THE LATE GERARD CRAIG SELLAR
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sm,—In every generation 'there are one or two people who act as a kind of nucleus round which different groups of friends cohere, the punctum immobile among divergent tastes and interests. They usually stand a little aside from the ordinary course of life, and, being free from personal or professional ambitions, have leisure for the profession of friendship. Such an one was Gerard Craig Sellar. He went through life acquiring loyalties, to which he was scrupulously faithful. Eton gave him his first ; then came Balliol in the early 'nineties, the Balliol of Hubert Howard and Basil Blackwood ; the Colonial Office under Mr. Chamberlain ; Lord Milner and South Africa. From each he drew not merely the sentiment of a place or a tradition, but a new reading of life which helped to form his creed, and warm human affections. He amassed loyalties, and he consequently amassed friends, so that, when he died last week, a light was extinguished in the lives of a great number of his fellow mortals.
He was an admirable official, both at the Colonial Office, in South Africa, and at the Foreign Office during the War. That, I think, was the work for which he was specially cast by nature, for he loved the rigour and etiquette of a service, and in his blood were both business ability and an aptitude for the problems of government. But a few years after he returned from South Africa he succeeded to great wealth, and his life was necessarily switched into a new orbit. He had to accustom himself to the interests of a Highland landed proprietor and learn the ritual of the management of large possessions. In all these new relationships he was a model of conscientiousness—too much, perhaps, for out of his wealth he sometimes seemed to get more trouble than pleasure. But it changed him not at all. The chief joy of his possessions was that they enabled him to show hospitality to his friends, and to offer first-class sport to those who were not much in the way of it. He never became an ordinary Highland laird, or anything like it. For shooting and fishing he did not care consumingly, his prime interests lying rather in public affairs and the human comedy. The one exception was sailing. The " wet-bob tastes which he had learned at Eton and Balliol never left him.
He amassed loyalties and friendships, but not in a dull way, for with them he also acquired enthusiasms. To the end of his life he retained a delightful youthfulness, ardour, and innocence of spirit which made his juniors by a generation seem often disillusioned and decrepit. He remained youthful at heart because he loved youth. This, I think, was the key of his life. He was a generous benefactor to his Oxford college, because he wanted young men to be happy there as he had been. He was infinitely tolerant of youthful foibles and extravagances, and his affection gave him insight, so that as an adviser of youth he showed often an uncanny wisdom. He had a host of proteges in every rank of life, on whose interests he spent an infinity of patience and thought. It was his real hobby. He loved to help in the shaping of human material, if the quality was good and he could get it young.
His loyalty and enthusiasm had nothing soft or sickly about therri. There was a masculine shrewdness in his judgments, and his mind was keenly critical. Humour was never absent, and I think that he was specially happy when laughing at himself. Nothing so delighted him as to be the centre of a comic situation. This fortunate conjunction is generally found in eupeptic people who never knew an ailment ; but Gerard Craig Sellar knew little else. From his childhood he was very delicate, and during the last twenty years he was constantly ill. Many a man in such circum- stances would have become peevish and self-centred, but his courage was so steady that ill-health was never allowed to weaken his interest in life, or cloud his humour, or cripple his shy kindness and ready sympathy. His first thought was always for other people.. He had hoped at one time to spend his life in his country's service, but I feel that he served his generation in a more difficult and not less worthy way, simply by the example of his courage and dutifulness and charity. His death has taken away for many of us much of the warmth and brightness of our house of life.—
Previous page
