JOAN BARTON

 

JOAN BARTON
POET AND BOOKSELLER
By
BARRY VAN-ASTEN

‘Ghost dogs in the vanishing gardens’

[Lot 304: Various Books]

 

 

Having recently discovered the poetry of Joan Barton, I have become captivated by her work and find it inconceivable that she is not more widely known*. Her poems, like that other great poet, John Betjeman, seem to capture the fading essence of middle class sensibilities, the grandeur and decline of the once great mansions; there is a real sense of melancholy for that old world which following the First World War was eroding away and all but disappeared after the second war; the romance and mystery that existed before the swallowing-up of small villages and the strangling effects of the motor car; the abundance of concrete tower blocks devoid of character and architectural beauty…nature tamed and eventually despoiled and polluted. Barton’s world is that of Betjeman’s suburban sprawl and Larkin’s commonplace book-lined sanctuary, and that place that calls to us seemingly from afar – the cemetery, where we encounter the ‘unloved unvisited dead’. But Barton was not born into a wealthy middle-class family; life for the Barton’s was hard, although they were certainly not poor. Joan tells us in Women Writers Talking (1983) interviewed by Janet Todd (p. 197) that her ‘parents never had a bean, but people were so stupid then – they tried to keep up a face. I was the eldest of three children and was terribly jealous of my brother who was only about fourteen months younger and important because he was a boy. I’ve been very influenced by this jealousy. My sister was nearly five years younger than I was and very pretty; I was always the plain, difficult one. I don’t think Joan will ever get married, was my mother’s attitude. I was fairly, though not extremely, close to my sister – she died when she was fifty-one. There’s no one left.’

Joan Barton was born on 6^th February 1908, at Melville Road, Redland, Bristol. She was the first-born child of her parents, Francis Henry Barton (1871-1951) and Eleanor Rose Padmore (1877-1951) who were married at St. Saviours Church in Bristol on 24^th May 1904 (1). Her father, Francis or ‘Frank’ as he liked to be known, was the son of Henry Francis Barton (1840-1914) and Elizabeth Lyon (1834-1914) who were married in Clifton on 31^st October 1861 (2); Frank was a picture-frame maker, as can be seen in the 1901 census and at the time of his marriage four years later, his occupation is given as ‘picture dealer’ living at 12, Collingwood Road, Bristol.

Joan’s mother, Eleanor Rose Padmore was born in Clifton in 1877 (she was Christened at Tyndall’s Park, St. Mary’s, Gloucestershire on 7^th January that year) and she is the daughter of John Padmore (1839-1923) who was born in Eyton, Shropshire, and Julia Powell (1840-1920), born Albrighton, Shropshire (and Christened there on 31^st May 1840); John Padmore, who was a Station Master at Clifton Down Railway Station from 1874-1899, and Julia were married in Kings Norton in 1863 (3)

The following year after Joan’s birth, on 17^th April 1909, Joan’s brother, Gerald Francis Barton was born (4) and the last child, Joan’s sister, Olive Sylvia Barton, was born in Bristol in 1912 (5).

Joan’s father, Frank, seems to have been a successful art dealer and picture-frame maker, and was the Managing Director of the firm, Barton & Long, Ltd. which had their premises at 84, Whiteladies Road, Redland, Bristol. On the ground floor was the little gallery which exhibited pictures – in March-April 1916 they exhibited the war cartoons of Dutch artist Louis Raemaekers (1869-1956). I have found business advertisements from 1906 relating to the gallery and 1916 for Barton & Long, art dealers who specialised in picture framing and making, prints, stencilling, gilding, restoring and artist’s colourmen. The ads continued up until the premises at 84, Whiteladies Road became The Clifton Bookshop on 14^th June 1965; the bookshop was originally the book department of Harold Hockey, Ltd. of 170-174 Whiteladies Road which moved to the new address; the old address continued to supply stationary.

‘I went to a little dame school and then a council school which was terrifying.’ [Women Writers Talking. p. 197] In 1919, aged 11, Joan won a scholarship to the distinguished Colston’s Girls’ School, Cheltenham Road, Montpelier, Bristol, where she had a ‘marvellous English teacher’ and became ‘Head Girl’; the school was governed by the Scottish Headmistress, Miss Beatrice Margaret Sparks (1877-1953) of St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (1894-97) who had been Headmistress of Wisbech High School from 1905-1913, and then Colsten’s from 1914 to September 1922 when she became Principle of Cheltenham Ladies’ College until retiring in 1936. Colsten’s was then governed by Headmistress, Miss Helen Drew of Oxford High School and Newnham College, Oxford who had been the Head of Newark High School for girls in Nottingham. In the nineteen-twenties Joan had already begun to write poetry, some of which would be printed in the school magazine (6). Joan was offered a place at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, to read English but she was unable to find a scholarship so she began a degree course at Bristol University, which she loathed. During her second year, Joan became ill, suffering with her thyroid and was admitted to hospital; time away with illness meant she had to abandon her course and any idea about becoming a teacher. She had to pay back the £12 grant when she gave up her University place so she had to find work. In 1929, aged 21, she began working as an assistant at George’s Bookshop, 89, Park Street, Bristol; one of her colleagues who also worked as an assistant there was Frederick James Catley who also had poetic aspirations (7). Working at the bookshop did not pay very well so Joan had to take on a second job as a registry clerk at BBC Bristol, where she remained for almost five years. While working at George’s, Joan began to correspond with the poet and short story writer, Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) who took an interest in her work and encouraged her. The following year, in 1930, aged 22, Joan’s first poem was published – ‘One Sharp Delight’:

 

Quiet in the frowsy air, it yields
Its fan of boughs darkly towards the sky,
Hurt by the shame, filth and indignity
Of this harsh land of stones, not fields;
 
This patient ash-tree growing here
In burning suns, dense fogs, and sooty rains,
Hemmed in by walls and houses, yet remains
Lovely, inscrutable, austere.
 
