10 Reasons to Keep the Patrick White House

1 It was the home of Australia’s only Nobel Laureate for Literature Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for The Eye of the Storm. This novel centred on the life and last days of Elizabeth Hunter, draws on the domestic interiors of 20 Martin Road as the setting for her Sydney house. It is a place of great significance for Australia’s cultural history and heritage. Patrick White gave us a new language for understanding Australia and Australians. His novels probe enduring themes for Australian culture and history including exploration and settlement, migration and pastoralism, artists and Aboriginal people. No Australian writer better conjures the landscapes of the inland, the Monaro, the bush or suburbia. White had a great ear for the Australian vernacular, which must be a challenge to his many translators. In his novels, plays and short stories Patrick White gave dignity to the rituals of domestic life, and the lives of ordinary men and women.

2 It will widen the readership of Patrick White’s work

A writer lives through his writing, but writer’s houses open new doors to their work. This is particularly the case for 20 Martin Road, which is part of the imaginative landscape of some of his great novels and short stories.

In the years since his death, the freshness of Patrick White’s work has been obscured by the stereotype of a forbidding public persona. Discovering the house and its landscape setting offers new ways of encountering his work and understanding its themes, characters, places and preoccupations. With a mix of uses and activities, the Trust’s plan for the White house will introduce a new generation of Australian and international readers to White’s work.

Today writers’ festivals, book clubs and community activities are now an integral part of reading and sharing ideas about literature and culture. Keeping the White house will enable us to build a community conversation around Patrick White’s work and his important causes, including conservation and philanthropy.

3    20 Martin Road and its neighbourhood was the imaginative
      and domestic setting for some of Patrick White’s greatest work

The house and its neighbourhood was an inspiration for White’s work. It is also the domestic space in which its important themes were explored. This includes not just those novels and stories that obviously draw on the house and Centennial Park, but recurring themes in his work, such as the intimacies, routines and small dramas of domestic life. As David Marr argues, “houses for White had a particular virtue. He was a domestic man and lived a very settled domestic routine with his partner Manoly Lascaris. Houses were the centre of his life . . . Being at home - and At Home - meant a great deal to him. He boasted of ‘wearing a track between his desk and the stove’ . . .”
Despite the loss of most of the contents, the White house is still remarkably intact. It will not remain so if it is sold. Even with the highest heritage listing a new owner is certain to get permission to knock down internal walls and change the character of the house and garden. Given the drastic changes to other significant houses in Patrick White’s life, this is the last opportunity to keep and to understand these inspirational spaces in his domestic and creative life.

4   The house is an important part of Australia’s cultural and literary history

For 25 years from 1964 to 1990, 20 Martin Road was a meeting place for artists, writers, actors and people who were a creative force in Australian cultural life. This was an extraordinarily fertile time in Australian cultural history, in literature, theatre, film and art. No other place in Australia better represents this great flowering of creativity, where so many artists gave voice to distinctively Australian stories, characters, language and images.

Bringing the house into the public domain as a writers’ place and centre for ideas about Australian culture, will create again the kind of cultural meeting place that was at play around Patrick White’s dinner table. There is no other place in Sydney or Australia that has this important function, or that honours such a rich period in Australian cultural history.

5 Patrick White has readers all over the world, and many
discover Australia through his novels and stories

Patrick White is one of the few Australian writers reaching an international audience. Keeping the Patrick White house will create a physical and virtual centre for readers from all over the world to discover the landscape and interiors of his imaginative and domestic life.

6    The move to 20 Martin Road was a turning point in Patrick White’s life and work

The house was the springboard for Patrick White’s public life, and advocacy for many social, environmental and conservation causes. Living closer to the city allowed White to enjoy the theatre and galleries, buying paintings and encouraging young artists.

His causes, such as the defence of Centennial Park, were an important part of his character and contribution to Australian life. The programmes developed around the White house will, among other things, stimulate debate around causes that he supported, such as the environment.

7 White was one of Australia’s great benefactors

Through the house we meet a writer whose interests and generosity are not well known: quiet philanthropist, benefactor to the Smith Family and Aboriginal education, generous donor to NSW cultural institutions such as Art Gallery of NSW and the State Library, and patron saint of Sydney theatre. White used his Nobel Prize money to establish a prize for Australian writers who have not received proper recognition for their work. Such quiet giving is rare in Australia. The Patrick White Centre will commemorate White’s deep generosity, and further his philanthropy in Australian cultural life and education.

8 Keeping the house is a way of honouring his life partner Manoly Lascaris and the life they shared together, the man White called ‘my sweet reason’.

Manoly Lascaris was the centre of White’s life. His friendship and moral support sustained White’s life as writer. Greek people, places, symbols and traditions are a recurring theme in his work. At 20 Martin Road White and Manoly Lascaris furnished and arranged the house to reflect their shared interests, Lascaris’ Greek heritage, and a taste for the best modern design. It was Manoly Lascaris’ great wish that the house be opened to the public.

9 20 Martin Road is the key to Patrick White’s scattered collections At 20 Martin Road White displayed his passion for collecting Australian paintings, and supporting young artists. The expansive white walls were one of the reasons he chose the house. White frequently rearranged the pictures and regularly donated works to the Art Gallery of NSW to liberate space for new works. 20 Martin Road is the connector to White’s paintings, furniture, books and other items now scattered between the State Library of NSW, the NSW Historic Houses Trust and the Art Gallery of NSW. Without the house these gifts will have limited public life or capacity for interpretation. His desk, books and paintings together represent his deepest interests and passions. 10 Patrick White valued writer’s houses and enjoyed visiting them Although he didn’t make plans to turn his house into a writers’ centre it is certain that if this was another writer’s house at risk White would be making speeches and contributing funds to purchase the house. In 1988 he wrote to the NSW Government about the threat facing ‘Wyewurk’: “[The house] should be preserved and restored to its original condition as the house where D. H., Lawrence lived while writing his novel Kangaroo. It could become a place of pilgrimage for tourists less interested in the mostly philistine pursuits Australia has to offer. As our politicians harp on about tourism their minds are chiefly concentrated on sport, hotels, beaches and casinos, whereas ‘Wyewurk’ in Thirroul is an opportunity to aim at attracting a more civilised type of visitor. They do exist in considerable numbers.” Keeping the Patrick White house would be an important addition to Australia’s cultural tourism assets and a point of interest for many well read international visitors.