Philip larkin letters to.., p.21
Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica, page 21
(They seem to be having a row, downstairs.)
The quarrelling & the radio have sunk to a lower note still. Good. This letter is a pathological document, I’m afraid – honestly, I should never patronise anyone, I’m much too silly myself. What should I do without you? Goodnight, my dear one – I had all this coming to me, I know. And of course it isn’t much. It could be much worse. Goodnight, dear rabbit, goodnight, sweet rabbit, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.
*
Thursday morning – Had better send this, though it’s a rotten letter and I apologise. O dear rabbit don’t hold it against me.
I am to go out to this wretched dinner tonight – don’t look forward to it.
I think of the half hour we spent overlooking the square at Selby. How nice it was! That fellow in a bad way praying against his motor bike.
I hope your return hasn’t been accompanied by any nasty shocks, except insofar as the whole business is a nasty shock.
Hugs & kisses,
Philip
1 Inhabitant of Holtby Hall, Cottingham, the Hull University hall of residence which L. had just left with relief, to escape the noise etc., only to find things even worse in 11 Outlands Road. (See Appendix A, which relates 11 Outlands Road specifically to ‘Mr Bleaney’.)
2 These ‘friends’ of Charles Madge probably included John Saville, long-time lecturer and professor at Hull University, who was an active Marxist historian and who, with L.’s encouragement, built up an impressive Labour history collection.
3 Ray Brett: see Appendix B.
1 May 1955
11 Outlands Road, Cottingham, E. Yorks
[…] Feel more cheerful today – can’t think why. I’m not ‘getting on’ with people very well yet, but feel a comfortable they-can’t-stop-paying-me glow at the pit of my stomach. My mother sent me a note today, too, sounding more cheerful – I think I had sounded cast down on Friday. Ordered Satchmo (Louis Armstrong) in the College bookshop – created a fine effect, like a Bateman drawing.
No doubt all this will be dispelled tomorrow if I pick up many replies to my advert: ‘Dear Sir I can offer you too nise rooms with coking facitiles nine guinness a weak yours respectively Sarah Glum’. Hey? What about that? […]
Yeats’s Letters are greatly improved as he ages – he is rather a humorless young bore, much taken up with the ‘movement’, but in age he is playful and amusing, recounting how his baby daughter says ‘Thine is the kitten, the power and the glory’ – but as the kitten grew up she altered it to ‘Thine is the cat’ & c. […]
*
Later. Cheerfulness somewhat dispelled by Mrs D. putting the price up, and asking ‘how long I was staying’ etc. in quite a reasonable way – & quite reasonably putting up the price for these days – but it felt like a tiny shifting of the foundations, wch is disturbing. Oh dear! You are right when you say we both dread change & prefer to ‘sit quite still and wait’. I’m afraid I do, but can’t now. Feel quite cast down – no real reason why I shd be, any more than 6 hours ago, but you understand, don’t you? Marriage wd be a huge change, wdn’t it – I fear it for that partly. Partly, again, I’m very self-centred, and I fear not being able to support the change to basic unselfishness I feel marriage entails – I don’t mean I’m used to having the biggest egg and so on so much as that I’ve usually taken great comfort in solitude and not being bothered to consider other people. I should tend to be snappish if I didn’t watch out. And partly I’m afraid of the bigness, the awfulness, of marriage – ‘till death do us part’. Of course I feel that now, sometimes, even without being married, and more keenly insofar as I haven’t done for you what I could – take you away from all these trying people & the hardship of having a job. I’m sorry about the letter I didn’t answer. I expect I left it till I could talk to you, & then that time didn’t come. Of course you can speak of such things! As far as my making things clear from the first, didn’t I say that I’d just got out of a fearful tangle that wouldn’t have arisen if I’d not let things drift? Of course that’s a long time ago now. But it made a deep impression on me, my unfitness for ‘romantic attachments’, & since it entailed so much distress I thought that above all I must never let it happen again. You mustn’t think of me as one who, ‘having once known love, can never more’ etc. I am more like one who, having once got into the soup, dare nevermore, etc.
