Philip Larkin
Page 30
Can you feel the autumn where you are? It seems to hang in the air here, and sharpen my senses, and again I feel a sense of a great waste in my life. We must go again up that road to the wood where we found the scarlet toadstool and listen to the wind in the trees. I’m sure it’s beautiful at this time of year. Here the moon is large and lemon-yellow and drifts up into the sky at night like a hollow phosphorescent fungoid growth. Do you watch it?
Well, old creature; now I must up and dress, & see about my lunch. I’ll send you a card about when I’m likely to arrive on Saturday. Keep yourself in good trim & good fettle.
My very best love,
Philip
13 September 1953
My very dear old creature,
[…] Kingsley is very well: rapidly becoming a successful writer! On Wednesday he is going to London to see his English publishers, his American publishers, & be photographed & interviewed for Vogue. You can imagine the mixture of feelings I contemplate all this with!1 His two children seem well enough; The elder reminds me of Hilly, the younger of Kingsley – the younger likes blue cheese, beer, pickles, vinegar & little girl friends, all of which things Kingsley likes himself. The house is a bit cleaner, but full of things needing repair: for instance, I had been raising & lowering my bedroom window every night & morning some days before I found out a whole pane was missing! […]
All special love,
Philip
1 Eva wrote on 15 September: ‘Kingsley is forging ahead. Somehow I fancy I can hear Daddy saying, “You ought to be glad you’re not being photographed and interviewed by Vogue!”’
15 November 1953
My especial old creature,
[…] Yes. I am sad Dylan Thomas has died. Eliot, Auden and he were the three living poets who had altered the way other people write poetry – other poets have written as well or better, but these three are the influences. Lawrence, for instance, never had a tenth of the influence of Dylan Thomas. I stood him a drink once! As for poetry, I have been rhyming away myself recently, and have sent a group of 8 poems to some undergraduate concern at Oxford. Should have grown beyond this by now, but still: it may lead to something.1 […]
Farewell, my dear old creature: my thoughts are often with you,
Philip
1 Eventually five of these poems were published in Fantasy Poets, no. 21, 1954.
30 November 1953
Flat 13, 30 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast
My dear old creature,
This is just a little note with no reason behind it, except that I envisaged you pottering about your little home & wished I could let you know how much I’d like to be there! Dear old creature, remember you are very often in my thoughts: I hope you’ll come here again next year, even if I have to escort you myself. In the meantime I look forward to seeing you at Christmas. There’ll be no thunder at Christmas, & we can sit tippling damson gin.
With my best love – shall consider some “writing” now – Philip
6 December 1953
30 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast
My dear old creature,
[…] For me the great news this week has been the death of T. F. Powys;1 although he did in fact die on 27 November, I didn’t hear of it till a week later. You know he was a great favourite of mine, though he was an old man and would obviously not write any more. I felt very sorry for him because he did in his work describe the fear of death better than anyone else I know, and it was a matter he couldn’t regard without distress. Bishop Barnes died too,1 as I expect the Church Times will have told you. […]
I expect I shall have Leo Japolsky up here some time today – he always comes at an inconvenient moment – because he is only recently back from Oxford where he was interviewed in connection with his Doctorate. I wonder if they are going to give it him. I could hear him playing the piano this morning and it didn’t sound very cheerful playing. From what I saw of his thesis I thought he would be a borderline case. He will be extremely dejected if he doesn’t get it. […]
With my best love to the dear old creature,
Philip
1 T. F. Powys (1875–1953), novelist; brother of J. C. and Llewelyn Powys.
2 Ernest Barnes (1874–1953), Bishop of Birmingham from 1924, known for his controversial views on theological and other subjects.
1954
24 January 1954
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
My dear old creature,
Today has got going suspiciously early: I mean I’ve only got up, breakfasted, shaved & dressed, and here it is, 20 to 1, with hardly any progress made. Outside, the day is grey and dry, with a bleak with blowing, or at any rate a wind: perhaps quite a mild one. I did go out to secure the papers, but hardly noticed what was happening as I had only just got up. In the papers I found the first 2 reviews of Kingsley’s book.1 I expect you’ll see the S.T., which is adverse. The Observer, though not much more perceptive, praises it very highly indeed. My copy turned up last Monday, & I do find it extremely funny. I think Kitty would enjoy it, though I don’t know if you would.
My life proceeds on its usual winter course, quiet and not especially demanding. I feel much more cheerful now my pain has gone. My young assistant continues to gobble up all the work I can find for him.2 Which is very nice for us: shortly I hope to maintain connection with the library by telephone only. Of course when he goes I shall fall down flop.
Monica continues to be a good deal exercised about where to live. Various flats present themselves but are either given to others or are not suitable. It worries her a good deal, since now Charmian has gone the rent of her house is of course still the same but with only 2 people to pay it – & I don’t suppose the other girl is going to pay any more as she is “only temporary”. I do feel sorry for her: she dislikes her job, it wears her out, and she is not very good at fending for herself in the matter of flat-finding and the rest of it. And the future seems to hold nothing better.
