The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  470 Warrior; Swami belonged to the second Hindu caste, the warrior caste.

  471 Not traced in the Irish Times; possibly the article was printed elsewhere.

  472 It appeared in 1963 from the Vedanta Press.

  473 In 1962, for his editorials in the Santa Barbara News-Press.

  474 Their first visit in fifty years, to mark Stravinsky’s eightieth birthday, with performances and public celebrations, including a meeting with Khrushchev.

  475 Led by Bob Mitchell and featured on the soundtracks of such films as Bing Crosby’s Going My Way (1944), The Bells of St Mary’s (1945), White Christmas (1954), and the Disney cartoon Peter Pan (1953).

  476 Canadian-born, Oxford-educated actor (1896–1983), on the London stage from 1922 and in Hollywood from the 1930s; he played Kildare’s mentor Dr. Gillespie in the television series “Dr. Kildare” (1961–1966).

  477 Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. (1890-1978), architect and landscape architect settled in Santa Monica; son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959).

  478 French film director (1894–1979), son of the impressionist painter; he directed Laughton in This Land Is Mine (1943), about the French Resistance.

  479 From Prospero’s parting speeches, IV.i and V.i.

  480 Lester took part in the National Geographic Society ascent of Everest in 1963.

  481 Prinzmetal (1908–1987) was Connie Wald’s new husband. In 1959 he helped identify a form of angina pectoris, “Prinzmetal’s angina.”

  482 The Luces had been experimenting with LSD.

  483 Not her real name.

  484 The rich!

  485 Olgivanna Wright (1898–1985), widow of Frank Lloyd Wright.

  486 When they took hashish with Paul Bowles in October 1955; see Introduction p. xx and D.1.

  487 A separate episode; Lawrence lived on Malibu Beach.

  488 Brahmananda, also called Maharaj.

  489 Vivekananda, also called Swamiji.

  490 She was accused with four others of conspiracy to obtain a criminal abortion; eventually, the case against her was dropped. See Glossary.

  491 Rogers—homespun comedian and movie cowboy (1879-1935)—was half-Cherokee Indian, rangy, thatch-haired, easy-going, and clean-cut.

  492 Alice Story and Margaret Mallory; see Glossary under Mallory.

  493 Dr. Phillip Oderberg, a psychotherapist practising in Santa Monica.

  494 Robert Kennedy (1925–1968), the president’s younger brother, was then U.S. attorney general.

  495 Pierre Salinger (1925–2004), then President Kennedy’s press secretary.

  496 Owned by and named after the comedian (b. 1926).

  497 Black thoughts.

  498 Linda Christian (b. 1924), half-Dutch Mexican-born actress, known for her turbulent love life, had been married to actors Tyrone Power and (briefly) Edmund Purdom; she did not marry Ford.

  499 Bouché painted the portrait, but Time never ran the article because, as Edward Mendelson records, “the managing editor objected to honoring a homosexual” (Later Auden, p. 452).

  500 “Hic et Ille” in “The Well of Narcissus.”

  501 “The Yoga of Renunciation” (XVII) in the Bhagavad Gita; in their translation, Prabhavananda and Isherwood have “The end of sorrow.”

  502 The Santa Barbara show moved on to Stanford University, opening March 1; the Phoenix Museum of Art opening was planned for April 16.

  503 American writer and anthologist (1885–1977), he published over a hundred books, including collections of Frost (a close friend), Eliot and Pound. In 1961–1962, he was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.

  504 Weaver (b. 1912), a novelist and journalist, contributed to Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, and The Saturday Evening Post; his story “Holiday Affair” became a 1946 movie. His wife, Harriet, assisted Untermeyer with an anthology Stars to Steer By (1938); they were lifelong friends.

  505 Bryna Ivans Untermeyer, Untermeyer’s fifth wife, from 1948 until his death.

  506 Probably Moss Hart and George Kaufman’s 1936 play, published in 1937.

  507 I.e., his 1927 bestseller, We, about his life and his transatlantic flight.

  508 A framed photograph.

  509 Balaram Bose, wealthy householder disciple of Ramakrishna; Ramakrishna and his followers often visited his house in Calcutta.

  510 American collage artist; he exhibited at the Rex Evans Gallery. Bachardy stopped only briefly, to see Dole’s work, which he admired.

  511 Not his real name.

  512 The Danger Islands.

  513 Mahendranath Gupta’s The Gospel of Ramakrishna.

  514 My long and heavy task, from Alfred de Vigny, “La mort d’un loup” (The Death of a Wolf,” 1843).

  515 Antony Armstrong-Jones (b. 1930), English photographer and designer, married Princess Margaret, younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1960 and was created 1st Earl of Snowden in 1961. They divorced in 1978.

