by James Booth
39. Now the Mercure Hull Royal Hotel. It was burnt out in 1990, but was deliberately restored in the same traditional style in order to recall the poem, with high clustered lights and differently coloured chairs.
40. To Maeve Brennan, 6 August 1966. Motion, p. 365.
41. SL, p. 387.
42. LM, p. 369.
43. Not in LM.
44. To Monica Jones, 8 October 1966. LM, p. 364.
45. Motion, p. 310.
46. 8 October 1966. LM, p. 364.
47. LM, p. 365.
48. SL, p. 381.
49. Ibid., p. 382.
50. Brennan, p. 49.
51. James Booth, ‘“Snooker” at the Seaside: The Birthday Walk in Scarborough’, AL 16 (October 2003), p. 29.
52. He would never take her advice, being ‘very determined about what he liked and what he didn’t’. Judy Egerton, interview with the author, 17 December 2010.
53. 3 June 1967. SL, p. 396.
54. Professor Raymond Brett, personal communication, 1969.
55. Edna Longley, ‘Poète Maudit Manqué’, in George Hartley (ed.), Philip Larkin – A Tribute: 1922–1985 (London: Marvell Press, 1988), p. 230.
56. 23 May 1968. Not in LM.
57. This line was changed in the typescript from the workbook’s ‘The sunlight pouring through glass’.
58. DPL/1/7/18.
59. Motion, p. 371.
60. In Susannah Tarbush, ‘From Willow Gables to “Aubade”: Penelope Scott Stokes and Philip Larkin: Part 2’, AL 26 (October 2008), pp. 5–10, at p. 7.
61. 10 May 1967. LM, p. 375. A selection of Penelope’s verse and drawings, ‘Poems by Pen Evans’, is to be found in AL 27 (April 2009), pp. 15–21.
62. Tarbush, ‘From Willow Gables to “Aubade”’, p. 7.
63. 24 April 1968. Passage not in LM.
64. Motion, p. 374.
65. 27 March 1967. Motion, p. 369.
66. Jean Hartley and James Booth, ‘Jean Hartley DLitt’, AL 31 (April 2011), p. 10.
67. 23 August 1967. LM, p. 377.
68. Hartley, p. 134.
69. Published in the New Statesman on 18 May 1968.
70. 24 April 1968. Passage not in LM.
71. Workbook 7, 1/7/20.
72. The date in the 1988 Collected Poems, ‘16 June’, is inaccurate. This was the date the poem was begun.
73. Émaux et Camées (1852).
74. ‘A Conversation with Ian Hamilton’, FR, p. 25.
75. ‘Poet’s Choice’, FR, p. 17.
76. DPL/1/7/78.
77. The word appears elsewhere in his work only in the juvenile ‘Last Will and Testament’ (1940).
78. It is difficult also not to hear a horrible gauche pun here. ‘White Major’ evokes a Kiplingesque officer in the British army, the kind of person who would use the phrase ‘a white man’ to indicate decent, upright values. In a letter to an inquirer, however, Larkin denied that he intended this pun: ‘you don’t mention that “Sympathy in White Major” is an echo of “Symphonie en Blanc Majeure” (Gautier). Nothing about white majors!’ Complete Poems, p. 444.
79. When Kemp in Jill allowed his room-mate to plagiarize his tutorial essay, Warner declared: ‘That’s awfully white of you, old man.’ Jill, p. 119.
80. Oliver Marshall, ‘A Letter from Loughborough’, AL 15 (April 2003), pp. 18–19. Larkin had written a four-line squib with this title in Workbook 5 in 1959. Complete Poems, p. 298.
81. Les Complaintes (1885) and L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune (1886).
82. Robert Giroux of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the American publisher of High Windows, objected to this poem on the grounds of anti-Semitism. Without engaging in any argument Larkin directed that the poem either be included, or omitted with a note indicating that the omission had been made. Motion, p. 436.
83. To Monica Jones, 12 September 1968. LM, p. 391. Hartley, pp. 133–5.
84. Hartley, p. 194.
85. 4 October 1968. SL, p. 405.
86. 2 November 1968. SL, p. 407.
87. 24 November 1968. Not in LM.
88. 26 December 1968. Not in LM.
17: Jazz, Race and Modernism (1961–71)
1. 20 November 1968. SL, p. 408.
2. This may have been at the suggestion of John Kenyon, Hull Professor of History. John White, personal communication, 24 October 2010.
3. An anthology of Larkin’s own favourite jazz recordings is available. Trevor Tolley and John White (eds), Larkin’s Jazz, Properbox 155 (four-CD set), in association with the Philip Larkin Society. www.propermusic.com.
