Friendship Continued

A correspondent recently contacted me about a painting by Gabriel Atkin that includes an idealised nude male figure.  It was very intriguing to consider whether Atkin had in fact based the figure on Siegfried Sassoon; the physical resemblance was superficial, but the possibility remains that Atkin admired his lover’s physique enough to want to paint him.  It is well-attested that Gabriel Atkin (1897-1937) provided Sassoon with his first sexual experience, in November 1918, just after the war had ended.  The relationship did not last long, and the two men seem to have had little to do with one another in later years; they did not form the same kind of warm friendship as Sassoon later did, for  example, with Glen Byam Shaw.  Siegfried did, however, support Atkin financially, enough to enable him to continue with his artistic career.  In the late 1920s, Atkin got married, but he and his wife were both addicts and died tragically young.

Financial assistance seems to have played a large part in many of Siegfried’s post-war friendships.  Although he was never wealthy, did not make a substantial income from his writing, and was only able to afford to purchase Heytesbury House in Wiltshire in 1934 because of a long-awaited legacy from his paternal aunt, Rachel Beer, he was generous with his funds.  Others who benefited from his largesse included the poet Robert Graves, Sassoon's former army batman John Law, and the composer William Walton (who was still in his teens when he first met Sassoon and who later dedicated his “Portsmouth Point” overture to his benefactor).

Of those to whom he made generous loans, few can be described as close friends of Sassoon, exceptions being Graves, with whom Siegfried famously fell out in 1928 after the publication of Goodbye to All That, and the lesser writer Walter J Turner.  Sassoon’s patronage of Turner was less direct: he lent his friend money to buy a house in Tufton Street, Westminster, which he then moved into with Turner and his wife Delphine.  I will digress slightly here to comment that, when I read Siegfried’s words about Delphine Turner and about Phyllis Loder, the wife of another of his friends, I have no difficulty in believing that he was bisexual; he clearly admired, and was attracted to, both women immensely and might have married either of them, given the opportunity.  Sadly, Delphine also went out of his life when he decided he had seen enough of her ungrateful and somewhat slovenly husband.  (Turner, for his part, found Siegfried's piano-playing an annoyance, and Siegfried got the message.)

There is clearly a question mark over whether Sassoon was trying to buy friendship, whether he sought gratitude and recognition for his kindness to others.  To my mind, the fact that he kept a list of names and amounts indicates one of two things – he either expected to be paid back at some stage (which, in view of the people he lent money to, seems unlikely) or he was storing up good deeds so as to reassure himself that he was deserving of his own good fortune.  I feel we should not judge this habit too harshly.

Dennis Silk often speaks of the generosity shown by the older Sassoon when entertaining Dennis and his Cambridge cricketing friends in local restaurants.  Siegfried seems to have enjoyed the conviviality such occasions offered, and no doubt he felt that this more than repaid any financial outlay involved.  He used the opportunity to coerce the youths into joining in his favourite parlour game of “Cricketers’ Initials”.  I will not try to tell Dennis’s most famous anecdote about this - Dennis is the only one who can do justice to it.

Another friend who might have needed, but would surely never have sought, financial assistance from Siegfried was Edmund Blunden.  (I was lucky enough to be present when Margi Blunden saw, for the first time, the tiny cottage on Boars Hill where her father had started his married life, and I will never forget how moved she was by the realisation of how the young couple must have struggled.)  Sassoon and Blunden met only after the war, and immediately found they had much in common: their literary tastes, their shared interest in cricket, and, perhaps most significantly, their feelings about the war.  Sassoon referred to “little Blunden” in the same kindly way he had formerly referred to “little Owen”, though it would be fanciful to suggest that Blunden in any way replaced Owen in Sassoon's affections; these were two very different friendships.

Blunden's first letter to Sassoon, written in 1919 in appreciation of the latter's work as literary editor of the Daily Herald, was the beginning of a correspondence that lasted until Siegfried's death, and the results are now available to enthusiasts in the form of Selected Letters of Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden, 1919-1967, edited by Carol Z Rothkopf and published by Pickering & Chatto in 2012.  The three-volume set, although beyond the budget of most individuals at £275 (there is a hefty discount available for SSF members), is the kind of thing any self-respecting library ought to try to acquire - and you can help them make up their minds about this by requesting it as many times as you need to!  Both men were accomplished letter-writers and the result is as entertaining as it is interesting.

