Philip larkin letters to.., p.18
Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica, page 18
At Christmas all this will no doubt be thrashed out. I’m not looking forward to it. Honestly, I don’t know what I want – but I do know what I don’t want! I find the presence or company of my mother largely depressing. It fills me full of a sense of guilt & motheaten pity & wormeaten fear of responsibility and age and death. These things are uncomfortable. Of course, they may also be justified and salutary. […]
Faintly, on the gusty wind, a brass band playing Once in royal David’s city … Christmas is coming! If Christmas were what Christmas were what Christmas seems, And not the Christmas of our dreams … Now Christians awake. And the rain is pelting down. Rise to adore the mystery of love … Did I tell you how all last Armistice Day I could not get from my head the line Tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved?1 It repeated itself time & time again, seeming to hold the whole spirit of the day. That day … It positively sends shivers down my spine. Like August 4th 1914: the overheard clink of the milkman’s measure as he filled the jug, & the words ‘We’re going in’ – so the sudden repeated exclamation ‘They’ve signed! They’ve signed!’ and, in the distance, cheering … ‘Not knowing what to do, like, we followed the crowd up west, but when we got to Admiralty Arch we couldn’t get through, and had to go round … Everyone was makin’ for the Palace …’ O rabbit! do you understand all this? O life! O England! ‘And bugles calling for them from sad shires …’2 O tripe! O Noel Coward! O Cavalcade! […]
1 Words from the hymn ‘O Valiant Hearts’, written during the First World War by Sir John Stanhope Arkwright (1872–1954).
2 Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’.
15 December 1954
30 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast
[…] I am suffering pangs of conscience about buying my mother a pair of fur gloves. She asked for them. I ought to have refused, really. If this sounds lavish, it’s because Bruce suddenly sent me ten iron men for reading his proofs, just about five times as much as I had decided to ask for. So look out for misprints in ‘Best sf ’, published by Faber & Faber.
As for your strictures about my mother,1 no, of course I’m not offended, but I think yr language rather turgid – John Middleton Bunny. I don’t know whether I agree with you or not, really; but, of course, if one starts blaming one’s parents, well, one would never stop! Butler said that anyone who was still worrying about his parents at 35 was a fool, but he certainly didn’t forget them himself, and I think the influence they exert is enormous. I’ve told you before that the only characteristic I can’t trace directly to one or other of them is hay fever! What one doesn’t learn from one’s parents one never learns, or learns awkwardly, like a mining M.P. taking lessons in table manners or the middle aged Arnold Bennett learning to dance. I never remember my parents making a single spontaneous gesture of affection towards each other, for instance.
Of the present situation, well, again I don’t really know what to say. Admitted, my mother is nervy, cowardly, obsessional, boring, grumbling, irritating, self pitying. It’s no use telling her to alter: you might as well tell a sieve to hold water. On the other hand, she’s kind, timid, unselfish, loving, and upset both by losing her husband rather early & by being seventy (next month) with both her children showing marked reluctance to live with her. Balanced intelligent people, I know, can adjust themselves and find compensations, but she isn’t balanced or intelligent. It seems to me a vicious circle. If she were more attractive she would have a more interesting life: on the other hand she won’t get it until she’s more attractive. Am I, ultimately, on her side? God knows! In my heart of hearts, I’m on no one’s side but my own.
You seem to suggest that I’ve yet to throw off my mother & grab myself primary emotional interest in a woman my own age. This may well be true – it sounds true – but it’s not a thing one can do by will power. It’s all too difficult for me to write about: I never got the hang of sex, anyway. If it were announced that all sex wd cease as from midnight on 31 December, my way of life wouldn’t change at all. I tremble to think what mafficking most people would throw themselves into! (Of course I don’t welcome this trait in myself!)
