The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 02
CHAPTER II
MRS. GLOVER AS A WIDOW IN TILTON—HER INTEREST IN MESMERISM AND CLAIRVOYANCE—THE DISPOSAL OF HER SON—MARRIAGE TO DANIEL PATTERSON
Mrs. Glover had now to face a hard situation. Her brief married life had ended in adversity, and returning a widow to her father's house, she was without means of support for herself or her child, and she had neither the training nor the disposition to take up an occupation, or to make herself useful at home. Her sisters and brothers were married and gone from home, and her parents were growing old and less able to cope with her turbulent moods. Embarrassing as this position would have been to most women, Mrs. Glover did not apparently find it so. She took it for granted that she was to receive not only the sympathy of her relatives but their support and constant service, and that they should assume the care of her child. She divided her time between her father's house and that of her sister Abby, and her baby was left to her mother and sister or sent up the valley to a Mrs. Varney, whose son, John Varney, worked for the Tiltons. Frequently, too, the child stayed with Mahala Sanborn, a neighbour who had attended Mrs. Glover at his birth. But wherever he was, it was not with his mother, who had shown a curious aversion to him from the beginning. “Mary,” said her father, “acts like an old ewe that won't own its lamb. She won't have the boy near her."
It must be said to the credit of the Baker family that they met Mrs. Glover's demands with a patience and faithfulness that seems remarkable from a family of such impatient and dominating character. They gave her the best room in each house and regulated their domestic affairs with a view to her comfort. When her nerves were in such a state of irritation that the slightest sound annoyed her, Mark Baker spread the road in front of his house with straw and tan bark to deaden the sound of passing waggons. The noise of children disturbed her, so the baby was sent to Mahala Sanborn or to Mrs. Tilton. At her sister's house they tiptoed about the rooms and placed covered bricks against every sill that the doors might close softly. At both houses she was rocked to sleep like a child in the arms of her father or her sister, and then gently carried to bed. Sometimes, at the Tiltons', this task fell to John Varney, the hired man, who like the members of her own family, rocked her to sleep and carried her to bed. To put an end to this practice, Mrs. Tilton ordered a large cradle made for Mrs. Glover. It was built with a balustrade and an extension seat at one end upon which Varney could sit, and by rocking himself as in a chair, also rock the cradle. Another symptom of her pathological condition was her intense desire for swinging. A large swing was hung from hooks in the ceiling of her room at Mrs. Tilton's, and here she was swung hours at a time by her young nephew, Albert Tilton. When Albert tired of the exercise he sometimes hired a substitute, so that "swinging Mrs. Glover" became a popular way of earning an honest penny among the village boys. One of these "boys" has described his experience to the writer. "Some days," he said, "Mrs. Glover was so nervous she couldn't have anybody in the room with her, and then I used to tie a string to the seat and swing her from outside her bedroom door." Mark Baker and John Varney were obliged often to carry her in their arms and walk the floor with her at night to soothe her excitable nerves, and when everything else failed, Mark used to send for old "Boston John" Clark to come and quiet Mrs. Glover by mesmerism. Clark was a bridge-builder from one of the villages up the valley who had acquired some reputation as a mesmerist, practising, like Dr. Ladd, upon any subject who was willing, and particularly happy when he dis covered a "sensitive" like Mrs. Glover. He never failed to soothe her, and after one of his visits, the Baker family enjoyed a space of quiet from the incessant turmoil of Mary's nerves. Yet Mrs. Glover was neither helpless nor incapacitated. She did not keep to her bed and she was able to go about the village and to attend to whatever she was interested in. Her neighbours remember her at church gatherings and at the sewing circle, where she went regularly although she did not sew. It was one of Mrs. Glover's notions, after her six months in Charleston, to imitate the Southern women in little matters of dress and manner, and at the sewing circle she sat and gave voluble descriptions of her life in the South and the favourable impression she had made there, deploring the loss of the daily horseback ride she had been accustomed to take in South Carolina.
