Fare Thee Well, Mariner

Thank you all who have expressed their condolences. Those who know me, those who knew him, know how sad it is to lose him.

It’s hard being away, not being able to be there, to hug Lucha, his lovely wife, to be with all those people of all ages who also loved him.

It’s hard to know how to shed tears, on your own, in front of a computer. Something tells me that is no proper way to mourn a loved one.

I owe Colin many things. One of them is my love for English poetry. Another one is the understanding that literature means nothing if it does not create relations with people, if it is not talked about by the fireplace (the one at his house, in Christmas, holding a glass of whiskey, I remember; so many Christmas days I was honoured to visit him!), or with some tequilas and Negra Modelos at our favorite bar, La Tasca, or with a cup of tea, or a cheap Americano at the university’s cafeteria.

Colin was many things. He was also a sailor. He built boats. He designed them and built them with his own hands. He built one in his garden in San Jerónimo, Mexico City, so close to where my parents live, and when the boat was too big to be there he took it somewhere else, until it was ready to be taken to sea. He sailed away one day, but did not get to England, “su tierra” as he referred to it. I always thought the reason he built boats was because he wanted one day to sail away and reach English shores again or die trying. A couple of times I was lucky enough to go and see his boat’s progress, learning about the process and talking at the same time about Larkin, Eliot, Hughes or Tennyson. Colin’s most superficial conversation was more illuminating than any given week secluded in the library.

I was 17 18 when I met Colin White. I was the first one to arrive in the classroom; it was the term’s first week. He was already there, and I, long-haired and skinny, came in and sat. Colin was already sitting on his desk, holding his massive and ancient Oxford Anthology. He was smoking his pipe, and the smell of tobacco filled the room. (Yes, he smoked in the classroom, and during his seminars as well; he only stopped when emphysema and doctors forced him to). After staring at me and chuckling, he asked me, in an English accent that I then found very difficult to understand: “So why on earth are you here?” We then had a discussion about comic books and literature, one that would last during all the time we knew each other; our friendship was always punctuated by that conversation.

Writing this I realize my acquaintance with Mr Colin White lasted for 15 14 years. I am glad to have hugged him all those times. He would get all embarrassed and blush, and would then criticize me for wearing a beard (”Can’t you afford razors or what?”) or for supporting the wrong English football team, in an attempt to distract the attention from the fact I had just hugged him. I loved bumping into him at the school’s corridors. In the last years he became thinner and seemed more fragile, so I had to be careful when I hugged him.

For him I was always wrong, and I don’t think he took me as seriously as he took other young colleagues of mine. Sometimes, when we met outside the university, and he had had a class and I had had a class, he would ask me about my students, about what I was teaching, would show concern and even some interest in my subjects, but I know that deep down he thought that “cultural studies” were rubbish (we also discussed that term endlessly, without me ever being able to convince him it was a relevant discipline). I enjoyed debating with Colin, even if I knew that I would never convince him of anything. It forced me to find ways to defend what I was into, and taught me the importance of disagreeing, and how friendship, and respect, can exist even when there is no consensus.

Because Lucha is from Tabasco, like my parents, Colin liked to joke I was the heir of conquistadores or terratenientes. (Lucha is dark-skinned; my parents are quite pale). I once told him one of my distant ancestors on my mom’s side had put fire to a church in Villahermosa because he thought religion kept people from working and being productive. From that Colin created this myth in his head that my family had massacred indingenous Tabasqueños. What started as a joke became a “standard”, and he would often bring that up. He would often introduce me to other people as “a heir of terratenientes”. He seemed to find it funny. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I didn’t. Unsuccessfully, several times I tried to explain that we Priego were common, honest folk, and not horrible señores feudales and that I would not inherit blood-tainted money (or any money for that matter). I think he never understood that I was always suffering financial uncertainty. It was amusing, though, to witness an Englishman who first arrived in Veracruz, like a Graham Greene or Malcolm Lowry, accusing me of being too white for someone whose family was from Tabasco.

When Colin started teaching in the History department I started feeling he preferred his students there. He always had nice things to say about them, but to us he always said we knew nothing. I felt a bit jealous of them, who also went out with him for drinks at la Tasca. He was so pround of Iván, I remember, who did/was doing a PhD in Cambridge. Colin’s love for history was as intense as his love for poetry, but I guess that at some point of his teaching career, the last years at least, he preferred teaching history than literature. It made me a bit sad that “we”, English lit students, had been unable to keep him more interested in our conversations. Maybe we were too banal. But there was this empathy amongst the students and former students who went out with him for drinks: we shared something. We felt honoured to be granted more time to be with him, to keep learning from him and listening to his stories outside the uni.

Two years ago he went to my 30th birthday party in Mexico City, at Charlotte Broad’s house. There he talked to my friend Jon, who was visiting from England. I’ve always thought of Jon as a young Colin, and when I introduced them to each other and saw them chat I was happy, as if I had finally brought two worlds together. Two dear friends, two Englishmen of different generations with a similar love for literature. That was a very special day.

I am who I am largely because of Mr Colin White. Like many of his former students, I can still listen to him read out loud Tennyson, Shakespeare, Eliot, Larkin, Auden, Hughes.

I never thought I would be in his “tierra” the day he would die. I always thought he would die here, staring at the sea.

I will never forget the day we read “Church Going” and “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”. That seminar is forever branded in my memory.

Colin, tu tierra estuvo fría ayer. Llovió todo el día. Ya no quedaban hojas en los árboles. When I found out about your departure I opened a bottle of a single-malt (21 years, you would have liked it) and had a glass. I then went out to walk around the park. The crows cried, and I thought of our poetry seminar: “Flying the black flag of himself”, remember? Your voice came back to me, as clear as ever. What instruments we have agree: the day of his death was a dark cold day.

Earth, receive an honoured guest.

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Please read Adela’s In Memoriam.

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Update: my previous post brought 788 unique visitors. That means there’s people thinking of Colin…