Isabella Bird Bishop, Part 3

[00:00:04] Welcome to Women Worth Knowing, the radio program and podcast hosted by Cheryl Brodersen and Robin Jones Gunn

[00:00:12] Okay, Cheryl, we have to just dive right in to Part 3 of Isabella Bird Bishop.

[00:00:17] When we left off, she was in Japan, which was closed to the outside world, but she was getting special permission to go into the interior because this woman was pretty much unstoppable.

[00:00:27] So you have to go back and listen to the first two episodes.

[00:00:30] You do, but we will tell you this.

[00:00:31] She was an explorer.

[00:00:32] She was an English woman when she was home in England or Scotland.

[00:00:36] She was sickly.

[00:00:37] But when she is having an adventure, especially the worse the condition, the better she feels.

[00:00:46] And we can't explain that.

[00:00:47] Nope, nope.

[00:00:48] And it's not like she's ever pain free, but she's kind of not aware of herself and she loves to travel.

[00:00:54] So she goes into the interior of Japan in February of 1878.

[00:01:00] She's 47 years old.

[00:01:02] And she goes over 1,000 miles from Tokyo to Niko in the north through the interior.

[00:01:11] And she traveled by rickshaw, by foot, by donkey, and by horse.

[00:01:16] Now, she hired this man named Ito to be her guide and her interpreter.

[00:01:20] Ito spoke perfect English.

[00:01:22] But she had kind of a love-hate relationship with him because he was vain.

[00:01:26] If ever there was a mirror, she'd see him, you know, primping himself.

[00:01:31] He was very careful about his clothes.

[00:01:34] He always had to look absolutely perfect.

[00:01:36] And he was always flirting with and disappearing with women along the journey.

[00:01:41] And she didn't approve of his morals at all.

[00:01:45] But he spoke almost perfect English.

[00:01:49] He had been hanging out with the boats.

[00:01:51] So he had all these interesting phrases that she was always correcting.

[00:01:55] Or some of the phrases, they were driving her crazy.

[00:01:58] So she told him what they meant.

[00:01:59] And then he hated saying them.

[00:02:01] So he would say, what is a better thing to say?

[00:02:03] And so she'd give him another phrase.

[00:02:04] So he started saying, oh, it is a beautiful day.

[00:02:11] So actually, towards the end of their 1,000 miles, Ito was totally won over again by Isabella's resiliency, her fortitude, her fearlessness, and her acceptance of all things Japanese.

[00:02:25] She might not have thought they were pretty or inviting.

[00:02:31] But she loved seeing them.

[00:02:34] She loved writing about them.

[00:02:36] She loved describing them.

[00:02:38] And again, she was very brutal in her honesty about what she saw in the interior.

[00:02:45] Because at the time, there was this arrogance at the ports from a lot of the Japanese officials.

[00:02:51] And they said, you know, we don't need religion.

[00:02:53] Your religion is dead.

[00:02:54] And as she's looking at the interior and the poverty and the, I want to say, the sickliness, the cruelty of some of the citizens to each other, she's saying they need Jesus.

[00:03:13] You know?

[00:03:14] They think they don't.

[00:03:15] And they don't know how desperately they need him.

[00:03:18] One of the officials said to her, we have no religion.

[00:03:22] And all your learned men know that religion is false.

[00:03:25] And she wrote about it.

[00:03:26] She did.

[00:03:27] She wrote about it in her book, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.

[00:03:30] And can you imagine how that affected those who felt this heart call to go to Japan and bring the gospel?

[00:03:36] That's right.

[00:03:36] That's right.

[00:03:37] So one of her letters to Henny at this time was 100 pages long.

[00:03:41] Now, her letters are mainly to Henny, some to Anna, Stoddard, her best friend, and a few to John Murray, her publicist.

[00:03:49] But mainly she writes all of her discoveries that are compiled to her sister in letter form.

[00:03:59] And that's important as we go on.

[00:04:02] So she told her sister that she wanted to go from Japan to the Mele Peninsula.

[00:04:05] And her sister wrote her back and said, I think you should call it the Golden Cherniece and the Way Fither.

[00:04:13] And that was exactly what she decided to call it.

[00:04:16] I want to say one thing about Japan, though.

