Searching For Madeleine St John: The Craft Of Biography

Speaker

Helen Trinca

Speech Date

May 8, 2013

Issue

Issue 21

Helen Trinca is an author and Managing Editor of The Australian. Her early books were co-written – Waterfront: The Battle that Changed Australia and Better than Sex: How a Whole Generation Got Hooked on Work. She has now published the biography of Australian expat writer Madeleine St John, title Madeleine – The Life of Madeleine St John. Trinca has held senior reporting and editing roles in Australian journalism, including a stint as The Australian’s London correspondent. Helen Trinca addressed The Sydney Institute Speech on Wednesday 8 May 2013

SEARCHING FOR MADELEINE ST JOHN: THE CRAFT OF BIOGRAPHY

HELEN TRINCA

When we settled on the title for this talk – the Craft of Biography – it seemed like a good idea. But lately, as I have been working on the speech, I’ve wondered whether I need to throw away that title and substitute this one, “Edward St John: man of principle, or monster? Or both?”

He was the very picture of a man of public action, and he had a reputation that he cherished. But it was one that was challenged, absolutely, by his daughters – Madeleine St John, the subject of my biography, and her younger sister Colette.

Because that indeed is the question that dominated this book, and which caused me to bring to bear all the skills I could muster under this “craft of biography” that I found myself practicing – somewhat accidentally – these past couple of years.

And, for my audience here tonight, it’s a particularly interesting question because so many of you are of the generation who would know of or recall Ted St John – the Liberal Member for Warringah from 1966 –1969; the backbencher who became notorious for his decision to publicly challenge the decisions and behaviour of two of his own prime ministers, Harold Holt and John Gorton.

Ted St John was indeed a man of principle, a public figure not just in the 1960s, but also later as a barrister of note, a conservationist and a nuclear disarmament campaigner. He was the very picture of a man of public action, and he had a reputation that he cherished. But it was one that was challenged, absolutely, by his daughters – Madeleine St John, the subject of my biography, and her younger sister Colette.

Madeleine continued to rant to friends about the public and private disconnect but could never completely convince close friends and family about “the ghastly Ted” as she called him after his death.

Madeleine St John clung to that negative view, to those memories. She told many people over the course of her life about the father who had, in her mind, rejected her, who had emotionally abandoned her and Colette as young children. But she could never dent the public reputation of her father.

There were camps within the St John family, and various views among her friends, but these were private, hidden judgments and conversations. To the outside world, Ted was a model citizen and a man who made a significant contribution to the nation.

It was only in 1997, when Madeleine was short-listed for the Booker Prize, that some references to the dysfunctional relationship between father and daughter surfaced in the press. By then Ted St John was dead, but Madeleine’s anger was as vital as it had ever been. But while some of the complex emotional story emerged in the press at that time, it faded quickly.

The tapes sat in her home in Chicago and the story, which had dominated, absolutely dominated, so much of Madeleine’s life seemed destined never to be told.

By 2004, when she was in her early 60s, Madeleine had severe emphysema and knew she could not live much longer. She had written four lovely novels, she had some money for the first time in her life, but there was only one thing that really mattered at the end – to record what she saw as the truth about her father.

His public record was intact; but Madeleine wanted her version of their lives recorded. So she did exactly that, recording nine hours of statements about the father who, as far as she was concerned, was one thing in public and another at home. She asked her friend, Judith McCue, to use these tapes as the basis of a biography. Two years later Madeleine was dead.

The tapes were secure, but they too, in a sense were dead: Judith had no interest in writing the biography of this complex, difficult woman. The tapes sat in her home in Chicago and the story, which had dominated, absolutely dominated, so much of Madeleine’s life seemed destined never to be told.

Now it has been – in this book, Madeleine: A life of Madeleine St John. By accident really, after my chance encounter with her work, but it has been told. It is her story, but of course, it is also Ted’s story. Not the public story of Ted St John – he deserves his own biography and there is not a great deal in this book about Edward St John QC; or Edward St John MP. It is Ted’s private life that is discussed and debated in this biography – a story that, of necessity is driven in large part by Madeleine’s view of his behaviour.

Searching for Madeleine was, of course, especially challenging because she was relatively unknown.

