Marilla North (ed.)
Yarn Spinners: A Story in Letters:
Dymphna Cusack, Florence James, Miles Franklin
UQP, $34.95pb, 441pp, 0 7022 3192 4

'THIS IS A BOOK about friendship and storytelling,' writes Marilla North in her prologue to this artfully arranged selection of correspondence. It begins in 1928 and covers the next twenty-seven years, chronicling the large and small events in the lives of Dymphna Cusack, Florence James and Miles Franklin, three of Australia's most vital, fluent and committed women writers.

The book begins with letters between Cusack and James, with Cusack an intense young teacher based in Broken Hill, longing to travel to England like her more sophisticated and ostensibly glamorous friend. Cusack is methodically making her way as a writer, chafing at the smallness and provincialism of Australia — a frustration that finds expression a few years later when she and Miles Franklin collaborate on Pioneers on Parade (1939), their lampoon of Sydney's pompous sesquicentennial celebrations. There is a certain amount of schoolgirlish glee in this section of the book, which is rather difficult for the reader to share; not only is it often impossible to connect with a previous generation's sense of humour, but Marilla North and the authors provide few real clues to the reason why Pioneers was considered so outrageous. A fascinating letter in this context, however, is written by the English critic St John Irvine, who takes it upon himself to warn Franklin that her literary reputation is in danger because of her collaboration with Miss Cusack on such a `smarty-smart' novel, and expressing the hope that `the shock of receiving such a letter as this will make you pull yourself together'. (There is no evidence that Franklin shared this letter with Cusack: did she think Irvine might have had a point?)

Florence James returns to Australia with her two daughters to wait out the war. With Cusack, they move to Hazelbrook in the Blue Mountains, where they write long and eager letters to Miles Franklin in Sydney about their lives and the planning of their most ambitious project: a novel about women in Sydney during the war. Perhaps the most interesting section of the book follows, the part dealing with the fortunes of that novel — which was, of course, Come In Spinner. It's a pity that we can't know more about the collaboration between Cusack and James. They were living in the same house and, therefore, saw no need to write to each other. Their letters to Miles Franklin seem, understandably, rather preoccupied.

  But the history of Spinner's publication is absorbing and well documented. The story is well known: how the manuscript, written under a male pseudonym, won the Sydney Daily Telegraph competition for the best novel of the year in 1947, with a prize of £1000 and the promise of publication in Sydney and London. Cusack and James's joy was dimmed when the Telegraph asked them to delete large chunks of their manuscript, and it vanished altogether when the Telegraph demanded further cuts. After much unpleasant argument, mostly with Telegraph editor Brian Penton, the authors were grudgingly awarded the prize money but denied the publishing contract. This gruelling saga, which took four years, is fully covered, with Miles Franklin cheering her friends on at every twist and turn. The obtuseness and condescension of Penton and the other Telegraph heavies are reliably breathtaking. Heinemann in London eventually accepted Come In Spinner in 1951. It is impossible not to sympathise with Cusack when she tells Franklin: `It's been a long fight, dearest, but I feel something has been achieved at last and all this publicity is not only important for us but for Australian books generally.'

The story then settles down: Cusack has left Australia and is building on her literary reputation by writing further novels and plays, then marrying Norman Freehill and travelling with him around Europe; Florence James is working as a literary agent in London and bringing up two children on her own. Miles Franklin remains in Australia, where she writes long, wistful and increasingly cranky letters (often about the political situation and the state of local writing and writers) to her absent friends. Here the narrative falters and fractures; the book loses some of its energy as we trace the different preoccupations of the three writers.

There are times when firmer editorial direction would have been useful. North could have provided commentary more comprehensive than the footnotes she permits herself. There are signs, too, that she might have wished to add her own voice more often (a clue is the occasional presence of exclamation marks in footnotes). Occasionally, she presupposes familiarity with these authors' work that is unlikely to be universal; a little more critical comment would have been useful. But these are mild frustrations rather than major problems. Throughout Yarn Spinners, Marilla North guides the reader firmly and mostly unobtrusively, establishing clearly time and place, prompting the reader with notes that are almost invariably judicious and well-placed, telling us precisely what we need to know.

The correspondence itself is well chosen and full of energy. The trio write with the enviable ease of women who are used to putting their thoughts down on paper without too much judicious weighing of words. Their personalities come through clearly. Cusack is fluent and seemingly artless. Only her irritated references to what she calls her `dog's disease' give the clue that she suffered greatly from the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. From time to time, North interpolates a quiet footnote that leaves the reader in no doubt of the extent to which Cusack suffered, and of her determination to write in spite of this. Florence James, the least fully represented of the three — possibly because, as Cusack kept telling her, she was a `deadline daisy' who continually put things off, including replies to letters — is cooler, more reserved. And Miles Franklin, astute, funny and always fully engaged in whatever she was writing about, is the opinionated letter writer she always was.

The apparent artlessness of the correspondence can be deceptive. All three women had difficult problems to overcome: Franklin a dictatorial mother and demanding relatives; James an unfaithful husband and a thoroughly unpleasant divorce; Cusack her `neuralgia', which kept her in bed for weeks at a time. James did not tell the others when she married; Franklin did not tell Cusack that she had entered a novel in the Telegraph competition. Most of what we are told about these difficulties comes from North's footnotes. It is clear that these women were very much of their time in what they chose to tell each other.

A quibble: North asserts that `the dons' decided what was to be read in the English language, and that there was very little, if any, publishing of importance done in Australia. In fact, Angus and Robertson had been flourishing for more than fifty years by the time Cusack and James published Come In Spinner. It would have been more accurate to say that many ambitious fiction writers preferred to try their luck with an English publisher.

This is a book about friendship, yes, but is it a book about `storytelling'? Yes and no. There are stories in Yarn Spinners, but this book isn't really a series of stories. Even so, the word `yarn' is the key, in another way. Marilla North has presented us with three writers, weaving a skein of words, looping back and forth: not a story, but a conversation.