Another voice

Is trifle sufficient?

Auberon Waugh

ur heroic ages produce poets,' said a Daily Telegraph leader mourning the death of John Betjeman. 'Ours is an unheroic age, so we need poets to match. We could have done much worse than BET- JEMAN, who loved the human race and the built forms in which it expressed its per- sonality ....

`No poet since KIPLING has done anything like so much to shape our thoughtways. He has gone, but something of him remains in us, as we view our sur- roundings with his eyes. Moreover, thanks to him, we now think of "Victorian" not as an epithet but as a heritage.'

Oh dear. It is rather a dirty trick, I sup- pose, to resurrect this surprisingly boorish and illiterate leader — no doubt intended well, quite possibly dashed off late at night under pressure of a deadline — to illustrate the inadequacy of our unheroic age to mark the passing of one of its very few heroes certainly its only knight with the slightest claim to have worn shining armour. In France less important writers than Bet- jeman are given state funerals. Streets, squares, whole new towns are named after them, although this last honour might, perhaps, be inappropriate in Betjeman's case.

Oh why do people waste their breath Inventing dainty names for death? We die; that's that; our flesh decays Or disappears in other ways.

But since we're Christians we believe That we new bodies will receive.

Betjeman was always dissatisfied with his earthly body. It was never an appropriate vehicle for the exuberance of his emotional passions: Little alas to you I mean For I am old and bald and green.

Or again: My head is bald, my breath is bad Unshaven is my chin I have not now the joys I had When I was young in sin.

A happier age than our own would build him a huge marble memorial in the baroque taste, showing his resurrected body, all flax- en curls and cherubic wings, ascending to heaven from the swamps of Lust, Doubt, Melancholy and Despair: 0 whip the dogs away my Lord They make me ill with lust.

Bend bare knees down to pray, my Lord, Teach sulky lips to say, my Lord, That flaxen hair is dust. Of all the odd sentiments to be found in that Daily Telegraph leader, the oddest is surely in the glib statement that Sir John Betjeman loved the human race. Of all the people I have ever known, I would say that he was the one who detested the human race most completely. He loved its humour, its fantasies, its occasional aspirations towards nobility, but I suspect it was his detestation of the human race in almost every other manifestation which drove him on his desperate quest towards religious certainty, towards the cosy, unquestioning acceptance of a benign God, revealed through stained glass windows, Early English arches and the ringing of church bells, which he supposed to be in the giving of the Church of England. If ever he could have convinced himself of its truth, he would have found that peace which passeth all understanding. But he couldn't, and he didn't.

Throughout his religious poems there runs the theme that none of it may be true. The debate within himself is endless and tortured; one can easily interpret his entire artistic career as the struggle to stifle these doubts and relapse into cosiness. Compare his poem on Christmas (from A Few Late Chrysanthemums, 1954) and his earlier poem, 'Before the Anaesthetic' or 'A Real Fright' (from New Bats in Old Belfries, 1945) with his hymn of praise for the Church of England, 'Septuagesima' (from Church Poems, 1981), Here is Christmas, as seen in A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954): And girls in slacks remember Dad And oafish louts remember Mum And sleepless children's hearts are glad And Christmas-morning bells say "Come!" ...

And is it true? And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained glass window's hue, A Baby in an Ox's stall? ...

That, it must be remembered, was writ- ten almost a decade after 'A Real Fright': I, breathing for a moment, see Death wing himself away from me And think, as on this bed I lie, Is it extinction when I die? ... St Giles's bells are asking now "And hast thou known the Lord, hast thou? ..."

St Giles's bells they hear me call I never knew the Lord at all. Oh not in me your Saviour dwells You ancient, rich St Giles's bells. Illuminated missals — spires Wide screens and decorated quires All these I loved, and on my knees I thanked myself for knowing these And watched the morning sunlight pass Through richly stained Victorian gjass And in the colour-shafted air

I, kneeling, thought the Lord was there' Now, lying in the gathering mist I know that Lord did not exist.

Compare this to the deliberate an

c1 almost later poem, avowed relapse Thribb in his A somewhat unattractive time Which hardly lends itself to rhyme. But still it gives the chance to me To praise our dear old C of E. So other churches please forgive Lines on the Church in which I live, The Church of England of my birth The kindest Church to me on earth. There may be those who like things full); Argued out and call you "woolly" • • ' Well, let them be so, but for me There's refuge in the C. of E. And when it comes that I must die I hope the Vicar's standing by • • • And at that time may I receive The Grace most firmly to believe For if the Christian's Faith's untrue What is the point of me and you? As we- all know, he died in his sleep, at home, and not in any cottage hospital. would be too much for those of us wh°1°VI` ., ed him if we had to suppose that he died, he had lived, tormented by the terror to death. On the face of it, he might seeal have recovered completely from his Re: Fright, except that I doubt if he ever 9_111, reached that cosy state. Just as his C"""- tianity expressed itself in a fixed determia.a: tion to be kind to the human race I?: detested for its meanness, its greed and cruelty, to show a jolly face to the wool when he was at his most melanchoiY, s° am almost certain he decided to affects cosy certainty in religion which he w" never My within se miles of feeling. purpo in this disquisition is not simply to argue that Betjeman was a gutr-„') kind and possibly saintly man, but also te suggest that his concerns were of ul°1 universal interest than anybody has yet Sligai gested. Far from being a minor poet of loe and temporary appeal, a genial light w so has unfortunately gone out in the waY many genial lights are liable to do, like dealt old Buffy Frobisher, I would suggestttha his light may well go on burning wih fiercer brightness as the years go IV- would certainly imagine that his poetry wl" be being read with pleasure and Profit long after the dimmest provincial university ha finally cleared its shelves of Eliot, Pound and Auden. He may have lacked Shakespeare's i.0: tellectual rigour and breadth of vision, .115 may have written nothing to compare Keats's Odes and may never have attamn"is the benign serenity of Wodehouse, hut h, greats tes may a hyde twper prove thoe seh among ter fools for not having seen it. niwnlieth: