LETTERS: 146 autograph letters signed and other correspondence regarding her work traveling around America for YWCA. AND 18 signed letters and one card regarding her work for American YWCA on child labor in China, Agatha Harrison.
EXTENSIVE YWCA CORRESPONDENCE ARCHIVE 1917-1928
About 150 letters, primarily autograph letters signed, a few typed letters signed, a few notes, and one telegram; original envelopes present; totaling over 500 pages of text. Most are from the National Board of Young Womens Christian Associations of the United States of America in New York; others are from various parts of America and England.
A deep and dense archive, from Mary S. Sims, Executive Secretary and Secretary for Cities, the National Board of the YWCA, to her English cousin H. Herbert C. Arthur, regarding her work travelling around America as YWCA “Secretary for Cities,” and other matters. The letters are in a distinctly modern voice, with Sims proving herself to be a forward-looking woman of great character, employed in a prominent position within a progressive organization. Since its 1910 Berlin Conference the World YWCA had switched its emphasis to the education of working women and the amelioration of social conditions.
Sims addresses Arthur as “Bert” (and on one occasion as “Mon cher cousin”), and the envelopes are mostly addressed to him at his home, 59 Howard Road, New Malden, Surrey, or at his place of work with the Inland Revenue, York House B3, Kingsway, London. (Arthur was an active member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Kingston-on- Thames Circuit, and Hon. Collector of the Theological Institution Fund.)
Three-quarters of the letters are sent from America, with all but around twenty from New York. Addresses include: Women’s University Club, New York; National Board of the Young Womens [sic] Christian Associations; Central Young Women’s Christian Association, Pittsburgh; The Blackstone, Chicago; The Eyrie, Seal Harbor, Maine; Hotel Statler, Buffalo; Clift Hotel, San Francisco; Skirvin Hotel, Oklahoma City; Hotel Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Harrisburgh, Pennsylvania; Hartford, Connecticut; Washington DC; Regent’s Palace Hotel, Piccadilly Circus. Several of the letters are written on board ships, and two are sent from Paris and one from Rome.
Sims played a prominent part in the YWCA in America, and is the author of The Natural History Of A Social Institution: The Young Women’s Christian Association (New York: Women’s Press, 1936) and The YWCA and Social Awakening, in The YWCA - An Unfolding Purpose (New York: Women’s Press, 1950). She was the only child of Joseph Stephens Sims of Simsbury, Connecticut (originally of Camborne, Cornwall), and his wife Elizabeth M. Cables Sims. (Twelve Autograph Letters Signed from her mother (as “Cousin Lizzie”) are also present in this collection, including one to Arthur’s wife Hope and one jointly to husband and wife.)
She was a close friend and colleague of Agatha Mary Harrison, a prominent English campaigner for workers’ rights (particularly in China), and close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, and the letters contain several references to her.Sims’s staff in 1927 consists of fifteen: “13 are white & 2 are negros [sic] and we have been sitting together 2 hours in the morning & 2 in the afternoon every day discussing our plans.”
Sims’s work as Secretary for Cities is unusual for a woman of the period, as it involves a large amount of travel across America. On April 15, 1917 she writes, “I am just back from a short trip through the middle west, Chicago and Minneapolis and around there, I stopped in Canada, Toronto and Ottawa on my way back. I was working of course. My job takes me out of the city some of the time, but I am rather closely tied here through the winter months by committee meetings and such. [...] Just now I am reading up as part of my job on the economic and industrial changes in the lives of women because of the war” And later in the same year (May 1, 1917): ‘I am enclosing a pamphlet that I got out to all of our city associations last week. [...] I have checked the paragraphs I wrote and of course I edited it all. It is rough work for it was done in a hurry.’ 12 January 12, 1919: ‘I have been in the sleeper every night but three in the last two weeks and expect to be on almost as much the next two weeks. We have such terrific distances here, it is 2 days and 2 nights from San Francisco to Seattle and 5 days and 4 nights across the continent. These are very busy days but I rather enjoy the traveling as I get a little time to read. Have you read the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? It is quite worth reading. Also Richard Baldrock by Marshall. I am reading now Mr Morgenthau’s book on his experiences in Turkey as American Ambassador in the first years of the war.”
