very little work during the day.
Collier’s influence––that is to say, Collier’s demand to be
amused––even made itself felt in Christopher’s sex life. Christopher had of course told Collier that he was homosexual. Collier, as a good Proustian, had to take this in his stride; he only maintained that women had better characters than men––aside from this, he wasn’t shocked by boy love, it was merely not his cup of tea. At the same time, as a Proustian voyeur, he was curious to get a glimpse of Christopher in actual pursuit of sex; and Christopher was delighted to oblige him. As with Denny, Christopher now prepared to give a theatrical performance for Collier’s benefit, and his own.