by Barbara Pym
Germany was delightful and more than usually interesting, as we arrived in Hamburg on the same day as the Führer and were able to see him. I thought he looked smooth and clean, and was very impressed. The elections were held on the Sunday, 19 August (we had arrived on the Friday). There was plenty of publicity etc. urging voters to say ‘Ja’ for Hitler. The ones I can remember best were: ‘Führer wir folgen dir’ Alle sagen Ja!’ ‘Ein Reich, Ein Fükrer, Ein Ja’. At the station – ‘Reisende! denk an eure Stimmpflicht’.
4 October. The position at present is this. I am staying at home this autumn and not taking a job. I think I am going to enjoy it very much, being naturally contented. But I am not entirely idle, as I am writing my novel of real people which is getting on quite well, though not really as fast as it ought to. I try to type 2 sides every day, and today I haven’t done quite that, although on occasions I can do more.
Henry went to Finland on the 19th of September, and according to Jockie’s account is happy there. Naturally he hasn’t written to me, although he did in August about my story, a very nice letter. Still I hope that he will keep the promise made at viva-time in July. I still love him very deeply as far as one is able to judge, with no men to compare him with and absence making the heart grow fonder – but I am calmer about it. It is not as easy to be jealous of various vague Finns as of some definite people in Oxford.
7 October. I wrote 4 pages of my story today, and enjoyed doing it. After lunch I thought all inspiration had gone, but later it came back quite surprisingly. I gave way to a hysterical outburst because Links was cross with us about laying the tea. And I haven’t really cried for ages. I do try my best to be honest with myself and ask myself whether I’m really in love with Henry, and whether I really feel a kind of Sehnsucht for him. I do believe that Absence makes the heart grow fonder and lends a sort of glamour to the beloved person.
9 October. Wrote in the morning and went in the town. Cold weather is coming upon us and I feel the need for my waffy coat. I started my white polo jersey and have done quite a lot. It is in a nice rather thick 4-ply wool. All afternoon I thought about clothes and decided to get myself a new evening frock. I’ve not had one for three years! I also decided how to make my blue velvet and how to renovate my green frock. Not a bad afternoon!
23 November. I went to Oxford. It was lovely seeing people again. Jockie and Barnicot, Sharp, Hilary, Harry, etc. I also had a letter from dear Henry and took my degree of Bachelor of Arts, which was rather boring.
10 December. I was to have returned to Shropshire this morning, but after much thought decided not to, but to wait until Henry came. It required a lot of thought, this decision, but Jockie and Mr B. persuaded me to stay. I knew that if I went home I should only ‘fret’ at not seeing him, but I knew also that if I stayed I might have to endure much misery. And yet the thought of unhappiness couldn’t make me run away. I had to face up to it, and I wanted to know if I still loved him. I called for Jockie and we had tea at the Moorish – he was deliciously amusing as ever. We decided it might be rather fun if Henry were drowned at sea then we might write a Lachrymae Musarum – rather in the style of the elegies for Edward King – in Latin English. I should do rather a Clevelandic poem –
My pen’s the spout
Where the rain water of mine eyes runs out –
or whatever it is.
11 December. At about 8 o’clock this evening I saw my Henry, for the first time since July 18th. He greeted me with derisive laughter, but said he was glad to see me. It was not a happy evening and during the end of it I was in tears. They were all there. Henry was excited and he and Jockie squabbling rather a lot. Henry has a navy blue hat, which I think I don’t like. Somehow I lamented the passing of the brown hat and the big grey coat – and yet he was not really much changed in his attitude towards me – there wasn’t really a chance to show it.
12 December. A lovely morning and I was with Henry. The intense misery of the night before had given way to a state of ‘calm of mind, all passion spent’. I was content just to be with him and tried hard to live in the present as I drove down the Banbury Road with him in YR in the sun and said goodbye at about half past twelve – hours of his company and so little of it alone – he really hardly seemed aware of me! He will not be in England again until May, and so much could happen in these next months, with the Spring coming – that same Spring which in 1933 afflicted poor Sandra with that divine madness for which she can only be thankful. For, in spite of unhappiness, it has brought me Jockie and other friends – and a little of Henry which I shall never forget.