Her letter of March 21, 1926 provides a view of Sims’s New York apartment: “My dearest Bert/ I am typing this on my own little typewriter sitting in our living room at eleven thirty in the morning. Annie Kate is darning a heap of light coloured silk stockings. A girl called Olive Crabtree is reading in one corner, her home is in Hull. Her father makes tinboxes. On the other side is a girl called Kate Wilson who is reading the Sunday paper. She comes from London but really lives in Buenos Aires only she is staying here now. I am the everlasting limit not to have gotten a letter off on the Olympic yesterday. Someway the days pass so rapidly I cant realize that the boat day has come. I really am ashamed. Now it is spring we go out so much that there doesn’t seem to be any spare time. [...] We are rather mixed up because the Worlds Committee wants us, both Annie Kate and me, to do some work at an Institute in Surrey in June about June 19 or 21 to the 25 or so and then to be in London at the British biennial for a few days. [...] We, A. K. and I, have to go to our old Convention in Milwaukee in April.’ (‘Annie Kate’ or ‘A. K.’ is the ‘Associate Secretary, Cities’ Annie Kate Gilbert. A letter from Gilbert is also present, postmarked 3 November 1926, in which she writes, following a visit with Sims to England: ‘You can’t imagine how much more fun Mary and I [have] from a common knowledge of places and people - & particularly because of the family. You all were terribly good to take me in as one of you. | Mary and I have just voted - without much intelligence - for we don’t know all the men - but for those we do know there was a big cross. The out-of-doors sounds like election day - we intend to be in the thick of it after the theatre tonight - on Broadway - Agatha, Peg [Margaret E. Burton?], Mary & I, a completely feminine crowd.’)
Other topics include:
his character and hers (On August 24: 1923: ‘I am in no way an extraordinary person, some of the things in me that seem to impress you are essentially the result of the kind of life I lead. I am spurred on all the time, in training as it were, to a certain type of conversation and to a variety of interests [...] I have long known that the only real values were personal ones - everything else is not worth considering.’);
his family;
her trips to England in 1921, 1923 and 1926; his trip to Germany in 1922 (‘I certainly would like to be with you. We hear such conflicting reports here. Did you read that article in the Atlantic last spring on the Mind of Germany. Do write me what you really think. There isn’t any censor now.’); her ‘agnostic point of view’ and his ‘paganish’ nature; her academic ambitions (‘Oxford is certainly a marvelous place. I think I shall end by studying there even though the work I really want is best got at the University of London’);
politics (including the impeachment of Governor Jack C. Walton of Oklahoma in 1923);
her extensive reading (on January 27, 1919, for example: ‘Ambassador Morgenthau’s story of his experiences in Constantinople, the Green Mirror by Hugh Walpole, the Money Maker by Gilbert Parker, the Old Franciscan Missions of California by James, the Small House at Allington by Trollope, the Program of the British Labour Party and about 40 magazines’);
her travels (January 12, 1919: ‘I get awfully mixed up with the seasons when I do so much traveling, in the last 10 days I have been from snow and 10 below zero to flowers and sunshine and orange groves glowing with golden fruit, to say nothing of all the stages between’);
the American landscape (On November 7, 1923: ‘I wonder often what you would think if you were with me on some of these long journeys over our vast country. I have just been in El Paso. I wonder if you have a map that shows it, the extreme southwest of Texas, right at the Mexican border. A city made out of the desert, 3700 feet above sea level and surrounded by bare rocky mountains blue & purple & rose in the dazzling sun.’); his unhappy employment (‘I wish you could pull out of your job [...] I hate having anyone with your brains condemned to that ghastly clerical work [...] don’t think there is anything fine in settling down now and letting people kick you because there isn’t [...] It’s so long since I’ve seen you I hardly know how I dare to write this way’);
