England

England serves two distinct roles in Nettie’s account: it is an early stop on the journey to Africa, where she encounters both the reach of British missionary activity and the African objects held in English museums, and later a destination where she and Samuel seek help for the Olinka. The contrast between England’s public religious institutions and the limited attention they give the Olinka makes the country more than a way station; it becomes a test of what missionary sympathy can accomplish.

A country encountered on the way to Africa

Before reaching Africa, Nettie, Corrine, and Samuel travel to England as part of their missionary journey. Nettie describes it as a country of white people, but her first impressions also include people who welcome the group into their homes and invite them to church gatherings and tea. She explains tea as an indoor meal of sandwiches, cookies, and hot tea, and notes that guests and hosts use the same cups and plates. These ordinary details give the visit a social intimacy that contrasts with the rigid racial divisions Nettie knows from home, without suggesting that hospitality erases those divisions.

The group’s stay also makes their work seem more legible to Nettie. She understands that English missionaries have been traveling to Africa, India, China, and other places for more than a century, and that England has an Anti-Slavery & Missionary Society. At a museum, however, she sees the other side of this history: collections of African vases, jars, masks, bowls, baskets, statues, and other objects, alongside materials taken from many regions. Their beauty leads her to consider the people who made them and the fact that the English present those makers as belonging to a past that has ended. Nettie questions that account, drawing on what she has read about African civilizations, and recognizes a gap between the objects’ presence in England and the histories of the communities that produced them.

The Atlantic route and the meaning of return

England is also a literal threshold between the United States and the African coast. Nettie’s account follows the group’s departure from Southampton on July 24 and arrival in Monrovia, Liberia, on September 12, with stops in Lisbon, Portugal, and Dakar, Senegal. The passage links England to a wider route across the Atlantic and down the West African coast, rather than treating the journey as a simple departure and arrival.

When Nettie first sees the African coast, she, Corrine, and Samuel kneel on the ship’s deck and give thanks. The moment joins the present voyage to the history of their parents, who had longed to see Africa again and had lived and died without doing so. England therefore occupies an unsettled place in the journey: it is a country from which the group sails toward a land understood through family memory, while its museums and missionary history have already shaped Nettie’s questions about Africa and its past.

A second journey and a public appeal

Years later, England becomes the destination for a different purpose. Nettie and Samuel travel there with the children after spending much of their money on tin roofs and the voyage. They have married in England, and their visit is tied to efforts to obtain relief for the Olinka from English churches and the Missionary Society. The journey brings family life and political petition into the same setting: the group travels together, but also carries the Olinka’s grievances to institutions with religious authority and influence.

In England, Nettie and Samuel present those grievances to the bishop of the English branch of their church. He looks through Samuel’s yearly reports but does not turn to the Olinka’s situation. Instead, he asks about Corrine’s death and why Nettie did not return to America afterward. The encounter exposes the distance between the church’s records of missionary work and the urgency of the people whose circumstances that work is meant to address. For Nettie and Samuel, England offers access to the institution they hope will help; the bishop’s response leaves their appeal unaddressed in the meeting described.

Family life during the stay

Despite the limited means of their second visit, Nettie remembers the month in England as a good time. The family has little money after the expenses of the tin roofs and crossing, but begins to feel like a family without Corrine. People they meet remark that the children resemble Nettie and Samuel, and Olivia and Adam gradually take this resemblance as natural. As the children go out to see the sights on their own, Nettie and Samuel spend quieter time together, including in conversation.

Their marriage is openly affirmed in this setting. Samuel tells the children that he and Nettie love one another and intend to marry; Nettie later says they were married in England the previous fall. The country thus becomes not only a site of institutional disappointment but also a place where their shared life is named and made public. Those two functions coexist: the bishop’s indifference does not prevent the family from finding steadiness in one another during the same stay.

A place between departure and homecoming

Nettie’s letters make England part of a larger geography of separation and anticipated return. In writing to Celie, she recalls the journey to Africa and later describes the family’s travel to England, while looking ahead to coming home after nearly thirty years without a word between the sisters. She wonders how Celie may have been changed by years of childbearing and abuse, and shares those worries with Samuel rather than the children. England belongs to this interval before reunion: a place where Nettie’s family travels, works, and makes plans while Celie remains far away.

Across the two visits, England shifts from an unfamiliar country of welcoming homes and museum collections to the seat of a church authority from whom Nettie and Samuel seek assistance. The first stay enlarges Nettie’s understanding of the connections among missionary work, African history, and the objects displayed abroad; the later one tests whether those connections produce meaningful support for the Olinka. Its significance lies in this contrast, as well as in its place on the route that carries Nettie between Africa, family life, and the long-awaited prospect of returning home.