Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
Feb. 1928,

John,

Today I received letter from Naomi detailing the move to Horley Hall from Evelyn Road, and another from Una lamenting her going. An elaborate ordeal, given the paucity of train stations in Malaya and what trains there are run slow. It sounds quite the country mouse to Singapore's citified existence. Their stories of request-a-stop and remote railway stations horrified Bruce.

Naomi and Fred still say they won't stay at Horley Hall forever. I remain doubtful. But then I reread Gil's account of Rilla and family and thought that hearing about the happiness of my children was a mild burden to carry.

I miss Naomi particularly, because our local representative, in his infinite wisdom, decided to foist the issue of increased pew rent on Session. I can't fight it, because I'm supposed to be a neutral party. Politics are for other people, not ministers of impoverished rural parishes. Sorry, did I say that out loud?

Phil is also supposed to be neutral, though personally, I've seen less aggrieved cats in corners. Naomi doesn't have to be neutral, and neither does Sam. But these days she's in Ipoh and he manages a Halifax bank!

Cue an absolutely incendiary missive from Faith to our local council. It was explosive, and said all the things I wanted to say but couldn't. About how the whole point of Martyrs' was to ease the pew tariff on the fishing population, not that anyone remembered that these days. She damned them for forgetting Mrs. Yonger, whose charitable donation founded Martyrs' in the first place. Then there was a bit about the hypocrisy of people who purport to be Christian but don't practice charity at home. John, I wish I had a copy to send you. It was magnificent. I'm not sure it will work, but I hope it does. If the pew rent does go up, it will hit little Culross hardest, so I suppose we will simply have to trust that the next time there's an election we get neither a coalition nor a Tory at the helm.

So much for our no politics rule. What can I tell you instead? Bruce is the new Martyrs' pianist. He took over after Anne Hazelhurst became too arthritic to play. How she and Simon remain embroiled in so many committees is anyone's guess. Not that I can talk; I'm suddenly surrounded by well-intentioned people demanding I do less. Ruthie and Phil started it, but Faith's joined in, and Jem, and Gil. Even Kitty occasionally hints I could leave the more active part of my vocation to other people, but she hasn't a clever idea as to who. Teddy isn't one of ours, and anyway, has his hands full with the station house and keeping Larkrise in some kind of order without running my parish for me. So does Jem, though he's more a proponent of chaos than otherwise. Shirley's hours are too like a doctor's – too erratic – to commit completely to things like reshingling roofs, and Sam had the temerity to move away. Bruce has a degree to complete and a life to live when not being match-made by Phil or improving our choir. He keeps slipping underused pieces past the choristers. Very much Rosemary's child. You can tell her the wedding I conducted last week featured Handel instead of Bach; Where E'er You Walk makes for a rather lovely choral motet. But I suppose you knew this. The choir is in schism because half of them welcome the variety but the other half don't believe one can be legally married unless someone sings Jesu Joy.

And as I keep telling Gil, I can't retire. Never mind the parish, what would I do? Books are your territory. My church – make that churches – was never grand; They are built on shakier foundations than sand, and my parishioners' houses likewise. But as the hymn has it, The church is a people. These are my people, and I know them by their names. As the same hymn has it, We are the church together. I can't abandon them just because my back aches and my knees are imperfect and it takes me longer to shovel snow off the Conway roof than it used to. Not when they keep going in the face of their private setbacks and disappointments. It would feel like a betrayal. Besides, who would fight the question of the pew rent?

Now, I'm back to politics. Better quit while I'm ahead, eh?

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Jo

P.S. Do you know how Di gets on as regards the resuscitation of the Glen paper? Kitty wants all manner of particulars that none of us here can give her.


