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2006 – Larkin Garden Party
'What will survive of us is a party' – by Elaine Sommerville.
Elaine Sommerville reports on the 2006 Larkin Garden Party at 105 Newland Park, Hull, 19 July 2006.
[From About Larkin 23, April 2007]
Left: Naomi Wright at the harp.
The Larkin Garden Party, hosted by Mrs. Miriam Porter at 105 Newland Park, Hull on 19th July 2006 was a focus of media attention. Journalist Stephen McClarence, reporting for The Times, turned in a crisply humorous piece for the paper’s Literary Supplement, headlined, 'What will survive of us is a party'. Photographers from The Times and Hull’s glossy society magazine, The Journal, snapped away as two hundred guests enjoyed Mrs. Porter’s royal hospitality, and paradisiacal garden on a day of blazing summer heat. Among the delights, a marquee housed a generous supply of Pimms, there were trays of vol-au-vents, mouth-watering sandwiches and dishes piled high with strawberries and other luscious fruit. Among these pleasures, Mr. McClarence wandered and chatted. His article featured memories, increasingly precious, of those who knew Philip Larkin.
There was his long time secretary Betty Mackereth who remembered being told, 'I won’t answer the phone to the vice-chancellor, Downing Street or the Palace.' The poet told Jean Hartley, his publisher, after her former husband George had unwisely sent a photograph of a new addition to his second family, 'It’s like sending garlic to Dracula.' Amber Allcroft, a Library Assistant in the 1960s, recalled a boss happy to celebrate with his staff and play hokey-cokey around the library stacks. 'We often saw him optimistic, happy, carefree and in love,' she said.
Amber, at Miriam Porter’s invitation, organised a stall of Larkin merchandise including postcards and notelets with four different images: Philip Larkin in the late 1950s, a picture of him reading a poem at Peter Sheldon’s retirement in 1982, an image from 1968, wearing a duffel coat at the topping-out ceremony of the Brynmor Jones Library, and a pen self portrait from the mid-sixties. Also available was the second edition of Jean Hartley’s book, Philip Larkin’s Hull and East Yorkshire.
During the afternoon, there were readings of Larkin’s poems by Professor E. Dawes, Professor James Booth, Jean Hartley, Paul Walker and Amber Allcroft.
The magic of the occasion lies in the garden at 105 Newland Park. Mrs. Porter’s gift for design has created a subtle sense of theatre and enchantment, with thatched summer house and gazebo, amethyst geodes, areas in the vast garden which are completely different in design and feel, from a beautifully formal walkway lined with standard box and cotoneaster, to a secret woodland hideaway with its rustic seating and carpet of ivy. The many mature trees, which were there when Philip Larkin lived in the house, still flourish, imparting a cathedral-like sense of gravity and tranquillity to the garden. Under Miriam Porter’s ownership, it has developed new beauties; but it still, somehow, guards its Larkinesque past within.
Betty Mackereth with Amber and Jim Allcroft Jean Hartley, Derek Mole and Miriam Porter In full swing Photographs © James Booth 2008
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