Philip Larkin

by James Booth

  When, in October 1983, Vikram Seth renewed their brief corres­pondence of five years earlier, asking for advice over his second collection, The Humble Administrator’s Garden, Larkin was impressed enough to respond. He paid Seth the compliment of hard-hitting but helpful criticism, writing that though he liked Seth’s ‘clear, moving, funny’ writing and the skilful way he handled metre and rhyme, he did not feel his poems were ‘world-beaters’. ‘Sometimes they were too long (for me), sometimes they had a kind of flaccidity.’ He asked Seth to forgive his ‘candour’ and advised him to cut down the number of poems in the volume. After ‘the initial cold shock’, Seth took the advice to heart. Candour, Seth wrote, ‘never harmed anyone’.39

  In October 1983 Larkin contributed two couplets on Hull’s Library, ‘A lifted study-storehouse’, to the celebrations for Sir Brynmor Jones’s eightieth birthday. Urged on by Anthony Thwaite and Blake Morrison, he had made a selection of the best of his prose, and on 7 November Faber published Required Writing. The volume collected together various autobiographical pieces, the interviews with the Observer and Paris Review, a number of general essays and many of his reviews, including insightful pieces on Housman, Auden, Hardy, Owen, Betjeman, Pym and Plath. It concluded with the Introduction to All What Jazz and a selection of his jazz writings. He dedicated it to his friend Anthony Thwaite, who had commissioned many of the reviews as Literary Editor of the Listener, the New Statesman and Encounter. In his Foreword Larkin claimed that the volume had ‘little coherence’, and in a letter to Colin Gunner he referred to it as ‘a collection of hack journalism. I wanted to call it THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL, but they wouldn’t play.’40 In fact it makes a unified and impressive impact, and it is not surprising that it won the W. H. Smith Award.41 When I thanked him for his signature at the launch in Hull, he responded in character: ‘I should be doing the thanking,’ he said, and mentioned the number of pence he received ‘for every one of these they sell’.

  When in January 1984 Poetry Review published a special issue on ‘Poetry and Drink’, Larkin was persuaded to provide a contribution, ‘Party Politics’. The speaker depicts himself in the corner of a room of forks and faces, his glass never full:

  You may get drunk, or dry half-hours may pass.

  It seems to turn on where you are. Or who.

  The political metaphor of the title fails to grow wings. There is little conviction in the poet’s grumbling about the arbitrariness of social rewards, and he is all too literally intent on his next drink. In contrast, in a short interview with A. N. Wilson broadcast on Radio 4 on 29 March 1984 his funny side was to the fore: ‘I haven’t given poetry up, but I rather think poetry has given me up, which is a great sorrow to me. But not an enormous crushing sorrow. It’s a bit like going bald.’ Asked what he intended to do with the £4,000 tax-free W. H. Smith Award, he quipped, ‘Well I think I shall buy a new suit. I need one and I gather they cost about that nowadays.’42

  Early in 1984 Monica was prescribed antibiotics for another infection. Then in February Larkin himself was diagnosed with phlebitic thrombosis and took a week off from the Library. The following month Monica was well enough for him to drive her back to Haydon Bridge, though only for a fortnight to see whether she could cope. He wrote to her on 2 April as soon as he arrived back in Hull: ‘I can’t imagine you’ll be any less feeble but I hope you find some satisfaction in being among your own things, and your own boss again. Be careful, dear, of stairs & road crossings, and be sensible about eating & drinking.’43 But she was unable to fend for herself and later in April he brought her back to Newland Park, where she was to stay for the rest of her life. She cut a startling figure around the University in her flamboyant cape, elaborate spectacles and strange hats. One of the young Library staff at the time recalls: ‘You couldn’t miss her bright colours.’44

  Betty retired on her sixtieth birthday, 27 June 1984, and Larkin officiated at her farewell ceremony. On the day she actually left, however, he was in Oxford with Monica, receiving an Honorary DLitt in the new specially purchased suit, ‘like a walrus maternity garment’.45 On 17 July he began a month of sittings with Humphrey Ocean, who had been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint his portrait. He wrote to Judy Egerton:

  It’s inevitably rather tedious; in fact I tend to fall asleep, quite without malice, but wch holds things up. The trouble is, he doesn’t want to talk – reasonably enough – and if I talk he doesn’t just grunt, but feels obliged to lay down his brush and concentrate on what I am saying [. . .] What I can see looks very brown to me – a sort of sepia study.46

