Friends of Hastings Cemetery


Gardiner, Commander Charles Gregory

Walter Head, steward of the Hastings Golf Club House, said he knew deceased, who was a member of the Club. He was playing golf on Saturday morning for two hours, and left about one o clock, taking his bicycle with him. Witness saw him riding down Harley Lane. Deceased then appeared to be in good health. He had known him for eight years.

The Commander bad many friends, young and old. in all walks of society, and the way in which, at the death of his gifted and 1amented father (the late rector of St. Leonards), he devoted himself to the care of his aged mother until her decease, endeared him to many as the pattern of a loving son, whilst to his unmarried sister he was equally kind. In St. Leonards he was everywhere known and liked, and he was equally popular at the meeting of the Bicycle Club or those insti­tutions which few men of his position will attend—a St Leonards tea. But wherever the Commander could help his friends or be of any sort of use, there would he be found, ….....

Only very recently he had gone down to stay with his brother, [Rev. Frederic Evelyn Gardiner] the Sub-Dean at Truro, and help him to entertain an army of Archbishops and Bishops, who came from all parts ….

He was much amused at the last notice which appeared in the “Advertiser” chronicling his return to St Leonards, and was very pleased to find that one of his old father’s parishioners and choirmen had not forgotten him, and now, alas! the last notice that can be written will be but to chronicle his funeral.

He was distinctly a man who will be missed, a friend in the best sense of the word, and a man who, though in St. Leonards society, absolutely set his face against listening to or repeating scandal in the Club, on the Parade, or at St. Leonards At Homes. We fear the news of his death will only reach many of his friends through this column of the "Advertiser" and "Observer/’ too late for them to attend his funeral or even to send a wreath.

______________________________


When the news of Commander Gardiner's death became known in St. Leonards on Saturday evening the Rector, the Rev. J. Awdry Jamieson, gave orders for the bell of the Parish Church to be tolled, and the fa­mily of the deceased were specially remem­bered at the weekly prayer meeting at the Church House.

On Sunday morning the Rector, whilst pleading for the Sunday Schools, alluded to the fact that Miss Gardiner [Selina Harriet Gardiner] had been superintendent of the Girls' School for many years, and had probably done as much as or more than any other person to benefit the young in the parish. The Commander himself, who was a regular attendant at the church, whenever he was at St. Leonards, had, when a resident, been one of the sidesmen, and for a time a Sunday school teacher. …..…

NEXT