Since such a resolution would mean that the movement had now gone beyond the point where we had to break in to be heard, and would start things in the right direction, I arranged to spend three months in India, from November to January, under the auspices of the International Information Center, which had been set up in London after the Geneva Conference so that various peoples and countries interested in the subject might have some means of contact.
Mrs. John Phillips, who had fought many battles in Pittsburgh for birth control, suggested that her daughter, a graduate of Vassar and a newspaper woman, might come along as my secretary. All the way a fine young crowd rallied around the lively Anna Jane, who had as great a capacity for laughter as any human being I ever knew. Nothing was too hard for her, nothing too big or too small for her to do; altogether she was a perfect companion, beginning with our voyage to England, and ending in Honolulu.
Temporarily in London was Gandhi’s appointed successor, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, of a family noted for scholarship. He was the youthful leader of the more radical elements in India, much more inclined towards Communism than Gandhi. After having been in jail for four years he had now been released to see his wife who was ill and dying in Germany. I was unable to be present at a reception for him, so Anna Jane telephoned to say I was sorry. “Why should Mrs. Sanger be sorry?” he said, with the simplicity of the truly great. “She can come any time.” I did so the next afternoon.
Nehru was quiet and poised, with a thoughtful manner which impressed you immediately as one of controlled intelligence. His intention was to establish in the mind of Young India that Gandhi’s spiritual doctrines would only be effective if knit with economic and sociological principles.
More recondite than the Indian was the Englishman, Paul Brunton, small and dark, with a solemn, intense, almost mystic expression in his eyes. He was attempting to find what virtue lay in fakirs and holy men, combing India for them, and had embodied the result in his book, The Search in Secret India. He told me, “Not many holy men remain; most of them have gone back into the mountains, inaccessible to Westerners. The one for whom I have the greatest regard is the sage of Arunachala, the Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai. My wife and I have a little hut southwest of Madras, and if you will visit us when you reach that section of India, I will see that you come into his presence.”
Naturally I accepted his offer eagerly and put it on my “must” list.
Shortly before my departure from London, a farewell banquet was given at the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, a relic of old London known to few, and to which you could be admitted only by invitation. It was on Monkwell Street in the City near the London Wall and Aldersgate. Well aware of the difficulties of threading that maze, even by daylight, I inquired of the carriage attendant at the Savoy whether the taxi-driver were familiar with it.
“Certainly, Madam.”
Off I went with Mrs. Kerr-Lawson, the painter’s wife, somewhat pressed for time. As usual in November, it was raining. After we had serpentined in and out for twenty minutes we began to surmise that the driver was lost, and I called to him, “Don’t you know the way?”
“Well, I thought it was down ’ere, but it don’t seem to be.”