The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

by Paula Byrne

  Back home in Shropshire, Pym invited Henry, Jock and Barnicot to stay. It was an emotional visit, as Pym knew that Henry was leaving for Finland on 11 September. Henry, she recorded, was ‘absolutely at his best’. He was wearing a grey flannel suit, a bright blue silk shirt with a darker blue tie and blue socks.

  He looked beautiful and took me in his arms in the bathroom and in the bedroom. He wanted me to return to Oxford with them so that we might do again those things we used to do when I was an undergraduate and he a graduate living in 86b Banbury Road. I wanted it too, but I felt somehow that were I with him like that again, I should not be content with half measures.[2]

  She wanted much more than to be his sexual plaything. ‘So it is better that I remain here, thinking lovingly of him, with more real fondness than before.’[3]

  A photograph dating from that time shows the genuine affection between the group, as they sit in deckchairs in the garden of Morda Lodge. Pym, looking girlish and pretty in a white summer dress with bows, gazes adoringly at handsome Henry, who lights her cigarette.

  When they left, Pym focused her efforts on her writing life. Although she disliked the genre, she wrote two short stories, believing that it was a useful stepping stone to getting published. Titled ‘Unpast Alps’ and ‘They Never Write’, she sent them to the London Mercury. She was also beginning to think about a plot for a new novel: ‘Possibly another me, in the character of an undergraduate this time!’[4]

  She was making a concerted effort to be more positive – cleaning her room, writing letters, darning socks, and pulling up some ‘aggressively dead’ zinnias in the garden: ‘Last sad signs of summer.’[5] And she was reading a lot. Her current novel was Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night, a murder mystery set in an all-female Oxford college. Inevitably, it made her think of her St Hilda’s. ‘Pleasure and pain in an agreeable mixture. That’s what I think of when I think of Oxford and my days at St Hilda’s.’[6]

  Jock wrote thanking her for the wonderful stay. He told her that he’d met Elsie, who was very nice and pretty and adored Henry. He was sure that Henry would break her heart. Brita, he confirmed, was ‘hideous’. As ever, Jock urged her to find consolation in her writing.

  By the end of the summer, Pym had finished her novel about Belinda and Harriet. She had the manuscript, divided into two volumes, ‘nicely bound in soft yellow covers and green backs’, receiving it back on Armistice Day. She was still unsure about the title, torn between ‘Some Tame Gazelle’ and ‘Some Sad Turtle’ – ‘But somehow it reminds me rather too much of turtle soup … I am alternately cheerful and depressed about it.’7

  CHAPTER XIII

  Omit the Nazis

  Barbara was twenty-four years old, studying in Munich and had obtained a Nazi soldier for a boyfriend, whom she described as ‘absolutely moulded into his uniform’. He was handsome, with ‘closely cut chestnut hair, a straight little face, white teeth and a darling, wide smile. His cap tilted over one of his green eyes was a sight.’ He was sporty and strong: ‘very sensitive, very amusing, very affectionate, could sing and play the guitar beautifully, was an expert shot and skier’. He was a dead ringer for Friedbert Glück, but his name was Karl Maier. His American girlfriend, Barbara Rucker, found him ‘fascinating’. ‘Karl was a typical soldier of the very best kind – quick, clean, brave, proud and believed infinitely that Germany should be wieder gross und stark [once more big and strong]. He didn’t want war, but said if it came he’d fight until he was killed.’[1]

  Barbara Rucker, who hailed from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her grandfather had been president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a music scholar, but interested in politics. Initially she had been sympathetic towards the Nazis: ‘At first one does incline to be, particularly when one sees how relatively more secure and hopeful the people feel.’ But she soon realised her mistake: ‘Slowly but surely I’ve grown to be a great enemy of National Socialism.’ She tasked Karl on the Jewish question and he admitted that he knew some nice Jews and that in theory communism had some good ideas. As the historian Julia Boyd says: ‘It is a curiously touching portrait and a reminder that in 1936 not every young German wore a uniform to beat up the Jews.’[2] A year later, Barbara wrote to her sister to say that she had had an encounter with Julius Streicher and that any illusions she had about Nazi achievements had been destroyed. She was ‘shaking with anger’ at hearing his ‘unbelievable lies’:

  That there’s no such thing as a decent Jew in the world, that they all have a certain bacillus in their blood which gives diseases to ‘white’ people; that they caused the world war, the downfall of Rome and heaven knows what else … I really looked desperately around the room for one sane person who wasn’t believing it all – but with the exception of Klaus, who, although a National Socialist, was also disgusted, they were all hanging on his words.[3]

  By the end of 1936, the rabid anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany should have been apparent to everybody. Yet there was a stubborn trait in Barbara Pym and a refusal to believe that Friedbert was capable of being cruel. She could not separate him from his beliefs.

