Tribute to Patrick White
Patrick White, the Sublime, and Myself
Published in SX News on 28 May 2012 under the title "Yours sincerely, Patrick White
By John Ellison Davies
(In memory of Patrick White, b. 28 May 1912 d. 30 September 1990.)
This is an acknowledgement of one man’s kindness and courtesy to me over a period of nearly twenty years, although I met him only once. The same man was notorious for his rages, rudeness, and broken friendships. He described himself as “the monster of all time”. Could it be the same person?
When I was fifteen I found a Penguin copy of Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot in a newsagency. (If you can believe that, given the sort of books you will find in a newsagency these days.) I had heard of him. Someone told me he was interesting.
How shall I describe the effect the novel had on me? It blew my mind? Substitute any phrase you like to express true shock and awe. It seemed to me the work of a mind near to bursting with pity and compassion for all humanity, and the work of someone exultant with the possibilities of spiritual and physical ecstasy. Parts of it were also gloriously funny. It opened my eyes to what a novel could be, and I was already reading heavy-hitters like Graham Greene and Albert Camus
For the first and only time in my life I wrote a fan letter, sent care of the publisher. I did not imagine he would get it. I did not expect a reply. One came in sprawling blue handwriting..
31.v.70
Dear John Davies,
Thank you for your letter. It is difficult to advise anyone on how to go about writing, because different ways suit different people. I doubt whether most writers would want to sit down at their desks regularly every morning, as though they were turning up at the office, but that is the way I have to go about it.
I always write a book straight through, in three versions. The first version, getting it down on paper, is pure hell. The second version is a matter of oxywelding, which I quite enjoy at times. The third version I type: it is your last chance, & I begin to take fright.
Sometimes I have let several years pass between books, chiefly through discouragement, though I do take a long time to fill up. The book I am working on at the moment I started comparatively soon after The Vivisector (which is coming out this year); at 58 you begin to feel you may drop dead: better get on with another while there is time.
On the whole I can’t say I enjoy writing: it’s 80% drudgery, & nothing to show for it except a row of books, whereas if I were a painter there would be the physical relief of laying on the paint; & something to delight (or perhaps torment) the eye. As a writer I just sit here, & feel my bronchial tubes fill up.
Something may come out of your folly – your pages of drivel. I remember finishing a whole novel which other people seemed to find drivel, because I hadn’t the technique at that stage to convey what I wanted to. The book came out again years afterwards, in slightly different form, as The Aunt’s Story.
I think I wrote four novels before one was accepted by a publisher, & although I then published several, nobody really took notice of my work till I was middle-aged.
The worst thing about the whole business is that I never find writing becomes any easier, & I am in a state of nervous despair every time I sit down at the desk. No doubt there are many who can enjoy what they are doing, & I hope you will be one of those.
I hope also I shall read something you have written; there is room enough for creative writers in Australia.
Yours sincerely,
Patrick White
P.S. I think it enriches a writer to have spent several years away from Australia, but then it is equally important for him to return. P.W.
I was amazed that he had taken the time and the trouble to write to me so frankly. Emboldened, I sent him a short story of mine about a Frenchman who wakes up in his own coffin, spoiling a happy family reunion.
11.ii.71
Dear John Davies,
Thank you very much for your letter, which I must have had a long time in my drawer; I can’t say how long because there isn’t a date. Have been very busy getting a novel down on paper: that is the reason I haven’t answered before. Now that I have this first version I’m not going to look at it again till I return from Europe in October (I’m starting in mid-April via the States.)
I thought your story well-written, though I’m not so keen on that kind of fantasy. And why Paris? Are you partly French, or perhaps you have spent some years of your life in France? I felt the story would have had far more vitality if it had happened in Brisbane! The heat & colour would have offset the rather pallid fantasy. However, I know that at your age I yearned after the exotic. Later on I only wanted to write about what I knew in my bones.
You refer to Manoly in your letter. How did you know about him?
