The Whitsun Weddings

      Today is the Eve of Whitsun - Whitsunday - Pentecost.  The day churches celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Disciples who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Shavuot.  It is a moveable feast i.e. its date each year is governed by the date of Easter

     It is also the day of Philip Larkin's poem 'The Whitsun Weddings'.  Published in 1964 by Faber in the collection of the same name. The first poem in the collection, 'Here', describes, in part, a journey to Hull, 'The Whitsun Weddings' a departure; describing as it does a train journey undertook one hot Saturday afternoon from the Paragon Station in Hull to London Kings Cross.  The opening stanza suggests the journey, at that particular time and date, has been made before. One gets the sense of the mundane quality of an oft repeated journey.

     Then, in the third stanza, things begin to change.  At first the narrator pays little attention to the noise on the platforms when train stops; 'and down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls I took were porters larking with the mails, and went on reading.'  But when the train departs one of the unnamed stations he looks up and notices:

'grinning and pomaded, girls   

In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,   

All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event

    Waving goodbye

To something that survived it.'

     His interest piqued, he makes the point at the next station and subsequently of looking out at the platform and the waiting passengers, and wedding parties gathered to see off the newly married on their honeymoons.  Larkin it has to be said is a little pejorative in tone, just as he is in 'Here', however as the train moves toward the capital the subject changes from the particular to the universal.

     One of the reasons I like this poem so much, and it is quite a personal reason, is that the poem talks about things I know; Lincolnshire, the eastern side of England, the East Coast mainline.  My line, which I have travelled more times than can remember or count.  It could be my relations on those platforms. My parents took that line on their honeymoon, spending the first few days in London before taking another train down to Cornwall.

     Here is Philip Larkin reciting his remarkable poem.  Of the two recordings I found on YouTube, the best.