his high opinion of her (on July 23, 1923, on her return to America from England, she writes: ‘I’m awfully glad if I didn’t disappoint you too much. I was rather worried after 8 years of your weaving fancies around me.’); her liking for opera and the theatre (‘I forget whether you disapprove of these amusements’); the prohibition of alcohol in America; the difference between the American and English characters; parenting (her ‘distinctly modern feeling that children belong to their fathers as much as their mothers even when
they are a beastly nuisance’); the ‘rotten’ American educational system; her home routine;
her full social life (in 1927: ‘We seem to do so many things these days. I’m sure I don’t see why we do - it isn’t merely work that keeps me busy, its doing stupid social things that mostly aren’t much fun anyway.’);
travel arrangements;
the First World War (‘I am very glad though that we are in the war now, but I do not see how we could have come in before.’); President Woodrow Wilson (‘a real statesman’);
the signing of the armistice (‘I am so conscious that we here in America have never realized the war, that we have had no privations and few sorrows’);
letter of August 11, 1925 accompanied by typescript (2pp., 8vo) , with pencil note by Sims, giving a ‘Summary of Replies’ at the ‘Conference on Religious Institutes and Summer Schools Asbury Park, N. J., - May 6, 1925’.)
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Regarding Agatha Harrison
The correspondence includes several references to Sims’s close friend Agatha Harrison. A letter of March 27, 1924 contains the first reference to her: ‘Agatha Harrison was with us for 10 days and sailed on Saturday last for England. I certainly wanted to go with her. She is returning here however early in May as there is much to do this end.’ And 19 May 1924: ‘I have had busy days with our convention and then right on top of it the week of World’s Committee meetings in Washington. [...] Agatha Harrison has again been staying with me but she sails in Saturday. Will you do something for me, will you take her out to tea one day. I would like you to know her. She is one of my very best friends and knows me better than most people, as you do. You will have much in common for she lived several years in Camborne when she was a little girl. Her father was one of the Wesleyan’s Ministers there. She has not had an easy life but she has done a lot with it and she is a dear. She will be in London first after Whitsuntide for a few days staying with her sister. [...] Take Agatha to Lyons or some such place just where you would take me and she likes cut cake and cigarettes as I do. Don’t take her any place expensive. She wouldn’t like it. She has been out of England for 3 years except for April 3 to 19 of this year when she was there for C.O.P.E.C.’
On June 26, 1924 she compares her character with Harrison’s: ‘in spite of your thinking to the contrary I really have no passion for reforming the world, I merely like what I work at & seems worth doing. Of course Agatha is unusual, she can do more at reforming than most people can and she is a dear. I hope you will see more of her.’
On September 26, 1924: ‘I’m glad you saw Agatha. She wrote me the other day that you were a great help to her. I feel something the way you do about her going to China,
except that as you have undoubtedly seen she is temperamental and an individualist. The China staff is small, very small, compared with us here and it takes a large staff to be able, in my experience, to use people like her well. The small groups have to be so general in their interests and everybody do [sic] everything. They can’t afford specialization nor do they provide the necessary buffers.’ On August 11, 1925: ‘Agatha showed me her letter to you. I’m glad she is writing and I know you can do things, but you must put your health first, even China can wait’. On February 11, 1926: ‘Agatha says you were the greatest comfort and the most understanding person in England to talk to. I am so glad you like each other.’ On July 27, 1925: ‘Agatha showed me your letter to her. I was proud of it, with its fine and sympathetic understanding of the China situation and also of how it is seeming to her. These weeks have been hard for her. You are a very intuitive person.’ A letter of September 1, 1925 encloses a typed copy of a letter from Harrison to C. W. Shipway of Letchworth, with a copy of the letter to which she is angrily responding. In her letter Sims writes of Shipway: ‘Agatha suggests he may be a Wesleyan brother and as such you might deal with him. I would suggest a punch in the eye.’
