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Journey Down A Rainbow
Priestley and his wife, Jacquetta Hawkes, separate at Kansas City, she to visit New Mexico and the evidences of ancient man in America and he to go on to Texas to investigate modern man.
- GenresTravel
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
About the author
J.B. Priestley
471 books294 followersJohn Boynton Priestley was an English writer. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and after schooling he worked for a time in the local wool trade. Following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Priestley joined the British Army, and was sent to France - in 1915 taking part in the Battle of Loos. After being wounded in 1917 Priestley returned to England for six months; then, after going back to the Western Front he suffered the consequences of a German gas attack, and, treated at Rouen, he was declared unfit for active service and was transferred to the Entertainers Section of the British Army.
When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).
The publication of English Journey in 1934 emphasised Priestley's concern for social problems and the welfare of ordinary people.
During the Second World War Priestley became a popular and influential broadcaster with his famous Postscripts that followed the nine o'clock news BBC Radio on Sunday evenings. Starting on 5th June 1940, Priestley built up such a following that after a few months it was estimated that around 40 per cent of the adult population in Britain was listening to the programme.
Some members of the Conservative Party, including Winston Churchill, expressed concern that Priestley might be expressing left-wing views on the programme, and, to his dismay, Priestley was dropped after his talk on 20th October 1940.
After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style.
His prolific output continued right up to his final years, and to the end he remained the great literary all-rounder. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men.
It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. He set a fine example for any would-be author.
When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).
The publication of English Journey in 1934 emphasised Priestley's concern for social problems and the welfare of ordinary people.
During the Second World War Priestley became a popular and influential broadcaster with his famous Postscripts that followed the nine o'clock news BBC Radio on Sunday evenings. Starting on 5th June 1940, Priestley built up such a following that after a few months it was estimated that around 40 per cent of the adult population in Britain was listening to the programme.
Some members of the Conservative Party, including Winston Churchill, expressed concern that Priestley might be expressing left-wing views on the programme, and, to his dismay, Priestley was dropped after his talk on 20th October 1940.
After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style.
His prolific output continued right up to his final years, and to the end he remained the great literary all-rounder. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men.
It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. He set a fine example for any would-be author.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 7, 2023
Having read several novels and plays by J.B. Priestley, his co-authored Journey Down a Rainbow, came as quite a surprise to me. I did not expect this writer, with his solid roots in Bradford, Yorkshire, to be involved in creating a book about the South-West United States. He was keen in the introduction to Journey down a Rainbow, to emphasise that this was not a travelogue as such:
“This is not another of those books about America. True, it begins like a travel book, and perhaps right to the end it never entirely loses its resemblance to one. Those readers who insist upon travel books are not going to be warned off. If what they want are glimpses of the American South-West, they will find them in these chapters; the peepshow is working. But we had no intention of adding one more volume to the pile, already too high, of books about America by visiting authors from Europe. The time for such books has gone. We are already in another age, when America pays the piper and calls for most of the tunes … English readers have not to be conducted across the Atlantic now to observe the American style of urban life: it can be discovered in the nearest town. It is now the great invader.”
When was this written, the English or American reader might ask? The answer might surprise you.
It was 1954.
One reason for such a switch of focus by J.B. Priestley, was partly the social climate at the time. In the 1950s both sides of the political spectrum in Britain joined forces in their anxiety about the Americanisation of British culture, which had first been identified by 1902 by W.T. Stead. Journey down a Rainbow, and the reaction to its publication, formed part of that fear of a loss of a national and increasingly endangered way of life.
J.B. Priestley’s works often displayed a social conscience, and he was an outspoken broadcaster on the BBC radio, as well as writing many essays. But why this location? The answer lies with his co-author Jacquetta Hawkes. J.B. Priestley married three times in total. His first marriage was to Pat, who died tragically young. Then he married Jane, from whom he was divorced, and a year before the writing of this book, J.B. Priestley married the archaeologist and poet Jacquetta Hawkes. Journey down a Rainbow is the record of a kind of literary honeymoon.
Jacquetta Hopkins (later Hawkes) came from an unusual family. Her father was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where his researches into biochemistry led to his discovery of vitamins for which in 1929 he was awarded a Nobel Prize. He was also a cousin of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Jacquetta was his younger daughter, and she had both the capacity for scholarly research and the imagination of a poet and a writer.
Jacquetta’s mother had trained as a nurse and had met her future husband when they were both working at Guy’s Hospital. She took her children round the Cambridge museums, where Jacquetta was fascinated by the exhibits of ancient pottery and jewellery. There is a story that at the age of nine, when Jacquetta learned that their house had been built where a Roman road was overlapped by an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, and that a beautiful amber necklace had been dug out from below one of the gateposts, she decided to try her own excavations.
