Lost Years

by Christopher Isherwood

  Ledebur, Count Friedrich (b. 1908). Austrian actor; second husband of Iris Tree. The marriage ended in 1955. His films include Moby Dick (1956), The Blue Max (1966), and Slaughterhouse Five (1972).

  Lehmann, Beatrix (1903–1979). English actress; the youngest of John Lehmann’s three elder sisters. She met Isherwood when she was visiting Berlin in 1932, and they became close friends.

  Lehmann, John (1907–1988). English author, publisher, editor, autobiographer; educated at Cambridge. Isherwood met Lehmann in 1932 at the Hogarth Press, where Lehmann was assistant (later partner) to Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Lehmann persuaded the Woolfs to publish The Memorial after it had been rejected by Jonathan Cape, publisher of Isherwood’s first novel, All the Conspirators. Isherwood helped Lehmann with his plans to found New Writing, discussing the manifesto and obtaining early contributions from friends such as W. H. Auden. He tells about this in Christopher and His Kind, and also writes about Lehmann in D1. When he left the Hogarth Press, Lehmann founded his own publishing firm and later edited The London Magazine. He wrote three revealing volumes of autobiography, beginning with The Whispering Gallery (1955).

  Lehmann, Rosamond (1901–1990). English novelist; an elder sister of Isherwood’s longtime friend John Lehmann. She made a reputation with the frankness of her first novel, Dusty Answer (1927), and her later works—including Invitation to the Waltz (1932), The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Echoing Grove (1953)—also shocked with their candid handling of sexual and emotional themes. From 1928 to 1944 she was married to the painter Wogan Philipps with whom she had a son and a daughter.

  Lerman, Leo. American magazine editor. Lerman was an actor and then a writer, and he held various editorial positions at Condé Nast, eventually becoming one of its most senior managers. During the 1940s he was well-known in New York for his Sunday night parties which attracted writers, actors, and dancers, and for a time, he wrote a gossip column for Vogue. He also introduced various new writers into Vogue’s pages. He was close friends with his Manhattan neighbor, Truman Capote, from the day of their first meeting in 1945 and attended Yaddo with Capote in 1946. The house Lerman rented on Nantucket, Hagedorn House, which Isherwood mentions, was evidently a converted coastguard station in Quidnet and may have belonged to the poet and biographer, Herman Hagedorn.

  Lewis, Hayden (1919–c.1994). Lewis was born in Alabama; his family came from Caledonia, a rural community near a tiny town called Pineapple, and they later moved to Fairhope, not far away, where Lewis eventually retired. As a young man he worked in Chicago, and attended the University of Chicago with a younger brother. Then, during the war, he went to Florida and worked for the navy in a civilian capacity until he and Caskey moved on together to California. After spending several decades building up his successful ceramics business with Rodney Owens, Lewis returned to Alabama where he married a Florida native, Mildred MacKinnon, whom he met at the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education. He appears frequently in D1.

  Litvak, Anatole (1902–1974). Russian-born film director. He made his first film in Russia, then worked in Germany, France, and England from the late 1920s before going on to Hollywood in 1937. His films in English include Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), All This and Heaven Too (1940), Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), The Snake Pit (1948), Decision Before Dawn (1952), and Anastasia (1956). During the war, Litvak co-directed propaganda films with Frank Capra.

  Lodge, Carter (d. 1995). American friend of John van Druten. Lodge was van Druten’s lover in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He lived mostly in the Coachella Valley at the AJC Ranch, which he and van Druten purchased in the early 1940s with Auriol Lee, the British actress and director. Lodge managed the ranch, where they grew corn and tomatoes, and handled his own and van Druten’s financial affairs very successfully. Isherwood also writes about him in D1.

  Logan, Joshua (1908–1988). American stage and film director, producer, and playwright; educated at Princeton. In the 1930s he went to see Stanislavsky in Moscow before beginning his career as a producer in London. Usually working with others, Logan wrote, directed, or produced some of the most successful ever Broadway musicals and plays, including Annie Get Your Gun (1946) and South Pacific (1949). In Hollywood he made musicals into films, and directed Bus Stop (1956), Picnic (1956), and Sayonara (1957), among others.

