Philip Larkin (102 page)

  
19.
   Richard Rorty,
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 23.

  
20.
   Letter to Barbara Pym, 14 December 1977.
SL
,
p. 574.

  
21.
   Ibid.

  
22.
   Auden, ‘As I walked out one evening’, in
The English Auden
, ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber & Faber, 1977), p. 228.

  
23.
   We may also recall that ‘clothes make the man’. Mark Twain,
More Maxims of Mark
, ed. Merle Johnson (privately printed, 1927).

  
24.
   ‘Senecas Troas Act 2d Chor’, in
The Poems of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester
, ed. Keith Walker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 51.

  
25.
   He commented to one correspondent: ‘I can see the justice of your objection to the last line, and yet I do not know how else to say what I mean, namely that postmen, by going from house to house and bringing welcome distraction in the shape of letters, cure those awful waking thoughts as if they were a kind of doctor.’ To B. Z. Paulshock, 16 August 1978. DPL(2)/2/15/51.

  
26.
   Motion, p. 466.

  
27.
   In ‘The Winter Palace’ (1978), ‘The Mower’ (1979), the concluding lines of ‘Love Again’ (1979, begun in 1975), ‘1982’ (1982) and ‘Party Politics’ (1984).

  
28.
   DPL(2)/2/15/85.

  
29.
   
SL
,
pp. 580–1.

  
30.
   Ibid.,
p. 581.

  
31.
   Hughes’s lines assert a right-wing organicist concept of nationhood:

                         
A Nation’s a Soul;

                         
A Soul is a Wheel

                         
With a Crown for a Hub

                         
To keep it whole.        

Ted Hughes,
Collected Poems
(London: Faber & Faber, 2003), p. 381. For a discussion of the poems see Neil Roberts, ‘Hughes, the Laureateship and National Identity’,
Q/W/E/R/T/Y
9 (October 1999), pp. 203–9.

  
32.
   Motion, p. 471.

  
33.
   Brennan, pp. 88–9.

  
34.
   Motion, p. 472.

  
35.
   
SL
,
p. 577.

  
36.
   ‘The Changing Face of Andrew Marvell’,
RW
, pp. 245–53.

  
37.
   DPL(2)/2/14/44.

  
38.
   Motion, p. 469.

  
39.
   
SL
,
p. 589.

  
40.
   DPL/1/8/50. See Burnett,
Complete Poems
, p. xix. For a facsimile of the typescript see
AL
33 (April 2012), cover.

  
41.
   Between pp. 96 and 97 of M. V. Hughes,
A London Girl of the 1880s
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

  
42.
   The card is reproduced in
AL
30 (October 2010), p. 4.

  
43.
   
SL
, p. 601.

  
44.
   Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 20 June 2011.

  
45.
   DPL/1/8/32 and DPL/1/8/47.

  
46.
   In ‘Larkin as Animal Poet’ (
AL
22, October 2006, pp. 5–9) I suggested that the hedgehog might have been diseased or already dead, since it was out on the lawn in the daytime. However, Larkin says that he mowed the lawn ‘last night’, and hedgehogs are active in the dusk. I am grateful to Peter James for pointing out my mistake.

  
47.
   http://www.amarc.org.uk/Newsletter02.pdf (accessed 14 December 2010).

  
48.
   Ted Hughes,
Letters of Ted Hughes
, ed. Christopher Reid (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), p. 404.

  
49.
   23 August 1979.
SL
,
p. 603.

  
50.
   DPL/1/8/22.

  
51.
   DPL/1/8/26 and 1/8/28.

  
52.
   DPL/1/8/30.

  
53.
   For a facsimile and transcription see
AL
34 (October 2012), pp. 5–9.

  
54.
   Interview with the
Observer
,
RW
,
pp. 47–56.

23: Extinction (1980–5)

    
1.
   To Amis, 26 April 1980.
SL
, p. 619.

    
2.
   Ruth Siverns,
Barlow Dale’s Casebook
(London: Macmillan, 1981).

    
3.
   In her last years Ruth Siverns became friends with Winifred Dawson (née Arnott), who happened to live in nearby Winchester. She died on 31 December 2012. Obituaries appeared, by myself (www.guardian.co.uk/books) and by Win Dawson,
AL
35 (April 2013), pp. 5–6.

    
4.
   DPL/2/3/91.

    
5.
   ‘Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album’, ‘MCMXIV’, ‘Toads’, ‘The Explosion’, ‘A Study of Reading Habits’, ‘Home is so Sad’, ‘Within the dream you said’, ‘Afternoons’, ‘The Old Fools’, ‘For Sidney Bechet’, ‘So through that unripe day you bore your head’, ‘Next, Please’, ‘The Trees’, ‘Church Going’, ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, ‘Days’, ‘Wires’, ‘An Arundel Tomb’, ‘Cut Grass’, ‘Vers de Société’, ‘I put my mouth’, ‘At Grass’, ‘Mr Bleaney’, ‘Coming’, ‘Toads Revisited’, ‘The Building’.

    
6.
   James Orwin, ‘Serious Earth: Philip Larkin’s American Tapes’,
AL
25 (April 2008), pp. 20–4, at p. 22.

    
7.
   Ibid.

    
8.
   The recording was omitted from Bloomfield’s
Bibliography
. The readings were released commercially by Faber in 2009 under the title
The Sunday Sessions: Philip Larkin Reading his Poetry
. Orwin, ‘Serious Earth: Philip Larkin’s American Tapes’, p. 23.

    
9.
   Motion, p. 483.

  
10.
   
SL
, p. 624.

  
11.
   Motion, p. 482.

  
12.
   Ibid., p. 484.

  
13.
   
SL
,
p. 632.

  
14.
   13 January 1981.
SL
,
p. 637.

  
15.
   http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article4718715.ece (accessed 14 December 2010). Bragg gives a highly coloured account of a meeting at a restaurant at which Larkin became drunk, refused to leave and, according to Bragg, ‘had to be forcibly ejected by policemen with dogs’.

  
16.
   Motion, p. 489.

  
17.
   Ibid., p. 486.

  
18.
   
SL
, p. 662.

  
19.
   23 February 1982.
SL
,
p.
665.The reference is to Salman Rushdie.