Philip Larkin
Page 42
3 ‘Their sort’ of gulls go ‘oghoghogh’. See Philip’s card of 27 May 1960.
4 On 13 June Eva had sent a cutting concerning the Bunny village clock, stuck at just after 10, and a visit by ‘special coach’ of thirty-one members and friends of the Bunny with Bradmore Mothers’ Union to Bottesford to see the former vicar of the village. (‘They toured the parish church before tea.’) A cutting concerning a ‘KEEN BUNNY CYCLIST’ followed on 23 July, and one on a Bunny nonagenarian on 7 August. The cutting which prompted Philip’s comment here was included with a letter of 19 September. It recorded the success in his examinations of the son of the secretary of the Mothers’ Union.
28 September 1961
Hull
My dear old creature,
I got back here yesterday rather tired & not sorry to be home again: the conference, though agreeable enough, was exhausting like all functions. While I was away Farrell got a job at Bristol! So he will be going after Christmas. More worry.
I forget how much I said about Monica’s house – it is really half a house, very solid & well-made, and once she has her purple carpet & chandeliers up – as I expect she has now – it will look very nice. It is solidly fitted & has this nice kitchen window onto the river. I didn’t greatly care for the village of Haydon Bridge, & her position is rather noisy though/ as you say this may at times seem an advantage.
When I got back there was a letter from Barbara Pym, answering one written by me on 5th March, the day before I was ill! I had imagined I had said something to offend her, but she seems quite affable. I want to do an article on her when her next book comes out, if I can.1
Friday A lovely fine day, though I do find it hard to get up in the mornings – I feel so tired! My physical wellbeing is still a trifle precarious. I’m so glad you read about Gdma Moses, isn’t she marvellous?2 All love
Philip
1 Larkin had first written to Barbara Pym on 16 January 1961.
2 The American folk artist ‘Grandma Moses’ – Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961) – died on 13 December 1961. She had begun painting at the age of seventy-eight, three years older than Eva was at this time.
28 October 1961
My dear old creature,
I am sitting in front of my fire on Saturday night, & thought I would write you a page. It has been a dullish sort of day, & I’ve felt rather drowsy and below par: I was glad to get in from shopping and into my bath. After that I had two pikelets and some china tea.
Perhaps my drowsiness is due to going out last night with Betty. We went far out in her car to a place called The Trout, in the depths of the country, & had a very good dinner of duck & burgundy. Before setting out we had a drink at her parents’ home, & her father tried to convert me to healthy feeding. I told you Betty wouldn’t be immunised, didn’t I? They scorn doctors & eat raw cabbage & things of that sort. Hull is full of polio germs going round in mortal dread of catching Betty. Anyway, the whole family looks very healthy. I have bought some cabbage & carrots to try myself. […]
Well, I suppose I had better go and grate my carrot. The cabbage is simply enormous – as big as a football. I shall never get through it. However, I dare say it is very healthy. I keep expecting to come across a furry visitor !1
With all very best love
Philip
1 On 31 October Eva wrote: ‘How did you fare with the raw carrot and cabbage? Raw carrots are very good for one. I remember Mr Bilston, the Borough Accountant at Warwick always had his vegetables raw, shredded. Walter and Rosemary also have raw cabbage. They like it very much.’
19 November 1961
My dear old creature,
[…] Yesterday too I bought another cabbage. I find a good deal depends on one’s cabbage of the moment. Last week’s was tough & I am chucking away about half of it. This new one is much more tender. This diet renders shopping beautifully simple – cheese, carrots, cabbage, & perhaps tomatoes. And some onion./ Nothing else. It’s a great burden off my mind. As for whether I like it, well, I don’t dislike it enough to stop doing it. As for whether it’s healthy, well, I haven’t been ill since I started it, but whether that means anything I don’t know. Betty is always revoltingly healthy. […]
Very best love, old creature,
Philip
26 November 1961
My very dear old creature,
[…] Not a great deal has happened this week. I had a poem in the New Statesman on Friday wch I hope no one will notice, as it speaks somewhat critically of these parts.1 It is all right up to the last verse, when it collapses somewhat to my ear. I have the feeling of having been out quite a lot, but all it boils down to really is attending one lecture. […]
Best love,
Philip
1 ‘Here’ appeared in the New Statesman on 24 November 1961.
