Bahá’í World/Volume 18/Doris Holley
DORIS HOLLEY
1894—1983
PASSING DISTINGUISHED MAIDSERVANT BAHAULLAH DORIS HOLLEY ROBS IRISH BAHAI COMMUNITY OUTSTANDING MEMBER ACTIVELY ASSOCIATED EARLY DAYS FORMATIVE AGE CAUSE. HER STERLING SERVICES IN STAUNCH
SUPPORT CLOSE COOPERATION HAND CAUSE HORACE HOLLEY WERE LATER ENRICHED AS PIONEER CONTINENTAL EUROPE AND FINALLY HER DEARLY LOVED IRELAND. HER CHEERFUL GENEROUS SPIRIT CONTRIBUTED CORDIALITY UNITY MANY BAHAI OCCASIONS. ASSURE LOVING PRAYERS PROGRESS HER SOUL.
Doris Holley, whose maiden name was Pascal, was born in London on 14 August 1894. She had two brothers and a sister. Her father was a concert pianist. Always a seeker of truth, he became, in turn, a Swedenborgian and a Christian Scientist. Her mother was not much interested in religion and considered it an unsuitable subject of conversation. When Doris was five years old, her parents moved to the United States of America. Four years later, while her father remained in a boarding house in New Rochelle, New York, her mother took the children to live in Barbados, West Indies.
While she was growing up, Doris liked to get off by herself and read. When she reached sixteen her mother said to her, ‘I will find some way of making you do as I wish.’ Doris
Doris Holley
then resolved to leave home as soon as she could. In the autumn of 1912 her mother sent Doris to Paris to study for a year. On her arrival there Doris said to the woman who had agreed to look after her, ‘Mother told me that I was not to go out alone in Paris.’ The woman replied with amusement, ‘Does your mother expect me to engage a nanny to take care of you?’
One morning in February 1913, a month after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had arrived in Paris to start His second visit to that city, Doris heard Him address a meeting at the home of Hippolyte and Laura Dreyfus—Barney. Although she had already heard His name from Juliet Thompson, she did not realize who He was and knew nothing about the Bahá’í Cause. Doris has said of this, ‘I was spiritually asleep at the time, but while I was listening to the Master’s talk I felt as if Jesus were speaking and I thought that the Master was saying what Jesus would have said. When the meeting was over, instead of following the Master out of the room as the others in the audience had done, I remained in my chair. The Master soon returned. To my natural astonishment He walked straight up to me and kissed me on the forehead. I still did not recognize who He was.’ Ironically, Horace Holley and his wife, Bertha, attended this meeting with their child, Hertha. Doris had not seen them before nor were they introduced on that occasion.
Some weeks after the start of the First World War, in the autumn of 1914, Doris moved to London and several months later sailed for New York City. After Horace Holley’s marriage had foundered he and Doris became friends. Doris has remarked, ‘The first time that I saw Horace alone, I thought that our marriage was to be; I married Horace because I liked him, not because he was a Bahá’í.’ Doris attended some Bahá’í meetings with Horace. She explained, ‘I just gradually learned more about the Cause until I realized that I had become a Bahá’í.’ In September 1919 Horace and Doris were married. About a year later she lost her only child at birth.
In the spring of 1925, assured by the National Assembly that such a move would be of much assistance to the Bahá’í community, Horace resigned from his position at the
Redfield Advertising Agency to devote all his time to secretarial work for the Assembly. Although he and Doris occasionally received help by means of modest inheritances, most of their support for the rest of Horace’s life came from the Bahá’í Fund. It cannot have been easy for either of them to accept regular support from this source. That their action would be bountifully blessed finds assurance in Shoghi Effendi’s response of 24 October 1925: ‘I rejoice to learn that ways and means have been found to enable the National secretary, who discharges in such an exemplary manner the manifold and exacting duties of a highly responsible position, to devote all his time to the pursuit of so meritorious a task. I am fully conscious of the privations and sacrifice which the choice of this arduous work must involve for him, as well as for his devoted and selfless companion; I cannot but admire and extol their heroic efforts, and wish to assure them both of my continued prayers for the speedy fruition of their earnest endeavours.’1
For the first twenty years of their married life, except for part of each summer when they occupied a cottage of their own at Green Acre, the Bahá’í School in Eliot, Maine, the Holleys lived in New York City. Although they were happy there, when they realized that the Guardian wanted ‘the spiritual and administrative centre to be fused into one’, they made plans to change their residence to Wilmette, Illinois. According to Amatu’l-Bahá Rúḥíyyih Khánum, late in 1939 the Guardian cabled Horace, AWARE PROFOUNDLY APPRECIATE PERSONAL INCONVENIENCE INVOLVED TRANSFERENCE TEMPLE VICINITY DEEPEST LOVE.2
The American Bahá’í, issue of May 1983, records Doris’s service in the United States: membership on the Contacts Committee (1925); the Public Relations Committee (1948-1950); the Bahá’í News Editorial Committee (1949—1950 and 1951—1952); the Temple Hospitality Committee (1953—1958), serving most of that time as committee chairman; and the National Spiritual Assembly’s Reviewing Committee (1958—1959). During the years that her husband served as secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly, Doris regularly provided hospitality for the members during
1 Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’í Administration, pp. 89—90. 2 The Bahá’í World. vol. XIII, p. 855.
