Philip Larkin

by James Booth

  Larkin had failed to become a novelist in the 1940s. However, as if his creativity could not be contained by his death, its aftermath shows a vivid abundance of novelistic character and event. During his researches for his official biography Andrew Motion concluded that the unpublished ‘When first we faced, and touching showed’ must be the product of a secret relationship of which neither Monica nor Maeve was aware. Though Philip had never shown her the poem Maeve felt at first that it must be addressed to her. Otherwise she was baffled as to who the ‘third woman’ could be. At one point she visited Betty for coffee and asked if she could help with the mystery. Had Philip, perhaps, Maeve inquired, had an affair with Joanna Motion, Andrew’s first wife? Later, on learning the truth, and discovering much else about Philip she had not suspected, such as his habitual use of four-letter words, Maeve became disillusioned. She ‘regretted his selfishness’, telling Motion that he had taken ‘the best years’ of her life and ‘given little in return’. She quoted Byron, an odd choice in the circumstances: ‘Were I to meet him again, that’s how I should greet him, “with silence and tears”.’9 Her moral judgement was characteristically decisive: ‘He had feet of clay, didn’t he? Huge feet of clay.’10 Later, however, her attitude mellowed and she enjoyed the celebrity of a famous poet’s muse. She became Vice-Chairman of the Philip Larkin Society, and put together, with my help, an affectionate memoir, The Philip Larkin I Knew (2002).11 At the time of her death in 2003 she was organizing a Society excursion to Scarborough to explore the site of her shopping trips with the poet in the 1960s. The excursion took place after her death.12

  Monica retired into seclusion, leaving most of the house she had briefly shared with Philip exactly as it had been when he died. So it stayed for the remaining fifteen years of her life. Uniquely among his loves and muses she understood poetry, and took it as seriously as he did. Unlike the others also, she had a capacity for tragedy. She had never been deceived about the complexity of Philip’s life: ‘I didn’t think he was straightforward.’13 Whatever Philip’s faults, she could not bear to be without him. ‘He lied to me, the bugger, but I loved him.’14 Money from the Larkin Estate maintained and redecorated the rooms where she slept and in which she spent her days reading the Daily Telegraph, tracing her lover’s growing reputation in literary magazines, and watching boxing and cricket on television. Elsewhere his clothes and shoes remained in their cupboards, his books and records on their shelves. Unfortunately, however, no one was at hand to prevent her falling prey to a cold-caller and commissioning the construction of an expensive plastic and glass conservatory, which she left bare and empty.

  I met Monica briefly in 1999 two years before she died, barging in with academic questions at the end of an event. She was bedridden but as firm and opinionated as ever. At one point, her carer came in for a chat, no doubt concerned that my questions were overtaxing her frail charge. She had, she said, taken Monica into the front bedroom recently ‘for a change of scene’. ‘We found Philip’s old scarf and some of the dresses you used to wear when you went out together. It’s happy memories isn’t it?’ Monica drove her fists into the bed on each side of her and strained forward from the pillow: ‘I found it terribly boring actually.’ The nurse laughed ruefully: ‘I don’t give up, Mr Booth.’ Later she told me how she had to fight Monica in order to wash her hair: ‘she was so stiffened against it. It’s very long, and it’s really beautiful when it’s washed.’15 At Monica’s funeral two years later, a very Anglican affair with much mumbling and a brightly encouraging organ, the officiating priest commented that he was wearing the same robes as at Larkin’s funeral. He remembered because they had been noticed on television, and he’d received admiring letters about them.

  After Monica’s papers had gone to the Bodleian, according to her wish, and Larkin’s remaining books, records and letters had been taken to the Brynmor Jones Library, the Larkin Society bought the residual contents of the house: pictures, ornaments, furniture, cameras, blank workbooks. At first we thought there might be manuscripts hidden under the upstairs carpets, but the promising unevennesses were only accumulated piles of dust. Again, life imitated fiction, when, despite the most rigorous search, we failed to locate the manuscript book in which Larkin had drafted ‘Morning at last, there in the snow’, ‘Be my Valentine this Monday’ and ‘We met at the end of the party’. This had fallen down the back of a small bedside cabinet and only came to light when the house-clearer whom we paid to take away the last debris heard it rattling on the way to the tip.16 More movingly, in one drawer we found a small translucent envelope containing petals of a pressed dog rose, now brown, together with a lock of pubic hair.17 Though the moment of passion it preserves is lost to memory, this poignant metonym of the spring of life preserves its emotional charge. Like the rose and hair, Larkin’s poems have, also, with accumulating deaths, outlived their occasions.