I had a Brisbane poet wished on to me last year. I agreed to see him just for a talk & a cup of tea – I thought – and all this turned into a most embarrassing article in one of the Brisbane papers. I usually beware of a writer in whom a journalist also lurks, but this time I slipped up.
I hope you keep on writing: you will if you have to, in spite of the drudgery.
Yours sincerely,
Patrick White
I felt this required a reply, at least to reassure him that I had no connection to any Brisbane poets. The lurking journalist he referred to was, I knew, David Rowbotham, then literary editor of the Brisbane Courier-Mail. I had read Rowbotham’s article about his meeting with White. As to my knowledge of Manoly Lascaris and his intimate role in White’s life, that was already more widely known than White himself realised.
Some time later I received a postcard from him, from France. I can’t find it now. I took it as a graceful conclusion to our correspondence.
The Australian ran a competition for parodies of White’s style. My entry won a small prize. In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I was in Paris. There were photographs of him and a koala bear in every bookshop window.
In 1977 I was in Bondi and invited to a barbecue, a Labor Party fund-raiser. I was told that Patrick White would be there.
The man I saw seemed shy and gentle, standing awkwardly with his back against a paling fence, hemmed in by a semi-circle of eager Vaucluse types asking him questions and giving him advice. One woman asked him why he had not been to the Bondi Pavilion Theatre recently. White replied: “Because there were no plays I wanted to see and no actors I wanted to see.” End of, I thought. But she kept on telling him that he should keep up and get about more. Others peppered him with more questions. I wondered if they had read his books. They were behaving like the more comic and grotesque characters in his books. No wonder he had his back against the fence.
I noticed that his glass was empty. Minutes ticked by. Nobody else made a move. I interrupted. “Mr White, can I get you a refill?” He pivoted to face me with a beatific expression. “Yes. Thank you.”
Fortified, he became more tolerant of the continuing Vaucluse Inquisition. I saw a tremor of amusement on his lips. Food was announced. He almost ran to get his sausages. As he passed by me I said softly: “Don’t take any notice of them. You don’t need me to tell you that.” He heard me. I did not mention our letters.
I did not mention the letters to anyone. A year later fate played two jokes on me. An acquaintance offered me a ticket to the opera. Patrick White, she added casually, had given it to her because he could not be bothered going that night. So I went to the opera with his ticket and sat in his seat.
A close friend, politically active, was invited to his house for dinner. She told me that it was a good evening. “Lots of booze and shouting.”
I suppose I had chances to know him better if I had made the effort. I felt I had no gift for him, nothing to add to his life. I would leave him alone.
One day I drove to Martin Road and parked opposite his house. I stayed in the car, thinking. Was he in there, despairing, at his desk? Was he feeling discouraged again? The Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata suffered such intense nervous stomach cramps when writing that he kept a small bed in the same room. The life of the mind has its own stresses.
One source of White’s rage was clear to me. When even strangers at a barbecue want a piece of you, friends probably want even more. He had serious work to do, difficult work that nobody could help him with. It did not surprise me that he might snap sometimes, throw a wobbly, even burn bridges. I would not knock at the door. I finished one cigarette and drove away.
In 1989 I knew he was in failing health. I used a writer’s stratagem to say hello, really to let him know that I was thinking of him and wished him well. I sent him a few of my poems, some published and some not, stapled together with a cover and improvised title. The handwriting in his reply was spiky, unsteady.
24th Sept
Thank you for the poems. I like best In The Gardens and Lunch. I can see them better than the others, some of which are a bit wafty. The title Elites of Love I don’t like at all. It is clumsy and, dare I say, pretentious.
Yours,
Patrick White
I laughed. He was right. He died a year later. I recalled his description of Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith in The Twyborn Affair – “a mistake trying to correct itself”. I felt it applied to White himself. His life was a search for the sublime, the ecstatic, which is all around, and within, and elusive, and worth pursuing. We need more monsters like him. Read his books and remember him.
John Ellison Davies is a poet and freelance writer based on the NSW Central Coast.