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

by Barbara Pym

  Now that I’m back from Dorset I can answer your letter properly.

  We did go to tea with Lord David on Thursday last and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course we talked a lot about ‘writing’ – did you know that Anthony Powell was Lord David’s fag at Eton? He also told me that John Bayley was his star pupil, which brings me to the letter you so kindly sent me – of course I was thrilled and astonished. Another nice thing was that he appreciated your TLS article in a way that I feel it ought to be, though perhaps I can hardly do it myself being the subject of it. And yet why not? Perhaps in the distant future people will think it much better than the novels it celebrates!

  As for the Booker prize – did you say that each publisher can send in four? I suppose Macmillan may well have already made their choice but anyway here are the details of mine. Now called Quartet in Autumn and due to be published in September. James Wright told me they hoped to have some copies by the end of July. I suppose they would have something available before then, though, as I think I told you, the proofs were rather nasty looking and grey (perhaps like the book) computer set and not in a nice little book like proofs used to be. Anyway, I’m sure James Wright would be the person to approach. Both he and Alan Maclean like The Sweet Dove Died and will publish it next year – marvellous, as it went to about twenty publishers in one form or another!

  I’m sure that under your benign reign [as Chairman of the selection committee for the Booker Prize] all will be sweetness and light – one had certainly heard of ‘difficulties’ in the past. I’m sure Robin Ray won’t give any trouble!

  I was interested in what you said about Kingsley and Jane. Everyone now seems to go to Weidenfeld – the publisher who told me that their fiction list was full up for the next two years! Robert Liddell tells me that Olivia Manning has left Heinemann for Weidenfeld. (There’s literary talk for you!)

  I’m finishing this letter in bed with a cat on my knee, just before getting up, and with luck I shall catch the morning post. Tomorrow a girl is coming from BBC 2 to talk to me – she is a ‘researcher’, I suppose, who will case the joint to see if a short film could be made for the Book Programme. Miss Pym in bed with her cat or watering the lettuces in her dried-up garden? Or just sitting. As for the photograph, I don’t think I had Tom Maschler in mind when it was taken. I was recovering from a cold but felt I mustn’t smile too much. I would really like to achieve a dark brooding expression but don’t think I ever could. The car went splendidly in Dorset and Hilary is very pleased with it. I kept wondering if Hardy ever had a car. I could imagine Florence driving but not, of course, Emma Lavinia. Do you know if he did?

  All best wishes,

  Yours ever,

  Barbara

  26 May. Why nothing to read in the outpatients at the Radcliffe? Must we be content with our thoughts?

  To Bob Smith in Ibadan

  Barn Cottage

  Jubilee + 18 June 1977

  Dearest Bob,

  Macmillan have taken (and are publishing early next year) an earlier novel which I had been trying to get published and which I feel is one of the best I have ever done. About an older woman and a younger man – I hope ‘sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo’. I don’t think I have anything else that I would like published without a great deal of alteration, though several of my unpublished works have bits in them that might be used. I feel it’s probably better to write something new after these two have come out.

  Much love,

  Barbara

  To Philip Larkin

  Barn Cottage

  9 July 1977

  Dear Philip,

  By now you will be back at work. ‘Oh, I thought you were coming back next week’ is another office reaction I remember, making one feel subtly unwelcome.

  Yes, it has certainly been all go on the Pym front lately and I’m sure people will now get as sick of me as I used to get of various overexposed novelists in the days when I couldn’t get anything published! But it’s rather nice to bask in it for a change.