  Larkin’s grave is in the cemetery in Eppleworth Road, Cottingham. The small plain white headstone bears the simple wording decided upon by Monica:

  Philip Larkin

  1922–1985

  Writer

  The stonemason initially placed inappropriate full-stops at the ends of the lines, and these had to be clumsily filled in: a homely touch which Larkin would have appreciated. The grave stands mid-row, and attracts tributes of flowers. For a time a weatherbeaten copy of the Collected Poems was placed there, and someone planted a small Laurus nobilis, or bay, close to one side. But the roots would have unsettled the surrounding stones and the Council removed it. However, the grave is picturesque, and looks much as the final resting place of a well-loved poet should look. By the time of Monica’s death in 2001 mortality had completed Philip’s row and filled three more. So, looking over Larkin’s grave a little to the right one can see Monica’s grave about twenty yards away. A stone of exactly the same form as Philip’s was eventually erected over her, giving simply her full name:

  Margaret Monica Beale Jones

  7th May 1922 – 15th February 2001

  It is quite untended.

  Maeve Brennan’s relationship with David Bassett lasted until his death. They did not marry, though they were effectively a couple. He died four years after Larkin in 1989 and, since he had no surviving close relatives, it fell to Maeve to wind up his affairs and make arrangements for his burial. His gravestone of purple marble, larger and more ornamental than Philip’s, in accordance with Maeve’s Catholic taste, is located at the very end of the same row as Larkin’s. In due course, in 2003, when Maeve herself died, she was interred in the same plot. Thus, the visitor today encounters a densely worded gravestone giving David Bassett’s details and ending: ‘A very dear friend’. Below, without explanation, is engraved: ‘also Maeve Brennan, devoted sister of Dermot and Moira’. The inscription concludes with Maeve’s favourite words of poetry: ‘What will survive of us is love.’ She had always been earnest that ‘Philip really did mean’ what he had written, insisting that there was no irony in the line. One can hear the ghostly less deceived snort across the grass from Monica’s grave: ‘Love isn’t stronger than death just because two statues hold hands for six hundred years.’18 What the ghost of David Bassett makes of the situation is a question perhaps for Larkin’s favourite celebrator of life’s little ironies, Thomas Hardy. At Maeve’s funeral Betty commented wickedly: ‘Now nobody can contradict me.’ And during the third Hull International Conference on the Work of Philip Larkin, held in the nearby Lawns Centre in summer 2007, she stood beside Larkin’s grave in the drizzle and recited ‘An Arundel Tomb’ to the assembled delegates.

  One distinctive aspect of Larkin’s poems concerning death is the absence of any reference to those who will remain to grieve his passing. He would never have written a poem like Hardy’s ‘Afterwards’ in which the poet imagines his own afterlife in the memories of others (‘He was a man who noticed such things’). Nor does Larkin imagine his body decaying physically after death. There is nothing in his work similar to Betjeman’s elegy on his fath
er: ‘In Highgate now his finger-bones / Stick through his finger-ends.’19 For Larkin beyond death there is simply nothing. In the words of Auden’s elegy on Yeats, he has become his admirers. What will survive of him is poetry. But the thought of his literary afterlife was never of any consolation to him.20 ‘We must never die. No one must ever die.’21

  Notes

  Abbreviations

  AGW Philip Larkin, A Girl in Winter (London: Faber & Faber, 1975 edn).

  AL About Larkin (Journal of the Philip Larkin Society) (April 1996–April 2012); nos. 1–6 ed. Jean Hartley; nos. 7–14 ed James Booth; no. 15 ed. Jean Hartley and Maeve Brennan; no. 16 ed. Jean Hartley; nos. 17–21 ed. Belinda Hakes; no. 22 ed. Janet Brennan; nos. 23–37 ed. James Booth and Janet Brennan.

  AWJ Philip Larkin, All What Jazz: A Record Diary (London: Faber & Faber, 2nd edn, 1985).

