J. R. Ackerley
Encyclopedia
J. R. Ackerley was arts editor of The Listener, the weekly magazine of the BBC. He was also openly gay, a rarity in his time.
, in 1892.
Shortly afterward, he met another actress named Janetta Aylward (known as Netta) in Paris, and the two of them moved in together in London. Three years later she gave birth to a boy, Peter, then Joe a year later, and Nancy in 1899. Peter's birth, and possibly Joe's and Nancy's as well, was the result of an "accident" according to Joe's Aunt Bunny, Netta's sister: "Your father happened to have run out of French letters that day," she said. Roger Ackerley had "a cavalier attitude towards contraception
."
Ackerley was educated at Rossall School
, a public
and preparatory school
in Fleetwood, Lancashire. While at this school he discovered he was attracted to other boys. His striking good looks earned him the nickname "Girlie" but he was not sexually active, or only very intermittently, as a schoolboy. He described himself as
Failing his entrance examinations for Cambridge University, Ackerley applied for a commission in the Army, and as World War I was in full swing, he was accepted immediately as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to the 8th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment
, part of the 18th Division, then stationed in East Anglia
. In June 1915 he was sent over to France. The following summer he was wounded at the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. He was shot in the arm and an explosion caused shards of a whiskey bottle in his bag to be imbedded in his side. He lay wounded in a shell-hole for six hours but was eventually rescued by British troops and sent home for a period of sick-leave.
He soon volunteered to go back to the front. He had been promoted to captain by now and so, in December 1916, when his older brother Peter arrived in France, Ackerley was his superior officer. Reportedly the cheerful and kind-hearted Peter was not resentful and saluted his brother "gladly and conscientiously." In February, 1917, Peter was wounded in action on a dangerous assignment, heading into No man's land
from a dangerous ditch (where Ackerley said goodbye to him) ominously called the "Boom Ravine." Though Peter managed to get back to the British lines, Ackerley never saw him again.
In May 1917 Ackerley led an attack in the Arras
region where he was again wounded, this time in the buttock and thigh. Again he was obliged to wait for help in a shell-hole, but this time the Germans arrived first and he was taken prisoner. Being an officer, his internment camp was located in neutral Switzerland and was rather comfortable. Here he began his play, The Prisoners of War, which deals with the cabin fever of captivity and the frustrated longings he experienced for another English prisoner. He was not repatriated to England until after the war ended.
On 7 August 1918, two months before the end of hostilities, Peter Ackerley was killed in battle Peter's death haunted Ackerley his entire life. Ackerley suffered from survivor's guilt and thought his father might have preferred his death to his brother's. One result of Peter's death was that Roger and Netta got married in 1919, reportedly because Peter had died "a bastard".
After the war Ackerley returned to England and attended Cambridge
. Scant evidence remains from this time in his life as Ackerley wrote little about it. He moved to London and continued to write and enjoy the cosmopolitan delights of the capital. He met E. M. Forster
and other literary bright lights, but was lonely despite a plenitude of sexual partners. With his play having trouble finding a producer, and feeling generally adrift and distant from his family, Ackerley turned to Forster for guidance.
Forster got him a position as secretary to the Maharaja of Chhatarpur
who he knew from writing A Passage to India
. Ackerley spent about five months in India, still under British rule, and met a number of Anglo-Indian
s for whom he developed a strong distaste. The recollections of this time are the basis for his comic memoir Hindoo Holiday. The Maharaja was also homosexual, and His Majesty's obsessions and dalliances, along with Ackerley's observations about Anglo-Indians, account for much of the humor of the work. During these months, he also developed a short friendship with the twenty year old Narayan and sixteen year old Sharma, who were servants of the King of 'Chokrapur'. Of one evening with Narayan he wrote, 'he suddenly laughed softly and drew me after him. And in the dark roadway, overshadowed by trees, he put up his face and kissed me on the cheek. I returned his kiss; but he at once drew back, crying out: 'Not the mouth! You eat meat! You eat meat!' 'Yes, and I will eat you in a minute,' I said, and kissed him on the lips again, and this time he did not draw away.'