She crept out secretly at dead of night, with a torch and a trowel, and tried to dig up the lawn! All she got for her troubles, was blisters on her right hand. But her future was now decided. She was going to become an archaeologist.
Jacquetta Hopkins was indeed the first woman to study the newly established full degree course in archaeology and anthropology at Newnham College, Cambridge; the only one in the country at that time. During an excavation of a pre-Roman Celtic capital just outside Colchester, she met her future husband, the director of the excavation, Christopher Hawkes. The couple continued to carry out excavations in various countries, both on their own, and singly. During the Second World War Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes were separated for quite long periods, and Jacquetta became increasingly interested in more imaginative writing, whilst continuing to publish scholarly works about Prehistoric and Early Britain.
But during the war Jacquetta met the poet W.J. Turner, and their passionate affair resulted in her only book of poetry, “Symbols and Speculations”. Tragically Walter Turner died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage in December 1946.
Jacquetta was invoved in preparations for the first Unesco conference in Mexico City in 1947, and on learning that J.B. Priestley was to be one of the senior UK representatives, she protested, on the grounds that Priestley was merely a popular author! Not an auspicious beginning! However she was overruled, since the head of the committee insisted that J.B. Priestley had experience of both literature and the theatre, plus he was already well known abroad. In Mexico City Jacquetta and J.B. (Jack) Priestley fell deeply in love, and remained so for the rest of their lives.
It is difficult for us initially, to see the common points of interest, which would allow this couple to collaborate on any book. But they wanted to explore the growing impact of technology on society. With Jack’s “man of the people” stature, combined with Jacquetta’s expert knowledge of ancient cultures, they could provide contrasting viewpoints. A visit to the South-West United States would allow them to examine both cultures.
There were Texans, “the latest men”, living in the most technologically advanced society of the day, representing “a pattern to which all our urban Western civilisation is beginning to conform”. These would be viewed by Jack, with his dry, sardonic, slightly mischievous eye. In contrast, Jacquetta would make a scholarly study of the people of the pueblos in New Mexico, who still preserved “much of their ancient culture … living more or less as they always did”. Whether this stance was decided at the beginning, we have no way of telling, but this is how the book reads.
Journey Down a Rainbow, consists of a series of letters between “J.B.P” and “J.H.” Each chapter of the book alternates between their experiences. They travelled together to Kansas City, and then went their separate ways, “J.B.P” to Dallas, and “J.H.” to Alberquerque. As we read the book, we can sense that Jacquetta enjoyed the trip more. The pottery and weaving she described appealed to Jacquetta’s strong visual sense, and she was in her true element, exploring the deep past: the cave sites and ritual dancing. Jacquetta thoroughly enjoyed exploring the remaining pueblo society of New Mexico.
J.B. Priestley however, found the booming Texas oil industry, the biggest Woolworth’s store in the world, football games at Fort Worth and so on, not really to his taste. Jacquetta was delighted with her finds in the ancient Indian societies in New Mexico, but the brash new America he saw in Texas, did not appeal to Jack at all. Sometimes he was waspish and critical of the consumer society he saw: the materialism driven by mass communications, advertising and salesmanship. At others, he sought refuge by making his descriptions increasingly flippant.
“J.H” and “J.B.P” were happily reunited in Santa Fe, and they discussed their adventures:
“We talked and talked, had a drink or two and talked, prepared dinner and talked, ate the dinner and talked. Afterwards we went out to feel the icy breath of night on our cheeks, to see the huge glitter of stars …”
Jacquetta too could see the irony of their different experiences, and contrasted the frenzied panic of shopping for trivialities in New York, with an experience which had moved her greatly. In a museum, she had seen beautiful woven patterns, which had been created from dog hairs by a prehistoric woman, “living as humbly as a badger”
The title, Journey Down A Rainbow, and dedication to Jung, should perhaps be explained. The phrase comes from Jung’s “The Integration of the Personality”. Jack had introduced Jacquetta to Jung’s psychological writings, and Jung’s influence is evident in the writings of both of them. Following Jung’s theory, J.B. Priestley attributed the great success and longevity of their marriage to a balance of the masculine and feminine aspects of each of them. He claimed that he had a deeply intuitive approach to life, and, oddly, that Jacquetta had a masculine intellect: “Jacquetta is an introvert … she needs me to warm her towards people and the world.”
It has to be said that this a peculiar book (in the correct sense of the word), reading as a set of essays, or snapshots, and switching between surviving prehistoric cultures of New Mexico, and life in the growing consumer society of Texas; back and forth, between the two. It might appeal greatly to those who know both societies well. In New Mexico the successors to the earliest prehistoric inhabitants still lived among historic remains preserving their ancient culture. Just across the state line in Texas lay the rapidly expanding cities.