There is an amusing account, on October 14, 1922, from the Skirvin Hotel, Oklahoma City: ‘I thought you would enjoy this stationery. I assure you it isn’t nearly as wild as the place itself. The whole place acts like the movies. There is a special session of the state legislature called. This is the capitol [sic] of the state and most of the legislators are staying in this hotel and are endeavouring to impeach the governor for all kinds of things, releasing 279 convicts in 6 months is one of the least. Most of them are young for it is a very young part of the country and they wear broad cowboy hats and some of them blue denim overalls and smoke horrid black cigars. I like your pipe much better.’ (The letter is accompanied by a cutting of an editorial on the subject from the Daily Oklahoman, October 14, 1923.)
On May 6, 1924 she writes that she is ‘in the convention which closes today and then on Thursday I go to Washington to the World’s Committee meeting. The Viscountess Gladstone spoke last night on the League of Nations. She was quite good.’ On September 26, 1924: ‘My secretary comes up every day with the letters and I dictate so you see I am not ill merely careful. I am going out to a meeting this afternoon however and expecting to be entirely fit by Monday.’ On November 7, 1920: ‘Did you know I have acquired a small freehold in Cornwall, isn’t it a joke? I always did own the house or sort of own it in the messy way they do things and now I have bought for £50 the land it stands on. I think the rate of exchange was what really tempted me as I had to pay only $181.50 for the £50. Do you know American money well enough to realize how small that is - When you get absolutely poverty stricken through your consistency I will let you live in it for a modest consideration.’) On January 1927: ‘I have had my staff in since the 4th. when we are all together it is 15 - 13 are white & 2 are negros [sic] and we have been sitting together 2 hours in the morning & 2 in the afternoon every day discussing our plans. It is most interesting but fatiguing. Tomorrow night mother, A. K., Agatha & I are planning to hear the English singers.’ May 9, 1928: ‘Agatha sails tonight on the Aquitania. She has heard that her mother is ill so is going now instead of later.’
In letter postmarked February 24, 1928: ‘We went to a most interesting play last night a negro folk play called Porgy from the book of the same name by Durose [sic] Heyward. I wish you could get it and read it. It shows a whole other side of America’. May 20, 1928: ‘We thought we would come down on Sunday in the afternoon that is mother, A.K. & I. I don’t know what Margaret Burton is doing - you are good to say we might bring her. Perhaps we will but I will tell you on Sat. She is nice - quiet - a little older than I.’
There are a number of surprisingly-liberal references to religion. On May 19, 1922 she writes: ‘The more I think of you as a “pagan” the more pleased I am, because you really are you know. Of course you have several layers of convention and “inertia” and journalism, but underneath it all you are really very paganish and very, very nice.’ And on November 12, 1922: ‘I think probably what you say is true, we agree more than we realize. Of course I don’t know what I do think about a great many things, for one thing religion. I have never believed one thing and then been vastly upset by learning something different. I can’t remember being in the least disturbed in my college days by so called higher criticism. In other words I am not much interested in theology except as an intellectual pastime. [sic] I find it at times very diverting from that standpoint. The most interesting books I have read in a long time are the volumes called an Outline of Science by Sir Arthur Thompson of the University of Aberdeen I believe it is, one of the Scotch universities anyway. I think I am too apt to see all round a question to ever be strongly partizan on any matter.’
In April 1925: ‘Don’t worry about my orthodoxy, it doesn’t exist. Bishop Brown seemed to get into trouble with his church but it came to nothing. We have an extremely reactionary group in this country, chiefly in the Baptist & Presbyterian churches. Very little in the Episcopal and not in the Methodist.’
Towards the end of the correspondence she writes (March 23, 1928): ‘Your letters are so very dear - we never have talked much have we of the things of the spirit - perhaps it is because we are both Cornish and some things like personal immortality are not so much beliefs as a quality of life.’
