The day I nearly met Patrick White

When I read Patrick White’s book The Tree of Man I was fascinated by his style of writing and his storytelling ability. He became my favourite Australian author. When I published my first book, Strangers Country in 1977, I readily admit, that, in parts, its style and phraseology owed something to Patrick White.

 After its publication my friend, the late James McQueen, suggested I send Patrick White a copy of my book. There was some discussion about how many other aspiring writers would do the same, and how Patrick White might think that it was a sneaky way of using any comment he might make as promotion material. I didn’t want him to think that, so I expressly wrote inside the cover that my book was just a small gesture in appreciation for all his writing and that I wasn’t seeking a response.

On the strength of my book having positive reviews in The Age Newspaper, The Australian and the ABC book program, I was invited to attend the Adelaide Writers Festival where I mixed with many literary luminaries such as Elizabeth Jolly, Ann Summers and Thea Astley.

 On the third day after I had read (rather nervously) one of my stories, a man I’d never seen before emerged from the crowd, sat down beside me and introduced himself. I was somewhat surprised by the event and I regret that I didn’t get his name. I think he said he was a publisher.

 He told me that he had a message from Patrick. He told me that Patrick said thanks for the gift of my book and that he’d read it and enjoyed it, that I had an individualistic style and that I should never be persuaded to sway from it. I thought it a rather cryptic message at the time, but who cared, the man at the very top of my literary tree liked my stories! I was, to say the least, elated.

 In 1982 I was accepted to attend the Film School in Sydney to learn film script writing. I rented a room from a friend of mine in Randwick and drove to the school in North Ryde each weekday. At the weekends I used to walk for miles in all directions, exploring the Eastern Suburbs and working potential scripts over in my mind.

 During one of my walks around Centennial Park, quite by accident, I suddenly realized that I was in the street where Patrick White lived. Martin Road, Centennial Park. Number 20. I remembered it well.  It was the address to which I’d posted my book.

 Would I walk right in and knock on his door? Hello Mr White, I’d say, my name is Geoffrey Dean… remember my book? Would he invite me in? Would he offer me a cup of tea or coffee? And why did I want to say hello? Perhaps I needed the story of my visit to carry around me in my name-dropping bag to impress my friends at the dinner table? I had no real idea what my motive really was.

 And just say that he had invited me in - what then? I wasn’t really a literary person at all. I’d never so much got a sniff at getting a degree in literature. I disliked disseminating writing for its own sake. I was a storywriter. I wrote stories intuitively by watching and seeing and listening; teasing stories out from the remembered past and the present ethos; waiting for them to emerge and reveal their shape and purpose. How could I have talked about that with a great writer who had won the Nobel Prize?

 But then Hell, I could talk about something else, couldn’t I? Like, where I lived under the mountain in Hobart and how my day job was painting other people’s houses - or about farming - just general repartee - the kind of conversation I was reasonably good at.

 So, drawing in my breath and imagining that my backbone was lashed to a shining steel rod, I opened the gate and let myself into his garden. A garden, I thought, that owed as much to Southern Europe as it did to Australia.

 I either rang or banged at the door. (A detail that escapes my memory.) Silence from within - the kind of dull silence that belonged to a house bereft of any living being. There was hardly any need for the neighbour’s voice calling to me from over the fence that Patrick and Manoly were away.

 I never did try again during that year I was living in Sydney. I had stumbled on his street by accident, knocked at his door and he wasn’t home. I put the event down to Fate giving me a message. At that age and experience draining my feeble literary courage once, was enough…

 Some years later I met Vivian Smith the expatriate Tasmanian poet at Salamanca Market who now lived in Sydney. I knew Vivian when he lived in Hobart and I had heard through the literary grapevine that he was Patrick White’s friend. I told him about my foray into Patrick White’s territory. Ah, yes, he said, I actually had a conversation about you with Patrick when I saw your book in his bookcase.

 And, I asked? Well nothing much really he said. He asked me how old you were and when I told him you were about my age he seemed rather surprised. Was it because he thought my writing had the promise of the young, I asked?  No, nothing to do with that, Vivian said. It was more to do with whether your stories would be acceptable in Australia because of their...

 That’s when the phone rang Vivian told me and Patrick went off to answer it. When he came back, Vivian said he was fuming about something that had gone wrong with the publishing of his next book. Unfortunately we never got back to you, Vivian said rather regretfully. I wonder what it was he was going to say?

 Yeah, and me too. A pity he wasn’t home that day I called.