1938

January. Hilary went back to Oxford and met Jay – a funny little thing but rather fascinating, she said. After they met he wrote to me, saying that her voice had reminded him of mine. And

This was especially welcome at this time because I was still feeling rather unhappy and lost about Henry’s marriage – I was thankful for any interest to be taken in me.

25 February. I went to Oxford. After tea I went shopping and when I came back there was a light in my room. I went in and saw someone standing in a camel hair coat with his back to me. He turned and faced me and held out his hands to me. I scarcely knew him as we had only met once before. Soon I was talking rather nervously and rapidly and found out that he was writing for a newspaper called Oxford Comment, that he hadn’t been well and was going to Spain in March. He thought perhaps that I was disappointed in meeting him again but soon we had our arms around each other and I knew it wasn’t so.

26 February. When I got to Balliol three blond Etonians like teddy bears were there. I was nervous and forgot my Finnish accent. They went soon after I came. Jay embraced me with such force that he hurt my nose and made it crooked.

For some reason I was vaguely unhappy all evening – either because it was raining or because I had forgotten my lipstick, or for some other, less obvious reason.

After dinner we went to see Ghosts at the Playhouse. It was quite the most terrifying play I have ever seen and I felt unhappy all the time. We talked in the intervals about ourselves and our ambitions. He said that he couldn’t bear to die without having done something by which he could be remembered.

At the end of the play – which was horrible – we were both frightened and disturbed and walked back to my rooms apart and almost without speaking. There was a tremendous wind in Pusey Street, so that we could hardly stand. It was cold and refreshing.

28 February. Jock depressed me about my Finland novel and I was in tears all the time I was at his flat, especially as I was also unhappy about Henry and my own life seemed pointless and just a waste of time if I wasn’t even going to be able to write. I went home and cried – there seemed to be nothing to live for.

The next day I tried to pull myself together and succeeded in thinking about a new novel although I was still unhappy and thought I would have to get a job somewhere at once.

3 March. I was better. A man came along the street singing and I threw some money to him. He wished me luck – I thought how I needed it. I did some writing and then read a book about the Oxford Group – For Sinners Only – which brought a curious kind of consolation as well as making me laugh. I thought how nice and easy it would be to be ‘changed’.

I went to the Pacifist Meeting in the Town Hall. I saw Don Liddell – he and Jock were there selling literature and carrying posters. Just before it was about to begin I saw Jay standing up in the front. I felt rather excited although I had resolved to put him and all such diversions from me – but I managed to attend well enough to the meeting. The speakers were George Lansbury, Mary Gamble and J. Middleton Murry. After the meeting I talked to the Liddells and John Barnicot. We walked along the Corn. Just by Marks and Spencer’s Jay walked past us. I caught him up and asked him if he was going to sign the Peace Pledge. He took my hand and held it very fast. Walking along with him all my unhappiness vanished. We went into the the Randolph and, as it was only five to ten we were able to buy a bottle of Niersteiner to take back with us. In my rooms we drank wine and talked and loved and I made a half-hearted effort to convert him to Pacifism, though I wasn’t entirely converted myself. But he said that he thought there were worse things than war, and that if he thought all Beauty was going out of his life he would simply shoot himself.

4 March. I met Jay by the Ashmolean and we leaned up against it and stood looking up at the Randolph and the blue sky behind it. We were like two people having a coltish flirtation. He bought me a bunch of violets and I gave him half a dozen – one for every occasion we had met. Then we parted, he to write an essay and I to write him a Betjeman poem:

5 March. I went to lunch with Jay in Balliol. We had eggs with cream on top, chicken and chocolate mousse. And Niersteiner, of course. Just before three we decided to go out. Jean-Pierre Giraudoux came in for a moment to ask Jay to go on the river but he didn’t stay when he saw I was there. We walked out into the Broad and down Holywell and talked about going to Italy or somewhere in the Cotswolds. Up to town on the 10. 10, breakfast on the train … Ach, jenes Land der Wonne, Das seh’ ich oft im Traum.… When we got into the Botanical Gardens we lay down on the grass under a tree. There were branches of mistletoe in the branches so we kissed. After a while we went into the hothouses and looked at the goldfishes and the palms. Jay kissed me by the orchids and stole a spray for me. They were pinky-mauve with purple centres like velvet. I thought they had a sweet smell but Jay said they smelt like the tomb. I remembered Marvell and so did he:

I said that perhaps it would be nicer to have a marble vault together than a house in North Oxford.

11 March. I went to lunch with Jay in Balliol. We had fish, duck and green peas, peaches and cream, sherry, Niersteiner and port. Jay was wearing his elegant East-End style suit, made in Savile Row – slate-blue with nice padded shoulders and trousers with no turnups, touching the ground at the back.

Jay was lying on the sofa and I was sitting on the floor beside him when Woodrow Wyatt, the editor of Oxford Comment, came in. I remembered my Finnish accent. After he had gone away we were happy and then incredibly it was five o’clock and he had to go and see his tutor. I knew it would have to be goodbye and perhaps not even Auf Wiedersehen. I was calm and sat down at the table to write something on a farewell card. Jay stood in front of his mirror and combed his hair and put on his coat. Then he came up behind me and said ‘ Servus’. That was the last time I saw him.

I inscribed a card of Boecklin’s Die Insel der Toten with our initials and the dates of our first meeting and our last and added a line from my favourite poem by Heine … Neuer Frühling gibt zurück.…

I was pleasantly sad at leaving his rooms. I took a red anemone from my buttonhole and left it on top of his pale blue pyjamas. I walked round the room touching things. Then I walked slowly down the stairs.

I walked out of the St Giles’ gateway in a happy daze and then into Elliston’s for tea. I was so happy I could hardly speak coherently to Ruth Brook-Smith and Alison Ross whom I met there. Still in the same state I went back to change to go to dinner at St Hilda’s. Just as I was ready to go out I saw that there were some flowers in the hall. Two dozen of the loveliest daffodils and with them a card from Jay saying in German that although he had to go away I knew that he had thought of me. I felt it was a perfect ending to what had been one of the happiest episodes of my life. I was so glad that I didn’t see him again in Oxford.

