Amy disembarked the ship in Naples, but she had little strength to get herself to the train station and onto the train for Rome. Not to mention changing trains in Rome for Paris or getting across town in Paris to board another train for Calais. And then there was crossing the English Channel. Just as she had been on her arrival in Japan, Amy was at the mercy of strangers. And strangers were kind to her. First Italian people and then French people saw she was in need of help. Kind strangers escorted her from one train to the next, until finally on December 15, 1894, Amy arrived in London.
Amy was met at the station by her mother. She was so exhausted from the journey that she stepped off the train and fell into her mother’s arms. She had heard no news on the trip and so was eager to find out whether Robert Wilson was still alive. Her mother assured her he was very much alive and looking forward to seeing her. But before she could make the trip up to Broughton Grange, she had to rest and regain her strength. It was nine days later, on Christmas Eve, before she was strong enough to make the train journey north to the Grange.
Robert Wilson was beginning to recover from his stroke, and seeing Amy was the best medicine he could possibly have hoped for. The two of them spent hours in the library together. Amy told him all about her missionary adventures, and he convinced her to have her letters home from Japan published in a book. Amy had so many wonderful insights and such a good way with words that it would be a shame not to give English Christians the opportunity to view missions work through her eyes. For the next six months, besides taking care of Robert Wilson, Amy gathered her letters into the manuscript for a book. She drew many of the sketches in the book herself, and William Wilson drew the rest. How different things were from the early days at the Grange when the Wilson brothers didn’t want Amy around.
Amy titled the book From Sunrise Land. The book was an instant success, and within a few months of publication, it went into its second printing. Once Amy had finished the book, she began to wonder what to do next. The doctor said that her health was still delicate, much too delicate to attempt another missionary journey. As she puzzled over what to do, the weeks turned into months, and life for Amy fell into almost the same routine it had been in before she left for Japan. On the outside it looked as if nothing had really changed. But on the inside, Amy was a different person. She had experienced the mission field firsthand. She had worked through her views on national dress and on following “harmless” local customs like keeping idols, and she had learned how to hear God’s voice and follow it. But what was she supposed to do with all of this experience that was now locked inside her? She began to pray hard.
Shortly afterwards, Amy received a letter from a friend in Bangalore, in southern India. Her friend was a nurse and in charge of a hospital supported by the Church of England’s Zenana Mission Society. She told Amy that the climate in the mountains where Bangalore was located was very pleasant and healthy, not too hot and not too cold, with none of the extremes the climate in China or Japan had. She asked Amy whether she would consider coming to work with her in Bangalore. Amy was willing to consider anything, but she felt it was a little like “cheating” to take the easy way out and go to a place with a mild climate. On the other hand, she was eager to get back to the mission field, and it seemed unlikely that any doctor would let her go back to a place that had a harsh climate. Amy settled in her mind that if the Zenana Mission Society would accept her as a missionary, knowing her physical condition and that she did not belong to the Church of England, she would go to Bangalore.
After a series of interviews with the mission society, in July 1895, Amy was accepted on the spot to work in southern India. Once again the Keswick Society agreed to sponsor and support her. Three months later, Amy was again waving good-bye to Robert Wilson. They had just spent his seventieth birthday together, and because he was getting older, she knew this time it was unlikely she’d ever see him again. What she didn’t know was that she would never again set foot in the British Isles. She had bought a one-way ticket to India, believing that was where God had called her. Indeed, it was the last ocean voyage she ever made. She would never leave India.
Chapter 9
A Fish out of Water
Amy retraced the path of her earlier journey to Japan: east through the Mediterranean Sea, south through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and on into the Indian Ocean. During the voyage she often sat on deck in a slatted wooden deckchair and looked out to sea. Always she had the same thing on her mind: What would India really be like? Every English person thought he or she knew about India. After all, it had been under British control since the seventeenth century. First it had been under the control of the British East India Company, and then in 1858 it came under direct British rule, becoming the most populous colony in the British Empire. Queen Victoria was known also as the Empress of India, and the country itself was called the “jewel in the empire’s crown.” It was very fashionable for young Englishmen to spend time in India. With sixty thousand British soldiers stationed there to keep the peace, there was plenty of opportunity for a young Englishman to make a name and a fortune for himself.
Fine teas, exotic spices, and raw cotton from India were for sale everywhere in England. Book stores sold novels and collections of stories of discovery and adventure set in India. But in truth, England had influenced India far more than India had influenced England. In India, English was the language of business and government, which was a good thing because there were fifteen major languages spoken there, not to mention over eight hundred local dialects. English rule, or Raj, as it was called, also had brought roads, railways, industry, and education to India.
