22 January. In the Times Literary Supplement of January 21st I was cited as ‘an under-rated novelist’ by Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil. Paul Binding and Philip rang me up on Friday night to tell me. Then on Saturday it was referred to in The Times and my name appeared on the front page. Cape apparently said they ‘might consider a reprint’. (That’ll be the frosty Friday!) Saturday afternoon at 5 o’clock Sarah Fuller from Radio Oxford came and I gave a little interview. During the week letters from kind friends but no agent or publisher approaching.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
30 January 1977
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for sending me The Times cutting – I had already seen it as we take that paper (I had wanted the Telegraph, but now Hilary’s choice is justified!) but I’m very glad to have another copy to send or give to people. Funny Cape’s ‘might consider…’. I can imagine some minion being phoned up on a Friday evening when everyone else had gone home! A pity they had already rejected Four Point Turn. Of course I haven’t had a word from them.
I am struggling to get that novel into a fit state to send to Macmillan (as Pamela Hansford Johnson recommended) but I have no very high hopes. It is not the same person [James Wright] there that you once gave me an introduction to, who wrote very kindly about my work but thought it not a commercial proposition. I now rather regret having gone so far with this last one but perhaps we can’t help ourselves. I am really better at making marmalade (very successful this week!) and doing patchwork.
A nice girl from Radio Oxford came and asked me a few questions and this was broadcast in the early morning programme on Monday. And somebody who had just been rereading A Glass of Blessings, heard this and wrote me a v. nice letter, so you and Lord David have certainly done a lot for my morale (if that’s the right word).
Romantic novel reading is now finished so I can read what I like. I had the letters of Sylvia Plath from the Library. How is she regarded as a poet? I was amazed at what a simple ordinary sort of girl she seemed to be, writing about clothes and hair-dos and boy friends. I must say it put me against Ted Hughes but maybe there was something to be said for him. You probably know him? Then perhaps I shall reread that not overrated novelist A. Powell. Or perhaps not read at all, except for the odd Larkin poem, and The Times obituaries?
Excuse a short letter. I just wanted to thank you again.
Best regards,
Barbara
5 February. Tomorrow is Septuagesima. The question is do we have flowers in the church? Perhaps a few evergreens, but one would have thought not daffodils etc. Suppose somebody had given unsuitable flowers and hothouse plants? Some titled person.
7 February. The novel (Last Quartet) has arrived at Macmillan and the girl who acknowledges it addresses me as Mrs Pym. This puts me into a different category altogether.
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
Barn Cottage
8 February 1977
Dearest Bob,
I don’t know whether you will have seen the TLS of 21st January in which various people were asked to list authors whose works they considered under – or over-rated. And Miss Pym was named twice as under-rated both by Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil – and there was no collusion, as Philip afterwards told me!
Quite a lot of people rang up and wrote but of course Cape has been totally silent. Having just rejected my last novel what could they say, indeed? Anyway that same novel is now with Macmillan. I am not ‘overly’ hopeful but I did make it a bit longer as Hamish Hamilton had suggested. Difficult to pad things out, though. I made two more chapters – Edwin going to a memorial service and the three of them, with Father G, having lunch after Marcia’s funeral at the crematorium. Then I added a few more ‘bits’, remembering that you had wanted more of Norman, I described his Christmas in more detail and the first morning of his holiday, though I did not dare penetrate too far into the bedsitter. (Didn’t they say that Jane Austen never has two men talking alone together in her novels? I’m afraid I have been bolder than that). But don’t let us forget that you were the first person to write an article about Miss Pym.
Life in 1977. Concorde, costing I don’t know how many millions, flies over our heads, clearly visible from our cottage window, while the road outside is as full of potholes as in the 16th century.
Much love,
Barbara
‘Rethink Motorways’, ‘Save Bath’ (which I had read as ‘Save Bathwater’, referring to the drought last Summer). And now we see that there are some people who always have a Save Something sticker on their car. Save Me – a man might say, who wakes up in the watches of the night and thinks of death.
10 February. Letter from Tom Maschler!
14 February. No Valentines but during the morning as I sat at the sewing machine, Alan Maclean rang from Macmillan saying that they would love to publish the novel. Can hardly believe it can be true but he said he would confirm by letter (with 8½p stamp).
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
21 February 1977
Dear Philip,
I haven’t dared to write to anyone until I actually saw it in print, though Alan Maclean rang me up last week to tell me that Macmillan would like to publish Last Quartet! But now I have the letter before me, and it seems from this that you know (perhaps?), so this is just to say my inadequate thanks.… If it hadn’t been for you, and sending it to Pamela H.J.… not to mention all those years of encouragement. What can I say that would be at all appropriate? I hope anyway (12.10) that you will be having a good lunchtime drink. We are about to have one – poor Hilary has a bad cold so hers will be whisky – mine sherry.
Alan Maclean said you had promised to send him your TLS piece – I do hope it hasn’t been too grinding a chore – and that it or some of it might be used as a foreword if suitable. He says they will publish in October.
Of course the whole business of the TLS ‘tribute’ has meant that, for the first time ever, Tom Maschler of Cape has written to me! He says they intend to reissue some of the novels, though they haven’t decided which ones, and he also enquired tentatively about Four Point Turn (as it was then called) which Cape rejected in July. I don’t suppose for a moment that he has ever read anything of mine. I find it rather difficult to compose polite non-committal sort of letters to him, not of course revealing that I know about the rather unkind crack of the writer in that Bookseller article you sent me.
We have had practically continuous rain for the last few days, but spring is on the way with bulbs coming up in the garden and things beginning to sprout. And I have been spreading horse manure (‘gift’ from kind neighbour) over the place where we might grow some vegetables.
Last week we had a terrible meeting to decide what (if anything) Finstock is going to do for the jubilee. I suppose similar meetings have been taking place all over the country in dark village and parish halls, with the same jumble of ideas. I sometimes amuse myself by trying to guess what sort of poem (or hymn) you would have written if you had been Laureate instead of Betjeman! Jake Balokowsky, biographer – an impossible task for poor Betjeman because (presumably) you have to produce something that will be understood and appreciated by the great mass of loyal subjects who care nothing for literature – as well as being criticised in the quality papers.
Have you been following The Times correspondence about Keats and Claret? Rather pleasing, I thought. I suppose the beaded bubbles might have been something like Mateus rosé, unless it was just poetic fancy, and obviously a much darker-looking wine.
Thank you again!
Very best wishes,
Barbara
3 March. A lovely sunny day to go and see my new publishers, Macmillan. I was put to wait in the what-would-you-call-it, foyer, waiting room, reception – fresh daffodils and books and girls making lunch dates with each other. Alan Maclean is rather tall and elegant-looking, James Wright is smaller, with dark, curly hair (cut by his wife).
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
4 March 1977
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for your champagne-jumble letter. Isn’t it splendid the way good news, when you’re older, sends one to the drink of some kind – even if not M. et Ch. at least a glass of something extra! (When I was much younger unrequited love caused me to buy and eat halfpound slabs of Cadbury’s coffee-milk chocolate. A good thing one’s tastes change!)
Of course what I really wanted to know was, what kind of jumble. I dare say you’d have some old books from that Library of yours?
Yesterday I met and had lunch with my new publisher(s) – Alan Maclean and James Wright from Macmillans. They both seem to like my book and so of course I found them totally sympathetic and congenial! It was nice for me revisiting a part of London I know so well, having worked in that area from 1953 to 1972. After lunch I had a wander into Fetter Lane and gazed briefly at the spot where my old office stood, now occupied by a hideous office block advertising space to let in it. I even knew the restaurant at the bottom of Chancery Lane where we sat and discussed titles. They like Quartet in Autumn – a sort of compromise or mixture of various ideas – what do you think?
Of course the TLS article will be a pleasant surprise and I will see it however you prefer – certainly wouldn’t want to see it in proof. Only let me know when it is coming out so that I can tell Hazel and others. Somebody did write and ask for a photograph but I don’t know if they’ll include one as I hadn’t anything very suitable – two snapshots and another, with a rather worried but innocent expression. I suppose I ought to have some more taken when the book (Q. in A?) comes out but I hate being done.
Caroline Moorehead from The Times has asked if she can come and see me. Hilary says we must clean the windows! Do you have a window cleaner in Hull?
I feel this letter is being rather incoherent, but I can still hardly believe it has all happened. One of the funniest things has been the reaction of Tom Maschler in Cape who has been writing me some quite cordial letters and I gather that he and Alan Maclean have spoken about me on the telephone. Hilary and I invented a Maschler pudding – a kind of milk jelly. Which brings me on to say that you would be most welcome to come here any time to lunch or whatever – perhaps a choice of puddings ought to be provided – nothing milky for a librarian. And why was/ is there that delay in getting cards into the catalogue? Did you solve the problem?
Very best wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
18 March. Went to see Dr S today. He is kind and efficient but so brisk that one wonders if one had a psychological problem how much time he would be able to give it. In this connection – the doctor’s surgery is crowded but the vicar’s study is empty. And there could be a sort of rivalry between them when it comes to dealing with life’s difficulties.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
14 April 1977
Dear Philip,
No proofs yet or other news at the moment though James Wright says they hope to get finished copies at end of July and to publish in September. Now, having no complete copy of the book with me I feel I could have made it much better – will it seem very thin and meagre in print? Anyway, not to worry, as they say. Did you notice, by the way, that there was a little tiny Larkin quote at one point, where Marcia is in the ambulance [‘Unreachable inside a room’]? I never asked the author’s permission! I felt in some superstitious way it might bring me luck, as indeed it did. Thank you again!
