N.B! -> The Women's Christian College,
Cathedral P.O., Madras, India,
January 10th, 1924.[added in pencil: "Please return at your convenience A. H. T." - evidently Abby passed the letter around to at least one other person to read.]
Dear Miss Turner,
Your nice Christmas card found me today after wandering to Queen Mary's, the Government women's college; and your last one went to the Men's Christian College which is known everywhere as the Madras Christian College. You see, we are quite an educational metropolis!
It was nice to hear from you, especially when I've been so very bad about writing. I don't believe I've ever written you a real letter since your perfectly grand one, started on the steamer and ended at college, reached me a year ago. And your pictures are so good. The English lake region looks too lovely to be true; but the shepherd's cottage tucked under the hills in Glen Coe won my heart most completely. (Will you have any time to tramp with me in the summer of '26 - or it may be '27?) The Harvey pictures I have showed to my physiology classes and they were much thrilled.
Thank you for your careful account of the salivary digestion experiment. It so happens that I turned over the physiology to the new chemist in October just before we got to that point, so I've not yet done it. She omitted it, I think. I wonder if you've heard anything about the Miss Langwill episode? It's strange, amusing and sickening. She claims that she didn't know what she was coming to, that the situation was misrepresented on the other side. She seems to have expected the new labs to be finished, to have lots of time for research, and above all not to be in a missionary institution. I know Mrs. Peabody is capable of painting anything in the most vivid colors, with very little real knowledge of facts (Not for circulation, please!); but even so it is hard to believe that a woman of any intelligence who had to fill out the documents she did and who knew she was coming to the Women's Christian College could fail to realize that it was a missionary college. Furthermore she had a talk with Edith Coon who told her about the academic, science building, etc.
Anyhow Miss Langwill left us at Christmas and married an Assam tea-planter whom she met on shipboard. She fulfilled the financial requirements of the broken contract - refunding passage & outfit - but left us absolutely stranded. We were desperate until the Isabella Thoburn College came to our rescue and loanded us a Miss Catherine Justin, M. Sc. Kanasa Agricultural, for the three months. I don't mean to paint Miss Langwill entirely in black colors, for she is a very nice person and helped a lot with the chemistry end of the building plans. And being as she was in love I could forgive her anything except her lack of appreciation of the perfectly ripping treatment she has had from Miss McDougall, and her spreading around Madras, even to the very last, that she had not been squarely dealth with. For that is tommyrot. Poor Edith! It's awfully hard on her after she wore herself out trying to get us the right person. It remains to be seen what will happen in the future.
Anyhow it makes us realize more than ever the need for someone on the Board at that end who thoroughly understands the academic end of things. None of them do. I remember well how folks raved to me before I came, & you remember how near I came to starting in 1920! Edith & I were talking about it yesterday & wishing very much that Miss Woolley would really attend the Board meetings. It would make such a difference. In England they have several excellent people who know all about us and they don't do such glaring things. We hope Miss Wild will stay long enough to get a little bit acquainted with us. Miss Sophie Hart of Wellesley is to be here this week end. (If you know her, you'll understand that I am awaiting her arrival with very assorted anticipations!) When are you coming this way?
You say you hope we're in our new labs. Nothing doing until Feb. 1925! Another academic year after this, in our present measly accomodations! But it is very thrilling to see things going on apace even tho' the nearest approach to machinery in the whole establishment is a yoke of oxen that drag a stone wheel thru a trench to grind the mortar and a hand-made derrick tied to the nearest tree! One does marvel at the primitive methods. I can hear them now, clipping up bricks with hand hammers, and pounding down the floor foundations by hand. The roof is going on over the Botany end; my walls are still rising. In Edith's establishment they are beginning to plaster.
My two years of apprenticeship are up & altho' I'm still the infant of the crowd I begin to feel my feet under me. One's second year in India - I judge that my experience is not unique - simply turns one inside out - it's groping, fumbling, floundering in thinking and doing. There's so much to think along the lines of internationalism and race prejudice. I'm revelling in the company of rampant internationalists from many countries - England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, U.S.A. & India. The Indians, altho nationalists, are making that a stepping stone to Internationalism. It was a shock, after my two years, to jump onto a boat from Madras to Calcutta at Christmas & plunge into the midst of a bunch of Britishers fresh from London. The Indians & Anglo-Indians, who were treated as much by the majority of Britishers aboard (they were mostly business people), were so obviously far superior in culture & grace. I had believed that I was a real democrat in spirit, but my pride fell flat when I saw my instant reaction to some of the very vulgar and narrow trades & commercial people on that ship. And I can't keep my bristles down sometimes when a very Yankee American blows in with all the traditional swagger, blatantly here to tell India about the U.S.A. rather than to learn of India. Truly I've found it more difficult to like some of my fellow countrymen than anyone else in India. But I hope that the pendulum may have reached its limit in that direction & that I'll end up by being a genuine, tho' much enlightened, Yankee!
As for religion, if you thought you had any it gets knocked completely out of you. But in the scrapple you find a few solid bits, & I have a feeling that those bits are of the lasting kind. There's nothing so good as contact with sincere and educated Hindus for smashing up the unreal in our own religious thinking. More of that anon, perhaps.
You ask what was the matter with me last summer. I had forgotten that there was anything. It was just a chronic thing - intestinal fermentation that has troubled me ever since the flu (perhaps you remember the Dr. Hubbard ? whom you took me to see in Holyoke prescribing soda for it.). It gets gradually worse rather than better & so far no one has been able to help it. Last summer I tackled another doctor who believed it was due to chronic fatigue & put me to bed for a week with three raw eggs a day & two huge dishes of curds from B. lacticus Metchnikoff. But it didn't seem to have any effect except to get me rested a bit! I've about given up doing anything. It's not really serious at all, but I am sure that I could keep in much better physical tone if I could only get rid of it.
I've just returned from Christmas with my family. It will be their last in India. They are coming to spend next summer with me in Kodai & will then sail from Colombo, hoping to see my China sister, tho' it looks rather impossible. My nurse sister was married in Nov. to an ice-man (or what do you call one who owns & manages an ice establishment?) whom she met during her first job in Little Compton, R.I. Small Peggy is a senior at Wheaton & we believe will postpone matrimony at least until Mother & Father are home. She doesn't seem to have found anything in college that has really waked her up. I'm sorry - for she's such a very nice kid. I wish you might meet my family sometime, Miss Turner. They're looking for a furnished house somewhere - anywhere almost within range of Julia in R.I. Sometimes I despair of ever really knowing them. [Margin note with arrow pointing to next sentence: "Private, please."] It's nice to go home, but it's not really home. They are ready but I am not & it makes one very sad, to feel that they have given their lives to India & then when old & ready to retire have not their children's confidence. I hope they'll have my other sisters' more.
What an effusion this is! Please forgive. Much, much love to you, dear Miss Turner.
I've not had any direct Holyoke news for ages. Do tell me who is in your department now, & Zoo. And who is living with you. D. Eliz. used to be my chief informant but now she's full of Wisconsin. It's nice to have her playing around there with my great pal from Wellesley.