Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  Ivan. See Moffat, Ivan.

  Jacky. See Hewit, Jacky.

  James, Edward (Eddie) (1907–1984). Youngest child and only son of Willie James and Evelyn Forbes; heir to an American railroad fortune. His parents frequently entertained Edward VII at their home West Dean Park, both before and after Edward’s accession: James was the godson and rumored to be the son of the monarch. He was an early patron of the Surrealists (especially Dali), and was married briefly in the early 1930s to Tilly Losch, the Austrian ballerina, launching his own ballet company to further her career. His poetry appeared in vanity editions, paid for by himself. He had a kind of reverse kleptomania, leaving objects in friends’ houses, and then accusing his hosts of stealing them. Sometimes he would arrive unannounced with only pennies in his pockets, even from abroad, having lost articles of clothing or abandoned his car along the way. Among his close friends in Hollywood were Marguerite Lamkin, the Stravinskys, and the Baroness d’Erlanger. James had a coffee finca in Xilitla (pronounced he-heet-la), near Tampico, Mexico, where he spent some of his time in company with the mysterious German writer “B. Traven” (Albert Otto Max Feige). In the last decade of his life he built an uninhabited concrete city in the jungle, a surrealist art work.

  japam. A method for achieving spiritual focus in Vedanta by repeating one of the names for God, usually the name that is one’s own mantra; sometimes the repetitions are counted on a rosary. The rosary of the Ramakrishna Order has 108 beads plus an extra bead, representing the guru, which hangs down with a tassel on it; at the tassel bead, the devotee reverses the rosary and begins counting again. For each rosary, the devotee counts one hundred repetitions towards his own spiritual progress and eight for mankind. Isherwood always used a rosary when making japam.

  Jaya Sri Ramakrishna! This Sanskrit chant can be translated as “Hail to the great Ramakrishna!” Jaya or Jai also means “Victory to” or “Glory to.” Sri means “revered” or “holy,” though it has a secular use as “Mr.”

  Jay. See de Laval, Jay.

  Jenkins, Terry. British model and aspiring actor. Isherwood met him when Charles Laughton brought Jenkins to Hollywood in 1960. Jenkins was then in his twenties. Laughton was in love with Jenkins, coached him and got him a screen test, but Jenkins had no real talent for acting. He was heterosexual, but admired Laughton and entered into a sexual relationship with him in an untroubled manner. When Laughton was dying, Jenkins looked after him with great care and sensitivity. Later Jenkins married.

  Jennifer, also Jennifer Selznick. See Jones, Jennifer.

  jnana yoga. One of the four main yogas or paths of spiritual development towards transcendence. Jnana yoga is the discipline of discrimination in which the spiritual aspirant analyzes and rejects transitory phenomena, eliminating them one at a time until realizing his union with Brahman.

  Jo, also Jo Lathwood. See Masselink, Jo.

  John, also Johnny, also Johnnie. See van Druten, John.

  John, also Prema. See Prema Chaitanya.

  Johnson, Graham. A monk at Trabuco from the mid-1950s. He was black, a dancer, and later left the monastery; for a time he lived in Europe.

  Jones, Bill. An amateur writer with whom Isherwood was friendly at the end of the 1950s. Isherwood tried to help Jones with his writing, but with no success. Jones lived with an actor, “Kap” Kid, for many years.

  Jones, Jennifer (Phyllis Isley) (b. 1919). American actress. She began her Hollywood career in B-movies in 1939, and was discovered in 1941 by David Selznick, who changed her name, trained her, and took control of her career. She won an Academy Award for The Song of Bernadette in 1943. Later she was also in Duel in the Sun (1946), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Gone to Earth (1950), Carrie (1951), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), Tender Is the Night (1962), and others. Her first marriage, to the actor Robert Walker with whom she had two sons, ended in divorce. In 1945 Selznick left his wife, Irene Mayer, for Jones, and they married in 1949. His obsession with Jones combined with her own emotional instability (including suicide attempts) made a melodrama of their careers and their private lives. In 1965, Selznick died, leaving huge debts. In May, 1971 Jones married a third time, to the wealthy art collector Norton Simon. Later her only child with Selznick, Mary Jennifer, committed suicide. Isherwood first met Jones when he worked with Selznick on Mary Magdalene in 1958. He and Bachardy attended many parties at the Selznicks’, and Isherwood took Jones to meet Swami Prabhavananda in June 1958. They remained friends after Selznick’s death.

