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

by Barbara Pym

  Endings: Fr Bode beaming through his spectacles and saying ‘Oh but you mustn’t leave us – there’s the bazaar, the outing to Runnymede, and the party to welcome Fr —.’

  21 September. Greenwich. 34 Croom’s Hill where Denton lived. It stands back a little between 32 and 36 – square and flat with a nice front door and fanlight. Three floors, white painted windows, dull red brick, net half-curtains. Green plant (azalea?) in upper window. Tiny patch of rather bald grass in front with dustbins. I sat down on the low stone wall opposite by the park with my umbrella up for it was raining and gazed for a few minutes, but I saw nobody.

  5 October. Headline in Daily Mirror. Secret Love of Vanished Vicar (splendid hymn metre).

  All over The Times and Telegraph ladies (often titled) are forced to sacrifice their minks – sometimes ‘going abroad’ – the picture it conjures up – one wonders.

  January 1957. One talks so gaily about ‘old loves’, but there comes a time when they really are old.

  August. At a writers’ conference at Swanwick. It really makes one despair when someone gets up and asks if publishers like chapters to be all the same length.

  Meet a man who has ‘an amorphous mass’ of humorous material and a big shapeless novel that can’t be controlled.

  Dulcie could make some kind of shopping list which might have on it ‘Husband for Viola’.

  26 October. Staying with Ailsa. In the afternoon we went in the car on a Denton pilgrimage. It was a fine but sunless afternoon, the sky grey-white. Many lovely beech trees in autumn colours – carpets of leaves in the woods. We went through Plaxol to Crouch – notice a pub, the Rose and Crown. Crouch is a straggling village with apple orchards. We drove on then came to a board saying Middle Orchard on the right. There were two houses, one near the road. You go down a short grassy lane, bumpy, to get to Middle Orchard. It is a clapboard house, white (with grey and black) with a balcony on the side nearest the road. Two men were working in the garden or orchard between the two houses. We didn’t speak to anyone.

  Mr Neale (OUP) entertained Mrs Wyatt, Carol Robson and BP to lunch today. Mrs R. is rather beautiful but nails not quite worthy.

  When the woman’s daughter (who had divorced and remarried) came to tea with her new husband, the mother shows her disappointment by not making any fresh cakes and giving them ‘just a bit of sponge and some biscuits’.

  Dreadful scene in library. Viola and Aylwin overheard by Dulcie and Miss Foy. He is talking in a Henry Jamesian way ‘There is – as it were – somebody else’. Can it be me? Dulcie wonders, almost in dread, but it is Laurel.

  8 April 1958. How would she eat when alone? Half a lobster and a glass of Chablis at Scott’s – or baked beans on toast and Coca Cola in the Kenbar at Barkers?

  29 April. Last week we went down to the little room (at the I.A.I.), DF, Mrs Nadel and I and opened the trunks of the late Professor S. F. Nadel. In the top of the trunks brightly coloured African rugs or hangings – underneath the notebooks tidily packed. Notes neatly annotated and indexed but some in German shorthand. Even Mrs Nadel cannot read them now.

  Sunday morning early. Two strange people in church in front of me. He in a hand-knitted ‘Norwegian’ pullover, she in a raincoat with tartan-lined hood and black lace mantilla. Both with rather new-looking English missals.

  A Glass of Blessings published on 14 April. Only 3 reviews up to 29 April, none wholly good. My humour deserts me when I am dealing with romance, I am tone-deaf to dialogue, am moderately amusing. Reviewers all women. Young?

  17 May. A station wagon draws up outside the home of the Siamese diplomats next door and out get two Buddhist priests in orange robes. We wait to see them leave – two of the servants come out and a basket, obviously containing food and drink is put in the car. Later the priests themselves come out and are driven away by the (English) chauffeur. I wonder if the appearance of two English clergymen would arouse such interest in the suburbs of Bangkok.

  15 June. Wellington House Lydden. Fête on the Saturday, washing up at the back of the tea marquee among rank nettles and elder bushes. By my bed Honor has put Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879). How almost enviable were the lives of those Victorian lady hymn writers – the leisurely travel abroad, faith and purpose in life. In her study ‘her American typewriter’, her ‘harp-piano’ at which she composed hymns. Somebody had given her ‘A Journal of Mercies’ in which every day she noted down the particular mercy she had received.

  Young man from the Clarendon Press. Low Church Anglican, plays cricket, likes chess, bumbling. Married with wife who looks very like him – untidy curling hair.

  12 May 1959. The telephone wakes me up ringing – it is 1 a.m. It goes on and on but I don’t answer it. It could be the stolid unimaginative persistence of a wrong number or the sly voice of a ‘nasty’ caller. In a book it might be an inconsiderate woman friend. Young man sitting opposite to me has 3 sausage rolls, a roll, baked beans and chips. Not a very well balanced meal for a hot day. In the little Lyons it’s cool and dark with the air conditioning.

  In the Buttery reading old Tatlers: ‘sincere and reverent ceremony’ – describing a society wedding – so one would hope!

  January 1960. Evensong and Benediction in a N. London church, rather sparsely attended. The young man in the college scarf looking for he knows not what and fleeing when he is offered tea in the Church Hall afterwards, or an older man who has lost his faith coming out of nostalgia and perhaps the memory of a beautiful server or acolyte.

  4 February. Going to the vet in Lancaster Gate to fetch Tati. Waiting room has large table with copies of The Field and Country Life. Round the walls photographs of grateful patients, some with their owners! The whole place slightly shabby as if the animals have made it so. Disconcerting cat’s cry from the cattery. Where is it? One is not allowed to see the animals. The vet’s assistant is almost excessively reassuring, more so than a human doctor, as if he expects tears, even hysterics, which they must often get.

  Laurie Fleming stays at home with his mother – does the flowers beautifully – Is it now the unmarried son who does this?

  In the church one of the servers appears with startlingly golden hair – curls falling over his eyes give him an air of sickly Victorian piety.

  To Bob Smith in Ibodan

  40 Brooksville Avenue

  21 October 1960

  Dearest Bob,

  This morning I had the proofs of my new book which is called No Fond Return of Love, the title they made me have instead of A Thankless Task. My heart sinks rather as I open the book and begin reading – who can enjoy it? I wonder. Why isn’t it much better? Then I look over some of the bits I like to cheer me up. Hazel is going to correct the proofs for me. They say it will come out in the spring.

  Love,

  Barbara

  St Valentine’s Day. In the flower shop at Ludgate Circus – a queue of people – but they are all women!

  [This is the first letter to Philip Larkin, who had written to suggest that he might write a review article about her next novel when it was published.]

  40 Brooksville Avenue

  1 March 1961

  Dear Mr Larkin,

  Thank you very much for your letter. I was very pleased and flattered to think that you should have had the idea of writing an essay on my books and am grateful to you for telling me about it, even though it was too late to do it. Perhaps, if you still feel like doing it, I could let you know when my next is ready – (so far only four chapters written). It will be my seventh which seems a significant number.

  N.F.R.L. (originally called A Thankless Task!) has had a better reception than I thought it would have, and your letter certainly encourages me to go on.

  Yours sincerely,

  Barbara Pym

  1 March. Soup, jelly and bread and butter – that’s not much of a meal for a man I think as I sit in the Kardomah.

  8 March. Sophia finds an exquisite piece of claw sheath, like mother of pearl, in
the cat’s basket.

  11 April 1961. Rome. Fr John Francis Gordon knocks back a Tio Pepe at the bar while we wait to be called for our flight. He also buys up all the little bottles of brandy on the plane – but he is nice (and Irish). Many nuns waiting at Leonardo da Vinci airport waving handkerchiefs and with bunches of flowers to welcome back a Mother Superior – we are surrounded by them. Near the hotel an illuminated sign shines continuously in the night BANCO SANTO SPIRITO (on a par with TAKE COURAGE).

