Lost Years (68 page)

Like many mothers of her class and era, Kathleen consigned her sons to the care of their nanny from infancy and later sent Isherwood to boarding school.
Her husband's death affected her profoundly, which Isherwood sensed and resented from an early age. Their relationship was intimate and mutually tender in Isherwood's boyhood, increasingly fraught and formal as he grew older. 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 he wished to rebel. Her intellectual aspirations were 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.

Isherwood, Richard Graham Bradshaw (1911–1979).
Christopher Isherwood's brother and his only sibling. Younger by seven years, Richard Isherwood was also backward in life. He was reluctant to be educated, and never held a job in adulthood, although he did wartime national service as a farmworker at Wyberslegh and at another farm nearby, Dan Bank. In childhood Richard saw little of his elder brother who was sent to boarding school by the time Richard was three. 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 some of Isherwood's friends and even helped Isherwood with his work by taking dictation. Richard was homosexual, but he seems to have had little opportunity to develop any longterm relationships, hampered as he was by his mother's scrutiny and his own shyness.

In 1941, Richard returned permanently with his mother and nanny to Wyberslegh—signed over to him by Isherwood with the Marple estate—where he lived, more and more, as an eccentric semi-recluse. There are further passages about him in
D1.
After Kathleen Isherwood's death in 1960, Richard depended upon a local family, the Bradleys. He had become friends with Alan Bradley after the war when Bradley was working at Wyberslegh Farm, and Bradley and his wife, Edna, cared for Richard when Kathleen died. Later, Bradley's brother, Dan Bradley, took over the role with his wife, Evelyn (Richard referred to them as the Dans). Richard was by then a heavy drinker. Marple Hall fell into ruin and became dangerous, and Richard was forced to hand it over to the local council which demolished it in 1959, building houses and a school on the grounds. He lived in one of several new houses built beside Wyberslegh, with the Dans in a similar house next door to him, and when Richard died he left most of the contents of his house to the Dans and the house itself to their daughter and son-in-law. Richard's will also provided for money bequests to the Dans, Alan Bradley, and other local friends. Family property and other money was left to Isherwood and to a cousin, Thomas Isherwood, but Isherwood refused the property and passed his share of money to the Dans.

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.

Jay.
See de Laval, Jay.

John, Augustus (1878–1961).
English painter, trained at the Slade during the 1890s. His most admired work was produced during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and he is remembered above all for his portraits, especially of literary figures including Hardy, Yeats, Shaw, Dylan Thomas, T. E. Lawrence, Joyce, and Joyce's friend Oliver Gogarty. John knew many other writers, and led a flamboyantly bohemian life involving numerous affairs and children out of wedlock. He is said to be the model for characters in various novels of his period.

Johnson, Celia (1908–1982).
British actress, primarily on the stage. She made her film debut in Noël Coward's
In Which We Serve
(1942) and is best known for her role in his
Brief Encounter
(1945). She also appeared in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(1968) and continued to act on stage and television until near the end of her life.

journal.
In
Lost Years
, Isherwood often uses the term “journal” for his earlier diaries which have been published in Christopher Isherwood,
Diaries Volume One 1939–1960
, ed. Katherine Bucknell (London: Methuen, 1996; New York: HarperCollins, 1997). Editorial notes refer to this published volume of diaries by the abbreviation
D1
.

Kallman, Chester (1921–1975).
American poet and librettist; companion and collaborator to W. H. Auden. He also appears in
D1
. Auden met Kallman in New York in May 1939, and they 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 with Auden wrote and translated a number of opera libretti, notably
The Rake's Progress
(for Stravinsky),
Elegy for Young Lovers
and
The Bassarids
(both for Hans Werner Henze).

Kazan, Elia (b. 1909).
American stage and film director, born in Constantinople to Greek parents. He studied at Yale and began his career as an actor on Broadway and in Hollywood. Among the plays he directed are Thornton Wilder's
The Skin of Our Teeth
(1942); Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman
(1949); and Tennessee Williams's
A Streetcar Named Desire
(1947),
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(1955), and
Sweet Bird of Youth
(1959). Kazan brought his production of
A Streetcar Named Desire
to the screen, and he made a number of other celebrated films, including
Gentleman's Agreement
(1947, Academy Award),
East of Eden
(1954), and
On the Waterfront
(1954, Academy Award). He was a founder in 1947 of The Actors Studio, famous for Method acting. In 1962 he moved from The Actors Studio to The Lincoln Center Repertory Company, then turned to writing fiction and eventually his own autobiography,
Elia Kazan: A Life
(1988). He also appears in
D1
.

