by Barbara Pym
But I mustn’t bore you with all this and apologise for having written this much in the role of indignant rejected middle-aged female author (a pretty formidable combination, don’t you think?). Of course I am hoping that somebody else will have the goodness to take it. Robert Liddell, whom I have known for many years (he was one of the characters in Some Tame Gazelle) has suggested people I could approach in Longmans, Gollancz and Hutchinson, and I have also been urged to try Fabers, so we shall see. But it may be that none of them will want it – do you think the title unsaleable? I fear the attachment is not so unsuitable as the public (reading) might wish and perhaps it is altogether too mild a book for present tastes. But then that has always been a sort of fault of mine. It might be printed privately by that man in Ilfracombe who advertises in the Church Times – with a subsidy from the Ford Foundation perhaps. Or it could be cyclostyled and distributed privately to a few select persons. You as a Librarian will, I am sure, appreciate the niceties of all this. How to enter it in a bibliography and all that.
Having taken up so much with all this I must now say what I ought to have said first – how very glad I am to know that Fabers are going to bring out another collection of your poems. And about time too! This writing of about two poems a year is all very well, but … I presume it will include all my favourite ones (esp. ‘Faith Healing’) and that you won’t leave any out? As for Jill, I shall be interested to read that because I have only read A Girl in Winter and that a long time ago. In what way are you revising it? – I suppose only in details, because isn’t a novel like a poem or a piece blown by a glassblower – once it is formed there is really nothing much you can do about it except tinker with details. Perhaps I should revise your novel and you mine. That might have interesting results.
Yes, I have a shrinking from publicity too, which is just as well as I seem to be doomed to failure and to sink down into obscurity, at present anyway. Yet I like to think that a few people will read what I have written.
I must again apologise for this boring and egotistical letter but you will, I’m sure, understand and make allowances. It ought to be enough for anybody to be the Assistant Editor of Africa, especially when the Editor is away lecturing for six months at Harvard, but I find it isn’t quite.
With all good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Barbara Pym
40 Brooksville Avenue
8 July 1963
Dear Mr Larkin,
Many thanks for your kind letter of astonishment and indignation. It was comforting to think of you leaving for a ‘short tour of Midland Universities’ and I hope it was comforting to you and ‘successsful’, if that is a suitable word.
Since I last wrote I have sent my book to Longmans, where I had an introduction, but they have decided not to publish it, and say what one had suspected, that ‘novels like An Unsuitable Attachment, despite their qualities, are getting increasingly difficult to sell’, though they did say it was ‘most excellently written’. And of course the more one looks at the books now being published, not to mention the stirring events of this year [the Profumo scandal], the less likely it seems that anyone, except a very select few, would want to read a novel by me. I could almost offer my services to Dr Stephen Ward as a ghost writer, for he is a Canon’s son and surely I could write about his early years if not the later ones.
Anyway I shall try a few more publishers before laying the book aside for ever. I thought I would try Macmillan and then perhaps Faber, though I would feel shy about accepting your kind offer to say a word to Charles Monteith. Because you haven’t read the book and it may be hopeless for all you know! It is rather a mild book. I shall try to make my next (which I have almost started) less so!
Excuse this scrappy letter, finished off at the end of a working day, surrounded by material for the October Africa – need I explain or apologise further?
All good wishes –
Barbara Pym
5 June. Oh those meals with her – indigestible Italian food in Soho restaurants of which one wouldn’t dare to see the kitchen. At least now they would not have to go to bed – no love only friendship or whatever this light irritability and boredom was called.
6 June. The middle-aged woman with an Italian lover (both academics) who comes over occasionally. His hatred of Naples and Neapolitans. Love of Guinness. He eats too quickly whereas she likes to linger over her food. He is preoccupied with death. After a strict Catholic upbringing the pagan layer has seeped through or oozed up to the top.