Twice Mrs. Glover made an effort at self-support. While living with Mrs. Tilton she taught a class of children, holding the sessions in a small building, once used as a shop, on the Tilton place. After a few weeks' trial she gave it up. A little later she repeated the experiment, but with the same result. Although Mrs. Glover was later to have a "college" of her own, and to be its president and sole instructor, teaching was assuredly not her vocation in these early Tilton days. Perhaps a dozen of her Tilton pupils are still living, and they are fond of relating anecdotes of the days when they went to school to Mrs. Glover. They all remember that the teacher required the class to march around the room singing the following refrain:
| " | We will tell Mrs. Glover |
| How much we love her; | |
| By the light of the moon | |
| We will come to her."[1] |
Mrs. Glover began now to enjoy considerable local fame on account of her susceptibility to mesmeric influence, and her clairvoyant powers. She had developed a habit of falling into trances. Often, in the course of a social call, she would close her eyes and sink into a state of apparent unconsciousness, during which she could describe scenes and events. The curious and superstitious began to seek her advice while she was in this trance state. "Boston John" Clark experimented with her, putting her into the mesmeric sleep and attempting to trace lost or stolen articles by means of her clairvoyance. Once she tried to locate a drowned body. These efforts were not attended with any great success, but interest in mesmerism and clairvoyance ran high, and any one who could fall into a trance and describe things was sure to be an object of wonder. John Varney conceived the notion of turning this talent of Mrs. Glover's to practical account. "Boston John" was sent for, and Mrs. Glover, at Varney's suggestion, described the hiding-place of Captain Kidd's treasure, which was then a topic of exciting speculation. She indicated a spot near the city of Lynn, Mass. Varney and his cronies set out for the place and spent several days digging for the treasure, but without success.
A few years later when spiritualism swept over the country, Mrs. Glover took on the symptoms of a "medium." Like the Fox sisters, she heard mysterious rappings at night, she saw "spirits" of the departed standing by her bedside, and she received messages in writing from the dead. There are people living who remember very distinctly the spiritism craze in Tilton, and who witnessed Mrs. Glover's manifestations of mediumship. One elderly woman recalls a night spent with Mrs. Glover when her rest was constantly disturbed by the strange rappings and by Mary's frequent announcements of the "appearance" of different spirits as they came and went.
Mark Baker's house was one of those where spirit'séances were held. The whole community was more or less interested and a few went to extremes. One of this number became so excited over the wonderful phenomena of Mrs. Glover's writing mediumship that his mind was temporarily unbalanced. A former Tilton woman, who remembers these events, writes of Mrs. Glover's ability as a writing medium: "This was by no means looked upon as anything discreditable, but only as a matter of great astonishment."
During these years, too, Mrs. Glover tried her hand at writing. She spent many hours in her room "composing poetry," which sometimes appeared in the poet's corners of local newspapers, and there is a tradition that she wrote a love story for Godey's Lady's Book. This literary tendency was a valuable asset, which Mrs. Glover made the most of. It gave her a certain prestige in the community, and she was not loth to pose as an "authoress." Perhaps it was this early habit of looking upon herself as a literary authority which led her to take those curious liberties with English which have always been characteristic of her. She drew largely upon the credit of the language, sometimes producing a word or evolving a pronunciation which completely floored her hearers. Some of these words and phrases have passed into local bywords. "When I vociferate so loudly, why do you not respond with greater alacrity?" she sometimes seriously demanded of her attendants. She referred to plain John Varney as "Mr. Ve-owney," and few ordinary words were left unadorned. She sought also to improve upon nature in the matter of her own good looks. Although she had a beautiful complexion, she rouged and powdered, and although she had excellent teeth, she had some of them replaced by false ones, "made entirely of platinum," as Mrs. Glover described them.
On the whole, it is no wonder that Mrs. Glover was not taken seriously in her own town. Artificiality spread over all her acts, and in no relation in life did she impress even her nearest friends or her own family with genuine feeling or sincerity. Indeed, she was bitterly censured in those years for the more active faults of selfish and unfilial conduct and a strange lack of the sense of maternal duty. In 1851 Mrs. Glover had given her son, George, to Mahala Sanborn. The boy, having reached the age of seven, was growing too large to be sent about from one house to another to be looked after. Mrs. Glover's mother had died of typhoid fever in November, 1849, and Mrs. Tilton was growing each year more impatient and weary of Mrs. Glover's conduct. So when Mahala Sanborn married Russell Cheney and was preparing to move away from Tilton, Mrs. Glover begged her to take George to live with her permanently. Mrs. Cheney, who was attached to the boy, at last consented to do so, and George accompanied her and her husband to their new home in North Groton, and was called by their name.
Mark Baker, in the fall of 1850, had married Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, a widow of Londonderry, N. H., and moved into the village of Tilton. Mrs. Glover continued to live at home, spending most of her time there now, for her stepmother was of a pliable nature and gentle disposition, and had taken up the task of attending to Mary's wants with a patience equal to that of Mrs. Glover's own mother.
Notwithstanding Mrs. Glover's shortcomings of temper, she could be amiable and attractive enough when she chose. To men she always showed her most winning side, and she had never lacked admirers. One of her suitors at this time was Dr. Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist practising in Tilton and the villages thereabouts. Dr. Patterson was large, handsome, and genial. He wore a full beard, dressed in a frock coat and silk hat, and was popular among his patrons. Although he was industrious enough at his business and made a living sufficient for himself, he was not a genius at money-making, and he was not inclined to exert himself much more than was necessary. From his first acquaintance with Mrs. Glover he was determined to marry her. Conscientious Mark Baker, when he heard of Dr. Patterson's intention, visited the dentist and told him of Mary's ill-health and nervous afflictions, but interference only strengthened the doctor's determination, and on June 21, 1853, the wedding took place at Mark Baker's house, although Dr. Patterson was obliged to carry his bride downstairs from her room for the ceremony, and back again when it was over. Mrs. Glover had been very ill and weak that spring and was not yet recovered. After her marriage she spent the days of her convalescence in Tilton with her husband, and then they went to Franklin, a neighbouring village where Dr. Patterson was practising. But Mrs. Patterson's invalidism, from being intermittent, soon became a settled condition. She sent for her cradle while they were living in Franklin, and the older residents still recall the day that Patterson drove into town with a large waggon containing his wife's cradle.
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| Photograph by Wm. W. Weller |
DANIEL PATTERSON
Mrs. Eddy's second husband
From Franklin they went, in a short time, to North Groton, where the Cheneys and young George Glover were living. North Groton, in the southern fringe of the White Mountains, was very remote and could be reached only by stage. Like all the White Mountain region, it was beautiful in the summer season, but in the winter it was rugged and desolate. The farmhouses were far apart, and the roads were sometimes impassable. Often one would not see a neighbour or a passerby for weeks at a time when the snow was deep; and the winters there were very long. In a lane off the main road, the Pattersons lived in a small frame house, which faced a deep wood. At the right rose the mountains. Back of the house there was a swift mountain brook, and there the dentist had built a small sawmill, which he operated when there was not much dentist work to do, or when his wife's ill-health made it necessary for him to stay closely at home. He also practised homœopathy intermittently, but in the main he worked at his dentistry, driving to the nearby towns to practise, and leaving his wife alone or in the care of their occasional servant. There was only one near neighbour. It is not strange that, under these circumstances, Mrs. Patterson fell into a state of chronic illness and developed ways that were considered peculiar by her friends.
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The house in North Groton, N. H., where Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Daniel Patterson, lived for seven years.
Her neighbours in North Groton tell the old story of her illnesses, her hysteria, her high temper, and her unreasonable demands on her husband. She required him to keep the wooden bridge over the brook covered with sawdust to deaden the sound of footsteps or vehicles, and, according to local tradition, he spent many evenings killing discordant frogs, whose noise disturbed Mrs. Patterson. Other stories sink further toward burlesque. Old inhabitants of North Groton still remember the long drive which a neighbour made for Mrs. Patterson one stormy winter night. While the doctor was away in Franklin, attending to his practice, Mrs. Patterson fell into a state of depression which ended in hysterics. A neighbour was sent for, and Mrs. Patterson declared she was dying, and that her husband must be brought home at once. To her own family this situation would not have seemed the desperate affair it was to Mrs. Patterson's neighbour. Moved by the entreaties of the dying wife, he set out at night on the thirty-mile drive to Franklin, over roads that were almost impassable from heavy snowdrifts. His horses became exhausted and he stopped at Bristol only long enough to change them for a fresh pair. Arriving at Franklin the next morning he made haste to inform Dr. Patterson of his wife's dying condition.
To his astonishment the dentist looked up and remarked, "I think she will live until I finish this job at least," and went on with his work. When they reached North Groton late that day, they found Mrs. Patterson sitting in her chair, serene and cheerful, having apparently forgotten her indisposition of the night before.
Gradually the sympathy of her neighbours was withdrawn from Mrs. Patterson, and in North Groton, as in Tilton, she came to be harshly criticised. Many years afterward, upon the occasion of the dedication of the Christian Science Church in Concord, N. H., July 16, 1904, a North Groton correspondent, under the head, "Time Makes Changes," wrote in the Plymouth Record:
With the announcement of the dedication of the Christian Science Church at Concord, the gift of Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, the thoughts of many of the older residents have turned back to the time when Mrs. Eddy, as the wife of Daniel Patterson, lived in this place. These people remember the woman at that time as one who carried herself above her fellows. With no stretch of the imagination they remember her ungovernable temper and hysterical ways, and particularly well do they remember the night ride of one of the citizens who went for her husband to calm her in one of her unreasonable moods. The Mrs. Eddy of to-day is not the Mrs. Patterson of then, for this is a sort of Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll case, and the woman is now credited with many charitable and kindly acts.
Although Mrs. Patterson now lived near her boy, George, she did not see a great deal of him. He had started to go to school, and used sometimes to stop at his mother's house on his way home, but she never cared to have him with her. Instead, and by some perverse law of her nature, she showed a deep affection for the infant son of her neighbour, naming him Mark after her father, and making plans for his education and future. In 1857 Russell Cheney and his wife went West to live, taking George Glover with them. George was now thirteen. He was excited at the prospect of the trip, and after bidding his mother good-bye, he was taken to Tilton a day before the time set for their departure, to say farewell to his Grandfather Baker and his Aunt Tilton.
In Retrospection and Introspection Mrs. Eddy gives the following account of her separation from her son:
After returning to the paternal roof, I lost all my husband's property, except what money I had brought with me; and remained with my parents until after my mother's decease.
A few months before my father's second marriage to Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, sister of Lieutenant-Governor George W. Patterson, of New York—my little son, about four years of age, was sent away from me, and put under the care of our family nurse, who had married, and resided in the northern part of New Hampshire. I had no training for self-support, and my home I regarded as very precious. The night before my child was taken from me, I knelt by his side throughout the dark hours, hoping for a vision of relief from this trial. The following lines are taken from my poem, "Mother's Darling," written after this separation:
| " | Thy smile through tears, as sunshine o'er the sea, |
| Awoke new beauty in the surge's roll! | |
| Oh, life is dead, bereft of all, with thee, — | |
| Star of my earthly hope, babe of my soul." |
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. 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, had a wife and two children, and by a strange providence had learned that his mother still lived, and came to see me in Massachusetts.
From Enterprise, Minn., where the Cheneys settled, Mrs. Patterson often had news of her son. Mrs. Cheney and her husband wrote frequently to their relatives and friends in North Groton and Tilton, giving details of their life and of George's progress. Mr. Cyrus Blood of North Groton, one of George Glover's early chums, remembers a visit he paid to Dr. Patterson, during which Mrs. Patterson read a letter from George, in which he told her of leaving the Cheneys and enlisting in the Civil War. This was in 1861 when George was seventeen. "She seemed as well pleased, and as proud," writes Mr. Blood, "as any mother with a boy in the army." The present writer has also read a letter from Mrs. Patterson to P. P. Quimby of Portland, Me., dated July 29, 1865, in which she describes her son as "mortally ill at Enterprise, Minn.," and declares that unless he is better at once she will start for the West "on Monday."
George Glover made an excellent record as a soldier; was wounded at Shiloh and honourably discharged; was appointed United States Marshal of the Dakotas; knocked about the Western states as a prospector and miner, and finally settled at Lead, S. D., where he now carries on his mining enterprises. He has a wife and four children, the eldest of whom is a daughter named Mary Baker Glover, for her grandmother. Mrs. Eddy and her son met for the first time after their long separation, in 1879, Mrs. Eddy having sent a mysterious telegram begging him to come to her immediately. She was then living in Lynn. The Glovers live in a handsome house in Lead which Mrs. Eddy built for her son in 1902. None of the family is a Christian Scientist. Several years ago when Glover's eldest daughter died his neighbours expressed amazement that he had not called upon Mrs. Eddy to cure her. "Why, do you know," replied George, "I never thought of mother!"
In March, 1860, three years after George had gone West with the Cheneys, Dr. and Mrs. Patterson became involved in a dispute with a neighbour and moved away, this time trying Rumney, the next village. At first they boarded with Mrs. John Herbert, a widow at Rumney Station, and later they lived by themselves in a house belonging to John Dearborn in Rumney Village, a mile from the Station. Mrs. Patterson's reputation had preceded her and she was at once a topic of discussion. She went out but seldom, and then propped up with pillows in a carriage. It was said that she suffered from a spinal disease. From the Herbert family and from her husband she required the utmost attention. Dr. Patterson waited upon her constantly when he was at home, carrying her downstairs to her meals and back again to her room. When he was not at home, she was able to walk about and attend to most of her wants unassisted; but when he returned she relapsed into a state of helplessness.