Oswestry

early 1938

Now it is spring and the garden is full of beautiful flowers, primroses, violets, daffodils, scyllas, grape hyacinths, anemones, und so weiter. And Miss Pym is looking out of the window – and you will be asking now who is this Miss Pym, and I will tell you that she is a spinster lady who was thought to have been disappointed in love, and so now you know who is this Miss Pym. Well now, as I am telling you, this Miss Pym is looking out of the window, and she is looking into the field opposite the house, where there are many lambs frisking, it being spring, the sweet spring, when maids dance in a ring. But this Miss Pym, although she is, so to speak, a maid, is not dancing in a ring, no sir, and she is not frisking, no buddy, no how. She is seeing an old brown horse which is walking with a slow majestic dignity across this field, and she is thinking that it is the horse that she will be imitating and not the lambs. Old brown horse, she says, we have had our moments you and I, and she is singing in a faded voice an old song she is remembering and it is all about great big moments of happiness and such. No, Jock, it is not about sin and such – you are not rightly understanding this Miss Pym. I must ask you to remember that we are here today and gone tomorrow, Heigh-ho.

Well, as I was saying before you interrupted me, this Miss Pym is feeling oh-so-happy in this beautiful weather and she is sitting outside in the garden in a green deck chair and she is reading a book. She is reading the Poetical Works of Lord Byron – no, not the whole poetical works of this said Lord, but Don Juan – and you are thinking well, that is enough, nicht wahr? And she is beginning at the beginning of the poem and she is reading these lines:

And she is laughing ha-ha – she is laughing, is this Miss Pym and thinking Oh, this is like my dear friend Jock who is in the frozen north, where the sea is frozen, and the snow is frozen, but the people they are not so frozen she thinks, else how could there be any lilla flickas? Well, she is thinking of her friend Jock, her dear friend, and she is wanting to thank him for his beautiful letter, which is the most beautiful letter she has ever had from him. I must write another letter, she thinks, that is what I must do. So cheerio chaps and here goes, she says, not being by any means one of your old fashioned spinsters. And it is evening and she is sitting by the fire in the drawing room smoking a cigarette and the wireless is on and dear Aunt Janie is knitting a white jumper, and this white jumper is always going wrong, oh, you have no idea how wrong it is going. Anyway here is Miss Pym in the middle of a happy domestic scene, so you can think of her in this same happy scene, and I know you will like to imagine her in the drawing room with Aunt Janie, rather than imparadis’d in Mr J’s arms in Balliol, or getting into a merry state of condition in the St George’s restaurant with Mr Pullein-Thompson, or walking in the Parks and telling her so sad life story to Mr B. H. de C. Ireland. Well, now you have what you like, so I hope you are content, because it is not often that we have what we like in this life.

And now you are asking, what is this Miss Pym doing with herself in Oswestry? And I will tell you, she is writing, simply that. And she is writing a new novel, and Chapter One is nearly done, but it is not in rhymes, no sir, not even Miss Pym is as clever as that. And this novel it is oh-so sober and dull, and there are no parties of young people getting beschwipst, and there are no Finns or Swedes or Germans or Hungars and the Magyar bor is not flowing at all freely, and there is no farm on the puszta … no, there is none of this. Well, there can be really nothing, you say. And you will be right die ganze Welt dreht sick um Liebe you will be saying in a furry, sentimentvolle Stimme as you see darling Henry and more darling Elsie and how happy they are. And you will be coming back to England, and you will be meeting this so dull spinster which is like the old brown horse walking with a slow majestic dignity, and you will be saying Well-fer-goodness-sake, Miss Pym, like they say in the films. But this spinster, this Barbara Mary Crampton Pym, she will be smiling to herself – ha-ha she will be saying inside. But I have that within which passeth show – maybe she will be saying that, but she is a queer old horse, this old brown spinster, so I cannot forecast exactly what she will be saying.

And what else is she doing you ask me? Well, she is reading, and she is reading The Christian Year, and Don Juan and Rainer Maria Rilke, and the Daily Mirror, and the so nice poems of Mr Betjeman, which remind her of standing looking up at the Randolph on early closing day, and having a coltish flirtation with a young man. Ho-ho, you say, wagging your finger very avuncular, so this spinster is having a coltish flirtation. Das ist nicht gut you add in a guttural voice, shaking your head, but Miss Pym, this so prudent sensible spinster, she is agreeing with you. Nej, she is saying, det ar dalig. For she thinks that may be Swedish for saying that it is not good to have a coltish flirtation outside the Randolph on early closing day, even if the sun is shining and you are only four and twenty. Then come kiss me four and twenty – but no it is not that, not at all – Miss Pym is four years too late. And Mr Liddell is chuckling because she is four years too late.

