When Alan was with Joan he felt tongue-tied and ‘lamentably failing in spontaneity [. . .] Ought I to take liberties with her person when she is alone in my room? But she is not the sort of girl I want to violate; and I think we both are reticent.’15
As was feared, Sir Bolton abjectly failed to be won over by the attractions of Joan’s would-be suitor; unable to hide his lack of enthusiasm, the best he offered was an invitation to come to Dumbleton sometime. When the end of the holiday came and the Eyres Monsells returned to England, Alan stayed behind to travel and write in Spain and Portugal.
At the end of January 1933, Joan was a bridesmaid at St Margaret’s, Westminster, for the wedding of Nancy Beaton, Cecil Beaton’s sister. Beaton had spent hours posing his two youngest sisters, Nancy and Baba, as models for his photographs, and as a result they had become well known and fashionable in the world of ‘Bright Young Things’. The wedding was a lavish and highly theatrical affair masterminded by Cecil. He did not want Nancy to be accompanied by ‘lumpy girlfriends looking like bad imitations of musical comedy bridesmaids in tulle skirts of pastel shades’.16 Instead the bride was to look like a snow queen. The eight bridesmaids behind her were harnessed to one another with garlands of flowers in sleeveless, low-necked dresses, shivering in the cold. They were probably chosen because they were of similar height rather than because of any close friendship with the bride.* In the church, there were tall silver Venetian posts and artificial flowers arranged by Constance Spry. The crowds gathered outside St Margaret’s; for Cecil Beaton, acting as master of ceremonies in lavender-grey trousers and a white top hat, the wedding was the glittering success he intended. A month later, Joan was once again a bridesmaid at the wedding of a couple who were well known in hunting circles: Diana Coventry of Croome Court, Worcestershire, and John Mason. Joan, wearing ‘buttercup flamingo’, had also been a bridesmaid the previous year, and was to be a bridesmaid again in 1934: she obviously looked the part.
Joan wrote, rather confusedly, to Alan about their marriage plans and finances. Alan had also arranged to stage a play.
I loved to hear about your play. It will obviously be wonderful & how exciting the first night will be!
The thing is you must not write for money. You won’t will you, as if you do, you obviously won’t write such good things as if you didn’t. Graham agrees with me about this. In fact this is the real reason he is not absolutely delighted. He says I ought to wait years and years before I marry you so that you don’t have to think about getting money quickly & won’t spend any time writing articles just for money. But that would be too awful, wouldn’t it?
I don’t see that we shall want any more money than you usually have. Sir B. ought to give me about £1000, don’t you think, & I couldn’t possibly want more than £250 for everything for myself, so all the rest would be enough for the house, food & servants & you wouldn’t want more than you always have. (I hope you realise after this what a sensible, practical girl I really am) [. . .]
I stayed with Billa last weekend which was heaven, especially as no one else was there so we just sat in front of a fire & talked the whole time. We went to a dance of the Jones’s which was really rather fun on Saturday. There was a dreadful hunting scene in one of the rooms so Billa & I turned it round & wrote the only three rude words we knew on the back in lipstick which seemed very funny at the time. (Some nice man rubbed them out after though, so we aren’t disgraced.) [. . .]
I nearly forgot to tell you some very good news – Graham says Lady E.M. likes you very much indeed which she really couldn’t help doing could she?17
They also discussed how to make Pryce-Jones more acceptable to his prospective father-in-law. Unfortunately, he said he could not shoot because he always closed the wrong eye in a panic when a pheasant came over, and when he played golf he could not hold a mashie properly, but he could at least try harder. But wouldn’t it be awful if he really did like it? In her next letter Joan wrote:
I’m afraid I was a little optimistic about the £1000 Sir B. ought to give me, but it doesn’t matter now as he will die quite soon as last night we made a wax image of him and melted it in front of the fire so I shouldn’t be surprised if he is already in his death throes [. . .] I quite agree with your economic theory and we must certainly have a house at Granada as it is quite one of the loveliest places I have ever seen [. . .] I rang up a shop the other day and said that I would design some clothes for them and I’ve got to show the things I’ve done which is rather unfortunate as I haven’t done any. However if I could do some I might make some money which would be very useful.18
Betjeman wrote to Alan congratulating him and giving him advice.
