A Certain Style

by Jacqueline Kent

  I think it would be true to say that Beatrice initiated or revived the publishing policy which George Ferguson, always with her active participation, kept in operation so long and so successfully, which means that, as much as anyone else, and more than most, she has kept Australian literature alive for more than a quarter of a century.

  George Ferguson added:

  No other editor can possibly claim to have had so much influence during almost four vital decades of development in Australian publishing. When Beatrice came into A&R Australian publishing differed little from what it had been in the nineties. When she left it had been transformed into the third force in publishing in the English language; and no one had played a more important part than she had.

  It was a cheerful Beatrice who wrote to Xavier Herbert in January 1974, about a month before she started her new job. The trip, she said, had been a good move. She had been able:

  to see that Dick lived before he died (he enjoyed every minute); to confirm my divorce from the old firm; and to make me more than thankful that I had Australia to come home to. Anyhow I’ve now joined the ancient firm of Thomas Nelson (estab 1872) … I find them wonderful people – vital, enthusiastic and competent – and it will be fun to work for them as an editor in Sydney, with my office here at home. I’m sorry to say so, since you categorically hate all publishers; but publishing is my game, my way of life, if l have to earn a living.2

  Nelson’s Australian office was true to its UK origins, it was even something of an outpost of Empire. Al Knight was Canadian; English-born Anne Godden had worked as an editor in colonial Africa; Sue Ebury, originally from New Zealand, was married to a member of the English aristocracy; another editor, English-born Liz Macdonald, had studied at university in London and worked for Oxford University Press in the UK. Beatrice was the only Australian-born person on the senior editorial staff. The editorial offices were on the upper floor of an ancient building in Little Collins Street, an English-looking part of Melbourne that, with its deciduous tree-lined wide streets and solid grey Victorian buildings, kept the less refined aspects of Australia at bay.

  While Beatrice rejoiced to find herself working for a company where her expertise was respected and valued, she was not entirely confident. At sixty-five she was the oldest editor and she would be working directly on manuscripts for the first time in some years: could she still do it? A month or two after she started at Nelson, Anthony Barker dropped in to see her and over a glass or two of whisky – usually when Beatrice’s anxieties came out – she worried about the amount of work she had taken on.3

  However, she was encouraged to find that she resumed the rhythms and skills of close, detailed editing very quickly. She revived other habits of years: quick and decisive evaluation of manuscripts, efficient use of words and time. Some of her younger Nelson colleagues found her insistence on high standards of editorial practice and behaviour rather formidable. She even reminded Sue Ebury of her children’s nanny. Ebury felt that Beatrice would have been very much at home in a certain stratum of literary London – the cultivated, well-read world of Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch, of Michael Joseph, George Weidenfeld and Sir William Collins.4

  When they came to know Beatrice better, her colleagues picked up occasional hints that this woman of the world, this lucid, clever judge of manuscripts, was less secure than she seemed. Just occasionally, when she was caught off balance – perhaps by an allusion to a book she hadn’t read, or a production procedure that was unfamiliar – her response had a touch of defensiveness. Was this, Sue Ebury wondered, because she still felt vulnerable after what had happened at Angus and Robertson?

  In December 1976 the National Book Council named Beatrice Bookman of the Year. This was the first time a woman, and an editor, had won the award, but Beatrice – no lover of inclusive language – was content to be a bookman, not a bookperson. There were tributes from several of her friends and former colleagues, including Nancy Keesing, George Ferguson and Douglas Stewart. At a dinner in her honour she nailed her traditional editorial colours to the mast, mourning what she saw as the decline in standards of language use. Another thing she deplored was the growing commercialisation of publishing generally. When Suzanne Lunney interviewed her for the oral history archives of the National Library of Australia in 1977, Beatrice cut off her reverent questions about literature with: ‘The sad thing about publishing is … you talk about publishing as though it were literature, well it’s not! That’s the merest fraction of it. It’s usually books of information’.