Yet the long night no comfort brings,
With darkness comes no sweet and secret scent
Of flowers or frostbound field, no echoes lent
By the clear notes the linnet sings.
 
But, when stars fade, and from the sea
The moon draws in her beams and braids her hair,
And over the dim roofs to this blank square
The dayspring comes reluctantly –
 
Ah, then one sharp delight it knows,
One perfect hour, incomparable and rare:
It sees the thin mists rise and all the air
Put on the colour of a rose. (8)

 

Barton seems to have not just been attracted to poetry as she also started writing short stories and a novel; as to the novel, she says to Janet Todd – ‘when I wrote a novel, I sent him [Walter de la Mare] the beginning and he sent it to Faber for me, which was the greatest mistake because they criticised it rather harshly and I never wrote another word of it. I went on with poetry…’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 198] (9)

Another early poem from 1930, ‘Great House on View Day’ captures the decline of the country house with its ‘attics, through whose high windows / swathes of light pour in’ and the ‘low-roofed warrens-servant’s rooms’ with their old iron bed frames beneath which is the ‘flowered po’. Outside, the parkland where the lawns are ‘roofed with the cedars’ that ‘stretch away to private woods’, a ‘greenness reaching to infinity’. She brings to life the sounds of the pheasants with their ‘kok-kok’ and quietly contemplates that ‘someone should be here / contentedly alone / writing their masterpieces / testing their verses on this private air.’ (10)

There was always a sense of secrecy about Joan which comes through in her poems; she hardly ever told her parents anything about herself and this reserved nature, something I believe her father also harboured, continues right through her work. It is as if she only reveals anything through the mask of a character, such as Miss Prideaux or the Major; she steered clear of anything that could ‘divulge me to anyone else – no one must know me, I thought – I wrote through a male person or I made a mask.’ She then tells us that she had ‘no strong family feeling. My father hadn’t got it either. I’ve got a thousand nephews and nieces but my brother and sister are dead. I’ve loved people but I can’t bring myself to talk about it.’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 201] It was only late in her poetic career that she was able to drop the mask and produce more personal poems.

Although her poems are not overly religious, Joan does say that religion meant a ‘great deal’ to her during her adolescence as can be seen by the following early poem:

 

AT CANDLEMAS
 
O Mary, ringed with endless light,
I give thee now this taper bright.
 
O Mary, see, I pray, ‘midst all
Thy host of stars, my candle small;
 
That when alone in winter night,
My little child shall wake in fright,
 
O, then, dear Mary, grant I pray
One gift her childish fears to stay.
 
Give but one flame whose little light
Shall all her dragons put to flight,
 
Spare but one light whose slender flame
Shall her small room from darkness claim.
 
And build for her a shallow ark
Against the terrors of the dark.
 
O Blessed Maid, give back from all
Thy host of stars one candle small. (11)
 

Around 1935, Joan moved away from the traditional rhyming form of poetry, as in her poem ‘At Candlemas’ which she considered outdated and began experimenting with a more free style, sometimes dropping the standard capital letter at the beginning of the line and playing around with punctuation. In the poem, ‘Rain in a Summer Night’ we can see Barton’s confidence as she uses repetition and inter-changeable words such as ‘summer night’ and ‘separate’ (‘separate petal’/’separate crystal’), ‘nightmare room’… ‘summer dark’, ‘summer rain’, ‘nightmare hour’ and the repetition of ‘sliding soaking seeping’.

During the early 1930’s Joan reviewed for The New Statesman and The Weekend Review. Throughout the nineteen-thirties Joan worked for the BBC in Bristol which she left in August 1940, the Somerset County Council Treasurer’s Department, as County Secretary in Hampshire for the Women’s Land Army, and for the British Council, where she was the director of the periodicals department; the British Council was evacuated to Oxfordshire and moved to Blenheim Palace where the poet John Betjeman was in charge of another department. Betjeman took a keen interest in Joan’s poetry and encouraged her to publish her work. Joan worked at the British Council until 1947 when she decided, with her deputy, Barbara Watson, to run a bookshop together. Joan explained her relationship with Barbara in an interview with Janet Todd [Women Writers Talking, p. 199] saying that she had ‘been living with her for thirty-five years as companions’ adding that there was ‘no emotional thing but we get on awfully well.’

At the outbreak of war, Joan declared in her poem ‘First News Reel: September 1939’, that ‘It was my war, though it ended / when I was ten’, thinking of course of the first Great War which she lived through. The third verse evokes an almost romantic view of the destructive power of war in the landscape, where ‘a self removed and null / doubting the eye that sees / the gun in its green bower, / yet meticulously records / at each load, discharge, recoil…’; she sees how the engine of war, the gun, makes lives fall away, like leaves that ‘spin from the trees / in an untimely shower / over the sunlit fields and are whirled away / to the edge of the sky.’ (12)

The cemetery and the churchyard feature in many of Barton’s work, such as in The Mistress, where the ‘short cut home lay / through the cemetery’ with its ‘iron palings tipped with rusted fleur-de-lys’ where one can become ‘lost’ in their ‘laurel groves / eaten up by moss…’ In the same poem she seems to echo Stevie Smith when she says ‘too far, too far: always’ and one resonates with the claustrophobic feeling of being ‘under the smothering boughs in airless dark’. In another poem, Rest Eternal from November 1931, nature consumes the traces of our existence where ‘there was nothing there / but nettles and rain and grass, / so tangled you could not tell / where the churchyard was.’ In A Country Funeral, she imagines the scene ‘with a thin and steady flame like faith; / over their heads the marble words flow on.’ which is a beautiful description of the tragedy of a death and the handing over of the body back to nature or to God if you prefer.

Smell is also a major part of Barton’s poetry, as in the ‘cypress smell’ of The Mistress and the ‘scent of briar and garlic from lush inland lanes’ found in Thoughts on Happisburgh, where there is also ‘trampled cliff paths sweet with gorse…’ and in the poem A Landscape, the ‘hot smell of the earth / oppresses the nostrils’. Sounds also feature heavily in her work too as in The Timber Wharf where there is the ‘ticking in the ears / with beetle noises, rat feet in the corners, / bat wing in the rafters, / And that sigh in the ears / As though the sap were still weeping / in dying trees.’

In the poem, My Grandfather in the Park, Barton reminisces and draws a charming picture of her grandfather with his ‘Homburg hat set square’ and his ‘hands knotted on his stick’. She tells how he was a ‘station-master endless years retired / still timing trains / as they came slowly slowly pounding past / beyond the tarry fence / at Redland station,’ which is a delightful evocation of her grandfather, John Padmore, who worked for GWR and was station master at Clifton Down station for 25 years from 1874-1899. In fact, there are several connections to the railway in the Padmore family, as if steam and not blood, coursed through their veins. John Padmore, who was appointed station master in September 1874 at Clifton Down on the opening of the Clifton Extension Railway, was a well-known and much respected employee of GWR, as can be seen from the following article in the Clifton and Redland Free Press (Friday 28^th July 1899, p. 2) which says that there was ‘a small gathering at the Imperial Hotel [Clifton] on Saturday night [22^nd July], when Mr. J. Padmore, late stationmaster at Clifton Down, was presented by a number of his friends with a revolving chair of polished elm, a handsomely carved oak barometer, and a cheque.’ The article goes on to say that, ‘the chair was occupied by the Rev. Canon Prideaux, who mentioned that Mr. Padmore had been at Clifton Down since its opening 25 years ago, when it was merely a country station.’ John Padmore’s son, (Joan Barton’s Uncle) George Lycett Padmore, born 24^th September 1865 in Montgomeryshire, Wales, carried on the railway tradition, and entered GWR’s service as a boy clerk in 1880 at the office of the Divisional Superintendant in Bristol; he was promoted in 1890 and placed in charge of the time-table for the Bristol Division. George retired in 1926 after working as Traffic Manager for the Exeter Division and died two years later (13).

Towards the end of the poem (My Grandfather in the Park), she once again conjures the ‘image of old age, / solid not frail’ when she says that the park-keeper is cruel not to let the children play on the grass, but grandfather ‘only shook his head, smiled / his slow smile, tapping at his ear: / ‘The 11.20’s due’ he said.’ Joan then says that there were ‘three daughters and six sons / gone on their way’ referring to her Aunts and Uncles, namely: Alice Padmore (1864-1946), George Lycett Padmore (1865-1928), Harry Powell Padmore (1867-1935) who was a schoolmaster and Headmaster of Swanage Council School; he married Elizabeth Frances Barton (born 1865) in Barton Regis, Gloucestershire in 1890 and died in Abbotsford on 16^th January 1935; Ernest Alfred Padmore (1869-1919) who was organist and choirmaster at St. Peter’s Church, Padgate; a member of the Cheshire Railway Committee, he married Jane Farrington (1863-1939) on 26^th March 1894 at Padgate, Lancashire and died at home at 111, Padgate Lane on 2^nd September 1919 and was buried four days later at Warrington Cemetery, Lancashire. Rev. John Pritchard Padmore (1871-1946), ordained in 1928, he was vicar of Coaley in Gloucestershire from 1936-1944; he also worked as a Railway Book stall Manager and he married Florence Nightingale Tyler (born 1863) on 17^th June 1896 in Carmarthenshire, Wales. Rev. Padmore died on 3^rd August 1946, his funeral taking place a few days later on 7^th August at Clevedon parish church. Arthur Padmore, born in Aberystwyth, Wales in 1873; Walter Richard Padmore (1875-1964), the first child born to the Padmore family in Redland, Bristol, on 20^th January 1875 (he was christened at St. John the Evangelist, Clifton on 5^th March 1875); he married Effie Louise Mcgregor (born 1877) in Bristol in 1904 and died in Gloucestershire in 1964. Eleanor Rose Padmore, Joan’s mother, born in 1877, followed by Edith Mary Padmore, known as ‘Teedie’, born in 1878 and christened at St. Mary’s Church, Tyndall’s Park, on 14^th July 1878. Edith never married and died in Bristol at the family home, 7, Warwick Road, on 15^th February 1945.

Likewise, in the Barton family, her grandfather was Henry Francis Barton, born in Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucestershire in 1840; Henry was a carpenter who lived at 7, Highland Vale in Clifton (1881 and 1891 census) and later in 1901 can be found at 84, Whiteladies Road, Redland, Clifton. In 1911 he is living at Queen’s Road, Craythorne, Swanage in Dorsetshire, a ‘retired carpenter’. He died on 11^th July 1914 and was buried three days later. Henry and his wife Elizabeth Lyon, whom he married on 31^st October 1861 in Clifton, had (in 1911) ‘eight children, five living’; the first child was William Lyon Barton, born in 1864 in Clifton, who was like his father, also a carpenter. In fact, he succeeded his father and became head of the firm of Messrs. H. Barton and Son, builders of Abbotsford Road. He married Phoebe Elizabeth Herbert in Bristol in April 1886 (she died on 19^th December 1943 at 3, Queen’s Avenue, Tyndall’s Park, aged 81; funeral at St. Paul’s Church, Clifton on Wednesday 22^nd December). William was formerly a volunteer attached to the Gloucesters (Bristol Rifles) and won the long service medal – during the First World War he joined the ‘University Volunteers’ in 1917 and was a member of the Guard of Honour when the King visited Bristol. He died in September 1932 (his address at the time was 39, Aberdeen Road, Cotham, Bristol) and his funeral took place on Friday 23^rd September 1932 at Canford Cemetery. Other members of the family included: Elizabeth Frances Barton, born in Clifton in 1865 who was a dressmaker and later married Harry Powell Padmore (1867-1935) [Eleanor Rose Padmore’s brother, the schoolmaster]; Priscilla Barton born Clifton in 1867, Alice Barton born Clifton in 1868, Francis Henry Barton, Joan’s father, born in Clifton in 1872, and Amy Barton, born in Clifton in 1873 who was a Stationer’s Assistant.

In 1947 Joan and her partner, Barbara Watson, established The White Horse Bookshop at 14, The Parade, Marlborough, which moved in September 1949 to 136, the High Street, Marlborough – ‘we didn’t make any money but it was a great success and we had lots of fun.’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 199] The two ladies worked extremely hard at the business of bookselling and usually took a short holiday together; closing the bookshop (14) A few years later in 1951 Joan lost both her parents at the beginning and end of that year. Her father, Francis Henry Barton ‘beloved husband of Eleanor’ and ‘managing director Barton and Long Ltd.’ died on Monday 8^th January that year at 7, Warwick Road, Bristol (15) and her mother, Eleanor, died tragically at the same address following a house fire. The Bristol Evening World for Thursday 13^th December 1951 said that, ‘Mrs. Eleanor Rose Barton aged 75 of 7 Warwick Road, Redland who tried to beat out the flames with her hands when her house caught fire on Tuesday [11^th December], died from burns in BRI [Bristol Royal Infirmary] last night.’ The article states that Mrs. Barton was hosting a bridge party on Tuesday evening and after it ended she began to tidy up and as she was going to bed the fire broke out. In the same newspaper, dated Tuesday 11^th (p. 7) it said that ‘a woman companion’ Miss E. Hearn who lives at the garden flat at 7, Warwick Road, ‘heard the screams’ and rushed to the bedroom ‘smothered the flames with a rug’. Mrs. Barton suffered ‘burns on her legs, face and body’. Miss Hearn was ‘already in another room when Mrs. Barton began undressing near an electric fire.’ She found Mrs. Barton ‘with her clothes on fire. Miss Hearn wrapped a rug round her and phoned for help to Mr. M. A. Webb, Mrs. Barton’s son-in-law who lives in the flat at the same house.’ Eleanor Rose Barton died at Bristol Royal Infirmary on Wednesday 12^th December 1951 and her funeral took place a few days later at Clifton on Monday 17^th December. (16)

In 1956, Joan and Barbara’s religious convictions grew stronger and they both returned to the church. Joan was producing very little poetry at this time because the bookshop took up a lot of her time and then in 1961 she began editing the parish magazine (16 pages).

Towards the end of the nineteen-fifties, John Betjeman suggested that Joan contact the Listen Press and send them some of her poems, which she did and her poems ‘The Mistress’ and ‘Thoughts on Happisburg’ were both published in their pages.

In May 1966 Joan and Barbara retired and sold The White Horse Bookshop to Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Evans which they ran under the same name (17). Joan and Barbara moved to Salisbury, in Wiltshire and continued to trade in old and rare books from their home at 10, Mill Road. Joan began to write poetry again. About this time, the musician, artist and publisher, Edwin ‘Ted’ Tarling (1938-2004) who founded the quarterly poetry magazine Wave and the Sonus Press, took an interest in Joan Barton having seen some of her poems in Listen. The result of his interest in her was several poems published in Wave during 1970-73 (‘Mission Priest’, ‘Lot 304: Various Books’, ‘A Passion for Knowledge in North Wiltshire’, A House Under Old Sarum’ and ‘The Major: An Epitaph’); and in 1972 Tarling published her first collection of poems – ‘The Mistress and Other Poems’. There are some beautiful and tender pieces in the collection, such as It Was Only A Dream and The Wet Summer, where ‘hair is not less fine, eyes grow no dimmer / In the dusk, and the rain’s a private house / To those who have no other.’

