by Barbara Pym
Gilbert Phelps (the other Finstock author) and I have recently been judging entries for the Southern Arts Association Prize – open to people living in Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight etc. We gave the prize to Penelope Lively for her book of short stories [Nothing Missing but the Samovar] and we had a little gathering at Chipping Norton to meet her, drank champagne, ate canapés and had ‘literary talk’. Do you remember The Road to Lichfield her novel for Booker? She went to the dinner this year but said A.J. Ayer wasn’t nearly as good as you! She has a nice husband who teaches at Warwick University. I have also been reading some romantic novels, as one of the final judges this time, so only 8 books to read. One all about the mistresses of Louis XIV that I’m learning a lot from – I am so ignorant of French history!
A horrible wintry sleety day! I hope tomorrow is better as a young woman is coming to lunch who is writing a book about Elizabeth Taylor (the novelist, of course). I am to delve back into my memories of the fifties when we sometimes went to PEN together.
Very best wishes,
Barbara
23 March. ‘Weekend Break’ with Henry in Derbyshire. Large dinner at hotel in Grindlewood Bridge and a bottle of Orvieto. I didn’t drink much – no ill effects. Couldn’t make the bathwater run or fill my hot water bottle. Good breakfast! Drove to Eyam, the plague village, then to Bakewell. Beautifully situated church, warm and fragrant (but not incense, perhaps furniture polish). Saturday evening was hectic in the hotel, large parties dining, masses of people in the bar and, in the Rutland Lounge, even a private showing of somebody’s holiday slides – a group sitting in the darkened room with their coffee and drinks. I fled though Henry would have stayed. Was awakened at midnight by hotel staff asking if it was O.K. for me to be called at 8.30 instead of 7.30 as it was Sunday!
Sunday: on the way back we stopped at Hassop where there is a Catholic church (early 19th century classical style) and Hassop Hall Hotel, formerly the home of the Eyre family – now a rather superior hotel and restaurant. We walked round the front and saw many tables laid for lunch. Inside a very nice hall with a coal fire, silver in a glass-fronted cabinet and fresh flowers. Then as we left cars began to arrive – Derbyshire Catholics to a good Sunday lunch? – quite a stream of them.
Then we tried to find Newstead Abbey and Byron. (Had to find a public loo.) After landing in a street of miners’ houses we asked the way and were directed through the colliery. Then on to the motorway and stopped to have tea and sandwiches in a motorway café. A whole new civilisation. ‘The cold, dark wine in Derbyshire’ [No Fond Return of Love] – Henry on Friday demands that the Orvieto shall not be too cold.
28 March. Hatchard’s Authors of the Year Party. Young man from Hatchard’s introduced Hilary and me to Patience Strong (and her agent) first – all in green, small, difficult to talk to because sitting rather low down. Then we went over and spoke to Steve Race, Iris Murdoch (red dress and black stockings) and the Vicar of St James Piccadilly (Rev. W. Baddeley). Then to Olivia Manning who was a bit peeved because her books were not displayed. (One of mine – Less Than Angels – was next to Diana Dors’ autobiography.) The Hatchard’s men came and spoke very kindly and were flattering about my books. We spoke to Jilly Cooper before leaving.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
1 April 1979
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for your letter and sympathetic words – actually I’m feeling fine at the moment – went to London last week to Hatchard’s Authors of the Year Party. Diana Dors was holding court at a large round table, but I did have a word with Iris Murdoch. The Duke of Edinburgh was there but I don’t think he reads my books.
No kittens as yet though she is spherical – she herself is a very pretty tabby, greyish, not exactly silver.
This is only a scrappy note to send with the book, not a proper answer to your letter. I am trying to finish and improve a country novel, a new one ‘ based’ on life here (but of course nothing like it, really?). The University one I have done nothing about – I feel it would be out of date now and I hardly know about such life after all this time.
Yours ever,
Barbara
A fine Easter, sunshine and things burgeoning. I live still!
