This is a complete and accurate transcript of the tape of the second oral history interview of Jennie Kingston Fitzwilliam (CN 272, T2) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words have been omitted, except for any non-English phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. Foreign terms which are not commonly understood appear in italics. In very few cases words were too unclear to be distinguished. If the transcriber was not completely sure of having gotten what the speaker said, "[?]" was inserted after the word or phrase in question. If the speech was inaudible or indistinguishable, "[unclear]" was inserted. Grunts and verbal hesitations such as "ah" or "um" were usually omitted. The transcribers have not attempted to phonetically replicate English dialects but have instead entered the standard English word the speaker was expressing. Readers should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and rule than written English.
Chinese place names are spelled in the transcript in the old or new transliteration form according to how the speaker pronounced them. Thus, "Peking" is used instead of "Beijing," if that is how the interviewee pronounced it. Chinese terms and phrases which would be understood were spelled as they were pronounced with some attempt made to identify the accepted transliteration form to which it corresponds.
... Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence on the part of the speaker.
.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
( ) Words in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[ ] Words in brackets are comments by the transcriber.
This transcript was made by Alice L. Fitzwilliam (daughter-in-law of Jennie Fitzwilliam), with some revisions by Robert Shuster and was completed in July 2003
This is a complete and accurate transcript of the tape of the second oral history interview of Jennie Kingston Fitzwilliam (CN 272, T2) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words have been omitted, except for any non-English phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. Foreign terms which are not commonly understood appear in italics. In very few cases words were too unclear to be distinguished. If the transcriber was not completely sure of having gotten what the speaker said, "[?]" was inserted after the word or phrase in question. If the speech was inaudible or indistinguishable, "[unclear]" was inserted. Grunts and verbal hesitations such as "ah" or "um" were usually omitted. The transcribers have not attempted to phonetically replicate English dialects but have instead entered the standard English word the speaker was expressing. Readers should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and rule than written English.
Chinese place names are spelled in the transcript in the old or new transliteration form according to how the speaker pronounced them. Thus, "Peking" is used instead of "Beijing," if that is how the interviewee pronounced it. Chinese terms and phrases which would be understood were spelled as they were pronounced with some attempt made to identify the accepted transliteration form to which it corresponds.
... Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence on the part of the speaker.
.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
( ) Words in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[ ] Words in brackets are comments by the transcriber.
This transcript was made by Alice L. Fitzwilliam (daughter-in-law of Jennie Fitzwilliam), with some revisions by Robert Shuster and was completed in July 2003.
*****
Collection 272, T2. Interview of Jennie Kingston Fitzwilliam by Paul Ericksen, June 21, 1984.
ERICKSEN: This is an interview by Jennie Eliza Kingston Fitzwilliam by Paul A. Ericksen for the Missionary Sources Collection of Wheaton College. This interview took at the offices of the Billy Graham center Archives on June 21, 1984, at 2:15 pm. [Pauses] Well, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, we're having to go back and recover some information that we lost in a...a previous interview. [The audio track of this interview, recorded May 17, 1984, was so poor that it was not kept] I wonder if we could begin if you could just sort of give a brief sketch of...of your life. Just when you were born, where you...where you grew up and where you were raised, where you went to school, where you served as a missionary and what you have been doing since.
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I was born in Newbury, Massachusetts in 1908...Nineteen hundred and three and I grew up in various places in Massachusetts. We lived in Newbury for a while and then moved to Athol, Mass. where I spent most of my grade school time. And then we moved to Dunstable, Mass. where I went to...finished up grade school and I went to high school.. Dunstable was a real small town and did not have a high school so I went to high school in Concord, Mass, which was a real privilege, being a historic town and was a really wonderful place to go to high school. I had to travel quite a long distance because we didn't have much in the line of train service in those days in that small town, so I went down in the morning about 7 o'clock and came back at night about 7 o'clock. And the conveyance was a passenger car at the end of a freight train. We went to Concord Junction and then changed and went to Concord. And it was during my high school days...I don't remember when I accepted the Lord. I think I always loved the Lord. I grew up in a Christian home and we had family prayers morning and night and...and I don't know, I just think I grew up loving the Lord. I don't remember when I accepted the Lord, but I do remember that when I was in high school, I dedicated my life to the Lord. Somehow or other, I was going to some meetings and it...it became more real to me and I went forward to dedicate my life to the Lord. I was involved in a Sunday afternoon Sunday School in a little...a little...what used to be a little country chur...school house, and we had Sunday afternoon Sunday School class there. And the pastor from the Baptist church in Nashua, New Hampshire, which was about five miles from where we lived, came out to help us with that Sunday afternoon Sunday School. And so through him, I became very much more interested in missionary...in Christian work. And having made a rededication of my life to the Lord in one of the services in his church, I made plans under his guidance to go the Moody Bible Institute. So I went to Moody after I graduated from high school and took the missionary course there. I went definitely with missionary work in mind, although I couldn't say where I got my call, because I had never met a missionary until I went to Moody Bible Institute. My parents went to the Advent Christian Church and I just don't remember that missions was ever...was talked about a lot. They were very devoted people. The second coming of the Lord was very much stressed but missionary work.... Although they do carry on missionary work. They do have an arm of foreign missions in their church but I never heard it stressed in the church. I heard more about it from my pastor, the Baptist pastor, Dr. George Cole, who was pastor of the little Baptist church in Nashua where I attended. In fact I was baptized in that church just before I went to Moody. And he was a Moody graduate. He was very enthusiastic about Moody and encouraged me to...to go to there. Those three years at Moody were some of the most precious years of my life. I took the missionary course. And it just...it just seemed to me to be next door to heaven - the fellowship and the fun times and all at Moody Bible Institute, it just stands out in my life as a great time of getting to know the Lord more, of getting to know God's servants, and getting acquainted with the mission fields of the world. And it was while I was there...though when I went to Moody I went with the very definite thought that I was going to go to Africa as a missionary. I suppose because that probably about the only field that I had heard much about. [chuckles] But anyway when I got there the Lord directed my thoughts toward China. I couldn't tell you just how. I joined the China prayer group. And as I look back there was no particular influence that sent my...sent my interests to China, but when I was...became interested in China, Dr. Isaac Page, who was the China Inland Mission representative in the Midwest and lived in...in Chicago, was a very great influence in my life. He was a great favorite of all of us and he used to have us out to his home on Monday nights, which was a free night at Moody in those days, and we had great times of fellowship and great times of fun. And he impressed on us of putting our...if we felt called to China, then we were called to China and nothing in this world should be allowed to distract us, especially the influence of an attractive young man. [Chuckles] So he watched us quite carefully - the