The starting point for this essay, is the Christopher Hitchens' article that appeared in the Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/05/philip-larkin-the-impossible-man/308439/ - in 2011.
In this piece Hitchens queries why the Larkin biographer, ex-poet Laureate, Andrew Motion made no mention of Larkin's passion for pornography: apparently he had a prodigious collection, meticulously catalogued. This collection demonstrated a penchant for magazines and periodicals of a sadomasochistic nature featuring what would no doubt be categorized today as 'teen' in school uniforms being flogged and sodomized.
I mention this, not for the frisson, or indeed to provide more fuel to the fire of what Mr Hitchen's calls the Terry Eagleton crew - "who have become so righteously fixated on the later “revelations” of Larkin’s racism and xenophobia." as Hitchen's describes it. But, rather because since we are dealing with stereotypes what could be more prefect for a sexually repressed Englishman, with cryto-racist inclinations, than to find an outlet in the peccadilloes of well spanked pert bottom.
Though I suspect the real crimes of Larkin lie elsewhere, namely in his use of rhyme, his use of form and structure, and his seeming lack of reliance upon the Arts Council - leaving him free to write without their implied agenda for the 'new' and the 'modern', i.e. without rhyme, form or structure. And if one really wishes to truthful, Larkin's greatest crime is that in-spite his rejection of the 'modern', and to some extent the American, he had the impertinence to be popular.
At which point, it is only fair, to say that for the longest time I have been a paid up member of the Terry Eagleton crew, seeing Larkin as snobbish, aloof, hating the working classes and of course the most unforgivable of sins, popular. Add to this that when asked Mrs Thatcher claimed that Larkin was her favourite poet - though perhaps we should see this in much the same way as Tony Blair claiming to have watched Jackie Milburn from the Gallogate - but regardless, to anyone collecting labels, and displaying them like coffee table books, Larkin was not a poet to be liked.
And of course, in addition to the charges of elitism, racism, conservatism, Larkin - in the current year - stands accused of the most grievous of all crimes, misogyny.
It is a curiosity, to me at least, that this 'confirmed batchelor' has not been branded an MRA, or possibly been adopted by that movement's radical wing MGTOW, or it's newly terrified and terrifying adjunct, the Incels. No doubt were I to surf those areas of the internet where the wilder elements of the latter day witch-smellers gather I would find confirmations of my suspicions. No doubt, with critique of why Sunny Prestatyn - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48415/sunny-prestatyn - proves his hatred for women.
And it should be noted that the Hitchens' article indulges in this sort of thing to some extent. However, in addition to Hitchens' undisputed charm and style, he does save himself from being hysterical by having a working knowledge of Larkin's life and work, and not using his knowledge to push his agenda.
The starting point for this essay may have been the Hitchens' article, but the inspiration lies elsewhere in an event in New York at the now defunct Philoctetes Centre, in 2008 - a video of the event can be found on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWNihMubl5E&t - in which the aforementioned Andrew Motion talked with Michael Braziller about his 'friend' and subject Philip Larkin.
It is easy to be cynical about Andrew Motion, in the past I have referred to him as the 'aptly named' upon reading one of his pieces in his role of Poet Laureate. Which is unfair, since his poetry in his role as poet is rather good.
However during this event Mr Motion made a number of rather odd comments. For instance his claim that the line from the Whitsun Weddings, - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48411/the-whitsun-weddings - "there swelled....A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower....Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain." may be a reference to the Laurence Olivier film of Henry V, which he is sure 'his friend' Larkin would have seen. Perhaps the justification could be the reference to an Odeon in the seventh stanza.
The main subject of the event was the poem, Whitsun Weddings, but to prove some point or another, reference was made to High Windows - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48417/high-windows - which famously begins, "When I see a couple of kids... And guess he’s fucking her and she’s.... Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, ....I know this is paradise", and perhaps leads one to consider if this was really to Mrs Thatcher's taste. During the discussion, Mr Motion remarked as to why the line "Like an outdated combine harvester," should appear in the poem, in such a manner as to suggest he has either never seen the line before, perhaps in much the sameway has he knew nothing about the hardback editions of Bamboo and Frolic.
Indeed when the Q&A session began, I was left wondering if anyone in the room actually had ever read any of Larkin's poems. As the discussion became focused upon unfocused allegations of misogyny, rather than the work they were supposed to be discussing. Leaving me only the consolation of going back to Hitchen's article and his quote from Orwell about "“the W.C. and dirty-handkerchief side of life." and the irony that a body established to study 'imagination' - now defunct - should lack the imagination to perhaps know that women relieve themselves and blow their noses.
