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The Whitsun Weddings was inspired by a train journey which the poet made from Hull to London on Whit Saturday, 1955. The poem was finally completed in October 1958, following repeated redrafting. More than a quarter of a century later (1981) Larkin recalled the genesis of one of his best poems.
'I caught a very slow train that stopped at every station and I hadn't realised that, of course, this was the train that all the wedding couples would get on and go to London for their honeymoon: it was an eye-opener to me. Every part was different but the same somehow. They all looked different but they were all doing the same things and sort of feeling the same things. I suppose the train stopped at about four, five, six stations between Hull and London and there was a sense of gathering emotional momentum. Every time you stopped fresh emotion climbed aboard. And finally between Peterborough and London when you hurtle on, you felt the whole thing was being aimed like a bullet - at the heart of things, you know. All this fresh, open life. Incredible experience. I've never forgotten it.
The Whitsun Weddings . . . . was just the transcription of a very happy afternoon. I didn't change a thing, it was just there to be written do.... . You couldn't be on that train without feeling the young lives all starting off, and that just for a moment you were touching them. Doncaster, Retford, Grantham, Newark. Peterborough, and at every station more wedding parties. It was wonderful, a marvellous afternoon. It only needed writing down. Anybody could have done it.'
The poem's title is upbeat and life-affirming. In the Christian Church Whit Sunday or Pentecost is a time of spiritual rebirth. The festival celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus.
When the day of Pentecost came, all the believers were gathered together in one place. Suddenly there was a noise from the sky which sounded like a strong wind blowing, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire which spread out and touched each person there. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.
Traditionally Whit Saturday was regarded as an auspicious day for a wedding and it was a popular choice among the British working classes. Moreover, a wedding is an expression of a loving commitment, bringing with it the prospect of future happiness and the expectation of new life.
The opening words of the poem, That Whitsun, immediately distance the expensive being described and locate it in past time. There is a suggestion of annoyance at the unnecessary delay (caused by British Rail) in setting out
I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out
The assonance of 'ay' sound in 'late...away' captures Larkin's irritation while there is a clever reverse assonance in 'Whitsun...sunlit' to emphasise brightness and heat of the day. Larkin initially focuses on 'my...train'. Trinity and word-repetition describe the carriage in which the poet sits (alone?) and the train's slow, leisurely departure (late) from Hull station.
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone
Larkin appeals to the reader's sense of touch ('cushions hot'), smell ('the fish-dock'), and sight ('blinding windscreens'). The train journey first takes them (?) through suburbia before it passes close to the quays, then out into the countryside along the River Humber. The final two lines of the opening contain an extraordinary combination of sound and sight.
The river's level drifting breadth began
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet
A subtle interweaving of short 'i' and 'e' sounds verbally re-enacts the slow, lazy movement of the river, while the last line brilliantly telescopes a panoramic view of sky, land and water.
In the second verse the train moves inland and the rural landscape of Lincolnshire is vividly described. The heat of the sultry afternoon is personified
All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Its oppressiveness is suggested by internal rhyme - 'All....tall'. The flat farmland of Lincolnshire with its grazing animals is brought to life in the phase
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle
The adjective 'short-shadowed' subtly reminds us that it is still early afternoon and the sun is high in the sky. By contrast the man-made polluted waterways are cacophonously described
Canals with floatings of industrial froth
A greenhouse 'flashed' by in the sunlight, recalling the 'blinding windscreens' of the opening verse. There is a further contrast between the euphony of the 'smell of grass' and the cacophony of the 'reek of buttoned carriage cloth'. The train now reaches the outskirts of the town where it will make its first stop. It is one of the 'new' towns built in post-war England. Larkin dismisses it contemptuously as 'nondescript'. Man's pollution of the rural environment is again cacophonously described.
acres of dismantled cars
Larkin illogically imagines that the town approached the train rather than vice-versa, a common sensation experienced by rail-travellers. This squalid decaying, physical landscape will contrast with the immaculately turned-out wedding parties observed later by the poet from the same vantage-point of his railway carriage.
The Whitsun weddings of the poem's title are introduced suddenly at the beginning of the third verse
At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at
Hitherto Larkin had only been aware of what he could see exposed in the sunlight on the platforms of the different stations
sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade
Initially he had mistaken for horseplay by the railway porters the sound of wedding-guests saying goodbye to newly married couples and so had paid them no attention.
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
and went on reading.
In the early part of the journey it was the physical landscape which had caught the poet's eye. But now as the train pulls slowly out of the station, he becomes aware of the smiling perfumed young women on the platform, dressed in cheap imitations of the latest female fashions and watching the train depart.
grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All poised irresolutely, watching us go,
The fourth verse is a grammatical spill-over from the third and it also concludes the description of the scene introduced at the end of it.
As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it
The girls are on the periphery of the main event. The central focus is on the newly-married couple who have 'survived' the wedding ceremony and the subsequent celebration of the 'event'. The poet's attention has been caught, he is 'Struck' and so he tells us
I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
At the next station the middle-class Larkin observes another working-class wedding, different from the first, yet essentially the same. He mockingly describes the older generation of this particular wedding-party
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
And uncle shouting smut;
However, once again the unmarried thirty-something poet's eye is drawn to the unmarried girls who stand out from the others because of their hair-styles, accessories and different-coloured dresses.
the perms
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons,mauves, and olive-ochres that
Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
In this fifth verse (again a spill-over from the fourth) the poet goes beyond what he can see on the platform and imagines where the wedding-receptions had taken place earlier in the day.
cafes
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes
Zeugma wittily suggests how little heed will be taken by the couples of last-minute advice flung at them like confetti.
the wedding days
were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
In the final movement of the verse and in the opening lines of the sixth Larkin interprets the facial expressions of the various guests on the platforms as they waved good-bye to the departing married couples.
as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known
Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding.