The last letter (May 20, 1928) sees her on the verge of travelling to Southampton from New York on the SS Mauretania with her mother, ‘A. K.’ and the missionary Margaret Ernestine Burton.
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THE AGATHA MARY HARRISON CORRESPONDENCE 1924-28
Eighteen signed letters (sixteen in autograph) and one card, also to H. Herbert C. Arthur, regarding her work for the American YWCA on child labour in China. With other matter. London, Prague, Asbury Park, Bristol, Manchester. Also included are a draft of Arthur’s first letter to Harrison, a photograph of Harrison and Mary S. Sims, and two papers on workers’ rights in China. Ten of the nineteen items are in their envelopes, addressed to
Arthur at 59 Howard Rd, New Malden, Surrey, with three sent from on board ship (SS Aquitania, SS Mauretania and SS Berengaria). The letters total 43pp.
As her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography explains, after championing women’s workers rights in Nottingham and Hull, in 1917 Harrison had been appointed by the London School of Economics to the first academic post in Britain concerned with industrial welfare. ‘This work led to her appointment in 1921 by the Young Women’s Christian Association as an investigator into industrial conditions in China. There she became particularly concerned with the issue of child labour, and her often successful efforts to persuade industrialists to dispense with it gave her valuable experience in negotiating in adverse conditions. | From 1925 to 1928 she worked in the USA for the YWCA’s education and research division, after which she returned to Britain to work for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.’
The present correspondence covers the period of Harrison’s work with the Women’s YWCA, an organization which had, since its Berlin Conference of 1910, switched its emphasis to the amelioration of social problems and the education of working women. Harrison had been introduced to the recipient H. Herbert C. Arthur, an active figure in the English Wesleyan Methodist movement, through her American colleague Mary S. Sims, with whom she stayed in New York, an intense relationship existing between the two women.
The strength of Harrison’s extraordinary character shines through vividly in the present correspondence. She is a modern, enlightened woman of conviction, working with determination for social change within an organization with liberal values. Mainly concerned with the question of child labour in China, she attends meetings with the ‘textile men’ of Liverpool and Manchester, and conferences in Prague (where she makes an address) and Asbury Park, and prepares for an interview with the Labour leader and future Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Her ‘rather heavy’ sense of responsibility’ makes her feel a ‘fool’, and she quarrels with Arthur, who has taken ‘a large bit of the burden of this thing’. Her aim, she writes, is to convey to him ‘a vision of a great need. Knowing what that has done to my life - I can only wish the same for you’.
1. 9.30 p.m.’ [1924] On letterhead of 406A King’s Road, Chelsea, SW10 [London]. 2pp., 8vo. Arranging a meeting ‘at the Gaiety Theatre corner (I imagine it is there still) of the Strand & Aldwych at 4.30’. Regarding Sims she writes: ‘Mary is a very special person - so any friend of hers would naturally be of interest to me.’
2. September 5, 1924. ‘at Hull’. 4pp., 12mo. ‘Sincerity is a rare thing - at least the real kind is - so when I meet it I’m never “amused” [...] Why did you hedge your letter round with so much apprehension - didn’t you know perfectly well I’d take what you said just as you meant it? | Of course I gasped - chiefly because I read your letter rushing off in a taxi to have lunch with my late employer - & in my bag I had some letters to post one of which was the decision to go back to America early next year. | I’d like to tell you why I’ve come to that decision - Can we meet again for tea?’
