4 On the flap of the envelope Eva has written ‘passport. photo’.
11 February 1951
Queen’s Chamber’s, Queen’s University, Belfast
My dear Mop,
[…] Today I’ve half decided to go to Bangor again, but by bus this time; lunch, then walk either along the coast to Donaghadee, or inland to Newtownards. Each way wd be about 8 miles. I don’t really know if I can manage 8m!
I found your quotes from G.B.S. very interesting, & very sympathetic too. I shouldn’t join any Brains Trusts – say you have no brains, & stick to it. Of course I understand how you feel about these Churchgoers. I shd always keep an eye open for anyone you like personally, & if there should be anyone, take all steps to transfer the relation to a personal footing & drop the social side out.1 Anyway you can easily say you are very busy & can ill spare any time. Say Kitty is on nights at the Brush,2 & you have to look after Rosemary. But I certainly shouldn’t indulge in any heartsearching; not beyond: Am I more unhappy with these people than I shd be alone?
Speaking of Kitty[:] her stockings are nines – well, better too large than too small, eh?3
Jim writes to say that he has bought 4 cottages for £1000 & is living in one of them on the rent of the other three! They are at a village called Harbury, not far from Leamington. I think you’d reach it from Warwick by going along the Banbury Road about 5 miles then turning off. Doesn’t it sound idyllic? But I bet they are cold, & how about repairs? If I had any sense I’d join him & live by writing: but nay.4 I’m a useless creature.
£2000 seems quite enough for a house of that class, in Heathcoat St.,5 but it wd be near Kitty & it is quite unusual for another house to be free so near, isn’t it? Have you looked inside it?
Now to Bangor. Have you seen snowdrops & daffodils yet? I have.
All very best to you & Kitty & R,
P.
[…]
1 In a letter of 6 February (misdated January) Eva had written ‘I am doing what everyone has advised me to do, that is to get out and find new interests and mix with folk but, I am now wondering whether I too, shan’t end up by feeling more confused, puzzled and consequently miserable. This afternoon I have been to the sewing party. I have nearly finished my cushion cover for some unknown baby’s pram. I quite enjoyed it and had chats to various people but – now I have been asked to join in with them in dusting the church and generally getting it all spic and span against the coming of the new curate in a fortnight’s time. Miss Jepps is helping and says they all take overalls, so it looks like a real job. Then there is a whist drive and I have also been asked to be on the Brains Trust next Monday – What shall I do? Shall I turn into an ardent church worker or disgust them all by wriggling out of it[?]’
2 Larkin invents an imaginary job for his sister in the Loughborough factory of the Brush company, which manufactures electrical equipment.
3 Eva replied on 13 February: ‘How I adored your sketches and Kitty was highly amused at herself at the “Brush”. By the way, how cross she looks.’
4 Jim Sutton and Philip had shared an ardent admiration for D. H. Lawrence, hence the touch of Laurentian dialect here.
5 The Larkins had sold 12 Dixon Drive, and Eva, living with her daughter and Walter, was searching for a suitable house of her own. In her letter of 6 February she wrote: ‘The house which is for sale here in Heathcote street [the name can be spelled either “Heathcote” or “Heathcoat”] is very near York Road. I enquired about it at the agents. It is next door to the Catholic Church hall. There are three bedrooms, lounge, dining room, kitchen with triplex grate and scullery, cycle shed (wooden) W.C. coalhouse and small private garden. The drawback is that there is no indoors lavatory, although there is a bathroom with modern panelled bath and washbasin. Rateable value £17. Rates £7.7.4. per half year. Price £2000.’
11 March 1951
Queen’s Chamber’s, Queen’s University, Belfast
My dear old Mop,
[…] I have just looked at your photograph by holding it up against the sun & think that in reverse you look a quizzical, merry old bird!
