Wright, Thomas E. (Tom). American writer, from New Orleans. Isherwood met him while both were fellows-in-residence at the Huntington Hartford Foundation in 1951, and they had a casual affair which lasted about eight months. Wright was then about twenty-four years old and had taught at New York University. He was a childhood friend of Speed Lamkin and of Speed’s sister, Marguerite, and he knew Tennessee Williams and Howard Griffin. He also became close to Edward James and lived at James’s Hollywood house as a caretaker for a number of years. Bachardy drew the first of several portraits of Wright in 1960. Wright published novels, travel books—including one about Mexico which Isherwood mentions reading, Into the Maya World (1969)—and Growing Up with Legends: A Literary Memoir. He eventually settled in Guatemala. He appears in D.1.
Wyberslegh Hall. The fifteenth-century manor house where Isherwood was born and where his mother returned to live with his brother after the war; it was part of the Bradshaw Isherwood estate. During most of the nineteenth century, Wyberslegh was leased to a family called Cooper who farmed the surrounding fields, lived in the rear wing of the house, and rented out the front rooms. When Isherwood’s parents married in 1903, his grandfather, John Isherwood, divided Wyberslegh Hall into two separate houses. Frank and Kathleen Isherwood moved into the front of the house, and, for roughly half the twentieth century, the Coopers continued to live in the back overlooking the farmyard. The Nazi incendiary bombs which Isherwood mentions were dropped on January 9, 1941, when a tenant was occupying the front half of Wyberslegh. Richard was then performing his wartime national service as a farmhand at Wyberslegh farm and helped Jack Smith and other farmhands put out the fires.
Wystan. See Auden, W.H.
Yatiswarananda, Swami. Hindu monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He was sent from India to live at the Vedanta centers in Switzerland and Philadelphia. In the early 1940s, he supervised the Hollywood Vedanta Society during an absence of Prabhavananda. The visit is described in D.1.
yoga. Union with the Godhead or one of the methods by which the individual soul may achieve such union. Isherwood and Prabhavananda translated the yoga sutras or aphorisms of the Hindu sage Patanjali (circa 4th c. BC to 4th c. AD) as How to Know God (1953); they describe the aphorisms as a compilation and reformulation of yoga philosophy and practices—spiritual disciplines and techniques of meditation—referred to even earlier in four of the Upanishads and in fact handed down from pre-historic times.
York, Michael (b. 1942) and Pat McCallum. British film star and his wife, a photographer and writer. He was educated at Oxford, where he acted for the Oxford University Dramatic Society. His real name is Michael York-Johnson. In 1965, he had a small role in Franco Zeffirelli’s stage production of The Taming of the Shrew, for Olivier’s National Theatre Company and afterwards appeared in the movie with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Subsequent films include Romeo and Juliet (1968), Justine (1969), Something for Everyone (1970), Cabaret (1972), England Made Me (1973), The Three Musketeers (1974), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Weather in the Streets (1983), The Wide Sargasso Sea (1993), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), Borstal Boy (2000), Megiddo (2001), and Austin Powers: Goldmember (2002). He has often appeared on television, notably in “The Forsyte Saga” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and on Broadway, and he has a prize-winning career recording audio books. She was born in Jamaica to an English diplomat and his American wife, educated in England and France, married for the first time as a teenager, and in 1952 had a son, Rick McCallum, later a Hollywood producer. From the early 1960s, she worked as a fashion journalist at Vogue, then as a photographer and travel editor at Glamor before becoming a freelance photographer with a few lessons from David Bailey. Her portraits of celebrities have appeared in Life, People, Town and Country, Playboy, and Newsweek; she has published several books and had numerous gallery exhibitions, in particular of her later avant-garde work featurig dissected cadavers and nude portraits of professional people at work. She met Michael York when photographing him for a magazine profile, and they married a year later, in 1968. Isherwood was introduced to them in 1969, probably at the Vadims’ lunch party described in the diary entry of January 15.
Yorke, Henry (1905–73). English novelist, educated at Eton and Oxford; his pen name was Henry Green. His mother, a daughter of Lord Leconfield, was brought up at Petworth, and his father, trained as a classicist, became wealthy manufacturing brewery and plumbing equipment. Yorke worked in a factory of his father’s and rose through the firm to become a managing director. His novels draw on his experience of both working-class and upper-class life, and also on his time in the National Fire Service during World War II: Blindness (1926), Living (1929), Party Going (1939), Caught (1943), Loving (1945), Back (1946), Concluding (1948), Nothing (1950), Doting (1952). He also wrote a memoir, Pack My Bag: A Self Portrait (1940). He married Adelaide “Dig” Biddulph, daughter of 2nd Baron Biddulph, in 1929, and they had a son, Sebastian, but Yorke had a reputation as an adulterer and, during his last two decades, a heavy drinker. Isherwood first mentions him and his wife during his 1947 trip to England recorded in Lost Years; the Yorkes also appear in D.1.
Zeigel, John (Johnny, Jack) (b. 1934). American professor of literature; a doctor’s son; educated in Sewanee, Tennessee, at Pomona College and Claremont Graduate University in California, and at Harvard. He majored in classics as an undergraduate and taught ancient Greek and Latin language and literature as well as modern literature. He also plays the violin. Zeigel was a Ph.D. candidate at Claremont and a teaching assistant at Pomona when Isherwood became friendly with him in 1961. Evidently they met in the late 1950s, probably through Zeigel’s companion, Ed Halsey, who was briefly a monk at Trabuco. Zeigel met Gerald Heard who arranged counseling with Evelyn Hooker in 1957 or 1958. Hooker certified Zeigel was homosexual so he would not be drafted to fight in the Korean War. Isherwood gave Zeigel an introduction to the poet Witter Bynner, who had known Willa Cather, and after visiting Bynner in Santa Fe, Zeigel decided to write his dissertation about Cather. He moved with Halsey to Ajijic, Mexico, to begin working on the dissertation, then in 1962 took a part-time teaching job back in Pasadena at the California Institute of Technology. Halsey was killed in a car crash that autumn, a tragedy on which Isherwood possibly drew in A Single Man. Zeigel, instead of returning to Mexico as he had planned, became an assistant professor of English and Humanities at Cal. Tech. In 1975, after the death of his father, he left California to care for his mother and to manage family investments and a cattle ranch in Colbran, Colorado where his parents lived. He was made professor of English at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, and spent the rest of his teaching career there, until he retired in 1998.
Acknowledgements
Don Bachardy has shown extraordinary patience in waiting for me to edit this volume of diaries, and all the while he has continued to answer endless questions, to share with me his astonishing knowledge of the movies, and above all to unfold in long conversations his understanding of and love for Christopher Isherwood. Needless to say, these would be different diaries without Don, and certainly I could never have completed my task as editor without his help and encouragement. I thank him for continuing to trust in me over the years, for the excitement we have shared about this material, and for his friendship.
Through the Hollywood Vedanta Society, I was introduced to the sunny energy of Pravrajika Vrajaprana, a Californian nun of the Ramakrishna Order and an open-hearted scholar. She has spent many hours teaching me about Vedanta, clarifying terminology, and setting Isherwood’s practices and beliefs in a broader context. She has even hunted through this volume for mistakes in the footnotes and glossary. Any that remain are mine, not hers. I am extremely grateful to her, to Eduardo Acebo, to the late Peter Schneider, and to the many other nuns and monks at the Vedanta Society of Southern California who have generously answered a wide range of questions.
I have had research assistance from Douglas
Murray, Anne Totterdell, Gosia Lawik, Christopher Hurley, and many other members of the staff at the London Library, and I thank each of them for their skill and tenacity. Christopher Phipps also helped with research before going on to create the detailed index without which this diary would be a disappointment to many readers.
Others who have answered myriad questions along the way, and with whom I have shared often delightful exchanges, include Kathy and Jeff Allinson, Paul Barber, the late Thomas Braun, Charlotte Brown of the UCLA University Archives, Patrice Chaplin, Robert Craft, Tom Devine, Jane Faulkner of the UCSB Library, Robin French, Ronald Frost, P.N. Furbank, Grey Gowrie, Don Graham, Stephen Graham, Richard Grigg, John Gross, Pat Hardwick of the UCLA History Project, Nicky Haslam, John Heilpern, Nancy Hereford of the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, Sue Hodson of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Samuel Hynes, Shayna Ingram of the UCSB English Department, Evelyn Jacomb, Frank Kermode, Vijay Khan, Robert Maguire, Lucy Maguire, Edward Mendelson, Breon Mitchell, Anthea Morton-Saner, Araceli Navarro, Axel Neubohn, John Julius Norwich, Richard W. Oram, Peter Parker, Geraldine Parsons, Christopher Pennington, Jan Pieńkowski, Sherrill Pinney, John Rechy, Andreas Reyneke, John Ridland, Andrew and Polly Robison, John Sandbrook of the UCLA vice-chancellor’s office, David Segal, Michael Sragow, Walter Starcke, Rupert Strachwitz, Geoffrey Strachan, Hugh Thomas, Daniel Topolski, Annu Trivedi of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi, Roy Turner, Swami Tyagananda, Hugo Vickers, Bettina von Hase, Grace Wherry, Edmund White, Swami Yogeshananda, and John Zeigel.
I would like to thank my agent Stephanie Cabot for her thoughtful advice and continuing support, and I would also like to thank Caroline Dawnay for setting me up in this project years ago. For their forbearance as well as for their enthusiasm, I would like to thank Isherwood’s most recent publishers, Alison Samuel, Jonathan Burnham, Clara Farmer, and Daniel Halpern. And to their colleagues, Lizzie Dipple, Dr. Anthony Hippisley, Rowena Skelton-Wallace, Amanda Telfer, Alison Tulett, and Terry Karten, thank you for your hawk eyes, your nerve, and your stamina.
A few trusted friends generously read and commented on parts of this book. Thank you Al Alvarez, Richard Davenport-Hines, Isabel Fonseca, John Fuller, Bob Maguire, Bobby Maguire, Robert McCrum, Blake Morrison, and Erik Tarloff.
I am also more than grateful to Jackie Edgar, Vilma Catbagan, Felisberta Rodrigues, Charlie Watson, Katrina Johnston, Elizabeth Jones, and Susan Mellett, for clearing the way to my desk. To my family, for permanent safe haven, joyful distraction, and leaving me alone over many, many long hours, I can never offer enough thanks.
Index
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Works by Isherwood appear directly under title; works by others appear under authors’ names.
Page numbers in italic indicate entries in the Glossary (pages 601–722).
