April 20 [Monday]. Peter did sort of ask me to, but not definitely enough, in the middle of a supper party at Patrick Woodcock’s, last night. He repeated that he wanted a separate place to live and he again referred to the unsatisfactory sex situation.
Actually the party was quite a success, although Patrick had invited old Gladys Calthrop and two Frogs from the French embassy. Poor Gladys got a terrible headache and had to leave, but the Frogs were nice, even charming, Jean-Pierre and Odile Angremy; she was both attractive and friendly and he was blond, plump but sexy, and quite intelligent—by which I mean, among other things, that he admired my work. He is a writer himself, and has published what he claims is a pornographic novel.63 He greatly recommends a modern writer named Bataille. He spent several years in China, and is preparing an anthology of writings about it. He hadn’t heard of Journey to a War.
John Gielgud and Martin Hensler were also there; John as amusing as usual, and so genuinely benevolent. Martin was in an exceptionally gracious mood and made himself very agreeable. David was David. Tonight we are going out to dinner together again, with the novelist Julian Mitchell.64 I sometimes begin to wonder if David proposes all these threesomes because Peter and he quarrel when they are alone!
When I called Don yesterday I told him the situation between Clement and Bob Chetwyn and we’ve agreed that he shall book a passage on a plane leaving Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, and arriving early Thursday, the 23rd. Meanwhile I have to send him a cable as soon as possible, either confirming this or telling him to wait. At present the situation doesn’t look good. Richard Schulman, Clement’s partner, feels that Bob Chetwyn is far too expensive. They are obviously going to bargain. Bob’s [. . .] agent Elspeth Cochrane has lost his former contract and another copy of it has to be picked up and copied for Schulman and Clement. So nothing can be settled till tomorrow. Of course I can still reach Don in time but I hate to make such a cliff-hanger out of the proceedings, when the delay is all due to the inefficiency of this [agency]. Clement said to me on the phone: “It’s a war of nutrition.”
An attractive dark lank-haired young man from Hull, with a high forehead, crooked teeth and a tape recorder interviewed me for two hours this morning to get material for a thesis he is writing on four novelists of the thirties and their attitude to political questions—Edward and me, Anthony Powell and Henry Green. His name is David Lamborne. Then a big fat blond pleasant but unattractive young German-American named Otto Friedrich followed him immediately, with questions for a book on pre-1939 Berlin.65 Mrs. Gee66 contrived to interrupt us several times; she comes in very quietly unannounced, often startling me violently. I want to kick the shit out of her—there’s something masochistic about her attitude—and yet, whenever I settle down to talk to her, she’s nice and very sensible.
Don told me on the phone that Swami is already beginning to fuss about the Garland of Questions and Answers by Shankara, which he sent me to rewrite—although the deadline isn’t till June 1! Started work on them yesterday.
April 21. Everything still hangs—it’s 12:20 p.m.—and Clement still hasn’t had his conference with Miss Cochrane about the terms.
Last night I went with David and Peter to have supper with Julian Mitchell. Peter told me that [Don’s friend] complained to him about Don—how Don had “stood over him in the middle of the night and watched him while he read the play” and how [the friend] hadn’t been able to make up his mind under such pressure and so he’d shown the play to someone else at the Royal Court, which had made Don furious. So I said to Peter that I dislike [the friend] and could never under any circumstances work with him—which I hope he passes on [. . .].
Meanwhile, in Shankara, I come upon this question and answer: “What is sin?” “Jealousy.” This baffles me, it seems so sweeping and suggests that “jealousy” is being used with some much broader, deeper significance. Is Shankara saying that all sin (and that word itself is a bit vague) is jealousy in some form? Then, obviously, “jealousy” isn’t merely jealousy in the ordinary sense. Would “envy” be better—meaning that desire for what belongs to other people is the root of all attachment? It isn’t, though. What about attachment to the things which do belong to you? Must write to Swami about this.
