From Ernest [John] Bowden at 617 S. Crouse Avenue, Syracuse 10, New York, United States, to Lewis Court.
He has just received a news clipping from his sister in Lifton in Devon. It was Court's appeal for anecdotes about [Edward Charles] `Charley' Bartlett.
Bartlett was `one of the joys of my youth'. He came to Tavistock in Bowden's sixteenth year [1892] and immediately took him under his wing.
Every Friday after the class meeting he would take Bowden to his study and keep him there until 10 o'clock. His comradeship was for Bowden `a big window into a new world'. Bartlett gave him his first lesson in Theology and under his supervision he worked through the first pages in Binney's Compend.
He assumes that Court has been told the story of Bartlett's courtship. It was love at first sight - from the pulpit in a series of revival services.
Bowden often remembers his association with Court in Forest of Dean and South Wales [1896-98]. Court's friendship was a bright spot in those two terrible years. The doctors insisted at first that there was nothing wrong with his health, but then when he had an x-ray they detected an hole in his right lung which the stethoscope had never detected.
For the sake of his health, Bowden went to Canada and spent two years in the wilds and made a fairly complete recovery. Eventually he was able to return to his books and for the past twenty years he has been a writer for their morning paper, covering religious, scientific and educational themes. He encloses a clipping with one of the `many bits of recognition that come my way'. Tonight he is taking part in a radio programme, presenting the British view on the Palestinian question.
A great deal has happened since they walked the twelve miles to Woolaston and back on Court's missionary deputation. Bowden was delighted two years ago to visit the church which Court designed at Lidford in Devon.
Notes .
- Ernest John Bowden (b.1876) spent his youth in Tavistock, Devon, and was raised in the Bible Christian Church. He trained for the ministry at Shebbear College and commenced circuit duties in 1896 in the Forest of Dean. Bowden resigned from the ministry in 1898 through ill health and emigrated to Canada and then the United States. Source: Beckerlegge and Maw Ms 91.10.2