"Affection craves legend and relics."

Due out in 2012?

The paucity of recent posts has largely been due to my work on completing Part I of the proposed book below. My goal is to have the writing and research for Part I completed by the end of this year, with publication of the book following sometime in 2012. That is the goal at least. Based on the current manuscript, which is over 95% completed, I anticipate Part I to have over 700 pages, including over 1,000 footnotes. To comport with scholarly writing customs of today, Phineas Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy will be referred to simply as Quimby and Eddy.

While a great many biographies of Mary Baker Eddy have been published (and virtually none on P.P. Quimby), none have focused on this debate in the manner that this book will. The book will have a huge amount of new information on everyone mentioned, and it will cover a great many areas that have not been covered by prior historians.

Here is the proposed title and an outline of the chapters:

 

The Phineas Quimby - Mary Baker Eddy Debate and the Fall in Lynn: A New Look Based on Original Documents

—PART ONE—

Chapter 1: “How Biographical Treatments of Quimby and Eddy Have Influenced the Debate.” This gives a look at how histories of Quimby and Eddy have affected the debate.

Chapter 2: “Animal Magnetism and Charles Poyen.” This includes a brief history of Franz Anton Mesmer and his later followers, focusing on Charles Poyen in America.

Chapter 3: “James Rogers Newton and Other Forgotten Healers of the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” This places Quimby and Eddy in a context of non-medical healing that has been virtually ignored by scholars in this debate.

Chapter 4: “Phineas Parkhurst Quimby: Early Years 1802-September 1862.” This looks at Quimby before he met Eddy.

Chapter 5: “Mary Baker Eddy: Early Years 1821- September 1862.” This looks at Eddy before she met Quimby.

Chapter 6: “Warren Felt Evans: Early Years 1817- December 1862.” This looks at Evans before the year he is believed to have met Quimby.

Chapter 7: “Portland and Lynn: October 1862-January 1866.” This looks at the years when Eddy was connected to Quimby.

—PART TWO—

Chapter 8: “1866 and the Fall in Lynn.” This looks at an important year.

Chapter 9: “Years of Seclusion: 1867-1874.” This looks at Eddy before Science and Health was published. Evans published two books on mental healing during this time period.

Chapter 10: “Into the Public Eye: 1875-1882.” This looks at Eddy before the debate begins. This includes early letters from Dresser, Ware, Geo Quimby, etc., before the public debate began.

Chapter 11: “1883: The Debate Begins.” This looks at the start of the debate.

Chapter 12: “Christian Science and Mind-Cure in Boston: 1884-1889.” This gives a look at the earliest days of New Thought, Eddy’s growth in Christian Science in Boston and around the country, Warren Felt Evans and Quimby, etc.

Chapter 13: “Eddy’s “Retirement” in Concord, N.H.: The Early Years 1890-1894.” This gives a look at this time period while the Quimby debate simmered down.

Chapter 14: “The Dressers Fight Back: 1895-1899.” This gives a look at the Annetta Dresser book in 1895, Judge Septimus Hanna’s booklet, Christian Science History in 1899, and the article by Horatio Dresser in the Arena.

Chapter 15: “Eddy’s Final Decade and the Earliest Eddy Biographies: 1900-1910.” This gives a look at Milmine, Wilbur, 1904 NYT, etc.

Chapter 16: “The Historians Take Over: 1911-1962.” This includes the Dresser 1921 book, the biographies around 1930, etc.

Chapter 17: “Latter-Day Scholarship: 1963 - Present.” This includes Braden, Peel, Gill, Anderson, etc.

Chapter 18: “Conclusion.”