And Miss Pym is reading the newspapers and listening to Wien du Stadt meiner Traüme on the wireless. But it is not that any more. No it is Deutschland. Ein Reich, Ein Führer – Heil Hitler! that is what it is. And she is receiving letters from her so dear friend in Dresden, and he is saying that it is Schade that she is not in Germany to experience these so great events which have shaken the heart of Germany, or something similar. And Miss Pym is remembering how … but no she is not remembering, she is just writing back a very cautious letter because she does not like to be rude to a dear friend who has been always so kind to her when she was allein in einer Grosstadt, like Marlene Dietrich in the song, which her dear friend Jock wouldn’t know about. And Miss Pym is getting a letter from her dear little, young boy friend Mr J., whom her dear friend Jock thinks unprepossessing, which is not true. For Jock has not seen him in his pretty blue suit, looking like a handsome little boy out in the East End, and taking a pride in being so because it is so much more Stimmungsvoll to look like the Mile End Road than like Mayfair. Well, as I was telling you, Miss Pym is getting this letter from Mr J., and it is written from Dover where he is spending two hours because he has missed the boat which shall take him on the beginning of his journey to Spain. And Miss Pym is very angry, oh she is, you have no idea how angry she is with Mr J. It is coming over her like violent wave. Yes siree. And do you know why she is angry? You may think you can guess why, but even you are not so clever, Mr Jock Liddell. Your first in Greats availeth you nothing here. Well, I will tell you, I am not one for keeping you in suspense. She is angry because Mr J. writes oh-so-calm in his letter that he forgot to go to the Schools to do the French Unseen in Pass Moderations, and so he will not be able to get through his two subjects, no, not even though Miss Pym wrote him three beautiful letters and offered up so many prayers for him. Now do you see why Miss Pym is angry with him? And do you not think her anger is right? How shall thy fortress ever stand … well no, the rest of the quotation is not suitable, but how will Mr J. become oh so celebrated and famous if he is doing silly things like this? asks Miss Pym. And she is going to his tutor in Balliol and they are weeping together and drinking a glass of sherry wine to steady their nerves, and his tutor is saying Where were ye, nymph, and Oh, what the influence of a good woman could have done at this time, and they are weeping again, and Miss Pym is wishing she had stayed longer in Oxford, so that she could have led young Mr J. by the hand into Schola Magna Borealis, or whichever it was, and she and his tutor are very broken, but Mr J. is not broken, oh no, no how is he broken, he is in Paris, kissing people’s hands and paying nice compliments and being charming. And Miss Pym is quoting Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ and shaking her head, and being very wise and old, like as if she had a house in North Oxford and asked young men to tea on Sundays.

Well, another day is come, and the sun is shining all the time and it is as hot as summer and this Miss Pym, this spinster I was telling you about, is sitting outside in her green deckchair and she is reading Don Juan and smoking a Russian cigarette (she is quite a dog, this old spinster) and knitting a pink jumper. And then she is dropping off to sleep and the sun is shining on her face and making what we would call sun-kisses if we were not verboten to be all romantic. So we will say freckles. And Miss Pym is oh-so-pleased, and she is looking in the glass, and thinking how her face is a little brown, and she is singing a song ho-ho, and it is a song about somebody who is tall and tanned and terrific – you know how, like these so glamorous American playboys are that you see when you are in the Ritz in the two shilling seats. And Miss Pym is very pleased and happy and she has just had tea and when she finished writing to her dear friend Mr Liddell she will be writing that oh so dull and full of nothing novel I was telling you about in our last. And she is writing it in a fine book with a marbled cover, like I don’t know what unless it is a fine pulpit in the House of God. And Miss Pym is chirping out a poem

She is chirping, oh so merrily with a hey nonny nonny, is Miss Pym. Miss Pym is asking tenderly after the Herr Lektor Harvey and his beautiful wife. And she is envying Jock because he is with these so dear people and he is seeing new things and he is filled with the Stimmung of the northern winter. And she is hoping to see dear Henry and darling Elsie if they come to England in the summer, and she is hoping that marriage has improved dear Henry, and that he will not any more be rude to her. For this Miss Pym, this spinster, she is getting to a good age now, and she is got very touchy like and crabby. And she is sorry that she cannot send dear Jock any beautiful cards and pictures like he sent her, but she has only a card of Balliol College Chapel and one of that place, and she thinks he would not be liking that. Plurimi pertransibunt … she is saying and her eyes are misty with tears and she is reaching for the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. But then she is remembering poor Henry, and how he thinks Swinburne very fine, and she is giggling and thinking it is oh-so funny that he should now be reading this poet which she read on Sundays after evening chapel when she was a plump Backfisch of sixteen summers. And she is saying ho-ho, you brown bright nightingale amorous – so ist die Liebe, nickt wahr? And then everyone is angry with her because she says these things, and is not behaving like the old brown horse I was telling you about, but she is not minding that everyone is angry, no not at all. She is thinking of herself eating dinner in St Hilda’s College on the last night of last term, wearing a green chiffon dress and pearls and diamonds. And she is feeling oh so happy because why? Oh, you want to know everything, you old people, with your wagging fingers. Well, it is because she is eating a brown soup with no taste, and some slices of pork and some stewed plums – that is why she is feeling oh so happy. Do you think that is why? Well, you will never know now, because this Miss Pym, this old brown horse spinster, is all shut up like oyster, or like clam. And she is an old stuffed-shirt is this gnädiges Fraülein Pym vacker – no sir, no how, but she is a devoted friend, oh yes, she is so devoted. And she is sending so much love to Finland, to dear Jock, to the dear Harveys. Oh, she is so loving.

Oswestry

5 April 1938

says Miss Pym, thinking of her dear friends so far away Well, it is the last day of March. It is the first mild day of March, and it is the last. Perhaps the Herr Lektor will explain this so nische poem of Wordsworth to his dear wife if she does not know it already. And after this little digression Miss Pym, this old spinster I was telling you about last time I wrote, will continue her letter.

Well, now, what is she doing, this Miss Pym, what has she to tell her dear friends in Finland? She cannot write such an interesting letter as her dear friend Jock, but she can tell them about the lovely spring weather and the beautiful flowers which are growing in Shropshire. And the cherry tree at the bottom of the garden is out, and Miss Pym, this old learned spinster, is quoting A.E. Housman to herself, and she is picking flowers to put in her room, and she is wearing a black jersey and sandals, but she is not saying Hail Mosley! no sir, she is singing. Now what is she singing? Will no one tell me what she sings? I will tell you.

But now it is the third day of April, so now you will never hear what it is that Miss Pym was singing, but it was probably the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’, ‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ ‘Still wie die Nacht’, ‘Ungeduld’, and ‘St Louis Blues’, and now while she writes she is listening to the lovely wailing music from Budapest and it is reminding her of so many things, but they are not the sort of things you would wish to know about, so we will say no more about it. But now the music is finished and they are playing the Hungarian National Anthem which is so sad and beautiful like the Eton Boating Song and the Randolph and so many other things in Miss Pym’s life. But you would not want to hear about those either.

