Happy birthday Betty

Larkin, contemporary dance and diaries

On the 27th June, Betty Mackereth will be 100. She was Philip Larkin’s secretary at the Brynmor Jones Library in the University of Hull for nearly 30 years. She was also his muse and latterly, lover. My dear friend Professor Graham Chesters, Chair of the Philip Larkin Society, says of her,  “as well as making Larkin’s professional life as bearable as possible… [she] also inspired the most tender of his love poems.” This is a reference to “We met at the end of the party”, unpublished in Larkin’s lifetime and found by chance in a notebook in a pile of papers on a rubbish tip in 2002. It was first published in a newsletter by the PLS.

We met at the end of the party
When all the drinks were dead
And all the glasses dirty:
’Have this that’s left’, you said.
We walked through the last of summer,
When shadows reached long and blue
Across days that were growing shorter:
You said: ‘There’s autumn too’.
Always for you what’s finished
Is nothing, and what survives
Cancels the failed, the famished,
As if we had fresh lives
From that night on, and just living
Could make me unaware
Of June, and the guests arriving,
And I not there.

“We met at the end of the party” is reprinted here by permission of the Society of Authors as the literary representative of the estate of Philip Larkin.

After Larkin’s death in 1985, and following his specific wishes, Betty destroyed his diaries, shredding them sheet by sheet, and sending what remained to the University incinerator. Fortunately, this poem remained amid the cull. The diaries are gone, but the poetry lives on. Furthermore, as Larkin experts and critics both know, his poems are arguably a more uplifting read than some of his private letters, and one might consider the diaries fall into that latter category.

Yet almost regardless of what you think of what ought to be done with a personal diary after the death of the writer, during life it can be a living thing, a friend and confidant.

Computerised versions obviously exist, but I have become extremely fond of this resolutely analogue 5 Year Diary by Leuchtteum which I bought on the advice of my thoroughly digital daughters, who each have one. It is as good as its title. There is only enough room for a few lines each day, because each page is divided into five quotidian spaces, one for each year. I have had mine since January 2023, so now the cross references each page delivers are coming into their own.

I can look at the roses in the garden, and see that yes, this time last year they were also in flower. I can see how relationships with certain friends have blossomed, how more difficult others have stayed tricky, but also how certain issues about which I was worried have vanished completely and that I am, er,  doing less running than I was this time last year. Of course,  devoted diary keepers will say all this can be achieved if you write, store and re-read books from previous years, but who really does that? Lots of people write a diary and occasionally look at past ones, but when the same day from subsequent years is on the same page, it is impossible not to. It also trains you to be succinct.  

Handwritten diaries are like magic carpets. They fly you straight back to proper, actual, filmic memories, not like photographs which often offer a vague feeling about past events. Sometimes, even huge events which you want very badly to be a ‘life memory’ are overwritten by other memories in your brain, like a re-recording on those TDK cassette tapes we all used to use for recording what was quaintly called “the Pop Parade.” Diaries might be shredded, but if they are left physically untampered with, they cannot be wiped. They get you straight back in the memory.

I am always telling my children to do things “because they will be a life memory.” Only this week, I encouraged my daughter and her boyfriend to take part in a contemporary dance piece (with me) in France for precisely this reason. We were on holiday in Provence and I had chanced on an open invitation from New York choreographer Daniel Gwirtzman, who is on an artistic residency at the House of Dora Maar near our house in Menerbes. One of the demands of the Maar gig, which has been going for a long time, is that artists are obliged to produce a piece of work during their summer stay. Hence the engaging Gwirtzman, director of the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company (whose philosophy is that “anyone can learn to dance” and which thrives on collaborations with communities),  was on a mission to find people who might provide an interpretation ‘through movement’ of their views on Provence in general, and this village in particular. People who lived nearby were invited to contact him. He would discuss an idea and film what he provoked. Even if our ‘moment’ might not end up in the resultant show, I was intrigued, and felt this would mark my holiday with my daughter rather well.

“You want me to do WHAT?” said Honey when I told her about Gwirtzman and his project. I pointed out she had done ballet for about a decade. “Yes, when I was 5 years old, and dancing with a basket,” she said, rolling her eyes. Just come and meet him, I said.

We went to meet him; me, her and Honey’s boyfriend James who came along for the lolz. He’ll win you over, I thought. He’s a New Yorker. Guess what? The very next morning at 0745, James, Honey and I were taking part in the art work, running through the jasmine in our garden while Daniel filmed us.

Here is Daniel before he starts recording. He had discovered that what we liked doing was running, so running was our choice of movement. After charging around the jasmine, we went out of the garden and up towards the village. “Aren’t you glad you are doing this?” I puffed to Honey as on Daniel’s command, we ran (several times) up past the vineyards along a remote country lane. After a pause, she spoke. “Well, it’s rogue,” was her response. I can cope with rogue. Rogue is worth remembering, worth writing a diary entry about. Lying in bed is not.

Daniel, sitting like only a dancer can, with James and Honey

I put the morning in my diary, of course. As long as I don’t lose it, the 5 Year Diary is my personal, indelible TDK tape of good, bad and insignificant memories. Will I ask for it to be shredded after my death? I don’t think anyone will be interested in reading it, frankly, so I don’t care. Happy birthday, Betty.