A Quiet Pilgrimage

by Elizabeth Gray Vining

A memoir following the loss of her husband after four happy years of marriage

Genres: Biography Memoir

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Elizabeth Gray Vining began her distinguished writing career with children's books because she said "they enjoy their books so much, read and re-read them—which is satisfying to a hard-working author." Later she began to write for adults as well, and they, too, read and re-read her books. among the most popular of these books are Windows for the Crown Prince, The Virginia Exiles, Friend of Life, Take Heed of Loving Me, and Flora.
—From the back of "Return To Japan"
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Elizabeth Janet Gray, also known as Elizabeth Gray Vining, was a prominent Quaker, known for having gone to Japan after World War II to tutor Emperor Akihito of Japan in English while he was the Crown Prince. She was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, and a noted author of children's and adult literature. She won the Newbery Award for Adam of the Road, published in 1942.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked it. It is not so much a telling of her Quaker path to spiritual enlightenment. It is a quiet declaration of the path her faith took as well as a well done autobiography. It covers her childhood, her sadly brief marriage to a man she deeply loved and who loved her. It covers her sister and their life together, her travels and some about her time in Japan as the tutor to the Crown Prince. She touched on that briefly as she has another book just on that experience. It was an enjoyable read, especially if you like her writing style. She can be wonderfully descriptive about the places she has been. This is not the modern tell all type of biography though. Do not expect that as it was written at a time when people seemed to have more class than that. It also is a good book for aspiring writers to read. It shows the path it took her to become the writer she was. Some things, she believed, were universal for writers. That experience and travel were helpful. That sometimes you had to set it aside to be finished later when your inner voice was ready for it. She leaves you with a feeling of hope for your writing. No matter what level of writer you believe yourself to be.

[Darlene Ivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A companion book to Windows for the Crown Prince, Quiet Pilgrimage adds background and summaries for the time Vining was in Japan tutoring the Crown Prince, but also provides detailed accounts of her life before and after.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this in a very different way than I expected. I saw a copy at the Quaker Meeting House, and it seemed to stress Vining's spiritual journey in her embrace of Quaker Christianity. As far as spiritual autobiographies go, it was rather lightweight.

But I thoroughly enjoyed all the descriptions of this area in which I live. Elizabeth Gray Vining, author of Newbery Award-winning Adam of the Road among many other books for children and adults, was born in 1902 in Germantown, which is now part of Philadelphia (I think, anyway), and her descriptions of the area are very interesting. She mentions a charming little stone chapel in Wayne, PA, St. David's, which is now possibly the largest church in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. She also mentions a frieze done by sculptor and head of the Physical Education Dept. at University of Pennsylvania, Tait McKenzie, which was commissioned by her father to memorialize Scottish soldiers in WWI to go to Scotland; he died before it was finished and it doesn't say where the sculpture went. Quite by surprise, the day before I read the passage I had gone to a service at the Episcopal cathedral in Philadelphia, and a friend pointed out a new frieze on the wall by Tate McKenzie -- a Greek-style frieze, but with WWI soldiers in various poses (one with his foot on the neck of a creature with wings and claws who I presume is the devil). Reading local history is very interesting to me, maybe more so since I'm new to the area.

All in all, I don't love Vining's writing. In this kind of autobiography there are too many names, too many place, too much trivia about dinners and travels and summer homes, etc. I skipped the entire section where she goes to Japan as tutor for Crown Prince Akihito; and after that point, there were many sections where I skimmed first lines of paragraphs and didn't properly read the chapters. Which, according to the "So many books, so little time" philosophy, is no tragedy.

One oddity Vining mentions is how you can see the sun both rise and set over the ocean from Cape May, New Jersey (possibly from the same spot, although I went to different beaches) -- something I had only seen in Florida before I saw it a few years ago in Cape May for the first time. It was possibly the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen (and I've seen a few, since I'm from the West Coast).

Another interesting tidbit:

[My mother and sister] needed me, and I needed to be needed. Violet was fifty-three, Mother seventy-five, neither one was in good health. . . . [Violet] underwent during the next few years a series of operations and she struggled besides with high blood pressure and a painful injury to her knee.

I happen to be 53, and a passage like this makes me realize how modern medicine and health information allow us to age much more slowly than in days of yore.

A few more quotes I enjoyed:

The fragile, white-haired, ninety-year-old Friend who sat "at the head of the meeting" always said the same thing: "Put your hand in the hand of God and He will lead you onward and upward to Heaven, wherever Heaven is." The open-mindedness of that last clause sweetened the repetition for me. (303)

[Discussing the McCarthy hearings and a similar incident in early U.S. history) There has always been in this country, it seems to me, from the very beginning of our national life, two strains: one a devotion to liberty and a regard for the individual conscience, the other a lust for conformity to prevailing modes of thought, based chiefly on fear lest our security be endangered and the precious essence of our national character be somehow lost. Two things have saved us from the second group: the willingness of individuals to stand up and resist for conscience' sake at cost to themselves, and a national gift for changing our mind and coming up with better second thoughts. 325