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.
