A Subaltern's Love-song

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness ofjoy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won.
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads 'not adopted', by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car-park the dance has begun.
Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girls hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us, the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice,

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car-park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

John Betjeman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

John Betjeman was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984. He was immensely popular and held in great affection. The above is one of his most famous poems. Larkin was a great admirer of his - some of his writings about "Betchers" can be found in "Required Writing", an anthology of some of his prose.

He has since become wildly unfashionable, which is probably why I like him so much. Yes, he can be campy and twee ("mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells"), but I can forgive him that for his supreme craft and power to evoke almost filmic images, as he does here in "Devonshire Street", another deservedly famous poem: -

Devonshire Street

The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet.
The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene
With Edwardian faience adornments - Devonshire Street.

No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm
Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by.
The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm
Its chimneys steady against a mackerel sky.

No hope. And the iron knob of this palisade
So cold to the touch, is luckier now than he
'Oh merciless, hurrying Londoners! Why was I made
For the long and the painful deathbed coming to me?'

She puts her fingers in his as, loving and silly,
At long-past Kensington dances she used to do
'It's cheaper to take the tube to Piccadilly
And then we can catch a nineteen or a twenty-two.'

~~~~~~~~~~

More information on Sir John here: -
http://www.johnbetjeman.com/



[This message has been edited by Clive (edited February 13, 2003).]

Dear Clive

Thanks for posting these.

I have taken the liberty of retitling the thread with the poet's name and dates. I hope this is all right.

I shall be interested to see how our American colleagues react.

Regards

Clive Watkins

Clive:

Hmm, why is camp always seen as a prejorative? I think camp can be wonderfully delightful, particularly in its purest manisfestations (to paraphrase Susan Sontag's landmark essay, "Notes on Camp," something is most purely camp when the intentions are to produce a serious work of High Art and the results are closer to Low Trash). Some things are so bad they are just wonderful, like Mariah Carey in "Glitter," where you would swear she had to have pissed off the cinematographer in some particularly nasty way to have been lit and shot from the most unflattering angles possible and her line readings are so flat as to be positively concave.

My sister took me to see Radio City Music Hall's Christmas Show, which was just an absolute masterpiece of kitsch. Why, she asked me after, did I love this when I was critical of several other Broadway shows which weren't "any better really" than the Christmas show. I told her: Because the Christmas Show doesn't pretend to be anything any more than kitschy entertainment and 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' is pretending to be a Great Musical."

I don't find Betjeman to fall squarely into either category: camp or kitsch. But then again, I have not read much of him. I tried. I took out his Collected Poems from the library on and off all last summer. And I sat myself down and dutifully read. And mostly (and please try not to hate me for saying this) I was bored.

I suppose the assumption is as an American I am supposed to be fascinated with High British Culture--from the foibles of the monarchy to tea and crumpets and the like. Well, alas, I am not. I think that is the problem with Betjeman for most American readers. He is so squarely Briddish that it almost feels like he is writing in another language. I was talking to someone else earlier tonight about Sara Teasdale, and in a way I think he and Teasdale suffer from the same phenomenon: the craft overwhelms the subject. There is a reticence to their work that, while exquisitely crafted, can be too precious or "pretty" to have real staying power--at least for me.

Interesting that I don't feel this way about Larkin--though I suppose in the case of Larkin, he was almost obsessively seeking out taboo subject matters or points of view. But there is always, with Larkin, layers of meaning and feeling. Look at "Church Going" where I think you get two conflicting attitudes (at least!): this is all nonsense, silly nonsense, but why don't I believe in it, am I missing out on something? Or "This Be the Verse" which is caustic and bitter and, well, compassionate in a way you wouldn't ordinarily expect Larkin to be. With the Bejetman poems posted here, I feel like he is bordering on sentimentality, that a very British reticence is keeping him from showing the complexity of the subjects he has chosen. Or, as in the case of the first poem, he isn't kitschy enough. I would rather read Stevie Smith, who can be wicked as well as wickedly funny.

Then again, it took about a year for Larkin to click with me. So, I will take out the Bejetman Collected again in a bit and see if it clicks.

Hope all is well with you.

Tom

Betjeman is in my view a minor poet but remains a definite feature in the poetic landscape of British writing in the last century. As time refines him, the number of poems which occurs to anthologists will dwindle, but that is true of all writers, including the greatest. And reading through any collection, there is no need to feel one has to enjoy more than a few poems, after all.

An aside to Tom… You say: "I suppose the assumption is as an American I am supposed to be fascinated with High British Culture - from the foibles of the monarchy to tea and crumpets and the like." I don’t imagine Clive intended to impose on you (or on any non-British member) in the way this remark implies - any more than, as someone from the UK, I imagine that I am supposed to be "fascinated" with American cultural, social and literary history. We enjoy what the breadth of our sympathies allows us to enjoy.

Anyway, here for the curious are two more samples, the first from the beginning of Betjeman’s career, the second from towards the end. The second poem, "Harvest Hymn", is a parody of a hymn well-known in the UK which begins" We plough the fields and scatter The good seed on the land". I wonder if it is sung in other English-speaking countries.


Death in Leamington

She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the ev'ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa.

Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work'd it
Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high 'mid the stands and chairs-
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
And the things were alone with theirs.

She bolted the big round window,
She let the blinds unroll,
She set a match to the mantle,
She covered the fire with coal.

And "Tea! " she said in a tiny voice
"Wake up! It's nearly five."
Oh I Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,
Half dead and half alive!

Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?

Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,
At the gray, decaying face,
As the calm of a Leamington ev'ning
Drifted into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
Turned down the gas in the hall.

…

Harvest Hymn

We spray the fields and scatter
The poison on the ground
So that no wicked wild flowers
Upon our farm be found.
We like whatever helps us
To line our puree with pence;
The twenty-four-hour broiler-house
And neat electric fence.

All concrete sheds around us
And Jaguars in the yard,
The telly lounge and deep-freeze
Are ours from working hard.

We fire the fields for harvest,
The hedges swell the flame,
The oak trees and the cottages
From which our fathers came.
We give no compensation,
The earth is ours today,
And if we lose on arable,
The bungalows will pay.

All concrete sheds…etc.

Didn't Larkin say (something to the effect that) to start a fight between any two British poets, mention Betjeman?

Here is Larkin reviewing Betjeman in the Guardian archives .

Clive:

Put scare quotes around the word supposed.

Tom

Clive,

I can't seem to locate it, but my favourite poem by JB is a scathing piece about British wifes praying in a church during some war (WWII I think). His technical virtuosity has been rivalled by few poets this century. And that, alas, is one of the main reasons that he's increasingly regarded as a minor poet; part of the general devaluation of technical skills over the last century, the attitude that technical ability implies a lack of message.

Shekhar

Dear Shekhar

The poem you are thinking of is called "In Westminster Abbey" and begins "Let me take this other glove off As the vox humana swells". It was published in a 1940 collection.

In the second verse, the speaker - a woman - prays "Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans, Spare their women for Thy sake, And if that is not too easy We will pardon Thy mistake".

Here is the fifth verse:

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I’ll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

Unfortunately, I am afraid I do not have the time to put up all of its seven verses!

You are right: it is a splendid satire.

Clive Watkins

Thanks for posting this, Clive. My introduction to Betjeman was roundabout--I was reading a little book of verses by Wendy Cope, and her fictional character was a Betjeman fan. Needless to say, I didn't get her little joke because I didn't know the poet, so I looked him up and read a couple of his poems. I expected them to be bad--after all, Wendy Cope went to Oxford, so if she thought him bad enough to merit being the favorite poet of her satirical character, well, he must be just awful. Basically I went away feeling terribly confused, because I didn't think his poems were awful, and figured I just must be stupid.

