Joyce Cary

This article is about an author. For the actress, seeJoyce Carey.For the baseball player, seeKid Cary.

1950sPenguinphotograph of Joyce Cary

Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary(7 December 1888 – 29 March 1957), known asJoyce Cary,was anAnglo-Irishnovelist and colonial official.His most notable novels includeMister JohnsonandThe Horse's Mouth.

Early life and education

Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary was born in 1888 in his grandparents' home, which was above the Belfast Bank on Shipquay Street inDerryinUlster,the NorthernprovinceinIreland.His family had been 'Planter' landlords in neighbouringInishowen,a peninsula on the north coast ofCounty Donegal,also inUlster,since the early years of thePlantation of Ulsterin the early seventeenth century. However, the family had largely lost its Inishowen property on the western shores ofLough Foyleafter the passage of theIrish Land Actin 1882. The family dispersed and Cary had uncles who served in the frontierUS Cavalryand the CanadianNorth-West Mounted Police.Most of the Carys wound up inGreat Britain.Arthur Cary, his father, moved toLondonin 1884 and trained as an engineer. He then married Charlotte Joyce, elder daughter of James John Joyce, manager of the Belfast Bank, Derry, in August 1887 and they settled in London.His mother died of pneumonia in October 1898.

Throughout his childhood, Cary spent many summers at his grandmother's house in the north of Ireland and at Cromwell House in England, home of a great-uncle, which served as a base for all the Cary clan. Some of this upbringing is described in the fictionalised memoirA House of Children(1941) and the novelCastle Corner(1938) – i.e., Cary Castle, one of his family's lost properties inInishoweninUlster.Although Cary remembered his West Ulster childhood with affection and wrote about it with great feeling, he was based inEnglandfor the rest of his life. The feeling of displacement and the idea that life's tranquillity may be disturbed at any moment marked Cary and informs much of his writing. His health was poor as a child. He was subject to asthma, which recurred throughout his life, and was nearly blind in one eye, which caused him to wear a monocle when he was in his twenties. Cary was educated atClifton Collegein Bristol, England, where he was a member of Dakyns House. His mother died during this period, leaving him a small legacy which served as his financial base until the 1930s.

In 1906, determined to be an artist, Cary travelled to Paris. Discovering that he needed more technical training, Cary then studied art in Edinburgh. Soon enough, he determined that he could never be more than a third rate painter and decided to apply himself to literature. He published a volume of poems which, by his own later account, was "pretty bad," and then enteredTrinity College, Oxford.There he became friends with fellow studentJohn Middleton Murryand introduced Murry to Paris on a holiday together. He neglected his studies and graduated from Oxford with afourth class degree.

Nigeria and early writing

Seeking adventure, in 1912 Cary left for theKingdom of Montenegroand served as aRed Crossorderly during theBalkan Wars.Cary kept and illustrated a record of his experiences there,Memoir of the Bobotes(1964), that was not published until after his death.

Returning to Britain the next year, Cary sought a post with an Irish agricultural cooperative scheme, but the project fell through. Dissatisfied and believing that he lacked the education that would provide him with a good position in theUnited Kingdom,Cary joined the Nigerian political service. During theFirst World War,he served with a Nigerian regiment fighting in the German colony ofKamerun.The short story "Umaru" (1921) describes an incident from this period in which a British officer recognises the common humanity that connects him with his African sergeant.

Cary was wounded at the battle of Mount Mora in 1916. He returned to England on leave and proposed marriage to Gertrude Ogilvie, the sister of a friend, whom he had been courting for years. Three months later, Cary returned to service as a colonial officer, leaving a pregnant Gertrude in England. Cary held several posts in Nigeria including that of the magistrate and executive officer in Borgu. He began his African service as a stereotypicaldistrict officer,determined to bring order to the natives, but by the end of his service, he had come to see the Nigerians as individuals with hard lives.

By 1920, Cary was concentrating his energies on providing clean water and roads to connect remote villages with the larger world. A second leave had left Gertrude pregnant with their second child. She begged Cary to retire from the colonial service, so that they could live together in Britain. Cary had thought this impossible for financial reasons, but in 1920, he obtained a literary agent and some of the stories he had written while in Africa were sold toThe Saturday Evening Post,an American magazine, and published under the nameThomas Joyce.This provided Cary with enough incentive to resign from the Nigerian service and he and Gertrude took a house inOxfordonParks Roadopposite theUniversity Parks(now marked with ablue plaque) for their growing family. They had four sons, including the composer,Tristram Cary,and the civil servant,Sir Michael Cary.

As a novelist in the 1930s

Cary worked hard on developing as a writer, but his brief economic success soon ended as thePostdecided that his stories had become too "literary". Cary worked on various novels and a play, but nothing sold, and the family soon had to take in tenants. Their plight worsened when the Depression wiped out the investments that provided them with income and, at one point, the family rented out their house and lived with family members. Finally, in 1932, Cary managed to publishAissa Saved,a novel that drew on his Nigerian experience. The book was not particularly successful, but sold more than Cary's next novel,An American Visitor(1933),even though that book had some critical success.The African Witch(1936)did a little better, and the Carys managed to move back into their home.

