fn388 A Santa Monica realtor.
fn389 Anne Marshall’s Hunting the Guru in India was published by Gollancz in 1963; it contains no passages about Ramakrishna and homosexuality.
fn390 He continued the new volume for four years and labelled it “October 1962—September 1966.”
fn391 I.e., the University of California at Irvine.
fn392 In order to turn back Soviet ships carrying more weapons; see Glossary under Cuban Missile Crisis.
fn393 American bass Jerome Hines (1921–2003) sang the lead in Boris Godunov, October 23, and Khrushchev even visited his dressing room.
fn394 The Cuban representative, Mario García Incháustegui, characterized the Soviet weapons as defensive, asserted Cuba’s right to defend itself, and denounced the blockade as an “act of war.”
fn395 Longtime resident of Santa Monica Canyon.
fn396 China invaded on October 20; see Glossary under Sino-Indian War.
fn397 Leucocristine, or vincristine, extracted from periwinkles (vinca), used in chemotherapy.
fn398 On November 7, Nixon lost the California governor’s race. In what he called his “last press conference,” he announced, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.”
fn399 Frank Laughton (1907–1964), youngest of the three Laughton brothers; he ran his parents’ Pavilion Hotel in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, where the boys had spent their childhood.
fn400 Twenty-two portrait drawings at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, January 29 to February 17, 1963.
fn401 Jerry Wald had been dead for only four months. Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, opened May 8, 1962 on Broadway.
fn402 “Thou art that,” one of the Hindu “great sayings” stating the oneness of the soul with Brahman.
fn403 Not his real name. He was a trained engineer, considered brilliant.
fn404 The missiles were already being shipped back to Russia, but Soviet IL-28 bombers remained in Cuba; Castro agreed, on November 19, to their removal.
fn405 I.e., Pacific Coast Highway.
fn406 Warrior; Swami belonged to the second Hindu caste, the warrior caste.
fn407 Not traced in the Irish Times; possibly the article was printed elsewhere.
fn408 It appeared in 1963 from the Vedanta Press.
fn409 In 1962, for his editorials in the Santa Barbara News-Press.
fn410 Their first visit in fifty years, to mark Stravinsky’s eightieth birthday, with performances and public celebrations, including a meeting with Khrushchev.
fn411 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).
fn412 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).
fn413 Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr. (1890-1978), architect and landscape architect settled in Santa Monica; son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959).
fn414 French film director (1894–1979), son of the impressionist painter; he directed Laughton in This Land Is Mine (1943), about the French Resistance.
fn415 From Prospero’s parting speeches, IV.i and V.i.
fn416 Lester took part in the National Geographic Society ascent of Everest in 1963.
fn417 Prinzmetal (1908–1987) was Connie Wald’s new husband. In 1959 he helped identify a form of angina pectoris, “Prinzmetal’s angina.”
fn418 The Luces had been experimenting with LSD.
fn419 Not her real name.
fn420 The rich!
fn421 Olgivanna Wright (1898–1985), widow of Frank Lloyd Wright.
fn422 When they took hashish with Paul Bowles in October 1955; see Introduction p. xx and D.1.
fn423 A separate episode; Lawrence lived on Malibu Beach.
fn424 Brahmananda, also called Maharaj.
fn425 Vivekananda, also called Swamiji.
fn426 She was accused with four others of conspiracy to obtain a criminal abortion; eventually, the case against her was dropped. See Glossary.
fn427 Rogers—homespun comedian and movie cowboy (1879-1935)—was half-Cherokee Indian, rangy, thatch-haired, easy-going, and clean-cut.
fn428 Alice Story and Margaret Mallory; see Glossary under Mallory.
fn429 Dr. Phillip Oderberg, a psychotherapist practising in Santa Monica.
fn430 Robert Kennedy (1925–1968), the president’s younger brother, was then U.S. attorney general.
fn431 Pierre Salinger (1925–2004), then President Kennedy’s press secretary.
fn432 Owned by and named after the comedian (b. 1926).
fn433 Black thoughts.
fn434 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.
fn435 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).
fn436 “Hic et Ille” in “The Well of Narcissus.”
fn437 “The Yoga of Renunciation” (XVII) in the Bhagavad Gita; in their translation, Prabhavananda and Isherwood have “The end of sorrow.”
fn438 The Santa Barbara show moved on to Stanford University, opening March 1; the Phoenix Museum of Art opening was planned for April 16.
fn439 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.
fn440 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.
fn441 Bryna Ivans Untermeyer, Untermeyer’s fifth wife, from 1948 until his death.
fn442 Probably Moss Hart and George Kaufman’s 1936 play, published in 1937.
fn443 I.e., his 1927 bestseller, We, about his life and his transatlantic flight.
fn444 A framed photograph.
fn445 Balaram Bose, wealthy householder disciple of Ramakrishna; Ramakrishna and his followers often visited his house in Calcutta.
fn446 American collage artist; he exhibited at the Rex Evans Gallery. Bachardy stopped only briefly, to see Dole’s work, which he admired.
fn447 Not his real name.
fn448 The Danger Islands.
fn449 Mahendranath Gupta’s The Gospel of Ramakrishna.
fn450 My long and heavy task, from Alfred de Vigny, “La mort d’un loup” (The Death of a Wolf,” 1843).
fn451 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.
fn452 Isherwood gave at least two lectures during May, “Influences” and “The Autobiography of My Books.”
