'If there is anyone who could give me a constructive answer to the problem of my being housed somewhere at less expense, and as efficiently, I should be very glad to have their suggestions.

'As to travelling, I do not know when any of the Group has travelled first-class. A telephone call to Cook's in Berkeley Street will tell you that they always travel tourist class.'3

Buchman's quarters in those days were described by a visitor as 'a tiny room almost completely filled by the bed, round which were large piles of a newspaper which he was sending out to friends around the world. The only light came from a small well going up past every floor to the outside air far above. On the other side of the bed was another door opening into a minute bathroom which had no right angle between any of its walls.'

The occasion was a typical one. The visitor was Francis Goulding, then an Oxford undergraduate, and the time about three in the afternoon. Buchman was lying on the bed. Goulding continues:

'Frank raised his head and said, "Well, what do you want?"

' "Oh, nothing really," I said. "I just wanted your advice on something. But I'm disturbing you."

' "No, no, no. Not at all. I was up till 4.30 this morning sending out these papers and I thought I'd have forty winks. I'll get up now. You go and ask Salvo to bring up tea for one and two cups. He knows."

'Salvo was happy to comply. Frank insisted I eat the cakes and we talked about my future.'*

(* Salvo, an old Italian waiter, used to say, 'I should like to see the Ten Commandments plastered up in every street in London. They keep people cleaner than Pears soap!' Buchman was one of three, other than his family, present at his funeral.)

In 1933 a new arrangement was made by which Buchman had the use of seven rooms, including a very large sitting room, for only forty-four shillings a day. His sleeping quarters do not seem to have improved much. Mrs Harold Taylor, wife of the headmaster of Cheam, remarks of this period, 'People used to say to us, "He must be a very rich man if he can live indefinitely at Brown's." Well, I saw his bedroom once. It was a coathanger, a bed and a bag.'4

The large sitting room included in the new bargain was hardly more adequate than Buchman's sleeping quarters. 'I remember being in that room when it was so crowded that if, by mischance, you lifted your foot off the ground, you had to be a stork for the rest of the time because your neighbour's foot had occupied your place,' recalled Nora Cochran-Patrick.5

'Brown's really was a hive of activity at that time,' wrote John Vinall, who joined Brown's in his teens and became head porter. 'He was always surrounded by people. Dr Buchman would see about thirty or forty people in a day; he would never get flurried ... I believe that more than half the visitors to Brown's were Dr Buchman's friends... Whenever there was a birthday party in Room 1, the staff would always go too.... At Christmas he went . . . through the kitchens and the steward's room - down mysterious passages he went, and ... gave an envelope to each one of the staff. There were one hundred and fifty staff, and one hundred and fifty envelopes.... It was really a personal gift from a friend.... Dr Buchman was the making of me - you have got to model yourself on somebody, and for me that was Dr Buchman.'6 He was a very homely sort of man, seemed to fit in with everybody, rich or poor, talk to anybody, and talk with you and help you,' Vinall said in old age. 'I'm trying to do what Dr Buchman was doing. Not that what I'm doing it so good, but still, I'm trying in that way.'

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