Betjeman

by A. N. Wilson

  To the actor James Fox … Radio Times, 28 August-3 September 1976

  Before the First World War, we … Lady Diana Cooper to author, 1981

  A rotten, low, deceitful … Summoned by Bells (hereafter SB)

  One of Betjeman’s closest upper-class … Diana Mosley to author

  It is a most miserable thing … Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, ch. XIV

  a little-known Victorian architect and his clerical patron … Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England, London 4: North, p. 658

  In Kentish Town, until the 1970s … Gillian Tindall, The Fields Beneath: the history of one London village, Phoenix Press, 2005, p. 169

  To a member of the Camden History Society … quoted Tindall, p. 203

  CHAPTER TWO

  CORNWALL – AND THE DRAGON

  The first of them would be a picture … John Lucas to author

  I [sic] was a quiret [sic] eve when I went out … CLG I, p. 11

  the healer of all wounds … CLG I, p. 6

  I do want to buy a house in Trebetherick … CLG I, p. 537

  Here at the end of the last century … John Betjeman, Shell Guide to Cornwall (revised), Faber and Faber, 1964

  In 1863 the church was excavated … Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Cornwall, Penguin, 1951, p. 150

  Beak’s Bay … Michael Thomas to author, 2004

  Little by little as business prospered … CLG I, p. 46

  One of Betjeman’s childhood playmates … Bevis Hillier, Young Betjeman, John Murray, 1988, p. 81. Bevis Hillier’s life of Betjeman is in three volumes – Young Betjeman, New Fame, New Love and The Bonus of Laughter. Hereafter, HILLIER I, HILLIER II and HILLIER III

  The cosy fuchsia-ed and tamaris-ed … CLG I, p. 46

  Joan, a year older than John … HILLIER I, p. 81

  now red-capped and jacketed like me … SB

  I learned a lot from that tough … BBC Radio Talk, 24 August 1953

  I couldn’t see why Shakespeare … SB

  I knew as soon as I could read and write … SB

  The American master, Mr Eliot … SB

  As a publisher, however … CLG I, p. 142

  where the walls / Of Magnus Martyr … T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

  compulsive sociability … compare Roy Jenkins, John Julius Norwich, Melvyn Bragg, Archbishop Rowan Williams, Iris Murdoch, Anne McElvoy, Condoleezza Rice, Edmund Wilson, Elton John and other only children

  Skipper’s children, Joe and Audrey … CLG I

  Wavell mi … Geoffrey Madon’s Notebooks, ed. J.A. Gere and John Sparrow, Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 23

  Hum was like a father to me … BP, undated

  I liked the way you took … SB

  a pleasing buxom wench … The Draconian, December 1918, p. 5117

  The cleverest actor of all … quoted The Draconian, April 1920, p. 5260

  Betjeman first achieved notice … J.B. Mallalieu, On Larkhill, 1983, p. 38

  All that was crumbling, picturesque … SB

  To my dear boy … BP

  Thus were my London Sundays incomplete … SB

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE SECRET GLORY

  When I announce … BP, JB to Auberon Waugh, 6 December 1973

  I like things that are overshadowed … HILLIER III, p. 679

  Doom, shivering doom … SB

  At home, his parents … SB

  Do you tickle your arse … SB

  When he had children of his own, Betjeman taught them to sketch … CLG I, p. 7

  Everybody thought he had absolutely fallen … Arthur Machen, The Secret Glory, Martin Secker, 1922, p. 160

  There is no system known to human wit … Machen, The Secret Glory, p. 171

  Dr Pevsner, his mind not attuned … Pevsner, Cornwall, p. 152

  Boswell quotes Johnson as saying … James Boswell, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1957, p. 51

  I saw golden Mywanfy as she bathed … Machen, The Secret Glory, p. 188

  The age demanded an image … Ezra Pound, Personae, Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 186

  First tremulous desires in Autumn stillness … SB

  Electric currents racing through my frame … British Library (hereafter BL) Add. MS 71645 f164

  One day after lunch, his mother … HILLIER I, pp. 116–17

  He signs his name ‘Moth’ because that is … Lord Alfred Douglas, Stopes Papers, BL Add. MS 58994 f75

  Betjeman pasted into his copy of W.B. Yeats’s … BP, JB to Rupert Hart-Davis, 20 June 1962

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OXFORD

  Maurice Bowra, who had taken part in heavy fighting … Maurice Bowra, Memories, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 85