I am so sorry I haven’t written before. Of course I’m delighted. You’ve scored all along the line. But there is one thing you must do before you marry – you must explain that you were once inverted. She won’t mind at all. In fact she obviously knows as she is quite aware that old Graham and I and all our friends are inverted. I think it is mad not to be honest and clear up the embarrassment of a prickly conscience. Actually inversion is an additional charm. It worked very well with Philth [Betjeman’s nickname for Penelope] although I have now decided I daren’t marry her – money and emotion and fear getting in the way.
Oh Bog, I am pleased – though very sorry for Dotty. You must marry at once. ‘Delay has dangers’ as my favourite poet the Reverend George Crabbe says. Those eyes of hers like tennis balls and that undeniable depth and constancy. Of course it’s what we all need and those who are supposed to make bad husbands – like you – always turn out the best. Bog, I am glad. I have a lot of important things to tell you when you return. There’s no more need to write for money. I hope you’ve written a good play. You will become a great author. I will tell her she must marry you at once.19
During Penelope’s long absence in India, John had met Billa Cresswell at a weekend party at Sezincote, a Regency mansion in the Gloucestershire countryside. A few days later Billa and John met in his London flat and lay on a sofa, where they kissed and cuddled. He then proposed to her, and she accepted despite his shortcomings which, as he pointed out, included the fact that he had no family background to speak of and little income. ‘Finally there’s no getting away from the fact that I love you, darling Billa,’ Betjeman wrote. ‘It’s the most restful and consoling affair I have yet experienced, and it’s quite enough really to know that you exist with those extraordinary clothes and that loud voice and that white and painted face. Moreover we’re one up on everyone else because we’ve suffered [. . .] Meanwhile I will tell Philth’s friends that I don’t want to marry her – can’t afford it. Dishonesty is the best policy – and the kindest at present. I love you, I love you, I love you.’20 Joan, one of the few to know about this latest development, wrote immediately to Billa: ‘Darling, darling, darling Billa, Betj told me last night and I am so thrilled about it I don’t know what to do. It’s nearly as exciting as Bogs and I. It is HEAVEN and I think really he is much nicer than Graham or anyone (except Alan). Darling what a heavenly quartet we shall be.’21 However, shortly afterwards this new affair ended abruptly. Penelope sent a telegram from India telling John to do nothing until he had heard from her. Betjeman backed down and in July – after more emotional turmoil – John and Penelope married in a registry office in Edmonton, although they were too frightened to tell the Chetwodes beforehand. Billa reflected afterwards unflatteringly that John ‘was a sort of joke we all knew really. His hair was like last year’s nest [. . .] It was just the sort of thing he did. He liked girls and he liked the idea of being in love.’22
Graham, meanwhile, had a new boyfriend – ‘madly attractive as tall as me with great shoulders & the smallest hips’23 – and went to stay with Somerset Maugham and his lover, Gerald Haxton, at the Villa Mauresque on Cap Ferrat. They ‘couldn’t have been more charming hosts. I played lots of tennis & lay in the sun & found the loveliest place in Nice when we went in for our fucking.’24 Immediately afterwards, Joan and
Graham went skiing in Austria. Joan was a less enthusiastic skier than her brother, although she thought the mountains were ‘divine’. Her father, ‘that odious Sir B’, had given her £20 for Easter, which was ‘really rather “sportin” of him’.25 She had been reading Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, a ‘heavenly’ novel about the damage caused to children by tyrannical and overbearing parents. It was a book, she felt, that all parents should be forced to read. She and her brother had both also read Alan’s latest book, a short biography of Beethoven which was dedicated to Graham. ‘I think it is the first readable book that I have encountered that deals with music & the life of a composer,’ Graham wrote to his friend. Unfortunately, the press was less enthusiastic. The review in the Observer was entitled ‘A Strange View of Beethoven’. Not only had Pryce-Jones made the composer out to be a snob and a cad, he was also apparently ‘stupid’ which was why he wrote ‘that kind of’ music. The review was also sceptical of Alan’s claim that ‘an amateur is more likely to write real criticism than the qualified critics’. He was likely to remain an amateur if he confined himself to libelling the dead, the reviewer added.
