Bill Carr – a love and reverence for literature

In my sorting out of old files and paper in my chaotic personal archive, I have been unearthing essays I wrote a long time ago. It has occurred to me that some of these may be worth reproducing in another time for one reason or another. In the case of the following essay about Bill Carr, UG lecturer and Theatre Guild actor, the man I wrote about was a lover of literature, whose deep knowledge of the poetry of Martin Carter and Derek Walcott, in particular, I greatly admired. He is one of those people whose memory should be preserved. No one could have believed that he would succeed in the attempt. It seemed a sort of mad over-estimate of his remaining strength. But he carried off the performance for the entire run of the play with gallantry and the theatrical flair which once had made him memorable in King Lear, Hamlet, and Walcott’s Franklin in the old Theatre Guild days. It must have been pure courage that saw him through – borne up, also, no doubt, by his abiding reverence for Walcott’s undying work. In his last years, he was in and out of hospital, very weak often, very sick sometimes, but never once that I saw in a dull, ill humour and certainly never complaining about life which held for him always to the end the zest and promise that makes every passing hour matter. Some of that tenacity in holding on to the richness of life must have flowed from his wife, Marjorie, but the strength was in him too, perhaps as deep down as his faith as a Catholic, which he did not speak much about (at least to me) but which was rocksteady through all the bad, enfeebling days.

Bill had his hates as well as his loves. He harboured a special loathing for the pretensions of political power. Those who lorded it over others, he felt, almost invariably had no good reason or right to do so and the worst of them were the most likely to act the over-mighty autocrat. In the heyday of party paramountcy, the manifestations of which he utterly despised, he would quote to good effect one of Karl Marx’s better remarks:

A“But the more these conscious illusions of the ruling classes are shown to be false and the less they satisfy common-sense, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of established society.”

bove all, when all is said and done, Bill Carr loved, respected, and relished good writing – he revelled in what was best in literature. His knowledge of all the classics of Western literature was unsurpassed. I learned so much about literature from him I cannot begin to list the insights he carelessly bestowed on me in the course of conversations. I thought I knew Walcott’s work well until Bill Carr spoke to me about the complexity and beauty of his art. He introduced me to the inner workings of many great writers. I thank him for that out of a full heart. His favourite almost over all as an essayist was Matthew Arnold, whom he thought much underestimated. Over the years he pointed out to me more times than I can remember parts of Arnold’s writing peculiarly appropriate to the happenings of our day. He seemed to know Arnold’s work by heart. He liked to quote Arnold’s words about literary criticism: “I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is thought and known in the world.” He thought anyone interested in well-written, commonsensical, clear and clarifying prose should read Arnold’s essay “Culture and Anarchy.” The best writing, Bill Carr said to me not long ago, is always more up-to-date than today.

When Bill died, I looked up my Newman – the great Cardinal John Henry Newman, convert-scholar of the Catholic Church. Bill loved the cardinal – Newman was not only a man of the most unflinching Catholic faith but also an absolute master of language. I found some words from a sermon Newman once gave – simple words but I write them down now with feeling for Bill Carr who taught me so much about what is worth our love and reverence in literature.

“May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.”