Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian novelist and playwright who explored themes of religious experience, personal identity and the conflict between visionary individuals and a materialistic, conformist society. Influenced by the modernism of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, he developed a complex literary style and a body of work that challenged the dominant realist prose tradition of his home country, was satirical of Australian society, and sharply divided local critics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973 and is the only Australian to have been awarded it.
Born in London to affluent Australian parents, White spent his childhood in Sydney and on his family's rural properties. He was sent to an English public school at the age of 13, and went on to read modern languages at Cambridge. After graduating in 1935 he embarked on a literary career. His first published novel, Happy Valley, was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. In World War II he served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force. While stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1941, he met Manoly Lascaris, who became his life companion and, as White later wrote, "the central mandala in my life's hitherto messy design."
In 1948 White returned to Australia, where he bought a small farm on the outskirts of Sydney. There he wrote the two novels, The Tree of Man and Voss, that brought him critical acclaim in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the 1960s he wrote the novels Riders in the Chariot and The Solid Mandala, and a series of plays, including The Season at Sarsaparilla and A Cheery Soul, that had a major impact on Australian theatre.
White and Lascaris moved to Sydney's Centennial Park in 1964. From the late 1960s White became increasingly involved in public affairs, opposing the Vietnam War and supporting Aboriginal self-determination, nuclear disarmament and various environmental causes. His later work includes the novels The Eye of the Storm and The Twyborn Affair and the memoir Flaws in the Glass ''.''
Childhood and adolescence
White was born in Knightsbridge, London, on 28 May 1912. His Australian parents, Victor Martindale White, a wealthy sheep grazier, and Ruth were in England on an extended honeymoon. The family returned to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. As a child he lived in a flat with his sister, a nanny, and a maid while his parents lived in an adjoining flat. In 1916 they moved to a large house, "Lulworth", in Elizabeth Bay. At the age of four White developed asthma, a condition that had taken the life of his maternal grandfather, and his health was fragile throughout his childhood.At the age of five he attended kindergarten at Sandtoft in Woollahra, close to their home. His mother often took him to plays and pantomimes and White developed a life long love of the theatre. Nevertheless, White felt closer to his nurse, Lizzie Clark, who taught him to tell the truth and "not blow his own trumpet".
In 1920 he attended Cranbrook School but his asthma worsened. Two years later he was sent to Tudor House School, a boarding school in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, where it was thought the climate would help his lungs. White enjoyed the freedom provided by the school where discipline was lax. He read widely from the school library, wrote a play and excelled at English. In 1924 the boarding school ran into financial trouble, and the headmaster suggested that White be sent to a public school in England.
In April 1925 his parents took White to England to enrol in Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire. In his first years at Cheltenham he was withdrawn and had few friends. He found his housemaster to be sadistic and puritanical, and White's certitude of his own homosexuality increased his sense of isolation. He later wrote of Cheltenham, "When the gates of my expensive prison closed I lost confidence in my mother, and never forgave."
One of White's few pleasures was the time spent at the Somerset home of his cousin, the painter Jack Withycombe. Jack's daughter Elizabeth Withycombe became a mentor to him while he was completing his first, privately published, volume of verse, Thirteen Poems, written between 1927 and 1929. White also became friends with Ronald Waterall who was two years his senior at Cheltenham and shared his passion for the theatre. He and White would spend their holidays in London seeing as many shows as they could.
White asked his parents if he could leave school to become an actor. His parents compromised and allowed him to leave school without taking his final examinations if he came home to Australia to try life on the land. But their son had already changed his mind on his future profession and was determined to become a writer.
In December 1929 White left Cheltenham and sailed to Sydney. He spent two years working as a jackaroo on sheep stations at Bolaro in the Monaro district of New South Wales and at Barwon Vale in northern New South Wales. The landscapes impressed White and he wrote two unpublished novels during this time: "The Immigrants" and "Sullen Moon".
