Letters reveal pain of Larkin’s greatest love

Philip Larkin’s ‘‘true love’’ told him that she would not be ‘‘an object of pity like a beggar’s sore’’, according to a cache of letters.

Monica Jones, who was in a non-exclusive relationship with the poet for four decades, wrote to Larkin that she knew he only thought of her ‘‘as a SITUATION, something to be fixed’’.

The letters, which are held at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, have been accessed by John Sutherland, the academic and author, who is planning a biography of Jones.

While Larkin’s correspondence with her was published in the 2010 book Letters to Monica, the editor, Anthony Thwaite, only quoted selectively from her letters to Larkin. The Bodleian Libraries bought thousands of her letters from her estate after her death in 2001 aged 78.

Sutherland described the correspondence as the ‘‘last great exchange of letters in literary history’’, telling The Observer that it was ‘‘like she’s ripping open her soul and her mind’’.

Larkin’s love life, as well as his epistolary flair, has proven to have an enduring fascination.

It is widely accepted that his two greatest loves, outside his family, were Jones and Maeve Brennan, the Irish writer.

For a period during the 1970s he was in concurrent relationships with the two women, as well as with his secretary Betty Mackereth.

In an interview three years ago Mackereth said that when she visited Larkin on his deathbed in 1985 he revealed to her who his ‘‘true love’’ had been.

‘‘He said to me, not many hours before he died, Maeve came to see me. I didn’t want to see Maeve. I wanted to see Monica to tell her that I loved her,’’ she told a BBC Four documentary. ‘‘I felt like saying to him, ‘You stupid man, why the hell didn’t you marry her years ago?’’’

Sutherland, who was taught by Jones, an English lecturer, said that the letters were ‘‘explosive in their nature’’, adding that he thought she was the most important person in the life of one of the leading 20th century poets.

Jones wrote of being ‘‘so frightened’’ and referred to a bruised shoulder as ‘‘a kind of company’’, according to extracts published yesterday.

‘‘Her letters resemble a literary stream of consciousness,’’ Sutherland said. ‘‘At times more surging flood than stream. They have odd disjunctions.

‘‘After a pages-long diatribe against Maeve, Monica suddenly reminds Philip to water the flowers.’’

GETTY IMAGES English poet Philip Larkin with his muse and mistress Monica Jones is pictured at the memorial service for Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman at Westminster Abbey, London,in June 1984.