Eventually, if Alan was to come to Dumbleton, Joan had to face her father and talk to him seriously about her marital prospects. If she had any doubts about marrying Alan they were outweighed by the benefits: marriage would get her away from her father of whom she was terrified. Sir Bolton played the role of a typical unreformed Victorian paterfamilias to perfection.
Darling Alan,
I thought I had better say nothing more to the family till you came back; however last night Lady E. M. said Sir B. would like to see me as she had told him. So, quite hysterical with fear, I tottered to his room to talk to him, & darling you can’t imagine how nice he was. Lady E. M. must have said the most charming things about you. He talked mostly about money, & gave me a lecture on how badly & stupidly I’d been brought up, never having to know the value of money etc, etc. But if he only knew how economical I am the last half of every year when I’ve finished my allowance, he wouldn’t say such things.
He asked, too, what sports you were fond of! So I said you had only given up hunting for the present as you were so much in London, & you adored golf. All of which is very nearly true, isn’t it? He was very pleased, & said, ‘Oh, he likes that sort of thing, does he?’
So it looks as if everything is really going to be HEAVEN if after two months of reflection you can still have the thought of St. Margaret’s (or the registry office as the case may be).
Darling, I love you so very much, so do write again quickly.
Joan xxx26
In April 1933, Pryce-Jones at last came down to Dumbleton. The first evening went well enough, and the following day when Sir Bolton suggested a round of golf, another well-meaning guest tried to extricate Alan from embarrassment by exclaiming, ‘But you can’t expect Pryce-Jones to play with borrowed clubs.’ Tennis was rejected with similar finality. They settled on a walk around the lake in the grounds instead.
Sir Bolton started the conversation with his young guest: ‘I gather that you want to marry my daughter.’
Alan said that he did.
‘Well, now, there are a few things to discuss.’
Alan agreed.
‘Where is your place?’ his host asked.
Alan replied that, sadly, he had no place. His father was an eighth child, and it was very unlikely that his unappealing childhood home in Wales would ever be his.
‘And what job have you?’
Alan told him.
The dialogue continued until, at last, Sir Bolton said, ‘And so, Pryce-Jones, having nothing, without prospects, without a home, you expect to marry my daughter, who has always had the best of everything here, in Belgrave Square, on the yacht which a kindly Government allows me. No, no, Pryce-Jones, come back in a few years’ time when you have something behind you.’27
The romance reached the gossip columns. The headline story on the front page of the Daily Express for 2 May related to a crisis in the government over a reduction in British tariffs to aid exports of coal to Germany. The headline of the story beside it read ‘Daughter of First Lord Engaged, but her parents refuse their consent’. A photograph of Joan sat in the middle column of the page.
The ‘Daily Express’ understands that Miss Joan Eyres Monsell, second daughter of Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lady Eyres Monsell, has become engaged to Mr. Alan Pryce-Jones, an assistant editor on the ‘London Mercury’, a monthly journal dealing with literature and the arts.
The young couple are very much in love, but so far Miss Eyres Monsell’s mother and father have refused to sanction the engagement. Both have strong literary inclinations. Mr. Alan Pryce-Jones is aged only twenty-four and besides reviewing books writes a good deal on architecture. His fiancée, barely twenty-one years old, is very tall, smart and good-looking. She has set a fashion by wearing Grecian curls at the back of her head. Miss Eyres Monsell is devoted to her brother Graham, who is a wonderful musician and lives in Paris. She has always moved a great deal in literary and artistic circles.
Lady Eyres Monsell is immensely rich. The fortune she inherited cannot be less than £50,000 a year. She was formerly a Miss Eyres, and lady of the manor at Dumbleton Hall near Evesham.28
Sir Bolton’s decision was final, and the following day a denial of the engagement appeared in the papers.
‘There is no truth in it,’ Mr. Pryce-Jones stated. ‘It is true that I have known Miss Joan for a number of years, but there is no question of our being engaged.’