How small part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
as I am always quoting in my novel. If I’m in Oxford in the Spring who knows what may happen – or shall I just content myself with remembering last year and the year before? And still be desolate and sick of an old passion.
29 December. Oswestry. Dear Jockie sent me a select Rochester – Poems on Several Occasions and Valentinian (1696.) I was delighted with it, in spite of its expurgations! But as I’ve read the real thing from Phi while I was at Oxford it didn’t much matter.
1935
3 January. Actually I miss Jockie more – his company and conversation, but I am still enslaved by Henry’s baser charms. I’ve not written to him – mainly because I’m not sure of his address. He goes back to Finland next Wednesday.
Now for more trivial matters. I am knitting a sock, dark blue – but ah for whom? I suppose much will depend on the size and general elegance, but it seems thick enough to withstand the rigours of a Finnish winter. My novel progresses not at all – Auntie Nellie is here and we are without a maid, so that at present I seem too busy to do much at it. Nor am I reading anything ‘worthwhile’ just now, although our greater English poets in their completeness lie in my bookshelves. Tonight we went to see Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra, which was quite entertaining and unintentionally amusing.
9 March. Oxford. I went to see Jockie at the flat and yearned for Henry, as that atmosphere always makes me. Henry had left behind his grey overcoat and I sat in it sentimentally the whole evening.
19 April. Germany. We started from Victoria at 10. This year going to Germany wasn’t quite so much to soothe an aching heart, though I had been rather bored. I hadn’t written to Henry since February 25th nor he to me. There is something satisfying about such silence.
20 April We arrived in Cologne about 6. I was very tired but sufficiently awake to notice who of last year’s German students were there to meet us. To my pleasure I noticed Hanns. It was so nice to see his familiar face again that I felt comforted although there was no sign of Friedbert. I spoke to Hanns and we had a little conversation in German. The drive to the Kameradschafthaus was rather long.
Friedbert was angelic to me. Such kindness as his one can never forget.
May. Oswestry. Why can’t I write this diary properly? But now that I’ve seen Henry again I must make myself write. Otherwise his biographers (or mine) will be disappointed at the break in the otherwise continuous account of my acquaintance with him.
After Germany I was in love with Friedbert in a way. I put it so because I realised even at the time that most of it was probably glamour. His being a foreigner – the little Americanisms in his speech like ‘terribly’ and the way he said ‘Barbara’ – it being in a foreign country with the Hohenzollern Brücke by moonlight and zwei Manhattan at the Excelsior and his Nivea Creme that I rubbed on my arm to remember the smell of him – for all these things I loved him and yet I hardly knew him as a person and didn’t at all agree with his National Socialism, although I tried to read Feuchtwanger’s book The Oppermans and a lot of German poetry just after my stay in Cologne and my interest in the language was reawakened with the result that really I learnt a good deal more. Now that I’ve seen Henry again I suppose it will be Swedish, which he seems to speak and read fluently and gets quite annoyed when I can’t do the same.
I heard from Barnicot th
at Henry was in Oxford when I arrived 22 May. On Friday 24 May I saw him again for the first time since 12 Dec. The meeting was quite as I could have wished. I came upon him face to face in the Broad. He was pleased to see me, genuinely I think. He made fun of my pink toenails, saying that I must hide them under a table as quickly as possible. This we did, by having coffee in Fuller’s, although it was almost lunchtime. Funnily enough we saw Alison there and it was pleasant not to feel jealous of her. Henry was extremely nice and I went back to lunch full of hope. I went to see him at 30 Banbury Road at 6 o’clock that evening and he was still nice and seemed more interested in me – which was perhaps natural. ‘There is no future, there is no more past’.… When I quoted that to Henry in a letter I was writing while with him one morning I’m sure he didn’t in the least know what it was, and naturally he wouldn’t ask. That is so unsatisfactory, not being properly understood, and not being given the chance to explain. I suppose I imagine that I must be more interesting and intelligent than the other unwanted lovers of this world. However, I had dinner at the George with him and Jock. Henry said – ‘It’s no use looking at those strawberries, because you won’t get any’. I had actually been contemplating a fine lobster. I was happy that evening. Then, although Henry and Jock argued somewhat (about Jock’s desire to leave Oxford and cut himself off from it entirely) we had pleasant conversation and things seemed better than they had been. Afterwards we went back to 30 Banbury Road and were turned out for being noisy, and perhaps the woman heard my remark about it being so sordid to be seen in one’s suspenders. I was on Henry’s knee at the time and Jock was playing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ on the recorder. A strange combination of circumstances.
