Philip Larkin letters to Monica: highlights from 1960-4The Telegraph's literary editor, Gaby Wood, selects her favourite moments from Philip Larkin's letters to his lover Monica Jones from 1960-4.
02 Oct 2010
August 6 1962
21 York Road, Loughborough, Leics.
[…] Isn’t it a sad shock about Marilyn Monroe [who had died the day before]? The People made her sound very dopey, but I was shocked all the same. The Mirror said her fan mail had shrunk from 8,000 to 80 a week! I’m sure Hollywood is a ghastly place to work in for anyone like her, everyone wanting to screw you and get a cut for doing it, nobody really helping you. Did you see, by the way, the story in Time about Cary Grant receiving a telegram from a paper asking “HOW OLD CARY GRANT” to wch he replied “OLD CARY GRANT FINE HOW YOU”? Ogh ogh. […]
September 29 1962
32 Pearson Park, Hull
[…] Well, of course, I do understand and agree with what you say, when you say how we are wasting our lives. When I say I wish we could talk more easily about ourselves, I mean just that; I mean it seems strange not to, and I think it’s something of a barrier between us, or a failure between us – it’s difficult to know precisely what I mean: I don’t say I want to bore you with my feelings, or be bored, so to speak, by yours, but I have a curious feeling that in some ways we are not in sympathy & this keeps us off any kind of discussion that might reveal the fact. I have the continual feeling that you either know me too well or don’t know me enough.
[…] I can’t say how badly I feel about the way we are wasting our lives: it terrifies me, and gets worse every day. […]
October 4 1962
32 Pearson Park, Hull
Dearest,
You must think me awful, as if I deliberately set out to upset you – I’m so sorry: it isn’t that. […] You know, I expect you do want to be reassured, but I always fall into the habit of thinking you are more assured than I am: you have such a strong, seamless character – not vague, shifting and gullible like mine – and you have a – really, I wd swear it – stronger personality than mine: you aren’t given to bursts of temper or vindictiveness but are much more level and firm than I. For this reason I am always feeling I deserve a denunciation from you – I always feel morally inferior, not only relatively in the way I have behaved but absolutely in comparing ourselves.
And of course I do feel terrible about our being 40 & unmarried. I fear we are to turn slowly into living reproaches of the way I have dallied and lingered with you, neither one thing or the other. […] If only we could achieve, I don’t know, a kind of self-encouraging intimacy, it wd be so easy for us to marry. But this may be a fancy on my part – people are different, after all. […]
March 10 1963
32 Pearson Park, Hull
[…] I had time only to scribble you a note on Thursday, was it, before going to London – my spirits didn’t greatly improve there. […] Heard little of interest, except that [music critic Donald] Mitchell contemplates leaving the D[aily] T[elegraph] – awgh! awgh! I give myself 7 days after he goes – and that S[ylvia] Plath gassed herself. She had had a mental breakdown once before, & is supposed to have feared another, while, as far as I can see, making certain of it. Ted had cleared off, not enjoying the symptoms. […]
I still feel pretty depressed, I must say. Every now & then I open the little trap door in my head & look in to see if the hideous roaring panic & misery has died down. It hasn’t, & I don’t see why it should – I mean, the only change in my life wd be to have something to be miserable about. […]
April 22 1964
The Library, Hull
Enclosed is £5 for
food – I meant to give it you.
Dearest,
It’s just about three o’clock, and I have absented myself from my visitors for a few minutes. I have really had little time to reflect since you left, but have felt extremely remorseful & upset & appalled at the situation I have created. I can only say again that I didn’t want to hurt you because I thought it wasn’t “serious” enough, but anyway I am ashamed of it all. Perhaps it was a good thing to bring the affair [with Maeve Brennan, Larkin’s colleague at Hull library; their affair, begun in 1961, lasted for 18 years] into the open – I certainly feel closer to you now than I have done for some time. […]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/philip-larkin/8037222/Philip-Larkin-letters-to-Monica-highlights-from-1960-4.html
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