Philip Larkin (93 page)

  
48.
   11 February 1961.
LM
,
p. 276.

  
49.
   11 June 1961.
LM
, p.
283.

  
50.
   Motion, p. 311.

  
51.
   Motion (p. 311) and
LM
(p. 283n) give the date as 5 March, which was a Sunday. The letters to Eva show that it was Monday 6 March.

  
52.
   Colin Vize, ‘Larkin’s Refraction’,
AL
35 (April 2013), p. 23. Vize concluded that ‘less than 1% of the population exhibit short-sightedness of the magnitude experienced by Larkin’.

  
53.
   Bradford, p. 224.

  
54.
   11 March 1961.
LM
,
p. 278.

  
55.
   
LM
,
p. 279.

  
56.
   Ibid.,
p. 280.

  
57.
   Ibid.,
p. 281.

  
58.
   Brennan, p. 41.

  
59.
   To Monica Jones, 13 March 1961. Not in
LM
.

  
60.
   Larkin was hurt when Amis failed to follow up this hospital visit. On 11 July, following his recovery, he remarked to Conquest that he had received no letter from Kingsley: ‘His joy at learning I was discharged without any discoverable defect must have rendered his right hand useless: give him my sympathy. It must be hell not being able to toss off’ (
SL
, p. 331).

  
61.
   Motion, p. 313.

  
62.
   Larkin Society. DNX, box 1.

  
63.
   
SL
, p. 327.

  
64.
   Brennan, p. 42.

  
65.
   To Betty Mackereth, 13 April 1961 (unpublished).

  
66.
   Brennan, p. 42.

  
67.
   Ibid., p. 29.

  
68.
   Ibid., p. 39.

  
69.
   Hartley, ‘Larkin, Love and Sex’, p. 7.

  
70.
   Motion, p. 305. Maeve was offended by Alan Bennett’s review of Motion’s biography which depicted her as a northern ‘lass’ deceived by a sophisticated seducer. All Larkin ‘really wants’, Bennett concluded, ‘is just to get his end away on a regular basis and without obligation’. Alan Bennett, ‘Alas! Deceived’, in Stephen Regan (ed.),
Philip Larkin: Contemporary Critical Essays
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), p. 243.

  
71.
   10 April 1961. Brennan, p. 75.

  
72.
   Brennan, p. 43.

  
73.
   
LM
,
p. 283.

  
74.
   
Philip Larkin Reads and Comments on The Whitsun Weddings
, Listen Records.

  
75.
   Brennan, pp. 56–7.

  
76.
   
Mademoiselle de Maupin
, trans. R. and E. Powys Mathers (London: Folio Society, 1948), p. 133.

  
77.
   5 August 1961.
SL
, p. 331.

  
78.
   9 August 1961.
LM
,
p. 284 and n.

  
79.
   17 August 1961.
LM
,
p. 285.

  
80.
   It was published at once in the
New Statesman
, on 24 October 1961.

  
81.
   21 September 1962.
SL
, p. 346.

  
82.
   
Philip Larkin Reads and Comments on The Whitsun Weddings
, Listen Records.

  
83.
   Shakespeare’s anti-Petrarchan sonnet, no. 130 (‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’), is an ironic example of the genre, and its conventions feature in Marvell’s ‘To his Coy Mistress’: ‘An hundred years should go to praise / Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze [. . .]’.

  
84.
   Brennan, pp. 57–8.

  
85.
   Ibid., p. 57.

  
86.
   Motion, p. 46.

  
87.
   Brennan, p. 57.

  
88.
   Among the books which Maeve left at her death was Linda O’Keeffe’s lavishly illustrated
Shoes: A Celebration of Pumps, Sandals, Slippers and More
(New York: Workman Publishing; special edition for Past Times, Oxford, 1996).

  
89.
   Brennan, p. 50.

  
90.
   Ibid., pp. 174, 184, 209.

  
91.
   Ibid., p. 73.

  
92.
   Ibid., p. 43.

  
93.
   Ibid.

  
94.
   
LM
,
p. 289.

  
95.
   Judy Egerton, interview with the author, 17 December 2010.

  
96.
   
SL
, pp. 339–40.

15: Sitting It Out (1961–4)

    
1.
   
Critical Quarterly
3.4 (Winter 1961), p. 309.

    
2.
   9 December 1961.
SL
,
p. 335.

    
3.
   
Critical Quarterly
misprinted ‘bribes’ in line 2 as ‘brides’, a mistake carried forward into the 1988
Collected Poems
. The correct reading was restored in a reprint of
Collected Poems
later in 1988.

    
4.
   To Conquest, 9 December 1961.
SL
,
p. 335.

    
5.
   
SL
,
p. 336.

    
6.
   23 January 1962.
LM
,
p. 292.

    
7.
   30 April 1962.
SL
,
p. 342.

    
8.
   
LM
,
p. 292.

    
9.
   
SL
,
p. 335.

  
10.
   To Conquest.
SL
,
p. 341.

  
11.
   
SL
,
p. 342.

  
12.
   ‘The Living Poet’,
FR
, p. 81.

  
13.
   He finished the poem on 21 August and it was published in the
Observer
on 18 November 1962.

  
14.
   
LM
,
p. 302.