Wrestling With The Angel by Michael King

Author:Michael King [King, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780670893713
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2001-06-04T04:30:00+00:00

Charles Brasch had her to afternoon tea and dinner at his house in Heriot Row where, initially, Frame ‘nearly died of inferiority and disapproval; he always has that effect on me’. Subsequently, however, she wrote to Sargeson that Brasch had been ‘a gracious host, most kind and gentle’.27 And to Peter Dawson: ‘Seeing him from time to time, one [begins to find] him more approachable. I think he is a shy man.’28 She also went to local drama productions, sometimes in Brasch’s company, sometimes by herself. In these early months of the year the plays she saw included Richard III, Antigone and Lorca’s Blood Wedding.

To Frame’s dismay, Brasch’s news of the pension campaign did not sound promising. He told her that ‘the minister has said … try the Social Security Department for a medical benefit. Which means that JF is not worthy of [a literary pension], only of being declared a lunatic … I don’t think I can accept [this], as it would bring so much loss of confidence and continued need for the presentation of certificates.’29

On 7 May Frame was invited to dinner at Margaret Dalziel’s, and discovered that her fellow guests were Charles Brasch (there was a danger, Frame told Sargeson, that she and Brasch were now being viewed as ‘a couple’),30 Professor Alan Horsman and his wife, Dorothea, writer Dennis McEldowney, and the vice-chancellor, Dr Arthur Beacham, a Welshman. According to McEldowney, ‘Janet … scarcely said a word except to murmur a bit when the Vice-Chancellor wanted her to do a Lucky Jim about Otago. She didn’t think it was quite … “What kind of writer are you?” he wanted to know.’31 Frame told McEldowney afterwards that she had enjoyed the evening but had been overwhelmed by the number of people there.32

McEldowney followed this up by asking Frame to dinner with him and his widowed mother the following month, when the only other guest was the poet Ruth Dallas. ‘Janet and Ruth talked shop, about the choice of words,’ McEldowney noted. ‘Janet is worried because she finds she has a small vocabulary; Ruth deliberately uses a small vocabulary … Ruth said she always felt sad when she read a completely worthless manuscript [for Landfall] because of the work that had gone into it. Janet said, “I know, I’m having that experience now.”’ They confessed to one another their favourite comic strips. Frame’s was Dr Kildare.33Afterwards, she told Sargeson that she found McEldowney ‘so civilised. His long period of disability has been a sort of aristocratic Leisure, put to the best possible use … Ruth Dallas,’ she went on, ‘is very gentle, contained … She nursed her mother for over twenty years … [Such] an experience would bring serenity or insanity.’34 Along with Neal White and Brasch, Dallas and McEldowney would become her closest friends in Dunedin.

The day after the McEldowney’s dinner, on 23 June 1965, Frame came down with mumps. The women from the English Department rallied round magnificently, she told Sargeson, bringing her hot soup and

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