I find your Courtaulds letter hard to understand – honestly, yr bank people would understand it better than I – it seems incredible that they should be giving away £24m., and yet that’s what they seem to be doing.3 O enviable creature! You could take a cruise all round the world for that, & forget that such goblin-eared miseries as crouch about York Road ever existed!
Not a very successful drawing. Believe me, I do sympathise with your difficulties in your lonely life: I feel very beastly at being so far away and able to do so little to help. Certainly, as I said at Christmas, I think a rest would do you good, and am interested to hear that Dr Folwell does too. After all, if circumstances can affect you adversely (as you say they can), a change in them might affect you favourably. You do not take sufficiently into account the fact that your depression results from the kind of life you lead: surely if you alter, even for a bit, the kind of life then you may alter, even for a bit, the depression it produces – and that is better than nothing. 3 months pleasure and 9 months misery is better than 12 months’ misery. Isn’t that so? Of course I agree about the unpleasantness of having a stranger to live with you, unless the stranger were a person you found sufficiently nice to make a friend of, which might happen, of course. Did you see Dr Folwell again? I’m sure you are less trouble than some of her more desperate patients who chew the carpets. In short, I think a brief holiday first of all would be the thing – especially as you HAVE THE MONEY. Talking about money, I haven’t yet spent the £1 you gave me for Christmas, but I keep it separate, in your original envelope, & shall ‘plunge’ in due course.
Let me know how you get on. Remember that every day is something chalked up to your account; a victory, instead of a defeat; a medal, not a black mark. I think of you a great deal. Would you like me to ring up for a chat next Sunday?4
Very best creaturely love,
Philip
1 Lucky Jim.
2 On 19 January Eva had written: �
��I was interested to know that you now have a young man under you. I hope he doesn’t make you as distracted as some of the maids made me. I wonder if you and I are alike. I always think you resemble G. Dad more than anyone else.’ Grand-dad is Eva’s father, William Day.
3 Philip returned the letter, which Eva had enclosed with hers of 19 February. It informed her that ‘they are going to give me a fresh share for each one I already possess. As I think I have 300 this seems a nice little gift.’
4 Eva responded on 26 January: ‘How I wish I could chase all my fears away […]! then life might be worth living. Even now, I am shrinking from inviting Effie in on Thursday evening, fearing that the weather will do something dreadful which will un-nerve me, and prevent me making the necessary preparations.’ Later, on 4 May, she related how Effie had called on her, ‘all in a thrill’, to insist she ‘go over and celebrate her television set which had just been fixed up. […] The T.V. programme was rather boring but the climax arrived for me when the weather report came on. I hardly know how I listened to it – I was all in perspiration.’
21 February 1954
My dear old creature,
Well, here I am, set down in the middle of the Anglo-Irish tradition, and considerably relieved that my ordeal of Friday is over.1 It went quite well, I think: I was nervous to start with, and the beginning of my paper was not very good (2 young men got up & went out & I thought O dear it can’t sound up to much), but the second half of the paper was much better written & got some laughs, & they were really very kind & agreeable afterwards. So the ordeal went off not too badly after all my moanings, as I expect any one who wasn’t a craven creature would have realised to start with.2
On the other hand I don’t feel particularly happy as I have nothing to do today and to be alone in a strange town is always a little upsetting. I am booked here over tonight, but I’ve more than half a mind to go home. […]
If you are passing a bookshop you might look out for a Penguin copy of Love lies bleeding by Edmund Crispin & read what he says about himself on the back (don’t buy it as we have it): I think it will amuse you.3 He’s a rare old card is Bruce, like all my friends, successful swine all of them.
Talking about colds, the fellow who arranged for me to come down here, a lecturer called Donald Davie, has along with his wife & 2 children most frightful colds – I fancy even the cat sneezed once, so I hope I haven’t caught it myself. But Dublin always seems a chilly wet place to me, though no worse than Belfast, I’m sure.
I still feel no more decided about what to do today – it seems absurd to go home, yet I’ve no resources save the church & the cinema … creature alone in Dublin! Creature feels a bit lost. There is a mild sun coming out, but I can hear the wind, & I don’t feel that rain is far away. I wonder what kind of a day you are having, & whether anything is sprouting in your back garden.4
Very much love, dear old creature:
P.
1 Donald Davie had invited Larkin to give a talk at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was teaching at the time. Davie was on the editorial board of Dolmen Press and had been in favour of publishing what was to become The Less Deceived. He was overruled by his two co-editors. See Selected Letters, 229.
2 On 23 February Eva wrote: ‘Words cannot express how magnificently brave you are! Really, I do think you are wonderful to give that talk in spite of the awfulness of your feelings. How glad you must be now that it is over, and how uplifted to think that you didn’t fail.’
3 Montgomery had written: ‘He is thirty-one years old, unmarried, constitutionally torpid: for recreation he does crossword puzzles, reads and sleeps. Unlike most authors, he has not been a lumber-jack, bar-tender, advertising agent, ship’s cat, lecturer in metallurgy, gigolo, and Member of Parliament. For a time after leaving Oxford he was, however, a schoolmaster.’