Although none of Cary's first three novels was particularly successful critically or financially, they are progressively more ambitious and complex. Indeed,The African Witch(1936) is so rich in incident, character, and thematic possibility that it over-burdens its structure. Cary understood that he needed to find new ways to make the narrative form carry his ideas.George Orwell,on his return from Spain, recommended Cary to the Liberal Book Club, which requested Cary to put together a work outlining his ideas on freedom and liberty, a basic theme in all his novels. It was released asPower in Men(1939) [not Cary's title], but the publisher seriously cut the manuscript without Cary's approval and he was most unhappy with the book. Now Cary contemplated a trilogy of novels based on his Irish background.Castle Corner(1938) did not do well and Cary abandoned the idea. After this came one last African novel,Mister Johnson(1939), written entirely in the present tense. Although now regarded as one of Cary's best novels, it sold poorly at the time. ButCharley Is My Darling(1940), about displaced young people at the start of World War II, found a wider readership, and the memoirA House of Children(1941) won theJames Tait Black Memorial Prizefor best novel.

Final years

Cary now undertook his great works examining historical and social change in England during his own lifetime. The First Trilogy (Herself Surprised,To Be a Pilgrim,andThe Horse's Mouth) finally provided Cary with a reasonable income, andThe Horse's Mouthremains his most popular novel.Cary's pamphletThe Case for African Freedom(1941), published by Orwell'sSearchlight Booksseries, had attracted some interest, and the film directorThorold Dickinsonasked for Cary's help in developing a wartime movie set partly in Africa. In 1943, while writingThe Horse's Mouth,Cary travelled to Africa with a film crew to work onMen of Two Worlds.

Cary travelled to India in 1946 on a second film project with Dickinson, but the struggle against the British for national independence made movie-making impossible, and the project was abandoned.The Moonlight(1946), a novel about the difficulties of women, ended a long period of intense creativity for Cary. Gertrude was suffering from cancer and his output slowed for a while. Gertrude died asA Fearful Joy(1949) was being published. Cary was now at the height of his fame and fortune. He began preparing a series of prefatory notes for the re-publication of all his works in a standard edition published by Michael Joseph.

He visited the United States, collaborated on a stage adaptation ofMister Johnson,and was offered an appointment as aCBE,which he refused. Meanwhile, he continued work on the three novels that make up the Second Trilogy (Prisoner of Grace,Except the Lord,andNot Honour More). In 1952, Cary had some muscle problems which were originally diagnosed asbursitis,but as more symptoms were noted over the next two years, the diagnosis was changed to that ofmotor neuron disease(known asLou Gehrig's disease(ALS) in North America), a wasting and gradual paralysis that was terminal.As his physical powers failed, Cary had to have a pen tied to his hand and his arm supported by a rope to write. Finally, he resorted to dictation until unable to speak and then ceased writing for the first time since 1912. His last work,The Captive and the Free(1959), the first volume of a projected trilogy on religion, was unfinished at his death on 29 March 1957, aged 68.

Legacy

Blue plaque in Bank Place, beside Shipquay Gate,Derry,August 2009

He had appointed his close friendWinnie Davinas his literary executor, and she supervised the transfer of his library to theBodleian Library,posthumously published some unfinished works, and supported scholars who studied his papers. She also wrote Cary's entry for theDictionary of National Biography.

Selected works

• Verse(as Arthur Cary, 1908)
• Aissa Saved(1932)
• An American Visitor(1933)
• The African Witch(1936)
• Castle Corner(1938)
• Power in Men(1939)
• Mister Johnson(1939)
• Charley is My Darling(1940)
• A House of Children(1941)
• Herself Surprised(1941)
• The Case for African Freedom(1941)
• To Be a Pilgrim(1942)
• Process of Real Freedom(1943)
• The Horse's Mouth(1944)
• Marching Soldier(1945)
• The Moonlight(1946)
• Britain and West Africa(1947)
• The Drunken Sailor: A Ballad-Epic(1947)
• A Fearful Joy(1949)
• Prisoner of Grace(1952)
• Except the Lord(1953)
• Not Honour More(1955)
• The Old Strife at Plant’s(1956)
• Art and Reality(1958)
• The Captive and the Free(1959)
• Spring Song and other Stories(1960)
• The Case for African Freedom, and Other Writings on Africa(1962)
• Memoir of the Bobotes(1964)
• Cock Jarvis: An Unfinished Novel(1974)
• Selected Essays(1976), ed. Alan Bishop

See also

• List of Irish writers

Further reading

• Tobias Döring. 1996.Chinua Achebe und Joyce Cary. Ein postkoloniales Rewriting englischer Afrika-Fiktionen.Pfaffenweiler, Germany.ISBN978-3825500214.
• Lardner, John (4 February 1950). "Art and Roguery by the Thames [review ofThe Horse's Mouth] ".The New Yorker.Vol. 25, no. 50. pp. 88–90.
• Leithauser, Brad (12 June 1986)."Out of Exile".The New York Review of Books.33(10).[examines much of Cary's work]
• Malcolm FosterJoyce Cary: A Biography,1968, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, Boston
• Alan Bishop "Gentleman Rider: a biography of Joyce Cary", 1988, Michael JosephISBN0 7181 2330 1
• Mahood, M. M.(1964).Joyce Cary's Africa.London: Methuen.

External links

• Works by Joyce CaryatFaded Page(Canada)
• John Burrows & Alex Hamilton (1954)."Joyce Cary, The Art of Fiction No. 7".Paris Review (Fall-Winter 1954–1955).Fall-Winter 1954-1955 (7).
• Brief overview
• Authortrek resources
• Google scan of 1957 Life magazine article on Cary's last days
• "Joyce Cary: Master Novelist",George Steinbrecher, Jr.College English,Vol. 18, No. 8 (May 1957), pp. 387–395

Bibliography

• Works by Joyce CaryatOpen Library