The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 05

by Sibyl Wilbur

CHAPTER V

FORMATIVE PROCESSES

AS when in a patriotic symphony one hears a prolonged orchestration of a nation’s woe, its anguish crying in the strings, its resentments explosive in the brasses, its struggles hinted in the vague ruffle of drums, there begins to be apprehended a note of hope, which swells and grows until the horn takes it up with confidence and sings and soars above the harmonic conflict a pæan of faith; so in preparing to sing its theme a great life is submerged in its community, through periods of prolonged and poignant delay, when affairs obtrude, other voices and other wills are clamorous, and its clear call of faith is drowned for the time, heard only as elfin notes on the inner ear of him who is to play the great strain.

For three years Mary lived with her sister Abigail, though she spent some time at her father’s home, where she accepted the new régime unflinchingly and even lovingly, recognizing freely the good qualities and capacities of her stepmother. She occupied herself with writing when strong enough, and likewise when strong enough assisted her sister in her social life and entertaining which brought influential personages to their board. Mr. Tilton was now a railroad director and foresaw a future for the little city.

HOME OF ABIGAIL TILTON, TILTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Where Mrs. Eddy lived with her sister before her second marriage
Removed from its original environment

The status of the Tilton and Baker families in the community of Central New Hampshire has been indicated. The town in which they lived was not far from Hillsborough, Franklin Pierce’s home, or Boscawen, the early home of Webster. The Bakers and the Tiltons were Democrats, their political predilection was in the marrow of their bones. It has been indicated that influential personages gathered at their homes, and their friendships with leading politicians were strong. It follows that discussion of public affairs as well as of religion and business ventures found place in their daily intercourse, influencing members of the families in their relations toward each other.

This is the period of 1850 to 1853, when public events were rapidly changing the colonial spirit of all Americans. The passage of the Compromise of 1850, devised by Clay, which included the Fugitive Slave Act, was the beginning of a bitter strife in politics. The debates which now waged in Congress were perhaps the most strenuous mental and moral wrestlings that the republic of the United States has known. This wrestling of mind and soul was to end only in the mighty physical conflict which Americans call the Civil War. In 1850 Webster was working with herculean efforts to preserve the Union against the attacks of the extreme pro-slavery men on the one hand and of the abolitionists on the other.

The Southern states hotly resented the agitation of the question of the morality and wisdom of slavery, while the North seemed to experience a shuddering horror over the Fugitive Slave Law, evading its rulings wherever possible with the passage of personal liberty laws. These laws were intended to protect free negroes falsely alleged to be fugitive slaves and threatened with reenslavement. Such a fate menaced many negroes who had been set free. This was true of the negroes Mary Baker Glover had freed. In the first place with freedom granted, the negro had had to leave the South to preserve it; now even in the North he might lose it if an unscrupulous trader claimed him.

In June, 1852, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was nominated for President at Baltimore by the Democratic National Convention which endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law, and denounced slavery agitation. The Free Soil Democrats, a month later, nominated John P. Hale of New Hampshire for President. Daniel Webster, also of New Hampshire, would doubtless have been the Whig candidate but for his age and his uncompromising attitude in support of the Fugitive Slave Law. His death occurred in October of that year. New Hampshire was probably never more mentally excited and morally wrought in its history.

At this time Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his life of Pierce, a delightful biographic sketch. Pierce had married Jane Appleton, the daughter of the president of Bowdoin College, Hawthorne’s alma mater. Had Albert Baker been alive he, too, must have supported Pierce with pen and oratory. Families were greatly influenced in their political thought by their old-time friendships. Pierce was not only personally a man of rare fascination and magical charm, but he possessed the strength conferred by family tradition throughout New England.

Mary Baker was an unusually intellectual woman; where did she stand in this hour? Conceive her position. She who might have effectively wielded her pen in this cause must allow it to lie idle. She must behold another woman do that which, with her family behind her, as the Beechers were behind Harriet Beecher Stowe, she, too, might have done. She was like a soldier paroled on honor whose sword is restless in its scabbard. Moreover, she was deprived of independence by these circumstances, for, throttled on the subject for which she felt the greatest interest, she could not write on sugary nothings as many another genius, struggling against its environment, has discovered. Furthermore, she was ill a great portion of the time, and as it has been shown that bereavement contributed to that physical condition, it must also be shown that mental isolation, caused by her independent political views, added to it. Her father, who had contended so bitterly with her on religion, would in this hour have contended with equal strenuosity over politics had she asserted her opinions. Her sister Abigail was likewise set against her in political views.

It is still remembered in that community how the Tiltons held an informal social gathering and everybody of consequence in the town attended. It appears to have been a semi-political reception, and on this occasion the Baker sisters disagreed before their guests. Mrs. Glover had come into the parlors to assist her sister. She was a notable figure, because of her grace and beauty, though wasted in health, and her large eyes burned as she listened to the expressions of political opinion around her, called forth by the presidential campaign.

“And what does Mrs. Glover have to say to all this?” said a gentleman who had observed her repressed emotion while listening and taking no part in the conversation. All eyes turned toward her. Those who had not dared to venture an adverse opinion in the great house of the town hushed the lighter-minded around them. It was a moment of suspense such as only occasionally thrills a social gathering.

“I say,” said Mrs. Glover, “that the South as well as the North suffers from the continuance of slavery and its spread to other states; that the election of Franklin Pierce will but involve us in larger disputes; that emancipation is written on the wall.”

The gathering had received its thrill which went down the backs of the several guests like baptismal currents of lightning.

“Mary,” cried her sister, “do you dare to say that in my house?”

“I dare to speak what I believe in any house,” responded Mrs. Glover quietly.

The report of that speech went abroad. Mrs. Glover was remembered for it long by political thinkers of New Hampshire. They said Mrs. Eddy was an extremely intellectual woman at thirty, and that she had remarkable insight in affairs. They also said that her pride was as unbending as her father’s. Now Abigail, too, had made a speech, not easily forgotten or overlooked by a Baker.

Keeping in mind these political agitations which stirred the country, and further grasping the hour by remembering that it was now railroads were being built across the continent, shipping was being improved by the introduction of steam, gold had just been discovered in California, improved machinery was being placed on the farms and in the mills, it will be seen why, with rapid changes in conditions of living, it was not strange, as a recent writer^[1] has said, that there should be a corresponding change in the minds of men and that their ideas should become unsettled and that transcendentalism in religion, literature, and politics should begin to flourish. Methods of education improved, newspapers were published in every town, the lyceum system of lectures became popular. Literature in America developed a new school of which the lights were Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Hawthorne, Holmes, — all New England men.

In such an era Spiritualism had its birth, and mesmerism and animal magnetism were being widely discussed. But if a Poyen lectured through New England on these subjects, he had an Emerson on his heels with saner topics. Yet it must be taken into account that in the early fifties the conversation at social gatherings was everywhere in America charged with the subject of Spiritualism. In 1849 the Fox sisters of Rochester had startled the world with the story of their “rappings.” That the “undiscovered country” should be rapping to our world attention seemed almost more wonderful than if Mars should be found to-day to be signaling our planet.

London was no less excited over this topic than New York or Boston. Mediums developed on all sides. They saw “the vanished hand” and heard “the voice that is still.” In London they handled red-hot coals and unfastened cords and bonds, they caused musical instruments to be played by unseen touch and the ringing of bells to sound upon the air. Poyen and Andrew Jackson Davis published books on mesmerism or animal magnetism. The cure of disease by clairvoyant diagnosis and mesmeric healing was quite commonly given credence. Were such ideas reconcilable with religion? They speculated on it under the very altar, though New England was not peculiar in this respect. However, it is a just assertion that not to have heard such discussions or not to have been interested in them, was not to have lived at all in the consciousness of the time.

Mary Baker did live in that consciousness, fully and deeply. Just as she lived in the consciousness of political struggle, just as she drank in the new literary atmosphere of that glorious school of New England writers, she was aware of that oscillation in religious notions. Every circumstance of her education and breeding had given her the habit of dealing with life in a large way. She who dared to set aside her father’s and sister’s political opinions to maintain her own convictions, most certainly had ideas concerning Spiritualism. But to connect her life seriously at any period with Spiritualism is to make use of unwarrantable conjecture. Was this the woman to go into trances for the benefit of the superstitious country folk? Would such as these have had access to the great house, to the secluded chamber, to the invalid absorbed in her books? Even Dr. Ladd, the family physician, who was interested in mesmeric experiments, was restrained from practising on Mary Baker by the dignity of her position.

The time came when Mary Baker had thought her way through this maze of intellectual vaporing and then there came from her pen a refutation of these wonder-workings. The common people were those she then sought on the basis of an independent life of voluntary poverty. She sought working men and women, not to play upon their superstition, but to clear their vision. She associated with Spiritualists for years, more or less; she must associate with them as she must with Universalists and Unitarians. She did not avoid them or their discussions, as will be shown in later chapters. At times she was even present at seances. Her dealing with the entire subject was consistent, and her deep sounding of its contentions was as much a part of her development as the consideration of Calvinism in her earlier years.

While living with her sister Abigail, Mary was often confined to her bed for long periods. She was afflicted with a spinal weakness which caused spasmodic seizures, followed by prostration which amounted to a complete nervous collapse. In her moments of utter weakness her father would take her in his arms and soothe her as though she were again his bairn. All differences of faith and opinion were forgotten in the purely human love which was very strong in this family. Abigail sought in divers ways to make her sister more comfortable. She had a divan fitted with rockers to give Mary a change from long hours in bed, and when the invalid would be able to go about again they would carry her down to the carriage and the two sisters would drive slowly through the village streets and country highways.

In 1853, after nine years of widowhood, a complete change was brought about in her life and in all the circumstances of it, through a second marriage. Mrs. Eddy has said this marriage was unfortunate and has left it without further word of protest. It was unfortunate, yet jeweled adversity. It occupied twelve years in the heart of her life, and subjected her to a measure of isolation and social obscurity. But it carried her away from worldly stimulation to a prolonged retreat in the mountains where significant experiences dealt with her heart. From 1850 until 1875 was largely a period of meditation for her. She passed a great part of this time in small towns far from the madding strife of cities. She experienced much suffering physically and went through mental agony few natures are called upon to endure. She did not succumb to the assaults of pain or grief, but emerged with a work which seems destined to greatly change the world’s religious thought.

Dr. Daniel Patterson, a dentist, a relative of Mark Baker’s second wife, came to their home on a visit. He was a big, handsome, healthy man with great animal spirits and excessive confidence in himself. He had some knowledge of homeopathy and used the prescribed remedies for his dental patients in his journeys through the country. Mrs. Glover’s invalidism interested him. He expounded it to the family. She was too delicate, he declared, for harsh remedies and would be particularly susceptible to high medical attenuations, the catch phrase of the new medical school of the hour. A crisis occurring in her illness, he experimented and brought her through successfully. On a day in due season, Dr. Patterson confided to Mrs. Tilton that he loved her sister, that he believed her to be suffering as much from the separation from her child as from organic functional disorder. He wanted to marry her, reunite her with her child, give her her own home, and make her a well woman through the care he would bestow.

It is not likely that Mrs. Tilton reflected sufficiently to detect an ambitious project, or that she saw more than an honest love offering devoted care. She consulted her father who discussed the matter with the dentist. Mark Baker must have been doubtful of this fluent-speaking, full-bearded, broad-shouldered optimist in broadcloth. Dr. Patterson was always something of a dandy, and even in the mountains wore broadcloth and fine linen, kid gloves and boots, topping all with a silk hat. His raiment was a considerable part of his personality. Mr. Baker must have taken a more accurate measure of this man than did Mrs. Tilton, but he knew it was true that Mary never ceased to grieve for her child, — her child that was not welcome either in the home of his second wife or in the Tilton home. A marriage that would restore that child to Mary might rouse her to health and happiness. Moreover, the dentist was a kinsman of his wife.

The marriage was accordingly arranged, and took place at the Baker home. Mrs. Glover, who was at first startled at the proposal and much averse to the marriage, has explained why she consented to it and how disastrously it terminated for her in two succinct sentences. She says: “My dominant thought in marrying again was to get back my child; but after our marriage his stepfather was not willing he should have a home with me.”^[2]

Dr. Patterson first took his wife to Franklin, a nearby factory town, where they lived for three years. He employed a housekeeper but put his wife off with regard to her child. She must wait until her health improved. He was much abroad traveling from village to village. He called frequently upon his influential relatives in Tilton, and sometimes leaned a bit heavily upon their goodwill. Not very prosperous, he was always confident that just around the corner was the best success in the world. Left much to herself, Mrs. Patterson, as we must now call Mary Baker, read deeply in her books. She had brought to Franklin furnishings to make her small home comfortable, a few pieces of mahogany willed to her by her mother, long mirrors in gilt frames, her own excellent collection of books. A few family friends came from time to time and certain of the townspeople called. Among them, Mr. Warren Daniels, a wealthy and retired mill owner living in Franklin, said that Mrs. Patterson’s reputation for intellect and beauty had preceded her, but that in Franklin she led a retired life, was the most reserved of women, and one whom all men must respect and honor.

In 1856 Mrs. Patterson persuaded her husband to remove to Groton, a village to the North of the Winnepesaukee region, near the entrance of the Franconia range of the White Mountains. In this village her son was living with the Cheneys. Perhaps Dr. Patterson was more easily persuaded to make the change since the Tiltons held a mortgage on a little property in that town which he hoped to buy on easy terms. Groton is a farming center, little changed by passing years. It boasts a general store and post-office, a blacksmith shop, district school and Union church. Situated some miles back from the railroad, its elevation is about one thousand feet above sea-level. The journey thither is by conveyance, up through the foot-hills along a valley pass, following a turbulent trout stream which leaps and falls over the rocks, singing a wild little song of its own. Two mountains loom blue and magnificent away to the North. On the lesser hills along the way the loggers are at work.

COTTAGE AT NORTH GROTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE

The home in the White Mountains to which Dr. Patterson took Mrs. Eddy in 1856

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The new home was a little unpainted cottage off the main road. It was beside the stream in which was a mill-dam. John Kidder, a machinist and cabinet-maker, was their neighbor, and had an interest in the sawmill attached to the Patterson property. Other neighbors there were not far away. It was not a lonely or desolate spot. The town had a small library; to the church came different denominational preachers; the school had eighty-four pupils and was taught by a man who later held a position in the faculty of a Massachusetts college. Many physicians, lawyers, and clergymen now scattered over the United States came from this mountain village. Clergymen especially seemed to develop here, twenty having gone out into the world from this mountain nest in the past fifty years.

The Patterson home in exterior was not unlike its neighbors, but within it was different. Mrs. Patterson carried with her an atmosphere which was reflected in her surroundings. She was bedridden most of the time they lived here, yet her active mind secured perfect order, exquisite cleanliness, a shining radiance of books, prints, polished mahogany, and a cherished few gleaming bits of silver service and brass candlesticks. At first she had a housekeeper, but one day she took in a blind girl who came to her door seeking employment. The housekeeper protested and Mrs. Patterson allowed the housekeeper to go and retained the blind girl, who was with her for several years and in old age paid a beautiful tribute to Mrs. Eddy’s kindness. She spoke of her as low-voiced and gentle, but insistent on perfect housekeeping.

She not only befriended the blind girl, but was kind to her sister, who said, “I thought it the most beautiful home in the world. I was a child of ten and used to visit my sister Myra. I remember well how Mrs. Patterson would call me to her room, lay down her book, and place her thin white hand on my head or stroke my cheek. She wished to comfort me, for I had lately lost a good father.”

Of Mrs. Eddy’s extreme invalidism at this time there is no doubt. “I had the honor to take care of Mrs. Eddy once,” said a very old woman of Groton. “She was all alone in her home and I heard her bell ringing. I went in and found her lying rigid with foam on her lips. I brought her around with cold water. She motioned to her medicine chest, and I gave her what she wanted. Then I sat with her till she got better.”

