by Barbara Pym
‘Oh, do not speak of it. It is more than I can bear,’ said her husband sinking down on to the couch, and taking a glass of schnapps.
‘It is more than I can bear,’ said Mr Liddell, casting the beef away, and sinking down beside the Herr Lektor.
‘Well, well,’ said Miss Pym, coming into the room. ‘Two old men bearing an imaginary burden, that is what I see. It must be the more heavy because it is not real.’
‘So there is no burden?’ said Mr Liddell, rising to his feet.
‘I will not say that,’ said Miss Pym, in a quiet thoughtful tone, ‘but you do not have to bear it.’
‘Oh, I know who will bear it,’ said Mr Liddell in a loud triumphant voice, ‘It is that handsome tall Etonian, that Mr Michael Benthall of the OUDS. Miss Pym admires him, I know that, he has a scar above his right eyebrow, she admires that, he wears a black polo jersey, he takes her out to dinner, he gives her orchids, oh, I see it all now, that is what it is. Those young shoulders can bear this burden better than ours can.’
‘Oh, do not say any more. My head is reeling. I cannot keep up with this,’ said Mr Harvey in a low groaning voice. ‘I think it is simpler if I bear the burden myself. We do not wish to be hearing about these dreadful people that she is associating with.’
‘Oh, fancy that the Herr Lektor should end a sentence with a preposition,’ cried Mrs Harvey in a delighted tone.
‘Well, it is the first time he has ever done it in his life,’ observed Mr Liddell in an open tone.
‘There must always be a first time,’ said Mr Harvey, in a dull flat tone.
Now this just shows what idleness and a wandering mind and sitting out in the garden to write a letter can do. Poor Henry will now think there is a burden and really there is none.
There is an aeroplane flying above my head, but it is so high up that I can’t see it. Fancy! And now I am getting all anxious about little J. in Spain. I look every day in the papers to see if he is dead yet.
‘I see that the Reverend R.G.T. Gillman, rector of West Felton is to take the Three Hours service on Good Friday,’ said Aunt Janie.
‘Oh, that will be interesting,’ said Mrs Pym, ‘I have heard that he is continually crossing himself and saying ‘I am not worthy’’ in the middle of the service.’
‘We are none of us worthy,’ said Barbara in a low tone, spreading some Gorgonzola cheese on a biscuit.
‘Why here is Mr Boulder!’ said Aunt Janie, as the curate was announced.
‘How is your fiancée?’ asked Barbara in an open tone.
‘She is better, thank you,’ said Oswald.
‘How old is she? She is older than I am, is she not?’ asked Barbara in an eager tone.
‘Yes, she is older than you are,’ said Oswald in a guarded tone.
That was the gist of a conversation I had with the curate when he dropped in to tea last week. He and Miss Carfax are to be married in the summer, just fancy, a real curate’s wedding in Oswestry. They say he is to be married in a cassock. Oh, fancy! Shall I never know how old she is?
Now it is Easter Sunday and Miss Pym intends to finish this letter. But it isn’t a very good letter, what with all this talk of pressed flowers and Mr Benthall, or is it J. or Pullein-Thompson? I hardly remember which one it is, it seems not to matter very much. Benthall is handsome, J. is charming and has beautiful manners. Pullein-Thompson is unique, and one wants all those things and more. It should be a consolation to know that they can be found, even if not in the same person.
I have written nearly 90 pages, very restrained, very trivial round and common task, not many laughs but quite nice in parts and in a mild way. Shall I ever make a novelist? What a genius I had when I wrote that book! I feel I can almost be saying that with Swift. How long do you stay in Finland? You must be very useful to the young couple as you appear to be doing all the cooking. How nice if they had a little stranger! I should be expected to look at it with tears in my eyes, should I not?
With love to you all –
Pymska
To Elsie Harvey in Helsingfors
Oswestry,
17 April 1938
Easter Sunday
My dear sister!
Thank you so much for your nice letter, but oh, why didn’t you finish it? I am now burning with curiosity to know why you are glad that I have a …? Did your husband or the censor stop you from writing any more?
