Where There’s a Will to See the World, There’s a Way--Just Ask Doris Moseley

In 1907, the Lusitania was launched and W. H. Auden was born. So was Doris G. Moseley. Though she isn’t a household name, she makes my own personal “Who’s Who Among Women Travelers” by virtue of her will to see the world.

Doris is 91 now, confined by a broken hip to her daughter’s home in Chatsworth, which is what prompted her to write a letter to the Travel Section. In it she stated: “I enjoy reading about traveling, but I liked it better when I did it! I spent two years in India working with Mrs. Gandhi, climbed the Great Wall of China when I was 75, saw Buddha’s footprint atop Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka, crossed Russia on the Trans-Siberian railroad, flew around Mt. Cook in New Zealand and attended a Muslim wedding in Kashmir.”

So I rang her up to get the full story. But it’s a long one, and though Doris, who was born in London, is extremely articulate, she doesn’t talk in sound bites. After trying to fill me in over the phone, she paused, slightly daunted. “I have all these lovely memories,” she said at last. “Better come see me.”

It was a chilly December day when I drove out to the Valley to visit Doris, who had a few hardy roses hanging on in her garden. She met me at the front door, then led me rather unsteadily to the kitchen, where we sat down to chat. In her housecoat, with eyes clouded by cataracts, she didn’t look like a world traveler. But I soon realized that her whole life had been an incredible journey. Here’s how our conversation went:

Question: What made you start traveling?

Answer: Well, when I was a little girl I had a geography teacher who talked about foreign countries and used all these marvelous names. Now I realize she didn’t pronounce them correctly.

Q: Do you recall your first trip?

A: Yes. We would go to the seaside, take the ferry across the Channel and walk around in Calais for a few hours. It only cost a few shillings.

Q: And you grew up to be a teacher.

A: Yes, but I had to fight my own way. I was born in a working-class section of London and got a scholarship to Cambridge. My husband died in the war, and my house in London was bombed. Later, I managed to get into Libya to see his grave in the desert at Tobruk.

Q: And afterward?

A: Well, I had these two bright children, and I wrote every school I could think of. Diana went to a Quaker school and Roger was accepted at Christ’s Hospital in Sussex. That’s where I met Dr. Harold Dobbs, the president of Princeton. I was just a poor little English widow, but I’ve always been lucky in the people I’ve met. He said he would sign for me to come to America and got me a job teaching English at the University of Illinois.

Q: You brought your children over and taught in Urbana, Ill., then became a librarian at a school outside Chicago. Right?

A: And after 11 years there I took three off to go to India. I was nearly 62, and saw an advertisement for a librarian at Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalayas. At the time, the village was full of Tibetan refugees living in dreadful, smoky huts.

Q: How did you meet Indira Gandhi?

A: At a YWCA conference. She thought I was doing a good thing, and had me to tea several times in New Delhi. She made it possible for me to join an American group in India to visit a newly discovered temple. I’ve never seen so many erotic carvings! And it was through her that I “took the salute” on an Indian admiral’s yacht during a regatta in Bombay. There were Sikhs with turbans . . . marvelous!

Q: How did you get to Sri Lanka?

A: Once, in Greece, I met a woman from there--it was called Ceylon at the time--and when I finished at the library I wrote to her. It turns out that she was the sister of the president. In Sri Lanka there is a mountain called Adam’s Peak where you can see a footprint made by Buddha. To get to the top at dawn with all the pilgrims, you start at about 5 in the afternoon and walk and walk. It was dark and I was about halfway up when I met an English policeman, very smart in shorts and socks. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Where will you sleep?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. So he took me to the police hut and gave me a bed. The next morning I woke up to all this marvelous chanting, and my heart swelled up. I’m in Sri Lanka, I thought, miles away from anyone who knows me. It was nirvana.

Q: Did Premier Khrushchev really kiss your hand?

A: Oh, yes. I knew a girl at the University of Illinois whose uncle worked in the American embassy in Moscow. When I arrived at my hotel there, an invitation to a party at the ambassador’s house was waiting for me. I had a lovely blue linen dress with a little jacket, so I looked absolutely marvelous. And that’s how I met Khrushchev.

Q: I can hardly believe all this.

A: Well, wait until you see my passports.

(There were seven of them, covering over half a century of travel, bearing exotic stamps and photos of Doris--including one in which she was fair-haired and beautiful.)

Q: How did you manage to go to all these places?

A: Well, maybe the times were different. You could trust people then. And I traveled without an attitude. I was just interested, and I was terrifically polite--to everyone. Somehow it’s carried me through. And I’m not shy or standoffish. I think I look as if I want someone to talk to me.

But she was getting tired of talking to me, I could tell. So I made my farewells. Halfway down the walk, I heard her call out, “Pick a rose, luv, for the drive back.”