Betjeman

by A. N. Wilson

  Bron’s widow Teresa … Conversation with author, July 2005

  pronounced by Powell ‘Sar-deest’ … Conversation with author

  Isn’t it nice that Penelope should be immortalised … BP, Bowra to JB, 19 October 1950

  The Empress loses interest in such things … Waugh, Letters, p. 218

  I am beginning to find that there is a lot to be said for sham half-timber … CLG I, p. 412

  He wrote urging Waugh to come to Farnborough … CLG I, p. 418

  Just my subject and just my writer … CLG I, p. 430

  What a wonderful book HELENA is … CLG I, p. 520

  I must write to tell you what I find myself doing … CLG I, p. 438

  What I cannot believe … Waugh, Letters, p. 245

  Those were the days when that divine baroque … SB

  If you accept an absurdity … Waugh, Letters, p. 244

  Dearest Evelyn, I am very grateful … ibid.

  Betjeman delivered a Christmas Message … Waugh, Letters, p. 247

  Oi know oi was ysterical … BP, PB to JB, 29 October 1950

  Dear Evelyn was never very high-brow … BP, Bowra to JB, 29 October 1950

  Before 1948, everything was all right … Paul Betjeman to author, November 2005

  Like Penelope Betjeman, Anne Barnes … Anthony Barnes to author, 22 February 2006

  Betjeman became a frequent guest … Anthony Barnes to author, 22 February 2006

  John seems very fond of that South African boy … BP, JB to John Piper

  You really are an angel … BP, Diana Mosley to JB, 24 May 1946

  The public seem very willing to buy it … BP, Sir Oswald Mosley to JB, 16 January 1947

  A book printed by ‘Mosley Publications Limited’ … ibid.

  old Comper has certainly not gone out of his way … BP, Charles Peers to JB, 3 May 1950

  lost in admiration … BP, P. Morton Shand to JB, 3 January 1950

  John Summerson went into the RIBA canteen … BP, John Summerson to JB, 5 January 1950

  very sad it will be for Penelope … CLG I, p. 517

  Woad was very please [sic] oi went ter the garden party boot … BP, PB to JB, Friday [date?] 1950

  CHAPTER TEN

  DEFECTIONS

  I have the most beautiful secretary … BP, JB to T.S. Eliot, 1 May 1951

  Jill Menzies ‘is very pure’ … BP, JB to Anne Barnes, 11 August 1951

  She is a very clever girl … BP, JB to John Guest, 2 October 1956

  I think I was getting too fond of him … CLG II, p. 14, quoted HILLIER II, p. 501

  sex ‘only as a means of procreation’ … Harry Jarvis interview with CLG

  from 1953 for over a decade … Richard Ingrams, Muggeridge: The Biography, HarperCollins, 1995, p. 170

  JB was very flattered … CLG II, p. 9

  Is it not time you gave your heart a rest? … ibid.

  just an upper class nanny … In conversation with Richard Ingrams. She used much the same language to me.

  He made a brief plunge to Rome … Rose Macaulay, Last Letters to a Friend, Collins, 1962, p. 79

  I love the Bog villa and also the people … BP, 25 May 1954

  just an escape for JB … BP, Alan Pryce-Jones to CLG, scribbled during the 1980s on a letter of JB’s dated 22 August 1953

  Do I stand between you … BP, JB to Alan Pryce-Jones, 22 August 1953

  Antonia Pakenham … Antonia Fraser to author, 2006

  Osbert Lancaster, one of Betjeman’s closest friends … Osbert Lancaster to Richard Ingrams

  Darlin Tewpie oi AVE got confidence … BL Add. MS 71648

  We must have this … CLG II, p. 3

  The Roman Catholics were not taking part, ‘and we … BP, JB to T.S. Eliot, 14 May 1951

  The Archbishop – Ice creams – John Betjeman … BP, Earl Ferrers to JB, 28 September 1953

  When I asked the Dowager Duchess … CLG II, p. 42

  Nooni nooni nooni noewke … BP, JB to Penelope, 28 November 1953

  When I’m depressed, Mr Rowse … A.L. Rowse to author

  As they gathered round the wireless … Elizabeth Cavendish to author, 27 October 2005

  Moucher took to Betjeman immediately … Deborah Devonshire to author, 24 October 2005

  Dear, feeble, pale, soft-spoken Elizabeth … Letter at Chatsworth

  Stevenage New Town in the rainy afternoon … CLG II, p. 42

  HORRIFIED … This is not a personal matter with me … BP, JB to Alan Pryce-Jones, 22 August 1953

