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2008 – The Philip Larkin Society AGM
'Philip to Monica: The Poet’s Most Intimate Letters' – by Alison Mace.
Alison Mace reports on Anthony Thwaite’s talk on the Philip Larkin/Monica Jones correspondence, at the Society's AGM on 7 June 2008.
[From About Larkin 26, October 2008]
The venue was familiar, and so was the Distinguished Guest Speaker: we were back at The Lawns, happily flood-free this June, and the speaker was our own Anthony Thwaite, President of the Society. He began, understandably, by rejecting the title ‘guest’, and then also, with Larkin himself as precedent, the attribution ‘distinguished’. His substantial audience begs to differ.
Anthony is in the middle of a task he claims is threatening to overwhelm him, physically if not emotionally; Larkin, a phenomenally prolific letter-writer noted for his daily letters to that ‘Dear old creature’ his mother, was if anything more prolific still in his constant correspondence with Monica Jones. His letters to her can sometimes run to tens of pages; they range over every imaginable topic and, as Anthony demonstrated, record the intimate exchanges characteristic of a marriage. That is indeed how Larkin’s relationship with Monica, his longest with any woman and the one that was severed only by his death, begins to appear on the evidence of these letters. In their outspokenness and intimacy, as Anthony pointed out, they go some way towards compensating, as ‘doorways to the personal’, for the destruction of the poet’s diaries
Not all the letters have yet come into Anthony’s hands, and many of those he read to us were early ones from Larkin’s Belfast period. A remarkable and lengthy example was a detailed description of an Orange Parade, in all its, to Larkin, interminable pomposity, with a wealth of entertaining detail – but ending with an endearing hope that he hasn’t bored Monica.
Often illustrated with snatches of verse – exasperated, witty, affectionate – the letters also feature Larkin’s characteristic little drawings – which, like Philip’s regular name for Monica, ‘Bun’, owe something to those of Beatrix Potter. Her world seems to have contributed to the relationship the element of private silliness that is often a component of lasting intimacy. One letter recalls a greatly enjoyed holiday visit that he and Monica had made to Sawrey, Potter’s Lake District home.
The most electrifying of Anthony’s examples, one he had touched on in his talk at last year’s conference, is the letter in which Philip makes bold to take Monica to task for her loud voice and sharp manner – a homily which, even though he tries to soften it by enjoining her to receive it as if delivered by a motherly Beatrix Potter character, hits hard. It prompted a member of the audience to ask whether Monica’s response to it is known – and the fascinating answer was that, to date, her letters to Philip aren’t, and are not foreseeable to be, in the public domain. What they may contain could, apparently, bring down litigation.
Just occasionally, however, scraps of Monica’s correspondence do appear, as comments on these letters of Philip’s; if their relationship amounted to, or resembled a marriage, it isn’t surprising to find him sometimes broaching the subject of Maeve Brennan and his ongoing friendship with her. It’s more than clear from Monica’s spirited, angry annotations that she received his attempts to play down or justify that rival relationship with pain, disbelief and even contempt. Yet its existence did not destroy her own relationship with Philip, and the majority of his wide-ranging letters to her, at least in the group Anthony selected to read to us, were of a much more peaceable tenor.
A particularly engaging topic, among many of literary interest, is a list of contrasts between Yeats, for whom Larkin had little good to say, and Hardy, whom of course he valued most highly among poets. The list culminates ‘Yeats : mad; Hardy: sane’. His huge admiration for Lawrence is familiar knowledge; how delightful now to hear of his whole-hearted enthusiasm for Handel – one of whose commendable attributes seems to be his ‘Englishness’. Discussion of writers, musicians, composers and contemporary figures abound, demonstrating not only the wealth of interests shared by Philip and Monica, but also the breadth and depth of his cultural knowledge.
The range of voices in this intriguing selection – petulance, amusement, outrage, joyful admiration, despair, compassion, flippancy, seriousness – is wide and varied; yet they are all, somehow, unsurprising. This is the Larkin we know from the poetry and other writings – but vividly, intricately, amplified. Through all of them runs the poet’s unique wit, and this was perhaps what came through most compellingly in Anthony’s delivery of his selection.
Whatever the trials facing him when the deluge of the remaining letters rises around him, Anthony is clearly finding great enjoyment in this undertaking of preparing them for publication. We wish him a speedy passage, and we owe him gratitude for conveying so much of that enjoyment to us.
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