[00:04:18] You know, again, she's tracking up the interior where no white woman had gone before.

[00:04:22] And she would sleep in these inns where the people would sleep.

[00:04:26] Or she would ask a homeowner if she could have a room.

[00:04:31] And every place she went, she would find people peeking in any holes in the paper walls to see her because she was such a novelty.

[00:04:38] They wanted to know what she looked like.

[00:04:40] And one morning she woke up and all the walls were gone.

[00:04:43] They had all been removed.

[00:04:45] And she was surrounded by a crowd of villagers just wanting to see what she looked like.

[00:04:49] Yes.

[00:04:50] So that was, you know, some of what she described in her book on Japan.

[00:04:56] So from there she went to the Mele Peninsula.

[00:05:01] So for those of you who don't know where the Mele Peninsula is, it's where Thailand is.

[00:05:07] It's where Malaysia is.

[00:05:09] And it kind of juts down.

[00:05:11] It's also near Shanghai.

[00:05:13] It juts down from China.

[00:05:16] And it's just this peninsula that, you know, comes down from China.

[00:05:21] And she goes there.

[00:05:24] And one of the things that's in 1878, she's there.

[00:05:29] And she has only with her four small boxes, 20 inches long, a foot high, and a foot wide.

[00:05:35] So it's not very much that she has.

[00:05:39] And again, I forgot to mention that when she was in Japan, she dressed like the Japanese.

[00:05:46] She wore kimonas and she dressed like them.

[00:05:49] And again, she would take their mode of travel.

[00:05:51] She would eat what they ate.

[00:05:53] She did not like sushi and all the raw fish, even though she liked fish.

[00:05:57] She didn't like that food.

[00:05:58] And she said she subsisted on rice and eggs wherever she could get them.

[00:06:03] So now she's in the Malay Peninsula.

[00:06:05] And in those, besides those four small boxes, everywhere she went, she carried a canvas stretcher bed, a cork mattress, blankets, woolen sheets, and her Mexican saddle.

[00:06:19] They all just went with her wherever she went.

[00:06:21] So in Thailand, she traveled on junk, steamers, elephants.

[00:06:27] She stayed in tents besides donkeys and horses.

[00:06:30] She stayed in tents, stables, huts, and caravans over plains and mountains.

[00:06:36] At one point, she was very disappointed to hear when she was in Thailand that her host had prepared a dinner for her because she was staying at this little hut that didn't have anywhere around it and just kind of taking in nature.

[00:06:50] She loved it.

[00:06:51] And her host had prepared a dinner for her and she would have to come down to this dining room for dinner.

[00:06:56] So she gets down to this dining room, which is outdoors, and seated on one of the chairs, and it's an English table.

[00:07:04] It's sat like an English table with china and everything.

[00:07:06] And seated on one of the chairs is a golden retriever.

[00:07:09] And on another chair is a monkey.

[00:07:12] And on another chair, it's a gibbon, which is, I think—

[00:07:15] No, yeah.

[00:07:16] A smaller monkey, right?

[00:07:17] But, Hans, so anyway, the gibbon keeps ordering the monkey around and the monkey keeps going and stealing food off of everyone's plates.

[00:07:26] And she was delighted.

[00:07:28] She just said that was one of her best dinners ever.

[00:07:31] She just loved it.

[00:07:32] It was mainly bananas and coconut.

[00:07:34] I can't remember what else she was served.

[00:07:36] She returned from Asia, from the Malay Peninsula that year.

[00:07:46] And she realized that Henrietta was sick and she had contracted typhoid in 1880.

[00:07:56] And she died of typhoid.

[00:07:58] And Isabella was deeply grief-stricken.

[00:08:01] She tried to take care of her and thank the Lord she did not get typhoid, which a lot of people had gotten.

[00:08:08] So she insisted on wearing black because she could not get over the grief of Henrietta.

[00:08:16] John Bishop renewed his marriage proposal.

[00:08:20] Oh, yes, Dr. Bishop.

[00:08:21] Dr. Bishop.

[00:08:22] And Isabella accepted but insisted on wearing black even at their wedding ceremony.

[00:08:26] Really?

[00:08:27] And she really didn't know if she loved him.

