The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
THE ADOPTION OF A SON—MRS. EDDY'S HOUSEHOLD AND THE NEW FAVOURITE—A CRISIS IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE—MRS. EDDY IS DRIVEN FROM BOSTON BY "M.A.M."
In 1888 George Washington Glover, Mrs. Eddy's long-absent son, the child of her first marriage, came to spend a winter in Boston. He brought with him from the West his wife and four children, and took a house in Chelsea. Although his relations with his mother at that time seem to have been amicable, they were certainly not of a very close or confidential nature. While Mr. Glover was in Boston his mother's business affairs were still conducted by Mr. Frye, and the son was a far from conspicuous figure in her daily life. He was not a member of her household or of her church, and took no part in her great religious enterprise. Mr. Glover and his family were first publicly introduced to Mrs. Eddy's followers in December, at a fair given by the Christian Scientists. On this occasion the Glovers were cordially welcomed by Mrs. Eddy's friends, and the resemblance of the daughter Mary Baker Glover, to her grandmother was the subject of general comment throughout the evening. At a late hour Mrs. Eddy herself appeared to grace the fair, and when she entered the hall the orchestra began to play Mendelssohn's wedding march, to symbolise, so the Journal explains, Mrs. Eddy's "indissoluble union with Truth."
Mr. Glover's prolonged stay in Chelsea seems not to have brought him and his mother any closer together, for, almost immediately after his return to the West, Mrs. Eddy adopted a son who was presumably more to her liking.
Ebenezer Johnson Foster was a man of forty-one when Mrs. Eddy adopted him, and she herself was then in her sixty-eighth year. Dr. Foster was a homœopathic physician who had been practising his profession at Waterbury Center, a little mountain town in Vermont. Like most of Mrs. Eddy's disciples, he had led a quiet, uneventful life until he came under her influence. As a boy of fifteen he had enlisted in the Union Army and had served for three years. Later he was graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia.
Dr. Foster first heard of Christian Science through William Clark, an old army comrade who believed that his health had been restored through his study of Mrs. Eddy's book. Dr. Foster decided to investigate this new system of healing, and, in the autumn of 1887, when he went to Boston to pay a visit to an old aunt, he called at Mrs. Eddy's house in Columbus Avenue and an interview was granted. The first impressions on both sides were very agreeable. Mrs. Eddy was more than eager to enlist the sympathies of "the M.D.'s," as she termed physicians, and she saw in Dr. Foster the tractable kind of man she was always looking for. She lavished her most gracious manner upon him, and he was led away captive in the first interview. It seemed to Dr. Foster that Mrs. Eddy was very like his own mother; that she was full of gentleness and sympathy and affection. She told him that she wished him to become her student, and he entered her class the following day.
After completing his course at Mrs. Eddy's Metaphysical College, Dr. Foster returned to Waterbury Center and resumed the practice of homœopathy, experimenting more or less with the Christian Science method of healing, and industriously reading Science and Health. In the following May he received an urgent letter from Mrs. Eddy requesting him to attend the National Convention of the Christian Scientists' Association, which was to meet at Chicago in June. Because of division and discord in the Boston church, Mrs. Eddy, foreseeing serious trouble, was strengthening her position by every possible means, and was ascertaining, in one way and another, which of her students could be depended upon in case of an emergency. Dr. Foster was easily persuaded to go to Chicago. After the convention adjourned and Mrs. Eddy returned to Boston, he went to visit his brother in Wisconsin. There he soon received a telegram from his teacher, bidding him come at once to Boston. Before he could start, another telegram from her told him not to come. Soon afterward he received a letter urging him to come at once.
When Dr. Foster arrived at Mrs. Eddy's new house in Commonwealth Avenue, July 4, 1888, he was at a loss to know just why she had sent for him, except that the recent schism in the Boston church, resulting in the withdrawal of thirty-six members, had left her short of active workers.