As that was intended to be the last thing I ever wrote I hadn’t got anything else in mind, though I have always wanted to write something vaguely about this place and its environs and I have now started to think and make a few notes and bits. There is so much rich material, of course, if only I could do it! Now Macmillan want to see the one about Leonora and James which James Wright saw and liked in 1970 (by coincidence) so perhaps they will take that.
Hilary and I sat up late one evening (bathed and in our nightwear) hoping to see C. Isherwood on Tonight but all we got was the Stetchford by-election. I suppose it served us right. One gets very tired of all this publicity by the ‘media’ when a book comes out. I have not watched Roots either, only seen cruel, horrible trailers.
Do be careful that when you go to the Hull Jazz Record Soc. Eamonn Andrews doesn’t pop up and get you for This is Your Life! But we shall see you before that date so can give more practical advice and warning. I look forward very much to seeing you.
All good wishes,
Barbara
15 April. Went into Witney on the bus – excessive exuberance of daffodils in Ramsden. Who is that woman sitting on the concrete wall outside Barclay’s Bank reading the TV Times? That is Miss Pym the novelist.
23 April. Philip Larkin to lunch. We had sherry and then the wine (burgundy) Bob gave me for Christmas (was this rather insensitive to Bob?). We ate kipper paté, then veal done with peppers and tomatoes, pommes Anna and celery & cheese (he didn’t eat any Brie and we thought perhaps he only likes plain food). He’s shy but very responsive and jokey. Hilary took our photo together and he left about 3.30 in his large Rover car (pale tobacco brown).
24 April. ‘Dialogue service’in church with Mr M. (from Ramsden) explaining the service to the children (of which there weren’t all that many). He looked like a driving examiner with his clipboard. Said we were invited to a ‘meal’ and we had a picture of sliced loaves and fish fingers. He did quite well apart from that.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
5 May 1977
Dear Philip,
Many thanks for your nice (All Souls) letter. We did enjoy seeing you and I only wish it could happen more often. Perhaps it can now that you know the way from Oxford. (Or do you? I very much hope you didn’t really get lost – it is a pretty tortuous way but the one we always go. Then it occurred to me that you might be a motorway man – or your car might be!)
I had meant to write sooner but I have been expecting those photographs every day but they still haven’t come, so I feel that if I write and post a letter to you they will arrive the day after. I called in the last time I was in Oxford but didn’t like to bully the nice middle-aged ladies. I can’t suddenly start developing a sense of urgency in my old age!
My proofs have come and I have corrected them and sent them back yesterday – those rather nasty greyish computer-set sheets which took me back to I.A.I. days, when latterly we had our books done like that. The novel reads quite well in parts – rather short, and of course it could have been so much better – Hilary was enthusiastic as she was reading it for the first time and helped me with the proofs. Then this morning James Wright rang and apparently both he and Alan Maclean like The Sweet Dove Died so it looks as if that will be published too. I don’t remember if you saw it in its final form – perhaps you will now!
I meant to ask you about Samuel Beckett but of course I don’t suppose you saw the plays that Sunday night on the telly. I fell asleep in one which made me ask myself if these Irishmen aren’t making fools of us!
I’ve been reading the diaries of Evelyn Waugh – what a lot he drank, though he often felt ill after it or was even sick. The book is too big to read in bed which is a pity. As for fiction (usually of a size to read in bed) I haven’t found anything very good lately. Seeing all the reviews of these sexy American female novelists it makes me wonder if anyone will review mine! I suppose I can’t expect that Lorna Sage or Jacky Gillott will notice it – I suppose it rather depends what else is available at the time. I don’t really mind, though of course one would hope for one good review in one quality paper.
All good wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
10 May. The contract for The Sweet Dove Died came from Macmillan and James Wright and I are James and Barbara to each other. Ghastly PCC meeting in the evening. I must have an organist in my next novel, being paid in bottles of sherry left at his back door. ‘ The opportunity to play a remarkably fine instrument’.
18 May. Dorset. Stopped for tea in Sturminster Newton and went into the church. We admired all the hassocks and kneeling cushions, hand-embroidered with flower motifs in tapestry. A woman with a slight foreign accent (perhaps the vicar’s wife, met all that time ago on a walking tour in Switzerland?) showed us round and explained about the embroideries but did not comment on any other aspect of the church.
19 May. Tea with Lord David Cecil. A comfortable, agreeable room with green walls and some nice portraits. They are so easy to talk to, the time flew. We had Lapsang tea, brown toast, redcurrant jelly and ginger cake. He told me he had been inspired to write after reading Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (just as I had been inspired by Crome Yellow). He said that Anthony Powell and I were the only novelists he would buy without reading first. A.P. was his fag at Eton. Lord D. said he thought comedy in the novel was out of fashion now – not well thought of – we agreed on this.
20 May. Seeing a handsome Dorset woman at a petrol pump I thought a Hardy heroine of today might well follow such an Occupation. Tess for instance.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
22 May 1977
Dear Philip,
Now that I’m back from Dorset I can answer your letter properly.
We did go to tea with Lord David on Thursday last and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course we talked a lot about ‘writing’ – did you know that Anthony Powell was Lord David’s fag at Eton? He also told me that John Bayley was his star pupil, which brings me to the letter you so kindly sent me – of course I was thrilled and astonished. Another nice thing was that he appreciated your TLS article in a way that I feel it ought to be, though perhaps I can hardly do it myself being the subject of it. And yet why not? Perhaps in the distant future people will think it much better than the novels it celebrates!
As for the Booker prize – did you say that each publisher can send in four? I suppose Macmillan may well have already made their choice but anyway here are the details of mine. Now called Quartet in Autumn and due to be published in September. James Wright told me they hoped to have some copies by the end of July. I suppose they would have something available before then, though, as I think I told you, the proofs were rather nasty looking and grey (perhaps like the book) computer set and not in a nice little book like proofs used to be. Anyway, I’m sure James Wright would be the person to approach. Both he and Alan Maclean like The Sweet Dove Died and will publish it next year – marvellous, as it went to about twenty publishers in one form or another!
I’m sure that under your benign reign [as Chairman of the selection committee for the Booker Prize] all will be sweetness and light – one had certainly heard of ‘difficulties’ in the past. I’m sure Robin Ray won’t give any trouble!
I was interested in what you said about Kingsley and Jane. Everyone now seems to go to Weidenfeld – the publisher who told me that their fiction list was full up for the next two years! Robert Liddell tells me that Olivia Manning has left Heinemann for Weidenfeld. (There’s literary talk for you!)
I’m finishing this letter in bed with a cat on my knee, just before getting up, and with luck I shall catch the morning post. Tomorrow a girl is coming from BBC 2 to talk to me – she is a ‘researcher’, I suppose, who will case the joint to see if a short film could be made for the Book Programme. Miss Pym in bed with her cat or watering the lettuces in her dried-up garden? Or just sitting. As for the photograph, I don’t think I had Tom Maschler in mind when it was taken. I was recovering from a cold but felt I mustn’t smile too much. I would really like to achieve a dark brooding expression but don’t think I ever could. The car went splendidly in Dorset and Hilary is very pleased with it. I kept wondering if Hardy ever had a car. I could imagine Florence driving but not, of course, Emma Lavinia. Do you know if he did?
All best wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
26 May. Why nothing to read in the outpatients at the Radcliffe? Must we be content with our thoughts?
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
Barn Cottage
Jubilee + 18 June 1977
Dearest Bob,
Macmillan have taken (and are publishing early next year) an earlier novel which I had been trying to get published and which I feel is one of the best I have ever done. About an older woman and a younger man – I hope ‘sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo’. I don’t think I have anything else that I would like published without a great deal of alteration, though several of my unpublished works have bits in them that might be used. I feel it’s probably better to write something new after these two have come out.
Much love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
9 July 1977
Dear Philip,
By now you will be back at work. ‘Oh, I thought you were coming back next week’ is another office reaction I remember, making one feel subtly unwelcome.
Yes, it has certainly been all go on the Pym front lately and I’m sure people will now get as sick of me as I used to get of various overexposed novelists in the days when I couldn’t get anything published! But it’s rather nice to bask in it for a change.
The BBC 2 thing [a Book Programme film about her life and work] was very enjoyable – they were all so nice, though unfortunately Robert Robinson himself couldn’t come as he had ’flu. There were two cameramen, a lighting man, a sound man, Will Wyatt, the Producer, and Jennifer McKay the ‘researcher’ (whom I’d already met). They made me walk out of the cottage, up the hill, then we all went into the churchyard where I again had to walk about and answer questions against a background of the church door. (I seem to remember that you were taken in a churchyard – it makes a good background for all shades of belief, and after all it’s what we all come to!) Then we broke for lunch – they went off to a pub, and Hilary and I had a drink quietly here. In the afternoon Lord David appeared driven in a large BBC hired car (black and a chauffeur wearing dark glasses), much too big to park comfortably in our country road and there were fantastic traffic jams. We all had tea in the garden – Lord D., Hilary, Jennifer and myself, and Minerva was rather troublesome, leaping up on to the tea tray and trying to put her paw into the milk jug. Lord D. and I chatted and we agreed that the whole thing might easily have lapsed into farce, rather like the Mad Hatter’s tea party. All was finished at about 5.30. I enjoyed it all very much, my only fear being that I may have said rather foolish things or not said anything I meant to say – e.g. I couldn’t remember what I read, who were my favourite authors etc. I did at least save myself once when a question about my treatment of men characters suggested that I had a low opinion of the sex. My instinctive reply sprang to my lips ‘Oh, but I love men’, but luckily I realised how ridiculous it would sound, so said something feeble, but can’t remember what. They are going to invite me to a preview which will reveal the worst.
