Literary Highgate: The Betjeman Society, 25 May 2014 Today's title 'Literary Highgate' is, I fear, somewhat misleading for what I have to say to you today. With one notable exception, none of the literary figures I shall talk about actually produced a magnum opus here, and Highgaters lay claim to famous people who, in truth, spent only a little of their lifetimes here. Nevertheless, claim them we do, and we are proud of their connection with us, however slight it may be. Also, I'm going to talk more about the writers and their connection with Highgate than their writings. If you are fanciful enough to believe in ghosts, as I am inclined to do, I hope this afternoon you will get a sense of spirits from the past joining us, to hear themselves brought back from past centuries for your interest and pleasure. I'm going chronologically, starting, unashamedly, with that celebrated author Anon. In fact, with a nursery tale about someone who never got further than the bottom of the Hill, but who is indelibly associated with Highgate. For it was here that a poor boy, way back in the 14th century, heard the sound of the bells of London crying out, 'Turn again, Whittington, Thou worthy citizen, Lord Mayor of London.' You can see a charming statue at the foot of Highgate Hill, not of Sir Richard, as Dick Whittington was to become, but of his legendary cat, just outside the Whittington Hospital. If Dick had managed the stiff pull up the hill, he might never have returned to see if the streets of the City were truly paved with gold, and we might have not had this haunting little rhyme to remember him by. Now we jump nearly 300 years. Round the corner from this Institution you will find a cul de sac called Bacon's Lane, at the side of The Old Hall, a handsome 17th century redbrick house. In 1626 two noted literary figures were travelling together in a coach, and as you might have expected from the great essayist Francis Bacon and the philosopher and scientist Thomas Hobbes, they were deep in speculative conversation. Soon, we are told, 'they were resolved to try an experiment - the possiblity of using snow to preserve meat - and they alighted out of the coach and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate Hill, and bought a fowl, and made the woman exenterate it.' They continued up the Hill with the disembowelled chicken, and in what is now Pond Square they stuffed it full of snow. But in the process, Bacon, now an elderly man of 65, caught a chill, and took shelter in the nearby mansion belonging to Lord Arundel, where the housekeeper tucked him into bed. He wrote to his absent host, 'My very good lord, I was likely to have had the fortune of Caius Pliny the Elder, who lost his life trying an experiment about the burning of Mount Vesuvius, for I was also desirous to try an experiment or two touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well . . . ' Unfortunately, the comparison with the Elder Pliny was 1

all too close, for Bacon, wrapped up in damp sheets according to Aubrey's Brief Lives, caught pneumonia and within three days he was dead. Not a long or happy stay in Highgate, but one we still remember. Highgate was already a refuge for the rich and powerful, easily accessible from London, but a separate place where they could build grand houses in which to retreat from the dirt and noise of the City, especially at times of plague. One who did this in a less ambitious way, and has a more serious claim to Highgate residence, was the poet Andrew Marvell. If you walk up Highgate Hill, you will see a plaque on the wall commemorating a cottage where he is believed to have lived during his time in London. The building was demolished in 1867, but there is a 19th century watercolour of it in the Institution's collection of paintings. Marvell, who originally came from Hull, spent a good deal of time in London. He was known for being an unsociable person, so Highgate was a place where he could, as he wrote to a friend in 1675, 'sequester himself', and be alone. The cottage also stood conveniently next to the high road to the North where the mail coaches passed by. From 1659 to his death in 1678 Marvell acted as agent for Hull Trinity House, a shipmasters' guild. Right across Highgate Hill still stands the impressive Cromwell House, built in 1638 and originally known as The Merchant's House. From its cupola on the roof there is a remarkable view right down the Thames, and from there merchants with their spyglasses could clearly see ships sailing up to the docks. This must have influenced Marvell's choice of domicile, as I am sure he made use of this facility to get the latest shipping information to send up the Great North Road to the traders of Hull. Marvell was also MP for Hull, too busy to publish more than a handful of the poems for which he is now known. Most came before the public only after he died. But next door to the site of the cottage stood - and still stands - Lauderdale House, built in 1582 for a Lord Mayor of London and later home to the first Duke of Lauderdale. In its grounds is a grand sundial commemorating Marvell, below which are engraved lines from his poem The Garden. In those days grand houses had grand gardens, filled with exotic specimens brought from far away by exploring gardeners like the Tradescants and Parkinson of Herbal fame, so I can imagine Marvell taking his ease in this very garden,where '...all the flowers and trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 2

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.' Probably the most famous literary Highgate resident arrived here in 1817, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge came up the Hill in search of a cure for his addiction to opium. He came following a letter of recommendation to a Dr James Gilman who had just set up practice in a family house in Highgate - Moreton House, just a few doors away from here. Coleridge's name was not mentioned in the letter - he was referred to as 'a very learned, but in one respect an unfortunate gentleman . . . who wishes to fix himself in the house of some medical gentleman, who will have courage to refuse him any laudanum, and under whose assistance . . . he may be relieved. As he is desirous of retirement and a garden, I could think of no-one so readily as yourself.' Later Gilman recalled that he had had 'no intention of receiving an inmate into my house,' but within minutes Coleridge had somehow created the impression that Gilman had known him all his life. The famous charm was at work. 'Coleridge asked to come to Highgate immediately, and within 'a few minutes' what normally would have 'cost many hours to arrange' was fixed.' Little did Dr Gilman know that his paying guest was to remain with him for seventeen years! The hoped-for cure was never completely accomplished. Gilman did his best to wean Coleridge off opium, but with the cunning of a true addict Coleridge managed to buy extra doses from the local pharmacist, going round after dark to a side door which can still be seen on the corner of Townsend's Yard. The pharmacist's books clearly record these illicit transactions, as well as the debts Coleridge ran up in the process. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that the poet's life 'changed radically and permanently' under the ministrations of Gilman and his wife Ann. Not all Coleridge's friends were happy about this. Charles Lamb came to visit, and was dismayed when, after a short conversation, he was interrupted by Dr Gilman 'virtually showing him the door.' But he wrote to Wordsworth, 'Coleridge is absent but 4 miles . . . I think his essentials not touched, he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks up another day, and his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Arch angel a little damaged.' Lamb, who knew his old friend very well and clearly missed his company, also wrote, 'Tis enough to be within the whiff and wind of his genius, for us not to possess our souls in quiet.' My heart goes out to the Gilman family who were now living in such a disturbing presence. 3

In these tranquil years Coleridge was able to write again, even though 'something of what Byron would call that "wild originality" was certainly lost.' His Biographia Literaria appeared in 1817, to decidedly mixed reviews. Byron read it in Venice, and quipped, 'Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation I wish he would explain his Explanation.' Sibylline Leaves, another book published the same year, attracted the attention of the young John Keats, then living on the other side of Hampstead Heath. In a letter to his brother George he recounted an unforgettable meeting with Coleridge on the poet's favourite walk, from Highgate Village to the Heath down Millfield Lane: 'I walked with him at his alderman-after-dinner pace for near two miles I suppose. In these two miles he broached a thousand things. - let me see if I can give you a list. - Nightingales, Poetry - on Poetical sensation Metaphysics - Different genera and species of Dreams - Nightmare the difference between Will and Volition - . . . Monsters - the Kraken - Mermaids . . . A Ghost Story - I heard his voice as he came toward me - I heard it as he moved away - I heard it all the interval - if it may be called so.' What a matchless talker Coleridge was. In July 1824 he was coming out of Mr Dunn's pharmacy with Seymour Porter, the assistant who helped him with his secret stash of opium, when they saw a cortege coming up Highgate Hill. It was carrying the body of Lord Byron, on its journey from Missolonghi in Greece to Newstead in Nottinghamshire.Young Porter 'never forgot the spontaneous funeral oration that Coleridge suddenly poured forth in the middle of the pavement. It was 'a strain of marvellous eloquence', lasting not less that a quarter of an hour . . . Porter was greatly moved by Coleridge's sense of Byron's greatness.' In 1823 the Gilmans, and Coleridge with them, had moved to a larger house, No. 3 The Grove, which is a handsome Georgian terrace looking from the back over the Heath to Kenwood House. Coleridge had an upstairs room overlooking this view, where he lived contentedly until his death in 1834. The Grove became a kind of Mecca during Coleridge's lifetime, for he was visited by countless writers and thinkers eager for conversation with the Sage of Highgate. Wordsworth followed Lamb up the Hill, with poet laureate Southey, and later there were Walter Savage Landor and Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, the indefatigable diarist Crabb Robinson and Leigh Hunt. And from across the Atlantic, Ralph Waldo Emerson and an influential Unitarian minister from Boston, William Ellery Channing; he and Coleridge both described their meeting in their respective journals. A fine literary guest list. Next we move to Highgate School, at the very top of the Hill, where another poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was a pupil from 1854 to 1863. 4

