A Very Private Eye: The Diaries, Letters and Notebooks of Barbara Pym

by Barbara Pym

  March

  But I remember, I remember.… I was never more happy in my life than with him [Jay] in the spring of 1938. I am sure that I truly loved him and do still. I put this in writing so that in the years to come I may look back on it and reflect about it (as poor Friedbert would say) and smile and say, ‘No, no, it was only a passing infatuation,’ or ‘Yes, yes, you did love him...’

  Oh how absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself! Everybody should try it – no life can be complete without it. ‘When we have before us such objects as excite love and complacency...’ Love and complacency – and children should be flattered! So I will leave this notebook to Jay in my will.

  27 March [on holiday in Wales]. Pwllheli looked lovely – the sea calm and sparkling, the cardboard hills clear in the distance.

  Today was my darling Jay’s twenty-first birthday and I was able to drink his health in Burgundy (not Empire). I wish I knew where he was. As it was there was a beautifully religious effect in my room at night – a single candle before his photograph, lighting up his lovely, sparkling Russian eyes. Like an ikon – he would have appreciated it. One day I must remember to tell him. But I will not tell him that the reason why I had the candle there was because I had no reading lamp and wanted to read in bed. Children must still be flattered – even when they are twenty-one.

  Wednesday 3 April Oswestry. This morning I polished up an old box I found upstairs – it is of walnut with black and yellow inlay and a brass crest on the lid. It makes a beautiful box for relics – so in went all the letters, pressed flowers, Niersteiner corks, handkerchiefs, Tilia platyphyllos etc. It will still hold a few more letters, though it is quite nicely filled. I wonder what will happen to it. If I were to die tomorrow I should either have it sent back to him or buried with me (probably the latter) – but as it seems not very likely that I shall, I daresay it may be in my possession for years and years, until one day it becomes junk again and the box returns to the place where I found it – perhaps with the relics still in it. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.… What a great pleasure and delight there is in being really sentimental. I thought about this as I picked flowers in the garden this morning – violets – a great patch of them smelling lovely, sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, primroses plain and coloured, scyllas and wild celandines, so very much spring flowers. People who are not sentimental, who never keep relics, brood on anniversaries, kiss photographs goodnight and good morning, must miss a good deal. Of course it is all rather self-conscious and cultivated, but it comes so easily that at least a little of it must spring from the heart. I could write a lovely metaphysical poem about the relics of love in a box. Perhaps I will – for his seventieth birthday (in March 1989).

  Sunday 7 April. Today I have been reading Of No Importance – Rom Landau’s diary of February–October 1939. Many things in it I understand so well – the reluctance to sit down and begin writing so that one finds oneself doing all sorts of unnecessary tasks to postpone that moment of starting. And also the feeling that no day is really satisfactory if one hasn’t done some sort of work – preferably a few pages of writing, but anyway something useful. Why is it that one is still surprised to discover that other people feel these things too? I am beginning to be less surprised now. I used to think that I was the only person who the night before setting out to go abroad – even for a holiday – had the feeling that I’d give anything not to be going. But Jock says he feels it too and Mr Barnicot – both hardened travellers.

  My days pass so pleasantly and uneventfully but really with nothing accomplished. I have done so little writing this year. But writing it not now quite the pleasure it used to be. I am no longer so certain of a glorious future as I used to be – though I still feel that I may ultimately succeed. Perhaps I need some shattering experience to awaken and inspire me, or at least to give me some emotion to recollect in tranquillity. But how to get it? Sit here and wait for it or go out and seek it? Join the ATS and get it peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors? I don’t know. I expect it will be sit and wait. Even the idea of falling violently in love again (which is my idea of an experience!) doesn’t seem to be much help in the way of writing. I seem to have decided already the sort of novels I want to write. Perhaps the war will give me something. Perhaps the Home Front novel I am dabbling with now will get published. Perhaps.…

  But women are different from men in that they have so many small domestic things with which to occupy themselves. Dressmaking, washing and ironing, and everlasting tidying and sorting of reliques. I think I could spend my whole day doing such things, with just a little time for reading, and be quite happy. But it isn’t really enough, soon I shall be discontented with myself, out will come the novel and after I’ve written a few pages I shall feel on top of the world again.

