[Sir] John Betjeman

Life
1906-84 b.[former family name of Betjemann of Dutch descent;] son of London furniture manufacturer in Islington; first lived at Lissenden Gardens, an enclosed N. London and later in Highgate (’glad I did not live in Gospel Oak’), after 1909; and socialiteç ed. Dragon Prep and Marlborough , where he was a contemp. of Lousi MacNeice; schools; fnd. The Heretick, an anti-sports magazine; adopted High Anglicanism, influenced by Arthur Machen; entered Magdalen Coll., Oxford, Oxford with difficulty around Maths 1925; ungratefully taught by C. S. Lewis who called him a ’little prig’ and who later played a part in his failure to qualify albeit in the Pass School - having trouble with everything but English lit.; made friends with Maurice Bowra and contrib. to Isis; ed. Cherwell, the student paper, during 1927; accompanied by his teddy-bear Archibald Ormsby Gore - remembered by Waugh in Brideshead Revisited (1925); met Edward Pakenham (Lord Longford) and discovered the world of ‘seedy’ Irish aristocracy; first arrived in Ireland in 1925 as Longford’s guest at Pakenham Hall [now Tullynally Castle], Co. Westmeath; sometime penpal of Alfred Douglas (Wilde’s Bosie); he left Oxford without a degree and a detestation of Lewis; m. Penelope Chetwode, dg. of a titled Field-Mashall, with whom two children; lived in Berkshire; served as churchwarden at Uffington, Oxford, and restored the church; developed the Shell Guides to Britain with Jack Beddington, published by the Architectural Press;

worked on films in Minister of Information in World War II, as unfit for military service, and served as press attaché to John Maffey at the British Embassy in Dublin, 1941-43 - intended to counter Irish support for Germany in Ireland and possibly spy on their supporters; he displayed growing Irish sympathy and established many connections amid the remaining Anglo-Irish gentry whose homes he treated alternately with admiration and affectionate ridicule, remarking on dilapidated Georgian country houses and the misguided burning of some of them; befriended Patrick Kavanagh who celebrated the birth of his dg. Candida in a poem; wrote “The Irish Unionist’s Farewell to Gretta Hellstrom in 1922”, based on his friendship with Emily Sears (later m. Ion Villiers-Stuart of Dromona House, nr. Cappoquin), whom met in Ireland in Waterford; moved to post in publicity for the Admiralty, 1944; an IRA plan to assassinate him was abandoned as his real character became better understood; the Irish govt. gave a farewell dinner at his departure; his increasingly estranged wife Penelope converted to Catholicism; Betjeman met his life-long mistress and muse, 20 yr-old Elizabeth Cavendish of Lismore Castle in 1951, in 1951;

fnd.-member of the Victorian Society in 1958 during attempt to save St. Pancras Station and other buildings in Britain; his Collected Poems 9155) sold half-a-million copies; made Metro-land for the BBC in 1973 (dir. Edward Mirzoeff), and based on his longer poem [‘Child of the First War, forgotten by the Second, / We called you Metro-land. We laid our schemes / Lured by the lush brochure, down byways beckoned ...’]; later made A Passion for Churches with the same director; also The Queen’s Realm, an aerial anthology of English landscape, at the Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee; appt. poet laureate, 1972; served as long-term trustee and sometime Vice-President of the Bath Preservation Trust, campaigning against demolition and modernisation in that and other British cities such as Leeds; made John Betjeman’s Dublin for BBC (1979);

Betjeman suffered from Parkinson’s diseased in later years and d. at home in Trebetherick, Cornwall, 19 May 1984, and bur. in St. Enodoc’s Church; he was a believer in ghosts as well as the ethereal quality of buildings and household objects (‘seaside lodgings, the bicycle and the harmonium’, acc. Auden); his Irish-related works incl. Ghastly Good Taste and poems such as “Netterville, Netterville ...” (Co. Meath) and "Ireland with Emily" - named for Emily Hemphill of Tulira Castle, Co. Galway; he also wrote a study of Francis Semple, the architect of Austin Clarke’s Black Church and other noted Irish buildings including the GPO and St John’s Catholic Church in Coleraine (Co. L’Derry). ODNB OCEL

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Criticism
Dominic Moseley’s Betjeman in Ireland (Somerville Press 2023), 160pp. See also See Maurice Craig’s Dublin 1660-1860 (1969), and refs. in Mark Bence-Jones’s Twilight of the Ascendancy (1987), and Eunan O’Halpin, Spying on Ireland: British Intelligence and Irish Neutrality  (OUP 2008), 380pp.;

Frank O’Connor selects Betjeman’s “Sunday in Ireland”, in O’Connor, ed., A Book of Ireland (London: Collins 1960; &c.), p.27-28 [often treated as a song].

