was a manifestation of the psychic world, and the psychic is
always subject to the spiritual. Christopher was a devotee (despite all his backslidings) of Ramakrishna. So how could any psychic phenomenon possibly do him harm?
However, Christopher’s experiences in this house did differ from all the others he had had elsewhere, because they had a second aspect or dimension––so it seemed to him. The longer he lived there, the more 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.
[* I.e., not snug, not comfortable.]
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he felt that its psychic atmosphere was both something which had belonged to the place before he came there and something which was a projection of his own disturbed, miserable, hate-filled state of mind.
On February 24, Christopher finished chapter nine of The Condor and the Cows, and on March 15 chapter ten.
On March 12, Glenway Wescott arrived and spent a week in the
Canyon. He didn’t stay at 333 but at a motel on Entrada Drive, perhaps because he wanted privacy to work. However, he was with Caskey and Christopher most evenings. He was wonderfully cheerful, silly and energetic, and brightened everybody up. He cooked meals for Caskey and Christopher, read Christopher’s 1939–1944
journals and praised them to the skies, and went to bed with Jim Charlton. He left in a glow of popularity.
On March 22, there was a sneak preview of The Great Sinner at the Criterion Theater in Santa Monica. Christopher had long since given up trying to convince himself that the film was any good. Peck was awful. He did his best but he was hopelessly miscast. In the big emotional scenes he made an ass of himself. Ava Gardner looked beautiful but she was as completely un-Russian as Peck, her voice was ugly and her acting was awkward––they were an uninspiring pair. Walter Huston, as her father, made every scene come to life in which he appeared; but his part was far too small. Ethel Barrymore was excellent in her two gambling scenes. Melvyn Douglas behaved with charm and discretion as Armand de Glasse, the unconvincing character who runs the casino. And the total effect was mediocre, Hollywoodish, saccharine. The preview cards were lukewarm.
Gregory Peck took his failure deeply to heart; it must have hurt his vanity. As a result of this, he developed a distaste for Christopher––
having decided, I suppose, that Christopher’s script was responsible for his humiliation. Although they had gotten along well during the shooting,1 Peck henceforth avoided talking to Christopher when 1 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 188
Lost Years
they met at parties. It wasn’t until years later that he became gracious again––and even helped Christopher become a member of the
Academy.
Fodor may well have been partly responsible for Peck’s attitude.
As soon as it became evident that The Great Sinner had laid an egg, Fodor started a subtle propaganda campaign to convince all who were concerned that it was Christopher who had spoilt the script by his revisions. I’m sure Fodor didn’t convince Gottfried Reinhardt, and I doubt if Fodor managed to do Christopher any serious harm professionally, but the ill will must be taken for the deed.
On March 26, Christopher went with Tito Renaldo to see Swami.
I don’t know if this was the day that Tito first met Swami––it may have been much earlier. But I think that Tito probably asked Swami on this occasion if he could go and live at Trabuco as a monk, as soon as it was opened as a monastery. Gerald Heard had already talked the trustees into handing over the property to the Vedanta Society.
Trabuco opened officially on September 7, 1949.
On April 2, Christopher finished writing The Condor and the Cows.1
On the 4th, he and Caskey mailed the manuscript and the photographs––two copies of each––to Methuen and to Random House.
Caskey had worked really hard on the photographs, developing, enlarging and cropping them himself and making a dummy of the illustration pages which showed the exact relative sizes for each picture to be printed. He had also designed a photographic montage for the jacket––the two ceramic bulls they had brought back from Pucará in Peru superimposed on a view of the marble column topped by a carved condor (in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela) which commemorates the foreigners who came to South America to fight for Bolívar. And he had done a pen-and-ink drawing of Cuzco as a
frontispiece for the book.
On April 5, David Kidd (one of Christopher’s [friends]) brought Sara Allgood to the house. Christopher had the advantage of being one of the few people in Los Angeles who had seen her in the
Christopher that Siodmak was queer. Christopher never saw any definite evidence of this, but he did sometimes wonder if Siodmak fancied him.
1 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.
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original London production of Juno and the Paycock. So he was able to delight her by saying (ninety percent sincerely) that her “Sacred Heart o’ Jesus” speech was one of his favorite theatrical memories.
She loved his flattery, and the little onions which Caskey kept for the martinis––indeed, she ate nearly a whole jar of them. Christopher loved her ladylike airs and her wonderful rich voice––indeed, he found himself talking to her with a slight Irish accent. Their meeting was a huge success and was repeated.