2 Michael Sadleir’s 1940 novel about Victorian prostitution, made into a film in 1944.
3 Ruth Bowman was at this time in the second year of her degree course at King’s College, London.
4 Perhaps ‘loving’ was meant?
13 April 1947
172, London Road, Leicester
My dear Mop & Pop,
Well, back again: Leicester and the college do not seem to have changed at all. Since Thursday I have worked solitarily in the Library, doing very little but clear up after the holiday. Almost nobody has been about: one felt like a lost soul. Jack Simmons, biographer of Southey, looked in and looked out again. He is a friend of A. L. Rowse1 & indeed resembles him in a distant way.
Thanks for forwarding the letters: one contained the news that Messrs Lars Hokerberg have cabled an offer for Swedish bookrights of Winter, which I have accepted on Watt’s advice – 10% per copy, £30 advance. I suppose it will be a translation. So we shall all have to learn Swedish! Truly, it’s a language I know nothing of at all.2
I also had another batch of press cuttings including Evening Standard (19/3/47), Liverpool Daily Post (26/3/47), Manchester Evening News (26/3/47), Daily Dispatch (27/3/47), and Oxford Mail (3/4/47). They are all fairly favourable – Edward Shanks suggests I am a woman using a pen-name.3 Benighted old idiot. I have put them all in a little notebook – there are now sixteen in all. […]
Did you notice that Somerset Maugham4 had founded a prize of £500 p.a.? I wouldn’t mind getting that. I think I shall ask someone to send my book in for it. A condition of winning is that you must travel at least 3 months – perhaps to Sweden!
I do hope everything is going well at Loughborough – give Kitty & Walter my love. What does Pop want for his birthday present – not a book, by any chance? Let me know.
The Budget “news” in the S.T. is a bit heartening, isn’t it?
Best love to both,
Philip
I have finished the biscuits!
1 A. L. Rowse (1903–97), Cornish author and historian.
2 Sommar blir vinter, trans. Britta Gröndahl (Stockholm: Lars Hökerbergs bokförlag, 1947).
3 Edward Shanks (1892–1953), English journalist and critic.
4 W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), successful British author and playwright.
2 May 19471
172, London Road, Leicester
My dear Kitty,
This is a gentle wave of the paw to hope you are both very comfortable & well.2 Pop came over today and we shrank about the dusty, bitter streets for a few hours. Unless your nursing home is a sort of punishment-house you are very much better off there. We seem to be settled in another cold belt for good and all.
There is not much news here: I went with a party of students to Stratford on Wednesday to the theatre. I have also accepted an invitation to the students’ dinner. So before long I shall be organising campfire rallies, tennis tournaments, community singing, and reunion rugger matches. The descent is very easy.
Otherwise my exam is looming very large in my view, though I expect you feel a million miles away from the world where exams take place – almost on a different planet. I wish I was. And nearly everybody wants me to visit them, or wants to visit me, which I think is a bore, but better, of course, than the other way round.
Many salutations. I look forward to seeing this new sprig of our ancient family.
Very much love,
Philip
1 Addressed to Mrs C. Hewett, 53 York Rd., Loughborough.
2 Kitty had just given birth to Rosemary (28 April 1947). Apart from the formal letter to Kitty and her husband Walter concerned with holidays, which Philip copied to Eva on 20 April 1969, this is the last letter which survives from Philip to his sister until 1972, twenty-five years later. Kitty seems to have destroyed all the others. It is preserved in a file containing letters from the 1970s related to Berrystead Nursing Home and the sale of Eva’s house following her death. Kitty perhaps kept it because of its celebration of Rosemary’s birth.
27 May 1947
My dear Mop & Pop,
Got back here after some 4 hrs! at about 9.30. I suppose it wd be. Not exactly a joyride, but I munched my biscuits and was relatively at peace.
Enclosed are some B.U.’s.1 I do hope they are enough, and of the right kind.
