"Affection craves legend and relics."

Hawthorne Hall on Park Street

In an earlier post, I showed a later photograph of the site of Hawthorne Hall (also called the Hawthorne Rooms), which was a hall utilized by Mrs. Eddy on Park Street, between Tremont Street and the State House, on the edge of the Boston Commons. For some reason I have always been interested in that location, perhaps because it was where Mrs. Eddy delivered the lectures from the late 1870s to the mid-1880s that got her movement going. (Of course there were other reasons for the success of her movement at that time, such as the creation of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College on Columbus Avenue and the publication of The Christian Science Journal, as its name was changed to, but the Hawthorne Hall lectures played their important role as well.) 

William Lyman Johnson was just a boy when his father, William B. Johnson, took him to hear Mrs. Eddy speak at Hawthorne Hall in 1884, and in my collection is a photocopy of his historical manuscript that he prepared for the Christian Science Board of Directors in 1919. In that manuscript he provides an ingenuous look at that day, from the standpoint of a child who really didn’t want to be there. Below are lengthy excerpts of his recollection, which go beyond what he recorded for Mary Beecher Longyear as printed in The History of the Christian Science Movement (1926). The text is then followed by the floor plan of the Hall, an introductory card to hear Mrs. Eddy speak there, a photograph of William Lyman Johnson (one that we have seen before), along with roughly contemporaneous photographs of the very short Park Street, where the Hall was situated.

“The first time I saw Mrs. Eddy was in 1884 in the Hawthorne Rooms. My father had told me so much about her and the remarkable things she had done, and what wonderful healing her teaching had accomplished, that I wanted to see her, but did not desire to get to[o] close, for I had, somehow received the idea that she could read the thoughts in the minds of people, and I was afraid that if she read mine she might discover that I would rather be playing ball than going to church.

 

The Sunday afternoon was one of beauty, either in late Spring or early fall, that father and I walked to the Hawthorne Rooms. The rooms were not large, but well-lighted by the windows that fronted the Commons. I am afraid that the scenes along the malls [i.e., the walkway outside] and the emerald greens of the vast arches of the elms claimed more of my attention than did the preparations for the service. I envied the freedom of the birds that winged their way through the bowers of translucent green, traced the rough streams of eddying bark on the trunks of the old elms, and wished that I was out on the grass, or calling to the deer in the deer-park, or wondering at the changing shapes of the sprays of the fountain that was playing in the frog-pond, and splashing and sparkling into irridescent[sic] sprays of rainbows.

 

Before the service began the room became filled, and then a quiet, and I heard some one say:—‘here is Mrs. Eddy.’ I cannot remember what her sermon was about, but there is a strong recollection that the place was very quiet, and when I asked my father in a whisper, for a piece of peppermint, he did not seem to hear me, and something seemed to say to me ‘don’t whisper again,’ and I did not.

 

When the service come to an end my father left me, as he had some business of the church to do, and I was well content to look out upon the Common, and know that soon I would be running and skipping over the turf with the freedom of the other boys. A crowd of people was standing about the platform listening to what Mrs. Eddy was saying. My reveries were disturbed when father came over to me and said he wanted me to meet the Teacher. I remember I held back and father gently chided me and urged that I must act like a little gentleman, for he had told her of my singing, and she had said to him that I must go to the College and sing for her and some of her students, and added that if she asked me I must surely go as I would then be honored by singing for the greatest person on earth. But this was too much for me, for I did not want to sing for the greatest person on earth. . . . An unwilling captive, Father dragged me forward near the platform, and I took refuge behind a tall stout man. There were about a dozen people lingering about the platform and I could hear Mrs. Eddy speaking to them, and I stopped shifting from one foot to another and began listening and wondering at some of the things she said. I must have been there five minutes, when she stopped and there was silence. The thought came like a flash that she had looked clear through the fat man behind whom I had taken refuge and had seen me. It is evident, from what she told my father afterward that she sensed a child was near, and at that moment father dragged me forward and said:—‘Teacher this is my son.’ She reached out her hand with a most loving smile, and at the clasp all fears vanished. Holding it in a firm grasp she told me that my father had given her an account of my singing and success at the Conservatory, and said that she would like to hear me sing sometime. Just what I answered I do not remember for I kept watching her eyes, but when she asked me ‘what I should like to be when I grew up’ I told her:—‘a fine musician.’ Her answer was:—“I hope that you will be?’ and looking into my eyes, she said, as she put her hand on my head:— ‘may God bless you.’