girls and the fellows - that we wouldn't form any ardent but unwise friendships, but he was so nice about it that nobody resented it. [Chuckles] Somehow it always seemed that when we girls started out to go up to Isaac Page's house, that somewhere along the line this group of boys came along too and we usually ended up arriving at his house together. [Chuckles] But we really had great times at his house and my desire to go to China was definitely very much deepened through the influence of Mr. Page in my life. And toward the end of my last term at Moody Bible Institute, I applied to the China Inland Mission. At the time I was [pauses] being quite friendly with the man I finally married [Francis Julius Fitzwilliam], but we were not in any way engaged or anything because he wasn't sure of his call to China and...and so we just were friends. But after I graduated...we both graduated...in fact before he graduated, he put in his application to the China Inland Mission too, feeling very definitely that that's where the Lord was leading him. As soon as I graduated I went to the CHINA Inland Mission home in Toronto and I there learned to know the mission better and met the American council [of the CIM] and was accepted under the China Inland Mission. That was a great milestone in my life. I can remember dithering around before entering the council room [chuckles] and wondering whether I would be accepted or whether I wouldn't be accepted. It was a great joy and a...a...a great spiritual blessing to me, as I realized that the Lord had allowed me to join this wonderful China Inland Mission that in my mind it was so wonderful - the life of Hudson Taylor, and the way the mission looked in just faith alone to God...for God to supply all of our needs, and how God had worked through the years, just in answer to faith, that I just thought I was joining a company of such spiritual giants that I didn't know how the Lord ever let me in. But it was a great...a great milestone in my life. Then I went home to my home in Charlton, Mass., Charlton [unclear] Mass. and stayed with my parents until...I believe I was accepted in the spring, early spring. Maybe it was January, February, maybe. February, maybe. And then so I went home for the rest of that time until fall, and then in the fall...well, during that summer, after my husband was accepted by the mission he came to my home in Charlton and we became engaged. We...of course, my mother thought we ought to get married before we went to the mission field. She didn't like this idea of her daughter going off into the unknown like that, but the mission rules were that you go out and do Chinese study for two years before you get married and so that you can get the language and get to know the people. And so we were glad to con...I wouldn't say we were glad (pauses). We did it willingly, anyway. [laughs], to concede to that. I went out with a party of young women. I think there were, I don't know, there must have been ten or twelve of us. I don't really remember what it was. We traveled out...the escort that was supposed to take us, some...something else...something happened and that's how [word unclear] they allowed us go on our own which was very un CIMmie at that time [chuckles], but we had a nice, good trip out to Shanghai and were greeted and that wonderful CIM headquarters in Shanghai, got to know many of the older missionaries and then we were escorted off to the young women's language school. Just a few days after we were out of Shanghai and off to language school, the young men of the party arrived. They were escorted off to the young men's language school, which was many days journey away from ours, but during that time (that was in 1937...uh, 1927) the...the armies under Chiang Kai-shek swept up through China {on the Northern Expedition against the warlords, 1926-1927]. At that time he was a Communist [actually the Communist were one of the dominant factions in the larger Kuomintang party which Chiang led] , but...so all the missionaries were withdrawn from the interior down to the coastal station. We were escorted down to Shanghai and lived there behind the barbed wire barricades of the international settlement for, well, quite a bit over a year before China opened up again. Eventually though, Chiang Kai-shek began to realize that this would be China for the Communist, for the Russians and not China for the Chinese and he renounced Communism [in 1927] and then the doors gradually opened for missionaries to get back. But during that time we were in Shanghai, the mission decided, "Well, since all these young people are in Shanghai, we might as well let them get married and go off to their stations together." So they made the rule one year instead of two, so we were married in Shanghai. And them Mr Fraser, Mr J. O...Mr. James Fraser, who was the pioneer worker among the Lisu people, was appointed superintendent of the province of Yunnan. Oh, in the meantime, we were designated to Yunnan for Lisu work, which was a great [pauses] time of rejoicing on our part, because we really had felt the Lord was calling us to China...to tribal work, but in the CIM you have to be willing to go where to council designates you, at least for six months, and then, if you feel really that's not where the Lord wants you, you can appeal, but you must accept the designation unless there's some really great reason why you shouldn't. So we were prepared to go where the mission sent us. And so, great was our rejoicing when they sent us where we really felt the Lord was guiding us. So Mr. Fraser escorted us. You couldn't get up through China through the front door, so he escorted us around to...to...past down...around Singapore and up to Rangoon and up through Burma, and then over the border into China from...from the Burmese side. And ee went to the city of Tengyueh, we and another couple, rented a Chinese house there and settled in to study Chinese. We had to do...before we could go to Lisu work, we had to take examinations in the Chinese language because living in China, we must at lest be able to communicate and to give the message of salvation to Chinese when we meet them as...as well as to the Lisu people. So we settled down to study Chinese there. In the...in the meantime, my son [Jack] was born there in the city of Tengyueh. We lived in this Chinese house and we had the front courtyard and the Chinese family that owned the house had the back courtyard. And the landlady of the house died very suddenly just the day that Jack was born. We had a Burmese doctor who was there because the British had a consulate there. And...and he was there to look after the British members of the Consulate and so he attended me when Jack was born. When the landlady died, they opened the gates into the front courtyard where our part was and brought out the casket, and hired...and then hired...and the hired mourners and the firecrackers and it was one bedlam [very chaotic] right under our window day and night [chuckles] , so the doctor came in and said, "That just can't go on, you just have to get out of here." Sp the custom in China is after a woman has had a baby, they are not allowed to go out through the...the front door of the home, the front door of the courtyard...there's a courtyard and then an outer courtyard and then there's a front gate. You are not allowed to go out that front gate for months because it would bring terrible calamity to the owners of the property. So the doctor said to the landlord, "Now I've got to get my patient out of this place. There is just too much commotion. It's disturbing to her and it's disturbing to the baby and I've got to get her out of here." And ee said, "Well, you can't go out the front gate. That would be absolutely fatal for us." And so the doctor said, "I don't care how you get her out but you have to make some way for her to get out of this hous...this courtyard." And so he tore down...the courtyard was surrounded by a great big, oh, I suppose a ten-foot high wall all around made of out of bricks...mud bricks and tiled over so the water wouldn't make it disintegrate. And so he tore down that great big high ten-foot wall for about thirty feet so that we could be...I could be carried out of that hole in the wall rather than going out the front gate. Fortunately some of the British men who lived in Wheaton [sic] and worked at the Consulate had an empty house that they let us live in. And we moved over there and finished up our work in...in the China. While we were gone, somebody, supposedly the landlord, got into our house and stole all of ...most of our things. But anyway, the Lord took care of us and after completing our Chinese exams, we were carried down...we were allowed to go down to Lisuland. That was about Christmas of, I don't know, 19.... [Pauses] Yes, Christmas of 1929, because my son was born in 19...June of 1929. So Christmas of 1929 we were allowed to go...to move down to Lisuland. Now, do you want me to go on from there?
