Felix loved working with William Ward. Together they made a great team. In his spare time, Felix translated Pilgrim’s Progress and A History of British India and of England into Bengali. His father used the books in his classes at Fort William College.
With Felix Carey back at Serampore, William Ward felt free to travel back to England for a break. It was the first time he had returned to England in twenty years. He planned to meet with the missionary society committee while in England and explain the situation in Serampore. He was hopeful that this would help to smooth out some of the difficulties that existed between the missionaries and the missionary society.
While William Ward was away, William Carey and Joshua Marshman set about bringing their next dream to life. Since his early days with Dr. Thomas, William Carey had dreamed of a college similar to Fort William College, but for Indians. There were already two colleges for Indians in Calcutta, one for Hindus and one for Moslems, but William wanted to start a college for Christians to attend. Until this time, a Christian student was not allowed to enroll in either of the other colleges. By now, about six hundred Indians had become Christian converts and had been baptized by William. William was anxious for many of these converts to continue their education, especially learning Sanskrit, so that they could talk intelligently about the gospel message with other educated Indians.
William wanted Serampore College, as he named it, to be a place where Christians from every denomination would feel welcome. This, however, brought him into disagreement again with the missionary society committee back in England. The committee reminded William and Joshua Marshman that it was the Baptist Missionary Society and had sent out Baptist missionaries to begin Baptist churches and schools. Back in England, William Ward was able to smooth out the disagreement a little, but the committee could see no value in supporting an interdenominational college.
The Danish people in Serampore understood better than his English “support team” what William Carey was trying to do. The king of Denmark, who carefully followed the work of the Serampore mission, donated five acres of land adjacent to the mission on which to build the college. Soon after, Lord Hastings agreed to be a patron of the college and gave one hundred twenty-five pounds to the building fund. The British government even agreed to pay the cost of hiring a professor of medicine.
William Ward finally arrived back in India with five thousand pounds he had collected from Christians in Great Britain and America. (The Baptist Missionary Society had not approved of his asking Baptists for money for the new college, but many Baptists had given to him privately anyway.)
Despite all his other duties and the responsibilities of starting a new college, William had desired for a long time to do one other thing. He wanted to establish a society to help Indian people better use their farmland to feed more people. He had often spoken to Lady Hastings about this desire, since she shared his love of plants. She encouraged him to do it, and so in 1820, William Carey founded the Agri-Horticultural Society of India. Lady Hastings signed up as the new society’s first member. William and Charlotte loved to host the society’s meetings in their home. It was exciting for them to meet with other people who loved the flowers and trees of India as much as they did.
At fifty-nine years of age, it may have looked to outsiders that it was time for William Carey to slow down and enjoy old age. But not William. He had struggled against huge obstacles all his life, and the struggle was not yet over.
Chapter 17
Say Nothing about William Carey
Charlotte Carey had never been strong. Since being seriously burned at age fifteen, she had not been expected to live a long life. Even after she and William had married, most people thought she would live for only a year or two at best. But her love for William had given her new reason to live, and during their years of marriage, she enjoyed reasonably good health.
William loved Charlotte, and the two of them spent as much time together as they could. Like him, she was gifted in languages and read through all his translations, offering helpful suggestions.
By Christmas 1820, however, Charlotte’s health was beginning to fail. Each day, William would lovingly carry her out into the garden, where they would sit together for an hour or so talking and praying. On May 30, 1821, Charlotte died. It was the saddest day of William Carey’s life. The two of them had been married for thirteen years and three weeks, and William missed Charlotte terribly.
Three more deaths quickly followed Charlotte’s. Krishna Pal, the mission’s first convert, died of cholera. He had been a strong and energetic evangelist up until the week he died. Next came the death of thirty-seven-year-old Felix Carey as a result of liver problems. Soon afterward, William Ward contracted cholera and died within twenty-four hours. At fifty-four, he was the youngest of the Serampore Triad and the first to die. He had been a faithful and valued member of the team. William mourned the passing of each of them.
In 1823, William married for the third time. His new wife was Grace Hughes, a forty-five-year-old widow. She was kind and generous, and everyone at the Serampore mission was glad when she came to live there.
The two of them had been married only a few months when William injured his thigh in a bad fall while stepping out of his boat. When the governor-general heard of the accident, he immediately sent his private doctor to treat William. The doctor did the best he could according to what was known about medicine in 1823. William’s treatment included having one hundred ten bloodsucking leeches placed on his thigh. In spite of the “treatment,” William made a slow recovery, and it was six months before he was able to walk again. Just as when he had injured his foot jumping from the buggy, William had to be carried to and from his lectures at Fort William College.
