Christmas Day 1932 The Log Chateau, Lucerne-in-Quebec
Dearest Family,
We’ve just finished the most unparallelled Christmas Day. It was quite extraordinarily different from any other and I must tell you something about it because the mail goes tomorrow and there isn’t another till Jan 4th I’m told.
We all arrived yesterday by train, in a wildly hilarious mood. After our last week’s activities the thought of two days’ rest was the signal for general noisiness, and as we had a whole coach to ourselves the 50 of us managed to make a fairish row. As our travelled relations know, the coaches in this part of the world are all in one with seats on each side of a central gangway, so that there was absolute pandemonium by the time we arrived.
We got here to find sledges drawn by horses with jingling bells, which brought us to the Log Château. It’s a fearfully high class country club and is as its name indicates built entirely of logs, in the shape of a five pointed star with an enormous chimney going right up the middle of the central hall and, as Bill Browne said, “Imagine any other religious leader bringing his missioners to spend Christmas in this sort of place. We should probably have been in a retreat in the East End of London.”
Well, we unpacked and had dinner and then the mail came, and with it Mamma’s letter of the 13th, written about a week after I’d left which was a very good plum for Christmas. I think it had been kept back on purpose.
Boxing Day
That didn’t get finished last night. After dinner on Christmas Eve, as I was saying, I had my mail, and then Eleanor Forde and I went and fixed up a little Woolworth manger scene in Frank’s room, which is the sort of thing he simply loves. There were one or two little figures about 3 inches high and a little stable and a couple of trees, and with the aid of a standard lamp we got a very pretty effect, and Frank was simply delighted. He’s a wonderfully simple soul and he asked all the team to come and see it. Eleanor and I and two others then sat up till 2.0am finishing off the Christmas presents and writing a topical poem for each person, a job which we’d started the day before, but which was only half done.
After breakfast on Christmas morning we all gathered in the ball room and LW distributed the presents, which were just Woolworth toys as nearly as possible fitting the recipients, and as each person came up their poem was read out, and it was a tremendous success. Frank then gave us each a peppermint stick which he said he’d always had when he was a boy, and we all danced around and cheered each other and felt festive. We all separated after that, some to the swimming bath, some to walk and I went with a party for fun and games in the snow, which resulted in a very high class snow sphinx.
We all had tea and Christmas cake together, followed by thumbnail sketches of the work from all over the world, which lasted till it was time to dress for dinner. As it was Sunday we felt we couldn’t as a body do anything very wild, and anyway we were all fairly exhausted, but LW wanted to stage a tableau to wind up the day. So after dinner while most of them were singing carols round the piano he arranged a cradle which he’d found hanging about somewhere, with straw in it and a light hidden in the middle of it and then I sat by it with various people’s silk dressing gowns arranged to look like Eastern draperies, and Sir Walter Windham was Joseph, with my striped coat hung round him to look like an Arab blanket. Then all the other lights were turned out and LW made the people file past the door of the little ante room where we were doing it. I believe the whole effect was extraordinarily beautiful though, and not a bit stagey. Then we sang a carol or two more and had prayers and to bed, as Mr Pepys would say ‘well content’. None of us were troubled in the same way as him though, to my knowledge.
This morning we stayed in bed till between 11 and 12 and went for a short walk before lunch, after which one of the Dutch girls and I went skiing. I borrowed some boots from one man and some trousers from another and hired the skis, and we had a fearfully good afternoon. Bill Browne and one or two other men came with us with toboggans and two of them fell off their conveyances at high speed in such a way as to slip the cartilage in their respective knees. Bill’s was certainly cartilage and I’m not sure about the other man. In fact all the tobogganers sustained minor injuries mostly in the shape of getting their fingers between the sledge and the snow which had the effect of removing quantities of skin, so that they bled hideously but the actual damage was fairly slight.
We’re going to Montreal for a short houseparty tomorrow.
I wondered what you were all doing yesterday and I remember working out that you were having lunch when we were having our breakfast. Sorry this is so scrawly. It’s now 11.30 so bed is indicated.
Love from Mary
The Alphabet of the Overseas Team
This is an alphabet I wrote on the way out and which we read out on Christmas Day
A is for André, and expert in Dutch
And for Alan whose coat gives the Golfin’ Man touch.
B is for Bill without wife, without child,
And also for Brian whose voice is so mild,
Also for Bobbie from one of our bishoprics.
C is for Charlie, from whom we can pick up tricks,
D the desire to go out and start hitting.
E is for Eleanor but not for her knitting.
F is for Francis who makes us all leaders,
Who knows where this dangerous practice may lead us?
G is for Gas, a potent great sin,
H is the hairdresser, rough on our tin.
I the immensity of the whole area,
Known to the world as the ship Berengaria.
J is for James who’s a rising young doctor.
K is for Kirstie; perhaps she’ll be a proctor.
L is for LW whose fatherly benignity
Has made him for all of us a friend and affinity.
Also for Lionel, from the state of whose socks
It seems that he always walks unshod on rocks.*
M is for Marion, the Brigadier’s sister,
If she hadn’t come with us, how we should have missed her.
Also for Mary, undisciplined she,
She will bring her knitting and darning to tea.
N is for Nick whose real name is Eustace,
His clearly put guidance has taught and amused us.
O opportunity, how many seize on it?
P is the pain when we’ve just failed to freeze on it.
Q is the quantity of food that we eat.
R is for Reggie whose running is fleet.
S are the sights which we’ve none of us met before.
T is for Thompy with his gift for mixed metaphor.
U our undying affection and unity,
So much desired by the rest of the community.
V is the voyage which our health has restored
And also we hope that of all men on board.
W – Sir Walter who’s travelled extensively
He tells us how we can do same inexpensively.
X is the number of Pagans ahead
Y do we wish they were Christians instead?
Z is the letter we have to call Zee
In this land of the brave and the home of the free.
* This was because Kirstie and I had to mend them on the way out.
Ritz Carlton Hotel, Montreal - This is rather a good address.
Dearest Parents,
I’m afraid Mother will have gone to Switzerland, but this is just a very short letter to say that Frank says he’d “be glad” for me to stay on with the team till April, but that I must make my own decision about it. My feeling is that it would probably be right for me to stay, so that unless you feel very strongly about it I will. It appears that they’re going to Vancouver and the west, and there is a fearful shortage of women, and I feel it’s a choice of loyalties. There is work at home I know, which I can very profitably do, and I can be a ray of sunshine round the warren which I should admittedly like to do and be, but we’re all working 17 hours a day and sometimes more, so that I really feel it’s fair that there should be room for occasional relieving. They’ll be a ten days house party near New York from Jan 3rd to 12th and the Aquitania sails on the 11th for home. So I don’t know what your plans are, but I feel if God wants me to stay here he’ll work it so that you don’t suffer any undue inconvenience at the other end.
The work here is so amazing that I feel I’m learning a wonderful lot, and the longer I stay the more I shall get a grasp of the whole situation. I’ve just been showing people into their seats for the evening meeting, which incidentally I’m not attending. There must be over 1000 in the ball room downstairs. I’m very bad at reckoning numbers but imagine a room about as big again as the Common Room absolutely packed, with people standing at the back, at the sides and on the window sills, a gallery running round three sides at the top also packed quite full, an overflow meeting in a largish church, and I should think literally hundreds being turned away. I shudder to think what it will be like tomorrow, as there are quite three times as many people tonight as there were yesterday, and we’re catching the 11.15 train to Detroit, which is 14 hours away. So we shall have a good long night in the train.
We’re actually going to Dearborn Michigan, which is where Henry Ford lives, and he’s going to put us up because he says we’re the first lot of people who’ve never asked him for any money, and he’s going to give an old fashioned Barn dance in our honour. Dearborn is apparently a village which has been kept exactly as it was 70 or 80 years ago. No motors, not even Fords, are allowed within its boundaries, and one drives about in landaus and barouches, and the Barn Dance is going to be of the same period, and we shall dance all the old country dances in their appropriate setting. It all sounds fun.
We leave there on the 1st, having been gathering our strength for the house party. Then if all goes according to plan we have a whole week’s rest before going to the west.
As for Frank, he’s a superman. He never forgets anyone’s face or name, and I should think he must have met literally millions; he’s certainly never made a mistake in a name since I’ve been here. He never flags and is never cross, but always manages to indicate exactly what he thinks. The night before we left Lucerne I’d had a plan of packing and going to bed early, as indeed had several others. So I hadn’t changed and was sitting over dinner talking to Bill Browne, when Frank came up and said, “Aren’t you going to go and get ready the meeting?”, to which I replied that I was going to bed. “I see” said Frank, quite kindly and pleasantly, but Bill said after he’d gone that he thought I’d better make quite sure that I wasn’t wanted at the meeting. So I went and asked and he said he did want me to go. And off I had to pop and get into my evening clothes, and speak. It was perfectly reasonable. We’d had two day’s rest which was more than he had because he’d all sorts of arrangements to see to all the time, but he never says he’s tired – except by implication ‘pour encourager les autres’. “Bless your hearts” he says “what would happen if I went about telling people when I was tired?”. But at the same time he always sees when anyone really needs a rest and packs them off to bed. He really is the most inspiring and amusing leader, with a positive gift for working in the background. We hardly ever see him except at team meetings, but he just materialises and de-materialises imperceptibly at intervals.
And you can take it from me that whatever anyone may say about this movement I don’t know what else besides the power of the Supernatural could move 50 odd people about all at once from place to place, with no secretarial and no bank balance. The money gets sent along as it’s needed from various sources, mostly thank offerings from people who’ve been changed and had their families re-united, and Frank appears to carry it all about in a wad of notes in his pocket, and he simply doles it out to anyone who hasn’t got any. He peeled off 25 dollars for me the other day – just to get on with. I know the total assets at one point were 1500 dollars in cash, out of which to pay the hotel bills for anything from two to four days at 3 dollars a head. Of course some of us have got money, but even so it didn’t humanly speaking leave a very wide margin, and by the same token I may as well have my next quarter’s allowance, if I’m going to stay, and I imagine the best thing would probably be to have it in a lump sum, and give it straight to Frank, minus the £10 I still owe the bank, and then I shan’t have to have any truck with bank balances. I should think the PR bank had better telegraph it to me.
I do hope Val is doing the H.C (Holiday Cousin, a magazine produced by the family each holidays). Do put in anything out of any of my letters if it’s worth it.
This seems to be a long letter after all.
Love from Mary
English