  A very long letter written by Barnes … BP, from Director General of Television, 31 July 1951

  Though Anne Barnes was Betjeman’s confidante … Anthony Barnes to author, 22 February 2006

  Oi habsolutely realise naow that the Anglican Church … BL Add. MS 71649

  A great brain has made this place … BBC written archives, 12 May 1952

  having decorated the house with rich wallpapers … CLG II, p. 3

  Well, my dear fellow, all I can say … BP, Evelyn Waugh to JB, 16 November 1957

  Oh no, old boy … CLG II, p. 47

  Among the paranoid fantasies … Evelyn Waugh, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, Penguin, 1951, p. 83

  He had made no new friends in late years … Waugh, Pinfold, p. 14

  Betjeman has flu … The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, ed. Charlotte Mosley, Houghton Mifflin, 1997, p. 244

  It was remarkably kind of you to come to Ascot … BP, Evelyn Waugh to JB, Whit Sunday 1955

  At a certain point … Paul Betjeman to author, November 2005

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MINDFUL OF THE CHURCH’S TEACHING

  Soon after he moved to Cloth Fair … CLG II, p. 108

  This reads the same backwards … CLG II, p. 224

  As was always to be the case, Betjeman found his temper fraying … CLG II, p. 72

  it is a token of how famous … CLG to author

  Miss Howson, the stained glass artist … JB to Roy Plomley, St Swithin’s Day, author’s collection

  Those who met Betjeman during those early years … William Glenton, Tony’s Room: The Love Story of Princess Margaret, NewYork Pocket Books, 1965, p. 109

  She found that Betjeman had signed a ‘repairing lease’ … HILLIER II, p. 471

  at least two fascinating biographies and at least one fictitious exploration … The biographies are by Robin Denniston and by Piers McGrandle. The fictitious account, much altered, and with other priests contributing to the composite Huddleston-figure, is in my novel My Name is Legion, Hutchinson, 2004. See also the fascinating chapter on Huddleston in Eric James’s The House of My Friends, Continuum, 2005

  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE … BP, Penelope to Jack Beddington, 3 August 1956

  John, in his new role as nouveau riche … BP, Penelope to Jack Beddington, Bank Holiday 1958

  Yew az poured 1 doz … BP, Penelope to JB undated

  Penelope says it is very middle class … BP, JB to Anita Dent, 20 April 1957

  I am pretty hot on ecclesiastical … BP, Victoria Dennistoun to JB, 11 May 1958

  Have you done it yet? … Lady Oaksey to author, August 2005

  I always suspected it was the cause of the fire … CLG II, p. 109

  Oh, how jolly! This is going to be fun! … Glenton, Tony’s Room, p. 33

  The second time, she succeeded … Glenton, Tony’s Room, p. 40

  It was even said … that Elizabeth had helped … Alastair Forbes told me he had it from Betjeman himself that he (Betjeman) and Elizabeth had told the princess to add the phrase about ‘mindful of the Church’s teaching’.

  ‘Don’t buy my collected verse’, he urged R.S. Thomas … Author’s collection, 22 December 1958

  How nice of you to write to me … CLG II, p. 161

  Betjeman was continually hard on him … Paul Betjeman to author, 18 November 2005

  I go to London for telly on Sunday … CLG II, p. 126

  LENTEN THOUGHT … BL Add. MS 71649

  I long to see you and Wanta
ge again … CLG II, p. 123

  Darling Tewps, If you won’t come down for Christmas … BL Add. MS 71648 ff. 93–4

  Dear feeble Elizabeth and I … CLG II, p. 113

  One of his closest confidants … Typed transcript of interview with CLG

  she wrote to a country neighbour … BP, PB to Michael Astor, 11 December 1961

  I love Stoke-on-Trent … CLG II, p. 89

  I could not face Keele without her … CLG II, p. 186

  My dear Commander … CLG II, p. 174

  Like sorrow it goes in waves … CLG II, p. 186

  Though she never would admit it … CLG II, p. 192

  Alas I can’t possibly believe … BP, Anne Barnes to JB, 17 September 1960

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SUMMONED BY BELLS

  Jim Knapp-Fisher has died … CLG II, p. 519

  It is so hard to believe it is all over … BP, William Wicklow to JB, 3 October 1958

  Artificial genuineness … Compare ‘Approval of what is approved of / Is as false as a well-kept vow’ in ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’

  Some know for all their lives … SB

  The secret of a man’s nature … J.A. Froude Thomas Carlyle: A History of the first Forty Years of his Life, 1795 – 1835, Longman, Green and Co., 1896, Vol. 1, p.89

  Wibz has been misbehaving in Florence … BL Add. MS 71648

  Important … ibid.

