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2008 – Larkin's Hardy
'Thoughts Afterwards' – by Margaret Young.
Margaret Young recalls a previous Hardy event, her memory jogged by 'Larkin's Hardy', a talk by Jane Thomas at the Tranby Room, Staff House, University of Hull on 17 January 2008
[From About Larkin 25, April 2008]
Jane Thomas
Photograph © James Orwin 2008In my memory Hull evenings are preferably grey, rain washed and lit by street lamps. I like Hull that way. A wet January evening has not only been a fitting backdrop for a return to my hometown for a talk on Larkin's choice of Hardy's poetry but strangely reminiscent of the last time I visited the University for a talk on Hardy.
On that occasion the subject was 'The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy'. The speaker had been Dr C Day-Lewis. He was introduced by Philip Larkin, whose choices for the Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse were yet to be made. Publication would be five years later and this was Tuesday 19 November 1968. My love of both Hardy's and Larkin's poetry was just beginning at that time. The small pink entrance ticket has been tucked into my six-shilling Selected Shorter Poems of Thomas Hardy ever since; the book 'mended, when a tidy fit had seized' me! The ticket and its evocations have, amongst my treasures, a rightful place with Larkin's 'Love songs in Age' and, speaking from the pages of my 1973 birthday present of Twentieth-Century English Verse, Hardy's 'Old Furniture' and 'The Sunshade'.
The ticket only just revives a visual memory of that evening in 1968. I am therefore indebted to Jean Hartley for telling me that Larkin held a dinner afterwards at which she was present and at which she was placed next to Dr Day-Lewis. My recollection of Larkin's presence at the lecture was beginning to wear thin and she has reassured me that he was indeed part of my memory!
Ivor and Jean Maw; Margaret and Edward Young
Photograph © James Booth 2008I have even less visual recollection of Dr. Day-Lewis but what has remained with me through forty years was his reading of 'Afterwards'. I recall that the room became utterly still and we were held spellbound as he read. In memory the poem lasted so much longer than its five stanzas could possibly have done. Even now I feel the hard lump deep inside and the tears which, refusing to hold back, slipped embarrassingly down my face that night. It was not only Hardy's contemplation of his mortality but also its reader which caused me sorrow. He seemed to me old and the words unbearably poignant. For me was 'the unfailing sense of being young'. He must have been just 64, four years older than I am now and four years away from his untimely death.
That night Larkin, others and I, from our different perspectives, saw Hardy's hedgehog travel 'furtively over the lawn' and perhaps not only for me was it no longer Hardy but Dr Day-Lewis who 'noticed such things'.
Though 'Afterwards' was not included in the choices Larkin made for the Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse that Jane Thomas explored with us that night, I do not doubt its resonance for him. As for me, 40 years on, Larkin's 'we should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time' has a resonance that a 20 year old 'pink ticket' holder could not have fully appreciated in 1968.
What a pleasure it has been to come to the University of Hull again and share in a love of poetry. I am very appreciative of a most stimulating evening and the warmth of welcome. For obvious reasons I shall not be leaving it another forty years!
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