This Sunday I am not really any fuller of the joy of life than I was last Sunday: I am entering – or entered – on a very anti-Queen’s phase at present, along with sour depression & all the rest of it. The scarcity of any good companions, my own inability to do anything myself, all contribute to clay-cold depression. When I am in I want to be out & when I am out I want to be in – last week I was out three times: once to hear Beckett read a paper about Jane Austen1 – that was at a meeting of the Belfast Literary Society, where a man was knitting a sock on the back row all the time; once at a send-off party for Miss Webster of the Library, who is going to the States for 5 months – do you know, that party wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t suggested it – presumably they would just have nodded goodbye to her at the end of her last working day. I contributed a bottle of champagne, which was gawped and giggled at as if they had never seen one before: I tell you, Belfast is a dull unsociable place, much worse than Leicester: they have nothing that appeals to me at all. The third outing was a somewhat comic outing to a dance with Ellen Wilson who preserved her meek inaudibility as we shuffled backwards & forwards in front of the band which was my only reason for going. I think I should be able to dance if I only learned.
It was a pleasure to get Kitty’s letter, and I am glad the stockings are acceptable: certainly I don’t want paying for them: they are what Lewis Carroll calls an unbirthday present. Rosemary’s room sounds very nice: I am glad the furniture is solid – it will need to be, I expect. She will look delightful as a bridesmaid, & her own comments will be worth hearing.
You sounded a little more bold this week about the house situation! The one you describe sounded nice but I fancy you’d need a shed for the garden tools at least, and an immersion heater is always useful, though that can always be added later at little (I imagine) cost. I should not buy a big house nor a house you don’t like. […]
With all my love to dear old
Philip
1 J. C. Beckett, Warden of Queen’s Chambers.
17 April 1951
Queen’s Chambers, Belfast
My dear mother monst-haugh,
I was most relieved to get your card & know that you had crossed safely to the other side. That took a great load off my mind! […]2
I know you would like a letter at Hyde, but, to say truly, I’ve forgotten (or never knew) Auntie N’s address, so I am sending this to your little room in Loughborough to greet you on your return. I wonder if you have been to Leigh and Manchester and all your old haunts? But the Sunday papers say that your weather has been just as bad, & really it’s been just the same here. A snivelling North wind drivelling over the town.
With all love to old
Philip
1 On 27 May 1951 Philip responded to a puzzled query (21 May) from his mother: ‘a Monst-Haugh is a Monst-Haugh, e.g. the Loch Ness Monst-Haugh.’
2 Eva had visited Philip in Belfast, and was now staying with Nellie Day in Hyde. In her letter of 17 April she wrote ‘I did like being in Belfast and shall often think of you in surroundings which I now know.’
29 April 1951
Queen’s Chambers, Belfast
My dear Mop-Monst-Haugh,
[…] Jim wrote saying he enjoyed seeing me: the idea crossed my mind that he would gladly (I imagine) take a room in any house we have over here. I haven’t yet mentioned the vague idea we had to Monica. She will be over here in May. Jim is a nice old bird, but his letters grow fuller & fuller of windy philosophical tosh about mankind … However it shows a nicer, more unselfish nature than mine.
I hope Rosemary had a good birthday & that my little remembrance turned up.
