The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym Read online

  She kept in occasional contact with Rupert, whose life continued to be touched by tragedy: his photograph, taken in the summer of 1932, is preserved in Pym’s papers, alongside a cut-out article from The Times announcing his marriage to a French woman. As telling as the torn-out pages of her diary describing that night of 15 October 1932 is the fact that Barbara Pym, who mined her own life for her books over and over again, never based a character on Rupert Gleadow.

  CHAPTER XIV

  In which we are introduced to ‘the Saga of Lorenzo’

  Pym expunged the memory of Rupert Gleadow in the most expedient manner: by falling in love with another man. There was to be no bottom-spanking and crawling on all fours in this relationship. Barbara fell deeply and passionately in love and it affected her profoundly. He would be the inspiration for one of her best-loved and most memorable characters.

  In Hilary term, Pym had spotted a ‘pale, Magdalen man’. She saw him again at a morning lecture on Swift and Pope and then again at another lecture a few days later, where he sat almost in front of her, giving her ample opportunity to observe him closely: ‘He languishes over much and has an affected way of leaning his head back. I like his thick curiously-cut bronzy hair and his pale smooth face and hands.’[1] A languid quality and an abundance of affectation were indeed his leading characteristics. Later that day, she went to ‘the Bod’ and saw him again. One of her tried and tested methods of getting male attention was to stare. She was delighted when he looked back: ‘I am convinced he hates me. Our gazes meet and he half smiles – but it is a cynical sort of smile. His affectation intrigues me.’ This was the very day after she had refused ‘a real necking party’ with Rupert.[2]

  She called her new man Lorenzo. She may just have liked the romantic sound of the name, but it is more likely that it was a reference to the Lorenzo of Edward Young’s epic poem, Night Thoughts, written in the 1740s, which she was ploughing through in her studies for the eighteenth-century literature paper. Throughout this rambling meditation on ‘life, death, and immortality’, the poet addresses his ‘Faithful Friend’, the dashing and dissipated Lorenzo, admonishing his faults and exhorting him to moral reform. By a curious coincidence (one of many in Pym’s life), she later discovered that Night Thoughts was one of her very own Lorenzo’s favourite texts.

  His real name was Henry Stanley Harvey. He was not a Magdalen man, but was at Christ Church, the richest and poshest of the colleges. Henry’s tutor was C. S. Lewis: Pym had spotted him at Magdalen because that was where the future author of the Narnia books held his fellowship and gave his tutorials.

  Henry was tall and movie-star handsome, with dark hair and hazel brown eyes. He had a fine pointed nose, which only added to his seemingly aristocratic look, and was always impeccably dressed. Like Rupert before him, he was fatherless and adored by his mother. Barbara most definitely had a type. Despite his air of superciliousness and arrogance, she detected a strain of vulnerability. Henry was not quite as dashing as Rupert, with his private aeroplane and Winchester background. He was a grammar school boy, whose father had been a surveyor. He was from a similar social class to Barbara, but as a boy with a doting mother and sisters, along with reckless good looks, there was a spoiled quality to his character. She was to capture this trait to perfection in her fictional counterpart.

  She set out to discover more about this mysterious stranger. A good stalking ground was the English lecture room. Sure enough, she found herself sitting next but one to him. Perfect for more detailed observation. Barbara saw from the start a quality of cruelty in his demeanour: ‘He doesn’t like being observed but often looks at you in his malicious way.’ He had twinkling ‘(but not pleasantly twinkling)’ eyes, ‘like a duck’. She noted that ‘he walks swiftly, in his effortless yet affected manner’. She even took a survey of his small and mingy handwriting, which sloped to the left. He wrote on plain paper. Above all, she was struck by his mouth. ‘And what a mouth! He is able to curl it in the most fascinatingly repulsive sneering smile.’ She confided to her journal, ‘this diary seems to be going to turn into the saga of Lorenzo’.[3]

  By the end of the month, Pym had found out his real name and that he was at glamorous Christ Church. She hoped he would be an entry into a new, more sophisticated circle. She stalked him in the Bodleian Library, observing his herringbone tweed grey overcoat and brown leather gloves, lined with lambs-wool. He made eye contact and passed the occasional sarcastic smile. But no more. She made sure to sit opposite his desk, which was usually littered with books. One of the books was one that she wanted, but she lacked the courage to ask him for it. He had a cold and a cough, ‘also a vaguely hectic flush – or was this my over-solicitous imagination?’[4]

