Barbara Pym and Rupert Gleadow
Presented by Yvonne Cocking
at the Conference of the Barbara Pym Society in North America
12-13 April 2008
The early days of the friendship
between Barbara Pym and Rupert Gleadow have been recorded by Hazel Holt
and
Hilary Pym in A Very Private Eye, and
by Hazel Holt in A Lot to Ask, so I
shall not cover the same ground in any detail. In this paper I should
like to
concentrate on Rupert’s life after he and Barbara ceased to be
potential
lovers, but remained friends.
Barbara Pym met Rupert Gleadow in
her first term at Oxford,
through
their friend Bill Thacker, but it was not until May 1932 that he was
sufficiently aware of her to ask her to tea.
He had come up to Trinity
College
in 1928 and was working for his imminent final examinations in Classics
and
Egyptology. Although Barbara had already
attracted a lot of attention from her male co-students, she had not yet
set her
sights on any particular one of them.
It is clear that Rupert and Barbara
were immediately very taken with one another.
Her diary entries testify to her attraction to Rupert, who was
rather
good-looking, and he wrote:
“Did you intend a
flattering
suggestion when you said you had done no work since you saw me in the
Bod? I’ve been trying to work too, but
it’s no
good – no good at all. The Egyptian sage
whom I was reading kept on putting [here he gives the Egyptian
hieroglyphs for
‘Barbara’] in the most ungrammatical places in sentences, and finally…I
gave it
up.”
Rupert shared rooms with George
Steer (Christ Church)
at 47 Wellington Square,
so
time to be indoors alone together was limited, and indeed frowned upon
by the
University authorities. After Barbara
had had her first tea date with Rupert, sitting on the leopard skin
sofa in
George’s sitting room, Rupert was very keen to see her again, but his
work
schedule was such that it was difficult to find a window of opportunity. He wrote to her a few days later, on 28th
May:
“Dear Barbara
It was so nice having tea with you on Thursday. As George’s Schools begin on 2nd,
a week before mine, and he will be out till after 5, I’m hoping you may
come
again that week – only it’ll have to be at 3 o/clock!
I gather from Bill Thacker that you
sometimes drop in and pay a friendly call – I wish I could encourage
you to do
the same, but I’m so often out – 5 to 2
[i.e. 1.55] is the only time of day I’m really
likely to be in, apart from the morning, and sometimes between 6.30 and
7.15. I suppose the University would not
allow me merely to come and call on you, otherwise they’d have all
sorts of Don
Juans getting in. Yesterday every street I came out of I looked
carefully round
to see if you weren’t in sight! Today I
am going to look for you in the Bod at 12.45 and 6.30…
Hoping to
see you soon, Your [sic] Rupert”
However, he did find
time to take her to see the film Frankenstein on the 2nd
June,
her 19th birthday, and bought her ‘a heavenly scarf – Royal
blue and
orange’. The next day he wrote:
“Barbara Darling
I just can’t face any work just now
so I’m writing to you instead … it’s a comfort to think we shall meet
tomorrow
at 10.15…Trevor Wylie saw us walking down the High together yesterday –
I just
saw him out of the corner of my eye; and then found a note in my rooms
“How are
you?” I haven’t been able to tell him
that the answer is HAPPY … Goodbye darling for the present. Yesterday and you were a marvellous pair, and
so will you be tomorrow. With lots of
all my love, Rupert.”
And the next letter a
few days later is in similar vein
“Barbara Darling
It’s been the most marvellous day,
and I haven’t stopped thinking about you the whole time … Darling, my
memory is
going to take special care of today, and never forget how lovely you
have been,
and how kind –… Today must be very happy for always at having seen so
much
happiness of ours. Goodnight – and now
to dream about you. My love to you
always, Rupert.”
On 1st June Barbara was introduced
to Miles Macadam, Rupert’s close friend and fellow Egyptologist from Worcester
College.
They started their final exams, on 9th June and
on 16th Rupert wrote ecstatically:
“Barbara
my Darling
All
is well -
and we have both got FIRSTS! Hoorah,
hoorah!”
Barbara and Miles spent most of the
time together while Rupert was entertaining his mother and brother
Edmund, who
had come to congratulate him on the examination results, and then the
three students
spent much of the last week of term together.
“My darling Barbara
If I’d been told five weeks ago how
happy we should be three together I should not have believed it. I think Miles finds it a great comfort to
have our company. I think you don’t mind
two at once. This I suppose is my last
letter to you from Oxford. With lots and lots of love and kisses, Rupert.”
They wrote to each other frequently
during the long vacation, though whether they would ever meet again now
that
Rupert had left Oxford was
in
doubt. His letters are very romantic,
recalling the happy days they had spent together. But
he is also preoccupied with his future career
about which he vacillates endlessly, undecided whether to return to
Oxford to
do a D.Phil., or whether, because of his interest in flying, to join
the Royal
Air Force.