Once again I have to thank you for a very happy weekend. What struck me this time was really how young you both are – not young in the sense of silly, but young in keen response to things. Let Mop see a pretty patch of garden, or Pop get his nose into a new book, and the interest aroused is as quick and vivid as my own, and sometimes more so!
It makes home a very nice place to come to.
By the way, by a strange piece of fortune I have obtained some films for my camera from Belgium. So please don’t worry Mr. C. on my account this year!
Love,
P.
1 Bread units: ration slips.
20 July 1947
Charlton Hotel, Wellington, Salop.
My dear Mop & Pop,
[…] Yes, as you will probably have heard, I paid a visit to Kitty on Friday and spent a happy 4 hours or so. I invented a game of “shake-a-paw” with Rosemary, who gave an occasional toothless grin. This Kitty found surprising and said it meant she had taken to me. I took her a few mangy cherries & she gave me two lettuces and some spring onions. […]
But we’ll talk a lot more when I arrive for next week end – if Kitty will let us.
All love,
Philip
13 September 1947
6 College Street, Leicester1
My dear Mop and Pop,
It is only Saturday night, but I thought I would start my letter to you – if not finish it – while I have a little time and feel in a talkative mood. There is really quite a lot to tell you, though I don’t expect I shall get it all down or even remember it.
Thank you, in the first place for your letter. […]
My room here now is quite comfortable – or perhaps I should say it looks more like a room. I have two good lights, a little table to work at, a bookcase, 4 pictures & your calendar, a bowl of fruit (of my own buying), my gas fire (newly repaired), and plenty of books to read. This lodging will suit me, I think – it’s not quite so good (I’m taking good in the widest sense) as 172 London Rd., it’s less physically comfortable in some ways than Miss Davis, and while seemingly clean has a foul kitchen-stench that I abhor. The food is fairly adequate & there’s always bread to fill up on. Tonight I intend to have a bath in the enormous dark brown “baths our grandfather used” type of bath. […]
Sunday
I arose uncalled this morning and am writing this before breakfast. On Thursday I bought one of those 22/- large white sweaters (coupon free) that I mentioned. It is a good heavy garment and designed, I imagine, for those in peril on the sea.
And on Friday I went to tea at Kitty’s. I enjoyed this quite a lot. Rosemary looked very well to me, what I call the ‘wan look’ quite gone, and after tea she had a fit of giggles when we went to look at her. She lay and chuckled and squeaked for quite five minutes and wd have gone on if we had not departed. Earlier I took a photograph of her, but whether or not it will prove even in focus I can’t guess.
I hope the photograph of me I sent a postcard asking for will not frighten the Swedes out of their skins.2 I can’t think of a better one, although I am not particularly fond of it. Before I send it off I will order three more prints from its number so that you may have another one. […]
I don’t think I need any of the things I left behind for the moment. I wonder when you will be at home & prepared to receive boarders – or one boarder, anyway. Perhaps there is nothing really to fetch, but I should very much like a taste of home sometime after this rather strange week in strange surroundings.
Very best love to both creatures,
Philip
1 Philip’s landlady at 172 London Road re
quired his room, so he moved into 6 College Street on 7 September 1947.
2 Publishers of the Swedish translation of A Girl in Winter.
26 October 1947
6, College St. Leicester
My dear Mop & Pop,
This is being started before breakfast, although ten o’clock has just passed. No – breakfast has just come and gone. I do not feel very cheerful this morning, though nothing lasting has happened to disturb my composure – I mention it only to account for any steely brevity that may make itself felt in my phrasing. The principal cross to bear is that my oafish lodgings-mate, Rose, has announced his intention of coming cycling with me this afternoon. Now, as it happens, Sunday afternoon is one time when I like to be alone. To have him with me – to have anyone with me, of course, but him in special – will largely destroy my delight. But what can one do? I feel that to refuse would be not only rude but self-important. I only hope he won’t enjoy himself. I don’t fancy he will.
