English poet laureate, John Betjeman wrote a number of poems based on his experiences in Ireland between 1941 and 1943. This poem is set in west Co Waterford, with each stanza closing with the line "Dungarvan in the rain". Much researched and disputed by eminent academics, it recounts the story of his unrequited love for a woman called Greta Hellstrom.

The identity of this woman has been researched by biographers, and it was found that this wasn't the woman's real name. In fact, only one family knew who she was - until recently. Some individuals even claimed to be the woman Betjeman refers to as "my Swedish beauty", but no one matched the description.

The woman in the poem is in fact Emily Sears, who later married Ion Villiers-Stuart, member of a long-standing family of landed gentry, the Villiers-Stuarts of Dromana House. Betjeman knew them both. He used to visit the Yellow House in Helvick Head, a fishing lodge, which was then owned by the Villiers-Stuarts.

Betjeman "was stunned by my grandmother's extraordinary beauty, but though he worshipped her, it was only from afar, for she was in fact in love with my grandfather, Ion Villiers-Stuart, whom she married. They did, however, remain good friends right up to the end of his life," said Barbara Grubb, a member of the Villiers-Stuart family.

The poet tries to hide the identity of the woman by describing her as Swedish when, in fact, she was American, and by setting the poem in 1922. He was at school aged 16 in that year, and he only got to know the Villiers-Stuart couple in the early 1940s.

Betjeman married Penelope Chatwode in 1933 and they had two children. In 1941-1943, he took the post of British press attache in Dublin. During his time here, he and his family stayed in Collinstown House, near Clondalkin in Dublin. While in Ireland he attempted quite successfully to learn the Irish language.

During his time in Ireland he met Emily Sears. He visited her both in Galway and in Waterford. They spent many happy times both at Dromana and at the Yellow House at Helvick. He wrote Ireland with Emily after a bicycle ride through the Burren with her in the summer of 1943. In the same year, he and Chatwode returned to England. Betjeman was knighted in 1969 and he was made poet laureate in 1972. He died in 1984.

Grattan Square Dungarvan

The final lines of the poem show the poet's respect and his final acceptance of Emily's decision to remain friends and never to be lovers: "You were right to keep us parted:/Bound and parted we remain,/Aching, if unbroken hearted-/Oh! Dungarvan in the rain."

Dromana House

The Irish Unionist's farewell to Greta Hellastrom in 1922 

by John Betjeman

Golden haired and golden hearted
I would ever have you be,
As you were when last we parted
Smiling slow and sad at me.
Oh! the fighting down of passion!
Oh! the century-seeming pain-
Parting in this off-hand fashion
In Dungarvan in the rain.

Slanting eyes of blue, unweeping
Stands my Swedish beauty where
Gusts of Irish rain are sweeping
Round the statue in the square;
Corner boys against the walling
Watch us furtively in vain,
And the Angelus is calling
Through Dungarvan in the rain.

Gales along the Commeragh Mountains,
Beating sleet on creaking signs,
Iron gutters turned to fountains,
And the windscreen laced with lines,
And the evening getting later,
And the ache - increased again,
As the distance grows the greater
From Dungarvan in the rain.

There is no one now to wonder
What eccentric sits in state
While the beech trees rock and thunder
Round his gate-lodge and his gate.
Gone - the ornamental plaster,
Gone - the overgrown demesne
And the car goes fast, and faster,
From Dungarvan in the rain.

Had I kissed and drawn you to me
Had you yielded warm for cold,
What a power had pounded through me
As I stroked your streaming gold!
You were right to keep us parted:
Bound and parted we remain,
Aching, if unbroken hearted -
Oh! Dungarvan in the rain!