  Jock, who had read Pym’s novel in instalments, offering useful advice and criticism, had one serious objection: ‘Omit the Nazis.’[4] Eventually, Pym acceded to his wish. That the Nazis were ever included might come as a surprise to readers of the published edition of Some Tame Gazelle. But the typed version in its original green binding is perfectly preserved in the Bodleian.

  With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to judge. Pym was possibly blinded to the true nature of Nazism by her love affair with Germany: she was drawn to the language, to the magical and romantic landscapes and the poetry of the great German writers. Friedbert’s adoration came at a time when Pym was badly damaged by Henry Harvey’s callous behaviour. Nevertheless, friends and family (in particular her sister Hilary, who was vehemently anti-Nazi) repeatedly warned Pym about her relationship with a blackshirt who just so happened to be a rising star in the Nazi party. There were no invitations issued to Friedbert to come and visit Shropshire.

  Pym felt herself to be in love with Friedbert and fascinated by modern Germany: in the Ur-Tame Gazelle Belinda honestly admits that her interest in Nazi politics is due entirely to her infatuation with Helmuth. Pym was also, at some level, trying to hurt Henry and to show that she could be adored by another man. Henry certainly responded to women who played hard to get and who aroused his jealousy.

  Pym continued to pour out her love for Germany and for Friedbert in her novel. Belinda, now in middle age, is a romantic who frequently lapses into daydreams about her days in Germany. Like Pym, she spends time in Cologne as a student. She is blonde and Aryan, speaks German, loves German poets and, in her youth, had a penchant for Nazi stormtroopers:

  Liebfraumilch always reminded Belinda of the Rhineland, which she had visited in the spring just before she was twenty-one. The Nazis had been young and arrogant then and she had hardly known which she liked best, Kurt or Helmuth. Although it had been April she could not help thinking of Heine’s ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’ as being symbolic of her first visit to Germany.[5]

  In Pym’s imagined world, set thirty years in the future, the Nazis are now exiled to Africa, following a revolution in the 1950s. There has been no world war. How could she have anticipated such a war in 1935? Kind Belinda knits socks and vests, not for her boyfriends, but for the ‘poor Nazis’. She insists on using expensive wool, ‘but she always excused herself by saying that after all the Nazis were rather special people. Helmut had been a Nazi.’

  Though Belinda is still in love with Henry the Archdeacon, she lives mainly in the past.

  ‘Dear Helmuth,’ she murmured, rolling her eyes … gently stroking the unfinished vest. A set of confused German memories now came into her mind. She saw herself at Bonn, – or had it been Königswinter? – walking along the narrow streets with Helmuth, while he explained the meaning of Dampfschifffahrt. And a band was playing ‘Warum kuszt mich dein Mund so heiss?
’ Or the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’. One of the two; it didn’t really matter now, for after the terrible revolution of the nineteen fifties and all the dear Nazis in exile in Africa, things like that were of no importance. What a good thing Belinda had taken her good mother’s advice and had not become engaged to Helmuth! Otherwise she would probably have been in Africa now and one heard such dreadful things.

  Whereas Archdeacon Henry is selfish and rude and barely notices Belinda, ‘Dear Helmuth had been most appreciative’. Pym uses the detail from her Oxford diary – when Henry described her as being ‘like something off a chocolate box or the cover of Die Woche. Belinda at twenty-one had thought all this rather delightful, although she knew that it was not intended as a compliment and she had always rejoiced in being blonde and Aryan.’ Belinda now says, ‘Of course’ – whereas in her youth, she would say ‘selbstverständlich’. Page after page is filled with Belinda/Barbara’s memories:

  Belinda’s thoughts began to wander from Sunday’s joint to the happy times she had spent in Germany. Through a blur of sentimental memories she saw herself in Berlin (or had it been Hamburg) in a place where they drank a lot of beer and stood on the table and danced. And dear Helmuth had told her how important it was that one should be a good leader, like the Führer.