  516 Isherwood gave at least two lectures during May, “Influences” and “The Autobiography of My Books.”

  517 By Anthony Burgess.

  518 By Herbert Gold.

  519 Mason Wells, who owned the Jones Street house, and Frank Hamilton (b. 1923) his younger companion, were both painters. Wells was the brother of Jo Masselink’s friend, Kady Wells, also a painter, mentioned in D.1.

  520 The Tuileries Palace was repeatedly sacked by the Paris mob, beginning in 1792 when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned there, and repeatedly restored, until the Communards burned it down in 1871 leaving a colossal ruin and the extensive gardens. In Sentimental Education (1869), Flaubert fictionalized the 1848 attack on the Tuileries, at which he was present.

  521 Chester Alan Arthur III (1901–1972), merchant seaman, astrologer, psychic, early gay liberationist, and grandson of the U.S. President; he wrote Circle of Sex (1962), cataloging sexual preferences by star sign.

  522 Paxton’s mother was a Christian Scientist and raised him as one.

  523 Ruskin was criticizing the railroad for blasting track through a scenic rocky valley between the two English towns; see “Joanna’s Cave” in Praeterita (1899), vol. 3.

  524 In “Why Do People Intoxicate Themselves?” Tolstoy’s preface to Drunkenness (1890) by Dr. P.S. Alexeyev.

  525 John XXIII (1881–1963), Pope since 1958.

  526 I.e., the town of pilgrimage in Orissa.

  527 Swami Nirvanananda, a direct disciple of Brahmananda (Maharaj); Treasurer of the Ramakrishna Order and later Vice President.

  528 I.e., Vivekananda with, behind him, Brahmananda, Sarada Devi, and Ramakrishna.

  529 Bachardy drew Paul Latouche (not his real name), but there are no drawings of Rob; he met them both on the beach.

  530 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), President of India, 1962–1967; he had been a professor of ethics and Eastern religions at Oxford, 1936–1952, and held other posts in the Indian government. He was knighted in 1931.

  531 The Limited Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting nuclear testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and under the sea, was signed by Britain, the U.S. and the USSR.

  532 Isherwood and Bachardy knew both movie stars, but Pickford (1892–1979) only slightly.

  533 Another accident, on the night of August 9, with a Mrs. Ratner.

  534 II.ii, where Juliet warns Romeo not to swear by “th’ inconstant moon.”

  535 I.e., in his draft of chapters 15 and 16 in Ramakrishna and His Disciples.

  536 Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), arch-conservative, pro-nuclear Republican senator from Arizona; he made the cover of Time in June 1963 as a likely presidential candidate for 1964.

  537 Harper and Row, the publisher.

  538 The bank robber, Jesse James (1847–1882), was almost certainly shot in the back of the head by a member of his gang for a $10,000 reward; the body was identified by his Civil War wounds.

  539 Odets (1906–1963), a one-time member of the Communist party, wrote Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing (1935), Golden Boy (1937),
Rocket to the Moon (1938), Night Music (1940), Clash by Night (1941), and The Country Girl (1950) and worked in Hollywood, where his best-known screenplay was Sweet Smell of Success (1957). He appears in D.1.

  540 A carved and painted figure made by the Hopi Indians of northern New Mexico and Arizona to represent a supernatural being. Wonner and Brown collected the dolls and revered their religious and historical significance.

  541 The August 9 accident.

  542 MacNeice (b. 1907, Belfast) was at Oxford with Auden and Spender and collaborated with Auden on Letters from Iceland (1937). He was a university lecturer in classics, a BBC writer and producer, and published verse, verse translation, autobiography, and plays. He appears in D.1.

  543 The New Moon with the Old (1963).

  544 Genet (1910–1986) was a foster child, teenage criminal, and convict. His 1943 autobiographical novel Our Lady of the Flowers and Sartre’s 1953 study Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr were published in translation in the U.S. in September 1963. Stravinsky and Craft had met Genet in Paris in October 1962, and Stravinsky let him use, for free, two pieces of music (“Histoire du soldat” and “Octet”) for the film, released January 1963, of his play The Balcony.

  545 Isherwood evidently had the volumes translated from Russian by S.S. Koteliansky and published in England in 1927 and 1929 respectively: Solitaria (1912) with excerpts from the The Apocalypse of Our Times (1918) and Fallen Leaves (1913 and 1916).

  546 Jee-oh.

  547 NBC drama series featuring psychiatrists who helped people in their eleventh hour of need. Masselink’s episode, “Oh, You Shouldn’t Have Done It,” was aired October 30, 1963, starring James Coburn. Isherwood and Bachardy owned no T.V. set until 1964.