  The BBC 2 thing [a Book Programme film about her life and work] was very enjoyable – they were all so nice, though unfortunately Robert Robinson himself couldn’t come as he had ’flu. There were two cameramen, a lighting man, a sound man, Will Wyatt, the Producer, and Jennifer McKay the ‘researcher’ (whom I’d already met). They made me walk out of the cottage, up the hill, then we all went into the churchyard where I again had to walk about and answer questions against a background of the church door. (I seem to remember that you were taken in a churchyard – it makes a good background for all shades of belief, and after all it’s what we all come to!) Then we broke for lunch – they went off to a pub, and Hilary and I had a drink quietly here. In the afternoon Lord David appeared driven in a large BBC hired car (black and a chauffeur wearing dark glasses), much too big to park comfortably in our country road and there were fantastic traffic jams. We all had tea in the garden – Lord D., Hilary, Jennifer and myself, and Minerva was rather troublesome, leaping up on to the tea tray and trying to put her paw into the milk jug. Lord D. and I chatted and we agreed that the whole thing might easily have lapsed into farce, rather like the Mad Hatter’s tea party. All was finished at about 5.30. I enjoyed it all very much, my only fear being that I may have said rather foolish things or not said anything I meant to say – e.g. I couldn’t remember what I read, who were my favourite authors etc. I did at least save myself once when a question about my treatment of men characters suggested that I had a low opinion of the sex. My instinctive reply sprang to my lips ‘Oh, but I love men’, but luckily I realised how ridiculous it would sound, so said something feeble, but can’t remember what. They are going to invite me to a preview which will reveal the worst.

  Sunday

  It would be interesting to meet John Bayley some time – a bit alarming to think of Iris [Murdoch], though everyone says how nice she is, I’d love to know how she actually does her writing because she seems able to produce such a lot. No philosophical stuff, just real nitty gritty, which brings me to you getting up at 6 to add a few lines to your poem about DEATH. How many lines might you expect to add? I have been re-reading Larkin very much this summer – in the garden among the roses – but the later poems rather than the earlier ones. ‘The Building’ is ‘remarkably fine’, as an old Oxford friend of mine used to say about many things, and makes one long for DEATH. Hurry up with it.

  I had a very cordial conversation with Helen Gardner in Oxford when I went to lunch at St Hilda’s recently – we spoke ‘ warmly’ of you. I wandered about the College, trying to find bits I remembered among all the new buildings.

  Best wishes,

  Barbara

  17 August. The wettest day of the year, or ever – thunder at 7 a.m., flooding etc. We went to Bristol where I did a talk for Pamela Howe to be broadcast in Woman’s Hour. And in the end got her umbrella and she got mine, not discovered until we were miles apart! This could well provide a ridiculous episode for a novel. Emma meeting Claudia and then annoyed at getting C’s inferior umbrella.

  To Philip Larkin

  Barn Cottage

  21 August 1977

  Dear Philip,

  August is a funny time (not necessarily a wicked month?), holidays and all that, though I always used to like it in the old days in London – summer dresses in the office and visiting American anthropologists and slipping out for tea at the old Kardomah in Fleet Street.

  But the weather makes no difference to the great joy of receiving the advance copy of Q. in A., looking so much better than the terrible grey proofs. And yesterday a huge parcel from Cape with copies of the re-issues in beautiful brilliant colours with my name in enormous letters! Publication date for all three has been fixed for 15th September. I suspect that Cape’s contribution has been ready first but like to think that Tom Maschler is behaving in a gentlemanly way – about time too! What a good thing you got that handsome tax rebate, otherwise you’d surely be asking for a rake off on my royalties because
of the use of Larkin quotes on the jacket. (Perhaps you will anyway). Where shall I send the copies I’m going to send you – to the Library or your private address?

  I don’t think The Times is going to do me as I haven’t heard anything more from Caroline Moorehead but someone from The Guardian is coming on Sept. 1st and I have done a chat with Pamela Howe in Bristol, going out in Woman’s Hour, and Harpers/Queen in September, due out the end of next week. What a lot of film is wasted on taking photographs now – still it’s nice to think one is providing work for nice young photographers. I sat in the chilly garden recently while somebody else snapped me. I see Miss Drabble is out soon – glad she doesn’t clash with me – I wonder who will?!

  Later

  We went into Oxford and into the Ashmolean. Correspondence displayed led Hilary to say that if you keep things long enough you can have an exhibition of absolutely anything!

  Cat purring on my knee, making it difficult to write!

  Best of wishes,

  Barbara

  27 August. Tullia Blundo the Italian girl who is writing a thesis on my novels came. She is a small dark Sicilian (living in Pisa) wearing mauve-tinted glasses – lively and interested in everything. Her word is ‘tremendous’.

