The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 04

by Sibyl Wilbur

CHAPTER IV

CHANGE AND BEREAVEMENT

MARY BAKER and George Washington Glover were married two weeks before the Christmas of 1843 at the farmhouse near Tilton by her beloved pastor, Dr. Corser. There was a wedding party and all the notables of the neighborhood and guests from Concord and even Boston attended. Roaring fires greeted the arriving sleighing parties and there were feasting and merriment. Mark Baker saw all his children around him at this wedding, save the lamented Albert, and felt that all were well launched in life. Samuel was there from Boston, with his wife, a missionary in her teens to the Indians. Abigail, who had been married six years, was present with her husband, Alexander Tilton. Martha with her husband, Luther Pillsbury of Concord, and George Baker, still unmarried, were there.

Surrounded by five children, four of whom were well married, Mark Baker was justified in believing that his name and blood would go down to posterity enriched, strengthened, honored. There was to be, however, no permanent issue, save through the medium of that frailest and youngest, the flower-like girl, who, in her bridal garments, clung to his arm as they walked down the stairs of the old-fashioned house. She alone, holding her father back at the parlor door for one parting embrace and long look in his eyes, was to insure him a third and a fourth generation and to make his name known throughout the world.

Her father might well have looked at her with paternal pride on her wedding day. He had dowered her with beauty, educated her with care, gathered her safely into the church, clothed her delicately and without parsimony. As finely and nobly bred was she as any bride who ever left her father’s home in all New England. Yet could this father have looked into the future he would have foreseen that his daughter Mary would yet reject his religious dogmas, his political ideas, his wealth and family pride, — that she would one day depart from them all with a more significant departure than this of going forth as a bride.

The young husband and wife left immediately for the South. George Glover had a promising business in Charleston, South Carolina. During the four years he lived there, from 1839 to 1844, he made thirteen conveyances of property and two were made to him. These acts involved several thousand dollars, as the registry of deeds of that city discloses. He owned a few slaves and employed a number of men in his building ventures. One of the first things Mrs. Glover endeavored to influence her young husband to do was to free his slaves.

With change of environment the whole question of slavery became a real and terrible one to her, and no longer merely a political issue as it was considered by the Bakers, the Tiltons, the Pierces, in New Hampshire. A young colored woman who worked in a boarding-house of the city (as was related by a Boston woman sojourning there) had stolen a shawl, and though she gave it up, she was taken to the sugar house and whipped. Her screams were audible on the road. George Glover could not drive out with his wife on a pleasant evening through the magnolia-lined avenues of the “Queen City of the South” and be certain that she would not see or hear some such evidence of the inhuman side of slavery. It was thus that the issue was made real to her.

The question of freeing his slaves was frequently debated between them, Mr. Glover explaining to his wife that it had been made illegal to do so in South Carolina by a statute passed in 1820, and only by special act of the legislature could slaves be made absolutely free. Her answer to this was that she had learned of some instances where masters allowed their slaves to depart of their own free will. Then her husband argued to her that it would be a loss of property for him to free his slaves as he had accepted them in payment of debts, and very likely would have to do so again. But Mrs. Glover was insistent that to own a human being was to live in a state of sin. Glover was young, prosperous, had large contracts ahead of him, and so thought seriously of yielding to her persuasions. Events soon took the necessity of decision out of his hands and left it to his wife, who decided with characteristic moral acumen.

It was June of the summer following their marriage. Mr. Glover had a contract for supplying building material for a cathedral to be erected in Haiti and on this business went to Wilmington, North Carolina. Because of her unique position in her new social surroundings, not only as an advocate of abolition in conversation, but one who had dared to write on the subject for the local papers, he took his young wife with him. He feared, indeed, to leave her behind, for she was in delicate health and impressionable to the excitement of high argument.

In Wilmington they found yellow fever raging and the city in a panic. Mr. Glover endeavored to forward his business for a speedy departure; but he was himself suddenly stricken with the fever and survived but nine days. During his illness his young wife was excluded by his brother Masons from the perilous task of nursing him. Mr. Glover was a member of Saint Andrew’s Lodge, No. 10, and of Union Chapter, No. 3, of Royal Arch Masons, and his need in this hour brought a quick response from members of the order. In his delirium he constantly talked of his wife, of his hopes through her, and of his business plans which he now saw blasted. When he knew he was dying, he begged his brother Masons to see his wife safe to her father’s home in the North. His request was carried out faithfully.

