The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 08

by Sibyl Wilbur

CHAPTER VIII

THE MYSTERY OF THE QUIMBY MANUSCRIPTS

THROUGH the writings of Mary Baker on what she thought Quimby believed, “Quimbyism” and Quimby manuscripts came to have a factitious existence. Her writings were given into Quimby’s keeping and were doubtless copied by other patients; her explanations of his cures were often accepted instead of Quimby’s, even Quimby himself accepting them in part, flattered at the interpretation put upon him and his work. A curious commingling of mesmerism and religious faith resulted from the association of these distinctly differing minds, and the manuscripts handed from one to another perpetuated this confusion.

Mary Baker dwelt long under the influence of Quimby’s mesmeric belief and it came to have a great, though not supreme, significance in her later teaching, the significance of a counterfeit of the truth she was later to discover and proclaim. From 1862 to 1866 were for her so many years in the wilderness, after which came that search for the mountain which was to be her Horeb, and which had first been shown her by illumination when in Rumney she healed the child of blindness. A sublime faith held her firmly through this period of confusion as it did through subsequent travail of spirit, but the confusion, temporarily wrought in her, induced her to give honor where honor was not due.

In later years, roused by the assault of critics hostile to her restatements of Christ’s teachings, Mrs. Eddy wrote fearlessly of her confused condition at this period. She related how for years she struggled with the effects of Dr. Quimby’s practise, acknowledging that she had written and talked of him with ignorant enthusiasm until she realized the harmful influence of teaching such “a false human concept.” She said:

It has always been my misfortune to think people bigger and better than they really are. My mistake is to endow another person with my ideal and then to make him think it his own. … I would touch tenderly his [Quimby’s] memory, speak reverently of his humane purpose, and name only his virtues, did not this man [Julius Dresser] drive me for conscience’s sake to sketch the facts. … I was ignorant of the basis of animal magnetism twenty years ago, but know now that it would disgrace and invalidate any mode of medicine. The animal poison imparted through mortal mind by false or incorrect mental physicians, is more destructive to health and morals than are the mineral and vegetable poisons prescribed by the matter physicians. … I denounced it [Quimby’s method] after a few of my first students rubbed the heads of their patients and the immorality of one student opened my eyes to the horrors possible in animal magnetism. I discovered the Science of Mind healing and that was enough. It was the way Christ had pointed out; and that had glorified it. My discovery promises nothing but blessing to every inhabitant that walks the globe.^[1]

The confusion of her ideas with Quimby’s in her early writings, which were widely copied and circulated, gave rise to the Quimby manuscript tradition. This tradition grew into a controversy which deserves some explication, lest, in treating it as negligible, a fabulous fame of incongruous origin shall be perpetuated. The existence of writings of any consequence which are veritable Quimby manuscripts would be negligible were it not for the possible confusion of them with Mary Baker’s writings. Veritable Quimby manuscripts are absolutely hypothetical, as hypothetical as was the inheritance of Mme. Therese Humbert of Paris. It will be remembered that credit for an enormous sum was secured for a period of over twenty years by the Humbert family on a basis of nothing. Nay, not upon nothing. Mme. Humbert had a copy of a will, and she had an affidavit from a notary that securities representing the property she claimed to be heir to were sealed in a strong box and held for her in the safe of a bank. When the court finally ordered this strong box opened, it was found that there were not securities for twenty millions, but there were one thousand dollars, a few copper coins, and a brass button. Eleven millions had been advanced on this absurd basis.

The Quimby claim is a purely intellectual one and the credit secured has been an extravagant belief, a belief which provokes unjust and invidious suspicion as to the origin of the fundamental principles of Christian Science. To show how baseless is this suspicion, it is necessary to examine the Quimby claim.

