Minor Heresies, Major Departures: A China Mission Boyhood

By John H. Espey

An American boy, son of Presbyterian missionaries, was born in Shanghai early in this century. The boy lived two lives, one within the pious church compound, the other along the canal and in the alleys of a traditional Chinese city. There he faced the alley brats' Lady Bandit, heard the shrill screams of a child's foot-binding, learned rank obscenities from passing boatmen, and, while still in short pants, chewed Sen-Sen and ogled snake-charmers in the old Native City. He sailed up the Yangtze to attend boarding school, and along with his Boy Scout patrol, met Chiang Kai-shek. And when John Espey grew up, he wrote about his years in China.

This memoir is the story of those years, and while it is a wry, affectionate account, it also conveys an often overlooked picture of China in the years before communism. Seen through the eyes of a child, the interplay of religion, commerce, and American colonialism that took place during this period is revealed more tellingly—and more lightheartedly—than in many an analysis by an "old China hand."

Espey's bent is to use a "Chinese" approach to his subject, that is, to hide a second meaning within his words, to speak in parables. This he learned from both his single-minded missionary father and the family's Chinese cook. The result is that the reader of Minor Heresies, Major Departures will learn a great deal about the Pacific Rim while having a rollicking good time.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.
An American boy, son of Presbyterian missionaries, was born in Shanghai early in this century. The boy lived two lives, one within the pious church compound, the other along the canal and in the alleys of a traditional Chinese city. There he faced the all

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520913653

John H. Espey

John Espey (1913–2000) was a novelist, memoirist and literary scholar, and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1990, Espey's Strong Drink, Strong Language received a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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Minor Heresies, Major Departures

By John Espey

Reminiscences

Minor Heresies

Tales out of School

The Other City

Strong Drink, Strong Language

Two Schools of Thought (with Carolyn See)

Criticism

Ezra Pound’s Mauberley: A Study in Composition

Oscar Wilde: Two Approaches (with Richard Ellmann)

Bibliography

Margaret Armstrong and American Trade Bindings

(with Charles Gullans)

Fiction

The Anniversaries

An Observer

Winter Return

Fable

The Nine Lives of Algernon

Verse

The Empty Box Haiku

Minor Heresies,

Major

Departures

A China Aiiddion Boyhood

JOHN ESPEY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

This collection consists of all the chapters I wish to preserve from Minor Heresies, Tales out of School, and The Other City.

In somewhat different form, Coals of Fire and She Bringeth Her Bread from Afar originally appeared in Harper’s Magazine. People of a Deep Speech, Every Man unto His Own Family, To Keep It Holy, Two Masters, Making a Man Out of Him, War Game, The Cave-in, Le Scouting en Chine, Blasphemer, Madame Poliakov, I Wait upon the Gissimo, We May Not Climb the Heavenly Steeps, Undine, Ramon and the North American Attitudes, Just the Way They Do It in the States, and The Three Worlds originally appeared in whole or in part in The New Yorker.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright 1944, 1945 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1973, 1975 by John J. Espey. New and revised material Copyright 1994 by The Regents of the University of California.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Espey, John Jenkins, 1913-

Minor heresies, major departures: a China mission boyhood / John Espey.

p. cm.

This collection consists of all the chapters I wish to preserve from Minor heresies, Tales out of school, and The other city- -Colophon.

ISBN 0-520-08250-8 (alk. paper)

1. Espey, John Jenkins, 1913- . 2. Missions, American—China

-Shanghai. I. Espey, John Jenkins, 1913- Minor heresies.

Selections. 1994. II. Espey, John Jenkins, 1913- Tales out of school. Selections. 1994. III. Espey, John Jenkins, 1913- Other city. Selections. 1994. IV. Title.

BV3427.E8A3 1994

951.04'1'092—dc20

[B] 93-24516

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

This book is a print-on-demand volume. It is manufactured using toner in place of ink. Type and images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California Press editions.

