To FER, 10th December, 1932
Saturday
Beloved Mamma,
This is being the most wonderful voyage. I never imagined what fun it was going to be. I had a sort of sneaking fear at the back of my mind that we should spend the whole days having meetings and trying to convert our fellow-passengers. Instead, though, we have admittedly two meetings a day, one in the morning at 10 and one after tea at 5, but the rest of the time we do as the spirit moves us. I played some fairly strenuous deck tennis this morning, and there were various other quoit games that we can put in quite a lot of time at. Then this evening being a Gala evening we were all issued with paper hats and squeakers, which we wore and blew respectively and spent the time at dinner heaving balloons about, and being generally festive. There was incidental dancing all through dinner, and we joined in at intervals. But as there were only 3 girls, 4 women I should say, to 14 men it was more fun on the whole to stay all together.
The party consists of the following people whose names and occupations I may as well give you, so that you have an idea what they’re all like
- Canon L.W. Grensted (look him up in Who’s Who) 48
- Sir Walter Windham 63 (ditto)
- Rev. Eustace Wade 31, called for some reason Nick. Chaplain of Downing College, Cambridge
- Rev Alan Thornhill 26 Chaplain of Hertford College, Oxford
- Rev Ronald Thompson 30 (Thompy) Chaplain at some branch of Toc H
- Bobbie Rawstorn 25 son of the suffragan Bishop of Warleigh, wherever that is – going to be a parson.
- Lional Ford 26, also potential parson. Very Anglo-Catholic
- Bryan Sturdy 22 a South African embryo parson
- Reggie Owbridge 21 (Owbridge’s Lung Tonic). Very rich. Potential parson
- Bill Browne 26 a Group worker in Oxford, Used to be a lecturer there
- Francis Goulding 26 ditto, except that he wasn’t a lecturer
- James Gillatt 22, a medical student
- André Wurfbain 35, a Dutchman
- Charley Kirkham 26, a Swiss, though you wouldn’t think it from his name
- Marion Forster 56, sister of Brigadier Forster
- Eleanor Gairdner, daughter of Temple Gairdner, who I gather was a well-known missionary.
- Kirstie (Christine) Thomson 29, a tutor at Oxford among the Home Students
And
Me
The numbers after everyone’s names are their ages. We all gave our autobiographies and ages over a period of three days, which is how I know.
They are all perfectly delightful, have heaps of interests, and many of them are fearfully clever. Certainly living with them as ordinary human beings has made me see how sane and normal they are. I couldn’t wish for nicer or more considerate travelling companions.
But under it all is the very deep sense of the Ever Presence of God, and His guiding hand in everything we do. It’s even more of an eye opener than merely working with them. Nick Wade, who has been in America before, has said that the Americans think English men very ill-mannered, especially to ladies, so that a campaign has been started to make the team ultra-polite by practising on us. They all have to leap up whenever we come to table, and push our chairs in, and rush to fetch things for us, which is frankly rather foreign because we are used to being on very equal terms, but it’s all taken as a good joke, and they’re getting quite good at it now.
We’re also learning not to be markedly insular and even trying to hold our knives and forks à l’Americaine, because our English table manners are supposed to be fearfully bad. There is also an American on board who is head of the American College in Smyrna, who gives us lessons in American life and thought so we shan’t be complete ignoramuses when they start talking about Republicans and Democrats, or the Civil War. So it may be said to be being a good all round education.
Sunday
I went to my first communion service this morning, having spent the better part of the week plucking up courage to ask one of the parsons about it. I eventually bearded Nick, and he was very nice about it, and said that there was no reason I shouldn’t come. So I had a short talk with the Canon afterwards, who quite agreed, and it was all all right.
He’s just been and said I must read through the service of Baptism, and of course I haven’t brought a prayer book, which is rather an oversight when one’s supposed to be being a missionary. So I shall have to go about cadging one.
Oh, by the way, I wish Daddy would try and remember who Sir Walter Windham is. I told him (Papa) about him after the Oxford houseparty in June and he couldn’t remember ever having met him. But Sir W says he had some touch with him during the war, and that he was so drawn to Daddy because he had an unorthodox mind, and he felt they were twin souls. He left the Navy himself because he was never allowed to do what he liked, and if ever he had an idea it was always squashed by the senior officers and he was told not to think. So he left in a pet and has since been everything under the sun. He says he can’t bear the thought of ever meeting Daddy again because he (Daddy) gave him a job to do, something about submarines off the coast of Ireland, I rather gathered, and he did it badly, and felt he’d let Daddy down, but that he had been very ill, and was muzzy in the head, and had botched it. The whole affair has I gather been quite a cloud on his mental horizon ever since, so that as Daddy was responsible for giving him the job in the first place I should love it if he could furbish up his memory and send a message to the old boy that he remembers him, and that all is forgiven and forgotten. Take back your errin’ son. Not, I imagine, that it’s all that important to his future peace of mind, but he obviously is of the same turn of mind as Papa, and there are so few of such people about that it’s a pity if Papa has no idea who he is.
All the earnest divines who are with us, including LW, are passionate devotees of PG Wodehouse, and we spent the whole of breakfast discussing Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. There’s a new very good one called Hot Water which I’ve just read and is so funny that I had to read it in seclusion because I laughed so much.
Yesterday was a gloriously warm and sunny day because surprisingly enough we were on the same level as Rome; we’ve come an extraordinarily long way south, but today is colder and has been snowing. A paper called The Atlantic News is published on board every day, and from it we learn of snow in London and 30° below zero in New York, which makes us feel chilly, and glad of our overcoats. We’ve hardly passed any other ships at all and LW says this is a very dull ocean as he hasn’t even seen a whale.
We get to New York on Tuesday morning the 13th, and this will come back to England in the same ship, so that you’ll get it about the 21st I expect.
I think that I shall now close, wishing you all a v. merry Xmas, because the fug in this writing room beggars description and I must have a breather before lunch.
The sea has been very kind, and only one or two of us have ever succumbed, and then only very temporarily.
Very much love
English