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 2nd 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
Great post and pictures. Pop quiz: What was Calvin's favorite kind of pie? A picture for a hint: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2174/images/2174_MEDIUM.jpg
Regarding the 1897 Riley story -- do you mean you haven't been able to verify it? Or haven't been able to find an account outside of Arthur Corey. The first story regarding the leaden bullet sounds a bit too much like S&H 358:2. Unfortunately I have a hard time trusting anything that comes out of Corey's mouth.
All this strips away the mystery surrounding death leaving the wonderful assurance, as Mrs. Eddy puts it in Miscellaneous Writings:
"Man is not annihilated, nor does he lose his identity,
by passing through the belief called death. After the
momentary belief of dying passes from mortal mind, this
mind is still in a conscious state of existence; and the individual has but passed through a moment of extreme
mortal fear, to awaken with thoughts, and being, as
material as before." (Mis. 42:5-10)
Posted by: Calvin A. Frye | 08/03/2010 at 07:36 PM
Thanks, Calvin. As to your question on Calvin Frye's favorite pie, I will have to guess a berry pie. Am I close?
In regard to the Frank Riley source, I mean that beyond the Corey account, I have no backing for it. Since I do not see it mentioned in Frank Riley's book and could not find anything on it at the Corey collection at SMU, I thought I would add that word of caution at least.
Posted by: Keith | 08/04/2010 at 07:40 AM
From Minnie Weygandt's Reminiscence:
She [Mrs. Eddy] liked pies herself, frequently eating apple, lemon, squash or custard pie, though she did not care for berry or mince pies. However, there was a member of the family who liked mince pie and that was Calvin Frye. He could have eaten it for breakfast if it was around - and sometimes he did.
Posted by: Calvin A. Frye | 08/04/2010 at 06:55 PM
Thanks, Calvin. I especially like Minnie Weygandt's reminiscence. As the cook at Pleasant View she had a lot to say about the meals there, which is more interesting than it sounds.
Posted by: Keith | 08/05/2010 at 06:38 AM