1962
7 January 1962
My very dear old creature,
This is my first letter to you of 1962, and of course it is your birthday letter. Indeed it may not reach you till your birthday. Let me be first of all then, [to] wish you a happy and comfortable day, and a year free from storms & worries and illness: may you keep your old friends and make new ones. […]
Monica came on Monday & went back on Friday. She had left a pipe or two frozen, and was worried about them. She spent Christmas Day at home, & had a duck. About eleven the old miner next door called with a glass of neat whiskey & a piece of cake! As she hadn’t had anything to eat she found this rather daunting, but she managed to swap the whiskey for port, at least. Your towels were a great success, & she is very touched that you should think of her. We didn’t do much. She came into the Library a good deal and set examination questions. […]
I’m glad to say the weather looks mild and agreeable & I might go out to Hessle to stir up the Hartleys, or I might just go out. It’s 5 to 2 & of course I haven’t had lunch yet! I expect you are just licking up your plate. Once again a very happy birthday & all best love.
Philip.
11 February 1962
My very dear old creature,
A grey day, but not over-cold as far as I can see. I surprised Kelly putting my papers outside my door at 10.15! I think he is anxious to efface the bad impressions of last week, but they are a pair of fussers & meddlers, really. Still, better than Wilks who stole my Observer & still hasn’t paid me the 3/6 he owes from last June, though he sometimes refers to it as if it concerned two quite different people.1 I didn’t shop very carefully yesterday, & forgot bananas (I eat these regularly now – they are easy things to manage) and have no caster sugar for my grapefruit. I might find some bananas today, but the sugar will have to wait.
This has been a better week once I got free of the Committee on Monday. What I find is that sometimes I am frightfully tired in the evenings, brain-tired chiefly but nerve-tired too, & unable to take up anything of my own. I don’t as a rule try. Perhaps I ought to buy a television set! […]
On Friday night I had to put in time listening to a poetry reading by William Empson – he is professor at Sheffield & a wellknown poet, in a slightly mad way. He used to teach in the east & affects a Chinese beard, wch looks very straggly. Afterwards he came with us to a pub & blathered on. Honestly, all writers are utterly awful when you meet them. This is one reason why I never undertake speaking engagements, but only one, as you can imagine.
Miss Moon has begun & will I think do well.2 She is a tiny creature with a singsong voice, vaguely accented (she comes from Staffordshire), & seems cheerful & efficient & with a kind of inhuman pixie brightness. I’m sure she’s a valuable addition to the staff. I am running into a bout of Wood-hatred: I can hardly keep myself from kicking him downstairs, through plate-glass doors, sawing his head off, etc.
Have you found out by now who has bought the house next door? I hope it is someone nice – not a gang of Pakistanis who will build a pile of empty kit-e-kat tins in the yard and grow marijuana in the back garden, nor yet some frightful crowd with gate-kicking children. I have wondered whether you had got any further forward with your holiday arrangements, fearful burden that they are. I should still like us – you & I – to have a week somewhere if possible. I thought Minehead was a great success. It wd, I suppose, be September, or perhaps late August.
I have bought a Valentine to send to Mary,3 though I don’t expect she is feeling much like Valentines! This month her baby is due.
I have an awful lot to do today – double load of laundry, & some washing – so I had better push on. Take care of yourself, dear old creature. You are always in my thoughts.
Love from Philip
1 The Kellys occupied the bottom flat in 32 Pearson Park at this time; the Wilkses occupied the middle floor.
2 Brenda Moon had been appointed chief cataloguer to replace John Farrell. Five years later, in 1967, she was promoted to be the second deputy librarian alongside Arthur Wood.