  My diary, ‘a red Oxford University one’ … CLG II, p. 511

  Looking back aged thirty-three … CLG I, p. 252

  His friend and undergraduate contemporary Osbert Lancaster … Osbert Lancaster, With an Eye to the Future, John Murray, 1967, p. 93

  Dear Mr Betjemann, I am glad to have your poem … BP

  Warren was a legendarily snobbish man … Oral tradition in Oxford

  Lewis might not come across … For all the Lewis anecdotes, see my biography C.S. Lewis, Collins, 1988

  He made a particular cult of a Low Church … Gerard Irvine to author

  Many who laughed, or smiled, at the sight … John Lucas to author

  It was to Freddy Hood that he made … BP

  Isaiah Berlin, in his tribute … Hugh Lloyd Jones (ed.), Maurice Bowra, A Celebration, Duckworth, 1974, p.76

  Anthony Powell brilliantly captured … Lloyd Jones, p. 111

  Anthony Powell, pondering in old age … Journals 1982–6, Heinemann, p. 184

  In grown-up life, some time in his fifties … James Lees-Milne, Deep Romantic Chasm: Diaries 1979–81, John Murray, 2000, p. 101

  The Anglo-Irish are the greatest race … BP, JB to Elizabeth Bowen, 12 June 1946 nowhere in your excellent book do you say anything appreciative … CLG I, p. 251

  I remember going to a dance … Elizabeth Longford, The Pebbled Shore, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982, p. 68

  He picked up a waitress … Bowra, Memories, p. 169

  Dear Betjemann, You must write to the Secretary … Duncan Andrews Collection, quoted HILLIER I, p. 283

  Betjeman did his best to make life awkward … Lancaster, With an Eye to the Future, p. 93

  A sustained and successful effort … Lancaster, With an Eye to the Future, p. 81

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAKING A MARK – ARCHIE REV

  Betjeman’s biography. John demonstrates … Evelyn Waugh, Diaries, edited by Michael Davie, Penguin, 1986, p. 777

  Waugh, three years older … Diana Mosley to author, 4 June 1990

  My love to John … Evelyn Waugh, Letters, ed. Mark Amory, Penguin, 1980, p. 318

  I had a suspicion … Anthony Powell, A Question of Upbringing, Heinemann, 1951, p. 182

  And being slightly off his head … CLG I, p. 52

  I’ve the face of an angel … From an unpublished and undated letter to Betjeman from W. H. Auden, written during his time at the Downs School, Colwall, (1932–5) BL Add. MS 71646 f14

  Do you know what Winters … CLG I, p. 44

  The German lesbian film … HILLIER I, p. 246

  Praise the Lord … CLG I, p. 77

  Archibald looks like this … CLG I, p. 79

  Archibald has accepted the Incumbency … CLG I, p. 87

  He said he’d like to marry me … CLG I, p. 95

  Four Quakers and he … HILLIER I, p. 214

  Osbert Lancaster remembered … HILLIER I, p. 297

  A year younger … For Edward James, I have used John Lowe, Edward James, Poet, Patron, Eccentric, Collins, 1991

  Patrick Leigh Fermor … John Murray Archive, quoted HILLIER III, p. 590

  If anyone asks me … BP, JB to Mr Boyne, 14 January 1974

  P. Morton Shand will probably be best known … His son Major Bruce Middleton Hope Shan
d, born 22 January 1917, married Rosalind Maud Cubitt on 2 January 1946. Camilla Rosemary, born 17 July 1947, was their first child

  I have frightful nightmares … BP, P. Morton Shand to JB, 21 October 1958

  To understand Leeds … Quoted Timothy Mowl, Stylistic Cold Wars, John Murray, 2000, p. 53

  When Gothic architecture ceased to be fashionable … Architectural Review Vol.70, October 1931, p. 92

  I sometimes think that I should like … Peter Quennell in the Sunday Telegraph, 28 October 1984, quoted HILLIER I, p. 258

  Penelope Chetwode, I always think … Presentation copy of Mount Zion given to Penelope Betjeman

  CHAPTER SIX

  MARRIAGE

  It was quite different with Johnnie … BL Add. MS 71645

  We ask people like that to our houses … Bowra, Memories, p. 169

  We like them to see how we live … Note by Michael Davie in The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, p, 796

  Darling East-End girl … CLG I, p. 115

  Dishonesty is the best policy … CLG I, p. 116

  It will annoy Philth very much as she is always … CLG I, p. 97

  Although admiring Betjeman as a poet … Anthony Powell, Journals 1982–1986, Heinemann, 1995, p. 204

  I have no right to interfere … BP, Bryan Guinness to JB

  I love you all right, you needn’t fear that … BP, Penelope Chetwode to JB

  I know you were annoyed when I first wrote … BP, Penelope Chetwode to JB

  I just hated saying goodbye to you, my own darling … BL Add. MS 71645

  Bowra was soon telling everyone … Bowra, Memories, p. 170

  Penelope, darling, Your John must be a very stupid man … BL Add. MS 71646

  At the new suburb stretched beyond the run-way … In an earlier printed version it is ‘At a red suburb ruled by Mrs Simpson’. In the volume Continual Dew (1937), it is ‘At a red suburb ruled by Lady Liner’

  There is no possible chance of my going over … BL Add. MS 71645

  An affair was inevitable … CLG I, p. 100

  Her passion for horses … Imogen Lycett Green, Grandmother’s Footsteps, Macmillan, 1995, p. 118

  I take all your new friends to my bosom … BL Add. MS 71647

  I hope no one killed themselves at that meet … BL Add. MS 71645

  The thing itself outrages conscience … BP, Sam Burney to JB

  Penelope is practising mysticism … Bowra, Memories, p. 191

  Where did you get that nice horse? … Bowra, Memories, p. 193

  the furthest place from London I could find … CLG II, p. 527

  The ‘Diary’ and its team of clever young … Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove, Collins, 1973, p. 55

  The slowest part of the journey … CLG II, p. 513

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MR PAHPER – THE DEFINING FRIENDSHIP

  probate was complete … HM High Court of Justice Principal Probate Registry, 1934

  Alan Pryce-Jones (‘Bog’) tells a remarkable story … Alan Pryce-Jones, The Bonus of Laughter, Hamish Hamilton, 1987, p. 231

  Pierce Synott, the Oxford friend who invited John Betjeman … Papers in the Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California, quoted HILLIER I, p. 199

  My dear deaf father, how I loved him … SB

  Shoot! Said my father … SB

  I see / His kind grey eyes … SB

  Born on 13 December 1903, and educated … All Piper information, unless otherwise stated, is taken from Richard Ingrams and John Piper, Piper’s Places, Chatto & Windus/The Hogarth Press, 1983

  Send me some S. Devon lighthouses … David Fraser Jenkins and Frances Spalding, John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the Beach, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2003 (hereafter Jenkins and Spalding), p. 54

  Dear Artist … BP, 27 October 1936

  In the October 1936 issue of Architectural Review … Jenkins and Spalding, p. 113

  He drew absolutely certainly with a quill pen … Ingrams & Piper, p. 46

  Where do we go from here? … Stephen Spender, ‘A Talk with John Piper’, Encounter, May 1963, p. 271

  They had been at school together … Jenkins and Spalding, p. 57

  Myfanwy was immensely impressed … HILLIER II, p. 101

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the field marshal … HILLIER II, p. 101

  Naow, Peter, what is orl this abaout not believing … Peter Quennell to author, 1980

  Thank you for making our marriage so happy … HILLIER II, p. 85

  We thought he was just … JB to Colin Gill, quoted to author by John Lucas

  He was a much-loved parish priest … JB, The Times, 4 November 1958

  My dear Penelope, I have been thinking over the question of playing the harmonium … Bowra, Memories, p. 172

  Am very annoyed … BP, Penelope Betjeman to Pipers, 10 February 1940

  The Pipers were intimidated … HILLIER II, p. 101

  What a service you did us the day … BP, undated letter from Osbert Lancaster to JB, probably 1941

  I can’t do more than ten … Ingrams & Piper, p. 47

  As their friend David Cecil once remarked … to A.L. Rowse, repeated to author

  a partnership which did more to teach Englishmen … Ingrams & Piper, p. 50

  What are the problems? For you, economic ones? … BL Harrod Papers Add. MS 71645

  Till we all get a unified & intelligent … BP, C.R. Ashbee to JB, 7 March 1937

  A letter from R.L.P. Jowitt … BP, the Georgian Group, 8 December 1939

  Graham Greene … The Spectator, 16 September 1938

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BETJEMAN AT WAR

  At present fighting in a war seems to me … BP, 12 October 1939

  Archie is very well and pro-Hitler … BP, JB to Gerard Irvine, 19 October 1940

  There is no doubt that you have transformed … CLG I, p. 242

  I saw as I sat in St Cyprian’s … ibid.

  the tabernacle as the centre … The tabernacle, abominated by Comper, was in fact added by a clergyman about twenty years after the church was built; but the doctrinal point stands, since the Eucharistic Altar was for Comper central.

