Liberation (128 page)

Isherwood, Frank Bradshaw (1869–1915).
Isherwood's father; second son of John Bradshaw Isherwood, squire of Marple Hall, Cheshire. He was educated at Sandhurst and commissioned in his father's old regiment, the York and Lancasters, in 1892 at the age of twenty-three. He left for the Boer War in December 1899, caught typhoid, recovered, and served a second tour. In 1902 he left his regiment and became adjutant to the Fourth Volunteer Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, based locally, in order to be able to offer his wife a home despite his meager income. He married Kathleen Machell Smith in 1903, and they settled for a time in a fifteenth-century manor house, Wyberslegh Hall, on the Bradshaw Isherwood family estate. In 1908, Frank rejoined his regiment and the family, now including Christopher, followed the regiment to Strensall, Aldershot, and Frimley; in 1911 a second son, Richard, was born and the family moved again to Limerick, Ireland, early the following year. Frank was sent from Limerick via England to the Front Line almost as soon as war was declared in the summer of 1914, and he was killed probably the night of May 8, 1915 in the second battle of Ypres in Flanders, although the exact circumstances of his death are unknown. Isherwood felt that Frank was temperamentally unsuited to the life of a professional soldier, though he was dutiful and efficient. He was a gifted watercolorist, an excellent pianist, and he liked to sing and take part in amateur theatricals. He was also a reader and a story-teller. He was shy and sensitive, mildly good-looking, and a keen and agile sportsman. He was conservative in taste, in values, and in politics, but, unlike Kathleen, he was agnostic in religion and was attracted to theosophy and Buddhism. Isherwood wrote about his father in
Kathleen and Frank
.

Isherwood, Kathleen Bradshaw (1868–1960).
Isherwood's mother, often referred to as “M.” in the diaries. Only child of Frederick Machell Smith, a wine merchant, and Emily Greene. She was born and lived until sixteen in Bury St. Edmunds, then moved with her parents to London. She travelled abroad and helped her mother to write a guidebook for walkers,
Our Rambles in Old London
(1895). In 1903, aged thirty-five, she married Frank Isherwood, a British army officer. They had two sons, Isherwood, and his much younger brother, Richard. When Frank Isherwood was lost in World War I, it was many months before his death was officially confirmed. Isherwood's portrait of his mother in
Kathleen and Frank
is partly based on her own letters and diaries. She was also the original for the fictional character Lily in
The Memorial
. Like many mothers of her class and era, Kathleen consigned her sons to the care of a nanny from infancy and later sent Isherwood to boarding school. Her husband's death affected her profoundly, which Isherwood sensed and resented. Their relationship was intensely fraught yet formal, intimate by emotional intuition rather than by shared confidence. Like her husband, Kathleen was a talented amateur painter. She was intelligent, forceful, handsome, dignified, and capable of great charm. Isherwood felt she was obsessed by class distinctions and propriety. As the surviving figure of authority in his family, she epitomized everything against which, in youth, he wished to rebel. He deemed her intellectual aspirations narrow and traditional, despite her intelligence, and she seemed to him increasingly backward looking. Nonetheless, she was utterly loyal to both of her notably unconventional sons and, as Isherwood himself recognized, she shared many qualities with him. There are many passages about her in
D.1
,
D.2
, and
Lost Years
.

Isherwood, Richard Graham Bradshaw (1911–1979).
Christopher Isherwood's brother and only sibling. Younger by seven years, Richard was also backward in life. He was reluctant to be educated and never held a job in adulthood, although he did National Service during World War II as a farmworker at Wyberslegh and at another farm nearby, Dan Bank. In childhood, he saw little of his elder brother, who was sent to boarding school by the time Richard was three. Both boys spent more time with their nanny, Annie Avis, than with their mother. Richard later felt that Nanny had preferred Christopher; she made Richard nervous and perhaps was cruel to him. When Richard started school as a day boy at Berkhamsted in 1919, he lodged in the town with Nanny, and his mother visited at weekends. Isherwood by then was at Repton. The two brothers became closer during Richard's adolescence, when Isherwood was sometimes at home in London and took his brother's side against their mother's efforts to advance Richard's education and settle him in a career. During this period Richard met Isherwood's friends and helped Isherwood with his work by taking dictation. Richard was homosexual, but he seems to have had little opportunity to develop any long-term relationships, hampered as he was by his mother's scrutiny and his own shyness.

