Clinton Bond

Clinton Spencer Bond III

Clinton Bond loved talk – his own, yes, but other people's too. If you could match wits with him, there was no place you'd rather be than in a conversation with Clinton. He had an impressive voice, rich and full of reverberation – but if his voice seemed made for pronouncement and pontification, his laugh was goofily disruptive, erupting from deep in his chest and subsiding in aftershocks of snorts and splutters, catching him by surprise, it seemed, as much as anybody else. Getting that laugh out of Clinton was always a delight.

Clinton loved food – making it, serving it, eating it. We will remember Clinton at table – holding forth, pouring the wine, carving the roast. The dining room was the first room of his big old Oakland fixer house to be rehabilitated – and the most lovingly, from wainscoting to fireplace mantel to ceiling molding. Dinners at Clinton's were always an occasion.

For all his social presence and sense of occasion, Clinton was essentially a private man, cherishing his solitude. In truth, he had little patience for everyday social transactions, and a standard exchange of pleasantries was almost beyond him. He might offer a quip instead, or an unsettling observation. Some would be intrigued and play along; others, no doubt, just found him difficult.

If his was not a kindness-forward persona, Clinton was in fact a kind and empathetic man. You saw this in his photography: he was an accomplished photographer, and people were his favorite and best subject. You saw this in his teaching too. With his students, Clinton was unfailingly attentive - how seriously he took the business of learning to write! If a student took an interest, he spared no pains. Unstinting in his marginal comments after forty years of college teaching, he was often to be found, if you inquired, "upstairs, grading papers."

Eighteenth century British literature was Clinton's scholarly specialization, and the period certainly suited his sensibility: the wit, the satire, the enlightened skepticism, the probing scrutiny of manners and morals almost seemed his natural habitat. Nevertheless, he'd come to literature late, starting off as a chemist, and he was not one to be impressed by the boundaries between fields and disciplines - he read promiscuously for pleasure, stuffing his house with books of every description, according to no particular scheme. At Saint Mary's College, where he taught, Clinton gladly volunteered for the short courses between regular semesters, where professors were free to offer students reading projects of their own devising.

Clinton leaves behind his funny, generous, opinionated wife, Shirin, who was really the perfect match for him and always gave as good as she got, and his valiant daughter, Viv, who fought so hard for him at the end and who, though entirely her own person since earliest girlhood, nevertheless reminds us of her vivid dad – in her direct gaze, her tart observations, her aversion to cant and pretense. Clinton also leaves a sister, Peggy, and a devoted circle of friends. We miss him.