A Nobel savage
Francis King
PATRICK WHITE: A LIFE The English obituaries of Patrick White were far more perfunctory than those of Graham Greene. But, although Greene's books had an immeasurably wider circula- tion, White was immeasurably the greater artist. In awarding him and not Greene the Nobel Prize, the committee surely got it right.
Whether David Marr has got it right in devoting 727 closely printed pages to a book which White himself suggested should be entitled 'The Monster of All Time', is another question. Beside the vision, grandeur and audacity of the novels, the life is sadly blinkered, petty and mean. I can never forgive mediocrity in anyone,' was one of White's characteristically arrogant pronouncements; but, whereas he was a giant as a writer, he all too often himself showed mediocrity or worse in his behaviour.
It is to the credit of Marr that at no time does ;le attempt to present White as more likeable or more admirable than he was; and it is even more to White's credit that when, old and plagued with a multitude of afflictions — glaucoma, pulmonary fibrosis, a collapsed spine — he sat down to read Marr's manuscript, he never demanded any alterations other than to errors of fact. To many a writer it would have been devastat- ing to see his personal equation so remorselessly written out; but White, with rare self-knowledge, even self-hatred, knew that his description of Tolstoy as 'that old abomination' was equally apt for himself. Marr begins by recreating White's asthma-afflicted, over-indulged childhood as the only son of a family from Australia's grazier 'aristocracy'. His mother, who ended her days, attended by nurses and servants, as a neighbour of L.P. Hartley in a sumptuous flat in Rutland Gate, was such a thumping snob that she arranged to be presented at Court at the age of 41. White showed a similar snobbery over the antecedents of his lifetime companion, Manoly Lascaris. Just as a certain type of English snob likes to boast 'We came over with the Normans', so a certain type of Greek snob likes to boast 'We're descend- ed from the Byzantine emperors.' White
did this boasting for his partner.
The two men met in Alexandria, where White, an air force officer, found himself in the war. Before that White had suffered an English education, first at Cheltenham and then at King's College, Cambridge; had lived in Ebury Street, where he became the lover of the Australian painter Roy Le Maistre; and had travelled widely in Amer- ica. Marr's account of the long 'marriage' of White and Lascaris is as moving as A.N. Wilson's account of the long marriage of the Tolstoys, for precisely the same reason: in each case, the victim not merely accept- ed but even welcomed immolation on the altar of genius.
If White emerges badly from this relationship, Lascaris emerges only with credit. In the difficult years, in the immedi- ate aftermath of the war, when, despite all the family money, White was unsuccessfully attempting to scratch a living from the land, Lascaris slaved at tending livestock, creating a garden, breeding dogs. Enraged over some triviality, White would either scream at him, often in front of others, or would demand that he should clear out, now, now, at once, out, out, even if the time was long past midnight. Lascaris would patiently explain that at such an hour he could not possibly leave; he would leave in the morning. When the morning came, White had forgiven and forgotten. So, far more admirably, had Lascaris.
Marr successfully demonstrates why, to the amazement and regret of many of his English friends, White returned after the war to what he called 'The Land of High Farce and sheep shit', instead of settling in London. He constantly derided his fellow countrymen for their vulgarity, philistinism, obtuseness and provinciality; but he had the sagacity to realise that, once he was out of Australia, the colours would gradually bleed from his palette, as they have from the palettes of so many Australian writers self-exiled in England. Marr tells a sad story of friendships con- stantly lopped off, as though they were
dead branches in an orchard from which the owner is determined to exact a maxi- mum yield. The pattern is usually the same. This or that person is needed — like Sidney Nolan in the case of The Vivisector — to provide the author with the rough ore out of which he mints the gold of a charac- ter. The fictional character achieved, all that is left of the human character is dross for White. Lacking the courage to acknowl- edge this, he finds ludicrous pretexts for a break: this friend has omitted to reimburse him for a bottle of cream, that friend has refused the cauliflower salad prepared by White as part of a luncheon at which she is a guest. Once he has savagely excommuni- cated a friend of many years, this pope allows no return to the True Church of his favour. `I'm-sorry-let's-make-it-up' letters receive no answer.
In his last years, after the award to him of the Nobel Prize, White wasted more and more time on two activities for which he had no natural aptitude. The first of these was the writing of plays and film-scripts. Because of his eminence, the plays got staged and some of the films got made; but the results were never satisfactory. The other activity was politics, with this disdain- ful elitist suddenly and improbably embrac- ing Republicanism, anti-Americanism and other 'progressive' beliefs. His ineffectuali- ty in politics is demonstrated by the tone of the letters which he took to sending to world leaders. Was it likely that Reagan would listen to a writer who exhorted him `Come on, cowboy!' or Mrs Thatcher to one who urged her 'Search your heart, Mrs Thatcher, if one exists behind the pearls'?
Six years in the writing, Marr's fine bio- graphy gives the impression of including everything that anyone has ever known or thought about White. But, paradoxically, its very length sometimes militates against a clear view of its subject. The carefully drawn map contains so many by-roads, cul-de-sacs and meandering paths that there are times when one cannot discern the highway.
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