Dick Sheppard

FEW religious teachers in our own day have more deeply moved the heart and conscience of England than Dick Sheppard. If any-

one could have converted London to Christianity he could, if he had been given health, have done perhaps even that. He had multitudes of friends in every class of life, from the highest to the lowest, and few who knew him can have failed to have been pro- foundly moved by his unique capacity for love. Wherever he moved—in church, or on a voyage, at a cricket match, or at a week- end at a country house, at the Albert Hall, at Brotherhood meetings, or among the homeless in St. Martin's crypt—people poured out to him their joys and sorrows, and went away refreshed and re-born to hope. His friends, and surely no one had so many, will be eager to read his biography, and they will not be disappointed, for Mr. Ellis Roberts has written a really remarkable book, showing insight and sympathy with one of the most complex and difficult characters imaginable.

He, rightly I believe, regards Dick as having a deep " fault " in his personality, a tragic disintegration which was never made whole.

He calls the shy, despondent, easily wounded being " Lawrie," and

the superbly successful actor, orator and broadcaster, the centre of every circle in which he moved, " Dick." The tragedy is, he thinks,

that Lawrie and Dick could never come to any mutual understanding, and alternated so quickly that there was no stability or restfulness in the personality which contained them both.

I think that Mr. Roberts underestimates the fact that Dick claimed to be (and was extremely proud of his claim) the great-grandson of

Napoleon (not, according to my recollection, through his mother,

as Mr. Roberts asserts, but from his paternal grandfather, that formidable personage of whom Dick was so much afraid in his

early boyhood). Dick knew that he had the power which Napoleon had, of persuading multitudes of people to believe or to do any mortal thing which he desired. He could raise thousands of pounds, fill any building, win enthusiastic devotion with effortless ease when-

ever he set his mind to do it. He knew that he could easily be entirely unscrupulous in using people, throwing them aside, and yet not losing their affection. I think he knew that he possessed these powers. " I know of only one great orator," he said, " who has not lost his soul in the process."

On the other side was a profoundly humble, utterly genuine, com- pletely devoted disciple of Jesus, ready to learn from anyone who could teach him, all too ready to believe that the intellectual man was his superior, with an unceasing, passionate desire to be entirely conformed to the Christian pattern, which left him no rest, and which tore his very soul to shreds in his unlimited desire for entire conformity to the character of his Master.

These were the two sides of Dick, and no one who knew him well could fail to be aware of them. He was superb as an actor,

as a manager of an immense business, as St. Martin's was, as a raiser of money, as Editor of a very successful Review. His tearing down of fraudulent reputations and of pompous ecclesiastics was quite merciless, and yet in a moment he could turn to be the profoundly humble, very lonely, deeply wounded, penitent disciple of Christ.

I am glad that this biography brings out the-very generous and sometimes much tried affection of Archbishop Lord Lang. He and Dick had much in common: they must often have exasperated one another ; and yet, right up to the very end, they loved and under- stood one another. The Life does not bring out, as I think it should., Dick's real veneration and love for Randall Davidson.

Those tragic last years at St. Paul's, his misery at not being able to transform the Cathedral into being the bright, colourful, burning centre of London's Christian life, his desire for a complete martyr- dom, which made the Peace Pledge Union his last and tragic love, all bring out the wise and patient devotion of Dick's " Little Dean," bis " beloved Walter," the last, and one of the wisest, of his friends. This Life stresses the 'tragedy of the last year of Dick's home life. I deeply regret, and so, I believe, will all his friends, that this episode has been Izzentioned at all. As Mr. Roberts truly says, there must be two sides to such a tragic story, and only one side can be told here. Dick's friends can only know how difficult must have 'been the tensions and agonies of sharing the existence of that storm-tossed, bewildering, yet always fascinating personality. Surely he who was the soul of forgiveness would not have desired to perpetuate a story which is so hurting, and which can never be