Ruth Massey in 1899, justifying the six years of professional training which had confirmed her response to a missionary call. Ruth’s mother had kept the landmarks of those years, telegrams from Edinburgh: ‘Girls all through except Hilda Macfarlane praise the Lord’ (July 1894); ‘Coming tomorrow 10.15. Ploughed in Anatomy Probably other subject also’ (March 1896); ‘Massey Droylsden Through Ruth’ (July 1899). At last she was Dr Ruth Massey MB, ChB, Edin., and it was a case of upward as well as onward, since this came one early September day from Fort William: ‘From Britain’s high-est point we send our greetings joint Stephen Mary Ruth’, father and daughters.

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-98

Chapter

Ruth Massey in 1899, justifying the six years of professional training which had confirmed her response to a missionary call. Ruth’s mother had kept the landmarks of those years, telegrams from Edinburgh: ‘Girls all through except Hilda Macfarlane praise the Lord’ (July 1894); ‘Coming tomorrow 10.15. Ploughed in Anatomy Probably other subject also’ (March 1896); ‘Massey Droylsden Through Ruth’ (July 1899). At last she was Dr Ruth Massey MB, ChB, Edin., and it was a case of upward as well as onward, since this came one early September day from Fort William: ‘From Britain’s high-est point we send our greetings joint Stephen Mary Ruth’, father and daughters.

Chapter

Ruth Massey in 1899, justifying the six years of professional training which had confirmed her response to a missionary call. Ruth’s mother had kept the landmarks of those years, telegrams from Edinburgh: ‘Girls all through except Hilda Macfarlane praise the Lord’ (July 1894); ‘Coming tomorrow 10.15. Ploughed in Anatomy Probably other subject also’ (March 1896); ‘Massey Droylsden Through Ruth’ (July 1899). At last she was Dr Ruth Massey MB, ChB, Edin., and it was a case of upward as well as onward, since this came one early September day from Fort William: ‘From Britain’s high-est point we send our greetings joint Stephen Mary Ruth’, father and daughters.

ABSTRACT

Massey was ‘at home’, twice over, at ‘The Willows’, Fairfield, to friends wishing to say goodbye to Dr Ruth Massey.

The Bristol and Kensington valedictories were stirring occasions. Here the missionary endeavours of an entire denomination were focused on the world: China, India, Madagascar, Africa, New Guinea, Samoa. At Bristol, where ‘the audience pleasantly whiled away the time listening to the strains of an excellent band’, there were 16 missionaries or their wives returning to the field and 14 going out for the first time. At Kensington, of 23 missionaries, 15 were women and two of these were doctors. The rhetoric was of a type. In his address at Kensington Silvester Horne ‘likened the missionaries to soldiers going into the field’, while in Bristol Samuel Pearson, Annie Pearson’s brother, ‘spoke of the gathering as a great peace meeting. Where Christianity went the blessings of civilization followed close upon its heels. Let those who were going out remember that they had a vast army of friends who were the friends of God.’ That was fighting peace talk, perhaps out of deference to the meeting’s Quaker chairman, Joseph Storrs Fry.17 His words should be noted too:

He could no more imagine a living church being destitute of the missionary spirit than of a strong and healthy man spending his life in the coffin in which he was to be buried. When a church ceased to be a missionary church, the death warrant of that church had been signed in heaven.