  Friday–Sunday 19-21 April. In Oxford once more and it is melancholy because I know absolutely nobody except the Liddells – and they are charming in their ways, but it is not a way which fits all my moods. Respect and Esteem, the dry bones picked clean of flesh. To one who has known Oxford in the spring with Jay they are not enough.

  How differently one behaves now though on a melancholy evening! Instead of the abandonment of tears and the luxury of a good cry one thinks philosophically about what is the best thing to do – to smoke, get ready for bed, read a nice light novel and then sleep a long sleep. It is always better in the morning. It would be interesting for a novel to trace one’s development (if it is development) in matters of emotional restraint.

  I went to Evensong at Christ Church and there was a pretty girl there (rather like Jill Furse) looking sad, almost weeping. But the service was soothing and the singing exquisite, so I hope it comforted her.

  Friday 10 May. Oswestry. Today Germany invaded Holland and Belgium. It may be a good thing to put down how one felt before one forgets it. Of course the first feeling was the usual horror and disgust, and the impossibility of finding words to describe this latest Schweinerei by the Germans. Then came the realisation that the war was coming a lot nearer to us – airbases in Holland and Belgium would make raids on England a certainty. People one met were either gloomy (Mr Beauclerk, the electrician and Mr Cobb, the wireless shop), slightly hysterical (Miss Bloomer) or just plainly calm like Steele. I think I was rather frightened, but hope I didn’t show it, and anyway one still has the ‘it couldn’t happen to us’ feeling. Then there is the very real, but impotent, feeling of sympathy for these poor wretches who are the latest victims. In the news the Dutch and Belgian Ministers spoke and the Dutch Minister sent a greeting to his wife and children and grandchildren. Then it was the most difficult thing to control oneself, and I know that if I had been alone I couldn’t have done. Later came the news of Mr Chamberlain’s resignation and his speech, in that voice which brings back so many memories mostly of crisis. But even if he has failed, and we can’t be sure yet that he has, there is no more courageous man in the government or indeed anywhere, I’m sure of that. But Winston Churchill will be better for this war – as Hilary said, he is such an old beast! The Germans loathe and fear him and I believe he can do it.

  It was odd to remember that this day used to be a great anniversary for me. Seven years ago, on May 10th 1933, I first went out with Henry. Imagine a lovely summer evening at the Trout with the wistaria out and the soft murmuring of the water. And my heart so full of everything. And now, emotion recollected in tranquility.… dust and ashes, dry bones. Or are they not so dry as all that? I don’t suppose I shall ever know.

  Thursday 20 February 1941. This evening I was looking for a notebook in which to keep a record of dreams and I found this diary, this sentimental journal or whatever you (Gentle Reader in the Bodleian) like to call it. Perhaps it is hardly a diary, for I keep a bald record of everyday happenings in a neat little book which has a set space for every day. And I write in this book only when the occasion seems to demand it. In the spring, when I think of past loves like Jay or when something momentous happens, l
ike the invasion of Holland and Belgium (but not when France gave in – perhaps I’d got used to shocks by then. Now all I remember is sitting in deck chairs on the lawn with Hilary, the garden full of sweet williams).

  It hasn’t been such a bad winter as last, although there has been all the frightful bombing. We’ve had sirens too and a few bumps in the distance (in August) but nothing worse than long nights at the First Aid Post, smoking, knitting, talking, eating and trying to sleep in the stuffy air, covered with scratchy Army blankets.

  I’ve worked hard in the YMCA canteens at the Tented Camp and Parkhall. I’ve even been temporarily – though it was quite violent while it lasted – in love. Anyway it has all passed now and my heart is free again with Jay’s memory warming it, especially with February and March coming on – his months. I hear no news of him – I don’t write.

  I have been doing quite a lot of writing lately [her ‘spy novel’] which is satisfying and pleases me if nobody else. I have also been improving my mind – I’ve read Jane Austen – Emma most lately, Scott – Redgauntlet, Johnson’s Tour in the Hebrides with Boswell – I’ve had a Scottish craze lately. At the Tented Camp I grew fond of a young soldier who had been a waiter in many of the best Scottish hotels – LMS on the china, stags’ heads and palms. Anyway, because of that, or for some more subtle reason, I took to listening to the news in Gaelic and poring over maps of the West Highlands.

  I’ve also read Vanity Fair, after hearing it as a serial on the wireless. That marvellous Waterloo chapter was especially appropriate this summer although I had nobody in France or at Dunkirk. But perhaps one could almost enjoy it for that reason – only enjoy isn’t at all the word.

  This very evening on which I’ve written all this I was looking among my books and took out John Piper’s Shell Guide to Oxfordshire. I went all through it, a nostalgic pilgrimage in churches and churchyards – most of which I have never seen at all but shall see one day – and lingered over the view of Blenheim’s park and lake by which are quoted some favourite lines of Matthew Arnold from Thyrsis.

  Friday 4 July. Here it is – summer and at least the dream of flowers has come true. In my room delphiniums, sweet williams, roses and sweet peas. Tonight (rashly) I wrote to Jay. Afterwards picking flowers I thought of ‘Go Lovely Rose’ and

  How small a part of time they share

  That are so wondrous sweet and fair

  Also of the chicken without any bone, the cherry without any stone and the baby without any crying. The first poem is obvious, the second [‘I gave my love a cherry’] less so but still fairly obvious.

  I have been reading Katherine Mansfield’s scrapbook – and I feel that I might do more with this. I have my commonplace book for extracts and poems, but this could be bits of stories and ideas as well as a kind of superior (and very sentimental) diary.

  When Mrs Morris comes she brings her grandchild Dorothy with her. Dorothy follows you about or if you are sitting in the garden stands and peers at you through the trelliswork by the back door. One morning when I was washing up the breakfast things she came and stood with her hands at the draining board, staring at me. ‘Wordsworth could have made more of this,’ I felt, but I could think of nothing to say except to tell her to be a good girl and go and sit down at the table. We are embarrassed when children stare at us – there is something unnerving about it.

  I have written a story called ‘Goodbye, Balkan Capital’ which I have sent to Penguin New Writing, but three weeks have passed and I have heard nothing. Shall I ever succeed – I begin to doubt it sometimes and now is a hopeless time to try. All the same I might write something for Woodrow Wyatt’s English Story. Something nostalgic, faintly Russian and true – period (for me) July 1939.

  A table too near the band in Lyons and thoughts, a flashback to the dark house in Mayfair and his eyes looking out over Lake Maggiore. Very sad but gradually the music puts me in a better frame of mind and I go back cheerfully to wash stockings in Bayswater. Or could I meet somebody thinking to be consoled and finding that they need consoling too? It must be logical and yet it seems that the best stories nowadays are more atmospheric than anything else – incomplete rather than rounded off – anyway it mustn’t be too long as my things generally are.

  Or I might do something about a child like Dorothy or evacuees.

  15 July. Pwllheli. To see an airman or soldier with Poland or Czechoslovakia on his arm makes me think that there could be a story about him. He is at a dance in a ramshackle place like the pavilion with the band playing an old Continental tango like ‘Regentropfen’ and he thinks of his estate in Poland and the great dogs or his forests or the peasants sitting on the ground drinking vodka. Or he is in a provincial hotel with stags’ heads and dim stained mirrors. The Czech could remember that glass restaurant in Prague on a Saturday afternoon with dancing and very full of gay young people – it looks over the water. And lilies-of-the-valley being sold in the streets.

  20 July. It is extraordinary how the slightest emotional disturbance (like hoping to have a little German conversation with a Czech officer) can put all other ideas out of one’s head, making one stupid and unable to concentrate on anything intelligent like writing or any book but the lightest novel. It is humiliating to discover that one has not grown out of this sort of thing, but enlightening too, a useful experience and happily it passes so that it is all the more satisfying and peaceful to be normal once more. I suppose it can go on happening indefinitely, at any age, or I shall know when I get there – if anything like this ever happens to me again. It was so very slight too, and had really nothing to do with the Czech personally – just the desire for a little Stimmung, which conversation with an attractive foreigner can bring.