Oh dear! must go to bed. The household is retiring. Feel tired and confused. Tomorrow I shall meet the awful world of accommodation again – I wish I moved naturally among these things, but as I said, they just make me curl up inside. Goodnight, dear rabbit: dear Monica: many kisses […]
3 May 1955
11 Outlands Rd, Cottingham, E. Y.
Dearest,
Back from the Binns’s1 – him & her, & Prof Brett & his wife: that’s all. Not quite a predicted evening: house in a new estate, but quite un-Eaglelike: one huge room instead of 2 small ones. The conventional appurtenances of ivy up the wall, those lampshades, & curious ornaments. Frightening knowledgeableness on everyone’s part, especially Binns, who speaks Chinese & whose post as Eng. Lang. lecturer apparently embraces the whole of Scandinavia & therefore the fishing industry in Hull. Did you know that the reason coke-scoops corrode is that rain through coke forms weak sulphuric acid? I shan’t be ‘such good value’ here, I can see that. Still, I set the wives hunting for flats.
There was drink: Aqua Vita (e?), mint-smelling Scandinavian spirit which Mrs Brett pronounced as ‘like Bols’ & I fancy Mrs Binns added ‘or Kummel’ – both a bit wide of the mark, in fact. Then Beaujolais, 49, darned good too. An’ ciharettes for further orders. Large talk about yachts and croquet & motor-mowers also was bandied about, & laying out gardens, or getting the War Ag.2 to lay out gardens (market) – all very frightening to a poor worm trembling between lodgings & the deep blue sea. Life, life! Inexhaustible appetites.
I found a charming bit in the Yeats letters,3 about how he had chanced to find one night an erotic drawing of two lesbians, and ‘it got into my dreams and made a great racket there’ – don’t you find that funny? In fact his letters show him up very well: light, fragrant, wholesome, humorous. Almost never spiteful or self pitying or pompous. […]
*
Back again. Well, I am nearly committed to Mrs Squire, rightly or wrongly I don’t know. Hallgate (not Northgate) is the central street in Cottingham, & I walked along it from no. 1, my nerves getting worse as the shops started. Then just in time they stopped, and I found a high wall with a door (wooden) bearing no. 200 and a polished-smooth plate on which the name Squire could just be seen. Opening it, I found a long orchard-garden, and an old-fashioned house at the bottom. Mrs Squire met me, a decent old party of 77, well spoken, & showed me ‘my kitchen’ & ‘my room’. The first is a small one at the foot of the stairs, not noticeably good or bad, with a gas stove & I suppose a sink, though I’m ashamed to say I didn’t notice it all as sharply as I should. The ‘room’ is simply a medium-sized bedroom, with a gas fire, 2 armchairs, a little bay window with a table in overlooking the orchard-garden, and some hefty Victorian furniture. There is a large modernised bathroom next door, for the whole house – her, & her niece & husband, whom I didn’t see. The general look of the room is hideous, but it was upside-down with a mattress etc. airing for the people coming in tomorrow. I liked it on the whole, chiefly for the orchard-garden, the fact that it was so central yet so secluded, & because it is the right kind of house – Potterish. Mrs Squire had a Potterish look too. Rent 38/6 a week, and a meter for the gasfire. I enquired closely into the radio-problem, & it isn’t perfect, it is in the room beneath, but I asked her to put it on while I listened, and if it’s never worse than that it isn’t too bad. The other thing is it may be cold in the winter. But on the whole I thought it quite good. It is near the pub, and of course very near all the shops, & the bus terminus. People won’t think much of it, I can see, but it will no doubt do for me. No room for books of course. I was influenced by the thought of having breakfast in the bay window, looking over the trees, but I may be mistaken. It will mean a lot of running up & downstairs with a tray – I must get a big tray.
Phew! I feel exhausted. You have had a round-by-round description of one of the most gruelling days of my time here. In the pictures during the advert-shorts there was one advertising, well, I don’t know what, dog food perhaps, but the scene of a little girl hugging a retriever was laid in a pet-shop, & in the background was a hutch of rabbits. Tears started to my eyes and began rolling down my cheeks in a very silly way.
I think one thing I can say about the progress of our relation is that I’ve grown tired of all my friends except you – all my close friends, that is: not many really. This is worth mentioning because you have often felt that you were in a different camp from all sorts of points of view, haven’t you? ‘Socially, politically, morally’ as one might say. I kept you apart because I know, myself, that I acted a different part with them from my behaviour with you, and since I couldn’t do both at once it was well not to try. And in any case I couldn’t see you mixing into, nasty phrase, life as it was led at Kingsley’s house or the Strangs’. Therefore I kept them away from you, and as I did myself still enjoy their company I suppose I was keeping part of my life hidden from you in a suspicious way. But when I met Kingsley in Cheltenham, & the Strangs on Boar Hill, & Bruce in Abingdon, I thought on each occasion: I’m through with this. Basically. You have shown me better things!
I suppose I shall see K. & B.,4 at least, from time to time, but not with the same ruthless keenness. Reading this through, it sounds mawkish & self righteous – I mean, perhaps, things better than the role I was acting – I don’t know! No, I am quite genuinely hard & nasty, in some degree, & need doses of it occasionally, but not often.
I quite genuinely have tummy-ache at the moment. Has your headache gone?
*
Thursday 7 a.m. in bed. Brilliant morning. Awake somewhat depressed. Corners of people’s houses! Why do we live in them? That place will be too small, I shan’t be able to have the new record player I’d planned to buy. I don’t know, I feel basically distressed at living & its problems, a fundamental je ne suis pas heureux ici feeling saddening my whole outlook – and not only not happy but not competent, not skilled, practised, adroit: I have no house no wife no child no car no motor mower no holidays planned for Sweden or Italy: I feel them all sucking greedily at the marrowbone and my own insufficiency strikes me. And perhaps it is only fear after all! I dread being one who only at 50 gains what everyone else has had since they were 25. Well, at least we can have a holiday, can’t we? I’ve felt too bothered to think about it. What do you think? I’ve asked everyone here to settle their dates at least provisionally by the end of this month.
Well, dear, this strange document will be your birthday letter, and by rights should express nothing but celebration of the day when little rabbit was deposited on the unfeeling crust of the earth, to find its way about for seventy years? oh dear, as I write this tears overflow my eyes and I don’t know what to say: I wish I could hold you closely and try to forget this silly wretchedness. It is only the weather & the miles! […]
When I stop writing to you I feel bereft, but I must get up. Oh my dear! What absurdity it all is!
My dearest lov
Philip
1 A. L. Binns: see Appendix B.
2 The War Agricultural Committee, created to maximise domestic cultivation for food.
3 L. was reading the recently published edition by Allen Wade of The Letters of Yeats (1954).
4 Kingsley Amis, Bruce Montgomery.
9 May 1955
11 Outlands Road, Cottingham, E. Yorks
[…] I’ve tried ordering The G. of A.,1 just as new – have you ever tried that? Feckless bun, if not. I brought my copy back with me, and revel, positively revel, in it. I do think it better than A S. of E.,2 richer, more verbally farcical. She is the most adroit writer of our time, unless Evelyn W. goes neck & neck, & of course they’re very different in technique – she could never do ‘busted tester’s leg for ’ee’3 etc.
Very tired! Up at 6.30 – woke at 4.30 to hear the ‘charm’ & the cuckoo – lovely birds, with no clocks or newspapers, shouting for delight. Am in consequence v. tired, and must to bed, but I just wanted to give you a few words. Good night!
Tuesday morning Up and dressed and breakfasted: the radio heaving away downstairs & also into the son’s (empty) room next to mine, by loudspeaker. Have just finished verse 5 of the poem I thought of with you in York4 – do you remember? (You said with some bitterness that the rush of the thrush was all you ever got.) It is ‘only light’.
I do feel like talking to you much more, but I had better put my shoes on and go to work. Work is a kind of vacuum, an emptiness, where I just switch off everything except the scant intelligence necessary to keep me going. God, the people are awful – great carved monstrosities from the sponge-stone of secondratedness. Hideous. And there’s nowhere else to lunch, within easy reach anyway.
Blackburn Rovers! Did you see that one of the Scilly Isles has black rabbits on it? In the Observer last Sunday? It sounded v. attractive. What think you? – Samson Island. Black rabbits. Do read the article.