BOOK

The Philip E. Lilienthal imprint honors

special books in commemoration of a

man whose work at the University of

California Press from 1954 to 1979 was

marked by dedication to young authors

and to high standards in the field of

Asian Studies. Friends, family, authors,

and foundations have together endowed

the Lilienthal Fund, which enables the

Press to publish under this imprint

selected books in a way that reflects the

taste and judgment of a great and

beloved editor.

For Carolyn See

who always believed it would happen

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

COALS OF FIRE

THROUGH THE SCENT OF WATER IT WILL BUD

PEOPLE OF A DEEP SPEECH

EVERY MAN UNTO HIS OWN FAMILY

PRAYING AT ALL SEASONS

THE FIG TREE

THE PROMISED LAND

TO KEEP IT HOLY

TWO MASTERS

SHE BRINGETH HER BREAD FROM AFAR

THE SERVANT IS FREE FROM HIS MASTER

CHANGES AND WARFARE

MAKING A MAN OUT OF HIM

WAR GAME

THE PINE TREE PATROL

THE CAVE-IN

LE SCOUTING EN CHINE

SINS OF THE FLESH

BLASPHEMER

MADAME POLIAKOV

I WAIT UPON THE GISSIMO

WE MAY NOT CLIMB THE HEAVENLY STEEPS

I DISCOVER THE WORLD

THE SHANGHAILANDERS

SAS I

SAS II

UNDINE

SAS III

RAMÓN AND THE NORTH AMERICAN ATTITUDES

THE BUST OF JUNO

JUST THE WAY THEY DO IT IN THE STATES

THE THREE WORLDS

DEPARTURES

INTRODUCTION

Shortly after I joined the faculty of Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1938 with the rank of Instructor in English, I found that two other new members were, like me, the sons of Presbyterian missionaries to what we then called, in our political innocence, the Orient. Together with our wives, we formed our own informal social group. Living on modest salaries, we relied on California sherry and our own wits for much of our entertainment. Those of us who had grown up in the Anglo-American atmosphere of port- city life enjoyed creating charades, riddles that rhymed, and other word games.

I’ve thought of a good one, someone said one evening. If you had to sit down right now and write your autobiography, what would your title be?

I hear my voice responding instantly: "Minor Heresies."

The others booed and hissed. You’ve ruined the game, John, the inventor said. You could at least have held back long enough to give the rest of us a crack at it.

I’m sorry, I said. It just popped out. I’m surprised myself.

Well, you win, of course—that’s a terrific title—but since you’ve wrecked the game for the rest of us, you’ll have to pay a penalty.

That’s fine with me, I said, assuming that I would have to come up with a new game or provide the drink the next time we got together. What’s it going to be?

You’ve got to write the book!

This provoked general laughter and we turned to some new contest. But for me it wasn’t entirely a laughing matter. Though I knew no one expected me to pay up, I realized, as our evening fun continued, that I had possibly found my subject and my own voice after several years of blundering about in the literary world with no success. In my files I had the typescripts of a sonnet sequence, a painfully allegorical Jamesian novella, an Oxford B.Litt. thesis on British criticism of American literature from 1800 to 1850, an academic murder mystery, and a false/naive children’s story written as a fable. Each had been returned to me more than once by a variety of publishers, sometimes with a letter expressing genuine regret and showing a thorough reading, more often with a perfunctory rejection slip.

Occidental, which was my own undergraduate college, prided itself on being a first-class teaching institution. I carried a full schedule, with weekly papers and reports to read, write comments upon, and grade. I rarely found time for my own writing until close to midnight, when I would put in an hour or two before going to bed. As the most junior member of the Department of English, I began my teaching day at eight o’clock in the morning five days a week.

Once started on this new project, I found myself writing with confidence and pleasure and was sometimes tempted to forego sleep altogether before going to the campus. As I got further and further into the book, I became aware of at least one tricky problem. After leaving Shanghai under gunfire in 1937, my parents had retired to Pasadena, following a year spent in the Philippines. Though I was a son of the manse, I was a skeptical son, a disappointment to my father. If I was going to write about what my sister, three years my elder, and I had come to feel about the mission movement without disturbing our parents or their friends, I would have to skate on very thin ice. The Chinese part of me required filial respect; the American, truth to my own convictions.

