Philip larkin letters to.., p.19
Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica, page 19
1 From Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and the epigraph for T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
2 ‘Success Story’ (formerly ‘To Fail’) was dropped from the contents of The Less Deceived.
3 ‘Times, Places, Loved Ones’ eventually became simply ‘Places, Loved Ones’.
4 Collected poems of Thomas Hardy: the edition used by L. and Monica was the 4th edition (Macmillan, 1930), and all their page references are to that edition.
5 ‘Woak Hill’: William Barnes (‘When sycamore leaves wer a-spreaden/Green-ruddy in hedges …’)
29 January 1955
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
[…] I hear the Myxomatosis Committee says it will rage again this year. If this is so, I don’t want a holiday in rural England. It would be quite dreadful to be afraid to go out lest we shd happen on any pitiful stricken ones. This Christmas was quite enough for me. Do you know, it is absurd – & I mean that – but I keep thinking of them in terms of Owen’s Exposure. ‘Is it that we are dying?’ And they looked so like a battlefield – some newly dead, some old, all so terribly abandoned. And of course it was so cold, that day! By the gor I do like Owen, though. Just a small amount: not all. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll look some up to quote.
But now – oh, my eyes ache & I feel, ’ow you say, lowzee. Goodnight, furry one. […]
I’m not sure I like this ‘poor, poor fellow’ line of yours about D.H.L.1 – it grates on me rather, like an utterance of some moral pockethandkercher brigader, and I’m not clear about the ‘wish to outrage “the human spirit”’ – but Lawrence is not really a living subject with me. He died, quietly, about 1950. I really don’t know what you mean. And as regards cruelty, except when he was in a temper Lawrence’s cruelty was so much literary daydreaming (like Llewelyn’s sex). Compare him with a person like Hemingway, for instance, who really enjoys bullfights and big game shooting. I’d sooner have Lawrence: he does less damage. Murry’s book, apart from being hideously written, is also very much dramatised, isn’t it? As with Keats, he has made up a story of it, but I’m sure it was never as open-&-shut as that.
As a matter of fact, I think the key to Lawrence, or one of them, is his gift of mimicry. Nothing he says can be taken seriously: he is always ‘doing’ passion, ‘doing’ prophecy, ‘doing’ love, ‘doing’ insouciance, ‘doing’ blood-brotherhood – what happened if you took him up on them? Oh dear. His petulance at being taken seriously is almost embarrassing. His need to keep pretending necessitated a complete vacuum, hence no job & almost continuous travelling, to evade the barnacles of people & circumstances. To deflate Lawrence you had only to take him seriously. This explains his marvellous writing, too – he could ‘do’ life, superlatively. I think it explains the fact that nobody took him seriously for a moment, except ‘women & mad people’. And he preferred it that way.
Or, at least …
*
Midday, Monday. Aren’t the M.C.C. making heavy weather of things? Do you listen right from 7 to 8.30? I do, but fall asleep sometimes before it’s over. Mind you, it’s thrilling whatever happens, but I thought that when English journalists were crowing over Australia taking a day to score 160 they should wait & see what pace ‘House-on-my-back’ Hutton imposed on his New Elizabethans. To hear Cowdrey & Compton cowering at the crease made you think that they imagined that runs appreciated on the scoreboard like money in the bank, if you could only leave them there long enough. What’s the use of staying in 3 days if you don’t get any runs?
*
Evening Are you listening to Sosarme?2 I am, and have just spent half an hour hootlessly fronting through Butler’s Notebooks for the passage saying ‘If people must believe in something, let them believe in the music of Handel’. But I did find a passage claiming that music ‘improved’ up to Handel, & declined since, wch is very much my own feeling though I don’t damn Scarlatti & Bach as he does.
By the way, Molly3 & Arthur are officially to get spliced in June. News broke this afternoon about five o’clock: Joan was about as bowled over at Molly’s news as Molly was at Liz’s news. (The Davies’4 eyes are also popping, having ‘heard’ from the future Mrs Murphy:5 ‘an I-er-ish pawut!’ George kept repeating. ‘Gud Gaud!’) About three people have suddenly got engaged recently in the library, leaving Graneek reeling.
Which leads me on wery properly to say6 that if I left you with the idea that I was looking to the wallbars of matrimony to strengthen my character on them it was accidental and must have ‘shone through’ what I was saying, which was that it seemed to me that if we were going to get married this would be a good point to do so. I have a living wage, you want to pack up your job, we both want – or think we want – the same kind of life, we know each other well enough, etc. And we are ageing! I would sooner marry you than anyone else I know, and in any case I don’t want to lose you. The sort of thing that gives me pause (paws) is wondering whether I do more than just like you very, very much and find it flattering and easy to stay with you instead of, well, behaving as folks do, rushing after other people who take their fancy – of course, very few people do take my fancy; the ones that do are ‘quite impossible’; & in any case all that kind of thing wears off, being based on illusion & deprivation. Is it fair to marry without feeling ‘quite sure’? But am I the kind of person ever to feel ‘quite sure’? And anyway, don’t I feel ‘quite sure’? How should I feel if you wrote & said you were going to marry Norman Scarfe?7 As in my old dream? Sure enough, anyway. Surely!
I agree about the horrors of pretence! But it’s a rare marriage that doesn’t have them, I feel.
*
‘My publisher’ writes to say the book is ‘on’ – he wants to put in Spring & Since we agreed, both of wch I’d left out.8 What do you think? After all, it’s your book. He says that everybody in the office of the Business Manager bought Listen 2 for Toads! He praises Church going, too.
Tuesday Uurrgghh. Bagface off: I do her evenin’ duty. Feel exhausted – this ‘flu’ is certainly the lingering kind, & rising at 7 has taken its toll, as well. Still anyone’s game, isn’t it? but I should have preferred a few more runs from England. If Evans can score 42 in 30 mins., why should Cowdrey score 16 in 100 mins?
Graneek had a soppy letter from my successor, signed ‘Robert’, & talking about the ‘smiles & happiness extended to him’ when he was here. Wish I’d extended 2 fingers from a bunched fist to him. I’m glad I’m going. This library is breaking up as a team, esp. if Molly goes. Shall I send you a LISTEN?9 then you can read Mr Murphy. Afraid this is a scrappy letter – am enclosing a blank cheque for socks, rail fare, shirt? Huck huck. Ark ark. Affec. thoughts, P.
1 In a letter dated 22 January 1955, from 8 Woodland Avenue, Monica had written: ‘If I thought you liked DHL for all his ideas, his attitudes, his moods – well, honestly, I think I’d be almost afraid of you, I think of it sometimes & then I think of you & I know you aren’t like that […] But O, the cruelty, the lack of any central stability in himself wch makes him lash out so pitilessly at people – his one thing, that underlies so much of his work, just the wish to hurt – it is pitiful, I am always so sick with pity when I read about him that I can hardly go on; when I read him, I am more sick with shock. And yes, he is obscene, I’d call it that, tho’ not for the reasons he was banned for – if he could have been just simply obscene in that way it might have helped him – but it is obscene, the wish to outrage “the human spirit”; he wishes to outrage, to degrade, to destroy, poor, poor fellow […]’
2 Handel opera, Sosarme re di Media, 1732.
3 Molly Sellar, assistant in QUB Library, later to marry Arthur Terry, Lecturer in Spanish.
4 George and Elspeth Davie: see Appendix B.
5 Patricia (Patsy) Strang, née Avis, was about to marry Richard Murphy, Irish poet.
6 Also in her letter of 22 January, Monica had written: ‘Look, then, would you like me to say a few of the things I have thought about what you said about marriage? I’ll only give you a few at a time, then if you don’t like those, I can stop, if you like – anyway, too much at once is tedious & the sort of female letter that makes a man groan “O God!” Well, for one thing, a first thing, you can’t marry just because you think it’s a sort of moral duty & a nasty one, a punishment that you ought to take – my dear! what a motive! you can’t. (One thing that does make me feel we are “suited” is that you can discuss such an idea with me, & that I can hear it without the least offence, & even with understanding – I do see what you mean. But being “suited” & actually wanting to marry is another thing again, too) & indeed I wasn’t even hurt, not a bit, just interested & sympathetic, really. Well, that’s not a valid motive for marrying, but don’t ask me to list what I think are valid motives. Another thing, & a question for you, is this. If you were marrying (forget the motives for the moment) would you rather marry me than anybody else? I don’t mean just the people you possibly could marry – than anybody you’ve seen?’
