AARL

A man of many parts: a personal reminiscence of Warren Horton

Gordon Bower

There are many people who could write about Warren from their perspective and their knowledge of him, but I imagine that some constant themes might emerge and it is those themes I will try to identify.

Much of what appears here will be familiar to many readers, because if there was one overriding memory of him, it was his ability to make you feel the important recipient of some extremely rare or privileged information, when in your heart of hearts you knew that his familiar 'This is for your ears only' meant that more than a few others would have received the same information with the same directive!

For example, Warren used to refer to me often as 'his oldest and closest friend in libraries' but I suspect that does not make me unique. Certainly we were friends on and off for perhaps 35 years and very close friends on and off for a good many of those years.

Many of the best anecdotes about WMH were the ones he used to tell about himself. The most famous of course was his introduction to Canberra Grammar. As he told it, he was travelling by car with his parents from Sydney to Melbourne when they stopped off for a picnic in the grounds of this famous school. When his parents asked him if he liked it there he agreed that it was very pleasant - at which time he was told he was to be a boarder there and his case was summarily extracted from the boot of the car and deposited with him at the school.

What is particularly interesting about this story, as well as the poignancy of the tale itself, is the fact that he used to tell it about himself. Was it designed to make you feel sorry for him and was it a way of trying to explain what influenced his character development? Was it a true story or had it in true WMH fashion been embellished over the years of it being told?

Anyone who knew Warren well knew that, in polite parlance, he was economical with the truth on occasions. In fact he told whoppers, but the complex thing about it was his ability to get people to keep believing in him even when you knew that he was not telling the truth. Sometimes this was either a ruse to flush out your knowledge or point of view, or a way of inflaming you and even, on other occasions, his way of protecting you. Whatever the reason, this was always one of the most complex and obscure aspects of his personality.

I imagine that all of his friends have a period of time in their mind when their memories of Warren are at their most felicitous. For me his best years were in the early seventies, when his political skills were still being honed and again in the eighties and nineties when he and Patsy Hardy were so happy and content.

There were many landmarks in the seventies. Warren and I were both heavily involved in the NSW Branch of the then Library Association of Australia (now ALIA) at that time and followed each other as treasurer, then branch president, and I later took up the post of executive director. The association was going through a period of very significant change, of which one obvious manifestation was the move from the old terrace accommodation in Surry Hills to the modern rented office space at Science House and later to LAA-owned properties in Elizabeth Street and Ultimo.

It was during this period that Warren really developed his 'big picture' mentality which he kept for the rest of his life. I remember he walked into my office in the Library Board of NSW in 1974, handed me a letter from Justice Rae Else-Mitchell, then chairman of the Council of the Library of New South Wales, and said to me 'The only answer is Yes'. It was an invitation to be a member of a small committee of library staff to conduct what became known as the LERN Report (Library Enquiry into Role and Needs) of the library.

Of course I said 'Yes' and Warren as chair drove the committee over the next five months to produce a well received and influential study. We all had to do our day jobs at the same time, so working sessions were mostly after hours, often until 1:00am. It was a hugely exciting and bonding experience for me and the other members, Jo Macintyre, Dianne Patenall, Therese Delanty and Wendy Whitton as secretary. What was most significant about the LERN Committee was the freedom we were given to operate and it stands as a tribute to the generosity of spirit of the then principal librarian, Russell Doust. It was a significant event for the library.

At about the same time Warren devoted many hours, in and out of the office, to what became known as the Sheldon Award (1973) which established a clear professional structure for professional librarians and for paraprofessionals at the State Library of NSW, a truly landmark event referred to in detail in the later NSW Office of Industrial Relations Inquiry of 1984. The party at Warren's house at Balmain to celebrate the victory, with endless repetitions of 'The Red Flag', 'Lloyd George knew my father' and 'Part of the Union' still lives in the memory of those of us who were there.

This period was when it became obvious to me (and indeed anyone who knew him well then) that Warren worked what were really ridiculous hours. This meant early starts (7:00am not being unusual), late nights, all day Saturdays and even on occasions Sunday mornings. His stamina was amazing - especially when his social life was hectic to say the least. We reminisced (by e-mail) in his last few months about those days and how, on some celebratory occasions, lunch moved seamlessly into dinner. Lunch at the Art Gallery of NSW was often memorable and when Don and Audrey (the managers) closed the door to the public and brought out the coffee and the port we knew that escape was out of the question. Of course, it was typical of Warren's character that such events turned out to be full blown political or professional discussions.

It was about this time that we began, with our respective partners, to holiday together. Always at the same beachfront home we rented at North Avoca on the NSW Central Coast. Always the fish from the Co-Op at Terrigal, barbecued on the beach and accompanied by the best of wines. It was at times like this that he could turn off from work and become the enormously relaxed and entertaining person it was easy to love.

Warren had an encyclopaedic knowledge of many subjects - American History (particularly presidential), the Australian political scene, literature (particularly biography), classical music and cricket, to name only some. Cricket was a love we shared and on the too few occasions he could be dragged away from working on a Saturday, I would pick him up and head for the Sydney Cricket Ground. We used to sit in the old Bob Stand, so named because the original price of a ticket there was a shilling (a bob). The SCG was more relaxed then and you were allowed to take in your hamper of cold chicken, pate, cheese and biscuits and chilled white wine. Warren was traditionally a 'red man' but could be persuaded to a good white as well.