  Beatrice was gradually, though reluctantly, coming to terms with the way publishing had changed. Events at Angus and Robertson had more or less forced her into becoming the standard-bearer for Fowler and the Oxford English Dictionary, and with a staff of editors she had been able to choose the manuscripts she wished to work on – usually those of authors whose writing she knew. Now she found herself editing a wide range of manuscripts by authors whose only common denominator was that they lived in Sydney and were being published by Thomas Nelson, and her mapping pen and red ink were working overtime. Sue Ebury, the editorial liaison between Beatrice and Nelson’s Melbourne-based production department, admired her meticulous work but was given the distinct impression that the authors with whom Beatrice had worked at A&R had been better writers, whose manuscripts needed less editorial attention than Nelson’s. If she was trying to make Nelson believe that she had done little rewriting in the past and was not used to performing radical surgery on manuscripts, Beatrice was being disingenuous.

  One of her chief delights was working with some of her favourite authors. Thea Astley had decided that Beatrice was her editor, rather than A&R being her publishers, and moved across to Nelson while Beatrice was there. Over A Kindness Cup and Hunting the Wild Pineapple, they renewed their friendly editorial relationship. Hal Porter went to Nelson for The Extra, the third part of his autobiography, and a book of stories, The Clairvoyant Goat. Nelson’s staff became participants in the Hal Porter show, having dinner with him or accompanying him on pub crawls while they tried not to drink as much as he did. Robert Sessions – the young Englishman who became Nelson’s publishing director when Anne Godden and Al Knight left to set up their own company Hyland House – took over the role of chief minder. Porter often spoke of Beatrice, who Sessions suspected was the only woman the writer had ever really loved, though his behaviour was hardly loverlike. When Porter was with Beatrice at Folly Point he drank too much, said outrageous things and generally behaved like a naughty schoolboy, while Beatrice played the stern but indulgent parent or teacher. It was not particularly pleasant to watch, but both Beatrice and Porter appeared to derive great enjoyment from carrying out what was by now a well-established double act.5

  Not all Beatrice’s relationships with authors who followed her to Nelson proceeded on such predictable lines. In 1976 Nelson accepted Ruth Park’s Swords and Crowns and Rings. Bob Sessions, who had come to Nelson from Penguin, had wanted to publish it as the first hardback under the Viking imprint, but had let it go; Penguin were nervous about hardback fiction and he knew it needed to be cut substantially. Beatrice had misgivings about the novel, which she thought sentimental and too long, but Nelson were keen to do it and Sessions was happy for Beatrice to handle it because of her experience and her friendship with the author. Park cut 30 000 words out of the manuscript and the novel was edited and published. Swords and Crowns and Rings won the 1977 Miles Franklin Award, went into paperback and sold well. Beatrice later edited other books of Ruth Park’s, including Playing Beatie Bow (1980), the Children’s Book of the Year in 1981.

  Beatrice had been working for Nelson for some months when Les Murray showed her the draft of a novel dealing with Indonesia during the events of 1965, when President Sukarno took his country on a collision course with the West, causing a bloodbath and his own downfall. The manuscript was currently on offer in London and had the intriguing title of The Year of Living Dangerously. Its author was Murray’s friend Christopher Koch. Beatri
ce knew Koch as a promising young writer: they had met in the late 1950s after Harnish Hamilton published his first novel The Boys in the Island (1958), and they had a mutual friend in Hal Porter. As soon as she read the new manuscript Beatrice was enthusiastic: here was the first significant Australian novel about Indonesia. Koch wished to publish his new novel in the UK and Australia simultaneously, and so it was jointly published by Nelson and Michael Joseph.

  In late 1977 the editing process began, Beatrice and Koch working by letter. Koch was living in Launceston, having recently left his job in the ABC Radio education department to write full-time. At first he was a little suspicious of Beatrice: he thought her literary tastes were ‘a bit arty’, she had worked for a company that took advantage of being Australia’s only significant publisher to treat local writers badly, and she had a reputation for being high-handed, ruling her little empire ‘like the czarina’. On The Year of Living Dangerously editor and author worked together amicably enough – when Beatrice said the manuscript was too long Koch cut it by one-third, and he agreed to most of her other suggested changes – though prickles were never far below the surface. At one point in the novel two of the main characters realised they were in love and Beatrice snapped, ‘For God’s sake, Christopher, can’t you get them to show more feeling than this?’ Koch argued back heatedly, eventually agreed to look at the passage again, decided Beatrice was right and reworked it. They had touchy discussions about grammar (the use of ‘that’ as distinct from ‘which’) and Koch felt that Beatrice’s insistence on correct usage sometimes chopped into the rhythm of his sentences, but each emerged with respect for the other’s professionalism, and Koch had no doubt that Beatrice’s work had improved his book. The Year of Living Dangerously became a bestseller and a newspaper headline catch-phrase; it won the Age Book of the Year Award in 1978 and a National Book Council award the following year. It was made into a successful movie starring Mel Gibson, Linda Hunt and Sigourney Weaver.

