Monthly Archives: June 2020

Poetry

John Betjeman’s The Subaltern’s Love Song (1941)

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Sir John Bet­je­man (1906–1984) was Poet Lau­re­ate from 1972 until his death in 1984, though both poems that I dis­cuss here in this blog were writ­ten way back in 1937 and 1941 respec­tive­ly. He was a life­long poet but also a jour­nal­ist and TV broad­cast­er and some­thing of an “insti­tu­tion” in Britain, pop­u­lar for his bum­bling per­sona and wry­ly com­ic out­look. He was known for being a staunch defend­er of Vic­to­ri­an archi­tec­ture, and he played a large part in sav­ing St Pan­cras rail­way sta­tion (and many oth­er build­ings) from demo­li­tion.

Indeed, Bet­je­man bemoaned all that he saw slip­ping away in the wake of the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of Britain. The town of Slough had acquired up to 850 new fac­to­ries just before the Sec­ond World War and was the epit­o­me of all that he saw wrong with moder­ni­ty, the “men­ace to come”. His poem Slough begins:

Come, friend­ly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now

Some­what harsh, per­haps. On the cen­te­nary of Betjeman’s birth in 2006 his daugh­ter Can­di­da Lycett-Green apol­o­gised to the peo­ple of Slough on his behalf and said that her father had regret­ted writ­ing the poem. He may well have regret­ted pick­ing on a par­tic­u­lar town but I doubt that his sen­ti­ments had changed regard­ing the chang­ing urban archi­tec­tur­al land­scape.

The first poem of Betjeman’s I came across was arguably about anoth­er world in the process of being sub­sumed by the march of progress and the Sec­ond World War. The Subaltern’s Love Song is a gen­tle poem reflect­ing the mid­dle-class cul­ture of Sur­rey at the time it was writ­ten in 1941. The sto­ry is imag­ined, though the muse of his poem was very real: Miss Joan Hunter Dunn worked at the can­teen at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don where Bet­je­man was work­ing. He was so tak­en by her that he was inspired to write the poem, imag­in­ing him­self as a sub­al­tern (a junior offi­cer in the mil­i­tary) in her thrall through­out a breath­less series of sum­mer activ­i­ties that ends in their engage­ment.

Eleven qua­trains of flow­ing ten-syl­la­ble iambic rhythm tell the unfold­ing sto­ry of the imag­i­nary love affair, and it does it with wit and sparkle. Let’s leave aside the fact that its writer was mar­ried at the time!

Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Fur­nish’d and bur­nish’d by Alder­shot sun,
What stren­u­ous sin­gles we played after tea,
We in the tour­na­ment — you against me!

Love-thir­ty, love-forty, oh! weak­ness of joy,
The speed of a swal­low, the grace of a boy,
With care­fullest care­less­ness, gai­ly you won,
I am weak from your love­li­ness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-han­dled rack­et is back in its press,
But my shock-head­ed vic­tor, she loves me no less.

Her father’s euony­mus shines as we walk,
And swing past the sum­mer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the veran­dah that wel­comes us in
To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bed­room of moss-dap­pled path,
As I strug­gle with dou­ble-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my vic­tor and I.

On the floor of her bed­room lie blaz­er and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-tro­phied with sports,
And wes­t­er­ing, ques­tion­ing set­tles the sun,
On your low-lead­ed win­dow, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hill­man is wait­ing, the light’s in the hall,
The pic­tures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am stand­ing beside the oak stair
And there on the land­ing’s the light on your hair.

By roads “not adopt­ed”, by wood­land­ed ways,
She drove to the club in the late sum­mer haze,
Into nine-o’clock Cam­ber­ley, heavy with bells
And mush­roomy, pine-woody, ever­green smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Sur­rey twi­light! impor­tu­nate band!
Oh! strong­ly adorable ten­nis-girl’s hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the inti­mate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words nev­er said,
And the omi­nous, omi­nous danc­ing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twen­ty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

John Bet­je­man
Literature

J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (1945)

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A whole new gen­er­a­tion of kids study­ing GCSE Eng­lish are dis­cov­er­ing J B Priestley’s 1945 play, An Inspec­tor Calls. It seems to be every­where at the moment: as well as being on the syl­labus in schools, the Nation­al Theatre’s pro­duc­tion of the play was doing the rounds again nation­al­ly when the lock­down hit. Sad­ly, I just missed out on that, hav­ing seen the poster too late, but I did find a DVD of the 1954 film for a quid in a char­i­ty shop, and snapped it up.

You may well be famil­iar with the sto­ry: set in 1912 in a well-to-do north­ern Mid­lands house­hold, in a soci­ety divid­ed by class dis­tinc­tion, we find the Bir­ling fam­i­ly assem­bled in cel­e­bra­tion of their daugh­ter Sheila’s engage­ment to Ger­ald Croft. The patri­arch, Arthur Bir­ling, is feel­ing pleased with him­self, as his busi­ness is doing well and he is on an upward social tra­jec­to­ry, improved even more by the social stand­ing of the Croft fam­i­ly into which Sheila is mar­ry­ing. Their evening, how­ev­er, is inter­rupt­ed by the arrival of Inspec­tor Goole (“Poole” in the film ver­sion).

The Inspec­tor, played mas­ter­ful­ly by Alis­tair Sim in the 1954 film, has some ques­tions for all the mem­bers of the fam­i­ly and Ger­ald Croft, in turn, con­cern­ing a girl who has just com­mit­ted sui­cide in the gris­ly man­ner of drink­ing bleach, a sign of her des­per­ate men­tal state. It becomes appar­ent that each per­son has had some involve­ment with this poor girl, albeit in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, and each has played some part in her descent and degra­da­tion. The unfold­ing of the sto­ry­line is sub­tle and we the audi­ence are grad­u­al­ly drawn in as details are revealed and it dawns on us that every­one present has some con­nec­tion.

Telling­ly, the char­ac­ters react dif­fer­ent­ly to Inspec­tor Goole’s rev­e­la­tions. The old­er ones refuse to accept their respon­si­bil­i­ty; the younger ones — Sheila in par­tic­u­lar — approach an epiphany. Priest­ley lays bare the self-impor­tance of the old­er gen­er­a­tion of the Bir­lings with­out flinch­ing. It is a bril­liant decon­struc­tion of the human con­di­tion.

Here is Alis­tair Sim (bet­ter known per­haps for his cross-dress­ing com­e­dy per­for­mances in the St Trini­an’s movies) in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly com­pelling scene from the film.

J B Priest­ley