Who we are, part 1 (Mum)

At last I am able to dilate upon my remote ancestry, thanks to the National Geographic Society’s Geno 2.0 project, which I described earlier. The results of their analysis of my mitochondrial DNA and my Y-chromosome arrived when I was in London a few weeks ago, and I have been gradually absorbing the implications ever since, most of which are simply awe-inspiring. On the whole I am thankful that my mother never lived to be vexed by the idea that it is thanks to her, and her distant relations, that my brothers and I are 2.7% Neanderthal, although my beloved Lyolik says with firmness that he reckons that this figure is far too low. Whichever way you look at it, however, there can be no doubt that approximately 60,000 years ago one or quite possibly more of my mother’s female ancestors turned the head of Hairy Slobodan of the Caucasus, some no doubt fetching Neanderthal, and that this was far more than a brief dalliance; evidently it involved a sustained period of gleefully horizontal folk-dancing in the flickering light of a fire, perhaps in a cave or escarpment, or in the lea of some convenient, mossy bank (for privacy). Intriguing.

Let us go back to the beginning, however. The common direct maternal ancestor to all people living today was born in East Africa around 180,000 years ago. Obviously she was not the only female hominid alive at that remote time, but hers is the only line of posterity that has survived into current generations. This woman represents the deepest root of the human family tree. She gave rise to two descendant lineages known as L0 and L1’2’3’4’5’6, each of which is characterized by a different set of genetic mutations carried by their respective members. Current genetic data indicate that indigenous people belonging to these groups are found exclusively in Africa. This means that, because all humans have in a common this female ancestor, and because Africans are the oldest groups on the planet, we know our species—each and every one of us, the entire human family—originated there. The more historically-minded might choose to think of this as a distant but satisfactory premonition of gins-and-tonic on the verandahs of suburban Nairobi or the polo fields of Happy Valley, but in truth we are looking at hairy hominids busying themselves over tens of thousands of years with the task of basic survival, and the quest for controllable flame—fire! the earliest glimmer of the pre-dawn of human civilization—at around the same vital moment as the earliest discovery, or evolution, or invention of language itself, those guttural love cries with which in due course Mum’s people evidently beguiled certain Neanderthals of the Caucasus.

L3

Eventually, by a process of gradual genetic mutation, L1’2’3’4’5’6 gave rise to L3 in East Africa. While L3 individuals are found all over Africa, L3 is important because of its movements north. Our L3 maternal ancestors were the first party of Homo sapiens to leave Africa, and therefore represent the deepest branches of the tree found outside that continent. Thenceforth, members of this group went in different directions. Many stayed on in Africa, dispersing to the west and south. Some L3 lineages are predominant in many Bantu-speaking groups who originated in west-central Africa, later scattering throughout the continent and spreading this L3 lineage from Mali to South Africa. Today, L3 is also found in many African-Americans. Other L3 individuals, however, our ancestors, kept moving northward, eventually leaving the African continent completely. These people gave rise to two important haplogroups that went on to populate the rest of the world.

It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may have prompted our ancestors’ departure from Africa. The African Ice Age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. Around 60 to 50,000 years ago the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt, introducing a period of warmer temperatures and moister climate in Africa. Parts of the inhospitable Sahara briefly became habitable. As the drought-ridden desert changed to savanna, the animals our ancestors hunted expanded their range and began moving through the newly emerging green corridor of grasslands. Our nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and plentiful game northward across this Saharan avenue, although the exact route they followed remains to be determined. Whatever the cause of the exodus, it is also clear that when it occurred (a) there were barely 2,000 individuals of the species Homo sapiens left alive, so we very nearly became extinct before the long human migrations even began. We survived only by the skin of our teeth; our civilization might never have developed at all. (b) Those 2,000 shivering, frightened, increasingly desperate specimens were evidently huddled in and around an area of Ethiopia known as the Asaf Depression. And that was the point of departure for many tiny groups of the survivors, of whom a handful actually stayed put.

N

Our next crucial maternal ancestor is the woman whose descendants formed haplogroup N. Haplogroup N comprises one of two groups that were created by the descendants of L3. One of these two groups of individuals moved north rather than east and left the African continent across the Sinai Peninsula, in what is now Egypt. Also faced with the harsh desert conditions of the Sahara, these people apparently followed the Nile basin, which yielded a reliable supply of food and water in spite of the surrounding desert and its frequent sandstorms. Descendants of these migrants eventually formed haplogroup N. Early members of this group lived in the eastern Mediterranean region and western Asia, where they apparently co-existed for a time with other hominids such as Neanderthals. Excavations in the Kebara Cave (Mount Carmel) in Israel have unearthed Neanderthal skeletons as recent as 60,000 years old, indicating that there was both ample geographical and chronological overlap between us and them. This accounts for the presence of Neanderthal DNA in those of us who live outside Africa—between 1% and 4% of the whole of our DNA is Neanderthal.

Be that as it may, after several thousand years in the Near East, members of our group began moving into unexplored neighboring territories, following large herds of migrating game across vast plains. These groups broke into several directions and made their way into territories surrounding the Near East. Today, haplogroup N individuals who headed west are prevalent in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean. They are found farther east in parts of Central Asia and the Indus Valley of Pakistan and India. And members of our haplogroup who headed north out of the Levant across the Caucasus Mountains have remained in southeastern Europe and the Balkans. Importantly, descendants of these people eventually went on to populate the rest of Europe, and today comprise the most frequent mitochondrial lineages found there.

R

After several thousand years in the Near East, individuals belonging to a new group called haplogroup R began to move out and explore the surrounding areas. Some moved south, migrating back into northern Africa. Others went west across Anatolia (roughly corresponding with modern Turkey) and north across the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia and southern Russia. Still others headed east into the Middle East, and on to Central Asia. All of these individuals had one thing in common: they shared a female ancestor from the N clan, a recent descendant of the migration out of Africa.

