Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Very Private Eye The Diaries Letters And Notebooks Of Barbara Pym by Barbara Pym The reluctant spinster. A Very Private Eye: the Diaries, Letters and Notebooks of Barbara Pym Edited by Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym (Macmillan £12.95) Aheart she was a Betjeman girl (`The tennis-playing, biking girl,The wholly- girl'), eager, enthusiastic, Jolly, jokey, a bit of a tomboy, tremendously interested in everything and everyone, and remained so, in spite of several severe knocks, essentially adapt- able and good-mannered, taking to novel- writing and spinsterhood when romance and lovers proved incompatible with com- fort and pride. Altogether, as the blurb of this autobiographical compendium states, MI 'excellent woman', Barbara Pym pub- lished ten quite delightful, slightly sinister, if light in tone, novels, and enjoyed, three Years before she died in 1980, a literary comeback following 16 years of neglect. book, Very Private Eye is a loving, tender u°0k, a joyful compensation for those of us who did not have the pleasure of knowing her. Pleasure it must have been, because so evidently she was herself spectacularly °Pen to all the pleasures life placed in her a'y, although her natural commonsense d her that pleasures must sadly and often painfully be paid for. One does, of course, wonder what extracts were left out °f these diaries, notebooks and letters, uecause clearly omissions there must be: eertain passages suggest there were darker entries, possibly too grim to be printed — .this stage anyway. Marginal speculation `Its, yet one feels that the jolly girl must, Metaphorically, have bitten her fingernails during long night hours. the Oxford clear divisions define this portrait: Oxford years, the war and the novelist. The prefaces give us some useful back- ground material. Barbara Pym was born on 2 June 1913. Her father was an Oswestry solicitor, himself the illegitimate son of a domestic servant, her mother an ironmon- ger's daughter. Her childhood was one of nannies, books, ponies, hens in the garden, church attendance (Barbara in later years was a devout Anglican); sugar-mice for Christmas and Gilbert and Sullivan. Bar- bara read English at St Hilda's- (1931), and there began the romance of her lifetime with an idealised elegant charmer, Henry Stanley Harvey (Lorenzo in the diary). There had been one chap before, Rupert, with whom first sex was experienced. Henry clearly enjoyed being courted, and in his fashion succumbed. One gets the impression that Barbara took him to bed rather than the other way round. She bought loads of new clothes to impress him, read to him in his bath, and had to endure his closest mate's cynical scrutiny — that of writer-to-be Robert Liddell, known as Jock. 'Putting a brave face on it' was a necessity; 'what a perilous thing happiness is'. It was a case of bonding Barbara's duck to Henry's swan. It was all so delicious, so youthful, so touching and tender. When Henry married, the word 'spinster' went into the diary. That was to be her chosen role, and to show her good nature she kept up a spirited corres- pondence with Henry's wife. Once she had nearly lost her temper: 'I am fed up with the whole business of writing gay, flippant letters to you to see that I didn't really feel that way.' After Henry there were other chaps. As war approaches she notes that 'everything that did happen and didn't quite happen and might still happen' was much on her mind. As a Wren, working in naval censorship, she enjoyed foreign travel and jolly times with dashing naval officers, although a hint of disillusion creeps in. Then began her sad and unsatisfactory affair with Gordon Glover, a married man whose wife lodged with her children in the same house as Barbara. It was the spinster's encounter with a cad, and again she was the loser in the love game. One does wonder whether anyone fell in love with her. There was a fair amount of bouncy sex, much friendship (though not with Glover), yet no fully reciprocated love. She was now writing novels, for 'her 'the happiness' which was to replace the lack of passionate love. Her sadness becomes more out- spoken: 'I will fight for what I want and if I can't have it, then I will have nothing, but NOTHING.' The spinster self-image is now reinforced. She writes to Henry: 'It looks as though you and Jock may get your way and have me as Miss Pym all my life.' So we come to the novelist earning her living at the International African Institute as an editor, settling down, to a shared household with her sister, first in London and later in the country — near Oxford, need one add? The first novels, declared literary by the critics, earned her some money without much help from the pub- lisher-, Cape. In the Sixties, Cape turned down the latest Barbara Pym as being out of fashion, and so she remained for 16 years, enduring refusal after refusal from Hamish Hamilton, Macdonald, Faber, Hodder, Longmans and Michael Joseph, to mention only a few who now should blush with shame. Even so, she went on writing and acquired her best fan in Philip Larkin, whose encouragement sustained and comforted her. It was Alan Maclean, at Macmillan, who had the flair and perception to take on Quartet in Autumn, which was short-listed for the Book- er, a nomination which ensured paper- backs and reprints — even from Cape. She was not one to bear grudges, and she enjoyed the fame of her last three years; nor was she overtly cynical, but her atti- tude was a trifle graver. There had been what might be described as a last love affair with a younger man called Richard: 'I must learn not to take "things" so much to heart and try to understand — don't stop loving (can't), just be there if and when needed.' Henry married again, and remained in touch; they drove to Greece together, a sweet last pain. He came to see her before she died. Never could those Oxford years be forgotten, nor any so cherished. It is possible that her fiction• has been overestimated, since it was so underestim- ated for a time. She lived to know the score: 'Trying to understand people and leaving them alone and being "unselfish" and all that jazz has only the bleakest of rewards — precisely nothing.' Small won- der that her work has a sharp edge to it; she knew what it was like to be sorely wounded. She lived her life as fully as people made it possible for her, and she left behind ten delightful novels. A good . life, it could be so described, of a person open to joy and grief, and A Very Private Eye leaves us with admiration and affec- tion for Miss Pym the reluctant spinster. Barbara Pym’s letters, notebooks and diaries. I posted recently about friends who live nearby and have a lovely secret garden; one lent me some books on my last visit there with Mrs TD. Last month I posted about two of these: the twenty years spent at St Hilary church, Cornwall by the genial and charming Fr Bernard Walke (link HERE), and The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (link HERE). In the garden, presided over by the sphinx-like cats, we discussed the novels of Barbara Pym. My loan of Some Tame Gazelle (link to my post HERE) wasn’t entirely successful, but we all agreed we enjoyed her fiction. In return I was lent A Very Private Eye: the diaries, letters and notebooks of Barbara Pym , edited by Hazel Holt (a friend and long-time colleague of hers at the International African (anthropological) Institute, and BP’s younger sister, Hilary Pym. It’s a highly entertaining, often very funny insight into the mind and thoughts of this novelist. It starts with her early life then Oxford, where she began her undergraduate studies in 1932. She seems to have spent much of this university period in a spin of dizzy romances and social engagements, alternating with assiduous academic work. I admit I skimmed much of this. Much more interesting are the later sections: her war years (she served as a Wren – the women’s royal naval service – with duties including postal censorship) in London and Naples, then her long career at the International African Institute, where she edited anthropological papers. I was surprised by the number of times her heart was broken when love affairs ended badly. Less surprising was the originality, passion and grit she showed in her literary work – she began to write at the age of twenty-two. After six fairly successful novels and minor celebrity as an author, she famously fell out of favour at the start of the swinging sixties. Publishers lost their nerve, and rejected everything she sent them, saying it wouldn’t sell. She was devastated. A long, increasingly friendly and encouraging correspondence with Philip Larkin, who admired her work, boosted her confidence. Eventually they met in person and enjoyed some very Pym-esque teas together. In January 1977 the TLS published a list, chosen by eminent literary figures, of the most under-rated writers of the century. BP was the only living writer to be chosen by two contributors: Larkin and David Cecil – another long- time admirer of her novels. Because of this publicity, and the changing mood of the times, her fiction came into demand again. She was rediscovered. She was delighted to find herself more famous and successful than she’d ever been. Especially when she discovered that her fiction was being taught in American universities. It’s gratifying to see revealed so intimately in her letters, diaries and notebooks, the deep pleasure and spirited pride she felt in her final years when she finally received proper recognition of her literary merit, after those dismal years of disappointment and humiliation. She lived from 1946 in affectionate harmony with her younger sister, Hilary, and some very dubious cats, at first in London, then in the countryside. They ended up in a village which she described in a letter as straight out of Some Tame Gazelle , published many years earlier. She was thrilled to find that village life hadn’t changed that much, even though London had. The title of this anthology of her non-fiction reflects what a private person she was. It’s thanks to the judicious editing and selection of the two editors who knew her so well that we can dip into this charming book and enjoy seeing the vivacity, wit and humanity of this excellent woman from a slightly different perspective from the one gained from reading her novels. View of the shore from where we swam: those are our bags. I’ll append here some pictures taken on Saturday’s seven-mile walk around parts of Helford River and the fields above it. Our new walk app describes the route and places of note on the way. We stopped for a swim at the bottom of the hill, in the salty tidal river, in the refreshingly cool water. I thought the house martins had all migrated south, but there were still a few about that day. The river and open sea from further on in our walk. This is the view from that beach where our bags were, out over the tidal creek. A Very Private Eye : An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters. ‘Could one write a book based on one’s diaries over thirty years? I certainly have enough material,’ wrote Barbara Pym. This book, selected from the diaries, notebooks and letters of this much loved novelist to form a continuous narrative, is indeed a unique autobiography, providing a privileged insight into a writer’s mind. Philip Larkin wrote that Barbara Pym had ‘a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies of everyday life’. Her autobiography amply demonstrates this, as it traces her life from exuberant times at Oxford in the thirties, through the war when, scarred by an unhappy love affair, she joined the WRNS, to the published novelist of the fifties. It also deals with the long period when her novels were out of fashion and no one would publish them, her rediscovering in 1977, and the triumphant success of her last few years. It is now possible to describe a place, situation or person as ‘very Barbara Pym’. A Very Private Eye , at once funny and moving, shows the variety and depth of her own story. Barbara Pym. Barbara Pym (Barbara Mary Crampton Pym; June 2, 1913 – January 11, 1980) was a British author whose novels explored manners and morals in village life with a subtle, understated wit. She published nine novels in her lifetime and four books were published posthumously. Tweed skirts and peach halves, knitted socks and tea kettles, macaroni cheese and old books: Barbara Pym has become known for her novels about the small comforts of mid-twentieth-century Englishwomen’s daily lives. Much as Belinda turns the conversation to lighter topics in Barbara Pym’s first published novel, Some Tame Gazelle (1950), to avoid argument and taking things too seriously, Pym’s fiction appears to focus on lighter matters. She appears to be concerned with whether to serve a rich fruit cake or a cake with a coffee icing or with who knits socks for whom, but these details reveal deeper truths about how people forge and maintain connections, and what happens when those efforts fail and people live solitary lives. Upbringing and education. Born in the small market town of Oswestry, in Shropshire, her father, Frederic Crampton Pym, belonged to a professional class, as a lawyer in a firm of solicitors. Her mother, Irena Thomas, was the assistant organist at the church they attended and was a handsome, “tomboyish” woman, according to Hazel Holt, friend and co-worker (and, later, the literary executor of Barbara Pym’s will). At the age of twelve, Pym attended Huyton College in Liverpool, a boarding school for girls. There she read Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow and determined that she would become a writer. Holt recalls her early creative work, at the age of sixteen, as “respectable but adolescent”. From 1931 to 1934, she studied at St. Hilda’s College (Oxford) graduating with a BA (Honors) in English. In A Mind at Ease , Robert Liddell recalls her as a student: a “cheerful, romantic outgoing girl of just nineteen, playfully flirtatious, whose interest in men was keen but not obsessive.” She met her steadiest love interest there, in 1932: Henry Harvey, who later married (and divorced) another woman, Elsie Godenhjelm. She had a string of suitors but, according to Holt, she tended to pursue “safe” romances. A Young Writer at War and at Work. From 1934 to 1939, Pym was living at home and reading widely. She particularly loved poetry and describes in “Finding a Voice” her discovery of Elizabeth von Arnim as a revelation (particularly The Enchanted April and The Pastor’s Wife ), for von Arnim’s “dry, unsentimental treatment of the relationship between men and women.” Other writers she considered influential included Ivy Compton-Burnett (for her “precise, formal conversation”), John Betjeman (for his “glorifying of ordinary things and buildings”), Gertrude Trevelyan (for Hothouse , which made her long to write an Oxford novel), and Denton Welch (for Maiden Voyage , which reflects his “acute miniaturist observation and