Angel Over Her Tent

Chapter 17—Personal Glimpses

To many young people today Mrs. White has become like a character out of a myth or legend. They hear adults constantly quote from her books and tell about the important things she did for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In their denominational history books they see her photographs, surrounded by stern-looking, old-fashioned-appearing people. As a result, modern young people do not think of her as a real person whom they would enjoy knowing and being with. For example, they do not realize that she often went on picnics with her family and grandchildren. AOT 127.1

One Sabbath she spoke at a church at Napa, California. Her daughter-in-law, May Lacey White, planned that after the services they would eat outdoors. Driving home in two different carriages the family passed a quiet little mountain stream, and everyone agreed this was the place they should stop and eat. Someone took the picnic basket out of the carriage and set it on the ground. May White unfolded the large checkered tablecloth and spread it on the grass. Other members of the family arranged blankets and soft cushions around the cloth. AOT 127.2

Mrs. White had been riding in a two-seated surrey following her son’s carriage. Untucking the sealskin covering her legs, Willie White helped his mother down from the vehicle. Then he unhitched the horses and fed them grain. Sitting down around the picnic lunch, the family thanked God for the blessings He had bestowed upon them. AOT 128.1

Sandwiches made up a main part of the picnic. Some contained peanut butter and olives, others had nut food and eggs. Besides the sandwiches, they had sliced tomatoes, olives, whole-wheat sticks, dried figs, fresh pears, almonds, a hot dish kept warm in a fireless cooker (a device warmed by a soapstone heated beforehand), and milk and oatmeal cookies. AOT 128.2

After dinner, Mrs. White rested while her daughter-in-law took the children on a nature walk. After the walk, the children clustered about their grandmother and listened to her point out common objects of nature around the picnic site and make parables about them to bring out a lesson. Tiring of that, they listened to May White read from the manuscript of their grandmother’s next book, Prophets and Kings. AOT 128.3

In 1900 Mrs. White left Australia and returned to the United States. Settling in northwestern California, she purchased Elmshaven, a sixty-acre estate near St. Helena, a town about seventy miles north of San Francisco. The property included a seven-room house, a cottage, a large barn, some livestock, as well as orchards, vineyards, garden, hay land, pasture, and woodland. She obtained the whole estate for a sum rather small even in her day. AOT 128.4

The orchards had many prune trees, and the neighboring farms also possessed large prune orchards. In the spring white blossoms covered the California hills. When the fruit ripened in the fall, school closed for two weeks so that the children and young people could help harvest it. Mrs. White’s grandchildren often came over to help pick in her three prune orchards. Adults shook the fruit off the branches, and the young people picked it up and placed it in boxes. The children earned a nickel for filling a box holding three full buckets of prunes. The fruit growers dipped the prunes in boiling water to crack the skins, then spread the fruit out on long trays to dry. AOT 129.1

Sometimes Mrs. White supervised her grandchildren as they worked around Elmshaven. Although she strongly believed in keeping youngsters busy, she would not use force to make them work, nor would she scold them if they made mistakes. Her attitude encouraged them to work even harder. AOT 129.2

Besides harvesting prunes, the grandchildren picked grapes, which Mrs. White’s assistants would squeeze into grape juice for those at Elmshaven to use. Olive trees also grew on the estate. Each fall the family picked and cured barrels of them in salt brine. Often Ella White and the other grandchildren scampered down into the shadowy cellar containing the stored olives and thrust their hands into the open barrels, trying to see how many olives they could hold at a time. AOT 129.3

Believing that no one had an excuse to serve poor meals, Mrs. White kept lots of healthful food in her pantry and storage cellars. She served much fresh fruit during the summer. In the winter she substituted canned fruit. For spreads on her whole-wheat bread, she used cottage cheese, thick cream, honey, jam, peanut butter, and coconut butter. Her favorite dishes were baked corn souffle, tomatoes and macaroni, and tiny cooked mustard greens. She never served meat, but did have the meat substitutes then available. AOT 129.4

She raised her own chickens and fed them grain instead of the meat scraps some farmers used. The fowl provided the eggs used in her home. She kept five cows to provide milk, which she sterilized by boiling in big pans on her wood-burning cookstove. Instead of butter, she used cream. Although she ate only two meals a day herself, she welcomed members of her family and visitors to use her pantry to prepare an evening meal for themselves. AOT 130.1

On Sabbath afternoons Willie White and his family took long walks among the heavily forested hills near Elmshaven. On their return they would stop at Mrs. White’s home. She would gather her grandchildren about her and tell them about the new earth, especially the wonders she had seen in her visions. During the fall and winter they often sat in front of the crackling fireplace, singing hymns and reading stories. Grandmother White loved to sing. The White family stayed close together on Sabbath, the children never going off alone or with neighbor children. AOT 130.2

On warm Sabbath days they gathered out in the yard underneath a favorite tree. Mrs. William White read to her children from the Youth’s Instructor or Our Little Friend. As she read, Grace, her daughter, often climbed the old shade tree and perched on one of the large branches. There the girl watched the orchards and forested hills rolling off toward the horizon. As the Sabbath sun crept down behind the hills, the family and any visiting friends sang and prayed. AOT 130.3

When the grandchildren visited Mrs. White in her writing room at Elmshaven during the week, they scampered up the dark, narrow backstairs instead of coming up the wide formal stairs as they did on the Sabbath. In the room they would find her writing on her lapboard, using the light coming in through the bay window. Mrs. White would put down her pen and greet each child with a kiss. AOT 131.1

She especially liked to play with Arthur White, then only a toddler. Setting him on her lap, she caressed and cuddled the child. Giggling, Arthur would try to count the buttons running down the front of her dress. But always he got tangled up in his special numbering system. Laughing, his grandmother would hug him. AOT 131.2

Mrs. White seemed to have much to write, and she could not spend a lot of time with her grandchildren. When she felt she must resume writing, she would mention some interesting things on the farm she knew about. In the fall she might tell them about a tree in her apple orchard that bore an unusual amount of large fruit. The children would hurry off to sample the apples. Other times she might tell them about a new calf, or the hatching of some chicks. Instead of scolding her grandchildren for bothering her and shooing them away when she needed to get back to work, she thought of something interesting for them to do. AOT 131.3

Mrs. White always seemed cheerful and at peace. Happiness radiated from her. Never did her children feel tense, nervous, or ill at ease around her. Her deep blue-gray eyes glowed with an alert kindness. When her grandchildren were around, her face always filled with her love for them. AOT 132.1

She had a sense of humor and could laugh and enjoy the amusing things of life. One time as she spoke to a large audience, some of the people began to smile in the middle of her sermon. Knowing that she had said nothing humorous, she wondered what caused the disturbance. AOT 132.2

Glancing around the rostrum at the ministers behind her, she saw her grown son William sleeping in his chair. She smiled to the audience and said, “I hope that you will not feel too badly about Willie sleeping while I’m preaching. He is tired, and besides, he has attended meetings with me in many places. In fact, Willie has been going with me to meetings since he was a baby. I would take him to the platform in a little basket. He would sleep while I preached, and as you can see, Willie has never quite overcome that habit.” AOT 132.3

Mrs. White always took advantage of chances to help other people. Whenever she heard of some young man without money or a job, she took him in and helped him find a job and start a new life. Some of them she employed as business assistants. AOT 132.4

To those needing clothing she gave garments she no longer used. Many times she donated to poor families the new clothes she had just bought for herself. Always she remembered that the poor have a sense of pride, too, as well as the wealthy. Once Sara McEnterfer planned to give some of Mrs. White’s carefully patched dresses and coats to a woman—once wealthy—who had lost most of her money. Learning of Sara’s plan, Mrs. White told her to send the new ones she had bought for the coming season. “She has been used to much better things,” Mrs. White explained, “and I would not hurt her feelings by giving her my old clothes.” AOT 132.5

Besides gifts of clothing, food, and money, she tried to provide medical help for the needy sick. Sara McEnterfer, a nurse, spent much time treating the people while Mrs. White lived in Australia. In fact, she almost did the work of a visiting community nurse. People responded to the efforts of the two women. To show their gratitude, a group of fishermen that the Seventh-day Adventist women had aided sent a large crate of fish to Avondale College. The head cook, learning of its delivery, became upset. She went to see what Mrs. White wanted done with the fish. “Shall I throw them out?” she asked. AOT 133.1