Note: Betjeman is a leading character in Arthur O‘Riordan‘s Improbably Frequency (Dublin Th. Festival 2004), a musical drama on Erwin Schrödinger et al. in Emergency Ireland [World War II], and is treated at some length in Robert Cole, Propaganda, Censorship and Irish Neutrality in the Second World War [International Communications] (Edinburgh UP 2006) and Clair Wills, That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War (London: Faber & Faber 2007).

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Commentary
Bernard Adams, Denis Johnson (Lilliput Press 2002), writes: ‘John Betjeman (who had now “gone native” to the extent of opening and closing his letters from the British Embassy in Irish) write to the Controller of Programmes in London advocating a looser rein for Johnston’ (p.211); further: ‘Betjeman had taken to calling himself “Seán”.’ (p.213.) Note: In Dominic Moseley, op. cit., (2023), he is recorded as signing off his letters, ‘‘le meas mór, do chara dhílis, Seán Ó Betjemán’.’

Bernadette Gorman, review of Dominic Moseley, John Betjeman, in Cassandra Voices (27 June 2023) ‘[...]Betjeman first visited Ireland in 1925 as an Oxford undergrad. having met Edward Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford, at University - which he atten: ’[ded in company with his teddy-bear ..., and was entranced by the country. He was to pay frequent visits over the next five decades, staying in stately homes, and making enduring friendships, these decades included nearly three years as Press Attaché to the British mission to Dublin during the Second World War. Several of his best known poems, written long before he became a knighted Poet Laureate, are set in Ireland. Betjeman in Ireland describes his fascination with Ireland through a series of often inter-linked themes: his love of the Irish countryside, particularly the overlooked Midland Counties, the mansions and the ruined mansions, the eccentricities of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, life among writers in Dublin, his poetry, and, of course, his many love affairs. The book brings to life this charming and complex man and his relationship with Ireland, with the same light-hearted touch which characterises his poetry.’

Further: ‘An unapologetic social climber, Betjeman was the son of a furniture manufacturer from North London. Yet he was often ridiculed for his remorseless snobbery and his upwardly mobile pursuits. He finally enrolled in Magdalen College, Oxford after some difficulty in 1925, and it was in Oxford he met influential people such as C. S. Lewis and Maurice Bowra and Evelyn Waugh but also members of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy who held a unique charm for him and with whom he formed a special bond. Indeed, his road to social success seems to have been through the back door of the Irish Ascendancy.

‘Others in the roll-call of Betjeman’s Irish friends were Lord Rosse of Birr Castle, Basil Ava of Clandeboy House, Co Down Northern Ireland. His life-long love affair with Ireland was cemented in 1951 when, aged forty-six, he met the twenty-year-old Elizabeth Cavendish of Lismore Castle, who became his lifelong mistress and muse, causing occasional, great misery to his aristocratic wife Penelope. [...] Moseley chronicles an awesome litany of love affairs, flirtations and dalliances indulged in by Betjeman. But this larger than life, affable, and energetic figure could still say, incredibly, in later life that the one regret he had was not ‘having had more sex.’

‘It was possibly because of Betjeman’s popularity among Ireland’s Ascendancy he was chosen as press attaché. He soon became an instant hit among the literati of the Palace Bar, on Fleet Street in Dublin. This helped fulfil his mission ‘to ameliorate the anti-Irish tone of British press and to dilute the anti-English sentiments of the Irish press.’

In the Palace Bar the influential editor of the Irish Times, RM Smyllie ‘held court’ among a wide audience. Betjeman charmed a formidable array of artists and writers such as Sean O’Faolain, Frank O’Connor, Brinsley MacNamara, Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, Austin Clarke, Terence de Vere White, Maurice Craig, Cyril Cusack and numerous others from the world of literature who also wielded a lot of influence.

‘He was no less popular among the artists he befriended such as, Paul Henry, Jack B. Yeats, Harry Kernoff, Sean O’Sullivan and numerous others. This group was ‘the locus of soft power’ in Ireland and once Betjeman was accepted and esteemed in this circle his success in Ireland was assured. (See Cassandra Voices, online; accessed 13.07.2023).

Quotations

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