92 E215k

Kennedy
Mrs. Eddy

1253800

92

fe215k

PUBLIC UBRAWf

f>

HER

LIFE,

HER WORK

AND

HER PLACE IN HISTORY

by

Hugh

A, Studdert

Kennedy

THE FARALLON TRESS

58

SUTTER STREET
4, CALIFORNIA, u

SAN FRANCISCO

s.

A.

Copyright 1947
Copyright under International Copyright Onion
All Rights Reserved under Inter- American Copyright

by

The

Farallon Press

Printed in United States of America

L ESPERANCH SXVBRTSON QC BBRAN

SAN FRANCXSCO

Union (1910)

FOREWORD
I.

II.

A NEW

>

^UCi-f
ENGLAND ANCESTRY

EARLY YEARS

K-

-*

13

GROWING UP
IV. THE LAST YEAR AT Bow
V. SANBORNTON BRIDGE
VI. GEORGE WASHINGTON GLOVER

26

III,

35
41

52

VII. CHARLESTON
VIII.

IX.

X.

XL
XII.
XIII.

THE RETURN TO SANBORNTON

60

71

DANIEL PATTERSON

82

A NEW HOPE

96

PHINEAS

107

P.

QUIMBY
THE LECTURE AT WARREN
THE TURNING POINT

119
-

XIV. SANBORNTON REVISED AND AFTERWARDS

XV. AMESBURY
XVI.

A SMALL BEGINNING

XVII. MESMERISM

142

150

161

-.

XVIII. THREE YEARS

XX.

"SCIENCE

XXII.

AND

HEALTH"

XXIII. EDWARD

J.

EDITION

ARENS

204

214
224
235

XXIV. CONSPIRACY TO MURDER

4.(f

193
.

GILBERT EDDY

THE SECOND

172
182

XIX. COMPLETING THE BOOK

XXL ASA

130

vn

244

FEB26MU

XXV. MALICIOUS ANIMAL MAGNETISM

XXVI THE CHURCH

255

XXVII. BOSTON
XXVIII THE DEATH OF GILBERT EDDY
XXIX. CALVIN FRYE

269
-

XXXVII A TROUBLED SCENE

XXXVIII THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH

XLI LONDON
XLII Two YEARS

359

369

377
384

392

400

410

417

426

.435

JOSEPH PULITZER

XLVII THE "NEXT FRIENDS" SUIT

XLVIII THE CASE IN COURT AND ITS OUTCOME
XLIX. THE RETURN TO BOSTON
-

KEEPING THE FAITH

LI THE END AND

INDEX

347

XLV. MARK TWAIN

L*

324

339
-

XLIII JOSEPHINE WOODBURY AGAIN

XLIV. WIDENING RECOGNITION

315

331

XXXIX. PLEASANT VIEW

XL. DEFECTIONS AND LOYALTIES

294

-304

279

28

XXX. THE RISING TIDE

XXXI. THE QUIMBY MANUSCRIPTS
XXXII TREMONT TEMPLE
XXXIII. THE JOURNAL
XXXIV, CHICAGO
XXXV. "SCIENCE AND HEALTH" AGAIN
XXXVI. COLLEGE CLOSED AND CHURCH DISSOLVED

XLVI

25-1

THE.
-

444

-----

454

473

BEGINNING
*

vra

466

432

437

TRUTH OR TRADITION?
history s

A straightforward and factual account of one of

most colourful

characters, or another excursion into calculated

Immediately the biographer lifts his pen to write the life story of
Mary Baker Eddy, he is confronted with two urgently sponsored but con

fiction?

flicting versions

of Mrs. Eddy. There

is

the first-sly-then-violent

demand

for the legendary creature of ecclesiasticism, painted from a palette of

disclosure, suppression and distortion to represent an oracular but pale
there is thrust upon him, by her avowed and unavowed
made equally repellent by a different admixture of
a
villainess
detractors,
the same colours of disclosure, suppression and distortion. The clamour

nonentity.

so great as to divert attention almost entirely

the long-recognized need for an unslanted record of the extraordi
her in true
figure that was the real Mrs. Eddy, one that will place

raised

from
nary

Then

by these contenders

historical perspective

is

and one

that will live because of

its

authenticity.

A.
biographies of Mrs. Eddy," as my husband, the late Hugh
Studdert Kennedy, has observed, "have hitherto been put out by the
"All

Church as propaganda in defence of Mrs. Eddy, or they have been vicious

on her by her antagonists. Why not relate the whole story quite
and let the facts speak
simply, as in the case of any important character,
for themselves? I have always felt it was something very like presumption
attacks

on our part to attempt to steady the ark of Mrs. Eddy

suppression of relevant information

IX

s life story

by

especially in the face of her public

proclamation that nothing has occurred in my life s experiences which, if

correctly narrated and understood, could injure me
As far back as 1914, when he set sail from England to become Foreign
Editor of The Christian Science Monitor in Boston, there was close to
1

."

Mr. Kennedy

heart the desire to write a genuine

portrait, one so un
tainted by either apology or recrimination as to win the
respect and in
terest of Christian Scientists and non-Christian Scientists alike. But
years
were to slip by before he felt
ready to undertake the monumental task.
It

was not

until the Fail of

1938 that the work began in earnest.

Con

vinced that such a book could go out with the

goodwill of all concerned,
Mr. Kennedy confided his vision to his friend, Mr. William P. McKenzie,

Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Mother Church.

time for collating of fact and the
retiring of

was to write

enthusiastically,

and

"Whenever

falsehood,"

you come

"Now is

the

Mr, McKenzie

here,

you

will

be

welcomed and have any help we can give,"

An interview with the Board on October

10, 1938, served to highlight

the need for total independence from official
pressure and partisan con
siderations for the historian- in short, the demand for absolute

integrity

of authorship.
will

When

you have us

Mr. William

interested?"

P.

Rathvon asked,

Mr. Kennedy

replied

"To

"I

what extent

think

it

would

be a most dangerous thing for the success of the book if

you had anything
to do with it. I think this has been the
charge against all the books [the
biographies of Mrs. Eddy]. They have been procured books for a pur
pose.

and

want your help and

approval,,

your advice and recommenda

am

tions,
eager to give the fullest consideration to anything you
have to say; but I must safeguard
book from any suggestion that it
I

my

has been written to order or

2

is

in

any sense at any point dictated or

"

procured.

may be asked why the Board was consulted at all The vast archives
The Mother Church, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in

It

of

Boston,

contain most every document of importance

relating to the
*

Miscellany, p. 298.

The Board

official transcript

of the conference,

life

and work

of

founder, Mrs, Eddy, either in original or facsimile. Mr. Kennedy

that the custodians of this treasure in historical material would

its

felt

hardly expect
sufferer

him

to

make

bricks without straw, especially

would be Mrs. Eddy

when

the only

memory, and he entertained the sanguine

data
hope that they would welcome an opportunity to correct from their
arise.
which
might
any historical inaccuracies

About

this

copies of

all

time there came into Mr. Kennedy

hands authenticated

the documents and other records needed for a full and

rounded biography, the absolute reliability of which was attested by

of The
Judge Clifford P. Smith, Editor, Bureau of History and Records
Mother Church, official representative of the Board and generally con
ceded authority on the incidents of Mrs. Eddy s long life and the develop
ment of her organization. In his letter to Mr. Kennedy of December 1,
1938, he states categorically that the source material in question, even
in most of its detail, is authentic and that "The Mother Church has most
of the documents which are

quoted"

do the book independently of

therein.

Thus

it

became possible to

officialdom, yet without sacrificing the

advantages of officialdom s resources.

and copies
lengthy manuscript was completed by the Fall of 1939
were submitted for comment to several whose opinions were highly

The

valued.

To Mr. McKenzie,

place great emphasis on the

to overcome in establishing her great

the author wrote :

"I

which Mrs. Eddy had

want quite definitely to get away from the dangerous pseudoThe net effect of such
serenity which pervades some previous biographies.
an attitude [as theirs], as I am sure you will agree, is to present Mrs.
obstacles

work, for I

as one like Jesus tempted in all things like as we are, but as a

the ordinary
being that never was in earth or heaven, and so affording
human no points of sympathy or contact. To me Mrs. Eddy is nowhere

Eddy not

more

what men call grandeur than in just

come back to it again and again."

vivid in her claim to

way she rode the storm.

If there

who would

this,

the

of the biographer
lingering doubt as to the fairness
bring right out into the open the pertinent facts with noth-

was any

XI

withheld it was dispelled by Mr. McKenzie s response on

the
think the strongest feeling that is in our minds
reading
manuscript
is that of
gratitude. It would take too many words to express our feelings,
ing at

all

and
of a

s<o

I will

"I

evaluation

The

am sure there is a place for the work

say no more at present. I

friend to our Leader

and

who

writes

from the standpoint of observation,

goodwill"

propriety of discussing the sensational charges levelled against

Mts. Eddy by her detractors and of

and

the fascinating

significant

telling frankly the

Quimby

whole story of

controversy received the unquali

endorsement of Lord Lothian, who will be remembered as the British

Ambassador to the United States and a pre-eminent Christian Scientist.

fied

In a

letter

dated June 14, 1940, he stated his reaction to the book:

all the hostile lives of Mrs,
Eddy and I have always

"I

think I have read

thought, as you have done, that they ought to be answeredor, at any

rate, that a biographer should take into account what they have alleged
and deal with it indirectly if not directly. These hostile books are the

mine from which opponents of Christian Science and of Mrs. Eddy are
going to dig out their material for decades to come and it is essential
that there should be in existence and available a
satisfying answer. That,
I suppose, is

why

enjoyed reading your book so much. It

best account that I have yet read of

6f Mrs, Eddy

The answer
important

what one might

call the

is

by far the

human aspect

life."

to the question of

"outsider,"

what the book might mean to the allwas indicated

the impartial non-Christian Scientist,

ty Mr; Constant Huntington, President of Putnam s

publisher who had undertaken to issue the work abroad

in
:

London, the
want to tell

"I

you that I continued to enjoy my reading of the book to the end, and
when I had finished it, I felt that you had achieved what we both set out
to do,

Throughout the work, you have consistently kept yourself in

the background, and let the facts of the life of Mrs,
Eddy speak for
.

themselves. This

a great achievement/
the
Lastly,
manuscript was submitted for expert editing to Mr, Arthur

Corey,

who

is

is

perhaps the best qualified authority today on the

XII

life

and

work of Mrs. Eddy and the history of her movement, because of his access
and familiarity with an unmatched wealth of source material and

to

of infinitely more consequence

attitude on the subject.

what

is

"The

because of his clearly judicial

only major point which Mr. Kennedy

Mr. Corey

book does not

discuss,"

the widely-publicized charge that Mrs. Eddy was

writes,
guilty of frequent plagiarism. However, I am inclined to agree with the
author that this is a somewhat extraneous matter, bearing little if at all

upon the

"is

basic trend of her

life

and the attainment of her

goal.

There

has never been a writer of moment, apparently, who has not made gen
erous use, either consciously or unconsciously, of the writings of others.

As Emerson

points out, even Shakespeare

owed

debts in all directions,

6043

lines in one play, 1771 were written by some author before

2373
Shakespeare,
by him on the foundation laid by his predecessors,
1899
being entirely his own. It is the use that greatness makes of
only
such material which gives the material a greatness it did not before have

for out of

and

it is

in this that the value of great writing

human

lies.

Within the

limitations

language, nothing
possible. Mrs. Eddy used what she
found where she found it. Hegel and Swedenborg accommodated her
with apt expressions although they would undoubtedly have been sur

of

else

is

their words; before Mrs. Eddy s advent,

of
the
Ann
woman
Apocalypse to her followers, who called
her Mother, referred to her foundation body of Shakers as the Mother

prised at the

meaning she gave

Lee was the

Church and began the Shaker version of the Lord s Prayer with Our
Father and Mother which art in heaven while from Lindley Murray s
English Reader (page 1 18) came most of what Mrs. Eddy has to say in
;

Miscellaneous Writings (page 147), word for word, about the man of
what magic does she transform these obscure and
integrity. But, lo, with
previously moribund expressions! Whatever their original impulsion, the
thought that now lies behind them vivifies and invests them with im
mortality.
"Because

she was driven by the all-absorbing conviction that hers was

Eddy s use of what she found where she found it was

a holy cause, Mrs.

XHI

not confined to her literary activities, for everything else and everyone else
and even herself she used without hesitation to further her crusade. In this

no mystery that she demanded unquestioning

followers, for this meant loyalty to Principle as she saw
light

it is

loyalty

from her

it."

So it

with the hope that my husband s endeavour to paint with words

an objective, accurate and uninhibited portrait will place the heretofore
is

enigmatical Mary Baker Eddy in true historical perspective that this, his
fondest work, goes forth,

CLARISSA

La Mirada
Saratoga
California

XIV

HALE STUDDERT KENNEDY

A New

THE LONG LIFE

England Ancestry

of Mary Baker

Eddy extended from 1821

to 1910.

Times

have changed since 1910, so that looking back upon those years seems like
an age when the tempo
looking back upon the age of innocence. It was
of

life

was

still

fastest thing

on

unhurried,

when a

bicycle

the road, certainly in

most part the

Hampshire, where in and out

was

New

still

for the

of the hills the roads wound,

Narrow ribbon

Of

strips

white, amidst the green,

and no man thought of traffic save when he thought of the great city and
and the "moving picture" was
its
busy streets. Oxen ploughed the fields,
to
still something for the small town boy, who had gone to the big town,
tell

about on his return.

unaccus
Hampshire of thirty years ago represented an
tomed scene, the New Hampshire of one hundred years before that was
in another world; not so much in the outward and visible sign as in the
New Hampshire of 1910 had a century
inward and
grace. The

But

if

New

spiritual

of peace behind her.

On both sides of the Atlantic men and women were

how best might be celebrated the great fact that for

one
hundred
nearly
years no strife had risen between the two great
branches of the
English-speaking peoples, and New Hampshire in com
beginning to talk of

mon with
It

the rest of the

country was taking part in the discussion,
different in the New
Hampshire of 1821 when our record

was very

opens.

The War

of 1812 was

still

a vivid memory; the

lution not so long past but that fathers

who had waited through

children s children.

it

New

War of

who had fought in

it

the Revo
and mothers

could be telling the story once again to their

Hampshire had been in the midst of it all
it

Running up as it does to the Canadian frontier, the Granite State, as

came to be called, early learned the stern realities of war and that de

mand

for watchfulness which is the

price of liberty. The French wars, the
Indian wars swept through her
valleys, and among the earliest recollec
tions of the child,
Mary Baker, must have been the story of how her great-

great-grandfather, Captain John Lovewell, lost his life in a desperate

struggle with the Indians at "LovewelFs Fight", and of how General

John
McNeil, cousin of her venerable grandmother, was the hero of the battle
of Chippewa in the War of 1812,
By 1821 the noise of war had died away in the distance; but the men
and women of those days had known about it, and die hills and the vales

and the meeting-houses, even the trees, had their tales to tell
Life was hard and
rugged. In winter, it was a constant struggle with
the elements, in the
spring and summer with the soil The winters in New
Hampshire
drifts

are winters indeed.

aimlessly

down

into April, winter has

From

the day that the

to a frost-bound earth
early in

first

snowflake

November, well on

own way. The magic of October with its

colour gives
way to the lighter glory of No

it all its

forthfaring of unbelievable

vember; the crimson and the orange and the purple

merge gently into the
pale grey and gold. And then one day, as Longfellow has it
:

Out of the bosom of the

Out of the cloudfolds of her
garments
Air>

Over

the woodlands

brown and

bare,

ver the harvest

fields forsaken,

shaken,

and

Silent,

sojt3

and slow

Descends the snow.

Thence onwards it snows hard and often. There are

days of splendour,
with the sun shining from a cloudless
sky. Then there is more snow, until
stone-wall and fence have vanished and roads are no more and even the
houses seem to have pulled white sheets and blankets around them.

And cold! Whittier knew all about it and in his "Snowbound" has left
an ineffaceable picture of a New England winter and how it was met in
a New England home one hundred
years ago.

Of

no

however stout,
homespun stuff could quite shut

chill

coat,

out.

His

story as presented in "Snowbound" was the winter story of any

farm in
Hampshire, when, after a night and a day and a night of
storm and snow, nothing is left of the familiar
landscape, "no cloud above
and no earth below," just sky and snow
everywhere, with all familiar

New

on strange shapes,
But the work of the farm had

sights taking

to

go on. Paths had to be dug through

stalls had to be littered.
Hay had

Wood had to be brought in,

the drifts.

to be pitchforked

down from the hay-loft for the

cows.

The horses had

to

have their corn. Milking,

Lt
skimming, churning had to go on, and at night
the

women

folk

had

still

In vivid contrast to

and weaving and knitting to do.

was the spring and summer. Those accus

their spinning

all this

tomed

to the gradual, almost

imperceptible, oncoming of spring in milder
climates, can have no idea of the sudden burst of
which heralds

spring in
ing".

all is

Outwardly,

of the

snow the

Then suddenly
breeze there
reveals a

trumpets
For weeks, underneath, the snow has been
much the same, but underneath the warm blanket

New England.

"go

has been quickening with countless

sturdy growths.
nip and eagerness seem to vanish from the air; what

soil
all

is is

mild and warm, and in a day or two the

melting snow

world of

life

well

where and each morning

is

high summer.

new green is suddenly every

new phalanx of wild flowers in the woods

its

finds a

and by the brooks.

Soon it

on

way. Lush

was the same a hundred years ago, but in those days the
farmer and his hired men
still a
was
machine age
long way off, and the
in a very real
the
the morning until
went forth to their work
evening"

The

setting

"in

sense.

Indeed, work, hard work to which no limit was set or expected, was a
characteristic of everyday life. There were few pleasures as the present
world understands them, but in their place was the glamour of the pioneer

from the earth every day,

opportunity to wrest something new
a
like
and the vision of a new country
growing child coming daily into
life

with

its

fulfillment.

in thrift,

In the soul of the

and in the

New Bnglander there was a passionate joy

achievements of his

visible

own

hands*

The digging

stump, the reclaiming of another acre of land, gave a

up of another
zest to the days and a deep-toned content to his night s sleep. The life
self-contained. In a large household,
was, and had to be,
tree

tremendously

and many of them were very

large, there

had

to be a large

measure of

With

a great multiplicity of things to do, everyone had to

perform his part faithfully, and the efficient housewife had a place and a
time for everything, and her daughters and hired girls often the daugh
organization.

ters of

neighbouring households

A bright

cleanliness

was

had to be

faithful.

characteristic at all times, but especially in

summer; open doors and open windows, with well-scrubbed tubs and
churns drying in the sun, and everywhere a sense of brightness and light*
So it was no doubt on July 16, 1821, when Mary Baker was born in

Bow,

New

Hampshire, a

little

township some four miles south of

Con

cord, the State capital,

Mark Baker, her father, lived

on his own farm, an upland tract of

hundred acres which had been cleared by his father and elder
brother. For six generations there had been Bakers in New
England.
The first immigrant was one John Baker, who, as the records show, was
some

five

a freeman of Charlestowtx in 1634, He came from Kent where his

people
had for generations been substantial yeomen in the parish of Lyminge.
Lyminge is not far from Folkestone, and the low square tower of the old
parish church
First

was

was a landmark on the way to the coast when Edward the

king.

The

first

Baker of

Lyminge, whose
teenth century.

whom

is one Robert, a native of

over
the
span spread
greater part of the fif
his long story nothing is known for certain save one

anything

life s

Of

is

known,

itself

When he lay a-dying and bethought him of the things he had done
or left undone, he made provision in his will that "twelve pence" be paid

thing.

another twelve pence for the main

tenance of the church building and a bushel of wheat
all the lights of

to the church for

"tithes

forgotten",

"to

the said

church".

Perhaps

it

may be

too

much

to picture

from

this

an

all

too scrupulous

honesty combined with a deep religious feeling and a strong sense of

and responsibility. And beyond this a fundamental gener

which
osity,
lay however so deeply buried under the demands of thrift and
care that it only emerged when these demands had been fully met.
public spirit

Be

this as it

may, such a fashion of a man might well be held as a com

posite picture of all the Bakers. So they were in Kent and so they were
when they crossed the Atlantic and settled on the New England seaboard.

The

next Baker in succession in Lyminge was John, the son of Robert.

tardy payment of tithe represented an in
cipient rebellion against the demands of the Church, which only approach
ing death could reverse. But whatever the father s attitude, there can be
It is possible that his father s

no doubt about the son s.

He

openly flouted the ecclesiastical demands

by attempting to administer his wife s estate without paying tax to the

Church.
was tried and condemned, condemned
march before the

He

"to

Procession in church on two Sundays, clad only in ragged shirt and

breeches, bearing a lighted candle worth a penny".

There

is

more than a

penance imposed upon

reason to conclude, especially from the

was a Lollard. The teachings
that ecclesiastical authority could do to

little

him, that John Baker

of WyclifEe, in spite of

all

suppress them, had spread steadily through England. Wycliffe s "poor

"went
everywhere. Carrying portions of the newly translated
preachers"
Bible with them, they

"constantly

great favour with them.

did mingle

among the poor" and found

So much was

this the case,

and so strong did

that in the
feeling run,

the fifteenth century, in many places, "Processions" were

early years of
abandoned and the worship on saints days ceased to be observed. The

abandonment of the Procession, such an integral part of pte-Reformation

sore point with the ecclesiastical authority, and
worship, was a specially
resulted in its inevitable flood of recanta
persecution had
the return to orthodoxy was the restoration
tions, one of the first signs of
the favourite penances imposed on
of
one
and
of the Procession,

when renewed

"re

pentant"

heretics

was to walk in

it.

for he not only had

John Baker s was evidently a particularly bad case,
to walk in the Procession, but to do so "with contumely and discredit".
of martyrdom, as did so many, but he must
He did not resist to the

have gone

much

point
furdier than his fellows, to be placed, as he was, in the

forefront of the Procession.

matter of tithes or John

no doubt

forgetfulness in the

may be thought of Robert s

In any event, whatever

s

contumacy

in the matter of taxes, there

can be

rebellion of their descendant in the fourth

as to the

gen
open
one John Baker, who after much discussion and "earnest persua
by which he "refused to be exercised", was finally excommunicated

eration,
sion",

as

an

"obdurate

That was
the

separatist"*

New World

Some

four years previously the great migration to

had begun. The Massachusetts Bay Company was char

in 1634*

tered in 1629. In sharp contrast with the

little

company of

settlers,

humble farmers, labourers and artisans, long immortalized as die Pilgrim

Fathers who had landed on the bleak shores of Cape Cod nine years be

new company was a magnificent enterprise. The Plymouth

an outlawed religious band. In the eyes of orthodox England
was
Colony
its members were
contemptible troublemakers. In the opinion of the
fore, the

Bishop of London they were

"men

of tio account instructed by guides

for them, cobblers, tailors, felt-makers,

On

the other

hand

the

and such

Bay colony was

like

fit

trash".

literally

a cross section of

English society transferred bodily to the New World* All strata, with the
exception of the peerage, were represented* Not a few possessed

large

anded

England; some were wealthy merchants; others were

roll of the company were such names

estates in

>rominent

men of learning. On the

John Young, Sir Richard Saltonstail, John Endicott, John Winhrop, and many other well-known landowners and men of substance.
The great mass of the new colonists, however, were yeomen farmers
is

Sir

md

freeholders

from East and South-eastern England.

writh their livestock, their tools,

for trading

And

they came

with great stores of supplies and goods

all, they brought with them the

with the Indians. Above

Established Church.

They were not

"Separatists"

in the strict sense of the

word, although orthodox England may so have regarded them. They

greatly desired that the "English form" might be purified, but they did
not say on leaving England, as did
Separatists, "Farewell Babylon,
>the

Farewell

Rome,"

but rather in the words of one of them,

England! Farewell the Church of

friends
It

God

in

England and

"Farewell

all

dear

the Christian

there."

was to a ship

for this New England that John

excommunication at Lyminge.
the years stretching back into centuries,

company setting out

Baker attached himself after

Meanwhile throughout

his

all

four other families, afterwards destined to come together, were moving

from one generation to another in England, the Ambroses of Suffolk, the

Goodhues of Kent, the Chandlers of Hertfordshire, and the Lovejoys

from Buckinghamshire, weavers and millers, candle-makers, blacksmiths,
people of much solid worth who about the same time and for the same
reason as did John Baker of Lyminge, decided to throw in their lot with
the Massachusetts Company and seek a larger freedom in the New

World. Henry Ambrose, Nicholas Goodhue, John Lovejoy and William

Chandler, all set out on the great adventure about the same time.

Of the ways and means of John Baker s journey nothing is known.

What time of the year or hour of the day he left the little village where his
people had lived and laboured for so long, who, if anyone, went with him,
where he took ship and who were his companions on the voyage, there is
no record. When next we meet John Baker, he is a freeman of Charles-

town, a

little

settlement

on the other

side of the Charles Estuary

from

The

was registered as a freeman shows that he was

some small fortune with him and so had a status above the
hired labourer or indentured white servant, large numbers of which came
out with every company. A few years later he was in Boston, had evi
Boston.

fact that he

able to bring

dently put his substance to good account and was the owner of a profit
able grist mill which derived its power from the rise and fall of the tides

among

He

the fens to the west of the city.

in, 1684 full of
years, "well loved

died

and

may

be

gathered from the Roxbury church records wherein he is referred to

Father Baker and described as
and blind and godly".

as

But while John Baker was thus prospering, accommodating himself

a larger freedom, settling himself into a groove which no Baker seems

to

as

worthy,"

"old

to

have been able to tolerate for long, the religious views of the colony were
not being allowed to remain undisturbed.
in

Three years before John Baker reached Charlestown, there had landed
Boston one Roger Williams, a scholar of Cambridge. He came to New

England not

at all with the

He

moderate hopes and demands of

was a refugee

in the fullest sense of the

his fellow

word from the

immigrants.
tyranny of Archbishop Laud, and he threw a bombshell into the settle
ment of Boston by insisting that religious toleration, far from being
merely a matter of practical expediency, was a demand of Christian
principle.

In other words, he sought to defend everyone

for himself

right to think

and

to enjoy in so doing die respect of his fellows, Williams

was quite emphatic in the matter. He insisted that persecution for cause
of conscience was "most
evidently and lamentably contrary to the doc
trine of Christ Jesus", that no one should be bound
worship or main
"to

worship against his own conscience", that the church and state
should be separated, that to limit a choice of
magistrates to church mem
tain a

bers

was

like

than to his

choosing a pilot according to his

"plan

of

salvation"

rather

seamanship, and finally, that the magistrate could not

have and should not have "any power in matters of conscience".
skill in

Such a thought

in the land of

"the

last

word and

the final

good"

was

indeed a square peg in a round hole. But even worse than Williams was

a man should hold such views was bad enough,

were
simply baffling. Moreover, Mrs. Hutchinson
they
was clearly no fanatic, but a woman of calm judgement, of good family,
ready wit and bold spirit," as Governor Winthrop admitted in no

Anne Hutchinson. That

but in a

woman

"of

little

dejection.

worse".

liever",

And yet here she was, he added,

She not only

insisted that the

"like

Holy Ghost

Roger Williams or
in every be

"dwelt

but stoutly maintained the inalienable right of private judgement

in religious matters against all authority, ecclesiastical or civil.

Such doctrines cut

at the very roots of established Puritanism, and so

the
end
both
in
Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished.
Williams was the first to go. He could not return to England where Laud

was dealing more hardly than ever with nonconformists.

He had no choice

And so, when the

glory of the fall had well

passed and night brought an ominous breath of cold, he set out for the
vast .stretches of wooded lands, which lay then as now at the head of

but to go out into the wilds.

Narragansett Bay.

The

winter which followed was one of terrible privation, but

when

spring came again he had gathered five companions around him, and
together they founded the settlement of Providence. That was in 1636.

Two years later, Anne Hutchinson was banished, and joined Williams in
the Providence settlement.

Thereafter for many years a steady stream of people who chafed under
the ever-increasing intolerance of the Massachusetts clergy and land
owners, followed the two pioneers into the wilderness. They had fled to
the

New World

And

so

from the tyranny of Charles I and Archbishop Laud.

the same "intolerable errors" "taking root down

when they saw

wards and springing

out once more.

upwards"

all

around them, they picked up and went

Throughout the seventeenth century the settlement of Providence

(Rhode Island, as it came to be) and later New Hampshire were havens
of refuge for all who could not do with the
of Massachusetts and
for
still freer and more individual life.
longed
"form"

This came to be

specifically true of

New Hampshire,

and so

it is

not

surprising that the Bakers ultimately

found

their

way

there.

About

the

middle of the eighteenth century a great-grandson of old Father Baker,

one Joseph Baker, took the road north and settled in Suncook, now

Pembroke, New Hampshire,

Joseph Baker is the first of

his

house of

whom

a succinct

life

story

is

He

preserved,
prospered greatly. Like so many other of the pioneers in
these new lands, he had a considerable knowledge of
surveying, Suncook
territory claimed by both Massachusetts and New Hamp
and
when
the dispute came up for definite settlement, Joseph Baker
shire,
was employed to survey the disputed areas, and to make the necessary
reports. It was not an easy job, especially in such a matter where feeling

was then in

was

likely to

on,

we

find

run high, but Joseph Baker acquitted himself well, and, later
him becoming a selectman, a deacon of his church, and a

collector of taxes,

He also

made a happy and fortunate marriage to Hannah Lovewell,

of
daughter
Captain John Lovewell, whose name, as has been seen, was
a household word throughout New England as the hero of Lovewell s
fight in the Indian Wars. Captain Lovewell was killed in battle, and

became one of the folk songs of the day.

Hannah Lovewell brought Joseph Baker two hundred acres of good
farm land, and into his home a remarkable character. She inherited all
her father s courage, and stories of her fearlessness where Indians were
the

"Song

of Lovewell

Fight"

New England firesides long after the Indian

She was the mother of eleven children, and like all

concerned were recounted by

menace had

ceased*

New England mothers of those days

her work was never done.

Meanwhile, her husband was becoming a figure of some importance,

not only in thf little town where they lived but in the state, or
province
as it was then, of his adoption. In 1758, Governor
Wentworth

Banning
Hampshire appointed Joseph Baker Captain of the militia. It
was in those days a more than ordinary trust* The fourth and final
strug
gle between die French and English for supremacy in North America
had reached its most acute stage. The French had overrun the Ohio
of

New

valley,

and

this together

with the building of Fort

Duquesne, where

10

Pittsburgh now is, clearly revealed their intention to shut off the English
from the Mississippi valley and confine them to the Atlantic Seaboard.

New
these

England colonists were, to an ever larger extent, taking part in

wars, and the experience thus gained was fitting them for the great

struggle for independence, which, at the time

when Joseph

received his

captain commission, was less than twenty years away. When this strug
marched with the rest. He was also a member
gle did come, Joseph Baker
s

of the local Committee of Safety and a delegate to the Provincial

gress of New Hampshire.

was probably at the

It

Baker

and

eldest son, also

settled in

close of the Revolutionary

named

Joseph,

moved

War

across the

Con

that Joseph

Merrimac River

Bow.

There in the uplands, high above the river valley, he had acquired his
hundred acres, and now set about the great task of clearing the land.

five

There he married Marion Moor McNeil. Ultimately Scots, both the

Moors and the McNeils had come to New England by way of northern
Ireland from the county Antrim, and they brought with them all the fire
fight in religious matters for which Ulstermen, even then, were well

and

known. Mark Baker, Mary Baker s father, was their younger son.
Meanwhile, through the years since their arrival in the New World,
the Ambroses, the Goodhues, the Lovejoys and the Chandlers had been

coming together. In sharp contrast with the Bakers, the Ambroses and
the families that went to their making were a mild and peace-loving
people. If the Bakers were

They

united as did

all

all

Michaels, the Ambroses were

all Gabriels.

New England in those days on the basis of religion,

but their approach was that of the meek rather than the mighty. It was
Nathaniel Ambrose, Mary Baker s grandfather, who after serving faith
fully in the Revolutionary

War, devoted

all his

savings from his calling

New

as a carpenter to the building of a meeting-house in Pembroke,

Hampshire. It survived for many years as "the Ambrose meeting-house".

Nathaniel Ambrose married Phebe Lovejoy, whose family on both

Lovejoys and the Chandlers, had for many generations enjoyed
a special reputation for "gentle godliness". It was of the first Chandler

sides, the

11

New England, namely, William, of whom John Eliot, his

wrote
that he lived
and that
pastor,
very religious and Godly
when he died he left
sweet memory and savor behind him".*
to arrive in

life"

"a

"a

Nathaniel Ambrose and

Abigail, and
lines of the

To

these two,

little

girl,

Phebe Lovejoy, had a daughter

Bakers and the Ambroses were united when

Ambrose, was married

a

his wife,

early in the nineteenth century the strangely contrasting

to

this girl,

Abigail

Mark Baker.

Mark and

Abigail Baker, was born, on July 16, 1821,

and last child. The old

the subject of this record, their sixth

grandmother, Mark s mother, Marion Moor McNeil that was, was asked
to choose a name for her. She named the child
Mary*

Roxbury Lane and Church Records,

p. 83.

12

APT

WAS in her thirty-eighth year when her youngest child was

born. Early marriage was the rule in New England in those days where
a woman, still unmarried at twenty-five, was looked upon as already an
ABIGAIL BAKER

old maid. But no matter

how

young girl became a

her
word
matron
on
wedding day. Thence
onwards her life was her home and her children. Her children were wont
to come quickly and regularly, and her family would be complete in the
early she married, the

in the fullest sense of the

early thirties. Thirty-eight

would be regarded

as rather past the usual age

of childbearing.
It is not
surprising, therefore, that to the thought of a deeply religious
woman as Abigail Baker was, the coming of this child in her "old age"

should take on some special significance. In

and studied so earnestly were many stories of

the Bible which she loved

children destined to great

ness being born to women in later life, and although her essential meek
ness and modesty caused her to view such thoughts with disquiet, she

could not, as she confessed in distress to a friend, avoid their coming.

In the spring of 1821, Mrs. Baker and this friend and neighbour, Sarah
13

much together. She was

devout and pious woman", and
two would frequently and regularly meet and talk over
religious mat
ters and
pray aloud together* As runs one account of the matter which
Gault, were

"a

the

seems to be traditional, "During these

meetings, Mrs. Baker many times
told her neighbour, Mrs. Gault, that she felt herself to be a most wicked

woman, because of

the strange thoughts she

had regarding her youngest

which was yet unborn. She told Mrs. Gault that she could not
keep
her thoughts away from the
strong conviction that this child was holy and
consecrated and set apart for wonderful achievements, even before her
child,

birth.

She

said, *I

I cannot shake

know these are sinful thoughts for me to entertain, but

off/ Then these two devout women would talk the

them

question over and pray

together."

However this may be, there can be no doubt that between

Mary and her mother,

there existed

from the

the

little girl

dawnings of the child s

consciousness a more than
usually deep spiritual bond. Abigail Baker was
in every sense of the term a mother in Israel
Writing of her many years
afterwards, Mrs,

first

my mother

I cannot
speak as I would,
8
can
never
do justice."
memory
pen
She seems to have been a remarkable woman, not
only in point of
culture, but because of a certain calm and
wisdom
which rose
patient

for

Eddy

recalls

serenely above the

said,

"Of

qualities to which the

many

besetments of a working day and was found

almost mystically at hand when

help was needed* She was well named
for
between
her
and her namesake in Israel there was a bond
Abigail,

enough. The "iron-willed" Mark Baker, unrelenting Calvinist as he

was, must often in spite of himself have called her blessed* She had a
way of softening the rigours of his faith without hurting him, and, with a
fine
heresy in the presence of which the voice of protest was often stopped,
on the all embracing love of God" in an
"dwelling
age committed to the
"horrible decree" of
as
called his own
predestination,
John Calvin
clear

rightly

tenet

All his long

life

religion. Instant

Mark

and

Baker was a veritable

Boanerges in matters of
he
found
the task of convinc*
argument,

effective in

Adtm

Retrospection and Introspection, p. 3.

Dickey; Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 133-4

14

ing a waverer or confronting a backslider particularly congenial to him,

while he gloried in the sternness of his faith,-. and, in-: its demands for
Mrs.
wrote
scrupulous obedience. "My father s relentless

Eddy

theology",

him many

of

years afterwards,

"emphasized belief

day, in the danger of endless punishment,

and

in a final

judgement

in a Jehovah merciless

towards

unbelievers."

But

if

Ambrose was a true Ambrose.

in

Mark,

the

Abigail. If

"earnest

"so

of things hoped

Mark was wont to

his feet, Abigail

Mark Baker was a

was wont simply to stand, for she could not otherwise

might seem at
a

home

most in evidence

was the prevailing spirit of

get up and out and shake the dust from off
for"

help me God".

It

true Baker, Abigail

If the church militant was

first difficult

if not impossible to -fashion

from such

by
open hand", and at which
needy
were always welcome", and pervaded by a love long remembered
by its
children. Abigail Baker did it, but the adjustment demanded in the com
ing together of these two heritages was tremendous, only exceeded in
stuff

difficulty

characterized

"the

"the

by the task of making the adjustment in the soul of a

single

individual.

That adjustment, the little girl who had been named Mary was des
tined to undertake and carry through with portentous effect.

As we have

seen, she

was the youngest of sk

children.

Three brothers,

Samuel, Albert, and George Sullivan, and two sisters, Abigail and
Martha, awaited her in the farmstead at Bow. The three boys at any rate
and possibly Abigail were old enough to take note of it all and to receive

new sister with that eager interest and competition in affection which
in large families seems only to increase with each new arrival. If the little
girl was to be spoiled she was destined to it. From the first she seems to
the

have been regarded as a much-prized possession by

especially by the old grandmother,

all

the family, but

who had named her Mary.

Grandmother Baker was a typical New England grandmother. If

Abigail was the mother of her children, Grandmother Baker was the
Mother Emeritus, and the same gracious spirit which gave her the naming
of the youngest child consigned that child specially to her care. It was
1

Retrospection and Introspection, p. 13.

15

Grandmother Baker who rocked Mary s cradle in those first few months
as she sat by the open window, and it was Grandmother Baker who, later
her people,
on, took the child on her lap, and told her wonderful stories of
about the Indian wars and other wars, of the mighty deeds of mysterious
who far away, and longer ago still, had done things worthy of
remembrance.
ancestors

Like

all families that

Bakers were

full

have wandered far from their homelands, the

of traditions, some of them well founded, others not so

In her book, Retrospection dnd Introspection, Mrs. Eddy recalls

how among her earliest recollections was a great sword in a brass scabbard
well.

which her grandmother told her had been given to one of her ancestors
by Sir William Wallace. It lay in an old chest in the garret at Bow, along
with some worn leather-bound books and papers yellow with age, telics

from the Moor household, which Marion Moor McNeil had brought
with her, many years before, when she was married to Joseph Baker,

Grandmother Baker had many other

Mary. She showed

tales to tell

her the old newspapers which Mrs. Eddy, with all the vividness of a child
hood memory, recalls, contained, among other things, stories of Valley
Forge, of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, of Washington s farewell to
his troops,

and most

Among

remembered of

vividly

death and burial of George

all,

"a

full

account of the

Washington".

the papers in the chest were

"certain

Scriptural sonnets, besides other verses

manuscripts containing

and enigmas which

my grand
1
mother said were written by my great-grandmother", It was the cherished
conviction of Grandmother Baker that Hannah More was in some way
among

her forebears, but, inasmuch as

spinster, this

there

was

clearly

Hannah More

lived

and died a

one of the traditions not so well founded* But

had been no doubt in the mind of the

little

Mary

Baker,

That her

grandmother told her so was enough. There was, moreover, the poetry in
her great-grandmother s own
writing to prove it,
portrait or description of Mary as a little
remains, but from

No

girl

descriptions of her in

hood it
*

is

young womanhood and some

not imagining too

Retrospection and

Iatros|>ection,

much

incidents in her child

to picture her as a child of

more than

p. I*

16

clear skin- she

ordinary beauty, with large blue-gray eyes, a singularly
never lost that and an abundance of curly chestnut hair. She was a

of listening
happy, eager child, one who gave the impression at all times
with all her ears, and her family early came to learn that no conversation

She did not always get things right, but, right

or wrong, she always got something, and she had a way of putting frag
mentary sayings and vivid expressions to strange and unexpected uses.
was

really over her head.

Like most children she loved long words -she loved them all her life
but as a child it was specially noticeable, and she sometimes brought them
effect. One instance, which is traditional, is worth re
Mark
Baker, as has been seen, was a great man in a dispute. At no
calling.

out with telling

when elucidating some matter of

or
the
with
preparing
"strange
help of "Priest" Burnham from
across the river to administer a "seemly rebuke" to some recalcitrant

time was he more in his element than

doctrine"

church member. Priest Burnham was a

Sarah Battle in

Mark Baker

would

at

felt

very

"the

much

any time galvanize him

Burnham

Like

essay on Whist, he really enjoyed

It would almost seem that he must have felt grateful

rigour of the game".

to backsliders for the satisfaction their

him.

man after Mark s own heart.

Lamb s famous

summary confounding brought to

The very word backslider

the same.

into satisfying action.

And so whenever

and drove up the hill from Pembroke to

the Baker farmstead, he was sure of a welcome. There were other disputes
of an entirely secular nature which Mark Baker was called upon to settle.
Priest

crossed the river

He was known as a man who loved an argument too much not to see fair
and he

set his face sternly against bad language and against

any
to
of
the
heat
calculated
unf
oldment
of
the
impair
satisfying
display
theme.

play,

Mary was often the silent observer and auditor of these battles of
words. Her sisters, Abigail and Martha, or the boys, would probably not
have been admitted to the parlour where they took place, but
so small that she was overlooked.

And

Mary was

happened on one occa

sion, when a more than usually heated argument was under way between
two farmers who had brought their case to Mark Baker for arbitration,
still

17

so

it

that one of the disputants raised his voice

beyond the point at which

On this occasion
usually intervened with some restraining order.
alert
and anxious,
became
corner
he did not intervene, and Mary from her
Mark

At last she

could bear

but firmly,

"Mr,

it

lull

remarked

quietly

vociferously?"

moment, and then everyone burst out laughing,

was not long before the matter was settled and all concerned were

There was

and

no longer, and in a sudden

Bartlett, why do you articulate so
it

silence for a

good humouredly the child s quaint speech. It passed into a

and years afterwards whenever discussion ran too high
saying",

discussing
"family

some

the spell could at once be broken by

reference to

Mary s

quiet

not, however, only in the matter of quaint speeches that

Mar^

rebuke.
It

was

began to stand out in the family circle. She had queer ideas about animals.
Incidents that the rest of the farm household took inevitably as a matter
of course, occasioned her deep concern whether the horses were too cold
in the snow, or the hens were warm enough at night, or the ducks dis
tressed because the

comfort the

little

pond was

girl,

frozen.

Grandmother Baker did her

assuring her that

God

"cared

for all his

best to

creatures",

never quite assured, and one chill evening in November,

her brother Albert found her singing softly to the pigs at the other side

but

Mary was

of the pasture wall because she felt sure they were lonely,
Abigail Baker, it is to be imagined, must often have wondered
recalled her talks with

youngest

child*

None

Sarah Gault

-as

she

at these traits of difference in her

of her other children had

made problems of such

matters as lonely pigs, inadequately warmed horses, or ducks barred from

the enjoyment of their natural element by the forces of nature. Yet to

Mary

they were quite obviously real problems.

fancies are not uncommon with sensitive children, and

Such

doubtful

if

they would have been even remembered

if it

it

is

had not been for

another development which brought no little perplexity to Grandmother

Baker and Abigail, and deep concern to Mark, "Mary s Sayings" had

always amused him, even as they often puzzled him, but the story he was
to hear now from Abigail about
Mary s hearing a voice calling her seems

18

to

have

him with a doubt which bordered on

filled

fear.

To

the solid,

intensely concrete mind of Mark Baker, in spite of the fact that he ac

cepted the story of Samuel in its entirety, there could be nothing but
"something wrong",

Whatever the

when told of Mary s

actual explanation

"voices".

be, the account of the matter

may

given by Mrs. Eddy herself in her book, Retrospection and Introspection,

is

her honest recollection of the matter, undoubtedly.

Whether Mrs. Eddy in childhood heard the voice of

God by

audible

the question of her own

any
personal integrity and irrelevant to the larger question of whether she was
divinely ordained to be mankind s saviour in this age. But it is interesting

sound, in

literal sense, is surely irrelevant to

enough to warrant some consideration here. Surely with all the marvels
/hich tax our credulity anew each day, only the reckless or the incorrigi4y ignorant would deny the possibility of such supernormal occurrences
Mrs. Eddy describes from her childhood, although conservatism would
prompt the average reader to a few reservations. Fairness demands that
is

made

allowance be

comparisons by
"Many

for the inevitable infusion of biblical concepts

and

this narrator of pious bent.

rears, "connected

with

my

and

Mrs. Eddy writes in later

childhood throng the chambers of memory."

peculiar circumstances

events,"

on

to recall having heard a voice during her eighth year

her
railing
repeatedly, and of having gone to her mother only to be told
that no one had called. She recites that her cousin, Mehitable Huntoon,
ITien she goes

overheard the voice on one occasion and that her mother was troubled by
account of the strange phenomenon. Steeped as she was in scriptural

their

lore, it is

not surprising that the then

little

Mary and the later Mrs. Eddy

sought an explanation in the story of the voice of the Lord coming to

Samuel. The sincerity of this colourful account cannot be questioned, but

many

will challenge the reliability of

Psychologists insist that everyone

tional falsification of

be the world

is

human

subject to paramnesia, the uninten

memory, and few are

Retrospection and

19

likely to

concede Mrs.

s sole exception to this universal tendency.

cherish the prophet version, the voice will

*

recollection in such things.

Introspection, pp. 8-9.

come

Eddy to

For those who

three times

and

will thus

foreshadow sainthood*

We

fundamental consequence

need not take sidesin

in considering the

this

question of no

words of one who has

We

can plumb the depths of her un

proved herself a truly great leader.
deniable genius and marvel at her spectacular achievements without hang
ing her

work

on a

tradition

which can do no

less

than discredit her and her

in the eyes of a skeptical age.

But what about Mark Baker? Accepting without question the full
teaching of Calvin as to God and Heaven and Hell, he nevertheless was
overwhelmed at such an outrage on probability as Mary

s voices*

Brushing

aside impatiently Abigail s less material explanation, he declared that the

child s brain was too big for her body, that she must drop all her books,

have done with questionings which caused him so much vague uneasiness,
and go out into the fields and romp and play like other girls and boys.

And so the child went out, not at all

averse, but her questionings

with her. Already, for Mary, the world was not the simple place
for her sisters, Abigail and Martha, and the boys,

went

it

was

One of the boys, however, seems to have understood Mary better than
the others. Albert Baker was eleven years old when she was born, and
from the

first

seems to have held his

little sister

in special regard.

Her

questionings evidently did not disturb him as they did his father, and as
the years passed and the little boy of eleven had come to be a big boy in
his teens and the little girl was rising eight or nine, there began to develop

between the two a relationship of rare sympathy and understanding*

About the time that Mary was listening in scared silence for her "voices

1*

or slipping out of the kitchen door in the gathering darkness to sing to

the lonely pigs, Albert was preparing to enter Dartmouth. All the Bakers

were well taught,

sufficiently well taught, as

corded, to teach school

"acceptably

Mrs, Eddy herself has re

*
but Albert quite

at various times/

evidently from his subsequent history was

and a thinker. Along with his brothers,

more than
and

ordinarily a student

on with his sisters,

he
attended
and
the
common
school
Martha,
Abigail
nearby, but whereas
the brothers went no further, Albert moved on to the Pembroke
Academy
and thence
*

later

to Dartmouth.

Miscellany, p. 310.

20

Mary was an eager repository for Albert s learning. How early the two
began that "discursive talking", which Albert alludes to in a later letter,
it is not
possible to say, but if the boy is, as he clearly was, father to the
man, the future lawyer and congressman-elect, Albert Baker, friend and
law partner of Franklin Pierce, was ready to share what he knew with an

And

audience always ready to ask questions.

mother

valiant stories

folding record,

"new

and the mother

every

morning,"

so with the old grand

simple faith, and Albert

and her own forever

un

questions, the

had much
do and many things to straighten out.
thing especially began to trouble her about now, the question of
religion, she later writes. From the first moment that she was able to
to

little girl

One

apprehend anything of the matter, Mary seems to have taken her religion
seriously. Hers was a serious day and religion was the most serious topic

most households of that day. But as a small child her approach to it

was not at all the accustomed one. The unquestioning acceptance of a
in

tutored attitude not only did not

commend

itself

to her, but never seems

to have occurred to her as anything like what should be required. She

devoted herself obediently to the task of learning the Westminster Cate
chism, and actually could say it by heart before she was ten. She went to

church and Sabbath school and sat or knelt with due devotion through
the prayers and Bible reading with which Mark Baker exercised himself

and

his household,

morning and evening. But such

eousness was not at

even to

Mark

all

himself,

for her.

To

fulfilling

her brothers and

enough
the due fulfilment of such

of

all right

sisters,

and

obligations constituted

the essential part of their religious life. To Mary they were only inci
dents. As far as the Bible was concerned, she not only listened dutifully

what was demanded of

was actually found studying it at

all times with absorbed interest. This, combined with the fact that while
she was willing and eager to believe in the love of God, she did not seem
to

her, but she

to be at all reconcilable to the wrath of

misgiving.

of

The wrath of God was,

God was well in its

Mary s

God, caused Mark no

little

of course, his great standby. The love

God was the real thing, and

way, but the wrath of

apparent conviction that the

care,

which she was convinced from

her grandmother, God bestowed on lonely pigs and cold horses, must be
extended to all men regardless of sect, Mark Baker viewed with increasing
disquiet.

Already, as he saw it, he had had more than his share of trouble with his
it.
to die time

children in this matter of religious conviction or lack of

Up

Mary, none of them had made any

and Mark was not only greatly troubled but

that he began to be concerned about

formal profession of faith,

completely at a loss to understand what

it

could mean.

To him

religion

was

essentially a grand thing, a mighty exercise, an exulting and exalting

conflict, with enemies worthy of his weapons. He could not understand
any man worth the name not being eager to throw his hat in the ring and

go to

it.

With

backsliders to be

found in every community and grand

differences of doctrine constantly arising,

any

failure to take

advantage

of such opportunities was to Mark Baker

simply incomprehensible.
It was not that his children, but
especially his sons, were in any sense
of the

word

even lax in the meeting of their religious obliga

On the contrary, they all seem to have been even scrupulous in
doing so. Only they had never "found religion" in die almost unctuous
fullness of that term, as Mark had done,
irreligious or

tions.

Mary had
sioned

always been his hope. True, her exceptional devotion occa

uneasiness. The stories Abigail told him, from time to

him some

time, of long Bible readings, of prayers carefully written out

posed, of brave determinations on the part of his small

and com

daughter to
emulate her hero Daniel, and pray seven times
with
her
face
towards
daily
the east, all this was not as it should be.
does
not
seem
to have
Abigail
been troubled by it. Neither, it is to be imagined, would Mark have been
had it not been for Mary s growing tendency towards restless
inattention,
if not
open dissent, whenever, in their discussion of
he
religious matters,

touched upon the subject dearest to his

"unconditional

decrees.

them

and

election".

own

heart, the great doctrine of

Predestination, endless punishment, inexorable

Many a time, no doubt, had he and Priest Burnham rejoiced over

obviously shrank from them* Naturally joy loving

as
one contemporary has described
light hearted,
her, she seems to
together.

Mary

22

Mark

have rebounded from the grave and distressful view of things, as

would have them, with a most unseemly ease. There was nothing morbid
in her childish devotions. No doubt she shared in the "luscious gloom"

and could

of the period,

sigh with the best of

them over

"withered

joys"

over graveyards and upturned sods and what not.

"perished hopes",
But when faced with a real issue such as her father was propounding to

and

her so vigorously, she came out every time quite emphatically on the side
of the cared-for animals, rather than that of the eternal punishment of
unbelievers. It

Mary was
was

clearly her father s

in her twelfth year

duty to do something about

when they

finally

came to

grips.

it.

Mark

was about time that she made a formal profession of

the fashion of those days, he felt that it was laid upon

satisfied that it

faith,

him

was

and, after

to prepare her for the exercise

in doctrine

and of good

and

to see to

it

that she

was

"sound

understanding".

This brought the matter, the whole question of predestination and the
"horrible decree" of endless
punishment, right out into the open between
the two,

Mark

quickly found his worst fears confirmed.

To

his utter

perplexity, he discovered that the doctrines that filled him with such
exaltation, aroused in his daughter nothing but dissent. She was unwilling

to be saved, if hei: brothers

and

sisters

were to be doomed to perpetual

banishment from God.

He

Nothing that Mark Baker could say or do would change her.

spoke
of the final judgement day, of the dangers of endless punishment, and of
a God utterly merciless towards unbelievers. Mary stood her ground.
But she sank physically under the struggle. She could not sleep at night,
and grew worried and anxious. Whether Abigail actually intervened at
not possible to say, but that something happened to awaken
to a sense of what he was doing, is certain. For the next time we
see him, he is rushing from the house towards the stable, hitching a horse

this point, it is

Mark

to the wagon, and driving recklessly down the hill towards Pembroke to
fetch the doctor. The story seems to be well founded that someway down

the road he

met a neighbour, who

hailed

where he was going in such a hurry. But

23

all

him with

concern, asking

he got for an answer, as

him

Mark

urged his horse to greater

efforts,

was the agonized shout,

"Mary

is

dying."

But Mary was not dying. And although the old doctor, who knew
Baker, declared she had a fever, and must be kept quiet, he made
clear to a much chastened and sobered Mark that there must be an end

Mark
it

to his great missionary work.

The

old doctor guessed, but

it

was Abigail

Baker who really understood, and in her handling of a difficult situation

disclosed a rare
sympathy and wisdom. At a moment when a mother s
advice to submit or compromise would have been
easy to give and obvious,
Abigail refrained. She told the child simply that God would guide her

and make the way

clear for her.

Writing of the incident many years afterwards, Mrs, Eddy says : "My
mother, as she bathed my burning temples, bade me lean on God s love,
which would give
do,

me

rest, if I

seeking His guidance.

over me.

The

fever

went to

I prayed;

was gone, and

I rose

condition of

Him in prayer,

and a

as I

was wont

to

glow of ineffable joy came

and dressed myself, in a normal
soft

health,"

And then she goes on to relate how from that moment the horrible
decree of predestination, the dread of the
day of judgement, and of a
God

"merciless

towards

But the small

heretic

unbelievers," "forever

had

could reckon herself to have

to

lost its

power."

go through one more ordeal before she

won

her

great battle for freedom* She

from her father s wish that she
should become more closely united with it. But not at the
expense of her
convictions. How the
was
is
best
told in her own
gap
finally bridged

loved her church and was not at

all

first

averse

words. Writing of her examination before die church

members, she says;
"The
pastor was an old-school expounder of the strictest Presbyterian
doctrines. He was
apparently as eager to have unbelievers in these

dogmas

lost,

as he

was to have

elect believers

converted and rescued from

perdi*

both salvation and condemnation

depended, according to his
views, upon the good pleasure of infinite Love. However, I was
ready for
his doleful
which
I
answered
without
a
questions,
tremor, declaring that
tion; for

Retrospection and Introspection, p. 13

24

never could I unite with the church,

if

assent to this doctrine was essential

thereto."

She then goes on to relate what followed, how she stoutly maintained
that she was willing to trust God and take her chance of spiritual safety
with her brothers and
taking, even

if

sisters,

not one of whom had taken the step she was

left her outside the doors.

her creedal doubts

Nonplussed for a moment, the pastor tried another way; he asked her
tell him when she had experienced
change of heart", to which the
child could only tearfully reply that she could not remember any precise

to

"a

time.

The

pastor, however, insisted that she

had been

truly regenerated,

and begged her to say how she felt when the light dawned upon her.
Mrs. Eddy has written, "that I could only answer him in
replied",
"I

the words of the Psalmist

"Search

me, and know my thoughts : and see

lead

me,
if

O God, and know my heart: try

there be

any wicked way in me, and

me in the way everlasting."*

This was so earnestly

said, so the story continues, that

even the oldest

church members wept. After the meeting was over, they came and kissed
her, while to the astonishment of many, the old pastor relented and re
ceived the little girl into communion and her protest along with her.

So was the first victory won, and it is perhaps significant that it was
won without compromise and without bitterness, with "satisfaction and
tears of

gratitude",

Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid. p. 14.

25

achieved no one

knew how,

as the final outcome.

Growing

"WHEN I

Up

HAD finished my business, passing from Stoddard through Hills-

borough, I called at a log-hut, and after a few words, asked the farmer

how he

As other farmers. Where do you get your meat? In yondet

Where your meal? At Lichfield. I asked him if he would sell. He

lived?

brooks.

him to go along with me to a Justice of the

and
I
would
Peace,
purchase his farm, which was about fifty acres. After
the deed was executed I continued my journey to Chelmsford, and the
replied that he would. I told

company with a soldier, my companion in the

and took up my residence in the log-hut
Army,
I had lately purchased* Here I commenced cutting and clearing away the
trees, lying on a blanket with my companion, and living as best we
spring following, 1786, in
I

came

to Hillsborough,

could."

So does General Benjamin

Pierce, veteran of the Revolutionary

and an old friend of the Bakers, record in

founding of the family fortunes in

his quaint

War,

autobiography the
outbreak of

New Hampshire, At the

* From an
autobiography of General Pierce preserved among the papers of Albert Baker flow in
the possession of the Longyear Foundation. The paper carried the title: Btfag an account
of tit
and
Adventures &f General Benjamin Fierce in kis own words such as was oft t&ld t& bh ton
life

franklin

his earliest years.

26

the war of revolution, he was working on his uncle s farm at Chelmsford,

a little town not far from Concord, Massachusetts, and on the historic

day of April 19, 1775, when the British marched out of Boston to take
possession of the stores and arms at Concord, the news reached young
Pierce as he was ploughing in the field. "The British", shouted a passing
horseman,

"have

fired

on

the Americans at Lexington

and

killed eight

men."

many others, young Benjamin did not hesitate a moment.

the cattle," he writes, "dropped the chains from the
between
stepped
plough, and without any further ceremony, shouldered my uncle s fowl
Like so

ing-piece,

"I

swung

place where the

in Captain

the bullet-pouch

first

and powder-horn, and hastened to the

Next morning, I enlisted
spilled.

blood had been

John Ford s Company, which was stationed

at Cambridge."

The end of the war found him covered with honour, but "destitute of
so when he was solicited by one Colonel Stoddard to explore
money",
owned in New Hampshire, he ac
and
went
on
his
cepted gladly
journey. It was on his way back from this
that
made
the
he
expedition
quick purchase just mentioned of a log hut
and fifty acres of land at Hillsborough.
In this same log hut, some twenty years later in 1804, Franklin Pierce,
the future President of the United States, and life-long friend of Albert
Baker, was born.
lands which he, Colonel Stoddard,

At that time Benjamin Pierce was coming to be a man of consequence,

not only in his little community but in the state. In the year Franklin was
born, the log hut was exchanged for a "new and elegant home" in Hills-

borough Lower Village, and Benjamin Pierce began to take a vigorous

part in State and National politics. His education had amounted to very

what he could gather before he entered the Army

attending
school from the age of ten to sixteen years, three weeks in each year" but
little

"by

he was a

man

of rugged forceful personality, wise and generous. If his

long years of soldiering had

quick to see his

Known
27

own

made him somewhat domineering, he was

limitations

and

to acclaim the virtues of his fellows.

throughout the countryside as Squire Pierce, he was a

"squire"

had come to be used in New England.

At the time when Mark Baker was beginning to wrestle with the re-

in every sense of the term, as

it

of his youngest child, Benjamin Pierce, now a General

ligpus problems
of New
he had taken an active part in the War of 1812 was Governor
he
would
often
Concord
at
duties
his
to
Hampshire, and when attending
ride over of

an evening to see

Mark Baker

at

Bow.

a pleasant ride from Concord, and although there were

Bow
just
Pierce evidently
in those days no telephones to escape from, Governor

was

found die Baker home at

Bow a welcome retreat from official

duties,

and

Baker a congenial companion. Even after he had

as he did in 1830, the General would often on occasion drive
private life,
retired finally into

over from Hillsborough

"along

the winding

Contoocook

river"

to

visit

his old friend.

common. Indeed it is to be imagined that after

was no one Squire Baker loved to talk with more
The old General may not and probably did not share

The two had much

Priest

Buraham,

than Squire Pierce.

Mark s

in

there

militant strength in religious matters, but

when

it

came to de

of States Rights, the

nouncing a Federalist or maintaining the principle
hitch.
a
without
went
two veterans
along together
seems to have been particularly interested in these visits, not only

Mary

conversation" always had a fascination for her as a

"grown up
or later, in the course of the
no
doubt
bit
child,
chiefly because, sooner
her much-loved brother,
about
to
hear
be
sure
something
visit, she would

because

Albert, then

at Dartmouth, and about the General s son,

had been a guest several times at the Pierces, and be

about 1832

Franklin. Albert

tween him and Franklin Pierce, just then establishing himself as a lawyer
at Hillsboroughj there early existed a very real bond of sympathy. Frank
lin was six years older than Albert, just about the right disparity in age
to produce devotion on one side and lively interest on the other, and there
be no doubt that when Albert returned home at vacation time he

on

brought back with him glowing tales of his friend and of the household
at Hillsborough.
Mary, of course, would be

all ears.

The

Pierce family

five

boys and

2&

was, as a whole, some five or six years ahead of the Baker

child was nine years old when Mary was born. To

three girls
family.

The youngest

of twelve or thirteen they represented attainment in the fullest

sense of the word, and Albert, so definitely on his way as to be at Dart

little

girl

mouth, gained much reflected glory to

for a friend.

Almost from the

problem.
to the

first,

Mary s

Mary s mind

in having Franklin

education seems to have presented a

At

little

the usual age, she began to go with her brothers and sisters
country school at the cross roads close by. But whereas Abigail

it, taking everything as a matter of

the
hill
the
down
and the long climb back again, the
course,
long trudge
the
the
still
of
school
and
noise
sessions,
greater noise of the play hours,
Mary seemed to wilt under it. So much so that on the advice of the old

and Martha thought nothing of

family doctor, Nathaniel Ladd of Pembroke, she was ultimately kept at

of the time, and depended for education upon what she could

home most

learn for herself with the aid of her mother

and Albert.

Albert was her great resort and standby. In those days, Dartmouth,
like most other colleges, aimed at giving its students what used to be

England
gentleman s education". The specializing 6f today
was unknown, and, before he graduated, the student had to be well
grounded in the classics, mathematics, physics, rhetoric, and mental and
called in

"a

moral philosophy. The college year was a long one, at any rate for the
faculty. Instead of terminating as now in June, it went on into August,

an arrangement which enabled students, who needed to do so, to take

two or three months off during the winter to "teach in the country schools

home

at

To

or

elsewhere".

who needed to work his way through college or to

an
insufficient
allowance, this was a great boon, and it was
supplement
probably on such vacations as these that Albert and his small sister
the student

studied together, as she has recorded in her book, Retrospection

and In

trospection.

Summing up
that

29

my

the matter, she writes

brain was too large for

"My

father was taught to believe

my body and so kept me much out of

with far less labour than

school, but I gained book-knowledge

is

usually

requisite."

then she goes on to tell how that at the age of ten she was
familiar with Lindley Murray s Grammar as with the Westminster Cate

And

"as

Sunday/ Her favourite studies

philosophy, logic, and moral sci

chism; and the latter I had to repeat every

with Albert, she

ence",

tells us,

while she also

were

"natural

"received

lessons in the ancient tongues,

Hebrew,

Greek, and

Latin".

seems a formidable order indeed, but, on the other hand, exactly the
kind of "education" one would expect an eager child to get from an
It

undergraduate brother whose thought was necessarily entirely occupied

with just such studies. It need not be supposed that any of it was very
the Westminster Catechism
deep or very thorough, but, combined with

and the sonorous eighteenth century

literature of Lindley

Murray s

which
Grammar,
her
life*
s
all
Mrs.
of
was to be characteristic
Eddy writing
if
s
Grammar,
thoroughly studied, as books were
Lindley Murray
studied in those days, read and re-read and read again, was a liberal
it

helped to lay a sure foundation for that precise style

education in

itself,

Mary had both

annotated, are

books,

still

when combined with the English Reader,

and her original copies, much worn and copiously

especially

preserved.

they were in her possession

all

They
her

are strangely revealing, for although

and might have been annotated at

life

the character of the handwriting in these notes shows clearly

enough the little girl in her teens*
The English Reader, first published in America in Alexandria, Vir

any time,

still

grand in its sweep and in the catholicity of its

taste. The Grammar^ which was the standard text book for
fifty years
throughout England and America, is excellent, but the Reader is just
grand. In the four hundred or so pages which comprise die two books,
ginia,

about 1810,

is

truly

Lindley Murray in the seclusion of his Yorkshire home managed to secure

a truly remarkable selection of all that is best in eighteenth
century
literature. Goldsmith, Addison, Pope, Hume,
Cowper, Samuel Johnson,
to
1

mention only a few at random, have

liberal scope, while the Bible 3

Retrospection and Introspection, p. 10.

Ibid,, p. 10.

30

especially the

sented.

Book

of Proverbs,

and the ancient

With the help of Lindley Murray,

were such people as Socrates

and

and read a few of the things they

the

classics are well repre

little

girl

learned that there

Sallust, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius,

said.

Lindley Murray was, moreover, much interested in questions of the

day. As a lawyer in New York before he determined to retire and make
his

home

in England, he

question of slavery.

had been brought

When

in contact with the rising

he reached England he found Wilberforce

thundering against the practice in the British colonies, and so into his
Reader went several articles on the subject, and poems by Cowper and
Addison. That was some fifteen years before the Missouri Compromise
of 1820, whereby slavery was made a kind of local option in the United
States. Fifteen years after the Compromise, with Lloyd Garrison in turn

fulminating against slavery in his abolitionist paper,

The

Liberator, in

Bow, was reading her Lindley

Boston, Mary
Murray, marking the verses by Cowper and Addison, carefully studying
Baker, in the farmhouse at

and

the articles

which runs

"It

evidently being specially impressed with the paragraph

may not be improper to remind the young reader, that

unhappy negroes on being separated from their country

and dearest connections, with the dreadful prospect of perpetual slavery,
frequently becomes so exquisite as to produce derangement of mind, and

the anguish of the

suicide."

The extracts from the Bible, if one is to judge by the markings, were
studied with special care. This verse from Proverbs has a mark and a
number all its own : "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom. Length of
in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her
are
ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."
ways
And so as the little girl studied with her mother and Albert, Lindley

days

is

Murray was a

great help.

Books, moreover, were only a small part of her means to the desired
end. There were the hundred and one things she could read, mark, and
learn, every

day

in the life

around

her.

Very

early, she

seems to have

developed that aptitude for learning from the most unpromising things
and circumstances which was so characteristic in her later life.
31

As

soon as she could read at

Hampshire

Patriot

all,

she read the newspapers. The New

to the house, and,

and State Gazette came regularly

in the early thirties of last century, the

New Hampshire Patriot and State

Gazette, like all other papers in America, was full of the great question
of slavery and how best it might be dealt with. That she read all about it

and much
that,

perhaps sufficiently attested by the family record

her father had settled down to read the family paper at night,

else besides, is

when

she would,

on

occasion, steal downstairs in her nightgown

and

inveigle

him

into letting her read the paper to him. In spite of her occasional
culty with long words, Mark seems to have suffered her gladly.

In

this

matter of education,

Mark Baker was

a typical

diffi

New Englander

of that generation. With the greater part of their own young lives spent
amidst wars and rumours of wars, in blazing new trails and clearing new
lands, the New Englanders of the Revolutionary period had little time
or opportunity for education. Education, however, was part of their
heritage. Living in a less troubled period their fathers and mothers had it

more than

they.

And

so

when more

settled times

came

again, the

Mark

Bakers and Benjamin Pierces of New England determined that whenever

possible and wherever their children were ready to accept it, they should
be given a good education. They wanted a good groundwork for all their
children, but if any one of them should show any special ability and reveal
the possibility of becoming a

"scholar",

that

was the

fulfilling

of a great

and he was afforded every opportunity.

The achievements of Franklin on the one hand and the promise of
Albert on the other were a great bond of union between the two fathers,
and Mary s quiet insistence that she must learn things
Mr, Pierce"

desire,

"like

Mark

evidently found hard to gainsay.

It was about this time that an
arrangement was

come to between the

to
which
was
families,
bring them still more closely together. To
Mary especially it meant new day dreams for her two heroes.

two

case

had come up

for decision in the

Court House at Concord

involving the townships of Bow and Loudon, a small

five miles at the other side of the State
capital from

town some four or

Bow, concerning a
32

question of pauperism. The case for Loudon was pleaded by young Frank
lin Pierce; that for Bow by Mark Baker, and Mark Baker won. There is

no record as to the rights of either party. It is possible that Loudon had

such a bad case that Bow could not have lost, no matter who had con
ducted the case; but the outcome appealed to the sporting instincts of
old General Pierce with a special keenness. He lost no time in driving
over to

Bow

and to enjoy with him the

not
it all their own
did
have
young people
way after all.
one that finds a place in many records and shows how the

to congratulate his old friend,

thought that the

The story is
two men seem

to have vied with each other in generosity, Squire Pierce

maintaining that Squire Baker was the hero, a man who, without benefit
of law learning of any kind, could go into open court and win his case
against a

man

specially equipped, as

in return dilated

up

to

with

him

upon young
and

after the trial

And

all his heart.

was

his son, Franklin. Squire

Piercers generosity, telling

"swept

him a

bow",

Baker

how he had come

and congratulated him

then, so the story goes, Squire Pierce not to be

outdone began to talk about Albert and how full of promise he thought
the lad and how they had been glad to welcome him into their home at

how he would go far, and Mark should get him into

and
how
who was a good Democrat, would be glad to
Franklin,
politics,
show him the way. In fact, after he left college, what Albert should do
Hillsborough, and

was to come over to Hillsborough and get to reading law in Franklin s

office.

And

so

it

was

virtually settled

and seems from that time

to have been

taken for granted by the family at Bow as one of the happy developments
that might be looked forward to in the future.

Whether Mary

actually overheard the conversation

which settled the

not possible to say, but it is evident

many,
from her subsequent references to the matter that the plan filled her with
deep satisfaction. Her first letters, which began to appear about this time,
question, as she did so

it is

show how eagerly if sometimes, a little self-consciously she welcomes

any and every opportunity to learn both for herself and others.

A letter she wrote at this period or a

makes
33

this clear

little later

enough. She thanks a

"Dear

to her brother Sullivan

Brother"

for

"friendly

and council" and for "lively interest in toy welfare", tells him how
she misses his help and encouragement, chides herself with the re
flection that there is "no philosophy in repining", and begs in conclusion
advice

much

that he will

But

it

"excuse

all

mistakes".

was not only absent brothers

Samuel had by

this

time gone to

Boston to learn the building business and Albert was at Dartmouth

that tempted repining. The burden of ill-health which Mary was to carry
years began even then to press hard upon her.
the
nature of this ill-health or its cause is not easy
was
What exactly
to determine. It was nothing that Doctor Nathaniel Ladd could give a

through so

many weary

name

At

best he could only observe the things and circum

the
circumstances, that seemed to make the child better
stances, especially
he found that the rough
or worse. Some of it was simple enough.
definite

to.

When

and tumble of the country school was evidently too much for her, he
advised that she be kept at home as much as possible; when he found that

Mark was

launching one of his grand crusades to rescue a soul from the

his small daughter as the objective, he could
with
burning
put his foot
down and insist that it stop. But there were other things not so clear, and

Ladd found

even Doctor

it

hard to believe that the theoretical sufferings

and far-away questions as

unconditional election could have a serious effect on the little girl s health.
or inconveniences of animals or such abstruse

And

yet

somehow they seemed

to be conjoined, to operate as cause

and

effect.

At

was no more than a low fever at times, long restless nights,

with
radiant joy and complete freedom. Later on, it took
alternating
physical shape in some form of indigestion, until at the age of about
first, it

fourteen

we

cates clearly
"I

must",

find a passage in a letter to her brother Sullivan which indi

enough that the long struggle had begun*

she writes

the phraseology

is

typical

"extend

the thought

would permit and only add my

and
I hope by
improving slowly
dieting and being

of benevolence further than selfishness

health at present is
careful to sometime regain
*
1

letters of

Mary Baker

it."*

to her brother Sullivan, Sept. 7, 1835.

Ibid,

34

IN THE

AUTUMN

of 1832,

when Mary was

in her twelfth year, her eldest

John and Nancy

Glover of Concord. It was the first wedding in the Baker family of that
generation and a great occasion. Friends came to it from far and near.
brother, Samuel, married Eliza Glover, daughter of

For several years previously, Samuel had been living in Boston, where he
was doing well as a builder and contractor, and the fact that he came back
to

Concord to claim a bride from among

a popular one.

Among

his

those present at the

own

people

made

the

wedding was the bride

match

young

brother George, just past his majority, and in the merry-making which
followed the ceremony he and Mary seem to have been thrown very
joyfully together.

George Washington Glover was a happy eager boy who loved to talk
and be talked to. He was full of fun and just the type and just the age
a

who, in spite of all the deeps of a strangely

exuberant capacity for enjoyment. Mary
almost
questioning mind, had an
Baker, too, loved to talk. Her mother in a letter written several years later,
to appeal to

little girl,

how much

in
"chatter"; and
the
and
became
the
best
girl
big boy
way
of friends. George was going back with his sister and his brother-in-law
to Boston to learn the building business, so the wedding feast at Concord

indicates rather pathetically

the

35

of such gatherings the

little

she misses her

was, for

him and Mary, a veritable hail and farewell. However, they made
when the party finally broke up, George
the laughing curly-headed Mary on his knee and swore that he

such good use of their time, that,

hoisted

in five years time to marry her.

incident was recalled afterwards when the two actually were

would be back

The

mar

to Boston, and to
ried, but for the time being George Glover went away
new adventure. And Mary went back to the farm at Bow to wrestle with

father over the question of unconditional election, to study

Murray s Grammar and the English Reader, and to acquire

and her

herself

Lindley

through her brother Albert and through her

own untrammeled

studies a

which only the years could

kaleidoscopic mass of general knowledge, to
give coherence.

The next clear glimpse we get of Maryand thereafter all is more clear
she

September 7, to be

tember, 1835
Sullivan,
ticut.

It is a Monday afternoon in Sep

exactand she is writing to her brother

a few months over fourteen.

is

who a few months previously had gone to Wethersfield, Connec

For some time

had not been good, and

his health

Bow

thought that a change from the rigours of

And Mary

climate of Wethersfield might be helpful.

the letter shows, she

and her
the

sister

was evidently

is

writing to him.

already referred to.

It is the letter

As

it

to the comparatively mild

is

alone in the house.

Martha have gone

first letter

to attend a funeral,

preserved out of the

by the same hand

in the future,

Her

father

and

and mother

-but, since

it is

thousands destined to be written

many

perhaps

it

should be quoted with

all its

it.
Writing from Bow, Maty begins
an opportunity of sending you a letter by Mr. Cutchins
without putting you to that expense which any intelligence that I could

mistakes
"As

upon

I have

communicate would

Then
for his

there

is

"friendly

ill

tepay I improve

it

with

pleasure."

the passage already quoted, wherein she thanks Sullivan

advice and

council",

tells

him how much she misses him,

and reports her own improvement in health and the hope that she would
After rambling through various common
with care "sometime regain
it".

places, she quaintly concludes

36

"Although

deed and think

did not receive the toothpick I shall take the will for the

much

of

them

for

coming from you. Write every oppor

is the second letter I ever wrote and

as this
tunity excuse all mistakes
of
wishes
the
well
your affectionate sister Mary Baker."
accept
The picture that such a letter conjures up and the story that goes with
it are both distinct. Years afterward, from her wide balcony window at

Pleasant View, Mrs.

Eddy could

look

down

Merrimac

the valley of the

towards the high lands of her childhood s home at Bow, and in her book,
wrote of the changes fifty years or
Retrospection and Introspection, she

more had made, how where once were "broad fields of bending grain
waving gracefully in the sunlight, and orchards of apples, peaches, pears,
shone richly in the mellow hues of autumn, now the lone
and wandering winds sigh low
night-bird cries, the crow caws cautiously,
then filling in the details of
And
dark
pine groves."
requiems through

and

cherries

the picture, she recalls "green pastures bright with berries, singing brook
flocks spreading themselves over
lets, beautiful wild flowers", and large
1

rich acres.

So

it

would have been on

Mary wrote

this

Monday

afternoon in September

when

to Sullivan.

Perhaps the most important part of the letter from the point of view
of subsequent events is the reference to the journey of her father and

mother to Sanbornton to look

at

a farm, for within the next

six

months

town on the Winnepesaufeee

the family were to move there, and the little

River was to see some of the most important events in

But for the

moment

the chief value of the letter

is

Mary s

the picture

early
it

life.

affords

a queerly bookish, rather wistful little girl, already all

too familiar with the handicaps against which she was to struggle through
so many years. That the letter is decidedly solemn and sententious in

of

Mary

herself,

nothing of importance, save that Mary followed the fashion

of the day, which demanded pathos in some form, at some point in a
No well brought up girl of a hundred
letter, as almost a first requisite.

parts, reveals

could have written to an absent brother at any length, without

years ago
1

Retrospection and Introspection, p, 4.

37

a reference of some kind to die uncertainties of

life,

and the wanness of

the outlook generally.

reason, moreover, to suppose that the letter does not fairly
represent Mary as she generally was. Something not accustomed was
influencing her. She had remained at home alone when the rest of the

There

is

family had gone off for the day. True, one purpose of the excursion was
not very cheerful, to attend a funeral, but, after the funeral, there was
inspected, and the new farm represented to die family
the possible culmination of a change which had evidently been
under discussion for some time. The three sons had left home. Mark had

the
at

new farm to be

Bow

prospered and his three daughters, all distinguished for their beauty, were
growing up. Bow was small, so small as to be hardly a village. Concord

was only four miles away, but four miles was a long way, especially in
winter, and it would be easier for everyone to be in a larger community
where neighbours were separated by only a few yards instead of a few
miles and a "handed tea" or a "reception" did not involve a long cross
country journey. Sanbornton had just the

facilities

necessary.

In ordinary circumstances, the prospect, one might suppose, would

have been especially exciting to a young girl of Mary s age and tempera
ment, but for some reason she was not specially interested, indeed she
evidently regarded the proposed move with such scant favour as to prefer
remaining at home to taking any active part in its consummation.

There was a reason, of course, for

this apathy,

and that reason was

one Andrew Gault,

Very little is known of Andrew Gault, save that he was the son, or as
some authorities maintain, the nephew of that same Sarah Gault, who was
Abigail Baker s friend and confidante in the weeks and months before

Mary was born.

He was six years Mary s senior and, as may be gathered

from a letter of Martha Baker

Mary

all

her

life.

And

skirts

to

Mary several years later, he had known

he was in love with her, as Mary was or

must have been just about this time that the

so, if

thought she was with him,

young man of

it

twenty was beginning to

and waving hair was growing up.

realize that the little

girl of short

38

As

to

feelings, the only testimony,

Mary s

indeed the only record of

to be found in two short poems. But they tell a

she wrote and sent to Andrew or perhaps as was

the incident at

all, is

The first
to him on parting just before the
quite commended in those days gave
left Bow. The second she sent to him from Sanbornton. Neither
family
great deal.

great poetry. In fact they are no better nor no worse than any
or fifteen in those days might have written in the circum
girl of fourteen
stances. There are the same desperate dilemmas in the matter of rhyme

of them

is

and the same fabulous

finds

hard

it

"to

solutions.

take a final

In the

leave",

of the opening verse she

and the nearest she can go to a rhyme
first line

unaccustomed grief my bosom heaves". The

to
she
had
solve
was a difficult one and the solution was not
problem
perfect, but one can think of many worse, and Andrew, it may be ven
in the third line

is

"with

tured, thought the whole thing just perfect.

*Very

breast,"

and clasped hands

But go

A vernal feeling thrills her

linger fondly*

those finer feelings riven

Which through my bosom

And with

shot

thee take this flower of

Heaven

The flower forget-me-not.

And

Andrew got his forget-me-not and his good-bye, and one day,
soon afterwards, he saw Mary drive down the hill from Bow and out of
so

For so it really was. No doubt his thoughts followed her with

as he watched the wagon disappear round the bend towards
vows
many
Concord, and equally no doubt Mary was firm in her constancy. In the
poem she sent him soon after they had settled in their new home at San
his

life.

bornton, there
thinks

it is.

heart,

we

39

part."

no doubt as to where her heart

It is in

wearied with

and

is

Bow

"studying

there, too,

with

is,

its "running brooks"

worn-out

books".

There

had she learned the sad

it

or as to where she

so restful to the soul

was she had

truth,

"We

live,

lost her

we

love,

Andrew, no doubt,

received the

poem

in those days he could have received

it.

was the only way

Mary, no doubt, meant

with tears

And

it

every word of it. But although they may have seen each other occasionally
in the years which followed, they drifted
quietly and happily apart. He
married and Mary married, and the curtain never rose again on the old
scenes.

40

Sanbomton. Bridge

*C

THEY REMEMBER MARY BAKER as a most

interesting

and beautiful child,

As a young woman she was slim, alert and grace

Of medium height, she had a well-formed figure. Her feet and hands

dainty and fragile. ...

ful.

were exquisitely fashioned. Her features were regular and refined a

delicately aquiline nose, a rather long and pointed chin, a firm mouth and
a high broad forehead. But her most striking beauty lay in her big grey
1
eyes, deep set and overhung by dark lashes."

Some

thirty years or

more ago, seeking data

for a series of articles

on Mrs. Eddy which subsequently appeared in McClure s Magazine,

Georgine Milmine, a New York newspaper woman, journeyed to New
Hampshire and succeeded in finding quite a number of people who
remembered Mary Baker as a young woman and had "heard speak" of her
as a child. The foregoing description is from the record of what she
found.

It fits in very well

with what

little

can be learned or inferred from

and other sources.

She was a beautiful child and a beautiful woman. Indeed, all the
Bakers were remarkable for their good looks. There is no early picture of

early letters

Mary,
1

"

41

as there

Mary Baker G.

is

no

Eddy":

picture at all of her mother, but

one that

is

preserved

Georgine Milmine, McClur^s Magazine, vol. xxviii, p. 235.

of her eldest sister Abigail shows a woman of statuesque beauty and grace,
while her father, as is seen from a picture taken in middle life, was tall

and

with high brow and clear piercing eyes.

Mary always seems to have had the knack of dressing well. In prac
tically every account that has been given of her this fact is recorded,
erect,

together with some comment expressing wonder as to how, in an out of

the way place like Bow or even in Sanbornton, she could have kept abreast
as she did with the fashions of the day.

forty years ago,

how Mary
town the

it

Baker,

seems

Mark

still

to have

Baker

"French Twist",

In Sanbornton some

been a matter of

thirty or

lively recollection

youngest girl, introduced to the little

evidently a form of hairdressing which, in
s

those days, was the last word.

Sanbornton, or more correctly, Sanbornton Bridge the Tilton of

today was in the middle decades of last century a thriving little mill
town with woollen mills, grist mills and cotton mills straggling up and

down

Winnepesaukee River. The first settler was one Nathaniel

Tilton, who came there in 1768, and, a hundred years later, when the
town was incorporated, its name was changed to Tilton in his honour.
the

At

the time the Bakers arrived, the Tiltons, descendants of the

original
Nathaniel, were the most substantial people in town. Alexander Hamilton

Tilton was a prosperous mill-owner. The "Tilton Tweed" which he had

invented was known everywhere and brought in to him a
large and

The

two years of the Bakers arrival

Alexander Tilton married Abigail Baker, Mary s eldest sister, would
seem to show that from the first the two families were thrown much
of social inter
together and that the Baker girls would have, in the
increasing revenue.

fact that within

way

course, all that

Sanbornton had to

offer.

And Sanbornton apparently could do very well. It was no more than

a small town but, after Bow, it must have seemed to
Mary and her sisters
a veritable whirl of social

For Sanbornton did not

depend only upon
itself. All round
about, wherever there was a stream with a good volume
of water and a suitable fall, a dam had been laid and a mill had been
built

and a

had sprung up, and Sanbornton

Bridge
Sanbornton Square or Franklin Falls or Tin Corner or

little

visited friends in

life.

settlement

42

the Chapel

and

vice versa.

The

"Bridge",

as

it

was generally

called,

had

a fine wide street lined with shade trees and flanked by white houses with
green shutters. It had a large church with a typical Bullfinch Steeple,

away above the town on Academy Hill, was Sanbornton Academy

whose hundred or more students, boys and girls, formed a social centre
while,

in

itself.

To Mary it meant a new world. There is, it is true, the backward

glance to Bow and Andrew already noted, but it is not long before Mary
writing to Sullivan of the various parties and weddings and excursions
and what not, in which she and her sisters are taking part, and of the

is

people she is meeting and the new friends she is making. In

she expresses a natural and wholesome attitude in such typical tid-bits

many new
all,

as this:
"...

Boston,

you an abridged sketch of a gentleman, recently from

reading medicine with a doctor in this town, a perfect

I will give

now

complet gentleman, I met him a number of times at parties last winter.

to go to the Shakers with him but my superiors thought

He invited me
it

would be a profanation of the Sabbath, and

And

so

Then

it

I accordingly did not

go."

goes.

the tremendous event of Abigail s wedding. It was to

a
real June wedding with all the friends of both families
affair,
gathered together. But, as was only proper one hundred years ago, Mary,
in writing about it to her brother Sullivan, had to express some due
there

is

be a great

feeling of regret,
"She

as

if

not actual sorrow, at the approaching separation.

will be lost to us irrevocably, that

is certain"

she writes.

And then,

reluctant to surrender the luxury too quickly, she adds

changed is one short year. Dear brother can you realize it with
if

"How

me?

If

so take a retrospect view of home, see the remaining family placed round
the blazing ingle scarcely able to form a semicircle from the loss of its
3

However, it is not long before she is herself again, quoting

Burns and begging Sullivan to come and see them before long,
she promises not to be as sleepy as she and Abi were the last time.
numbers."

Mary

Ibid.

43

to Sullivan, April 17, 1837.

from Albert begin to appear. He is in practice at

with Franklin Pierce more and more preoccupied
and,
Hillsborough,
with politics, he is very busy, too busy in fact, for it is clear from his

And now

letters

he has already embarked upon that reckless spending of his

which
energies
brought an untimely end to a more than ordinarily
letters that

promising career some four years

later.

The

relationships which existed between Mary and Albert, and Mary

and Sullivan present an interesting contrast. Sullivan was her gossip.
She wrote to him about the little day to day happenings and knew he
would be interested. But Albert was evidently reserved for more serious
questions.

Thus on one occasion

the two sisters, Abigail

and Mary, had

evidently been the objects of some kind of village talk and Abigail had
written to Albert about it, and then, before he could
reply, had written

again to say that the matter had been cleared up. And so Albert writes
to Mary to tell her how
glad he is. "You cannot be too careful or too
sensitive,"

he adds,

fear so long as
1

way

"to

any breath of slander; though you need never

you are innocent* The things always work

their

own

clear."

sound advice, but the

It is

throws on Albert

letter is
diiefly interesting for die light it

outlook at that time* In the spring of 1837, Sanbornton Bridge had been the scene of one of those
unbelievably vigorous
revivalist missions which were wont
periodically to descend on a New
s

England town and sweep

tioned

it

letter to
"Abi

all

before them. Abigail had

evidently men
and so Albert comments on it in this

in her last letter to Albert

Mary.
informs

me",

he writes,

meeting at Sanbornton,

"that

there has lately been a

protracted

and that you cherished a hope, that you had

been brought to embrace the doctrines of that

religion, the strange
influences of which have thus far
puzzled philosophy to solve," Albert
says he knows Mary will be anxious about how this information will
affect him, but
says there is no reason for her timidity as he does not
wish to discountenance
woman can hardly
religion. For that matter,
live without
he adds naively, and then he strikes a
timely warning:
"a

it,"

Albert to Mary,

March

27, 1837.

44

"One

cism.

thing,

They

do not allow

are as distant

yourself to be suspected of bigotry or fanati

religion, as from true philosophy

from true

its

very antipodes."
In order to appreciate the full significance of such a statement it is
necessary to understand in a measure the attitude at that time of the

New

on this question of "con

version".
According to his view, a community was divided into three
the
classes;
definitely converted, the hopefully inclined, and the finally
orthodox

The

lost.

As
sisters

England

evangelical religionist

were beyond the pale.

already noted, when Mary was twelve, none of her brothers and
finally lost

had made any

definite

"profession",

and

it is

evident from this

from doing so and that Mary is still

holding out, although wavering. The letter clearly shows that the brother
and sister must have talked the matter over many times, and a just
letter that

Albert

is still

very far

inference seems to be that, while

Mary

steadfastly remained

hopefully inclined, Albert had gone over to the finally lost.

desire, however, that Mary should follow him, and probably

now than he was

should feel

in his

free, if she

Dartmouth days,

is

among

the

He had no
less positive

even anxious that

Mary

should so desire, to cross over the border into the

fold of the definitely converted. His only hope is that she retain that
freedom from bigotry and fanaticism which the two had evidently agreed
was the only fitting attitude on religious questions.

At Dartmouth, Albert had been much interested in Mental and Moral

Philosophy. As has been seen, he was an excellent scholar, a member of
the Phi Beta Kappa, then as now a very definite gauge of scholarship.

He

was

also a

Fraternity, a

member and

literary

at one time vice-president of the

and debating

society,

United

whose discussions on such

the evil of underrating our abilities greater than that of

overrating them?" and "Have the people the right to instruct their
attracted wide attention. It is interesting to note that,
representatives?"

subjects as

"Is

the affirmative side in the first of the specific

quite typically, Albert took
the
mentioned
and
negative in the latter. In discussing such
subjects

questions he was evidently in his element.

*Ibi

45

As

his

opponent for Congress, the Hon. Isaac Hill wrote of him just
1841 "He was fond of investigating abstruse and

after his death in

and he never forsook them

metaphysical principles,
their every nook and corner however hidden and

Thus

in Albert

is

seen

to

compel his sister Mary

could not accept orthodox

until he

had explored

remote."

the elements which, years afterwards, were

into new fields in the realms of religion.

all

He

faith;

but he was convinced that, without that

something which religion professed to give, man was

stranger in a
so
he
had
the
will
to
and
the
and
explore
strange land",
courage to
"a

keep on.

Meanwhile, he writes to reassure Mary. If there was any further

correspondence on the matter between the two during die year which
followed, it has not been preserved. Anyway, in the summer of 1838,
took the step she had so long delayed. In that year, under date
July 26, was inscribed in the Clerk s Book of Sanbornton Congregational

Mary

Church,

this notice

into this church, Stephen Grant, Esq., John Cilly and his
Hannah, Mrs. Susan French, wife of William French, Miss Mary
A, M. Baker, by profession, the two former receiving the ordinance of
baptism. Greenaugh McQuestion, Scribe,"
Mary s letters during this period show that she was passing through
a period of stress and doubt and that continued ill-health was
beginning
"Received

wife

to raise questions in her mind, the answer to which was still

thirty years
or more away. It is, however, almost
to
find
in
one of her
startling
letters
a letter to Sullivan in the spring of 1837 the
:
following

passage
has been very ill since our return from Concord* I should
think her in a confirmed consumption if I would admit: the idea, but it
"Martha

may not be so, at least I hope

The italics are Mary s and,
to appear

some

not*"

in view of the fact that this

thought

thirty or forty years later as

attitude in the practice of Christian Science, the statement

and

significant

However,

it

in those days.

enough.
was not

all sickness

She was

living the

was

a fundamental mental
is

interesting

or religious questionings with

Mary
of a normal girl of her age and

life

46

in the early summer of 1838, her health evidently much im

attended Holmes Academy at Plymouth and set about the
she
proved,
work of learning, with that eager vigour which characterized her all too
time,

and

few opportunities for regular study. Mary was now seventeen and for
a brief time was able to be a typical school girl of that age. She made
wholeheartedly, and
although, as was then only proper, it was always "Miss Burnham" or
Miss Howard or Miss Shedd or Miss Sutherland in her letters, such
friends easily, inspired

"devotion",

and returned

it

had no concord with the normal abandon of her attach

was at Holmes Academy that she met Augusta Holmes,

studied restraint

ments.

It

daughter of Nathaniel Holmes, a prominent mill owner of Sanbornton.

girls were attracted to each other from the first, and the corre

The two

spondence which passed between them after Augusta left Sanbornton and
went to live with her family at Haverhill is refreshing for the way it runs
true to form.

At Sanbornton the two were

devoted to each other with a

passion which only school girls of seventeen or eighteen can compass.

is
Augusta s "Little Spouse" and Augusta is Mary s "Husband",
is their
and a younger girl who appears only as "Betsy
daughter.
It lasted as do all such "passions" through a summer day, and when
Augusta returned to Haverhill and a certain "Enoch" began to weave

Mary

R."

his disturbing

way

in

and out of her

letters,

Mary,

after a

few doleful

expressions of regret, resigns herself plaintively to the inevitable

relationship moves easily on to more solid ground/

and the

And

the ground was solid enough. There is the usual gossip in the
about parties and people, clothes and what not, but such questions
as literature and religion occupy the greater part of them. Mary and

letters

when they are reading everything in sight and it

ask
excited questions back and forth in a way sug
They
gestive of nothing so much as a slow motion picture of a telephone con
versation if such a thing can be conceived. Had Mary read Byron s
Augusta
is

are at the age

a new world.

Prisoner of Chillon? No, but she had read Corsair and Winifred, and
did Augusta ever see Godey*s Lady s Book? And did she possess a copy
of Surwalt s grammar, and, if so, would she lend it to her, as she heard
*

Mary Baker

47

to

Augusta Holmes, Jan.

6, 1839.

that

was

it

easier than Levizac

s,

and

is

she well, and did she get

home

safely?

reading about this time was wide enough in its scope. In the
scrapbook of her poems which is still preserved are many pages of manu
script devoted to extracts from Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Scott,

Mary s

Mrs. Hemans, Byron, and so on. Of these, Milton seems to have been
her first and most lasting favourite. Literally pages are devoted to tran
scribing portions of Paradise Lost The main theme of it all is, of course,
the joys of solitude, the pathetic beauty of nature

human
to

and the uncertainty of

life,

Mary, however, was gaining an education in another way, by listening

and talking with other people. All her life she had an extraordinary

faculty for doing just this, for hurdling the elements of a

new

subject

and using with assurance information acquired perhaps only a few

mo

ments before. In early

and

life, it is

safe to say, she uniformly thought

talked beyond her years, and

she sometimes got out of her depth, her
very daring had an evocative effect on her auditors.
Thus one of her "teachers" about this time was the Reverend Enoch
if

Corser of Tilton Church, It was Doctor Corser

who

received her into

church membership, and

many years afterwards, his son Bartlett recalled

the long religious discussions his father had had with Mary Baker, and
how much the old Calvinist had admired her*
"Bright,

as they

good, and pure, aye

walked back from a

brilliant,"

visit to

he declared to Bartlett one day,

the Baker home.

"I

never before had

a pupil with such depth and independence of thought. She has some great
future, mark that. She is an intellectual and spiritual genius."

To
Eddy

what extent
s

Bartlett Corser s
it is

memory was

by Mrs,
But there is evi

irradiated

impossible to say.

subsequent attainments,
dence enough that Mary was thinking for herself, especially in the realm
of religion. She passed through periods when she sought to whip herself
into orthodoxy, when die orthodox idea of God as the
great Afflictor to
the ends of good, seemed the only possible view of the matter, and on one
occasion we find her begging Augusta to pray for her, declaring in true
iwa.

48

Jonathan Edwards style that she could not but be amazed at

forbearance towards her.

God s

Indeed, she was getting religion from all sides now, and this, combined
with increasing ill-health and the tendency of the period to take a pseudolife in
general, plunged her often into the depdis.
pathetic view of

She was really ill at times. The rigours of winter, which modern inven
done so much to modify, pressed hardly upon her, and her letters

tion has

and yet more colds, taken for granted as an inevitable

of
the frost and snow of the dark days of the year in New
accompaniment
Hampshire. Albert is often sorely anxious about it. In one letter home
are full of colds

about this time, he speaks of

again in danger.
pray she will be more

health
"I

how saddened he

is

to hear that

Mary s

is

herself.

Don t

he adds,

breathe these awful frosts. It

health of the stoutest. I

covered.

careful,"

is

"I

fear she has exposed

to break up the

enough
have suffered from them of

late,

but

am

re

Albert, in fact, at times felt the strain very much. He had never spared
himself and his election to the State legislature in 1839 threw upon him

a load of work which, in addition to his practice as a lawyer, was at times

more than he could carry. He was never very robust. In a letter to his
brother George while he was reading law in Boston, under date of April
28, 1837, he tells him how he had just left hospital a day or two previ
ously, and that he had "done nothing since the first of March". Several
times in his letters occurs the phrase,
my health continues," and men
tion is made, as in the quotation above, of sickness from which he has
"if

recovered.

he took a prominent part in the

was chairman of the select committee ap
pointed to deal with the ever-present question of slavery and was undeviating in his Democratic devotion to States Rights. Sympathetic as he
After his election to the

business of the House.

legislature,

He

undoubtedly was towards the sentiments which advocated Abolition, he

favoured the resolutions which rebuked abolitionist agitation, and recom

mended
any
49

that Congress should not interfere with the slave trade between

states that desired this trade to continue.

He

demand as a speaker and lecturer, and

went to Washington as Senator, the care
of his practice, both at Hillsborough and Concord, devolved upon Albert.
He is clearly being overworked, and it is not surprising to find him writing
was, moreover,

when his friend Franklin

in a letter to

Mary

about

great
Pierce

this time,

"I

set

out for Boston

this

morning.

am almost worn out. I have scarcely slept two hours for the last two

days."

Like Mary, however, he has periods when his health is "unusually

and then he forges ahead with redoubled energy. In the three years
good",

he was in the legislature he piloted several important reforms through to

the State statute book. Among these were the abolition of imprisonment
for debt, the revision of the election laws, the protection of graves

molestation, the powers to be conferred

roads, whether a

town

on

should be allowed to

from

corporations including rail

buy stock in a railroad, the

holding of courts at convenient times, and so on.

And all the time, Senator Pierce from Washington was writing to his
young partner not only about laws but about politics, and it began to be

Albert Baker had his feet definitely set on the road to Congress.
ought to have been a happy and inspiring period for both Albert and

clear that
It

Mary, and so to a

certain extent

it

was. Albert

"loved

to

work",

as he

himself often put it, and as long as he could work even under difficulties
his natural buoyancy of spirit asserted itself, In his student days he had
written

home

classics

"for

would

the

round sum

sell his shirt,

"By

the

how

that he had sold his college

of ten dollars", and when that was gone he

to his brother Sullivan

Gods,"

he added,

"I

am

as rich as a prince.

What

a glorious thing, this idea of borrowing money and dying in

1
solvent," There is a
laugh, of course, in every line of it, and there were
times
later
on
Albert could get back to where he was then,
when
many

but the

In

last

few years of

his life

this respect the brother

on each
dened"

other.

many

They

and

were overshadowed by
sister

ill-health.

undoubtedly reacted unfavourably

worried over each other

times by the news from home,

s health.

and

His

joy

his letters

is

"sad

show him

turning more and more "for help and consolation" to religion. He never
seems to have reached the standpoint of the definitely converted, but he
*

Albert Baker to Sullivan, 1838.

50

had quite evidently ceased

among

the finally lost.

to find

Thus

any

numbering himself
Mary during one of her periods
enjoying good health, but even

satisfaction in

in a letter to

of sickness, he says he hopes his sister is

if not, she should maintain an attitude of calmness and resignation, since
adds that he sees the hand of God in events
providence is inscrutable.

He

good and evil. "God rules, let the earth submit."

That was in 1840. The following year he was nominated to Congress
in a district where election was certain, but he died some two weeks before
election day,

on October

His death was a

more than

to

21, 1841.

cruel shock to his family

Mary, One rather pitiful little

and

friends, but to

poem

no one

in which she expects

soon to follow her brother, and wonders whether her friends will miss her
or forget her, is the only reference to her sorrow that has been preserved.

Albert Baker to Mary,

51

Wasninffton

ijr

lover

GEORGE WASHINGTON GLOVER, the boy of twenty-one, who had companied so well with the little curly-headed Mary at Samuel Baker s wed
ding,

was curiously enough true

of

He did return in five

any rate, to a part

But
he
had
whether
the courage to ask
years.
the radiant young person on the edge of seventeen, whom he found in
place of his little playmate of eleven, to marry him and was refused, or
whether he did not ask her, because the whole incident had been long
it.

since forgotten, as seems

But

it

was

most

to his promise or, at

likely, it is

just five years after

Samuel

not possible to

say.

in 1832, that

George
wedding,
was again a guest in the Baker household. The occasion was Abigail s
wedding to Alexander Hamilton Tilton, and George came up with Sam
uel from Boston to attend the ceremony, and join in the great family
reunion which marked die occasion.

There

no record of

meeting with Mary at this time, or what they

thought of each other, and when he said good-bye to her after the great
event was over and the guests were departing, it was to
go further afield
is

his

than ever* After Samuel

wedding he was leaving Concord

now he was to leave Boston for Charleston, South Carolina.
s

for Boston;

52

There

is

very

little

in the

of direct record of George Glover, but

way

a clear enough picture of him more clear than is usually the case can
be had from what there is. The one portrait of him which is preserved
well groomed in the style of the day,
man of about
shows a

young

thirty,

with the inevitable wealth of wavy dark hair, a fine broad brow, long
but not overly determined jaw. It is a portrait
straight nose, and forceful

which seems to

from

and

few

his

fit

what may be gathered of

in very well with

letters, or inferred from what he did.

enterprising, in

an age when vigour and

enterprise were so essential

the fact that he was ready at twen

to success,

is
clearly shown, if only by
his native Concord for
to
leave
ty-one

was eager

not content with that,

into the almost alien land
It

is,

his character

That he was vigorous

later

to a

however, in his letters, as

New

is

One

Boston to seek

on

his fortune,

and,

to adventure further afield

still,

Englander

of South Carolina.

so often the case, that George Glover

from Concord, while evidently

on a flying visit home from Charleston, is specially interesting. It is ad
dressed to Samuel Baker in Boston. Samuel was then a widower, his wife,

reveals himself

most

clearly.

written

George s sister, having died some years previously. Dated Concord, April
20, 1841, the letter runs along gaily, in a sort of pseudo-sophistication,

with the grown-up salutation, "Friend Baker," and a postscript telltale of

a young man just finding himself: "Sir, will you visit the South for a
wife

if

you do I

He

will present

you with a Lady, plantation and ninety

in the height of prosperity as a contractor,

thirteen houses. Jestingly, he
having just undertaken the construction of
will give him a negro
if Abi will name her first son for him,
that
says
to "all young
his
extends
servant worth a thousand."
"respects"
negroes."

states

he

is

"I

He

Lady s now in the market," and asks to be remembered

and the rest of the family, Friend Baker."

"to

your

sisters

pervaded by that badinage

and that atmosphere of hail-fellow-well-met, which, from all that can be
learned of him, was the essential George Glover. He loved to talk and
meet new people. He was a born promoter in the best sense of the word,
one of those men who, starting from nothing, would inevitably have made
It is

,53

a cheery, swaggering kind of

letter,

his fortune in

and buy and

a big way

if

he had had time.

sell, and, at each turn,

add a

He

little

would build and borrow

mote to his actual capital

He probably always kept at the right side of a forced liquidation, but, no

doubt, the margin of safety was often small, and, in order to steer such
a business to success, his own personal attention was requisite all the time.

Records in Charleston show that the land on which the thirteen dwell
ing houses mentioned in this letter were erected was actually conveyed
to him. The probabilities would seem to be that the purchase was financed

something else and that the thirteen dwelling houses, when

completed, were in turn sold and the proceeds of the sale immediately

by the

sale of

reinvested in the purchase of materials to build the cathedral at Haiti

which was his great unfinished enterprise at die time of

Only thus can the fact be accounted for that the equity in

had been met, was comparatively small

However, his greatest assets were his vigour and

all

his

early death.

his estate,

when

and

these

claims

are clearly

enough

in evidence in his letter.

He

enterprise,

is

"at

the heighth of

prosperity,"

As to Mary, the nearest the letter gets to any mention of her is to ask
Samuel to convey his, George s, respects to his sisters. And yet in a
curious way, it does shed some light on the course of his
courtship, if so
it

can be called.

Among

among Mrs. Eddy

the few papers relating to Glover preserved

a "reading" of George s character
a

s effects, is

by

phrenologist of Charleston named William P. Heberd, in the course of

which he is described as "naturally cheerful and fond of enterprise, yet

too cautious to venture

Below

much

this description, in

proof thereof Sept. 5

himself, without he

Mrs. Eddy

is

sure of

success."

handwriting, are the words

"in

184L"

The presumption seems

excusable that George did actually spend the

in
his letter he was hoping to do, in the North, with his,
summer, as
people at Concord, or even, for a time, at Sanbornton, that the courtship

two moved slowly forward, as courtships were wont to do in those

New England, and that when the time came early in September
for George to return for the winter to Charleston, he
proposed and was
of the

days in

54

Mary was willing to risk an immediate marriage, but that

a
characteristic final caution, wanted to wait until his po
with
George,

accepted; that

was more

sition

Be

may, he did return to Charleston with no more than a

that, and a few weeks later, Albert Baker s death had over

that as

promise,

if

shadowed

secure.

it

all else

in

Mary s

mind.

It was a bitter blow. But the girl is just twenty and, sickness and be
reavement notwithstanding, the joy of living and a vital interest in a
thousand things struggle eternally out into the open. Everyday life at

Sanbornton
ried,

is

quickly resumed.

Her

friend,

Augusta Holmes, now mar

not to the disturbing Enoch but to one Samuel Swasey, a rising

attorney in Haverhill, New Hampshire, destined one day to become

Speaker of the House of Representatives, is Mary s never-failing resort.
She writes to her about everything, moving easily if somewhat discon
certingly at times

from the most earnest consideration of

religion

and

kindred topics to the latest marriages and the latest engagements and the
latest possibilities among their mutual friends at Sanbornton.

In a typical school-girlish

letter,

she rambles

on about Miss

L.

Howard

attending a singing school and a dancing school, about Miss Shedd

being engaged, about Caroline Dean getting letters from George Merrill,

about Miss Delano hurrying preparations for an early marriage. Of

these events she admits she does not know first hand, and then, rather
tardily, she concludes that if "everyone would be cautious in reporting
flying stories, a great deal less of falsehood

would be

reported."

bandy names back and forth, as

girls have always done. There is a Mr. Noyes who has called on Mary,
but "only to be polite", and a Mr. L. who is "incoherent about Diana".
Then,

two

girls

Augusta to say "something nice" for her to "Mr. Dickey",

more than willing to do what she can towards "making cold hearted

Mary
is

in other letters, the

man

asks

raise his

and

standard of female excellence

still

higher.

But",

she adds

be the true explanation of George s

perhaps may
y
to
to my being married, I
Charleston
t
return empty handed
after all

this

"as

<j^on

begin to think
55

much

of that decisive step, neither

do

I intend to be

mar-

tied at present. I

while

am

sure I feel as though I should like

my liberty a little

longer."

Long

courtships were very

much

the rule in

New

England, one hun

dred years ago. The relationship of an engaged couple always had about
it an air of "limited
It was a transitional stage, of course,
permanence".
but one to be traversed slowly and

amenities explored. There is

George were engaged, but that there was
all its

nothing to show that Mary and

some kind of understanding between them and had been for several years
seems most likely. Their actual marriage, when George returned to
Charleston in the

fall

of 1841, was

still

more than two

years away.
sometimes
Mary
heightens, the
often
of
depression
deepens. Keenly appreciative
beauty wherever she
might find it, she is carried up into the seventh heaven by a trip she made

In those two years,

if

the joy of

s life

with her brother Sullivan through the White Mountains in the summer
of 1842*
little journal she
kept shows how much she revelled in it all

"The

then a

hue of

my

feelings are painted

on

all

objects,"

she writes; and

showing how

inexorably the cloud of ilUiealth over

shadowed her outlook, she adds, "O if I felt well, the n might I be happy,"
little later,

She found no little comfort and joy in writing poetry, and her poems
found a place in the local newspapers and magazines to an increasing
extent.

She even got

as far as

popular magazines of the day.

afterwards, Mrs,

was a

Eddy was

verse-maker,"

and

Godcy s Lady s

None

of

it is

Book,,

one of the most

great poetry.

to write of herself,

"From

my

Many

years

childhood I

this exactly describes these earlier efforts.

Never

now and again appear a line of no little

poems
beauty and power, shadowing forth that vigour of expression which was
to appear so
emphatically later on in her prose.
theless, in these

will every

Then there is another picture of Mary about this time which has its
own charm. It is supplied by a certain Martha Philbrick, who, as a little
girl at

Sanbornton, was taught by

Mary in Sunday School Writing

Martha
many years afterwards,
Philbrick, then Mrs. Weeks, says "Then
we did not have a^question book but I learned a few verses from the
Bible, and after repeating them to her, she would explain them to me.
:

56

She was very pretty to look at; her cheeks were red, her
curls, she had beautiful eyes. She wore a crepe moire silk.
was white straw and had a pink rose
just

hair
.

was brown

Her bonnet

in each side, with her curls she

was

lovely."

be sure, did George Glover find her when at last he felt

himself sure enough, and came back to Sanbornton to claim her for his
So, one

may

wife.

great occasion. Time had wrought many

was married. Old General Pierce was dead and

Mary s wedding was a

changes since Samuel

Grandmother Baker long

ory.

since,

and Albert s death was

The Pierce home at Hilisborough, so long the scene

still

a sad

mem

of joyous goings

and comings, was closed, and Franklin Pierce, supposedly retired from
public life, had removed to Concord, opened spacious offices almost op
them and
posite the Court House they are still there much as he used
was devoting himself to building up his practice as a circuit lawyer. Mark
Baker, grown older, but still erect and emphatic, more militantly religious
than ever, has prospered greatly. Already he is contemplating selling the
farm outside the Bridge and acquiring one of the most favoured homes
on the main street. Martha has been married to Luther Pillsbury of

Concord a year or more, and Abigail, now a mother,

is

climbing with her

husband Hamilton Tilton to new heights of importance. Hamilton is

becoming a wealthy man, and Abigail, with that remarkable executive
which she was

put to such good purpose, is helping him.

was
a great occasion. There were, of course,
Mary wedding
the usual tears, but in all cases, except perhaps one, they were concessions
ability

And

to the

so

later to

demands of the

times.

The

exception was the

first

Abigail,

Mary s

life, Mary had meant very much to her, but it was not
Mary married and left home that the full extent of Abigail s

mother. All her

until after

devotion

is

revealed.

when the two had

Your
is
to me than
dearer
months,
memory
me
of
Do
reminds
remember
our
you.
you
twilight
gold. Everything
me
It
time
for
for
there
I
feel like meeting with
is a
precious
meeting?
you
"Dear Child,"

she writes to her youngest daughter

been separated about

six

and sometimes
57

I fear I

worship

Mary

instead of the great

Jehovah."

Such a message is poignant and eloquent enough, and throws a vivid

of the young girl who could inspire
light on the character and personality
a
woman as poised and possessed as was
such devotion in the heart of
Abigail Baker. In an earlier letter full of happy gossip, Abigail presents
a picture of the Baker household about this time and especially of Mary

which outshines in value many pages of description.

"And

your
Is

now

fireside

she writes,

Mary,"

with dear

She answers

Mary muse on

their

will visit

you

in

your

own room,

at

George."

Mary happy? Are

pleasant?

"I

Are her surroundings

dear mother, perfectly," Does

her anticipations fulfilled?

for

Mary,

"Yes,

doings back home during the cold of the winter?

But things are as always. Martha is sewing, Mahala

reading. But they miss Mary s cheerful presence.

is

braiding, father

sits

look out at the win

and
George
Mary coming over the
"I

dow and

say

how

I wish I could see

hill."

The Mary
at last.

In

that emerges as the result of

spite of her sickness

it all is

perhaps clear enough

and her day by day

questionings, cheerful

helpful, one who uniformly made the best of things and had that
in her which made her presence at twilight, for her mother
a benediction.
It was deep winter, two weeks before Christmas that
they were married,

and

with snow covering the mountains and deepening in the

valleys. The
1
came
in
and
on
foot
from
far and near. Dr.
company
pungs
sleighs and

Enoch Corser, Mary s special friend and teacher, performed the cere
mony, and when it was over and the last good-byes said, George and Mary
bundled into a sleigh and took the road along the Winnepesaukee River
towards Concord, where the first break in the long
journey to far-off
Charleston was made.

Next morning, Mary drove round with her young husband for a last
They drove over to Bow and up to the old farm
stead, past the country school and down the hill to Pembroke, and then,
later on in the day, took the
stage to Boston. From Boston, a few
look at her old haunts.

days

later,

As
1

they sailed for Charleston.

they were leaving Sanbornton, Abigail Baker handed George a

large sleigh to

accommodate

number of people.

58

package. It was carefully sealed and marked with the injunction

was not to be opened until the two were well on their journey.
They had a rough passage, more than usually rough, and Mary was

little

that

it

they sailed south, the storm abated, and so it was that

the
package together. There was no letter inside, only a
they opened
a
little book,
had
copy of Lydia Sigourney s poems, one of which

very

sick, but, as

Abigail

in Lydia s best style. The Mrs. Hemans of America, as

Lydia Sigourney has been well called, has no counterpart today. She
belonged to an age that is past, but it is not difficult to believe that her

marked. It

is

poem conveyed

to

George

all

that Abigail

wanted

to tell

him out of the

fullness of her heart.

A mother yields her gem to thee

On the
She

true breast to sparkle rare,

places

The

"neath

thy household

tree"

idol of her fondest care;

And by trust to be forgiven.

When judgement wakes in

terror

mid

By
thy treasured hopes of Heaven
Deal gently with my darling child.
all

So
scure,

runs one of several verses. If the exact

meaning
its

message gains dignity and pathos

as

is

sometimes ob

coming from Abigail to

George.

And

so, in

due time, the

the South rose

up

all

spire of St. Michael s in the Queen City of

white and glistening out of the blue sea, and before

long the packet was moored to the wharf at Charleston.

59

CHARLESTON, LIKE
into three periods.

MANY

"From

other cities in the South, divides

the earliest

from the end of that war to the

War

War

times"

its

history

to the Revolutionary

War;

of 1812; and from the end of the

of 1812 to the outbreak of the great

many decades, there is no story.

civil conflict

in 1861. After

that r for

In the Forties of

last century,

Charleston had reached the peak of

its

and most brilliant period. The South was still the senior partner in
the great federation, for although the North was beginning to feel its
growing industrial power and was ready to assert it, the real Southerner

third

in the real

South never believed for a moment that such assertion would

amount to anything.
Charleston was the crown jewel of the South. All through her
long
history of nearly three hundred years she seems to have had a unique
ever

facility for surprising

her

visitors. "Behold

the half was not told

me,"

is

common summing up

of the matter even today.

Beautiful for situation on a narrow strip of land between the
Ashley
and the Cooper rivers really arms of the sea the town, like
York,

New

60

runs south and north, a vivid picture at all times, especially in the sun
colour. Blue and green and dazzling white, with a
light, of primitive
of
endless
nearer view
shipping stretching up to the skyline;

up the Ashley river from Boston in the early

had been much impressed with the beauty of the town as it was
many respects mag
approached from the sea, declaring that it was
Josiah Quincy, sailing

Thirties

"in

nificent".

Later on, of the town

itself,

he declared that in

commerce and shipping, "and indeed in everything,

I ever saw or expect to see in America *.

it

its

buildings,

far surpasses all

In the Eighteen

Forties, ships

came to Charleston from the ends of

the earth, but mostly from the West Indies, and bananas, cocoanuts,
the
coffee bags, cotton bales and bags of rice, especially bags of rice

were everywhere. And in

the
and
the
weft
of the harlequin pattern,
through
warp
the slave, not at all the despairing, downtrodden person the word con

staple product of the immediate hinterland

and out of
is

jures up.

it all,

"The

about this time,

negroes,"

declared an

"notwithstanding their

amazed

traveller

from the North

degraded condition, looked bright

and happy."
In the matter of slaves, as in almost everything else, the Charleston of
the Eighteen Forties was at its best. Abolitionism, as urged in Boston,
reached the Carolinas as a disturbing echo, but it is doubtful if the sound
ever reached the stable or the kitchen or the field with any very
telling effect. "The institution of the South" was working with ever

of

it

greater smoothness. Slaves were well cared for and, especially with the

wealthy planters or merchants, each generation had found the family

bond connecting master and servant stronger and less galling. The slaves,
particularly the house servants, the

grooms and the

inevitable jockeys,

took a tremendous pride in their "famblies", while as to the "famblies",

servants next to my children" was the creed of the master and mis
"my
tress;

anything

less

would have been impossible.

was a fascinating community, the like of which had never appeared

before, or since. Unlike New England, which was largely colonized by
It

yeomen, the Carolinas drew

61

their first settlers

from the upper

classes.

The Lords

who

Proprietors,

empire from Charles

the historian; the

obtained their amazing charter to a

II,
among
Duke of Albemarle, who as

back the kingCharles II

from

new

numbers Lord Clarendon,

General Monk had brought

their

reckoned

exile

"to

enjoy his

own

again";

Sir

afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury;

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley
Lord Craven, Lord Berkeley, Sir George Carteret, Sir John Colleton and
Sir William Berkeley, all cavaliers of the most worthy standing; and
Charles, with,

warding their

more

it is

to be imagined,

services.

especially

no

little relief,

took

this

way

of re

He

moved

was, moreover, as he declares in his patent,

to do so by reason of the fact that the Lords

a laudable
Proprietors "were incited by
the Christian religion".

and pious design

of propagating

By their charter from the king, which granted them

now comprised in North and South Carolina and Georgia,
all

the territory

with an

un

the South Seas", whatever that might

limited western expansion
but per
mean, they were enjoined to establish the Church of England
but
make
conscience.
of
laws,
to
mitted
only
They might
grant liberty
with the consent of the "greater part" of the people a most unusual
and they were required to establish a nobility
provision in those days
but not to give its members English titles. The new territory and its
"to

remain
people were forever to

"of

His Majesty

s allegiance".

of a nobility was what gave the

provision as to the founding
Carolinas, and indeed the old South generally, that distinctive quality

The

which at every turn in

its

history has

marked

it

off abruptly

from the

democratic North. For although the new nobility was little

more than plutocracy depending upon the amount of land owned by a
man, the titles passed by descent as well as by purchase and gave to the

foundationally

holder a standing distinctly above his fellows. The owner of twelve thou
sand acres was a baron; of twenty-four thousand acres, a cassique; and
thousand acres, a landgrave. For some reason, while no one
of
forty-eight

was ever

called

"baron"

or

"cassique",

the

title

Landgrave survived, and

Smith are among the outstanding

Landgrave Morton and Landgrave
It
Charleston
in
might be difficult to define the exact
history.
figures
62

status of this untitled class of landed gentry, but

it

was perfectly well

understood and accepted during the colonial period, survived the Revolu
tion curiously enough with even added distinction, and was perhaps the

most

influential element in Charleston society

The rule

of this

little

oligarchy of

rice

down to

the Civil

and cotton planters,

War.

in the

Eigh

teen Forties, was undisputed. That was their unquestioned privilege. The
large trade of the town was left almost entirely to foreigners. Englishmen

and Scotsmen especially came there, engaged in trade and accumulated

great wealth, and the landed gentry were content that it should be so, so
long as they and their traditions represented Charleston before the world.
The picture presented was an extraordinarily gracious one, at least on
the surface. The planters ruled well and generously. They were men of
culture and refinement. Most of them had been educated in England.
They were travellers, readers, and often scholars, and they had a standard
of

"honour"

expectancy.

so high as to keep the plain man in a state of breathless

man s word must be better than his bond because it had

no guarantee.
sacred. If

one

A woman s name and a promise however foolish were

man wronged another, he must be willing if necessary to

give his life in expiation,

State or his lady.

and he must always be ready

to fight for his

new world, so strange and unaccustomed to the New

of
almost everything, that George Glover introduced his
England concept
when
wife
young
they stepped off the packet at Charleston. It was all
It

was

familiar

into this

enough

to George. Charleston

was famous for

its

hospitality to

from the North if they came well accred

ited, and George had evidently done well and made good use of his oppor
tunities in the five years he had been there. He had been given an
honorary
strangers, especially strangers

on the
Major and was

position

of the governor of the State, enjoyed the title of

generally called Colonel. To be sure, colonels in South
staff

Carolina were almost as frequently met with as they were in Kentucky;

nevertheless, when a man attained to the title, whether he had a right to
it

or not,

it

showed quite

the Governor s

63

staff,

definitely that

he had been accepted.

To

be on

even in an honorary capacity, was to be in the midst

South Carolina almost had to

of everything. Governors at that time in

be Landgraves, in other words, landowners on a very large scale, and so

leaders in the class that ruled Charleston and prided itself in its culture.

Colonel Glover, moreover, was a Mason, and the Masonic order in

Charleston comprised some of Charleston s most prominent men.
The fact that the young couple arrived in the Queen City in the New

Year was a fortunate thing

for

Mary,

certainly

to find herself a little before the rush of the

was quite regular in

November

it

this regard.

was supposed to

As soon

kill

and from November

as the

the malaria

gave her time

began. Charleston

for

"season"

first

it

frost

had

fallen in

the family departed for

end of January everyone who

was anyone was on the plantation. By the end of January the "gay season"
brought the young people back to town and the round of concerts, dances,
races and theatre goings was soon in full swing. The old Theatre on
the country,

to the

Meeting Street was the scene of many grand assemblies. The stock com
panies were uniformly good and stars came frequently. Fanny Ellsler
danced

there,

while a

little

Jenny Lind sang and Rachel acted Adrienne Lecouvreur,

further

down the

street in the large hall of the

Apprentices

on

literature, Agassiz on zoology and MacLibrary Thackeray

ready read Hamlet to an enthralled audience. While over and above and

lectured

all were the race meetings with their exuberant

negro jockeys in
exuberant jackets, their gay crowds and the long procession of
round-bodied coaches, all resplendent with hammer cloth and bands. On

beyond it
their

the box, a
alertness,

coachman

radiating grandeur, behind a

and within and alongside on horseback,

footman radiating
the beauty and

all

gallantry of the ages.

imagine a greater contrast than that presented by

Mary seems to have grasped it
little
is
known of their story during the scant
quickly enough. Very
months they lived in Charleston or in Wilmington, North Carolina,

It is difficult to

Sanbornton Bridge and Charleston, but

all

six

where Colonel Glover often went on business. That

they were very happy,
at
is
clear
from
such allusions as Mrs.
times,
blissfully happy
enough

Eddy made to those times in later life and from some of her earlier poems.
64

record, as to where exactly they lived and how, what was the
manner of their household and how Mary passed her time while her
husband was away or at work, is preserved.

But no

From such material, however, as is available, not a little can be gath

Thus it was not long before Mary was appearing in print and in

ered.

such a

way

as to

show

that she

and her young husband were taking a

keen interest in politics, always a grand question in Charleston. The bitter

campaign between the Democrat, Martin Van Buren, and the Whig or
Clay, for the Presidency, had already begun,
true to the Democratic principles of her father and Albert

Republican,

Mary,

Henry

and
and

Franklin Pierce, was eager in her support of Van Buren and her opposi
tion to Qay, Her few weeks in Charleston, as will be seen, had greatly
intensified her native horror of slavery,

but with her at that time, as with

abolitionists, the question was one of states rights

against federal rights. Slavery should be abolished, but it should be abolished in such a way as to preserve unimpaired the right of each state to
all

but whole-hearted

self-government,

on

the terms provided for in the Constitution.

Van

Buren was the champion of the old Democratic principle of States* Rights,
Clay was all for increasing the power of the Federal Government, Mary

had been

bom and

bred a Democrat, and so she sided with

Van Buren

against Clay.
I/ 1 e*er consent to be married,

(And I am not quite sure that I may)

The lad that I give my fair hand to
Must stand by the patriot,

Clay.

He must toil in the great undertaking,

Be instant by night and by day;
Contend with the

Demon

of Party,

And rote for the Patriot, Clay.

So did a Clay partisan burst into print in Wilmington towards the end
of March, 1843.

65

To which Mary promptly replied

O!

to be married,
plight not your troth
don not the bridal array;

And

For your lad

a banner

at

If he stands by the

frolic,

Demagogue

Clay.

If he tug in a blind undertaking^

To stand

by your side soon as may;

Be content

He

fl:

ll

to live single!

stand

by"

the

my fair one,

Demagogue

Clay.

There were many more verses to both original and parody than are
and deprived of an atmosphere impossible to recapture, both

here given,

seem sorry

show

stuff,

clearly

On the

but they leave no doubt as to the writers views and

enough that Mary was

larger issue of slavery,

at least keeping abreast of the times.

Mary s

attitude

was much more impor

In her support of Van Buren and her opposition to Clay, her point
of view was typically inherited. Gilbert s wisdom fitted her case exactly,
tant.

boy or gal
Born into this world alive

Every

little

Is either a little Liber-al

Or
In her attitude on

little

Conserva-tive.

slavery, she

not only ran counter to her family

traditions but also to the burning convictions of

practically all her friends
in her new home. Abolitionism in South Carolina, when
Glover

Mary

was not only political heresy but something very like treason.
There can be no question as to Mary s feelings in the matter, but it

was

says

there,

much

either for her

own

clear

judgement or for Colonel Glover s

some indiscretion in the

wise influence that she did not launch out into

on the "institution". Such an attack would, of

than useless, and would have
have
worse
been
course,
endangered her
husband s position, if not ruined it. That she did raise the question in

way

of an open attack

66

print under

an assumed name seems

certain,

but she was careful not to

disclose her identity.

In her

own home

she was quite definite about

it.

She had heard a

about slaves, but actually to see them and talk to them and, worse

lot

still,

have them wait on her was a new and almost incredible experience. She
apparently lost no time in trying to persuade George to set such slaves
as he had, at liberty.

He may

from time to time have had

quite a number, as they were

constantly offered in payment of debts, and were in fact conventionally

legal tender. George had to explain as best he could that, under the laws

of South Carolina, there was no

and that

freed,

just to turn

way by which a

them out would be

out a dog or
would
They
simply be

like turning

a horse and leaving them to fend for themselves.

homeless, and that would be all.
It

slave could be legally

was a hard problem, but, meanwhile, there were many things to do.
all, there was her husband s work. The cathedral in Haiti was an

Above

ambitious undertaking, perhaps too ambitious, but to a young girl of

Mary s temperament it was full of wonderful possibilities, not the least of

which was the prospect of a trip to the West Indies. That Colonel Glover
at one time seriously thought that such a trip might be necessary is made

by one of Mary s poems

clear

to leave for the

West

Indies."

still

It is

preserved entitled, "When expecting

no more than the usual fond farewells

and mother, her brother and sisters, but it

draws aside the curtain on many discussions between the two on how the
to her family, to her father

great enterprise was faring and what it might be necessary for them to do.
Then there was for Mary the wonder of the Southern spring. All
things unfolding fresh and green and the air fragrant with jessamine

and dogwood and magnolia. Mary

revelled in

it,

as

is

shown in perhaps

the happiest of these early verses of hers, a poem, "Written at the Sound
in Wilmington," in which she tells how much she loves it all and how

looking forward to yet other unfoldments of rapture.

a background to the picture were her letters, those she wrote and

eagerly she

As

is

those she received.

67

Of

those she wrote, practically

none has been

pre-

served, but her

mother in one of her

already quoted from speaks of

letters

often".
hear from you
Mary was always a
of the news she sent home may be gathered
good correspondent, and some
from references to it in the replies she received. Thus Mrs. Eddy, in later

how much

life,

she rejoices

used to

tell

of

so

"to

how Colonel Glover

at one time

had a quarrel with

a quick-tempered Southerner over the question of slavery. The quarrel

resulted in a challenge to a duel, and Glover as the challenged party had
chose "toe to toe and muzzle in the mouth".
the choice of

As

weapons. He
such terms placed the "indomitable

courage"

of both parties beyond

a reconciliation was quickly effected and honour was satisfied.

that Mrs. Baker refers in one of her letters
probably to this incident

question,
It is

to

and

tell

him

says:

".

Please give

his

own goodness

injury than revenge

Mark, too, wrote at

least once, the

divine

and

much

love to your dear George

from his affectionate mother that to err is human, to forgive

Mary when she

I

know

tells

him

it is

better to forgive

an

it."

evidently written

home about

same Mark, only worse. Mary had

the unhealthiness of the climate in the

date of February 6th, 1844, takes

approaching summer, and Mark under
and penalty, on duty and
reward
on
to
expatiate
up a foreboding pen
it should
enough before closing to say concernedly
that unhealthy clime and come to a better, it would be pleasing
:

esteem, softening
be, quit

to

"If

me."

One more
home

at

letter

and then

this

back and forth

picture,

now

of the old

Sanbornton and now of

future in her

new home

Mary radiantly looking forward to the

in the South, is complete. It is from Mahala San-

daughter, who had been a kind of upper

servant in the Baker household for many years, a complacent gossipy
letter such as Mary would no doubt rejoice to receive. To "dear, dear
born, the local blacksmith

Mary,"

Mahala

"Shall

with

my

writes

morning devote a few moments in conversing

and how do you do would that I could
dear and old friend
I this pleasant

shake hands with you and kiss your cheek this morning."
And then she goes on to tell how she had just spent three weeks nursing

68

at

"Mrs.

cover,

and

how Mrs. Ack

Holems",

the children,

"left

very sick and

is

in a cold hearted world

how
if

alone,"

sad

it

will

be for

she should not re

Your mother
adding that Mary knows well "how to pity them.
have been very busy this spring a cleaning house and quilting.
.

We go into the clock room together and exclame O that the Girles were
here today what a good time we would have . my love to Mr. G. and
a kiss for yourself goodbye farewell do write soon wont you Mary from
.

your true friend,

Sank"

went, through the spring and on into the summer. And then
suddenly it all came to an end. Summer in those days in the lowlands of

So

the

it

South was considered almost deadly for white people, and as soon
and the ponds began to look green and filmy, the women

as the streams

folk were hurried off the plantations to the coast

as quickly as the

work would

permit.

The

and the men followed

clearing of the forests

and the

embanking of the rivers and the flooding of the lowlands had added
greatly to "the fever of the country", as malaria was called, and the
exodus from the plantation in the summer often began early in May.
In was early in June that George and Mary set out from Charleston on

what was

to be their last trip together.

Haiti which had taken so

many

The

material for the cathedral in

and yon to collect was at last

Wilmington, and George had to go

trips hither

being assembled on the dockside at

there to attend to the final loadings.

day or two after their arrival,

was
with
a
fever
stricken
twelve
and
George
days later he died.
a
was
seven-months
child
but, as she was to write her
Mary
carrying

brother George Sullivan later, "day and night I watched alone by the
couch of death." She could only wait and pray. She prayed very hard, so
hard that the good doctor was almost sure she was availing and told her

George died, but if the testimony of the Reverend Albert Case who
was with him in his last moments is to be accepted, Mary s prayers availed
so.

at least to the extent of

making

his passage easy

scious that the time of his departure

the

Masonic Magazine,

was at

and

hand,"

peaceful.

"Con

wrote Mr. Case in

calmly arranged his business prepared for

the removal of her he loved to the home of her youth, and consoled her

"he

Letter to George Sullivan Baker, January 22, 1848.

69

with the thought that they would meet again in heaven. Said he, I have
5
a precious hope in the merits of my Saviour.
"

Behind the

stilted

language of a rather

stilted age, the

good

intent

is

clear enough.

George Glover was buried

at

Wilmington with

full

Masonic honours,

the local Lodge sending out a general invitation to the funeral :

"The Citizens of
Wilmington are respectfully invited to attend the

Major George W. Glover, deed, at 6 o clock p.m. from Han

over House to the usual place of interment. June
The funeral was attended by the Governor of the State and his staff,
who walked in the procession with other citizens and friends from the

funeral of

28."

to Hanover House and thence to the churchyard of St.

he was buried, and Mary turned over the page on
There
Church.
John
a chapter opening not too auspi
to another chapter of her long life

Masonic Lodge
s

ciously, for despite her late

found him

John

"in

indigent

Lodge No.

1, in

husband

sometime prosperity, his passing

as the Masonic record of St,

circumstances,"

Charleston, establishes. It

is

said

on

fairly reliable

the projected
authority that his earnings had gone for lumber to be used in
cathedral at Haiti and that during his illness this was stolen from the

One of lesser character than Mary Baker would have been crushed
all time, but this frail woman in a day of frail womanhood was to

docks.
for

again and again, triumphantly, above what surely appeared to be

malevolent circumstances under which men would reel.
rise

70

The Return

IN THE WILMINGTON Chronicle

following

letter

to

for

Sanbornton

August

21st, 1844,

appeared the

the columns of your paper, will you permit me, in

behalf of the relatives and friends of the late Maj. George
Glover, of
"Sm:

Through

W.

the
Wilmington, and his bereaved lady, to return our thanks and express
those friends of the de
cherish
towards
owe
and
we
of
feeling
gratitude
ceased, who so kindly attended him during his last sickness, and who still
extend their care and sympathy to the lone, feeble and bereaved widow,
after his decease.

Much has often been said of the high feeling of honour,

and noble generosity of heart which characterizes the people of the South,
Glover (my sister) whilst recounting the kind
yet when we listen to Mrs.
attentions paid to the deceased during his last illness, the sympathy ex
tended to her after his death, and the assistance volunteered to restore

her to her friends, at a distance of more than a thousand miles, the power
of language would be but beggared by any attempt at expressing the

The silent gush of grateful tears alone

feelings of the swelling bosom.
can tell the emotions of the thankful heart. Words are indeed but a
71

meagre
is all

tribute for so noble

an

we can award; Will our

effort in behalf of the unfortunate, yet it

friends at

Wilmington accept

it

the tribute

of grateful hearts.
"Many

only to
until

thanks are due to Mr. Cooke, who engaged to accompany her

but did not desert her, or remit his kind attentions

New York

he saw her in the fond embrace of her friends.

"Your

friend

and obedient

servant

GEORGE
"Sanbornton

August 12

So

Bridge,

S,

BAKER"

N.H.

1844"

the story

is

told in the grandiose language of the day. It

is
supple
her
herself of
sad journey and still pre
served, a simple weary record to modern thought of almost incredible
laboriousness. The thousand miles must have seemed interminable.
By

mented by a diary kept by Mary

from Wilmington to Portsmouth, Virginia, with a change of cars at

Weldon, North Carolina; thence by boat to Baltimore and on by another
boat to Frenchton. From Frenchton the two travelled across the
rail

Delaware by

Newcastle, whence they took a boat to Phila

delphia; they took another boat to Bristol, Pennsylvania, and then on by
state of

rail

rail to

and by ferry to New York. And so

New
Concord,
Hampshire, and Sanbornton.

to Jersey City

train to

on by

stage

and

We must imagine the actual home-coming, of the meeting of Abigail

with her widowed daughter, of the one by one hesitant
approach of old
friends, of the messages which must have come from far and near, of the
letters

with

from Augusta and many others and the

all

the time

visits of the old minister,

in the background, a monumental
struggle be
the Sermon on the Mount.

Mark

tween Calvinism and

It is not difficult to
picture it all, interwoven as it must have been with
the ever-present pathetic looking forward to the event that was now so

near.
It

was on September

called

George

a son, was born. He was

and immediately sent away to the care of

11, 1844, that the child,

after his father

72

a mechanic, who had

nearby, a Mrs. Amos Morrison, wife of
own.
of
her
recently had a child
For Mary was very low. The death of her husband, the long and weary

woman

a difficult confinement, had left her so utterly

journey home, followed by
life was despaired of. Characteristically
her
for
weeks
exhausted that

more hardly
enough, the whole situation seems to have reacted on Mark
than on anyone else. The same sudden revulsion of feeling which had
caused him, years before, to rouse himself from the foreboding part in
which he always cast himself and drive frantically down the hill from
to fetch the doctor, crying to a neighbour, "Mary is dying," now
caused him to do everything in his power to protect his sick daughter

Bow

from the
side her

slightest disturbing noise.

He strewed tan-bark on the road out

window, so the story goes, and seemed possessed by a desire to

reparation, however clumsy, for past hardness.

make some kind of

Very slowly, Mary got better, but weeks had passed into months before
a really decided improvement could be observed, and even then it became
evident that more than one chronic disability would have to be contended
with. The spinal weakness, which she had had from early girlhood and to
which her mother alludes in one of her letters, was very much accentuated
and at times she suffered great pain. Abigail and the faithful Mahala were
devoted in their care, and in the end Mary struggled back to life.
It was months before she could see her little son, and the months had
almost run into years before she had him around with her as

much

as

normal mother would want. Thus, from the very first, was established that
severance in association, so much stronger in effect upon the child than
the mother, which, in years to come, was to result in their complete sepa
ration. Mahala Sanborn was the one that looked after the little boy. It

was to her he had recourse in his first troubles and with her he shared his
first exuberant excesses. For little George took after his father. From the
restless youngster, and even before he learned any
he
learned, with the inevitable intuition of the young animal,
thing else,
that it was Mahala who did not care how much noise he made, while with
first,

his

73

he was a sturdy,

mother

his excesses

had

to be abated,

if

not by her by somebody

else.

Very slowly Mary began to pick up the threads of her new old life. It
was rather a sad business at first. She was more beautiful than ever, and,
always possessed of a strangely compelling charm, it was not long before
first this

with no

one and then that one among the young

little

diffidence offering their

excursion into happiness, with

its

humble

men in

her circle were

respects again.

tragic ending,

memory, and, although outwardly entering more and more

of those around her, nothing was the same as it had been
little

poem

still

But her

brief

remained a poignant
into the life
before.

One

preserved written about this time reveals her attitude of

*mind with a curiously pathetic beauty which crept into her

verse-making

when she was really deeply moved. It is entitled,

South/ and its last two verses are nearer real poetry than
only

had written up to

"Wind

of the

anything

Mary

this time.

Yes, balmy breeze, when evening glows

O, pitying come and kiss my cheek

But no, thy sighing would disclose

Thee

hither

from the grave I

seek*

say do worms dare revel round

The casket where no gems can

Hath loveliness a level found.

rust?

common

dust?

Beneath the cold and

But once again, youth and time, combined with an

indomitably opti
mistic religious sense, won the
victory. She took up writing again and, this
time, she

made

use of every medium. Fiction,

poetry, essay writing.
According to the reminiscences of Sarah Clement Kimball, village
tongues were set wagging by the eager attentions paid the young widow,
hard upon her return to Sanbornton,
by a young clergyman, the Reverend
Richard S, Rust, who became
principal of a Methodist
called

Academy,
Hampshire Conference Seminary, which was opened in San
bornton early in 1845. The two had much in
common, and it was not
long before he had offered Mary a position as substitute teacher in the
the

New

Published in the Ladles

Home

Journal, June, 1911.

74

Academy. Mr. Rust was also editor of a fraternal magazine called the
Covenant, and he welcomed Mary s writings to its columns. She made

good use of her opportunity, as the files of the magazine clearly show,
and if the quality of her output obviously suffers from a lack of that
in an acceptance on merit only and not on favour, it
discipline involved
support herself with the
Tale of the Frontier, a novelette
only means she had. Emma Clinton,
in four chapters; The Test of Love, a short story; Erin the Smile and the
Tear in thine Eyes, an essay advocating Irish freedom, and quite a num
ber of short poems, "The Emigrant s Farewell," "The Moon," "The

shows that she was making a serious

effort to

Man of the Mountain,"

and so on. There is nothing distinguished

hack
about it all. Most
writing in the remorselessly pedantic style
of the day. It is interesting, however, as a revelation of the fact, to be

Old

of

it is

come so evident later on, that Mary writing for effect and Mary writing
on something about which she really cared, were almost unrecognizably
different.
"Can

a feeling pervade the benevolent bosom in any one of Eve

daughters, opposed
benevolent institutions

with such,

if

s fair

the extension of

to the best interests of her sex

Even
simply because they are of secret origin?
indeed there are any, we trust the avenues to reason and

sentiment though chilled, are not quite frozen in the icy fetters of specu
lative views, or the colder icebergs of popular surmise closing them ef
fectually

from the genial sunshine of truth

reason

twin

sister.

Rather

would we spare this immortal boon, heaven s best gift to mortals, so sad
a libel on its power of research, as to suppose any subject not first fully
understood, would be condemned. But if reason is not suffered to act,
truth is her foe, ignorance
slumbering on an unwary sentinel at her post,
whose
unwarrantable
her friend; yea
legitimate offspring are
ignorance,

and what enlightened female of this century

would not blush to acknowledge herself the dupe of some misguidings?"
Thus an extract from an essay on "Odd Fellowship" in the Covenant.

prejudice

The

and blind

sentiment

is

error;

good enough, even

characteristically sound,

later prose, the style

pared with the simple power of her

75

is

but com

incredibly bad.

It

is

only so by comparison, however. It was largely the newspaper, and

to a very considerable extent, the literary style of the day, and, however
indifferent, it laid the foundation, in Mary s case, for something of real
excellence.

Anyway,

it

more than passed muster with the Reverend Richard Rust.

For the young widow began to have no lack of admirers and the Reverend
Richard was a frequent visitor in the Baker household, so frequent that
those whose business it was to do so were already beginning to speculate

and probable outcome of it all. It quickly became

apparent, however, that Richard was not the only one. There were John
M. Burt and Luther Bean and James Smith and a boy who finds a record
as to the significance

only under his nickname

"Sleeper",

and

several others, all of

whom were

duly speculated upon in their turn.

As
girl

to Mary, although she entered into it all as would any other young
more she got very tired of it at times. In a letter to

she was no

her friend

Martha Rand, who was

later to

marry her brother Sullivan,

she indulges herself in a mild outburst of annoyance over the

gossip about
herself and John Burt. "John M. Burt", she writes, "has
paid an annual

to the homestead (not I) recently, and spoke of Miss Rand

very
now intends to go to
kindly wished me to send a little love to her.
visit

He

Wisconsin

he graduates in August. I hope then people will mind

their business about us, as I am
getting a little mad at their lies, for such
they

after

are."

This

letter to

"Mathy",

as

Mary

calls

her friend, gives an interesting

picture of Mary about this time the spring of 1847. In many ways it
is reminiscent of the letter she wrote from Bow to her brother
Sullivan,

second letter I ever wrote," so many years before. It is

again a sleepy
afternoon and again with the family away, this time
at church", and
again the solitude and the silence are "well calculated to influence mem

""the

"all

ory to bring up the light of other days". It is the same kind of cloud and
sunshine letter. At one moment,
weary of solitude I have half de
"so

termined this very moment to throw aside my

pen and wait to
and the next rallying herself to a more cheerful outlook and

weep,"

entertaining

76

her friend with some excellent gossip about their mutual friends and their

The

doings in Sanbornton.

"Sem.

ladies"

are getting

up

"a

fare (not

to defray the expenses of building operations, such as fitting up an

assembly room. Miss Lane is the directress. Prof. Sanborn is leaving the
"

fair)

town with

his wife

and

children,

and so

on.

And

then she comes back to

Mathy and how

she wishes they could be together somehow during the

She
coming summer, "get a school together or in some way manage
be
to
careful
of
her
"the
health,
greatest earthly blessing,
begs Mathy
it".

without which

little else

can be

enjoyed,"

and bids her not to be anxious

about the future but to rely on God.

excuse this hasty scrawl. George has been constantly at my
elbow which must account for the execution. Let rne hear from you very
"Please

soon and

all I

could wish.

And now adieu

Believe

me truly

MARY M.

thine.
GLOVER"

The picture seems to be complete enough. Mary making the best of it.
Her little boy constantly at her elbow. She is interested, tremendously so
on around her, but there is evident through it
a deep-seated discontent which every now and again sinks out of sight
and sound, but is never completely eliminated.
it not so?" she writes
at times, in all that goes

all

"Is

to

Mathy,

"Does

not the heart find utterance in

disappointment?"

Of all the suitors who thronged Mary about this time, there was just
one who seems to have won some place in her affections, John M. Bartlett,
a young lawyer, who, after a brilliant record in the Harvard Law School,
went out

to Sacramento, California, to

engage in law practice and died

He had known Mary for

there within a few short weeks of his arrival.

years and, before leaving for California, spent the summer in San
bornton. Mary by that time had no doubt achieved a certain measure

some

of freedom, so that her future was not, as

it

was at

first,

so

much

a matter

of speculation. At any rate, although the two were together quite often,
it seems to have attracted
very little attention and probably nothing would

have been known of the understanding which existed between them if it

had not been for a pathetically prim notation in Mrs. Eddy s handwriting

under Bartlett s obituary notice which she had cut out and put in her

77

scrapbook. It runs,

"He

was engaged

to

marry Mrs. Glover when he

left N.H."

Many

years afterwards, Mrs.

Eddy was

to write in her

book Retro

and Introspection "Early had I learned that whatever is loved

It is not
materially, as mere corporeal personality, is eventually
:

spection

lost."

difficult to believe that

she

had reference

to these days, for the loss of her

husband was only the beginning of a long series of bereavements and

separations which in the course of a few years were to leave her alone.

When

she said good-bye to young Bartlett, as he set out for the then
almost mythical California, she was already within the shadow of another

perhaps the most bitter of her

loss,

fought a good fight. She

great task of peacemaker

life

her mother. Abigail Baker had

all her life, not only in the

had worked hard

and moderator in a household which but for

her would often have been hard pressed by the grimness of her husband s
religious views. She had been ailing for some time and eager at first from

a sense of duty to recover.

Her youngest

son,

George Sullivan, was soon

marry Martha Rand, and she held up until then, but, after she had
seen them married and wave their last farewells as they set out for their
new home in Baltimore, she realized that she was very worn and tired.
me go to my home of eternal
she said. That was on Novem
ber 4, 1849. She died on the 21st.
Mary was desolate and there was no one to whom she could turn. As
to

"Let

rest,"

so often happens in such cases, she never seems to have

thought of her
father apart from her mother, and now that her mother was
gone, her
father

was almost a stranger to

her.

Mark

in the aura of her mother s

plea to "think kindly" of her father, and of her assurance that he loved
her as much as any of his children, was one thing, but Mark
of
this

He

deprived
benediction was quite another. It was much the same with Mark.
never seems to have thought of Mary apart from
Abigail Only thus

can be explained the change which seems to have come over them both
after Abigail died.

But that was to come afterwards. Meanwhile, Mary

at Baltimore
1

writes to

George

Retrospection itnd Introspection, p. 32.

78

"Oh
George, what is left of earth to me. But oh, my mother! She has
suffered long with me; Let me be
willing she should now rejoice, and I
bear on till I follow her. I cannot write more.
grief overpowers me."
Her mother had been buried only a few weeks when news came to her

My

John Bartlett had died in Sacramento.

All her life, Mary was at her best in a crisis, and at

that

her long struggle against

plete collapse

ill-health

would seem

this crisis

inevitably to presage

when
com

under the added burden, a traditional sense of duty, so

in those days, came to her rescue. She was the

common in New England

only one

left at

Some shrewd

home and

she was needed.

Mark Baker had

prospered.

had proved very profitable, and the

before
s
death
he
had built a handsome house in the Colonial
year
Abigail
style just off the main street of Sanbornton and next door to the home
railroad investments

of his eldest daughter Abigail Tilton, and moved his

family there. He
could well have afforded to employ a housekeeper, but
was now the

Mary

woman s

natural head of the house from the

rose to the occasion.

standpoint,

and she bravely

She kept house for him

loyally through the winter,

as
best
she
with
his
uncertain
bore,
could,
temper and his growing dislike
of her little boy, and sought to make a home out of the
left

wreckage

Abigail

The task was one of increasing

what for Mary was another tragedy.

Mark Baker was

place
well

64. All his life

home, who
or his, who cared

around

his

and

left

him

all

ended abruptly in

he had been used to having a woman

had no doubt as to her

it

final arbiter in all matters

was

his

of importance,

mother, the wise, placid

was Abigail. Left alone with Mary,

in

Ann Moor

whom

he had

own dogged obstinacy confronting him in the

convictions which made him feel defeat before he had
begun

it is no wonder that he
sought a quick way out of his difficulty.
decided to marry again, and his choice fell
upon Mrs. Elizabeth

to argue,

79

it

too often, his

form of quiet

He

it

and

for her part of the

great enterprise efficiently and
undisturbed in the satisfying assurance that he was the

religious or profane. First

McNeill, then

difficulty

as far as he could see

head of the household and the

found,

by

s passing.

New Hampshire. She was a

woman of good family, sister of George W. Patterson, sometime Lieuten
ant-Governor of New York, an ample, placid-looking woman, judging
widow

Patterson Duncan, a

from her

picture,

of Candia,

who probably

fitted exactly into the place in his

home

Mark Baker had

The prospect filled Mary with dismay, for it quickly became evident
that it would not only mean that she would have to leave home, but that
designed for her.

that

she would be separated from her boy. Her sister, Abigail, next door,
offered her a home, but she had a son of her own, a delicate ailing child of

George who always had given promise of

not be welcome. It was one of those
would
energy
outdoing
was
which
circumstances
probably nobody s fault. Abigail had
unhappy
four,

and Mary

s six-year-old

his father in

she was becoming a wealthy woman. She

always been kind to Mary, but
had grown used to comfort, and the prospect of having George about

day and every day did not appeal to her from any angle.
was as she saw it an easy way of solving the problem,
George had always regarded Mahala Sanborn, the old Baker servant, as
his staple recourse. Mahala was devoted to him and he to Mahala.
the house all

Moreover, there

What more natural than that George should be sent to live with Mahala,
who, now happily married to one Russell Cheney, had settled in the little
North Groton some forty miles away.
And so it was arranged. Mary, delicate and without resources the
final winding up of her husband s affairs had left her practically nothing
could not have much voice in the matter. George was sent away and
Mary moved into Abigail s home. "The night before my child was taken
from me/ she wrote years afterwards in Retrospection and Introspection,

village of

"I

knelt by his side throughout the dark hours, hoping for a vision of
1
from this trial." Outwardly when he had gone she made the best

relief

it, but thenceforward her every thought was motivated by one desire,
to find die vision to bring about a reunion between herself and her son,
she always maintained.

of

The first need,

She had
1

as she rightly saw

it,

tried writing with a certain

Retrospection

and

was to make herself self-supporting.

measure of success, but

it

was too

Introspection, p. 20.

80

uncertain

her child.

when it came to the question of actually supporting herself and

So she conferred with her old friend Richard Rust, and he, a

as
long way ahead of his time, having had experience of Mary s ability
a teacher in his own academy, urged her to open an infant school in the
little town.

Mary took up the idea with enthusiasm.

She secured a small building behind her sister s home which had formerly
It

was a novelty, of

course, but

been used as a shoemaker

shop,

and

there she opened her school.

painted it red, as a school house should be,

had
little

and

desks

There

not

is

and

She

fitted it

out with

how long

the novel

chairs all complete.

much evidence

as to

how

she fared or

experiment carried on. Only one of her pupils in later life left any
recollections of the little school and its teacher. That was one Sarah

Clement, daughter of Zenas Clement, a friend and neighbour of Mark

Baker at Sanbornton, and she only remembered isolated incidents such
as

would fasten themselves on the memory of a small

child of six or

One

incident, however, which she recalled very vividly, is worth

It
recording.
appears that Sarah was not being at all well behaved in
class, indeed she was behaving very badly. And so, after repeated admoni

seven.

tions,

Mrs. Glover sent her out into the garden to get a switch widi which
When Sarah returned with the smallest twig
"whipped".

she was to be

she could find, Mrs. Glover, regardless of all the claims of dignity or
discipline, burst out laughing, openly forgave her, and sent her back to

her seat unpunished.

Sarah seems to have been devoted to her young teacher. She loved
her, she says, for her "kindness and cheerfulness", and the picture she
of how on summer evenings she would run across the road, climb
the gate of the Tilton home and watch Mrs. Glover as she worked
in the garden, the two talking comfortably back and forth, is welcome

has

left

up on

enough,

if

only for the measure of peace

But Mary was

just

making

the best of

it
it.

suggests.

In her heart

all

the time was

the thought of the little boy in Groton, and then there was Abigail,
"vision of relief"
meaning to be kind, but more masterful than ever.

No

had so
81

far

been seen.

ABOUT THREE MILES from Sanbornton Bridge

to the west, at the point

where the Pemigewasset and the Winnepesaukee rivers unite to form the
Merrimac, is the little town of Franklin, even in the middle of last century famous or infamous, according to the political views held, as the
birthplace of Daniel Webster. It was in those days, as it still is to a very
large extent, the shopping centre for all the district round about. Sanborn

ton Bridge drove down the Winnepesaukee river, and Webster and such
like places drove down the
Pemigewasset to do their shopping in Frank
lin. It was a
mill
town
with unlimited water power in the hills
thriving
just at
lin

hand and

right in

its

very midst. All that Sanbornton had, Frank

had, only, in addition to its industries, it had its merchants and its
its doctors and its
lawyers who cared for the needs of the

craftsmen,

countryside.

Among the doctors of Franklin, in the days when Mary Glover was liv
ing in her sister Abigail

He was primarily

house at Sanbornton, was one Daniel Patterson.

dentist, but, like so

had made some study of the then

many

rebel art of

dentists in those
days,

he

homeopathy and practised

82

it

on the

side.

His headquarters were

tended much further

at Franklin, but his practice ex

and, sometimes for a week or more at a time,

afield,

he would take the road on horseback, and, having previously advertised

his coming, would move from one little town to another, take a room,
generally provided for such purposes in the local hotel, and attend to
such patients as came to him. It was quite a common practice in
England in the middle of last century.

New

Daniel Patterson was a good dentist, and within a short time of his
settling in Franklin was apparently much in demand. He was a distant
relative of the

new Mrs. Mark Baker

because of this connection that

and it was probably

Glover came to know him. The

of Sanbornton,

Mary

purely professional. The art of filling teeth

was rapidly improving and was being resorted to increasingly in prefer
ence to the time-honoured method of tooth-pulling, and Mary, who was

acquaintance was, at

first,

had gone to him

evidently having trouble with her teeth,

for professional

service.

On December
Sir,"

should be

filled at once.

and asks him

She

if

is

as she adds half-humorously,

all I

ail

have

left.

evidently anxious that this should be done,

would like to retain as long as possible

"I

Never knowing before the

the difficulties I find attend

The

him very formally, "Mr. Patter

he thinks that the teeth he had examined

12, 1852, she writes to

son Dear

tone of the

was ignorant of

it."

letter, in spite

two already knew each other

loss of teeth I

of

its

quite well,

formal opening, suggests that the

and

it is,

of course, probable that,

Mrs. Baker, Doctor Patterson had been a

through
visitor in the Baker and Tilton households at Sanbornton. He was a
his relationship with

personable man, tall and broad-shouldered, with excellent features and

full flowing black beard. He was, moreover,
something of a dandy,
dressed in broadcloth with

"varnished boots",,

and

affected at all times

the formal fashion of the day, a silk top hat.

seems from the first to have been determined to marry the young
widow at Sanbornton, and the stars in their courses aided him. Quite
apart from the separation from her boy, Mary s position in her sister s

He

83

house was one particularly galling to a woman of her temperament.

Abigail Tilton was coming to be a great lady, and, in those acutely
political days, her

home

for vigorous political

Sanbornton was naturally the headquarters

discussion of all kinds, generally centring round
at

the ever-inflammable question of slavery.

Democrats. They did not

any circumstances in
foundly in

"States

like slavery,

their

own

Rights",

The

Tiltons were good northern

tolerated it in

and would not have

state or

and any

home, but they believed pro

manner of speech which

act or

savoured of a willingness to invade these rights for any reason whatso

was regarded by them as something very like treason.

Mary also was a good Democrat, but she had been brought in contact

ever

with slavery in the South, and had been torn ever since between her
whole system and her loyalty to the old Democratic

heartfelt horror of the

viewpoint. Generally, she seems to have managed to avoid any expression

of opinion at the gatherings in her sister s house, but on one occasion

she was directly challenged. The debate had turned to the question of
Slavery, and what would be the effect of the election of Franklin Pierce

a strong Democrat to the presidency. One of the guests asked Mrs.

Glover her views. She might have passed it by, but for some reason she

determined to make a clean breast of

it. Franklin Pierce was her friend,

and not only her friend but her childhood s hero; nevertheless she did
not hesitate. She believed, she said, that not only the North but the

South suffered from the continuance of slavery and its spread to other
states; that the election of Franklin Pierce would tend to inflame the
situation,

and she did not think

as a whole. Abigail Tilton

she dared

that his election

would benefit the country

was aghast, but when she asked Mary how

make such a statement

in her house,

Mary

replied quite firmly

that she dared say

what she believed in any house.

Such was the situation as far as Mary was concerned

of 1853

when Daniel

average

New England marriage in those days

Patterson was pressing his

in the early part

He

had formally
proposed in March, but had been refused. Romance entered into the
suit.

only on a level with

many

other considerations. Marriages were contracted,

especially second mar-

84

and considerations of expediency were given

riages, with deliberation,

much

weight. Mary had an unhappy home. She was entirely dependent

sister. She was separated from her child, and she was wretchedly
her
on
ill

most of the time. Daniel Patterson, the breezy optimist, told Mary,
as well, that homeopathy was just the thing to

and Abigail and Mark

cure her of her
the

"highest

that in the case of

ills,

attenuations"

anyone so finely strung as Mary

would work miracles, and that if she would

marry him, he would treat her and she would get well.
There is no reason to doubt that he believed all he said.

The

effect his

marriage to the beautiful daughter of Mark Baker might have upon his
practice may have had something to do with it. It would not have been

New England in the middle of last century if it had not.

to be

no doubt

that

Mary

optimism he evidently

attracted

him enormously, and with his usual

would follow. Their not

felt sure that all the rest

inconsiderable correspondence shows that

charms,

But there seems

Mary was

not

immune

to his

either.

He

almost failed, however. Early in April, Mary refused what was

evidently another petition. Some differences as to religion had arisen

between them, for

"I

could

to the

not,"

Mary

she adds,

writes that she cannot yield her religion to his.

"other

things

compared to

this are

but a grain

universe."

But by the end of the month she had given in and accepted him. No
doubt Abigail had something to do with it. Mary s marriage would quite

many problems for her. Although there had always been a

bond
of sympathy between them, Mary s unorthodox political
strong
views and the constant reproach presented by Mary s separation from
her son, rendered the proposed change a most desirable one, from Abi
clearly solve

son and living

at the convenient distance of Franklin, was, she must have
thought, just
as it should be. Mark Baker was not so sure. He would
naturally desire

gail s point of view.

Mary happily married, reunited to her

the marriage for much the same reasons as would Abigail, but Daniel
Patterson was not the kind of man to appeal to Mark Baker.
might

He

have forgiven the varnished boots and the Prince Albert coat, but he was

85

not quite sure of Daniel s religious views. In Mary s vigorous doubts

which almost brought disaster at one point, it seems reasonable to detect
a strong parental pressure. There is no doubt that her father did at one
time very much disapprove of the match on the grounds of Daniel s
also seems to have entertained grave uncer
religion or lack of it.

He

tainties as to the entire excellence of the

farewell letter to

Mary when

doctor

Patterson

s character.

she refused his second petition

on some

he
grounds of religious difference shows this very clearly:
thought,"
writes from Franklin on "Monday morn Apl. 11, 1853",
would at
first vindicate
moral
and
a
for
letter
character,
my
prepared
your father s
but
on
more
mature
that
and
deliberation,
perusal
knowing
you had
"I

"I

become

dissatisfied with

my

Disposition

and wished

irrevocably dismissed me, I concluded to withhold

all I

yes

had already

had

written."

However, he did not destroy the letter of vindication which seemed

so good on Sunday night but so doubtful on Monday morning, for after

Mary had relented, he showed it to

lin,

April 10, 1853, Daniel

Mary",

it is

of things

"Mary

M.

is

her. It

is still

preserved, dated

clearly very

much

hurt. Instead of

Glover",

and he plunges

Frank
"Dear

at once into the midst

your family object to our union on

grounds new and strange to me
"You
say they have heard Dark things
And then in the sonorous and almost melodramatic style of the day,
"Much

to

my

surprise, I learn that

."

with a heavy interlarding of biblical and poetical metaphors, he says he

cannot guess what these dark things are with which his name is besmirched

but that he

is

Suspicion

down which

hoof."

"some low
cess-pool of Slanderous
Lucifer plunged his hydra head and
dividing
the Arch Angel issued forth from the
very throne

sure of their source in

Why even

if

of God, he would not be spared the whiplash of innuendo and falsehood.

There is more to the same purpose and amazing as it sounds to modern
ears

he

it

must perhaps be regarded

finally reaches his

without reserve.

as sincere enough.

"Vindication",

Daniel

is

At any

nothing

if

rate,

when

not wholly

86

He

offers to take her father

around to

all

the places where he has

will take

He

stayed to check on the nature of his irreproachable conduct.

him to his native town to meet clergymen and business men
leaders

"who

and

social

have long known and dealt with me," who have known him
in fact, some of them being members of the Con

from infancy upwards,

gregational Church, to which the Bakers subscribed, and not blood

he will take the trouble to go, I will bear his
relations of his, either.
"If

expenses or I will give

address in the matter."
It certainly

seems

him any number of

full

enough to

satisfy

reliable

names

Mark Baker,

whom

for in the

he

may

end he

seems to have approved the match heartily and with the aid of the new
Mrs. Baker, who had a real affection for Mary, prepared for the wedding
to be held

from the Baker homestead.

They were married on June 21, 1853, and after some delay went to
live in Franklin.

Doctor Patterson

s Micawber-like
optimism carried all before it at first.
house in Franklin, furnished" it mainly with things
Mary brought with her from Sanbornton and engaged a housekeeper.
But he quickly revealed the defects of his superficially attractive virtues.

He

bought a

little

His

claims were always ahead of his achievements. His varnished boots,

Prince Albert coat and silk hat were always really in the world of his
dreams. He could see Daniel Patterson clothed in them in a thousand
different

engaging

and he was

situations,

but his dreams often had rude awakenings

in the dust until he could

dream

again.

Squire Baker of Sanbornton was by this time a quite important figure

throughout the countryside, and Doctor Patterson s marriage to his

daughter certainly would give him, Daniel, added prestige. He appar

ently made much of it, but only socially. He gave up his journey ings

abroad in search of business, sold his horse and settled down to living
all the time in Franklin. He had not
enough work, however, the good
of
Franklin
the
soon
limits of their modest dental de
reached
people

mands and

his practice steadily dwindled.

Meanwhile, Mary did not get any

87

better,

and within a few weeks of

her marriage suffered her first cruel disappointment. Daniel Patterson was
to live with them, we are told
unwilling that her little son should come

by Mrs. Eddy, in her book Retrospection and Introspection. "My domi

nant thought", she writes,
marrying again was to get back my child,
but after our marriage his stepfather was not willing he should have a
"in

home with

me."

Mary, however, never lost hope. She did her best to make a home for
Daniel Patterson, and, for a time, the outlook was not so bad. Mary had
again a home of her own, and all her life she had a faculty for making

much

out of very

people called

upon

little

in the matter of her surroundings.

her and she returned their

The towns

but for her the whole

calls,

atmosphere of those days must have been one of disappointment. She

was sick. Before they were married, Patterson had held out hope of
recovery under his care that amounted almost to a promise.
The months that followed, stretching out into years, were dreary

enough. Doctor Patterson was not doing well, and

into the falling off,

an

hard not to read

it is

which supervened upon

effect

his marriage,

disappointment that his wife s rich relations had done nothing for them.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the situation was
entirely unrelieved.

Daniel Patterson

deliberate unkindness
spirits,

for the

rose with him,

as to the

moment
and

at least,

have had
It

many

took very

and when thus

little

faults,

but

to raise his

raised the whole world

way he could carry conviction

earth to those around him. It was

in his breezy boisterous

new heaven and

undoubtedly

may

was not one of them.

the

this characteristic

the eyes of the sorely tried

and

new

which constituted
unsatisfied

woman

his chief attraction in

he had

made

his wife.

He

had, moreover, a great love of natural beauty. "There was one time
in my ride to this place," he wrote to her on one of his journeys
from

Wolfborough on Lake Winnepesaukee "when I said to myself now

I wish Mary was with me
it was on
attaining the summit of a hill, the
view of the lake burst upon my vision with its smooth face scarified
and lacerated by numerous islets and points, and yet it was beautiful,

first

then I really wished you by my

side."

88

But when
still

remains

all

has been said in his favour that can be

said, the picture
the same. Daniel Patterson was a man of
many fair

much

weather friends and no enemies save himself, and

during the three years
that he and Mary lived in Franklin more and more of his friends tended
to pass by on the other side, while the one
enemy entrenched himself
more firmly than ever as the man in possession.
Meanwhile, it does not seem likely that Mark Baker or Abigail Tilton
sat idly by and let
their course
things drift without any effort to

change

into a better direction.

Abigail could not but feel a certain
responsibility in the matter,

and from the way

in which she

amount of
more than

came to the rescue

once

later on, it is natural to assume that she did

was probably due to Abigail that a
plan was
ultimately consummated which gave promise to Mary of the fulfillment
of her great desire to have her
boy with her, or in any case, close at hand.
In the hill town of North Groton where little
George was living with

what she could. Indeed

it

Mahala Cheney and her husband, the Tiltons owned a small

property,
a good house and land on the outskirts of the town.
Through the land
ran a little trout stream with an excellent fall and on the stream was a
saw-mill.

There was a small mortgage on the

property, and the plan that was
worked
out
was
that
the
in
the property was transferred to
finally
equity
the Pattersons, who, on
it over, assumed
for the
taking
responsibility

mortgage.

The
son.

proposition evidently appeared very attractive to Doctor Patter

it solved more than one
problem. His wife would be near

For him

her son.

The

on

the mortgage was nominal when considered as

and a saw-mill properly worked would provide a welcome addition
to the uncertain income derived from his
practice.
interest

rent,

of course, overjoyed at the

prospect, and so in the spring of
as
soon
as the roads were
1855,
passable and the accustomed sudden

Mary was,

mildness of coming summer was

everywhere, they loaded their household
effects onto a
and
took
the
road into the hills. It was a climb most
wagon
of the way, for the

White Mountains
89

town near the entrance of the Franconia

Range of the
lies at an elevation of over one thousand feet.

last century North Groton was a thriving community,

smaller than Sanbornton but considerably larger than Bow. It had

In the middle of

much
a

good

school, a large general store

which catered to the needs of a wide

The

Pattersons new
home was not far from the main road, along which the slow-moving ox
teams made their way down the hill to the little town of Rumney on the
then newly constructed railroad and back again. It was not isolated even
in winter, and Mary who could make a home out of almost anything had
countryside,

and

it

even had a small public

unpainted house into a very attractive

Years afterwards, she used to declare that she was

very soon transformed the

place in which to

live.

library.

little

of a speck of dust", and the few records of her life at North

"impatient
Groton show that somehow in spite of her burden of continued illness
she managed to secure "perfect housekeeping".

The records are indeed very scanty, affording only occasional glimpses
of the passage of the months running on into years. There is no word
of her first meeting with her son, of the visits of Mahala, his foster
mother and her own devoted nurse, of the goings and comings of
Patterson, or of the letters which must have passed back and forth
between her and Abigail. Such few records as are preserved
strangely revealing, one especially.

are,

however,

Shortly after they arrived and settled in no doubt with the help of
Doctor Patterson secured a housekeeper. She was efficient

Mahala

enough, but evidently the type of woman who imperatively demanded

that things should be run her way, and it was not
long before the matter

came to an issue. One day a blind girl came to the house

work
and Mrs/Patterson, immediately interested, after talking
seeking
to her for some time, decided to take her in and see what she could do.
of authority

In

spite of her blindness she

seems to have been remarkably capable and

quick to learn, but the housekeeper

from the

first

was profoundly

dis

approving. Finally, she told Mrs. Patterson, perfectly straightly, that the
blind girl would have to go or else she would. Mrs. Patterson did not
hesitate a
girl

moment. She

let

the housekeeper go and she and the blind

went on together.

90

blind girl s name was Myra Myra Smith. She stayed with Mrs.
her
Patterson all the time she was in Groton, and many years afterwards
the
to
to
used
she
how
recalled
go
sister, then a very aged woman,
and
Pattersons home some two or three times each week to visit Myra,

The

how Mrs. Patterson

"was .ill

nearly

all

the

time".

She

recalls

how

the

came to her bed

sick woman was always reading, but that whenever she
head and say, "Oh
side she would lay aside her book and pat her on the
dear little girl. You are worth your weight in gold. I wish you were
you

of the greatest pleasures of the children

was to carry in the earliest berries and wild flowers to the poor sick lady
Such recollections, scanty as they are, draw aside the curtain a little.
Smith herself recalled when a very old
and his visits,
As to

mine."

She

also recalled

how

"one

."

George

woman how
lessons, how

Myra

the boy would come to his mother to be helped with his

his mother loved to have him there, and how he seemed to

be always happy with her. Doctor Patterson, however, disapproved these

when he returned home and found the boy with his
visits, and one day
wife after he had forbidden him to come, he sent him back to the Cheneys
with the injunction not to return. It is not known whether the Doctor
he felt the pres
disliked the child or if, as he has been quoted as saying,
already overtaxed strength.
of it all,
It is only possible to piece together a surmise as to the meaning
Doctor
that
Patterson,
annoyed by the
but the generally accepted theory
was always
his
wife
that
himself
to persuade
boy s presence, found it easy
the
house, is
worse after he had been there and therefore forbade him

ence of the husky youngster taxed

Mary s

There seems, however, to have been quite definitely another

children of
reason. It was Mahala. She was well over forty and had no
he was a
since
her own, and had had George with her almost continually

plausible.

than possible that the prospect of losing him as she

baby. It was more
saw the boy becoming more and more attached to his mother was more
than she could bear to contemplate. Only indeed on some such assumption
what quickly followed Doctor Patterson s drastic action.
can be
explained

Mrs. Eddy in Retrospection and Introspection says her husband was

have a home with her, and adds "A plot was
unwilling her son should
:

91

consummated

for keeping us apart. The family to whose care he was

soon removed to what was then regarded as the Far

committed very
never met again until he had reached the age of
West.
.

We

thirty-

1
four."

She does not say how she bore up or went down under this latest blow,
but it was soon after the departure of the Cheneys they went to Minne
sota that an incident occurred which, in view of what was to follow in
s life, has a significance all its own. In the long days and often

Mary

she devoted herself to just two subjects, religion

nights she spent reading,
and medicine. She read the Bible as she had always done for long hours
together, but

now she also studied any book she could get on homeopathy.

Daniel Patterson, as has been seen, practised homeopathy to a certain

seems to have had a peculiar fascina
extent, and from the first its study
to the fact that she hoped
Mary. This was no doubt partly due
cure for her own troubles,
some
to discover
studying the system herself

tion for

by

such as her husband had not been able to find, but also because in its
a mental and even a spiritual
early days homeopathy frankly presented
to
a woman of Mary s mentality
element calculated to make strong appeal

and background.
In his monumental work on the subject (Der Organon der ratlondlen

Hahnemann
Heilkunde) , in which he expounded his system, Friedrich
was quite definite on this point. The Organon was first translated into
after the study of homeopathy had first
English about 1825, a few years
been introduced into the United States by a Danish doctor, one Hans
Busch Gram. The system, although bitterly opposed by the orthodox
medical profession, gained ground rapidly. Curiously enough, the date
of its formal introduction to each state is on record, and the spread is
remarkable, running from

pathy reached
the time

Mary

New York

in 1825 to

Iowa

in 1871.

Homeo

New

Hampshire as a serious study about 1840, and at

Patterson was passing through such deep waters in the

house at North Groton, some fifteen years later, it was definitely

coming into favour as a remedial agent. The Organon had reached

little

Reftaspectidn and

Introspection, pp. 20-21.

92

several editions.

Hahnemann had by

that time been dead

many

years

of thought had arisen in the practice of

bitterly opposed schools
and the Rationals. Hahnemann had
Hahnemannians
his system, the
laid it down in his Organon that, although drugs might be the

and two

definitely

medium, the actual healing agent was purely mental and spiritual.
he wrote,
means of the spiritual influence of a morbific
is
only",
"It

"by

agent that our spiritual power can be diseased, and in like manner only
by the spiritual operation of medicine can health be restored/

The Hahnemannians
Organon

accepted this teaching implicitly, regarded the

as their Bible and insisted, as they still insist, that "the doctrine

of the spiritual dynamization acquired by trituration and succession as

indubitable". The Rationals on the other hand maintained that the spirit
ual side of the remedy if
that they were free to use

it

existed at all

was only part of the cure and

known

to science".
adjuvants
the whole subject, as is
in
was
interested
Patterson
Mary
absorbingly
shown by her many allusions to the matter in the course of her writings,
"all

and especially by one

case of cure in which she herself was the practitioner.

This she describes in

detail.

No date is given, but it is more than possible

it was one of her

experiences while at North Groton, as it is known
that while there, although she did not seem to be able to help herself, she
tried to help others through homeopathy. The case she describes is one

that

of dropsy :
"We

prescribed for her the fourth attenuation of

Argentum

nitricum,

with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved

to us to give her unrnedicated pellets
perceptibly. ... It then occurred
for a while,

as before,

and watch the

and

result.

We did so, and she continued to gain

but the
would give up her medicine,.
and was relieved by taking it. She went on in this

finally said she

day she suffered,

occasional visits from us, em
way, taking the unmedicated globules, with
1
was
cured."
was written in 1881, but
and
no
other
means,
(This
ploying
third

the episode

is

retained in the present version of Science

156.)
1

Science

93

and Health, Third

Edition, p. 158.

and Health,

p.

What

actual effect this or other similar experiences

Patterson at the time,

it is

difficult to say.

Everyone

is

had upon Mrs.

inclined to read

into the past the convictions of the present, and these later accounts
of her earlier experiences are generally designed to enforce
Mrs.

Eddy

by
an

One cannot be
argument which was quite admittedly a later attainment.
which later on
time
of
that
the
at
sure that she even caught a glimpse
she saw so clearly.

The

however, that

fact,

when

writing of her discovery

of Christian Science she declared that for twenty years before that event
to trace all physical effects to a mental cause."
she had been
1

"trying

would seem to indicate that

this

was at

homeopathy.
Mrs. Eddy leaves no doubt in her
her,

was indeed a

her at

definite step

North Groton

is

day she consoled her

made

little

least a highlight in her

later writings that this

onwards, but that

clear

blind

bottle of very highly considered

it

failed

study of

study helped
even to help

by the rather pathetic story of how one

maid who had dropped and broken a

homeopathic medicine by saying that

it

The woman with

the dropsy might be cured by

good anyway".
the faith begotten of a kindly deception. But Mary Patterson could not
deceive herself, and so the remedy was no good.

was

"no

She was, however, before she

left

North Groton,

to receive another

glimpse of the power of faith, this time in herself, so vivid as to leave

upon her mind an impression which remained through the years and

reappeared as a witness later on.

Not far from her home in North Groton there lived a retired minister,
a devout old man, well over ninety. He was known as Father Merrill, and

day he would walk over to the Patterson home to visit Mrs.

Patterson, who, after her son was gone, was bed-ridden most of the time,
and the two would read the Bible and pray together.

day

after

One day

as he turned in at the gate from the road, to his complete

he
looked
up and saw Mary all smiles and with arms outstretched
surprise
the
down
path to meet him. With Father Merrill there was no
coming
had
to
what
doubt as
happened. He cried out at once with joy, "Praise
1

Retrospection

and

Introspection, p. 24.

94

God, He has answered our prayer." Mary for the time was equally joyous
and equally sure that it was an answer to prayer. But that she was un
satisfied, restlessly insistent on knowing the why and how of it all, is

made

clear

from her

later experience.

She could not hold

faith of the old minister could not be hers

on.

The

any more than could the

blind
faith

And so she sank back again.

of the woman
And now things went from bad to worse. Patterson was away most
of the time, but he earned less and less until even the interest on the
sick of the dropsy.

mortgage was a long way

in arrears.

Abigail could, of course, have saved the situation, and was no doubt
appealed to, but to her practical mind it had long since become apparent
that the enterprise in

North Groton was a

failure, that

Mary was drifting

and that the best thing for all concerned

the holder of the mortgage foreclose. Under date of September
29, 1859, Mrs. Patterson recorded in her note-book:

into a state of chronic invalidism,

was to

let

day my sister sells our homestead"

was
none other than Martha Pillsbury.
mortgage
"On

this

Abigail

no doubt good, but she left Mary to wring

drop of humiliation and suffering. It was not

intentions were

from the situation the

last

until the actual

day of the foreclosure that she

Sanbornton to take her sister away.

from

Nor was

for the holder of the

this all that

Wheet, with

whom

Mary was

came over

to bear helplessly.

in her carriage

When

one Joseph

Doctor Patterson had quarreled, heard about

this,

he gleefully dispatched his son Charles to toll the church bell mockingly
until the tormented Mary was well beyond reach of its clangour.

As
little

they drove slowly down the mountain road towards Rumney, the
blind servant trudged some way behind. She would not ride or come

too near the carriage. She could not bear to hear the low sobbing of her
mistress as she leaned wretchedly on Abigail s shoulder.

95

A New

IT

WAS TOWARD

Hope

the end of March, I860, that

Groton. She got no further than

10

Rumney

Mary

Patterson

left

North

Station at the foot of the

mountain road. There Abigail found a temporary home for her and her
husband at a boarding house kept by a Mr. and Mrs. John Herbert.
Patterson does not appear to have been with her when the actual move

was made, but evidently the plan worked out by the all too efficient
Abigail was that, in return for what she was doing in the way of financial
rehabilitation, Patterson should

and make a home for his

make a

serious effort to reform his

ways

wife.

Daniel apparently accepted the proposition with alacrity. He was never

hesitant about accepting any chance to begin again.
new prospect fas

cinated him, for in his

mind

eye, he could always see a new unfolding

prosperity.

When next there is any record of him he is a gracious exemplary

presence in the Herbert home at Rumney Station. He carries his invalid
wife downstairs to all her meals, and carries her back
again, and earns
much approval

for his devotion, while his Prince Albert coat

and

var-

96

nished boots and silk hat begin to attract attention and to inspire confi
dence in the minds of the patients who resort in increasing numbers to
the office he

had taken

work, and no

man

close by.

For Daniel Patterson could always get

could be more suave and gracious and even,

it is

to

be imagined, lovable at times. He was just the kind of character that

would be forgiven, not until seven times but until seventy times seven.

His position, it must be admitted, was at no time an easy one. The

contrast between the satisfying picture of married life as he had visioned
must have been harsh enough. Daniel Patterson
married to the brilliant young widow, daughter of Squire Baker of Sanbornton, bringing her back to health and happiness through his care

it

and

as

it

really was,

and winning the gratitude and admiration of the Bakers and

the Tiltons and the envy of a good half-dozen of his wife s former suitors,
such a
firmly established in his practice with a host of new patients

and

skill

must always have made the reality

dreary indeed. To win happiness from the situation, as it was, would call
for a love and patience and an abiding satisfaction in unseen things which

and one even

picture

brighter

still

Daniel Patterson did not possess, apparently.

He had a way, however, of pouncing on anything in the passing stream

which

fitted in

with his

mood and making

the

most of

it

while

it

lasted.

At

such times, he was at his best, and it was, no doubt, the constant
renewal of these periods which made it possible for the two to stay to
gether, even as long as they did.

The

first

few months at Rumney seem to have been just such a period

was not long before he had secured a little house where

for Daniel. It

Mary

could

settle

down

to

home-making once again, and get the

full

advantage of the coming spring and summer. The house was situated
at Rumney village back in the hills about a mile from Rumney Station.

had a splendid view of the foothills and the mountains beyond, and,
with the blind girl, Myra Smith, once again her devoted servant and
It

companion, and Daniel

So

it

still all

attention,

was through the summer and

to get better.
then in the April of

Mary began

winter,

and

the following year, 1861, the whole face of things was changed by the

97

The war brought

outbreak of the Civil War.

terson a

new

if

Mary Pat

into the life of

Always intensely patriotic, the fact that

hinged on the question of secession and on

tragic interest.

the whole struggle, at

first,

that question only, caused her to throw her devotion without any mental
reserve on the side of the North. Whatever other right a State might

have under the Constitution, there could be no doubt of the

fact,

it

had

not the right to secede from the Union. Even on her sick bed she could
do something to help. She could knit socks and make lint. She could

throw open her

little

home

for meetings of the sewing circles.

She could

and she could defend and explain the stand of the

phases to her friends and neighbours. She seems to have

write for the press,

North

in all

its

of these things, and to have been, of course, all the better for it.
It was only a temporary stimulus, it is true, but it made life more tolerable,

done

all

opening up to the sick woman an opportunity for service which

of her being.
life was
literally a fundamental demand

all

her

war upon Daniel was to afford him the most reason

able excuse that had ever come his way for "making a change". It is not

The

sure he

effect of the

was consumed with

patriotism.

He was well over forty and never

by the prospect of high adventure, but he loved to

be where things were happening, where he could meet with and talk to
people who were doing things about which he in turn could talk, and

particularly attracted

the papers every day were full of such matters. And so, within a few
months of the outbreak of the war, he was hard at work exploring every

means of getting

into the

main stream of

nothing better offered, but preferably

an army doctor, if
special commission such

events, as

on some

would bring him more varied opportunities. In the end, probably

through the Tiltons, he received a commission from Governor Barry of
as

New Hampshire to
in the state to aid

carry to

Washington funds which had been collected

in the South, and attend to their

Northern sympathizers

distribution.

was exactly what Daniel wanted. He could see in his coming sojourn
Washington a most satisfying social round which he would undoubt

It

in

edly have opportunities for extending to an almost unlimited extent. In

98

Washington, a Prince Albert

coat, varnished boots

and a

silk

hat would

be necessities.

And
girl,

so in

March

he set out for

of 1862, leaving
the front.

A few months before he

left,

Mary

a strange

alone with the

new hope had come

little

into

blind

Mary s

life.

The second

quarter of last century was a period of mental upheaval

the
world, but especially in New England. The willingness
throughout
to try anything once, which in later years

Far West, was typical of

New

England

became so

characteristic of the

at that time. It

was an era of

dynamic change. Railways were spreading themselves everywhere; news

papers, turned out by machines, were starting up overnight in every town

and

village.

The

fellow, Whittier

electric telegraph was on the way. Emerson and Long

and Lowell and a host of disciples were preaching new

freedom and inevitably opening the way for the excesses of their virtues,
while, in the realm of the occult, mesmerism and spiritualism were among
the stock subjects of conversation and eager inquiry.
This was specially true of mesmerism. Since its first promulgation by
Friedrich Anton Mesmer in 1766 in his book De Plctnetarum Influxu,

mesmerism had swept

into and out of popular interest several times. Its

domination
of
Paris just before the Revolution had been fol
amazing
lowed by complete discredit, and for fifty years or more its practice was

regarded as simple charlatanism. In the early twenties of last century,

however, it began to creep back into serious notice, and, in 1831, a com
mittee of the

Academy

of Medicine of Paris reported favourably

on

as a therapeutic agent. Ten years later, James Braid, a

of
Manchester,
surgeon
England, in an ^ble work on the subject, defi
the
whole
nitely brought
question back into the fold of scientific research.
"magnetism"

He renamed the phenomenon, Hypnotism,

netic

At

sleep"

in the practice of surgery

and the

began

possibilities of

"mag

to attract wide attention.

that time hypnotism seemed to be in a fair

becoming ortho
dox, but, a few years later, the discovery of chloroform on the practical
side, and the sudden rise of spiritualism in the realm of mental phe

way

nomena, tended to make mesmerism once more an

99

to

outcast.

The inevitable

result of this

"neglect"

was

to consign the practice once

hands of the charlatan, using the term in its broadest sense.

The mesmerists who toured the towns and countrysides of New England
again to the

so frequently in the second and third quarters of last century were often
of exceptional ability in their doubtful practice, but they were first

men

of all showmen, with apparently one objective, to make as much

money out of it as possible. The papers of the day were full of their
advertisements,

and

if

one were to judge from the claims those advertise

ments advanced, their powers were stupendous. They were, however,

overshadowed in the mind of the public by the rapidly rising tide of
Spiritualism. In the middle of last century, spiritualism was spreading
over the eastern United States like an epidemic, mainly on the strength
of its appeal as the possible beginning of a new revelation. "Spirit Circles"

sprang up everywhere and Andrew Jackson Davis book The Principles

of Nature, Her Divine Revelation, which he declared had been dictated
in clairvoyant trance, quickly attained the status of a textbook.

Mary
merism;

Patterson must have read

indeed, this

is

evident

all

about both spiritualism and mes

later discussions. To one who

from her

was attracted as she was, almost to the point of fascination, by the mental
and even the spiritual side of homeopathy, their possibilities would almost
necessarily appeal very strongly at

first.

All her

life,

however,

Mary s

great standby had been her Bible, and no doctrine survived in the end
for her which was not, in its final analysis, justified by the Bible. Her
search, as she herself was wont to point out in later years, was for Spirit

not

spirits.

her stay in North Groton, there began to

appear in the papers which came to her bedside stories of amazing works
of healing that were being done by one Phineas P. Quimby, a doctor in

During the

latter part of

Portland, Maine.

He

was,

it

was clear at once from the various

reports,

no ordinary doctor. Indeed, he departed entirely from the ordinary paths

of medicine, discarded drugs and relied for his cures upon a new
power
which he designated Wisdom.
Mary Patterson must have read the early accounts of it with eagerness.

100

It

must have seemed to her to

fit

dim conclusions

in exactly with the

had been forced upon her by her study of homeopathy. As she put
to herself later, "Less and less medicine until there is no medicine."
Thus in the Lebanon, New Hampshire, Free Press of December 3,

that
it

1860, appeared a long article on this new form of healing. It was copied
issue in
widely by other New England papers, and either the original
the Free Press

or a copy of

Lebanon
it

is

only some twenty miles from Rumney Station

certainly have been seen and read by Mary

must almost

who was

always an eager reader of newspapers.

The opening paragraph of the article could hardly fail to rivet her
attention, for it tells of the healing of a woman whose trouble must have

Patterson,

seemed to be almost exactly her own.

"Just

at the present

about Dr.

Quimby

time,"

the article opens,

of Portland,

and

mention the case of a young lady of

fited

it

this

may

"there

is

a good deal said

not be considered amiss to

town who has been

greatly bene

by him.

nearly three years she has been an invalid a great part of the
time confined to her bed, and never left the room unless carried out by
"For

her friends.
visit

A few weeks since she heard of Dr. Quimby and resolved to

him. She did so, and after remaining under his care four days she

home free from all pain and disease, and is now rapidly re
health
and strength."
gaining
The papers of the day were, of course, full of such cures achieved in
returned

the most amazing and unaccustomed ways. Professor De Grath s Original

Electric Oil and the Celestial Telegraph vied with spirits and all manner

of manipulations to produce instantaneous cures for

all

and sundry

ills.

way was different. In the first place, the article in the Lebanon
newspaper was not a paid advertisement. Neither was it written by
Quimby himself but by the editor of the paper or one of his staff, who

But

this

evidently regarded the subject of sufficient importance to rank as news.

The writer continues and it is not difficult to imagine Mary Patterson s

growing interest
"The

101

reputation of Dr.

Quimby

as a

man who

cures disease has ex-

tended without the narrow limits of his

own

state

and the

sick

from

various parts have learned to avail themselves of his services. The in

the public in his success, suggests the
creasing respect and confidence of
that of two thou
day of miracles and brings up a question as ^absurd as
sand years ago, Can any good come out of Nazareth? Can actual disease
be cured by a humbug? Dr. Quimby effects his cures without the aid of

medicine or outward applications, and his practice embraces cases like

the above, where all ordinary treatment has failed to relieve. These facts
of a superstitious world,
place him in the rank of the mysteries
but there are few of his patients after a second interview who do not think

at

first,

the mystery

is

in

them and not

stands, his explanations

and

...

in him.

his cures go

It

hand

is

here that Dr.

in hand.

While

Quimby

his senses

are penetrating the dark mystery of the sick, he is in complete possession

of his consciousness as a man. Not fearing to investigate the operation

of the mind, he penetrates the region where nothing but magicians,

sorcerers, witchcraft

them

and spiritualists have ventured, and going far beyond

in his experiments, he arrives at the principle regulating happiness."

and there were many like it would be suffi
article such as this

An

cient to account for the interest that

of

Mary

Doctor Quimby aroused

in the

mind

Patterson.

And

she was immensely interested, so much so that in the October of

1861, on a rumour that Quimby was coming to Concord, she persuaded

Patterson to write to him in Portland and state her case. It must have

seemed to her almost a

last

chance and she was determined to take

it.

And so Daniel wrote from Rumney on October 14, offering to bring Mrs.
Patterson up to Concord if he would exercise his "wonderful power" in
her behalf whilst visiting that section

"for

the benefit of the suffering

portion of our race."

Within a few days, a reply came from Quimby to the effect that he had
not then any plans to visit Concord, but enclosing a printed circular

which he was apparently in the habit of sending out in response to

inquiries.
1

It

is

a long and tortuous document and very possibly explains

The Quimby Manuscripts^

First Edition, p. 146.

102

why

the sick

woman

before she wrote to

The

circular

is

Rumney waited
Quimby again.
in

a very businesslike one, wherein

would respectfully announce

him

on

applications,

feelings

where he

in regard to their

He then goes
ward

simply

and what they think

is

P. P.

Quimby

and

vicinity,

will attend to those wishing

health."

no medicine and makes no out

to say that he gives

"but

"Dr.

to the citizens of

that he will be at the

to consult

another nine months, as she did,

sits

down by

their

the patients, tells

disease."

If the patients

them

their

admit that

he is right, then the explanation he gives them is the cure, "and if he

succeeds in correcting their error, he changes the fluids of the system
and establishes the truth or health."
After several paragraphs, devoted to severe strictures on orthodox
medical practice, he concludes with a note as to fees. Referring again to
his method, he says, "This can only be explained to patients, for which
explanation his charge

dollars. If necessary to see

is

more than once,

What

effect this circular,

had upon Mary

them

dollars."

Patterson,

combined with
is

all

she had read about him,

not known. That she did not at that time

follow her inquiries further is clear from her subsequent letters. The
probability is that the stimulus of the war all around her, together with
the preparations for her husband s departure for Washington, diverted
her thought sufficiently to give her temporary relief. It was about this
time, too, that she received a letter

had from him

ously.

since he

from her son, the

first

direct

news she

was taken away from her some eight years previ

This brought the great struggle more nearly home to her, for the
Mary that her son had enlisted in the army two years before

letter told

and how tremendously with all the enthusiasm of a lad of eighteen

he was looking forward to going to the front.

Mary wept

over the letter and kissed

it.

Her

hopes had been broken

so often where her boy was concerned that she seems through these years
to have had no heart to make further effort. She simply took what little
1

The Quimby Manuscripts,

103

First Edition, pp. 144-5.

comfort she could get

there

is

when

some evidence

it

came. She wrote to him, of course, and

more than once, but the war

that he wrote to her

made any thought

of their seeing each other again more improbable than

ever. Meanwhile, Doctor Patterson had
gone to Washington, and Mary
settled

down

with her blind servant to

make

the best of things,

and

to

watch eagerly and anxiously, as did so many mothers and wives in those
days, for letters.

She did not have

to wait long, for about the middle of

April she re
a
letter
from
a
letter
from Wash
morning
Abigail, enclosing
ington addressed to her husband, Hamilton Tilton. It was not from
Patterson, but from one of his friends, and it told the absurdly pathetic
story of how Daniel, all eager to see and hear all there was to be seen and

ceived one

had driven out from Washington in a sulky with a party of friends

to view the battlefield of Bull Run, how
going off on his own he had
too
near
the
Confederate
lines
and
had been picked up by Stew
strayed
art s
and
carried
on
the
off, possibly
cavalry
suspicion of being a spy.

heard,

No

doubt Abigail in her covering letter did her best to soften the
shock, but it must have been severe enough in any case. The fate of a spy
was summary, and the suspense might have
gone hardly with Mary. But
within
a
or
two she received a letter from Patterson him
fortunately
day
self from
Libby prison, a cheerful, incorrigible letter, the letter of a boy

who

has got himself into a scrape but is

secretly enjoying every moment
Due deference is paid to the solemnity and seriousness of the occa
sion, but it is impossible to escape the impression that Daniel is
having
a good time. He writes
of

it.

"DEAR

You

WIFE,

be amazed to learn that I am in

prison in the Confederate
States prison, but it is so, I was taken one week
tells her
ago today."
not to be uneasy as he is safe and that his fellow
are
friendly
prisoners
will

He

gentlemen.

The

letter is

characteristic note

is

nothing

struck

if

when he

not tender, but an

incongruous yet
says,

"I

left

my

travelling

bag and

new

pair of boots at 381 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, at Mrs.

C. W. Heydon
He asks her to communicate with their
s."

representative

104

in Congress, gives directions for reaching

asserts his

him

concern for her welfare and signs,

in prison

"Your

by

letter, re

affectionate

Hus

band."

rose to the occasion as she always did. She wrote at once to

Edwards, and he took the matter up with the Secretary of War.
Nothing, however, could be done, as no prisoners were being exchanged.

Mary

T.

M.

An appeal to her old friend Franklin Pierce

was equally

fruitless.

There

was nothing to do but wait, and when the stimulus of the new demands
had passed, the old wretchedness descended upon her worse than ever
before.

In her extremity, she remembered Quimby. She wrote to him begging

to Rumney and help her, as she could not go to him. It is a

him to come

fear-wracked, despairing letter, dated Rumney, May 29, 62.

The shock of her husband s capture, she writes, brought on a relapse
just when she was getting well from a chronic disease which completely
incapacitated her for a year at a time. Writing from bed, she begs him
to visit her immediately,, explaining,
have entire confidence in your
as
read
in
the
circular
sent
philosophy
my husband Dr. Patterson."
"I

But Doctor Quimby was unable

to

come

to her,

and Mary turned to

her sister Abigail for help. She now had one purpose and one purpose
only in mind, to get to Doctor Quimby, for it seems certain from subse

quent events that she had already begun that process so evident later on
of reading into Quimby s philosophy what she most desired to find

Throughout her long years, Mrs. Eddy s great source, at once of

strength and vulnerability, lay in just this facility with which she endowed

there.

those associated with her with the qualities she most desired to find in
them. As she herself put it some twenty-four years later after many bitter
has always been my misfortune to think people bigger
experiences,
"It

and

better than they really

are."

This accounts, in a measure perhaps, for the amazing sudden ruptures

of friendships with which her life and career are punctuated. The friend
of yesterday would suddenly appear before her for what indeed he had
1

The Quimby Manuscripts,

Christian Science Journal, June, 1887.

105

First Edition, p. 147.

always been, while the "spiritual genius" would be seen for what he always
was, just another human being of common clay.

Doctor Quimby was the

this

tendency.

When

first

and perhaps the most notable example of

him in her despair from Rumney, she

she wrote to

had quite evidently worked through to an estimate of him far ahead of

desert and one she did not have when her husband had written some nine
months previously.
Abigail s response to her appeal was instant, as it always was, and when
she drove over from Sanbornton to
Rumney, she insisted that Mary

go

back with her there until Doctor Patterson should be released.

Mary

readily acceded to the proposal. She was determined somehow to get to

Portland to see the man who she was convinced could help her, and Abi
gail she felt sure

would make

possible. This decision gave her

strength. Instead of having to be carried to the carriage, as Abigail
it

new
had

evidently expected she would have to be, she rose and dressed herself
and the two set out together on the long drive back to Sanbornton.

On the way, Mary told her sister of her great desire. Abigail was utterly
Quimby was nothing but a charlatan or worse still a mesmerist.
She would not think of helping any sister of hers to
go to him.
shocked.

Nothing is known for certain of Mary s impressions on returning to

Sanbornton after an absence of nearly ten years, or of the wretchedness
of her

own

thoughts as she contemplated the burden of making yet an

other effort at a fresh

beginning.
She did make the effort, of course.

arranged a new plan,

many

suitable

Within a few weeks Abigail had

had arranged so
was
to
to
Doctor Vail s Water
Mary
go

to the last detail, as she

other things in the past.

New Hampshire. Abigail provided her with a

companion and nurse, a young woman named Susan Ward,

Cure Sanatorium

made

down

at Hill,

the provisions for a comfortable

journey, supplied her with the
necessary funds, saw her on her way and felt sure that all would be well.
all

Mary agreed to everything, without protest. Hill was nearer to Port

land than was Sanbornton, and
Mary was determined somehow or other
to get to Portland.
106

11

Phiaeas P. Quiimby

PHINEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY was a native of Lebanon, New Hamp

on February 16, 1802, to Jonathan Quimby,
shire, where he was born,
Susannah. When he was two years old, his
wife
his
a blacksmith, and
father

and mother moved to

Belfast,

Maine, and when he was thirteen

or thereabouts, being small of stature and not overly strong, his father
decided that the calling of a blacksmith would be too hard for him and

a clockmaker.
apprenticed him to
It was not a hit-or-miss choice
childhood, the

and

little

on

his father s part.

From

Phineas was fascinated by anything that

in order to get things to

"work"

exactly his patience

his earliest
"worked",

was inexhaus

choice. It was, moreover, a

Clockmaking was almost an obvious
trade in which a man could quickly make a name for himself if he was
demanded good clocks, and bad
an honest and skilled craftsman.

tible.

People

clocks quickly revealed their deficiencies. Seth

Thomas,

the elder, of

out clocks which at

Plymouth Hollow, Connecticut, was already turning
to make a clock
and
his
of
that
exceeded
son,
tained a standard only
by
the
all
in
as good as one turned out by Seth Thomas was,
probability,

107

young Phineas Quimby when he entered

dizzy height set for himself by

on his apprenticeship
for

"Quimby

in Belfast,

clocks"

are

still

Maine. If it was, he reached

to be

found

in

his objective,

Maine, and they long en

joyed a reputation for accuracy and good workmanship.

However, young Quimby was not only interested in the workings of
clocks, but in the workings of anything. He was a natural inventor, and
never was so happy as when he had some

amaze

and

his friends.

new

contraption with which to

Moreover, boy and young man, he was eager in debate

mercilessly Socratic in argument.

Quick to recognize faults or inac

would pass them by, he had a

curacies in almost anything where others

an argument of compelling his opponent to toe the line which

quickly earned him a reputation at the general store or where not as a
in

way

champion debater.
Belfast, Maine,

in those days,

was a busy

little

town devoted to ship

building, and, lying as it does at the head of Penobscot Bay, it was con
sidered of sufficient importance to be invested
by the British towards the
close of the War of 1812. Like
many other coast towns, moreover, Belfast
enjoyed an intercourse with the outside world and the great coastal cities
like

Boston,

ways

New York and Baltimore, denied in the

to the inland towns,

days before the rail

and was, as a consequence, sure sooner or later

of a visitation from any

or person much in the public eye.
And so, one day, in the late thirties, there arrived in Belfast, a certain
"rage"

Frenchman named Charles Poyen, who advertised a course of lectures in

the town hall on the then much discussed
question of Mesmerism. Belfast
and among those eagerly present was Phineas
Charles
Quimby.
Poyen found a sympathetic and attentive audience, and
flocked to hear him,

went

excellently well until he came to giving practical demonstra

mesmeric influence. Immediately he found himself in difficulties.
Things did not work as they should, and the task which he claimed he
usually found so simple was laboured and exhausting. At last, he spoke to
his audience about it. Someone,
consciously or unconsciously, was work
was
his
him,
ing against
explanation. He would be glad if the person
for
it
would
remain
after the meeting and have a talk with
responsible
him, as he felt sure he must be a mesmerist of considerable
all

tions of

promise.

108

Whether Phineas Quimby thought himself the man or not, he was evi
dently determined to make the claim. Such an opportunity was too good
to let pass by, and so as the audience filed out, he remained, and very
soon he and

M. Poyen

in convincing

Quimby

few days Phineas

is

were in close conference. That Poyen succeeded

of his mesmeric powers,

to the satisfaction of the proprietor,

street

and buy of

Phineas

is

evident, for within a

giving free exhibitions in the general store,

"willing"

and much

people to come in off the

his wares.

Quimby

took the matter seriously, as he always did.

everything he could get on the subject,

among

others,

He

read

no doubt, Poyen

book, Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England. He also

seems to have followed Poyen for a time from town to town, until at last,

own

quite convinced of his own powers, he began to practice on any of his

friends who were willing to become subjects. His success in inducing
"magnetic

to

"willing

was immediate and uniform, and from that he went on

minor ailments. Once satisfied that he could do that,
away"

sleep"

was settled as far as he was concerned. Here was something

more
infinitely
engaging than clockmaking or inventing. If minor ail
ments could be healed, more serious ones could be healed. He tried and
was apparently successful. People began to talk about him and to come
to him for help in increasing numbers.
So matters went until some time in 1842, when Quimby made a new
discovery. Among the many subjects who had come under his influence
the matter

was a youth named Lucius Burkmar.

neighbours, had always been

He was a boy that, according to the

But under Quimby s influence he

exhibited the most surprising powers. When thrown into a mesmeric
trance, so some said, he could describe people and places he had never
"queer".

seen, tell the location of ships at sea

and report happenings of the moment

in distant places which were subsequently verified.

he also appeared to have the power of

"looking

ing disease and prescribing remedies which in

instantly. So goes the story.

Quimby was astounded and

109

enthusiastic.

into

Most amazing
people"

many

He

cases

of

all,

and diagnos
healed them

determined to give up

clockmaking and go on a lecture tour with Burkmar. This he did for a

time with great success. Quimby, however, was an intelligent man, indeed
he had unquestionable gifts as a scientific research student. He never had
satisfied with just seeing things work, he demanded to know how
At first he had been satisfied that his "power" flowed from
worked.
they
himself, but an experience he had with Burkmar raised in his mind serious

been

doubt on the

course of their association,

subject. It appears that, in

Burk

and was engaged to diagnose cases for an

Quimby
later a man of considerable
other mesmerist named John Bovee Dods

mar

for a time

left

entitled The Philosophy of Electrical Psy

a
Dods
had
chology.
wealthy clientele compared with that of Quimby,
and when Burkmar came back to him again, as he eventually did, Quimby
found that the remedies he had been prescribing while working for Dods
were much too costly for his, Quimby s, patients. The two conferred on

repute

and author of a book

the subject. Burkmar agreed to prescribe cheaper remedies,

tients got well just the same, we are told!

As

the result of this

on Quimby

and the pa

and other experiences, it gradually began to dawn

was faith in the drugs and not the

that the healing agent

drugs themselves. Here he would seem to have arrived at much the same
point as had Mary Patterson from her experiments with homeopathy.

Their fundamental divergence thence onwards lay in the fact that

Quimby sought his solution along the lines of a philosophy; Mary Pat
terson sought hers along the lines of revealed religion, in the broadest
sense of that term. But that is, of course, to anticipate the record.

When Mary Patterson wrote to him from Rumney in the early summer
of 1862, Doctor

Hotel
year.

Quimby had

in Portland

and was

His remarkable

a commodious suite in the International

treating as

many

as five

cures were talked of everywhere,

got to Portland the more detailed was the picture.

Doctor Vail s Sanatorium, she found that Doctor

and

his

work were one of

the

Sanatorium seemed to be in a
eral of the patients

had

main

hundred patients a
and the nearer one

When Mary
Quimby

subjects of conversation.

reached

of Portland

The whole

vague unrest and expectancy. Sev

actually been to Portland and seen Quimby. One
state of

110

afterwards to figure so prominently in Mary Patterson s

returned to the Sanatorium from such a visit shortly after

Julius Dresser
life

and

story

He was much improved in health and quite enthusiastic

Mary

got there.

about

Quimby s work and methods.

must get to Portland at all

of her own, and there was
without
funds
costs. She was, however, entirely
she could call. Abigail would not think of
apparently no one upon whom
her little
sending her money for such a purpose. She did, however, send
these
saved
time
to
and
from
sums
extra
time,
carefully, denying
Mary

Mary was more than ever

satisfied that she

which the money was intended. She grew

and at last she wrote to Quimby again almost in

herself the small comforts for

worse rather than

better,

to him. Apparently she has at last the where

her way, but now the question arises, has she the strength
how clearly she now sees the mistake
After

She wants

despair.

to

come

withal to pay
to make the journey?

saying
in not trying to reach him when she had more strength, she
continues by explaining that her stay for two or three months at this

she

made

water-cure place has been anything but helpful. Her ability to walk several
miles has diminished until she can only sit up in bed occasionally and now

doubts whether she has the strength to reach him or, having that, whether
would
any foundation or reserve would be left for him to build on.
"I

rather die with

or

them

my

friends at Sanbornton hence I shall

go

to

you to

live

to die very soon. Please answer this yourself."

answered at once with that kindly consideration which seems

Quimby
to have

come

And

man, encouraging Mrs. Patterson to

and assuring her she would be able to make the journey.
a few weeks later, Mary Patterson set out for Portland, and on

been

characteristic of the

to him,
so,

October 10th, 1862, presented herself at Quimby s office at the Interna

tional Hotel. She was so weak and exhausted that she had to be assisted

up the

steps to his room.

out to see her almost at once, and as she looked up she

would have seen advancing towards her a small kindly man with broad
forehead and white silken hair and beard, one who managed somehow to

Quimby came

The Quimby Manuscripts,

ill

First Edition, pp. 147-8.

an atmosphere of sympathy and understand

what
she
had
just
longed for, and when he sat down beside her,

establish for himself at once

ing. It

as

was

was

trouble to
self

and maintained quietly that he would "explain" her

her and that that explanation would be the cure, she felt her

his custom,

roused to a sense of expectancy almost reaching exaltation. Anyway,

what followed would suggest some such process, for as he told her that
she was "held in bondage by the opinions of her family and physicians",

and that

"her

animal

calling itself spinal

spirit

was

disease",

reflecting

grief

upon her body and

"she

a sense of peace and new

ment, she was standing before him
cured",

of

its

could be cured, and would be

strength came over her, and, next mo

that

healed,

no

less.

She was quite sure

it.

Within a few

days, with enthusiasm, she

was writing about

it

to the

Portland Courier:
nurse and sick room en route for
died out of the heart of those
had
my recovery
who were most anxious for it. With this mental and physical depression
I first visited P. P.
Quimby, and in less than one week from that time I
"Three

Portland.

weeks since

The

I quitted

my

belief of

ascended by a stairway of one hundred and eighty-two steps to the

of the City Hall, and am improving ad
And so her great hope was fulfilled.

dome

infinitum."

She was

healed.

There could be

no question of it in her mind.

She must, however, learn the way of it. She had no doubt whatever
that the method of Quimby s work was one that could be elucidated and
learned by anyone who applied himself to the study. Quimby himself
does not seem to have been so sure.
is
reported frequently to have
declared that he did not know how it was done. But even as early as

He

her letter to the Portland Courier,

doubt at
of Jesus.

all

on the

She had

luctantly satisfied

subject.

Mary

Patterson seems to have had no

Quimby had rediscovered the

healing

method

go through deep waters indeed before she was

that this was not so.
to

re

Meanwhile, she began at once with the eager devotion of a convinced

disciple to take of the things of Quimby and set them up as way marks
112

along her

own spiritual journey. She

spent every

moment

she could in his

Hotel talking to him, asking him questions,

notes
or
longer manuscripts he had to give her, and building
reading any
up her own concept of the new teaching at a rate which must, at times,
suite at the International

have kept the kindly little doctor running breathlessly behind,

he was able to follow her at all.

in

if

indeed

Quimby, however, seems to have appreciated it all immensely. He was

many ways a remarkably selfless man. At the time Mary Patterson

came to him,

his

work and teaching were

his very

life.

He

cared

little

or

nothing for the money his practice brought him. Many times his letters
a great number of which letters are still preserved show him

to patients

returning money that had been sent him, on the ground that for some
reason or other he did not feel that he had earned it. He was, moreover,

always eager to learn more of his own doctrine, and he must have re
garded with interest if not assent Mrs. Patterson s confident interpreta
tion of everything he taught in the light of religious faith.

Mary

Patterson was probably happier in these few weeks than ever

life. At first, she seems to have
enjoyed perfect

before in her troubled

health. No doubt intervened at any point to give her pause, and life
must have seemed opening out to her with a promise such as she had never

ventured even to outline before.

And
that

then, right in the midst of

it all,

a strange thing happened, one

must have seemed to her

instance of the

"power"

in her overflowing gratitude yet another

of her new-found faith. One day a message was

brought to her in her room at the International Hotel that a gentleman

was below who desired to speak to her. And when she went down, there
stood Daniel, very thin and worn, sadly unkempt and very chastened.

He had escaped from the Confederate prison, and after many bitter hard
ships

had found

his

way

first

to

Sanbornton and then as quickly as he

could on to Portland to his wife. In spite of all their strange incompati

bility, it must have been a happy reunion. Patterson would be at his best
in such circumstances,

to

Mary would have

113

and the appeal of

carried all before

it.

his chastened self

and condition

It

was

lina,

all

Some months

previously

Mary had

letter

capture. It

Lellan

how

so utterly unexpected.

from him, not from Libby, but from Salisbury, North Caro
whither fortunately for him he had been removed shortly after his

had a

was dated

May

19, 1862,

"eternal tardiness"

they

felt

now

and

had blasted

they were

"fixed

after telling his wife

their

for the

hope of

liberty,

war beyond a

how Mche added

possibility of

release". He went on to dilate on the comfort of his

surroundings.
North Carolina in May has much to commend it and Daniel, it is evident
from his letter, was settling down to enjoy it all.
clear and balmy and I am allowed to breathe
"The
he writes,

earlier

"is

air",

as

much

as I please through the

window.

My bed

is

just

by the window,

right so be of good cheer. God is over all and does

all things well. Give
yourself no uneasiness on my account."
have
would
received the letter about the time she was leaving
Mary
I believe all will

end

Rumney with Abigail for Sanbornton, and so it must have

rest

about her husband, at

Whether Daniel meant

planning escape, by

least for the

set her

mind

at

moment.

Mary any hint that he might be

mention of the fact that his bed was just

to convey to

his innocent

by the window, it is not possible to say, but as a matter of fact the position
of his bed evidently did help. For, some four months later, on the night
of September 20, taking advantage of a heavy rainstorm, Daniel and two
companions let themselves down from this window by means of a rope

improvised from sheets and blankets and made good their escape into the
adjoining woods. There they wandered for several days, fearful of com
ing out into the open, and subsisting
night raids on the gardens, orchards

they came to in the clearings.

At

on what they could get by means of

and chicken roosts of such farms as

last,

after

two months of great hard

ships, during which they were time and again near recapture, they suc
ceeded in reaching the headquarters of General Milroy of West Virginia.

There they were provided with means for their journey to Washington,
where Patterson arrived about the first week in November, continuing on
almost immediately to Sanbornton and Portland.

On

November

26, 1862, the

New

Hampshire

Patriot reported the

114

story in full

under the heading

"Escape

of Dr.

Patterson",

and a few

may be hoped, to his

usual dress, is lecturing on his experiences in the Mechanics Hall, Port
land, no doubt to a large and interested audience, who had paid fifteen
weeks

later, Daniel, fully restored to health and,

it

cents each for the privilege.

By January

back again in Sanbornton

Quimby which bears this date

12, 1863, the Pattersons are

Bridge, and from Mary s

first letter

to

it is

clear that her remarkable recovery has greatly impressed her family

and

friends. Five or six of these friends, she tells

Quimby, are going to

him, while Abigail is anxious he should see her son Albert, and plans
shortly even to see him herself. Lying as it does amid a desert of so much

visit

suffering, the letter

have no laws to

is

like

a small oasis of joy

fetter

my spirit now,
my dear husband

escaped prisoner as
yearns to join the army and she

and am merry;
am quite as much an
Her husband, she sighs,

"I

though
was."

eat drink

is

trying to acquiesce,

However, Daniel seems to have suppressed his yearning and to have

from doing anything impetuous. After his many and sore trials,

refrained

the comfortable

home

of the Tiltons, combined, at

first,

with the interest

of his friends in his experiences, must have made life seem very pleasant
to him. After all, there was plenty of time, and in describing as few
could so well the horrors of a Confederate prison, he was doing some

thing to arouse proper feeling and raise the general morale.

Mary is not so sure that all is well. Her next letter written from

San

bornton under date of January 21, 1863, to Quimby, shows that the sit
uation is worrying her. She longs for a place of her own, while her faith
is

unimpaired, she fears the onset of old troubles.

**You know", she writes rather plaintively,

"I

am

less

than one year

from the

thirty-nine of supposed disease, and the habit is yet so strong

that I need your occasional aid." Enclosing a remittance for the
5
last treatment, or "sitting," she requests another.

upon me

Some time in February, Abigail made a trip to Portland to see Quimby,

taking her son Albert along with her. The boy, never robust, had
p. 148.
*

Ibid., p. 149.

115

He

tracted habits which were causing his family much anxiety*

to excess and drank considerably, and Mary s complete faith in

smoked

Quimby

evidently aroused in Abigail a genuine hope that he might be able to help

and even cure her son. She was, moreover, herself suffering from an ab

dominal rupture and

healed.

Mary was equally insistent that that, too, could be

so Abigail went to Portland, full of a hope which rested,

And

however uneasily, on a fundamental scepticism.

For Abigail Tilton had none of Mary s faith.

capable woman with

a remarkable executive capacity, she never had had a thought where

Mary had had so many of

many years before, during a
change"
Mary had written

questioning the established order. Once,

revival at Sanbornton she had "felt the

joyfully to her friend Augusta Holmes

was not long before she had settled easily back into that
routine which made of her religion a habit rather than a faith.
Mary,

about

but

it

it

however, had unquestionably been healed. She, Abigail, did not under
stand it ahd did not much like it, but if it could help her son, she was
willing to try

it.

And so she went.

Mary next letter to Quimby, written on March 10, tells the further
development of the matter. Abigail and her son had been back at San
s

bornton just a week, and already the boy

in behalf of his

to

"hold

mother and

herself, to

is

slipping.

"renew"

him back from his easy

his

She begs Quimby,

"influence"

in order

sins".

besetting
**His parents are truly grateful and somewhat
encouraged at the suc
1

cess thus

far."

must indeed have seemed to her in

sorry
unqualified rejoicing when she had returned to
Sanbornton some two months earlier;
eat drink and am
merry; have
no laws to fetter my spirit now."
"Somewhat

encouraged"

contrast with her

own

"I

But Abigail was not Mary; neither was Albert. Where

Quimby suc
ceeded easily with the woman full of faith, he failed
completely as
subsequent letters show with the woman full of doubts and her son.
For

Mary

Patterson had full faith in

Quimby. She not only fitted

him

*Ibld.. pp. 149-50.

116

but continued to carry him

along with her in the months and years to come through her every spirit
ual experience. It is not without
significance in this connection that a
at once at their

first

meeting into Her

ideal,

few days before she wrote this last letter to Quimby she had written a
a friend in Portland, evidently one of Quimby s patients, which

letter to

would seem to
able form her
writes,

"to

son to the

indicate that she

was already attempting

own interpretation

send

of

Quimby

to put into read

s teaching.

"I

will

try",

she

my philosophy by Mrs. Tilton when she accompanies her

International."

But Mary herself is beginning to be full of trouble once again. She is

somewhat from old habits, pain in the back and stomach, a
"suffering
cold just now and bilious." So she wrote to Quimby. And then she has
1

been trying to help Albert, and won t the doctor laugh when she tells
him that she is suffering from
constant desire to smoke". But adds,
"a

pleadingly,

"Do

pray rid

me of this feeling."

was part of Quimby s theory at that time that he took his patients
upon himself and then "threw them
by his own superior
wisdom. Mary evidently feared her wisdom was not
strong enough.
Then there was always Daniel. He had at last bestirred himself, it is
It

off"

"griefs"

true,

had gone to Lynn, then

as

now a busy manufacturing town some

twelve miles north of Boston, and resumed his dental

practice in partner
with
other
two
dentists.
followed
but
whether Daniel suc
ship
him,
Mary

ceeded so well that they could afford to go off on a

holiday, or, as is
more likely, so ill that there was not much else to do, in
event, the

any

following September found them in Saco, Maine. Saco was Daniel s

native town.
had a brother still living there, and so, as they had never
been there together before, it is possible that the trip was just one of those

He

little

romantic contrivances with which Mary often tried to hold the

queer

restless

man to whom

she was married.

Saco, on the Saco river, some fifteen miles west-south-west of Portland,

was at that time a thriving town with the inevitable grist, cotton and

lumber mills climbing up the

1

Ibid., p. 130.

117

river,

which at

this point

drops some forty

feet on its way to the sea a few miles away. It was a cultured place, too,
with a fine library and an old established academy. The grand stretches
of Old Orchard Beach were close by.

The

proximity of the

traction in

Mary

eyes.

little

town to Portland was no doubt a great at

the one letter of hers to Quimby written

From

from there that has been preserved,

it

may reasonably be inferred that she

saw him frequently, as may the fact that she sought his help and advice on
the perennial problem which Daniel presented. Growing worse instead
of better, he gradually drifted from mild semi-professional flirtations to
more serious and more sordid associations.
would go off and leave his

He

wife for days and weeks at a time. Mary evidently had great hopes of
reformation from their visit to Saco, and it is possibly due to the failure
of these hopes that she is alluding when she writes to Quitnby: "But I
1
have conquered my first disappointment."
The letter also contains another appeal for help they are pathetically
would like to have you in your Omnipresence
frequent from now on
"I

visit

me at eight o clock this eve, if convenient. But consult your own time.

Only come once a day until I am better."

The bitterness of hope deferred was evidently still to be her

experience.

Ibid., p. 130.

118

The

her

talking",

little

12

Warren

a born teacher.

To

be a successful teacher

and Mary,

her

life, had loved teaching. Her

necessary to love teaching,

letters,

Lecture at

MARY PATTERSON WAS

"discursive

which Albert

all

recalls so interestedly in

it is

one of his

school at Sanbornton, her writings regarding slavery

and other political issues, and now her eager advocacy of Quimby s teach
ing or her

own interpretation of it, all reveal that urge

to teach which later

on was to be put to such tremendous purpose.

When
lines laid

she

first

conceived the idea of teaching and healing along the

to say, but it seems reasonable

down by Quimby, it is impossible

to suppose that her failure to make a permanent home for her husband
turned her thought definitely in this direction. She was almost tragically
in need of an objective in life, and this course seemed to offer her one.

Be

that as

it

may, the

early winter

found her back again in Portland

studying eagerly. Writing of these times, George Quimby, Doctor Quimby s son, who acted as his father s secretary, recalls the persistence with

which Mrs. Patterson sought to grasp what his father was teaching. "She
learned from him," he writes, "not as a student receiving a regular course
119

but by sitting in his room, talking with him, reading his manuscripts,
copying some of them, writing some herself and reading them to him for

....

criticism.

... I have heard him talk hours and hours, week in and week
1

out when she was present, listening and asking questions."

And so in the spring of 1864, she set out on what was to be
she intended

it

or not

Among Quimby

way.

Hotel in Portland

whether

her first missionary journey. It came about in this

s patients who were staying at the International

at the time

Mary was

there,

were two women, Miss

Mary Aim Jarvis of Warren, Maine, and Mrs. Sarah Crosby of Albion.
The three women became close friends. Miss Jarvis suffered from asthma
and was threatened with

tuberculosis, while

from some kind of nervous

Mrs. Crosby was recovering

disorder. All three were earnest students of

Quimby s methods, and Mrs. Crosby and Miss Jarvis began

and more to Mrs. Patterson

me many

for further enlightenment.

to look

"He

more

(Quimby)

Mrs. Crosby declared years afterwards, "that I was

not so quick to perceive the truth as Mrs. Patterson."
Mrs. Crosby and Miss Jarvis seem to have left Portland for their homes
told

times",

new year, both greatly improved in health, but, in March,

had
a rekpse and wrote to Mary begging her to fulfill at
Jarvis
once a promise she had evidently made to both her and Mrs.
Crosby to
visit them in the near future. She had
faith
in
Mrs.
Patterson
s
great
early in the

Miss

understanding of

Quimby s teaching and felt sure she could help her if

she would only come at once. It was a definite caE for
help and Mary,
after doubtless
decided to answer it and
talking it over with
Quimby,

go

to Warren.

Her next letter to Quimby is

31, 1864. It

Warren

written

from there under date of March

opens in a happy, engaging way, telling of her arrival at

a hectic trip involving an all-night
"Next morn

after

stop-over.

ing at ten o clock got into a villainous old vehicle and felt a sensation of
being in a hen coop on the top of a churn dash for about six hours! when
the

symptoms began

to subside,

and so did the old

cart."*

And then she goes on to tell of her friend, how warm was her welcome
*
1

T&f Qsttmh

Manuscripts,

Km Edition, p. 438.

Ibid., pp. 150-1.

120

and how anxiously she had been awaited, her

a day or two before.
But she has good news. Miss

hostess having expected her

Jarvis is better already,

and

it

seems

possible to detect in her account of the matter a strange new expectancy

as of one who tries something for the first time, and, half doubt, all hope,

begins to realize that perhaps, after all, she can do it. After telling Quimparoxysm of what she
by that the Saturday before Miss Jarvis had had
called difficulty of breathing on account of the easterly wind / she
"a

continues :
"I

it

sat

down by her, took her hands and explained in my poor way what

was, instead of what

is

was not as she had understood

breath became natural, and to

my

it.

In a

little

her

surprise even, she raised phlegm easily

and has scarcely coughed since, till today. So I have laughed at her about
the wind veering according to P. P, Quimby. I say to her, Svhy even the
1

winds and the waves obey him

There is a word about Mrs. Crosby at Albion, and how she looks for
ward to seeing her soon, quite a little about her own struggles
keep
."

"to

in

5*

a plea to the little doctor to continue helping her, and then,

the end, what would seem to be an allusion, pervaded with an uncon

the faith,

scious pathos, to Daniel.

at

home,

"If

would like it there;

I could have
but! but! but

my
.

husband with

me and be

."*

But if she could heal she ought to be preaching and teaching, and very
soon she began to be convinced that she could heal. "Miss Jarvis is doing
she writes to Quimby on April 5, "and I shall not stop here longer
well,"
than

is

necessary to

make her

final triumph.

When

happy."

On April

10,

"a

lame back and

And

then on April 24 comes the

gone/*
I came here she could not do but a litde house

some other ailments have

all

work. ... In three weeks she did her washingl a thing she told me she
had not thought of being able to do ever again. . . . She never knows

which way the wind blows now, east or contrawise."

It was clearly her business to preach and teach the word wherever and

however she could.

1

Ibid., p. 151.

Ibid., p. 151.

121

And so in due time there appeared in the Post Office

and other

Quimby s

in

"marts"

Warren

Town Hall

lecture at the

this notice

Patterson will

opposed to Deism or

as

disease
spiritual Science healing

Rochester-Rapping

M. M.

"Mrs.

one week from next Wednesday on P. P.

spiritualism."

contained in two letters to Quimby, one

story of the lecture is
8
2
written on April 10 and the other on the 24th. It was "thinly attended",

The

but the

"precious

manufacturer

there were described by

few"

wife)"

as the

"uppertendam",

"a

while

lady present (the

Mr. Hodgeman,

"a

man of sixty years old, said it was the nearest right of anything he ever
had no poetry at the close, twas all truth. Will
heard in Warren."
"I

read

it

to

suit the

you

if

when next

I see you. ... I have changed it to

she was planning to deliver it again "This seems to

you

occasion"

like

me a spiritual need of this

very respectful

The

people."

The hearts

Warren folks

of

she finds

and kind.

lectures were not barren in results, for within a

few days

"Mrs.

"

Fuller (the woollen-manufacturer s wife) is writing to Mary telling her

returned
is sick and
asking Mary to help her. Only Mary hesitated.

she

"I

a note",

she writes,

mended her

"that

to visit

Meanwhile, she

was not done with

my pupilage yet, and recom

you."

is

evidently writing and thinking constantly and long

and think more.
long to be strong," she writes

ing to be able to write

"I

Quimby, "and then would

and letting people read

I not be

happy saying

just

what I wish to do

it."

"Dr.,"

she continues,

"I

have a strange feeling of late that I ought to be

perfect after the command of science, in order to know and do the right.
So much as I need to attain before that, makes the job look difficult, but I
shall try.

When

When men and above all women revile me to forgive and pity.
am

misjudged because misunderstood to feel : Wisdom forgive

All things shall work together
them for they know not what they do.
I

good to them who love wisdom. ... If I could use my pen as I long to
do, and not sink under it, I would work after this model till it should
4
appear a thing of beauty which is a joy for ever
for

."

Ibid., p. 155.
Ibid., pp. 152-4.
*
Ibid., pp. 152-4.
*Ibid., p. 155.

122

This

last sentence, in

view of

all

that

was to follow,

is

perhaps

signifi

cant enough.
for her all the way. The light
are almost crudely vivid in contrast.

Meanwhile, the road continued up

hill

and shade in her letters to Quimby

The joy of being able to help others is overcast perpetually by the fear that
she

would not be able

self in effecting a cure

to

"throw

off"

the

under Quimby

"griefs"

that she took

upon her

strange healing process, Albert s

smoking, Miss Jarvis asthma, threatened tuberculosis and other troubles.
"When

Jarvis would come to my bed it would invariably set me

And before I was sick she had lost
the least approach to

Miss

to coughing.

now

a cough;
little, but she can t get back for I tave
borne her sins and you have saved me."* This strange doctrine of trans
ference was to cling stubbornly throughout many years to come.
she

was indeed

is

coughing a

too evident a hard path that Mary Patterson was

trying to follow, but her faith remained unshaken, and some time in the
latter part of May, 1864, she returned to Portland, and for a month or
It

all

more resumed her former day by day association with Quimby. It seems
likely that one of their subjects of conference was Daniel, but whether the
kindly doctor had anything to do with it or not, it was not long before
Mary had determined to make yet another effort to bring about a better
understanding with her husband.
Daniel himself seems to have enjoyed at this time one of those splendid
visions of a new heaven and a new earth which rose periodically above the
horizon of his

now,

life.

his appeal

the world.

This time, his vision was surely the greatest yet,

for,

was not to be to the few or even to the many, but to

And

so in the

Lynn Weekly Reporter

all

for June 11, 1864,

appeared the following advertisement :

Dental Notice
Dr. D. Patterson

**Would respectfully announce to the public that he has returned to

Lynn and opened office in B. F. & G. N. Spinney s new building, on

Union Street between the Central Depot and Sagamore Hotel, where he
1

Ibid,, p. 157.

123

will be

happy to meet the friends and patrons secured last year while in
and now he hopes to secure the patron

the office of Drs. Davis and Trow,

mankind by the exhibition of that skill which close

study and many years of first class and widely extended practice enable
him to bring to the aid of the suffering. He is aware that he has to com
age of

all

the rest of

pete with able practitioners, but yet offers his services fearlessly, knowing
that competition is the real stimulus to success, and trusting in his
ability
to please all who need Teeth filled, extracted or new sets.
was the first

He

LAUGHING GAS in Lynn for Dental purposes and has had

success with it. Terms lower than anywhere else for the same

to introduce
excellent

quality of work."
It was all no doubt a part of

a mutual effort of the two to live together

must
the
have
read
advertisement with some misgivings, but
again. Mary
she evidently determined to make the attempt and
early in July returned
to Lynn.
It was all to no purpose, however, Daniel s
periodic reformations were
of briefer duration as the years passed, and
Mary had hardly settled in
their new home before she realized that her husband was
just as he had

always been, only worse. Previously, his obvious contrition for his failings
had won from Mary forgiveness again and again, but now he did not

The bad boy had become a rather down at heel Don

and each time it took a larger dose of ill-doing to find a reaction in
repentance. He was no longer an itinerant dentist, but he went away just
the same for days and weeks at a time.
Mary stood it as long as she could.
But at last when proof was brought to her of a
particularly sordid intrigue
on the part of the doctor with one of her friends proof in the form of
bother to be contrite.

Juan,

written by him (still preserved) which are

unprintable in the
warmth of their expression she packed up her few
things and once more
with
Sarah
in
Maine.
That
did not
sought refuge
Albion,
Crosby
letters

Mary

drive

him to

shown by an

1902 by his boardinghouse keeper, R. D. Rounsevel of Littleton,

quoting him as saying he
could have had as pleasant and happy a home as
anyone could want if he
infidelity is

affidavit in

had only done as he ought by Mary.

124

Crosby recalled how Mary arrived

home in Albion a small farmhouse on the outskirts of the town almost
assets being her
or
without
clothing, "her only
at her

Many years afterwards, Mrs.

money

destitute,

proper

mdomitable will and active mind". But the two women were genuinely
devoted to each other and Mrs. Crosby received Mary gladly. To Mary,
haven of
the little farmhouse at Albion must have seemed a veritable

was she cut off

refuge, for not only
as well.

There

clear that

is

Mary

the fall of 1864

little

very
devotion to
led to

from her husband but from her family

it would seem

information on the point, but

Quimby and his teaching had by this time

a complete breach between her and Abigail. Her

over eighty, was also estranged from Mary for

father, now an old man
some reason as is shown by the fact that when he died, as he did the

out of a very considerable estate.

following year, he left Mary nothing
The cause of Abigail s estrangement was of course Quimby. The
doctor s failure to help her or her son had convinced her at last that he
was what she had always thought he was, just a mesmerist, and that
"Mary

heresy,

was healed by her own faith". Mary would have none of such
and so they parted. During the next five years of her life, Mary

Patterson was often in the direst poverty, but she never asked Abigail for
help again,

and Abigail never

offered to help her.

They

were, after

all,

Bakers, both of them.

several months, and
Mary remained with Sarah Crosby at Albion for
incidents occurred,
it was during her stay there that an incident or series of
to the general trend of Mary Patterson s thought
apparently so alien
be quite baffling until explanation is sought quite
to
as
about this time
outside the realm of

any philosophic unfoldment.

has been seen, Spiritualism at this period was one of the great
New England. The "Spirit
subjects of talk and experiment throughout

As

Circles"

of the

fifties

were

demanded no equipment

still

for

its

available in out-of-the-way places

Mary Patterson

at times

practice

and amidst out-of-the-way people.

was vigorous in her repudiation of Spiritual

ism in any form. She made

125

and the very fact that it

made it specially popular and

in eager existence,

its

denunciation the central point in her

Warren, and in many of her

lectures at

ings of
in

she

is

letters to the

papers on the teach

careful to point out that Spiritualism has nothing

Quimby
common with Quimby s doctrine.

And yet one day, as she and Sarah were sitting together in the parlour
farm at Albion, a strange thing happened. They had been
as
talking
they often did by the hour about Quimby s teaching and about
of the

little

Crosby was more than a

Spiritualism, in which Mrs.

believe,

when suddenly Mary stopped

began speaking in a low sepulchral

talking.

voice.

As

little

inclined to

She leaned backward and

the fascinated Sarah sat

listening with all her ears, the voice explained after the

orthodox fashion

was Albert Baker, Mrs. Patterson s brother, and that he had

been trying for some time past to get control of his sister in order to warn
that

"he"

Mrs. Crosby against

ian

spirit",

and

He told her that he was Mrs. Crosby s

her.

in spite of his great love for his sister, he felt he

"guard

ought to

her (Mrs. Crosby) that, while Mary loved her as much as she was
capable of loving anyone, life had been a severe experiment with her and

tell

she might use Mrs. Crosby

tious purposes of her

"sacred

confidences"

to further

any ambi

own.

The

explanation of the incident usually put forward, is that Mary,

having failed to bring her friend round to her own strongly adverse views
of Spiritualism and all that went with it, took this way of proving to her

how

easily its manifestations

could be faked. If

this

was

so,

she either

own powers of acting a part or Mrs. Crosby s

Mrs. Crosby was convinced that the manifestation was
genuine, and, some forty years later, wrote a vivid account of the incident
badly underestimated her
credulity, for

and subsequent happenings,

tions were

insisting emphatically that the

communica

beyond question.

However

this

may

be,

She even

Mary

followed

up her

first

success with other

Sarah

or Albert did through her that if

"appearances".
she would look in certain places she would find letters from him. Sarah
looked, and, sure enough, there were the letters. The writing, it is true,
told

was strangely like Mary s the letters are still preserved but that
might
be accounted for by a family resemblance. At any rate, such an
explana126

more than satisfied Mrs. Crosby. Indeed, by the time the

to
come, she was far beyond a touch of doubt. In her story,
began
she declared that she believed implicitly in Albert s care
years afterwards,
and guardianship over her, that she derived constant strength and comfort
tion evidently
letters

from

it,

and that

this spirit friendship

was

"one

of the most

real"

she had

ever known.

Perhaps the main importance of the matter, at least to the present

purpose, is the indication it affords of the confusion which pervaded Mary
Patterson s thinking at this time. In many ways, the next two years, the
two years that immediately preceded the incident which was to change her

whole
there

life,

is

are the most difficult of all to appraise.

no outward sign of development,

in

They are years wherein

any

direction.

