Interview conducted by Reggie Holme
RAE Holme: I am sitting in a house in Grasmere with Miss Guenevere Morton, who lives in Windermere and whose family go back a long way in the history of Scotland and Ireland. First of all, Guenevere, could you tell us a bit about your family background on your father’s side?
Guenevere: I always consider that I come from a pioneering family, not only on my father’s side but my mother’s also. My grandfather - who is the furthest back of the family that I know in Scotland - started life as a shepherd at the age of 9. That was when his father died and he had a terrific sense of responsibility despite his young age. He decided there and then, even though he had an older brother, that he was going to be responsible for his mother and the rest of the family and would earn a living to keep them. Of course, the only thing he could do at that age was to become a shepherd. I don’t know how he earned enough, but they seemed to manage.
As he grew older, he became a weaver like most of the men in his village. He had a loom in his sitting room and he used to sit there and weave away all day watching the goings-on through the window. He was particularly interested in the horses that went by. This time observing gave him a sort of instinct for spotting a good horse. Eventually it meant that when he had enough money he bought a couple of these horses, started breeding and began a stud.
One day he was in Glasgow and saw a tram being drawn by a most beautiful horse. ‘That’s just the mare I would like to develop my stud’, he thought. So, he bought this mare and brought her back to his village. I remember her because she used to draw the carriage that my grandmother used to go around in, in later years. On another occasion he saw a milk-cart going on its rounds, drawn by a beautiful pony. He managed to catch up with the milk-cart and eventually brought this pony home too.
Eventually he had quite a famous stud, horses sold all over the place - as far away as New York, where he used to go to judge them. Judging was one of his hobbies. The stud was in his home village in Ayrshire in the Irvine valley. At that time, it was just one long street and nearly all weaving people. My grandfather’s great concern was that the people there should have enough money to live on and to really lead a happy existence. His whole energy was given to finding new ways of doing things. Eventually he heard about the power-looms which were being used in Nottingham. Taking his courage in both hands, he went all the way to England, to Nottingham, and brought back a power-loom. Eventually the whole valley took to these power looms and started factories there - 2 or 3 factories in the area. The whole area became well-known for the fabrics they produced.
My father got fed up with school life and wanted to be doing something much more, as he thought, creative and exciting. So, my grandfather thought the only thing was to put him into the factory. He started off, like all the others aged 14, at 6 in the morning and did the whole business of learning all the different processes, from the ground up. When he got to 19 his father more or less handed over the works to him to take on. My grandfather went on to other interesting sidelines, including Donegal. He was always concerned about the way people lived. He heard about Donegal and how poor the people there were so he decided to go over there and see what could be done. He actually started the girls weaving in their own homes and not loom-weaving but Donegal hand-tufted carpets. These were the Donegal carpets which are also known all over the world. They were all made by hand, which meant people could do it in their own homes and I believe that is still going on. It was a very big industry in that part of the world for many years.
My mother’s family is Irish. She has records of her family which go back to about 300, which is quite a long way back. Down the ages they have always seemed to take responsibility in Ireland being Mayors or Sheriffs of their towns, or whatever it was. Then about 200 years ago one of them went out to India and they have been going there ever since - both in the Indian Army and the Indian Civil Service and things of that sort. A very different background but also a pioneering one. Her father was, in a way, much more interested in things of the mind than in soldiering, which was his profession. He apparently spent his evenings reading philosophy at home rather than going out and living a social life.
When my father took over the works, he had learnt a lot about being very particular about details and seeing that everything was just exactly right. I learnt a lot from him in that way because I helped him myself for quite a while. I was amazed at the extent to which he went to get perfection either in a type of fibre - wool or cotton - or in the colour and getting the match absolutely exactly right. If it wasn’t right it was sent back to be redyed. That sort of standard of perfection was constant throughout the works.
I think Britain was known for its standard of perfection and that is why people came to us for our goods and expertise.
Eventually the works expanded so much in the village that my father decided to find another factory that would take on a lot of the work. He found one in Carlisle so he moved there and got going with his textiles. Eventually it led him on to making dyes because he couldn’t find dyes that would keep their colour. He described once having spent months going over a very special design very carefully, working out all the colouring and getting it to, as he thought, perfection and then producing it. It found its way to the windows of Liberty’s in London. A month or two later he was going past these windows and had a look in. He thought he saw something that looked faintly familiar but couldn’t quite make out what it was. Then it suddenly dawned on him that here was his precious tapestry which he had spent so long working out, faded beyond recognition - the colours just gone. So, he decided there and then that he was going to make fast-dyes so that people could enjoy these things, keep their blinds up in their cottages, not keep out the sun and transform life in that way.
He had a curious sense of knowing what was possible, without knowing how it was going to happen. And I think if you do have that, you somehow have the vision and the initiative to keep at it when other people want to give up. I know this happened quite a few times when the fast-dyes were evolving, because it took years sometimes to get certain colours really fast. On more than one occasion I know his chemists felt that this was not going to be any good at all but he kept encouraging them to keep at it and they did achieve it in the end. But he had a knack of knowing how to choose the right people. He used to go to Cambridge for the young chemists there.
The factory made materials of all sorts - many were printed fabrics for curtains. It made all furnishing materials of one sort or another from heavy curtain materials and light casement materials and carpets.
My sisters and I were brought up to have really everything we could possibly want and it was the era when women didn’t have to go to college, it wasn’t expected of them. The thing that I was interested in was travelling, which I was able to do. The first place I went to was America. I had never been to any other place outside Britain until I went to America with my father and my mother. He was going over on a business trip so we had a few weeks over there.
Then the next place I went to happened to be Egypt, where I went with Professor Flinders Petrie and a party that he was taking out for that winter’s tour. I knew nothing whatever about archaeology but here was a chance to visit another country which was the thing that really interested me. So, I joined up, went with them and had a most fascinating winter, living in the desert miles from anywhere, in the most primitive possible existence, digging up skeletons and so on. I used to have to measure all the long bones and skulls with Professor Petrie, and these eventually found their way to London. The skeletons belonged to the people - the courtiers of the Pharaoh who happened to die at that particular time. All his courtiers were automatically killed off when the Pharaoh died - bashed on the head and put underground. Some of them obviously had been bashed on the head and buried without making sure that they were really dead at that time, and you could see by the position they were lying in that they had tried to get out - which was rather a tragic discovery.
For a short time, I went into the business to see how it worked. I was actually particularly interested in textiles having been brought up amongst them. I used to help my father to choose the designs and colours for the different printed fabrics and I learnt a tremendous lot from him in that way, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I learned a lot about perfection in work because he was absolutely determined to get the right thing, whatever it was, for what he was doing. The right fibre, the right fabric, to make the right quality of fabric, and the dyes had to be exactly matching. If they weren’t right they were sent back again.
He found a process going on in America which he thought would have great possibilities because he could see what he could develop it into. They in America were making candlewick bedspreads. I believe originally they were made in Canada, and probably the States as well, in the far outlying districts where the women wanted interesting work to do besides all the chores. They invented the idea of embroidering plain material with candlewick. They used to make their own candles of course and they used the wick for embroidering bedspreads or whatever they wanted to do. This eventually turned into quite an industry and the Americans discovered a way of doing it by machinery, which is what interested my father. So, I went over there, discovered how it all worked, came back and we got a department going in our factory. We didn’t make bedspreads so much as interesting hangings for exhibitions and different decorative use. A machine like that could do this while ordinary weaving couldn’t produce it. But of course, we did do a lot of bedspreads and everyday things as well. It was a process that lent itself to all sorts of possibilities and, of course, all the colour, design and so on was what interested me very much.
My mother’s people had been going to India from Ireland for the last 200 years and that was what they expected their life to be. The discipline of letting their husbands be out there while they had to be home looking after their families was part of life. They thought nothing of the sacrifice of that sort of existence. My mother’s parents actually died when she was fairly young so she had to earn her living. She decided to be a teacher and was one of the first students at the Charlotte Mason College in Ambleside. She learnt how to do all sorts of interesting things there, not only teaching from books but doing handicrafts and such like. One of my Scottish uncles heard about this. He was very keen to have his workers in Ayrshire know something about it... how to employ their leisure time and so on. So, he came and fetched one or two students from this place in Ambleside to go to Scotland and teach them how to do it and that was how my mother met my father.
My grandfather’s firm was one that was founded on exact standards, perfect work. For that reason, it went on expanding and overflowed across the border into the north of England to a mill in Carlisle. My father took on this mill and started off on numerous different things in his own line, especially getting these fast dyes perfected. I worked for a short time with him at this time and learnt a tremendous lot about what perfect standards mean in a business - the sort of workmanship that Britain was renowned for right throughout the world. I think it was because people took a real pride in their work and got a kick out of it. It was also because it took all their imagination, ingenuity and skill to produce it. One longs to see that in this country again. As a result of all his work my father received a knighthood in 1938, which of course he was proud to receive but he knew that it was really as a result of all the people who had been working with him over the years to produce all these things.
