Love your efforts to inform and expose light on a controversial poet and the Victorian era in your linked post Colin. Well done. John B too, of course.

Thank you for your comments Neil.

There is an excellent (long) article about Betjeman at:

http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/23/mar05/betjeman.htm

This extract may explain his attitude to women - and men:

A word on Betjeman’s sexuality: his early experiences, as with so many of his public school and university contemporaries, were homosexual.

In later life, Hillier says, “John’s tastes were predominantly heterosexual, but he liked to speculate about the ‘percentage’ of homosexuality in people’s psychological make-up, including his own.

He commented on a well-known Conservative politician, ‘I never realized what percent he was until I saw him pouring tea.’

His own ‘percentage’ probably remained above the average, but Alan Pryce-Jones thought that John’s occasional professions of homosexuality should not be taken too literally.”

Late in life, he speculated on his tastes: “I think by nature I’m masochistic. So far as the body is concerned I prefer taking orders to giving them.” Hence his famous penchant for muscular, sporty girls, especially tennis players and cyclists.

From “A Subaltern’s Love Song”:

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won.
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

He made a bit of a joke of it (glimpsing a strapping woman one day in the Tate Gallery, he squawked to his companion, “Oh I say, wouldn’t you like to be pushed in a pram by her round Hyde Park?”), but it was real enough, proved by the fact that both his wife and his long-time mistress, different though they were, belonged to the dominatrix type.

Oh Colin: That is so interesting! I am learning so much inside this wonderful place. Even learning more about the 'birds and the bees!!' Never heard 'percentage' used before in that context. Super way to say it. I much prefer a little of the femininity in a man who doesn't mind taking over female chores and is at ease in the company of women. That particular 'percentage' makes me want to sing, "You are so easy to love!" I was always a tomboy too and prayed every night that I would wake-up a boy! So it all fits very nicely and it all 'comes out in the pudding.' jollyweez