You will perhaps be more interested to hear that Miss Pym has written 60 pages of her new novel, in her lovely marbled notebook. Now this is not so much because during this last week she has written only about fifteen pages, because she has been doing other things. Yes, she has been sewing and buying new clothes. And she and her dear Aunt Janie are going to Liverpool on Thursday because Aunt Janie’s nice blue costume, well, it is oh-so nice this costume but there is something about the back of the coat that is not quite as it should be, which is like so many things in this life. So this coat must be altered and Miss Pym and her Aunt will be driving to Liverpool in a motor car and they will be spending much money, for Mrs Pym went yesterday to London and has left behind the housekeeping money with her daughter, and oh fancy! if Miss Pym should spend it on herself instead of on food for Mr Pym and her Aunt Janie and the dear servant Dilys – that would be a very wicked thing, would it not? And Miss Pym is thinking, it is no end of a nuisance all this food business, what should I do if I were married and had to be always bothering about it like the poor Fru Lektor? But if I were married I should be rich and have many servants and I should be sitting down writing a novel and at one o’clock lunch would appear, just as it does in Balliol or Trinity, where Miss Hilary Pym and Mr Peter Potter of the OUDS are eating oysters. But Miss Hilary Pym is now in Athens and she enjoyed so much the voyage from Brindisi when she watched the sunrise with a nice young man from Cambridge, while Mr David Hunt lay sleeping, not caring to do such romantic things. And Miss Pym says she is just oh so little disappointed in Athens because it is rather dusty and there are people squatting on the pavements wanting to weigh you and clean your shoes and sell you things. And the shops are not so beautiful as she had expected, but oh, one can see the Acropolis every day and there is dear Mr Dunbabin at the British School and dear Mr Casson coming too, and not so dear Miss Benton and they are all jolly chums together.

Miss Pym is praying every day for Mr J. in Spain and she is writing him a beautiful poem for his birthday, and it is in heroic couplets, and it is such a clever poem because it spells his name down the side, and it is not sentimental, no sir, it is most unique. But she cannot send it to him because he has no address in Spain and so she will send it to him in Balliol at the beginning of next term. And he will read it through once and then it will be lying on his table with all the letters from his admirers. And Monsieur Jean-Pierre Giraudoux, that so charming French boy will be coming in and reading it, and Mr J’s rich Indian friends will be coming in and Mr J will be putting a record on the radio gramophone, and can you guess what the record will be? It will not be the sad German record, or the funny Russian one, or the romantisch Hungarian one that Miss Pym likes – it will be Josephine Baker singing Si j’étais blanche – oh, fancy, says Miss Pym to Mr J, if your black friends should understand French! And she is remembering how she played bowls in Balliol with the late Mr Harvey and Mr Wall and Mr Sundarum. Oh, so many summers ago. But she is not sad, oh no Sie ist nicht traurig, because she is always happy when she is in Balliol.

And she is happy again now because she has had another letter from that so kind, nice Mr Liddell out of Helsingfors. And she is so especially, so immensely pleased with the photographs of her dear sister Elsie, who is so charming and who can speak Finnish, which is the most difficult language in the world. She is putting these photographs in her album, and hoping so much that she will be able to meet her dear sister in the summer. Snow we have not in Oswestry, she says in a low, sad tone, and oh for the Stimmung of the northern winter, and how I wish I were a man and could be invited to stay out in Finland. Oh how true it is that to him that hath it shall be given!

Well, every time she gets a letter from her dear friend Jock, Miss Pym is conscious that she has not so many interesting things to write about as he has. For the people she thinks so nice, he just thinks dull – and will not be wishing to hear about them, perhaps. But as long as this Miss Pym remains an old brown spinster, reading the poems of John Betjeman with calm of mind all passion spent, it is okay, nicht wahr? ¿no es verdad?

Oswestry

12 April 1938

Well, this is a lovely letter from Mr Liddell, and fancy, there is a page written by darling Elsie, and she shall have a separate letter all to herself from her loving sister. And there is a page with the Herr Lektor’s writing on it, but what he has written does not make sense, and he is not sending any nice messages, so he shall not have a letter to himself. He shall have Mr Liddell’s letter. But is there enough for two? It is hardly worthwhile dividing a cherry, as my dear mother is fond of saying – Well, we shall see. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, as I said to Mr Jepsen in August 1937, and I daresay that if it did then it does now.

Life is so beautiful here, so ganz entzückena, the weather so fine and the garden so full of beautiful flowers. I was looking in my Shelley the other day, and I found a collection of flowers there which brought back a rush of memories. Oh, it came o’er me like a violent wave. Those flowers were some I picked in the garden of St Hilda’s in the spring of five years ago. It was a Sunday morning and I thought oh, if I could give them to Lorenzo – (but I didn’t talk like that in those days) but here they are still, brown with age but one still keeps its colour, it is a bright blue scylla and it was pressed in Marlowe, at the beginning of Edward II. Well, that was five years ago, and this old spinster this Miss Pym, she has some new pressed flowers now. They are a daffodil, an orchid and a violet, and they are some of the flowers given to her in Oxford this spring by a dear young friend. So, dear Lorenzo, would you like these poor flowers that have waited five years to be given to you? No? It was what I thought. You would not wish me to be deprived of any sentimental token that would give me pleasure.

‘No,’ said the Herr Lektor in an emphatic voice – ‘I should not wish it.’

‘I think Miss Pym is not quite herself today,’ said Mr Liddell, in a nervous, hurrying tone. ‘This talk of pressed flowers and sentimental tokens, it is not good. I understand that she was perfectly content at Oswestry. That there were no regrets, no …’ he stood holding a beef in his hand, making vague nervous gestures with it.