Back in England, Prisoners of War was finally produced to some acclaim. Its run began at The Three Hundred Club on 5 July 1925, then transferred to The Playhouse on 31 August. Ackerley capitalized on his success, carousing with London's theatrical crowd, and through Cambridge friends met the actor John Gielgud
, and other rising stars of the stage.
, W. H. Auden
, Stephen Spender
, and Christopher Isherwood
. Ackerley was one of Francis King
's two mentors (the other being C. H. B. Kitchin
).
In October 1929 Roger Ackerley died of tertiary syphilis. After his death, his son discovered his father had a second family who he visited occasionally when supposedly travelling for business, and when walking the family dog. The mother of this second family was Muriel Perry, who had served as a nurse during World War I. She had three daughters, Ackerley's half-sisters- Sally, Elizabeth, and Diana. They thought Roger was their uncle, their much-loved "Uncle Bodger" who brought them gifts and money, though they began to suspect he was their father as they grew older. Sally, later Duchess of Westminster
, and Elizabeth were twins, born in 1909. Diana was born in 1912.
Shortly after Roger's death, Ackerley found a note in a sealed envelope addressed to him which ended:
Ackerley had met Muriel during his father's final illness and recalled hearing her spoken of over the years. Roger wanted Joe to look after his second family and he did so, without ever divulging their existence to his highly strung mother, who died in 1946. In 1975 Diana Perry, now Diana Petre, wrote a memoir of her life called The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley. The term "secret orchard" was Roger Ackerley's, from one of his final notes to his son.
Ackerley's relationship with his father was something of an obsession. There had always been tension between them, stemming from the son's covert homosexuality and his father's domineering personality. My Father and Myself explores the possibility that Roger had some homosexual experience as a young guardsman, but this was ultimately never proven.
. Almost all his significant work was produced during this period. He had a stable job at the BBC, and the unsatisfying promiscuity of his younger years faded. What remained was his search for what he called an "Ideal Friend". Instead he accepted financial responsibility for his unstable sister Nancy and his aging Aunt Bunny. More importantly, in 1946 (the year his mother died) he acquired an Alsatian
bitch named Queenie from a sometime-lover, Freddie Doyle, who was going to prison for burglary. This scene, with Ackerley visiting Freddie at the police station, is how Ackerely's only novel, We Think the World of You, begins. ("Johnny" in the novel is closely modelled on Freddie.)
Over the next decade, Queenie was Ackerley's primary companion. His reduced social obligations made these years his most productive, revising Hindoo Holiday (1952), completing My Dog Tulip
(1956), We Think the World of You (1960) and working on drafts of My Father and Myself.
Ackerley left the BBC in 1959. He visited Japan in 1960 to visit his friend Francis King
, and was very taken with the beauty of the scenery and even more with Japanese men.
On 30 October 1961 Queenie died. Ackerley, who had lost a brother and both parents, described it as "the saddest day of my life." He said: "I would have immolated myself as a suttee when Queenie died. For no human would I ever have done such a thing, but by my love for Queenie I would have been irresistibly compelled." In 1962, We Think the World of You won the W. H. Smith Literary Award, which came with a substantial cash prize, but even this did little to stir him from his grief. (He thought Richard Hughes
should have won, and also thought little of the award's previous recipients.)
In the years after Queenie's death, Ackerly worked on his memoir about his father and drank too much gin. His sister Nancy found him dead in his bed on the morning of 4 June 1967. Ackerley's biographer Peter Parker gives the cause of death as coronary thrombosis
.
Toward the end of his life, Ackerley sold 1075 letters that Forster had sent him since 1922, receiving some £6000, "a sum of money which will enable Nancy and me to drink ourselves carelessly into our graves," as he put it. Ackerley did not live long enough to enjoy the money from these letters, but the sum, plus the royalties from Ackerley's existing works and several published posthumously, allowed Nancy to live on in relative comfort until her death in 1979. The annual J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography
was endowed by funds from Nancy, starting in 1982.
