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Frederick Temple, always known as Freddy, had the most eminent clerical heritage of all the St John’s deans and chaplains. His grandfather , Frederick, had been Archbishop of Canterbury from 1896 to 1902 and his uncle, William, was archbishop from 1942 to 1944 and regarded as one of the greatest primates England ever had. Freddy followed them in the family tradition of Rugby School and Balliol College Oxford. He never matched them in prestige, but he eventually became a very capable archdeacon and later a suffragan bishop. His gift was a pastoral one, and he bestowed it with considerable effect during his time at St John’s. He was a very gentlemanly and popular dean, who was also a happy one, save, significantly, for the loss of his 6-year-old son, Michael, during a tonsillitis operation in 1954. One of the most moving sermons ever delivered from the pulpit in St John’s came from Bishop Hall in memory of the little boy and support of his father and mother.1 The new dean’s induction service was held on 4 March 1953, followed by a reception for all those on the electoral roll. At the service, the governor, Sir Alexander Grantham, read a lesson, and only three nave rows were reserved. Temple was sometimes bemused by the ceremonial which went with St John’s being the unofficial state cathedral. He recalled his first conversation with the governor’s aide-de-camp, prior to the governor’s attendance. The officer asked that two seats be set aside for His Excellency. Temple asked him why two. ‘The cocked hat, dear boy, the cocked hat,’ was the reply. Dean Temple had harmonious relations with most of his lay council members, who could range from the distinguished to the irascible . His first council included academic Dr. E. Todd, senior civil servant and Cantonese expert Ronald Holmes, taipan John Marden, Baronet Sir John Kinloch, historian George Endacott, business man Chapter 7 Shedding Colonialism, 1953–1976 202 Imperial to International and Volunteers Commander Colonel Henry ‘Dow’ Dowbiggin, and our keen and opinionated giver and chronicler, A. S. ‘Bunny’ Abbott. It is a testimony to the balming qualities of Freddy Temple’s approach that Abbott could say, at the 1953 church meeting, of the dean’s first year, that it had been ‘the happiest of my thirty-two years at St John’s Cathedral’. Strangely, for a man so formal and yet understandably from one with passionate convictions, he could sign letters to the dean ‘Love, Bunny’. Relations with Bishop Hall, or at least his more experimental side, were not always that easy. His earlier idea that the dean might be housed in the old Peak police station had not come to a vote, but in May 1953, the council declined to lend him $50,000 to extend Bishop’s House as premises for Chung Chi College. It was incautious and inappropriate, they thought. Perhaps more meanly but with equivalent sense of propriety, they also declined to fund a book of Alaric Rose’s talks. Somehow, the bishop did that himself. Temple faced a pastoral challenge almost straightaway. Assistant Chaplain George She left for the United Kingdom for further studies, and a man as yet unique in St John’s history withdrew from the scene. He was to return a year later but then as headmaster of Diocesan Boys’ School. She was a practical and spiritual comprador, a crosscultural bilingual, witty Eurasian at home with Westerners, which the cathedral had never had before. He was ‘an intellectual a professional , inexhaustible, guileful if need be in a Cantonese way, affable and open in an English way’, according to the dean. In particular, he was a pastor to the Chinese and the returned Chinese. From this position, he had achieved a remarkable breakthrough . He had begun and sustained a 9 a.m. Sung Eucharist with a hearty breakfast fellowship afterward. It was, in its way, a family group. She was ‘Uncle George’. In no sense was it sectional, yet the origins and early mainstay of what is now the cathedral’s principal Sunday service were Chinese. Chinese Anglicans who preferred to worship in the English liturgy of the cathedral created this service. They had been educated in Anglican schools, so they were comfortable with English forms, and they found the Chinese prayer book too difficult to understand. They were a social elite or potentially so. Christianity in this form was an entrance door into the upper reaches...

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