  Rome I.A.I. Meeting [meeting of the I. A.I. Executive Council]. Lunch at Roxy Cinema Café (which is very good) then I had a short siesta while Ailsa went to the Officers’ Meeting. The first Reunion was at 6. A strange collection of people most of them carrying or wearing raincoats. I felt like Prudence, overdressed in cream Courtelle and a pink and white striped carnation from the spray sent to us by the Tourist Bureau. Then we all moved over to the Ritz for the ‘informal reunion’ – walls covered with pleated silk, gold plush sofas and chairs, pictures of Roman emperors – a strange decor. Plenty of drinks and canapés. Then a very slow dinner at the Hotel Sporting with DF, Evelyn Forde, Kenneth Robinson and Ailsa. Afterwards for a drink in the bar at the underground station – v. draughty, loud juke box. The Chairman [Gouverneur Mueller] is seen approaching – a bored figure in a Homburg hat, his luggage being carried. He joins us. A strange setting altogether.

  13 April. Meeting 9.30 to 12.45 p.m. Then lunch at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘too much wine and too much marble’ as Contessa Grottanelli said. Each lady had a red rose by her plate and Mel Herskovits told me how he mixed tobacco in a great bowl.

  14 April. After the Lugard Lecture we went to a cocktail party at the Grottanelli’s flat, high up in a rather squalid building in Largo Arenula. Crossing over the square we went underground and saw the thin cats (mostly grey tabby or tortoiseshell) which are said to be fed by elderly ladies. At the party, as we were leaving, a nice glimpse of Vinigi in his study, handing out offprints of an article to admiring Africans. Then a strange dinner with Ailsa, Lucy Mair, Kenneth Robinson and Nana Nketsia at Checco. Much Chianti. Back in N. Nk’s large Ghana Embassy car and the first glimpse of the Spanish Steps massed with red, pink and white azaleas.

  20 April. To Amalfi and then went to Ravello on the bus. Acres of lemon groves all covered with matting and branches so that you don’t see them until you are close to. It is for the lemon groves that one loves Italy – also for oranges with stalks and leaves still on them and the little bundles of dried lemon leaves which you unwrap to reveal a few delicious lemon-flavoured raisins in the middle. The cathedral at Ravello – pulpit supported by lions of marble, walking, their legs going forward. Also in the garden of the Villa Rifolo a little marble lion licking its cub.

  The Church ought to have a lot of summer festivals – Corpus Christi or St Peter and St Paul would do – so that we can have an evening mass with lots of incense, all doors open and hymns with soppy words and Romish tunes.

  The new Archbishop of Canterbury has a lovely lap for a cat.

  A rather rich lunch hour in St Paul’s churchyard. All the people sitting on seats with lunch, knitting etc, raising their faces to the mild September sun. I go round to the back where the pieces of broken marble are – it is all white and beautiful, looks good enough to eat – broken off bits of friezes and urn stands. In the middle of such a pile, as if on the rocks at the sea-side sits a woman (middle-aged of course) drinking tea from a plastic cup, the traffic swirling in front of her. I pass the mulberry tree, but it is too late for there to be squashed mulberries on the pavement. Coming round the other side and down by the shops I go to the secondhand bookshop. There is a band playing on the steps of St Paul’s which can be heard in the shop. It is a boy’s band and they play the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhäuser at which point inconsequential conversation starts in the shop between the owner and a woman about dogs/cats. As I go out the band plays ‘Land of Hope and Glory!’ Surely something for me here. John and Ianthe in the churchyard and Rupert and Penelope hearing the band?

  To Philip Larkin

  40 Brooksville Avenue

  23 September 1961

  Dear Mr Larkin,

  When I had your letter it seemed impossible that I should ever get on with another novel, but now I am nearly half-way through and the last part is usually quicker than the first, so perhaps I shall finish something by the spring. Then, if it ever gets to the stage of proof copies, I’ll ask my publisher to send you one, so that you can decide if you’d like to do anything about it. But even if you don’t I should like you to have it because you seem to like – or at least to understand – poor Wilmet and Keith. I think incubus or familiar describes him well. I’m considering what you said about bringing characters from one’s earlier books into later ones and I agree that one does have to be careful. It can be a tiresome affectation. With me it’s sometimes laziness – if I need a casual clergyman or anthropologist I just take one from an earlier book. Perhaps really one should take such a very minor character that only the author recognises it, like a kind of superstition or a charm.