‘Oh, fancy if all passion should not be spent!’ said the Fru Lektor in a high, agitated tone.

‘Oh, do not speak of it. It is more than I can bear,’ said her husband sinking down on to the couch, and taking a glass of schnapps.

‘It is more than I can bear,’ said Mr Liddell, casting the beef away, and sinking down beside the Herr Lektor.

‘Well, well,’ said Miss Pym, coming into the room. ‘Two old men bearing an imaginary burden, that is what I see. It must be the more heavy because it is not real.’

‘I will not say that,’ said Miss Pym, in a quiet thoughtful tone, ‘but you do not have to bear it.’

‘Oh, I know who will bear it,’ said Mr Liddell in a loud triumphant voice, ‘It is that handsome tall Etonian, that Mr Michael Benthall of the OUDS. Miss Pym admires him, I know that, he has a scar above his right eyebrow, she admires that, he wears a black polo jersey, he takes her out to dinner, he gives her orchids, oh, I see it all now, that is what it is. Those young shoulders can bear this burden better than ours can.’

‘Oh, do not say any more. My head is reeling. I cannot keep up with this,’ said Mr Harvey in a low groaning voice. ‘I think it is simpler if I bear the burden myself. We do not wish to be hearing about these dreadful people that she is associating with.’

‘Oh, fancy that the Herr Lektor should end a sentence with a preposition,’ cried Mrs Harvey in a delighted tone.

‘Well, it is the first time he has ever done it in his life,’ observed Mr Liddell in an open tone.

Now this just shows what idleness and a wandering mind and sitting out in the garden to write a letter can do. Poor Henry will now think there is a burden and really there is none.

There is an aeroplane flying above my head, but it is so high up that I can’t see it. Fancy! And now I am getting all anxious about little J. in Spain. I look every day in the papers to see if he is dead yet.

‘I see that the Reverend R.G.T. Gillman, rector of West Felton is to take the Three Hours service on Good Friday,’ said Aunt Janie.

‘Oh, that will be interesting,’ said Mrs Pym, ‘I have heard that he is continually crossing himself and saying ‘I am not worthy’’ in the middle of the service.’

‘We are none of us worthy,’ said Barbara in a low tone, spreading some Gorgonzola cheese on a biscuit.

‘How old is she? She is older than I am, is she not?’ asked Barbara in an eager tone.

That was the gist of a conversation I had with the curate when he dropped in to tea last week. He and Miss Carfax are to be married in the summer, just fancy, a real curate’s wedding in Oswestry. They say he is to be married in a cassock. Oh, fancy! Shall I never know how old she is?

Now it is Easter Sunday and Miss Pym intends to finish this letter. But it isn’t a very good letter, what with all this talk of pressed flowers and Mr Benthall, or is it J. or Pullein-Thompson? I hardly remember which one it is, it seems not to matter very much. Benthall is handsome, J. is charming and has beautiful manners. Pullein-Thompson is unique, and one wants all those things and more. It should be a consolation to know that they can be found, even if not in the same person.

I have written nearly 90 pages, very restrained, very trivial round and common task, not many laughs but quite nice in parts and in a mild way. Shall I ever make a novelist? What a genius I had when I wrote that book! I feel I can almost be saying that with Swift. How long do you stay in Finland? You must be very useful to the young couple as you appear to be doing all the cooking. How nice if they had a little stranger! I should be expected to look at it with tears in my eyes, should I not?

Oswestry,

17 April 1938

Easter Sunday

Thank you so much for your nice letter, but oh, why didn’t you finish it? I am now burning with curiosity to know why you are glad that I have a …? Did your husband or the censor stop you from writing any more?

I send you a piece of blossom and a cowslip, pressed in Pilgrim’s Progress. Perhaps you already have flowers in Helsingfors though I read in the Encyclopaedia that spring comes in the middle of April. We are having lovely weather and it is warm enough to be sitting outside in the sun, and your dear sister is browning her face, so that she shall look like a Scandinavian when she goes to Oxford, and then the young men will take her out to dinner and ask her to sherry parties.

I would so much like to learn Finnish. I know ‘excuse me’ (anteeksi) and oletekko … How many dear Finnish brothers could I get with those two sentences?)

I hope you and Henry are coming to England this summer, and that I shall see you. Perhaps we shall meet in Oxford, or you must visit me here and see the beautiful Welsh countryside.

You can imagine your sister Barbara very busy making new clothes, because it will soon be summer, and fancy, if Elsie should be smarter. Your husband and Mr Liddell will no doubt have told you what I look like, but it is known that their opinions are often unflattering. They do not think that an unmarried female novelist should have any interests but her work. You have no idea how harsh they are to me.

You see, I am pouring my heart out to you. I have had toothache which is very painful and I lie in bed at night in great agonies, knowing that I shall have to endure it until the Easter holiday is over and I can go to a nice dentist who will have to be cruel to be kind. But in the day it doesn’t ache so much, only in the night when one’s courage and physical strength are at their lowest ebb.

What a depressing letter I write to my dear sister! She will say, Oh, this Barbara, she is always weeping and ill-treated and suffering, nicht wahr? Whereas in reality, she is smoking, eating, drinking, using much lipstick, making new clothes, writing letters to dear friends, thinking out a new novel, reading nice poems by Mr John Betjeman, making plans for visiting a foreign country, and dreaming at night of somebody she loves very much. But it is not anybody you know, so she will not tell you any boring details.

Dear sister Elsie, I long to meet you. I think of you frying beefs and walking in the Esplanadsgatan in your new brown walking suit and send you my love. Barbara

Oswestry

early 1938

‘You and Janie have been asked to lunch at Bryn Tirion,’ said Mrs Pym, one Sunday morning. ‘I hope I did right to accept the invitation for you, Barbara?’

‘Yes, you did right,’ said Barbara, in careful, considered tone. ‘It would have been impolite to refuse when I had no previous engagement. I think Uncle Frank and Aunt Helen would have thought it so.’

