Mildred Cable, Intrepid Explorer and Author of The Gobi Desert
Friday, June 17, 2005
A few words about Mildred Cable, the intrepid missionary and explorer and author of a classic work of travel literature, The Gobi Desert, in which she wrote brilliantly about her adventures in the wildest and remotest places in Central Asia no Europeans had ever reached before. Today anyone stumbling across a copy of her book at a garage sale or in a used books shop will find it to be addictive reading. It's hard to put down.
Mildred's parents were Christian evangelicals and her father, John Cable, was a leader in the Baptist Church in Guildford, a lovely ancient town in Surrey. He was also the prosperous owner of a "gentlemen's outfitters and haberdashery store" in Guildford and, as a local justice of the peace, he once found himself in a position to help my grandmother in a time of trouble.
I learned of John Cable's connection to my family's history from papers I recently acquired from the archives of Dr. Barnardo's Homes in London, England.My grandmother, Annie Beatrice Gevaux, was a member of the Guildford Baptist Church. Her children took Sunday School lessons from John's other daughter and one August day in 1906, my aunt Florence, a little girl of 7, confided in her teacher. Florence told her that her father, a branch manager for Prudential Insurance, had deserted the family, abandoning 7 children under the age of 8.
John Cable came to my grandmother's rescue and was instrumental in getting the four youngest Gevaux children (my mother was one of them) admitted to Dr. Barnardo's Homes, Britain's famous institution for abandoned children, headquartered in London. The three eldest stayed with my grandmother who took in boarders and became a washerwoman in order to support her family. I have a copy of Cable's signed application to Barnardo's in my files in which he testified that Grandma was a respectable, god-fearing woman deserving of assistance.
Alice Mildred Cable was born in Guildford in 1878 into a passionately evangelical Christian family who believed in spreading Christianity to the farthest ends of the earth. As a child she yearned to grow up and become a missionary, and rebelled against her family's plans for her to become a typically bourgeois young lady. Instead, when she reached 18, she insisted on studying in London where she learned basic medical practices and prepared for missionary work in China.
On arrival in Huozhou, Shanxi, China in 1902, Mildred met two English sisters--Evangeline and Francesca French. The trio established a mission station and a girls' school there, together with a church, a dispensary, and a refuge where opium adicts could receive treatment. They also established an itinerant mission for Muslim women and traveled across the Gobi desert, taking medical and educational supplies with them to aid nomadic Muslim families. They loaded their little horse and cart with a small portable organ, pamphlets, and song books written in a Chinese phonetic script that they taught to many people along the way. It's a poignant and intriguing image that comes to mind of the three English women holding sing-alongs for nomadic Muslim peasants somewhere in the middle of the vast and normally silent desert.
Mildred, Eva and Francesca made three separate journeys across the Gobi over a ten year period. They gazed at cave walls covered in Muslim paintings, they met military generals, princes, and prostitutes, and they soldiered on through duststorms and scorpion attacks, finding refuge in a desert castle, protected by a Muslim military unit. In her book Mildred describes in vivid detail the strange tundra, flora and fauna never seen by Europeans before. She evokes the people and places of a culture now eradicated, and she seems more interested in the exotic men and women she met in the Gobi rather than converting them. She describes their homes, their children, the way they dressed, ate, grew food--all of which she herself took part in--as well as the harsh and strange features of the landscape, the vegetation, and animal life. The Gobi was like a separate planet.
The women's success was based partly on immediately abandoning western dress and adopting local clothing, plus immersing themselves in the local language. They boarded in the humble homes of the people they met, living as they did, sleeping on earth floors. They went completely native and showed no fear when faced with threatening warlords and bandits. They literally charmed them like birds out of the trees.
During their travels, they adopted a little 7 year old beggar girl and eventually took her home to England when they were forced to return to England in 1937 after political turmoil in China forced them to leave.The three women were heaped with honors after reaching home. Mildred's book, The Gobi Desert (1940), was widely read and admired, and The Royal Scottish Geographical Society awarded them jointly the Livingstone medal. Mildred received the Lawrence memorial medal from the Royal Central Asian Society, and she served as Vice President for the British and Foreign Bible Society until her death in London in 1952.
My mother and her siblings never knew the story of John Cable and his actions in their behalf. Even Florence may have forgotten her own role in the story. It's doubtful that any of them knew of Mildred or ever read her book. However, a cousin of mine, Hilary (Gevaux) Hield, does recall her mother reading The Gobi Desert to her as a child. Much later, as an adult, Hilary flew over the Gobi and looking down over the great wasteland, she felt a flash of nostalgia for those childhood readings. Hilary's mother married Frank, one of the 7 children who were assisted by John Cable.
Mildred's books are scarce. She also wrote Through Jade Gate and Central Asia: An Account of Journeys in Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert but it's out of print. The original editiion of The Gobi Desert has been long out of print, but Virago Press issued a reprint in the 1980s and that is available on Amazon.com.
Bibliography:
Linda Benson, "Muslims, Missionaries and Warlords in Northwesern China," Oakland University Journal (Fall 2001), p. 9-21.
William James Platt, Three Women: Mildred Cable, Francesca French, Evangeline French. The Authorised Biography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964). [Out of print].
Ricci Roundtable on the History of Christianity in China (Online).