7 Lecturer in History, Leicester University.
8 ‘Spring’ was included in The Less Deceived, as was ‘Since we agreed’ under the title ‘No Road’.
9 Listen, Vol. One, No. 3, Winter 1954, contained L.’s ‘Poetry of Departures’ as well as ‘Sailing to an Island’ by Richard Murphy and poems by Donald Davie, Kingsley Amis, George MacBeth, Jonathan Price and others.
10 February 1955
Belfast
Dearest,
Sunshine … distant voices of children … a dog barking … the sense of distance …
This week has got out of hand. I’m suffering from too little sleep & too much drink: my evenings are given over to writing a review of Chrysanthemums1 for the student magazine, not very well either, be it said, or ‘going out’. So I’m afraid this will be shortish; I hope you’ll forgive me just this once. I’m wearing the yellow socks at present, and they’re very gay, though nobody has commented on them. Have you filled in my cheque? I dread seeing ‘fifty pounds’ scrawled on it in an unambiguously rabbit hand – very trusting of me, giving a blank cheque to a rabbit! Their moral balance is none too reliable. A vision of all the fun to be had for £50 passes over their brains & before they know where they are the thing’s done. Great hats with feathers in, velvet coats with pearly buttons, days out on the river – oh, what fun. Then in a few days the stoat policeman comes looking for one of them, and there are many shufflings and lyings and rabbits being bundled out of one warren into another for a few days – oh, yes! Never a conviction. It’s the most difficult thing in the world, getting a conviction at River Bunny …
*
Evening. Just signed the end of the Betjeman scribble – phew. Hack journalism, except that it’s unpaid.
The plans of my library came today – how glad I am that it’s seven-eighths planned! I have very little feeling for these things. I study tiny cubes and rectangles marked ‘Librarian’s room’ and ‘Librarian’s secretary’ & ‘Librarian’s Lavatory’ & wonder if it will ever come to pass. What a farce! The days are racing by, O Lard! Beverley & District PEN Club. Bradford Oddfellows. Hull Chamber of Commerce. All clamouring for a talk on Books & you. O put your furry paw in mine.
I took some photographs of Molly in her giraffe pullover the other day, & have one or two that may enlarge somewhat. There’s not much news on that front, after the grand flare up: they’re both quiet and undemonstrative. Arthur grumbles ‘Molly seems to have as many relations as the people in War and peace’ – Molly doesn’t grumble at all, just carries on falling against people and enjoying attention and so on. The news is gradually spreading, to the accompaniment of good natured guffaws. Most people like both of them, though tend to find them rather comical.
I did enjoy your letter. Spring days is nice to have. I’m sorry you felt low, but don’t not tell me, please! Describing things does help to get rid of them: hence literature. If you are not dull to me, what care I how dull you be (not very grammatical)? Everybody is several degrees worse in company: if you are dull, then I am hypocritical, chatting about Saxon red-glaze pots or heraldry – you know. I’m sure you would think less of me if you saw me on some evenings – and anyway you are much better sitting alone than I am wasting my time.
As regards TEL,2 I think of him as being a reveller-in-suffering, chiefly his own, rather than a homosexual – I miss in him the outgoing feeling necessary for any sort of sex. Homosexuality is surely much more like heterosexuality than it’s like anything else, don’t you think? But I grin at old EMF, muffled up on the touchline, still cheering the game on.
Really you couldn’t say anything more to my way of feeling than that you don’t like the idea of getting married. I dare say I could go through with it, but the bitter envy & self-reproach that would spring up if I heard of anyone else getting married, say, in the lunch-hour indicates where my sympathies lie. I remember saying to Kingsley ages ago that I couldn’t stand the idea of ‘a decent wedding’. He replied that ‘you’d never marry a girl who wanted a decent wedding. So it’s all right, you see.’ Everything you say I agree with. I think what frightens me most about marriage is the passing-a-law-never-to-be-alone-again side of it.