  During the last week of January, Pym saw a lot more of him in the library, where he was dishevelled and hectic, finishing an essay before rushing out to a tutorial. ‘We progress not at all,’ she wrote. In February, she saw him at a play in Christ Church, sitting with his friend, Robert ‘Jock’ Liddell, who was a New College man. Henry looked dashing in black flannel bags and a curious striped coat. She noticed his long, slender neck.[5]

  Meanwhile another handsome Henry came into her life. His name was Henry (‘Harry’) Howard Harker. He was the son of a miner and a clever scholarship man. He was greatly attracted to the ever-smiling, fun-loving Pym and she might have done better to have chosen him. He invited her to tea and was kind and courteous. But her heart was firmly with the other Henry. She had found out that he was in his final year and she needed to move quickly: ‘In spite of being very conscious of each other, nothing seems to happen!’[6]

  CHAPTER XV

  In which Sandra makes her Appearance

  Shortly after the Rupert incident, Pym created an alter ego: a sexy, glamorous, free-spirited creature whom she called Sandra, short for Cassandra. Was she named after the Greek goddess who was given the gift of true prophecy, but doomed never to be believed? Or perhaps after Jane Austen’s only sister? Perhaps she just liked the name: ‘Sexy Sandra’ was a very different kettle of fish to Miss Pym.

  Sandra wore tight satin skirts and provocative red blouses. She flirted with boys and wore scarlet lipstick to match her nail polish. Miss Pym might have been innocent and ‘decent’ and unwilling to become an Oxford mistress, but Sandra didn’t care a fig about other people’s perceptions of her. It does not take a psychologist to see what Pym was doing by splitting her identity. The division between Miss Pym, the good girl, the dutiful daughter, and ‘Sandra’, the bad girl, was a coping strategy – an effective method, in the short term, of dealing with her sense of dislocation and the fallout from her bad experience with Rupert.

  Sex before marriage was still unusual for educated girls in the early 1930s. Most Oxford male undergraduates slept with one another or went to prostitutes or ‘fast girls’ in London for their kicks, returning to college on the last train (known as ‘The Fornicator’). They took their Oxford girlfriends out to tea at Boffin’s. Many of Pym’s contemporaries were so-called ‘bluestockings’. Very few would dare to be promiscuous. The threat of an undesired pregnancy was a huge deterrent in the days before safe and widely available contraception.

  Pym wrote a long poem, ‘Sandra to Lorenzo’: ‘But what of life? – ’tis nothing short of bliss/ When I forget it in Lorenzo’s kiss’ – and left it where Henry could see it.[1] He continued to say nothing to her, only to return her stares. She poured out her frustration in her journal: ‘I love Lorenzo – I mean love in my own special way – and I thought I was getting over it – I don’t think he cares a damn about me – but sometimes vague and marvellous doubts arise.’[2] She opened the door to the Bod for him and was upset when he didn’t express thanks. Then she would send fragments of further poems to Lorenzo, claiming that Sandra was a different person. She asked him to write poems back and deliver them to ‘Barbara Pym and she will give them to Sandra’.[3]

  Spring was Pym’s favourite season, timely for the Lorenzo business: ‘Chestnut trees just c
oming out – pale, almost too good to be true – green blue skies, daffodils and best of all, cherry trees in half and full flower. My attitude to Nature is 18th Century, I know. But oh Marvellous Days.’[4]

  Back in Oxford for Trinity term, she longed for more sightings of Lorenzo and managed to catch a glimpse of his profile, ‘so divine, his hair is more auburn and his skin lovely, pale brown with a faint flush. What shall I do?’ Just as she was beginning to lose all hope, Lorenzo finally cracked and spoke to her. He ran after Pym when she left the Bodleian. He seems to have had a profound physical effect upon her: ‘I trembled and shivered and went sick.’ His first words: ‘Well and has Sandra finished her epic poem?’ She could hardly contain herself, answering, ‘Er – No.’[5]

