Summary:
Philip Larkin was recently voted the greatest post-war writer by a poll of authors in the Times newspaper. But while Larkin may be most novelists’ favorite poet, it’s now generally agreed that there was a less savory side to the man they called the “Hermit of Hull.” This article looks at the life of Philip Larkin, including his love affairs with two very different women.

Details or Sample:
Philip Larkin: Deprivation and Daffodils

There was a time, not too long ago, when Philip Larkin’s reputation as a quintessentially English poet became a little tarnished. After his death in 1985, and the subsequent publication of the poet’s Selected Letters in 1992, Larkin was seen not so much as the nation’s treasured poet whose words, according to his biographer Andrew Motion, managed to speak “from the heart to the heart,” but rather as a racist misogynist with a penchant for schoolgirl porn. These revelations sparked a debate between his enemies, who were now armed with evidence to back up their attacks, and his defenders, who retaliated by devising a more complicated version of the man, one for whom irony was important and public writing and private opinions distinctly separate. But now that the furor is over, or at least abated, it’s Larkin’s poetry that stands above our desire for salacious personal details; and it’s a testament to Larkin’s work that he was voted the greatest post-war writer in the Times’ recent poll of authors.

Philip Arthur Larkin was born on 9 August 1922 in Coventry, England. He was the second child and only son of Sydney and Eva Larkin, whom he referred to as Pop and Mop. He attended the city’s King Henry VIII School between 1930 and 1940, and regularly contributed to the school magazine, The Coventrian, which, during his last year at the school, he also helped to edit.

Despite the war, Larkin was able to complete his education without interruption – he failed his army medical due to poor eyesight – and graduated from St. John’s College, Oxford in 1943 with a First Class Honors degree in English.

For a poet with the reputation of the quiet modern genius of English poetry, Larkin’s collection of work is fairly slender (three relatively short volumes). His original ambition was to be a novelist: Jill and A Girl in Winter were published in 1946 and 1947 respectively. One of Larkin’s first poems, Ultimatum, was published in The Listener, a national weekly, in 1940, and in 1943 he had three poems published in Oxford Poetry (1942-1943). While he was studying to qualify as a professional librarian at Wellington, Shropshire in 1945, ten of Larkin’s poems, which would later that year be included in his debut collection, The North Ship, appeared in Poetry in Oxford in Wartime.

By 1949 Larkin had completed his professional studies and become an Associate of the Library Association. The following year, he became sub-librarian at Queen’s University, Belfast, and it was in Belfast that he resumed his poetry; privately printing 100 copies of a small collection of work entitled XX Poems. Five of Larkin’s poems were included in a pamphlet published by the Fantasy Press in 1954. Up until this point, Larkin’s poetry had received little, if any, attention. However, in October 1955 the Marvell Press’s publication of Larkin’s collection The Less Deceived would immediately establish him amongst the front rank of modern British poets. During the year of publication of The Less Deceived, Larkin took up the position of librarian at Hull University.

While Larkin’s volume of work may have been slim, he was kept fairly busy in his love life. Although he never married, during the last three decades of his life Larkin conducted parallel affairs with two women: Monica Jones, a flamboyant English lecturer, and Maeve Brennan, his colleague at Hull University library. He also had a shorter affair with his long-standing secretary, Betty Mackereth, during this time. Naturally, these affairs are often held up by Larkin’s critics as evidence of his misogynistic tendencies. But while he may have been portrayed as a national loveable curmudgeon, a poet of simple truths and simple language, Larkin was probably a little more complex. A man who once said, “Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth,” Larkin was able to expertly express the truth about life; the everyday mundane existence that pulls us down and the love – in whatever form – that raises us up. With the revelations about the darker side of Larkin’s life, it’s now acknowledged, if not accepted, that this was a necessary component of his work.

Larkin’s most intense emotional relationships were with women. However, such was Larkin’s ability to compartmentalize his life – that classic librarian’s trick – that his love affairs were often overlooked. Kingsley Amis said that Larkin once referred to Maeve Brennan in a letter to him, and he had absolutely no idea who the woman was as he’d never heard Larkin mention her before.

The relationships Larkin enjoyed with the two women were very different: Maeve was unthreatening and cozy, while Monica was the opposite – intellectual, feisty, and difficult. It´s been suggested that far from being a calculating lothario, Larkin could never make up his mind which woman he really wanted. Eventually, the two women came to know about each other, and continued their relationship with Larkin, which did little to force the poet into any sort of decision. Yet, while some might see Larkin as a man torn between two lovers, it does little for his reputation as an honorable man to learn he wrote such missives to Monica Jones as, “I see quite clearly your worth and niceness to me: I see also how unlikely I am to find anyone more fitted for me… it’s only a blend of relentless selfishness and dropsical romanticism that prevents me facing the fact.” Such admissions may present Larkin in a pathetic light; however, the rumor that he and Monica used to derive pleasure from recording bigoted ditties on a tape recorder is perhaps one example of why he was pilloried after his death.

The Whitsun Weddings, Larkin’s most famous and, most would agree, best collection of poems was published in 1964 to wide acclaim. The following year he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

Larkin was offered the prestigious title of Poet Laureate in 1984, but he declined the offer, citing the post’s associated trappings – high public profile and associated media attention – as contributing to his refusal to accept. The honor was taken up by Ted Hughes.

Larkin’s last collection of poetry, High Windows, was published in 1974. What many regard as Larkin’s final great poem, Aubade, was published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1977. The poem’s theme is universal; though it’s written from the point of view of an alcoholic bachelor, what awaits this character is the same that awaits us all (“It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,/Have always known, know that we can’t escape,/Yet can’t accept”).

In June 1985 Larkin was admitted to hospital where surgery was performed to remove his esophagus. He died of cancer on Monday, 2 December 1985, aged 63.

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