Philip Larkin
Page 11
Last Saturday Jim & I shambled into Acotts3 & demanded a long list of practically unobtainable hot records – they had at least ½! Yeah man! In a fit of madness we bought four & damn good they are too. Then the Turl bookshop was selling off first hand but shopsoiled Lawrences for 2/6 instead of 4/6. I bought 2 we haven’t got – “Reflections on the death of a Porcupine” & “Studies in Classic American Literature”. Jim bought “Fantasia of the Unconscious” & “Kangaroo”. We sit whole evenings reading on each side of the fire reading bits aloud. Josh4 gets frightfully annoyed.
Glad you like my pipe. I do, much more than the last. It holds more. Going down to the Cherwell Offices yesterday I was struck by my reflection in shop windows. Suits my face fine! Still, enough of this egoistical babble in which you can’t take part.
Pleased to hear the is going forward once more. I’ve forgotten what my ideas about education were but anyway glad your lecturer liked them. But nothing will be done for years yet – probably not in our time at all. Blast ’em all.
I’ve heard of that Sherard Vines5 book all right. You’re very cute, actually: from what I remember it is a first novel (not quite sure, though) and certainly all the critics blamed it for being “clever”. I rather wanted to get hold of it.
Jim’s sports coat isn’t quite purple – a kind of red, more. Not very fine, but it looks excellent with an orange sweater. Unfortunately, Jim’s likely to sell the latter.
God, this pen!
Bevin,6 the old b—— he’ll have us both in the services before we can say “Ather-ather-ather”. But I reckon Herr Hitler will press all the buttons on his desk before then. So does everybody else. At an A.R.P. lecture (compulsory) yesterday, the lecturer said that the authorities expected the use of gas in the spring. Er … ha, ha. Very funny … Er – UH? Ather-ather-ather …. Blast ’em. Everybody I meet curses the war like blazes.
I like the sound of your owl. Good drawing, too. I suppose if I send you a pea green boat you’ll start snooping round for the honey & the £5 note as well, eh? You can’t fool me! Still, love to the owl & both pussy cats.
This letter is becoming long – & frightfully dull, too, I expect. T. S. Eliot is coming to speak at the Ark – a religious group – & I may join the Ark (2/6) just to hear & see him. I want to confirm my opinion that he really is an unpleasant guy.
Stopped a buck the other day in Hall:
Member of Democratic Socialists (trying to get me to join): “And we’re having the Lord Privy Seal to come down too!”
Me (ladling soup, cheerfully) “Oh ar, & you’re having Attlee too, arncha?”7 (collapse of Dem. Soc. & an awed hush.) Ah well these little things will happen won’t they.
Ernie Roe is becoming unbearable. Sits at tea making mad remarks like “What is Truth?” and “Is Truth the same as reality?” I don’t know whether he does it because he can’t help it or because he thinks it’s smart. Georges burned “F. G. SMITH IS A” on Bish’s mahogany fender yesterday with a red hot poker while B. was out of the room. The idea is that the visitors can supply the missing word to taste.
Well I must knock off & do something in the way of work. Blast it. Blast everything. This life is getting me down. I’m going mad! Ather ather ather.
Yours affec.
Philip
1 Addressed to Miss Katharine Larkin, c/o 85 Stanfell Road, Leicester.
2 The ink is brown and the pen has a very thin nib.
3 Music and record shop on the High Street, Oxford.
4 Philip’s room-mate, Noel Hughes.
5 Walter Sherard Vines (1890–1974): academic, poet, novelist and critic. His first novel was Humours Unreconciled (1928).
6 Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), Labour politician: Minister of Labour in the wartime coalition government.
7 Clement Attlee (1883–1967), Labour Party politician. He was Deputy Prime Minister under Churchill for much of the war, and later became Prime Minister (1945–51). In January 1941, however, he held the office of Lord Privy Seal.
26 January 1941
S John’s College, Oxford
Dear Pop,
I am taking advantage of Sunday morning to apprise you of the fact that I am still alive & moderately well. I suppose by now you’ve paid my battels. I hope you don’t consider them excessive – I don’t think they are, actually.