The story of haplogroup R is complicated, however, because these individuals can be found almost everywhere, and because their origin is quite ancient. In fact, the ancestor of haplogroup R lived relatively soon after humans moved out of Africa during the second wave, and her descendants undertook many of the same migrations as her own group, N. Because the two groups lived side by side for thousands of years, it is likely that the migrations radiating out from the Near East comprised individuals from both of these groups. They simply moved together, bringing their N and R lineages to the same places around the same times. The tapestry of genetic lines became quickly entangled, and geneticists are currently working to unravel the different stories of haplogroups N and R, since they are found in many of the same far-flung regions.

U

Descending from the R group, a woman gave rise to people who now constitute haplogroup U. Because of the great genetic diversity found in haplogroup U, it is likely that this woman lived around 47,000 years ago. Let us call her Granny Ugh! Her descendants gave rise to several different subgroups, some of which exhibit very specific geographic homelands. The very old age of these subgroups has led to a wide distribution; today they harbor numerous particular European, northern African, and Indian components, and are to be found in Arabia, the northern Caucasus Mountains, and throughout the Middle and Near East.

One interesting subgroup is U6, which branched off from haplogroup R while still in the Middle East, moved southward, and today is found in parts of northern Africa. Today, U6 individuals are found in around 10% of people living in North Africa. However, other members of the larger haplogroup U descend from a group that moved northward out of the Near East. These women crossed the rugged Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia, and moved on to the steppes of the Black Sea. These individuals represent movements from the Black Sea steppes west into regions that comprise the present-day Baltic States and western Eurasia. This grassland then served as the springboard for subsequent movements north and west.

Today, this line is part of populations in Europe, West Asia (including Arabia), North Africa, India, and the North Caucasus Mountains. In Europe, this lineage averages 7% of the population. In Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, etc.) it is between 9% and 16% of the population. In England, it is about 12% of the population. Toward the Mediterranean, this line is between 10% and 12% of the population in Croatia and Greece.

U5

The most recent common ancestor for all of us U5 individuals broke off from the rest of the group and headed north into Scandinavia. Even though U5 is descended from an ancestor in haplogroup U, it is also exceedingly ancient, and thought to be around 30,000 years old.

U5 is quite restricted in its variation to Scandinavia, and particularly to Finland. This is probably the result of the significant geographical, linguistic, and cultural isolation of the Finnish populations, which restricted geographic distribution of this subgroup and kept it genetically isolated. The Saami, reindeer hunters who follow the herds from Siberia to Scandinavia each season, have the U5 lineage at a very high frequency of around 50%, indicating that it may have been introduced during their movements into these northern territories.

The U5 lineage is found outside Scandinavia, though at much lower frequencies and at lower genetic diversity. Interestingly, the U5 lineage found in the Saami has also been found in some North African Berber populations in Morocco, Senegal, and Algeria. Finding similar genetic lineages in populations living thousands of miles apart is certainly unexpected, and is likely the result of re-expansions that occurred after the last glacial maximum around 15,000 years ago. Humans who had been confined to narrow patches in southern Europe began to move outward again, re-colonizing ancient territories and bringing new genetic lineages with them.

In addition to being present in some parts of North Africa, U5 individuals also live sporadically in the Near East at 2%—about one-fifth as frequent as in parts of Europe—and are completely absent from Arabia. Their distribution in the Near East is largely confined to surrounding populations, such as Turks, Kurds, Armenians, and Egyptians. Because these individuals contain lineages that first evolved in Europe, their presence in the Near East is the result of a back-migration of people who left northern Europe and headed south, as though retracing the migratory paths of their own ancestors.

U5B

Today, this line is present most often in Finland (15%) and Latvia (12%). It is between 6% and 9% of maternal lineages in Luxembourg, Northern Ireland, Spain, and Slovenia. It is widespread in western Eurasia, particularly to the north. This spread began with the expansion of haplogroup U5B-bearing populations out of West Asia during the Upper Paleolithic, prior to 12,000 years ago, and like other branches of U it reached Europe during the Paleolithic. Despite later waves of migrants from other lineages, it remains common there.

Insomma, we can now conclude (not very surprisingly) that Mum’s distant relations down to approximately 10,000 years ago were only 45% Northern European, and that that component of our ancestry is found at the highest frequency in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Russia and Germany (oh!). While not limited to these groups, it is found at significantly lower frequencies throughout the rest of Europe. This component is probably the signal of the earliest hunter-gatherer inhabitants of Europe, who were the last to make the transition to agriculture as it moved in from the Middle East during the Neolithic period around 8,000 years ago—Hairy Grandmother Margaret on her wee Shetland pony, as Hamish rightly predicted, galloping headlong across the land bridge into the vastnesses of the Scottish highlands at almost the very earliest time that this was possible. Is it any wonder therefore that on my first visit to Edinburgh some years ago I had the strongest feeling that I had been there before?

On the other hand we of the line of U5B are also 37% Mediterranean, a component to be found at the highest frequencies in southern Europe and the Levant—people from Sardinia, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Egypt and Tunisia. While not limited to these groups, it is found at lower frequencies throughout the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Central and South Asia. This component is also probably a sign of the Neolithic population expansion from the Middle East, beginning around 8,000 years ago, likely from the western part of the Fertile Crescent.

We are also 17% Southwest Asian. This component of our ancestry is found at highest frequencies in India and neighboring populations, including Tajikistan and Iran—and it is probably just as well that Mum never lived to learn this, although I am quite sure that she would have looked askance with her customary pursed-lip skepticism. Nevertheless this component is an undeniable fact of our mitochondrial DNA, and it is also found at significantly lower frequencies in Europe and North Africa. As with our Mediterranean component, it was most probably spread during the Neolithic expansion, perhaps from the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent. Individuals with heavy European influence in their ancestry will show traces of this because all Europeans have mixed with people from Southwest Asia over tens of thousands of years, something that was not lost on Grandfather Borthwick and his slightly crude allegation that there was, at least in the Borthwick line, a “touch of the tar-brush.” Putting it in a slightly more positive light, Mum carried a modicum of the culture of primitive near-eastern philosophy, mathematics, jurisprudence, and the root of writing itself, and no doubt this expressed itself in the skills she duly brought to The Times cryptic crossword puzzle, and to the bridge table. 