Thank you for giving me the official permission of the Hoity Toity Poets Society to like Betjeman. I think I'll go off in a corner and read him with a more open mind. I like the light-heartedness of that first one (and of your parody). Reminds me ever so faintly of P. G. Wodehouse.

We know Larkin was a great admirer of JB's(and was not a great admirer generally)and, while Larkin's finest poems are a long way better than Betjeman's, I think Bejeman wrote a much larger number of pretty good poems, and that Larkin's "Collected" is, in general, a less rewarding read than Betjeman's.

Betjeman worked for the British Embassy in Dublin at one time and is widely believed to have been a spy (although probably of the cocktail party circuit type) which he probably was, and has written a few excellent poems about Ireland. He was an inveterate snob and fawner on the high and mighty, by all accounts, and his world is not my world, but I still think he was a wonderful poet of place, and London in particular.

Minor he may be, but I think poems (apart from those mentioned above) like "Myfanwy", "Middlesex", "Christmas"
"Slough" and "How To Get On In Society" will be around for a while yet.

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hooker's Green

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that villagers can say
"The church looks nice" on Christmas Day

Provincial public houses blaze
And Corporation tramcars clang,
on lighted tenements I gaze
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
says "Merry Christmas to you all."

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
and oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad
And Christmas-morning bells say "Come!"
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremenduous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true, For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare-
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

Dear Rosa,

The poem you are thinking of is "Mr. Strugnell" and is from Cope's "Making Cocoa for Kinglsey Amis."

Cope uses Strugnell for all sorts of parodies of all kinds of styles--he isn't a character so much as a means--, but in that particular poem, he is clearly modelled on Larkin. (It is a parody of Mr. Bleany, but there are numerous other give-aways: jazz, '63, and of course Hull.) Betjeman was a big influence on Larkin, and will always be important for that if nothing else--it is just another nod to Larkin, not a dismissal of Betjeman. It is a delightful wicked parody. She also does brilliant send-ups of Shakespeare and Wordsworth in the Strugnell sonnets, but that certainly doesn't mean she finds them inferior poets!

The poets she--or perhaps rather, the superior Mr. Strugnell?--is taking a swipe at (via the dramatic irony of the monologue from Mrs. M.) are not the likes of Betjeman, but Patience Strong and Pam Ayres, who, I take it, are "Deep Thoughts" Hallmark type "poets."

I hope the Betjeman fans don't mind if I post the poem here (if only to clear Cope's name of Betjeman bashing... )

Mr. Strugnell

'This was Mr. Strugnell's room,' she'll say,
And look down at the lumpy, single bed.
'He stayed here up until he went away
And kept his bicycle out in that shed.

'He had a job at Norwood library--
He was a quiet sort who liked to read--
Dick Francis mostly, and some poetry--
He liked John Betjeman very much indeed

'But not Pam Ayres or even Patience Strong--
He'd change the subject if I mentioned them,
Or say "It's time for me to run along--
Your taste's too highbrow for me, Mrs. M."

'And up he'd go and listen to that jazz.
I don't mind telling you it was a bore--
Few things in this house have been tiresome as
The sound of his foot tapping on the floor.

'He didn't seem the sort for being free
With girls or going out and having fun.
He had a funny turn in 'sixty-three
And ran round shouting "Yippee! It's begun."

'I don't know what he meant but after that
He had a different look, much more relaxed.
Some nights he'd come in late, too tired to chat,
As if he had been somewhat overtaxed.

'And now he's gone. He said he found Tulse Hill
Too stimulating--wanted somewhere dull.
At last he's found a place that fits the bill--
Enjoying perfect boredom up in Hull.'
'

Thanks for taking time out to clear up my confusion. Much appreciated! The "Jason Strugnell" character seemed like a supercilious ass (poking fun at his poor unsophisticated landlady), so I just assumed Cope would make his favorite poet a bad or pretentious one. It all makes a little more sense now.




[This message has been edited by RosaRugosa (edited February 14, 2003).]

Just as an aside - Pam Ayres was a writer of comic doggerel who was enormously popular in Britain in the late 70s, mainly due to her reading of the poems in a broad Oxfordshire accent.

