"Doubly a foreigner in strange lands": the experiences of Eva Dykes Spicer, London Missionary Society, at Ginling College, China, from 1923 to 1951.

Seton, Rosemary

The papers of Eva Dykes Spicer (1898-1974), who, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, taught at Ginling College, a Christian women's college in Nanking [Nanjing], China, from 1923 to 1951 and then went on to be principal of a women's college in Nigeria with the Church Missionary Society, were donated to the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London in 2006. This rich collection of papers comprising her extensive correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues, as well as personal items, photographs, lecture notes, texts of talks and sermons, articles, committee papers, and other materials almost entirely relating to her time in China, has now been cataloged online and for the first time made available for research. (1) In recent years attention has focused on the American context of China's Christian Colleges, culminating in the publication, in 2009, of China's Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, edited by Daniel Bays and Ellen Widmer. (2) Spicer was one of the very few non-Americans on the foreign faculty at Ginling, and her papers provide a unique perspective on college life over nearly three decades. (3) They complement documentation to be found in the archives of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, at Yale Divinity Library; the Second Historical Archives, in Nanjing; and the collections of the personal papers of other faculty members such as Matilda Calder Thurston, in the Burke Library Archives in New York. (4)

On a personal level, letters in the collection cast light on Spicer's relationships with her family at home and those formed with her colleagues, students, and Ginling College alumnae--her "family in China." They reflect Spicer's very English background and reveal her difficulties in adjusting not just to Chinese society but also to the strongly American character of campus life in Nanking. They are also revealing of her distinctive attributes: her strong Christian faith, her care and concern for others, her need for affection, and her ability to attract affection in return.

Spicer's background was not that of a typical missionary. Daughter of a solidly middle-class, even wealthy, family, she was educated at socially elite and expensive private schools. The family's prosperity was derived from a leading paper manufacture and stationery business. Her father, Albert Spicer, created a baronet in 1906, was a Liberal Member of Parliament for many years and a driving force in promoting nonconformist, and particularly Congregationalist, causes. For twenty-five years he was treasurer of the London Missionary Society (LMS), largely a Congregationalist body. The family lived in some style in London, at Lancaster Gate near Kensington Gardens, where Eva was born on May 29, 1898. She was one of eleven children, in birth order: (Albert) Dykes, Marion, Bertha, Grace, Stewart, Janet, Lancelot, Gwendolen, Eva, Olga, and Ursula. The eight Spicer daughters received a good education; at least three went on to university, their father wishing them to be capable of earning their own living. He dissuaded them from taking up salaried posts, however, preferring that they undertake work of a voluntary nature. (5) This made for some difficulties for the older daughters; the younger ones, like Eva, were more able to go their own way.

In 1917 she went up to Oxford, where she studied history at Somerville College. At the university she was an active member of the Student Christian Movement and, in her final year, was elected Senior Student of her college. Almost immediately after graduating in 1920, she wrote to the secretary of the LMS, inquiring about opportunities for missionary service. She said later that she had been attracted as a child "by the romance of the appeal" and that all she had learned had, "on the whole, tended to strengthen rather than weaken" that "early desire." (6) After teacher training at the London Day Training College, later the Institute of Education, and a spell at Mansfield College, where she took courses in pastoral and teaching work, she left for China in August 1923. She had been appointed to teach religious studies and to assist in directing religious activities at Ginling College in Nanking.

A New Women's College in Nanking

Ginling College had been founded in 1913 by a number of American mission boards keen to provide tertiary education for female students emerging from Christian schools in eastern and central China and was the first institution in China to award accredited university degrees to female students. (7) The founders had very much in mind the concept of a liberal arts college exemplified by select women's colleges in the United States such as Mount Holyoke College and Smith College. The founding president of Ginling, appointed in 1913, was Matilda Calder Thurston, a graduate of Mount Holyoke. In 1921 Smith College recognized Ginling as "its little sister in the Orient" and provided considerable support over the years through funding and by temporary faculty placements. In 1923 the LMS agreed to support the college by contributing the services "of a self-supporting lady missionary." (8) That same year Spicer arrived at the college, very much the product of an English educational system.

Almost immediately she was immersed in intensive language study at the University of Nanking, it being a requirement for foreign faculty at Ginling to be competent in Chinese, despite English being the main language of instruction. She told her parents that she felt "doubly a foreigner in strange lands." "Nothing but experience," she wrote, "could tell you what a crowd of young and enthusiastic American missionaries are like." Each day began with prayer. "The Almighty," she thought, "must get rather tired of being asked to help us study this great language. I half expect a voice to say ... 'Take it as said/" Spicer also felt "doubly a foreigner" at Ginling, a college run very much on American lines and with a majority of the faculty American. She was relieved to find her colleagues a "more subdued type of American." Most of them, she reported, were "delightful," while Matilda Thurston was "a dear." She added, "I have a particularly soft spot for her because she is so nice and British looking." (9) But she felt cut off from her compatriots, especially from other members of the British missionary community. The nearest was a group at Shanghai, a six-hour journey away, and she could travel there only very infrequently. Early in 1925 her parents, together with their youngest daughter, Ursula, visited China and spent some time in Ginling, leaving Ursula behind for a few months as a companion cum assistant. In what seems a very deliberate display of English tradition, the two sisters organized a May 1 festival at the college "with Robin Hood and Maid Marian, who was also the May queen, and Jack of the Lantern, and Morris dancers, milkmaids, village children, flower girls, chimney sweeps etc." For good measure her sister also put on some scenes from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. (10)

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It took time for Spicer to get to know China or any Chinese. She told her sister Bertha that she knew her "letters have terribly little about China in them, but it's awfully difficult to know what to write." (11) She had endeavored to mix informally with Ginling students from the outset, taking some of her meals at their tables. This meant eating Chinese dishes, which she grew to love. When she commenced teaching in her second year, her courses included Old Testament studies, the expansion of Christianity, and the social and ethical teachings of Christ. She also acted as faculty adviser to the very active branch of the YWCA in the college. Ginling students, she wrote, seemed very capable and had much more poise than English girls, but they also relied rather more on the faculty for help. This she sometimes felt unable to give, bemoaning her inability through ignorance of their backgrounds to fully understand their problems and queries. (12) Gradually, as she got to know them better, she was pleased to find herself able to like them. Perhaps, in any case, their backgrounds were not so dissimilar from her own, since many came from socially privileged homes and from politically or militarily influential families. Whatever their cultural differences, Spicer seems to have gotten on very well with her students. Throughout her time at Ginling she took very seriously her role as mentor and adviser, in personal as well as in spiritual matters.

The Kuomintang and Christian Education

In 1926 forces allied to the Kuomintang, the nationalist movement founded by Sun Yat-sen after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, set out from the south of China with the aim of rooting out the various warlords in the north and establishing a united government. By the spring of 1927 this diverse force, known as the Northern Expedition Army, under the command of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek, was approaching Nanking. In early March Spicer reported a tense atmosphere in the city but did not think that either she or Ginling was in danger. As the army entered Nanking on March 23, militant elements began seeking out foreign residents. Anumber were killed, including the dean of Nanking University, an American. There was also widespread looting and rioting. American and British gunboats on the Yangtze River attempted to restore order by firing on the rioters. At Ginling, a group of Chinese faculty, with support from an army officer, a brother of one of the students, took foreign members of staff to a safe hiding place. The next day the Ginling party and other foreign residents, mainly from the university, were escorted to the river and waiting gunboats, which took them to the safety of the International Settlement at Shanghai. From there Spicer wrote to her parents on April 2 to say that she felt very dazed after such unexpected and dramatic events. She was trying to work out what to do next but was coming to the conclusion that she would leave China to come home, even though that might look as if she were running away. She would plan to return in September 1928 if she were wanted. (13)

Her decision was not as startling as it sounds. She was anticipating her prearranged furlough by only a few months. Nonetheless, the break came at a convenient time. She had been finding the situation difficult and depressing, both in the college and in the country. Left-wing elements among the Kuomintang were vociferous in their opposition to Christian education and to Christianity, and Spicer had little confidence in Thurston's judgment and leadership at such a critical time. Nor was there, she thought, an "outstanding Chinese woman" on the staff. If, as seemed likely, teaching in religion at the college would have to be cut back, was there, she wondered, any place for her at Ginling? (14)

During her extended furlough she thought carefully about her future. Having received assurances that she would be needed, she returned to Ginling in September 1928, writing to her parents that it seemed "very natural to be back." Both in Nanking and at the college there had been changes. Nanking had become the seat of the new government, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, and at the college Thurston had been succeeded by Wu Yi-fang as president. Wu had graduated from Ginling in 1919, among the first female students in China to do so, and had then gone to the United States to pursue postgraduate studies. She was awarded a doctorate in biology at the University of Michigan in 1928. That same year she replaced Thurston as president of the college, it having become a government requirement that all schools and colleges be headed by Chinese nationals.

Spicer was immediately impressed by Wu, who had, she considered, "taken hold of things wonderfully well." She wrote in some detail about Wu's inauguration as president in November 1928, a splendid affair with processions, speeches, and a banquet. Madame Chiang Kai-shek attended, as did representatives of all the Christian colleges in eastern China. (15) It now fell to Wu to guide the college through to registration with the Ministry of Education, a thorny task involving negotiations not only with the government but also with the Ginling College Committee in New York. That she succeeded in satisfying both the government and the New York committee, achieving full registration for the college in 1930, is a tribute to her considerable leadership and diplomatic skills. Both parties declared themselves satisfied with a statement of purpose that ensured that the college "would conform to the highest standards of educational efficiency, promote social welfare and high ideals of citizenship, and develop the highest type of character, in accordance with the original purpose of the five Christian mission boards which were its founders." (16) The rewards of registration were felt almost immediately: student numbers increased, the atmosphere in the college improved, and the government began to show favor both to the college and to its president. Madame Chiang Kai-shek frequently attended college events; she and her sisters donated a building in 1933, while Chiang Kai-shek found time to attend the commencement ceremony in the following year and to address the student body.

The negative impact of registration--the disbanding of the religious department and the downgrading of religion as a subject within the college--presumably affected Spicer more than anyone else. She was, however, upbeat in her 1930 report. She wrote, in a section marked "not to be printed," that they had "put the courses on religion in the department of philosophy" in the new prospectus. Nobody had raised any objection. So far, she thought, the new regulations had made "no difference whatever." But she was concerned at the "increasing attitude of indifference to religious matters" among students, reflecting, she thought, the "different regime in the middle schools." Even among the Christian students she encountered at a conference, it was clear that the "dominating thing in the student mind is the need of China. If religion in general, and Christianity in particular, can help to meet that need they will welcome it, otherwise, not. Any idea of putting God first, and their country afterwards is as yet far from most of their minds." Overall, however, Spicer felt much settled. She missed England and her home life, but not so acutely. She had previously been unhappy at what she saw as a lack of unified direction at Ginling. Now, with Wu as president, "an almost ideal person to work for and under," she felt reassured that Ginling was making a "real contribution ... to the cause of women and Christianity in China." (17) It must have helped too that Nanking, despite some alarms, was more peaceful, although that would not last.

Migration to Western China

Spicer spent the summer vacation of 1937 with a close friend, Li Dze-djin, a Ginling graduate and colleague, and her three sisters, at their house at Kuling, a popular hill-station about 300 miles southwest of Nanking. Here they became aware of the Japanese attacks on the Chinese mainland. There were air raid warnings, and they could hear the sound of distant bombing. By September, when the new academic year should have started, Nanking was being bombed on an almost daily basis, and it was judged too dangerous to begin the new session there. Spicer traveled to Wuchang, where a group of Ginling students were based at Huachung (Huazhong) Christian University. Another unit was housed in Shanghai, and a third in Chengtu (Chengdu) in western China. At the end of 1937 Nanking fell to the Japanese, and it was decided that the college should abandon the Ginling site altogether, apart from a small group headed by the dean of studies, Minnie Vautrin, who stayed at her post with the aim of securing the campus as part of the International Safety Zone in the city. (18) The rest of the Ginling faculty and students made the long trek to the campus of the West China Union University (WCUU) at Chengtu, in Sichuan Province, which eventually housed not only Ginling but also several other migrated institutions. After a short spell in Shanghai, Spicer arrived there in September 1938.

Her immediate reaction was to feel how remote the place was, with no daily newspapers to keep her in touch with the outside world. This was particularly agonizing after the outbreak of war between Britain and Germany in September 1939. "How much more I mind England being at war," she wrote to her sisters, "than I do China even though I do mind that quite a lot." (19) But she had her beloved radio, given her a few years earlier, on which it was sometimes possible to hear "the cultured tones of the BBC." (20) She postponed her furlough, due in 1939, until 1940, first traveling to the United States before going on to Britain, where she remained until September 1941. Here she heard the sad news of the death of Minnie Vautrin, the heroic defender of the Ginling campus in Nanking, where up to 10,000 Chinese women and children had been sheltered during the massacre of 1937-38. Vautrin had returned to the United States in 1940, worn down by her experiences, and some months later had committed suicide. In a long letter to Matilda Thurston, sent in August 1941, Spicer wrote that, while very sad at the news, she was not really surprised. She had been a close friend of Vautrin and realized how damaged she must have been by the "three years of terrible experiences with the Japanese." Vautrin, she wrote, "believed in purity and peace and ... had been overwhelmed by bestiality and war; she believed in love and reconciliation, and she could not but be aware all around her of hate and bitterness. So her own tiredness mingled with the fate of the world." Spicer was gratefully aware of the support she herself received from her own close-knit family, but as she pointed out, Vautrin had "no family to stand back of her in her time of difficulty" and had had to cope with her depression and mental torment alone. (21)

In the following month, September 1941, Spicer set out from London to return to China via South Africa and India. It was not an easy journey. As she told the LMS, "The Pacific War broke out when I was between Durban and Colombo." On reaching Delhi, she found that all visas for China had been canceled and she had to apply for a new one, necessitating a six-week delay. Not until February 1942 did she get back to Chengtu, where, after an absence of eighteen months, she noticed a huge rise in the cost of living, as well as a widespread lowering of morale. She now found herself having to teach history, since the college had been forced to close its department of philosophy, although she was allowed to teach one course in the sociology of religion and also a course in comparative religion at Nanking Theological Seminary, now at WCUU. Throughout her time in Chengtu Spicer seems to have enjoyed her wider role in university affairs, chairing both the Advisory Committee for Joint Religious Activities of the different institutions at WCUU and also the Committee for Student Evangelism in Isolated Universities. She was also pleased to find, for the first time, LMS colleagues in the same city as herself and, rejoicing to feel herself at the "centre of the LMS in Free China," joined their local committee. (22)

Postwar Developments

With the coming of peace in August 1945, Ginling staff and students were eager to end their wartime exile. But transport for the many thousands who wished to return home was totally inadequate, and those with government posts took precedence. Not until the summer of 1946 were they able to make the return journey, mainly by truck and train. Viewed from the exterior, the college buildings, occupied by the Japanese military from 1942, seemed more or less intact. But inside it was a different story--radiators and furnaces had been removed; most of the furniture was missing; the library was empty, and all laboratory equipment had been removed. (23) Despite these discouraging conditions, the new session started on time, while a fund-raising campaign was launched to replace books and equipment. Spicer was out of China, on furlough for the academic year 1947-48. In London she found her two oldest sisters so much in need of support that she thought she should extend her stay. The college, however, had a record student intake, and her presence was urgently requested both in the history department and to supervise religious activities. For Spicer, Ginling's need came first, and she flew back in August 1948 for what turned out to be the last brief chapter of her time in China.

Life at Ginling proceeded reasonably for a while after the Communist takeover of Nanking in April 1949, but conditions for Westerners became progressively more difficult, and in November 1950 Spicer made the decision to leave Ginling and China. At the age of fifty-three she felt too young to retire. She accepted the position of principal of the Women's Training College at Old Umuahia, Southern Nigeria, sailing for Africa in April 1952. Spicer served in Nigeria for a period of six years. Despite suffering ill-health she was an effective head of the college and was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1959. After an active retirement, involved in LMS affairs, the Congregational Union, and the Society for the Ministry of Women in the Church, she died suddenly, in 1974, at the age of 76.

Conclusion

It took time for Spicer to become accustomed to life at Ginling, where initially she felt so much a foreigner. She seriously contemplated leaving in 1927 when her role as teacher of religious studies was being eroded by new government regulations and because she had considerable doubts about the way the college was being led. From the arrival of Wu Yi-fang as president in 1928, Spicer's allegiance to Ginling was total. She remained a staunch and trusted member of the college, through all the upheavals and vicissitudes of revolution and war, until her final and reluctant exit early in 1951. The college barely outlived her departure, merging at the end of the year with Nanjing University and almost entirely dropping its liberal arts curriculum. The events of 1951 might have spelled the end of the college, but did not mean the end of the Ginling family. Generations of students found that the Ginling experience had given them a collective identity of which they could be proud. Theirs was a community to which Spicer also felt she belonged, and in retirement she took great care to maintain links with the extended Ginling family. She kept in touch with Matilda Thurston until the latter's death in 1958 and with other former colleagues and students. She wrote annual letters to Ginling friends each Christmas and made several journeys visiting groups of Ginling alumnae in many parts of the world, finding these "a wonderful renewal of friendship and fellowship."

Rosemary Seton, formerly head of Archives and Special Collections at SOAS, University of London, is the author of Western Daughters in Eastern Lands: British Missionary Women in Asia (ABC-CLIO, 2013).

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Notes

(1.) Eva Dykes Spicer's papers and materials are housed at Univ. of London, SO AS Library, PP MS 92, Papers of Eva Dykes Spicer. To search the SO AS Archive catalog, go to http://archives.soas.ac.uk /CalmView/.

(2.) Daniel H. Bays and Ellen Widmer, eds., China's Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900-1950 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2009).

(3.) For a recent study of Ginling College, using sources in both China and the United States, see Jin Feng, The Making of a Family Saga, Ginling College (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2009). See also Matilda Thurston and Ruth M. Chester, Ginling College (New York: United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1955).

(4.) See Peter Tze Ming Ng, "Historical Archives in Chinese Christian Colleges from before 1949," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 20, no. 3 (1996): 107.

(5.) Albert Spicer, 1847-1934: A Man of His Time, by One of His Family (London: Simkin Marshall, 1938), 60.

(6.) Eva Dykes Spicer, Answers to Questions, 1922, Univ. of London, SO AS Library, CWM-LMS Archive, Candidates' Papers, Box 37.

(7.) This was in 1919, a year before Oxford University awarded degrees to its female students. Eva Spicer, graduating in 1920, was in the first class of students in which females were able to receive degrees.

(8.) See CWM-LMS Archive, LMS Committee Minutes, Book 11, 1922-27, p. 43, para. 6. LMS is now part of the Council for World Mission (CWM), formed in 1977. The CWM-LMS archives are located at SO AS.

(9.) Spicer Papers, PP MS 92, Letters to her parents, October and November 1923.

(10.) Spicer Papers, PP MS 92, Letters to her parents, 1925.

(11.) Spicer Papers, PP MS 92, Letters to her sisters, 1923-25.

(12.) Eva Dykes Spicer, Annual Report 1925, CWM-LMS Archive, Central China Reports, Box 9.

(13.) Spicer Papers, PP MS 92, Letters to her parents, 1927.

(14.) Ibid.

(15.) Spicer papers, PP MS 92, Letters to her parents, 1928.

(16.) Quoted in Feng, Making of a Family Saga, 154.

(17.) Eva Dykes Spicer, Annual Report 1929-30, CWM-LMS Archive, Central China Reports, Box 10.

(18.) See Hua-ling Hu and Zhang Lian-hong, The Undaunted Women of Nanking: The Wartime Diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2010).

(19.) Spicer Papers, PP MS 92, Letters home, 1939.

(20.) Spicer Papers, PP MS 92, Letters home, 1937.

(21.) Spicer Papers, PP MS 92, Letters to Mrs. Thurston, 1930-56.

(22.) Eva Dykes Spicer, Report 1942-1943, CWM-LMS Archive, Reports 1942-49, CH/3.

(23.) See Feng, Making of a Family Saga, 217.