Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

154 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

There were, however, other sources of relief and outings of a more conventional kind. Mitrinovic loved the theatre, and especially the variety theatre, the music hall. Groups of them would make regular visits to places like the Windmill Theatre where he particularly enjoyed the humour of comedians such as Sid Field and “Monsieur Eddie Gray. He showed his appreciation of his favourite performers by presenting them with elegant walking canes, of which he had quite a number. The story is told of one occasion when Eddie Gray came on stage, spotted Mitrinovic and his friends in their usual seats in the front stalls, and suggested to the rest of the audience that they might like to leave for a while as “there’s a friend there and I want to have a chat.” In later years the comedian Richard Hearne, “Mr. Pastry, recalled that

It was always a great joy when one was appearing on the stage performing to an audience in which he was present. He was a great theatre-goer with a wonderful sense of humour. I shall always see his beaming face with his happy party of friends beside him.!°

He loved jokes, especially vulgar ones. He also had a healthy appreciation of good food. In the Bloomsbury and Soho areas of London that were his main haunts there were restaurants of almost every nationality under the sun. Group members would join him in visiting them, eating the food and drinking the wine of each country in turn. Alan Watts, who was present on a number of such occasions, was later to describe the image that Mitrinovic presented to the world on such occasions.

He was a stout Slavonic man with a completely shaved head, black winglike eyebrows, and entrancing eyes. On the street he wore extremely formal clothesan exalted bowler hat (a sort of cross between a bowler and top hat like the one used by Winston Churchill), cutaway morning coat, and striped trousers. He carried a walking stick with an amber handle, always paid his bills with crisp white five-pound notes, which in those days looked like legal documents, and smoked very fat Virginia cigarettes. He also drank formidable amounts of whiskey . . . He used to take us to dinner in the Hungarian, Greek and Russian restaurants of Soho, order six different dishes, and mix them all up."!

Watts failed to mention that Mitrinovi¢ had been known to take his shoes and socks off and walk home barefoot after such evenings out.

Despite such apparent eccentricities and exhibitions of spontaneity, like the time he did a handstand in the corridor of the First Avenue Hotel after a formal dinner to launch one of the quarterlies, of one thing all those