ERICKSEN: Well, if you could just sort of sketch out the different stations you lived at and...
FITZWILLIAM: Did I...did the account of the arrival in Lisu land, the festivals and that, is that...?
ERICKSEN: I would like to talk about that in more detail a little later.
FITZWILLIAM: uh-huh.
ERICKSEN: So you don't need to...to touch on that right now.
FITZWILLIAM: No. Well, we arrived there at Christmas time and settled in to study of the Lisu language.
ERICKSEN: And then in 1940 your husband died...
FITZWILLIAM: My husband died in 1940.
ERICKSEN: ...from typhus...
FITZWILLIAM: He had typus fever.
ERICKSEN: ...fever? And then did you stay in Lisuland after his death?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I stayed for a few months and then the mission sent word that they wanted me to get out for a while and to go up to Chefoo where my son was in school. It was the school for missionaries children up in northwest,,,northeast China, in Chefoo, yes. And so I left Lisuland to go up and visit with him. I intended to return to the work among the Kachin and the Lisu. It was the work I was in at that time. But after I spent the summer up in...in Chefoo with Jack, the Japanese war became so intense that I couldn't get back. In fact, they came up through Burma and over the border and burned our station and destroyed our station in that invasion, the Japanese invasion through...through Burma. And so we were...of course, war broke out between the United States and Japan, so we were put into an internment camp and I was repatriated to America from the Weishen internment camp.
ERICKSEN: So then you returned to the United States when?
FITZWILLIAM: December. We got here just the end of December 1943.
ERICKSEN: Then what did you do when you got back to the United States?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, my brother came down to meet ...to meet us at the boat and we went home with him for a month or so. But when we came home, we brought a number of missionary children whose parents were in free China, that is part of China that was not occupied by the Japanese, and so, of course, the children couldn't get to their parents in that area of China and they were repatriated with us on the Gripsholm, repatriated with us. And so we opened a hostel in the mission home in Philadelphia...in the CIM home in Philadelphia. And after I had a visit with my brother, I went down to Philadelphia for about a year and took care of the hostel there. The children went to public school and lived in the home, and I with another CIM missionary who was a nurse, was responsible. And gradually the parents got out and got home so the hostel was just...dis...disbanded. Then I...my brother offered me a home and a...and a job if I would stay with him...near them, but he's not a Christian and I just couldn't see taking Jack back to that area where there just didn't seem to be a keen Christian church. And then a friend that worked...that I worked with in China in the school for missionary children, Ruth Thomas, had a home in Wheaton here. And so she extended an invitation for Jack and me to come to Wheaton and live with them. And she had a son named David and he was a very good pal of Jack So it was a very nice setup. We went to live in Wheaton. And then Jack finished his college...his high school work at Wheaton High School. He had taken part of it on the...on the boat coming home because we were on that boat, I guess, for almost two months, keeping out of the war zone, we went all the way down around India and all the way down around Africa and then up the coast of South America. So they organized a school on the boat, so when they came to Wheaton High School they made out very well. They were placed in, I believe, in the junior year in Wheaton High School. So I stayed there with her until the boys finished high school, until Jack and David finished high school. And then Mrs. Thomas went back to China. And Jack has not...was not well after internment camp. He seemed to get one thing after another, and so I thought I should stay home and get him started in college. So then I started working for...well, any time I had while he was in high school I had been working for Wheaton College so I just continued there. He...he took his freshman year in high school and then I left my work at Wheaton College and went back to mission work. And I did deputation work for a year, intending to go back to China, but then the Communist situation became impossible and China closed, so I went back to Wheaton College. I was away a year. And then went back and he finished up his college. Then I...after he finished college, I was invited by the Philadelphia Bible Institute to be dean of women and I went there for five years and then came back to Wheaton College until I retired.
ERICKSEN: And when did you retire?
FITZWILLIAM: 1969
ERICKSEN: [Pauses] Okay. And you are now working for?
FITZWILLIAM: I worked...after I retired, I went...I was going to retire in North Carolina with this Mrs. Thomas with whom I had lived. I went down there for nine months, but my son and his family were missionaries in Japan and then they were transferred to the Philippines. He got his master's degree in School Business Administration while he was home on his first furlough. So they transferred him to the school in Philadelphia...in the Philippines. They came home on furlough and then the Lord seemed to lead that they just not go back. They children were ready to enter...some of them... they go to [unclear] high school. So they stayed home. So since they were staying home, I didn't want to be that far away, so I came back to Wheaton...
ERICKSEN: Okay.
FITZWILLIAM: ...and went to work part time at MAP [Medical Assistance Programs].
ERICKSEN: Well, let's go back and look at a few more details over all the things that you've done. Can you tell me a little bit about your family? Perhaps the influence that they had on your Christian life?
FITZWILLIAM: You mean my parents?
ERICKSEN: Because you were raised in a Christian.... Yes. And you were raised in a Christian home?
FITZWILLIAM: My father and mother were very devoted Christians. They went to the Advent Christian Church and I guess if you know that denomination, you know they put a great deal of emphasis on the second coming [of Jesus Christ]. Apart from the fact that they believe in soul sleep, they don't differ too much from, say, Baptists. Somehow or other, the Lord never...I don't know particularly why, I...I just never enjoyed the Advent Church. I joined the Baptist Church. But my parents had a great deal of influence in...in my Christian life, of course. As I say, we had devotions and they were very...I wouldn't say they were what you'd call terribly active in the church, but they were very faithful in their attendance and showed a great deal of love and faith in the Lord. And I think it just rubbed off on me. [Chuckles]
ERICKSEN: Can you just....
FITZWILLIAM: My brothers never did accept the Lord. They just about worshiped the ground my parents walked on, but the one thing that would have been everything to them, they just didn't seem to show much...any interest in They weren't antagonistic but they just didn't seem to show much interest in Christian things.