She was indeed far from well, but Mrs. Patterson had come to Groton to be with her boy. Her desire for him amounted to a passionate hunger of maternity, and he, when he had seen his mother again, was as eager to be with her. But now a peculiar jealousy interfered between mother and son. He would come to his mother in spite of the injunctions of his foster parents and his stepfather, and once broke through the window to get into her room. Dr. Patterson would find him there with his books, leaning upon his mother’s couch, while she examined his progress in studies, a poor progress indeed as she found. The blind servant stated that these visits aroused Dr. Patterson to declare a peremptory prohibition of the lad from the house, which was not entirely successful. He reported to the Tiltons that the boy could not be kept away and that he exhausted his mother. That report brought Abigail Tilton to Groton on a visit, and the Cheneys shortly after fulfilled an ambition long cherished by going West. In her autobiography Mrs. Eddy writes of her son:

A plot was consummated for keeping us apart. The family to whose care he was committed very soon removed to what was then regarded as the far West. After his removal a letter was read to my little son informing him that his mother was dead and buried. Without my knowledge he was appointed a guardian, and I was then informed that my son was lost. Every means within my power was employed to find him but without success. We never met again until he had reached the age of thirty-four.^[3]

Young Glover ran away from the Cheneys after they had been in Minnesota a short time, and as a young lad enlisted in the Union army for the Civil War. He made a good record as a soldier, was wounded at Shiloh, and after the war became a United States marshal, and led the life of a prospector in the Western states. Mrs. Eddy had a temporary knowledge of him. He wrote her from the front during the war, and that her love for him was not uprooted by continual separation was shown in her excitement and joy at hearing from him. She called in her friends to read his letter, and wept over it and kissed its pages. But her son passed again into obscurity, bent on the pursuit of a freedom which he first learned to love at the Sanborn smithy, and which life in the wild West of those days seemed to foster as second-nature. Thus he grew up beyond the sphere of his mother’s influence and his life became fixed in a path diverse to hers. Destiny inscrutable seemed fixed in its decree that she should live childless and alone.

When they took her boy from her arms the second time, Mrs. Patterson seemed about to sink into utter despair. A very old man, of more than ninety years, devout and saint-like, used to visit her. He came nearly every day to read the Bible and pray. One day when old Father Merrill came to her home, he saw Mrs. Patterson dressed and walking to meet him with a smile and outstretched hands of welcome. He leaped with delight, clapping his hands and crying out, “Praise God, he’s answered our prayer.” Earnestly they discussed it together. Was her improved condition an answer to prayer? Mrs. Patterson believed that a blameless life should be healthy, but the old man thought God sometimes sent sickness for spiritual good. She did not cross this old man with argument, but she had begun to work on the idea that would haunt her for years until perfected, the nature of Divine healing.

Their neighbors, the Kidders, were also friendly visitors. Mrs. Kidder was a Spiritualist and spent hours urging its claims on Mrs. Patterson. A child born to the Kidders at this time Mrs. Patterson named after her father. She also took the Kidders’ son, Daniel, a lad of fifteen, for a private pupil. He was an ambitious lad and later had a successful career in mechanics and railroad construction. He remembered with gratitude the help Mrs. Patterson gave him with his studies, especially in rudimentary mathematics and physics.

Dr. Patterson had kept up his itineracy while at Groton. He has a record for a certain sort of gallantry through the country and was once pursued to his home by an irate blacksmith whose wife was too attractive to the doctor. The less of this recounted is the better, save only that his unfitness as a husband be shown. His fortunes did not thrive. Although he mortgaged Mrs. Patterson’s furniture and articles of jewelry, he could not meet his payments on the little property. A certain farmer went to Tilton and took up the mortgage on the house, and then demanded possession of the mill. Dr. Patterson defied him with high words, and the villagers said they had a personal encounter. When Dr. Patterson saw the legal paper he prepared to remove, not only from the mill but from Groton.

Mrs. Tilton came over to remove her sister in a carriage. Together they drove down the mountain road. The village church bell was tolling, and Dr. Patterson’s enemy having got into the church, found this means of expressing his derision. The blind girl walked behind all the way to Rumney, a distance of six miles. She would not ride in the carriage where she could hear the sobs of her mistress. Abigail held her sister in her arms and strove to comfort her. And well she might. She who managed with such executive skill in many affairs had managed but indifferently in arranging this marriage.

1. Encyclopædia Britannica: United States.
2. “Retrospection and Introspection,” p. 32.
3. “Retrospection and Introspection,” p. 32.