The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 04

by Georgine Milmine

CHAPTER IV

MRS. PATTERSON BECOMES QUIMBY'S PATIENT AND PUPIL—HER DEFENCE OF QUIMBY AND HIS THEORY—HER GRIEF AT HIS DEATH—SHE ASKS MR. DRESSER TO TAKE UP QUIMBY'S WORK

Upon reaching the hotel in Portland where Dr. Quimby had his offices, Mrs. Patterson was received by Julius A. Dresser and introduced to Dr. Quimby. George A. Quimby, Mrs. Julius A. Dresser, and the Hon. Edwin Reed all remember Mrs. Patterson's appearance at this time. She was so feeble that she had to be assisted up the stairs and into the waiting-room. She had lost the beauty of her earlier years. Her figure was emaciated, her face pale and worn, and her eyes were sunken. After the fashion of the time, her hair hung about her shoulders in loose ringlets, and her shabby dress suggested the hardness and poverty of her life. Yet Mrs. Patterson, as she was introduced to other patients sitting about the waiting-room, made something of an impression.

"Mrs. Patterson was presented to Dr. Quimby," says one of the patients who was present, "as 'the authoress,' and her manner was extremely polite and ingratiating. She wore a poke bonnet and an old-fashioned dress, but my impression was that her costume was intended to be a little odd, as in keeping with her 'literary' character. She seemed very weak, and we thought she was a consumptive."

Mrs. Patterson almost immediately informed Quimby that she was very poor, and asked his assistance in getting an inexpensive boarding-place. Quimby, by personal intercession, obtained a room for her at reduced rates in Chestnut Street. According to George A. Quimby, Quimby's son and secretary, Mrs. Patterson's first stay in Portland lasted about three weeks. As far as her health was concerned the visit seemed a complete success. Under Quimby's treatment the spinal trouble disappeared and Mrs. Patterson left his office a well woman. But this hardly-achieved visit to Portland meant much more to her than that. For the first time in her life she felt an absorbing interest. Her contact with Quimby and her inquiry into his philosophy seem to have been her first great experience, the first powerful stimulus in a life of unrestraint, disappointment, and failure. Her girlhood had been a fruitless, hysterical revolt against order and discipline. The dulness and meagreness of her life had driven her to strange extravagances in conduct. Neither of her marriages had been happy. Maternity had not softened her nor brought her consolations. Up to this time her masterful will and great force of personality had served to no happy end. Her mind was turned in upon itself; she had been absorbed in ills which seem to have been largely the result of her own violent nature—lacking any adequate outlet, and, like disordered machinery, beating itself to pieces.

Quimby's idea gave her her opportunity, and the vehemence with which she seized upon it attests the emptiness and hunger of her earlier years. All during her stay in Portland she haunted the old man's rooms, asking questions, reading manu scripts, observing his treatment of his patients. Quimby at first took a decided liking to her. "She's a devilish bright woman," he frequently said. Always delighted to explain his theories, in Mrs. Patterson he found a most appreciative listener. Both on this and subsequent visits he permitted her to copy certain of his manuscripts. Undoubtedly he saw in Mrs. Patterson, in her capacity as an "authoress," a woman who could assist him in the matter dearest to his heart,—the popularisation of his doctrines.

Her devotion to her teacher was that of a long-imprisoned nature toward its deliverer. Her greatest desire seems to have been to teach Quimby's philosophy and to exalt him in the eyes of men. Soon after her recovery she wrote the following letter to the Portland Courier:^[1]