On Sunday 26th
June 1932, he writes from his
mother’s flat in Queen’s Court, West London,
where he
says he is bored, though he has only been there a few days:
“I’m
alone in the new flat with my
mother.”
I should mention here that the
Gleadows must have recently moved from the family home, Bakeham House,
set on a
51 acre site in Englefield Green, Surrey – not far from Virginia Water,
the
scene of Humphrey’s first improper advances to Leonora in The
Sweet Dove Died.
Possibly Rupert’s father had recently passed away.
“Oh, what a change
from Oxford.
Miles stayed with us two nights, and went to
the air display with us … I can give you as yet no better idea of my
plans for
next year than before; I may still go into the Air Force.
I spend my spare
time wondering what parts of that last week I shall remember best:
those lovely
nakedish times by the Cher, and Miles with his trousers on a paddle,
and you
upside down: or Charlbury and Great Tew; or Thames; or Goodnight
Vienna, and certain hours, particularly one Monday, one
21st June, on a leopard-skinned sofa in Wellington Square. ‘But what has been is past forgetting’. It’s all been very marvellous, and for an end
to one’s last term uniquely and most appropriately charming.”
All these events are chronicled in
Barbara’s diary. As we do not have any
of Barbara’s letters to Rupert, we have to deduce their contents from
his
replies, but she seems always to have answered promptly, and with
enthusiasm:
“Thank you for your
lovely long
letter, and the photographs … the one I am most glad to have is the one
of
you. Your letter I got on Thursday
evening on coming in rather late, and when I got rid of my tiresome
family I
took it to bed and read it straight through twice … When I am alone,
and have
got free from the depressing keeping up of appearances that the company
of my
mother always entails, then I always seem more, and more naturally,
happy than
I used to before; and I think that must be the result of all the happy
times we
had in Oxford and I do miss you, you know, and I don’t envy you a bit
at
Oswestry if there really are no young
men for you to console yourself with. If
absence makes the heart much fonder, I shall be in love!
Fancy that! ... I’ll tell you in my next
letter why the arguments are so strong that I should go into the Air
Force …”
For some time Rupert had been
complaining of problems with his eyesight, particularly when he was
studying.
“As the oculist may
make all sorts
of differences to my thoughts about flying, I’ll not write you now
about the
Air Force… I somehow think the D.Phil is more probable, though I’m
rather afraid
of not being able to get through the subject in the time (2 years).
A couple of weeks later
he wrote:
“Barbara Darling
…so many things have happened since
I last wrote. On Friday July 8 I made up
my mind; on Saturday July 9th I bought an aeroplane!!!!.
Till last Friday I
was occupied in getting my licence out of the Air Ministry, and
yesterday I
flew it myself for the first time. Of
course, I am broke henceforward. The
machine is very old and 2nd hand, a special Moth with a
racing
fuselage whereby it goes faster than the ordinary of its kind … and by
the way
my eyes are much better: I had no difficulty in landing an aeroplane!
…I’m
still as vague as ever about my plans: yesterday the D.Phil took a turn
for the
worse … There being no aerodrome anywhere near Oswestry, I suppose I
shan’t
have a chance to take you up at present, but let me know if you go and
stay in
Liverpool again. I could do it from
there…Being bored so much in London…makes me think I must be very
susceptible
to it; and as I’m very much afraid I should be bored in the Air Force
I’ve more
or less decided not to go in to it.”
On 26t h
July, Bakeham House was put up for
auction, but no one bid for it.
“God
knows when we shall get rid of
it.”
Meanwhile another
career possibility had presented itself:
“As far as going in
to His Majesty’s
service in the Levant, that means learning
languages for
a year, and after that I’m very much afraid there’s an examination,
which is
unthinkable. As for Egyptology, all the
intrigues about the Readership at Oxford
have shown me what to expect there, and what sort of people academic
people
are. So that’s not very attractive
either…I don’t want to take up Egyptology professionally, so to come to
Oxford
and take a D.Phil. for 2 years would be a sheer swank and probably a
waste of
time. Abroad every MA is a Doctor. So I’ve decided probably not to do that –
certainly not if I don’t get the Derby Scholarship.”
The Derby Scholarship
was awarded by the University for two years
to a candidate of sufficient merit offering a subject connected with
the languages
and literatures of ancient Greece
and Rome:
“So we have now
gone all the way
round the circle and come back to the Air Force, which is the quickest
way of
getting paid (one begins at about £350 a year), and where I
should have to
amuse myself by writing in my spare time – which would be plentiful…”
And then, another volte
face!
“Stop Press! I may come to Oxford to learn modern Greek
from Professor Dawkins concurrently with, or instead of, the D.Phil.,
with a
view to becoming a Professor of modern Greek! (a much more humane and
less
competed-for study than all this squabbling Egyptology.)… I think the
Air Force
idea is now as good as definitely done for, so I am expecting that I
shall be
at Oxford next term.”
