Philip Larkin: Poems Philip Larkin

Early life and education

'You look as if you wished the place in Hell,' My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well, I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said. 'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'

from "I Remember, I Remember" (1954),The Less Deceived

Philip Larkin was born on 9 August 1922 at 2, Poultney Road, Radford, Coventry,[15] the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884–1948) and his wife Eva Emily (1886–1977), daughter of first-class excise officer William James Day. Sydney Larkin's family originated in Kent, but had lived since at least the eighteenth century at Lichfield, Staffordshire, where they were in trade first as tailors, then also as coach-builders and shoe-makers. The Day family were of Epping, Essex, but moved to Leigh in Lancashire in 1914 where William Day took a post administering pensions and other dependent allowances.[16]

The Larkin family lived in the district of Radford, Coventry, until Larkin was five years old,[17] before moving to a large three-storey middle-class house complete with servants' quarters near Coventry railway station and King Henry VIII School, in Manor Road. Having survived the bombings of the Second World War, their former house in Manor Road was demolished in the 1960s to make way for a road modernisation programme,[18] the construction of an inner ring road. His sister Catherine, known as Kitty, was 10 years older than he was.[19]

His father, a self-made man who had risen to be Coventry City Treasurer,[19] was a singular individual, 'nihilistically disillusioned in middle age',[20] who combined a love of literature with an enthusiasm for Nazism, and had attended two Nuremberg rallies during the mid-1930s.[21] He introduced his son to the works of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and above all D. H. Lawrence.[22] His mother was a nervous and passive woman, "a kind of defective mechanism...Her ideal is 'to collapse' and to be taken care of",[23] dominated by her husband.[24]

Larkin's early childhood was in some respects unusual: he was educated at home until the age of eight by his mother and sister, neither friends nor relatives ever visited the family home, and he developed a stammer.[25] When he joined Coventry's King Henry VIII Junior School he fitted in immediately and made close, long-standing friendships, such as those with James "Jim" Sutton, Colin Gunner and Noel "Josh" Hughes. Although home life was relatively cold, Larkin enjoyed support from his parents. For example, his deep passion for jazz was supported by the purchase of a drum kit and a saxophone, supplemented by a subscription to DownBeat. From the junior school he progressed to King Henry VIII Senior School. He fared quite poorly when he sat his School Certificate exam at the age of 16. Despite his results, he was allowed to stay on at school. Two years later he earned distinctions in English and History, and passed the entrance exams for St John's College, Oxford, to read English.[26]

Larkin began at Oxford University in October 1940, a year after the outbreak of the Second World War. The old upper-class traditions of university life had, at least for the time being, faded, and most of the male students were studying for highly truncated degrees.[27] Due to his poor eyesight, Larkin failed his military medical examination and was able to study for the usual three years.[28] Through his tutorial partner, Norman Iles, he met Kingsley Amis, who encouraged his taste for ridicule and irreverence and who remained a close friend throughout Larkin's life.[29]

Amis, Larkin and other university friends formed a group they dubbed "The Seven", meeting to discuss each other's poetry, listen to jazz, and drink enthusiastically. During this time he had his first real social interaction with the opposite sex, but made no romantic headway.[30] In 1943 he sat his finals, and, having dedicated much of his time to his own writing, was greatly surprised at being awarded a first-class honours degree.[31]

Early career and relationships

Why should I let the toad work         Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork         And drive the brute off?

from "Toads" (1954), The Less Deceived

In 1943 Larkin was appointed librarian of the public library in Wellington, Shropshire. It was while working there that in early 1944 he met his first girlfriend, Ruth Bowman, an academically ambitious 16-year-old schoolgirl.[32] In 1945, Ruth went to continue her studies at King's College London; during one of his visits their friendship developed into a sexual relationship. By June 1946, Larkin was halfway through qualifying for membership of the Library Association and was appointed assistant librarian at University College, Leicester. It was visiting Larkin in Leicester and witnessing the university's Senior Common Room that gave Kingsley Amis the inspiration to write Lucky Jim (1954), the novel that made Amis famous and to whose long gestation Larkin contributed considerably.[33] Six weeks after his father's death from cancer in March 1948, Larkin proposed to Ruth, and that summer the couple spent their annual holiday touring Hardy country.[34]

In June 1950 Larkin was appointed sub-librarian at The Queen's University of Belfast, a post he took up that September. Before his departure he and Ruth split up. At some stage between the appointment to the position at Queen's and the end of the engagement to Ruth, Larkin's friendship with Monica Jones, a lecturer in English at Leicester, also developed into a sexual relationship. He spent five years in Belfast, which appear to have been the most contented of his life. While his relationship with Jones developed, he also had "the most satisfyingly erotic [experience] of his life" with Patsy Strang, who at the time was in an open marriage with one of his colleagues.[35]