4. AWJ, p. 45.
5. Larkin’s LP collection is held in the University Collection at the Hull History Centre.
6. AWJ, p. 106.
7. Ibid., p. 116.
8. FR, pp. 112–16.
9. Hartley, p. 139.
10. James Booth, ‘Glimpses’ (interview with Monica Jones), AL 12 (October 2001), p. 23.
11. AWJ, pp. 47, 36.
12. Ibid., p. 65.
13. Interview with Paris Review, RW, p. 70.
14. To Sutton, 23 June 1941. SL, p. 18.
15. AWJ, p. 35.
16. B. J. Leggett notes the parallel in relation to ‘Aubade’. Larkin’s Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and Poetry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), p. 14.
17. AWJ, p. 36.
18. Ibid., p. 60.
19. Interview with Paris Review, RW, p. 61.
20. AWJ, p. 167.
21. Ibid., p. 47.
22. Ibid., p. 156.
23. Ibid., p. 243.
24. Ibid., pp. 86, 85.
25. Ibid., p. 119.
26. Ibid., p. 19.
27. Ibid., p. 40.
28. Ibid., p. 41.
29. Ibid., pp. 41–2.
30. Ibid., p. 78.
31. ‘Requiem for Jazz’, Weekend Telegraph, 23 April 1965; in Larkin’s Jazz: Essays and Reviews 1940–1984, ed. Richard Palmer and John White (London and New York: Continuum, 2001), p. 140.
32. AWJ, p. 112.
33. Ibid., p. 44.
34. Ibid., pp. 39, 43.
35. Ibid., p. 63.
36. Ibid., p. 211.
37. Ibid., 28. Trevor Tolley gives an account of Larkin’s jazz tastes in the chapter on All What Jazz in My Proper Ground: A Study of the Work of Philip Larkin and its Development (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991).
38. AWJ, pp. 96–7.
39. Ibid., p. 126.
40. Ibid., p. 150.
41. Ibid., pp. 218–19. The Paston Letters were written by members of the Paston family between the years 1422 and 1509.
42. Ibid., p. 161.
43. Ibid., p. 46.
44. Ibid., p. 188.
45. Ibid., p. 187. The text has ‘remembering’ in error for ‘remember’.
46. Ibid., p. 188.
47. Ibid., p. 201.
48. Ibid., p. 209.
49. Ibid., p. 282.
50. Ibid., p. 62.
51. Ibid., p. 187. Stokely Carmichael (1941–98) was a Trinidadian-American activist associated with the Black Power and Black Panther movements.
52. Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007); cited in ‘Ugly on Purpose’, review of Richard Palmer, Such Deliberate Disguises: The Art of Philip Larkin (London and New York: Continuum, 2008). http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/january-2009-larkin-coltrane/ (accessed 14 November 2011).
53. To Sutton, ‘Friday Night’, 1939? Not in SL.
54. AWJ, p. 234.
55. Ibid., p. 68.
56. Ibid., pp. 117–18.
57. Ibid., p. 87.
58. ‘Requiem for Jazz’, in Larkin’s Jazz, ed. Palmer and White, p. 141.
59. AWJ, p. 87.
60. Ibid. John Osborne refers to ‘the radicalism and cosmopolitanism’ of Larkin’s racial ideology in his jazz writings. Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence: A Case of Wrongful Conviction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 45.
&nb
sp; 61. AWJ, p. 24.
62. Ibid., p. 20,
63. Ibid., pp. 21, 24.
64. Ibid., p. 97.
65. Ibid., p. 55.
66. Ibid., p. 283.
67. 3 August 1971. SL, p. 443.
68. SL, p. 444.
69. Ibid., p. 445.
70. To Donald Mitchell, 9 December 1968. Motion, p. 386.
71. Lisa Jardine, ‘Saxon Violence’, Guardian, 8 December 1992, Section 2, p. 4. For good measure Jardine adds: ‘and an easy misogynist’.
72. The Noctes Ambrosianae, a series of seventy-one witty and humorous discussions set in Ambrose’s Tavern, Edinburgh, appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine between 1822 and 1835.
73. To Monica Jones, 16 November 1968. Not in LM.
74. 19 June 1970. SL, p. 432.
75. 19 November 1973. SL, p. 493.
76. 21 August 1971. AWJ, p. 284.
77. To Judy Egerton, 15 November 1969. SL, p. 421.
78. 15 September 1984. SL, p. 719.
79. sl, p. 445.
80. DPL(2)/2/15/44.
81. 14 October 1980. SL, p. 629.
82. To Conquest, 12 November 1973. SL, pp. 492–3.
83. SL, p. 456.
84. See also John Osborne, ‘Diasporic identities’, in Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence, pp. 229–45. Osborne sees Larkin’s enthusiasm for jazz as an aspect of his modernity.
