Philip larkin letters to.., p.34
Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica, page 34
It wouldn’t have occurred to me that you weren’t grown up! I don’t know whether you mean something different from being put on, or disregarded, or overruled: these things happen to grown-ups, sometimes exclusively so. No one ‘puts on’ a child, do they? What people do for children is make allowances. I suppose ‘eventually’, as Fritz Wendel1 would say, no one is quite grown up. It might be said that anyone not bearing a full load of ‘adult’ responsibility (e.g. marriage, property, nippers) is often taken to be incomplete, wch is nearly the same, but I don’t think you are less grown up than Hilly, say. I’m sure one is more likely to be treated like a child at home than anywhere else: stands to reason. They’re just in the habit of doing so (‘Well, get out of the habit, then’).
As regards the rabbitry (did you know there is a legal term bottomry?), well, it is deep, and perhaps fishy, it might just as well be infantility on my part as recognition of it in you. Indeed, although I know you are living there a normal girl I do deeply feel ‘somehow’ there is a rabbit there too, doing the things you do; even lecturing on Hopkins. It is a strange fancy. I can’t explain it. I think perhaps the rabbit takes your place at times, or stays behind when you go out to an evening at the Frasers. Of course I know it doesn’t really! but I feel loth to say ‘there is no rabbit’. It must be deeply fixed in me, & therefore the fault, if there is one, is mine. […]
1 In Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin.
7 October 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
[…] I began writing a passage beginning
‘A LECTURER, in drip-dry shirt arrayed,
Rode with us, his expenses nicely paid
To teach creative writing in the States
(Plus a few summer schools and lecture dates) …’
This is ‘no accident’: I have decided that G.S.F. & his kind are THE MODERN PARDONER – & my Protestant soul revolts at the self-interposition of this mangy crew between the simple reader & the Word. Don’t you agree? But don’t spill it: I’ve a mind to work it up into a satiric dialogue. One speaker could recite the above:
Where’er he went, it was his common caper
To steal some sheets of headed letter-paper
– all right, eh? All right. […]
11 October 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
Dearest,
I was very upset to get your telegram & did feel for you strongly.1 I didn’t pick it up till I got in about 6. Of course I realised yr mother was seriously ill, but (like you?) I fancied she might weather this new attack as she had others. It is comforting to know that she was normal & happy in her mind so near the end: I wish I’d felt the same about my father, who’d drifted away many days before, or so I felt. To die with Conservative gains coming in is not the worst of ways!
Meantime I hope you are looking after yourself & getting some help from the doctor in the way of the upsetting arrangements that need to be made. Is some care being provided for your father? I’m not forgetting him & indeed think he is of those involved most to be pitied now. If you think it wd give him any comfort to know I have a particular sympathy for him then do tell him.
Of course I shall think of you tomorrow. Your letter suggested (perhaps wrongly) that the funeral wd be an ‘almost –’ exclusively family one & so I haven’t even ordered flowers, but I shall be sympathising with you & thinking of your mother. I’m sorry we met only twice(?): she sounded a very brave & lively person.
There’s not much to report here. There were some long faces in the University on Friday, haw haw. Old Covers hasn’t surfaced yet! He was by all accounts in that state of stuttering euphoria Gallup increases on the left invariably induce in him, making his wife drive voters to the poll in ‘the’ car. John Saville,2 normally (to give him his due) one of the few people in the place to greet one first, strode past me like a dance-hall usher on his way to stop some jiving. I was particularly glad N. Hull stayed C. after that interfering Yank Yid Liebling’s comments in the S. Obs. about ‘university intellectuals’. Oh well. How singularly unfunny & inept Feiffer is once he leaves The Village! Yankees Go Home.
I’ll be going home next weekend. I know you’ll have lots of letters to write, but perhaps you’ll send a card saying whether you’ll be in Leicester & if so whether you’d like me to call.
I have at last bought a second hand mirror (15/-) for the bedroom: not exactly a work of art, but decent enough. Hope it doesn’t disintegrate when I try to hang it! It has a signed painting on the back of what looks like the Humber ferry coming in at night. Quite nice too!
Sun still shining here, but ‘not for long’ I feel.
My very best love
Philip
1 Monica’s mother died on 11 October.
2 Marxist Professor of Economics at Hull University. He and Larkin were on good terms, sharing their passion for jazz.
13 October 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
Dearest,
Are you really going back to Leicester tomorrow or Thursday, I wonder? I expect there’s much to keep you and yet much to take you back. I do hope you are having help in the sad and difficult business that must result from your mother’s death. Really, I can hardly believe it is all true, and wish it weren’t. It shows, or seems to show to me, how thin the surface of life is that we scuttle over like water-beetles. I thought of you yesterday, and deeply hoped you were not being simultaneously ravaged & numbed by it all. I think it is affecting me by making me peevish and unwilling to undertake the increased bothers of a new term. Of course I might have been peevish anyway. More than likely! […]
26 November 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
Dearest bun,
I have four rolls of pink toilet paper on my low table, more or less at my elbow, but their only significance is that I’ve been too lazy to put them away. Pink is a new departure for me – only just discovered Bronco (why Bronco? Talking Bronco) makes it. Well, it’s curious to begin a letter in this way. I have been alone to the cinema to see some Italian film called Girl in a bikini (remember Maria Allasio) and didn’t much enjoy it. I do think foreign countries look vulgar & ruined. Coming in I ate two buttered pikelets and drank some milk (I’d previously had a Chinese dish at the Red Lion Restaurant. The Chinese are marvellous at making you feel you don’t want any more, without satisfying you.)
