● ● ● was to write a book which would define that style for today as she saw and felt it in the depths of her being.
She was not able to resume work immediately on returning to Lynn. George Barry’s diary for the summer and fall shows that he spent a great deal of time house hunting for her, but it seemed impossible to find exactly the right place. The months were marked by extraordinarily frequent and severe electric storms which matched her own unsettled condition. In August she moved into pleasant rooms at a Mrs. Chadwell’s on Commercial Street, but Mrs. Chadwell was talkative and there were constant “demands from the sick and calls to see about,” so that writing was almost impossible.123
On September 9 Richard Kennedy wrote Sarah Bagley an item of news which showed his continuing interest in Mrs. Glover’s doings:
Last Friday night Mrs G had a gathering of her students, she has something new on foot this time, or at least she is going to make a new movement, and this is the movement. She intends throwing out great inducements to all those who gather about her in this the hour of her peril. She is the centre around which all the orbits must revolve and when one sees fit to step out from her circle they loose their equipoise and are known no more among men.
With brash and callow sarcasm he went on to say: “How fearfull to think of dont you almost shake with fear and awe at her terrible sublimity, but after all I ought not to speak of her she is not worth notice.”124 As an historical judgment this last remark ranks with Wright’s prophecy that Mrs. Glover and her Science were dead and buried, but for the next two or three years each of the young men might well have assumed that her movement had been effectively stopped.
123 [Mary Baker Eddy to Mary Ellis, 7 October 1872, L05666, MBEL.]
124 Richard Kennedy to Sarah O. Bagley, 9 September 1872, 1922.001.0543, LMC. In his letters to Miss Bagley at this time Kennedy attempts to give spiritual comfort and counsel, but he is evidently straining on tiptoe to imitate Mrs. Glover’s manner. However skilful a rubber of heads, he was evidently not cut out to be a religious teacher. Actually, very little is known about his character. On the basis of Miss Milmine’s description, many writers have tended to stress his “sociability,” but in an 1873 letter to Miss Bagley he writes: “I am not as fond of going about as the general class of people. I have neither formed but few acquaintances.” Richard Kennedy to Sarah O. Bagley, n.d. [Peel’s estimate: 1873], 1922.001.0544, LMC.