Barton’s later poetry is influenced by her professional life as a bookseller, attending various sales and ‘lots’, mostly following a death and perhaps a loved library has been dismantled – ‘some of my poetry has grown out of bookselling – I’m not inventive’ she told Janet Todd [Women Writers Talking, p. 200] The books that we own are a very personal thing; they contain something of the essence of the reader who has cared for them and in some instances, contain various personal items tipped into the pages, between the covers; old photographs, pressed flowers or perhaps a letter all tell a story and reach into the past of someone’s memory; an intrusion into a life or the revelation of something which should not be brought to light. In the poem, ‘Lot 304: Various Books’ we get a sense of this discovery and tender intrusion upon the ‘fading ephemera of non-events’; the ‘seed lists and hints on puddings’ and the ‘ghost dogs in the vanishing gardens’. Barton is receptive to the energy that such items contain – ‘always as I touch a current flows, / the poles connect, the wards latch into place, /a life extends me’. The emotions bottled-up within a book, the ‘love-hate; grief; faith; wonder;’ but above all, the ‘Tenderness.’ That same gentle perception of a life through the loved and well-worn book is found in the poem, ‘The Major – An Epitaph’ where we find Barton, seated at the desk of the dead Major, drinking sherry brought by the ‘deaf housekeeper’ as she sorts through the bachelor gentleman’s things. She finds nothing remarkable, ‘no secret sex’ just ‘all clean and decent stuff’. The Major’s regimental life, always ‘on parade’, is ordered and there is little in his diaries to show a full and active social life, mostly blank pages, ‘deserts of non-involvement…’ But something is always irresistible in the search for one’s self in others and no matter how little we leave of ourselves, we recognise the futile struggle of existence and its termination, when ‘loneliness comes sifting silting down / and men are buried in it still alive.’

There is an absence of human love and affection in Barton’s poems and if it appears at all it is a brief reference to the past, such as Christopher, in ‘Gay News’, who was ‘so idiotic yet so beautiful / in his Anglican fig, / (ashamed of his people but he married well).’ She walks a line between the playful Betjeman and the morose and melancholy Larkin – how delightfully she brings to life the remnants of a marriage consumed by books in the poem A Passion for Knowledge in North Wiltshire, where a widow wants them ‘all cleared out!’ Barton draws upon her own book buying and selling and the many private collections broken down and sold off she attended for to many book lovers it really is an all consuming passion, and Barton says it beautifully with the phrase, an ‘unstemmable tide of books’. In other poems she delights in the fading Edwardiana and Victorian bric-a-brac that tell a story all of their own, such as Miss Prideaux’s ferns and the ‘Waterford glass’, the ‘Spode dishes’ and the ‘Coalport cups’…, or the ‘Elizabethan beds’, ‘corner cupboards’, and ‘presses crammed with linen’ found in The Contents of the Mansion. There is something in these old fragments of a life with their own seemingly real and intensifying presence, the ‘yellowing pillow-lace’ and the ‘tapestries the cobwebs knit together’; the ‘volumes of pictured fish and brilliant birds’, ‘rosewood desks and Chinese cabinets / stuffed with old letters, diaries, photographs’. Barton pays particular attention to these details for in her hands these old and worn accessories play an equal part and importance to the characters that inhabit the poem – the ‘Worcester service for three-dozen places, / gilt candelabra, coasters, Irish crystal, China on pantry shelves…’ we all have memories of such items from our childhood, familiar loved objects that become lost with time… ‘the table-silver in its velvet cases’, the ‘copper saucepans dulled with verdigris’… ‘old scoops and mortars, leaking jelly moulds.’ Barton also leads us into some dark places where there is a sense of loss and loneliness, of growing older and the ultimate separation – death:

 

‘Only the ghosts presentient to each one

make entry here, gyrate

between the eyes and sleep,

breed the authentic chill

of spectral air;

the fly-by-nights that ride the elderly,

phantoms of love not given, not received,

the lonely apparitions of regret,

extinct once violent selves, the lives unlived,

and spiral loss that forms

the narrowing circle;

And that last fear – not death but how it comes.’ 

[A House Under Old Sarum]

 

In 1975, BBC Radio 3 aired a programme on Joan Barton and he poetry. Philip Larkin had given some of Barton’s poems to Cecil Day-Lewis and the poet, Anne Stevenson had suggested that the BBC produce a programme on her. An interview took place and was recorded on 24^th June 1974. The programme was called The Living Poet and it was transmitted on Thursday 24^th July 1975 at 9.30 p.m. Joan introduced her own poems which were read by Jill Balcon, the wife of Cecil Day-Lewis, and Penelope Lee. It was produced and presented by Susanna Capon [Radio Times, issue 2697. Saturday 19^th July 1975].