The (Presbyterian) Minister who complains that he has to work on Sundays and therefore ought to have another day off to make up for it. Yet outside his chapel we see the notice ‘This is the day that the Lord has given – let us rejoice in it’.
14 August. A wet day. Hampstead, Keats’ House. A pity it looks out on to some ugly modern houses. Inside it is rather austere and simple. The engagement ring he gave to Fanny Braun is a red stone (almandine: ‘a garnet of violet tint’ Concise Oxford Dictionary) set in gold. The curator has filled the conservatory with begonias, pelargoniums, geraniums, ‘We try to keep it a thing of beauty,’ he says. There are bunches of grapes hanging from the vine. How full of vines altogether Hampstead seems to be.
15 August. This afternoon to see the Henry Moore–Francis Bacon exhibition. It is a rather hot afternoon and the gallery (New London, Bond St) is underground so that the effect is claustrophobic which seems appropriate. The gallery is small and has all-over black carpet. The Bacon pictures look softer when you see them in the flesh than they do in hard glossy reproductions and the colours are beautiful. Some are of his friend. (‘Not very nice to show your friend looking like that’). Most of the people looking at the pictures seem to be solitary. And this was better because comments always sound so silly. Later, walking in Bond Street, I see a young man sitting alone in a grand antique shop, presumably waiting for customers. A woman admirer might be a great nuisance always coming to see him.
Deborah has been ‘taken up’ by Monica an older woman who works as an ‘Editor’ in one of our great University Presses. She is a devout Anglo-Catholic and wants to have the cottage blessed. The vicar comes and there is a rather awkward ceremony with the cat putting her head in the Holy Water. Monica should go on rather about some man where she works – now getting past the age for loving detachment – gradually hardens into hostility so that she now dislikes and avoids men, is annoyed if one comes and sits by her in a bus.
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
23 August 1963
Dear Mr Larkin,
Many thanks for your letter from Sark (who can be writing to me from there? I wondered suspiciously, not recognising your hand immediately). It was perhaps rash to buy a Panama hat though it will last you for the next thirty years or so – 32/6 seems expensive but not when you think of it as an investment.
I hope you did one or two poems – don’t you carry your MS book about with you everywhere or write them on the backs of envelopes? I’ve often wondered what poets did, thinking that perhaps they had no need of the more material aids to writing. On a wet afternoon recently I went to Keats’ house in Hampstead (never having been before) and saw that he had written two poems at least – inside his Ben Jonson and another book – Shakespeare, I think.
I like the idea of the Introduction for The Whitsun Weddings being anti-twenties – I suppose when you were at Oxford nobody came into The George wearing a silver lamé shirt or went around with a lizard on their shoulder or carried a toy kangaroo – and that was the early thirties when I was up. But surely there must have been girls, even in the austere one-bottle-of-wine a term forties – (shoulder-length pageboy hair, square shoulders and short skirts?). It must have been strange. The Meagre Time – don’t you think quite a good title for a novel?
Since I last wrote I’ve sent my book to Macmillan, but they have returned it regretting it wasn’t suitable for their list. So I have decided for the moment to lay it aside and
start something else when I can. I don’t feel that I can ‘improve’ An Unsuitable Attachment at present; though obviously it could be improved. I haven’t the energy to do it and it might still be unacceptable whatever I did to it. Three people who have read it tell me it isn’t below the standard of my others. (I’m incapable of judging now!) I did read it over very critically and it seemed to me that it might appear naive and unsophisticated, though it isn’t really, to an unsympathetic publisher’s reader, hoping for that novel about negro homosexuals, young men in advertising, etc.
If you would like to read it I should be very glad to send you one of my two copies, which are both idle at the moment. But I feel it would probably not be worth approaching Faber with it.
I see I haven’t congratulated you on being elected to your College SCR (St John’s?) – which I do most heartily – Was it Larkin, the Librarian (some problems of) or Larkin the poet – I suppose the latter.
All best wishes, etc,
Barbara Pym
40 Brooksville Avenue
9 October
Dear Mr Larkin,
Many thanks for your letter. After I had suggested you might like to read An Unsuitable Attachment, I began to feel it was rather an imposition, but having said it I felt it would be stupid to change my mind, so I have today posted my carbon copy of the MS to you. (To The Librarian’ marked Personal). Once anything gets into our Library it seems to be swallowed up, so this MS may find itself classified as a thesis or something (not that I mean to cast doubts on the efficiency of your staff!). Anyway I hope it won’t prove too awkward to handle.
You will see exactly why a new publisher wouldn’t take it on, I think; the beginning is too vague, too many characters, and there’s not enough plot. And who is the heroine? I think perhaps I could rewrite it some time, but not now, as I have started something else.
I hope you will have had a nice ‘tour’ and return strengthened and refreshed to the north, and ‘some problems of’. We have plenty with the next number of Africa – trying to avoid having two rather dull articles together, and nothing to put in ‘Notes and News’ but endless Conferences and new African Studies Centres springing up in the most unlikely places.
All good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Barbara Pym
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
40 Brooksville Avenue
16 October 1963
Dearest Bob,
Who is your wicked friend from Lagos? Do I know him? A taxi from Abeokuta must have been rather expensive. Do you know that Michael Crowder is apparently going to arrange for a performance of The Palm Wine Drinkard in Yoruba for the delectation of our Executive Council? At Daryll Forde’s suggestion, admittedly! That would be one entertainment Miss Pym would not wish to attend. We have so many Nigerians at St Lawrence’s now. There is a fashion for them getting baptised, too, started by a pretty girl called Florence (an Itsekiri) to whom I am godmother. Now a young man has fastened on to Hilary and asked her to ‘see him through’. Personally, I have the unworthy feeling that it is rather because he is attracted to Hilary than because he wants baptism, but I may be maligning him! Anyway, have the CMS (it would be them?) failed in the Niger Delta, for I should have thought that most of them would have been baptised already. We did meet one, at Florence’s baptism party, who was a lapsed Catholic and announced his intention of coming to our church, but he hasn’t shown up yet! At the party we drank Coca Cola, British wine and tea and ate biscuits, cake and delicious Nigerian rice and fish with hot peppery sauce.
Richard came one Saturday with the Mrs Beeton and stayed for a drink and an informal lunch. Then he drove us to Cricklewood where he was taking some pictures to be cleaned to an old retired Polish General.
Love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
3 November 1963
Dear Mr Larkin,
I was so much encouraged and cheered by your letter about An Unsuitable Attachment. In a way I hadn’t wanted you to read it, not only because it seemed a terrible burden for you to wade through a second-carbon typescript, but also I feared that you might find it so very much below the standard (if I can say that) of my others that I should feel I could never write another word! Anyway I am so glad it did give you some amusement and I am grateful for your comments and criticisms, which will be a help to me when I come to rewrite it, if I do, and also in a general way for the future. I can’t help feeling that it would be better to start at Faber’s with a new book, though, or with this one improved in some ways. I could certainly send them a better typescript, too! You are quite right about Ianthe and John. Ianthe is very stiff and John had been intended to be much worse – almost the kind of man who would bigamously marry a spinster, older than himself, for the sake of £50 in the P.O. Savings Bank! And some of the other people are too much like those in earlier books. I’m glad you liked Faustina.
I have no contractual obligations with Cape now – they had the first refusal of this one. I suppose it was money, really, they didn’t think they could sell enough copies. However well they do out of Ian Fleming and Len Deighton and all the Americans they publish, I suppose they can’t afford any book that will not cover its cost. (I don’t think I really feel this!)
How well you type – not that I ought to find that surprising. And not a word about your own books – have you written the Introduction yet or are you perhaps even now in the middle of it?