 

The remarkable tones of her voice, the wonderful questioning of her eyes which seemed to look deep into me, rather frightened me at first, then drew tears from my eyes. The exceptional manner in which she spoke to others and the way she stood, made an unforgettable picture, and in after years, whenever I saw her, the impression engraved upon my boyish thought that day in Hawthorne Rooms came back with inspired freshness.

 

This first look from her eyes and the touch of her hand has ever lingered with me as one of the events of my life.”

William Lyman Johnson

         

 

A Tale of Two Books

A recent inquiry about the following rare book by one of Mrs. Eddy’s youngest students, Elizabeth Earl Jones, led to me decide to post bibliographical and historical information on two extremely rare books, one the Jones book and the other a book by Alice Jennings, an Augusta Stetson student:

The Language of Color, by Elizabeth Earl Jones. Asheville, N.C.: Hackney & Moale, [1903].

This book is “Dedicated with tender love and gratitude to Mother [i.e., Mrs. Eddy].”

A copy in my collection has pasted in a small, early photograph of Elizabeth Earl Jones that is otherwise unrecorded (see below). That copy also has the following inscription (as also seen below),

“For Dear Mrs. Smith

      Lily Hazzard

              Oct. 28, 1903.” 

In my collection is an original letter from Julia Leonard, the wife of early Christian Scientist, Frank Leonard, and the daughter-in-law of Pamelia Leonard, who was in Mrs. Eddy’s household at Pleasant View. The letter is to noted book dealer in Los Angeles, Ernest Dawson, and is dated March 19, 1926:

“The book ‘Language of Color’ by Elizabeth Earl Jones was presented by Mrs. Eddy to Frank Leonard’s mother Mrs. Pamelia J. Leonard. Mrs. Eddy’s card with ‘Happy New Year’ in Mrs. Eddy’s handwriting accompanied the book.”

Gilbert C. Carpenter, Jr., reported at one point that Mrs. Eddy had a copy of the book on her nightstand for two weeks and would not let anyone remove it.

It is recorded that Mrs. Eddy ordered six copies of the book.

A letter from Jones to Mrs. Eddy appears in My., pp. 327-328, written at roughly the same time as the book was published.

The Fruit of the Spirit Poetically Interpreted, selected by Alice Jennings. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, [1903]. First edition, first issue, along with the subsequent first edition, second issue.

This surprisingly rare book—in either issue—is interesting and significant. In the first issue appear no writings of Mrs. Eddy, but in the second issue are the following poems by Mrs. Eddy: "Love" (pp. 31-32) and "Constancy" (p. 49). These two poems appear on cancel leaves in the second issue.

The copy of the first issue in my collection includes the following inscription on the front free endpaper:

 

"Mr. William B. Johnson, C.S.B.

With best wishes for the new year

Alice Jennings

1904"

Also included in this copy of the first issue are notes written by Gilbert C. Carpenter, Jr., in which he cited nine letters that Mrs. Eddy wrote which refer to this book.

The copy in this collection of the second issue of this book, which includes the poems by Mrs. Eddy, has the following inscription:

"With love and best wishes

to

'Aunt Minnie'

from

Ethel"

This copy of the second issue originally belonged to Minnie Scott, who was one of Mrs. Eddy's maids.