A few words about Mildred Cable, the intrepid missionary and explorer and author of a classic work of travel literature, The Gobi Desert, in which she wrote brilliantly about her adventures in the wildest and remotest places in Central Asia no Europeans had ever reached before. Today anyone stumbling across a copy of her book at a garage sale or in a used books shop will find it to be addictive reading. It's hard to put down.
Mildred's parents were Christian evangelicals and her father, John Cable, was a leader in the Baptist Church in Guildford, a lovely ancient town in Surrey. He was also the prosperous owner of a "gentlemen's outfitters and haberdashery store" in Guildford and, as a local justice of the peace, he once found himself in a position to help my grandmother in a time of trouble.
I learned of John Cable's connection to my family's history from papers I recently acquired from the archives of Dr. Barnardo's Homes in London, England.My grandmother, Annie Beatrice Gevaux, was a member of the Guildford Baptist Church. Her children took Sunday School lessons from John's other daughter and one August day in 1906, my aunt Florence, a little girl of 7, confided in her teacher. Florence told her that her father, a branch manager for Prudential Insurance, had deserted the family, abandoning 7 children under the age of 8.
John Cable came to my grandmother's rescue and was instrumental in getting the four youngest Gevaux children (my mother was one of them) admitted to Dr. Barnardo's Homes, Britain's famous institution for abandoned children, headquartered in London. The three eldest stayed with my grandmother who took in boarders and became a washerwoman in order to support her family. I have a copy of Cable's signed application to Barnardo's in my files in which he testified that Grandma was a respectable, god-fearing woman deserving of assistance.
Alice Mildred Cable was born in Guildford in 1878 into a passionately evangelical Christian family who believed in spreading Christianity to the farthest ends of the earth. As a child she yearned to grow up and become a missionary, and rebelled against her family's plans for her to become a typically bourgeois young lady. Instead, when she reached 18, she insisted on studying in London where she learned basic medical practices and prepared for missionary work in China.
On arrival in Huozhou, Shanxi, China in 1902, Mildred met two English sisters--Evangeline and Francesca French. The trio established a mission station and a girls' school there, together with a church, a dispensary, and a refuge where opium adicts could receive treatment. They also established an itinerant mission for Muslim women and traveled across the Gobi desert, taking medical and educational supplies with them to aid nomadic Muslim families. They loaded their little horse and cart with a small portable organ, pamphlets, and song books written in a Chinese phonetic script that they taught to many people along the way. It's a poignant and intriguing image that comes to mind of the three English women holding sing-alongs for nomadic Muslim peasants somewhere in the middle of the vast and normally silent desert.
Mildred, Eva and Francesca made three separate journeys across the Gobi over a ten year period. They gazed at cave walls covered in Muslim paintings, they met military generals, princes, and prostitutes, and they soldiered on through duststorms and scorpion attacks, finding refuge in a desert castle, protected by a Muslim military unit. In her book Mildred describes in vivid detail the strange tundra, flora and fauna never seen by Europeans before. She evokes the people and places of a culture now eradicated, and she seems more interested in the exotic men and women she met in the Gobi rather than converting them. She describes their homes, their children, the way they dressed, ate, grew food--all of which she herself took part in--as well as the harsh and strange features of the landscape, the vegetation, and animal life. The Gobi was like a separate planet.
The women's success was based partly on immediately abandoning western dress and adopting local clothing, plus immersing themselves in the local language. They boarded in the humble homes of the people they met, living as they did, sleeping on earth floors. They went completely native and showed no fear when faced with threatening warlords and bandits. They literally charmed them like birds out of the trees.
During their travels, they adopted a little 7 year old beggar girl and eventually took her home to England when they were forced to return to England in 1937 after political turmoil in China forced them to leave.The three women were heaped with honors after reaching home. Mildred's book, The Gobi Desert (1940), was widely read and admired, and The Royal Scottish Geographical Society awarded them jointly the Livingstone medal. Mildred received the Lawrence memorial medal from the Royal Central Asian Society, and she served as Vice President for the British and Foreign Bible Society until her death in London in 1952.
My mother and her siblings never knew the story of John Cable and his actions in their behalf. Even Florence may have forgotten her own role in the story. It's doubtful that any of them knew of Mildred or ever read her book. However, a cousin of mine, Hilary (Gevaux) Hield, does recall her mother reading The Gobi Desert to her as a child. Much later, as an adult, Hilary flew over the Gobi and looking down over the great wasteland, she felt a flash of nostalgia for those childhood readings. Hilary's mother married Frank, one of the 7 children who were assisted by John Cable.
Mildred's books are scarce. She also wrote Through Jade Gate and Central Asia: An Account of Journeys in Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert but it's out of print. The original editiion of The Gobi Desert has been long out of print, but Virago Press issued a reprint in the 1980s and that is available on Amazon.com.
Bibliography:
Linda Benson, "Muslims, Missionaries and Warlords in Northwesern China," Oakland University Journal (Fall 2001), p. 9-21.
William James Platt, Three Women: Mildred Cable, Francesca French, Evangeline French. The Authorised Biography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964). [Out of print].
Ricci Roundtable on the History of Christianity in China (Online).
posted by Stephanie Grant Duke at 11:38 AM
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