Philip Larkin (86 page)

Authors: James Booth

BOOK: Philip Larkin

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26.
To Sutton, 26 January 1950.
SL
, p. 158.

27.
To Sutton, 4 May 1950.
SL
, p. 161.

28.
The workbook shows that in the final version Larkin excluded some explicit moralizing over the exploitation of the horses in the interests of human greed: ‘They lived in terms of men, hedged in / By bet and bid’; ‘money rode them, led them in’. DPL/1/1/82. See also Philip Larkin, ‘Worksheets of “At Grass”’,
Phoenix
11/12 (1973/4), pp. 93–8.

29.
He made further adjustments to the second stanza in November 1950 (DPL/1/2/24) and before its publication in
XX Poems
.
Complete Poems
, p. 381.

30.
Hartley, p. 76.

31.
Henry Mayhew,
London Labour and the London Poor IV
(1862; London: Frank Cass, 1967), p. 240.

32.
Janice Rossen,
Philip Larkin: His Life’s Work
(Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 89; Joseph Bristow, ‘The Obscenity of Philip Larkin’,
Critical Inquiry
21 (Autumn 1994), pp. 176–7. See also James Booth,
Philip Larkin: Writer
(Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), pp. 108–12.

33.
Richard Bradford,
The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin
(London: Robson Press, 2012), p. 87.

34.
DPL/3/1/3.

35.
DPL/1/2/1.

36.
DPL/1/2/6.

37.
See for instance the photograph in
AL
12 (October 2001), p. 17.

38.

A deleted draft passage is even more metaphorically tangled:

And the vertiginous wedge, would, would stick in her throat

Like a half-chewed bandage, till she fell on her knees,

An endless recession of motives patterning the light [. . .] (DPL/1/2/9)

39.
Larkin considered ‘unprintable’, but took Amis’s advice that this ‘would just mean cunt, whereas unpriceable
probably
meant cunt but could mean all sorts of other things too’. ‘An Interview with John Haffenden’,
FR
, p. 55.

40.
James Booth, ‘Glimpses’ (interview with Monica Jones),
AL
12 (October 2001), p. 22.

41.

SL
, p. 165.

42.
To Sutton, 18 June 1950. Not in
SL
.

43.
To Sutton, 3 July 1950. Not in
SL
. My impression of Larkin’s correspondence differs from Motion’s: ‘Larkin seldom hesitated to complain about whatever was bothering him to anyone who would listen.’ Motion, p. 182.

44.
To Sutton, 26 July 1950. Not in
SL
.

45.

SL
, p. 166.

46.
To Sutton, 26 January 1950.
SL
, p. 157.

47.

LKA
, pp. 228–9.

48.

TWG
, p. 473.

49.
Ibid., p. 476.

50.
Ibid., p. 479.

51.
Ibid., p. 482.

52.
DPL/1/2/20. It is omitted as incomplete from the
Collected Poems
and the
Complete Poems
. Motion gives an edited version (pp. 196–7). Motion (p. 195) gives the date of Larkin’s departure, incorrectly, as 16 September.

9: The Best Writing Conditions (1950–2)

1.
Michael Innes was the pen-name of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (1906–94), Scottish academic and author of crime fiction.

2.

LM
,
pp. 9–10.

3.
Ibid., p. 10.

4.
Misdated 25 November in
LM
. Larkin writes on the first page ‘Tuesday 28th Nov.’ In 1950 25 November fell on Saturday.

5.

LM
, p. 23. The cartoon and dialogue are omitted in
LM
.

6.
Not in
LM
.

7.

LM
, p. 42.

8.
23 May 1951.
LM
, p. 38.

9.
15 September 1951.
LM
,
p. 58.

10.
James Booth, ‘Glimpses’ (interview with Monica Jones),
AL
12 (October 2001), pp. 21–6, at p. 21.

11.
21 November 1950.
LM
, p. 21n.

12.

LM
, pp. 45–6 and n.

13.
Winifred Dawson (née Arnott), personal communication, 21 November 2011.

14.
Motion, p. 202. Motion relates this comment to Larkin’s reading of H. E. Berthon’s
Nine French Poets
1820–1880
(London: Macmillan, 1930, with later reprints). But Laforgue (whose first volume was published in 1885) is not included in the volume.

15.
Interview with
Paris Review
,
RW
, p. 58.

16.

LM
, p. 35.
LM
omits ‘or the implied-conceit kind (
Moments
of
Vision
)’.

17.
Ibid.

18.
To Monica Jones, 14 February 1951. Not in
LM
.

19.
Larkin to Barry Bloomfield, 1977. Motion, p. 215.

20.
‘Going’, ‘Wedding-Wind’, ‘At Grass’, ‘Deceptions’, ‘Coming’, ‘Dry-Point’, ‘Spring’, ‘If, My Darling’, ‘Wants’, ‘No Road’, ‘Wires’, ‘Next, Please’, ‘Latest Face’.