Remembrance Day in a Comet

Dear TLS/Faber-quiz-maniacs,

Now that the idiosyncratic blush is no longer a mystery, we can move on to another particularly perplexing question. Oh yeah, it’s time for another installment of our favorite guessing game.

Literary Detective: Today’s case, boy?
Apprentice: Who described a takeoff in a Comet on Remembrance Sunday? Code: Aeroplanes 1. Looks like a tough case, chief.
Literary Detective: When it’s a comet, it’s always a tough case, boy. Especially when that comet is not exactly a comet. Got it?

Well, some of you have suggested Mark Twain (still, Remembrance Sunday in his times?!), others thought it must be a war poet, e.g. Siegfried Sassoon. But no convincing evidence so far.

Let’s read together this wonderful poem by the wonderful Philip Larkin:

Hurrying to catch my Comet
One dark November day,
Which soon would snatch me from it
To the sunshine of Bombay,
I pondered pages Berkeley
Not three weeks since had heard,
Perceiving Chatto darkly
Through the mirror of the Third.
Crowds, colourless and careworn,
Had made my taxi late,
Yet not till I was airborne
Did I recall the date -
That day when Queen and Minister
And Bands of Guards and all
Still act their solemn-sinister
Wreath – rubbish in Whitehall
It used to make me throw up,
These mawkish nursery games:
O when will England grow up?
- But I outsoar the Tames,
And dwindle off down Auster
To greet Professor Lai
(He once met Morgan Foster),
My contact and my pal.

Philip Larkin, Naturally the Foundation Will Bear Your Expenses, emphases mine.

So Remembrance Day is not explicitly mentioned in the poem – would have been too easy, right? But I hope you will agree that lines 2 & 12-16 are an obvious reference to this specific holiday.

Apparently, I am the first to come up with this answer. This means…oh well, not much, just that I am unofficially great. And that lots of readers will be brought into the welcoming arms of this blog.

Yours truly,

The indefatigable Literary Detective