His love and extensive knowledge of red wine backfired on him once. After the LERN Report was finished we all headed off for a long lunch at the Summit Restaurant on the top of Australia Square in Sydney. As the first person there I had a quick look at the wine list and saw a fairly unusual McWilliam's Robert Hermitage rather than the more usual Philip Hermitage that was our standard red at that time. When Warren arrived he said 'You choose the wines, GB'. I suggested we had a Robert Hermitage - a tad expensive I said, but a good wine. Warren adopted his frequent scoffing manner and said 'There is no such thing as a Robert Hermitage' and challenged me to order it and if successful he would pay. The rest of the story you can guess - it was very good and very expensive and Warren laughed about it for years, so it was a pretty good investment!

His move to become state librarian in Victoria came as a surprise to his Sydney friends and the move itself was clouded with mystery. I lost touch with him while he was in Melbourne but there were many stories which emerged of less than happy times. But the saving grace was the fact that he met and married the person who was to have the most significant effect on his life, Patsy Hardy. An independent spirit, she was full of grace, good humour and style and was his guiding light.

After he accepted the post of director-general at the National Library of Australia and they moved to Canberra, Patsy was always there with Warren, with her own enormously strong personality never in question, but a true companion as well. Their generosity was often reflected in invitations to lunches and dinners at their splendid home in Drysdale Circuit. Sometimes as the only guests, sometimes with new and interesting other guests and once each year the highly enjoyable lunch they hosted for senior staff at the library. Whatever the occasion one was always assured of superb food and wine provided by the most attentive and interesting hosts.

In my view Patsy's death from cancer in 1994 marked the beginning of the deterioration in Warren's health, wellbeing and personality. Patsy's last social outing was lunch at our home in Watson and although she clearly was not well, she enjoyed the day and made us all feel at ease. I was honoured to find that before her death Patsy had asked that I act as host at the celebration of her life held at the NLA. Patsy had a unique quality in that not only did she make Warren laugh but she also had the ability to make him laugh at himself.

That ability to laugh at himself was best illustrated by a story he told on more than one occasion. As director-general at the NLA he was often on the 'diplomatic circuit' and on one such occasion he and Patsy were guests at Government House together with many of the diplomatic corps. After the event guests waited at the front door as their cars were brought around for them. The arrival of each car was announced - 'car for the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom' as the Rolls-Royce appeared; 'car for the Ambassador of...' and another Rolls-Royce would appear. Finally Warren's Holden appeared and the announcement, after a short pause, was made: 'Self drive Holden Commodore'. He used to laugh at that one.

But with Patsy gone, and his own battle with prostate cancer starting to grip him, the life somehow seemed to ebb from him. He became cantankerous and although he had always been ready for a good argument, seemed now to pick fights over trivial issues or on intensely personal grounds. Certainly our greatest falling out was preventable and ultimately pointless, but he put himself into a rage about it, storming around his office shouting. One independent observer of this event said that he behaved abominably, and he did, but he had never been able to admit he was wrong.

For a man as strong and decisive as Warren, he could be amazingly indecisive at times. During the ten years we worked closely at the NLA our relationship ranged from intensely close to highly volatile. As executive officer of the Australian Council of Australian Libraries and Information Services (ACLIS) for all of its life from 1988 to 1998, I was bewildered and bemused by Warren's attitude to that organisation. The library had of course supported ACLIS' predecessor AACOBS since 1956 and continued to provide staff and accommodation to ACLIS. Warren's attitude was difficult to ascertain because it swung from wholehearted support to a position of total separation.

What made life difficult for the council and the staff was that you did not know which position was in vogue at any particular time. Nor would he give a straight answer to the question of whether he would offer any ongoing support for ACLIS if it left the library building. We never received a straight reply from Warren even when formally asked by at least one ACLIS president. Eventually he admitted that he had changed his mind (the acknowledgement being rather rarer than the change of heart!) about the need for two similar organisations and strongly pushed for what was to be a merger of ACLIS and ALIA. The failure of the merger process and its replacement of it by the decision of the ALIA General Council to reinvent themselves from within infuriated him but we both had to admit that the opportunities presented by the grand design and fabric of the true merger were irretrievably lost.

In his last months at the NLA, he developed a paranoia about who would follow him as director-general when he retired and he would spend literally hours on occasion running through the senior members of the profession and why none of them would really do. His relationships with many of the staff over this period were fractured and many old friends hurt and mystified by his behaviour. He had lost the plot and I think he knew it but was unable to recapture it.

He had always seemed invincible and though we knew he was dying it didn't seem real somehow. Towards the end I picked up the phone to break the years of silence between us and we started a pleasant exchange of e-mails full of memories and reminiscences. Hopefully there were others like me who made their peace with him in the end. He wasn't an easy man to get along with but you knew he was larger than life.

I suppose in the end, it is fair to say that those who knew him well miss him now that he has gone, because even though we often fought with him we also laughed with him and we still remember the good days.

Amongst other positions, Gordon Bower (please remove '.nospam' from address) was executive director of the Library Association of Australia, and later executive officer of the Australian Council of Libraries and Information Services. Since moving to the UK in 1998 he has held various project manager positions in higher education.