For me though, apart from some thought-provoking ideas, and its entertainment value, it stays at a default of 3 stars.
“This is not another of those books about America. True, it begins like a travel book, and perhaps right to the end it never entirely loses its resemblance to one. Those readers who insist upon travel books are not going to be warned off. If what they want are glimpses of the American South-West, they will find them in these chapters; the peepshow is working. But we had no intention of adding one more volume to the pile, already too high, of books about America by visiting authors from Europe. The time for such books has gone. We are already in another age, when America pays the piper and calls for most of the tunes … English readers have not to be conducted across the Atlantic now to observe the American style of urban life: it can be discovered in the nearest town. It is now the great invader.”
When was this written, the English or American reader might ask? The answer might surprise you.
It was 1954.
One reason for such a switch of focus by J.B. Priestley, was partly the social climate at the time. In the 1950s both sides of the political spectrum in Britain joined forces in their anxiety about the Americanisation of British culture, which had first been identified by 1902 by W.T. Stead. Journey down a Rainbow, and the reaction to its publication, formed part of that fear of a loss of a national and increasingly endangered way of life.
J.B. Priestley’s works often displayed a social conscience, and he was an outspoken broadcaster on the BBC radio, as well as writing many essays. But why this location? The answer lies with his co-author Jacquetta Hawkes. J.B. Priestley married three times in total. His first marriage was to Pat, who died tragically young. Then he married Jane, from whom he was divorced, and a year before the writing of this book, J.B. Priestley married the archaeologist and poet Jacquetta Hawkes. Journey down a Rainbow is the record of a kind of literary honeymoon.
Jacquetta Hopkins (later Hawkes) came from an unusual family. Her father was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where his researches into biochemistry led to his discovery of vitamins for which in 1929 he was awarded a Nobel Prize. He was also a cousin of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Jacquetta was his younger daughter, and she had both the capacity for scholarly research and the imagination of a poet and a writer.
Jacquetta’s mother had trained as a nurse and had met her future husband when they were both working at Guy’s Hospital. She took her children round the Cambridge museums, where Jacquetta was fascinated by the exhibits of ancient pottery and jewellery. There is a story that at the age of nine, when Jacquetta learned that their house had been built where a Roman road was overlapped by an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, and that a beautiful amber necklace had been dug out from below one of the gateposts, she decided to try her own excavations.
She crept out secretly at dead of night, with a torch and a trowel, and tried to dig up the lawn! All she got for her troubles, was blisters on her right hand. But her future was now decided. She was going to become an archaeologist.
Jacquetta Hopkins was indeed the first woman to study the newly established full degree course in archaeology and anthropology at Newnham College, Cambridge; the only one in the country at that time. During an excavation of a pre-Roman Celtic capital just outside Colchester, she met her future husband, the director of the excavation, Christopher Hawkes. The couple continued to carry out excavations in various countries, both on their own, and singly. During the Second World War Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes were separated for quite long periods, and Jacquetta became increasingly interested in more imaginative writing, whilst continuing to publish scholarly works about Prehistoric and Early Britain.
But during the war Jacquetta met the poet W.J. Turner, and their passionate affair resulted in her only book of poetry, “Symbols and Speculations”. Tragically Walter Turner died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage in December 1946.
Jacquetta was invoved in preparations for the first Unesco conference in Mexico City in 1947, and on learning that J.B. Priestley was to be one of the senior UK representatives, she protested, on the grounds that Priestley was merely a popular author! Not an auspicious beginning! However she was overruled, since the head of the committee insisted that J.B. Priestley had experience of both literature and the theatre, plus he was already well known abroad. In Mexico City Jacquetta and J.B. (Jack) Priestley fell deeply in love, and remained so for the rest of their lives.
It is difficult for us initially, to see the common points of interest, which would allow this couple to collaborate on any book. But they wanted to explore the growing impact of technology on society. With Jack’s “man of the people” stature, combined with Jacquetta’s expert knowledge of ancient cultures, they could provide contrasting viewpoints. A visit to the South-West United States would allow them to examine both cultures.
There were Texans, “the latest men”, living in the most technologically advanced society of the day, representing “a pattern to which all our urban Western civilisation is beginning to conform”. These would be viewed by Jack, with his dry, sardonic, slightly mischievous eye. In contrast, Jacquetta would make a scholarly study of the people of the pueblos in New Mexico, who still preserved “much of their ancient culture … living more or less as they always did”. Whether this stance was decided at the beginning, we have no way of telling, but this is how the book reads.
