Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!
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.
Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk, And swing past the summerhouse, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
The Hillman is waiting, the light’s in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing’s the light on your hair.
By roads “not adopted”, by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze, Into nine-o’clock
Camberley, heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!
Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
In his new book The Scarlet Runners: A Social History of Queen Anne’s, Caversham, Dan Talbot, author and Head of History, refers to Betjeman’s encounter with Joan. “He met her at the Ministry of Information; and, though he barely knew her, liked the name and knew the sporting culture in which she had been brought up. In A Subaltern’s Love-song, Joan Hunter Dunn is a suburban tennis player, but with ‘The grace of a swallow, the speed of a boy’, she has the sort of magnetism that could make a girl a hero in her own school.”
Joan was Lacrosse Captain, House Cricket Captain and tennis champion at Queen Anne’s, and prefect of her boarding house, Michell, in 1934.
Ends
The Scarlet Runners: A Social History of Queen Anne’s, Caversham, will be published in October 2008. See the Home page for details.
Link to The Times Obituary, 17 April 2008
