Betjeman, A N Wilson
May. 24th, 2024 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callmemadamIt’s a complete coincidence that I read this book during what I now know is the year of the fortieth anniversary of Betjeman’s death. Last week, BBC4 had a ‘Betjeman evening’, showing some old films and interviews. I’d already, while reading, watched my DVD of Metroland and found on YouTube his programme about parish churches in the diocese of Norwich. The part of Betjeman evening I did watch was an ancient Monitor programme about Betjeman and Philip Larkin. I found it contrived and unenlightening. Incidentally, if you ever see anything about Larkin on TV, it will include a clip from this programme of him going to work at the library. I must have seen that section about a dozen times. Betjeman and Larkin admired each other’s poetry because it was intelligible.
John Betjeman was born in 1906. Like his contemporary, Evelyn Waugh, he rather looked down on his own perfectly respectable middle-class family and came to enjoy the company (and the homes) of his social superiors. He was unhappy at Marlborough and left Oxford without a degree (largely due to his tutor, C S Lewis, who obviously didn’t like him). In spite of this, he was widely read and very knowledgeable about architecture for someone his age. His first proper job was writing for The Architectural Review, before being asked to edit the Shell guides to English counties. He married Penelope Chetwode and they had two children. Being highly susceptible, he was always falling in love but these crushes rarely developed into affairs until he met the aristocratic Elizabeth Cavendish, who became his mistress and later his carer, until he died. This Penelope/John/Elizabeth love triangle was never resolved. He had a great capacity for friendship and had a very wide circle of friends.
The longest-lasting friendship was probably with John Piper and his wife Myfanwy (Myfanwy of the poems). The two men went church crawling together and collaborated on the Shell guides. The Osbert Lancasters were also lifelong friends. Evelyn Waugh was always trying to convert him to Roman Catholicism and Betjeman was devastated when Penelope did convert because going to church and working in the parish at Uffington was something they shared, He remained a devout High Anglican (he said, Catholic, believing it to be the true catholic church). He managed to be friends with the Mitfords, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, the younger generation of Auberon Waugh and Richard Ingrams and even Princess Margaret. How did he do it? ‘Blinding charm’, according to ‘Debo’, the late dowager Duchess of Devonshire.
Betjeman’s Collected Poems sold in huge numbers for a poetry book; he was the most popular poet of his generation and Larkin said that he was virtually Poet Laureate before he was given that honour. Of course, to some people ‘popular’ is a term of abuse. A N Wilson considers that of about 200 published poems, thirty are really good. This seems harsh but most of us would be thrilled if we could write one good poem. Wilson particularly likes The Death of George V and so do I. In later life the poetry dried up as he continued his relentless round of socialising, public speaking and broadcasting. He said of the TV programmes, ‘I like to think of them as poems.’
A N Wilson has a (to me) strange explanation for this lack of later poems. According to him, poetry is best when written by the young (he excepts Tennyson and Thomas Hardy from this rule) and opines that had Keats lived, he would never have written anything as good as the poems he wrote in 1819. A question I have often posed to myself is this: supposing Bob Dylan had, like Keats, died at twenty-five? My answer is always that his early songs would still be played and admired today. Dylan is now eighty-two* and wrote many great songs in the extra fifty-plus years he had after twenty-five. So, I don’t buy this ‘young poets are best’ idea at all; I think it’s an excuse. I tend to agree with Penelope and Piper that Betjeman should have stopped endlessly gadding about and written something ‘really worthwhile’. This is due to a strict, puritanical side of me which hates to see a great brain (e.g. Stephen Fry’s) not put to better use. The nicer part of me says, ‘So wot? People should do what they want to.’
Betjeman’s last years were not happy ones, due to Parkinson’s disease which was diagnosed late. His relationships were a mess; he truly loved both Penelope and Elizabeth. This was terribly unfair on both; Penelope because she was left with the responsibility of maintaining their house and bringing up the children and Elizabeth because she was deprived of the children she longed for. I find it hard to understand how he could go regularly to confession and then, after receiving absolution, carry right on committing the same sin, as he must have thought of it. Until I read this book, I had no idea that the Betjemans had a son, Paul, who became completely estranged from his father and made a new life for himself in America. Paul was fond of quoting This Be The Verse. Betjeman’s public knew nothing of any of this, of course, and continued to dote on the endearing old buffer they saw on their screens. As this book shows, Betjeman was a much more complex man than his public persona suggested.