For all of this we must be grateful, and now to Dad and the Y-chromosome.

The Gum-tree leaf

This brief note was addressed from Government House in Sydney to my great-grandmother Sophie Pearson by Lady Mary Lygon (1869–1927), who was a lady of the bedchamber to H.R.H. The Duchess of Cornwall and York. In May 1901, the Duke and Duchess (the future King George V and Queen Mary, the present Queen’s grandparents) visited Australia to represent King Edward at the inauguration of the new federal Parliament in Melbourne, and soon afterwards the Duke visited Kilmany Park for some shooting. The royal excursion was dreamed up by my great-grandfather’s friend Chief Justice Sir John Madden, who was at that time acting governor of Victoria, and responsible therefore for all the local arrangements. Lady Mary’s note still lives in a little bundle that consists of Sir John’s increasingly restive letters from Melbourne to my great-grandfather in advance of the visit, seeking (inter alia) firm assurances that there would be enough game birds to keep the Duke fully occupied on his day at Kilmany, and that there would be sufficient traps and buggies to convey the royal party safely to and from the special train at Sale, etc. In the end everything went swimmingly, and the Duke spent the whole day slaughtering anything with a pulse that was not human, even during afternoon tea. Afterwards my great-grandmother must have written to thank the duchess for the signed photographs that the duke presented to her at the end of the day—I still have those—presumably enclosing the “painted Gum-tree leaf” to which Lady Mary refers. Some years ago I wondered if by any chance that whimsical gift, a thoughtful souvenir of East Gippsland, might still be preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor, and made a discreet inquiry to the excellent Pam Clark. Mindful of Queen Mary’s enthusiasm as a collector of objets d’art, I thought this distinctly possible although it is true that an East Gippsland gum-tree leaf might not have enjoyed the same prominence as, for example, a carefully selected miniature hardstone animal with ruby eyes from the House of Fabergé. Still, perhaps it could have been tucked away in a little cabinet containing various other intercolonial bits and bobs at White Lodge or Frogmore? Alas, there was at that time no discernible trace of it. However, I have an inkling that some day, perhaps decades or even centuries from now, some unsuspecting reader will open an exquisite volume bound in morocco leather, perhaps stamped with the Princess’s monogram, and out will fall that painted gum leaf, perfectly preserved—the ideal page marker. If that should happen, I fervently hope that Google will by then be so powerful, even omniscient, that the responsible librarian will without a moment’s delay find her way to this page and simply join the dots. The notepaper is edged in black, of course, because the Court and therefore all vice-regal households throughout the empire were still in deep mourning for Queen Victoria.

Mary Grant Bruce

Our relation by marriage the Australian novelist Mary Grant Bruce (1878–1958) was the second daughter and fourth child of Eyre Lewis Bruce of Miegunyah, Traralgon, and Mary (Minnie) Atkinson, the daughter in turn of William and Louisa Whittakers, Welsh pioneers of the Monaro district of New South Wales. Mr. Bruce was a surveyor who migrated to Victoria from Co. Cork in 1854; settled near Sale in East Gippsland ten years later, and surveyed Bruce Road, his only monument, which still skirts the Colquhuon State Forest, commencing at a point on the Princes’ Highway that is roughly half way between Swan Reach and Kalimna West, and leads most of the way north to the neighborhood of Tambo Upper.

The Bruces of East Gippsland were closely bound by marriage my mother’s Borthwick, Pearson, and Gooch families. Two of my great-grandmother [Emily] Sophie Pearson’s younger Gooch siblings of The Fulham near Sale each married a different one of Mary Grant Bruce’s: Frank Gooch married Emily Bruce, while Sophie and Frank’s adored youngest sister Mollie married Maxwell Bruce (Max). Much earlier, in the 1880s, Sophie Pearson’s sister Kate Gooch married William Pearson’s brother Jack, and by this neat and not particularly unusual Victorian stratagem the children of all three families were provided with many cousins, a deep devotion to each other, and a powerful attachment to the region of East Gippsland where they all grew up.

In 1914, Mary Grant Bruce married her distant Anglo-Irish cousin, Major George Evans Bruce, to whom in London she introduced the whole Pearson family.

Beyond these immediate family connections, like the Pearsons, the Bruces were lifelong friends and neighbors of the Borthwick family of Sale and nearby Bald Hills, and shortly after the end of World War I, the Pearsons’ eldest daughter Helen, my grandmother, married William Borthwick. Throughout the extended periods they spent living abroad, George and Mary Grant Bruce corresponded with great-grandmother Ada Borthwick and her daughters, my grandfather’s sisters Jean and Kathleen Borthwick. During the bleak period of crisis that followed the death in a shooting accident in Northern Ireland of the Bruces’ younger son Patrick (Pat), Mary’s affectionate correspondence with Mrs. Borthwick turned more and more toward breathing exercises, thought-power, table-rapping, and spiritualism. The letters, several of them immensely long, are interesting for many reasons, but mainly because they shed such penetrating beams of light on the tight-knit Gippsland circle from which so much of the granular detail of the Billabong novels was liberally harvested.

The original correspondence will in due course go, together with the rest of the Trumble family papers, to the National Library of Australia in Canberra. But in the meantime here are transcriptions of the six long letters from Mary Grant Bruce:

I. Mary Grant Bruce to Ada Borthwick. The sorrow piled on sorrow to which Bruce refers were the death on active duty of two of Ada and William Borthwick’s five sons, John Malcolm at Aden in 1908, and Keith in the Battle of the Nek at Gallipoli in 1915.