ABC (television network) 403, 407, 408, 422, 479
Abedha (Tony Eckstein) 240, 601
Acebo, Eddie 133, 240, 601
Achard, Marcel, A Shot in the Dark 145n, 148
Ackerley, J.R. (Joe): C.I. visits and socializes with in England 76, 99–100, 122, 447, 448, 450; at Don Bachardy’s exhibition 119; in California 172, 174–5; seeks advice from Gerald Heard 172; death 447, 449, 450, 462; obituary 448; 601
My Father and Myself 529; We Think the World of You 76
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) 519, 563, 601
Adam International Review (magazine) 73
Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams 527
Adrian, Janet see Gaynor, Janet
Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, The (Shaw): C.I.’s stage adaptation xxxv, 422, 428, 432, 445, 446, 457, 473, 475, 479, 492, 493, 494, 495, 496, 520; productions 529, 533, 534, 544, 546, 548, 549–50, 551, 552, 557, 559, 563; racial issues 544, 546, 548, 559; reviews 550, 551
Advise and Consent (film) 129
“Afterwards” (C.I.; story) 45
Ahmanson Theater, Los Angeles 511
Ainsworth, William Harrison: Old St Pauls 88; The Tower of London 28
Ajax Films (Australian film studio) 585
Akhilananda, Swami 226
Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban-Fournier), Le Grand Meaulnes 69, 70
Albert, Eddie 506, 601
Albert, Edward 506, 602
Algeria 572
Algerian War (1954-62) 5 & n, 63n
All the Conspirators (C.I.) 92
Allen, Dr. Alan: recommended by Gavin Lambert 177; treats C.I. 177, 178, 180, 183, 187, 194, 199, 220, 264, 284–5, 287, 289,336, 337, 342, 382, 396, 401, 434, 509, 510, 512, 515, 536–7, 553; treats Don Bachardy 361–2, 373; death of wife 428, 436; remarries 509; 602
Allen, Edwin 378, 379, 579, 602
Allen, Jiri Selma (wife of Dr. Alan Allen) 428
Allied Artists (film studio) 585
Allsop, Kenneth 95–6
Alston, Ben 284, 336
Altman, Dennis 545–6, 571, 589–90, 602
Alvarez, Al 77, 78, 81
Amboen, Bill 483–4
“Ambrose” (C.I.; section of Down There on a Visit) 64–5, 75, 126, 167, 170
American Civil Liberties Union see ACLU
American Legion (veterans’ organization) 173
American Samoa 571, 576, 577
Amis, Kingsley 179
Amiya (Ella Corbin; later Countess of Sandwich) 46, 87, 103, 119, 120, 197–8, 222, 469, 602
Amrita Bazar Patrika (newspaper) 311, 312
Amul (Clare Street) 319
Anamananda, Swami see Arup Chaitanya
Anang, George 173
Anarchy (magazine) 215
Anastasia, Grand Duchess 446, 447
Andelson, Sheldon 357
Andersen, Hans Christian 28
Anderson, Judith 138, 193, 249–50, 498, 603
Anderson, Phil 343, 347, 603
Andrews, Betty see Harford, Betty
Andrews, Christopher 402
Andrews, Oliver 29, 603
Andrews, Robert Hardy 135
Angeles National Forest 273
Angell, Roger 298
Another Sky (film) 250
anti-Semitism 20, 141–2, 292, 335, 367
Antonioni, Michelangelo 250, 266, 429
APA (Association of Producing Artists) 529
Apia, Western Samoa 571, 577–8, 580
Apollo 8 (first manned lunar mission) 534
Apollo 11 (moon landing) 569, 570, 577
Approach to Vedanta, An (C.I.) 248, 510
Apuleius, The Golden Ass 367
Aranyananda, Swami (pseud.) 305, 310, 314, 315, 318–19, 320, 321, 322–3, 331
Arizu, Betty 142, 341, 603
Arkin, David 363
Arlen, Michael 458
Armstrong, Peg 27
Armstrong-Jones, Antony 272, 481n
Aronowitz, Alfred, Ernest Hemingway 138
Arthur, Gavin (Chester Alan Arthur III) 275
Arts Review (magazine) 120
Arup Chaitanya (Kenneth Critchfield; later Swami Anamananda): at Laguna Beach 212; at Belur Math 303, 306, 307, 308, 310, 328, 332–3; takes sannyas 328, 330, 331; at Hollywood Vedanta Center 340, 566; 603
Asaktananda, Swami 441, 522, 537, 540, 568, 603