  548 See Oct. 29, 1961 and June 18, 1962.

  549 An attractive blond friend who served in the military and once sat for Don Bachardy.

  550 April 12, 1945, as Roosevelt began his fourth term in office.

  551 Rose Nys de Hauleville Wessberg.

  552 Marguerite Baltus Nys, known as Mère.

  553 Sigfrid Wessberg, then about twenty, the son from Rose’s second marriage.

  554 Njal’s Saga, ch. 75.

  555 The penultimate chapter of Rolland’s The Life of Ramakrishna (1929), which Isherwood knew well, concludes with this account of Ramakrishna’s death: “According to his utterance of faith, ‘He passed from one room to the other . . .’ And his disciples cried: ‘Victory!’”

  556 “A Unique Person and Talent,” printed underneath Huxley’s obituary in The Sunday Times, London, Nov. 24, 1963, p. 8.

  557 Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born prematurely on August 7, lived only two days.

  558 Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973), Kennedy’s vice president, who automatically succeeded him, had survived a massive heart attack in 1955 and eventually succumbed to a second. But he was re-elected in November 1964.

  559 He behaved inappropriately towards a woman outside the congregation; police were reportedly involved.

  560 Willingham, “Aftermath: The Way It Isn’t Done: Notes on the Distress of Normal Mailer,” pp. 306–308; Mailer, “The Big Bite,” p. 26; Vidal, “Tarzan Revisited,” pp. 193, 262–264, Esquire, Dec. 1963.

  561 On their return from China where they observed the Sino-Japanese conflict for Journey to a War; they sailed in mid-June from Shanghai to Japan, then on to Vancouver, New York (by train), and England.

  562 Shankarananda (1880–1962) was President of the Ramakrishna Order from 1951 until his death. Isherwood met him in India in 1957 and writes about him in D.1 where he spells his name “Sankarananda.”

  563 Here Isherwood added a superscript “x” for a marginal note, “Xerox.” Carlson (1906–1968) invented electrostatic copying, later called xerography, towards the end of the 1930s. The first photocopier came out in 1958.

  564 Not his real name. He later left the order and married.

  565 Belur is in north Howrah, West Bengal’s second largest city and its district headquarters.

  566 Ritual in which lights are waved in front of a deity or a holy person.

  567 Revered Jesus.

  568 Not his real name. He was a boyfriend of Jim Charlton, and a model for the main character in Charlton’s novel, St. Mick.

  569 Vijaya Raje Scindia (1919–2001), widow of the last ruling Maharaja of Gwalior and Rajmata (1916–1960). She represented Gwalior in both houses of the Indian parliament and was committed to social service and mass education.

  570 Nun who has taken final vows; see Glossary under sannyas. Here, Isherwood spelled it “prabrajika”.

  571 Presumably Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist.

  572 Evidently Swami Vivekananda Centenary Memorial Volume (1963), edited by R.C. Majumdar and published in Calcutta.

  573 The Czechoslovak Church began as a reform movement among Roman Catholic clergy in Czechoslovakia and was officially established under a Czechoslo vak Patriarch in 1920. Novák was the fourth Patriarch.

  574 Man of pretended joviality.

  575 The “Death Picture of Ramakrishna,” taken August 16, 1886 and showing more than fifty devotees standing behind his body, is printed as Plate 19 in Ramakrishna and His Disciples.

  576 Isherwood typed Sashi Kanto, but hereafter he typed Shashi Kanto, showing the pronunciation.

  577 Mallika Clare Gupta, author of a privately published book about Swami Gnaneswarananda and co-author with Irene Ray of Story of Vivekananda, for children.

  578 1907.

  579 Girish Ghosh, Bengali actor, playwright, songwriter and Ramakrishna devotee (1844–1912); Ramakrishna attended several performances when the theater opened in 1884 and thus became patron saint of Bengali drama, with his portrait backstage in most Calcutta theaters.

  580 Mathur Mohan (d. 1871), also called Mathuranath Biswas, a devotee who persuaded Ramakrishna to settle at Dakshineswar, and who provided for his material needs.

  581 Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979), American Roman Catholic priest, a bishop from 1951 and, later, archbishop. He broadcast “The Catholic Hour” on NBC radio beginning in 1930, and from the start of the 1950s had a weekly T.V. show. He also published a number of books. Isherwood typed “Sheean.”

  582 A founder and editor of the Sikh Review, published monthly in Calcutta from 1953.

  583 Mountaineer (b. 1944), son of two Unitarian ministers; later a Base Commander for the British Antarctic Survey team and President of the British Mountaineering Council.

  584 Hanuman is the Hindu monkey god.

  585 Barasat.

  586 Moffitt, a writer, was a monastic follower of Ramakrishna for twenty-five years. His nine books include several volumes of poetry and a memoir of his spiritual journey.

  587 Guha (b. 1923), Bengali poet and essayist educated partly in the U.S., taught comparative literature at Javadpur; among his publications is W.B. Yeats: An Indian Approach (1968), about Yeats’s knowledge of Indian philosophy and religion.