George Glover was interred with Masonic rites in the Episcopal cemetery of Wilmington. His business associates and members of the lodge followed his body to the grave and then strove to do all that was possible for his widow’s comfort. For a month Mrs. Glover was entertained in the home of these cordial Southerners, made more than friends by the calamity of the hour. They did all that kinsmen could have done. They converted his business interests into as large a sum of money as possible and an escort was selected to accompany her to her home. She had already communicated with her family, and her brother George met them in New York City.

Mrs. Glover had brought with her a considerable sum of money, but her husband’s business, as may be readily understood from the nature of it, fell to pieces at his death. Now it was that she permitted his slaves to go free, unwilling to accept for herself the price of a human life. No record exists of this transaction because of the statutes on emancipation, which existed in South Carolina until the proclamation of President Lincoln. Mr. Baker, though a Democrat, and opposed to the policies of the abolitionists, was no lover of slavery and he upheld his daughter in this sacrifice of property.

Mrs. Glover was received with tenderness by her parents and given her girlhood room again, a spacious and comfortable chamber in which she had so lately donned her wedding veil. It was August, and she had escaped from the tropic heat of the South to her native mountain air. She breathed deep drafts at her window, looking out over the familiar valley. But there was in her eyes a look of loneliness, a look of fear, and they were often wide and startled, as those of one who sees a vision.

In September she gave birth to a son whom she named after his father. Mrs. Glover's life for a time was despaired of. She was far too ill to nurse her child and Mark Baker carried the infant to the home of Amos Morrison, a locomotive builder, whose wife had given birth to twins a few days before George Glover was born. Of these one had died, leaving the mother with a little girl, Asenath. This mother took Mary's child to her breast with her own and both thrived.

Mahala Sanborn, daughter of a blacksmith, was engaged to nurse Mrs. Glover, but her father would sit for long hours by his daughter's bed, often taking her in his arms and rocking her gently like a child. The roads were strewn with tan-bark and straw, and the house was hushed as if death had invaded it. When the long struggle for life ended in a feeble victory and the babe was brought home again, the young mother was very happy. Her widowed heart found comfort in maternal expression. He was a vigorous, robust infant, and to her had the eyes and smile of his father. But it seemed she was too tender and too devoted, too weak physically to exercise a mother's care, and when she had overtaxed herself her parents would send little George home with Mahala Sanborn, or it may be they merely permitted the spinster nurse to take him, indulging her fondness. This was not well, as later events proved.

A significant fact in relation to the child's infancy is found in the birth of another grandson to Mark Baker a few months later. Abigail Tilton's first child was born in June of the following year and she named it Albert, in memory of the lamented brother. This boy was very handsome as was also a daughter, Evelyn, born a few years later. Both were delicate, nervous children, while George Glover was quite the reverse. Sturdy, hearty, and romping, this child of Mary’s made the house ring with his demands. When Abigail was there with her baby, to the smithy little George must go to stay with Mahala, and to the smithy he went with the Tiltons’ coachman, and there his spirits were not constrained, nor was his childish nature subdued to its proper walk in life. Thus without her consent, at the very outset, was the mother’s influence over her child lost.

George Baker was still living at home and Abigail came out to the farm nearly every day. George and Mr. Tilton were rapidly making a fortune. They had been manufacturing cassimeres and tweeds for eight years and were about to install new machinery, lease a new mill, and otherwise branch out. They were persuading their father to build a handsome house in town, near to the Tiltons, a house in Colonial style, of very comfortable proportions. He was placing his savings in other investments than crops through his son’s and son-in-law’s advice, such as workmen’s houses for rents, and railroad stocks. He was more and more interested in politics, and much pleased when George Baker was made a colonel on the Governor’s staff. His townsmen now called him Squire, in recognition of his growing wealth and influence.

HOME OF MARK BAKER IN TILTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Where Mrs. Eddy lived as a young widow with her father after her mother's death
Erected in 1848, it has been removed from its original environment

As in the case with most prosperous persons, the sense of executive power made Abigail and George wish to regulate the lives of those dear to them. They were a bit impatient of that quiet unfoldment of destiny which was now dealing with their sister Mary. They could not help discussing her future. They would have liked some definite arrangement for her, especially about her child.