Keate, Richard (Dick) (b. 1922).
American pilot and furniture designer. Keate flew B-17s for the air force during World War II and afterwards became a flying instructor in northern California. From there he often visited Santa Monica Canyon and sometimes took trips with Isherwood and Carlos McClendon to Johnny Goodwin's ranch and to the bullfights in Tijuana. In the late 1940s he was a pilot for Air Services of India (now Air India) and lived in India. When he returned to California, he attended the American School of Dance on the GI Bill and worked as a dancer. In 1956 he moved to New York, planning to take up acting, but instead studied Flamenco guitar; his studies took him to Spain where he became interested in furniture, and he began to import Spanish furniture to New York and then to design and manufacture his own furniture. He opened a shop, Casa Castellana, in Greenwich Village in 1964 and was successful for many years.

Kelley.
Howard Kelley; see Index and see also
D1
.

Kennedy, Bill.
American editor, magazine publisher, and radio host. Kennedy lived in New York, but Isherwood first met him in January 1949 at Salka Viertel's house. During the 1940s, Kennedy helped the medium Eileen Garrett to relaunch her psychic magazine
Tomorrow
as a literary publication, and he later persuaded Isherwood to write regular reviews for it. He also co-hosted a radio show, “The World in Books,” with a friend Vernon Brooks; both Isherwood and W. H. Auden were guests on the show.

Kennedy, Ludovic (b. 1919).
Scottish-born writer and broadcaster; educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He served in the British navy during World War II and worked as a librarian and a lecturer before joining the BBC, where he presented television news and public affairs programs. He was a newscaster for ITN in the mid-1950s. His later television shows also focused on criminal and legal topics, especially miscarriages of justice, and he published books on similar matters. In the late 1950s he ran for Parliament. As Isherwood mentions, he is married to Moira Shearer.

Kennington, Eric (1888–1960).
English painter and, later, sculptor. Kennington was born in London, studied at the Lambeth School of Art, and was an official war artist during both world wars. He is best known for his illustrations of T. E. Lawrence's
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
(1926). The illustration Isherwood saw at Forster's flat, of Mahmas, a camel driver, appears in book 7, chapter 87.

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 already befriended 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 painted and helped establish 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 starting 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 to promote some of the great artistic talent of the twentieth century. In 1941 he married Fidelma Cadmus (Fido), sister of the painter Paul Cadmus. He served in the army from 1943 to 1946. Isherwood often tells about Kirstein in
D1
. Don Bachardy blames himself as well as Kirstein for the end of this friendship. Trouble arose between Kirstein and Bachardy in 1966 when Kirstein, without consulting Balanchine, commissioned Bachardy to do portraits of the New York City Ballet stars; Balanchine did not approve of some of the portraits, and the whole project was withdrawn. Kirstein thereafter refused to see Isherwood again, even though W. H. Auden tried to bring about a reconciliation.

Kiskadden, Peggy.
Thrice-married American socialite from Ardmore, Pennsylvania; born Margaret Adams Plummer, she was exceptionally pretty and had an attractive singing voice. From 1924 until 1933, she was married to a lawyer and (later) judge, Curtis Bok, the eldest son of one of Philadelphia's most prominent families. In the early 1930s she accompanied Bok, a Quaker, to Dartington, England, where she first met Gerald Heard and Aldous and Maria Huxley. Her second marriage, to Henwar Rodakiewicz, a documentary filmmaker, ended 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 (later President of Harvard University), and William Elliott Kiskadden, Jr. (nicknamed “Bull”). 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. There are numerous passages about her and her family in
D1
.

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 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, as well as holding distinguished positions at hospitals in Los Angeles—teaching, administering, and practicing—and writing articles on particular procedures and problems. Kiskadden 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.

Knight, Franklin.
Vedanta monk living at Trabuco monastery from 1955 onwards; a cousin of Webster Milam, who, as a high school student, lived at the Vedanta Center with Isherwood and others during the war. Isherwood often mentions Milam in his diaries of the period; see
D1.
Webster did not become a monk, but Knight did. After he took his first vows his name became Asima Chaitanya.

Kolisch, Joseph.
Viennese physician. Kolisch was a follower of Swami Prabhavananda. Aldous and Maria Huxley, Gerald Heard, several of the nuns
and monks at the Vedanta Center, and perhaps even Greta Garbo, followed his advice and were on his vegetarian diets during the 1940s. At the suggestion of Gerald Heard, Isherwood first saw Kolisch in January 1940 for what he thought was a recurrence of gonorrhea. In
D1
Isherwood describes how then and on other occasions, Kohsch tended to attribute his symptoms to Isherwood's psychological makeup.

Lamarr, Hedy (1913–2000).
Austrian-born film actress. She appeared nude in a 1933 Czech film,
Extase,
and a few years later Louis B. Mayer brought her to Hollywood where she played various seductress roles. She appeared in
Algiers
(1938),
Comrade X
(1940),
Boom Town
(1940),
Ziegfeld Girl
(1941),
H. M. Pulham Esq
. (1941),
Tortilla Flat
(1942),
White Cargo
(1942), and others. Her career faltered after the war (she turned down Ingrid Bergmann's role in
Casablanca
), though she is still remembered for
Samson and Delilah
(1949). Lamarr married six times.