Drumcrinna,

Omagh

Co. Tyrone

N. Ireland

November 30^th /29

My dear old friend,

I knew I should hear from you quickly. You have long been my standard of courage under a blow—and even at first, when we were crushed under our agony, I kept remembering you and thinking how gallantly you had always kept up your head, with sorrow piled on sorrow. Having known your courage helps me to carry on, as we must do, for Jon—and because Pat would so hate us to be unhappy. His love was so wonderful—a baby’s, even with his twelve years, and yet not like a child’s in the way he tried to care for me and shield me. He couldn’t bear me to be tired or worried. I keep remembering how he would take off my shoes and put on my slippers, and kiss each foot as he did it, my little loving son—the brain of a man in many ways, but always the loving heart of a baby. It doesn’t seem possible that he is gone.

You will have heard about it from Max or Janie. Thank God, there was no suffering for him—his dear face was quite peaceful. Just “I’m sorry”—and he knew we were doing all we could, and looked at us with such love—and then went to sleep with his cheek against mine like a tired baby. It might have been so infinitely more cruel for him. For us there are memories that can never lose their horror, but thank God, they were ours alone—and the great mercy was that Jon was away. He is so brave and steady—carrying on well at school and doing his very best for us. His housemaster wrote, “His quiet, manly courage, his complete thought for you and his mother, have won all our admiration and respect.” But it is so hard for him, for their mutual love was a beautiful thing. They were so unlike, but each thought the other the most wonderful boy in the world. Did anyone tell you how the shock was eased for Jon? We were sick with anxiety for its effect on him, knowing he must hear it from strangers—he is in his first term at Repton, in Derbyshire. But on the two nights before the accident he dreamed that Pat was dead. He said, “I kept thinking of it, and it was like a cloud over me, and when Mr. Hooton sent for me I knew what he was going to say.”

I know all is well with my darling. I never think of him “at rest”—I believe that he has gone on to work, the work for which his splendid brain and beautiful spirit were made. Do you know Kingsley’s words—“The best reward for having wrought well on earth is to have more to do; and he that has been faithful over a few things, he shall find his reward in being made ruler over many things. That is the true and heroical rest, which only is worthy of gentlemen and sons of God.” [Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight… (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1855), p. 213.] I believe they don’t go so very far—that they work up from plane to plane until they are worthy to stand in His Presence. And there are so many who have crossed over who would love him and guide his little feet—he won’t be lonely.

But the loneliness without him! He had been at home 2½ months, because he had had appendicitis—and his happiness, his joy of being alive, were beyond expression. I never knew anyone who played the fool so divinely—I think we laughed all the time. It was like having the spirit of sunshine in the house. And I was still shivering with thankfulness at having got him safely through the operation, and each hour was precious to me, from the moment he came dashing in to my bed in the morning until I tucked him up at night. Well, I have my memories—and I shall have my baby always in my heart.

I loved the poem you sent, and will keep it always: it must be doubly precious to you in your dear boy’s writing. I wonder if they have rest. The Spiritualists believe that the young soldiers act as Guides to help the new spirits who go over and I think it a lovely thing to feel.

My best love to you, dear old friend.

Yours ever affectionately,

M. G. Bruce

II. Mary Grant Bruce to Ada Borthwick

Robinswood

Dorset Road

Bexhill-on-Sea

Sussex

28^th Oct. /33.

Dearest Mrs. Borthwick,

It isn’t often I get the chance of answering a letter “all hot from the oven”—but your lovely letter have just come in on a cold grey evening, and it—and your flowers—brought Australia so vividly to me that I just cast everything I ought to be doing to the winds, and here goes. The flowers were wonderfully fresh. The heath, flat as flat, but perfectly coloured, looks as though it were painted on a sheet of paper. It was lovely to hear from you—every bit of the news of old Sale friends so good to hear. Give my love to them all—and when you see Winnie, tell her I’d love a letter. I am so glad she is still with the Baileys. Torchie [Gooch] was with us for 3 weeks—a fine boy—He and Jon twin-souled completely—scurried all over the country on bicycles and made Robinswood a gay place. I loved having him—and he understood my Gippsland-hunger and let himself be pumped about everyone and everything. He is now in the North, in a wee car—spent a Sunday with Jon at Repton, and means to go to see him again. He sails on Nov. 11^th. I’m afraid I won’t see him again. George spent a day with him in London, showing him “sights.” My Jon is large and very strong. 5 ft. 10 in bare feet, with a mighty chest—nothing left of the delicate little lad he used to be, thank God. And the very best of loving sons. Everyone seems to like him—he has such a kind heart. We are great mates. He is to go to one of the big Agricultural Colleges next year—is now in his last year at Repton—was lately given a House Exhibition of £25, given not for scholarship but for character and good influence. He has a strong turn for science, and I hope he will develop that at the Agric.l College; where the scientific side is very strong. George and I are always well, in fact, people say we grow younger. We are hard hit financially, like most people, but it doesn’t trouble us and I never regret that Jon has to grow up knowing that money isn’t necessary for happiness. We are all very interested in the modern study of thought-power, and apply it to all our daily life, including the control of our bodies—and we have now no ailments. We used to have so many, but in the last 3½ years have had only one apiece—a slight cold. We deep breathe regularly, with thought: thinking we take in strength, hold it into our whole being, and expel weakness: it has an amazing effect in producing the sound body and the happy mind.

It’s most interesting to be alive now, and to see all these mental developments growing—everywhere people are studying psychology, healing by mental methods, using the creative power of thought in  all matters. They say the “Age of Mind” is opening, and certainly youth is thinking as it never thought before. Christian Science always had a lot of this truth, though, I think, overlaid with too much Mary Baker Eddy! I don’t hold with them that pain and illness don’t exist, but I know they can be largely avoided by thought: and the more one dwells on good, the more good comes to one. Which Paul expressed in “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are good, whatsoever things are lovely…of good report…if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, THINK ON THESE THINGS.” [Philippians 4:8.]

It was queer—if such things are queer—that I had been thinking of you a great deal lately. But that so often happens—one thinks strongly of a person, and then one meets them, or have a letter. We’re all wireless-sets. Mother and I used to exchange thought constantly—and I think—I know—we do so still. She and Father often seem so near, especially when I need a bit of extra help over anything. As for Pat—well, his nearness is often a very real thing. I don’t see any reason why it should not be. We know there are “messengers given charge concerning us, to keep us in all our ways” [Luke 4: 10.]—and why should they not be those who love us best?