I am sorry you expected me on the 19th. Instead, I went in the Melton Mowbray direction, to Hungerton and Beeby. One feature of the Leics. Countryside is the enormous sheds of ammunition & explosive, quite unguarded, along the roadside.
This week has been crazy week, for I have bought a camera. (I can see Pop’s eyebrows becoming stiffer & more aggressive.) It is a “Puma Special”, & I fear it is rather a faux pas.1 (Wasn’t one of grand-dad’s endearing habits that of buying phony cameras?) Not that it’s bad in itself, I imagine, though I can’t say till I’ve seen what it does, but it is not really the kind of camera I need. It is a fixed focus with 3 exposure speeds – 1/25, 1/150, 1/450. So you can see it’s only good for open air movement. It won’t take time exposures, which is a great drawback. It takes 16 exposures on a roll, but I suppose the developing is more expensive as they have to be enlarged. Until I see what kind of results it produces, I can’t make up my mind about it, but something tells me that I shall part with it when I have learned all I can learn off it. In case you think I am afraid to tell you the price, may I add that it was £6.7.9?2
This letter does not seem to contain much news so far, but in truth there is not a great deal to report. I get some amusement out of writing my book, but it is almost completely shapeless and without tone, The Library Association Record have asked permission to reprint a passage from Winter – the bit about teamaking fairly early on, ending “Why does he have to talk in that silly way?” I met Mr Kent in the street recently, and he had recovered from his influenza. He regretted not having seen Pop, whom he seems to regard as a stimulating agent. I look forward to any comments that Pop hears about his masterly article in his journal.
I am glad Rosemary liked her bowl (by proxy) – the drawing was not really meant for her, but for any infant. The sun is shining here today, but it’s very windy – probably a cycle ride will be more of a curse than a blessing. Then tonight I shall stay in and write. How beautiful life becomes when one’s left alone!
My very best love to both creatures. Let me know how life fares at “Creature Lodge, Coten End” –
Philip
1 Mark Haworth-Booth describes Larkin’s cameras, and analyses his skill as an amateur photographer, in ‘Philip Larkin as Photographer’, About Larkin 42 (October 2016), 5–15. See also Haworth-Booth’s foreword to Richard Bradford, The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkin’s Photographs (London: Frances Lincoln: 2015).
2 Sydney replied (27 October 1947): ‘Comments on your camera are (1) I don’t recognise the make. Whose make is it? (2) What “focal lengths” are given i.e. apertures, mine, e.g., are F23. 16. 11. 8. 5.6 and 4.5. Yours should be fairly wide for an exposure of 1/450. A useful time is about 1/10 except in midsummer. (3) It doesn’t matter about time exposures, you can use your other for those. (4) As you say, proof of pudding is in the eating. Don’t sell it until Dalton has put on another dose of purchase tax or otherwise made them less obtainable.’ Hugh Dalton was Chancellor of the Exchequer at this time.
26 November 1947
6, College St., Leicester
My dear Mop and Pop,
Many thanks for your letter, received this morning rather latish (lateish?). The post has been getting later recently. Yes, my weekend was spent almost entirely with Kingsley, who on Thursday (tomorrow) starts his Finals. I shall be very interested to see if he gets a First Class or not.
It’s pretty chilly here, but I keep fairly warm. Lunches have started at the College today, in the new “Refectory” as they call it – good food but not very plentiful. I suppose we shall have to start wearing gowns now, to get splashed with gravy, etc. I shall feel rather queer.
When I was in Oxford I saw some St John’s Xmas cards, very small & plain, but found they were 1/- each, so put them down hurriedly and walked away. Isn’t everything a price!
My novel1 is not going very well at present, & is causing me much worry. In fact I worry all day about it. I can’t “focus” it: it blurs & shifts: I don’t know the “key”, so to speak, to which it shd be tuned. O by the way! Kingsley said: “… or psychology, as we would say nowadays.” Me: “As we should say nowadays.” Kingsley: “No, that means we ought to say it. We would say psychology, if we were to say it.” Who’s right, please? We always quarrel over this.
