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Arriving at Vanners, he found a large, strangely mixed crowd, assembled about the gate to welcome him, from the quite poor to the wealthy who had motored over from their country places. A great number followed him and as many as could do so pressed into the garden and sat down around him. The silence was most impressive.
Upon this Crass shouted out that if ever the Vanners did return, they would finish what they had begun last Tuesday. He would not get off so easy next time. But when he said this, Crass not being able to see into the future did not know what the reader will learn in due time, that the man was to return to that place under different circumstances.
Michael Sadler, called on a number of working women of that Settlement, who were on holiday at Vanners’, in Byfleet, some twenty miles out of London, and paid a second visit there, meeting on that occasion people of every condition who had specially gathered to see Him, among whom were “the clergy of several denominations, a headmaster of a boys’ public school, a member of Parliament, a doctor, a famous political writer, the vice-chancellor of a university, several journalists, a well-known poet, and a magistrate from London.” “He will long be remembered,” wrote a chronicler of His visit to England, describing that occasion, “as He sat in the bow window in the afternoon sunshine, His arm round a very ragged but very happy little boy who had come to ask ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for sixpence for his money box and for his invalid mother, whilst round Him in the room were gathered men and women discussing Education, Socialism, the first Reform Bill, and the relation of submarines and wireless telegraphy to the new era on which man is entering.”
These small runlets can be multiplied, on a shelf measuring six or eight feet in length, to such an extent that the machine can put through as much ore as a dozen vanners, consuming only a mere fraction of the power necessary to drive one machine of the older type.
On the 28th September, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá again visited Vanners, the little farm house on the old royal manor that dates back to the time of Edward II. He motored down from London and stayed over night, returning on the evening of the second day. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was much struck during the drive by two detachments of Boy Scouts tramping the road.
On the afternoon of September 9th, a number of working women of the Passmore Edwards’ Settlement, who were spending their holidays with Miss Schepel and Miss Buckton at Vanners, in Byfleet, a village some twenty miles out of London, had the great privilege of meeting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. They wrote a short record of his sayings to keep for themselves. The following is an extract:—
The design which he practiced was based less upon any previsioned concept of art than upon the purchase, at a price, of a rainbow-end job lot of colors. The vanners descended, bent on negotiations. Progress was obviously unsatisfactory, the artist, after brief and chill consideration, reverting to his toil.
The consequence is that in large mines the nests of vanners comprise scores or even hundreds of machines. When shaking tables are used, without the addition of the endless moving bands, good work can also be done; but the waste of power is still excessive. The vanning spade and shallow washing dish are the prototypes of this kind of ore-dressing machinery.
All day long people of every condition gathered about the gate for a chance of seeing him, and more than sixty drove or cycled to Vanners to see him, many wishing to question him on some special subject.
Presently he rose, and said: “You are dear to me. I want to do something for you! Later on he walked in the village, and many poor children came to him, and mothers with sick babies and men out of work. He spoke to them all, through an interpreter. At tea-time other friends joined us. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá liked the cottage garden at Vanners, the little orchard and the roses.
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