Patience Strong writes 'inspirational' verses which, despite being rhymed and metred, are usually written out as prose. Very popular on calendars and tea-towels the length and breadth of Britain.

As a further aside to this aside, when he was compiling the Oxford Book of 20th Century Verse, Larkin seriously considered including something by Patience Strong. Can't remember what he said about it - something about her poetry being 'honest' - but I think it was more mischief than anything else.

NYC Tom (isn't it?). You were right to pick me up on my hasty crit which might seem to imply an overall condemnation of camp art. First, I'd better emphasise that I intended the word to convey 'theatrical, affected, exaggerated'. Any reference to gay culture would IMO have been inappropriate when discussing JB's sexual orientation. 'Infantile' is the first word that springs to mind, but I don't really want to chase that hare.
To avoid misunderstanding I should probably have used the word 'whimsy.' Whimsy can to my mind be engaging if well controlled or tedious(if stale and self-indulgent). It seems to me that the Myfanwy poems and others in which JB writes self-deprecatingly and nostalgically of unrequited love would have benefited from pruning. Jokes of this sort were common from Victorian times.
IN THE PUBLIC GARDENS is, I suggest, a superior example of JB's whimsicality.

In the Public Gardens,
To the airs of Strauss,
Eingang we're in love again
When ausgang we were aus.

The waltz was played, the songs were sung,
The night resolved our fears;
From bunchy boughs the lime trees hung
Their gold electroliers.

Among the loud Americans
Zwei Englanderwere we,
You so white and frail and pale
And me so deeply me;

I bought for you a dark-red rose,
I saw your grey-green eyes,
As high above the floodlights,
The true moon sailed the skies.

In the Public Gardens,
Ended things begin;
Ausgangwe were out of love
Und eingang we are in.

OK, OK. The 'white' ... 'pale' combo in st 3 is bad. I suspect the 'white' may refer to a dress.

Of Betjeman's religious poems, I most admire ST SAVIOUR'S, ABERDEEN PARK ...
Too long to quote in full here, alas. The use of period detail seems well judged to set the scene and create an impression of lost lifestyles - I particularly like
'Solid Italianate houses for the solid commercial mind.' And the inclusiveness of JB's brand of Christianity is moving - even to this secular humanist. Margaret.

[This message has been edited by Campoem (edited March 11, 2003).]

I'm sorry to have come to this so late, especially as it was me who recently took time to criticise J.B., having fallen in to what could, I discover above, be called 'the Larkin Trap'. Yes I do think Betjeman is a divisive figure, although I agree with Shekhar about his technical skill.

He's the kind of figure that tells us so much about British culture in the middle part of the 20th century, and will be useful to historians. I was interested to hear Oliver's information about JB's diplomatic role- I do agree about the Cocktail parties.

It seems to me that Betjeman was essentially an ameliorating figure, part of the 'feel-good factor' that would have held classes and society together. Amongst the upper classes he was a figure of fun and affection.
I don't know how 'high' his background was, but I wonder whether Larkin's feelings towards him were governed by a cool analysis of poetry or by the sense that the society Larkin wanted to protect revered Betjeman as a reassuring old buffer/ High Church type? Larkin was the son of a Coventry Councillor, and would have been no stranger to the Cocktail Party himself, nor to the mechanics of social climbing.

My basic thesis is that the figure Betjeman became anaesthetised his poetry, rendering its technical skill somewhat redundant. This was a great pity, making him a dealer in dodgy stereotypes, a shuffler of nostalgic images. I agree again with Shekhar about 'In Westminster Abbey'. This is also one of my favourites, but it's also a noticeably patriotic poem, satirising on safe ground.
In summation of my view, Betjeman shows us how to waste a gift beautifully, to the detriment of the general poetic environment.

[This message has been edited by edeverett (edited March 05, 2003).]

