By now, Buchman had evidently begun to feel thoroughly at home in England. 'Dearest Mater,' he wrote, on Christ Church Boat Club paper, 'God is very good, oh so good. It is marvellous, wonderful! Here I have many old and new friends and one meets at every turn grateful ones whose lives have been changed.'32

Hamilton, in any event, was interested enough to want to get to know Buchman better. In August he went to a 'house-party' at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, arranged by Robert Collis, a young Irish rugby international whom Buchman had helped with personal problems.

The house-party, which became a characteristic feature of Buchman's work, was a way of bringing together an assortment of people for several days in a friendly, relaxed atmosphere where they might be able to take fundamental decisions for their lives. It had much the flavour of the contemporary social house-party but the same essential purpose as a religious retreat: the main difference was in the sort of people whom Buchman invited. Many, as Hamilton discovered, were 'thorough-going pagans' like himself.

'There were,' according to Robert Collis, 'old Rugbeian Blues, Etonian rowing men, Presidents of the Oxford Union, Firsts in Greats,* Naval officers, Americans, a British colonel, Indians, Chinese, a famous American lawyer and a well-known English MP. The two latter arrived rather drunk but rapidly sobered down.’33

(* The traditional Oxford Degree of Philosophy and Ancient History.)

Buchman had in fact brought the lawyer and the Member of Parliament from London himself, in a Rolls hired by the MP. The lawyer, who was distinctly the worse for wear, kept complaining that there was a creak in the car, to which Buchman drily retorted that there was a creak, but not in the car.

This house-party, which lasted five days, began with Buchman asking everyone to say who they were and why they had come. Hamilton said candidly that he had slipped a stitch in life and that he knew he would get nowhere until it was picked up. Soon, he recalled, the atmosphere had become so relaxed that 'you were talking to people to whom you'd not even been introduced'.

'Buchman,' wrote Collis, 'not only succeeded in harmonising this gathering, but by the end genuine friendliness replaced the strain intensely felt through the first meetings . .. Each had come wearing his mask ... By the end of the house-party the masks had disappeared from each face...To describe the house-party as a success would be to understate the facts of the case. It was a very tour de force.’34

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