3. October 2, 1924, ‘at Hotel Passage | Prague’, on letterhead of ‘Sociální ústav ?eskoslovenské republiky’. 4pp., 8vo. ‘Here I am sitting solemnly in the Chamber of Deputies - with one ear open for an impassioned orator in French. I’ve learned one thing - that not one day longer must I be unable to understand fully - & speak imperfectly - French & German. Internationalism is impossible unless you can understand at least 2 other languages other than your own - I’m now led to believe! [...] I tried hard to see you before I left, but there were wearisome cttees right up to the end. At Swanwick a Wesleyan conf. of a select nature was also in session. <?> was there. Mr Carter. etc. the latter - asked me if I’d come in front of their I.<?>: Cttee (Wesleyan) & later - if I’d join them at Communion - I hd to tell him I didn’t want to. Once or twice when I was at school I went - but never since. I don’t think friend Carter knew what to make of me! | I’ve read Hovelaque [sic] - & there is not as much as I was led to expect - but much that will provoke discussion. [...] I mounted to the speakers desk - under the Presidents chair & addressed the Conf: on China. A Conference that has met to discuss home day- workers’ councils & unemployment. And the East - unless they all watch will wreck everything - I’d been given 30 min: but half an hour before I spoke I was told I could have 5 mins ! ! I’d like to tell you about it one day. It was a pompous <?> audience - & struck terror to my heart. Then my mind went back to the night shift I saw just before I left - & the memory of the absolute rightness of the cause - stiffened my knees - & somehow I got through - Its all over - & what I said is to be presented by the British delegation in some significant resolution to the Conference later.’
4: [November 2, 1924] ‘at 406a Kings Road S.W10 | Sunday’. 3pp., 8vo. ‘Next week are my most important meetings in Liverpool & Manchester - do you know how I’ve wanted to get at these textile men. | At one place I found a group just beginning the study of Hovelaque’s [sic] book [see Item Eighteen below] & I realised then I needed these points you mentioned by [sic] me.’ She asks him to repeat in writing his opinion of the book. ‘I talked so much at our last tea, instead of making notes of what you said! I have not forgotten Henry Hodgkins book’. She has heard that Mary Sims is ill (‘What a terrible nuisance a body is’). She has had lunch with ‘the Bishop of Birmingham (Barnes)’.
5. December 30, 1924. 2pp., 8vo. ‘Tomorrow I go to Manchester for the Students Conference - to speak twice - woe is me. [...] I sail Feb: 18th for New York. To disturb my peace of mind a note came 2 weeks ago from the National Xtian Council of India if I’d come out there & help them do what was being done in China on the industrial question!!’
6. [January 30, 1925] ‘at Manchester | Friday’. 1p., 12mo. She is ‘having an annoying time’ in Manchester and proposes an arrangement to tell him about it on her return to London.
7. ‘In a Conference - at Asbury Park -’ [Conference on Religious Institutes and Summer Schools, May 6, 1925]. 3pp., 12mo. ‘I’m sitting next to Mary in a conference of earnest men & women - & we’ve 4 elephant sized blackboards - & a chairman who stands with chalk poised ready to put our ill considered thoughts down on the said blackboard. Its all very funny - we’re supposed to be seeing how Xtianity can be applied to current issues.
There’s one very tiresome man with huge horn-rimmed glasses that Mary & I particularly dislike - he’s got fat hands for one thing - & talks a lot - & thinks he’s clever. I’ve picked him out of the whole group for Mary to marry. I tell her there’s no choice. [Sims has added the note in pencil: ‘(Of course he is already married | M.)’] Just a little way away is the sea - & soon Mary & I will go & look at this wideness’.
8. May 3, 1926. On letterhead of the National Board of the Young Womens Christian Associations of the United States of America, New York. 3pp., 8vo. Regarding Sims, who is in England, she writes: ‘Inevitably she is going to be called in to a considerable extent on the W.C.A situation in England - it just can’t be helped - and investigated. At odd times you’ve met me after I’ve had a heavy time - & it meant much to me of rest & refreshment. This is just to say - when Mary is in London attending meetings - will you watch her carefully - & insist on her having tea - etc She’s very tiresome about food unless she’s watched. [...] Even I believe she has to be in these British meetings - they value her opinion - I’m glad you’ll be on hand to be a safety valve’.
