To Dohnavur: Camp
The next move en famille after the long tour of 1900 was to Dohnavur, for a few months’ work. As usual, wherever possible, the head of the family undertook the toilsome part of the removal.
“June 16, 1900. — Dohnavur. Preparing accommodation for everyone before their arrival next week. Clearing and getting bungalow shipshape.
“June 21. — B. and the women’s band arrived.”
It was a delightful arrival. The south-west monsoon had cooled the air and covered the mountains with veils of light mist, so that they looked like the mountains of home, only higher and grander; for in India, even in the south, the hills run from five thousand to over eight thousand feet, rising sheer from the plains.
The whole place was charming: the bare barn-like bungalow, with nothing of the luxurious about it; the compound, with its enchanting views; the walks to the water lying at the foot of the mountains — all this was pure delight, and from the first happy day of arrival it was a place of songs; for the country birds of the old allegory were “tame in the house,” and they made that solitary place a place desirous to be in.
Apart from such attractions, the Dohnavur district possesses an interest of its own. Every square mile of it has its private story of raids and skirmishes and battles. For in the days of a certain overlord, called Alam Khan, his underling, a Patan officer, sold on his own account this strip of southern country to the king of Travancore, who naturally was not slow to take possession. In due time there was 18 27« trouble; and from Kalakadu, six miles north of what is now Dohnavur, to Cape Comarin, thirty miles south (the Cape was then included in Tinnevelly territory), there was anarchy and all its attendant misery; while, to add to the confusion, marauding chieftains sallied forth from their forts all over the country and ravaged the villages. One such chieftain encamped on the outskirts of a little town three miles south of Dohnavur. There he built a fort and bullied the unfortunate inhabitants of the hamlets round about. All this happened from 1750 onwards. Later, another overlord ruled Tinnevelly and the adjacent countries. He must have been a pleasing character, for he is chiefly remembered for his brave attempt to play a double game. With the British, who were now beginning to loom large on the Indian horizon, he opened negotiations concerning this debatable strip of country, while at the same time he offered the whole to the king of Travancore. And as both parties accepted his invitation, the result may be imagined. The final battle of a series of battles was fought near the town where the chieftain aforesaid held court; after which the Travancore army retired to its own borderland, a bare plain under the sunburnt mountains where a pass leads into the kingdom of Travancore. Thereafter there was peace. But the traces of old troubles lie scattered about the district. One, which is rather interesting, is the presence of the fort three miles away, now a ramshackle old house called by courtesy the palace. Its head, great-great-grandson of the marauding chieftain, early in July 1900 paid a visit of ceremonial welcome to the Dohnavur bungalow, and invited the missionaries to come and preach to his retainers. Once, after two of the party had slipped into friendship with the women folk who live in the secluded rooms at the back of the house, he proposed their accompanying his family on an expedition to a famous little temple hidden in the woods on the mountain. They were all exceedingly friendly, from the rough, good-tempered men who lounged about in the old square courtyard — where, to give a feudal touch to the scene a pair of falcons perched on the rafters — to the white-haired grannie who pressed betel nut and lime
CH. xxii.] TO DOHNAVUR: CAMP 275
upon her guests, fully expecting them to enjoy munching the compound. The British Raj may have its faults, but it is certainly a peacemaker.
Finally and chiefly, the district was supposed to be, and certainly proved to be, extremely desirable from a missionary point of view; for it is exceedingly needy, being very strongly Hindu in atmosphere. It may be there is a special reason for this found in its religious history. Here Rama, king of Oude, in the long ago ages sent his vassals to search for his good and beautiful Sita, who had been carried off by Ravana, king of Ceylon. Where their footsteps fell, shrines sprang up; the plain is strewn with shrines. And the precipitous doubleheaded mountain, which seems to stand as guard to Dohnavur, holds place in the famous story. “To show his power,” says the Ramayana, “Hanuman” (the monkey god who helped Rama) “sprang to the top of the Mahendra mountain, leaping from summit to summit, making it groan beneath his weight.” From it, “he took his flight” across the perilous ocean to Ceylon. So the mountain is holy ground; and the forest at its foot, and clinging about its deep ravines is full of holy places.
Thus its very story seemed to call aloud for the coming of the Greater, the King of kings; and the verse, “He must reign,” was written in large Tamil letters and hung up in the Dohnavur bungalow for all to see.
As a centre for work, no other district bungalow offered quite the same opportunity, for no other long-established C.M.S. station was set in quite so Hindu an environment. The village itself is small, and clusters about a church built in 1824 with money given by Count Dohna, a German friend of missions. The village — which at that time was a dependency attached to the adjoining Hindu village, Pulliankurichi (Village of the tiger), wherein no Christian has ever been allowed to live — changed ita name when it built its church, and called itself Dohnavur (pronounced Donavur), Ur meaning village.
Into this new opportunity, then, the family entered with zest and with expectation, finding to its great happiness friendly welcomes nearly every where, always from the scattered Christians, often, as above related, from the Hindus too; for at that time such visits as were now offered were rare enough to be interesting. And many a page could be written about those happy itinerating days, full as they were with weariness and hope deferred, and yet enriched for ever by blessed overweights of joy. But the main reason which led to Dohnavur at that time was the fact that it was a suitable place for an Ordination Class; and for awhile the steady teaching of Divinity students went on, broken only by days of evangelistic work in the surrounding district. Class with Ordination men, 8 to 10, 11 to 12, 2.30 to 4.30; this was the ordinary routine, with, between classes, literary work, correspondence, occasional Tamil reading with a fellow-missionary, and often, after tea, village work. It was a full day. The one almost invariable breathing space was the hour after dinner, from eight till nine; that was spent under the stars.
There was one adventure that June:
“Upon returning from harvest festivals, with the Carrs en route for Palamcottah, our bandies attacked in the dark, 2 a.m., by dacoits [professional robbers] or some of that ilk. A bad time; they thrashed the drivers and fought with us. Carr much knocked about and bruised; myself only hit on the shoulder. Finally they fled. Got to Palamcottah about 8 a.m.”
So the journal; or, as told more fully on arrival home: “I woke to find my bandy rolling down a bank. The driver was nowhere, and the bulls were blundering about in the dark. I heard shouts, and knew something was up. I had nothing with me, not even my stick; but I put out my hand instinctively, and there lay a stout stick beside me. I seized it right thankfully and rushed off to find the Carrs’ bandy, and I got there just in time. He was fearfully knocked about, and she was inside alone.” “He came with a perfect war whoop, flourishing his stick and sent them all flying,” was Mr. Carr’s account. “How ever did the stick get there?” “I had a pastor with me in the bandy, part of the way; he slipped out without waking me, and by mistake left his stick behind.”
CH. xxn.] TO DOHNAVUR: CAMP 277
This was the year of China’s peril:
“News from China seems slow and unreliable,” he writes on August 20.” But God’s will shall be done there, and the Coming of Christ hastened. P- writes that she is glad I am not there,
and ’s people write that they are thankful she is not there.
We think it hard lines that people glorify missionary martyrs so much, and yet grudge us the crown of martyrdom!
“We are going on quietly here. At present I am chiefly occupied with the Ordination Candidates. We have gone carefully through Exodus, with its spiritual meaning, as well as its points of scholarship. And now we are half-way through the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Divinely inspired New Testament commentary on Exodus. They read some subjects with Mr. Douglas while I was in Travancore, so that I shall only have three or four more to teach them when Hebrews is finished. I am anxious, however, to get them out into special mission work, and so combine practical training with Theological. We have had several conversions, I am glad to say, among the Christians, and there is a movement among the boarding-school boys.”
A day or two later an entry is: “Wrote a long Memorandum with Carr on Native Church organisation, protesting against proposed change of front.” This was the Memorandum mentioned in chapter XV. Its rejection led to his resigning his vice-chairmanship of Council. For the protest entirely failed; and as that which he tried to avert has passed from the region of discussion and become an accomplished fact, there is no point in raising the question afresh. His motive in fighting was true to himself: the new policy contained, as he believed, elements prejudicial to the spiritual welfare and ultimate independence of the Indian Church, and therefore he resisted it with all his might. It was not the first time, nor the last, that he stood upon the losing side; and no story of his life would be true which eliminated this feature, his absolutely unshakable courage in playing a losing game.
Some to whom the guidance of the Indian Church is a matter of vital concern, and who, knowing his views on the subject, sympathised with him, may wish that the matter of this Memorandum should be fully discussed, and those views clearly set forth in this chapter. But to do so at all adequately would require many pages of extracts from private letters and papers, as well as the publication of the whole Memorandum; and in common fairness to those who took a different view, the other position should be stated in equal detail. This would involve furnishing more food for discussion than at the present time appears to be desirable; and even if all were written, the number of those possessed of sufficiently accurate and comprehensive knowledge of the situation to be capable of an intelligent opinion one way or other upon the mass of matter thus provided, would be very few. For better or worse, the tide has set in a direction opposite to that which the writers of the Memorandum felt best for the Church in India. We leave the subject, therefore, refusing to write or to copy a discouraged line. An acquaintance with history, as he himself often used to say, quoting from Bishop Westcott, is the best antidote to discouragement: the God of history is the God with Whom we have to do. In the end — can we not believe it? — the prayer of all who love this land will be answered, and the Church spiritual will shine forth liberated, purified, and strong.
An obstinate spell of fever followed this distressful writing, but as soon as he could crawl back to work he was at it; and there he sat at the dining-room table with books and pen and papers about him, a way-worn figure in a grey coat, with white resolute face and dark eyes that “glowered” — there is no English word which exactly expresses the expression — at any one who suggested he ought to be in bed. The meekest of invalids when helplessly ill, he was an incorrigible convalescent; and if too much afflicted by expostulations, would retire into his shell in an aggrieved fashion, wholly and uncomfortably human. It was upon one such occasion, or rather, after he had happily recovered from the sense of injury, that he produced his Wordsworth and read from the Miscellaneous Sonnets:
“My friends, restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain.
Oh, leave me to myself; nor let me feel
The officious touch that makes me droop again.”
After which there was nothing for it but to retire defeated.
“‘Tis death, my soul, to be indifferent;
Set forth thyself unto thy whole extent,
And all the glory of His passion prize,
Who for thee lives, who for thee dies.”
TRAHERNE.
“Yea, and if you be sure that your part be good, and another hold the contrary, yet if it be a thing that maketh no matter, you will laugh and let it pass, and refer the thing to other men, and stick you stiffly and stubbornly in earnest and necessary things.”
WILLIAM TINDALE to JOHN FBITH, prisoner in the Tower, and afterwards martyr (about 1536).