I send you a piece of blossom and a cowslip, pressed in Pilgrim’s Progress. Perhaps you already have flowers in Helsingfors though I read in the Encyclopaedia that spring comes in the middle of April. We are having lovely weather and it is warm enough to be sitting outside in the sun, and your dear sister is browning her face, so that she shall look like a Scandinavian when she goes to Oxford, and then the young men will take her out to dinner and ask her to sherry parties.
I would so much like to learn Finnish. I know ‘excuse me’ (anteeksi) and oletekko … How many dear Finnish brothers could I get with those two sentences?)
I hope you and Henry are coming to England this summer, and that I shall see you. Perhaps we shall meet in Oxford, or you must visit me here and see the beautiful Welsh countryside.
You can imagine your sister Barbara very busy making new clothes, because it will soon be summer, and fancy, if Elsie should be smarter. Your husband and Mr Liddell will no doubt have told you what I look like, but it is known that their opinions are often unflattering. They do not think that an unmarried female novelist should have any interests but her work. You have no idea how harsh they are to me.
You see, I am pouring my heart out to you. I have had toothache which is very painful and I lie in bed at night in great agonies, knowing that I shall have to endure it until the Easter holiday is over and I can go to a nice dentist who will have to be cruel to be kind. But in the day it doesn’t ache so much, only in the night when one’s courage and physical strength are at their lowest ebb.
What a depressing letter I write to my dear sister! She will say, Oh, this Barbara, she is always weeping and ill-treated and suffering, nicht wahr? Whereas in reality, she is smoking, eating, drinking, using much lipstick, making new clothes, writing letters to dear friends, thinking out a new novel, reading nice poems by Mr John Betjeman, making plans for visiting a foreign country, and dreaming at night of somebody she loves very much. But it is not anybody you know, so she will not tell you any boring details.
Dear sister Elsie, I long to meet you. I think of you frying beefs and walking in the Esplanadsgatan in your new brown walking suit and send you my love. Barbara
To Robert Liddell in Helsingfors
Oswestry
early 1938
Friends and Relations
‘You and Janie have been asked to lunch at Bryn Tirion,’ said Mrs Pym, one Sunday morning. ‘I hope I did right to accept the invitation for you, Barbara?’
‘Yes, you did right,’ said Barbara, in careful, considered tone. ‘It would have been impolite to refuse when I had no previous engagement. I think Uncle Frank and Aunt Helen would have thought it so.’
‘Well, dear, I daresay they would have thought nothing,’ said Mrs Pym absently. ‘We will have a boiled fowl for lunch and then we can have it cold for supper with some ham.’
‘We shall not need much supper, Irena,’ said Aunt Janie in a prudent tone. ‘I expect we shall get a good lunch and tea at Bryn Tirion.’
‘Yes,’ observed Mrs Pym. ‘Helen keeps a very good table.’
‘Well, well,’ said Barbara in a bright, elderly tone. ‘Here we are. Well, Uncle Frank how are you, and Cousin Charlotte I saw you in Oxford but it is a long time since I saw Cousin John. How tall he has grown.’
‘Yes, he must be as tall as Emily’s second boy,’ said Aunt Helen in a full, satisfied tone.
‘No, John is much thinner than Billy’ said Barbara. ‘Billy is very broad.’
‘I expect John will fill out,’ said Aunt Janie.
‘Yes,’ said John.
‘Are Charlo
tte’s eyes quite well again?’ asked Barbara in an interested tone.
‘Oh, yes, I am all right now,’ said Charlotte, ‘but I have missed a term’s work. I shall not be able to get anything better than a third now.’
‘We got £250 compensation from the Insurance Company,’ said Uncle Frank.
‘We were very pleased about it.’
‘It was not enough,’ said Barbara firmly. ‘Charlotte would probably have got a second if it had not been for this.’
‘Oh, no, Charlotte is not clever,’ said Aunt Helen in a full, sensible tone, ‘she would never be able to get a second. She does not work as hard as you did, and you are not as clever as Barbara, are you Charlotte?’
‘No, mother,’ said Charlotte.
‘And Hilary has gone to Greece,’ said Aunt Helen. ‘Has she gone alone?’
‘No, she has gone with a young man she knows, a fellow of Magdalen, an archaeologist, we have met him, he has been to the house,’ said Barbara in a high, hurrying tone.