A few months after Pat went I met in London a delightful elderly Scotswoman; we met at the Club, introduced by a mutual acquaintance who knew very little about me. We liked each other, she found that I was keen on old houses, and asked me to come and see hers in Chelsea. I went, and as we were sitting talking after tea, I noticed that her eyes strayed past me several times. Presently she said, “Mrs. Bruce, I hope you won’t mind if I say something—I’m like many Highlanders, I have “the sight,” and so had my mother before me—and I see someone so plainly near you that I feel I must tell you.” I said “Yes?” very bewildered. “He has been standing very near you for some minutes—a boy about 12, with such a rosy, happy face, and a sweep of golden hair across a splendid brow”—and she went on to describe Pat minutely, every detail correct. “He’s so happy that I see him, and you know—he is putting his arm round your shoulders and smiling at you in such a protective way.”

There are so many who have similar experiences. This was especially striking, as she knew nothing about me and my loss—I have never worn mourning, which we all detest, and our meeting and our talk had been quite impersonal. It gave me a comfort I cannot explain—something of “the Peace that passeth all understanding.” [Philippians 4:7.] I knew Pat was there, with a deep, inner knowing—knew he was alive and busy and working somewhere “about his Father’s business,” [Luke 2:49] but “still living, still loving, still mine”—able to be near his dearests sometimes,--perhaps as a part of that “business.” I have never lost the feeling: it grows and deepens. I know he’s not with me always—I wouldn’t want to hold him there, and keep him from his job. But sometimes I have a sudden wave of knowledge that he is beside me—as if I could almost touch him: and always there comes that great wave of happiness. We keep with him step by step in that otherwhere—we’ve just kept his 16^th birthday happily. As for thinking of him as “dead,” that seems to us merely silly!

There is a tremendous drive of interest in the future life and the matter of survival. Wherever you go you hear it talked about. In this age of empty churches the one thing that will fill a church to the doors is the announcement of a sermon on the future life; and psychic investigation on scientific and religious lines is spreading by leaps and bounds. One development that is very marked is the spread of spiritual healing, due to the Spiritualist bodies—there is scarcely a little town in England that is without its “healing circle,” and in every private asylum there are Spiritualists “casting out devils,” and restoring people just as the Master did. There is, of course, a fearful lot that is cheap and fraudulent about so-called Spiritualism, but there is also a steadily growing side that claims to have received teaching from the Other Side that has made life a new thing—and these people are living a life of love and service because of it. One constantly hears sermons on the wireless about it, and in London there is a body of clergymen, over 200 strong, who are steadily investigation psychic matters. Some of the most prominent Presbyterian divines have openly declared their belief in psychic “communications.” This tremendous “drive,” which has steadily increased since the first year of the War, makes one think. I had a complete scorn for the whole thing four years ago. But now I wonder if the strength of this wave of pressure from the Other Side is not a counter-blast to another wave almost as strong—the denial of God. Look at it in Russia: look at it wherever the Communist element is strong. It isn’t only in the Communist “Sunday schools,” where children are deliberately taught to jeer at God: it is in the educated classes, led by such men as Julius Huxley [sic] and Bernard Shaw. A professor at the London University put two questions 2 years ago to a class of about 30 undergraduates: 1. “Do you believe in the existence of God?” With about 4 exceptions the answer was a flat “No.” Last year there was a series of Sunday talks on “The Future Life” by well-known men—they say never was a series more keenly listened to, more provocative of letters on both sides. There were 12 talks, and 6 of the speakers argued brilliantly against any existence after death. It is the same in the schools: Jon says many fellows at Repton, fine fellows too, have no belief in God or a future. The Churches cannot hold the young. And the young are “seeking”: the wave of riot and indiscipline that followed the War is being succeeded by a desire for something fine to hold to. They are getting together in groups, talking things out. The Oxford Group movement is a sign of the times: apart from it there are innumerable “Conferences of Youth” meeting to discuss problems of life and mind. Jon went to one in the holidays—70 or 80 young people, from 17–30, who spent a week-end discussing modern problems. A boy of 18 couldn’t have done that in my youth without being thought “queer,” but no one would apply that epithet to our large and merry Jon. It’s normal now.

Well, I’ve run along—somehow felt you’d be interested in the things that are interesting us. Life is very full—one curious result of believing as we do about mind-power and thought-control is that people are always coming to talk—many of them in trouble. It makes one happy, feeling that one is used as a channel, but one’s days disappear in a disconcerting fashion! However, it is one form of being “on service,” and I believe that’s the only thing that matters.

What a lot you’ve always given, in affection and happy outlook—and in laughter, which is one of the best forces in life. Do you know what I was thinking of the day before your letter came? Do you remember coming to see Mother when she was ill and we’d put her for coolness in father’s little room? You’d said good-bye, but you suddenly turned from the front door and ran back to her, and said “I just had to come back and pull your pigtail!” If you knew how many laughs that gave her—bless you! Other people used to look like [scowling face] and ask about her symptoms.

Write again some time—I do love to hear. My love to you and all the dear old friends. How I would love a yarn to you.

Yours ever affectionately,

M. G. Bruce

III. Mary Grant Bruce to Ada Borthwick

Robinswood

22^nd Sept. 1935

Dearest Mrs. Borthwick,

You know without my telling you how sorry I was to hear from Jean of your illness—and if I were a free agent I’d be in London tomorrow to see you and the girls: but I’m a duck with one wing at the moment, having lately had a minor operation, about which Jean will tell you, and my stitches don’t come out until tomorrow. It’s nothing to worry about, but it will tie me here for a bit.

But being 70 miles from you is not a bar to thought, and in that way I am near you now, and will keep near. For years we have studied the power of thought, steadily held, to help in illness; and we know how real it is. The Guild of Healing to which we belong, works altogether by mental means, thought and prayer, for cases sent to it, and the cures that I could tell you about are more like miracles than anything else. We look on thought as a kind of wireless, and we know that where there is love and sympathy and faith that wireless goes straight to its object. I feel that you can believe this—anyhow just because you know I love you, will you try to remember that especially twice a day at 7.30 a.m. and 9.30 p.m. I am thinking steadily at you?—picturing you happy and peaceful, with rays of vitality and health pouring into you, building up new health and harmony in all your being—and will you relax and feel receptive?

Of course one is “nothing of oneself.” We just believe in the Master as the Great Healer, just as keen to give people health as He was when He walked in Galilee: we believe that those we have loved, who have gone ahead, are working for Him in that purpose, relaying, as it were, His wireless rays to those who suffer: and we believe that anyone on earth can join in that purpose and be channels for His healing. It doesn’t for a moment supersede the work of doctors and nurses, but it does help to make an atmosphere that aids all their work.

It isn’t for us to say precisely what “healing” is. The healing of the Master is from within, and it manifests as He directs—often in complete bodily recovery, or perhaps in the deepest healing of all—absolutely peace of soul. But the Blessing never fails if only one opens oneself to receive it. One patient said to me—“I just had the feeling that the Everlasting Arms were holding me fast.”

I haven’t the slightest doubt that all our “dearests” who have gone over are working round you now. I must tell you a little story of my operation last week. After it was over, the sister who had been present as chatting to me in the evening, and asked me “Who is Pat?” “Pat is my son,” I said. “Why?” “Well, when you were unconscious you began to wriggle—and then you said happily, ‘Pat says, “Lie still, Mother,”—Pat says “Lie quite still, Mother—it’s all right—you’re going to be quite well.”’ And you did lie still!” finished sister.

So I picture you, with all your dear ones looking after you, those you can see and those you can’t—and there are no “visiting hours” for the ones you can’t see—they’re there all the time, “messengers Given charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.” [Psalm 91: 11, cfr. Matthew 4: 6.]

My best love, and I’ll be looking out for very good reports of you.

With strongest thoughts.

Yours lovingly,

Minnie G. Bruce

IV. Mary Grant Bruce to Jean Borthwick

Robinswood

Dorset Road

Bexhill-on-Sea

24^th Sept. ’35.

My dear Jean,

I was so glad to hear that your mother was going on well—her message was just her, wasn’t it? I was very interested to hear what the Doctor said of the blood-vessels expanding to carry the extra supply, because I’ve known other instances of what they call “compensating adjustments” developing to relieve heart trouble. My father had a weak heart all his life, and we never knew when an attack of palpitation would come. Certainly his doctor thought one would carry him off. But he lived to be 90, and in the last 10 years the heart strengthened, and was wonderfully strong in his last illness—a stroke. With what I know now I believe it was largely due to his serenity of mind: he took care—after 75!—but he declined to worry. And his last few years were wonderful, for his mind was so clear and young.

My husband’s heart was weak for years—he was not allowed to go to the Front in the War, and always had to be very careful. Five years ago, when we were both in the mud, mentally and physically, we were put on to a system of breathing with the use of thought, and though we hadn’t the least faith in it—it seemed to us so visionary, and we’re very practical people—we promised to try it for 3 months. The results fairly amazed us. We lost every ailment we had, and they were many—even in my case, frequent acute lumbago. In 5 years we’ve each had 2 slight colds—we used to have colds and ’flu all the winter. Our minds toned up with our bodies, and we came back from the depths to be happy, normal, and stronger than we had been for twenty years.

Once you get interested in this sort of thing it is a queer fact that all sorts of side-lights seem to be led to you about it. One in our case was a course of lectures on practical psychology. We learned a lot from it: the lecturer was very keen on thought used constructively. He said that all the body responded to thought, but that three organs were especially susceptible to it—the eyes, the ears, and the heart. So my husband and I treated his heart steadily, just thinking strength into it. I don’t mean that we made a ceremony of it: he made it part of his breathing exercises, and I thought at him quietly alone. It helps very much in mental treatment to make a mental picture of the person you want to help, for one’s mental pictures have real power—so real that nowadays we literally do not dare to picture anything that includes fear. When I treat a case, I “see” him, happy, strong, well, bathed in light, and that light signifies to me the supply of all his special need. One can’t, oneself, know all his need, because one is finite: but if that light can represent to you the Infinite Love, help can’t fail.

There are not always cures, as man counts cures—though there are many. But whenever one talks to people engaged in mental healing one hears of amazing cases where pain goes. I know of one, a man with very advanced cancer of throat, in ghastly pain and fear: and under mental healing every bit of pain and fear went. He lived on for 6 weeks, in perfect serenity, and his passing was a triumph.

I don’t often use the term “faith-healing,” for it puts off people who can’t feel faith. I had very little myself. But if one can get people to try—just for an experiment—so often results come; and then faith takes care of itself. One can’t whip up faith to order, but one can take a chance to help—and I don’t think God bothers about one’s beliefs or lack of them, so long as one is trying to help. And when a result comes that is beyond any earthly explaining—well, one just knows that it is God, and one realizes that God needs human channels to work with. So we just go on holding our little pictures of people bathed in light, and when we finish we give thanks—before we see any result. That’s important.

And then one mustn’t spoil it by worrying. It was very hard for me to realise this, being a born worrier: harder still to practice. Then I was taught the power of affirmative prayer—the prayer that not only asks, but takes. The 23^rd Psalm is a supreme example—“The Lord is my shepherd, therefore I lack nothing,” and the power of that Psalm, especially when said aloud, is most remarkable. Any affirmation for God has power. I have my own, for any matter that tries to worry me: whenever a worry-thought comes I say “God’s looking after that—it’s all right.” It’s beyond any explaining, how it can turn aside worry—even material difficulties seem to melt. It seems to me that it is like linking-up with some reservoir of power.

We “sit under” a very fine Presbyterian minister here who said something once that is worth thinking over in this connection—“Most of us pray wrongly—we’re so busy clasping hands in prayer that we omit to open them to receive.” And we have grown to believe that the prayer that merely asks isn’t much good: we’ve got to do something ourselves, to get busy about taking. It fits in, doesn’t it, with, “Whatsoever ye ask, believing that ye have received—” [Mark 11: 24.]

It doesn’t mean living on a high plane. This is as jolly and ordinary a home as you can see, full of laughter. Only we have learned a few things about practical working, and no other religion is any good to me—I’ve got to see practical results. We are only stumblers on the way, always learning, always making mistakes. But we do get results that make the learning worthwhile: if I can pass onto you and Kathleen a few thoughts that may help you in a difficult time, then I’m paying a bit of the debt I owe for all I’ve been given in the way of help. We don’t limit our system to illness: it works over all the practical happenings of every day. It works extraordinarily over smoothing journeys: we’ve had experiences of travel being smoothed away that have made us gasp, they’re so strange. Try it when you think you’re going to miss a train, when things go wrong—“God’s looking after this—it’s all right.” And it will be.

Don’t be put off by a faith-healer who has to charge a fee. After all, he has to pay rent and food-bills, and if he doesn’t make a charge he might be quite unable to give his time. One has to look at the thing practically. I know a woman who had the power of being a channel very strongly. She declined to take any fees, believing it to be wrong. She was very poor, a widow whose two sons had been killed in the War, and she earned her living by teaching music, going here and there to pupils, taking healing cases at every moment when she could fit them in, often until midnight. Her friends begged her to drop teaching and charge healing fees, but she wouldn’t: and she was wearing herself out. Then it really seemed that God took a hand and said “my channel shall not be wasted,” for by a succession of coincidences all her pupils fell away, leaving her with none, until she was forced to charge a small fee for patients. Today she is doing wonderful work, keeping all her energy and time for the healing. She still hates taking fees, but she has learned that it isn’t sense to waste her gift.

Some people have the gift strongly through touch. I believe most people are healers, more or less: and the gift can always be developed. The laying-on of hands may be used by anyone: I have known the pain of a double-dislocation relieved by a woman who had never tried anything of the kind before, but, wrung by the sight of the girl’s agony, obeyed a sudden impulse to stroke her gently, with a desperate prayer to be made a channel. It was four hours before the doctor came, and all that time the girl was out of pain as long as the hands kept on her—if the “channel” moved away for a moment the pain returned in full force. None of us know how we may be used, until we try.

I hope all this hasn’t bored you—you needn’t answer it! I got interested in the method of our treatment in telling you about my husband’s heart, and didn’t tell you the result. The result is that there now seems nothing wrong with it! Last year we three went for a 3-weeks’ cycling tour in Devon and Cornwall, doing hundreds of miles in that hilly country, and nothing tried him. This summer he went to Wales for 3 weeks, walking 12–20 miles a day in the mountains and came home looking like a boy. He is 68. Whereas he used to cherish colds all the winter, he now seems immune to either colds or winter flu. Last winter he went about in flannels. I wore an overcoat exactly three times. I submit that if only on the score of economy this result is worth attaining! And it is entirely due to the “Healing and Strength” system we were given 5 years ago. I’ll put in a copy.

The length of this letter will show you it doesn’t hurt me to write—my wound is just west of the armpit, and my forearm is quite available for duty. I am much gayer now that the stitches are out—for a few days I must take things easily, but I’ll soon be well.

Please keep on feeling very hopeful—don’t let yourself say that you’re afraid of anything: that’s an affirmation that is too risky to use. I seem to have cast most of my burden of fears, but there’s one thing I’m afraid to say, and that is—“I’m afraid!”

Much love to you both, and my strongest thoughts.

            Yours affectionately,

                        M. G. Bruce

V. Mary Grant Bruce to Jean Borthwick

Robinswood

Dorset Road

Bexhill-on-Sea

24^th Oct. ’35.

My dear Jean,

I was so sorry not have a glimpse of you and Kathleen yesterday, so am writing to wish you both a happy and peaceful voyage. It was lovely to see your dear little Mother, and she was so bright and happy. I hope my visit did not tire her. It seems such a good plan that you have changed cabins, if only for the possibility of keeping a port-hole open and my experience is that a ship doctor gives far more attention to a class in the 1^st class.

You say I was a tow-rope. I wasn’t: I only showed you a tow-rope. It is there all the time, if you will grip it. Don’t let your minds dwell on difficulties, either present or possible—cast your burden by affirming the Power that can deal with any difficulty. Our affirmation—“God’s looking after it—it’s all right”—is the best tow-rope I know. It has pulled us out of many a bad hole. It is just an affirmative prayer, and that is the most powerful form of prayer.

It seems to me that in the mysterious form of “wireless” that prayer works we have to make an active connection that establishes the full electric circuit. I’m not scientific, but I compare it with getting light into a room. We don’t know what electricity is; we only know that it is a force man can use if he turns on a switch. If he only looks at the switch, and prays “let light come,” he has not connected up fully. But if he makes an active connection, pulling down the switch, he has affirmed faith in it—and he gets light. Our affirmative prayer—like the 23^rd Psalm, which is our splendid affirmation—is the pulling down of the switch.

I know that if you practice it regularly you will feel worry drop from you and feel that strength has been given you to face any emergency. You will “lift up your hearts”: and the mental sympathy that is so strong between mother and children will enable your mother to sense that confidence and serenity in you, and it will react upon her in every way.

Will you send me a p.c. from some of the ports to say how the journey goes? I’ll be thinking of you all every day, and knowing that “God’s looking after you—you’re all right.”

Love to you both, and “bon voyage.”

