by Janet Frame
It is early morning now. Grey days these past days with Scotch mist and a damp chill lingering around my feet as my house is so high and the dampness invades the lower storey which, as I’ve told you, is just a large basement with a decayed old bedroom and what used to be a bathroom and a little patio where the japonica grows inside, unrained on but flourishing. My daffodils are all in bud and the lilacs are all healthy and Lucas is eating the primroses. He must have been reading my old English recipe book where the first instruction for primrose wine is ‘Take a peck of primroses’.
I haven’t done anything outwardly or been anywhere or seen anyone since I last wrote. I’m just quietly in exile and longing, pursuing my writing and making occasional discoveries but the work is slow as yet. Until these past few days the weather has been beautiful with all the birds singing crazily in the sun and the flowers bursting open—and, inevitably, all the windows opening and the radio and tv noises coming out, and all the lawn-mowers mowing with their frightful noise. I haven’t yet had to put in my ear-plugs in the daytime yet, nor at night, for the world does go dead at night, it’s like country night. There was a 7 and a half acre place for sale across the valley for 8000 dollars—it must be the place I can see, where sheep graze. The place you saw in the mountains sounded interesting. You could always live in the avocado trees. It must be very expensive, as I believe the mountain lions demand their cut or else. I’ve seen only one avocado tree—at Frank S’s place. In his younger days he used to be a very keen gardener on his ¼ acre property and there were always stout orange pumpkins on the windowsill and strings of garlic and tree tomatoes and chinese gooseberries. He planted an avocado and a custard apple and a pawpaw and had fruit from them. And there was a lemon tree at the back door where he encouraged his male visitors to pee as pee is good for lemon trees, so he said.
Today I may take a walk along the town to the library. I always think there are so many strangers in the town until I remember that I am the stranger. I can always call in at Maureen’s gallery where there’s usually an exhibition though they’ve stopped inviting me to the openings as I never go—I usually sneak in a couple of days afterwards. And once last week I met Rodney who is Charles’ close friend and, unusual for him, as he does not know me very well nor I him, he stopped to speak to me. He is scarcely five feet high. He works as a drama tutor and producer. That day last week he seemed very excited and dramatic. He’d been in Wellington and had difficulty getting back because of a strike and he spoke like a messenger out of a play.
‘There are all kinds of rumours going around Wellington,’ he said. He didn’t say what the rumours were and I had no clue but he communicated some of the excitement of a returning traveller. I felt like labelling him as Enter Traveller from Athens, rather than from Wellington.
I’ve at last settled about Intensive Care in England. Macmillan somehow (through my agent who is no longer my agent) read the typescript and were very keen to publish it, with a slightly bigger advance, and I had to decide between loyalty to my publisher of ten years (publishing age only) and the big prestigious firm and (rather reluctantly) I decided in favour of loyalty and my old firm. Or rather, it was less in favour of loyalty than of habit.
I may have to go into hospital for an operation—I’ll know next week. If I do go I’ll be there 14 days and then come home to take things easily (as if I don’t always!) for a couple of months. It’s hard not to feel a little gloomy and apprehensive but if I do have to go (and it’s still not certain) I know I’m a very quick recoverer. I’m in rude health now but I’ll be in ruder health when I go travelling from New Zealand which will be early next year. I’ll have a place to stay in New York until you find (if you decide to find and if the ground has not moved too much from beneath our separate feets) the ‘remote spot’—Always bearing in mind that the remotest spot (though there may now be no guarantee that it is remote now, as it may be polluted by noise, people etc.) is that little town of Psyche. Handy quote from John Keats,
‘Yes, . . . I will build . . .
in some untrodden region of my mind,
where branched thoughts newgrown with pleasant pain
instead of pines (avocados) shall murmur in the wind:
Far far round shall these dark-clustered trees
fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
and there by zephyrs, streams and birds, and bees,
the (mountain lions) shall be lulled to sleep:’
etc. etc.
He spoils it of course by saying the ‘casement will be ope’. I’d certainly not live anywhere where one had to ope the mail and ope the casement and ope everything else that needed oping.