Think I’ll have a bath now. I always feel I need a bath more when I’m wearing my blue suit. Can’t explain this …
*
Later – Duly bathed. I don’t mean, of course, that I don’t like making love with you: that wd be inaccurate – I only mean I don’t take girls to dances or out or that kind of thing – Chwist naher – and I suppose that’s not healthy, i.e. not normal. Still, let’s drop all this, till we can talk about it. I feel much better since having the bath – much be-etter! – and writing verse 2 of my poem.2 Reasons for att. earned the censure of the Dolmen Press boys – too sexy, I suppose, for the priest-ridden crooked little lice. It’s not up to much. […]
1 In a 20-sided letter dated 7 December 1954, from 8 Woodland Avenue, Monica had written: ‘Forgive what may be a terrible page to read, but don’t be robbed! don’t be robbed of your soul! I don’t mean by that exactly, simply, don’t live with your Mother; if you could do it without being robbed, that would not count, but can you, can you even live at all without it; can you? I would say, make the effort, do it, but it isn’t a matter of effort. Anyway, forgive me, & say you do please …’
2 This is likely to be verse two of the following, which appears in Notebook 4, after October 1954, though itself undated:
How we behave, I find increasingly,
Depends on something like a sense of shape,
Not on ambition or ability.
What shapes our comfort? What decides
Long before policy has woken up,
The manly square, the lucky seven-sides?
Quarrelsome diamond? dangerous triangle?
Designs more intricate and twice as sharp
Direct us; we adroitly disentangle
Person and place and impulse that will best
Illude us we are there safe in the loop,
Bright in the star, and chuck away the rest.
20 December 1954
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
[…] George Hartley of LISTEN – ‘Lissen’ – writes to ask if I wd like to ‘kick off’ a series of volumes of poetry he wants to publish – in Hull!! Have written temporising. If only he lived in any other city! ‘Luke at that, Mister Chairman. Luke at that word. Used to write it oop in you-rinals when I was a nipper. Now they call it poetry.’ […]
Christmas 19541
Christemas
No traps are set that day; there are no guns; Dogs do not bark.
Even our oldest, even our youngest ones Hop out by dark.
Yet none can tell why such a respite should Each year come round,
As if, that day, some mighty Rabbithood Peered above ground.
1 On 20 December 1954, Monica wrote to L.: ‘A Christmas poem for me! I love it. Don’t you, aren’t you very gravely pleased & proud? A secret present for me – for a secret reason. I can’t say how much I like it. It is better than The Oxen for Christmas; your little poems! they are being good ones, in the pretty cards, aren’t they, don’t you think so yourself?’
28 December 1954
21 York Road, Loughborough
Dearest Monica,
Yes, I ought to have reported my safe arrival, but as we didn’t sink I hoped you’d guess I’d got home in the end. […]
I sat looking at your parcels for ages. I couldn’t think what they were. The one that rattled I put down as shaving soap (wch I didn’t want!) & the book I finally decided was that O.U.P. illustrated edn of nursery rhymes (wch I quite wanted to look at, but not much more than that). I was quite enchanted with the soap – what luxurious pellets! so far I haven’t used it, but it smells so fine and unusual I know I shall enjoy it when I do. Then I got some of the wrappings off the book, & seeing the grey jacket & dark blue binding I thought ‘Oxford editions of the poets! Great God! Who is it? Landor? Shelley? Vaughan?’ Then I saw the words Brewer’s dictionary & I really thought you’d gone ravers: ‘yeast is yeast, but waste is waste’, I muttered – then I got it all out & could see that your reason hadn’t dismounted from its throne, & that in fact I had a good sensible present, the sort of luxury (as you say) I shdnt buy for myself but am very glad to have, to set beside my other works of reference in my small bookcase. I too thought we had it somewhere, but I can’t find it. It is a curious work. Like others of its kind it’s better at telling you things it knows than things you don’t know. I tried it with several things – B.V.D.’s,1 making the fig, jessie (Scotch for pansy-boy) – and got no or unsatisfactory replies. On the other hand it was informative about bunny, & harrowing about cats – the awful barbarous cruelties practised on cats, all because they were connected in the popular mind with witches! – and just by reading about I’ve found many entertaining things – the last words, yes,2 also the taverns & giants. And it’s nice to have the jeroboam – magnum stuff tabled, & the months-&-jewels, & the Bibles, & many more. I should like to set you a baby questionnaire:
What is jerked beef?
Would you fetch a rick mould if asked to?
What or where is the Brisbane Line? Has it anything to do with ships?
What’s the French for April Fool?
You have eaten lots of shaddocks in your time. Why were they called that? What are they called now?
The other two things I noticed are, how proper it is (talking cock, I mused, but found no elucidation; likewise … but enough!), & how valiantly it tries to keep up with jazz – but no bop or cool, the latest words. Their explanation of raspberry I find Bowdlerised to the point of irrelevance. Well! Thanks! I shall, leave it at home for the present, but when I have anywhere to put it I shall like to have it by me. […]
1 Underwear, ‘better ventilated drawers’.
2 Monica had evidently suggested that L. should read the entry on dying words from Brewer.
8 January 1955
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
[…] Have been brooding on my poems.1 There was a letter from Hartley waiting for me when I got back, saying that the book wd be printed in London & promising not to sell it in Hull, saying that in fact it was impossible to sell poetry in Hull. His description of the book – 9’’ × 6’’, either Garamond or Ultra Bodoni type – doesn’t sound very appetising, but I’ve rather come round to the view that ‘there is a tide in the affairs of men’, if this is a tide. It’s not a very powerful tide! Fantasy Press are paying Davie.2 This will take care of my poetry for about five years: render it impossible for me to publish another book till I’ve written a lot more. But I think this is a good year to strike. I’ve made a list of probables and find 23 suitable ones. I think it’s important that there shouldn’t be any dud among them, or ones I myself am not sure of. I can’t decide about Churchgoing – it’s one of the 23, but I’m not sure. What do you think? This assuming a standard that disqualifies Poetry of departures & To fail & Spring. I should like it for its length!
Another thing: I am always at a loss about a title. I’d like to call it Such absences, to draw attention to my favourite poem! only it doesn’t make sense, since my poems aren’t really ‘attics cleared of me’, far from it, in any way that makes sense. Can you see any way in which it would make sense? Otherwise, I shall have to think of some other title. Can you suggest one?
Lastly, how about dedicating it to you? I don’t mean any great fanfare of trumpets, just a note ‘inscribing’ (rather than dedicating) it to Monica Jones. No subordinate clauses about ‘remembering that sundrenched auberge in Picardy where we drank that exquisite bottle of Chateau Margarine …’ Or wd you sooner have Monica, M. Jones, M.M.B. Jones? Or wd you sooner not have it at all? Some of them, the poems I mean, are coarse fare, as you know: I shd quite understand if you’d prefer not to be associated with it. Or if you’d sooner see them all before deciding, I expect that can be arranged. Will you let me know what you’d like?
I see the latest selection by the Poetry Book Club is called ‘Kites’ Dinner’3 – shall I call mine Snake’s Dinner? That makes me grunt with laughter, like a pig, but again I can’t see how to explain it. There seem no alternatives to the priggish (i.e. Poems, 23 Poems, Poems 1946–1955) or the smart (In the same breath, True to life, etc. etc). […]
1 L. is brooding on the contents and appearance of what became The Less Deceived.
2 Oscar Mellor’s Fantasy Press, at Swinford near Oxford, had since 1952 been running a series of small poetry pamphlets, the Fantasy Poets. Elizabeth Jennings had been no. 1, and later ones were by Gunn (16), Davie (19), Larkin (21), and Amis (22). Jennings’s first full-length book (Poems, 1953) came from the same press, followed by Gunn’s Fighting Terms (1954) and Davie’s Brides of Reason (1955). L. was evidently irritated that Davie had been offered an advance.
