by Barbara Pym
This letter seems to be full of coincidental meetings and possibilities for turns of plot, which sound improbable, so I had better turn to Finstock news. Uproar at the annual church meeting, mostly over finance. The trouble is that the village of Ramsden (we share a vicar) does better than we do, but then they have more wealthy residents. I think if I had my time over again I would keep aloof from all this and, as it is, I never say much.
The S. D. D. comes out in June, I’m told. Prepublication sales have been quite good and Cape are reissuing STG and Less Than Angels. I don’t think I shall ever be liable for VAT but I have bought a new account book (as advised in the last no. of The Author – I expect sales have shot up!). But the main thing is to feel that I am now regarded as a novelist, a good feeling after all those years of ‘This is well written, but…’
Yours ever,
Barbara
7 April. Friday. Nasty turn (faint, heart attack, stroke) in Abingdon on our way out to lunch [with Hilary]. Came to to find myself in the hospital there – then taken by ambulance to the Radcliffe. Conscious by now. Doctors all round me but no food all day. Next day Prof. Sleight and his boys came round. Home after lunch. On Tuesday went to the Radcliffe again and had an ambulatory electro-cardiogram attached to me for 24 hours. Took it off and returned it on Wednesday but have heard nothing. Am taking it easy and have written nothing for over a week.
28 April. To Dr S. He told me about a pacemaker that could be fitted to the heart but which must be removed at death as it is liable to explode in the crematorium. (He said I could use it in a book.)
13 June. I wrote all morning but feel depressed about it. The copies of The Sweet Dove have come. Marvellous bits on the back – what the critics said about Quartet. Can one ever do it again? Or even if one does will the critics allow it?
6 July. Sweet Dove published at last. Marvellous press – Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Financial Times. In the evening we drank a bottle of Castilio la Torre (Spanish champagne!).
14 July. On the way back from Malvern [to visit Muriel Maby] we stopped at Willersey for dinner with Henry and the Barnicots. Forty years and more I have known them, I thought as we sat there talking.
19 July. Went to London to record Desert Island Discs [for BBC Radio 4] with Roy Plomley. Lunch (cold salmon) with him at the Lansdown Club. A vast spacious room. Then listened to records, a cup of tea, then did recording. Ate with Poopa in the Viking Bar at Paddington Hotel and back on the 8.15 train. Relief to be home and in the country again.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
27 July 1978
Dear Philip,
I don’t seem to have thanked you properly for your nice letter (of 17th June!) in which you sent me the valuable and interesting Sycamore Broadsheet with the early Larkin ‘Femmes Damnées’. A fascinating curiosity. I was a bit reminded of the work of Arthur Symons. I shall treasure it. Which reminds me, I have chosen you reading one of your poems [‘An Arundel Tomb’] for my Desert Island Discs which is going out this Saturday (29th)! The other discs (records, I call them) are mostly rather romantic music, and the book Henry James The Golden Bowl (which I have already stumbled through once). I went to London last week for the day to record it – Roy Plomley is so nice and easy to get on with, I found, didn’t you? It must be a kind of silly season for the programme if they are having a novelist!
Thank you so much for the kind things you said about The Sweet Dove. It has been gratifyingly well received, enough balm to soothe and heal all those wounds when only you and a few kind friends thought anything of my works. Francis King has written beautifully in Books and Bookmen. It’s interesting that some people definitely like SDD better than Quartet – Francis King, notably. But Lord David and Robert Liddell prefer Quartet and the earlier ones. My next, if it ever gets finished, will probably be a let down for everyone – a dull village novel, with no bi- or homo-sexuality.
I have recently met, or rather he has visited us, Fr Gerard Irvine who seems to know Charles Monteith (and indeed everyone worth knowing!) – perhaps you know him too? Very amusing, talks nonstop and has invited me to sample the hospitality of the Clergy House when I’m next in London. That might be worth trying! He has complimented me on my accuracy in church matters in my novels.