‘Ah,’ said Aunt Helen. ‘I expect there will be something between them after this. You mark my words.’
‘Oh, I think Mr Hunt is just a friend,’ said Aunt Janie quickly.
‘I do not think there is any likelihood of an engagement,’ said Barbara.
‘Ah, but you never know,’ said Aunt Helen hopefully.
‘But I do not think...
‘Well, lunch is ready. We will go in,’ said Uncle Frank.
‘What do you think about Austria and Germany?’ asked Aunt Helen.
‘Well, I always like the Germans,’ said Barbara.
‘Oh, Barbara, surely you do not like the Germans,’ said Aunt Helen.
‘The ones I have met have been very nice,’ said Barbara in a firm, level tone. ‘I have a friend in Dresden...
‘Ah, I expect it is a young man,’ said Aunt Helen in a triumphant tone, ‘that is what it is.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Barbara, ‘it is a young man, but that is not why...
‘Oh, Barbara, you surely would not marry a German?’ persisted Aunt Helen.
‘No, I have no intention of marrying a German,’ said Barbara firmly.
‘Well it would be something to talk about if Barbara married a German, would it not?’ said Aunt Helen brightly. ‘Personally I could not marry a foreigner.’
‘Neither could I,’ said Barbara in a hopeless tone – ‘As I said I have no intention...
‘You would have to live in Germany,’ continued Aunt Helen. ‘You would not be able to live in Oswestry. I wonder how you would like that.’
‘How quickly time goes,’ said Mrs Minshall, ‘it seems only yesterday that you were married.’
‘I have been married twenty six years,’ said Mrs Pym, in a firm, clear tone.
Mrs Minshall looked surprised – ‘But Barbara, she is how old – eighteen?’
‘Barbara is twenty four,’ said Mrs Pym in a clear, ringing tone.
‘Yes, I am twenty four,’ said Barbara in a low, mumbling tone.
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Minshall.
‘Have you heard that Greenfields is to be sold?’ asked Mrs Pym.
‘Pour Louisa Richards,’ said Mrs Minshall, ‘I suppose she is dead now.’
‘No,’ said Barbara, ‘I saw her walking into the town yesterday.’
‘Well, fancy, I thought she was dead. Your brother Ridley and his wife, are they still living?’ asked Mrs Minshall, turning to Mrs Pym.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Pym, ‘They are very well.’
‘And Janie – is she still single?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Pym smiling. ‘Janie is still single.’
‘Mrs Minshall seems to want us all to be either dead or married,’ said Mrs Pym to her daughter as they drove home in the car.
‘Well, I do not see what else we can be,’ said Barbara in a thoughtful tone. ‘I suppose we all come to one state or the other eventually. I do not know which I would rather be in.’
‘Oh, there is plenty of time for that,’ said Mrs Pym comfortably.
Dresden A.
Strehlerer str. 65,
Bei Rieper.
23 May 1938
Dear Jock –
Oh you really should not do it – making this poor old spinster laugh, so that when she is walking alone in the Strehlerer strasse a broad smile is coming on to her face because she is thinking of Jonathan Cape speaking in a voice drained of all emotion, and the passion fruit cocktails. But oh Jock just imagine – I might have been there drinking that passion fruit juice, and I know well how harmless it is because my uncle at Hatch End frequently drinks it. Did you think of me? just for one instant, as you stood among that happy band of pilgrims, those Cape authors? No, said Jock in a harsh, hurrying tone. I cannot say I thought of you. Why should I have thought of you? What could have been my motive? You were talking to Miss something, said Barbara in a low, sad voice, that is why you did not think of me. How can you shake that falser than false Cressid by the hand when you think how he has ruined my life? [Jonathan Cape had rejected Some Tame Gazelle] Well, that’s a new one on me, you might well say if you were given to talking Amerikanisch. It is Cape and not Harvey who has brought this Miss Pym to this state of condition in which her whole life has resolved itself into a question of ‘And now what?’ or ‘Where do we go from here?’ Well, we need not be speaking of that now. Good things will always keep and what can be more good than a discussion of the whole purpose of one’s life? I can think of plenty of things more good, you may say in a hasty, hurrying voice. Perhaps I can too.