  Luhan, Mabel Dodge (1879–1962). American writer, patron, salon hostess; married four times. Her four volumes of memoirs, begun in 1924 and published during the 1930s, were admired by D. H. Lawrence, who was both attracted and repelled by her. Born in Buffalo, New York, to great wealth, she was sent to Europe in 1901 to recover from a nervous breakdown; there she lived in a Medici villa in Florence, wore Renaissance dress, had lovers, befriended Gertrude Stein, and entertained lavishly. In 1912 she returned to New York where she set up her salon at 23 Fifth Avenue and had an affair with the radical journalist John Reed. Next she moved to Taos, New Mexico, where she met Tony Luhan, a Pueblo Indian whom she married in 1923. The Indian way of life became her religion, and she believed that she and her husband were messiahs by whose leadership white civilization would be redeemed. She brought others to Taos to celebrate her new life, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Leopold Stokowski, John Collier, and Lawrence. During the 1920s and 1930s she worked for land reform, self-determination, and medical benefits for the Indians.

  Lynes, George Platt (1907–1955). American photographer; educated at The Berkshire School, where he met Lincoln Kirstein, and, briefly, at Yale. Lynes first photographed Isherwood and W. H. Auden during their brief visit to New York in 1938. In the 1940s, he encouraged Bill Caskey in his efforts to become a professional photographer, and later, in 1953, Lynes befriended and photographed Don Bachardy. He appears in D1. Lynes made his living from advertising and fashion photography as well as portraits (his work appeared in Town and Country, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue), but he is also known for his photographs of the ballet, male nudes, and surrealistic still lifes; he did many portraits of film stars and writers.

  Macaulay, Rose (1881–1958). British novelist, essayist, and travel writer; educated at Somerville College, Oxford. She was the daughter of a Cambridge don and published her first novel in 1906. In all she wrote twenty-three novels; the last and perhaps best, The Towers of Trebizond (1956), became a bestseller in the U.S. Macaulay also produced various works of nonfiction, including a biography of Milton and a book about the writings of E. M. Forster, and she wrote numerous articles for periodicals.

  Mace, John. Los Angeles lawyer. He and Isherwood had a number of mutual friends and sometimes attended the same parties in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1954, Isherwood asked Mace to represent him when Curtis Harrington sued Isherwood for punching Harrington in the face at a party given by Iris Tree. The case was settled out of court and Isherwood paid Harrington $350.

  MacNeice, Louis (1907–1963). Poet, born in Belfast. MacNeice was an undergraduate at Oxford with W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, and he collaborated with Auden on Letters from Iceland (1937). He worked as a university lecturer in classics and later for the BBC as a writer and producer, while publishing numerous volumes of verse, verse translation, autobiography, and plays for radio and stage.

  Madge, Charles (1912–1996). South African-born sociologist and poet; educated at Winchester and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He became a communist in the early 1930s, worked as a journalist and was a founder in 1937 of Mass Observation. His first marriage, to the poet Kathleen Raine, ended in 1939, and he then began an affair with Stephen Spender’s first wife, Inez Pearn, whom he later married. He published only two volumes of poetry, but continued his social and economic research through the war and, in 1950, became a professor of sociology at Birmingham University.

  Maher, Fern (b. 1917). American social worker. Educated at UCLA where she became close friends with David Sachs. She lived for some years in the Benton Way house. In 1948 she married Ken O’Brien, a photographer who was an occasional resident at Benton Way, and after some time abroad in North Africa,
they eventually settled in Venice, California.

  Mailer, Norman (b. 1923). American novelist; born and raised in New Jersey and Brooklyn and educated at Harvard. Mailer was in the army and fought in the Pacific during World War II; he became famous with the publication of his first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), about an American infantry platoon invading a Japanese-held island. Subsequent books include The Deer Park (1955) about Hollywood, An American Dream (1965), Why are We in Vietnam? (1967), Of a Fire on the Moon (1970) about the lunar landings, The Executioner’s Song (1979) about the execution of a convicted murderer, two books about Marilyn Monroe, and Oswald’s Tale (1995) about Lee Harvey Oswald. He won a Pulitzer Prize for The Annies of the Night (1968), describing the first peace march on the Pentagon—in which he was a participant—during the Vietnam era.