At one stage she offered to leave her husband to marry Larkin. From 1951 onwards Larkin holidayed with Jones in various locations around the British Isles. While in Belfast he also had a significant though sexually undeveloped friendship with Winifred Arnott, the subject of "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album", which came to an end when she married in 1954. This was the period in which he gave Kingsley Amis extensive advice on the writing of Lucky Jim.[33] Amis repaid the debt by dedicating the finished book to Larkin.[36]

In 1955 Larkin became University Librarian at the University of Hull, a post he held until his death.[37] Professor R. L. Brett, who was chairman of the library committee that appointed him and a friend, wrote, "At first I was impressed with the time he spent in his office, arriving early and leaving late. It was only later that I realised that his office was also his study where he spent hours on his private writing as well as the work of the library. Then he would return home and on a good many evenings start writing again."[38] For his first year he lodged in bedsits. In 1956, at the age of 34, he rented a self-contained flat on the top-floor of 32 Pearson Park, a three-storey red-brick house overlooking the park, previously the American Consulate.[39] This, it seems, was the vantage point later commemorated in the poem High Windows.[40]

Of the city itself Larkin commented: "I never thought about Hull until I was here. Having got here, it suits me in many ways. It is a little on the edge of things, I think even its natives would say that. I rather like being on the edge of things. One doesn't really go anywhere by design, you know, you put in for jobs and move about, you know, I've lived in other places."[41]

In the post-war years, Hull University underwent significant expansion, as was typical of British universities during that period. When Larkin took up his appointment there, the plans for a new university library were already far advanced. He made a great effort in just a few months to familiarize himself with them before they were placed before the University Grants Committee; he suggested a number of emendations, some major and structural, all of which were adopted. It was built in two stages, and in 1967 it was named the Brynmor Jones Library after Sir Brynmor Jones, the university's vice-chancellor.

One of Larkin's colleagues at Hull said he became a great figure in post-war British librarianship.[42] Ten years after the new library's completion, Larkin computerized records for the entire library stock, making it the first library in Europe to install a Geac computer system, an automated online circulation system. Richard Goodman wrote that Larkin excelled as an administrator, committee man and arbitrator. "He treated his staff decently, and he motivated them", Goodman said. "He did this with a combination of efficiency, high standards, humour and compassion."[43] He rejected the Net Book Agreement.[44] From 1957 until his death, Larkin's secretary was Betty Mackereth. All access to him by his colleagues was through her, and she came to know as much about Larkin's compartmentalized life as anyone.[45] During his 30 years there, the library's stock sextupled, and the budget expanded from £4,500 to £448,500, in real terms a twelvefold increase.[46]

Later life

Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of . . . No, that's not the difference: rather how Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution.

from "Dockery and Son" (1963),The Whitsun Weddings

In February 1961 Larkin's friendship with his colleague Maeve Brennan became romantic, despite her strong Roman Catholic beliefs.[47] In early 1963 Brennan persuaded him to go with her to a dance for university staff, despite his preference for smaller gatherings. This seems to have been a pivotal moment in their relationship, and he memorialised it in his longest (and unfinished) poem "The Dance".[48] Around this time, also at her prompting, Larkin learnt to drive and bought a car – his first, a Singer Gazelle.[49] Meanwhile, Monica Jones, whose parents had died in 1959, bought a holiday cottage in Haydon Bridge, near Hexham,[50] which she and Larkin visited regularly.[51][52] His poem "Show Saturday" is a description of the 1973 Bellingham show in the North Tyne valley.[53]

In 1964, following the publication of The Whitsun Weddings, Larkin was the subject of an edition of the arts programme Monitor, directed by Patrick Garland.[54] The programme, which shows him being interviewed by fellow poet John Betjeman in a series of locations in and around Hull, allowed Larkin to play a significant part in the creation of his own public persona; one he would prefer his readers to imagine.[55]

In 1968, Larkin was offered the OBE, which he declined. Later in life he accepted the offer of being made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour.[56]

Larkin's role in the creation of Hull University's new Brynmor Jones Library had been important and demanding. Soon after the completion of the second and larger phase of construction in 1969,[57] he was able to redirect his energies. In October 1970, he started to work on compiling a new anthology, The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973). He was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, for two academic terms, allowing him to consult Oxford's Bodleian Library, a copyright library. While he was in Oxford he passed responsibility for the Library to his deputy, Brenda Moon. Larkin was a major contributor to the re-evaluation of the poetry of Thomas Hardy, which, in comparison to his novels, had been overlooked; in Larkin's "idiosyncratic" and "controversial" anthology,[58][59] Hardy was the poet most generously represented. There were twenty-seven poems by Hardy, compared with only nine by T. S. Eliot (however, Eliot is most famous for long poems); the other poets most extensively represented were W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden and Rudyard Kipling. Larkin included six of his own poems—the same number as for Rupert Brooke. In the process of compiling the volume he had been disappointed not to find more and better poems as evidence that the clamour over the Modernists had stifled the voices of traditionalists.[59] The most favourable responses to the anthology were those of Auden and John Betjeman, while the most hostile was that of Donald Davie, who accused Larkin of "positive cynicism" and of encouraging "the perverse triumph of philistinism, the cult of the amateur ... [and] the weakest kind of Englishry". After an initial period of anxiety about the anthology's reception, Larkin enjoyed the clamour.[60]

In 1971, Larkin regained contact with his schoolfriend Colin Gunner, who had led a picturesque life. Their subsequent correspondence has gained notoriety as Larkin expressed right-wing views and used racist language.[61] In the period from 1973 to 1974, Larkin became an Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and was awarded honorary degrees by Warwick, St Andrews and Sussex universities. In January 1974, Hull University informed Larkin that they were going to dispose of the building on Pearson Park in which he lived. Shortly afterwards he bought a detached two-storey 1950s house in Newland Park which was described by his university colleague John Kenyon as "an entirely middle-class backwater". Larkin, who moved into the house in June, thought the four-bedroom property "utterly undistinguished" and reflected, "I can't say it's the kind of dwelling that is eloquent of the nobility of the human spirit".[62]

Shortly after splitting up with Maeve Brennan in August 1973, Larkin attended W. H. Auden's memorial service at Christ Church, Oxford, with Monica Jones as his official partner.[63] In March 1975, the relationship with Brennan restarted, and three weeks after this he initiated a secret affair with Betty Mackereth, who served as his secretary for 28 years, writing the long-undiscovered poem "We met at the end of the party" for her.[64] Despite the logistical difficulties of having three relationships simultaneously, the situation continued until March 1978. From then on he and Jones were a monogamous couple.[65]

In 1976, Larkin was the guest of Roy Plomley on BBC's Desert Island Discs. His choice of music included "Dallas Blues" by Louis Armstrong, Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis and the Symphony No. 1 in A flat major by Edward Elgar. His favourite piece was "I'm Down in the Dumps" by Bessie Smith.[66]

In December 2010, as part of the commemorations of the 25th anniversary of Larkin's death, the BBC broadcast a programme entitled Philip Larkin and the Third Woman focusing on his affair with Mackereth in which she spoke for the first time about their relationship. It included a reading of a newly discovered secret poem, Dear Jake, and revealed that Mackereth was one of the inspirations for his writings.[67]

Final years and death

Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.

from "Aubade" (1977), Collected Poems

Larkin turned sixty in 1982. This was marked most significantly by a collection of essays entitled Larkin at Sixty, edited by Anthony Thwaite and published by Faber and Faber.[68] There were also two television programmes: an episode of The South Bank Show presented by Melvyn Bragg in which Larkin made off-camera contributions, and a half-hour special on the BBC that was devised and presented by the Labour Shadow Cabinet Minister Roy Hattersley.[69]

In 1983, Jones was hospitalised with shingles, a skin rash. The severity of her symptoms, including its effects on her eyes, distressed Larkin. As her health declined, regular care became necessary: within a month she moved into his Newland Park home and remained there for the rest of her life.[70]

At the memorial service for John Betjeman, who died in July 1984, Larkin was asked if he would accept the post of Poet Laureate. He declined, not least because he felt he had long since ceased to be a writer of poetry in a meaningful sense.[71] The following year, Larkin began to suffer from oesophageal cancer. On 11 June 1985, he underwent surgery, but his cancer was found to have spread and was inoperable. On 28 November, he collapsed and was readmitted to hospital. He died four days later, on 2 December 1985, at the age of 63, and was buried at Cottingham municipal cemetery near Hull.[72]

Larkin had asked on his deathbed that his diaries be destroyed. The request was granted by Jones, the main beneficiary of his will, and Betty Mackereth; the latter shredded the unread diaries page by page, then had them burned.[73] His will was found to be contradictory regarding his other private papers and unpublished work; legal advice left the issue to the discretion of his literary executors, who decided the material should not be destroyed.[74] When she died on 15 February 2001, Jones, in turn, left £1 million split between St Paul's Cathedral, Hexham Abbey and Durham Cathedral, and another £1 million to the National Trust.[75] Larkin is commemorated with a green plaque on The Avenues, Kingston upon Hull.