After leaving his wife, Dr. Patterson went to Littleton, N. H., where he practised for some years. Afterward he led a roving life, wandering from town to town, until he at last went back to the home of his boyhood, at Saco, Me., where he secluded himself and lived the life of a hermit until his death in 1896.
Bitter experience awaited Mrs. Patterson after her husband's desertion. Whatever may have been the cause for his leaving, Mrs. Patterson did not, at that time, claim the sympathy of her friends on account of it, and to her landlord and his wife she maintained silence on the subject, merely saying in answer to inquiries, that he had gone away. According to Mrs. Patterson's relatives, her husband went about the separation deliberately, announcing his intention and his reason[1] to her family, and making what provision he was able for her support.[2]
In the fall of 1865 Mark Baker, Mrs. Patterson's father, died, and at about the same time her sister, Mrs. Tilton, closed her door forever against Mrs. Patterson.[3] Her only child, George Glover, at that time a young man, she had sent away in his childhood. Mrs. Patterson was, therefore, for the first time in her life, practically alone in the world and largely dependent upon herself for support. Untrained in any kind of paid work, she fell back upon the favour of her friends or chance acquaintances, living precariously upon their bounty, and obliged to go from house to house, as one family after
- ↑ To her family Dr. Patterson said that he was unable to endure life with Mrs. Patterson any longer.
- ↑ For several years after their separation Dr. Patterson gave his wife an annuity of $200, which was paid in small instalments.
- ↑ When Mrs. Tilton, who had taken care of Mrs. Patterson from childhood and supported her in her widowhood, finally turned against her sister, she was as hard as she had been generous before. "I loved Mary best of all my sisters and brothers," she said to her friends, "but it is all gone now." The bitterness of her feeling lasted to the day of her death. She instructed her family not to allow Mary to see her after death nor to attend her funeral, and her wishes were carried out.
