by James Booth
Hull, an economically depressed, unpretentious city, with a hinterland of empty vistas and vast skies, had turned out to be more welcoming to him than he cared to acknowledge to his correspondents. One of his early letters to Judy Egerton, of 28 May 1957, suddenly modulates into a self-conscious paean to Hull’s seclusion:
this institution totters along, a cloister of mediocrities isolated by the bleak reaches of the East Riding, doomed to remain a small cottage-university of arts-and-science while the rest of the world zooms into the Age of Technology. The corn waves, the sun shines on faded dusty streets, the level-crossings clank, bills are made out for 1957 under billheads designed in 1926, and the adjacent water shifts and glitters, hinting at Scandinavia . . . That’s a nice piece of evocation for you.55
He had happened upon the ideal solution for a man like him. He needed to submit himself again to his own ‘customs and establishments’. But rather than resume where he had left off, in Leicester, Oxford or London, he had stranded himself in an English elsewhere, not dissimilar to the Irish elsewhere of Belfast. Like Belfast, Hull made him feel welcome by insisting on difference. The ‘salt rebuff’ of the Northern Irish accent was replicated by the local Hull dialect which makes ‘phone’ into ‘fern’ and ‘road’ into ‘rerd’.56 Belfast had been a ferry journey away, but Hull was almost equally secluded, at the end of the railway line with the North Sea beyond. The language he uses about the two port cities is similar: in Belfast ‘the faint / Archaic smell of dockland, like a stable, / The herring-hawker’s cry, dwindling’; in Hull ‘spires and cranes [. . .] / Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water’. As he put it in 1979: ‘As for Hull, I like it because it’s so far away from everywhere else. On the way to nowhere, as somebody put it [. . .] Makes it harder for people to get at you. I think it’s very sensible not to let people know what you’re like. And Hull is an unpretentious place. There’s not so much crap around as there would be in London, at least as I imagine it, or in some other university cities.’57
Almost all his remaining poetry was to be written in his rented attic on the edge of things. His public literary and professional career developed in visits to London or Oxford. Otherwise he became ‘the hermit of Hull’. In the early days glimpses of Kingsley Amis’s literary success gave him a shallow discontent with his lot. After a visit to Amis in January 1956 he wrote to Monica: ‘It’s not his success I mind so much as his immunity from worry and hard work, though I mind the success as well.’58 But his friendship with Amis was now less cordial. After a meeting in August he wrote to Monica: ‘he is really not interested in much more than showing off, and [. . .] once he’s shown off sufficiently to oneself he’s ready to discard one in favour of the most dreary second-raters’.59 To increase his jealousy, a film of Lucky Jim starring Ian Carmichael was released in 1957. However, as Larkin’s own reputation grew, this envy subsided. It is significant that, during his thirty years in Hull, he only once invited Kingsley Amis to visit him. Amis was forced to call off the trip at the last minute, and in the event never visited Hull, coming for Larkin’s funeral only as far as the church and cemetery at Cottingham.60
13
Poet-Librarian
1956–60
Larkin was increasingly comfortable in his professional role. He appointed Betty Mackereth to the post of his secretary in 1957, commenting to his mother that she seemed ‘all right in a way: no doubt she will learn. She’ll probably stay all her life [. . .] now.’1 Betty comments: ‘He was a very good boss. He took an interest in people; he spoke to people.’2 He impressed Library Assistant Maeve Brennan by his combination of shyness and bohemian style: ‘At 32 Larkin was tall and slim, with a diffident manner and an embarrassing stammer. By contrast, his dress was unconventional by the standards of the day: sports jacket, corduroy trousers, socks in vivid plain colours, and often a pink shirt, which we considered very daring.’ Like his father he wore silk bow-ties, and his clothes marked him off from the only other two men on the Library staff, both of whom wore ‘the customary dark, pin-striped suits’.3 Maeve remembers that the nine women library assistants ‘invariably wore regulation pale-blue serge fitted overalls which showed off good figures to advantage!’4 For a time he was called ‘Sir’, but with joking ironic reference to the novel To Sir, With Love (1959), by the Guyanese writer E. R. Braithwaite, which he recommended to them.5 He was in his element.