Life in Hull sounds much more carefree than London – is it like Eating People is Wrong? A sherry party at noon – how civilised that sounds, though there is the question of lunch afterwards. As for a party with twisting, I have really passed that now, though the other day I did go to a sort of Nigerian tea party where we did the Highlife. I was pleased to see that I had guessed the drinks that Granville Jameson [a West Indian in the original version of An Unsuitable Attachment] would offer correctly – there was Coke, port, Guinness and tea.
January Africa will be rather dull, I fear, but some more promising articles have appeared for April. I have hurt and offended somebody by leaving out an account of their Conference (9 a.m. Lecture in Amhani. 10.15 Tea and biscuits etc) but have written a propitiatory letter and promised to put it in the next number.
Best wishes and thanks,
B.P.
May I say ‘Philip’, if that is what people call you, or should we go through the academic convention of ‘Philip Larkin’ and ‘Barbara Pym’?
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
40 Brooksville Avenue
8 December 1963
Dearest Bob,
I have received the offprint, for which many thanks – the first time anyone has ever given me an inscribed one. How many free ones does J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria give its contributors? We give 25, but of course people, especially Americans, order lots more.
Richard has been reading some of my books – I gave him Excellent Women and A Glass of Blessings – do you think that a good choice? E. W. he found terribly sad, but witty – why is it that men find my books so sad? Women don’t particularly. Perhaps they (men) have a slight guilt feeling that this is what they do to us, and yet really it isn’t as bad as all that. I haven’t got on very far with the new book I started, though some of it forms in my mind, but the last few weeks I have been terribly busy and tired. Daryll’s book on the Yakö is in second proof stage and of course I have to give it much attention, being so fulsomely thanked in the foreword.
Love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
12 January 1964
Dear Philip,
I will start by making the usual apology for a typewritten letter, but I am just about to ‘do some writing’ and so to type something might put me in the mood. I have written seven or eight chapters of a new novel. Of course in the end it will turn out not to be any good, perhaps, but I may as well write something even if only for priv
ate circulation among a few friends. I am glad you lent it (my last MS) to a friend to read and hope she enjoyed at least some of it. Catherine used to be quite a favourite heroine of mine but she now seems less real to me than Wilmet and Prudence (my own favourites). Of course I am longing to read Jill (which I seem to have missed when it came out first) – I can’t believe it can be badly written – I thought, somehow, it was for the poems you had written the Introduction, or perhaps you have written two, which would be better still! I read the new Kingsley Amis on Boxing Day, sitting up in bed, eating cold duck – most enjoyable, of course not one of his best but I would rather have a lesser work by a writer I like than any number of masterpieces by.… I also thought the hero not so bad as the reviews had led one to believe – but it was rather difficult to imagine that somebody like Helène would really have gone to bed with someone made to sound so very unattractive? I can believe it was not much exaggerated, though, the American scene.
I hope the horn-players are less noisy. Are they a Thurberish couple or a jazz group or just people learning to play – you didn’t make it clear. I suppose 32 Pearson Park is a large Georgian or Victorian house converted into flats – horn players on the ground floor, Larkin on the first, and who up above? Or have you got the two top floors, what they call a maisonette? I do know that your part is newly decorated and that you have a cleaned tufty carpet (perhaps Indian?) in your sitting room.
I hope your driving lessons go well – it must be quite terrifying learning now, though people gain more confidence behind the wheel of a car, I believe. I did learn years ago in Shropshire but I have not kept up my licence as I have never had a car or much opportunity of driving one. I certainly couldn’t go to work in one as there is nowhere to park it in Fetter Lane. Which leads me on to speak of our Library (? capital L) and what the staff do. There seem to be more staff in the Library than anywhere else – I suppose their purpose is to discourage Visitors. Still, I expect the staff at the University Library, Hull, do just the same? We don’t buy a great many books, but have good holdings of foreign periodicals, some being exchanged with Africa. (I have sometimes thought of writing a Pinterish play about our Library.)