He is also learning
Arabic because:
“anywhere from Algeria
to Persia
I may
want to speak it…I am now definitely going to go in for the Derby
Scholarship
and so unless something else turns up I shall be in Oxford
next term from the beginning of term until the award is announced. Then if the award is not to me, I shall go
away again…”
After spending some days cruising
on a sailing vessel around the Scottish islands, Rupert is now
continuing a
lone holiday in Wales,
and has apparently received an invitation from Barbara to visit her. He writes from Fishguard on 3 September:
“I haven’t yet made
my arrangements
for when I leave here, but I am at present expecting not only to be at Oxford
on Oct 10 but to try to get to Oswestry about Sept 16.
From the Post Office at
Bala on 7th Sept, as
usual his plans are indefinite:
“I propose at
present to arrive on
Thursday 15th. I can’t say
exactly yet, because it rather depends on the state of the weather
around Snowdon
when I’m there. From Bala I’ll write and
let you know what time I propose to arrive … I’ve asked Miles to come
to the
Lakes with me, and if he is able to we shall probably want to start on
20th…
I think, after my
D.Phil. (if any) I shall give up being called an Egyptologist…and be
called a
linguist. After all, I ought to know by
then Arabic, Greek (ancient and modern), German and/or French, Egyptian
and
Coptic, besides Latin and English, possibly some Italian or Spanish –
preferably the latter…”
Rupert arrived on 15th
September; after he left
on 22nd he wrote:
“My darling, I
never realized what
it was going to be like parting from you.
As soon as you were out of sight I very nearly wept … it was
awful….I’ve
called Miles ‘Darling’ several times … and told him I wished he was
you, which
he didn’t take very kindly … Darling, what can a man say in a case like
this?
‘Thank you for making me fall in love with anyone so charming as you? Or, for making me realize that I have?’...Oh
for a kiss!!...I shall be glad when I can see you again.”
Barbara felt much the
same, as she confided to her diary. “We
had such a heavenly week together. I’d
never imagined it would be so good. I
actually wept a bit!”
Many letters passed between the two
while Rupert and Miles were in the Lake District – Rupert’s all very
loving,
Barbara’s, too, by inference.
Rupert
returned to Oxford in
early October
looking for digs “with a complaisant and inexpensive landlady” -
‘complaisant’
because he hoped to entertain Barbara there – and found some in 90 St.
Mary’s
Road. Then they met Miles, who had a
Senior Scholarship at New College,
and had lunch at Stewarts. “A happy reunion,” Barbara recalls. “It was
marvelous.”
In another letter about this time,
Rupert first mentions astrology:
“I’ve just been
lent some books on
Astrology, which are very interesting, though here and there one of
them is
absurd ; but on the whole amazingly true; you should read what it says
about
Gemini people (I’m Gemini, and so to some extent are you).
What time of the day were you born? Do let me
know …”
On 13th October Barbara
records: “Met Rupert in a dark suit and white tie – he persuaded me to
have
lunch at the Randolph with his mother and Edmund…I was of course
terrified but
my fur coat gave me confidence … we all adjourned to Fullers for tea
with Mrs
Macadam and Miles.”
From now on Rupert’s letters show
signs of an increasing emphasis on sex, but at the same time Barbara
seems to
be, to some extent anyway, distancing herself from his attentions,
perhaps
regretting some of her earlier confessions to him. “My intentions are
strictly
dishonourable,” Rupert declared to her, and he is confident that
Barbara will
finally succumb to his pleas and go to bed with him.
Now back living in College, he tries to
persuade her to visit him in his rooms.
In spite of the University’s strictures against such
unchaperoned
visits, Rupert was prepared to take a chance:
“Miles says he’d
never dare take a
girl in to his bedroom at Oxford
for fear of being disgraced – but these things admittedly always do go
wrong
with him just as they always go right with me.”
Early in November
Rupert heard that he was not to receive
the Derby award:
“They gave no
reason for their
decision, but I think it was because they didn’t consider the subject
classical
enough …However, I merely went and saw Prof. Griffith to ask him about
ancient
Egyptian astronomy and astrology in case of doing that for a D.Phil.”
But in fact in turned
out that there was a Don who had
already adequately covered those subjects:
“I’m feeling rather
tired through
lying awake half the night thinking out my future.
It’s no good.
I’ve got to go down. There’s no
point in staying on fatuously up here and taking a fatuous D.Phil. I’m too old for the entrance to the consular
and other services, but I’m not too old for the diplomatic and foreign
office,
and I’m damned if I see why I shouldn’t try to go into that if there’s
an
examination next August. I ought to be
able to learn lots of French and German before then.”
And he added,
prophetically, ”No doubt in the end I shall
find Astrology is the only profession left.” During the winter vacation
he was
at St. Albans, flying.