85. To John White, cited in Tolley and White (eds), Larkin’s Jazz, CD liner notes, p. 13.
86. 20 November 1968. SL, p. 408.
87. 27 November 1968. Motion, p. 386.
88. To Peter Crawley, 19 June 1969. SL, p. 416.
89. 13 January 1970. SL, p. 425.
90. To Peter Crawley. SL, p. 417.
91. AWJ, pp. 17–18.
92. Ibid., p. 19.
93. Ibid., pp. 22–3.
94. Ibid., p. 25.
95. Ibid., p. 27.
96. Ibid., p. 23.
97. Ibid.
98. The ‘novel in gibberish’ is not immediately identifiable. Probably Larkin had in mind James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which still remains problematic for most readers.
99. Motion, p. 386. Richard Palmer devotes a chapter to ‘Larkin’s Most Expensive Mistake’, analysing the ‘determined perversity’ of the Introduction to All What Jazz. Such Deliberate Disguises, pp. 13–33.
100. ‘The Art of Jazz’ (1940), in Larkin’s Jazz, ed. Palmer and White, p. 169.
101. AWJ, p. 27.
102. Ibid., p. 15.
103. Palmer, Such Deliberate Disguises, p. 57.
104. AWJ, pp. 15–16.
105. Larkin’s Jazz, ed. Palmer and White, pp. 6–7.
106. AWJ, p. 22.
107. Ibid., pp. 28–9.
18: Politics and Literary Politics (1968–73)
1. 10 March 1946. SL, p. 115
2. LM, p. 381.
3. Hartley, p. 159.
4. To Monica Jones, 14 September 1964. Passage not in LM.
5. SL, p. 403.
6. Ibid., p. 402.
7. http://senatehouseoccupation.wordpress.com/1968/07/02/are-examinations-really-necessary/ (accessed 10 December 2010).
8. 19 August 1968. SL, pp. 403–4.
9. 16 November 1968. Not in LM.
10. 24 March 1973. SL, p. 473.
11. 16 November 1968. Not in LM.
12. Ibid. (insertion).
13. Critical Quarterly 2.4 (Winter 1960), p. 351; 3.4 (Winter 1961), p. 309; 8.2 (Summer 1966), p. 173; 10.1–2 (Spring–Summer 1968), p. 55. Larkin also published in Critical Quarterly a review, ‘Mrs Hardy’s memories’, 4.1 (Spring 1962), pp. 75–9, and his essay, ‘Wanted: Good Hardy Critic’, 8.2 (Summer 1966), pp. 174–9.
14. http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj70/amis.htm.
15. 4 October 1968. SL, pp. 404–5.
16. 17 October 1968. SL, p. 406.
17. LM, p. 394.
18. To Kingsley Amis, 8 April 1969. Not in SL.
19. LM, p. 385.
20. Trevor Jarvis, personal communication, 2010.
21. University of Hull Collection, The History Centre, Hull: U DJH.
22. John Saville, Memoirs from the Left (London: Merlin Press, 2003), pp. 138, 139, 145.
23. A BBC radio quiz, based on literary quotations, starring Frank Muir and Denis Norden. It ran from 1956 until 1990.
24. In LM (384) the phrases ‘aren’t the 2 songs lovely together! My eyes fill with tears’ are inadvertently omitted.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., p. 387.
27. To Monica Jones, 15 January 1969. Complete Poems, p. 461.
28. See http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/23072911/The-Decline-of-the-AngloAmerican-Middle-East-19611969 (accessed 12 April 2011).
29. Mitchell left the army later in the year and unlike officers of similar rank was not awarded an OBE. The final evacuation of troops from Aden took place on 8 November 1967. Mitchell capitalized on the glamour of this exploit in a populist campaign to become a Conservative MP.
30. To Monica Jones. 5 August 1953. LM, p. 104.
31. Interview with the Observer, RW, p. 52.
32. Blake Morrison, The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950s (London: Methuen, 1980), p. 256.
33. Trevor Jarvis, personal communication, 2010.
34. Motion, p. 381.
35. To Conquest, 7 April 1969. SL, p. 413.
36. Motion, p. 380.
37. To the Revd A. H. Quinn, 3 February 1969. Complete Poems, p. 641.
38. 8 October 1969. SL, p. 420.
39. To Maeve Brennan, 4 September 1969. Motion, p. 393.
40. Motion, p. 390. The official opening by the University Chancellor, Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, took place on 12 December 1970.