  What a joke about your being a Captain … CLG I, p. 251

  Dear Betjeman, I do not know the origin … BP, K. Clark to JB, 9 September 1939

  Jane and Sir K … BP, Maurice Bowra to JB, 17 July 1939

  My dear John, I don’t quite understand what part of the air force … BP, Philip Chetwode to JB, 3 October 1939

  I cannot understand what you want … BP, Philip Chetwode to JB

  Gosh, you know, I bet she is a doctor’s daughter … Betjeman broadcast, BBC Home Service, 3 July 1961

  We must all do our bit … BP, JB to Cyril Connolly, 6 October 1940

  You will think it rude and not a little unkind … BP, Myfanwy Piper to JB, 19 March 1940

  a damn nice chap … CLG I, p. 167

  Unpopular … except among politically minded tarts … BP, 20 April 1941

  He told her afterwards that she was so beautiful … CLG I, p. 201

  I think he should be very good … CLG I, p. 200

  which they wrongly imagined … BP, 2 March 1941

  I wish I cared more about the war … BP, 2 March 1941

  As you probably know, the last big raid … BP, John Summerson to JB, 7 May 1941. The ‘we’ who had photographed St-George’s-in-the-East was the Royal Institute of British Architects.

  It wasn’t correct as Arabs hadn’t been imported … HILLIER II, p. 224

  They are all very fearful of British propaganda … BP, JB to John Lehmann, 12 February 1941

  I have to see pro-Germans, pro-Italians, pro-British … CLG I, p. 285

  Oddly … you became a source of much anxiety … BP, Brennan to JB, 10 December 1967

  where everyone – Roman, Anglican … CLG I, p. 176

  I spent a lot of time defending Dev … BP, JB to Geoffrey Taylor, CLG I, p. 354

  We’ve had a happy time with them with no rancours … BP, Myfanwy Piper to JB, 6 Nove
mber 1941

  Oh how I miss you … It’s really awfull … BP, Myfanwy Piper to JB, 8 March 1941

  I think a good deal about … BP, JB to Myfanwy Piper, undated [1941]

  I cannot believe that such an expense … ibid.

  my fondest love to luscious, bubble-breasted … BP, JB to John Piper, 29 March 1952

  Did you go to Confession … BP, Penelope Betjeman to Myfanwy and John Piper, 16 April 1941

  What a week! … BP, Osbert Lancaster to JB, undated [1942]

  Darling Honor, he wrote … letter dated ‘27.v. 1944’ sent to author by Eve de Harben, a cousin of Honor Tracy’s

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE PATH TO ROME

  Queen Mary said as she left Badminton House … James Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, George Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 609

  Known to his family as Ava … The full title is Marquess of Dufferin and Ava

  he felt again the magic of that person … Lees-Milne, Deep Romantic Chasm, p. 101

  You know the heavenly Campo Santo … BP, Maureen Dufferin to JB, 18 July 1945

  A man of brilliance and of many friends … CLG I, p. 387

  J. Coxeter & Co. … BP, 16 October 1946

  like the clappers … CLG to author

  1730ish … Pevsner says 1749; The Buildings of England: Berkshire, Penguin, 1966, p. 143

  Betjeman wrote to Evelyn Waugh … BP

  Having already settled £5,000 … Details of this and other inflationary equivalents of sums mentioned in the text are all culled from www.eh.net/hmit/ukcompare

  When father went out on his basic … Chatsworth: typescript in Deborah Devonshire’s copy of Continual Dew given her by Evelyn Waugh

  The field marshal spent a week with them … BP, PB to Alan Pryce-Jones, 28 December 1945

  grossly proletarian … Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, p. 660

  My experience, Betjeman wrote to Gerard Irvine … CLG I, p. 508

  If we were to desert it … CLG I, p. 411

  The rift between the Betjemans after this crisis … Gerard Irvine to author

  His Kingdom stretch from See to See … BP, date unintelligible but probably 1975. It is a picture postcard showing the enthronement of Donald Coggan as Archbishop of Canterbury.

  I absolutely agree … JB to Harry Jarvis, 16 November 1963, CLG II, p. 264

  This pensione, she once wrote from Florence … BL Add. MS 71648 f118, 22 September 1958

  Pauline privilege he has only known that used once … BL Additional MS 71648