Miss Eyres Monsell was equally surprised at the report. ‘It’s awfully interesting but quite untrue,’ she said. ‘Mr Pryce-Jones has been a friend of the family for a long time and we are both interested in literature and art but that doesn’t mean we must be engaged.’29
There was nothing they could do. Neither Joan nor Alan had any money behind them nor a steady income of their own, and neither family approved of the other, although the objections of the Pryce-Jones family rested more on vaguely hostile recollections of a time when his mother had been a debutante and resentment that her son had not been welcomed with open arms. Joan and Alan continued to enjoy one another’s company among their close friends, such as Billa, who was also turning out to be not quite the sort of daughter her mother might have hoped for. Billa used to drive around London in a tiny car with the words ‘Alan is a pansy’ scratched into the paintwork. She, too, much preferred the company of artists and writers to that of young men of an officer class.
Betjeman came down to Dumbleton and Joan took a photograph of him posing by a window taken from the parish church, which had been placed beside the lake as a feature. John’s head is flung back with his hand on his brow in mock anguish. Betjeman’s first prose work, Ghastly Good Taste, had just been published. He captioned the picture, ‘The author – an example of good taste if ever there was one.’ He also composed a short poem about the marriage proposal. It was written in the extravagant, dramatic style of the nineteenth-century poet Sydney Dobell, the sort of thing Betjeman loved, the more obscure the better.*
Dumbleton, Dumbleton, the ruin by the lake,
Where Boggins and Sir Bolton fought a duel for thy sake;
Dumbleton, Dumbleton, the Gothic arch that leads
Thro’ the silver vestibule to where Sir Bolton feeds.
The groaning of silver plate,
The sickly social shame;
Oh heirs of Dumbleton! The Monsell in thy name!
A second poem for Joan, in which Dumbleton Hall is transformed back into the original Jacobean house – ‘an ancient stonebuilt mansion’ – was written ‘As if by Longfellow’:
Those old pinnacles and turrets as in good Queen Bess’s reign
Still jut out before above the creeper, still the level lawns remain,
And within, upon the staircase, tapestries still catch the wind.
And there are tusks that Marco Polo may, perhaps, have brought from I
nd,
Quaint old lanterns light the carpets, quaint old carvings deck the stair,
Sumptuous fabrics line the sofa such as Shakespeare used to wear;
And the heiress of the Cocks still retains the names of Eyres,
With Sir Bolton standing by her still receives one on the stairs;
Best of all his lovely daughter welcomes every author-guest –
Newer Shakespeares, other Beaumonts with their Fletchers come to rest;
Come to steal, perhaps, some kisses just as Shakespeare did and
Drake –
Thus is kept thine ancient glory, Gothic Dumbleton, awake.
The manuscripts of the two poems were presented as a gift to Joan. John also composed a fable for Penelope entitled SS Centipeda and Giomonsella, Martyrs which he decorated with his own drawings. The two martyrs are Joan and Penelope, both wearing haloes. It is a farcical story in which Penelope is both the daughter of a Spartan general and related to Julius Caesar. Graham appears as ‘St Graham Hermaphrodite’.
Betjeman had perhaps exaggerated Alan’s combativeness – by August he had fallen out of love. He confided all in a close friend, Patrick Balfour. Although heir to the Kinross title, Balfour had little money of his own, but he seemed to know everyone – among his closest friends at Oxford were Evelyn Waugh and Cyril Connolly, and he claimed that Connolly was the first person he ever went to bed with. His talent for knowing people made him the ideal person to write the ‘Mr Gossip’ column in the Daily Sketch. Patrick no doubt invited Alan’s confidence, and his letters are full of pained examinations of his own, unsuccessful, love affairs, as well as those of others. Alan had just been to the Salzburg festival where he encountered a friend of Graham called Bobby Marshall. He had recorded more tortured reflections in his diary: ‘I knew I was sunburnt and looking my best; but he is a “hearty”, who has always led a perfectly normal life, and I am engaged . . . I don’t want to go to bed with him (or do I?) nor he with me yet we can’t bear to be apart.’30
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