Word: roerich
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...Calvinistic Church, had had a look in at Catholicism and had finally joined the Episcopal Church. As an acolyte in cassock and surplice he regularly served at Mass. But now he had turned to Far Eastern mysticism. He became fascinated with a fork-bearded Russian theosophist named Nicholas Roerich, and later, when he became Secretary of Commerce, sent Roerich to Outer Mongolia to do research in grasses. Roerich was the "Guru" (Spiritual Leader) to whom the now famous "Dear Guru" letters, full of mystical fiddle-faddle, were written. Wallace has never either admitted or denied authorship of the letters...
...thrown at him. No matter how hard the reporters tried, he said, "I am not going to engage in Red-baiting . . ." That still left one interesting question: Did Wallace write (in 1934) the fawning, fantastic Guru letters, full of schoolboy mysticism and "secret" pet names, to the late Nicholas Roerich, a fork-bearded Russian artist, explorer, and cultist (TIME, Dec. 29)? For months Columnist Westbrook Pegler had been trying to provoke a yes or no from Wallace...
Wallace stopped the mission, later said: "The Department [of Agriculture] has no intention of re-employing the Roerichs." In Manhattan, Roerich's chief financial backer, Louis L. Horch, a broker later turned bureaucrat, who had put more than $1,000,000 into the Riverside Drive Museum, went to court to get back control of the building. The thousand paintings were unslung from the museum walls. Later the U.S. Government sued Roerich for back taxes. Pegler devoted 25 columns to suggesting that Wallace wrote letters calling Roerich "Dear Guru" (Teacher...
White Blossoms. Roerich never returned to the U.S. With his wife and son he retired far from the world of Wallaces and Peglers to his beloved Kulu Valley in the Punjab, the "Silver Valley." "Whether in winter," he once wrote, "when the snowy cover sparkles, or in spring, when all the fruit trees are covered with snowy-white blossoms, the valley equally well merits this name." He had noted that its healthy people did not have cancer. There Roerich, drinking in the mysteries of Hindu and Buddhist shrines, also tried to learn what diet or beneficent rays or simple ways...
...Roerich, who left Russia at the time of the Revolution, gets faint praise in the Soviet Encyclopedia (1944), though many Roerich paintings still hang in Russian museums. Says the Encyclopedia: "His art is very decorative. His subject matter is taken out of legends, and he treats it in a religio-mystical reactionary style...