Another Hunter-Dunn

 I've been away for a few days on a walk/ church crawl in Somerset, exploring the area between Shepton Mallet and Wells, whose utterly glorious cathedral was of course the high point. Somewhere along the way – in fact at St Aldhelm, Doulting, one of many fine churches we visited – I glanced at the notice board as we left and spotted a familiar name... Yes, the Vicar is the Rev. Jonathan Hunter-Dunn, surely a kinsman of the famous Joan Hunter Dunn who was the subject of one of Betjeman's cheeriest and best-known poems, 'A Subaltern's Love Song' – 

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 summer-house, 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.

The Joan Hunter Dunn of real life caught Betjeman's ever catchable eye in 1941, when he was one of the 'pale green intellectuals' working at the Ministry of Information, where Joan was second-in-command of catering (a job she secured by declaring that she knew 'nothing at all' about institutional catering). Betjeman recalled that 'I was walking down a corridor at the Ministry of Information with my friend Reggie Ross Williamson when we saw a beautiful girl with red hair. "Gosh, look," I said. "‘I bet she’s a doctor’s daughter from Aldershot."’ (In fact she was a doctor's daughter from Farnborough.) 'You ought to go and see her,' he told another friend, Roland Pym, 'she is a lovely sturdy Creole type with curly hair and strong arms and strapping frame and jolly smile and soft laughing voice.' The poem inspired by Betjeman's crush was published in Horizon in Feburary 1941, and when Betjeman took Miss J. Hunter Dunn out to lunch, he showed her the printed poem while they were in the taxi en route. She was 'absolutely overwhelmed. It was such a marvellous break from the monotony of war.' She later recalled that Betjeman had been the perfect gentleman and had not even made a pass. 
  Joan Hunter Dunn went on to marry another man from the ministry, Harold Wycliffe Jackson, in 1945, and followed him to Malaya, Singapore and Rhodesia, where he died in 1963. Betjeman helped her in her widowhood, writing and visiting, and helping with the education of her three sons. Sadly all of Betjeman's letters to her were stolen in a burglary in 1996. Joan herself died in 2008 at the ripe age of 92.