Hudson stood in stunned silence as goosebumps ran up his arms. It was ten minutes after ten, and here he was holding enough money to pay Mrs. Finch his rent on time and buy food for breakfast. And not only that, the woman he’d prayed for had made a full recovery. He was so certain she was going to die. But God had answered his prayer. Now he knew, no matter what, he had the faith to trust God in all that lay ahead of him in China.
Chapter 6
A Dead Man in London
Taylor, how would you like to be my apprentice?” Dr. Hardey asked after Hudson had been his assistant in Hull for about a year.
Hudson’s mouth dropped open. He stopped mixing the medicine he was preparing and turned to the doctor with a questioning look.
“You heard me right,” said the doctor. “I want you to become my apprentice. It will be five years of hard study for you, but I know you can do it. You have what it takes to be a good doctor.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Hudson, stunned by the offer. “It’s a great honor to be asked. I’ll have to pray about it before I give you an answer.”
Dr. Hardey nodded; he had expected no less. He knew Hudson prayed about everything.
It was such a tempting offer. Hudson liked the idea of being a real doctor rather than a doctor’s assistant. But the more he thought and prayed about it, the more convinced he became that he should reject the offer. While he could see the advantage of being a qualified doctor, he also recognized that inside of him was a burning desire to be in China as soon as he could. Yes, he needed more medical training before he left, but he thought he could get that training faster by going to London. So he decided to turn down Dr. Hardey’s offer and resign as his assistant.
He also talked to his parents about his decision. He knew that the offer was a wonderful opportunity, so it was arranged that Mr. Taylor would release Hudson’s cousin, John, from work in the pharmacy so he could come to Hull and be Dr. Hardey’s new assistant.
A week after announcing his resignation as Dr. Hardey’s assistant, things began to fall into place for Hudson. Uncle Benjamin, whom Hudson and Amelia had stayed with on their first trip to London, offered to have Hudson stay with him for a week or two. And the Chinese Evangelization Society agreed to pay Hudson’s medical tuition at London Hospital. Hoping to get a doctor into Inland China as soon as possible, the society was more generous to Hudson than he could have imagined. It offered to provide his rent money as well. At the same time, Hudson’s father also volunteered to support him while he was in London. Instead of having no financial aid, Hudson now had offers from two sources!
But which proposal should he accept? He didn’t want to get too indebted to the Chinese Evangelization Society in case things did not work out in China. He also wasn’t sure he wanted to get too tied to one organization in case God called him do things on his own. Accepting his father’s aid, though, would also be difficult. His father was not doing well financially, and Hudson knew the offer represented a big sacrifice for the family. As he considered whose support to accept, he wrote to both his father and the Chinese Evangelization Society, letting each one know about the other’s willingness to support him and promising to make a decision soon.
As he prayed about the decision before him, a strange thought crept into his mind. What if he turned them both down! What an ideal way to stretch his faith a little more. Could he rely on God, and not on his father or the Chinese Evangelization Society, to meet his needs? He would be in a new city where nobody knew him. What a perfect opportunity to trust God to supply his needs. Immediately, Hudson felt that this was what God wanted him to do. He picked up his pen and wrote another pair of letters, the first to his father and the other to the Chinese Evangelization Society, thanking them for their offer of support and telling them he would not be accepting it. As he wrote, he decided that they would both think he had accepted the other’s offer. It was perfect. He would be free to rely on God alone to meet his needs without other people, especially his mother, worrying about how he was doing.
Two weeks later, in early September 1852, he stood at the bow of a coastal steamship headed for London. As the ship carefully made its way through the thick fog that blanketed the banks of the river Thames, he pulled his overcoat tight around him to keep out the cold, damp air. What lay ahead for him he did not know. One thing is for sure, he promised himself, the next time I stand on board a ship, it will be headed for China.
The boarding house where Uncle Benjamin lived was small but comfortable, and Hudson spent two enjoyable weeks with him. In another boarding house, just around the corner, his cousin Tom lived in a tiny third-floor attic room. Tom invited Hudson to move in and share the room with him. Hudson lugged his belongings up the three flights of stairs to Tom’s room. He enrolled in a surgery course at London Hospital in Whitechapel, and once again his life quickly fell into a routine of work, study, prayer, and fellowship, not to mention the time he spent each day practicing writing Chinese pictographs.
Hudson had managed to save a little money during his time in Hull, and he was determined to make it go as far as possible. To do this, he experimented until he came up with a diet that cost very little and did not leave him feeling too hungry. On the walk home from London Hospital, he would stop at a bakery and buy a two-penny loaf of brown bread. He would have the baker cut the loaf in half. One half of the loaf was his dinner, and the other half would be his breakfast. Of course, he could have cut the loaf in half himself, but he asked the baker to do it because he thought his hunger might tempt him to cut too large a “half” for dinner, leaving too small a piece to satisfy his hunger at breakfast. On the way to the hospital in the morning, he would stop at a fruit stand and buy two apples for his lunch. When he was thirsty, he drank water. By eating only apples and bread and drinking water, Hudson was able to live on three pennies a day, plus what he paid his cousin for half the rent on the attic room.
