Sometimes friendship plays out more easily in writing, as it does in this beautiful volume of Janet Frame's correspondence with Charles Brasch.
‘Mr Editor, A story. Crumbly and of poor grade. You probably won’t want it.” So begins Dear Charles Dear Janet: Frame & Brasch in Correspondence. The slim (letters run to 58 pages) limited edition, hand-printed by Tara McLeod, charts Janet Frame’s growing confidence as a writer and the careful yet deepening friendship between her and Charles Brasch.
From the time of her self-deprecating offer to Landfall (of which Brasch was the founding editor) in 1949, Frame and Brasch corresponded for 24 years. Their letters leaven the professional with the personal, noting books written and read, music heard and films seen; news of friends and places in common; assurances of general well-being; as well as matters regarding their respective work.
Among Frame’s lengthier letters is one engaged with a review of Scented Gardens for the Blind – on the objection to Frame’s “weakness for metaphor”, she comments, “I’m afraid I breathe metaphors, mostly bad or indifferent” – and others acknowledge Brasch’s tireless efforts to secure her an income. As heir to considerable wealth, and patron of the arts, he made ostensibly anonymous donations to Frame, and for over
a decade petitioned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to establish a pension grant equivalent to the British Civil List. In 1971, he was able to write to Frame that the Government had agreed to grant her an annuity.
Brasch’s letters convey his desire to make the idea of settling permanently in New Zealand less nightmarish for Frame, who in the early 1960s believed that only “living away from New Zealand is a means of ensuring physical safety and security”. It was in direct response to Frame’s fears that Brasch started inquiries regarding the annuity, at the same time reminding her of the cultural life possible in New Zealand, with Dunedin at times “abuzz with poets and musicians”.
In the nine letters, also included, written after Brasch died in May 1973, Frame declares he “held the Arts on his shoulders for so long – little Antipodean Atlas”. The volume ends with her, recipient of a honorary doctorate, living permanently in financial security in New Zealand – achievements for which we must be partly grateful to Brasch.
There are other smaller but equally touching acts of kindness recorded here, starting with the coat Brasch gave to the younger writer the first time they met; the tea and seed cake served at that meeting and habitually thereafter; the gingerbread and date squares Frame made for Brasch’s afternoon tea; a handmade rug Brasch sent Frame as a housewarming gift when she bought her first house in 1965; mint from her garden, a “little bag of fresh ripe walnuts” from his; and the first editions of her books Frame always sent Brasch and Brasch always read and responded to immediately, declaring A State of Siege “above all a poem”, The Rainbirds “a haunting and troubling book” and Daughter Buffalo “a very beautiful and persuasive fable”.
Theirs is a genuinely reciprocal correspondence, yet to another friend, American painter Bill Brown, Frame confided that she felt “rather constrained in Charles’ company”. Sometimes friendship plays out more easily in writing, as it does in this beautiful volume of letters.
What the correspondence captures is two rare people attuned to each other across distance, time and sometimes unsympathetic situations. The letters criss-cross the world, expressing the twin excitement and depression that comes with travel and the authors’ doubts about wanting to come home.
Most wonderful are the incidental details: “the budding broom and gorse” in Dunedin; “a seal, a penguin, and a tiny hedgehog” on Pipikariti Beach; “the exotic waves of people and traffic” in London; the “spectacle of the surrounding fire of maple, birch” at the MacDowell Colony in North America – building up a picture of lives lived in parallel attentiveness.
DEAR CHARLES DEAR JANET: FRAME & BRASCH IN CORRESPONDENCE, edited by Pamela Gordon and Denis Harold (Holloway Press, limited edition of 150, $250).