May Bolles Maxwell and daughter Mary
May Bolles Maxwell was one of that first group of pilgrims
from the West who, in 1898-99, visited ‘Abdu’l-Bahá while He was still a
prisoner in ‘Akká. She records her memories of the occasion in the
following pages.
Those days in the prison-city oriented forever the course of
her life. She gave her heart, her entire being to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and served
Him and His appointed successor, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Faith, to
the end of her days. Her first mission, under ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s direction,
was to teach the Faith in Europe, particularly France. She returned to
Paris and quickly gathered about her a group, which by 1901-02 numbered some
thirty Bahá’ís. Among them were Edith MacKaye (the first convert), Herbert
Hopper, Marie Squires, Helen Cole, Laura Barney, Edith Jackson, Thomas
Breakwell (first English believer), Hippolyte Dreyfus (first French believer),
Agnes Alexander.
The young Canadian architect, Sutherland Maxwell, later to become President of the Royal Academy of Canada and architect of the superstructure of the Shrine of the Báb – the golden-domed “Queen of Carmel” – married May Bolles and took her to Canada, where she established the Faith and received ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in her home. She became a radiant light, kindling the souls of countless men and women with the fire which the Master had lit in her own heart. He Himself wrote of her, “Her company uplifts and develops the soul ...” New and old believers alike, learned from May to “turn unto Shoghi Effendi” as the Will and Testament enjoins, and she constantly upheld and encouraged the youth who crowded her drawing room. One of the greatest events in her life took place in 1937, in Haifa, when the Guardian of the Faith married her beloved daughter, her only child.
In spite of ill health, she set out, in January 1940,
on a teaching visit to South America and there achieved the longed-for
“Priceless honour martyrs death”, as the Guardian cabled her bereaved
husband. Her shrine, erected by the Guardian of the Cause and designed by
her husband, describes her as “‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s beloved handmaid and
distinguished disciple”. It is a memorial in that southern outpost of the
world, to one of the great heroines of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.
(David
Hofman, forward to ‘An Early Pilgrimage’, by May Maxwell)