  BD1 ‘Biographical Details: OXFORD’, AL 23 (April 2007), pp. 5–13.

  BD2 ‘Biographical Details: OXFORD – Part 2’, AL 24 (October 2007), pp. 4–19.

  Bibliography B. C. Bloomfield, Philip Larkin: A Bibliography 1933–1994 (London: British Library and Oak Knoll Press, revised and enlarged edn, 2002).

  Brennan Maeve Brennan, The Philip Larkin I Knew (Manchester: Manchester University Press, Larkin Society Monograph 3, 2002).

  Collected Poems Philip Larkin: Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: The Marvell Press/Faber & Faber, 1988, revised 1990).

  Complete Poems The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, ed. with an introduction and commentary by Archie Burnett (London: Faber & Faber, 2012).

  FR Philip Larkin, Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews 1952–1985, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber & Faber, pbk edn with two additional chapters, 2002).

  Hartley Jean Hartley, Philip Larkin, the Marvell Press and Me (1989; London: Sumach Press, 1993).

  Jill Philip Larkin, Jill (London: Faber & Faber, 1975 edn).

  LKA The Letters of Kingsley Amis, ed. Zachary Leader (London: HarperCollins, 2000).

  LM Philip Larkin, Letters to Monica, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber & Faber/Bodleian Library, 2010).

  Motion Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (London: Faber & Faber, 1993).

  OBTCEV Philip Larkin (ed.), The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).

  RW Philip Larkin, Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982 (London: Faber & Faber, 1983).

  SL Philip Larkin, Selected Letters, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber & Faber, 1992).

  TWG Philip Larkin, Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions, ed. James Booth (London: Faber & Faber, 2002).

  Archival Sources in the Hull University Collection, The History Centre, Hull

  U DLN Larkin family papers.

  U DLN/6 Letters to Eva Larkin. These are cited in the text by date only.

  U DP, DPL Various papers related to Larkin deposited in the University of Hull Collection.

  U DP/174/2 Letters to James Sutton. These are cited in the text by date only.

  U DPL/1/2–8 Larkin’s poetic workbooks 2–8 (1950–81).

  U DX/329 Pictures, ornaments, etc. from 105 Newland Park in 2001–2, belonging to the Philip Larkin Society, inventoried by James Booth in 2003. Key items are deposited in the History Centre, Hull; others are on loan to the East Yorkshire Museums Service.

  The U prefix is omitted in the notes.

  Other Archival Sources

  British Library Add. MS. 52619: Larkin’s poetic workbook 1 (1944–50).

  Unpublished letters not included in Selected Letters, Letters to Monica or The Letters of Kingsley Amis are cited by recipient and date only. The correspondences are held in the following institutions:

  Kingsley Amis: The Huntington Library, California, AMS 353–428.

  Monica Jones: The Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Eng. c.7403–c.7445.

  Introduction

  1. Jonathan Raban, ‘Philip Larkin’, in Driving Home: An American Scrapbook (London: Picador, 2010), p. 88.

  2. http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/literature/20120422_Collected_Philip_Larkin__A_sobering_triumph_of_exquisitely_finished_poems.html?viewAll=y&c=y#ixzz1snyCEM65.

  3. ‘Poets’ poll crowns Larkin king of verse’, Guardian, 15 October 2003, p. 8.

  4. To Judy Egerton, 6 June 1982. SL, p. 674.

  5. Complete Poems, p. xxvi.

  6. 20 September 1945. SL, p. 110.

  7. Oliver Marshall, ‘Stories from the Doldrums’, Irish Times, 18 May 2002, p. 8.

  8. Complete Poems, p. xiii.

  9. Dennis O’Driscoll, ‘Scraping the bottom of the waste paper basket’, Irish Times, 11 February 2012.

  10. Paul Muldoon, New York Times Sunday Book Review, 19 April 2012.

  11. To Patsy Strang, 12 July 1953. SL, p. 202.

  12. W. N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis (eds), Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2000), p. 150.

  13. ‘Statement’, RW, p. 79.

  14. ‘The Pleasure Principle’, RW, p. 89.

  15. ‘A Conversation with Ian Hamilton’, FR, p. 24.

  16. See R. J. C. Watt, A Concordance to the Poetry of Philip Larkin (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1995).