breaks in their meetings at the national Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds, and also entertained numerous visitors to the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár.
Early in 1944 Horace had his first serious illness. Although he recovered and remained in fairly good health until 1949, he was not very well for the rest of his life. When Doris was asked whether it was difficult to take care of him, she said, ‘No, I always felt that Bahá’u’lláh was taking care of him. Besides that, Horace always felt that whatever I did was right.’
In his message of 24 December 1951 the Guardian announced to the Bahá’í world the appointment of the first contingent of Hands of the Cause, twelve in number. Horace was one of the three elevated to that rank on the North American continent.3 Two years and a day after the passing of the Guardian in the early hours of 4 November 1957, immediately following their third Conclave, the Hands of the Cause announced their selection of Horace for service in the Holy Land. Horace and Doris reached Haifa on the last day of 1959; Horace passed away there on 12 July 1960. After his death Doris remained in Haifa for a year and kept house for the nine Hands who were serving there, and then began her life as a pioneer.
In November 1961 she settled in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and seven years later she moved to Lausanne. She pioneered for almost a decade in Switzerland. In her letter of 13 May 1983 to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Republic of Ireland, Counsellor Agnes Ghaznavi wrote, ‘In spite of the great difference of age, Doris was a very near and dear friend, both to my husband, Bijan, and to myself. Doris had a special quality of understanding people in their difficulties and of using her keen intellect for piercing mysteries in human lives . . .’4 She is also remembered for her delightful sense of humour that never failed her during her long and distinguished career of service to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Just before she left Switzerland; when it became apparent that her hearing was failing, Doris wrote to a friend announcing her decision to settle in Ireland and remarking wryly that she
3 Shoghi Effendi, Messages to the Bahá’í World (1950-1957), p. 20. 4 Letter from Dr. Agnes Ghaznavi, Biel, Switzerland.
might find it easier to be hard of hearing in English than in French.
Early in the summer of 1971 Doris moved to Limerick in the Republic of Ireland. During her early months there she was thrilled to find that a large number of young people were becoming attracted to the Faith. In a warm, sensitive and understanding manner she taught and helped each person with whom she became acquainted. Bahá’ís throughout Ireland, both north and south, had the opportunity of getting to know Doris and of listening to her valuable remarks about the Bahá’í Revelation during the four years she spent in Limerick. The young people who flocked to her confided in the Hand of the Cause of God Raḥmatu’lláh Muhájir, ‘We cannot talk to our parents, but we can talk to Doris. The age difference is of no importance to us.’
In order to save the Local Spiritual Assembly of Dun Laoghaire from lapsing, Doris moved there just before Riḍván 1976. Two years later she transferred her residence to Dublin. In February 1980, after visiting Connecticut for several months, she returned to Ireland and, for the purpose of serving on the Spiritual Assembly of County Wicklow, found a room for herself in a comfortable home in Greystones. A little more than a year before her passing on 4 April 1983, to enable her close friends to reach her without delay if she needed them, Doris lived in a home in Dun Laoghaire, where she was treated with much kindness and consideration. During the last weeks of her life she said happily to some of us, ‘I feel that Horace is with me every night.’
Four days after her passing, on a bright, clear Friday afternoon, a moving funeral service was held in the chapel of Deansgrange Cemetery, near Dublin. More than fifty people were in attendance, a few of whom were not members of the Bahá’í community. On this occasion—joyful, yet tinged with sadness—I was privileged to read a poem which Doris had written in 1935:
- Let us want everything and nothing,
- And only that elusive fire
- That burns our wayward consciousness
- Into the flow of Thy desire;
- That melts the metal of our minds
- From separate sparks to liquid flame
- And lights the Inner Light;
- And melts in tears the veil that hides from sight
- The path—the home—the end—
- That is Thy Name.1
1 World Order, vol. 1, No. 9, p. 354.