When our Shakespeare decided that "there were more things in this world than were dreamed of in your philosophy," I cannot say of a verity that he had a foreknowledge of P. P. Quimby. And when the school Platonic anatomised the soul and divided it into halves to be reunited by elementary attractions, and heathen philosophers averred that old Chaos in sullen silence brooded o'er the earth until her inimitable form was hatched from the egg of night, I would not at present decide whether the fallacy was found in their premises or conclusions, never having dated my existence before the flood. When the startled alchemist discovered, as he supposed, an universal solvent, or the philosopher's stone, and the more daring Archimedes invented a lever wherewithal to pry up the universe, I cannot say that in either the principle obtained in nature or in art, or that it worked well, having never tried it. But, when by a falling apple, an immutable law was discovered, we gave it the crown of science, which is incontrovertible and capable of demonstration; hence that was wisdom and truth. When from the evidence of the senses, my reason takes cognizance of truth, although it may appear in quite a miraculous view, I must acknowledge that as science which is truth uninvestigated. Hence the following demonstration:—

Three weeks since I quitted my nurse and sick room en route for Portland. The belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of those 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 ascended by a stairway of one hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall, and am improving ad infinitum. To the most subtle reasoning, such a proof, coupled too, as it is with numberless similar ones, demonstrates his power to heal. Now for a brief analysis of this power.

Is it spiritualism? Listen to the words of wisdom. "Believe in God, believe also in me; or believe me for the very work's sake." Now, then, his works are but the result of superior wisdom, which can demonstrate a science not understood; hence it were a doubtful proceeding not to believe him for the work's sake. Well, then, he denies that his power to heal the sick is borrowed from the spirits of this or another world; and let us take the Scriptures for proof. "A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand." How, then, can he receive the friendly aid of the dis enthralled spirit, while he rejects the faith of the solemn mystic who crosses the threshold of the dark unknown to conjure up from the vasty deep the awestruck spirit of some invisible squaw?

Again, is it by animal magnetism that he heals the sick? Let us examine. I have employed electro-magnetism and animal magnetism, and for a brief interval have felt relief, from the equilibrium which I fancied was restored to an exhausted system or by a diffusion of concentrated action. But in no instance did I get rid of a return of all my ailments, because I had not been helped out of the error in which opinions involved us. My operator believed in disease, independent of the mind; hence I could not be wiser than my master. But now I can see dimly at first, and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their normal action; and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration, becomes clear to the minds of those patients who reason upon the process of their cure. The truth which he establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly unconscious thereof); and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in disease. At present I am too much in error to elucidate the truth, and can touch only the keynote for the master hand to wake the harmony. May it be in essays, instead of notes! say I. After all, this is a very spiritual doctrine; but the eternal years of God are with it, and it must stand firm as the rock of ages. And to many a poor sufferer may it be found, as by me, "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

Her extravagance brought general ridicule upon Quimby and herself. "P. P. Quimby compared to Jesus Christ?" exclaimed the Portland Advertiser, in commenting on her letter, "What next?" Mrs. Patterson again took up the cudgels. She wrote in the Portland Courier:

Noticing a paragraph in the Advertiser, commenting upon some sentences of mine clipped from the Courier, relative to the science of P. P. Quimby, concluding, "What next?" we would reply in due deference to the courtesy with which they define their position. P. P. Quimby stands upon the plane of wisdom with his truth. Christ healed the sick, but not by jugglery or with drugs. As the former speaks as never man before spake, and heals as never man healed since Christ, is he not identified with truth? And is not this the Christ which is in him? We know that in wisdom is life, "and the life was the light of man." P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulchre of error, and health is the resurrection. But we also know that "light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."

Mrs. Patterson expressed her admiration of Quimby in verse also:

SONNET

Suggested by Reading the Remarkable Cure of Captain J. W. Deering

To Dr. P. P. Quimby

 'Mid light of science sits the sage profound,

Awing with classics and his starry lore,

Climbing to Venus, chasing Saturn round,

Turning his mystic pages o'er and o'er,

Till, from empyrean space, his wearied sight

Turns to the oasis on which to gaze,

More bright than glitters on the brow of night

The self-taught man walking in wisdom's ways.

Then paused the captive gaze with peace entwined,

And sight was satisfied with thee to dwell;

But not in classics could the book-worm find

That law of excellence whence came the spell

Potent o'er all, the captive to unbind,

To heal the sick and faint, the halt and blind.