Surprise showed on Mrs. White’s face. “Throw them out?” she exclaimed. “Of course not. Aren’t there plenty of people who would be thankful to have fish? Find some of them. And then send the fish to them with our compliments.” AOT 133.2

Then Mrs. White had her secretary write the fishermen a letter of thanks for their kindness, telling them she greatly appreciated the thought behind their gift. She always respected the beliefs and rights of others, and she had great tact and courtesy. AOT 133.3

Much of her writing Mrs. White did in the night, often rising as early as one or two o’clock in the morning. Her secretaries laid out her pen and paper the night before. They draped a heavy robe over her writing chair and placed her wool-lined slippers beside the bed so that she could get up by herself. Lighting a kerosene lamp, she would write until morning. AOT 134.1

Not only did she spend the early morning hours writing, but she also spent much time during the night in prayer. Her prayers, whether given in public or overheard late at night, created a great impression on people’s minds. H. M. S. Richards, Voice of Prophecy radio program speaker, states that as a boy in Colorado he heard Mrs. White preach. Until he heard her pray, he considered her only a pious woman. “When she prayed in public at one of the meetings I attended,” he said, “I knew that she was God’s messenger. She talked to God as though He was right there.” AOT 134.2

Sometimes the power of her prayers erased doubt in people’s minds. Danish-born John Matteson, a former Baptist minister, accepted the Seventh-day Adventist faith but found it difficult to believe that Mrs. White was a true prophet. As is true today, the lives and activities of false prophets have caused many people to doubt that there is such a thing as a real prophet. Matteson first met Ellen G. White in 1866. Later he wrote that he considered and weighed well all her actions and words. AOT 134.3

“I have been at one period of my life a skeptic,” he explained, “and I now let skepticism bring in her objections, and let the Bible, the Spirit, and reason answer.” He studied Mrs. White through the eyes of doubt and disbelief. Then his opinion changed. “I happened accidentally to overhear her family prayers twice, unknown to her, as she was alone with her husband and children. What was she doing? Planning cunningly how she might lead her admirers to bring their sacrifices before her? Or how she might be revenged upon her enemies and bring shame upon them? No! Childlike and earnest pleadings were not only heard by me, but by Jesus and the angels. She communed with God.” AOT 134.4

An early Seventh-day Adventist church school teacher, Mrs. Alma McKibbin, also overheard Mrs. White’s private prayers. Quite ill, Mrs. McKibbin spent a night in the home of Sarah Peck, one of Mrs. White’s secretaries. Miss Peck had invited Mrs. McKibbin there with the intention of taking the sick woman to St. Helena Sanitarium for a medical examination. The Peck house stood just east of Mrs. White’s home, facing her upstairs bedroom. AOT 135.1

Too ill to sleep, Alma McKibbin lay on the sitting room couch and stared out into the darkness. The still night air carried sounds remarkably well, and Mrs. McKibbin heard the distant rustlings of night creatures in the orchards and fields. A pale yellow light suddenly glowed in Mrs. White’s bedroom window. She has gotten up to write, Mrs. McKibbin thought. But then a voice crossed the quiet darkness between the two houses. Mrs. White was praying. “Such a prayer I never heard,” Mrs. McKibbin wrote years afterward. “She was praying first of all for the people of God; she was praying for everyone that knows this truth, that we might be true and that we might realize our responsibility to give it to others. Then she prayed for herself.” AOT 135.2

Prayer, Mrs. McKibbin realized, was the source of Mrs. White’s spiritual strength. It was her means of constant contact with God. Only through prayer could she have remained God’s messenger and done the special service He expected of her. AOT 136.1

In the morning Mrs. White would sometimes come to family worship and ask, “Did you hear the music in my room last night?” The others always had to shake their heads and answer No. The angels came with music in her night visions, but she alone had the privilege of hearing it. The other members of her household went about their duties or slept, oblivious to the music of heaven. Perhaps it was a partial reward for the countless difficulties she suffered while serving God and the church. AOT 136.2