My psyche’s not untrodden, anyway.
In the meantime until I see you next year (unless you can visit me, which is only a dream) I’ll be patient, and finish my Mortal Enemy which is growing daily; and think of you and write my Live Oaks in the manner in which they are accustomed.
I wish Paul well for the new semester and both satisfaction in painting and everything else and Ned success in further banner-carrying—which will probably not be necessary. If word of his success gets around he may be called upon to represent the nation in Washington. You’d get a surprise if you woke one morning to find a hastily scribbled note—Gone to Washington.
Now. Peedauntal News. Have you looked at your testimonials lately?
All kinds of warmest love to
99. Dunedin September 4
Dear B P N,
A quick letter full of sweet nostalgia. A hello. A greeting.
It’s two in the afternoon and I’ve done a fair morning’s work and I’m really getting involved in my characters now, and I find this is enjoyable. They’re not alive yet, though, in the writing. Characters seem to become alive with me only when they’re about to die.
The day is grey, with mist and a little warmth and I’m about to walk down into the town to take the air and mail this. A mail strike starts on the 7th September.
No outward news. Just inward. I felt sharply homesick for your paintings.
I came across a short poem (not very good, I thought) written about one of Dick Diebenkorn’s paintings.
Here it is, for your interest.
‘Ingleside, 1963’. Adrian Henri
‘Look through the Supermarket window / up the highway
the hill rises steeply / hoardings and magnolias bright
in the sunlight / white walls black freeways traffic-signs
at intersections / green lawns dark hedges / colours
clear and bright as packets in your wire basket.’
That’s all. I really don’t think much of the poem but maybe I’m dumb. I’m interested in writing about paintings, though, as they’re great inspirers. Also, it’s easy to write rubbish, a catalogue.
In my last note I mentioned the possibility of having an operation. I don’t think this is likely now, so I’m sorry I mentioned it. I don’t know yet, though, till next week.
Just thinking of you, and thinking of you, and waiting till I can say in the flesh Hello Bill Hello Paul Hello Ned Hello Schubert (who is woven with morning light).
Love to the Bee, the Pee, the ’En,
from the Jay
who was born that way
and lives in hope
the casement to ope
upon the mountains where the lions play
till
dusk
all golden and their light is shed
on
Bill
Paul
Ned
Jay
a dream away.
Geometrical Love from Jay
100. Dunedin September 9
Dear live lively oaks B.P.N. (I’m sure Ned would object to being called a live oak.)
That was a lovely present, B. It came this morning and your letter came yesterday. Lucas (who’s asleep at the moment on soft white pseudo-mama) was also overjoyed and tried to claw the letter from my hands and was very excited while I wa
s unwrapping the records. I had forgotten how much of oneself is communicated to an animal, how characteristics that one has but conceals are expressed openly in the accompanying cat—the ‘familiar’. Lucas licked the photo of Paul and the little kitten—what a lovely kitten—but where’s Paul’s head (‘never will we know his fabulous head where the eye’s apple slowly ripens’). And what tiny ear-folds (the kitten, not Paul). Lucas has huge ears; and back feet like a kangaroo; and a pointed face—I think he must have Siamese relatives, and he’s very much like a panther as he spends a lot of time crawling and slinking away up on the bookshelf and the backs of chairs. Kittenhood, also, seems to be a wonderful trip. Lucas now has another mama—my dressing-gown, and he purrs hysterically and plays the piano and nuzzles whenever he touches the dressing-gown. When I got up the other morning I found ‘Lay your sleeping head my love human on my faithless arm’ torn from the book and lying on the floor. Penguin Book of English Verse. What taste in one so young!
I learned yesterday that I shall only have to go into hospital overnight for a test. These medical people are forever scaring me! I shall take Lucas overnight to the vet whose name is Mr Aberdeen (he’s nearer and cheaper than Mr Twaddle or doctor T). I hear that he’s very good with animals. He even dresses like one.
I did like hearing about the lunch and the bathing—what bliss. And you will say hello to Ann for me? I don’t say Felix because I don’t know him and was a little scared of him that night when he came to dinner.