Thomas --

You mentioned Teasdale. I wonder if you might consider starting another thread, and expounding on what you've mentioned about her work here in passing. I've only recently discovered her, and I've been critically comparing her work to that of Millay and Wylie. I'd like to hear further thoughts on it, if you don't mind.

Jennifer

I just think Betjeman is absolutely wonderful. If you've watched The Office (UK version, I suspect) you may note that the "action" takes place in Slough and one of the series ends with Ricky Gervaise's rendition of this:

Slough

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Peter,
One of my favourites!

What a delightful thread. Thankyou Clive and Clive and Alicia.
Janet

Yes, Devonshire Street is a beautiful and poignant piece and I doubt if any other British poet could have bettered it. Betjeman was less successful writing about the working classes, but this is understandable. Here is an interesting oddity, a poem about the death of a working-class woman, from a poem called “Variations on a theme By TW.Rolleston.” Larkin has complained that this piece is “unaccountably” missing from the Collected Betjeman and quotes this extract , which is wonderfully poignant.


“But her place is empty in the queue at the International,
The greengrocer's queue lacks one,
So does the crowd at Mac Fisheries. There's no one to go to Freeman's
To ask if the shoes are done.”

Here is the full poem.


Under the ground, on a Saturday afternoon in winter
Lies a mother of five,
And frost has bitten the purple November rose flowers
Which budded when she was alive.
They have switched on the street lamps here by the cemetery railing;
In the dying afternoon
Men from football, and women from Timothy White's and McIlroy's
Will be coming teawards soon.
But her place is empty in the queue at the International,
The greengrocer's queue lacks one,
So does the crowd at Mac Fisheries. There's no one to go to Freeman's
To ask if the shoes are done.
Will she, who was so particular, be glad to know that after
The tears, the prayers and the priest,
Her clothing coupons and ration book were handed in at the Food Office
For the files marked 'deceased' ?


If only it had ended at “To ask if the shoes are done” but he goes on for another four lines and, in my opinion, bungles it, although the line about the clothing coupons and ration book are good. Maybe my view is coloured by having known those four lines first. The earlier lines are not of his best either and I have no idea what the meter is. It seems like accentual pentameter and trimeter alternating, but how many beats are in “Men from football and women from Timothy White’s and McIlroys” Obviously it is set as a wartime or early postwar poem, with the mention of clothing coupons and ration book.

Especially interesting point when you ask about the meter, or the form, as I suspect you also meant. Not that I can put a name to it, but it seems typical to me of comic 'working class' (whatever that is in this day and age) doggerel. Pam Ayers may well have loved it, bless her heart. I saw someone at Cambridge folk festival (197*?) reciting something which, from memory, went a bit like this:

Times were very hard in the French Revolution
They didn't do things by halves
Woman sat watching their men go to the guillotine
And mistakenly knitted them scarves

...

etc.

And there's always The Lion and Albert .

Not JB's forte, as you say, because it's not really his crowd, but he might have been trying a cloth cap on his graces with 'Variations on a Theme...'

For a bit more orientation for non Brits - if I'm not mistaken the Joan Hunter-Dunn was women's singles champion at Wimbledon once, when they didn't scream and argue with umpires.

I notice that Pam Ayers parody of Wendy Copes also trip over a mass of no-meter-in-particular-sort-of-syllables-that-sound-like-they-were-exchanged-in-a-fish-and-chip-queue, by way of getting to the end-rhyme.

Maybe not the working class, but boy did he get the nouveau riche:

Executive

I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.
In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill
The maîtres d'hôtel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.

You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know,
I'm partly a liaison man, and partly P.R.O.
Essentially, I integrate the current export drive
And basically I'm viable from ten o'clock till five.

For vital off-the-record work - that's talking transport-wise -
I've a scarlet Aston-Martin - and does she go? She flies!
Pedestrians and dogs and cats, we mark them down for slaughter.
I also own a speedboat which has never touched the water.

She's built of fibre-glass, of course. I call her 'Mandy Jane'
After a bird I used to know - No soda, please, just plain -
And how did I acquire her? Well, to tell you about that
And to put you in the picture, I must wear my other hat.