While he never found the "Ideal Friend" he wrote of so often, he had a number of long-term relationships. Ackerley was a "twank," a term used by sailors and guardsmen to describe a man who paid for their sexual services, and he describes in detail the ritual of picking up and entertaining a young guardsman, sailor or labourer. Forster warned him, "Joe, you must give up looking for gold in coal mines."
My Father and Myself serves as a guide to the understanding of the sexuality of a gay man of Ackerley's generation. W. H. Auden
, in his review of My Father and Myself, speculates that Ackerley enjoyed the "brotherly" sexual act of mutual masturbation rather than penetration. Ackerley described himself as "quite impenetrable."
Early Life, World War I, and India
Ackerley's memoir My Father and Myself, begins: "I was born in 1896 and my parents were married in 1919." His father, Roger Ackerley, was a fruit merchant, known as the "Banana King" of London. Roger had been previously married to an actress named Louise Burckhardt who died young and childless, probably of tuberculosisTuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, in 1892.
Shortly afterward, he met another actress named Janetta Aylward (known as Netta) in Paris, and the two of them moved in together in London. Three years later she gave birth to a boy, Peter, then Joe a year later, and Nancy in 1899. Peter's birth, and possibly Joe's and Nancy's as well, was the result of an "accident" according to Joe's Aunt Bunny, Netta's sister: "Your father happened to have run out of French letters that day," she said. Roger Ackerley had "a cavalier attitude towards contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
."
Ackerley was educated at Rossall School
Rossall School
Rossall School is a British, co-educational, independent school, between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St. Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College which had been founded the previous year...
, a public
Public School (UK)
A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...
and preparatory school
Preparatory school (UK)
In English language usage in the former British Empire, the present-day Commonwealth, a preparatory school is an independent school preparing children up to the age of eleven or thirteen for entry into fee-paying, secondary independent schools, some of which are known as public schools...
in Fleetwood, Lancashire. While at this school he discovered he was attracted to other boys. His striking good looks earned him the nickname "Girlie" but he was not sexually active, or only very intermittently, as a schoolboy. He described himself as
a chaste, puritanical, priggish, rather narcissistic little boy, more repelled than attracted to sex, which seemed to me a furtive, guilty, soiling thing, exciting, yes, but nothing whatever to do with those feelings which I had not yet experienced but about which I was already writing a lot of dreadful sentimental verse, called romance and love.
Failing his entrance examinations for Cambridge University, Ackerley applied for a commission in the Army, and as World War I was in full swing, he was accepted immediately as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to the 8th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment
East Surrey Regiment
The East Surrey Regiment was a regiment in the British Army formed in 1881 from the amalgamation of the 31st Regiment of Foot and the 70th Regiment of Foot...
, part of the 18th Division, then stationed in East Anglia
East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...
. In June 1915 he was sent over to France. The following summer he was wounded at the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. He was shot in the arm and an explosion caused shards of a whiskey bottle in his bag to be imbedded in his side. He lay wounded in a shell-hole for six hours but was eventually rescued by British troops and sent home for a period of sick-leave.
He soon volunteered to go back to the front. He had been promoted to captain by now and so, in December 1916, when his older brother Peter arrived in France, Ackerley was his superior officer. Reportedly the cheerful and kind-hearted Peter was not resentful and saluted his brother "gladly and conscientiously." In February, 1917, Peter was wounded in action on a dangerous assignment, heading into No man's land
No man's land
No man's land is a term for land that is unoccupied or is under dispute between parties that leave it unoccupied due to fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dumping ground for refuse between fiefdoms...
from a dangerous ditch (where Ackerley said goodbye to him) ominously called the "Boom Ravine." Though Peter managed to get back to the British lines, Ackerley never saw him again.
In May 1917 Ackerley led an attack in the Arras
Arras
Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
region where he was again wounded, this time in the buttock and thigh. Again he was obliged to wait for help in a shell-hole, but this time the Germans arrived first and he was taken prisoner. Being an officer, his internment camp was located in neutral Switzerland and was rather comfortable. Here he began his play, The Prisoners of War, which deals with the cabin fever of captivity and the frustrated longings he experienced for another English prisoner. He was not repatriated to England until after the war ended.
On 7 August 1918, two months before the end of hostilities, Peter Ackerley was killed in battle Peter's death haunted Ackerley his entire life. Ackerley suffered from survivor's guilt and thought his father might have preferred his death to his brother's. One result of Peter's death was that Roger and Netta got married in 1919, reportedly because Peter had died "a bastard".
After the war Ackerley returned to England and attended Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
. Scant evidence remains from this time in his life as Ackerley wrote little about it. He moved to London and continued to write and enjoy the cosmopolitan delights of the capital. He met E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
and other literary bright lights, but was lonely despite a plenitude of sexual partners. With his play having trouble finding a producer, and feeling generally adrift and distant from his family, Ackerley turned to Forster for guidance.
Forster got him a position as secretary to the Maharaja of Chhatarpur
Chhatarpur
Chhatarpur is a city and a municipality in Chhatarpur district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. It is the administrative headquarters of Chhatarpur District.- History :...
who he knew from writing A Passage to India
A Passage to India
A Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time...
. Ackerley spent about five months in India, still under British rule, and met a number of Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...
s for whom he developed a strong distaste. The recollections of this time are the basis for his comic memoir Hindoo Holiday. The Maharaja was also homosexual, and His Majesty's obsessions and dalliances, along with Ackerley's observations about Anglo-Indians, account for much of the humor of the work. During these months, he also developed a short friendship with the twenty year old Narayan and sixteen year old Sharma, who were servants of the King of 'Chokrapur'. Of one evening with Narayan he wrote, 'he suddenly laughed softly and drew me after him. And in the dark roadway, overshadowed by trees, he put up his face and kissed me on the cheek. I returned his kiss; but he at once drew back, crying out: 'Not the mouth! You eat meat! You eat meat!' 'Yes, and I will eat you in a minute,' I said, and kissed him on the lips again, and this time he did not draw away.'
Back in England, Prisoners of War was finally produced to some acclaim. Its run began at The Three Hundred Club on 5 July 1925, then transferred to The Playhouse on 31 August. Ackerley capitalized on his success, carousing with London's theatrical crowd, and through Cambridge friends met the actor John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, and other rising stars of the stage.
Working at the BBC, and the Secret Orchard
In 1928, Ackerley joined the staff of the BBC, then a year old, in the "Talks" Department, where prominent personalities gave radio lectures. He was Literary Editor of the BBC's magazine The Listener from 1935-59 discovering and promoting many young writers, including Philip LarkinPhilip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...
, W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
, and Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
. Ackerley was one of Francis King
Francis King
Francis Henry King, CBE was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland, brought up in India and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land...
's two mentors (the other being C. H. B. Kitchin
C. H. B. Kitchin
Clifford Henry Benn Kitchin was a British novelist of the early twentieth century. He was best known for his mystery novels, notably Death of His Uncle and Death of My Aunt, but his other novels were also highly regarded, especially by other writers. His best known novels are The Auction Sale,...
).
In October 1929 Roger Ackerley died of tertiary syphilis. After his death, his son discovered his father had a second family who he visited occasionally when supposedly travelling for business, and when walking the family dog. The mother of this second family was Muriel Perry, who had served as a nurse during World War I. She had three daughters, Ackerley's half-sisters- Sally, Elizabeth, and Diana. They thought Roger was their uncle, their much-loved "Uncle Bodger" who brought them gifts and money, though they began to suspect he was their father as they grew older. Sally, later Duchess of Westminster
Gerald Grosvenor, 4th Duke of Westminster
Colonel Gerald Hugh Grosvenor, 4th Duke of Westminster DSO PC was the son of Captain Lord Hugh William Grosvenor and Lady Mabel Crichton and a grandson of Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster....
