The Dressmaker's Daughter (25 page)

My poems began to be published in newspapers and magazines. A friend who was a tutor in the English Department, Susan Sheridan, told me that I ought to be sending poems off to magazines. I said that I didn’t know how and, anyway, it was too early; I was just beginning to
learn how to write. She told me that I should put three poems in an envelope ‘to show them a range of your work’ and to enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope.

The first time I did this I sent my poems to
The Australian
newspaper. Rodney Hall was the poetry editor and he sent back an acceptance note for ‘The Aunts’. Thomas was in his car outside my gate, waiting to take me to lunch, and, as I opened the letter, abandoning manners, he said, ‘Good on you, love. Half the Department have been busting themselves for years to get into that paper and you have done it first time!’

We drove off to lunch and made merry.

After this, I sent off more poems and slowly began to be published in most of the literary magazines in the country.

I was failing English Literary Criticism in second year because, paradoxically, the subject was Poetry. I had no idea how to write about the poems we studied. I found it even more difficult than writing about prose. It simply baffled me. What could one say about a Wallace Stevens poem laid out there like a body on a marble slab? We were never told about his code of colours; nothing in the poems seemed clear to me.

I walked the corridor of the English Department in tears. Published everywhere but failing in the place where it mattered. I had a sweet tutor called John Edge, who said wearily, ‘Poetry is not my thing,’ and sent me to
Andrew Taylor, who seemed to comprehend my bafflement. Andrew gave me an essay by T.S. Eliot, in which he said that it was not necessary to understand a poem to enjoy it. I cheered up and passed by a squeak.

Hugh’s earaches were cured when Margie diagnosed the infection and said that if he had grommets inserted into the ear canals he would be cured. He had the operation in Burnside Hospital and never had an earache again. This made a big difference to our life because he was no longer in pain and we could sleep through the night. Hugh seemed to be allergic to many things, but, what they were, we didn’t know. He would sneeze for half an hour at a time. Making up a mixture of hot jelly, which was what he craved, seemed to comfort him, so often he sat at the kitchen table drinking his brew. It may have been that the steam helped, or the gelatine calmed his mucous membranes, or it may have been psychosomatic. We never knew. Years later, as an adult, he had tests that had been developed then to diagnose allergies and it was found he had the highest possible reading for reaction to dust. And I had let him sleep on an old mattress on the floor of a carpeted room because he had wanted to.

When the American poet Jack Gilbert was interviewed by Sarah Fay for the
Paris Review
’s 175th issue, she asked him, ‘Is writing autobiography like seeing a film?’ and he
said, ‘It’s more like a feeling rising from the tops of my knees.’

To me, writing autobiography is more like entering a large room towards the back left-hand side of my head. It has a large door, a high ceiling and a parquet floor. Perhaps it is a library. When I remember entering the front door of our house at Dulwich, I can see and feel the thick, dark brown carpet and see our bedroom’s open door on the left. I can see the long hallway where Caroline in a frock smocked in blue looked up from the far end of the long passageway and seemed to calculate the distance she would have to crawl to the front door. I said to her, ‘One day, my darling, you will walk down this hallway dressed as a bride.’ Wrong.

The people, when I remember them, seem to walk out from the door in my head and, looking the same as they did at that time, not aged at all, stride out and enter the whole of my mind. Memory frees them.

Then there are letters that relate events I had forgotten. I do not ever remember, for instance, Professor Brian Medlin sitting on my bed discussing poetry. Because he had led those anti-Vietnam War moratoriums and was such a colourful figure, influencing many artists, I would have expected to remember that he gave me advice about my poetry. Yet reading this letter I wrote to Thomas that tells of this, I don’t recall Brian even being in my house. Here, too, is Julia Britten, who was more
influential on me than I had ever realised, and for the good, too. She is in her nineties now and still writing plays and having them performed. Wit, endurance and experience she had, and she made me laugh. We howled together.

The address of this letter is given as Esplanade, which means it was written at Julia’s at Henley Beach and the date is Tuesday the thirteenth. There is no month or year but, when I read on from this bundle of letters I found in a library, deposited there by the recipient, I realised it was January 1976 and I was about to turn forty.

Dear Thomas,

Whenever I get in this position face-down on the hot lawn, I think about writing to you, so here goes.

James is here with Julia eating her strudel and hearing of her German cook’s habits left over from her childhood holidays in Germany.

This morning I wrote a poem about you and chicken livers and one called Rat.

Look, here I am trying to be legible in all ways so you, dear man, won’t be struggling with a rave. Bigger writing, too.

Last night Julia chose three poems to send to Rodney Hall [the poetry editor of
The Australian
]. She is so disgusted with
Swamp Riddles
and
New Poetry,
especially Rob’t Adamson’s editorial – which made me screech with laughter walking along the beach. She says don’t send a thing to these parochial boys; send it to England. Hmmmm. Actually I think I’ll just shut up and read and write and let what happen may.

Julia says (I say that a lot, don’t I?), ‘Newspapers say, “Have you got one from that person that is 4 inches?”’ And she selected 3 of differing lengths. She’s had stuff in
The Observer
and
Guardian
and worked years in South African papers. Rob’t A says in his editorial, ‘This has drained me.’ Julia said, ‘You might say it’s had somewhat the same effect on me.’

James is driving me back to Dulwich later. I think I’ll finish this later, too. Patrick White says, ‘Educated men bleach the meaning out of words, there is no colour left.’ Perhaps he means the way they use language but not, I think, in the way they see and dig language, surely. Q. What do you think?

It’s strange, no matter how I want to be myself and tell the truth in poems, I have to pick up the seashell (person) and listen to the waves returning even if I feel the shell’s a sham and is not teaching me what I need. But then, some do. I must be careful, very bloody careful, or I’ll go after a big shell’s loud seas and forget my own sea’s sound.

Geoff Wilson says, ‘When you see a Cezanne face to face, you just wonder why you paint.’ The more I
see of modern Australian poetry, the less I feel I know and it’s so dismaying to enjoy so little, as you know. And when I see the great Adrienne Rich of the USA lauded to the skies by my women friends and read her myself, all I feel is queasy and seasick. I think it’s the rhythm – so I have to stop reading. Yet she got a Gold Book Award for that selfsame book
Diving Into the Wreck.
Have I told you about her before? Perhaps.

Wed.

In a minute I’ll be older (by a year). I simply had to tell you this lovely coincidence – in Stephanie and Clifford’s latest house acquisition I found a pile of
Observer
magazines. One contained an interview with Philip Toynbee with Rob’t Graves. As you told me you like him, I read it at once. What a lovely thing to say – ‘A great poet must be in love and he must protect his honour. To write poetry, you have to be in an induced trance. And you might say that a poet’s life is like Alice falling down the well and clutching at the flowers and things growing out of the walls as he falls past them.’ Ain’t that the truth?

Today I had lunch with Ianesco [Ian North] and his brother and walked home through the park. I feel particularly worried about money at the moment and I saw a circle of petunias in the park so lay down beside them and their hot mouths and looked inside one and
all unreality went back to its proper place. I shall just ring the bank man tomorrow and make a clean sheet of it. He’s always been very adjusting in the past. And Richard has offered to pay all costs of the divorce. How it drags us into debt from each other.

Philip called today and stayed to dinner and sat on Hugh (literally) and, as he says he weighs 14 stone, Hugh won’t be so saucy for a while. Goody goody.

With books spread around, I said to Philip, ‘I’m aiming to get all these in order – novels together and so on.’ He said mildly, ‘Do you intend to do it alphabetically, Jill, or will you use the Dewey system?’ My foot was near to him so I kicked him.

Maurice is teaching me Italian. I learnt several words. Now just what were they?

Sat 17th

This letter has gone on too long and yet I’d like to continue. By now you will have had some of your holiday and a think, too. I find it so strange that I can speak so calmly of you talking about ending this affair and can accept it and not resent it.

Brian Medlin asked me if he could see some poems last night. He sat on my bed and read ‘Pub’ and ‘Mrs Stone’ and ‘Childhood Landscape’. He
said he thought they were ‘Tremendously good’ – he was drunk – but they were couched in literary language that spoke only to the educated. He said he’d like to talk to me later about reaching uneducated people. I felt distant, as if I try to do what he suggests I’ll end up with doggerel or nursery rhymes. He’s a good man and clever but he’s made many a good artist give up painting and work in posters masquerading as fine art. Art is political but taking people by the scruff of their neck and yelling at them ‘for their own good’ is stupid and ugly, too. Also arrogant.

On the subject of publishing poetry, Brian made good sense and said most of what’s published in
New Poetry
is rubbish and R Tipping and Rbt Adamson are verbal acrobats who he ignores. He’ll learn to hate me. Or, more likely, find me quite unsatisfactory, and my poetry.