  Mangeot, André, Olive, Sylvain and Fowke. Belgian violinist and his English wife and two sons. Isherwood met the Mangeots in 1925 and worked for a year as part-time secretary to André Mangeot’s string quartet which was organized from the family home in Chelsea. The Mangeots’ warm and chaotic household offered an irresistible contrast to the cool formality of Isherwood’s own, and Olive, energetic but easygoing, was an attractive rival to Kathleen in the role of mother. Isherwood brought all his friends to meet Olive when he was in London. She is the original of “Madame Cheuret” in Lions and Shadows and Isherwood drew on different parts of her personality for the characters “Margaret Lanwin” and “Mary Scriven” in The Memorial. She had an affair with Edward Upward and through his influence became a communist. Later she separated from her husband and for a time lived in Cheltenham with Jean Ross and her daughter.

  Mann, Erika (1905–1969). German actress and author; eldest daughter of Thomas Mann. Isherwood first met Erika Mann through her brother Klaus in the spring of 1935 in Amsterdam; she had fled Germany in March 1933. Her touring revue, The Peppermill (for which she wrote most of the satirical, anti-Nazi material), earned her the status of official enemy of the Reich, and she asked Isherwood to marry her and provide her with a British passport. He felt he could not, but contacted W. H. Auden who agreed, and the two met and married in England in June 1935. In September 1936 Erika emigrated to America with Klaus and unsuccessfully tried to reopen The Peppermill in New York. As the war approached, she lectured widely in the USA and wrote anti-Nazi books, two with Klaus, trying to revive sympathy for the non-Nazi Germany silenced by Hitler. She worked as a journalist in London during the war, for the BBC German Service and as a correspondent for the New York Nation. Later, she became increasingly close to her father, travelling with her parents and helping Thomas Mann with his work. She also appears in D1.

  Mann, Klaus (1906–1949). German novelist and editor. Heinrich Klaus Mann was the eldest son of Thomas Mann; Isherwood became friendly with him in Berlin in the summer of 1931. By then Klaus had written and acted with his sister, Erika, in the plays which launched her acting career, and he had published several novels in German (a few appeared in English translations) and worked as a drama critic. He travelled extensively and lived in various European cities even before he left Germany for good in 1933; in 1936, when his family settled in Princeton, he emigrated to America and lived in New York, continuing to travel to Europe as a journalist, and later settling for a time in Santa Monica. He founded two magazines: Die Sammlung (The Collection) in Amsterdam in 1933, and Decision, which appeared in New York in December 1940 but lasted only a year because of the war. Klaus became a U.S. citizen and served in the U.S. Army during the war. He wrote his second volume of autobiography, The Turning Point (1942), in English. Isherwood wrote a reminiscence about Klaus for a memorial volume published in Amsterdam in 1950, Klaus Mann—zum Gedaechtnis, and describes their friendship in D1.

  Mann, Thomas (1875–1955). German novelist and essayist; awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. Mann was patriarch of a large and talented literary family; he and his wife Katia Pringsheim Mann (whose father was a mathematics professor and Wagner scholar) had six children. Mann’s novels and stories are among the greatest German literature of this century. They include Buddenbrooks (1901), Tonio Kröger (1903), Death in Venice (1912), The Magic Mountain (1924), Doktor Faustus (1947), and The Confessions of the Confidence Trickster Felix Krull (1954). Mann lectured in support of the Weimar Republic both in Germany and abroad during the 1920s, and he publicly dissociated himself from the Nazi regime in 1936, taking Czech citizenship (though he had remained in Switzerland since a 1933 holiday). Isherwood first met him in Princeton where Mann was a visiting professor after his flight from the Nazis. Then in 1941, Mann moved with his family to Pacific Palisades and became part of the circle of German emigrés and artists with which Isherwood was intimate; he is sometimes mentioned in D1. Later the Manns returned to Switzerland.

  Markova, Alicia (b. 1910). English prima ballerina; her real name was Lilian Alicia Marks. She danced for the Ballets Russes in 1924 and afterwards for various companies in England where she was partnered for many years by the British dancer Anton Dolin (also a former member of the Ballets Russes). In 1935, Markova and Dolin founded their own ballet company and toured internationally. Later she became a professor of dance at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.

