Raymond Bonham Carter's Independent Obituary
Bill Schenley
Raymond Henry Bonham Carter, banker: born London 19 June
1929; married 1958 Elena Propper de Callejon (two sons, one
daughter); died London 17 January 2004.
A distinguished career in banking, suddenly cut short by an
act of fate that led to 25 years of paralysed incapacity: if
that accurately sums up Raymond Bonham Carter's life, it
also misses the point entirely. The real story was one of
survival in the face of daunting odds, a tale less dramatic
but no less extraordinary than the tales of those who have
survived wars, natural disasters or other ghastly
misfortunes.
Raymond was the youngest of the four children of Sir Maurice
and Lady Violet Bonham Carter. She was the daughter of H.H.
Asquith, Britain's prime minister from 1908 to 1916, to whom
Maurice - always known as Bongie - had been private
secretary. Courage may therefore have been in the blood.
Winston Churchill, a lifelong friend of Violet's with whom
he campaigned against appeasement in the 1930s, described
her as a "champion redoubtable". She in turn was to remark
on the "heroic fortitude" of her two daughters, Cressida and
Laura, although the compliment was qualified by
simultaneously noting their "genius for provoking and
creating situations which it alone could enable them to
face". And early on in life her eldest son Mark had, as a
prisoner of war, established his credentials for derring-do
by escaping from behind enemy lines in Italy and making his
way back to Britain.
The courage demanded of Raymond was of a different kind. At
the age of 49, he went into hospital for the routine removal
of a benign brain tumour. The growth was larger than
expected, the operation went on too long, he suffered a
thrombosis and then, in intensive care, his hips
crystallised. Most doctors did not think he would survive;
at best, they thought he would remain almost blind and
paralysed from the neck down. In fact, he lived for nearly
25 years.
For half the 20th century, the name Bonham Carter was
associated above all with politics. Violet was a Liberal
campaigner all her life, eventually sitting as a life peer
in the House of Lords. Mark was to follow her there, having
briefly been MP for Torrington. And Laura was no less
involved in politics, both in her own right and through her
marriage to Jo Grimond, who led the Liberal Party from 1956
to 1967. Yet it was quite natural that Raymond should have
become a banker. Neither his father nor any of his father's
10 older brothers were politicians; they could be found
instead in almost all the traditional professions.
Educated at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford, where
he read PPE, Bonham Carter won a fellowship which in 1952
took him to the Harvard Business School. On graduation two
years later, he joined J. Henry Schröder & Co, setting up
its first research department. Soon he was advising the Bank
of England and acting as an alternate executive director for
Britain at the IMF in Washington, where he was also a member
of the United Kingdom's Treasury and Supply Delegation.
Back in London in 1964, he joined S.G. Warburg & Co, where
he was an executive director from 1967 to 1977 before being
seconded to serve as director of the Industrial Development
Unit at the Department of Industry. Had he not been obliged
to give up, he might have expected to reach the highest
levels of his profession.
Disability did not, however, bring to an end all useful
activity. From his wheelchair, Bonham Carter acted as
treasurer for the International Institute for Strategic
Studies, where he is remembered for the acuteness of his
intellect and the incisiveness of his remarks; he remained
on the institute's executive committee into the 1990s. He
also served on the council of the Bobath Centre for Children
with Cerebral Palsy, which repayed his help by providing him
with physiotherapy. And, after the death of his brother Mark
in 1994, he took over as overseer of the publication of his
mother's letters and diaries.
As a young man, Raymond Bonham Carter was known for his
sense of humour. He was an accomplished mimic, gave a
plausible imitation of a steam engine's whistle, and could
make a loud cluck with his tongue that would have turned
heads even among the Xhosa or Bushmen of southern Africa. He
loved skiing, tennis and dancing, and was also remarkably
fit, able to jump from a standing position on to table-tops
and given to taking his children for runs on Hampstead
Heath. He was clever and capable, but not showy. In the
words of his brother-in-law Jo Grimond, "Raymond, had he
lived in the [19th] century, would have been the guardian
into whose care each dying father would have wished to
commit his widow and children."
None of this, however, adequately explains the resources of
will and courage that later enabled him not just to survive
his operation, but to recover at least some of his physical
faculties (his intellectual ones never deserted him), to
remain profoundly interested in the world around him and to
confront his misfortune without a trace of self-pity or
recrimination.
Admittedly, he had help. Foremost was the help of his wife,
Elena, whom he had married in 1958 and who was as rocklike
in her love and support as Raymond had been in his when she
had suffered a long, shattering nervous breakdown in the
1970s. He also had the love of his sons, Edward and Thomas,
and of his daughter, Helena, who continued to live at home
long after she had become a successful actress. Helena's son
Billy, by Tim Burton, the director of her two latest films,
was Bonham Carter's seventh grandchild, born in October.
More support came from a succession of devoted nurses -
perhaps 1,500 in all - who helped to look after him over the
years; and more still came from a wide group of friends who
would sit and read, as well as talk, to him (he always
enjoyed the obituaries). One other source of comfort was
canine - latterly, in the shape of Kes, his amiable and
affectionate golden retriever.
All these contributed to Bonham Carter's long and amazing
defiance of death. But, at bottom, the decisive contribution
was his own.