After that I didn’t see Henry for four days which made me rather depressed. At least I only caught glimpses of him. And on Sunday night I heard from Jock that he’d gone to live at 5 Pusey Street. I spent Sunday night wandering about Oxford trying to console myself and perhaps catch a sight of him. Monday too was spent in looking for him, without success, for I didn’t like to call at his house and would have preferred a chance meeting. I went to his room and left him a note. On top of his tin of Nivea, which the mean creature refused to give me. The note I left was in my best style I think. He thought it charming and wrote me a nice letter next day, which I was surprised and delighted to get. As a result I went to see him on Wednesday morning at ten o’clock and saw him eating his breakfast. He was not particularly good tempered, but then he seldom is in the mornings. He will never talk about him and me and always gives evasive answers that are unsatisfying to me, as I want so much to know how things really are between us. Is it any use hoping even for his friendship – and is that enough? Is it not rather worse than nothing? At present I can’t decide. Barnicot thinks I have no hope at all and that his friendship would be of no use to me. But I think somehow that I’d like it. I don’t mind being part of the furniture of his background, or even hanging over him like a gloomy cloud, as he said at tea one day. He himself has admitted that I have a special place in the little world he has built for himself and of which presumably J. is the centre. And I suppose too that he feels this is so in the novel where I have brought us all together in our later years. But at the present moment it seems as if this world is falling to pieces – so what becomes of me then?
After supper we all went on the river. We landed at the Victoria Arms where Jock left us and strutted away across the ferry. When Jock had gone Henry proceeded to get rather drunk. I had a little beer but not much, though I was quite hilarious. We got mixed up with a party of tight undergraduates, one of whom was rather funny, and asked Henry to sleep with him. Henry, rather getting the worse of it in the wit combat, diverted attention to me. From then I was for it. We had been speaking foreign languages, as one naturally tends to under the influence of drink, and he pretended I was a German. None of the undergraduate party could really speak it, so we were able to deceive them. Henry (by this time rather drunk) insisted that we should punt along with them and kept trying to put me in the other punt, which he eventually succeeded in doing with the help of another man. Barnicot (who was punting) was silent. Up to now I had been quite enjoying things but when I found myself in a punt with five drunken undergraduates I didn’t feel so happy. Also I was being taken further and further away from my own people, who seemed unable to catch up. I think I am to be congratulated on the way in which I kept up the deception to the end. Anyway I’d have felt even more of a fool if I’d admitted to them that I was English and a graduate of the University, so I more or less had to and my German was adequate. There was rather a terrifying moment when turning and we were standing up and the punt began to fill with water. I suppose I should have felt very much ashamed of myself but I wasn’t really, especially as it was all H’s fault. At the time I wasn’t in the least angry with him although I should have been, for he behaved like a complete cad. We went on to Jockie’s flat where we had tea and Jock heard all the story. I think he was amused about it, though of course he pretended to be shocked. Of course when Henry told it, he made me out to be much worse than I really was. But I was feeling very loving towards him and sprawled all over him on the sofa.
30 May. I went round to Henry’s at 10. This was a very nice day for me. We spent the morning quite lazily, I was sleepy and so was he. I read aloud to him then he wanted the book to himself, so that all he could lend me was Colley Cibber’s Apology for his life which I wasn’t really feeling in the mood for. So I slept a little and thought much and rubbed Nivea and Eau de Cologne on myself and wrote a love letter to Henry and then he said I could stay to lunch. We decided to go to Basingstoke to fetch the Bentley – just me and Henry. We caught the 3 o’clock train and had a carriage to ourselves and it was upholstered in lurid shades of red and rusty brown in a large bold pattern. I’m sure I shall always remember that upholstery.