There is, of course, an art to biography but Madeleine is my first biography and I am much more comfortable talking about the craft.

I am by training and experience a reporter, and it was my skills and training in journalism that I brought to this project. They were skills gathered over a great many years and they were tremendously useful. But nothing really prepares you for managing the sheer scale of a biography.

I was used to writing articles as large as 3000 words, and I thought I knew something about the writing of a story. But managing the narrative over 90,000 or 100,000 words requires a completely different approach. Not to mention the complicated process of research and the way the trail just keeps on stretching ahead of you when you have such a long, long deadline.

Searching for Madeleine was, of course, especially challenging because she was relatively unknown. It was precisely that invisibility that attracted me: I wanted to know more, I was curious about this expat writer who seemed to have slipped through the cracks. She’d gone to London at the end of the 1960s and stayed there but had not been a professional Australian. Clive, Germaine, Barry were all very familiar to us, but – “Madeleine who?” my friends asked when I announced I was embarking on her biography.

It was in that house in 1954 that Sylvette committed suicide – shattering the lives of Ted, of Madeleine and her younger sister Colette.

But I liked that she was under the radar. The truth is that the little-known subjects offer so much more opportunity, simply because they are little known. But this lack of a record, indeed the lack of a public life, did create its own challenges.

Madeleine St John was born in Sydney in 1941. She was a classic wartime baby in the sense that her father Ted St John met her for the first time when she was 15 months old, when he came back from Palestine. Her mother was a French émigré and, after the war, the St Johns lived in various houses around Sydney, winding up at Number 9, The Rampart, Castlecrag.

It was in that house in 1954 that Sylvette committed suicide – shattering the lives of Ted, of Madeleine and her younger sister Colette. Madeleine went on to Sydney University, she married, she separated from her husband Chris Tillam after a few years when they were both living in America, she went to London in 1968 and she remained there till her death in 2006. She lived in near poverty and struggled at times with depression, despite her sparkling manner and a great capacity for charm.

She should have been one of our famous expats, but she wasn’t. What had gone wrong?

And then suddenly in 1993, she published a lovely novel, The Women in Black, and then another three in quick succession. She was nominated for the Booker in 1997. Australia claimed her, colonised her and then – when Arundhati Roy won the prize – Australia promptly forgot about the novelist with the snooty name. By the time she died in 2006, Madeleine was scarcely known here or in London.

It is not a remarkable life, on the surface, but when I stumbled across her books late in 2010, I was intrigued by Madeleine St John. She should have been one of our famous expats, but she wasn’t. What had gone wrong?

Google gave me the bare bones of her life but it did not seem to accord with the witty voice of her novels and offered no explanation of why she had taken to long to make something of her obvious talent and education. The suicide of her mother was obviously devastating but was it enough to explain why she had never shone?

There seemed to be a great deal more to discover about St John, and very shortly after, I decided I would be the one to discover it!

Because Madeleine had died relatively recently and because she had died relatively young at 64, there were lots of very alert 70-year-olds who were her contemporaries.

There were some practical obstacles, specifically a distinct lack of material about the subject. Where were the archives? There were no diaries or letters or “notes to self”. Madeleine seemed at the end of her life to have been rather keen to minimise her footprint on the planet: her flat in Notting Hill, and her life in general, were rather distilled by the time she died.

As her emphysema worsened and she was confined to her flat, Madeleine winnowed down her friends and relations to about three people; she washed her contact book to about half a dozen numbers. Her work was good, but there were only four published novels plus an unpublished one, but nothing else. It was not a lot to go on.

was using exactly the skills of an investigative journalist – persistence, lateral thinking, energy, attention to detail and the sort of imaginative leaps that are needed at times to pull the pieces together.

But of course, there is always more.

I found other friends and relations – some of them discarded, some of them just a long way from London – and they found others, and everyone found letters. I found a stash of pictures, and then, of course, the aforementioned tapes.

Because Madeleine had died relatively recently and because she had died relatively young at 64, there were lots of very alert 70-year-olds who were her contemporaries. I was lucky too to find some older people who had known her mother Sylvette, and I tracked people in London who were close to her over various decades. She kept people in silos but biographers have the effect of breaking down those silos.