Yours affectionately,

Mary Grant Bruce

VI. Mary Grant Bruce to Jean Borthwick and Kathleen Borthwick

Sunningdale

Dorset Road

Croydon

19^th Nov. ’39

My dear Kathleen and Jean,

It was not until I came back to Victoria lately that I heard that your dear mother had gone to find those waiting for her on the Other Side—and what a reunion that must have been! But to you two, whose companionship made her life here beautiful to the end, there must be great loneliness. And George and I send you all our sympathy. I am sure you would not have wished her to stay, once she grew too tired, but the daily blank is hard to bear at first. I have found it only lessens when one can concentrate thought on the one who has gone ahead—picturing that new life, blessing daily the one we love in new joys and service. I am so very sure they never go beyond the reach of our love and our blessings.

I can think of very few people who so consistently gave love and received it as your mother. She is my very oldest friend: always an example of what could be, and of “gallant and high-hearted happiness.” [cfr. “Grant to us, O Lord, the royalty of inward happiness, and the serenity which comes from living close to thee. Daily renew in us the sense of joy, and let the eternal spirit of the Father dwell in our souls and bodies, filling every corner of our hearts with light and grace; so that, bearing about with us the infection of good courage, we may be diffusers of life, and may meet all ills and cross accidents with gallant and high-hearted happiness, giving thee thanks always for all things.” Robert Louis Stevenson.] I don’t suppose she ever guessed how much she helped other people—but she had only to be her dear self to do that.

With much love.

Your affectionate friend

Mary Grant Bruce

Mary Grant Bruce

The Australian novelist Mary Grant Bruce (1878–1958) was the second daughter and fourth child of Eyre Lewis Bruce and Mary (Minnie) Atkinson Whittakers, the daughter in turn of William and Louisa Whittakers, Welsh pioneers of the Monaro district of New South Wales. Mr. Bruce was a surveyer who migrated to Victoria from Cork in Ireland in 1854; settled near Sale in East Gippsland ten years later, and surveyed Bruce Road, his only monument, which still skirts the Colquhuon State Forest, commencing at a point on the Princes’ Highway that is roughly half way between Swan Reach and Kalimna West, and leads most of the way north to the neighborhood of Tambo Upper. I am afraid that one day someone will feel they have to pave it.

Now the Bruce, Gooch, and Pearson families of East Gippsland were closely bound by marriage. Two of my great-grandmother Sophie Pearson’s younger Gooch siblings each married a different one of Mary Grant Bruce’s: Frank Gooch married Emily Bruce, while Sophie and Frank’s adored youngest sister Mollie married Maxwell Bruce (Max). After Mollie died in childbirth, leaving Max with a baby daughter, Sophie and William Pearson took the baby into their own family, and raised her with their own son and daughters (including Granny). The baby’s name was also Mollie. Eventually she took the additional surname of Pearson (whether she was ever formally adopted I do not know), and became known affectionately to subsequent generations of Pearsons, Borthwicks, and Trumbles as Mungie.

Now, much earlier, in the 1880s, Sophie Pearson’s sister Kate married William Pearson’s brother Jack, and by this neat and not particularly unusual Victorian stratagem the children of all three families were provided with many cousins; a deep attachment to each other, and a powerful attachment to the region of East Gippsland where they all grew up

Beyond these immediate family connections, like the Pearsons, the Bruces were lifelong friends and neighbors of the Borthwick family of Sale and nearby Bald Hills. In 1914, Mary Grant Bruce married her distant Anglo-Irish cousin, Major George Evans Bruce, to whom in London she introduced the whole Pearson family, including her niece Mungie, who was by then in boarding school.

Throughout the extended periods they spent living abroad, George and Mary Grant Bruce corresponded with great-grandmother Ada Borthwick and, after she died, with Aunt Jean and Aunt Kath. During the bleak period of crisis that followed the death in a shooting accident in Northern Ireland of the Bruces’ younger son Patrick, Mary’s affectionate correspondence with Mrs. Borthwick turned more and more toward breathing exercises, thought-power, table-rapping, and spiritualism.

In any case, it is hardly surprising that the Linton characters in Mary Grant Bruce’s famous series of Billabong novels often resemble various Bruces, Gooches, Pearsons, and Borthwicks, and I have a strong feeling that their fictional property, Billabong, is a fusion of Bonegilla (above), Kilmany Park, and Bald Hills, with plenty of embellishments. Here, for example, is the opening of From Billabong to London, the publication of which coincided with the Pearsons’ extended visit to England, beginning in late 1912:

If you came to the homestead of Billabong by the front entrance, you approached a great double gate of wrought iron, which opened stiffly, with protesting creaks, and creaked almost as much at being closed. Then you found yourself in a long, winding avenue, lined with tall pine-trees, beyond which you could catch glimpses, between the trunks of a kind of wilderness-garden, where climbing roses and flowering shrubs and gum-trees and bush plants, and a host of pleasant, friendly, common flowers grew all together in a very delightful fashion. Seeing, however, that you were a visitor by the front entrance, you could not answer the beckonings of the wilderness-garden, but must follow the windings of the avenue, on and on, until the wild growth on either side gave place to spreading lawns and trim flower-beds, the pine-trees ended, and you came round a kind of corner formed by an immense bush of scarlet bougainvillea, and so found the house smiling a welcome.
Very rarely were any doors or windows shut at Billabong. The kindly Australian climate makes the sunlit winter air a delight; and if in summer it is sometimes necessary to shut out heat, and possibly intrusive snakes, as soon as the sun goes down everything is flung wide open to admit the cool evening breeze that comes blowing across the paddocks. Billabong always looked as if it were open to welcome the newcomer.

It was a red house of two storeys, looking lower than it was because of its width and the great trees that grew all round it, as well as because of its broad balconies and verandas. From either side the garden stretched away until hedges of roses blocked the entrance to orchard and vegetable patches. The house stood on a gentle rise, and in front the trees had been thinned so that across the smooth lawn you looked over stretching paddocks, dotted with gum-trees, and broken by the silver gleam of a reed-fringed lagoon. There was no other house visible—only the wide, peaceful paddocks. The nearest road was two miles away, and it was seventeen miles to the nearest town. Perhaps, seen from the front, Billabong might have seemed a little lonely.