Ingleside,
Glen St Mary,
March, 1928

Jo,

I would be less likely to tell you off for your continued tenure as minister to Martyrs', Knox and Holy Trinity, if I hadn't lately had Faith's report of the sprain to your wrist doing she's uncertain what exactly, coupled with Phil's exasperated letter to Anne about the impossibility of getting you to stay in bed and recover from a head cold. Someday, one of your imperfect roofs will collapse from under you, and I refuse to have it on my conscience (probably so does Faith) that I didn't at least try and warn you to delegate your responsibilities. I only don't lecture John on the same theme because it is very difficult to lecture an absent-minded bookworm who sermonizes on the Greek roots of the word Presbytery, and how it is different from the Episcopoi, which is also Greek, but means something quite else. There's no danger of him falling and breaking his neck in the process of so lecturing.(Though he might break his nose with a book spine.)

No surprise re Faith. If her letter-writing potential age ten was anything to go on, I shudder to think what the local council is up against now she's grown.

Speaking of, your report of little Iain's birthday and the Kingsport Contingent generally was sorely needed, because I've come to dread Leslie's copperplate. It's awful knowing your children are unhappy and not being able to intervene. This last Christmas with Rilla was hard; The last time I saw anyone look the way Rilla did, it was Leslie nerving herself to go to Montreal with Dick Moore. I can't decide if that was the worst of it, or if watching my grandchildren notice was worse still, or if seeing Leslie see the same was worst of all. She was so obviously back in those House of Dreams era, and those are really only an idyll for Anne and myself. All because of a baby that may not be a girl, and Ken doesn't want! He and Rilla are due at the Castle Frank Fords for Easter, and Leslie is equal parts anticipation and exhaustion. Consequently, we're spending Easter in Toronto. It can't all fall on Persis, Jims and the Hargreave woman to relieve the little boys' burdens.

Maybe don't pass on that Susan isn't well. It worked out rather well that Shirley couldn't get a locum, because despite Susan's talk about hosting Iain's birthday, she dropped a plate the other day. Susan never drops plates. There might have been the odd piece of crockery sacrificed at the altar of The War when it was on. But there wasn't a war on at the time, so Anne and Rosemary went to investigate and found Susan collapsed against the kitchen counter. Rosemary swept up the plate while Anne got me on the telephone

I couldn't make up my mind what was wrong, and sent for Dick Parker, who thought he had his afternoon off. Poor, deluded chap. We conferred for so long that Anne brought in a tea tray, complete with honey, because that's what Dick uses as a sweetener, where anyone normal would use sugar. A lovely gesture, but I fear by the time we remembered such things as tea existed, it was cold.

I have a sick feeling it's heart trouble. So has Dick, and when I feel brave, I'll speak to Shirley about it. It shouldn't come from a letter, or from anyone else – you don't mind, do you? It's one of those jobs that feels mine.

The worst part is that if it is heart trouble, all I can do is bully Susan into retirement. Cheer up, Jo. You're in some excellent company. Susan also disbelieves in retirement. I don't half do a thing, eh?

I don't understand the pair of you. I'd retire tomorrow and make a career of visiting my children if I could get someone to take the practice over. Instead I've promised to keep it intact for Bruce Meredith, so it's another few years of the headless chicken dash for me yet.

That's all the news at our end, except to say newspapers are a fraught business. Now Betty's husband is in on The Great Glen Newspaper Caper. It goes slowly, because…actually, better write to Di about that one. I don't understand that business, either. Tell Kitty from me that as and when that changes, she will be first to know.

I trust your wrist is mending, whatever you did to it. I'm relying on you to not die of an injury and keep me abreast of everything my children don't tell me. Was Tuesday really victim of a seizure? Perhaps more pertinently, did Kitty really talk Teddy into writing a column for The Chronicle? I demand answers.

Love ever,

Gil


Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
March, 1928

Gil,

I happened to fall on the bell tower stairs, if you want to know. My fault completely for failing to mend a loose tread. It mixed badly with a shoelace, and my wrist took the brunt of the fall. It wasn't a bad sprain at all. Nothing Bruce couldn't fix. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing to you. Teddy's column makes a much better story.

It started because Teddy likes to rhapsodize over wildlife while walking with your grandchildren. Points out the snowdrops and things like that. Kitty thinks it a great joke.