  In her diary – ‘Oh ever to be remembered day!’ – she professed herself far too excited to write. She was counselling herself, trying to calm down. She quoted Wordsworth: ‘Emotion recollected in tranquillity’ – a phrase that she would often employ when strong feelings threatened to overcome her rationality. Nevertheless, ever the writer, she still captured Henry’s physical aspects: ‘He talks curiously but very waffily – is very affected. Something wrong with his mouth I think – he can’t help snurging.’ Henry asked her if she was still keeping up the dual personality. She was amazed that he knew: ‘He had caught me out.’ Barbara asked how he knew her. ‘Of course I do,’ he replied, coolly. ‘Everyone does.’[6]

  They chatted about mutual friends and then she took the plunge and told him that she had named him Lorenzo and thought the name suited him: ‘How awfully flattering,’ he replied. Then with a comic Pym touch, she closed the scene: ‘He snurged and went on up the Iffley Road.’[7]

  In her diary, she mused upon the fact that her love for Lorenzo felt entirely different to her other crushes. She was also prescient in feeling that it would not come to a satisfactory end and that within her personality there was a tendency for self-punishment: ‘I had that kind of gnawing at the vitals sick feeling … that is so marvellous.’[8]

  CHAPTER XVI

  In which Sandra has her First Date with Lorenzo and bites him on the Cheek

  The tenth of May 1933 was a day that would be forever etched on Pym’s heart. It was her first date with Henry Harvey. Two months later she wrote about it in her diary, composing the memory with a degree of self-consciousness, as if she were writing a novel: ‘Here follows as faithful as possible a reproduction of the facts of that evening.’[1]

  On that ‘sultry’ day, when ‘one expected it to thunder at almost any moment’, she had gone along to the library after tea. She paints the picture vividly, even down to her underwear:

  I wasn’t looking awfully beautiful. I was wearing (when my body was found!) a brown check skirt, yellow short sleeved jersey – yellow suede coat – brown hat and viyella scarf – flesh coloured fish net stockings, brown and white ghillie shoes (blue celanese trollies – pink suspender belt – pink – kestos-white vest) brown gloves – umbrella. This all gives the atmosphere.[2]

  She stayed in the Bod until Lorenzo arrived. He usually sat in the same seat. Then she waited until the bell rang for closing hour, so that she could walk out with him. Her friend, Mary Shipley, who was walking alongside Pym, tactfully left the scene, thus giving Henry the opportunity to make his move.

  He asked Pym if she wanted a lift. She accepted and as they walked to his car, he asked her if she were an Irish Pym. She said no. He told her that he liked to hire cars and that he shared his (registration YR 4628) with a friend who was a Polish Jew and a count – a man called Barnicot. She didn’t believe him: ‘He said he liked me and my sense of humour and he thought me (seemed romantic) quite mad.’[3]

  Henry drove her to the Trout, a lovely old pub nestling on the banks of the Thames. It was a romantic setting, with mist on the river and the heady fragrance of wisteria scenting the air. She picked some of the lilac-coloured blossom for her room, though Henry rather spoilt the moment by telling her that it would soon wither. It did.

  They managed to obtain a private room, where they played ping-pong, had a supper of mixed grill and fried potatoes, and drank beer. He was fussy about greasy chips, so she picked out the least greasy, thinking ‘what an awful man to marry!’ And yet ‘really there’s something terribly attractive about the idea’. She was moving very quickly from a first date to thoughts of marriage. After supper, they talked about general things, but Barbara, tipsy, confessed her true feelings for him. She knew that she had said too much, too soon, and it seems things became a little awkward. He clearly did not respond the way she expected. Then she leaned over and bit him hard on the cheek.[4]

  What happened next is not clear, but at some point in the evening, things became passionate and he pressed kisses on Pym’s ‘not unwilling mouth’. In a later diary entry, she recalled his ‘cave man squeeze – the sudden narrowing of the eyes as he grew passionate’.[5] He drove her home, she ‘still in a daze’. Back at the gate at St Hilda’s, she kissed his bitten cheek before returning to her room. Later, she reflected on the evening: ‘Words can’t bring back the feelings he aroused in me and still does. But there it is. Is there no mode of expression that will crystallise it all into something really worthy which will last? A poem. A sonata?’[6]

  Something significant had happened to her, but Pym was too honest not to admit that he clearly did not feel the same way. In some respects, she was still acting the role of a spurned lover in a Renaissance sonnet: ‘Oh cruel Lorenzo! … cruel Gabriel Harvey.’ Henry did, indeed, have a cruel streak, especially towards Barbara. He was a man who liked beautiful, cool girls. He played hard to get. Pym was too open, too guileless and too smitten to enrapture him. This first date set the standard for the relationship between them: she adoring him, he lapping it up and not reciprocating. At the end of her long journal entry, she wrote: ‘And so I began to hope – and what a lot of misery was this evening responsible for.’[7]

  A few days later, Rupert Gleadow came to see Pym. He wanted a proper kiss, but she refused, ‘because the last mouth to touch mine had been Lorenzo’s’.[8] She saw little of Henry, but others continued to pay court. The man called Harlovin took her out in his car for picnics, but her head and heart were still full of Henry.