3 Mary Judd (formerly Wrench).
24 February 1962
My very dear old creature,
[…] Most of the interest this week has been centred on Mary, who has gone into the maternity home but as far as I know hasn’t had her baby yet. I told you she went to that odd film that we saw! It didn’t seem to disconcert her. Stephen1 says, “You can’t hurry a Judd”, but I’m sure Mary wishes it were all safely over.2 […]
My tongue varies from green to yellow: Betty’s father says it is my system getting rid of its poison, and will go on for a year. He also said be thankful it’s nothing worse! I don’t know what he means by that. However, I continue with the raw salad daily, as far as possible, like Timmy Willie in Beatrix Potter’s Johnny Town Mouse – I feel great sympathy with him. Do you know the story? It’s about a field mouse that gets taken to town accidentally in a basket, and town life doesn’t agree with him. Then he gets back to the country, & the town mouse comes & visits him. There is a wonderful passage when the town mice ask what he does in the country, & he explains how he sits shelling nuts & peas, and smelling the violets after the rain – it nearly makes me cry. You will think I am silly.3
I wonder if your wall has been repaired. […]
Very dearest love Philip
1 Mary’s husband.
2 On 27 February Eva wrote: ‘I am rather surprised to know that Mary went to that horror film. Her waiting reminds me/ of how I was kept waiting for your arrival. I had Mrs Poole in a month before you came. You were actually a fortnight late.’
3 On 27 February Eva wrote: ‘Dearest creature, how I loved the story about the little field mouse. Whenever In think of him smelling the violets after the rain, I feel I could cry, too. I’m sure this is not silly. (I have made a lot of mistakes here, but it is a bit difficult to write as Rosemary is practising on the piano. Rather deafening!)’
4 March 1962
My dear old creature,
Self indulgence Sunday – I lay in bed till 12.15! I felt I needed it, having been out at a party wch was quite respectable & over by 11.30 but wch involved a good deal of standing, wch I found hard to take, poor old bones. Now it is a quarter to two, & snowing slightly – really, isn’t the weather grim! We have a little snow each day, just to encourage us.
This weekend is the anniversary of my collapse: I have the same committee tomorrow, so I hope I survive. I think I shall. But think of me between two and three in the afternoon. Funnily enough, there is an item on the agenda that was on last time, & is the last thing I remember trying to speak about!
On Friday evening I went along to see Mary: she is in a pleasant little room, & looks very well. There were two women friends of hers there when I arrived, then when they went Betty looked in, & then Stephen, and I thought they’d probably prefer to be alone, so I went without really saying much. Helen Mary is reputedly a “rampageous” child, & has red hair, rather to Mary’s surprise: she seems to have enjoyed the whole experience, though by all accounts it wasn’t easy by any means. Hilary,1 who was at the party last night & is expecting another baby in April, expressed the wish that Mary could deputise for her, as she found it less thrilling. But Mary was always rather tough, in her own way.
There’s no more news of Miss Cuming:2 she had a stroke a week last Wednesday, and has been unconscious ever since. It is saddening, but a painless condition as far as one knows. Life seems all birth and death at the moment. Ay, an’ Ah doan’t feel that gradely, Ah’m tellin’ thee, so theer. […]
