Biography
Alice Mildred Cable was born on February 21, 1878, in Guildford, Surrey, England. Her father was a draper, and the family was Methodist. She grew up in a devout home and was educated at a school for girls in Guildford. She was an able student, and she trained in the Pharmaceutical Society. As a young woman, she felt a call to the mission field, and in 1901, she applied to the China Inland Mission. She was accepted and sailed for China in the same year, when she was twenty-three. She was sent to the province of Shanxi, in the northwest of the country, where she was assigned to the town of Huozhou.
In Huozhou, she worked with an older missionary, Eva French, and her sister Francesca. Eva was a bold and gifted woman, and she became the leader of a trio that was to spend the next forty years together. They were a team of three women, and they took a unique approach to the work. They ran a school for girls and visited the villages to preach and teach. They fought the foot-binding of girls and the opium traffic. They were pioneers of women's education in the region. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 had devastated the mission, and they were part of its rebuilding.
In the 1920s, they felt a call to reach the people of the northwest, in the vast Gobi Desert and Central Asia, where there was almost no Christian witness. In 1923, they set out on a long journey with a cart and a team of mules. They traveled across the Gobi to the oasis towns of Gansu and Xinjiang. For the next fifteen years, they made a number of journeys through the desert, covering thousands of miles. They traveled by cart, by camel and on foot, and they stopped at inns and villages. They carried Scriptures and tracts in many languages, and they spoke to the people about Christ. They also set up a few small stations in the oases.
They were remarkable women, who traveled in conditions of great hardship. They endured freezing cold, scorching heat and sandstorms. They faced bandits and warlords. They also lived through the political upheavals of the 1930s, when the region was in turmoil. They were known by the people as the three virtuous ones. In 1936, they were forced to leave the area because of the war and the arrival of the Soviet-backed warlord. They returned to England.
Mildred wrote a number of books about their journeys. Through Jade Gate and Central Asia, published in 1927, told the story of their first travels. The Gobi Desert, published in 1942, was a vivid account of the desert and its peoples. Other books include The Story of Topsy, A Desert Journal and Something Happened. Her books were popular, and they were widely read. They gave readers a picture of a remote part of the world and its need of the gospel. She had a lively and humorous style.
She was a woman of great energy, with a gift for friendship. She and her companions did not have an easy relationship. Eva was strong-willed, and Mildred sometimes felt overshadowed. She was also a woman who suffered from the strain of travel and from ill health. After returning to England, she spent her time speaking and writing. She was an active supporter of the Bible Society. She died on April 30, 1952, in London, at the age of seventy-four, a few weeks after her friend Eva French. Francesca died a few years later.
Her life shows what three women with little money and no protection may do when they trust God and travel together. They opened a road across the desert.