Some twenty years after Quimby’s death (which resulted from a tumor of the stomach in 1866), when Christian Science had been placed on a firm foundation, it began to be contended by Quimby’s son and a former patient of Quimby that he had left manuscripts on a number of subjects, setting forth a system of philosophy. Jealously guarding the proof of his claim, the son, by indirect assertion, implied as his reason for not publishing the alleged manuscripts that their authorship would be claimed by the author of “Science and Health” if he published them during her lifetime.

This is a rather strange suggestion, but it sets forth the shadow of a fear justified by circumstances. It has been shown that Mrs. Patterson in 1862 wrote certain manuscripts for Quimby and gave them to him. She repeated this generous, if unprofitable, act in the early part of 1864, when she spent two or three months in an uninterrupted effort to fathom and elucidate “Quimbyism.” It seems almost incredible that a woman of her intellectual and spiritual development should have devoted so long a period to the struggle of formulating a philosophy out of the chaotic but dogmatic utterances of this self-taught mesmerist. But there was a deep-lying reason for this long struggle, which was bound to end in dire failure, and the reason both for the struggle and for the failure could only be made known to her by the extraordinary and impressive circumstance of an original discovery.

As the deviation of the needle from the true North caused mariners to investigate for centuries the cause of deflection until the eminent scientist, Lord Kelvin, successfully insulated the compass, so, though she subsequently discovered the principle of mind healing, it was not until Mary Baker learned what “Quimbyism” really was, namely magnetism, that she came to understand why she so long strove in vain to have Quimby unfold to her that which was not his to give, why she so long sought for principle where there was no principle. Quimby was navigating without a compass, and his zigzag course could only fetch home by accident.

But Quimby believed in his own course as the true one. While he acknowledged to other patients that he was delighted with Mrs. Patterson’s enthusiasm and asserted that her perception of truth was keener than that of any other of his patients, it is not in evidence that he ever gave her credit for a scope which exceeded his, save in religious apprehension, which to him was not authoritative. He received from Mrs. Patterson manuscripts to which she unselfishly and unguardedly signed his name. These manuscripts in Mrs. Eddy’s handwriting, interlined with Quimby’s emendations, may still be in existence.

Lest the implied reason for not publishing the alleged Quimby manuscripts — the fear that their authorship would be disputed — should be retroactive, there is still another reason advanced. This reason, too, is given only by implication, but it is worthier of commendation than the former. The second reason is the illiteracy of Phineas Quimby, for which he was in no wise to blame, but which, as has been shown, prevented his accomplishing anything in the way of literature.^[2]

“My father was self-educated,” said Mr. Quimby, “but he had read a great deal. His head was full of speculative ideas and he was constantly writing down his thoughts. He wrote without capitalizing or punctuating. His mind was always ahead of his pen, and he would not paragraph or formulate his thoughts into essays. I guess many of his words were misspelled too.”

If the son cherished and guarded the papers containing his father’s original notes, there must have been some more sufficient reason, which he alone knew, why he so long withheld them from publicity. He for years refused to submit them for inspection to any person competent or incompetent to judge of their value. Under the most urgent demand he failed to bring them forth into the light, to allow a friend in dire need to use them in defence in a suit at law, or to permit a distinguished scholar to prepare a brief in their interest. Literary men, lawyers, and journalists have urged their exhibition in vain. In 1887 Mrs. Eddy advertised that she would pay for their publication. But for some deep and inscrutable reason it has been impossible to unveil them.

The conclusion seems warranted that there is nothing worthy of the name of manuscripts in the Quimby safe. It may be that there are certain deposits of fragmentary pencilings of Phineas Quimby. It may be that there are certain of Mrs. Eddy’s writings there. It may be that these writings are interlaced, and to produce one is to produce the other. Thus the Quimby manuscript tradition may rest, not on nothing, but, as in the Humbert will case, on something so near to nothing as to be negligible of consideration.

But though the original manuscripts, if such there be, have never seen the light, it must be understood that George A. Quimby has exhibited some writings which he calls Quimby manuscripts. These are a series of copybooks filled with writing. Originality is not claimed for these writings which are described as copies of copies of Phineas Quimby’s notes, but only are they so described when exact information is required. Ordinarily they are loosely called by Mr. Quimby, “my father’s manuscripts.”

Authenticity is rendered doubtful for these writings, because, not only has no one ever seen the originals on which they are said to be based, but also because the world never heard of these copybooks until after “Science and Health” had long been published, was in its third edition, and the book and its philosophy had begun to make a stir in the world of thought. It would have to be shown clearly upon what they are based to clear them of the possibility of plagiarism. It is possible they are of an earlier date than when they first came to be spoken of; it is possible they are enlargements on conversations held with Phineas Quimby by the patients who made the transcriptions; it is possible they are emended Mary Baker writings.

But unless originals exist, how can these copybook writings be authenticated? Yet the copybook manuscripts with their uncertain dates, the “copies of copies,” are all that is meant when critics of Christian Science refer ambiguously to Quimby’s writings. These copybooks have been evasively exhibited in lieu of the original Quimby notes, and the owner of the copybooks has allowed books to be written from them on the philosophy of Quimby, has given out photographs of their pages as facsimili of Quimby’s manuscripts, and has generally led the world to believe they were the writings of his father. He appears himself to be a victim of the Quimby manuscript tradition.

If the copybook manuscripts themselves were published, illustrated with original Quimby notes, illiterate scrawls it may be, yet the genuine pencilings of Phineas Quimby, some interest might be evoked for them. But until this act of sincerity be performed, so far as the evidence goes Quimby left no writings.

1. Christian Science Journal, June, 1887.
2. The author made the journey in the depth of winter to the little town of Belfast, Maine, off the main line of travel and somewhat difficult of access, to see, as I supposed, the Quimby manuscripts. Arriving there the custodian of the manuscripts, George A. Quimby, said to me:

   “If all the people who have come to see me in the past twenty years about these manuscripts of my father were fishes and were laid head and tail together they would stretch from here to Montana. If all the letters that have been written to me on the subject were spread out they would make a plaster that would cover the country.”

   When I asked Mr. Quimby for permission to see these much-talked-of manuscripts, he took from a drawer in his desk a copybook such as school children use to write essays in. It was in a good state of preservation, not yellowed by age, and was written in from cover to cover in a neat copyist’s hand. There were no erasures, or interlineations, no breaks for paragraphs and very few headings. There were dates at the end of the articles, of which there appeared to be two or three different ones in the book. The dates were 1861 and 1863.

   “Is this your father’s handwriting?” I asked Mr. Quimby.

   “It is not; that is my mother’s, I believe, and here is one in the handwriting of one of the Misses Ware.”

   Mr. Quimby went to a great iron safe in the wall of his office and brought out six or eight more books of a similar character. I glanced through the pages and saw that all were written in this style with some variation in the handwriting and then asked:

   “Are none of these in your father’s handwriting?”

   “No, they are all copies of copies. … These are the only manuscripts I have shown to any one and the only ones I will show.”

   “But,” I objected, “there have recently been printed facsimile reproductions of your father’s manuscripts over the date 1863 in which appears the words ‘Christian Science.’ I particularly wished to see that manuscript.”

   “I am showing you exactly what I showed others. That is the very page that was photographed.”

   “And in whose writing is this?”

   “My mother’s, I believe, or possibly one of the Misses Ware; … they are

   copies of things my father wrote. He used to write at odd moments on scraps of paper whatever came into his mind.”

   “And have you those papers now?”

   “Yes, I have.”

   “Will you let me see a few pages of them?”

   “No, I will not. No one has seen them and no one shall. … I tell you they have all been after them, Arens, Dresser, Minot J. Savage, Peabody, and these recent newspaper and magazine investigators. But I have never shown them. Dr. Savage wrote me that I owed it to the world to produce them.”

   “And did you not think so?”

   “No. I have said I will never print them while that woman lives.”

   “Do you mean Mrs. Eddy?”

   “That is just who I mean.”

   —Human Life, April, 1907.