I hope your various troubles have sorted themselves out – the sofa, immersion heater, the bookcase, the car.… Today we see that a huge branch has blown down off the elderberry tree in the back (the branch where we hang one end of the clothes line) so that has to be dealt with. A great deal of jam has been made, strawberry and raspberry – jam-making seems to be associated with the publication of novels.
Must stop and go to the hairdresser (in the village) but shan’t have that fashionable frizzy style that the young seem to be adopting.
Yours ever,
Barbara
23 September. Hooray! The Sweet Dove is no.3 in the Sunday Times Best Sellers List. Whatever the significance (or lack of it) it’s nice to see it in print.
17–19 August. Spent at Willersey staving with Henry. Elsie [Henry’s first wife] was there too. Strange situation dating back over 40 years. A long walk up the hill in lovely country. Three elderly people walking – not together but in a long line separately, Elsie stopping to pick flowers.
The things people say:
I never read novels
I never watch television
I never eat jam
I never have tea
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
20 October 1978
Dear Philip,
I suppose you are back at ‘work’ now. Yesterday at the dentist, the young dentist asked me ‘Are you working today?’ – for a moment I couldn’t think what he meant, then my thoughts went back to how I used to arrange my dental appointments in those old days – not a whole day off, unless you were having a tooth out, but you could wangle most of the afternoon for a simpler operation and perhaps tea afterwards in Wigmore Street.
I was amused by the cutting of the Larkin-Pym engagement [‘Mr R.G. Larkin to Miss E. A. Pym’]. No relation of mine either, as far as I know. Do you think we’ll get an invitation to the wedding? (Comforting to know that young people do still announce their engagement in this formal way, isn’t it.)
I was also highly amused by your description of being installed as a C. Lit. Had the Duke written the speech himself, and did all those ladies know who Satchmo was? You once gave me a card to go and hear Elizabeth Bowen talking there. And now, as I may have told you on my postcard, even I have been made a Fellow. I always used to envy novelists who were, little thinking that I should ever achieve it. I don’t know when I shall be able to go and sign the book or whatever one does. Robert Liddell told me he had never been (as he is in Athens, anyway) but they didn’t seem to mind.
You have been a good deal in my thoughts lately as two people here have had to ‘do’ you for their Open University Exams! So I have been lending volumes of Larkin and adding a few discreet reminiscences. I don’t know whether the fact that you have actually been in this cottage adds to one’s ability to interpret the more obscure poems. But I have been very cautious. Who can say what anyone, let alone a poet, might have meant when he wrote that particular line?
Since I last wrote I’ve been to another ‘feast’, this time at Univ. The Feast of St Simon and St Jude, though that day doesn’t really come till 28th Oct. I suppose they have to have it before term starts. It was all most enjoyable, not only because Harold Wilson and Stephen Spender were among the other guests. I didn’t get to speak to them, only glimpsed them in the distance. I had said I would like to stay the night in college and, remembering what you had told me about it, didn’t know what to expect, but I and another female guest were to stay with the master, Lord Goodman. So it was all very comfortable, almost excessively warm as the central heating was on! Lots of bedside lamps and a bottle of Malvern water by the bed. Breakfast next morning with the Master and Mrs Brigstocke (High Mistress
of St Paul’s, but young and attractive as they seem to be nowadays). Luckily I was able to face bacon and eggs and a certain amount of civilised conversation. Lord G’s solicitor‘s offices are in the same building as Macmillans which gives us a curious unexpected link. Afterwards Mrs Brigstocke drove me to the station in her Daimler – an elegant woman in a beautiful car. All the same I had hoped I would sample the kind of rude undergraduate accommodation I’d heard about and perhaps even meet Harold Wilson at breakfast. (Could one have stood that?)
Well, that seems to finish this letter on a rather misleading social note. Life otherwise goes on as usual. I have been invited by the editor of The Church Times to write them a story. I wonder if I can!
