Trevor Gardner's autobiography My First Eighty Years is as truthful and upright as its
author. Sadly, he did not see his book published. It divides itself into three sections:
the Army and the War; D.O. and Finance, in Northern Rhodesia; then financial
administration at Cambridge.
The Army suited the author well. He was a serious, naturally disciplined character,
always by nature well tumed-out. Through no fault of his, an accident to his foot early
on, he did not see action; he was valuable as a staff officer and member of AMGOT
(Allied Military Government, Occupied Territories).
Enchanted, seduced, as many of us were, by Kenneth Bradley's Diary of a District
Officer, Trevor Gardner found himself in 1946 in the very same area of the Eastern
Province. More, he had the privilege of serving under the tuition of some of our best
D.O.'s - Ronald Bush, Douglas Hall, Robin Foster, and with our unique home-grown
eccentric, Christie Lawrence. He did well, and enjoyed the life.
Of course we all somewhat romanticised the history of our Chiefs, perhaps because
there was so little history about; but to swallow Chief Kawaza's tale that his people
were in fact a lost impi split off from Lewanika stretched the bounds of credulity to their
outer limit. He and his people were ordinary, industrious Chewa. To put anything like
this one over Trevor Gardner later would have made various financial experts envious.
Indeed, there must have been joy in Heaven when he detected two casting errors in the
Auditor-General's own accounts. At all events the photograph of him in camp reveals a
clearly happy and useful field D.O. Artlessly, he boasts of having passed his Ci-Nyanja
exams with distinction.
However in those carefree years the spectre of Federation stole up on us. At this time
Trevor Gardner was swallowed up by the Finance Division of the Secretariat, where he
spent the rest of his working life in N. Rhodesia. More's the pity, as another tour in the
bush as D.C. would have made him appear less stiff, more friendly, even.
It may be helpful to try to explain here how the Federation appeared to junior officers
on the ground, from 1950 to 1953. We, cadets and D.O.s, worked round our Districts
under such fine men as Bush and Hall to try to sway Chiefs and Councillors to
acceptance and support. All in vain. African opposition, expressed with respect but with
great force by the Chiefs, was as Gardner puts it "pathological". Nor were we, the
Administration, altogether disinterested. Our loyalties basically were identical to those
of the Chiefs, to the memory of Queen Victoria; and we were her present Majesty's
faithful servants. We never trusted Southern Rhodesia. We thought the Native
Commissioners no more than civil servants who jumped to every Central Government
command. Rather we were administrators in the tradition of Lugard, imbued by the
grand Margery Perham. Also a great stretch of the Empire was still open to us for
posting. Southern Rhodesia kept its people in Africa for leave, while our conditions
were generous on an imperial scale. Under Federation we should soon be cut off
(goodbye Union Castle!). No-one re-assured us about this - certainly not dry little
Sir Gilbert Rennie.
Many years later, when it was all over and Rhodesia had fallen, Ian Smith explained
Rhodesia's tight rein to me. "Well, you have to have discipline, you see". I did not
pursue an argument with that lonely and gallant figure. But we did not need, in widely
flung Districts, that narrow discipline which a civil service ministry, by its nature,
strives to impose. A discipline of paper and frequent Returns.
During the Federal years Gardner had an inside view of the politicians, local and
imperial. Finance was much of the key to success or failure. His observations are
shrewd and far-seeing and his judgements of men and events are of great historical
interest. However, he is mistaken in labelling his Governor, Sir Arthur Benson, as
"brash" and a "maverick". Their casts of mind differed profoundly; but while history
will pronounce Trevor Gardner a master of the figures, no doubt. Sir Arthur was master
of the field, and of men. The Financial Secretary was easier with the passive Sir Evelyn
Hone. As all of us, he liked his own way.
The last section of the book covers Trevor Gardner's work as Deputy Treasurer and
Treasurer of Cambridge University. Worthy, yes. But it lacks the interest of the first
two. He may describe Cambridge politics as "Byzantine", but if so, he does not offer us
a single decent murder. Nor do the ghosts of C.P. Snow's intriguing dons flit or shuffle
in the cloistered courts at twilight. Sadly it must be said.- "L'secret d'ennuyer, c'est de
tout dire".
At Cambridge, Gardner was a dynamo of beneficent activity. The Fitzwilliam,
Kettles Yard and the Cambridge University Press are just three institutions which are
beholden to him. At one stage he sat on one hundred and twenty committees, prompting
a rare flash of wit from the author, who says: "A committee should consist of uneven
numbers, of which three is too many". He earned the gratitude of the University, past
and future, by his sturdy resistance to the more brutalist architecture of the 1960s. He
did know, by then, a Byzantine twist or two.
More than just a good book-keeper, Trevor Gardner could and did take long views.
He kept the Philistines at bay, within and without, at Cambridge: there were always
plenty of those running around. If he appeared to us a dry stick, he understood the
biblical injunction that unless a house is builded upon rock, it cannot stand. The new
Africa, which he saw and lamented, had the magic quality of turning his rock to sand.
He passes it by in two pages. He doubtless ended a full life, having exercised ability
and authority, and satisfied, as we all were for him, that he had done his utmost in his
time.
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