It’s evening now, and very cold. I’ve spent it in ‘my room’, adding verse 6, & reading the beginning of a life of John Galsworthy. Written in a horrible style by H.V. Marlot. […]
Wednesday. This letter isn’t being as solid as its predecessors – must start changing soon for this Senate Dinner. […]
After the dinner. Groogh! These affairs are barely worth the drink they serve. Prof Brynmor Jones (the articulate Colwyn-Williams) much in his element – took me aside, gripping me by the elbow, to explain his ‘tactics’ tomorrow – he is sitting on the fence, as Pro Vice Chancellor, between the Vice Chancellor, who wants new halls, new halls, & the rest, who want a new library. He sounds as if he is going to advocate both, with what results I don’t know. I was introduced to the Chairman of the UGC who looked like a successful broadcaster – young, round faced, shining – & moaned my moan, or tried to. I honestly think that Hull is making too much of its library deficiencies, and they may provoke a retort instead of agreement. Actually they should never have appointed me, I am quite the wrong man since I don’t care 2d about it all. We shall see. I would much sooner kiss your pretty measurements than worry about Stage I, interim accommodation etc.!
Dear me, must to bed now. Glad you liked the little verse.5 It came ‘straight off’ – used up the lower part of the page left blank by your Christmas poem, which also came ‘straight off’ – would you like that page? Wallyble manuscript – 2 Larkin poems as they boiled over from the seething brain, both meant for you alone. Say if you would.
To bed, to bed! XXX
*
Thursday evening. Feel exhausted. Day began badly by my getting in late – V.C. had been ringing up, they wanted to start much earlier than had been arranged. Anyway, I arrived & before long was showing Sir Keith Murray round, like a social worker showing a new councillor a distressed area – ‘one water closet per three families!’ The reason I was in late was I had lost my little tooth – had put it down somewhere last night (only on the dressing table as it happened) but I couldn’t see it. Thought I’d swallowed it: was already imagining where the incision wd have to be made. […]
*
Friday. Must round this off, and send it off to you inside a gift I wot you will be right glad to receive. Your nice letter this morning – how much more coherent than mine is. Woke early this morning & felt depressed and frightened at this huge million-book library I am saddled with, then fell asleep & slightly overslept. Yes, I liked the red suspender belt. I have rather lost the thread of what I wanted to say about ourselves, but perhaps over the long gloomy weekend I shall be able to say more. Nobody has invited me out this weekend, yet, so I ought to have plenty of time. I’m glad you liked the shears – I felt they were good.
Much silky love P.
1 Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academe.
2 Mary McCarthy, A Source of Embarrassment.
3 Evelyn Waugh, Scoop (Book III, ‘Banquet’).
4 ‘Mr Bleaney’, completed May 1955.
5 Not known.
3 July 1955
200 Hallgate, Cottingham, E.Y.
[…] You’ll see I enclose a subscription form for this book:1 I was round at Hartley’s last night & they were busy sending them out, so I collared a few, about sixty. He had 600 printed, & is busy finding 600 people to send them to. This upsets my idea of dining with Landor & with Donne,2 my idea, that is, of having just a select few friends in the back, since all the people imaginable are getting them, nuns, military men, alcoholics, feather-bedders, sexual deviants, impostors, people like Dannie Abse & C. A.Trypanis & George Fraser, not to mention all the poor crazed creatures who are subscribers, or have sent poems, to Listen … So what I am working round to is that if you have anyone you’d like to receive a form, either send me the name & address or I’ll send you some forms. The general effect of the evening was to depress me, slightly: I hate to think of the publicity involved. As for the form, well, it’s the type that will be used, but not the paper: I don’t care for the type. ‘The Marvell Press’ is H’s idea, God knows why. M. was born at Hull, or died here, or at any rate was an MP here. The asterisked clause is my idea, though I don’t know if it’s a good one. Some people may prefer not to be listed, though I can’t think for the moment who they’ll be. Hartley is off to London now to learn window-dressing: his wife keeps on the business still. She has far more sense than G. H. He is complacently sending forms off to ‘Herbert Read Esq’ and ‘C. Day Lewis Esq’, sodding fool. I have given him the names of A.S.C.,3 Horne,4 &, I can’t think why, Mollie5 at Leicester. Oh, & the Evanses. So you know where you are. It will be of tremendous interest to me to see if anyone responds.