The campus was in post-war disarray, with makeshift huts dotted between the 1920s redbrick buildings of the original University College. The Library was inconveniently housed on the ground and second (top) floor of one of the main 1920s blocks fronting the Cottingham Road. As Betty Mackereth remembers, ‘Some of the shelving stacks were fifteen feet high, and required skilful ladder climbing. (No talk then about “Health and Safety at Work”.)’ At first she was shocked at the contrast with her previous job in the Hull Transport Department, where she had had schedules to prepare and many letters to type:
In the University it was all hanging around chatting: chat-chat-chat; chat-chat-chat. I found myself asking ‘what am I to do now?’ And Philip would be evasive. In the early months he found a book in the Institute of Education that was not in the Library. So he borrowed it and told me: ‘Copy this book and I’ll have it bound.’ So I typed it. But doubt whether he really did ever have it bound. It was just something to keep me occupied.6
The Librarian’s office was on the ground floor overlooking a huge sunken lawn known as the ‘soup-plate’. Betty recalls that in the summer Larkin would hold a lens in each hand and adjust them at different distances from his eye to view the women students lying around in the sun. Playing astutely on his youth he allowed his own romantic affections to become the subject of collective interest among his staff, and dramatized his lusts for particular students. One such student, Maeve remembers, ‘was of Amazonian build – Philip entertained a fantasy about well-proportioned women – and he named a tiny room in the new Library after her, where, the idea was, he would be able to seduce her’. For a time this was known as ‘Miss Porter’s room’.7
He inherited from Agnes Cuming, his predecessor, a Deputy Librarian, Arthur Wood, who, Betty recollects, was an amiable character not highly regarded by his colleagues. In his letters to Monica Larkin elaborated a running gag of merciless antipathy towards this rotund, cheerful ‘pop-eyed little deputy’. ‘I should like to feed him into a haychopper’, ‘little jumped-up sawn-off sod!’ ‘I saw a van in Newland Avenue called Mobile Butchery Service today: felt like giving them a ring to come and deal with Wood.’8 But within the Library he was careful to maintain the proprieties.
During his first years in Hull the Library staff had something of the aspect of a family, and his youth gave piquancy to his role of paterfamilias. When he moved into the Pearson Park flat he asked his female colleagues for their help. As Maeve Brennan recollects:
He discussed his furnishing plans with us, asked our advice on the best shops for his needs, and regaled us with his purchases in the weeks before he moved: a rose-pink carpet for the sitting-room, offset by bottle-green chintz arm chairs and settee, book cases, storage units for records and, last but not least, a primrose-patterned tea-service which received much use in the coming months. Once everything was in place, he invited us in twos for tea on Sunday afternoons – a series of mini-house-warmings. We admired in particular the spacious attic sitting-room, with its arched high windows at tree-top level, overlooking the park below.9
He could scarcely fail to make an impression: unmarried in his thirties, considerate to the point of ceremoniousness, but refreshingly informal at a time when pre-war deferences and decorums were breaking down.
Following the success of his first mature volume he was now confident of his ultimate poetic destiny. When the Queen paid a brief visit to the University in May 1957 and he was not presented to her, he commented to his mother: ‘Ah well, one day I shall meet her as Philip Larkin, not the paltry librarian of a piffling university.’10 His fame was spreading. It was enthusiasm for T
he Less Deceived which impelled one of his library assistants, Mary Wrench, to apply for her post in 1956. She had been working for some years in the London Institute of Education, and decided to apply for the position in Hull to see what the poet was like, rather than with a serious intention of taking the job. She was, however, charmed at the interview. ‘Philip was so nice to me and insisted on seeing me off on the coach, saying “I do hope you’ll come”.’ On her move up to Hull Mary found Maeve Brennan particularly kind and welcoming, and the pleasant informality of the Library made a sharp contrast to the stifling atmosphere at the London Institute: ‘He was so friendly with all the staff, using our Christian names and wanting to be called Philip. Everyone liked him. He was very likeable.’11
He made a tradition of the staff Christmas parties at which he supplied the drinks while the ‘girls’ provided the food. Maeve Brennan recollects: ‘He joined in the long, extended congas through the book stacks with sheepish enthusiasm [. . .] going out of his way to put everyone, even the youngest junior, at ease.’12 He followed the love lives of his colleagues, congratulating them on their engagements, and sympathizing with them during their ‘disengagements’. Maeve comments: ‘I myself experienced both states twice in his first three years!’ Her ingenuous exclamation mark catches something of the innocence of the time.13 Mary Wrench detected a strategic element in the young librarian’s attentiveness: ‘He was quite wily with it. He would make comments which you would think were only meant for you. But then you realized that he was doing this with everyone.’14 It was at some point in the mid- or late 1950s that he pasted thirty-five numbered renderings of his own name (‘Philip Larkin’, ‘Philip Larkin Esq’) into his diary, cut from envelopes, each written by a different correspondent, from his mother and Ruth Bowman to John Betjeman and C.P. Snow.15 Perhaps he was meditating on his various identities.