  Yew KNOW I have only to sit down by a warm fire … BL Add. MS 71648

  After a first printing of 80,000 … John Murray Archives, quoted HILLIER III, p. 102

  Tear-in-the-eye whimsicality … Both reviews are quoted in HILLIER III, p. 104

  It was left to Philip Larkin … Required Writing, Faber, 1983, p. 131

  much gentler and quieter than I expected … CLG II, p. 201

  So permanent and black and true … Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life, Faber, 1993, p. 347

  He enjoyed it when … Philip Larkin to author

  like a dark-haired Stephen Spender … JB to R.S. Thomas, author’s collection

  The Happiest evenings I ever Spent … CLG II, p. 103

  Oh, thank you, thank you for your succinct … JB to R.S. Thomas, author’s collection

  Treen of all houses … CLG II, p. 171

  I absolutely understand about E … BL Add. MS 71648

  Mr Betjeman was the ideal … CLG II, p. 204

  ‘Yes’, a girl in ABC make-up … CLG II, p. 205

  like Polzeath laid out on a grid system … CLG II, p. 220

  Aussieland is much nicer … CLG II, p. 223

  It’s odd that I should travel … CLG II, p. 222

  He told R.S. Thomas … Author’s collection

  For example, he was friends … Caroline Dawnay to author

  I realise, he wrote to Edward Hornby … CLG II, p. 102

  Dr Johnson said a man should keep … The remark was made to Joshua Reynolds in 1775 (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1957, p. 214)

  Now what was the name of that music-hall … Sunday Times, 8 July 1962, quoted in HILLIER III, p. 364

  ‘And did you’, asked Betj … ‘The Lost Betjemans’, ‘Bristol My Home’, HTV, 1994

  There’ll never be another … John Osborne, Almost a Gentleman, 1991, p. 243

  My dear old Top, Betjeman wrote to Osborne … CLG II, p. 280

  Secretly proud, I showed off merrily … SB

  on horseback among the jeep-infested … CLG II, p. 276

  for Elizabeth there was the grief … Harry Jarvis interview with CLG

  After all the poverty you must be seeing in India … CLG II, p. 277

  I feel very sad today … JB to R.S. Thomas, 4 January 1965, author’s collection

  Darling Dadz and Liz … BL Add. MS 71653, innumerable letters

  After National Service … This and all subsequent information about Paul emerged in conversation, November 2005, in NewYork.

  He is a wonderful fellow … JB to R.S. Thomas, 21 December 1967, author’s collection

  while your son is disillusioned … JB to R.S. Thomas, 4 January 1965, author’s collection

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LAST YEARS IN CLOTH FAIR

  In very early January 1966 … CLG II, p. 300

  When Jonathan Stedall asked him … Time with Betjeman, Episode One, quoted HILLIER III, p. 532

  Betjeman had in fact first met Harry Jarvis … BP, Harry Jarvis to CLG

  My love to the Smasher … BP, JB to Harry Jarvis, 28 August 1969

  I offered the Mass for you today … BP, Harry Jarvis to JB, 28 September 1968

  Feeble is OK but v pressing … BP, JB to Harry Jarvis, 13 January 1965

  I had a horrid dream … CLG II, p. 315

  could think of little else … CLG II, p. 311

  The 1964 book found far more … Cornwall: A Shell Guide, 1964 p. 39 and passim

  I got a salary of £800 … BP, JB to John Piper, 7 February 1965

  the local authorities who may use Shell … ibid.

  Meanwhile, the proper Shell guides … BP, JB to John Piper, 10 February 1966

  The reason I can’t go on with … BP, JB to John Piper, 11 March 1966

  Gabble, gabble, gabble … BP, JB to Harry Jarvis, 2 March 1965

  One of the many committees … Eric James to author, 2005

  Opportunities to ‘assemble my ideas’ … BP, JB to Harry Jarvis, 22 February 1966

  I cannot recommend Jerusalem … CLG II, p. 325

  This memorial to Sir Walter Scott … HILLIER III, p. 262

  Oh but you are the one true church … Helen Gardner to author

  Young William … HILLIER III, p. 261

  The birds are all killed and the flowers are all dead … CLG II, p. 317

  ‘Often’ wrote Bernard Levin … Bernard Levin, The Pendulum Years, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970

  Betjeman called him ‘bad Simon’ … HILLIER III, p. 315

  DOWN WITH GRACIOUS LIVING … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB, ‘Soonday’ some time in the mid-1960s. Gerard Irvine was sometime vicar of Cranford, a parish near Heathrow Airport.

  I wish I were in England … BL Add. MS 71656 A f4

  the 1847 bit which needs a roof lift … BP, letter from JB to Harry Jarvis, 1 April 1967

  He claimed to think highly of her poem … Richard Ingrams to author

  I have met him twice, dining with Harry Williams … JB to R.S. Thomas, 22 December 1968, author’s collection

  It is of great help in restaurants … JB to Roy Plomley, author’s collection

  I got a rather delightful thing … BP, JB to Harry Jarvis, 29 January 1970

  We are all four very happy … CLG II, p. 421

  When they got to Tasmania … Margaret McCall interview with HILLIER III, p. 301

  GO AWAY! GO AWAY! … Ibid.

  The latent sadism in the human race … CLG II, p. 425

  Betjeman was tired and drunk … Julian Jebb to author shortly after returning from this trip to Australia

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE MISTRESS

  most unbecoming in the Archbishop … James Lees-Milne, 29 June 1984

  As I am sure you know … Pusey House Archives, quoted HILLIER III, p. 589

  We can ave er ealth food week tergether … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB, April or May 1975

  I miss Penelope … BP, JB to Harry Jarvis, 13 August 1972

  It is reediculous that she cannot … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB, undated

  I am now very nearly in 29 Radnor Walk … CLG II, p. 465

  Alfred Austin is my favourite laureate after Eusden … Letter to Roy Plomley, author’s collection

  In a sense Betjeman was Poet Laureate already … Quoted CLG II, p. 438

  I have become so public and overexposed that I am dry … JB to R.S. Thomas, author’s collection

  Oh Gosh, thanks. Reading a book … John Guest to author, 1978

  Betjeman sat with a slightly goofy, froglike look … John Gaskell
to author, 2005

  Bloody plastic! … John Gaskell to author, 2005

  I love the Grosvenor Chapel and its plentiful incense … JB to John Gaskell, 10 September 1973 and 6 February 1974

  With John Guest, Harry Williams … John Guest to author, 1978

  For your information, I never went to bed … BP, JB to Auberon Waugh, 6 December 1973

  He had once remarked to Osbert Lancaster … Richard Ingrams to author, 2005

  Dear Bron, I very much enjoyed yesterday’s luncheon … BP, JB to Auberon Waugh, 13 February 1975

  This is the sort of publicity … BP, JB to Anthony House, BBC, 28 February 1975

  As they entered the modernistic restaurant … ‘I’m just a pop poet’ … Quoted to the author by Canon John Lucas, 1975

  Parker remembered Betjeman’s indifference … HILLIER III, p. 481

  Every Anglican priest … JB, reprinted in Coming Home, ed. Candida Lycett Green, Methuen, 1997, p. 516

  And though for church … ibid., p. 521

  For moi birthday oi would VERY … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB, 3 February 1975

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LOVE IS EVERYTHING

  I am writing to you to see if we cannot work out … CLG II, p. 240

  Harry Williams and Philip Larkin … Philip Larkin to author, 1983

  John was very difficult to live with … James Lees-Milne, The Milk of Paradise, John Murray, 2005, p. 174

  With Harry Williams and John Guest … John Guest to author, 1979

  When Richard Ingrams called on him … Richard Ingrams to author, 24 October 2005

  I have been in King’s College Hospital … BL, JB to John Sparrow, 21 February 1977

  Jonathan Stedall has now said … CLG II, p. 554

  Thirty years after this painful episode … Conversation between author and Paul Betjeman, NewYork, 6 November 2005

  Penelope went over to NewYork … and reported … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB, 20 March 1974

  IT IS WONDERFUL NOT BEING … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB, 24 August 2003

  Powlie’s birthday … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB

  In 1977, however … CLG II, p. 516

  When I met Lily Betjeman … Lily Betjeman to author, Port Isaac, August 2003

  Paul smilingly said to me … 6 November 2005

  I have been staying at St Michael’s College … CLG II, p. 263

  once, when Penelope had been … Lees-Milne, Milk of Paradise, p. 174

  Plymmie would like to be friends with her … BP, Penelope Betjeman to JB, undated

  Candida had the delicate task … CLG to author, October 2005