Lydia Mary Fay and the Episcopal Church Mission in China Ian Welch ydia Mary Fay was born in Bennington, Vermont, in and for the last year or two she was the only foreigner in the L1804 and died in Chefoo (today Yantai) in Shandong house which she occupied.)”11 Province, North China, in October 1878.1 Her death followed Mary Fay focused her affections on her students, whom she a long series of age-related illnesses; from the mid-1860s she invariably referred to as her “young ladies” or her “boys.” She required extended breaks from her work in Shanghai, which seems to have had no close friendships with other women of the she spent either in her room at the mission school or in foreign kind experienced by, for example, the Anglican women missionar- sanatorium towns in China.2 ies of Fujian Province or Catholic women’s orders.12 Toward the Most of Mary Fay’s early life was spent in or within twenty end of her life she summed up her life’s work: “Teaching is my life miles of Albany, New York, but her education and wide reading and my delight.”13 It is worth reflecting on the balance between gave her a Eurocentric literary worldview.3 Her life story exem- “delight” and necessity when assessing missionary idealism.14 plifies people who find purpose for their lives (i.e., a vocation) Many teachers will identify with her fear of being forgotten by in a teaching career underpinned by strong religious faith, a her students. “I know [it] is the common lot of teachers, to spend combination that eventually took her to the mission field at the our lives, the best that we can give of our hearts and bodies for age of forty-six, this in an era when the average age of new mis- those who have as little thought or concern, and think every debt sionaries was about twenty-five. She had become a governess/ of gratitude is cancelled when our salaries are paid.”15 teacher in the 1820s, and by the time of her death she had worked with young people for over fifty years.4 She was a missionary Preparation for twenty-seven years when the average length of service by American Episcopal missionaries in China was around five years. Mary Fay’s initial employment in Virginia was as a governess Like so many people, she is at best a “shadowy figure in narra- with the prominent Episcopalian Dulany family near Alexandria, tions of religious and general history.”5 As an ancient Hebrew and she subsequently worked for the Carter family, with whom writer observed, “There are some who have no memorial, who the Dulanys were linked by marriage.16 Originally a Presbyte- have perished as though they had not lived; they have become rian, Mary Fay decided early in her stay in Virginia to become as though they had not been born” (Sir. 44:9 RSV). an Episcopalian. On July 12, 1840, she was confirmed by Bishop By the 1890s a majority of female English-speaking mis- William Channing Moore in Christ Church, Alexandria. She had sionaries were single women undertaking traditional “female” taken her first Anglican Communion on March 8, four months nurturing roles in education, health, and social welfare, while before her formal confirmation.17 An English minister, speaking men ran the ecclesiastical and mission administration at home at her memorial service in Shanghai, described her Episcopalian and abroad. Women found it almost impossible to overcome the identity in these terms: “If I were to try and say what type our “cult of domesticity,” which, for women such as Lydia Mary Fay, late friend bore, I should say that her character was moulded required home, husband, and family as evidence of a “normal” and fashioned in the Anglican pattern. Quiet, careful, reverent, female life.6 not caught up by passionate revivals and the gospel of hysterics, but equable and calm and thoughtful. Her letters were full of Focus quotations from the older and more learned Divines.”18 Mary Fay’s pastor at Christ Church, Alexandria, was Missionary history has tended to overlook the personal lives Charles B. Dana (rector 1834–61).19 Her very deep feelings for him and deeper longings of missionaries, male or female, married were revealed in many letters but most dramatically in a letter or single.7 Mary Fay described her life as a “path of loneliness in October 1847.20 In that year, after about eight years of work as and lowliness of service.”8 At a function celebrating a quarter a governess in northern Virginia, she moved to Warrensburg, in of a century in China, Dr. John Macgowan, a contemporary, upstate New York, where an unchaperoned visit by Dana upset declared, “Her life is sacrificed not for father, mother, husband, her father.21 She had received six letters from Dr. Jefferson Minor friend, or even for her own people, but for a far off and ancient of Miller’s Tavern, Virginia, seeking her services for his Midway people.”9 The emotional and social isolation indicated by Mac- Female Academy, opened a year or so earlier, in 1845 or 1846, and gowan reflected her life in America and in China. Julia Emery some distance from Alexandria and Dana.22 Minor believed that reported that Mary Fay’s letters were written from a “lonely Mary Fay could provide the leadership the school needed, and room.”10 The missionary who knew her best was Robert Nelson, she finally accepted. It is obvious that she had nursed hopes of who observed that her prodigious appetite for learning was a marrying Charles Dana and that she decided to leave America product of “many a lonely hour of day and night. (For, during a when that door closed. large portion of her missionary life, she kept her solitary table; Midway Female Academy was a small private girls’ school near Miller’s Tavern, a village about thirteen miles from Tap- 23 Ian Welch, a former secondary school teacher, uni- pahannock, Virginia. The academy enrolled forty girls as versity lecturer, and senior public servant, worked boarders and day students, with at least two full-time teachers on Australian national curriculum programs. He is in addition to Mary Fay. In 1848 an advertising leaflet named now researching missionary history at the Australian Mary Fay as the principal, declaring that she is “so well and National University, Canberra. favorably known and has given such general satisfaction as to —[email protected] render comment or eulogy unnecessary.”24 Her only personal visitors at the school from 1847 to 1850 were the local Episcopal assistant minister (later rector) Henry Waring Latane Temple January 2012 33 and his wife, from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Miller’s Tavern. revelation. But Oh! with tastes and feelings so perverted and Mary Fay wrote to Dana that “Mr. Temple’s sermons generally thrown away upon trifles how slow must such a work be, and put my mind out of frame” and that his services were dreary what patience, direction, discrimination, firmness and wisdom and “Methodistical.”25 Her social environment in Virginia was does it require in a teacher.”28 restricted, for the greater part, to relationships with parents, Jocelyn Murray might have been describing Mary Fay when some of whom openly rejected Christianity.26 Mary Fay was she wrote the following of potential female missionaries: “She not impressed with the almost pagan, hedonistic lifestyle of her should be ‘a sensible middle-aged person with strong decision “young ladies” but did succeed in transforming the school’s of character’; good health and good temper are ‘indispensible,’ religious character.27 A religious education program centered and she should of course be ‘devoutly religious.’ A lady who on an opening prayer and a “short Bible lesson each day.” It had been a governess would, if she had these attributes, ‘answer was no easy task to “persuade the young ladies to twist up extremely well.’”29 their curls, cut them off, put on plain dresses, lay aside their ornaments, and try and look and act a little more like school Devoted Service in China girls, and when they are composed enough for quiet, patient study, try to cultivate their taste for the really beautiful and When Mary Fay arrived in Shanghai in early 1851 there were true, their love of science and of truth, as it is in nature and forty boys in the Boys’ Boarding School, established a few years Noteworthy Announcing in Early African Pentecostalism,” the conference will bring “Commemorating the Past—Embracing the Future” is the together scholars working on three continents to examine theme for a daylong bicentennial missions celebration to be “transnational dimensions of the origin and life of Christ held February 6, 2012, at Tabernacle Church, Salem, Massa- Apostolic Church in both Nigeria and Ghana.” According to chusetts, and Park Street Church, Boston, to honor Adoni- Dale T. Irvin, NYTS president and professor of world Chris- ram Judson and the seven other missionaries who traveled tianity, the conference will advance understanding of global with him in 1812 from Salem to Burma. Judson and his party Pentecostalism and transnational and diasporan African were commissioned by the American Board of Commission- church life. For details, contact [email protected]. ers for Foreign Missions. The program includes lectures by The American Society of Missiology (www.asmweb.org) Paul Borthwick (“Endurance Personified as Seen in the Life will hold its 2012 annual meeting June 15–17 at Techny Tow- of Adoniram Judson”), senior consultant for Development ers, Techny, Illinois, with the theme, “Prophetic Dialogue: Associates International, and Todd Johnson (“North Ameri- Practice and Theology.” Roger Schroeder, S.V.D., professor can Missions from the Judsons to Global Christianity”), of intercultural studies and ministry at Catholic Theological director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Union, Chicago, is ASM president.