In the period following ‘An Arundel Tomb’ Larkin’s relationship with Monica coarsened. The difference in their characters played its part. Philip was deriving increasing satisfaction from managing the Library, and enjoyed his new status. At the same time he was writing reviews, maintaining several diverse correspondences, and creating the poems which were his main purpose in life. For all its frustrations his life was full and creative. In contrast Monica found her lecturing job a ‘hardship’, and fretted at its relatively modest demands. Writing from 192a Hallgate on 28 July 1956, Philip erupts at her attitude towards ‘holidays’:
You sounded as if I’d irritated you in some way over holidays! Just think how lucky you are to be at home all July, all August, ALL September [. . .] AT HOME, free, among your belongings & making your own days, never doing any filthy work & money coming into the bank just the same – twelve consecutive weeks . . . I honestly don’t think a week at Stratford with my mother & a week at Swansea with Kingsley is in the same street, as How to Live [. . .] you’re immeasurably better off. I don’t suppose I’ve had more than 3 weeks consecutive holiday since I left Oxford –16
A number of her students recall Monica as a lively, inspirational tutor and lecturer.17 But she had a perfectionist reluctance, not uncommon among Oxford-educated academics of her generation, to bring her work to publication. Consequently, since research was a requirement of her contract, Leicester University held her at the ‘promotion bar’ in 1957,18 and she never moved beyond the lecturer grade. She worked on a study of George Crabbe but nothing ever emerged. It is easy to sympathize with Philip’s puzzlement in a letter of 3 November 1958: ‘I wonder why you’re finding your work hard.’19
There was also a lack of accord on literary principles. Not infrequently Philip seems to be deferring to Monica’s judgement simply in order to avoid a quarrel. His favourite poem in The Less Deceived had been ‘Absences’. Monica now wrung from him an assurance that he rejected symbolism in favour of common sense:
Of course I agree with all you say about symbolism! How could I not? My mind is stodgy as usual tonight, but I know I’m with you there, like a rabbit huddled against a warm pipe outside the greenhouse on a frosty night. As soon as you start meaning one thing by saying another you open up a gap & the thing sounds hollow. Rabbits wouldn’t understand symbolism.20
It is dispiriting to see him deferring to her cosy ‘rabbit’ philistinism. However, in his poems he remains true to himself. Some of his greatest works rely on the metaphorical gap between saying and meaning.
