CHAPTER XII
A.D. 1882-1883
THE FIRST STONE OF BATALA CHURCH
About the middle of August Miss Tucker went for change to Allahabad; and very soon after her arrival she was able to speak of herself as ‘less tired’ than before leaving Batala; despite two nights of severe travelling, inclusive of sixteen hours straight off in her duli. ‘The change of air already tells on my bodily frame,’ she wrote; ‘and the change of scene on my mind and spirits.... I was becoming low in every way.’ Before the end of September she was back again in Batala; and there she was soon joined by Mr. Baring, after his most sad absence. For a while, but only for a while, Batala was still to be his home.
In October for the first time the idea came definitely up of building a ‘Mission Bungalow’ in the place, an idea which afterwards developed into A. L. O. E.’s last earthly home.
It was also in the course of 1882 that some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her to revise the same before publication. Miss Tucker had not attained to modern composure on such questions, and she wrote with indignation: ‘I am afraid ... neither you nor others may like my note to ——.... I need not dwell upon the part about the little book; it is too personal to myself. What would you think of a little book being written about yourself,—and sent to you to correct? Oh! Oh!! Oh!!!’
For some time past Charlotte Tucker had been watching with great interest the movements of the Salvation Army in India; at first with a disposition to admire and approve, which tendency gave place gradually to strong disapproval, as she saw more of the methods employed, and found the exceedingly defective nature of the religious teaching given.
Some very curious glimpses of Indian modes of life and thought, and of the manner in which Miss Tucker dealt with them, appear in the letters of 1882 and 1883, as will be seen in succeeding extracts. Among the singular things constantly happening, an old woman in a Zenana, at about this time, composedly offered to sell to A. L. O. E. one of her daughters-in-law. ‘If you will give me a hundred rupees, you may have her,’ the old woman said frankly. Needless to remark, Miss Tucker did not buy the poor girl!
‘Nov. 17, 1882.—I had, I thought, finished my Zenana-visiting to-day, when a man, at a loom in a room which I had not entered, called out to me, “I wish a Gospel. I want to compare it with the Koran.” He and the bibi wanted me to come into their room; so of course I went and sat down. Says the man, “I think my religion good. I want to compare our books.” “Much better,” said I. The man brought his Koran, a translation into Urdu, probably made by some Christian, or at least printed in some Christian press. The good man treated me to such a long reading of the Koran, page after page, I did not know when he would stop! I felt it not only common politeness to sit and listen attentively, but good policy also, for how can I expect an earnest Muhammadan to give the Gospel a fair hearing, if I will not even listen to the Koran?
‘The man was anxious that I should understand as well as hear, stopping every now and then to translate a word that he thought might puzzle me. But the Urdu was particularly simple for anything doctrinal. To understand anything doctrinal, even such sermons as I hear, it is absolutely necessary to know some Arabic words. I have written out more than two hundred,—chiefly Arabic,—all beginning with M, and mostly three-syllabled words, which I feel that I ought to know; yet they are hardly of any use with women; and if I have them all at my fingers’ ends, I shall still be very imperfectly furnished. Is it not a puzzling language? Of course, some of these two hundred words are provokingly similar to each other, but the meaning is different.’
In the same letter she mentions a visit from the Indian Christian Faqir, M., who a quarter of a century before had given up a lucrative situation, and ever since had wandered about India, preaching the Gospel. On 20th November the same subject recurs:—