He writes from there on 9th Dec: “…I’m sending the
horoscope.” A horoscope is a map or diagram of the skies from a given
place at
a given time. The positions of the stars
and planets in a horoscope is supposed by astrologists to influence
human and
terrestrial affairs.
“I don’t know
whether it is really
very good, seeing as how it’s the first horoscope I ever did. Really, I think your marriage prospects are
quite excellent (so are mine! But I will tell you about my wife one
day.) I think it’s an extremely fine
horoscope and
I wish you luck with it.”
On 17 January 1933, back after the
winter vacation, Barbara says, “Rupert called in the afternoon and I
found
myself remarkably glad to see him … went on to his rooms in Trinity…we
indulged
in some very pleasant caresses both before and after tea – but I stuck
out
against having a real necking party. But
really he is charming, and I couldn’t be cross with him.”
I think it was on this same day
that Barbara had caught sight of Henry Harvey for the first time. Perhaps that is why she was so coy with
Rupert. From this time on her thoughts
were increasingly on “Lorenzo,” and she detached herself gradually from
her
relationship with Rupert, encouraging him not to think of her as his
exclusive
girl friend.
He replied:
“You’ll be glad to
hear that at
last I’ve stopped wasting my time; at last I’ve found someone with whom
I can
fulfill my promise to you not to be strictly faithful; but as I only
made the
discovery 2 days before coming here it’s only two days kissing I’ve
been able
to have – and I did need it…By the way did you see that in America a
man was
sent to prison for ‘from 1 to 3 years’ for seduction!
I shall have to look out, if ever I go there!
On 23rd February 1933,
he wrote inviting her to lunch - then said: “After
inspecting Harvey, Miles and I decided that various other people look
like that
…in other words the face did not seem altogether strange.
Well, well.”
So Barbara must have told him of
her interest in Henry. Rupert finally
had to accept that Barbara was not for him.
As Hazel says in A Lot to Ask,
“He tactfully made a comfortable joke of the whole affair”, and he
bowed to the
inevitable with good grace. However,
they continued to correspond and remained friends throughout their
remaining
time together in Oxford,
though
perhaps there was a touch of bitterness in one letter where he suggests
that
this is what Barbara would say of him in the future:
“There was that
poor dear Rupert
Gleadow – quite mad about me he was,
but my dear he really was terribly trying,
so lascivious – never would leave me
alone! What did I like him for? Oh, I don’t know, I suppose he was rather
pathetic – of course an awful poseur – he would make you think he was
acutely
miserable when all the time the man was devoured
by a positive flame of sexual
excitement. It was most indecent.”
I think that tells us
quite a lot about Rupert himself.
On 29 Mar 1933 he wrote from Queen’s Court, London
(his mother’s flat):
“I am going to take
a ticket in the
next 2 or 3 Irish Sweeps for astrological reasons.
I will, as I said, do your fiance’s
horoscope, but NOT of course until you are engaged to someone, and for
any one
else my fee is now 1 guinea…
and by 20 Apr 33
the romance was over.
“Barbara dearest, Who have you fallen in love with this time?
…I have not led an entirely unsexual vac, have you?
I hope and think perhaps you’d have written
if you had…I have got myself all mixed up in Astrology again with
several
people expecting horoscopes and all my aunts panting for golden
prophecies of
their futures.”
That is the last of the
letters from Oxford. Rupert obviously completed the academic year;
but I don’t think it he went back again in October 1933.
Eighteen months later, in October
1934, Rupert wrote from NW3 asking Barbara about her exam results,
which of
course she had had the previous June, and tells her:
“You’ll be
surprised to hear that I
have taken up music and am energetically studying the laws of harmony,
such of
them as are left in these days. But the
writing still continues and I am now settled on Primrose Hill trying to
finish
a novel by the end of the year. After that
I shall probably go abroad again…No, I am not married, nor anything
like it. I think it would be surprising if
I were,
seeing what my views on the subject are.
But at the moment my heart is fairly free. I
had a couple of love affairs early in the
year, neither very satisfactory. How is
your own heart? Pining, I suppose, for some beautiful man, as usual. Yours ever, Rupert”
Later that month
“It was very nice
to get your
letter, particularly coming so soon. I
was sure you’d reply at once, which none of my other friends ever
do…Don’t you
find it an awful strain, writing a novel?
I do. However, I’ve written about
70,000 words already, so it’s getting on.
I can’t tell you what it’s all about, it’s too strange and mixed. Probably some people will find it shocking
but it’s not intended to be; only, my hero and heroine show the most
awful
tendency to go to bed together every time they meet!
I
can’t help it, can I? … Very glad to hear that things are going so well
with
you; surely you must be unique in being able brazenly to say ‘No!’ when
people
ask you if you are looking for a job?”