I do some mild developing. The sort of place I need
Is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed
A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire -
I fix the Planning Officer, the Town Clerk and the Mayor.

And if some Preservationist attempts to interfere
A 'dangerous structure' notice from the Borough Engineer
Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way -
The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay.

Due to unresolved technical problems I am unable to read the further postings on this thread since it was revived, so aplogies if I do not respond to any comments where it might be thought I should.

Back From Australia


Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay,
We never seem to catch the running day
But travel on in everlasting night
With all the chic accoutrements of flight:
Lotions and essences in neat array
And yet another plastic cup and tray.
"Thank you so much. Oh no, I'm quite all right".

At home in Cornwall hurrying autumn skies
Leave Bray Hill barren, Stepper jutting bare,
And hold the moon above the sea-wet sand.
The very last of late September dies
In frosty silence and the hills declare
How vast the sky is, looked at from the land.

John Betjeman

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 05, 2005).]

I have a favorite JB poem which I could not find on a quick Google searh. Perhaps someone will recognize it.
It contains the verse:

The Old Great Western Railway shakes.
The Old Great Western Railway spins.
The Old Great Western Railway makes
Me very sorry for my sins.

Dear Gail

It’s entitled “Distant View of a Provincial Town” and begins

Beside those spires so spick and span
Against an unencumbered sky
The Old Great Western Railway ran
When someone different was I.

The verse you quote is the last. Sorry! I don’t have time just now to put up the rest.

Kind regards…

Clive Watkins

<u>Distant View of a Provincial Town</u>


Beside those spires so spick and span
Against an unencumbered sky
The old Great Western Railway ran
When someone different was I.

St. Aidan's with the prickly nobs
And iron spikes and coloured tiles ---
Where Auntie Maud devoutly bobs
In those enriched vermilion aisles:

St. George's where the mattins bell
But rarely drowned the trams for prayer ---
No Popish sight or sound or smell
Disturbed that gas-invaded air:

St. Mary's where the Rector preached
In such a jolly friendly way
On cricket, football, things that reached
The simple life of every day:

And that United Benefice
With entrance permanently locked, ---
How Gothic, grey and sad it is
Since Mr. Grogley was unfrocked!

The old Great Western Railway shakes
The old Great Western Railway spins ---
The old Great Western Railway makes
Me very sorry for my sins.

Perhaps the word "twee" comes to mind in reading John Betjeman's verses. A minor poet certainly, his poems are entertaining but cute at the same time. His work continues to be charming because of the English subject matter and nicely captures something of life in his native land at a certain stage in his existence. But it adamantly refuses to rise to any great heights as poetry.

Chris

Clive said:
Sorry to digress from JB, but that's a huge understatement, Clive! Pam Ayres is STILL enormously popular. I met her at a literary lunch last year and she's delightful; part of her appeal is her 'ordinariness' and lack of celeb behaviour. She even rears chickens in her back garden. Here's a testimony of how busy she still is:

PAM AYRES has just completed her UK Spring tour of 45 shows which played to an average 91% capacity, confirming her place as one of the biggest selling comediennes in the UK. Pam is now starting to write her autobiography which will be published in Autumn next year, when she will undertake an extensive book promotion tour including concerts in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

This year PAM AYRES celebrates 35 years as a professional entertainer. It was November 1975 when Pam made the first of her appearances on the ITV talent show, Opportunity Knocks, the “Britain’s Got Talent” TV show of its day, and this proved to be the start of an incredible career for a unique entertainer.
On TV Pam has recently been seen on The One Show, Paul O’Grady, and QI, and next year she will be recording a new DVD of her latest live show. Also next year Pam will be recording her fourth series for Radio 4 of AYRES ON THE AIR. Pam is is a regular guest on other Radio 4 programmes such as Just A Minute, Loose Ends, and Saturday Live.