Bob and Diana [Boynes] and Caro and I have just had a walk round the park looking at the moon and Sthn Cross.

God sends me what I need in the hands of friends. Tonight I picked up
The Progress of Poetry
which someone at the party left out. I read Wordsworth and suddenly read without the doily over my eyes. So without my own narrow expectations in the way, I
realised he is a great poet. How foolish and obtuse I’ve been.

I’m going to read all the old poets now and give up reading rubbish on good paper for a while.

Tonight I thought how strange it is that we know so little of each other’s worlds or obsessions. For instance, when seeing Tristram (Carey) [the composer] I don’t realise how his appearances and activity in the social world in which I see him comprise just the tip of the mountain of his reality world, which is music. Or Bob’s experience of the world, which is so visual it shocks me to take a walk with him after all these years. Or you and the people you quote – the books in your head, which are in some ways the way you see the world. P’raps. I suppose Wordsworth looked quite ordinary and yet really was a sort of walking mountain/cloud.

At last I’ve done it. I’ve dreamt a whole poem. And I’ve remembered it. And you who I love.

Jill

These letters of mine were, I think, sent to the Department of English and from there were collected by hand. Soon after this letter was sent, a reply came, so I wrote again at once.

16 Swift Ave,

Dulwich, 21st Jan. 76

Dear Thomas,

Yes, it’s an immoderate number of letters, but then it’s all or nothing with me.

My head is a bursting melon full of poems. It’s madness. Today I walked home from the city through the park and lay down again beside the petunias and found a pencil and wrote about them. Then I walked on and saw a grey horse in the olive grove with its dark eyes and turned quickly away and saw the hills were wearing patchwork skirts and said, ‘No, no. Look at your feet,’ and saw that they were crushing the Queen’s green dress. It’s madness. The grapes (as I walked into Swift Avenue) were sour but the figs were ripe and nectarines hanging heavy round the corner. I tell you, it’s a curse.

I’m still reading that hero Auden. In a way, I feel that my love for you is as irrational as the duckling who, as he wakes from the egg, sees first the farmer, not the duck, and follows him devotedly as he carries his buckets. It’s as if you were the one I saw when I woke, and, although my head tells my blood it’s irrational, my blood can’t reason.

Today a magpie landed on the fence outside my room and sang with Haydn on the radio and a lovely thing – another arrived and they crossed beaks affectionately as old lovers and then the song went on.

It seems a pity that you can’t read a letter at the beach [where Thomas was on holidays with his wife] but will have a surfeit in the Department, which is not meant for reading letters – and too many at once, at that.

Today Diana worked in her studio as she always does and I watched her make a piece of jade into an art deco pendant that droops in silver loops – beautiful. She looks lovely working in her dirty clothes and big hands. Her hair was hanging down and, to my horror, she picked up a blow torch and began welding by the open door. One gust and she’d be alight. She’s promised to tie it back with a scarf as I told her horrible stories of scars. She has a show at the Festival in Green Hill Galleries.

I’ve begun
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
today – and it’s a real pleasure to have what sounds like an old friend speaking so wisely and kindly. Well, dear man, goodbye,

With love from Jill

16 Swift Ave,

Dulwich

22nd Jan. ‘76

Dear Thomas,

Yr. letter came yesterday and I was so glad. So much has happened since I last wrote. There are 6 adults staying here for the cricket. Neil and Kate
Lovett, who work in publishing, and Peter Davis and Frances. She is a painter and he is a lexicographer who was making an Australian dictionary with Noel but it fell undone.

They have a live flying fox in their room on a rope [the rope was slung between the twin white iron beds in Caro’s bedroom and Caro moved in with me] and she kisses it with a red tongue tip. Its wings are fine soft leather ending in black question marks. It is a waif and it’s off to New York with them.

Oh dear, I was relieved to have your letter, which made me see Erica Jong has not come between us as in my neurotic midnight talk I was sure.

Yesterday I had lunch at Chesser Cellar with two nursing friends. Afterwards, we went to Bookmasters and I persuaded them to buy
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
I bought Erica Jong’s
Here Comes & Other Poems.
Nice talks in it, which are from speeches she’s made. She is very sensible and I see from her long road how lucky I’ve been in not having to battle to find a voice. I mean, she made all her narrators men for years and wrote lies as a result. I feel she’s been picking up stones and aiming for a target that was only a mirage and one day, at last, the real target appeared and she managed to see it, aim for it and finally hit it. She hasn’t had many bull’s-eyes yet, as poems go, but some are good.

