The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

by Paula Byrne

  In silence they watched the sausages lying in the frying-pan. After a while the fat began to splutter.

  ‘They’re bursting,’ she said unhappily.

  ‘I always prick them with a fork,’ he said in a kind tone.

  ‘Well, yes, I did prick them.’

  ‘With your fingernail?’ He smiled.

  ‘No, with a knife, I think …’

  Afterwards when he had gone, it was that part of the evening she remembered – her appalling domestic efficiency and the meagre meal she had given him when he must have been rather hungry. What was it about him that brought out this curious inadequacy?[1]

  Pym sent this novelistic scene (and more) to Skipper in the form of a letter. Its purpose was twofold. Just as she had done with Henry Harvey, she was flattering Skipper by using him as her muse for her fiction. But she was also desperately trying to explain her own frustrated and complex emotions about their relationship. She went on to apologise for an incident about luncheon meat: ‘Who she wondered were the people who ate it for “luncheon”?’ Somehow there had been a row. ‘Perhaps it had been a desperate attempt to break down the awkwardness and loss of rapport she had felt between them.’

  Pym used her joke novel-letter to try to process and explain the insurmountable barriers between then:

  In church she prayed for them both and resolved to ask him for a proper meal (with cheese) very soon. It gave her a curious kind of pleasure to think of him preparing his luncheon, arranging his table in the elegant way he always did, in the cool clean Sunday morning ambience of Sussex Gardens, in that bright sparkling air, free from the cats’ hairs which caused him so much distress in Queen’s Park. Any hairs there would be Siamese, as he had pointed out.[2]

  Of course it was not the cat hair, but all the unspoken things that neither could fully express. Pym knew this: ‘So you see, my dear, how with a little polishing life could become literature, or at least fiction! I hope you get its poor little message, or that it at least entertains you for a moment.’[3]

  The letter did the trick and a burglary at Sussex Gardens sent him rushing back: ‘now the lovely square gold watch and the platinum and diamond one (in the style of the 1920s) left him by his father has gone’. Pym, with her hair still in curlers, comforted him and gave him tea. They went to an election rally in Hammersmith to hear Alec Douglas-Home: an old school Tory, eldest son of the 12th Earl of Home, he had become prime minister following Harold Macmillan’s resignation due to illness in the wake of the Profumo affair. A year on, he was fighting for his political life. The week after they heard him speak, Harold Wilson’s Labour Party came to power with a narrow majority.

  Later, when Skipper invited Pym back to Sussex Gardens, she felt something had shifted. He still looked as gorgeous as ever, in his scarlet pullover and long navy coat: ‘Very sweet, but not, perhaps, Skipper again.’[4] There was then a three-week break, when he was in the Bahamas, with no contact. The following month, they met again for lunch and one evening Pym helped him collect some pictures for L’Atelier. He talked about his mother’s peacocks and how they had to be shut up in the greenhouse at night. At a party, everyone told Pym that she was ‘blooming’. She mused on the reason for this: ‘is that joy at seeing R [Skipper] again or what over three weeks away from him has done?’ At the Lyons restaurant, she sat alone, watching a man coming to a table whilst his companion, a middle-aged woman, went to fetch his food. It reminded her depressingly of her own relationship: ‘fetching food for him as I have fetched it for my darling R. on more than one occasion’.[5] There were more apologies, this time from Skipper: ‘Do forgive, or better still overlook my behaviour of late. I really am beset by difficulties.’[6]

  November was always a difficult month for Pym. December, she told Larkin, was even worse ‘because that has Christmas too’. That year, Skipper went home to the Bahamas for Christmas. Pym wrote to him, telling him that she was working on a new novel: ‘I hate writing “tender love scenes” and am no good at it – why I wonder? Too inhibited and behaviour-ridden no doubt.’[7] He replied that he was lonely, she was in his thoughts, and her prayers for him meant a great deal. She had asked for a photograph and he promised to send her a glamorous one.

  At the end of January, in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, Skipper returned unexpectedly from the Bahamian sunshine to the suburban gloom of Brooksville Avenue. ‘Are you still brown she asks idly? He pulled out his shirt and revealed a square of golden brown skin on his belly.’ It was, for Pym, an erotic moment: ‘She found herself thinking “All thy quaint Honour turned to dust/And into Ashes all my lust”.’ Except, she noted wryly, ‘he probably doesn’t have any quaint honour’. At least Skipper wrote her a kind letter, desperate to restore Pym’s confidence in her novel: ‘You know if you want practical assistance I will do all I can. Winter will pass after the long delay, of that I am sure.’[8] And he gamely sent a charming Valentine card.

  She wrote him a poem:

  O, Sweet Bahamian, cruel Fate

  Has sent you to me much too late

  Tormenting me with many a Scene

  Of Happiness that might have been …

  Yet I must love you, Dearest Boy –

  My Jewel, my Treasure and my Joy –

  For though you never can be mine,

  At least you’ll be MY VALENTINE![9]

  A week later, however, there was more upset. She rang Skipper, only to have him say that he ‘felt guilty (which I hate)’. She invited him to tea, but he was not at his best: ‘in his spoilt little Bahamian mood, full of euphoria, money and sex talk, teasing me and being unkind to Minerva. I get irritated with him.’[10] On one occasion he gave Minerva a whack, which deeply upset her. He wrote a poem to ‘The Goddess of Brooksville’ (Minerva the cat that is, not Barbara), begging forgiveness:

  (With apologies to All Good Poets from Catullus to Sandy Wilson).

  Who is Minerva, what is she?

  Purring gently on Ianthe’s knee.

  Goddess of Brooksville, quean of cats,

  Pampered Neuter, fantastic fat;

  Delighting my mistress with feline graces,

  All thoughts of me away she chases.

  And when I come on bended knee

  Ianthe’s making pussy’s tea.

  Matchless Minnie, cunning cat,

  Remember well we had a spat,

  And I thee whacked with spiteful glee

  To show you could not vanquish me.

  But now you jealous wicked kitty

  I must pretend to show you pity,

  Else I fear Ianthe’s rage

  Will turn upon me page by page.

  So, sluttish ’Nerva peace I offer,

  Bowing, scraping, humbly proffer:

  Now hide thy claws, come out from Telly

  And let me tickle thy vast round belly.

  Then once again will Ianthe smile,

  Prettily deceived by all this guile.

  Oh perfumed pussy, betray me not

  Or doomed I be to a sad, sad, lot.[11]

  Skipper’s fear that Pym’s rage would avenge itself on the page would prove to be prescient. In May, she decided that she must end the relationship, but she was in too deep. Hilary, who had recently been ill and hospitalised, was sympathetic, but also told her sister to ‘be her age’.[12]

  Pym was more angry and upset than she suggested to others. In her journal, she expressed her deepest feelings, which she was somehow managing to suppress: ‘Fortunately all the fury and bitterness I sometimes feel has stayed hidden inside me and R. doesn’t – perhaps never will – know.’ She was determined to ‘end it all – but how? And why?’ But when Skipper wrote a letter inviting her to dinner for her birthday, she softened her resolve: ‘I phoned him and we talked. I must learn not to take “things” so much to heart and try to understand – don’t stop loving (can’t), just be there if and when needed.’[13]

  A huge part of the problem was that Pym did not have enough to do. Larkin’s encouragement was, as ever,
vital. She told him that she was revising and polishing An Unsuitable Attachment, as well as working on The Sweet Dove Died, but she was struggling with it: ‘Over the coldest Easter for 80 years I tried to beat the first two chapters into a better shape now that the characters are becoming clearer.’ And she couldn’t help but feel that it was all a waste of time: ‘I really still wonder if my books will ever be acceptable again when I read the reviews in the Sundays.’ Nevertheless, she still wanted fame: ‘I think it might be nice to be famous and sought after when one is rather old and ga-ga.’[14]

  One of Larkin’s most well-known works was a funny and bitter poem about the burden of work. It was called ‘Toads’, using the metaphor to depict the ghastliness and boredom of everyday life. Work is a toad that squats on us, poisoning six days a week just for the sake of ‘paying a few bills’.[15] Pym knew that Larkin would understand this aspect of her unhappiness: ‘Today, being surrounded by galley proofs, I feel a bit like your poem about the Toad “work”.’[16] What she couldn’t and wouldn’t share was the complications of her personal life. The reticence was mutual – though Larkin did tell her that his ‘friend’ (Monica Jones) thought Pym should have a character who went over to Rome. She rather approved of the suggestion.

  When Larkin proposed that she send the revised version of An Unsuitable Attachment to Faber, citing his name, she was grateful. Whilst the book sat with Faber, Pym agreed to go to Christie’s auction house to bid for books for Skipper in his absence. He was about to travel to Venice, Greece and Istanbul. Before leaving, he took Pym to lunch at the Kardomah. They ate salmon sandwiches, drank coffee, talked about the process of bidding on his behalf, then walked in the rain to W. H. Smith to buy him some holiday reading matter. ‘What a change to be happy for a moment,’ she confided to her journal.[17]

  Yet with Skipper away, Pym experienced feelings of ‘wonderful peace’. Her bid at Christie’s was successful: ‘Sharpe’s 2 vols of Birds of Paradise for 1,000 pounds! It was rather nerve-wracking but rewarding and afterwards lunch at Fortnums.’[18] She had enjoyed the atmosphere of the sale room. When Skipper returned from his travels, he was so pleased about Pym’s acquisition of Birds of Paradise that he took her to dinner and gave her a present of a glass bird from Venice. She was delighted; the little bird ornament would feature in a pivotal moment in The Sweet Dove Died.

  Her spirits were still high when she received bad news from Faber. Larkin’s editor, Charles Monteith, sent Pym a kind rejection letter, but it was another blow to her esteem. ‘Now I feel as if I shall never write again … rather a relief to feel that I don’t have to flog myself to finish the present one since probably nothing I write could be acceptable now.’[19] She lost no time in reporting the bad news back to Larkin. She thanked him for all his help, but admitted that she had rather given up hope. Larkin was, understandably, mortified. He was trying his utmost to find Pym a new publisher and had sent Monteith a copy of Excellent Women back in February (‘They aren’t all like this but a certain plangent autumnal tone is common to them, which I like very much’).[20] Pym replied that she was not surprised by the rejection: An Unsuitable Attachment was ‘not the kind of book to impress a new publisher’. At least she was busy at work and had a new office carpet, ‘speckled black and white that won’t show the ash’.[21]

  Her problematic relationship with Skipper was still gnawing at her. She wrote a message to herself in her journal:

  Rainer Maria Rilke 1873–1936

  Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis 1855–1934

  (18 years between them, but he was a man of genius).[22]

  CHAPTER VIII

  In which Mr Philip Larkin is disgruntled (when was he not?)

  Al Alvarez was one of the few critics of The Whitsun Weddings to give Larkin a hostile review. The collection had established Larkin as one of England’s foremost poets, but he was rendered furious by one word. Alvarez described Larkin’s world as ‘commonplace’. Larkin fumed to Monica: ‘I’d like to know what dragon-infested world these lads live in that makes them so free with the word “commonplace”.’[1] Later he would tell the critic John Haffenden, ‘I don’t want to transcend the commonplace. I love the commonplace. Everyday things are lovely to me.’[2] Indeed, one of the reasons Larkin loved Barbara Pym’s novels so much was her sensitivity to the commonplace, ‘the trivial round, the common task’. In his letters to Pym, he made sure to include ephemera that he knew she would enjoy. His carpet, back from the cleaners, feeling like an unmown lawn; a local party with hot punch, Beatles records, and people dancing the twist; his purchase of a Panama hat with a black ribbon.

  Larkin could be bitingly sarcastic about other writers. He described Dylan Thomas as ‘an incredibly small and tousled, grubby Welshman. His face is round with a comical snubby nose, fat cheeks, incipient double chin and two flabby lips.’ E. M. Forster was a ‘toothy little aged Billy Bunter’. Ted Hughes was ‘embarrassing’. To his mother, he ranted: ‘Honestly, all writers are utterly awful when you meet them.’ Even his beloved Hull received the full force of his vitriol, when he was in the mood. He described the city’s Market Place as: ‘A horrible chip-infested place with swarms of depressing cut-price, kid-dragging people, caricatures of every vapid vulgarity.’[3] By contrast, he always treated Pym with the utmost reverence and kindness.