I am jealous of [Don’s friend], because Don still cares for him. I hate the thought that when Don comes to London he’ll be wishing he could see [him]—that is, if he does wish it. And yet I know that, the more I can make Don feel perfectly free, the more he will love me. And now Shankara tells me the jealousy is sin! Ha.67
Also at the party last night was that curiously attractive rather battered-looking artist, Keith Milow. He always plays it very cool when we meet, but this time he invited me to some get-together next Sunday, and he kissed me when we said goodbye.
Another of the guests, James somebody (the friend of John Golding who’s some kind of art historian)68 told me that he’d been waiting to meet me for thirty-five years!
The party itself was quite unmemorable, as far as I was concerned. Mitchell is pleasant enough, but such a professional entertainer and host; there’s a slickness in his geniality which, you feel, must surely infect his books as well.
Another day of miserable cold.
April 22 [Wednesday]. The situation has, as they say, deteriorated. Yesterday I was told by Clement that Chetwyn’s agent Miss Cochrane told him Chetwyn has another (previous) engagement which may be coming up—it’s a two-character play with Lynn Redgrave in one of the parts; he worked on it last year and now suddenly it’s a possibility or even a probability. It would take Chetwyn away from us from the end of May until about July 20. However, the Tom Stoppard play has been postponed until September 1, so there would be more time for our play at the other end.
Hearing this, I blew my top, exclaiming that this was Clifford Williams’s betrayal being repeated. When I talked to Miss Cochrane on the phone (she was unexpectedly sensible and nice—they always are) she assured me that all this was very uncertain and that anyhow Chetwyn would never leave our play if it could be cast before the Redgrave play came up; only in the event of a total failure to cast it would he leave. However, when I repeated her words to Chetwyn he stammered a good bit, then muttered that this wasn’t quite the case and that he must talk to Miss Cochrane again. Now it seems clear that the Redgrave play is part of his program, if he can get it. He wants to fit both of us in.
So this morning I had a very painful conversation with Don, who is terribly disappointed but says there’s no question of his coming just for the trip—unless we are going ahead right away, he won’t. And I can’t advise him to do otherwise. Obviously he should stay where he is and I should stay here a little longer—but only a little.
So I’m endeavoring to scare Clement into action by threatening to leave on Friday and by talking constantly about the huge costs of my staying here, including all these phone calls to Santa Monica (there have been ten of them, to date). And I’m going to talk things over very frankly with Clement and Bob Chetwyn today. Richard Schulman will be there too.
The latest candidate for Oliver is Tom Courtenay. (Have I already commented on the extraordinary run of Cs in this affair? Clifford Williams, Clement, Chetwyn, Miss Cochrane, me—not to mention other people we offered the play to: Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Plummer. Corin Redgrave we also considered. And then, of course, Clifford Williams left us to do Oh! Calcutta!!)
A severe shock on the scales this morning; I weighed nearly 160!
Last night a quiet rather sad little supper with Neil Hartley and Bob Regester. I felt that Neil is an increasingly unwilling slave of Tony. He really resents Tony’s caprices, or is worn out by them. He feels that the Nijinsky film will run on the rocks because of them; he expects temperament clashes and overspending. Tony merely says, “It’ll be fun.”69 Neil said to me how nice it would be if Don and I and Bob and he could get together on a film, “You’re such creative people.” But he quickly added, “That is, if you don’t have to have a huge amount
of money”!
Both he and Bob liked the extreme “pudding-basin” haircut I got yesterday from an Italian barber far down the King’s Road. “It wouldn’t look good on anybody but you.”
5:30 p.m. Feeling blue, a cold starting. I’m increasingly miserable because I had to tell Don not to come, this morning. And yet I’m sure I did right. Even if the whole situation changes, it was right, at present. And if we take it as possible that I may leave now and we may both have to come back later—when the play has been cast and rehearsals are about to begin—then Don will have saved an entire round trip.
The utter foulness of this miserable spring! I long to get off the island. Am now planning to leave next Wednesday the 29th.
