Sir John Betjeman

You would never think that Sir John B could become a fashionable enthusiasm. He is such a parochial poet, stuck to his narrow island, Victorian churches, London, Cornwall, his class consciousness that always prompted him, out of good manners, to be good company; to talk, to share, to be sweet. And yet Suggs has chosen him on Cultural Exchange, and Jarvis Cocker once said he was listening to Betjeman on his ipod. You listen to Betjeman's voice to be comforted and charmed, rocked by the steady rhythm and inevitable rhymes, but also to be moved by the subtleties of emotion, the message of the huge Cornwall seas roaring and breaking, and to come face to face with fear of death or faith in Christianity - one of my favourites is called Before the Anaesthetic. There is something of the English Hymnal and the Book of Common Prayer about Betjeman's work, something that we have in the backs of our minds as part of the common culture and the dimly-remembered shared relationship with our English God, which these days only the Queen seems to fully comprehend.

But there are also the feelings that people develop for places - the love of home, of some small corner of this little island. I think this poem is little-celebrated but it reminds me of my hut on the island.

Eunice

With her latest roses happily encumbered
Tunbridge Wells Central takes her from the night,
Sweet second bloomings frost has faintly umbered
and some double dahlias waxy red and white.

Shut again till April stands her little hutment
Peeping over daisies Michaelmas and mauve
Lock'd is the Elsan in its brick abutment
Lock'd the little pantry, dead the little stove.

Keys with Mr Groombridge, but nobody will take them
To her lonely cottage by the lonely oak,
Potatoes in the garden but nobody to bake them,
Fungus in the living room and water in the coke.

I can see her waiting on the chilly Sunday
For the five forty (twenty minutes late)
One of many hundreds to dread the coming Monday
To fight with influenza and battle with her weight

Tweed coat and skirt that with such anticipation
On a merry spring time a friend had trimm'd with fur
Now the friend is married and, oh desolation,
Married to the man who might have married her.

High in Onslow Gardens where the soot flakes settle
An empty flat is waiting her struggle up the stair
And when she puts the wireless on, the heater and the kettle
It's cream and green and cosy, but home is never there.

Home's here in Kent and how many morning coffees
And hurried little lunch times of planning will be spent
Through the busy months of typing in the office
Until the days are warm enough to take her back to Kent.

Betjeman did sometimes go abroad - Vienna, perhaps? - and felt very singular, as we see in the following poem.

In the Public Gardens

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 Englander were 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;
Ausgang we were out of love
Und eingang we are in.

Lucky me, I have a recording of Betjeman reading these poems and you can't get them on Youtube. They sound better than you would guess from reading them inwardly.