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It is surprising how difficult it is to recall one’s childhood. In the earliest part of it very little stands out. What events impress themselves on the memory are often of small consequence for a proper assessment of one’s development. A few significant happenings may be worth recording. But let me first introduce the rest of my family. The first child to be born to my parents lived only ten days. Her name was Ethel and I do not remember my parents ever mentioning that such a person had existed. It was from my brother Malcolm that I learned this detail. He was born rather more than a year later, on February 10th, 1903 Since my twin brother and I were not born until 1916, my first recollections of Malcolm were of him as a teenager. Indeed, by the time I was old enough to appreciate what he was doing he had already moved away to College. He had been a pupil at the old Ipswich Municipal School in Tower Ramparts. After graduating from the Imperial College of Science in Metallurgy he returned for a year to teach at his old school. By this time my brother Raymond and I were pupils at the same school in the preparatory department. I remember how proud I was to have a brother on the staff.
I continued to have a special regard for Malcolm and followed his various activities with great interest. He never practised as a metallurgist, but after his year of school teaching joined a rather unusual group of open-air preachers known as the Pilgrim Preachers led by Ernest Luff who lived in Frinton in Essex. I still have a few pictures of Malcolm with this very varied group of people, all of whom were older than he was. I remember meeting Mr. Luff and was greatly impressed by his appearance, for his white beard gave him in my young mind a patriarchal aura. That fervent band of servants of God made a deep impact on Malcolm. They were men who believed in prayer and I remember receiving an itinerary of the route the Pilgrim Preachers were proposing to take as a reminder that they needed prayer. Even at that early time I appreciated something of the sense of co-operation in God’s work between those who worked and those who prayed. It was in some measure the encouragement of Ernest Luff that led my brother Malcolm to apply to Spurgeon’s College for training in the ministry. I followed his progress through the four years he spent at the College with the greatest interest and undoubtedly my own deep interest in theological training owed a great deal to that period. By the time Malcolm reached the end of his training I was still only thirteen, but my appetite for training for the work of God was already being whetted.
Malcolm became minister of the Baptist Church in Rochester, Kent, where he stayed for two years until he and his wife, Margaret, responded to an appeal from the Baptist Missionary Society for a couple to serve in Kinshasa in the Belgian Congo. I remember this was somewhat of a surprise to my parents and to the rest of the family, but since this call was so evidently of God the whole family gave its full support. My mother in spite of her health problems was delighted. During the first three year period of service Malcolm developed considerable skill not only in French but also in the lingua franca Lingala. However he realised that his colleagues were unable to satisfy his enquiring mind about the form of the languages which the Congolese used. He requested the Society’s permission to spend his first furlough at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. His remarkable linguistic ability was at once recognised by the University authorities that he was invited to join the staff of the School as a senior lecturer. But he did not feel his work in Congo was finished and felt in fairness to the Missionary Society that he must return to Kinshasa. After another year however the University renewed its offer and the Baptist Missionary Society recognised that Malcolm’s expertise would be more valuable in instructing those who were destined to work in Africa than his own presence in Kinshasa. It was with very great regret that Malcolm left Africa, although he revisited it many times when he was a member of the University staff. My reason for relating these developments in some detail is because of the significance they had in deepening my own interest in the work of God abroad. There is no more effective way for this to take place than when a member of one’s own family is involved.
Malcolm became Professor of Bantu at the University and Head of the Department of African Studies because of his linguistic and administrative flair. But I was more than a little astonished when after he died I read the obituary in the Times to discover that his colleagues regarded him as aloof and unapproachable. It made me realise with what different eyes those unconnected with the family thought of him. To me he was anything but aloof. He certainly had a fantastic memory which was stocked with an endless supply of fascinating facts. There was one occasion when he was visiting us and had displayed some of this fund of knowledge to my children. In course of conversation he mentioned his difficulty in finding a hat large enough for him. One of my daughters, who was never over-awed by her imposing uncle, commented that it was probable that he was too big-headed. I wish that his former colleagues could have been present to observe the way in which he enjoyed having his leg pulled. Malcolm had lost his wife some few years earlier. She had contracted an illness in Africa, which plagued her latter years and from which she subsequently died. She was of a gentle disposition well suited to keeping my brother’s feet grounded on terra firma.
I naturally had more to do with my other brother Raymond. We were twins, although not identical. Although there was enough facial resemblance for other people immediately to recognise us as brothers, we were different in almost every other respect. For him sport took precedence over studies. He was definitely not of an academic mould. At school he was content to remain in the lower streams provided he could play for the school team. His great love was cricket and he not only played for the school team but later graduated to the reserve team of the East Suffolk and Ipswich Cricket Club. This was all totally beyond me who never engaged in sport at all if I could get out of it, which I usually managed to do.
But I must go back a bit. Even in my earliest years I do not remember having too much in common with Raymond although we were attached to each other in a close sort of way. There is something about being a twin which is indefinable but real in the way in which two are linked together. On looking back I wonder to what extent the element of competition affected me more strongly than I realised at the time. Raymond was extrovert whereas I was not. He was pushing and adventurous, whereas I was timid and retiring. There was a sense in which I envied his greater confidence in himself. But I soon gave up the attempt to vie with him. I understood from my mother that when we were born Raymond was the stronger of the two physically. In fact I was so weak that my mother wondered at one time whether I would survive. But since God had his own plans for me I did survive, although I never appeared to be so physically strong as my brother.
I think it was more by accident than by choice that we both at one time worked for the same company. I had already joined the staff of the East Anglian Electricity Company, whose offices were at Finborough Hall, near Stowmarket, in the county of Suffolk. When Raymond also joined the same Company we at first bought a tandem and cycled the fifteen miles to and from our home each day. It was characteristic that Raymond usually insisted on being on the front, but I was content to take a back seat. Before long we concluded that there must be an easier way to get to work and it was then that we invested in the old Singer tourer to which I have already referred.
Later Raymond felt the call of God to serve him in colportage work, but his real vocation was evangelistic work among children. He became an evangelist with the Caravan Mission to Village Children, a part of the Scripture Union movement. While I was still working at Finborough Hall I paid various visits to Raymond and his wife Coral to give some assistance with the village campaigns. After some years in Essex he was moved to Sussex and it was while he was actively engaged in a mission in a Sussex village that he became ill and died the same day from a coronary at the early age of forty-six. I still remember the sense of shock when I received the news.
I must mention my sister Doris who is three years younger than I am. In spite of that age difference I soon discovered that I had more in common with her than with my twin brother. I certainly spent more time playing with her than with Raymond although it meant engaging in more girlish activities than boyish. It was a relief to me that when my brother dashed off on one of his adventures which held no interest for me, I always had my sister to play with. I vividly remember one occasion when the three of us went away for a few days’ holiday on a Suffolk farm, Raymond threw himself with great gusto into the activities of the farm (it was harvest time), but my sister and I played in the orchard. I think we played shops, which was much more interesting than romping about the farm. It never occurred to either of us that we could do what we were doing at home and were losing a golden opportunity to experience something new. In the end that holiday was abruptly curtailed as I was rushed home because I had become ill. I believe it resulted in my tonsils being removed, the doctor performing the operation on the kitchen table.
Doris trained as a secretary and obtained a job at the Education Offices in Ipswich. Being in such close touch with the Secretary for Education led her to change direction and train as a mature student at a college of education. For many years she taught commercial subjects, first in Ipswich and later in Reading and Dovercourt. Since retiring she has devoted herself to giving teenage girls Biblical teaching at a small local church.
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