From the traditions which abound in these villages it is evident that the Pattersons' marriage was an unfortunate one. Dr. Patterson's bluff and rather coarse geniality must greatly have irritated his high-strung and self-centred wife, and there is no doubt that, on his part, he came quickly to see the force of Mark Baker's advice against the marriage. He seems to have responded faithfully to his wife's demands, and to have endured her irascibility with patience. It was probably a relief to both when Dr. Patterson went South, after the Civil War began, in the hope of securing more profitable employment as an army surgeon. He visited the early battlefields, and, straying into the enemies' lines, was taken captive and sent to a Southern prison. In his absence Mrs. Patterson showed that she was capable of a gentler sentiment toward her husband. During his confinement in prison she published (June 20, 1862) the following poem, the last stanza of which is slightly reminiscent of certain lines in Lord Byron's poem to the more celebrated patriot, Bonnivard:
TO A BIRD FLYING SOUTHWARD
By Mary A. Patterson
| Alas! sweet bird, of fond ones reft, |
| Alone in Northern climes thus left, |
| To seek in vain through airy space |
| Some fellow-warbler's resting place; |
| And find upon the hoarse wind's song— |
| No welcome note is borne along. |
| |
| Then wildly through the skies of blue, |
| To spread thy wings of dappled hue, |
| As if forsooth this frozen zone |
| Could yield one joy for bliss that's flown; |
| While sunward as thine eager flight, |
| That glance is fixed on visions bright. |
| And grief may nestle in that breast, |
| Some vulture may have robbed its rest, |
| But guileless as thou art, sweet thing, |
| With melting melody thou'lt sing; |
| The vulture's scream your nerves unstrung, |
| But, birdie, 'twas a woman's tongue. |
| I, too, would join thy sky-bound flight, |
| To orange groves and mellow light, |
| And soar from earth to loftier doom, |
| And light on flowers with sweet perfume, |
| And wake a genial, happy lay— |
| Where hearts are kind, and earth so gay. |
| Oh! to the captive's cell I'd sing |
| A song of hope—and freedom bring— |
| An olive leaf I'd quick let fall, |
| And lift our country's blackened pall; |
| Then homeward seek my frigid zone, |
| More chilling to the heart alone. |
| Lone as a solitary star,[2] |
| Lone as a vacant sepulchre, |
| Yet not alone! my Father's call— |
| Who marks the sparrow in her fall— |
| Attunes my ear to joys elate, |
| The joys I'll sing at Heaven's |
Rumney, June 20, 1862.
Left alone, and once more penniless, after her husband's imprisonment, Mrs. Patterson again fell back upon her relatives. She wrote to Mrs. Tilton for assistance. Mrs. Tilton went to Rumney, settled Mrs. Patterson's affairs there, and took her back to Tilton.
It is this part of her career that Mrs. Eddy has sought to blot out of existence. She makes no reference to it in her autobiography, and in another place has said that no special account is to be made of the years between 1844 and 1866. These twenty-two lost years—between her twenty-third and forty-sixth birthdays—were, as has been shown, spent in fretful ill-health and discontent. It was a hard life, sordid in many of its experiences, petty in its details, and narrow in its limitations. Yet there is nothing to show that Mrs. Eddy made an effort to improve her hard situation, or to make herself useful to others; and at forty she was known only for her eccentricities.
- ↑ This song was evidently an adaptation of a popular "round" of that period, which ran:
" Go to Jane Glover And tell her I love her And by the light of the moon I will come to her." A correspondent gives the information that in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland, a similar "round" was in popular use previous to the year 1840, the words of which were:
" Go to Joan Glover And tell her I love her And by the light of the moon I will come to her." - ↑ Byron's “Prisoner of Chillon,” when relating how the bird perched and
sang upon the grating of his donjon, exclaims:
“ I sometimes deem'd that it might be My brother's soul come down to me; But then at last away it flew, And then 'twas mortal well I knew, For he would never thus have flown, And left me twice so doubly lone, Lone as the corse within its shroud, Lone as a solitary cloud,—” etc.