Best of wishes,
Yours,
Barbara
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
Barn Cottage
25 October 1978
Dearest Bob,
Of course Richard did write when he had read the book [The Sweet Dove] – the card was only to say it had arrived and I’ve also had an affectionate card from him from Indonesia, of all places. What did he say about the book? Well, rather wisely he didn’t make much comment except to say how much he had enjoyed it. It was all such a long time ago anyway… Little did I think that anything as profitable as this novel would come out of it.
I am struggling to write another novel but nothing good seems to come from me at the moment and having been so successful with the last two I am a bit apprehensive about the next one. Yet who really cares! I really think all those years of not being published have made me as hard as teak, or whatever is a hard wood. I wrote my little piece in the New Review symposium – if you haven’t seen it I can tell you briefly that I said I had been too much occupied in trying to get published again to reflect overmuch on ‘the state of the novel’ during the last ten years or so! There is one misprint or rather word left out in what I wrote which makes it appear that I regard romantic and historical novels as the most prestigious kind!
I have been made a FRSL [Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature], rather to my surprise and pleasure. I never thought I should make it. I haven’t yet been able to go up and sign the book (and have my hand held by the president at my inauguration) but I have paid my subscription and that surely must be the main point. Robert is one and Elizabeth Taylor was – it’s interesting to study the list. Philip Larkin is a Companion of Lit. of which there are only 10 at one time.
Much love,
Barbara
9 November. Haven’t written in this notebook for ages, not since I was asked to write a short story for The Church Times. Today Iain Finlayson came to interview me for Cosmopolitan – a discussion of Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise and what the enemies of promise are now. I had to point out that sloth and sex are less potent temptations for a writer in her sixties than for a younger writer.
18 November. Rather chaotic Bring and Buy coffee morning in aid of the CPRE. Held at Mrs C’s house. It is surely better, one feels, not to see how one’s doctor lives, to discover the secrets of his life, that he has fine Waterford glass and exquisite Persian rugs.
8 January 1979. Went to Dr S. to consult him about my increasing bulk, which seems unnatural. He did tests and told me several things it might be. Naturally I seized on the most gloomy (if it would be gloomy to die at 66 or 67?). He gave me a letter to Mr Webster, a consultant surgeon in Oxford. I went to 23 Banbury Rd where the consultants live. Mr Webster thinks it is fluid in my abdomen (dropsy, but he had a grander name for it) and thinks I should go into the Churchill, perhaps next week. Great relief at getting all this over, even euphoric, though no doubt unjustified.
13 January. In the Churchill. Lunchtime – purple jelly with a dab of synthetic cream and ‘All right dear?’
An Indian gentleman sitting at the bedside across the way stretches out his long fingers and takes a grape.
Opposite two women wait for their operations. Almost like Henry Moore figures.
The analysis of the fluid from my abdomen shows that there is something (malignant) though the X-rays didn’t indicate what. It could be something in the ovaries or secondaries from the breast cancer – which could be treated either by an operation or drugs or radiotherapy.
Immoderate laughter of the evening visitors.
A thought. We pray at Finstock church for Mr Cashman – is this because, strictly speaking, he lives in Finstock – or do we pray for Ramsden people when they’re sick or vice versa.
In hospital one has to fight very hard to keep one’s independence and most of the time it isn’t worth it.
How did people die in the old days (not the 19th century but really old days like the 17th century). What did they do about cancer? If I’d been born in 1613 I would have died in 1671 (of breast cancer). I’d certainly have been dead in 1674.
20 January. Mr Webster said it is probably ‘ an ovarian problem’. He says the drug will work – it is a poison and may make me feel sick. It is a long-drawn-out treatment, may last months – injections every three weeks.
5 February. Home again. Went to see Dr S. Very kind and practical. Asked me to consider now how I wanted my end to be, whether at home, in hospital or hospice, or private nursing home.