For the children the farewell is boring. The fathers are in an expansive mood, delighted with the day's success. However, the phrase 'wholly farcical' again implies a sneering, mocking, dismissive class attitude on the part of the poet. The married women are more reflective, being acutely aware of what lies ahead for the bride, the good times and the bad, in the marriage described paradoxically as a 'happy funeral'. The response of the unmarried girls on the edge of the wedding-parties is the most complex.
girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding.
The phrase 'religious wounding' is capable of several interpretations. It may refer to the newly wed girl's first painful experience of sexual intercourse. It may refer to the painful times which will inevitably occur in the marriage. It may suggest the pain experienced as a result of the bride's inevitable separation from her family following the religious ceremony. The phrase reflects Larkin's perspective, not that of the girls.
In the poem's final movement, beginning in the middle of the sixth verse, the last of the newly-married couples has boarded the train which now speeds towards the final destination.
Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam
As the train approaches the metropolis, there is a change in the physical landscape and we are subtly reminded that the day is moving on.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads
For the remaining fifty minutes of the journey the twelve couples, alone together for the first time since their wedding-ceremonies, recall embarrassing moments from earlier in the day.
I nearly died
A significant shift in perspective now occurs while the poet shares the physical journey and the passing view with the honeymooners, paradoxically he still remains a detached observer, a choric commentator, missing the significance of this shared journey as he watches the couples watching the physical landscape slipping by.
and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives all contain this hour.
Each couple is setting out on a different journey in life and will never meet again, yet all are now at the same starting-point. But they are too happy and excited (and working class?) to be reflective, unlike the reflective (middle-class?) poet. The phrases 'sitting side by side' and 'their lives' emphasise the bachelor, middle-aged Larkin's isolation.
London is described in a supervising pastoral image
spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat
As the journey nears its end, the poet highlights the visual contrast between 'Bright knots of rail' and 'walls of blackened moss' beside the railway line, another example of environmental pollution, this time caused by the smoke from the train's engine. The cacophony of 'Came close' captures the sudden, frightening proximity of the viaduct walls. The phrase 'Past standing Pullmans' suggests how slowly the decelerating train passes the stationary carriage and the long 'ah' sound also introduces a sad tone. The lines
it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give.
are (deliberately?) ambiguous. It is not made clear who or what has been 'changed' as a result of the train journey. Neither is it clear what the nature of the 'power' is and to whom it has been given. Onomatopoeia and cacophony bring the train to a shuddering halt.
We slowed again,
....the tightened brakes took hold
The final image of the poem is esoteric (subjective)
there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere beoming rain.
The 'arrow-shower' combined with the paradox of 'there swelled A sense of falling' sadly hints at a later falling out of some (or all) of the twelve couples as they had earlier fallen in love. There is the suggestion that they are now at their happiest, at the outset of their marriages, still benign victims of Cupid's arrows. But the implication is that at some time to come the arrows will turn into piercing arrows of cold, driving rain, which almost penetrate the skin (symbolising unhappiness and sorrow). Ominously the 'sunlit....Whitsun' of the opening verse has become 'rain' by the end of the poem. Larkin himself has said enigmatically of the poem that these 'mysterious last lines' should suddenly 'lift off the ground', but that the rest of the poem should be read on a 'level, even a plodding, descriptive note'.
The Whitsun Weddings consists of eight verses, each ten lines long and rhyming a b a b c d e c d e. This rhyme pattern captures the rhythmic sound of a steam-engine as it gathers momentum every time it leaves a station. The use of run-on lines and run-on verses creates a sense of relentless, onward movement as the train makes its way southward by a 'slow and stopping curve'.
The Whitsun Weddings is Larkin's longest poem, narrated in a slow, unhurried, leisurely fashion which re-enacts a sense of the long, leisurely train journey from Hull to London. In literature a journey frequently functions as a metaphor for life itself. Larkin uses the unifying frame of a train-journey to observe twelve young couples who, as a result of a 'frail Travelling coincidence' briefly share one hour at a similar point in their lives before they alight from the train at its destination and continue separately on the longer journey which will take up the remainder of their lives.
In the opening movement of the poem (1 -20) Larkin describes the train and the physical landscape, urban and rural, at the outset of his journey. In the second movement of the poem (21 - 55) the poet is a detached, middle-class observer, amused almost to the point of disdain, as he watches and describes the different working-class wedding parties assembled on the platforms of various railway stations. Social observation becomes social prejudice on the part of the middle-class, intellectual poet. However, the mood of the third and final movement (55 - 80) changes to one of somber meditation as the solitary bachelor ponders the significance of what he observes. Thus there is a very noticeable shift from description to reflection. In a metaphorical sense the poem itself is a journey - from visual observation to social comment to philosophical musing.
Larkin claimed there was nothing of himself in The Whitsun Weddings. But his biographer, the English Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, maintains there is everything of the poet in the poem - the longing for love as well as the standing aloof and detached, attracted to the young girls but not prepared for the commitment of marriage.
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