Chapter 75
(Helen) Mother and Daddy returned to Canada in the spring of 1926 and had a very happy summer in Port Hope. Miss Agatha Reid spent some of it with them. They got in touch with some of their old friends: Mrs. Cumberland, Mrs. Wickett and Mrs. Trinbeth. Somerville and his wife Mary joined them, with their son Michael, who was then three months old.
(Somerville) I have a vivid recollection of spending a delightful week with them in the cottage they had rented for the summer in Port Hope, on the north side of Ridout Street slightly west of Bramley Street. Aunt Dora had passed away the previous summer. Mary and I had been married for two years and Michael had come to us in June, 1926. He was a small infant when we went to Port Hope. We went by train, as at that time there was only a gravel road between Toronto and Port Hope. Indeed one of the highlights of our visit was a trip Dad took us on by motor as far as Oshawa, which left an indelible impression of miles of road under construction and billows of dust.
The cottage was quaintly old-fashioned, without cellar or refrigerator. We took Michael’s bottles to the butcher store at the corner to have them kept cool. The week was delightful, one of those oases in life’s journey. Mother had always treated Mary as a daughter and rejoiced that she and I had come together.
Later on Mother and Dad stayed with us at our bungalow on Arlington Avenue in Toronto, but my memories of their stay there are not nearly as distinct as those of the week together in Port Hope.
They left in the late autumn for China and I shall never forget our parting on the train. As Mother said goodbye she said she expected this would be the last time we would see each other. When I replied that there was no reason to think so she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said she knew it to be so. She always had an uncanny ability to foresee the future—a kind of second sight—arising, I suppose, from her extraordinary understanding of people and of life.
(Helen) Christopher and his family had moved into a house on Deut Road, Shanghai. One day a mad dog came into the garden, ran past little John, savagely bit the little boy he was playing with, and jumped six or seven feet through an open window into the house, where it bit little Fanny and was only prevented from killing her by the bravery of the amah, Ah Mo, who fought it off with a chair. After the anti-rabies injections Fanny was very ill and the doctor advised that the family should go on leave. When the school teim was over, Dorothy and I went up to Shanghai with the two Chinese babies, Hei Ling and Tien Chei, with our faithful cook Yee Goo to help, and Christopher and his family went up to Kuling.
There was very little business in the Book Room at that time. If a single customer arrived in the course of a day there was great excitement. But we did have some sales. We did not know how to keep accounts. I thought the receipts should be entered on the right hand side of the ledger and Dorothy thought they should be entered on the left hand side. This annoyed Daddy because of the hopeless muddle.
David was in Shanghai for some reason, on business. I don’t know whether he was still reporting or whether he had by this time joined the Swedish Match Company.
In the autumn of 1926 the Principal of the Diocesan Girls’ School died and I was invited to come down to Hong Kong to help out until somebody else could be found. I had just had dysentery but managed to crawl onto the boat. After teaching there for about a month, Dorothy and I went on to Yeung Kong and had a very good time there. But conditions were strained. Just before Christmas the city elders came to us and said: “There are going to be riots at Christmas time and there will be special attacks on the foreigners. (There were just ourselves and the Roman Catholics inside the city and the Presbyterians just outside it.) We think you ought to go”. There was a junk in the harbor, so we just gathered up what we could and with the two older Chinese children went down and boarded it. During the troubles that followed the Roman Catholic nunnery was stoned. The nunnery had taken in many abandoned Chinese babies. It was said that because all of these had died there was a lot of feeling against the Roman Catholics. When they came to attack our house, some of the students whom I had taught at the Government school persuaded them to leave it alone.
That winter Daddy and Mother had hoped to get back to Yeung Kong and were on their way from Canada when the doctor advised Christopher that Jean should return to Canada for medical care. Therefore Daddy and Mother stayed in Shanghai and I went up to meet them there, while Dorothy stayed in the flat in Hong Kong with the two children and Yee Goo.
It must have been in January, 1927, when Christopher and family left for Canada. A few days before they left we got word that the missionaries were being turned out of inland China because of increasing political troubles. Christopher went down to the Yangtse River boat and brought back Mr. and Mrs. Savage and their children and Miss Taylor and Miss Featherstone. The Deut Road house was full. When Christopher and his family left a day or two later the Savages and later the Duffs took over the house. I remember Miss Featherstone showing me the verse on her Scripture calendar for the day they had to flee down the river: “O Lord, if the Lord be with us, why have all these things happened unto us?” They had lost everything; I don’t think they had anything. I think Miss Taylor had only the things she stood up in. The Savages had their boxes.
