Robert Lowell

Personal poetry on 4th July

‘Say yes to everything - I do!’ the words were Prue Leith’s. It seems a merry and , on this, the 4th of J|uly, an American , optimistic motto to offer the world.

We were stayting together at a grand house in Ireland, Clandeboyes,

to address a Literary Luncheon, organised by the Oldie Magazine. The mag’s editor, Harry Mount, is a trustee of the house, which was, until her fairly recent death, the home of his godmother, Lindy Dufferin.

It was only when I turned in for the night , and found a copy of Robert Lowell’s long verse novel, ‘The Dolphin’ on the bedside-table, that I thought of Lindy’s sister-in-law, Caroline Blackwood, with whom I formed a friendship when I was in my twenties, and she, I suppose, just around fifty.

Robert Lowell, her husband, had just died. I was researching a book about the poet and controversialist Hilaire Belloc.

Caroline’s uncle, Lord Basil Blackwood (killed at Ypres in 1917)

used to do the brilliant illustrations to Belloc’s Cautionary Verses for children.

I remain everlastingly in Caroline Bl;ackwood’s debt, because she offered me kindness and friendship, and because she introduced me to one of the people who was to become one of the dearest of my friends, Beryl Bainbridge. Caroline suggested we met for lunch, which began at 1pm, and ended somewhere beyond 1pm the next day.

In what follows, I am not ‘passing judgement’. God knows,