Can you guess where I am writing this? Of course you can. Naturally I am in a beer garden and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and the chestnut trees are in blossom and the band is playing music. And at any moment they may play Orpheus in the Underworld, I feel, because I see a trombone in the band and so there is no reason why they shouldn’t. But no, just now they are playing a sad Volkslied that I am very fond of … you can guess the sort of thing. I needn’t tell you. I can see that you are afraid I will. I find this atmosphere has on me the same effect as the meanest flower that blows had on Wordsworth. When I see the palms in their silver painted urns, I think of little Jay, and how I used to force him to appreciate such things. Friedbert is being educated to enjoy the poems of John Betjeman, but naturally it is rather difficult particularly when I have to explain such lines as ‘The incumbent enjoying a supine incumbency’ but I make him read them aloud which is really a treat. And he has his revenge by translating long passages out of the Volkischer Beobachter to me, which I could really quite well read myself. And then he has a disconcerting habit of asking me things which I feel I ought to know and don’t F. Let us talk about Cromwell. B. (in an interested, condescending tone) Cromwell? What about Cromwell? F. (in a firm, direct tone) What was the influence of Cromwell on Milton? B. (in a high, nervous, hurrying tone) The influence of Cromwell on Milton? Did you say the influence of Cromwell on Milton? F. (giving the the word its full meaning) Yes.
I needn’t say any more, you know that Cassandra is familiar only with the more sympathetic parts of ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘Comus’ and of course ‘Samson Agonistes’. How well she remembers the opening lines of the last poem, and the voice that read them.
Did I tell you that we went to Prague the weekend before last? I sent Mr B. a card from the city where he was shot, when he was just sitting drinking beer, doing nobody any harm. Curiously enough – the day after we came back I was sitting in the Hotel Eden reading the Times and in it was a letter from Mr B. about the Sudeten Germans.
Well, we went to Prague via Bodenbach, and it was as hot as August and we sat in the Speisewagen mopping our faces and making rather waspish remarks to each other and then we went back to our carriage and a handsome young Czech began speaking to me in perfect English, and dear F. kept on wanting me to look out of the window at things, but everytime I looked I was too late and saw just nothing, or what one might see any day between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Well, afte
r 3½ hours in the train we arrived at the Masyrak – Masarak – Masyarak – well anyway you must surely know what I mean – station. And I was so terribly excited in the taxi to think that we were really in Prague, but F. was not at all, although he had never been there. Oh the Golden City, I kept saying, the Golden City. No, I do not think it is Golden, he said. To me it is Golden, it will always be Golden, and the streets are paved with sharp stones – even the pavements which made walking in high heels extremely uncomfortable.
In the evening a sort of Czechish Mr Barnicot attached himself to us – I think he directed us somewhere when we asked the way – I don’t remember exactly. Somehow there was never a time when he wasn’t with us. He was quite pleasant and helpful and spoke German. He thought F. and I were English as we occasionally spoke to each other in that tongue, and after a time F. said to me ‘I do not like to go with this gentleman more’ and so after we had politely exchanged addresses and I had coyly waved to him out of the back of a taxi we found ourselves alone – And you will not wish to hear any more, I’m sure.
We spent Sunday morning very conscientiously sightseeing, although I had a vague hankering after the English St Martin’s church which was advertised (if one can advertise Divine service) in the hotel. I wondered if I should find the English colony in Prague any more interesting than the Anglo-American one in Dresden. Here is the first of my impressions of the latter.
In the library attached to the church, getting out English books (after Divine Service at 11).
‘I am Barbara Pym,’ said Miss Pym in the manner of one feeling that she ought to say something. ‘I have just come to Dresden.’
‘Well, you have not taken long to find us,’ said Mrs Bruce in a welcoming tone. ‘ This lady here –’ she indicated a gaunt woman of middle years – ‘has been in Dresden five years and this is the first time she has been here.’
‘Yes,’ said the gaunt woman in a satisfied tone, ‘today is the first time.’
‘I think we all feel the need for worship in our English tongue when we are abroad,’ said Miss Pym in a low grave voice.