Back in Dunedin (which used to be Wax-Eye City—what a year’s history is being written in my letters!) I see no-one, go nowhere, and though it’s not my practice to tell people the day of my birthday I told it to you because there is no sharing of it with anyone here. Still, I share it with Christopher Isherwood? Also with Saint Augustine, Goethe and Tolstoy . . . among numerous others. It’s difficult to know what star and sign I am because everything applies to the Northern Hemisphere. Here, August is Spring and corresponds with northern March.
Down among the daffodils, my daffodils are out, and my paper-white narcissi, and my forsythia, and the orange blossom which has a heavenly smell is putting forth its leaves and the primroses are still numerous, even with Lucas having one for breakfast now and again.
The woman in New York who offered to provide for me would do so, I think, as a patron of the arts. Her father was a publisher and when she herself worked in publishing, though she did not have to work for a living, she used to give many grants to authors from her own and the publisher’s pocket. I think it is wise to take money, though, only if it is impersonally part of a foundation which this woman may perhaps establish. I don’t know. Ici repose . . .
Snow on the hills today.
THE NEXT DAY.
Early morning. Sun. Lucas is drunk from eating his breakfast primrose. I will not believe that cats do not know colour. His favourite colours are white, black, purple and red. I find his company exceedingly refreshing as he hides nothing and is not ashamed of any of his feelings. I think that when I fly away from here some time my sister will take him—oh oh what heartstrings one has, always being tuned.
Stars.
Work as usual. The sun is coming south and now shines in the sittingroom in the evening. I write, read—poems and dictionaries. I bought myself Ulysses for my birthday. And a bundle of Penguin poets. Recently the BBC had a programme in which it used verse which had been rejected by the little poetry magazines.
I have very little to say this morning, only that I am thinking and thinking of you all over there and if I were with you I would just be silent and happy. I’ll go to post this now, with butterflies to eat the moths that eat B’s surcingles and P’s cap-pompom, and lots of invisible love.
101. Dunedin September
Dear Bill, Paul, Ned (your full names today),
Just a short hello letter before I walk into town as there’s a bus strike. It’s raining. Lucas is asleep on my knee. (I hope. Otherwise he will skate across the desk and eat all the typescripts he can find, tearing them into small pieces. He makes ‘lace’ of the toilet paper too, like the mice at MacDowell.)
Your painting that used to hang on the wall of Paul’s room is particularly beautiful this morning, B, as there’s a soft grey in the sky, with hints of thunder-blue beyond, and these are echoed in the painting so that it looks more mysterious and the blues and greys are colours in a dream. Did I tell you that my favourite is the man on the extreme left (left, facing the picture). His pose in some way inspires so much compassion. The others too. But don’t let me embarrass you by talking about things I know nothing of. Let me, instead, paste here a picture of your friend
Poor chap.
The rain rains heavily now.
The sky lowers. The blue has disappeared.
Here we are wondering how our Prime Minister will deal with a remark made by Ky of South Vietnam on B.B.C. television. Ky is reported as saying he will retire anytime if it suits the country. Holyoake (our Prime Minister) has promised him a cattle ranch . . .
Yesterday I went into human society for the first time for months, and I felt lonely for you and Paul, in the midst of Dunedin human society. I went to Charles Brasch’s place for dinner. The Burns Fellow, Ted Middleton was also there and we had a pleasant dinner swallowed with and followed by diluted conversation about publishers here and elsewhere. Charles is reading Mailer’s Armies of the Night to Ted who is almost blind. If one does not want to join in the conversation at Charles’ place one can always gaze at the paintings on the wall. His collection is usually on loan somewhere but last night he had a lovely painting by Frances Hodgkins whom I think you said you didn’t know. She’s our painting equivalent of Katherine Mansfield and her life followed something of Mansfield’s pattern—most of it spent away from New Zealand. She did return to New Zealand, and Dunedin, where she was born but found she could not bear it, so she left permanently to live in England and Europe. The painting on the wall last night looked very much Matisse-inspired. She lived to a great age, though, unlike K.M. and changed and developed her style in her later years. The painting scholarship at the University (equivalent of the Burns Writing Scholarship) is named after her.