Madeleine was dead but somehow my activity brought her to life again, and I became the connective tissue for people who never knew each other. Throw a pebble in the pond, as they say. I had never seen myself as an investigative journalist, but in the two years I researched this book I felt that I was using exactly the skills of an investigative journalist – persistence, lateral thinking, energy, attention to detail and the sort of imaginative leaps that are needed at times to pull the pieces together.

I have been criticised by one reviewer, the novelist Michelle de Kretser, for not writing a literary biography. But I would have fallen flat on my face writing a literary biography. I don’t have the skills for an academic analysis of Madeleine’s work. But I am sure too that an academic or even many professional biographers don’t have the journalistic skills that allowed me to track my quarry across the world. This was a biography waiting for a journalist to come along!

I was dogged in my pursuit of material and it paid off. I gathered a great deal of material about this woman who had in fact gone out of her way towards the end of her life to get rid of the evidence.

But it’s one thing to pull in the data: you also need to know what to do with it. It has to add up to something; it has to have a point – otherwise, why put it in?

I was discovering new things about Madeleine – lots of new things that had not been on the table till now, but I still needed to see what they meant.

After I had finished the book I came across a wonderful interview in the Paris Review with the American biographer and historian, David McCullough. I think it’s worth quoting what he said in that interview. McCullough is talking about the motto hanging above his desk. And I quote him:

It says, “Look at your fish.” It’s the test that Louis Agassiz, the nineteenth-century Harvard naturalist, gave every new student. He would take an odorous old fish out of a jar, set it in a tin pan in front of the student and say, Look at your fish. Then Agassiz would leave. When he came back, he would ask the student what he’d seen. Not very much, they would most often say, and Agassiz would say it again: Look at your fish. This could go on for days. The student would be encouraged to draw the fish but could use no tools for the examination, just hands and eyes.

Samuel Scudder, who later became a famous entomologist and expert on grasshoppers, left us the best account of the “ordeal with the fish.” After several days, he still could not see whatever it was Agassiz wanted him to see. But, he said, I see how little I saw before. Then Scudder had a brainstorm and he announced it to Agassiz the next morning: Paired organs, the same on both sides. Of course! Of course! Agassiz said, very pleased. So Scudder naturally asked what he should do next, and Agassiz said, “Look at your fish.”

McCullough went on to say how much he loved that story because seeing is so important in writing history or biography. He says: “Insight comes, more often than not, from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than from discovering something new. Seeing is as much the job of an historian as it is of a poet or a painter, it seems to me.”

I was discovering new things about Madeleine – lots of new things that had not been on the table till now, but I still needed to see what they meant.

I have always loved the stories about the people who fly under the radar, and in the same way I like the comments that sit between the major statements. In so many interviews, people would begin by saying that they did not know much about Madeleine, that they didn’t really think they could help me, but then they would just talk about her life and I would pounce upon the diamonds.

but there are plenty of others on the periphery who don’t relish the thought of their lives being invaded just because they were once part of your subject’s life.

I loved, for example, the comment from a school friend that when they were 13-years-olds at St Catherine’s boarding school at Waverley in Sydney. Madeleine never had any food in her Tuck Tin. She would come back from Saturdays or weekends at Castlecrag with not much to show for it. How sad that made me, thinking of the motherless Madeleine with nothing delicious in her Tuck Tin. Sometimes it is enough just to include a statement like that, to make the point.

I took a decision not to make too many claims for big meaning in this book. I wanted to let readers see the “paired organs” beloved of Louis Agassiz and to help them discover things. One of the other big challenges in the craft of biography is managing the living: your subject may be dead, but there are plenty of others on the periphery who don’t relish the thought of their lives being invaded just because they were once part of your subject’s life.

In my case, there were two people in particular who felt that this biography threatened their privacy and their memories: Madeleine’s sister Colette and Madeleine’s former husband, Chris Tillam, neither of whom wanted to speak to me at first. I had already completed the first draft when they suddenly changed their minds and agreed to do so.

I was immensely grateful to both of them and the exercise was a fruitful and positive one, but negotiating your way through the minefield of family memories and vested interests and protective friends can be daunting at times. There is also an issue about how much of their lives to put in, how sharply to attempt to draw their portraits.

it was only when I listened to the M-tapes, as I began to call them, that I began to appreciate the depth of her anger.