Mrs. Eddy soon made it known to him, however, that he was to be a teacher in her college, and she duly installed him as professor of obstetrics.[1] She took great comfort in Dr. Foster's presence in the house and began to feel that from him she might hope for the unquestioning obedience and perpetual adoration she was always seeking. She loved to amaze and astonish; when her students ceased to "wonder," she was usually through with them. Each of her favourites gave her, as it were, a new lease of life; with each one her interest in everything quickened. The great outside audience meant very little as compared with the pliant neophyte beside her chair or across the table from her. It was when Mrs. Eddy was weaving her spell about a new favourite that she was at her best, and it was then that she most believed in herself. But she could never stop with enchanting, merely. She must altogether absorb the new candidate; he must have nothing left in him which was not from her. If she came upon one insoluble atom hidden away anywhere in the marrow of his bones, she experienced a revulsion and flung him contemptuously aside.
Dr. Foster had been in the house but a little while when Mrs. Eddy told him she foresaw that the relation between them must be a very close one. This announcement somewhat disconcerted him, until she explained that it was her intention to adopt him as her son. In her petition to the Court, Mrs. Eddy stated that "said Foster is now associated with your petitioner in business, home life, and life work, and she needs such interested care and relationship." On the 5th of November, 1888, accordingly, Dr. Foster's legal name became Ebenezer J. Foster Eddy.
The new son was a small man with an affectionate disposition, gentle, affable manners, and very small, well-kept hands. He had certain qualities which Mrs. Eddy had always found desirable in those who were closely associated with her. He never offered Mrs. Eddy advice, never interfered with her wishes, never questioned her wisdom or demurred to her projects—as even Mr. Frye was sometimes known to do. He says to-day that he cannot remember ever having crossed his adopted mother in anything. If he had planned to go up to Waterbury Center to visit his father, for instance, and Mrs. Eddy told him to unpack his bag and stay at home, he did so without so much as a question, and preserved a cheerful countenance.
When Foster Eddy settled himself in his new home at 385 Commonwealth Avenue, he found that not all of Mrs. Eddy's friends were so kindly disposed toward him as was his mother. At this time Miss Julia Bartlett, Captain Eastaman, Josephine Woodbury, William B. Johnson, Mrs. Augusta Stetson, Frank Mason, and Marcellus Munroe constituted a kind of executive staff for Mrs. Eddy, and the new son felt confident that several of these persons had attempted to prevent his adoption from motives of self-interest. If Mrs. Eddy were going to adopt any one, why not one of her trusted and tried rather than a comparative stranger? From the day of his installation as the son of the house, Foster Eddy felt that Mrs. Eddy's cabinet was jealous of his influence over her, of her affection for him, of his musical accomplishments and his winning manners, and of his efforts to bring sunshine into his new home.
Mr. Frye went his silent, inscrutable way, keeping a wary eye upon the new favourite. Frye was little about the house in those days. When he was not doing his marketing he was usually to be found in his own room, waiting for orders and working at his accounts. Although he seems to have been scrupulously honest, he was a poor bookkeeper. Mrs. Eddy often took him to task harshly for this fault, and it was the cause of many a scene between them. She now threatened to take the accounts altogether out of his hands and give them to her new son, but as often as she decided upon this step she as often changed her mind, and in the end the books remained in the keeping of Mr. Frye. He probably knew that Mrs. Eddy trusted him in so far as she could trust any one, but that it was necessary for her to have grievances and to break into thunder-storms about them. Every one had to take his turn at standing up under these cataclysms of nerves; if it were not Mr. Frye, then it was some one else, and the new son was soon having his occasional bad day like the rest.
Mrs. Lydia Roaf, Mr. Frye's sister, was Mrs. Eddy's cook at this time, but she and her brother had little to say to each other. Miss Martha Morgan acted as housekeeper. She had come from Maine to study under Mrs. Eddy and had stayed to help with the housework. Foster Eddy's duties were manifold, but were chiefly in the nature of personal services to Mrs. Eddy. He went about town on errands to her publishers and printers; addressed meetings which she could not attend; wrote some of her letters for her; saw visitors when she was indisposed; sometimes took a drive with her; kept her desk in order; played and sang for her when she was in a pensive mood. Mrs. Eddy liked her son to appear with some distinction when he went out to represent her. In winter he usually wore a long fur-lined coat, and Mrs. Eddy later bought him a diamond solitaire for his little finger. Since he had to speak occasionally in public, Mrs. Eddy sent him to the Boston School of Oratory to learn the use of the voice. She called him "Bennie" and he addressed her as "mother."
| |||
| Courtesy of the N. Y. World | Courtesy of the N. Y. World | ||
| EBENEZER J. FOSTER EDDY | GEORGE WASHINGTON GLOVER | ||
| The adopted son of Mrs. Eddy | Mrs. Eddy's only child | ||
Dr. Foster Eddy was sometimes called upon to attend Mrs. Eddy in her illnesses, and he, like the other members of the household, spent his spare moments in treating her against that old foe, malicious animal magnetism, which was always infesting the house. He also made himself useful about the house, and sometimes helped Miss Morgan with the dishes.
When Mrs. Eddy had a bad day, Dr. Foster's new home was a difficult place to live in, but the storms were usually for gotten in the smiles and calm which followed. Mrs. Eddy could be the most agreeable of hostesses and of mothers when she chose, and from the days when she told a young man of Swampscott that if she could put on canvas her ideal of Jesus Christ the face would look like his, she never underestimated the human appetite for flattery. She could unblushingly refer to the "touch of fairy fingers" or the "music of footfalls," and could deliver the most threadbare euphuisms with a smile that warmed the heart of the recipient and covered him with foolish happiness. After having fretted herself to sleep the night before, she would sometimes arise in a mood almost beatific, and would greet the object of yesterday's invective with a benediction and a smile. In such a humour she would promise the pardoned offender a larger place in her life and a greater control of her affairs, telling him that he, more than any one else, had understood the true meaning of her teachings and the real significance of her life, and that she must perforce look to him to carry on her great work after her. It was the same old story that Mrs. Eddy had breathed to Spofford, Arens, and Buswell, each in his turn, but to the eager listener it was always new.
By the spring of 1889 Mrs. Eddy had come to a crisis in her affairs. In spite of the brave fight she was making against those who had gone out from the church, and whom she chose to consider her enemies, she began to show the wear and strain of the eight preceding years. She had now reached the age of sixty-eight, the trembling palsy which affected her head and hands was growing more pronounced, and her fear of mesmerism amounted to a mania. Yet now, more than ever before, there was work for her to do. It was a critical moment in the history of her church. The movement was spreading rapidly, and new problems, incident to the growth of Christian Science, were presenting themselves for solution. In nearly every state the healers were coming into conflict with the law and public opinion, and her followers everywhere needed advice and direction. The "conspiracy" which had come to light the year before had shown her that the Boston church was not so completely under her control as she had believed, and she determined that something should be done to insure her domination of it in the future.
Mrs. Eddy had decided, too, to revise Science and Health, and to get out a new edition. In Boston her work was subject to continual interruption, and she was often irritated beyond endurance by the people about her. Mrs. Woodbury and Mrs. Stetson, in particular, had begun to wear upon her. Although Mrs. Stetson's success in building up the church organisation in New York made her indispensable, Mrs. Eddy distrusted her and was annoyed as well as pleased at her progress. Soon after Mrs. Eddy adopted Dr. Foster, Mrs. Stetson took a young man from Maine, Carol Norton, to occupy a somewhat similar position in her household, although she did not legally adopt him. When Mrs. Eddy heard of this, she exclaimed with vexation, "See how Stetson apes me!" She also made a new by-law forbidding "illegal adoption."[2]
This was the situation when Mrs. Eddy suddenly left Boston, driven from home, so she declared, by malicious mesmerism. The fear of it had for a long time completely dominated her, and it was now interfering seriously with her work in the college and church. She spent her time in talking about it; in treating and fighting against it, and in discovering and thwarting imaginary plots. She felt it reaching out to her, not only from her enemies, but from her most trusted students and friends. She believed she could see it in their faces. As she once bitterly remarked to Mrs. Hopkins, "You are so full of mesmerism that your eyes stick out like a boiled codfish's."
She had never loved any one so well that she could not, in a moment of irritation, believe him guilty, not only of disloyalty, but of theft, knavery, blackmail, or abominable corruption. She could never feel sure of even the ordinary decencies of conduct in her friends. All the suspicion, envy, and incontinent distrust which so often blazed in Mrs. Eddy's eyes seemed to have found a concrete and corporeal expression in this thing, Mesmerism.
The delusion of persecution grew upon her, and she believed that she was watched and spied upon. Her mail, her clothes, her house, her friends, and even inanimate objects she thought were infected with mesmerism and made hostile to her. Throughout the winter and spring she complained continually to her adopted son that Boston was so full of mesmerism that it was choking her, and that she must escape from it. Her one thought now was "flight"—to get away from the Boston Christian Scientists and to a place where she could prosecute her work and carry out her plans without interference or interruption. She talked of going to Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, but at last she threw deliberation to the winds and announced one morning that she must go immediately—somewhere, any where.
Foster Eddy knew of a furnished house which was to be let in Barre, Vt., and thither he conducted Mrs. Eddy, with Mr. Frye and the women of the household—Lydia Roaf was no longer one of them, having fallen ill and gone home to die. When Mrs. Eddy arrived at Barre, new troubles awaited her. The town band customarily played of an evening in the square before her house, and although she sent Mr. Frye out to request the band boys to desist, they refused to do so. Consequently Mrs. Eddy packed up and returned to Boston. A few months later she was up and away again, this time moving into a furnished house at 62 State Street, Concord, N. H. She found no peace here, and sent Dr. Foster out to look for some place that should be a certain distance from the post-office, telegraph-office, express-office, etc. She wanted to be well out of reach of these, and yet be not too far from Boston. Dr. Foster canvassed the suburbs of that city and found a desirable house and garden for sale in Roslindale. The owner asked a price considerably above the market value, but Mrs. Eddy paid it, declaring that mesmerism was again at work, trying to keep her out of her own, and that she would have the property at any price. Dr. Foster was sent back to Commonwealth Avenue to pack her furniture and move it out to Roslindale. The new house was scarcely settled when Mrs. Eddy, believing that her neighbours were mesmerised, went back to Concord. Here she lived again at No. 62 State Street, until she moved into the house which she named Pleasant View, and in which she lived until January, 1908.
In retiring to Concord, Mrs. Eddy had no idea of loosing her hold upon Christian Science, or of resigning her leadership. It is very doubtful if, when she went away in the spring of 1889, she meant to leave Boston for good. After that date she made alterations in her Commonwealth Avenue house, and the fact that she had the walls of her own room there pulled out and interlined with a substance which would deaden sound and make the room absolutely quiet, seems to indicate that she intended to return there to live. But in going from Boston, Mrs. Eddy was acting, as always, upon the urgent need of the moment. For the present it was imperative that she should be free from the hot-bed of mesmerism in Boston, both for her own peace of mind, and in order to do what was before her; and although her retirement to Concord proved most fortunate in its general results, Mrs. Eddy, in going, was probably not concerned at the moment with anything but her own security and convenience. It was apparently not until she had left the city and had become more inaccessible to her students and followers, that she realised how greatly her administrative life in Boston had taxed her strength. For years she had complained of the anguish of meeting people; she believed that her students, and even strangers, left the burden of their ills and sorrows with her when they went out from her presence, and she suffered excruciatingly from the nervous excitement produced by even the most casual social intercourse. From this time on her dread of crowds and her distress at meeting people increased and she became gradually more and more inaccessible.
- ↑ See Chapter XIX.
- ↑ Illegal Adoption. Sect. 3. No person shall be a member of this church who claims a spiritually adopted child; or a spiritually adopted husband or wife. There must be legal adoption or legal marriage, which can be verified according to the laws of our land.—Church Manual, 1904.