  Jim, also Jimmy. See Charlton, Jim.

  Julie. See Harris, Julie.

  Kagawa, Toyohiko (1888–1960). Japanese social reformer, Christian evangelist, and author. One of four illegitimate children of an imperial adviser and a geisha, Kagawa was orphaned at four and raised by his father’s wife in the ancestral home. At sixteen he met an American missionary and resolved to become a Christian minister. While he was a student at Kobe Theological Seminary, he lived in the Shinkawa slums, filling his room with outcasts and sharing his student funds with them. He contracted trachoma during this period and became half-blind; he also married. Afterwards he studied theology at Princeton and began publishing works of autobiography and Christian meditation, using his royalties for medical, educational and welfare projects in the slums and reserving only a tiny portion for his wife and three children. He inaugurated Japan’s first labor union in 1921, and was continuously involved in other aspects of the labor movement. He also advised the government on slum rehabilitation and social welfare. In 1940 he was briefly imprisoned for pacifist opposition to the war with China.

  Kali. Hindu goddess; the Divine Mother and the Destroyer, usually depicted dancing or standing on the breast of a prostrate Shiva, her spouse, and wearing a girdle of severed arms and a necklace of skulls. Kali has four arms: the bleeding head of a demon is in her lower left hand, the upper left holds a sword; the upper right hand gestures “be without fear,” the lower right confers blessings and boons on her devotees. Kali symbolizes the dynamic aspect of the godhead: she creates and destroys, gives life and death, well-being and adversity—she does all of this through the presence of Brahman, symbolized by Shiva, the transcendent aspect of the godhead. She has other names: Shakti, Parvati, Durga. Ramakrishna devoted himself especially to the worship of Kali in her temple at Dakshineswar.

  Kallman, Chester (1921–1975). American poet and librettist; companion and collaborator of W. H. Auden. Auden met Kallman in New York in May 1939 and they took a honeymoon trip across the country ending in Los Angeles. He and Auden lived together intermittently in New York, Ischia, and Kirchstetten for the rest of Auden’s life, though Kallman spent a great deal of his time with other friends, often in Athens as he grew older. Kallman published three volumes of poetry and he and Auden together wrote and translated a number of operas, notably The Rake’s Progress (for Stravinsky), Elegy for Young Lovers and The Bassarids (for Hans Werner Henze).

  Kathleen. See Isherwood, Kathleen.

  Katz, Rolf. German economist. Isherwood met Katz in the early 1930s in Berlin where Katz, then a dogmatic Marxist, was writing communist propaganda prophesying the coming war. Isherwood translated some articles for him, and admired Katz’s intellectual honesty. Katz fled to Paris in 1933 after Hitler’s putsch, later to London, and finally to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he became director of a respected weekly bulletin, Economic Survey. When Isherwood visited him there in 1948, Katz’s Marxism had softened to watchful criticism of the capitalist system he now accepted. Katz appears in The Condor and the Cows and he was the original for Dr. Fisch in Down There on a Visit.

  Kaufman, Len. A Beverly Hills agent and publicist; second husband of the actress Doris Dowling.

  Kelley, Howard. Upstairs neighbor to Denny Fouts at 137 Entrada Drive, where Isherwood and Bill Caskey first met him with his friend, Wallace Bobo, during the late 1940s.

  Kelly, Thomas Raymond (1893–1941). Quaker teacher and author of The Testament of Devotion, a collection of devotional essays drawing on texts
from Meister Eckhart and others. Kelly was briefly a graduate student of the Quaker leader Rufus Jones at Haverford College and later returned there to teach. He trained at Hartford Theological Seminary, taught at various American universities, and worked in Europe several times as a Quaker volunteer. Kelly suffered ill-health through overwork and strain—which perhaps contributed to his sudden early death—but he also experienced mystical illuminations.

  Kennedy, Bill. American editor and magazine publisher. Kennedy helped the medium Eileen Garrett to relaunch the psychic magazine Tomorrow as a literary publication during the 1940s, and he persuaded Isherwood to write regular reviews for it. He lived in New York.

  Kennedy, Helen. See Sudhira.