  4 September. Kew. Staying with Bob. Getting off the bus we walked past Sanders the Funeral Directors – a notice ‘Driver Wanted’. Church of St John the Divine – as we were going in a young man in black jacket and crash helmet who turned out to be the MC. Rather trendy clergy and American or Canadian curate preached.

  To Philip Larkin

  Barn Cottage

  Dear Philip,

  Just a line to thank you for the wonderful publication day card, which arrived on the dot yesterday morning. Now I know what those enormous cards are really for! What impressed Hilary was your skill in portraying the vanquished Maschler (a hidden talent?).

  I had a marvellous day – lovely weather and plenty of drink and even a telegram from James Wright in Macmillan. And of course the day before, articles in Times and Guardian by those clever young women. Caroline Moorehead told me how hard it was to find writers to write about these days so perhaps I have been a godsend to somebody! Actually the Guardian article is even better, I think. And surely those photographs show that slightly mad jolly fun face (that I don’t much like)? Two good reviews so far.

  I have been making plum jam and shall soon make (green) tomato chutney, though a few of the latter have started to ripen. [She was stirring and consequently ‘distant’, when James Wright rang to congratulate her on The Times and Guardian articles.] And blackberries in the hedgerows of course. Season of M. and M. etc.

  All good wishes,

  Barbara

  26 September. Met the Grottanellis for lunch at the Randolph on an unnaturally warm September day. The Italian who shops in London for long woollen underpants, doesn’t care for children so won’t see his grandchild. Tells me of his old father who died recently in his 90s. All right to have a mistress in your 40s but not in your 80s. The great house and estate in Tuscany now fallen into decay.

  29 September. Leapt into a taxi at Paddington and drove on a bright morning (St Michael and All Angels) to the Daily Express building where Will Wyatt and the – photographer were waiting [to do the London sequences for the television film]. Walked in Fleet St and Fetter Lane past the grey office building that stands on the site of St Dunstan’s Chambers. Sat in Oodles, where we drank coffee, looked in the windows of the Protestant Truth Society, stood by the drinking fountain at St Dunstan’s, was photographed in the bus queue. Then Will and I had lunch in a pub in Essex St and from the window I could see the Macmillan building. Then bus to Trafalgar Sq (7p) and underground to Paddington (35P).

  1 October. We took two sisters from the village to visit their other sister ‘terminally’ ill in the Churchill. Driving in the car, the smell of poverty. They are still that old-fashioned category ‘the poor’, harking back to the old days when they were in service at a North Oxford vicarage and things were so much better. Not for them the glories and advantages of the welfare state. Looking at one of them with her hairy chin and general air of greyness one couldn’t help thinking that this was as much a woman as a glamorous perfumed model.

  8 October. She knew that she dared not pray for humility, to be granted the grace of humility, it being such a precious thing, but when others were decorating the church for Harvest Festival she chose a humble, even humiliating task, emptying the cat’s tray, bundling the soiled Katlitta into a newspaper. Yet had she even chosen it – it was just something that had to be done. Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.

  To Bob Smith in Venice

  Barn Cottage

  9 October 1977

  Dearest Bob,

  Things go well, still, with more good reviews of Quartet. The only less favourable ones have been in the Sunday Telegraph – not bad but the woman obviously didn’t like BP type novels – and the New Statesman – again not bad, but the reviewer thought my novels must have had mainly Oxbridge readers (and what’s wrong with that as Philip Larkin said to me when we were having lunch in Oxford some days. ago). TLS has been very favourable, also (surprisingly) Financial Times. And a very nice thing – I had a letter from the Editor of the Church Times saying that although they didn’t now normally have space for novel reviews he was going to review mine in November (the new one and the reprints) if only because I had given so many splendid free commercials for the Church Times.

  I have had quite a lot of letters from various people, including several from people who say they have always liked my novels and thought I was dead! A very nice, generous letter from Jock in Athens, who thinks Quartet very fine, even if ‘darker’ than my others.