 While the first book appearance of the poem "Love" was in Miscellaneous Writings in 1897, I believe this is the first book appearance of the poem "Constancy." (A separate copyright edition of the poem of probably only two copies exists elsewhere in my collection.) Adam Dickey in his Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy (p. 77) wrote how Mrs. Eddy shed a tear when he read that poem from her newly printed book Poems in 1910. She said that she wrote the poem after she lost her husband. Bates-Dittemore point out (p. 69) that she wrote an early version of this poem in February, 1856—which suggests that the "husband" Mrs. Eddy was referring to was Daniel Patterson. However Mrs. Eddy frequently repeated her poems, and it is quite possible that this poem in its original form referred to her first husband George Glover.

This book is largely unknown, even among many Christian Science collectors. I only know of one collector with a copy of one of the two issues, and I have not seen it mentioned in any history of Mrs. Eddy or Christian Science. However, it was apparently mentioned in Henry Raymond Mussey's pamphlet The Christian Science Censor (1930), where on p. 14 he mentioned the Fleming H. Revell Company "who in 1903 had published a volume of Christian Science poems, . . ." Ralph Geradi and the Rare Book Company to my knowledge never had a copy of this book.

In the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity is an unusually large collection of letters by Mrs. Eddy, Alice Jennings, and others on this book. Also the Library has the original gift from Jennings to Mrs. Eddy of her book with inscription dated November 11, 1903.  

   

     

Identify that photo

Just for fun, let's see how many of these photos of early Christian Scientists can be identified. To be sure, this is not an easy task since some of them are somewhat obscure, but all of them knew Mrs. Eddy. Enjoy! (In a day or two, I will give the initials of the individuals whose photos have not yet been identified.)

Photo #1

Photo #2

Photo #3

Photo #4

Photo #5

Photo #6

Photo #7

Photo #8

 

Photo #9

Photo #10

Photo #11

 

Photo #12

 
          

Michael Meehan’s Book on the Next Friends Suit—A Study in Bibliography

 Mrs. Eddy and "Next Friends," by Michael Meehan. Concord, New Hampshire: Rumford Printing Company, 1908.

The above is the ultra rare trial edition, which immediately preceded the "authorized edition" printed by the University Press. The only other copies of the trial edition that I have seen were at the New Hampshire State Library, the Treasure Room at Principia College (which was possibly part of the Bliss Knapp collection that was bequeathed to Principia), the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, and the Craig Beardsley collection. (I do not know of another private collection that has a copy of this trial edition except for the Beardsley copy.) According to the WorldCat online bibliography, two other colleges or universities have this edition as well.

I am fortunate to have in my collection two copies of this edition, which on pp. 73-78, has the first printing in a book of Mrs. Eddy's "Reply to McClure's Magazine." Also included is the first separate printing in a book of Mrs. Eddy's famous letter to Judge Chamberlin (written on May 16, 1907), which appeared on pp. 111-112. On pp. [166-168] is a facsimile reproduction of Mrs. Eddy's letter to Michael Meehan of November 15, 1907, in which she returned to him a corrected version of her meeting with the Masters the prior August.

Also in my collection is a copy of the above-mentioned "authorized edition," which has the following cover and title-page (this is actually the second issue of the second edition, as will be explained below):

  

The bibliographic description of that edition is as follows:

Mrs. Eddy and the Late Suit in Equity, by Michael Meehan. Concord, N.H.: Michael Meehan, 1908. 

The bibliographic differences between the two editions are significant. For example, they use different frontispieces of Mrs. Eddy, use other different photographs, different biographical sketches in some cases, different text in some places, etc.

The above second edition as mentioned above came in two issues. The first issue appeared in green cloth; the above second issue, with some minor revisions, appeared in black leather. (The second issue on p. [xv] corrected the names of the recipients of letters sent by Mrs. Eddy that appeared opposite pages 104 and 168. The first issue had the recipients, Michael Meehan and Judge Chamberlin, in the wrong order. Also in the second issue, on the same page that listed the illustrations in the book, most of the page numbers are four pages off from the first issue.) In my collection are both issues. One of the two copies in my collection of the second issue in black leather was John Dittemore’s copy, with his signature. The second copy has a similar but slightly different black binding, so the second issue at least has two states of binding.

The history of the publication of these books is not clear. As recorded by Lyman Powell in his biography of Mrs. Eddy, pp. 225-226 (1991 edition), Meehan had 5,000 copies printed of Mrs. Eddy and the Late Suit in Equity in the spring of 1908. However, the first copy went to Mrs. Eddy, who read it late into the night. The next day she sent a letter to Meehan asking him not to publish the book and offering to reimburse him four times the amount of his expenses, which she did. Her goal in preventing the publication of the book was to not “keep alive a memory of bitterness and discord.” Powell notes that he used Mrs. Eddy's own copy of the authorized edition to write his biography. Here is an envelope that Mrs. Eddy signed to Meehan (the contents related to that envelope are unknown to me):

The above historical account by Meehan does not seem to be completely accurate. For example, the account suggests that no copies ever made it out to the public. This is clearly not the case, since a book review of the authorized edition appeared in the Arena magazine of May, 1908 (see below for the first page of that review). In addition, in the New Hampshire Historical Society is a copy of the authorized edition inscribed by Meehan to a friend on March 21, 1908. (A copy in Mary Baker Eddy Library files is dated March 1908 by the owner.)  Also, while the authorized edition is scarce, it is not as scarce as a suppressed book should be.

In the New Hampshire Historical Society is a letter from Michael Meehan to William Chandler, dated September 16, 1907, in which it is clear that the book was already in the works. (The Next Friends Suit had ended on August 21, 1907.) In the letter, Meehan wrote:

After talking the matter over with Mr. Farlow, we deemed it the better part of wisdom, to illustrate the book containing the details of the case, Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy vs Calvin A. Frye, et al, with a photograph of Mrs. Eddy and photographs of the members of her household, the Judge and Masters in the suit, the lawyers on both sides, the alienists and a few others.

 

You can send me a photograph of yourself right away, cabinet size, and with it, a 500 word sketch of your life. If you don't feel disposed to write this sketch, have some friend do it for you. The sketch is to occupy one full page opposite the cut of you. The photograph and sketch should reach me, not later than one week from today. Send the photograph at once, so that I can have the cut made.

Also in the New Hampshire Historical Society is a copy of a letter from William Chandler to J.J. Spurgeon of the New York World, dated October 17, 1908, in which he essentially tried to get the World interested in another exposé on Mrs. Eddy. In the letter he made the following comments: 

“Mr. Meehan wrote a book called “Mrs. Eddy and her Next Friends [sic].” It was printed with her facsimile indorsement [sic]. Instantly it was suppressed and the edition destroyed. But one copy, which I have, is outstanding. Shortly it was reprinted with variations and the sale begun, the new title being “Mrs. Eddy and the suit in equity [sic].” Very soon Mr. Meehan was induced to sell the copyright with all the books which had been printed and the edition was withdrawn from sale.

 

I have been preparing a book to be an addition and a reply on various points to Meehan's book [which book was never printed by Chandler]. Dr. [Henry] Hopkins is to write one chapter or more. I have asked Mr. Meehan to write one chapter, after seeing the proposed contents of my book. I have also asked Mr. Slaght [who was the New York World reporter who contacted George Glover in Lead, South Dakota to get him to come East to start the Next Friends Suit] to write a chapter;  which of course as a part will explain the WORLD'S creditable connection with the initiation of the inquiry and its withdrawal. This has never been quite properly treated.

 

In reference to the above proposed book of mine I wish to ask whether the WORLD has any objection to the participation of Mr. Slaght therein. . . . I am going to finish the book and more than that am going to make preparation for future proceedings.”

When the revised edition was produced, it removed from the account of Mrs. Eddy’s interview with the court Masters the references to slight deafness and fatigue when she was not working on spiritual matters.

