PART III

CHAPTER ONE

MISSION STATION
The Lowlands

MR. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, I suppose, has done more
than anyone to stamp the idea of the repressed prud-
ish man of God on the popular imagination. There
was an earlier time when Stevenson's Open Letter
allowed us to recall Father Damien; Rain has im-
pressed the image of Mr. Davidson over the mission-
ary field: the Mr. Davidson who said of his work in
the Pacific Islands, "When we went there they had no
sense of sin at all. They broke the commandments
one after the other and never knew they were doing
wrong. And I think that was the most difficult part
of my work, to instil into the natives the sense of
sin": the Mr. Davidson who slept with the prostitute,
Sadie Thompson, and then killed himself.

I remember at school finding it a little hard to
reconcile the popular idea of missionaries with the
thin tired men who used to stand on a platform rap-
ping with a small stick while the starved-looking
bodies of black children slid across the screen. They
seemed to be less Biblical than Mr. Davidson; they
seemed to be more concerned with raising a few shil-
lings for the support of the hideous tin church which
was projected as a grim climax onto the sheet than
with the sense of sin. The sense of sin lay far deeper
across the altar steps of our own school chapel. Her*