Silly Little Country

Joan Jackson, RIP

Of her, John Betjeman said:

She had bright cheeks, clear sun-burned skin, darting brown eyes, a shock of hair and happy smile. Her figure was a dream of strength and beauty.

And he made that dream the wonderfully nutty and very English poem "A Subaltern's Love Song", that features this wonderful combination of restraint and sense of detail informed by lust (note that they are in a car, and that she is on the right emphasizes that it is she driving the car).

And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice,

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

From the Telegraph obituary for this muse:

He was unable to attend her wedding to Harold Wycliffe Jackson, a Ministry of Information civil servant, in January 1945. But in September Betjeman hastily got in touch to ask if she minded if the poem was published in his collection, New Bats in Old Belfries. She assured him there was no objection, but asked for her name to be taken out of capital letters in the last line.

Some three years later Betjeman described her in a letter to the illustrator Roland Pym as "a lovely sturdy creole type girl with curly hair and strong arms and strapping frame and jolly smile and soft laughing voice, a girl to lean against for life and die adoring".

and

Since Betjeman was liberal with his affections, speculation about the relationship with his muse persisted over the years, not least when she attended Betjeman's memorial service in 1984.

But Joan Jackson took little notice, neither saying she was proud to have become his muse nor considering it a joke. She told one of her sons that Betjeman was married, and added: "I was in love with Dad."

Labels: john betjeman joan hunter dunn subaltern love

posted by Alan Adamson @ 3:14 PM