After some

months spent with Mrs. Crosby at Albion, she returns to Lynn;

once again, valiantly to make a

home

for her husband;

is

tries,

physically

She writes for the papers poetry, news items, gossipy reports of
happenings. She enters vigorously into temperance work, joins the

better.

local

Good Templars,

is

raised to the position of presiding officer, writes for

them and speaks for them and becomes popular and sought after.
There is more than a hint, however, from her own writings that, in
spite of all the outward show of great happiness, there was a desola
tion in the heart of this

woman

at that time such as she

had never known

Hope deferred and deferred again has made the heart sick. She
has tried so many things and so many things have failed her. She tries
before.

them over again with ever lessening hope. She plays with Spiritualism,
now as a medium and now as a clairvoyant letter writer; but even in her
"spirit

letters"

she has her brother begging her friend to "love and care"
great suffering lies before her". She can fool Sarah

for his sister because

Crosby

"a

into well-being with a fake spiritualism, just as years before she

had fooled the woman sick of dropsy into health with her unmedicated
pellets. But she cannot fool herself into anything now, any more than she
could then.

In the bleak days of January, 1866, came the final blow, the death of
Quimby. For the last few years of his life, he had been struggling man127

an internal ailment (abdominal tumor), always declaring

was not strong enough to heal him it was yet strong
wisdom
that,
enough to hold the disease in check. But he gave himself ungrudgingly
to his work, too ungrudgingly, and at last his wife and children, who had

fully against
his

if

never shared his views, seeing him failing every day, prevailed upon him
to give up and take a much needed rest. And so in the summer of 1865

he closed his

Portland and retired to his boyhood s

office in

home

in

Belfast.

But the end came

swiftly.

He

failed a

little

each day, and at

last

acknowledged that the task was beyond him. When his wife begged him
to have a doctor, he consented, did everything the doctor told him to do,
but only, as he put it, because he hoped thereby to "comfort his family".
He never thought that the doctor could help him, but calmly waited for
the end.

"I

do not dread the

at his bedside during his

he said to his son George, who was

more than if I were going on a
"any

change,"

kst hours,

trip to Philadelphia."

He died

on the morning of January

appeared in the Lynn Advertiser a little

"On the Death of P. P.
Quimby,

16, 1866.

poem

Who

A few days later there

written by

Healed with

Mary Patterson,
the

Truth that

not great poetry, but the sincerity of

almost within the light of the golden circle.

Christ

It is
Taught".

brings

it

Can we

its

sorrow

power that gave us life?

wisdom of its way?
Then ask me not amid this mortal strife
Shall

forget the

we

forget the

This keenest pang of animated clay

less ....

To mourn him

And so her friend was gone. His "kindness and humanity", which she
was to remember and acknowledge all her life, Mary Patterson could
enjoy no longer. His "influence" and "power" and "Omnipresence" had
passed from her life.
In her book Retrospection
curtain for a

moment

and

Introspection Mrs. Eddy raises the

on the bitterness of these years. The trend of

128

human

life",

she writes,

too eventful to leave

"was

me undisturbed in the

be a real and abiding rest All things

must
to
the
earthly
ultimately yield
irony of fate, or else be merged into
*1
the one infinite Love.
illusion that this so-called life could

And then she goes on to tell how that as these

sterner;

how that, up

lessons

became dearer

to then, the clouds that surrounded her

they grew
had always seemed to have a silver lining, but that now they were not even
with light". "The world was dark. The oncoming hours were
"fringed
indicated

by no

floral dial.

The

senses could not prophesy sunrise or

starlight."

So
more

it

was, she says,

spiritual

when

existence".

the

And

moment

arrived

"of

the heart s bridal to

then, looking back on

it all

through the

perspective of the years, she could add simply : When the door opened,
I was waiting and watching; and, lo, the bridegroom came!"*
<r

*
1

Retrospection
Ibid., p. 23.

129

and

lutrosptctitm, p. 23.

13

The Turning Point

IN THE

LYNN

appeared
"Mrs.

Reporter of Saturday morning, February 3rd, 1866, there

this paragraph.

Mary Patterson of Swampscott

fell

upon the

ice

near the corner

of Market and Oxford Streets on Thursday evening and was severely

into the
injured. She was taken up in an insensible condition and carried
residence of S.

M.

during the night. Dr. Gushing

internal

and of a

who was

called,

severe nature, inducing spasms

She was removed to her home

in a very critical

was kindly cared for

found her injuries to be

Bubier, Esq. nearby, where she

in

and

internal suffering.

Swampscott yesterday afternoon, though

condition."

There can be no doubt that Mary Patterson was badly hurt. Dr. Alvin
Gushing, then one of the leading physicians in Lynn, when called

M.

upon to testify some forty years

time that

when he reached

later,

declared from his notes taken at the

the Bubiers house he found Mrs. Patterson

unconscious, semi-hysterical and complaining by word and

action of severe pain in the back of her head and neck". He attended her
"partially

through the night, and next morning against his better judgement but in
response to Mrs. Patterson s earnest pleas, he arranged for her to be taken
1

A suburb

of

"Lynn.

130

"As soon as I could", the account concludes,

procured a long
from
and
two
men
a
robes
and
with
blankets,
nearby stable. . .
sleigh
placed her in the sleigh and carried her to her home in Swampscott."

home.

"I

What Mary

Patterson caEed

home

at that time

was a

We

two-room

little

apartment which she and her husband had rented some time previously
in the home of Mr. A. C. Newhall at 23 Paradise Court, Swampscott.

The apartment was on

there

the second floor,

was a welcome view over the

and from the bedroom window

tree tops

towards the

sea.

To this bed

room Mary was carried.

Daniel was away, but Mary s active association with the Good Tem
plars had won her many friends, and two of these friends, a Mrs. Carrie
Miller and a Mrs. Mary Wheeler, came to her aid and took turns in
watching by her bedside. They watched with her through Friday and
Saturday. She apparently rallied in some measure and regained conscious
ness, but

Sunday morning found her

still

practically helpless

condition generally which evidently caused those around her

and

in a

much mis

giving. Doctor Gushing came and went, and then Mary asked for her
Bible and that she might be left alone. We have no account of what fol

lowed except that which she has given us. Writing many years afterwards
in an article entitled "One Cause and Effect", she says, referring to this
incident:

"I

called for

my Bible and

opened

it

at Matt. IX.2.

As I

read,

the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the result was that I rose,
dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before
enjoyed,"

This was the third time in her

similar experience, once at

life

that

Mary had

North Groton when

after

passed through a

weeks and months

of invalidism she one day surprised old Father Merrill on his way to visit
her by running down the garden path with arms outstretched to meet

him; once in Portland when Doctor Quimby told her she could be made
and would be made well; and now in Swampscott as she read the

well

account of Jesus healing the man sick of the palsy.

Neither in North Groton nor in Portland had she been able to hold
1

Miscellaneous Writings, p. 24.

131

for long the

new ground

she

road from North Groton to

had won. As she drove down the mountain

Rumney with her sister Abigail, she was a

wretchedly sick woman, and within a few weeks of her healing in Portland
she was writing to Quimby begging him to come to her and "remove this
pain".

It

not surprising, therefore, to find that the question whether this

healing would not result as did the other two was the fear now that

is

latest

most sorely

tried her faith.

She was surrounded by doubt.

"My

friends

were frightened", she has written in her Miscellaneous Writings,

dear old lady asked me,
beholding me restored to health.

that

you

are restored to us?

Has

How

Christ

come again on

earth?

"at

is it

"

Mary

answered bravely enough, "Christ never left. Christ is Truth, and Truth
1
is
always here." But then she goes on to tell how another person, "more
material",

met her and how she shuddered

at her approach.

And so within a few days she is writing to Julius Dresser and begging
him

to

come

to her aid.

earliest students, the

dead. Julius Dresser was one of his

in fact whose healing had finally decided Mary

Quimby

man

is

aE cost; he could surely help her if he would. She

him from Lynn, under date of February 15, 1866, and after
telling him how constantly she is wishing he would step forward into the
place vacated by Doctor Quimby and how confident she is that he is more
she continues
capable of occupying his place "than any other I know
"Two weeks
ago I fell on the side walk, and struck my back on the ice,
and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapors
to

go

to Portland at

writes to

of",

from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor &c, but to find myself the help
less cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby. The physician
attending said
I

had taken the

bed alone and

last step I ever should,

that nervous heat,

affection

She
1

is

from

but in two days I got out of my

am frightened, and out of

will walk; but yet I confess I

are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal

which I have suffered so long and hopelessly."*

my friends

evidently very

much

afraid,

and

as so often happens, the

more

Ibid., p. 180.
McClurff s Magazine, vol. xxviii, p. 510.

132

she wrote about

the worse her fear became until her cry for help

drowning man

that of a
"...

it

is

like

Can t you help me?

I believe

you

can. I write this with this feel

in my condition if they had not placed

ing : I think I could help another
I have not done, and yet I am slowly
This
their intelligence in matter.
will undertake for me if I can get to
t
write me if
failing.

Won

you

you

OJ? 1

your
Julius Dresser, ktely married,

was at that time engaged

in newspaper

work in Portland and had apparently given up ail thought if he ever

had any of actively pursuing Quimby s teaching. He replied to Mary s
but made it quite clear
appeal for help with a few well-chosen platitudes,
for herself than he
more
to her that she could, in his opinion, do much
could do for her, which was probably true.

As

to

Mary s

suggestion that he

come forward

as

Doctor Quimby s

He

expresses
successor, Julius Dresser is quite emphatic in his dissent.
himself well, but it is difficult to avoid the thought that the cautious

nature of his approach, combined with the character of his comment, may
have had a profound impression upon Mary and unwittingly opened the

way towards her own future. Whatever may have been her concept of the
teaching of

Quimby at that time, it is certain from all subsequent develop

ments that she was continuing steadily that process of interpreting it in

her own way and still unquestioningly calling it his, which she had begun
almost at their
took the

meeting. If a homely illustration may be forgiven, she

shoes, and within a very short time she had soled them

first

Quimby
own fashioning, and not long afterwards she had remade

with soles of her

the uppers.

At this period, however, her whole thought was to find some means for
on Quimby s work. She had not yet in all probability had the
faintest glimpse of the fact that the work she was destined to carry on
would not be Quimby s. Julius Dresser s letter on the subject could hardly
carrying

fail

to

"As

make her think

Ibid., p. 511.

133

to turning doctor myself,

Julius wrote,

"and

undertaking to

fill

and carry on his work, it is not to be thought of for a

do a strong man s work? Nor would I if I could.
Dr. Quimby gave himself away to his patients. To be sure he did a great
work, but what will it avail in fifty years from now, if his theory does not
Dr. Quimby
minute.

s place

Can an

infant

come out, and if he and his theories pass among the things that were to be
forgotten? He did work some changes in the minds of the people, which
will grow with the development and progress in the world. He helped to
make them progress. They will progress faster for his having lived and
done

his work.

exists.

So with

Jesus.

He had an effect that was lasting and still

He did not succeed nor has Dr. Quimby succeeded in establishing

The true way to establish it is, as I look at it,

and by a paper and make that the means rather more than the
curing, to introduce the truth. To be sure faith -without works is dead,
but Dr. Quimby s work killed him, whereas if he had spared himself from
the science he aimed to do.

to lecture

curing,
theory,

and given himself partly and as considerately, to getting out his

he would then have at least come nearer success in this great aim
1

than he did."

Whether Julius Dresser s

letter really

clear about this time that

had anything

to

do with it,

it

was

Mary
began to feel that the task of carrying
on and developing further the work of mental and spiritual healing might
devolve upon her. To turn away from any labour because of its difficulty
first

or the hardship it involved was something quite foreign to her nature and
to every instinct of her heritage. The Bakers always had been faithful alike

and their failings. It was up to her to succeed where

If teaching and writing were demanded as well as
had
failed.
Quimby
healing, she would do all three. Certainly her future shows that at some
to their virtues

time or other she reached some such decision.

In her book Science and Health Mrs. Eddy puts the matter simply
enough. Dating, as she always did, her discovery of Christian Science
from this experience in Lynn, she writes that for three years thereafter,
she lived a secluded

so as to give herself entirely to the

finding of a

life,

positive rule of practice.

The quest,

Julius Dresser to Mrs. Patterson,

March

she says,

"was

sweet, calm,

and buoy-

2, 1866.

134

ant with

Conceding the basis of

hope."

"all

harmonious Mind-action

God, and

that cures were produced in primitive Christian healing

of it all.
by holy, uplifting faith," she felt driven to establish the Science
She declares she did achieve "absolute conclusions through divine revela
to be

and

tion, reason,

Her

statement that the

must in

hope"

demonstration."

itself

"search

was sweet, calm and buoyant with

be accounted a tribute to the efficacy of her

faith, for

hard to imagine three years into which more harassment could be

crowded. Quite literally she often had nowhere to lay her head, and much

it is

of the time endured a poverty on the borderline of destitution.

for
History does not tell whether she ever renewed her plea to Dresser
help.

Indeed

herself, she

would seem

it

clear that,

thrown back

somehow met the demand. Within a few

at last entirely

weeks, she

is

on

writing

Lynn Reporter on the amenities of Swampscott in

Court in particular. Mr. Newhall wants to sell
Paradise
of
23
and
general
his house and Mary is doing her best to help him.
But before the article appeared in print, Mary had set out on her three
an

article for the

on the scene and the

years of wandering. Daniel had somehow reappeared
Mr.
Russell
at the corner
a
in
a
owned
house
two took rooms in Lynn,
by
of Pearl and

High

with Patterson.

Streets. It

was Mary

s last effort

to

make her home

He finally deserted her here and, although for some years

he made her a small allowance of two hundred dollars per annum, paid in
after their separation in Lynn he more or less com
irregular instalments,
her
pletely passed out of

life.

Seven years

him, and some twenty years later still,

later she secured

after

a divorce from

wandering from place to place,

he found his way back to Saco,

sinking each time a little lower in the scale,
Maine, where he was born. There, for a few years longer, he lived the life
of a hermit.

When Mrs.

Eddy, then a wealthy woman, heard from

his

brother, like a voice out of the past, that he was in sore need, she sent him
died in 1896 in the poor house,
money but she never saw him again.
his last resting pkce the potter s field.

He

To
1

Science

135

what

extent,

and Healtb t

if

p. 109.

at

all,

Mary

realized that the separation

was

final

when he left her in Lynn, it is impossible to say, but whatever her feelings,
her actions from now on are the actions of an independent woman with
a single purpose.

At

first

die Russells

about in

Mary s

teaching

when

Russell.
gladly, especially Mrs.
was
to
come
as
but, by degrees,

had received her

She thought her a wonderful woman,

the strangeness of her

experience so often in the future,
it became apparent that
curiosity had been satisfied and

real

demands were to be made on

first

a mild resentment, but,

life

and conduct

began to arouse at

later, positive offence.

Moreover, Mr. Russell s father was a retired Baptist minister with very
decided views, and it was not long before Mary realized that she would
have to move again.
She took a room in a boarding house on Sumner Street kept by a
Mr. and Mrs. George D. Clark, and it is here that a clearer view of

Mary Patterson is

to be

had than has been

possible for

some

time.

Years

Jr., who was then a young man, wrote his

Mrs. Patterson, which are full of welcome detail, even to
providing a diagram showing where each of the guests sat at table. As to
Mary Patterson s appearance, she was now forty-five, but George Clark

afterwards, George Clark,

recollections of

her as
beautiful woman with the complexion of a young girl".
remembers that she usually wore black, but "occasionally violet or
pale rose in some arrangement of her dress". He remembers especially

recalls

"a

He

"a

dove coloured gown trimmed with black velvet that she wore in the
summer". But what he remembers best about her is her
way of talking

and a little gesture she had with her right hand as though she were

"giving

a thought from her heart". Describing her fellow-guests, he says: "We

were rather a mixed household and were fourteen at table. There were

a salesman or two, and a man

who has since become a well-known bootmaker. . . , The wives of several
several shoe operatives

of the

men were

lively,

often

from the

factories,

also guests at the table,

and

conversation was usually

He also adds that "everyone liked

theological."

her".

But Mary tad among her friends at Lynn at that time quite a number
of people more in her own circle, whom she knew
or
through her
family

136

through her association with the Good Templars. There were the Phil
the Clarks on Buffum Street;
lipses, a Quaker family, who lived near
married daughter Susan, Mrs. George Oliver, who lived close by;
and Mr. and Mrs. Winslow, people of considerable means, who had a
beautiful house on Ocean Street. Both the Phillipses and the Olivers were
their

well off,

Thomas Phillips and George Oliver being prominent men in the

War had made Lynn famous through

shoe business, for which the Civil

out the country.

It was in these three families during the summer of 1866 that Mary
Patterson first apparently demonstrated to her own satisfaction her ability
"heal the sick"
for so she always thereafter spoke of it. During the
time she was boarding at the Clarks, the Phillipses were her great resort.
Mr. and Mrs. Phillips made her welcome at any time, and she came to

to

call

them Uncle

Thomas"

and

"Aunt

Hannah".

She was

particularly

Phillips, who somehow reminded her of her own mother,

and as if to make the recoEection of her early childhood s home complete,

devoted to Mrs.

was a Grandmother

a devout old Quaker well over ninety,

Grandmother Baker, was Mary. They had
long talks together, especially about healing, and Mr. Phillips would
refer to them jokingly as
two saints". It was the healing of Dorr

there

whose name,

Phillips,

too, like that of

"the

Phillips, the Phillipses youngest son, a lad of about fifteen, that Mary
Patterson seems to have regarded as her first definite
She had had
"case".

instances of healing, of course, before that

dear-cut case of Miss Jarvis at

Mary s

there

was the apparently

Warren

but there seems to have been, in

mind, some doubt as to whether such healings might not be, in

some way, due to the "master influence" of Quimby.

have healed her
and you have saved me," she wrote to him from Warren.
But now Quimby was gone, and if she was to be saved from the dire
"I

effects of healing

anyone, she would have to save herself. It

is possible,

of

as she did ultimately, com

course, that she was already freeing herself
this
doctrine" of
from
"penalty
pletely
Quimby s method, but, however

boy Dorr Phillips presented a clear objective.

There could be no question here of
or imagination. The lad

that might be, the school

"nerves"

137

was suffering from a badly infected finger, was in great pain, and had been
for several days. There was apparently little that could be done to afford

him immediate relief. Mary asked the boy if she might help him and Dorr
heard Mrs. Patterson talk; and,
readily agreed. He had, no doubt, often
mixed up with his eagerness to get better, was surely a tremendous boylike curiosity to see if this strange thing about which he had heard so

much would work. Mary seems to have had a good idea of the "psychol
involved. She made a bargain with Dorr, and put him on his
ogy"

He

again or
let anyone else look at it, until she told him he might, and he was to be a
man and try not to bother about it any more.

honour to keep

his side of

it.

was not to look at

his finger

That evening Dorr went over to his sister Mrs. Oliver s house to stay
the night. His finger had not pained him all day, but when Susan Oliver
wanted to see it, he firmly refused. He told his sister of his promise and
how he was determined to keep it. When he came down to breakfast next
morning, he had evidently forgotten all about

was

off,

and when

his sister

drew

his trouble, for the

his attention to the fact

bandage
and they both

looked at the finger, they found it was perfectly well. Years afterwards,
Susan Oliver became a Christian Scientist, and eventually made her
testimony as to the details of this case.
After this, other instances of healing followed quickly.
young man
the
Olivers
was
healed
almost
with
from Boston who was staying
instantly

of a fever which

had reached the point of delirium, and Mrs. Winslow,

in an invalid chair for sixteen years, was so

who had been going about

walk unaided around her garden and even

venture as far as the beach. So runs the testimony.
far cured as to be able to

The
ment

effect of all this

as

it

was

had done in the

interesting.

best described as a sense of uneasiness.

derful,

While

case of Abigail,

it

it

did not arouse resent

did arouse what

is

perhaps

The Winslows thought it was won

but begged

further.

So long

Mary not to talk about it or attempt to go into it

The attitude of the Phillipses and the Olivers was much the same.
as

it

talk about

it,

was

all just

but when

an

it

interesting phenomenon, they were glad to

was put before them, as Mary was evidently
4

138

which might
beginning to do, as a new explanation of life and religion
their
accustomed
effects
have disturbing
convictions, they very defi
upon

began to draw away from it.

now, such a course was impossible. She did not break with
her friends, but she began to look in other directions for an audience. She
nitely

To Mary,

mixed assembly at the Clark boarding house.

Among the boarders interested in hearing Mrs. Patterson and taking part
in the arguments on Spiritualism and other kindred subjects, which pro

found

it

in the strangely

vided a nightly feature at the dinner table and afterwards, was one Hiram

Hiram Crafts was an expert heel finisher whose

in Stoughton, Massachusetts, a small town some thirty miles
south-west of Boston, and having come to Lynn for the winter to do some

S. Crafts and his wife.

home was

work

special

in one of the shoe factories, he

had found

his

way

to the

Clark boarding house. His place was next to Mary s at the dinner
and although an enthusiastic Spiritualist he began from the first to
eagerly to

what Mary Patterson had

to say.

He had,

table,
listen

of course, heard of

Quimby, and it was still as an exponent of Quimby s teaching that Mary

was seeking to make herself heard.
And so from taking part in the arguments at the dinner table young
Crafts sought more detailed knowledge, and after dinner each night he
and Mary would sit together talking for long hours. Mary evidently saw
saw in him, an apt pupil, one who would at last go
and she was unsparing in her efforts to help him. She

in him, or thought she

all

the

way with her,

not only talked to him for hours each day, but she began about this time
to fashion from the mass of writing she had done during her association
with

Quimby some kind

manuscript or a copy of
instruction

of systematized exposition of his teaching. This

it she handed in instalments to Crafts for his

and guidance, thus beginning a

practice which she seems to

have followed generously for years, with ultimately

bitter results to

herself.

Writing of these early manuscripts years afterwards in the preface to

her book Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says that they "show her com
parative ignorance of the stupendous Life-problem

139

up

to that time,

and

the degrees by which she came at

length to its solution". She values them,
she says,
a parent may treasure the memorials of a child s growth, and
1
she would not have them
The trouble was, however, that the
changed".
"as

student not unnaturally took these

manuscripts as the final word, and
off on his own to teach and
preach a doctrine which his teacher was

went

leaving rapidly behind. It took Mary Patterson many years to free herself
from the essentials of Quimby s teaching, and every manuscript

entirely

of her own which seemed to

perpetuate them came up in later years to
cause bitter trouble for herself or some of her followers. But that is once

again to anticipate the record.

For the time being all was well, and when Hiram Crafts left Lynn
early in 1867 it was with the intention of giving up his work in the shoe

and devoting himself to the further study of what he had learned

from Mrs. Patterson and to the healing work which it entailed. He felt,
trade

however, that he was still in need of instruction, and he and his wife asked
Mary to come to Stoughton also and make her home with them.

Mary agreed. Many years afterwards, Hiram Crafts gave the details
of the agreement reached between them. Mrs. Patterson was to have a
room and board free in return for instructing Mr.

Crafts, and Mrs. Crafts

work was to do the housekeeping for the three. Mrs.
Crafts was apparently as earnest as her husband in her efforts to under
stand
new faith", and after spending the remainder of the winter in

as her share of the

"the

family moved to Taunton, another small town a few miles

from Stoughton. There they took a house. Mrs. Patterson furnished her
bedroom and the front parlour with her own things, and the Crafts cared

study the

little

for the rest of the house

Crafts took an
days,

office,

and the garden. Most important of all, Hiram

and having, with the gracious simplicity of those

endowed himself with

on the door

as Dr.

Hiram

the proper designation, announced himself

At the same time he inserted an

S. Crafts.

advertisement in the local newspaper. It runs :

To
Dr.
1

Science

and Health,

the Sick

H.S.

Crafts

Preface.

140

Would say unhesitatingly, I can cure you, and I liave never failed to
cure Consumption, Catarrh, Scrofula, Dyspepsia and Rheumatism with
many other forms of disease and weakness, in which I am especially
successful. If

your

you give me a

fair trial

and

are not helped, I will refund

money."

Viewed

in the light of today, such an advertisement makes strange

reading, but announcements of the kind, even by regular practitioners,

were then quite common. Moreover, Hiram seems to have been success
to the extent that one grateful patient allowed her name and
address, with a description of her cure, to appear in a later issue of Hiram
ful, at least

announcement. In a small place like Taunton, such testimony

of
could,
course, have been easily verified.
And so all was well. Mary Patterson was absorbed in her writing, and

Crafts

it

begins to be a matter of

comment among those who come

in contact

with her at this time that she always carries with her a heavy roll of
papers, steadily growing in bulk, which somehow, they gather, she regards
as her most treasured possession.

141

14

Sanborntoti Revisited
an*

in Lynn, Abigail made

one last effort to solve the problem which her sister presented and to solve
it in the
way she desired. She wrote Mary a letter in which she promised

EARLY IN 1866, when Patterson deserted Mary

do anything and everything for her on one condition, namely, that she
should give up her "queer ideas", and return to the orthodox religious

to

views of her family.

Abigail was a typical

was dreaded so much

New

Englander of her period, wherein nothing

and queerness was, of course,

"queerness",
of
the
on
universal
basis
numbers.
appraised
Spiritualism at that time had
to
be
It
too
had
queer.
long ceased
many adherents. In any event, it
claimed to be no more than an adjunct to orthodox faith, and some of the
*
people quite unfearfully admitted an interest in it. If Mary had
as

"best

professed a devotion to Spiritualism, the probabilities are that Abgail, far

from being embarrassed by it, would have

felt nothing but approval, even

she
follow
could
not
with
her.
But this strange new teaching
though
along
to which her sister was devoting herself so earnestly, with its outlandish
daims of spiritual healing, moral regeneration and what not, was
"queer"

142

in the fullest sense of the word.

No wonder people like the Phillipses and

and the Winslows of Lynn had been trying to dissuade Mary

from having anything to do with it.
That this, or something very like it, was Abigail s line of reasoning is
the Olivers

clear

from her

letter, in

which she

next door, in which she can

live

a house right
unmolested and pursue her

offers to build her sister

her

own life

offer.
writing undisturbed. But there is a string attached to this tempting
ideas
these
that
"There is
one
I
of
ask
you, Mary,
you give up
only
thing
which have lately occupied you, that you attend our church and give over

your theory of divine healing."

In all the years that Mary had been suffering from sickness* and want
and loneliness, Abigail had never offered to do so much. True, she had
helped her again and again, but her aid was always characterized by a
sound New England caution, which is quite absent from this offer.

hard to say to what extent

constituted any temptation to Mary.

Her reply to Abigail s letter has not been preserved, but the facts speak
sufficiently for themselves. Mary did not accept the offer, and shortly
It

is

afterwards, as has been seen, left

it

Lynn to

join the Crafts at Stoughton.

But Mary Patterson loved Sanbornton. Like Bow and Concord, it was
New Hampshire, and all her long life, the hills and valleys of

essential

her native

state, its

ruggedness and grandeur, had place in her heart which

only became more simple and more secure as the years went by. And so in
the summer of 1867, when everything seemed to be moving well with her

new home

at Taunton, with Hiram Crafts well

and apparently on the way to success, Mary s
thoughts turned towards Sanbornton. She had not been there since her
brief visit in 1861 when she stopped with Abigail for a few days on her
way from the misery of Rumney to the still greater misery of Doctor

and the Crafts

in their

established in his office

Sanatorium at Hill, and then she was too ill to care much about
anything. But now her health was better from now on sickness enters

Vail

and less into the record of her life and she is eager to see
and
her friends and family once again. So much may perhaps
Sanbornton
steadily less

be justly inferred from the simple course of things, but in any event, the
143

August of 1867 found her in Sanbornton staying with her sister Martha.
Time had wrought many changes. Martha, it will be remembered, had
married Luther Pillsbury, a young lawyer of Concord, and now Luther
was dead and Martha had come back to Sanbornton with her
daughter

make her home there. Mark Baker had been

a
or
in
the
and
more,
gone year
big house off the main street, which Mark
had built for himself next to the Tiltons,
Mary s brother George the
Ellen, a girl of twenty-one, to

much

loved

"Sullivan"

of her earliest letters

lay dying.

was in many ways a sad home-coming.

George, who had long man
a
branch
of
the
Tilton Mills at Baltimore, had been
aged
struggling
It

against failing sight for several years. It preyed

and broken in mind and

upon him

sadly, until at

body, he returned to

last, totally blind,

home at Sanbornton, to die.

Next door was Abigail, now

far

his old

and away the first lady of the first

had prospered greatly, and Abi

family in Sanbornton. Hamilton Tilton

gail

was more and more developing that remarkable

ability,

which,

on her

husband s death some ten years kter, enabled her to take entire
charge of
his business and build
a
fortune
which
at
the
time
of
her
death
was one
up
of the most considerable in the state.

The local

records

show that in 1882, when Abigail took over the busi

ness, the mill property

mile

were
five

down

embraced seventy-five

the river and controlled

"diirty-two

looms and 1700

"an

acres,

extended a third of a

immense water

spindles";

hands, and had a monthly product

power".

There

the mill employed

seventy-

"in

tweeds and

meltons"

of

30,000 yards.
Abigail was a great lady, and she was so in much more than a merely
She was so often tight in business that she had come to

ironic sense.

expect as a matter of course that obedience which real ability so often

Her mistake was the common one of expecting a similar obedi

secures.

ence in other

fields.

irritated her,

and

Mary s determination to

think for herself had

always
her ktest exhibition of free
thinking, seemed to
Abigail the last straw. As Mrs. Eddy put it many years afterwards in an
article
replying to one of her critics, "My oldest sister dearly loved me,
this,

144

but I wounded her pride when I adopted Christian Science, and to a

1

Baker that was a sorry offence."

There is no record of Mary s meeting with Abigail on this occasion, but
from a pathetic little poem found among her papers and written about

might reasonably be inferred that she saw Abigail and saw

her often, that Abigail strove with a high hand to have her way, and,
when she failed, determined that the breach between them should be final
time

this

it

and told Mary so.

But before the final break took place, Mary had done other things to
cause Abigail offence. She had done the worst thing she could do, she
had put her queer ideas into practice almost in Abigail s
perhaps most unforgivable of all, had been successful.
It

her

presence, and,

was towards the end of Mary s stay that it happened. Ellen Pillsbury,
Martha s daughter, developed an abscess which failed to yield

sister

to ordinary methods of treatment, until the girl became seriously EL Mary

this point the whole family was as
was eager to help, but hesitated.

On

one against her. There

is

some evidence that she had

tried to induce

George to allow her to help him, but had been rebuffed. Ellen, however,
was not so prejudiced Mary was to find this true of young people
asked
frequently in the future and when her aunt with the queer views
the girl if she might help her, she readily assented.
Mary appears to have gone into her niece s room just before the family
.

sat down to supper, for it was while they were still sitting around the table
that the door opened and she and Ellen entered together. There was
silence for a moment as the little company looked from one to another in

And then before anyone could speak, Ellen told them calmly
was quite well and wanted to sit down and have supper with
them. There was instant protest from everyone present. To them it was
the most dangerous bravado. But Ellen was determined, and in an atmos

amazement.
that she

phere which changed kaleidoscopically from resentment to acquiescence

and thence to sullen surrender, she made a good supper, using her hand
as before, with

recovered.
*

Miscellany, p. 313.

145

no

trace of her trouble.

Next day found

her completely

As subsequent

from being impressed by this exhibi

did
not
understand, the family was more outraged
power they
than ever. Ellen, however, was for the time being completely won over,
and when Mary, realizing that no spark of welcome remained for her any
events proved, far

tion of a

where, determined to return to Taunton, Ellen insisted on going with her.

And so they set out together. There is no picture of the leave-taking
of Mary with her family as she left Sanbornton for the last time. It is,
however, a fact that friendly relations were never restored, and that not
even letters ever again passed between her and her sisters.
loved Mary
best of all my sisters and brothers," Abigail was wont to say, "but it is
"I

all

gone now."
must have been with strangely mixed feelings that Mary made the
long journey over a hundred miles by stage and train from Sanborn
It

ton to Taunton. She was estranged finally from her family, and she had
parted from Abigail in such a way as to make it certain that she could
never ask her aid or counsel again. But there were compensations. Her
niece Ellen was apparently devoted to her, and Mary can hardly have
failed to hope that this love might prove a healing link between her and
her people. Then, too, she was going back to her work at Taunton. Hiram
Crafts, as far as she knew, was still doing well, and no one could tell what

Ellen might not do.

This dream of better things was destined to be rudely shattered soon

after she got back to Taunton. For instead of the serenity and promise
which was

dead

all

around when she

set against the

left,

she came back to find Mrs. Crafts

renewed monopolizing of her husband by

this

Mrs.

all-absorbing teaching, and Hiram Crafts a man more than

half inclined to see the matter through his wife s
eyes and agree that he

Patterson

could get on as well without Mrs. Patterson as with her, perhaps better.
all, for within a few days, in a sudden revulsion of

Neither was that

feeling, Ellen

rounded upon

her, insisting that her

Abigail were right about her and her queer ideas and
and that she was going back to Sanbornton.

mother and Aunt

common associates

And so Ellen went. A few days afterwards on August

13, 1867,

Mary
146

sat

down and wrote

the

little

poem

already alluded to which, some forty

was found among her papers. .It is

years later,

called

"Alone".

Fve sought the home my childhood gave

A moment s shelter from the wave

Then

those

when

Sister drove

whose pain I bore

>

me from

weary heart,

So wronged
There are

sick,

the door,

O tired sigh,

to live

alone

Fd die.

The first three are occupied with these

thoughts of her aloneness and with frailty of all human ties. As always,
with Mary, it is not great poetry, but in the kst two stanzas, wherein she
rises to a sense of
joy in contemplating the compensations of the spiritual
vision, the

to

five stanzas in all.

woman

attains to those simple devotional heights

make her one of the most effective hymn-writers

To

which were

of her time.

mankind with word and deed

Thy life a great and noble creed.
bless

O glorious hope, my faith renew,

O mortal joys, adieu! adieu!
out once again in search of a resting place. Her writing occu
2
pied her time and thought more and more, and her first desire when she
left the Crafts at Taunton would
naturally be to find some place where

Mary

set

she could pursue her purpose in this direction in peace and quiet. But she
did not know where to turn, and so she went back to Lynn and sought the
advice of her old friends, the Winslows. It was the Winslows,

it will

be

remembered, who in spite of the fact that Mrs. Winslow, through Mary s
ministrations,
1

Published in

The

had been released from a wheel chair in which she had spent
Ladies*

Home

Journal, June, 1911.

A clear glimpse of her daily routine at this period Is afforded in the record of one Fred Ellis,
a master at a boy s school in Boston. He lived with his mother, Mary Ellis, at Elm Cottage,
Swarnpscott, and Mary Patterson apparently^ had found a refuge there for a few weeks between
leaving the Clarks and joining the Crafts in Stoughton. It was for Mary a brief interlude of
comparative jjeace, and Fred Ellis later recalled how Mrs, Patterson would spend the greater part
of each day in her room writing, and how, in the evening, she often would join him and his
mother downstairs and read them what she had written during the day. Quimby was at that time
uppermost in her thoughts, but Fred Ellis recalls significantly how she was developing his teaching
along her own lines.

147

had earnestly begged her not to pursue her

studies further, and, above all, not to talk about them to anyone. Mr.
Winslow was a retired Unitarian minister, and the position of Unitarianthe previous sixteen years,

of his fundamental
perhaps sufficient explanation
of
so
mysticism as he conceived
strongly
disquiet over anything savouring
s healings" to do. Unitarianism in America had recently gone
"Mary

ism at that time

is

few years pre

through deep waters in this direction, and it was only a
Unitarian
National
the
that
Conference, viewing with grave
viously
their
concern a wayward tendency in
body towards "German idealism,
rationalism

and mysticism", had adopted a definitely Christian platform,

its members were "disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ". The

affirming that

however, that a large minority had refused any such acknowledge

ment and had gone out and formed the "Free Religious Association",
fact,

could only render the orthodox Unitarian more distrustful than ever of
anything so unorthodox as spiritual healing.

The Winslows seem, however, to have been sincerely devoted to Mary,

and when she explained

to them, as she

must have done, that

all

she

wanted was quiet to think and write, they bethought them of a friend
they had in Amesbury, a little town some forty miles to the north near

New Hampshire

who might

take her in and give her what

she needed. Amesbury was an ideal place for the purpose. It was the home
of the poet Whittier, who was then at the height of his career, and while
the

border,

Whittier was a Quaker and a rebel in

many

respects, the

Winslows

evidently had no
And so Mary set out. It was late

doubt as to his fundamental orthodoxy.

fall, and it was evening when she

In
all
Amesbury.
probability she carried with her a letter of
introduction to Mrs. Mary Esther Carter, the friend of the Winslows

arrived in

already mentioned.
Carter, as

it

At any

rate, this

was her

the street to the

home

first

house of

call.

Mrs.

but advised her to go down

of a Mrs. Nathaniel Webster, who had a
large

turned out, could not take her

in,

house and was always glad to welcome strangers.

So Mary set out once more. It must have been quite dark, by this time,
but as she made her way down Merrimac Street towards the river, it

148

would not be long before the

lights

house could be seen through the

of Mrs. Webster s big three-storey

There could be no mistaking it

trees.

Mrs. Carter had told her that it comprised fifteen rooms at least and in
a moment or two Mary had passed through the gate in the picket fence,
under the two giant elms on each

side of the

porch and was knocking at

the big front door.

It was opened by Mrs. Nathaniel Webster herself, a large woman with
a broad kindly face, clearly justifying her reputation for hospitality, and
to her, in the dim light, Mary told her story. She must have been very
tired,

but she evidently wanted Mrs. Webster to know the

when

she had finished she added simply that she

facts,

and,

knew she had been fed

to come to her. Mother Webster had apparently no doubt about it, and
standing aside to let Mary enter, she exclaimed, "Glory to God! Come

right

149

in!"

was a queer
so she was generally known
was a Spiritualist of the type then called a "drawing medi

MOTHER WEBSTER

FOR

woman. She
um". She would
produce strange drawings which in turn she interpreted
into messages from the departed. Captain Nathaniel Webster, her
husband, was a retired sea captain, who held a good position in Man
chester as superintendent of a cotton mill and visited Amesbury only
about twice a month, coming up on a Sunday just for the day.
As a consequence, Mother Webster was left a good deal alone, and
partly to relieve the loneliness of her life, and partly out of the generosity
of her heart, opened her house to almost anyone in need, but especially
to

anyone interested

in Spiritualism or

what she would regard as kindred

subjects. When Mary told her, as she seems to have done the first evening,

that she

was

interested in something

"far

in advance of

Spiritualism",

Mother Webster.
vivid picture of the woman herself and of her strange household is
afforded in an account written for McClure s Magazine, some forty
that was

more than enough

years later,

for

by her granddaughter, a Mrs. Mary

Ellis Bartlett.

According
150

was apparently no limit to Mother Webster s charity.

the account runs,
"Invalids, cripples, and other unfortunate persons",
"were made welcome, and
my grandmother took care of them when they

to her, there

were ill and lodged and boarded them free of charge."

In such circumstances, the guests could hardly refuse to take part in the
which were evidently among Mother Webster s happiest
spiritistic seances
relaxations.

of the front

the rear
She had a room specially fitted up for the purpose
was
as
this
in
It
decorated
was
blue,
regarded as a
parlour".
"in

colour unusually pleasing to spirits. The room was furnished much as

other rooms, with good sturdy New England tables and chairs, but

Mother Webster always alluded to this equipment as "spiritual furni

which she
ture". Moreover, she had in the room a
"spiritual couch", upon
took her daytime naps and to which she even resorted occasionally at
night if she was restless, being convinced that she could sleep there when
she could not sleep anywhere else.
To complete the furnishings there was at the head of the table a large
arm chair which had belonged to Captain Webster s mother. It was

and Mother Webster always occupied

this chair at her seances or when she was engaged on her spirit drawing.
Above the "spiritual room" was a bedroom, a bright sunny room with a
alluded to as the

"spiritual chair",

river, and this room, much to her satisfaction as it must

Mother
Webster turned over to her new guest. Mary was used
have been,
to Spiritualism and to Spiritualists. Later in life she used to say that in
those days she found them more ready to listen to her than were most
in favour of what
people, and in many cases quick to abandon their views
she had to give them. And so Mother Webster s "spiritual room" and its
furniture" had no terrors for Mary. She was far too grateful
"spiritual
for Mrs. Webster s kindness, and it was not long before the two women

view over the

became close friends.

Mrs. Bartlett declares that Mrs. Patterson attended many of her grand
and it is more than likely that
"spiritual room",

mother s seances in the

she did. Spiritistic seances in those days were like silver in the days of
Solomon nothing accounted of. It is, however, significant that, as the

151

winter wears on,

it

Mary

is

found established in the

"spiritual

table"

using
with the

"spiritual room",

Mother Webster s "spiritual

strewn with her papers and books.

as her study, seated in

chair",

The

exact significance of this recorded fact may not be clear, but it

seems reasonable to suppose that in securing the use of the "spiritual

equipment for her study, Mary had at least persuaded

Mother Webster that the room could thus be used without impairing in
room"

with

any way
ested in

its

its

Mother Webster, moreover, was much inter

She seems to have grasped little of what it was
impressed her is shown by the fact that she dwelt in

spiritual value.

Mary

s writing.

about, but that

it

wonder to her granddaughter on how Mrs. Patterson,

writing

and

after she

had

the pages she had filled with

gather up
tear them up, because she could not make them read as she

written for hours,

all

"would

wished."

Of the
no

other guests in the house at the time Mary was there, there
record save in the case of two, a Mrs. Richardson and a young man

destined later

on to

figure prominently in her story

is

named Richard

Kennedy. Kennedy was a bright, energetic lad he was no more who,

left alone in the world, had at the age of eighteen established himself in

a little box business which already employed several

extra hands.

From the

first, he was tremendously interested in what Mrs. Patterson had to teach,

and was eager to learn as much as he could about it. The same was prob

ably true, in a measure, of

many

of the guests

who came and went. Mrs.

likely that some of them were

and
even
healed
for
at
the
turn of the year it began to
helped
by Mary,
be whispered about in the little town that in Mother Webster s house was
a woman who "worked miracles". Such stories would lose nothing in the

Bartlett does not

mention

it,

but

it

seems

and by the time the spring came round and Mary and Mother
Webster would be going for a walk in the evening along the river bank,
telling,

the curious

would sometimes walk

after

them

at a distance to see

any chance Mrs. Patterson would "walk on the water".

Mary shrank from such notoriety, and was apparently

if

by

beginning to

wonder whether she ought not to move again, when the matter was
152

suddenly settled for her in a way which must have

surely reached the depths of humiliation.

made her

feel that

she

had

It appears that almost from the first, when Captain Webster returned
home on his bi-monthly visits, he had objected to Mary s presence.
Whether he resented the assurance implied in her occupancy of the

or thought she had too

much influence over her, in any case, according to Mrs. Bartlett, he
insisted to his wife that Mrs. Patterson should not be allowed to remain.
"spiritual

room"

and

his wife s

"spiritual chair",

Mother Webster, however she had a will of her own indignantly

refused, and no more would probably have been heard of the matter if it
had not been for the arrival in the early summer of Mother Webster s
son-in-law, William Ellis, from New York.
William Ellis, to judge from his photograph, was a man of determina
tion. Even in moments of relaxation
the photographer has discovered
him seated at a desk clad in a flowered dressing gown and shod with
embroidered slippers his straight mouth flanked by side whiskers is firm
and set of purpose. His wife had died a few years previously, leaving him
with three young children, and it had been his custom to have the children
spend the summer in Amesbury with their grandparents. It was a satis
factory arrangement for him in every way, but he strongly objected to
Mother Webster s penchant for hospitality, and trading, no doubt, on her
desire to have her grandchildren with her through the

on the departure of
rate, as

all his

summer, he

insisted

mother-in-law s guests or such of them, at any

of, before the children arrived. His daughter,

he did not approve

Mrs. Bartlett (one of the children) has

,

left

a vigorous picture of her

ic

New

procedure. When it was time for us to leave

father always went to Amesbury in advance of
"my
the rest of us, in order to clear my grandmother s house of broken down
father s

York,"

method of

she writes,

we might have enough room in the

house and because he thought the atmosphere of so much sickness and

Spiritualists

and

Spiritualism

was unwholesome

One

Saturday

Amesbury on
153

sick persons, so that

his

for

young

children."

evening early in June, 1868,

annual

visitation.

William

Ellis arrived in

Mrs. Bartlett does not mention

his

Patterson

to

Mary
any of the other guests, but in regard
he was decisive from the first moment. She would have to go and at once.
Mother Webster emphatically refused and at first seems to have stood
but faced with the usual alternative and also, it would seem,
her
attitude towards

ground,
with the possibility of violence, at last tearfully consented to ask Mrs.
Patterson to go. It was just the kind of tyranny to arouse in Mary an

which had the whole Baker tradi

indignation and determination to resist
it. She took one look at Mother Webster s tear-stained face

tion behind

and another

at

Mother Webster

s son-in-law,

and then

quietly but firmly

refused to move.

She had, however, to deal with something cruder and more brutal than
had ever previously come into her experience. The day had been hot and
a storm had broken, one of those semi-tropical
sultry and towards evening
thunderstorms which sweep occasionally over New England at night in
down at times in unbelievable deluge,
high summer, with rain pouring
and the sullen roar of one crash of thunder rolling in on the echo of the

more impenetrable
Mr. Ellis was

each flash of lightning the while only rendering

the following darkness. Storm or no storm, however,
determined Mrs. Patterson should go.

last,

The rest of the story is perhaps best told in Mrs.

Bartlett s

own words

she says, "commanded Mrs. Patterson to leave, and when

she steadfastly refused to go, he had her trunk dragged from her room
and set it outside the door, insisted on her also going out the door, and
"My father",

when

she was outside he closed the door

at the time

and a heavy

rain

was

and locked

it.

... It was dark

falling."

a small
Very fortunately the front door of the house was protected by
and
sat
down
entrance porch, and, there, on the narrow stoop, Mary
waited, not knowing what to do or where to go.

and perhaps not altogether idle to speculate as to the thoughts

that passed through her mind as she sat there listening to the echoing
of the rain as it swept by. One thought
peals of thunder and the swirl
It is easy

almost surely would have been there, the recollection of Abigail s offer,
will build a house for you next to our own and settle an income

154

upon you ... we can be together very much, and you can pursue your
writing.

There

"

is

only one thing I ask of you,

Mary

Mary knew Abigail well enough to know that the offer was still open.
The harder the battle, the more frequent the apparent defeats, the more
would Abigail love to win in the end. But the one thing that Abigail asked
was the one thing that Mary would never give, and so if the thought ever

came

at

all, it

only came to be dismissed.

How long she waited there is not known, but, after a time, she heard
the door being unlocked, and, next moment, she saw Richard Kennedy
and Mrs. Richardson standing in the doorway. As the door was shut and

locked behind them, Mrs. Richardson told

decided that

if

Mary

that she

and Dick had

she (Mary) was to be turned out, they would go too, that

knew a kindly woman living

certainly take them in for the

she

arrangements to stay there

nearby, one Sarah Bagley,

who would

night, and possibly they could make

permanently. Dick would carry their baggage

and they might as well go at once.

After waiting no doubt for a lull in the storm, Mary and her friends
set out, and a few minutes later were drying themselves around the hos

over,

Sarah Bagley s kitchen, telling their story and finding a

full measure of that kindness and compassion which Mrs. Richardson had
pitable fire in

anticipated. One door had closed, but another had opened. Next day
Mrs. Richardson and Richard Kennedy seem to have gone elsewhere, but
Mary arranged to stay. Sarah Bagley had evidently heard all about her,
if

she did not

know

her personally, and the agreement reached between

them was that in addition to a small sum which Mary would pay for
board she should teach Miss Bagley what she could of the doctrine she
was evolving.
In Miss Bagley, Mary found a woman much more in her own tradition
than any she had associated with at

all intimately for

some

time.

A spin

of a well-known New England

was
man
of much the same type as
a
Squire Bagley,
family.
Pierce.
His
which
is one of the
or
Baker
journal,
Squire
literary
Squire
landmarks of New England, is a delightful haphazard mosaic of great:

ster living alone, she

Her father,

155

was the

last survivor

names, shrewd comment, humorous aphorisms, and household expenses.

The Bagleys had once been very well off, but the Civil War and changing
times had reduced the family fortune until Sarah, the sole survivor, was
left

with the old house on Merrimac Street and

little

besides.

She supple

mented that little by working as a dressmaker, and "managed" somehow.

Old Squire Bagley had been a Universalist and so was Sarah, but of
late years she, like

many

others,

had turned

open mind, however, and from the

stand the

new

first

to Spiritualism.

She had an

displayed an eagerness to under

teaching, which to the much-enduring

Mary

Patterson

must have been strangely refreshing. Richard Kennedy had secured a

room close by and would come in and join them in the evenings. He, too,
was eager to learn, and gradually as the days and weeks passed, a great
change came over Sarah Bagley. She had been a very lonely, stalemated

woman. She kept her head up in proper New England style, changed her
gown and tidied up for company every afternoon, and sat in the front
parlour on Sundays, but the glory of it all had departed, and the coming
of Mary Patterson into her life seems to have brought some of it back
again.

Georgine Milmine when collecting material for her

articles in

Mc-

who had known Mary

had come to be strongly opposed to her and
her teaching, but one and all they "loved to talk of her and were glad to
have known
As Miss Milmine sums it up, "There was something
Clure s Magazine interviewed a number of people

in those days.

Some

of them

her".

about her according to these people that continually excited and stimu
lated, and she gave people the feeling that a great deal was happening."

In a household
this

Sarah Bagley s, where nothing ever happened,

must indeed have been as a wind from the south.
like that of

To Mary it would

all

have an unaccustomed sweetness, for the small

which Sarah moved was very different to the strange

medley
which surrounded Mother Webster. Whittier was one of her closest
circle in

When Squire Bagley died, leaving Sarah and her sister little
the
old family house, Whittier was one of the first to come to
beyond
the rescue, and when Sarah in order to eke out their income
to
friends.

sought

156

all he could to help her and was one of her

committee men. Then, it was of Captain Valentine Bagley, Sarah s uncle,
that Whittier wrote his poem "The Captain s Well", which tells of how

teach school, Whittier did

the Captain being wrecked on the coast of Arabia and almost dying of
thirst, vowed a vow that if ever he got back to Amesbury he would dig a
well by the wayside so that the wayfaring man and the wayfaring beast
that passed by might always have the means to slake their thirst. The

Captain did return to Amesbury and digged his well by the wayside near
to where Sarah lived. And so the Bagley home was a home of gracious
tradition

and the

little

town

itself

a place of peace and quiet.

The belfry and steeple on meeting house hill,

The brook with its dam and the grey grist mill.

Mary always

retained a deep affection for Amesbury. It

is

not certain

met Whittier at this time, but she did meet him later, on a return
and
in circumstances which both must long have remembered.
visit,
Meanwhile, happy as conditions were, and busy as she was writing
and teaching, Mary was ever ready to make a move which promised wider
that she

opportunity and greater independence. After she had been with Miss
Bagley about six months, such an opportunity presented itself in the form
of an invitation from a friend in Stoughton, a Mrs. Sally Wentworth,
to visit her.

Mary had met Mrs. Wentworth when

she was living with the Crafts

at Stoughton. Mrs, Wentworth had brought her daughter Lucy, who was
suffering from tuberculosis, to Hiram Crafts to see if he could help her,

and as the

child quite definitely improved under his care, her mother

became very interested in what Mrs. Patterson was teaching, and eagerly
desired to learn more of it. She was herself a practical nurse, with strong

leanings towards Spiritualism, and her story affords an interesting view

of the quasi-magical healing methods which were so common in New

England in the years immediately following the Civil War. Mrs. Went
and combining forces as she did at
"gifted rubber",

worth was herself a

times with

157

"Old

Asa Holbrook", a

Spiritualist

and clairvoyant

"doctor"

and following, she

appears to have had a considerable reputation
s "method"
Patterson
Mrs.
of
that
a
knowledge
undoubtedly thought

who

would

still

And

so

own and Old Asa Holbrook s powers.

Mary came back to Stoughton. Her arrangement with Mrs.
further enhance her

Wentworth, as it was finally worked out, was that Mrs. Wentworth was
to pay three hundred dollars for a complete course of instruction, but
that this payment was to be received not in cash but in board and lodging
over a considerable time.
At first, the arrangement seems to have worked out very well for all
concerned.

fifteen

Lucy, now apparently fully restored to health,

Mary, as did her older brother Charles. They were

The daughter

became devoted

to

and seventeen

respectively,

and many years afterwards, in an

Lucy Wentworth described how eagerly the

two looked forward each day to the time when Mary would have finished
her writing for the day and would "unlock her door" she evidently had
loved her," Lucy
to keep it locked against them and let them in.

interview with Sibyl Wilbur,

"I

Wentworth declared in this interview, "because she made me love her.

She was beautiful and had a good influence over me. I used to be with
her every minute that she was not writing or otherwise engaged."
And then she went on to tell how they would read and talk together
and, perhaps most interesting of

all,

take

"long

walks in the

country".

Whatever it was that Mary was writing and thinking at that time, she was
out the problem of her own health. She was,
steadily working
evidently

moreover, working out or perhaps it would be more true to say, beginning

to be aware of another problem which was to present itself to her in many

forms repeatedly in the future, the problem of family relations in

connection with what she was trying to do. It was, of course, the age-old
of Martha and Mary. In every family with which she was brought

different

problem

problem inevitably presented itself the Russells

at Lynn, the Crafts at Taunton, the Websters at Amesbury, her own
at Sanbornton, and now the same thing was apparently to happen

in intimate contact, this

people
with the Wentworths.

Mary, however,

this time,

seems to have been dimly aware of what was

158

coming and to have done her best to prevent it. The devotion of Lucy
Wentworth was clearly the kind to arouse something very like resentment
with other members of the family. She would not tolerate the smallest
criticism of Mrs. Patterson, and when her eldest brother Horatio, who

Kate Clapp, much given to

had
mimicry, would, as they often did, speak jokingly of something they
heard of Mrs. Patterson s teaching or their mother s interpretation of it,

was married and

lived close by, or her cousin

Lucy would spring to the defence in such a way as to ensure a renewal

of die
on stiE more generous lines. It was probably for this
reason more than any other that Mary tried to restrain Lucy Wentworth s
devotion. That she was in a large measure successful is shown by the fact
that she remained with the Wentworths the better part of a year before
"attack"

the inevitable break took place.

The exact cause of the break
is

rapidly

moving

is

not quite

clear.

Mary s

life

into that atmosphere of bitter controversy

at this point

and clashing

opinion which was to surround her in ever widening range right through
to the end. Thenceforward, apparently, there could be no such thing as
neutrality and very little of moderation in the average estimate of men

and women regarding her. On the one side in this simple matter of record
Horatio Wentworth s lurid story of how Mrs. Patterson was finally
ejected from his father s house because, when his father was ill, she
retired to her room which was over Mr. Wentworth s and having locked
herself in deliberately hammered on the floor, keeping it up "with short
intermissions ... for a long time", in order to prevent the sick man from
sleeping. Then, as if this were not enough, he adds that when they finally
did get her out of the house, they found on entering her room the carpets

is

cut to pieces", and

on
Side by side with this shameful and shameless picture may be placed
that provided in Lucy Wentworth s account of the matter. It lacks the
vigour and resource of Horatio s narrative, but what it lacks in vigour,
"slashed
up through the
an obvious attempt to

middle",

"set

it

would seem to gain

in probability.

the family toward our guest. I

159

the feather bed

the house

"all

fire".

"A

she says, "grew up in

came about.
father

coolness",

don t know how it

My

thought she absorbed my mother too much and that she was weaning
away from them. ... I never missed anyone as I missed her."

And so Mary packed up her few things once more and moved on.

me
But

her years of wandering and obscurity were almost over. She had used,
to the uttermost, the days of small things. She had preached her gospel

who would listen. She had taught now a shoemaker, now a

seamstress, now a boy in a box factory; and everywhere she had gone, she
had been writing. The pile of papers,
up with a string", had grown
much the more a great deal
so
more
it
the
bulkier and bulkier, and
grew,
did she treasure it. As the sharp-tongued Catherine Clapp has left record,
called it her Bible". As a matter of fact, the manuscript which she
was now working on and it is still preserved was the beginning of a
to anyone

"tied

"she

monumental work to be
for the Bible-minded

thought she saw, in

called

Mary

"The

Bible

Baker must

and

now

its

Spiritual Meaning,"

reconcile

what she saw, or

Quimbyism with what she had always accepted as

eternally sacred.

160

16

Small Begintiias

WHEN MARY DECIDED to leave the Wentworths at Stoughton,her thoughts

Amesbury and Sarah Bagley. In the old Bagley
Sarah
with
as an eager student, she had known a peace and
homestead,
she had long been a stranger, and the two women
to
which
understanding
naturally turned to

had corresponded frequently while Mary was away. Sarah evidently wrote
that she was more interested than ever in Mary s teaching, and that she

and young Richard Kennedy spent much time in studying the manuscripts
left with them. None of the correspondence has been
but
it would seem more than
preserved,
likely that as Mary recounted to
Sarah the growing difficulties of her position in die Wentworth house

which

Mary had

hold, Sarah

would urge her

to return to

Amesbury, assuring her of a

warm welcome in her home.

At any rate, Mary did not hesitate. She went straight from Stoughton
Amesbury, arriving there in the early fall of 1869. To her it was some
thing more of a homecoming than she had known for many years. She had
to

been a welcome guest in many households through her long period of

wandering, but, in coming back to Sarah Bagley, she could feel that she
161

was not only welcomed but needed, that she had a real opportunity for
service and for furthering the great purpose, which, about this time, was
beginning to take definite shape in her thought.

For

it

would seem

Amesbury on

clear

second

from what follows that

it

was while she was at

Mary Patterson began definitely to

the
from
of
half
borderland
emerge
light, in which she had lived for so
long, into a mental realm where more confident advance was possible.
this

While she was

at the

visit that

Wentworths she had completed a manuscript which

Man, and had allowed Mrs. Wentworth to

she entitled

The

Science of

make a copy

of

This copy is

reveals

it.

two points of special

still

preserved, and, apart from

interest.

She

still

its

contents,

loyally attributes the teach

ing it presents to Quimby, and yet so unceasing is the development of

her own concept that she cannot even leave Mrs. Wentworth s manuscript

alone after she has copied

with her

it,

but must needs change

it

to bring

own changing thought. There is no

it

into line

character

mistaking Mary
handwriting as seen in the corrections and interlineations.
Writing of these days many years afterwards in her book Science and
s

istic

Health Mrs. Eddy

tells

tion to the author, she

hue of

how when

had

Christian Science was

to impart, while teaching

from her own

its

"a

fresh revela

grand

facts, the

and she had to do

this orally through the meagre channel afforded by
language and by her
2
the
circulated
students." And then, she adds
and
manuscript
among
spiritual ideas

spiritual condition,

point in question that as former beliefs were gradu

her
from
ally expelled
thought, the teaching became clearer, "until finally
the shadow of old errors was no longer cast upon divine Science".*
this illustrates the

comparison of this Wentworth manuscript with the Quimby

manuscripts, which were eventually published in 1921, shows that while

Any

the language is often much the same, there is

clearly here emerging that
fundamental doctrine of Christian Science which differentiates it from
all

other interpretations, namely, the unreality of matter from the stand-

The Board of Directors of The Mother Church state, in their letter to the author under date
of September 8, 1941, that they have this manuscript in Sally Wentworth s hand and that it
contains a dozen words in Mrs. Eddy s unmistakable and authenticated penmanship.
*

Science

and Health,

p. 460.

Ibid.

162

point of Spirit. This is a doctrine Quimby never affirmed and one that
Julius Dresser and others of his immediate followers always repudiated.
It is this
teaching

and more

and

involvements which must, of course, enter more

warp and weft of the story from now on. It will be

into the

its

found before long challenging thought in all directions and, whatever the
view of it may be,
transforming the lives and the outlook of many people.

The moment this demand, the unreality of matter and

consequently
the unreality of all matter s manifestations,
including disease and death,
is
rela
imported into the teaching of Quimby, thence onwards the
only

tion between the old

and new theories is the relation between the Ptolemaic

and

the Copernican theories of the universe.

Copernicus did not and, of
course, could not disregard the Ptolemaic literature of the heavens, but he

could render

it all

obsolete by the simple demonstration that the earth

moved around the sun and not the sun around the earth.
Quimby de
clared that mind was
than
certain
matter, and that,
stronger
strange

and devious methods,

this

through
could be practically demonstrated.

Mary Patterson in the manuscript she gave to Mrs. Wentworth is rapidly

reaching the point where she sees that Mind can overcome matter and all
materiality in the human consciousness, not because Mind is stronger
than matter and all materiality, but because Mind is the
only reality, and
matter and all
are
in
the
realms
of
illusion.
she often put
As
materiality
it

to

in effect later on,

"Matter,

like twice

two

is five, is

not, but seemeth

be."

All of which
digression

is

of course, to run ahead of the

record, but some such
to
render
perhaps necessary
intelligible the almost
is,

movements which

cyclonic

are to take place in the near future.

Meanwhile, Mary Patterson, like a passenger on board a boat crossing

the horizon as seen from the shore, is
quite unaware of anything out of
the ordinary happening. She comes back to Sarah
with her familiar
Bagley
bundle of papers now much bulkier than when she had
some two years before and gets down to work at once.

left

The fall and winter which followed seem to have been for
the few oases of
peace

163

and

tranquillity in her

long

life.

It

Amesbury

Mary one of
was die calm

before another storm, more tempestuous than any before, but while the
quiet lasted it must have been strangely welcome. Miss Bagley, like the

good New England spinster that she was, was essentially a home-maker.
She had a place for everything and everything was in its place. In this,
she and Mary were very profoundly in agreement. Years afterwards, in
the great house on Chestnut Hill, careful servants on cleaning days would
put thumb tacks in the carpets so that they might return each piece of
furniture to

its

exact position in Mrs.

Eddy s

study.

Then, Sarah Bagley had a new interest in life. In the evenings when
young Richard Kennedy came round and the three would sit and talk and
read together, Sarah no longer watched the clock so as to be ready to
move on her way upstairs the moment it pointed to a quarter of ten.
Already both she and Dick, as she always called him, had had some suc
cess in helping sick people,

and they were eager to learn more of the

means by which it could be done. Mary, too, was more sure of herself.
The one thing that had always troubled her about Quimby s healing, or

Quimby s attitude towards it, was his often expressed uncertainty

how it was done. From the first she was confident that if it was done

rather
as to

must be a discoverable way by which it was done. Quimby,

however, as has already been noted, was not so sure and was at times
was in him and might
inclined to believe that the
with

at all there

"power"

"perish"

him.

Every day was now affording

discovered

covered a

Quimby
way and

was done to

Mary

proof that even

if

she

had not

way of healing the sick, she had none the less dis
that she could pass on the knowledge as to how it

others.

So

the winter passed happily and profitably, and as the spring came
the
on,
question as to what should be the next move seems to have come
for
discussion
among the three. By this time, Richard Kennedy, who
up
relative of Miss Bagley by marriage, had moved over to the
and so eager and interested was he in his new studies that
house,
Bagley
to
a
it
be
his work
began
question with him whether he should not give

was a distant

up

of

making boxes and devote himself instead to the work of

healing.

He
164

was only twenty-one, but

in those

days everyone started out on their life

work earlier than they do today, and to be a full-fledged doctor in practice

at twenty-one was not at all

uncommon.

Mary Patterson seems to have been rightly doubtful about the move,
but as spring merged into summer the idea took more definite shape until
at last it was decided that Mary and Dick should move to Lynn, that
Dick should set up as a doctor, take an office and keep regular hours, while

devoted herself to teaching mudhi the same as the arrangement

followed with the Crafts at Taunton.

Mary

Before the actual move was made, Mary had an interesting experience
which must have gone a long way towards confirming her and her two
faithful friends in the feasibility of the plans
they were working out. One
very hot day in early summer, Sarah came to Mary and asked her if she
would not go with her to visit her old friend Whittier, who had lately
suffered the loss of a much-loved sister and was himself far from well.
Mary readily agreed and it was not long before the two women reached
the large gabled house under the elms which Whittier had built for him
self some thirty years before. They found the
poet sitting before a large

with flushed cheeks and coughing painfully. He greeted his visitors

with what graciousness he could muster, but when Sarah asked him what
on earth he wanted with a fire on such a hot day, he answered irritably,
fire,

with the liberty of an old friend, that he had the

and

fire

because he was cold

Amesbury he would need brass-lined

to
survive.
This
was
all
that
lungs
Mary needed. She sailed right in. There
that

if

Jesus Christ lived in

unfortunately no record of what she said, but as Whittier listened to her

with growing interest, Sarah noticed that he stopped coughing and that

is

moved away from the fire. Within a

was
gloom
gone, and when his visitors rose to go, he
took both of Mary s hands in his and said eagerly,
thank thee, Mary,
the flush left his cheek and that he
little

while

all his

"I

has done

me much

Come

Whether she ever

good.
again."
did go again is not recorded, but "professionally" it was not
necessary,
for next day Whittier was out and about,
completely recovered.
for thy

It

165

call. It

was not long after

this incident that

Mary and Richard Kennedy set

out for Lynn. Sarah must have been sad to see them go, but she herself
was rapidly making new friends with her healing work. She kept it up with
to herself and varying success until she died some twenty years
profit

first of a long succession of students of this

in thought beyond the point at which
advanced
never
new teaching
Sarah what she knew at that
they entered/When Mary Patterson taught

later,

but she was one of the

who

date, her teaching

tion of

Quimby

was

still

s doctrine.

mixed up with the mesmerism and manipula

herself was to leave it entirely behind, but

She

Sarah Bagley never did.

It was early in the summer of 1870 when

Mary and

Richard Kennedy

They went first of all to the house of a Mrs. Clarkson

Oliver, a friend who had formerly lived in Amesbury. She received them
went in search of suitable quarters wherein
gladly, and next day Richard
arrived in Lynn.

to set out

on the new adventure.

It

was some time before he could find

towards evening at the corner of Shep

just what he wanted, but, finally,
herd and South Common Streets he came upon a large three-storey house,
standing a

little

back from the

street.

In front of

it

was displayed a notice

was established a private school for young children,

that the Principal was Miss Susie Magoun, and that the second floor,
which comprised five rooms, was for rent to a suitable tenant. It seemed

to the effect that there

what he was looking for, and within a few minutes he was

mission. He was
talking to Miss Susie Magoun herself, explaining his
seeking offices for a physician, with sleeping quarters adjoining, and had
to Richard just

seen the notice that the second floor was to

let and thought it might be

Miss Magoun, contemplating the boyish figure before her, not
unnaturally assumed that the physician in question was his father, but

suitable.

less readily acquiesced when Richard somewhat diffidently

that
he was the physician and that he wanted the rooms for
explained

none the
himself

had,

it

and

"an

elderly

woman who was

writing a

transpired, only recently opened the

school,

book".

Miss

Magoun

and she was eager

to

have her second floor rented as she herself occupied the third.
Within a few days, all the necessary agreements as to rent and notice
having been arranged,

Mary Patterson and Richard Kennedy moved into

166

their

new

quarters,

and next morning, on a

appeared a sign bearing the simple legend,

The

tree outside the front door,

"Dr.

Kennedy".

reasons for success are often difficult of discovery and

still

more

of just appraisal. But in the case of Richard Kennedy the cause

of his success for he was from the first extraordinarily successful is
healed the sick. The
did what he said he would do.
simple enough.
in one or two
s
sign on the tree, outside Miss Magoun school, brought
idle curiosity,
in
have
the
first
curious people almost
gone
day. They may
but they came out enthusiastic, self-appointed publicity agents for the new
doctor and his new theory of medicine. One grateful patient passed on
news to another, and it was not long before Richard had a large
the
difficult

He

He

good
and thriving

practice.

more
Then, quite a number of his patients desired to know and to learn
of the theory, and it was here that Mary Patterson took up the work. At
first she talked to each one separately, as she had been doing now for a

number of years, but after a time she came to see that if she was to carry
on the work to the best advantage and make her just contribution to the
between her and young Richard, she would have
partnership which existed
to work out some way of teaching more than just one person at a time.
Richard could charge a regular fee for a definite service rendered, but
there seemed to Mary no way in which half an hour s talk could be

and she apparently shrank from making the attempt.

however, she were to form a class, give people an outline of what
to learn, fix the number of lessons to be given and

evaluated,
If,

they might expect

would pkce the whole enterprise on an

and open the way for sound development. She decided

charge a certain definite

intelligible basis

upon

fee, it

this course.

The great problem was one of fees. Limited as her experience so far had
lesson that the human
been, Mary Patterson had evidently learned the
mind never values highly what

it

secures easily

and

cheaply.

She must

with the type of mind that came to her on the

already have been familiar
cost
it
would
that
basis
nothing, could do no harm and might do some
often have seen the sorry results of such an attitude.
good, and she must

167

And

so she took

what was

to prove a

momentous

decision.

most part with working people, almost

ing for the

all

of

She was deal

them connected

in varying capacities with the shoe industry. Their average

wage would

probably have been considerably less than $1,000 a year, and yet she
decided on a fee of $300 for a course of twelve lessons. This fee was never
changed. Years afterwards, when she had secured a charter for a college
of her own, carrying with it the right to confer diplomas and degrees, the

$300 remained the same. Writing of it in her book

and
Retrospection
Introspection Mrs. Eddy says
could think of no financial equivalent for an impartation of a knowl
fee for instruction

"I

edge of that divine power which heals; but I was led to name three
hundred dollars as the price for each pupil in one course of lessons at my

She

sum

for tuition lasting barely three weeks."

often, as will be seen, received students for nothing, often remitted

College,

startling

part of the fees, but in the final settlement she always gave them a receipt
in full. The fee was $300. To those who desired to pay but could not, she

was notable in her consideration and forbearance, but to those who had
taken what she had to give, who could pay and would not, she was unre
mitting in her demands that the obligation be met.
And so the work got under way, and the first class was formed. It was

a strangely mixed and strangely troubled gathering. Perhaps the best view
is obtained from the account
preserved by one of its members, Samuel
Putnam Bancroft, who in 1920 published his recollections of those early

of it

days of the Christian Science movement, together with some interesting

original documents, in a book entitled Mrs. Eddy as I Knew Her in 1870.

Putney Bancroft, as he was known to his friends, was a young shoe

operative, a foreman in the factory of Bancroft & Purington in Lynn, and
he recounts how one evening in the fall of 1870 he received an unexpected
call from a
young man under his supervision in the factory named Daniel

H.

SpofEord and his wife.

They seemed very full

of something

and

after

the usual greetings Mrs. Spofford plunged at once into the

subject, telling
him of a remarkable woman, a Mrs. Patterson,
come to
who
lately

Retrospection

and

Lynn

Introspection, p. 50.

168

new method" of healing the sick and that this woman had
was teaching
a young man with her, a Dr. Richard Kennedy, who was treating patients
with great success; that Mrs. Spofford had been treated by him and had
"a

been greatly benefited and had now enrolled herself in a class just being
formed by Mrs. Patterson for the purpose of giving instruction in her
method so convincingly demonstrated by the young doctor. Mrs. Spof
ford urged Putney Bancroft to join, and after some further discussion
Bancroft was so impressed that he asked Mrs. Spofford to arrange an
interview for him with Mrs. Patterson. They met soon afterwards and

was greatly
Bancroft found everything as Mrs. Spofford had said.
"and
the
he
with
writes,
favourably impressed with her
lady,"
pleased
"I

proposition to the extent that I decided to accept

Among the other members of the class, some of

it."

whom were

to figure

W.

Barry,
prominently in the events which were to follow, were George
a foreman in a workshop; Miss Dorcas Rawson, also a shoe worker; Mrs.

Frances Pinney,

who had a

small specialty workshop for

women s

shoes;

Allen, a worker in his father s box factory; George H. Tuttle,

a young sailor; Mrs. Miranda Rice, a sister of Miss Rawson; Charles
Stanley; Wallace W. Wright and Mrs. Otis Vickery.

George H.

The

class

was held

in

Mrs. Patterson s rooms over Miss

Magoun s

and

in spite of the many difficulties which seem to have attended

school,
lasted through the full twelve lessons. In word and deed
session
its
every
it illustrated Mrs. Eddy s later contentions that her early teaching was a

groping in the dark, and that while the fundamental principle was the

same from the beginning it was so overlaid with the irrelevancies she inher

from Quimby or her own more orthodox convictions as to be almost

unrecognizable when placed side by side with what she ultimately evolved.
ited

Bancroft

s brief

"Before

description

studying",

and comment present the complete picture.

were treated by Dr. Kennedy, in

he writes,

"we

order to render us receptive and to acquaint us with the physical methods

used, after which Mrs, Patterson was to teach us the spiritual methods."

Kennedy s treatment consisted of manipulation of the head and

plexus. The theory as we understood it, was, that these were con-

"Dr.

solar

169

sidered the most sensitive portions of the body. Mrs. Eddy taught us, how
ever, that there was no sensation in matter. To some of us this seemed a

paradox. This paradox, or seeming contradiction of theory, led to many

serious complications and brought sorrows to Mrs. Eddy and reproach on

her teaching. This she did not realize for some time.

As soon

as she did,

her students were instructed to modify the physical methods and finally to

abandon them
In

altogether."

this first class,

Doctor Kennedy s energetic preparatory

exercises

were accepted as a matter of course, but as the class progressed, the argu
ment waxed so vigorous at times that at last Charles Stanley, who seems
to have passed

all

bounds in the matter of

criticism,

was asked to with

draw, Mary not unreasonably insisting that he came there to learn not
to teach; in other words, that he might at least hear "the whole
story"
it. She was, however,
eager for questions and
when
M.
and
Wallace
discussions,
Wright presented her with a series
of written questions, she answered them fully and carefully in
writing.

before he began to criticize

Wallace Wright was perhaps the best educated member of the class.
the son of a Universalist clergyman and brother of Carroll D.

He was

United States Commissioner of Labour. The questions he

are
not of sufficient importance to warrant detailed considera
submitted
tion here. They are concerned for the most part with side issues, and anv

Wright,

later

points of principle involved

must be dealt with

later on.

Wallace Wright s

last

question is, however, particularly apposite at this juncture as showing

how loyally, even at this late date, Mary was still attributing her teaching
to

Quimby.

It

would not be long before she was to learn from bitter

would create for her. But for the moment

experience the difficulties this

when Wright asked her, "Has this theory ever been advertised or
prac
ticed before you introduced it, or
by any other individual?" she answered
faithfully: "Never advertised, and practiced by only one individual who
healed me, Dr.

Quimby of Portland, Me., an old gentleman who made it

a research for twenty-five years, starting from the
standpoint of mag
netism thence going forward and
that
behind.
I discovered the
leaving
art in

moment s

time,

and he acknowledged

it

to

me; he died shortly

170

after

the

and since then, eight years,

have been founding and demonstrating

science."

How

little

the

good

doctor,

Quimby, had

really

"left

magnetism be

in his teaching, Mary was to learn

through much tribulation within
a few short months of making this statement.
Meanwhile, the class laboured along. Mary had made elaborate prep
aration for it Not only did she give to each of its members a
manuscript
hind"

copy of The Science of Man, the manuscript which she had permitted
Mrs. Wentworth to copy, but she also wrote specially for this class two
other pamphlets,

The Soul s

Inquiry of

Man

and

Spiritualism

and

Individuality. All are published by Bancroft in his book from his original
manuscript, and taken together they provide an excellent summary of
Mrs. Eddy s teaching in 1870 some five years before the
of

publication

Science and Health.

Patterson was, as Bancroft affirms,

faithful teacher".
Although the course consisted nominally of twelve lessons, she taught
any student who seemed to need it "between lessons" and continued to

Mary

instruct
"Every

"a

them afterwards.

We were never

really

meeting with her was a lesson; every

This continued for

171

<c

years."

graduated,"

letter received

he wrote.

from

her.

Mes:meosm

DICK

Miss

WAS A

great success.

Magoun may

He had a way with him

have had some misgivings, at

and with everybody.

first, when she saw the

by Mary in the furnishing of the apartment on

the second floor; only the most necessary articles of furniture,
oil cloth on the floors and the
cheapest shades at the windows. But, as the
rigid

economy

exercised

"paper"

patients arrived in ever increasing numbers, she began, rather incredu

the end of the month
lously at first no doubt, to take heart of grace.

By

when the rent was paid promptly and fully, she was completely won over.
Moreover, Dr. Kennedy was a most agreeable person. He had a pleas
ant word for everyone, and, within a few weeks, had secured the devotion
of the children in the school.
Busy as he was, he would somehow

manage

run downstairs about the time the pupils were being dismissed for the
day and help Miss Magoun with the task of getting the younger children
into their wraps and overshoes. Then
naturally when the patients were so
numerous as to overtax the waiting accommodation on the second floor,

to

Miss

Magoun would

young doctor s

on the third at the

She always had a good word for him among her

cheerfully place her parlour

disposal.

172

and with the parents of her pupils, and as her school was in good
standing, success for Dick succeeded as only success can. "Go to Doctor
Kennedy. He can t hurt you, even if he doesn t help you/ became a
friends

common admonition from their friends to

discouraged invalids, and they

seem to have taken the advice in ever larger numbers.

Many of those who came to Richard for treatment went on to Mrs.
least, their plan was succeed
most
even
their
ing
sanguine expectations. Richard Kennedy un
beyond
doubtedly thought so and with every reason, but Mary seems to have been

Patterson for teaching, and so, outwardly at

more than doubtful. She was learning very rapidly and the troubled
passage of the first class had taught her much. Some things almost baffled
her. The practice of manipulation which she had inherited from Quimby,
and to which, up to now, she had loyally adhered, troubled her most of
all.

As

by Quimby in connection with the explanation of his

had never seemed to create any difficulty. The presentation

practised

**Wisdom", it

had moved forward as one consistent whole, but the inconsistency between
what she was teaching about the allness of Mind and the nothingness of
matter and the apparent re-enthronement of matter involved in manipula
tion, seemed to her to become more glaring every day. Putney Bancroft

probably put

it

mildly

when he

said that to

some of them

it

seemed a

paradox.
It

to

was a puzzling

make the

students

situation.
"more

The

physical manipulation

receptive".

was supposed

Yet Mary Patterson found, much

to her bewilderment, that far from this being the case, she had to labour
as she had never laboured before in order to lift the thought of her stu

dents into a mental atmosphere of sufficient calmness and spirituality to

apprehend anything of what she was trying to teach. The downward

tendency of manipulation was quite definite, and with many members

of the class the mental wrench involved in passing from physical practice
to spiritual teaching was so violent as to cause them to become confused
and resentful. But the solution this crisis demanded brought her teaching

quickly into a freer atmosphere.

When Mary finally did see this, she was immediate and thorough in

173

She required her students to score from the manuscripts she

had given them all references to manipulation, insisted that it was pure
mesmerism, and banished it forever from her class and teaching. In her
first edition of Science and Healthy published a few years later, her repu
her action.

diation of the practice

final

is

and emphatic:

"Sooner

suffer a doctor

infected with small-pox to be about you", she wrote, "than come under
the treatment of one that manipulates his patients heads and is a traitor
1

to

science."

Mary

Patterson

imagined, at

all

conviction

on

this point

was

not, as

may

well be

welcome to Richard Kennedy. Manipulation was an

which had become known beyond the

established feature of his method,

He had become an expert in its use, and

to
him
that far from minimizing its importance,
had
proved
experience
the more he could make of it, the better. He found it especially efficacious
circle

of his regular patients.

women patients. The

very ceremony of taking down the hair before

and
and
"treatment",
drying
putting it up again afterwards, suggested
to them that something important was being done in their behalf, and
they responded most favourably. In fact, he never did attempt to do any
thing more than this, it is said. He did not pretend to teach. He left that

with

to his partner.

Years afterwards, when called upon to testify in court as to his practice

this time, he made his position
went to Lynn to
quite clear
with
Mrs.
Our
practise
Eddy.
partnership was only in the practice, not
about

"I

in her teaching. I practised healing the sick

mode was

operating

upon

by physical manipulation.
the head giving vigorous
rubbing."

He then went on to relate how Mrs. Eddy had tried to teach him
science of healing

understand

by

soul-power",

but that he

"never

The
"the

had been able

to

This, of course, was after the lapse of years when the

recollection of his long and eager discussions with Miss
and
it".

Bagley

Patterson at

Amesbury and

had become blurred, but

When,
*

Scttnce

therefore,

and Htaltb,

first

it

Mary

the early vision of their

great undertaking

shows clearly his position.

Mary came

to her

young

disciple, Richard, after

her

editioa. p. 193.

174

first class

and told him of her

decision, she

found herself confronted with

a problem which, in varying forms, was to present itself to her at every

turn in the future, the problem of the student who would not or could not
advance with her, who entered her teaching at a certain point and out of
what he found or thought he found, at that point, evolved something of

own. Richard Kennedy refused to give up manipulation. He was the

of several. As Bancroft puts it: "Some of her pupils refused to
for
comply. Dr. Kennedy was one of them, and after labouring with him

his

first

some time she was obliged to

sever the partnership

which existed between

them."

The

conviction that manipulation in general and Richard Kennedy s

in
practise of it in particular was pure mesmerism did not come to Mary

any sudden

"revelaton".

that, at first, she

It

is,

indeed, clear

from Bancroft s account of

it

was inclined to think it was the character and amount of

was at fault, and she sought to get over the difficulties

manipulation that

bound up with its use by suggesting modifications. Water was, first of all,
eliminated from the head-rubbing process, and the process itself consider
ably shortened. Later on, under pressure of a growing conviction, the
whole preliminary exercise was greatly reduced.

That Kennedy viewed these developments with increasing disfavour

cannot be doubted, and for the next twelve months the relationship
between the two must have been characterized by that process of disagree
ment and compromise which can only have one outcome.
Meanwhile, the arrangement was profitable to both parties. In a little
notebook of Mrs. Eddy s still preserved are careful records of her receipts

and expenditures at this period. These show that from June, 1870, to
May, 1871, Mrs. Patterson s share of the receipts was $1,742. As the
division was made after the deduction of all expenses, rent, living costs
and so on, it is clear that, from a financial point of view, the partnership
was a complete success.
It was, however, for Mary, a hard and rugged road. The tumult of her
first class did not come to an end at the close of the final session. There
were long lulls in the storm, but, for years afterwards, the flotsam and
175

jetsam of its wreckage would be cast up on the shore. The first great out
burst occurred more than a year after its close. The central figure was

Wallace
class

W. Wright, the man whose written questions at the time

Mrs. Patterson had answered so

ently more than

new

satisfied

him, and he

fully.

Mary s

of the

answers had appar

of enthusiasm for

left the class full

He

seems to have practised in Lynn for some time,

evidently profiting by Mrs. Patterson s ever readiness to help and further
instruct, which Bancroft mentions, and then early in the summer of 1871
the

teaching.

out for Knoxville, Tennessee, where he had connections, planning

to enter into the practice of spiritual healing there with another of Mrs.

he

set

Patterson s students.

At

first

he seems to have had considerable success, but,

later on, for

some reason that he could not understand, he began to "lose his power",
and as more and more cases came his way which "utterly refused to yield
he began to have "doubts". From doubts he went on to
and
the conviction he finally reached was that what he had
convictions,
learned and had been practising was mesmerism and nothing else.
As soon as he was satisfied on this point, he wrote to Mary in Lynn,
to

treatment",

demanding that she refund the fees he had paid her and telling her just
what he thought of her and her teaching. If it had been a simple case of
demonstrate what he had learned, Mary would not, in all
probability, have hesitated to return the money. She had shown herself
more than generous in this regard, but, in this case, to return the
inability to

money

would have been virtually to admit that Wright s charge was true and that
her teaching was mesmerism.
Coming as it did at the time when her sus
picions as to

Kennedy s

part in

it

were reaching the point of conviction,

was the

last thing
Mary would admit. She absolutely refused to do
demanded.
Wright
few months later, Wright himself was back in Lynn. He called on
Mary and renewed his demand, and when Mary again refused, he decided
to thrash the whole matter out in the
public press. It was a particularly
cruel form of attack, but one to which
Mary was to become accustomed in
this

as

the future*

176

The

broadside came in the

first

Beginning at the beginning,

found

me

Lynn Transcript, January

Mr. Wright says "The 9th of
:

13, 1872.
last

in Knoxville, Tennessee, as assistant to a former student.

met with good success in a majority of our

cases,

June

We

but some of them utterly

refused to yield to treatment. Soon after settling in Knoxville I began to

question the propriety of calling this treatment, Moral Science* instead

of mesmerism.

Away from

of this so-called science

the influence of argument which the teacher

to bring to bear upon students with

knows how

such force as to outweigh any attempts they

oppose

it,

commenced

to think

may make

at the time to

more independently, and

to argue with

myself as to the truth of the positions we were called upon to take. The
result of this course was to convince me that I had studied the science
of

mesmerism."

This was more than enough for Mary. The following week she replied
fully to Wright. She did not attempt to deal with his charges of teaching
mesmerism, but she did indicate what Wright s real purposes were,
namely, simple extortion and revenge. She said he had demanded from
her not only the return of his tuition fee, but $200 "damages" extra, and
threatened that if she did not comply, he would see to it that she should

never hold another class in Lynn. The controversy was taken up with
less wisdom than zeal by several of Mary s students who rushed to her

Wright was in his element, and finally, after much writing back
and forth, he issued a challenge to Mrs. Patterson to give a public demon
stration of the practical value of her teaching by "methods" he would

defence.

"enumerate".

In return, he promised that

his charges,

He

"asking

added that

considered

"a

if

she was successful he would retract all

forgiveness publicly for the course he

refusal to comply,

failure of her

"by

cause".

silence or

The methods

had

otherwise",

taken".

should be

of proof he proposed

were as follows :

To restore the dead to life again.

2nd To walk upon the water without the aid of artificial means.
1st :

177

3rd :

To live

24 hours without

any kind without

4th :
5th :

its

having

effect

air,

or 24 days without nourishment of

upon

her.

To restore sight when the optic nerve has been destroyed.

To set and heal a broken bone without the aid of artificial means.

Mary Patterson

but
very naturally ignored this challenge,

some of her

followers, not so wise, joined issue with vigour, repudiating

character of
charges and bearing testimony to the high

Wright s

their teacher

and

the true spirituality of her teaching.

Mr. Wright was exultant. Mrs.

Patterson, he declared, had, as he

knew

she would, utterly failed to meet his demands, and that it must be clear
to everyone that both she and her Science were "practically dead and
buried",

which

after all

was a singularly unfortunate excursion into the

realm of prophecy.
The whole incident served to bring into focus for Mary, as nothing else
perhaps could have done, the dangerous tendency of all students to stop

a particular point instead of going along with the evolving doctrine as

necessarily progressed with advancing discernment. This was, of course,

at
it

highlighted by the controversy over Kennedy s manipulations, and it was

soon afterwards that she and Richard came to the parting of the ways.
She was evidently very much attached to him at one time, entertaining

high hopes for his future, and the break-up of their partnership would
mean for her a complete realignment of her plans. The arrangement they

had agreed upon in Amesbury had worked out well. The more successful
Richard was in demonstrating the value and practicality of her teaching,
the more eager were those thus helped to learn more about it from her.
But now she could not be certain that what Richard was doing was really
spirituality. And as the days and weeks passed and
she saw more and more of the character of his work, she
gradually con
cluded that it was not.

a demonstration of

It was, of course, all new to her, as it was to

Kennedy, but it must have
been with grave misgivings that she saw the large and
increasing number
of people, mostly women, who came to Richard for treatment
again and

178

again, "because they could not stay

faction that this should be so.

away",

and Richard

apparent

satis

quite evident from Richard Kennedy s testimony, already quoted,

that he had from the first no doubt, unconsciously regarded Mary
It

is

Patterson
the

more

teaching merely as an

successful he was, the

addendum

more

to manipulation, and that

became that for him, at

certain he

manipulation was the only thing that mattered.

so the partnership was dissolved in the spring of 1872. It had
lasted less than two years, yet, when the final accounting was made, Mary

any

rate,

And

Patterson

share of the funds accumulated amounted to

She remained for the time being

in the apartment over

school. Richard took offices further

down

and

in

Magoun s

town.

Richard Kennedy enters into the story of

several years after this,

some $6,000.

Miss

Mary

Patterson s

many ways profoundly

life

for

affected the course

of her development, not so much, or at all, for what he was as for what,,
in her view, he stood for.
was, to her by this time, the arch mesmerist,

He

and

in order to appreciate the importance of the part he played in this

necessary to appreciate the extraordinary part which mesmer

ism played in popular thought in the last quarter of last century.
As has already been noted, Spiritualism, especially in the years imme-.

record,

it is

had overshadowed mesmerism as a.

Mesmerism had had its day, and, in
that day, had held out the promise of many possibilities. There had been
at first nothing sinister in what the world was led to expect from it It had

diately succeeding the Civil War,

popular excursion into the unseen.

been advocated as a healing agent, and many

men like

Phineas

Quimby

When it lost favour as a

had practised it successfully in this connection.

means of healing, it continued to maintain itself as an interesting exhibit
tion, and few forms of entertainment were more common in the middle
of last century than an exhibition of mesmerism or hypnotism by some
well-publicised exponent.

Up

to this time, however, mesmerism, as far as the general public

was aware of

it,

had been

practised only

on

willing subjects, with the

mesmerist personally present. Later on, as was inevitable, the possibility

179

of mesmerizing people at a distance without their

knowledge, much less
their consent, began to be discussed as
though possibly a demonstrable

The

question was debated everywhere; short story writers and long

story writers began to develop it as a theme. Bram Stoker wrote his

fact.

Dracula as did

merism

later

on

Du Maurier his Trilby. But what placed mes

human affairs most forcibly before the public

was Henry Irving s play, The Bells, with its tale of horror, centring round
the mesmerized murderer of the Polish Jew. The Bells was first
produced
in London in 1872, and
immediately the possibilities of mesmerism as a
as a sinister agent in

means for compelling criminals to confess was discussed in all its aspects
in newspapers and magazines
throughout the world. From this particular
ranged over every other kind of use or misuse, until noth
was
ing
thought impossible.
Upon one point there was complete agreement, namely, that either
ignorance or acquiescence was really necessary to successful hypnosis.
use, discussion

This, however, was far from removing the fear of it. Acquiescence could
be withheld, but who could guard
against an attack of which he was

ignorant?

The whole

one about which very little is popularly

possibility of the most extravagant claims as to the power of
mesmerism, in certain circumstances, is still to be proved, but the effect
of suggestion itself a form of mesmerism on individuals or on
large
subject

is

still

known. The

masses of people

is

today recognized and traded on to an ever increasing

extent.

In 1872,
s

it

was

still

almost a virgin

temperament and parts

field,

and to a man of Richard

offered unlimited scope for experi

ment. It has been charged that, after he severed his connection with
Mary

Kennedy

it

it was this
experimental study that claimed and absorbed his
and practice. To him it had all the fascination of
laboratory
research. His one
absorbing interest was to see the thing work. He had
accepted from Mary Patterson the supremacy of Mind. He was now

Patterson,
interest

proving

it,

as he thought,
every day.

He failed to realize the distinction

180

which

Mary

Patterson was beginning to draw between the divine

called its counterfeit, the human mind.

Mind

and what she

But

the partnership

had been dissolved and

thus, for the

moment,

all

quiet. Richard Kennedy went his way, and Mary, saddened and
troubled but not dismayed, went back to her rooms over Miss Magoun s

was

school,

more determined than ever to go forward.

in defending herself against the attacks of

A few weeks previously,

Wallace Wright

in the

Lynn

Transcript, she had declared simply that what remained to her of life
would be devoted to the cause she had espoused, "Well knowing as I do",
she added, "that God hath bidden me."

181

AFTER

New England. It
than a year after John Endicott landed at
Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay and a

LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS,
was first settled in 1629,
Salem as the

first

full year before

18

is

one of the oldest towns in

less

John Winthrop s company reached Charleston and

and tideswept Trimountaine peninsula as the site

selected the windswept

for the future city of Boston.

In those days, Lynn was known by the Indian name, Saugus, but in or
about the year 1637, there came to Saugus a refugee Puritan minister
from England, one Samuel Whiting. He was a native of King s Lynn,
the old town on the Wash in Norfolk, and not being a Separatist with
his

Babylon, Farewell Rome", but having a love for "dear

deep in his heart, he, with the consent of his fellow-colonists,

"Farewell

England"

changed the name of the

it is

little

settlement from Saugus to Lynn.

And

so

to this day.

Lynn is one of those places which through all its changing history has
always managed to be important. It has no golden age to look back upon,
unless it be the years of the Civil War when its factories were
working
182

night and day to turn out shoes and saddles and harness for the Federal
forces. Only ten miles from its big neighbour, Boston, it has maintained
its

identity through the years

cities

of

and is today one of the great manufacturing

New England.

few houses
Seventy years ago, Lynn stood well bade from the sea.
had crept out towards the rough unwalled beach, but where the broad

and promenade are today were only cow paths, winding

and out between the boulders down to the shore.
WeE out from this shore, but easily reached, save at high tide, was a
great mass of rock. It is still there, of course, and known today, as seventy

plaza, the sea wall

in

Red Rock. It rises some twenty feet above the water in a

and anyone finding his way to the eastern side of it
would have nothing between him and the old world but the ocean, with
the new world shut off behind him by a wall primeval. As far as nature
could provide a symbol, the Red Rock at Lynn was certainly a TSFo Man s

years ago, as the

series of ledges,

Land"

between the old and the new. Today

from all over the world,

a rocky

visited by many people

was just another rock on

it is

but, seventy years ago,

it

coast.

Through the summer of 1872, on into the fall, and for nearly three
years off and on when the weather was fair, a lone woman might have
been seen of an afternoon making her way along the cow paths towards
the shore, carrying a book and a roll of papers. She would cross the
shingle towards the Red Rock and disappear round its southern wall. A
couple of hours later she would reappear again and make her way towards
Lynn.
This

woman was Mary Patterson. Her bitter experience with her first
the breach with Richard Kennedy, the controversy with Wallace
Wright and other similar experiences had convinced her that her teaching
class,

would never be safe from misrepresentation until she had embodied it, not
as heretofore in a written manuscript but in a printed book. Soon after
her break with Richard Kennedy, she seems to have become convinced that

she should give up teaching, give up everything, and devote herself to

this one thing of writing a book. She wrote or worked out a good deal of
it

as she sat thinking

183

and dreaming on the Red Rock at Lynn.

Quite apart from the mental labour demanded, the writing of this book
Science and Healthy as she later called it, must have involved a tre

mendous

The

edition amounted to some 150,000

be written in long hand, and, after tireless
correction, emendation or complete rewriting, a fair copy of the final
recension had to be made. At first, Mary attempted to do ail this herself,
physical task.

words. It had, of course,

but, later on, she

It is

first

all to

had the help of George Barry, a student

only possible to get occasional glimpses of the

but from what few records there are one

gresses,

may

in the first class.

work as

it

pro

detect in the unfold

ing story a growing sense of expectation among Mary s small number of

loyal followers that something really portentous was in the making.
his Memoirs, draws aside the curtain for a moment
group struggling along after the defection of Doctor Ken
nedy, meeting each Sunday in Mary s rooms for a kind of informal
service and discussion and
listening to any new interpretation their teacher

Putney Bancroft, in

on the

little

had to

offer. It

was a very small band, indeed, Samuel Bancroft, George

Rice, her sister, and a few others.

Barry, Dorcas Rawson, Mrs. Miranda

of you who call yourselves Christian Scientists," wrote Bancroft

a century later, looking backwards, "those who attend the beautiful
churches which have been erected
can hardly realize the situation in
"Those

half

which Mrs. Eddy and her loyal students were placed, or the sentiments
with which they were regarded at that time.
were considered much the

We

same

as the
<

adds,

We

and the

Tioly Rollers or the Howling Dervishes are today." But he

were a happy company, notwithstanding our loss of numbers
*

and contempt with which we were sometimes regarded."

These Sunday gatherings in Mrs. Patterson s rooms were
very informal
ridicule

in character.

"Mrs.
Eddy read the Scriptures to us," Bancroft writes, "and
*
us
an
gave
extemporaneous explanation of them." That they had music

and singing is

clear

from a letter of Mary

to Bancroft written one

Friday
of the meeting to be held on the
following

morning and reminding him

Sunday. "We have an instrument
Berry family will
1

Mr/i.
* Ibid.
8
Ibid.

Eddy As

in the parlour

again,"

she writes.

be here and we shall have music from

you

Knew Her m

1870, by Samuel

Putnam

"The

all."*

Bancroft,

184

But perhaps the most important thing

that arises out of these informal

gatherings or Bancroft s account of them, is the first clear glimpse they

afford of Mary Patterson s teaching, especially in her interpretation of the

Lord

Prayer which Bancroft gives in

dently had a devoted regard

full.

for this prayer,

All her

and it

is

Mrs. Eddy evi

life

no doubt

significant

of her teaching was becoming fixed that

although the actual wording of the interpretation, as given by Bancroft,
differs greatly from that finally embodied in Science and Health, the
of the

way in which the principle

meaning

is

:
essentially the same. Bancroft s rendition follows

Teacher: After this manner, therefore, pray ye :

Student: Our Father which art in heaven,
Teacher: Harmonious and eternal Principle of man,
Student: Hallowed be Thy name.

Teacher: Nameless and adorable intelligence.

Student: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Teacher: Control the discords of matter with the harmony of

Student: Give us this day our daily bread.

spirit.

Teacher: Give us the understanding of God.

Student: And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Teacher:

And

Truth

will destroy sickness, sin

and death,

as

it

de

stroys the belief of intelligent matter.

And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Teacher: And lead man into Soul, and deliver him from personal
Student:

sense.

Student: For thine

is

the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory, for

ever.

Teacher: For

God is Truth, Life and Love

for ever.

apartment over Miss Magoun s school for about

months after her break with Kennedy, and then she went to stay for a

Mary remained in the

six

time with Miss Dorcas Rawson,

ful practitioner.
1

Mrs. Eddy As I

185

Mary was

Knew Her

who was

better off

in 1870 , by

rapidly becoming a very success

than she had been for many years,

Samuel Putnam Bancroft.

but she needed to conserve her resources. She had no source of income,
her allowance from Doctor Patterson,, of $200 a year, had long ceased,

and she had given up her teaching in order to devote all her time to writ
ing. She was, moreover, it is to be imagined, looking ahead to the time
that she might need money to publish her book, and, meanwhile, she had
pay for such help as she needed on it. Dorcas Rawson no doubt urged
her to make the change and come to live with her for a time. Mary was

to

glad to do so, but the break-up of her little home in Miss Magoun s
schoolhouse ushered in for her three more years of wandering from place
to place,

from friend to

Doubtless

Mary

friend, or

from one boarding house to another.

Patterson was at this time, as she had often been in

the past and was often to be in the future, a very difficult person to live
with. More and more was she utterly absorbed in what she was
doing, and

more

inclined to subordinate everything and everybody to her work.

Those who could go along with her, who could share something of her
vision and consequently enjoy something of its rewards, far from
being

demands she made upon them, either directly or through

her teaching, rejoiced to meet them. But time and again in a student this
devotion would wane, displaced or overshadowed often by seemingly the

irritated over the

most

trivial circumstances. In a
long succession of cases, some of which
have already been noted, devotion would be transformed overnight to
hatred. But it is an interesting fact that in after years, not
infrequently

after a breach lasting the better part of half a

century, these

same men

and women would bear eloquent testimony

looked back

upon

to the fact that

they still
the days of their association with
Patterson
as
Mary

the anni mirabili of their

It

was possibly for

this

lives.

reason that Mary, after a last bitter

experience

with the Wentworths at Stoughton, never attempted to stay

very long
with friends, even when they were as faithful and devoted as was Dorcas

Rawson.

As

she put

it

very cogently years afterwards,

"Human

reason
1

and calls for rest. It has a relapse into the common hope."
Dorcas Rawson remained faithful through the years to come, but it is
becomes

tired

Miscellany* p. 165.

186

doubtful

if

even she could have borne for long the tremendous pace of

Mary Patterson, in those days. Once satisfied that the next step de
manded of her was to write this book, she literally worked at it day and
night.

And so, after a few weeks with Dorcas Rawson, Mary took rooms again
on Sumner Street kept by Mr. and Mrs. George
Clark where she had stayed for a time after Doctor Patterson had left
some four years previously. It was George Clark, Jr., it will be recalled,

in the boarding house

who

years afterwards, gave such a vivid description of Mrs. Patterson as

he remembered her when she was living with his parents in the summer of

now six years older, and in his leisure from the

had been devoting some time to writing tales of
adventure for boys. Mary took an immediate interest in his work, and in
his recollections he tells of an incident, interesting for its own sake but
1866. George Clark was

inevitable shoe business

specially so for the light

it

throws on one of

Mary s most lovable

charac

her ability to rejoice utterly in another s success.

that, at the time she was staying with the Clarks, she
to
seek a publisher for the book she was writing. George
began definitely
Clark had finished a book of his own, and, probably due to Mary s
teristics,

It

would seem

encouragement, determined to get a publisher for it. And so the two

joined forces and George Clark with his finished copy and Mary with a
prospectus of her book went up to Boston from

they had decided upon, namely,

Lynn

to see

a publisher

Adams & Company, whose headquarters

were on Bromfield Street. George s book, a boy s story of seagoing life,

was accepted at once. Mary s prospectus was rejected with equal prompt
ness. The publishers were confident, they said, that Mr. Clark s book
would sell well, but they could see prospects of nothing but loss in a book
such as Mrs. Patterson was outlining.
With all the enthusiasm engendered by a

first
acceptance George was
and
so
full
of
was
and so cheerful in her
too,
jubilant,
Mary
rejoicing,
and
confident
for
his
future that it was not
encouragement
expectations
until after they had reached Lynn on the homeward
journey that the

young author
187

realized

how

different

must be the

feelings of his

compan-

ion.

When

he did

have found

afterwards how
it, he recalled thirty years
own apparent selfishness and how he could almost

realize

contrite he felt over his

in his heart to wish that the situation

it

had been

reversed.

said anything about it to Mary at the time, he does not

but
he
does say that as they were walking up from the station
relate,
towards Sumner Street, Mary suddenly caught his arm as they were
shall have a church of my own some
passing a church and said quietly,

Whether he

"I

She was never long cast down by apparent defeat.

day."
Moreover, her life was an almost constant demonstration of a
insisted

upon

in her later teaching, namely, that opportunity

hand and that

to the individual

who

is

fact

always at

the closing of one

recognizes
opening. Frequently what she found
this,

but the signal that another is

as she passed through the new door was only a very temporary "salva
to further denial, but it made for that eternal renewing
tion", doomed

door

is

of hope which, especially in these early days, was Mary s sheet anchor.
Kennedy had hardly gone his way before Putney Bancroft was at hand.

Putney was a very different man. Richard had been brilliant in his way.
Putney Bancroft was far from that, but he had a certain quality of patient
consideration which was just what

married,

and

after

Mary had been

Mary most

needed.

He

had

lately

with the Clarks for some time he and

his wife asked her to come stay with them. They had just purchased a
house in Swampscott and had a good room they could place at her dis
posal. Mary accepted the invitation gladly, and all went well for a while.

She was once again

in an atmosphere of understanding, free from the

of
meeting people whose interests were quite divergent from her
necessity
she
settled down to work with renewed vigour. Bancroft speaks
own, and

of

how

earnest she was

and how unremitting

in her application.

was not long, however, before the great question of finances began
to loom large once more. Mary had paid liberally for the quiet she needed
It

and so much

treasured,

and funds were running

low.

The

necessity for

earning again became urgent. Fortunately, she now had the means always
at hand. She could teach, and among her growing band of followers there

were always a number eager to learn more of the teaching

set forth in the

188

little
Sunday gatherings which Mary Patterson continued to hold in the
homes of her friends.
She hesitated about adventuring upon another formal class the diffi

and perversities of her first effort in this direction were still aU too
But she decided to take just a few at a time. Bancroft

culties

fresh in her memory.

says

"one

or

two,"

in order to secure

but the fact that she

left the

more accommodation

Bancrofts about this time

for teaching seems to indicate

that she contemplated a larger gathering.

She left the Bancrofts with regret, not only because she was fond of
them and they had been loyal to her, but because she seems to have felt
that the loss of

what she could give them for her board and lodging
young couple unduly. Bancroft, however, makes it clear

straiten the

might

that she was oversensitive on this score, and in

quoting a letter from her
on the subject remarks how it shows
loving kindness and thought for
"her

others, particularly her pupils."

Certainly the letter reveals the

was working.
She trusts her hosts
sees

no

alternative.

and

difficulties

under which

Mary Patterson

not be wounded by her moving elsewhere, but

have one student engaged and expect others," she

will

"I

And

would be awkward

trying to teach in so small a place.

there are other handicaps. Every word she would say could be heard in
the adjoining parlour, students would have to come through the parlour
writes,

it

to enter and, anyway,

make

Annie s wanting to

And then, in the same letter,

clear statement that

months more

is

she goes

on

the piano

would

will see the first

be a great deal to do. It

"written out for the last time".

She

on to speak of her book,

the

first

within sight of the end. Three

draft completed, but even then there will

available.

still

It

practice

the whole situation untenable.

still

is

has to be

"compiled"

and

after that

was exacting, toilsome work, and Bancroft makes it clear that Mary
this time had moments when she yearned for some
sign of human

about

friendship

on

and encouragement.

"Thanksgiving

189

Day",

He reproduces

prefacing

it

letter

from her written

with the remark that

"knowing

her

loneliness so

him,

it is

Written to

well",

he cannot

cry of distress

"a

"read

and

"Friend Bancroft",

it

or think of

suffering as of

the letter

is

it

one

pitiful

without

emotion".

To

lost in the wilderness".

enough.

"They

tell

me

and rejoicing; but I have no evidence

day
of this except the proclamation and
gathering together of those who love
this

is set

apart for festivities

I am alone
today. .
reunited in this world with me. .

one another.

my

students hears

Family

My

ties are

spirit calls

broken never to be

today, but

who

of

all

it."

word of it, but, from a few poignant sentences like the

above which appear in her letters during the next
year or so, it would seem
that these months of intense mental and
spiritual labour were among the
There

is little

most lonely of her

Formerly, in times of deep trial she had a last

recourse in her family. She could write to
Abigail, and, even if Abigail
did not understand, she could catch again the
strange homesick comfort

which flows from

life.

ties

which had once been happy and joyous even when

But now, even this poor

they are but pale ghosts of their former selves.

comfort

is

world for

denied her.

"Family

ties

are broken never to be reunited in this

me."

Only one word appears

family,

and

mother,

Mark

placidity of

it

to have reached

Mary in these years from her

comes from a most unexpected quarter, from her
step
Baker s widow. It is a loving, complacent note, the
very

which

may well have thrown into still more bitter relief the
lone struggle of Mary s life.
Calling Mary her "own dear daughter," Mrs.
Baker expresses a yearning for more
frequent word and sends tenderest
*
and
all
who
are kind to you."
loving greetings
yourself
"to

But the

loneliness of the
lonely

Thanksgiving Day passed and in the

next picture that Bancroft
supplies, Mary and he are busily engaged in
working out a new plan full of promise for both of them.
had

Mary

decided that the best answer to the

suggestion of failure or stagnation
was a definite expansive forward movement. Richard
Kennedy had failed
her.

Wallace Wright had

out in one of her

letters to

pilloried her in the public press,

and she

Bancroft against the bitterness of

it

all

cries
"Oh

*Hutorit*t Files oj the Mother Church.

190

how I have

worked, pondered and constantly imparted my discoveries to

wicked boy that I shall not name and all for what? God grant me
patience. Mrs. Susie Oliver told me once that Richard said he thought I
this

had

suffered so

much from bad

students

if

he did not well

it

would

kill

me, but it won

All the Baker in her surged to the surface at such moments. Not only
was she not going to succumb to the malice of her enemies, she was going

show herself stronger than ever.

And so it was arranged that Putney should go to Cambridge, open an
office there, and that
Mary would follow as soon as she could find a
to

suitable place to live.

Owing to

the death of Bancroft s uncle, the firm of

Purington & Bancroft had been dissolved, and Putney had to decide upon
a

new move

in any case. In his account of the matter he says that the

was taken only "after much deliberation and investigation", and
that Cambridge was chosen because it was
seat of learning", that
decision

"the

and women of cultured and developed minds were to be found

and that "some of them. would gladly welcome her and the Truth
she would bring them".
"men

there",

Mary seems to have canvassed all the little group before finally deciding
on Putney, as is shown in his engaging prim record "Dorcas Rawson
had her own little coterie. Mrs. Rice could not desert husband and child.
George Barry was employed in copying her manuscripts, and was expected
to take an active part in promoting the sale of her book.
George Allen had
:

his

box

factory.

Who was available? It was the old story,

one had taken

a wife, another at the plough/

etc.

etc."

upon Putney. He set out for Cambridge, carrying

with him some newly printed cards and a sign which read :

And

so the lot

fell

S. P. Bancroft
Scientific Physician

Gives no Medicine
1

Mrs. Eddy As I

Ibid.

Ibid.

191

Knew Her

in IB 70,

by Samuel Putnam Bancroft.

How seriously he took his mission may be gathered from his diary, in
which he records under date, December 7, 1874 "Today I took another
which I take with fear and trembling, but in which I feel
step, and one
that I am obeying the call of wisdom which call I dare not disobey. I have
:

a demonstrator of the Science of healing

today come before the world as
the power of the Soul over matter, as taught by Mary M. B.
the sick

by

Glover, and which I believe to be the true Science of Man."

Poor Putney! Both he and Mary were doomed to another disappoint
ment. They did everything they could. Mary wrote letters to the Boston
and
Press, but the papers inevitably refused to print the letters

Cambridge

save as advertisements. Putney sent out letters to "prominent divines and

men of learning", but received answers to none of them. "Our efforts to

obtain recognition were

futile,"

he writes,

"and

continued to be of no

2
avail."

Yet,

the time, healing

all

work was going on and the fame of

it

was

somehow getting abroad. Mary Patterson in her letters of encouragement

to Putney refers to several cases and Putney in his diary speaks of his
work and of the advice that Mary gives him from time to time. One item
of

news

in

far afield
nia",

one of

Mary s

letters is

word of her work had

she writes,

Mrs. Eddy As I

Ibid.

"has

Knew Her

written to

in 1870, by

of special significance as showing how

"Miss Sweetland of Califor

travelled.

me to take

her case

there."

Samuel Putnam Bancroft.

192

title

THE REGISTRY OF DEEDS for Essex County in the State of Massachusetts

shows that on March 31, 1875, Frances E. Besse, in consideration of the
1
sum of $5,650, deeded to TMary M. B. Glover, a widow woman of
the property at Number 8 Broad Street.
Lynn",
The house is still there carefully preserved a small two and a half
by a narrow strip of lawn with a large shade
purchase was a great adventure for Mary Patterson

storey building surrounded

tree at

one comer.

and an

Its

act of faith of

no small

order, but

solved for her the wearing

problem of a place to live and write. After her plan to move to Cambridge
help Bancroft with his work failed to mature, she took rooms in a
it

<nd

Number

9 Broad Street, and looking out of

her window one morning she saw a new sign on the house opposite, to
the effect that it was for sale. The thought came to her that if she could

boarding house in Lynn at

only manage to buy that house, reserve the best room on the ground floor
as a class room, a small room for herself as a bedroom and study, and
rent out the rest,
1

it

might afford her that quiet and sense of settlement for

She assumed a $2,850 mortgage and paid $2,800 cash.

193

which she craved as her book neared completion. Once she had made up
her mind, Mary always acted promptly, and it was not long before the
deed was signed and the house was hers.

However viewed,

this act

of

Mary

Patterson

in buying the house at

Number 8 Broad

Street marks quite definitely her emergence "out of

tradition into history".
to now, the story of her life could have pre

Up

sented to the onlooker no unmistakable trend or purpose. There was no

focal point towards which the rays of her effort could gather. She may

have known, and her followers may have suspected, that the movement
if so it
may be called for which she stood was already much wider than

any outward and visible sign would lead one to expect. If bad news travels
fast, good news often travels faster, and already, as has been seen, requests
for help

and teaching were reaching Mary from

as far afield as Cali

fornia. Nevertheless, concrete evidence of establishment

Word

of

had gone out through

and growth was

largely lacking.
many devious
that
two
be
interested without either
ways
neighbours might quite well

knowing of the other

it all

so

s interest.

As soon as Mary

Patterson bought her house and put up, as she did,

5
her blue and gold sign bearing the legend, "Christian Scientists Home ,
the movement, as a movement, was born. It was not long before Lynn

was talking about it and news items appeared

Patterson and her teaching.

in the press about

Mary

Georgine Milmine, in preparing her articles for McClure s Magazine,

made exhaustive enquiries about these early days from a number of people
in Lynn then alive who could remember them, and she stresses the
grow
ing sense of wonder which these people recalled over the devotion of Mary
Patterson s followers and the reports of healing work. Whatever trouble

and disappointment she had with individual students,

constantly increased, and, as Milmine has it,

now on

there were several

their
"for

number from
every deserter

new adherents".

Perhaps most remarkable of all, is the vivid recollection of these people,

even of those who afterwards were completely alienated from her, of the

power of her teaching. Their common testimony was that

from her was beyond equivalent in gold or silver."

"what

they got

194

Milmine writes,
a certain spiritual or
"They speak", Georgine
emotional exaltation which she was able to impart in her class room; a
"of

feeling so strong, that,

it

was

like the birth of

a new understanding, and

seemed to open to them a new heaven and a new earth

They came
out of her class room to find that for them the world had changed. They
lived in a new set of values.
One of the students who was closest to
,

her at that time says that to him the world outside her little circle seemed
like a mad house where each inmate was given over to his delusion of love,
or gain, or ambition, and the problem which confronted him was
1
awaken them from the absurdity of their pursuits."

Meanwhile, in

spite of her rapid

how

attainment in other directions,

to

Mary

had but one care and one

large class

room on

labour, the completion of her book. Besides the

the ground floor she retained for her own use only one

little attic on the third floor,

lighted by a skylight in the
roof which could be pushed outwards and upwards to secure ventilation.
Here she completed her manuscript and made her final corrections. This

small room, a

combined study and bedroom was furnished austerely enough, and was
unheated save for a small kerosene stove. On the walls the sole adorn

ment

a framed text from die Bible which ran,

"Thou

shalt

have no other

Gods before Me."

It was,

however, for Mary, a

home

at last.

The

vacant rooms were

quickly filled for the most part by those who were eager to have her teach
and then seems to have been born that devoted service
ing, and there

on the part of certain individuals which Mary needed so much and which,
in varying degrees, she was to enjoy for the rest of her life.

At

first,

vidual, but

was never filled for long by one indi

out there was always another to take his
place.

this position of service

when one

fell

was George Barry and Miss Dorcas Rawson who arranged all the
details of the purchase of Number 8 Broad Street. George Barry, it will
be remembered, had been a member of the much-discussed first class.
It

When

he met Mrs. Patterson he was suffering from tuberculosis in a

serious form, and his healing was one of the most striking that there had
1

MfClttre s Magazine, vol. xix, p. 109.

195

been up to that time. His devotion to

Mary was

deep and sincere, and,

in addition to
copying out her manuscripts, he sought to relieve her as
much as possible of all lesser cares.
arranged all the details of

He

moving

and

furnishing, attended to all the business matters, ran errands and

wrote letters, and in every way showed himself most
helpful.

And

yet,

although in the

fullest sense

of the

word a

he was

disciple,

not an apostle of the new faith. No one could have been more devoted or
efficient in the matter of
carrying out instructions than was George
Barry,

but he had none of those qualities of initiative and

independent action
which Richard Kennedy had possessed in such a marked
degree.