Hello Jayne

I must admit I don't know much about Pam Ayres. Though I think she can probably be compared in style and popularity to Wendy Cope, isn't that right? Maybe they both should be taken about as seriously.

Chris

--Not remotely, Chris.
Best regards,
David

It's nice to see a Betjeman thread at the top of the heap. He has always been one of my favorite poets although it's hard to pin down exactly what makes him so special. It's more than the "twee" factor, though rarely are poets so unabashedly nostalgic and camp (lines like "Oh, chintzy, chintzy cheeriness" and "That burning buttercuppy day" spring to mind). If he is a minor poet, so be it; he had an arresting voice and there wasn't and still isn't someone remotely like him. To an American boy born in the late eighties, Betjeman represented everything I considered to be British: the 50s-style propriety, the quirky place names, the soft sadness settling everywhere like dust in a polished living room. There probably never really was a Britain like that, and it certainly wasn't like that when I lived in London for a brief time, but he captures a sense of place so well and his poem emit sadness and warmth at the same time. Plus, his love poetry is punchy and smart. Myfanwy and Joan and Wendy, oh my.

On a different note, I once recited "A Subaltern's Love Song" to my roommate who cares nothing for poetry. He responded, "See, that's a good poem. You can tell the poet could actually write." Exactly.

Here's a review I wrote for 'First Things' on A N Wilson's Betjeman biography:

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-1641...19731B7B1D6B39

"Camp"? Oh, come on. Not Uhmerican "camp" anyway. Youse guys splat the label "camp" on something and think you've said something intelligible. Might be true sometimes, but not here. Betjeman was various things, but not yet "camp". Rather more just himself, chumbly as he was. I actually like him a bit, primarily for his skill and comfortableness (which, as we can now see, is streng verboten in "art" these sad days). I once had a British acquaintance (he's now moth-eaten and mentally gone to seed, I fear, drinking lonely acidulous screwdrivers in his thatchy home), who loved Betjeman but who wrote truly terrible prosaic free verse, and somehow didn't allow there was a difference between them except in level of technique.

Betjeman: Not as good by far as Kingsley Amis at his best, but good enough.

Not as good as KA!!! KA was primarily a novelist, and a very good one, much better than Martin, but his poems are minor things, though I like them. Betjeman is one of the three best English poets of the last century, along with Larkin and Auden in my opinion. His voice is distinctive and he has that wonderful English melancholy we find in Tennyson and Arnold and in lesser voices too, like de la Mare. The Scots, where I grew up, don't do melancholy, and neither do Americans unless I've missed something.

Some of those closing stanzas. Just read them and you'll see what I mean. Larkin can do that, but Amis can't, and doesn't want to.

David, any chance of getting to see that article of yours without all that plaver of a 7 days free trial. I am always suspicious of free trials, but I'd like to read the article.

I actually prefer Kingsley's poems to his novels. I reread Lucky Jim recently and found it a struggle to get through. His later novels have a weird kind of syntax that makes them difficult to enjoy.

I agree that the early novels are the best. I think 'Take a Girl Like You' is the pinnacle of his achievement. I suppose he ran out of interesting things to say. On the other hand, the older I get the less inclined I am to read books through unless I've read them before.

--That's strange, John.
When I first posted the link you could read it all, and the free trial has appeared since then.
It's in the archives of First Things, but seems you need to be a subscriber to read it there.

I watched the Youtube of Pam Ayres's "Just Ask My Husband" (or something like that) and found it quite entertaining, literary judgments aside. I was surprised to find that Pam was apparently married to my father-in-law.

They're both very good. Especially at their very best.

I love Betjeman and am delighted that he has a biography (I also love literary biographies).

As Chesterton said of Dickens, he didn't just "give the people what they wanted" -- he wanted what the people wanted.

Funny isn't it, John. I'm becoming the same way. Stodgy maybe.

I'm all for Betjeman. Limpid and sad. Funny and sharp. his voice has that wonderful British ring to it that some might mistake for pretentiousness. It's actually the opposite of pretentious. I sometimes wish I was born English until I realize that then I would have to be English.