  In one sense, her confidence had been boosted by the date with Henry, whom she now called ‘Gabriel’, after Shakespeare’s contemporary, the satirical author Gabriel Harvey. She began to adopt an air of sophistication. At a Keble College musical concert, she wore a black dress ‘too charmingly décolleté – back and front’, accessorised with the ‘Pym pearls’ and a fur coat. On the other hand, her reputation had begun to suffer. Harlovin invited her to Cheltenham, along with a male friend called Harding, and they teased her about her ‘appalling reputation’. Pym’s method of coping with this was to deflect onto her alter ego: ‘Poor Sandra!’

  Harlovin tried to kiss her, but she refused and told him about her love for Henry. He laughed and said he was very attracted to her: ‘Damn Gabriel!’ Pym had been told that Harlovin was married and so she considered that things could become complicated if she embarked on an affair, though she liked him and the way he teased her.

  After dropping off Harding, they had lunch in the car and drank cider, which made her drowsy and she accidentally burnt him with her cigarette. Harding returned and took the wheel. During the drive back to Oxford, she fell asleep on Harlovin’s ‘very comforting’ shoulder. In her diary, she wrote: ‘Incidentally, I burnt Harlovin (accidentally) and also bit him – but not so hard as I bit Gabriel.’[9]

  CHAPTER XVII

  We’re having a Heatwave – a Tropical Heatwave

  In June 1933 there was a heatwave. Pym and her girlfriends sunbathed on Port Meadow in backless gingham frocks. On her birthday, 2 June, she noted that she felt no different, but was only ‘more and more wretchedly in love’ with Henry Harvey. He had raised her hopes when he had taken her to the Trout, but now he seemed to be withdrawing: ‘Gabriel lay low.’ She imagined him walking arou
nd the garden of his digs, naked.[1]

  Pym went to the Bod in the hope of a sighting. She heard Jock Liddell ‘in his precise little voice’ complaining that it was ‘dreadfully hot’. Jock was small and blond and delicate-looking. Henry had first met him on a steamer from Dover to Ostend the spring before he came to Oxford, in 1930. Henry thought the boy, aged perhaps thirteen, looked rather lonely and made some friendly overtures. Hoping to give him some ideas for school essays, he began spouting Aristotle and Hegel. Henry’s self-deprecating account of what transpired next is testament to his undeniable charm: ‘But this little boy was not thirteen. He was 21, already at Oxford and reading Greats. He was two years and 8 months older than I was (18) and knew very much more about Tragedy, Aristotle and Hegel than I did (almost nothing). So he started talking and didn’t stop (neither did I) until we got to Aachen early the next morning.’[2]

  Pym was attracted to Jock’s blond prettiness. She found his babyish looks seductive and noted his waspish wit and ‘attractive peevish voice’.[3] Liddell did very little to disguise his campness. Pym’s diary makes constant reference to his ‘dissipation’, and she was clearly in no doubt about his sexual orientation.[4] For his own part, Jock was ‘aware of’ her before they met. He remembered that she made a friendly gesture whilst he was working as an assistant in the Bodleian’s Department of Western Manuscripts, toiling at his draughty desk over the papers of Bishop Percy.[5]

  Flirting with other men provided continued distraction for Pym. She and her friend Sharp asked a couple of young men for a light for their cigarettes; this yielded an invitation to tea at the Air Squadron. One of the men took her for a drive in the Oxfordshire countryside, but she still could not stop herself from thinking of Henry. Knowing he had his finals, she wrote Henry a formal note wishing him luck: she told him that she was badly sunburnt – ‘absolute agony to touch’ – and that it was ‘depressing’ to have reached the age of twenty. She told him that she thought he’d look ‘decorative’ in his subfusc – the formal wear required for sitting exams.[6]