[00:08:31] So she's marrying him at how old?

[00:08:34] She's almost 50.

[00:08:35] She's like 48, 49 years old.

[00:08:38] So she's not sure, actually 49, she's not sure that she loves him.

[00:08:42] But she knows he's a good man.

[00:08:45] And she almost feels indebted because he took such good care of her sister.

[00:08:49] And this is her third marriage proposal and maybe her last because she's almost 50.

[00:08:55] So while he's in Edinburgh and he's, you know, doing a surgery on a man who is afflicted with a disease called erysipelas.

[00:09:05] We would call it now in these days cellulitis.

[00:09:08] Okay.

[00:09:09] But in then, but in those days they didn't have antibiotics.

[00:09:13] So there was no way to treat it.

[00:09:15] And it was very, and it is still, cellulitis is very infectious.

[00:09:18] And what happens is that John Bishop contracts that cellulitis and he becomes afflicted.

[00:09:28] So he has to at one point, because he is contagious, he has to step away from his practice.

[00:09:34] And the only relief he gets from this cellulitis is when he takes these very cold, cold swims in the ocean.

[00:09:45] That's it.

[00:09:46] Really?

[00:09:47] And you know how cold it can be in England.

[00:09:49] That ocean is cold.

[00:09:50] But that seems to be his only relief.

[00:09:53] But they do ride horses together.

[00:09:56] And it is during this time where John is stricken down and he's getting worse and worse,

[00:10:04] that Isabella begins to realize how wonderful John Bishop is.

[00:10:08] She begins to see that he is so kind and always kind, unwaveringly kind.

[00:10:16] Even when he is in the worst pain, he is always kind, that he is happy, that he is always complimenting her, loving on her.

[00:10:27] His mind is clear and bright.

[00:10:29] But he continues to lose weight even during this time.

[00:10:35] And after four and a half years of marriage, he died on March 6, 1886.

[00:10:45] And so while she was still married, she had been inducted into the National Geographic Society.

[00:10:52] So she was never idle when she was back in England or Scotland.

[00:10:58] And in the National Geographic Society, they would ask her to lecture on more than one occasion.

[00:11:05] And she was the first woman ever inducted.

[00:11:07] And then somebody said, wait, we don't want women in this association.

[00:11:10] So then they wanted to take it back along with other women who had been inducted after her.

[00:11:18] And she just really didn't care.

[00:11:20] She was not a suffragette.

[00:11:21] She just wanted to travel and to write.

[00:11:24] And she was like, you know, I'll leave that discussion to others.

[00:11:28] But I'm still going to do.

[00:11:30] I'm still going to explore my freedoms.

[00:11:31] I'm still going to travel and do what I do.

[00:11:35] So after John's death in 1888, she came down with scarlet fever.

[00:11:43] But she finally recovered after some time with it.

[00:11:47] Scarlet fever, as you know, affects the heart, which it did affect her heart.

[00:11:51] She was independently wealthy after the death of John.

[00:11:56] He had left her all his estate, all his money.

[00:11:59] He didn't have any other relatives to leave it to.

[00:12:02] So it was all left to Isabella, as well as the state of her parents.

[00:12:07] And it had, you know, her father come into money from his father.

[00:12:11] Her mother come into money from her mother.

[00:12:14] And so the state was very sizable.

[00:12:16] She was a very independently wealthy woman.

[00:12:19] But she never cared about money.

[00:12:21] Right.

[00:12:21] I was going to say, what a contrast to so much of her life was just so minimal.

[00:12:26] Right.

[00:12:26] Now, in Japan and in the Meili Coast, she had become aware of diseases and sickness.

[00:12:37] And also, I think because of her sister's typhoid and because of her husband dying, she really wanted to take a medical course.

[00:12:45] And something I forgot to mention is she was sickly the whole time she was married to John, too.

[00:12:50] She developed carbuncles on her spine.

[00:12:53] Oh, baby.

[00:12:54] So carbuncles are these huge open sores.

[00:12:56] Yes.

[00:12:57] Like boils on her spine.

[00:12:58] So she was in tremendous pain.

[00:13:01] Mm-hmm.

[00:13:01] So she decides, you know, after his death that if she's going to go on the mission field, and she's about 58 at this time, she needs a crash course in medicine.

[00:13:11] So she goes down to London, and she takes a medical training course that was a little less than a year.

[00:13:18] And she decides she needs to practice before she goes to the mission field.

[00:13:24] And she had her eyes at this point on going to Persia.

[00:13:27] Yes.

[00:13:27] This is the very first thing I had read about her.

[00:13:29] Like, I'm almost 60 years old.

[00:13:30] I think I will go be a missionary, medical missionary to Persia.

[00:13:35] Right.

[00:13:36] Wow.

[00:13:36] She buys a house in London and decides that she's going to take in the infirmed.

[00:13:44] And so she takes in one man who is like a retired farmer, and she realizes that she's physically, mentally, and emotionally not equipped for the work of taking care of people.

[00:13:52] Her gift is not taking care of people.

[00:13:55] Her gift is to travel and to be fearless and to write.

[00:13:59] Yeah.

[00:14:00] You know, but she thought, oh, what am I doing for these people that I'm visiting?

[00:14:03] And she felt like she couldn't do enough.

[00:14:05] She felt almost exploitive.

[00:14:07] I'm just writing about them, but I'm not giving anything back.

[00:14:10] And that was one of the reasons that she wanted to, you know, do more.

[00:14:14] So she went first to India, and she was given land in India where she could establish and build a hospital in her husband's name.

[00:14:27] And so it started out with 60 beds and a dispensary for women, and it was called the John Bishop Memorial Hospital.

[00:14:33] She hired, while she was in India, an interpreter so she could do these things named Mando.

[00:14:39] And he was a huge man, loved to wear feathers in his hair and carry a sword over his shoulder that he brandished.

[00:14:47] And every town they entered, he would start brandishing the sword.

[00:14:50] Upon reaching the village of Lay, he was recognized for who he really was, a murderer and a ruffian.

[00:14:58] Oh, no.

[00:14:58] Isabella would later write, and I love this understated comment, an attendant of this kind was a mistake.

[00:15:06] Oh.

[00:15:07] You think so?

[00:15:08] Oh, you know.

[00:15:09] In India, she rode elephants that she often slipped off of while fording rivers.

[00:15:15] She rode yaks, donkeys, and hiked over the Kashmir Mountains.

[00:15:19] And she stayed with llamas in the Himalayans just finding out about their life.

[00:15:27] Isabella felt like she had lost some of the zest for writing during this time

[00:15:31] because she no longer felt the excitement of writing to describe it to Henrietta.

[00:15:38] Oh.

[00:15:39] And this is also when she abandoned the letter format and just began to write her descriptions, just like to no one.

[00:15:46] That's interesting.

[00:15:48] She joined a group of British soldiers who were bound for Persia.

[00:15:51] And the leader was a man named Major Sawyer.

[00:15:56] He was handsome, irascible, intelligent, energetic, obstinate, and brave.

[00:16:02] And he was 38 years old.

[00:16:03] And he really resented having to take this old Scottish woman with him, but he was pressured into doing it.

[00:16:12] You know, you have to take her.

[00:16:13] She's well-known from the higher ups.

[00:16:17] But he was soon won over by her fearlessness and intrepidness.

[00:16:22] Nothing dawned on her.

[00:16:23] They traveled some 1,500 miles together on just one of their trips from Baghdad to Tehran.

[00:16:31] So, you know, that's from Iraq to, you know, Iran.

[00:16:38] 46 days.

[00:16:39] Isabella lost 22 pounds but never complained.

[00:16:42] Wow.

[00:16:43] That was what she was known for.

[00:16:44] She never complained.

[00:16:45] You know, you would get kind of her observations in her letters and in her writing, but she never, ever complained.

[00:16:52] The more Isabella saw of the world, the more she appreciated and advocated faith in the Lord Jesus because she saw the severity and the brutality of the Kurds towards the Armenians and the Nestorian Christians.

[00:17:08] Now, Nestorian were famously off-doctrinally way back during the time of Nestor, their follower.

[00:17:14] But by this time, Nestorian was just another word for Christians.

[00:17:18] And she saw them being brutalized by the Kurds and by some Muslims.

[00:17:24] And she saw that there was cruelty in their ranks but not with the Christians.

