by Barbara Pym
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
31 July 1970
Dear Philip,
Thank you for a beautiful card from the Hebrides – I dare say you are still there plodding through Scottish verse and Drinkwater. The latter reminds me so much of my schooldays in the twenties, though he was nothing like as popular as Rupert Brooke and Charles Hamilton Sorley.
Your going to All Souls [to work on The Oxford Book] suggests a plot for a novel though I doubt if I could write it. Middle-aged unmarried female don waits eagerly for the autumn when a friend of her Oxford days (the well-known poet, librarian and whatever else you like) is coming to spend a year at All Souls (doing some kind of research, perhaps). At first it is all delightful and they go for beautiful autumnal walks on Shotover (? can one still do this) but unknown to her he has been visiting a jazz club in the most squalid part of the town (where is that now?) and has fallen in love with a nineteen year old girl … the ending could be violent if necessary – or he could just go off with the girl, leaving the female don reading Hardy’s poems. Perhaps it is a novel by Rachel Trickett, the first part, anyway?
I have no news of a publisher for The Sweet Dove and I don’t think any one will ever publish it, though I go on sending it round. It is a wonder to me now that I ever published anything and I can hardly believe that I did! The article in Ariel could appear this autumn, but if it doesn’t apparently it can’t be till next autumn, I don’t know why and neither does its author! Please don’t feel guilty for not having written about me yourself – you have so often encouraged and cheered me, not to speak of amused, in countless ways, and that is better than anything.
My sister has bought a car and I am going to learn to drive. I wonder if I shall be able to do it? I did learn years ago but haven’t kept it up and things are very different now, as people gleefully tell me. So I can but try, at the driving school which appears to be run by an Irishman – It would be a comfort if the car could be blessed at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Quex Road, Kilburn. I will let you know how I get on.
I suppose I ought to be grieved and shocked at your Library’s withdrawal from SCOLMA, but I am not a bibliographer at heart so received the news without any emotion but a slight pleasure. The trouble with bibliographies about Africa is that they are getting so enormous that the quarterly one we publish in Africa is crowding out original work, such as articles and even book reviews. I long for the old innocent days when the bibliography was 8 or 10 pages instead of the 16–20 it now is!
I have had a week’s holiday so far (in that good June weather) and hope to take some more in September. We picnicked just outside Iris Murdoch’s village (Steeple Aston) but nothing sensational happened. Another time we got stuck in Woodstock and an L.P. Hartley-like chauffeur wearing dark glasses came to our aid.
Best wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
10 August. Had my third driving lesson from Peter – grinding round Willesden and Cricklewood in the rain in second gear.
20 August. If you were ever romantic, and, of course, you can’t possibly be now, at your age, imagine lunching with somebody and him urging you to drink most of the wine because it makes him feel so sleepy. Tall Irish Murdoch waitress, perhaps a student doing a holiday job.
31 August. It seems unnatural not to be writing bits for novels in one’s notebook. What sort of novel could I write now? A gothic novel – I thought of this as I made my daily visit to the nectarine tree, spread out against the south-facing wall at the top of the garden. They seem old-fashioned fruit with their hard red cheeks, not soft and downy like a peach. Why shouldn’t it be a modern gothic novel. What are the ingredients. A heroine, but much more of a heroine than Mildred or Wilmet. A setting. A hero. Mystery. A modern version of Jane Eyre?
6 September. Bob and I met at Green Park station to go to the Chapel Royal (11.15 Sung Eucharist), but when we got there found it was closed until October. ‘And you’re too late for the Guards’ Chapel,’ said the man. So we made our way to St James Piccadilly where Matins had started. The rector (the Rev. William Pye Baddeley – brother of Hermione and Angela) was in the middle of reading the 2nd lesson in a modern version, where Mary Magdalen breaks the box of precious ointment over Jesus.… ‘Here endeth that perfectly lovely lesson,’ he declared. The congregation was mostly elderly and well dressed. We prayed for visitors to London, especially those from the USA and there were some dollar bills in the plate.… Then we had tea at the Ritz (which seemed to be the only place open round there) sage green and pink upholstery. But the reclining nymph at the fountain is golder and brassier than in Anthony Powell’s The Acceptance World where she is bronze. Still the vaguely Latin-American looking people and the heat very fierce (central heating on a hot summer’s day). But the waiter who brought our tea was Irish and it was hot and strong.