‘Well, dear, I daresay they would have thought nothing,’ said Mrs Pym absently. ‘We will have a boiled fowl for lunch and then we can have it cold for supper with some ham.’

‘We shall not need much supper, Irena,’ said Aunt Janie in a prudent tone. ‘I expect we shall get a good lunch and tea at Bryn Tirion.’

‘Well, well,’ said Barbara in a bright, elderly tone. ‘Here we are. Well, Uncle Frank how are you, and Cousin Charlotte I saw you in Oxford but it is a long time since I saw Cousin John. How tall he has grown.’

‘Yes, he must be as tall as Emily’s second boy,’ said Aunt Helen in a full, satisfied tone.

‘No, John is much thinner than Billy’ said Barbara. ‘Billy is very broad.’

‘Are Charlotte’s eyes quite well again?’ asked Barbara in an interested tone.

‘Oh, yes, I am all right now,’ said Charlotte, ‘but I have missed a term’s work. I shall not be able to get anything better than a third now.’

‘It was not enough,’ said Barbara firmly. ‘Charlotte would probably have got a second if it had not been for this.’

‘Oh, no, Charlotte is not clever,’ said Aunt Helen in a full, sensible tone, ‘she would never be able to get a second. She does not work as hard as you did, and you are not as clever as Barbara, are you Charlotte?’

‘No, she has gone with a young man she knows, a fellow of Magdalen, an archaeologist, we have met him, he has been to the house,’ said Barbara in a high, hurrying tone.

‘Ah,’ said Aunt Helen. ‘I expect there will be something between them after this. You mark my words.’

‘The ones I have met have been very nice,’ said Barbara in a firm, level tone. ‘I have a friend in Dresden...

‘Ah, I expect it is a young man,’ said Aunt Helen in a triumphant tone, ‘that is what it is.’

‘Well it would be something to talk about if Barbara married a German, would it not?’ said Aunt Helen brightly. ‘Personally I could not marry a foreigner.’

‘Neither could I,’ said Barbara in a hopeless tone – ‘As I said I have no intention...

‘You would have to live in Germany,’ continued Aunt Helen. ‘You would not be able to live in Oswestry. I wonder how you would like that.’

‘How quickly time goes,’ said Mrs Minshall, ‘it seems only yesterday that you were married.’

‘I have been married twenty six years,’ said Mrs Pym, in a firm, clear tone.

Mrs Minshall looked surprised – ‘But Barbara, she is how old – eighteen?’

‘Well, fancy, I thought she was dead. Your brother Ridley and his wife, are they still living?’ asked Mrs Minshall, turning to Mrs Pym.

‘Mrs Minshall seems to want us all to be either dead or married,’ said Mrs Pym to her daughter as they drove home in the car.

‘Well, I do not see what else we can be,’ said Barbara in a thoughtful tone. ‘I suppose we all come to one state or the other eventually. I do not know which I would rather be in.’

Dresden A.

Strehlerer str. 65,

Bei Rieper.

23 May 1938

Oh you really should not do it – making this poor old spinster laugh, so that when she is walking alone in the Strehlerer strasse a broad smile is coming on to her face because she is thinking of Jonathan Cape speaking in a voice drained of all emotion, and the passion fruit cocktails. But oh Jock just imagine – I might have been there drinking that passion fruit juice, and I know well how harmless it is because my uncle at Hatch End frequently drinks it. Did you think of me? just for one instant, as you stood among that happy band of pilgrims, those Cape authors? No, said Jock in a harsh, hurrying tone. I cannot say I thought of you. Why should I have thought of you? What could have been my motive? You were talking to Miss something, said Barbara in a low, sad voice, that is why you did not think of me. How can you shake that falser than false Cressid by the hand when you think how he has ruined my life? [Jonathan Cape had rejected Some Tame Gazelle] Well, that’s a new one on me, you might well say if you were given to talking Amerikanisch. It is Cape and not Harvey who has brought this Miss Pym to this state of condition in which her whole life has resolved itself into a question of ‘And now what?’ or ‘Where do we go from here?’ Well, we need not be speaking of that now. Good things will always keep and what can be more good than a discussion of the whole purpose of one’s life? I can think of plenty of things more good, you may say in a hasty, hurrying voice. Perhaps I can too.

Can you guess where I am writing this? Of course you can. Naturally I am in a beer garden and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and the chestnut trees are in blossom and the band is playing music. And at any moment they may play Orpheus in the Underworld, I feel, because I see a trombone in the band and so there is no reason why they shouldn’t. But no, just now they are playing a sad Volkslied that I am very fond of … you can guess the sort of thing. I needn’t tell you. I can see that you are afraid I will. I find this atmosphere has on me the same effect as the meanest flower that blows had on Wordsworth. When I see the palms in their silver painted urns, I think of little Jay, and how I used to force him to appreciate such things. Friedbert is being educated to enjoy the poems of John Betjeman, but naturally it is rather difficult particularly when I have to explain such lines as ‘The incumbent enjoying a supine incumbency’ but I make him read them aloud which is really a treat. And he has his revenge by translating long passages out of the Volkischer Beobachter to me, which I could really quite well read myself. And then he has a disconcerting habit of asking me things which I feel I ought to know and don’t F. Let us talk about Cromwell. B. (in an interested, condescending tone) Cromwell? What about Cromwell? F. (in a firm, direct tone) What was the influence of Cromwell on Milton? B. (in a high, nervous, hurrying tone) The influence of Cromwell on Milton? Did you say the influence of Cromwell on Milton? F. (giving the the word its full meaning) Yes.

I needn’t say any more, you know that Cassandra is familiar only with the more sympathetic parts of ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘Comus’ and of course ‘Samson Agonistes’. How well she remembers the opening lines of the last poem, and the voice that read them.

Did I tell you that we went to Prague the weekend before last? I sent Mr B. a card from the city where he was shot, when he was just sitting drinking beer, doing nobody any harm. Curiously enough – the day after we came back I was sitting in the Hotel Eden reading the Times and in it was a letter from Mr B. about the Sudeten Germans.