  But the cordiality between Beatrice and Christopher Koch soured at a private dinner to celebrate the NBC award. After a whisky or two, Beatrice compared him unfavourably with another contemporary writer she admired; her tendency to be excessively forthright, to put it mildly, was increasing with age and was exacerbated by alcohol. It was as if all those years of editorial good manners and gentlewomanly behaviour had to find an outlet, as if for every ladylike action there had to be an equal and opposite waspish, even spiteful, reaction. Koch wrote her a hurt and angry letter, and he and Beatrice were not on speaking terms for some time. But when in 1985 Koch’s novel The Doubleman won the Miles Franklin Award, Beatrice went up to congratulate him at the prize-giving event. They chatted amicably for a while, and Beatrice suddenly said, ‘Christopher, this is ridiculous. Let’s make up, shall we?’ So they did.6

  In the Australia Day honours of 1981 Beatrice was made an AM for her services to Australian literature (she had been made an MBE in 1965). She was naturally pleased and wrote to Hal Porter, one of her nominators: ‘Thank you for putting in the word that helped the Powers to give me an AM. It was gratifying to the old girl.’7 At about the same time she was awarded an Emeritus Fellowship by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. This scheme, set up by the old Commonwealth Literary Fund, allowed for a small annuity to a group of no more than twenty writers. Beatrice’s was worth $5000 per annum to begin with, increasing in November 1987 to $8750, and her fellowship remains the only one ever given to a book editor. But ironically, in the midst of these honours, when the often thankless role of the book editor was being acknowledged and Beatrice was finally achieving public recognition as the doyenne of her profession, she was about to lose her job for the second time.

  By 1980 the UK owners of Thomas Nelson were taking a long, hard look at their Australian program. Publishing in Australia was growing more competitive, profit margins steadily narrower, and while the Australian company had published some profitable books, they had also lost money on novels and poetry. The parent company decided to cut back on general publishing and concentrate on educational and specialist works with a guaranteed market. There would be staff cut-backs: there was no further need for a separate Sydney office with an editor being paid a salary.

  This decision, which he could do nothing to influence, deeply upset Bob Sessions. He had very much enjoyed his visits to Folly Point, talking to Beatrice over whisky and soda about the Nelson list, about other authors and their books, discussing Australian writing in general. His conversations with Beatrice, he felt, had given him a real ‘feel’ for Australian literature and he was grateful to her. Twenty-five years Beatrice’s junior, he was also a little in love with her: her vitality, sensuality, wit and elegance had scarcely diminished with the years. She always called him Robert, never Bob, and his staff at Nelson watched with amusement as he gradually grew more urbane, taking to whisky instead of beer, and smoking cigars. Sessions also protected Beatrice. In her seventies, she was starting to slow down, to miss small points on manuscripts. Once Sessions suggested as tactfully as possible that she might like to concentrate on structural editing, leaving the very detailed work to others. Beatrice was affronted by this, pointing out that she had been employed to do a complete editorial job. Sessions said no more but quietly made sure that her manuscripts were checked by a Nelson in-house editor without Beatrice’s knowledge. Now, after seven years, he was being forced to tell her that her services were no longer required.