To Bob Smith in Lagos
40 Brooksville Avenue
6 November 1970
Dearest Bob,
I am feeling encouraged because The Sweet Dove was very nearly accepted by Peter Davies, and I sent it completely out of the blue with no indication that I had ever written anything else. One of the directors (Mark Barty-King) wrote me a long letter, quoting five readers’ reports, some of which were very flattering. It was ‘very accomplished’ and ‘a minor tour de force’ but the general opinion was that it wasn’t quite powerful enough or plotted enough to appeal to enough readers. I have had to write back and reveal my secret, but I don’t suppose they can change their minds now. One of the less kind reports said that it was clever-clever and decadent – that made me feel about 30 years younger!
The Bishop’s chaplain [Fr Jennings] has now materialised and it is all a bit like A Glass of Blessings. He hasn’t moved into the house in Kingswood Avenue yet because it is in a filthy condition and it needs to have £5,000 spent on it (surely it can’t be 5,000, but that is what he said). He is going to have one of the front downstairs rooms made into a garage and is going to have ordinands living in the house. I gather he is director of the ordinands, if that is the correct title, as well as chaplain to Graham Willesden, who is no longer a Suffragan but Bishop of a new province which seems to include us and Hazel, far west in Ealing.
Love,
Barbara
9 November. I visit the Library at LSE. Waiting down below at the enquiry desk – the rough students with longhair and strange one-sex clothes make me feel old and vulnerable.
What is wrong with being obsessed with trivia? Some have criticised The Sweet Dove for this. What are the minds of my critics filled with? What nobler and more worthwhile things?
26 November. At the National Portrait Gallery with Hazel to hear the readings about Andrew Marvell. Not ‘My love is of a birth so rare’ – but, of course, ‘Had we but world enough and time’ – the audience of middle-aged and elderly ladies must surely have had the poem recited to them when young. I sat with bowed head as Robert Harris (himself a little too old) read it, but Hazel detected a triumphant smirk or two.
Reading Charlotte M. Yonge’s The Daisy Chain and see the echoes or rather foreshadowings of Ivy Compton-Burnett in it. Ivy would have made Dr May marry Meta Rivers and she would then have had an affair with Norman. Some patches of Ivy dialogue too. Oh that some idea might come to me. It is enjoyable and very readable.
To Bob Smith in Lagos
40 Brooksville Avenue
31 December 1970
Dearest Bob,
There was no Christmas service at St Lawrence’s which was rather sad, but of course there are plenty of nearby churches to go to. We went to St Anne’s. A nice service and the church was really warm. Next Sunday Fr Jennings will be back and he does feel the cold so and certainly lets one know it. We fear he is rather pampered but certainly the object of interest and amusement. It never does to ask after his health or he will tell you. Work is going on on his house. It was burgled recently and some coffee tables were stolen, also an ‘antique’ clo
ck which had been given to one of his ordinands. When commiserated with, however, he said the clock was really rather a hideous Victorian thing and not at all to his own taste, which Hilary and I thought rather mean of him. Little, of course, does he realise who is drinking it all in!
Much love,
Barbara
22 April 1971. It amuses me to read in a review of Malcolm Muggeridge’s book about Mother Teresa that he describes Newman’s ‘Lead kindly light’ as ‘exquisite’. Not quite the word.
27 April. Morning at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. O little lump – almost a subject for a metaphysical poem. Conveniently opposite are an ABC café and a pub. I choose the latter (Private Bar). Two elderly ladies with light ale, coughing and cackling, and an Irish Landlord. Andrew Cruickshank said that in the 18th century there was moss growing round the high altar of St Paul’s cathedral. Can this be true?
To Bob Smith in Lagos
St Mary’s Hospital
Harrow Road
1 May 1971
Dearest Bob,
I don’t know how to prevent this letter being a shock to you, as it has been to me – because this time last week I never imagined I should be in hospital!
I discovered a lump on my left breast, immediately went to the doctor who got me in here for an examination next day, the day after I was taken into hospital, the next day they operated and now, two days later here I am writing to tell you about it.
Of course I couldn’t have chosen a worse time, with Hilary away in Greece, but everyone has been marvellous and all those clichés about one’s true friends are proved right. Hazel a tower of strength, Mrs P.C. coming round with grapes, my friends at the Institute rallying round.
You will have guessed that it was cancer and that was why they took away the left bosom. I can’t make out whether the other ladies here are breastless (like Amazons?) or have other things the matter with them. Everyone is so kind – the black hands and the white hands, so cool and firm and comforting.
Don’t worry about me, I am being well cared for.
Much love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
22 June 1971
Dear Philip,
Many thanks for your letter – also the note with your Christmas card – then came the postal strike and all those devious things we had to do (at the International African Institute) like giving letters to people to post in France and Belgium and various parts of Africa! I had imagined you having a lot of social life (the mantelpiece permanently dark with invitation cards) and wondered even if the plot of the novel I sketched out was coming true. You do seem to have worked hard – the (then) English Reading Room of the Bodleian has many sentimental memories for me – I can remember deliberately not going there for fear of seeing a certain person or to hope that my absence would be noticed. I do wonder which poems you will have chosen – how on earth do you know where to begin? I suppose that is settled beforehand.
I hope you won’t think I am taking my revenge on you for not having written, but now you will have to hear all about my operation! In fact, at this moment (in time, as people say) I am sitting in the garden in a rare burst of sunshine and am on convalescent leave, probably returning (gently) to work the week after next. I was in hospital the first three weeks in May having been rushed in for a sudden operation. Since there are no longer hushed voices when one speaks of it I’ll tell you that it was a breast cancer, luckily caught when very small so I hope there won’t be any recurrence though I suppose one mustn’t be over-optimistic. Now I am like the woman in that novel by Penelope Mortimer except that mine is the left side and hers was the right. Also, I’m about 25 years older which does make a difference – one minds much less about one’s physical beauty and of course it doesn’t show at all when one is dressed. It was my first visit to hospital and apart from the first few days of discomfort (and even that wasn’t very bad) I rather enjoyed the experience. To have a lovely rest, to have flowers and grapes and books brought to you and to be a centre of interest is not at all unpleasant! I found I even didn’t mind students looking at me. I had it done on the NHS but by luck I was put in a side ward which was as good as a private room – I used to mingle with people in the ward though and had a lot of talks – I discovered that all you need do is to make some enquiry and you will get a whole life story. I wonder if I could write a hospital novel, hardly a romance, I feel, nor yet Doctor in the House.
I cannot get anything published, though Peter Davies almost took the Leonora book. They thought they had discovered a new writer and, bearing that in mind, the readers’ comments were rather funny. Rather to my surprise I find I have nearly finished the first draft of another novel about a provincial university [never revised, unpublished] told by the youngish wife of a lecturer. It was supposed to be a sort of Margaret Drabble effort but of course it hasn’t turned out like that at all. The Ariel article is supposed to be coming out in October – I’ll let you know when it does, if it does, but it has actually been in proof.
I was interested to hear of your meeting Iris Murdoch and wonder if we shall find a character like you in her next novel. Obviously a novelist should cross question people, like the anthropologist in the field, but I’ve never been able to do that very much myself though I love finding out things about people in my own way.
I have lately taken to reading Charlotte M. Yonge. I’ve found much enjoyment and richness especially in The Pillars of the House, which is a very churchy one. What a wonderful length books were allowed to be in those days before the telly and all that!
What do you think of Maurice in the Sunday Times? Hard to tell from the rather mangled extracts but I look forward to reading it in its proper form, I wonder what could possibly be regarded as too daring to publish nowadays?
I hope all went well at the Library when you were absent and everything wasn’t left for you to decide (or perhaps you’d rather it was!). I am being quite gratifyingly missed at my work and the July Africa has come out 4 pages shorter than intended. Also the mystique of the advertisements has not been fathomed by anyone else trying to do my work. Yet I don’t really want to become embroiled again. It is all too easy to pass the days pleasantly doing not very much, but I suppose that’s convalescence.
With all good wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
22 August. How splendid All Saints Margaret St is – close to 200 people there! I reckon when you compare it with the five to ten at St Lawrence’s it hardly seems to be the same religion. And yet, where two or three are gathered together.…
Bob is taking Joan to Walsingham to give thanks for her recovery. I gave thanks for mine quietly in my bed at St Mary’s Hospital, Harrow Road and at Brooksville Avenue, even in poor old St Lawrence’s.
30 October. Cats Protection League Bazaar, held in Westminster Cathedral Hall. A few men, perhaps 2 or 3, but the rest women and me as dotty as any of them. Tea in pink or blue plastic cups, not very hot. A woman sitting by the door collecting money just ‘for the cats’. She has a gentle face, wears slacks, voluminous coat and fine brown straw hat. Stuffed frog by her on table, but of no significance (at first I thought it was a raffle). This simple collecting was something, perhaps the only thing she could do.
To Bob Smith in Lagos
40 Brooksville Avenue
31 October 1971
Dearest Bob,
Thank you so much for having the copy of Ariel sent, it was lovely to see the article in print and I am so grateful to you for having written it and given me such pleasure. There are some rather good erudite articles about T.S. Eliot and ‘that sort of thing’. One might contribute an obscure note on something: ‘Mrs Widmerpool’s bridge-coat’, for example.
The event for us has been the closing of St Lawrence’s. It closed at the end of September without ceremony, but last Wednesday the Bishop of Willesden came and gave us a Sung Mass and quite a lot of people came. Since the closing w
e have been to St Mary Magdalene’s, Paddington. It has rather good music and quite an amusing vicar (dragging on a cigarette) and curate who live in a startlingly modern clergy house just opposite the church.
I have finished the first draft of a novel about a provincial university. The idea for it was inspired by that business of John Beattie and Rodney Needham in Africa [an academic wrangle] and the original version of Mrs Fisher’s Twilight Tales of the Black Baganda – there are also two characters in it rather like Richard and his mother, exiles from the Caribbean. Perhaps my immediate circle of friends will like to read it.
Much love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
7 November 1971
Dear Philip,
I have made very good progress and when I went to hospital two weeks ago for a check-up they told me I needn’t come back for a year – so unless anything unforeseen happens I am clear of that! I am working nearly full time.
The article Robert Smith wrote about me in Ariel has now come out in the October number. ‘How Pleasant to Know Miss Pym’, it is called. On reading it, I wonder if that is what I am really like or my books. If you see it, tell me what you think! Perhaps somebody in the University of Calgary would care to buy some of my old notebooks in a few years’ time. (The Univ. of Calgary is connected with Leeds in the publishing of Ariel).
I still haven’t passed my driving test! But am due to take it for the 4th time on 19th November at 12.15 (at Hendon). I don’t know who the patron saint of such things is – possibly St Jude – or the demoted St Christopher? All middle-aged women fail their first test, my second was perhaps too soon after my being in hospital, my third I was not careful enough, but perhaps my fourth will be better if I am very careful. ‘All he wants is a safe ride.’ The examiners at Hendon are uniformly grey men; perhaps it is a breed, like customs officers.