Barbara had been twice to Germany
in 1934, and had obviously told Rupert about Friedbert Gluck, whom she
had
first met in Cologne at
Easter that
year:
“It’s good that you
have been to Germany
and can talk about it. Oh, but please
don’t admire those filthy Nazis in
their beautiful uniforms: you won’t get a chance much longer, because
1936 will
just about see the end of Hitler…I suppose you are still as chaste as
ever? I’m rather lonely just now, not
having had a mistress since the Spring … Yes, I shall always remember
that
lovely summer of ours, which was so fine … this morning when I was in
my bath
the wireless played Goodnight, Vienna!
I wonder how long we shall go on being able to hear that. It always pleases me. There
is also Wien du Stadt meiner Träume which was
also a theme of that summer…
Will it surprise you to know that I’ve still got the complete
collection of
your love letters? A month or two ago I
began reading them through, to see if I shouldn’t reduce the number,
and save
space, but I only got half way and so there they are still. They seemed to me to have stood the test of
time very well. Mine on the other hand
were a little shocking occasionally and I feel they might well be
destroyed! You know the saying: ‘Do
right and fear no man; don’t write and fear no women!’
However, I shall have to trust you. Best
wishes to you and love from Rupert.”
Ten months later his
next letter was written from the Sesame
Imperial Club in London,
clearly in
response to one from Barbara:
“Yes, the Astrology
still
flourishes; in fact I can answer any reasonably serious question, and
collect
horoscopes on all sides. My stay in Paris
this time has yielded 2 dozen, including Nijinsky and Toscanini and
D’Annuncio. Also I have met the best
astrologers in England,
and in fact have been getting on the ‘inside’ of that profession. But that is not my real job.
My real job – which I could see written in my
horoscope and tried to avoid – is political.
The principle is this: In lots of countries valuable goods are
being
destroyed and yet there are people starving.
This is unnecessary because we know there is enough to go round. The only thing needful is to distribute it. No orthodox party has any solution for the
problem, in fact the only known solution so far is Social Credit – and
we have
started an ingenious electoral campaign which is already producing
results. People will tell you it won’t
work, but how do they know? And how can
they pretend the present system works when food people need is thrown
in to the
sea to keep up prices? However, you
won’t want a sermon on politics. Only
that is the cause I am working for, and in the present state of the
world it
seems a pretty desperate one. We need to
work hard, but we shall get there…”
Social Credit was a
political theory originated by a Scot,
Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952), which argued that “economic
reform
would prevent the destruction of soils and food for the sake of profit
and
ensure that the whole population would be guaranteed sufficient income
to
enable them to buy fresh, protective foods.”
(Agricultural History Review, 46,
1998, 200)
“Mother is still at
Queen’s Court …
since going round South America she’s been to Baghdad
and is now seriously trying to get married again. From
her horoscope it looks as though she
might succeed and regret it; …
As for my novel,
well I wrote two
and didn’t like either of them. They
were too much the distillation of the superfluous bile of a thoroughly
discontented person. That’s because I
was not working hard enough and was trying to evade my miserable
destiny … and
my sex life was unsatisfactory. I wrote
a number of short stories too, and some of them I did try to publish,
but the
form did not come easy to me. They were
too strained, and so naturally they didn’t succeed.
Short stories being a technique nowadays
rather then an art, it is easy to get too self-conscious about them …
No, I’m not married
… As for you, I
know you’ll marry all right, though not for a year or two, and to a
very nice and
rather original man. The horoscope is at
home, and I remember most of it – Mars in Aries, Moon and Venus in
Taurus, Sun,
Mercury and Saturn in Gemini, Ascendant 2 degrees Leo, and Uranus very
strong
in the House of Marriage.
I’m afraid I never
realized your
attraction for Henry Harvey was really so serious as to be still among
the
emotional possibilities. I always
imagined him a rather painted god,
not real. However, he seems to have made
an impression on a poor maiden heart.”
And, again, obviously in reply to a
question from her:
“Yes it is possible
to love more
than one person, perhaps more than two, for that is the case with me at
the
moment. I will admit, after your own
candour,”
This will be when she
told him that she was in love with
both Henry and Friedbert:
“that I have one
mistress in France,
and another in Russia,
and what should be a third in England. The only thing is that in a case like that
one is always conscious that it is the other person who loves best, for
one
cannot give one’s own heart to more than one person.
And it is rarely enough that one can give it
to one. And of course one cannot, under
any circumstances love a real Nazi … Yes, no doubt we have changed. This letter will tell you a good deal for it
is written quite spontaneously and very fast … but I don’t think any of
it will
surprise you, either on the sexual or political plane.
Your own sounded, as you suggest, a bit
colder and more disillusioned, but I am sure that you only find it a
bit hard
to write really naturally, because it is such a long time that is due
to the
conjunction of Saturn and the Sun … Do you remember George Steer, who
was in
digs with me in Wellington Square, but lent me his room to have you to
tea in
once or twice?”
He of the leopard skin
sofa!
“He is now The Times Special Correspondent in Addis
Ababa,
so if you read about Abyssinia in The
Times, it’s him.