  Kennedy, Paul. A young man with whom Isherwood had an occasional sexual relationship towards the end of the 1950s. Kennedy developed cancer suddenly and died young. Isherwood was deeply affected by visiting Kennedy in the hospital, and drew on the experience for the episode in A Single Man in which George visits Doris in similar circumstances.

  Kenny, also Ken, also Arup, also Arup Chaitanya. See Critchfield, Kenny.

  King, Marcia. American fashion illustrator and artist. She was an instructor at the Chouinard Art Institute during the 1950s, and became friends there with Bachardy. They frequently drew together in the evenings, using hired models, friends, or one another as subjects.

  Kirstein, Lincoln (1907–1996). American dance impresario, author, editor, and philanthropist. Isherwood’s first meeting with Kirstein in New York in 1939 was suggested by Stephen Spender who had met Kirstein in London. Kirstein was raised in Boston, the son of a wealthy self-made businessman. He was educated at Berkshire, Exeter, and Harvard where he was founding editor of Hound and Horn, the quarterly magazine on dance, art and literature. He also worked toward becoming a painter and was among the founders of the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art. In 1933 Kirstein persuaded the Russian choreographer George Balanchine to come to New York, and together they founded the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. Kirstein was also involved in founding the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in other similar projects. His taste and critical judgement combined with his entrée into wealthy society enabled him both to recognize and to promote some of the greatest artistic talent of the twentieth century. His poetry was admired by W. H. Auden. In 1941 Kirstein married Fidelma Cadmus (Fido), sister of the painter Paul Cadmus. He served in the army from 1943 to 1946.

  Kiskadden, Peggy. American wife of Curtis Bok, Henwar Rodakiewicz, and Bill Kiskadden. Isherwood was introduced to her by Gerald Heard soon after arriving in Los Angeles; they became intimate friends but drew apart at the end of the 1940s and finally split irrevocably in the 1950s over Isherwood’s relationship with Don Bachardy. Peggy Kiskadden was born Margaret Adams Plummer and grew up in Ardmore, Pennsylvania; she was exceptionally pretty and had an attractive singing voice. Her father was a manufacturer and her first marriage, which lasted from 1924 until 1933, was to Curtis Bok, the talented eldest son of one of Philadelphia’s most prominent families. As Mrs. W. Curtis Bok, she first met Heard and the Huxleys at Dartington, England where she accompanied her Quaker husband in the early 1930s. Her marriage to Henwar Rodakiewicz foundered in 1942, and she married Bill Kiskadden in July 1943. She had four children: Margaret Welmoet Bok (called Tis), Benjamin Plummer Bok, Derek Curtis Bok, and William Elliott Kiskadden, Jr. (nicknamed “Bull”).

  Kiskadden, William Sherrill (Bill) (1894–1969). American plastic surgeon; third husband of Peggy Kiskadden. Kiskadden was born in Denver, Colorado, the son of a businessman. He studied medicine at the University of California and in London and Vienna in the late 1920s and eventually established his practice in Los Angeles. He preferred the more difficult and unusual reconstructive procedures to cosmetic surgery, and he was outstandingly skilled. He was the first clinical professor of plastic surgery at UCLA and founded the plastic surgical service at UCLA County Medical Center in the early 1930s. He held many distinguished positions at hospitals in Los Angeles, teaching, administering, and practicing, was responsible for setting a high standard of training in the field, and wrote many articles on particular procedures and problems. He became interested in the population problem and with Julian and Aldous Huxley and others founded Population Limited in the early 1950s. He served in both world wars, the second time in the Army Medical Corps. In February 1958, he nearly died after a cardiac operation, but survived to the end of the next decade.

  Knopf, Edwin H. (Eddie) (1899–1981). American producer, screenwriter, and director. Knopf worked in the editorial department of his brother Alfred Knopf’s publishing house before he became an actor in 1920; he played leads on Broadway and in Europe and produced several hit plays. In 1928 he went to Hollywood as a director and screenwriter; by 1936 he was head of MGM’s scenario deparment. Isherwood met Eddie Knopf in Goldwyn’s story department in November 1939, but Knopf left Goldwyn immediately after this. He then hired Isherwood to work on Crossroads back at MGM, in 1941, Isherwood’s last job before the war. Later Isherwood worked with Knopf again on Diane in 1954 and 1955. Knopf had lost a hand in Germany just after World War I when he took a live hand grenade away from a child. For a time he was married to the actress and singer Mary Ellis; his second wife, Mildred, wrote cookbooks.

  Koehler, Wolfgang (1887–1967). German psychologist and philosopher. Koehler emigrated to America in the 1930s and taught for a time at Swarthmore where he met and was friendly with W. H. Auden in the early 1940s. He wrote Gestalt Psychology (1930) and The Place of Value in a World of Fact (1938), as well as The Mentality of Apes (1925) which Isherwood and Edward Upward read in the 1920s and which Gerald Heard took as a seminal text for his personal theory of psychological evolution.

  Kolisch, Dr. Isherwood first saw Dr. Kolisch in January 1940 on the advice of Gerald Heard. He thought he had a recurrence of gonorrhea, though Kolisch ruled he had never had it in the first place and attributed Isherwood’s symptoms to his psychological makeup. He treated Isherwood effectively, evidently on this basis, although Isherwood later suspected, half-humorously, that Kolisch had privately diagnosed syphilis. Kolisch was from Vienna and was a disciple, or at least a pupil, of Swami Prabhavananda. He was influential in Hollywood in the late 1940s and early 1950s; the nuns and monks at the Vedanta Center were on his diets, and perhaps Garbo as well for a time.

  Krishna and the gopis. Krishna is the Hindu god and the divine teacher of the Bhagavad Gita. A gopi is a cowgirl or milkmaid; the term is usually reserved for the village girls of Vrindavan, who are the constant companions of Krishna. When they heard his flute playing on moonlit nights the gopis would leave their husbands and their work to go out and dance with Krishna. He multiplied his body and made love to them all with equal passion. The dances sometimes lasted six months, yet when the gopis returned home no one knew they had been gone. Krishna’s favorite mistress and consort was Radha, wife of the cowherd Ayanaghosha. She symbolized perfect, unselfish devotion despite her jealousy at Krishna’s infidelities. The Radha-Krishna cult celebrates their divine and carnal love, a favorite theme for poets and artists who described their love scenes intimately. Radha lives only for Krishna and longs to be merged with him; sometimes their love is interpreted metaphorically as the soul of man yearning for union with the divine.

  Krishna. See Fitts, George.

  Krishnamurti (1895–198[7]). Hindu spiritual teacher. Isherwood first met Krishnamurti in 1939 through the Huxleys and later went to hear him speak in Ojai; Huxley was very close to Krishnamurti for a time. As an impoverished boy in India, Krishnamurti was discovered by Charles Leadbeater, a leader of the Theosophical movement, and taken up by Leadbeater and Annie Besant as the “vehicle” in which their Master Maitreya would reincarnate himself. Krishna and his younger brother, Nitya, were given up by their father, also a Theosophist, as foster children, and educated in England in circumstances of remarkable privilege and isolation—messiah and assistant. In 1919 they were sent to an orange ranch in Oj
ai, California for their health (the ranch was purchased in 1927 as a permanent base for the Theosophical movement and called The Happy Valley). There Nitya died of tuberculosis, and Krishnamurti first underwent “the process,” dramatic symptoms expressing both ecstasy and suffering, perhaps analogous to samadhi, but apparently triggered by his repressed yearning for feminine love. Disillusioned by his brother’s death, in 1929 Krishnamurti renounced his messianic role and rejected the guru-disciple relationship along with the devotional and ritual aspects of Hinduism; he said he no longer wanted followers and that he could not lead others to truth. In 1933, when Annie Besant died, he broke with the Theosophists, pleading amnesia about his life up until then; nevertheless, he maintained a close relationship with the Theosophical movement, and his former benefactors continued to believe in him. He went on speaking to devotees, sometimes in huge numbers, for the rest of his life all around the world. He had a verbal gift, and was able to convey brilliantly the essence of the wisdom he had been force-fed from childhood. He was also extremely handsome and charismatic, particularly to women, and his supposedly chaste existence revolved around a twenty-five-year-long sexual affair with Rosalind Williams Rajagopal who had nursed and fallen in love with Krishnamurti’s younger brother Nitya on his deathbed and then married Desikacharya Rajagopalacharya, Krishnamurti’s lifelong colleague and rival. There were other affairs as well. Eventually Krishnamurti grew dissatisfied in his relationship with Rosalind and especially Rajagopal, whom he tried to sue, and he spent more and more time abroad, in Switzerland and in India, where he died.