I had grown up with an inherited knowledge of the Protestant mission movement that began in the middle of the nineteenth century and, with respect to China, was to carry through to the establishment of the People’s Republic. For at least two generations, many of the most talented and idealistic youth in America and Britain—my father among them—had responded to the Student Volunteer Movement or the YWCA and YMCA and had answered the call to spread the Gospel abroad.

During my own boyhood, a conflict within most Protestant denominations persisted between Fundamentalists, who held to a literal reading of the Scriptures, and Liberals, who promoted a more free, symbolic interpretation of the Bible. As part of this division, the mission movement came in for examination and criticism. A committee of American Protestants, thanks to Rockefeller supporting funds, undertook an elaborate survey. Though its report, Rethinking Missions, came out in 1932, after I had left China, the entire discussion had been in the air for years.

For the United States, Kenneth Scott Latourette has written most exhaustively on this subject, and in his autobiography, Beyond the Ranges, he touches on the underlying force that sent many young men and women overseas when he quotes from Robert E. Speer’s What Constitutes a Missionary Call?: If you are a Christian, the burden of proof rests upon you to show why you should not become a foreign missionary. Latourette expands on this tenet: The challenge was stated clearly: in the United States all have the opportunity to hear the Gospel; in Asia, Africa, and many other areas, millions have not so much as heard the name of Christ; therefore, if you are a Christian, unless some clear obligation stands in the way, you should become a foreign missionary.

What I suppose must be called the logic of this claim can be accepted only by those who believe that the exclusive road to the salvation of one’s immortal soul depends on a belief in Christianity. Even here, some flaws might be exposed, but for anyone born and raised in part in another culture, such as China, the claim stretches the limits of absurdity.

My sister and I were born in Shanghai and spent the greater part of our lives there until graduating from the Shanghai American School. Though we felt quite at our ease in both the International Settlement and the French Concession, the Presbyterian mission compound outside the Little South Gate of the old Native City was our true home. As the only foreign children in the South Gate Mission compound, we grew up depending on each other, or at least I depended on my sister. In later years we came to feel that we had saved each other, not in any mission sense, but simply as individuals. Even though we lived a transplanted middle-class American life when it came to food and clothing, we lived another part of our lives in harmony with our Chinese servants. Neither our cook nor his wife, our amah, was a Christian. We found ourselves in a trying position, knowing not only that we should honor our parents but that we should do nothing to disgrace the household or risk anything that would make our parents lose face in the eyes of the Chinese. Sometimes the roles overlapped; sometimes they seemed irreconcilable.

A problem that had faced the earliest missionaries in China typified our own feelings. We had been told more than once that when it came to a Christian burial in the earliest days of the mission movement, the presiding foreign missionary had been shocked to find a Buddhist and a Taoist priest, as well as a representative from the local Confucian center, in attendance, generously offering their assistance in what they probably thought was a barbaric rite.

The missionary had had to make clear to them that they were not welcome, that they could take no part in the service. When we heard of this from the missionaries, the incident was treated condescendingly, used as an example of the ignorance of the pagans. But when we heard of it from our servants, we learned that it was a serious breach of manners, that these men were there out of courtesy, that though their individual creeds might be in conflict among themselves, and certainly with a foreigner’s, they respected the right of foreigners to their own outlandish beliefs.

Those days were long gone by the time my sister and I learned of them, but when we talked this over in private, we found ourselves in complete sympathy with the Chinese view. After all, wasn’t it better to take no chances? Quite apart from the question of manners, one of the other creeds might just possibly contain the truth.

As I grew older, this difference of viewpoints came to represent for me a typical American attitude that led self-righteously into policies supporting reactionary governments abroad and an unquestioning assumption of superior knowledge in all things. The so- called China Lobby in support of the weakening hold of Chiang Kai-shek’s failing regime was the prime example of this when I began to write, and little in subsequent American foreign policy has led me to change my mind.

With my typescript completed, I began the familiar round of submissions, still an innocent in the world of publishing and igno rant of the chances of an unsolicited book being accepted for publication by a major house. Alfred A. Knopf was high on my list, and I was pleased to get an enthusiastic letter from one of his readers, Arthur Wang—could he be Chinese?—who thought my book somewhat thin, not in content, but in bulk. Knopf was definitely interested but wondered if I couldn’t make it into a more substantial collection.

Could I recite the Twenty-third Psalm? I did my conscientious best to keep up with my classes and wrote into the early morning hours. Everyone seemed pleased with the new chapters. Finally a beautifully printed contract arrived, with an advance of five hundred dollars, a substantial sum in those days, approximately a quarter of the annual salary I earned as a recently promoted assistant professor.

I had written as lightheartedly as I could about issues that concerned me seriously. For myself, I had called into question the whole intent of foreign missions. The Chinese part of me had always resented this intrusion that frequently brought not peace but a sword as it challenged traditional Chinese values and broke up families. I did not doubt the sincerity of the missionaries, understanding that for persons like my father the salvation of an immortal soul made all disputes over policy pointless.

Still, I remained, as far as I could honestly be, a dutiful son of the house, and before I signed the contract I took a copy of my typescript to Pasadena when my wife and I went to our weekly Wednesday evening dinner with my parents.

After dinner the following week my father and I had some moments alone in the living room, my typescript beside him. His first question took me by surprise. Are you putting any of your own money into this, John?

No, I’m not, I said.

I’m glad to hear that, he responded.

Actually, Father, I said, Knopf is one of the most respected American publishing houses, known not only for its list of authors but also for its care in bringing out attractively designed books.

That’s interesting, he said.

I waited. When he said nothing more I asked, Is there anything in the manuscript that disturbs you? and braced myself for what I thought must be the inevitable attack.

Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. You’ve used two things I don’t like to read about, though I’m astonished that you know anything about them. He mentioned a South Gate scandal involving two sisters and an English acquaintance’s abuse of his wife.

Why, we heard all about things like that from the servants, Father, I said and stopped. I had been on the point of saying that we probably knew more of the details than he did. You don’t deny that what I’ve written is true?

No, he said, but I just don’t like to read about such things in connection with the mission.

If that’s the way you feel, I said, I’ll be glad to take them out. After all, they’re not really central to the book as a whole.

I would appreciate that, he said. It’s generous of you to do it.

Not at all, I said and again waited for a frontal attack. When it failed to come I asked, "Are those the only things that bother -»3

you?

What else would there be?

Oh, I said, I thought you might be troubled by my having made one incident out of two or my occasional juggling with times and places.

He looked puzzled. What makes you think that sort of trifle would upset me? After all, I’ve spent a good part of my life attempting to harmonize the Gospels.

This witty response and its deadpan delivery staggered me. Then I realized that my father hadn’t intended this to be anything more than a simple statement of fact, and I managed to say, I’m glad you feel that way about it.

Before Minor Heresies came out, Knopf sold two of its chapters to Harper s and four to The New Yorker. The reviews were largely favorable, and I wondered what Father would make of Adrienne Koch’s remark in the New York Times Sunday Book Review: The author’s minor heresies manage a minor miracle: an artful decapitation of American missionary zeal.

He probably never saw it, but if he did, a letter he received from one of his Princeton seminary classmates more than made up for whatever doubts he may have had. This good man had recognized my name in The New Yorker and after buying a copy of Minor Heresies he had read it aloud chapter by chapter to this wife. He wrote: I finished reading the last chapter aloud to Ruth last night. Then I closed the book and, slapping my thigh, I said, ‘That boy’s just a chip off the old block!’

Once again, I was taken aback. If I was a chip off either of my parents’ blocks, I had always supposed it was my mother’s and not my father’s. The effect of this letter was for me a major miracle. Father took over the book as his own, sending copies to his friends. When one of them would write a somewhat qualified letter of thanks, suggesting that his son’s book might not be the best way to advance The Work—as missionaries called their commitment—Father would throw his head back and say (what I had often said of him), You know, some people have absolutely no sense of humor!

COALS OF FIRE

MR. LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH has given us in Unforgotten Years a lively account of his passage through the state of Justification and his attainment of Sanctification at the age of seven, a conquest of Satan and a gain of Grace that changed the lives of many Red Indians, who were converted … in their thousands. Had I, during my childhood in the Presbyterian mission outside the old South Gate of the Native City of Shanghai, been the first cause of any similar movement, no matter how modest in comparison with Mr. Smith’s, I should certainly exploit it to the limit of my talents. Humbly I confess that I was not so blessed, and I must content myself with a record of my failure. Yet even earnest failure brings its joy and its holy reward. Though Mr. Smith will doubtless shine in the courts of heaven under his ruby diadem, I am equally certain that I shall not be far distant from him, more modestly crowned, but crowned nevertheless, by a central yellow topaz set in a floral wreath of golden immortelles; and above this chaste design a single fiery opal will burn. For I have known what it is to heap coals of fire upon the heads of mine enemies, and I have felt the same coals scorch my own scalp in return.

The differences in degree and quality of Mr. Smith’s success and my own are probably due to a multiplicity of causes, the most funda-

9 mental of which is the distinction between a Quaker child and a Presbyterian child. Mr. Smith had to be converted. As far as I know, this is a quite superfluous act of vainglory for any Presbyterian infant born in the faith. Although the Presbyterian Church has tacitly relinquished its right to election, and although it was never openly stated that election was hereditary, there still exists a gentlemen’s agreement between the Lord and Presbyterians that they and their children keep the inner track to salvation and have a reserved section on the right hand of God. And I strongly suspect, anyway, that Western Red Indians are far easier to convert than the very simplest Eastern Chinese, all of whom are so well guarded against distracting influences that they even enjoy an endemic resistance to smallpox. They may bear the scars: they do not succumb.

And yet I cannot conceal my envy of Mr. Smith. Oh, how I should have liked, when I myself was seven, to whip into submission before the Lord those alley brats who lived opposite the mission compound in a crowded little street called Mulberry Lane! Instead, like Paul, I was halted on the road to Damascus. Paul was, I realize, converted; but then, Paul had not been a Presbyterian before his setback, though I think a strong case could be made out for his being a thorough one—and a missionary to boot—after it.

The alley brats were a constant thorn in the flesh of my sister, three years my elder, and me. A gang of twenty-odd arabs, they tore through the district on errands of malice, pitched rocks across the canal and bamboo fence circling our Presbyterian compound, harried the mongrel dogs on the streets, or, failing any of these amusements, fought fiercely with each other just to keep fit.

These alley brats were led by a savage young amazon known to us as the Lady Bandit. Only once was her leadership challenged. Another wild creature, an albino girl, invaded the district for six days. We saw her leading the gang down the road across the canal, her pink hair bristling, her pale eyes squinting as she searched for prey. The Lady Bandit was missing. On the sixth night my sister and I woke to a wild scream across the canal. The next morning the Lady Bandit was back at the head of the gang. That is all I know, but we never saw the albino again. This should be enough to explain why none of the boys in the gang ever tried to lead it.

A variety of persecutions had been devised by the alley brats for the two foreign children. When we rode unescorted in a ricksha they leapt up and pulled off my sister’s hair ribbons. If the ricksha man dropped the bars and gave chase, the rest of the gang surrounded us and taunted us with Chinese words I am sorry to say we understood perfectly. Or they would grab an end of my Windsor tie on gala days and pull out the bow and knot as the heavy silk scorched out through my Eton collar. Our amah grew worried over my diminishing stock of cravats, so one day she tied a square knot in a new Windsor before she made the bow. I bore the scar of that encounter for months. We were occasionally spat upon, and more than one stone sailed over the bamboo fence.

The sorest part for us was that we were under strict orders never to retaliate. We were living witnesses of a peaceful order come to help these people, and how would it look if we raised a hand in anger against them? I do not pretend that we could have taken on the feeblest alley brat and come out on top, but there were times when we would gladly have gone down fighting, spilling our lifeblood for the pagan joy of gouging out a single eye. But no. If one had been spat upon in the face, one sat bolt upright in the ricksha, taut flesh quivering and tears held back, a living witness, until one reached privacy and a washbowl.

The climax of this feud was reached one spring when our gate keeper went on a particularly urgent opium binge. To inconvenience no one, he left the gate unlocked whenever he lay down for another pipe. Our garden was coming into early bloom and the alley brats saw their chance. Led by the Lady Bandit, they would dash across the bridge over the canal, sweep through the gate, and start ripping off the heads of the flowers. As soon as the servants or our parents saw them and shouted, they retreated with their booty. But one afternoon neither servants nor parents were at home. The gang swarmed into the yard and ran wild through the flowers. This was too much. My sister and I dashed out the front door screaming threats, and I picked up a brickbat from the border of the walk. Taken aback by this unusual display of courage, they all retreated to the bridge—all but one.

The Lady Bandit stood a good twenty feet inside the gate, feet planted wide. She sneered at me. Only by purifying her Chinese can I translate her words into: Well, throw it if you dare, you dirty little bastard!

I will if you don’t get out, you rotten turtle egg! I retorted with equal delicacy.

You wouldn’t dare, you stinking little white ape’s abortion! she yelled.

Throw it, John, throw it! my sister urged.

Should I? I whispered, terrified.

Go ahead, my sister incited me. We’ve got to do something. Defiler of dead strumpets! the Lady Bandit bawled.

Putrid bitch of a running bitch’s granddaughter! I howled back. Good work, John, but throw it, my sister egged me on.

Incestuous spawn of camel’s dung! the Lady Bandit screamed. Bloody mother of your own brother! I shrieked and let fly.

Swift and true as the stone from David’s sling, jagged edges twirl ing orange in the sun, my brickbat arched out and caught her squarely on the forehead.

She staggered and clapped a hand to her head. Reeling back, she tasted blood. Then, shouting the Chinese equivalent of Murder, Rape, Arson, and Slaughter as the gang dissolved before her, she fled across the bridge into the mouth of Mulberry Lane.

My life has not been without its simple joys, but I have never dared hope to feel again the surge of primitive triumph that swept me at that instant, the savage glee that raised the hackles on my neck and spread wide my nostrils.

It did not last. Both my sister and I knew we had sinned: we would have to pay. But before our depression set in completely, we discussed the miraculous flight of the brickbat. I had never before hit anything at that range. Was it—could it have been—the hand of the Lord that had guided me? Or was it—and we shuddered—the hand of Satan? We went back into the house, the clouds of Presbyterianism closing in upon us.

Late that afternoon, when parents and servants had returned, a wrathful delegation from Mulberry Lane swept into the compound and was fittingly received in the backyard. The Lady Bandit, still gory, was with them. Her parents addressed my father with a demand for compensation, since the marriage value of their daughter had been lowered. Father, sending for medicines and bandages, set himself cleansing the wound. He suggested mildly that their comely daughter had had no right to be in our garden. The Lady Bandit’s parents sidestepped this detail and demanded money. Father, tangled in a bandage, assured them that he would charge them nothing for the medicines he was using on their daughter. He admitted that his son, who, he pointed out, was much smaller than their daughter, had acted in haste and with an angry heart, but he repeated that their daughter had had no right to be in our garden. The medicine was still free.

The Lady Bandit’s parents wavered. Listening from the kitchen window, trying vainly to control my reflexes, I wondered what sort of marriage value, if any, their daughter had ever had. In later years, I should add, the Lady Bandit was betrothed to a meek-shouldered artisan and went off to live with his family for a year before the wedding. Every six weeks or so she would run away and come back to Mulberry Lane, where she made the air blue describing her prospective mother-in-law. This worthy woman would wait a few days, probably in relief, before coming to collect the girl with the fine beauty mark on her forehead. Foolishly, she never asked my advice on how to handle her. But the Lady Bandit and I were quite good friends by that time. Our family was invited to her wedding, and some years ago I looked approvingly on her small son. This, though, lay far in the future.

While Father patiently held his ground, the Lady Bandit’s neighbors, acting as seconds, cornered the cook and the amah, his wife, beneath the kitchen window, out of Father’s earshot. The cook led off quickly when he saw what he was in for. What right, he demanded, did they think that snotty-nosed girl had to be in our garden wrecking the flowers? He did not doubt that his master would take the whole affair to court, and if he didn’t get complete satisfaction there, he would order a fleet of twenty American gunboats up the Whangpoo and blow the living hell out of Mulberry Lane.

The seconds were thrown off balance and could only counter that the girl had been hurt.

Of course she had been hurt, and rightly, the cook snapped. She had probably reviled the boy.

That might be so, the seconds admitted, but at the same time, the girl said the little white devil was himself an artist in insult.

The cook smiled broadly. And why not? he wished to know. They might as well realize at once that the superior son of this house was the only son of an only son, first cousin to the President of the United States and a nephew of the King of England; and though he was not, perhaps, physically impressive, he was endowed with a happy turn for felicitous phrases and the tongue of a five-clawed dragon. He would like to add as well, the cook went on, that the family he worked for was one of amazing refinement and wealth, so rich that they could spare two piculs of polished rice over a period of ten weeks and never miss it.

That, the seconds said, was a very interesting statement.

If they thought it was, the cook replied, they had better think it over, and that in a hurry, unless they wanted the twenty gunboats. As for himself and his wife, they had no more time to waste on alley trash, for they must retire and soothe the young master’s wounded feelings.

The seconds drew away and got the ear of the Lady Bandit’s mother. The cook and the amah came into the kitchen, where he winked at me and she hurried out to find me some clean underwear. We watched the council break up. The Lady Bandit’s head was beautifully swathed. Her parents and her parents’ neighbors bowed to Father and thanked him for the liberal gift of his rare medicines. Father returned to us, haggard but at peace, and we all relaxed. Mother had a little trouble balancing the household accounts for a while, but every seventh night for the next ten weeks the cook disappeared into Mulberry Lane carrying twenty catties of polished rice.

At this point my mother took an active part. Mother had married Presbyterianism. She was born a Baptist, and from her childhood immersion she had retained a faith in the essential goodness of the human heart that years of contact with Presbyterians had as yet failed to eradicate.

Mother decided that the alley brats would make excellent subjects for her children’s Christian zeal. She pointed out to us that the alley children were not really bad children at all. They lived hard, meager lives, barren of beauty. They did not mean to ruin our flowers out of spite. Every soul had a love for beauty deep within itself that craved satisfaction, and the alley children got this satisfaction by picking—picking, not stealing—our flowers. Now, if we didn’t want the alley children to pick our flowers, what could be done about it?

The innocent light of purity struck our eyes. Almost in chorus we said, They should have flowers of their own.

Mother smiled approvingly at this budding charity. Good, but how were they to have flowers of their own?

We hesitated and then rushed on. We will give them flowers, we said.

Mother beamed. Gradually the plan was imposed upon us. First we gathered together thirty-odd tin cans and flowerpots. Then we slipped or potted the best plants we could find, and day after day that spring we watered and cultivated them tenderly as we watched for signs of growth.

Early in the summer we had about twenty sturdy

Reviews for Minor Heresies, Major Departures

[tippycanoegal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oh, I am so pleased to see that this fantastic book is once again in print. I stumbled upon my copy at our local used book store with no idea of the delights waiting for me. My copy, just called Minor Heresies, presumably the first section of this currently available omnibus, is dated 1947. I cannot put it down. I would not have guessed that a memoir about life as a missionary's child in Shanghai in the period between WWI and WWII could be so fun. I was not surprised at all that several chapters of this memoir were first published in the New Yorker in the 1940s. The book is written with that kind of amused and intelligent voice that you often find there. But the story is a singular one. I am thrilled that I picked up two of Espey's books this weekend because I am almost finished with this one and don't want to put it down. How can it be that I had not heard of this author before? Definitely an under-rated classic!