Mary Riley was a BTC regular, but more importantly, Oswald and Biddy Chamber’s friend.
She first met them in London, cooked at the Bible Training College (BTC), went to Egypt as Kathleen’s nurse and actually helped Biddy move to Oxford.
Tried and true, the plucky native of Essex devoted herself to the Chambers family and her God.
Who was Mary Riley?
As one of twelve children born to a coachman and his wife, Mary went into the workforce early.
Mary was one of four Rileys who attended the Bible Training College.
I wrote about her family, including her fellow student siblings Nellie, Arthur and Kate here.
Born in 1878, Mary’s listed in the 1901 census as a servant for Reginald Slader, a religious organization secretary. His two daughters worked as a church organist and a secretary to a bookseller.
Described as a “dream of a cook,” she was working for an elderly woman in London when she first met Oswald Chambers during a League of Prayer lecture at Speke Hall.
“The grip that held me then made me want to hear more of the Lord Jesus as presented by him.”
Shortly thereafter, the BTC needed a cook and Mary took the job.
Kathleen Chambers knew Mary Riley her whole life.
“Mary could cook like nobody’s business. She was a wonderful cook.
She was a lovely lady. I loved Mary very much.”
At the BTC
Anyone remotely linked to the BTC could attend classes and Mary climbed the stairs from the basement kitchen like everyone else.
She loved being at the BTC. Mary Riley wrote about the years in Oswald Chambers: His Life and Work.
They were very full days, up often before six o’clock Mr. Chambers would be in his study preparing for the day, and the whole atmosphere of the College was charged with the presence of God, as he continually prayed that it might be.”
According to Kathleen,
“Mary was very, very downright in her beliefs about God. And she would contradict anybody absolutely to the utmost of her ability. There was no two ways about it, everything was black and white.”
Riley family photo
She cooked at the BTC–often for an unknown number of guests–every day for four years.
The family trip to Askrigg in August 1915 following the closure of the BTC for the duration of the war, included Mary and several other BTC students, along with Oswald’s brother and sisters.
Oswald traveled to Egypt in October, leaving Biddy and Kathleen behind, with Mary, in the echoing #45 Clapham Common north.
Mary had agreed to travel with Biddy and Kathleen, serving as a nurse, to Egypt when Oswald made arrangements.
Mary Riley in Egypt
Biddy’s decision to join her husband was unusual, but why did 38 years-old Mary join her?
“She was very fond of my mother and father; would have done anything for either of them,” Kathleen recalled. “Mary was a very true friend.”
Still, the dangers were real and Mary had never traveled outside of southern England.
She never complained.
The home in the desert, a two-bedroom bungalow with sandy floors and an outside kitchen, made for primitive living.
The YMCA arranged for the British army to provide a soldier to aid Mary with the cooking.
Soldiers at the nearby Zeitoun ANZAC camp, realized something new was happening right away.
As Theo Atkinson wrote:
“Mrs. Chambers and Kathleen and Miss Riley arrived, and things got better and better.
“They kept open house for us all. Whatever they had they shared, and with . . . Miss Riley’s cooking, we began to feel almost as if we were home again.”
Oswald’s lectures in Egypt
When she had time, Mary attended Oswald’s lectures in the big YMCA hut.
As she wrote:
Mary in front right (Wheaton College photo)
“The sermons at Zeitoun in those years of strain and stress were the very sacrament of preaching.
“No one could doubt it who heard with the keen hearing of the spiritual ear, the miracle of authentic stillness that falls upon an assembly of men in those rare moments when a man speaks to his hearers; spirit to spirit, and he and they alike know it.
“The moment passes, but the “inward and spiritual grace” abides—a sacramental permanent possession.”
Mary traveled to the Suez Canal with the Chambers family and would take Kathleen with her in the early mornings to haggle over food at the stalls.
She bore it all cheerfully and even managed to join the family on a camel ride to the pyramids!
After Oswald’s death
Mary Riley stayed behind to continue cooking while Biddy and Kathleen left for two weeks of mourning.
She supported her dear friend and the YMCA ministry, bowing to God’s unknowable will:
“When God called our shepherd and teacher into His presence, and we were left without nay explanation saving that “He doeth all things well.”
They were encouraged that so many soldiers returned to Zeitoun, even without Oswald there.
Biddy began a class that studied Oswald’s book Biblical Psychology.
Mary soon recognized,
“The students came to the realization that he was our teacher yet, and we continue still to see new meaning in all the words he left us.”
Steadfast to the end, she remained in Egypt with Biddy and Kathleen until the very end. They traveled back to England together in June 1919.
Post-Oswald life
Mary is behind Biddy, Egypt YMCA secretaries 1915. (Cadbury Library photo)
Biddy and Kathleen lived with friends while Mary returned to her family’s home in St. John Woods.
As Biddy ran another class that read through Oswald’s teachings, Mary regularly attended.
She traveled with Biddy and Kathleen when they retrenched to Oxford, not leaving until that humble cottage was livable.
Over the years, Mary helped with Biddy’s “ministry of the books,” by storing some volumes at her home.
Mary Riley never lost her appreciation for Oswald’s teachings, later writing:
“To all who knew Oswald Chambers, his life was the interpretation of his teaching.
“To those to whom it comes now in another form the meaning opens in the hidden individual ways of God.
“The writer believes that the Spirit of God is using this teaching in many lands to very many lives as a corrective to the wave of shallow thinking, and of shallower religious values that has swept across a section of the Christian communities everywhere.”
Mary never married and lived the rest of her life with her spinster sisters at the family home. She died December 8, 1955.
About Mary, Oswald wrote in his diary in1917:
Of Mary Riley what can I say? To have been with her and known her during these months and past years has been to see a Christian woman indeed and a joyous mixture of Mary and Martha. God bless and be blest for Mary Riley.
A good friend to the end, Mary’s devotion at the BTC and in Egypt enabled Biddy to take the notes she later used to compile the books of Oswald Chambers’ words.
We might not have My Utmost for His Highest without her practical help.
Tweetables
How Biddy and Oswald Chambers’ friend helped their ability to write My Utmost for His Highest Click to Tweet
The importance of ministry even in the small things. Click to Tweet
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