 

 

Mrs. Eddy in Wilmington, North Carolina— Redux

Mrs. Eddy told interviewer Henry Robinson about 1894 that when she lived in the South she published anti-slavery articles that caused threatening locals to want to find who would write such a thing. She later made similar comments to others. It is routinely stated by historians that such articles never appeared, and it is certainly true that no record of any such articles has been found. What has been completely ignored in this discussion is the critical point that Mrs. Eddy wrote somewhat extensively and exclusively for the Wilmington Messenger, a short-lived newspaper which is not extant today, nor was it extant when the early Christian Scientists ca. 1904 spent so much time researching Mrs. Eddy’s history in Charleston and Wilmington. Thus, no biographer of Mrs. Eddy has ever been able to research that paper for 1844 when Mrs. Eddy was there. (While the history of Mrs. Eddy in Wilmington prepared by Elizabeth Earl Jones—which includes the work of many other early Christian Scientists in the area about 1904 and later—mentions the Messenger a few times, a close reading shows conclusively that the source was simply clippings of her poems that Mrs. Eddy had pasted into her scrapbook. Jones wrote in her historical work, “Mrs. Eddy in North Carolina” (May 1938), a copy of which is now in the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington, North Carolina, p. 48, lamenting the fact that only the Wilmington Chronicle had survived for her and other researchers to examine and the Messenger was no longer extant.)

Historian Alan D. Watson gave a brief history of that newspaper, “Sometime in the early 1840s a paper titled the Messenger appeared to accompany the Chronicle. It was sold in 1844 to David Fulton and Alfred J. Price, who founded the Wilmington Journal, . . .” (See Watson’s book, Wilmington, North Carolina to 1861. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., [ca. 2003], p. 170.)  The Messenger was a “Democratic sheet” as Watson called it (which matched the political leanings of the Glovers and Bakers) while the Chronicle avidly supported the Whigs. About all that we know today of that newspaper comes from a few poems that Mrs. Eddy preserved that were written for or published in the Messenger (as so stated on the clipping), and occasional comments that appeared in the arch-rival, cross-town Chronicle.

Robert Peel—who missed the fact that early researchers did not have access to a file of the Messenger—mistakenly wrote in Discovery, p. 322: “An exhaustive search of the Charleston and Wilmington newspapers has not brought any such [anti-slavery] articles to light. Southern newspapers were definitely not publishing anti-slavery views in those days.” While Peel’s assumption was understandable (and his view that Southern newspapers were not publishing abolitionist articles in those days matched the Bates-Dittemore coverage of the issue), it is an assumption that needs to be examined more closely, for the Peel and Bates-Dittemore comments that Southern papers were not printing anti-slavery views in the antebellum days appears to be too facile of a determination.

Back on December 13, 1843, the Chronicle, for example, printed this statement of alarm regarding a letter from twelve Rhode Island citizens:

“The leader of the small band of Abolitionists in Rhode Island was Thomas W. Dorr, he having been their candidate for Governor and member of Congress, and also a Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The People refused to elect him by triumphant majorities and would give no countenance to that mover of SEDITION, who now stands charged with TREASON against his native state. He however appears to have excited the special sympathies and admiration of the Editor of the ‘Wilmington Messenger,’ who recently extolled him as an ‘individual espousing the cause of LIBERTY.’. . .”

While the Dorr Revolution was not directly about abolition but rather about Rhode Island enfranchisement laws (which included his personal desire to allow black citizens to vote even if political expediency forced him to drop that plank), Thomas Dorr was a nationally noted anti-slavery advocate. That the editor of the Messenger would extol a noted anti-slavery advocate as a proponent of liberty—even if the editor was only focusing on the populist enfranchisement objective of the Dorr Rebellion—suggests the editor of the Messenger might have been more broadminded and less subject to single-issue bias than has been presumed by later historians.

Even the Chronicle, though in no way anti-slavery, was not against printing the anti-slavery views of John Quincy Adams in its issue of December 20, 1843. Adams at that time opposed a specific motion to propose abolition at the same time that Congress, of which he was a member, was wrestling with the question of what to do with the annexation of Texas and the question of slavery in the District of Columbia. However, as reported by the Chronicle, Adams made his personal views and goals known: “On the subject of Abolition, Abolition societies, Anti-slavery societies, or the Liberty Party:— I have never been a member of either of them. But in opposition to slavery I go as far as any of these; my sentiments, I believe, very nearly accord with theirs. That slavery will be abolished in this country, and throughout the world, I firmly believe. Whether it shall be done peaceably or by blood, God only knows, but that that it shall be accomplished I have not a doubt, but by whatever way, I say let it come.” Adams then said that while he did not want to impose abolition on the District of Columbia for constitutional reason, he fully expected the citizens to vote to abolish it.