  Larkin is respectful of the artist’s procedures, but Ocean’s insistence on not engaging with his subject infects the painting. With its muted contrast and dull colour it catches something of the somnolence Larkin describes. Judy Egerton, who liked the painting, conceded that it depicts Larkin the librarian rather than the great poet.47 Larkin told Jean Hartley that ‘at first he had been rather taken with it – it made him look like the young Mussolini – but after several hours more work it looked like Hitchcock at eighty’.48

  The University had imposed a 20 per cent cut in Library expenditure for 1984, and Larkin now had the unpleasant experience of seeing several of his staff made redundant. He accorded each of them an individual, sympathetic interview.49 He was briefly cheered by the purchase of a new car, a second-hand Audi (the name reminded him of Auden). Also in the summer he watched the Test match at Lords, and saw the George Stubbs exhibition mounted by Judy Egerton at the Tate Gallery. He did not share her enthusiasm for Stubbs’s work, finding it ‘voulu’.50 In September Larkin was photographed again by Fay Godwin. His letter of thanks shows his keen appreciation of her determination to do justice to her subject: ‘The trouble, as always, is me [. . .] my sagging face, an egg sculpted in lard, with goggles on – depressing, depressing, depressing.’51 As his life grows gloomier and more hopeless, his letters become ever more entertaining.

  John Betjeman died on 19 May 1984 and in July Larkin attended the memorial service in Westminster Abbey. Despite Kingsley Amis’s urgings, he had determined to turn down the Laureateship. As he wrote to Colin Gunner: ‘I just couldn’t face the fifty letters a day, TV show, representing-British-Poetry-in-the-“Poetry-Conference-at-Belgrade” side of it all.’52 The offer came in December and he declined. Hughes would become the next Laureate. He wrote to Amis: ‘the thought of being the cause of Ted’s being buried in Westminster Abbey is hard to live with. “There is regret. Always, there is regret.” Smoking can damage your bum.’53 As if to fulfil Larkin’s prognostication, Ted Hughes, born eight years later than Larkin, was accorded a memorial in Poets’ Corner in 2010, barely thirteen years after his death.54

  In March 1985 Larkin exchanged his last letters with Ruth Bowman. On 7 March she wrote to sympathize with him in his low spirits. Her limp, she told him, had now deteriorated to the point that she could walk only very short distances even with a stick. She apologized for sending him ‘quite the gloomiest letter you could wish not to have’. On 27 March he wrote to her, offering to call on the £4,000 W. H. Smith Award to help pay for an operation. But the offer was ungraciously phrased, and he was clearly overwhelmed with his own problems. He mentioned Monica’s lack of medical insurance:

  I have a nasty feeling that before the curtain falls she is going to need a lot of attention. I just don’t know. But there may be a house to buy and alter so that she can live on one floor. There may be paid help. I don’t know. But I have a notion that I’m likely to need the rest of my money [. . .] I do want to help. But I’m bound to consider the other factors I have mentioned. I’m sure you understand. I hope this doesn’t sound too curtly brutal: it isn’t meant to.

  But Larkin’s real worry was not money: ‘For my own part, I fully expect to be on the operating table before you – they are longing to get at my oesophagus, which has misbehaved for years but isn’t in any sense serious as I understand it. Drinking, well I haven’t got it organized yet. But I shall.’55 Ru
th took the hint; in any case she had already been offered help from a different source.

  Also in March Larkin had his first meeting with Hull’s new Vice-Chancellor, William Taylor, who, he told Gunner, seemed to be ‘weighing me for the drop’.56 But he was ‘for it’ in a more literal sense than this. On 16 March Dr Richardson, the University’s Medical Officer, sent him to see Dr Clive Aber in the Nuffield Private Hospital in ‘the Avenues’, opposite Pearson Park. Rather comically, Aber gave the professional diagnosis that Larkin had ‘acute depression and hypochondria’ and suffered from ‘a cancer phobia and fear of dying’. He sent him for a barium-meal X-ray which revealed a tumour in his oesophagus. An operation would be needed. Far too late Larkin cut down on his drinking and put himself on a diet. To add to his problems, Monica also fell ill. Before the operation he phoned several friends including Betty and Maeve, to say goodbye, just in case. During his convalescence a rota of car-drivers, comprising Betty Mackereth, his jazz friend Mike Bowen and the wife of the University’s Professor of Russian, Virginia Peace, was arranged to ferry Monica, who did not drive, to the hospital. Maeve was touched that he ‘stressed that after Monica, he wanted me to be amongst his first visitors’.57