ERICKSEN: Can you just briefly described what soul sleep is?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, they...they believe that when you die you go to sleep in the Lord. And as I understand it you are not conscious, but you are in the Lord's keeping, and then when the Lord comes back in the second coming you're raised and the body is changed and you are with the Lord. It's just a difference of being with the Lord as soon as you die or being unconscious asleep in the Lord until He comes back. And somehow...not that I...not that I could have quote verses, I couldn't have. I could have after I had been to Moody, but there's something...there is just something about it that didn't grip me and I am glad that it didn't. I certainly believe absent from the body, present with the Lord. But they are a very devoted group of people and very dedicated to the Lord and it had a great influence on my life.
ERICKSEN: You...you said they did have...they did have a missionary arm of the church but there didn't seem to be much...?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, they do have, I don't think I heard much about it...I don't remember hearing much about it in my younger days. After I started going to the Baptist Church in Nashua, through the influence of George Cole, I...I just sort of dropped out of that Christian Church and attended.... Well, as a matter of fact there wasn't any right near where we lived. There was one that got started in Nashua after we moved to Charlton. But we moved there...of course, I wasn't at home when they moved there, when my parents moved there. I came back to that home...to my home there when I graduat...finished at Moody. But it was the influence of...the influence of Dr Cole, I think, that really turned my thoughts to missions, though as I say, I never met a missionary, but I don't think in those days in that area of New England, missionaries were very plentiful on the ground. They are much more so now. But the church in the little town when we lived in Dunstable was a combination of a Unitarian and a Congregational church, so there wasn't much life in it, so I never went there very much, just for the Sunday school and then to Nashua for the Baptist church.
ERICKSEN: What sort of mission programs or how did the Baptist church that you went to emphasize missions?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, that was...that was just about the time that the Conservative Baptists were forming and George Cole was very much interested in the Conservative Baptist Church. It took...I don't think he got that church out of the General...the North...North American Baptist Convention, but he was very influential in...in the Conservative Baptist Church and finally resigned from there and took a pastorate in a Conservative church. And so his interest was in the Conservative Baptist work and I guess that's where my interests were. [Pauses] Though I never considered...I never considered going out under the Conservative Baptists. Somehow or other the CIM appealed most to me.
ERICKSEN: What sort of program did the church have? Did they have, like, a missionary conference?
FITZWILLIAM: I just don't remember that we had much in the line of a missionary program. I just can't remember that we did. It certainly wasn't a very impressive one or I would have remembered it. But I heard of missions because that what I determined I should do, but as far as being influenced by any missionary person, I never was.
ERICKSEN: Did you ever get any missionary books or anything like that from Rev. Cole?
FITZWILLIAM: I don't remember reading any missionary books until I went to Moody. I had heard stories, of course, of Mary Slessor and all of those early missionaries in the course of going to Sunday school and church.
ERICKSEN: It sounds like you took a kind of big jump going to Moody.
FITZWILLIAM: What?
ERICKSEN: It sounds like you took a big...a big step in going to Moody.
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, it was, it was cause I had...I had never been away from home very much except when I went to high school. I for two years that I was in high school I lived in Concord during the week and went home weekends, but apart from that I was a home girl. And I don't think my mother was very enthused about it but she wouldn't stand in my way if she felt that's what the Lord wanted. So she was a little concerned about my going to this wicked city of Chicago [chuckles]. But all my life, my mother and father were very wonderful in that way. They...they never put any hindrance in my way, although it was hard for my mother to let me go to China. And t5hat was the hardest part about my going to China, was that I realized how hard it would be for my her, but she never in any way sought to hinder my going.
ERICKSEN: Do you remember how you felt leaving for...FOR Chicago? You had always been a home girl.
FITZWILLIAM: Well, my brother, three years older than I, took me to the train and he...I never had taken a sleeper before and he explained everything about the sleeper, and how I...how I would behavior and what I would do and I just.... I can't remember whether anybody met me. I don't think anybody met me at the train. I just got a taxi and went to Moody Bible Institute, if I remember, because I remember arriving in a taxi. But when I entered the doors at Moody, I felt at home. It was really a wonderful experience.
ERICKSEN: Was there anyone once you got there who greeted, sort of got you settled in, took you, under their wings?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, no. I became friends with the...the new students. I was a new student. I don't remember any of the old students...the older students...the upper class students...we didn't have a big brother or big sister program, I don't think, because I don't remember any big sister program, but it just was a general family feeling, a very warm family feeling among all of the students. It [pauses] it was a wonderful experience for me coming from New England, because in New England at that time, strong keen Christians weren't too plentiful on the ground and to get into an atmosphere of such dedicated young people.... I know I remember in high school I can remember one other Christian girl but other than one other Christian girl, I don't remember any other Christians in the high school where I went. There might have been, but they weren't very active. And so New England was a very cold...spiritually a very cold place. That's one thing that made the Advent Christian Church stand out in my mind, I think, because they were a very keen...keenly dedicated group. But I don't remember...I remember one family of young people but don't remember many young people that were active in the church.
ERICKSEN: Any of the...any of the folks that you went to Moody with you that stand out in your mind as being influential in your life other than your husband?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, we had what you'd call a little China clique. John Kuhn, Isobel Kuhn and a group that went out to China at that time. We were very, very close friends and that fellowship meant a lot. It was just like one big family. I was very friend...friendly with two other girls. We were sort of an inseparable trio and one of those girls went to China under China Inland Mission. The other one applied but wasn't accepted for health reasons. But all through my life those friendships have meant a lot.
ERICKSEN: Who were the two...the two women of the inseparable trio?
FITZWILLIAM: Hazel Williamson, she...the whole...the three Williamson sisters that went to China under the China Inland Mission and Ethel Harper was a little girl from England and she wanted very much to go to China but they felt healthwise she wouldn't be able to stand it, so she's in...she just went into mission work here at home.
ERICKSEN: What did the missionary course that you took consist of? What classes that you took?
FITZWILLIAM: Well we had Missionary Principles and Practices. Dr. Robert Hall Glover was teaching missions at that time and Dr. McCleary. We had phonetics, we had history of missions, [pauses] general survey of missions all around the world.
ERICKSEN: Did Dr. Glover teach all those classes?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, no he taught missionary survey. He wrote the book which was the book used in missions classes at that time.[Probably referring to The Progress of World-Wide Missions.] There have been other books written since then, since he died, but it was a real classic and he taught that class. And...then of course w e took all the Bible courses that they...Bible classes...Bible courses took. The missionary...the missionary course was an extra semester.
ERICKSEN: Any courses you particularly liked?
FITZWILLIAM: II don't know. liked them all except I didn't particularly like...I didn't particularly enjoy teacher training under Dr. [James M.] Gray. I don't...of course, you wouldn't...you wouldn't know Dr. Gray, but he was President of Moody Bible Institute then. And he taught teacher training and used to give us...get one student...get one person to teach the class. He was...we were teaching Bible Synthesis. We dithered through each class [chuckles] and after we got out we considered it "safely through another week" if we didn't get called on. But other than that one class I just loved all the classes. It was...it was just a really spiritual treat to me.
ERICKSEN: Did you find the things that you learned in Dr. Gray's class turned out to be good on the field?
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah. Oh, you couldn't help but...you couldn't help but know he was a wonderful teacher. You couldn't help but know that it was good for you but he just had a way of making most people tremble in their boots.
ERICKSEN: Was he a stern man or...?
FITZWILLIAM: He was very stern, yes, he was very stern. He would interrupt her every once in awhile and say "We're teaching synthesis. Now that's the main outstanding events." Then we would go on and it would be that we would stop and he would say, "We're teaching synthesis. Now that's the main outstanding events." And so he would get you all sort of scared.
ERICKSEN: [Portion unclear] How did you teaching go?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I don't remember. Of course, he didn't get...I don't...I don't remember that he got around to me very often. He didn't get around to the...everybody in the class very often, because we were a large class...
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: ...and you had to teach almost half of a class. I think I was pretty nervous every class we went to. I think we all appreciated the class but didn't enjoy it?
ERICKSEN: What was...can you describe what the spiritual life was like on the campus?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, [pauses] t was a warm spiritual life. We had devotions, of course. We had...I think perhaps the outstanding thing that stands out in my mind is the Thursday morning...the Thursday morning chapel service, I suppose you would call it, when the whole school, and all the faculty and staff gathered in the auditorium. And it was a time of prayer and praise and Dr. Gray always led it if he wasn't away. And it was a really outstanding spiritual experience to see that great auditorium of young people standing up and giving testimonies and standing up and praying. It was just a warm...wonderfully warm Institute family prayer meeting. Then we had...several days a week we had women's chapel, when the Dean of Women led it and it was always a warm inspiring time. We had prayer bands for different companies...countries and I, of course, joined the China prayer band. That was always wonderful fellowship because all of us were more or less interested in China and in praying for China and looking forward to going to China. It just...the whole day was great experience.
ERICKSEN: You mentioned Monday nights were free nights?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, we didn't have classes on Monday. It was the holiday because we had classes on Saturday and we had assignments on Sunday. And so Monday was a free day and that's when we would have picnics and all the social events would be on Monday. So it would usually be on Monday night that we went out to Isaac. Page's house. And he used to have us out quite regularly, not every Monday night, but quite regularly. But we weren't supposed to study on...on Monday. Not that we were forbidden to, but we were encouraged not to, to make that a really free day because with study, classes...we had classes on Saturday and we all had assignments on Sunday.
ERICKSEN: What was your assignment?
FITZWILLIAM: I taught Sunday school and I had a....
ERICKSEN: At?
FITZWILLIAM: Down in Englewood some place. And I went to a retention...detention home for children, young...young...very young adults, and I went to Cook County jail visitation and street meetings, of course.
ERICKSEN: Any of those that you enjoyed more than others with...any part of your assignment that you really...?
FITZWILLIAM: The part that I really didn't like was Cook County hospital.
ERICKSEN: Why was that?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I don't know. I never...I used to go home and have nightmares after Cook County hospital visitation. I don't think I ever saw anything in China worse than Cook County hospital. I don't know, I thought it was such a terrible place.
ERICKSEN: Conditions or...?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, it is mostly a charity hospital and these people would be..... They just didn't have not enough nurses. It smelled terrible and.... Maybe...maybe it was just because I came from a small town and I never...I never had any contact with down-and-outers and the kind of people that go to Cook County Hospital.
ERICKSEN: You...you mentioned street meetings? Did you ever have to talk at street meetings?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, we all gave testimonies. Yeah. I don't remember too much about it. I remember speaking, yes. I didn't really enjoy street meetings but it was good experience.
ERICKSEN: [Pauses] So in...you mentioned earlier in the course of your time at Moody, you began thinking more and more about CIM and feeling a call to go to China. Anytime in there you remember you decided...
FITZWILLIAM: No.
ERICKSEN: "I'm going to China?"
FITZWILLIAM: I don't remember anything definite that was the call...was a call. I just had a quiet conviction that this is where the Lord wanted me. And I don't...I don't even remember many of the China...of the missionaries that spoke [at Moody] that stand out except for Isaac Page. I think probably he had more real influence in my interest in the CIM than...than any other missionary that I knew. He was a former missionary of the CIM and he was just the kind of person that young people are influenced by. He was warm, friendly, jolly. And we were all just very enthusiastic about him and his appeal for missionaries. He didn't mince any matters. He...he gave me a book once and he put in the front, flyleaf of the book, "Jennie Plug Christian...Jennie Plug Kingston" and then he wrote under it "From here on, Plug is going to be your middle name. If you are going to get the Chinese language, you're going to have to plug." And so he didn't...he didn't give us the impression that we were going out to an easy job, but he had a really great appeal to young people.
ERICKSEN: What was the orientation period up in Toronto or Canada school like [at the CIM headquarters in Toronto]?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I was up there all by myself as far as candidates were concerned. They just liked to do that. They didn't take us in groups. They took us individually and we just lived in the home, went to prayer meetings, got to know the missionaries that were there. Oh yeah, we did have some Chinese language study and in that they sought to weed out anybody who had problems with the language. I mean, not that we learned a lot, but they seemed to be able to tell whether it was hopeful or not. We had to learn Chinese characters and Chinese radicals [a part of the Chinese language that characterizes a character as to its meaning]. It was just a very short course on...on the Chinese language and of course, they got to know us...got to know me. So...
ERICKSEN: What was it like...?
FITZWILLIAM: ...of course I got letters from my husband...my fiancee. I got them quite regularly and they noticed that and they asked me what this was all about and I told them And they asked if we were engaged and I said no, we were not engaged until we were both accepted. So they let that pass. And then later he was invited up and he was accepted.
ERICKSEN: So you have to be invited to this.
FITZWILLIAM: Oh yes, you had to be invited. You don't get invited until after they had pretty well completed your application.
ERICKSEN: So you would submit a written application?
FITZWILLIAM: Oh yeah, a written application and a resume of your Christian experience...Christian...Christian...you life and Christian experiences, your call and....
ERICKSEN: Did it require recommendations from anyone?
FITZWILLIAM: Oh yes. It was a long process of applying and finally being invited to the home [in Toronto].
ERICKSEN: What was it like meeting the council [of the mission]?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, it was a little awesome. There were these older missionaries, older missionaries and older pastors who were on the home council and they asked questions. I remember one question they asked. They asked if I met a person that I was pretty sure I might not have a chance to meet again, how would I present the Lord. And that...things like that.