Mary M. Patterson.

For the Courier.

Mrs. Patterson returned in good health, as she thought, to Sanbornton Bridge. Quimby became the great possession of her life. She talked incessantly of him to all her friends, and sought to persuade the sick to visit him. In 1863 she wrote many times to Quimby. Her letters, now in the possession of George A. Quimby, describe, in the most reverential terms, her indebtedness.

The following extracts illustrate the tone of these communications:

Sanbornton Bridge, January 12, 1863. 

. . . I am to all who see me a living wonder, and a living monument of your power. . . . I eat, drink, and am merry, have no laws to fetter my spirit. Am as much an escaped prisoner, as my dear husband was. . . . My explanation of your curative principle surprises people, especially those whose minds are all matter. . . . I mean not again to look mournfully into the past, but wisely to improve the present.

In a letter dated Sanbornton Bridge, January 31, 1863, she asks for "absent treatment." "Please come to me and remove this pain." In this letter she says that her sister, Mrs. Tilton, and her son, Albert Tilton, are going to visit Mr. Quimby. She says that Albert smokes and drinks to excess, and begs Quimby to treat him for these habits, "even when Albert is not there." She explains that she herself has treated Albert to help him overcome the habit of smoking and, while doing so, felt "a constant desire to smoke!" She asks Quimby to treat her for this desire. In other letters Mrs. Patterson repeatedly asks for absent treatments, and occasionally incloses a dollar to pay for them.

In a letter from Saco, Me., September 14, 1863, Mrs. Patterson says that Quimby's "Angel Visits" (absent treatments) are helping her, "I would like to have you in your omnipresence visit me at eight o'clock this evening.” On this occasion she specifies that she wishes to be treated for “small beliefs,” namely, “stomach trouble, backache, and constipation.”

In the early part of 1864, Mrs. Patterson again spent two or three months in Portland. She found congenial companions in one Mrs. Sarah Crosby, who was likewise a patient of Quimby's, and Miss Anna Mary Jarvis, who had brought her consumptive sister to Quimby for treatment. Mrs. Crosby and Mrs. Patterson became warm friends. They occupied adjoining rooms in the same boarding-house and spent much time together. Mrs. Patterson told Mrs. Crosby that she intended to assist Quimby in his work. The latter, says Mrs. Crosby, frequently expressed his pleasure at Mrs. Patterson's enthusiasm. “He told me many times,” she adds, “that I was not so quick to perceive the Truth as Mrs. Patterson.” Quimby now gave Mrs. Patterson much of his time. He was practising then mainly in the morning, and allowed Mrs. Patterson to spend nearly every afternoon at his office. “She would work with Dr. Quimby all afternoon,” says Mrs. Crosby, “and then she would come home and sit up late at night writing down what she had learned during the day.”

Tintype by Preble 

MARY BAKER G. EDDY

From a tintype given to Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby in 1864. Mrs. Eddy was then Mrs. Patterson

This second visit to Quimby seems to have been even more stimulating to Mrs. Patterson than the first. She gave all her time and strength to the study of this esoteric theory. It was during this visit that she first manifested a desire to become herself an active force in the teaching and practising of this “Science.” The desire became actually a purpose, perhaps an ambition—the only definite one she had ever known. She was groping for a vocation. She must even then have seen before her new possibilities; an opportunity for personal growth and personal achievement very different from the petty occupations of her old life. In one of her letters to Quimby, written some months after she left Portland, there is this new note of aspiration and resolve:

Who is wise but you? . . . Doctor, I have a strong feeling of late that I ought to be perfect after the command of science. . . . I can love only a good, honourable, and brave career; no other can suit me.

