John Betjeman: The Illustrated Summoned by Bells (1989)•
Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)John Betjeman: The Illustrated Summoned by Bells (1989)
[Bought in Colonial Collectables, Browns Bay, Auckland - 15/5/24]:
John Betjeman. The Illustrated Summoned by Bells. 1960. Paintings and Sketches by Hugh Casson. 1989. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. / The Herbert Press, 1995.
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The Best of Betjeman
"John Betjeman was a mediocre poet – but he wrote one brilliant poem," according to a British newspaper pundit by the name of Simon Heffer. Of Betjeman's verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, Heffer opines: "It isn’t doggerel, but it hardly qualifies as poetry. Less thought seems to have gone into his rhymes than into [his] television scripts." [NB: Summoned by Bells is written in non-rhyming blank verse].
I then revisited the Collected Poems, and found one undemanding bit of verse after another, reaffirming my belief that this was poetry for people who don’t like their verse too profound, or too strenuously poetic.Well, f-- you very much for that little contribution, Simon. You can leave now.
His article as a whole does rather put one in mind of a celebrated passage from Summoned by Bells itself:
After Miss Usher had gone home to Frant,
Miss Tunstall took me quietly to the hedge:
"Now shall I tell you what Miss Usher said
About you, John?" "Oh please, Miss Tunstall, do!"
"She said you were a common little boy."
[chap. 4 - "Cornwall in Childhood": p.49]
It's not that Heffer doesn't have a point. His summary of Betjeman as a "comic poet in the mould of Belloc or Chesterton" has a certain justice to it. But I doubt that he knows as much as he thinks about poets and poetry if he believes that those two "had poetry as a sideline, but, unlike Betjeman, had no pretensions about it."
We may prefer the Father Brown stories and Belloc's Cautionary Tales to their more formal verses, but like virtually all writers in this medium, they took what they did desperately seriously. Does Heffer imagine that it's accidental that all three of these poets remain so readable when their more ambitious contemporaries have faded into the dust of second-hand bookshops?
And what is that "one brilliant poem" which, in Heffer's estimation, redeems poor old John? Well, not to keep you in suspense, it's "Betjeman’s poem of 1936 on the death of King George V."
Not only is it to my mind his greatest poem, but one of the great English poems of the last century. Unlike so much of his work, it does not instantly invite parody; its greatness lies in its acute and concise portrayal of the king, and the sense that his death moved Britain from one way of life to another.So let's hear it, then:
Spirit of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe
Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky:
In that red house in a red mahogany book-case
The stamp collection waits with mounts long dry.
The big blue eyes are shut which saw wrong clothing
And favourite fields and coverts from a horse;
Old men in country houses hear clocks ticking
Over thick carpets with a deadened force;
Old men who never cheated, never doubted,
Communicated monthly, sit and stare
At the new suburb stretched beyond the runway
Where a young man lands hatless from the air.
I agree that it's a bloody good poem - very much in Betjeman's earlier mode: "Death in Leamington" or "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel." But is it really so much better than the rest of the work in Mount Zion or Continual Dew? Heffer thinks so:
A world of standards and tradition is being blown away by the sub-art deco sprawl of Metroland, by a king (Edward VIII) who is consorting with another man’s wife, and who doesn’t even bother to wear a hat. It takes a considerable poet to force all that meaning into 12 lines. On that basis, and however ordinary so much of his output, Betjeman the poet merits admiration after all.Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed ... Actually, in his graceless, grudging, bovine way, Simon Heffer has stumbled on an important truth about Betjeman. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day! The fact is, all of his readers - even his greatest admirers - find his fluent facetiousness wearying at times. But all of them make an exception for one great poem.
The funny thing, which old Dumbo above was on the verge of discovering, is that it's always a different poem. For me "Death in Leamington" has a sinister edge below the pastiche Victorianism which transforms it from verse to poetry. I can read it again and again and it keeps on changing.
I also like the way Betjeman is so adept at delivering painful stingers in the midst of otherwise fairly ordinary narrative verse. I've already given one example above, but here's another, from "False Security" (1954):
Can I forget my delight at the conjuring show?Then there's the culmination of "Cricket Master: An Incident" (1960):
And wasn't I proud that I was the last to go?
Too overexcited and pleased with myself to know
That the words I heard my hostess's mother employ
To a guest departing, would ever diminish my joy,
I WONDER WHERE JULIA FOUND THAT STRANGE, RATHER COMMON LITTLE BOY?
"D'you know what Winters told me, Betjeman?
He didn't think you'd ever held a bat."
The other day I was looking around an antique shop in Browns Bay when I came across a copy of the illustrated version of Summoned by Bells. I already had the edition above, but it seemed worthwhile to invest a few dollars in the rather charming drawings and watercolours with which Betjeman's old friend Hugh Casson adorned the book.
Rereading it, I was struck again by the intense class anxiety which seems to lie at the root of his work - as with so many other English writers. Betjeman's teddy bear Archie (full name Archibald Ormsby-Gore) is alleged to have been the original for Sebastian Flyte's Aloysius, so perhaps Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited remains the best starting point for anyone seeking to fathom these complexities.
As a mere colonial, I fear that I'm outside all that (or beneath it, as my old friend Martin Frost was wont to remark). Leaving that to one side, though, rereading Summoned by Bells also reminded me of the bibliographical complexities that surround Betjeman's (so-called) Collected Poems, in its various incarnations.
Why, for instance, in the latest (2006) edition of this much revised and expanded book, does the poem "Cricket Master" appear twice, at the end of High and Low (1966) and then again as an addendum to Summoned by Bells?
In his Guardian review of the above volume, poet and editor Anthony Thwaite complained:
In his introduction, [Andrew] Motion ... says that "there is still a lack of academic interest in his work ... and no properly edited edition of his poems". You can say that again. For many years, including in his lifetime, Betjeman, in spite of the superficial elegance of production of his books, was textually mangled - in minor ways, true; but in a poem every detail matters. In a review of the 1958 Collected Poems (the book that famously sold in its hundreds of thousands), Philip Larkin commented: "I hereby offer to correct the proofs of Betjeman's next book of poems for nothing, if that is the only way to protect them from such blemishes". (He cited the perpetuation of "Chirst" for "Christ" and "that I wanted" instead of "what I wanted".)
I don't know whose fault such things were or are: I have the feeling that Betjeman was a careless proof-reader. For many years, the final stanza of his marvellously chilling poem of childhood dread, "NW5 and N6", was marred by a full stop missing at the end of the penultimate line: it has at least been put right in this edition. But there are several niggling errors in the book too: a stray lower-case for upper-case in the last line of "Thoughts in a Train", a comma instead of a full stop in "Before the Lecture". Something has gone wrong with the punctuation in the middle of "An Ecumenical Invitation", and again in the second stanza of "To Stuart Piggott".
... As for the gaps, they lie at both ends, poems missing from Betjeman's first two books (Mount Zion, 1931, and Continual Dew, 1937), and retrievals from his laureate years. It's surely a pity, in Collected Poems, to omit such early sportive pieces as "School Song", "The Garden City" or "Tea with the Poets" ("Tucking in at whipped cream walnuts, / Blue shorts bursting under green, / C Day Lewis brings his wolf cubs / Safe into the full canteen").
For completeness, too, there should be room for Betjeman's honest and dutiful efforts on official occasions, such as his poem for Prince Charles's wedding to Lady Diana in 1981, however sadly it reads now: it's certainly no worse than some of Ted Hughes's laureate verses.
Betjeman, altogether, is so good, and so important (a judgment at which he would no doubt have guffawed), that John Murray, the firm that has for so many years published his work and benefited from its large sales, should put in hand a properly edited full-scale edition of his poems, in a handsome uniform typeface (the variations in the present book are ugly) and on good paper, not nasty, already yellowing stuff.
This situation doesn't seem to have been redressed as yet, but we live in hope. Perhaps Kevin J. Gardner's book of "New and Uncollected Poems", Harvest Bells, will fill the more obvious gaps. It'd be better to have something reasonably definitive to rely on, though.
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Poetry:
- Mount Zion (1931)
- Mount Zion; or, In Touch with the Infinite. Illustrated by de Cronin Hastings et al. 1931. Poetry Reprint Series, 4. London: St. James Press / New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975.
- Continual Dew, a Little Book of Bourgeois Verse (1937)
- [as 'Epsilon'] Sir John Piers (1938)
- Old Lights for New Chancels, Verses Topographical and Amatory (1940)
- New Bats in Old Belfries (1945)
- Slick but not Streamlined. Introduction by W. H. Auden (1947)
- Selected Poems. Preface by John Sparrow (1948)
- St. Katherine's Church, Chiselhampton, Oxfordshire: Verses Turned in Aid of a Public Subscription towards the Restoration of the Church (1950)
- A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954)
- Poems in the Porch (1954)
- Poems in the Porch. Illustrated by John Piper. S. P. C. K. Saffron Waldon, Essex: The Talbot Press, 1954.
- Collected Poems. Ed. the Earl of Birkenhead (1958)
- John Betjeman’s Collected Poems: Enlarged Edition. Ed. The Earl of Birkenhead. 1958, 1962. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 1970.
- Collected Poems. Ed. The Earl of Birkenhead. 1958, 1962, 1970, 1979. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 1989.
- Collected Poems. 1958. Introduction by Andrew Motion. John Murray (Publishers). London: Hodder Headline, 2006.
- John Betjeman [selected poems] (1958)
- Lament for Moira McCavendish [limited edition of 20 copies] (c. 1958–59)
- Summoned by Bells (1960)
- Summoned by Bells. 1960. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. / Readers Union Ltd., 1962.
- The Illustrated Summoned by Bells. 1960. Paintings and Sketches by Hugh Casson. 1989. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. / The Herbert Press, 1995.
- A Ring of Bells (1962)
- High and Low (1966)
- Six Betjeman Songs (1967)
- A Wembley Lad and The Crem (1971)
- A Nip in the Air (1974)
- A Nip in the Air. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 1974.
