● ● ● intractable a student.64 But the chief effect of Kennedy’s rubbing seemed to be to encourage in his patients a high degree of personal dependence on him, as had been the case with Quimby and his patients, and the feeling of power was evidently not unpleasing to the young man.65
On June 1, 1871, Mrs. Glover recorded that she had received from Kennedy as her percentage on his practice through their one year in Lynn a total of $1,744. About this time Susie Magoun gave up her school in the house on Common Street, married one John M. Dame, and moved away, leaving Mrs. Glover and Kennedy to sublet from another tenant.
Though there were already faint stirrings of trouble between them, the two appeared to be on good terms when Mrs. Glover wrote a student, Frances Spinney, early in the summer: “I had a letter from the lady I visit in Portland this morning, . . . She seems full just now but says I can have a room any time. . . . Yesterday morning Richard took a fit to go to Portland but he will go to a Hotel or perhaps to the Islands.”66
The casualness of her mention of Portland, so closely associated with Quimby, hints at the way she was steadily moving away from that episode of her life. Interestingly enough, however, she appears to have changed her mind about going there and to have gone instead to Tilton, as Sanbornton Bridge had now been renamed. From Tilton she wrote Miss Spinney on July 11, “They were glad to see me on my arrival, but really all is so changed since last I were here that I feel as if I never wanted to come again.”67 Her new purpose made return to the outgrown past difficult.
64 Kennedy, thoroughly hostile to Mrs. Eddy by 1878, dryly testified that her instructions were to rub out belief in a “personal God,” which probably had reference to Stanley’s rather primitive and anthropomorphic theology. [See George Choate notes on Kennedy testimony in Milmine, Life, p. 145.]
65 See p. 361 regarding his continued hold on his earliest patients. Mrs. Colby (see p. 345, note 48) remarked of one of these, Frances Spinney: “She is kind of sour against Mrs. Eddy; gives everything to Dr. Kennedy. . . . I felt sure that this Miss Spinney was going to give Mrs. Eddy credit for her healing, but Dr. Kennedy did the treating, and he was Mrs. Eddy’s student. He comes to Miss Spinney’s now [1907] and visits her.” “Statement of Mrs. Carrie G. Colby,” 8 January 1907, recorded in Alfred Farlow, “Facts and Incidents Relating to Mrs. Eddy,” c. 1909, Subject File, Alfred Farlow - Manuscript - Facts and Incidents Relating to Mrs. Eddy (2 of 2), pp. 128–129, MBEL.
66 Mary Baker Glover to Frances Spinney, c. 1871, L03928, MBEL.
67 Mary Baker Glover to Frances Spinney, 11 July 1871, L03929, MBEL.