9. TLS. September 27, 1926. 1p., 4to. With one enclosure (see below). She gives him permission to use a ‘memorandum’, and asks him to say that ‘it was prepared by some of us who have been working in other countries on the industrial question for the committee that is making the agenda for the coming International Missionary Council’. She is enclosing (see below) ‘a letter I have just received from the Chinese delegate who went to the World’s Committee at Oxford (the same meeting that Mary attended.) It is rather a personal kind of a letter but it expresses so much the feeling of a great number of people that I want you to see it. When all the reasoned arguments have been applied to the Chinese situation you are still left with this great spiritual upheaval that so few people take into account. You cannot reckon with it with gunboats though you can temporarily quell it. I hold my breath every day wondering what the outcome will be.’ She is also sending (not present) ‘a copy of the petition that the Y.W.C.A. in China presented to the Boxer Indemnity Commission. That delegation is now back in England and I imagine that Parliament will be considering their report in the near future. I consider this statement is a reasonable one and it represents the opinion of a large number of people. If only we would be generous instead of merely logical what a profound effect it would have on the present situation.’ Enclosed is a typed copy (3pp., 8vo) of a document headed: ‘By request Mrs. Mei and Miss Ting in May presented to the British Indemnity Delegation, on behalf of the Y.W.C.A., the following statement (free translation) concerning current Chinese opinion regarding use of the British Indemnity funds.’
10. [undated (signed ‘A. H.’), enclosed by Sims in a letter of 12 October 1926.] On letterhead as Item Seven. 1p., 12mo.
11. June 30, 1927. With Southampton postmark, ‘On board S.S. “Majestic”.’ 3pp., 12mo. ‘Here I am within sight of England again - & its a good feeling. I had decided to stay in England & work - then suddenly 10 days before I sailed they asked me to come back to take the work of a colleague of mine who has suddenly died. So I go back for a year at the end of September & in between I’m going to rest & go to a few Conferences - & probably to the Assembly (if I can get in) at Geneva. [...] I’m deep in China of course -
one of my interviews is to be with Ramsay Macdonald re the whole affair. [...] Thank you for your efforts on China’s behalf with Mr Carter. I remember him well when he first came in to the Ministry & thought he was rather stupid & not given to “seeing things”‘
12. ACS, postmarked from Bristol, 5 July 5, 1927.
13. TLS, December 30, 1927. 1p., 4to. ‘I have got several friends in the Student movement and one particularly, Margaret Reed, [in manuscript: ‘Annandale North End Rd Golders Green N.W1’] who was one of our secretaries in India and is particularly interested in foreign students that come to England.’ A twelve-line quotation from a letter from Reed to her on ‘the Student Movement’ follows.
14. March 1, 1928. On letterhead as Item Seven. 2pp., 8vo. ‘Mary will probably have told you what has happened - Miss Cratty [Mabel Cratty (1868-1928)] - the very marvellous head of this Association died on Monday. Its hard to convey to anyone outside just what this means - its a deep personal, as well as a corporate - loss. And it is a knock down blow for Mary - for without reservation she accorded this woman a respect & love & obedience that was unquestioned. Knowing Mary - you’ll be able to judge of the kind of person Miss Cratty was - when I say this’. Sims ‘needs all the “standing by” of her friends just now - her wistful elf-like face these days haunts me.’ Two newspaper cuttings regarding Cratty’s death are included with the letter, one of which has a headline describing her as ‘Director of 600,000 Members, 110 Foreign Officials and All Local Association Heads’.
15. ‘20 Dudham Park | Bristol’ [no date]. 2pp., 12mo, plus pencil note of 1p., 12mo. Sending and praising the poems of Carl Sandburg. ‘Dr Lew arrived Friday & went straight to Swanwick - They want him to go to Winchester & I hope he will for then we can travel to Swanwick together for I am going to the Second Student Conf. there after Winchester. [...] I bought Mary a cherry dress yesterday. I suddenly saw it in a shop here. & as the Americans say, “it had her name on”‘.