White's uncle, who owned Barwon Vale, convinced White's parents that their son was not suited to the life of a grazier. White's mother was happy for him to become a writer but she wanted him to have a career as a diplomat as well. On this basis his parents agreed to send him to Cambridge. While studying for the entrance examinations, White completed a third unpublished novel, "Finding Heaven".
Europe, America and war
From 1932 White lived in England, studying French and German literature at King's College, Cambridge. There he began a love affair with a fellow student that lasted until White graduated. White wrote poems, some of which were published in the London ''Mercury. He spent his holidays in France and Germany to improve his languages and read Joyce, Lawrence, Proust, Flaubert, Stendhal and Thomas Mann with admiration. He made a pilgrimage to Zennor in Cornwall where Lawrence wrote Women in Love and the visit inspired further poems. A collection was published as The Ploughman and Other Poems in an edition of 300 in Sydney in 1935 but received little critical attention and was later suppressed by White. A play, Bread and Butter Women, was given an amateur production in Sydney the same year.On White's graduation in 1935 his mother wanted him to embark on a diplomatic career but he was determined to stay in England and become a writer. His mother relented and his father granted him an allowance of £400 a year. He moved to London's Pimlico district where, in 1936, he met the Australian painter Roy de Maistre. De Maistre briefly became White's lover and remained a mentor and friend. White later said that de Maistre had encouraged him to break from naturalistic prose and write "from the inside out."
White began work on the novel Happy Valley, partly based on his experience working as a jackaroo. In 1937 his story "The Twitching Colonel" was published in the London Mercury. His father died in December, leaving him a legacy of £10,000 that enabled him to write full-time in relative comfort. He started work on a play, Return to Abyssinia, and wrote skits for revues which were produced with moderate success. He completed Happy Valley and the novel was accepted by the British publisher George G. Harrap and Company in 1938.
Happy Valley was published in early 1939 to generally favourable reviews which encouraged White to go to America to find a publisher there. White arrived in New York in April and travelled across the country. He visited Taos, New Mexico, where he viewed Lawrence's ashes and met Frieda Lawrence. He then moved to Cape Cod where he worked on a novel, The Living and the Dead, partly based on his life in London. When the Second World War broke out in September, White took the first available ship back to England where he continued to work on his new novel.
In early 1940 White heard that Ben Huebsch, the head of the American publisher Viking, had accepted Happy Valley. Huebsch had published Lawrence and Joyce in America and White was delighted with the connection to these writers. Huebsch was to become one of White's main literary supporters. White decided to travel back to New York for the publication of Happy Valley and to complete the new novel. Happy Valley was published in June to favourable reviews. Huebsch also accepted the now completed novel The Living and the Dead for publication.
White returned to London where, in November, he was called up to an intelligence unit of the Royal Air Force. He was stationed at Bentley Priory during the Blitz before being transferred to North Africa in April 1941. He subsequently served in Egypt, Palestine and Greece. While stationed near Alexandria in July 1941 he met Manoly Lascaris, who was waiting to be recruited to the Royal Greek Army. Lascaris was to become White's life partner.
Following the war White was determined to leave England to avoid "the prospect of ceasing to be an artist and turning instead into that most sterile of beings, a London intellectual." White's preference was to live in Greece but Lascaris wanted to start a new life in Australia. White relented because, "It was his illusion. I suppose I sensed it was better than mine."
Before leaving for Australia White began work on a novel The Aunt's Story, inspired by a painting by Roy de Maistre. He sent the completed typescript to his American publisher in January 1947. In March, his play Return to Abyssinia opened in London to polite reviews. White missed its short season because he was in Australia making preparations for his permanent return. He returned to London and began a new play, The Ham Funeral, inspired by the William Dobell painting "The Dead Landlord".
White sailed back to Australia in December 1947. During his voyage The Aunt's Story was published in the United States to very favourable reviews and strong sales. Critic James Stern's review in the New York Times Book Review'' was enthusiastic and Stern would go on to be one of White's major champions in America.