  Feeling dreadful, he broke the news as gently as possible on his next visit to Sydney. He said she could become a consultant, perhaps do some freelance work. Beatrice took the blow calmly, as she did all set-backs, saying she had been expecting it for some time (which Sessions did not believe). Her stoicism and tact made him feel even worse. The next day he received a curt phone call from John Broadbent, whom Sessions had met in Beatrice’s company once or twice, with a request for a meeting at Broadbent’s club. As soon as Sessions appeared, Broadbent went on the attack. Was Nelson aware that Beatrice didn’t own the house she lived in, that it belonged to her late husband’s estate? Did Sessions realise that this forced retirement would ‘probably kill’ Beatrice? What was he going to do about it?

  Broadbent’s knight-errantry sent Sessions back to Folly Point the next day, telling Beatrice he would do anything he could to reverse Nelson’s decision. Whatever Beatrice might have felt about her lover discussing her financial situation with her employer, she was firm: she wouldn’t hear of any change, she would accept Nelson’s decision and things must stay as they were. (Of course her financial position was not as dire as Broadbent had painted it.) They arranged that she would be paid a small retainer to oversee the last of Nelson’s general list.8

  Beatrice stopped being a full-time employee of Thomas Nelson in April 1981, a few months after her seventy-second birthday. Most women of her age and background would have retired gracefully but at no time, then or ever, did Beatrice intend to disappear entirely. As she had once told Xavier Herbert, publishing was her way of life, and she saw no reason why that should change.

  After a three-month trip to Europe she returned to Sydney invigorated, telling Hal Porter she was ‘glad indeed to sink back into my rut of domesticity, friends and relations, work offered and accepted’.9 She had work to finish off for Nelson and she was now editing manuscripts for other publishers, including the new Sydney firm of Mead and Beckett, run by Rod Mead and Barbara Beckett.

  Late in 1980, while Beatrice was still at Nelson, Patrick Gallagher, managing director of Allen & Unwin Australia, asked her to edit the manuscript that had won a new award for an unpublished novel by a writer under the age of thirty.10 Though the English-born Gallagher had been in Australia for several years he knew little about Beatrice; Allen & Unwin were publishers of non-fiction and academic books and this was their first foray into fiction. Sponsored by the Vogel bread company and the Australian newspaper, the prize, then worth $10 000, was Australia’s richest for a young writer. The winner, Paul Radley from Newcast
le, New South Wales, was only eighteen; his winning novel Jack Rivers and Me was the story of five-year-old Peanut, his imaginary friend Jack Rivers, and life in the country town of Boomeroo.

  Radley was the latest beneficiary of the perennial Australian eagerness to find brilliant new young writers.11 In the press and on television he was portrayed as a rustic genius, a young man who, after an indifferent education, had somehow found the assurance, style and craft to write a prize-winning novel. He also seemed to need his family around him a great deal, especially his great-uncle Jack.

  Beatrice worked with Paul Radley by letter. The manuscript was too long, she wrote in November 1980, mostly because he ‘went on’, spoiling effects by adding sometimes tedious dialogue. She worried about the fact that the main character could not possibly have reproduced grown-up conversations – ‘Remarkable child though he is, P. is only five’ – and sent three and a half pages of her usual crisp, occasionally elliptical notes. But Beatrice also gave Radley a great deal of latitude: ‘please rewrite these four lines retaining their lyrical quality’, or ‘see if you can make him sound more natural’, for instance. She wasn’t going to hold his hand or be his mentor, but simply give guidance. ‘Remember I’m a helper, as all editors should be,’ she told him.

  At least once she had to reprove him. ‘You really do owe it to yourself (money apart) to take your writing more seriously than you appear to do,’ she wrote to him in February 1981. ‘It is a demanding art or craft, and you have the essential qualities of humanity and imagination. Your appearing (in spite of your modesty) so cavalier, even arrogant, about it disturbs me because I believe good writing is so important – and so rare. But if you just don’t want to be a writer, that’s that.’12 Her words take on a new resonance in view of what was to happen fifteen years later.

  Beatrice became firm friends with Patrick Gallagher, then in his early thirties. The Allen & Unwin offices were not far from Beatrice’s house and Gallagher occasionally called in to see her on the way home from work. Their only disagreement came when Jack Rivers and Me was ready for publication and Gallagher assumed that Beatrice wanted her name as editor on the imprint page. Beatrice let him know in no uncertain terms what she thought of editors who thrust themselves forward in this way.