It was one comment, from a woman in the audience, that "shuffling gouts of steam." was in someway a violent reference, that sent me back to the poem: if only to escape the Dimension B world in which people gather to express their angst, while pretending to discuss a work of literary art.
Whitsun Weddings
Here is a recording of the Larkin reading the poem in 1964... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eTF6QNsxA
Firstly, the poem takes the form of eight verses, of ten lines each. The lines have ten syllables, except for the second line of each verse, which has four. The rhyme pattern is A,B,A,B,C,D,E,C,D,E. It is similar in form to some of Keats' Odes.
The poem was first published on 28th February 1964.
Larkin began writing the poem in 1957, and there is speculation that it is based on an actual journey in 1955, though this has been called into question as there was a rail strike. But for now, we will quote Larkin, "'You couldn't be on that train without feeling the young lives all
starting off, and that just for a moment you were touching them.
Doncaster, Retford, Grantham, Newark, Peterborough, and at every station
more wedding parties. It was wonderful, a marvellous afternoon.'"
The reason I use this quote is that those towns, with perhaps the exception of Doncaster, are in the midlands, and hint at a puckish humour of Larkin, that also appears in the poem. Upon first becoming aware of the wedding parties, he claims " I took for porters larking with the mails,", or to put it another way, porters chucking bags on the train.
Before moving on, I wanted to point to a particular piece of poetic skill, in the line, "At first, I didn’t notice what a noise..... The weddings made.....Each station that we stopped at:" Were Larkin to be an aspiring young poet today, offering his work for critique to savageries of an intenet forum, this reliance upon poetic device, rather than grammatical correctness would be slapped down most sternly. As would, "Not till about", and numerous other 'grammatical crimes'.
Perhaps this is one of the more overlooked differences between English and American poetry. With English poetry being less about what is said, than how it sounds, what you hear, and what is implied.
So let us consider the last stanza first.
"And as we raced across.... Bright knots of rail.... walls of blackened moss.... Came close.... and what it held.... Stood ready to be loosed with all the power.... That being changed can give.... We slowed again,.... And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled..... A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower.... Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain."
Obviously I have trimmed the verse to make the point. But I would suggest this is a description, and a rather sensual description of canal sexual congress, more that it is a reference to having seen Larry Olivier crying 'once more into the breech dear friends', or a description of the journey into Kings Cross/St Pancras.
Back to the combine harvester, that so puzzled Mr Motion, "I thought of London spread out in the sun, Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:" Wheat is something referred to in a number of Larkin's poems.
In an interview given to the Paris Review - https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3153/philip-larkin-the-art-of-poetry-no-30-philip-larkin - Larkin claimed not to be influenced by poets he admired. Yet in the same interview it becomes clear that he was very widely read. He is also quoted elsewhere as saying he was influenced by WB Yeats, in his early years. Which is curious, since WH Auden was also influenced by Yeats, and both he and Larkin claim to have stopped being influenced by Yeats at roughly the same time in the late 1940's.
And it is somewhat odd, that one of Auden's more famous poems, When I Walked Out One Evening - https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening - begins "As I walked out one evening, .... Walking down Bristol Street,..... The crowds upon the pavement..... Were fields of harvest wheat." And when you chuck into the mix Auden's The Night Mail - https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-mail-2/ - it becomes perhaps more arguable that Larkin is at least referencing Auden, with trains, post, wheat etc.
At the risk of stretching a point, and indeed whittling at the divide between English and American English, I was recently watching a lecture on Auden, again on youtube, - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcRhInARHFs&t= - given by Langdon Hammer of Yale University, about the Auden poem The Letter - http://writing.jmpressley.net/papers/auden.html Now forgive my filthy mind, but I would suggest there is more going on behind that sheep pen wall than Auden describing the countryside, particularly when you get to this, "I, decent with the seasons, move... Different or with a different love,.... Nor question much the nod,.... The stone smile of this country god... That never was more reticent,....Always afraid to say more than it meant." Especially as saying more than it meant could get you imprisoned, or even hanged.
Therefore, I would suggest that Larkin was far more influenced by Auden, particularly in his use of hidden meanings, than he is letting on. And given Auden's stature as a poet, especially during the formative parts of his career it is difficult to see how he couldn't be.
But rather than belabour that point, let us consider an issue that was prevalent in the period 1955, when supposedly the genesis of the poem happened and 1964 when it was published, namely divorce.
I would suggest reading this, or a similar, brief history of divorce - https://www.lawteacher.net/study-guides/family-law/History-Divorce-Law.php and to consider that until 1967 only the High Court in London could grant a divorce.
An interesting point is, that poem begins, "That Whitsun, I was late getting away", and then as the journey of the poem continues, it alternates between I - "I didn’t notice what a noise", "I took for porters", "I leant.... More promptly out next time," "I thought of London" - and we - "We ran
Behind the backs of houses", "A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept", "Each station that we stopped at", " Once we started, though,.... We passed them, grinning and pomaded.", "And, as we moved,", " We hurried towards London", "And as we raced across.... Bright knots of rail".
There are numerous possibilities here. The we is the collective we, referring to the passengers on the train. Another is that the we is possessive, referring to the train itself. Another is, if we assume this is not a literal account of train journey, that Larkin is referring to observation and conversations he has had in the past upon seeing such wedding parties: thus "sun destroys.... The interest of what’s happening in the shade,", having seen these wedding parties, they become impossible to ignore.
Or perhaps, the we is an adulterous liaison. Quoting from the website on divorce, "Until 1969 it was impossible for a "guilty" spouse to divorce an
"innocent" partner. As long as the innocent spouse took care not to be
caught in adultery, he or she could effectively block the other's
divorce and remarriage." Which in turn would give a different interpretation to "While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared.... At a religious wounding." beyond the somewhat banal interpretation of women being the victims of sex, and only when sanctified by the church can they be wounded by be penetrated: or perhaps worse, by not being penetrated.
Again if one looks into the social history of the period, it becomes clear that divorce was a big issue, with marriages breaking down at an alarming rate. "fathers had never known....Success so huge and wholly farcical;" is in some ways the key-line of the poem, if one takes this line of assuming that the poem is, or at least in some part, about divorce. For what is the point of spending money, you can perhaps ill afford, when the chances are it will just break down and end in divorce, or dishonour.
I use the word dishonour, for a particular reason, in this context. Because when I was a paid up member of the Terry Eagleton crew, might chief gripe about this poem was that the characters in the wedding party were sneering portraits of the working classes, "The fathers with broad belts under their suits...And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;...An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms, ....The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes," That Larkin could be so course, was all the confirmation I required to buy into all the other cliches, gloomy, racist, misogynist, etc, that effectively acted as excuse not to read his poems. That being the purpose of cliche, it tells you all you need to know without ever having to know anything.
However, when one digs into the gossip - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationships_that_influenced_Philip_Larkin - surrounding him, it would seem that Larkin was quite Ladies man, and chivalrous with it. This is certainly how the documentary Love and Death in Hull - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqa6L22m0rY&t=244s - presents his relationship with Maeve Brennan, that began in 1960. And given that at the time he was already in his more famous relationship with Monica Jones, and if we equate chivalry with honour, it might be argued that Larkin didn't wish to 'spoil her for marriage'.
Two lines in particular, casual scene setting on the face it, interest me. "All windows down" and "I leant... More promptly out next time." This suggests a compartment carriage, that was fitted with a sliding window in order to open the door by using the outside handle. At which point one could become a trainspotter and go in search of what class of carriage was in use on the East Coast Mainline. However, fruitful, and interesting this endevour, it would miss the opportunity to sniff the seats, and hazard a guess as to "then a smell of grass.... Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth" what was going on in those compartments, when the train was between stations and the blinds were pulled down.
And it shouldn't be overlooked that yes, the first and second stanza is a perfect description of that journey from Hull to Doncaster, "thence...The river’s level drifting breadth began,....There sky and Lincolnshire and water meet....All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept...For miles inland,....A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept." But " I was late getting away" and "all sense
Of being in a hurry gone." offers possibilities of something more illicit, such as meeting a lover - a lover from the office, without the embarrassment of being seen together by colleagues.
The closing of the second stanza offers an interesting commentary, "Until the next town, new and nondescript,.... Approached with acres of dismantled cars." The statement with regard to the anonymity of post-war planners and architects is fairly generic of the period, yet the second, with regard to scrapyards of cars is not, especially the timing of the poem being published and the publication eleven months before of the first Beeching report: the premise of which was that rail services should be cut back, stations closed, rail-lines grubbed up, because cars were the future of transport.
Which is in large part why I am no longer a member of the Terry Eagleton crew, because clearly Larkin would have been aware of the Beeching report, and the debates that led up to it's commissioning, since it was no secret that the railways had been losing money for years. Indeed the situation of the railways rather mirrored the debates surrounding marriage, and any number of courses and questions that were raised in the 1950's, reformed in the 1960's, with the effects being felt in the 1970's and 1980's. Thus while Dr Beeching is set on his path of 'just married' being sprayed on the sides of Cortinas, and wedding parties that drag on until midnight, Larkin is recording the people who lived in streets not lined with cars, where " the wedding-days... Were coming to an end" at three in the afternoon.
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