, and Elizabeth were twins, born in 1909. Diana was born in 1912.
Shortly after Roger's death, Ackerley found a note in a sealed envelope addressed to him which ended:
I am not going to make any excuses, old man. I have done my duty towards everybody as far as my nature would allow and I hope people generally will be kind to my memory. All my men pals know of my second family and of their mother, so you won't find it difficult to get on their track.
Ackerley had met Muriel during his father's final illness and recalled hearing her spoken of over the years. Roger wanted Joe to look after his second family and he did so, without ever divulging their existence to his highly strung mother, who died in 1946. In 1975 Diana Perry, now Diana Petre, wrote a memoir of her life called The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley. The term "secret orchard" was Roger Ackerley's, from one of his final notes to his son.
Ackerley's relationship with his father was something of an obsession. There had always been tension between them, stemming from the son's covert homosexuality and his father's domineering personality. My Father and Myself explores the possibility that Roger had some homosexual experience as a young guardsman, but this was ultimately never proven.
Later life
Ackerley spent the last 24 years of his life in a small flat overlooking the Thames, at PutneyPutney
Putney is a district in south-west London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
. Almost all his significant work was produced during this period. He had a stable job at the BBC, and the unsatisfying promiscuity of his younger years faded. What remained was his search for what he called an "Ideal Friend". Instead he accepted financial responsibility for his unstable sister Nancy and his aging Aunt Bunny. More importantly, in 1946 (the year his mother died) he acquired an Alsatian
German Shepherd Dog
The German Shepherd Dog , also known as an Alsatian or just the German Shepherd, is a breed of large-sized dog that originated in Germany. The German Shepherd is a relatively new breed of dog, with its origin dating to 1899. As part of the Herding Group, the German Shepherd is a working dog...
bitch named Queenie from a sometime-lover, Freddie Doyle, who was going to prison for burglary. This scene, with Ackerley visiting Freddie at the police station, is how Ackerely's only novel, We Think the World of You, begins. ("Johnny" in the novel is closely modelled on Freddie.)
Over the next decade, Queenie was Ackerley's primary companion. His reduced social obligations made these years his most productive, revising Hindoo Holiday (1952), completing My Dog Tulip
My Dog Tulip
My Dog Tulip is an American independent animated feature film based on the 1956 memoir of the same name by J. R. Ackerley, BBC editor, novelist and memoirist. The film tells the story of Ackerley's fifteen-year relationship with his German Shepherd Queenie, who had had been renamed Tulip for the...
(1956), We Think the World of You (1960) and working on drafts of My Father and Myself.
Ackerley left the BBC in 1959. He visited Japan in 1960 to visit his friend Francis King
Francis King
Francis Henry King, CBE was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland, brought up in India and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land...
, and was very taken with the beauty of the scenery and even more with Japanese men.
On 30 October 1961 Queenie died. Ackerley, who had lost a brother and both parents, described it as "the saddest day of my life." He said: "I would have immolated myself as a suttee when Queenie died. For no human would I ever have done such a thing, but by my love for Queenie I would have been irresistibly compelled." In 1962, We Think the World of You won the W. H. Smith Literary Award, which came with a substantial cash prize, but even this did little to stir him from his grief. (He thought Richard Hughes
Richard Hughes (writer)
Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.He was born in Weybridge, Surrey. His father was a civil servant Arthur Hughes, and his mother Louisa Grace Warren who had been brought up in Jamaica...
should have won, and also thought little of the award's previous recipients.)
In the years after Queenie's death, Ackerly worked on his memoir about his father and drank too much gin. His sister Nancy found him dead in his bed on the morning of 4 June 1967. Ackerley's biographer Peter Parker gives the cause of death as coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis is a form of thrombosis affecting the coronary circulation. It is associated with stenosis subsequent to clotting. The condition is considered as a type of ischaemic heart disease.It can lead to a myocardial infarction...
.
Toward the end of his life, Ackerley sold 1075 letters that Forster had sent him since 1922, receiving some £6000, "a sum of money which will enable Nancy and me to drink ourselves carelessly into our graves," as he put it. Ackerley did not live long enough to enjoy the money from these letters, but the sum, plus the royalties from Ackerley's existing works and several published posthumously, allowed Nancy to live on in relative comfort until her death in 1979. The annual J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography
J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography
The J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography is awarded annually by the English Centre for International PEN to given to a literary autobiography of excellence, written by an author of British nationality and published during the preceding year. The winner receives £1,000 and a silver pen. The winner...
was endowed by funds from Nancy, starting in 1982.
Sexuality
Ackerly was openly gay, at least after his parents' deaths, having realized his homosexuality while interned in Switzerland as a prisoner of war. Ackerley worked hard to plumb the depths of his sexuality in his writings and belonged to a circle of notable literary homosexuals that flouted convention, specifically the homophobia that kept gay men in the closet or exposed openly gay men to persecution.While he never found the "Ideal Friend" he wrote of so often, he had a number of long-term relationships. Ackerley was a "twank," a term used by sailors and guardsmen to describe a man who paid for their sexual services, and he describes in detail the ritual of picking up and entertaining a young guardsman, sailor or labourer. Forster warned him, "Joe, you must give up looking for gold in coal mines."
My Father and Myself serves as a guide to the understanding of the sexuality of a gay man of Ackerley's generation. W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, in his review of My Father and Myself, speculates that Ackerley enjoyed the "brotherly" sexual act of mutual masturbation rather than penetration. Ackerley described himself as "quite impenetrable."
Works
- The Prisoners of War (first performed 5 July 1925), a play about Captain Conrad's comfortable captivity in Switzerland during World War I. Conrad is tortured by his longing for the attractive young Lieutenant Grayle. Contains the memorable bon mot when a Mme. Louis refers to "the fair sex" and Conrad replies, "The fair sex? And which sex is that?" Ackerley claimed to prefer the title The Interned to The Prisoners of War.
- Hindoo Holiday (1932, revised and expanded 1952), a memoir of Ackerley's brief engagement as secretary to an Indian Maharaja in the city of ChhatarpurChhatarpurChhatarpur is a city and a municipality in Chhatarpur district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. It is the administrative headquarters of Chhatarpur District.- History :...
, called Chhokrapur (meaning "City of Boys", a joke of Ackerley's) in the book. The spelling of Hindoo was the publisher's choice. Ackerley preferred Hindu. - My Dog TulipMy Dog TulipMy Dog Tulip is an American independent animated feature film based on the 1956 memoir of the same name by J. R. Ackerley, BBC editor, novelist and memoirist. The film tells the story of Ackerley's fifteen-year relationship with his German Shepherd Queenie, who had had been renamed Tulip for the...
(1956), an account of living with his dog Queenie. Eventually his relationship with Queenie becomes all-consuming and pushes aside most of his human relationships. The dog's name was changed to Tulip when the editors of Commentary, who had purchased an excerpt, became concerned that using the dog's real name might encourage jokes about Ackerley's sexuality. A 2009 animated feature based on this bookMy Dog TulipMy Dog Tulip is an American independent animated feature film based on the 1956 memoir of the same name by J. R. Ackerley, BBC editor, novelist and memoirist. The film tells the story of Ackerley's fifteen-year relationship with his German Shepherd Queenie, who had had been renamed Tulip for the...
featuring Christopher PlummerChristopher PlummerArthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
, Lynn RedgraveLynn RedgraveLynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE was an English actress.A member of the well-known British family of actors, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962...
and Isabella RosselliniIsabella RosselliniIsabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini is an Italian actress, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and model. Rossellini is noted for her 14-year tenure as a Lancôme model, and for her roles in films such as Blue Velvet and Death Becomes Her.-Background and early life:Rossellini is a...
was made. - We Think the World of You (1960), Ackerley's only novel, which concerns the relationship between an educated middle class man based closely on himself and a working class London family. The story is built around a fictionalized account of how Ackerley acquired Queenie (called "Evie" in the book) and learned to live with her. The book also traces the largely frustrated relationship between the homosexual narrator and Evie's (mostly) heterosexual former owner. The novel was made into a motion picture in 1988 starring Alan BatesAlan BatesSir Alan Arthur Bates CBE was an English actor, who came to prominence in the 1960s, a time of high creativity in British cinema, when he demonstrated his versatility in films ranging from the popular children’s story Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving...
and Gary OldmanGary OldmanGary Leonard Oldman is an English actor, voice actor, filmmaker and musician.A member of the 1980s Brit Pack, Oldman came to prominence via starring roles in British films Meantime , Sid and Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears , with his performance in the latter bringing him his first BAFTA Award...
. - My Father and Myself (1968), published posthumously. It is a memoir of Ackerley's life and relationship with his father. Along with a memoir by Ackerley's half-sister Diana, it was the source of the 1979 TV movie Secret OrchardsSecret OrchardsSecret Orchards is a 1979 made for TV movie directed by Richard Loncraine. The film is partially based on the memoir My Father and Myself by J. R. Ackerley....
. - My Sister and Myself (1982), published posthumously. Selections from Ackerley's diary, edited by Francis King. The bulk focuses on Ackerley's difficulties with his sister Nancy West (née Ackerley), but there is also a long section about Ackerley and Queenie's difficult stay with Siegfried SassoonSiegfried SassoonSiegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...
, the model for "Captain Pugh" in My Dog Tulip.
Other works
- Somewhat ironically, as he himself endured his captivity quite placidly, Ackerley was chosen to edit and write the introduction to Escapers All, 15 first-person accounts of World War I POW camp escapees (published by The Bodley Head in 1932).
- Ackerley wrote a short biography of his friend E. M. Forster, called E.M. Forster: A Portrait, which was published posthumously in 1970.
- A volume of his poems, Micheldever and Other Poems, was published posthumously in 1972. He was one of the poets included in Poems by Four Authors (1923).
- Ackerley's letters were published posthumously as The Ackerley Letters, edited by Neville Braybrooke, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
- In the United States, his books are published solely by New York Review Books Classics.
Quotations
- "If you look like a wild beast, you are expected to behave like one." (My Dog Tulip)
- "To speak the truth, I think that people ought to be upset, and if I had a paper I would upset them all the time; I think that life is so important and, in its workings, so upsetting that nobody should be spared." (Letter to Stephen Spender, December 1955.)
- "If there is good to be said of me, others must report that." (Notebook for My Father and Myself)
- "I was born in 1896 and my parents were married in 1919." (My Father and Myself)
- "'The fair sex? And which sex is that?'" (Captain Conrad to Mme. Louis in The Prisoners of War)
- "About all I knew of [India] when I sailed for it was what I had been able to recollect from my schooldays—that there had been a mutiny there, for instance, and that it looked rather like an inverted MatterhornMatterhornThe Matterhorn , Monte Cervino or Mont Cervin , is a mountain in the Pennine Alps on the border between Switzerland and Italy. Its summit is 4,478 metres high, making it one of the highest peaks in the Alps. The four steep faces, rising above the surrounding glaciers, face the four compass points...
