Public Figure, Private Life
More about:
The household “family”
John Lathrop in Mrs. Eddy’s study
Those in the household were there for more than taking dictation, driving the carriage, serving meals, sweeping the rugs, or keeping her pencils sharpened. They were there to stand their ground metaphysically, watching and praying at their Leader’s direction through the storms and struggles that attended so many things she did. She told one of her recruiters to find someone “who will stand”
The members of her household were employees, yet they called her “Mother.” She, in turn, treated them as “family,” encouraging, directing, teaching, and sometimes admonishing them. In 1903 in the Church Manual she directed followers not to refer to her as Mother. She disapproved of the practice, and the term was being mocked in the press. However, some of her closest associates, purely out of affection for her, continued to call her “Mother.”
Mrs. Eddy was kind, thoughtful, warmhearted, sometimes lighthearted, and deeply concerned for the well-being of all her staff. She was also hardworking, devout, punctual, punctilious, richly inspired, and always alert to whatever challenged her Cause. She demanded of her staff, as she demanded of herself, that they live up to the highest standard of Christian Science practice. She might admonish them severely when they failed to measure up to the metaphysical needs of the hour.
The best-known of her staff was Calvin A. Frye, a former machinist from Lawrence, Massachusetts, who arrived in 1882. In 1910, twenty-eight years later, Calvin was still serving as her principal assistant. In all those years he had not taken a single vacation.
The hundred-plus household workers who served over the years as secretaries, personal maids, grounds keepers, household help, and metaphysical workers, included: Laura Sargent, Clara Shannon, Joseph Mann, John Lathrop, and later, Adelaide Still, Adam Dickey, Irving Tomlinson, and others,.
The Bakers. Most of her own family, the Bakers, dismissed the religion their famous relative founded. Most of them had little to do with her after the 1870s.
George Glover, Jr. Her son, George, against his mother’s wishes, was largely raised by a foster family, the Cheneys, who deprived him of an education. Growing up untutored and illiterate in the West, George married, had children, and pursued various mining and prospecting ventures. On a few occasions, he came east with his family to visit his mother. He received generous gifts from her, including a fine home which she had built for him and his family in Lead, South Dakota.
Dr. Ebenezer Foster Eddy. In 1888 Mrs. Eddy legally adopted a student in whom she saw promise, Dr. Ebenezer Foster. She affectionately called her adopted son “Benny,” and assigned important church responsibilities to him. But this relationship turned out badly. After 1897 they had virtually no further contact, and in the last decade of her life he took sides against her in the “Next Friends” lawsuit.