Siegfried's Friends

I promised a while ago to say something about Siegfried Sassoon's friendships.  I suppose I have been putting it off because there are just so many of them that it's a daunting task.  Dennis Silk, speaking on the subject at an SSF annual conference in Marlborough a few years ago, was unable to squeeze all his material into the time available, whilst Philip Stewart, who took us on that wonderful literary tour of Boar's Hill, referred to Sassoon as not only being at the centre of a vast web of acquaintances but being a person that everyone liked.  It is as though, for all his faults, people were drawn to him.  We do not get a strong sense of this from his work; it seems to me that he is always on the outside looking in, admiring people like Norman Loder and Rupert Brooke from afar, never thinking of himself as an object of admiration or (in the case of Lady Ottoline Morrell, to name but one) desire.

I can only hope to scratch the surface in this blog, so I will concentrate on those who come most immediately to mind, rather than trying to assess their relative importance in Sassoon's life.  To begin at the beginning, we know little of his childhood friends.  He was, after all, kept away from children of his own age in his early years by being taught at home.  He seems not to have been very close to his older brother Michael, but to have had a more confiding relationship with his younger brother Hamo.  There were substitute father figures - Tom Richardson the groom, for one.  Yet in the pre-war days no one friend seems to stand out strongly, although Siegfried clearly had great affection for Loder, Bobbie Hanmer, and Gordon Harbord, all friends who shared his love of sport.

The war brought Sassoon into contact with others of his age group, and he quickly found a kindred spirit in Robert Graves.  Graves' own account of their first meeting describes how he sought out Sassoon as the owner of a volume of Lionel Johnson's essays he had spotted lying around.  Siegfried himself recorded his first impression of Graves as "an interesting creature" and "a defier of convention"; bearing in mind Graves' later career, the latter description reveals considerable insight on Sassoon's part.  Graves became heavily involved in Sassoon's case when the latter made his "Soldier's Declaration" in the summer of 1917, and some believe he was instrumental in preventing a court-martial.

In my most recent post, I wrote about Siegfried’s association with Lady Ottoline Morrell and how it influenced his own life, both directly and indirectly.  It was through her that he met people like Bertrand Russell and John Middleton Murry, who would be keen to see him make his outspoken protest against the war.  These were not friends as such; Siegfried deferred to them in the same way he would have done to anyone he considered more learned than himself, and, in this respect, he was very unsure of himself. Nevertheless, after the war, when he no longer wished to think about his recent past, he remained friendly with Lady Ottoline.  Neil Brand, in his play "Between the Lines", interprets their relationship in a touching scene that will be clearly recollected by anyone who has heard or seen it performed.  The dialogue between them is the dramatist's invention, but it is completely believable.

Other, older,  friends also disapproved of Sassoon's protest.  Robbie Ross, Oscar Wilde’s former lover and literary executor, was one such.  Ross, a Canadian by birth and a prominent art critic, had first met Siegfried before the war and had been a kind of mentor to him, one of several older men Sassoon seems to have seen as substitute fathers (another being Edmund Gosse, who had given him advice and encouragement in his early poetic career).  He was angry when he heard about the “Soldier’s Declaration”, feeling that Siegfried had been led by malign influences to put himself in danger.  Yet Ross himself was in serious potential trouble because of his homosexual activities, and the stress of this must surely have contributed to his sudden death, aged only 49, just before the war ended.  It was a major blow to Siegfried as well as to Ross’s many other friends, who included Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, both of whom had been brought within Ross's circle by Sassoon.

The friend who perhaps influenced Sassoon most strongly at this period, and whose presence helped him to get over the deaths of Ross and Owen, was the psychiatrist William Rivers, who had treated him at Craiglockhart.   I recently came across this passage in Sassoon’s memoirs.