  Yours sincerely,

  Barbara Pym

  40 Brooksville Avenue

  15 October 1961

  Dear Mr Larkin,

  Your novel I liked was called A Girl in Winter, but written quite a long time ago, I think? Did you write any more and why didn’t you go on being a novelist? Because you preferred to be a poet or other things pressed too heavily? I apologise for this string of questions. Today my sister was tidying her desk and the old photograph albums reminded me of that lovely poem of yours.

  My novel goes on, but slowly, so probably all the Literary Editors (why do I give them capital letters?) will have changed or died by the time it is in proof so you can relax for about a year and not think too much of what may have been a rash suggestion on your part (though I am still pleased at the thought of it!). Unfortunately I am the Assistant Editor of Africa, though I quite enjoy it, and I also have to see all the books we publish through the press. The only thing is that it takes too much time and energy. A pity one has to earn one’s living – why isn’t there a fund for middle-aged writers to have a year off to write a novel! No – Hull has no anthropology department, so I shouldn’t think you’d take Africa. Incidentally I have never been to Africa, nor have I a degree in Anthropology, but I know the jargon now – as esoteric as the terminology of jazz!

  Yours sincerely,

  Barbara Pym

  40 Brooksville Avenue

  11 December 1961

  Dear Mr Larkin,

  The novel is getting on – no title yet, of course, and none of the splendid collection I have seems to fit it. Now I have to force myself to type some of the earlier chapters because that’s the only way I can tell what it’s going to be like – whether it is worth going on, and all those other depressing thoughts that come. But I can see now that it will get finished if I am spared. No – nobody has ever written about the ‘art’ of my books – sometimes they have been well reviewed – other times not at all. Excellent Women was best received – A Glass of Blessings worst!

  I can’t imagine you writing anything ‘knowing and smart’ (not even Jazz) so it must be only your own harsh self criticism – of course being so young when you wrote it, it would certainly be different from what you’d write now. Perhaps it is better not to publish anything before one’s thirty – I mean novels. I wrote Some Tame Gazelle when I was 22. Then rewrote it about ten years later.

  I don’t think you are a 500-words-a-day-on-the-Riviera sort of writer – perhaps nobody is now. What would one do for the rest of the day, having spent the morning writing? Lead a worthless life, I suppose, and how pleasant it might be for a bit. Then one would get involved with the English church – there would be no escape.

  Yours sincerely,

  Barbara Pym

  40 Brooksville Avenue

  25 February 1962

  Dear Mr Larkin,

  Th
ank you for your letter which gave me the rather disquieting picture of you sitting, pen-in-hand – before a daunting pile of my novels. You will be relieved to hear that progress on the seventh is very slow, but perhaps sure – I sometimes wonder. In any case, I don’t think I’ve written to you since seeing your very charming tribute in the Guardian which gave me so much pleasure that it really absolves you from doing anything else.

  If you feel like asking me anything about my ‘works’ please do – the less great are probably far more explicit than the great, so it wouldn’t be like asking Mary McCarthy. On the other hand it is often better not to know things. I liked a poem of yours in the Listener some weeks ago – one rather puzzling line, but poets are not to be asked to explain why and how.

  The Geography of Communication – sounds like a poem – I will look out for it – not, I think, on my station bookstall, which has lurid paperbacks, women’s magazines and an occasional surprise like The Times Ed. Sup., but perhaps at Paddington. OUP publishes our books too – we have a sort of joking relationship with them.

  Yours,

  B.P.

  To Bob Smith in Ibadan

  40 Brooksville Avenue

  9 March 1962

  Dearest Bob,

  Excuse this Institute paper, but Friday afternoon seems a good time to write to you, as I make it a rule never to do anything that may upset me for the weekend and so like to put Africa and our irritating authors out of my mind.

  We are now in the throes of Lent at St L’s, as you may imagine – Imposition of Ashes on Wednesday evening – Stations of the Cross tonight. I hope you are getting some of these things. Lent must seem odd in the tropics, but no doubt you are used to it by now. Hazel thought somebody might have a bouillabaisse flown over from Marseilles for Ash Wednesday. But fish and chips in Lyons was perhaps more of a deprivation.