As December closed in with its leaden skies and the day of the wedding drew near, Mary paid a farewell visit to Albert’s grave and afterwards wrote a poem in which triumph and foreboding were once more joined, though in a rather bouncing rhythm. Albert’s struggle was ended now, and she wrote:
’Tis finished” the Saviour triumphantly cried
’Tis finished” the tears of Gethsemane dried
And divinity stooped to humanity’s tomb
With the light of his love to encompass its gloom.
But as her thoughts turned back to herself, the shadow fell again, and she reminded herself:
Thou too may soon follow the spirit that’s fled
When far from thy kindred and place of the dead.131
A few days later, on Sunday, December 10, 1843, she and George Washington Glover were married at her home in Sanbornton. Following the wedding they left for Concord and during their short time there took a quick drive to Bow. Later they went on to Boston, and there, on Christmas Day, 1843, they embarked by ship for that lovely and tragic South which was everything New England was not.
And who, exactly, was George Washington Glover? Mary might almost have put the question to herself as they settled down for the stormy sea trip that would take them first to Wilmington, North Carolina, then on to Charleston.
She had seen little enough of this handsome, successful young man, ten years her senior, who was so at ease in a world she could scarcely imagine.132 Yet she had traded her own loved world for him, and now the promise and the problem of the future merged into one.
131 Mary Baker Glover, entry c. December 1843, “Written on leaving N. England at the Grave of Albert Baker, Esqr.,” poem, A09002, pp. 106–107, MBEL.
132 He was the same age as Albert Baker and closely resembled George Sullivan Baker in appearance.