  Martinez, José (Pete) (c. 1913–1997). Mexican-born ballet dancer; also known as Pete Stefan. Isherwood met him through Lincoln Kirstein in 1939. Martinez was among the first students at the American School of Ballet (founded by Kirstein and Balanchine), and during the 1940s he danced with the American Ballet Caravan and the Ballet Society, forerunners of the New York City Ballet. He created the scenario for Pastorela (1941) and toured in it to Latin America. In 1942, Martinez worked with Isherwood at the refugee hostel in Haverford, Pennsylvania, while waiting to be drafted into the army. Isherwood records their life together in D1. Martinez’s family then moved from Texas to Long Beach, and Isherwood saw him in Long Beach in 1943 before Martinez left to fight in northern France from 1943 to 1945. Afterwards they met occasionally in New York and California. When the war was over, Martinez danced for two more years: he was in the original cast of Balanchine’s Four Temperaments (1946), and he created the role of the minister in William Dollar’s Highland Fling (1947). A knee injury forced him to retire in 1947, and he became a teacher, opening his own studios in Virginia, Ohio and, finally, California where he worked until the mid-1960s and then remained for the rest of his life.

  Masselink, Ben (1919–2000). American writer. Massehnk was in the marines during the war; one night on leave, he got drunk in The Friendship, the bar in Santa Monica Canyon, and Jo Lathwood took him to her apartment nearby and looked after him. When the war was over he went back to her and stayed for over twenty years. Masselink had studied architecture, and Isherwood helped him with his writing career during the 1950s. His first book of stories, Partly Submerged, was published in 1957, followed by two novels about his war experience—The Crackerjack Marines (1959) and The Deadliest Weapon (1965), the second of which Isherwood admired—and a story for teenage boys, The Danger Islands (1964). Masselink also wrote for television throughout the 1950s and in 1960 worked at Warner Brothers on the script for a film of The Crackerjack Marines. In 1967, when Lathwood was in her late sixties, Masselink, still in his forties, left her for a younger woman. There are numerous passages about the Masselinks in D1.

  Masselink, Jo (c. 1900–1988). Women’s sportswear and bathing suit designer from Northville, South Dakota; among her clientele were movie stars such as Janet Gaynor and Anne Baxter. She had worked as a dancer and was briefly married to a man called Jack Lathwood (whose name she kept professionally); also, she had a son and a daughter with a North Dakotan, Ferdinand Hinchberger. From 1938 onwards she lived on West Channel Road, a few doors from The Friendship, and by the late 1940s she knew many of Isherwood’s friends who frequented the bar—including Bill Caskey, Jay de Laval, and Jim Charlton. She never married Ben Masselink, though she lived with him and used his surname. She appears often in D1.

  Matta Echaurren, Ro
berto Sebastián (b. 1911). Chilean-born surrealist painter. Matta trained as an architect with Le Corbusier and began painting in Paris towards the end of the 1930s. During World War II, he worked in New York with other European surrealists who had emigrated there, such as André Breton, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy.

  Maugham, William Somerset (Willie) (1874–1965). British playwright and novelist. Maugham was married and had a daughter, but for a long time his usual companion was Gerald Haxton, eighteen years younger, whom he met in 1914 working in an ambulance unit in Flanders. Maugham and Haxton travelled, and they entertained on Cap Ferrat at the Villa Mauresque which Maugham bought in 1926. After Haxton’s early death, Maugham’s subsequent companion and heir was Alan Searle. Isherwood met Maugham in London in the late 1930s and saw him whenever Maugham visited Hollywood, where many of Maugham’s works were filmed; later Isherwood also made several visits to Maugham’s house in France. Their friendship is described in D1. Shri Ganesha (the character about whom Maugham consulted Swami for the film of The Razor’s Edge) was based on Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950), an Indian holy man Maugham met in 1936. Later, in 1956, Swami and Isherwood both advised Maugham again on his essay “The Saint,” about Ramana Maharshi. “The Saint” was published in Maugham’s Points of View (1958).

  Mauriber, Saul. Assistant to the photographer and writer Carl Van Vechten. He was still a student when he met Van Vechten and worked with him for twenty years. Later, Mauriber also became a designer.