*Correct at the time of writing. 83 today!
Pics on LJ
John Betjeman was born in 1906. Like his contemporary, Evelyn Waugh, he rather looked down on his own perfectly respectable middle-class family and came to enjoy the company (and the homes) of his social superiors. He was unhappy at Marlborough and left Oxford without a degree (largely due to his tutor, C S Lewis, who obviously didn’t like him). In spite of this, he was widely read and very knowledgeable about architecture for someone his age. His first proper job was writing for The Architectural Review, before being asked to edit the Shell guides to English counties. He married Penelope Chetwode and they had two children. Being highly susceptible, he was always falling in love but these crushes rarely developed into affairs until he met the aristocratic Elizabeth Cavendish, who became his mistress and later his carer, until he died. This Penelope/John/Elizabeth love triangle was never resolved. He had a great capacity for friendship and had a very wide circle of friends.
The longest-lasting friendship was probably with John Piper and his wife Myfanwy (Myfanwy of the poems). The two men went church crawling together and collaborated on the Shell guides. The Osbert Lancasters were also lifelong friends. Evelyn Waugh was always trying to convert him to Roman Catholicism and Betjeman was devastated when Penelope did convert because going to church and working in the parish at Uffington was something they shared, He remained a devout High Anglican (he said, Catholic, believing it to be the true catholic church). He managed to be friends with the Mitfords, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, the younger generation of Auberon Waugh and Richard Ingrams and even Princess Margaret. How did he do it? ‘Blinding charm’, according to ‘Debo’, the late dowager Duchess of Devonshire.
Betjeman’s Collected Poems sold in huge numbers for a poetry book; he was the most popular poet of his generation and Larkin said that he was virtually Poet Laureate before he was given that honour. Of course, to some people ‘popular’ is a term of abuse. A N Wilson considers that of about 200 published poems, thirty are really good. This seems harsh but most of us would be thrilled if we could write one good poem. Wilson particularly likes The Death of George V and so do I. In later life the poetry dried up as he continued his relentless round of socialising, public speaking and broadcasting. He said of the TV programmes, ‘I like to think of them as poems.’
A N Wilson has a (to me) strange explanation for this lack of later poems. According to him, poetry is best when written by the young (he excepts Tennyson and Thomas Hardy from this rule) and opines that had Keats lived, he would never have written anything as good as the poems he wrote in 1819. A question I have often posed to myself is this: supposing Bob Dylan had, like Keats, died at twenty-five? My answer is always that his early songs would still be played and admired today. Dylan is now eighty-two* and wrote many great songs in the extra fifty-plus years he had after twenty-five. So, I don’t buy this ‘young poets are best’ idea at all; I think it’s an excuse. I tend to agree with Penelope and Piper that Betjeman should have stopped endlessly gadding about and written something ‘really worthwhile’. This is due to a strict, puritanical side of me which hates to see a great brain (e.g. Stephen Fry’s) not put to better use. The nicer part of me says, ‘So wot? People should do what they want to.’
Betjeman’s last years were not happy ones, due to Parkinson’s disease which was diagnosed late. His relationships were a mess; he truly loved both Penelope and Elizabeth. This was terribly unfair on both; Penelope because she was left with the responsibility of maintaining their house and bringing up the children and Elizabeth because she was deprived of the children she longed for. I find it hard to understand how he could go regularly to confession and then, after receiving absolution, carry right on committing the same sin, as he must have thought of it. Until I read this book, I had no idea that the Betjemans had a son, Paul, who became completely estranged from his father and made a new life for himself in America. Paul was fond of quoting This Be The Verse. Betjeman’s public knew nothing of any of this, of course, and continued to dote on the endearing old buffer they saw on their screens. As this book shows, Betjeman was a much more complex man than his public persona suggested.
*Correct at the time of writing. 83 today!
Pics on LJ
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