Much love old Creech-Haugh,
From Young Creech-Haugh
15 May 1951
Queen’s Chambers, Belfast
Dear creaturely one,
Alone at last! For after I saw Monica off last night, the War
den lugged me in for a bottle of stout: then, all today there was work … As you can imagine, the weekend was very full & exhausting, & I think Monica enjoyed it all very much. The weather was superb: quite un-Belfastlike. On Friday I had to leave her very much to her own devices, but showed her one or two “picturesque” pubs in the evening; then on Saturday we went to Dublin & walked all about it in the finest of weather. (For lunch I had a tomato cocktail, a mushroom omelette, & fresh pineapple & cream.) I’d never stayed there before & was interested to get the “feel” of it. In a way I rather disliked it: beautiful Georgian streets are all decaying into flyblown slums; men squatted about playing cards for money (betting is legal); everything was very expensive & I found the waiters faintly ironic, as if to them I was just another mug. Many of the main streets were up: others ought to have been: dust blew everywhere. Flags drooped at half mast for the funeral of the Papal Nuncio, & we sat in College Park and watched Trinity College playing cricket like old English Gentlemen. Monica was much distressed at the price of shantung & gabardine – about 12/- the yard. On Saturday night we had a steak each, & fruit salad, & Bordeaux – 42/3d – at Jammet’s, but I really don’t think it was good cooking, it was just lots of food. After that we took a long long walk along the nine-bridged Liffey, circling Guinness’s & Steevens Hospital, seeing a lot of drunks. On Sunday we walked about more, & I took photographs. These I fear will all be failures.1 The journey back was long & rather tiresome, but the weather remained fine. On Monday we walked from Crawfordsburn to Helen’s Bay & looked at the sea, & had tea at the Ship Hotel where you and I had tea on that wet Sunday. Really, it is a good place. After that we had to return & put Monica aboard, & I watched the boat out. In Belfast she’d found a sort of dressing gown that’s apparently scarce, & was pleased in proportion. I asked her vaguely about the self-raising flour (not having your letter with me) and she said that if she wanted anything to rise, she put “raising” in it, & didn’t trust any flour.2
Now for your letter! Tell Kitty that athlete’s foot is, according to Piggot,3 “very intractable”: I didn’t really listen to Maybin when he explained it, but it is some sort of skin disease. If she is really interested I will enquire about it, but it’s my sincerest hope that she hasn’t anything of that at all (Irish expression). Incidentally I met Miss MacDonnell who said she was very pleased to have heard from you, and asked me to advise you to rub your foot with something I have also forgotten. Addled creature!4
By far the most surprising thing in your letter was the meeting with Mrs Knight at the doctor’s surgery. That is really odd. I have chumbled yr affairs over a good deal in my mind: Monica had no particular suggestions to offer except to buy a house & make some money by it. Generally speaking that is what most people say. I think she’d gladly live in it – or live in it, anyway – but was much too polite to say so without being asked. Probably Jim would, too: if it was in the country & he was not “badgered”. Perhaps they’d both live there! But I’m not sure I feel inclined to add Monica onto the family in that way: anyway, it would be your business. I think I had better not arrange anything this Summer in case you want me to do anything for you. For my part I quite agree with yr Dr about not living alone. I don’t really think you want the responsibility of a house, either, from the work aspect or the business aspect either. There remains the possibility of your coming to Ulster: this I still feel to be a faute de mieux by reason of the expense, the isolation, the trouble & I shouldn’t be here much in vacations … I don’t know! It seems such a way of throwing good, irrecoverable money away. Tell me what you think of the lady at tea. She is the one that I said you’d be one-to-three or four with, isn’t it? […]
I’m so pleased you are better: what tablets are you taking? I can ask Piggot what they’re supposed to do. And I hope you keep on with your diary: I have at last stopped mine, out of weariness with it.
1 One of these photographs is reproduced in Mark Haworth-Booth, ‘Larkin as Photographer’, About Larkin 42 (October 2016), 11.
2 On 8 May Eva had written: ‘Could you ask Monica whether it is Self-Raising Flour which is used in the fruit crumble recipe? We often make it.’
3 Jimmy Piggott (double t), Deputy Warden of Queen’s Chambers.
4 On 21 May Eva wrote ‘If you ever do see Miss MacDowell again thank her for her hint about pumice stone. G. Dad used to use sandpaper!’
10 June 1951
Queen’s Chambers, Queen’s University, Belfast
My dear old Monst-Haugh,
Your yellow notepaper was much appreciated: it added a summery air to a nice letter. Aren’t bird calls beautiful in the evening? Sometimes I hear repeated “over and over again, a pure thrush word” (Edward Thomas),1 but I think the blackbirds are the best, or what I imagine are blackbirds. Their calls seem like smooth odd polished sound-shapes, don’t they? cast up on the beach of the evening. I liked your ending “Now I must end and get wine” —
I thought of you creeping down a cellar stair.