We smoked Finnish cigarettes and talked about travel in Finland and the English countryside. We also read the Telegraph and I meditated on how strange and wonderful it was to be in a train with Henry, and who would have thought it two years ago and the sort of thing I always think whenever I do anything with him. I suppose this is inevitable, as the most ordinary things done with someone one loves are full of new significance that they never have otherwise.
In Basingstoke we wandered through the streets till we found the garage, where we were told that the car would be ready in about half an hour. So we wandered in the streets once more and looked at the shut shops. We saw some cottages for the poor, aged and impotent but somehow it was difficult to imagine that either of us would ever be those things. Basingstoke is a very ordinary town with rather a hideous Jubilee (1887) tower, which doesn’t match the rest of the architecture. But I suppose I shall always remember it luridly. I think Henry and I must have looked like two characters out of a musical comedy – the comic characters. As I caught sight of our reflections in shop windows I couldn’t help smiling. I was wearing my German hat, turned up all round, so that it looked like a kind of parson’s hat, or dish, and there is always something faintly ludicrous about Henry’s blue hat with him inside it. It was rather hot, thundery weather and I expressed a desire for a drink of Eno’s which Henry thought rather shocking. We looked about at men’s clothes in the shops and then went and had tea at a place called the Golden Gate Café – all orange. We sat in the window and Henry said that if he was very rich he would buy me a cottage in the country, only I couldn’t have a wireless. Also an establishment in Oxford which I insisted on.
The ride back in the Bentley was marvellous. It was the first time I’d ever ridden in one. We ran into heavy rain and thunder when we’d gone a few miles and had to put the hood up, during which I cut my finger. Henry made a somewhat unnecessary fuss about it, but it was nice to be poor Pym-ed at intervals. When we reached Pangbourne the weather was nice again, and stayed so all the way back to Oxford. I was wearing the Barnicot waffy coat which I liked very much. It is so enormously spacious and opulent. I’m sure we must h
ave looked very caddish. I found myself wanting to gaze all the time at Henry’s divine profile, particularly those lovely hollows in his cheeks which delight me so. But if I gazed too much I had to make conversation so I contented myself with remaining huddled in the huge coat, wishing the journey needn’t ever come to an end.
After supper went for a ride in the Bentley – Henry and Jockie in front, Barnicot and I in the back. It was very pleasant intrinsically but Henry’s good temper had worn off and though we were together in the back of the car on the latter part of the ride he said he was bored with me, and seemed in the sort of mood when he would be nasty whatever I said.
The next time I saw him properly was Saturday the 1st. I had lunch with John Barnicot and we talked a good deal about Henry as we always do. He thinks I have absolutely no hope at all, and it’s a waste of time me hanging around. Naturally this wasn’t really news to me, but I couldn’t help being a little cast down when he told me that Henry found me boring because I always agreed with him. J.B. thinks it would be better if I were a little rougher with Henry. Consequently when we met him I tried to be rude to him and he was also rude to me, which made me annoyed. However it was difficult to be really effective in public and the afternoon was rather futile and pointless. We walked down St Aldate’s and through Christ Church meadows and then went in the Botanical Gardens, where I took them into the very hot hot-houses. But there was nothing exciting there – only a few orchids. We were all rather fractious and I chased Henry with a stick and argued with him about the date when the place was founded, although I hadn’t really the faintest idea. Henry and B. and I had tea in the Union Garden – the first time I’ve had a meal in the Union. That was nice and there was a charming cat in the garden, but Henry was rude about my teeth, which always makes me unhappy. Henry and I then walked back to my digs in St Margaret’s Road somewhat drearily and I tried to talk to him and find out how I stood. I said it hadn’t been delightful seeing him but quite nice, to which he agreed saying that nothing could be delightful any more.