ERICKSEN: Who was the head of the council when you met?
FITZWILLIAM: Dr. Frost was the...the home director at that time. Henry W. Frost. He was preceded by Dr. Robert Hall Glover.
ERICKSEN: So you were....
FITZWILLIAM: He was a wonderful old man.
ERICKSEN: [Pauses] So then after they had interviewed you.... Was that at the end...near the end of
FITZWILLIAM: Yes.
ERICKSEN: ...your time then? After they had a chance to live and see you?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes I was there two or three weeks.
ERICKSEN: So after the interview, then did they ask you to leave the room? Or what happened?
FITZWILLIAM: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I had to leave the room and wait outside and they discussed it and they invited me in, told me I was accepted.
ERICKSEN: Did they have any recommendations that they made.
FITZWILLIAM: I don't remember...
ERICKSEN: They just said, "you're in," and....
FITZWILLIAM: ...that they did, no, other than that they reminded me of the policy of the mission that we must look to the Lord for support...
ERICKSEN: Uh-HUH.
FITZWILLIAM: ...and...and be prepared for what the Lord has for us.
ERICKSEN: So then that was in the spring?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes. I graduated from...from Moody in a December graduation [in 1925]. So then I visited my pastor's home. By that time he had a...George Cole had a church in Cleveland and I visited him for awhile and then went on the Toronto, to the CIM home.
ERICKSEN: And then your husband must have been accepted sometime after that?
FITZWILLIAM: He was accepted sometime after that. He was accepted along more toward summer time, toward spring.
ERICKSEN: And then when did you become engaged?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, he came to my home...to my home. After he was accepted, he came afterwards to my home and we were engaged then. And then he went on back to his home in Champaign. He was in Ill...Champaign. I.....
ERICKSEN: So then in the fall....
FITZWILLIAM: So then we didn't see each other again until [pauses] after we had been evacuated to Shanghai. And they were evacuated to Shanghai. They...they opened a home for the lady missionaries and a home for the men and we saw each other then. They were in different parts of the town, but.... [Chuckles] That's the way CIM worked in those days.
ERICKSEN: So, from where did you leave for...for Shanghai? Where did the ship...?
FITZWILLIAM: We...from Vancouver. We all gathered in Toronto and went across the states by train. And then we were met in Toronto...Vancouver by the representative. There was a home there...a CIM home in Vancouver in those days. And the ee took a boat from there. We went out on an Empress, a British boat, The Empress of Asia.
ERICKSEN: Did you have any fears or doubts as you set out, leaving your family behind? Taking a...?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, that was hard. That was the hardest part of going, leaving home because I could see it was very hard for my mother especially, but I didn't have any doubts or fears, I don't think. I knew very well that the Lord was taking me.
ERICKSEN: What about, did you have any dreams or goals for your work in China?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, of course our dream and our goal was to see a spiritual church because our...our work was with Christians, not with unsaved people. The Lisu did all the evangelistic work and we only worked...
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: ...among those who had become Christians, so our goal was to see a church that was strong spiritually and that reached out to other tribes and they did. [Pauses] We reached several different tribes in that area.
ERICKSEN: What do you remember about arriving in Shanghai?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, we had stopped off in Tokyo first, in Japan first for several days. I think the boat, they took on...they took on cargo or something and we were there for several days and that was sort of an introduction to the Orient, which was kind of a shock, I must say, a culture shock, the smells and the sights. So that when we got to Shanghai it wasn't quite...quite so...I don't remember it being quite so bad. We...of course, we were met at the boat by a number of the CIM men and helped through customs. And then we were put into rickshaws and escorted to the CIM compound. So it was really exciting. [Pauses] Shanghai is so different from any other place in the world or was at that time, sort of half western and half Chinese and we lived in the...of course, we lived in.... The CIM home was in the International Settlement. Of necessity it was, so that we were...Shanghai was really neither China or home. It was [pauses] very, very different from either China or home.
ERICKSEN: What was the CIM home like?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, very nice. It was a very large home, of course, because it was the headquarters, the international headquarters. The general director of the mission lived there. And it had a big hospital connected with it for the missionaries. And it had [pauses], well, it was...[pauses] there were missionaries coming and going all the time. Mr. [D. E.] Host was the home director...was the general director at that time and he was a great man of prayer. He used to invite the men to have come and have prayer with him and sometimes he would pray for a couple hours, walking around, kneeling, talking, anything - a wonderful man of prayer, but he never invited any of the ladies, of course, to have prayer with him. It was just very hard to describe - a very CIMee kind of a...kind of a home.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. How large a staff...sort of permanent staff did they have? Was it...?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, they had quite a large...because the whole of international offices were there. There were a lot of secretaries, missionaries who were appointed to secretarial work. As I said, they had a hospital...a fairly large hospital for a private hospital where doctors conducted operations and all the missionaries coming and going from China went through there. It had a large permanent staff. It had apartments for people who were permanently on the staff but the people...missionaries coming and going lived in the mission home and ate in the mission hall dining hall. And it was...the thing that stood out...stands out as I look back on it was the times of prayer for China. That was a big thing in the day. We went through the list of the missionaries every day and had prayer each day.
ERICKSEN: Oh, why...why was it that the international headquarters were in China? It seems that....
FITZWILLIAM: Well, they felt that that's where the work was and that's where it should be directed from. And there were various home countries. See, there was an American...American headquarters and a Canadian headquarters. I don't know why at that time all...all of the missionaries were accepted in the Toronto headquarters. Later on it was switched to the Philadelphia headquarters. Then there was a British headquarters, and a Swedish headquarters0, and an Australian headquarters but...but...but Shanghai was the center. It's where the home...where the general director lived, and where the work was directed. And they felt that this was work for China and that that's where the work should be directed.
ERICKSEN: I guess even now the...the general headquarters are in Singapore.
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah.
ERICKSEN: Still in Asia.
FITZWILLIAM: And it's a good thing. I think it's good because they are more in touch with the needs of the field than is possible for a home-based mission to be.
ERICKSEN: How long were you in Shanghai before leaving for Yangzhou for...?
FITZWILLIAM: A couple weeks.
ERICKSEN: How did you travel to language school? Did you...?
FITZWILLIAM: By train. There's a train going up. Yangzhou is one of the real old cities of China. And they have...the language school there was not a typically Chinese.... It was quite foreign. Lots of rooms. I think there were...I think there were probably about 50 of us that year from all over - Australia, England, Sweden, America, Canada - sort of a melting pot. [Chuckles]
ERICKSEN: Can you recall what an average day at language school was like?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, we were supposed to be up by six. There was a rising bell, and being a...being a more...CIM...I suppose al ways will be...maybe not as much under OMF [Overseas Missionary Fellowship, the name of the mission since 1950], but there was definitely an English flavor to it. And so there was a rising bell at six o'clock. The Chinese boy would bring tea up and put it out in the hall and we could go out and have a cup of tea. And we had quiet time for private prayer. And then the bell for breakfast rang, I think, at 7:30. And we had breakfast, then we had prayers, then we classes. We had group classes with the Chinese teacher for conversation and then we'd have a reading with the Chinese teacher to get pronunciation. And then we had time to study the grammar and learn the characters. And we ate lunch, dinner at noon, afternoon tea about 3:30, and dinner at night. And...I just don't remember after...after the dinner, we had prayers, evening prayers. I just don't remember what we did in the evening. I guess we just studied or read. We were supposed to put in at least six hours of study a day., outside our classes. There was about two hours of classes. So it was...we worked, we didn't fool around. [laughs]
ERICKSEN: Did part of your study time include...did you need to go into...into the town to practice ever?
FITZWILLIAM: No, we never did. We had Chinese teachers that...that taught us. Matter of fact, we weren't allowed...we weren't allowed into the town unescorted because the anti-foreign sentiment was pretty high at that time.
ERICKSEN: How was that showing itself?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, just unfriendliness and they'd called foreign devils after us in the streets.
ERICKSEN: Did they ever call you that?
FITZWILLIAM: Oh yes, but many many of the Chinese were very very friendly. Especially the Christians, of course, were very wonderful and friendly and helpful. And there wasn't any feeling of anti-foreign feeling that they showed at all
ERICKSEN: Now at...by the time that you were in language school did you know that you were going to Yunnan later or had that...?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes
ERICKSEN: That had been decided.
FITZWILLIAM: Well, no, no, that was decided...that was decided after we had been at language school and after we were evacuated to Shanghai.
ERICKSEN: Back to Shanghai. What was the mood back in Shanghai at the mission when everyone was evacuated?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, you couldn't help but have a little bit of a...not fear, but an uneasiness about what was going to happen because missionaries were evacuated from all over. And of course, the Boxer troubles had taken place some 20 some years before that [the Boxer uprising of 1900, when thousands of Chinese Christians and many missionaries had been killed] so it was a very vivid memory in the lives of some of the older missionaries. So they didn't hesitate to bring people out when things got tense in the interior. Some missionaries didn't come down to the coast, but most everybody did because it was easier on the...on the Christians for the missionaries to get out until things settled down a little. But then, Chiang Kai-shek...as you know, he turned anti-communist (and I believe...I believe he was a real Christian). In fact, Dr. James Taylor, [later head of the mission] who was a little boy at school when I was...worked at a school...the school for missionary children after I went up to see Jack [the visit was in 1940], he is just a little older than my son.... But he was the only...he was invited to give the message at Chiang-Kai-Shek's funeral, which was a real complement to a foreign missionary.
ERICKSEN: Can you describe the procedure by which it was decided where you were going and all the missionaries were going when you were in Shanghai?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, we..we left the...we were the first to leave because we could go around and come in the back door of China and nobody could get in up through the eastern part of China for some little time after we left. So everybody envied us getting out and going on our way, but I don't remember that we lived in fear and trembling. We were not uneasy about the situation because we knew the Lord was in control and in His own way. We didn't feel that the Lord had taken us out there just to send us home again.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: And it was a good ti...it was a good time as far as getting to know...we got to know many, many of the older members of the mission [during their forced stay in Shanghai] that we never would have met otherwise, because our work was isolated in the far west...southwest corner of China. We met very few other missionaries there, so it was a real privilege to meet all the other members of the mission that year in Shanghai.
ERICKSEN: When it came time for the assignment to be made, can you tell me about that?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I think we all spent a little extra time in prayer. [Chuckles] Everybody was sort of tense to know where they were going to go. That was a different...you might say that was a different era than today. We expected to be told where to go and to do it. I don't...I don't suppose they would even handle it the same way now. There's a different spirit of independence that younger workers have now that we didn't have. We weren't supposed to have, anyway. But somehow, it didn't...it didn't matter.
ERICKSEN: And yet you said before that you and Mr. Fitzwilliam were...were really hoping, I think, for tribal work..
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, we got.. It felt...well, even when we were still at Moody we definitely felt called to tribal work because there again, Isaac Page was a trib...had been a tribal worker and he was very enthused about tribal work in China. And we...Mr. James Fraser had been home on furlough, not while we were at Moody, but had been and some of the students had met him. So we were enthused about that even when we were...before we got out to China. And of course, everybody wanted to go to the tribes, either the tribes or to the far reaches of Tibet. [Chuckles]
ERICKSEN: Like Robert Ekvall.
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah. Nobody wanted to go just to the Chinese cities round about the coast.
ERICKSEN: So there was sort of a sense of adventure...
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah.
ERICKSEN: ...in the missionaries too?
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah, there's a glamour about tribal work that there isn't about Chinese work. At least for us, there was. It was hard, but it was...Isobel Kuhn described it as, "physical hardship with spiritual luxury." We lived very primitively but spiritually, it was a...a luxury.
ERICKSEN: Were you married before or after you knew you were going...
FITZWILLIAM: We were married after we knew we were going,...
ERICKSEN: ...to...?
FITZWILLIAM: But, we were engaged.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. So they...?
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah.
ERICKSEN: Yeah. Where...where did the wedding take place?
FITZWILLIAM: In Shanghai in the...in the it was what we called the Free Christian Church in Shanghai. It was quite a nice little church.
ERICKSEN: Tell me about that. We have some photographs taken of the church, and I really didn't know anything about it.
FITZWILLIAM: Well, it was...it was a...of course, in Shanghai, in the market of Shanghai, you could go out and buy arm loads of flowers for a few pennies. So they decorated the church. It was very beautifully decorated. And a very wonderful English man married us, Mr. [William H.]Warren, who was most beloved of our missionaries in those days. He...I have forgotten what he was. I think he was assistant director or something. He was a very lovable old man. He married us. We had a typical wedding like you would have here at home with best man, bridesmaids and so forth. One thing we had to have, being Americans of course, the British...the American consul had to attend the wedding and see the service. And one of our ushers...John Kuhn was one of our ushers and this man came in and he thought he was the American consul and he took him down and put him in the front seat. And he was sort of a straggler from the street, come in. The American consul slipped in the back and he got there just in time to see the ceremony take place.