Ralph Geradi of the Rare Book Company told me in the 1980s that in over sixty years of selling rare Christian Science material, he had handled only one or two copies of the trial edition. That scarce edition did not appear in the collections of A.H. Greenly, Arthur Corey, Otto Englisch, Annie Leavitt, Gilbert Carpenter, Jr., etc. I have never seen it listed in any catalog, nor was it mentioned by Robert Peel, Bates-Dittemore, Lyman Powell or any other biographer. The only published records that I have seen of the trial edition were in the following two publications from William Chandler, the above-mentioned attorney who opposed Mrs. Eddy in the Next Friends Suit:

•  Eddy Will Litigation [:] Deposition of William E. Chandler. [Concord, N.H.: N.p., 1912], p. 186
• An untitled leaflet, p. 2, published by Chandler about 1908 to object to Unitarianism being compared to Christian Science. The leaflet reprinted a letter by Chandler which appeared in the Concord Evening Monitor, October 20, 1908, and Independent Statesman, October 22, 1908. 

According to Henry Raymond Mussey in pamphlet The Christian Science Censor (1930), p. 19, when Mrs. Eddy paid for the copies of the authorized edition to keep them from being circulated, they were brought to Boston and kept in the basement of the Christian Science Publishing Society. This information almost certainly came from John V. Dittemore.

Here is the first page of the Arena book review of second edition of the Meehan book:

 
 

Mrs. Eddy's portrait in one of the editions of the Meehan book, with a facsimile of her signature. 

 

Trivia Time Again

1.              To whom (and when) did Mrs. Eddy write this: “Oh, the marvel of my life! What would be thought of it if it was known in a millionth of its detail? But this cannot be now. It will take centuries for this.”

2.             What property did some Christian Scientists approach Mrs. Eddy about buying in 1895 only to have her eventually counsel them that it was not necessary?

3.             When did Mrs. Eddy speak at Steinway Hall?

4.             In the standard 1932 hymnal, which hymn is “out of order”?

5.             What alleged statement by Laura Lathrop “shocked” Mrs. Eddy?

6.           In 1895 what year did Mrs. Eddy look forward to, wondering how they in that future year would look back and see how Christian Science had progressed?

7.             What did Mrs. Eddy say she was deeply interested in when young but was later weaned from?

8.             Where in My. is Mrs. Eddy’s address given in Tremont Temple?

9.             Mrs. Eddy wrote a letter to Mrs. C. Pearse on March 5, 1898, in which she talked about how poor she was when she started her Christian Science career and how practitioners had a right to charge for their services to make a living. Where was that letter, in slightly revised form, later published?

10.         Which popular hymn is titled in an English translation, “A Strong Fortress”? (Below is a clue, based on a photograph I took in Coburg, Germany.) 

 

A photographic record

In an earlier post, I discussed the history of the 1898 deed for the Christian Science Publishing Society, and ten years later the Church built a new site for the Publishing Society across from the church edifice. That has since been torn down and the building that we now know as the site for the Publishing Society is essentially next door to the old site. This was a important step by the Church to solidify its ability to print and promote Christian Science literature, although that building effort is relatively unknown today.

In the Christian Science Sentinel, February 29, 1908, we see a sample call for donations for the new building.

 
 

In the Christian Science Sentinel, April 4, 1908, Mrs. Eddy had a letter to her published on the subject of donating to the building fund:

Interestingly, a series of postcards was produced in 1908 to record the progress of the building that was taking place so that today we can see the stages of progress from March – November 1908. I have collected those postcards as I was able to find them, and here they are, including later postcards of the building as fully completed (the first card shows the finished building shortly after its completion).