To save himself even more money, Hudson walked everywhere he needed to go. He walked four miles to the hospital in Whitechapel and back each day. He walked to church on Sunday. He also walked a four-mile round trip to the shipping office once a month. He went to the shipping office as a favor for Mrs. Finch, his former landlady in Hull. Mrs. Finch’s husband was a ship’s officer for a shipping line that operated out of London. Half of his wages were kept at the office for Mrs. Finch to collect. Normally Mrs. Finch had the money sent up to her in Hull, but there was a charge for this service. So she had asked Hudson if he would go to the shipping office for her once a month to collect her husband’s wages and send them to her. This way she would save having to pay the service charge. Mrs. Finch had been good to Hudson in Hull, and he knew she needed all the money she could get, so he was happy to do the favor for her.
Hudson had been in London about three months when he got a letter from Mrs. Finch saying she needed the money from her husband’s wages right away because she was about to fall behind in her rent. Hudson was very busy with his studies right then and did not think he could spare the time to walk to the shipping office to collect the money. Without giving it much thought, he decided to send Mrs. Finch the last of his own money. He would go later in the week and collect her husband’s wages and repay himself from that. This way they would both be happy: Mrs. Finch would quickly get the money she desperately needed, and Hudson would not have to give up half a day of study to get it for her.
There was just one problem with this solution, however. When Hudson finally went to the shipping office to get Mr. Finch’s wages, he got some bad news. Mr. Finch, it seemed, had abandoned his ship and headed for a gold rush. Since Mr. Finch was no longer on board ship, there were no wages to collect. Hudson was stunned. He explained to the clerk in the shipping office how he had just sent Mrs. Finch the last of his money and now had no way of being repaid. The clerk was sympathetic; he even apologized for Mr. Finch’s behavior. But he pointed out to Hudson that men deserted their ships and their families every day, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
It took a few moments for the seriousness of the situation to settle in on Hudson. He had only a few pennies left. And not only was he not going to be repaid for the money he’d already sent to Mrs. Finch, she was not going to get any more money from her husband to pay her rent and take care of the children.
Hudson left the office and began the walk home. It would have been normal to be depressed by such news, but as he walked on, he found himself getting happier and happier. When he had arrived in London, his intention was to trust God to provide all his needs, but he’d always had the money he’d saved in Hull to get by on. Hudson’s money would have eventually run out, leaving him no other option but to rely on God. Mr. Finch and his gold-digging ambitions had only brought that day about sooner. By the time Hudson climbed the stairs to his attic room, he was excited about what would happen next. How would God meet his needs?
That night, Hudson continued with his studies. He had to stop for a few minutes to make himself a new notebook. It was cheaper for him to make his own notebook than buy a ready-made one from the store. To make the notebook, he took a stack of blank paper and hand sewed it together. Just as he was finishing the last stitch, the needle jerked through the paper and pricked him in the finger. There was no blood, and a minute later Hudson had forgotten all about the prick. That was, until the next day.
It was noon and Hudson was sitting in a lecture when he began to feel sick. The room started to swirl around him, and he could no longer concentrate on what the lecturer was saying. Hudson stumbled outside into the fresh air and had a drink of water. He felt revived, so he made his way back to the lecture hall. He thought he must have overexerted himself the day before walking to the shipping office and staying up late to study. Back in the lecture hall he began to feel weaker and weaker, until he was too weak to even hold the pencil he was taking notes with. Obviously, he hadn’t exhausted his fingers walking to the shipping office or sitting up late to study! Something else was wrong.
After the lecture, he dragged himself back into the surgery, where earlier that day he and some of the other students had been dissecting the body of a man who had died of malignant fever. He knew he should help the other students clean up, but all he could do was slump into the nearest chair.
“I don’t know what’s come over me,” he said to the surgeon in charge of the dissection. Then he described his symptoms.
The surgeon went pale. He cleared his throat several times before finally speaking. “What has happened to you is clear enough. You must have cut yourself while dissecting the body and infected yourself with the malignant fever.”
Hudson shook his head. “That’s not possible. I would know if I cut myself with the scalpel, and I’m sure I didn’t. Here, look at my hands.”
As Hudson raised his hands for the surgeon to inspect, a thought crossed his mind. “It couldn’t be a pinprick I gave myself while sewing a book together last night, could it?”
The surgeon thought for a moment. “It doesn’t take a large opening to let in an infection.” He reached forward and put his hand on Hudson’s shoulder. Then, lowering his voice and looking straight into Hudson’s blue eyes, he said, “You must get a coach home as quickly as you can and get your affairs in order, for you are a dead man!”
Hudson couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. It wasn’t that he doubted the surgeon’s diagnosis, or that he thought people survived malignant fever—they normally didn’t. What Hudson couldn’t believe was that he wouldn’t make it to China after all. “I am not afraid to die,” he said, looking straight at the surgeon. “In fact, I look forward to meeting my Maker. But unless I am very much mistaken, I cannot die because God has called me to China, and I have not yet been there. I may get very sick, but I doubt that I will die.”
