L.C. Beckett

Philosopher and scientist Lucille Catherine Beckett (1884–1979) explored connections between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism and philosophy, just as Fritjof Capra later would in his best-seller The Tao of Physics (1975). Unbounded Worlds (1959) and Neti Neti (1955) were her best-known works, but she also published Everyman and the Infinite (1922), The World Breath (1935), Movement and Emptiness (1968) and Insight and Solitude (1973). According to Michael Holroyd:

"Lucille was a believer in miracles. Travelling down Oxford Street in London one day in deep despair on the top of a bus, she was visited by a revelation, which she set out to elucidate in two books, Unbound Worlds (1959) and Neti Neti (Not This Not That) (1955). In these books she sought her own 'theory of everything.' Mixing philosophy with astrophysics, adding a portion of ancient and modern religious dogma, some measure of infinity, a sprinkling of quotations from Jung, the Buddha and the astronomer Fred Hoyle, she concocted a terrific brew to keep despair at bay."

Biography

L.C. Beckett was the daughter of Ernest Beckett, 2nd Baron Grimthorpe (1856–1917), "a man of swiftly changing enthusiasms [. . .] a dilettante, philanderer, gambler and opportunist. He changed his career, his interests and his mistresses quite regularly." Her mother was American, Lucy Tracy Lee (1865–1891). In 1903, she married Count Czernin von und zu Chudenitz (1875–1962), the Austro-Hungarian Minister to Bulgaria. They had four sons. When they divorced in 1914, she retained custody only of the youngest, Manfred (1913–1962). During the First World War she worked firstly for the British Ambassador in Rome and then for the American Red Cross. After divorcing Count Czernin, she lived at the house in Ravello, Italy – Villa Cimbrone – that she inherited from her father. In 1921, Communists in Viterbo fired at her car, mistaking its occupants for fascists. Her fifteen-year-old son Jaromir was killed and son Paul and chauffeur Enrico were badly injured. Despite this, she asked that mercy be shown to the perpetrators.

Beckett mixed with some of the foremost artists and scientists of her time. At the Villa Cimbrone she was visited by, among others E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence and Greta Garbo. An additional attraction at the Villa Cimbrone was the cliffside 6-floor house, La Rondinaia (the swallow's nest), that she built in its grounds in 1930. She was a friend and patron of the artist Ceri Richards, with whom she discussed artistic inspiration. He is known to have presented her with one of four hand illustrated copies of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. She in turn presented one of Richards' paintings to Carl Jung. Of natural scientists she particularly admired Fred Hoyle and Sir Arthur Eddington (to whom she dedicated The World Breath (1935)). Her thoughts developed and were refined in the light of new scientific discoveries. In the fields of psychology and religious studies she frequently references Carl Jung, Krishnamurti and Christmas Humphries – all of whom she knew personally. In 1926 she married Captain Oliver Harry Frost (thereby becoming the Honourable Lucille Frost). They divorced in 1941. At various times, she also lived on Dartmoor and in Chelsea. In 1972 she sold La Rondinaia to Gore Vidal and moved to Lisbon where she died in 1979. Gore Vidal claimed that her spirit permeated La Rondinaia.

Works  

Everyman and the Infinite, London: L.N Fowler & Co. 1923.

"When so many writers of today feed vulture-like on the offal of the soul, it is well to turn to a book like this which through the finite imaginatively evokes the infinite" – Daily Telegraph

The World Breath, London: Rider & Co. 1935.

"The author explains (and what erudition has gone towards that explanation!) how the universe, mankind, sciences, religions, the atom and nebulae, all operate in waves and respond to the Law of Periodicity" –  Manchester Evening News

Gremlins (1948, unfinished)

In 1948 Beckett was planning to write a book about the psychology of airmen but this project seems not to have been completed. She was particularly interested in their stories about gremlins. These stories abounded in the RAF in the Second World War; her son Manfred had been an RAF fighter pilot and SOE agent (his story is told in Double Mission by Norman Franks). In the following report, under the heading 'Mrs Frost believes in Gremlins – so she's advertised for some,' she humours a bemused reporter from The Mirror:

 The Hon. Mrs Lucie Frost has never seen a gremlin – but she's convinced they exist. In her luxury top floor flat in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea (London) surrounded by modern paintings and grotesquely carved wooden statuettes this grey-haired lady sadly shook her head and gazed dolefully through her horn-rimmed spectacles as I entered.

"A newspaperman," she muttered. "I thought you might be a gremlin. I am disappointed."

"I advertised for them you know – in The Times too," she went on, "but not one has turned up yet."

The glaring eye of the painting over the mantelpiece winked balefully.

"I'm writing a book about the psychology of airmen," Mrs Frost explained. They are a different race of men altogether.

"The gremlins are there," she breathed.

A bubbling sound came from the kitchen.

"There my greens have boiled over . . ." said Mrs Frost. "Those gremlins . . . !"

Neti Neti (Not This Not That), Marazion, Cornwall, UK: The Ark Press 1955

This book, in which the author attempts to develop a new conception of religion, is believed to have influenced the composer John Cage. The title, Neti Neti, is a reference to the Upanishads.

• "My whole aim is to find out as much as I can about that 'self-process' of true creation going on in Nothing Between all 'things'." (p.29)
• "In Nothing between all things lies the greatest of mysteries which we have persistently screened from our minds with the image of God, because no man cares to contemplate a void." (pp.34-35)
• "[I]t is out of Nothing between two electric charges, between cognition and concept, between the ingredients which make up events, and finally between two thoughts, that new creation arises." (p.100)
•  Of Death: "some day when the senses drop their message at the door of the brain, there will be no image on the other side – and we shall be as we always were." (p.104)

Unbounded Worlds, Marazion, Cornwall, UK: The Ark Press 1959

In this book, dedicated to her grandson, Nicholas, the topic is infinity and causation.

• "[T]he aim of everything I have been saying has been to enable my reader to catch a glimpse of what infinity really means – if that be possible." (p.22)
• "If we are physically one with the Universe why should we not be one with the principles which govern it?" (p.58)
• "[M]any of the discoveries of science were foreshadowed hundreds, even thousands of years ago by the so-called mystics." (p.67)

Movement and Emptiness, London: Stuart (Vincent) & J.M. Watkins Ltd. 1968

• "How modern scientific discovery in the field of astro-physics leads back to the one fundamental fact of 'unborn, unoriginated, unformed', which the Buddha recognised" (flyleaf).

Insight of Solitude London: Robinson & Watkins Ltd. 1973

• "I am firmly convinced that the Buddha taught what is being rediscovered in our time by the most eminent scientists." (foreword)