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Valerie Minogue
12 years ago

What I remember perhaps most about Verna is her gentleness, and her wonderfully expressive eyes that radiated kindness, sweetness of soul — and a sometimes impish humour. Verna had the rare gift of being able to be deeply serious without becoming earnest. I remember with such pleasure her enjoyment of old castles in Wales, when she and Peter came, to my great delight, to visit me in Swansea in June 1998. Indeed it was after a castle-viewing on the Gower pensinsula that Verna made me a present of two of her books: her wonderful recreation of Miles Franklin’s ‘lost’ years in the States — Her Unknown Brilliant Career, which I greatly enjoyed and admired, and The Last Exquisite, fascinating in its vivacious and insightful evocation of the life of Frederic Manning, and its illuminating sidelights on so very many important figures of the period, such as Lawrence (both T.E and D.H.), Pound, Graves and T.S.Eliot, among others. Some years later, in London, there were other happy times — going to meet her outside Senate House Library, where she would have been working away for several hours, and going with her to an art exhibition at the Royal Academy, and on another occasion, having Peter and Verna to lunch and going together to a big Art Show at Olympia. On my visits to Sydney, I was often entertained by Peter and Verna, and also had the pleasure of seeing Verna at the Ladies’ lunch group of dear Sydney friends. It was always such pleasure to talk quietly with Verna, whether about people, art, history or literature, picking up in the process a great deal about Australian and British literature and history, from the Pankhursts to Katherine Mansfield, on whom she was researching in London. It is such a shame she was never able to complete that undertaking. Her books remain a delight with their elegance, extraordinary range, keen critical intelligence and accuracy. It was desperately sad to see Verna laid low, as she was, by illness, but the Verna we remember with love is the Verna of the years before her tragic illness, the lovely lady who has left such a beautiful and indelible impression on the minds of all who knew her.

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Anonymous
12 years ago

I remember Verna's thoughtful intelligent conversation and love of family, when Ursula and Verna came by The Hughenden

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