Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

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What Larkin ruefully described as his “misengagement” dragged on long after he and Monica met in 1946, and was only resolved, amid emotional stress all round, in 1950—Monica and Philip became lovers that summer. Peppered with wry humour and biting critiques, these letters are as much a social and cultural history as a reflection of his tenderness towards [Jones] .

When in 1982 Monica fell downstairs in her Haydon Bridge cottage, he took her in and looked after her. These letters were written over a long period to the woman he loved most (although not the only woman he loved), and they are wonderful. There is something of Mass Observation about them - reflections on life, literature, domestic chores and personal feelings .

The wrangle with Ruth lasted eight years; the wrangle with Monica would last for 35, leading to the same outcome. This is from an Amis-Larkin letter of the same period: "It doesn't surprise me in the least that Monica is [studying George Crabbe, 1754-1832, poet and parson]; he's exactly the sort of priggish, boring, featureless (especially that; there isn't anything about him, is there? This remarkable unpublished correspondence only came to light after Monica Jones’s death in 2001, and consists of nearly two thousand letters, postcards and telegrams, which chronicle – day by day, sometimes hour by hour – every aspect of Larkin’s life and the convolutions of their relationship. WHAT ON the surface he wanted, and more or less admitted, was to enjoy all the conveniences of an available lover without most of the concomitant financial or emotional responsibilities. What we do not find, surprisingly, is all that much about Larkin’s own work, let alone Monica’s role in it.

He might be a bad bargain, but the relationship with Monica was stable as long as she had the exclusivity on it. Photograph: Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Philip Larkin and Monica Jones at the memorial service for John Betjeman at Westminster Abbey, June 1984. He published four volumes of poetry – The North Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974) – for which he received innumerable honours including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the WH Smith Award.

He dedicated The Less Deceived to her, but besides asking her advice about a title, and whether to include “Church Going” (an uncertainty that takes one aback, since it is unquestionably one of his best poems), there is very little: she offers him occasional ideas on details, which he often rejects.