I’m beginning to
realize that one day it will be convenient to be married and have a
woman to
look after me, but at present I still feel very much the wanderer –
1934 I had
the misfortune to spend all in England, with three unsuccessful love
affairs,
so I was very glad, when Christmas came, to flee to Munich – and now
I’m
devoured by the desire to see Hungary and the Balkans … I took the MA
in June,
Miles is finishing his D.Phil. and will take his degree in October and
after
that he is going out to excavate in Nubia for the winter …”
Next communication is a
postcard from Bregenz, postmarked 25th August 1935:
“After an idyllic
month in the
north Tirol at 3000ft…I go to Dusseldorf
to represent England
(probably not officially) at the International Astrological Congress,
and am
continuing to write two books in the time.”
At the end of August, when Barbara
was in Budapest she received another postcard from Rupert suggesting
that she
visit him in London on her way back. “I’d love 2CU,” he says, using the
abbreviation for “to see you” that kids use today when texting.
But Barbara did not take up the
invitation, for Rupert wrote in October:
“I had hoped that
you would reply
to my letter inviting you to see me in London … but since you did not I
am full
of curiosity to know whether it was because you thought your reply
would not
arrive in time … or because after the confessions in my letter you felt
it
would not be safe! … As an astrologer, I feel now exempted from the
effort of
writing further novels. I have
discovered the political cause that is going to make most headway and
propose
to devote my energies to it – viz. Social Credit. Why
don’t you start a group in Oswestry? Or
order it…”
The Newsletter,
presumably:
“Tuppence weekly,
from your
newsagent. As we are going to win our
battle I’m naturally keen to do so as quickly as possible and get it
over,
after which I shall retire under a pseudonym to Cornwall
and predict disasters for the Sunday
Dispatch. Perhaps! …Yours
politically and pertinaciously, if somewhat intermittently, and with
love,
Rupert.”
Late in October he
writes:
“Thanks so much for
your great
letter complete with photograph: I think you look fiendishly
intelligent but
very agreeable … Your account of Budapest
was very intriguing … I think I may go there for a Xmas holiday.”
The next item in the
archives is a newspaper cutting with a
surprising announcement:
“The
marriage will take place on December 7th, in Paris, between
Rupert
Seeley Gleadow of 6 rue de
Belloy, Paris 16e, son of the late Frank Gleadow of Bakeham House, Englefield Green, Surrey, and of Mrs.
Harold Bompas of Flat 10, 24 Palace
Court, London, W 2, and Mlle. Marguérite Rendu, daughter of the
late Eugène Rendu and of Mme. Rendu
of Paris”
So Mrs Gleadow did
marry again. There is a Harold Bompas who
donated a sculpture in 1937 and three paintings in 1941 to the Ashmolean
Museum.
Perhaps this was Rupert’s step-father? There
was a Marguérite Rendu who translated
detective fiction from English into French between 1930 and 1937. This could have been his fiancée. The provenance of this cutting is
uncertain. In the light of later
communication I think the wedding date must have been 1937.
After the newspaper cutting is a
letter from Palace Ct.
dated 5th December
1938:
“Dear
Barbara
I had intended to
write to you long
ago for I did not think you could have seen the announcement in The Times at the beginning of
August. But I’ve been full of work and
terribly weak in health. I shall be here
until January 2nd and if you like to see me you have only to ring up or
drop a
line.
One learns to
love, you know, and I began learning in 1932.
It seems incredible to realize that in those lovely days none of
the
tragedies of life had yet happened. But
if we had not had those wonderful times together probably I should not
have
known those sublime heights of love which Marguérite and I
together achieved
and which will always remain a light to my life.
So you see you have
made a
difference to my life which I shall not forget.
With love, Rupert.”
Sadly, I think the
announcement in August must have been of
Marguérite’s death. Rupert’s first book, Astrology
in Everyday Life, published in 1940, was dedicated “in memory of
Marguérite…”
Then, almost another year later
there is a letter from Bettiscombe by Bridport in Dorset,
a few weeks after the outbreak of war:
“Dear
Barbara
It is a long time
since you heard
from me, but for some reason that interval is now at an end – I thought
you
might like to see the enclosed…”
There is no enclosure
in the Archive.
“The last year has
naturally been
pretty unpleasant for me, but I am now staying with some people who are
very
nice and are willing to bring up my daughter with their own children,
so it
looks as though that problem were solved.
At present she is in France
with my old mother-in-law.”
This is our first
inkling that he had a child. Probably the
missing enclosure was a newspaper
cutting, or some other evidence of the death of his wife, possibly in
childbirth.
“When war began I
was near St.
Tropez having a lovely holiday with sea bathing…the journey back across
France
in mid-September took a very long time…How are your literary ventures
going? I’ve just written a novel which
Raymond Savage…”
A well-known literary
and theatrical agent, biographer of
Lord Allenby and the desert campaign of 1922, and advisor on the film Laurence of Arabia:
“ has agreed to
handle…I heard
about six months ago that Miles was hoping to get married in
September…I have
no intention of doing any war work until forced to; it is a waste of
time for
an intelligent person. Hitler is doomed
anyway …I hope there are still 57 pubs in Oswestry and that you are in
love
with some beautiful person as usual.