William’s injury was much better by the end of 1823, and William would soon need a good pair of legs to run for his life! The year had been particularly wet, and since almost all of the Bengal region is a huge delta crisscrossed with rivers and swamps, the whole area had begun to flood. The flooded streams and rivers had grown more and more wild until thousands of dead animals and huge trees were tumbling down the Hooghly River in front of the mission. Finally, the river flooded into the mission center and, in the process, washed away William’s house. William was home at the time and had to race out of the house to safety to avoid being washed downriver with it. With the house, the garden that had given him and Charlotte so much joy was also washed away.
As the floodwaters receded, the missionaries could see the heavy damage the flood had inflicted on the mission buildings. Just as he had after the print shop fire, William stood in the midst of the ruins and made plans to rebuild. The next day, he sent off a letter to England to order more bulbs and seeds so that he could replant the garden. To provide some extra money for the rebuilding of the mission, he took on the job of translating government documents into Bengali.
Eventually, everything was replaced, and Serampore College was back up and running. Then in 1827, the king of Denmark granted the college the right for all its departments to confer degrees. This was a great honor, as Serampore College was the first college in India to be granted this right. The irony of the situation was not lost on William. He smiled to himself as he recalled how years before he had encouraged dissenter ministers in Kettering to expect great things from God and to achieve great things for God. Now here he was, a man with nothing more than a grade-school education, heading the first college in India granted the right to confer degrees.
The following year, the new governor-general, Lord Bentick, decided to take a serious look at the practice of sati. William had done everything he could to keep the horrible practice in the public eye ever since he had written his report for Lord Wellesley in 1802. Indeed, he had nagged every governor-general since then to make it illegal. Now, finally, it seemed that someone had the courage to do just that.
On Friday, December 4, 1829, Lord Bentick signed an order declaring the practice of sati illegal in all of India. It was two days later, on Sunday morning, that William first read the order. Lord Bentick had sent a copy of it to William and had asked him to translate it into Bengali so that it could be made public. William was so excited he wasted no time. He asked one of the other missionaries to preach the sermon at church that morning, and then he set to work translating the order. He worked as fast as he could. He did not want to waste a single minute, since every minute that passed could mean the death of another widow. He worked all day without even stopping to eat, and by nightfall, the governor-general’s messenger was on his way back to Calcutta with the Bengali translation of the order.
Over the next few years, William had more difficulties to face. The banks in India failed, and all the money the mission had was lost. As a result of the financial crisis, Fort William College was forced to close, depriving William of the income that had kept much of the Serampore mission running. Then there was another flood. Once again, William’s garden was washed away, and huge mahogany trees, swept along by the river, crashed through his greenhouses, shattering them into a thousand pieces. As soon as the floodwaters receded, William began planting a new garden yet again.
William also plodded on through another revision of the Bengali New Testament and lectured in religion and science at Serampore College. Even though he was now an old man, he remained faithful to the call of being a missionary. He would never give up that call or retire from it.
In July 1833, William suffered a stroke. Although he did recover a little, it was soon followed by another stroke and then another. Each stroke left him weaker than the one before. Despite the effects of the strokes, William loved to be in his garden and so was carried out there every day. In the end, however, being carried outside became too stressful for him. The gardener would bring flowers and leaves into William’s room and talk to William about how each plant was doing.
William’s three surviving sons also came to be with him. Jabez came from Rajputana, where he was still running a mission station; William Jr. came from Cutwa, where he was doing the same. Jonathan, now thirty-seven years old, came up from Calcutta, where he was a well-known attorney. Many other people came to visit him as well, including the governor-general and his wife; Dr. Wilson, the bishop of Calcutta; and other newly arrived missionaries.
One of the last people to visit William was Alexander Duff. He had come to discuss his own plans to establish a Christian college in India, and William encouraged him. Alexander Duff was deeply impressed with William’s years of missionary service in India and talked to him about them also. But since William tired easily, he did not want to stay too long. As he started to walk toward the door, though, William sat up in bed and called him back. “Mr. Duff,” he said in a feeble voice, “you have been speaking about William Carey. When I am gone, say nothing about William Carey—speak only about William Carey’s Savior.”
In the early hours of June 9, 1834, William Carey died quietly in his bed. He was seventy-two years old. In his will, he asked to be buried next to his second wife, Charlotte. He directed that a simple headstone was to be placed on his grave. The headstone was to give his name and age, under which was to be inscribed, “A wretched, poor, and helpless worm. On Thy kind arms I fall.”
William Carey may have seen himself as poor and wretched, but people saw him as something quite different. As his body was carried through the streets of Serampore, the flags at the Danish Government House were lowered to half staff. And the streets were lined with silent crowds of Hindus, Moslems, and Christians, all wanting one last look at the man who had become a well-loved legend in the Bengal region.