Well, we went to Prague via Bodenbach, and it was as hot as August and we sat in the Speisewagen mopping our faces and making rather waspish remarks to each other and then we went back to our carriage and a handsome young Czech began speaking to me in perfect English, and dear F. kept on wanting me to look out of the window at things, but everytime I looked I was too late and saw just nothing, or what one might see any day between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Well, after 3½ hours in the train we arrived at the Masyrak – Masarak – Masyarak – well anyway you must surely know what I mean – station. And I was so terribly excited in the taxi to think that we were really in Prague, but F. was not at all, although he had never been there. Oh the Golden City, I kept saying, the Golden City. No, I do not think it is Golden, he said. To me it is Golden, it will always be Golden, and the streets are paved with sharp stones – even the pavements which made walking in high heels extremely uncomfortable.

In the evening a sort of Czechish Mr Barnicot attached himself to us – I think he directed us somewhere when we asked the way – I don’t remember exactly. Somehow there was never a time when he wasn’t with us. He was quite pleasant and helpful and spoke German. He thought F. and I were English as we occasionally spoke to each other in that tongue, and after a time F. said to me ‘I do not like to go with this gentleman more’ and so after we had politely exchanged addresses and I had coyly waved to him out of the back of a taxi we found ourselves alone – And you will not wish to hear any more, I’m sure.

We spent Sunday morning very conscientiously sightseeing, although I had a vague hankering after the English St Martin’s church which was advertised (if one can advertise Divine service) in the hotel. I wondered if I should find the English colony in Prague any more interesting than the Anglo-American one in Dresden. Here is the first of my impressions of the latter.

In the library attached to the church, getting out English books (after Divine Service at 11).

‘I am Barbara Pym,’ said Miss Pym in the manner of one feeling that she ought to say something. ‘I have just come to Dresden.’

‘Well, you have not taken long to find us,’ said Mrs Bruce in a welcoming tone. ‘ This lady here –’ she indicated a gaunt woman of middle years – ‘has been in Dresden five years and this is the first time she has been here.’

‘Yes,’ said the gaunt woman in a satisfied tone, ‘today is the first time.’

‘I think we all feel the need for worship in our English tongue when we are abroad,’ said Miss Pym in a low grave voice.

‘And some of us feel even more the need for English novels to read,’ said the gaunt woman.…

But now you see my imagination has run away with me, and I think how nice it would have been if I had made that remark about worship. Does one ever make consciously Compton-Burnett remarks in situations where they would be most fruitful I wonder? I must have the courage to try some day.

Supper has been brought in and I am waiting for dear Friedbert to come; it is all so domesticated. I feel I should say ‘The Master has to go to Pirna today – he will not be here for lunch.’ And then in he comes – the hasty husbandly kiss…

Auf wiedersehen – whenever that may be. Won’t it be odd seeing Henry married. I only hope I may not find it too odd or not enough odd. I feel there should be a happy medium. Still, Hope springs eternal…

Oswestry.

20 July 1938

I shall just be able to start a letter to you before I have to go out into the town to meet my sister Hilary, but I have only about ten minutes and it is known that one cannot say much in ten minutes. Still, it is something to have started this letter, do you not think it is something?

Yesterday we went to Liverpool to do some shopping. My mother has given me a fur coat to go to Poland, and I bought it yesterday. It is a golden brown musquash, quite long – I had only a little short one before. Hilary helped me to choose it. I tried on several, and it was a marvellously hot day, so that I was wondering if the coat would perhaps be too hot! But as my dear sister told me, the Poles are hot but their country is cold. I have had my passport back from Dr Alberg, with a Polish visa etc. It looks lovely, and I don’t understand a word of it. He also sent me some books and pamphlets about Poland, so I shall be able to learn something about it.

I had a postcard yesterday from a friend of mine Mary Sharp (Henry will remember her). She was married a few hours after she landed in America and is now on her honeymoon round Lake Michigan. She sent me a picture of a romantic lake and forest. Oh, said Barbara, in a quiet full tone, I do not grudge happiness to other people, although it is something I want for myself. It is known that every woman wants the love of a husband, but it is also known that some women have to be content with other kinds of love. Now, Barbara, I do not quite see your meaning. I do not see what you mean by ‘other kinds of love’. I hope you do not mean anything disgraceful. I very much hope it. Disgraceful? said Barbara, in a high nervous voice. Why should I mean anything disgraceful? One is usually silent about disgraceful things. No, indeed, she added, her voice taking on a fuller, rounded tone, I was meaning the love of a dear sister, simply that.

I expect your dear husband is busy with his examination papers, but I hope he has not been reading Pilgrim’s Progress aloud to you. Give him my love. I am sending a great deal of love to Oxford, so you must divide it up into suitable portions.

Helsingfors

30 September 1938

What will you think of me for not having written to you for so many months? Actually I don’t suppose you will have thought of anything, as I imagine you must have been through the same anxiety in Finland as we have here in England. And now here we are with seven gas masks in the house and Mr Chamberlain is safely back in England and thanks to him there isn’t going to be any war. Although one hardly dares to believe it after all the worry of the last few days. I’ve wondered so much where you were and what you were feeling because being here I’m so cut off from all my friends who seem to be all over the world at the present moment. But it was marvellous to be back in England after Poland, where everyone was so terrified. I left Katowice on the 16th – a fortnight ago to be exact – when it was still pretty easy to come through Germany. I suppose I should have had to go eventually if I hadn’t left of my own accord.

