17 SEPTEMBER, 2021

Dear Harry,

At the end of my three years at Cambridge I was headed out into the real world without the first idea what to do with the rest of my life. Just like you, Harry. I know that much. You had your degree in psychology. You would have made an excellent psychotherapist—a familiar path these days but not an obvious one in the 1920s when you graduated. Back then the career paths in that field would have been either psychiatrist, with a medical degree, or psychoanalyst, with a couch. I can understand that neither one would have appealed. Alternatively… you had been involved in amateur theatrics at Cambridge, and you were tempted by the dream of a career in acting. I believe I mentioned earlier that Peggy told me this. But I suspect your father played a part in your rejecting this path, whether consciously or unconsciously: a practical man, a scientist, an inventor, a businessman, he would never have approved.

And then there was the ministry, the path you chose.

As for me, I was a poet. I had been writing poetry since the age of twelve, and it was at that age, Peggy told me, that I announced my intention to become a writer. I had been writing poems in my student days at Cambridge—pretty maudlin stuff, I could well imagine. Still, it could hardly escape my attention, as I reached that time to leave the sheltered world of academia behind and set out into the real world where a “job” was needed, and the livable income that went along with it, that poets are not known to make a lot of money. That they are, in fact, lucky if they make anything at all.

There was, too, another factor that had to be considered: National Service. I had deftly managed to postpone the requirement by heading off to university, but now the obligation loomed once more. I had this somewhat romantic poet’s notion of joining the RAF to become a pilot, where I could leave the mundane earth behind me and drift ecstatically among the clouds in the cockpit of my Spitfire. I even showed up for the aptitude test, which put an ignominious end to that aspiration. It proved me to be singularly lacking in spatial perception—a quality obviously essential to a pilot. (It also helps to explain that deficiency in sports I mentioned earlier, that I was never able to locate a ball in space).

What, then? Did we consult together about this? Did we have a serious family discussion about my future prospects? If we did, I don’t remember it. But there was another option into which I more or less stumbled without clear intention—one that would, to coin a phrase, conveniently kill two birds with one stone. I learned that teachers employed in the state school system were spared the necessity of National Service in the military, and that I could earn myself a further deferment by enrolling in a year at a teacher’s training college.

A teacher’s life? It would be ideal, I easily convinced myself. Not much work, really. Short days, long holidays. I would have plenty of time to spend on my poetry!

From what Olympian heights did I condescend to look down upon a world awaiting nothing better than the flowering of my genius!

How wrong I was.

Your ever self-deluding son, Peter