I had a card from Hoggart, as I said – then a letter from Grigson giving complete bibliographical details down to the arrangement of the t.p. & the pagination of the original GPO leaflet.1 There’s scholarship for you. I’ve always had an admiration for Grigson. His anthologies show wider reading than Hoggart wd do if he lived to be 90. And he’s a significant editor (New Verse) into the bargain. So tell R.H. that Grigson fixed me up: actually it’s included in a Grigson anthology for children called The Cherry Tree, too. It’s a nice poem. ‘Everybody’ knows about it now (hence my enquiry), as the original documentary was on TV, or part of it. How little people know, without having it stuffed down their throat by mass media.
I have now hung up my vast heavy mirror in my bedroom, & am fearful of the screws giving way & it crashing down like something out of the Castle of Otranto. It wd scare the living daylights out of me if it fell down in the middle of the night. I bought special screws & a chain, but the screws were so hard to get in I’m afraid I used a Brummagem screwdriver (hammer) some of the time. It’s the sort of job you’d think needed a man: so do I.
There is not much news. The SCR politely passed nem. con. a motion of mine that the food needs improving, then (also nem. con.) one proposed by the other side saying that we were quite satisfied with the food at present & thought it good value. We’re in 1984 already, boy: double-think while you wait. A Kitchen Committee was in fact set up, though, & I was put on it. We are still waiting for the ‘varieties’ of beer. God, it’s a farce. Something tearstained seems to be clutching my lapels and urging me not to let it get me down. It isn’t the food that gives you ulcers: it’s getting angry while you eat it. […]
Well, this is all about me & my doings. I do of course think about you, & wonder if your bed is aired. A pity you cannot arrange for it to be ‘switched on’ as required. How is your father this weekend? You will be feeling the awful mixture of regret & sorrow, & joy at getting away, when you leave. I did sympathise abt the food. Tell him our caterer is an ex-hospital caterer & is so bloody awful I am protesting – if you think he will care. I do sympathise with you, but I’m sorry for him, too.
All best love
Philip
1 L. had been asking various people about the history of Auden’s poem and film commentary ‘Night Mail’, including Richard Hoggart and Geoffrey Grigson, the poet, critic and editor.
1 December 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
[…] I met the Registrar’s secretary at the bus stop, who said ‘I didn’t think you’d know me with my clothes on!’ This is the kind of verbal gaffe she’s given to making. As a matter of fact I didn’t.
*
Wednesday The slow movement of Elgar no. 2 is on the wireless, & reminds me of long Edwardian Saturday-to-Mondays of Dr Pussy, the rich cigar smoke, the mist over the woods at the bottom of the paddock, the muffins & Gentleman’s Relish, the guns and gossip, and the young Pussy stealing away to do some scoring that he must have ready by Wednesday – rather cold up in the stable-loft, but he often has sport there of an unexpected kind, that perhaps the others wouldn’t appreciate … My eyes are swimming with tears!
Half an hour later, the end resounding, receding, splendid, sunset-like – is it Dr Pussy in the Pullman on Monday running rapidly through Surrey woodlands, ‘Oh’, what a splendid time the rabbit has! But how awful my medium-wave has become – awful interference all the time, can’t hear anything really. Has yours gone worse? Is it my valves? Elgar always makes me think of Dr P., & you, & fills me with a terribly strong loving yearning, for wch there seems no proper target or expression, & wch no one will ever understand – it is like some land where we are together for ever, beyond the reach of time and change and small selfishnesses and the burden of scrabbling from day to day. […]
9 December 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
Dearest Bun,
A drowsy evening: last night I finished a review and the poem, so I am resting before the next review. Damn me if I know quite how I am doing so much. Facilis est descensus in Averno??? (– your Brewer gives Facilis decensus Averno,1 so I wasn’t far wrong) – so much reviewing, I mean. Not so much poetry.
Well, I was glad to get your letter, very long in the circumstances. I do feel sorry for you, & for your father. I sympathise with him because I am one of the mice who give up & drown, not the kind who go on swimming until the milk turns to butter & they can hop out. Particularly as it won’t! I shouldn’t have the heart to make him do anything. But I’m not the kind of mouse who tells other people they can’t boil eggs. I’m sure it is all a fearful strain on your strength and patience. I wonder if you managed to get the nurse. […]
1 Virgil’s Aeneid, 6.126. (Dryden trans. ‘The gates of hell are open night, and day;/Sweet the descent, and easy is the way’).
13 December 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
My dearest,
Much saddened to find your postcard here on my return.1 I sent a card to you at Leicester from London, lamenting its usual dirt and chilliness, but that will lie uncollected now – doesn’t matter. I only wish I could get a word to you quickly. It is good that there is some friend there – will he remain within call?
