Bahá’í World/Volume 18/Jean Hutchinson-Smith
Jean Hutchinson-Smith
JEAN HUTCHINSON-SMITH
1886—1979
Jean Hutchinson-Smith was the Australian-born daughter of John and Margaret Lauder who, with a young family, left Scotland about 1880 to seek a new life in a new land, and settled in Sydney, Australia. Jean was born in 1886 and was educated at Sydney Girls’ High School—at that time, 1900, the only girls’ high school in the State of New South Wales—and at the University of Sydney. She passed to the Abhá Kingdom on 20 July 1979, in her ninety-third year.
Jean was fifty-five when she found the Bahá’í Faith and had been widowed for eight years, but her daughter, Alicia, feels that if they had both heard of the Faith at an earlier time her father would undoubtedly have embraced it, for breadth of thought was always apparent in the family.
Jean’s life as a young, educated matron was filled with the difficulties caused by living for many years in backward country towns where her classically-educated husband was posted as a teacher. Some of her receptivity to the
spiritual life must have been born of the combined effects of education and harsh living conditions. She had a truly international outlook and was a sincere seeker after Truth. Her introduction to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh through Stanley and Mariette Bolton, and subsequently ‘Father and Mother Dunn’, was the climax of this long search. She became a Bahá’í in March 1941. A letter from the beloved Guardian dated 22 January 1944 was her most cherished possession. In his own hand he had written: ‘May the Beloved bless your devoted efforts, guide every step you take in His service, remove all obstacles from your path and fulfil every desire you cherish for the furtherance of the interests of His Faith.’
After she became a Bahá’í she travelled extensively in the British Isles and Europe from 1948 until the early 1960s, neglecting no opportunity to meet with the friends in the many countries she visited. Her gift for languages, particularly German and French, was a tremendous advantage. She was an able speaker and will long be remembered gratefully in Edinburgh where significant newspaper publicity on the Faith followed a public meeting she addressed in that city. The Bahá’ís there had been trying for years to break into the press. Marion Hofman recalled this when she visited Jean in Sydney in 1977, so many years after the event, which must have taken place in 1948, the same year in which Jean and Alicia served as tellers when the first Local Spiritual Assembly of Dublin was formed in the home of George Townshend. Wherever Jean’s ship called she made contact with the believers. In 1959 she and Alicia visited Tokyo, the first Australian Bahá’ís to visit the Japanese Bahá’í community. On two visits to Europe and the United Kingdom in the early 1960s Jean was tireless in promoting the Faith in company with Alicia. ‘I wish to assure you of my loving and deep-felt appreciation of your constant and manifold services to our beloved Faith,’ the Guardian wrote in a postscript to a letter written on his behalf on 18 February 1950. ‘I will supplicate the Beloved to bless continually your high endeavours, to remove every obstacle from your path, and enable you to win great victories for its institutions.’
The erection of the Bahá’í Temple at
Ingleside was the great thrill of Jean’s Bahá’í life. She had seen the Faith grow in numbers and strength to a degree that in the early days of rented meeting halls would have seemed a dream. She rejoiced in hearing prayers recited in her home in languages other than English, as testimony to the universality and growth of the Cause. During Marion Hofman’s visit in 1977 Jean remarked how deeply she regretted not having had the privilege of making the pilgrimage to the World Centre due to the dates being fully booked when she applied, and was comforted by Marion’s reply, referring to words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in which He expressed the thought that to be engaged in teaching the Cause is equivalent to having attained the Threshold (Tablet to Mariam Haney dated 18 October 1903).
(Reprinted from Australian Bahá’í Bulletin, July 1980, and based on information supplied by ALICIA HUTCHINSON-SMITH.)