Had lunch with Bob Regester at a club he has just joined, Burke’s. He says it’s very smart, but the general effect is more Mafia. We talked about his difficulties with Neil, who is possessive but unemotional and undemonstrative. Bob finds the relationship confining. And then, when I went round to Woodfall to get the Tom Cuthbertson story about Peter Schlesinger xeroxed,70 Neil started, in an oblique way, to ask my advice about Bob, without ever mentioning his name. So of course I handed out lots of admirable advice, which I would do well to follow myself. Don’t try to make the relationship exclusive. Try to make your part of it so special that nobody can interfere with it even if he has an affair with your lover. Remember that physical tenderness is actually more important than the sex act itself. Etc., etc., etc.
Roger Stock had been in to see Neil and had told him that he and Edward [Albee] can’t make it together. What slums of deprivation other people’s private lives seem to be—when you’re in the sort of mood I’m in today!
April 23 [Thursday]. I had rather a nice evening, yesterday, with Bob Chetwyn and the friend who is living with him, Howard Schumann(?).71 Howard is American, Jewish New Yorker, with possibly some Negro in him. He writes for T.V., films and off-Broadway revues. He comes on super-friendly and cozy, clasped my hand with both of his when we said goodnight, and seemed to be telegraphing repeatedly that Bob and he are a domestic couple. Bob did and said nothing to confirm this, however. But they have evidently been together for quite some time and Bob told me, while he was driving me home, that Howard wants to settle permanently in this country. Howard has a darkish skin, very bright dark eyes, close curling perhaps Negroid hair and a thick moustache. I suppose he’s in his late twenties. Yesterday, viewing Bob’s face in the new frame of reference, as a guy with a house-guest, I thought he looked like Alec Guinness.
Earlier, we had our conference; Chetwyn, Clement and Richard Schulman. Richard, who is very dapper, white haired and queenish, led off with a real loyalty pledge—never never would he cease to believe in our beautiful play and strive to put it on. So I commended his loyalty, and Clement’s; and then we got down to discussing who we’d like for a director if we ditch Bob Chetwyn! Chetwyn arrived a bit later, which was convenient. But he too pledged loyalty. He now talks as if it’ll be no sweat to fit in the Lynn Redgrave play and then our play before doing the Stoppard play in New York. He agreed that he and I could list the alterations he would like to see made and then I could take them back to Don in Santa Monica and work on them there. In other words, no efforts were made to restrain me from leaving. When I rubbed in once again all my expenses they merely clucked sympathetically.
Came home feeling bluer than ever. The fact that I had told Don not to come seemed extraordinarily painful. I don’t really understand why, myself—for, after all, it now also seemed to have been the obviously right decision.
Then this morning I got a cable from Don, “Arriving Saturday morning unless you call.” So I called and we talked it all over. He was so sweet—sweet like nobody else on earth can be, assuring me that it didn’t matter where we were together as long as we were together; and sly old Dub said (with doubts still flickering about [Don’s friend]) why don’t you come to London—there are so many people who’d love to see you—and Kitty purred, there’s lots of people everywhere, but he only wants his old Dub. So it was settled—barring last moment changes—that I’m to leave next Wednesday the 29th.
What does concern me is that Don hasn’t sold any more pictures as the result of the show and that Blum doesn’t seem to be able to set up any shows in New York or San Francisco for him. Also, he says he isn’t working at all. When he told me this he didn’t betray any concern, but of course he is concerned, he must be, being Don. So I’m worried. I only hope I can help him, somehow, by being with him.
This business of work is such a bewildering circle, it takes you round and round. Work is important, yet only as much as you wish it to be—because it’s symbolic, never an absolute. Then again, work is desirable (or so we say) for an artist because it makes him happy to be working. But then, is happiness important? When I say that I want Don to be happy, he always retorts, but why, what’s so special about happiness, why should happiness be import ant, why isn’t it just as important to be unhappy? But then one says, the unhappiness of not working is due to guilt. If you aren’t working, you feel guilty. But is guilt wrong? No, not necessarily.
The Gita says, “Never give way to laziness,”72 but the Gita is speaking of the constant effort one should make to realize the meaning of life, the Eternal within. This effort can go on throughout periods of inaction. Inaction is not the same thing as laziness. And certainly the effort can go on throughout periods of unhappiness. Indeed, unhappiness is possibly less stultifying than happiness, provided it isn’t too intense.
Such a burst of philosophy, all of a sudden! It is partly because I’d like to fill up the pages of this notebook before I leave. But that too has a motive. I have kept this diary up doggedly, day by day, because I believe that a continuous record, no matter how full of trivialities, will always gradually reveal something of the subconscious mind behind it. I’ve never regretted keeping a diary yet. There are always a few nuggets of literary value under all that sand.
The most difficult thing to make oneself record is the day-today climate of the mind, the contents of its reverie. Today I kept remembering that I’m still grossly overweight, about 158, and that I ought not to eat starches or drink alcoholic drinks. I have a vague desire to go to a steam bath which is partly sexual, partly a wish to get in out of the rain and cold.
April 24. I did go to a steam bath, the one on Jermyn Street, where amidst many of my fellow toads I ran into an autumn crocus, Horst Buchholz! What a cheerful bright-eyed shameless rogue he is, and how attractive still. He was much interested to hear about the play and eager for a part. I told him maybe he could play Patrick in German, and he replied, “First in German and then in English!” He and his old lover Wenzel Lüdecke are still together—in business. They recently started to shoot a film in Egypt. The Egyptians assigned them a place to shoot exteriors, without mentioning that it was part of an army camp. And then the Israeli planes flew over and bombed it! This shattered Horst’s nerves so completely that he quit. And now they are being sued by their backers for not delivering the film and are suing the Egyptians for exposing them to this danger.
He made me feel very cheerful. I asked Clement to send him a script.
Then I went with David and Peter to the National Film Theatre to see some quite unbelievably boring German “underground” films. We—and enough other people to cram the theater—went (presumably) because of all the advance publicity put out by the maker of Sisters of Revolution and Rosy Worker on a Golden Street— the maker is called Rosa von Praunheim but is a young pale arrogant-looking man with shoulder-length hair, who is married.73 Films and Filming carried an article by him, attacking nearly all other German filmmakers. It was illustrated by three stills of scenes allegedly contained in Sisters of Revolution—and not one of them appeared on the screen! Since two of the stills showed naked or nearly naked men about to make love or rape each other, the audience might well have demanded their money back, but they bore it all with British resignation. There were only a few protests.
> Then we went to eat at Odin’s and were joined by Patrick Procktor, who was so irritating that I spoke to him quite angrily, which delighted him. He is a really malicious bitch. This morning I ran into him at Ron Kitaj’s show.* Patrick had brought his dog with him into the gallery, and Ron came out, quite annoyed, and said, “I gave orders that no dogs were to be let in,” to which Patrick replied, “I felt sure you couldn’t be serious.” Later, I’m almost certain I heard him running down Ron’s painting to a young man, on the street, near the gallery entrance, as I was coming out.
Then I went hunting for a gold chain for Don, along Bond Street and in the jewellers’ shops of the Burlington Arcade. Nothing even remotely suitable. The jewellers here say that the chain Truman Capote had from Bulgari’s in Rome must have been copied from an antique one.
Then I had lunch with Jean Cockburn74 and her daughter Sarah and three of their friends at a little restaurant in Chancery Lane. Jean looks old but still rather beautiful and she is very lively and active and mentally on the spot—and as political as ever. Sarah is a barrister and, according to Jean, hasn’t cared to marry because “since she took to the law, she has seen so much of what marriage lets you in for.” Sarah is rather plump but quite nice looking.
Seeing Jean made me happy;† I think if I lived here I’d see a lot of her—that is, if I could do so without being involved in her communism. Her devotion to Sarah doesn’t seem repulsive, either. Peggy [Ross] is an invalid most of the time, because of her arthritis, and their mother has had a stroke. So Jean is kept very busy.