 
            

 

The "continuing to eat the pie" accounts

The issue is sometimes raised for discussion concerning Mrs. Eddy’s or Calvin Frye’s recorded comments about continuing to “eat a pie” even if apparently dead to human sense. In Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (first edition), pp. 268-269, are reminiscences along these lines. Muriel Holmes wrote: “Our aunt [Julia Bartlett] was present . . . when Mr. [Calvin] Frye fell downstairs and broke his neck. After he was revived, the students questioned him earnestly as to what he had been doing when Mrs. Eddy was restoring him. He said that he had been in the pantry eating a piece of pie. He explained that he had started downstairs to go to the pantry for a piece of pie, and that, to his sense, he never stopped.” Lottie Clark left a similar reminiscence: “Miss Bartlett said that while Mrs. Eddy was living at 385 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Mr. Calvin Frye suddenly passed on, and Mrs. Eddy raised him from the dead. Some time elapsed from the moment he passed on until Mrs. Eddy restored him to life. One of the students who witnessed this demonstration asked Mr. Frye what his experience was during the time that, to them he seemed to be dead. He replied that he was in the pantry eating pie.”

As a kind of oblique reference to the above, see Joseph Eastaman’s letter to Mrs. Eddy, July 17, 1896 (In My True Light and Life: Mary Baker Eddy Collections. Boston: The Writings of Mary Baker Eddy and The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity,  2002, pp. 451-452):

“Mr. [Edward Everett] Norwood the 2^nd reader in the Memphis church was here a few weeks ago stopping at the house of old patients of mine. I went there to dinner one evening, while sitting at the table, Mr. Norwood asked me to give him a thought, soon after he went upstairs and in a few minutes a heavy fall was heard. I went upstairs and found him in belief dead. I treated him 20 minutes without the least success. 

I was prompted to stand up and stamping my foot, done what I saw you do once when Frye fell downstairs in the Commonwealth house (call him loudly by name). I too called him loud and as it were with the Mighty voice of truth, his color returned. He looked wild, shook himself, and said Capt. I was with my mother and Mr. Green (both had passed out many years before).

I told him to stand up. He did so. Then told him to read four pages of S.&H., and come downstairs. After that he gave me no end of evil thoughts to meet in belief, because he went about telling the Scientists how he had been dead & was alive again, till I stopped him & showed him the belief of evil he was doing himself & me.”

Edward Norwood in his reminiscences did not mention the above, but he made this comment (Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (amplified edition), p. 362): “I have heard of several restorations from the dead made by Mrs. Eddy, but as they were not given at even second hand, I refrain from quoting, except that Calvin Frye told me that Mrs. Eddy had restored him (in answer to my question).”

In comparison, the following appears in page 240 of Arthur Corey’s, Christian Science Class Instruction, where the phrase is then quoted from Mrs. Eddy rather than Calvin Frye (perhaps because she heard it from Frye?):

“During dessert at Pleasant View one evening, Laura Sargent posed this question: ‘Mother, if someone put a leaden bullet though your heart as we sit here at the table, what would become of you really?’ Smiling quietly, her teacher looked up and said, ‘Why, I'd go right on eating my apple pie.’ What she clearly implied by that was that while she might appear dead to them, she couldn't possibly appear dead to herself, and so would go right on doing exactly what she was doing and seeing it in the same old way. She brought this out in a discussion of the subject with Dr. Frank L. Riley in November 1897, in which she said that if she saw the Doctor slain by an arrow before her, she could no longer converse with him. She added that he would go on about his affairs, leaving no body in the chair where he had sat, while she would proceed to bury his dead body in belief.”

I have never been able to verify the Frank Riley story. It does not appear in his 1917 book, Spiritual Healing, and I have not found it in any material at the Arthur Corey library at Bridwell Library at SMU in Dallas or any other source. I do not recall seeing this issue mentioned in any Laura Sargent material either.

In my collection are various reminiscences that Adelaide Still provided to Gilbert Carpenter, Jr. Included in that material is the following (which Still may have witnessed or just heard from Laura Sargent):

“While at supper Mrs. Eddy was eating a piece of pie, when she said: ‘If I should pass away while eating in this chair, I should wake up right in the chair, and the piece of pie would be here.’ Mrs. Sargent asked, ‘Would we be with you, Mother?’ Mrs. Eddy answered: ‘I haven’t proved that yet.’”