ERICKSEN: The American consul must have been a busy man if he had to attend weddings of Americans.
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah. Yeah, he had to see the service. Well, I suppose you could have gone to the Consulate and be married if you didn't want a church wedding, but he was very cooperative. He would come to a church wedding so you didn't have to have two ceremonies. And we couldn't go away for a honeymoon, but we went to a few...for a hotel for a week or so.
ERICKSEN: In Shanghai.
Fitzwilliam. In Shanghai. Because we couldn't, of course, get out of the settlement, the foreign settlement. But it was a really interesting time, because it was one wedding after another. [Laughs]
ERICKSEN: The same...the same day you mean.
FITZWILLIAM: No, but all...
ERICKSEN: Just....
FITZWILLIAM: ...around the same time.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: Because they shortened the time from two years to one year so everybody...
ERICKSEN: Jumped in.
FITZWILLIAM: ... got plans to get ready to get married.
ERICKSEN: Was the Free...the Free...what was t, the Free...?
FITZWILLIAM: I think they called it the Free Christian Church. It was sort of an interdenominational church.
ERICKSEN: For different...was it basically for the missionaries?
FITZWILLIAM: For...for...for foreigners, for Europeans and Americans.
ERICKSEN: One other thing I was wondering. I've heard that CIM tended to cluster similar theological persuasions together. Was that a factor...
FITZWILLIAM: Yes.
ERICKSEN: ...in your assignment, do you know?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, different parts of the field were denominational, if you had a denominational....like, the Church of England. They had a special spot in the western...in Szechwan where the Church of England people went and they had a bishop there and so forth. . We were more or less...you would classified us as interdenominational...leanings. But they didn't send...they didn't send some ...if a missionary...if one section had been taught baptism by sprinkling, they wouldn't send somebody who's rabid on baptism to that area. They more or less tried to keep people who were of one mind in one spot, not only for the missionaries' sake, but for the sake of the people...
ERICKSEN: Sure.
FITZWILLIAM: That they would not get them all mixed up with different views. And...now, in our part of the field we were all almost all Americans, in fact we were all Americans except Mr. Fraser. And I remember one of the men, at the time we were designated, telling us that the place where we were going to be sent was mostly American, except for Mr. Fraser and they said, "Mr Fraser could get along with any nationality." And there's no doubt about it, no matter how spiritual you may be, sometimes your nationality traits rub off and it's easier to live and work with those who see things the same way you do. So that...to a certain extent. That didn't control things, but....
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: ...where it was...where it was possible without sacrificing everything else, they..they did.. Different areas of the country was not sealed off to others, but...
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: ...predominantly that.
ERICKSEN: Any...anything outstanding that you can remember about your trip to...your trip down to Singapore and up to Rangoon in the western...?
FITZWILLIAM: Oh, that was really a great time. We went, of course, by boat all the way down to Singapore, then up to Rangoon. Then up Rangoon to [word unclear] and up the Irrawaddy River to Bhamo. And it was a...it was really an education in itself. Singapore, of course, is much like...much like Shanghai, except much more British, much more foreign. And then Rangoon, of course, is American Baptist. We stayed in the American Baptist home. Most of the...most of the missionary work in...in Burma at that time was carried on by the American Baptists, so we stayed in their homes and...wherever we stopped. And Mr. Fraser was good. He took us sightseeing all around. It was interesting to go up through Burma. At that time it was a British colony and a beautiful, a lovely little country. After they got their independence, it wasn't...it wasn't too nice. There's no two ways about it, the British had good,,,had good colonizers compared to, say, the French in Indochina. We went up...when we went back after our furlough we went up through Indo China on the railroad went up through...let's see, I suppose that would be Vietnam now on that French railroad and then went overland from east...eastern Yunnan to the west. But our first trip was around through Burma.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: And, of course, our ties were a good bit through Burma, because we got out...most of the money we used was Burmese money in our area. And our mail came up through Burma. If we had to go to a doctor, then we had to go to Burma for the doctor, so Burma was really our port of entry. That was a nice trip, because was with this other couple....
ERICKSEN: What were their names?
FITZWILLIAM: ...and Mr. Fraser. The Castoes
ERICKSEN: What was his name?
FITZWILLIAM: Harold Casto. He left the mission after they came home.
ERICKSEN: Do you remember her name by any chance?
FITZWILLIAM: What?
ERICKSEN: Do you remember Mrs. Casto's name?
FITZWILLIAM: Marguerite.
ERICKSEN: So you got to know Mr. Fraser a little better on...on your trip?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, yes and greatly admired him. He was the most practical Christian I think I've ever met. He really took the Lord at His Word and...and was very practical in his...and a very practical Christian. He really believed in prayer. If he was traveling around the country, he would go into a Chinese temple and ask them if they would let him go into a room and, as they say, [ phrase in Mandarin], that is, to pray. And they just assigned him a room and he would go in and have a prayer time. And he was almost refused by the China Inland Mission because he had a hearing...a little bit of a hearing problem. They said he wouldn't learn the language. But he learned the language so perfectly that both the Lisu and the Chinese say, that if you couldn't see him you wouldn't know that he was either a Lisu or a Chinese. He just got it [unclear]. Very, very musical person. And as we went along down through Singapore and up through Burma whenever we would stay in these American Baptist mission homes with families, they would have Mr. Fraser give a little semi-recital. And the first thing he did was take everything off the piano, if they had ornaments or anything on it. Then he would sit down and play. He would just...in Shanghai, when he came down to the coast, they would beg him to give a recital and he'd just sit down and play. And he said that...he used to carry some music along with him and he would sit and enjoy the music by reading it.
ERICKSEN: What kind of music did he play?
FITZWILLIAM: Oh, classical music. Of course he had no...no time for anything else but...and he was very enthused about using Chinese tunes because the Chinese that don't...that haven't learned to sing our kind of music from children [from childhood], they can't carry a tune, because they only had five notes on their scale. So he always felt that if you could get a hymn into a Chinese tune, that it would mean more to the Chinese people, which was a big concession when you realize how very musical he was.
ERICKSEN: Did the mission agree with him on that?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, I think they did.. I notice in the Prayer for China bulletin that comes out every month that they're getting out a hymnbook with mostly Chinese tunes and Chinese hymns - not translated America hymns, but Chinese hymns which is certainly a good idea, although the Lisu wouldn't like that. They like...they like our kind of music and they are very musical. They laugh at the Chinese singing.
ERICKSEN: We are at the end of the tape. We will have to save some for next time, I guess. Thanks.
END OF TAPE