Daddy, Mother and I moved into rooms on Boone Road, Shanghai. Missionaries were pouring into the city from inland China. British troops were everywhere and there was good Christian work done amongst them.
One night, in the middle of the night, there was a knock on the door and there was Mr. Ruck with Elsie Ransom. They had brought a Dutch nurse to the hospital who was very ill with T.B. Elsie stayed with us and we grew very fond of her. Mother used to say that she much preferred boys to girls but she always won the girls. Young girls and women turned to her when they were in trouble and lonely. She comforted them and helped them. They used to call her their mother and Elsie was one of these.
In the spring of 1927 Mother went down to Hong Kong to visit Dorothy and then brought her and the children back to Shanghai. By this time Elsie Ransom had gone to Europe escorting the Dutch nurse. They finally managed to get a passage on a German freighter but were put off at Singapore. Finally they managed another passage. Sister Joan nearly died going through the Red Sea but eventually got back to Holland. The following year Elsie returned to China and married Mr. Wilhelm Koll.
During the summer of 1927 Dorothy and Daddy went back to Yeung Kong, leaving the two children with me and Mother in Shanghai. That was the first time I really had responsibility for the Book Room and it was very interesting indeed. When Daddy left for Yeung Kong he said, “I have paid all the bills, and the daily receipts will be enough for the daily expenditures”. We took in about $10.00 a day. But he had forgotten one bill, and it came in just after he left —$100.00 for Bibles. We never went into debt, and I did not know what to do. As I looked up from the invoice, my eyes met a text I had hunted up for a missionary: a robin singing on a bare bough in the snow, and the words, “My God shall supply all your need”. Next day a business man came in and ordered $50.00 worth of tracts to be sent to a hospital up river, and paid cash. The next day some one else bought $50.00 worth, so the Bibles account was settled. The sales went back to $10.00 a day!
We were expecting Harold Collier, who was coming out from Canada to help in the work. We were all set to receive him but he didn’t turn up. Then we received a postcard which amused us very much from one of the brethren in Japan: “Why the deuce doesn’t Mr. Collier come?”
(Harold Collier) When I got to Ottawa and had bought my ticket right through to Shanghai, I got a chill, having just come north from Atlanta, Georgia. I was laid up for several months. When I had paid all my doctor’s bills my money was gone. I went to Montreal and thanked the ticket agency that had refunded my passage money when I took ill. The agent was very friendly and told me that he had a ship leaving San Francisco in six days’ time. I didn’t have any money but I told him I’d think it over. I was walking down the street towards Beaver Hall Hill when I heard my name called. It was Mr. David Taylor. He asked me if I was still interested in going to China and I told him that I had just been given the offer of a passage on a ship leaving in six days but that I must wait and see what the Lord would have me do. He invited me to his office. He was called away immediately but not before he had written a check that more than covered my expenses to Shanghai. To me that was indeed the Lord’s leading! At the prayer meeting that night others gave me more money, so that when I finally arrived in Shanghai I had almost as much as I had saved before my illness.
Shortly after arriving in Shanghai, on the advice of my brother in Canada, I was vaccinated by Dr. Marsh, who was Christopher’s family doctor. He had said: “Now you’re safe for two years”. But a few weeks afterward I fell ill. I had been romping with Hei Ling and Tien Chei one evening, although I felt rather miserable. I went to bed without my supper. On waking next morning I took a hot bath and found my body covered with blisters. Dr. Marsh was called and exclaimed: “You’ve done it and I didn’t think you could”. “Done what?” I asked. “You’ve got smallpox. You’ve got to go to the Isolation Hospital right away.” So I went. There were two other Europeans there with smallpox, a Russian woman who had not been vaccinated for seven years and the baby of an American couple who did not believe in vaccination. They both died but I was well again at the end of a month.
Mr. J. L. Duff, who was an old friend to the whole Willis family, advised me to go down to Yeung Kong for my convalescence and offered to go with me. He was a great help. He knew so much about China and we all enjoyed his visit very much. We traveled with him on the Gospel houseboat, the Fook Yum Shien, and had a delightful time preaching in the villages.
(Helen) Early in 1929 Christopher and his family were planning to return from Canada to Shanghai and Mother and Daddy were hunting for a house for them, the Dent Road house being no longer available—or possibly pulled down. They found a house in the Presbyterian Mission Compound. They lived in two rooms downstairs, while Christopher and family lived upstairs.
About this time Somerville wrote to say that Mary was expecting a baby and was not well. Mother didn’t want to leave Daddy, so it was arranged that Dorothy should return to Canada. Daddy and Mother and I returned to Yeung Kong and carried on the work there as usual into that summer. Mother was always teaching. She taught music in the Government school in Yeung Kong and had boys to whom she taught English, using large pictures of the various Bible stories.
Towards the end of June, 1929, Mother took ill with a high fever and we did not know what was the matter. The American missionary doctor had gone, so there was no one to call in. We thought it was dengue fever but on hunting through the book of tropical medicine, we found that the symptoms corresponded exactly to those of sunstroke. Nothing we could do helped. She became unconscious and I think did not suffer. She passed away with a gentle sigh at five o’clock on July 1st .
(Christopher) When the cable telling that my mother had gone to be with the Lord was handed in, we were singing the last hymn at the close of our regular weekly prayer meeting. The hymn was, “How good is the God we adore” and we were singing the line, “Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home”. In Chinese it is, “Whose Spirit shall guide us safe to the Father’s House”. I could not but think how beautifully it told the news that in some respects was so sad.
Next morning I went in to tell the friends in the Missionary Home, for she and my father had stayed much at the Home and were greatly beloved there. The first I met was dear old Dr. Lowry, who had been a special friend of my mother. He was old and just about blind. When I told him, his whole face lit up with joy, and exclaiming, “How lovely for her!!!” he gazed up with the most rapt expression, as though he could see right into those heavenly mansions above.
I stood and watched him, a little hurt he gave me no word of comfort, for indeed he had quite forgotten my presence. Then he remembered, and coming back to earth (as it were) he said, “Oh, I suppose you expect a little word of sympathy”. I wrote and told my father, and later he told me that this had brought him more comfort than anything else.
Harold Collier was up the river at the time, but one of the brothers in the meeting went after him and he returned immediately. One of the sisters in the meeting helped me to dress the dear body and we carried it downstairs. Next morning when we went in, the expression on her face had changed from the perfect peace of the evening before to the happiest, merriest smile. Her face had relaxed into the natural expression of her happy spirit. It seemed to say: “If only you knew: if only you could know the delights I am enjoying now”.
Crowds flocked in all day, not only the Christians but all our neighbors and many leading people of the city. All remarked on her expression. One woman had been a Bible woman but her only son had got in with the Communists and persuaded her to give up her faith. She came, and she told me afterward that the sight of “Lai Shi Tai’s” face had convinced her she was enjoying the presence of God. She was restored in soul.
My father had a metal inner coffin prepared so that the body could wait for burial or be sent to Canada if her children wished it. But we all agreed that a good soldier is buried on the battlefield where he falls. With Harold’s help Father had a tomb built of blocks of stone, with a slab of slate in front bearing in Chinese the inscription and the verses: “Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
The funeral was in September when Dorothy and Somerville arrived from Canada. Harold Collier had gone up to Shanghai to manage the Book Room while Christopher came down to Yeung Kong. A great procession marched singing through the streets, the coffin borne by eight bearers. On the way it passed a heathen funeral procession, the mourners wailing and worshipping dumb idols. What a contrast!
(Somerville) I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland, when I received a cable telling of Mother’s death. It was shortly after we had lost our little boy, James D’Arcy. The events are inseparable in my memory. Her last letter spoke of her loss of little Elizabeth. Her sympathy was the only comfort I received. Her intuitive perception of the right thing to say at the right time exceeded any other person I have ever known.
(Helen) After the funeral my father and I went up to Shanghai and lived at the Missionary Home and helped in the Book Room. In February, 1930, we got a cable that Dorothy and Harold were engaged. We came down almost at once. Dorothy and Harold came out from Yeung Kong and were married on 25 March 1930 and went to Singapore and Bangkok for their honeymoon.
Later Daddy and I returned to Shanghai and Miss. Spurling asked him to supervise the Missionary Home while she was away. Dorothy Dear, a young sister from Hamilton, Ontario, one of Christopher’s Sunday School scholars, had come out to help, so the Book Room was well staffed. I think it was that autumn that Christopher and his family moved out to Brennan Road.
When Miss Spurling returned to Shanghai in the spring of 1931, my father and I and Tien Chei left for Canada. Just before he left he fell and broke his wrist. We sailed 3rd class on the “Empress of Australia”. There were several missionaries on board and my father at once began a Bible study group.
