Cheerful, bespectacled with thin gold rims, chubby-fat, cherubic Arthur Goodland, kindness in the very soul of him, lover of beauty in nature, art and woman-kind – one would not automatically at all see in him the extremely well-trained chemical engineer and hard-driving top executive in a highly successful company and industry. Yet Arthur held a first class degree from Cambridge and was Factory Operations Director of Bookers Sugar Estates when the Guyana sugar industry reached a peak production of 370,000 tonnes in the 1960s, never achieved before or since. He was a superb executive and manager of men – not to forget that, as I write of other things.
Arthur and I were colleagues in Bookers Sugar Estates – he managing the factories, I concerned with marketing sugar. We discussed matters as colleagues, but often talked of other interests as friends. He was keen to pick my mind about poetry in particular; I listened with great interest to what he had to say about archeology and art. We had a common love of the great English painter Turner and agreed one of the most remarkable places on earth was the Turner Room at the Tate Gallery in London.
When my first marriage was breaking up I was lost in dismay and confusion. “Come and stay at my home until you sort things out,” Arthur said to me. Matter-of-fact kindness that means so much. I stayed with him for about 6 weeks and found a new equilibrium. Our infinitely varied conversations helped a lot – a good amount of laughter and “life still has much to offer” balanced the sad realities. Arthur to be thanked from the top and bottom of my heart.
I think this is when I showed Arthur the manuscript of The Marbleaus (which was to become The Hummingbird Tree when published) which had been gathering dust for years since I finished writing it in the 1950s. He liked it and suggested that he might send it for me to a friend he knew in London, Herbert Van Thal, a literary agent. Which was done, resulting in Heinemann accepting the book for publication promptly, and it going on to win the Royal Society of Literature’s special prize for a new novel and with it the honour of a Fellowship.
“One day I will designate the very expensive bottle of St. Emilion Red which you owe me”, Arthur said. For the time being Houston Blue Label had to suffice.
Arthur must have spent an unimaginable amount of time and effort in contributing to the great success of the sugar industry at the time. In this period the industry was making immense strides – technically in the factories (Arthur’s responsibility), agronomically in the field and also in improving the lives and prospects of people according to Jock Campbell’s overarching injunction – “People are more important than ships, shops and sugar estates.” Arthur played an important role in what I remember was in part an exciting crusade.
But he certainly had time for other interests. Denis Williams, Director of the Walter Roth Museum, was a good friend and Arthur became a devoted and talented amateur archeologist. He did good and important work in discovering and investigating ancient Amerindian sites. As always, his enthusiasm was infectious as he explained the discoveries he helped make in the interior “mounds”.
Of all his other interests, his sculpting was the one I knew by far the best. And I will let the story of “Imoinda the Slave Princess” stand not only for my friend Arthur’s appetite for art, but also for the inextinguishable creative spark in him.
It began when Arthur, who used to forage for “found art” on the sands beyond the sea wall, one day saw an immense tree trunk cast up on shore by a storm and had a vision of some beauty within it which he could bring to life. He got a fork-lift and a tractor-trailer and bought the great tree trunk back to his home on Main Street, Georgetown, and installed it in his inner courtyard where he cultivated orchids.
And there for two or three years he worked on it with an axe I believe and saws and hatchets and sharp knives and a sculptor’s gouger and all the tools until at last Imoinda the slave princess and her paramour slowly but surely emerged into life and was ready to be polished and presented. I remember weekend after weekend, whenever I could, visiting Arthur at his home and sitting and drinking rum and ginger and watching him work and talking with him as he practised his art and finished his labour of love. Ah, I can see Arthur now – bespectacled, in khaki shorts, shirtless, dripping with sweat, breaking off to take long drinks of rum and ginger and ice, explaining what he was doing in between discussing the marvellous ways of the world, happy to the point of laughing with joy. How good that was. Life at its best.
The launching of the work, the unveiling of the sculpture, was a great success, a social and cultural event not to be missed. Arthur had left one shining nipple still to be added to the left breast of the Princess – so people were invited to attend “Imoinda’s Nipple Fixing Ceremony”. The invitation list was comprehensive. I remember it included the Roman Catholic and Anglican Bishops of Georgetown but I cannot recall if either or both attended. I also recall that the two ladies of the night who had acted as models were very happily present at the ceremony.
The event was a great success, well attended – who would possibly want to miss it. The Chairman of Bookers was visiting from London and he attended and said a few congratulatory words. And in the conclusion, ascending the ladder, letting fall the tarpaulin protecting the proud sculpted Princess and her lover, and affixing the nipple as stipulated Prime Minister Forbes Burnham did the final honours of a remarkable night with considerable aplomb.
The statue was gifted to the nation. It now stands displayed in the main George Walcott lecture theatre of the University of Guyana with its official title “Orinooko and Imoinda; The Royal Slaves” 1669.
When Arthur retired he went to live in Brazil in a town named Olinda. And beautiful it must have been as Arthur described it. I do not know how he discovered it. – on one of his “travels to know the world, only one chance we get” – but he loved the place. From there I received letters from him and sent replies with fair regularity. He had developed an interest – and learnt a whole new skill – in translating modern Brazilian writers into English and in the course of time I received English translations of whole books by Brazilian writers done by Arthur himself. It astonished me that in retirement he could have taught himself so much to so high a standard. How exquisitely and endlessly proficient is the mind of man!
There is a poem by an author Arthur translated though the translation of this poem is not Arthur’s. But I think of Arthur when I read the concluding stanzas of Mario de Andrade’s poem, “My Soul Has a Hat”:
“It is the essentials that make life useful.
I want to surround myself with people
who know how to touch the hearts of those whom hard strokes of life
have learned to grow, with sweet touches of the soul.
Yes, I’m in a hurry.
I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.
I do not intend to waste any of the remaining desserts.
I am sure they will be exquisite,
much more than those eaten so far.
My goal is to reach the end satisfied
and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.
We have two lives
and the second begins when you realize you only have one.”
