{"id":15357,"date":"2023-06-27T12:17:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T11:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=15357"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:17:00","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T11:17:00","slug":"john-betjemans-love-affair-with-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2023\/06\/27\/john-betjemans-love-affair-with-ireland\/","title":{"rendered":"John Betjeman’s Love Affair with Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The colourful humourist and English poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) is the subject of Dominic Moseley\u2019s Betjeman in Ireland<\/em><\/a><\/span> (Somerville Press, 2023), which is lavishly illustrated with photographs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Betjeman, who took his teddy bear, Alfie with him to Oxford in 1925 was the inspiration for the character of Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh\u2019s Brideshead Revisited<\/em>. Posted to Dublin as press attach\u00e9 in the British Embassy during World War II from early 1941 to autumn 1943, his love affair with Ireland had begun two decades earlier in Oxford. There he met, and had a unique affinity with, the remnants of the Irish Ascendancy in all their fading glory. Chief among them was Edward Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford who lived in what is now, Tullynally Castle in Co. Westmeath. It was Pakenham who first brought Betjeman to Ireland in 1925.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Betjeman nourished an abiding fascination with Ireland from his Oxford days, especially the Irish Aristocracy \u2013 the more eccentric the better. He declared his \u2018particular\u2019 fondness for \u2018people who had gone to seed\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Others in the roll call of Betjeman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

It was through such aristocrats that Betjeman got his first taste of Ireland and when he arrived in Dublin as press attach\u00e9 in 1941, whereupon he immersed himself further into that circle. Described affectionately by Moseley as \u2018an ambitious social alpinist\u2019 who \u2018dearly loved a lord and lady\u2019 he shamelessly cultivated them. Indeed, his enthusiasm for the Irish upper crust bordered on sycophantic.<\/p>\n

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 \u2018having had more sex.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was possibly because of Betjeman\u2019s popularity among Ireland\u2019s Ascendancy he was chosen as press attach\u00e9. He soon became an instant hit among the literati of the Palace Bar, on Fleet Street in Dublin. This helped fulfil his mission \u2018to ameliorate the anti-Irish tone of British press and to dilute the anti-English sentiments of the Irish press.\u2019<\/p>\n

In the Palace Bar the influential editor of the Irish Times, RM Smyllie \u2018held court\u2019 among a wide audience. Betjeman charmed a formidable array of artists and writers such as Sean O\u2019Faolain, Frank O\u2019Connor, Brinsley MacNamara, Flann O\u2019Brien, Patrick Kavanagh<\/a><\/span>, 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.<\/p>\n

He was no less popular among the artists he befriended such as, Paul Henry, Jack B. Yeats<\/a><\/span>, Harry Kernoff, Sean O\u2019Sullivan and numerous others. This group was \u2018the locus of soft power\u2019 in Ireland and once Betjeman was accepted and esteemed in this circle his success in Ireland was assured.<\/p>\n

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Portrait of Se\u00e1n \u00d3 Faol\u00e1in by Howard Coster, 1930’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ireland could easily have become a strong ally for Germany against Britain. Betjeman had \u2018stepped into a historical minefield with little resources except his natural affability\u2019. He certainly seems to have had a major diplomatic impact, and his friendship with the writer, Elizabeth Bowen \u2013 herself working for the British Ministry of Information<\/a><\/span> and an on-off lover of Sean O\u2019Faolain \u2013 was sure to have helped Betjeman.<\/p>\n

It was Betjeman\u2019s easy charm, wit and affability that made him a huge success in Ireland and his encounters with the Irish politicians of the day, including \u00c9amon de Valera were very successful too: he had a sympathy with the problems posed by partition in the North, but this did not prevent the IRA classifying him, for a time, as a person of \u2018menace\u2019, although the plot to assassinated him was later dropped.<\/p>\n

In 1942, he used his influence to get the English Horizon literary and artistic magazine to do an Irish number, featuring among others, Sean O\u2019Faolain, Frank O\u2019Connor, Patrick Kavanagh and Jack B Yeats.<\/p>\n

What this entertaining page turner underscores is that John Betjeman was first and foremost a gifted poet who \u2018celebrated every aspect of the idea of love\u2019 and was especially \u2018a poet of place whether it be the home counties, Oxford, Ireland or his beloved Cornwall.\u2019<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, he had a particular affinity with, and admiration for, Patrick Kavanagh where a sense of place is always foremost in the latter\u2019s poems.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A major early influence was Goldsmith\u2019s \u2018Deserted Village.\u2019 Betjeman\u2019s passion for place, for architecture, for locations, for churches and old ruins saturates his poems and this is very much the case regarding his most celebrated Irish poem \u2018Ireland With Emily<\/a><\/span>\u2019 where place fuses with his unrequited passion for Emily Hemphill of Tulira Castle in Galway (later to become Emily Villiers-Stuart of Dromana House, Waterford). It is one of his finest and most evocative poems about Ireland.<\/p>\n

Betjeman\u2019s passion for architecture flourished in Ireland too and his love of stately houses often outstripped his passion for their occupants, albeit he later wondered \u2018how many linen sheets in the houses of Ireland received his lustful limbs.\u2019 The combination of place with the erotic in his poems is described as a \u2018potent brew\u2019.<\/p>\n

He waxed erotically about Furness House, Kildare, Shelton Abbey, Wicklow, Woodbrook House, Portarlington, Pakenham Hall, Westmeath and numerous others. Betjeman even learned the Irish language and frequently signed himself Sean O\u2019Betjem\u00e1n. His heart-rending Irish poem \u2018A Lament for Moira McCavendish\u2019 is another fine example of how place and love conflates in a way unique to Betjeman.<\/p>\n

He might, as the author suggest, \u2018have by his association with Elizabeth Cavendish, ascended to the highest rung\u2019 socially but the portrait that emerges in this book is of a complex, flawed but likeable, warm human being with a large-hearted humanity and a unique generosity of spirit. It was that quality that made him the perfect diplomat in Ireland at the time.<\/p>\n

A devout Anglican who feared the afterlife he emerges as the most loveable of \u2018sinners\u2019 in this book. His \u2018Ballad of the Small Town in Ireland\u2019 is likened to a Thomas Moore melody in which he celebrates the ordinary life of fair days, burned barracks, elegant squares, neglected graves, ruined churches and court houses.<\/p>\n

Above all, Betjeman\u2019s pre-eminence as a poet of merit is vigorously reclaimed in this study. The author notes how the \u2018Modernism\u2019 in poetry championed by T.S. Eliot and E.E. Cummings paved the way for an, often \u2018graceless poetry devoid of scansion, rhyme, metre and original thought\u2019.<\/p>\n

As a traditionalist Betjeman is often dismissed as a \u2018trite poet\u2019 and, lamentably, does not feature today on school and college syllabi. None of this takes from the fact that his Collected Poems sold over two million copies and that when he died in 1984, he had been England\u2019s poet laureate for twelve years, from 1972.<\/p>\n

This book is not just an inspirational, charming and entertaining account of Beckett\u2019s time in, and life-long love affair with, Ireland but it is a passionate command to restore him as a major poet of the English language.<\/p>\n

Betjeman In Ireland<\/em> by Dominic Moseley is published in paperback by Somerville Press<\/a><\/span> and costs \u20ac15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The colourful humourist and English poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) is the subject of Dominic Moseley\u2019s Betjeman in Ireland (Somerville Press, 2023), which is lavishly illustrated with photographs. Betjeman, who took his teddy bear, Alfie with him to Oxford in 1925 was the inspiration for the character of Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh\u2019s Brideshead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":15358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[89,319,925,945,946,1163,1164,1349,1454,2104,4459,4922,4926,4927,4928,4929,5667,8221],"class_list":["post-15357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-with","tag-affair","tag-bernadette-gorman-john-betjeman","tag-betjeman-in-ireland-by-dominic-moseley","tag-betjemans","tag-british-spies-in-ireland","tag-british-spies-in-ireland-during-world-war-2","tag-cassandra-voices-bernadette-gorman","tag-cassandra-voices-review","tag-culture","tag-ireland","tag-john","tag-john-betjeman-and-ireland","tag-john-betjeman-cassandra-voices","tag-john-betjeman-in-ireland-spy","tag-john-betjeman-poet-cassandra-voices","tag-love","tag-sean-ofaolain-john-betjeman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}