16. ‘20 Dudham Park | Bristol | Tues’ [no date]. 3pp., 4to. ‘I’m glad you liked Mr Koo - I felt you did. Mr S<?> is all you say - but I have a soft corner for him - because it was through him that Child Labour Commission was appointed. He was a real friend at court & cared. And he was miles ahead of his colleagues - why he stood out as an understanding person on China ! ! ! So you can imagine what the others are like & why I have so many white hairs [...] You must know perfectly well that you have been a great help to me over these rather difficult months. Naturally I want your help for China - you’re in touch with people - you preach - & I wanted you to see some of the “underneath” part of the problem. Your letter, & comments on Mr Koo & Mr S<?> show me that you’ve sensed it all. And to help on this one does not need to go to China - the work on it is this end - something must be done with the “Mr S<?>‘ while they are growing up. | I feel you have taken a large bit of the burden of this thing - so can you imagine what that means - for I happen to be a fool, & feel a rather heavy responsibility not only for the tragic little men d<?> of 687 in <?> - but the bigger question of our attitude - so do you understand why I hate your remarks? | Now we’ll call a truce’.
17. ‘Monday | Bristol’ [no date]. 4pp., 12mo. ‘Pax. & a truce on your own terms - how could it be otherwise after your letter! I hate things that are not mutual - & felt from your letter you had no realisation, of what a help knowing you had been to me too. | But now I see that I’ve passed on in a slight measure what Grace <?> gave to me - a vision of a great need. Knowing what that has done to my life - I can only wish the same for you’ A long postscript describes how ‘Those textile men in Manchester have taken hold of this thing’, with reference to the China Section of the Chamber of Commerce and the International Labour Office.
18. ‘Glasgow | Monday’ [no date]. 2pp., 8vo. ‘Mother & I are having a good, tho’ damp time. Learning to be an aunt is a humiliating process - my small niece stares through me with wide gray blue eyes - You feel more baffled before a child than anyone else on earth.’
19. ‘Sunday’ [no date, 1924?]. 20 Dudham Park | Bristol. 2pp., 4to. Regarding two books. The first, Emil Hoverlacque’s ‘China’ (see Item Four above), contains a ‘diatribe on missionaries especially in China’; and the other, Tawney’s ‘Acquisitive Society’, has a final chapter which ‘explains what I feel very adequately [...] its my answer to what you said about your unsureness versus people’s sureness’.
20. Corrected pencil autograph draft of Arthur’s first letter to Harrison (removed from a letter to him from Sims, 19 May 1924). 1p., 8vo. Begins: ‘Dr Miss Harrison, | I have a cousin, Mary Sims of Simsbury & New York, who has suggested that I should invite you to have a “dish o’ tay” (as Cornish people say) with me somewhere in London during your stay there.’ He states that ‘Mary & I have a certain regard for each other [...] I leave Kingsway at 4 o/c every day. We could probably find some purveyor of cut cake & cigarettes which Mary says is ordinarily agreeable to you.’
21 and 22. Two typescripts. The first (4pp., 8vo) headed ‘Message of the National Christian Council to the Christians in China. | Adopted by the Executive Committee, July 15, 1925’. Autograph message from Harrison at head: ‘I thought these would interest you.’ The second (2pp., 8vo) headed ‘Greetings to all missionary brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ in China’. Autograph message by Harrison at head: ‘Chefoo is in North China & the centre of the <Garment?> industry’. The two items removed from a letter from Sims to Arthur, September 11, 1925.
23 and 24. Two small black and white photographic prints, both with image of 6 x 4 cm. The first shows a smiling Sims and Harrison, captioned by Sims on reverse: ‘Not to [be] outdone by you in the matter of pictures | This is Annie and me on our roof - Taken in May’. The second is of a tree in snow, and is captioned by Sims on reverse: ‘This is our same roof - that our back windows look on the 1st. day of April when we had the biggest snow of the year. It is the same corner where we are standing in the other picture’. The two photographs have been removed from a letter from Sims to Arthur, August 15, 1924.
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