Here he was introduced to the works of Keats, which inspired his own earliest poetic efforts. His was an unhappy life, as he struggled to keep his then unacceptable sexual desires under control. At Oxford he was befriended by Robert Bridges, later Poet Laureate, who in a long correspondence encouraged Hopkins' experiments in 'sprung rhythm', and in 1918 collected and published his ground-breaking poetry, bringing to Hopkins huge but sadly posthumous recognition and popularity. I promised you one truly Highgate-born magnum opus, and it may come as a surprise. Erase from your minds 'blue remembered hills' and 'coloured counties', Wenlock Edge and Ludlow Town. A E Housman wrote A Shropshire Lad here in the Village. Byron Cottage on North Hill, where he lodged from 1887 to 1905, boasts a blue plaque commemorating those years, when he was Professor of Latin at University College London. The cherry 'hung with snow' stood not on Bredon Hill but on Hampstead Heath. Housman, himself something of a hermit, was also looking for a retreat. A contemporary description of Highgate at this time spoke of it as having 'that appearance of quietude and sleepiness which one is accustomed to meet with in villages miles away from the busy metropolis.' Poetry was Housman's leisure occupation. In his Leslie Stephen lecture in Cambridge in 1933, on The Name and Nature of Poetry, he described his method of composition: 'Having drunk a pint of beer at luncheon - beer is a sedative to the brain, and my afternoons are the least intellectual portion of my life - I would go out for a walk of two or three hours. As I went along, thinking of nothing in particular, only looking at things around me and following the progress of the seasona, there would flow into my mind, with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza at once, accompanied, not preceded, by a vague notion of the poem they were destined to form part of . . . I happen to remember distinctly the genesis of the piece that stands last in my first volume. Two of the stanzas . . . came into my head . . . while I was crossing the corner of Hampstead Heath between The Spaniard's Inn and the footpath to Temple Fortune. A third stanza came with a little coaxing after tea . . .' Housman was a strange, sardonic man, who was not going to betray in public how passionate he was about the poetry he wrote. He ended his lecture by quoting Coleridge, quite consciously comparing his own Highgate retreat with that of the earlier poet: 'I will not say with him that I recentre my immortal mind in the deep sabbath of meek selfcontent; but I shall go back with relief and thankfulness to my proper job.' - which was editing in the most dry and academic manner Latin authors whose popularity today is far outshone by Housman's apparently casual afternoon compositions. A few minutes' walk brings us to a house on Southwood Lane also sporting a blue plaque, for Mary Kingsley, intrepid explorer and 'New Woman.' Her Travels in West Africa, published in 1897, was a best-seller which gained her vast respect and prestige in the scholarly community, although some papers, including The Times, refused to run reviews, presumably out of some misguided prudery. Further down the same street another blue 5

plaque commemorates Arthur Waley, the man who never went to China, but through his translations of the earliest Oriental poetry opened up a new world of literature to English readers. Here a boy and girl are sent out to pick rushes for thatching; we are in China in the 4th century AD: Green rushes with red shoots, Long leaves bending to the wind You and I in the same boat Plucking rushes at the Five Lakes. We started at dawn from the orchid-island: We rested under the elms till noon. You and I plucking rushes Had not plucked a handful when night came! or this, by Po Chui, who lived fom 772 AD to 846, writing to a friend born in the same year: We are growing old together, you and I; Let us ask ourselves, what is age like? The dull eye is closed ere night comes; The idle head, still uncombed at noon. Propped on a staff, sometimes a walk abroad; Or all day sitting with closed doors. One dares not look in the mirror's polished face; One cannot read small-letter books. Deeper and deeper, one's love of old friends; Fewer and fewer, one's dealings with the young. One thing only, the pleasure of idle talk, Is great as ever, when you and I meet. Back to The Grove. Number 9 was occupied in the 1920s and '30s by a now neglected writer, John Drinkwater. He made his name with a play on Abraham Lincoln in 1919, but as early as 1912 he had been Manager of the burgeoning Birmingham Repertory Theatre, that notable nursery of great actors including Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans and Ralph Richardson. Some of Drinkwater's poems still survive in anthologies, like 'Moonlit Apples' or these charming verses which my mother loved and taught to me: Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed Because a summer evening passed, And little Ariadne cried That summer fancy fell at last To dust, and young Verona died When beauty's hour was overcast. Theirs was the bitterness we know Because the clouds of hawthorn keep So short a state, and kisses go 6

To tombs unfathomably deep, While Rameses and Romeo And little Ariadne sleep. Unfairly forgotten, I think. Drinkwater married the Australian virtuoso violinist Daisy Kennedy after her divorce from the great pianist Benno Moiseiwitch. Her daughter Tanya Moiseiwitch went to school locally (at Channing), and became a leading stage designer, working in the glory days of the Old Vic with Tyrone Guthrie. And Daisy's first cousin's grandson is another violin virtuoso, now living on the opposite side of the Heath. His name is Nigel Kennedy. Number 2 The Grove was home for many years to Yehudi Menuhin. The distinguished lawyer Sir Edward Fry lived in Number 6. He wrote a strongly-worded report in 1884 to Parliament on the need to suppress the Indo-Chinese Opium Trade; I wonder if he was influenced by knowing that that most famous addict Coleridge had lived and died just a few doors away from his own home. Sir Edward's picture hangs in the corridor behind me, as he was President of this Institution in 1872. In 1866 his son Roger was born in Number 6; he grew up to be the Bloomsbury art writer and critic, Roger Fry. Number 3 The Grove has two plaques on it, one to Coleridge and the other to JB Priestley, who bought the house in 1931 and lived here until the end of the Second World War. These were the years when he wrote English Journey, a classic account of contemporary England; also the 'Time' plays recently revived by the National Theatre. Here too Priestley composed The Postscript, which in 1940 and 1941 was the most listened-to item on the wireless after the speeches of Winston Churchill. I seem to have strayed from literary to artistic and celebrity Highgate, but in the 1950s the writer Rumer Godden had a flat in The Old Hall, underneath that of the actress Margaret Rutherford. This house, built on the site of Lord Arundel's mansion where Bacon died, is now owned by film producer and former Python Terry Gilliam. The painter Kyffin Williams headed the Art Department of Highgate School from 1944 to 1973; there is an early painting by him in our Library, near the Betjeman portrait we have on loan from your Society. And at Highgate Junior School, in 1916 T S Eliot did a stint as a prep-school master. Which brings us to the reason you are all here today. John Betjeman was born on the lower slopes of Highgate in 1906, baptised in St Anne's Church and then, in 1909, transported to that delightful house 31 Highgate West Hill. Going 'up the Hill' was of considerable importance to him, as were his early years at the progressive prep school Byron House, much patronised by the professional and intellectual families comfortably settled in what was now a desirable suburb of the capital. Here Betjeman fell in love for the first time - certainly not the last! - with the wonderfully-named Peggy Purey-Cust, and at a children's party in The Grove suffered his first social humiliation : experiences 7

which he recalled with crystal clarity in his verse autobiography Summoned by Bells, and in a sad little poem called False Security. I don't think I ever drive past his house without saying to myself, 'Deeply I loved thee, 31 West Hill!' This single line of verse seems to me a perfect example of Betjeman's poetic style, mixing emotion eloquently expressed with plain, unadorned, down-to-earth fact. He was blessed with a particular mixture of practicality and imagination, rhetoric and realism, together with a special kind of oblique irony and humour. His deeply-felt but wonderfully accessible way of writing brought him love and admiration from all corners of society, and made him the most popular Poet Laureate of our time. In Summoned by Bells he tells of his early dreams as a Highgate child: 'I knew as soon as I could read and write That I must be a poet . . . My father smiled: "And how's our budding bard? Let what you write Be funny, John, and be original." (I think we all agree that he followed his father's advice brilliantly.) 'And so, at sunset, off to Hampstead Heath I went with pencil and with writing-pad And stood tip-toe upon a little hill, Awaiting inspiration from the sky. "Look! There's a poet!", people might exclaim On footpaths near. The muse inspired my pen: The sunset tipped with gold St Michael's church, Shouts of boys bathing came from Highgate Ponds, The elms that hid the houses of the great Rustled with mystery . . . but the lines of verse Came out like parodies of A & M. The gap between my feelings and my skill Was so immense, I wonder I went on.' (Lucky for us that he did!) Betjeman hated Highgate Junior School where he was bullied by boys and by teachers. But he was writing reams of poetry, and in a burst of confidence, he says '. . .I bound my verse into a book, The Best of Betjeman, and handed it To one who, I was told, liked poetry The American master, Mr. Eliot. That dear, good man, with Prufrock in his head And Sweeney waiting to be agonized, I wonder what he thought? He never says When now we meet, across the port and cheese. 8

He looks the same as then, long, lean and pale, Still with the slow deliberating speech And enigmatic answers. At the time A boy called Jelly said "He thinks they're bad" But he himself is still too kind to say.' Betjeman left Highgate to board at the Dragon School in Oxford, but he retained a great affection for the scenes of his early years. Later his keen eye and clever pen were to create a moving portrait of the Highgate of his childhood, hymning its pleasures and amenities and its now long-forgotten social nuances and customs. For him, Highgate had been home, and his parents' move to Chelsea, says his biographer Bevis Hillier, intensified his loneliness when he went back there for the holidays. He 'escaped from the 'poky, dark and cramped house' whenever he could', doubtless longing for the airy freedom of the Heath stretching behind West Hill and the elegant but friendly charm of the Village at the top. So we claim him as a Highgate literary figure, and at the Institution we treasure our Betjeman collection, including of course the famous boater and tie. I believe he would be pleased to see his portrait - praised by his daughter Candida as a speaking likeness hanging in our library for the modern Highgate community to enjoy. I hope you will agree that among our other literary ghosts Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate, is in excellent company up here.

Isabel Raphael Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution

Bibliography Quotations have been taken from: Aubrey's Brief Lives Coleridge: Darker Reflections - Richard Holmes Young Betjeman - Bevis Hillier

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