The Ascetic
“The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.”
-Katha Upanishad
During the preparation of An Invitation: Farleys House & Gallery and the Lee Miller Archives, an interview with Ami Bouhassane by Elisabet Riera Millán was reviewed in La Surrealista Oculta. By chance, I read a few pages past the interview and came across this passage:
“En 1932 partieron de viaje a la India durante cinco meses con las excusa de visitor a dos amigos ingleses de Roland: Bill Egerton, instalado en Indaur y un tal Nixon, que vivía como un native en Benarés… A Nixon lo entonado cantos y vestido de color azafrin: se habia convertido en parte de un pequeno grupo de harekrishnas que habia construido un santuario en lo alto de las montanas, en el Himalaya, cerca de Almora” (1).
["In 1932 they left for a trip to India for five months with the excuse of visiting two of Roland's English friends: Bill Egerton, installed in Indaur and a certain Nixon, who lived like a native in Benares... Nixon sung songs and dressed in the color saffron: he had become part of a small group of harekrishnas who had built a sanctuary high in the mountains, in the Himalayas, near Almora.”]
The name “Nixon” triggered a memory that I could not identify, but I had previously recognized that Millán had drawn on Roland Penrose’s 1981 Scrapbook for her essay and so I returned for another look at Scrapbook where I found the following passage by Roland Penrose:
“It was therefore not the prompting of the surrealist that urged Valentine and me to accept invitations to spend a long winter in India. A Cambridge friend, Bill Egerton, has invited us to stay in British Raj style in Indore, where the Maharajah’s Father Christmas entered on an elephant and another friend Nixon, who had cast off all temptation of official honours from the Civil Service and “gone native”, asked us to pay him a visit in Benares surrounded by his chanting, meditation Hindu friends” (2).
After reading Scrapbook, my memory re-focused and I recalled where and why the name “Nixon” set in the context of an Ashram, was familiar. It was from past, unrelated personal research, concerning W. Somerset Maugham’s, The Razor’s Edge. Since the publication of the Razor’s Edge in 1944 many researchers and readers have believed that the protagonist, Larry Darrell, was based on a real person. Several persons have been identified over the years, but the most likely candidate is Ronald Henry Nixon who we now learn was a Cambridge friend of Roland Penrose. The conclusion that Nixon (who is later known as “Sri Krishna Prem” )was Darrell has much to support it.
The premise of The Razor’s Edge is the spiritual journey of Larry Darrell. The book was a bestseller when it was released in 1944 and, immediately, Hollywood (ironically) set it to film in 1946 with Tyrone Power as Darrell. The role was repeated by Bill Murray in 1984. The book was, and remains, one of the bestselling and read books of the twentieth century. To this day many authors, when asked, still refer to The Razor’s Edge as their inspiration.
For those that practice Yoga in the West there is a connection between their practice and The Razor’s Edge. Although many modern Western practitioners of yoga use it simply as a means of physical exercise, those with the slightest knowledge of yoga will recognize the name, Paramahansa Yogananda.
In 1920 Yogananda was sent by his order (lineage) to the United States to promote Yoga in the West. By the mid 1920’s he situated himself in Hollywood and had a measure of success that then exploded with the appearance of The Razor’s Edge in 1944 and the movie in 1946. Yogananda also wrote his very successful Autobiography of a Yogi in 1946 and sent a copy to W. Somerset Maugham expressing his appreciation with a note thanking Maugham for his introduction of Eastern spirituality to the West. It could be convincingly argued that the Yoga studio attendees today would not be there if not for Yogananda, and Yogananda would not have achieved his success but for Larry Darrell’s spiritual journey in The Razor’s Edge.
The catalyst upon which the leading character, Larry Darrell, sets forth on his spiritual journey is that he was almost killed as a RAF flying officer in a WWI biplane dogfight when he was saved by a close friend who flew in front of an attacking German plane and died in Darrell’s place. Ronald Henry Nixon (also known as Sri Krishna Prem) was himself in a WWI dogfight with several German aircraft and miraculously saved by, what he called “a power beyond our ken.”
As told to Sri Madhava Ashish, Sri Krishna Prem’s friend and successor, we learn about the incident directly from Sri Krishna Prem:
“It is high time that something like the true story of Ronald’s strange escape from enemy fighters replaced the distorted, even mythologized versions which are still circulating in India. Ronald was on the usual dawn patrol, which in his case consisted of a flight of two-seater fighters patrolling the section of the front line for which their squadron was responsible. According to what he told me, the British at that period held air superiority on that sector of the front, even though the German single-seater fighters had greater altitude. The Germans would not attack a flight of two-seater British fighters, because the observer’s backward-firing guns gave the British the advantage over the fixed, forward-firing guns of the German single-seaters. They therefore adopted the tactic of using their superior altitude range to watch British squadrons from their vantage point, and then descend in force to attack British stragglers. In those days of unreliable aero engines, stragglers with engine trouble were many.
On this occasion Ronald’s engine started giving trouble. Meanwhile, he was watching his attackers over his shoulder. When he judged that the attacking plane was about to open fire, he side-slipped. Ronald began to slip left, when he felt his hand on the control column pushed over to the right. As he slid right he saw the attacker’s tracer bullets flash just at the place he had expected to be” (3).
After the war, both the literary character Darrell and the real Nixon were left with a void where a human need for purpose demanded a spiritual quest. The statistical probability of these stories being unrelated, is in my opinion, nil, and for what it is worth, my conclusion is that Nixon was the inspiration for Larry Darrell.