I was so lucky in that I saw the target right away (not intellectually, just intuitively) and, as the target was the centre of the lake for me, it was easy to see where to aim. One day I’ll hit it and the circles will go on and on, I hope.

But although that’s my aim, I do see that I’ll never be satisfied, as there are all these great poets to read and see how low I really am.

A girl who’s working with the Women’s Politics course at Flinders University came to see me to ask if they could put some poetry in a booklet they’re making for the course. I felt very honoured.

Noel Usher and Michael O’Brien called and asked if I’d help at a Freshers’ Camp for adults on weekend of 12th–15th Feb at Noarlunga. I said I would. I remember how lonely I was in the first term and the shock of the brain operation I felt I was having at university with being forced to think and to have my mind sharpened like that – it seemed so frightening. I felt if someone from outer space offered to fix my brain and make me more able to think I’d have said no, but there I was of my own volition having the operation daily. My teeth used to chatter from shock.

Philip has been round a few times – he asked me to dinner but I don’t feel like it as when he goes to a restaurant with me alone he doesn’t talk and I feel married to him and doomed. He’s coming here
tonight, as Julia, Stephanie, Jack, Clifford and Simon are coming to dinner.

Two days ago I decided to leave here Sat. for Melbourne as I felt sad, but, since your letter and these visitors, I think I’ll wait till end of Feb, as I’d planned. How quickly things alter for the better (or worse?). [I didn’t always have the children with me because sometimes on weekends and for school holidays they went to stay with their father and Becky at their home at North Adelaide and then later at Henley Beach, where they had moved near Julia.]

Well, I’ll admit it, Pisspot, I’ve been missing you.

Love from Jill

P.S. I am curious to hear how you get letters. Or if you do. I don’t believe any sane person would travel miles to work to collect their mail. What gives? Do you get these letters?

Sunday 18 Feb.

Dear Thomas,

You might feel awash with letters but it’s so pleasant for me to write them that I hope you won’t feel it’s strange.

Today Robyn Greer [the administrator of the new Women’s Community Health Centre run by the friend who shared my house, Dr Margie Taylor] and I went to Maslin Beach and swam with her two children.
It was my first visit and it was quite easy to run in naked in the daylight, even after all the years of clothes. I was surprised how easy it was – as soon as I saw the first naked person I felt I was walking into my own country at last. Only at night racing off from dinner parties had I swum naked before, and the sun is better than the moon. I wondered how I’d feel if I met acquaintances but it’s so pleasant and ordinary that when I met that nice barman from Charlie Brown’s [bistro] I just said hello and felt nothing.

While there, I read ‘Frost at Midnight’ and ‘The Ancient Mariner’. I hope someone will read me Coleridge when I’m dying…

Today I had to help a drunken boy out of the water at the beach as he was lying face-down on the edge, getting burnt, red as an Easter egg, and water in his mouth. People walked past. Strangely I put on my shift to do it. Shades of my uniform?

There is a poem I wrote about you today called ‘Rebellion by the Sea’ and yesterday one about your carnations.

And what about you, dear Pisspot? Rit any poems lately? I’m just opening R Graves as you suggested in one second, so goodnight.

19th. Today is quake day. [The newspaper and other media had made much of the fact that a psychic had
foretold that there would be a tsunami caused by an earthquake in the sea in Spencer Gulf.] Caro is scared. Hugo intends to take his surfboard to the beach to catch the tidal wave. I heard him telling Bob at breakfast – he has no idea what a tidal wave is, so Bob tried to explain. He said, ‘It’s the nastiest kind of dumper, Hugo.’

I’m so glad you mentioned Rob’t Graves, Thomas. I think he’s ravishing. I have a Penguin of Auden’s choice of his own work and here it is.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm

is the way I feel about you.

Later, Bob, Diana and I had dinner at Los Amigos last night and saw a film. Now Bob is playing gin rummy with Caroline in her yellow nightie while Diana brushes her hair, ready to make jewellery.

And Hugo and Dan are catching yabbies at the creek – and that, as the cricket broadcasters say, dear man, is the state of play at the moment.

With love from Jill

P.S. Please excuse the corrections with pen in poems – none of us can fix the ribbon so I have to use carbons and type blind.