In 1941, he returned permanently with his mother and Nanny to Wyberslegh— signed over to him by Isherwood with the Marple Estate—where he eventually lived as a semi-recluse. Nanny died in 1948, and after Kathleen Isherwood's death twelve years later, Richard was looked after first by a married couple, the Vinces, and then by a local family, the Bradleys. He became a heavy drinker, Marple Hall fell into ruin and became dangerous, and he was forced to hand it over to the local council which demolished it in 1959, building several houses and a school on the grounds. Eventually, Richard moved out of Wyberslegh into a new house on the Marple Estate; the Dan Bradleys lived in a similar new house next door. When he died, he left most of the contents of his house to the Dan Bradleys and the house itself to their daughter and son-in-law. Richard's will also gave money bequests to the Dan Bradleys, Alan Bradley, and other local friends. Family property and other money were left to Isherwood and to a cousin, Thomas Isherwood, but Isherwood himself refused the property and passed some of his share of money to the Dan Bradleys. Richard appears in
D.1
,
D.2
, and
Lost Years
.

Isherwood, Thomas Bradshaw (1921–2002).
Christopher Isherwood's first cousin, only son of Frank Isherwood's younger brother, Jack Bradshaw Isherwood. Thomas was heir to what remained of the family estate after the deaths of Richard and Christopher, and he was the last of the Bradshaw Isherwood line.

Ishvara.
God with attributes; Brahman and maya united; the personal god.

Ivan.
See Moffat, Ivan.

Ivory, James (b. 1928).
American film director; born in Berkeley, raised and educated in Oregon. He studied film at UCLA, served in the army, then began making documentaries, including one about India, which resulted in his meeting Ismail Merchant there in the early 1960s and forming a lifelong personal and business partnership with him. Ivory co-wrote his early screenplays with novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and had a number of subsequent successes with her. His work includes
Shakespeare Walla
(1965),
Savages
(1972),
The Europeans
(1979),
Heat and Dust
(1983),
The Bostonians
(1984),
A Room with a View
(1985, Academy Awards for Screenplay, Art Direction, Costumes, nominations for Best Picture and Best Director),
Maurice
(1987),
Howards End
(1992, Academy Awards for Best Actress, Screenplay Adaptation, Art Direction, nominations for Best Picture),
The Remains of the Day
(1993, Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Director),
The Golden Bowl
(2001),
Le Divorce
(2003), and
The White Countess
(2005).

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 King Edward VII at West Dean Park. Edward James was a godson and rumored to be son of the monarch, although he himself evidently thought he was a grandson, and his mother a beloved illegitimate daughter. He was an early patron of the Surrealists (especially Dali), and was married briefly in the 1930s to Tilly Losch, the Austrian ballerina, launching a ballet company to further her career. His poetry appeared in vanity editions, paid for by himself. Isherwood knew James by the start of the 1950s, probably through the Stravinskys who, with the Baroness D'Erlanger, were among his close friends in Hollywood, and James appears in
D.1.
He spent much of his time in Mexico where he was friendly with the English painter Leonora Carrington and a young Indian man called Plutarcho Gastelum, and where he had a coffee finca in Xilitla (pronounced he-heet-la), near Tampico. There, he was often accompanied by the mysterious German writer “B. Traven” (Albert Otto Max Feige). In the last decade of his life, James built an uninhabited concrete city in the jungle, a surrealist art work.

Jan.
See Niem, Jan.

japa or 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 japa. Japam is a Tamil form which came into use among Bengali swamis of the Ramakrishna Order—including Prabhavananda, Ashokananda, Akhilananda—because they spent varying periods of time in the Madras Math.

Jarre, Maurice (b. 1924).
French composer, educated at the Paris Conservatory; he was musical director for the Théâtre National Populaire and began writing music for French movies in the 1950s. He became famous with his scores for
Lawrence of Arabia
(1962) and
Doctor Zhivago
(1965), both of which won Academy Awards for best music, and went on to write the music for
Barbarella
(1968),
The Damned
(1969),
Ryan's Daughter
(1970),
The Man Who Would Be King
(1975),
The Year of Living Dangerously
(1982),
A Passage to India
(1984; Academy Award),
Witness
(1985),
Fatal Attraction
(1987),
Dead Poets Society
(1989), and others. Although he told Isherwood in 1973 that he would not compose the music for “Frankenstein” unless it was made as a feature film, he did compose for T.V. occasionally. He is the father of composer Jean-Michel Jarre.

