Whtg to His Friends

W.H.T.G. TO HIS FRIENDS SOME LETTERS AND INFORMAL. WRITINGS. OF CANON W. H. TEMPLE GAIRDNER OF CAIRO 1873-1928. LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.2 TEMPLE GAIRDNER OF CAIRO By CONSTANCE E. PADWICK. With photogravure Frontispiece and several Illustrations. Cloth boards. 7s. 6d. net. Seventh Thousand. (Hidden away in Cairo from the gaze of the world, was a great man-great in heart and mind and soul, a living embodiment of the Franciscan spirit. Canon Gairdner was a C.M.S. missionary to Moslems, but now this book is known his praise is in all the Churches.) " A book not merely to be read, but to be read many times, to be used as an aid in one's devotions that something of his understanding of Christ may be communicated to us." J. H. OLDHAM in The Church Overseas. EXTRACTS FROM PRESS NOTICES. "A notable contribution to biographical literature ... a life painfully, joyously and abundantly spent in the quest of God, and in the service of the Kingdom." DONALD FRASER in the International Review of Missions. "His biography has the interest attaching to a remarkable personality ... a fine J?Ortrait of one of the great Christians of our time. ' The Times. "The best and most interesting missionary biography that has appeared since • Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar' ... a moving account of a character of singular devotion and beauty." The BISHOP OF SoUTHWARK in the Southwark Diocesan Gazette. "No book could be more opportune, and everyone ought to read it ... We owe much to Miss Padwick for a biography so beautifully written." The Rev. W. WILSON CASH in the Church of England, N ewspape,. "A really valuable and important biography . the man was a saint as well as all the other things he contrived to be." The Student Movement. S.P.C.K. LONDON PREFACE Tms little book has been compiled at the suggestion of many friends who wished to have a lasting share in what has been called my husband's "greatest legacy" -that is, his letters and informal papers. And indeed this thought of sharing is a keynote of the book, just as it was also of the life of Temple Gairdner-one who was ever eager both to enter into the lives of others and to share with them his own. Writing was to him no labour ; it was inevitable, easier often than speech. " Read what I have written," he would say, when asked to describe some incident. But it is to the circumstances of his life-his residence as a missionary abroad, with the inevitable long and frequent separations from kith and kin-that we owe the mass of his correspondence. There were letters on purely personal subjects, giving sympathy with friends in joy or sorrow, or vividly describing some latest happening in his own circle. And when "news" there was none, the stream of letters continued just as full and free. It was an adage of his mother that "A good letter-writer can write an interesting letter without any news to give " ; and of himself he once vi PREFACE wrote : " I am not very good at general letters, for mostly my letters have not much news. They are all individual, written with an individual in mind." In such letters, then, he shared with another his latest and best thoughts on all manner of things, both in heaven and on earth. But when the great events happened -those thrills, whether of Travel, Music, Works of Art, Beauties of Nature (and who so readily thrilled as he !) -his happiness was never complete until he had shared the experience and the joy with others. " I write [he said] because it is the only way to share these glories with you all, and so redeem me from utter selfishness." While the tide of enthusiasm still ran high he would pour out description and impression in vast circular letters to his intimates-" My dear Unfortunates," he would call them when a letter reached its forty-seventh sheet. In the queerest places, and at the oddest times, such " circulars " would be dashed down ; the last of this long series (an account of a four-days visit to Paris) was rapidly flung on to paper by a figure perched on a bag amid the noise and whirl of a Paris station, intent on his task, yet with an eye and ear on the alert for the arrival of his family from England. For obvious reasons of space, only mere fragments of such letters are here given. To the letters are added some papers read to an informal Literary Society in Cairo. These were not intended or prepared for publication, and are now PREFACE vii printed quite unaltered in the spontaneous and inti mate style in which he dashed them off. To our children, all of whom have taken part in the preparation of this book, as· to myself, the task has brought real happiness, in spite of a sense of our unfitness. To all the friends who have willingly shared their letters with others our thanks are due ; but most of all to my husband's biographer, Miss Constance Padwick, without whose inspiration and leadership this book had never been begun ; and to Mr. Kenneth Maclennan, but for whose efficient help it had never been carried through to completion. M.D.G. 0xFoRD, January, 1930. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE NEAR EAST . I II. HE SEES THE WORLD 19 Ill. AT THE SEA 37 IV. CHRISTMAS AND EASTER FESTIVALS • 43 V. LETTERS TO CHILDREN 49 VI. PORTRAITS 66 VII. HE SENDS HIS THANKS 78 VIII. HE SHARES THE LIVES OF HIS FRIENDS 83 IX. REFLEXIONS ON SOME DEEPER THINGS 96 X. ART AND ARTISTS 110 XI. HELLAS I I 8 XII. ON Boo KS AND AUTHORS I 23 XIII. ON THE WRITINGS OF H. G. WELLS 139 XIV. ON ELGAR'S SECOND SYMPHONY 157 W.H.T.G. TO HIS FRIENDS CHAPTER I THE NEAR EAST My heart is full of praise to God : " All things are yours " . I have claimed the heart that enjoys ; only the slavish " dolish " spirit cannot. But he who has shod his feet with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace has heart-leisure to enjoy God's works, and to praise their Maker. I felt God loves to have it so,-to have His masterpieces appreciated. (From his journal.) Desert near Port Said. (His first sight.) Dismal, featureless, giving you the sensation that no one had ever trodden it since the beginning of the world. For it was utterly lifeless : not even a heron stood on that doleful shore. Altogether it gave one the impression of being a sort of fag-end of God's earth like the useless, shapeless snippings which fall from the making of a beautiful garment and are swept away. All the same, as you may see from the way it has impressed me, it has a sort of weird influence upon me : like Kersland Street on a wet December evening. Seen from the Pyramids Road. Yesterday afternoon (Saturday) I rode out to the Pyramids-reading the Spectator as I rode along, to the great amusement of the natives. The sun set when I got half-way and the afterglow was simply lovely ; such soft half-tints as baflle description. But what was 2 W. H. T. G. TO HIS FRIENDS chiefly remarkable was the reflexion of the wondrous sky in the pools left by the inundation in the midst of the limitless verdure of the cultivated plains. These pools were simply lovely water-colour paintings opalescent studies in indescribable livid, soft crimsons, blues, and daffodil, framed by the rich green meadows. The dark, emerald expanse-which astonishes even a visitor from Ireland-glooming ever more and more in the waning light, but always rich emerald green, broken by those bright gleaming pools of soft purple and crimson or more brightly shining daffodil-yellow ! Can you imagine it ? or is the pen wholly powerless ? A Desert Walk by .Night. Well, to celebrate the last occasion before entering definitely on old age, the humble pair took train to the station before Helwan as the sun declined, walked across the two and a half miles of desert plain, reached the foot of the steep rocky mountain just as the sun set, gained its top as darkness fell, sat down in the unearthly solitude and silence of that desert place and by the light of the stars wanly lighting up the deep darkness of night ate their frugal meal . then waited, listen ing to the dense silence of those hills ; until, at about 9 o'clock, the east began to pale with a mild silver light . this increased a little, and lo, at the spot where it increased Somebody from beneath the eastern horizon pushed up the edge of a gleaming disk. So the moon rose and the ghostly darkness grew brilliant ; the weird uncertainty of the landscape in the starlight suddenly transformed itself into the jet and-ivory of moonlit buttresses of rock, jagged crags, precipitous ravines, and the long flat ridges of these desert hills. So we rose and walked round the top of a great ravine, sometimes rolling stones down and listening to the uncanny hollow crash and bang as the THE NEAR EAST 3 stone smashed to pieces on the rocks below, and the echoes of the barren hills took up and reverberated the sound. It was weird. Once M. went on· in front as I was rolling some stones down, and when I looked she had disappeared ; and when I called her there was no reply; perfect silence-that was still weirder.

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