Well, one evening the Carlisles and your Kingsport Contingent went to whatever Gilbert & Sullivan thing was on at the Crown Imperial. Something about ghosts, if memory serves. Basingstoke, too. (I wouldn't trust my memory on this; I find those plots hazy at the best of times.) They left the children care of Teddy and Kitty, which is a real proof of love, because none of them was what you'd call a picture of health. We have a lurgy going round, and they were all in different stages of having it. Christopher was surfacing from a fever, Helen succumbing to one, Iain teething, and so on and so forth.

Rather a potent cocktail. And you know Kitty; As much time for children as clover has for the cow that eats it. She left Teddy to it, and started writing up her latest case for The Chronicle. So, there's Teddy managing all these recalcitrant children until it was too much even for him.

About ten o'clock, he told Kitty it was her turn to mind the children, and he took himself off to the kitchen for a much-needed cup of tea. He obviously took inspiration from Kitty's column inches, because he started writing what became the first of his 'Jack Pine' nature columns over tea. Find it enclosed. He never meant for anyone to read it, but Kitty, exhausted by the children, was out for blood. So, when she found it, she showed it to her editor over Teddy's protestations. The editor published it.

Susan's now on assorted intercessions lists. Most of them are Presbyterian, including both Knox-on-the-Sea (Culross) and Holy Trinity (Waterford). But since you've caught Shirley up on the episode, she now also has a regular spot on the Sacred Heart and St Margaret's prayer requests, too. So are your Toronto connection, albeit in a rather different, and less explicit way. We talk often about how important united fronts are, and not enough, I fear, about how easily those little emotional cracks can widen in marriages, and how difficult they are to stop up.

Your writing of Rilla reminds me of Phil and my early days with Sam and Jake. They were much closer together than anticipated. There was Phil wrestling these two hale, hearty, and vocal infants, and me trying to minister to what was then only the Patterson St/Waterford dyad. We hadn't fully negotiated our own domesticity. It was a lot to juggle. And that manse! Phil learned domesticity at Patty's Place, where the oven drew evenly and the windows weren't draughty! How she hated it! And how I hated that she hated it.

I can still hear, somewhere in the back of my mind, that epiphanic moment where things clicked into place and we realised the only way forward was together. Which is not to say thereafter everything was smooth sailing, only that we turned in considerably fewer circles when I sat up my share of evenings, and Phil got into the habit of going the parochial rounds with the baby on one arm and a dish of something in the other. I'll think of you as you travel Toronto-ward.

Bruce came for supper the other evening and asked that I pass on his apologies for remaining in Kingsport over the Easter break. Between playing for a sudden rash of weddings and involvement in one of our Lent appeals for the ACS – my fault as much as Una's – he's become quite busy. Better extend the apology to John also, as he and Rosemary won't see him this holiday. Tell them it's all my fault. I understand this leaves you with your hands full, what with Dr. Parker holidaying with Alice and family. I hope that young locum is back covering Lowbridge for you, at least.

Don't work too hard, and I'll solemnly promise not to break any bones rehanging our bells before Eastertide, does that seem fair?

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch,

Jo


Ingleside,
Glen St Mary,
April, 1928

Jo,

All I can say on the subject is that Teddy's idea of fun is not mine. Twelve illness-ridden children indeed! I'm still haunted by memories of the year my six caught measles off each other in the space of a week. The Merediths had the temerity to catch it off them, and Anne, Rosemary, John and I got maybe seven hours of sleep between us until the ordeal passed. I don't think Susan slept at all.

Even then it wasn't over. Rilla – still very young – caught it next, and had spots all over the back of her head. She couldn't lie down, forget sleep. Una, always generous, gave her measles to Mary Vance, who gave them to Billy Shakespeare Drew, who gave them to the rest of the Drews, who shared it with the Crawfords, who infected the McAllister small fry, who passed it along to the Penny family. It was a grim few months of my life, I can tell you. Tell the lot of them from me to count themselves lucky that it was only garden-variety influenza.

