(This report appeared in the May 2003 issue of Green Leaves, the journal of the Barbara Pym Society.)

The fifth annual meeting of the Barbara Pym Society of North America took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the weekend of March 29-30, 2003, on the campus of Harvard College. About 25 of the attendees gathered for the traditional Friday evening meal at Chang Sho restaurant, allowing us to get a jump-start on Pym topics before the conference's official opening. We were particularly delighted to find several members from England among us, including Yvonne Cocking. This was Yvonne's first trip to the US, and what a treat it was to have someone on hand who had worked at the African Institute when Barbara was there!

On Saturday morning, we arrived at Harvard Law School to find Ellen Miller and her helpers presiding over the registration table and tea table with good humour and efficiency. After greeting old friends and welcoming newcomers, we enjoyed one more cup and the conference started. Ellen began by noting the irony that in the midst of war, we had gathered together to talk about this quiet English writer and the world she created -- a world in which the appearance of a caterpillar in one's cauliflower cheese was viewed with horror. She remarked that she hoped the balm of Barbara Pym would offer us respite amid so much fear and sadness.

At Ease With Ladies

The first speaker was Kate Charles, author of the well-known 'Book of Psalms' mystery series as well as three suspense novels. Charles is American, but lives in England, where she is chair of the Barbara Pym Society. The title of her talk was inspired by lines in NFRL and AFGL, where Pym points out that Neville Forbes and Adam Prince, with their clerical backgrounds, are 'at ease with ladies' in situations such as parish functions. Charles considered Pym's clergy in relation to the women in their lives -- including wives, sisters, and what Helen Napier refers to as 'holy fowl' -- those parish women who take care of the clergy and even fall in love with them.

Charles began with curates, noting that they are almost always 'good looking', though inclined to be somewhat pompous and to take themselves too seriously. We have Mr. Donne, whom Harriet cherishes and feeds, though he disappoints her by marrying. Then there is Mr. Lattimer, who proposes to and is very sensibly turned down by Miss Morrow, and the startlingly handsome Marius Ransome, who proposes to, and is accepted by, dim mousy Mary Beamish. Charles also mentioned Bishop Grote, who before he grew to resemble a sheep, was one of the must 'sought-after curates in the history of the Church of England'. Luckily for the bishop, he runs into Connie Aspinall while stocking up on supplies before his return to Africa. Charles noted, 'I can just imagine him ticking the items off his list: mosquito netting, water sterilizing tablets, wifeÉ' And suddenly there is Miss Aspinall. And let's not forget one other curate, Basil Branch, who appears in AUA, at ease with the now elderly Bede sisters, as he escorts them around Italy and recovers from ill health.

While 'the typical Pym curate is good-looking and self-centred,' Charles noted that the typical Pym vicar is a celibate Anglo-Catholic'. And whereas marriage seems to be on the minds of the curates, the celibacy of the clergy is a major theme for the vicars -- even the married ones. For instance, Mark Ainger's reflections that it might possibility be 'better not to marry' are prompted by Sophia's devotion to their cat, Faustina, whose hairs he found on the linen altar cloth at early Mass. Likewise, Nicholas Cleveland, noting that Jane has spoken out of turn at a parish meeting, reflects that she will 'never learn when not to speak', musing that there is 'something to be said for the celibacy of the clergy'. This topic is a major theme in EW, where Mrs. Morris comments on Julian Malory's unmarried state as being not natural, while Helena Napier predicts that 'he will break out'. Mildred, tiring of the subject, eventually draws to the conclusion that it might be more suitable that there should be a biretta in the hall rather than a perambulator'. Despite the efforts of Allegra Grey, we know that this will continue to be the case for Julian: In AGOB, Wilmet, hearing him preach and naturally speculating on his marital status, recalls that Miss Prideau had said that he lives with his sister. Neville Forbes, the vicar in NFRL, also has problems with women. And it's little wonder, because 'Father Forbes is handsome enough to be a curate'. His trouble with a particular woman -- Miss Spicer, who 'waylaid him after the benediction and declared her love' -- sends him fleeing to North Devon and his mother's guesthouse.

At least four other vicars might be categorized as the type who are looking for help from the women in their congregation. In fact, in the case of David Lydell, his need for a good meal leads two women to compete for him with the lure of food and wine. Indeed, as Letty wonders, it seems that he did go 'all round the village sampling the cooking of the unattached women before deciding which one to settle with'. Charles noted that even Father Oswald Thames in AGOB, who is not exactly the sort to 'set feminine hearts a flutter', uses what leverage he has on the women of his congregation, searching for 'some good woman' to look after Father Bode and himself. When he mentions this to Wilmet Forsyth with an appealing look, she wonders 'how many men, perhaps the clergy especially, went about cajoling or bullying women into being the answer to prayer'.