We are working a scheme of fire-watching now with Balliol & Trinity. 8 undergraduates (in John’s at any rate) are “on duty” if an alert takes place. Two are always awake. (4 shifts of 7–10, 10–1, 1–4, 4–7) and if an alert takes place, one goes up onto the tower & the other stands ready to run messages. After a half-hour they change places. If nothing happens during an hour they chuck it.
We are told that sand is now considered the most effective way of dealing with incendiary bombs – especially sandbags. Put a sandbag on a bomb, & the bag burns through at the crucial point & a steady & well directed stream of sand pours onto the bomb. Sound in theory at any rate. I mention this because I imagine you’ll be interested, but you probably know it anyway. […]
I note the Government have done several drastic things, although I never read the papers. The suppression of the “Daily Worker”1 has caused a good deal of annoyance here: and Attlee who was here the other night apparently made a very poor show. Indians kept popping up with awkward questions about India and so forth.
I am College Secretary of the English Club & College Agent of the Cherwell. I may have told you this before.
Well, I must divert my attentions to Anglo Saxon at present so this letter must cease. I do hope you’re all right.
Yours very affectionately,
Philip
1 Organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain, founded in 1930.
5 February 19411
S John’s College, Oxford
Dear Katharine,
I’m sorry I was so long in answering your letter which I enjoyed very much, notepaper included.
I’m afraid this letter won’t be “more like a book”. It’ll be more like a telegram. Going through your letter & the points I feel I want to answer – there is a general view here that undergraduates will be allowed the usual 9 months extension – i.e. to 19.9 months if they call up the 18s though I think they will have to close down [the University]. Pity – I’m just beginning to enjoy it. Has Joyce found a chance to become the life & soul of the party yet?
At present it is 8.28 p.m., and snowin’ ’ard. On every cornice, crag, gargoyle, ledge, and bit of dog-tooth moulding in Oxford snow settles. In the High ’buses run silently: down the Broad rectangles of light fall across the wide pavements from the lodges of Balliol & Trinity. Further away, south-east down St. Aldates, gusts of snow blow past Big Tom and away onto the Meadows, where are no footprints; and south-west2 by the river flakes fall in the quadrangles of Magdalen. And in hundreds of brightly lit rooms, or solitary by reading-lamps, hundreds of undergraduates smoke, read, talk and laugh, oblivious of the outer dark but part of it, forgetful of all but a tiny section of living but influenced by life and its implications, as am I, sprawled on a sofa in St. John’s College, a pad on my knees and my feet on the fireplace, writing to you.
There is a nice little literary description of the scene for you. Tell me if you like it. It’s quite easy.
I don’t think I’ve got much to tell you, apart from the fact that “The Cherwell” (university rag) accepted 2 of my poems and I’m getting to know the editors. Soon be in the literary swim my boys!
I’m sorry to hear you are overburdened with work. I have quite a lot but I rarely do any of it. It’s too hard. All I do is mess about, read, eat, and talk to Old Coventrians, with possible intervals of listening to hot records. Yas sir! Oxford on the whole is pleasant. But it’s impossible to do any form of serious writing (prose) when you’re here. Quite impossible.
Talking about writing, I sent 3 poems off to the Listener the other day. I hope they accept them – all of them. Sidney Key
es3 – literary ed. of Cherwell – says he knows Ackerley well.4
Well, it’s about time I knocked off and did something to the enormous pile of work that eyes me from a corner of this large, panelled room. I will sign off now with my signature tune “Forward Lads”: (tune – “Rock of Ages”)
“O won’t it be just posh
When we beat the ruddy Boche?
When the battle we have won
When we’ve licked the bloomin’ ’Un,
Then earth’s treasure will be mine,
And the sun forever shine,”
Sung in tones of beautiful youthful hope.