End of lecture. I don’t make a very good lecturer do I?
It still rains heavily. Lucas who woke briefly when I stopped typing to paste in Nixon’s picture, and almost decided to eat the paste, but thought better of it, is fast asleep again. He’s very useful as a hand, foot, and lap-warmer.
I have again had courage to study the forms for application to live indefinitely in the United States. I am getting out all kinds of credentials (if one is a scientist or worker in the arts one has to prove one is worthwhile) to try to prove I can write. It’s an awful miscellany. It includes a letter from the Mark Twain Society making me A Daughter of Mark Twain. (I thought the U.S. ambassador might have heard of Mark Twain.)
Every time I venture into human society here it is clear to me that I do not belong here and I am not happy here, though I do not necessarily seek happiness. Pain (nights in the gardens of) is pretty fruitful. I cannot be myself here, as I have found that I can be, when I am away from N.Z.
Pause for joke. What joke?
Now I will away. I hope your work Bill and Paul, the glossy live oaks, is going well. Mine has reached rock bottom and I found out partly why when I was sorting my papers yesterday and came across the raw original of Intensive Care, pages and pages and pages. I don’t know how I endured such agony or how I deceived myself into continuing it; the memory of the agony quite swamped me. Isn’t it crazy? I haven’t needed such a long recovery before.
Pause for thought and love barrage to make its way from here across the Pacific.
And hello and goodbye and concentrated love from
DEAR CUSTOMERS AND COLLEAGUES
CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE HOUSEHOLD
HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO RECEIVE
AN ALL COTTON
SEED PEARL
BELOW KNEE
PANTY.
WE, FORMERLY AND STILL OCCASIONALLY OF PEEDAUNTALS ANTIPODEAN INC., ARE GIVING AWAY A LIMITED NUMBER OF THESE SEED PEARL PANTIES. YOUR HOUSEHOLD HAS BEEN SELECTED AT RANDOM.
YOU PAY ONLY FOR INITIAL SHAPING, STYLING AND FITTING. WE MUST CHARGE FOR THIS AS WE WANT TO BE SURE YOUR SEED PEARL BELOW KNEE ALL COTTON PANTY LOOKS ITS VERY BEST.
CONGRATULATIONS.
WE ARE STILL MANUFACTURERS OF THE FINEST PEEDAUNTALS IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. WE ALSO MANUFACTURE AND PROCESS MORAL FIBRE INTO THE MOST ENCHANTING GARMENTS AND UPHOLSTERY.
A SPECIAL CATALOGUE IS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST.
OUR REPRESENTATIVE HOPES TO CALL ON YOU IN A FEW MONTHS’ TIME. PERHAPS BEFORE. WHO KNOWS.
AGAIN CONGRATULATIONS.
YOURS, PEEDAUNTALS INC.
WHILE NOT DESIRING TO BOAST OF OUR PRODUCT WE DRAW ATTENTION TO THE ACCOMPANYING HEADLINE WHICH DEALS WITH THE USE BY THE OPERA GROUP OF OUR (NOW UP-DATED) SPECIAL CAPACITY PEEDAUNTAL.
SOCIAL TIT-BITS
A CARNIVOROUS PLANT, THE WELL-KNOWN RELATIVE OF A CERTAIN STEINWAY, DEPUTY MANAGER OF PEEDAUNTALS LTD, INC, OC, THAT ENTRANCING PLANT ABOUT-TOWN TOLD OUR SPECIAL GARDEN CORRESPONDENT OF POSSIBLE PLANS TO MOVE TO AUSTRALIA. ‘IT’S ONLY A THOUGHT,’ HE SAID. ‘I WOULD STARVE DOWN UNDER. CARNIVOROUSLY SPEAKING, OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT WHO GAVE US THE NOTES OF THE FOREGOING CONVERSATION IS OF COURSE NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT.
