Liberation (163 page)

 

¹⁶
Eija Vehka-Aho, a model, mostly for Helmut Newton, used only her first name professionally. She was married briefly to Foster who also worked in fashion.

 

¹⁷
Welsh-born half-Italian actor, writer, director (b. 1933); he won a Tony Award in
Oh! What a Lovely War
when it transferred to Broadway in 1964 and appeared with the Beatles in
A Hard Day's Night
(1964),
Help
(1965), and
Magical Mystery Tour
(1967).

 

¹⁸
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862–1932), political historian, philosopher, pacifist; author of
The Greek View of Life
(1896) and, based on his work toward founding the League of Nations,
The International Anarchy
(1926). At King's, he was Forster's teacher, and Forster became his executor and biographer.

 

¹⁹
I.e., the back sides of the seven Cambridge colleges situated along the river Cam.

 

²⁰
At Bob and May Buckingham's in May 1967; see
D
.
2
.

 

²¹
I.e., second hand; see Glossary.

 

²²
“The Other Boat” and “Dr. Woolacott” both published posthumously in
The Life to Come and Other Stories
(1972).

 

^*
I suspect I'll like
Zabriskie Point
better the second time, as often with Antonioni. Of course the facile oh-it's-all-ghastly attitude to California is a bit irritating, but I liked the student riot sequence better than the Death Valley part which I find, oddly enough, visually disappointing. And that celebrated orgy seems arty and unsexy in the worst way. And the boy [Mark Frechette] is a bore. His act is “Son of James Dean.” As for Richard Hamilton, I want to see that show again too, with Don. He slows me down and makes me look. At present I like best some of the beach scenes, the “Swingeing London” series, some of the automobile pictures and the “Cosmetic Studies.” Also that afternoon I discovered Atkinson Grimshaw's “Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, 1887.” [For “Swingeing London,” see Glossary under Richard Hamilton.]

 

^†
I was watching Corin Redgrave carefully, wondering how he'd do for Oliver. He looks very young, too young, but is the right type more or less. He is now acting in a T.V. version of [ James Elroy] Flecker's [play]
Hassan
. So is Gielgud. Corin remarked that he felt Gielgud was doing the part of the Caliph all wrong (not making him into a perverse and exhausted old man who can only get kicks out of torture) but that of course he couldn't tell Gielgud this. He and Vanessa are writing a play which brings in Garibaldi.

 

^*
David Plante's novel
The Ghost of Henry James
certainly has something; it is about a family and its interrelations, written impressionistically, in very short chapters, skipping from one character to another. It has a lot of skill in it and is sophisticated—in a rather old-fashioned way—but not the very least bit pissy assed or closet queeny. Bits of description are often good. It reminds me much more of Virginia Woolf than of James. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he turns out to have considerable talent.

 

²³
Arnold and Mrs. Maltin (not their real names), Isherwood and Bachardy's accountant and his wife.

 

²⁴
He was an actor, and played O'Connor in the film.

 

^*
David (Mark's friend) and Tony Meyer.

 

^†
Jolyon Jackl[ey]. [An aspiring actor; son of music hall star and comic film and T.V. actor Nat Jackley (1909–1988).]

 

⁴⁰
Bob Regester, in a crimson pirate blouse and a jewelled belt; John Hopkins with a gold band in his hair, Gregory [Brown] looking like a plump white-skinned lesbian in a mannish velvet jacket; a black boy in a shimmering white coat, diamonds on snow; Patrick Procktor's friend Ole [Glaesner] with heavy silver and blue eyelid-paint.

 

²⁵
About Isherwood's work.

 

²⁶
Christopher Isherwood
(1971); Wilde had already published
Art and Order: A Study of E.M. Forster
(1964).

 

²⁷
London antique dealer (b. 1938), intimate of Jagger and other members of the Rolling Stones.

 

²⁸
British painter (1916–1984); he studied at the Euston Road School and privately with William Coldstream and taught at the Camberwell School of Art, 1946–1981, serving as head of Fine Art from 1964.

 

²⁹
Jean Léger worked at Helena Rubinstein, the skin care and cosmetics company, and Alexis Vidal, his lover, at the couture house of Philippe Venet.

 

^*
David said later that he didn't really mind waiting at Orly because, after all, we
were
being delayed by a strike and he was on the side of the strikers.

 

^†
Yesterday morning, as I lay in bed after waking, I had a strong but not frightening feeling that the Nid de Duc bedroom was haunted—that is, I felt a crowded sense of
presences
there. I stupidly told this to David who was simply bewildered. He couldn't believe I meant it. To him, such things are unthinkable.

 

^‡
Also, Peter has style, he keeps up an appearance, washes his hair, makes an effort—in this he is a disciple of Don. His seemingly indestructible snakeskin jacket (which even resists rain) always looks good on him.

 

^*
We decided that one of the marks of a “great” restaurant is that the glasses are not merely clean but flash in the light like diamonds.

 

^†
8 a.m. (March 25) David and Peter not up yet. Thought I would go and pray for us all in the church. But the church wasn't open, only the curiosity shop around the corner. Everything else, the restaurants, the other hotels, are locked up. The place is quite dead. But, in the morning, death seems calming and even refreshing, you breathe the cold pure breath of the dead stone.

 

^‡
At supper at Douglas Cooper's there was a French senator, Madame Crémieux [Suzanne Crémieux-Schreiber (1895–1976), Radical Senator for the Gard region, 1948–1971] and her friend Madame Bernier. It wasn't Cooper's fault they were there, they had been invited long before, and he hadn't been expecting us definitely. The two women spoke English and yet, like most Frogs, they wouldn't, despite the fact that David and Peter have hardly a word of French. So I got bitchy and would only answer them in English, until Madame Bernier asked me about my books and what they were called in their French translations. That started me off and I betrayed too much knowledge of the language, so that Madame Bernier said bitchily, “You speak beautifully—you speak as much as you wish to.” David didn't condemn me however.

And indeed this trip has made me love them both even more than before.

Douglas Cooper talks French abundantly, with an American (Texas)-Australian accent. He bitches nearly everybody. When I said how kind Maugham had been to me, he said, “It's curious how nasty people do kind things.”

His house is
stiff
with Picassos, not to mention all the other treasures. The wall with the sandblasted Picasso drawings is wonderful and unique and somehow hateful.

 

^*
I fed the two fat three-star pussies bits of my Coquille St. Jacques, to the disgust of the waiters.

 

^†
Natasha seemed calmer than she usually does. The only somewhat hysterical thing she did was to make a fire by burning an old chair in the fireplace! David promptly photographed it. His camera clicks continually.

 

³⁰
And estate manager.

 

^*
David said his “poem” was actually the beginning of a novel—it's a description of me drawing. Here it is: “He held the red pencil like a piece of heavy chalk, only with the black pencil did I notice any delicacy. Peter thought this was as bad as his drawing. Now I can see that it is. I am impressed though by the straightness of his back and the fact that he looks for five seconds at his subject before translating his marks from his mind. What a mistake I am making. I have no need to look when I am writing.”

 

^*
The defect in his face is his ugly nostrils and badly placed nose but he does have charming blue eyes. His voice is Cockney and his manner un-gracious, trying hard to play it cool. Tony is said to dislike him. He used to be an English disk jockey in the States. Now he sells British men's clothes to America. Albee says that, when he goes away for the weekend, he brings ten times as many clothes as he can possibly wear.

 

^*
Rory has rather horrid treasures. I mean there is something distasteful about a grown man collecting such very expensive toys. This is unjust but I felt it. David's socialistic puritanism was also aroused by Rory. And on the way home he said, every time a car with a Monaco sign passed, “There goes another tax dodger!” But his indignation is always good-humored and self-mocking.

 

^†
While there we saw the Easter Parade, the girls stepping like drum majorettes all in white, many quite pretty, the men of the band ugly, gnomelike. Tony says that this was originally a Saracen village and its inhabitants are many of them obviously Arab.

 

³¹
La Fiorentina; see Glossary under Cameron.

 

^*
Drove to the show with Marguerite in her Bentley and a girl called Sandy Campbell and Peter and his friend Jean Léger (the one we met in Paris). Marguerite suggested that they should bring the silver goblets and shaker with their Bloody Marys in the car. This made two black hippies in a neighboring car clamor for a drink and then the Bloody Marys were upset over Marguerite and Peter.

Nothing to say about David's pictures, because I hardly saw them for the crowds. Must go again. The show disturbed me for another reason: David's overwhelming success must make anyone who loves him (and I do) afraid. Surely the world will make him pay for it, cruelly. For David is not only a “golden boy,” as the press calls him, but a crusader for his way of life, for our minority. (He kissed me on the mouth, without the least affectation, when I came into the gallery.) Many people must be gunning for him. [Hockney's retrospective “Paintings, Prints, Drawings 1960–1970” was at the Whitechapel until May 3.]

 

³²
Nicol Williamson replaced Burton several weeks into filming Richardson's 1969 adaptation of Nabokov's novel.

 

^*
Another unwelcome item in the mail when I got back was Dodie's new novel
A Tale of Two Families
. It makes my heart sink.

 

^†
As we were landing in Paris through an unusually thick cloud, I told Anna, who seemed slightly nervous, that there are two apparently crazy sayings I keep remembering in appropriate moments of stress—a pilot once told me, “You're really safer when you're inside a cloud than anywhere else,” and Patrick Woodcock's dictum, “Cancer is really the easiest way to die.” (He later modified this, referring specifically to lung cancer, see April 16.)

 

³³
British actor (b. 1941), trained at RADA, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company; his films include Richardson's
Tom Jones.

 

³⁴
Worth (1916–2002), American stage star, played opposite Gielgud in the original New York production half a decade before, December 1964–May 1965. Isherwood and Bachardy first met her in London in 1961, and Bachardy drew her twice that summer.

 

³⁵
Bogarde (1921–1999) played a lawyer pursuing blackmailers responsible for the death of a boy with whom he was chastely in love in
Victim
(1961), and he played Gustav von Aschenbach in Visconti's
Death in Venice
(1971).

 

^*
The most basic criticism of the book is, as so often, contained in the question: “Yes, but
why
have you told me all this?”

 

³⁶
Here and below Isherwood mistakenly wrote “La Plante”; also, Le Page is a microbiologist, not a geneticist. See Glossary.

 

³⁷
British actor (b. 1939), especially of Shakespeare, and, later, film star; educated at Cambridge. Isherwood wrote “McClellan.”

 

^*
William Golding—this name was censored for at least a week, until I finally read it on the back of some other book. Reasons for the censorship? I can only think of two possibilities: When
A Meeting by the River
appeared, it was reviewed in both
The Sunday Times
and
The Observer
(I believe) second to a novel of Golding's—I remember reading the reviews as I travelled down to see the Beesleys! Also, perhaps, because of a general boosting of Golding far above his deserts, in my opinion; Morgan praised
Lord of the Flies
very highly.

 

³⁸
Isherwood visited Taylor in the hospital in 1956; see
D.1.
He saw him again in 1961, with Grant (1925–1998), an interior designer, furniture collector, preservationist, co-founder of the Victorian Society and the editor of
Great Interiors
(1967); see
D.2.