Tributes to Vincent Clarke

PNN reprints a selection of tributes to Vince Clarke

Since we heard the sad news of Vince Clarke's death, a large number of appreciations have appeared on rec.arts.sf.fandom; mostly expressing gratitude for Vince's kindness and thoughtfulness.

Typical is Patrick Nielsen Hayden:

I'm so sorry. Vince was unfailingly kind to us on our TAFF trip and on subsequent visits to the UK. He was a thoughtful, charming man.

He had a long and sometimes harrowing journey through life and through fandom. It was hard to remember, knowing the courteous gentleman of his later years, that he was once known as a feudmaster, quick to respond with hot words. Something happened to change all that. And the owl was once the baker's daughter.

I'm glad fandom managed to honor him as a Worldcon Fan Guest of Honor (in 1995). I'm sorry that, despite being the first TAFF winner, he never actually managed to visit the United States.

And particular sympathy to his closest friends. For instance, Chuck Harris, whose friendship with him goes back decades. And Rob Hansen, who went to enormous trouble to be kind to Vince in his difficult last months, and to make sure that he stayed connected to fandom up to the end, rather than vanishing entirely into the maze of hospitals and social services.

As Patrick says, Rob Hansen had visited Vince regularly over the last year, and had written regular reports on his progress. Now he wrote:

He was without doubt one of the genuinely nicest people I ever knew. Nothing was too much trouble for him, and the help he gave me when I was writing and researching THEN was invaluable, irreplaceable, and unstinting. I really couldn't have done it without him.

Chuck Harris overcame his difficulties with Usenet to write:

He was a dear friend to so many of us and much of the joy I found in fandom was due to him. Tritely, things will never be the same without him.

Gary Farber wrote of visiting Vince:

I only had the opportunity to meet Vince twice, both times, of course, during my month-long sojourn in Britain, two years ago this month. I rode with Rob Hansen from Rob and Avedon's over to Vince's to pick him up to fetch him back to dinner at Rob and Avedon's, and we spent the evening, over a splendid dinner of Rob and Avedon's, in fannish talk, and then Vincent was wonderful enough to have me come and stay with him for nearly two days, weeks later in my trip.

What a dear sweet man he was. What a dear sweet man.

The passing of Vince is the passing of one of the last Giants of British Fandom. A connection to the beginning of British Fandom, the essence of long-time British fandom, is gone. Vince was at the solid core of British Fandom since the Thirties. His house was a veritable museum of fandom: this was not a man who collected fanzines, but who simply had one of the greatest collections of Thirties and Forties fanzines from having acquired them new, of course. His attic was thick with shelves of fanzines, and accumulations of photographs of fans, and old mimeos, and all the other detrius of a classic fan. It reminded me of nothing so much more than Harry Warner, Jr's, attic, save that there was work space available, and more light. His collection of photos of old fans was marvelous: the young lions of British fandom of the Thirties and Forties: Arthur C. Clarke, William F. Temple, and, of course, Vincent Clarke.

Downstairs were stacks of sf, old and new, including many volumes from the first decades of this century, full of fanciful tales of future wars between Britain and Germany, Britain and France, Britain and America, and more.

This was the house that Vincent had lived in all this time: a house whose bathroom had been blown up in the Blitz, and since repaired, but not terribly more modernized. I felt that I was as close as I could be to visiting older England, and the classic British fandom I'd read about when I was young, when I stayed there, tucked into bed so thoughtfully by Vincent with a hot water bottle to keep me warn on that cold November night, in a bedroom with no other means of heating, of course.

That dear man was so concerned that he provide the proper hospitality for his guest that he had bought a frozen prepared breakfast for me, afraid that his cooking wouldn't be adequate. I assured him it was lovely.

His health was fairly strong then. He couldn't run a fast sprint, but he was hale, and the only real sign of any age was a tremble in his lower lip. He wanted to make sure that I made it to the train station all right, and being afraid I might be lost, he bundled himself up in his raincoat, put on his tweed hat, and we walked all the way to the train station together, talking of his time in the War, of what the Blitz had been like, of what his duty at a radar station had been like, all of which I was fascinated to hear, of course, though I had to work a bit to persuade him of this.

Vince was the truest of trufen. He really didn't know me from a hole in the wall, I believe: he took it on faith from Rob and Avedon that I was another trufan, and that was basis enough for him to put up a stranger from America, and to trouble himself to take me into his home, and offer me his finest hospitality. Although generations apart, we weren't separated at all by age: we talked of fandom, of fanzines, of sf, of all the things that fans bond together over. I took numerous photos of his house, feeling that somehow I was trying to record signs of a bit of fandom I knew wouldn't last forever. I truly felt that if any house in Britain deserved to be turned into a museum of fandom, it was Vince's. And yet, Vince was not lost in the past: he applied himself to the new skills of fandom on the computer and the Internet, and read considerably of new and current sf; his mind was lively.

But what will stick most with me forever is his willingness and interest in meeting another fan, and his kindness and sweetness in his hospitality. I tried, against the odds as I knew it was, to convince him that fans in America would love to see him, that we would love to have a fund for him to visit us, but it seemed to me that to him, while the idea had its attractions, the idea of visiting America was nearly as fantastic as if I had proposed a fund to bring him to Mars, or to Fairyland: they were each equally fantastic and mystical places that one would want to visit but that one knew one really couldn't.

That was two years ago, and now he's gone, and now he'll never visit. But he'll always be a little bit with those of us who even met him, let alone those of us who knew him well. Fan well, Vincent. I know that his sense of wonder, his joy at fandom, his love of sf, lives on with us, if no where else. Drink well with Arfer, and your other friends of old, and we'll always remember you.

Many people regretted that Vince was unable to make his TAFF trip. The current TAFF delegate, Maureen Kincaid Speller, said:

I am still trying to come to terms with the realisation that Vince isn't there any more. He seemed like he'd be there forever. I thought about him often while I was in the States. In part, I felt I was making the trip he didn't, and I am so sorry I won't be sending him the completed report.

Gary put it very well when he said, 'to Vince -- you set us an example'. He inspired me, he inspired many others, and the world is a much poorer place without him.

Dave Langford wrote:

Any attempt to list Vincent's long-time contributions to fandom and unobtrusive kindnesses to fans -- especially new fans -- would go on and on and need a [LONG] warning in the subject line. He would have been vastly embarrassed at the mere thought of such a list, of course. Few fans of real stature have been so determinedly self-deprecating.

Goodbye. There are too many goodbyes these days.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden wrote:

Oh, Vince is dead! Not unexpectedly, and he had been having a very hard time with the prospect of more hard times to come; but it's still a Vincent-sized loss.

He was a diligent and long-thinking man, forever doing the kind of painstaking basic work that holds our world together, like indexing and copying his fanzines so younger fans could have access to them. Or his joint project with Rob Hansen, pursued over many years, of collecting and recording a genuine history of British fandom. That was very much his kind of project: no flashy reinterpretations and shallow-rooted revelations, just laborious primary historical research, careful fact-gathering before the sources disappeared, and utterly essential.

He was the eldest of the elders of TAFF, and we shall miss him there too. He had a sharp eye and sharper judgement, and a tongue blunted only by kindness. I learned a lot from him, more than I can say.

He's gone, survived by much unobtrusive good he wrought. Pause a moment and assign his name to as much of it as we can identify; not because he'd have wanted that, but for us to remember him, and how he loved the good for its own sake.

And Avedon Carol summed up that difficulty of finding words, saying:

Various people wrote various things about Vincent.

And I want to thank you all for saying them, because I could not, and they were all true, and they were right and proper evocation of the sweet, quiet man I knew who gave us all so much.

I hope, in the time I knew him, that in some small way I was able to give something back. I know my world would not have been as rich without him.

Finally, Greg Pickersgill wrote on the Timebinders mailing list:

I really think it's important to make clear that Vince Clarke is the great unsung hero of fandom -- in any era other than that dominated by the genuine brilliance of Walt Willis he would long ago have been recognised as a brilliant fanwriter, clever and funny fanartist, excellent editor, and general motive force behind many of the good things that have happened in fandom. In short one of a very few people who have made science fiction fandom -- and made it a worthwhile and satisfying and stimulating place to be.

What's also worth remembering about Vince is that he was a real fan in every sense -- he took immense pleasure in his book and magazine collection, loved fanzines, was entertained by even the most hopeless sf films, and was endlessly entranced by science itself -- and did so every day until the worst of his illnesses took over. He was one of us writ large -- someone with every one of the characteristics of a fan, but, incredibly, only the good ones. I've often wished I would grow up to be like him, but I don't have that charm within me -- and it is no consolation to know that very few others do either. Few can carry the Shield of Umor with as much right as Vincent Clarke -- and I hope it protects him wherever he goes.

-- Alison Scott

07 Dec 1998