We were in Canada over a year and in October, 1931, sailed for England, where we had a very happy visit and got back to Shanghai in February, 1932. There had been the Japanese attack on Shanghai and the Book Room had taken a large house down the street (Quinsan Gardens) to house the printing presses, which had been mercifully preserved when the north end of the city was burned. My father and I lived in this house throughout 1932.
We returned to Yeung Kong in the spring of 1933. During this year Harold Collier was not well. He had an operation for appendicitis and in January, 1934, he and Dorothy left for England on the “Benlawers”. Christopher’s son John came down to Yeung Kong and we went up the river to Wong Nai Waan on the Gospel houseboat and had good attention in the villages. On our return John returned to Shanghai, Daddy going with him to Hong Kong.
In November, 1934, we made another trip up the river to Wong Nai Waan. My father caught cold. This developed into pneumonia. We got him back to the hospital at Yeung Kong but he died there a week later, on 5 December 1934.
Marjorie Hayhoe, who had come out from Canada a year before, was there and she looked after the house and the children while I stayed at the hospital. She was a great comfort. We cabled for Christopher. My father was pleased to hear he was coming, but was gone before he arrived. My father had said he wished to be buried under ground and was so thankful that he would be laid as close as possible to his wife: “They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they are not divided”.
Dorothy and Harold had reached England on 30 March 1934. They returned to Canada in April or May and started back to China in November, visiting along the way. They were in Winnipeg when they received the news of Daddy’s death.
(Christopher) When word came of my father having been called Home, or rather that he was so ill, it was the busiest time of the year in the Book Room for us. However, through the Lord’s good ordering, our brother Ruck was in Shanghai and immediately offered to stay and help with the work. I was able to get a boat leaving that very day for Hong Kong and soon after reaching Hong Kong another boat to Kong Moon. My cable to Helen reached Yeung Kong before my father was taken and it brought him a measure of comfort on leaving Helen and Majorie alone there.
My sister used to read my father a Psalm each evening and the Psalm for that last evening was the 16th. After reading the 11Th verse: “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore”, my father remarked “How lovely!” and those were his last words.
I could not get a boat out of Kong Moon, so pressed on overland to Yeung Chun, a city northwest of Yeung Kong, hoping to be able to get a sort of bus that had been started from there to Yeung Kong. But there was nothing available that afternoon and it was not till morning that I could get away. I arrived after my father had left us.
He had been intensely lonely after my mother left him and rarely smiled, but he found great comfort and pleasure out of our children, and when visiting us or staying with us, his whole countenance would change to one of relaxed pleasure. When I finally reached him, I was charmed to see that his face bore just that look of peace and joy, as though to tell us “I’m at Home!”
The cemetery was a little piece of land that I had been able to buy some years previously for burying the saints, as the Lord gathered them Home. I think perhaps the first to be buried there was Slai Po’s little boy, a child I loved dearly. There might have been about an acre in the bit of land and it was completely surrounded by a hedge of wild pineapple and almost impossible to break through into it. There was a gate, which was kept closed. It was on a gentle slope at the side of a hill and was the only land we owned in China at that time.
The funeral was, as I recall, the next day. Many attended it and there was much real sorrow shown. As far as I remember, Leviticus 21:1,101And the Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them, There shall none be defiled for the dead among his people: (Leviticus 21:1)
10And he that is the high priest among his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and that is consecrated to put on the garments, shall not uncover his head, nor rend his clothes; (Leviticus 21:10) and 11 were spoken of at the funeral, telling us that Heaven is a place of unsullied holiness and untainted joy and that is where our dear ones are now abiding.
(Somerville) Dad told me on his last visit to Canada that he would not have exchanged his years in China for all the years before. They fulfilled his life long desire to serve as an ambassador for Christ amongst those who had had no opportunity to hear of Him and His saving power.
(Helen) Mother wrote to me that all her life she had wanted something—she was not sure what. But that desire had been fully satisfied on coming to China. In those early years there was much discomfort, poverty, deprivation, poor food, cold and heat. But it was well worthwhile.
“At Home”
Her eyes are opened now,
She can see the Son of God,
The Friend she walked with all the way
As she trod this thorny road.
Her ears are opened now,
To hear the song they sing,
Glad songs of praise to Him she loved,
Her Saviour and her King.
(Found on a scrap of paper in her own handwriting among the papers of A.F.W. “his” changed to “her”)