Attached to the “Golden Memories” reminiscence of Clara Shannon in the British Library was a Foreword by Maurice McC Church CS and Richard St. J. Prentice, CS, dated July 1969 in London. This gave their account of having known Clara Shannon, and in it they gave an account of what she told them about Mrs. Eddy having raised Calvin Frye from what to Clara Shannon was obvious death. “Miss Shannon also told the writers that though Mr. Frye himself did not ever refer to the experience, she was most anxious to ask him one question. So next day she went to him and asked, ‘Calvin, I want to know; where were you yesterday, when you appeared to us to have died? Miss Shannon said she was astounded to hear his reply: ‘I was in the pantry, eating custard-pie!’”  (A comparable account from a letter that Prentice wrote on October 17, 1968, appears on page 364 in the expanded edition of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer.)

The issue whether Calvin Frye was actually clinically dead or not has been raised. The expanded edition of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (p. 368) records Calvin Frye’s note in his diary on May 13, 1904: “Mrs E saved my life from comatose suic’d.” On the same page is mentioned that Adelaide Still told Robert Peel many years later that one of the household workers asked Mrs. Eddy a few days after Calvin Frye had been revived whether they could say that she raised him from the dead, and she replied, “No; he was not dead.”

The accounts of Mrs. Eddy raising Calvin Frye are numerous, and can be found in the reminiscences of Irving Tomlinson, Adam Dickey, George Kinter, John Salchow, Clara Shannon, the Eastaman letter above, etc. While some are of the same experience, it is clear that the event happened several times. In the above-mentioned Adelaide Still reminiscence material is the following recollection by her that painted a different picture—at least in this one example:

“Mrs. Eddy once rebuked Calvin Frye, and he went into the next room and when Mrs. Eddy rang for him he did not come, and they went to call him and found that he had collapsed. They failed to bring him round so eventually they pushed him into a rocking chair and dragged him into Mrs. Eddy’s room. She tried, without success, to bring him round, and eventually said to him, ‘Do you wish to commit suicide, Calvin?’ And he answered, ‘What is there to live for?’ and came round, but he was put to bed and took a little time to recover.

At another time, Laura Sargent took the blame for something Calvin and I were responsible for, and I told Mother, to which she replied: “If only I was sure he would not have another one of those attacks, wouldn’t I give it to him!”

Elsewhere Still clarified that this took place in the summer of 1908, and while some in the household thought that Frye had been dead, others (including Still) were convinced that Frye was conscious but just emotionally hurt because Mrs. Eddy had so rebuked him after he had given her what Still referred to as a “saucy” reply. It was to this episode that Still referred when she pointed out that a household member asked Mrs. Eddy if they could say that Frye had passed on, and she said no. It is interesting that in Still’s account, Frye was simply feeling sorry for himself, and she and Mrs. Eddy and some others knew it. While that might be, Mrs. Eddy’s comment about whether he wished to commit suicide [compare Frye’s own term above, “comatose suic’d”], and Still’s additional comment that Frye was sick for a couple of days thereafter, suggests that the episode was more serious than just hurt feelings. Note: this account is not the same one recounted by Adam Dickey in his Memoirs, pp. 107ff. and Irving Tomlinson, in the amplified edition of his book, pp. 64ff. The latter account took place on November 9, 1908. It is also not the same as the Kinter account from 1905 that Peel cites in Authority, pp. 245f., (see also Stephen Gottschalk in Rolling Away the Stone, pp. 304f and Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 400f). In a footnote in Authority, n105 on p. 464, Peel gives further support for the theory that Frye was possibly in a kind of comatose state rather than actually dead, including a reference to Frye’s letter to Tomlinson of March 11, 1904, regarding the passing of Mary Munroe and Frye’s suggestion that they check to make sure she was not rather in a comatose state but still alive. At the least it is clear that many household members thought he had died, and his comments about the “eating the pie” suggests that if Frye was serious in his response that he certainly experienced something beyond comatose unconsciousness.

  James Gilman portrait of Mrs. Eddy  

Calvin Frye outside at Pleasant View