This is a topic upon which I touch timidly; not only because Joe has talked of it himself in Some Eminent Victorians, but also because I had, perhaps less than most of his friends, the opportunity to appreciate his gifts as a public, or even a social, entertainer. In the long list of his after-dinner speeches there were not more than half a dozen that I was lucky enough to hear; and the little corner in the Garrick Club where I know he was wont to sit, quickly attracting thither the most appreciative spirits and keeping them all the evening in a ripple of laughter, was obviously a forbidden spot to me.
I think his celebrity in this matter needs no mention of mine; but I should like to quote one or two appreciations by distinguished literary men.
The first is in a letter to myself, where Anthony Hope draws a remarkable portrait of him: “He was a great arguer,” he writes; “for while his temper was always serene, his good humour did not blunt the edge of his tongue. Quite recently I have reread his last book with the keenest appreciation; it shows a broad, appreciative mind, and yet one quite clear for values and criterions.
“We have lost a man of rare gifts, a splendid companion, a generous, kindly, gracious friend. One is happy in having known him, happy too in feeling that life was to him a fine thing—a thing he loved, appreciated and used to the utmost. And his name will live—I think that will be proved true—in the memories of men and in their written records of these times.
“He was a figure and a presence amongst us.”
Another appreciation is by W. J. Locke and appeared in one of the leading papers:
“In a brief notice like the present it is impossible to dwell on the career of one of the most versatile of our profession. Everything he touched he adorned with his own peculiar sense of artistic perfection. He was an eminent art critic, a theatrical manager with high ideals, an editor of fine discernment, and a distinguished playwright. He was one of the finest after-dinner speakers of his generation, and one of the few men who earned, maintained, and deserved the reputation of a wit. A writer in a recent newspaper article wrongly charged him with being rather a monologuist in social talk than a conversationalist. Far from this being the case, no one more fully appreciated and practised the delicate art of conversation. It may be said, perhaps, that he was one of the youngest—he died in his sixty-eighth year—and one of the last of the great Victorians; for though his keen intellect never lost touch with the events and movements of recent years, yet his mental attitude was typically that of the second half of the nineteenth century in its sturdy radicalism, its search after essentials, its abhorrence of shams, and its lusty enjoyment of what was real and good in life. The honest workman with pen or brush always found at his hands generous praise or encouragement; for the charlatan, or ‘Jack Pudding,’ as he was fond of terming him, he had no mercy.
“Struggling against grievous physical disability, he died practically in harness. His last book, a treatise on painting, completed but a month or two ago, is said by those privileged to read the proofs, to reveal a vigour unimpaired by illness and an enthusiasm undimmed by age. An arresting and lovable figure has passed from us, one that linked us with a generation of giants whose work was ending when ours began. It is for us, with sadness, to say, Vale: but we know that their honoured shades will greet with many an ave the advent of ‘Joe’ Carr on the banks of Acheron.”
Two more extracts from letters, I have the permission of the writers to quote. One is from A. E. W. Mason:
“The traits and qualities which come back to me,” he writes, are “his boyish spirit, his sense of fun, his swiftness in dropping out of fun and suddenly touching upon great themes with the surest possible touch, his knowledge of Shakespeare, his passion for Dickens,” etc. And the other is in the letter of affectionate sympathy written to me at the time of his death by one of the oldest and most valued of his friends, Sir Frederick Macmillan: