Young Nash and his wife were living on the second floor of a modest house at 8 Broad Street, Lynn.2 At supper the first night—a meal which Mrs. Godfrey energetically set about preparing as soon as she arrived—they were joined by the owner of the house, a Mrs. Mary Baker Glover, who took her meals with the Nashes. At one point she reached over and touched Mrs. Godfrey’s hand, asking what was wrong with her finger; then the conversation turned to less dispiriting subjects.
That night Mrs. Godfrey slept peacefully. When she woke in the morning, her finger was almost normal. Years later her daughter described how her mother gave a little scream, jumped out of bed, and ran into the next room in her nightgown, calling out to her nephew, William, “Look at my hand.” William’s laconic response was: “Guess Mrs. Glover has been trying her works on it.”3
To his aunt’s blank question as to what that meant, he explained that Mrs. Glover had an incomprehensible new method of healing which she called Metaphysics or Christian Science. At the breakfast table that morning Mrs. Glover herself offered to complete the cure through her method. This involved entire reliance on God, she emphasized. Within a few days the last vestige of the difficulty had disappeared except for a slight malformation of the nail, and that too was corrected as soon as Mrs. Godfrey drew Mrs. Glover’s attention to it.
The young Nashes were great admirers of their landlady-boarder and had named their four-month-old baby Flora Glover Nash in her honor.4 But they felt no interest in her ideas and, when it came to their own ills, preferred the known evils of nineteenth-century medicine to the unknown hazards of relying on God. Thus Mrs. Nash had a doctor ● ● ●
2 [Since 1931] the house has been open to the public as a historical site, and thousands of visitors each year climb to the “little attic room” famous in Christian Science history.
3 [Mary Godfrey Parker, “Reminiscences of Mrs. Mary Godfrey Parker,” 13 December 1932, Reminiscence, p. 6, MBEL.]
4 R. A. Nash, 4 January 1935, Reminiscence, MBEL; Flora Glover Nash Duff, “Statement of Mrs. Flora N. Duff, formerly Miss Flora Glover Nash,” January 1935, Reminiscence, p. 1, MBEL. The latter gives 1876 as the year of her birth, but the Lynn city records show that she was born at 8 Broad Street on October 1, 1875, a date which accords with Mrs. Parker’s account. After two or three years at that address the family moved to Utica, New York. Although they never became Christian Scientists they remained friendly with Mrs. Eddy and always visited her when they came back to Lynn and Boston.