  Expecting the new curate to visit, Belinda considers wearing her swastika: ‘She was wondering whether to wear her little swastika brooch or not. Dear Helmuth had always been so pleased at this sign of presumable sympathy with the Nationalist Socialist party.’ In her house, on her mantelpiece, Belinda proudly displays a framed photograph of dear Helmuth, ‘chatting with the Führer in Berlin. She kept this for sentimental reasons and pointed it out to visitors. “You can understand how I feel about these poor Nazis” she would say.’

  The Archdeacon is compared with Hitler. His wife Agatha has allowed moths to spoil his suit and Henry leans out of the window to rant, as Hitler leaned out of the balcony in the Rathaus:

  The voice went on calling. It seemed that the moths had got into his grey suit and why had Agatha been so grossly neglectful to let this happen? The tirade was audible to anyone in the garden or in the road beyond.

  It was like the Führer’s speech in Hamburg, thought Belinda, although the Führer had been more important than poor Henry and what he said had been of significance to a whole country.

  In Pym’s fictional world, it is Hilary/Harriet who is the voice of reason, urging Belinda to forget about the Nazis. Harriet has never been to Germany and dislikes people ‘reminiscing about how lovely the Swastika flags looked in the street’. In a long scene, later deleted, a German couple, now in exile, appear at the village. Harriet is horrified, whereas Belinda is thrilled:

  But of course Belinda felt differently. How delightful it would be to see if she could still speak German! How she would enjoy remembering with them their lamented Führer! Why they might even have known dear Helmuth or dear Kurt, though perhaps that was rather too much to expect.

  Belinda thinks that the refugee ‘Herr Niersteiner’ looks like one of the Nazi leaders:

  It was too late in the day to say haben Sie gut geschlafen, so she contented herself with nodding pleasantly from time to time, taking in the full details of their appearance. Herr Niersteiner was a stout man of middle age, rather like General Goering, or was it Goebbels? The names were so alike that Belinda always muddled them up. He was wearing a brown shirt which looked like a relic of his Nazi days, if a shirt can be expected to last twenty years.

  On and on the references go. Belinda breaking into German songs; Helmuth’s green hat (like Friedbert’s); the beer garden in Königswinter where they had that lovely drink; the Hohen-zollernbrücke in the moonlight; Helmuth’s dislike of Heine.

  ‘Well I thought a young girl in love if she read German at all would surely be fond of Heine,’ said Belinda. ‘Or at least some poetry. But especially Heine, although dear Helmuth didn’t really like me to read him,’ she mused rather sadly.

  ‘Oh, of course he wrote against Hitler, didn’t he?’ said Harriet complacently.

  ‘Oh no dear,’ replied Belinda in a shocked voice, ‘Heine was a long time before the Führer. I don’t quite know why dear Helmuth didn’t like him. I think he said things against Germany,’ she murmured vaguely. And anyway, she thought, I expect Helmuth wouldn’t have approved of Jenes Land der Wonne, Das seh’ ich oft im traume. Such things didn’t exist in Nazi Germany and he had always disliked anything that was too romantisch.

  Heine was not only Jewish, but also a pioneering left-wing political radical who deeply influenced Karl Marx (and famously wrote ‘where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well’): little wonder that Friedbert was sceptical.

  In Belinda’s middle age she wonders what has happened to Helmuth. ‘It would be so very nice to send a sum of money sufficient to keep him in beer and heisse wurstchen all his life. Or perhaps he was dead. She hated to think about that, she who had once been his liebe kleine Belinda.’

  Jock, who knew and understood that Pym’s novel was a love letter not only to Henry, but also to Friedbert, was wise in advising her to ‘harden her heart’ and to omit the Nazis. Nancy Mitford later regretted Wigs on the Green and refused to let it be reissued; satirising Nazis was no longer a mere tease. Pym was not alone, during the thirties, in treating the Nazis as a bit of a joke. At the time, she did not take Jock’s advice. But when Some Tame Gazelle was finally published after the war, in 1950, every single reference to Germany and the Nazi party was deleted.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Pymska

  With thoughts of Henry in Finland, Pym began to learn Finnish and created a new persona. She was to be known as Pymska. She kept herself busy in Shropshire, learning to drive and sending Some Tame Gazelle to Chatto & Windus. Her thoughts were turning to her new novel, Adam and Cassandra, which would reflect her love for Budapest.