Jebb, Julian (1934–1984).
British journalist, filmmaker, BBC producer; educated at Cambridge. He was an alcoholic and died from an overdose of a sedative prescribed for alcoholics. The December 1973 film he made of Isherwood was used in “Hooray for Hollywood,” an “Arena: Cinema” program which also featured interviews with Neil Simon and David Puttnam. “Hooray for Hollywood” was presented and produced by Gavin Millar and went out October 10, 1978 on BBC 2. Bachardy recalls that Jebb's film may also have been aired by itself on another, earlier occasion.

Jennifer.
Also Jennifer Selznick and, later, Jennifer Simon; see Jones, Jennifer.

Jess.
See Bachardy, Jess.

Jo.
Also Jo Lathwood. See Masselink, Jo.

Johnson, Bart (not his real name).
American school teacher. An amateur writer with whom Isherwood had a brief sexual relationship at the end of the 1950s. Isherwood tried to help Johnson with his writing, but without success.

Johnson, Clifford (Cliff ).
Professor of English. He joined the Vedanta Society in 1960 and lived at Trabuco until the late 1970s. He became a brahmachari and was managing editor of
Vedanta and the West
for some years. Swami Prabhavananda gave him the Sanskrit name Bhuma.

Johnson, Lamont (Monty) (1922–2010).
American actor and, especially, director; educated at UCLA and the Neighborhood Playhouse. He worked in radio as a teenager to pay his way through college, then moved to New York where he continued in radio soaps and directed an off-Broadway production of Gertrude Stein's
Yes Is for a Very Young Man
. In 1959, he was a founder of the UCLA Theater Group, and during the 1960s and 1970s he won numerous Emmys and Screen Directors Guild awards for his T.V. miniseries and made-for-T.V. movies. He also directed episodes of popular shows like “Have Gun Will Travel,” “The Rifleman,” and “The Twilight Zone,” and a few feature films, including
The Last American Hero
(1973) and
Lipstick
(1976). He acted on T.V. and in a number of movies. He appears in
D.2.

Jones, Jack.
American painter; a disciple and, later, close friend of Gerald Heard. Some of his best work was of Margaret Gage's garden on Spoleto Drive, where Heard lived until 1962, and he shared Heard's interest in clothing and costume. Jones was about the same age as Don Bachardy and lived nearby in Santa Monica Canyon, so they sometimes sat for each other. He appears in
D.2.

Jones, Jennifer (Phylis Isley) (1919–2009).
American actress, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma; in childhood she travelled with her parents' stock stage company and spent hours in her father's movie theaters. After a brief stint at Northwestern University, she attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, left for a radio job in Tulsa, and began her Hollywood career in B-movies in 1939. She was discovered in 1941 by David Selznick, who changed her name and took control of her career with spectacular results. She won an Academy Award for
The Song of Bernadette
in 1943, followed by
Since You Went Away
(1944, Academy Award nomination),
Love Letters
(1945, Academy Award nomination),
Duel in the Sun
(1946, Academy Award nomination),
Portrait of Jennie
(1948),
Madame Bovary
(1949),
Carrie
(1951),
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
(1955, Academy Award nomination),
A Farewell to Arms
(1957),
Tender is the Night
(1962),
The Towering Inferno
(1974), and others. Her 1939 marriage to the actor Robert Walker, with whom she had two sons, ended in divorce in 1945, and Selznick left his wife, Irene Mayer, for Jones; 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 1971, Jones married a third time, to Hunt Foods billionaire and art collector Norton Simon. On May 11, 1976, her only child with Selznick, Mary Jennifer, committed suicide; partly as a result, Jones created the Jennifer Jones Foundation for Mental Health and Education and trained as a lay therapist and volunteer counsellor. Isherwood first met her when he worked with Selznick on
Mary Magdalene
in 1958, and he took her to meet Swami Prabhavananda in June that year. He writes about the friendship in
D.1
and
D.2
.