“In the daytime, sitting in a sunny room, a man could discuss his psycho-neurotic symptoms with his doctor, who could diagnose phobias and conflicts and formulate them into scientific terminology. Significant dreams could be noted down, and Rivers could try to remove repressions. But by night each man was back in his doomed sector of horrorstricken Front Line, where the panic and stampede of some ghastly experience was re-enacted among the livid faces of the dead.”

This gives us a clue as to the true value of Rivers’ presence in Sassoon’s life.  It was ironic that he, like Ross, should die suddenly – in Rivers’ case, at the age of 58 – leaving Sassoon with strong feelings of bereavement.  Other friends appeared to fill the void, one of the most notable being T E Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), who shared much with Sassoon.  By the time Lawrence, too, was taken from him suddenly, Sassoon had married Hester Gatty and was moving into a new phase of life, finally becoming a father, a role to which he had aspired for many years. 

The friendship that interests me most, naturally, is the one Sassoon shared with our SSF President, Dennis Silk, who has often told the humorous tale of his first meeting with Siegfried in 1953 (engineered by Sassoon's other great post-war friend, the poet Edmund Blunden).  Dennis, in his usual self-deprecatory way, refers to himself as “the idiot boy” to whom Siegfried could confide his feelings about the past without feeling judged or threatened.  And it is Dennis, more than anyone, who has been responsible for the existence of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship – simply because anyone who hears the affection with which he talks about his friend “Sig” cannot fail to want to hear more and to find in themselves an increased admiration for the man as well as the poet.

Time on his hands

Our Chair will shortly be going into hospital for an orthopaedic operation, and will afterwards be under several weeks “house arrest” as a result of being forbidden to drive until fully recovered.  Such periods of enforced physical inactivity can cause depression and a feeling of worthlessness, as anyone who is out of work will know.   Siegfried Sassoon found this when he was confined to “Dottyville” (Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Edinburgh), where he was being “treated” during the summer of 1917.  As an outwardly healthy man, used to physical exertion, it grieved him to have to get his exercise from a daily round of golf while his former companions were still enduring shell-fire at the Western Front; this, of course, is why he eventually insisted on going to rejoin them.  In the intervening period, however, he had discovered and mentored a young man who would become the iconic poet of the First World War; I refer of course to Wilfred Owen.  It cannot therefore be said that Sassoon’s stay at Craiglockhart was a complete waste of time!

A period of enforced leisure, even if confined to the house or to bed, can, however, be fruitful in many ways, provided that one’s mind is active.  Our Chair will have little difficulty finding something to do with her time while she is unable to go out to work.  For a start, there is our SSF Journal, which she edits.  Looking back over past issues of Siegfried’s Journal, I am always struck by the sheer variety of content, something few literary societies’ journals and newsletters can equal.   In recent editions we’ve had poetry (both original and “vintage”), reviews of books, films and theatre, memoirs, extracts from a previously unpublished thesis, genealogical research, humour, photographs – actually it would be easier to list what we haven’t had.

So there will be no shortage of “stuff to do” for our Chair.  Siegfried Sassoon had previously found how rewarding enforced leisure time can be when, having being taken ill after "eight days in hell" during July 1916, he was unexpectedly shipped back to Britain to recuperate at Oxford.  Physically he was already much recovered, but a sympathetic medical officer had  (or so Sassoon himself thought) been influenced by his recent service record and winning of the Military Cross and recommended he be sent home for a period. Living in female student accommodation at Somerville College - temporarily requisitioned as a military hospital - he used his time profitably, not only writing new poetry, but making new friendships which were to be highly influential in his future career.  The most notable of these acquaintances was Lady Ottoline Morrell, to whom he was introduced by Robbie Ross.

Lady Ottoline, though her personal interest in Sassoon led to a unilateral romantic attachment, would prove a significant figure in his life and career, whether for good or ill.  She encouraged him as a poet, of course, but he was only one of many up-and-coming writers who would profit by her generosity and protection: Aldous Huxley and D H Lawrence were among her other protégés (few of whom showed the same gratitude as Sassoon did).  In the following year, when he was again sent home, this time with a shoulder wound, it was the influence of the Morrells' circle that led to his one-man protest against the continuation of the war for, as he felt, political reasons.  Many of his friends disapproved of his action, and yet it was perhaps the one thing in his life for which he is now most admired.  From this period come many of his most remarkable war poems, following hot on the heels of his major collection, The Old Huntsman.

Sassoon would once again be forcibly removed from the battlefield in 1918 when, accidentally shot in the head by one of his own men, he was forced to retire permanently from military action and could spend time in London with old friends; these included “little Owen”.  On 17 August, the two men spent a glorious afternoon together, at Osbert Sitwell’s London home and at the Chelsea Physic Garden close by.  Sadly, they would never meet again in life, as Owen (much to his friend's dismay) returned to the Front, where he was killed less than three months later.

Apart from intellectual and social activity of the obvious kind, time spent in such circumstances gives the opportunity for reflection, and this is something Sassoon also profited by, turning out some of his best poetry when he had the time to think about it without the distractions of shell-fire and the daily duties of an officer.  Even after the war was over, he would need time and leisure to allow his most polished work to ferment in his mind until ready to be transferred to the printed page.  Seldom, in his later life, would he need to worry about returning to the daily grind; this proved both a blessing and a curse, as he would never have the subject matter that the experiences of military service had brought him.  He would, however, have time to look back over his early life, and the result was the wonderful Sherston trilogy, which brought him a wider readership and even greater recognition.

It's A Mystery!

I hear that next year's annual Crime & Mystery Conference at Oxford will recognise the centenary of the outbreak of World War I by taking as its theme "War in Crime Fiction".  I wish them luck with this.  War is a tricky subject, one that can be so painful to read about that the addition of a crime, particularly a murder, to the mix would seem like overkill (if you'll forgive the unintentional pun).

Writers of today are far enough away from the events of the Great War in temporal terms to be able to distance themselves from its events just long enough to attempt the feat.  Two that I can think of, off the top of my head, are Ben Elton and Carola Dunn.  I read Elton's The First Casualty some years ago, and reviewed it for Siegfried's Journal.  It was in many ways an enjoyable read, but the author seemed to be so busy trying to give his readers a history lesson (and simultaneously trying to please female readers by throwing in a bit of romance) that he clean forgot to write the convincing murder mystery he had presumably intended.  Those who picked it up because they were fans of his comedy act must have been extremely disappointed.  Still, it was a valiant attempt.

Carola Dunn's Anthem for Doomed Youth was about as different as it could be.  Capitalising on the title of a Wilfred Owen poem without ever actually mentioning any World War I poetry, it is (as I said in my review for the WOA Journal) a superficial story with entertaining moments.  Unlike Elton's novel, it is not set during the war, but a few years later; events that took place during the war link the suspects and give away most of the plot before it has been enacted.  Once again, it is not very successful as a whodunnit.

A series of mystery novels by a present-day writer that have been given a better reception are Anne Perry's series of five books set in World War I, No Graves As Yet (2003) and its successors, featuring mild-mannered academic Joseph Reavley, a character based on Perry's own grandfather, who himself served in the trenches.  I have to confess I have not read any of these myself and therefore can neither recommend nor warn you off them.  If you are intrigued enough to pick one up, you will judge for yourselves.

Go back further in time, and you find that there were indeed crime writers, during and immediately after the Great War, who used it as a theme in their work.  Their books, popular at the time, have mostly faded into obscurity.  W F Morris, a Norfolk schoolmaster and former middle-ranking army officer, obtained some success with accomplished mystery novels such as Bretherton (1929) and Behind the Lines (1930), but his works are out of print today.

Interestingly, Dorothy L Sayers' famous detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, wins over his audience by his humanity, revealed in part through his war experience.  A major in the Rifle Brigade, Lord Peter suffers from nightmares and flashbacks as a result of the traumatic events he witnessed, and his servant Bunter (formerly his batman) has the job of picking up the pieces.  The war does not play a direct role in the crimes and mysteries solved by Lord Peter, but it is an important aspect of the back story.  Sayers' own husband, Oswald Arthur Fleming, was disabled as a result of his war service; but, by the time she married, she had already created Wimsey in the image of her perfect man.

John Buchan's celebrated adventure story, The Thirty-Nine Steps, certainly involves crime and mystery, although it would be inaccurate to call it a crime novel.  Published in 1915, it came too early to deal with the unpleasant truths that the war would bring home, and limits itself to suggesting that Richard Hannay, by unveiling the spy ring and thwarting their plot, has reduced the danger of Britain's defeat in the forthcoming conflict.  In later works, Hannay goes on to become an army officer, and is wounded at the Battle of Loos just before the events of Greenmantle. By the time he stars in Mr Standfast, he has reached the rank of Brigadier-General.  Conscientious objectors and shell shock play a role in this last Hannay outing.  There is, by this time, no doubt that his creator understands the implications of war; Buchan's brother Alastair, a lieutenant in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, was killed in 1917.

If you would like to find out more about the C&MC conference "experience", you can read about it in somebody else's blog! http://wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/st-hildas-crime-and-mystery-conference_21.html

An Embarrassment of Riches

The title expresses my feelings as I look forward to the events of the next year.  As if it were not enough to have enjoyed such a successful annual conference earlier this month, we are already building up to the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, with so many treats in store.

The next major event for many of us who are members of several war poets' societies is the AGM of the Wilfred Owen Association, which takes place on 2nd November at St Anne's College, Oxford, and is combined with a Dominic Hibberd memorial event, with readings by several WOA members who were involved in the 2007 programme based on Dr Hibberd's celebrated "Winter of the World" anthology; the latter will form the basis for our own centenary event at Heytesbury next August, about which you will already have heard if you receive Siegfried's Journal or look at the SSF website.

Dominic Hibberd (3 November 1941 - 12 August 2012) was a noted academic, writer and broadcaster and the biographer of both Wilfred Owen and Harold Monro.  It is the words of these two poets that will be read at the memorial event.  Dr Hibberd had been closely involved in the work of the WOA for many years and has been much missed since he was gripped by a neurogenerative disorder that caused his withdrawal from public appearances and put an end to his creative contributions.  

For myself, I only met Dr Hibberd a handful of times, the first occasion being at the famous "Sassoon Day" in Marlborough as a result of which the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship came into being.  Those who were there will recall that he slipped and fell on some steps at Marlborough College and had to receive medical treatment before he was able to give his talk; he told me, some years later, that he still did not feel fully recovered.  He never became a member of the SSF, but it is clear from the response of WOA members to his death that he was a much-loved and valued member of their community.  

Dominic Hibberd is one of so many distinguished speakers and writers I've had the privilege to hear and meet over the years since we set up the SSF, and I know that there are many more such "discoveries" to come - as there are in store for those of you who have been unable to attend our events so far.  A poet I had never heard of until I became interested in First World War writing (which is less than 15 years ago) is Isaac Rosenberg, whom many regard as one of the most gifted of his generation.  On 9th November at the Imperial War Museum, our patron Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson will show off another of the many strings on her bow by hosting an event about Rosenberg, at which she will once again take the stage with another of our patrons, Max Egremont.  Those who have attended the events Jean has run every November for the past three years will know how enjoyable this promises to be.  Tickets are only £10 and more details are available on the IWM website: http://www.iwm.org.uk/events/iwm-london/isaac-rosenberg-lecture-by-irsac

Rosenberg is one of many poets who do not have their own societies to commemorate their life and work, so it is not too often that we get the opportunity to hear about him.  The SSF's collaboration with the Wilfred Owen Association has proved extremely fruitful in recent years, and another joint event is planned for next spring, of which details will be made known as soon as possible.  In the meantime, there are numerous dates in 1914 that you can put in your diaries immediately.  I've already mentioned the Heytesbury event on 2nd August, but July is also jam-packed with interesting happenings, including our annual cricket match (no date as yet) and of course the third in a series of War Poetry tours of the Western Front, jointly organised by the Western Front Association and Battle Honours tours.  Next July will see us back in Ieper (Ypres), which was the base for a very successful SSF tour back in 2010.  (Can it really be three years ago already?)

In the week leading up to our Heytesbury event, there will be two major festivals going on in that part of the country:  The Wylye Valley 1914 group will be putting on an exhibition at Codford Village Hall on the weekend of 26th-27th July (see their website for details: http://www.wylyevalley1914.org.uk/event-dates/ ) and there will be guided walks around the area.  In the meantime, the Thomas Hardy Society is holding its biennial festival in Dorchester from 26th July to 2nd August, and we are hoping to collaborate on an evening event some time during that week.

The icing on the cake, of course, will be the English Association's "British Poetry of the First World War" conference at Wadham College, Oxford, from 5th to 7th September 2014.  The Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship will be hosting a small exhibition and speaker panel and several members of the SSF will be actively involved as panel speakers, not all of us on the subject of Sassoon!

It's all very exciting, and hard work for a lot of people.  I can hardly wait - although, come to think of it, I am going to need quite a bit of time to prepare for all these events, especially the ones that involve the SSF. What I am looking forward to most, however, is what I always look forward to: meeting friends old and new, whilst combining entertainment with a learning experience.

The Dead

Not a cheery title for a blog post, I know, but it’s something that’s been on my mind recently, since I heard that the government had recently released wills made by hundreds of ordinary soldiers from Britain and its overseas possessions, who knew their lives were at risk.  The wills are being digitised by Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service and should all be available on-line in time for next year's centenary.  Ironically, the Ministry of Justice only became aware of their existence as a result of a request made under the Freedom of Information Act.

The contents make salutary reading.  Even early in the war, it seems, reality soaked quickly into the psyche of those who had recently arrived on the Western Front and were beginning to see what they had let themselves in for.  Most of them were young men who, under normal circumstances, would not have been thinking about death at all.  Many were unmarried, and left such property as they owned to their mothers, recording their last wishes on simple forms issued for the purpose by far-sighted officialdom.

Some were accompanied by letters to their families, and they make heartbreaking reading, especially when viewed in the soldiers' own handwriting.  "Mother dear, do have courage," wrote 19-year-old Joseph Ditchburn   "I will be all right."  He died two months later; the letter was never delivered.    

"This war is going to be worse than I thought," wrote 26-year-old Harry Lewis-Lincoln, when it dawned on him that it was not going to be all over by Christmas.  Meanwhile, a chaplain wrote to the widow of footballer Albert Butler to tell her that her late husband had commented, on having his leg blown to bits: "No more football for me."

Siegfried Sassoon seems to have felt an affinity with the dead, almost a communion with them, both during the latter part of his own military service and after the war had ended.  “I stood with the dead”, he says, as though to show solidarity with his late comrades.  It is hard to see how anyone who had lost the number of friends, comrades and acquaintances Sassoon had lost in the course of the war could feel otherwise.  For him, at that stage, they were still living, breathing men whose faces and voices were fresh in his mind.

“To any dead officer” he addresses the words, "Cheero.  I wish they'd killed you in a decent show."  Thus the blackest humour links military incompetence with death, in a manner typical of his war poetry.

William Rivers, who treated Sassoon at Craiglockhart Military Hospital in 1917, later included him, anonymously, as an example in a study he wrote on Conflict and Dream.  Sassoon's main symptoms, in medical terms, were the nightmares and hallucinations he suffered, an effect common among soldiers suffering from "neurosis".  Sassoon's dreams featured the dead in no uncertain manner.  Rivers diagnosed this as a "repression of war experience" and Sassoon felt that talking it through with the psychiatrist helped him enormously.  He subsequently wrote about his feelings in poems like "Survivors", in which he speaks of "haunted nights" and "the ghosts of friends".  He knew he was not alone in being obsessed with the dead, and his ability to get his feelings out in the open using the written word was cathartic as well as resulting in great poetry.