It is fascinating to think that Valentine Penrose spent years as a disciple of Ronald Henry Nixon/ Sri Krishna Prem, studying in a Himalayan Ashram. In addition to the five months Valentine spent in India, when she visited India in 1932, she visited Sri Krishna Prem for six months (by my estimate) before her brief 1936 stay at Mougin with Penrose during the filming of La Garoupe. Valentine then returned to Sri Krishna Prem for additional years between 1936 and 1940 when she arrived in London during the blitz. Although she sailed for France, her ship was diverted to England as France at the time was completely occupied by the Nazis.
Aside from the intriguing connection of Larry Darrell and Roland Henry Nixon, the impact that Sri Krishan Prem and his Ashram would have had on Valentine through the years she was under his tutelage would have been a life changing experience. Sri Krishna Prem was, by all accounts, a Yogi of tremendous charisma, intellect and influence. If one believes that there is such a thing as a mystic, seer or holy person, Sri Krishna Prem checked all the boxes. He was considered a saint among Hindus in India during his lifetime and he is venerated and studied, even to this day, throughout the world by believers.
Roland Penrose speaks of Valentine’s attachment to Nixon and her attraction to his teaching in Scrapbook. And he leaves no doubt that the demise of their marriage was Valentine’s absorption with Eastern spirituality and Roland’s self-acknowledged hedonistic attachment to material pleasure. The effect of Sri Krishna Prem on Valentine was so strong that she enrolled in the Sorbonne to learn Sanskirst when she returned after her five month stay in India. Sanskirt is rarely spoken and generally studied to read religious texts in their original forms.
It seems likely that Valentine was one of those few who desired to traverse the razor’s edge. She was not a rock star, movie idol, or yoga tourist spending a few weeks in an ashram in India. Five years in the Himalayas with Sri Krishna Prem is indicative of a person undertaking a spiritual journey and questions arise such as: “how far did she advance?” “was she initiated into the Ashram?”or “was she a Yogi?” and so forth. One thing seems certain, Valentine was very serious about her journey.
Aside from the influence of Sri Krishna Prem and her experiences in the Himalayan Ashram, Valentine was an intriguing woman who arrived on the Paris scene in 1916 at the age of eighteen. She was acquainted with Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, André Breton and others to whom she later introduced Roland Penrose. Her influence on the French Surrealist movement was earlier and greater than Roland whose impact, aside from financial assistance, was greater on the English side of the channel.
As one of the very few women involved in the early Surrealist movement, she was a prominent author of French Surrealist poetry. Her work was admired and praised by Paul Éluard, who wrote the prefaces for two of her collections of Surrealist poems. In addition to her Surrealist poetry, she contributed to Breton’s La Révolution Surréaliste (1926), the inauguration edition of VVV, Roland Penrose’s London Bulletin and other Surrealist publications. Valentine was drawn by Picasso, sat for portraitures by Man Ray and Max Ernst, appeared in Luis Buñuel’s L’Age d’Or (1930) and Man Ray’s La Garoupe (1937), translated Federico García Lorca’s for poetry David Gascoyne and made collages to accompany her work. In short, in Surrealist circles on the continent, Valentine did everything and knew everybody.
Valentine’s most significant creative achievement was her 1962 publication of The Bloody Countess: Atrocities of Erzsébet Báthory, which concerns the true tale of a female psychopath and serial killer, the Countess Erzsébet [Elizabeth] Báthory, who was responsible for the torture and murder of more than six hundred young women. She cannibalized, tortured and washed in the blood of these women to preserve her youth. Although the book appears to be a Gothic horror novel, it is in the genre of a historical investigation of a “cold case” that was solved, but not explained.
Although Valentine was not the first to deal with the tale of the Countess Báthory, her research is the most meticulous. Over a period of ten years Valentine travelled to Hungary to examine historical family records, genealogy, local history, courts and investigative records as well as the local history and dynamics of key persons involved to diagram to a degree the psychological influences at play. It is a serious work. Like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) it became the inspiration for the genre of films starting in 1971 with Countess Dracula and dozens of movies that followed.
Another author interested in the Countess was Man Ray’s friend, William Seabrook. Seabrook introduced the Zombie genre into American culture and film and followers of Man Ray may recall his autobiography where he recalls when he and Lee Miller visited the sadistic Seabrook to “baby sit” a model that he had in bondage while he and his wife went out to dinner. Man Ray took photos of Seabrook and Lee in bondage which are viewable on Google Images of Seabrook and Lee Miller. Valentine discusses Seabrook’s essay on the Countess in his 1940 book Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today in the introduction to her novel, but it is unknown whether she was aware of Lee’s photo session with Seabrook some thirty years earlier.
The subject matter is interesting because, although it doesn’t seem to square with the Eastern philosophy of Sri Krishna Prem it does follow the Surrealist interest and admiration of Marquis de Sade. Despite growing interest in Valentine in recent years, her experiences in India have not been emphasized. This seems to be a grave mistake. The Ashram at Mirtola is still operational and, to my knowledge, no researcher has contacted the Ashram to see what photos, records and other documents they may have concerning Valentine’s years under the guidance of Sri Krishna Prem.
Footnotes
(1) Penrose, Valentine & Marie- Christine del Castillo Valero (Translator) & Elisabet Riera Millán (Contributor) La Surrealista Oculta (2020) Wunderkammer (page 18)
(2) Penrose, Roland (1981) Scrapbook Rizzoli International Publications Inc (page 49)
(3) Ashish, Sri Madhava (Summer 2012)“Mirtola: A Himalayan Ashram with Theosophical Roots” Quest 100.3 (pages 98-105)