George

Barry was an excellent orderly, but he had none of the qualities of a

sergeant-major. Mary Patterson had need of someone with these qualities,

someone upon

whom

her other students could

depend,

trusted to speak for her

intelligently and authoritatively
not present to speak for herself. Such a man Richard

who

could be

when

she

Kennedy,

was

at his

had been, and up to now his place had never been filled
by another.
It was not, however, to remain vacant much
As
will
be remem
longer.

best,

bered, Putney Bancroft

in his

was

first

introduced to Mrs. Patterson by a

man

one Daniel Spofford. Mrs. Spofford,

department
who had been greatly benefited in health by Richard
Kennedy, was
planning to enter a class to be held by Mrs. Patterson, and together they
at the shoe factory,

urged Putney Bancroft to

Spofford also joined,

join. This, as

has been seen, he did. Mrs.

and although her husband

for some reason did not,

he was apparently
very much interested in the whole subject and studied
his wife s
The two left
after
manuscript eagerly at
night.
Lynn shortly
the close of this class for the far west, where Daniel
planned to take up
farming or some employment which would give him outdoor work. They
carried copies of Mrs. Patterson s
manuscripts with them, and the more

Daniel studied them, the more convinced he became of their

verity. He
gradually evolved from them a system of healing which he thought was

more or

own, and after some four years in the west, during which
he found himself devoting less and less time to
farming and more and
more to the practice of healing, he decided to return to
Lynn and devote
all his time to the work.
less his

196

Whether or not he had heard from his

friends there

as indeed

would

of the rapid development of Mrs. Patterson s teaching

likely
not clear, but when Mary was organizing the first class to be held in

seem very
is

new home

which she did early in April having heard of Daniel

return
to Lynn, she sent him a letter inviting him to join as a
Spofford
tender you a cordial invita
guest student. "Mr. Spofford," she wrote,
her

"I

tion to join

my

next class and receive

without medicine, without

my

instructions in healing the sick

money and without

price."

He

accepted

im

mediately.

Daniel Harrison Spofford was, in many ways, one of the most interest
ing of Mary Patterson s early followers. He was a great contrast to
Richard Kennedy. Born at Temple, New Hampshire, he was early left an
orphan, and at the age of ten came with his elder brother and widowed

mother to eastern Massachusetts. There, when little more than a child,

he went to work on a farm, and although rather a frail boy managed to

do a man s work. Thoughtful and reflective by nature, he was an earnest

student of the Bible, and even when a chore boy around the farm would
often worry over the problems which a strong Calvinistic theology pre
sented. Then, when he was twenty, came the Civil War. He fought

through it all, some twenty engagements, among them Gettysburg and

the second battle of Bull Run, and was finally mustered out in 1864.
Thereafter he worked in a shoe factory in Lynn, as a farmer in the far
west, and now back again in Lynn as a practitioner and student of mental
healing.
It

was no doubt because she recognized

the average that

Mary

in

him some

qualities

above

and gave him

which he otherwise would

Patterson invited Daniel to her class

a receipt in full for the three hundred dollars

have had to pay. But whether she did or not, he quickly showed himself
an exceptional student, and in less than a month after he entered the
class

he had opened an office in Lynn and put out

Scientific

His

"Dr.

Spofford,

Physician".

success

was immediate and even more pronounced than that of

And yet he had none of the qualities which were

Richard Kennedy.

197

his sign,

apparently the main cause of Richard s popularity. Richard was hailfellow-well-met with everybody, had a remarkable capacity for friendship
and a warm enjoyment of everything. Daniel, on the other hand, was an
idealist
frail

and something of a dreamer, gentle in manner as he was somewhat

He carried about with him an atmosphere of aloofness

in build.

contrasting strangely with Richard s breezy intimacy. His success, like

Kennedy s, lay in his healing works.
People came to him in increasing numbers for healing, and Mary got
into the

of turning over her students to him for further instruction.

group was growing rapidly now, so much so that the Sunday

way

The little

morning gatherings were taxing severely the capacity of the front room
at Number 8 Broad Street. It quickly became evident indeed that some
thing would have to be done about it, and so on June 1st a meeting of
students was held at the Broad Street house for the purpose of consider

ing the advisability of renting a hall in which to hold public meetings.

The resolution adopted at this meeting, which has, of course, a special
historic interest,
"Whereas

age,

of

and

was as follows

in times not long past, the Science of Healing,

far in advance of all

Lynn by its

new

to the

other modes, was introduced into the

city

discoverer, a certain lady,

Mary Baker Glover,

friends spread the

many
good tidings throughout the
the
of
aloft
standard
life
bore
and
truth which had declared
place, and
freedom to many manacled with the bonds of disease or error,
"And,

"And,

who

whereas,

whereas, by the willful and wicked disobedience of an individual,

name in Love, Wisdom or Truth, the light was obscured

has no

by

clouds of misinterpretation and mists of mystery, so that

hidden from the world and derided in the streets,
"Now,

therefore we, students

God s work was

and advocates of this moral science

called

have arranged with the said Mary Baker Glover,

to preach to us or direct our meetings on the Sabbath of each week, and
hereby covenant with one another, and by these presents do publish and
the Science of Life

proclaim, that we have agreed and do each and all agree to pay weekly,
for one year
beginning with the sixth day of June, A.D. 1875, to a treas-

198

urer chosen by at least seven students the amount set opposite our names,
provided nevertheless, the moneys paid by us shall be expended for no
other purpose or purposes than the maintenance of said Mary Baker
Glover as teacher or instructor, than the renting of a suitable hall and

other necessary incidental expenses, and our signatures shall be a full

sufficient guarantee of our faithful performance of this contract.

and

(Signed)
"Elizabeth

M. Newhall

H. Spofford
George H.Allen

Dorcas B. Rawson

Daniel

Asa T.

R Macdonald

George

W.

Barry

S. P. Bancroft

Miranda

R. Rice

...

#1.50
2.00
$2,00
#1.00
.50

#2.00
.50
.50"

This made a total of ten dollars a week. Five dollars were to be paid
to Mrs. Patterson, the other five being used to defray the cost of renting
a hall and "other incidental expenses".

These Sunday sessions which were more in the nature of lecture

gatherings than church services provided a rallying point for her follow
a sounding board for her crusade and a satisfying compromise with
her diildhood Congregationalism.
ing,

On the following Sunday, June 6th, the first public Christian Science
meeting was held in the Templar

Hall. Putney Bancroft came over from

Swampscott to lead the singing, while his wife played the melodeon. The
s

congregation numbered between sixty and seventy.

fair to becoming a Sunday service.

seemed
This

The weekly meeting

s

meeting appears to have been in every way a success, and no

doubt Mary and her faithful band looked forward to a peaceful develop
ment of their plan, increasing numbers and expanding usefulness. They
first

were, however, quickly to learn that whatever things the future had in
store for them, peace, as far as the outside world was concerned, was not
to be one of them.

199

Word of the meetings soon got abroad and the merely

curious

came

in ever larger numbers.

and openly

With them

Patterson

also

came the covertly

well-known condemnation of

antagonistic. Mary
Spiritualism brought many Spiritualists to her Sunday services, and in
the time reserved for questions they sought in every way to trap her in
her speech and involve her in argument. She struggled on valiantly for

a time, but at length became convinced that no matter how successfully

she might defend her teaching, the atmosphere of argument and conten
tion

was not what she and her followers were in search

meeting, the public

It

all,

Mary

now

Patterson

great

completion. It

of.

After the

fifth

were abandoned.

Sunday
must have been a disappointment, but

and, after

it.

services

it

was not the

first

work was the book, and

was a hard

rapidly nearing
Bancroft in his memoirs makes mention of

of many,
that

was

task, but she was happy in

this.

"I

consider",

he

says,

summer of 1875

the most harmonious period of the twelve years

from 1870 to 1882, during which, Mrs. Eddy had continued to reside in
"the

Lynn. I never knew her so continuously happy in her work."

And yet she could never have been able to see very far ahead.

No

who would even

her

publisher could be found

had gone into

She would need some $1,500
available funds

self,

and she had

consider her book,

and

all

Broad Street house.

she was to publish it her

the purchase of the

to $2,000

if

or nothing. It was George Barry and Elizabeth

solved
the problem. They decided to advance the
finally
and publish the book themselves. And so, as far as the book was
little

Newhall who

money

concerned, they disappeared as George Barry and Elizabeth Newhall and

reappeared within a few days as "The Christian Science Publishing Com
pany".

They went

work with a

but their troubles were far from over.

Even with the money guaranteed and with a considerable sum
paid in
advance, the printer proved dilatory beyond all reason in carrying on the
work. This very dilatoriness, however, in the end, resulted in a
develop
ment of considerable importance and in an incident which
evidently made
to

a deep impression on

Mary

will,

at the time

and was often

recalled

by her

afterwards.
1

Mrs. Eddy As I

Knew Her

in 1870, by

Samuel Putnam Bancroft.

200

from Richard Kennedy she had

become
more
as to the dangers of mesmer
more
convinced
and
steadily
ism in any system of mental healing. She began to reason, first, that
Quimby s teaching, consciously or unconsciously, had been based on
mesmerism; and, secondly, that wherever her own interpretation became
It appears that ever since she parted

involved in any way with Quimby s, it became obscured to that extent.

She herself felt sure that she had carried through, without any suggestion
of mesmerism in her own practice, but developments seemed to indicate
that certain people seized upon any mesmeric possibilities she allowed to
remain, as Kennedy had done, and quickly developed them, until, as far
as she could see, such doctrine

to encounter this again

ments of Quimby

own

with her

long

crowded out

and again

all else.

Mary

Patterson was

in the years that were to follow. Ele

which she loyally but mistakenly associated

for so long, were to dog her steps right up to the end of her
s teaching,

life.

In the spring and summer of 1875 the practice of Richard Kennedy

was considered to be a kind of opposition camp in Lynn. He had a large
clientele, but Mary Patterson decided that the effect of his work in a

number of cases was like that of a habit-forming drug the patient came
more and more under his influence. She also became convinced of a grow
ing enmity in the most unexpected quarters, and suspected, with almost
a sense of horror, that when any of her students came under the influence

Kennedy the most fantastic things were likely to happen. It was all
new to her, but, in the end, she seems to have reached the conviction that
of

Kennedy was a mesmerist

see

how

of the

first

water, that his one purpose was to

consuming interest of his life was

far he could go, while the one

the exercise of his new-found power in any

this was how she saw it, so she said.

and every

direction.

At

Her trying experiences of this period, interpreted in the light that

least,

all is

mental, began to bring into sharp focus the heretofore nebulous doctrine
of malicious mental malpractice the teaching that one may be injured
or destroyed through the secret, silent machinations of an enemy who
has eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So thoroughly did

201

this

view take hold that we find

Mary

Patterson working diligently and

followers to work diligently with mental declarations

rallying her closest
to offset the enemy s attack and to render him impotent in his

designed

perfidy. It

return

was considered
him, to his

upon

Notes to her students

to

Science doctrine ever

"take

up"

the culprit are

as milestones in the

and they stand

files,

his directed malice might even

possible that
in a sort of law of compensation.

own undoing,

in the historical

advancement of Christian

more out of the personal sense of the attack-and-

defense, the affimiation-and-denial, in

With this

still

conviction as to

"treatment."

Kennedy and

his purposes, apparently

came

another conviction, namely, that the basis of Kennedy s seeming power

was the general ignorance of what was going on. She herself was satisfied
as she realized the intent of mesmerism, to that
in
that
proportion

just

was powerless, and out of all this grew the final conviction that
she ought to embody something on the subject in her book. She was very
late in doing this, and it is probable that if it had not been for the
extent

it

dilatoriness of the printer in

Boston she would not have done

it,

at

any

the matter in Retrospection

rate, not at that time. In her account of
tells how, as the weeks and even months passed
the work, she at last yielded to
the
which
printer was holding up
during
insert
in the last chapter of her
should
she
that
conviction
the constant

and Introspection she

book

"a

of
partial history

what (she) had already observed of mental

malpractice".

Thence onward, the work went through without further

the fall

of 1875, the Christian Science Publishing

delay, and, in

Company had com

The book was

published under the title of Science and

pleted
in an edition of one thousand copies, at a
the
market
on
and
Health,
put
its task.

It was well printed on good paper in a substantial

price of $2.50 a copy.
cloth binding of green, blue, grey and brown.

Daniel Spofford was placed in charge of sales and commenced his task
by sending out copies for review to the most important New England
newspapers, with the rather unfortunate request not to mention the book
1

Retrospection

and

Introspection, p. 38.

202

at all unless

it

could be reviewed favourably. Later on,

Mary was

to learn

indeed she knew of Spofford s request the wisdom of Mrs. Steven

son s dictum, "Speak for my son or agen my son but aye be speakin
about my son."
if

Most of die papers took the course of not mentioning the book at all,
but those that did, some of diem, like the Springfield Republican of
excellent standing, received it with surprising cordiality.

203

HA

cience

well said that anyone who commences to read the Bible as

were any other book will quickly find that it is like no other book.
The same is true, in a measure, of Science and Health. It is like no other
IT

HAS BEEN

if it

book. There are no standards, either of literature, form, or content, by

it can be
appraised. Perhaps the most revealing statement that ever

which

was made in regard

Mrs. Eddy s own in the preface to the last

edition, issued in 1908, where she says that "until June 10, 1907", she
had never "read this book throughout consecutively".
to

it is

Between the appearance of the first edition in 1875 and the last in 1908,
Science and Health ran through 382 editions. In many of these,
changes
of considerable importance were made,
especially in the early editions.
In the sixteenth edition, issued in 1885, the book was completely rear

ranged and to a large extent rewritten, and yet the author never read
through consecutively until it had been out more than three decades.

it

Anyone, therefore, who expects to find in Science and Health the pro
gressive unfoldment of a thesis in what he would regard as orderly
advance from step to step will quite certainly be
disappointed. The
chapter

204

on Prayer with which the book now commences, was,

until 1902,

one of

the later chapters of the book, while only three chapter headings appear
ing in the first edition are retained in the last.

For these reasons a review of Science and Health in the accepted mean
ing of the term must be impossible, whether in its first or last edition. It is,
however, possible, and very readily possible, to grasp its purpose; and
when this purpose is grasped, each chapter, practically each page, becomes

a treatise on the fundamental

issue,

almost complete in

itself.

Mrs. Eddy, in her teaching, laid stress on the proposition that Chris
tian Science differed from orthodox Christianity in nothing save that it
was

step

"a

more

spiritual".

In other words, she places all the Christian

Paul s famous summary, in his epistle

virtues in the forefront of doctrine.

to the Gaktians, finds an honoured place in Science and Health. Her

purpose is to "advance from the rudiments laid down". Her faith was
that in the light of the great revolutionary dictum as to the allness of
Spirit and the consequent nothingness of matter, every Christian virtue

would be revised outward and upward,

until, as she puts

it,

"joy

is

no

longer a trembler, nor is hope a cheat".

While not nearly so outspoken as the

Mrs. Eddy

dissertations

Here

is

a typical passage from the

We learn from science mind

is

not; that the real

is

Spirit,

first

universal, the first

all that really is; also, that the real

is

the last revision of

book reduces most of her basic propositions from page-long

down to brief paragraphs and even, in some instances, to

short sentences.

what

first edition,

and unreal

which

is

edition :

and only cause of

what is, and

constitute

immortality,

and the unreal

matter, or mortality. The real is Truth, Life, Love and Intelligence, all
of which are Spirit, and Spirit is God, and God, Soul, the Principle of
the universe and man. Spirit is the only immortal basis* Matter is mortal

has no Principle, but is change and decay, embracing what we term

and death. God is not the author of these, hence Spirit is
not the author of matter; discords are the unreal that make up the oppo
ity;

it

sickness, sin,

site

to harmony, or the real that emanates

Science

205

And Health,

p. 298.

Truth and not

error. Spirit

or through which to act; no partnership

with Spirit,
or
_- fellowship exists between them; matter cannot co-operate
mutable and imper
the mortal and unreal with the real and eternal, the
and self-destroy
fect with the immutable and perfect, the inharmonious

never requires matter to aid

it,

and undying. Spirit is Truth, matter its oppo

ing with the harmonious
man and the universe, and
error; and these two forces control
site; viz.,

are the tares

and wheat

harvest, until matter

ourselves Spirit,
stance, Life

and

and

that never mingle, but

is

grow

side

by side until the

self-destroyed; for not until then do we learn

of error, that would make sub
the

yield

up

ghost

matter.
Intelligence,

God and His

idea are all that

is

mind, and mind produces mind only, nature,

not
reason and revelation decide, that like produces like; matter does
false
a
name matter, error, it being
produce mind, nor, vice versa.
claim to Life and Intelligence, that returns to dust ignored by Spirit,
real primitively; all

is

We

of matter."
supreme over all, and knows nothing
This thought is, in the final version (from 1908 on) embodied in one
has become famous as "the
compact paragraph on page 468, which

that

is

scientific

statement of

being."

Beginning,

"There is

declares

no

Mind

life,

all

material; he

Science

truth, intelli

and immortal,

in matter,"
gence, nor substance
with matter or error unreal and temporal, concluding that
it

"man

is

not

is spiritual."

of these
simply the iteration and reiteration
the
different forms. No matter what
subject under

and Health

statements in

many

is

it be Creation, Marriage, Spiritualism, Atone

the
Sick, or what not, sooner or later it will be found to
ment, Healing
lead up to a new view of the original thesis, the allness of God and the

consideration, whether

nothingness of matter.
Science and Health has been subjected to criticism from every point of
view few books more so. Sometimes, as in the case of Mark Twain s

memorable onslaught, the discussion was carried to the limits of the

English-speaking world and beyond. Any attempt to traverse anew the
field of these discussions, casting them into one comprehensive review,
*

Science

and Health,

First Edition, pp. 10-11.

206

would be as

profitless as it

any biography of Mrs.

would be

Eddy

must, as

tedious. It
it

is

fact,

however, that

moves from point to point, cover

most phases of the long controversy, linked as they so often

are to momentous passages in her life. Mrs. Eddy s life, after the publi

incidentally

and Healthy was

cation of Science

would be

inextricably interwoven with her

any just picture of

her life without at the same time discussing her teaching; and a discussion
of her teaching, in whatever phase, involves her book Science and Health.
teaching. It

impossible, therefore, to present

been often said that the movement came not out of the book,
but that the book thrived because of the movement. In any event, the
It has

book of 1875 was almost

its

authors immediate

did everything in

stillborn.

circle.

their

No

one seemed to want

Members of

this circle,

power to get the book into

it

outside of

however, certainly

circulation.

Dorcas

Rawson and George Barry made

literally

hawking

it

excursions into neighbouring towns,

from door to door, and talking of the teaching it con

tained wherever they could find anyone willing to listen. Advertisements

were inserted in local papers, accompanied by testimonies of healing, and

and many prominent and wellof the world. At first there seemed to be

copies were sent to libraries, universities,

known people
little

son

in various parts

response, but after a time the clouds began to break. Dorcas Rawand George Barry s vigorous frontal attack seems to have been

more or less successful. Quite a number of copies of the book were sold
and read by an ever-widening circle, with the result that, almost from the
first, the number of people seeking Mrs. Patterson s help and counsel
increased greatly.
The outside world, however, had been almost

Mary

received a letter, the

first

silent,

of several, from no

and then one day

less

a person than

Bronson Alcott, the philosopher of Concord, the father of Little Women

and friend of Emerson and Longfellow, It was not just a simple ac
knowledgement, as some few had been. He had not only received the
book, but had read it through chapter by chapter, right to the end, and
with growing enthusiasm. It must have been a wonderful letter for Mary
to receive ;

207

"The

profound truths which you announce, sustained by facts

of the immortal
in

life,

modern phrase

work the

give to your

seal of inspiration

reaffirm

the Christian revelation. In times like these, so sunk in

sensualism, I hail with joy your voice, speaking

and immortality, and my joy

is

God
woman s

an assured word for

heightened that these words are

divinings."

He then goes on to say that reading her book has awakened an earnest
desire to

know

then enquire

if

"more

of yourself

you would deem a

and agreeable to you,

will

personally".

visit

And, he

adds,

"May

from me an impertinence?

you name the day when

may

pleasure of fuller interchange of views on these absorbing

letter was written on
January 17, 1876, and, a few

If not,

expect the

themes."

That

two
days
met in Lynn.
Bronson Alcott was one of those men whose place in the
history of
philosophy and letters seems to grow in importance as the years pass. In
his day,

at times

later the

although standing out vividly enough by himself too vividly

his theories and methods were so
utterly revolutionary as to

them

often, in the popular estimate, into the realm of fantasy. And

although he was listened to eagerly wherever he went and could hold
audiences large or small enthralled
his marvellous conversational

carry

so,

by

powers on an extraordinary variety of subjects mostly transcendental in

character, the effect
reckless

way

they could.

on

his auditors

in which he
forged

was again and again vitiated by the

left them to follow as best

ahead and

He had no school of philosophy and never made any

attempt
a consequence, his audience never
quite knew what to
expect. They could understand him, and applaud or condemn
according
to their individual
predilections, when he launched out on his favourite
to found one.

As

topics, the primitive greatness

of the child

mind

or superior spiritual

promise of the woman s. But they could not always follow him
dwelt upon the "illumination of mind and soul
direct

when he
communion with

by

the Creative
or insisted on the
Spirit",
and monitions of external nature", or the
flow to man from
serenity and

"all

but audible

"invaluable

spiritual counsel

benefits

which must

simplicity".

And

yet

Emerson could and did take the same

ideas

catching from

208

Alcott the inspiration behind them

them

and

intelligible

and so present them as

to

make

instantly acceptable to great multitudes. If there

such a thing, Alcott was and

is

a philosopher

s philosopher and, as such,

being steadily discovered.
The teaching of Mary Patterson was just the kind to attract such a
mind. The position she took up and claimed to prove as to the allness and
is

is

consequent ever-presence of God,

his

own theory

and

of

Health,, he

"direct

Spirit,

communion",

was eager

to

meet

its

only went a step further than

so, after he had read Science

and

author.

We

have no description of their first meeting in Lynn, but that Bronson

Alcott was far from being disappointed is evidenced by his next letter to
Mary. It is written from Concord and dated January 30th. It shows that
he lost no time after his return

them

all

about

in seeing

Emerson and his

circle

and telling

it.

Recalling his visit with pleasure, he speaks of her grace and charm and
of his desire "for more intimate fellowship" with her and her "devoted

At a gathering in Emerson s home that week, he had spoken of

her and her teaching. "Mr. Emerson had heard of your book, it appeared,
and the company listened to what I had to tell without disloyal criticism."

circle."

After

this

manner he hope

can trust

to advertise Mrs. Glover

and her work and

commendations anywhere. Perhaps the subject can

be introduced next week when he is to meet the Divinity Students at
feels she

his

conversation on Divine Ideas and methods."

Cambridge
Daniel
Meanwhile,
Spofford and George Barry went forward with
renewed hope in their efforts to develop the sale of Science and Health.
"for

was building up a very considerable practice. Besides his office

Lynn, he had opened offices also in Haverhill, Newburyport and

Spojfford
in

Boston, and, as one of the main objectives of his work was to lead his
patients on through their own healing to a further study of the new
teaching, he

found a ready sale for Science and Health, which even at

was beginning to be regarded and spoken of as

that early date

"the

textbook."

Then some more

209

or less favourable reviews were beginning to

come

in.

had described the doctrines of the book as

free from those vile theories about love and
and
and
"wholly
"high
pure"
the spiritualists". The
marriage which have been so prevalent among
Christian Advocate of Buffalo, New York, declared that the book was

The

Springfield Republican

not influenced by superstition, or pride, but strik

ing out boldly and alone . . full of philanthropy, self-sacrifice and love
toward God and man." While the Boston Investigator summarized its
"certainly

original

view comprehensively enough, by saying: "We shall watch with keen

interest the results of Science and Health. The work shows how the body

can be cured and

which

is

how a

better state of Christianity can

certainly very desirable. It

be introduced,

has likewise a hard thrust at Spiritual

and taken altogether is a very rare book."

Such notices, combined with the favour of a man

ism,

while Emerson and his

disloyal

criticism",

band.

little

"pleasant

circle"

at

like

Concord

Bronson Alcott,

listened

must have been more than welcome to

As Bancroft puts

it, "Such

notices as these

"without

Mary and

made us

all

her

very

happy, and we gathered around our leader with renewed confidence

1
her and hope in the future of Christian Science."

in

Meanwhile, the leader herself also seems to have enjoyed about this
time one of those brief periods filled with the satisfaction of
hope realized,
which she enjoyed, or rather allowed herself to enjoy, so seldom. It is
indeed a significant fact in Mrs. Eddy s whole life, but especially from

now

on, that although so

many contemporary records comment on her

have had much use for a cheerfulness

cheerfulness, die never seems to

which was begotten from what the world would call success. Later on
when she had become one of the world s best-known women, Ishe wrote
of herself:
those

who

"I

rejoice with those

who rejoice, and am too apt to weep with

weep, but over and above

unspeakable."* She always

"eternal sunshine", and the

eternal sunshine and

joy
the
gives
impression of one seeking this
fact that she
and
apparently found it
it all

are

again

again, even in die most difficult circumstances,

1

Mrs. Eddy As 1 Knew Her In 1870 , by Samuel

* Mxstelbmtd*s
Writings, p. 279.

Putnam

is

the only possible ex-

Bancroft.

210

extent was
planation for her serenity, which, to an increasing
amaze her friends and confound her enemies.

wont

to

To this ability may also perhaps be attributed the impression of extraor

dinary beauty which she gave at times and to which both her friends and
her enemies alike bear testimony. She never seems to change very much,

Almost the same words are used in describing her at sixty as at sixteen.
"Slim, alert, graceful
big grey eyes deep set and overhung with dark
her skin dear, red and white," so testified an old neighbour
lashes
.

at

Bow

presents

in 1836. Putney Bancroft, in 1876, in his prim, formal style,

much the same picture. He, too, speaks of her regular and finely

moulded

features, of her eyes,

"deep

set,

dark blue and piercing, sad,

very sad at times, yet kind and tender," of her splendid carriage, her slim,
well-rounded figure". Ten years later still, a student speaks of her
"yet

and twenty years after

eyes",
her
in
that,
eighty-seventh year, the matter-of-fact
Arthur Brisbane finds this word "beautiful" the only word by which to
as

"exquisitely

beautiful, even to critical

when Mrs. Eddy was

describe her.

But in these Lynn days especially, what seems to have made the most
profound impression on her followers, was Mary Patterson s self-sacrifice
all the years during
and devotion to her purpose. As Bancroft puts it,
which I knew her, Mrs. Eddy s life and her activities were dominated by
this one idea, the promulgation of her theories. She was undoubtedly
"In

more importance to the world than all

1
had to offer.**
It was, on the other hand^just this devotion to purpose which betrayed
Mary at this time into doing and saying many things and resorting to
methods which time and experience, often most bitter experience, caused
sincere in thinking that to be of

else she

abandon. The conservatism and modesty; the obligation

to respect the opinions of others; the policy of discretion not to push
forward aggressively but to await alertly die appeal for help; the wisdom

her, later on, to

of restraint and the paramount value of charity which characterized her

later teaching and actions, find little place in these early days. If the sick
1

Mrs. Eddy As I

211

Knew Her

in 1870, by

Samuel Putnam Bancroft.

did not come to be healed, then

let

the practitioner of Christian Science

If any man
go out and find the sick and heal them, in spite of themselves.
the
in
reviled you or failed to appreciate your teaching
public press, then
a certain amount of judicious reviling in return was quite in order. If the
of Materia Medica advertised themselves and the benefits

practitioners

of what they had to offer, then the practitioners of Christian Science

should not hesitate to do the same and more also.

Thus, when Bancroft wrote to

Mary from Cambridge,

complaining of

him

bis lack of patients

and the apparent

sharply, in so

words, to stop growling and get to work. "Do not

C
Make a stir. Go to the sick and heal them if they

stand

still,"

do not send

many

failure of his work, she told

she wrote.
for

you."

When an unfavourable review of

Science and Health appeared in the

Boston Globe, she did not hesitate to write to the paper, characterizing
the review as
whatsoever";

"stupid";

the

comments of the reviewer

and the reviewer himself

sensualism from a

as

as one prevented

"of

by

no value
his

own

perception of supersensual truths". All of

which was possibly true, but in marked contrast with the restraint of her
"clearer

later years.

Most

startling of all, however,

mote the

sale

were some of the methods used to pro

of Science and Health. It

is,

of course, entirely possible

that

Mary Patterson, labouring under the ever-increasing burdens of a

new movement, every step forward in which was into new country, had
no knowledge of many of those means and methods until after they were
an accomplished fact although it is to be admitted there is no record that
she ever objected to such things.

Anyway,

in those days, characterized, as

has been already noted, by the most

extravagant claims from all manner
of "doctors" and Dealers", they would not be
nearly so offensive as they
would be today. And yet, one of Spofford s efforts is
startling

enough.

He got out a circular describing the book in the most extravagant terms,

and also a hand bill which reads like nothing so much as the advertisement
for a patent medicine. It

commenced

212

A HOLIDAY PRESENT
SOMETHING THAT WILL DO GOOD

SCIENCE
Hundreds

AND HEALTH

of invalids have been cured

by readlng_it

from
Thereafter, follow a series of some ten or twelve testimonials
the
received
and
have
the
benefits
to
others
and
doctors
they
testifying
be
the
book
names of booksellers in Boston from whom
procured.
might

Mary Patterson s
<c

My

students

bitter

disgrace

been often more than

from an unexpected

213

complaint to Putney Bancroft about this time,

my

justified.

quarter.

recommendation,"

would seem to have

Help, however, was near at hand, and

SOME THREE YEARS

before that

"obdurate Separatist",

John Baker,

left

New

Lyminge in Kent, in 1634, and

sons of the Reverend
two
World,
young men, John and Samuel Eddye,
Kentish
another
of
Vicar
William Eddye,
village not far
Cranbrook,
from Lyminge, had made the same journey. John Baker, it will be re
membered, ultimately built himself a grist mill on the outskirts of Boston
and
John and Samuel Eddye took up land not far from
set out for th$

his native village of

prospered greatly.

Salem and devoted themselves

it is

impossible to say.

The

from neighbouring villages

to farming.

Whether

the three ever met,

a small one, and they came

in England. They may have met In any case,
colony was

still

die Eddyes, too, seem to have prospered, John especially, and in the
1830*$, Asa Eddye, the son of Abel, the son of Ebenezer, the son of

Samuel, the son of Samuel, the son of John,

still

a farmer, was living in

Londonderry, Vermont, He and his wife, Betsy, had several children, of

whom Asa Gilbert was the next to the youngest.

Farming in Vermont in the early part of last century was very much
same as farming in New Hampshire at that time, a constant struggle,

the

214

late

and

early,

with the inexorable demand everywhere upon everyone to

In the case of the Eddyes, the situation was rendered some

what different by reason of the fact that Betsy Eddye, far from yielding

do

his share*

had the most original ideas as to her status and

a
She
had
passion for driving, and as soon as the children
obligations.
to
old
were
enough
go to school she would, after seeing them safely
delivered at the school house, set out with her horse and buggy and drive
to custom in this respect,

day long around the countryside.

There is no record that Asa Senior ever protested.

all

He was less inclined

to do so, perhaps, because in the evenings Betsy would train her children,
boys and girls alike, in all the arts of housekeeping. They were taught,

not only to cook and sew, wash and iron, but to spin their

weave

own

their

cloth,

and make

their

own

clothes.

The more

own

wool,

successful

was as a teacher, the more she was relieved of household cares and
more time she could take off to indulge her "ruling passion".
At first, she was influenced to a certain extent by weather conditions,

she
the

remaining at

home

if

the day was wet or stormy; but kter, finding such

a kind of helmet on the "diver"

restraint irksome, she fashioned for herself

was made of thick cloth, was attached more or less rigidly

to her shoulders, and had a nine by ten-inch pane of window glass inserted
principle. It

an opening opposite her facei. The contrivance served, of course, as a

perfect windshield, and with this protection she could venture out in all
in

weathers in complete comfort.

Then, Betsy had unusual ideas about doctors. When she or any of the
ill, her unfailing recourse was one "Sleeping Lucy". "Sleep

children was

ing

Lucy",

nature".

whose right name was Lucy Cook, had a remarkable

"gift

of

When summoned professionally to aid the sick, she just naturally

went into a trance and, while thus conditioned, diagnosed the trouble and
prescribed the remedy, apparently in very much the same way as the boy
Burkmar,

it

will

be remembered, was doing for Quimby about the same

mountains in Maine. Betsy, moreover,

at the other side of the

time, away
had a great love for fine clothes and, what was still more unusual in a New

England housewife of a hundred years ago and a cause of

215

still

greater

perplexity

The

a
to her neighbours, she was credited with having

boy,

Asa

Gilbert Eddy,

who had taken up

"fine

library".

weaving as a trade, in

him in 1859 by his parents

the end inherited the farm. It was deeded to
the rest of their lives.
on condition that he agreed to support them for
the elder Asa three
and
1860
in
died
They id not survive long. Betsy
for a time, but his
farm
Asa Gilbert continued to manage the
years later.
he leased it and returned
heart was really not in farming, and before long
to his trade as a weaver.

and unusual
Eddy was a man of somewhat unequal parts
and
ultimately
traits. As a boy at school he moved ahead steadily enough,

Asa

Gilbert

was outstanding in
achieved a good common school education, but he
a time when pen
at
even
In
this,
nothing save in the art of penmanship.
he was apparently regarded as
manship had many amazing exponents,
rather small,
his life he delighted in its exercise.
exceptional, and all
in
different
little
bit
a
was
he
everything he did
mild-mannered man,
just
from which they
cloth
the
and
clothes
own
his
or affected. He

designed
were made, and he secured the impression of added height by wearing his
luxuriant hair in the
pompadour style. He loved to play
highest possible

the violin

and

to

draw animal

pictures for

little

children.

He was genial

and candid and just naturally kind, and he had two

other qualities which,

later on, as they found occasion for exercise, were to overshadow all

others, self-sacrifice

and

tenacity of purpose.

When he first enters this record, about 1876, he is living in East Boston
his friends
working as an agent for a sewing machine company. Among
were a Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey, who lived in the little township of Chelsea,
dose by. Being a bachelor living alone, he was often asked to their home,
on going to visit them, he was conscious at
once that something unusual had happened. Mrs. Godfrey did not leave
him long in doubt. She had, it appears, for some weeks previously, been

and one day

early in 1876,

from a badly infected finger caused by a broken needle and

complicated by poison from some coloured thread. It was so serious that
suffering

the doctor

had advised amputation. Gilbert Eddy evidently knew

all

about it, and, as the Godfreys had been away in Lynn for a few days, had

216

come round on
showed him her

their return to see

how Mrs. Godfrey

was.

When

she

finger, perfectly healed, he was naturally overjoyed, and

to tell. And
eager to hear the story they were evidently more than eager
so they told him of how they had been invited by some friends, who lived

Lynn and who knew of Mrs. Godfrey s trouble, to visit them; how these
friends had rooms in the house of a Mrs. Mary Patterson at Number 8

in

Broad

when

how they persuaded Mrs. Godfrey to ask Mrs. Patterson

how Mrs. Patterson had agreed to do what she could; and how

Street;

for help;

she,

Mrs. Godfrey, got up next morning, her

was perfectly

finger

well.

Gilbert

Eddy was

immediately interested and, suffering from some

minor ailment himself, was anxious to try the

effect of the

new treatment.

The Godfreys had met Spofford at Lynn and, probably at their insistence,
Gilbert

went to consult him

at his office in Boston.

He

The result was

all

he

not instantly at any rate so quickly

recovered,
and thoroughly as to make him eager to learn all he could as soon as he
could about the new teaching. Spofford had no difficulty in persuading
could have wished.

him

to

come with him

if

to

Lynn and meet Mrs.

Patterson.

The

result of

their meeting seems to have been an instant appreciation on both sides,

and within a few days Gilbert Eddy had enrolled himself in a class that

Mary was then forming.

Asa Gilbert Eddy was one of

the

most

satisfactory of all

Mrs. Patter

son s students up to that time. He never seems to have hesitated a moment

He

accepted as truth what he was taught the first time

Spofford explained it to him. Mrs. Patterson admitted him as a student as
soon as she saw him. He entered a class she was forming, studied the
at

any

point.

usual three weeks, and at the end of that time assumed at once, with the
usual ease, the

Patterson s

title

of

"doctor"

and

set to

work, being the

students to announce himself as a

"Christian

first

of Mrs.

Science prac

titioner".

was a dear-cut example of orderly development which might have

occasioned in the hearts of the little band nothing but satisfaction and
It

rejoicing.

217

On

the surface aU was calm.

The

calm, however, was very

much

of the kind that precedes a storm. Gilbert rose rapidly.

He had

certain quiet capacity for getting things done and a sense of order, which
to Mary, burdened at every turn by ever-increasing calls upon her time
and attention, was an indescribable relief. She tended to lean upon him

more and more and

to act, either actually or apparently,

on

his advice,

often with

The

all too drastic thoroughness.

slowness of the sale of Science

and Health was perhaps what

it and
planning

troubled her most. Already, she was hard at work revising

for a second edition.

the

first

edition

Eddy

She could not, however,

issue

a second edition before

had been sold and some of the necessary funds for the second
thus made available. It was probably on the advice of Gilbert

that she decided to take vigorous action.

She asked Spofford to

come to Lynn and go into the whole question with her. As a result it
was decided that Spofford should turn over part of his practice to Gilbert

Eddy and devote

all his available

time to promoting the sale of Science

and Health*
In ordinary circumstances, such a plan might have worked very well.
Spofford had built up quite a large connection and had had charge of the
sale of the

book since

its

publication.

He

was

resourceful,

and

if his

methods were sometimes somewhat crude, even for those days, he was
enthusiastic and anxious to do the best he could. The circumstances were,
however, far from ordinary. The rapid rise of Gilbert Eddy was being
viewed by some of the older members of the group with steadily increas

ing disfavour. The advent of this eleventh hour worker, at a wage not
only equal to but obviously greater than their own, was the cause, at first,
of much secret heart burning and, later on, open rebellion, and the weeks
to present as unlovely a picture of the
results of petty jealousy as is possible to imagine.

and months which foEowed were

The first

to reach the breaking point was George

Barry. So long as he
occupied the position of head man, his devotion knew no limits. He may
have felt that the more indispensable he made himself, the
higher must
he be in the estimate not only of his teacher but of his fellow-students.

He enjoyed this sunshine to the uttermost, apparently, and evidently had

218

no idea of sharing the

Mary

completed the

any newcomer like Gilbert Eddy.

was all to no purpose, and when she

position with

tried to reassure him, but

it

new arrangement with Spofford and

Gilbert

Eddy

for

managing the sale of Science and Healthy he went off in high dudgeon
and refused to return.
Spofford himself was hardly less disaffected. He appeared to acquiesce

new plan wholeheartedly, but it became evident before very long

that discontent over Gilbert Eddy was colouring his interpretation of
in the

every

move

that was

made from Lynn.

He went about his work without

complaint, but without any enthusiasm or accomplishment,

seems to have

and Mary

felt it all intensely.

Indeed, there began to develop anew about this time with Mary Patter
son and her followers a phase of thought which, although ultimately seen

by Mary herself for what it was and definitely overcome, was to remain
for many years a possible source of ever-recurring wrong development. It

was a phase of the old Quimby

himself the

healer took

to cast

upon
them out of

his

belief that, in the process of healing, the

"griefs"

of his patient, and then proceeded

experience. The cruder phases

own thought and

of this theory had long been abandoned, but there remained the convic
tion that the healer was open to the mental demands of his patients and
to the burden which his emotions, whether of anger, hatred, and resent
ment and so forth, would impose, if he were personaEy present

Apart from

this, there

can be no doubt that in addition to the cares of

Mary Patterson was subject day and night to calls

from her students for healing for themselves and advice in the healing of
others. She had not yet reached the heights of her later teaching when she
a young movement,

could affirm calmly,

more harm than one

"Evil

thoughts and aims reach no farther and do no

s belief permits. Evil thoughts, lusts,

and malicious

purposes cannot go forth, like wandering poEen, from one human mind
to another, finding unsuspected lodgement, if virtue and truth build a
1

strong

defence."

She was conscious

ing burden and, with her feet

1

Science

219

and Health, pp. 234-35.

still

in these

months of a

steadily

uncertainly planted in the

grow

new way,

she was often fearful and anxious. Sometimes, she reached a point almost
letter to Daniel Spofford written
as is dear from a
of

long
despair,
towards the close of 1876. Spofford had been complaining, insisting that
he was being driven away from her, and in every way showing clearly
that he was constantly mulling the whole thing over in a spirit of dissatis
faction

and

hurt.

**Now3 Dr.

me

Mary is

Spofford,"

live or will

you

kilt

well nigh desperate.

she writes,

"won

me? Your mind

is

you exercise reason and let

on my
just what has brought
t

you do not govern yourself and turn

from me. Do, for God s sake and the work I
your thoughts wholly away
have before me, let me go out of this suffering I never was worse than last

never recover
relapse and I shall

if

to do me good and I do not doubt it. Then

night and you say you wish
I shall write no more to a male student
me.
of
won t you quit thinking

and never more trust one to live with. It is a hidden foe that
1
Read Science and Health page 193, 1st paragraph.

at work.

is

**No student nor mortal has tried to have you leave me that I
Dr. Eddy has tried to have you stay. You are in mistake. It is

know

of.

God

not

Do

not
that has separated us and for the reason I begin to learn.
think of returning to me again, I shall never again trust a man. They
know not what manner of temptations assail. God produces the separation

man

and I submit to

it,

so

must you. There

is

no cloud between

us,

but the

way you set me up for a Dagon is wrong, and now I implore you to return
forever from this error of personality and go alone to God as I have
taught you.
"It

is

mesmerism I

can make me suffer.

from the face of the

It is the letter of

feel

and it

is

killing

me.

It is

mortal mind only that

Now stop liiinking of me or you will cut me off soon

earth."

a sorely tried and

significant for the contrast

it

woman, and is chiefly

the calmness and serenity per-

fear-filled

presents to

1
The passage from Science and Health (First Ed.) , page 193, runs: "Evil thoughts reach farther,
do more harm than individual crimes, for they impregnate other minds and fashion your
body. The atmosphere of impure desires, like the atmosphere of earth, is restless, ever in motion,
and calling on some object ; this atmosphere is laden with mental poison, and contaminates all
it touches. Wlien malicious purposes, evil thoughts, or lusts, go forth from one mind, they seek
others and will lodge in them unless repelled by virtue and a higher motive for being." The
contrast with the same passage from the last edition of Science and Health (page 234), is

arid

interesting.

220

vading her later dealings with much more difficult situations. In these
is abundant evidence that
Mary Patterson was, at times.,
early days, there
that she was advancing into a realm of thought hither
fearfully conscious
to unexplored, that she was leaving old landmarks behind her, and that
there was no human being of whom she could inquire the way or even

probable direction. The spirit was willing, and not

only willing but inflexibly determined. Nothing, apparently, could turn
her aside. Ail through these years of struggle and disappointment, she
take counsel as to

its

must have been aware that she could free herself and return, almost at
will, to a life of ease and comfort with her people at Tilton. From the
one

receive from Abigail, some ten years later, it

so
that,
deeply did her sister feel the talk and criticism
had
s actions
brought upon her, she would have welcomed any

bitter letter she

was to

was dear enough

that

Mary

prospect of their being abandoned with all her heart and at almost any
cost.

But if the spirit was willing and inflexible, the flesh was often weak, and
this letter to

Spofford reveals

Mary Patterson down in one of those deeps,

at times

by every prophet, great or small, whether without the

plumbed
walk of Ur of the Chaldees or Jerusalem. It was an experience she was
often to have in the future.

As

she puts

it,

looking back over the years,

book Retrospection and Introspection

realization of the shift
of
and
the
of
human
of
scenes
mortal anticipations,
happiness,
frailty
ing
in her

such as

first

led

me

"A

to the feet of Christian Science,

of advancement.
requisite at every stage

Though

our

seems to be

first

lessons are

changed, modified, broadened, yet their core is constantly

renewed; as
remains
chord
the law of the
unchanged, whether we are dealing with a
or
the vast Wagner Trilogy."
exercise
with
Latour
simple

In the midst of it all a strange thing happened, Gilbert Eddy asked

her to marry him. It might be assumed she had no thought of it and that
marriage held little attraction for Mary Patterson. The tragedy of her
marriage, followed by the long drawn out misery and disappointment
of her second, left little in the prospect that anyone should desire it. She
was fifty-six years old, and Gilbert was some ten years younger. Moreover,
first

221

she had

now

in

life just

one

great, all-absorbing purpose.

She could not

she refused him.

it, and so
But that night she had a dream, a very common incoherency begotten
in a
of the troubles of the day, in which she found herself wandering
and
alone
and
fearful
"swinish
quite
forms",
wheat field surrounded by
conscious of a very
at a loss as to what to do. Then, suddenly, she was

think of

dose at hand, and next moment she heard a

simple, honest presence
voice saying to her, "Come on, Mary, I will help you."
It

was Gilbert Eddy, of

They were married

course.

next day,

New

Year s Day, 1877, with a suddenness confounding to Spofford, coming

hard upon her renunciatory letter of two days before!
That they entertained a real affection for each other which only
seems clear enough, but Mrs. Eddy, as she
deepened as the years passed,
on in one of her books, had at this time and always after
as will be seen, shared
dominant
one
wards,
preoccupation. Gilbert Eddy,
indicated later

ambition and this joy with amazing faithfulness and loyalty, and
because she recognized these qualities Mary Patterson found the promise
and encouragement in him.
of

this

security

No doubt they hoped, too,

that

by

their marriage they

which had made

would put an

their useful co-operation so

end to the petty jealousies

a certain extent justified,
difficult, and their hopes in this direction were to
at any rate, as far as the rank and file were concerned. To George Barry

and Daniel Spofford,

as will be seen,

it

was the

they had recovered from

last straw;

the

but the rest

surprise, rallied
group, after
round their teacher with renewed affection and loyalty. Indeed it quickly
became clear that, coining as it did at a time when a vague sense of

of the

little

uneasiness as to the ultimate

to

make

itself felt,

first

demands of the new teaching was beginning

human act of this marriage had a

the very simple

wholesomely clarifying effect.

There is something very homely and accustomed about the Lynn
Reporter s account of the celebration of the event which was held at the

Broad Street house a few weeks

Scientists

Festival",

later.

Under

and under date February

the caption

"Christian

10, 1877, die account runs :

222

"A

very pleasant occasion of congratulations

and

bridal gifts passed

and bridegroom Dr. and Mrs. Eddy, at

on tie evening of the 31st ult. The arrival of a

off at the residence of the bride

No. 8 Broad Street,

of unexpected guests at length brought about the discovery
large number
that it was a sort of semi-surprise party, and thus it proved, and a very
at that. It afterwards appeared that the visitors had
agreeable surprise
assembled in the lower parlour, and laden the table with bridal
the door was suddenly thrown open and some of the family
when
gifts,
find the room well packed with friendly faces; all of which
to
invited in
was the quiet work of that mistress of all good management, Mrs. Bixby.
silently

of the most elaborate gifts in silver was a cake basket.

bouquet
of crystallized geranium leaves of rare varieties encased in glass was
charming, but the presents were too fine to permit a selection. Mr. S. P.
"One

Bancroft gave an opening address a very kind and graceful speech,

which was replied to by Mrs. Glover Eddy with evident satisfaction,
when alluding to the unbroken friendship for their teacher, the fideEty to

Truth and die noble purpose cherished by a number of her students and
the amount of good compared to others of which they were capable.

The happy evening was closed with reading the Bible, remarks on the
Scripture &c. Wedding cake and lemonade were served, and those from
out of town took the cars for
Little

imagination

is

home."

needed to describe the scene when the

last guest

had gone, Mary always ready to hope for the best, happy in the evidence
of so much affection and peace restored, and Gilbert methodical and
*he could do up a shirt as well
almost woman-like in his care of tilings
his
sister-in-law once said of him
as any woman/ as
happy because she

was happy, moving

quietly about tidying the room, putting chairs back

up the plates and carrying them to the pantry

of the wedding cake bad: in the cake box.
the
remains
and putting
in their places, stacking

223

"E

The Second Edition

IT

WOULD BE a mistake to suppose that all the days

of these years of Mrs.

or indeed any years of her life were characterized by gloom

the good and often amazing results later achieved, it
anxiety. From
deal of confident and satisfying
these
in
is clear that,
early days, a great
work was
done, and that the compensation of such successes, small

Eddy s

life

and

being

or great, must have gone a long way to relieve the pressure of apparent
failure elsewhere. Bronson Alcott had followed up his first interest with
several kindly acts.

in his

He received both George Barry and Daniel Spofford

home at Concord, visited Mary several times

in

Lynn, on one occa

sion at least stopping overnight in order to remain to the close of a session

with her students. At another time, when some specially violent attack on

Science and Health had come to his notice, he set out for
characteristically

words,

"I

announced himself to

At

arrived with the

have come to comfort

recalled the incident,

own/

Mary when he

Lynn and

Years afterwards, Mrs. Eddy

you."
his
how
conversation, "with a beauty all its
adding

reassured her.

another time Bronson Alcott wrote to her from Concord, telling

224

her

how Mrs. Emerson had

had commended

herself

expressed

and her book

a wish to meet
"to

her,

and how he

respectful consideration

to some of our best

with remarkable insight,

people", adding
judge
will be found among professing saints and worth
worst
opponents
your
less men." All of which must have been a great help and encouragement.
Nevertheless, the road was rough enough. The lull in the storm which
"I

Eddy was hardly more than momen

was
tary. George Barry
completely irreconcilable, and within a few weeks
he had brought suit against Mrs. Eddy to recover the sum of $2,700
followed her marriage with Gilbert

which he said was due to him

"for services rendered over a

period of five
of
went
into
the
smallest
detail; even the
particulars
years".
errands which he had shown himself so willing to run and the small

His

bill

he had apparently been glad to render were all charged for. He

a
put price on his judgement in selecting carpets and furniture, and on
his time in going to the bank for money or in
paying the house rent, these
with
the
more
reasonable
demands for compensation in the work
together
services

of copying out manuscripts. The monetary consideration,

although
serious enough, was small compared with the
anxiety and disappointment
which the whole episode occasioned Mrs. Eddy at a time of great stress

and uncertainty. She was working hard on the second edition of her book
and seeking at the same time to straighten out the ever more entangled
problem of Spofford s dealing with the

first.

At length she could apparently stand the strain no longer, and decided
to put
her.

an end to it by going away for a time and leaving no address behind

so, one day early in March, she and Gilbert set out together

And

and, without disclosing their plans to anyone, took train for Fairhaven in
Connecticut on a visit to Gilbert Eddy s brother, Washington
who

Eddy,

was married and had a home

there.

On

the eve of her departure she wrote to Spofford, but carried the
letter with her to Fakhaven and did not mail it until some time after her

Like several other letters written about this time, it is

pervaded
of strain and fear. Quimby s doctrine of
a
sense
by
penalty died hard,
and she had still the most incredible depths of suffering to plumb before
arrival.

225

she could reach the point she did later when she realized, as she put it,
that "the belief and the believer are one", that no belief can go further
as 1881 she could write, looking
"than
thought permits". Even as early
the sick when
suffered
we
back on these days
greatly for
years past
for them."
suffer
cannot
we
and
over
all
that is
now,
healing them
the sick but
for
not
But in 1877 she was suffering for them, and
only
:

"In

. .

to shake herself

many other misconceptions from which she was later

free. Her letter to Spofford when she was leaving Lynn is almost pathetic
in its burden "The book lies waiting, but those who call on me mentally
for

me, stopping my work that none but me

no more now if ever. They lay
stop. I can do

in suffering are in belief killing

can do ... the book must

upon me

suffering

inconceivable."

Later on, she wrote in another letter that whenever she tried to con
centrate on her work of writing she felt the demand of those who needed

and towards the end of the letter de

wretchedly that if it were not for her husband she would gladly
up the ghost of this terrible earth plane and join those nearer

healing
clared
"yield

my

"as

sensibly as a

hand",

Life".

But whenever Mary Baker or Mary Patterson or Mary Baker Eddy

reached such depths it was invariably the signal for a tremendous rebound.
Neither was

this reaction

any ordinary reaction. It almost always meant

new height. As she was to put it years after

for her the attainment of a

wards in one of her articles : "First purify thought, then put thought into
words, and words into deeds; and after much slipping and clambering,
1
you will go up the scale of Science."

She slipped and clambered more than enough

in these early days

and

but the general trend was always upwards.

Moreover, she never stayed long in the deeps. Thus in this case, a few
days after she had written to Spofford in terms of despair, telling him that
she never hesitated to admit

it,

the book must stop and that she can do no more "now if ever", she is
writing to him at length about it, planning in detail for the second edition.
It is a long letter in which
eager interest in her work
1

and careful considera-

Miscellaneous Writings^ p. 341.

226

tion of business details alternate with doubt

and

fear

and a

feeling,

not

untouched with bitterness, over the actions of some of her students.

under date, Fairhaven, April 19, 1877, she says :

Writing
"MY

"I

DEAR STUDENT,
will consider the arrangements for embellishing the book. I

had

the hand of the former

picture of Jesus and a sick man
of
the
in
rebuke
him
as
to
disease; or waves and an ark.
outstretched

fixed

on the

The last will cost less I conclude and do

made to look right except in colours and

Now

arranged in gilt.

for the printing

the entire work as

as well.

No

rainbow can be

that cannot be conveniently

would 480 pages include the

it now is? The book entitled

to Scriptures and
Science and Health is to embrace the chapter on Physiology all the same
as if this chapter was not compiled in a separate volume; perhaps you so

Key

If the cost

what you

understand

it,

terms for I

am confident in the sale

is

you to accept the

more there can be a

stated, I advise

of two editions

and above it all. If I get my health again I can make a

demand for the book for I shall lecture and this will sell one edition

net income over

large

of a thousand copies (if I can stand it) . I am better, some. One circum
The night before I left, and before I wrote you those

stance I will name.

went into convulsions from a chemical, and was

fragments, Miss Brown
not expected to live, but cam^ out of it saying she felt perfectly well and
as well as before the injury supposed to have been received. I thought at
that time

O, how

if

again the Mother would die in her labours.

students can know what it all costs me. Now, I thank

she was not

little

my

1x>rn

twice a week;
you for relieving me a little in the other case, please see her
in healing you are benefiting yourself, in teaching you are benefiting

would not advise you to change business at present the rolling

stone gathers no moss; persevere in one line and you can do much more
others. I

than to continually scatter your

as practitioners

fire.

and thus healing

Try

to get students into the field

book and introduce the

will sell the

more than aught but my lecturing can do. Send the name of any
or
can
get to study for the purpose of practicing and in six months
you
science

227

thereabouts
to hear
will

you

we

will

have them in the

will understand.

me

forward them to

Send

field

If you have ears

helping you.
Boston. T. O. Gilbert

all letters to

at present.

TSfow for the writings you named. I will make an agreement with you
it and have
to publish the book the three years from the time you took
at the
twenty-five per cent royalty paid me;
or continue those
make other

arrangements

Spirit shall direct

upon. During

upon and the

me,

I feel this

is

end of

this period,

we have made

we

will

just as the

the best thing for the present to decide

we shaE have a treasurer such as we shall agree

funds deposited in his or her hands and drawn for specified
these years

end of these three years if we dissolve partnership the

purposes, at the
divided between us; and this is the best
surplus amount shall be equally
still

performing, and

me
tously, entitle
it is

to

all I

some income now that

I have none and instead

I have allowed

my

am

expended on that book, the labour

have done for students and the cause gratui

I can do. All the years I have

am

am unable

to work.

But

as

sued for $2,700! for what? for just this,

students to think I have

no

rights,

and they can not

wrong, me!

God open
"If

it

their eyes at length!

you conclude not

to carry the

work forward on the terms named,

have to go out of edition as I can do no more of it, and I believe

hour is to try my students who think they have the cause at heart

will

this

giving all his time and means to help

me up from the depths in which these students plunge me and this is all
he can do at present Please write soon*

and

see if

it

be

so.

My husband

is

"As

ever,
MARY"

The

letter is typical,

and presents a

lems which confronted Mrs.

picture, clear enough, of the

prob

and of the way in which

their burden was added to by doubts and fears, both her own and those
of her students, which a fuller insight was at length to dissipate. The letter
also

shadows forth a

Eddy

difficulty

at this time,

which was to present

itself at

every turn

228

in the future, a difficulty with

which the leader in almost any cause

is

apt

to be confronted, that of finding disciples with the capacity to grasp a

vision and with sufficient faithfulness to follow a leader without demand
for a place either at his right

hand or

his left.

had a mind of his own. Already fundamentally

Spofford, though,
alienated by the blow to his feelings involved in Mary s marriage, he
too sympathetic or co-operative.
probably was none
His reply to the letter just quoted was to the effect that he saw no
favourable prospect at all for the second edition, that the royalty she
asked for was excessive, and that he could not possibly undertake the

work on those terms.

At first glance, it might appear that he was

in

a large measure

justified

In ordinary circumstances twenty-five

one seldom enjoyed, but the circum
and
be
would
cent
high royalty
per
not
stances were
ordinary. Practically all Spofford s sales were and would
in his contention as to the royalty.

full published price. In other words, he would not have to meet

the thirty or forty per cent discount to the bookseller such as a publisher
to the author s royalty and cost of
usually has to write off, in addition

be at the

reckon his own profit Thus even

production, before he can begin to
after paying the twenty-five per cent royalty which Mrs. Eddy asked for,
he would still stand to make at least a twenty per cent higher profit than

a regular publisher could have expected.

In answer to his complaint, Mrs. Eddy wrote that she thought what
she asked for was just; that over against the capital he was investing, she

had given three years and more of work. Spofford

dose out the remaining copies of the first edition

reply to this was to

at what he could get

them and turn over the proceeds, approximately $600, to George

Barry and Elizabeth Newhall, the two students who, it will be recalled,
advanced the money (over $2,000) for the publishing of the book and
had not yet been reimbursed. (Spofford, too, had contributed about $500
for

to the project.) This left Mrs. Eddy without any copies of her book and
no funds with which to secure even a reprint. Much disturbed she returned

immediately to Lynn, and when Spofford called upon her at her request

229

minced words, if we are to judge

which fol
extant) and the results

to talk the whole matter over, neither

by

their letters to each other (still

lowed, for their partnership was rudely terminated.

It was a bitter blow, not so much because of its effect
that she must have seen could be remedied

evidence

it

seemed to supply of the malignity of

friends into enemies. First,

was able to turn her

upon her book

but because of the further

power that
Richard Kennedy, and

this strange

now Daniel Spofford. If they had just gone out from her, it would have
been bad enough, but she and her little band were positive that both
and Spofford were now actively engaged in a mental opposition,
Kennedy

weE prove disastrous.

determined to do what she could to

the results of which might

Mrs. Eddy

offset the effects

of

the onslaught. She was beginning to perceive what is today so generally

from the public exhibition
acknowledged, that mesmerism in all its forms,

of direct hypnosis to mass mesmerism as practised by the skilled propa

to the ignorance of its subject. And so
gandist, is effective in proportion

book she determined to tackle the question

in the second edition of her

thoroughly.

In

many ways

second edition of Science and Healthy which was

this

by T)r. Asa G. Eddy", reflects the stress and

slim book of 167
confusion amid which it first saw the light of print.

published early in 1878

pages against the 456 of the first edition, it consists of five chapters
against eight in the first edition. Of these five, the first and second entitled
respectively

"Imposition

Chapters IE and
quite short, the

(Chapter IV)

VII

first

and

Demonstration"

and

"Physiology",

are

in the first edition; while of the

remaining three, all

(Chapter

HI)

"Metaphysics",

is

entitled

and the

last

"Mesmerism",

(Chapter

V)

the second

"Reply

to a

Clergyman".

In its make-up the book follows the form suggested by Mrs.

Eddy in
her letter to Spofford, save that instead of a frontispiece
representing
Jesus healing a sick man is a line drawing, not too badly executed, of
Jesus raising Jairus daughter, while the outside cover is embellished with
a floating ark done in

gilt line. It is full

of typographical errors

more
230

than thirty are

listed in the

"errata"

and there are many others. The num

and the title of the book appears

bers of the pages are sometimes repeated

correctly only on the outside cover.

The probabilities are that the book was rushed into print in order to
secure the earliest possible publication of Mrs. Eddy s statement on
"Mesmerism", which, as already noted, appears in the second edition as
Chapter III.
This statement, in view of the circumstances in which
has an interest
standpoint,
years ago,

it

it

it

may

reveals

an

insight into the processes of the

The application of
own and unique.
Her great desire was

able.

her findings to her teaching

to forearm

matter, foreknowledge in the case of

human mind

is,

inevitable protection against the deception that twice

But there

still

lingers the old

of course, her

by forewarning. As she saw the

mesmerism was just as sure a pro

tection against deception as the foreknowledge that twice

else.

written,

which must be accounted remark

then almost a virgin field for research

an

was

own. Today viewed strictly from a psychological

seem at times elementary, but as a product of sixty

all its

two

two

is

bugaboo of malignant

is

four

is

anything
telepathic

bombardment.
"The

best

mode of self-protection from this mental outlaw",

she writes

and get your eyes

open to the fact of what he is attempting. Then you are safe; and his
malevolent attempts, through a mental process, to harm you are futile.
in the second edition,

"is

to understand Metaphysics,

His mind cannot influence yours, causing motives, resolutions, loves,

and hates, purposes and acts, that you would never have known but for
him, when you know what he is about; and his attempt will be power
less, and fall before you a pitiful spectacle of defeated malice, that can
no more afiect you than the bullet that strikes against the armour of steeL
Ancient magic, sorcery, and whatever method employed by the
demoniacal mind, were less fcarbarous in their codes and tendencies than
the modem modes or secret impregnation of thought by the unscrupulous
*1
manipulator and subtle mesmerist,
.

Science

231

anJ Health, (2nd Ed,),

pp. 138-139, 143.

the mental
This doctrine, so strange today but so plausible then, of

transmission of

evil,

was to recede

the years rolled thence

steadily as

onward.

While Mrs. Eddy was writing thus in the fall of 1877, the suit against
and she
her instituted by George Barry had come up at last for trial,
found arrayed against her as witnesses in support of Barry, not only
Daniel Spofford, but several others who had at one time been her de
but it must
voted friends.
subpoenas left them no alternative,
Perhaps
have been none the less galling.
It was for her the first of

many similar experiences. She had been really

fond of Barry and he of her. He was the first of her students to call her
mother and, in the days of Ms devotion, had written a little poem, not
without merit, emphasizing his debt to her:

O, Mother mine, God grant I ne er forget

Whatever be my grief or what my joy,

The

immeasurable, inextinguishable debt,

my sweet employ

I owe to thee, but find

Ever through thy remaining days

To thee as faithful as thou

to

be

wast to me.

However viewed, the suit was a sorry business and a strange com
counsel had finished reading the
mentary on human nature. By the time
was evident that Barry desired to take up
of the eight or nine years he had been associated

of particulars,
plaintiff s bill
the position that in

all

it

with Mrs. Eddy, he had never received from her any value even such as
could be made to offset the carrying up of a bucket of coals from the
cellar, for which service he charged at the rather high rate of fifty cents
a bucket. But then, as has been seen, practically everything was included,

even walking out with her in the evening when they went house-hunting
before the purchase of

Number

8 Broad Street.

Mrs. Eddy went on to the stand and told of their relationship, saying
had taken him when he was a lad little more than eighteen, taught

she

232

him

practically everything he knew, even

how

to write properly; that she

had remitted half his fees when he went through her first class; and that he
had begged her

to be allowed to copy her manuscripts in order that he

might the better study them. Some of which Barry admitted under crossexamination by Mrs. Eddy s counsel. The jury was in a quandary. It was

between the two was, as Mrs. Eddy

contended, one of reciprocal service, but to what extent it was difficult
the relationship existing
possible that

The verdict of $350 in Barry s favour ultimately tendered was

a compromise and represented compensation only for the actual copying
of portions of Science and Health for the printer.
to decide*

Mrs. Eddy saw in it all simply the malign effects of mesmerism, as

it. This is evident from her
handling of the matter in the second

she called

and Health. She reasoned soundly enough that there

can be no such thing as a falsehood that has not an antecedent truth; but

edition of Science

any other falsehood, would operate as truth until

to be a falsehood. All of which was, of course, but a logical

that the falsehood, like

it

was shown

deduction from the admitted fact that the mesmerist

is
powerless in the
of
an
denial
of
his
understanding
power.
presence
And so when the second edition of Science and Health at last appeared

in January of 1878,

it

was found to contain the vigorous denunciation of

mesmerism and mesmerists already referred

to.

The

result

was an im

mediate and very sharp separation of the sheep from the goats. Spofford
and Barry, for the time being at any rate, were classed with Kennedy,
while those remaining were pronounced loyal.

The movement was growing

much more rapidly than appeared on the

But even on the surface

it was
presenting to an increasing extent
its existence. The little Christian Scientists Home
of
evidence
tangible
on Broad Street in Lynn, the Christian Science Publishing Company and
the Christian Scientist Association which had been organized,

surface.

chiefly

through the efforts of Spofford, in the summer of 1876, were

that a
It

233

movement was

was

this last,

all

evidence

afoot.

the Christian Scientist Association, that now, with

Under their
ironic justice or injustice, took action against Spofford.
f
or
"immorality."
tie was now declared

Rules of Order,

expelled

was published in the Newburyport Herald. His

could not be expeEed from the
retort was a letter to that paper, stating he
To which Mrs. Eddy, always
member.
Association as he had never been a
contradicted his assertion and elaborated on the charges
in
Notice to

this effect

response,
against him.
C
Our Constitution

quick

a member is expelled
for this article
motive
The
for immorality, that it should be made public
or in
in the Constitution was to prevent a member from going astray,
requires,"

she wrote,

"when

so ignorant
case this could not be prevented, to forewarn the community,
the
secret
of
this
student,
agent for misof the evil that can be done
dbief that

by
a mental malpractice becomes

The

time

is

not far off when

of
the witnesses to the secret sins, yea, crimes, committed in the name
abuses
such
of
victims
unconscious
the
been
have
who
Sdence, and those
will

be heard in our halls of

state;

and because a man

heals in

some

in

stances (as all mesmerists do) and does incalculable evil in others, he
will not blindly be upheld by the sick, and pin his wicked deeds on the
better

deed that the one may offset the other; or make Science and Health
for such
May the direct line of duty from which

the pretence
malpractice.
I never swerve, be taken by those of our worthy students as

we know

it

Truth will triumph over error."

finally, and
There were more letters and statements and questions from George
and Elizabeth Newhall, with a vigorous rejoinder from Miranda

will be

Barry
It was not long, however,
Rice, but Spofford did not return to the attack.
more difficult issues.
even
to
face
called
was
Mrs.
before
upon
Eddy

234

HAPTER
Edward

NO

J*

23

Arens

BETTER EXAMPLE could be offered of Mary Baker Eddy s lifelong

endowing many of those who came to her aid with

inclination towards
qualities they

did not possess than that of Edward

J.

Arens. Arens was

who had come to Lynn as a young man, working at first as a

but
later opening a cabinet-making shop of his own.
carpenter,
stocky,
glowering man, to judge from his photograph, with shaven chin overhung
a Prussian

with a fierce walrus moustache merging into luxuriant sideburns, which, in

up and around into a veritable mane of dark hair. His whole

and deep-set snapping eyes suggest pugnacity in a high
degree and convey a strange impression of a mind hovering on the edge
turn, run

face, his full lips

of unbalance.

In the years before he met Mrs. Eddy, he was frequently involved in

litigation. Indeed, he seems to have been one of those people for whom
going to law about anything and everything had an inevitable fascination.
Instead of being a last resort with Arens, it was apparently a natural first

happens to such people, from claiming his rights

under the law, he has been generally described as seeking much more

resort and, as so often

235

than his

rights.

The

line

between this and plain fraud

Arens was

On

is

not easy to draw.

Lynn in connec

arrested in

June 24, 1876, Edward J.

tion with a notorious series of swindles carried out

by a group known as
the Gremkw-White gang, which operated in Lynn and Boston and
the charge against him was withdrawn pos
further afield.
Ultimately
knew how to
he
because
sibly

it

"arrange"

but the suspicion remained,

and from subsequent amazing events which must be later described, the
inference seems reasonable that he was intimately acquainted with the

New England seaboard towns.

Arens entered one of Mrs. Eddy s classes in the fall of 1877, just after
her break with Spofford, and very quickly established himself in a position
of influence, not only with Mrs. Eddy but with her husband. The source

underworld of the

of this influence was in

intricacies

of the kw.

all

intimate knowledge of the

probability his

Up to this time, Mrs.

Eddy had never

voluntarily

resorted to court proceedings. Indeed, she seems to have had a very whole
some aversion to anything of the kind, and there can be little doubt that
a number of her less scrupulous students had taken advantage of

quite
tie fact, leaving their obligations unmet and, in some cases, failing to
return money loaned to them for one purpose or another.

To
be

man

like

Arens, such a

number

of "unredeemed

rights"

would

short of shocking, and it was not long before he was urging Mary
Gilbert Eddy to turn over the various unredeemed notes and promises

little

and

to him, and

let

him bring suit against the delinquents for recovery. In the

and Health, published in 1881, Mrs. Eddy is

third edition of Science

she writes :
evidently alluding to the circumstances when
"In the interests of truth we
ought to say that never a lawsuit has en

We

have suffered great losses and the

tered into our history voluntarily.
direst injustice rather than go to kw, for we always considered a kwsuit,
of two

evils,

the greatest.

About two

years ago the persuasions of a

we might be doing wrong in per

obligations with us ... .The student who

student awakened our convictions that

mitting students to break their

argued this point to us so convincingly offered to take the notes and
collect them, without

any participation of ours; we trusted him with the

236

whole
legal

affair,

doing only what he told us, for we were utterly ignorant of

proceedings."

Be this as it may be, in the February of 1878, Arens, on her behalf, sued
Richard Kennedy to recover $750 upon his promissory note of eight
before. In the following April he actually sued two members of the
years

namely, George H. Tuttle and Charles Stanley, for unpaid

and later still Spofford for breach of contract. All three actions were

first class,

fees,

ultimately lost but, quite undeterred by such failure, Arens went on to

consummate his masterpiece in the art of litigation, a suit against Daniel

Spofford for witchcraft.

He did not so style it, of course, but from the
the suit in the

case subsequently

Witchcraft

first

announcement of

was so styled in the press, and the

Newburyport Herald,
became famous in the
it

legal annals of Massachusetts as

Ostensibly this case was an appeal to the

"Ipswich
court by one Lucretia L. S. Brown of Ipswich to restrain one Daniel
Spofford, who, the complainant affirmed, was a mesmerist, from practis
the

ing his arts

and

Case".

upon her and

severe spinal

causing her

"great

suffering of

body and mind

pains".

Appropriately enough, the case ultimately came up for

Supreme Judicial Court at Salem.

The

trial in

the

strange story is soon told* In her letter to Spofford from Fairwhich she went into some details about the second edition, Mrs.

haven, in

Eddy mentioned a Miss Brown whom she had restored to health evidently
from invalidism of many years standing, the result of an injury. This Miss
Brown is the Lucretia L. S. Brown in the case. Lucretia Brown was a
spinster about fifty years of age, who lived with her mother and sister in
an old house in Ipswich facing on School-House Green. It was a typical
England house and household, with an emphasis on neatness and

New

itself and all its surroundings. Indeed, it used to be a saying in

those days, that Essex was the cleanest county in Massa
in
Ipswich
and
chusetts,
Ipswich the cleanest town in Essex County, and the Browns

order in

were the cleanest people in Ipswich. Miss Lucretia had suffered all her
life from spinal trouble caused by a fall when a child and, although not

237

actually bedridden, she

was often confined to her bed for weeks at a time

and never could walk further than around the house or across the Green,
or on her good days, to church. In spite of all her handicaps, she had
built

up with

city dealers

where

the aid of her sister a crocheting agency, taking orders for

it

was the period when crocheted antimacassars were every

and giving out piecework to

"the

ladies"

in the village

who

desired to earn something in their spare time.

Miss Luaretia was noted for her system, from which she never deviated.

At exactly two

o*clock in the afternoon

on

certain days in the week, she

gave cot the crochet work Those who arrived before that hour assembled
in die parlour, and, exactly on the stroke of the hour, the door leading into

Miss Luctetia s bedroom was opened and the ladies admitted, one by one,
She received them in bed, whereof the turned-

in tbe order of their arrival.

down

and pillow were always so incredibly white

comment as to how it could possibly be done.

sheet, tbe counterpane

and smooth

as to arouse

Even when the last lady had taken her order and gone her way, after all
yam had been handled and the directions given, the bed was still as

tbe

iinnimpled as ever and Miss Luaretia still as neat and prim.

Miss Lucxetia tad been healed by Mrs. Eddy. There was no doubt of

She was

up and about the house all day, and on several

amazement of her friends and neighbours, had walked
distances of two or three miles to make an afternoon call on
days when
die was not "receiving". The healing of Miss Lucretia Brown was
it

able to be

occasions, to the

every

where the talk of Ipswich and die neighbourhood.

Then, one day, she had a relapse and, when in great
to Mrs. Eddy. Mrs.

fear, she

appealed

sent her loyal friend,

Miss Dorcas Rawson, to

Eddy
see her. Miss Rawson was
usually very successful, but she could do noth
ing with Miss Locretia, who, baffled but determined, took to her bed
again. It was just at the time when the Spofford
was at its
controversy

and the

between him and Kennedy had been

suspected.
Tbe fear of mesmerism, or malicious animal magnetism as it was
called,
was everywhere. Mrs. Eddy could insist that
forewarning was a complete
protection, but her followers were not at all so sure; and when one
height

alliance

day

238

shortly after

Miss Lucretia s

relapse,

Daniel Spofford for no apparent

some of the students were in an uproar. No

further explanation could satisfy them save that Daniel Spofford was a
mesmerist and, in order to have his revenge on Mrs. Eddy and her loyal
reason at

all called to see her,

had brought about the relapse of Miss Lucretk Brown, whose

healing was such an outstanding instance of the truth and effectiveness of
students,

Mrs. Eddy s teaching.

Mrs. Eddy herself had written in the Newburyport Herald that the
time would come when the courts would take cognizance of the malprac
of the avowed mesmerist, and so nothing would do, in Arena s judge
ment, but that Spofford should be sued at once and enjoined by the court

tice

from further wrong-doing.

the matter,

if

at all

To what

until too late

Eddy was

extent Mrs.
is

uncertain.

She

consulted in

herself, in the third

and Health, declares that the case was brought into

to her advice and judgement". But in any event, the Bill

edition of Science

court

"contrary

of Complaint was duly

and runs in part:

drawn up and presented.

It

is

a strange document

complaining, the Plaintiff, Lucretia L. S. Brown, of Ipswich,

in said County of Essex, showeth unto your Honors, that Daniel H.
"Humbly

Spofford of Newburyport, in said County of Essex, the defendant in the

above entitled action, is a mesmerist and practises the art of mesmerism

and by his said art and the power of his mind

minds and bodies of other persons, and uses

influences
his said

the purpose of injuring the persons and property

others and does by said means so injure them.
"And

and

and

power and

art for

social relations of

the plaintiff further showeth that the said Daniel

has, at divers times

controls the

H.

Spofford,

and places, wrongfully and maliciously and with intent

to injure the plaintiff caused the plaintiff, by means of his said power and
art, great suffering of body and mind and severe spinal pains and neural
gia

and a temporary suspension of mind, and

still

continues to cause the

plaintiff the same. And the plaintiff says that the said injuries are great
and of an irreparable nature and that she is wholly unable to escape from
the control and influence he so exercises upon her and from the aforesaid

effects

239

of said control and

influence."

The
was

case attracted instant attention as soon as the Bill of Complaint

filed,

and the Boston Globe sent a

reporter

down

to Ipswich with

When

he arrived, Lucretia was

but he did succeed in seeing
actually or ostensibly away from home,
ter sister, who was evidently most emphatic on the question of Spofford s
instructions to interview

Miss Brown.

delinquency.

The kdy informed the Globe reporter/

the account ran,

"that

she

and

awful power of mesmer

family believed that there was no limit to the
the
of
law, and thought that
ism,, but she still tad some faith in the power

tier

Dr. Spofford might be awed into abstaining from injuring her sister
further. That he does so she believes there is no possibility of doubt. In
answer to a query put by the reporter, she admitted that should Dr. Spof
ford prove so disposed even though he be incarcerated behind the stone
walls of Ghatlestown, he could

still

use his mesmeric power against her

sister."

came up before the Supreme Judicial Court of

Massachusetts in Salem on May 14, 1878. Edward J. Arens appeared as
In due

course, the case

counsel for the plaintiff, and as soon as Judge Horace Gray, who was to
hear the case, had taken his seat on the bench, Arens arose and pre

sented his petition for a hearing on the Bill of Complaint and made an
exposition of the case to the judge. It was more or less of a routine. The
Judge ordered that a notice be served upon Mr. Spofford and appointed

May 17th, for a hearing of the case.

On Friday morning, a great crowd thronged the Court House, and the

die following Friday,

newspapers were evidently prepared to make the most of it. They were
all, however, to be disappointed. The proceedings were brief and colour
less,
Spofford did not appear, but his attorney appeared for him and filed
a demurrer which Judge Gray immediately sustained, giving judgement
that it was not within the power of the court to control Mr.
Spofford s

mind. Arens immediately appealed the case.

but was never prosecuted.

The

appeal was granted

There seems to be

little doubt that, from the first to

kst, the whole
was
strange proceeding
arranged and promoted by Arens as part of his

240

campaign to secure Mrs. Eddy protection for her

the law. Mrs. Eddy herself, before she realized
to
teaching by appeal
where this policy was leading, left the matter, she says, entirely to Arens.
It was the first and last attempt of the kind, and, on the whole, seems to
singularly

ineffective

have had a very clarifying effect on the infant movement. The statement
in the Bill of Complaint, to the effect that the plaintiff had no power to
the real or imaginary attacks of mesmerism, was
protect herself against
and the net
to
everything Mrs. Eddy was trying to teach,
exactly contrary
Brown and
Lucretia
convince
been
to
to
have
seems
outcome of the case

mesmerism
Spoff ord and his friends understood
or misusing it, they themselves had something better

her friends that, even

and were using

and stronger.

it

if

and
Anyway, Lucretia recovered completely

carried

on her

business as

received her "ladies" in

before, with the single difference that she now
She remained a
her
bedroom.
in
as
instead
the
of,
formerly,

parlour

devoted follower of Mrs. Eddy until her death some five years later.
Meanwhile, although there is scant record of it, the new teaching was
far afield. Less than seven years
spreading rapidly and astonishingly
to declare in
Witchcraft
after the "Ipswich
Case", Mark Twain was

the "new
querulous amazement that he believed
would "conquer half of Christendom in a hundred years".

something very
religion"

Science

like

and Health,

in spite of

apparently limited circulation and

a great and increasing number of

its

chequered history, was being read by

a way of travelling from hand to hand, one copy
people. The book had
often making long journeys, being read in its progress by many different
people,

many of whom were to find,

often weeks and months later, that

had unconsciously changed the whole course of

credited to

The
is

by

it

story of

Numbers

of long standing.
healing of physical troubles or infirmities
its

Odyssey, as

it

came to be pieced together

of people
replete with testimonies
it,

their lives.

it

forgot even

its title,

who wrote

in after years,

who read the book, were helped

or even who lent it to them, and

it,

then spent years in trying to find it again. But, in these early years, not
much of all this appeared on the surface. It was like the coming of spring

241

an ice-bound country the work was being done underneath.

transformation was to come almost overnight.
in

The

Mrs. Eddy in the second edition of Science and Health spoke of several
cases of healing as the result of simply reading the book, while

not long before

from

in

letters to the

same

effect

practically every state in the

still

preserved

it

was

were coming

Union and even from England and

Ireland,

Years afterwards Mrs. Eddy was to place on record as one of her find
ings that students of her teaching who were thus thrown on their own
self or others,

by place and circumstances from any appeal to her

seemed "stronger to resist temptation than some of those

who have had

line

resources, precluded

characteristically,

and precept upon precept"; and she added,

they must learn by the things they suffer, the sooner

upon

"If

line

gained the better.

When within a few years, Mrs. Eddy, her book and her teaching had
emerged definitely into the light of national knowledge, these people were

this lesson is

all

more than, ready to move forward and enter with enthusiasm upon the

missionary

field.

But meanwhile,
ing

is

in

Lynn and Boston, the only record apparently unfold

and persecution, each one worse than the last

that of conspiracy

The Witchcraft Case was

hardly out of the way before George Barry

the
on
scene
once
more, this time in a role so entirely discreditable
appears

from him any last vestige of sympathy. Possibly he hoped

to regain by his action some of the influence and
power he had once
if
he
misunderstood
the
woman
with whom he was
but,
so,
enjoyed,
sadly
He
wrote
to
Mrs.
for
the course he had
dealing.
Eddy expressing regret
as to alienate

money that had been awarded him as the

of his suit against her, and proposing that she
join with him in
what was clearly no more than a disreputable plot to
get rid of Richard
Whether
this
letter
had
Kennedy.
any connection with the amazing and
taken, offering to return the
result

inscrutable conspiracy which must next be rekted,

it
certainly serves to reveal the character of

but

impossible to say,
George Barry as nothing
it is

else could.
1

Miscellaneous Writings, p. 278.

242

the

evident to

is

"It

city,

and

The

end.

me",

he wrote,

I think also

it

"that

would be

relations between he

and

you

desire

for your

I are

Dr. Kennedy to leave

interest to accomplish this

probably of a different nature

from what you suppose, as I owe him a debt on the past, which, if driving
him from Lynn will accomplish, it can be done. He thinks I am your
him continue to think
enemy, and favour, if either, his side. Let
greatest

do no harm. For my part I rather a person would come out

as you and I did facing each other, than to sneak
boldly and fearlessly
his poison venom into them he would
the
in
like a snake
grass, spitting
so;

will

it

slay.

have said I owe Dr. Kennedy an old score, and the interview I
so that I arn now deter
night has increased that debt,
be your object also, as two heads are better than one, to drive

had with him

mined,

if it

last

him from Lynn.

great
result

enemy

may

in

we be enemies especially if we have one

common? Perhaps we can be united on this, and the

Why

be that

should

be finally rid of one of the greatest hum

her fair face. All this can be accomplished;

this city will

bugs that have ever disgraced

but as I said before, it is necessary to be very cautious and not

communication together be known, as a friend in the enemy

advantage not to be overlooked."

let

camp

our

is

an

Mrs. Eddy declined the proffered money, told Barry she

would only help to do what was right and would always be ready to help
him to do that, and, in the matter of his proposition regarding Richard
issues to God. Such a reply
Kennedy, recommended him to leave all such
it was effective is evidenced
was
nothing if not restrained. That

In

reply,

certainly

by the

fact that

and never
George Barry disappears now from the story

returns.

In any event, he and

by what was

to follow,

spiracy to murder.

would quickly have been overshadowed

the arrest of Gilbert Eddy on the charge of con

his affairs

spiracy to JVlurder

TOWARDS THE END of October, 1878, a

notice appeared in the

Boston

newspapers which, greatly alarmed Daniel Spofford s many friends.

caption "Mysterious Absence", it ran as follows

Under the

D. H. Spofford, the Christian Scientist, has been missing since

Tuesday, October 15, and much alarm for his safety is manifested. He
had offices in Haverhill, Newburyport, and at Hotel Tremont, No. 297,
"Dr.

Tremont

and was

seen at the latter place, in appar

ently good health and sound mind. The cause of his disappearance is
beyond explanation. Dr. Spofford is about 35 years of age, has a light
Street, Boston,

last

complexion and full beard, and wore dark clothes and black Kossuth
He was a member of the Grand Army in Newburyport and an Odd

hat.

FeEow in Lynn. Any information regarding his whereabouts may be sent

A. A. Spofford, No. 151, Essex Street,

to the Boston police or to

Lawrence."

Shortly afterwards, a news item appeared in the press to the effect that
Spofford s body had been identified at the morgue, and there was little
doubt but that he had been foully done to death. Within a few
days,

244

Gilbert

Eddy and Edward Arens were

having conspired to procure his murder,

arrested in

Lynn charged with

and bail was set at three thousand

dollars.

Only a few weeks previously, Mrs. Eddy had written to Spofford her
to him in seventeen months a plea that he desist from, and a

first letter

warning against the boomerang effects upon himself of, the malicious
mental malpractice which she said she could detect him directing against
her.

He

had not answered her

letter,

and now she found her husband

charged with being accessory to his murder. With characteristic energy

she rose to the occasion and tackled the question of bail. It was quite a
problem. She herself did not have the money in cash and her house would
not be accepted in surety, as a part of the original mortgage still remained
undischarged. Bancroft was willing to come to her aid, but his house, too,
still a
mortgage on it, and so he was not available. Finally, Miranda

had

Rice was accepted as surety, and Gilbert Eddy and Arens were released
on bail. They had hardly got back to Lynn from Boston before the news

reached them that Spofford had reappeared, as suddenly and mysteriously

as he had dropped out of sight three weeks previously, and had visited his
brother Albert that morning in Lawrence.
The relief which must have followed the

first

amazement in the

little

household at Lynn was destined to be short-lived, for it quickly developed

that Spofford had come back with a story which only made more definite
the charges against Arens and Gilbert Eddy. The charge of conspiracy
to murder still remained to be answered. Spofford s story, as pieced
together from press interviews

nothing

if

not

lurid.

One morning
in his office, at

and subsequent court proceedings, was

early in October, according to his story, he was sitting

to the door,

No. 297 Tremont Street, when a knock came

on opening which he was confronted by a

man, who said that he wanted to

and deciding quickly that he was

that would be looking for him, asked him
at him,

of doctor he wanted to

245

see.

heavy-set rather brutal-looking

see the doctor, Spofford took

Whereupon

one look

certainly not the type of man

if he was sure he was the kind

the

man

produced one of Spof-

the door
ford s cards from his pocket, explaining that he had found it on
if he was the man indi
that
and
of Ms (Spofford s) Newburyport office,
that his name
cated on that card then he was the man he wanted to see,
was James L. Sargent, that he was a saloon keeper and that his business

was very important.

Rather doubtful, Spofford asked him to come in to his consulting
at once into his sub
room, and when they were seated Sargent launched
two men named Miller and Libby.
by asking Spofford if he knew
ject

remarked bluntly: WeU,

Spofford replied he did not, Sargent
want to get you out of the way. Miller, the
they know you, and they
the old man s daughter, and he wants
young man, says you are going with
himself."
to marry her

When

then went on to explain that these two men had offered him five
hundred dollars to put Spofford out of the way, and had already paid

He

him

seventy-five in advance.

to get aE the

money

Ms neck by

risking
sensible

and

or as

He

deckred that while he was determined

much of it

as

killing Spofford,

he could, he had no intention of

and that if Spofford would be

a little while, the

just disappear for

settled satisfactorily.

He then went

whole thing could be

on to make the

surprising statement

Pinkham and had

that he had already notified State Detective Hollis
asked him to watch the case. He told Spofford to think it over and let
him know.
had gone, Spofford lost no time in going round to see
Detective Pinkham and found that Sargent had told him the same story.

As soon

as he

Pinkham declared, however, that he had paid little

as Sargent

attention to the matter

had a criminal record and he figured that he was only attempt

ing to square himself with the police by appearing in the role of a

conscientious informer. He said that he would certainly look into the

matter further, and Spofford went away.

few days later, Sargent appeared once again in Spofford s Tremont
Street office, complaining that
Libby and Miller were pressing him. He

faad,

he

the job

said, tried to get

some more money out of them by telling them

he, Spofford, was already dead, but that they

was done and that

246

and were now accusing

Something had to be done and at
once. He urged Spoffotd, now thoroughly alarmed, to go with him to
his (Sargent s) brother s house at Cambridgeport, and hide himself there

had sent a boy round to

his office to investigate,

him, Sargent, of playing them

until

false.

collect the balance of the five

he could

hundred dollars promised

him. Once again, Spofford consulted Detective Pinkham, who evidently

advised him to comply with Sargent s suggestion, for the two set out at
once for Cambridgeport. Spofford left Boston on October 15, and for

something more than two weeks kept in hiding in the house of Sargent
Sargent had promised to come out, from
things were going, but he failed to do

sister-in-law.

him know how

Spofford took
first

to the

time to time, to let

his

home

so,

and

at last

hands and returned to Boston, going

Lawrence.
brother in

courage in both

of his

Meanwhile, Arens and Doctor Eddy as he was now generally called

had been identified by Sargent as the Miller and Libby in the case, and
although Spofford was alive and unharmed they still remained charged
with the conspiracy to murder him. It was in vain that they both insisted
that they had never seen the man Sargent before and repudiated the
in bail of three thousand
charge with the utmost vigour; they were held
dollars for examination in the Municipal

Court in Boston on

Novem

ber 7th.

When the

case

was

finally called

on the afternoon of November

7th,

a motley array of witnesses confronted the judge, Judge May, a wellknown jurist in the Municipal Court. James L. Sargent, the central figure
in the case

on

the side of the State, was a bar-tender with a criminal

His friend and star witness, George Collier, was at that time
under bond waiting trial on some particularly unsavoury charges, while
record.

otter witnesses for the prosecution were James Sargent s sister Laura,
who kept a disorderly house, and several of her girls, who, as it subse

and
quently appeared, were needed to confirm evidence given by Sargent

H. W. Chaplin appeared for the prosecution, and Russell H.

Conwell appeared for the defendants.
Mr. Chaplin in opening the case for the Commonwealth contended

Collier.

247

that he

Arens and
able to prove directly that die defendants,
that
and
Sargent
the life of Mr. Spofford,
conspired to take
of two hundred dollars toward the five hundred

would be

Eddy, had
had ken paid upwards
him for carrying out
briefly

The

commission.

their

evidence

may

be

summarized ;
L. Sargent testified that he
Miller, but

who called

had become acquainted with a man

whom he now, recognized as the defendant

that Miller or Arens was in the

Arens, some four months previously;
one day he told
of cooling to his saloon to tell fortunes, and that
dollars could
that he knew of a good job where three or four hundred

Mm

much

be made without

was told

to,

that, he,

on

inquiring

man

what
and

it

"licked",
Arens, wanted a
come to again", but he wanted to

"he

so that he wouldn t

wanted him
be sure that the
declared that

trouble; that he, Sargent,

lie

man who

did the job was to be depended on. Sargent

on this point,
I was just the man for him,

reassured Arens.

and Arens said

the old man Libby or Dr. Eddy would not pay more than was absolutely
as he had already been beaten out of
necessary to get the job done,
dollars. I met Arens the following Saturday at the comer
"I

told

him

he

said,

"that

seventy-five

of Charles and Leverett Streets at five o clock, and

Charles Street into an alleyway.
me himself, and so

wanted to see

he and the old

man Libby

He

said Libby

we walked down
satisfied and

was not

we

selected a spot in the freight yard

would meet me in half an hour.

be a plot of some kind

"In the meantime.,
fearing that the affair might
and
friend
of
a
a revolver
got another friend
against myself, I borrowed
with me. Collier secreted himself in a freight car. with
named Collier to

go

the door partially open, so that he could overhear any conversation, and
at the appointed time I met Arens and a man who was known to me as
Libby, but
"Eddy

whom

asked

I recognize as the defendant Eddy.

I wanted to do the job,

me how much money

and

I told

him I ought to have one hundred dollars to start with. He asked if I

would take seventy-five dollars at the outset, and I said I would. He
wanted to know if I would be square and I told him, yes. He then said
248

he had but

thirty-five dollars

with him that night which he would give. me

and would send the remaining thirty-five by Arens on Monday, morning.

I told him, no, I must have the whole at. that time. Just then a man came
meet him on
five dollars,

bring

and

and Arens told me in a quick tone to

Monday morning. I did so and Arens passed me seventyfew days later! met Arens again, and he said he would

down

walking

me

the freight yard

directions where to find

Dr. Spofford at

his office in

HaverhiU

Newburyport."

as long as
Sargent then went on to describe in detail how he delayed
the
he
touch with Arens again, how
money,
spent
possible getting into

and at

last

when Arens got

difficult

longer, he met him again.

went to the Tremont
c

We

gave

me

sixteen dollars, with

and

Hotel,"

which

clearly could

not be put off any

Sargent continued,

went to the doctor s

"and

office in

Arens

New-

the doctor, but brought away one of his business

buryport. I did not see
cards; came back and called at Dr. Spofford s office and had a conversa

met Arens on the Common by appointment

and told him I had made arrangements to have die doctor go out of
In a few days he met me on the Common again. He said I was
town
the whole thing was a put up job, for Dr.
playing it on him and that
to find
Spofford was in his office. He had sent a boy
to tell how he met Arens several times, and that
on
went
Sargent

tion with him. I afterwards

out."

the country
Sargent should take Spofford into
on the pretence that he had a sick dhild. Their plan, he said, was to take
him on the head with a
Spofford out on some lonely road and **knock
first
to
run
horse
the
afterwards causing
entangling the body
away,
billy",

that
finally they agreed

with the harness, so it would appear that death was caused by accident.
and kept
Sargent said he took the doctor to his brother in Cambridgeport
his
of
fact
as
the
As
soon
three
weeks.
about
there
for
him
disappearance

was published in the papers, Sargent said that he sought out Arens and
told him that he had made away with the doctor, and that he had done it
at half-past seven the evening before. Sargent said that Arens replied
that he

had known this,

things that otter people

249

that he

had

felt it,

knew nothing of

and had a way of

telling

such

more money,
saw him several times afterwards, seeking to secure
him at
Arens agreed to do something more for him, met

He
and

dollars.
Lynn and paid him another twenty
who
Another witness was a woman named Jessie MacDonaid,

had

lived as housekeeper with

that she

said she

Doctor and Mrs. Eddy for several months,

but that she had often heard Doctor

had never seen Spofford,

of

Eddy speak
heard Mrs.

Ms

persecution

of Mrs.

Eddy and had on one

occasion

from the Bible which said that

reading a chapter

Eddy

all

wicked people should be destroyed,

of ill-fame, supported by the

keeper of the house
declared that Sargent had a room in her
testimony of some of her girls,
three or four times to see him, and
there
that Aiens had come
s sister, the

Sargent

house,
that,

on one

had given her seventy-five dollars to keep

her that he was going away to her brother s house in

occasion, Sargent

for him, telling

Gambridgeport.

was followed by the detective employed in the case,

Pinkham. He told how Sargent had laid the case before him,

Sargent s

Hoiis

sister

he did not attach

much importance

go ahead and find out what he could,

Areas

Eddy

in conversation together

to his

on the

to

it

at

first,

but told Sargent to

how he had seen Sargent and

Common, how he had followed

towards the
Lynn, and how he had seen Sargent go
house there, how he had subsequently asked Eddy if he

home

in

door of Eddy s
had arranged to have Spofford put out of the way, how Eddy had denied
the charge, denied that he had ever been in Sargent s saloon, and how
Arens had likewise maintained when questioned, that he had never .seen
and did not know Sargent, and that he stuck to this even when he was
confronted with Sargent himself.

Another
at

detective
s

on

the case, one Chase Philbrick, testified to seeing

house in Lynn; saw him try to get

Eddy
Sargent
He confirmed Detective Pinkham
Collier, the

man who hid in

versation between

in,

testimony. Finally

do so.
came George A.
but

fail

to

the freight car in order to overhear the con

Arens and Sargent. His testimony corroborated that

of Sargent.

This closed the case for the Commonwealth. The defence

inasmuch

250

as the case

shown

was one where only probable cause for suspicion was to be

no evidence. The Commonwealth, on the other hand,

offered

submitted no arguments, simply laying the "chain o circumstances"

before the court, and asking the court to decide whether or not the evi

dence was

show that the

sufficient to

before the Superior Court. Judge

very anomalous

one",

parties should be held to appear

May

remarked that the case was

but thought the evidence was

"a

sufficient to justify

the parties being so held, and ordered accordingly, fixing the amount of
bail at three thousand dollars each for the appearance of the defendants
at the

December term of the Superior Court.

The case was never called. Anomalous as

lution

if

so

it

may

be

styled-

it

certainly was,

its final

was the most anomalous part of

it.

reso

With

out filing any memorandum of his reason for this action, the District At
torney decided simply to take no further action in the matter. The Supe
rior

Court record reads

"This indictment was found and returned into Court

by the Grand
the said Arens and Eddy were
Jurors at the last December term, when

said indictment read to them, they

severally set at the bar, and, having
not
that
were
thereof
said
guilty.
they
severally
"This indictment was thence continued to the
present January term,

and now the

prosecute

District Attorney, Oliver Stevens, Esquire, says he will

this indictment

thereupon paid.

And

said

further, on payment of costs, which are

Arens and Eddy are thereupon discharged.

no

January 31,1879."
This decision on the part of the District Attorney not to prosecute

Doctor Eddy and Arens precluded all possi

of a public exoneration through an effective defence. Between the
bility
date of the preliminary hearing in November and the time of the District

further the charges against

Attorney s nolle prosse in January, counsel for the defence, largely

through the efforts of Mrs, Eddy herself, had secured a complete confes

Commonwealth s chief witness, George Collier, that the

charges against Eddy and Arens were entirely false and that there was
not a word of truth in the story he had told on the stand.

sion from the

251

December 17, 1878, Collier

Before a justice at Taunton, under date
declared under oath
on oath depose and say of my own free will,
George A. Collier, do
Dr. Asa G. Eddy
order to expose the man who has tried to injure
and
me
by great persuasion
Arens, that Sargent did induce
and Edward
:

<%

J.

from Boston on or about the 7th day

go with him to East Cambridge
in the Municipal Court in
of November last, the day of the hearing
E. J. Arens for attempting
and
Boston in the case of Dr. Asa G. Eddy
and that he showed me
to hire said Sargent to BE one Daniel Spofford,
and told me what to
the place and the cars that he was going to swear to,
to

made me repeat the story until I knew it well, so that I

say iti court, and
was not one word of
could tell the same story that he would, and. there
between
truth in it at. I never heard a conversation in East Cambridge
to pay
offer
or
them
saw
or
pay
saM Eddy and Arens and Sargent,
Sargent any money.

GEO. A.

(Signed)

There were
exoneration,

several other depositions

"and

on February

COLLIER"

and affidavits making for complete

1879 5 Gilbert Eddy wrote a letter to the

the case for the defence. It was published

10,

Boston Traveller, summarizing

Personal Vindication", and ran
next day under the caption,
for
A.
"The confession of Geo.
Collier, one of the principal witnesses
:

"A

Daniel
<!aine

and E. J. Arens last- October,

against Dr. Eddy
the 6th instant. But Collier s confession is only part of the

H. Spolord and

out on

evidence of the defence. There are other

and

as direct testimony,

a part
Dr.

of which is that a dozenf witnesses are ready to testify they were with
until ten minutes of six p.m. on the very
-Eddy at Boston Highlands

and "afternoon that -Sargent and

Collier swore Dr.-

Eddy was

-with

day
him

"

"

at half-past five
"The

p.m: bargaining to killSpofford.

ride in the horse car

from the Highlands to East Cambridge

would occupy an hour, and when

Lynn there were company there who

the"

Mm to inquire about his class

doctor reached his residence in

will testify they

were waiting to see

and he reached home about a

quarter-past

having taken the half-past six train from Boston. Upon the lawyer
pinning him down to a date, Sargent swore he knew it was the day and
seven

252

hour that he stated because a seizure was made in a rum shop on that
he claimed to meet Dr. Eddy and E. J. Arens. The
day and at the hour
was made on the rum shop that he named, and
seizure
records show that a
at the

hour he named, but that the aforesaid gentlemen were with him
is
proven a lie. Mr. Arens can show an alibi by several

then and there

witnesses

very

time."

So
as

it

who were
.

in a doctor s office in Boston, where he

."

..

;\

the matter was closed.

was at the

;
.

.
.

..

The whole

...

case

;...:!

is still

..:.:

:..

as complete a mystery

was in that long-ago; day.. Every suggested solution

apparently inescapable objections.

The

possibility that

it

fraught with
was a kind of

is

double-crossing extortion plot on the part of Sargent to get money from

Eddy and Arens as well as Spofford, is vitiated by the fact that he never

attempted to get money from Spofford, and apparently never got any
from Eddy and Arens, as the whole story of their meeting was denied
by Collier. Moreover, even if this were shown to be still a possibility^
there would remain to be explained Sargent s dealings with the detective

Pinkham.

That this was a deep laid plot on the part of Spofford to have this re
venge on Doctor Eddy cannot be seriously considered; while its vice versa-,
that it was a deep laid plot on the part of Gilbert Eddy to have his revenge
on Spofford, is equally incredible. There is, of course, what seems to be the
genesis of a clue in Aren s former reputed connection with the under

world, but

it

apparently leads nowhere.

No

attempt was

made

to extort

money from Arens, and if the object had been to get him out of the
way, the method chosen was so tortuous and uncertain as to place it out
side die

bounds of possibility.

Mrs. Eddy, in her view of the case, quite definitely attributed the whole
incident to mental manipulation, claiming that it only presented on a

somewhat

larger scale the

same incoherent features to be found in other

ruptures that had taken place in the development of her work Incoher
ence was indeed characteristic of the case from first to last. As one com

mentator well said of

the nightmare of

253

it, "The

some

evidence reads like the testimony heard

plethoric judge/*

HAPTER
Malicious

SOONER OR LATER,

25

Animal

in traversing the lives of those who, like

Mary Baker

becomes necessary to turn aside

make
to
sure
that
we
their definitions; in other
understand
long enough
to
make
sure
that when they use an expression or group of expres
words,

Eddy, lay claim to original thought,

sions,

it

such use means the same to them that

The field of

it

does to us and vice versa.

and bypaths of the human

that time, Freud and his
school were still thirty years below the horizon. The word *1>ehaviourhad not been coined, the word "propaganda" still found no place
research along the major roads

mind has extended enormously

since 1878.

At

istu"

outside the

"Sacred
Congregation" of the Vatican, and no one had
of
thought
asking why we behave as human beings". At that time, no
one was heard to speak of "mass mesmerism", and
although fashion,
devotion, patriotism, every kind of human emotion then as now came and

went, no one had ever thought of attributing such movements to any

thing but specific and most reasonable causes.

Even today,
of analysis.

research has not attempted to

go much beyond the bounds
The ways and means by which the new
attains its

propaganda
ends have been thoroughly investigated and are
pretty well known, but
no effective general antidote has ever been found, if it has ever been

254

Today, books are written on the use of mesmerism or suggestion

sought.

or personal magnetism in the art of salesmanship or of making friends.

There is not a failing or foible of human nature which has not been

analysed to the end that means might be discovered for its exploitation.
Yet, in spite of all this, the average man is satisfied to believe that his
thoughts originate with himself, that his likes and dislikes are his own,

uninfluenced by anything but his own intelligence and reasoned judge

ment. The fashions of yesterday and his changed views in regard to

them are always there to have him in derision, but his confidence in him
self and in the sovereignty of his choice is never impaired.
That far back, Mrs, Eddy reached the conviction that all final power
is

mental or

the

spiritual.

She reasoned,

logically

enough,

power that moved the muscles of her hand to

that,

inasmuch as

write, of her limbs to

walk, was purely mental, then there was at least nothing incongruous in
the assumption that the power which controlled all the actions and

changes of matter, from the stars above to the earth beneath, might be
mental also. From this point, she went on to see that if this proposition

which she embodied in the statement, "All

*
were true, then, like all
manifestation,"

is infinite

Mind and its infinite

an un

truths, there could be

it; in other words, a counterfeit* or supposititious oppo

that
the
and
site,
higher anyone attained in the realm of Truth, the more
obtrusive would be the untruth or the counterfeit which could be brought

truth told about

to light

by the

discovery.

This counterfeit of Truth, of the divine Mind, as she called it, in all
its manifestations, she declared to be the human mind, and from that she

human mind was a state of

mesmerism from which the mortal needed to be awakened. The moment,

went on to maintain

that, first

and

last, this

however, she had proved that this divine Mind could waken the mortal
out of the mesmerism of pain and disease, anger, sorrow, or what not, that

moment

there arose in a

more

aggressive form than ever before the

counterfeit contention of the opposite of truth, namely, that

induce or reimpose these limitations.
1

Science

255

and Health,

p. 46&.

it

could

The whole of human belief has been always unconsciously insisting on

the work, Mrs. Eddy maintained, became much more rapid
just this, but
tod effective when it was done consciously. The normal action of human
belief to

maintain

magnetism",

its

own

convictions

and standards she

and the conscious attempt

to

individual for injury of others, she called

or

"malicious

There

is,

mental

make use of

"malicious
-

called

this

"animal

power by the

animal

magnetism"

malpractice".

of course, nothing in all this but what

is

a commonplace in

Where Mrs. Eddy clearly differs from

the study of psychology today.

is in her contention
psychologist

the

that this mental influence can

first,

and without physical implementation^ andy second, that

operate directly
an understanding of the supposititious nature of this human mind and a

and ever presence of the divine Mind are a

of the former and a
against the mesmeric influence-

realization of the reality

complete protection
demonstration of die actuality and presence of the latter.
In brief, Mrs, Eddy, instead of taking it for granted that the sudden

and subterfuges which were constantly

among her followers were simply part of the changes and

inexplicable hatreds, disloyalties

coming to

light

chances of

human life,

in the presence of

which she was

;

helpless, insisted

that they were the result of directed effort oh the jpart of an individual or
individuals and of failure of the student to guard himself against such
;

"

imposition.

In the Conspiracy to Murder

for her thesis. If

case, she

maintained that she had support

enough
possible to imagine a group of people being
separately expertly mesmerised, in the manner of the public exhibitions
of that period, or in the manner of the more serious
of the
it is

experiments

modern

clinic,

and then

to conduct a similar case, the result

;

"willed"

could hardly have been more fantastic than that which

actually took place
"The
is an
nightmare of some plethoric

m Boston in the eighties.

judge"

apt enough description.

It seemed to Mrs.

Eddy that there must be some reason for it all,

other than what appeared on the surface. And so she
began to formulate
her theory, and two
years later in the third edition of her book Science
256

and Health^ under the

title

she considers in some detail

"Demonology",

had been made upon her and her teaching and

she was fostering, from the first open break with
that
upon the movement
the various attacks that

to- the final defection of

Spofford, culminating in the
incoherent medley of the Conspiracy to Murder Trial.
She considers it all from the mental standpoint* The actual translation

Richard Kennedy

of the thought into a deed is to her of secondary importance. She dis

misses the overt act with the same logical inconsequence as did Jesus
when he declared, "Ye have heard it said of old time, Thou shalt not

commit adultery, but I say unto you, whosoever looketh upon a woman
to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

The man who,

as he

life

taking

knows

it

in his stride, indulges his

hatred, his anger, his meanness, his cruelty, his fear

and what not, in

simple ignorance, believing that these feelings and emotions are just Ms
own and cannot injure, save insofar as they are translated by him into

Mrs. Eddy regards simply

In other words, he is a man who

specific deeds,
titioner.

as

an ignorant mental malprac-

is
thinking wrongly through ig
norance and not from malice aforethought. He is ignorant of the fact that
the "atmosphere" of fear or hatred or cruelty he carries around with him is

contagious, or in the words of the

its effect.

The man, on the

modern psychologist

.:

other hand,

malpractitioner, and

man who

evil effect,

It is

a long chapter,

sand words

doing, has confi

deliberately uses his knowl

Mrs. Eddy calls a maEtious mental

mental malpractice. He is a

not from ignorance but with malicious

this chapter

on Demonology -some

and, in the light of all that

is

skilfully

but one possible way", Mrs. Eddy

through a mental method of treating disease, and

257

thirteen thou

known today regarding

mass application of suggestion and the effect of

ganda, makes strangely interesting reading.
"There is

is

his practice malicious

practises wrongly,

purpose.

in

who knows what he

dence in the dynamic power of thought and

edge to produce the

"stampeding",

writes,
this is

the

imposed propa

"of

doing

evil

mesmerism, that

controls the

error instead of Truth.

mind with

the exhibitions of mesmerism has seen

produce

pain,,

it

Whoever has witnessed

a joint, suspend thought,

issues intended,
whatever
to

stiffen

and move the individual mind

that by mortal mind alone the body can be

proving beyond a doubt
uttered aloud can be met with rebut
Falsehoods
affected injuriously

bat a silent mental process of impregnating into the mind,

ting testimony;
and thence into the body, .suffering, disease, fear, hatred, sensuality, etc.,
*Satan

is

ail

let loose

the sin that standeth in holy places

other beasts of die

either to

The

field,

more

subtle than

a crime at which everyone should shudder

become the victim or the

perpetrator."

essence of her contention, of course,

is

that the wider the field

realm of Mind, the wider must of neces

opened up by metaphysics in the
so she writes again:
be the field
up to its counterfeit.

And

opened

sity

individual

"The

who employs

his

developed mental powers,

atrocities according to opportunity,

escaped felon, to commit

no
.

period.

God

is

like

an

safe at

hath laid His hand upon him, justice is manacling him.

to metaphysics is full many a league in the line of light,

From physics

but from die use of inanimate drugs to pass to the misuse of mortal mind
is to drop from the platform of manhood into the mire of folly and
iniquity."

From first to

last,

the whole chapter

is

the negative view of her faith. It

that its purport should be grasped in some measure,

is, however, important
because of the tremendous part this teaching, or its misapprehension,

pkyed

in the immediately subsequent history of the

edition of Science

movement. The third

and Health represents what may be

called the high

point in the negative presentation of Christian Science. In every later

edition, a movement is made towards the positive side. "Mesmerism can

but metaphysics can make diem unbelieve

is the
keynote of the third edition. "Keep your minds so filled with Truth
and Love, that sin, disease, and death Cannot enter them," is the keynote

make mortals

believe a

lie,

it",

of the

last.

In 1879

it

was the teaching of the third edition that held the place of

emphasis.
s

Miscellany, p. 210.

258

The Church

dissensions which entered so largely into the chronicle

s life in 1878, important as they are, tend to obscure far

ONCE AGAIN, THE

of Mrs.

Eddy

more important developments. In spite of all defections and disloyalties,

unwise suits and amazing criminal charges, the foundations of a great
of the years that
only in the perspective
this can be clearly traced, for in those early days it seems to have been
one of the characteristics of the Christian Science movement that it never

movement were being kid.

It is

of rapid growth. New adherents were con

presented the appearance
of them actuated largely by curiosity. They
stantly coming in, many
then came back
then
and
for
a
time,
stayed away for a time, and
stayed
turned back, or
never
and
on
went
and
remained
Others
longer
again.
went out and never returned.

The movement

was, however, steadily expanding. Even those

who

or late, in friendship or in wrath,

dropped out, whether they did so early
that
the
new
were stiH missionaries of
teaching, at any rate, to the extent
they told others about

it.

And very

to prove conclusively enough,

in

making a new

259

disciple

often, as the subsequent history

an adverse

criticism

than a favourable one.

was

was even more effective

But the movement had no definite headquarters outside of the little

front room at Number 8 Broad Street in Lynn. Several attempts had
been made to secure such a focal point.

On June 8,

1875,

it

will be

remem

had banded themselves together

bered, eight of Mrs. Eddy s students
Scientists" and
Christian
"The
pledging
informally, calling themselves
themselves to raise

them every
money enough to have Mrs. Eddy address
were continued for five successive Sundays and

Sunday. The meetings

owing to the rising tide of argu

ment brought to the meetings by Spiritualists and others who dissented
from Mary Patterson s teaching and resented her well-known disapproval
then, as already noted, were abandoned,

of Spiritualism.

move towards an
Thereafter, for about a year there was no definite
1876 came "The
of
summer
the
in
and then
organization of any kind,
Christian Scientist Association". This second attempt at organization
differed importantly

the interest of

from the

first

in that

it

made no

direct effort to enlist

was devotional rather than missionary

establish and develop those already inter

the general public. It

its purpose, and designed

ested rather than to make new converts. It held

to

in

more or less regular

of
different
the
homes
in
but
students, usually in
always
weekly meetings,
Salem.
and
in
Boston, Roxbury
Lynn, but sometimes also
Mrs. Eddy seems to have approached the idea of organizing a church
own with a considerable amount of hesitancy. Indeed, in the nine

of her

between what has come to be regarded as the date

years which intervened
of her discovery of Christian Science in 1866 and her publication of the
first

edition of Science

and Health in 1875, she was evidently convinced

that church organization was a hindrance rather than a help to the highest
spiritual
"We

development.

have no need of creeds and church

organizations",

she wrote,

"to

sustain or explain a demonstrable platform, that defines itself in healing

. The mistake the
the sick, and casting out error.
disciples of Jesus
.

made
this,

to

found

religious organizations

and church rites,

was one the Master did not make. ... Christ

am Truth and

Life*, the teihple for the

indeed they did

church was Truth,
if

worshippers of Truth

is

Spirit

260

No time was lost by our Master in organizations, rites,

and ceremonies, or in proselyting for certain forms of belief."
But Mrs. Eddy in the attic room of Number 8 Broad Street in Lynn,

and not matter.

and Healthy with the weapons of her warfare still largely

writing Science
and the world still largely uncontacted, was one thing, and Mrs.

untried

Eddy definitely confronted with the problem

of spreading her gospel was

As she was to write some years afterwards in a later edition
quite another.
of her book Until the author of this book learned the vastness of Chris*
:

tian Science, the fixedness of mortal illusions,

and the human hatred of

Truth, she cherished sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet
2
with immediate and universal acceptance."

have been long before she was compelled to abandon this

hope, and the conviction that the world of her day would find it difficult
if not impossible to accept her teaching save through the accustomed
It cannot

channel of a church must have followed soon afterwards. This was espe
true in the world of New England to which she first addressed
cially

As

long as a man went to church, or at least was not opposed to

churchgoing, he might believe what he liked and, however regrettable, it
would not be out of order. But if he did not go to church, or, worse still,
herself.

was opposed to churchgoing, he could not expect to be accepted as a

religionist at all, much less get a hearing as an exponent of a new faith.

A great many of Mrs.

Eddy s most

useful

and

effective students in

these early days had been active in church work before they came into
Christian Science Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, all strongly

evangelical in purpose and organization. They wanted a church to work

for, and were all too evidently at a loss when confronted with the prospect

of working out their own salvation and that of others in any but die
accustomed way.
Mrs. Eddy was quick to grasp the situation, and so in the summer of

1879 steps were taken to form a chartered church organization. In

August, she and some of her students met together, elected officers and
*?
directors, chose a name, "The Church of Christ (Scientist) , and applied
1

Science

Science

261

and Health.,
and Health,

First Edition, pp. 166-167.

p. 330.

to the state for a charter.

The

officers

and

directors were:

Mary

B. G.

Edward A. Orne, Miss

Eddy, president; Margaret J. Dunshee, treasurer;

Dorcas B. Rawson, Arthur T. Buswell, James Ackland, Margaret J.
directors. On August 23rd, the
Foley, Mrs. Mary Ruddock, Oren Carr,
charter was granted. The purpose of the corporation was
carry on and
"to

transact the business necessary to the worship of God", and Boston was
named as the place within which it was established. The charter members

numbered

twenty-six.

These apparently orderly developments might reasonably suggest for

their central figure a period of greater quiet and freedom from harass

ment than had

hitherto been her lot. Such, however,

being the case.

The

Murder

had drained Mrs. Eddy

Trial,

They had

was very far from

lawsuits of 1878, culminating in the Conspiracy to

also left her

s financial resources

to the limit.

burdened with a sense of fear over the machina

tions of her enemies which at times cast her into the depths. If her

oppo

nents could seize her husband and throw him into prison, arraign him
before the courts on the charge of murder and carry them all through a

maze of incoherences
they not do?

like

nothing so

much

as

an

evil

dream, what could

True, she put up a stiff fight against it all, but she had not only her own
fears to combat, but those of her students.
They crowded around her like
frightened children, wondering which of them would be the next victim.
Indeed, there emerges definitely about this time a situation or condition

which was to become almost characteristic of the movement in the

future,
and a just appraisal of this condition would seem to be essential to a

just

appreciation of Mrs.

Eddy s own

movement she founded.

Much more than most

history, especially in

its

relation to the

Mrs. Eddy seems to have been uni

With one or two exceptions to be noted

leaders,

formly ahead of her followers.

later, there never was anyone,

especially in those early days, who could

be said to have been able to
keep pace with her even to the extent of being
readily within hail. By the time they had caught up to a certain
point, she
had gone on ahead.

262

Too,

it

often happened with some of her followers that when they

it or concerned about it

reached a certain point they were so interested in

camped around it, and what they ultimately did with it

on the view taken of it by those who got there first after
largely depended
had
Mrs. Eddy
gone on. These early comers "preached" to those who
came after with all the authority of senior students, and in this way it was
that they literally

brought about that

many went

off entirely

on some tangent or

other, or

did so with clouded vision hampered with burdens

they went on they
had
which their leader
long discarded.
if

On the other hand, among those who came afterwards would always
be large numbers who had read her book sufficiently aright to see where
mistakes were being made by others and not to be influenced by them.
These pressed on and often a very young

disciple

would be found sud

denly in the vati.

In no circumstances was

all this

more

fear of malicious mental malpractice.

obsession.

They

accepted the idea of

true than in this matter of the

To many

"danger"

students

it

became an

with both hands and there

they stayed. The sure defence which Mrs. Eddy had proclaimed and to
which she was ever seeking to have recourse namely, an understanding
of

its

unreality

meant

to

them

little

or nothing.