Very best love, Philip
1 Hilary Penwill had been Larkin’s secretary until 1957.
2 Larkin’s predecessor as Librarian. She died on 9 March 1962.
25 March 1962
My dear old creature,
[…] I haven’t had any success with Easter yet, not that I’ve tried very hard. Bournemouth doesn’t seem any good. Whenever I undertake the wearisome and disagreeable task of “booking holidays” – a task that quite abolishes the desire, if any, that prompted its undertaking – I get the impression that the entire population of Britain spends its time reserving holiday accommodation for every conceivable holiday period for five years in advance. Better prepare yourself for anything or nothing –
but probably not in the south of England.1
I ambled round the town yesterday & got as far as Marks & Spencer’s,2 where I bought a large size vest & pants in as warm-looking material as I could find – they came to 31/- in all, not unduly cheap. Then I went on to the Market Place, a horrible chip-infested place, and looked round the stalls, but what a mixture Hull is of the romantic and the drearily ugly – the redbrick Tudor school, where Andrew Marvell & William Wilberforce were educated, and the trawlers tied up in Prince’s Dock, but the swarms of depressing cut-price kid-dragging people, caricatures of every vapid vulgarity, quite offset them. What a dump! What a crew!3 […]
All very best love, Philip
1 Eva replied on 27 March: ‘I wonder where else we could try? Hastings, Folkestone? I expect they would all be full up too. Don’t forget to ask for a private bathroom. (I don’t expect that would be available either.) […] I managed to have an interview with the Bank Manager last Friday. […] The first thing he said was “I don’t know whether you have anyone dependent on you, Mrs Larkin, but I think, at your age you might spend some of your capital – say £2,000 and enjoy yourself. Go [on] a cruise round the world.” He added, “you can’t take it with you, you know”. […] The knowledge that I can indulge in a luxury now & then prompted me to make an appointment at the hairdresser’s for a shampoo, set & trim. The Manager cut it and one of the girls did it in a new style, which I quite like – price 12/-!!!.’
2 This was ‘the large cool store’ in Whitefriargate, Hull, which inspired the poem of that title, completed on 18 June in the previous year, 1961.
3 Eva concurred in slightly different vein (27 March 1962): ‘I quite agree with all you said about the people one meets on a Saturday in a large city. I am really tired of seeing so many “nobodies”, dressed smartly albeit cheaply trailing round the streets, all busy spending.’
1 April 1962
My very dear old creature,
[…] My photographs of Mary’s baby came out moderately well, though she is a squalling little thing & looks quite agonised in most of them.1 She has asked me to be god-father, wch is rather a tall order. I accepted though. Somebody will have to look after me when I’m old.
Betty is another godparent, I think. Miss Moon is gradually taking the Library in hand: she is also trying to buy a flat in Cottingham for between two & three thousand, but there is some hitch at present. I’m glad she is putting down roots – she is a
tremendous acquisition. A very busy little creature. […]
A fat volume – two fat volumes, in fact – of Lawrence’s letters have been published & I am eating my way through them.2 His life between say 1910 & 1914 seems very adventurous & idyllic, living in Italy & Germany with Frieda. Different from living in Hull with nobody!
Oh, I wish it were warmer!
Very best love, Philip
1 See Plate 10C.
2 The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Harry T. Moore (Heinemann, 1962).
9 April 1962
Picture postcard1
Waiting for a connection here – it looks as if I have plenty of choice, doesn’t it! Fine but cold.
Love
Philip
1 Largest Railway Crossing, Newcastle upon Tyne.
29 April 1962
My very dear old creature,
[…] On Thursday a friend of the Hartleys’ drove them & me to Bridlington – this place always reminds me of one of my boyhood friends, Peter Snape or Peter Sharpe or someone, who always used to go there – to hear a Louis Armstrong concert: this was a very great thrill for me, as Armstrong is the Shakespeare of jazz even now, & I’ve never seen him before. We got back about midnight. You’ll see a picture of him in the S. Times today. And see all those poets in the Colour Supplement! Grim-looking crew. […]
All love,
Philip
27 May 1962
My very dear old creature,
[…] I expect you’ve been reading the Sunday Times feature on “Loneliness” – I just glanced at it. It is odd to think of young people being lonely, yet I remember how lonely I was at Warwick during vacations – at least, I think I was. Never knew anyone at Warwick, did we? I didn’t, anyway. But as a family we were not very sociable. I remember that if there was “somebody in the drawing room” at Coventry I felt an intense emotion of fear mixed with shyness – a kind of embarrassment lest the door should open with its curious crackling sound (I can hear it now) and its awful occupants catch me crossing the hall. It wasn’t so much that I was shy of people as that I hated the idea of them in “our” house. I expect you have been thinking of Coventry lately, now that the Cathedral has been consecrated. I wish I remembered the old Cathedral more clearly. I remember going with the school on several occasions – could they have been Founder’s Day? – but all I remember was that it was very tall and very dark.1