MRS. EDDY

It was during some year in the early ’80’s that I became aware—­from that close contact with public feeling resulting from editorial work in daily journalism—­that the Boston atmosphere was largely thrilled and pervaded by a new and increasing interest in the dominance of mind over matter, and that the central figure in all this agitation was Mrs. Eddy.  To a note which I wrote her, begging the favor of an interview for press use, she most kindly replied, naming an evening on which she would receive me.  At the hour named I rang the bell at a spacious house on Columbus Avenue, and I was hardly more than seated before Mrs. Eddy entered the room.  She impressed me as singularly graceful and winning in bearing and manner, and with great claim to personal beauty.  Her figure was tall, slender, and as flexible in movement as that of a Delsarte disciple; her face, framed in dark hair and lighted by luminous blue eyes, had the transparency and rose-flush of tint so often seen in New England, and she was magnetic, earnest, impassioned.  No photographs can do the least justice to Mrs. Eddy, as her beautiful complexion and changeful expression cannot thus be reproduced.  At once one would perceive that she had the temperament to dominate, to lead, to control, not by any crude self-assertion, but a spiritual animus.  Of course such a personality, with the wonderful tumult in the air that her large and enthusiastic following excited, fascinated the imagination.  What had she originated?  I mentally questioned this modern St. Catherine, who was dominating her followers like any abbess of old.  She told me the story of her life, so far as outward events may translate those inner experiences which alone are significant.

Mary Baker was the daughter of Mark and Abigail (Ambrose) Baker, and was born in Concord, N.H., somewhere in the early decade of 1820-’30.  At the time I met her she must have been some sixty years of age, yet she had the coloring and the elastic bearing of a woman of thirty, and this, she told me, was due to the principles of Christian Science.  On her father’s side Mrs. Eddy came from Scotch and English ancestry, and Hannah More was a relative of her grandmother.  Deacon Ambrose, her maternal grandfather, was known as a “godly man,” and her mother was a religious enthusiast, a saintly and consecrated character.  One of her brothers, Albert Baker, graduated at Dartmouth and achieved eminence as a lawyer.

MRS. EDDY AS A CHILD

As a child Mary Baker saw visions and dreamed dreams.  When eight years of age she began, like Jeanne d’Arc, to hear “voices,” and for a year she heard her name called distinctly, and would often run to her mother questioning if she were wanted.  One night the mother related to her the story of Samuel, and bade her, if she heard the voice again to reply as he did:  “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.”  The call came, but the little maid was afraid and did not reply.  This caused her tears of remorse and she prayed for forgiveness, and promised to reply if the call came again.  It came, and she answered as her mother had bidden her, and after that it ceased.