While it might be shown that the Messenger was not afraid to take a controversial stand, does that mean that it might have accepted anti-slavery messages from Eddy, as she later alleged? We cannot know for certain. Mrs. Eddy later told of sending in such messages using a nom de plume. The Chronicle on May 1, 1844, published this intriguing slap at its rival regarding one of that rival’s pseudonymous contributors:

“The last communication of Laicus, in the Messenger, convinces us of what we before suspected, that he is an impertinent, mischief-making intermeddler, without the countenance of those for whom he pretends so much zeal. We therefore spurn alike his arguments and his counsel.—We have no other answer for him.”

Mrs. Eddy claimed to have published pseudonymous anti-slavery pieces that turned the local population against her. Could she be the “impertinent, mischief-making intermeddler” that aroused the Chronicle’s ire? Mrs. Eddy claimed that her articles were considered to be from an outsider (a “Yankee”) on behalf of the slaves. It is at least intriguing that Laicus also appears to have been viewed as in intermeddler, which suggests an outsider attempting to meddle in the affairs of the locals. Also Laicus was advocating something on behalf of others “for whom he pretends so much zeal.”

If Mrs. Eddy was not Laicus, was she by chance a different correspondent who wrote under a nom de plume? Without an extant file of the Messenger, we obviously cannot know. But we can say, based on the above, that it is not possible to say that all of the Wilmington papers have been searched, or even to state that the Messenger would have automatically refused such articles if they were offered to it. We do not know what Laicus specifically was writing about—and the phrase “last communication of Laicus” strongly suggests that he|she had more than one communication published in the Messenger. Other than attacking slavery, it might be argued that there were probably few other topics that would have drawn forth such a notice and phrase from the Chronicle other than perhaps a sharp-tongued attack of the Chronicle itself (which seems unlikely given the context) or of the Chronicle’s much-favored Whiggery, which is a possibility but sharp political comments would not likely have earned the term “mischief-making intermeddler.”

The above will appear in my book on the Quimby debate and the histories of Quimby and Mrs. Eddy, including a discussion of Mrs. Eddy's comments about having freed her husband's slaves (when historical evidence suggests that the George Glover, at least at the end, did not own slaves). The above issue about writing anti-slavery articles presupposes that Mrs. Eddy had anti-slavery|abolitionist views in 1844, while she supported political candidates who did not support the abolitionists. All of this I believe needs a fresh look, and I will be discussing that at some length in my book, which I hope to publish in 2012.

 

Edward J. Arens, One of the Founders of New Thought

Edward Arens was a pupil of Mrs. Eddy’s husband, Asa, and he eventually broke with the Eddys and went out on his own, starting by writing pamphlets that plagiarized Mrs. Eddy’s work to the point where she sued him for plagliarism and won. He is considered one of the founders of the New Thought movement, and it was Arens that taught the former P. P. Quimby patients, Julius and Annetta Dresser, when they returned from California to Boston in 1882.

Here is a look at most of the pamphlets and books of Arens:

The Understanding of Christianity, or God, and the Distinction Between Spirit and Matter, . . . by E.J. Arens. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1881. 

This is the suppressed pamphlet mentioned above which was described by Mrs. Eddy in her 1896 article "Inklings Historic" in Mis., pp. 380-381.  In April, 1883, Mrs. Eddy brought suit to prevent Arens from further distributing the pamphlet. About five months later, the court ruled in her favor and required Arens to pay her court costs. As Mrs. Eddy explained it in the above article, p. 381:

"A writ of injunction was issued under the seal of the said Court, restraining the defendant from directly or indirectly printing, publishing, selling, giving away, distributing, or in any way or manner disposing of, the enjoined pamphlet, on a penalty of ten thousand dollars.

The infringing books, to the number of thirty-eight hundred or thereabouts, were put under the edge of the knife, and their unlawful existence destroyed, in Boston, Massachusetts."

Mrs. Eddy made the following comment in her article “Mind-Healing History” in The Christian Science Journal, June, 1887: “[Arens] was fined the costs of court; and about four thousand of his pamphlets were destroyed in Boston, being chopped into pieces by the officers of the law.”

This is the same pamphlet described by Asa Gilbert Eddy in his notice entitled "To the Public" in volume one of the third edition of Science and Health (1881), pp. [vii]-xii.