A few years later at the beginning of 1978, a young writer named Mary Michaels took an interest in Barton and began writing her essay, ‘The Poetry of Joan Barton’ [Hull University Archives] which included an edited transcript of an interview Michaels had with Barton on Monday 16^th January 1978 which Michaels later submitted to Janet M. Todd at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, for publication in Todd’s ‘Women and Literature’, titled ‘An Introduction to the Poetry of Joan Barton’, published in the United States the following year. Also during 1978, having seen an advertisement, Joan applied for a Literary bursary from Southern Arts Association and was successful and she began to produce more poems – ‘I made a study in a spare bedroom, sat down, and suddenly found I’d written three poems in no time.’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 201]

Her next collection was published the following year – ‘Ten Poems’ (1979) by the Perdix Press. One of the poems, ‘Old School’ is dedicated ‘in memoriam M.C.’ It is possible that M.C. was the initials of a favourite teacher, perhaps of English, but the notion of the ‘Old Girl’ in the poem is strong and I would suggest it was a former pupil of Colston’s, perhaps connected to the school magazine – ‘In that old school, M.C., you built for us / a house of words, a house of infinite rooms, / from which we could look out / the better to enjoy or to endure. / I still inhabit it. / Did I thank you then? I wish I could be sure.’ I have found an ‘old girl’ by the name of Muriel Cox who attended Colston’s Girls’ school and lived in Redland, Bristol. She was actually born Florence Muriel Cox in Redland on 6^th December 1905, daughter of Sidney Charles Cox (1866-1931) who was the proprietor of the Western Daily Press and allied papers in Bristol, and Florence May Tricker, born in Portsmouth in 1882 (they were married at Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucestershire on 6^th October 1903). Muriel probably used her middle name to distinguish her from her mother also named Florence. Muriel, ‘passed with distinction her matriculation’ at the examination held in London University and was awarded a £100 scholarship, as ‘the most promising worker in Sydenham High School of 400 students’ in 1922 (18). Whether or not Muriel is the ‘M.C.’ of the poem, I cannot confirm, but I put her forward as a candidate.

Joan Barton had an amazing poetic voice which was truly her own – ‘I’ve always been isolated in my work except for Walter de la Mare and John Betjeman’; for Joan, poetry and ordinary life were two different things to be kept separate. As for her poetic influences she says it was ‘mostly by older poets whose books we sell. Tennyson, Browning, and the seventeenth-century poets mean far more to me than the moderns though I like Joy Scovell, some of Anne Stevenson’ and she has a close affinity to Alice Meynell, whom I also consider a marvellous poet. She goes on to say that she also likes T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost but doesn’t like Robert Lowell or John Berryman – ‘Masculine thinking can be so different from women’s and I can’t cope with it.’ [Women Writers Talking, pp. 199-200]

Her next collection, A House Under Old Sarum, a collection of new and selected poems, was published by Peterloo Poets in 1981 and two years later, her final collection, Night Journey on the Plain was self-published in Salisbury.

During her final years Joan’s eyesight began failing, particularly after 1983 and Joan Barton died in Salisbury, Wiltshire probably sometime between July and September 1986 aged 78 years old. Her partner, Barbara Watson acted as the executor of her will.

 

‘the straightened sheet
plain as a linen shroud
beneath the chin,
then you will know
for sure what hour it is:
how soon must come
the stripped and empty bed,
her folded clothes
put ready to take home.’ 

[Last Days]

 

 

PUBLISHED COLLECTIONS:

 

The Mistress and Other Poems. Hull, Yorkshire. The Sonus Press. 1972. Hand set and printed by Edwin Tarling at 3, Berwick Grove, Hull, Yorkshire. Red cloth. pp. 64.

Ten Poems. (privately printed)The Perdix Press, Sutton, Mandeville, Wiltshire, (hand-printed, limited signed edition). 1979.

A House Under Old Sarum: New and Selected Poems. Liskeard, Cornwall. Harry Chambers/Peterloo Poets. 1981. pp. 79.

Night Journey on the Plain: 16 New Poems. Salisbury, Salisbury Printing. 1983. pp. 28 [iv, 24]

 

A PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF POEMS IN PERIODICALS:

 

One Sharp Delight: The New Statesman, volume xxxiv, number 877, Saturday 15^th February 1930, p. 602.

At Candlemas: The Saturday Review of Literature, 27^th December 1930, p. 490, also Time and Tide, volume xii, number 6, edited by Wyndham Lewis, Saturday 7^th February 1931, p. 17.

Fallen Snow: The Best Poems of 1935. Thomas Moult, London, Jonathon Cape, 1935. p. 63.

A Landscape: New Writing (Penguin), issue 16, 1943, p. 100. [also Poems From New Writing, 1936-1946, edited by John Lehmann, (Penguin) 1946, pp. 92-93]

The Mistress: Listen, volume 3, number 3-4, spring 1960, p. 6. [also included in The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, edited by Philip Larkin, London, Book Club Associates, 1978, poem number 395, pp. 431-432]

Thoughts on Happisburgh: Listen, volume 4, number 1, autumn 1962, p. 14.

Mission Priest: Wave: New Poetry, number 1, autumn 1970, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

Lot 304: Various Books: Wave: New Poetry, number 3, spring 1971, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

A Passion for Knowledge in North Wiltshire: Wave: New Poetry, number 5, autumn 1971, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

A House Under Old Sarum: Wave: New Poetry, number 6, spring 1973, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

The Major: An Epitaph: Wave: New Poetry, number 7, summer 1973, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire; also in New Poetry 1: An Anthology, edited by Peter Porter and Charles Osborne. Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975, p. 38.

Great House on View Day: Poetry Book Society Christmas Supplement 1974, edited by Philips Larkin; Thirty Years of the Poetry Book Society, 1956-1986. London. Hutchinson. 1988. p. 111; also About Larkin, issue 1, the Philip Larkin Society, Hull, Yorkshire, 1996 (600 copies), p. 16. (includes letter from Joan Barton to Philip Larkin, p. 17)

First News Reel: September 1939: New Poetry 3: An Anthology, edited by Alan Brownjohn and Maureen Duffy. Arts Council of Great Britain, 1977, p. 55.

Contents of the Mansion: New Poetry 5: An Anthology, edited by Peter Redgrove and Jon Silkin. Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979, p. 11.

Children of the Night: Agenda, volume 21-22. 1983, p. 59.

Night Journey on the Plain: PN Review, 30, volume 9, number 4, March-April 1983. p. 51.

Gay News: Poetry Matters: Journal of Harry Chambers/Peterloo Poets, number 1, Autumn 1983.

Easter, A Night Piece, The Timber Wharf, The Wet Summer [from The Mistress and Other Poems]: The Rialto, number 8, Spring 1987.

 

A SELECTION OF ARTICLES AND RELATIVE BOOKS:

 

An Introduction to the Poetry of Joan Barton, by Mary Michaels. Women and Literature, volume 7, number 2, Rutgers University, spring 1979, edited by Janet M. Todd.

Joan Barton: A Poet Rediscovered, by Mary Michaels. Bristol Review of Books, number 5, spring 2008. [published on the 100^th anniversary of Barton’s birth]

Women Writers Talking, edited by Janet M. Todd. Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. New York. 1983. [Joan Barton interview] pp. 197-207. Includes the poems: ‘The Mistress’ pp. 201-202, ‘Lot 304: Various Books’ p. 202, ‘Gay News’ p. 203, ‘The Major – An Epitaph’ pp. 203-205, ‘Last Days’ pp. 205-206, ‘Lord Let Me Know My End’ pp. 206-207.

Philip Larkin, the Marvel Press and Me. Jean Hartley. Manchester, Carcanet. 1989.

Poems From the Second World War. Gaby Morgan. Pan Macmillan. 2015. [contains Barton’s poems: ‘Newgale Sands 1940’ and ‘First News Reel: September 1939’]

 

NOTES:

 

* I must mention the writer and Barton advocate, Mary Michaels who has researched and written much on the poet; and fellow admirer and passionate enthusiast of her work, Stephen Pentz, whose excellent ‘First Known When Lost’ site (blogspot.com) has several articles on Barton.

 

1. Marriages. Barton-Padmore – May 24^th, at St. Saviour’s, Redland, by the Rev. H. R. Wilkins, assisted by the Rev. W. S. Michell, Francis Henry, younger son of H. F. Barton, Collingwood Road, Redland to Eleanor Rose, second daughter of J. Padmore, Cotham. [Western Daily Press. Thursday 26^th May 1904. p. 10]

2. Henry and Elizabeth died in 1914 within months of each other (a similar fate which was to befall Joan’s parents later in 1951). Elizabeth Barton, died in May at Queen’s Road, Swanage, ‘beloved wife of Henry Francis Barton (formerly of Redland) aged 80 years’. [Western Daily Press. Tuesday 12^th May 1914. p. 19] Francis Henry Barton, died 11^th July 1914 at Craythorne, Swanage, (suddenly) age 74, formerly of Abbotsford Road, Cotham. [Western Daily Press. Monday 13^th July 1914. p. 12]

3. Joan’s maternal grandparents, John Padmore, son of Richard and Margaret, and Julia Powell, daughter of John Thomas and Sarah Maria, had nine children. The first-born was Alice Padmore (1864-1946) followed by George Lycett Padmore (1865-1928); Eleanor was the eighth child born in 1877. Eleanor’s mother, Julia Padmore, died in Bristol aged 79 in 1920 and her father, John Padmore, died at 19, Montrose Avenue, Redlands, Bristol on Wednesday 11^th July 1923, aged 84; his funeral took place on Saturday 14^th July at St. Saviour’s Church.

4. Gerald Francis (‘Frank’) Barton married Helen Mary O’Brien (born Bristol 1909) in Bristol in 1929. They had the following children: Michael Francis Barton, born in Bristol in 1929; Brian O’Brien Barton born in Bristol in 1932, and Helen B. Barton born in Bristol in 1936. Gerald died in February 1980 in Penzance, Cornwall.

5. Olive married Bristol-born, Mortimer Ann Webb (1908-1961) in Bristol in 1937 and their son Andrew R. Webb was born there in 1942. Olive died in Bristol in 1964 aged 51 years old.

6. For more on the school magazine see ‘Colston’s Girls’ School: The First Hundred Years’ by Sarah Dunn, Redcliffe Press, Bristol, 1991.

6. Frederick James Catley, born in Bristol on 14^th June 1911. His poem, ‘The Hawk in Winter’ appeared in ‘Penguin Parade’, number 7, 1940, p. 42. F. J. Catley worked at George’s Bookshop from 1928 and seems to have had a long career there. He died on 21^st July 2004.