Sunday
It would be interesting to meet John Bayley some time – a bit alarming to think of Iris [Murdoch], though everyone says how nice she is, I’d love to know how she actually does her writing because she seems able to produce such a lot. No philosophical stuff, just real nitty gritty, which brings me to you getting up at 6 to add a few lines to your poem about DEATH. How many lines might you expect to add? I have been re-reading Larkin very much this summer – in the garden among the roses – but the later poems rather than the earlier ones. ‘The Building’ is ‘remarkably fine’, as an old Oxford friend of mine used to say about many things, and makes one long for DEATH. Hurry up with it.
I had a very cordial conversation with Helen Gardner in Oxford when I went to lunch at St Hilda’s recently – we spoke ‘ warmly’ of you. I wandered about the College, trying to find bits I remembered among all the new buildings.
Best wishes,
Barbara
17 August. The wettest day of the year, or ever – thunder at 7 a.m., flooding etc. We went to Bristol where I did a talk for Pamela Howe to be broadcast in Woman’s Hour. And in the end got her umbrella and she got mine, not discovered until we were miles apart! This could well provide a ridiculous episode for a novel. Emma meeting Claudia and then annoyed at getting C’s inferior umbrella.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
21 August 1977
Dear Philip,
August is a funny time (not necessarily a wicked month?), holidays and all that, though I always used to like it in the old days in London – summer dresses in the office and visiting American anthropologists and slipping out for tea at the old Kardomah in Fleet Street.
But the weather makes no difference to the great joy of receiving the advance copy of Q. in A., looking so much better than the terrible grey proofs. And yesterday a huge parcel from Cape with copies of the re-issues in beautiful brilliant colours with my name in enormous letters! Publication date for all three has been fixed for 15th September. I suspect that Cape’s contribution has been ready first but like to think that Tom Maschler is behaving in a gentlemanly way – about time too! What a good thing you got that handsome tax rebate, otherwise you’d surely be asking for a rake off on my royalties because of the use of Larkin quotes on the jacket. (Perhaps you will anyway). Where shall I send the copies I’m going to send you – to the Library or your private address?
I don’t think The Times is going to do me as I haven’t heard anything more from Caroline Moorehead but someone from The Guardian is coming on Sept. 1st and I have done a chat with Pamela Howe in Bristol, going out in Woman’s Hour, and Harpers/Queen in September, due out the end of next week. What a lot of film is wasted on taking photographs now – still it’s nice to think one is providing work for nice young photographers. I sat in the chilly garden recently while somebody else snapped me. I see Miss Drabble is out soon – glad she doesn’t clash with me – I wonder who will?!
Later
We went into Oxford and into the Ashmolean. Correspondence displayed led Hilary to say that if you keep things long enough you can have an exhibition of absolutely anything!
Cat purring on my knee, making it difficult to write!
Best of wishes,
Barbara
27 August. Tullia Blundo the Italian girl who is writing a thesis on my novels came. She is a small dark Sicilian (living in Pisa) wearing mauve-tinted glasses – lively and interested in everything. Her word is ‘tremendous’.
4 September. Kew. Staying with Bob. Getting off the bus we walked past Sanders the Funeral Directors – a notice ‘Driver Wanted’. Church of St John the Divine – as we were going in a young man in black jacket and crash helmet who turned out to be the MC. Rather trendy clergy and American or Canadian curate preached.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
Dear Philip,
Just a line to thank you for the wonderful publication day card, which arrived on the dot yesterday morning. Now I know what those enormous cards are really for! What impressed Hilary was your skill in portraying the vanquished Maschler (a hidden talent?).
I had a marvellous day – lovely weather and plenty of drink and even a telegram from James Wright in Macmillan. And of course the day before, articles in Times and Guardian by those clever young women. Caroline Moorehead told me how hard it was to find writers to write about these days so perhaps I have been a godsend to somebody! Actually the Guardian article is even better, I think. And surely those photographs show that slightly mad jolly fun face (that I don’t much like)? Two good reviews so far.
I have been making plum jam and shall soon make (green) tomato chutney, though a few of the latter have started to ripen. [She was stirring and consequently ‘distant’, when James Wright rang to congratulate her on The Times and Guardian articles.] And blackberries in the hedgerows of course. Season of M. and M. etc.
All good wishes,
Barbara
26 September. Met the Grottanellis for lunch at the Randolph on an unnaturally warm September day. The Italian who shops in London for long woollen underpants, doesn’t care for children so won’t see his grandchild. Tells me of his old father who died recently in his 90s. All right to have a mistress in your 40s but not in your 80s. The great house and estate in Tuscany now fallen into decay.
29 September. Leapt into a taxi at Paddington and drove on a bright morning (St Michael and All Angels) to the Daily Express building where Will Wyatt and the – photographer were waiting [to do the London sequences for the television film]. Walked in Fleet St and Fetter Lane past the grey office building that stands on the site of St Dunstan’s Chambers. Sat in Oodles, where we drank coffee, looked in the windows of the Protestant Truth Society, stood by the drinking fountain at St Dunstan’s, was photographed in the bus queue. Then Will and I had lunch in a pub in Essex St and from the window I could see the Macmillan building. Then bus to Trafalgar Sq (7p) and underground to Paddington (35P).
1 October. We took two sisters from the village to visit their other sister ‘terminally’ ill in the Churchill. Driving in the car, the smell of poverty. They are still that old-fashioned category ‘the poor’, harking back to the old days when they were in service at a North Oxford vicarage and things were so much better. Not for them the glories and advantages of the welfare state. Looking at one of them with her hairy chin and general air of greyness one couldn’t help thinking that this was as much a woman as a glamorous perfumed model.
8 October. She knew that she dared not pray for humility, to be granted the grace of humility, it being such a precious thing, but when others were decorating the church for Harvest Festival she chose a humble, even humiliating task, emptying the cat’s tray, bundling the soiled Katlitta into a newspaper. Yet had she even chosen it – it was just something that had to be done. Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.
To Bob Smith in Venice
Barn Cottage
9 October 1977
Dearest Bob,
Things go well, still, with more good reviews of Quartet. The only less favourable ones have been in the Sunday Telegraph – not bad but the woman obviously didn’t like BP type novels – and the New Statesman – again not bad, but the reviewer thought my novels must have had mainly Oxbridge readers (and what’s wrong with that as Philip Larkin said to me when we were having lunch in Oxford some days. ago). TLS has been very favourable, also (surprisingly) Financial Times. And a very nice thing – I had a letter from the Editor of the Church Times saying that although they didn’t now normally have space for novel reviews he was going to review mine in November (the new one and the reprints) if only because I had given so many splendid free commercials for the Church Times.
I have had quite a lot of letters from various people, including several from people who say they have always liked my novels and thought I was dead! A very nice, generous letter from Jock in Athens, who thinks Quartet very fine, even if ‘darker’ than my others.
Hilary and I went to see Beatrice Wyatt, former Secretary of the I.A.I. We talked of the old days at the I.A.I. but she had obviously forgotten my connection with it so one couldn’t have much coherent conversation. Really one feels that poor Marcia in Quartet was the best off, seeing Mr Strong smile at her in her last moments. Luckily one doesn’t brood too much about one’s declining years, being blessed with an optimistic temperament and realising that there is nothing you can do about it. Also I have faith that I would somehow be sustained – I felt that very much when I was in hospital and couldn’t read or write properly.
Oh dear, I hadn’t meant to write all this – that is the worst of doing it on a typewriter. I should never dare to write about really old people, only those in their sixties, and my next is (‘hopefully’) going to be about village life in the 1970s. I had already started it when all this excitement of publication and endless letter-writing came upon me. But now it seems to be changing course. ‘Do you find that the characters, etc?…’
I have already had proofs of The Sweet Dove Died (from the Keats quotation) which should come out in March or April next year. It is totally different from Quartet and there are no clergy in it, so goodness knows what people will think of it. Yet it is a chunk of my life, in a sense!
Love,
Barbara
Letty and Marjorie could come to live in the village [in A Few Green Leaves] Marjorie not wishing to live in the village where she had been jilted and having sold her cottage nearer London for a vast sum.
The novel could begin with the woman coming to the village and her first social occasion, as it were a set piece. And what more suitable or more full of set pieces than a flower festival in the church.
Setpieces – a series of them. Why not? Write them first then weave a plot round them.
21 October. My BBC 2 programme. Quite pleasing and not too embarrassing. Finstock looked better than it really does in various shots.
22 October. To Paul Binding’s. Iris Murdoch and John Bayley called in for a drink. She is much smaller than I had imagined. Fairish short hair, a rather dumpy woman wearing trousers and a sort of ethnic tunic. Very nice face and pleasant to talk to. Told me she had to write things many times over – nothing comes out absolutely first time. John Bayley is just as I had imagined. Very pleasant and, of course, knowing what he feels about my books made him even nicer to talk to.
In church thinking of Heaven. There seated on one side of the Almighty would be her headmistress, eyes gleaming (but kindly) behind her pince nez.
27 October. Went to lunch with Henry at Willersey. Beautiful day and drive. In front of us two women driving, pensioners no doubt, saying how nice it is to be driving in the Cotswolds on a Wednesday morning. Lunch with Henry in his nice cottage. Three pensioners.
28 October. James had rung to say that Quartet is on the Booker shortlist. Caroline Blackwood, Paul Bailey, Jennifer Johnston, Penelope Lively, BP and Paul Scott.
1 November. Went to London with Poopa to have lunch with Will Wyatt at the TV Centre in Wood Lane. A beautiful glittering palace, all glass windows and long shining corridors – almost like a hospital. Saw the film again then lunch, joined by Robert Robinson who is most pleasant. Bottles of wine and the bright glass walled room and a bird getting in (which they apparently often do). Afterwards a taxi (paid for by the BBC!) took us to Oxford Circus where we surged round John Lewis. Cup of tea and scone in the Tournament Bar at Paddington, all squashed up in wooden booths. What you think is a mirror turns out to be another person sitting beside you. A real Norman [Quartet] place.
2 November. It is All Souls and I think of the people who have died – Links, Dor, Ack, Nellie, other aunts and uncles, Rupert Gleadow, Gordon Glover, Elizabeth Taylor, etc.
4 November. A power cut for about 2½ hours, 6.30–9 p.m. Supper was gin and tonic and boiled eggs and toast done on the fire. The old cope better than the young on these occasions, especially in a village.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
9 November 1977
Dear Philip.
Many thanks for your letter. Don’t apologise for not writing sooner – you have far more reason not to write than I have, in my retirement, when you are in the full flower of your active Librarianhood. I hope you have managed to ‘do’ Marvell by now – you really are having a year, beginning with having to write about me in the TLS. Not to mention Booker!
I have had my invitation to the dinner though I haven’t accepted yet, but I expect I shall go – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to mingle in the Literary World, perhaps even to catch a glimpse of Maschler! I imagine you will be there? Anyway, Booker (Ballroom entrance, you note), here we come! Poor Paul Scott – one hears he is seriously ill. I hope he wins. Then Paul Bailey. Then B. Pym. I don’t know enough about the other women to pass judgement, but I’m not antifeminist.
Talking of Bailey – we met John Bayley and Iris at drinks with a young friend some weeks ago. I thought they were extremely nice and we had some agreeable conversation, enlivened by John suddenly dropping his glass which seemed to go off with a loud explosion and there we were all scrabbling on the floor picking up bits of glass! Iris was much smaller than I had imagined – I’d always thought of her as tall, but I seemed to tower above her (though only in height, of course).
I didn’t hear all of Jill but the bits I did hear seemed funny and moving and I really could hardly bear the attempts to cut thin bread and butter and in the end her not coming to the tea party. I hope this never happened to you – well, perhaps the bread and butter part did.
So glad you saw the TV programme and didn’t think it too bad. Hilary and I were invited to see it again and have lunch with the Producer and R. Robinson and others at the TV Centre last week! It was a bright day and all that glittering glass seemed like a temple of Mammon or the House of Pride, which I suppose it is in a way. They are all so nice though and I was presented with a book containing all the photographs etc. There have been various repercussions in the form of letters from people who haven’t seen me for 30, 40 or (in one case) even 50 years. ‘Yes, I am that Barbara Pym.…’ I let them go through our photograph albums because I like seeing things like that myself, but one friend who saw the programme didn’t like that aspect of it so you can’t win. Looking at those early photographs makes one wonder about the pattern of life and what the point of it all is – but luckily one doesn’t brood about it over much.
Quartet in A. has been accepted in Sweden! My ambition would be to have Liv Ullmann read it on the equivalent of Swedish Woman’s Hour! I think it might appeal to the Scandinavians. James Wright told me they are reprinting but what that means in sales figures I’m not sure as they probably wouldn’t print more than 3,000 to start with? Like Blackwell’s being ‘sold out’ (of 3 copies!!). Anyway I am so happy just to be in print again that nothing else matters.
Yours ever,
Barbara
Remembrance Sunday
Romans 8:35–39
Firemen on strike. ‘They didn’t want people to die’ said a firemen’s spokesman and the public have ‘avoided a fire situation’.
Success: cooking in sunflower oil a dry, unripe avocado.
18 November. Thoroughly cleaned sitting room, washed kitchen floor, did stairs with Hoover (flea preventative). Made scones. James W. rang up to say that an American publisher (Dutton) had taken Quartet. ‘Only’ 5,000 dollars! Henry rang.
23 November. Booker Prize. James and Alan drove me to Claridge’s. Very spacious inside, white and gold and a roaring coal fire in a sort of hall. In the ballroom a group had already assembled. I had a gin and tonic and was introduced to Lettice Cooper, Penelope Lively and her husband, various literary editors etc. and Tom Maschler. Francis King was sitting opposite when we arranged ourselves for dinner. I was next to Ion Trewin (Literary Editor of The Times). Philip spoke on what they had looked for in the novels. Could I read it? Did I believe it? Did it move me? Then he mentioned two of the near misses, mine and Caroline Blackwood’s, before coming to the winner, Paul Scott. His daughter Carol received it and made a short speech, then each of the runners up went up to receive a leather bound copy of their book. P. Bailey – not there. C. Blackwood – greyish, rather too-long hair, 2-colour long-sleeved dress. Jennifer Johnston – blonde, longish hair, dark-rimmed glasses, black dress. Penelope Lively – rather tall, glasses, flowered long sleeved dress. BP in her 65th year. Tall, short hair, long black pleated skirt, black blouse, Indian with painted flowers (C & A £4.90) and green beads.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
24 November 1977
Dear Philip,
What a marvellous evening it was – I did so enjoy it. Words are beginning to fail me … but you must know what a real deep pleasure the whole thing was – even to the meeting with Tom Maschler! (charming, of course). I thought your speech was splendid.
Alan talks of more reprints, perhaps he and ‘Tom’ can fight it out between them! Dutton in U.S.A. have taken Q. in A.
It was fascinating to me seeing the other short-listed authors – Penelope Lively seems to live not so very far from us – I now want to read her book. Also Caroline Blackwood’s. Hilary bought Paul Scott’s before she left for India and read and much enjoyed it, so I am looking forward to reading it myself.
Don’t bother to answer this – I don’t expect or wish it. It’s only just a heartfelt expression of thanks from the most over-estimated novelist of 1977.
Barbara
25 November. Took a condolence card to the Miss Hutts, popped it through their letter box and ran away. Bought two in Woodstock. The kind of thing you would always have by you.
30 December. Young Chinese American Ping Dai called after tea. Wanted assistance with ‘creative writing’, being disappointed in the facilities offered him at Oxford – St Clare’s Hall. This would make a short story for him – calling round West Oxford villages on a dank December evening in search of novelists.
‘Winter Break’ with Henry to Ross-on-Wye. Drove to Cheltenham where we had a drink at the Pump Room – salty, healthy-tasting water. Huge deserted ladies cloakroom – except for a lady traffic warden – one could imagine scenes from the past. Drank coffee and cream in a nice trendy café. Then to Deerhurst and visited Odda’s Chapel where a beautiful black and white cat rolled and accompanied us. In this area one sees mistletoe and black and white houses. Then to the forest of Dean where we had a pub lunch at the Speech House Hotel and walked in the forest. Arrived at Ross about 3.30. Henry made tea in his room – then a walk. Piped music everywhere and at dinner ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ in a bouncy electronic way (Emma would know the tune – Graham wouldn’t).
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
29 January 1978
Dear Philip,
I regret that I didn’t see a TLS with the death poem – will I have to wait till another collected poems? Perhaps one ought to have the TLS regularly, 1977 having been such a good year. If you have a copy of the poem I’d love to have it. (Can one ask for such things, a poem taking a bit less paper than a novel?)
Since I last wrote I’ve been busy coping on my own here, with Hilary in India but expected back next week. People have been very kind to me and I had a lot of invitations for Christmas and hardly needed to cook at all. I haven’t done as much writing as I’d hoped (of course) but a little and have been asked to do a talk in a radio series on ‘The Novelist’s Voice’, how I found my voice as a novelist etc. so I’ve been trying to write that and will be going to record it in February.
I have had some correspondence with Maschler (‘Dear Tom’ now) about reissuing the other books which he intends to do. And if he doesn’t Macmillan will! I had the proofs of The Sweet Dove Died some time ago, apparently done in India but rather fewer mistakes than the proofs of Quartet! I think it will be published in April. I wonder what people will think of it – so many people have not liked Quartet as much as my earlier books. Not reviewers, but friends and people who have written to me. But I have to point out that I wrote it entirely for my own satisfaction with (at that time) very little hope of publication!
Later
I started this letter in the morning, then broke off to get lunch and now how nice it was to hear you talking about the photocopying business on the radio, over my rice pudding. I used to spend happy minutes in the office copying letters in the old innocent days when the thing was first invented (early sixties?). That wonderful light that used to glow, quite inspirational.
This weekend, cold and sleety, has been busy with the Local History Society Jumble Sale at which I assisted. Then on Tuesday we have the collection of clothes for Help the Aged, at which I shall also assist. Then cleaning the cottage to prepare for Hilary’s return! I’ve just made marmalade, quite successfully – the lure of the Seville Orange is not be resisted, and you can cut them up while watching the telly.
All the very best wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
Barn Cottage
10 February 1978
Dearest Bob,
The Sweet Dove will be published late April or early May (Some Tame Gazelle was published 1st May 1950). I expect people will find the SD totally different from Quartet and I daresay it will not be liked, but you can’t win, really, because quite a lot of people don’t like Quartet at all because it isn’t light and funny like some of my earlier ones. But the whole thing makes one wonder about the ‘literary scene’! Are there not other good writers in the wilderness who deserve the sort of treatment I’m now getting?
Much love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
5 March 1978
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for sending the poem which fits very well into the blank page at the end of High Windows. I have read it many times, with, I was going to say, increasing pleasure and enjoyment – words which may seem inappropriate but that’s the feeling it gives me. I know it will be among the ones I like best – ‘Faith Healing’, ‘Ambulances’, ‘ The Building’ and of course ‘Jake Balokowsky’. But when I wake in the small hours I don’t think of death, I always try to switch my thoughts to something frivolous like clothes or planning a scene in a novel. And it’s not so much death that would worry me as an incapacitating illness or something like that.… And as of now, as they say, I can worry about a talk I am going to give to the Romantic Novelists’ Association on Wednesday next! Still, I’m sure they’ll be friendly and at least they’re all novelists, and I’ve been reading their works for the past four years.
Talking of ‘Jake Balokowsky’ reminds me that I have had a letter from Rota, the antiquarian bookseller, acting on behalf of an American University (he doesn’t say which) wanting to buy some or any of my manuscripts or typescripts of my immortal novels! This immediately reminded me of a correspondence (or was it an article?) from you in The Author some years ago about this sort of thing but I don’t think I’ve still got it. Ought one to bequeath one’s MSS to some English University (much to their dismay)? I imagine you must always be having requests for the scraps of paper you keep by your bed to write down things. What do you do about it?
It was so sad to learn that Paul Scott did die – I had hoped he wasn’t so ill after all. I had just finished reading Staying On which made me weep as well as laugh a lot. It must have been far and away the best of the six! Now I’m reading Penelope Lively’s which is most enjoyable and readable.
Occasionally I dip into Quartet in Autumn – open a page at random and marvel about the whole thing! James Wright tells me that they have reprinted it again, so that’s twice, and Blackwell’s now have a respectable number of copies! The SDD comes out end of May. You will of course be getting a copy when it appears. Which brings me to comment on your economy drive! At least you need not buy books. I don’t think one needs to buy much in the way of clothes either, though perhaps women ought to. Yet it isn’t done to wear furs now which in my youth I always longed for. But Earl Grey tea has gone down from 46p to 44p a quarter! Drink one needs, but luckily I don’t like whisky and am just a small steady drinker of wine and sherry with the occasional gin. But you of course seem to go to so many functions – your letter was full of a variety of social occasions and when you mentioned having to chair a lecture by William Empson I was taken back to 1943–4 in the Wrens in Naples where I used to ponder over that poem of his which begins ‘ Not locus if you will but envelope’ … with whom did I ponder? Can’t remember now!
Did you see my piece in The Times? – Caroline Moorehead asked me to do whatever I felt like so I produced a half-joke half-serious defence of the poor novel. I was very pleased to be published there. I’ve also done a radio talk in the Finding a Voice series which Beryl Bainbridge started last week. Mine comes on 4th April. I rather dread hearing it as I don’t like my voice but maybe I’ll get used to it. Such is ‘Fame’, as you must know!
Yes, I did see the Book Programme about Susan Hill having given up novel writing. Exactly how one often feels oneself don’t you think!
All good wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
Barn Cottage
16 March 1978
Dear Philip,
Yesterday I went into the garage and delved in the packing case or tea chest, where the MS remains of Miss Pym are deposited and I came up with what you see on the attached list! I suppose ‘draft’ is more appropriate than ‘version’ but the way I wrote, and still do, was to work straight on to a typewriter with a hand written draft or a few notes or even nothing. If whole chapters exist in handwriting it is because I didn’t have a typewriter available at the time, was away or ill in bed (the first version of Quartet was written in bed with my breakfast in Balcombe Street – 1973–4).
(Do you have the MSS drafts of A Girl in Winter and Jill?)
Of course with moving at various times I have destroyed a lot that I might otherwise have kept, though I still have a lot of unpublished stuff, novels and short stories. Perhaps the prize is my first novel written in 1929! [Young Men in Fancy Dress, unpublished] But I haven’t included these on the list. When I am gone, perhaps? What I personally value most are nearly 40 small notebooks (of a size to go in the handbag) in which I have since 1948 or thereabouts kept a kind of diary, not only of events and emotions but also of bits and ideas for novels. But these I couldn’t let go, while still alive!
I had written a noncommittal letter to Rota when I wrote to you, saying I would look and see if I had anything suitable though I hadn’t kept much. I honestly don’t care about the money – after all it would be money for nothing as it were – and wouldn’t like any of my MS handwritten material to go to USA to be pored over by earnest Americans (not even Jake Balokowsky). I wouldn’t mind letting them have a typescript but perhaps they would want more than that, though Rota did say typescript, and even proof copies; but proof copies I have mostly given away. Anyway since the Americans never published any of my novels (except Less Than Angels which sold 1 copy a year till Cape got the rights back!) their Eng. Lit. students might not be all that interested. Now of course Dutton has taken Quartet and also Excellent Women, but even so…
As you see, my remains are by no means complete, and if there was any chance of a British Library or University being interested I would gladly leave the whole lot to them, even without getting money. I suppose Rota acts mainly for USA (Texas or others?). I would really like to have something at Amherst, where a very nice American anthropologist I knew told me that certain ‘pornographic’ type books were kept in what was known as ‘The Treasure Room’ in the Amherst library. Surely New England for me, if anything?
The post brought a letter from my publisher to say that Woman’s Hour is to do a serial reading of Quartet! Rather unsuitable I would have thought, but a lot depends on the adaptation. Perhaps they will leave out the exact nature of Marcia’s operation (‘major surgery’would be enough), otherwise listeners will think me horribly unfeeling and lacking in sympathy, hardly realising that I know all about hospitals and operations from practical experience!
With best wishes and renewed thanks,
Yours ever,
Barbara
18 February. Long walk through churchyard and woodland paths and by fields full of frozen cabbages. (Graham and Emma. He just wanted someone to bully and criticise when they were together. In small domestic matters at first).
26 February. People have now become familiar with the words and liturgy of the burial service through hearing them so often in TV plays. ‘For as much as it has pleased almighty God…’
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
6 April 1978
Dear Philip,
Thank you very much for your most helpful letter, suggesting all the things I might do with my remains. I have decided, for the moment, on 1. (Do nothing). After all it had not occurred to me to do anything until Rota suggested it and now that I realise what the possibilities are I can consider things more carefully. So I wrote to Rota to this effect and haven’t heard anything more. And now my literary remains are all in a large cardboard box in my bedroom – more like a novel by J.I.M. Stewart than The Aspern Papers! As well as your letter, other things have inspired me to hang on to my MSS for the moment – one was going to an exhibition of Oxford writers in the Bodleian (a copy of Jill corrected for the re-issue among them), and another was reading a book about L. V. Woolf and seeing that various papers of his illustrated were stamped ‘University of Sussex’.
You say you will be in Oxford 19th–20th April – is that by any chance for the Rawlinson dinner at St John’s on the 19th? Because if it is, we may catch a glimpse of each other (‘across a crowded room’, of course) as I have been invited to this as a guest by an anthropologist I used to know in London who is now in Oxford (Edwin Ardener). I thought I had better warn you, though in a novel one would prefer the man to be taken by surprise and even dismayed!
This letter seems to be full of coincidental meetings and possibilities for turns of plot, which sound improbable, so I had better turn to Finstock news. Uproar at the annual church meeting, mostly over finance. The trouble is that the village of Ramsden (we share a vicar) does better than we do, but then they have more wealthy residents. I think if I had my time over again I would keep aloof from all this and, as it is, I never say much.
The S. D. D. comes out in June, I’m told. Prepublication sales have been quite good and Cape are reissuing STG and Less Than Angels. I don’t think I shall ever be liable for VAT but I have bought a new account book (as advised in the last no. of The Author – I expect sales have shot up!). But the main thing is to feel that I am now regarded as a novelist, a good feeling after all those years of ‘This is well written, but…’
Yours ever,
Barbara
7 April. Friday. Nasty turn (faint, heart attack, stroke) in Abingdon on our way out to lunch [with Hilary]. Came to to find myself in the hospital there – then taken by ambulance to the Radcliffe. Conscious by now. Doctors all round me but no food all day. Next day Prof. Sleight and his boys came round. Home after lunch. On Tuesday went to the Radcliffe again and had an ambulatory electro-cardiogram attached to me for 24 hours. Took it off and returned it on Wednesday but have heard nothing. Am taking it easy and have written nothing for over a week.
28 April. To Dr S. He told me about a pacemaker that could be fitted to the heart but which must be removed at death as it is liable to explode in the crematorium. (He said I could use it in a book.)
13 June. I wrote all morning but feel depressed about it. The copies of The Sweet Dove have come. Marvellous bits on the back – what the critics said about Quartet. Can one ever do it again? Or even if one does will the critics allow it?
6 July. Sweet Dove published at last. Marvellous press – Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Financial Times. In the evening we drank a bottle of Castilio la Torre (Spanish champagne!).
14 July. On the way back from Malvern [to visit Muriel Maby] we stopped at Willersey for dinner with Henry and the Barnicots. Forty years and more I have known them, I thought as we sat there talking.
19 July. Went to London to record Desert Island Discs [for BBC Radio 4] with Roy Plomley. Lunch (cold salmon) with him at the Lansdown Club. A vast spacious room. Then listened to records, a cup of tea, then did recording. Ate with Poopa in the Viking Bar at Paddington Hotel and back on the 8.15 train. Relief to be home and in the country again.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
27 July 1978
Dear Philip,
I don’t seem to have thanked you properly for your nice letter (of 17th June!) in which you sent me the valuable and interesting Sycamore Broadsheet with the early Larkin ‘Femmes Damnées’. A fascinating curiosity. I was a bit reminded of the work of Arthur Symons. I shall treasure it. Which reminds me, I have chosen you reading one of your poems [‘An Arundel Tomb’] for my Desert Island Discs which is going out this Saturday (29th)! The other discs (records, I call them) are mostly rather romantic music, and the book Henry James The Golden Bowl (which I have already stumbled through once). I went to London last week for the day to record it – Roy Plomley is so nice and easy to get on with, I found, didn’t you? It must be a kind of silly season for the programme if they are having a novelist!
Thank you so much for the kind things you said about The Sweet Dove. It has been gratifyingly well received, enough balm to soothe and heal all those wounds when only you and a few kind friends thought anything of my works. Francis King has written beautifully in Books and Bookmen. It’s interesting that some people definitely like SDD better than Quartet – Francis King, notably. But Lord David and Robert Liddell prefer Quartet and the earlier ones. My next, if it ever gets finished, will probably be a let down for everyone – a dull village novel, with no bi- or homo-sexuality.
I have recently met, or rather he has visited us, Fr Gerard Irvine who seems to know Charles Monteith (and indeed everyone worth knowing!) – perhaps you know him too? Very amusing, talks nonstop and has invited me to sample the hospitality of the Clergy House when I’m next in London. That might be worth trying! He has complimented me on my accuracy in church matters in my novels.
I hope your various troubles have sorted themselves out – the sofa, immersion heater, the bookcase, the car.… Today we see that a huge branch has blown down off the elderberry tree in the back (the branch where we hang one end of the clothes line) so that has to be dealt with. A great deal of jam has been made, strawberry and raspberry – jam-making seems to be associated with the publication of novels.
Must stop and go to the hairdresser (in the village) but shan’t have that fashionable frizzy style that the young seem to be adopting.
Yours ever,
Barbara
23 September. Hooray! The Sweet Dove is no.3 in the Sunday Times Best Sellers List. Whatever the significance (or lack of it) it’s nice to see it in print.
17–19 August. Spent at Willersey staving with Henry. Elsie [Henry’s first wife] was there too. Strange situation dating back over 40 years. A long walk up the hill in lovely country. Three elderly people walking – not together but in a long line separately, Elsie stopping to pick flowers.
The things people say:
I never read novels
I never watch television
I never eat jam
I never have tea
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
20 October 1978
Dear Philip,
I suppose you are back at ‘work’ now. Yesterday at the dentist, the young dentist asked me ‘Are you working today?’ – for a moment I couldn’t think what he meant, then my thoughts went back to how I used to arrange my dental appointments in those old days – not a whole day off, unless you were having a tooth out, but you could wangle most of the afternoon for a simpler operation and perhaps tea afterwards in Wigmore Street.
I was amused by the cutting of the Larkin-Pym engagement [‘Mr R.G. Larkin to Miss E. A. Pym’]. No relation of mine either, as far as I know. Do you think we’ll get an invitation to the wedding? (Comforting to know that young people do still announce their engagement in this formal way, isn’t it.)
I was also highly amused by your description of being installed as a C. Lit. Had the Duke written the speech himself, and did all those ladies know who Satchmo was? You once gave me a card to go and hear Elizabeth Bowen talking there. And now, as I may have told you on my postcard, even I have been made a Fellow. I always used to envy novelists who were, little thinking that I should ever achieve it. I don’t know when I shall be able to go and sign the book or whatever one does. Robert Liddell told me he had never been (as he is in Athens, anyway) but they didn’t seem to mind.
You have been a good deal in my thoughts lately as two people here have had to ‘do’ you for their Open University Exams! So I have been lending volumes of Larkin and adding a few discreet reminiscences. I don’t know whether the fact that you have actually been in this cottage adds to one’s ability to interpret the more obscure poems. But I have been very cautious. Who can say what anyone, let alone a poet, might have meant when he wrote that particular line?
Since I last wrote I’ve been to another ‘feast’, this time at Univ. The Feast of St Simon and St Jude, though that day doesn’t really come till 28th Oct. I suppose they have to have it before term starts. It was all most enjoyable, not only because Harold Wilson and Stephen Spender were among the other guests. I didn’t get to speak to them, only glimpsed them in the distance. I had said I would like to stay the night in college and, remembering what you had told me about it, didn’t know what to expect, but I and another female guest were to stay with the master, Lord Goodman. So it was all very comfortable, almost excessively warm as the central heating was on! Lots of bedside lamps and a bottle of Malvern water by the bed. Breakfast next morning with the Master and Mrs Brigstocke (High Mistress of St Paul’s, but young and attractive as they seem to be nowadays). Luckily I was able to face bacon and eggs and a certain amount of civilised conversation. Lord G’s solicitor‘s offices are in the same building as Macmillans which gives us a curious unexpected link. Afterwards Mrs Brigstocke drove me to the station in her Daimler – an elegant woman in a beautiful car. All the same I had hoped I would sample the kind of rude undergraduate accommodation I’d heard about and perhaps even meet Harold Wilson at breakfast. (Could one have stood that?)
Well, that seems to finish this letter on a rather misleading social note. Life otherwise goes on as usual. I have been invited by the editor of The Church Times to write them a story. I wonder if I can!
Best of wishes,
Yours,
Barbara
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
Barn Cottage
25 October 1978
Dearest Bob,
Of course Richard did write when he had read the book [The Sweet Dove] – the card was only to say it had arrived and I’ve also had an affectionate card from him from Indonesia, of all places. What did he say about the book? Well, rather wisely he didn’t make much comment except to say how much he had enjoyed it. It was all such a long time ago anyway… Little did I think that anything as profitable as this novel would come out of it.
I am struggling to write another novel but nothing good seems to come from me at the moment and having been so successful with the last two I am a bit apprehensive about the next one. Yet who really cares! I really think all those years of not being published have made me as hard as teak, or whatever is a hard wood. I wrote my little piece in the New Review symposium – if you haven’t seen it I can tell you briefly that I said I had been too much occupied in trying to get published again to reflect overmuch on ‘the state of the novel’ during the last ten years or so! There is one misprint or rather word left out in what I wrote which makes it appear that I regard romantic and historical novels as the most prestigious kind!
I have been made a FRSL [Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature], rather to my surprise and pleasure. I never thought I should make it. I haven’t yet been able to go up and sign the book (and have my hand held by the president at my inauguration) but I have paid my subscription and that surely must be the main point. Robert is one and Elizabeth Taylor was – it’s interesting to study the list. Philip Larkin is a Companion of Lit. of which there are only 10 at one time.
Much love,
Barbara
9 November. Haven’t written in this notebook for ages, not since I was asked to write a short story for The Church Times. Today Iain Finlayson came to interview me for Cosmopolitan – a discussion of Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise and what the enemies of promise are now. I had to point out that sloth and sex are less potent temptations for a writer in her sixties than for a younger writer.
18 November. Rather chaotic Bring and Buy coffee morning in aid of the CPRE. Held at Mrs C’s house. It is surely better, one feels, not to see how one’s doctor lives, to discover the secrets of his life, that he has fine Waterford glass and exquisite Persian rugs.
8 January 1979. Went to Dr S. to consult him about my increasing bulk, which seems unnatural. He did tests and told me several things it might be. Naturally I seized on the most gloomy (if it would be gloomy to die at 66 or 67?). He gave me a letter to Mr Webster, a consultant surgeon in Oxford. I went to 23 Banbury Rd where the consultants live. Mr Webster thinks it is fluid in my abdomen (dropsy, but he had a grander name for it) and thinks I should go into the Churchill, perhaps next week. Great relief at getting all this over, even euphoric, though no doubt unjustified.
13 January. In the Churchill. Lunchtime – purple jelly with a dab of synthetic cream and ‘All right dear?’
An Indian gentleman sitting at the bedside across the way stretches out his long fingers and takes a grape.
Opposite two women wait for their operations. Almost like Henry Moore figures.
The analysis of the fluid from my abdomen shows that there is something (malignant) though the X-rays didn’t indicate what. It could be something in the ovaries or secondaries from the breast cancer – which could be treated either by an operation or drugs or radiotherapy.
Immoderate laughter of the evening visitors.
A thought. We pray at Finstock church for Mr Cashman – is this because, strictly speaking, he lives in Finstock – or do we pray for Ramsden people when they’re sick or vice versa.
In hospital one has to fight very hard to keep one’s independence and most of the time it isn’t worth it.
How did people die in the old days (not the 19th century but really old days like the 17th century). What did they do about cancer? If I’d been born in 1613 I would have died in 1671 (of breast cancer). I’d certainly have been dead in 1674.
20 January. Mr Webster said it is probably ‘ an ovarian problem’. He says the drug will work – it is a poison and may make me feel sick. It is a long-drawn-out treatment, may last months – injections every three weeks.
5 February. Home again. Went to see Dr S. Very kind and practical. Asked me to consider now how I wanted my end to be, whether at home, in hospital or hospice, or private nursing home.
14 February. My first visit to the radiotherapy clinic at the Churchill for my second injection. Waited in the dreary Out Patients waiting room with others and only one doctor coping. Waited nearly half an hour in a cubicle, sitting on a bed (shoes off) or lying gazing up at the ceiling. If you think wouldn’t it be better if I were just left to die you remember the fluid and how impossible it made things.
In the afternoon I finished my novel in its first, very imperfect draft. May I be spared to retype and revise it, loading every rift with ore!
All humanity is in the Out Patients, those whom we as Christians must love.
4 March. Henry came to lunch and we planned to go to Derbyshire for a ‘Winter Break’.
To Bob Smith in Ibadan
Barn Cottage
25 February 1979
Dearest Bob,
I have had to go into hospital (the Churchill) but am happily much better. I developed fluid in my abdomen which is apparently the result of an ovarian tumour, but fortunately they didn’t make me have an operation but are treating it with drugs which are supposed to ‘kill’ it, so that with luck I shall have a few more years of good life. I have to go to the outpatients’ radiotherapy clinic every three weeks – a rather dire place, but luckily I manage to get some amusement and ‘material’ out of hospital visits, as you know. Of course, having had the fashionable breast cancer op. in 1971 I suppose I have been lucky to have had nearly eight years without anything further!