Shortly after the above suit was filed, Arens came out with two new, revised pamphlets. In my collection are these two pamphlets, bibliographically described as follows:

• Christianity; or, the Understanding of God, and the Distinction Between Spirit and Matter as Applied to the Healing of the Sick. . . . by E.J. Arens. Boston: Caleb Rand, 1883. 

• Theology: or, the Understanding of God, as Applied to the Healing of the Sick, . . . by E.J. Arens. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1883. 

Also in the collection is a photostatic copy of Arens' own copy of his anonymous 1880 pamphlet entitled The Science of the Relation Between God and Man and the Distinction Between Spirit and Matter.

Other than in an unidentified list of rare Christian Science material for sale, which I found in the files of John Howell-Books, I have never seen the above suppressed pamphlet listed in any catalog. Since the pamphlet plagiarizes Mrs. Eddy's writings so closely, I believe it should be considered a variant edition of her writings. (On p. 214 of Clifford Smith's Historical Sketches (1992 edition), he mistakenly indicates that the suppressed edition was one of the 1883 pamphlets above.)

Included with the above pamphlets is a letter from Andrew McCance, the noted early book dealer who specialized in rare Christian Science material, to Allan A. Beauchamp, another dealer specializing in that material. The letter reads as follows:

"Boston, Mass.,  Dec --3, 1908

Mr. A.A. Beauchamp

New York

Dear Sir -- If your customer wants the "Arens pamphlets" he can have them without the one he already owns, but these being Arens own copies I thought they would have some interest on that account.

I bought both the copies of S&H at the last sale  1st edition $70.00  2nd at $55.00 [.] I should tell you however that I would have gone over the Century for the second edition and there was one other dealer had a bid for $100.00 so we decided to compromise[.]

Dont worry about me not asking enough for my Journals [.] I just filled up a set from Vol 12 to date at an average of 50 cts each[;] the prices I quoted you are not the prices I ask, by any means[.]

Very Truly Yours

[s]         Andrew McCance" 

Note: at that time, the Smith & McCance store was located at 38 Bromfield St. in Boston. (The 1875 edition of Science and Health was printed at 50 Bromfield St.) Later, Smith and McCance moved to their Ashburton Place address and then later to the third story of an address on Tremont Street. In the collection is a pamphlet that eulogized McCance after his death in 1939.

Hiram S. Crafts  signature

The one book title in this archive of Arens material is the following:

• Old Theology In its Application to the Healing of the Sick, the Redemption of Man from the Bondage of Sin and Death, and his Restoration to an Everlasting Life, by E. J. Arens. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1884. Vol. I.

On the paste-down endpaper is the pencilled notation: "H.S. Crafts  1885 | March." Hiram S. Crafts was the first student taught by Mrs. Eddy in Christian Science, back in 1867. He thus plays an important role in Christian Science history. Included with the book is a photocopy of a Crafts signature from a letter in the Mary Baker Eddy Library. 

I purchased this copy from the Rare Book Company. Later, when I visited the Rare Book Company they had Volumes I and II, priced at $75 if I recall, but I did not buy them. (The second volume was dated 1886.) Recently I was able to find a  copy of the revised edition of the Volume I described as follows:

• Old Theology In its Application to the Healing of the Sick, the Redemption of Man from the Bondage of Sin and Death, and his Restoration to an Everlasting Life, by E. J. Arens. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1886. Volume I. Revised edition.

After 280 pages of text, the book has several pages of advertisements for books and pamphlets by Arens, including references to the University of the Science of Spirit. It mentioned that a Volume II of the book was in preparation, to be sold by subscription only and entitled Origin of Matter (a copy of which is not in the collection).

The last pamphlet in the collection is the following extraordinarily rare and little-known work:

• Old Theology Healing as Taught in the University of the Science of Spirit, by E. J. Arens. Boston: A.S. Arthur & Co., 1886. (This is a prospectus for his “University.” In it he compares his “Old Theology” teachings to Mrs. Eddy’s in Science and Health.)

Given below are images of some of the titles in the Arens collection of material, starting with a photograph of Arens and then images of the pamphlet that the court ordered “put under the edge of the knife” because it plagiarized Mrs. Eddy: