Remembering
J. L. Carr
Ursula Buchan
There are four remarkable figures in niches above the north porch of Kettering's parish church. They look mediaeval but were in fact carved by the polymath, J. L. Carr. It was an extra- ordinarily eclectic congregation which passed beneath them last Friday for the funeral of their creator: shoemakers, artists, schoolteachers, journalists, house- wives, doctors, broadcasters, gardeners, clergymen.
The first time that I met Jim Carr was at the house of a mutual friend, to whom he was showing slides of the 'hidden treasures' of Northamptonshire churches and land- scape. I was struck particularly that anyone, least of all a Yorkshireman, should have known and cared so much about his adoptive county.
When I got to know him better, and read his novels, it became clear that a deep sense of place informed his writing. He was a true provincial, with a strong belief in the quality and richness of English provincial life. It was not just the limestone villages and Anglican churches of Northampton- shire that he honoured; he liked my husband partly because he recognised him as representative of unfashionable, red- brick, Congregationalist, shoe-manufactur- ing Kettering. Jim was best known outside Northamp- tonshire as a novelist of great truthfulness, with a range from elegy to farce, and as a maker and publisher of fascinating A pen-and-ink drawing by J. L. Carr of an eagle in the Saxon church at Brixworth, Northamptonshire illustrated maps of English counties and little 16-page booklets of poets and crick- eters, wits and writers, kings and queens. However, he was more than that: head- master, landscape painter, saver of church- es (he and his wife Sally looked after a redundant church in a field for some years and he was Hon. Sec. of the Northampton- shire Historic Churches Trust), cricketer, stone carver, and even gardener (being Jim, not a strictly conventional one).
He always insisted that he knew nothing about plants, but he grew both a Chinese Pagoda tree and a quince tree (after which his publishing company was named), which are hardly commonplace, and he once gave me an unusual double soapwort. Although the garden was only 90 ft long, it consisted of a number of small gardens, partly con- cealed from each other. It was jungly, mys- terious and full of intriguing objects like mirrors and bells hanging from trees, as well as his vertical stone carvings (originally Bath limestone windowsills).
He disliked intensely showing or being shown off. He was very proud to write for The Spectator but did not much care for its parties. After the Booker Prize ceremony in 1980, he wrote to me: Well, it was quite exciting. But as soon as I saw him [William Golding] I tht That man is going to get the f10,000. He not only has written a much longer novel but he has a very much longer beard. And a white one. He looks a SEER. And sure enough I was right. They measured our beards and they threw me out.
I cannot read this letter without hearing his soft rural North Riding voice in my head, so much did he write as he spoke.
He has been called modest, but he had a firm and proper sense of his own worth and achievements. He has also been called eccentric, but eccentricity suggests an odd- ness, a lack of pattern. His beliefs and actions were all of a piece.
Although I never discussed religion with Jim, I sense that the consistency of his approach to life and work was founded on deep religious belief. This gained expression in all he did, but especially in his attitude to friendship. Every so often, especially if one had not seen him for a while, there would arrive a postcard or letter, in his neat distinctive hand, with well known words shortened, such as 'Kg' for Kettering. It might contain a press cutting, or one of his little books inscribed all round the inside cover, or a query about the garden, or a request for me to hunt for the origin of a font in my end of the county, for he expected something from his friends — although not as much as he gave to them.
In large capitals across the bottom of his county map of Staffordshire are Dr John- son's words: 'A MAN, SIR, MUST KEEP HIS FRIENDSHIP IN CONSTANT REPAIR'. Jim did.
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