fn453 By Anthony Burgess.
fn454 By Herbert Gold.
fn455 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.
fn456 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.
fn457 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.
fn458 Paxton’s mother was a Christian Scientist and raised him as one.
fn459 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.
fn460 In “Why Do People Intoxicate Themselves?” Tolstoy’s preface to Drunkenness (1890) by Dr. P.S. Alexeyev.
fn461 John XXIII (1881–1963), Pope since 1958.
fn462 I.e., the town of pilgrimage in Orissa.
fn463 Swami Nirvanananda, a direct disciple of Brahmananda (Maharaj); Treasurer of the Ramakrishna Order and later Vice President.
fn464 I.e., Vivekananda with, behind him, Brahmananda, Sarada Devi, and Ramakrishna.
fn465 Bachardy drew Paul Latouche (not his real name), but there are no drawings of Rob; he met them both on the beach.
fn466 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.
fn467 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.
fn468 Isherwood and Bachardy knew both movie stars, but Pickford (1892–1979) only slightly.
fn469 Another accident, on the night of August 9, with a Mrs. Ratner.
fn470 II.ii, where Juliet warns Romeo not to swear by “th’ inconstant moon.”
fn471 I.e., in his draft of chapters 15 and 16 in Ramakrishna and His Disciples.
fn472 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.
fn473 Harper and Row, the publisher.
fn474 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.
fn475 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.
fn476 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.
fn477 The August 9 accident.
fn478 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.
fn479 The New Moon with the Old (1963).
fn480 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.
fn481 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).
fn482 Jee-oh.
fn483 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.
fn484 See Oct. 29, 1961 and June 18, 1962.
fn485 An attractive blond friend who served in the military and once sat for Don Bachardy.
fn486 April 12, 1945, as Roosevelt began his fourth term in office.
fn487 Rose Nys de Hauleville Wessberg.
fn488 Marguerite Baltus Nys, known as Mère.
fn489 Sigfrid Wessberg, then about twenty, the son from Rose’s second marriage.
fn490 Njal’s Saga, ch. 75.
fn491 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!’”
fn492 “A Unique Person and Talent,” printed underneath Huxley’s obituary in The Sunday Times, London, Nov. 24, 1963, p. 8.
fn493 Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born prematurely on August 7, lived only two days.
fn494 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.
fn495 He behaved inappropriately towards a woman outside the congregation; police were reportedly involved.
fn496 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.
fn497 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.
fn498 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.”
fn499 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.
fn500 Not his real name. He later left the order and married.
fn501 Belur is in north Howrah, West Bengal’s second largest city and its district headquarters.
fn502 Ritual in which lights are waved in front of a deity or a holy person.
fn503 Revered Jesus.
fn504 Not his real name. He was a boyfriend of Jim Charlton, and a model for the main character in Charlton’s novel, St. Mick.
fn505 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.
fn506 Nun who has taken final vows; see Glossary under sannyas. Here, Isherwood spelled it “prabrajika”.
fn507 Presumably Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist.
fn508 Evidently Swami Vivekananda Centenary Memorial Volume (1963), edited by R.C. Majumdar and published in Calcutta.
fn509 The Czechoslovak Church began as a reform movement among Roman Catholic clergy in Czechoslovakia and was officially established under a Czechoslovak Patriarch in 1920. Novák was the fourth Patriarch.
fn510 Man of pretended joviality.
fn511 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.
fn512 Isherwood typed Sashi Kanto, but hereafter he typed Shashi Kanto, showing the pronunciation.
fn513 Mallika Clare Gupta, author of a privately published book about Swami Gnaneswarananda and co-author with Irene Ray of Story of Vivekananda, for children.
fn514 1907.
fn515 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
.
fn516 Mathur Mohan (d. 1871), also called Mathuranath Biswas, a devotee who persuaded Ramakrishna to settle at Dakshineswar, and who provided for his material needs.
fn517 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.”
fn518 A founder and editor of the Sikh Review, published monthly in Calcutta from 1953.
fn519 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.
fn520 Hanuman is the Hindu monkey god.
fn521 Barasat.
fn522 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.
fn523 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.
fn524 Balzac’s title, The Wild-Ass’s Skin, is already a pun: the hero receives a magical piece of the skin, also called shagreen, which answers his every wish but shrinks as it does so, causing him extreme chagrin, for when it disappears, he must die.
fn525 Lal (b. 1929) was founder in 1958 of the Calcutta Writers Workshop, which publishes contemporary literature and translations, including his own translation of the complete Mahabharata from Sanskrit into English. Ratan (b. 1917) and Sio were among the seven writers who launched the workshop with him. Ratan, also a college teacher and later a business executive, is a prolific translator of novels and stories from and into English, Urdu, Punjabi, and Hindi.
fn526 The Gospel According to Sri Ramakrishna. Elder is “neither a man of the world nor a devotee of God.” Old, unemployed, and with nothing to do, he is available for household tasks such as cutting pumpkins for cooking. (By tradition women in Bengal do not cut them.) See Aug. 20, 1883; p. 281 in Swami Nikhilananda’s translation.
fn527 In the opening scene of The Dog Beneath the Skin, the Two are opposing presences who mark the passage of time and witness the activities of men, making life possible and limiting it. In the sannyas ritual, the monk dies and enters a new life of stricter religious devotion; Isherwood’s rebirth takes place in the opposite direction, abandoning the monastery for the world.
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