Mrs Sutcliffe has been displaying extraordinary virtuosity this week with a pig’s trotter – it has appeared 3 times this week, finally in soup.
Yes, all being well, I’ll see you on Saturday afternoon.
Love to both
Philip
1 This is almost certainly the fragment provisionally entitled No for an Answer, which fictionalises Larkin’s relations with Ruth Bowman and his father around Christmas 1947. See James Booth (ed.), Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions (London: Faber, 2002), xxxiii–xxxv.
9 December 1947
Postcard1
1 On 3 December Eva wrote: ‘Well, I have not felt at all well since my cold came on and have spent every morning in bed – but the bedroom is so cold, it is impossible to get the temperature above 42° and meals are a misery; that I get up about lunch time and spend the rest of the day in the dining room – crouched over the gas fire.’
1948
7 January 1948
Postcard1
[6 College St, Leicester]
Got a lift from Coventry Rd. bridge to Coventry in a saloon car, that did 60 m.p.h. some of the way, à la Jack Cann.2 Good thing I did, too, for there were nearly 20 people at the stop. Passed Marshall walking to work, & picked up a copy of Connolly’s Condemned playground for 2/- at W.H.S. Hope you are feeling peaceful & stronger, & are chivvying the nurses. All love – Philip
1 Between 7 January and 18 March 1948 thirty-seven postcards survive addressed to ‘Sydney Larkin Esq., Ward 2 [later Ward 1], Warwick Hospital, Lakin Rd., Warwick’, ten of which are printed here. Sydney was admitted to the hospital in January, initially for a gallstone operation. But his condition deteriorated and he died of cancer of the liver on 26 March.
2 John Cann, a friend of Sydney Larkin, had retired from a senior post in a brewery and had property interests in Mold, Newark and Scarborough. Cann visited Eva regularly in the 1950s and 1960s, and invited her to stay in Newark with his family.
12 January 1948
Postcard1
The Library, University College Leicester
Am thinking of you continually & hoping you are feeling better. Wet & miserable here.
All love,
Philip
1 Addressed to Sydney Larkin Esq., Ward 2, Warwick Hospital.
15 January 1948
My dear Mop,
Many thanks for your letter this morning: I was very glad to hear that Daddy was at least not conspicuously worse when you wrote.
The news about Uncle Ernie is sad & astonishing – how very ironic life can be. I can see that it is another trouble for you, not telling Daddy.1 Poor puss
y, you must be very worried: I am myself, when I have time to think. But we are still short-handed and are likely to remain so for many days yet, I fancy.
I expect, if it is convenient, that I shall be home about the same time on Saturday.
Was surprised to hear that Kingsley & Hilly are engaged today.
With very much love to you, also to Kitty,
Philip
1 On 13 January Eva wrote: ‘Kitty & I have been very upset over bad news from Auntie Alice – London. Uncle Ernest was taken ill on Sunday – a slight stroke, and passed away about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. / Upon the advice of the Doctors I have decided not to tell Daddy of this sad happening. He is not well enough to be told yet. I have written to Auntie Alice & also Uncle Alf.’ Ernest was one of Sydney’s five elder brothers.
20 January 1948
Postcard1
[6 College St, Leicester]
Have got another batch of developments back from the photographer’s today – 2 complete flops, 8 more or less flops, & six quite reasonable.
Hope things are going peacefully with you. One picture I took outside the hospital remains a blank.
My very best wishes & love,
Philip
1 Addressed to Sydney Larkin Esq., Ward 2, Warwick Hospital.
23 January 1948
Postcard1
[6 College St, Leicester]
Many thanks for letter: I’m glad things are no worse – or were no worse.
I shall be arriving about five tomorrow as usual. I do hope you are feeling well.
With much love,
Philip
1 Addressed to Mrs Sydney Larkin, 73 Coten End, Warwick.
Philip Larkin Page 22