By the end of 1956 their physical relationship had become the focus of earnest discussion between them. He was baffled by her passivity, and welcomed her explanation of her feelings:
you rarely seem to like anything more than anything else. I think, if you analysed it stroke by stroke, my – or anyone’s – way of making love is directed as much towards pleasing you as pleasing myself, and probably it grows by learning what you like – so if you don’t give any definite signs in this direction, it makes it a little – a little what? Less straightforward? Less confident? Anyway, if you like most things, there’s nothing to worry about, is there. I don’t reckon I ‘understand’ you at all, even if I do sometimes!21
Some months later, in July 1957, a mismatch between their levels of libido caused a problem. Monica complained that his lovemaking was ‘impersonal’ and not ‘tender’ enough, whereas he found her lacking in ‘lustfulness’: ‘If you don’t feel non-personally lustful too, then clearly a large gap remains to be bridged [. . .]’22 On 7 August he sent her a two-page letter apologizing for not having organized their annual holiday: ‘when it [. . . ] came to the point, this year I kept putting off the task of deciding what to do or discussing where to go, partly out of lack of initiative & partly because I doubted if we were likely to make a better success of it than last year, until the time came when it seemed too late. I can quite see how nasty & inconsiderate this has been.’ He ended the letter abjectly: ‘More later – it’s taken nearly an hour to write this.’ The following day (the day before his birthday) he seemed inclined to call a halt to their yearly routine: ‘I certainly thought at the time Well, you don’t have to go on these holidays if you don’t want to, and while this wasn’t a resolve not to, I felt I’d better be sure any further holiday was more likely to succeed.’23
Larkin’s feelings for Mary Wrench no doubt added to his dissatisfaction with Monica. In a letter written jointly to Maeve Brennan and Betty Mackereth in 1986 following Larkin’s death, Mary recollected: ‘I used to see quite a bit of him outside the university until my marriage, though I didn’t think this was a very wise thing to let the staff generally know [. . .] I think Betty knew all this at the time but I don’t know that Maeve did [. . .] Anyway, I was in a long line of female friends and why not?’ Their relationship was fresh and innocent. He told Mary never to put jam in an omelette, as Winifred had done in Belfast. Mary recalls, ‘he always did the cooking’.
one of my funniest memories [. . .] was that on one of these evenings he drew my attention to something in the corner of the room so that I had my back to him. Then he called me and miaowed and when I turned round he had put on a cat mask. He had made this himself. I think, still, that this revealed a very innocent natural sense of fun which few people who didn’t know him, except through the writings, would ever guess that he possessed.24
When the University acquired the books from Busby Hall, near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, Betty, the only driver on the Library staff, took Philip, Mary Wrench and another Library Assistant, Wendy Mann, in a hired car to the Moors. (The books travelled separately in the University van.) They stopped for a picnic on the way. In 1986 Mary wrote that her memory of the occasion ‘still makes me giggle’: ‘my trousers began to drop down and very simply and naturally he got on his knees, in the middle of all that rural expanse of moor and wrestled with a safety pin to secure my nether garments. I met Betty’s grinning face and we all three girls had difficulty in not exploding with laughter.’25 At times like this the young Librarian must have felt that the world of Willow Gables had become real and he had been given privileged acc
ess to it.
In October 1957 the question of marriage arose again when Monica’s Head of Department suggested she might take up a visiting lecturership in New York. Philip responded with exasperating indecision: ‘if I’m prepared to marry you it shouldn’t need an American invitation to precipitate the proposal [. . .] I am simply terrified at the prospect of us going on year after year & not getting married [. . .] You’ll say Mum is at the bottom of all this. Well, if she is, I don’t know what to do about it. [. . .] Do you think it wd part us if you went?’26 In the event she did not take the risk and turned down the offer. In January 1958 Philip suggested bizarrely that theirs was ‘a kind of homosexual relation, disguised’. Did she not agree that there was ‘something fishy about it’? He continued, ‘It seems to me I am spoiling yr life in a hideously ingenious way.’27 On another interpretation, these subtle wrangles show that they were perfectly matched. Both had sex in the head, and they were involved in an absorbing erotic agon which neither would have wished to end.
Larkin’s relationship with his mother also remained unresolved. He wrote to Eva as frequently as to Monica, with a continuous stream of reassurance and news. However, it was now apparent that he would not bring her to live with him. On 6 May 1956 he wrote immediately after his return from a visit to express penitence at a rare lapse of patience with her: ‘Home safely – am about to go to bed, but I must say how bitterly I regret my inexplicable irritability. Please forgive me. You do everything to make my visits enjoyable & then I have to go & upset everything. I have no self control, it’s awful. I love you very dearly & you mustn’t worry about me. I’m sure I’ll get better eventually.’28 On 13 November 1956 he confided to Monica his retrospective sympathy for his father, locked into marriage with this difficult woman:
