I am the only married grandchild of the late Right Honourable Sir John MacNeill, G.C.B., of Edinburgh, “who was prominent in British politics and Ambassador to Persia,” and Mrs. Eddy is certainly not my daughter.

  My mother, Margaret Ferooza MacNeill, was the only child of his who reached maturity, though he was three times married; she married my father, Duncan Stewart, R.N., now captain, retired, and died in 1871. Of her six children, one died unmarried, three years ago; five survive, of whom four are unmarried.

  I am the wife of Commander N. G. Macalister, R.N., who is at present inspecting officer of coast guard for Aberdeen division.

  I wrote to the editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal who published Mrs. Eddy’s statement, asking him to publish a correction, and I sent a copy of the letter to Mrs. Eddy herself. She did not reply at all, and he excused himself from publishing it on the ground that the correction could not appear for five months.

  In March, 1904, after the publication of Mrs. Macalister’s correction had been copied widely in American papers, Mrs. Eddy caused a paragraph to be inserted in the Christian Science Sentinel, saying that writers of her genealogy had been accustomed to connect her with the Sir John MacNeill family, and it was supposed she had a right to use the MacNeill coat-of-arms. She notified genealogical writers not to do so thereafter. Mrs. Eddy, however, continues to use the MacNeill coat-of-arms, which is engraved upon her stationery and impressed upon her seal. She defended her continued use of the coat-of-arms in a widely-published statement, issued in January, 1907, as follows:

  The facts regarding the McNeill coat-of-arms are as follows: Fannie McNeill, President Pierce’s niece, afterward Mrs. Judge Potter, presented to me my coat-of-arms, saying that it was taken in connection with her own family coat-of-arms. I never doubted the veracity of the gift.

  Mrs. Macalister, in a recent letter, writes: “I have been amused to find that Mrs. Eddy still uses my grandfather’s coat-of-arms on her notepaper, including the motto of the Bath, which even his son, had he left one, would have had no right to use, as the G.C.B. was for life only.”

  APPENDIX B

  ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS was born August 11, 1826, in Blooming Grove, Orange County, N. Y. He grew up in poverty and ignorance, and at seventeen he had received about five months’ schooling and had learned to read, write, and do simple sums in arithmetic. He was of average intelligence and had no tastes or ambitions out of the ordinary. In the year 1843, he first heard of animal magnetism, and he was himself magnetised repeatedly by William Levingston, a tailor in Poughkeepsie, where Davis then lived. Davis showed surprising clairvoyant powers while in the magnetic state, and soon he, with Levingston as magnetiser, was using his clairvoyant ability to diagnose cases of sickness and to prescribe remedies. By degrees what he called his “scientific” insight was developed, and soon, his biographer says, “there was no science the general principles and much of minutiæ of which he did not seem to comprehend while in his abnormal state.”

  On March 7, 1844, Davis fell into a magnetic or “superior” condition without the assistance of the magnetic process, and for two days he was “insensible to external things.” He wandered in the Catskill Mountains, and while there he received, “interiorly,” information of his future mission.

  The following year he went to New York and commenced to lecture, while in the clairvoyant state, Dr. S. S. Lyon of Bridgeport, Conn., acting as his magnetiser. The last of these lectures was delivered on January 25, 1847. The lectures were published in a book entitled, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind. Davis continued to lecture, and to write voluminously. His written works consist of thirty-six volumes, nearly all of which, it is claimed, were produced while the author was in a state of clairvoyance. The chief of these are his first books, the Divine Revelations (1847), and The Great Harmonia (1850). In these Davis gives a history of the universe, the formation of the earth, the origin of man, and the gradual development of present civilisation. In his first volume he gives a “Key” to the principles of nature, and relates the “true” version of sacred history, correcting and explaining the Old and New Testaments as he goes along. He gives his interior impressions of the real scheme of the material universe and of the spiritual world, and the relations between the two.

  Davis called this “revealed” system “The Harmonial Philosophy,” and developed it at length in the six volumes of The Great Harmonia. In many points Davis’s philosophy of life and his theory of disease resemble Quimby’s, and much of the terminology is the same. (When Davis began to lecture and to write, Quimby had for several years been practising and teaching but, so far as known, Davis had never met Quimby.) For example, Davis states: “There is but one Principle, one united attribute of Goodness and Truth.” This he calls the “unchangeable, eternal Positive Mind,” which “fills all negative substances. Worlds, their forces, their physical existences, with their life and forces, are all negative to this Positive Mind. This is the great Positive Power.” He compares his system to a wheel, the centre of which “is a Focus for the universal diffusion of knowledge, Truth, and the one unchangeable Principle.” “Truth,” he states, “is positive Principle; error is a negative principle, and as Truth is positive and eternal, it must subdue error, which is only temporal and artificial.”

  This Positive Mind he also calls Divine Intelligence, the First Cause, etc. He says: “Power, Wisdom, Goodness, Justice, Mercy, Truth, are the gradual developments of an eternal and internal Principle, constituting the Divine, original Essence!”

  Disease, in the Davis philosophy, is not a part of the “Great Harmonia.” His conclusions as to disease are:

  “That disease is discord; and that this disease originates in a want of equilibrium in the circulation of the spiritual Principle throughout the organism.

  “That the spiritual Principle is an organisation of refined and sublimated materials; consequently, being material, it is susceptible to material influences.

  “That those physical developments which are called diseases, are simply evidences of constitutional or spiritual disturbances; and consequently, that there is but one ‘disease,’ having innumerable symptoms.”

  The mission of the physician, Davis says, is not to the body, “for the body is but a subordinate portion of the individual.” “Disease is an effect, not a cause.” “Disease is an evil to be prevented; it is an effect to be overcome. Physicians are designed to minister to the spiritual principle.” “Man is a Unit,” he says again. “It is not true that he has a body to be cured of disease separate from his mind.”

  To dispel disease and to promote individual health and happiness, Davis says, the Divine Principle working through Nature has provided certain remedial agents. These agents are “Dress, Food, Water, Air, Light, Electricity, and Magnetism.” “Vital magnetism and electricity,” he writes, “are the divine elements of spiritual nourishment, and are the mediums through which the spirit acts upon the body; and to restore harmony or health, the prime-moving principle in the body must be addressed by and through identical mediums or elements.”

  He also says: “By self-magnetisation, or by the magnetic or spiritual action of the influence of one individual upon another . . . the human soul can rise superior to every species of discord, and thus subdue and expel disease.”

  Davis believed that Christ employed animal magnetism in making cures. “It is clear, at least to the interiorly-en lightened mind, that Christ cast out diseases, Satans, or devils, by the exercise of that spiritual power, which, in our century, has unfortunately been termed ‘Animal Magnetism.’”

  In applying his principle practically to the care of the sick, he recommends a cheerful, hopeful spirit on the part of the patient, strict attention to diet and temperature, and regular, simple habits. Occasionally, as for rheumatism, he prescribes a kind of beverage and gives instructions how to prepare it. “The patient is requested to remember,” he writes, “that I recommend a reconciliation with Nature, and not medicines, to accomplish his cure.”

  Like Mrs. Eddy, Davis had not much respect for learning. “Book-learning,” he writes, “is mainly ephemeral and useless; but Wisdom which unfolds from out the depths of intuition, is everlasting and more valuable than seas of diamonds.” He taught that true wisdom comes only through spiritual or interior vision, and that the evidence of the senses is not always trustworthy.

  Some time after the publication of his first books, Davis joined the Spiritualistic movement and became well known as a leader in that sect, travelling and lecturing extensively.

  APPENDIX C

  THERE IS NO fundamental similarity between Christian Science and Shakerism, but there are significant resemblances. Ann Lee’s main contribution to religious theories or pretensions was the idea that God is both masculine and feminine. She, herself, claimed to be the “female principle of God,” and the Shakers believed and taught that she was the “female Christ.” Mrs. Eddy also teaches the femininity of God, and Christian Scientists have claimed that she is the “feminine principle of Deity.” The Shakers asserted for Ann Lee that she was greater than Christ. Mrs. Eddy has said that her revelation of Christian Science was “higher, clearer, and more permanent,” than that given eighteen centuries ago. The Shakers prayed always to “Our Father and Mother which are in Heaven,” while Mrs. Eddy has “spiritually interpreted” the Lord’s Prayer, making it read: “Our Father-Mother God.” The Shakers proclaimed Ann Lee to be the woman of the Apocalypse, calling her the “God-anointed Woman,” and the “Holy Comforter.” In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy has called the attention of her followers to the significance of the chapter in Revelation on the woman of the Apocalypse and its “relation to the present age,” suggesting that the woman represents the founder of Christian Science. Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy teaches, is the “Holy Comforter.” In the original Mother Church in Boston is a stained-glass window, showing the woman of the Apocalypse clothed in the sun and crowned with twelve stars. It is titled “The Woman God Crowned,” and above it is a representation of the book Science and Health. Shakers always called Ann Lee “Mother”; Christian Scientists formerly thus addressed Mrs. Eddy. Mother Ann, like Mother Eddy, declared that she had the gift of healing. She also believed that she took upon herself the sins and sufferings of others; in the early days, Mrs. Eddy had the same idea. The Shakers believed that Mother Ann had spiritual illumination — the mind that saw things as they were; that the rest of the world was deceived; that the evidence of the senses, used against her, might mislead; this is a prevailing idea in regard to Mrs. Eddy among Christian Scientists. Ann Lee governed largely through fear; her followers believed that, with her mental powers, she could inflict torment upon them in this world. In the early Christian Science days, if not now, “malicious animal magnetism” — as Mrs. Eddy named this power of mentally working evil on others — was an orthodox doctrine. The Shakers called their establishment “The Church of Christ”; Mrs. Eddy used the same name, adding the word “Scientist.” They called the original foundation the “Mother Church”; Mrs. Eddy so designated her first Boston building. Ann Lee forbade audible prayer, teaching that it “exposed the desires”; Mrs. Eddy opposes audible prayer, which may “utter desires which are not real.” Finally, Ann Lee enjoined celibacy. Mrs. Eddy teaches that celibacy is a more spiritual state than marriage; she permits the marriage relation merely as “expedient,”— “suffer it to be so now.”

  Not Under Forty

  CONTENTS

  A CHANCE MEETING

  THE NOVEL DÉMEUBLÉ

  148 CHARLES STREET

  MISS JEWETT

  “JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS”

  KATHERINE MANSFIELD

  A CHANCE MEETING

  I

  IT HAPPENED AT Aix-les-Bains, one of the pleasantest places in the world. I was staying at the Grand-Hôtel d’Aix, which opens on the sloping little square with the bronze head of Queen Victoria, commemorating her visits to that old watering-place in Savoie. The Casino and the Opera are next door, just across the gardens. The hotel was built for the travellers of forty years ago, who liked large rooms and large baths, and quiet. It is not at all smart, but very comfortable. Long ago I used to hear old Pittsburghers and Philadelphians talk of it. The newer hotels, set on the steep hills above the town, have the fashionable trade; the noise and jazz and dancing.

  In the dining-room I often noticed, at a table not far from mine, an old lady, a Frenchwoman, who usually lunched and dined alone. She seemed very old indeed, well over eighty, and somewhat infirm, though not at all withered or shrunken. She was not stout, but her body had that rather shapeless heaviness which for some detestable reason often settles upon people in old age. The thing one especially noticed was her fine head, so well set upon her shoulders and beautiful in shape, recalling some of the portrait busts of Roman ladies. Her forehead was low and straight, her nose made just the right angle with it, and there was something quite lovely about her temples, something one very rarely sees.

  As I watched her entering and leaving the dining-room I observed that she was slightly lame, and that she utterly disregarded it — walked with a quick, short step and great impatience, holding her shoulders well back. One saw that she was contemptuously intolerant of the limitations of old age. As she passed my table she often gave me a keen look and a half-smile (her eyes were extremely bright and clear), as if she were about to speak. But I remained blank. I am a poor linguist, and there would be no point in uttering commonplaces to this old lady; one knew that much about her, at a glance. If one spoke to her at all, one must be at ease.

  Several times in the early morning I happened to see her leave the hotel in her motor, and each time her chauffeur brought down and placed in the car a camp chair, an easel, and canvases and colour boxes strapped together. Then they drove off toward the mountains. A plucky old lady, certainly, to go sketching in that very hot weather — for this was in the latter part of August 1930, one of the hottest seasons Aix-les-Bains had ever known. Every evening after dinner the old lady disappeared into the lift and went to her own rooms. But often she reappeared later, dressed for the opera, and went out, attended by her maid.

  One evening, when there was no opera, I found her smoking a cigarette in the lounge, where I had gone to write letters. It was a very hot night, and all the windows were open; seeing her pull her lace shawl closer about her shoulders, I went to shut one of them. Then she spoke to me in excellent English: —

  “I think that draught blows out from the dining-room. If you will ask the boy to close the doors, we shall not feel the air.”

  I found the boy and had the doors closed. When I returned, the old lady thanked me, motioned to a chair at her side, and asked if I had time for a cigarette.

  “You are stopping at Aix for some time, I judge?” she asked as I sat down.

  I replied that I was.

  “You like it, then? You are taking a cure? You have been here before?”

  No, I was not taking a cure. I had been here before, and had come back merely because I liked the place.

  “It has changed less than most places, I think,” she remarked. “I have been coming here for thirty-five years; I have old associations with Aix-les-Bains. Besides, I enjoy the music here. I live in the South, at Antibes. You attend the Grand-Cercle? You heard the performance of Tristan and Iseult last night?”

  I had not heard it. I told her I had thought the evening too frightfully hot to sit in a theatre.

  “But it was no hotter there than anywhere else. I was not uncomfortable.”

  There was a reprimand in her tone, and I added the further excuse that I had thought the principals would probably not be very good, and that I liked to hear that opera well sung.

  “They were well enough,” she declared. “With Wagner I do not so much care about the voices. It is the orchestra I go to hear. The conductor last night was Albert Wolff, one of our best Kapellmeister.”

  I said I was sorry I had missed the opera.

  “Are you going to his classical concert tomorrow afternoon? He will give a superb rendering of Ravel’s La Valse — if you care for modern music.”

  I hastily said that I meant to go.

  “But have you reserved your places? No? Then I would advise you to do so at once. The best way here is to have places for the entire chain of performances. One need not go to all, of course; but it is the best way. There is little else to do here in the evening, unless one plays at the gaming tables. Besides, it is almost September; the days are lowering now, and one needs the theatre.” The old lady stopped, frowned, and made an impatient gesture with her very interesting hand. “What should I have said then? Lowering is not the word, but I seldom have opportunity to speak English.”

  “You might say the days are growing shorter, but I think lowering a very good word.”

  “Mais un peu poétique, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Perhaps; but it is the right kind of poetic.”

  “And by that you mean?”

  “That it’s not altogether bookish or literary. The country people use it in some parts of England, I think. I have heard old-fashioned farmers use it in America, in the South.”