English people who lived in India were in a class of their own. They had the best of everything. They could afford to surround themselves with large numbers of servants, because they were cheap to hire. The men went on elephant hunts and played cricket and cribbage, while the woman held dinner parties, embroidered pillows, and conducted readings from Shakespeare. The children were sent home to attend boarding school in England. But they usually returned for summer, when whole families would retreat to hill stations in the mountains to avoid the fierce summer heat. In short, the English in India were pampered, and that was just the way they liked it.
Beyond tea, spices, cotton, and pampered lifestyles, Amy wondered what India was really going to be like. What would God have for her to do among the three hundred million people who lived there? While she didn’t know for sure what lay ahead, she knew her first step involved working with the Zenana Mission Society.
Finally the ship reached Madras on India’s southeastern coast. Madras was called the “Gateway to the South.” Crowds of people surged around the end of the gangway as Amy disembarked. Men offered to carry her bags or hail a carriage for her as she looked around for Mr. Arden, the Church Missionary Society secretary, whom Robert Wilson had arranged to meet her. Sure enough, he was there waiting. He weaved his way through the crowd to Amy, who heaved a sigh of relief to see him. They shook hands and greeted each other. Her adventure in India was certainly getting off to a better start than her Japanese experience had.
While Mr. Arden loaded her trunk into the horse-drawn carriage, Amy looked around. It was difficult to take in everything at once. She had never seen so many colors before. Every sari, the traditional dress that Indian women wore, was different, and each one seemed to be more vibrant than the last. There were peacock blue, iridescent orange, and yellow as bright as the sun. Tall, dark men with twisted white or orange turbans on their heads were everywhere, as were little girls with jangly bangles the length of their arms. Amy loved it all.
Mr. Arden took her to his home, where she was to spend her first three weeks in India before heading inland to Bangalore, where the Zenana mission hospital was located. Amy had decided to stay the three weeks in Madras because she wanted to arrive in Bangalore rested and in the best possible health. While staying with the Ardens, she asked questions about India of anyone who had time to answer them. She was particularly interested in the history of Christianity in southern India because that was where her new home was to be. She learned that according to tradition, Thomas, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, was captured and sold as a slave to a merchant who took him to South India. There Thomas was sold again, this time to a king named Gundobar, who put Thomas to work overseeing the building of his new palace. During the building, Thomas had the opportunity to talk to the king about the gospel, and as a result, the king became a Christian and was baptized. Amy was thrilled to hear there was a group of Christians in southern India who called themselves “Thomas Christians” and traced the roots of their church right back to the time of St. Thomas and King Gundobar.
A week after Amy arrived, another missionary, Louisa Randall, came to talk to her. Louisa was an Englishwoman about Amy’s age and had brought a letter with her regarding a problem she had encountered. Several months earlier she had met a young Muslim girl who wanted to become a Christian. But unlike Buddhists in Japan, who would tolerate a Christian in the family, Muslim families became violently angry if someone in the family became a Christian. The Muslim girl knew that if she became a convert she would either be banished from her home and family forever or be killed by her brothers. Finally, the girl decided she didn’t have the courage to give up everything, including possibly her life, to become a Christian, and so she decided to stay a Muslim.
In a letter to her supporters, Louisa had written about the Muslim girl’s struggle. As a result, one of her supporters had written back and complained that the story was too depressing and suggested that Louisa might brighten it up with a “happy ending.” The response had upset Louisa, and she now wondered whether she’d done the right thing by telling the girl’s story in the first place. She came to ask Amy her thoughts on the matter. Should she rewrite the girl’s story, perhaps making the ending a little more vague and less depressing for her supporters? Amy was appalled. How could any Christian try to bully a missionary into inventing a happy ending when there was none? The truth is the truth, Amy told Louisa, and nothing, not even pressure from supporters, should cause a missionary to swerve from telling it.
Strangely enough, it wouldn’t be long before Amy herself would be tested on this. She would find out that telling the truth was not always popular, even among Christians.
Finally, Amy’s three weeks with the Ardens was up, and she began the two-hundred-thirty-mile trip from Madras to Bangalore. The trip had seemed so easy when she studied it on the globe in Robert Wilson’s library. But that was back in England, and now as Amy sat on the train headed west toward Bangalore, she felt as though the trip would take forever. Villages and temples rolled past the train window where she sat, but she was having a hard time focusing on them. A servant brought her a cup of tea, but she didn’t have enough strength to lift it to her lips. Amy realized she was sick again and getting sicker by the minute. This time she had dengue fever, or “breakbone fever,” as it is also known. Indeed, Amy felt as though every bone in her body was broken. She could barely lift herself out of her seat when the conductor announced that the train was pulling into the station at Bangalore. She dragged herself off the train and into the arms of a waiting Zenana missionary. It was the exact opposite of the way she’d planned to make her entrance, but she was too ill to care. She was whisked off and admitted to the very hospital she’d come to serve in.