Anne's in ecstasies over Teddy's snowdrops. Warn Teddy – you'll see him before I do. Also warn him that Di wants to poach him for this newspaper thing she and the others are trying to resuscitate. It sounds more like a coupe by the day. Everyone wants to know who knew Teddy could turn out a phrase like that. I said no one, and got laughter all round. The column now sits in a frame on one of our end tables, among the general parlour bric-a-brac. Maybe don't tell Teddy that; He'd be mortified.

Susan's much better these days, and is a whirlwind of housekeeping, as if to compensate for succumbing to bed-rest. Vain my warnings that she will exacerbate her condition. Susan won't succumb, as she says, except of a Friday evening when everything stops for Shirley's call. From this I conclude that he is wasted on his animals and has missed his calling as a doctor.

I have a gentle bone to pick with you on that note. Poaching my most reliable assistant for wedding season! How could you?

We're awash in babies, at the moment. Betty's due one, Mary's just had one, and Olive Kirk(?) Drew(?) is about to have twins. Even Gertrude has just been delivered, and that's much closer to Rilla's doorstep. She's happy for her friends, but you can hear talking to her that it sticks in her teeth. She still wants her girl, and Ken still hasn't the stomach for another high-risk birth. It's hard to blame him when I share his sentiments. Mind, I'm sympathetic to Rilla, too. She's surrounded by people who have the thing she wants. That's always hard. Even harder to compromise on a baby.

It's easy for Persis to talk about adoption. She hasn't a family. The trouble, as Anne keeps saying o' nights, that babies aren't a sticking plaster. They're something you have to live and work with. You don't even – whatever Morgan, Oracle and their ilk say – always fall in love instantly with them. Anne did, and I always thought that lucky. But Mrs. Arabella Pye…and that Binnie woman at Bay Shore, young May Binnie's mum – ask John. I spoke to the Bay doctor once, and he said he'd never seen a woman less bonded to her babies. It was awful. I hope it won't be like that with Rilla.

It's times like this I remember an old classmate who refused to go into obstetrics because he wanted a moderately uninterrupted life.

Nan and Jerry are off to Labrador by way of Kippewa. Nan wants the girls to know it better, and develop more concrete memories of where they were born. I shall be happy provided no one summons me out that way again for a complicated delivery of more twins. Once was enough. Anne hinted this to Nan over the phone and her Mums! was audible from six feet (plus many long-distance miles!) away. How Anne and I laughed, later! The children always scandalize so easily.

I trust yours are happier, and your wrist adequately recovered. Bruce sent us a detailed report of the state of those bell tower stairs, and Faith another of your injury. All I can say is count yourself lucky it was only a sprain. I bet Faith has beat me to the saying of it.

Love ever,

Gil


Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
Easter, 1928

Gil,

Phil reckons we can outdo your measles story, but given the season, it would probably be uncharitable to try. When you feel up to it, ask her about the Waterford Rubella. I don't think I can face a recapitulation this side of the New Jerusalem.

Speaking of, we took a leaf out of John's book and held our own sunrise service this year. There was mist for miles, Gil, and the sea positively roiling. I stood out on the pier with my flock and the smell of it, the salt, the sulphur and damp – it was like nothing I imagined. As we concluded the service, the fog burnt away and the sun came dazzling through the clouds. The beauty of it, Gil. I haven't words. Jake's boys loved it, or professed to. I suspect they meant the bacon rolls for breakfast more than the sunrise.

In rather more earthly news, and in direct contravention of our politics rule, I take it from your last letter that you, too are overwhelmed by women indignant about the Persons Declaration. Ever since the verdict arrived, I've been surrounded by righteously indignant women. Not without just cause, either; I know precious little of politics, I realise, but how so many people can get it wrong fairly boggles me. I can't speak to government, but I tell you, if you took the women out of church, the system would collapse. I trust all at your end are fighting the good fight, or at least writing Strongly Worded Letters of an advisory nature to the Supreme Court. Tell Anne I'd expect nothing less.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Jo


Ingleside,
Glen St Mary,
April, 1928

Jo,

That Persons Act! I've never seen Betty of the old Junior Reds Brigade so furious as she was over tea yesterday. Ostensibly she was moderating the Great Glen Paper Caper. But they got off-track when the evening edition arrived with the bulletin about women in senate, or specifically, how they can't be. Merry riot broke loose, I can tell you.