Journey Down a Rainbow, consists of a series of letters between “J.B.P” and “J.H.” Each chapter of the book alternates between their experiences. They travelled together to Kansas City, and then went their separate ways, “J.B.P” to Dallas, and “J.H.” to Alberquerque. As we read the book, we can sense that Jacquetta enjoyed the trip more. The pottery and weaving she described appealed to Jacquetta’s strong visual sense, and she was in her true element, exploring the deep past: the cave sites and ritual dancing. Jacquetta thoroughly enjoyed exploring the remaining pueblo society of New Mexico.
J.B. Priestley however, found the booming Texas oil industry, the biggest Woolworth’s store in the world, football games at Fort Worth and so on, not really to his taste. Jacquetta was delighted with her finds in the ancient Indian societies in New Mexico, but the brash new America he saw in Texas, did not appeal to Jack at all. Sometimes he was waspish and critical of the consumer society he saw: the materialism driven by mass communications, advertising and salesmanship. At others, he sought refuge by making his descriptions increasingly flippant.
“J.H” and “J.B.P” were happily reunited in Santa Fe, and they discussed their adventures:
“We talked and talked, had a drink or two and talked, prepared dinner and talked, ate the dinner and talked. Afterwards we went out to feel the icy breath of night on our cheeks, to see the huge glitter of stars …”
Jacquetta too could see the irony of their different experiences, and contrasted the frenzied panic of shopping for trivialities in New York, with an experience which had moved her greatly. In a museum, she had seen beautiful woven patterns, which had been created from dog hairs by a prehistoric woman, “living as humbly as a badger”
The title, Journey Down A Rainbow, and dedication to Jung, should perhaps be explained. The phrase comes from Jung’s “The Integration of the Personality”. Jack had introduced Jacquetta to Jung’s psychological writings, and Jung’s influence is evident in the writings of both of them. Following Jung’s theory, J.B. Priestley attributed the great success and longevity of their marriage to a balance of the masculine and feminine aspects of each of them. He claimed that he had a deeply intuitive approach to life, and, oddly, that Jacquetta had a masculine intellect: “Jacquetta is an introvert … she needs me to warm her towards people and the world.”
It has to be said that this a peculiar book (in the correct sense of the word), reading as a set of essays, or snapshots, and switching between surviving prehistoric cultures of New Mexico, and life in the growing consumer society of Texas; back and forth, between the two. It might appeal greatly to those who know both societies well. In New Mexico the successors to the earliest prehistoric inhabitants still lived among historic remains preserving their ancient culture. Just across the state line in Texas lay the rapidly expanding cities.
For me though, apart from some thought-provoking ideas, and its entertainment value, it stays at a default of 3 stars.
January 10, 2019
Edit.
I have scanned more of the book.
In the Preface, J. B. Priestly clearly states that Journey Down A Rainbow is is not a travelogue. He and his wife Jacquetta Hawkes seem to be seeking the sources of the American culture invasion of GB and even Europe.
As a snapshot in time this book is serviceable--for a light sociological study or light geographical study. Many are interested in mid-century life, so this book may be of some service yet. To base one's ideas about today's US American Southwest on this book would be to do a disservice to one's self, a miseducation of self. The assessments of J B Priestley and his wife Jaquetta Hawks made are made about people, places, and social situations that often no longer exist or that are much changed.
I thought to just disappear this book from my lists. But others are thinking of reading it, so I want to let them know what to expect, a very good description of mid-century American Southwest, its people, places, and situations.
For those of us interested in what a charmimg Brit might have to say about early 21st-century US, I suggest reading instead Stephen Fry in America (2008). If I should find another similar book with an another open-hearted spirit as writer, I will come back and edit this review.
I have scanned more of the book.
In the Preface, J. B. Priestly clearly states that Journey Down A Rainbow is is not a travelogue. He and his wife Jacquetta Hawkes seem to be seeking the sources of the American culture invasion of GB and even Europe.
As a snapshot in time this book is serviceable--for a light sociological study or light geographical study. Many are interested in mid-century life, so this book may be of some service yet. To base one's ideas about today's US American Southwest on this book would be to do a disservice to one's self, a miseducation of self. The assessments of J B Priestley and his wife Jaquetta Hawks made are made about people, places, and social situations that often no longer exist or that are much changed.
I thought to just disappear this book from my lists. But others are thinking of reading it, so I want to let them know what to expect, a very good description of mid-century American Southwest, its people, places, and situations.
For those of us interested in what a charmimg Brit might have to say about early 21st-century US, I suggest reading instead Stephen Fry in America (2008). If I should find another similar book with an another open-hearted spirit as writer, I will come back and edit this review.
September 20, 2023
Strange. Had most of the elements of a book that I usually like. But just never really fully captured my attention. Sort of limped through it, all the way to the end.
June 3, 2016
Mr. Priestley looks at city life in modern Texas. Mrs. Priestley looks at the Native American Indians in New Mexico. Mr. Priestley's writing is more entertaining than Mrs. Priestley's.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews