Six Poets (11 page)

Forcibly fed when sprawled across her knee

Lock'd into cupboards, left alone all day,

‘World without end.' What fearsome words to pray.

‘World without end.' It was not what she'd do

That frightened me so much as did her fear

And guilt at endlessness. I caught them too,

Hating to think of sphere succeeding sphere

Into eternity and God's dread will.

I caught her terror then. I have it still.

Betjeman remembered the cruelties and rebuffs of his childhood all too vividly for the rest of his life: that harsh nursemaid, a cruel master at his prep school, the tortures of his first terms at Marlborough. And there were other unbearable memories. In a Christmas Day broadcast in 1947 he recalled how his nanny Hannah Wallis, a simple and loving soul, had bought him a toy for a present, a toy which he wanted and for which she'd had to save up. In the excitement of unpacking his stocking he trod on the toy and broke it.

He didn't let on, hiding the debris in his room and saying nothing to her lest he should hurt her feelings. Later, after Hannah had tidied his room he found the broken pieces in the waste-paper basket. Neither of them ever mentioned it. It's a good job childhood is at the beginning of our lives. We'd never survive it if it were in the middle.

Now a poem about the Metropolitan Railway. One of Betjeman's first poems for his school magazine was about the Metropolitan Railway. It began: ‘When travelling to Timbuctoo / Don't set out on the Bakerloo.' After Marlborough, Betjeman went to Oxford, which he left without taking a degree, and eventually landed up on the staff of the
Architectural Review –
the ‘
Archy Rev
' as he called it. Because he was one of the first champions of Victorian architecture (as well as of the railway), Betjeman is affectionately regarded as backward-looking, a fuddy-duddy. In fact, he was a visionary, detecting quality in the architecture of all periods, including that most remote of all periods, the recent past.

(Baker Street station buffet)

Early Electric! With what radiant hope

Men formed this many-branched electrolier,

Twisted the flex around the iron rope

And let the dazzling vacuum globes hang clear,

And then with hearts the rich contrivance fill'd

Of copper, beaten by the Bromsgrove Guild.

Early Electric! Sit you down and see,

'Mid this fine woodwork and a smell of dinner,

A stained-glass windmill and a pot of tea,

And sepia views of leafy lanes in
PINNER
,

Then visualize, far down the shining lines,

Your parents' homestead set in murmuring pines.

Smoothly from
HARROW
, passing
PRESTON ROAD
,

They saw the last green fields and misty sky,

At
NEASDEN
watched a workmen's train unload,

And, with the morning villas sliding by,

They felt so sure on their electric trip

That Youth and Progress were in partnership.

And all that day in murky London Wall

The thought of
RUISLIP
kept him warm inside;

At
FARRINGDON
that lunch hour at a stall

He brought a dozen plants of London Pride;

While she, in arc-lit Oxford Street adrift,

Soared through the sales by safe hydraulic lift.

Early Electric! Maybe even here

They met that evening at six-fifteen

Beneath the hearts of this electrolier

And caught the first non-stop to
WILLESDEN GREEN
,

Then out and on, through rural
RAYNERS LANE

To autumn-scented Middlesex again.

Cancer has killed him. Heart is killing her.

The trees are down. An Odeon flashes fire

Where stood their villa by the murmuring fir

When ‘they would for their children's good conspire.'

Of all their loves and hopes on hurrying feet

Thou art the worn memorial, Baker Street.

In that poem, Betjeman, as always, sees architecture in terms of the people who inhabit it. Churches call up the worshippers, trains the travellers … it's always a landscape with figures.

The next poem was written in the fifties, but it ends up with Betjeman remembering, as in so many of his poems, the London he knew as a boy.

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens

Runs the red electric train,

With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's

Daintily alights Elaine;

Hurries down the concrete station

With a frown of concentration,

Out into the outskirt's edges

Where a few surviving hedges

Keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again.

Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,

Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green

Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,

Delicately drowns in Drene;

Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,

Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,

Gains the garden – father's hobby –

Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,

Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.

Gentle Brent, I used to know you

Wandering Wembley-wards at will,

Now what change your waters show you

In the meadowlands you fill!

Recollect the elm-trees misty

And the footpaths climbing twisty

Under cedar-shaded palings,

Low laburnum-leaned-on railings,

Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.

Parish of enormous hayfields

Perivale stood all alone,

And from Greenford scent of mayfields

Most enticingly was blown

Over market gardens tidy,

Taverns for the
bona fide
,

Cockney anglers, cockney shooters,

Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters

Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.

Betjeman was quick to cotton on to the power of brand names to evoke a period: ‘Well cut Windsmoor', ‘Jacqmar scarf'. It's a technique nowadays used by Barry Humphries, of whom Betjeman was an early fan, and by Victoria Wood, and at its best it's a poetry of recognition. The Betjeman family fortunes had actually been based on a brand name. His father was a well-to-do cabinet-maker, and the staple of the firm in Edwardian times was the ‘Betjeman Patent Tantalus', a drinks cabinet that could be locked up to defeat the servants.

Betjeman didn't get on with his father, had no intention of following him into the family business, and, quite early, was on the move up the social ladder. This gave him a keen ear for social pretension and the niceties of the language in which it was cloaked, most famously in this poem – a catalogue of snobberies, and apparently a virtual documentary of the expressions used in the Betjeman family home.

Phone for the fish-knives, Norman

As Cook is a little unnerved;

You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes

And I must have things daintily served.

Are the requisites all in the toilet?

The frills round the cutlets can wait

Till the girl has replenished the cruets

And switched on the logs in the grate.

It's ever so close in the lounge, dear,

But the vestibule's comfy for tea

And Howard is out riding on horseback

So do come and take some with me.

Now here is a fork for your pastries

And do use the couch for your feet;

I know what I wanted to ask you –

Is trifle sufficient for sweet?

Milk and then just as it comes dear?

I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;

Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys

With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.