26 April. Romantic Novelists’ lunch at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly – a curiously deserted hotel, vast ladies’ cloakroom in the basement with marble basins and pink velvet sofas. After, bus to Paddington and had a quiet calm of mind all passion spent tea in the refreshment room on platform 1 before getting the five o’clock train home.
1 May. Typing the new novel slowly – have only done 63 pages, some people may be disappointed in it – others will like it.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
1 May 1979
Dear Philip,
Just a brief letter to tell you that four lovely kittens were born on 11th April – all Toms! We think we’ve found homes for all and shall keep one ourselves, a black one. The others are two very prettily marked tabby and white and third is dark smoky grey. They are a great pleasure and interest and we have quite a stream of visitors, especially children, wanting to see them. As a result of the birth, watching them with their mother when they were feeding while still very young, I thought of a splendid title for a novel Blind Mouths at the Nipple.
I hadn’t really expected you to come last week – in fact I went to London for a day on Wednesday to attend the luncheon of The Romantic Novelists’ Association – quite an enjoyable occasion – at the Park Lane Hotel in Piccadilly. It didn’t seem the kind of hotel where you could imagine people staying – perhaps it only exists to have ‘gatherings’ of this kind?
As a result of showing you the American reviews I spent Easter sorting them out and have now stuck them into a book! And I had such a nice letter from the Boston man who wanted my literary remains that I felt almost sorry to have refused him. And I’ve just had the proofs of the story I did for the New Yorker [Across a Crowded Room]. And a large cheque (for me) from Macmillan and quite a respectable one from Cape. Cape are also going to reprint Jane and Prudence and No Fond Return now – cordial letter from Maschler. So I wish all neglected novelists could have the good friends and luck that I’ve had.
Greetings and best wishes,
Barbara
2 May. To the radiotherapy unit at the Churchill. It is Thiotepa, the drug they put into me. Afterwards a large lunch at The Gate of India in Oxford.
10 May. Heard the cuckoo for the first time this year, on a damp May evening, wet and green.
18 May. Summer at last! (What one has stayed alive for?!)
26 May. In the early morning I woke having dreamed of finding a splendid title for a novel (the one about the two women, starting off with their Oxford days) which has been simmering in my mind. The Keats poem:
In a drear-nighted December
Too happy, happy tree
Thy branches ne’er remember
Their green felicity
2 June. I am now in my 67th year – shall I make 70?
3 June. Went to 11 o’clock Martins at Spelsbury. Welcomed by the vicar (Irish charm) who invited us to sit anywhere we liked in the empty church. Whit Sunday, but of course they had had their ‘family communion’ service at 9.30. At the service I felt I could enrich my novel by giving more about Tom’s church, which was probably like this one. The enrichment of my own novels may be suggested by my reading of the two latest Margaret Drabble novels (The Ice Age and The Realms of Gold). She gives one almost too much – but I give too little – laziness and unwillingness to do ‘research’, which doesn’t seem to fit my kind of novels.
16 June. Adam Prince at the end of the holiday – a short section or vignette. He experiences not only a motorway café but a motel (or ‘ Posthouse’) – the impersonality of it all. No human face, no charming elderly ladies crocheting in the lounge, no discussion (even if/albeit ill-informed) about modern art or women priests. Plastic continental breakfast –
and how uncontinental such a breakfast was! No ‘Buongiorno Signore’ from a smiling young waiter bearing a tray on his shoulder. On the motorway ‘ Oh Central Reservation’, like a line from a hymn.
17 June. Went to Snape – three lovely days. Sat on the beach at Aldeburgh collecting stones and drinking coffee. On the way back called in at the Priory, Horton-cum-Studley, now a hotel. Asked for tea. There was a conference going on; perhaps salesmen from Birmingham. Youngish men, rather too fat. Tea very expensive (£1.40). Chateaubriand Steak on the à la carte menu was £11.50! It would be a good setting for a romance, an unexpected meeting, or a short story about a conference or seminar.