Upon leaving Portland, after this second visit, Mrs. Patterson went to Warren, Me., to visit Miss Jarvis. Here she seems to have tried Quimby's treatment upon Miss Jarvis, putting into practice what she had learned from Quimby himself during the last three months. "At the mere mention of my going," writes Mrs. Patterson, " Miss Jarvis has a relapse and is in despair."

She confidently believes that she has benefited the sick woman. Once, after receiving an "absent treatment" from Quimby, she successfully transmitted its blessings to Miss Jarvis. She became so "cheerful and uplifted" that Miss Jarvis "was gay and not at all sad." She also writes that she has been asked to take outside cases at Warren, but that she feels herself not yet ready, being still in her "pupilage."

In a letter from Warren, March 31, 1864, she says:

I wish you would come to my aid and help me to sleep. Dear Doctor what could I do without you?

In a letter dated Warren, April 5, 1864:

I met the former editor of the Banner of Light, and he heard for once the truth about you. He thought you a defunct Spiritualist, before I quitted him at Brunswick, he had endorsed your science and acknowledged himself as greatly interested in it.

In another letter from Warren, under date of April 24, 1864, she says:

Jesus taught as man does not, who then is wise but you? Posted at the public marts of this city is this notice, Mrs. M. M. Patterson will lecture at the Town Hall on P. P. Quimby's Spiritual Science healing disease, as opposed to Deism or Rochester Rapping Spiritualism.

In a letter dated Warren, May, 1864, she writes that she has been ill, but,

I am up and about to-day, i.e., by the help of the Lord (Quimby).

Again,

Dear doctor, what could I do without you? . . . I will not bow to wealth for I cannot honour it as I do wisdom. . . . May the peace of wisdom which passeth all understanding be and abide with you.—Ever the same in gratitude.

In one letter she describes the sudden appearance of Quimby's wraith in her room. She spoke to it, she adds, "and then you turned and walked away." "That," she says, "I call dodging the issue." She repeatedly calls his treatment his "Science"; her illnesses, her "beliefs" or "errors"; and her recoveries, her "restorations."

In May, 1864, Mrs. Patterson left Miss Jarvis and went to visit another friend, her fellow-patient, Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby, at Albion, Me. Mrs. Crosby,^[2] who is now living at Waterville, Me., gives an interesting account of this visit, which lasted several months. Mrs. Patterson, she says, although in a state of almost absolute destitution, retained the air of a grand lady which had so characterised her in her youth. Although visiting at a farmhouse where every one had a part in the household duties, Mrs. Patterson was always the guest of honour, nor did it occur to any one to suggest her sharing the daily routine. Mrs. Crosby's servants waited upon the guest, and even her room was cared for by others. Mrs. Patterson talked incessantly of Quimby, and often urged Mrs. Crosby to leave her home and go out into the world with her to teach Quimby's "Science." Mrs. Crosby admits that she was completely under Mrs. Patterson's spell, and says that even after years of estrangement and complete disillusionment, she still feels that Mrs. Patterson was the most stimulating and invigorating influence she has ever known. Like all of Mrs. Eddy's old intimates, she speaks of their days of companionship with a certain shade of regret—as if life in the society of this woman was more intense and keen than it ever was afterward.

Mrs. Crosby says that, during this visit, both she and Mrs. Patterson became somewhat interested in spiritualism through communications from Mrs. Patterson's dead brother. Mrs. Crosby is authority for the following account:^[3]

Mr. Crosby's farm was rather isolated, and the two women found relief from the tedium of country life in spirit communications from Mrs. Patterson's dead brother, Albert Baker. Mrs. Patterson had been much attached to this brother, and described his talents and personality at great length to Mrs. Crosby, making such an attractive picture that he became a very real person to the young woman. Albert, Mrs. Patterson told her, was Mrs. Crosby's guardian spirit; he had long been trying to communicate with her, but had never been able to do so until his sister came to visit her, as Mary was his "only earthly medium." Mrs. Crosby says that she implicitly believed in Albert's care and guardianship over her, that she derived constant strength and comfort from it, and that this spirit friendship was one of the most real she has ever known.