Susan was incensed. She wanted to know who the government thought ran the country for them while the boys were at war. That meant Cornelia, also there, had to take the Supreme Court's side, and that offended her because it meant agreeing with men. Di and Betty took Susan's side. All this time, Betty jostled her baby on her knees and Anne tried not to fly into one of her tempers. No luck there, especially not when Ellen stormed up to the house and egged her on. She sat right down in one of our inferior armchairs and gave the men great whack. I had half a mind to join in, purely to give Cornelia back-up, except that I value my life too much and anyway don't agree. Besides, when have you ever known Cornelia to require a vanguard?

Then Betty left and the Merediths joined us. The political debate was still going. Rosemary contrived to be both conciliatory and exasperated in that way she has that rather defies quantifying. John, Alistair and I left them too it and retreated to three-way cribbage. It seemed safer. I keep waiting for the 'phone to go and announce opinions from Kingsport, but I suppose they were otherwise preoccupied. Faith knows better than to tie up a doctor's line, and Mara's busy with the current run of The Queen was in the Parlour. I can only suppose Judith Carlisle is managing assorted children. All I can say, Jo, is if the women making men of our boys aren't persons then I don't see how the boys in question are, either. All Jem's best lessons came from Anne, and I hope I'm gracious enough to admit it.

More on the newspaper disentanglement. I know you want details. It's a vexed quandary. The difficulty with wresting the Glen's paper back from the Lowbridge Herald empire is that it's expensive. Di thinks it would be easier to start from scratch. They can't for two reasons; That involves intruding on the Lowbridge patch (whatever that is) and they have no writers. It's true Betty's husband's been champing at the Lobridge bit for months; Neither he nor Betty cares for town life. But Ed's a photographer – same as Di.

There's Kitty, obviously, and she does want to leave The Kingsport Chronicle. But I don't see her trading a solid city daily for a rural weekly edition with a lower salary.

Ken would never do it. Can you imagine Ken agreeing to life in the Glen? In the unlikely event he did, Leslie would box my ears for stealing the grandchildren out from under her, even if things in Toronto weren't still grim. (They are.)

According to Leslie, Ken works longer hours than ever, Rilla is exhausted by her existing children, and the boys spend most of their time with Persis on St George St. They're quite thick with her and Miss Hargreave; They call her 'Aunt Cass' these days, which she's not, but when you get down to brass tacks, neither is Judith to my Kingsport Contingent. Funny how family works, isn't it?

But we've got to do something, because even I'm fed up with the way the Glen Herald swamps us with Lowbridge doings and ignores local news. The Taylor silage caught fire last week and went unreported. The fire spread to the farmhouse and devastated the family. News, surely. Not according to the Lowbridge reporter I spoke to. He shrugged and said they had bigger concerns than a localized fire. Localized! It ruined two farms before it was done!

Another farm had a bad case of whatever-it-is sheep catch in damp pastures, and that never broke the front page, either. Not even the Notes on the Glen section, despite Shirley saying whatever-it-is was highly contagious and one case meant he had to notify all surrounding farms.

Our little church's 60th anniversary squeaked onto half an inch of back page, and you should have heard Susan's tirade. She made it front-page news. No one dared point out we were lucky it was news at all.

Personally, Anne has my vote. She started reading me her poems again around Walter-time. I said I hadn't words for her verses, because I hadn't. I still haven't. But I think a good stint of adjective-free prose would be good for her.

Your daughter would be ideal. What are our chances of extricating Naomi from Horley Hall?

Love ever,

Gil