vibrant interest in everything he saw”). Early in the war years, Pym helped her mother care for six children who had been evacuated from Birkenhead. Shortly afterward, she volunteered at the local YMCA camp for soldiers and then began working at the Postal and Telegraph Censorship in Bristol, which suited her inquisitive personality. She joined the Women’s Royal Navy Service in 1940 and travelled to Naples, where she served as an officer (an experience characterized by nightly cocktail parties and minor romances, Holt explains). After the war and following her mother’s death from cancer, Pym began work at an anthropological foundation – the International African Institute – in 1946. Just two years later, she was promoted to the position of research assistant there. She was writing in the evenings and on weekends, continuing work on the draft she began after graduation, a novel about two middle-aged sisters sharing a home. Early publications: a subtle world-building. Drawing on her relationship with her younger sister, Hilary, Pym published Some Tame Gazelle in 1950, which considered the youth and middle years of Harriet and Belinda Bede. Straight away readers recognize the importance of church personnel in the lives of these women, which reflected Pym’s younger years, in which much of the family’s social life revolved around the church calendar. Church men come for tea and stay for cake – and an occasional nap. As Belinda observes: “Of course, if the Archdeacon had not been asleep, she could have had some conversation within, but it was nice to know that he felt really at home, and she would not for the world have had him any different.” These are not idealized, sacred figures: their religiosity takes a back seat to their main-dish and dessert preferences. Pym published three more novels in quick succession ( Excellent Women in 1952, Jane and Prudence in 1953, and Less than Angels in 1955) before she was promoted to editorial secretary and assistant editor of Africa (a quarterly publication of the anthropological institute) in 1958. That same year she published A Glass of Blessings , notable for its unambiguously gay characters and for its reference of a character in her previous novel, illuminating a subtle world-building designed to please her growing body of readers. Her work at the International African Institute fueled her interest in the worlds of academics and anthropologists: people studying people. In “The Quest for a Career,” Constance Malloy describes how Pym and Hazel Holt would invent “home lives” and “field lives” for their co-workers. Holt describes Pym’s working years from 1946 to 1974, in “The Novelist in the Field” and explains that only “occasionally, when she had an idea or when things were a little slack, she would write a bit of a novel in the office”. Pym chose to work from 10 am to 6 pm in the offices in St. Dunstan’s Chambers, so that she could avoid the 5 o’clock rush on the subway, so it’s easy to imagine that there were a few slack evenings while her colleagues were already en route in the crowds. A disruption and renewed recognition. After her next novel, No Fond Return of Love (1961), which Holt believes to contain the most Pym-like character of all (Dulcie), Pym’s publisher lost interest in her work. Rejections accumulated and concerns about salability surfaced. She continued to write for her own satisfaction, but even after finishing three complete drafts, publishers kept their distance. In the interim, she was diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer and she suffered a minor stroke. Still, she wrote. “Often she would get out one of the spiral-backed notebooks in which she recorded her observations and make a note of something that had caught her attention,” Holt remarked. In 1977, in a special issue of the Times Literary Supplement which considered the “most underrated writer” of the previous 75 years, two writers, Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil, named Barbara Pym. Larkin wrote, “I’d sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen.” Publishers’ interest was renewed and her public work resumed with A Quartet in Autumn (1977). Her books still considered anthropology and the church and also reflected her developing interests in local history and healthcare. Of these later novels, Holt refers to Letty’s character in Quartet in Autumn as the closest to Pym, as she was in the early 1960s. It was followed by The Sweet Dove Died (1978) and A Few Green Leaves (1979). Barbara Pym’s legacy and posthumous publications. In a letter to a friend in 1976, Pym commented: “And what could be more mundane than trying to type a novel.” (This is quoted in Deborah Donato’s Reading Barbara Pym .) Pym was not aiming to chronicle the lives of extraordinary adventurers. As Shirley Hazzard describes it: “She is herself the poet of the lonely, the virtuous, the ironic; of the unostentatiously intelligent and witty; of the angelically self-effacing, with their diabolically clear gaze. Nothing escapes