BELONGING AND ESTRANGEMENT IN THE POETRY OF PHILIP LARKIN, R. S. THOMAS AND CHARLES CAUSLEY Focusing on the significance of place, connection and relationship in three poets who are seldom considered in conjunction, Rory Waterman argues that Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas and Charles Causley epitomize many of the emotional and societal shifts and mores of their age. Waterman looks at the foundations underpinning their poetry; the attempts of all three to forge a sense of belonging with or separateness from their readers; the poets’ varying responses to their geographical and cultural origins; the belonging and estrangement that inheres in relationships, including marriage; the forced estrangements of war; the antagonism between social belonging and a need for isolation; and, finally, the charged issues of faith and mortality in an increasingly secularized country. For Martin Stannard, and Christopher and Joan Speake Belonging and Estrangement in the Poetry of Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas and Charles Causley RoRy WaTERman Nottingham Trent University, UK First published 2014 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Rory Waterman 2014 Rory Waterman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Waterman, Rory. Belonging and Estrangement in the Poetry of Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas and Charles Causley / by Rory Waterman. pages cm Includes index. ISBn 978-1-4094-7087-8 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Larkin, Philip—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Thomas, R. S. (Ronald Stuart), 1913–2000—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Causley, Charles, 1917–.—Criticism and interpretation. 4. alienation (Social psychology) in literature. 5. Identity (Psychology) in literature. I. Title. PR6023.a66Z96 2014 821’.914—dc23 2013019347 ISBn 9781409470878 (hbk) Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 Provincial and Universal: Traditions and the Poet-Reader Relationship 5 2 Home, Leaving and Finding One’s Proper Ground 43 3 Kissing with the Eyes Closed: Love and Marriage 79 4 Between the Wars 105 5 Searching for the Best Society 133 6 Awkward Reverence: Faith and Mortality 163 Bibliography 193 Index 207 This page has been left blank intentionally Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor Martin Stannard at the University of Leicester for reading this study and making many valuable suggestions. I would also like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing me with a full scholarship to undertake this research, and Professor Stephen Regan (Durham University) and Dr Mark Rawlinson (University of Leicester) for their attention and insights in the final stages. I am also extremely grateful to the Estate of John Betjeman, the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Philip Larkin, and the Estate of Charles Causley, for permissions to quote previously unpublished archival material in this book. Parts of this study have been published, often in very different versions, in Explicator; About Larkin; Bonds and Borders: Critical Essays, ed. Dorette Sobolewski (Cambridge Scholars, 2011); Dark Horse; Semicerchio; Able Muse Review; Think Journal; Through the Granite Kingdom: Critical Essays on Charles Causley, ed. Michael Hanke (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2012). Other pieces that have fed directly into the development of the book have been published in Essays in Criticism; PN Review; The Poets’ Sourcebook, ed. Dawn Potter (Autumn House, 2012); The Times Literary Supplement. I am grateful to the editors who have published sections of this study, or works that have fed directly into its development: Professor James Booth, Gerry Cambridge, Gregory Dowling, Belinda Hakes, Professor Michael Hanke (who has been invaluable), Alan Jenkins, Alexander Pepple, Professor Seamus Perry, Professor Christopher Ricks, Professor Michael Schmidt, Dorette Sobolewski. I apologize sincerely if I have missed anyone in this list. I would also like to thank the organizers of the following conferences, for which I put together papers related to this work: Lost in Translation, University of Leicester, October 2009; The Artist Under the Microscope, Durham University, November 2009; LINK Seminar, De Montfort University, Leicester, December 2009; Nightmare, UCL, March 2010; My Territory, University of Leicester, April 2010; Bonds and Borders, University of Glasgow, June 2010; British and Irish Poetry Since 1960, Queens University Belfast, September 2010; Poetry and Source, University of Plymouth, May 2012. Many others deserve thanks, including Professor Ronald Tamplin; Fran Brearton and Patrick Villa at the War Poets Association; Professor Tony Brown and all involved with the R. S. Thomas Study Centre at the University of Bangor; the Special Collections staff at the University of Exeter; the Special Collections staff at the University at Buffalo, NY; the staff at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; the Special Collections staff at the University of Hull; and the staff at the British Library both at St Pancras and Colindale, London. I would also viii Belonging and Estrangement like to thank the many people I met and talked to in my pursuit of the ghost of R. S. Thomas across north Wales, but especially David Walker in Manafon, Mrs J. Neal in Eglwys-fach and Reverend Jim Cotter in Aberdaron. Again, I apologize to anyone I have inadvertently missed out. Last, but never least, I’d like to thank my parents Andrew Waterman and Angela Waterman, and my wife Libby Peake, for their support and love, and my father and wife for their careful proofreading. Introduction I feel as though I should begin with a definition. The Oxford English Dictionary regards estrangement as: ‘separation, withdrawal, alienation in feeling or affection’.1 Such separation, withdrawal and alienation might of course either be willed or enforced by circumstance. A man kicked out of his home and a man who has chosen to leave his wife might both be said to be estranged from their previous lives, but the type of estrangement they experience is likely to differ substantially because the latter embraces it. This is an important distinction, and is often manifest in the ways the writers focused on in this study, Philip Larkin (1922–85), R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) and Charles Causley (1917–2003), responded to the same, or similar, phenomena – such as relationships, isolation, geographical deracination. The sense in which most of us understand ‘estrangement’, of course, is ‘alienation in feeling or affection’. This has little application to Causley with regard to his Cornish background, though it is manifest in – among other things – his response to changes to his home environment. In Larkin’s work, there is frequently an axis or tension between belonging and estrangement as normally understood. With Thomas it is different again. In his earlier poems about Iago Prytherch and the like, Thomas is among rough hill-farming people, ministering to them, and does feel compassion – yet is also not of them: is set apart by education, accent, being an Anglican priest in a country of Methodism, and by his personal fastidiousness; and a similar tension informs his later poetry about the nature of Wales, of love, and of God. In writing this study, it quickly became apparent that the exploration I wanted to make of these near-contemporaries had a biographical shape. I therefore imagine it as the charting of a sort of composite poetic ‘life’, from inherited environment to death and spiritual transcendence – with the caveat that too great a biographical focus can obfuscate one’s analysis of any literary work. Chapter 1 focuses on the foundations and motives underpinning the poetry of Larkin, Thomas and Causley. It looks at the ways in which they dealt with inherited literary traditions, and how they attempted to build relationships with and challenge readers. To what extent do they forge a sense of belonging with and/or separateness from their readers, and how do they go about it? The second chapter considers geographical and cultural origins, and how these writers responded to their environments. The mid- to late twentieth century was a time of increased geographical deracination in Britain (and elsewhere), as national and international travel became increasingly possible and necessary. How do these poets respond to such circumstances and challenges? The third chapter considers the belonging and estrangement that inheres in relationships and in marriage. The twentieth century was also marked by a shift in emphasis regarding the importance of marriage; how is this represented and challenged by these poets? Chapter 4 focuses on the forced estrangements of 1 Oxford