Does “Mother’s Evening Prayer” refer to Eddy’s son?
Excerpt from William Lyman Johnson’s musical setting of “Mother’s Evening Prayer,” 1898, SM0010.
We are sometimes asked if Mary Baker Eddy’s poem “Mother’s Evening Prayer” was written about her son, George Washington Glover II, at the time she was forced to relinquish care of him. Lines such as “Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight” and “mother finds her home and heav’nly rest” in particular may help to enforce such perceptions—especially given the fact that Eddy’s separation from George for significant periods of time when he was a child and young adult was a source of great sadness for her.1
In about May 1851, George was separated from Eddy (then Mary Glover) at the age of 6. He was sent to live with Mahala and Russell Cheney, in North Groton, New Hampshire, some 30 miles north of Sanbornton Bridge, where she was living at the time.2
It is well documented that Eddy did write verse at this time—specifically poems titled “The Mother at Parting with her Child” and “Mother’s Darling.” A verse from “Mother’s Darling” appears in her autobiographical work Retrospection and Introspection3 However, none of the drafts of these poems, or others in our collection, in any way resembles “Mother’s Evening Prayer.”
The first verse of what would eventually become “Mother’s Evening Prayer” appeared in the June 1893 issue of The Christian Science Journal, in an article Eddy wrote titled “Things and Thoughts.”4 She referred to the verse as “mother’s silent orison.” The complete poem was then published in the Journal’s August 1893 issue as “The Mother’s Evening Prayer.”5
The Library has not been able to establish any connection between “Mother’s Evening Prayer” and Eddy’s only son.
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- “Mother’s Evening Prayer,” in Mary Baker Eddy, Poems (Boston: The Christian Science Board of Directors), 4–5.
- Eddy’s family contracted George’s living with the Cheneys without her agreement, apparently due to her poor health, asserting that it was in the best interest of both mother and son. Mahala had worked for the Baker family as a domestic servant and cared for both Mary and George at times. For a detailed account see, for example, Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998), 68–94.
- Eddy, Retrospection and Introspection (Boston: The Christian Science Board of Directors), 20.
- Eddy, “Things and Thoughts,” The Christian Science Journal, June 1893, 99. The entire article is on pages 97–100.
- Eddy, “The Mother’s Evening Prayer,” Journal, August 1893, 193.