It was very much a family firm and we had several generations of different workers’ families working. I don’t think there was ever a strike that I remember. It really was a family feeling, as I remember it. I wouldn’t say it was paternalism but because my father was brought up very much like these other people in his early days so he knew exactly how and what they felt. He could feel and understand their side of things. I never heard the word trade unions in those days at all! I really don’t know if they were there or not.
When I was young I had a variety of things that interested me. I used to travel a great deal. When I wasn’t travelling I was living at home and studying various things in Edinburgh, such as music - violin and singing. I went to the School of Art and studied sculpture there for a time. I always had something interesting on hand. But at the same time, in spite of all this, living in a family that had many activities going on all the time, I was getting nearer and nearer to a nervous breakdown. I lived in a very self-contained way and wouldn’t let anybody know what I was really thinking or feeling about anything. So, when I heard about the fact that people could actually become different, and they were able to sit quite happily in a large room full of people just saying quite honestly what had happened to them in the way of miracles the previous week, I thought ‘well now, if young people are as free to talk like that, that’s just what I want’. This is the way I first met the Oxford Group in 1930 and was told about an evening where some relations had been listening to a number of young people who had just been to Dr Frank Buchman’s city campaign in Edinburgh a few months earlier.
At that moment I think my sister got in touch with these people before I did and she was the person that I simply couldn’t get on with at all. We couldn’t get on with each other. We literally weren’t on speaking terms. Her name was Jean and she was the one who came next to me in the family. We both wanted to be different but just hadn’t the slightest idea how to set about it. Then when she had been to a meeting of the Oxford Group and discovered how people could become different, she actually decided she wanted to try it out.
The interesting thing was that she became so different that I couldn’t go on being nasty to her anymore! So, I became different too, in a way. She just was easier to talk to, and the funny thing was that she told me afterwards that the thing that clinched it for her was - as she walked out of the drawing room one night she just turned round and said ‘goodnight’ to me - a thing she hadn’t done for many a long day - and that was the nearest we got to speaking at that point. She was a very cheery outgoing person, could easily make friends with everybody around and was very entertaining and amusing. That’s exactly what I wanted to be. So, fundamentally I was completely eaten up with jealousy of her. Then when we became honest with each other, I discovered she was jealous of me for completely other things. So, we just laughed things over and saw how absolutely ridiculous it was and that when people could become really honest with each other it really did clear the barriers away and you could laugh at it. We became great friends after that and managed to live along together, do things together and really enjoy it.
I went to one of these meetings also and I said to one of the girls afterwards, ‘What do people mean when they keep on talking about surrendering their life to God?’ because everything new that happened to these people seemed to happen after that. She immediately said, ‘Well perhaps you had better do it and then you will know. Would you like to pray about it?’ Well, that was the last thing in the world I could ever dream of doing - praying out aloud in front of somebody else. But I realised that if I really meant business I would have to do it. So, I did. I haven’t the slightest idea what I said and after I had finished I felt a complete fool. But the interesting thing was that from that moment onwards my reactions to things were completely different. My mother said to me some time afterwards, when I started to be really honest with her, ‘Well you didn’t need to say any of these things to me because I knew at once that you were different.’
My father was still alive at that time. We had an interesting evening one time, because the whole family got involved at this point, and we had a time together just really being honest with each other about all sorts of things for the very first time. It was the most hilarious evening we had had for a very long time, so it showed me what can happen amongst families and with anybody when they are prepared to be different themselves and to do something about it. We were basically, outwardly, a happy family. I think what changed was that we became real with each other. Not hiding any feelings or resentments or reactions or any of these things but being prepared to come out with them when it seemed necessary.
I began to use the money I had, which I had used for travelling and doing all the things which I wanted to do, in a new way. I became prepared to ask God what he wanted me to do - which is the thing I had never thought of doing before. I had always believed that God had a plan, but I expected his plan to bless mine, so to speak. I remember one time very much wanting to go for a holiday up to the Highlands. I was mentioning this to somebody else, and they said to me, ‘Well perhaps God doesn’t want you to go to the Highlands’. I thought this was an extraordinary thing - why ever would God not want me to go to the Highlands. Then I think I learnt for the first time to realise that my motive was not necessarily God’s motive. There wasn’t anything wrong in my motive for wanting to go up there, I hadn’t any ulterior motives, but it just wasn’t what God wanted me to do at that moment.
I had to experiment and believe that God could really show me what he wanted me to do and not necessarily that I would know the reason, just the very fact that he wanted me to do a thing. I think the decision I made when I decided to give my life to God was to be available to be used by him in his way, which didn’t necessarily mean my way at all. It meant my being available to go to different places with other people, to meet and get to know people and try to help them to discover these new things for themselves.
RAEH At the training sessions and house parties of the Oxford Group, I understand that there was instruction in how you do find the guidance of God and how you check it.
That is what I found particularly helpful because, as I say, I had always had a certain faith and belief in God but didn’t know how to get at him, as it were. Then I heard these people talking about listening to God and having a mind and a heart free to receive what he had to say. That’s to say, being free of the fears and the hatreds and all the things that were blocking the way and learning how to measure my life up to God’s standards. That was quite a thing for me to do, to sit down and write things down under the headings of the 4 absolute standards - honesty, purity, unselfishness and love - and nothing could be more practical than those four headings. That illumined a great deal for me. Then being honest about all these things just cleared the way for God to be able to guide me and show me what he wanted me to do - whether it was though thoughts that came into my head or through circumstances or what. That was the thing that made Christianity practical for me.
I had been brought up in the usual conventional church way and read the Bible, not very often I must admit, so it was a new thing for me to learn how to do this and to really read, take apart the Bible and read it every day, and learn how to assess and apply it to myself. That was a new step for me. I find the best time for this is first thing in the morning. Sometimes it is in the middle of the night. Anyway, to do it first thing in the day and I know that if ever I don’t do this which is very rarely indeed, the day goes topsy turvy. Having this time with God makes all the difference in the world to clarifying one’s thoughts and actions and thinking of other people you are going to be seeing or be in touch with, and actually praying for them, for the situations that you know are in need of it. Prayer can become a real weapon on these occasions and you can really use it to help people and situations. I was grateful for having learnt that it can be used in this way because now I am getting considerably older and don’t go about as much as I did, I can spend my time in these ways which I feel is still a fighting time for people.
I try to put people in touch with God, not so much to pray for what I think their needs are but to enable them, in their own hearts, to be open to receiving what God is waiting to say to them. I had a letter from somebody only yesterday saying she had been ill, had an operation and was feeling very depressed and I had written to her - I don’t know what I said to her but what I did say apparently helped her to battle through to the next stage in her cure and she finds that she really is able to hang on to something that gives her hope.
RAEH: At the house parties of the Oxford Group there was training given in ‘stewardship’ -- meaning stewardship for God of time, talents and money. What action did this lead to in your case?
I learnt I had to think how I should spend my money, which till then had nearly always been on myself. I was very fond of clothes and I was very fond of travelling. I spent most of my money on both those things, going to concerts perhaps and that sort of thing. Then I began to see how I could spend it differently and how God really could show me how to use what he had given me of this world’s goods to be responsible for. That meant seeing how I could use them for other people. There were a lot of people around me who needed help in that way, maybe helping them on a journey or whatever it might be. Then later on, soon after the war, I had the thought to go to South Africa for a time, taking the play The Forgotten Factor out there, (description of what the play was about given by GM, but not typed here) and I went as I thought for six months. It resulted eventually in my staying 25 years. While I was there I got to know the country well and to see what the needs were and how we could help with this play. It was giving people new ideas to live by and for, and we took this play - about families - all over Southern Africa. It was so relevant wherever we took it and people even to this day remember it when they saw it 25-30 years ago.
I got to know Africa quite a bit at that time. Coming back to Europe from there for the first time I went to Caux, the world centre for MRA in Switzerland. While I was there I had the thought to use my wherewithal in some way for Africa. I thought maybe that might mean buying a house somewhere. I imagined at that time it might be South Africa. But nothing came clear for a while. Then later on the idea came from two other people actually, who knew what I had in mind, that maybe Salisbury in Rhodesia would be the place for me to buy a house. I was very pleased about this idea because I had already been there and I thought it was a marvellous place to be. There is nothing that could be more satisfying than to provide somewhere of that sort. The thought came to me that it wasn’t to be a house for my home but a house for the use of MRA. The people who came and went from that country could use it as a meeting place, for people of all races, on neutral ground where they had a chance of getting to know each other and talking things over. So, I got a house there and it has been going for 25 years and is still going strong. That has been a great interest and satisfaction to me.