  When the growth was removed, on 11 June, a further cancerous tumour was found, too advanced for surgery. Monica decided that he should not be told. While he was in the intensive care unit of the Nuffield Hospital one of his visitors smuggled in a bottle of whisky.58 He drank most of it, nearly died and was rushed back to Hull Royal Infirmary for emergency resuscitation. He was returned to the Nuffield to recuperate. Kingsley Amis offered to come up to Hull, but Larkin put him off so as not to ‘scare’ him. Even in this extreme situation he carefully preserved the different textures of his intimacies. His visitors give widely varying accounts of his state of mind. Maeve was surprised by his high spirits: ‘he poked his head round the screen and pulled such a comical face, accompanied by a cheery wave of the hand. He was obviously delighted to see me and appeared in positively buoyant mood.’ She remembers that he told her: ‘You look absolutely lovely.’59 Betty Mackereth, in contrast, recalls finding Philip ‘sitting up in bed with a faraway look on his face – about 5.00 in the afternoon. The t.v. was on, but he was looking past it. He was thinking about death.’ He told her: ‘Maeve came to see me. I didn’t want to see Maeve. I wanted to see Monica to tell her I love her.’60 Jean Hartley, who visited with Ted Tarling, recollects his remorse over earlier insensitivities: ‘he said he had been a callous bastard over other people’s illnesses. “Hadn’t realized. Failure of imagination.”’61 To Jean and Ted he gave a more dispassionate verdict on Monica: ‘There was always enough between us to prevent us drawing apart but never sufficient to bring us any closer together.’62

  At one point Maeve was the only driver available to take Monica to the hospital. She recalled that the atmosphere ‘bristled with emotional tension which could not have contributed to Philip’s well-being’. When she withdrew to leave him and Monica alone, ‘Philip reached out to me in a passionate embrace. Deeply embarrassed, I froze under the hostile glare of Monica.’63 Still determined to win Philip for the Church, Maeve persuaded Anthony Storey, the Catholic chaplain of the University, with whom Philip had a friendly relationship, to visit him. Only too aware of the poet’s atheism, Storey was reluctant, but he agreed in order to satisfy Maeve. He later recalled that Philip was dozing, so he leant over him and whispered: ‘Hello, Philip, this is Anthony Storey.’ Opening his eyes Philip saw the dog collar and, understanding Maeve’s strategy, exclaimed: ‘Oh, fuck!’64 On 17 July his solicitor Terry Wheldon visited and Larkin revised his will, cancelling a previous bequest to Maeve, an action which distressed and puzzled her after his death.65 He left his estate initially to Monica, and then, after her death, to be divided equally between the Society of Authors and the RSPCA. He wrote to Judy Egerton on 16 July that he was ‘very depressed – never be the same again, old age here, death round the corner etc, I dare say I needn’t elaborate.’66 On 19 July Michael Bowen drove him back to Newland Park.

  He was largely housebound, and Monica wanted to stay with him, so their shopping was done by Mike Bowen and Virginia Peace. He abandoned his intention of returning to half-time work at the beginning of the autumn term. His energy was failing, and he was unable to write a review of Dylan Thomas’s Collected Letters.67 He also cancelled a meeting with the new Vice-Chancellor to discuss a proposal that a number of rooms in the Library be redesignated for teaching. At this time the students were campaigning to ‘save Larkin’s Library’.68 He was unable to attend Maeve’s retirement party on 21 November, and Professor Eddie Dawes of the Library Committee read a speech on his behalf.69

  On 21 November 1985 Ted Hughes had occasion to write to Larkin concerning the Queen’s Medal Committee on which they both served. He took the opportunity, with much hesitation, to suggest a miracle cure: ‘I simply wanted to let you know somehow of the existence of a very strange and remarkable fellow down here, quite widely known for what seem to be miraculous healing powers.’ This man, Hughes assured Larkin, had cured twelve cancers, six of them terminal: ‘He explains his “power” as some sort of energy that flows from him and galvanizes the patient’s own auto-immune system [. . .] It isn’t absolutely necessary to meet him. All he seems to need is name, details of place – but best of all contact over the phone.’70 Hughes gave the healer’s telephone number, but Larkin did not call it.