41. To Eva Larkin, 5 October 1969.
42. Betty Mackereth, personal communication, 7 January 2014.
43. SL, p. 427.
44. Motion, p. 404.
45. Oxford University Rugby Football Club.
46. To Barbara Pym, 29 May 1971. SL, pp. 438–9.
47. Anthony Thwaite, personal communication, 2010.
48. 20 January 1966. SL, p. 380.
49. W. B. Yeats (ed.), The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), pp. xxxiv, xv.
50. 4 June 1966. LM, p. 361.
51. ‘“A great parade of single poems” – Philip Larkin, poet, librarian and anthologist, discusses his Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse with Anthony Thwaite’, Listener, 12 April 1973, p. 472.
52. Motion (p. 431) reaches different conclusions by counting numbers of poems rather than numbers of lines.
53. 22 November 1951. LM, pp. 71–2.
54. SL, p. 401.
55. 5 August 1953. LM, p. 104.
56. OBTCEV, p. v.
57. Yeats (ed.), The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, p. xlii.
58. The Republic of Ireland was also a member of the Commonwealth until 1949.
59. Walcott’s inclusion was presumably justified on the technical grounds that at the time of publication, 1973, St Lucia had not yet gained its independence from Britain. Had the volume been published six years later Walcott would presumably have been excluded as a ‘Commonwealth writer’.
60. OBTCEV, p. v.
61. OBTCEV, no. 283. Larkin’s response to Cannan’s work was critically scrupulous. He wrote to Monica that one of her poems was ‘good by accident, wonderfully evocative of the first war [. . .] They probably aren’t any good really.’ LM, p. 413.
62. OBTCEV, p. v.
63. Judy Egerton, interview with the author, 17 December 2010.
64. SL, p. 435.
65. 18 January 1973. SL, p. 472.
66. To Judy Egerton, 16 January 1971. SL, p. 434.
67. Larkin’s Latin is faulty. The quotation should be ‘quot homines tot disputandum est’. The usual, more economical form is ‘quot homines tot sententiae’, from Horace.
68. SL, p. 436.
69. Ibid.
, p. 477.
70. ‘Larkin’s Choice’, Listener, 29 March 1973, pp. 420–1.
71. SL, p. 481.
72. Motion, pp. 432–3.
19: Larkin’s Late Style (1969–72)
1. SL, p. 420.
2. 30 October 1969. Complete Poems, p. 442.
3. SL, p. 425.
4. 6 January 1970. LM, p. 405.
5. Motion, p. 394.
6. See James Booth, ‘Larkin as Animal Poet’, AL 22 (October 2001), p. 6.
7. To Thwaite, 25 April 1972. SL, p. 457.
8. Bowlby’s Row, signed ‘E. Tarling 1978’, and Entrance to Albert Dock. Larkin Society, DX/329, inventory 6 and 12.
9. LM, p. 348.
10. Ibid., p. 381.
11. Not in LM.
12. The others are ‘Spring’ (ababcdcd effgeg), ‘Whatever Happened?’ (aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ff) and ‘Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel’ (ababcdcde fgefg).
13. Burnett (Complete Poems, p. 456) cites Roger Day, who indicates no rhyme in the last line.
14. The fourth element, ‘earth’, has to be omitted for the sake of the metre.
15. See V. Penelope Pelizzon, ‘Native Carnival: Philip Larkin’s Puppet-Theatre of Ritual’, in James Booth (ed.), New Larkins for Old (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 213–23, at p. 218.
16. See James Booth, ‘The Card-Players’, in Michael Hanke (ed.), Fourteen English Sonnets: Critical Essays, Studien zur anglistischen Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft (28) (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), 169–77.
17. I am grateful to Raphaël Ingelbien for his help with this poem.
18. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–69), David Teniers the Younger (1610–90), Adriaen Brouwer (c. 1605–38).
19. Larkin wrote to Arthur J. Hobson on 15 December 1978: ‘I had no particular picture in mind. I should not go quite as far as to say that Brouwer was my favourite painter, but he is the only artist of whose work I have bothered to buy a book of reproductions, and in general I like Dutch low-life painting very much indeed.’ DPL/2/2/15/9.
20. Adjustments were made before its publication in Encounter 35.4 (October 1970), p. 41.
21. Motion, p. 395.
22. John Osborne, personal communication, 1996.
23. John Mowat, ‘Larkin’ About in Hull’, in Cliff Forshaw (ed.), Under Travelling Skies: Departures from Larkin (Hull: Kingston Press, 2012), pp. 73–4.
24. In Collected Poems (1988) the final date of drafting of ‘Vers de Société’ is given as ‘19.5.71’. This is the date at the top left of the page. But Larkin has written ‘20/5/71’ at the end of the draft. DPL/1/7/41, p. 159.