4 In her letter of 23 February Eva turned Philip’s query into a focus of anxiety: ‘What a sweet little sketch of me in the back garden! There are lots of things coming up in my back garden, Creature, but there are lots more that ought to come up and be thrown away. I fully intended to ’phone the gardener to-day and ask him why he had not been to set it in order – but the weather frightened me off it!’
30 May 1954
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
My very dear old creature,
[…] Will you think of Thos. Hardy on Wednesday? It was his birthday, in 1840.
I fancy I hear Leo1 playing his piano in the distance – he has been away for a week – he is a moody fool – but I want to borrow his room –
Patsy2 is on the point of going to Italy for a holiday. She has bought a knife to defend herself with! I think she is very courageous. She can’t even buy a return ticket on the ’bus without losing the return half – so perhaps she will never come back from Italy!
Now I must dress, & pack my lunch. My very best love, dear creature. Keep up your tail!
Philip
1 Leo Japolsky.
2 Patsy Strang.
8 August 1954
30 Elmwood Ave, Belfast
My poor dear old creature,
I say ‘poor’ because of the storms I hear you’ve been having in Nottingham and Lincoln, & which I expect did not pass you by either. Certainly I thought we were booked for one yesterday, but the rain came down instead. I was listening to a cricket commentary from Bradford & could hear the thunder there & the ‘ooo’s of the crowd as it lightened! I thought you would have your head in a bag safely somewhere.1
[…]
Tomorrow I have a stall reserved to see Tommy Trinder at the local Hippodrome. This is by way of being a “birthday treat”, though it will be rather a lonely one, I fancy. However, it’s nice to know you will be thinking of me & drinking my health.
Give my love to Kitty & the other two.
With all my love,
Philip
1 On 10 August Eva wrote: ‘Yes. I’m writing this at Kitty’s, for the weather has kept me on tenterhooks all day so that I have at last given up the fight and come here. / As you guessed I’ve been a “poor creature” since reading about the awful storms of last Friday and Saturday. On Friday evening I could both see and hear that a storm was coming up, and I was trying to hurry with the usual routine of leaving all safe before closing the door for the night when Walter came up to see where I was, (and wasn’t I thankful!).’
10 October 1954
30 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast
My dear old creature,
This day is a little upset – I found the time was a quarter to eleven before I knew what had happened. Now it is a quarter to two: I have my joint (of pork) in the oven, but I’m not sure I shan’t turn out the gas and go for a ride round when I finish this, as the weather is warm and balmy. Recently my bicycle has had a flat tyre, but yesterday the repair shop said they could find nothing wrong – they simply blew it up! Fool of a creature.
I feel a little better-tempered today as J. B. Priestley in the S. Times remarks that Kingsley has been “luckier than his own Lucky Jim” – good stuff.1 He hasn’t written to me since we met in Cheltenham: I’m hanged if I will be the one to write first. I’m so glad you found Corduroy2 – what can it have been doing in the ottoman? Finally, I don’t know if I mentioned it, but the Dublin book of poems has fallen through: the selectors didn’t like the group I submitted, so that’s that.3 I was disappointed at first, but now do not care. My skin is thick enough to withstand such criticism.
I’m sorry to hear Dennis Folwell is ill again – it coincides with “Jack”’s prolonged absence in the mental hospital, I suppose.4
Yesterday I did worse on my pools than ever before – 10 scored on each line: you can’t score less than 8, however badly you do, so you see that I was pretty near the bottom. I buy a bunch of postal orders and so don’t have to worry about buying them separately. If I won £75,000 I expect old creature wd find itself among marble halls somewhere!5
I really must send you a Llewelyn Powys: I have plenty of them here. Per
haps when I ring you up tonight I’ll ask you which you would like.
Yes, I should like another Country Life “Beautiful Britain” calendar when the time comes.
Trinity College was very interesting. The dinner was: celery soup, Lobster Newburg, pheasant, & apple pie with real cream. It was accompanied by sherry, white wine, & a Corton (burgundy, I suppose). Then we piled upstairs and sat round tables lit by red candles in silver sconces – or do I mean candlesticks? – and drank claret, madeira, or (and, I’m afraid in my case, and) port, & smoked cigars, while the Provost made a speech saying what a fine fellow Donald Davie was, and Davie made a speech saying what a good place Trinity College was. As a fellow, he is now committed to the place, but he seems quite happy about it.
Oh, drat! I’ve switched out the gas in the oven, now the rain has started! […]
In retrospect this looks a dull letter, but I shall be talking to you tonight, & anyway the sun has come out now. My special love.
Philip
1 Eva replied hesitantly, not sure of Philip’s tone (12 October): ‘I read J. B. Priestley’s remarks about Kingsley’s novel and in consideration of your remark assumed that it was not a very good review of “Lucky Jim”. When I got to Kitty’s last night she had kept their S. Times to show it to me. Walter spotted it first, and they both took it that it was a very good review and thought Kingsley had got the first prize. Are they right? I did not think so when I read it.’