Tom Dagnall, another vicar, uses the women in his parish to copy inscriptions from tombstones and pore over records. When his sister moves out, he throws himself on the mercy of the ladies in the parish, in the hope that they will invite him to an 'occasional meal'. Emma's mother views Tom as somewhat ineffectual. Though Pym implies that Emma and Tom wind up together, Charles isn't so sure that this is good...at least for Emma.

Offstage another helpless vicar finds himself engaged. In NFRL, Aunt Hermione notes that after the vicar's sister died, she popped round one morning and found him 'trying to wash his surplices'. The rest is history.

The last category is that of Pym's married clergymen, who are usually on the sidelines, taking 'second place to their more interesting wives'. While Jane is 'scatty, disorganized, and imaginative', Nicholas is vague, kindly, mild-mannered, and 'given to childish delight in animal-shaped soaps'. Mark Ainger is remote, though also kind and courteous, 'seeming not to be particularly interested in human beings'. And of course there is Archdeacon Henry Hoccleve, who Charles believes is 'even odder and more remote'. He is difficult, and 'not at all accommodating or kindly'. His wife, Agatha, is formidable. However, the main woman in his life is Belinda Bede, who 'finds courage to pamper Henry a bit' when his wife goes off to a German spa. But 'we know as well as she does that nothing will ever come of it'.

Charles concluded by noting that BP 'treated the clergy as a sort of third gender -- not women, but not exactly real men, either'. For instance, when Julian Malory is having trouble distempering, he says 'I suppose I am not to be considered as a normal man'. And in AFGL, we learn that 'Tom, being the rector of the parish, hardly seemed in [Emma's] eyes to count as an eligible man'. In Jane and Prudence, we find Nicholas wearing a flowered apron in the kitchen while drying his tobacco leaves. 'I feel I can almost count as another woman', he says when Miss Doggett arrives to confide her troubles to Jane.

Coming full circle, Charles ended her talk by reading from the final scene in STG when Harriet, that great connoisseur of young curates, introduces Belinda to Mr. Donne's replacement. Noting that he will be coming to supper on his first Sunday evening in the village, we find out that he is indeed fond of boiled chicken. And surely he will be, or learn to be, at ease with women.

Vibrations in the Memory: Echoes of Philip Larkin in His Favourite Books and Classical Music

Father Gabriel Myers, a Benedictine monk of St. Anselm's Abbey in Washington, DC, teaches Old Testament and Sacred Music/Devotional poetry to students of the Abbey School, and serves as the monastery organist. He has made several presentations in England at meetings of the Barbara Pym Society and the Philip Larkin Society. His talk centred on the friendship between Larkin and Pym, and how Larkin's personality and poetry are reflected in some of his favourite music.

Myers began by reminding us that Pym and Larkin wrote to each other and supported each other for 14 years before they finally met, noting that 'the faint odour of courtly romance permeated the informality of their friendship'. Pym's admiration for Larkin is evident in the two cameo appearances he makes in her novels: In QIA, an unattributed Larkin line -- i.e., 'unreachable within a room' from his poem 'Ambulances' -- is found in the scene describing Marcia's ride to hospital. Another tribute to the poet is in AFGL. Beatrix, musing on the fact that her daughter is not very well read in English literature, reflects that 'A few sad Hardy poems, a little Eliot, a line of Larkin seemed inadequate solace'.

Larkin, as a librarian, particularly admired Pym's gallery of 'rogue librarians'. To Myers, the material Pym gathered from Larkin about his work at the University Library of Hull may have helped her develop the 'tall, thin irritable-looking' Mervyn Cantrell. However, he believes that it is in Norman of QIA 'where traces of Larkin's character most brilliantly appear'. No wonder Larkin was to exclaim 'I liked Norman!'

In talking about the four classical pieces that Larkin chose for the radio programme 'Desert Island Discs', Myers said 'there is some irony in the non-believer (not the churchgoer) naming three works which fit so easily into my high-school course in Sacred Music'. Larkin's first choice, the fifteenth-century Coventry Carol, is surprising given his dislike of holidays. Yet Myers noted that the carol 'is closely related to [Larkin's] own favourite themes of grief and loss'. Also, the carol's focus on the suffering of women is similar to his sensitivity toward the female protagonists in his poems 'Faith Healing' and 'Love Songs in Age', which were both favourites of Pym.

Larkin's second choice was a prayer for mercy by the great Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis. This 40-part motet was first performed in the home of Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, whose ancestor's effigy clasps the hand of his wife in Larkin's poem 'An Arundel Tomb'. A recording was made of Larkin reading this poem, and Barbara Pym chose it as one of her Desert Island Discs (she wanted to have the voice of someone she knew). Myers finds the perfect response to 'An Arundel Tomb' in 'the heavenly sound of the Tallis motet'.

Larkin's third choice was Symphony No. 1 in A-flat Major by Edward Elgar. Myers believes that Elgar and Larkin shared some personal similarities. Elgar was very sensitive to criticism, provoking quarrels and rejection. He was curt, rude, and bad tempered in formal occasions, but amusing and high-spirited with friends. Regarding his first symphony, Elgar said that there was no program, no explicit content for it, other than 'a wide experience of human life with great charity and massive hope in the future'. To Myers, the poignancy of that music is recalled in Larkin's poem 'Going, Going'. Though the poem refers satirically to crooks and tarts, Myers finds in it the wistful voice of authentic grief. Another poem, 'High Windows', shocks 'but gives way to a mediation on emptiness, which is a sort of heaven in Larkin's universe'.

Myers noted that Larkin's final choice, the oratorio Solomon, by Handel, was intended by the composer 'as a compliment to his adopted country in the Augustan Age, the century of both Samuel Johnson and Jane Austen'. The optimism of the music reminds Myers of Larkin's poetic tribute to the jazz trumpeter Sidney Bechet: 'On my your voice falls like they say love should,/Like an enormous yes.' Myers believes that the word 'yes' deserves more attention in Larkin studies, which have tended to 'emphasize his personal failings at the expense of the humane greatness of his poetry'. In fact, Larkin himself said that he wrote poetry owing to 'a complex pressure of needs, [including the desire] to praise'.

Myers believes that this closing piece by Handel might be a suitable expression of the joy we experience when we read Pym. In closing, he reminded us that 2003 'marks the ninetieth anniversary of Barbara's birth, the fortieth of the beginning of her wilderness period, and the twenty-sixth of her rediscovery -- for which all who love her must thank Philip Larkin'.

Unsuitable for Attachment: Men in Barbara Pym's Life

After lunch, Dr. Nancy Talburt, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of English at the University of Arkansas, spoke about the men in Barbara's life and how they may have influenced her writing. Talburt, who met Pym in 1979 for lunch in Oxford, reminded us that the theme at the 2002 Oxford meeting was 'Unexcellent Men', noting that the subtitle could possible be 'The Living Happily Ever After Myth'. Talburt has spent time in the Bodleian reading the letters of the different men who corresponded with Pym. She is interested in the men in Pym's life because Pym is such a greater comic writer: She wrote from experience, re-using what had happened to her in her novels. Clearly, romance was very important to Pym, and Rupert, the first man in her life, was suitably handsome, and courted her in style. When she fell in love with Henry Harvey, she became part of his world, even though he did not fall in love with her. Henry eventually married three times, and Pym became friends with his wives, thereby maintaining her friendship with him. Talburt noted that there is no evidence that Pym wanted children. Instead, she was 'interested in the grand passion' and not in ordinary relationships. Pym had a very wide life, including her time in Germany and her service as a Wren in Italy, but for the most part she didn't include those experiences in her novels. She dived in and savoured life; she didn't want the experience to end or to forget the men she had cared for. Yet she suffered also. Experiences were vital to her and, in turn, to her work as a novelist.

Group Discussion

Dr. Anthony Kaufman, associate head of the English Department and director of undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois, led an informal panel discussion on various topics. The question arose and was debated concerning whether Pym's diaries can be trusted or whether she was sometimes fictionalising her own life in them. We were lucky enough to have Yvonne Cocking on hand to provide first-hand answers to questions about Pym during the period that they both worked at the African Institute. Also, Paul De Angelis, an editor with E. P. Dutton in the 1970s, provided insights into how that house came to publish both the first American editions of Pym's work, and the very first edition of A Very Private Eye.

All This Reading: The Literary World of Barbara Pym Following the panel discussion, Frauke Lenckos rose to speak briefly about the book of essays on Pym that she and Ellen Miller began working on four years ago and that is now a reality. Back in 1999, they started by agreeing on the book's theme, recognizing that 'reading is the activity and the adventure that brings [us] close to the miracle that is Barbara Pym's genius'.

In her foreword to the book, Hilary Pym Walton notes that it might not be too fantastic to feel that each of the essays in the book makes up for at least one of the years that Barbara was 'in the wilderness'. Speaking for Ellen and herself, Frauke read these lines from the introduction: 'We pay tribute to Barbara Pym herself. Her steady spirit has inspired and guided the making of our book, and she continues to enrich our lives immeasurably'.

After Frauke's speech, we enjoyed our champagne with much more joy and abandon than the guests at Mr. Donne's wedding reception did! The hors d'oeuvre were delicious and we were in high spirits, as we congratulated Ellen and Frauke on their hard work, and asked them to sign copies of the books. We were also happy to have four of the essayists with us: Kathy Ackley, Paul De Angelis, Anthony Kaufman, and Janice Rossen. All This Reading not only is a fine tribute to Barbara Pym, but also represents a new avenue for widening Pym's audience in the 21st century among readers, both academic and common.

Following the champagne party, we had dinner together and then had a chance to enjoy watching 'Tea with Miss Pym' and 'Miss Pym's Day Out'.

Class Differences in Barbara Pym's England

On Sunday morning, Tim Burnett covered a topic that was particularly interesting to Americans, as well as to his compatriots in the audience. Burnett is a consultant to Robert Holden, Ltd., Fine Art Agents in London, prior to which he was with the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum and British Library for more than 35 years.

Burnett began by reading the opening scene of QIA, where the hair of the four protagonists and the youthful librarian are described. The passage tells us 'almost all we need to know about the characters', but also reveals Pym's 'acute sensitivity to the nuances of class'. Along with their hairstyles, the names she chooses for the four are telling. However, Pym avoids hammering home the contrast between the upper middle class Edwin and Letty, and the more 'down market' Norman and Marcia by giving the latter a rather grand name.

Numerous passages were cited that point to Pym's consciousness of class difference. For instance, in NFRL, Dulcie browses through an old copy of The Field while visiting Aunt Hermione and Uncle Bertram, and is baffled by a query from a correspondent who wants to know how to prevent a mat in his 'lounge' from curling. The word 'lounge' is inside quotation marks to emphasize its unacceptable usage. 'Drawing room' would be correct, just as 'mirror' should be avoided in favour of 'looking glass'. Burnett noted that 'Barbara Pym never puts a foot wrong in the jungle that is the distinction between "U" and Non-U" usage, just as she is aware of and exploits all the subtleties of language in a stratified society'. As an example, recall that in J&P, Nicholas Cleveland remarks that 'A lady, or perhaps a woman' is coming, amending his sentence after he sees that the person approaching the front door is wearing a straw hat with a bird on it and is carrying a bloodstained bundle.

Burnett noted that 'class is one of the principal motors of Pym's fictions and certainly one of the principal sources of her humour'. Returning to Aunt Hermione's drawing room (not her lounge), we find Pym using marriage across class lines as a plot device. To their astonishment, Dulcie tells her aunt and uncle that her friend Viola Dace is to marry Bill Sedge, the son of their cook. Uncle Bertram's 'But how can they? Do they know each other?' is illogical, but does emphasize the surprise that such a marriage would have generated in a period when the world operated in 'well defined and defended circles'. And in NFRL, a major theme centres on Dulcie's interested in learning about Aylwin and Neville's background. This is the kind of exercise that Pym herself delighted in. The discovery that Mr. Forbes had been the black sheep of a gentry family (as Burnett noted, just like Pym's own grandfather) who had married the local hotelkeeper's daughter was 'unexpected and glamorous'.

Recognizing that we Americans have two barriers to surmount in understanding questions of class in Pym -- both the time difference and the fact that England is a different country -- Burnett talked in more general terms about class differences in Britain during the period when Pym was writing, 1935 through 1979. Noting the somewhat rigid differences among the lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle classes, he remarked that 'People were conscious of their position, and often none to subtle about expressing it'. This era came to an end around 1970, so Pym 'was ideally placed to observe and record that society and its demise'.

Many of Pym's characters are in the upper-middle class, and have private incomes and secure lives. Like the middle-middle, this group consisted of bank managers, lawyers, real estate agents, and other professionals, but they were located in London or major cities and destined for the top of their organizations. The upper-middle class also went to the same schools and colleges as the upper class and were at ease with them, the only difference being that upper class people owned, or had once owned, country estates. The upper-middle class tended to be inflexible in their attitudes, which they freely expressed, though often unthinkingly and without malice. Jews, Blacks, and gays were unacceptable, as well as Roman Catholics. The practices of the latter were viewed as mysterious, even somewhat sinister, and 'not quite English'. In fact, many Roman Catholics were from Ireland or the Continent. Other religions were viewed with intolerance also. We see this in J&P. When Fabian takes a walk down the main street of the village, he reflects that one couldn't go to the Methodist chapel, unless 'out of a kind of amused curiosity'; he also notices the 'little tin hut' used by the Roman Catholics for worship, with its 'plaster images in execrable taste'.