The BBC's recent (and excellent) production, The Wipers Times, a dramatised rendition of the history of the troops’ magazine edited by Captain Fred Roberts from 1916 to 1918, avoided overt references to death, and that was the whole point.  Everyone in the trenches knew their days were numbered; few had any confidence in their survival.  They soldiered on, literally, making life bearable by joking about death.  Poets too were mocked: "An insidious disease is affecting the Division, and the result is a hurricane of poetry. Subalterns have been seen with a notebook in one hand, and bombs in the other, absently walking near the wire in deep communication with their muse."  The writer couldn't possibly have seen Sassoon in action - could he?

"Is there anything left that can go wrong?"

I realised, when I took up blogging on behalf of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship, that there would be times when I was unable to keep to my schedule because of other commitments.  None of the hoped-for guest posts have turned up as yet to help me out, so I just had to take a break when I had two literary conferences to help organise on successive weekends.  There is almost nothing more time-consuming than trying to organise a literary conference, and this year's SSF annual conference has been no exception.  What's more, the SSF conference follows hot on the heels of the Barbara Pym Society's annual conference.  This year is the Pym centenary, so for two weekends in a row I was very tied up with organising events.  People keep telling me how tired I look.  Fortunately, they usually tell me, in the same breath, how much they have enjoyed themselves, and this just makes it all worth while.

Difficulties can often be anticipated and either avoided or mitigated when they do occur.  However, there is always something you just didn't think of or plan for, and these spanners seem to have a habit of throwing themselves into the works just as everything seems to be going really well.  I am never quite sure whether things go wrong because I expect them to go wrong or whether even worse things would happen if I didn't worry about it.  It certainly seems as though the things that go wrong are always the ones you never thought of, the possibilities you didn't even consider.

Take, for example, a boat trip up the River Thames.  You have hired the boat, you have a driver and a person to do the commentary and you have ordered the Pimm's.  You have even, after some coaxing and squashing up, managed to get all fifty people on board.  The engine starts up, the crew cast off, and you're away.

Then the driver says, "Is it actually important for us to get to Godstow?"

"Yes," I reply.  "That's the whole point of the trip."

"Ah," he says.  "There's a bit of a problem."

That's when I discovered that, because of low water levels in parts of the river after all the lovely dry and sunny weather we've been having, a barge had run aground, in the exact spot where we expected to unload our passengers!

Now, we had thought of going to Godstow by bus or car, but had dismissed the idea because we know what the traffic is like in Oxford on a Friday afternoon.  One doesn't expect a traffic jam to occur on the river.  Luckily, the passengers were so enchanted by the experience of drifting up the river on a sunny day, looking at the meadows on either bank and being told about the river's literary connections (especially "Alice in Wonderland"), that only one or two were dissatisfied with the trip, even though we never actually arrived at our intended destination.

Usually, members, particularly long-standing members, can be relied on to appreciate everything their organisers try to do to make events enjoyable, and rarely rebel.  The British tend to live up to their reputation for not complaining, or at least not complaining publicly.  In fact, we rather like it when things go wrong, provided that no one is hurt or upset, because it gives us amusing anecdotes to tell in later years.  "Do you remember the time when...?"  We seldom reminisce about the times when everything went like clockwork. Rather, we remember the time so-and-so dozed off during a lecture and fell off his chair, or when a bus broke down or someone got lost - you know the kind of thing.

This year's SSF conference was not short of such little incidents, but the one that caused the most hilarity (after the event, of course) was what happened at the beginning of the afternoon speaker sessions, when our President, Dennis Silk, and Chair, Meg Crane, were both trapped in a disabled lift in a conference room at Cardiff University. They didn't come to any harm, I hasten to add. They were, in fact, able to continue to participate in the conference despite their incarceration.  While awaiting the arrival of an engineer, chairs were passed into the lift to enable them to sit down, and they could see and hear everything that was going on at the front of the room.  Nevertheless, when the engineer arrived and rashly suggested they should "try to climb out", our Chair soon put him straight!

I won't continue.  Members of literary societies are prepared to make light of such little mishaps and, if one is lucky, they return to base saying what a wonderful time they have had.  By the end of the river trip, only a handful of Pym members even remembered that they were supposed to be going to Godstow. Likewise, after the SSF trip to St Fagan's, no one even seemed to notice that the minibus driver hadn't a clue where he was going. The organiser, however, remained mortified.