The new

idea of

God

was to them completely overshadowed by what was nothing more than a

new

idea of devil.

The Conspiracy
left the

to

Murder charge

against Doctor

incident almost as bizarre as the charge itself

So

Eddy and Arens

whole movement under a cloud of fear which culminated in an

and the trial which followed.

sorely depleted were Mrs.

Eddy s resources as the result of legal

that
she
and
her
husband
decided to rent their house and
proceedings
move for a while to Boston. This they did in the early part of 1879, living

very simply in a two-roomed apartment. Shortly before they made the

move, Mrs. Eddy had heard again from that strange shadowy character,
her son George Glover. He was now a man in the early thirtiesfand after

being mustered out of the army at the close of the Civil

263

War

had

like

many

others disappeared into the

unknown

as far as his relatives

were

concerned.

George Glover and

his relations with his

at first to present something of

mother and

an enigma until

vice versa

seem

his restless character

and

the nature of his upbringing are given their full weight. Having all his
father s love of change, circumstances made him from his earliest child

hood much more the son of Mahala Sanborn, the blacksmith

daughter

and upper servant in the Baker household, than of his own mother. It was
to her he learned to look in those first years when his mother was able to
have him with her seldom, and what was at first a necessity quickly became

a preference. The kitchen and the bkcksmith s shop constituted for him
the real venue of his life. Then when Mahala married Russell Cheney

and he went to

live

with them at North Groton he became to

all

intents

and purposes their son. However, the ruling passion of his life was free
dom from restraint of any kind. When the Cheneys went west he, as
he always seems to have been a round
already noted, went with them, but
peg in a square hole, and it was to get away from Mahala and Russell
Cheney that he enlisted in the army at the outbreak of the Civil War.

When the war was

one employment
his

over,

he drifted from one place to another and from

becoming interested in mining as

mother occasionally, but he had a

to another, eventually

major occupation.

He wrote to his

way of disappearing for years at a time, leaving no address or means by

which he could be reached.
Mrs, Eddy had evidently heard from him
again, for early in 1879 she wrote to him from Boston telling him how
much she wanted to see him. She and Doctor Eddy had some thought at

Towards the

close of 1878,

away from the growing

Lynn and Boston and making a fresh start. The idea was given
up almost as soon at it was conceived, but it was no doubt this plan that
decided Mrs. Eddy to write to George Glover, for when she wrote to him
that time of going to Cincinnati to settle, getting

turmoil of

she suggested they should meet in Cincinnati.

The

invitation

was evidently timed exactly

right, for

George seems to

264

have gone at once to Cincinnati, and when he did not find

came on

there he

His

arrival, as

Eddy

students.

his

mother

to Boston.

may

be imagined, created quite a

She was

sincerely

stir

among Mrs.

fond of him and no doubt had often

spoken to her friends about him, and now they were to see him in the flesh.
came in
His short sojourn in Boston was a veritable March visitation.

He

lion. At first, the

novelty of the situation
him
He
to
was
the
centre
of
attention
strongly.
among quite a
appealed
number of people, and when Mrs. Eddy, perhaps too ready to believe the

like

a Iamb and went out like a

best of people, urged

insisting that she
fully

him

to stay with her

and study

Christian Science,

was sure he would make a wonderful student, he cheer

and hopefully assented.

was at the period that the fear of malpractice was at its height. Mrs.
Eddy herself had by no means found her feet, and her followers could
It

George was all agog. Here was something he could

was not long before he was up in arms against all his

talk of nothing else.

believe in,

mother
still

and

it

enemies, real or imaginary.

quite evidently the ringleader.
s

Among these, Richard Kennedy was

He

determined to stop Richard

Ken

nedy and, simple Westerner that he was, adopted what was to him the
normal and natural way of effecting his purpose. He always carried a

gun which bulged ominously beneath his coat, and he determined to get
the drop on Richard Kennedy and* then make him acquiesce in his de
mands. Some thirty years later, at the time when Joseph Pulitzer was
using the great power of his paper to "expose" Mrs. Eddy and discredit
her movement, George Glover told the whole story, or his version of it,
to the

New York World. It bears all the earmarks of having been astutely

written

up for

the occasion, but

it

makes

interesting reading.

a week of my arrival in Boston I learned strange things. The

strangest of these was that rebellious students were employing black arts
to harass and destroy my mother.
"Within

"The

longer I remained with mother, the clearer

by eyil influences of the students,

at rest

265

and always

this

became. Pursued

we moved from house

apprehensive. It

to house, never

was a middening puzzle to me.

We

would move

to a

new house and

fellow lodgers

an hour an

all

smiles

and

would come; the

of black magic, and we would

Then, in
would vanish under the spell
be ordered to go. But mother made it all very

friendliness.

would be

inevitable change

friendliness

clear to

me.

He

was a master hand

was Kennedy
at
last I made up my
until
at the bkck arts, as mother pictured him to me,
mind to cut him short in his evil work. But I kept my plan to myself. One
and left our
morning I slipped my revolver into my overcoat pocket
that mother talked of most.

"It

boarding house.
had never seen

this man, but I knew where he had offices, and I

walked straight there. He was doing business as a healer, and his name,
lettered on a brass plate, was on the door of his office. Every detail of that
visit is as clear in my mind today as if it took place only a week ago.
"I

"The

girl

who admitted me asked me if I was a patient, and I answered,

led me straight to Kennedy s office, on the second floor

Yes She then

.

of the house, opened the door, bowed me into the room, and hurried away.
Kennedy was before me, seated at his desk.
c<

He looked up smilingly and asked,

"Pulling

out

my

against his head,

of treatment,*
"There,

chance to

Are you in need of treatment?

up to him, pressed the cold muzzle
I have made up my mind that you are in need

revolver I walked

and

said,

while he shook like a jelly-fish in terror, I gave him his one

I told him that my mother knew of his black art tricks to

live.

and that I had made up my mind to stop him or kill him.

Tfou needn t tell me that you aren t working your game of hypnotism

ruin her,
"

to rob her friends

and drive mother into madness/ said I. *My word to you

we have

move to another boarding house I will search you

out and shoot you like a dog.
shall never
forget how that man pleaded for his life at the end of
is

this

if

to

"I

weapon, and swore that the black art accusation was false, and
had deceived me.
"But

it

did the business

boarding house that

all

right.

my
my mother

We were not ordered out of another

winter."

266

Richard Kennedy, who was still living in Boston at the time the World
Glover s statement,
published George
vigorously denied that he was ever
thus intimidated,

and

in any event, inasmuch as the

World

at that time

was trying to show that Mrs. Eddy was incompetent to manage her own
affairs and had for years been insane, grave doubts attach to the whole
interesting, however, as showing that the strongest impression
which George Glover carried away with him was that produced
by Mrs.
of
s
animal
Whatever
he
or
not
Eddy explanation
magnetism.
may
story.

It

is

may

have been

thought ran readily into the old lines of superstition

and emerged eventually in a belief in witchcraft and black magic.
But whether it was all imagination or worse on the part of Glover,
assisted

told, his

by the World

reporter, or there

was more than a grain of truth

a fact that as the winter of 1879 gave way to

spring and spring
to summer, the fear of attack from their enemies which had been so acute
in

it, it is

at the time of the Conspiracy to

Lynn and

Murder

Trial began to abate in the

little

which were now forming themselves

in other centres, notably in Boston and Salem. When the church was
finally formed in August, everyone seems to have been in a much happier
circle at

in the other circles

frame of mind. George Glover had gone home, Mrs. Eddy and Doctor
Eddy were back again in Lynn, and the infant movement entered upon

one of those brief periods wherein the smoke

lifted and enabled Mrs.

and
her
followers
to see something of what
Eddy
they were winning.
No attempt was made at first to bring the new church more prom

inently before the public.

While Mrs. Eddy was

in Boston, she

and her

had been

in the habit of meeting on Sunday afternoons in a

hired for the purpose in the Baptist Tabernacle on Shawmut Ave

followers

room
and although Mrs. Eddy s

nue,

talks

on these occasions were sometimes

reported at considerable length in the Boston Globe the meetings were

still devotional rather than
evangelical in character.

The circle of her students, however, was quietly and steadily increasing.
One of her most devoted foEowers about this time was a Mrs. Clara Eliza
beth Choate, who had been healed, some years
previously, while reading
Science

267

and Health. She and her husband, George D. Choate,

lived at

Salem with
die

new

their little

son Warren, and so deeply were they attracted to

summer of 1878 they moved to Lynn and

teaching that in the

took a house directly opposite Mrs.

Eddy

at the other side of

Broad

Street.

many years afterwards, Mrs. Choate

of Mrs. Eddy about this time and the house

,In her Reminiscences, written

gives

in

an

interesting picture

Broad Street

as she

remembered

it.

Notwithstanding

all

the turmoil of

life, there always seems to have been that about Mrs. Eddy and her
surroundings which caused those who met her to forget all else but that

her

they were experiencing something entirely new. Mrs. Choate, in describ

ing their first meeting in the front room at Broad Street, emphasizes just
this point:

**When the double doors leading into the back parlour were at last
she writes, "and I saw her standing there, I was seized with a
opened,"
sense of great gladness which seemed to be imparted by her radiant expres
sion. ... I cannot describe the exhilaration that rushed
through my whole

was uplifted and felt a sense of buoyancy unspeakable. It was as

a
though consciousness of purity pervaded Mrs. Eddy and from her im
parted itself to me, whereupon I felt as if treading on air to the rhythmic
being. I

flow of

music."

The house,
was best

as Mrs.

in the simple

Choate describes

it,

must have been typical of what

New England home

of the day, with

its

soft grey

paper and lace curtains looped back over gilt arms, its crimson carpets
and black walnut furniture, its flowers and its neatness.
Mary, it will be
from
a
had
knack
of
remembered,
out
early girlhood
making a
"home"

of very little.

As to Mary herself, perhaps the most grateful contribution Mrs.

Choate makes to the picture of her at this time is the
emphasis she lays
her
cheer
and
the
she
had
of
upon
good
way
rallying her students, when
they were inclined to be discouraged or fearful, with some humorous
remark which broke the spell for herself and
everyone.

268

27

BOSTON IN THE early eighties of last century was just beginning to

demonstrate to a reluctant world that, in addition to its culture, it was,
after all, what it had always been, a great commercial city. For the better
most frequently heard word from Boston had
part of half a century, the
been the word of the man of letters, whether in the realm of philosophy,
literature or religion, until the very

mous with blue

stocking.

Half

name Boston had become synony

joke,

whole

earnest, there

had been

fashioned the legend of Beacon Hill and Beacon Street and their exclu
sive aristocracy of thought and estate, while men everywhere had heard
of the Concord drcle and other circles of less import, those of Prescott,
Ticknor, Bancroft, Motley and Parkman in the realm of philosophy;
Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes and Whittier in the realm of poetry. They

were

with
contemporaries and friends, these men, bound together
ties of sympathy and constituted a group of writers that had carried

all

many
name

the
its

of Boston throughout the English speaking world and beyond

borders.

By
269

the early eighties, this race of giants had passed or was rapidly

had pre
passing away. Emerson died in the April of 1882. Longfellow
little more than a month. Alcott, old and war-scarred,
ceded
by

Mm

and Whittier longer still, as

did Holmes and Lowell, but, in the eighties, the twilight had definitely
descended on the gods, and cultured Boston was resting on its laurels.
lingered peacefully

The

on

for another six years,

of 1872 had hastened the change. For two long-remem

bered days, November 9th and 10th, fire swept over the city south of the
Common until nearly a thousand buildings, most of them in brick and
great

fire

time in nearly two hundred

years, men as they passed along the old cow path of Washington Street
could look back and see the shipping at the wharves away to the south.

stone,

had gone up

in

smoke and, for the

first

The devastated area was rebuilt in a surprisingly short space of time, but
when a new and finer business district had arisen from the ashes of the
old, a new Boston emerged with it. The love of culture and tireless
inquiry which had earned for the city the title of the Athens of America
remained, but it now shared place with trade and commerce.

As

a great religious centre it was still pre-eminent, if not from the

devotional certainly from the theological point of view. From the time
of Increase and Cotton Mather, through Jonathan Edwards
up to Ellery
and
Theodore
Boston
had
the
been
in
forefront
Parker,
Charming
always
of religious controversy, and the "Boston Craze" of
today had a
becoming a national concern of tomorrow.

way

of

The early eighties of last century found Boston still running

very true
to form, preoccupied with the
of
question
Spiritualism in all its many
schools, remodelling its Unitarianism, and giving no little attention to
the teaching of Robert
Ingersoll. Just ripe for something new and revolu

tionary,

it

found

this

instinct that decided

quite definitely in Christian Science. It

was a sure

Mrs. Eddy to look more and more to Boston as the

centre for the

promulgation on a large scale of her teaching. The people

who came in increasing numbers to her informal
gatherings in the Baptist
Tabernacle on Shawmut Avenue were a
very different type from those
who had heckled her so relentlessly at her first few
in the
meetings

Templars Hall at Lynn some four years previously. They asked ques-

270

issues enough, but they did so for the most part in the
of genuine inquiry rather than of controversy. The headquarters
spirit
of the movement were still in Lynn, but, from now on, Mrs. Eddy found

and raised

tions

more and more of her work centring in the great city to the south.
As 1879 drew to a close, she and her husband once again rented
Number 8 Broad Street and moved to Boston, taking rooms at first

on Newton Street near Tremont, but later moving with the Ctioates into
a house on Shawmut Avenue, which they took together, Dr. and Mrs.

Eddy occupying

the second floor

and the Choates the

first

and

third.

In

the spring of 1880 the Eddys returned to Lynn, but Mrs. Eddy continued
to pay her share of the rent and used the Shawmut Avenue house as her
resting place

when they came to

town.

Meanwhile, the meetings of the

Tabernacle on

ance steadily increased. Mrs.

Lynn

little

church each Sunday in the Baptist

stabilized and the attend

Shawmut Avenue became more

to conduct the services

Eddy

generally travelled to Boston from

which necessarily became

the numbers grew. The meeting

by the Lord s prayer with Mrs.

would open with

Eddy

students appointed for the purpose

less

informal as

silent prayer,

s interpretation.

followed

Then one

of the

would read from the Bible and

another from Science and Health, after which there would be an address

from Mrs. Eddy. Quite often possibly when the room in the Baptist
Tabernacle was not available the Sunday services would be held in the
house of one of the Boston students, generally in that of Mrs. Clara
Choate on Shawmut Avenue. Meetings were also held at Lynn, some
Number 8 Broad Street, but more often in the front parlour of

times at

Mrs.

F.

A.

Damon s house on Jackson Street. It was a carefully organized

gathering, the one at Lynn, with a treasurer and a secretary who kept
minutes of each meeting, some of which have been preserved. These
minutes show how small at first was the whole enterprise. Sometimes five,

sometimes seven, sometimes as many as twenty were present, but seldom

more. Thus the record of the meeting held on September 5, 1880, runs
:

"Meeting

opened by Mrs.

course.

271

Damon in the usual way. Mrs. M.

summer vacation was present and

Whole number in attendance twenty-two."

having completed her

B.

G.Eddy,

delivered a dis

But

all

the time the

movement was

steadily growing.

The Boston

a succession of students to Mrs. Eddy s

meetings, especially, brought in
in the rapidly expand
classes, some of whom were to figure prominently
Ellen J. Clark, Arthur Buswell
ing days which lay ahead. Julia Bartlett,
that
so
were
Addand
and James
they left their work and homes in
eager

Boston and came to Lynn so as to study with Mrs. Eddy and commence
work as healers under her guidance. Of those who became interested
time perhaps the most notable was Julia Bartlett. She was one
of the few among the earliest students who remained faithful to their

about

this

teacher through the years, and was still with her at the end. Born in
East Windsor, Connecticut, and descended from Robert Bartlett, one of
the first settlers in Hartford, she lost her father and mother when she

was

still

a young

girl at school,

and found

herself at the age of sixteen

the eldest of a family of five. Fortunately they were all well provided for
and Julia was able to finish her education, but her responsibilities, as she

saw them, weighed heavily upon her. She grieved over her father s and
mother s death, and turned to religion with a devotion and fervour which
only an adolescent girl can show. She was a member of the Congrega
tional Church, which, in those days,

of

New

England, but

its

was almost the established church

teachings failed to bring her the comfort

and

assurance she so sorely needed, and she looked in vain elsewhere for help.
Finally, she became seriously ill and, in the ebb and flow of partial re
covery, gradually lapsed into a condition of chronic invalidism.

She

first

heard of Christian Science in the April of 1880, and never

apparently
doubted for a moment. As soon as possible she set out for Lynn and
placed herself under the care of Doctor Eddy, with the result that she
recovered completely. She then went
through a class with Mrs. Eddy, and
returned to East

Windsor determined

teaching her

work. Later on, she

life

make the practice of the new

moved to Boston and opened an
to

office there.

This growing band of students was at once a

strength and a care to
Mrs. Eddy, a strength because her one
great desire was to have as many
as possible put to work, and a care because so few were able to
work by

272

They were forever returning to her for help and guidance,

the problem that presented itself was one they could
when
often
very
have worked out for themselves. Mrs. Eddy s straight speaking
quite well
on many occasions led to jealousy and offence, and she was called upon,
themselves.

too often, to settle differences which brought upon her only the con
demnation of both parties. She pushed forward, however, and, in the

all

December of 1880, launched boldly upon an enterprise which was to

bring her teaching at one bound into the very presence of Boston s
higher criticism. She hired the Hawthorne Hall, Number 2 Park Street,

Sunday afternoon services.

Almost in the shadow of Park

for her

Street Church,

Hawthorne Hall,

named
Hawthorne, had long been the scene of some
of Boston s highest flights into the realm of science, philosophy and
religion. Many great people had spoken and lectured there, and cultured
after Nathaniel

Hawthorne Hall as readily as it did to Park

Street Church or King s Chapel. It was an intimate kind of place with a
good platform, a gallery at one end and seats sufficiently generous to
Boston found

its

way

to

make

for comfort.

The

were held at three o clock on Sunday afternoons, and

they quickly became a subject of much discussion both in the press and
at church meetings, public and private. Up to now it had all been rumour.
services

Ministers and others had heard of the queer movement in Lynn with
mingled feelings of curiosity and strong disapproval, and they had no

doubt read about the

"Conspiracy

to

Murder"

Trial with the feeling that

wind-up of a rather discreditable craze. The last thing

they could have expected was that they would next hear of this strange
teaching from the platform in Hawthorne Hall.
it

was the

It was

final

some time before the storm actually broke, and, meanwhile, Mrs.

Eddy carried her plans for development a step further by making a move
which was certainly not lacking in courage and imagination. Under a
State Act which had been passed in 1874, she applied for and secured a
charter for
1 It

college to teach her system of metaphysics,

was pulled down many

273

and on January

years ago to give place to a block of business buildings.

31, 1881, the charter

of the

"Massachusetts

to
lege, according
peutics,

of

was granted to the new

moral

disease."

transact all

its

Metaphysical

charter,

was

College".

"To

science, metaphysics

institution

and

under the

The purpose

title

of the col

teach pathology, ontology, thera

their application to the treatment

was empowered to confer degrees and give diplomas and

the business necessary to these ends. As the act of 1874 was
It

repealed in 1883,

and Mrs. Eddy s college was the only

kind to be chartered under

it,

institution of

its

the Massachusetts Metaphysical College

whose names appeared

quickly attained a unique position. The founders,
on the charter, were Mary B. G. Eddy, president; James C. Howard,
F. Woodbury, James Wiley, Wil
J. Eastman, Edgar
Walker and Samuel P. Bancroft, directors. In Charles J. Eastman,
Mrs. Eddy had a link with the past. He had been one of her pupils in

treasurer; Charles

liam F.

the

little

her

sister

had organized in the shoemaker

house in Tilton.

infant school she

Abigail

The founding of the

college

was

characteristic of

willing to

shop behind

Mrs. Eddy s method

the work she had set

of approach to every development of importance in

herself to do. What the thing was to be in the end, so
beginning. She was always

work with the

it

was to her in the

scantiest

and most

indifferent material, but the project from the first had the full outline of
the finished plan. And so she took her charter back with her to Lynn, and,

a few days

on paper that bore the heading,

8 Broad Street, Lynn". There
No.
Metaphysical College,

later,

"Massachusetts

she was writing letters

was no outward and visible change. Students came and went, and she con
tinued to teach as before, when and as she could. Those who paid and
those who could not pay were given a receipt for the fees. But now they
were enrolled for a regular college course, and, although the granting of

degrees carne later, the right to confer was there from the first.
It was a time of much
activity. Early in the spring, the third edition of

Science and Health was ready for the press. In it the deficiencies of the
second edition were made good and the chapter entitled
"Demonology"

added, as already noted. But it had hardly gone to the printers before
Mrs. Eddy was confronted with another problem which was to remain a
problem for many years to come, the question of plagiarism.

274

On

the conclusion of the

"Conspiracy

to

Murder"

Trial,

Edward

J.

Arens came immediately to Boston, took an office at 32 Upton Street

not far from Faneuil Hall and began a vigorous missionary work among
the market

men

in this wholesale district of the city. From the first, he

off more or less on his own,
fashioning his own ideas

seems to have gone

and further away from Mrs. Eddy and her steadily

growing band of students. He occasionally even hired a hall and gave a
lecture on Metaphysical Healing, charging an admission fee of ten cents.
and

drifting further

There was no

definite break; indeed, for

some time

after the trial,

he

appears to have been specially earnest and wholehearted in following

Mrs. Eddy s leadership, but he gradually drifted away. Then, one day.
Doctor Eddy received a pamphlet entitled Theology, or the Understand
ing of God as Applied to Healing the Sick- It was by Edward J. Arens,

and was,
Health.

for the most part, a verbatim transcript from Science

The only suggestion of indebtedness was

in the preface to the effect that the author

tained in a work by

and

contained in a notation

had used

"some

thoughts con

Eddy".

The matter came up later in the Federal Courts, but for the time being
Gilbert Eddy tackled the question with vigour. He seems to have felt it
much more than Mrs. Eddy. It was Mrs. Eddy who, later on, steadily
pursued a single course until her legal rights were recognized and estab

and

the purity of her teaching as she conceived it, safeguarded, as

far as she could safeguard it; but it was Gilbert Eddy who took immediate
lished

action.

He wrote a new preface to the third edition of Science and Health,

then in the press, in the course of which he denounced Arens

s action

tersely.

simply writing at the commencement of a work, *I have made use

of some thoughts contained in a work by Eddy, walks over copyright,
any fool can aspire to be wise, commence a book with the announcement
"If

have taken some thoughts from Ralph Waldo Emerson/ and then
copy verbatim, without quotation marks, from thirty to three hundred
pages of his works, and publish them as his own. . This may be conthat

*I

275

venient for

an ignoramous or a

villain,

but a

expounder of

real

The

be caught at
Understanding of Christianity or God would scarcely
would require ages
And then warming to his subject he continues :
who
to make the
and God s
published that
hypocrite
it."

"It

ignorant

mercy

pamphlet originate its contents. His pratings

but leave
ter, they cannot impart the hue of ethics,

are coloured

what he

his

by

own

his charac

impress

on

takes."

But there were

other

and more

serious difficulties ahead.

So long

as the

little community was in Lynn, progress, although

follower added to the prestige
was
fairly united. Every additional
enough,
of the original disciples, but with the steady rise in importance and num

difficult

centre of the

bers of the

movement in Boston, the labourers in Lynn who reckoned they

had borne the burden and heat of the day began very definitely to
murmur. They did not like to find that the last recruit in the great city
in the south was to receive "every man a penny a day".
From murmuring, they drifted towards open rebellion, until one eve
October, at a meeting of the Christian Scientist Association
at
Number 8 Broad Street, one of the members, in behalf of
held
being
himself and seven others, presented Mrs. Eddy with a memorial, signed

ning

late in

by each of them, announcing their intention to withdraw from the Asso

ciation. It was quite an unexpected blow, and it must have been with a
strange mixture of feelings that Mrs. Eddy scanned the names attached
to it, those of her old and trusted friends, Miranda Rice, Dorcas Rawson,

Margaret Dunshee, James Howard and the

others.

We, the undersigned, while we acknowledge and appreciate the under

standing of Truth imparted to us by our Teacher, Mrs. Mary B. G.
Eddy, led by Divine Intelligence to perceive with sorrow that departure
from the straight and narrow road (which alone leads to
growth in
Christ-like virtues) made manifest
by frequent ebullitions of temper, love
of money, and the appearance of
hypocrisy, cannot longer submit to such
Leadership; therefore without aught of hatred, revenge or petty spite in
our hearts, from a sense of duty alone to her, the Cause, and
ourselves,

276

do most

respectfully withdraw our

names from the Christian Science

Association and Church of Christ (Scientist) .

(Signed)

S. LOUISE DURANT,
MARGARET J. DUNSHEB,
DORCAS B. RAWSON,

ELIZABETH G. STUART,

JANE L. SHAW,

ANNA B. NEWMAN,
JAMES C. HOWARD,
"October

21st,

MIRANDA R. RICE/

mi"

Piecing the scene together from such scanty records as there are, nota
bly Clara Choate s memoirs, it was not lacking in drama or pathos. Mrs.
Eddy received the memorial in silence, and the eight students who had

out of the room one by one without speaking, leaving Mrs.

and Gilbert and two students who remained faithful to make what

signed

Eddy

it filed

Of

these two students, one was most probably Julia

Clara
Choate does not mention her name. The other
Bartlett, although
was a new student, already devotedly attached to Mrs. Eddy and destined

they could of

to

it.

become one of the best-known

figures in the

movement. His name was

Calvin Frye.
All that night, as Calvin Frye afterwards recorded in his notes, the four
sat together sorrowfully but bravely enough to find some reparation for

what at that period must have seemed a major disaster indeed. Calvin
Frye, in his notes, shows how they prayed over it, and how, towards
morning, Mrs. Eddy suddenly began to speak like one who, diinking
herself alone, spoke aloud. It

must have made a deep impression on him,

remember them. They ate

for he records her words, as well as he could

just ecstatic, disjointed phrases,

most of them quotations from the

Bible,

but through them is seen clearly enough the progress of a journey through
the darkness towards the light.
"Is

this humiliation, the humility the oppressor

O, the
"I

277

exaltation of

Spirit!"

have made thee ruler over many

things!"

would heap upon me!

upon

"Height

height! Holiness!

The Womanhood of God!"

Well done, good and faithful,
"One

woe

is

passed,

Unquenchable

light!

Divine Being!

enter thou into the joy of thy

and behold, another cometh

quickly;

Lord."

and no sign

shall be given thee. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
The furnace is heated, the dross will be
"Woe, woe unto my people!
destroyed."

the false prophet that is among you shall deceive if possible the
into forbidden paths. And their feet
elect, and he shall lead them

"And

very

shall bleed

upon the jagged rocks.

And the briars shall tear the rags from

them. For they are not clothed with a

garment of

I will give thee, daughter of Zion, a

"And

righteousness."

new

and a new

heritage

people."
"Her

ways are ways of pleasantness, and

all

her paths are

peace."

For three days they remained together in the house, conferring as to

The final decision lacked nothing certainly in faith, for, on
the next
step.

November 9th, 1881, the remnant of Mrs. Eddy s students in Lynn met
their teacher, Mary Baker Eddy, as pastor
together and formally ordained
of the Church of Christ (Scientist) and the decision was reached to move
,

the headquarters of the church from

Lynn to Boston.

And so, a few weeks later, Number 8 Broad Street was dismantled, and
the last evening before Mrs. Eddy and Gilbert were to leave for Boston
a meeting of the Christian Scientist Association was held in the front

oil

room that had been the scene of so many meetings during the previous
seven years. There was little business to transact, but Mrs. Eddy spoke
to them for a while and finished by reading the seventeenth chapter of the
Gospel according to St. John. As they bore in mind her interpretation of
the Christ, the passage probably seemed to the
appropriate, especially the closing verses.

little

righteous Father, the world hath not known thee

these have known that thou hast sent me."
thee,
"O

band

singularly

but I have

known

and

them thy name, and will declare it that the

love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them."
"And

I have declared unto

278

HAPTER
The

Death, of Gilbert

BEHIND THE SILENCE and underneath

28

Eddy

the gentleness of Gilbert

Eddy

there lay a tenacity of purpose which only adversity and opposition could
fully reveal. His love for Mrs. Eddy was deep and abiding, and rein

forced as

it

truth, in the

was by the conviction that she was the revelator of a great

promulgation of which he was privileged to have an effective

and

became a great passion.

It is hard to say which aroused Gilbert to more effective action, an
attack on Mrs. Eddy or an attack on her work, and whenever he started

part, his love

affection

on a campaign to offset either, he stuck to it until he had accomplished his

purpose. Thus his denunciation of Arens s plagiarism in the preface to
the third edition of Science
matter.

and Health was by no means the end of the

He determined that Arens should be

of copyright

arraigned for infringement

and the

action, however,

circulation of his pamphlet stopped. Before he took

he wanted to be sure of his position. And so, when he

and Mrs. Eddy left Lynn for Boston, it was with the intention of going
on almost immediately to Washington in order that Gilbert might make
an exhaustive study of the copyright laws in the Library of Congress.
279

the January of 1882, and, for three

Capital early in
a knowledge of
months, Gilbert devoted himself to the work, securing
later
it in writing, such as in
years, long
copyright law and embodying
after he had passed away, was to prove of inestimable value to Mrs. Eddy
and her movement.

They arrived in the

While her husband was thus employed, Mrs. Eddy was by no means
but it was
idle. She had left Clara Choate in charge of things in Boston,
to Julia Bartlett that she apparently looked more and more to "lead this
people"

in her absence. Thus, in

one of her

letters written to Julia shortly

she feels
Washington, Mrs. Eddy tells her how deeply
that there ought tp be a "substitute for me" in Boston and how sure she is
is the most fitted for the
that, of all those whom she left behind, Julia

after her arrival in

task.

Running through these

letters is still

the dread of attack, and

many are

the warnings to Julia and the other students to be on their guard. But it is
of the letters and the remarkable activity
quite evident, both from the tone

months she spent in Wash

they reveal, that Mrs. Eddy, during the three
care and cares of those around her,
ington, freed as she was from the daily
developed unexpected powers of endurance.
She is enthusiastic about Washington. "There

handsome a city as this, I do believe/ she writes

to

is

not in America so

Mrs. Choate, going on

her of the comfort and beauty of her surroundings. They have

rooms at 13 First Street, N.E., for which they pay $100 a month, "front
and rear parlours with board". "My front parlour", she writes, "com
to

tell

mands

the most magnificent view,

and at

this

hour of writing, I

am

me and

the

sitting at a desk with only the width of a street between

grounds that surround the

Capitol."

But her work came first, and Mrs. Eddy was soon in the thick of it. She
got out a circular announcing that she had opened an office at Number 13
First Street,

and was prepared

for lectures

Some knowledge

and

discussions

on

"Practical

new

Metaphysics".
teaching must have preceded
for
it
was
not long before she was holding a class. On February 28
her,
she wrote to Clara Choate that
during the preceding two weeks she had

of the

lectured every evening :

280

"I

have worked here harder than ever. Fourteen consecutive evenings

what else I am about. Get

and work. I have a goodly number already

I have lectured three hours every night besides

to

bed

at twelve, rise at six,

"

enlisted
It

was in Washington,

McNeil, Franklin Pierce

met again that old friend, Fanny

Franklin had long since passed away,

too, that she

s niece.

and Fanny, now Mrs. Fanny McNeil

Potter,

was

living in

Washing

will be

remembered, distantly related, and Mrs. Eddy

recalls in her Miscellany how, during her stay in Washington at this time,
they went together one day to visit the grave of Fanny s father, General
ton.

They

it

were,

John McNeil, in Arlington Cemetery.

Her letters from Washington are full of
love to this one

and

that, especially to

little

Clara

intimacies, sending her

s little

boy Warren, for

whom

she seems to have had a particular affection. "Love and a kiss to

Tell him I know who the little boy in Boston
dear Warren
is."

On

the other hand, her students in Boston were also active.

Undis

mayed by the defections in Lynn, they had set to work to make sure that
no permanent injury was done to the cause in which they had enlisted.
Early in February the remaining members of the Christian Scientist Asso
ciation met together and drew up a series of resolutions in which
they
censured the act of seceding members, declared their
charges to be untrue,

and reaffirmed

their loyalty to

Mrs. Eddy. The resolutions were pub

Lynn Union and throw much light on the situation, both in

Mrs. Eddy herself and the movement developing under her

lished in the

regard to
care.

After expressing
our beloved teacher, and acknowledged leader,
B.
Glover
sincere and heartfelt thanks and
for
Mary
Eddy,
"to

her earnest labours in behalf of this

association",

gratitude
the resolutions continue :

That while she has

had little or no help, except from God,

"Resolved,
in the introduction to this age of
materiality of her book, Science and
Health^ and the carrying forward of the Christian principles it teaches
and explains, she has been unremitting in her faithfulness to her God-

appointed work, and we do understand her to be the chosen messenger of

281

God

to bear

His

truth to the nations,

and

unless

we hear Her

Voice*,

we do not hear *His Voice

continued
"Resolved, That while many and
.

attempts are made by the

Science and Health, to hinder
malpractice, as referred to in the book,
and stop the advance of Christian Science, it has with her leadership
attained a success that calls out the truest gratitude of her students, and

when understood, by all humanity.

"Resolved, That the charges made to her in a letter, signed by J. C.
Howard, M. R. Rice, D. B. Rawson, and five others, of hypocrisy, ebulli
tions of temper, and love of money, are utterly false, and the cowardice
of the signers in refusing to meet her and sustain or explain said charges,
be treated with the righteous indignation it justly deserves. That while
we deplore such wickedness and abuse of her who has befriended them
in their need, and when wrong, met them with honest, open rebuke, we
look with admiration and reverence upon her Christ-like example of
meekness and charity, and will, in future, more faithfully follow and
obey her divine instructions, knowing that in so doing we offer the highest
testimonial of our appreciation of her Christian leadership.

That a copy of these resolutions be presented to our teacher

Mary B. Glover Eddy, and a copy be placed on the records

"Resolved,

and

leader,

of this Christian Scientist

Association."

Thus, as far as the faithful remnant was concerned, the vindication was
complete, and Mrs. Eddy, in a letter to Clara Choate, speaks of her
happiness in receiving this evidence of loyalty. Indeed,
clear that the defection of the

ment, had given

it

Lynn

a new impetus.

it

quickly became

from crippling the move

far as Mrs. Eddy was concerned, it

students, far

As

served for the inauguration of a policy, if so it

may be called, which was
to be typical of her work and method in the future. She
always met

appar

ent defeat as though it had been a

victory. She insisted upon "putting a
tax on calamity", as she afterwards
expressed it in one of her writings.

And
Gilbert
right

while she was teaching and

speaking in Washington, and
was
himself
with
the intricacies of the
Eddy
familiarizing
so,

kw,

copy

the

little circle

in Boston

was growing

rapidly.

When the two

282

returned to Boston, as they did early in April, it was to an outlook more

than had obtained for some time. Mrs. Choate
hopeful and encouraging
in her house in Tremont Street, at which
them
for
a reception

arranged

Christian Scientist in
practically every

Boston was present, and there was

much evidence on all hands of greater cheer and more settled conditions.
There was, however, one disturbing element. The Choates were the
students to have any particular social preten
Mrs. Choate gave to Mrs. Eddy was made
that
the
and
sions,
reception
not to fill this woman of simple, almost
occasion
a
social
of
much
far too

first

among Mrs. Eddy s

austere, taste with grave misgivings.

Along with

those interested in

who attended were many of Mrs. Choate s personal

who were not at all interested, but were glad of the opportunity
to meet a woman concerning whom so much had already been heard. Mrs.
Eddy was taken by surprise. She made a brief address but stayed only a
Christian Science

friends

short time,

from which

it

was inferred that she did not think the

real

such methods.
purpose of her teaching could be forwarded by
Meanwhile, she had much to do. While she was in Washington she
had, with the aid of the Choates, rented a house in Boston at 569 Colum
bus Avenue, not only as a residence for herself and some of her students,

but as the future headquarters of the Metaphysical College. Columbus

Avenue then was in a better part of town than it is today, and Number

569 was a roomy house, four storeys and a basement, a grey stone front
and a flight of steps leading up to the front door. In the matter of furnish
but the most simple.
ing, Mrs. Eddy stood out firmly against anything
die college was established on the second floor. It was
laid with oilcloth. In one corner was a small raised platform on which

The

class

room of

Mrs. Eddy had her

table

and

chair, while the seats for the students

were

set diagonally across the floor. Several students, among them Julia Bartto live. It was not long before a class was in
lett, came to the

coEege

the outlook seemed brighter than ever before.

progress, and in many ways
The skies, however, were to be darkened once again, and this time it

would go out altogether. Gilbert Eddy

had suffered much. Kind and gentle at all times, he was cut

must have seemed as

fell sick.

283

He

if

the light

to the quick by the malice which seemed to pervade the attacks on his
wife, and he viewed every onslaught on himself or upon any of the
students as an attack upon her. Even when accused of conspiracy to

murder, he never seems to have thought of himself in any other light save
as the channel through which an attack was being made upon his wife.
Shortly after their return to Boston from Washington, he seemed to
fail.

He

tried valiantly to help himself, insisting to

Mrs. Eddy and the

was nothing but what he could well handle himself. But he

grew steadily worse, and at kst Mrs. Eddy decided to call in a doctor
to diagnose the case. There had been much perplexity among her students,
others that

it

and a strong insistence that if the nature of the trouble were known it
would be more readily met mentally. And so Dr. Rufus K, Noyes, a
graduate of Dartmouth Medical School, who afterwards became a dis
tinguished physician in Boston,
as valvular heart disease.

was summoned*

He

diagnosed the case

Mrs. Eddy, however, had her own views on the matter. Whatever the
outward and visible secondary cause, the primary cause was the load of

and worry which the patient Gilbert had had to bear through
the brief years of their married life. Thirty years later her
diagnosis was
to be a commonplace, but in those days Professor Elmer Gates and a host

hatred, fear

of others, with their test tube experiments designed to show forth the
chemical changes brought about in the human
body through hatred and
anger, fear

ahead.

and worry and other strong emotions, were

The theory that diseases

still

thirty years
are sometimes traceable to a nervous and

so a mental origin had not been advanced in 1882 and would not be for
years afterwards. But Mrs. Eddy
again, as in all times of crisis, she had to

many

but that of her students

anxiety mounted.

also.

As

was

quite sure of

it,

and once

carry not only her own burden

Gilbert sank from
day to day, their

To their fear

of Kennedy and Spofford had now been

added the new fear of Arens, and while Mrs.
Eddy and Gilbert stood
firm, the students seem to have faltered in
dismay.

At daybreak on June 3, 1882, Gilbert

Eddy died. Only the day before,
he had felt so much better that he had ventured out for a ride
on the
284

street car. Julia Bartlett

went with him, and

all

were no doubt

much

cheered by this evidence of better things, so much so that Mrs. Eddy

was persuaded to retire early. But towards morning Gilbert passed away
in his sleep, so quietly that those watching at his bedside were scarcely
was a gentle person even in
aware that any change had taken place.

He

death.

The passing
of

Mary

s life.

of Gilbert

She had

Eddy may

suffered

well be reckoned to

mark the nadir

especially in the days before she

always, up to now, there had been a

much,

launched Christian Science. But

hope to which she could ding. In the long days and

nights of invalidism at North Groton or Rumney or Hill she seems to
have been roused again and again by a conviction that there was a way
great

if

ill-defined

out and she would surely one day find it. But the passing of Gilbert Eddy
not only deprived her of a strength and support she so sorely needed, but,

what was far worse, it seemed to controvert the great cbim she was mak
ing and upon which she and her followers had built so much. She never
really

doubted, apparently, but the demand upon her to justify her teach

ing was tremendous, and her

first

care was to meet

it.

Her own grief was

nothing to her in the presence of the necessity of convincing herself and

her followers, both those already with her and those to come, that nothing

had happened that could or should shake their faith in any way. Gilbert
Eddy was the victim of malicious mental malpractice, in her understand
ing of the term, and, if it was the last thing she did, she would make this
dear to her followers and to the world. And so, at her request, the news
papers, the Boston Herald, the Journal and the Post, sent reporters to
see her, and to them she told her story. The report of the interview which

appeared in the Post on June 5th, 1882,

is

perhaps the most compre

hensive of the three :

husband s death was caused by malicious mesmerism. Dr. C. J.

Eastman, who attended die case after it had taken an alarming turn,
declares the symptoms to be the same as those of arsenical poisoning. On
"My

the otter hand, Dr. Rufus K. Noyes, late of the City Hospital, "who held
an autopsy over the body affirms that the corpse is free from all material

285

belief. I know
poison, although Dr. Eastman still holds to his original
was poison that killed him, not material poison, but mesmeric poison.
cc

My husband was in uniform

any ailment. During

mind

and but seldom complained of

his brief illness^ just preceding his death, his

con

me

of this continual suggestion, through

*Only
It is weE known that by constantly
I
recover.
of poison, and will

tinual cry was,

the

health,

it

relieve

dwelling upon any subject in thought there finally comes the poison of
belief

through the whole system. ....

is not the first case known

"This

of,

where death has occurred from

what appeared to be poison, and was so declared by the attending physi

but in which the body, on being thoroughly examined by an autopsy

cians,

was found to possess no

New York.

signs of material poison.

There was such a case in

Every one at first declared poison to have been the cause of

symptoms were all there; but an autopsy contradicted the

deatfa^ as die
belief,

and

poison.

. .

it

was shown that the victim had no opportunity

for procuring

"Circumstances

debarred

me from

taking hold of

my

husband s

case.

He declared himself perfectly capable of carrying himself through, and I

was so entirely absorbed in business that I permitted him to try, and when
I awakened to the danger it was too late, ... I do believe in God s
supremacy over

error,

and .this gives me

peace."

Thus she held on and put up a bold front,

until she

had done what she

could to safeguard the integrity of her great thesis and reassure her
students. It was only when all had been done that she
began to realize the
full effect of the blow. The funeral services were held in the house on

Columbus Avenue, after which the remains were taken

by Mrs. George
Choate to Sanbomton Bridge, by this time renamed Tilton, and interred
in the Baker
the Merrifamily lot in the old burying ground
overlooking

mac. But Mrs.

Eddy was not

go to the memorial

service

able to

go to the funeral. Neither did she

which was held in Hawthorne Hall on the

foEowing

Sunday afternoon.
She almost sank under the

load.

could, but they were badly shaken,

Her

students rallied as well as

they

and only the most faithful

really stood

286

by her in tier hour of trial. One of these was Arthur Buswell, a student
who had gone through class with her in Lynn the previous year. He had
moved to Cincinnati, and now, in response to an urgent telegram from

Mrs. Eddy, hurried to Boston to do what he could to help. It was he who

took charge of things and brought some semblance of order and calmness
out of the chaos which followed Mrs.

Eddy s enforced

withdrawal.

He

thing to do was to get her away from it all as

finally persuaded her to accept an invitation
a companion, Miss Alice Sibley, to spend the next few

saw, at once, that the

first

completely as possible.

and
weeks or months
ton, Vermont.
for herself

He

at his old homestead in the small country

town of Bar

And so they set out, leaving the faithful Julia Bartlett and Mrs. Abbie
Whiting to care for what was
bus Avenue.

left to care for in

The road back was a long one and

me

nothing

left

solitude

and toil

of earth or on
if

the

way dark enough:

to love, as I

only I had one to

interested in anything of earth.

shall I

it

Long

have to struggle alone with

call

the big house

my

do

on Colum

"O,

I have

love, satisfied to

own!"

"I

cannot feel

have

much

and appear happy

So she wrote to two

after I shall smile

my great

grief."

of her students in Boston.

But

it

was a

fight to the finish,

and she never

really

gave in for a

moment. As Mary Beecher Longyear puts it in her records derived from

Arthur Buswell, "After a night of agony, she would emerge from her
struggle with a radiant face and luminous eyes, and they would hesitate
to speak to her for fear of disturbing the peace which enveloped ter."

was her

last great struggle with threatened failure and defeat before

the
into
road which was to lead on to continuous success. In thf
turning
summer of 1882, she descended into the depths, but before the summer

It

was over she had planted her feet firmly on the ascending path. From
there and then on, she moved in only one direction and that was, upward

287

HAPTER
r

CALVIN

A.

FRYE was

29

in Frye

bom on August

24, 1845, in Frye village,

Massa

Rye village is now a part of Andover, and had originally been

as Frye s Mills because it first appeared as a settlement around
die saw-mil and grist-mill of Enoch Frye II, who was Calvin s grand
chusetts.

known

The Fryes were an old New England family with worthy records
war of the Revolution and that of 1812. Enoch Frye III, Calvin s

father.

in the

father,

was born at the turn of the century, and

as his father

Enoch

II

was prospering and he himself early developed

desire for learning",
he was sent, first of all, to Phillips Academy at Andover and, later, to
"a

Harvard* whence he graduated in 1821.

At

Harvard, he was in dis

Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Samuel Hatch, Edward Loring and Francis Cabot, and before their
graduation they all agreed to hold a reunion every year for fifty years.
Enoch Frye HI remained faithful to the agreement. He was present at
tinguished company, for his class

the fiftieth

and

last

was the

class of

reunion of his class at Cambridge, in 1871.

He had not, however, been able to fulfill his early promise, for he had
hardly

left

college

and

started

on a

career of teaching which

might have

288

led to

still

which

left

better things, when he was stricken down with a serious illness

him incurably lame and not too strong, and so he returned to

Andover where he subsequently opened a small grocery store. Meanwhile,

he had married one Lydia Barnard. They had four children, of whom
Calvin was the third.
Small grocery stores in small towns were no more remunerative one
hundred years ago than they are today, and Calvin and Ms brother
Oscar had to go early to work; and so, after attending public school in
Andover, Calvin was apprenticed as a machinist, and worked in Davis &
machine shops in East Andover. Early in the sixties the family
town close by, and shortly after

Furber

moved

to Lawrence, a manufacturing

wards,

when he was

Lowell.

She

his father s

twenty-six, Calvin married

lived but one year,

and

Miss

Ada

after her death Calvin

E. Brush of

went back to

house in Lawrence.

was a sad household. While the children were still young the mother
had become insane, and although she had lucid intervals she had to be
sent away periodically to an institution. The father was a cripple and a
It

and Calvin s sister, Lydia Roaf who lived with them, had
After the loss of his young wife, Calvin would not
widowed.
been early
find much in his father s house to put him in better heart. But the Fryes
semi-invalid,

were essentially of that New England temperament that takes trouble

with a kind of placid resignation not to be found elsewhere. They were
of the Congregational Church, and attended services reg
a comfort, as one of
their
but
religion was to them, not so much
ularly,
the unquestioned necessities of life, wherein the only real stimulus was
all

members

derived from the avoidance of backsliding.

To a thought such as this, Christian Science,

if it

could be accepted at

all, would come almost as a bewildering light. And so it literally did to

Calvin Frye. He and his sister Lydia first heard of it from their sister-inlaw, Mrs. Oscar Frye. The Oscar Fryes lived in Boston and had become

new teaching to the extent of attending some of the

afternoon
meetings in IHfermome nail. Mrs. Frye s thoughts,
Sunday
as she heard the testimonies of healing, naturally turned to the insane
interested in the

289

mother in Lawrence, and at last she talked to Clara Choate about it, with
the result that Mrs. Choate consented to take the case and do what she
could to help. Within a very short time, to the utter amazement of Lydia
their mother was completely restored. In a lucid interval, after
her second commitment to an asylum, she had begged the family not to
from home again in any circumstances, and for years before
send her

and Calvin,

away

she was restored through Christian Science, Lydia had done

but care for her. And now her mother was well.

little else

Neither Lydia nor Calvin hesitated a moment. They would learn all
such wonderful things.
they could about the teaching which had done

And so

Lynn to see Mrs. Eddy, and joined a

was
class
hardly over when the pitiful little
in Lynn occurred, and Calvin
tragedy of the defection of the students
Frye it will be remembered, was one of the two students, who remained
Calvin went off at once to

she was then holding.

It

faithful

and watched with

When

followed..

through the wretched night which

Lynn for Boston, Calvin returned to

their teacher

Mrs. Eddy

left

Lawrence, and immediately began to devote

work of healing.

all his spare

time to the

morning in August, 1882, he received

a telegram, It was from Barton, Vermont, from Mrs. Eddy telling him
that she was that morning setting out for Boston, and asking him to

So

things went,, until early one

meet her at Plymouth. Calvin made his decision at once. He packed a

few things in order to be ready for any contingency, and set out for
Plymouth.

It was.

of his

From

her, as

day

life.

a momentous move, for

the time he joined her at

changed the whole course

Plymouth and travelled with
it

Mrs. Eddy for a single

she passed away twenty-eight years later. History records few

he did, to Boston, Calvin Frye never

until

left

such devotions.

The Mrs. Eddy that Calvin Frye met at Plymouth was a very different
person from the forlorn almost defeated woman who had made her way
from Boston to the little town of Barton a short two months before. The
first

few weeks had been for her a veritable Gethsemane. There was no

clear light anywhere.

The

little circle

at

Lynn was broken up and

the

290

which had promised so weE, was shaken and

in
the
death
o her husband she had lost not only a com
and
dismayed,
but
one
of
her chiefest supports in her work. She was
panion and friend,
an age when most people have almost rounded out their
sixty-two, at
life s task. She had only just begun, and now it must have seemed as if
even that beginning was being swept away.
in Boston,
larger circle

Nevertheless, although the sorrow must have been real enough and
poignant past belief, it never seems to have done more even

at times,

from the

first

than

"endure

for the

night".

In Arthur BuswelPs old homestead at Barton she was surrounded with

and kindness which she most needed, and, gradually the

love

again.

have never found a kindlier

"I

Clara Choate.

"I

am

people,"

came

situated as pleasantly as I can be in the absence of

one true heart that has been so much to me. O, darling,

the

light

she writes to her friend,

I never shall

master this point of missing him all the time, but I can try, and am
trying as I must to sever all the cords that bind me to person or things
material"

How weE she succeeded as the weeks passed is seen in Arthur BusweE s
account of those days. ^However ill she might have been the night be
fore, each day found her planning for the future of her church and col
lege,

arranging for lectures to be given by students, looking about for

new practitioners, and tirelessly devising means to extend the movement."

the middle of July she had quite clearly

By

found writing to Clara Choate : *Hold the

won

her

fort for I

way through and

a serpent and harmless as the doves that are cooing at

I hope my forty days in the wilderness are about over."

as

That they were indeed

to

Mary

at Barton which

over

was

is

is

am coming. Be wise

my

window.

quickly seen. Something had happened

whole tempo of her life if

to change the

is no record of the talk she had with Calvin Frye as

them from Plymouth to Boston or of the plans for the
future they discussed, but that the period of tentative action and uncer
tainty was over is dear. From the moment she reached the Boston and
Maine Station in Boston, on that August evening in 1882, she carried

not

its

course.

the train took

291

There

tilings

forward and was herself carried, with an impulsion which within

was to make her teaching one of the most
of a few short

the space

years
its borders.
discussed subjects in the United States and far beyond
Within a few days of her reaching Boston she had reopened the Meta

and shortly afterwards

physical College,
Number 569 to Number 571 Columbus

moved

its

headquarters from

Avenue. The new house was

and more convenient. The lecture room was established on

the first floor and another room on the same floor as a general office.
The rest of die house was occupied by Mrs. Eddy and some of her stu
office on the first
who lived on a
plan and used the

slightly larger

co-operative

dents,

floor in rotation to

meet thek

patients.

Among

the students

who

lived

were the faithful Julia Bardett, Abbie Whiting,

Hanover Smith, Arthur Buswell and Calvin Frye. It was Calvin Frye
and he did it with that
"took
who at once and
charge",

from the

first

quite naturally

after years to
amazing adaptability which enabled him in

fill

uncom

conceivable position in Mrs.

plainingly and with great efficiency every
s household. Mrs. Eddy rightly described him once as her man of

Eddy
work

all

He

could serve equally well in the capacity of coachman,

secretary, treasurer, real estate agent,

In die new

headquarters in

Boston

major domo and general manager.

it was Calvin Frye who supervised

the household, did the marketing, engaged the servants, paid the bills,
interviewed tradesmen and, in his spare time, helped Mrs. Eddy with-

ran errands for her, and was ready to represent her on any and
not specially small, but giving
quiet, soft-spoken man,
every occasion.
man who moved about unobtrusively and
the impression of smallness.
her

letters,

always appeared to be on hand when he was wanted. In the 1880 s his

hair was dark, and a flowing moustache, after the fashion of the day,
merged into a pair of full mutton chop whiskers. Twenty years later, the
hair was white and the mutton chop whiskers had gone, but it is the same
Calvin Frye. He changed very little, and, from the first, displayed those
qualities of devotion and efficiency which always characterized his asso
ciation with Mrs. Eddy.

He was just what Mrs. Eddy most needed. Years afterwards

she was

292

to tell

him that he had done more for the cause of Christian Science than
She needed, especially in these early years,

of her followers.
any other one

someone who would be almost her second self, who, in the stress of work,
would do what she wanted to have done as she would do it, carrying out
her wishes exactly to the letter without the friction of questions or
cism. She found such a one in Calvin Frye.

293

criti

T,E

TFD

30

/-]rr

-it

T1Ilie JKisincr lidle

FROM THIS POINT onwards the ride of Mrs. Eddy s teaching rises steadily.
There is to be much ebbing and flowing. There are to be times when the
wash backwards

is so extreme as to
give the impression of almost complete
but
the
viewed
over
months and years the move forward is steady
reversal,

and emphatic.
Something happened at Barton almost if not quite as important as that
which had supervened upon the little disaster at Lynn sixteen years before.
It

may

be venturing too far into the realm of inference to say that at

Lynn Mrs. Eddy discovered to her satisfaction

at Barton the "nothingness of evil",
yet it is a

"the

God", and
from the time

allness of

fact that

moved forward with more cer

and incomparably less apprehension than she had ever done before.

she returned to Boston from Barton she

tainty

She does not

lessen, indeed, she rather increases, her

students to be

on

position that evil

their guard.

But she

is

admonitions to her

more and more

insistent

on

the

powerless in the presence of good, and that the only

way to see evil, is to see it for what it is proclaimed to be in her teaching,
nothingness in other words, an illusion.
is

294

above the
skip of Science is again mounting the waves, rising
is at the
for
God
to
of
the
defiance
error,
billows, bidding
floodgates
in
helm." So she writes to one of her students after she had been back
"The

Boston some few weeks, .and her confident assurance was if anything an
understatement. No one could study with any care the record of these

months without being struck with the sudden burgeoning forth to be seen
on all hands. It is like nothing so much as the coming of an eastern spring
after a specially rigorous winter. Whereas before, students had come to

and twos, now they came so many at a

time that the little class room at the college was taxed to capacity. The
elder students, moreover, were now better able to stand by themselves and

Mrs. Eddy for teaching

in ones

even to take a hand in helping those

less experienced.

of the Journal
outstanding event of these days was the founding
The Christian Science Journal.
of Christian Science, afterwards called
The first issue appeared on April 14, 1883, with Arthur BusweE as asso

The

other
eight-page paper issued every
in the opening editorial of the first issue Mrs. Eddy set forth
the desire of our
"The
purpose of our paper", she writes,

ciate editor. It

month, and

was

at first a

little

her objective.

"is

heart, namely, to bring to many a household hearth health, happiness

increased power to be good and to do good."

and

paper and its difficulties, financial and

were
many, but it provided Mrs. Eddy with
early stages
a much wider platform than had hitherto been available and one she was
It

was an unpretentious

otherwise, in

little

its

able to use to the uttermost, for, in spite of certain peculiarities of style

and the influence of a laboured age in .writing, from which she found it

Mrs. Eddy was one of the most effective occasional

writers of her day. She had a quite remarkable vocabulary. By actual
count it was much larger than that of her most distinguished contem
difficult to

poraries,

shake

and

all

free,

with a freedom often irritating to the purist, she

her ideas rather than her ideas to language. Like Emily

her

life,

fitted language
Dickinson or Walt Whitman, she coined words and misused grammar
to"

without compunction or apology. Most of her articles in these early issues

of the Journals were afterwards reprinted in her book Miscellaneous
Writings,

295

and are among the most

effective of her lesser writings.

A great difficulty about this time was the growing tendency to plagiar
works, and early in 1883 she determined possibly fulfilling
Gilbert Eddy s wishes to bring suit against Arens and stop the circula
tion of his pamphlet, most of which, as has already been noted, was

ize her

and Health. The case came

simply a transcript from Science
Grcuit Court at Boston a few days after the publication of the

up

in the

first issue

of the Journal, and in view of what was to follow in the same connection
within a few years, Arena s defence was significant. Arens contended,

have infringed Mrs. Eddy s copy

through his counsel, that he could not
Mrs. Eddy s book Science and Health was not original
right, because
with her but had been largely copied from the works of Phineas P.
of Portland, Maine. When proof of this contention was in due

Quimby

course demanded, Arens could produce none. George Quimby of Belfast,

Maine, who had his father s manuscripts in his possession, refused to

submit them for inspection, and Arens had no proof to offer. The case
was accordingly quashed, and the court issued a perpetual injunction
against

Arens

distributing in

restraining

any

him from

manner"

"printing,

his pamphlet,

selling,

giving

away or

under pain of a fine of

$10,000. It was further decreed by the court that the remaining copies
of the pamphlet to the number of thirty-eight hundred should be "put

under the knife and thek unlawful existence

destroyed".

The costs of the

suit, $113, were taxed against Arens. When the Quimby Manuscripts
were finally published, as they were some forty years later, it was found

that there was no ground for Arens s contention, but the subject was to
come up again several times before it was finally laid to rest.
The immediate effect of the suit was to safeguard more certainly the

contents of the Journal.

As will be clear enough later, these vigorous measures by Mrs. Eddy

were not motivated entirely nor even principally by a desire to prevent her
legal rights being infringed but to preserve die purity and integrity of
her teaching as she understood it. As Christian Science
gained in popu
larity

and

publicity, first

one and then another student, dissatisfied with

he was given, would go off and

his position or prospects or the

teaching

296

found a

Eddy

sect of his

own, teaching and preaching his own version of Mrs.

s teaching, calling it Christian Science

and contending for

it

that

it

represented an advance on what Mrs. Eddy taught or a correction of her

succession of highly placed students did just this, and in less
errors.
than two years from the Arens suit quite a number of "Christian Science

Circles"

had sprung up,

with that set

down

the teachings of which

in Science and Health.

had

But while the Journal to an increasing extent

Christian Science now here

little

or

no

carried the

relation

word of

now there all over the world, the great forward

as Boston was concerned, was promoted by the Sunday

Hawthorne Hall. These were becoming increasingly popular.
The fact that the meetings were held on Sunday afternoon, instead of at
the time of the regular church services on Sunday morning or evening,
enabled many people to attend who would not have done so if it had

movement, as far
services in

involved being absent from their own churcL The order of service was
much the same as it had been in the Baptist Tabernacle on Shawmut
Avenue; a hymn, silent prayer followed by the Lord s Prayer, then short
readings from the Bible and Science and Healthy another hymn and
finally the sermon. But the character of a meeting was preserved by the
fact that questions were allowed

and even

invited.

At first Mrs. Eddy spoke

every Sunday, but later she sometimes dele

to
one
of
her
students
take her place, and not infrequently invited
gated
a minister of one of the other denominations, who had in any way shown

himself sympathetic towards her teaching to occupy the pulpit. She gen
erally let it be known when she was going to preach; but when she found,
as she did, that

when

she was scheduled to speak, the hall

was often

crowded to overflowing and when she was not so scheduled the attendance
was much less, she adopted the plan of purposely leaving it uncertain until

moment who was going to occupy the pulpit. As a result, the

attendance became more uniform, and meanwhile she had inaugurated
a policy which she was to adhere to invariably in the future, that of dis
the last

couraging dependence upon herself. She would often arrange with a

297

student to give the address, and then change her mind at the kst

and

speak after

Mrs. Eddy presented a

striking figure

on

the platform.

weE and had about her an

to compel attention even
which
seemed
command
and

dressed, she carried herself

air

Always

of distinction

She had, moreover she had it all her Me

her clothes so as to make them appear much better and more
recalls

an

Mary

asked Mrs.

than

Hawthorne Hall meetings which

illus

When it came to question time, a woman in the audience

Eddy

diamonds",

if

she thought

it

was Christian

"to

alluding to her costume, to which

moment s hesitation repEed

"There

costly

Harris Curtis, one of her students, in her recollections

incident at one of the

trates die point.

and

well-

before she began

a knack of wearing

to speak.

they were.

moment

all.

wear purple velvet

after a

Mrs. Eddy

are ladies here, I presume, with

much more

expensive- dresses

velveteen, thirty-six inches wide, and one dollar a yard. The

cross and ring were given me by those who have been healed in Christian

on, as ttis

is

Science with the request that I wear

imagine a more

them."

It

would perhaps be hard to

effective reply.

But as the meetings

in

Hawthorne Hall grew

in popularity

and

tales

of healing began to be noised abroad with increasing frequency, the min

isters of more orthodox faiths were roused to action, some of them to

sympathetic investigation, but most of them to vigorous opposition

denunciation. Indeed, Boston in 1883 seems to have set the pace
quality for all future denunciations.

"smouldering

fury"

There was about

it all

and

and

a venom and

which was at times reminiscent of nothing so

much

as the days of Salem witch-baiting. The two

great protagonists of ortho
were
the
L.
T.
Reverend
Townsend, D.D., member of the faculty
doxy
of Boston University, and the Reverend
Stacy Fowler, editor of the

Homiletic Review.

Doctor Townsend came out

straight from the shoulder on one occasion,

the Boston Methodist Preachers*
Meeting, when- his topic was "Prayer
and Healing". Alluding to Mrs. Eddy as "this woman", he denounced

her in so

many words

as

a fraud and a charlatan, declared that her teach-

298

ing was

crude attempt to resuscitate the defunct idealism of the

type which appeared in the Middle Ages", and that her views
"a

nihilistic

upon

all

metaphysical matters

contradicting

hotchpotch".

"we

When

speak very

the meeting

mildly"

was

over,

are

"self-

some of the

clergymen present urged Doctor Townsend to publish his address. This

he subsequently did under the title of The Boston Craze.

With

a rather engaging inconsistency. Doctor Townsend, at the close

c
:
*But notwithstanding these criticisms

of his pamphlet, has this to say

upon this misnamed Christian Science, fairness requires us to add that this
woman, Mrs. Eddy, by her methods, is successful in healing disease. Our
professional faith-workers are therefore in danger of losing their laurels
at the hands of one whom they must regard as an infidel/
In other words, it is the old cry : "Give God the glory! As to this man

we know he is a sinner."
The Reverend Stacy Fowler took another
that the movement is already past the peak
nothing awaits Mrs.
decline

Eddy and

He

line.

of

its

is

quite confident

prosperity,

and

that

her teaching in the future but steady

and final extinction. Writing in the Homiletic Review for August,

1883, Fowler says confidently enough :

ic
While Dealers* are multiplying it is evident that the science

is
waning.
Mrs. Eddy writes that her ability to teach the art of healing in her classes
in twelve lessons is a greater wonder than her power of instantaneous

healing.

She may teach the principles of the science

in twelve lessons, but

she cannot impart her power, her personalised in twelve, nor in twelve
hundred lessons. The real ictus is her personalism. Her pupils are but
feeble imitators of their teacher. Hence the spell is losing its charm. The

movement

is

losing

its

momentum. In

its

present

form

it is

an epidemic

an epidemic it will pass away, as did the Blue Glass mania. It is as

transcendental as was Brook Farm, and like that experiment it may be

and

as

useful in

demonstrating"

that sentiment, fancy

the solid facts of science, nor the panacea for

and

fitful

human

impulse are not

ills."

Doctor Fowler can hardly have had more than a few weeks wherein
he could have been accounted a true prophet, for it must quickly have
299

become evident that

Ae

movement, far from losing momentum, as he

was gaining momentum at a quite bewildering rate.

confidently declared.,
became
Christian Science and the amazing way in which it was spreading
that an
is
good copy for the newspapers. There nothing

editor likes better

can be kept within bounds and

than a good controversy, provided that
the newspaper itself not be involved, and Qiristian Science wherever it
it

aroused controversy. Editors, it is

appeared in any community inevitably
neutral attitude
small towns.
in
true, often had a hard time, especially
was all too often construed by their orthodox readers as one
on their

part
of affording help and comfort to the enemy.
Later on, Mrs. Eddy herself entered the lists with vigour, and scarcely
a Sunday passed at Hawthorne Hall without her replying to some news
to disapproval voiced from the
paper or pulpit criticism, if not responding
floor. Some of the issues raised were a little awkward, to say the least, but

she parried them all successfully. More than once, for instance, someone
would stand to ask, in accusing tones, why this exponent of Mind over

matter occasionally wore spectacles during her piatform appearances. She

made short shrift of such inquirers, for in presenting her doctrine as a
idealism she disclaimed any inconsistency in doing such things
practical

as seem needful until the student reaches the point in demonstrable under
standing where suet things no longer seem needful.

In these early days of advance her energies were taxed to the uttermost
to keep in touch with a
1

movement which was

rapidly outgrowing all

and on throughout the years proved a stumbling block to

Nevertheless, her use of glasses off

of hti followers, who remained concerned, like the savants of old, with how many angels
could ciance on the head of a pin. And this same type of essentially superficial criticism was to
plague her .in other directions. As late as 1900, the Episcopal congress at Providence, in an effort to
discredit the new movement, pointed to- the fact that Mrs. Eddy had had teeth extracted tinder
local anaesthesia by Dr. John M. Fletcher of Concord, and now wore artificial dentures, while
claiming to restore carious bones. But far from evading the issue, Mrs. Eddy seized upon the
have always instructed students of
challenge to write in the Boston Herald, December 2, 1900:
Christian Science to be wise and discreet, conforming, where conscience is not offended, to the
of
no
men.*
there
could
be
that
logical objection to anaesthetics where pain was
usages
Asserting
not otherwise dispensed with, she counseled full co-operation wherever the services o a dental
were
a
involved. As
matter of fact, she reminded her readers, this cardinal point was made
surgeon
on page 464 of Science and Health, in unambiguous words:
from an injury or from any cause,
a Christian Scientist were siezed with pain so violent that he could not treat himself mentally,
and the Scientists bad failed to relieve him, the sufferer could call a surgeon, who would give
him a hypodermic injection, then, when the belief of pain was lulled, he could handle his own
case mentally." After all, it was no more than a question of the individual doing what is practical
to him until and unless something else becomes practical to him. This aspect of her teaching is
clearly elucidated on pages 253 and 254 of her book, where she writes that "God requires per
fection, but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought and the victory won. . . . This
task God demands us to accept lovingly to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical, the material.

many

"I

"If

."

300

spring of 1884, It was so weE established in Chicago that

were
coming to Mrs. Eddy to go out there and teach a class.
urgent
journey from Boston to Chicago was much more of an undertaking

bounds.

By the

calls

it is
today, and Mrs. Eddy was thronged with work. The
the
Journal,
editing of which really devolved upon her, was gaining
in
circulation
and brought inquiries from many quarters. Every
rapidly

then than

day added to her mail. She was, moreover, teaching regularly in her
college, lecturing every Thursday evening, as well as preaching most

Sundays at Hawthorne.
In the ciraimstances, Mrs. Eddy felt she could not leave Boston for
Chicago. It would mean a full month s absence, and it seemed as though
there

was no one quite

fitted to

be

left in charge.

They were

all still

pitifuEy dependent upon her for guidance. She finaEy decided to ask
Clara Choate to go to Chicago in her stead. Mrs. Choate had held the
fort faithfuEy and successfuEy during the difficult period when Mrs.

She had not infrequently taken her pkce on

and she was one of her oldest students.
But when Mrs. Eddy broached the question to Clara Choate, she found

Eddy was

in Washington.

the platform at Hawthorne Hall,

herself suddenly faced with a situation which, until she

had finally ridden

down, was to face her frequently in the future. Mrs. Choate was doing
very weE in Boston. She had a large practice, and, moving as she did in a
it

good social circle, she enjoyed a special distinction from her dose associa
tion with a woman who was rapidly becoming one of the best discussed
people in the country, Chicago was in those days to the average Bostonian
very much "the West", and Mrs. Choate all too evidently feared that, if
she went to Chicago, the more successful she was the greater likelihood
to remain there. This did not appeal to her

would there be of her having

at all, and so she declined.
Mrs. Eddy
it

to

.seems to have realized that, with the

movement growing

as

many opportunities would be lost if her students were not ready

make sacrifices and go without question where opportunity offered.

was,

Years afterwards she was wont to maintain that Christian

should be

301

"minute

men and

women",

and

it

Scientists

would seem to have been

die reluctance of

Ckra Choate

to

go to Chicago

at her request that first

aroused her to an exaction of instant willing service from her followers,

as was later to become .characteristic of the movement as a whole.

The Immediate
occasioned her

step she took in the matter

much

trouble. Realizing the

was one that afterwards

importance of the problem

before her from the point of view of the movement as a whole, she
gathered together all die students actually resident in her house and laid
lie issue before them, requesting them ? as she did not wish any thought
of dissension to get abroad, to regard the meeting as private. It was a

mistake she never would have

the

little

church in

made

m later years. The rock upon which

Lynn had broken up

jealousy

was

still

a menace.

Those who had been summoned to the meeting

rate

could not

resist

some of them at any

the kudos such a summons- would surely give them

among their feEows. They took care to let the fact of the meeting be
known and then surrounded its proceedings with die utmost secrecy. It
mysteriously as the P. M. Society, and quickly became a
burning question of debate not only with the students in Boston but
further afield.

was aluded

to

It met only twice, but so

widespread and lasting was the discussion it
occasioned that four years later Mrs.
Eddy, in reply to charges that the
proceedings at these meetings were "terrible and too shocking to relate",
felt
obliged to explain their nature through the Journal. After declaring
that the "Society" met
only twice, she continues : "The first subject given
out for consideration was this : There is no Animal
. There

Magnetism

was no advice

no mental work, and there were no transactions at

those meetings which I would hesitate to have known.
The second
P.M. convened in about one week from the first. The
subject given out at
that meeting was in substance, God is All!
is none beside Him/
given,

"there

This proved to be our

But the

last

meeting/

stir was. sufficient

to alienate Clara Choate.

often happens, no definite breach at

first,

There was, as so

but the two drifted further

apart until some three years later her name was formally dropped
the roll of the Christian Scientist Association and
Church.

from

302

Meanwhile, Mrs. Eddy determined to go to Chicago herself. She

handed over the management of the Journal to one of the students, a
Mrs. Emma Hopkins, suspended her classes at the coEege and her Thurs

day evening lectures and, accompanied by Calvin Frye .as secretary and a
Mrs. Sarah Crosse as companion, set out for Chicago, to teach a class of

men and twenty-two women (according

to the official history of Fkst Church, Chicago) . During her stay she gave
a lecture to some four hundred people, "Whom do men say that I am?"

thirty-three

at

made up

of eleven

Hershey Hall. That was

could have spent

enrol in her

in April, 1884.

She spent a month there, and

much

classes.

Chicago, but from

longer if she had taken everyone who wanted to

Would-be students came not only from all over

much

further afield, while shortly after her return to

Boston applications began to be received from as far west as Californk.

In the issue of the Journal for September, 1886, appears the name of one
Ella Bradshaw, C.S.D., who, in accordance with the practice at that time,
had opened the "California Metaphysical College" in San Jose, announc

ing that it afforded "an opportunity on the Pacific Coast for receiving
a course of instruction in the rudiments of Christian Science".

303

TKe Quimby

31

MantsLscripts

FEW STRANGER OR more contradictory controversies have ever raged in

the realm of literature or philosophy than that which has surrounded the
of Phineas P. Quimby .and the allegation that the teaching
manuscrq>Cs
of Mary Baber

Eddy is entirely derived from them. Commencing in 1883,

The
whole question, of course, depends on an understand
persists.
of
what Mrs. Eddy actually taught. The protagonists of the claims of
ing
it

Pdineas Quimby maintain that she taught just what Quimby taught, while
at the same time
insisting that if Quimby could have heard what she was

he would have turned in his grave.

Thus George Quimby in a letter dated November llth, 1901, quoted
by Horatio Dresser in his book The Quimby Manuscripts, is quite
teachijog

emphatic on the point :

"The
religion which she teaches certainly is hers, for which I cannot be
too thankful; for I should be loath to
that
go down to my grave
feeling

my fatter was in any way connected with Christian Science."

As

has been seen, Mrs.

Eddys

for

many years,

certainly

from 1862

to

304

the time of her first class in

Lynn in 1871, unhesitatingly attributed her

It
is possible, however, from her first association with
to
Quimby.
teaching
him that what she was attributing to Quimby was her own interpretation
of what he was teaching, and not at all what he would have regarded as
he had understood the differences involved in her interpre

his teaching if

tation of

and

it.

her

further

In any case, she steadily, if quite unconsciously, grew further

away from him, but it was not until she saw, as the result of

first class

in Lynn, the incompatibility of her views with the

Quimby

system of manipulation that she realized, not only what she was teaching
was not what Quimby had taught, but that her great task in the future

was to be the freeing

Quimby

What

herself

and her teaching from the

essentials of

s doctrine.
it

took Mrs. Eddy nine years to discover, the protagonists of

Quimby never discovered, and Julius Dresser, who first publicly raised the
issue in 1883, had no doubts at all on the subject.
Julius Dresser, it will be remembered, was the man who first brought
Mrs. Eddy and Quimby together. It was he who came back to Doctor
Vaii s Water Cure establishment at HiH with a wonderful story of his

own

cure

by the new doctor

in Portland

and about many other

cures.

Mary, of course, knew all about it. Indeed, as has been noted, it was with
the express determination that Hill should only be a stopping place on
the way to Portland and Quimby that she consented to Abigail s earnest
solicitations that she

That was back

with

go to Doctor Vaii s establishment.

and during the four years of her

in 1862,

Quimby which foEowed

and

association

she had been in constant touch with Julius

was, of course, to Dresser that she sent her appeal for

after
help
Quimby had died and she was struggling at Lynn to complete
her recovery from a well-nigh fatal accident,
Dresser,

it

Quimby s death, Dresser, who had married, went west,

some years he and his wife practised a form of mental healing
out there. By 1881-1882, word of the new system being taught in Boston
Shortly after

and

for

reached him, and when he found that the Mrs. Eddy who was identified
with the movement was die Mary Patterson he had known in Portland,

305

be determined to make

bis

way

east again

and

see

what was going

forward.

His

first

was

impression^ before be set out,

possibly that

Mrs. Eddy

was making a success of

her regard for

"Quimbyism", and, remembering
himself and the appeal she had made to him for help, he may have
thought
that he might as well have his share in

any success that was being

achieved.

He did not approach Mrs. Eddy directly after his arrival in Boston.
He decided to have all the facts before he made any move, and these
facts

when he

discovered them were not at all to his liking. As the result

enquiry and sundry visits to Hawthorne Hall, all he could

of
see in

Mrs. Eddy

teaching was something very like an

Quimby. As George Quimby was to write

ing was

all

too evidently her

own/ but

"apostasy"

several years later,

it

"the

from

teach

ought to be lie teaching of

Ouimby.

The

what Mrs. Eddy was teaching was something she

had evolved never occurred to .him apparently. Mrs.
Eddy, the

possibility

Mary Patterson who for four years had been associated with Quimby and
ought to be teaching Qulmbyism and that was all there was about
was not teaching Quimbyism, then she must be teaching something fraudulent and in
any event was
himself;
it

as far as Julius Dresser was concerned. If she

clearly guilty, in

not enter the

one

"AXX"

some

inexplicable way, of plagiarism.

opened his campaign in a roundabout fashion.

He did
but actually or
in
the
fictionally
guise of
who, under date of February 8, 1883, wrote a long letter to

Julius Dresser

field in person,

Ae Boston Post.

After declaring that "many would remember with

Quimby of Portland, Me,, who so

P. P.

interest, the

kte Dr.

successfully practised for about

20 years the mental method of

treating disease, which is now claiming
so much attention from all classes and is so
widely accepted as the surest
and best method of
on to mention that
disease/ "AXX"
eradicating

goes

at the time
world",

Doctor Quimby was

practising his method was "new to the
and that "although he did a vast amount of
good, he had, li

306

all

minds that take the

lead, to

bow

to the

judgement of smaller minds

and meekly accept the title of humbug, which ignorance always bestows
on wisdom that it cannot understand".
3

speaking with a gentleman on this subject a short time since/ he

was surprised and pleased to learn that he owed his life to
continues,
"In

"I

the

wisdom of that good man,

that he

had been a member of the same

household for a length of time; and also a student of Dr. Quimby. .

This gentleman informs me that Dr. Quimby did a great amount of
.

on the subject of mental

Science of Health

writing

healing, or his theory

which he termed

."

Having
any

rate

thus

made it perfectly dear who was meant

"A.O."

advances to a direct attack:

"Some

to Mrs.
parties,"

Eddy at
he

says,

Dealing through a mental method which they claim to have discovered,

did, in reality, obtain their first thoughts of this truth from Dr. Quimby,

and have added their own opinions to the grain of wisdom thus obtained,
mixed with a great
presenting to the people a small amount of wheat
Dr. Quimby was, in many respects, a wonderful
quantity of chaff. .
feared
he
man;
nothing, and he dared to do anything that his wisdom
.

taught him was right. He was no respecter of persons, and upheld only
truth, without regard to whence it came. The opinions of the people, with
regard to himself and his ideas, were of no importance in his eyes. When
we see a few like him in the same field of action, who, while they are in
the world are yet not of it,
of increasing."

Some

we shall see sin and sickness decreasing, instead

namely, on February 19, 1883, there appeared in

the Boston Post an answer to this letter. It was signed "E.G." Whether
ten days

later,

these initials concealed the identity of Mrs. Eddy herself, as internal evi
dence would seem to indicate, or the letter was the work of one of her
students, as

is

not impossible, certain

it is

that the letter itself lays the

all further repudiation of similar charges.

at times seems ungenerous to Quimby, it must be remem
bered that, after all Mrs. Eddy had gone through in her own mental

foundation for
If

"E.G."

struggles

307

and through the many misdemeanings in her students

attributed

to

Quimby s

most have

doctrine, her general estimate of his teaching

a great change. She still regards arid speaks of him, as she

even under the .most trying provocation, with kindness and

always

but she no longer regards him .as die inspired prophet such as
appeared to her in Ae Portland days twenty years before, when

he

by the aura of her own. thought.

die

A.O.V*

"E.G/*

writes.

Using

of that day, she begins mildly, professing inletter because it had also been her privilege to know

editorial,

in

And so

"we"

Dr. Phitieas P. Quimby, who died many years ago, and whom
we regarded very highly**. "He was *, she continued,
contemporary of
"the

late

"a

Dr. Newton, and often .amused us with his unique

mesmeric performances. He, Dr. Quimby, told us,

the

of

on our way

one

to a lecture, at the city

some of his powers to us in the

seated^ he

to us,

haU

hall.

in Portland, that he

Accordingly, after

we

1 shall set Aon to coughing*, and immediately

one after

coughing until the assembly in general

in chores, longer or shorter, according to directions. Then all of a
die
stopped, but our laughing, was not over, for imme

commenced sneezing

diately the

as if a sudden coryza

pocket handkerchiefs were in quick

had seized

requisition."

created the atmosphere evidently desired, that in which

not be taken too seriously, "E.G." gets down to the

Having
the
teal issue:

T3r.

Qaaxbfs
Ms

practice a

We

of treating the sick was manipulation; after imin water he rubbed the head, etc.
never called his

He

of treating diseases to our

knowledge, and we
.and his history. He was
very successful in many cases of lamehim several times if he had any system, aside from

maoipulatioa and mesmerism of treating disease, and he always evaded

the subject
were his patient, kit he never
gave us any further infor

We

mation

to las practice, kit

.always said
and I have thought best not to
divulge it After

it is

a secret of

treating the sick

retire to

my own,
he would"

a side room, and note with

pen the especial case with such other

308

paraphrase

as

he thought best This copy he gave to

to bring out, or, as he said, put into shape

His

certain individuals

scribblings were frag

mentary, but sometimes very interesting. He requested us to transform

them frequently and to give them different meanings, which we did. He
never took a student, to our knowledge, or gave information that was
of his healing. He called his scribblings, essays, but never the
practical,
Science of Health*. Science and Health

is

a work of Mrs.

B. G.

Mary

Eddy, issued in 1875. She discovered the science of healing embodied in

that work, after years of practical proof through homeopathy, that mind
instead of matter is the principle of pathology, and finally sealed her proof
casualty, from which she recovered through her exercise of
mental power over the body, after the regular physicians had pronounced
her case incurable. ...
grateful multitude acknowledge the blessings

by a severe

of her mental system of treating disease. Perhaps the following, in the

words of her husband, the late Dr. Asa G. Eddy, best express it: *Mrs.
Eddy s works are the outgrowths of her life. I never knew so unselfish an
individual ...
EG"

Five days later, Julius Dresser replies and this time comes at last right
out into the open. On February 24th he writes once again to the Boston
letter as a tissue of falsehoods, accusing
Post, characterizing "E.G.
s"

Mrs, Eddy of plagiarism and ingratitude, and winding up with what he

evidently regards as a knockout blow, a republishing of Mrs. Eddy s piti

him for help in 1866.

*E.G. was ever a patient of Dr. Quimby s,

ful plea to
"If

as she

claims,"

he

says,

1cnew the history , she knows that her article above referred to is
false from beginning to end. The undersigned is a quiet, humble citizen
of Boston, who seeks no controversy with anybody. But when he knows
"and

and dragged in the dirt, he will

the
truth
let
error become, as it always does,
and
forward
and
step
uphold
its own
As
*E.G.
has
maligned and belittled a good man, who
destroyer.

positively that truth is being outraged

gave up his

309

life

for the cause of truth,

and

actually died for sick people,

I will call as a

tie

Mrs. Eddy

whom *E.G.

speaks of.

TMs

was a patient and a student of the late Dr. P. P. Quimby of Port

land, Me., in the winter of 1862 and 63, Sbe was then known as Mis.
Patterson, wife of Dr. Patterson., dentist. The writer of the communica-

and student of Dr. Quimby s

a
the year

from

was

who

understand
"Now

at different times,

to 1865 including the period when Mrs. Patterson-Eddy

in the same capacity. There are other persons now in Boston
likewise patients of Dr. Quimby at the same time, and who
all

the facts Herein rekted.

Mrs. Patterson-Eddy knows positively that the assertions of

Monday s Post are a tissue of falsehoods. There are only

in last

"E-G.*

on mere minor points contained in TE.G.Y article.

Patterson-Eddy knows that the late Dr. P. P. Qimnby of Portland,
Me.5
actually and solely originator and founder of a mental method
of truth

of treating diseases.

also that

"She

that from

he called his peculiar theory the science of health,

Mm she got this name for the doctrine incorporated in her

Quknby never had regular students, but to such of Ms patients

Mrn fie freely explained Ms life-giving doctrine, for
no secret, and such ones kad access also to a portion of Ms writings,
Dr.

as could understand
it

copied them, as did Mrs. Patterson-Eddy. Such persons as herself

of an inquiring mind were therefore in a sense students of the

oifcers

and they made die most of

doctor^
"At

in
"

"Two

their opportunities.

5
of tte severe casualty stated
by E.G. as having hapto Mrs.
Patterson-Eddy, the latter wrote to the undersigned a

the

as follows :

ago I fel on the sidewalk, and struck my back on the ice,

to consciousness amid a storm of
up for deadj
vapours

cologne^ cUorofoon, ether, camphor, etc, but to find myself the

cripple I was before I saw Dr.

Quimby.

Tfae

attending said I had taken the last step I ever should,

kit in two days I got out of bed alone and will
walk; but yet I confess I
am frightened, and out of die nervous teat my friends are
forming, spite

310

of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and
can t you help me? I believe you can. I write this with
hopelessly

Now

this feeling; I think that I could help another in my condition if they had
not pkced their intelligence in matter. This I have not done, and yet I

am

slowly failing.
can get to you? . .

Won t you write me if you will undertake for me if I

.
"

Respectfully,

MARY M.
"This

letter is

PATTERSON*

in the handwriting of Mrs. Patterson-Eddy, and can be

by the truth-loving readers of the Post by calling at my office at No.

Chester
14
Square, Boston. At the same place other papers and persons

seen

can be consulted to prove the statements above made. Do not take my

as evidence, reader, nor that of anybody else. Talk is too cheap,

word
Call

and get the facts.

world in print,

mere

it

will then

scribblings*, or

science of truth

When Dr. Quimby s writings shall be given to the

C

be seen whether E.G. has correctly called them

whether truly they are the master delineations of a

and health

that shall

become the healing of the nations.

J. A. DRESSER"

To this letter, on February 23rd, 1883, Mrs. Eddy replied over her own
quite clearly not at all disconcerted. She re-asserts "E.G/s"
original statement and declares emphatically that far from being a tissue
of falsehoods they are "strictly true", "for all time". She states :

name. She

is

We had laid the foundation for mental healing before we

cc

ever saw

Dr. Quimby; were an homeopathist without a diploma, owing to our

aversion to the dissecting room.
made our first experiments in mental

We

healing about 1853, when we were convinced that mind had a science
which* if understood, would heal all diseases; we were then investigating

saw Dr. Q. until 1862. Mr. Dresser s statement

in last
knows
Eddy
positively that the assertions of
Post are a tissue of falsehoods , is untrue; we answer for all

that science, but never

c

that Mrs.

Monday s

time that those assertions were

311

"E.G."

strictly true.

We never were

a.

student nf

"

Dr. Qu&ob/s, ami Mr. Dresser knows that. Dr. Q. never had students
to our knowledge. He was a humaxiitarian, but a very unlearned man; be
a work in his life; was not a lecturer or teacher. He was
never
published
of a remarkable healer, and at die time we knew him he was
were one of his patients. He manipulated
unknown as a mesmerist.

We

but possibly bade of his practice he had a theory in advance

method, and, as we now understand it, and have since discovered,

his patients,

of

Ms

We

that theory with mesmerism.

him.
saw he
years ago, and aimed to
to write Ills droughts out.
and

he

We

take

say

copy to correct, and, sometimes, so transform it that he

was our composition, which it virtually was, but we always

tact the copy and, sometimes, wrote

gave
erf

it

knew him about twenty

was looking in our dkecHe did so, and then we

his

name on

the back

it ...
**At Swampscott, Mass,, in 1866,

we recovered

in

a moment of time

a severe accident, considered fatal by the regular physician, and

the internal action that had stopped, and the use of our limbs
that were palsied.

But die minds around us at that time were unac

One

individual of strong intellectual

power, and little spirituality even occasioned us, some momentary fears
of our ability to hold on to this wonderful discovery. In one of these
of fear we wrote to Mr. Dresser. . . .
sought for once the

quainted with our mental theory.

We

of one
versed

we believed

oa Dr. Q/s method of

whom we had con

and when we said to him, it is a
he believed no one but the Doctor

friendly, also with

healing,

mystery, he replied to the effect that

himself knew tow he healed. But to! after

we had found mental healing

and nearly twenty years have elapsed during which we have taught some
students and published five or six thousand volumes on this subject,
already circulated in the United States and Europe, the aforesaid gentle
to die public, Dr. Quimby, the founder of mental heal-

man announces
ing."

Shortly after the appearance of these letters, the Arena s Plagiarism

Case, as already described, came up before the courts. Mrs. Eddy won

312

her case

on all counts, and her claims to copyright in Science and Health

were finally established, but the great Quimby controversy continued al

most unabated for many years. It may be disposed of shortly here. In
published a pamphlet entitled Historical Sketch of
Metaphysical Healing. In this she once again covered the ground and
re-affirmed her position. Then, in 1887, learning that an attempt was
1885, Mrs.

being

Eddy

made

to secure the

boldly carried the

war

for publication; she

camp by offering to publish the
expense, and to hand over the proceeds

"Quimby Manuscripts"

into the enemies

manuscripts herself, at her own

to the owner of the copyright, on certain conditions. In due course there

appeared in the Portland papers the following notice :

"Important

Offer

Mr. George A. Quimby, son of the kte Phineas P. Quimby, over

own signature, and before a witness stated, in 1883, that he had in

<c

his

his possession at that time all the manuscripts written

by

his father. I

hereby declare to expose the falsehoods of parties publicly intimating

that I have appropriated matter belonging to the aforesaid Quimby, that

pay the cost of printing and publishing the

manuscripts, with the author s name attached :
I will

"Provided,

first

edition of these

That I am allowed first to examine said Manuscripts, and

Mr. P. P. Quimby s own compositions, and not

that I find they were

mine, that were

left

with him

many

years ago

or that they have not

from my published works; and also,

to
the
this one edition under copyright
out
bring
given
right
of the owner of said Manuscripts, and that all the money accruing from
since his death, in 1865, been stolen

that I

am

be paid to said owner. Some of Mr, Quimby s

purported writings, quoted by J. A. Dresser, were my own words, as
nearly as I can recollect them.
the sale of

book

"There is

shall

a great demand for

my

book Science and Health. Hence

Mr. Dresser s excuse

for the delay in publishing Quimby s Manuscripts,

that
this
age is not sufficiently enlightened to be benefited by
namely^
them (?) is lost; for if I have copied from Quimby, and my book is ac
cepted, this acceptance creates a demand for his writings.
"MARY

313

BAKER G.EDDY"

But George Quimby, who had the manuscripts in his possession, stead
fastly refused, to allow them to be published. He rather unconvincingly
claimed that Mrs.

was only a device to get the manuscripts

into her own hands, where they could easily be "altered or destroyed".
It could, of course, have been arranged for Mrs. Eddy to examine the

Eddy s

offer

manuscripts in the presence of a third party and make her decision there
and then. However, they were not published and were not to be for many
years more. Julius Dresser

had

to content himself with writing

and

publishing The True History of Mental Science, which he did in the

spring of 1887. Mrs. Eddy replied in the Journal, and the following year
George Quimby published an article on his father in the New England

Magazine. La 1895 Julius Dresser and his wife, Annette Dresser, brought
out a book, The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, and since then the contro
versy has continued down to the present day. After the publication of
the famous manuscripts in 1921, however, it has lost much of the
mystery

which up to that time had constituted

George Quimby
"certainly

was

"in

is

hers",

its

chief attraction.

statement to the effect that Mrs.

Eddy s

and that he would be loath to think that

any way connected with Christian

Science",

teaching

his father

would seem to be

final.

314

Xremoiit Temple

BUT WHETHER

on her doctrine by ministers of religion

from her, or an attack on her claim to be the

IT was an attack

and others who differed

true discoverer of that doctrine, as seen in the onslaughts of Julius Dres*

and others, the only effect upon Mrs. Eddy and

movement she was fostering was to aid them. The
Dresser controversy was to stimulate public interest.
ser

the progress of the

effect of the Julius

Mrs. Eddy and her teaching were rapidly becoming the most talked
of subjects in Boston, and a situation arose which required all the woman s
determination to

offset. It

became fashionable to know her, and still more

fashionable to invite her to be present at various social gatherings.

When

was a prospect that by so doing she could promulgate her

Mrs.
Eddy was glad and even eager to accept, but when there
teaching,
was no such prospect and the motive for the invitation was curiosity or
social prestige, she was vigorous and often curt in her refusals. It was,
however, at just such gatherings that she found many of those destined
ever there

later to

become prominent

The years 1883

315

in the

movement.

to 1885 were particularly notable in this fespect. Julia

Bardett has already been mentioned. Another important figure was that
of Ira O. Knapp, who later took a prominent part in the founding of

The Mother Church and was one of its Directors. His long white patri
archal beard and kindly ways made him for years one of the most pic
turesque figures in the movement. Like many others, he was definitely
attached to Christian Science through a remarkable healing, that of his
wife, who, after years of helpless invalidism as a result of which she had
lost the

use of her limbs, was restored suddenly and completely to health.

O. Knapp came of sturdy New England stock. Like Mrs. Eddy,

he was born in the hills of New Hampshire on June 7, 1839 having
Ira

first

seen the light in the

little

bend of the Connecticut River

town of Lyman, not

at Fifteen

Miles

far

Falls.

from the great

He

could trace

one Aaron Knapp, who settled

through
son of
Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1639, about the time when
Thomas
his
and
followers
were
the
three
Thunder",
Hooker,
"planting"
his father s line to

his ancestry

at

"the

towns of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield, in the land which was

afterwards to be called Connecticut.
kter ancestor, Abeal Knapp, was

a soldier in the Revolutionary

in

New Hampshire.

academies at

War and was

the

first

of his family to live

town and the

Ira attended the district school of his

Newbury and Peacham, Vermont. Afterwards, he farmed

He

and taught school.

also, as time went on, held such local offices as
school superintendent and selectman of his town and
justice of the peace
of his county.

He took a wife, Miss Flavia S. Stickney,

from among

his

own

people in Lyman. That was in 1866, and some eighteen years later,
this same Flavia,
through her infirmities, brought Ira and herself into

and so changed the course of their lives.

figure was Joseph S. Eastaman, a retired sea captain of the
old school, later, one of the Directors of The Mother Church.
Replete
with high adventure, shipwrecks and
strange wanderings in India, China,
Peru, he, too, was brought to Christian Science through the
of
Christian Science

Another

his wife.

He

healing
1

had,

it

seems, been to

Hawthorne Hall

several times ,

and

at last applied
directly to Mrs.

amaze

ment, Mrs. Eddy,

him by

Eddy for help. Not a little to his

instead of offering to
help his wife, surprised

316

asking

why he did not

explained

how

to

him

that

if

heal his wife himself.

She then appears

he would enter one of her

classes

to have

he could learn

might be done. Not a little incredulous, he agreed, with the

that within a few days, with the assurance of a man who all his

this

result

began using what little he knew in

with
excellent result. As he puts it in
the direction indicated, apparently
his own record of the matter, "As I understood the rudiments, I began
life

had been used

to doing things, he

to treat her; and, so quickly did she respond to the treatment, that she

was able to avail herself of the kindly invitation of the teacher to ac

company me to the final session."

But perhaps the most notable adherents

to the cause about this time,

notable because of the strange part they were later destined to play in
the history of the movement, were Josephine Woodbury and Augusta
Stetson.

Of

these, Josephine

Woodbury had known and admired Mrs.

1879 when she and her husband, Edgar Frank Woodbury,

Eddy
had become interested through reading Science and Health. They were
since

prominent people, with a town house in Boston and a summer

Maine. Mr. Woodbury had helped Mrs. Eddy in the formation
in
place
of the Metaphysical College and had been one of its Directors. In 1884,
after several years of hesitancy, Josephine Woodbury decided definitely
socially

to cast in her lot with the new movement. She was an eloquent speaker,
with a good voice and an unusually attractive presence. She was also
something of a poet and a writer, and she had all the defects of her vir

In these early days she carried all before her.

there was Augusta Stetson. When she first met Mrs. Eddy in
1884 she was a woman a little over forty who, after a period of study at
the Boston School of Oratory, was just setting out on a career as an

tues.

Then

She was a

woman, tall and generous in build, with

a singularly compelling presence. She was not beautiful like Josephine
Woodbury, but she had a way of commanding attention which was the
subject of comment all her life. As a little girl in Damariscotta, Maine,
where her father, Peabody Simmons, was engaged as an architect, she
was devoted to music and when she was only fourteen played the organ
elocutionist.

317

striking

in church.

She married

eran of the Civil

at twenty-two

War, who was

Captain Frederick Stetson, a vet

associated with his father in the

work of

the two went out to India in conshipbuilding, and shortly afterward

nection with the shipbuilding business, living for several years in Bombay
and then kter on in Akyab, British Burma. In the early eighties, Captain
Stetson s health he had never recovered from privations suffered in the
notorious Libby Prison during the Civil War broke down completely,
and the two returned to America where Augusta determined to make a
living for

them both. So

it

was,

when Mrs. Eddy met

her in the spring

of 1884.
invited to attend a lecture given by Mrs. Eddy in a
When the lecture was over, the two met
Charlestown.
in
house
private
and Mrs. Eddy seems to have recognized at once some exceptional abil
Stetson. She asked her to come and see her, assuring her,
ity in Augusta

She had been

as she often did to a promising newcomer, that if she would study Chris
tian Science she could do a great work in it. Mrs. Stetson did not respond
at once, but she evidently maintained her interest in Christian Science,
for in the fall of 1884 she invited Mrs. Eddy to give a lecture in her

house, as the result of which she decided to join the next class which at
that time

was

enrolling.

Augusta Stetson appears to have made the decision after much hesita
tion, even wondering whether she could spare the time from her work as
an elocutionist, which just then was becoming more or less established.
However, she decided to join, and within three weeks all else was for
gotten. She came out of the class with only one thought, to devote herself
completely to the practice of Christian Science. All thoughts of any other
work were entirely put aside, and it was not long before her remarkable

began to be widely known.

But Augusta Stetson was not the only one who had amazing success
about this time. Indeed, it would be impossible to explain the remarkable
success as a healer

progress of the new teaching in any other way save on the basis of the
spectacular exhibition of healing which seems to have been in evidence in

many

quarters. It

is

possible that a great deal of

it

was simply faith

318

healing, intensified enormously, as in every case of religious revival, by

the cumulative enthusiasm of increasing numbers. Many years later, Ed

ward Kimball, one of the ablest exponents of Christian Science, was to

admit frankly that a great deal of the healing in Christian Science, espe
in these early days, was faith healing. But whether
through faith
there
can
be no doubt cast on the cures which
or through understanding,
cially

from now on are to be recorded

From

its first issue,

in increasing numbers.
cases of healing were
given periodically in the

Christian Science Journal, but

was not

until about 1884 or 1885 that

became a regular feature. Up to then, practitioners
in various parts of the country had sent in accounts of the cases they had
handled, and some of these had been published. Later on it became the
practice to have the original testimonials from the people themselves who
it

the records of cures

had actually been healed.

One

of Augusta Stetson s records, as found in Volume Three of the

Christian Science Journal, is certainly a remarkable statement.
Writing

from SomervtUe, Massachusetts, she enumerates nine or ten cases of

healing, among them a hopeless case of cancer, a case of diphtheria,

and a badly sprained ankle which had failed to

to
medical
treatment
for some weeks. She gives her address, and
yield
states simply that she will be glad to give full details of these cases to
chronic heart disease,

anyone who

The

is

interested.

record of Julia Bartlett

from Sugar

is

no

less

remarkable. Early in 1884, a

Hill, New Hampshire, whose

case had been pro

young girl
nounced hopeless by her local doctor, applied to Miss Bartlett for help.
She was healed in nine days, and on returning to Sugar Hill her remark
able recovery attracted so much attention that Miss Bartlett received an

earnest appeal to visit the little mountain town. She decided to go,
during the eleven days she spent there she is credited with

many

as seventy patients a day,

many

of

whom

and

having ac
were cured instan

taneously.

When the widest margin is left for possible

tion, the fact still

319

if unintentional
exaggera
remains that only by some extraordinary phenomena

as are here indicated

can the tremendous impulse given to the movement

about this time be explained. Especially in the early days, it was the
that attracted public attention and, as has
healing work almost alone

been seen, attracted

it

to a remarkable extent.

had a considerable reputation for healing work, but

Mrs. Eddy
from the first she seems to have felt that her great mission was as a
herself

teacher

and that, through her

could be

made more

of her Science
teaching, the demonstration

universal

by the ever widening

practice of her

students.

As a

teacher she

measure by

began

to

all

had

in a

marked degree an

ability

shared in a

attention even before she

great teachers of arresting
session of a class was in the nature of a revela

speak The first

tion to those attending

it.

Thus a Miss Lulu Blackman, who

travelled about this time (1885)

from Lincoln, Nebraska, to go through one of Mrs. Eddy s

remarks in her account of the matter upon this fact :
When she entered the Class-room, I saw her for the
<c

tuitively,

the

members of the

standing until she

was

class rose at

first

classes,

In

time.

her entrance, and remained

She made her way to a slightly raised plat

... She stood before us seemingly slight,

seated.

form, turned and faced us.

to critical eyes,
graceful of carriage and exquisitely beautiful even
She was every inch the Teacher."

On the larger platform of the lecture hall, she seems to have been even
more
ness,

She had a remarkable poise and lack of all self-conscious

and had at times a happy and quiet humour which tended to modify
arresting.

Word of her preaching had by this time travelled

Hawthorne Hall had been outgrown, and the church now held its
services in the much larger Chickering Hall; and then one
day Mrs.
Eddy appeared on the platform of Tremont Temple.
Tremont Temple was in those days, as indeed it still is, the scene of
if

not silence dissent.

far.

notable gatherings and a platform for

many notable people. In
was
1885,
occupied every Monday by the Reverend Joseph Cook, a

many

it

popular lecturer of his day, and the

"Monday

Lecture in Tremont

320

Temple"

was one of Boston s

favourite

and

fashionable occasions. It

March, 1885, that Mr. Cook read

happened
of
Mrs.
a letter from one
Eddy s most bitter opponents, the Reverend
A. J. Gordon, denouncing Christian Science and all its works with a
at

a lecture of

his early in

thoroughness which was characteristic of those early days. Mrs. Eddy

immediately demanded the right to reply to these denunciations and
charges from the same platform. Mr. Cook agreed that she should have
ten minutes on the following Monday, March 16.

And

so at the time appointed, Mrs. Eddy appeared on the platform

and, in exactly ten minutes, gave an exposition of her teaching which

much

created

stir

at the time

and has

since

become

historic.

Recognizing,

with what must be regarded as rare skill, that it would be impossible to

present even the most general synopsis of her doctrine in a time so short,
she confined herself to questions and answers, asking the questions she
knew her audience was eager to ask, and answering them clearly and
crisply

and without

evasion.

The one evidently most asked she put first: "Am I a spiritualist?"
am not, and never
Her answer was direct and emphatic enough
And then she went on to explain how she understood the impossibility
of intercommunion betwen the "so-called dead and living"; how her life
had always been attended by phenomena of an uncommon order which
spiritualists mis-called mediumship, but how she clearly understood that
no human agencies were employed, but that
divine Mind reveals
:

"I

was."

"the

itself

to

humanity through spiritual

law".

And then she continued:

"To

such as are waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body ,
Christian Science reveals the infinitude of divinity and the way of man s
salvation

from

sickness

and

death."

Her next question brought another vital issue into

the open. Christian

Science had been described by more than one minister in Boston as a
Godless faith in which a kind of esoteric transcendentalism was substi

tuted for true Christian doctrine, and so she asked the question:

For

321

text

of her statement

cf.

Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 95-98.

"Do

believe in

a personal

God?"

Her answer seems to have stood out as one of

the great confessions of faith.

believe in God", she said,

Supreme Being. I know not what

the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is, or what the infinite in
"I

"as

the

as a loving
cludes; therefore I worship that of which I can conceive, first,
of
scale
the
Father and Mother; then, as thought ascends
being to

God becomes

diviner consciousness,
e

clared

the

it,

God

is

manner of my

Love

to me, as to the apostle

divine Principle

fathers, so

worship I

God

who de

which I worship; and after

."

She took each question slowly and deliberately, and it quickly became
each other, that she was
apparent, as question and answer followed
dismissed
For
Spiritualism, and
having
working on a well-conceived plan.
affirmed her faith in the fatherhood

and motherhood of God, her next

to man, and so she asked,

clearly the relationship of God
I believe in the atonement of Christ?"

point was

"Do

She paused a moment and then said simply,

do; and this atone
to me since it includes man s re
ment", she continued, Becomes more
from
as
well
as
from
sin. I reverence and adore Christ
sickness
demption
"I

as never

before."

Another pause and then this question, "How is the healing doi^e in
Christian Science?" Here was the crux of the whole matter. The Tremont

Temple was

were standing at the back of

the great gallery which circles the hall, and it is not difficult to imagine
the wave of expectancy which swept over the audience. It was a question
filled to overflowing.

everyone was asking.

Her
swer",

How was

Many

the healing done?

answer was certainly remarkable for

she said,

its

succinctness.

"This

an

much to give you any conclusive idea in

can name some means by which it is not done.

"includes

too

a brief explanation. I
is not one mind
acting upon another mind; it is not the transference
of human images of thought to other minds; it is not
the evi
supported
It

by

dence before the personal senses, Science contradicts this evidence; it

is not of the flesh, but of the
the
Spirit. It is Christ come to
destroy

power of the

flesh; it is

Truth over

error; that understood, gives

man
322

rise
ability to

above the evidence of the

senses, take

hold of the eternal

energies of Truth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal harmony,

. Christian Science is not a
the grand verities of being.
remedy of faith
.

alone, but

touch the
power. I
5
me.

combines faith with understanding, through which we may

of His garment; and know that omnipotence has all

hem

am

the Lord, and there

is

none

else, there is

no God beside

"

Time was running

short now, but she

was one more question,

"Is

had measured

there a personal

man?"

it

well.

There

the Scriptures were

clear enough, she said; man was made in the image and likeness of God.
She commended the Icelandic translation of the passage in Genesis, "He
created man in the image and likeness of Mind, in the image and likeness

of

Mind

created

He

him."

This image and likeness of

Mind did

not yet

would appear more and more as the "perfect model"

was "held in mind" and man s contemplation regarding himself turned
resolutely "away from inharmony, sickness, and sin, to that which is the
"appear",

but

image of his

323

it

Maker".

HA

33

MANY

RESPECTS the founding of the Christian Science Journal in

1883 was a masterstroke of policy. The tendency of the movement, espe

IN

cially at first,

was to spread

sporadically.

Word

tealed in Salem, Massachusetts, would be sent by

of a case of sickness
letter or carried

by a

friend to a sick person in Salem, Oregon, perhaps accompanied by a

copy of Science and Health, and the sick person in Salem, Oregon, being
restored to health, as

the

many were

while reading the book, would pass

on

good news to others, and, very soon, a little group, intensely eager
more of the new teaching, would be formed. Members of this

to learn

group would gather in each others houses for discussion and the exchange
of views and experiences, and letters any one of them might receive from

Boston from those who were devoting themselves to the study and prac
of Christian Science were read and re-read and then sent on further

tice

afield.

The one

thing needed above

all

others

was a connecting

link,

slight, to bring these widely scattered groups together in some

fellowship. In those early days there were few as there were

however

bond

of

always to

324

be few

who could have understood Mrs. Eddy s

steadfastly maintained

counsel of perfection that the one true bond of perfectness was devotion
to Principle. They felt deeply the need of personal guidance. The path

had set out to traverse was unaccustomed, and any assurance that
not travelling alone would be gladly welcomed. Such assurance
were
they
was supplied by the Journal, Even when it was only a little eight-page
two months, it was infinitely better than nothing.
paper, published every
they

had come to be quite a sizable magazine.

clearly Mrs. Eddy realized the need is seen in her statement

But by 1885

How
the

it

in

first issue.

she writes,
this date, 1883
newspaper edited and published
Scientists has become a necessity. Many questions im
Christian
the
by
portant to be disposed of come to the College and to the practising stu
"At

"a

,"

dents, yet but little time has

been devoted to

necessary for the age,

enlightenment
work seems alone adequate to meet the
is

and a

their answer. Further

periodical devoted to this

requirement."

The

history of the little magazine was chequered from the first, as it

was to be for many years. One after another, its editors or associates

work

of enthusiasm and devotion, only to

drift away after a year or two and embark on some course of their own.
Arthur True Buswell, its first business manager, whose aid to Mrs. Eddy

would enter upon

their

full

and

his care for her after the death of Gilbert

and

unselfish,

Eddy had been

so faithful

found the going too rough and was soon counted among

the opposition, for Richard Kennedy, Daniel Spofford, Edward Arens,

and others who had become alienated from Mrs. Eddy, were still active;

quickly became clear that the more rapid the advance of the
attractive to public interest would be any

Indeed,

it

original

movement, the more

healing/* This presented a constant invitation to those

were discontented. In some cases, of course, the age-old human fail

version of

who

"mental

ing embodied in the conviction that

than second

man

Rome was

it is

better to be first

man in a village

particularly in evidence, and, in the early

of
the outside world had no sure way of dis
Christian
when
Science,
days
tinguishing the original from the take-off, it was easy for the dissident

325

at

to

go out and build a

into the

new

village, secure-

a following, and persuade

many

fold.

Arthur Busweli went out in January of 1884, and his place was taken
by a Mrs. Emma Hopkins, wife of a professor of Andover. She was an

woman, had been healed by Mrs. Eddy of a serious

had
illness,
gone through one of her classes and now embarked on her
new work as associate editor of the Journal with enthusiasm. Her posi
able, well-educated

tion, bringing her, as

it

did, in constant association with

Mrs. Eddy, gave

her an outstanding place

among her fellows, thus making her the target

for both attack and temptation. The usual difficulties were not long in
developing. In the summer of 1884, there came to the Metaphysical
CoEege to study, a woman from Detroit named Mary H. Plunkett, who
5

was so impressed with Mrs. Hopkins possibilities that the Journal editor
ship seemed to her of too limited a scope for such genius. Why not with

draw

and wider

Emma was not

only a genius,
with a destiny. With her
learning and her familiarity with the "mysteries of mind", she might well
be a nineteenth-century Hypatia, and Mrs. Plunkett asked nothing better
to freer expression

fields?

so Mrs. Plunkett assured her, but a

than to

sit

at her feet

woman

and forward her goings. She

should be found to further her view that

result of selection
this

ce

by soul

affinity".

theory until later but,

however

months, completely won

ties

had

over

felt,

too, that a

way

marriages should be the

She does not seem to have featured

this

all

may

Emma Hopkins

be, she had, within

a few

to the view that her abili

were being wasted in her subordination to Mrs. Eddy, and that she
better join with her in
founding a new school of metaphysics.

And so they left Boston together, taught their own system for some
time in Detroit and Chicago and other mid-western cities,
published a
magazine entitled The International Magazine of Christian Science^ but
before long faded out as a serious threat to Mrs.
Eddy s leadership.

Mrs. Hopkins

history, as associate editor of the Journal,

was the

history of no fewer than three of her immediate successors. It was not

until 1890 that the Journal was able to shake itself
free, as far as Mrs.

Eddy s partisans were

concerned, from the taint of apostasy.

326

All through this long period, however, Mrs. Eddy remained firmly at
the helm, directed the policy of the magazine, and wrote much of its
contents.
copy of the Journal in the summer of 1885, shortly after
Mrs. Eddy made her appearance at Tremont Temple, affords an inter

view of the
esting cross-sectional

and of Mrs. Eddy

movement

connection with

as a

whole about

this

time

it.

the Journal for August, 1885, which is designated No. 5, Vol.

a magazine of some fifteen pages. It is well printed on good paper
varied in its content. Opening with an article by Mrs. Eddy which

Thus
Ill, is

and

is

used in part as a preface to her book Miscellaneous Writings,

followed by an interview with her by Lillian Whiting, reprinted
from the Ohio Leader. Thereafter come several articles signed variously,

was

later

this is

"Student",

"Christian Scientist",

or only with

various aspects of Christian Science,

Works, Christian Science and other

initials.

and one of them,

They

deal with

entitled

"Faith

a vigorous defence of
Cures",
the
of
the
attacks
Reverend L, T. Townsend
Christian Science against
already referred to.
Then there is poetry, quite a lot of

is

it,

some

original

and not so good,

some quoted from famous poets and excellent not only in form but in
appositeness. There are extracts from Science and Health, some wellwritten

book reviews and

three columns of testimonies

from those healed.

These testimonies are headed by a note to the effect that full particulars
will be supplied on application to the editor of the Journal. They include
other things testimonies as to the healing of dyspepsia, kidney
trouble, typhoid pneumonia, chronic dysentery, insanity, cholera, neu

among

and blindness.
But probably the most looked for

ralgia

Eddy
There

herself entitled

"Bible

features were those written

Lessons"

and

"Questions

and

by Mrs.

Answers".

a department bearing the heading "Humorous". It is not very

successful, but then it lays no claim to originality save in the matter of
is

"You can
easily tell a dogwood tree by its bark", from the
no
Sun
has
special claim to distinction. Many of the jokes were
Chicago
on clergymen and doctors! Finally, there are several columns devoted to

selection.

327

and office Lours of practitioners, mostly in or around

some
from
New York and one at least from as far west as
but
Boston,
Omaha, Nebraska. few pages of simple advertising round off the issue :

die names, addresses

garden swings, pianos, stationery, periodicals, and so forth. There are

from the "Massachusetts Metaphysical College" and two

also notices

pages of advertising for Science and Health.

From the biographical point of view the most interesting feature in
this issue is the interview with Mrs. Eddy by Lillian Whiting. Lillian

Whiting of the Ohio Leader was a newspaper woman of the transitional

school; that is to say, she was sufficiently near to the sentimentality and
of the Civil War period to be still touched by it and suffi
near
the irrepressible story-getting afflatus of today to present
to
ciently
some of its features. The fact that she was clearly "out for a story",
*1a%hfalutin"

while

it

would make one discount the value of the

highlights,

would in

tensify the importance of those more prosaic elements to which curiously

enough she gives great prominence.

Whether

she had been sent by her paper to Boston for the express
of
purpose
interviewing Mrs. Eddy is not at all certain. As she tells the
the
came to her quite suddenly and without any preparation.
idea
story,
She claims to have been so little interested in the subject that she had

made no

effort to

hear Mrs.

Eddy

either at

Hawthorne Hall or

else

where, but acting on a sudden impulse wrote to her and asked for an
interview. "My note of inquiry", she says, "was met
by a very courteous

come to her

at an hour named, and

accordingly at eight
o clock that evening I rang the bell of a large and handsome residence
on Columbus Avenue near West Chester Park known as the
Metaphysi
cal College.
maid ushered me into a daintily furnished reception room
where pictures and bric-a-brac indicated refinement and taste."
invitation to

She then goes on

to relate

how

that after she

had waited for a few

moments, appraising her surroundings* Mrs. Eddy came in and greeted

her cordially and gracefully. She was, from what she had
heard, pre
pared for this friendly greeting, but she was not prepared for

something

more,

"an

indefinable element of
harmony

repose but more like

and a peace

that

was not mere

exaltation".

328

She seems to have been a good interviewer, for, after some friendly
back and forth on topics of the day, she got Mrs. Eddy down to

talk

telling the story of her early life

and of how she

arrived at Christian

sturdy New England ancestry, the

devoted Abigail, the little girl sorely tried with sickness, but going on
her way. Just a word or two about all the trials and troubles that inter
vened, and then a very vivid picture of the Sunday morning in Lynn

The picture is

Science.

when

complete.

The

grown to be a very tired, worn-out woman, saw

her literally to arise from a bed of sickness and
that
enabled
something
this little girl,

walk.

One detail is added, not before recorded how that after Mrs. Eddy
had read the passage from Matthew recounting the healing of the man
sick of the palsy, she lay for some time thinking over it, and how that
with increasing persistency there came to her thought the words,
am
"I

the

Way and the Truth and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but

by me/

Whiting continues, telling the story,

began
from her bed and walked into the adjoining
grow strong.
From that hour the power was revealed to
room.
"And then",

Lillian

She

to

her."

a woman who
Whiting says that Mrs. Eddy impressed her
in -the language of our Methodist friends
filled with the spirit*."

Lillian
is

"she

arose

And

"as

she relates her

own

personal experience as the result of the inter

view. It is interesting because similar accounts of similar experiences
later come to be quite common.

own

personal experience in the call was so singular that I will

venture to relate it. I went as I have said in a journalistic spirit. I had no
"My

belief or disbelief,

and the idea of getting any personal

benefit

from the

matter for press use never occurred to me. But I remembered

afterward how extremely tired I was as I walked rather wearily and
call save

languidly up the steps to Mrs. Eddy s door. I came away as a little child
friend of mine expressively says, skipping*. I was at least a mile from the
Vendome, and I walked home feeling as if I were treading on air.
sleep that night was the rest of Elysium. If I had been caught up into

My

329-

have been a more wonderful renewal All the

paradise it could hardly

next day this exalted state continued. I can hardly describe it:

it

was

of mind and body."

simply the most marvellous elasticity
noticed the same stimulation, not
had
Bancroft
Many years before,
her privately or heard her speak
met
who
only on himself but on others
and as years went by this stimulus seemed to increase rather
in
public,

than diminish. It attached also in a large measure to her writings, and

even when every allowance

is

made

for the influence of pure imagination,

the effect often produced by the public reading of her letters

must be

accounted extraordinary.
In these early days of the Journal, this was specially noteworthy.
direct word from Mrs. Eddy was the thing most sought after, and through

the Journal this

far

from

word was going out everywhere. As Georgine Milmine,

friendly, writing

much

nearer those days has left record:

"Al

knew what to do with

though her subscription-list was small, Mrs. Eddy
remote
to
their
found
her Journal. Copies
villages in Missouri and
way
Arkansas, to lonely places in Nebraska and Colorado, where people had
much time for reflection, little excitement, and great need to believe in

upon the waters is no adequate

Christian Science began to be
and
Mrs.
Eddy
suggestion of the result*
talked of far away in the mountains and in the prairie villages. Lonely
and discouraged people brooded over these editorials which promised
miracles.

The metaphor

of the bread cast

The desperately ill had no

happiness to sorrow and success to failure.
declared that they had been
quarrel with testimonials in which people
snatched from the brink of the grave/*
The Journal had taken as its motto Paul s statement,

"For

the weapons

of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, to the pulling

down

of strong

holds."

Any study of

its

days, must compel the admission that

it

history, especially in these early

made good

use of

its

weapons.

330

VIEWED IN THE

perspective of

more than half a century, the outstanding

movement during the next three

characteristic of the Christian Science

from 1885 to 1888, is expansion. This phase of it completely over

shadows all others. It entered the period as a Boston Craze* It emerged
years,

from

it

as

ments and

a national and even international

criticism, attack

and defence,

are

religious

movement Com

no longer confined to

local

newspapers and periodicals. They appear with increasing frequency in

national magazines and are often placed in the forefront of debate.
Mrs. Eddy made the utmost use of it allattack of importance
was allowed to go unanswered, and so great was the interest in the subject

No

that the circulation of the Journal increased rapidly not only among pro
fessed Christian Scientists, but much further afield.
attack in the

An

Century Magazine one month like that, for instance, of the Reverend
Dr. J. M. Buckley, entitled "Christian Science and Mind Cure", which

would be followed by a reply in

the Journal in the next, and many Century readers would buy the Journal
containing the reply in order to see how Mrs. Eddy or some one or other
appeared in the issue for July, 1887

331

of her supporters bandied the matter. Mrs. Eddy, it would seem, seldom
her own name, but often the unsigned reply
replied to these attacks over

occupying a

was

its

first

leave little doubt as to who

place in the Journal would
of the movement is well
rapid was the expansion

How

author.

to Doctor Buckley, in which

by the closing words in the reply
the writer comments upon the change which has come over the face of
illustrated

things in one short year :

a most gratifying sign that The Century devotes so much space

with thanks an
to Christian Science.
year ago the editor returned
that there was
article on this
giving as a reason for his refusal,
"It

is

subject,

no such theme
article.

When

Now

as Christian Science.

this title

the Metaphysical College was

heads the Century

established in 1881, the

President reluctantly accepted the title, because Christian Science was a

fit name
by which
thing unknown to legislators and this was the only
she could secure incorporation.
corporates academies

and

murmur. The world moves

But
it

if it

so

societies

the Massachusetts Legislature in

under the caption, and without a

spiritward."

was largely because Mrs. Eddy determined that

that nothing that could be done to make it so move

moved

should, or, rather,

Now

it

should remain undone, as far as she was concerned. Her energy and
resource were alike inexhaustible. In these three years she taught no fewer

than twenty regular classes besides undertaking innumerable cases of

for the Journal,
special instruction. She wrote regularly and copiously

and attended with her own hand to a correspondence which increased

steadily week by week and month by month. In addition to all this, she

had the personal

direction of

a movement which, having spanned the

continent, stood in sore need of consolidation.

Her

great aim about this time seems to have been the training of
apostles in the simple sense of the word. She must have students who

could undertake for her,

who could be

trusted to go into a

new field and

speak with authority and act with wisdom and teach and preach with
understanding. And so in the Journal for February, 1886, she calls
vigorous attention to the need for teachers

and for

teaching.

In a

circular

332

letter

which she sent out to students in

different places throughout the

country, she emphasizes the advisability of those prepared to teach to

form classes as soon as possible and to carry on their work through some
centre which
"Christian

might be known variously as

Science

"Christian

Science

Institute"

or

Academy".

Meanwhile, new churches were springing up everywhere. It was in the

later to be fraught with
fall of this year, 1886, that she took the step

much import of sending Augusta Stetson to New York to establish

there. Mrs. Stetson was not specially eager to go. She had a
church
a

so

large following in and around Boston, preached quite frequently at

Hawthorne and Chickering Halls, and "altogether occupied a position
of no little prominence. She, however, decided to go, and although the

work

in

New York was

slow, so slow at first that she twice returned to

Boston seeking release from her office, before two years were passed she
was preaching to large congregations at Crescent Hall, Number 138
Fifth

Avenue, and Christian Science was spreading rapidly throughout

the state.

however, towards the west that Mrs. Eddy, with a sure instinct,
persistently turned her attention. In 1887, she sent Josephine Woodbury
It was,

A minister by the name of

D. Westervelt had been conducting a vigorous campaign
Denver against the new teaching, and the leading article in the Sep

on a

special mission to Denver, Colorado.

Reverend
in

W.

tember Journal was devoted to an examination of one of his essays.

Josephine Woodbury was an able speaker with, as has been seen, an

and her mission was a complete success. She re

turned to Boston with word of the growth of the cause in all directions.
But while Mrs. Eddy was thus sending envoys further and further

attractive personality,

west

an academy was

highest hopes were

established in

From the
anywhere
ence and wealth, who in
less

333

Francisco early in 1887

Ever since her

visit in

her

1884 she

way that was not being equalled

seems to have attracted people of influ
the freer atmosphere of the Middle West were

had seen the movement grow

else.

San

centred in Chicago.
there in a

first it

hide-bound than the settled Easterners, and so more contagiously

demonstrative. It

is

true that in Chicago as elsewhere, of those called

and increasing numbers

remained faithful, and within a few years Chicago had gained a reputa
tion in the movement for soundness which it never lost.

and chosen, many

in time fell away, but great

In the early weeks of 1888, Mrs. Eddy began to receive urgent calls
to revisit Chicago.
way had opened out for her to do so with excellent

had advocated through the Journal

years previously she
Christian
the formation of a National Christian Scientist Association.

effect.

Some two

Scientist Association

had

existed, of course, for

many

years,

ever since

Lynn days, but, as Mrs. Eddy points out in her notice in the
a society
for
Journal
January, 1886, ttds Association was exclusively
the earliest

connected with the Massachusetts Metaphysical College and thus neces

sarily limited in its scope.

deem it advisable", she says, "that an organization be formed on a

broader basis, by which all Christian Scientists and their students may
come together; and I would recommend that steps be taken by my stu
"I

dents throughout the United States to organize a National Christian

Scientist

Association."..

This was promptly done, and within a few weeks, namely, on February
meeting of the new Association was held in New York
At
that
City.
meeting, which was necessarily small owing to the shortness
11. 1886, the first

of the notice, plans were laid for the development of the larger organiza
tion, and in the following year the first annual meeting of the Association

was held in Boston at Tremont Temple on Wednesday afternoon, April

13. 1887.

The

annual meeting shows the extent to

which the new teaching had spread throughout the country. No fewer
than fourteen states were represented : Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode
Island,
Illinois,

list

of delegates to this

first

New

York, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio,

Wisconsin, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa and Colorado.

The report of the meeting, which

later appeared in the Journal, dwells

the
evidence
of
the
afforded
upon
rapid growth of the movement.
"This
the
Association",
report said, "only a year old shows by the

334

interest

manifested in

all parts of

the country the deep root

it

has taken

minds of the people, and the attendance shows how many were
anxious to see and hear the leader of this great movement."

in the

The meeting
adjourned

"to

lasted

two days, and at the end of the second day

meet a year hence". This next meeting was held

in Chicago.

The choice of Chicago was another excellent stroke of policy. As the

far west developed, Chicago was rapidly becoming the favourite city for
Then as now, perhaps the greatest railway
offered facilities for the gathering of people from
wider area than the old convention towns on the Atlantic coast.

conventions of

all kinds.

centre in the country,

much

it

Mrs. Eddy decided to attend the convention in person, and in order

it would be a
gathering fully representative of the move

to ensure that

ment, she issued a special plea to Christian Scientists everywhere to

attend.

no

"Let

consideration",

she wrote in the Journal,

<c

your purpose to be in Chicago on June 13."

She herself left it in doubt until almost the last

bend or outweigh

moment

that she

was formally announced in the May issue

present. Indeed,
of the Journal that she would not be. She was insisting more and more
on the need to divert attention from herself and concentrate it on her

would be

it

methods she adopted seem unnecessarily

can
be
no
there
severe,
question as to the exceEence of her objective. She
finally decided to go, and a few days before the convention was scheduled
teaching. If sometimes the

open she left Boston accompanied by Captain and Mrs. Eastaman,

Calvin Frye, and a young physician named E. J, Foster, who was later

to

to figure prominently in the movement.

What Mrs. Eddy and those around her actually expected to find in
Chicago it is not easy to say, but there can be no doubt that it exceeded

aE

their expectations.

Nothing that had happened up to that time could

have afforded more dramatic evidence of the extraordinary growth of

the movement. Even before the meeting opened^ it was apparent that
interest

aE the
335

throughout the country in the gathering was

advertising

and publicity

it

sufficient to give it

needed, and as the Christian Scientists

to come into Chicago, the newspapers, with a

quarters began
sure instinct of what would be news, published long preliminary descrip

from

all

tions

and

on such

issued periodical bulletins,

vital questions as to

most of them

whether Mrs.

Eddy

familiarly inaccurate,

herself really

would or

number of delegates belonging to the

would not be present.
National Association which assembled was about eight hundred, but
within a very short time after the doors of the Central Music Hall, where
was scheduled to be held, were opened, the hall was
the

The

actual

public meeting

filled to

in excess of four
overflowing with an audience considerably

thousand people.

Mrs. Eddy, apparently, was unprepared for anything of the kind. She
had come to the meeting without any intention of making a formal ad
the Reverend George
dress, and when told on their way to the platform by

who was then pastor of the First Church in Chicago, that he had
her as the speaker of the day, she was at first quite
announced
already
as she reached the platform,
vigorous in her dissent but next moment,
she went to the front and faced the
evidently realizing her opportunity,
B. Day,

audience.

as she appeared,
According to the Boston Traveller s report, as soon
remained
and
one
man
the audience rose to their feet as
standing until

notes of any kind and

inspiration of the moment," she
evidently depending entirely
of
the inadequacy of its recorded
in
address
delivered an
which,
spite
form, has come to be regarded as one of her most effective public utter
she motioned them to be seated. Then,

"without

on the

ances/

though

The

report, preserved in her

book Miscellaneous Writings,

al

and affording occasional views of the

which must have been in the original, only

excellent in substance

strangely compelling quality

illustrates anew how much at

all

times the power of Mrs.

Eddy s

utter

ances were deepened when they were delivered in person.

"Science is absolute and final. It is
revolutionary in its very nature; for
it

upsets all that

is

not upright.

It

annuls false evidence, and saith to the

An acoirate transcription of the original address appears in full on pages 283-294 of the book
Christian Science Class Instruction, by Arthur Corey.
1

336

Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not; neither

3
can you understand
So, after a few words of quiet greeting, outlining the purpose of the
for individual consecration, did she move into
gathering and pleading
five material senses,

."

her subject

and

set the pace for

what was to

follow.

The

speech comprised in all some three thousand words. There is no

attempt at an outline, as was the case with the address in Tremont
is a
quite remarkable wealth of eloquent reasoning,
in
telling phrases and unexpected legends of rhetoric such as
culminating
may well have roused the audience to eager attention even when their

Temple, but there

fuE import was not gathered.

wiE show the word and might of Truth
"Past, present, future,
healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner so long as there remains a
claim of error for Truth to deny or to destroy."
C

Because God is Mind,

and
all
is
Mind.
God is the sum
and
good
good,
total of the universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and death?"

So it went, culminating in this final statement

this

Mind

is

all is

There was a moment s

silence

when

she had finished, followed by a

scene which, judging from the various reports, must have been indescrib
able. According to one account a few days later in the Boston Traveller,

the whole audience seemed to

rise

and move forward towards the

plat

Men

and women climbed up,

dozens at a time, eager to shake her hand. "Those whom she had never
seen before invalids raised up by her book Science and Health at
tempted hurriedly to tell their story." Women lifted up their children so
that they might see her, and when she finally released herself it was only
form where Mrs. Eddy was standing.

with great difficulty that she made her way through the throng blocking
her passage from the door to her carriage.

That evening a reception was given for her in the Palmer House
where she was staying. Again it was all unexpected, and although she
went down from her suite and stayed for a few minutes, seeking not to
appear ungracious, it was evident to those who were with her that this
aspect of her visit filled her with doubt. Once again, people thronged her,

337

and she bad to appeal to Calvin

Frye,

who

stood near, for help. It was

only with great difficulty they were able to withdraw.

Publicly, she never said anything about it. In her message to Chicago,
published kter in the Journal, she has no words but thanks. Privately,
however, she implied, as she had done on several previous occasions, that
she did not think the cause of Christian Science was advanced by such

methods. Only once afterwards did she have a similar experience. That
in New York, about a year later, when she addressed a large audi

was

ence in the Steinway HaE. After that, she never appeared at any public
gathering of a similar kind.

But whatever

else

Chicago did for Christian Science,

movement an unquestioned
forward in

this

national character.

it

gave to the

From now on

it

moves

way.

338

35

Sccieiice

AMONG THE MANY

activities

previous chapter, not the

crowded into the three years covered in the

Mrs. Eddy was concerned, was

least, as far as

the revision of Science and Health. For

for her a constant devoted labour.

more than

Her main

thirty years this

was

purpose in these revisions

was, of course, to elucidate her meaning. True, in the earlier editions

she used the book as a platform to deal with special developments and
to right wrongs as she believed, adding chapters or inserting paragraphs
which were afterwards deleted or modified as the occasion for them

passed, but in the main her one thought was to make

prehensible the principle set forth in the first edition.

As

already stated, the book

is

unique.

The

fact that

more

its

readily

ap

author never

through consecutively in the thirty or more years that elapsed

between the first edition and the last is proof sufficient that she had no
read

it

thought of fashioning it after any accepted model. Like Emily Dickinson,

Carlyle, Saint John and not a few others, this woman

Walt Whitman,
had very

little

respect for convention either in her

grammar, her

style,

or her use of words. She bent and even twisted all three to her service

339

any way she wished if by so doing she could bring out her point more
clearly or more strikingly. In the fashion of some advertising she would,
in

be ventured, have gladly turned a word upside down or spelled

it backwards, if
by so doing she could have compelled for it the attention

it

may

she desired.

As has been seen also, she formed her style in a tortuous age of English
The florid grandiosity of the forties and fifties of last century

literature.

was a handicapping period in which to serve an apprenticeship for one

whose objective was not

literature in the ordinary meaning of the word,

but merely the use of language for the promulgation of a
revolutionary
idea. The more clearly did she see this idea, the more
easily did she divest

herself of the

she

had a

"ornamentation"

of her earlier

terseness of presentation

style, until in

her later years

and a cogency of content which place

her in a class by herself. In her earlier

writings, she

"labours

with the

rest".

As

the

subject to

demand

for her book increased

more widespread

criticism

from a

and

as a consequence

literary point of view,

was

Mrs.

Eddy seems to have realized that however little she might care
convention, the fact remained that breaches of

it

for literary
tended to divert at

from the main purpose of her writing and concentrate it on a

minor
essential Early in 1885, therefore, she determined that the
very
next edition of Science and Healthy as far as
literary form was concerned,
should be more in line with accepted
a
usage. To this end she
tention

wise course.
sity Press,

She

enlisted the services of

retired Unitarian minister

adopted
one of the editors of the Univer

named James Henry Wiggin,

act as proof reader for the fifteenth edition of her

to

book which she was

then preparing. She was

quite explicit with Mr. Wiggin as to what she
wanted done. In a statement made to the New York American some
twenty years kter, she declares that because some critic had insisted that
her book was
ungrammatical as it was misleading", she employed Mr.
a
man
whose
Wiggin,
authority was generally recognized, to "defend
"as

my grammatical construction", and also

avail
myself of his criticisms
my statement of Christian Science, which criticisms would enable me
"to

of

340

to explain

more

clearly the points that

might seem ambiguous to the

reader".

comparison of the

Any

fifteenth or sixteenth or

first

any

edition of Science

later edition

and Health with the

shows clearly that

this is exactly

what Mr, Wiggin did. The actual diction in all editions is as unques
tionably from the same hand as are different varieties of an individual
Often it is possible to trace the hand of Mr. Wiggin all too
signature.
when one of the author s refreshing departures from literary
as
clearly,
convention is rather pedantically sacrificed to the demand of the purist,
but, for the most part, his work seems to have been confined to the very
valuable and necessary task of bringing the style into line with accepted
standards.

James Henry Wiggin was an interesting character. If fate had de

London in the closing years of

the eighteenth century instead of in Boston in the closing years of the
nineteenth, he might have found a place along with Paley and Butler
cided that he should have flourished in

and a host of

lesser lights

among the immortals. He revelled in dialectics.

won his case than, if nothing better

Like Sheridan, he had no sooner

he would gladly turn around and argue with eager conviction

for the other side. For several years he wrote for the Christian Science
offered,

Journal over the

nom

teaching against all

de plume

"Phare-Pleigh",

defending Mrs.

Eddy s

comers, but, as his private correspondence sufficiently

shows, he did so only because he saw the weak pkces in the attackers
armour and the cut and thrust of the melee gave him much joy.

He did a good work on Science and Health, and the sixteenth edition

is
rightly regarded as one of the landmarks in the history of the book.
formal announcement of .the appearance of this edition in the Journal for
January, 1886, says: "Attention is called to this volume. It is worth the

notice,

not only of Christian

Scientists,

but of

all

who

are interested in

the progress of truth. It is from the University Press, Cambridge, and

this is a
guaranty for its typographical appearance. All the material of
editions
other
is herein retained, but all of it has been carefully revised and
rewritten

341

by Mrs. Eddy, and

greatly improved.

The arrangement

of the

chapters has been changed.

One new

chapter has been added,

on

the

on Christian Science
Apocalypse, giving an exposition of the bearings
is
believed
it
which
of the twelfth chapter of Revelation, to
by Mrs. Eddy
to particularly relate.

A special feature

is

full index,

prepared especially

by a competent gentleman. In these days no important

book has a right to come before the public without a proper index."

for this edition,

The
an

did a good job. His index proved to be

and served the readers of Science and Health well for

"competent gentleman"

excellent one

many years.
All the time that

this

work was going forward, the Quimby contro

from point to point.

versy already alluded to was moving unremittingly
In fact, controversy over Mrs. Eddy or some form of her teaching was
the order of almost every day. Wherever the movement planted itself in
however small a way, right there within a very short time a flame of debate

would spring up like that caused by a wind-blown spark in a grass fire.

But throughout, in spite of, or rather it would seem because of it all, the

movement prospered prodigiously.

For Mrs. Eddy, the days of poverty were

left

a long way behind. In

the winter of 1887 she purchased as a residence the large house, 385
Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston, which is still used as a residence for
the First Reader of

Columbus Avenue

The Mother Church. She

as the headquarters of the

retained the house

on

Metaphysical College and

thus secured for herself greater privacy, which she sorely needed. The
move also served to lessen, for a time at least, the growing tide of

sycophancy and aduktion which more and more

have filled her with anxiety.

at this period

seems to

One last thread to be gathered jip in these years, before going on to

consider the amazing aftermath of the Chicago triumph, is another visit
which George Glover paid to his mother in the summer of this
year.

George Glover is now a man of

children, and they live in Lead
interested in mining.

When

written to her son begging

forty-five.

He

has a wife and several

South Dakota, and he is still

Eddy died in 1882, Mrs. Eddy had

City,

Gilbert

him to come to

her, but

George Glover did

342

not even answer this

it

cerned,

Almost from
from

his

course,

if

letter.

All his

life,

as far as his

mother was con

was the same.

were planted in a road which led him away
so long as they both were alive, their inter

birth, his feet

mother, and just

so it may be called, was characterized by the same trend.

Long

any rate on the mother s part, were marked

when achieved by an outward semblance of happiness all too surely
doomed to disappointment and failure; then long periods of silence or
efforts to secure reunion, at

intermittent communication; then another effort at reunion, with the

same

results.

This had been the way of

it

in

Boston in 1877, at the time

of George s strange encounter with Richard Kennedy, and it is not sur

prising that when in the summer of 1887 Mrs. Eddy received a letter

from her son announcing

family to pay her a
little uneasiness.

Their

visit,

coming to Boston with

his

she should have regarded the matter with

no

his intention of

had grown utterly apart. If they had little in common in

had practically nothing in 1887. Mrs. Eddy wrote to him
telling him how she must have quiet in her home and oppor
lives

1877, they
frankly,

tunity to do her work without distraction; how that she still looked for
ward to a day when they could be reunited if he would only reform his
ways, but that now she had a duty to others to perform, and it was a

duty that must be performed.

George Glover was, it appears, the kind of

man who simply could not

of
such
as
he
would
have called them.
niceties,
importance
s
be
life
could
at
prospector
interrupted
any moment, and he evidently
felt very much in the mood for a trip east with his wife and children. He

realize the

wrote to Mrs.

on

notifying her that he was on his way. Mrs. Eddy,

letter, determined to make the best of it. She received

Eddy

receipt of his

him gladly when he arrived, introduced him and his wife to her students,
took a house for them in Chelsea and appeared with the children on one
or two occasions on the platform at the Sunday afternoon meetings.
But George Glover was still very much the square peg in the round
hole, and his wife, likely much more at home in a mining camp than in
343

into the very special menage

Boston, fitted no better than her husband
maintain. Slowly but steadily
to
which Mrs. Eddy at this time was obliged
as the weeks passed, the futility of the effort

became more andjnore ap

once
family went out west

George Glover and his

decade.
more, not to reappear on the scene for another
the need for some
Meanwhile, Mrs. Eddy was feeling more and more
one who would stand to her in the same relation as her son might have

parent,

stood

if

and

at last

things

but he was a

had been different. Calvin Frye was

faithful

man singularly lacking in any imagination.

and

efficient,

To him,

routine

was one of the great joys of life and one of its outstanding satisfactions.
He was devoted to Mrs. Eddy, and whatever happened to be her vision of
the moment was the limit of his desire. Mrs. Eddy, in whom the maternal
instinct in spite of its

need for

warm

felt always the

she lived and worked, as

many frustrations, was very strong,

affection in those with

whom

abundant evidence to prove.

if
True, she had already written in her book Science and Health that
the
then
a
to
be
would
friends
without
existence
anyone blank,

there

is

personal

time would surely come when he would be "solitary, left without sym
will slander, until the lesson
pathy. . . . Friends will betray and enemies
to exalt you; for man s extremity is God s opportunity
But, whatever her meaning and purpose in writing these words, she her
self always sought the love that is expressed in personal friendships and
is sufficient

."

hesitated not at all to say so.

show

The memoirs

and Martha Wilcox

of her household associates

Gyger speaks of her fond

this time after time. Caroline Foss

kisses,

how Mrs. Eddy, with tears streaming down her

to leave her side. The laborious efforts of the

tells

begged her never

a pale and unearthly Leader, forever platitudinizing on love instead of practising it, are effectively discredited by any one
of a thousand episodes such as that in which she drew Mrs. Wilcox to
face,

traditionalists to paint

her, patted her affectionately

And so,
she

in the

had nothing

and

said,

first moments of her

How nice and fat you

to hope from her son in the

comfort for her daily

are!"

final rather bitter conclusion that

way

of aid for her

living, she cast around to see

if

there

work or
was not

344

someone who would take the place of what he might have been. As she
did so, she seems to have thought more and more about the young physi
cian, Ebenezer Foster, who had accompanied her party when they went
to Chicago.

Foster was a graduate of Hahnemann Medical College in

Philadelphia. About forty years of age, he had until 1887 been practising
in Waterbury, a little mountain town in Vermont, and the

Ebenezer

J.

homeopathy

whole course of

his life

seemed to

set

towards his establishment there as

a country and small town doctor. Then one day an old friend, who had
long been sick, came to him and told him how he had been healed com

through reading a book called Science and Health, by a woman

named Mary Baker Eddy. Doctor Foster was very deeply impressed, and

pletely

shortly afterwards, being in Boston on a visit to an aunt, he went to call

on Mrs. Eddy, with the result that next day he had joined one of her
classes

which was

He was
later
office

just then forming.

completely

gave up

won

over, returned to

his practice there

and devoting

and came

Waterbury

for

time, but

to live in Boston, opening

himself with enthusiasm to the practice of the

an

new

teaching.

From the first, Mrs. Eddy seems

to have seen in Ebenezer Foster

some

one who might afford her the help she so sorely needed. She invited him

accompany her to Chicago, and shortly after her return to Boston,

grateful for aU the help he had been to her and faced with another bitter
crisis in her movement, she offered to
adopt him as her son. He gladly
it
her petition to the Court, Mrs.
so
and
was
In
assented,
arranged.
to

Eddy

stated that

business,

home

relationship."

"said

Foster

is

now

associated with your petitioner in

and life work, and she needs such interested care and
And so, on the 5th of November, 1888, the legal arrange
life

ments being complete, Ebenezer Foster assumed the name of FosterEddy, and entered Mrs. Eddy s household as her son.

But before

this

had been accomplished, the whole face of things in

Boston had been changed. Through all the years of her progress, Mrs.
both
Eddy had been slowly learning to distrust as she expressed it
<c

345

tear

and

triumph".

It

was not without reason that she had viewed the

outbursts of enthusiasm in Chicago with a heavy heart. The train carry

ing her back to Boston had scarcely reached the South Station before

she was faced with a

crisis

ment and caused her

to

which threatened to disrupt the whole move

decision which for audacity and courage

make a

has scarcely been equalled in the history of any great movement.

346

FOR SOME TIME

36

Chicago, serious trouble had

her followers in Boston. This trouble had its

before Mrs.

been developing among

Eddy

left for

from the first, which were

origin in two main tendencies, both present
forms
thorns in the flesh of the
as
in
various
themselves
to maintain

The
right up to the time of Mrs. Eddy s passing and beyond.
of these was the tendency of certain of her students and followers

movement
first

by the introduction of all manner of strange

doctrine, and the second was sycophancy and its inevitable repercussion
in its most rabid form. Richard Kennedy going out frankly as a dissident
to adulterate her teaching

and George Barry, after years of abject devotion, bringing suit

his every act
against his patron and teacher to recover compensation for
of service, are typical instances of both tendencies, and they were to be
in 1872,

duplicated again and again.

In the early days of 1888, the great problem confronting Mrs. Eddy
was the protection of her teaching against adulteration by her students,

347

and misrepresentation by her enemies. Of these, the former was by far

the most dangerous, and she rightly so regarded it. For several years, as
has been seen, Julius Dresser had been urging the claims of Quimby to
be the real discoverer of Mrs. Eddy s teaching or rather of what he con
ceived Mrs.

Eddy s

teaching ought to be. There was, of course, a curious

On the one hand, the more fully he de

inconsistency in his position.

veloped his concept of what Quimby actually taught, the more indignant
he became over Mrs. Eddy s glaring departure from that teaching, and,
at the same time, the

more

insistent

was he that she was a

plagiarist of

the worst type. In 1887 Julius Dresser had published his book The True
History of Mental Science, and the foundations for what came to be
called the

<c

New Thought" movement, as it exists today, were being laid.

Not a few of Mrs. Eddy s students were attracted by restatements and

variations of Quimby s teaching. The appeal to manipulation, mental
and physical, which underlay it, was much more readily comprehended
by some

mentalities than the appeal to spiritual law which

of Mrs.

Eddy s

much more

doctrine.

rational

and

Quimbyism would

was the

basis

inevitably appear to

them

simple. It put forward

no such revolutionary

ideas as that involved in denying the "sure-enough-isness", as one critic

put it, of matter and the material creation, while it preserved, at all times,
intact, the

nexus with matter. In other words,

mind could

it was
easy to believe that
so
as
there
was
some
outward means
body
long
which the contact could be effected, even if it were
the

influence the

provided by
only
making of passes with the hands or the manipulation of the head with

wet

fingers.

Even more misleading, because much more subtle, than the

teaching
of Quimby, as adapted by Dresser., was the
adaptation of Christian Sci
ence to the Quimby doctrine. Quimbyism was
always much more of a
or
a
of
method
medicine
than
a
philosophy
religion, and as a consequence
short in

appeal to many people. This shortcoming it was the ob

jective of the ever recurring "new and improved system of mental heal
to make good.
ing"

fell

One

its

of the main attractions of

all

such teaching, to the

less fervid

348

among Mrs. Eddy s followers, was the "freedom" it seemed to offer the in
dividual student. The suggestion that there was more than one way, that
was

to those

was

but something else might be discovered

not better, had a tremendous appeal, especially
resented the stern discipline meted out by Mrs. Eddy in her

Christian Science
that

just as good,

who

insistence that it

all right,

if

was no more possible to deviate by a hair

breadth from

the principle of Christian Science and succeed in its demonstration than

it was to deviate from the
principle of mathematics and expect to solve
its

problems.

Mrs. Eddy was uncompromising in the matter. "Having seen so much

suffering from quackery," she wrote in her book Science and Healthy
author desires to keep it out of Christian Science. The two-edged
1
sword of Truth must turn in every direction to guard the tree of life
"the

."

And

so, as the danger increased, the Christian Scientist Association,

under her direction, passed a series of resolutions, each one more drastic
than the last, calculated to curb this tendency to go after other gods.
Members of the Association were forbidden to use any other books as
textbooks than Science and Health and the Bible. Later on, they were
forbidden to meet in small groups to discuss Christian Science unless
all

members of the Association were invited to

attend.

In spite of everything, however, the unrest and fermentation continued,

and Mrs. Eddy knew when she set out for Chicago that she was leaving
behind her in Boston a situation very much like that which had con
fronted her in Lynn, seven years before.
typical instance of such "deviating doctrine" may be seen in the

attracting

much

Warren

F. Evans which about that time was

Doctor Evans never was a student of Mrs.
as far as can be gathered, ever claim that he had

teaching of the Reverend

attention.

Eddy. Neither did he,

evolved a rival system. Indeed, he seems to have been one of the earliest
exponents of pure Quimbyism, having been treated by Quimby in 1863,
and, as early as 1869, writing a book on the subject. His history was an
interesting
1

Science

349

and

and Health,

significant one.
p. 458.

Born in Roddngham, Vermont,

in 1817,

Academy, Middlebury College and Dart

mouth. Later, he received a diploma which entitled him to the degree of
MXX from a chartered board of physicians of the Eclectic School He
left Dartmouth before he had finished his course there, and entered the
lie

was educated

at Chester

for some twenty years,

ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and,
held charges in various towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Always somewhat frail,

persistent ill-health.

as has been seen, all

occult

in the latter years of his ministry he suffered

This was in the early

and the mystic

manner

from

of last century, when,

of excursions were being made into the

in the simplest

sixties

meanings of those words,

spiritual

ism, mesmerism, electromagnetism and so forth, while great impetus was

given to the more spiritual and mystic teaching of Emanuel Swedenborg.
And so, in these years of broken health, Evans began the study of the

works of Swedenborg, and came to believe strongly in the

possibility of

curing physical disease through "the power of living faith".

About the year 1863, Evans went to Quimby for treatment. It was just

a year after Mrs. Eddy s first meeting with him and, like her, Evans seems
to have been convinced that he had found the truth for which he had
long been seeking. The difference between the reaction of the two was,
however, fundamental, for whereas Mary Patterson manifestly read into
the Quimby doctrine views of a radically different kind, later to
appear
in Christian Science,

Evans seems to have grasped Quimbyism more

nearly as
visit to

Quimby taught
Portland, he told

shire,

on

from the always gen

he
returned to his home at Claremont, New
doctor,
Hamp
and at once began to practise. He later set up a kind of mind cure

teaching, and,

erous

than Dresser or anyone else. After a second

Quimby that he felt sure he could practise his
it

receiving cordial encouragement

little

sanatorium

and in the

known

as the

at Salisbury, Massachusetts,
devoted himself to writing books on the

"Evans

latter years of his life

Home"

subject of mental healing. It is true, he surrounds it all with an atmos

phere of religion and faith.
To Dresser and Evans were added several other minor "schools".
Indeed, one of the causes of unrest among Mrs.
s students was the

Eddy

350

temptation the situation presented to many of them to go out and found

a school of their own, it would appear.

This was not the only reason for unrest, in this medley of personalities
which constituted her following. About this time dissension from another

was to shake the young movement to its very foundations. It

happened that in the spring of 1888, Mrs. Abby H. Corner, one of Mrs.

direction

Eddy s

students in

West Medford,

daughter in childbirth,

and

outraged community saw to

Massachusetts, attended her

that both the mother

and the

own

child died.

An

was indicted for murder,

seeing that she did not have medical attention for her daughter, and the
case was given enormous publicity in the papers.
It

it

that Mrs. Corner

was by no means unheard of

for Christian Scientists to be dragged

before the courts in those days charged by their religious

and medical

opponents with everything from practising medicine without a license

to manslaughter. In the majority of such instances the Scientists won out,
establishing their constitutional right to
free choice in the

freedom of religious practice and

this case was

method of treatment to be followed. But

to have greater repercussions than any of the others.

Not a few in the Christian Scientist Association looked

upon

the

sit

uation as a test of their religion and called for a rallying to the support
of their persecuted colleague at a special meeting. Although invited,
Mrs. Eddy did not attend and, more disquieting still, the following letter

appeared in the Boston Herald under date of April 29, over the signa
ture of the "Committee

on Publication, Christian

Scientist

Association"

lamentable case reported from West Medford of the death of a

mother and her infant at childbirth should forever put a stop to quack
"The

ery.

There has been but one

We wait to

side of this case presented

hear from the other

by the newspapers.

side, trusting that attenuating circum

stances will be brought to light. Mrs.

Abby H. Corner never

entered the

Metaphysical College. She was not

an accoucheur, had attended but one term, and

obstetrics class at the Massachusetts

fitted at this institute for

four terms, including three years of successful practice by the student,

3*
are required to complete the college course.

351

Not only had the Committee no knowledge of this

letter

before

it

was

had no more than three^-not four terms,

published, but the College
in their treatment of diseases and dis
practitioners did not "specialize"
of every type without a threeorders, and all had been handling cases
years apprenticeship.
Such was the position of affairs

when

members decided to
their way. There was, it

thirty-six

withdraw. But a formidable obstacle stood in

that

any
remembered, the stipulation in the organization by-laws
one who wished to resign his membership was guilty of immorality and
should be publicly so branded. They were well aware of the fact that

will be

Spofford had suffered

this fate.

the
trip to- Chicago,
Associa
the
secured
of
her
dissident thirty-six, taking advantage
absence,
s wife, Mrs. William B. Johnson, and
tion books from the

So,

when Mrs. Eddy was away on her memorable

Secretary

turned them over to a lawyer to be held until such time as they should
receive letters of honourable discharge. Mrs. Eddy urged them to remain
within the fold, writing in a circular letter to them: "At the first special
I was absent not because unready
meeting called in behalf of Mrs. Corner,
or unwilling to help her, but that she needed no help and I knew
it."

Unmoved by this plea, the secessionists clung to the books, justifiably or

otherwise, for nearly a year, at which point Mrs. Eddy yielded, granting
of release, no strings attached.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Corner was tried in due course and acquitted, expert
medical testimony being adduced that the cause of death was such as

each a

letter

could not have been averted had a physician been in attendance.

But things could not be allowed to slip back into the old rut, where
the danger of rebellion stood as a constant threat. The triumph in Chi
cago, followed within a few short weeks by apparent defeat in Boston;
the bewildering contrast presented almost continuously among her fol

lowers of utter devotion or bitter rebellion; the

silent, ill-concealed strug

the
lines
of which should be
gle everywhere apparent along
age-old
greatest; her own seeming helplessness, in the presence of open rebellion,
to settle the issue in any other way but by drastic material action; all these

352

to culminate in a realization that the organiza

questions evidently began
which she had so eagerly and gratefully built up might somehow be
at fault, her college, her church, her association, with all the vision she

tion

had had for

all three.

She did not act

from the struggle

hastily,

and

but she determined to get away from Boston,

which seemed to be everywhere, and give

strife

and opportunity

herself time

to think

it all

out,

and

see if possible

what

was meant for her to do. Early in 1889 she sent her adopted son, FosterBennie, as she called him

Eddy
for

them to

live.

the country,

But when

my

shield

Now
called

and
to

it

into

Vermont

to look for a place

I want, need, the sweet peace

must be with

it

armour on.

you

are enjoying.

He

He

is
girdeth me.
my
alone can discharge me from this battle."
came to her that the kind of stand she was being

buckler.

apparently

upon

how

"Oh

I fall

up

A few months previously she had written to a friend in

He

make was a much more

difficult

one than any she had

contemplated.

On

February 15, 1889, she addressed the huge audience at Steinway

New York already referred to and had been almost mobbed

Hall in

by over-zealous followers and students; yet here in Boston the fight still
smouldered. She was clearly being required to do something different.
And so, on her return from New York, when she got word from Bennie

had found a house for her in the little town of Barre in Vermont,
she decided to leave Boston and try to solve her problem in the solitude
of the snowbound countryside.
It was a slow and all too bitter process. In spite of all the difficulties

that he

with which she had to contend, the year 1888 had been for her one of
tremendous activity. Applications for admission to her classes were com
ing in from all over the country. Between March, 1888, and February,
1889, she taught nearly two hundred students. Among those who went
through her classes in this year were many who were later to become

known in

Edward A.
P.
Lanson
Clara
Norcross,
Shannon, Edward
Kimball, Julia Field-King,
P. Bates, James A, Neal, Alfred Farlow and others. There could be no

well

353

the movement, such as General Erastus Bates,

doubt in her mind but that the movement was going forward and at a
rate she could hardly have thought possible.
Evidently it was just this

New

that was troubling her. Between her

York
disturbing experience in
on February 15, and her departure for Barre at the end of the month,
she taught a ckss in Boston of over
sixty students, and she had before

her

many

applications for admission to future classes.

longer a question.

Money was no

Men and women with wealth and substance were will

ing and eager to pay anything for her teaching, and although she never
deviated from the fee of $300 established years before save to re

duce

or forego it altogether
money seemed now to come to her with
out effort on her part. This then was the
picture as she took the train
for Barre from the North Station in Boston the
day following the last
session of her class
it was to be her last for
many years. It was a picture
it

bewildering enough, presenting such glaring contrasts as unity and dis

affection, devotion and treachery, outward and visible
prosperity past
belief, shot through in the most unexpected quarters with
conspiracy and

unseemly scramble for power, while in and out and over and above it
all was an attachment to her own
person, whether in love or hate, which
evidently cast her into the depths.

She found no
she

moved

rest at Barre,

to Concord,

New

and

as the long winter

gave

way

to spring

Hampshire, the scene of so much in her

life. It must have been a

strange homecoming. Abigail, away over
Sanbornton Bridge, now Tilton, had been dead these
many years, her
last written words to her
sister, words of bitter reproach. The
family
was scattered, and most of those who had known her were dead or

early

at

had

moved away. She took a house

at 62 State Street, and it was here that

she reached the
decision
which appeared to her as the solution
strange
of her problem. She would
scrap everything and build again from the
ground up, and in this new building she would eliminate the
opportuni
ties for
personal conflicts as far as possible and cause the new structure
to be

founded on principles instead of

persons.
She does not seem to have seen it all
clearly at first. She made one last
effort to withdraw herself and
save
her
yet
Fostercollege

by appointing

354

and when that only gave rise to bitter dis

she
General
Erastus Bates to teach the next one.
satisfaction,
appointed
was
more
Bates
but
the clamour for Mrs. Eddy s own
General
successful,

Eddy

to teach her next class,

instruction continued unabated. And so some time in these days

personal
she evidently reached the final decision that the college should be closed
and the church dissolved and the future progress of the movement left
to unorganized voluntary effort

Her

first

was with

step

and

"the

the Journal

providence of God".
it over
completely to

She turned

the National Christian Scientist Association,

rules",

which were published in the

May issue,

and in her

"seven

fixed

she declared emphatically

that in the matter of leadership she desired to turn her followers away
from her own personality to the principle of her doctrine. She laid it

down, therefore, that she should not in future be consulted

on any

"verbally

questions such as the following

"As to whose advertisement shall or shall not
appear in the Christian
.
Science Journal.

or through

letters"

"As

to the matter that should be published in the Journal

and Chris

tian Science Series

"On

"On

"On

marriage, divorce, or family affairs of any kind. ...

the choice of pastors for churches
disaffections, if there should be

any between students of Christian

Scientists
"On

who

shall

be admitted as members, or dropped from the member

ship of the Christian Science Churches or Associations. . .

"On disease and the treatment of the
sick; but I shall love
.

kind and work for their

all

man

welfare."

In June, when the National Christian Scientist Association held

its

annual meeting in Cleveland, the Journal was formally handed over to

it, and the control vested in the "Publication Committee", which then

Edward P. Bates of Syracuse, New York; Joseph Arm

of
Nebraska; William G. Nixon of Boston; and Augusta Stetson
strong
and Caroline D. Noyes of New York.
consisted of

Having
355

thus disposed of the Journal, Mrs.

Eddy

next turned her

at-

tention to her college, She hesitated here. When the rumour got abroad,
as it did early in the year 1889, after her large class in February, that she

contemplated closing the college, protests from all quarters were

so vigorous that, as has been seen, she hesitated and strove to compro

really

mise the situation by appointing others to teach in her place. When, in

the late summer, it became apparent that this was no solution, she decided
to take the drastic step of closing the institution entirely.

In a

letter

of explanation of her action, published in the Boston

Trav

eler, she put the matter simply yet forcibly :

"There are" 9 she wrote, "one hundred and
sixty applications lying on
the desk before me, for the Primary class in the Massachusetts Meta
physical College, and I cannot do my best work for a class which con

When these

were taught, another and a larger num

ber would be in waiting for the same class instruction; and if I should
tains that

number.

one Primary and two

would be delayed. The work is more than one person can well
accomplish, and the imperative call is for my exclusive teaching.
teach that Primary class, the other three classes

Normal

"From

the scant history of Jesus

cal authority for

a public

me when

and of his

institution.

disciples,

we have no

Bibli

This point, however, had not im

College. I desire to revise

my book
and Health with Key to the Scriptures/ and in order to do
this I must stop teaching at present. The work that needs to be
done,
and which God calls me to outside of College work, if left undone
might
hinder the progress of our Cause more than
my teaching would advance
pressed

opened

my

^Science

it:

therefore I leave all for

Christ."

Later on, in her book Retrospection and

Introspection, she suggests
how deeply she pondered the question at this time, when she writes : "The

apprehension of what has been, and must be, the final outcome of ma
which wars with Love s spiritual compact, caused me

terial organization,

to dread the unprecedented

popularity of

Her

followers, although stunned

my

College."

and not a

little
dismayed at her
seemed to have apprehended with
surprising rapidity, if only
at
what
she
was
to
do.
When
a meeting of the Metafirst,
dimly
seeking

action,

356

called for the purpose assembled on October 29, 1889,

physical College
the dissolution was effected in a series of resolutions, which kter became
historic.

After reciting the purpose and history of the College,

temporary nature, and the

stitution s prosperity

fact that

its

was willing to

its

admittedly

president at the height of the in

sacrifice it all, if

thereby greater

be gained, the statement continued :

spirituality might
an Institution for instruction in Christian Science,
That
"RESOLVED,
is
the
which
highest, purest and noblest of all teaching, should be of a
spiritual
toms,"

formation wholly outside of material regulations, forms or cus

for which, with other reasons listed, the

unanimous vote

is, "That

as all debts of the Corporation have been paid, it is deemed best to dis^
solve this Corporation, and the same is hereby dissolved."

So

the College was closed

permanently surrendered.

and the

right

by charter to confer degrees

After the College came the Church. Here, in a way, the situation was
simple. The dissolution of the material organization did not debar, and

was evidently not intended to debar, any voluntary meeting. But in her
urging dissolution, written from Concord under date November

letter

28, 1889,

Mrs. Eddy makes

it

zation was to be maintained,

perfectly clear that if

it

any material organi

would have to be along far different lines

from the one that was being dissolved. And so she wrote
"The Church of Christ
(Scientist) in Boston was my patient seven
think
she was well nigh healed a relapse came and
I
would
When
years.
a large portion of her flock would forsake the better portion, and betake
:

themselves to the world

maladies."

She was

either claimed

various hospitals for the cure of mortal

referring, she explained, to those straying sheep who
s

improvements on her doctrine or disappeared in ignominy.

She had put up with this condition of her Church for a decade, but must
now say, as to a patient who is relapsing because of dependence upon
physical hygiene,
spiritual

"quit

power, and you

your material props and leave

will

recover."

material rules whereby to regulate Christ,

357

all

for Christ,

would agree
drop all
Christianity, and adopt alone

If they

"to

the golden rule for unification, progress,

and a

better

example,"

by the

to provide them with a

simple procedure of disorganizing, she promised
erection of a shining edifice all their own.
plot of ground suitable for the
The deadline was set for their annual meeting to be held December 2,
official action.
1889, at which time their decision must be embodied in
When the members met at this meeting, they voted to disorganize,

and

in the next issue of the Journal the

whole strange

was brought to a close in a simple statement by Mrs.

to emphasize once again the purpose of it all.
"The

series of incidents

Eddy which sought

dissolution of the visible organization of the

church",

she

the sequence and complement of that of the College Corpora

wrote,
tion and Association. The College disappeared that the spirit of Christ
"is

might have freer course among its students and all who come into the un
derstanding of Divine Science, the bonds of the Church were thrown away
so that

its

members might assemble themselves together

to provoke one

another to good works in the bond only of

love."

358

A Troubled

OF THE OLD

organization there

37

Scene

now remained only

the National Chris

had been loosely formed and was loosely

held together, and it is possible that, after she had closed her College
and dissolved the organization of her Church, Mrs. Eddy had hoped

tian Scientist Association. It

that the National Christian Scientist Association might survive. It was

not long, however, before she became convinced that in the future it

would have to be one safeguarded as never before by mutual agreement

against attack from without or disintegration from within. Surrounded on

movement was, by those who sought to pull it down and

out of the wreckage to fashion something more after their own liking,
she held that an obligation was owed to the public that, if they sought
what she taught, they should be sure of getting what they wanted, and
not run the risk of unwilling entanglement in all manner of strange
all sides,

as her

doctrine.

When she closed her College and dissolved her Church, she was clearly
passing through a stage

359

when

she thought

and hoped

that the

way out

was a complete abandonment of all organization. "From the scant history

of Jesus and of his disciples, we have no Biblical authority for a pub
she declared in her notice closing the College, adding
that that point had not impressed her when she opened it. The di
rectors of the College in their closing resolutions had echoed the same

lic institution,"

thought, declaring that they found "no platform in Christ s teachings for
such material methods of instruction". It was the same when she dis

banded her Church and urged

whereby to regulate Christ,

its

members

to

"drop

all

material rules

Christianity".

hard to be sure what she really had in mind about this time,
probably because her own thought was in a state of flux, torn between
It is

the counsel of perfection as seen in the "Christly method" and the in

sistent demand of human nature for the outward and visible
sign of

united action involved in an organized church.

But whatever she was thinking, she pursued undeviatingly her course
towards the dissolution of old bonds. When the National Christian
Scientist Association

met in

tion of the Church,

it

New York in the year following the dissolu

received a letter

from

its

President couched in

much
and

the same terms as the notices regarding her College

urging the body to disband.

This
mind.

letter,

and Church

dated from Concord, throws much light on her state of

that the way out was to be an abandonment of all or

The hope

much

in the ascendant, for she

clearly views with
distrust the elaborate preparation that had
gone to the gathering of the

ganization

is still

very

convention. There

is

more than a shade of impatience in her

opening

thanks for your card of invitation,

your badge,
of which are complete," and more than a little
reflection on the value of such
of the fact that
meetings in her
sentence,

"Accept

and order of

my

exercises, all

recalling

at a previous
meeting at

which she was present the

atmosphere had been
such that no thoughtful conference had been
remember my
possible.
regret, when, having asked in general assembly if you had
any questions
"I

to propose, I received

no

reply."

After thus preparing the

ground, she moves forward at once to the

360

of her letter. She is gently persuasive, but the immense strength

purpose
of her conviction is clear enough.
advice again* you will do what?
Even this: Disorganize the National Christian Scientist Association!
and each one return to his place of labour, to work out individually and
"Now,

dear ones,

alone, for himself

if

and

you take

my

for others, the sublime ends of

human

life."

In thus recommending the dissolution of the National Association,

Mrs. Eddy makes it clear that individual groups of Christian Scientists

are to be left free to do as they think best in the matter of organizing

among

themselves.

"My

students can

now

organize their students into

form churches, and hold these organizations of their own,

in turn, their students will sustain themselves, and work for others."

associations,
until,

But she goes on to show that she has no

illusions as to the final value of

the time-honoured system of "getting together".

"For students to work
together is not always to co-operate, but some
I
...
once
times to co-elbow!
thought that in unity was human strength;

know that human strength is weakness, that unity is

divine might, giving to human power, peace."
And so the National Christian Scientist Association was disbanded,

but have grown to

and the abandonment of organized effort was complete.

It was only just in time. Nothing, it is to be imagined,

is

more danger

ous to the integrity of any cause than an organization so loose that its
members cannot be held to a common objective.
movement that can

depend

solely

upon

proof of works

the demonstration of a principle

is final

and

this final satisfaction that

incontrovertible,

and

it

is

always safe. The

clearly towards

was

Mrs. Eddy was looking as she

left

Barre in the spring of 1889, and for several years thereafter.

Boston for

As

long as

the only passport to fellowship was an ability to heal the sick in the
fullest meaning of that term, spurious doctrine should eliminate itself

through

Be

its

inability to

meet the demand.

may, unorthodox if not spurious doctrines continued

to grow apace. Of such bids for attention perhaps the most
extraordinary
was that put forward by Josephine Woodbury. Josephine Woodbury
361

that as

it

with her husband, Edgar F. Woodbury, were,

among Mrs. Eddy s

earliest students,

and

it

will be

remembered,
Boston

their social position in

not enjoyed at that time by other

gave diem from the -first a prominence
followers of the new teaching. Mr. and Mrs. Woodbury entertained
their town house in Boston and at their summer
considerably, both at
and as the years passed, Mrs. Woodbury
place at Ocean Point, Maine,
attracted a large coterie, mostly of

young

people,

who under

her leader

romantic and emotionalized version of Christian Science

ship, developed a
the dramatic
if we are to judge from both the words of her critics and
events which were to follow in time.

woman, and in her association with

Mrs. Eddy seems to have done some devoted work. She made lecture
tours as far west as Denver, wrote frequently for the Journal and later
Josephine

Woodbury was an

became a qualified

teacher.

able

She was, however, of an

eager, romantic

was not easy to impose

of woman upon whom
disposition, the type
restraints. Almost from the first, Mrs. Eddy seems to have had difficulty
it

with her, and the outstanding characteristic of Mrs. Eddy s letters to her
over a period of some ten or fifteen years many of them have been
is

preserved

her constant efforts to keep Mrs.

1888-89, the years

was

when

rising up, Josephine

so

much

else that

Woodbury

in line. In

was ominous and troubled

increasingly indulged the unconven

of 1890, she announced to her friends

Woodbury

summer
and students that she was about to give birth to a child which had been
immaculately conceived. The announcement immediately became a front
tional until finally, in the

page
as to
all

and Mrs. Eddy, struggling with a thousand other problems

the future of the movement, found this burden of ridicule added to
story,

the others.

Very wisely she took no public action in the matter, but her letters
show that she begged Mrs. Woodbury to retreat from the position she
had taken up, insisting that such claims were utterly inconsistent with
her understanding of Christian Science. Mrs. Woodbury, however, not
only refused to change her stand, but when the child & boy was born,
as he

was

early in June, she

named him

"The

Prince of

Peace".

362

Doubts may have

a number rose
quite

some of Mrs. Woodbury s followers, but

her
enthusiastically to the occasion and accepted

assailed

statements at their face value. Mrs.

Woodbury, meanwhile,

far

from

modifying her claims, even increased them, going so far as to declare

that Mrs. Eddy herself foretold the event, and a few weeks after the
child

was born she had

estate,

it

publicly baptized in a pool

on her Ocean Point

which she had for the purpose named Bethesda. In a strange book
some years later, entitled War in Heaven Mrs. Woodbury gives

written

a vivid description of the scene.

"There occurred the thought of baptizing little Prince in a singularly
beautiful salt pool, whose rocky bottom was dry at low tide and over
flowing at high tide, but especially attractive at mid-tide, with its two
crowd of people had assembled on the neighbour
feet of crystal water.
I
when
brought him from our cottage not far away, and laid
ing bluffs,

him three times prayerfully in the pool and when he was

they joined in a spontaneously appropriate

Such an incident,

lifted therefrom,

hymn."

to which the newspapers did not fail to

created a difficult situation. Ridicule

do full justice,

had been heaped upon Mrs. Eddy

teaching from the first and was to be heaped upon it repeatedly in the
future, but, in all previous and all subsequent cases, ridicule had no
ultimately by its own weight. Here,
on the contrary, was something that invited ridicule; while any serious
protest could but add to the flames.
Did not Mrs.
say that if spiritual healing was possible in the

fundamental

justification

and so

fell

Eddy

day of Jesus
token,

it

must be

possible in our

own age and

demanded Mrs. Woodbury, would

it

clime?

By

the same

not follow that,

if

the

immaculate conception actually took place at Bethlehem, virgin-birth

must be fully as possible today? Very wisely, Mrs. Eddy did not pick up
the gauntlet. After the tumult had died down, she re-affirmed her faith in
"the
Scriptural narrative of the Virgin-mother and Bethlehem babe," but

cautioned against

"speculative

theories as to the recurrence of such

events." Would
anyone presume to take the place of the Virgin Mary?
was the burden of her argument. Then, in Science and Health she fore-

363

among her followers with this sentence "The

perpetuation of the floral species by bud or cell-division is evident, but I
discredit the belief that agamogenesis applies to the human species."
So the incident passed. Josephine Woodbury was to enter the story
of the movement once again, even more vividly, within a few years, but
stalled all future claimants

now, so far as the outside world was concerned, she was quite forgotten.
Within the ranks of Mrs. Eddy s followers attention was now more and

more preoccupied with

their leader

It

is

speculation

and surmise

as to the future which

was planning for her church and the cause

as a whole.

not possible to say when, in the course of these nearly two years
Eddy reached the conclusion that the human mind

of retirement, Mrs.

was not yet ready for the

"Christly method",

as she described the

com

Almost from the

first, through the Journal,

pletely unorganized plan.
she was urging upon her students in various quarters to form churches of

own. She evidently regarded these churches just as loose gatherings

together of her followers in almost apostolic simplicity, and it is possible
their

she thought that ultimately the Church in Boston might be re-established

and go forward in the same way. But that she had no idea of the Church
in Boston being

abandoned

is

evidenced by her

1889, urging its dissolution.

In that letter she announced that she

had

letter of

"deeded

November

to those

build a church edifice the plot of land designed for the

edifice and which is now valued at $15,000."

site

who

28,

shall

of such an

The

idea that such a church would one day be builded had been in
mind for years. As far back as 1886, her followers had begun to collect
money for such a building, and the plot of land upon which The Mother
Church now stands in Falmouth Street had
actually been secured. The
contributions had paid off a substantial
portion of its cost. Now, how

her

ever, the mortgage was falling due and this situation presented a clear
opportunity to at last establish her church on a rebellion-proof founda
tion. Acquiring title to the
property personally at a fraction of its value,
she proved her altruism in the affair
by immediately handing over the
land in trust to one of her students, Ira O.
Knapp, for reconveyance to

364

three trustees, namely, Alfred Lang, Marcellus

Monroe and William

G. Nixon. While the church was thus the beneficiary, her control there
after was to be assured through her own by-laws governing the trustees,
the exercise of such by-laws in key instances to be contingent always
upon her written signature of approval. This unchallengeable control,

which she deemed

vital to the welfare of the

movement, was the whole

purpose of the elaborate transaction which she describes in Miscellanous

Writings as "circuitous," "morally and spiritually inalienable but mate
3*

rially questionable.

haps the only

Her maneuver was

astute

way in which the movement

and

successful,

and per

could be stabilized at that time.

At first all went well, until William Nixon, who was then Mrs. Eddy s
publisher, raised the question as to the legality of the Trustees receiving
contributions for the building of a church which was without charter or

organization or legal standing of any kind. Perhaps it was then that Mrs.
Eddy decided that in a social order built up and held together by rules,

conventions and regulations of all kinds, it would be impossible to

develop a church which should exist "alone", as she was to put it later on

a memorable
express

The

occasion,"in

the affections,

and need no organization

to

it."

three trustees were so convinced that their position was question

as indeed it was as the law was then understood, that they

able at law

three resigned, after making their position secure by returning all the
subscriptions received for the building fund to the amount of about

all

$23,000 to the donors. Mrs. Eddy tried in vain to prevent

done, insisting that
affect

God s

tetftple,"

this

being

was from God, and no material title could

The trustees were thoroughly scared. The Massa

"the

chusetts Insurance Title

tide

Company had

advised that the position was entirely

title and
and so when the money

refused to insure the

illegal,

O. Knapp conveyed the property once again to

Mrs. Eddy for a consideration of one dollar, and the work was begun

had been returned,

all

Ira

over again.

Mrs. Eddy was

insistent that subscriptions to the building

fund should

be received and the church built in the way she had planned, and that

365

if

research were carried far enough

proposed was perfectly legal

"till

mortal

it

would be found

"Unity prevailed,"

that the

method she

she wrote in the Journal,

man sought to know who owned God s temple, and

adopted

and urged only the

understand
about

material side of this question. ... I believe yea, I

that with the spirit of Christ actuating all parties concerned

this legal quibble, it

can easily be corrected to the satisfaction of

all"

And so

in the

end

it

proved.

A long disused statute, originally passed

in behalf of the Methodist Church,

"the

was discovered which provided that

deacons, church wardens or other similar

could be

officers

of church or

reli

bodies corporate for the purpose of

gious
all
in
succession
and
holding
grants and donations, whether of
taking
real or personal estate, made either to them or their successors, or to their
societies"

"deemed

respective churches, or to the

It

poor of their churches."

was then further discovered that, although the church had been

dissolved,

at once.

its

On

had never been surrendered. Mrs. Eddy set to work

September 2, 1892, she deeded the Falmouth Street prop
charter

O. Knapp, William B. Johnson, Joseph S.

Eastaman and Stephen A. Chase, who undertook to erect thereon within
erty to four trustees, Ira

five years

a church building to cost not

less

than $50,000.

This deed of conveyance has always and very justly been looked upon
as one of the important landmarks in the history of the movement, for in
it

the plans for a

"Mother Church",

which Mrs. Eddy had evidently

been formulating for some time, were first unfolded. Up to now the
Boston Church had been like any other church, a local organization with
a local membership. Henceforth, it was to draw its
membership from all
over the world. Members of local churches could be members of The

Mother Church,
but

whilst

it

also

opened

its

doors to those

who had no

local

they could subscribe to its tenets.

These tenets were at first of the simplest nature. They were
only three
in number and the whole confession of faith was
in
about one
comprised
affiliations

felt that

hundred and fifty words. They were as follows

366

"1.

As

adherents of Truth,

we

take the Scriptures for our guide to

eternal Life.
"2.

We acknowledge and adore

one supreme God.

His Son, the Holy Ghost, and man

in

We

His image and

acknowledge
likeness.

We

God s

forgiveness of sin, in the destruction of sin, and His

acknowledge
future
punishment of ^Whatever worketh abomination or
present and

maketh a

lie

And

And the

atonement of Christ, as the

efficacy of

Truth and

way of salvation as demonstrated by Jesus casting out

the
sick, and raising the dead,
evils, healing
resurrecting a dead faith
to seize the great possibilities and living energy of the Divine Life.
Love,

the

We

solemnly promise to strive, watch and pray for that Mind to

be in us which was also in Christ Jesus. To love the brethren, and, up
"3.

to our highest capacity, to be rneek, merciful,

with

all

and just, and

live

peaceably

men."

Nothing could

new
who would

far as her

to those

well be broader but Mrs.

church could safeguard

strive to live

up

it, its

Eddy was determined

that, as

membership should be limited

to the spirit as well as the letter of

their undertaking.

First of all, the Trustees

known

as the

empowered,
or reader

"Christian

were constituted a

Science Board of

as soon as the church

was

"perpetual body"

Directors".

This board was

built, to elect the pastor,

and to make all necessary rules

to be

speaker

for this purpose. It was required

to maintain public worship, while the deed further provided that, "when
ever said Directors shall determine that it is inexpedient to maintain

preaching, reading or speaking in said church," the property must be

reconveyed forthwith to Mrs. Eddy, her heirs or assigns.

The method of forming the church body was simple but effective.
Twelve Charter Members were appointed by Mrs. Eddy. These Charter
Members in turn elected First Members nominated by Mrs. Eddy, who,
somewhat ill defined, were turned over to the
Board of Directors, as they were in 1901, constituted a kind of seldom
summoned "privy council" whose main duty was to get the church started.
until their duties, always

The work once begun was pushed through with

367

remarkable rapidity.

Mrs. Eddy knew exactly what she wanted, while her experience through
the years, many of them bitter enough, had shown her clearly whom she
could trust and
2, 1892.

whom she could not. The deed was signed on September

On September

21, with the Charter Members duly appointed,

Members took place, and on October 5, at a general
for the purpose, the enrolment of regular members began.

the election of First

meeting called

On this

Two

occasion, fifty-nine persons were admitted to membership.

years later, the membership had risen to nearly three thousand, ninety-

per cent of whom lived outside Boston.

come a national institution.

five

The Mother Church had be

368

ing or

tJHe

<uiiurc

the original Mother Church edifice, like so much else

in the history of the Christian Science movement, presents on the surface
a picture of conflict clearly demanding for its resolution the understand

THE BUILDING OF

ing of motives and purposes not apparent to the casual observer. No more
satisfying objective could well be imagined -if traditional views are to

be accepted

than the project advanced and expanded in successive

by the Board of Directors for the

building of a permanent home for the Church in Boston.
So it was accepted by Christian Scientists everywhere. Those who had
issues of the Christian Science Journal

had

their original contributions returned to them,

now

sent

them back

again to Boston, often doubled and trebled. In order that the work might
go forward more rapidly, some forty of Mrs. Eddy s students were asked
to contribute one thousand dollars each immediately. Mrs.

Eddy made

the request and yet it is clear from letters and statements about this
time that her great concern was to turn the thoughts of her students and
followers away from what they were doing in the matter of material

achievement to

369

its

spiritual significance.

The

louder

and more

exultant

grew the rejoicing, the more surely did Mrs. Eddy come out with some re
minder that what they were doing amounted to very little if anything in
comparison with what they were thinking.

Thus

the issue of the Journal for March, 1892, might well have been
regarded as a "Church Building Number". It contained the architect s

plans for the proposed Mother Church Building and Publishing House,
a full list to date of subscribers to the building fund, a poem by Adelaide

Proctor on giving, and a vigorous editorial dealing with the whole ques
tion of church and church building. The issue is pervaded by enthusiasm

and evidently designed

newed effort.
It

to arouse Christian Scientists everywhere to re

might reasonably be expected that Mrs. Eddy would have pkced

unequivocally in the forefront of this appeal and used her immense

herself

influence to supplement the efforts of the Trustees. Instead, she uses this
issue of the Journal to
emphasize the fact that the whole enterprise has
no other basis than that of "suffer it to be so now".
57

not indispensable , she wrote,

organize materially Christ s
Church. It is not absolutely necessary to ordain
pastors and to dedicate
churches; but if this be done, let it be in concession to the period, and not
"It

is

"to

as a perpetual or indispensable ceremonial of the Church. If our Church

is
organized, it is to meet the demand, Suffer it to be so now The real
.

Christian compact

and

is

love for one another. This

bond

is

wholly spiritual

inviolate."

Nothing, however, could lessen the enthusiasm of Christian Scientists

everywhere. Neither did Mrs.

Eddy

seek in any

way

to lessen

it.

That

was quite

clearly not at all her purpose. She never failed to express her
appreciation of what was being done, and when a fund was started
by

the children to furnish

and decorate the suite of rooms which were

being
planned for her in the tower of the church, it seems to have touched her
deeply. She was, however, firmly determined that the substance should
not be lost in the shadow.

The

corner stone of the new

building was laid
in the course of her address Mrs.
Eddy once

on

May 21,

1894, and

again emphasized the same

370

point. Nevertheless,

sion a

more

it is

"possible

satisfied sense that

to read into

what she

said

on

this occa

what they were doing had to be done and

should be done at that particular time. "The Church," she said, "more
than any other institution, at present is the cement of society, and it

should be the bulwark of

civil

and

religious liberty.

But the time cometh

when the religious element, or Church of Christ, shall exist alone in the
affections, and need no organization to express it. Till then, this form
of godliness seems as requisite to manifest

its spirit,

as individuality to

express Soul and substance."

There was.much else, of course, in the address.

It was a joyful happy

Mrs.
it clear that she
and
made
thought it was so. She
gathering
Eddy
the
went
over
the
it
of
as
had
briefly
building
progressed and was
story
to progress, spoke of the donations that had come in from all over the
world so promptly and gratefully, of the children s fund and of the many
letters she had received. She then went on to tell of how the stone
granite for the building was coming from her native New Hampshire,
and of how that day they were laying away under the foundation stone
the names of all those who had subscribed to the building fund,
your
"in

own

handwriting",

together with a copy of the Bible and Science and

Health.

The ceremony, as described later in the June issue of the Journal, was
of the simplest character :
consisted of silent prayer, and the audible repetition in unison of
the Lord s Prayer by the Christian Science Board of Directors, thus
"It

quietly fulfilling the Scripture,

Mis

voice

was not heard in the

street

And thus unostentatiously was consummated the laying of our corner

the type of that stone which of old the builders rejected, but
stone,
which

is

become the head of the corner;

this is the

Lord s doing and

it is

marvellous in our eyes .

"As evidence of the watchfulness
and faithfulness of those having
immediate charge of the matter," the account went on to say, "we deem
it

but just to

trusted students

371

through three successive stormy nights, two

James A. Neal and Thomas W. Hatten watched

state, that

This was made necessary by certain

precious contents.
for the time being, the final completion of a part
delays, which prevented
of the mechanical work"
ease and rapidity with which the neces
Referring in conclusion to the

the stone with

its

With an

analogy almost
the mouth of a
of
in bringing out
approaching the miracle of the Master
fish the money with which to pay tribute, the large sum of money referred
sary funds

had been

raised, the

account says :

to in the Address, rolled into the treasurer s hands in prompt response

to the Leader s simple call.
doubt, if die history associated with the
demonstration of these respective sums were known, it would make a

No

would amaze even the most credulous."

Some six months later, namely, on January 6, 1895, the new Church
was dedicated. The final cost of the building was something over
chapter which

^250,000.
The dedication of the original Mother Church in Boston served, as
attention on a movement
nothing else could have done, to focus public

vaguely realized for

many

years but

national institution. Practically every

now

suddenly taking shape as a

newspaper in the United States of

any importance and many abroad carried long descriptions of the new
Church and the dedication ceremonies, while the story of Mrs. Eddy s
life and the movement of which she was the recognized leader was given
prominent place both in the newspapers and magazines.
What seemed to impress the general thought most was that, in spite of
the fact that the dedication ceremonies were held in the depth of winter

when Boston is almost surely frost-bound and snow-bound, thousands of

Christian Scientists travelled from all over the country and often from
beyond its borders to attend the opening ceremonies. The Boston news

papers especially,
the year,

found

it

all

too familiar with their

own

climate at that time of

hard to understand such enthusiasm.

crowds of Christian Scientists", said the Boston Glebe, "from

of the United States poured in and out of the new edifice. . . .
More than 6,000 of the faithful worshipped in the beautiful temple and
The cars were loaded all day,
participated in the dedicatory exercises. .
"Surging

all parts

372

and the church was the

centre of attraction to the travel. It

was

interest

snow beating
ing to watch the people stand in the cold, with the
beautiful
with
temple."
loving eyes at their
upon them, gazing

down

The New York Sun, after referring to the fact that it was necessary to
hold five services in order to accommodate all those who wanted to at
tend,

went on to

of being absent
Bible

relate

on the

how Mrs. Eddy had

occasion,

and Science and Health

The

first service,

"announced

her intention

and sent a communication ordaining the

as the rightful pastor of the

Church."

as described in the Journal s account of the matter,

began promptly at nine o clock a.m., and was attended largely by the
local congregation for whose accommodation it was specially given.

Another was held at

at one-thirty p.m.;

mid-day; another
at three o clock p.m. The same order was

ten-thirty a.m.; another at twelve

and the

last

repeated at each service except the second, at

which the children, who

had contributed the funds for the building and furnishing of the
Mother s Room, were present in a body,
Mrs. Eddy, as has been noted, was not there, but she sent a dedicatory
address which was read at

all

the services. It

is

in

many ways a remark

able document, chiefly because of its restraint. There is, it is true, run
ning through it a quiet note of triumph. "No longer are we of the church
militant, but of the church triumphant;

*Yet in

my

flesh shall I see

God

."

and with Job of old we exclaim,

most part, she is as usual

But, for the

concerned with turning the thoughts of her auditors away from the out
ward and visible to the inward and spiritual. "There is a thought higher
and deeper than the edifice. Material light and shade are temporal, ^aot
eternal/

Nevertheless, she allows herself to look backwards

and

re-

some of the path, often stony enough, by which she had reached
and occasion, the persecution and derision of the early days, the
encouragement of such men as Bronson Alcott, who had been her friend,

traverse

that day

and Wendell Phillips, who had said, "Had I young blood in my veins,
I would help that woman"; and the steady winning of the way by her
book Science and Health. And so she came to a concluding prayer or
invocation, the effect of which in the circumstances

remarkable:

373

may

well have been

cr

Dlvine presence, breathe Thou Thy blessing on every heart in this

Soul! This is the newborn of Spirit, this is His re
house. Speak out,

deemed;

this,

His

beloved.

May the kingdom of God within

with

you

heavenward. May
reascending, bear you outward, upward,
more real, and
of
silver-throated
the sweet song
singers, making melody

you alway,

the organ s voice, as the sound of many waters, and the

in this sacred temple dedicated to the ever-present God
the joy of angels

and

means, energies, and

within

it

Word

spoken
mingle with

all whose
rehearse your hearts holy intents.
Mother
The
erect
Church, find
prayers helped

home, and heaven"

would view

So, as the world

May

it,

was a great work completed. But Mary

Baker Eddy was far from sharing the world s view. For her the work
had only just begun. She accorded what had been done no more than
a passing glance. It was fully three months after the dedication of her

Church before she took time to make the journey to Boston

in order to

see it. Apparently, she viewed with misgiving the flood of personal adula
tion and publicity the whole episode had evoked, and it is evident from

her

letters,

about

this time, that she

was casting around

in ever-increasing

doubt for some means of saving for herself some small measure of that
peace and quiet for which she greatly longed and which she greatly
needed.
It is quite evident that the

thronged.

woman, about

this time,

was

literally

The more earnestly she strove to safeguard her movement from

alien teaching, the more inevitably was sfie called upon to settle questions
of doctine and give her endorsement to what conformed. She was nothing
if not
plain-spoken on the matter. Some of her public statements are

which she laid about her, quite regardless ap

of
in the very issue of the Journal describ
Thus,
parently
consequences.
the
of
the
corner
stone, in fact on the very next page to the
ing
laying
veritable whips of thongs

rather fulsome account of the matter, she has a statement under the
"Take Notice"

title

which leaves no doubt as to her meaning :

hereby state publicly and positively, that until I advertise through

these pages, or send special requests to individuals to the
contrary of
this statement, I shall not receive a call from
nor read
"I

anyone,

letters,

374

which I have not myself first solicited. I advertise this, after

two years for sufficient time of my own to arrange my
over
waiting
while having on hand packages of sermons, with request
and
writing desk,

MSS.,

etc.,

that I examine them, other people s correspondence to read, heaps of

MSS. sent for approval, pyramids of letters requiring immediate answers,

tiered

columns of applicants to

call

on me, business

letters

innumerable,

etc.
"My

work

five years
"If

for

ago I

The Mother Church

came

know myself

Christian Science,

to Concord,

this

and

is

my

all its

is

done; and be

N.H.,

that all

sole desire

teachers

it

remembered that

for the purpose of retirement*

and

its

whom I

taught, yes, that all mankind, shall have one Shepherd,

gather them into His fold (unto Himself) Divine Love.

With

individuals seeking an interview

have taught

students by whomsoever

and

He

shall

MARY BAKER EDDY"

whom maybe she would have

been glad to see but simply could not from lack of time, Mrs. Eddy was
less emphatic, but there was always, as in the notice above, attached to
her most vitriolic utterances a revealing note of kindness which softened
the blow and, as many later testified, served to open their eyes to their

own

lack of consideration

says:

"I

and

failure to

"do

their

own work". Thus,

in

evidently dealing with some such situation, Mrs. Eddy

cannot and do not receive visits any more from anyone but

one of her

letters

at my request to help me or who are my students.

the reason, viz. I have so much writing and care as a
leader in a cause to which I devote my entire life that I have not time

from those who come

This, dear one,

is

to visit or to be visited.

Now this is not because I would not enjoy seeing

you, but because I cannot give more than one hour to anyone unless
is to work with me in
my field of labour."

To

a friend

who had

apparently written to

she was seen in Boston, Mrs.

Eddy

allowed no earthly peace and

church oftener,"

it is

tier

this that

how seldom

regretting

replies wearily.

keeps

"The

it

fact is I

me from

visiting

am

my

However, the day came when she determined to make the journey and
had heard and read so much. In her

see for herself that about which she

375

dedication message she had spoken happily of how sure she was that if
she had been there in person she would have felt like the Queen of Sheba

Solomon and would have to say like her that the

had not been told her. But when she did go she went alone and

before the treasures of

half

unannounced.

was on April 1, 1895. Winter was just giving way to spring and it
was the week before Easter. She had heard that her foUowers when she
came were eager to have the chimes rung in the tower and to greet her
It

with flowers, and so she told no one of her plans until the last minute
and then, attended only by one or two of her household, left Concord
for Boston.

When she arrived, she drove at once to the Church, prepared

to spend the night in the Mother s Room in the tower. Her first view of
the auditorium was from the door at the end of the centre aisle. It was

afternoon and the light was failing, so she asked that the lights in the
auditoram might be turned on. When this was done, she walked up the
late

aisle until

she came under the dome. There she stood for a

moment and

then, advancing towards the platform, knelt down on the first step. She
was seventy-four now, and her hair, always one of her beauties, was
snow white. Clara Shannon, who describes the scene in her recollections,

goes on to

tell

how

that, after

the platform, going to the desk

and then very

little

and mounted
There she waited a moment

while, she rose slowly

on the

right.

softly but quite audibly repeated the Ninety-first

through to the end.

"With

long

life will

I satisfy

Psalm

Him; and show Him

salvation." She waited

again a little while and then, going over to
die other desk, repeated one of her favourite
Thou
hymns, "Guide me,
the
great Jehovah", through
prayer of the first verse to the quiet affirma
tion of the second :

my

Open is the crystal fountain.

Whence the healing waters flow;

And

the fiery, cloudy pillar

Leads me
Strong

Next day

all

my journeys through.

Deliverer. Still
it

Thou

art

was Sunday morning

strength and shield.

she left the Church
quite

my

early

and returned to Concord.

376

WHEN MRS. EDDY left Boston, in the summer of

39

1889, and went to

Con

cord, seeking the refuge of her native hills in which to work out the
strangely mixed problems that confronted her, Concord took little note

of her coming.

As

has been seen, most of those

who had known

her in

the days of her youth or young womanhood had passed away or had
joined in the great national movement westward and found new homes

new states. The old familiar landmarks were still there the old elm
on North State Street under which as a child she used to play on Sun
days, **between the morning and afternoon services," when her father
drove in with the family from Bow; the building in which Franklin
Pierce had his office; the winding road to Sanbomton Bridge, the straight
stretches and great bends of the Merrimac; and the hills and brooks of
Bow, amid which she and Andrew Gault had taken things so seriously
when she was all of fifteen and Andrew not quite twenty.
new Concord was to open for her in the near future, a Concord
wherein she was to be reckoned a leading citizen; but when she rented
a house there in the summer of 1889 at 62 State Street, the townsfolk
in

377

cook

little

notice of

it.

She was already a well-known and greatly loved

or greatly opposed woman to thousands of people throughout the country

and beyond

its

Concord through many years had been used

out of Boston and gave little heed to them.

borders, but

to hearing strange stories

This was exactly what

this tired,

much enduring woman

needed.

With

the faithful Calvin Frye and Foster-Eddy to help her, she could carry
on her work vigorously and yet be free in a measure from the thousand
and one intrusions which threatened at times to overwhelm her in Boston.

was in Concord that she worked out her plan to pull down her organi
the foundation for its
zation, and it was here in Concord that she laid

It

rebuilding.

Through the first two years of her retirement she lived

on State Street, and then one day in the spring of 1892, in

in the house

the course of

one of the daily drives she allowed herself, she found at a point about
a mile and a half west of the city on Pleasant Street at that distance
a country road again an old farmhouse for sale. It stood not far from
the road on a little knoll whence the view southward was along a narrow

end of which rose the gentle green hills of Bow, one above
their sides covered as she always remembered them with fields

valley, at the

the other,

and woodlands. She seems to have decided there and then that that was
live, and within a short time she had bought the

where she wanted to

house and the land that went with

it.

It was a more important move than appeared on the surface. In the

troubled times that followed and thereafter for many years seventeen
in all Pleasant View, as Mrs. Eddy called her new possession, was for

her a haven of refuge without which it might have been impossible for
do what she did do. Concord was just far enough from Boston so

her to

that anyone
the journey,

would think

twice, especially in those days,

about making

and yet near enough to be accessible within a few hours.

Moreover, Pleasant View aflForded her, particularly at first when she was
rebuilding the house and planning the garden, a relaxation and diversion
she greatly needed. And she certainly went to it with a will The original
house was quite small and commonplace, but Mrs. Eddy added bow

378

windows and wide verandas, built a porte-cochere at the front of the Louse

and a tower room with a balcony at the south-east corner, whence the best
view of the hills and valleys was to be had. Later on she bought more
s
cottage, stables and out-buildings. She sought
but
seems
to have had a strong objection to anything
always
privacy,
looked
like
seclusion.
that
There were no high fences around Pleasant
View, the hedges were kept low and neatly trimmed, while the lawns and

land, built a gardener

gaily stocked flower beds were always plainly visible

from the road.

The

project occasioned tremendous interest among her students and

followers everywhere. In that mysterious way common in such cases

whereby information is spread abroad, word of what Mrs. Eddy was

doing reached the most distant parts of the Field as the wide spread
of the movement was coming to be called and Mrs. Eddy began to
receive gifts large

and small

for her

new home. Among

these,

perhaps

the most interesting, because it gave rise to one of her most important
shorter writings, was the gift by a group of students of a little pond for
her garden. It is still there, fed as always by two or three small springs

and such surface waters as seep in from the hillside. Not to be outdone,
another group, this time in Toronto, Canada, sent her a boat for the
pond, and the little boat house that was built for it was long one of the
features in the grounds of Pleasant
"Across

But

if

Pleasant

lishment, Mrs.

View tended

Eddy

to

To the donors,
my hand to clasp

View.

lakes into a kingdom, I reach out

she wrote :
yours."

become more and more of an estab

continued to maintain the simplicity which had

always characterized her life. She rose at six in summer and seven in
winter, and after breakfast usually walked for a while, either pacing up

and down the veranda at the back of the house, or, if the day was fair,
strolling with some of her household round the little pond or along the
She loved her garden and delighted
moving trees in sum
mer or having things planted too late or too early, and seeing them come
to perfection just the same. There was something at times almost
pathetic
in her love for flowers and natural beauty. It had been one of the
great

paths through the trees beyond

it.

in doing things that others thought impossible, like

379

and one of her

passions of her childhood,

sternest condemnations

was

directed against a misinterpretation of her teaching which sought to

make little of physical beauty. "To take all earth s beauty into one gulp

of vacuity

and

label beauty nothing,

is

ignorantly to caricature

God s

creation, which is unjust to human sense and to the divine realism. ...
Earth is more spiritually beautiful to my gaze now than when it was more
1

earthly to the eyes of

Eve."

There was always something behind her indulgence. She might sit for
at a time in the dusk of summer evening doing nothing

an hour or more

apparently but watch the light fade from the hills, but it would be found
next day by her household that she had not spent her time in "dreamy
absentness", as she would express it, but had something very concrete
to

show

into hours

applied

moments before they pass

she only urged upon others after she had

for her apparent idleness.

it

*2

was a

practice

"Improving

rigorously to herself.

And so, at the time of the dedication of the Church and her brief visit
to Boston, as described in the preceding chapter, the daily round at Pleas
ant View had settled into definite ways. All her life Mrs. Eddy had been

punctual in the true meaning of that word. She accounted it just as much
unpunctual to be too early as too late. She always had a clock where she
could see it, and, especially in later life, she insisted that there should be
a time for everything and everything should have its time. She seems to
have felt very keenly that the more the essentials of the day s work could

be reduced to a routine, the freer were she and those around her to do
what she regarded as thek real work, to "pray without ceasing" in the
widest meaning of that injunction.
At Pleasant View, as afterwards at Chestnut Hill, meals were always
served to the minute and every member of the household was
expected
to be on time. Dinner was in the middle of the
day, and after dinner

punctually every day at two o clock Mrs.

by year, as she became more and more of a
1
*

Eddy went

for a drive.

Year

public figure, Concord people

Miscellaneous Writings, p. 86-87.

Ibid., p. 230.

380

looked forward to seeing her, and one of the regular daily incidents in
the city s daily life was the appearance of Mrs. Eddy s carriage on State
Street with

its

pair of weU-groomed horses

and Calvin Frye

in livery

on

the box seat.

Mrs. Eddy was now becoming a wealthy woman. She had ceased to
teach, but the circulation of her book Science and Health was rapidly

With the dosing out of the 1891 edition, over one hundred
thousand copies had been sold, while later royalties paid to her

increasing.

and

fifty

amounted to approximately $12,000 in 1893; $15,000 in 1894; and

$18,000 in 1895. But no matter how much riches increased, Mrs. Eddy
never relaxed anything of her almost rugged simplicity. She was the
recipient of many gifts, but she spent little on herself, and the furnishings
of Pleasant View although comfortable were far from luxurious.

Her writing was still her chief work; besides her articles for the Journal,
her constant literary labour was the revision of Science and Health. There
had been a new edition in 1891 and another in 1894, and at the time the
Church was dedicated she was hard at work on yet another edition which
was brought out

in 1896. Generally speaking, the trend of each succeed

quotations from other writers,

whether in prose or verse, which, in the earlier editions, were used so
or embodied in the text, are curtailed or elimi
freely as chapter headings

ing edition

is

nated, while

towards

now a

simplicity.

sentence or

Apt

now

a paragraph

is

rewritten in order to

elucidate her meaning.

The great work in

1895, and the first of the

many far-reaching develop

ments to come out of Pleasant View, was the compiling of the Church
Manual Rules and regulations governing The Mother Church had been
promulgated and adopted from time to time as occasion demanded, but
by 1895 they had become so numerous that some form of codification was
clearly

had always been Mrs. Eddy s custom to originate

and then send them to the Board of Directors with orders

demanded.

these rules

It

Now

the need was for a systematic

that they be officially adopted.
in
a
the
controls
convenient and comprehensive
various
of
marshalling
booklet.

381

And so,
Eddy
and

early in the

summer of -that

year, the First

Members

at Mrs.

a committee of four to go into the matter

Manual".
The committee appointed consisted
die Church

s direction appointed

"prepare

of four well-tried members, namely, Edward P. Bates, Julia Bartlett,

Judge Hanna and William B. Johnson. They got to work at once, and

within a few months the

first

edition of the

Church Manual made

its

appearance. Mrs. Eddy changed it, adding or deleting up to the year of

her death, but its broad provisions remained the same. It set forth the

scope within which the Directors should act, the provisions governing the
constituent departments and agencies of The Mother Church and the

terms under which branch churches might be formed. It provided for

discipline, how and in what circumstances it should be applied, promul

gated the terms of membership, and published in full the deeds and other
documents relating to the founding of the Church. Strictly speaking, the

Manual was binding only on actual members of The Mother Church, but
became the almost universal practice for branch churches to adopt
by-laws embodying the essential features of the Manual, the Manual
quickly became a code of conduct for church members everywhere.
as

it

How Mrs. Eddy viewed the matter is not easy to

say. It

is

quite clear

from the moment she concluded the age was not ready to do
without a visible church and decided that her own church should be
thatt

was going to safeguard it in every

not
from
false
doctrine, but from the dissensions
way possible,
only
which had characterized so disastrously the early
days of its history.
Nevertheless, it is again clear from her statements in regard to the
reorganized, she determined that she

Manual at the time

it,

of

its first

as she did her Church, as a

publication,
"concession

and

also later, that she viewed

to the

period".

In replying to the acclaim which some years later

greeted the appear
ance of a new edition, Mrs.
left
no
doubt
as
to
her position:
Eddy
"Will

growth

is

those beloved

taking in the

of Christ s

Sermon on

students,"

she wrote in the Journal,

Ten Commandments and scaling the

"whose

steep ascent

the

Mount, accept profound thanks for their swift

of
over
the
twentieth century Church Manual?
messages
rejoicing
Heaps
382

upon heaps of praise confront me, and for what? That which I said in
my heart would never be needed, namely, laws of limitation for a
1

Christian

Scientist."

At

another time, as though defending herself and her actions against

any possible charge of autocracy, she insisted that the rules and by-laws
of The Mother Church "were written at different dates, and as the occa

They sprang from necessity, the logic of events, from the

immediate demand for them as a help that must be supplied to maintain
sion required.

the dignity and defense of our Cause."

And so she went forward, her patience often tried by the fact that she
was compelled to take half measures where the full measure alone would

her hope, and to take the course nearest right when she
knew that in the long run it would have to be abandoned. More
and more was she led to make "Suffer it to be so now" her daily prayer.
But Pleasant View was a great comfort to her. Although beset on all

have

fulfilled

herself

hands, as has been seen, by those who sought her aid and counsel or
made claims upon her time for less worthy reasons, Mrs. Eddy neverthe
less as time went on, succeeded in securing for herself some measure of
the quiet she so earnestly desired. Three periods every day she devoted
to prayer and meditation, and at these times she was never disturbed. It

was

all

much

simpler at Pleasant View than

faithful, stood guard.

it

had been anywhere

else.

He sometimes made mistakes,

Calvin Frye, always

denying people who ought not to have been denied and admitting people
who ought not to have been admitted, but, on the whole, he did a work
that perhaps nobody else could have done. The faults of his virtues must
often have tried Mrs.

Eddy

to the uttermost, as they did without

doubt

of her household, but Mrs. Eddy, in appraising him, would come

back again and again with a sense of gratitude and returning peace to

many
his

one outstanding virtue that seemed to have no fault

Whoever

his faithfulness.

else fell away, Calvin Frye always remained. Pleasant Viewwithout Calvin would not have been Pleasant View.
1

Miscellany, p. 229.
Miscellaneous Writings, p. 148.

383

SHE NEEDED ALL Calvin s

4.0

Although the number of those

attaching themselves to her company and remaining faithful increased
year by year, those who fell away were still very many and were often
faithfulness.

from among those who had been nearest to her. Mrs. Eddy seems to
have recognized, almost from the first, that in the end her work would
have to be done alone, but she parted reluctantly from the "sense of
3 1
personal joys* , as she sternly characterized the small bonds of human

which she sought to fill a void in her life. In the end, she
realized and with tremendous abundance that the
vacuum is
"seeming
affection with

already filled with divine

Love"/

but

when she

lavished her affection

on

Richard Kennedy or Daniel Spofford or Miranda Rice or

begged her
son George to come to her when she was widowed and homeless, or

whom she thought would be a strong arm in her

and
in
support
support of the Cause she had made her own, she was
casting round for human help and encouragement.
adopted as a son one

For a short time, in the summer of 1892,

1

Science

Ibid, p. 266.

and Health,

just after she

moved

into

p. 266.

384

He

left his
Pleasant View, her son George had come east to visit her.
wife behind but brought with him his little son, George III. Mrs. Eddy

was delighted. She took a great fancy to the little boy, but George came
and went as he had done in the past, and, when he had gone, it seemed
to her a greater comfort than ever before that she

had by her one like

so well what she

who seemed to understand

her adopted son, Bennie,

wanted to do and was so ready to help her. Foster-Eddy was now Presi
dent of The Mother Church and Manager of the Publishing House.

He spent most of his time in Boston, but came out to Concord frequently,
and

"Bennie

room"

View was always

at Pleasant

kept ready for his

reception.

Foster-Eddy was to prove a sore disappointment. Dis

turbing stories began to reach Pleasant View about his personal conduct,
not the least of which was the rumour that he was guilty of improprieties

But Ebenezer

J.

woman

in his office. Journal subscriptions were lagging,

were
even if book royalties
increasing. Suspicion and dissension grew,
until an open break could not well be averted. It did not take long for

with a married

Mrs. Eddy to make up her mind that her protege was being victimized
by animal magnetism and that she, as the leader of the movement, was
the ultimate object of evil s onslaught.
dear conviction than she took action
final

The

No

sooner had

this

become her

action at once bold, stern and

fate of the cause, her very life s blood,

seemed again in jeop

and one cannot recount what followed without painting the vivid
the quiet reconnoitering, the mobil
picture of a seasoned general at war
and
the
ebb
flow
of
of
forces,
morale, the excitement of open con
izing
ardy,

flict,

the flicker of mutiny, the

call

to allegiance, rallying to the standard.

may be supposed that Mrs. Eddy endeavoured earnestly to bring her

adopted son around to her way of thinking. It is certain that recrimina
It

was left nothing

but drastic measures to be taken. Already tiis mentor had written him,
under date of March 17, 1897, that his work was ifesatisfactory, his
tion fell with increasing frequency until at last there

attitude

and conduct

less.

was not

385

"I

and reassurances value

to your mind on me. I am not and

reprehensible, his protests

falsely* referring

is on me/ she wrote. "But you

work
were governed by hypnotism
against me and yourself
This fruitless controversy, which boded so much evil to the great Cause,
as its leader saw the matter, could be, must be terminated. Seizing upon

cannot be mistaken

now

in

whose mind

"

to

the occasion of the First

Members meeting

currently in session, she dis

the adoption of this startling by-law:

patched a special letter directing
Rev. Mary Baker Eddy
"A member of this church who is a student of

and

refuses to leave a place in the field that she

knows

it is

for his or her

interest to leave and so advise him or her yet they do not comply with
my request, this member shall be dropped from the roll of membership

and he or she treated by this church

as a disloyal student.

This by-kw can

vote of every
only be amended or annulled by the unanimous
of this Church."

The immediate enactment

of this statute

was imperative

if

member

the

move

cannot
survive, the accompanying letter explained, for
when
need
the
to
this
be your leader pnless I have
you
guide you
power

ment was to

"I

guidance."

who was uncomfortably enough in the chair, must have

a
convincing defense, for the members wavered. In fact, they
put up
Foster-Eddy,

found

necessary to repair to

it

herself before taking

Concord and confer with Mrs. Eddy

a vote.

Needless to say, the tide had turned, for to be in disfavour with Mrs.
Eddy was to be in disrepute with the membership. Dr. Ebenezer J. Fos
ter-Eddy was unceremoniously stripped of his
swiftly relegated to the ranks.

one, but

it

may be

briefly

offices

and

his titles

and

The remaining story is a long and involved

summarized in the observation that he drifted

into obscurity, not to be heard of again until his reappearance ten

years
Next Friends" suit, to be described in due order.

later in the

tfc

The whole proceeding may not be above

criticism,

but

it

needs to be

remembered that the movement was

a state of war", and that Mrs.
Eddy had no alternative but to deal ruthlessly with what she saw as
"in

treachery.
insist

As

upon

to the justice of her appraisals and verdicts, of those who

interpreting the record, opinion must be divided. Not a few

386

believe that

tion

Mrs. Eddy s judgement was

from above

many who
trigue."

fell

all

infallible

because of her ordina

humanity out of the wilderness. Others feel that

before her onward march were the victims of

Certain

and that

to lead

it is

had

"court

in

that few survived, whatever their faults or virtues,

to defend themselves against household gossip as the

sainted Leader grew steadily more secluded with her work and her im
mediate associates. Available correspondence with the abjectly devoted

Dr. Julia Field-King and a wealth of other documentary evidence show

over and over again. Even the impeccable

Edward Kimball, writing

November 29, 1907, lamented that
to Judge Septimus Hanna
there were those prominent enough to command the Leader s ear who

this

as late as

were beating a constant pathway to her door to carry the

evil insinuation

was wrong in order to discredit him in her eyes and

thus dispose of an interloper. How could anyone, however great, be
that his teaching

wholly unmoved by the constant stream of provocative reports, unre

lieved by any counteracting statements? That Mrs. Eddy did as well as
she did

As

is

surely to her everlasting credit.

has been before noted,

it

was from the

first characteristic

of the

that for every one who dropped out there was always one and
sometimes many to take his place. In 1895 and the years which followed,
this was increasingly true. When the church was dedicated, Mrs. Eddy

movement

had around her or within immediate call a group of people

whose names were later to become well known in the movement, and
already

the great majority of them were to remain faithful right through to the
end. Of these, among the most notable were Judge Septimus J. Hanna,

William B. Johnson, Edward A. Kimball, James A. Neal and William

P. McKenzie. Judge Septimus Hanna was perhaps the most prominent
in the period under consideration. He had become interested in Christian
Science in 1886 while practising as a lawyer in Leadville, Colorado, fa
mous for its altitude above sea level 10,200 feet and for its mines of
silver. His wife, Camilla, had been healed of a serious
physical
and they both took up the study of Christian Science with much
earnestness, corresponding with Mrs. Eddy in regard to receiving in-

gold and
trouble

387

from her and making plans for devoting themselves exclusively

to the work. In 1890 they moved to Soranton, Pennsylvania, where Judge

structions

he had served for a time as County Judge in Council Bluffs,

Iowa, hence the title was elected "Speaker" of the church there. About
to contribute articles to the Journal which attracted
this time he

Hanna

began

much

attention, -and in the

summer of 1891 he was

invited to deliver the

sermon for the original Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. Next year
he was appointed editor of the Journal and his wife assistant editor, posi
tions they continued to occupy for more than ten years.

Of the others, William

B. Johnson, already mentioned as

accompany

in 1888, had be
ing Mrs. Eddy on her memorable journey to Chicago
of
a
1882
in
come interested
healing
rupture and chronic illthrough
health, the result of hardships suffered

during three years service in the

War. He kter became a director of The Mother Church, and ap

A. Kimball, destined after
pears and reappears in the story. Edward
Civil

wards to become the

first

movement, was from

was from Boston; and William

great apostle of the

Chicago; James A. Neal, kter a director,

P. McKenzie, also a director, was from Almonte, Canada. These three,

however, do not appear very prominently on the scene until several years

They are mentioned here because they are among the most notable
much defection, maintained their loyalty to the end.
It was about this time, too, when the wonder aroused over the spread
and scope of the movement as revealed in the dedication of the Church
in Boston had somewhat subsided, that Christian Science began to be
accepted as an important new theology, and to be considered as some
later.

of those who, amidst

thing that would have to be reckoned with in any future record of

religious history. The voice of ridicule was by no means silenced Mark

Twain s onskught was still ten years away but now, wherever the
movement established itself, although it made enemies aplenty, it also
made friends among those who were far from subscribing to the demands
of

its

teaching.

when they

With

the press, the activities of the movement,

especially

related to Mrs. Eddy,

became

"news"

to

an increasing

extent,

388

not from the point of view of ridicule, as had so often been die case in
the past, but for fundamental reasons.
In Boston, from now on, Christian Science, with its Church and

House and all their activities, is taken for granted, while it

to
detect in the tone of the press a certain civic pride in .the
possible
the
that
fact
city was the headquarters of a world-wide movement, for so
Publishing

is

it

was now rapidly becoming. But the larger it grew and the more eager
adherents, the more surely did Mrs. Eddy withdraw from any public

its

been noted, fully three months after the

completion of the Church that she first saw it, and another two months
were to pass by before she occupied its pulpit for the first time. When
contact with

she did

it

it.

It was, as has

was Sunday,

May

26, 1895

present at the morning service was

she was to speak, only to herself.

**Her presence was

the fact that she was to be

known only to

very few; the fact that

says the Journal s account of the. matter,

her appearance in the aisle of the auditorium on her way to the

"until

pulpit.

The

the organ

as usual until they were more than

she stepped upon the platform. After listening to
. she
a solo
stepped to the desk and without text or

services

half concluded

and

unknown",

had proceeded

when

note addressed the congregation for upwards of twenty minutes. Her

glowing words of kindly greeting, love, admonition and warning, were
eagerly listened to by all. At the close of the benediction
the audience were requested to remain seated until Mrs. Eddy passed
intently

out, as

large

and

it

would have been

impracticable to have personally

met aE the

audience."

The Journal adds that the event was

"a

memorable

one",

the hope that there would be "many repetitions of

But there was to be only one more such appearance.

and expressed

it".

the following February, Mrs.

One Sunday in
in The Mother

Eddy preached again

Church, coming unexpectedly, as she had done the first time, and re
turning immediately afterwards to Concord. After that, although in the
remaining fifteen years of her life she made several public appearances
of a similar nature, she never preached again in The Mother Churdi.

389

first sermon, the Journal

Immediately following the account of die
he had attended the
after
mother
to
his
a
boy
prints a letter, written by

and heard Mrs. Eddy speak. It is an interesting letter as affording

a glimpse of Mrs. Eddy at this time and of the impression she made on
those who saw and heard her. The letter runs:

service

T>EAR

MOTHER:

where I had the pleasure of seeing

just returned from church,
and hearing Mrs. Eddy. I think only a few of the congregation knew
to be there; I do not know now
any more than I did that she was going
why she came this particular day. Anyway when the lesson was half
"I

have

came into the auditorium

through to verse 27, the reader stopped, and she
rose to their feet when
The
audience
orm.
the
to
and passed up on
platf
not stop in the centre or step to the
they saw her coming in. She did
most prominent point behind the desk, but simply to one side, and after
bowing a welcome to the audience, she sat down and rested her head in
silent prayer. Then a lady in the choir sang a beautiful solo, after which
Mrs. Eddy arose and stepping to the desk, spoke in a quiet pleasant voice,
very distinct for you could easily hear every word and yet she seemed

to be talking as if she were in a small

room

you instead of in that large church.

*TMrs. Eddy did not preach; she took

no

sitting only a

text,

few

feet

from

but I wish I could write

She must have spoken for twenty minutes.

She said
you
it all in such a
simple, loving way. ... I don t wonder that she is loved,
she is all love. You simply feel as if she was your best friend/*
all

she said.

For several Sundays after this, the church was thronged in the hope
that Mrs. Eddy would speak again, so much so that in the Journal for
August she published a statement to the effect that, in the future, she

would notify the Church Directors when she would be present, empha
sizing once again that the only pastor of the church was the Bible and
Science and Health. "Therefore, beloved," she added, "my often
coming
is
unnecessary; for though I be present or absent, it is God that feedeth
the hungry heart, that giveth grace for grace, that healeth the sick and
cleanseth the sinner."

390

The Journal earned iier message, if not round the world, certainly all
over the United States and Canada, for the movement was growing now
prodigiously.
shows that it

An examination of an issue of the Journal about this time

was devoting no
services and

ments of church

Canada, while, as

a foothold

391

its

less

than forty-three pages to announce

practitioners in the

records show, the

new

at the other side of the Atlantic.

United States and

teaching had already gained

ON THE MORNING

of

May

Christian Science for the

41

many people in London heard of

The Times published a two-column

26, 1885,

first

time.

from a correspondent in Boston describing some of the phases of

mental healing that had sprung up in the United States, but giving
article

foremost place to Mrs.

Eddy and the teachings

of Christian Science.

The

was moving forward under a new editor. Thomas

Chenery, who had followed the great Delane, had died in 1884, and
George Earl Buckle had succeeded to his chair in Printing House Square.

Times

in that year

Delane had, as used to be

said of him, "turned the favourite broadsheet

of the English public into the leading journal of the world," and Buckle
was eager to maintain the standard. Politics and war were Delane s great
activities. Buckle, while
maintaining the standard of his paper in these
directions,

sought also news of the more fundamental development in

the realms of science

The

article

and

literature.

published in the issue of

May

26 was in every way a

recognized the fact that Christian Science differed

other methods in that it had a definite
and claimed to
article. It

theology

from

fair
all

work on
392

lines that

could be understood and demonstrated, while

honesty and

reliability,

adduced sev

it

and other

positive testimony from people whose

the correspondent declared, could not be gainsaid.

eral instances of healing

correspondent himself was, it is true, inclined to find his own

be
explanations for the healings, but was quite clearly determined to
it
he
He
the
situation
as
as
as
could.
and
was,
unbiased,
present
nearly

The

was, moreover, far from underrating the stir the new teaching was creat
his description of a service he attended at Hawthorne Hall
ing, and

consonance with those described in earlier

depicts a scene in interesting
chapters of this record.
"Hawthorne

for

Hall, where the Christian Scientists worship, is thronged

for service each Sunday. So eager are people

an hour before the time

to hear that after the standing

room

is all

taken people crowd around

outside the doors, where they can catch only an occasional word or two.
The service consists of ordinary devotional exercises preceding a sermon

by Mrs. Eddy."
The Times also had a leader or
full

column in

editorial

on the

length. On the whole, like the

subject,

comments, but, in the light of all that has happened

be said to have caught a prophetic glimpse of the future.
its

letter

running to a

original article, it is fair in

from Boston as "entertaining", and attributed the

since, it

It

cannot

regarded the

success of mental

healing in general and Christian Science in particular to the "credulity

of the Boston people", maintaining firmly that such things were to be
large share of fresh receptiveness
expected from people who still retain
"a

of an earlier

age".

The Timei

article

ered upwards for a

and leader aroused

little interest.

moment and then went out

The

again. It

flame

flick

was two years

before there was any further sign. Then one day a Mr. and Mrs. Graves
Colles, who lived in the little village of Killiney overlooking Dublin Bay,
received a letter from a friend in the United States tel|ng them about
Christian Science, what it was, and what it claimed to do. It must have

been a persuasive letter, for Mr. and Mrs. Colles acted promptly. They
sent at once to Boston for a copy of Science and Health, and, when it
393

that they had found

through with an increasing conviction
So
search.
in
been
had
impressed, indeed,
long
something of which they
were they that nothing would do but that they must cross the Atlantic

arrived, read

to learn

it

more about Christian Science from Mrs. Eddy

herself.

few months later they were in Boston,

That was in the fall of 1887.
and after several interviews with Mrs. Eddy they arranged to enter the
class she taught in the March of 1888
shortly before her journey to
class for the reason
Chicago. It was, as may be remembered, a notable
became
well known in the
it
in
afterwards
enrolled
of
those
that so many

movement, among them General Erastus Bates, Edward A. Kimball,

Hannah A.

Larminie,

Anna Dodge and

seem to have developed a

Larminie had studied with Mrs.

the

March

class

was

several others.

special regard for

Eddy

over, the Colleses

Hannah

The

Colleses

Larminie. Mrs.

three years previously, and

begged her to return with

when
them

and commence the work in earnest in Dublin. Mrs. Eddy was

consulted and with her approval the three set out on what was the first

to Ireland

missionary journey of Christian Science beyond the shores of America.

Reaching Dublin late in June, it was not long before Mrs. Larminie

had established

herself in offices at

40 Mountpleasant Square. She seems,

almost at once, to have secured a following, did considerable healing

work and taught at least one class. Mrs. Eddy, however, was eager that
Christian Science should gain a foothold in London. In a letter to a
friend several years kter she recalled that in the very earliest
days of her
work, as far back at 1868, she had remarked to a student that she felt

sure she could

than in

to

"introduce

Christian Science in England

more

readily

America".

Indeed, a study of her letters shows that her thoughts turned constantly
England as a more than favourable field. At the time that Mr. and

Mrs. Colles conferred with her as to the

advisability of

Mrs. Larminie s

joining with them to

sidered going to

make a start in Dublin, Mrs. Eddy seriously con

London herself in order to teach one or more classes.

The turmoil which followed her return from Chicago and the momentous
developments in the years immediately afterwards prevented her from

394

her project, but, as her correspondence with Mrs. Larminie

carrying out
in touch with the movement at the other side of the
clearly shows, she was
Atlantic all the time.

Thus, in November, 1888, she wrote Mrs. Larminie in Dublin, urging

her to extend her mission to London. Perhaps the chief reason actuating
Mrs. Eddy at this time was the fact that several dubious versions of her
teaching were already establishing themselves in London. Mrs. Larminie
complied at once, for in December, 1888, she writes to Mrs. Eddy from

London

that she

true, that the

is

"putting

people

the dividing Hne between the false

may not be

and the

deceived".

In the following year another member of the March, 1888, class,

namely Miss Anna Dodge, at the instance of Mrs. Eddy, went over to

Mrs. Larminie and the Colleses, who had now left

Dublin and lived in Monmouthshire, having a house also in London.

London

to help

All four seem to have been impressed with the extent to which false
teaching had gained a foothold and, as shown by a letter from Miss

Mrs. Eddy, determined to take up the very wise position of

conviction
to the outside world by their works rather than by
carrying
of
their
enunciation
faith. In other words, they set to work to heal
any

Dodge

to

the sick, thus beginning, as Mrs.

Eddy had begun and

successful extensions of Christian Science

as all the

most

had begun.

Writing to Mrs. Eddy under date of September, 1890, in a letter pub

lished in the October Journal, Miss Dodge said "Let Christian Science
:

do healing work

here, seen

and acknowledged, and

it is

established for

time; consequently I shall devote myself to healing, and do no teaching

further than to recommend the textbook to all."
at all for the present

all

Miss Dodge

later leased

a house at 48 Stanhope Gardens, and

it

was

in this house that the first public Christian Science services were held in

England. They continued, however, only for a couple of months, and

then the little group apparently decided once again that they should
devote themselves simply to healing. As a consequence, three years passed
before public services were held again. Then, finally, in the summer of
1896, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, of London was definitely

395

established at 57 Bryanston Street

and

advertised

its

regular services in

the Journal.

Shortly before this was done, Mrs. Colles and other members of the
group had written to Mrs. Eddy asking her to send to them a teacher

of recognized standing
establishing
request,

who

could help them for a time in the work of

and expanding the Church and

teaching. In response to this

Mrs. Eddy arranged with one of her students, Mrs. Julia Fieldand so early in the summer of 1896 Mrs.

King, to undertake the work,

Field-King sailed for England.

She was in many ways a remarkable

woman. Born on an Iowa farm,

displayed a more than usual aptitude for study, and ultimately

she early
to Oberlin College in Ohio. There, after taking her baccalaureate
degree, she studied medicine, practised for eleven years and taught in

went

Chicago Medical College. She married early and was widowed within
a few years, and then, in the early eighties, became interested in Christian
Science through a lecture delivered by Emma Hopkins, who, it will be
remembered, was one of the first editors of the Journal. She went

through

a class with Mrs.

Eddy

in September, 1888,

and

later settled in Seattle,

where she quickly developed a large practice.

From the first, she seems to have attracted the attention of

Mrs Eddy,
who, early in 1891, invited her to come to Boston and assume the editor
ship of the Journal Mrs. Field-King did good work. Although in the
end she

suffered the fate

common

to the favourites, her star

was for the

moment

in the ascendancy. She had been a successful

practitioner in
Seattle and also a successful teacher. She was,
moreover, a cultured

woman well versed in all social amenities, and so taking her all in all,
Mrs. Eddy evidently thought she would be a suitable woman to send as
special envoy to London. This judgement was well founded, for

although

at first disappointed with the situation

she wrote to Mrs.

in the
July of 1896 that the general thought in England was
far back as
it was in the United States fifteen or
twenty years ago" nevertheless,
she seems to have achieved almost instant success as a
teacher, and in

Eddy

"as

unexpected quarters.

396

Christian Science in the United States had its beginnings among the
humblest people; in England, it began rather among those at the other
end of the social scale. The Earl and Countess of Dunmore, Sir Douglas
Galton, Sir William Marriott, Colonel Hamilton and many other well-

known people became interested.

weE

and then in the winter of 1896 occurred one

of those amazing onslaughts on the new teaching which were so charac
All went

for a time,

of the early days of its history.

In November, Harold Frederic, the American novelist, died in Lon
don, and at the inquest it was shown that he had been attended by a

teristic

Christian Science practitioner. In spite of the fact that Frederic had been
by an orthodox physician before he appealed to Christian Science

treated

and was

under the care of a physician at the time of his

death, the practitioner, a Mrs. Mills, was arrested and charged with
murder. She was ultimately exonerated, but the case attracted a tremen
for help

also

dous amount of attention. Such notoriety was bound to hamper in some

degree the spread and prosperity of the movement abroad. Christian
Science had not yet achieved a sustaining momentum in England and

Mrs. Eddy quickly made it plain that she considered the Frederic affair
a serious set-back. To Mrs. Field-King she wrote that students should
"never take a case of so doubtful a kind/ And,
according to the report
of Sue Harper Mims, the Atlanta teacher, she told her gift-minded stu
dents that she "would rather have had the demonstration made in that

home

in

London where Harold

Frederic

was than to have

all

the gifts

Nothing in twenty years had harmed the Cause so much, she

insisted, since the survival of her doctrine depended wholly upon its heal

on

earth."

their fruits ye shall know them."

of
these
difficulties, the definite establishment of Christian
spite
in
London
Science
and the extraordinary appeal it made to people of

ing works.

"By

In

and influence placed the movement finally on a recognized inter

Ten years before The Times had regarded it complacently
as a "rather naive product of a rather naive people". But from now on,
as far as the outside world was concerned, the movement was able to

culture

national basis.

397

drawn from all walks

point to a large and increasing number of adherents
in life, from the highest to the most humble, on both sides of the Atlantic.

woman in Concord was concerned, there were

times when a very human sense of satisfaction would reign for a moment,

As

as

far as the elderly

when

she wrote to her son George that

and

princes, marquises

with her; that

marchionesses"

Hoke Smith

"Lords

came

and

ladies, earls

and

to see her or corresponded

declared she was the most illustrious

woman

on the continent; and that senators and congressmen sought her advice.
But, next minute, she had deflated her own balloon with the cryptic re

made the least proud by it or a particle happier."

mark that she was
She goes calmly forward. In her letters, as in a few isolated cases in
"not

again and again the old Adam of the

sternness with backsliders and unbe

may be seen arising

Mark s terrible
heritage

her writings,

Baker

lievers; his masterfulness

But the course of

Abigail always

daughter

Mary

and

intolerance; his pride of place

final victory

was

all

on the Ambrose

and

family.

side. Just as

won

in her struggle with Mark, so the Abigail in her

rode more and more to victory, until it was, in the end,

completely triumphant. Mark comes out at times and suns himself, as

in her short autobiography Retrospection and Introspection, where she
dwells for a page or two upon her family history and seeks to make the
best and more than the best of her strangely
failing son. She indulges it
all for a moment, and then the
the
and
Abigail
Mary in her are found

writing that it all amounts to just nothing at all :

is well to know . . . that our material, mortal
"It

record of dreams, not of

man s

place in the Science of being. It

shadow when

real existence,
is

history

is

but the

and the dream has no

as a tale that

is

told

and

as the

it declined^."

And

then she adds, almost

impatiently : "Mere historic incidents and
events
are
frivolous
and of no moment, unless they illustrate
personal
3
the ethics of Truth/

Her one
Cause, and
1
3

Retrospection

thought, now, more than ever, was the extension of the

may be ventured that the only abiding satisfaction she

it

and

got

Introspection, p. 21.

Ibia.t p. 21.

398

out of the lords and the ladies, the senators and congressmen, was the
it all afforded of the progress of that Cause. And so she writes

evidence

me

of some

learned long ago that the world could neither deprive

5
I
ambition and one joy/
thing nor give me anything, and have now one
And then, as if reflecting on even this, she adds "But if one cherishes
"I

ambition unwisely, one

will

1 Miscellartffous
Writings, p. 281.

399

be chastened for

it."

Two

THE TWO YEARS, 1897 and

of
years of attainment. Out

42

Years

1898, were for Mrs. Eddy, very notably,

was constantly
had
she
which
long been matur
beset, she brought to fruition two plans
of the Christian Science Publishing Society on a
ing, the establishment
the turmoil with which she

sure basis as an irrevocable Trust,

and the founding of a weekly magazine

form of the Christian Science SentineL They were years, too, of

many other outward and visible signs of expansion. In the summer of
1897 she received a great assembly of Christian Scientists to the number

in the

View, while towards the close of

1898 she gathered around her in Concord, on two bleak November days,
a group of chosen men and women students, summoned for what she
of

some three thousand

evidently designed as a

at Pleasant

new missionary

effort, to

what was to prove her valedictory in the matter of

The

whom

she delivered

class teaching.

View

on the afternoon of Monday, 5th

it an
about
must
have
1897
had
inescapable air of triumph, of
July,
joy at last in the morning after a very long night of struggle and no
little

gathering at Pleasant

sorrow. It was Independence Day, for the Fourth, falling

on a
400

Sunday

that year, the national

hoEday was kept on the following day.

In order to avoid anything in the nature of a pilgrimage to Concord

from distant parts of the country, Mrs. Eddy had not issued her invita
tion until the

Sunday morning

service the

letter to

Beloved

she wrote :

"I

"My

invite you,

Church",

one and

all,

day before. Addressing

to Pleasant View, Concord,

tier

New Hamp

on July 5th, at 12 :30 p.m., if you would enjoy so long a trip for
so small a purpose as simply seeing Mother."
shire,

The

however, was dispatched from Concord on June 30, and

somehow or other news of its contents got abroad almost immediately
letter,

and word was telegraphed

result that

to newspapers all over the country, with the

hundreds of Christian Scientists from as far west as Kansas

City set out at once for Boston.

On

Sunday morning The Mother Church was thronged. The

First

Reader, after reading the letter already quoted, gave notice as to the

arrangements that had been made for the journey to Concord, the time
and place of departure of the trains, the cost of tickets, and so forth.
Trains were to leave Boston at half-past nine in the morning. Ushers
were appointed to show the way to the cars. The sale of tickets was pro
vided in such a

way that

all

could be accommodated.

one of the hottest months of the year in Boston, and the heat
July
almost proverbially reaches its peak on Independence Day. This year
is

was no exception. As the heavily laden special

North Station, there was every indication of

trains pulled out of the

"the

was amply

wrath to

come",

and

All of the newspaper accounts of the

matter dwell on die heat, but also on the fact that nobody seemed to
care what the weather was like.
it

When

fulfilled later on.

the trains arrived at Concord, the travellers numbering well

over two thousand, found every available vehicle that could be requisi
tioned in and around Concord waiting to carry them to Pleasant View,

and by 12 :30 the entire party had reached its destination and the visitors
spread themselves over the lawn beneath the tower window.
All Concord joined in the celebration. The Honourable A. B. Wood401

worth,

mayor of the

city,

was present in the

chair,

and about one o clock

Mrs. Eddy came out of the house, accompanied by the Chairman of the
Board of Directors of The Mother Church, Edward P. Bates. Very

many

of those present had never seen her before and pressed eagerly
her, as cheers of greeting went up from all

forward to get a glimpse of

sections of the crowd.

The Mayor was

the

first

to speak,

and

his

commendably short address

served to indicate not only the standing which Mrs. Eddy had by this
time attained in her own community, but also the personal regard in

which she was held by those who did not share her
"Ladies

and gentlemen

It gives

me

great

faith.

pleasure",

said the

Mayor,

comply with the request of Mrs. Eddy, that, as Mayor of Concord,

I should welcome you to our
This I do with the most cordial feeling
city.
"to

me a great company of
of the country to express

possible, for I recognize the fact that I see before

men and women who

have come from

their devotion to the

religion of God
as it has been the more
clearly revealed

of her

all parts

and of

Christ, the great Healer,

through the insight and the power

who

has bidden you here. May this

day be one long to be remem
bered as the occasion when you saw her whom
you most delight to

honour, in her beautiful home and surrounded by the charming scenery

she loves so well."