  14 August. Oswestry. I have been reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Although I have read her before this is the first time I have really taken note of her special technique. It is one that commends itself to me – I find it attractive and believe I could do it – indeed, I already have, in a mild way. Sitting by the kitchen fire drying my hair, a cat, a basket chair and a willow tree and Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt meeting in the middle of the ocean to discuss War and Peace Aims.

  Tuesday 7 April. 1942 Bristol. Today Hilary came back from a weekend with the news that Jay is a Major in the Persian Army. How beautiful, how right, how more than mildly amusing!

  And it is spring again and I have noticed that almond trees and forsythia blossom in Clifton as in North Oxford, and the clear evening light comes into the house and one can pick daffodils in the garden. But I think I have noticed a little less joyousness and hope in myself – a more sober, damped down, possibly more suitable frame of mind.

  The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,

  The heart less bounding at emotion new,

  And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again.

  [Matthew Arnold]

  I recited these lines to myself last Friday evening when, at blackout time, I was drawing the dusty red baize curtains across the windows of the ramshackle building where I work and firewatch once a week.

  But the heart can still bound a little at the idea of Jay in a fez (dark red, I hope) and the idea that people might one day whisper about me and say – ‘Wasn’t there once something about a Persian Major?’

  To Henry and Elsie Harvey in Stockholm

  [As this letter was going to Sweden, a neutral country, it had to be written in guarded terms as it would be censored]

  The Coppice,

  Leigh Woods,

  Bristol.

  2 July 1942

  My dearest Henry and Elsie!

  Today I had a letter from Betty saying she had had a cable from you last week with the news that you were in Stockholm – and that you have a daughter! You cannot imagine how pleased I am at this news and how happy to know that you are safe. I have thought of you constantly during these last two years and it has been awful having no news, though Betty always passed on to me anything she heard, which w
asn’t usually very much. By the way she didn’t mention Elsie in her letter today so I presume it is my darling Swedish sister who has the daughter and not somebody else! If you have to take a second wife, Henry, you know who it is to be. ‘We need not be speaking of that just now,’ said Henry in a low, hurrying voice. ‘It is not a very suitable way to begin a letter.’

  I haven’t got on with this letter very well – I think I was a little depressed by being told that I couldn’t possibly send a letter to Sweden. But as I haven’t asked anybody who really knows I may as well go on writing, and if I can’t send it I will keep it until that happy day when we are all drinking tea together in 86B Banbury Road. (As I write I can still smell the peculiar smell of paint and carpet and new furniture that used to linger in the hall and see the china horse and the Degas and the long satin curtains in the sitting room. And old Barnicot coughing over a Craven A.)

  I had a lovely long letter from Jock today. It was dated April 15th and he had just had the letter I wrote in January. A long time, but it is a comfort to know that letters do arrive eventually. Of course all his news is very stale now and with the position in Egypt being so bad one doesn’t know whether he is still in Alexandria, where he was when he wrote. I daresay he has gone back to Cairo – the Germans were supposed to be about 60 miles from Alexandria at the weekend and we have been hanging on pretty well but of course one never knows what may happen. Jock wrote very cheerfully and seemed to be busy teaching Greeks, lecturing in the University of Alexandria, teaching Latin in the British Evening Institute and also running a Literary Society, with lectures on Gerard Manley Hopkins, Compton-Burnett and even Mr Huxley (against his will, he said). He has sent the translation of the Greek novel Eroica to Jonathan Cape and Jonathan doesn’t like it at all and advises him to offer it to John Lehmann at the Hogarth Press. I wonder if it will appear. It doesn’t seem right somehow to think of Jockie with all the New Writing people. I once sent a story to John Lehmann but of course he rejected it. He always looks so fierce that I hardly thought he would like it.