[00:17:29] And it was at that point she determined that she would help the plight of the Armenian women.

[00:17:38] And so she helped to support and open an orphanage, a school, and a medical center while she was in Persia.

[00:17:46] She also, as you would expect, in Persia, adopted the dress and would always wear a pun job.

[00:17:54] And she was hoping that she wouldn't be recognized as an English woman.

[00:17:57] But it seemed like wherever she was, she was still recognized for being English.

[00:18:03] While in Joltha, she received a copy of Henry Drummond's book, The Greatest Thing in All the World.

[00:18:07] Have you read that?

[00:18:08] Yes.

[00:18:08] I think we all have, right?

[00:18:09] It's such a great book.

[00:18:10] I think maybe in high school and it had such an effect on me.

[00:18:12] Oh.

[00:18:12] It just summarizes this is what God wants for us.

[00:18:17] Yes.

[00:18:17] It summarizes the love of God for us and the love that He wants us to have for others.

[00:18:23] She was greatly convicted.

[00:18:25] And she kept praying that she could display that type of love that she read about.

[00:18:30] However, the truth was that Isabella did not really like to interact with people at all.

[00:18:34] She found nature and observation wonderful and exhilarating.

[00:18:39] But serving others in the capacity of love, just interaction, did not suit her.

[00:18:44] Serving people, yes, she could feed them.

[00:18:46] She could bring water.

[00:18:48] She could do things with her hands.

[00:18:51] But just those interactions of love were not easy for her.

[00:18:55] She found that every interaction that she tried with the Muslims, she was repaid for those efforts of love with having all of what she had stolen, even her horse.

[00:19:07] She had fallen in love with her horse.

[00:19:08] Her favorite horse that she ever had was while she was in Persia.

[00:19:12] And she could call this horse and it would come into her room.

[00:19:15] In fact, on a couple of occasions, she would wake up with the horse in her tent licking her face.

[00:19:20] This horse just absolutely loved Isabella.

[00:19:22] And she could call and the horse would come to her.

[00:19:25] It was a smaller horse, so it was easier for her to mount.

[00:19:28] But she woke up and it was stolen one day.

[00:19:31] But it was later recovered.

[00:19:33] Oh, good.

[00:19:34] She would read Ben Hur and Sermons every Sunday evening to Major Sawyer and the other soldiers that she was caravanning with.

[00:19:42] And they traveled an average of 18 miles a day.

[00:19:44] She wrote this.

[00:19:45] A growing belief that Christianity was a force for good in the world and that its message could be most effectively spread through the work of medical missionaries.

[00:19:54] In 1882, she wrote to a friend,

[00:19:58] Beloved memories, noble examples, and stimulating words of those who I have lost are always goading me onwards and upwards.

[00:20:08] I feel that I must make the best of myself.

[00:20:11] I must bear an active part in life.

[00:20:13] I must follow their examples to be of worth of every meeting if I'm going to ever meet them again, which is my one personal hope.

[00:20:24] And thus, with a ceaseless ache at my heart and without a shadow of enjoyment in anything, I respond to every call to action.

[00:20:32] And my life, though very sad, is very full.

[00:20:34] And though I cannot enjoy, I am intensely interested.

[00:20:38] And for this, I thank God.

[00:20:40] And it summarizes everything, right?

[00:20:43] Right.

[00:20:43] Upon her return to England, John Murray set up a meal with Mr. Gladstone where she was able to talk about the plight of the Armenian girls.

[00:20:51] And he asked her quite a few questions.

[00:20:53] Isabel answered intelligently, meticulously in her slow, gentle voice.

[00:20:59] But she was not impressed with Mr. Gladstone.

[00:21:02] She didn't care about meeting dignitaries.

[00:21:04] In fact, she would rather just be alone writing or exploring.

[00:21:09] And he later became prime minister.

[00:21:11] He did.

[00:21:11] He did indeed.

[00:21:12] No respecter of persons.

[00:21:13] No respecter of persons.

[00:21:15] She chronicled her travels to Persia in her book, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan.

[00:21:20] She did not include a preface in that book because she did not have the heart to dedicate it to one particular person as she was still mourning for her sister and her husband.

[00:21:32] In 1891, she gave a talk at the YWCA in Tobermury.

[00:21:38] She was the one who had helped to fund and built the YWCA, Women's Christian Association.

[00:21:45] Yeah, the Young Women's Christian Association.

[00:21:46] Her talk was on Persian manners and customs.

[00:21:49] And she even had two costumes.

[00:21:51] Of course she did.

[00:21:51] That she had others model from her time in Isfahan.

[00:21:56] Isabella stayed on the island of Mull, which is the largest island in the UK and it's off the coast of Scotland.

[00:22:03] But the islanders had mixed feelings about her.

[00:22:06] They were so excited.

[00:22:06] Like, here's a celebrity, this woman who's traveled the globe.

[00:22:09] But they were so disappointed.

[00:22:12] Someone said, it's a wonder.

[00:22:14] It's no wonder she gets through.

[00:22:16] No one would even take a second look at her.

[00:22:19] The women were very critical.

[00:22:21] She wore comfortable clothes and did not care about the latest fashions.

[00:22:25] She was not the least but interested in money or society.

[00:22:29] She spent her time using her limited medical skills to help the overworked doctor on Mull.

[00:22:34] And she became almost as well known for her medical bag as for her travels.

[00:22:39] She often spoke at churches and meetings.

[00:22:42] She wrote articles for various magazines.

[00:22:43] In one of the articles, she described herself as a traveler who has been made a convert to missions, not by missionary successes, but by seeing in four and a half years of Asiatic travel, the desperate needs of the unchristian world.

[00:23:01] There was a time when I was altogether indifferent to missions and would have avoided a mission station rather than have visited it.

[00:23:08] But the awful pressing claim of the unchristian nations, which I've seen, has taught me that the work of their conversion to Christ is one to which one would gladly give influence and whatever else God has given to one.

[00:23:22] At 63, Isabella was in really bad physical shape.

[00:23:27] She suffered from rheumatic gout, infection in one lung, heart degenerative disease, and overexhaustion.

[00:23:33] So what did she do?

[00:23:34] In 1894, she boarded the steamer Mongolia for Yokohama.

[00:23:39] She took two cameras, and for the next three years, Isabella traveled between Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai.

[00:23:46] She wrote accounts of these travels in Korea and her neighbors, the Yangtze Valley, and beyond.

[00:23:51] In China, she met with CIM missionaries.

[00:23:54] She also had a near-death experience.

[00:23:56] She was on a seat carried by poles, and she told her men, look, I can walk.

[00:24:01] And they said, no, you're not safe.

[00:24:02] They entered into one of the Chinese villages, and the anti-Westerner sentiments were so high that they began to scream and yell, kill the foreigner.

[00:24:13] And they tried to knock her off of her post.

[00:24:17] Wow.

[00:24:17] She ended up just making it into the inn, hiding in this dark room, holding her pistol.

[00:24:23] And at one point, the people were trying to send firebrands through to set it on fire, but they didn't make it.

[00:24:31] Upon returning, she took French lessons, cooking class, classes on photography.

[00:24:39] At her 70th birthday, she went to Morocco.

[00:24:41] And I'm going to have to end there.

[00:24:43] She died October 7th in 1904.

[00:24:46] With her bags packed and ready for another trip to the Orient.

[00:24:49] That's right.

[00:24:50] But she went to heaven instead.

[00:24:52] Thank you for listening to Women Worth Knowing with Cheryl Broderson and Robin Jones-Gunn.

[00:24:57] For more information on Cheryl, visit CherylBroaderson.com or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

[00:25:03] For more information on Robin, visit RobinGunn.com or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

[00:25:08] Join us each week for a lively conversation as we explore the lives of well-known and not-so-well-known historical and contemporary Christian women.

[00:25:17] If you think there is a woman worth knowing, we'd love to hear from you.

[00:25:20] Email us at WWK at CCCM.com.

[00:25:26] We hope you've enjoyed today's episode.

[00:25:28] Make sure you rate us on your podcast app, subscribe, and share it with a friend.

[00:25:32] Thank you again for listening to Women Worth Knowing with Cheryl Broderson and Robin Jones-Gunn.

[00:25:37] Women Worth Knowing is a production of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.