  Jock was regularly in touch. He was still living in ‘North Oxford’ with his brother, Donald, but seriously contemplating a life abroad, possibly Cairo. Jock and Don were devoted to their landlady, Mrs Trew. They had witnessed a shocking turn of events, which had troubled them deeply. Mrs Trew was a rather lonely and sad figure, widowed and devoted to her only daughter, Christine. Whilst Christine was at Somerville College, Oxford, she met an aristocrat who was at Christ Church. His name was Edward Pakenham (brother of Julia, whom Pym knew). They married, Christine thus becoming the Countess of Longford. Christine established herself as a novelist and a playwright and she and her husband set up a theatre company. They lived in Pakenham Hall Castle in County Westmeath in Ireland, where they had country house weekends with writers such as Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman. However, Christine cruelly neglected her mother because she was ashamed of her lowly origins.

  Mrs Trew’s deepest fear was to die in a workhouse. When she fell ill, her daughter refused to take care of her and did indeed leave her to die in a former workhouse in Oxford, now a public assistance institution, but to all intents and purposes still a workhouse, where vagrants and prostitutes were left to die.[1] Don and Jock, who visited her regularly, could never forgive the heartlessness of Christine Pakenham. One day, Jock vowed, he would write the story and wreak his revenge. He told Pym all about the tragedy.

  Pym also heard from Jock that Henry was returning to Oxford in December, as he had the year before. This time she vowed to keep away. A few days later, she changed her mind and packed for Oxford. The city seemed changed, with nobody she knew in her old haunts, Elliston’s, the Bodleian, Cornmarket. Most of her friends were long gone, ‘everywhere is full of strange, young faces’. She had dinner with Jock and they looked at photographs of Henry in his photo album. Pym was surprised, as Jock’s relationship with Henry had fragmented over the years: ‘I was so moved that my eyes filled with tears, whether from love, memories of the past, regret of the present or anticipation of the future I don’t know.’[2]

  Oxford was full of ghosts. Barbara dressed in her new guise of Pymska, a more
sophisticated person than Sandra. She wore a turquoise dress, a black fur cape and high heels. When she called on John Barnicot he was impressed that she looked so elegant. His new friend, Meurig Davies, called in and they all sat together in the dark, listening to music from Budapest on the gramophone – ‘which always makes me a little melancholy’ – and sharing stories of unrequited love: ‘Mr B in love with Honor, Meurig with Ann Sitwell and Pymska with Henry.’[3]

  In December, Pym heard that Chatto had rejected her novel. She was comforted by Barnicot and Jock. Five days before Christmas Day, she heard that the London Mercury had rejected her short stories, but ‘in the bustle of Christmas shopping I seemed not to care overmuch’.[4] She looked forward to ‘cutting and improving’ her novel and took heart that the editor at Chatto said kind words: ‘I had a style which is a pleasure to read.’ Lonely as she was, she also felt ‘there is a world elsewhere’. Returning home to Shropshire for Christmas seemed a time for reflection. She felt that every time she went back to Oxford, it seemed to be a little sadder: ‘A slow wrenching away indeed.’[5]

  CHAPTER XV

  In which Pymska is involved in a Tragic Accident

  ‘The King died tonight at 11.55 pm. It was a very peaceful ending,’ wrote Pym on Monday 20 January 1936. It snowed heavily in Shropshire and the Pym family huddled around the wireless to hear the popular Prince of Wales being proclaimed as King Edward VIII.

  Barbara had ‘vivid and lovely’ dreams about Friedbert. She wrote to Jock to say that she was enjoying the snow: ‘Everything looks romantic. One only wants Friedbert and his fine pair of skis for everything to be perfect.’[1] They exchanged news about the fate of their respective novels. He said it was a great pity that they both failed to get recognition. ‘You are undoubtedly “the finest comic writer of the age”, though still, perhaps a little too diffuse.’ Jock, as always, read attentively: ‘I am inclined to think that a great deal of the blackberry episode might be cut short – the interest seems to me to flag a little just there.’ He also advised her to cut all the personal references and jokes and to be more general about Oxford and the Bodleian. ‘More disguise – Bodley may be Bletchley University, perhaps.’ He also tried once again: ‘Omit the Nazis.’[2]