Ted and Madeleine

With my editor, I made a conscious decision to keep the focus on Madeleine, not on others. We cut out a lot of material about these cameo performers that was in the first draft because it detracted from Madeleine’s story. But the major issue was juggling Ted and Madeleine – the two really big characters in this book.

The problem I faced was what weight to give these tapes? Even her close friends cautioned me that Madeleine had been in a sense obsessed with her childhood and had never been able to move beyond it.

I had heard the stories of their dysfunctional relationship – Madeleine had never made any secret of her anger towards her father and her “wicked stepmother,” Ted’s second wife, Val. But it was only when I listened to the M-tapes, as I began to call them, that I began to appreciate the depth of her anger.

Madeleine talks at length on the tapes about her father’s emotional abuse – or at least what she regards as emotional abuse. There is a reference to a devastating incident when Ted hit her quite violently, but physical violence does not feature strongly in the tapes – and it is this psychological and emotional abuse, that Madeleine is focused upon. She makes some quite extreme claims about Ted’s motivation.

Sympathy for Madeleine did not preclude sympathy for Ted. Indeed, Ted St John was so like his daughter that it is little wonder they clashed.

The problem I faced was what weight to give these tapes?Even her close friends cautioned me that Madeleine had been in a sense obsessed with her childhood and had never been able to move beyond it. Friends were divided about whether she was fantasising about the past or whether in fact she was accurately reflecting what had happened. And I faced the same dilemma. I worried a lot about whether I was fair to Ted, whether I was fair to Madeleine, whether I was fair to either.

But in the end, you have to choose.

The choices are imperfect but in the end you are of constructing a life and you must have clarity about what is going on. I didn’t shout it out from page one of this book, but I did take the view that Madeleine, no doubt a “difficult” woman, was also an irresistible, brilliant and charming person – a pretty special person who had survived and prevailed against her demons, against the sadness of her childhood.

But it wasn’t a zero sum game. Sympathy for Madeleine did not preclude sympathy for Ted. Indeed, Ted St John was so like his daughter that it is little wonder they clashed. He, too, could be cruel and judgmental, but he was also smart, well read and a man of considerable depth. To some people, he was as charismatic – and as narcissistic and pompous at times – as his daughter.

Over and over, as I wrote this story, I realised how hard it is to capture another’s life.

So, how much of the tapes should I take on face value, and how much did I need to make the point? In the end, I did the best I could. I used the material but I qualified it and I attempted to put it into some context. I tried to remind the reader that Madeleine’s memories were old memories, memories from childhood and burnished, perhaps embellished, over the years. All these decisions that one has to make about your material seem so cut and dried now that the book is in print and now that time has passed. But when you are in the thick of it, and having to make these calls it is not so easy.

I guess the biggest lesson I learnt was that the craft of biography is an imperfect exercise. You spend months, much longer, trying to establish the facts of an incident, and then wonder whether the real truth will ever emerge. Over and over, as I wrote this story, I realised how hard it is to capture another’s life.

There were other issues, and Ted undoubtedly struggled to relate to his teenage daughter. But when I received this email I had an “aha” moment.

I will conclude by mentioning an email I received after the book was published in March. A friend who had been close to Madeleine at Queenwood wrote to say that they had shared homework and spent time together at Madeleine’s house in the 1950s. This friend told me Madeleine loved her father and wanted more than anything to have his attention and approval. She had been jealous of Val. It is not hard to see how the teenage Madeleine transformed her jealousy and fears of losing her father to this new wife, into a belief that Ted was rejecting her. It was perhaps the start of their tragically dysfunctional relationship.

I am not suggesting that is the entire story. There were other issues, and Ted undoubtedly struggled to relate to his teenage daughter. But when I received this email I had an “aha” moment. It is obvious perhaps, but I had never heard it put that way before. Here was a close friend, who had lived through those difficult years with Madeleine, a school friend who was an important source – and yet I had found her too late.

Perhaps that’s why, in conclusion, I would say that the greatest skill needed when practising this craft of biography, greater than the Agassiz exhortation to “look at your fish”, is humility and an understanding that, some aspects of your subject will likely always elude you.