Albert's first communication to Mrs. Crosby occurred as follows:^[4]

One day Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Crosby sat together at opposite sides of the same table. Suddenly Mrs. Patterson leaned backward, shivered, closed her eyes, and began to talk in a sepulchral, mannish voice. The voice said that "he" was Albert Baker, Mrs. Patterson's brother. "He" had been trying, the voice continued, to get control of Mrs. Patterson for many days. "He" wished to warn Mrs. Crosby against putting such entire confidence in Mrs. Patterson. "He informed me," Mrs. Crosby continues, "through her own lips, that while his sister loved me as much as she was capable of loving any one, life had been a severe experiment with her, and she might use my sacred confidence to further any ambitious purposes of her own."

Mrs. Crosby was naturally amazed at this injunction. That Albert should select his own sister as the medium through which to warn Mrs. Crosby against her, seemed remarkable. Again, if Mrs. Patterson consciously shammed, Mrs. Crosby could not understand why she should deliver a message so uncomplimentary to herself—unless, indeed, to make the message seem more genuine. Several times, in the course of this visit, Mrs. Patterson went into trances. In one of these, Albert Baker's spirit told Mrs. Crosby that if, from time to time, she would look under the cushion of a particular chair, she would find important written communications from him. Mrs. Crosby, following the injunction, discovered now and then a letter. One of these is interesting chiefly as containing Albert Baker's spiritistic endorsement of P. P. Quimby. The text is as follows:

Sarah dear Be ye calm in reliance on self, amid all the changes of natural yearnings, of too keen a sense of earth joys, of too great a struggle between the material and spiritual. Be calm or you will rend your mortal and your experience which is needed for your spiritual progress lost, till taken up without the proper sphere and your spirit trials more severe.

This is why all things are working for good to those who suffer and they must look not upon the things which are seen but upon those which do not appear. P. Quimby of Portland has the spiritual truth of diseases. You must imbibe it to be healed. Go to him again and lean on no material or spiritual medium. In that path of truth I first found you. Dear one, I am at present no aid to you although you think I am, but your spirit will not at present bear this quickening or twill leave the body; hence I leave you till you ripen into a condition to meet me. You will miss me at first, but afterwards grow more tranquil because of it, which is important that you may live for yourself and children. Love and care for poor sister a great suffering lies before her.

Facsimile of the second sheet of the first “spirit” letter from Albert Baker, Mrs. Eddy's brother, to Mrs. Sarah Crosby

After leaving Albion, Mrs. Patterson continued to receive messages from Albert. On one occasion Mrs. Patterson sent Mrs. Crosby the following communication from her brother:

Child of earth! heir to immortality! love hath made intercession with wisdom for you—your request is answered.

Let not the letter leave your hand nor destroy it.

Love each other, your spirits are affined. My dear Sarah is innocent, and will rejoice for every tear.

The gates of paradise are opening at the tread of time; glory and the crown shall shall be the diadem of your earthly pilgrimage if you patiently persevere in virtue, justice, and love. You twain are my care. I speak through no other earthly medium but you.

Mr. Quimby died January 16, 1866. As in the case of many mental healers, his own experience apparently belied his doctrines. He had for years suffered from an abdominal tumour. He had never had it treated medically, but asserted that he had always been able, mentally, to prevent it from getting the upper hand. The last few years of his life he worked incessantly. His practice increased enormously, and at last broke him down. In the summer of 1865 he was compelled to stop work. He closed his Portland office and went home to Belfast to devote the rest of his life to revising his manuscripts and preparing them for publication. His physical condition, however, prevented this; he became feebler every day. He now acknowledged his inability to cure himself. As long as he had his usual mental strength, he said, he could stop the disease; but, as he felt this slipping from him, his "error" rapidly made inroads. Finally, Quimby's wife, with his acquiescence, summoned a homœopathic physician. Quimby consented to this, he said, not because he had the slightest idea that the doctor could help him, but merely to comfort his family. His wife had never accepted the "theory"; his children, for the most part, had no enthusiasm for it. They all, however, loved the old man dearly and could not patiently witness his suffering without seeking all means to allay it. Quimby followed implicitly all the doctor's instructions. His son, George A. Quimby, says:^[5]

An hour before he breathed his last, he said to the writer: "I am more than ever convinced of the truth of my theory. I am perfectly willing for the change myself, but I know you will all feel badly; but I know that I shall be right here with you, just the same as I have always been. I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip to Philadelphia."

His death occurred January 16, 1866, at his residence in Belfast, at the age of sixty-four years, and was the result of too close application to his profession and of overwork. A more fitting epitaph could not be accorded him than in these words:

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." For, if ever a man did lay down his life for others, that man was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby.

Many mourned Quimby's death. No one felt greater grief or expressed it more emphatically and sincerely than Mary M. Patterson. She wrote at once to Julius Dresser, asking him to take up the master's work. Her letter follows:

Lynn, February 14, 1866. 

Mr. Dresser:

Sir: I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much-loved friend, which perhaps you will not think overwrought in meaning: others must of course.

I am constantly wishing that you would step forward into the place he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good, and are more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of.

Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk, and struck my back on the ice, and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapours from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby.

The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone and will walk; but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly. . . . Now can't you help me? I believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think that I could help another in my condition if they had not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing. Won't you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?

Respectfully,⁠Mary M. Patterson.

The verses referred to had already been published in a Lynn newspaper.

Lines on the Death of Dr. P. P. Quimby,^[6] Who Healed with the Truth that Christ Taught in Contradistinction to All Isms.

Did sackcloth clothe the sun and day grow night,
 All matter mourn the hour with dewy eyes,
When Truth, receding from our mortal sight,
 Had paid to error her last sacrifice?

Can we forget the power that gave us life?
 Shall we forget the wisdom of its way?
Then ask me not amid this mortal strife—
 This keenest pang of animated clay—

To mourn him less; to mourn him more were just
 If to his memory 'twere a tribute given
For every solemn, sacred, earnest trust
 Delivered to us ere he rose to heaven.

Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul,
 Growing in stature to the throne of God;
Rest should reward him who hath made us whole,
 Seeking, though tremblers, where his footsteps trod.

Mary M. Patterson. 

Lynn, January 22, 1866.

1. Letter by Mrs. M. M. Patterson (now Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy) in the Portland Courier, November 7, 1862.
2. Mrs. Crosby is well and creditably known in Maine. When she was a woman of forty and the mother of five children, financial reverses came to her family. She learned stenography at night without a teacher and became a court stenographer at a time when it was most unusual for a woman to hold such a position. For fifteen years she was stenographer in the highest courts of Maine, during which time she paid off her husband's debts, and reared and educated her children.
3. This account is a condensed version of Mrs. Crosby's affidavit, which takes up the history of he entire acquaintance with Mrs Eddy, beginning when she was a patient at Quimby's in 1864. This document is now in the writer's possession.
4. Mrs. Crosby does not assert or even imply that Mrs. Eddy was ever, in any regular or professional sense, a "medium." Mrs. Eddy herself states that she has been able to perform the signs and wonders of spiritualism, though explaining them by another cause. In the second edition of Science and Health, 1878, page 166, she says: "We are aware that the Spiritualists claim whomsoever they would catch and regard even Christ as an elder brother. But we never were a Spiritualist; and never were, and never could be, and never admitted we were a medium. We have explained to the class calling themselves Spiritualists how their signs and wonders were wrought, and have illustrated by doing them; but at the same time have said, This is not the work of spirits and I am not a medium; and they have passed from our presence and said, behold the proof that she is a medium!"
5. New England Magazine, March, 1888.
6. In a copy of these verses sent to Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby the title is worded somewhat differently and several slight variations occur in the text.