If there is any way in wch you think I could help, let me know.
The conference was stodgy: I didn’t see your man – Wight was there, getting and passing to me the jugs of draught beer that were served at lunch, wch was a nice change. Graneek says he is being offered Edinburgh, & if he takes it wd I like Belfast? I said I didn’t think I could retrace my steps. Never return to the scene of the crime, as Frances says in The Disguises of Love.2
Regent Street looks very pretty with a central row of chandeliers much prettier than those lolling lumpy figures last year. I didn’t get time for any shopping, not that I cared. Lugged Rollei all the way there only to find the shop shut – I was going to have it overhauled.
I asked Wight what happened when all the English Dept were on TV on the same day. Ogh ogh ogh. My dearest bun, this drivel won’t divert you – I am sure Dr P. is sorry for you: he misses his friend Ld Catto.
I will try to send more frequently. All love P.
1 Monica’s father had just died.
2 Robie Maculay, The Disguises of Love (1952): American campus novel about the seduction of a college professor by a student.
20 December 1959
32 Pearson Park, Hull
[…] I think there are some very pleasant things in Altar & Pew1 – would you credit John Meade Falkner with the skilled anticipation of Betjeman on p. 42?2 Verses 3 & 4 seem to me almost better than Betjeman – and the idea is such a nice one, almost like Hardy – he used to have feelings about the Christian year just like these. And Jane Taylor3 – p. 25 – is excellent too: real changeless verse. Who was she? […]
1 Altar and Pew: Church of England Verses, ed. John Betjeman (1959).
2 ‘After Trinity’: L. included J. M. Falkner’s poem in The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (henceforth, OBTCEV).
3 Jane Taylor, 1783–1824. With her sister Ann, author of children’s books and hymns.
9 January 1960
32 Pearson Park, Hull
[…] The problem of what to do in the evenings has reappeared – of course, there are plenty of odd jobs, and I could write a review or two, but I wish I felt more inclined to write poetry. The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas abt things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It’s more like a desire to separate a piece of one’s experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs. […]
9 March 1960
32 Pearson Park, Hull
Dearest,
I’m back and somewhat rested, certainly more cheerful – I’m not going to Reading: didn’t care for the looks of it: withdrew my application what.1 Just withdrew what. Not very courteously actually, but effectively enough. I have lots of good reasons for this, but I was certainly in a funk too, and I shouldn’t wonder if it was just that. Actually the principal thing was the Librarian’s room, a dank hole about 8’ × 8’, no carpet, generally resembling the station-master’s room cum ticket office at Llanberis Junction (with Tydgogogoch). I felt it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to work there. […]
1 L. had applied for the post of Librarian at Reading University, but withdrew before the interview.
16 March 1960
32 Pearson Park, Hull
Dearest bun,
Thank you for your nice card. I’ve had an extravert sort of day, meeting W. G. Moore, my old Dean, then giving Farrell his weekly chivvying, then lunch with the works manager of our binders, then Senate, wch was all right but a bit frightening. I don’t know when I shall stop being nervous at Senate! – never, I dare say. Stage 2 of the Library is provisionally fixed for 1966–8 at a cost of £600,000! I doubt both these figures. Fortunately I had nothing to do with them. But ours is a slack sort of joint in many ways.
This reminds me that I found Sir Leslie Martin & his italianate sidekick St John Wilson sneaking into the Library at 6.15 p.m. yesterday so I gave them a brief tour.1 It was rather embarrassing, like showing two conscientious objectors round the Imperial War Museum. The only thing they fell on with glad little cries was an exhibition of filthy modern paintings on the landing. Of course, they didn’t criticise anything: it was just their miserable silence that underlined their response, or lack of it. It left me feeling like the proprietor of a Victorian music hall. Not that I mind that in theory – but for an hour or two it did seem rather garish, those reds & pinks & blues, & my room appeared like the madam’s room in a high class knocking-shop. Anyway, I made them sign my book. I almost expected them to add ‘Weather unfortunate’, or ‘Meals monotonous’. The Library will be the swansong of the old style. After this it will be all Danish butter-factories.
I’m glad to hear your dept. is getting into a mess – that’ll teach your man to go gallivanting off to the Land of the Free and leave you to educate each other. He needn’t think he is older than the Bourbon-on-the-rocks by wch he sits. […]
*
17 March. Saint Padherick’s Day. And rather a dull day too. I’m scribbling this between 6.15 & 7 p.m., as I am having to go out then to meet & entertain a librarian called Hoy, a tough character from Oriental & African Studies. Probably 2 or 3 nicker down the drain plus an evening, ay, mark that, Cesario. […]
I have had a copy of The L.D. bound in green leather: it looks quite nice. What a curiosity the subscription list is! Talk about social history. Dig the latest Listen, with ‘Patricia Avis’ saying how dull life is, & Richard Murphy lamenting his island girl’s maleficence, in consecutive poems ogh-ogh-ogh. Also one from me about nothing in particular.2 […]