Much love,
Barbara
5 March. Today the vet came and helped Nana [Minerva] out of this life. He took the body away. All very quick – a powerful injection and it was all over in a second. She was slumped in the green metal box he had brought, a little limp bag of bones. She would have been 18 in June.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
15 March 1979
Dear Philip,
We are both well now, though I had to go into hospital (the Churchill) in January and stayed a week during which time they did various tests and told me I had a malignant tumour somewhere inside, but they are treating it with drugs and seem hopeful of success, whatever that may be! After all, I have lived eight years since my breast cancer operation in 1971 so I suppose you could say that I have survived. And now I feel so much better again and don’t seem to have any ill effects from the drugs so far. Of course ‘they’ won’t tell you how long you’ve got – it may be several years yet and as I don’t want to live to be very old (what one says in middle age anyway!) it is really not so bad. Hard to know what to tell people really, but what with all these programmes about cancer on TV one feels it’s best to be honest. But in some ways you feel a bit foolish, looking and seeming quite well. (What, you still here?)
Otherwise some rather good news (if that is bad). Penguin are going to do Excellent Women and A Glass of Blessings, Cape tell me, though not till next April or thereabouts. This is an enormous pleasure to me. I have had super American reviews for E. W. and Quartet in Autumn including a long one in the New Yorker from John Updike (did you ever read Couples?). The Sweet Dove comes out there this month. The advance copy has a springlike or greenery yallery cover with a design of doves (Miss Pym, the ornithologist). I daresay the Americans won’t like that book, perhaps Leonora could only be credible in England? (I’ll send you a copy shortly).
But this letter mustn’t be only medical and literary. We’ve had quite a full time in the village with the usual events – Hilary gave a talk to the W. I. on her experiences in India. The church is organising a clothes sale – the history society has its monthly meetings, etc. etc. Our old cat has gone to her rest, assisted by the vet who came here to do it. So very quick, with an injection (I suppose you’d say a ‘massive’ injection, to use the in-word!). Sad to be without her but she was nearly 18 and had got to be a mere bag of bones and impossible to keep warm except by continual hot water bottles in her basket. But a new little tabby has adopted us and she is pregnant, so new life is springing up. If she has a black kitten we may keep it, but after this birth she will have to be ‘done’.
The garden still looks terrible but I suppose we must prune the roses soon. A few snowdrops have appeared and Iris Stylosa in the front but I’m reminded of that song we used to sing in the war. ‘Spring will be a little late this year!’ But I have finished the first draft of another novel, pretty poor so far and it is so strange to have ‘my publisher’ asking for it and saying he’s longing to see it. I fear he will be disappointed, and anyway I can’t suddenly turn into the sort of writer who can produce something quickly. Don’t you think one gets slower as one gets older – ‘stands to reason’ as Norman [Quartet] might say!
Gilbert Phelps (the other Finstock author) and I have recently been judging entries for the Southern Arts Association Prize – open to people living in Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight etc. We gave the prize to Penelope Lively for her book of short stories [Nothing Missing but the Samovar] and we had a little gathering at Chipping Norton to meet her, drank champagne, ate canapés and had ‘literary talk’. Do you remember The Road to Lichfield her novel for Booker? She went to the dinner this year but said A.J. Ayer wasn’t nearly as good as you! She has a nice husband who teaches at Warwick University. I have also been reading some romantic novels, as one of the final judges this time, so only 8 books to read. One all about the mistresses of Louis XIV that I’m learning a lot from – I am so ignorant of French history!
A horrible wintry sleety day! I hope tomorrow is better as a young woman is coming to lunch who is writing a book about Elizabeth Taylor (the novelist, of course). I am to delve back into my memories of the fifties when we sometimes went to PEN together.
Very best wishes,
Barbara
23 March. ‘Weekend Break’ with Henry in Derbyshire. Large dinner at hotel in Grindlewood Bridge and a bottle of Orvieto. I didn’t drink much – no ill effects. Couldn’t make the bathwater run or fill my hot water bottle. Good breakfast! Drove to Eyam, the plague village, then to Bakewell. Beautifully situated church, warm and fragrant (but not incense, perhaps furniture polish). Saturday evening was hectic in the hotel, large parties dining, masses of people in the bar and, in the Rutland Lounge, even a private showing of somebody’s holiday slides – a group sitting in the darkened room with their coffee and drinks. I fled though Henry would have stayed. Was awakened at midnight by hotel staff asking if it was O.K. for me to be called at 8.30 instead of 7.30 as it was Sunday!
Sunday: on the way back we stopped at Hassop where there is a Catholic church (early 19th century classical style) and Hassop Hall Hotel, formerly the home of the Eyre family – now a rather superior hotel and restaurant. We walked round the front and saw many tables laid for lunch. Inside a very nice hall with a coal fire, silver in a glass-fronted cabinet and fresh flowers. Then as we left cars began to arrive – Derbyshire Catholics to a good Sunday lunch? – quite a stream of them.
Then we tried to find Newstead Abbey and Byron. (Had to find a public loo.) After landing in a street of miners’ houses we asked the way and were directed through the colliery. Then on to the motorway and stopped to have tea and sandwiches in a motorway café. A whole new civilisation. ‘The cold, dark wine in Derbyshire’ [No Fond Return of Love] – Henry on Friday demands that the Orvieto shall not be too cold.
28 March. Hatchard’s Authors of the Year Party. Young man from Hatchard’s introduced Hilary and me to Patience Strong (and her agent) first – all in green, small, difficult to talk to because sitting rather low down. Then we went over and spoke to Steve Race, Iris Murdoch (red dress and black stockings) and the Vicar of St James Piccadilly (Rev. W. Baddeley). Then to Olivia Manning who was a bit peeved because her books were not displayed. (One of mine – Less Than Angels – was next to Diana Dors’ autobiography.) The Hatchard’s men came and spoke very kindly and were flattering about my books. We spoke to Jilly Cooper before leaving.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
1 April 1979
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for your letter and sympathetic words – actually I’m feeling fine at the moment – went to London last week to Hatchard’s Authors of the Year Party. Diana Dors was holding court at a large round table, but I did have a word with Iris Murdoch. The Duke of Edinburgh was there but I don’t think he reads my books.
No kittens as yet though she is spherical – she herself is a very pretty tabby, greyish, not exactly silver.
This is only a scrappy note to send with the book, not a proper answer to your letter. I am trying to finish and improve a country novel, a new one ‘ based’ on life here (but of course nothing like it, really?). The University one I have done nothing about – I feel it would be out of date now and I hardly know about such life after all this time.
Yours ever,
Barbara
A fine Easter, sunshine and things burgeoning. I live still!
26 April. Romantic Novelists’ lunch at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly – a curiously deserted hotel, vast ladies’ cloakroom in the basement with marble basins and pink velvet sofas. After, bus to Paddington and had a quiet calm of mind all passion spent tea in the refreshment room on platform 1 before getting the five o’clock train home.
1 May. Typing the new novel slowly – have only done 63 pages, some people may be disappointed in it – others will like it.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
1 May 1979
Dear Philip,
Just a brief letter to tell you that four lovely kittens were born on 11th April – all Toms! We think we’ve found homes for all and shall keep one ourselves, a black one. The others are two very prettily marked tabby and white and third is dark smoky grey. They are a great pleasure and interest and we have quite a stream of visitors, especially children, wanting to see them. As a result of the birth, watching them with their mother when they were feeding while still very young, I thought of a splendid title for a novel Blind Mouths at the Nipple.
I hadn’t really expected you to come last week – in fact I went to London for a day on Wednesday to attend the luncheon of The Romantic Novelists’ Association – quite an enjoyable occasion – at the Park Lane Hotel in Piccadilly. It didn’t seem the kind of hotel where you could imagine people staying – perhaps it only exists to have ‘gatherings’ of this kind?
As a result of showing you the American reviews I spent Easter sorting them out and have now stuck them into a book! And I had such a nice letter from the Boston man who wanted my literary remains that I felt almost sorry to have refused him. And I’ve just had the proofs of the story I did for the New Yorker [Across a Crowded Room]. And a large cheque (for me) from Macmillan and quite a respectable one from Cape. Cape are also going to reprint Jane and Prudence and No Fond Return now – cordial letter from Maschler. So I wish all neglected novelists could have the good friends and luck that I’ve had.
Greetings and best wishes,
Barbara
2 May. To the radiotherapy unit at the Churchill. It is Thiotepa, the drug they put into me. Afterwards a large lunch at The Gate of India in Oxford.
10 May. Heard the cuckoo for the first time this year, on a damp May evening, wet and green.
18 May. Summer at last! (What one has stayed alive for?!)
26 May. In the early morning I woke having dreamed of finding a splendid title for a novel (the one about the two women, starting off with their Oxford days) which has been simmering in my mind. The Keats poem:
In a drear-nighted December
Too happy, happy tree
Thy branches ne’er remember
Their green felicity
2 June. I am now in my 67th year – shall I make 70?
3 June. Went to 11 o’clock Martins at Spelsbury. Welcomed by the vicar (Irish charm) who invited us to sit anywhere we liked in the empty church. Whit Sunday, but of course they had had their ‘family communion’ service at 9.30. At the service I felt I could enrich my novel by giving more about Tom’s church, which was probably like this one. The enrichment of my own novels may be suggested by my reading of the two latest Margaret Drabble novels (The Ice Age and The Realms of Gold). She gives one almost too much – but I give too little – laziness and unwillingness to do ‘research’, which doesn’t seem to fit my kind of novels.