Pym may have become intrigued with Anglo-Catholicism when she moved to Pimlico, one of the working class districts where the 'colour and drama' of the Anglo-Catholic church might be more appreciated. By contrast, among the upper-middle class, 'spikey' Anglicanism with its smells and bells and communion every Sunday was out. Recall that Belinda 'cannot keep a note of horror out of her voice' when speaking of Father's Plowman's Romish ways. And when Dulcie Mainwaring steps on the porch at St Ivel's, she reads 'with a shudder' that confessions take place on Saturday at 6.45, indicating that Aylwin Forbes's brother might be High Church, and therefore unmarried. Burnett believes that the Anglo-Catholic church may have had more emphasis in the lives of Pym's middle class characters than it did in real life at the time. 'Most people would have viewed taking Communion every Sunday with horrorÉmatins and a good sermon were what most church-goers required'.

Burnett then turned to the class and financial status of the clergy. Archdeacon Hoccleve, with his large vicarage, spacious gardens, indoor servants, gardener, and wife who travels abroad, was much better off than his equivalent today. If he could have persuaded Lady Clara Bolding to join his congregation Ð with the possibility of her five or ten pound note in the collection basket Ð he would have benefited directly, as each parish supported its own incumbent. Today, most of the spacious rectories have been sold, and the Church of England pays clergymen a uniform stipend.

Noting that the purchasing power of the middle classes was much greater in Pym's day (in contrast to the upper class and the working class, who are much better off today than before), Burnett cited evidence of this in his own family. One of his great uncles, the youngest son of a large family who viewed himself as rather poor, left behind chattels that today could only be bought by at least a millionaire, including a dinner jacket and shooting suit by one of Saville Row's best tailors, and pair of Negretti & Zambra binoculars, the finest that money could buy. Likewise, Burnett's own parents inherited a house in the country in 1950. They initially took seven servants with them, but at the end of their lives had only a cook and a part-time gardener, both of whom had worked for them for 30 years.

Burnett emphasised that 'the middle class characters in Pym's novels enjoyed the last years when servants were affordable and available.' And indeed, most of the characters in the novels have a servant, such as the Bede sisters' Emily. The novels have a number of cooks (who were 'traditionally extremely fierce and territorial'), including the two already mentioned as well as Julian and Winifred Mallory's Mrs. Jubb. Mildred Lathbury, the daughter of a country clergyman, has an income of her own and the twice-weekly services of her 'woman', Mrs. Morris. Though Mrs. Morris addresses Mildred with respect as 'miss', she has no qualms about expressing her feelings with familiarity. The scene in which Mrs Morris discusses Julian's unnatural celibate state and her fears that the Roman Catholics will cause everyone to 'be kissing the pope's toe before you [can] say knife', demonstrates Pym's brilliance in catching regional accents and working class turns of speech'.

Pym also follows the tradition, going back to Moliere, whereby 'servants are the people with resolution and initiative, and continually have to make up for the shortcomings of their somewhat feeble and ineffectual employers'. For instance, Mrs. Glaze comes to the rescue of Jane Cleveland, who can't find her way to her own kitchen or vegetable garden. To Jane's relief, she arrives with liver for supper, carefully procured from her nephew, the butcher, and takes over.

Burnett concluded by noting that even though Barbara Pym's world has vanished, 'human nature never changes, and through her genius we know and care about the characters, both great and small, who populate her novels'. Nevertheless, human attitudes, assumptions, priorities, and prejudices do change. In light of her sympathy for human motivation and ear for dialogue, Pym 'has given us an outstandingly accurate portrayal of the particular world that she knew and understood so well, and which gave her, and through her, us, so much entertainment'.

Following Burnett's speech there were many questions from the Americans in the audience, which our British members were eager to help answer. What rich material we were able to gather, including the sartorial rules "no brown in town" and no black in the countryside. Also, we went away eager to find a copy of John Betjeman's 'How to Get on in Society', so that we could try to find the 32 examples of 'non-U' that Burnett told us were laced through it.

Concluding Activities

The conference closed with a dramatic reading of 'The Pilgrimage', a short story by Pym that Yvonne Cocking discovered in the Bodleian. Deirdre Bryan-Brown introduced the reading by talking about Pym's short stories and the history of their publication or non-publication. The reading was delightful, and was the perfect ending to another wonderful conference. Ellen Miller gave us the benediction, and we all expressed our warmest gratitude to her for the excellent job she did in putting together 'Pym V'.