  17. Martin Amis, Introduction to Philip Larkin: Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 2011), p. x.

  18. Motion, p. 313.

  19. Interview with Mark Lawson, Independent, Sunday 7 March 1993.

  20. Tom Paulin, letter to the Times Literary Supplement, 6 November 1992, p. 15.

  21. David Mason, ‘What Will Survive of Us’, Wall St Journal, 14 April 2012.

  22. Morten Hoi Jenssen, ‘Larkin’s Way’, Paris Review, 3 April 2012.

  23. William Logan, review of The Complete Poems, Poetry (Chicago), September 2012. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/244462.

  24. Martin Amis, review of Letters to Monica, Guardian, 23 October 2010.

  25. Amis, Introduction to Philip Larkin: Poems, pp. xvii, xxii.

  26. Hartley, p. 209.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid., p. 215.

  29. Absalom and Achitophel, ll. 545–6.

  30. Professor Raymond Brett, personal communication, 1974.

  31. Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 9 February 2013.

  32. Brian Dyson (ed.), The Modern Academic Library: Essays in Memory of Philip Larkin (London: Library Association, 1988).

  33. See James Booth, ‘The Turf-cutter and the Nine-to-Five Man: Heaney, Larkin, and “the Spiritual Intellect’s Great Work”’, Twentieth-Century Literature 43.4 (Winter 1997), pp. 369–93.

  34. Amis, Introduction to Philip Larkin: Poems, p. xvii.

  35. Interview with the Observer, RW, 51; ‘A Conversation with Ian Hamilton’, FR, p. 23.

  36. Raban, ‘Philip Larkin’, p. 89.

  37. Interview with the Observer, RW, pp. 47, 53–4, 48, 47.

  38. Tom Paulin, ‘She Did Not Change: Philip Larkin’, Minotaur: Poetry and the Nation State (London: Faber & Faber, 1992), p. 236.

  39. Anthony Thwaite (ed.), Larkin at Sixty (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), illustration opposite p. 60.

  40. 29 November 1952. LM, p. 94.

  41. Interview with the Observer, RW, p. 52.

  42. To Julian Barnes, 27 September 1985. SL, p. 751.

  43. To Monica Jones, 16 November 1968. Not in LM.

  44. Brennan, p. 24.

  45. James Booth (ed.), ‘Larkin’s Second Dream Diary’, AL 32 (October 2011), pp. 6–7.

  46. Motion, p. 62.

  47. Paul Bailey, Independent, 12 August 2005.

  48. DX/329, inventory 600 pp. i–ix.

  49. Nuala O’Faiolain, Are You Somebody? (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), p. 66.

  50. Interview with the Observer, RW, p. 48.

  51. To his parents, 2 February 1944.

  52. To Eva Larkin, 10 December 1944.

  53. Hartley, pp. 118, 81.

  54. Bridget Mason (née Egerton), perso
nal communication, 1 July 2011.

  55. ‘Letter to Bridget Egerton, aged Six’, AL 32 (October 2011), p. 8.

  56. Ann Thwaite, personal communication, 17 August 2011.

  57. To Eva Larkin, 7 January 1951.

  58. Daily Telegraph, 11 December 2010.

  59. ‘A Conversation with Ian Hamilton’, FR, p. 23.

  60. To Eva Larkin, 4 April 1954.

  61. 6 August 1955. LM, pp. 174–5.

  62. ‘An Interview with John Haffenden’, FR, 57.

  63. Motion, p. 460.

  64. Interview with Paris Review, RW, p. 66.

  65. Angela Leighton, personal communication, 1984.

  1: Dear Fambly (1922–40)

  1. LM,p. 106.

  2. Interview with the Observer, RW, p. 48.

  3. To Sutton, 12–14 April 1943. Not in SL.

  4. Autobiographical fragment at the beginning of Workbook 5. The first poetic draft in the workbook is dated 11 November 1953, and this fragment was presumably written immediately prior to this. DPL/1/5/1. Cited in Motion, p. 14.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Interview with the Observer, RW, p. 48.

  7. Motion, p. 8.

  8. ‘These I have loved’, Journal of the Association of Local Government Financial Officers 10.5 (January 1948), pp. 129–31. DLN/1/38.

  9. Interview with the Observer, RW, p. 49.

  10. Sydney Larkin obituary cutting. DLN/1/40.