3 A Kite’s Dinner: book of poems by Sheila Wingfield.
16 January 1955
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
Dearest,
‘So we are at last separated for the first time and I can’t tell you how strange it seems to be without you and how much I miss you in everything all day long.’ Who wrote that to his brother? No, not J.C.P. or even Ll. P., but Prince Albert Victor (Duke of Clarence) to the Duke of York (later George V) in 1883; not that it’s very unusual, I suppose, but I’m struck by the curiously warm, feminine character of the princes, rather like the Powyses, and especially George, who of course I always thought of as very forbidding. In other words I’ve started Harold Nicolson’s King George V: good reading. Good for telling. It has given me a line I think simply enormous in context – the last entry in the diary he had kept since 1880, on January 17 1936 – 18 years ago tomorrow! It runs:
‘A little snow, & wind. Dawson arrived this evening.
I saw him & feel rotten.’
Give me that, & you can take Mistah Kurtz: he dead1 avec le plus grand plaisir …
Well, this has been a mixed day. More snow, but very sunny. I went a walk between 3 and 5 – it is keeping lighter, you know! – and turned down New Forge Lane and back along the towpath. There was snow everywhere and the river was frozen, hard enough to hold bricks. Birds were darting about looking for anything eatable. The sky seemed rosy or even mauve. The snow looked blue, as in that Pissarro in the Leicester Art Gallery. When I reached Stranmillis the street lamps were just coming on.
My dinner was ready about 5.30 & I found it disappointing: steak awfully tough & dry although I had done it quite lightly. Had to leave half of it! Meal was redeemed by real cream & a tin of raspberries. Then I washed up & returned to my room for Take it from here & laundry. When that was over, I made up my collection for Hartley. In the end I left everything in except Spring & To fail (now called Success story):2 it makes 26 in all. Provisionally I’ve called it Various poems. I hope he is honest and efficient, by God! because it’s quite a good set and it will take me a long while to write as many more. I’ve put in ‘To Monica Jones’, again provisionally. Provisional form, I mean! Not person!
I have been looking up the poem that feels like the ancestor of Times, places, loved ones3 – that is, the first poem in The Collected poems of T.H.4 Do you see what I mean? I did not expect you to find it sympathetic, really, but it’s not very personal – I only start from ‘my own case’ in order to make two generalisations. They are the important parts. Anyway, I never read one poem by Hardy: and really as Keats said of Shakespeare ‘I think I shall never read any book as much’ – remember:
I am the passer when up-eared hares,
Stirred as they eat
The new-sprung wheat,
Their munch resume …
(p. 799)
and:
So, bran-new summer, you
Will never see
All that yester-summer saw!
Never, never will you be
In memory
Its rival, never draw
Smiles your forerunner drew,
Know what it knew!
(779)
This is the third & last verse echoing a first verse, and really, don’t you find it terribly affecting? I am blinking seal’s tears as I write – oh to be able to catch that Hardy note, that rough conversational approach behind which lurks the clearest of voices, fresh as rain, far off and sad! He is enough, enough for me anyway. I must read him more, much more.
And that calm eve when you walked up the stair … (647) And what about The whitewashed wall? (648) I like it, but the first verse is wrong, too over-written, if she did no more than look it would be better. Now I’ve come upon An ancient to ancients (658): this is the kind of success Hardy has, isn’t it; the quite-original form that could never be used again by anyone, but can be used once well by him. How the reiterated ‘Gentlemen’ calls up a group of game old birds sitting round a table! It’s the after-dinner connotations, I suppose. And the way it stands alone, over and over again, gives a sense of staunchness. Imagine the ‘Gentlemen’ just tacked on the ends of lines! And in the last verse how deftly it is turned to mean the younger generation, just to round it off. I wonder if The carrier (670) is the same idea as Woak Hill?5 If they were both thinking of the same story, I mean? And I’ve not noticed Green slates (675) before. But this could go on all night. […]