16 June. Adam Prince at the end of the holiday – a short section or vignette. He experiences not only a motorway café but a motel (or ‘ Posthouse’) – the impersonality of it all. No human face, no charming elderly ladies crocheting in the lounge, no discussion (even if/albeit ill-informed) about modern art or women priests. Plastic continental breakfast – and how uncontinental such a breakfast was! No ‘Buongiorno Signore’ from a smiling young waiter bearing a tray on his shoulder. On the motorway ‘ Oh Central Reservation’, like a line from a hymn.
17 June. Went to Snape – three lovely days. Sat on the beach at Aldeburgh collecting stones and drinking coffee. On the way back called in at the Priory, Horton-cum-Studley, now a hotel. Asked for tea. There was a conference going on; perhaps salesmen from Birmingham. Youngish men, rather too fat. Tea very expensive (£1.40). Chateaubriand Steak on the à la carte menu was £11.50! It would be a good setting for a romance, an unexpected meeting, or a short story about a conference or seminar.
24 June. In this new novel [never written] there will be two women, starting with their college lives (not earlier). One from a privileged background, the other from a more ordinary one (but not working class) and the subsequent course of their lives. This would be a chance to bring in World War II.
The great house where one lives becomes a hotel for conferences etc (like Studley Priory).
A hymn writer in the family or a woman like Charlotte Elliott or Frances Ridley Havergal.
When she comes to stay with her friend she hopes to ‘get to know her husband better’ – with unexpected results.
Rev. and Hon. or is it Hon. and Rev. A great-uncle. Always this tradition of service in the family.
The nice ‘girls lunch’ – could a husband or other intrusive man walk in at this time.
Victorian vicar who enlarges a church and puts (perhaps) a spire in memory of his first wife or mother.
An ancestor was a missionary in East Africa. On leave (furlough) he happened to be in Trafalgar Square when the lions were brought there (? 1867).
She ought to have some fine old Victorian Christian name – Maud, Violet, Edith, Ethel, Florence. But, of course the fashion for such names had not come back, though Hannah, Emily, Emma and Harriet were beginning to be in vogue. So what was her name? One of the 30s – Joan, Gillian, Barbara, Mary, Margaret, Edna, Hilda, Nancy, Ruth.
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
2 July 1979
Dear Philip,
I had such a nice letter from the USA asking me to ‘lecture’, but won’t go. It is Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the man who wrote had got on to my novels because of his interest in your work! A nice thought.
Two days of beautiful weather and I’m sitting in the garden. Went to the doctor this morning and all seems well at the moment. He had been on holiday but stayed at home during the time except for a visit to a conference in Liverpool – and he still hasn’t got a new car (still K registration). Now, I ask myself, ought I to be worried about him? Perhaps he has heavy family commitments – two girls to educate, I believe. Perhaps I ought to be a private patient.
I went to lunch at St Hilda’s on Saturday and had the usual consolation of not looking as old (or as fat) as some of my contemporaries! They were having a Gaudy but I didn’t stay for it. I usually have a word with Helen Gardner but didn’t manage to this time, though she was there.
The kitten we’ve kept is called Justin – I’m not quite sure how the name came about – the others were Oscar, Felix and Julius, mostly named by the people who took them.
How interesting about losing your taste for drink! I only lose it when I’m ill or in hospital, but it always comes back – though I don’t drink all that much, don’t like whisky which is the mark of a real drinker.
Shall I be embarrassed if we have lunch together, wondering if you’re going to offer me a drink? I’ll be prepared – do hope we manage to meet.
All good wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
19 July. A pathetic sight in Waitrose: the elderly woman, very old, leaning against a frozen food cabinet while her friend (also ancient) went round with her basket. And, in the doorway, a clergyman stands, contemplating the scene.
4 August. Mark Gerson came to photograph me – a nice, easy to get on with person. Luckily it took my mind off my poor physical state. Very blown out and feeling disinclined to eat and rather sick. I wore my loose black cotton dress and a red scarf.
5 August. I feel awful on waking but a bit better now sitting in the sun writing this, also trying to finish off my novel. Shall I write more in this notebook?
Perhaps what one fears about dying won’t be the actual moment – one hopes – but what you have to go through beforehand – in my case this uncomfortable swollen body and feeling sick and no interest in food or drink.
9 August Woke up in the Churchill, Ward 7 (Radiotherapy) this time, having had the fluid removed yesterday and so feeling better. It is now 7.10 a.m. Men at one end of the ward and women at the other, but you don’t mix except in the dayroom, where I can’t go as I’m imprisoned in bed.
29 August I went to the clinic and they have decided to take me off the thiotepa. Presumably the blood count has shown them something but I don’t know what. Has it worked? I asked the doctor but he gave me a somewhat non-committal answer. So I am to come off it for 6 weeks and come back to the clinic again. They have lots of other things they can try, he said. We had lunch at Quills in Oxford in the rather hushed, net curtained atmosphere (the restaurant used to be the Kemp Hall Cafeteria, scotch eggs, etc).
1 October. As I am not feeling well at the moment (more fluid) I find myself reflecting on the mystery of life and death and the way we all pass through this world in a kind of procession. The whole business as inexplicable and mysterious as the John Le Carré TV serial, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which we are all finding so baffling.
To Bob Smith in London
Barn Cottage
18 October 1979
Dearest Bob,
I’ve now heard from the hospital at last – in fact I rang them up to find out something (how useful to have a tongue in one’s head). Apparently they are not going to take off any more fluid at this stage but will try some new tablets which I am to get from the doctor. He is coming to see me today as I didn’t feel well enough to go to the surgery – my appetite has been even more miserable the last few days and I’ve been feeling sick, so not getting much nourishment. A few nips of brandy, Lucozade, weak tea, toast – hardly enough to sustain me.
Later. The doctor has just been and cheered me up as he thinks he may be able to give me something to combat the nausea. Also he says that champagne is better than Lucozade.
A simply lovely day here – sun so powerful that I had to draw the curtains in my bedroom. Hazel has brought Tom [her son] to Wadham (I suppose young people are all brought to Oxford by car these days). So he is embarking on what should be the happiest days of his life.
Much love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
Barn Cottage
28 October 1979
Dear Philip,
Many thanks for your letter – also a nice postcard in the earlier part of this curious late summer (now, with the clocks back, turning into winter!).
I sent you copies of the reissue of the last two books (Jane and Prudence and No Fond Return) to the Library and hope they will arrive safely. The whole six really look quite handsome in their bright jackets and looking at them perhaps I can quote St Hilda’s motto – Non frustra vixi – though I still wonder if any of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for you and Lord D. And the dear TLS!
I’m afraid I’m writing this in bed as I haven’t been well during the last week or two. It is, I fear, the inexorable progress of this ‘tumour’. I’ve been having drug therapy for since January. I was very well the earlier part of the year but haven’t been so good the last month – now they are trying a new drug. They don’t seem to operate these days as they used to. I go to the Churchill regularly and feel I’m getting the best cancer treatment there is. At the moment though I’ve lost my appetite and don’t even like drink which is a bore.
I thought I’d keep you up to date with all this as you are such a good friend and I’d want you to know – of course I don’t know quite what the future will be – who does, come to that! – and I’m quite cheerful and active in my brain, even if physically weaker. (Better that way round.)
I’ve finished my country novel except for a few finishing touches, so that is something, even if it isn’t all that brilliant. Glad you liked the story [in the New Yorker]. I think it was mostly based on St John’s – especially the pineapple neatly cut up and the lovely box of crystallised fruits. Univ. could furnish material for ‘ Breakfast with Lord Goodman’, I suppose, but I have no plans for writing that!
It must be a blow losing your deputy, but how distinguished and splendid is her new job – almost like being Mrs Thatcher – perhaps even more so with all the esoteric expertise she will bring to it. Perhaps it will be rather like the bit in my new novel where the rector’s sister suddenly goes off – I hope people will rally round. Meals and drinks and other comforts.
Wedding presents. Do brides (if the term is still appropriate?) still present you with a ‘ list’, usually from Harrods or Peter Jones, of presents they would like to receive? I know they used to, a very ungracious custom, I thought. Babies are easier – something silver?
What did you think of Booker? Not what it was, except for the money? I read Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Book Shop, shortlisted in 1978, and liked it but thought she should have given us a bit more – filled it out a bit. I’m not much attracted by her winner this year. I’ve read a few romantic novels, in the course of duty, and lately much enjoyed Penelope Lively’s new one The Treasures of Time. I waded through A.S. Byatt’s long novel The Virgin in the Garden but that was published last year, I think.
No more space – a lovely sunny day, but the windows need cleaning.
Hilary is well, looks after me very well, and sends greetings. And of course all these from me.
Barbara
31 October. In the Churchill hoping for relief from my fluid. Conversation in the bed opposite:
‘There’s some nice music tonight.’
‘I’m not a great lover of music’
‘No – it just passes the time.’
‘That’s right.’
21 November. Churchill. Ward 7. A cold, raw typical November day, but we got here and I’ve just eaten a kind of supper – vegetable soup, baked beans and sausage. After the removal of four pints of fluid. The curious mixed or unisex ward is surely Donne’s
Difference of sex no more we know
Than our guardian angels do.
December 1979. Christmas card to Philip Larkin
WITH BEST WISHES FOR CHRISTMAS AND
THE NEW YEAR
(Still struggling on – perhaps a little better!) Another visit to hospital (brief) on 2nd Jan.
Barbara
She died on 11 January 1980