My departure was in many ways quite dramatic. I left with Dr Alberg and the chauffeur at 8 o’clock in the morning. Mrs Alberg took a bunch of gladioli out of a vase and handed them to me as a last gesture and I was given enough food to feed myself and numerous Germans all through Germany and still have a lot to bring home here. So the fine Polish sausage was much enjoyed by our gardener. Dr Alberg was so nervous all the way to Beuthen – the German frontier station from which I was to catch my train – he told me not to speak at all at the frontier but just to show my passport and money, and not to speak to a soul in Germany. That was rather difficult as I had an eight hour journey from Beuthen to Berlin – and then the night journey Berlin – Hanover – Aachen – about another ten hours. And by the time I’d got out of Poland I wasn’t nervous any more, because of course Germany seemed just as usual. Naturally they knew very little about the crisis and I talked to many people and everyone was very kind to me. I had time in Berlin to see Unter den Linden and to walk in the Wilhelmstrasse, and to feel rather disappointed that it didn’t show signs of feverish activity. It was so dark and silent. I suppose everyone was having dinner. I had a splitting headache, having to deal with half my luggage being lost and some to be registered to England, all alone. But no, I wasn’t quite in tears on the Friedrichstrasse station. I just sat smoking a gold tipped Polish cigarette, feeling as I used to feel when I came back from Oxford and sat waiting on Snowhill station Birmingham, that my whole life seems to be spent sitting on stations all over Europe leaving behind the people I love. Well, Barbara, love is a strong word and now you will be thinking that I fell in love with somebody in Poland and you will be ready at once to be unkind about it (not Elsie!) and say that I had better not be putting any Silesian episodes into my novels. But don’t be afraid – if I ever do write another novel – and I intend to when I feel a little calmer in my mind – it will be in the style of my first one.

I can hardly expect you to believe that I ever went to Poland as I didn’t even send you a postcard of Katowice, but Jock and Barnicot both had letters from me so you can ask them. It was a curious life and the few weeks I had of it have made me just like I was before only more so. The family were extremely kind to me but I was agonisingly lonely, though latterly I became friendly with the British consul and he was a great comfort to me.

I am going to London some time next week and hope to get Something To Do. But what? My five talents are really so very special, aren’t they, and that must always be my consolation. Do I seem very bitter in this letter, by the way? You know I am not really like that. I shall like being in London – Hilary is there too, doing a secretarial course.

This isn’t a very exciting letter but it is full of affection and yearnings to see you, which I know can’t be satisfied for months. Now do you see why I am so mournfully pathetic about my friends being all so far away? The obvious remedy is to make new ones as everyone else seems to be doing, even at our time of life.

I feel I ought to have told you more about Poland – the smuts on one’s face, the bright pink soup, the barefooted peasants, the artistic pattern of the factories on a wet Sunday afternoon, the impossible but beautiful language and all that. But I will write again. And do please write to me – both of you. With best love –

27 Upper Berkeley Street,

Portman Square,

London W.I.

31 October 1938

As you see by my address I am at present living in London. Hilary and I are in rooms together – she is doing a secretarial course and I am writing a new novel. It is such a pleasant life – I don’t think I’ve been so happy since I was a young girl of eighteen in my first year at Oxford! I work very hard and have done about a quarter of this new novel. It is such a nice change being in London and our rooms are very comfortable and near everywhere – just by Marble Arch and Hyde Park. Jock asks why I loiter sadly in Upper Berkeley Street instead of returning to Poland. I might ask him why he stays in Greece instead of returning to England to be a comfort to his brother and to me. In any case the Polish family don’t want me to go back even if I wanted to. It was terribly lonely there and I had no time to write, and I honestly don’t believe I can be happy unless I am writing. It seems to be the only thing I really want to do. My parents also want me in England – my mother was terribly anxious about me, even before the Crisis started properly. So you see I have given all manner of excuses and reasons for staying in London. And of course the main one is that I’m happy here, and isn’t that enough? Have we a right to be happy, or is it only a rare thing, so that we should be glad if we are happy for a few days in every year? We have no rights, said Barbara, in a dull, flat voice.

I have met Jonathan Cape, Jockie’s publisher. He also nearly published my first novel, and spoke quite well of my second. I wondered if it was possible to get a job with a publisher and so I wrote to him and went to see him. Actually it seems impossible to get anything like that, but he was awfully nice to me and said he had liked my novels, and hoped I would go on writing. He asked Hilary and me to a cocktail party at his flat, which we enjoyed very much. He is a charming man and so amusing.

I heard from Jock last week. He doesn’t seem to be coming home yet. I have been hoping he would as I haven’t seen him since the end of February. Has he told you that his first novel Kind Relations is to be published? Actually Jonathan Cape told me, and then Jock said so in his letter. He seems to be meeting a lot of very odd people, but as he is thirty I suppose he can look after himself. It amuses me so much, though, to read the kind of letters he writes now and to remember how annoyed he used to be with me when I wrote like that. I wonder if I shall find him much changed – if I ever see him again. Somehow I cannot call him Robert. I am getting old you know and I am set in my habits and he has been my friend since I was twenty. You would not expect an old woman to change her ways, would you? I think you would be shocked if I were suddenly to marry, for instance. But there seems to be no chance of that.

Fancy that we should have nearly met in Germany – I am so sad now about it and Czechoslovakia and Poland and everywhere in central Europe that I can’t think of going there again at present. There seems to be nothing but cruelty and misery in the world sometimes. This ‘stand up to them and fight’ attitude sounds very fine but I am sure the people who profess it don’t stop for a moment to think what a war really means. You’d think that Spain and China would show everyone, but they don’t seem to.

This doesn’t seem to be a very amusing letter (all the amusing things I think of have to be saved for the novel, so my letters are all very dull!), now that I look back on it, but I hope you don’t mind. At least, I am very happy and don’t need comforting which is something new! The only thing is to work at something you like and that you feel is worth doing, even if it’s only a novel that doesn’t get published. I suppose it is all good experience, anyway, and while I’m doing it I’m perfectly happy.

See how serious and philosophical I am! But it is marvellous being with Hilary after being so alone in Poland, and we have the most wonderful jokes about everything. I don’t know what Henry will think about me, probably he will think nothing.