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24. Heaven and Hell in Shanghai, 1947
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
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We had more of heaven and more of hell in the first six weeks after my return than we had ever expected to experience; the heaven came from a deeper realization of the meaning of our love because of the suffering in our separation, and the hell from the terrible periods of despair into which Jim would be plunged every few days, sometimes lasting for a few hours, sometimes most of the night. We suppose it would be called a nervous breakdown , or the verge of one, and there were moments when I felt terrified and desperately alone. (to Earl and Katherine Willmott, 12 March 1947) A report had come to Mary in Canada, from fellow missionary Dr. Robert McClure, emphasizing Jim’s impaired health. Only two ships were taking passengers to China in 1946: it might be months before she could get a passage. Desperate to join her husband as soon as possible, she wrote to Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson, for help. Pearson had been a friend of Mary’s in her youth; he and Jim had been tennis partners at Victoria College. Now he arranged for Mary to go to China with the new Canadian ambassador, Chester Ronning; she was listed as nursemaid to the Ronning children. Dr. McClure had a reputation for exaggeration, but when Mary arrived she found his assessment of Jim’s health was accurate. Jim’s life in Shanghai was extremely pressured—hazardous for someone coping with depression and nervous exhaustion. He led what he called “a double life”—a “white” and a “red” one. The “white” one was a facade to cover his real purposes—to help the Chinese communist movement—and included revising his English Readers, working on a government commission for the reform of English teaching in middle schools, and a half-time teaching position at St. John’s University. The “red” life was producing the weekly Shanghai Newsletter, to publicize the gains being made by the communist forces and news of the increasingly repressive measures of the Nationalists. There was a cloak-and-dagger element to The Shanghai 24 Heaven and Hell in Shanghai, 1947 197 Newsletter: ways had to be found to mail it without having to pass the KMT censor and material had to be gathered from a variety of sources without Jim bringing attention to himself. It was an intense and risky assignment. Before he was asked to undertake this assignment, Jim had felt desperate to get back to Canada for a reunion with his family. He had been living this high-intensity life for six months before Mary was able to arrive in Shanghai. The toll on his nervous system was enormous. In spite of Dr. McClure’s warning about Jim’s health, Mary was not prepared for how he looked: anxious wrinkles in his face, his voice and manner often jerky and quite different from what they used to be. She conveyed these details to her father: Every few days the strain welled up into an emotional crisis where he could not sleep, his head felt full of tight knots that nearly drove him frantic, with the result that he became deeply depressed and lost all interest in life and all confidence in himself.… Fortunately for us both, the change that Jim observed in me was of just the opposite nature. He was amazed at the difference in my self-confidence, my quiet independent poise and the lack of the old strains that he remembered used to make me took so tired. (to Charles Austin, 30 January 1947) Their home was a small two-room flat on the campus of St. John’s University , where they cooked on a little coal-oil stove, ate mostly canned goods and kept boiled hot water in thermos bottles on hand. The bedroom was perpetually cold, but three or four hot water bottles warmed the bed. They lived in the kitchen-dining area, which had a large chair—“a chesterfield cut in half.” There they sat, cuddled—and wrestled with Jim’s inner demons. He had been running away from Mary when he left Canada. In a letter to Stephen, which he showed to Mary, he confessed his ambivalence was present even on the day he sent her the cable asking her to come as soon as possible: “I both wanted her and was afraid of her coming. I was afraid because I knew dimly…I would have to be frank and tell her...