Theosophist, actress, painter, cat lover, woman of letters. My mother was her editor at W H Allen, responsible for her biography of Victor Neuburg, one of Aleister Crowley's circle  (1965). I knew Jean briefly. She'd come to Spike Island, our woodland cottage in Sussex. I recall an oppressive  summer party once in her black-walled, black-shrouded Bloomsbury flat around the corner from the British Museum, overlooking one of the Egyptian Rooms. I set at least one of her poems to music - but she found the sequence of major harmonies I used carrying negative associations. She experienced similar discomfort with those of the occultist-composer Cyril Scott. Whenever I attempted a piece of his, she'd stop me.

1 November 2020