I expect you’ve seen K. by now: like you, I can’t think how he manages these jaunts. How does he behave in public? I’ve never seen him at it. Did he say anything of how his latest novel is progressing? Wants pulling together, I expect. I’m sure Ada wd find him better amusement than John Wain, though: much less of a swank.
It’s after midnight now: must to bed! and finish off this page in the morning. I think of you, curled up in your flimsy nightdress … Friday. Or not too flimsy: snow on the ground this morning! Brrr. This afternoon I must go to see about removing: my last week here will be frightful, with nothing in the flat except what belongs to Queen’s – no w.p.b., no books, no coffee pot! I wish we were going out this weekend to some interesting place. I think I am ‘booked’ on Sunday night to one of the people who’ve never asked me out before &’ve just heard I’m going, a brilliant one called Jope3 – in 1970 you’ll wonder how you ever didn’t know of him. I pull your long ears gently – much love P.
1 L.’s review of John Betjeman’s A Few Late Chrysanthemums in Q, 11, Hilary 1955: reprinted in Further Requirements.
2 T. E. Lawrence.
3 E. M. Jope, Professor of Archaeology, QUB.
15 February 1955
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
[…] ‘Nobody writes to me nowadays’ – at least, I don’t mind, exactly, but I get peevish at seeing nothing but Vernons Pools & the Devonshire Laundry. I have 3 regular correspondents – you, Mother & Kingsley, & Kingsley never writes. I shouldn’t be surprised if he were fed up with me, in a shoulder-shrugging sort of way: I am of him, except as you say ‘the dog is so very comical’. I was interested to hear the book1 had gone to Gollancz – oh please God, make them return it, with a suggestion he ‘rewrites certain passages’! Nothing would delight me more. And I refuse to believe he can write a book on his own – at least a good one. Still, we’ll see. In a sense he has behaved more consistently than I have: I sought his company because it gave me such a wonderful sense of relief – I’ve always needed this ‘fourth form friend’, with whom I can pretend that things are not as I know they are – and pretended I was like him. Now I don’t feel like pretending any longer, & I suppose it looks like ‘turning against him’, although it’s not really. None the less I write back much more quickly than he does & wd remember birthdays, etc., if he ever showed signs of reciprocating. And as you say he’s not like us. The idea of Kingsley loving a book – or a book ‘feeding’ him, as K.M. wd say – is quite absurd. He doesn’t like books. He doesn’t like reading. And I wouldn’t take his opinion on anything, books, people, places, anything. Probably he has been mistaken, to himself, about me.
I finished my Betjeman article, badly, saying really nothing. Don’t know if they’ll print it. One thing I didn’t say was how much more interesting & worth writing about Betjeman’s subjects are than most other modern poets – I mean, whether so-and-so achieves some metaphysical inner unity is not really so interesting to us as the overbuilding of rural Middlesex. I didn’t say it because I don’t believe in judging poets by their subjects, but I feel it. I prefer the mother-of-five to the golden smithies of the Emperor, or whatever they are. […]
I don’t know that I find you lacking in romance & little ways – at least, that wasn’t what I meant, I’m sure. And incalculability – well, I remember writing in a little débat2 some four years ago ‘I don’t want somebody’s daughter who’s “two people really” and demands a row and a reconciliation every weekend’ – is that the kind of thing you mean? No, I love & admire you for being free from that: there’s no surer anaphrodisiac. You’re a wonderful distinguished rabbit like that. On the other hand it may have something to do with – I mean, whatever I said (forgotten it now), I meant that final conviction (even if temporary) must spring from the sense of being complemented without being hampered by an overdose of what you yourself lack – I think we are much alike, but not exactly complementary. I feel especially that we are both shy, you speechless, me talkative-terrified, and can’t in consequence give each other the release from shyness that would mean so much, like the little things (some weeks back Eth complained that Ron3 touched her hair as he passed her chair when he had been putting coal on the fire) – this sounds a bit horrible, & I can hear you saying: Oh, 20 damns to your great pigface; but I’m sure you understand what I mean. […]