But Mary was performing a sacred duty under their unseeing eyes. While the family talked of Tilton’s tweed, the new Darling mill, workmen’s cottages, and the spur of railroad that would facilitate the shipping, — affairs of such importance in the advancement of the family that their discussion came into the family circle, — Mary’s discerning eyes were watching her mother, for her mother was dying. The daughter was receiving the content of the mother’s stored-up spiritual treasury and was assisting at the loosening of the earth fetters.

Mrs. Baker had enjoyed the new home in town less than a year. She did not bear the transplanting from her rural life. In November, 1849, she died, and her death caused some important changes in the life which flowed around her youngest child. George Baker married Martha Drew Rand a few months before his mother’s death and went to Baltimore to establish himself in mills in that city. About a year later, in the fall of 1850, Mark Baker married Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, a well-to-do widow, whose brother was an influential man of affairs in New York and a lieutenant-governor of that state. These events occurred five years after Mrs. Glover returned to her father’s house a widow.

Now Mrs. Glover had not been idle all these years. Although in delicate health, she had employed her pen in writing and at the request of the Hon. Isaac Hill prepared political articles for the New Hampshire Patriot, published at Concord. She wrote on various subjects, but especially on slavery from her experiences in the South. Her political views were somewhat different from her father’s and their views were to diverge more and more as the Civil War drew nigh. She also taught as a substitute instructor in the New Hampshire Conference Seminary, in which her old teacher, Dyer Sanborn, was now a professor. The Rev. Richard S. Rust, principal of the seminary, was so pleased with her work that he recommended to her that she open an infants’ school.

Mrs. Glover did this as an educational experiment. Her school was an early attempt to introduce kindergarten methods. It met with much criticism, as did all such experiments, in the early days in New England. So the experiment was one of brief duration. The substitution of love for harshness as a means of discipline, interest for compulsion as a method of imparting knowledge, was held up to derision by the hard-headed element of the community. And hard-headedness had a very great advantage in New England in those days. Hard-headedness was the critic of things in general. It was inclined to consider culture in a woman mincing affectation, very readily agreeing that she gave herself airs, and to be “stuck up” in a New England village, as Margaret Deland says, was next to being a heretic. It was not very easy, with such biting winds of criticism blowing, for an idealist to keep the lilies growing in the garden of the heart. It is not difficult to perceive why Mrs. Glover soon closed her infants’ school.

A very few months of living alone with her father and little son had passed when the talk of the family circle broached the idea of a new mistress for Mr. Baker’s house. Those who knew Mary Baker best at this time declare she was the soul of gentleness, patience, and humility. She had no resistance to offer to plans which were likely vitally to affect her. Passive and gentle, she heard the family planning and arranging. But suddenly she caught the trend of a new argument and then she did offer resistance. Mahala Sanborn, the spinster nurse, was to marry Russell Cheney of Groton, some thirty or forty miles away in the mountains. And Mahala, who was attached to little George, wanted to take the child with her to her new home.

“What, take my little son!” the mother cried. “Abigail, you wouldn’t think of it! Father, do you hear? Why, I couldn’t see him for months. It would break my heart. Indeed, indeed it would!”

Nevertheless, the child was let go. One has no doubt it was done for kindness, as the stern New Englander of those days understood kindness; no doubt it was believed to be necessary and right and just. The new mistress of the home was coming. Mary was to live with Abigail, at least for the present. Now little George was five and Abigail’s child was four. No doubt it was necessary to make due provision for every one’s peace and happiness, for every one’s but the weakest.

Mary did not give up until the very last hour. She knelt by his bed all night before they took her child and prayed for a vision of relief, for a way to be shown that she might not have to yield to the demand to let him go. But in the end she helped to dress him and pack his little things, weeping over each garment she folded away. She took his arms from around her neck and smiled through her tears when she gave him into the arms of Mahala Sanborn.

Four bereavements within a few short years separated Mary Baker from brother, mother, husband, and son. What wonder that at this period she sunk into invalidism and that in later years when reverting to this time she wrote:

It is well to know that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams. … The heavenly intent of earth’s shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of Being.^[1]

1. “Retrospection and Introspection,” p. 33.