Fairmont Hotel, Nob Hill, San Francisco, California March 24th,1933
Dearest Parents,
No mail so far this week, but your letter Mamma, telling about Lady Astor’s party, and Erica’s wedding, with Cousin Phyllis’s account of it, was handed to me in the train on the way here. I was amused at Billy’s comment on my activities. I expect that is probably the general point of view, but I think he has probably got the short end of the stick in the long run.
We’re having a short pause here to pick up the bits, and are going north on Sunday, it being now Friday. Well, now I feel I’d better give you the general programme as far as we know, so that you get some idea about where we shall be when. Everything has taken much longer than we originally thought, owing the response being so great that we’re having to go over places several times, and have extra house parties and things in order to train responsible leadership for when we’ve gone, because one can’t start a thing like this, and then leave half-changed people to muddle along as best they can, which would mean that all our efforts were pretty well wasted, or at any rate the job wouldn’t be finished, and it would be inefficient. So – we are going much more slowly than we thought. But I began to think of Biddy’s wedding, and one thing and another, and I told Ken Twitchell that I was keen to be home for, and be home in time to see something of her before she’s finally whisked into the Plowden family, and he said it would probably be right for me to go home early in that case. So the position now is approximately this. A good many of the team are staying right on into June and are not going home till the Oxford House Party which starts on June 28th, and up till then we shall be working across Canada, Regina, Winnipeg and somewhere else, after Vancouver, until we get to Niagara and have a house party there beginning on May 10th, probably for about a week I should think, possibly ten days. Then I think the team may split, and some will go to Washington so as to be about the place for the World Economic Conference, and some will go to various other places, but this is all a trifle up in the air, barring the house party which is definite.
Well now, one Mme de Trey and a girl called Jean Hood are going home at the end of April, and I might conceivably come with them, or I could simply come on my own a bit later, arriving in the region of the 20th or 25th of May.
Papa darling – you know you wrote to me a short time ago saying “when you come back in April (May, June or July or whenever you feel you should)” I didn’t comment on it at the time, because I hadn’t thought the whole thing out clearly, but the results of my cogitations during the last few days have been that God is going to be the deciding factor in my life from now on. I don’t mean that I shall necessarily have to be away from home all the time, nor that I don’t still love you all more than anything else in the world, and I hope it won’t upset things and break up the family plans, and holidays and everything, but there is absolutely no question in my mind that this is real – and I feel it’s only natural to want to be with the only people in the world, as far as I can see, who are accomplishing something, and the only reason they’re accomplishing it is because they take no credit for it themselves. They’re not superimposing another point of view on a mass production system, but they are making individual people different for good – so different that they in turn can be used to make other people different, and so on. Well, that seems to me a good plan, and the right answer, as “1066 and All That” would say. Besides, when I see divorced families reunited and made happy again, and feuds of long standing between businesses healed, and habitual drunkards made sober, then I begin to think that God can do things, whatever Billy Astor may say. I understand that the Church has had a discussion about the Group and turned it down by a large majority, which makes us laugh, because they can’t stop it. So there it is.
The reason for my writing all this at such length is that I felt that you should know exactly what I feel, and what the position is, because I don’t want to sort of delude you into thinking that once I come home I shall be home for keeps. I felt I was letting things drift rather, and putting off making up my mind about coming back, and that eventually I should have got back just in time for the wedding and then sprung it on you that I was going to the Oxford House Party, just when you thought I’d come back. So I did take the whole situation in hand, and here it is.
I seem to be writing at great length, but I do want to put it quite clearly. So will you – darling parents – consider this next point very calmly, taking a big view of the whole thing. Are you prepared for me to stay another two months, and then just be home in time for the wedding, and dash off again or is that more than you can bear? Because I left home with the idea that I was going to be away for a month. I’ve now been away four months, during which time I’ve reached a great many new conclusions and seen a great many angles of this that I hadn’t seen before. On the other hand – you haven’t – so I feel it may be rather a mouthful for you to swallow. So that as I am convinced, and I know Mother is too, that no real duties in life conflict, if it’s right for me to go back, so that we can discuss it all together, which is a difficult thing to do by post, then I think you should have the opportunity to say just what you feel about it. I’m sure we’ve got to think of things from the point of view of our families, but not to let our family point of view obscure our vision of the wider outreaches of the whole situation. Of course I don’t consider this business of trekking from pillar to post is a normal existence for anyone, but then I don’t consider that the condition of the world is a normal one either, and just because we’re lucky enough to have a nice Komfortable Kimble to live in, it doesn’t per se constitute a reason for sitting back in it, and ignoring the fact that other people are not so happily situated.
As for it affecting my mental capacity Papa, I do honestly assure you that it takes all the intelligence I have, and a bit over. Ken Twitchell told us the other day that if we were going to do this work intelligently we ought to have a certain knowledge of history, theology, economics, and general current events, so that we know the background of every situation, and it’s perfectly true. After all the good Lord hasn’t given us brains simply as the stuffing for the empty spaces in our heads, and I assure you mine’s been working during these months.
There, now, I think that really is the lot, so will you please consider unprejudicedly, or as I should say, guidedly, this whole matter, and let me know, always bearing in mind that you mustn’t try to dissuade me about having God’s plan for my life as a whole, but just confining yourselves to this one particular issue. I think you can be quite certain that supposing I don’t go home at the end of April or whenever it is, that God will provide another time for me to be there, so don’t be panicky about it. You have been such darlings about it all, and not complained or fussed or made me feel I’m being a beast to you, so I’m sure it’s right for you to have a bit of a say.
You won’t get this before the middle of April now I come to think of it. But perhaps I shall get some clue as to your feelings before then in answer to one of my other letters.
I enclose two letters that may amuse you. I hope I shall manage to see Captain Thorpe-Doubble, and Muriel Richmond sounds quite a likely relation of some sort. I wrote back to say I was so interested to hear from her, and that I would show you the letter to see if you had any views about who she is.
I find this can go in the Olympic on the 31st so that you ought to get it by about the 6th of April, which isn’t too bad.
I am most awfully happy in a calm kind of way. This is an awfully satisfying job, because you do see results.
Tell Val she is a monstrous pig. I sent her a cable, a present and a letter for her birthday and she hasn’t acknowledged any of them.
Darling parents, I love you. I’m perfectly sane, entirely balanced, and am not being in the least deluded, either by other people or myself.
Your very loffing, Maria
PS I sent you a smorl (sic) gift or reminder from the train the other day which really gives an awfully good idea of the scenery and countryside generally.
Bill (her brother, then aged about 12) was awfully excited at your having sent Polly £7, and said how frightfully nice of you it was.
I like Great Kimble Warren and the noo postcards.
English