- Betjeman in Miniature: Selected Poems of Sir John Betjeman (1976)
- The Best of Betjeman. Ed. John Guest (1978)
- The Best of Betjeman. Ed. John Guest. London: John Murray / Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
- Five Betjeman Songs (1980)
- Ode on the Marriage of HRH Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer [limited edition of 125 copies] (1980)
- Church Poems (1981)
- Uncollected Poems (1982)
- Betjeman's Cornwall (1984)
- Ah Middlesex [limited edition of 250 copies] (1984)
- Harvest Bells: New and Uncollected Poems. Ed. Kevin J. Gardner (2019)
- Ghastly Good Taste (1933)
- Devon. Shell Guides series (1936)
- An Oxford University Chest. Photographs by László Moholy-Nagy. Illustrations by Osbert Lancaster & Edward Bradley (1938)
- An Oxford University Chest. Illustrated by L. Moholy-Nagy, Osbert Lancaster, the Rev. Edward Bradley et al. 1938. Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
- [with Hugh Casson] A Handbook on Paint (1939)
- Antiquarian Prejudice (1939)
- Vintage London (1942)
- English Cities and Small Towns (1943)
- John Piper (1944)
- [with C. S. Lewis et al.] Five Sermons by Laymen (1946)
- [with John Piper] Murray's Buckinghamshire Architectural Guide (1948)
- [with John Piper] Murray's Berkshire Architectural Guide (1949)
- [with L. V. Grinsell, H. B. Wells & H. S. Tallamy] Studies in the History of Swindon (1950)
- Shropshire – with maps and illustrations. Shell Guides series (1951)
- The English Scene (1951)
- First and Last Loves (1952)
- First and Last Loves. Drawings by John Piper. 1952. A Grey Arrow. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1960.
- Gala Day London (1953)
- The English Town in the Last Hundred Years [The Rede Lecture] (1956)
- Some Immortal Hours (1957)
- Collins Guide to English Parish Churches, including the Isle of Man (1958)
- [as "Richard M Farren"] Ground Plan to City Skyline (1960)
- Clifton College Buildings (1962)
- [with Basil Clarke] English Churches (1964)
- The City of London Churches. Pitkin Pride of Britain series (1965)
- Collins Pocket Guide to English Parish Churches. 2 vols (1968)
- Victorian and Edwardian London From Old Photographs (1969)
- Ten Wren Churches [limited edition of 100 copies] (1970)
- [with J. S. Gray] Victorian and Edwardian Brighton From Old Photographs (1971)
- A Pictorial History of English Architecture (1972)
- London's Historic Railway Stations (1972)
- [with David Vaisey] Victorian and Edwardian Oxford From Old Photographs (1972)
- West Country Churches (1973)
- A Plea for Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street (1974)
- [with A. L. Rowse] Victorian and Edwardian Cornwall From Old Photographs (1974)
- Archie and the Strict Baptists (1977)
- Metro-land (1977)
- John Betjeman: Coming Home (1997)
- Coming Home: An Anthology of His Prose 1920-1977. Ed. Candida Lycett Green. Methuen. London: Random House, 1997.
- Trains and Buttered Toast: Betjeman's best BBC radio talks. Ed. Stephen Games (2006)
- Tennis Whites and Teacakes: An anthology of Betjeman's prose, verse and occasional writing. Ed. Stephen Games (2007)
- Sweet Songs of Zion: Betjeman's radio programmes about English hymn-writing. Ed. Stephen Games (2007)
- Betjeman's England: Betjeman's best topographical television programmes. Ed. Stephen Games (2009)
- Cornwall Illustrated. Shell Guides series (1934)
- [with Geoffrey Taylor] English Scottish and Welsh Landscape 1700–1860 (1944)
- English Scottish & Welsh Landscape: 1700-c.1860. Ed. John Betjeman & Geoffrey Taylor. With Original Lithographs by John Piper. New Excursions into English Poetry. Ed. W. J. Turner & Sheila Shannon. London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1944.
- Watergate Children's Classics (1947)
- [with Geoffrey Taylor] English Love Poems (1957)
- An American's Guide to English Parish Churches, Including the Isle of Man (1958)
- Altar and Pew: Church of England Verses (1959)
- Charles Tennyson Turner: A Hundred Sonnets (1960)
- [with Winnifred Hindley] A Wealth of Poetry (1963)
- John Masefield: Selected Poems (1978)
- John Masefield: Selected Poems. Preface by John Betjeman. London: Book Club Associates, 1978.
- John Betjeman's Letters: Volume One. Ed. Candida Lycett Green (1994)
- John Betjeman's Letters: Volume Two. Ed. Candida Lycett Green (1995)
- Hillier, Bevis, ed. John Betjeman: A Life in Pictures. London: John Murray (Publishers ) Ltd. / The Herbert Press Ltd., 1984.
- Hillier, Bevis. Young Betjeman. 1988. London: Cardinal Books, 1989.
- Hillier, Bevis. John Betjeman: New Fame, New Love. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 2002.
- Hillier, Bevis. Betjeman: The Bonus of Laughter. 2004. Hodder Headline. London: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., 2005.
Non-fiction:
Edited:
Letters:
Secondary:
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- category - English Poetry (post-1900): Alphabetical
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