With love, Rupert.”
Bettiscombe 20th
January 1940:
“My
dear Barbara
Your letter of 8th
Dec
was a very nice one … you are quite right about my daughter having
large black
eyes, but in other ways she takes after the mother, being fair,
fearless and
fond of animals. She was christened
Sylvia Marguérite …”
It is very sad that we
hear no more of Sylvia – whether she
ever got back to England
before the Germans occupied Paris,
or whether the Dorset family took her in. There is no evidence that her father took her
back after his second marriage.
“It is impossible
to describe my
book so you will have to wait till you read it.
I am also writing poetry, though with a compete disregard of the
modern
movement …
Miles got married
on Sept 2nd,
thinking it best not to give the war a chance to separate them. I saw him the other day on a flying visit to
Oxford, but not her, as three months of connubial bliss with so vast a
man (he
weighs about 14 or 15 stone!!) had necessitated an operation below the
belt
somewhere, and she was in the Radcliffe [Oxford’s main Hospital]. He reported that Tom Thacker is now Reader in
Semitics at Durham and
engaged to a
very nice girl – Tom’s horoscope suggested marriage to a widow with
children!! Miles has a flat in Oakthorpe
Mansions on the
Banbury Rd and is
still
after 4 years working on the publication of the diggings at Kawa.
I am really very
happy here, for I don’t think I told you that a few months ago I met a
painter
named Helen and we were both utterly taken with each other at first
sight and
still are. It is hard to believe that
anyone who loved so well as I did can begin again, but strange to say
it has
happened. We suit each other to
perfection, and after living together in the south of France we are now
doing
it here … she is a beautiful blonde … I think we bring it off so well
because
we are both experienced and interested in human relationships.
Our days are as
blissful as our nights.
With love,
Rupert”
The last Gleadow entry in the
Archive is the horoscope he drew of Barbara some years before, to which
he
added, “This being the first horoscope I ever did is rather liable to
contain a
few mistakes or inaccuracies. RSG”
Although there are no more letters
among Barbara’s papers, more must have been exchanged.
She records in her diary on 24th July 1941: “Had a
lovely letter from Rupert Gleadow and a copy of his new book Magic and Divination. How
lovely it is to be remembered by one’s
friends.”
Letters must also have passed between
them to arrange the visit Barbara paid to the Gleadows in April 1943,
shortly
before she went in to the WRNS, after which she wrote, “I really feel
it did me
good going away and being with Rupert and Helen, who are so blissfully
happy
together they hardly seem to be real.”
Apart from her noting his death in
1974, I could find no other mention of him among Barbara’s papers.
I have now regretfully to tell you
that despite my best efforts I was unable to find out much more about
Rupert
and his subsequent career, between 1943 and his death in 1974.
I tried the Internet, but almost
all that turned up concerned his published works. He wrote eight or so
books on
astrology and religion, the best known, perhaps, being Astrology
in Everyday Life (1940), and The Origin of the Zodiac
(1968). An article entitled “Magic
Does Happen” in Lilliput Magazine in February 1944 was
illustrated by Mervyn Peake. He also
contributed many articles to American
Astrology, one of which was summarized in Time
magazine, 20th
October 1952, about the time of the US
Presidential election:
“Writing in American Astrology (which has called Adlai Stevenson the
‘Man of
Destiny’) astrologist Rupert Gleadow last week revealed how the stars
stand. It is easy as pie to tell who
will win, said Gleadow, but tough to write about it, because he does
not want
to discourage anybody. His news: at the
time of the election ‘General Eisenhower suffers the transit of Neptune
and
Saturn over his Sun’ and that is really bad.
His conclusion: Stevenson, like a shooting star.”
He does not feature in any
biographical dictionaries, like DNB, Who
Was Who, or even in Astrology encyclopaedias. The
only obituary I found was in the English Astrological
Journal for Winter 1974/75,
which contained nothing that I didn’t already know.
However, - and this is where some
extraordinary coincidences occurred - I did find an entry for Helen
Gleadow, as
illustrator of a book of 12 sonnets, by Shirley Toulson, each devoted
to a sign
of the zodiac. It is called The Fault, Dear
Brutus, (you will remember that the rest of the quotation from Julius Caesar is “…is in ourselves, not in
our stars”) and was published by the
Keepsake Press. I knew of this private
press because it was owned and operated by the late Roy Lewis, with
whom I had
collaborated on The British in Africa,
and I remembered too that he had introduced me to Shirley Toulson in
the late 1960s. Shirley is a writer and
poet, her books
usually dealing with country matters. I
searched
the Internet for her, and found, as well as her published works, an
entry in a
newsletter devoted to keeping Oxfordshire’s footpaths open, which gave
her
telephone number as contact for a new branch to be formed in Chipping
Norton. I also found a reference to the
Pym Archive! This proved to be three
letters from Shirley to Barbara concerning a lunch they had had with
Elizabeth
Barnicot in Henley-on-Thames, as a result of which Barbara had sent
Shirley a
signed copy of Quartet in Autumn.
I telephoned Shirley in some trepidation, but
she was delighted to hear from the Pym Society, and a few weeks later
we met
for lunch in Oxford, and
later she
invited me to lunch at her house.
She told me that she thought Rupert
and Roy Lewis had been great friends, but that she had never met
Rupert, whom
she remembered as being very ill about the time she knew Helen. (He died two years after the publication of The Fault, dear Brutus.) Presumably
Roy
suggested Helen as illustrator of The
Fault, dear Brutus, and Shirley was very pleased with the
collaboration. Through Shirley I made
contact with Liz
Lewis, Roy’s daughter, and
visited
her at her flat, formerly her father’s, in Richmond.
We spent a few hours reminiscing about
her father, but unhappily she had no personal recollections of Rupert. She gave me a letter from Helen, and a 1986
Christmas
card which Helen had made from a linocut.
Since the Gleadows were crossed off the Lewises’ Christmas card
list for
1987, I assume that Helen died that year.
Shirley also told me that the University
of Reading holds an archive
on private
presses, so I went there to read the four boxes of correspondence
concerning
the Keepsake Press. I hoped to find
letters from Roy to
Shirley
suggesting Helen as illustrator, and perhaps letters from Rupert
himself.
To my disappointment I found only
one from Rupert. It was dated 2nd December 1961,
from 33
Cheyne Walk, where Barbara had visited him 16 or 17 years earlier. The letter is about What WeDdid
to Father, a science fiction book written by Roy Lewis
and commercially published in 1960.
“Dear
Roy
I have been
studying WHAT WE DID TO
FATHER in order to see if it could be arranged as a radio
entertainment: if so
it would be of some extra use and value to you, and I think it could be
done. If you have already tried to do
this, would you be kind enough to let me know what the result was; and
if you
have not, would you like to try it or would you have any objection if I
were to
make an arrangement and offer it to the BBC?
It is still my favourite book (except perhaps Elsa the Lioness)
and
certainly should be better known.”
This letter is signed
“Helen and Rupert,” but it is
definitely Rupert’s handwriting.. There is nothing more on this subject. What we
did to father, described as “a very funny comedy about a family of
ape-men
headed by an ambitious father who is hell-bent on ascending the
evolutionary
ladder” was reprinted in 1963 under the title The
Evolution Man, and in 1968 as Once Upon an Ice Age.
Copies
on abebooks are expensive, so presumably it is becoming a collector’s
item.
There are at least two British academic
institutions which study astrology, The Research Group for Critical
Study of
Astrology at Southampton University,
and The Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, part of
the
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University
of Wales, Lampeter. The Director of the Sophia Centre told me
that a couple of years ago someone was trying to sell Gleadow’s papers,
but he
had no record of any correspondence on, or any other recollection of,
the
subject. At least this suggested that
there was still someone about who had known Rupert, so my next move was
to get
a copy of his Will – in England
all wills are in the public domain. Disappointment
again! Effectively Rupert left
everything to his wife. However, it was
pleasing to find that he included a legacy to his daughter, now in her
mid-twenties,
living at Asnieres, a suburb of Paris.
With this my search had to
end. I was really disappointed that all
the good leads I found reached dead ends.
Although Rupert Gleadow was a man of considerable ability, and
one, I
think, with a social conscience, his
talents were never brought to bear on any really serious study, and I
can only
assume that whatever he achieved in his life was not sufficient to
attract high
public regard – Astrology is considered a pseudo-science, and not
generally
highly rated. A pity – he seemed to
start with so much going for him.
One last thought: as far as
predictive astrology goes, whether it was Barbara’s marriage prospects,
the
early downfall of Hitler, the fate of the Social Credit party, or the
outcome
of the 1952 US Presidential Election, Rupert got it spectacularly wrong!
References:
Holt, Hazel & Pym,
Hilary (eds.) A Very Private Eye.
Grafton
Books, 1985
Holt, Hazel. A Lot to Ask: A Life
of Barbara Pym. Abacus Books, 1990.
MSPym149, MSPym150.
Bodleian Library, Oxford
The author wishes to
thank Hazel Holt for permission to
publish this paper, and acknowledges the invaluable assistance of
Shirley
Toulson; Elizabeth Lewis; Dr. Nick Campion, Director of the Sophia
Centre;
Clare Hopkins, Archivist of Trinity College, Oxford; and Colin Harris
and staff
of Special Collections, Bodleian Library.
Yvonne
Cocking is the
archivist of the Barbara Pym Society.