on the map, pink because we governed it." (Hindoo Holiday) - "How arrogant people are in their behaviour to domestic beasts at least. Indeed, yes, we feed upon them and enjoy their flesh; but does that permit us to make fun of them before they die or after they are dead? If it were possible, without disordering one's whole life, to be a vegetarian, I would be one." (My Sister and Myself: The Diaries of J. R. Ackerley)
- "I had gone with him as far along that road as I intended to go; I had indulged in front of him a coarse appetite; it was quite another matter to share with him my satisfaction." (Hindoo Holiday)
- "My chance of finding the Ideal Friend was, like my hair, thinning and receding." (My Father and Myself)
- "I have lost all my old friends, they fear her [his dog Queenie] and look at me with pity or contempt. We live entirely alone. Unless with her I can never go away. I can scarcely call my soul my own. Not that I am complaining, oh no; yet sometimes as we sit and my mind wanders back to the past, to my youthful ambitions and the freedom and independence I used to enjoy, I wonder what in the world has happened to me and how it all came about.... But that leads me into deep waters, too deep for fathoming; it leads me into the darkness of my own mind." (We Think the World of You)
- "It is spring, it is winter, it is summer... Through twilight darkness, through the rain, through sunshine, frost, or heavy dew, I make my way with her across the plateau to the birch woods to give her everything she wants, except the thing she needs." (My Dog Tulip, referring to his dog's frustrated instinct to mate and have children.)
- "And when the time of their arrival drew near, I went out on to my verandah so that I might steal from Time the extra happiness of watching them approach." (We Think the World of You)
- "If Johnny came at all he was always late, and today was no exception; half-past two struck, and 'Not this day,' I said aloud, as though someone stood beside me under the great arch of the sky. 'Take all my other days, but not this one.'" (We Think the World of You)
- "I distrust myself so deeply, that is what I mean. How does one know what one is like? I hide from other people. I hide, too, from myself. The savage, the monkey within me, it cleverly conceals itself. That is civilization, of course. But not cleverly enough. Crises occur, and the façade breaks..." (My Sister and Myself)
- "The rich are very strange." (My Sister and Myself)
Sources
- Miller, Neil (1995). Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York, Vintage Books. ISBN 0099576910.
- Murray, Stephen O. "Ackerley, Joseph Randolph", Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Dynes, Wayne R. (ed.), Garland Publishing, 1990. p. 9
- Parker, Peter, Ackerley: The Life of J. R. Ackerley. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1989.
Research Resources
- J. R. (Joe Randolph) Ackerley Collection, 1924-1983 (187 items) is housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research CenterHarry Ransom Humanities Research CenterThe Harry Ransom Center is a library and archive at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States and Europe. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, 1 million rare books, 5 million photographs, and more...
of the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
.
- W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman Collection, 1929-1976 is housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research CenterHarry Ransom Humanities Research CenterThe Harry Ransom Center is a library and archive at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States and Europe. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, 1 million rare books, 5 million photographs, and more...
of the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
.
- Peter Burton papers, circa 1960-2008 are housed at the Cornell University LibraryCornell University LibraryThe Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. In 2010 it held 8 million printed volumes in open stacks, 8.5 million microfilms and microfiches, more than of manuscripts, and close to 500,000 other materials, including motion pictures, DVDs, sound recordings, and...
. - Sir John Collings Squire Papers, 1910-1958 (15.5 linear ft.) are housed at the Charles E. Young Research LibraryCharles E. Young Research LibraryThe Charles E. Young Research Library is one of the largest libraries at UCLA. It is named after the university's former chancellor of 29 years. Unlike the College Library which is geared towards undergraduates, this library is meant mainly for faculty and graduate students who wish to conduct...
at the University of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesThe University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
.
- Roy Broadbent Fuller Poetry manuscripts, 1965-1969 (ca. 50 items) are housed at the Columbia University Libraries.
- E. M. Forster Collection, 1908-1971 is housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research CenterHarry Ransom Humanities Research CenterThe Harry Ransom Center is a library and archive at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States and Europe. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, 1 million rare books, 5 million photographs, and more...
of the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
.
External links
- J. R. Ackerley on glbtq.comGlbtq.comglbtq.com is an online encyclopedia that presents detailed biographies of notable gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. It was named one of the "Best Free Reference Web Sites" in 2005 by the American Library Association....
- My Dog Tulip Movie Official Website
- My Dog Tulip IMDb page
- New York Review of Books Classics
- Secret Orchards IMDb page
- We Think the World of You IMDb page