  Larkin was due to be made a Companion of Honour on 25 November but there was no question of him travelling to London for the ceremony. He told Monica that he was ‘spiralling down towards extinction’.71 Poetry may have deserted him, but he continued to make phrases as dissolution approached. On Friday 29 November he fell down twice, the second time, late in the evening, in the downstairs toilet. His legs were wedged against the door and his face was pressing against one of the central heating pipes. Monica could hear him whispering ‘Hot! Hot!’ But he was unable to hear her because he had not put in his hearing aid. She called an ambulance and he was taken to the Nuffield Hospital, begging her on the way to destroy his diaries. On Saturday 30 November Betty drove Monica to see him, but he was sedated and asleep. On Sunday the visit was repeated with the same failure of communication. He died on Monday 2 December at 1.24 a.m., four months beyond his sixty-third birthday. It may be, as the nurse in attendance reported, that his last whispered words were: ‘I am going to the inevitable.’72

  Postscript: Petals and Graves

  Monica was too distraught to attend Philip’s funeral on 9 December 1985 in St Mary’s Church, Cottingham. Kingsley Amis came and gave an address, seeing Larkin’s home ground of thirty years for the first time. He limited his visit to Cottingham, not penetrating as far as Hull or the University. His son, Martin, remembers him, on his return from the funeral, reflecting ‘defeatedly’: ‘I sometimes wonder if I ever really knew him.’1 A formal memorial service took place later in Westminster Abbey, not inappropriately, on St Valentine’s Day 1986. Some weeks after Larkin’s death Monica gave Betty the diaries to be destroyed in accordance with his wish. He had always seen the diaries as comprising a special, suspect category among his writings. As early as 1954, following Patsy Strang’s intrusion upon them he had told Monica: ‘Journals – diaries – are two-edged weapons! I really must arrange for mine to be destroyed when I die.’2 At the other end of his life, in his interview with John Haffenden of 1981 he said: ‘I kept a diary for a long time, more as a kind of great grumble-book than anything else. It’s stopped now.’3 In fact, since his abortive attempt to ‘distil’ them in 1976 he had continued to fill their pages and there were now thirteen thick notebooks covering 1949 to 1980. Betty took them into the Librarian’s office, tore the pages from their bindings, shredded them and sent the contents to the incinerator. Her task took all afternoon.4 Tantalizing cuttings, photographs and quotations survive, pasted on the inside covers.

  Betty has no qualms about her action: ‘He was very sure that that’s what he wa
nted to happen. He told Monica and he told me.’5 However, she still feels uncomfortable about a second, unauthorized interference with Larkin’s property. Before the destruction of the diaries, Larkin’s solicitor Terry Wheldon visited the Newland Park house with her and removed the pornography in two large cardboard boxes. ‘In later years I would have stopped that,’ she says. ‘But I just went along with it. He said to me: “I always do this, because leaving things like this upsets the bereaved.”’ But, Betty says, ‘It wouldn’t have upset Monica in the least. She would have loved it. Wouldn’t she? She probably knew anyway.’ Later Betty wrote to the University Archivist, Brian Dyson, questioning this interference with Larkin’s estate.6

  Fortunately, Larkin’s will was self-contradictory. It had been altered during his first spell in Nuffield Hospital in 1985, at a time when his judgement may well have been damaged by his collapse following the episode of the smuggled whisky. One clause required his executors to destroy his unpublished work ‘unread’. Another clause gave them full permission to publish what they wished from his papers. His executors, Anthony Thwaite and Andrew Motion, took advice from a Queen’s Counsel and the will was declared to be ‘repugnant’, allowing them a free hand to do what they felt best. They earned the gratitude of succeeding generations by destroying nothing.7 Given Larkin’s own instinct to preserve and archive every twist and turn of his life and writing, including his gift of the first workbook to the British Library, and given also his fascination with the posthumous papers of Thomas Hardy and Wilfred Owen, this seems right. Anthony Thwaite records that Larkin ‘often referred [. . .] to work which would have to be left for “the posthumous volume” of his poems’.8