Philip
1 Addressed to Miss Katharine Larkin, c/o Stanfell Road, Leicester.
2 Larkin confuses south-east and south-west in this sentence.
3 Sidney Keyes (1922–43), poet; killed in action in North Africa.
4 J. R. Ackerley (1896–1967), Literary Editor of the Listener (1935–59).
6 March 19411
Thursday
[St John’s College, Oxford]
Dear Katherine,
It is raining. It is Thursday. I am confronted by loads of Anglo Saxon to do by Monday – it squats in corners and looks at me: the story of the Queen of Sheba (seo cwēn, genaten Sabā), Ælfric’s life of King Oswald (sum æþele cyning, Ōswold gehaten), and little rivulets and standing pools of grammar. What’s more, I feel tired and vaguely dispirited. Likewise, I don’t like this pen much. My writing, so far from looking like D.H.L.’s, as I hoped it might, resembles that of a slightly imbecile child.
Anyway! You seem to be doing a phenomenal amount of work – quite frightens me. Er – teaching a whole secondary school in Art2 – Gawd! I had visions of you.
But perhaps it isn’t so bad!
My idea with the orange & red paper was to use orange paper & red envelopes & vice versa. What is your opinion on this? Actually I suppose orange and green, or orange and yellow would be better, but I want to be bright and sunlike.
Talking of D.H.L. I applied for the original “Lady C.” and “Paintings” at the Bodleian yesterday. After about ¾ of an hour I was disturbed at my seat/desk by a girl – an unpleasant girl with spectacles – with a face as red as a peony who demanded “What is your reason for applying for these books?” I said “I want to read them.” This rather puzzled her – nobody in the Bodleian “just reads.” She didn’t consider this a serious answer & pressed me for a reason. I repeated that I wanted to read them: with motions of the hands suggesting one who explains to a child, I pointed out that these works were not available to the general public and, as I had a considerable admiration for Lawrence, I wanted to read them. She said I couldn’t have them without being a student of Lawrence or writing a thesis on him or something. I frowned and said: “Isn’t that rather childish?” She became even redder and whimpered that it wasn’t anything to do with her and would I come and see Mr Wright? I said: “Certainly”. So I came and saw Mr Wright, an objectionable little man like a constipated bank clerk. I repeated the foregoing in essentials and so did he. Then I remarked with pontifical scorn: “You see, I don’t consider these works obscene.” This touched him in his sensitive spot – his “tolerance” – and he snivellingly began explaining that neither did he nor the Library. I said that their action implied as much, and brushing aside his mumbling about copyright, responsibility, defacement etc. I shambled back to my seat, snarling. Actually, I suppose I could have got them by pretending I was writing a thesis on Lawrence – anything as long as I wasn’t going to “read” him, and admire him. If I were “studying” him – i.e. engaged on a longdrawnout effort to reduce Lawrence to my own size and the size of my readers, motivated at bottom by an envious and snivelling hate – well, that would have been all right. Tolerant Mr Wright wouldn’t mind at all. As it was, he could only squirm up to me with a yellow eye and mutter obscenely “I expect there are plenty of copies in the university if you only looked for them??!” I gave him one look and he lost his nerve. Canaille! Lice! Slimy professional haters! I regard the Bodleian Library as a home of a considerable amount of evil.
I went to see the O.U.D.S. production of “Othello” last night – stagemanaged by “Ernest Roe”. Pretty bad, apart from Iago. Desdemona was far too adult and poised – her “Willow Song” was quite inaudible and rather ludicrous. Othello, afraid of being too violent and so undignified, was rather stiff and weak. The grouping &c was wearily conventional. Parts were occasionally forgotten. I wonder why people do this sort of thing? Exhibitionism? Mere animal spirits? Anyway, I don’t care.
Jim had his medical yesterday. There is every possibility that he will be in the army within a month. He was put in Grade I: he said that the medical on the whole was not too bad at all – nothing like Lawrence’s descriptions. I still don’t think the army can be anything but revolting and intentional Hell.
Norman Iles and I climbed into college last night over the wall. Easy as falling off a wall – which it necessitates. The brilliant moonlight was unpleasant – and one had irrelevant memories of similar situations in the “Magnet” and so on. You’d probably like Iles. It’s only this term we’ve got to know each other really: I thought him rather an oaf last term and he says he thought me “fearfully dull”. He never gets up before 10 which I constantly tell him is all wrong – but luckily to a certain extent he can see his faults. And mine!