such persons; and they escape nothing.” The novels published in her lifetime are considered the Pym canon, with many devotees citing Excellent Women as their entry-point or favorite. Four additional works were published posthumously – An Unsuitable Attachment (1982), Crampton Hodnet (1985), An Academic Question (1986) and Civil to Strangers (1987) – and excerpts from her diaries and letters were published as A Very Private Eye (1984). Pym was often compared to Jane Austen for her comedies of manner; she was called Britain’s “other Jane Austen” or “new Jane Austen.” “Barbara Pym, the midcentury English novelist, is forever being forgotten, and forever revived. Her novels sketch a circumscribed scene whose anchors were the church and the vicarage, and the busy, decent Englishmen and -women (more women) who shuffled between the two. To read her, one must have an appetite for endless jumble sales and whist drives, and the interfering wisdom of dowagers and distressed gentlewomen.” Barbara Pym died in Oxford on January 11, 1980, at the age of sixty-seven. Contributed by Marcie McCauley , a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and the Humber College Creative Writing Program. She writes and reads (mostly women writers!) in Toronto, Canada. And she chats about it on Buried In Print and @buriedinprint . The Toronto Public Library played a vitally important role in the research for this piece, including assistance from the staff, in particular Leigh Turina and her onsite colleagues. More about Barbara Pym. On this site. Major Works. Some Tame Gazelle (1950) Excellent Women (1952) Jane and Prudence (1953) Less than Angels (1955) A Glass of Blessings (1958) No Fond Return of Love (1961) Quartet in Autumn (1977) The Sweet Dove Died (1978) A Few Green Leaves (1980) An Unsuitable Attachment (written 1963; published posthumously, 1982) Crampton Hodnet (written around 1940, published posthumously, 1985) An Academic Question (written 1970–72; published posthumously, 1986) Civil to Strangers (written 1936; published posthumously, 1987) Biographies. A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym by Hazel Holt (1990) Barbara Pym: A Very Private Eye by Barbara Pym (1984) A la Pym: The Barbara Pym Cookery Book by Hilary Pym and Honor Wyatt (1995) More information and sources. The Barbara Pym Society Marvelous Spinster Barbara Pym At 100 Barbara Pym and the New Spinster In Praise of Barbara Pym BBC’s Desert Island Discs with Barbara Pym in 1978 An Experiment with the Barbara Pym Cookbook Wikipedia Reader discussion of Pym’s work on Goodreads. *This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing! Pym, Barbara; Holt, Hazel; Hilary Pym, Editors. A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters. Barbara Pym; Hazel Holt [Editor]; Hilary Pym [Editor]; Published by E P Dutton (1984) From: London Bridge Books (London, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Fair. Seller Inventory # 0525242341-4-17468348. A VERY PRIVATE EYE. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN DIARIES AND LETTERS. Barbara Pym. Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym, editors. Published by E P Dutton (1984) From: Claras (East Hoathly, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardback published by E. P.Dutton, 1984. Very minor foxing on page edges. Good condition with dustwrapper, the spine of which is faded. [Ref: LC]. Seller Inventory # 323692. A Very Private Eye: The Diaries, Letters and Notebooks of Barbara Pym Barbara Pym; Hazel Holt; Hilary Pym and Jilly Cooper. Barbara Pym; Hazel Holt [Editor]; Hilary Pym [Editor]; Jilly Cooper [Foreword]; Published by Papermac (Do Not Use) (1994) From: Re-Read Ltd (Doncaster, United Kingdom) About this Item: Paperback. Condition: Good. Book is in good condition. All pages are unmarked and intact. Seller Inventory # G0112052. A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters. Barbara Pym; Hazel Holt [Editor]; Hilary Pym [Editor]; Published by E P Dutton (1984) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Collectible: Very Good. Stated First Edition; Very clean sturdy unmarked hardcover copy with dust jacket; some wear to dust jacket; some spotting on top of page edges EH. Seller Inventory # D9000. A Very Private Eye : An Autobiography in Diaries & Letters. Pym, Barbara; Holt, Hazel (editor); Holt, Hilary (editor) Published by Dutton/Plume, New York, NY, U.S.A. (1984) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good Plus. First Edition. Seller Inventory # 002032. A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters. Barbara Pym; Hazel Holt [Editor]; Hilary Pym [Editor]; Published by E P Dutton (1984) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Good. No guarantee that access code has not been previously used or that CD is included. Moderate dirt wear, wrinkling or creasing on cover or spine, good binding, moderate writing/highlighting. Used book stickers, residue, or marker may be on cover or edges of book. Seller Inventory # 0525242341-3.