Eye - 06 May 2016

From restorative humour to precious sediment

Humour in the midst of gloom

During research into Quaker relief work during and after world war two Lucinda Martin, of German Yearly Meeting, happened across some unexpected light relief.

In the unpublished manuscript of Hugh Maws’ Journal of a Quaker Relief Worker he writes of the challenges facing Friends Relief Service workers at home and abroad when ‘just at this time of flurry, doom and gloom, there fell into my hands a list of what I called “sic Milk Jokes”, that restored one’s sense of humour’. It contains ‘a few extracts from the various letters sent to various ministries during the last war’, including:

‘I had intended coming to the milk office today, but have had fifteen children this morning…

‘Re your dental enquiry – the teeth in the top are alright, but the ones in my bottom are hurting me terribly…

‘I am forwarding my marriage certificate and two children, one of which you will see is a mistake…

‘Will you please send me a form for cheap milk, I have a baby two months old and I did not know anything about it until a friend of mine told me…

‘I want money as quick as I can get it. I have been ill in bed with the doctor for two weeks, but he doesn’t seem to do me any good. If things don’t improve I will have to send for another doctor…

‘In accordance with your instructions I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope…’

A Friendly trilogy

A romantic novelist has made American Quaker women of the mid-1800s the heroines of a trilogy of books called the ‘Quaker Brides’ series.

Lyn Cote’s three novels – Honor, Blessing and Faith – have been published over the past eighteen months, with the last of the trilogy appearing in April. They explore the themes of women’s rights and the abolition of slavery.

Quakers, the author writes, ‘have fascinated me for years, I think it’s because they kept themselves as a distinct group for nearly three hundred years. Their distinctive Plain speech and dress made them stand out but more than that their desire to live according to the Inner Light or Christ’s light set them apart. It led some of them to champion for sweeping changes in our society’.

Filming at Frandley

Friends in Frandley saw lights, camera and action recently. The Quaker Meeting house was the setting for a scene featuring a Meeting for Worship in progress – a brief respite in what will be an eight-part crime thriller set in a fictional Cheshire town, due to be broadcast on ITV in the autumn. Four Friends were among the actors on set. Gill Alcock told Eye: ‘We were pleasantly surprised to be contacted about using the Meeting house, and very pleased to find that the company wanted to portray the Meeting as accurately as possible. We spent most of the time between takes talking to the other extras who were really interested to find out about Quakerism.’

Precious sediment

Martin Hartog, of Thornbury Meeting, unearthed Friendly gems in George Macaulay Trevelyan’s English Social History of 1942.

In passages relating to the late 1600s and early 1700s, Trevelyan wrote: ‘The finer essence of George Fox’s queer teaching, common to the excited revivalists who were his first disciples, and to the “quiet” Friends of later times, was surely this – that Christian qualities matter much more than Christian dogmas. No church or sect had ever made that its living rule before. To maintain the Christian quality in the world of business and of domestic life, and to maintain it without pretension or hypocrisy, was the great achievement of these extraordinary people. England may well be proud of having produced and perpetuated them. The Puritan pot had boiled over, with much heat and fury; when it had cooled and been poured away, this precious sediment was left at the bottom.’

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