24 June. In this new novel [never written] there will be two women, starting with their college lives (not earlier). One from a privileged background, the other from a more ordinary one (but not working class) and the subsequent course of their lives. This would be a chance to bring in World War II.
The great house where one lives becomes a hotel for conferences etc (like Studley Priory).
A hymn writer in the family or a woman like Charlotte Elliott or Frances Ridley Havergal.
When she comes to stay with her friend she hopes to ‘get to know her husband better’ – with unexpected results.
Rev. and Hon. or is it Hon. and Rev. A great-uncle. Always this tradition of service in the family.
The nice ‘girls lunch’ – could a husband or other intrusive man walk in at this time.
Victorian vicar who enlarges a church and puts (perhaps) a spire in memory of his first wife or mother.
An ancestor was a missionary in East Africa. On leave (furlough) he happened to be in Trafalgar Square when the lions were brought there (? 1867).
She ought to have some fine old Victorian Christian name – Maud, Violet, Edith, Ethel, Florence. But, of course the fashion for such names had not come back, though Hannah, Emily, Emma and Harriet were beginning to be in vogue. So what was her name? One of the 30s – Joan, Gillian, Barbara, Mary, Margaret, Edna, Hilda, Nancy, Ruth.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
2 July 1979
Dear Philip,
I had such a nice letter from the USA asking me to ‘lecture’, but won’t go. It is Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the man who wrote had got on to my novels because of his interest in your work! A nice thought.
Two days of beautiful weather and I’m sitting in the garden. Went to the doctor this morning and all seems well at the moment. He had been on holiday but stayed at home during the time except for a visit to a conference in Liverpool – and he still hasn’t got a new car (still K registration). Now, I ask myself, ought I to be worried about him? Perhaps he has heavy family commitments – two girls to educate, I believe. Perhaps I ought to be a private patient.
I went to lunch at St Hilda’s on Saturday and had the usual consolation of not looking as old (or as fat) as some of my contemporaries! They were having a Gaudy but I didn’t stay for it. I usually have a word with Helen Gardner but didn’t manage to this time, though she was there.
The kitten we’ve kept is called Justin – I’m not quite sure how the name came about – the others were Oscar, Felix and Julius, mostly named by the people who took them.
How interesting about losing your taste for drink! I only lose it when I’m ill or in hospital, but it always comes back – though I don’t drink all that much, don’t like whisky which is the mark of a real drinker.
Shall I be embarrassed if we have lunch together, wondering if you’re going to offer me a drink? I’ll be prepared – do hope we manage to meet.
All good wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
19 July. A pathetic sight in Waitrose: the elderly woman, very old, leaning against a frozen food cabinet while her friend (also ancient) went round with her basket. And, in the doorway, a clergyman stands, contemplating the scene.
4 August. Mark Gerson came to photograph me – a nice, easy to get on with person. Luckily it took my mind off my poor physical state. Very blown out and feeling disinclined to eat and rather sick. I wore my loose black cotton dress and a red scarf.
5 August. I feel awful on waking but a bit better now sitting in the sun writing this, also trying to finish off my novel. Shall I write more in this notebook?
Perhaps what one fears about dying won’t be the actual moment – one hopes – but what you have to go through beforehand – in my case this uncomfortable swollen body and feeling sick and no interest in food or drink.
9 August Woke up in the Churchill, Ward 7 (Radiotherapy) this time, having had the fluid removed yesterday and so feeling better. It is now 7.10 a.m. Men at one end of the ward and women at the other, but you don’t mix except in the dayroom, where I can’t go as I’m imprisoned in bed.
29 August I went to the clinic and they have decided to take me off the thiotepa. Presumably the blood count has shown them something but I don’t know what. Has it worked? I asked the doctor but he gave me a somewhat non-committal answer. So I am to come off it for 6 weeks and come back to the clinic again. They have lots of other things they can try, he said. We had lunch at Quills in Oxford in the rather hushed, net curtained atmosphere (the restaurant used to be the Kemp Hall Cafeteria, scotch eggs, etc).
1 October. As I am not feeling well at the moment (more fluid) I find myself reflecting on the mystery of life and death and the way we all pass through this world in a kind of procession. The whole business as inexplicable and mysterious as the John Le Carré TV serial, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which we are all finding so baffling.
To Bob Smith in London
Barn Cottage
18 October 1979
Dearest Bob,
I’ve now heard from the hospital at last – in fact I rang them up to find out something (how useful to have a tongue in one’s head). Apparently they are not going to take off any more fluid at this stage but will try some new tablets which I am to get from the doctor. He is coming to see me today as I didn’t feel well enough to go to the surgery – my appetite has been even more miserable the last few days and I’ve been feeling sick, so not getting much nourishment. A few nips of brandy, Lucozade, weak tea, toast – hardly enough to sustain me.
Later. The doctor has just been and cheered me up as he thinks he may be able to give me something to combat the nausea. Also he says that champagne is better than Lucozade.
A simply lovely day here – sun so powerful that I had to draw the curtains in my bedroom. Hazel has brought Tom [her son] to Wadham (I suppose young people are all brought to Oxford by car these days). So he is embarking on what should be the happiest days of his life.
Much love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
28 October 1979
Dear Philip,
Many thanks for your letter – also a nice postcard in the earlier part of this curious late summer (now, with the clocks back, turning into winter!).
I sent you copies of the reissue of the last two books (Jane and Prudence and No Fond Return) to the Library and hope they will arrive safely. The whole six really look quite handsome in their bright jackets and looking at them perhaps I can quote St Hilda’s motto – Non frustra vixi – though I still wonder if any of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for you and Lord D. And the dear TLS!
I’m afraid I’m writing this in bed as I haven’t been well during the last week or two. It is, I fear, the inexorable progress of this ‘tumour’. I’ve been having drug therapy for since January. I was very well the earlier part of the year but haven’t been so good the last month – now they are trying a new drug. They don’t seem to operate these days as they used to. I go to the Churchill regularly and feel I’m getting the best cancer treatment there is. At the moment though I’ve lost my appetite and don’t even like drink which is a bore.
I thought I’d keep you up to date with all this as you are such a good friend and I’d want you to know – of course
I don’t know quite what the future will be – who does, come to that! – and I’m quite cheerful and active in my brain, even if physically weaker. (Better that way round.)
I’ve finished my country novel except for a few finishing touches, so that is something, even if it isn’t all that brilliant. Glad you liked the story [in the New Yorker]. I think it was mostly based on St John’s – especially the pineapple neatly cut up and the lovely box of crystallised fruits. Univ. could furnish material for ‘ Breakfast with Lord Goodman’, I suppose, but I have no plans for writing that!
It must be a blow losing your deputy, but how distinguished and splendid is her new job – almost like being Mrs Thatcher – perhaps even more so with all the esoteric expertise she will bring to it. Perhaps it will be rather like the bit in my new novel where the rector’s sister suddenly goes off – I hope people will rally round. Meals and drinks and other comforts.
Wedding presents. Do brides (if the term is still appropriate?) still present you with a ‘ list’, usually from Harrods or Peter Jones, of presents they would like to receive? I know they used to, a very ungracious custom, I thought. Babies are easier – something silver?
What did you think of Booker? Not what it was, except for the money? I read Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Book Shop, shortlisted in 1978, and liked it but thought she should have given us a bit more – filled it out a bit. I’m not much attracted by her winner this year. I’ve read a few romantic novels, in the course of duty, and lately much enjoyed Penelope Lively’s new one The Treasures of Time. I waded through A.S. Byatt’s long novel The Virgin in the Garden but that was published last year, I think.
No more space – a lovely sunny day, but the windows need cleaning.
Hilary is well, looks after me very well, and sends greetings. And of course all these from me.