  Now that he had learned about her rejection from Faber, Larkin was indignant. Even before he wrote back to Pym, he fired off a letter to Charles Monteith. This was unusual conduct for Larkin, who feared confrontation. He had spent a lovely day with his editor, during which they had discussed the reissue of his collection The North Ship. But now he was quietly furious:

  The only feature of the day I am sorry about is your decision about Barbara Pym. I am not very good at expressing my thoughts on the spur of the moment, but in retrospect what I feel is this: by all means turn it down if you think it’s a bad book of its kind, but please don’t turn it down because it’s the kind of book it is … Personally, too, I feel it is a great shame if ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things can’t find a publisher these days. This is in the tradition of Jane Austen & Trollope and I refuse to believe that no one wants its successors today.[4]

  Larkin was writing his own manifesto: ‘I like to read about people who have done nothing spectacular, who aren’t beautiful or lucky.’ He wanted to read about people who can see ‘in little autumnal moments of vision, that the so called big experiences of life are going to miss them’. That such things ‘are presented not with self-pity or despair or romanticism, but with realistic firmness & even humour’. Larkin, now excessively riled, went out on a limb, saying that this was the ‘kind of writing a responsible publisher ought to support (that’s you, Charles!)’. He ended by saying that he would willingly write an introduction to Pym’s novel, if ‘saying so would help you to review your verdict on the book’. He requested no fee: ‘I’d gladly provide it for nothing. In fact I’d be honoured.’ He finished with a non-apology: ‘Forgive this Sunday morning harangue! But I feel I must stand up for a writer I find unique & irreplaceable.’[5]

  Had Pym ever had such a loyal and fervent advocate? The only sadness is that she never fully knew the full extent of Larkin’s support. He wrote again to her to express his sympathy, encouraging her to try other houses: ‘much of my sorrow is quite selfishly due to the fact that I shan’t be able to keep the [new] book on my shelves. Do try a few more people with it!’[6] Nor did Larkin let it rest with Monteith, who had written a long, conciliatory letter explaining his decision to reject Pym. But Larkin was eloquent in her defence: ‘In all her writing I find a continual perceptive attentiveness to detail, which is a joy and a steady background of rueful yet courageous acceptance of things which I think more relevant to life as most of us have to live it.’ Monteith had suggested that Pym had not sufficiently developed as a writer, but Larkin was having none of it: ‘I think development is a bit of a myth; lots of writers don’t develop, such as Thomas Hardy, or P.
G. Wodehouse, nor do we want them to. That is how I feel about Miss Pym.’[7]

  Mentioning Pym in the same breath as his beloved Hardy and Wodehouse was testimony to Larkin’s admiration. But Monteith was wrong to suggest that she had not developed as a writer. And despite the fact that she feared she was no longer publishable, she would continue to develop.

  CHAPTER IX

  In which Miss Pym takes Skipper as her Guest to the FANY Club Lunch and he receives a Love Token from Another Man, in the form of a Drying-up Cloth patterned with Dachshunds

  The Skipper affair dragged on throughout the summer of 1965. Pym invited him to be her guest at a luncheon of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) Club, of which she was a member. An all-female corps, the yeomanry was established in 1907 to provide assistance to civil and military authorities in times of emergency. Originally founded as a group of women who could provide first aid on the battlefield, it had grown exponentially during the two world wars.

  Skipper appeared to be particularly charmed by the women: ‘He seems quite at home among them and his eyes shine when one pays him a compliment.’[1] Once again, Pym was pleased to have such a good-looking young man, who was entirely comfortable in the company of women, as her companion. After lunch they went to Peter Jones to choose curtain fabric and then on to L’Atelier, where they sat in the window and people-watched.

  In September, Pym had a holiday in Malvern, near the Welsh border, where she visited Sir Edward Elgar’s grave. She carried a copy of Thomas Hardy’s poems and went to tea in the Abbey tearooms. In the Priory Gardens, the smell of heliotrope reminded her of Skipper’s aftershave lotion, L’Heure Bleue.

  She returned to London to good news. BBC radio’s Woman’s Hour was broadcasting an adaptation of No Fond Return of Love, which encouraged Pym to approach new publishing houses again. Her friend Hazel Holt even suggested that she should think about publishing her novels privately for her loyal following of readers.