Jazz shops here are damn’ fine. We’ve bought quite a lot of records, & I know several people who are interested in jazz, though nobody with quite my tastes, unless it’s Frank Dixon. We generally meet Fridays and Sundays in Magdalen and Christ Church respectively.
Well, I must abandon this letter and regard my work. I stay here till about March 23rd, to take my Shakespeare exam – er, of course, I shall pass. Have a vague feeling I’m certain to fail.
Well, much love and so forth, Philip
[…]
1 Addressed in an elaborately florid hand to Kathryn Larkin, c/o 85 Stanfell Road, Leicester.
2 The History of Loughborough College (1952) records Kitty as having joined the Commerce Department in 1941. Photographs from 1942–3 labelled ‘College Junior School of Art’ show that she was teaching there at that time.
2 April 1941
S John’s College, Oxford
Dear Pop,
Thank you for your letter of March 31st. You sound in a very hard condition back at Coventry – I heard from Smith who mentioned the number of food queues about. In Oxford they aren’t so numerous – except outside Lyons and in Woolworths. I never join a queue myself, it’s too much trouble. I haven’t bought cakes for weeks. Nor cigarettes or tobacco, chocolate, sweets &c. It’s certainly very easy not to have them when you can’t get them easily.
Re my abortive distinction. Bone said that Prof. Brett-Smith (big bug in the English School) was of the opinion that my General paper on Shakespeare was well up to distinction standard, but my second one (Text of “Othello”) fell from grace considerably. He was, apparently impressed by my “capacity for developing a theory”. The point about distinctions is that (as I’ve told you) they count two sections1 and thus you are ready to go in the army all the sooner. Thus I have known at least one person who deliberately avoided a distinction on these grounds. However, I could have got a distinction if I’d tried, so that satisfies me.
The S. African prof. is Leishmann not Leichmann2 if that makes any difference. He has edited a volume of poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke (modern Austrian poet, influenced Stephen Spender) but apart from that I don’t know much about him, except that his mental capacity is obviously below standards. He reads the “News Chronicle” and remarked apropos of nothing that he’d like to invent a ray that exploded powders – then he’d just fly over enemy ammunition dumps and blow them up. He really is a blockhead. […]
With very much love,
Philip
P.S. Mop says you have a new sports coat. Congratulations!
1 Examinations.
2 J. B. Leishman (one n) (19
02–63): translator of Rilke.
9 April 19411
Dear Katherine,
Subsequent to my first air-raid with real live bomb (last night) I am sound in mind and body. So is Pop, and Mop who is here as well, but the general opinion prevailing at present is that you shouldn’t return as you had intended.
As regards the raid, an attack appeared to be directed at the station, and the Goods yard was burnt. So was the Grammar School. Bombs fell (“Cor! I was just a-thinkin’ of ’aving a look outside when I ’eard . . Wheeeeeeeeee . . and o’ course me an’ ole Charlie ducked back into the Anderson, and there was a whackin’ great bang …. An’ ole Charlie, ’e says …”) in Manor Road (2) Park Road (2) and presumably frequently in S. Patrick’s Road. Anyway it wasn’t very pleasant.
Philip
P.S. It’s not meant to be!! …
1 Addressed to 85 Stanfell Road, Leicester.
30 April 1941
S John’s College, Oxford
Dear Mop,
[…] This afternoon has been very fine & Roe, Hughes and I went on the river in a punt. Not my idea of pleasure. The pole retreats along to the edge of the punt where it is most insecure and water swirls directly beneath him. He holds the pole upright & slides it vertically into the water. The punt glides over it and bends it away from him:
He has to withdraw the pole hurriedly in order to avoid breaking the pole. However he jerks the 20-foot pole up again, sliding it through his hands & getting his sleeves soaking in water (the pole is wet). Once more he slides it in, and shoves. Ah! this is fine! the punt glides rapidly away and the poler is forced to relinquish the pole and the others get out the paddles & paddle back: