Philip Larkin by James Booth Page A

with me books I had read, advising me on what I should read and actually interested in my reactions. I was dazzled. Annoyingly, some of my contemporaries developed a sudden and unlikely interest in English literature and hung around the library shelves in what I felt was a distinctly predatory manner, but Philip, whose maturity I had over-estimated, regarded these giggling sixth-formers with some complacency. 11
     
    Philip and Ruth’s feelings for each other developed in a decorous, hesitant way. By early 1944 there was amused gossip in the town about the awkward couple they made. At school she was warned to ‘stop bothering the new librarian’. An acquaintance at the time often saw them together ‘reciting poetry to each other [. . .] She looked at him with such adoring eyes.’ 12 They would walk on Sundays on the wooded slopes of the Ercall, above Wellington (joined on one uneasy occasion by Kingsley Amis). 13 In 1991 Ruth recalled that she had been shocked by ‘the robustness’ of Philip’s language and his outrageous sentiments, ‘but if I found any part of his conversation distasteful and said so he might grumble at my prudishness but he would carefully avoid such expressions again. Oddly enough he had a Puritan streak which made him outraged if I attempted to reply in kind.’ 14 He attempted to shake her religious beliefs, but gave up when she remained steadfast. And he joined her in her passion for cats. Their liaison was symbolically cemented when she stole a copy of Yeats’s poems from her school for him. Over the previous two years Larkin had run the gamut of attitudes towards sexuality and gender, from Théophile Gautier to D. H. Lawrence; from W. H. Auden to Dorothy Vicary. Now, still a virgin, he had to cope with a vulnerable, serious-minded schoolgirl, with no conception of his inner life, eager for a relationship with him, and also hoping for the only end of such a relationship. Over the next six years his entanglement with Ruth became an increasingly insistent element in his poetry and fiction.
    During his time in Wellington writing still continued to pour from the bottle uncorked by W. B. Yeats and Dorita Fairlie Bruce. Bruce Montgomery was now teaching at Shrewsbury School, and regularly on Tuesday, his evening off at the Library, Larkin would visit him in his ‘sumptuous’ house, a sharp contrast to his own makeshift ‘digs’. In turn Montgomery would visit Larkin in Wellington where they would sit for hours in the Raven or the more upmarket Charlton Arms, drinking and discussing literature. 15 When ‘Edmund Crispin’s’ The Case of the Gilded Fly was published in February 1944, Larkin redoubled work on his own novel, Jill , first mentioned in letters to Sutton in August of the previous year. Urged on by Montgomery he completed the manuscript on Sunday 14 March 1944. Montgomery suggested changes to the final chapter and then sent the typescript to Charles Williams, a founding member of the Inklings and a director of Oxford University Press, in the hope that he might pass it on to Faber and Faber. Larkin was filled with excitement and a sense of unreality. T. S. Eliot worked at Faber and might see his book. 16 But Williams wrote saying that he was unable to help. Montgomery immediately sent the typescript to Gollancz. Months went by, and Larkin began to feel that he had been left behind by his more successful friend.
    In contrast, opportunities to publish his poems came readily, confirming his conviction that the novel was the more difficult, serious form. R. A. Caton, owner of the Fortune Press, wrote asking him to contribute to a volume, Poetry from Oxford in Wartime , edited by William Bell of Merton College. Larkin sent him ‘So through that unripe day’ and nine recently written poems in Yeatsian style. These were immediately accepted and the volume was published in November 1944. In the meantime Caton had written to a number of Oxford poets, including Larkin, asking if they had