8. One Sharp Delight. The New Statesman, volume xxxiv, number 877, Saturday 15^th February 1930, p. 602, also The Best Poems of 1930, edited by Thomas Moult. London. Jonathon Cape. 1930. Also from ‘Advocate’, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Thursday 3^rd July 1930. p. 7. Joan’s poem ‘Fallen Snow’, which almost evokes Yeats’ ‘Wild Swans at Coole’, begins: ‘It falls still in my childhood – far away / On iron-hooded forests whence the swans / Have long since flown with clattering wild cries, / Where the round winter sun of level ray / The white and windswept fields with scarlet dyes.’ appeared in ‘The Best Poems of 1935’ [Thomas Moult. London. Jonathon Cape. 1935. p. 63]

9. Short stories (1936) at the Hull Archives: The Younger Daughter (pp. 11), Miss Horse (pp. 10), Vie de Provence (pp. 25), News from a Foreign Country (pp. 25) and Laura (pp. 19). Also at the archive is Joan Barton’s article for The Journal of the National Book League, Jan-Feb 1956: ‘Bristol and its Bookshops’.

10. Great House on View Day. Poetry Book Society Christmas Supplement 1974, edited by Philips Larkin; Thirty Years of the Poetry Book Society, 1956-1986. London. Hutchinson. 1988. p. 111, also, A House Under Old Sarum (1981).

11. At Candlemas. The Saturday Review of Literature. 27^th December 1930. p. 490. Also Time and Tide, volume xii, number 6, Saturday 7^th February 1931. p. 17.

12. First News Reel: September 1939. A House Under Old Sarum (1981), also Shadows of War – British Women’s Poetry of the Second World War, edited and introduced by Anne Powell. Sutton Publishing (Gloucestershire). 1999. p. 10 [also includes Newgale Sands 1940, pp. 55-56]

13. George Lycett Padmore, born 24^th September 1865 in Montgomeryshire, Wales, attended Highbury School, Redland and won a scholarship to Colston’s School in 1877. In 1880 he began work with GWR as a boy clerk for the Divisional Superintendant, Bristol. Promoted in 1890 and placed in charge of the time-table (Bristol Division); 1893-1911, responsible to the Divisional Superintendant for the whole of the train workings (Bristol Division). July 1911, promoted to Chief Clerk; 1914, became Assistant Divisional Superintendant of GWR Bristol. January 1921, became Divisional Superintendant of Pontypool Road area (Monday 25^th April 1921, he received a gold watch as a gift from GWR for his hard work and commitment). 1922 became Traffic Manager at Exeter Division. He retired in 1926. George married on Emmeline Agnes Read (1867-1962) at St. Saviours Church, Woolcott Park, Bristol, on 2^nd April 1888 (Emmeline died in Bristol on 11^th February 1962), they had a son named Bertram Read Padmore (1890-1969) who was educated at Colston’s School. George Lycett Padmore died on 24^th February 1928 aged 63 at Bathesda Hospital, Richmond, Melbourne, Australia. Apart from his railway work G. L. Padmore was well-known in Bristol as a keen Churchman, and in musical and Masonic circles. He had a long association with Holy Nativity where he was sidesman (usher or warden) from 1904-07, he then joined the choir and was a member for over 13 years. First Honorary Treasurer of the Knowle Church Society, Master of the Men’s Guild, and he represented the church on the Diocesan Conference; member of the new Parochial Church Council; member of the first Diocesan Board of Finance. Many years a singing member and member of the committee of the Bristol Musical Society and member of the Society of Bristol Gleemen of which he was Honorary Treasurer. He was also a member of the St. Augustine’s Lodge (Bristol Province) of Freemasons and one of the oldest members of the Knowle Constitutional Club (1904) being on the committee for many years. [much of the information is taken from the Bristol Times and Mirror. Friday 31^st December 1920. p. 2] George’s son, Bertram Read Padmore, born 27^th January 1890 in Bristol, was a Captain in the Railway Signals Engineers and the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. He married Ethelwyn Mary Bird on 31^st October 1914 at Holy Trinity Church, Liverpool, Queens, Nova Scotia, Canada and settled in Halifax, Canada in 1918. He worked in the City Engineers Department and his work took him to similar posts in America and Australia; after he retired he resided in Falmouth, Cornwall, dying there on 13^th March 1969, aged 79.

14. It is perhaps of no consequence to the casual reader but Joan and Barbara closed the bookshop for their holiday together on the following days, as given in The Bookseller: 11^th – 19^th April, 1950, 4^th – 21^st May, 1953, 17^th May – 5^th June 1954, 22^nd May – 12^th June 1956, 11^th June – 2^nd July 1957, 27^th May – 17^th June 1958, 31^st May – 3^rd June 1960, 14^th May – 9^th June 1962, 10^th June – 3^rd July 1963, 15^th April – 6^th May 1964.

15. Bristol Evening World. Wednesday 10^th January 1951. p. 9.

16. Bristol Evening World. Tuesday 11^th December 1951. p. 7, and Thursday 13^th December 1951. p. 6. Also Bristol Evening Post. Thursday 13^th December 1951. p. 6.

17. The White Horse Bookshop was later acquired by Mr. James Glover, former sales director of Hamish Hamilton, on 1^st February 1974; after 1984 it was under the management of Michael Pooley. The shop under the same name is still in existence.

18. Clifton and Redland Free Press. Thursday 23^rd November 1922, p. 3. Muriel had two siblings: Sidney Ivan Cox, born Redland in 1904 and dying in Battle, Sussex in 1972, and Valda Irene Cox (1915-1986). Muriel married the Argentina-born, Andres Delport Gordon Cheyne (1910-1984) in Surrey on 13^th May 1938 and she died in Islington, London on 29^th August 1986.