At

the conclusion of the

Mayor s address, Mr. Bates remarked that

no introduction to Mrs. Eddy nor she to it, as all
knew her though some had never seen her before. And then Mrs.
Eddy
spoke in her usual calm, unhurried way and in a voice which carried to
the audience needed

the limits of her audience. In the

atmosphere of all that had grown up
around her and her teaching, it must have been an
impressive scene. The
Boston Herald in a report of the matter
a
vivid
the view
presents
picture,

over the valley bathed in sunshine, the blue summits of the distant hills
and the great throng in bright summer
clothing, set off against a back
ground of green. And then the tall, slim figure of Mrs.
clad in

Eddy,

lavender and black

lace,

outlined clearly against the shadows of the

veranda.

402

"The

full

profile",

view

and her

it,

presses

said the Boston Globe,

extremely delicate

is

hair

is

silver

"is

sharp and keen, the face in

and tender motherly more nearly ex

white. She wore her badge of ruby and

diamonds as a Daughter of the American Revolution."

Mrs. Eddy s address on this occasion, afterwards republished in her
book Miscellaneous Writings, is one of the most interesting of her public
utterances.

In many ways,

as

might be expected,

it is

a quiet paean of

triumph.
"Today",

she said,

religious freedom, but

The

commemorate not only our nation s

a greater even, the

liberty of the sons of

civil

and

God, the

and radiant

reality of Christianity, whereof our Master

c
works that I do shall he do ; and, The kingdom of God

inalienable rights
said:

"we

cometh not with observation (with knowledge obtained from the senses)
but
of

The kingdom of God is within you,

within the present possibilities

mankind."

Then

she went

on with no

leaves of old-time

little

eloquence to

tell

how from the

"falling

men might

learn the parable of that hour,

that
all
error, physical, moral, or religious, would "fall before
namely,
Truth demonstrated, even as dry leaves fall to enrich the soil for
faiths"

fruitage".

And

so she spoke for some ten minutes or more,

and then with that

indescribable ease which was one of her great attractions she spread out
her hands to the audience, and, having turned for a moment to those

who were

beside her

"Friends,

am

on

the veranda, she concluded :

not enough the

new woman

of the period for out

not broad enough for me,

door speaking, and the incidental platform is

but the speakers that will now address you one a congressman may
improve our platforms; and make amends for the nothingness of matter
with the allness of Mind."

There were more speeches and

letters

and telegrams. The

last

speech

was that by General Erastus N. Bates. As will be remembered, he was a

veteran of the Civil War and had been a man noted for his courage.

With
403

all

the simplicity of a soldier he told what he

owed

to Christian

Science,

how at the close of the war he had returned to his home a physical
days numbered by his friends and physicians, his own expecta
life limited to a
very short time; how Christian Science had

wreck, his
tion of

brought him out of what was virtually his grave, and how, knowing this,
his audience would not wonder that his heart should now overflow with
love

and gratitude toward her whom

in

preservation of his earthly life so that he

not three, but four score years and ten.

The meeting which assembled

later,

was very

in

different in character.

Independence Day had been a

an

especial sense

he owed the

had now reached well nigh

his,

Concord, some eighteen months

The

View on
The
of
new
inauguration

gathering at Pleasant

veritable jubilee of achievement.

meeting in November of the following year was the

labours. Mrs. Eddy, full of plans for the future, sought to determine the

had to work with; in other words, to review her resources

and find out by personal test whom she might count upon to be faithful.
The problems to be met were many. She was confronted with a tre

materials she

mendously expanding movement, and experience in the past had shown

her that nothing was more dangerous to orderly progress than zeal with
out knowledge. As far as her own personal contacts with the movement
were concerned, she had been steadily withdrawing for over ten years,
with mixed results. As far back as 1888, in a letter to the National Chris
tian Scientist Association, she

had

two years she had been

gradually withdrawing from active membership and that this policy on
her part had "developed higher energies on the
part of true followers,
said that for

and led to some

startling departures on the other hand".

Similar registration of advantage and
disadvantage was characteristic
of all the years that intervened. Mrs.
Eddy s great and increasing diffi
culty, as the movement developed, was to find men and women capable of
faithful service and work, without
entering into the age-old competition
as to which should be the
greatest.

Late in 1898, she determined upon an

inventory. And so on Tuesday,
the 15th, she sent out an identical
or
telegram to some

November

sixty

seventy of her students scattered east of the Great Divide, telling

them
404

that

they would be in the Christian Science Hall in Concord at four

if

o clock on the following Sunday afternoon, November the 20th, she

would have
great blessing in store" for them.
"a

If

nothing

question,

a test of obedience and willingness to act without

successful, for everyone of those thus invited imme

else, it-was

and

it

was

Boston and Concord. They came from as far west as

Kansas City, from as far south as Memphis, and as far north as Toronto.
Some of those invited reached Concord only just in time, but the great
diately set out for

majority were present at the Sunday morning service in the Concord

one knew it at the time, but, later, many of them looked
Church.

No

back with interest on the fact that the reading from the Bible at that
service was the Tenth Chapter of Luke relating the sending out of the
seventy disciples.
By four o clock in the afternoon,
the Christian Science Hall. Mrs.

all

those invited

had assembled

in

Eddy was not present but Edward A,

Kimball from Chicago, who was rapidly coming into prominence in the
movement, stepped up on the platform and read a letter from Mrs. Eddy,
explaining that she had not in advance divulged the purpose of her

summons

as she did not wish to stir

share this

opportunity."

receive

three.

The purpose? This

from me one or more

to be determined

The work,

up those others who would

by the

designed

to"

representative group

lessons in Christian

results

shown

"wish

but, in

Science,"

any

case,

the

to

was
number

"to

not to exceed

impart a fresh impetus to the movement,

would be without money and without

price.

In the years to follow a cloak of mystery was to be drawn about this

memorable event, but at the time it was regarded as anything but esoteric.

Two newspaper reporters

one of whom,

at least,

was never a Christian

were among those invited and no one was pledged to secrecy.

recorded the experience in considerable detail and, since there is

Scientist

Many

virtually

on

no disagreement

as to the content of the material covered

the general impression created, the reader of today

accurate picture of an historic moment.

is

Mrs. Sue Harper Mims, the Atlanta teacher, describes the

405

and

not without an

"class"

as

an examination, with some teaching." Arriving promptly at

Mrs. Eddy spryly and gracefully mounted the platform. Her snowwhite hair, in loose waves or curls about her forehead, was uncovered.

"principally

four,

Handsomely

attired in

skirt

of black moire and a waist of white silk

covered with net and heavily trimmed in jet, her cape was thrown back
to reveal the
large diamond Cross, given her by Mrs. Stetson, and the
diamond and ruby badge of the D.A.R. Against the red-plush chair she

was a

striking figure.

Her

gestures, as always effective, were accentuated

by white-kid gloves, which she did not remove.

In her greeting, she said she had been
waiting fifteen years to meet
such a band of faithful workers. Then, without more ado, she
got down
to the business
you?"

The

on hand by asking each one

elicited little

Truth, Love and also

asked,

"Will

you

God? What is
It
this

in turn,

God

"What is

to

words borrowed from Science and Health,

comment. But when one hapless youth defined God as Life,

replies, largely in

tell

"destruction,"

me how God

there to

is

he was gently but devastatingly

destruction? Is there anything but

destroy?"

took quite some time,

naturally, to get around the large class, but
session was to last two hours and there was still some attention re

served for other matters.

Mrs. Eddy

said,

"and

"You

have told

now you must

live

me

up

to

wonderful things
them."

today,"

If Science

was to

be practical, they must prove their

precepts by works rather than words.
For herself, she had three times raised the
dead, she assured them, and
cited one instance. She was sent for
a woman
that her child

by
crying
was dead. Putting the mother out of the room, she took the child
up into
her arms and
In
an
hour
she
called
the
mother
back
and the child
prayed.
ran to meet her, restored not
only to
revelation that ever

saw

came to

life

and that it was impossible

She went on to relate how those who

"She

life

but to health.

her, she recalled,

The

very

was that she could not

for her to

first

die.

die."

merely called for her were healed

before she could get to them and then were loath to
admit that God
heals. So anxious was she to have them
the
truth that she
acknowledge
said to herself on one
"He
occasion,
(the patient) must not get well
until I get there!" This one did not
get well even after she
got there,

406

reached home, I threw my

and
hands
floor, put my
prayed that I might not
my
moment
touched with the thought that I was anything or did
be for a

and

it

was a

bitter lesson for her. "When I

on the

self

head in

anything, that this was

God s work and

I reflected

There was a pause, and then the students one

to recite their experiences.

Judge

Hanna

Him."

after another stood

said that he, too,

had

up

raised the

dead. Several spoke of revelation coming to them as a marvelous burst

of light, some describing it as literally flooding Science and Health as

The

was so impressive that when a Dr.

Stockman rose he was too overcome by emotion to speak.

they read.

scene in the

little

hall

Before closing, Mrs. Eddy had a few words to say on supply. Because
is All, man cannot lack. When one stands before a mirror, the re

God

the same as the original. "Now you are God s reflection. If

hands are full, your hands are full. If you image Him, you cannot

flection

His

is

lack."

The

had been

so very satisfactory, their teacher observed as she

this to be
left the platform, that there would be but one more session
class

held next day at one o clock.

The second and

about four hours and emphasized,

according to George Wendell Adams, the basic and vital truth that one
infinite Principle can only be manifested as one infinite idea, or reflection,
final session lasted

of course, was the

compound idea, man,"

How, though, to get down to cases, is instantaneous healing to be
done? Many were the answers to this question, ranging all the way from
"which,

"Realize

the ever-presence of

God"

to

"Deny

the claims of

evil."

When

had been heard from, Mrs. Eddy smilingly said the answer was simple.
is to love!" If one lives love and knows
only love, nothing is impos
but
sible in the way of healing.
love!" But was not the
nothing

all

"It

"Be

good and evil? Ah, yes.

must
love
like
he,
Jesus,
only
righteousness but, by the same token,
he must hate iniquity. Bearing out this theme, she was later to denounce

practitioner required to discriminate between

Not

to

no

John Lathrop the Three Monkeys

evil"

tists

407

as a

do not

"See

no

evil,

hear no

symbol of heathen philosophy, saying,

close their eyes to evil

but open

them."

evil,

"Christian

speak
Scien

Those who were un-

able or unwilling to recognize error as something to be corrected she

found "unteachable." The general tendency, on the other hand, to be
come fascinated with error instead of going on through to the truth, she

dismissed with the story of the man who killed a fox, stuck its tail out
at the crowd which soon
through a hole in the door and then laughed
collected to discuss "how the fox got through that little hole." Human
beings were

"always

reason for something that never

trying to find the

she concluded.
the human, it is good to think of God
another point she said
as our Father and Mother, with us every moment, giving us everything
Divine provision was
good and beautiful, caring for our human bodies."

happened,"

At

"In

a scale, she explained, with infinite good on the side of Spirit. Every
be on the side of infinity, while
thing put into the scale of Spirit would

like

on the side of limitation.

everything put into the scale of matter weighed
as Life, Truth, Love,
be
understood
to
was
now
The Trinity of old
wherein

man

reflects all that

triune, the idea of Life,

God

is.

With God

Truth, Love and

"living

triune,

man must

be

in the thought of his

Truth,
(As an afterthought, she was
to send each student a written statement on the Trinity, defining Father
as man s divine Principle, Son as His spiritual idea or image, and Holy
ever-present, infinite Life,

Love."

Ghost as divine Science, making

Life, Truth, Love, while

it

"out

"Jesus

in the

of the flesh Jesus

flesh"

was the

the wayshower to
Christ.")

Dismissing as absurd the literal interpretation of the Bible, she said

reminded her of the farmer who claimed scriptural authority for re

fusing to let his hired hands go for water on a hot day.

that thirsteth!" was the Biblical injunction, he insisted.

Who

"Hoe,

everyone

those present would like to translate for her into the

some
tongue"
passage from the Bible? The youthful John Lathrop,
asked about the women who brought sweet spices to the tomb of Jesus,
cc
said
Well, Mother, you know they were women and women have the
highest idea of God." But Mrs. Eddy was heard distinctly to murmur,
don t know about that." She let him finish and then she asked Mrs.
Mims to come up onto the platform with her.
want them all to see

among

"new

"I

"I

you."

The

stone that was rolled away from the sepulchre, Mrs.

Mims
408

volunteered, was the concentrated

and removing
something
it

out.

loved

human

belief that Life

was

limited,

meant seeing immortality. But Mrs. Mims had

in mind and here was the ideal opportunity for bringing

this stone

else

Those

at the tomb, disciples of another day,

"saw

what our be

Mother

Through

has, through Science and Health, enabled us to see.

this book we have seen all that they saw and more, and we owe

to her, this beloved one who is God s messenger today." Like an

awaited signal, this brought a flood of tributes from the assembled stu
dents. "How could we forget you?" was heard on all sides. Judge Hanna
it all

came

to his feet again, this time to say that in his position he

was such

a target for evil that blackness hid the horizon except when he turned to
Mrs. Eddy as "the Revelator for this Age." Few if any present failed to
voice the

had

same thought.

all finished,

"if

"My

dear

children,"

you had not seen

it,

Mrs. Eddy said when they

have had to teach you

I should

could not have avoided telling you that when my students become
blinded to me as the one through whom Truth has come to this age, they

this. I

Tears of joy were upon her cheeks, according to the

and she brought her class to a close with the joyous
benediction of one who has drunk deeply of the Holy Grail that is a

go

straight

down."

written accounts,

sacred goal attained.

These two meetings

in Concord are perhaps specially important to the

of
this
record in that they afford an interesting glimpse of the
purpose
inner life of the Christian Science movement about this time and of Mrs.

Eddy s relation to

it.

The

struggles

and

trials,

defections

and

disloyalties,

which seem to crowd themselves into every period of this woman s life
were, it now becomes increasingly clear, very far from being the whole
of the story. Back of them all and apparently quite unaffected by any of
them was a tremendous development constantly reaching new expansions
only to exhibit unmistakable signs of going on further still.

Some twenty years

and Health

before,

"Undisturbed

senses, Science,

still

Mrs. Eddy had written in her book Science

amid the jarring testimony of the material

enthroned,

harmonious, divine Principle,

present and

409

eternal."

is

is

unfolding to mortals the immutable,

unfolding Life and the universe, ever

AFTER

43

Josephine WoodTbuiry Again.

WHATEVER PEACE MRS. EDDY

attained at almost any period of her life,

but especially in her latter years, was attained in spite of, rather than

because of, circumstances. It

faithful friends

and

helpers,

is

true that she was

and that she was

messages of gratitude and loyalty from

all

now surrounded by

daily the recipient of

over the world, yet hardly a

week passed but that some friend disappointed her, or some trusted lieu
tenant failed in a given task, or someone she had
long striven to help
finally fell

away.

Worse

still,

others proved to be sources of great

em

barrassment.

notable instance of this last was Josephine

Woodbury, who here
once again makes a rather tragic entrance. Mrs.
Eddy had no doubt gone
far out of the way to keep this
spectacularly unconventional student in

and out of the public limelight Despite the

notoriety occasioned
her
two
before
that
her child had been
by
housetop proclamation
years
virginally conceived, when the Church was reorganized in 1892 her
the fold

ap

plication for

membership was accepted

albeit

conditionally.

Incidently, this ingenious device of keeping a

member

in line

by plac-

410

ing

him on probation instead of excluding him, was to be employed there

by the Church with astonishing success in case after case, although

after

must be admitted that

it

The

it

failed in this instance.

was not to be easily harnessed. Before very

was found to be involved in two law suits, one with a certain

irrepressible Josephine

long she

Fred D. Chamberlain, who charged her with alienating his wife s af

fections, and the other a divorce action brought by a Mrs. Evelyn I.
Rowe on the grounds that her husband had been devoting practically all
his earnings to the support of

of

Mrs. Woodbury

son, the

little "Prince

Peace."

The Boston

Traveler published a spicy and embroidered article on

Mrs. Woodbury was not the type to submit to ridicule

these affairs, but

without a
for

libel.

letters

fight. Greatly daring, she brought action against the Traveler

This, Mrs. Eddy indicated by one of those sternly inexorable

which she knew so well how to write when faced with an impasse,

last straw. "How dare you in the sight of God and with your
character behind the curtain of your students ready to lift it on you
pursue the path perilous?" she demanded. Swiftly, then, the Church acted

was the

and Mrs. Woodbury was

effect

"forever

excommunicated,"

being inserted in the Journal for June, 1896.

Her

a notice to this
libel suit

against
the newspaper collapsed and she found herself ostracized by the world
she had built up for herself, adrift in what must have seemed a desolate

and uncharted sea.

But Josephine Woodbury had been taught there was no living without
religion and no religion without a church and so it was not long before
she hired rooms in the Legion of Honour Hall in Boston, and there
every Sunday afternoon she or her daughter, Gwendoline, preached to

a group of her followers and others to the number of some one hundred

and

fifty.

The

following year, namely, 1897, about the time of the gathering at

Concord recorded

in the last chapter, Mrs.

War

Woodbury

published a

in Heaven. In this she gave what

pamphlet
purported to
be an account of her experiences in Christian Science. Later on still, she

entitled

411

Arena, in which she launched an attacLon Mrs. Eddy which for simple violence had hardly been equalled
up to that time. She ridiculed the English in Science and Health, accused
Mrs. Eddy of "trafficking in the temple", and with fine indignation

published, a series of articles in the

charged her with teaching the doctrine of spiritual conception. Mrs.

Eddy s title, "Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science," she derided
as paradoxical,
saying:

"Surely

a Discoverer cannot be the Founder

of that which she has been under the

necessity of discovering; while a
Tounder would have no need of discovering her own foundation."

She

had "discovered" were "ways of perverting

and prostituting the science of healing to her own ecclesiastical ag
grandizement, and to the moral and physical depravity of her dupes. ...
insisted that all she

What

she has founded

mental in

,"

she added,

"is

a commercial system,

proportions, but already tottering to

unfortunate excursion into prophecy!
its

its

fall."

monu

Another

Mrs. Eddy, in the course of her message to The Mother Church de

on June 4, 1899, and later republished in her book

livered

Miscellany,
which, although it did not mention Mrs. Woodbury
by name, was construed by her and her followers into a direct attack.
"The doom of the
"referred
Babylonish woman", Mrs.

made a statement

Eddy declared,

to in Revelation,

being fulfilled. This woman, drunken with the blood

c
of the saints, and with the blood of the
martyrs of Jesus drunk with the
wine of her fornication would enter even the
of
church, the
is

body

Christ, Truth; and, retaining the heart of the harlot

and

the purpose of

the destroying angel, would

pour wormwood into the waters the dis
turbed human mind to drown the
strong swimmer struggling for the
for
and
if
shore, aiming
Truth,
possible, to poison such as drink of the
1

living

water."

Josephine Woodbury was outraged. Within a few weeks she

brought
a suit for libel against Mrs.
Mrs.
in her

Eddy.
Eddy
reply maintained
that in speaking as she did she was
dealing with a situation, not a person,
and that in mentioning the
woman" she had
"Babylonish

"not

of an individual, but of a

type."

Mrs. Eddy

been speaking,
called to Boston her

Miscellany, p. 125.

412

foremost disciples
this

mentally

new

including Mrs. Stetson and

Mr. Kimball

to handle

crisis.

There were many

delays, but

when

the action did

come up, the court

dismissed the case at the end of the plaintiffs evidence.

That, as far as Mrs. Woodbury was concerned, was the end. Insisting
that she was being mentally hounded by Mrs. Eddy and her followers

and

in serious danger of her

friends wished her to do,

she declined to appeal, as some of her

shortly afterwards she withdrew definitely

life,

and

and finally from the scene, to live out her days in England.
Such an incident, dragging itself out anxiously over the weeks and
months and even

years, was only one of many with which Mrs, Eddy

and her movement were beset in these years. Almost every issue of the
Journal contains some reference to cases wherein Christian Science prac
titioners

had been haled before the

courts charged with the unlicensed

practise of medicine, with manslaughter, and so forth. It is true that

practically all such cases resulted in acquittal and that some of the de
cisions later

became

historic, establishing

for the much-enduring

only

trial

added

woman

to trial of faith

precedents for the future, but

Concord they must have represented

and patience, and she had had so many.

at

Nevertheless, looking back on it all in the perspective of the years,

the outstanding feature of these times, as far as the Christian Science
movement was concerned, was sustained and amazing growth, and if

were a history of the movement rather than a biography of

founder, it would be necessary to travel far afield to get a true picture

this record
its

year by year of what was happening. For at the turn of the century Chris
tian Science had literally spread all over the world. The Journal for
March, 1900, shows Christian Science practitioners established in Sophia,
Bulgaria; Peking, China; in

Hawaii and the

Philippines; in Australia,

England, France and Germany. Within a few years Mark Twain, one
of its most caustic critics, was to admit that it was spreading at the rate,
it, of a new church every four days. And Mrs. Eddy at Pleasant
never
lost touch with any of it. More and more, did those around
View
her seek to take over routine business and as much else as possible, but

as he put

413

that

Mrs. Eddy kept in touch with anything and everything that had any

important bearing on the spiritual or physical growth of the movement

is
amply shown by her letters and messages. Always she had been a re
markable correspondent, and although now she dictated a good deal, yet,

even at eighty and afterwards, she spent long hours each day at her desk
writing letters, messages, articles for the Journal or Sentinel, or working
at a task which was never done, revising Science and Health,
It

had become a

practice,

when a new church was

built

and dedicated,

Mrs. Eddy, notifying her of the fact and inviting her, no

matter what the distance, to be present. Mrs. Eddy always replied to
to write to

the invitation, personally, either by letter or by telegram, and these letters

to churches are today among the best-known of her shorter writings.
cover a wide field; from a nearby town, such as Lawrence, Massa
chusetts, to San Jose in California; Toronto, Canada; Sydney, Australia;

They

or London or Edinburgh. Several of them were published in her book

Miscellaneous Writings, which appeared in the spring of 1897, but most
of them appear in her book The First Church of Christ, Scientist and

Miscellany, published shortly after her death.

One of the most interesting of these letters

is

that written to the

own Concord on the occasion of its final organization,

February, 1899. It was at a time, as has been seen, when newspaper
attacks on Mrs. Eddy and her teaching were
particularly virulent. Jose
was
her
broadsides
in the Arena and, a few
phine Woodbury
preparing
church in her

months previously, had published her War in Heaven. And so Mrs.

Eddy s letter to the Concord Church is full of exhortation to patience
and to a recognition of the fact that those who attacked them did so for
the most part in ignorance

resentment She herself

and were deserving of compassion rather than

had patience, she said, with the attacks of the

newspapers because she "sympathized with their ignorance of Christian

Science", and because she knew that "no Christian can or does under
stand this Science and not love
"Rest

assured",

she added,

it".

"that

the injustice

to this denomination of Christians will cease,

done by press and pulpit

it no
longer blesses

when

this denomination."

414

Yet

in spite of the bitterness of the attacks

upon her from

without,

Mrs. Eddy was even more beset by adulation from within. Her writings
maintained that as far as her followers were concerned, while attacks

would only serve to strengthen them,

hindrance

Her

if

not a

letters

deification of herself

was only a

fatal obstacle to progress.

and

writings, about this time, are full of exhortations

against personal attachment to herself. Her teaching could not be ex

pected to survive if a person were to displace Principle for the student.
"Those

who look

for

me

in person or elsewhere than in

my writings,

lose

me instead of find me," she wrote to one correspondent, and in a vigorous

article entitled "Personal Contagion", published in the Journal, she said
:

"There

sinking

And

was never a
its

religion or philosophy lost to the centuries except

divine Principle in personality."

then she adds in a passage eloquent of patience sorely tried

by
"I

Boston in the height of prosperity to retreat from the world, and to

seek the one divine Person, whereby and wherein to show others the foot
left

steps

from sense to Soul.

To give me this

opportunity

is all

that I ask of

mankind."

But

it

had been

was a problem

particularly sensitive to

it

again. All her life she

human affection,

and, for years, in spite

pitiful failing, she had accepted it with new

had been sincerely offered. And so in these times of

of repeated betrayals

hope whenever

up again and

to be taken

and

adulation and hero worship she often found

what apparently meant so much to them.

An interesting instance is afforded in an
for June, 1899,

by one Martha

it

hard to deprive others of

published in the Journal

Sutton-Thompson, giving an account of
article

she paid to Boston and Concord. She had come to Boston for the
purpose of attending a class in Christian Science and, after describing

visit

how much

she kept hoping that before the class was over Mrs. Eddy
herself might come to see them, she goes on to tell how when the class

had come to an end without Mrs, Eddy s appearing, she and her friend
determined to go to Concord in the hope of catching a glimpse of their
leader.

415

They were

successful, for she writes

"The
following day five of us made the journey to Concord, drove
out to Pleasant View and met her face to face on her daily drive. She

seemed watching to greet

when

she caught sight of our faces, as

our carriage turned a little, she instantly half rose with expectant face,
bowing, smiling, and waving her hand to each of us; then as she went
us, for

out of sight, kissed her hand to

The writer then goes on to describe what
all."

it is

it all

meant

to her,

and when

remembered that Mrs. Eddy was in daily

receipt of letters from all

not difficult to understand

quarters expressing similar sentiments, it is

how she might be torn between a desire to reciprocate
in kind,

and a recognition of

was one of the great foes

the fact that

it all

unrestrainedly

undue devotion to personality

to progress.

not attempt to describe the Leader," Martha Sutton-Thompson wrote, "nor can I say what this brief glimpse was and is to me. I can
only say I wept, and the tears start every time I think of it. Why do I
"I

will

weep? I think

it is

because I want to be like her, and they are tears of

repentance. I realize now what it was that made Mary Magdalene weep
when she came into the presence of the Nazarene; it was not his per
sonality,"

Towards

Mrs. Eddy was full of compassion at

any rate there was here some semblance of an attempt to look away from
effect to Cause
but there was another kind of "gratitude" towards which
Mrs. Eddy always showed herself stern and relentless.
"A

affection such as this

person wrote to

of the occurrence, I
it

she writes in the Journal,

the time
"naming
the influence of your thought on
my mind, and

me,"

felt

produced a wonderful illumination, peace, and understanding

had not thought of the

writer at that time.

When

will the

but,

world

cease to judge of causes from a personal sense of

things, conjectural

and

"*

misapprehensive !
And so it went.

The pathway of what the world would call success was

no more easy for this woman than the long road of toil and
struggle she
had traversed in the earlier days of her
pilgrimage.

Miscellaneous Writings, p. 290.

416

44

Recognition

WITH THE FADING out of the hue and cry which supervened on the Woodbury

libel suits

and the Woodbury

articles in the

Arena, there followed

three or four undisturbed years. As far as the outside public was con
cerned, the articles in the Arena had overstepped the mark. Their mali
cious intent was apparent, and the rapid growth of Christian Science all
over the world, but especially in the United States, and the respect which
it

was gaining resulted in the attacks upon it having, in many cases, the
what was intended* On any issue which really attracts

reverse effect of

demand for good sportsmanship on both sides becomes

and the attacks on Christian Science, especially on its

public interest, the

more

insistent,

founder, began to savour more and more of bad sportsmanship.

The

general public, moreover, was as always interested in success, and

every day that passed showed the Christian Science movement more
successful. And so the years 1901 to 1906 were years of quiet, both as

Mrs, Eddy personally was concerned and her teaching.

Christian Science lectures became periodic features of public

far as

most

417

cities

large and

small,

and some Christian Science

life,

in

lecturers, like

for their eloquence and the con

nature
of
their
vincing
presentation. They attracted large audiences and
could command almost unlimited space in the daily press.

Edward A. Kimball, became famous

Edward A. Kimball, who has already appeared

several times in this

was perhaps the most outstanding instance of really effective

apostleship. Born in Buffalo, New York, on August 27, 1845, he was a
lineal descendant of one Richard Kimball, an Englishman of gentle

record,

birth

who landed

in

New

England

in 1684.

Edward s

father died

when

he was three years old, and the support and care of the children, two
sons and two daughters, devolved upon the mother, Elvira St. John
Kimball. She seems to have been a remarkable woman, one of those rare
people who combined a cultured sensitive mind with a simple capacity

management such as enabled her to raise her family and afford them
more than ordinary opportunities for advancement.
Edward got to work early. At the age of seventeen, after attending

for

public schools in Buffalo, he

afterwards went

on

moved

to Saginaw, Michigan, and soon

to Chicago. There he got a job as
bookkeeper with

a firm of manufacturers, and rose steadily in their

employ until he became
a partner in the firm.

In the early eighties both he and his wife he had married in 1873
suffered from persistent ill-health, and
they both seem to have heard of
Christian Science about the same time,
though through different chan
Mrs. Kimball was healed almost at once. Edward was not so for

nels.

tunate. It

however,

was

it

fully a year before

was complete, and

he

finally got relief.

thereafter both he

the study of the new

teaching with devotion.
and
obtained
instruction
from Mrs.
sought

As

met

When

his wife

he did,
took up

already recorded, they

Eddy in

of the historic class which

and

1888, being

in Boston after Mrs.

Eddy

members

return from

Chicago, and just before she took decision to dissolve her College and
Church and seek retirement in Concord. Ten
years later, they were members of Mrs.
Eddy s last class, the one she taught in Concord in the
November of 1898. Kimball was then a lecturer and a member of the

Board of Education, and recognized

as

one of the

ablest

men

in the

418

movement. In the

latter years of his life as

hall of

size in

a lecturer he could apparently

any part of the world.

any
any
In these years, Edward Kimball and his fellow-lecturers carried their
message everywhere, and from time to time there would come out of
fill

Pleasant

View a word

Sentinel for this

"well done"

of commendation, published in the Journal or

one or that one

had come

to

who had done

well.

And

Mrs. Eddy

mean much.

Another important move

tice of certifying teachers.

at this time

was the resumption of the prac

The Massachusetts Metaphysical

College, it
charter sur

be remembered, had been dissolved in 1889 and its

The state law under which the College was chartered originally
had since been revoked and it became necessary to set up a different ar
will

rendered.

rangement. Accordingly, Mrs. Eddy issued a new by-law in 1899 creating

a "Board of Education," to be constituted of three of her appointees and
authorized to send out twenty-one teachers annually. (Later the number

was changed to

Edward A. Kimball was designated

new auspices. Indeed, he was to continue

thirty triennially.)

to teach the first class under the

in this office for five years

and Mrs. Eddy was to publicly

his passing, that his

correct teaching of Christian Science has

and

"clear,

declare, after

been

an inspiration to the whole field."

Still another step was the establishment on an
orderly footing of what
was later known as the Committee on Publication. Ever since its first
is

appearing, as has been seen, Christian Science had been subject to attack
in the public press. It had invariably found a great cloud of defenders,

always earnest, but not always judicious, and in many cases it had
need of being delivered from its friends. As the teaching spread,

came

clear that

the subject

its

defence was better

and could deal with

left to

objections

it

be

really

understood

knowledge"

rathet than

those

"after

who

much

"after zeal".

And

so

it

became the custom to appoint

in different centres a

com

mittee to correct in every possible way, but especially by means of open

letters to the press or private letters to editors, all utterances that were

regarded as misstatements of Christian Science. It was also his duty to

419

send reports to headquarters in Boston of any developments affecting the

movement, and
difficulties

days.

with medical doctors and

The office

action

especially to aid practitioners

of

"Committee"

more and more

instantly bring

who became

involved in

others, as they often did in the early

was to develop

into a base for concerted

as the years rolled on, for the

effective pressure to bear

on editors and

Committee could

legislators

through

floods of officially inspired letters, and could well nigh swamp with pro
tests any hapless bookseller who undertook to handle literature which the

Church

deemed

authorities

"objectionable."

Meanwhile, as the great organization for so it was by this time was

perfecting itself, Mrs. Eddy in her retirement at Pleasant View was
keeping track of it
obvious danger to

York

built

all

and seeking

at every turn to safeguard

all organizations,

it

namely, materialization.

and dedicated a magnificent church

against the

When New

at the time, it

of the finest ecclesiastical structures in the country

was one

Mrs. Eddy in her

dedicatory message bade its members always to keep before them that
the letter of their work must die,
do all things material, but the spirit
"as

immortal

she added, "that a temple but fore

shadows the idea of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the
of

it is

heavens

"Remember",

grand man or woman, healing sickness and de

builds that which reaches heaven."

while a

silent,

stroying sin,
It was in these years, too, that a
pilgrimage to Concord, at the time of
the annual meeting of The Mother Church, tended to become one of

the most eagerly anticipated privileges of those

journeying to Boston for
the annual gatherings. Mrs.
did
not
issue
invitations every year,
Eddy

and ultimately ceased to issue them at all, seeking, as she did

persistently
at this time, to check the all too
vigorous tendency to focus on her per
sonality.

She was, however, constantly torn between a

sympathy with

who naturally desired to see her from motives of gratitude and

genuine human affection, and disapproval of the unwholesome adulation
those

with which she was

continually burdened.

The

great gathering of 1898, already described, was several times re

peated. In June, 1903, no fewer than ten thousand people journeyed from

420

Boston to Concord and spread themselves over the lawns at Pleasant

View and were addressed briefly by Mrs. Eddy from the balcony outside
her tower window. In 1903, she was eighty-two years of age, as slim and
a voice to the strength and beauty of which Arthur
Brisbane some five years later still was to testify. It carried her brief
address to the utmost limits of the great crowd.
erect as ever, with

There are several records of the scene at the gathering. When Mrs.
Eddy came out on to the balcony, she stood for a moment looking out
over the throng, and then, stretching out her hands with a characteristic
gesture,

bade them welcome

"to

your home in

my

heart".

"Welcome

to

she continued, immediately adding quaintly, "but not

to varying views." And then she went on
"Beloved, some of you have come long distances to kneel with us in

Pleasant

View,"

sacred silence in blest

communion

unity of faith, understanding, prayer,

and

to return in joy, bearing your sheaves with you. In

praise
I repeat to these dear members of my church: Trust in Truth,
parting
*
and have no other trusts

and

The following year, the Church at Concord was completed, and at

the time of the annual meeting Mrs. Eddy addressed an invitation to the
members attending

to

come out

to

Concord and

see the

new Church,

Monday,

invitation that

Mrs. Eddy expected to be present, but an

June 13,

1904".

"in

There was no indication in the

the afternoon,

interesting

little

ceremony had evidently been planned beforehand. Punctually at two

o clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Eddy started out from Pleasant View on
her daily drive. She took her usual route towards the courthouse. The
town was thronged with visitors and as she passed the lawn of the Uni
tarian

Church and the high school and other vantage points, she was
and waving handkerchiefs. Her carriage came to a

received with cheers

on Horth State Street, and she was greeted on behalf of the

church by the President, Mr. E. P. Bates, to whom she presented a little

standstill

rosewood box containing a gavel which, as an enclosed note explained,

had been made from a tree grown on her father s farm at Bow. It was
1

Mhcellany, p. 171.

421

a great day for Concord, and, as was the case with

it

was made a

all these

pilgrimages,

civic occasion.

A few days afterwards, Mrs. Eddy wrote to the Concord newspapers

concerned for the welcome which had been
expressing her gratitude to all
Church. She spoke simply of the pleasure
her
of
members
to
the
extended
it

had

all

given her.

what unanimity

my

"It

was a glad day for me

fellow-citizens vied

Christian Scientists short stay so

And

sweet to observe with

with each other to

make

the

pleasant."

back with the thought

that the earth was at least beginning to help the woman. There was much
to be done. About this time it became evident that The Mother Church
so Mrs.

Eddy

Building in Boston,

accommodate even

at eighty-three could settle

than ten years old, was quite inadequate to

local congregation. It was necessary to hold addi

less

its

on Sundays, and at the time of the annual meeting one of

the largest halls in the city had to be requisitioned to accommodate the
visitors.
Early in 1902, Mrs. Eddy sent a letter to the Board of Directors
tional services

suggesting that they give the matter their careful consideration, and at
the annual meeting in June a resolution was taken pledging any part of
$2,000,000 for the purpose of acquiring additional land and enlarging

The Mother Church

so as to

accommodate

at least five

thousand people.

No sooner was the need made known generally through the Sentinel and
money began to flow in from all parts of the world.
In October of 1903, sufficient sums had been secured to acquire the
necessary land and commence the work of clearing it. Early in 1904, the
the Journal than

foundation stone was kid, and for the next two years the great structure
in building. Fashioned of Bedford stone and
granite, its huge dome,
which still dominates the sky, rose to a height of 224 feet,
higher by one

was

Monument. In the late spring of 1906, the

was
and
the dedicatory ceremonies were set for Sun
building
completed
10.
day, June
foot than the Bunker Hill

Nothing

in the history of the Christian Science

movement,

it

may

be

ventured, served to awaken public attention all over the world to the fact
and the growth of Christian Science more than the
building of The

422

Mother Church extension or annex, as it has come to be called. Nothing

like it had ever been seen before. There were no appeals for money
quite
in the ordinary sense of the word; no suggestion of a bonded indebted
ness; and long before the Church was completed notices to the effect that
no more subscriptions were desired were inserted in both the Journal and
the Sentinel. Newspaper men especially were impressed by this fact more
than any other. The spontaneity of the whole thing made it clear to these
men, accustomed as they were to witnessing the struggles of other de

funds for anything connected with their

work, that Christian Science evidently contained some incentive to action
not shared by all religious bodies. When the day for the dedication of
nominations to raise

sufficient

the great structure came, the acclaim from the press was complete

and

almost unanimous.

Long

before the dedication date, railway companies throughout the

country had announced special excursion rates to Boston and most of

them ran special trains. So great, indeed, was the influx that between

30,000 and 40,000 Christian Scientists were in Boston ready to attend

is, of course, difficult to be sure of such figures, but

the ceremonies. It
the fact that the

new building held between five and six thousand people,

that the dedication ceremonies were repeated six times in the course of

the day

and that the building was

filled to

overflowing at each service

seems to argue that the estimate of 40,000 was not far from the truth.
Each of the six services was the same and of the simplest character, the

main feature being the reading of a dedicatory message from Mrs. Eddy.
This message was dated from Pleasant View the day before, June 9, and
in

many

ways, while characterized by a quite remarkable restraint, was

to all those who had so vigorously opposed her

an appeal of conciliation
in the past.

"A

genuine Christian

and Catholic, D.D. and M.D.,

loves his
It

was

Scientist",

loves all

she said,

who

love

"loves

Protestant

God, good;, and he

enemies."

also

a message of thanks

to each

and everyone who had helped

to bring their hopes to fruition.

"Beloved,"

423

she said,

"I

am

not with you in propria persona at

this

memorial dedication and communion season, but I am with you in spirit

and in truth , lovingly thanking your generosity and fidelity, and saying
virtually

what the prophet said Continue

:

And then,

looking backwards

upon

to choose

herself

whom ye will

and upon the

little

serve!"

Church

which had been the original building, she added "The modest edifice
of The Mother Church of Christ, Scientist, began with the cross; its
excelsior extension is the crown. The room of your Leader remains in
:

the beginning of this edifice, evidencing the praise of babes

and the word

which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Its crowning ultimate rises
to a mental monument, a superstructure high above the work of men s
hands, even the outcome of their hearts, giving to the material a spiritual
the speed, beauty, and achievements of goodness."
significance

At each service was sung one of her hymns, the same one "Shepherd,
It had been
Show Me How To
played on the bells before the first
:

Go".

service in the early

morning and before each of the five thereafter, and

it was
sung by thirty thousand people or more.

in the course of the day

Mary Baker Eddy was

not a great poet or even a poet at all in the strict

sense of the word, but she was a genuine hymn-writer. Her harshest critics
have been compelled to silence before "O er Waiting
of the

Harpstrings

Ye
Show Me How To

Mind",

or

"Saw

My

Saviour",

"O

Gentle

Presence"

or

"Shepherd,

Go".

when day grows dark and

Tear or triumph harms,

So,

cold,

Lead Thy lambkins to the fold,

Take them in Thine arms;
Feed the hungry, heal the
Till the

morning

White as wool,

ere they
depart,

Shepherd, wash them

If the dedication of the

heart,

beam;
clean.

new church roused

the press to special interest

Miscellany, p. 6.

424

and

all

manner of

articles

and

editorial

comment,

this

was nothing to the

by the series of testimony meetings which were held

on the following Wednesday evening. There was no
Boston
throughout
attempt on this occasion to accommodate everyone desiring to attend in
discussion evoked

new church by having a series of meetings throughout the day. The

meeting was held in The Mother Church edifice at eight o clock in the
evening, but it had overflow meetings in practically every hall of any size

the

throughout the city. At each of these meetings, those desiring to testify

were asked to introduce themselves simply by announcing the city from

which they came. It must have been a memorable scene, for in good, bad,
indifferent and broken English came out the cities of the world from

Los Angeles and so on west to Moscow again, with voices

welling up from "down under" all the way. And they bore testimony to
the healing of all manner of disease. Dion s Herald perhaps most nearly

Moscow

to

it all on a
large cross-section of public thought
the
whole
described
development as "audacious, stupendous and

summed up
when

it

the effect of

inexplicable".

In these weeks of June, 1906, Mrs. Eddy was doubtless the most dis
woman in the world. She must have distrusted "tear or triumph"

cussed

but triumph more than

to her there

425

tears. She had grown accustomed to storm, and

was perhaps something even ominous in this loud acclaim.

HA

45

Mark Twain

AS FAR BACK as 1899, Mark Twain had fired his first gun at Christian
Science and its founder in two articles which appeared in the Cosmo

The

politan Magazine.

first,

in the

August

issue,

was

entitled,

"At

the

in October,
Appetite Cure", and the second, which appeared
Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy". There was nothing malicious in
"Christian

the articles and, as

marks,

"Their

Mark Twain s

delightful

humour

re
biographer, Bigelow Paine, justly
even
which
in
awoke a general laugh,

devout Christian Scientists were inclined to

join."

Mark Twain was

Eddy and her book had benefited humanity,

the fun-making which to his mind her doctrine

willing to admit that Mrs.

but he could not

invited.

resist

Today, although worn rather thin

history, the articles are

still

Mark Twain how to

in the light of subsequent

delightful clowning.

No

one knew better

up an inference of his own into a solemn

his
announcement by
opponent and then use it to excellent purpose as a
foil for some
quite hilarious comment. His insistence that Science and
than

build

Health could not, as he averred Mrs. Eddy claimed, have been written
by the Almighty because no foreigner could secure copyright in the

United

States,

is

a case in point.

426

Nothing, however, roused

Mark Twain to more violent explosion than

and there was something about

about
Mrs.
Christian Science, especially
Eddy, which he evidently found
little short of exasperating. To him, one minute, Mrs. Eddy was "easily
an

issue quite impervious to his attacks,

on the planet, and in several ways as easily

most extraordinary woman that was ever born upon
the next,
she was a liar and a fraud, a crook and a charlatan.
Only once did Mrs. Eddy reply to him in a letter to the New York
the most interesting person
the

it";

Herald.

One

of the most

difficult

things to answer successfully

is

a clever

satire. Humanly speaking, any engagement in kind must meet satire with
more pungent satire, must at every point out-Herod Herod. Mrs. Eddy
made no attempt to do anything of the kind. To Mark Twain s direct

charges, she

makes

direct answers without heat or irritation.

Mark Twain

had lampooned her for being styled "Mother" by her followers. She says
word spread
simply that she had begged them not to do so, but that
and then she continues
like wild
"the

fire",

must think the name

not applicable to me. I stand in relation

to this century as a Christian Discoverer, Founder, and Leader. ... I
may be more loved, but I am less lauded, pampered, provided for, and
"I

still

is

cheered, than others before

me."

To Mark Twain s

implied charge that she regarded herself as a "sec

she
that
she considers "self-deification as blasphemous",
Christ",
says
and his further charge that if she does not regard herself as a second

ond

Christ she certainly regards herself as a second Virgin

misses in few words
"I

Mary, she

dis

have not the inspiration nor the aspiration to be a

first

or second

Virgin-mother her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am

remains to be proved by the good I do.
need much humility, wisdom,

We

and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and forecasting

heaven within us. This glory is molten in the furnace of affliction."*
But

if

Mrs. Eddy dismissed Mark Twain

was among her followers one

1
a

Miscellany, p. 302.
303.

Ibid,, p.

427

at least

attack thus briefly, there

who thought

it

might be done

more thoroughly; and when Mark Twain in the early days of 1906
collected his articles together, added to them others not previously pub
lished

and

issued the whole in

book form under the

Edward Kimball undertook to make

Magazine. His article appeared in the May

title

of Christian

reply in the Cosmopolitan

Science,

issue

and immediately

tracted widespread attention, not only for the skill with which

with

Mark Twain and

his book,

but because of

its

of satire which
ball himself

no one

admired

Mark Antony.

able

men",

is its

Mark Twain was

and he was armed with the deadly weapon

in his generation

Mark Twain

knew

better

how to

handle.

immensely, and he made no

conceal his admiration. His line of attack,

of

at

dealt

simple yet masterly

exposition of his concept of Mrs. Eddy s teaching.

The problem before Mr. Kimball was a difficult one.
at the height of his popularity

it

if

so

it

Kim

effort to

should be called,

is

that

an honourable man; they are all honour

underlying theme, and the effect in the case of Mrs.
"Brutus is

Eddy runs true enough to form. By the time he is finished with the "hon
ourable man" and his friends they seem somehow to have lost no little
caste

and importance.

Mark Twain s

objections were in many respects very human objec

the pure fun-making in them had been eliminated,
they
were the objections of the man in the street. Edward KimbalPs
tions.

When

replies

are very

human

replies.

His opening sentence

is

certainly calculated to

arrest attention.
"By

way of justification,

he writes,

"the

in part, of the Christian Science

propaganda,"
is asked to consider for a moment

reader of this article

the startling statement of fact, afforded us

by medical authority, to the
people who die every year, one-half die

effect that of the

fifty million

It
prematurely
may be presumed that before dying nearly all of these
people tried to get well, and that in this effort they had recourse to some
form of material means
it
be concluded that at least

Finally,
may
twenty-five million people die annually because of the
insufficiency of
material means to
cope with disease."

Having

thus laid before the readers an incontrovertible

statement,

428

Cimball goes

on to pay warm tribute

to the

"grand

men and women, who,

medical practitioners, have struggled on through the fluctuations of

uccess and failure, ever deploring the instability of medical theories and

LS

he inadequacy of material

Thus,

in

two

remedies."

brief paragraphs,

he laid before his readers what most

would be compelled to admit was a tragic need and the tragic

nadequacy of the means so far devised to meet it. Christian Science,
it insisted, had no quarrel with any man who sought by any means to
>eople

its voice
neet so urgent a need, but it did
inquiringly to those who
ire dying" and asks if "they are doing the best that can be done to live
"lift

n peace".
There was, therefore, he went on, quite clearly room for another heal
call for one, and where the
ing method. Indeed, there was an urgent
need was so great and the provision for help so utterly inadequate, it

became anyone to heap contumely on a woman who had

heart to render what aid she could.

surely

her

ill

it

in

he writes, "Mrs. Eddy proclaimed to the

"Nearly forty years ago,"
world certain postulates of a religio-scientific nature and declared that the
. . She in
verity thereof can be demonstrated with scientific accuracy.
.

sisted that

God, the

sole creator of all that has actual, legitimate ex

istence, has not created or procured disease and does not make use of it
or co-operate with it for any purpose. She declared that sickness is an

abnormality, wholly illegitimate, unlawful, and unnecessary; that it is

not a natural, indispensable, or irresistible incident of man s normal ex
perience; and, finally, that sickness, being at

human procurement, can

And

then,

warming

be and will be

most but a disorder of

exterminated."

to his subject, he continues

"She

declared that

the demonstrations of Jesus, instead of being works of mystery, were in

attestation of the divinely scientific verity that the nature, power, and

law of

God are

adequately available to a sick

man and

are spontaneously

responsive to his need.

"To

the chief

429

and metaphysicians she declared that,

mischief-maker of the world and the primary cause or essence

scientists, philosophers,

of disease

is

sum

what Paul designated the carnal mind, represented by the

of human fear, ignorance, superstition, sin, and

of an aggregation
erroneous and perverted beliefs and illusions.
"She declared that the one
supreme potentiality of the universe
divine

Mind

furthermore that this mind which was also in Christ,

that will ever effect, the redemption of mortals

all

ness.

"If

is

the

or Spirit, which correctly has been termed omniscience, and

is

equal to, and

from

sin

and

is

sick

these things be true, then

it

follows that the verity thereof sanctions

the unlimited hope and favourable expectations of everyone whose earthly

million people who have tested the truth
sojourn is beset by disaster.

of this Science insistently bear witness that by its means they have been
delivered from every form of disease, sin, vice, fear, and misery."

thus presented his case and established in some degree an

appreciation of the almost pathetic urgency of the situation how in the
presence of so great a need, such bitter hopes deferred and despair, any

Having

honest effort to bring help and comfort should not be met with derision

and contumely Kimball, evidently feeling that his readers were now
with him, turns suddenly on Mark Twain
"A man whose wit has
been the object of a nation s admiration; a
:

man who actually won his way to the generous affection of his country
men by reason of his genial and unmalicious humour and good cheer
this

man, whose mission in

life

was to tinge with gentle glow the rugged

peaks of human existence and, perchance, even to dry the tears of some
who were being stung by the bitterness of man s inhumanity to man ,
comes with deliberate offensiveness to denominate Mrs.
a liar and

Eddy

a fraud."

Thence onwards, Kirnball has an easy time of it. The reader is inclined
him when he declares that there is a certain "venerable

to agree with
stateness"

about

Mark Twain s

statement that Christian Scientists do

not think; that they have no

discriminating faculty; that they are the
dupes of folly and duplicity; that they have no mental integrity; and
that

most of them are engaged in

"an

unholy pursuit of money".

He does
430

not attempt to answer these charges, but comes quickly to Mark Twain s
main theme, namely, that Mrs. Eddy did not and could not have written
Science and Health.

Here Kimball

Clemens has written a

"Mr.

is

certainly at his best.

book",

he says in conclusion,

"through

which runs an unbroken thread of purpose to procure the discomfiture

of Mrs. Eddy. In this behalf, he presents a riot of inconsistency which

we may with

propriety consider. In order to gain his point he is obliged

to present Science and Health as possessing some merit. Then he insists
that Mrs. Eddy never rose to an intellectual altitude that was on a plane

of excellence with the book.

write

it

Then

and that her pretence

Mrs. Eddy,

obliteration of

follows the deduction that she did not

fraudulent.

is

He thus used the book for the

in apparent disregard of the fact that in

an

other place he has written of all the strange and frantic, and incompre
hensible books which the imagination of man has created, surely this one
is the
prize sample . He declares that in several ways Mrs. Eddy is the

most interesting
that

woman

that ever lived

and the most extraordinary

she launched a world-religion which is increasing at the rate of a

every four days ; that it is quite within the probabilities that

new church

she will be the most imposing figure that has cast

globe since the inauguration of our era ; that she

its

some

and then he declares

respects

she

is

and so

is

forth;

shadow across the

profoundly wise in

competent
not have written the most frantic and in
,

his conviction that she could

comprehensible book which

mony

of an

man

has ever created

And

this is the testi

expert!"

And so he rides to this finish

leader of this religious

movement

and that the textbook of

this

concluding that the founder and

a fraud and a cheat, and a tyrant,

"After

is

church

is

an unconscionable

that the

lie;

church organization is venal, its laws outrageous, and its aims degrading,
he declares, I believe that the new religion will conquer half of Chris

tendom

in a

hundred years/ and adds concerning

a compliment to the human race.

perhaps
It was not long before Mark Twain regretted

this statement,

T think

"

it is

man who
431

suffered

all his life

and

it .all

The
when he

very deeply.

especially in his later years

thought of the unkindness and cruelty inflicted by man upon his fellowman, came to see that what he had done in his articles and in his book

was something he would have condemned roundly in another. His bi

ographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, records how one day in conversation
with

Mark Twain

he referred to the matter and

elicited

a very unex

pected comment.
was at this period", Paine

writes, "interested a good deal in mental

and
treated
for neurasthenia with gratifying results.
had
been
healing,
Like most of the world, I had assumed from his published articles that
he condemned Christian Science and its related practices out of hand.
"I

When

I confessed rather
reluctantly

he surprised

me by

Christian Science

the Trinity as

is

much

one day the

benefit I

had received,

Of

course, you have been benefited.

answering:
humanity s boon. Mother Eddy deserves a place in

as any

member of

available a healing principle that for

it.

She has organized and made

two thousand

employed, except as the merest guesswork.

She

is

years has never been

the benefactor of the

"

age.

Mark Twain s
remained for

fun-making, as far as Christian Science was concerned,

many years and still remains, but the sting has long since

gone from it.

There was, however, already developing, even before
launched his satires, a far more deadly attack and
by a
different character.

genius

who had

For several years Joseph

raised the

Mark Twain
man of very

Pulitzer, the strange

New York World

from a

dynamic

"bankrupt

sheet"

one of the most widely circulated newspapers in the United

States by 1906, had been
watching Christian Science and its founder.
With that sure instinct for news which helped to make him one of the
in 1883 to

outstanding figures in modern journalism, he saw from the first the news
of Christian Science in
general and Mrs. Eddy in particular.
man of strong intellect; amazing ability and insatiable ambition, he
had in his latter years, when stricken with
blindness, withdrawn from the
possibilities

world of

men and women

far as his own

personal appearance was
concerned, but from the cabin of his yacht or from some
place of se-

as

432

elusion in the south of France or the coast of

Maine he kept

control of

and every day and many times each day

some one of the small army of secretaries, always at his command, would
cable instructions to New York as to what was to be dealt with promi
every detail of his great paper,

nently and

how

it

was to be dealt

with.

He

seems to have worked up to the conclusion that the Christian

Science movement was a gigantic fraud and that Mrs. Eddy, although
in her day the high priestess of this fraud, had,
become the tool of designing people.

in her later years, simply

The tremendous stir created throughout the country by the dedica

The Mother Church evidently decided Pulitzer that he was right.

tion of

Mrs. Eddy s absence from the scene of her triumph was something he
found it difficult to understand save on the assumption that she was

Her message, so he thought, anyone could

have written. It was quite possible that she was sick and incapable, even
mentally deficient, and that those around her in Concord, in collusion
incapable of being present.

with the church authorities, were keeping up the pretence of her leader
ship to further their own ends. She might even be dead. To be sure,

had

that she went out for a drive daily, but the carriage was a
closed one, and it would be the simplest thing in the world for someone

report

it

moderately resembling Mrs.

For Joseph Pulitzer

was

Eddy

to impersonate her.

would seem, to conceive such

a picture to believe that it represented the true condition of affairs. Al
ways he had had what he would have called a passion for truth, and so
it

sufficient, it

be described, but the truth was the truth of Pulitzer s own

determining. He was often right, far more often than not, and this per
haps makes no little excuse for him; but the fact remains that, once he
it

might

justly

had made up

his

mind

as to

what should be regarded as the

verities

of

a situation, nothing could change him. Facts might prove to be against

if so, then so much the worse for the facts. No one knew better

him, but,

than did Joseph Pulitzer how to get facts to prove

And

Twain s book,
433

his case.

summer of 1906, when everyone was talking of Mark

as his yacht was cruising off the coast of Maine, Pulitzer

so in the

seems to have formulated a plan for an attack on Mrs.

Christian Science hierarchy for so he would have called

Eddy and
it

the

the like of

which had never been attempted before. The World never did anything
in a small way, and the World would show the world how exposures
should be

made and misdemeanants brought

to justice.

434

"Mr.

"MY

46

"Concord, New Hampshire.

Bar
Maine.
Harbour,
Joseph Pulitzer,
DEAR MR. PULITZER: You are a comparatively old man, and

your years, your character, and your accomplishments entitle you to

the respect and
kindly regard of your fellows. That which is due you,

and which you have a right to expect at the hands of men,

you and yours to others under like or similar conditions.

is

due from

"Few, if any, women, living, have done so much to pass their names
to posterity as has Rev.
Mary Baker G. Eddy of this city and state, and
we of Concord, regardless of religious beliefs, have great respect for this
woman, and we resent any indignity aimed at her or passed upon her,

and every decent man and woman

in

Concord experiences a sense of

disappointment and shame on realizing that a great newspaper like The

World, through the overzeal of its representatives, would annoy her or
cause her discomfort by appealing to low natures or those
given to gossip
or envy, to secure guesses or opinions about her,
of
unworthy The World,

435

unworthy of Mrs; Eddy, and unworthy of the

manhood and womanhood

dear Mr. Pulitzer,
"My

of

intelligence, integrity,

New Hampshire s

and

capital city.

have met and talked with you once. I have

met and talked with Mrs. Eddy more than once. I know her; she knows
me. I have been in her home, in her study with her within a few months,
I

and discussed with her many

within forty-eight hours, and

have bowed to her in her carriage

salutation has been returned by her.

things; I

my

The World s representatives to Concord be carried

out in its columns, The World will say in substance that Mrs. Eddy is
dead, and that a mummy or substitute, and not she, is in the carriage each
day when it passes through the main streets of our city, and its occupant
is
greeted by our people; or it will say Mrs. Eddy is enfeebled and de
faculties which in the past made her won
crepit, and that those brilliant
"If

the intent of

derful accomplishment possible have departed.

every statement, or even insinuation, of this kind, I, as one who

knows, say it is not true, in whole or in part, but on the contrary is un
"To

qualifiedly false.
"This

letter to

you

is

not occasioned by any special zeal on my part in

is it occasioned
by any blind ad

the cause of Christian Science, nor

herence to or worship of persons or advocacies, but solely in a spirit of

a becoming regard for brains and re
justice, truth, square dealing
spectability as well as reverence for

age and motherhood.

"Very

"October

26,

1906."

So did Michael Meehan,

am,

truly yours,

(Signed)

MICHAEL

MEEHAN"

daily paper The Patriot,

at
the
eleventh
to
stave
off
the
blow.
As a newspaper man,
seek,
hour,

Editor of Concord

common with many others in Concord, knew what was coming.

About the middle of September, two reporters from the New York
World had made their appearance in Concord, evidently with instruc
he, in

tions to allow nothing to stand in the

Mrs. Eddy and

Pulitzer

how

"evidence".

way

of a ruthless investigation of

concerned her such as none knew better than

to set in motion.
They came armed with all manner of
all that

A few months previously, Georgine Milmine had undertaken

436

to write a life of Mrs.

Eddy

for

McClure s Magazine. She

set

about the

task with a will, and, after interviewing Frederick Peabody, who had
acted as attorney for Mrs. Woodbury in her abortive suit against Mrs.
York with such amazing
Eddy some years previously, returned to

New

and

McClure

sure they had the story of the century,

at once detailed other members of the staff, namely Will Irwin,

"revelations"

that

s felt

Burton Hendrick and Willa Gather, to collaborate with Miss Milmine

in

its

production.
of the coming story spread throughout the journalistic
world of New York, they lost nothing in the telling, and it was not long

As rumours

before

The World,

at Pulitzer s insistent

seeking to anticipate the

McClure

more

sensational.

Two

work

there.

delved into Mrs.

They

demand, was hard at work

and render them even

"revelations"

reporters were sent to

Eddy

Concord

to

commence the

past with earnest enthusiasm.

traced carefully her every transaction in real estate away back to

her first purchase of the little house on Broad Street in Lynn. They

They

investigated her copyrights, and, in both connections, viewed with rising

suspicion Mrs.

Eddy s

practice, specially noticeable in her later years, of

apparently turning over her equities to others. Thus, in 1899, they found
had transferred the copyrights of her books to Edward Kimball,

that she

and

that he, for no good reason that they could see, had in 1906 turned
them over to Calvin Frye. Surely this was just what the Chief had in
sisted that Mrs. Eddy,
mentally incapacitated, was in the hands of de
:

signing persons

who were

taking

it

turn about to share her substance

between them.

So

were The World men that they had discovered some

momentous
such
as could not be gainsaid, that they determined to
thing
confront some well-known Concord business men with the facts they
had unearthed and secure the support of their admissions as to their cor
sure, indeed,

rectness.

The two

who was

secretary of the

N. Ladd, Mrs. Eddy s cousin,

Loan and Trust Savings Bank of Concord, and
J. Wesley Plummer, treasurer of the Concord Church. Both men seem
to have received the suggestion of the reporters that Mrs.
Eddy was men437

chosen were Frederick

with a quite disconcerting amusement; were entirely

the
evidence they had accumulated, and possibly advised
unimpressed by
them to go to Pleasant View and find out for themselves whether Mrs.
tally incompetent,

Eddy was mentally competent or not.

Anyway, within a few days, the two men did actually present them
selves at Pleasant View and demanded to see Mrs. Eddy. No previous
announcement had been made of their intentions, and, at first, Calvin
at a loss to
Frye and other members of the little household were quite
that
were
the
rumours
of
heard
to
had
know what do. They
going around,
and it seemed a simple matter to settle the question of Mrs. Eddy s ex
istence

and mental

capacity once

and

for all by acquiescing in the de

mand in spite of the evident truculence with which it was made. But Mrs.
in her eighty-sixth year. Save in her daily drives, she had little
contact with the world, and what little she had, never exposed her to

Eddy was

anything but gentleness and consideration. These two New York news
paper men had evidently little of either quality about them. They did

not ask to see Mrs. Eddy, they demanded the right to see her, and vir
tually made it clear that they did not propose to leave the house till they
had seen her. Frye finally compromised the situation by asking them to

come back

when he would see what

be
would
back
from
her drive by that time,
Eddy
and it might be possible for them to see her.
As far as Calvin Frye and Laura Sargent and the other members of
at three o clock in the afternoon,

could be done. Mrs.

the household were concerned, this action represented no more than an

gain time. They shrank from the prospect of exposing Mrs.

effort to

Eddy
last

to

to such a contact, but there seemed

no other way out of

it,

and

at

reluctantly they took their problem, as they always did in the end,

Mrs. Eddy

herself,

and Mrs. Eddy solved

she would see the two men.

When

it

promptly by saying that

three o clock

came round and the

reporters returned, they were shown into her study.

As they stood in the doorway, Mrs. Eddy rose from her desk to greet
them. Next moment, the two men were
overwhelming her with questions.

They had done what no

other reporters

had done, and they were

deter-

438

but

it. Mrs.
Eddy answered calmly at first,
of her
Lewis
before
and
it was not long
Strang, another member
Frye
The
close.
a
household, intervened, and the interview was brought to

mined to make the most of

two

reporters, realizing

interpret

it,

no doubt

that, interpreted as

they intended to

they already had more than enough material

to

make

the

left the house without further protest.

story Pulitzer wanted,
One thing, however, remained to be done. Pulitzer was insistent that

Mrs. Eddy, if not actually dead, was at any rate so incapacitated that
she could not leave the house, and that the woman who took a daily
but some
drive in her
through Concord was not Mrs, Eddy,
carriage

other
as

woman made up

fact, their

They

to impersonate her. If they could establish this

work would be complete and

laid their plans carefully.

their

commendation

Every day, punctually at two o

sure.

clock,

Mrs. Eddy s carriage swung through the gates of Pleasant View on its
the
way to Concord. The carriage, however, was a closed one, and, in
its interior was very much in shadow; and
bright afternoon sunlight,
without being
so, after haunting the entrance to the drive for several days

to make their evidence such as

quite sure, they determined
could not be controverted.
day or two later, as the carriage slowed

able to

make

the entrance, they jumped on the running board, one on

each side, calculating that if Mrs. Eddy turned her head away from one,

down near

would only get the better view.

It all happened in a moment, and was all over before Mrs. Eddy had
recovered from her surprise or Calvin Frye, who was on the box as usual,
from his indignation, but the two World men had got what they wanted.

the other

As was

of the carriage
subsequently shown beyond doubt, the occupant
as it always was, but, in the account of the matter these

was Mrs. Eddy,

men were writing for The World, Mrs. Eddy had already been portrayed
as in the last stages of senile decay. It would, therefore, be a simple
matter for them to find that the Chief was right and that the occupant

of the carriage was not Mrs. Eddy.

It was a lurid story, and Michael

good
439

journalist,

Meehan, with the sixth sense of a

knowing what was contemplated, had determined to

make an

eleventh hour attempt to prevent the appearance of anything

Hence his letter to Pulitzer. The hope was a forlorn one

so scandalous.

and he must have known it. Joseph Pulitzer did not even answer Meehan s
letter, and in the columns of The World on the following Sunday morn
ing, October 28, appeared an article on Mrs. Eddy and her household
View, which, by reason of its quite shameless malice and
misstatement, was within a few days to arouse a large section of the
at Pleasant

American Press
In a

to vigorous protest.

which spread themselves over the front

many sections it was announced that Mrs.

series of scare headlines

page of one of

The World s

Eddy was dying, that she was controlled by a footman and impersonated
by a dummy, that she was hopelessly affected with cancer and "immured
at Pleasant

of

woman impersonates her on the streets

A. Frye, Secretary-Footman, Supreme Power at the
the headlines went on; "Mrs. Eddy s Fortune Estimated

View, while another

Concord". "Calvin

Eddy

Home,"

at #15,000,000,

Coterie
Gifts

Her Income

Say She Spent

Can be

it all

at #1,000,000 a Year.
in Charity,

though

No

Members of her
Records of Large

Found."

And

then came the story of the interview;

surely, in the light of what
one
of
the
most
subsequently transpired,
amazing travesties that ever

was published. Distasteful

quote, at least in part, the

as

is

the task, the historian

World s

is

compelled to

no other way could the

incredible malignancy of the attack be shown and the forces behind a
vastly more ambitious attack to follow understood. Here are
article, for in

typical

passages :
"Mrs.
Eddy looked more dead than alive. She was a skeleton, her
hollow cheeks thick with red paint, and the
fleshless, hairless bone above
the sunken eyes pencilled a
jet black. The features were thick with powder.
Above them was a big white wig.

"Her

body was

a horseshoe of
"Her

table.

pitifully emaciated,

brilliants,

was

and her

throat,

on which sparkled

shrivelled.

weakness was pathetic She reeled as she stood

clinging to the
faded eyes gazed
helplessly, almost pleadingly, at her

Her sunken

440

The air of the room reeked with the odours of powerful stimu
In a corner, as though hastily pushed aside, stood a galvanic battery
with its surgical basin half full of water and a sponge wet from use.

visitors.

lants.

"To

it

every eye

was

doped and galvanized

feet

"Strang

it

was equally

woman

much

longer.
to
her side
glided

and held an outstretched arm behind her in

readiness for the threatened collapse.

supreme

woman had been

But

utmost stimulation could not keep the tortured

clear that the

upon her

clear that the unfortunate old

for the ordeal of identification.

But old Mrs. Eddy was nerved to

effort.
1

"Her

listless

eyes were fastened

upon Professor Kent

as

he stepped

As

he bowed formally she released her hold upon the table,

swayed toward him, clutched him with her shrivelled fingers and held on
with desperate strength. Had Professor Kent withdrawn his support she

towards her.

must have

fallen.

"

My-dear-dear-pro fessor, she cried in the high cackling voice of

extreme age. *H-h-how glad I am to see you. Let me co-congratulate
you on getting back your position. I-I am so glad that you are at the head
of your school again. It was the senseless chatter of senility. Professor

Kent years ago severed all connections with the Concord School.
"As he stammered out a
reply and gently freed himself from the
quivering fingers, Mrs.
to

it

for support.

"Turning

"She

It

had

reeling again to the table

and clung

Her fictitious strength was almost gone.

to the others for the

understand your
visitor

Eddy turned

first

time, she gasped, I-I-I ca-cannot

poor me. B-but I ca-nnot be interviewed.

had just strength enough left to extend a palsied hand to each
in-terest in

and motion appealingly

lasted only three

to Strang.

The

interview

was at an end.

minutes."

No so-called
in the history of modern journalism has received
more emphatic or more general condemnation than did this tour de force
of the New York World. Concord, on that Sunday morning was literally
"scoop"

out in the streets about

1

it

before the sun was well up.

As soon as possible,

Professor Kent, a neighbour of Mrs. Eddy and at one time Principal of Concord High School,
had been persuaded by the reporters to accompany them for the purposes of identification.

441

Hon. Charles R. Corning, accompanied by General

of the National Republican Committee and one of
a
member
Streeter,
the foremost lawyers in New England, drove out to Pleasant View to

tte mayor, the

to Con
place their services at Mrs. Eddy s disposal, and on their return
cord gave to a representative of the Associated Press, who had come hot

afoot to Concord, statements combating in detail the absurdities and

misstatements of the World s article. Mayor Corning declared indig

nantly that he had known Mrs. Eddy for years, that he saw her driving
past his office almost every day, that he had just seen her, talked with

her for half an hour, that he had found her as usual,

and strong

"keen

of intellect

memory ... a surprising illustration of longevity, with

emphatic expression, and alertness rarely encountered in a

in

bright eyes,
person so venerable."

General Streeter

testified to

much

the same purpose. Mrs. Frank

New York, who

had been accused by The World of im

Mrs.
that
she had never in her life stepped inside
personating
Eddy, wired
Mrs. Eddy s carriage. Michael Meehan, editor of The Patriot, Josiah E,
Fernald, president of the National State Capital Bank, J. Wesley Plummer, deputy state treasurer, and George H. Moses, then editor of the
Concord Evening Monitor, and later United States Senator from New
Leonard from

Hampshire,

all

The World s

denied emphatically that there was a word of truth in

Stacy.

Next day, the press

Led by the New York

of the country left

Journal,

no doubt as to

The World s

great
of the most emphatic kind was almost universal.
"The

rival,

its

reaction.

condemnation

New York World", said the Journal, "continues its personal and

hounding of Mrs. Eddy, leader of the Christian Science religion.

it
publishes of recent events in Mrs. Eddy s home
could reflect credit upon no newspaper and
upon no man."
vicious

The

account which

The

upon Joseph Pulitzer can only be surmised. He

was used to storms and had weathered
many, but in each and all of them
he had always managed to
some
claim to be heard,
preserve
effect of it all

justification

for his action, which enabled

him to

out-ride even the

most violent storms

442

of protest. But here The World stood before the country, not only as
the perpetrator of a deliberate slander, but as doing it with a naivete
and clumsiness past belief.
made no attempt to justify his
Pulitzer said nothing at the time.

He

action, but during the next few weeks, in the cabin of his yacht at Bar
Harbour, he laid plans for a revenge which, less than a year later, stood

revealed in the

form of a

lawsuit which

must rank

remarkable in the history of American courts.

443

as

one of the most

The

...

"Next Friends"

Suit

was a great in
stitution. It dominated the field of journalism in the United States, and
dominated The World. His word was law,
Pulitzer

THE NEW YORK World

in the first decade of the century

completely

Joseph

and he exacted and received willingly from The World men a loyalty and
devotion seldom

if

ever equalled in similar circumstances.

He

could not

under the stigma of having allowed his paper to trump up

a case reflecting on a woman and upon the religion of a large body of
substantial than, as his critics insisted,
people and based on nothing more
afford to

lie

a desire for sensationalism.

It

was a new thing to Joseph Pulitzer to be

thus called to account and to find himself with nothing to say in his
defence. He must confound his enemies somehow, and it seems to have

been

clear to

him from

the

first

that whatever action he took

would have

to be such as to compel circumstances rather than any open

action

on

his part to

and

direct

produce his vindication.

immense driving force had got him much that he

early days. This same force, plus almost unlimited re

Joseph Pulitzer s

wanted

in his

sources, seemed, in his later years, capable of getting

him

literally

any-

444

thing he wanted and enabled him to

make

unmake anyone he pleased.

he had brought against
and he was determined that

or

He still firmly believed that most of the charges

Mrs. Eddy and her household were

true,

they should, somehow or other, be "substantiated".

And so he set about it. There was nothing to show for

then in
tion

its

issue for

March

2,

1907,

had been made to the Courts of

Eddy,

"who

some

The World announced

New

sues by her next friends, George

time,

and

that a peti

Hampshire by Mary Baker

W. Glover and George W.

Baker, against Calvin A. Frye, Alfred Farlow, Irving C. Tomlinson, Ira

O. Knapp, William B. Johnson, Stephen A. Chase, Joseph Armstrong,

Edward A. Kimball, Hermann S. Hering and Louis C. Strang," to

compel them to give an accounting of her property to make restitution
if it should be proved that they were in any
way in default and to enjoin
them while the suit was pending from receiving or disposing of any funds.

They

further prayed the court to appoint a receiver to take possession

of Mrs,

As

Eddy s

estate.

was concerned, neither Joseph Pulitzer

nor his paper had anything to do with the move. That The World
should give prominence to it, to news which seemed to indicate a develop
far as the outside world

ment tending towards

the justification of

its

contentions in regard to

Mrs. Eddy and the Christian Science movement, was only natural. Hence
when it devoted several columns in its issue of March 2 to the story of the
surprised and no other newspaper had the temerity to
full reporting had anything to do with a connection
such
that
suggest
of The World with the case. Indeed, so complete was Pulitzer s hold on

case,

no one was

the press at that time, that never once during the long drawn-out legal
proceedings which followed was such connection openly averred. It was

hinted at often enough, but that was as far as

Pulitzer

one.

On

had

laid his plans carefully,

a cold winter day in the

mistakable

New York

445

and the

latter part of

ever got.
story

boom in its

an

interesting

Lead

City,

un

South

Lead City in 1906 was en

Gold was being brought into

that.

history.

is

1906, a traveller of

cut alighted from the train at

Dakota. There was nothing unusual in

joying the great mining

it

a
from the snow-clad Black Hills at the rate of #5,000,000
was
mine
of the Homestake
rapidly
year, and the huge mining plant
York was much interested,
New
world
the
in
the
of
one
largest
becoming
the two cities.
and there was much traffic back and forth between
in
interest
no
mining, although
This
traveller, however, had

the town

particular

the station might have so

the driver of the hackney which he hired at
the house of a well-known mining
assumed, for he asked to be driven to

one George Glover.

was well settled in a comfortable home
George Glover, at that time,
which his mother, Mrs. Eddy, had built for him some years previously,
the boom which
and was energetically seeking to secure that share in
time to time
from
had
his grasp. Mrs. Eddy
always somehow evaded
of
for his mining ventures, but he was in chronic need
given him money
that was
Five thousand dollars to secure a share in something
"capital".
dollars to erect a new
thousand
"absolutely beyond question". Thirty
which for many years to come "would secure unlimited busi
quartz mill
the things mentioned in his letters to his mother
ness". These are some of
when a traveller from New York was landed
about this time. And

the
prospector in

city,

so,

and announced his desire to discuss a very private and con

fidential matter, he was no doubt filled with pleasurable expectancy.
The traveller introduced himself as Mr. James Slaght of New York,
confidential
and after
George Glover that his mission was highly
at his door

warning
and being assured by the latter that his confidence would be respected
and that he might speak with the utmost frankness, Mr. Slaght at once
went on to explain that he came from the New York World, that The
of all the statements to the contrary which had appeared
World, in
spite

broadcast in the press, was convinced that its charges in regard to the
condition and treatment of Mrs. Eddy were true. Mr. Slaght insisted to

George that
purpose of

it

its

that the whole

quarrel whatever with Mrs. Eddy,
disclosures was to save a woman, who in her day had de

had no

served well of her fellows, from falling in her old age into the hands of
to seize and dissipate a fortune which
designing people, who sought
at any rate, to George Glover himself.
rightly belonged, in large part

446

George was impressed. He evidently, as subsequent correspondence

disclosed, found it difficult at first to believe that his mother was domi
nated mentally by anyone, but when Mr. Slaght went on to dilate upon
the enormous proportions of his mother s estate; how that The World
had reckoned its net value at no less than $15,000,000 and that the

income approximated $1,000,000 a year, George, no doubt asking him

self what he could not do with a twentieth of such a sum, began to have
his doubts.

At

the right

moment, Mr. Slaght produced a

letter

from Senator

Chandler of New Hampshire. George knew him, of course, by reputation,

and as he commenced to read the letter he could see that it was most
friendly in tone. Dated, "Washington, D.C.,

November

22,

1906,"

it

ran:

DEAR MR. GLOVER,

I have consented to act as

legal counsel
concerning certain questions which arise in connection with Mrs. Mary

Baker G. Eddy. They are stated in a

will call
"It

is

letter

from me to Mr. Slaght, who

upon you and show you my letter to him.

important for public and private interests

that these questions

should be investigated and met and fairly and justly disposed of as

questions involving doubts which from large and commendable motives,

and

Mrs. Eddy, should help

to solve and settle. Therefore, please be sure and give Mr. Slaght a full
hearing and possess yourself fully of all the facts which he will be able
all

good

citizens,

especially all relatives of

to give you.
"Very

respectfully,

(Signed)

WILLIAM

E. CHANDLER"

As soon as George had finished reading, the adroit Mr. Slaght had
the letter referred to ready and handed it over. The senator came at
once to the point. Writing to Slaght from Washington, under date
November 22,
447

1906, he said:

I consent to act as counsel concerning cer

with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy.
connection
tain questions which arise in
It seems that there are several doubts about several points.

DEAR MR. SLAGHT

"MY

Mrs. Eddy may be detained in the custody of strangers against

"1.

her

will.

"2.

She may be

invalid that she

is

so nearly

worn out

in

body and mind

as a confirmed

accord
incapable of deciding any questions whatever,
in
and
therefore,
own,
necessarily,

will or pleasure of her

ing to any
and property affairs.
capable of managing her business
relatives near her,
Being thus restrained or incapable, or without
"3.

she
or

may be surrounded by designing men who either have already sought

of her large
may hereafter seek to wrongfully possess themselves

her to make a disposition of it contrary to what would

property, or induce
be her sane and deliberate intentions if she were in perfect possession of

her liberty and mental faculties.

"These doubts have arisen in connection with investigations recently
made. Beyond all question, steps should be taken to solve the doubts, to
correct the
"This

Eddy s

wrong,

if it exists,

and

to establish the right in every respect.

new work should be done,

son, or

in this regard;

if

possible, in co-operation with

Mrs.

any other relative who may be impressed with his duties

and if the relatives do not move, it should be done by

such right-minded citizens as are in sympathy with the commendable

movement.
"Yours

truly,

WILLIAM
It

is

E. CHANDLER"

not surprising that, in the circumstances, George Glover was

over, and, when told that his cousin, George W. Baker, only
son of George Sullivan Baker of the far-off days in Sanbornton Bridge
had decided to join in the petition, he consented to take the lead, and,
easily won

shortly afterwards,

on the advice of Senator Chandler, he

his

for

set

out with

daughter Mary
Washington.
Meanwhile, in Concord, there was no thought of what was coming.

448

The popular condemnation

and complete

of

The World

attack in October

had been

Mrs. Eddy and her house

look
to
forward
some measure of peace, in the
hold might reasonably
immediate future. And then one day, just before Christmas, Mrs. Eddy
so emphatic

that

it

looked as

if

from George from Lead City telling her

out
for
just setting
Washington with his daughter Mary and that
they looked forward to seeing her in Concord before they returned
home. He said nothing as to the purpose of his visit in Washington, and
to her surprise received a letter

he was

immediately on receipt of his letter Mrs. Eddy sent \^ord for him to come
to Concord as soon as he could, and telling him that although they had

not room for him and

Mary at Pleasant View, she had arranged for

them to be guests in the home of one of her friends in Concord.

On

the advice of Senator Chandler, George, in his reply, did not set
visit, but on January 2 he and Mary went up to Concord

any date for his

unannounced. Mrs. Eddy received them at once, and although, as written

up in The World three months later, she was again pictured as in the
depths of senile decay, subsequent testimony was abundant to show that
such allegations were untrue to the point of absurdity.

There was as

however, no word of the contemplated suit, and the

announcement in The World, as already quoted, broke on the little
yet,

household in Concord quite unexpectedly.

The petition of the "Next Friends", as published practically verbatim
in The World, was a formidable document, and indicated an
investiga
the property and position of Mrs. Eddy such as could
tion as
only
have been achieved as the result of the expenditure of much time and
resources. The charges amounted to the same as those advanced in th&
to

notorious articles in

The World some

six

months

previously, namely,

Mrs. Eddy was mentally incapable; was kept a virtual prisoner in

Pleasant View, and that there was reason to suppose that those who had
her in custody were dissipating or misappropriating her
property. The
that

petition then
this

set forth the alleged character

and worth of

property in detail, going back over the years to Mrs. Eddy s

and setting forth exactly how much she received from each.

classes,

449

went on to

first

The

income from her books and the computed value of the Journal and the
a going concern" were all set
Sentinel and The Mother Church
that the defendants
down, and the whole concluded with the usual prayer
"as

be required
action";

"to

disclose

and that

Mrs. Eddy

"a

and give an account";

receiver or receivers be

restrained

"be

from further

appointed".

felt it all keenly, especially the fact that the leader in the

attack should be her

own

son. But, in

moments of

crisis,

she had found

Those around her might strive valiantly

that she had
to solve this problem and that, but, if they could not do it, the burden,
in the end, devolved upon her. It had been the case when she first em
barked on her self-appointed task in middle life; it was the same when
to take the lead.

she was eighty-six.

From a legal point of view, she had always been singularly well-advised,
and

this

was

in regard to the
certainly the case

"Next

Friends

Suit".

General Frank Streeter, who immediately took charge of matters, was

a distinguished and resourceful lawyer, and his first act was little short

He

advised Mrs. Eddy to turn over her entire estate

of an inspiration.
to three trustees of her own choosing, and give them paramount power to

manage her affairs. In this way, the sole question which would be before
the court when the case came up for trial would be whether or not Mrs.
Eddy, at the time of granting the trusteeship, was mentally capable.
Accordingly, on

March

6,

1907, Mrs.

Eddy

signed a deed of trust

which gave ownership of property in trust to three individuals : Archibald

editor-in-chief of her publications and periodicals; Josiah E.

McLellan,

Fernald, president of one of the Concord banks; and

a cousin and a lawyer.

Henry M. Baker,

From the moment that the petition was formally filed and the inevitable
trial

of the case in the newspapers

had begun,

it

became

clear that time

was going to be on the side of the aged woman at Pleasant View. The
press in the country was thoroughly roused. Newspapers everywhere that
had told The World just what they thought of its policies and methods,

some

six months
previously, had no intention of allowing The
to prove itself right and themselves
wrong without a struggle.

World
News450

paper correspondents flocked to Concord with urgent petitions that they

might be allowed to interview Mrs. Eddy, and, in several notable in
stances, the request

was granted. William E. Curtis of the Chicago

J. Park of the Boston Globe, Arthur Brisbane of

Record Herald, Edwin

the

New York

all

Evening Journal,

went to Pleasant View and came

away with the same story: that instead of the mental and physical dere
lict they had been assured was held in durance vile,
they had found a

woman

"physically

solutely devoted to

vised the

and mentally
her",

work of her

who

phenomenal",

"selected

retainers",

and

disposition of all her affairs

whose people were

the food for her

and took

"the

belongings".

"super

keenest interest in the

"The

minded woman", declared impatiently yet another

table",

"ab

idea that this strong-

interviewer,

Dr. Allan

ever a victim of coercion, is manifestly absurd."

McLane Hamilton,
Of these journalists and others who interviewed Mrs. Eddy at Pleasant
"is

View

in the early

summer

of 1907, while the

"Next

Friends

Suit"

was

awaiting the convenience of the courts, the record of Arthur Brisbane

perhaps the most remarkable. Arthur Brisbane, at this time, was in his

is

early forties.

rapidly

He was editor of the New York Evening Journal, and was

coming to the front as an able

if

somewhat

ruthless journalist.

He was the last man in the world to commit himself to statements which
he knew might well be disproved within a few weeks. He went to Pleasant
View, as he admits himself, full of prejudice, but, from the first, he seems
to have been captivated by what he found there; his first glimpse of the
house,

"a

very pleasant quiet abode ... on the side of a most beautiful

the "brightness and light" to be found every
valley";

New Hampshire
where; the

"Christian

Science

ladies"

with

who

"peaceful

happy

expressions",

greeted him so kindly.

"One of them came forward to
say Mrs. Eddy is very glad that you
have come, and will see you. Please come into her sitting-room.
"She led the
way upstairs into a corner room at the rear of the house,
with wide windows overlooking the valley and the distant hills.
:

The

interview

was published

in_book form in 1930 oy

said to Arthur Brisbane.

451

M.

in

due course

New York Evening Journal and republished

New York, under the title What Mrs Edtty

in the

E. Paige, publisher,

a writing desk, in an armchair, sat a white-haired woman, who

rose and walked forward, extending her hand in friendly greeting to a
"Beside

That was Mrs. Eddy, for whom many human beings in this
world feel deepest reverence and affection, and concerning whom others
write and say unkind and un
it
have
necessary or excusable to
stranger.

thought

truthful things.
"It

is

quite certain that

see this beautiful

nobody could

and venerable

woman and ever again speak of her except in terms of affectionate rev
erence and sympathy. There are hundreds and thousands of Christian
Scientists

who would make

ing on Mrs. Eddy s

therefore a duty to

it is

almost any sacrifice for the privilege of look

is
impossible now for her to see many, and

face. It

make

an attempt

at least

to convey

the impression created by her personality."

And then Arthur Brisbane goes on to paint his picture. It
that his heart

is

eighty-six years old.

Her

about her forehead and temples. She

slender.

But her

figure

grasp of her thin hand

"It

is

easy to see

in his task :

is

Eddy

"Mrs.

is

an idea of

is

is

is

medium

straight as she rises

white, curls

height

and very

and walks forward. The

hand does not

firm; the

snow

thick hair,

of

tremble.

hopeless to describe a face made beautiful by age, deep thought,

exercise of power. The light blue eyes are strong and

and many years

concentrated in expression.

woman half Mrs. Eddy s

s

face

And the

sight, as

was soon proved,

very

head

is

that of

age.

almost entirely free from wrinkles; the skin

Eddy
clear; many a young woman would be proud

"Mrs.

is

to

have

it.

The

is

fore

high and full, and the whole expression of the face combines
benevolence with great strength of will. Mrs. Eddy has accumulated
power in this world. She possesses it; she exercises it; and she knows it.

But

is

it is

a gentle power, and

it is

possessed by a gentle, diffident,

and

modest woman.

Women will want to know what Mrs.

he cannot
see

tell.

With some women you

only the face. She wore a lace

simple dress.

That much

Eddy

wore.

The

see the dress; with

collar,

no

jewellery of

writer regrets

Mrs. Eddy you

any kind, and

is remembered."

452

enabled him
good journalistic sense which, in later years,
Brisbane
Arthur
his
in
uncertain
to scale dizzy and
profession,
peaks
his
in
picture,
then goes on faithfully to cover the whole ground. He fills

With

that

which he evidently designs to be a full-length portrait not only of the

out
woman, but of her surroundings also. He records how she pointed
she
how
spoke simply
the beautiful view to him from her study window;
"of

her

own

life

surroundings";

half

of her absolute happiness in her peaceful

she discussed business matters with him "for ovet

and work and

how

an hour with equal

interest

and without any sign of

flagging",

and

that
in the turn of his sentences he manages to convey quite accurately
which seems to have been a characteristic
sweeping away of prejudice
effect

on many people who

visited

Mrs. Eddy.
a passage of his own selection, and
few with
public speakers there are

He asked her to read aloud to him

later declares that "among

young

voices stronger, deeper, than the voice of

Mrs. Eddy

at eighty-six.

read the ordinary magazine type without glasses, as readily as

She

any woman

of twenty-five could do, and with great power of expression and under
standing."

their leave-taking, he writes: "Her face, so

Finally, in describing
framed in beautiful snow-white hair and supported by

remarkably young,
the delicate,

frail, erect

of that
body, seemed really the personification

to which her religion

victory over matter

453

aspires."

The Case

Judge Chamberlin,

in Couirt and

"Pleasant
"Hon.

View, Concord,

Concord, RH.

RESPECTED

May

16,

1907

SIR:,

over forty years that I have attended personally to my secular

and to my
affairs, to my income, investments, deposits, expenditures
all my investments except in one
selected
I
have
personally
employees.
"It

is

or two instances and have paid for the same.

my time, labours and thought, and

my property and affairs carefully
taken care of for the persons and purposes designated by my last will
influenced me to select a board of trustees to take charge of my property,
namely, Hon. Henry M. Baker, Mr. Archibald McLellan, Mr. Josiah
"The

increasing

yearning for

demands upon

more peace and

to have

E. Fernald.

had contemplated doing this before the present proceedings were

brought or I knew aught about them and I consulted Lawyer Streeter
about the method. I selected said trustees because I had
implicit confi
"I

dence in each one of them as to honesty and business

capacity.

454

person influenced

"No

me

make

to

this selection. I find

to select the trustees I need without the help of others.

gave them my property to take care of because I
"I

tected

and myself

me

have agreed with

"They

burden of doing

relieved of the

to take care of

myself able

wanted

it

pro

this.

my

property,

agreement a great benefit to me already.

suit was brought without
my knowledge and

and I con

sider this
"This

contrary to
for

my

my

wishes. I feel that

injury,

and

know

it is

not for

my

is

being carried on
any way but

benefit in

not needed to protect

it is

my

person or

property.
"The

present proceedings, test

is

personal reputation

"My

trusted friends are cruelly

my

trust in divine Love.

assailed

and unjustly

and some of my students and

and wrongly accused.

Calvin Frye and other students often ask me to receive persons

I desire to see but decline to receive
solely because I find that I

"Mr.

whom

cannot serve two

I cannot be

tfiasters

a Christian Scientist except

leave all for Christ.

"Trusting

I have not exceeded the bounds of propriety in the state

ments herein made by me,

I remain,
"Most

respectfully yours,

MARY BAKER EDDY"

This

letter,

written in her

own unmistakable hand, although not made

marked an important point in Mrs. Eddy s defence.

The case, as has been seen, had been narrowed down to the single ques
tion of Mrs. Eddy s competence at the time she executed her trust deed,
public until later,

and her

letter to

Judge Chamberlin, to which both sides would have had

filled Senator Chandler and his colleagues with mis

access,

must have

giving.

The

ing

it all its

that of a

defence, in fact, as far as the press was concerned, was hav

own way. The letter to Judge Chamberlin was clearly not

woman

either physically or mentally incapacitated,

testimony of Curtis, Park or Brisbane and several others

that the very reverse

455

was the

case.

The

all

and the

went to show

petitioners, moreover, had been

successful in securing evidence as to the existence of

no more

involving Calvin Frye or anyone

financial affairs

else at Pleasant View, while

any plot
Mrs. Eddy s

were found to be in perfect order. In fact, the prevailing

as reflected in the press was that the petitioners case

outside opinion
was lost before it

came

to court.

was at last ready for hearing, and was

delays the case
formid
on August 13, 1907.
opened at the Court House in Concord
able array of counsel appeared on both sides, the action being heard
two Co-masters, Dr. George F.
by Judge Aldrich sitting as Master with
After

Jelly

many

(an

alienist) of

Boston and Hosea

W.

Parker of Claremont,

New

Hampshire.
been wait
morning on the opening day many people had
of the
accommodation
limited
seating
ing to gain admission, and the
court room was taxed to the uttermost soon after the doors were opened.

From

early

Senator Chandler and his colleagues for the Petitioners had a difficult
task. Again and again as the case was unfolded, tKe senior counsel for
the Petitioners strove to broaden the issue but was brought back each
time by Judge Aldrich to an admission of the fact that there was one
before the court, and that was Mrs.
question and one question only
6th
the
on
s
day of March, 1907, the day on which
Eddy competence
she signed the deed turning over her estate and its management to
There was, of course, the question of misappropriation prior to
the granting of the trusteeship, but although General Streeter in behalf

trustees.

of the defendants repeatedly challenged Senator Chandler to produce

the slightest evidence of misfeasance in this respect, neither then nor at

any time later were such charges advanced.

Driven thus into a corner, it became apparent that Senator Chandler
intended to rest his case and build
sanity",

it

up upon a charge of

and that he sought to prove his point by showing

was subject to delusion

and controlled the

He set forth a

to a point

where

it

"usurped

"general

that

in

Mrs. Eddy

the place of reason

will".

chain of

six delusions to

was subject: (l) that the world does not

which he claimed Mrs. Eddy

exist;

(2) that she was super-

456

naturally inspired; (3) that she could heal miraculously; (4) that her
philosophy was destined to supplant others; (5) that there is such a

thing as malicious animal magnetism; (6) that malicious animal mag

netism is the cause of terrible evils. The Court, however, emphatically
upheld General Streeter s contention that however interesting such mat
ters

clearly had nothing to do with the case.

General Streeter declared, "these suggestions

might be in themselves, they

a matter of

"As

law",

which simply mean that Mrs. Eddy believes in some things

that Mr. Chandler and others don t believe,
unless they are in some

of delusions,

way connected with

the transactions of her business affairs, are absolutely

incompetent."

The
the

discussion was continued back

and

forth for

some

time, but in

end the Court decided that the only way to reach an answer to the
and the readiest way was for the Court itself to examine Mrs.

issue

Eddy, and to
to Pleasant

this

View

end Judge Aldrich proposed that the Court adjourn

rather than require Mrs.

Eddy

to undertake a personal

Concord. In deciding to journey to Pleasant View rather

than require Mrs. Eddy to appear in court, the Masters concurred in
pointing out that such action on their part should not be construed into
appearance in

an assumption that Mrs. Eddy was not able to come to Concord.

is no disrespect",
Judge Aldrich declared,
say of any woman of
"It

"to

is entitled to
every court clemency ... we
out
of
deference
to her, to go there if
reasonable,
entirely

Mrs. Eddy
think

it

years that she

desired."

And so

on the afternoon of August 14, 1907, the Court, accompanied

by leading counsel on both sides, adjourned to Pleasant View.
The coming of the Court seems to have made no unusual stir there.
It was a lovely summer day with just that
wisp of haze and that breath
of sweet odour which

ant

View were wide

fine

day for their

tell

of approaching

fall.

All the windows at Pleas

open, and Mrs. Eddy, as she entered her study on

her return from her customary drive, remarked with quiet humour as she
looked out on it all from her tower window, "Well, the Nexters have a

457

visit"

Some weeks

previously,

Edwin

Globe, had interviewed Mrs.

J.

Eddy

Park, news editor of the Boston

at Pleasant

View and had given an

intimate picture in his paper o Mrs. Eddy at home. Like Brisbane, he

seems during the interview to have been kept in a constant state of
for dates, names and circumstances which
astonishment at her

memory

appeared to him

"marvellous",

at the ease with which she

moved from

one subject to another, and at her vivid interest in the world around her.
He seems, however, to have been specially impressed with the fact that

Mrs. Eddy

ran her house and household in the full tradition of a

still

New England housewife. Several times he reverts to the subject and tells
how

Mrs. Eddy, seeking to convince him, rang for her house

neat wholesome looking
shortly afterwards,

in the end,

keeper,

who appeared

young woman,

And

house".

"a

in the attire which she

had worn in her

duties about the

then he continues :

was

started in to apologize for her appearance, although there

"She

nothing about

it

Never

remark,

that required apology. Mrs. Eddy quieted her with the

mind, dear, you are all right/ and then continued

smiling:
"

Are you my housekeeper?

"

Yes,

Ma am/

affirmed the pleased

and radiant

girl,

bowing and

smiling.
"

Do I go

thing

is

and look around every day and

running smoothly? asked Mrs. Eddy,

"

Yes,
"

"

"

"

downstairs

see that every

Ma am, you surely do/ answered the housekeeper.

Am I careful and observant?

*You surely are,

Have I

asked Mrs. Eddy.

Ma am.

arranged the furniture and shown just

how

wanted

it?

Yes, Ma am, you told me just how everything should be.

"

That will be
bowed herself

all,

dear/ concluded Mrs. Eddy, and the housekeeper

out."

And then Edwin Park goes on to tell how Mrs. Eddy dwelt happily on
harmony of her household and the devotion of its members; how
Mr. Frye had been with her for twenty-five
years, Mrs. Sargent for
eighteen, her cook for fifteen, and how all were most faithful.

the

458

Promptly at two o clock the carriages from Concord drove up to the

and a few minutes later Mrs. Eddy was receiving the Court

front door,

and attending counsel

in her study. It

of quickly changing emotions.

The

must have been a curious scene

Justices,

having regard for Mrs.

had evidently prepared themselves to act with the utmost

Eddy
and
consideration, and when the first greetings were over,
gentleness
s years,

Judge Aldrich
"Mrs.

Eddy,"

with you, and

you, and

Even

at once set out to reassure her.

he

we

said,

we want you to

as

were not at

"the

gentlemen here wish to have an interview

make this call as comfortable

let us know if we
weary you."

desire to

as possible for

he spoke he must have felt that circumstances, as they were,

as he had fancied them. There was nothing of The World s

all

lurid picturing in this quiet, composed, venerable woman, who sat at her
desk by the big open window and surveyed them all so calmly and kindly.
am very glad to see you," she said, "and I thank you."
"I

For a time the Court endeavoured to maintain

its

formality.

The

first

questions were depressingly routine. What was her native town? How
long had she lived in Concord? And then Judge Aldrich made another

brave show of kindness and consideration.

"Well,

all

the gentlemen present want to ask you some questions,

this interview as pleasant as possible for
you."

and we

want to make

you very much," Mrs. Eddy interjected, and the judge con
want to have regard all the time to your comfort and con
if
and
venience,
you feel at all fatigued, we want to have you say so at
"Thank

tinued:

"We

any time."
Mrs. Eddy again thanked him, assured him that, save for a slight deaf
ness, she was perfectly well, and could work many hours day or night
without any fatigue when it was
the line of spiritual labour".
And so Judge Aldrich went on for a time with his formal questions,
"in

but

it

was not long before a change came over the scene. The Judge had
Eddy about Pleasant View and how she acquired it. Doctor

asked Mrs.

JeEy had supplemented Judge Aldrich s questions by asking if the place

had been laid out under Mrs. Eddy s directions, and Justice Parker had

459

were all dis

trees, and it was not long before they
Mrs.
with
keen
with
raised
the
interest,
Eddy in the
cussing
questions
fruit
trees; how
lead, telling how she cut down scrub pine and planted

asked about the fruit

"You will see, it will

people had laughed at her, but how she had said,
be pretty, pretty soon." And now instead of the decrepit old woman to

whom

to her answers with tender

they had come prepared to help along
summer afternoon visit
encouragement, they found themselves enjoying a

with a delightful hostess, who kept them all at ease and immensely in
terested. They asked her about Concord, about the gifts she had made
from time to time to the city, about the church she had built there, and

about her friendly connections in the countryside.

Then Judge Aldrich turned to the question of finance.
said,

He

had, he

some insurance maturing in the near future; what would Mrs. Eddy
good investment for it? If she had $100,000 to invest, what

consider a

kind of investment would she consider sound?

And

Mrs. Eddy on the

whole preferred municipal bonds. Stocks might be all right for anyone
who could look after them, but she preferred not to have the trouble of

and the only time she had gone contrary to her judgement in this
respect, she had lost by it. How did she judge as to the value of muni
it,

cipal

bonds? Well, she had a

lation of the cities

and

their

book which gave definitely the popu

money value, and when she saw that they
little

were large enough in popuktion and valuation to warrant an investment,

she made it. And Judge Aldrich remarked that he
thought such judge

ment pretty sound.

Next they took an excursion into Christian Science, became tremen
dously interested and then had misgivings, misgivings as to whether they
were

justified in

bringing the religious question into it, and so, after a

abandoned the subject and went on to discuss

brief private consultation,

such questions as books,

letter-writing and accounts.

From

these they

passed to music. Doctor Jelly wanted to know if she was fond of music,
if she was musical in her
younger days, and Mrs. Eddy replied that she
used to be very fond of music, and,
as a child had never been

although

taught, she used to be fond of composing music.

And

then, as

though

460

suddenly remembering something, she told them that she had

ficial singer" in her home and she would be glad for them to hear

"an

fore they

As

left.

asked him to

let

they got ready to leave, she rang for Calvin Frye

her visitors hear the

Mr. Frye assented

gladly.

"Yes,"

he

"artificial

said,

"it

singer"

is

on

their

arti

it

way

be

and
out.

a gramophone, gentle

men."

But the Court was in no hurry to leave. Judge Aldrich wanted to tell
Mrs. Eddy about his mother, who was eighty-seven and still quite happy,
and Mrs. Eddy was full of interest. "Give her my love," she said, "God
bless her; she

am

is

sure she

is,

not a day older for her eighty-seven years

growing in grace." And then as she took

hers, she said simply

and Love,

He

"If

we keep our mind

fixed

if

she

his

is,

as

hand

in

on Truth, God, Life

advance us in our years to a higher understanding.

He will change our hope into faith, our faith into spiritual understand
ing, our words into works and our ultimate into the fruition of entering
will

into the Kingdom."

And so there were leave-takings all round,

one, even the stenographer.

"We

you for your services."

In the hall below, the Court

and she remembered every

have kept you very

busy,"

she said.

"Thank

listen to the

and the

rest of the

gramophone,

greatly interested in

and no doubt marvelling

at the dizzy heights

company stopped to
Mr. Frye s explanation
modern invention was

achieving.

Then, as the last record was being played, a message came from Mrs.
Eddy. As she had sat at her desk when the door had closed behind the
visitors, she had evidently come to the conclusion that al
the
Court
had done with her she ought not to have done with the
though
Court. She owed it something yet. They had all learned from what they

last of

her

had seen and heard

that

none of the things that were being said of her

was nothing compared with her message, and her

been
had
message
misrepresented and misinterpreted even more than her
life and person. She must bear testimony to her message, and the Court,

was

true,

but

all

she was sure of

461

it,

that

would

listen.

down word, and asked them all to come up to her

had forgotten something of importance. When they
were assembled once more, she stood by her desk, her back to the great

And

so she sent

room again

as she

window which gave a view across the valley to where Mount Monadnock rose up above the skyline, and said how she had a great desire to
tell them
footsteps of Christian Science."
something, quite briefly, of
1

"the

And

so, as

told them very simply

they stood around her, she

how

she

had gone in search of healing from orthodox medical practice to homeo

the drug but the human
pathy, from that to a realization that it was not

mind

that

was the

healer;

how

she

had laboured with

this

human mind
God
human mind

mesmerism and hypnotism, only to find that

through spiritualism,
was not in any of it, until at

was but a counterfeit of the

that

was in Christ

last

real

she came to see that the

Mind, the mind

that

is

God, the mind

Jesus.

When she finished, everyone was

silent for

a moment, but

if

there

was

was immediately broken by Mrs. Eddy. She shook

hands around once more.
thank you", she said,
your kindness
and attention very much."

any sense of strain

it

"for

"I

The

interview of the Masters with

Mrs. Eddy

at Pleasant

View

really

involved the collapse of the "Next Friends" case. As the Court and the
rest of the
company made their way down the stairway leading from
Mrs. Eddy s study to the hall below, Senator Chandler was heard to

remark in a tone of no

sharper than a steel trap."

Nevertheless, the hearing was resumed immediately on their return to
Concord. Judge Aldrich had been careful before
dismissing court as
little

bafflement,

they were about to leave for Pleasant

"She

View

is

to impress

upon the counsel

that the hearing was not

adjourned, that no recess had been taken. "We
do not take a recess really," he said. "The
hearing is going on, but going
on at another place."

And so, at the close of the interview, the Masters and those with them
returned at once to the court room, where the
hearing was continued.
Senator Chandler and his
made
a
brave
show for three days
colleagues
of carrying on, but it must have been clear to them from the
first that
462

would inevitably interpret their evidence and argument in

the light of what they had seen and heard for themselves. In addition to
this, the reports of the various alienists appointed to examine Mrs. Eddy

the Masters

and mental condition were coming in and, al

not
were
made
public until later, they were known by the
though they
to
counsel
be
very unfavourable to their case. This was par
plaintiffs
in regard to her physical

ticularly true in regard to the report of

Doctor Allan McLane Hamil

who

declared quite unequivocally that far from displaying any sign

of mental incapacity, he did not hesitate to say that Mrs. Eddy was

ton,

"both

physically and mentally phenomenal".

the Court convened on the sixth

When

day of the trial, namely,

Senator
as
senior
counsel for the plaintiffs,
Chandler,
August 21, 1907,
the
the
suit.
Rumours of what was
announced
of
withdrawal
arose and
about to happen had spread rapidly, and the
crowded as soon as the doors were opened.

little

court

room was

will doubtless
please the Court," Senator Chandler said,
be a relief to the Masters to be informed that the counsel for the next
"May

it

"it

friends have this

the pending suit,

day filed with the Court a motion for the dismissal of

and that they hereby withdraw their appearance before

the Masters without asking from

them any finding upon the questions

submitted."

was an astute move, for, in the matter of law, it not only saved the
"next friends" from
riding on to what was inevitable defeat, but effectu
It

ally barred

defendants counsel from bringing into court, and so making

had been accumulated to prove

public, the great mass of evidence that

Mrs. Eddy s complete physical and mental competence.

General Streeter pleaded with the Court to refuse the motion, urging
that his clients were entitled to every opportunity to clear themselves of
the charges so recklessly made against them and to establish beyond all
peradventure the complete competence of the venerable lady who had

been rendered the involuntary petitioner in the case. Judge Aldrich, how
ever, ruled that the Masters had no choice in the matter, and that in view
of the withdrawal of the plaintiffs there was

463

"nothing

left to

be answered

by Mrs. Eddy

or decided

by

us".

The

case, therefore,

stood dismissed,

without any ruling on the part of the Court.

The

result was, however, accepted everywhere as a signal

Mrs. Eddy and a complete proof of her

and

New York World were

the

capacity.

triumph for

As far as Joseph Pulitzer

concerned, the outcome of the proceed

If the press, after the attack

ings was the reverse of all they had hoped.
on Mrs. Eddy in the previous October, had scourged The World with

whips,

it

now proceeded to scourge it with scorpions. Even the newspapers

most notoriously antagonistic to Mrs. Eddy and her movement registered

a changed attitude almost overnight. The press throughout the country
seemed suddenly to develop a pride, not only in the vigour displayed by
this

woman so long past the age

of active service, but in the

done and was doing. Everywhere Mrs. Eddy became

about her were eagerly read.

work she had

"good

copy";

The

accounts given of her quiet good

at
humour, her,
times, quite disconcerting wit; her freedom from all bit
her
terness;
kindness; her charity; her infectious sense of fun; her refusal
stories

to ask for help or cry quarter, seemed to appeal specially to the

sporting
instinct of press and people.
"The

dismissal of the suit brought

Baker G.

Eddy",

declared the

New

by next friends against Mrs. Mary

York American,
be gratifying
"will

to all fair-minded people without

regard to religious belief ...
to be hoped that Mrs.
like all other
who are

Eddy,

their rights, will be left in

peace

now

acting within

persons

and

it is

security."

The Free Press of Detroit declared that it had been proved

to the satis

faction of the reading public that the "venerable woman was in full
possession of her mental faculties" and that any reports to the

were

"destitute

editorially:

of

"The

foundation".

entire

The Daily Herald

of

Omaha

contrary
declared

proceeding was disgusting. It was redeemed only

by the impressive scene that resulted

when Mrs. Eddy was examined

at

her home, where her

courtesy and unfailing good nature, no less than the
of
her thought and the force and
clarity
vigour of her expressions, put her
persecutors to shame. The effect on the enlightened sentiment of the

country was such that the dismissal in short order was an inevitable
consequence."

464

Mrs. Eddy

comment on

it all

was her accustomed one,

things cease to bless, they will cease to occur."

And so within a week or less, its customary calm

"When

these

had descended once

again upon Pleasant View, and Concord had returned to its familiar
ways. The many reporters who had hovered around the Court House at

hours or gathered in knots at the street corners had gone home, and
the lobby of the Eagle Hotel was no longer the scene of momentous offall

record discussions.

465

HAPTER

49

BUT FOR MRS. EDDY,

her victory was only a

breathing spell, if that. As
always, apparent defeat or actual victory merely served as incentives to

renewed

effort and on a
larger scale. She had claimed the right to live her
Concord secluded from the world, if she so desired, without
having
her motives or
capacity questioned and she had won her case. She now
life

in

claimed the right to reverse her

policy, if she had a need to.
Concord and make her home in Boston.

She would

leave

was no hasty or whimsical decision. The movement was

growing
rapidly, and although Mrs. Eddy as successive notices in the Sentinel
and Journal about this time
was withdrawing more
sufficiently show
and more from active participation in the
the new
work,
It

nevertheless,

of activity
constantly presenting themselves tended to increase
rather than diminish the amount of actual labour that
devolved
her.
fields

Concord was too

upon

far away.

When anything of importance was to be done,

she always dealt

directly with those responsible, and a trip to Concord
requisitioned a whole day for something which, if she were
nearer, could

466

be despatched in a few hours. And so, soon after the conclusion of the
"Next Friends Suit", Mrs. Eddy decided to return to Boston,
;

As soon
and it

was taken, the project moved forward rapidly,

was not long before negotiations were in progress for the purchase
as the decision

of a small estate in Chestnut Hill in the suburbs of Boston. Formerly

known as the Lawrence estate, it comprised a large house of twenty-five

rooms situated in some twelve acres of well-wooded ground, and com

manding a wide view across the valley to the Blue Hills. The purchase

was completed

late in the year,

and on Sunday, January

26, 1908, this

strangely venturing woman, at the age of eighty-seven said goodbye tp

Pleasant View. She looked out of her study window for the last time over
the river toward$ Bow, up the valley toward Mount Monadnock, and
then set out for her new home.
It was a beautiful day as she drove through Concord for the last time;
snow everywhere, but the air was mild and the sun shone brightly. She

walked across the station platform unaided and, as the newspapers put it,
"with the ease and
grace of a much younger woman," to the special train
waiting to take her and her household on the first stage of their journey^
Three hours later, in the red half-light of a winter evening, she drove

through the gates of Chestnut Hill, which was to be her home until she
died some three years later.
Concord was sorry to see her go. The old town had known her all her
i

life, and its people, especially in these latter years, had come to look upon
her as one of their particular possessions. The appearance of her carriage

on State Street of an afternoon, summer or winter, was something that

Concord, now these many years, had taken for granted. And so, a few
days after she and her household had departed for Boston, the mayor and
met together in special session and passed resolutions of
them
to be spread on the records of the city and forwarded
causing

the city council

regret,

to Mrs.

And

Eddy at Chestnut Hill.

Mrs. Eddy promptly

replied,

thanking them

"deeply"

for the

resolutions passed by your honourable body"; telling them how

"kindly
rich were the recollections of her associations with Concord and its "good

467

folk-,

and praying

that she might deserve the friendship

people of my native

and esteem

"of

state".

her go, Mrs. Eddy was sorry to leave,

sorry to see
and many times, especially during the immediately ensuing months, must
old-fashioned house
Iier dioughts have returned regretfully to the compact
so long.
for
which she had called her home
on tbe side of the
,

But if Concord was

Ml

Chestnut Hill was beautiful and convenient and supplied with the

last

When

word in everything, but

anyone had entered the
she had looked up from
time
the
door of her study at Pleasant View, by
her desk to see who it was, he was almost beside her, but at Chestnut Hill
there seemed to be so much walking to do before anyone could come
it

was so

vast.

whfcin hail of anyone else. She endured it all for a time, and then, in one
of those sudden decisions she had a way of making r the moment she

became convinced that something was wrong that could and should be
she took counsel with Calvin Frye and other members of her
righted,

household.

Adam Dickey in his memoirs describes how she clinched the matter by
me I cannot
remarking humorously: "When I call a student? to come to
wait Until he walks across such a great expanse of carpet from the door
to my desk. Something must be done to conserve my time."

In the end, a plan was worked out with the aid of the architect whereby
her bedroom and study were reduced to the same size as the bedroom and
study in Pleasant View and the two rooms arranged in as nearly as pos
sible the same way. The change, moreover, it was found, added greatly
to die comfort of the house. It allowed Calvin Frye to have a sitting room
as well as a bedroom, afforded space for an elevator, and widened the

landing outside of Mrs.

Eddy s

back again in her old home.

She must have been glad of

study.

She could almost imagine

herself

glad when she could think of Concord

4vithout regret and Chestnut Hill without
misgiving, for, as subsequent
events showed, she had great things yet to do. Of these, first
place must
it,

be given to the kunching of a great daily newspaper, which she was to

Science Monitor. Perhaps she had envisioned some-

name The Christian

468

earlier when she said, with the first

thing of the sort twenty-five years
that
there
an urgent need for a publication
was
the
of
issue
Journal,
devoted to counteracting the unwholesome influence of the newspapers of

the world.

Much

water had gone under the bridge since then, but the
had not changed much. All through the history of

colour of the stream

her movement, Mrs.

Eddy had

many things from the press gen

much of the misrepresentation #tnd

suffered

while; she recognized that

erally, and
sensationalism which characterized the newspaper approach to her teach

ing was inevitable, she must frequently have longed for some medium
through which she could make known the facts as she saw them. It was
plain

by now that

little

could be done through a monthly periodical, such

as the Journal, in this direction, in so far as reaching the general public

was concerned, and

in the

way

she felt

practically nothing in presenting the

it

ought

news of the day

to be presented.

And so, with the merciless notoriety attendant upon the "Next Friends
so fresh at hand, she was prepared to regard warmly the suggestion
from one John L. Wright that
general newspaper owned by Christian
Scientists and conducted by experienced newspaper men who are Chris

Suit"

"a

tian

Scientists"

at Chelsea,

be

started,

had been

Mr. Wright was

First

Reader of the Church

for three years substitute night city editor of the

Boston Globe and for

fifteen years a reporter

on

that paper.

From this
March of

impressive background of experience, he wrote Mrs, Eddy in

1908 that he was convinced a large public would be ready to support a
wholesome paper "that takes less notice of crime, etc,, and gives attention
especially to die positive side of

good of man and to the

life,

to the activities that

things really worth

knowing."

work for the

A few

months

August of that year to be exact, the Trustees of the Christian

Science Publishing Society received a laconic note from Chestnut Hill
later, in

signed by Mrs. Eddy requesting that a daily newspaper be started at

once, the same to be called The Christian Science Monitor.

Whether

the Trustees

knew what was involved

in starting

a metro

politan daily newspaper, not only in the matter of capital but in a thou
it is
impossible to say. Even

sand details of management and promotion,

469

this time few,

they did there were by

if

if

with the
any, connected

work

who would question any request from Mrs. Eddy;

that she never asked them to do anything
Experience had taught them
was feasible, while the rapid, orderly fulfilalmost a commonplace in the records of
had
become
meat of her plans

ukti! she

was

satisfied that it

the Cause.

The Trustees replied

their confidence that the

at once, expressing their joy at the

"move is

timely",

"good news",

and that the new paper would

Christian Science", that

mighty instrument for the promotion of
success from a business standpoint", and that they rejoiced
it would be

be

"a

"a

%>

have

this additional opportunity of assisting in

your plans for the

welfare of humanity".

The

exact nature of the

new project was not announced

immediately,
but within a week or so a notice appeared in the Sentinel to the effect
that large addition was necessary to die Publishing Society s building
in Boston, and that all who desired to subscribe to this object could send
"a

Church Treasury in Boston. Without any fur

the sum of $400,000 was subscribed within, a few weeks, addi-

their contributions to the

ther effort,

tionalland was purchased, and the work of constructing what was

required in the way of new buildings, and of strengthening existing build
ings to

Ae extent that they could

was commenced. Then

carry the weight of the printing presses

in October appeared the formal announcement of

the forthcoming appearance of the

new

daily, in

which the Trustees said :

a strictly up-to-date newspaper, in which

the news of the day that should be printed will find a
place, and whose
lt is their intention to publish

all

service will not be restricted to

any one

locality,

or section, but will cover

the daily activities of the entire world.

will be the mission of the Monitor to
publish the real news of the
world in a dean, wholesome manner, devoid of the sensational methods
"It

employed by so many newspapers. ..."

Meanwhile, throughout the country letters had gone out in all direc
tions to
newspaper men and women who were known to be interested in
Christian Science, inviting them to send in their names to the
Publishing

470

that a suitable staff might be selected to serve

Society to the end

on

the

was immediate and emphatic Many hundreds

paper. The response
men and women in all parts of the country wrote in expressing their
to serve the new daily in any capacity. The work of selection

new
of

willingness

was carried through rapidly, and,

some three months after the Trustees had received the
early in November,
from Mrs. Eddy, the new building was completed, the
first

must have been

difficult; nevertheless, it

request

machinery installed and the

November

staff

work.
ready to commence

the
25, 1908, the day before Thanksgiving,

first

Then on
The

issue of

Monitor appeared.
to the name and especially to
attached
Mrs. Eddy
great importance
an integral part of the title.
be
should
article
the point that the definite
Then she seems to have had quite a struggle to retain the words "Christian
the Board of Directors and many
Science" in the title. Some members of
Christian Science

with
others were of opinion that the title should be simply The Monitor,
was
that
indication as to the religious body
sponsoring it, but
out

any
Mrs. Eddy, while

the actual presentation of Christian

rigidly limiting

that the
Science teaching to one short article each day, was determined
it went.
wherever
Science
of
Christian
new daily should carry the name

She spoke of

it

and wrote of

ence she insisted on the full

it

as the Monitor, but in

any

official refer

title.

Nothing seems to have aroused

her more sternly to protest at any time than an appearance of sailing
under false colours. In the far-off days in Lynn she had boldly put up
In

all this

Mrs. Eddy was

consistent.

and gold notice, "Christian Scientists Home", over the door,

the
and she had been insistent to keep the words "Christian Science" in
Archibald
that
time
forefront of her work ever since. Even up to the
Chestnut
Lellan carried the proof of the first issue of the Monitor out to
would
Mrs.
that
some
had
still
accept
Eddy
hope
Hill, he seems to have
were
others
and
he
to the name of the new periodical
in
the

the blue

Mo

point

regard

but Mrs. Eddy, once again, left no doubt as to her wishes.

trying to make,
that the
his return to Boston, McLellan made it clear to his colleagues

On

471

matter was most certainly settled. "The name of the

The Christian Science Monitor."
pressively,

paper",

he said, ex

"is

To her followers as a whole Mrs. Eddy contented herself with a short

of the new paper in which she
name to all the Christian Science periodi
cals, The Journal, The Sentinel, Der Herald der Christian Science, and
now The Monitor. "The object of The Monitor", she added simply,
to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,*
notice which appeared in the
related how she had given the

first issue

"is

472

FROM THE DAYS of her first struggle with Richard Kennedy to maintain
the integrity of her teaching, Mrs. Eddy had always regarded this as the
great field of her warfare. Attacks upon herself and upon her doctrine
religionist might seem to occupy
a larger and more frequent place in the limelight of her life, but, in her
own mind, she never seems to have had the least doubt but that the real

from the point of view of the orthodox

enemy of the Cause at all times was the false prophet. Richard Kennedy,
Edward Arens, Josephine Woodbury, to mention a few of the most out
standing, constituted the only serious menace she seemed to feel, not as
individuals but as the lo here! and lo there! of mortal mind, as she would
have put it, which could and would,

In the

"Next

Friends

Suit"

if

not

resisted, deceive

even the elect.

she had won a final victory over the enemies

of her person, over those who sought to restrict her liberty and abridge
the rights and privileges of her movement. She had still to measure swords
in

an equally momentous

her

473

struggle with the

broadest possible meaning of the term.

"false

Christ",

in the

for

The

scene of
oldest

Eddy s

it all

was

Hew York and the

and most devoted

students,

central figure

Augusta

to
will be remembered, had gone

Augusta Stetson, it
Mrs. Eddy s request, as
Science

character, she

had

New York

at

start the Christian

far back as 1886, in order to

had been successful and more

force of
woman of striking personality and tremendous
from strength
carried all before her and gone

movement there. From the

than successful.

one of Mrs.

Stetson.

first

she

literally

at the corner of Fifth Avenue

to strength. From a room over a drug store
intervals
she.had moved her church .steadily at
and Forty-seventh
the room over the drug store to
to more commodious quarters. From
in 1890; to Hardman Hail on the
Fifth
Street,"

Crescent Hall at 138

Avenue,

from
corner of Fifteenth Street two years later; and
1894, to the Scottish Rites
to
Street; thence in 1896,
Street.

Hardman

Hall, in

Madison Avenue and Twenty-ninth

at 145 West
still more commodious quarters
accom
sufficient
in 1899, unable to obtain

HaE

in

Finally,
Forty-eighth
a church of such a
modations in any other way, it was decided to build
the near future, and to this end a
size as to meet all reasonable needs of
lot

was purchased at the corner of Central Park West and Ninety-sixth

Street
at first.
There was nothing in all this to occasion any misgivings
for
existed
have
to
seems
there
Stetson
Between Mrs. Eddy and Augusta
There
was, however,
real affection and mutual admiration.
a

very

years

between the two

this

fundamental difference

that,

wheteas Mrs.

Eddy

was ever attaining to clearer views of the ultimate of her teaching and
was always ready to abandon a practice the moment she saw that it tended
this ultimate, Augusta Stetson, like many
to
progress towards

impede
remained through the years exactly at the point of her entrance,
With the more obscure of Mrs. Eddy s followers, this tendency to stulti
others,

fication might pass unnoticed, but Mrs. Stetson s outstanding achieve*

ments made her the centre of the movement s sautiny so that her perpetu<

ation of the outgrown concepts of a by-gone period namely, that day

when marriage was looked upon as something to be risen
in the
eighties

above and one

woes were so

to telepathic
easily attributable

bombard-

474

ment by others
generation and

brought her into irreconcilable conflict with the newer

personalized doctrine. But after the die was once

its less

were by no means confined to these issues.

Her undeniable eloquence was regarded by her detractors, who were per
haps not so articulate, as symptomatic of arrogant vainglory, and every
cast against her, the criticisms

to
questionable pronouncement she made was transmitted promptly
Boston and to Chestnut Hill. She was quoted as telling her students :
"We need health and
strength and peace, and for these we look to God.

us not forget that we also need things, things which are but the
type and shadow of the real objects of God s creating, but which we can
use and enjoy until we wake to see the real.
surely need clothes. Then

But

let

We

why

not manifest a beautiful concept? Clothes should, indeed, be as

nearly perfect as possible, in texture, line and colour. ... It is certain* too,
that we need homes. Then why not have beautiful homes? Our homes

should express the highest sense of harmony and happiness. If we have a

carpet, why not a beautiful, perfect one, intead of a dingy half-worn one?
.

We have a right to everything that is convenient, most comfortable,

most harmonious. God made

and

all things are for

to mortal

all things,

though we only

His Children. Everything

is

see their shadows*

ours. It does

not belong

mind."

This, said her

critics,

elevated

money-making

aiid the ability to

make

money to the point where it was regarded as the supreme test of under
case was in the building. Her individualistic speech and
standing.

cited as departures from what were becoming the canonical

the
of
Church, and the initiative with which she built her
writings
York church became a sign of inordinate ambition. All this led readily
into the ancient charge of aspiring to displace the God-ordained Leader of

manner were

New

the

movement. Worse

accusation

of

"taking

to destroy these
cause.

still,
up"

and she never denied the

her enemies by name and "working" mentally

"incarnate

she was accused

evils"

which she declared inimical to the

There can be no question that Augusta Stetson knew

downfall of so

475

many

all

about the

of her distinguished predecessors through such back-

stairs

the Julia Reid-Kings, the Arthur True Buswells, the Clara

but with her superior intelligence, indomitable will and closer

gossip

Ghoates

Mrs. Eddy she should be able to weather the storm. Any

she had unquestioning faith
way, far and above all these considerations,
Leader and, as her
her
of
in the absolute
divinely inspired
friendship with

infallibility

events prove, she felt that in any final

correspondence and subsequent
Mrs. Eddy would come to her rescue.

But

as

"Gussie

church,"

as

Mrs. Eddy called

it

in her

test

letters,

flourished ever more spectacularly, so did the disquieting stories flourish.

The anti-Stetsonites saw a threat to the supremacy of The Mother

the whole movement

Church, to the purity of the doctrine upon which
Baker
of
the
was based and to
Eddy. When the great
Mary
leadership
edifice at Ninety-sixth Street was completed in 1903, they pointed to its
unorthodox design and appointments and to its unorthodox activities
within. All around the building had been fitted out with luxurious prac

were received, advised and treated, while

to have practitioners meetings
every day at noon Mrs. Stetson was wont
in which she gave advice, not only as to how certain problems should be

titioners

rooms where

met, but as to

how

clients

certain people

satisfactory should be treated

and

whose attitude was not regarded as

dealt with.

seemed innocent enough, and could be explained by skillful

casuistry as being absolutely in line with the teachings of Mrs. Eddy, but
It all

from the
giving.

first it

So

it

practitioners

son,

seems to have

filled

Mrs. Eddy herself with great mis

was not long before she formulated a by-law which forbade

rooms being in the same building with churches. Mrs. Stet

who always made a great point

of complete obedience to her Leader,

immediately complied, and the practitioners rooms at First Church, New

York, were vacated overnight and remained permanently closed. The
practitioners carried
of.

on their work and in the same spirit in other quarters,

course*

And so things went on until the summer of 1908, when rumours began
to be heard in
in

Boston that Mrs. Stetson was seeking to elevate her church

New York to a position similar to The Mother Church in Boston, and

476

to establish branches throughout the city,

scheme was discussed in the

few months

New York American,

and

it

later,

such a

was said that

subscriptions were already

coming in to carry through the project.

The announcement appeared in the New York American on Novem

ber 30,

and in the

issue of the Sentinel five

days

later, instead

of a simple

statement as to the falsity of the report, appeared a vigorous editorial

setting forth the unsound nature of the whole proceeding and restating

movement wherein there was one

met the situation by a
statement through the New York Times in its issue of December 7, in
which she declared that there had never been any thought in her mind
of establishing a branch church of the First Church of New York, but
that, on the contrary, the new church would be styled Seventh Church,
and its only connection with First Church was that the funds for the new
building would be supplied by First Church.
The situation was continuing to get more and more out of hand. With
the fundamental organization of the

Mother Church and

its

branches. Mrs. Stetson

the principal actors coming out from behind the scenes to take up their
battle positions on the open stage, what appeared to be a grave schism

was developing within the Church. To a public conditioned to think of the

Christian Science

movement

as

an organization, Mrs, Stetson s blatant

independence was a challenge to the constituted authority that was Boston

and, indeed, a threat to the very integrity of the cause itself. Whatever the
merits of Mrs. Stetson s stand

and whatever her personal deserts, Mrs.

could
she
not
that
was
a dangerously disturbing element and
Eddy
deny
she must have recognized that she was the only one at this time with
great enough influence to cope with such a contingency. But to the vener
ated warrior at Chestnut Hill, any direct action must have promised a
veritable

Armageddon. Perhaps some

sort of strategy could forestall a

ruinous battle.

And so on the day Mrs. Stetson s

York Times, Mrs. Eddy dispatched a

repudiation appeared in the New

letter to her in New York
propos

ing a visit together.

Mrs. Stetson lost no time in accepting the invitation. She received the

477

took the midnight

morning of the 8th and the same evening
Calvin
notified
she
Frye of her
train for Boston. Early next morning
invited her to come out to Chestnut
arrival, and Mrs. Eddy promptly
Hill at one o clock and go for a drive with her.
account of the matter, and there is no
According to Mrs. Stetson s
under
reason to doubt its accuracy, Mrs. Eddy showed herself tender and

letter

on

die

standing.

When Mrs. Stetson arrived, Mrs. Eddy was already in her car

at the door, and, after greeting her kindly, insisted on

riage waiting
her robe with her. Then the two set off together. From notes

sharing

Stetson s papers after her death, Mrs. Eddy seems to

her attention on dissuading Mrs. Stetson from
have concentrated
foutid

among Mrs.

all

inordinate or unseemly initiative. She deprecated

anything savouring of
church founding another branch church,
strongly the idea of one branch

and warned her to take a lesson from her, Mrs. Eddy s, own experience
and the difficulties she had when she sought to relieve her students of
labours rightly devolving upon them by giving them land and money to
to have provided both themselves.
few days
were
Mrs. Eddy
apparently rewarded, for within a
Stetson
announc
Mrs.
from
after their drive together she received a letter

build a church

when they ought

s efforts

ing that the whole project of the

new church had been abandoned. So

that she had

far, Mrs. Eddy evidently might feel satisfied
forlorn
a
but this would prove
hope.

won her battle,

In the summer of the following year Mrs. Stetson s students presented

her with a gift of gold, accompanied by a "composite letter", which ran
in part as follows:
"Our

hearts are filled with gratitude

tianity demonstrated

and awe

May a purified

as

we

life attest

see, in you, Chris

the endless gratitude

you have given us, while, with

of
I
Rabboni
Teacher
. . Your unselfish
old,
life, fast ap
Mary
cry,
proaching the perfect idea of Love, is to my hungry sense for Truth the
bread of heaven and the water of Life Eating this bread and drinking
this water is to me eating the
body of Christ, and drinking his blood
I feel for the manifestation of the Christ
.

The

voice of -the Father-Mother

God

is

ever speaking through

you.

our blessed teacher, as the manifestation of

Truth."

478

Mrs. Stetson, in a covering letter to Mrs. Eddy said she counted herself
from worthy of such adulation, and so sent it on to her, with the

far

assurance that she did so because she felt that

all

the devotion

belonged to her "forever Leader."

Mrs. Eddy was thoroughly roused. She sent the

it

contained

really

letter

on to

the

Board

of Directors and urged them to act upon it in accordance with Science

and Health and the Mother Church Manual; while to Mrs. Stetson her
self

she wrote

"Awake

upon

and

arise

from

this

temptation produced by animal magnetism

yourself, allowing your students to deify

you and

me."

Mrs. Stetson replied immediately, and in that vein of complete submis^

sion with which, however, Mrs. Eddy could no longer be swayed. The

Board of Directors had already summoned her to appear before them and
Mrs. Eddy determined to let the summons stand. About the middle of
July, Mrs. Stetson appeared before the Board in Boston, and a prelimin*
ary examination of the whole situation at First Church,

New York,

was

commenced.

The proceedings, however, had not gone far before Mrs. Eddy advised
that the examination be suspended
First

called

referred back to

New York, for action.

Church,

At

and the whole matter

one Virgil O. Strickler,

the Board in Boston and laid before them some startling

this point, the first reader of the church,

upon

claims in the

form of a diary which he had kept of some of Mrs. Stetson s

private meetings that he

Omaha.

He

had been

was a lawyer from

Christian
said, through
Science, had

had attended. Virgil

healed, he

Strickler

gone through Mrs. Stetson s class and had joined First Church, New
York. As first reader, he had the privilege of attending Mrs, Stetson s
"practitioners

and being greatly troubled at some of the

meetings, he had kept a diary which he now laid

meetings",

proceedings at these
before the Board. So serious were the claims set forth that the Board

and during September various practitioners^

were
summoned to Boston to answer inquiries.
students of Mrs. Stetson,
continued

its

investigations,

Before long the Board,

479

satisfied that drastic action

was necessary and,

of the Manual, removed Mrs. Stetson s

acting under a special provision
her licence
card and those of her practitioners from the Journal*, withdrew

a teacher and served upon her informal notice of

as

their

"findings

and

orders".

these findings were that Mrs. Stetson attempted

Among
and to

injure persons

by mental means;

this

"to

control

being utterly contrary to the

that she was responsible for "perverted

teaching pf Christian Science";
sex teaching", for "encouraging self-deification", and for "seeking des

potic control over her

students".

Mrs. Stetson, on receipt of this indictment, immediately turned it over

to the Trustees of her Church for examination, and it quickly became
the revolt against her was gaining ground rapidly,
that,

although
apparent
she was still sufficiently strong to secure from her Trustees some formal
exoneration. When this became apparent, Mrs. Eddy wrote to the Chair

man

of her Board of Directors, Archibald McLellan, under the date of

October

12, 1909, this directive :

**Beloved Student : Learn at once if The Mother Church can be prose

cuted for suspending a student or even expelling them, who is giving us
so much trouble as Mrs. Stetson does, and if it can be done safely drop
Mrs. Stetson s connection with The Mother Church. Let no one know
that I have written

you on this subject. Lovingly yours." No dimming of

had founded an empire and perfected the greatest

that astuteness that

crusade

is

here apparent.

The

regal Augusta was again summoned to Boston where she was to

be questioned by the Board for three days ten hours the first day, ten
the second and six the last. During the second session, the harried Mrs.

Stetson sent word to her church in

"requested

the

us

all to unite

Mother Church

was now induced

that I

directors"

"to

was absolutely

The day
Church,

on the pending

that

issue,

Mrs. Eddy had

who

are supporting

and that she

herself

may have been wrong where

I felt

December 15 namely, at a meeting of

was read from Mrs. Eddy

First

believe that I

right"

before this,

New

New York

with those in our church

York, a

letter

pleading for

480

Board in this "momentous question." Naturally, this was

the
waters, for to Mrs. Stetson s opponents such a letter could
upon
portend nothing less than her defeat, while the Stetson students had been
loyalty to the

oil

taught to expect divinely

meant to them that

judgement from their Leader and

must be gloriously vindicated.

infallible

their teacher

this

The

reign of Augusta Stetson was over. She returned to face a hostile

majority in the temple she had builded with her own hands. Her resigna
tion

from the branch church came on November

upon her public excommunication from

ber 18.

22, 1909, following close

The Mother Church, Novem

Defeat in Christian Science? Never. Well had Augusta Stetson learned

at least this lesson

from her adored teacher and forever Leader. She

now write with poignant sincerity:

learned during this severe trial that the hour had come when I must
see that this experience was to exalt me by severing me from material
could
"I

organization. ... I am confident that I burst the bonds which held me

to a material organization when I finished my church edifice and taught
Truth to those who were ready to assimilate it and rise higher and build

on a wholly

foundation

Watching over
Leader, Mrs. Eddy, foresaw from the summit of her
spiritual

answer to her prayer, namely, that her

First

Church of

Christ, Scientist,

child,

New York

Israel,

our beloved

spiritual vision the

a loyal branch of the Vine,

City, should bear fruit for

Immortality, lay the foundation for the Church Triumphant and Uni
versal, in which Christ, in His second appearing, must tabernacle in visible

and tangible presence to reign on earth forever and

forever."

Mrs. Ecldy

remained her saviour.

Armageddon s receding thunderings were no longer audible at far-off

Chestnut Hill, Here, too, the same serene satisfaction of Victory pre
vailed and Mrs. Eddy must have enjoyed the more tangible evidence she
held that

"what

blesses .one blesses

all"

Surely, as she settled back into the

sweet calm of that westering light of her long crusade,

heard these longed-for words,

servant."

"Well

she;

might h^ve

done, thou good and faithful

End and

.ITie

EDDY WAS now

MjfcS.

51

the Beginning

eighty-eight years old, and, as the days passed,

it

must often have seemed to those around her that she was living almost in
a world apart, while the world of everyday as she once put it "flutters
1

in.my thought as an unreal shadow."

She was setting her house in order, doing the things she felt ought to
be done, providing for everyone she felt ought to be provided for for

Geprge and
tiezer

with

Fiye and

many

others,

even for Ebe-

Benny of happier days. She was making her will

carefully thought out provisions, which were to mean so

Foster-Eddy, the

its

much

his family, for Calvin

many

in the future of the

Cause she had founded.

Troubles came and went, but above and

beyond them all, and through
diem all, was ever, now, more and more, "the eternal sunshine and
joy
unspeakable," of which she was wont at times to talk. And so she moved
quietly, faithfully

She was

still

on

into the closing years

and the

above aU the teacher. Indeed

much

last phase.
of her time seems to

have been taken up with just this.

Every morning she would summon her
household around her to instruct them on some
question, either one raised
1

Miscellany, p. 268.

482

or prompted by some happening of the

by a simple Bible reading
them* Calvin
before. She was often hard to the point of sternness with

which he kept in a kind of shorthand of his own on the

over Mrs.
scratch pad on his desk, reveals at times a grief almost childlike
natural
however
of
outlook, which,
Eddy s rebukes and shows a littleness
must have been a sore tax on the patience of a
from a human
Frye

s diary,

standpoint,

sweetness and
temperament. She met it all with a
devotion.
renewed
to
household
her
ever prompted
light which
The steadfastness of her faith was often tried in other ways. Her teach

woman of Mrs. Eddy s

for death any more than it did for sickness. She

ing allowed no place
cannot speak of myself as sufficient for
herself.
for
claim
made no
she had written years before in her book Unity of Good.
these things
insist only upon the fact, as it exists in Science, that man dies not."
But she met every onslaught of death upon herself or her friends with
unshaken confidence that even if the victory was not yet, yet surely it
"I

,"

"I

would

be.

In the August of 1907, just after the close of the "Next Friends Suit",
one of her most devoted adherents in England, the Earl of Dunmore, died
Arm
suddenly in London, and, a few months later, big, burly Joseph

who had served her faithfully as the publisher of her books, passed
so many occasions come
Later
still, Edward Kimball, who had on
away.
Arm
her
of
to her defence and the defence
teaching, followed Joseph
daunted. Each passing only served to call forth
strong. She was nothing

strong,

a new message of confidence to

neither do they sleep nor

follow

them,"

all

rest

her world.

from

"Our

brothers are not dead,

their labours

was the tenor of her word.

And

and

their

works do

so her peace returned

to her.

way was not easy for anyone, on the other hand, there seem
have been times, many of them, when the whole household would be

But
to

if

the

and an atmosphere of inde

caught up into a kind of seventh heaven,
scribable joy

was everywhere.

It

was no sudden

that

made

are the happiest

group

flash in the

pan

her write a few months before the end :

"The

483

Christian Scientists at Mrs.

Eddy s home

on

earth.

Their faces shine with the reflection of light and love; their

are upward; their

footsteps are not weary; their thoughts

and

their light

way

is

onward,

shines."

She was still hard at work, almost as hard at work as ever. Visitors
came and went at Chestnut Hill as they had done at Pleasant View.

to Our Leader"
study of the department in the Sentinel entitled "Letters
shows how many and varied were her interests in these years. Her own

There is no sign in them of waning power, but they

to the point, constantly having recourse simply to funda
mental fact as she saw it. There is only one enemy now a belief in a
letters

grew

are brief

shorter.

and

power apart from God. Every phase of wrong thinking could be reduced
to that, just as every phase of right thinking could be reduced to love.
If love

is all

there

is

to

the fulfilling of the law, then the belief in

there is to death and all that leads up to it. Just

life, is

the opposite of love is all

as John in his extreme old age

is
traditionally supposed to have said to his
whenever
disciples
they appealed to him for help, "Little children, love
one another," so this latter day Michael of a new-old faith, as she reached

the limits of her earthly course, could see

only one enemy, in whatever
he
a
belief
a
in
guise
appeared,
power apart from God, wrong thinking,
in
a
realm
of
wrong practice
thought, of mind; in a word, mental mal
practice.

Again and again, they failed her, as had Richard Kennedy, Arens,
Josephine Woodbury, and now, only the other day, Augusta Stetson,
drifting into witchcraft and necromancy, or if not wandering so far afield,
going about under a cloud of fear over the presence of something that
not but seemeth to

"is

be".

The way at

times must have seemed

very hard for her. Calvin Frye, in
how, on one occasion, after she had struggled valiantly
with weakness for several
days, she called some of her students to her and
with something of her old fire bade them
get about it and heal her. And
then suddenly realizing
to
by their answers that she had
his diary, tells of

from them, in this direction, she bade them take

her and know that she was well.

their

nothing
hope
thought away from

484

this she goes on alone

she is in her ninetieth year now through
into
of
of
struggle
periods
great calm and no little glory, and so,
periods
as
summer
to
autumn
and autumn to the first touch
at last,
gives place

After

of winter, full circle

It
it,

was the

"with

is

made.

December, 1910,
pleasant day", as one record has
the bright frosty beauty of early winter lying on the wooded
In the afternoon Mrs. Eddy went out for her usual drive,
1st of

"a

all

country".

seeming to her household much as she always was. On her return, she
rested for a while in her study, and then asked for her writing tablet.

When

it

had been brought

They were the

Life".

last

to her she wrote, in a firm hand,

"God

is

my

words she ever wrote.

The

next day, although she rose at her accustomed time and went to
her desk, she did no writing or reading. Every now and again someone

would come into the room

to see if she

needed anything, or to lay some

paper on her desk. They found her always the same, calm and motion
less, quite clearly wrapped in thought.

Her

study at Chestnut Hill, as has been seen, looked out over the
the Blue Hills. And her desk was close to the bay window
towards
valley
whence the best views might be had. Members of her household have told

how much
she

would

she loved this view, especially in the evening light, and how
for an hour or more at a time quietly contemplating it. She

sit

had a copy of the Bible and her book Science and Health on a reading
stand near by, and every now and again she would turn on the little light,
read awhile and then resume her thinking.

So

was

Friday in December and, as hour followed

hour, it began to be clear to those accustomed to her ways that a change
was taking place. Outwardly she was the same. She talked to those about
it

all

day on

this

her with her usual serenity and she retired at her usual time.
But she did not get up on the next morning. In the evening she passed
quietly away.

On

Church
at the

485

the congregation in The Mother

heard
the
news. Just before the benediction
Boston

the following day

building in

Sunday

accustomed morning

service, the first reader,

Judge Clifford P.

Smith, read from the desk part of a letter written by Mrs. Eddy some
twenty years before. "You may be looking to see me in my accustomed
pkce with you," he read, "but this you must no longer expect. ... I am
still

with you

on the

field of battle,

taking forward marches, broader and

*

higher views,

and with the hope that you

will follow."

The

reader then

added :

and

lines were written years ago, they are true

"Although these
today,
will continue to be true. But it has now become my
duty to announce

Eddy passed from our

home in Chestnut Hill."

that Mrs.

her

sight last night at 10 :45

clock, at

By the next day it was known, throughout the world, that finis had
been written to an earthly record that is one of the most remarkable in
human history*

Miscellaneous Writings t pp. 135-136.

486

Adams, George Wendell, in final session of

Science and Health, accept George Clark s
book, 187.
Ackland, James, student of Mrs. Eddy, direc
tor of first Church organization, 262,272.
Adams Company, Boston publishers, refuse
Mrs. Eddy s class of November, 1898,

&

407.
Advertiser,

s
Lynn, publishes Mrs. Patterson

poem on Quimby s death, 128.

Mrs.
Albion, Maine, home of Sarah Crosby,
Patterson takes refuge
125, 126, 127.

in,

120, 121, 124-

224; encourages Mrs. Eddy by visits and

and
letters, 209, 224-225, 373; last years
death of, 270.

Aldrich, Judge, Master in "Next Friends"

Suit, 456, 457; adjourns Court to Pleasant

View, 457, 459; interviews Mrs. Eddy,

459-462; dismisses case, 463-464.
Allen, George H., member of Mrs. Patter
son s first class, 169, 191; signs resolution
to help her work, 199.
Ambrose, Abigail, mother of Mrs. Eddy-

See Baker, Abigail (Ambrose).

Ambrose, Henry, immigrant ancestor of Mrs.
Eddy, joins Massachusetts Bay Company,

Mrs.
Ambrose, Nathaniel, grandfather of
Eddy, builds meeting-house in New Hamp
shire, 11; marriage of, 11-12.
Ambroses, ancestors of Mrs, Eddy, of Suf
11.
folk, England, 7; character of,
"Next
American, New York, regarding
Friends" Suit, 464; on New York Church,

477,

.487

Arena, Boston, publishes Josephine Woodbury s articles against Mrs. Eddy, 412,
414, 417,
Arens, Edward J., heading Chapter 23, 235243; character of, 235-236; member of
Mrs. Eddy s class, 236; litigation on Mrs.
Eddy s behalf, 236-237; institutes suit
against Spofford in "Ipswich Witchcraft

237-238-241; arrest and charges in

to Murder Case," 245, 247253, 263; does independent healing in Bos
ton, 275; plagiarizes Science and Health
in pamphlet, Gilbert Eddy, in Preface to
Science and Health denounces action ,of,
Case,"

to Mrs. Pat
Alcott, A. Bronson, writes letter
terson approving Science and Health, 207208; meets Mrs. Patterson, 208; character
and Sppfford,
of, 208-209; receives Barry

Amesbury, Massachusetts, home

148; heading Chapter 15, 150-160; Mrs.

Patterson s residence in, 148-157, 161-162,
163-164; she visits Whittier in, 157, 165;
her departure from, 157, 165-166.

of Whittier,

"Conspiracy

275-276, 279; Mrs. Eddy brings suit for

plagiarism against, 296; he contends Sci
ence and Health copied from Quimb/s
writings, 296; injunction issued against,
296; Mrs. Eddy wins suit against, 312-313;
continued opposition to Mrs. Eddy, 325,
473, 484.
Armstrong, Joseph, follower of Mrs. Eddy,
member of Publication Committee, 355;
defendant in Next Friends" Suit, 445;
death of, 483.
Bagley, Sarah, student of Mrs. Patterson,
155; Mrs. Patterson makes home with,
155, 156, 157; character and ancestry of,
155-157; Whittier s poem to uncle of, 157;
Mrs. Patterson leaves home of, 157; Mrs.
Patterson returns to, 161-162, 163-164;
Kennedy moves to home of, 164; visits
Whittier with Mrs. Patterson, 165; Mrs.
Patterson and Kennedy leave home of,
165-166; subsequent history of, 166.
Bagley, Squire, father of Sarah Bagley, 155,
156; writes journal, 155-156.

mother of Mrs.

Baker, Abigail (Ambrose),

Eddy, 12-15; her premonitions

Mary s birth,

of
13, 18; character

before

and am-

birth of,
Baker, Mark, father of Mrs. Eddy,
11; heritage of, 4, 5-8, 9-11; marriage,
birth of daughter Mary, 12; character of,
distress
14-15, 17-19, 21, 22, 23, 79, 398;
over Mar/s views, 18-19, 20, 21, 22, 23,
24; friendship with General Pierce, 28; at

tude toward Mary, IS, 19, 20, 21,,22,

letters and book

398; advice to Mary, 24;
to Glover, 57sent to Mary after marriage
s widowhood, 72,
58, 59, 68; after Mary
death of, 78-79.
73; last days and
of Mrs. fcday
Baker, Abigail, sister

Mary s

letters

from

43, 44, 46, 69, 76, 78-79;

Albert to, 49, 50; trip with Mary to White
Mountains, 56; letter concerning George
Glover s death, 71-72; marriage of, 76, 78;
ffl health, refuses Mar/s help, 144, 145;
death of, 144.
Mrs. Eddy,
Baker, George W., nephew of
*
Next Friends Suit,
joins in petition in
.,

<f

445, 448.

of Mrs.
Baker, Martha (Rand), sister-in-law
marries
Eddy, Mary s letter to, 76-77;
Mary s brother, George Sullivan Baker,

76,78.
sister of Mrs. Eddy-Sefe
Martha (Baker);
ancestor
Baker, Robert, earliest known Baker

Baker, Martha,
Pillsbury,

of Mrs. Eddy, 5, 6.
Baker, Samuel, brother of Mrs. Eddy, 15;
goes to Boston, 34; marriage of, 35, 52;
letter from George Glover to, 53, 54.

Mrs. Eddy,
Bakers, immigrant ancestors of
4-6, 7-8, 10-11.
Bancroft

450, 454.
Baker, John, son of Robert Baker, ancestor
of Mrs. Eddy, of Lyminge, England, re
fuses to

pay church

tax, 5, 6.

Mrs. Eddy, early history

of, 10-11;

mar

riage of, 10.

and Purington, shoe factory

Patterson s first class, 168, 169, 170, 171,

196- foreman in shoe factory, 168; writes
his recollections, 168, 171, 175, 184, 185,
records
223; describes first class, 16&-171;
her happiness in work, 184, 200, 210;
character of, 188; marriage of, 188; Mrs.
Patterson makes home with, 188, 189; she
leaves Bancrofts, 189; correspondence of

Mrs. Patterson and, 189, 190, 191, 192;

opens office in Cambridge, 191, 192; signs
resolution to help Mrs. Patterson s work,
199- mentions favorable notices of Science
describes Mrs. Patter

and Health, 210;

Baker, Joseph (2nd), grandfather of Mrs.

Eddy, early history and marriage of, 11.

son

Baker, Marion (or Ann) Moor McNeil,

vises concerning his lack of patients,

grandmother of Mrs. Eddy, 11, 12, 79;

marries Joseph Baker, 11, 16; background
and ancestry of, 11, 12, 137; Mar/s de
votion to, 15-16; relates stories to Mary as
child, 16, 18; Mrs. Eddy s recollections of,
16, 19; death of, 57.

in

as
Lynn, 168; Samuel Putnam Bancroft
foreman with, 168; dissolution of, 191.
Mrs.
Bancroft, Samuel Putnam, member of

Baker, Henry M., cousin of Mrs. Eddy, one

of Trustees during "Next Friends" Suit,

Baker, John, immigrant ancestor of Mrs.

Eddy, 4, 6; joins Massachusetts Bay Com
pany, 7; prospers in new land, 7-8, 214.
Baker, Joseph (1st), great-grandfather of

to Glover, 57; writes to

wife, 78-79; Mary

keeps house for, 79; remarriage of, 79-80;
disapproval of Daniel Patterson, 85-86;
final approval of Mary s marriage to Pat
terson, 87; estrangement from Mary, 125;
death of, 144.

c>ee

Tilton, Abigail (Baker).

of Mrs. Eddy, 15;
Baker, Albert, brother
with
childhood and early companionship
education of, 20, 28,
31;
28,
20-21,
Mary,
29 32, 34, 45; association with Franklin
with
Pierce, 27, 28, 32, 33; correspondence
to brother
Mary, 44-45, 50, 51; letters
and politi
George Sullivan, 49, 50; legal
toward
cal career of,46,49-50, 51; attitude
ill health and death
reHgion, 44-46, 50-51;
of, 49, 50, 51, 55, 57.
of Mrs.
Baker, George Sullivan, brother
Eddy, 15; letters of Mary to, 33-34, 36-38,

marriage

Mary, 68; death of

Mrs. Patterson ad
appearance, 211;

212;
her complaint about students to, 213; un
able to aid Mrs. Eddy in "Conspiracy to
Murder Case," 245; helps found Massa
chusetts Metaphysical College, 274; notes
beneficial effect of

Mrs. Eddy s presence,

330.

488

Barnard, Lydia, mother of Calvin Frye, 289,

marriage of, 289; illness and healing by
Clara Choate, 289, 290.
Barre, Vermont, Mrs. Eddy and Dr. FosterEddy make short stay in, 353, 354.
Barry, George W., member of Mrs. Patter
son s first class, 169, 184, 195; association
with Mrs. Patterson at Lynn, 195-196;
character of, 196; signs resolution to help
Mrs. Patterson s work, 199; helps form
The Christian Science Publishing Com

Science and
pany
Health, 200, 202, 207, 209, 229; breaks
with Mrs. Patterson over Gilbert Eddy,
to

publish and

sell

218, 219, 222; received by Mcott, 224;

sues Mrs.

Eddy

for

payment for services,

poem to Mrs. Pat

225, 232, 347; writes

terson, 232; Mrs. Eddy s testimony in case

of, 232-233; compromise verdict in legal

233; in controversy regarding Spofford, 233, 234; fails to involve Mrs. Eddy
in plot against Kennedy, 242-243.

suit of,

Bardett, John M., suitor of Mary Glover,

77-78; engagement to Mary, 78; death
of, 79.
Bardett, Julia, student of Mrs. Eddy, 272;
story of life, 272; opens office in Boston,

272; Mrs. Eddy s reliance on, 272, 277,

280, 287, 315, 316; at Metaphysical Cok
lege, 283; with Gilbert Eddy day before
his death, 285; lives with Mrs. Eddy, 292;
records of her healings, 319; works on
Church Manual, 382.

Mrs. Mary Ellis, granddaughter of

Mrs. Nathaniel Webster, 150; writes of
Mrs. Patterson s residence in Webster
home, 150-154.
Barton ,Vermont, Mrs. Eddy s stay in Arthur

Bartlett,

Buswell

home

in,

after Gilbert

Eddy s

death, 287; she leaves for Boston, 290; re

ceives kindly care in, 291; her important

metaphysical discovery made in, 291, 294.

Bates, Edward P., student of Mrs. Eddy,
attends class of 1888, 353; member of
Publication Committee, 355; works on

Church Manual, 382; Chairman, Board

of Directors of Mother Church, at celebra
tion at Pleasant View, 402; as President of
Concord church, receives gavel from Mrs.
Eddy, 421.
Bates, General Erastus, student of Mrs,
Eddy,, attends

489

class of

1888, 353, 394;

teaches classes, 355; at Pleasant

View

cele

bration, 403-404.

Bean, Luther, early suitor of

Mary

Glover,

76.
Belfast,

Maine, early home of Quimby, 107;

s, 108; Poyen s lectures in,

in 1830

life

108-109; Quimby s exhibition of Mesmer

ism in, 109; Quimby s retirement and
death in, 128.
Besse, Frances E., deeded Lynn property to
Mrs Patterson in 1875, 193.

Bible and

its

Spiritual

Mary Baker Eddy,

Meaning, The, by

manuscript of, 160.

Blackman, Lulu, student of Mrs. Eddy, de

scribes her as teacher, 320.

Board of Education,

creation of, 419.

Boston, Massachusetts, heading Chapter 27,

269-278; heading Chapter 49, "The Re
turn to Boston,1 466472.

Bow,

New

Hampshire, Mrs, Eddy

birth

place, 4; her grandfather settles in, 11;

General Pierce visits Mark Baker s at, 28,

32-33;

Mary Baker s

first

letters written

from, 33-34, 36; heading Chapter 4, "The

Last Year at Bow," 35-40; comparison
with Sanbornton, 38, 39, 42, 43.

Bradshaw,
physical

Ella,

opens

College"

in

"California

San

Meta

Jose, 303.

Braid, James, his research on hypnotism

surgery, 99.
Brisbane, Arthur, editor of

New

and

York Eve

ning Journal, pays tribute to Mrs. Eddy

in interview, 2 1 1 , 45 1-453, 455, 458; inter
view published by M. E. Paige in book,

What Mrs. Eddy Said to Arthur Brisbane,

451.

Brown, Lucretia L. S., patient of Mrs. Eddy,

her healing and relapse, 237-239; sues
"Ipswich Witchcraft Case,*
237, 239-241; complete recovery of, 241.
Brush, Ada E., marries Calvin Frye, 289;
death of, 298.

Spoflrord in

Bubier, S.

home

M,, Mrs. Patterson

carried to

of, after ice accident, 130.

Buckley, Dr.

J.

M.,

attacks Christian Science

in Century, 331, 332; Journal publishes

reply to attack of, 332.

Burkmar, Lucius, youthful mesmeric subject

of

Quimby, 109, 110; diagnoses

John Bovee Dods, 110; Quimby

ments with, 110, 215.

cases for
s

experi

Burnham,

"Priest,"

Mark

friend of

Baker,

17, 28.

Burt, John
76.

M,,

early suitor of

Mary

Glover,

Buswell, Arthur True, student of Mrs. Eddy,

262, 272, 287; director of first Church
organization, 262; takes charge after Gil
bert Eddy s death, 287, 291; lives at head
quarters, 292; associate editor of first
Christian Science Journal, 295; joins oppo
sition,

325, 326, 476.

Carr, Oreu, student of Mrs. Eddy, director

of

first

organization, 262.
Esther, directs Mrs. Patterson

Church

Carter, Mary
to Webster

home, 148, 149.

Reverend Albert, writes of George
Glover s death, 69-70.
Gather, Willa, on staff of McClure s Maga
zine re Mrs. Eddy s life, 37.
Century, The, publishes Dr. Buckley s attack
Case,

on Christian Science, 331, 332.

Chamberlain, Fred D., involved in lawsuit
with Josephine Woodbury, 41 L
Chamberlin, Judge, Mrs. Eddy s letter to, in
"Next Friends"

Suit, 454-455.

Chandler, William, immigrant ancestor of

Mrs. Eddy, joins Massachusetts Bay Com
pany, 7; religious character of, 11-12.
Chandler, Senator William E., legal counsel
in **Next Friends" Suit, urges George
Glover to join in petition, 447-448, 449;
charges against Mrs. Eddy, 455, 456, 457,
suit, 463, 464.
Chandlers, ancestors of Mrs. Eddy, of Hert

462, 463; withdraws

fordshire, England, 7; seek freedom, 7, 11;

reputation for godliness, 11.
Chaplin, H. W., attorney for prosecution in

Murder Case," 247-248.

North Carolina, George Glover

"Conspiracy to

Charleston,

moves

to,

52; recounts

life in,

53-54; con

veyance of land to Glover in, 54; Glover s

return to, 54, 55; Glover and bride Mary
arrive in, 56, 58, 59, 63;
early days of,
60-63; the Glover s life in, 63, 64; social

and

political life in, 64-69;

attitude

toward slavery

Chapter

7, 60-70; the

Mary Glover s

in, 66,

67; heading
Glover s leave, 69.
Charlestown, Massachusetts, John Baker, an
cestor of Mrs. Eddy,
registered as freeman
in, 7-8.

Chase, Stephen A., trustee for establishment

of Mother Church, 366;

"Next Friends" Suit, 445,

defendant in

Cheney, Mahala (Sanborn), wife of Russell

Cheney See Sanborn, Mahala.
Cheney, Russell, marries Mahala Sanborn
who took charge of young George Glover,
80.

Chestnut Hill, home of Mrs. Eddy, arrange

ment of furniture at, 164; she moves to,
467, 468; remodeling of, 468; Mrs. Eddy s
final days at, 380, 484, 485, 486.
Chicago, heading Chapter 34, 33 1-338.
Choate, Clara Elizabeth, early student of
Mrs. Eddy, 267; her healing and moving
of family to Lynn, 267-268; describes Mrs.
Eddy s life in Lynn, 268; Dr. and Mrs.
Eddy share home with, 271; tells of with
drawal of members from Christian Scien
tist Association, 277; her work in Boston,

280; Mrs.

Eddy s

letters

from Washing

ton, D. C. to, 280, 281, 282; gives recep

tion to Eddys, 283; Mrs. Edd/s letter to,

Dr. Eddy s death, 286, 290; heals

Frye s mother, 290; withdrawal
from Mrs. Eddy, 301, 302, 476.
Choate, George D., husband of Clara Choate,
267-268.
after

Calvin

Warren, son of Mr. and Mrs.

George D. Choate, 268; Mrs. Eddy s in

Choate,

terest in,

Christian
gives

281.
Buffalo, New York,
review of Science and

Advocate,
favorable

Health,

2W.

Christian Science, by Mark Twain, 428.

Christian Science Board of Directors, duties
of,

367, 381.

Christian Science Journal, The, founding of,

295, 324, 472; Arthur Buswell, associate
editor of, 295; purpose, and difficulties in
early stage, 295, 296, 469; Arens* plagiar
ism suit safeguards, 296; publishes history
of Augusta Stetson s and other healings,

319; heading Chapter 33, "The Journal,"

324-330; unifies movement, 324, 325; Bus326; Emma

well joins opposition, 325,

Hopkins and other editors

abandon po

326, 396; Mrs. Eddy directs policy

and writes for, 327, 328; article forms pref
ace to Miscellaneous Writings, 327; pub
sition,

lishes reply to Reverend Townsend,

reprints Lillian Whiting s interview

327;
with
Mrs. Eddy, 327, 328-330; Georgine Mil-

490

mine records influence of, 330; publishes

33 1-332; Mrs. Eddy
reply to Dr. Buckley,
examines
urges need for teachers, 332<-333;
essay of Reverend Westervelt, 333; pub

Christian Scientist Association, The, organi

zation of, 233, 260; action against Spofford, 233-234; certain members withdraw
from, 276-277; resolutions concerning se

ceding members, 281-282; formation of

National Association and early meetings,
334, 335; annual meeting in Chicag6, 335,
336; Mrs. Eddy s Chicago address to, 336,
337; resolution* to curb "strange doctrine,"

lishes report of first annual meeting of

National Christian Scientist Association,
334-335; announces second annual meet
edition of Sci
ing, ?3 5: announces 16th
ence and Health, 341-342; Mrs. Eddy

turns

it

over to Christian Scientist Associa

Mrs. Eddy s statement

tion, 355; publishes

mand honorable discharge from, 352; Mrs.

Eddy grants demand, 352; Journal handed

re dissolution of College arid Church, 358;

to form own churches,

Mrs. Eddy urges

de
364; plans for building Church, 369;

and dedication
of Mother Church, 370, 371, 372; pub
scribes cornerstone laying

lishes

Mrs. Eddy

notice of retirement,

on Church
374-375; gives her statement
Manual, 382-383; Judge Hanna as editor,
first sermon
388; describes Mrs. Edd^s
s
in Mother Church, 389; publishes boy
390; publishes
statement concerning her ap
carries message
pearance at Church, 390;
to U. S. and Canada, 391; publishes

letter describing occasion,

Mrs. Eddy

Anna Dodge s

letter

on work

London,

in

London

395; announces first services of

church, 395-396; Mrs. Field-King as editor
of, 396; notice of Josephine Woodbury*s

excommunication, 411; reports cases ^of

world-wide
legal difficulties, 413; indicates

349; dissenting members* attitude in "Cor

ner Case," 351; dissenting members de

over to, 355; dissolution of, 359, 360,361;

Mrs. Eddy s letter regarding withdrawal
from activities of, 404.
Chronicle, Wilmington, publishes George
Baker s letter on George Glover s death,

71-72.

Church Manual, Mother, compilation and

provisions of, 381-382; Mrs. Eddy s state
ment on, 382-383; in Stetson case, 479-480.
Church of Christ, Scientist, early establish
ment of meetings, 198-200, 260; resolu
tions to provide for expenses of, 198-199;

early meetings and discontinuance, 198200; heading Chapter 26, "The Church,"
259-268; Mrs. Eddy s attitude toward or
ganization, 260-261; formation of char
tered organization and naming of, 261-

and directors, 262; Mrs.

ordained as pastor, 278; moves to
Boston, 278; Augusta Stetson establishes
church in New York, 333, 474, 476; head
ing Chapter 36, "College Closed and

262;

first officers

movement, 413; publishes Mrs. Eddy s

article on **Personal Contagion," 415;
contains Martha Sutton-Thompson s de
of Mrs. Eddy, 415-416; Mrs.

Eddy

Eddy

Church

scription
writes against thought influence in,
416; publishes notices of new Church

reestablishment

Annex, 422.
Christian Science Monitor, The, Hugh A.
Studdert Kennedy, Foreign Editor of, XII;

founding of, 468-472; naming of, 471472.

Christian Science Publishing Society, The,
foundation of, 200, 233; publishes Science
and Health, 200; Foster-Eddy, manager,
final demotion from, 385, 386; establish

ment by Mrs. Eddy on Trust basis, 400;

expands and issues AfomW,46? 470,47l.
}

Christian Science Sentinel, The, founding of,

400; notice re founding of Monitor, 470;
editorial on Stetson case, 477; reveals Mrs.

Eddy s

491

activities,

Dissolved,"

484.

347-358; Mrs.

dissolution of, 357-358, 364;

of,

Eddy s

Mrs. Eddy s

through trusteeship,

364, 365, 366, 367, 368; contributions

and cornerstone ceremonies, 364, 365, 369,
370, 371, 372; Board of Directors, 367;
heading Chapter 38, "The Building of the
Church,"

Eddy s
Eddy s

369-376; dedication and Mrs.

address, 372, 373, 374, 376; Mrs.

first visit to Mother Church, 374,

376; Foster-Eddy, president of, 385; first

public services in England, 395; first church
in London, 395-396; gatherings and an
nual meetings at Concord, 400-403, 420,

and

421; Josephine Woodbur^s difficulties

dismissal from, 410, 411; Mrs. Eddy s
letters to new churches, 414; Mrs, Eddy

View at, 378-381, 383, 384-385;

assemblage of Christian Scientists at, 400404; Mrs. Eddy s final class in, 404-409;
Mrs. Eddy s letters from, 413, 414, 415,

en
presents church to Concord., 421, 422;
of Mother Church and dedica

Pleasant

481; Judge Smith announces, in Mother

Church, death of Mrs. Eddy, 485-486.

420; Martha Sutton-Thompson visits Mrs.

Eddy in, 415-416; annual church meetings
church to,
at, 420-421; Mrs. Eddy presents

largement
tion of Annex, 422-425; Augusta Stetson s
difficulties and dismissal from church, 474-

Catherine, cousin of Lucy Wentworth,

comments on Mrs. Patterson, 159, 160.
dark, Ellen J., student of Mrs. Eddy, 272.
dark, George D., Jr., son of Mr. and Mr*.
Mrs.
George D. Clark, his recollections of
and
Patterson, 136, 187; literary efforts of,
Mrs. Patterson, 187,
trip co publisher with

Qapp,

188,

Clark, Mr. and Mrs. George D,, Mrs, Pat

terson s stay with, 136, 137, 139; she
leaves their home for. Stoughton, 140; her
return to, 187, 188.

day, Henry, Mrs. Glover s

attitude toward,

65,66.

Qement, Sarah, pupil

in

Mrs. Glover s

in

fant school-See Kimball, Sarah Qement.

Qement, Zenas, father of Sarah, friend of

Mark

Mr. and Mrs. Graves, students of

Mrs. Eddy, 393-394; return to Dublin,
Ireland, to teach, 394; teach in London,

Coil es,

395, 396.
witness in

"Conspiracy

to

Murder

Case," 247, 248, 250; confession

251, 252, 253.
Committee on Publication, in "Corner Case,"
351, 352; control of Journal in, 355; mem

of,

bers in 1889, 355; establishment of, 419;

activities of, 420.
Cook, Reverend Joseph, permits Mrs. Eddy s
lectures at Tremont Temple, 320, 32 1-323.
Concord, New Hampshire, state capital, 4,
38; General Pierce s duties in, 28; legal
case, with Franklin Pierce and Mark
Baker, decided at, 32, 33; Samuel Baker
marries Eliza Glover in, 35, 36; George
Glover meets youthful Mary Baker in, 35,
36; Glover leaves, 36, 52, 53; Albert Bak
er handles Franklin Pierce s law practice
in, 50; Glover writes to Samuel Baker from,

53, 54; Franklin Pierce opens office in, 57,

377; Mrs. Eddy moves to, 354, 375, 377,
378; Mrs. Eddy s letter from, re dissolu
tion of Church, 357-358; Mrs. Edd/s
letter from, re dissolution of National
Christian Scientist Association, 360, 361;

investigates

Mrs. Eddy**

435-441; dozens uphold Mrs.

Eddy, 441, 442; trial of "Next Friends"
Suit in, 445, 448465; Mrs. Eddy moves
from, 466468.
life

at,

"Conspiracy

to

Murder Case," heading Chap-

ter 24, "Conspiracy to Murder,"

244-253;

Mrs. Eddy claims case supports

thesis of

mental influence, 256; included in various

under
attacks, in Science and Health,
drain Mrs.
"Demonology," 257; helped
finances, 262; causes fear in move
ment, 263, 267; public opinion re case,
273; Arens* activities at conclusion of , 275.
Conwell, Russell H., attorney for Dr. Eddy

Eddy s

and Arens
Case,"

Baker, 81.

Collier, George,

421422; World

in

"Conspiracy

to

Murder

247.

Corey, Arthur, edits manuscript of Mrs.

Eddy, XIV, XV; states views on Plagiar
ism, XV, XVI; author of Christian Sci
ence Class Instruction, records Mrs. Eddy s
Chicago address therein, 336.
"Corner Case," legal case involving Christian
Scientists

and Mrs. Abby H. Corner, 351-

352.
Corning, Charles R., mayor of Concord, New
Hampshire, defends Mrs. Eddy, 442.
Corser, Reverend Enoch, Mrs. Eddy s early
pastor, receives her into church, 48; mar
ries George Glover and Mary Baker, 58.
Corser, Bartlett, son of Reverend Enoch Cor
of
ser, relates father s early admiration
Mary Baker, 48.

Cosmopolitan

Twain s

Magazine,

articles against

publishes Mark
Christian Science,

426, 427; KimbalPs reply in, 428-431.

Courier, Portland, Maine, contains Mrs. Pat
terson s letter on her healing by Quimby,
112.
Covenant* The, fraternal magazine, edited

by Reverend Richard S. Rust, Mrs. Glov

er s early contribution to, 75, 76.

Hiram S., student of Mrs. Patterson,

139; she makes home with Crafts, 140,
143, 165; he opens office, 140-141; Mrs.

Crafts,

492

Patterson s break with, 146, 147, 158; Lucy

as patient of, 157.
Crosby, Sarah, patient of Quimby, 120; Mrs.
Patterson s visit to, 120, 121; Mrs. Patter
son makes home with, 124, 125; Mrs. Pat
terson s spiritualistic communications to,
126-127; Mrs, Patterson leaves home of,
127.

ence, and, with his wife, The Philosophy

of P. P. Quimby, 314; stimulates interest
in Mrs. Eddy, 315.

Wentworth

Crosse, Mrs. Sarah, accompanies Mrs.

as companion to Chicago, 303.
Curtis,

Mary

Eddy

Harris, student of Mrs. Eddy,

about costume, 298.

relates incident

William E,, of Chicago .RecordHerald, interviews Mrs. Eddy regarding

Curtis,

World s

charges against her, 451, 455.

Cushmg, Dr. Alvin M., attended Mrs. Pat
terson after ice accident, 130-131.

Daily Herald,

Omaha, Nebraska,

regarding

Suit, 464.
F. A., student of Mrs. Eddy,
meetings held in home of, 271,
Davis, Andrew Jackson, author of The Prinaptes of Nature, Her Divine Revelation,
on Spiritualism, 100.
"Next

Friends"

Damon, Mrs.

Day, Reverend George

B.,

pastor

First

Church, Chicago, where Mrs. Eddy spoke.

336.
"Demonology,"

chapter

in

Science

and

Health, 256-258, 274.

Dickey, Adam, writes of Abigail Baker in
his Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy, 14;
writes of Mrs, Eddy and Chestnut Hill,
468.
Dodge, Anna, student of Mrs. Eddy, enters
394; joins London group, writes let
Mrs. Eddy, 395-396.
Dods, John Bovee, mesmerist, author of The
Philosophy of Electrical Psychology, 110;
Burkmar and, 110.
Dresser, Annette, wife of Julius Dresser, 305,
314.
class,

ter to

Dresser, Horatio, author of

The Quimby

Manuscripts, 304.
Dresser, Julius, visits Quimby, brings him
and Mrs. Patterson together, 111, 132;
correspondence with Mrs. Patterson, 132134, 306-312; marries, later practices

men

305; carries on newspaper

attack on Mrs. Eddy, 306, 307, 308, 309311; Mrs. Eddy s reply to, 311-312; pub
lishes The True History of Mental Sci
tal healing, 133,

493

Duncan, Elizabeth Patterson, becomes second

wife of Mark Baker, 79*80; relative of
Daniel Patterson, 83; her letter to Mary,
190.

Dunmore, Earl

of, London, England, follower of Mrs. Eddy, death of, 483.

Dunshee, Margaret J., student of Mrs. Eddy,
treasurer of first Church organization, 262;
withdraws from Christian Scientist Asso
.

ciation,

276, 277.

Diirant, S. Louise, student of Mrs.

withdraws from Christian Scientist

Eddy,
Asso

ciation, 277.

Eastaman, Captain Joseph S., follower of

Mrs. Eddy, Director of Mother Church,
316; enters class, heals wife, 316, 317;
accompanies Mrs. Eddy to Chicago, 335;
Trustee In establishing Mother Church,
366.
J., pupil in Mrs. Glover s
infant school, 274; one of founders of

Eastman, Charles

Massachusetts Metaphysical College, 274;

attends Gilbert Eddy in last illness, 285,
286.
Eddy, (or Eddye), Asa, father of Asa Gil
bert Eddy, 214; death of, 216.

Eddy, Asa Gilbert, third husband of Mary

Baker Eddy, heading Chapter 21, 214223; ancestors and birth of, 214; character
of mother, early

life,

214, 215, 216; char

Mrs. Patterson

acter of, 216; studies with

and practices, 217, 218; jealousy of Barry

and Spofford toward, 218, 219, 222; mar
riage to Mrs. Patterson, 221, 222, 223;
visit his brother, 225; publishes sec
edition of Science and Health, 230;
involvement in "Conspiracy to Murder

they

ond

245, 247-253; writes new Preface

and Health, 275-276, 279;
leaves Lynn with Mrs, Eddy, 278, 279;
studies copyright laws in Washington, D.
Case,"

to

Science

C,

279, 280, 282; heading Chapter 28,

Death of Gilbert Eddy," 279-287;
illness and death of, 283, 284, 285; Mrs.
Eddy states cause of death, 285-286; fu
neral of, 286.
Eddy, (or Eddye), Betsy, mother of Asa
Gilbert Eddy, unusual character of, 214,
215, 216; death of, 216."
"The

son
Eddy* Dr. Ebenezer J. Foster-, adopted
of Mrs* Eddy, accompanies Mrs. Eddy to
Chicago, 335; Mrs. Eddy s interest in,
345; early history of, 345; joins Mrs.

117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 132, 137; healing

relapse, 1 12, 115, 1 17, 1 18;
studies with Quimby, 112, 113, 119-120,
123; Patterson joins wife, his unreliability,

as
class, later is legally adopted
her son, 345, 384; they make short stay
in Barre, Vermont, 353, 354; he assists
Mrs. Eddy in her work, 354-355, 378,

113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, 127;

begins healing work, 119, 120, 121, 122;
lecture at Warren, 121-122- spiritualistic

Eddy s

385;

is

President of Metaphysical College

and Manager of Publishing House, 385;

of
proves to be disappointment and subject
scandal, 385; Mrs. Eddy writes him re

garding conduct, 385-386; she directs

adoption of by-law causing him to lose
status, 386; drifts into obscurity, 386;
Mrs* Eddy makes final provision for him,
482.

Eddy,

Mary

Baker, birth and childhood, of,

4, 12-25, 28, 29; beauty of, 16-17, 41, 42,

57, 136, 158, 211, 320; .early religious

convictions, 2 1-25, 45; early schooling, 29,
30, 31, 32; correspondence with brother
Sullivan,; 33,34, 36, 37, 38,-43, 44, 46,
69, 76, 78-79; meets George Washington
Glover, 35, 36; correspondence of brother

by Quimby and

experiments with Mrs. Crosby, 125, 126,

127; Quimb/a death, 127, 128; her poem
on him, 128; injury from ice accident and
healing, 130, 131, 132; correspondence
with Julius Dresser, 132, 133, 134; deser

by Patterson and divorce, 135, 136;

healings at Lynn, 136, 137, 138; estrange
ment from Abigail, 138, 142-145, 146,

tion

221; association with Crafts, 139, 140,

141, 143, 146, 157; absorption in writing,
141, 152,157, 160, J63; .death of brother
Sullivan^ 144; situation regarding niece
Ellen, 145, 146; at Webster home, 148155, 156; Richard Kennedy studies teach
at Sarah
ings of;, 152, 155, 156*, 161, 164;

Bagley

s,

155,

Wentworths
scripts,"

156,

and

157-160,

157;

experiences at

Wentworth .Manu
162,

163;

returns to

Albert, 44-45, 46, 49, 50, 51; joins church,

46, early poetry, 56; marries Glover, 57,

meets Whittier,
Bagle/s,, 161, 163, 164;
165; partnership with Kennedy, 165, 166,

life in

from mother to,. 57, 58, 68, 73;

Charleston, attitude toward slavery,
63-67;, illness and death of husband

lace

George Glover, 69, 70; journey home, 71,

72, 73 ; birth of son, illness of, .72, 73 ; early
separation from son, 73, 80; poem in
Glover s memory, 74; letter to Martha

178, 181; disapproves Kennedy s methods,

174, 175; dissolution of Kennedy partner
ship, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181; Works on
Science and Health, 1&3, 184, 187, 189;
association with Bancroft, 184, 185, 188-

58;

letters

Rand, 76, 77; engagement

to Bartlett,, his

167;

first class,

Wright

167-171, 173, 175;

controversy, 170, 176,

Wal
177,

death, 77, 78, 79; death of mother, 78,.79;

keeps house for father, 79; remarriage of

192; purchases Lynn property, 193, 194;

completes Science and Health, 195, 200;
Barry s devotion to, 195, 196, 209, 218;

father, 79, 80; enters sister Abigail s

relations with Spofford, 196-198,

home,
opens infant school, 81; letter to
Daniel Patterson, 83: marries Patterson,
83, 85, 86, 87; unsettled married life, sep
80;

aration firom son, illness of, 87, 91, 92,

95, 96, 97, 98; interest in homeopathy, 92,
93, 94; her faith healing, 94-95; Abigail
provides home for, 96; Patterson enters

war work, 98, 99, 103, 104; investigates

Mesmerism and Spiritualism, 99, 100; de
sires

202, 203,
209, 212-213, 218-234, 236; holds public
meetings, 198, 199, 200; forms Christian
Science Publishing Company, 200; pub
lication of Science

and Health and

sale of,

202, 203, 207, 209, 212, 213, 218; meets

Alcott, 208, 209, 224; association with
Asa Gilbert Eddy, 217, 218; marries Gil
bert Eddy, 221, 222, 223; Barry s tuit
against, 225, 232, 233; controversy with

Quimby s treatment, 102, 105, 110,

111; son enters war, 103; Patterson in
Libby Prison, 104, 105; enters Vail s Sanitorium, 106; correspondence with Quimby,

Spofford, 225-230, 232, 233, 234; Arens

enters class, urges litigation, 236; meets
difficulties of "Ipswich Witchcraft" and

102, 103, 105, 106, 110, 111, 115, 116,

attitude

to Murder" Cases, 237-253;

toward organization, 260, 261;

"Conspiracy

494

organizes church, 261-262; moves to Boscon, 263; visit of son, 264-267; secures

Massachusetts Metaphysical
College, 273-274; problem of Arena and
297; stu
plagiarism, 275, 276, 279,
dents defection, 276, 277, 278; ordained
as pastor, 278; moves church to Boston,
278; visit to Washington, D.C, 279-282;
for

chatter

296>

Eddy

Gilbert

s illness

and cause

of death,

283-287, 342; association with Calvin

Frye, 290-293, 344, 383, 458, 468, 482,
483; founds The Christian Science Jour
295, 296; preaches in Hawthorn*
Hall, 297, 298, 300; difficulties with
Clara Choate, 301, 302; establishes work
in Chicago, 301, 303; Dresser controversy
regarding Quimby and, 304-3 14, 342, 348;
wins Arens plagiarism case, establishes
copyright claims to Science and Health,
nal,

3 12, 3 13; difficulties regarding .Quimby

manuscripts, 313, 314; prominent follow

316-319; lectures in Tremont Tem

320-323; directs policy of Journal,
324, 325, 327, 331, 332; Lillian Whiting
interviews, 328-330; sends Mrs. Stetson to
establish church in New York, 333; sends
ers of,

ple,

Mrs. Woodbury to Denver, 333; organizes

National Christian Scientist Association,
334; receives ovation in Chicago, 335-338;
revises Science and Health with James H.
Wiggin, 340-342; purchases home in Bos
ton, 342; George Glover s visit, 342-344;
adopts Foster-Eddy, 345; attitude toward
dissenting students, 347-349, 352, 386,
387; action in "Corner Case," 351, 352;

moves

to

Concord, 354; disbands Chris

tian Science organizations, 354-361; urges

students to form churches, 361, 364; dif

400-404, 420, 421, 422; final class,

409; life at Concord, 413, 420-422;
sents church to Concord, 421, 422;
sage to Mother Church Annex, 423,

Mark Twain s

plaintiffs

468; founds

Britain through Mr. and Mrs.

Mrs. Larminie, Mrs. Dodge, 392397; sends Mrs. Field-King to London,
396; attitude in case of Harold Frederic,
397; guests assemblage at Pleasant View,

495

suit against,

463 ;

The

Christian Science

Moni

468472; efforts to maintain integrity

of teaching, 473476, 479; difficulties re
garding Mrs. Stetson, 474481, 484; urges
Church to act in Stetson case, 479, 480,
481; makes will and provision for family
and friends, 482; final activities, 482, 483
tor,

days of, 485; death of, 485, 486.

Eddye, John, immigrant ancestor of Asa
Gilbert Eddy> leaves England, 214,
of CranEddye, Reverend William, Vicar
Gilbert
brook, England, ancestor of Asa
484;

last

Eddy, 214.
214,
Eddye, Samuel, brother of John Eddye,
in
Eddyes, ancestors of Asa Gilbert Eddy
England, 214.
to
Edwards, T. M., Congressman, worked
release Patterson from Libby Prison, 105.
Eliot, John, pastor of William Chandler,

Mrs.

EddyY ancestor,

12.

Pat
Fred, schoolmaster, describes Mrs.
terson s life at Swampscott, 147.

Ellis,

Emerson, Ralph

Great

withdraw

case dismissed, 464; vindicated by press,

464; moves to Chestnut Hill, 466, 467,

Church, 374, 375, 376; moves to Pleasant

View, 378-381; compiles Church Manual,
381-383; visit of Glover, 385; defection of

Colles,

424;

Pulit

ing

463 ;

Ellis,

Foster-Eddy, 385, 386; loyal adherents of,

387, 388; preaches in Mother Church,
389, 390; introduces Christian Science to

pre

mes

zer s attack on, 432-441; citizens uphold,

441, 442; Pulitzer counterattacks through
"Next Friends" Suit, 443-449; Glover in
suit against, 445-450; charges in suit
against, 448450; assigns trusteeship, 450;
Brisbane s interview with, 451453, 455;
Park s interview with, 45 1, 455, 458; writes
letter regarding trusteeship, 454455; hear
of "Next Friends" Suit, 456, 457, 459-

with Mrs. Woodbury, 361-364,

410414, 417; establishes Mother Church
by Trusteeship, 364-368; visits Mother
ficulties

426433;

attack on,

404-

William, son-in-law of Mrs. Webster,

causes Mrs. Patterson s ejection from
ster home, 153, 154.
Waldo, exponent of new

Web

freedom, 99, 288; Alcott and, 207, 208,

209; interest in Mrs. Eddy, 209, 210;
death of, 270.
used
English Reader, by Lindley Murray,

by Mrs. Eddy

as child,

XV,

30, 31, 36.

of
Evans, Reverend Warren F., follower
and writes books
Quimby, 349; practices
on Quimbyisrn, 350.

Evening Journal,

New

York, publishes Bris-

bane s interview with Mrs. Eddy, 45 1-453.

Evening Monitor, Concord, New Hampshire,
Mrs.
editor, George H. Moses, upholds

Eddy

against

World s

attacks,

442.

er,

Farlow, Alfred, student of Mrs. Eddy, 353;

defendant in "Next Friends" Suit, 445.
Femald, Josiah R, one of Mrs. Eddy s Trus
tees during "Next Friends" Suit, 450, 454.
Field-King, Julia, student of Mrs. Eddy, at
tends class, 353, 387, 396; works in move
ment and as editor of Journal, 396; teaches
in London, 396, 397; later opposition to
Mrs. Eddy, 476.
first Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscel
lany, The, by Mary Baker Eddy-See
Miscellany, The First Church of Christ,
Scientist and, by Mary Baker Eddy.
Fletcher, Dr. John M., dentist attended Mrs.

Eddy, 300.
Folejy,

Margaret

student of Mrs. Eddy,

Church organization, 262.

J.,

director of first
Foster,

Dr. Ebenezer

J.,

adopted son of Mrs.

Eddy-See Eddy, Dr. Ebenezer

J. Foster-.

Fowler, Reverend Stacy, Boston clergyman,

denounces Mrs. Eddy, 298, 299, 300.
Franklin, New Hampshire, birthplace of

Daniel Webster, 82; home of Pattersons,

82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 89.

death of and suit

regarding treatment by Christian Science
practitioners, 397.
Free Press, Detroit, regarding "Next Friends"
Suit, 464.
Free Press, Lebanon, New Hampshire, con
Frederic, Harold,

Frye, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar, brother and sisterin-law of Calvin Frye, 289; interest in Mrs.
Eddy s teachings leads to healing of moth

novelist,

289-290.

Frye Village, Massaschusetts, birthplace of

Calvin Frye, 288.
Fryes, ancestors of Calvin Frye, background
of,

288.

Gault, Andrew, early suitor of

38, 39, 43, 377;

Mary

Mary

poem

to,

Baker,

3940.

Gault, Sarah, friend of Abigail Baker, hears

of premonitions before Mary s birth, 13,
14, 18; relative of Andrew Gault, 38.

Globe, Boston, publishes review of Science

and Health, 212; reports "Ipswich Witch
craft Case," 240; describes dedication of

Mother Church, 372-373; describes Mrs.

Eddy at Pkasant View celebration, 403;
publishes Park s interview with Mrs. Eddy,
451, 458; John L. Wright and, 469.
Glover, Eliza, sister of George W. Glover

(I), 35; marriage to Samuel Baker, 35, 36.

Glover, John and Nancy, parents of Eliza
and George W. Glover (I), 35.

Glover, George Washington (I), first hus

band of Mrs. Eddy, his association with

Mary s brother Samuel, 35, 36, 52; meets

Mary as child, 35, 36; heading Chapter 6,
"George Washington Glover," 52-59;
wedding of Mary s sister, 52; character

at
of,

53, 54; career in Charleston, 54; courtship

to Mary Baker, 54, 55, 56,
57, 58; their life in Charleston, 59, 63, 64,

and marriage

tains article on Quimby, 101, 102.

Frye, Calvin, follower of Mrs. Eddy, 277;
devotion to Mrs. Eddy, 277, 278, 290,

65; attitude re slavery, 65, 66, 67, 68;

death and funeral of, 69, 70, 71,
72; Mary s poem on death of, 74.

292, 293, 344, 384, 385, 458, 484; ances

and marriage of, 288-289;
heading Chapter 29, 288-293; healing of
mother, 289-290; joins Mrs. Eddy s class,
290; takes charge of Boston headquarters,

Glover, George Washington (II), son of

Mrs. Eddy, birth of, 72; early life, sepa

tors, early life

290, 291, 292; accompanies Mrs.

to Chicago, 303, 335, 338; meets

Eddy
World

reporters, 437, 438, 439, 440; defendant

in

"Next

461; Mrs,
482.

Friends"

Eddy s

Frye, Enoch HI,

Suit, 445, 455, 456,

final provision for,

468,

illness

ration

from mother, 72, 73; Mahala San-

bom s

care of, 73, 80, 81, 89, 90, 91;

Patterson s opposition to, 88, 91, 92; taken
west by Cheneys, 92, 264; in Civil War,

103, 104, 263, 264; character of, 263, 264,

265, 343; visits Mrs. Eddy, 264-265, 384385; controversy with Kennedy, 265- 267;
visits mother but no reunion, 342-344;
leads in

father of Calvin Frye, 288,

289.
Frye, Lydia, sister of Calvin Frye, 289, 290.

"Next

Friends"

Suit, 445-448;

Mrs. Eddy aids, 446; visits Washington

and Concord, 448, 449; Mrs. Eddy makes
final provision for,

482.

496

Glover, George Washington (III), grandson

of Mrs. Eddy, visits her, 385.
Glover, Mary, granddaughter of Mrs. Eddy,
her trip to Washington, D. C, and Con
cord, 448, 449.
Godfrey, Mr. and Mrs., friends of Gilbert
Eddy, 216, 217; Mrs. Patterson heals
Mrs. Godfrey, 217.

Goodhue, Nicholas, immigrant ancestor of

Mrs. Eddy, leaves England, 7.
Goodhues, ancestors of Mrs. Eddy, of Kenc,
England, 7; join Massachusetts Bay Com
pany, 7; arrival in new world, 11.
Gordon, Reverend, A, J., opponent of Mrs,
Eddy, she answers his denunciation, 321*
323.

Gray, Judge Horace, in

Case,* 240.

"Ipswich

Witchcraft

Gyger, Caroline Foss, records Mrs.

kindly disposition, 344.

Eddy s

United

States, 92, 93;

his statement regarding nature of healing

agent, 93.
Haiti, Glover s project to build cathedral in,
54, 67, 69, 70.

Hamilton, Dr. Allan McLane,

"Next Friends"

Suit, testifies to

alienist

Mrs.

in

Ed

dy s mental powers, 451, 463.

Hanna, Camilla, wife of Judge Hanna, her
healing by Christian Science, 387; assistant
editor of Journal, 388.

Hanna, Judge Septimus J., follower of Mrs.

Eddy, helps prepare Church Manual, 382;
devoted work in Church and as editor of
Journal, 387, 388; in class of November
1898, 407.
Hatten, Thomas W., follower of Mrs. Eddy,
guards cornerstone of Mother Church,
371-372.
Hendricfc, Burton, on staff of McClure s
Magazine re Mrs. Eddy s life, 437.
Herald, Boston, Mrs. Eddy tells of Dr.

Eddy s death, 285; on "Corner Case,"

351; reports celebration at Pleasant View,
402.
Herald der Christian Science, Dcr, Mrs.

Eddy gives name to, 472.

Herald, Newburyport, articles on Spofford
case, 234; reports "Ipswich Witchcraft

497

Eddy

writes

on Mal

New

York, publishes Mrs. Eddy s

427.
Herbert, Mr. and Mrs. John, Mrs. Patterson

Herald,

Mark Twain,

reply to

makes home
Friends"

Hill,

with, 96.

Hermann

Hering,

New

S., defendant in "Nett

Suit, 445.
Hampshire, location of Dr. Vail s

Water Cure Sanatorium, Mrs.

Patterson s

stay there, 106, 110, 111, 305.

Hillsborough,

New

Hampshire,

General

Pierce settles in, 26-27, 28; birthplace of

Franklin Pierce, 27.
Historical File of the Mother Church, con
tains letter to Mrs. Eddy from her step
mother, 190.
Historical Sketch of Metaphysical Healing,
by Mary Baker Eddy, 313.
"Holbrook,

Ho

Hahnemann, Friedrich, his system of

meopathy, translation into English, 92; its
introduction into

237; Mrs.

Case,"

practice in, 239.

Old

spiritualist

Asa,"

healer

with Mrs. Wentworth, 157-158.

Holmes Academy, school attended by Mrs.

Eddy

as girl, 47.

Holmes, Augusta, schoolgirl friend of Mrs.

Eddy, Mary s correspondence with, 47, 5556, 116; marriage of, 55.

Holmes, Nathaniel, father of Augusta

Holmes, 47.
Homeopathy, Patterson s study of, 8,2, 83,
he can cure

his wife
and, 92-93; in the
United States, 92-93; Mrs. Patterson s
interest in, 92, 93, 94, 311; healing agent
in, 93; Mrs. Patterson cures case by, 93,
94; her conclusion that faith is healing

92; Patterson

by, 85;

power

s belief

Hahnemann

in,

later gives

94; Dr. Foster-Eddy practices,

it up, 345.

Homiletic Review, Reverend Stacy Fowler,

editor of, 298.

Hopkins,

Emma, student of Mrs. Eddy, asso

ciate editor of Journal,

303, 326; leaves

Mrs. Eddy to found new system, 326.

Howard, James C., treasurer and one of
founders of Massachusetts Metaphysical
from Christian
Scientist Association, 276, 277, 282.

College, 274; withdraws

Huntington, Constant, President, Putnam 6*

Company, publishers, London, states fav
orable views on Mrs. Eddy, XIV.

Huntoon, Mehitable, youthful cousin of

Mrs. Eddy, hears Mar/s childhood
"voices,"

19.

Hutchinson, Anne, seeks religious freedom,

8-9.
joins Roger Williams,

Magazine of Christian Science,

and
The, published by Emma Hopkins

International
"

Mary

Plunkett, 326.

favorable review
Investigator, Boston, gives
s

of Sdence and Health, 210.

mes
Ipswich Witchcraft Case," claiming
meric influence of Spofford as cause of re
Luoretia Brown, with
lapse of plaintiff,
Arens as her counsel, dismissal of case,
237-241.

Irwin, Will, on staff of McClure f Magazine

in investigation of Mrs. Eddy s life, 437.
...

Jams, Mary Ann,

patient of

Quimby, 120;
and healing of,

Mrs. Patterson s visit to,

120/121, 123, 137.
Telly, Dr. George F., Co-master and
in

Suit, 456, 459, 460.

B., one of Trustees for es

Johnson, William
tablishment of Mother Church, 366; helps
prepare Church Manud, 382; healing by
Christian Science, 388; Director of Church,
388; defendant in "Next Friends" Suit,

445.

New

World s

at

Kennedy, Clarissa Hale Studdert, wife of

Hugh A. Studdert Kennedy, writes Fore
word to Mrs. Eddy, XI-XVL.
Kennedy, Hugh A. Studcjert, author of Mrs.
Eddy, his views on biographies of Mrs.
Eddy, XI-XII; plans for writing life of
Mrs. Eddy, and correspondence with Mr.
McKenzie, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XVI; as
Foreign Editor of Monitor , XII; interview
with Board of Directors regarding biog
raphy, XII, XIII; letter from Judge
Smith to, XIII; letter from Lord Lothian
to, XIV; letter from Mr. Huntington to,

lecturer and teacher, 387, 388, 405, 413,

418^ 419; early history of, 418; reply to
Mark Twain, 428431; defendant in
"Next Friends" Suit, 457, 445; death of,
483.

Kimball, Sarah Clement, relates Reverend

Richard S. Rust s interest in Mrs. Glover,
74; pupil in Mrs. Glover s infant school,
Ira O., follower of Mrs. Eddy, one
founders and Directors of Mother

Knapp,
of

Church, 316; early history and marriage

of, 316; as Trustee receives deed of
Church site from Mrs. Eddy, 364-365,
366.

Ladd, Frederick N., cousin of Mrs. Eddy,

interviewed by World reporters, 437-438.
Ladd, Dr. Nathaniel, family physician of
Bakers, advises care of
34.

Mary s

health, 29,

Home Journal, The, contains poem

by Mary Glover on husband s death, 74;
Mrs. Patterson s poem "Alone," 147.
Lang, Alfred, follower of Mrs, Eddy, Trus
tee to establish Mother Church, resigns
Ladies

as,

365.

Webster home, 152, 155; studies Mrs.

Patterson s teachings, forms partnership
with her, 156, 161, 164, 165, 166, 167,
169, 170, J72, 173, 175; Mrs. Patterson s
disapproval of mesmeric methods of, 170,

Hannah A., follower of Mrs.

Eddy, enters class, 394; teaches in Dublin
and London, 394, 395.
Lathrop, John, in final session of Mrs. Eddy s
class of November, 1898, 408.
Leader, Ohio, publishes Lillian Whiting s
interview with Mrs. Eddy, 327, 328-330.
Lebanon, New Hampshire, article on Quim
by in Free Press of, 101-102; birthplace
of Quimby, 107.
Leonard, Mrs. Frank, denies World s accu
sation of impersonating Mrs. Eddy, 442,
Libby Prison, Patterson s letter from, 104-

173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 201, 202, 473;

character of, 172, 173, 188, 196, 197, 198;

London, England, heading Chapter 41, 392-

XIV; Mr. Corey s discussion of omission

of plagiarism charge by, XV.
Kennedy, Richard, follower of Mrs. Eddy,
at

81.
alienist

"Next Friends"

York, condemns
Journal,
tack on Mrs. Eddy, 442.

183; opposes Mrs. Patterson, 184, 190,

201, 230, 233, 347; Arens suit against,
237; Barry s plot against, 242, 243; rela
tions with Glover, 265-267; continued op
position to Mrs. Eddy, 325; 473, 484.
Kent, Professor, neighbor of Mrs. Eddy, in
World interview, 441.
Kimball, Edward A., follower of Mrs. Eddy,
attends her class, 353, 394, 418; -career as

partnership dissolved, 178, 179, 180, 181,

Larminie,

105; his removal from, 114.

399.

498

Lohgyear Foundation, preserves papers of

Albert Baker, including autobiography of
General Pierce, 26.
Longyear, Mary Beecher, tells of Mrs. Ed

dy after Gilbert Eddy s death, 287.

Lord s Prdyer, The, Mrs. Patterson s inter
pretation of as recounted by Bancroft, 185.
Lothian, Lord, former British Ambassador
j

to

U.

S., in letter states favorable opinion

of Mrs.

Eddy

to author,

XIV.

joins Massachusetts
leaves England, 7.

Mrs.

Bay Company,

Lovejoys, ancestors of Mrs. Eddy in

land, 7, 11; reputation of, 11.

Eng

Lovewell, Captain John, great-great-grand

father of Mrs. Eddy, 2; in Indian War, 2,
10; death of, 10.

Hannah,

ancestress of

Mrs. Eddy,

daughter of Captain Lovewell, 10; char

acter and marriage of, 10.
Lyminge, village in Kent, England, whence
Bakers emigrated, 5, 7.
Lynn, Massachusetts, the Patterson s life in,
117, 123, 124, 135; Mrs. Patterson after

husband

Patterson

135-140; Mrs.
.association with Kennedy and
desertion

s
s

in,

early practice in, 165-181; early history of,

182-183; Mrs. Patterson writes Science

and Health and

continues work in, 183-

192, 194-203, 209-213; Mrs. Tatterson

purchases property in, 193, 194; Mrs.
Eddy moves church from, 278.

Macdonald, Asa T. N., student

of

Mrs.

Patterson, helps finance her work, 199.

MacDonald, Jessie, housekeeper for Dr. and

Mrs, Eddy, witness in

"Conspiracy

Murder Case," 250.

Magoun, Susie, rents quarters

to

to

Mrs. Pat

and Kennedy, 166, 167, 169, 172,

173; Kennedy leaves, 179, 181; Mrs. Pat

terson

terson leaves, 185.

Animal Magnetism, heading

Chapter 25, 254-258; death of Gilbert
Eddy declared by Mrs. Eddy due to, 284,

Malicious

285, 286.

Masonic Magazine, recounts Glover s death,

69-70.

Massachusetts Metaphysical College, char-

499

Dissolved," 347-358; in "Corner

351, 352; Mrs. Eddy s dissolution
of, 356, 357, 419; superseded by Board of
Education, 419; Kimball teaches first class
under Board, 419.

Meehan, Michael,

editor

Concord

Patriot,

upholding Mrs. Eddy, 435-

436,439-440, 442.
Mental Science, The True History

of,

by

Julius Dresser, 314.

Lovejoy, Phebe, grandmother of Mrs. Eddy,

marriage and daughter of, 11, 12.

Lovewell,

Church

Case,"

writes Pulitzer

Lovejoy, John, immigrant ancestor of

Eddy,

tered, 273-274, 332; list of founders, 274;

Boston headquarters of, 283, 292; lieacling Chapter 36; "College Qosed and

Memoirs

of

Mary Baker Eddy, by Adam

Dickey, 14,468.
Merrill,

"Father,"

aged friend of Mrs. Pat

terson, witnesses her faith healing, 94-95,

Mesmer, Friedrich Anton, promulgates

merism in his book, 99.

Mes

Mesmerism, early history and nature of, 99,

100; Mrs. Patterson s interest in, 100-101;

Quimby

and, 106-110, 179; heading

Chapter 17, 172-181; Kennedy and, 173,
174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180-181; Mrs.
Patterson removes it from
teachings, 174;
at a distance, 179-180; statement on it in
Science and Health, 230-232,
256258;
in "Ipswich Witchcraft
Case,"
237-241;
students fear of, 238, 239; Glover s fear of,

265-267; Mrs. Eddy believes husband s

death caused by, 284-286; and Quimbyism, 308, 312.
Miller, Carrie, cares for
ice accident, 131.

Mrs. Patterson

Milmine, Georgine, newspaper

woman

after

writes

McCiure s Magazine of Mrs, Eddy as

child, 41; on early life of Mrs. Eddy, 156,

in

194, 195; describes influence of Journal,

330; claims sensational revelations in writ

ing life of Mrs. Eddy for McCiure s Mag
azine, 436-437.

Mims, Mrs. Sue Harper, follower of Mrs.

Eddy, describes class of November, 1898,
405-406, 408-409.
Miscellaneous Writings,

by Mary Baker

XV,

131, 132, 210,

226, 321, 327, 336, 380, 383, 399, 403,

Eddy,

citations from,

414,416,486.
Miscellany,
entist

The

and, by

First

Church of Christ Sci

Mary Baker Eddy,

citations

383, 412,
from, XII, 20, 145, 186, 281,

414,421,424,427.

of Mrs. Eddy,
Monroe, Marcdlus, follower
reTrustee to establish Mother Church,

Mo^ Sestors of Mrs. Eddy, of Northern

16.
Ireland, character of, 11,
tradition as to relationship

More, Hannah,
to

Mary

Baker, 16.

Morrison, Mrs, Amos,

first

nurse of Mrs.

72-73.
son, George Glover,

Edd/s

Mrs.
Moses, Senator, George H., upholds

442.
Eddy against World attack,
Mrs. Eddy As I Knew Her in 1870, by

Samuel Putnam Bancroft, publication

ol,

185,
168; quotations from, 169-171, 184,
189-192,200, 210, 211.

Gr*m-

Murray, Lindley, English Reader

mar of, Mrs, Edd/s study as child,

XV,

McClure * Magazine, Georgine MilmWs

articles on Mrs. Eddy in, 41, 132, 156;
describes Webster household, 150-154;
of Mrs. Eddy,
publishes Milmine s life
of
436437; staff conducts investigations
1

Mrs. Eddy, 437.

Mrs.
McKenzie, William P., follower of
of
Eddy, Chairman, Board of Directors
Mother Church, correspondence between
author of Mr*. Eddy and, regarding pub
lication of book, XII, XIII, XIV; de
votion to Mrs. Eddy, 387, 388.
MdLellan, Archibald, editor in chief of pub
lications for Mrs. Eddy, 450; Trustee in
"Next

name

Friends

for

The

Suit, 450, 454; regarding

Christian Science Monitor,

471472; Mrs. Eddy s letter to concerning

Augusta Stetson, 480.
McNeil, Fanny, niece of Franklin Pierce,
sees Mrs. Eddy in Washington, D. C,
281.

McNeil, General John, cousin of Mrs. Ed

dy s grandmother, 2; in War of 1812, 2;
father of Fanny McNeil, 281; Mrs. Eddy
visits

grave of, 281.

McNeil, Marion (or Ann) Moor, grand

mother of Mrs. Eddy See Baker, Marion
(or Ann) Moor McNeil.
McNeils, ancestors of Mrs. Eddy, in North
ern Ireland, emigrate, 11.

Neal, James A., follower of Mrs. Eddy, 353;

guards cornerstone of Mother Church,

371-372; Director of Church, 387, 388.
New England Magazine, publishes Quimby
article by his son, 314.

Newhall, A. C., the Pattersons home with,

131; Mrs. Patterson carried there after ice
accident, 131; she tries to help sell house
of, 135.

Newhall, Elizabeth M., student of Mrs.

Patterson, helps finance publication work,
199, 229; helps form Christian Science

Publishing Company, 200; regarding Spofford case, 234.

New

Hampshire, early days

of,

Newman, Anna
withdraws

1-4.

B., student of Mrs.

from Christian Scientist

Eddy,
Asso

ciation, 277.

New

Thought, foundation of, 348.

Suit, The, heading Chapter
47, 444453; World announces suit, 445,

"Next Friends"

449; Glover leads in

petition,

448, 450;

Mrs. Eddy s legal actions in, 454-456;

heading Chapter 48, "The Case in Court
and its Outcome," 454-465; Mrs. Eddy s
letter re trusteeship, 454-455; hearing
Mrs. Eddy s competence, 456457;

on
ad

journment to Pleasant View, 457, 459;

Court s interview of Mrs. Eddy, 459462;
plaintiffs

463464;

withdrawal,
vindication of

case

dismissed,

Mrs. Eddy, 464-

465, 473.

Nixon, William G., follower of Mrs. Eddy,

membefr of Publication Committee, 355;
Trustee to establish Mother Church, 365;
resigns as Trustee, 365.
Norcross,
attends

Lamson
class,

P., follower of

Mrs. Eddy,

353.

New Hampshire, residence

of Cheneys and George Glover in, 89;
the Patterson s life in, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93,
94, 95, 100, 131, 285; Mrs. Patterson

North Groton,

leaves, 95, 96.

Noyes, Caroline D., follower of Mrs. Eddy,

member of Publication Committee, 355.
Noyes, Dr. Rufus K., diagnoses case of Gil
bert Eddy, 284, 285-286.
Oliver, Mrs. Clarkson, Mrs. Patterson
Kennedy reside with, 166.

and

Mr. and Mrs. George, friends of

Mrs. Patterson, 137, 143, 191; Mrs. Pat
terson heals Dorr Phillips, brother of Mrs.

Oliver,

500

137,

Oliver,

138; withdraw from

Mrs.

Patterson, later Mrs. Oliver becomes

Christian Scientist, 138, 139.
Ome, Edward A., Director in first Church

organization, 262.
E., publishes book, What
to Arthur Brisbane, 451.

M.

Paige,

Eddy Said

of
Paine, Albert Bigelow, biographer

Twain, 426; his

tells

of

Mrs.

mental healing,
change of heart,

432.
of Boston Globe, interviews
Mrs. Eddy, 451, 455, 458.
in "Next
Parker, Hosea W., Co-master
Friends" Suit, 456, 459-460.

Park,

Edwin

J.,

and State Gazette, New Hampshire,

Mrs. Edd/s early reading of, 32; recounts
Patterson s prison escape, 114-115; pub

Patriot

lishes editor

Meehan s

letter to

Pulitzer

435^436.
supporting Mrs. Eddy,
Mrs.
Patterson, Daniel, second husband of

Eddy, heading Chapter 9, 82-95; early

life and character of, 82, 83, 88, 89, 96-99,
113-115, 117, 123, 124, 135; correspond
ence with Mary Glover, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88;
as Mary s suitor, 83, 84, 85; Mark Baker s
opposition to and final approval of, 85, 86,
Glov
87; marriage of, 87; forbids George
er s return, 88; life in Franklin, 87, 88, 89;
life in North Groton, 89-95; at Rumney
war work, capture,
Station, 95, 96, 97;
113prison experience, 98, 99, 103-105,
102115; correspondence with Quimby,
103; trip to Saco, 117-118; unfaithfulness
to and desertion of wife, 118, 124, 135,
136; return to Lynn, 123-124, 135; Mary
obtains divorce from, 135-136; return to
Mrs. Eddy in last
birthplace, 135; aided by
135.
years, 135; death of,
Patterson, Lieutenant-Governor George W.,
brother of Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Dun
80.
can, second wife of Mark Baker,
Frederick, attorney for Josephine

Peabody,

Woodbury,

interviewed

by Georgine Mil-

mine, 437.

Pembroke,
settles

Eddy

New

in,

10;

Hampshire, Joseph Baker

Nathaniel Ambrose, Mrs.

grandfather, builds meeting-house

in, 11.
"Phare-Pleigh,"

non de plume of James

Henry Wiggin,

501

in Journal, 341.

Murder

Case,"

250.

Martha, pupil of

Philbrick,

Mary

Baker, de

appearance, 56-57.
Phillips, Dorr, Mrs. Patterson s healing of,
137, 138.
Phillips, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, friends of
scribes

Mary

Mrs. Patterson, parents of Dorr

Mark

interest in

Mark Twain s

Philbrick, Chase, detective in "Conspiracy to

Phillips,

137, 138, 139, 143.

Philosophy of Electrical Psychologyf The, by
John Bovee Dods, 110.
Pierce, Franklin, birth of, 27; friendship and
association with Albert Baker, 27, 28, 29,

32, 33, 50, 57, 377; as Senator and politi

cal views of, 50; Mrs. Patterson regarding
his election to Presidency, 84; Mrs. Patter

son asks his aid for Patterson, 105.

General Benjamin, father of Franklin
Pierce, life of, 26-28; friend of Bakers, 28,

Pierce,

32, 33; death of, 57.

Pillsbury, Ellen, niece of Mrs. Eddy, 144;
healing by aunt and association with her,

145-146; estrangement from aunt, 146.

Martha (Baker), sister of Mrs.
Eddy, 15, 17, 20, 29, 36, 38, 46; mar
riage of, 57, 144; Mrs. Patterson s associa

Pillsbury,

tion with

and estrangement from, 95, 144,

146.

Pinkham, Hollis

G,

detective in

"Conspir

acy to Murder Case,* 246, 247, 250.

s
Pinney, Frances, member of Mrs. Patterson
first class, 169.
Pleasant View, home of Mrs. Eddy, 37;
~

heading Chapter 39, 377-383; purchase

and remodeling of, 378-379; Mrs. Eddy s
life
379-381, 383; assemblages of
at,
Christian Scientists at, 400^-09, 415^16,
420-422; World interviews Mrs. Eddy at,
438-439, 440-441; Glover visits Mrs. Ed
dy at, 449; interviews of Mrs, Eddy by
Brisbane and Park at, 451-453, 455, 458;
Suit held at, 457-462;
Friends"
"Next
Mrs. Eddy moves from, 467-468.
treasurer of Concord
J. Wesley,
Church, denies World s accusations, up
holds Mrs. Eddy, 437, 442.
of Mrs. Eddy,
Plunkett, Mary H., student
secedes with Emma Hopkins, 326.

Plummer,

Portland, Maine, home of Quimby, 101, 102,

Dresser visits
103, 106, 110, 306, 308;
Quimby in, 110-111; Mrs. Patterson visits

Quimby

in,

111-113, 119-120.

Post, Boston, interview with

Mrs. Eddy on

Gilbert Eddy s death, 285-286; publishes

Dresser s letters and Mrs. Eddy s replies,

307-312.

Poyen, Charles, mesmerist, association with

Quimby, 108-109.
Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelation,
"The,

by Andrew Jackson Davis, 100.

Progress of Animal Magnetism in New Eng

land, (*y Charles Poyen, 109.
Pulitzer, Joseph, owner of New York World,
character and purposes of, 432-434, 4424455 attacks Mrs. Eddy, 433-434, 436443; heading Chapter 46, 435-443; MeeJbmY letter to, 435-436; counterattacks

through "Next Friends" Suit, 444463;

disappointment over case dismissal, 464.

Quimby, George, son of Phineas P. Quimby,

.writes .of Mrs. Patterson s association with
father, 119-120; refuses to

in

father s writings, 296, 314; states

views ;on father s teachings, 304, 306, 3 14;
publishes article on father, 314.

lish

submit father

Arens plagiarism suit, 296,

312-314; refuses Mrs. Eddy s offer to pub-

..writings

meric subect, Burkmar, 109-110, 215;

Dresser s visit to and interest in, 111; cor
respondence of Mrs. Patterson with, 111
;

Mrs. Fanny McNeil, niece of Frank

Pierce See McNeil, Fanny.

Potter,
lin

ventive ability, 108; his interest in Mes

108-109, 179; association with
mesmerist, Charles Poyen, 109; has mes

merism,

Quimby Manuscripts, The, by Horatio Dress

quotations from, 102, 103, 105, 111,
115, 116, 117, 118,119-120, 121, 122,
123, 304; comparison of "Wenrworth

er,

Manuscript"

with, 162-163; final publica-

tion of, 296, 314; publication of, disproves

Arens plagliarism charge, 296; controversy

continues regarding plagiarism, 296, 304305, 314; George Quimby refuses Mrs.
Eddy s offer to publish, 296, 3 14; heading
Chapter 31, 304-314; Dresser newspaper
controversy charging Mrs. Eddy s plagiar
ism of, 306-307, 309-311; Mrs, Edd/s
reply to Dresser charge, 307-309, 3 1 1-3 12;
Mrs. Eddy s offer to publish, 313-314.
Quimby, Phineas P., discussion of Quimby
controversy endorsed by Lord Lothian,
XIV; accounts of healing work of, 100102; letters of the Patterson s to, 102-103,
:

105, 106, 110, 111; sends circular to Pat

tersons, 102-103; Mrs. Patterson deter

mines to visit, 105-106, 111; birth and

early life of, 107-108; heading Chapter 11,
107-118; character of, 107, 108; his in

115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123!

132, 137; Mrs. Patterson visits him for
treatment, 111-112; his healing of Mrs,
Patterson, 112, 119, 131, 132; own uncer
tainty of his healing method, 112; Mrs.
Patterson studies his methods,

112-113;
Abigail Tilton and son Albert visit, 115;
treats Albert with little result, 116; Mrs.
Patterson heals and lectures on teachings
117, 120-123, 137, 139, 170-171, 304,
305; his fajlure to heal Albert causes Abi
of,

gail s final estrangement from Mrs. Patter

son, 125; his devotion to work and final

127-128; death of, 127, 128; his

views not shared by family," 128; Mrs. Pat
terson s poem on his death, 128; Mrs. Pat
terson asks aid of Dresser, 132-133; Dresser
declines to continue work of,
133-134;
controversy over Quimby manuscripts as
source of Mrs. Eddy s teachings, 140, 296;
illness,

Mrs. Eddy s attitude towards and disagree

ment with, 160, 163, 173, 201, 225, 304305; Arens* claims of Mrs. Eddy s plagiar
ism of, disproved, 296, 312-313; George

Quimby

refuses offer of

Mrs. Eddy

to

publish manuscripts of, 296, 314; final

publication, 296, 314; heading Chapter
31, "The Quimby Manuscripts," 304-314;
George Quimby s statement concerning
teachings of, 304, 306, 314; Dresser s re

Mrs. Eddy and Quimby, 305-306;

Dresser charges Mrs. Eddy with plagiarism
of teachings of*, 306-307, 309-311, 348;
Mrs. Eddy refutes charges, 307-309, 311313; Quimbyism as a philosophy, 348-349;
Reverend Warren F. Evans as teacher of
doctrines of, 349-350.
lation to

Quimby, P. P., The Philosophy

Julius and Annette Dresser, 314.

of,

by

Rand, Martha, sister-in-law of Mrs. EddySee Baker, Martha (Rand).

Rathvon, William P., in interview with au
thor of Mrs. Eddy regarding the Board of
Directors interest in the book, XII.
Rawson, Dorcas B., member of Mrs. Patter-

502

s ifirst class, 169, 184, 191; Mrs. Pat

terson stays with, 186-137; Mrs. Patterson
leaves, 187; connection with purchase of

Co r-

son

Methodist Seminary and Editor of

Mrs. Patterson

teaching position to Mrs.

Glover and publishes her writings,; 74-76;
visitor at Baker home, 76.

Lynn .home,

195; signs
resolution to help finance Mrs. Patterson s

work, 199; joins George Barry in selling

Science and Health, 207;. fails in Lucretia

Brown s

relapse; 238;

ciation,

276-277; 282\

makes charges and

withdraws from Christian Scientist Asso
Record Herald, Chicago; William E. Curtis
interviews Mrs. Eddy regarding World s
1

charges against tier, 4!5 1 45 5 .

Reporter, Lynn, relates account of Mrs. Pat
terson s fall on ice, 170-131; records postwedding celebration of Dr. and Mrs. Ed,

dy, 222-223.
(
Republican, Springfield,, gives Science and
Health "favorable notice, 203.
:.

Retrospection

and

Baker Eddy,

Introspection, by Mary
14, 15, 16,

citations from,

19, 24, 25, 29, 30, 37: 78. 80, 88, 91, 92,

94, 128, 129, 168, 202, 356, 398.

Rice, Miranda R., member of Mrs. Patter
son s first class, 169, 184, 191, 384; signs
resolution to help finance Mrs. Patterson s
work, 199; rejdinder re SpofFord s expul

from Christian Scientist Association,

234; aids Mrs. Eddy in "Conspiracy to
Murder Case," 245; makes charges and
withdraws from Christian Scientist Asso
ciation, 276-277, 282.
sion

enant,

>

offers

Saco, Maine, visit of Pattersons to, 1 17-1,1 8;

Patterson returns to birthplace, 135; Pat
terson s death in, 135.
;*
"

"

_;"

Sanborn, Mahala, servant in Baker hotisehold, 68-69; writes letter to Mary Glover
in Charleston, 68-69; nurses Mary apd
cares for her son George, 73, $9; George
Glover sent to

live with, 80, 89,

90;

mai>

riage to Russell

Cheney, 80, 264;/reiati0nship of George Glover to, 91, 264; takes

Glover
west, 92, 264.
George
Sanbornton Bridge, New Hampshire, Baker
family moves to, 37; Mary Baker writes
to brother of farm at, 37, 38* Baker fanv
ily life in, 39, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47; heading
Chapter 5, 41-51; early history of, 42, 43;
:

marriage of Mary s sister Abigail in, 42,

43, 52; Mary received into church at, 46;
wedding of Mary Baker to Glover at, 56,
57, 58; departure of couple from, 58-59;

heading Chapter 8, "The Return to San r

71-81; return of Mary Glover
as widow to, 72; birth of Mary Glover s
son and her illness in, 72, 73; Mary s life
and literary work in, 74-81; death df
bornton,"

Mary s mother

in, 78, 79; Mary opens in

fant school in, 81; Mary Glover s marriage
to Patterson in, and departure from, 87;

Rounsevel, R. D., attests to Patterson s fail

ure as a husband, 124.
Rowe, Mrs. Evelyn, I., involved in lawsuit
with Josephine Woodbury, 411.

illness
short stay in,
106; heading Chapter 14, "Sanbornton
Revisited
and Afterwards," 142-149;
Mrs. Patterson s visit to, 143-146; her

Roxbury Lane and Church Records, refer to

John Baker, 8; contain Reverend John
Eliot s tribute to William Chandler, 1142.
Ruddock, Mrs. Mary, director in first Church

Sargent, James L., Boston saloonkeeper, in

volved in "Conspiracy to Murder Ciase,"

organization, 262.

Rumney
son

Station,

move

to,

New

Hampshire, Patter

96, 97.

to

come

to,

105, 106, 110; she

leaves, 106, 143.

Russell,

Mr. and Mrs.,

the Pattersons take

rooms with, 135; opposing views cause

Mrs. Patterson s departure from, 136.
Rust, Reverend Richard S., Principal of

503

and

final

departure from, 146.

246-253.
Sargent, Laura, follower of Mrs. Eddy, at
Pleasant View, 438, 458.

and Health with Key

Science

Village, New Hampshire, Patter

son s move to, 97, 132; Patterson writes to
Quimby from, 102; Mrs. Patterson begs

Rumney

Quimby

Mrs. Patterson

tures,

by Mary Baker Eddy,

to the Scrip

citations

from,

93, 134, 135, 139, 140, 162, 171, 174, 185,

202,
236,
260,
282,
327,
371,
412,

204-213, 218, 219, 220, 224-234,

239, 241, 242, 255, 256-257, 258261, 267, 271, 274, 275, 279, 281,
296, 297, 300, 309, 313, 317, 3i4,
328, 337, 339-346, 349, 363-364,
373, 381, 384, 393, 406, 407, 409,
414, 426, 431, 479, 485; heading

193-

Chapter 19, "Completing the Book,"

"Science and
203; heading Chapter 20,
Health" 204-213; heading Chapter 22,
"The Second Edition," 224-234; heading
and Health Again,
Chapter 35, "Science
339-346.
Science of

Man, The, by Mary Baker Eddy,

to Mrs. Wentworth,
given in manuscript
manu
162, 163; comparison with Quimby
Bancroft in
scripts, 162-163; published by
his book, 171.
Siannon, Clara, student of Mrs. Eddy, 353;

Mrs. Eddy for her first class, published in

Bancroft s book, 171.
Spofford, Daniel H., his interest in Mrs. Pat
terson s teachings, 168-169, 196, 384; prac
healing in west, 196; returns for fur
ther study with Mrs. Patterson, 196; prac
tices in Lynn, 196-197; character of, 197tices

198; signs resolution to help finance Mrs.

Patterson s work, 199; in charge of sales of
Science and Health, 202-203, 209, 212213; his relationship with Dr. Eddy, 217,

Mother

218, 219, 222; Mrs. Eddy s correspond

ence with, 220-221, 225, 226-230; meets
Alcott, 224; breaks with Mrs. Eddy, 229-

L., student of Mrs. Eddy, signs

notice of withdrawal from The Christian

230, 232; expulsion from Christian Sci

entist Association, 233-234; Mrs. Eddy
explains expulsion of, 234; involvement in

describes Mrs.

Eddy s

first visit

to

Church, 376.

Shaw, Jane

Scientist Association, 277.

companion to

Mrs. Eddy on
Dr. Eddy s death, 287.
her
Sigourney, LycUa, Abigail Baker gives
poems to George Glover after his marriage
Sibley, Alice,

Vermont

trip, after

to Mary Baker, 59.

Slaght, James, of New York World, per
suades George Glover into legal action

Mrs, Eddy, 446448.

76.
early admirer of Mrs. Glover,
mesmeric heal
"Sleeping Lucy," Lucy Cook,
215.
er, consulted by Dr. Eddy s mother,
Smith, Hanover, student of Mrs. Eddy,
makes home with, 292.
Smith, James, early admirer of Mrs. Glover,
against

**SIeeper,

76.

case,

Murder

Case,"

class, 169; requested to leave class,

170; Arens suit against, 237.
Stetson, Augusta, student of Mrs. Eddy,
first

and marriage of, 317-318;

Mrs. Eddy s class, 318; as successful

early history
joins

healer, 318, 474; records of healings pub

lished in Journal, 319; establishes church
in
York, 333, 474; member of Pub

New

Smith, Judge Clifford P., Editor, Bureau of

History and Records of The Mother
Church, in letter to author of Mrs. Eddy
declares source material authentic, XIII;
as First Reader of The Mother Church,
announces death of Mrs. Eddy, 485-486.
Smith, Myra, blind servant of Mrs. Patter
son, 90-91; recollections of her in Groton,
91; association with Mrs. Patterson, 94, 95 .

Soul s Inquiry of Man, The, written by Mrs.

Eddy for her first class, published in Ban
book, 171.
Mrs. Patterson s repudiation of,
125-126; her experiences with Mrs. Crosby,
126-127; her discussion with Hiram
Crafts concerning, 139; interest in, 142;
croft

237-241; in "Conspiracy to
244-253; in opposition to
Mrs. Eddy, 384.
Spofford, Mrs. Daniel H., wife of Daniel
Spofford, member of Mrs. Patterson s first
class, urges Bancroft to join, 168-169, 196;
healed by Kennedy, 168-169, 196.
Stanley, Charles, member of Mrs. Patterson s

Ipswich

Spiritualism,

Mrs. Webster and, 150-152;

after Civil

War,

179; disturbances caused by Mrs.

Patterson s condemnation of, 200.

Spiritualism

and

Individuality,

written

by

lication

Committee, 355; her

Eddy, 406;

treats in

gift to

Woodbury

case,

Mrs,
413;

her interpretation of Christian Science doc

474-476; controversy over New York
branch of church, 476-477; visits Mrs.
Eddy at Chestnut Hill, 477-478; Mrs..
trine,

Eddy s attitude towards, 478, 479, 480,

481, 484; Mrs. Eddy s letter to, 479; Vir
gil Stickler s findings against, 479; ex
communication

Church,

and

resignation

from

48L

Stevens, Oliver, district attorney in

spiracy to Murder Case," 251.
Stickney, Flavia S,, married Ira O.

"Con

Knapp,

316; her healing through Christian Sci

ence, 316.
St. John s
Lodge,
lina,

Wilmington, North Caro

Masonic Lodge, sends

invitation to

funeral of Georcye Glover, 70.

Strang, Louis C, follower of Mrs.

Eddy

504

World

intervenes in

Eddy, 439, 441;

interview with Mrs.

defendant

in

"Next

Suit, 445,
General Frank, attorney for Mrs.
Eddy in "Next Friends" Suit, 450, 456,
457, 463; protests dismissal of case, 463.
Strickler, Virgil O, First Reader in First
Friends"

Streeter,

Church, New York, makes charges against

Augusta Stetson, 479.
Stuart, Elizabeth G., student of Mrs. Eddy,
signs notice of withdrawal from Christian
Scientist Association, 277.

Sun,

New

York,

describes

dedication

of

Mother Church, 373.

Suncook,

New

settles in,

10.

Mrs.

Sutton-Thompson, Martha,
Eddy at Concord, 415-416.
Swampscott, Massachusetts, Mrs. Patterson s
fall on ice at, 130-131; her life there, 131,
135; her account of accident and healing,
131, 312; Mrs. Patterson stays at Ban

home

at,

188.

Taunton, Massachusetts, the Crafts and

Mrs. Patterson share home in, 140, 141,
143, 158, 165; Hiram Crafts opens office
140-141; Mrs. Patterson returns to,
146; she leaves Crafts at, 146, 147.

in,

from

Baker, becomes wealthy, 42, 52, 57, 144;

death of, 144.
Tilton, Nathaniel, ancestor of Alexander

Hamilton Tilton, 42.

Tweed/* invented by Alexander
Hamilton Tilton, increases revenue, 42.
Times, The, London, policy of editors of,
392; publishes article on Christian Science,
"Tilton

392-393, 397.

Tomlinson, Irving C., defendant in

"Next

Suit, 445.

Townsend, Reverend L. T., Boston clergy

man, denounces Mrs. Eddy, 298-299;
Journal replies

to,

327.

Transcript, Lynn, publishes Wallace Wright s

contentions concerning Mrs. Patterson s
teachings, 181.
Traveller,

Boston,

summarizes

defence

in

Murder Case," 252-253;

Mrs. Eddy s Chicago visit, 336-

"Conspiracy

describes

Swasey, Samuel, marries Augusta Holmes,

friend of Mary Baker, 55.
Swedenborg, Emanuel, Mrs. Eddy and, XV;
mystic teaching of, 350; Reverend Warren
F. Evans study of, 350.

benefit

Tiiton, Alexander Hamilton, brother-in-law

of Mrs. Eddy, mill-owner, marries Abigail

Friends"

Hampshire, Joseph Baker

describes

croft s

Abigail, 80; receives no

Quimby, 115, 116, 117, 125.
sister

337; reports

to

Woodbury

lawsuits,

411,

Tremont Temple, Boston, heading Chapter

32, 315-323; lectures held in, 320; Mrs.

Eddy replies to opponents in, 321-323,

327; Christian Scientist Association meets
in, 334-335.
Tuttle, George H.,

son s
237.

first class,

member of Mrs. Patter

169; Arens suit against,

Theology, or the Understanding of God as

Applied to Healing the Sick, by Edward
J. Arens, 275.
Tilton, Abigail (Baker) sister of Mrs. Eddy,

Twain, Mark, makes onslaught on Christian

Science, 206, 388, 426-427; admits growth
of Christian Science, 241, 413;
publishes
articles in Cosmopolitan against it,
426;
heading Chapter 45, 426-434; Mrs. Ed
dy s reply to attacks of, 427; Kimball

15, 17, 20, 29, 44; marriage of, 42, 52;

increasing prosperity of, 57, 79, 84, 144;
takes Mary into home, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84,

answers attacks of, 427-431; publishes

book, Christian Science, 428; later regrets
attacks, 431-432.

85; provides for Pattersons, 89, 90, 95, 96,

104, 105, 114; sends Mary to Vail s Sanitorium, 106, 143; takes son Albert to
Quimby, 115-116; Quimby s failure with
Albert causes estrangement from Mary,
116, 125, 138; character of, 125, 142, 144;

makes

offer

if

Mary abandon

theories,

142, 143, 154-155; death of husband and

care of estate, 144; breaks relationship with

Mary, 144, 145, 146, 190, 354.

nephew of Mrs. Eddy, son of

Tilton, Albert,

505

Union, Lynn, publishes resolutions of Chris

tian Scientist Association concerning seced

ing members, 281-282.

Unitarianism, position in America and at
titude toward spiritual healing, 148.
Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy, 483.

Vail

Water Cure Sanatorium, Doctor, Abi

gail Tilton sends sister Mary Patterson to,

106, 143; interest in Quimby of patients at,

110-111; Mrs. Patterson writes to

Quimby

What Mrs. Eddy

to consult
from,. Ill; her departure from,

published by

Quimby, 111.

Van

Buren, Martin, Mrs. Glover s support

of, 65, 66.

Vickery, Mrs. Otis, member of Mrs. Patter

son s first class, 169.
F., one of founders of
Massachusetts Metaphysical College, 274.
War in Heaven, by Josephine Woodbury,

Walker, William

"

4H,

::,-...:.

Ward, Susan,

nurse and companion for Mrs.

by sister Abigail, 106.

Patterson,- provided

Warren, Maine, heading Chapter

12,

"The

119-129; home of
Mary Ann Jarvis, 120; Mrs. Patterson
heals Miss Jarvis in, 121; Mrs. Patterson
lectures on Quimbyistn in, 121-122.

Lecture at

Warren,"

Webster, Captain Nathaniel, husband of

"Mother Webster," 150; objects to Mrs.
Patterson s presence in home, 153.
:

Webster, Daniel, birthplace

Webster, Mrs. Nathaniel,

of, 82.
"Mother

Web

Mrs, Patterson meets, 149; Mrs.

Patterson makes home with, 149, 151-153,

M.

Said to Arthur Brisbane,

E. Paige, 451.

Wheeler, Mary, cares for Mrs. Patterson

after fall on ice, 131.
Wheet, Joseph, quarreled witfa Dr. Patter
son, torments Mrs. Patterson, 95.
Whiting, Abbie, follower of Mrs. Eddy,
makes home with Mrs. Eddy, 292.

Whiting,

Lillian, journalist, interviews

Mrs.

_
Eddy, 327, 328-330.
Whiting, Reverend Samuel, Puritan minister
from England, names settlement of Lynn,
Massachusetts, 182.
Whittier, John Greenleaf, quotation from
his Snowbound, 3; as Quaker, 148; friend
of Sarah Bagley, 156-157; visit of Mrs.
Patterson to, 157, 165.

Wiggin, Reverend James Henry, assists in

revision of Sdence and Health, 340-342;
writes under name "Phare-Pleigh," 341.
Wilbur, Sibyl, interviews Lucy Wentworth
regarding association with Mrs. Patterson,
158.

ster,"

158; interest in Spiritualism of, 150-153,

156; Mrs. Patterson ejected from home of,
154, 155.
Weekly Reporter; Lynn, contains advertise
ment of Patterson s dental office, 123-124.

Wentworth, Governor, of New Hampshire,

appoints Joseph Baker captain of militia,
10,11.
Wentworth, Horatio, brother of Lucy, de
scribes Mrs. Patterson s ejection from
Wentworths, 159.
Wentworth, Lucy, daughter of Sally Went
worth, 157; healed by Hiram Crafts, 157,
158; devotion to Mrs. Patterson, 158;
causes family s estrangement from Mrs.

Wilcox, Martha, member of Mrs. Eddy s

household, Mrs. Eddy s affection toward,
344.
Wiley, James, one of founders of Massa
chusetts Metaphysical College, 274.
Williams, Roger, nature of beliefs, 8, 9;
founds Providence settlement, 9.

Wilmington, North Carolina, George Gloverhas business in, 64, 69; Mrs. Glover s
poem on, 67; George Glover s death and
burial in, 69-70; George Baker s letter to
Wilmington Chronicle concerning Glover s
death, 71-72.

Winnepesaukee River,

situation of,

Sanborn-

Wentworth Manuscript, manuscript of The

Sdence of Man, by Mrs. Eddy, Mrs.
Wentworth permitted to make copy of,

ton Bridge on, 37, 82.

Winslow, Mr. and Mrs., friends of Mrs.
Patterson in Lynn, 137, 147; opposes Mrs.
Patterson s unorthodox theories, 138, 143;
Mrs. Patterson heals Mrs. Winslow, 147148; refer Mrs. Patterson to Mrs. Carter

162, 163, 171; character of, 162-163; Mrs.

Patterson gives copy to class members, 171.

in Amesbury, 148.
Winthrop, Governor, of Massachusetts Bay

Patterson, 158-160.

Wentworth, Mrs. Sally,

practical nurse,

Mrs.

makes home with and

,-

Company,

7; declarations concerning

Anne

gives in
struction to, 157, 162; her interest in Spir

Hutchinson and Roger Williams, 9.

Woodbury, Edgar F., one of founders of

itualism, 157-158; jealousy over daughter

Pattersonl

Massachusetts Metaphysical College, 274;

husband of Josephine Woodbury, 362;
student of Mrs. Eddy, 362.
Woodbury, Josephine, student of Mrs. Eddy,
sent by her to Denver, 333, 362; wife of

Patterson

Lucy causes break with Mrs.

158-160,186.

W.

Westervelt, Reverend
D., his attack on
.Christian Science reported in J.ournal, 333.

506

Edgar F. Woodbury, 361, 362; prominent

Christian Science movement, 362;

in

strange claims concerning birth of son, 362363, 410; Mrs. Eddy issues statement re
garding Virgin-Mother, 363-364; heading
Chapter 43, "Josephine Woodbury Again,"
410-416; her involvement in lawsuits and

from Church membership, 411,

473, 484; attempts to establish own church,
411; publishes War in Heaven and articles
in Arena attacking Mrs. Eddy, 411, 412,
417; brings libel suit against Mrs. Eddy,
412; her case dismissed, 413; retires to
England, 413.
dismissal

World,

New

York, George Glover

of his intimidation of Kennedy,

account
in,

265-

267; history of, 432, 433, 444; Pulitzer

plans attack on Mrs. Eddy in, 434; Meehan protests attack on Mrs. Eddy, 435-

507

436, 440; reporters

visit

Concord, 436,

437441; publishes attack on Mrs. Eddy,

440443; discredited in "Next Friends"
Suit, 445-450, 464.
Wright, John L., follower of Mrs. Eddy, on
Boston Globe; suggests publication of a
Christian Science newspaper, 469.
Wright, Wallace W., member of Mrs. Pat-

terson

first

169; history of, 170;

to his written
questions, 170-171, 176; practices in Ten
nessee, 176; makes charges against Mrs.
Patterson s teachings, 176, 177-178, 181,
183, 190; Mrs. Patterson s reply to, and
continued controversy, 177, 181, 183, 190;
she realizes need for printed teachings
through experiences with, 183.
class,

Mrs. Patterson s answers

Dion s Herald, describes meeting

Church Annex, 425.

in

Mother

106232