The Chosen Highway

'In the first days of mourning for the beloved Master's passing' she listened to the Greatest Holy Leaf telling the story of her childhood and youth during the terrible imprisonment and exiles of Bahá'u'lláh, and began what she describes in her immortal book as 'an attempt to indicate some phases of a great historic moment in the life of Spiritual Civilization, which have not been elsewhere recorded'. No reader of The Chosen Highway or of the description of its author in the Preface by H. M. Balyuzi can fail to appreciate the qualities of warmth, spirit and faith that enabled her first to elicit and then to faithfully chronicle the stories told to her by Bahíyyih Khánum and by 'Abdu'l-Bahá's wife and daughters. No professional historian would have been taken into their confidence in the same way. 'Her presence gives us much joy,' wrote the wife of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. 'We look upon her, not only as a friend, but as one of our own dear family.' These accounts, together with Lady Blomfield's own description of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's visit to London when she welcomed him as a guest in her home, have ensured the lasting interest of The Chosen Highway since its first publication in 1940.