Philip Larkin Page 6

  40 He lived first in Queen’s Chambers (October 1950–August 1951), then briefly at 7 College Park East (August–September 1951) and at 49 Malone Road (September–October 1951), before finding comfortable lodgings in an attic at 30 Elmwood Avenue, where he stayed for his remaining three and a half years in Belfast (October 1951– March 1955).

  41 After staying briefly in a university property, Holtby House, he moved into 11 Outlands Road, which gave him the model for Mr Bleaney’s room (April–July 1955). Then he moved to 200 Hallgate, Cottingham (July 1955– April 1956); then to 192A Hallgate, Cottingham (April–October 1956).

  42 Philip Larkin, Letters to Monica, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber, 2010), 229.

  43 Dr Folwell and the Circle of Silent Ministry are explored by Philip Pullen, ‘No Villainous Mother: The Life of Eva Larkin’, in Dale Salwak (ed.), Writers and Their Mothers (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 81–95.

  44 Larkin, ‘An Interview with John Haffenden’, Further Requirements, 57.

  45 Maeve Brennan insisted until she died that Philip ‘really did mean’ this last line.

  46 The cutting is lost.

  47 Rosemary Parry comments that her mother Kitty ‘never expressed racism of any kind, so that was one thing Sydney had not influenced’. Email, 5 January 2017.

  48 Motion, Philip Larkin, 392.

  49 Abbeyfield House, 17 Victoria Street, Loughborough. Eva spent 12–24 July 1970 there.

  50 4–24 August 1971. Motion (Philip Larkin, 417) mistakenly states that she stayed for four months. The letters she wrote from there are dated 9, 16 and 24 August, and Philip’s postcard of 25 August addressed to Abbeyfield House has been redirected to 21 York Road.

  51 Larkin to C. B. Cox, 3 August 1972, Selected Letters, 461.

  52 Larkin, 10 February 1973, Selected Letters, 473.

  53 Larkin, 13 December 1977. Selected Letters, 573.

  54 Hull History Centre, U DPL/1/8/18, pp. 55–64.

  55 Larkin, Selected Letters, 571.

  56 Hull History Centre, U DPL/1/8/2.

  57 Larkin to Barbara Pym, 14 December 1977, Selected Letters, 574.

  58 Larkin, ‘An Interview with the Observer’, Required Writing, 54.

  TIMELINE

  25 April 1884 Sydney Larkin born in Lichfield, Staffordshire.

  10 January 1886 Eva Emily Day born in Littleborough, Lancashire.

  Early August 1906 Sydney Larkin meets Eva Day in Rhyl, north Wales. She is on a holiday with her parents and brother, he on a brief stopover during a cycling tour.

  5 October 1911 Sydney Larkin marries Eva Day in Leigh, Lancashire. In the same year he becomes Chief Audit Accountant in Birmingham City Hall.

  21 August 1912 Catherine Emilie Larkin (‘Kitty’) born in Birmingham.

  1913 Sydney Larkin appointed Assistant Borough Accountant in Doncaster, West Yorkshire.

  1919 Sydney appointed Deputy Treasurer of Coventry.

  1921 Sydney appointed Treasurer of Coventry.

  9 August 1922 Philip Larkin born at 2 Poultney Road, Coventry.

  1927 The Larkin family move into ‘Penvorn’, 1 Manor Road, Coventry.

  September 1930 Philip enters King Henry VIII Preparatory School, Coventry, moving into the senior school in 1932. His closest friends are the aspiring artist Jim Sutton, and the reckless Colin Gunner.

  1936 Sydney Larkin elected to the Presidency of the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants.

  c. 1936–40 Kitty attends Art College in Birmingham and subsequently enters Leicester College of Arts and Crafts where she completes a teacher’s diploma. (Precise details lost.)

  1936 and 1937 Philip accompanies his parents on holidays in Germany.

  1938 or earlier Sydney Larkin takes out a subscription on his son’s behalf to the Chicago jazz magazine Down Beat. He also buys his son a drum kit.

  December 1938 First published poems, ‘Winter Nocturne’ and ‘Fragment from May’, appear in the King Henry VIII School magazine, The Coventrian. Philip becomes deputy editor of the magazine and further poems follow in 1939–40.

  Summer 1939 Philip goes on a school trip to Belgium.

  3 September 1939 War declared. Sydney begins a new diary, at first in large hard-cover manuscript books. It would run to twenty volumes, and continue into 1946.

  9 October 1940 Philip enters St John’s College, Oxford, as a commoner, and the sequence of letters to his parents begins, at a rate of more than one a week. His schoolfriend, Jim Sutton, is studying at the Slade School of Art, which has been relocated to the Ashmolean Museum.

  Late October 1940 Sydney moves Eva away from the bombing to the house of his brother Alfred at 33 Cherry Orchard, Lichfield. After Christmas Eva lives for several months at Wear Giffard, Cliff Hill, Warwick.

  November 1940 ‘Ultimatum’ published in The Listener. Sydney Larkin pastes a cutting of the poem into his war diary.

  14/15 Nov. 1940 Coventry experiences its first major ‘blitz’ of the war. Sydney stays all night at his post in the Council House, which is hit by two bombs and several incendiaries.

  Sun. 17 Nov. 1940 Hearing no news from home, Philip and his schoolfriend Noel Hughes, also at St John’s, hitch-hike to Coventry. Their homes are undamaged but empty. On their return Larkin finds a telegram from his father: ‘Am quite safe. Daddy.’

  January 1941 Sydney Larkin awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours list, partly in recognition of his work as chair of the National Savings Committee.

  April 1941 Jim Sutton is called up and serves in the 14th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps.

  1941 Kitty joins the Commerce Department in Loughborough College and teaches in the College Junior School of Art until the birth of her daughter in 1947.

  5 May 1941 At the beginning of the summer term Philip meets Kingsley Amis, who has just arrived as an undergraduate in St John’s.

  May 1941 Attends seminars led by the Jungian psychologist John Layard.

  June 1941 Sydney buys 73 Coten End, Warwick, which becomes the new family home. Philip occupies an attic room overlooking the garden.

  November 1941 & February 1942 Amis, as editor of the Oxford Labour Club Bulletin, publishes Larkin’s ‘Observation’ and ‘Disintegration’.

  1 January 1942 Receives notification that he has been exempted from military service on the grounds of poor eyesight.

  Jan. 1942–July 1943 Moves out of college and shares lodgings in 125 Walton Street with Philip Brown, a medical student.

  Summer 1942 Kingsley Amis commissioned into the Royal Signals and leaves Oxford.

  1942–3 As Treasurer of the Oxford English Club Larkin entertains R. H. Wilenski (May 1942), Margaret Kennedy (May 1942), Dylan Thomas (November 1942), Vernon Watkins (February 1943) and George Orwell (March 1943).

  27 May 1943 First appearance of a ‘creature’ drawing, on a postcard to his parents.

  29 June 1943 Eva visits Oxford with Nellie Day (‘Auntie Nellie’), who lives in Hyde, Cheshire. Nellie is the widow of Eva Larkin’s only brother, Arthur Day (1888–1941).

  4 July 1943 Graduates with a first-class degree in English.

  Aug.–Oct. 1943 Encouraged by his Oxford friends Bruce Montgomery and Diana Gollancz, he writes girls’-school stories and poems under the pseudonym Brunette Coleman.

  1 December 1943 Arrives in Wellington to take up the post of librarian, lodging at first in Alexander House, New Church Road. Shortly after his arrival he meets Ruth Bowman, then a schoolgirl of sixteen.

  Early January 1944 Moves to ‘Glentworth’, King Street, Wellington.

  April 1944 Sydney Larkin takes early retirement at the age of sixty. He is succeeded by his deputy, Arthur Hedley Marshall, who remains City Treasurer

  until 1964.

  14 May 1944 Philip completes the manuscript of Jill. His Oxford friend Bruce Montgomery, who has just published a successful crime novel under the name Edmund Crispin, sends the typescript to his publisher, Gollancz, who turn it down.

  12 August 1944 Kitty Larki
n marries Walter Hewett, a mechanical engineer.

  1945 The Hewetts move into 53 York Road, Loughborough.

  1945 Poetry from Oxford in Wartime, ed. William Bell, published by the Fortune Press, including ten poems by Larkin, all included also in The North Ship.

  31 July 1945 The North Ship published, after much delay, by the Fortune Press.

  October 1945 Sends his second novel, then titled The Kingdom of Winter, to Bruce Montgomery’s agent, Peter Watt.

  Jan.–Sept. 1946 Lodges in 7 Ladycroft, Wellington, where he is woken early in the mornings by the sun through an east-facing window.

  September 1946 Takes up the post of assistant librarian at Leicester University College, staying during the first month with his sister Kitty and her husband in Loughborough. Shortly after his arrival he meets Monica Jones and lends her a copy of Jill and the proofs of A Girl in Winter, which has been accepted by Faber.

  30 September 1946 Moves into lodgings at 172 London Road, Leicester.

  26 October 1946 Jill published by the Fortune Press.

  Late September–early October 1946 Philip and Ruth Bowman become lovers and briefly fear a pregnancy.

  21 February 1947 A Girl in Winter published by Faber.

  28 April 1947 Kitty and Walter Hewett’s daughter, Rosemary, is born.

  2 May 1947 Philip’s letter congratulating the Hewetts on the birth of Rosemary. After this no letter to his sister survives until 1969. However, Kitty will have read most of the letters from Philip to their mother, and Eva will have related the contents of others to her.

  7 September 1947 Philip moves into 6 College Street, Leicester.

  October 1947 Philip buys a ‘Puma Special’ camera for £6. 7. 9d.

  Early January–26 March 1948 Sydney Larkin terminally ill in Warwick Hospital.

  21 January 1948 After abandoning plans for a back-street abortion, Kingsley Amis and Hilary Bardwell (Hilly) are married.

  February 1948 Faber reject Larkin’s collection In the Grip of Light, as do five other publishers.

  26 March 1948 (Good Friday) Sydney Larkin dies of cancer of the liver at the age of sixty-three. On 4 April Philip writes the elegy ‘An April Sunday brings the snow’, and then completes no other poem for almost a year.

  April 1948 Eva receives hot wax treatment for an injured wrist.

  17 May 1948 Philip proposes marriage to Ruth Bowman.

  August 1948 ‘Penvorn’ is leased, and Eva and Philip move into the newly bought 12 Dixon Drive, where they live for the next twenty-five months.

  1948 Walter Hewett joins Urwick Orr & Partners as a management consultant. On 27 July 1949 Philip congratulates him on earning £1,000 a year.

  28 December 1948–early January 1949 Philip and Ruth travel to Thomas Hardy country for a short holiday and visit Dorchester and Weymouth.

  March 1950 Visits Kingsley and Hilly Amis in Swansea, where Kingsley is working as a university lecturer.

  17 June 1950 Proposes for a second time to Ruth Bowman, but retracts the offer after three days.

  July 1950 Philip and Monica Jones become lovers.

  4 September 1950 The furniture from 12 Dixon Drive is put into store in anticipation of its sale and Eva moves in with her daughter at 53 York Road, Loughborough.

  1 October 1950 Arrives in Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to take up the post of sub-librarian. Shorty afterwards he meets Ansell and Judy Egerton. Ansell is a lecturer in economics, and Judy is later to become one of the poet’s regular correspondents.

  October 1950 Eva advertises in the press for a live-in companion to share the house she intends to buy, and over the following months interviews several applicants.

  October 1950 Eva begins to attend lectures on psychology organised by Dr Edith Folwell. In 1951 she writes ‘She really is the most marvellous woman I have ever met.’

  Oct. 1950–Aug. 1951 Philip lodges in Queen’s Chambers, Belfast.

  31 December 1950 First appearance in a letter of a drawing of the ‘old creature’ distinguished from the ‘young creature’ by a neat mob cap. At first she is still ‘dear old Mop’, but from 3 August 1951 becomes ‘Dear old Creature’.

  February 1951 ‘Latest Face’, inspired by Winifred Arnott, library assistant at QUB. Several of Larkin’s best early poems are addressed to her.

  27 April 1951 Larkin takes delivery of 100 copies of XX Poems, privately printed by Carswells, Belfast. He dedicates the collection to Amis.

  April 1951 Eva visits Belfast, breaking her return journey in Hyde to stay with her sister-in-law, Nellie.

  11–14 May 1951 Monica visits Belfast. On 12 May they take a trip to Dublin together.

  July–August 1951 Philip and Monica holiday in Dorset and Devon and also visit the Amises in Swansea.

  August 1951 Eva stays in Newark with the Cann family. John Cann had been a friend of Sydney Larkin.

  Aug.–Oct. 1951 Philip lodges briefly at 7 College Park East, and then at 49 Malone Road, Belfast.

  13 October 1951 Colin Strang of the Philosophy Department in QUB, and his wife Patsy, help Philip to move into an attic flat at 30 Elmwood Avenue, Belfast.

  10 December 1951 Eva moves into 21 York Road, Loughborough, bought with Kitty’s and Philip’s advice. However she frequently sleeps in ‘her’ room in her daughter’s home a hundred yards away, or takes refuge there from thunder.

  March 1952 Monica visits Belfast. On 15–17 March she and Philip take a trip to Dublin together.

  23–27 May 1952 Philip visits Paris with Bruce Montgomery.

  July 1952 After a clandestine affair of some months Patsy Strang tells Philip that she is pregnant by him, but immediately suffers a miscarriage.

  August 1952 Eva visits Belfast, breaking her return journey in Hyde and staying with Nellie for three weeks.

  January 1953 Winifred Arnott announces her engagement to be married. Philip tells his mother he feels ‘a bit balked concerning her’.

  July–August 1953 Philip holidays in Mallaig, Inverness-shire, with Monica, and then with Eva in Weymouth.

  August 1953 Completes ‘Mother, Summer, I’.

  26 October 1953 Completes ‘Whatever Happened’, which alludes obliquely to his affair with Patsy Strang.

  January 1954 Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim published.

  19 February 1954 At Donald Davie’s request, Larkin gives a talk at Trinity College, Dublin, where Davie is a lecturer.

  1954 Listen Magazine (Hessle), published by George and Jean Hartley, prints ‘Toads’ (Summer 1954) and ‘Poetry of Departures’ (Winter 1954).

  November 1954–September 1961 Monica lives at 8 Woodhall Avenue, Leicester. On his return to the mainland in 1955 Philip combines visits to his mother in Loughborough with visits to Monica in Leicester, though the two women seldom meet. It becomes a fixed routine for Philip to be at his mother’s for Christmas and with Monica at the New Year.

  30 December 1954–5 January 1955 Philip and Monica take a holiday in Winchester and Salisbury, and visit Bruce Montgomery.

  21 March 1955 Larkin takes up the post of Librarian at the University of Hull. He stays at first in a university property, Holtby House, in Cottingham.

  Late April–early June 1955 Lodges at 11 Outlands Road, in the room which inspires ‘Mr Bleaney’.

  May 1955 Lucky Jim wins the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction.

  4 July 1955 Eva’s GP refers her to a psychiatrist, who prescribes tablets.

  July 1955–Apr. 1956 Larkin lodges at 200 Hallgate, Cottingham, a ‘village-suburb’ of Hull.

  21 August 1955 Completes ‘Reference Back’, which he later calls in a letter to Eva ‘The one about you saying “that was a pretty one”.’

  September 1955 Philip and Monica holiday in Dixcart Hotel, Sark, Channel Islands.

  1 November 1955 The Less Deceived published by subscription by George and Jean Hartley’s Marvell Press.

  Late 1955 Eva is diagnosed with clinical depression and in early December is admitted to Carlton Hayes Hospital, Narborough, where s
he receives electric shock treatment. Philip stays with Eva over Christmas at the Angel Hotel in Grantham (where he writes ‘Pigeons’), with an excursion on Christmas Day to a hotel in Melton Mowbray where Kitty has booked a family Christmas dinner. At the end of December Eva is moved to convalesce in ‘The Woodlands’, Forest Road, Narborough.

  January 1956 In the New Year Philip and Monica visit Chichester Cathedral, and on 20 February he completes ‘An Arundel Tomb’.

  28 January 1956 Philip takes Eva home to 21 York Road before returning to Hull by train on 29 or 30 January.

  1956 New Lines, edited by Robert Conquest, published. It includes eight poems by Larkin.