Like a perfect ass I never posted the letter I wrote on board so that it’ll arrive with this one. I am so sorry, but now I seem to have some time to spare to tell you the thousands of things that have happened in the last two days. To begin with, I enclose if possible, some newspaper pictures taken of us the day we arrived, ie yesterday, in which I feature as Piefaced Polly, it really is a most unflattering portrait.
We got to New York quite early on Monday but took hours to come alongside; they’d somehow managed to get the ship at the wrong angle and then had to have five tugs to push her round which was a very slow process. However, by eleven we were ashore, blue nosed and dead in the feet, and were met by Ken and Marion Twitchell, the young couple who’d come out to Egypt last year, and they with various other Group people saw us through the Customs and then took us by their cars to Gramercy Park in which is Calvary Church and the home of the Reverend Sam Shoemaker. It’s very unlike our conception of a church in that it’s the Rectory, the Church, the Parish Hall and the Hostel, all in one. It’s a very small skyscraper, only about ten storeys high, and one floor is the Rector’s flat, one is the Fellowship office, one is reception rooms and club rooms, and the rest are bedrooms in which the permanent workers live, and the church is at the side; a very lovely church it is, too. We all had lunch, a delicious cold meat and salad one, which was handed round on trays, and we all sat about in armchairs and talked to all the Americans who – the women, that’s to say – were each more ravishingly got up and less like church workers than you can possibly imagine. The meal closed with ice creams which would have made Bill’s (her brother, then aged 14) mouth water, and then we were all divided in different parties to see the sights.
Most of us went up the Empire State Building, which has 102 storeys and is the highest building in the world, and saw New York spread out like a chess board in front of us. There simply isn’t a spare inch anywhere. It really was a remarkable sight. Then we drove up 5th Avenue in motors, and up Park Avenue, to tea with another member of the Group. Parks incidentally in New York mean any piece of grass, and whereas Gramercy Park is fairly large, about the size of Lennox Gardens I should think, the parks that Park Avenue gets its name from are little oblong plots with a few miniature bushes, each one being about 10 feet by 50, running down the middle of the Avenue and the notices saying you mustn’t walk in them are grandiosely signed by the Comptroller of Parks which conjures up the vision of a far wider field of activity than is actually the case.
After tea we all went back to Calvary House, by this time feeling we had taken in about all we could take in, and having collected the whole party we drove off to the Central Station which is more like a large white marble cathedral than a station, and started for Toronto. The men all slept in curtained shelves with a corridor running down between them, but as there were only four of us we had two double berth rooms, with enormously broad berths in them.
At 7.50 am on Wednesday morning we arrived in Toronto and were met by one or two of the team who led us here (The King Edward Hotel) to breakfast. It’s an enormous and palatial hotel where we each have our own bathroom, but the old hands say it’s nothing to the Ritz-Carlton and Château Laurier where they have been staying. As soon as breakfast was over we had to prepare statements for the Press and be photographed, and by the time we’d had a team meeting and unpacked and done all that, it was nearly lunchtime. So a Dutch girl called Julia Opten Noort* took Eleanor Gairdner and me to a cafeteria because one doesn’t have one’s meals included here, and it was very amusing, but frightfully expensive. I had a bit of fish and a baked apple with cream, and the bill was 40 cents, which is about 2/6 as the dollar is worth 6/- now. I came back here and had a rapid snooze and at three o’clock four or five of us went to a tea party to talk to a young married women’s study circle who are all interested and wanted to know all about it.
I had just got home from that and was imagining an early bed and restful evening when I was met by someone who said that Cleve Hicks wanted a girl to go to a supper party with him, so I said I’d go, and we started off after about a quarter of an hour. It turned out to be a clergyman’s family, and he was having a small drawing room meeting after supper. So we had supper en famille and then the daughter and I came back here to collect Kirstie and Francis, and Sir Walter and Charlie Kirkham who were going to speak at the meeting. It went very well and we all spoke, and got into conversation with a girl afterwards, who has been with me all this afternoon, and has decided to give her life to God.
Well, this morning I was fairly sleepy and rather missed the bus but got into the team meeting half way through, and Frank told us we were going to spend Christmas out in the country somewhere where we can rest and ski and listen to the mooses – which is a pleasant thought. There was a women’s meeting this morning at which I spoke among others and then I went out to lunch with the girl I mentioned at the top of the page and she’s only just gone.
This evening there are going to be three big public meetings of about 1000 people each probably, and we, the New Overseas team as we’re called, are going to go round in batches of five speaking at one after another. I’m going out to a preliminary dinner party in my best frock, because what they call semi-evening is what we call Buckingham Palace, which is a trifle disconcerting. So you see it’s not going to be a rest cure. All that has happened since breakfast yesterday. Our plans are still rather vague, but we shall be here till Monday at least and we may have a short House Party to end up with, but we don’t think there’ll be room anywhere for all the people. The whole thing is simply incredible – the interest and eagerness with which people come pouring in to hear us. What a life it is – it is fun.
Very much love from
Mary
PS
I think I may as well add a short bit as this hasn’t gone.
Soon after I arrived I was accosted by a pleasant faced, grey moustached gentleman, who said he was so interested to see me here as the last time he had seen Daddy was navigating a rubber horse in a swimming pool when you were at Williamstown, and that he was in fact Professor Philip Marshall Brown. He was leading a meeting where I was speaking and rather took me aback by introducing me as the daughter of a well known admiral whom he’d last seen in a swimming pool. He also took the opportunity of saying I was Auntie Gertrude’s niece, so that I was feeling pretty small fry by the time I had to speak.
We address meetings of over 1000 every evening, which comes curiously easily when I think that none of us know until we’re on our feet what we’re going to say – as a rule. I did as a matter of fact plan a train of thought while the first people were talking last night and Nick Wade who was leading is awfully good and always gives some indication of the line he wants one to take, when he’s introducing each one.
I’ve got quite into the habit of referring to the lift as the ‘ullervator’.
Then another unexpected thing happened. I came in one day and found a message to say that Miss Robinson had rung up, and would I ring her up. So I did, and would you believe it, she’s one of the Richmond Robinson lot, and Cousin Hilda Medlicott is her aunt. She’s coming to lunch here today.
Everybody, practically, has gone out to lunch with the manager of what’s called a Grocerteria, which is a place where they manufacture their own groceries, and some of them were also going round the works during the morning before lunch. Fortunately Cousin Robinson was coming to lunch. I haven’t discovered her Christian name yet, so I couldn’t go and have been spending a hard working hour marking newspapers for press cuttings which takes simply hours.
We leave here on Monday, some earlier, and go to Montreal or Ottawa, no, to a town 40 miles away called Hamilton – stay there till Wednesday, see Niagara on Thursday, spend Friday in Ottawa and go to Lucerne in Quebec for Christmas, as Frank says, to hear the moo of the moose. My fingers are covered with printers’ ink, so I must rush and wash and tidy for Cousin Robinson. I’ll let you know what she’s like when I’ve seen her.
After Lunch
Peggy, her name is, and she’s perfectly delightful. She has three or four brothers, George, Dick and Christopher, and I think there’s another and when we go to Niagara on Thursday she’s going to try and arrange that they meet us there, so that I can make their acquaintance.
I simply must finish now and do up the newspapers.
Very much love from
Mary (again)
* Julia later left the Oxford Group and became a fairly high level and notorious Nazi!
English