  Hilary and I went to see Beatrice Wyatt, former Secretary of the I.A.I. We talked of the old days at the I.A.I. but she had obviously forgotten my connection with it so one couldn’t have much coherent conversation. Really one feels that poor Marcia in Quartet was the best off, seeing Mr Strong smile at her in her last moments. Luckily one doesn’t brood too much about one’s declining years, being blessed with an optimistic temperament and realising that there is nothing you can do about it. Also I have faith that I would somehow be sustained – I felt that very much when I was in hospital and couldn’t read or write properly.

  Oh dear, I hadn’t meant to write all this – that is the worst of doing it on a typewriter. I should never dare to write about really old people, only those in their sixties, and my next is (‘hopefully’) going to be about village life in the 1970s. I had already started it when all this excitement of publication and endless letter-writing came upon me. But now it seems to be changing course. ‘Do you find that the characters, etc?…’

  I have already had proofs of The Sweet Dove Died (from the Keats quotation) which should come out in March or April next year. It is totally different from Quartet and there are no clergy in it, so goodness knows what people will think of it. Yet it is a chunk of my life, in a sense!

  Love,

  Barbara

  Letty and Marjorie could come to live in the village [in A Few Green Leaves] Marjorie not wishing to live in the village where she had been jilted and having sold her cottage nearer London for a vast sum.

  The novel could begin with the woman coming to the village and her first social occasion, as it were a set piece. And what more suitable or more full of set pieces than a flower festival in the church.

  Setpieces – a series of them. Why not? Write them first then weave a plot round them.

  21 October. My BBC 2 programme. Quite pleasing and not too embarrassing. Finstock looked better than it really does in various shots.

  22 October. To Paul Binding’s. Iris Murdoch and John Bayley called in for a drink. She is much smaller than I had imagined. Fairish short hair, a rather dumpy woman wearing trousers and a sort of ethnic tunic. Very nice face and pleasant to talk to. Told me she had to write things many times over – nothing comes out absolutel
y first time. John Bayley is just as I had imagined. Very pleasant and, of course, knowing what he feels about my books made him even nicer to talk to.

  In church thinking of Heaven. There seated on one side of the Almighty would be her headmistress, eyes gleaming (but kindly) behind her pince nez.

  27 October. Went to lunch with Henry at Willersey. Beautiful day and drive. In front of us two women driving, pensioners no doubt, saying how nice it is to be driving in the Cotswolds on a Wednesday morning. Lunch with Henry in his nice cottage. Three pensioners.

  28 October. James had rung to say that Quartet is on the Booker shortlist. Caroline Blackwood, Paul Bailey, Jennifer Johnston, Penelope Lively, BP and Paul Scott.

  1 November. Went to London with Poopa to have lunch with Will Wyatt at the TV Centre in Wood Lane. A beautiful glittering palace, all glass windows and long shining corridors – almost like a hospital. Saw the film again then lunch, joined by Robert Robinson who is most pleasant. Bottles of wine and the bright glass walled room and a bird getting in (which they apparently often do). Afterwards a taxi (paid for by the BBC!) took us to Oxford Circus where we surged round John Lewis. Cup of tea and scone in the Tournament Bar at Paddington, all squashed up in wooden booths. What you think is a mirror turns out to be another person sitting beside you. A real Norman [Quartet] place.

  2 November. It is All Souls and I think of the people who have died – Links, Dor, Ack, Nellie, other aunts and uncles, Rupert Gleadow, Gordon Glover, Elizabeth Taylor, etc.

  4 November. A power cut for about 2½ hours, 6.30–9 p.m. Supper was gin and tonic and boiled eggs and toast done on the fire. The old cope better than the young on these occasions, especially in a village.

  To Philip Larkin

  Barn Cottage

  9 November 1977

  Dear Philip.

  Many thanks for your letter. Don’t apologise for not writing sooner – you have far more reason not to write than I have, in my retirement, when you are in the full flower of your active Librarianhood. I hope you have managed to ‘do’ Marvell by now – you really are having a year, beginning with having to write about me in the TLS. Not to mention Booker!