I had a great thrill last time I was in Rhodesia about four years ago. My first morning there I happened to be alone in the sitting room and suddenly a young African dashed into the room from the stoop, the veranda, and I didn’t know who he was. Then I discovered that he was the son of a very well-known African leader there. The interesting thing was that he felt at ease enough to come into the home as though he was part of the family. That was something totally new in a white home, to have people feeling free enough to do that. I was grateful to feel that was possible. Many other people have met there in the same way, like Alec Smith, the son of Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister and Arthur Kanodereka, the Treasurer of the UANC (United African National Council) and one of Bishop Muzorewa’s party. People of that calibre, both white and black, have been there. They have all met and been able to sit down and talk really honestly as amongst friends, about what they hoped for and what they felt for the country.
We had many interesting dinner parties there, for the purpose of the whites and blacks meeting together who had never had a chance of meeting before. I have, on several occasions, heard both the black people and the white people say afterwards, ‘Well I never thought I could talk like that to those other people, they are just like us.’
RAEH Was Dr Buchman always a serious man? Was he solemn?
One of my earliest recollections of Frank was at my home outside Edinburgh, where we had many people come to visit us. When Frank Buchman was there he used to come out sometimes and join us. We were quite a lot of us one day sitting around our tea table with the family and friends in the big bay window when suddenly the door opened and my sister Jean appeared and ushered in a lady we had never seen before. We didn’t know who she was. She was rather an elderly lady, dressed in slightly old-fashioned clothes, with a saucy little hat, and altogether rather outstanding. Jean said, ‘Here is Mrs. Damp Squib’. We suddenly realised that a short time before Frank Buchman had asked my mother how she was getting on with her friends, the group that she used to join with for fellowship and so on in part of Edinburgh. My mother had replied, ‘Oh I think they are a lot of damp squibs’. Frank was very intrigued by this, so he decided he would come along and introduce the rest of the family to Mrs. Damp Squib.
The other thing I remember about the same time was that we played quite a lot of tennis. One day Frank decided that he would like to play tennis so we got a foursome together and started off. Frank burbled hard without stopping for the whole game. He never stopped talking once and sent the most colossal lobs up into the air which nobody could possibly return. I thought to myself ‘He doesn’t know anything about tennis at all!’ Then I discovered some years later that he actually must have been rather good, because his first visit to Oxford was part of a tennis team from Cambridge. That was how he came to meet some of the undergraduates from Oxford in the very early days. So, he enjoyed taking people in sometimes, pulling their leg.
At some of the earlier house parties we had, quite a few people used to get up and rather enjoy recalling the whole of their lives. They seemed to think that was going to be a help to them and other people. But Frank Buchman didn’t quite agree and my sister Jean was rather good at writing skits. So, she decided she would write a skit about ‘Mrs. Total Recall’. She did this and used to perform it at some of the earlier house parties. It was these clothes which she had collected for Mrs. Total Recall that Frank appeared in at this tea party, dressed as Mrs. Damp Squib.
At one time I was helping to look after a flat which Frank lived in, in Hay Hill, London. We used to have to arrange his meals for him and act as hostesses. He was having a lunch party one day and I had got it all ready, as I thought, very nicely. He came and looked all around the table before the guests arrived. He looked at the side plates on which I had put small slices of bread. I just sort of put them on without thinking how they looked or which way they faced or anything. He came round and put every slice exactly straight on each plate, which was a lesson to me in meticulous detail which makes all the difference to the look of a place.
My father always enjoyed doing a perfect job. He wouldn’t have had any satisfaction out of it if he hadn’t been able to put his whole attention and energy into it. As an example of how he set about perfecting his fast dyes, he would make cuttings of the colours in short lengths that had been dyed and put them on an exposure sheet which he would send to his brother in law who lived in India. He was requested to put them up on his roof in the full sunlight and leave them there for three or four months, which is what he did. As a result of these experiments over the years, they were able to get the colours that really stood up to sunlight.
I imagined that I would marry one day. I didn’t imagine any other thing actually. Though I had many interests all the time which occupied my attention, at the same time I think I always felt it would be nice to have a team-mate. Then I sometimes think what a lot of bother it has saved me, from having somebody else to worry about. I also realised I would have made a frightfully selfish wife - I would expect my husband automatically to do the things that I would suggest and wanted to do, or think should happen. So, I think both a man and me have been saved a lot.
With special thanks to Ginny Wigan for her transcription, and Lyria Normington for her editing and correction.
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