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.
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