Basic HTML Version
3
City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
The doctor was followed by the missionary William
Thomas Berger, a Christian starch manufacturer
from London who used his wealth to found the
China Inland Mission. Sending missionaries into
perilous and often downright hostile territories, the
mission was headquartered at Saint Hill from the
late 1800s and into the early 20
th
century.
The mission broke new ground by accepting the
working classes and single women as missionaries,
inspiring brave souls like Miss Gladys Aylward.
The former parlour maid failed the China Inland
Mission exams but undaunted she used her life
savings to get herself to China, the hard way,
overland by railway and sometimes mule.
Her story was told in
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
(nick-nack paddywack give the dog a bone).
Miss Aylward, a small dark haired Cockney was
not a great fan of the film, nor of the portrayal of
her by the tall, blonde Amazon Ingrid Bergman!
In 1941 the owner was Mrs. Margaret Drexel Biddle
and although she owned Saint Hill for just two
years she certainly left her mark on the property,
improving the plumbing (an American obsession
with old English country houses) and turning the
ballroom into a modern cinema room. Here she
could have curled up to enjoy Orson Welles’ 1941
classic Citizen Kane, often regarded as the greatest
film of all time. Or maybe The Maltese Falcon or
John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley which
controversially pipped Citizen Kane for the Oscar
that year. The home cinema list for the following
year, 1942, might have included Now Voyager,
Casablanca, Bambi or The Jungle Book (a vintage
Disney year) and perhaps memories of home with
Holiday Inn, the film that gave the world Bing
Crosby’s White Christmas.
Mrs. Drexel Biddle didn’t have to scrimp and save to
fund such whimsical projects as a monkey mural for
her new cinema room. When her father died in 1930
Margaret had shared in an estate worth an estimated
$85 million. A year later, she divorced her New York
banker husband to marry the dashing Philadelphia
socialite and scion of another American banking
dynasty Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Junior.
Tony, as he was known, was a snappy dresser
appearing on the front cover of Life Magazine
and on a short list of Best Dressed Men in the
USA alongside Fred Astaire. He married first
a tobacco heiress and second a mining heiress
investing heavily in a New York nightclub and a
phonograph and radio business before losing his
money in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Joining the
Diplomatic Corps he was American Ambassador in
Warsaw when the Germans invaded and followed
the Polish Government in Exile to France.
In 1941 he arrived in London as Ambassador to
the Allied Governments in Exile with Margaret for
whom Saint Hill became an interior design project.
It is her name that appears on the deed. This was her
house. Having served in the First World War Drexel
Biddle resigned from the State to serve in the
Second. The Biddle’s left London and Saint Hill after
just two years. They divorced soon after and as
Maggie Thompson Biddle she became the “grande
dame” of American society in post-war Paris.
The Eisenhowers, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
and many notable writers and artists were frequent
guests at the Parisian salon she set up in an 18th
century mansion just off the fashionable Boulevard
St. Germain.
Maggie wrote a book of portraits of English women,
two years in London and Sussex having turned her
into an expert. She was also a Paris correspondent
for American magazines taking her reporting duties
so seriously that, according to Time Magazine, she
would show up at Communist rallies in her
chauffeur-driven Bentley.
Throughout her time in Sussex and Paris she
collected flatware and art amassing a priceless
Continued on next page
The Bergers of the
China Inland Mission
The Drexel Biddles