Ascent of F6, The (C.I. play; with Auden) 103, 209, 211, 225, 253
Ashley, Maurice 448
Ashokananda, Swami 258, 279, 539–40, 604
Ashton, Frederick (Freddy) 63, 567, 604
Ashworth, Dr. (hand surgeon) 556, 567
Association of Producing Artists (APA) 529
Aubrey, James 499, 500, 604
Auckland 571, 582–4
Auden, W.H. (Wystan): and C.I.’s proposed Berlin musical x, xxxiii, 34, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 85; Don Bachardy’s drawings of xiii, 75, 119, 120, 264, 444, 548, 552; praises C.I.’s Down There on a Visit xiii, 166; taught by John
Layard xxiii; and landscape 28; and Spender 60, 349, 444, 505; C.I. meets during London visit (1961) 67–8, 80, 81, 82; and British television show about thirties 73, 77; C.I.’s relations with 77, 84–5, 141, 443; at Glyndebourne 84; recommends Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot 93; in New York (1961) 147, 148–9, 153, 155–6; verse for Play of Daniel 152; on the French 155–6; recommends Georg Groddeck 235; Bouché portrait 264; proposed Time cover article on 264; in Tokyo with C.I. (1938) 302; comments on C.I.’s A Single Man 335; on homosexuality 335, 443; on opera 335; visits C.I. in California (1963) 269; (1967) 442–4; drinking 444; on vice of modern journalism 444; comments on C.I.’s A Meeting by the River 445; and proposed musical version of The Dog Beneath the Skin 458, 505; awarded Gold Medal for Poetry by National Institute of Arts and Letters 512n, 515–16; in New York (1969) 594; 604
The Ascent of F6 (with C.I.) 103, 209, 211, 225, 253; The Dyer’s Hand xi, 265; Elegy for Young Lovers 69, 70, 77n, 84, 102; Journey to a War 521; “The Platonic Blow” 443; see also Dog Beneath the Skin, The
Aufderheide, Charles 437, 493, 597, 604–5
Austen, Howard 146, 148, 149, 334, 605
Australia: C.I. visits with Don Bachardy (1969) xxxv, 532, 541, 546, 554, 568, 571, 578, 585–90; possibility of lecture tour for C.I. 236, 243; popularity of emigration to 483
Austria, C.I. visits for television special xxxiii, 403, 407, 408, 411–16
Autobiography of My Books (C.I. proposed work) 284, 335, 371, 372, 373
Avant Garde (magazine) 446, 591
Axelrod, George 378
Axelrod, Nina 378
Ayer, A.J. (Freddie/Freddy) 146, 153–4, 605
Babymaker, The (film) 563, 599n
Bachardy, Don: studies painting at Slade in London xiii, xiv, 35–6, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 58, 62; becomes disciple of Swami Prabhavananda xv, 194, 205, 245–6, 248, 251, 254, 255, 257; suggestions for C.I.’s A Single Man xvii, xviii, 223, 246, 248, 264, 282, 283, 289, 296; hashish experience in Tangier (1955) xx, 256, 257; depressions xxi, 31–2, 87, 120, 235, 236, 237, 274, 362, 445; sees Cabaret in New York (1966) xxxiii, 422, 423–4, 425; collaboration on draft screenplay of I, Claudius xxxv, xxxvi, 561, 563, 572, 577, 581, 588, 591, 592, 593, 594, 595; collaboration on dramatization of A Meeting by the River xxxv, 475, 520–21, 522, 526, 528, 529, 533, 576–7; visits Tahiti and Australia with C.I. (1969) xxxv–xxxvi 532, 541, 546, 554, 568, 569, 570–71, 573–8, 579–81, 582–4, 585–90; reading of C.I.’s Down There on a Visit 5, 64, 66; stays with Julie Harris in New York (1960) 14, 16, 44; meets Cecil Beaton 14, 16; and Tennessee Williams 16, 17, 18; tonsilitis 16, 17; relations with mother 17, 87, 172, 177; letters to C.I. 21, 46, 125, 132, 143, 158–9, 274, 355, 510, 531; vagus nerve spasms 24; stomach complaints 25, 147, 170, 225, 537; keeps journal 39; leaves for England (1961) 44–5; C.I. joins in England 58–124; twenty-seventh birthday 65; dislike of Spender 68, 84, 122, 167, 168–9; happiest