14 February. My first visit to the radiotherapy clinic at the Churchill for my second injection. Waited in the dreary Out Patients waiting room with others and only one doctor coping. Waited nearly half an hour in a cubicle, sitting on a bed (shoes off) or lying gazing up at the ceiling. If you think wouldn’t it be better if I were just left to die you remember the fluid and how impossible it made things.
In the afternoon I finished my novel in its first, very imperfect draft. May I be spared to retype and revise it, loading every rift with ore!
All humanity is in the Out Patients, those whom we as Christians must love.
4 March. Henry came to lunch and we planned to go to Derbyshire for a ‘Winter Break’.
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
Barn Cottage
25 February 1979
Dearest Bob,
I have had to go into hospital (the Churchill) but am happily much better. I developed fluid in my abdomen which is apparently the result of an ovarian tumour, but fortunately they didn’t make me have an operation but are treating it with drugs which are supposed to ‘kill’ it, so that with luck I shall have a few more years of good life. I have to go to the outpatients’ radiotherapy clinic every three weeks – a rather dire place, but luckily I manage to get some amusement and ‘material’ out of hospital visits, as you know. Of course, having had the fashionable breast cancer op. in 1971 I suppose I have been lucky to have had nearly eight years without anything further!
Much love,
Barbara
5 March. Today the vet came and helped Nana [Minerva] out of this life. He took the body away. All very quick – a powerful injection and it was all over in a second. She was slumped in the green metal box he had brought, a little limp bag of bones. She would have been 18 in June.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
15 March 1979
Dear Philip,
We are both well now, though I had to go into hospital (the Churchill) in January and stayed a week during which time they did various tests and told me I had a malignant tumour somewhere inside, but they are treating it with drugs and seem hopeful of success, whatever that may be! After all, I have lived eight years since my breast cancer operation in 1971 so I suppose you could say that I have survived. And now I feel so much better again and don’t seem to have any ill effects from the drugs so far. Of course ‘they’ won’t tell you how long you’ve got – it may be several years yet and as I don’t want to live to be very old (what one says in middle age anyway!) it is really not so bad. Hard to know what to tell people really, but what with all these programmes about cancer on TV one feels it’s best to be honest. But in some ways you feel a bit foolish, looking and seeming quite well. (What, you still here?)
Otherwi
se some rather good news (if that is bad). Penguin are going to do Excellent Women and A Glass of Blessings, Cape tell me, though not till next April or thereabouts. This is an enormous pleasure to me. I have had super American reviews for E. W. and Quartet in Autumn including a long one in the New Yorker from John Updike (did you ever read Couples?). The Sweet Dove comes out there this month. The advance copy has a springlike or greenery yallery cover with a design of doves (Miss Pym, the ornithologist). I daresay the Americans won’t like that book, perhaps Leonora could only be credible in England? (I’ll send you a copy shortly).
But this letter mustn’t be only medical and literary. We’ve had quite a full time in the village with the usual events – Hilary gave a talk to the W. I. on her experiences in India. The church is organising a clothes sale – the history society has its monthly meetings, etc. etc. Our old cat has gone to her rest, assisted by the vet who came here to do it. So very quick, with an injection (I suppose you’d say a ‘massive’ injection, to use the in-word!). Sad to be without her but she was nearly 18 and had got to be a mere bag of bones and impossible to keep warm except by continual hot water bottles in her basket. But a new little tabby has adopted us and she is pregnant, so new life is springing up. If she has a black kitten we may keep it, but after this birth she will have to be ‘done’.
The garden still looks terrible but I suppose we must prune the roses soon. A few snowdrops have appeared and Iris Stylosa in the front but I’m reminded of that song we used to sing in the war. ‘Spring will be a little late this year!’ But I have finished the first draft of another novel, pretty poor so far and it is so strange to have ‘my publisher’ asking for it and saying he’s longing to see it. I fear he will be disappointed, and anyway I can’t suddenly turn into the sort of writer who can produce something quickly. Don’t you think one gets slower as one gets older – ‘stands to reason’ as Norman [Quartet] might say!