Thank you also for describing the wedding in such detail, & for sending the “programme”.2 Please tell me if the “Army” have power to marry people – I thought they had not – that they could solemnize it, so to speak, but not perform it. Have they clapped a bonnet on Rosemary yet? (Don’t show that bit to Walter!) Is she playing at weddings? If so I expect Grandma will be called in to fulfil a variety of functions.
No: the Royal Visitors did not visit Queen’s because they have been before. They came during an interim period before Graneek was appointed & Miss Megaw had to receive them at the Library.3 Do you know she was at Roedean? The Megaws are a definite “family” here. Another Megaw – though perhaps not related – is Arthur Stanley Megaw – the ‘Arthur Stanley’ who compiles the Bedside Book etc. He lives in Belfast too. […]
No more tooth news yet – I go to the dentist tomorrow & shall be snaggle-toothed or not as he decides. I do hope he can save it. It all depends whether the bone is healing.
I was interested to hear of the freight price to Belfast. It certainly seems a lot, but I expected it would be. Dear! It is a worry. Other people have suggested a companion & a third party to pay for the Companion, & it does sound sensible, but it is a lot of people to contend with, and would there be room for me?
I think before I write any more I had better shave & lunch (debauched creature!)
Ten to three. – In many ways I should like to keep an eye on you, but it would not be very sensible to lay out all that money bringing you to Ireland & back within a few years, & you would not want to be left here – it is really more sensible to leave you in England where you have a chance of keeping up with old creatures of like interests.
But have you any companion in view from Mrs S’s bag?4 It would be easier to get the “paying guest” first & the Companion after: in fact, once you had the p.g. you might find you did not need the Companion, & could keep the money for yourself.
Nevertheless, how unpleasant all this importation of strangers is! Setting up with somebody known & liked is one thing, but apart from that it is all a weariness.
If A. Nellie (as we are all calling her) does not come, it would be awfully nice if you came here. I could put a bit towards your fare, though at present I’ve forgotten the dates. I have a notion to fly back towards the end of July, landing at Birmingham.
A bill arrived from Leicester yesterday – £2 – 7 – 6 from a bookshop. Beasts! I thought they’d forgotten all about me.
Now I must post this, & pull myself together a bit (3.30 p.m.!)
With much love,
Philip
1 The final phrase in Thomas’s poem ‘The Word’.
2 Eva’s letter of 8 June gives a detailed account of ‘how the wedding […] went off’. Ivor Hewett, Walter’s brother, had married Connie (Constance) Barnett in Salvation Army uniforms. Eva commented: ‘Rosemary looked very sweet and played her little part very well.’
3 Chief Cataloguer at Queens. Motion (Philip Larkin, 200) has ‘McGraw’ in error.<
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4 On 21 May Eva had written: ‘Mrs Swainson […] has advertised in “The Lady” and the Church Times for a permanent Housekeeper Companion. She is “inundated with replies” and wants to know whether she shall pass any on to me if she thinks they are suitable.’
15 July 1951
The Library, Queen’s Univ. Belfast
My dear old Monst-Haugh,
[…] After the party broke up I took a stroll down Sandy Row, the Protestant Quarter: bonfires were burning in the road at nearly every street corner, all the shops were open, and people with paper hats on were dancing in the streets to drums & fifes and loudspeakers. All very thrilling and primitive! Thursday was of course the great day, the Twelfth. I cycled out to Finaghy where the procession would end & fell in with some Queen’s people who live there & we watched the Orange procession together. It was a very grey day & drizzle fell from time to time, but the procession was astonishing: nearly 300 “Lodges” with banners & bands all marching along to express their detestation of Communism (i.e. anything mildly savouring of the organisation of the labour movement), & their insistence on ‘Civil & religious liberty’ (i.e. denying civil & religious liberty to Catholics & Nationalists, & damn the Pope, etc.) I watched for an hour & a quarter & then gave up: but in the end I believe there were 100,000 people on the field hearing the speeches. […]
Philip Larkin Page 26