when drawing 78; relations with brother Ted 87, 379, 485, 535, 541; dreams 102, 174, 283, 445, 543; travels to South of France with C.I. 107–113; C.I. joins in New York after return from England 145–57; building of studio in Santa Monica house 159, 168, 178, 189, 195, 201, 215, 216, 219; earnings 159, 194, 215, 352; returns to California (1962) 166, 167, 168; problems about painting 170, 172, 176, 234, 263, 362, 370, 371, 372, 565, 566; income tax 174; drinking 177, 270, 362, 480, 482; spiritual reading 179, 185; coin stolen in burglary 185; twenty-eighth birthday 189; plans to spend summer in San Francisco 194; merger of finances with C.I.’s 201, 211; in New York for Cassini drawings (1962) 201, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207; visits moon rocket plant with C.I. 213–14; buys new car 220, 223; turns down NASA sketching project 221; bruises leg in fall 222; dancing 225–6; sore throat 225; visits circus with C.I. 228–9; stops taking Dexamyl 235; students in studio 237; weight 242; relationship with Bill Bopp 253, 256, 259, 260, 264–5, 266, 272; car stolen 254; making japam 255, 283; trip to Phoenix to draw Clare Boothe Luce 255–6, 257; relationship with “Henry Kraft” 269, 277, 280, 282, 283, 286–7, 289, 291, 295, 296, 298, 455; twenty-ninth birthday 276–7; sees psychotherapist 277, 279, 281, 283, 285, 288, 343; shares studio with Bill Brown and Paul Wonner 280, 283, 289; suggestions for C.I.’s Ramakrishna book 285, 289; reaction to Kennedy assassination 297, 298; in New York during C.I.’s India trip (1963-64) 299, 334, 335; driver’s license suspended 336, 337, 338; joins gym 337; thirtieth birthday 338–9; trip to Europe (1964) 338–9; in New York for Banfer Gallery show and City Ballet commission (1964, 1966) 343, 344, 347, 348–9, 350, 351–3, 360, 365–6, 368, 370, 388, 390, 391, 392, 393; liver problem 361–2; recalls childhood movie-going 365; reading of drafts of C.I.’s A Meeting by the River 367, 370, 371, 386, 390–91, 396–7; chest pains 373, 374; devotion to Ramakrishna 373; presents for C.I.’s sixty-second birthday 406; discusses drug-taking with C.I. 407, 542; drawings “made under stress” 408; suggestions for C.I.’s Kathleen and Frank 422, 440–41; at Timothy Leary show 439, 440; stays with Anthony Russo in Santa Fe 441; at Elysian Park “Love-in” 444; declines possible show at Mercury Gallery, London 446, 447; gets traffic ticket 458; Harper’s Bazaar assignment of celebrity portraits 463; visits Reagans 463; trip to New York (1967) 464–5, 467, 472–3; presents for C.I.’s sixty-third birthday 466–7; row with John Rechy over portrayal in Numbers 482–3; classes in dynamic reading 484; C.I. makes poetry tapes for 494, 497, 578, 581; visits Truman Capote at Palm Springs with C.I. 497, 540, 542–3; purchase of duplex buildings with C.I. 499–500, 519, 596; loans car to Ronnie Knox 502; stays in David Hockney’s flat in London (1968) 502, 503, 506, 509, 514, 518; commission for Royal Court Theatre 509, 516; thirty-fourth birthday 514; trip to New York (September 1968) 526, 528; trip to England (October-November 1968) 529, 530–31; selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in the West 530; recalls LSD experience 542; trip to England (1969) 543, 544, 550, 554, 555, 556, 558, 559; watches home movies with C.I. 547; collaboration on treatment for Cabaret film 551, 556, 560, 564, 566; sees Nureyev and Fonteyn dance 567; trip to London and North Africa (August-September 1969) 572, 576–7, 578, 581, 590, 591; 605–6
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