Philip Larkin (92 page)

Read Philip Larkin Online

Authors: James Booth

  
57.
   Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 20 June 2011.
  
58.
   Passage not in
LM
.
  
59.
   14 April 1959.
LM
,
p. 248.
  
60.
   
LM
,
p. 254.
  
61.
   To Monica Jones, 9 October 1959. Not in
LM
.
  
62.
   
LM
,
pp. 259–60.
  
63.
   
LM
, p. 261.
  
64.
   25 August 1959.
LM
,
p. 256.
  
65.
   Motion, pp. 296–7.
  
66.
   Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 20 June 2011.
  
67.
   To Eva Larkin, 20 March 1960.
  
68.
   Jean Hartley, ‘Larkin, Love and Sex’,
AL
30 (October 2010), p. 8.
  
69.
   Motion, p. 297.

14: Here (1960–1)

    
1.
   The drawing and poem are reproduced in facsimile as the back endpaper of
SL
. Motion records that he stayed with Bruce Montgomery before the interview. Motion, p. 302.
    
2.
   
LM
,
p
.
265.
    
3.
   16 March 1960.
LM
,
p. 266.
    
4.
   Archie Burnett, ‘Biography and Poetry: Philip Larkin’
AL
36 (October 2013), pp. 7–14, at p.13. Jean Hartley recalled seeing the film with Larkin. John Osborne, ‘Larkin and the Visual Arts’,
AL
36 (October 2013), pp. 15–17, at p. 15.
    
5.
   Thomas Gray,
Poems, Letters and Essays
(London: Dent, 1963), p. 6.
    
6.
   He had begun drafting it in late 1956, and had returned to it several times.
Complete Poems
, p. 417.
    
7.
   4 July 1959.
LM
,
p. 252.
    
8.
   Larkin commented to Barbara Pym some time later: ‘it’s a “trick” poem, all one sentence & no main verb!’
SL
, p. 367.
    
9.
   Hartley, p. 119.
  
10.
   Brennan, p. 36.
  
11.
   Ibid., p. 26. Betty Mackereth recalls that during the royal visit the Librarian’s office served as the Queen Mother’s ‘retiring room’, and was fitted with a set of net curtains. These were still incongruously in place when I arrived in Hull in 1968, and survived for many years afterwards.
  
12.
   15 August 1960.
LM
,
p. 270.
  
13.
   4 August 1960.
LM
,
p. 268.
  
14.
   He had been drafting it intermittently since the summer of 1959.
Complete Poems
, p. 419.
  
15.
   Brennan, p. 37.
  
16.
   Ibid., p. 28.
  
17.
   Ibid., pp. 33–4.
  
18.
   Ibid., p. 38.
  
19.
   Jean Hartley, ‘Larkin, Love and Sex’,
AL
30 (October 2010), pp. 6–8, at p. 7.
  
20.
   Jean Hartley, personal communication, 4 March 2011.
  
21.
   Margaret Fowler, ‘Larkin’s Library Recollected’,
AL
32 (October 2011), p. 11.
  
22.
   9 August 1959.
LM
,
p. 239.
  
23.
   
SL
, p. 319.
  
24.
   10 November 1960,
LM,
p. 275.
  
25.
   Richard Bradford,
The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin
(London: Robson Press, 2012), pp. 222–4.
  
26.
   
LM
,
p. 273.
  
27.
   Ibid.,
p. 275.
  
28.
   To Eva Larkin, 6 November 1960.
  
29.
   Motion cites this comment from a letter to Eva Larkin of 1 January 1961 (Motion, p. 310 n. 12). However these words are not present in the letter of that date. The correspondence is not yet fully catalogued and it may be that the letter containing this sentence has been misplaced, perhaps before the correspondence came to Hull. Richard Bradford (
The Odd Couple
, p. 223) repeats the quotation (presumably from Motion), but mistakenly applies it to Maeve rather than Monica.
  
30.
   To Monica Jones, 1 January 1961. Not in
LM
.
  
31.
   
LM
,
p. 276.
  
32.
   
Complete Poems
, p. 423.
  
33.
   Larkin cannot resist the bad pun ‘born / dead’.
  
34.
   She adds an arch parenthesis: ‘(why he didn’t call [a taxi] from the hotel, I cannot think)’.
  
35.
   Brennan, p. 38–9.
  
36.
   Ibid., pp. 8–10.
  
37.
   
SL
, p. 323.
  
38.
   5 March 1961.
SL
, p. 325.
  
39.
   Hazel Holt,
A Lot to Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym
(London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 89.
  
40.
   
Philip Larkin Reads and Comments on The Whitsun Weddings
, Listen Records, LPV 6 (Hull: Marvell Press, 1965).
  
41.
   11 July 1961.
SL
, p. 330.
  
42.
    ‘A Conversation with Ian Hamilton’,
FR
, p. 25.
  
43.
   To Monica Jones, 13 November 1960. Not in
LM
.
  
44.
   
FR
, p. 25.
  
45.
   ‘W. H. Auden’,
FR
, p. 40; ‘The Life under the Laurels’,
FR
, p. 296.
  
46.
   ‘On the Circuit’, in W. H. Auden,
About the House
(London: Faber & Faber, 1966), p. 63.
  
47.
   Interview with
Paris Review
,
RW
, p. 73.

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