Book manuscript- (c) 2009 by William Sims Bainbridge

On the other hand, Lucy joined the Woman’s Baptist Missionary Union, and delivered an effective address at its annual meeting in Boston, where Baptist ladies from all over New England convened to discuss such matters as the proper balance between home and foreign missions and whether evangelists do better to promise immediate results from conversion to Christianity or to be more modest in their claims for faith. She had created The Missionary Sewing Circle of the Central Baptist Church and Congregation, “to provide for the poor of the Church and Sunday School and to clothe Mr. Rose’s daughter and other like work that commends itself to the society.”²²⁵ The Central Church supported Baptist missionary efforts in Burma, contributing a three-hundred-dollar boat to become the floating home of Rev. D. L. Brayton who translated the Bible into the Pwo Karen language,²²⁶ and sending two ladies, Emma Chase and Martha Sheldon, to the Baptist effort there.²²⁷
Literary Sensitivity
Despite her plain midwestern origins and modest Baptist affiliation, Lucy began to travel in high social circles. In December 1876, she addressed the Rhode Island Women’s Club on the subject of George Eliot’s new novel, Daniel Deronda. The Club had been founded by elite ladies of Providence ten months earlier and was mainly discussed literary works.²²⁸ As Lucy later put it, “So well did I expound the doctrines of George Eliot that I was unanimously elected the vice president of the club, no slight favor in view of the representative women who composed its membership.”²²⁹

Lucy’s audience was well aware that “George Eliot” was the pen name of a woman writer,²³⁰ and some of her doctrines directly concerned the proper role of women in society. The Club’s founders were suffragists and had been active earlier in the movement to abolish slavery,²³¹ so they were ready for a lively feminist lecture packaged as a dissertation in literary analysis.

The book begins when Daniel Deronda first sees the beauty of Gwendolen Harleth, a spoiled, supercilious young woman, and the next hundred pages delineate her limited character in an extended flashback. Eliot asks, “Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?” Then she considers the vast significance of male History: “What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections.”²³²

Despite her frivolity, Gwendolen is intelligent and capable of insight into the cultural prison in which she finds herself: “We women can’t go in search of adventures — to find out the Northwest Passage or the source of the Nile, or to hunt tigers in the East. We must stay where we grow, or where the gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers, to look as pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining. That is my notion about the plants: they are often bored, and that is the reason why some of them have got poisonous.”²³³

The second theme of Daniel Deronda is religion. Gwendolen’s family loses all its wealth through soured investments, and she consents to marry a rich sadist named Grandcourt. When she reveals her defeat to Deronda, he counsels, “The refuge you are needing from personal troubles is the higher, the religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our own appetites and vanities. The few may find themselves in it simply by an elevation of feeling; but for us who have to struggle for our wisdom, the higher life must be a region in which the affections are clad with knowledge.”²³⁴

Although raised an English gentleman, unbeknownst to himself Deronda was a Jew, and much of the novel traces his slow discovery of this fact. Eliot had long since become disenchanted with Christianity, although holding many of its ideals, and in her eyes Christian society was materialistic, unjust, and superficial. The novel ends with Gwendolen crushed but struggling for spiritual release, Grandcourt dead, and Deronda voyaging eastward with a Jewish wife seeking to establish a Jewish nation that could be a model of moral perfection for the whole world.²³⁵

Eliot was not really a feminist, and Daniel Deronda advocates a return to traditional community in which men of exalted morality bestow love and honor upon traditionally feminine women. Certainly Lucy, herself, had experienced great adventures, in the Civil War and the Holy Land tour, and she rejected an entirely passive role for women. She had to be cautious in stating her religious views before the ladies of the literary club, because Baptists claimed the same biblical authenticity possessed by Jews, and her denomination hurled the same accusations against liberal denominations that Eliot did against Christianity generally. Lucy handled these powerful themes adroitly, and the ladies were charmed to hear Eliot’s views on the condition of women and the ideal religion.

Lucy, being a woman, was never permitted to don holy vestments and become a clergyperson herself. Reverend Thomas D. Anderson, who was pastor of Central from 1887 through 1902, said Lucy was “not a pastor, nor an officer of the church, but nevertheless a most efficient minister.” He considered her one of his most important “predecessors” and felt her enduring legacy more strongly than William’s. “Her influence appeared in members of her large Sunday School class which she instructed and deeply impressed with her personality, in the enthusiasm of the Women’s Missionary Society which she inspired with her own philanthropic spirit and in the trained efficiency manifested by our ladies in certain developments of church work.”²³⁶

Pleasant Days
Just before blue-eyed Willie turned three, Lucy made an elaborate blue overcoat for him, studded everywhere with brass buttons and sporting an elegant half cape, then took him to the photographers to have his portrait taken in this imposing get-up. “Before my life was at the noon, there came from God to my heart and home a treasure untold, more precious than gold, my Little Boy Blue!”²³⁷ Lucy and her son were unusually close, so much so that he would hardly have a thought without sharing it with her, and very early in his life she began to rely upon him for emotional support.

The Bainbridges adopted a vigorous little girl, born to unknown parents on November 23, 1872, “to heal the wound made by the death of baby Cleora.”²³⁸ Lucy called her Helen Augusta, taking the first name from her deceased friend and cousin, Nellie, and the second, from her mother. When the neighboring Reynolds girl taunted Willie that his sister was adopted, he thrashed her.²³⁹ In later years, he would say, “Adopted children are more important than natural children, for they have been specially chosen.”²⁴⁰

Lucy’s father occasionally visited Providence, and one time he walked down to the river with little Willie. They stood on a pier, watching the boats, when suddenly Willie fell into the deep water and began to drown. Despite his advanced age of more than seventy years, John Seaman jumped in and rescued the boy. That night, after saying his customary prayers, Willie added a few words about his ordeal: “Now, dear good Jesus, I thank you for making grandpa so lively — please dry up all the water and make the people go in wagons.”²⁴¹

After returning home, John Seaman wrote his grandchildren: “Willie and Nellie, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. If you were here in Cleveland I would give each of you a pair of nice shoes. If I get permanently lame you will have to draw me in your little wagon, but I don’t like that goat. I hear that you are going to school. After a while you will be able to write me a letter and tell me all about the goat, and other matters. Good night, J. Seaman.”²⁴²

On one of her summer visits to see her father in Cleveland, Lucy met with a nearly fatal accident, breaking a leg, and she was still recuperating when she returned to Providence.²⁴³ For sake of her shattered health, she sought the salt air of Warwick Neck, a tiny village just south of Providence. One day a wealthy friend took her to see some valuable hilltop land he had recently purchased. They encountered some acquaintances, and the rich man astonished everybody by proclaiming: “All take notice! I hereby give to Mrs. Lucy S. Bainbridge one acre of this land, provided she builds a cottage on it this summer.”²⁴⁴

Lucy’s father quickly provided the money, and they built a charming little house, complete with a veranda that wisteria vines soon covered, where they would spend many of the following summers.²⁴⁵ About two miles away, in the direction of Providence, was Old Warwick, with a church, a school, a blacksmith, and one store. From their cottage they could watch the play of sailboats far below them. In warm weather, Lucy often let Willie go barefoot. “Oh how good it felt!” More than forty years later he wrote in his diary, “I can feel the grass and the freedom now!”²⁴⁶

Both mother and son delighted in the local custom of clambake. “Upon hot stones a bed of seaweed is made, and on it sweet potatoes and corn are laid; over this a layer of clams; again a quantity of seaweed and on top of all a sailcloth. This savory pile is left to steam for half an hour and then dished up in tin pans with hot fish chowder, melted butter and steamed Boston brown bread. The finishing touch, if it happens to be in season, is a ripe watermelon.”²⁴⁷

The grand church event of 1877 was the semi-centennial anniversary of the Sunday school, observed on May 9. “The audience-room was handsomely decorated for the occasion. Large growing plants were tastefully arranged upon the pulpit platform, and upon the front of the pulpit was a bed of white roses with a border of green, in which were worked the dates ‘1827-1877,’ in red flowers, and the word ‘Welcome,’ in deep blue. Vines twined gracefully around the standards of the gas-brackets on each side of the pulpit, and each of the globes contained a handsome bouquet. The galleries were festooned with passion-vine, and hanging baskets were suspended from the gallery supporters. The passion-vine also decorated each of the chandeliers.”²⁴⁸

The morning celebration began with an organ voluntary, singing of “Rejoice in the Lord,” and Divine blessing invoked by William. Deacon Boyce, who had been superintendent of the school for thirty-six years, read a long historical sketch — interrupted by the choir singing “Children of Zion” — that explained such details as the move of the school from the vestry to the audience room in 1853 because of dampness, the enlistment of twenty members in the Union Army during the Civil War, the purchase of a harmonium in 1862, continual rescheduling of the hour of meeting, the collection of $300 to buy that boat for the missionary in Burma, the sudden deaths of many valued friends, and finally, at the end of what must have been an exhausting speech for all concerned, the absolutely latest event of the Sunday school, the resignation of Deacon Boyce himself, to take effect at the end of the day. The congregation responded thankfully to the end of Deacon Boyce’s marathon historical address, or to his resignation which climaxed it, by singing “Awake my Soul, Stretch Every Nerve!”

Young Willie greatly enjoyed the summer excursion down to Oakland Beach near Warwick Neck aboard a boat named The Frances. Six Churches joined for this grand event, and members of each wore badges of distinguishing colors. The Jefferson Street Church sported patriotic red, white and blue, but Willie and the other children of Central Baptist bore the odium of pink badges. A consolation was the delicious desserts sold by L. A. Tinninghast’s ice cream rooms, which came perilously close to running out of ingredients. A band played, and for a time all the choirs united under the direction of Stephen Greene, Boyce’s successor, singing rousers like “Hold the Fort” and “Pull for the Shore.”²⁴⁹ On the return across the calm waters of Narragansett Bay, Willie could imagine what it would be like to sail across the oceans of the entire world.

A Change of Course
John Seaman worked late at his store, the first Saturday of June 1877, transacting business until ten o’clock. As he walked briskly home, a neighbor exclaimed, “John, you are younger than any of your boys!” He seemed in perfect health when he went to bed, but Mary soon thought he was resting uneasily, perhaps troubled by a dream, and she went to wake him. She called out “John, John,” but he did not answer. She grasped his hand and found it lifeless. With the desperate idea that he might be in a state of “suspended animation” she called a doctor, who pronounced him dead from “paralysis of the heart.”²⁵⁰

The following Monday, Cleveland’s manufacturers and dealers in leather and boots and shoes met to adopt a resolution noting that at seventy-three he was the oldest merchant in their line of business and proclaiming him a “most honourable and upright” man. They further resolved to close their business the following Wednesday so they could attend his funeral. On Sunday, Reverend George W. Gardner, who had replaced Behrends as pastor of the First Baptist Church, delivered a sermon dedicated to John, based on the Biblical text describing the departure of Elijah from Earth, translated directly to heaven in a chariot of fire.²⁵¹

The youngest of Mary’s children, Mary Eliza, lived with her for a short time after John’s death, then married Samuel Henry Cowell, proprietor of a prosperous jewelry business right across the street from Seaman and Smith.²⁵² The house which John and Cleora had been built a comfortable distance from the central square of a small town was now deep in the heart of a major city, and the land on which it stood was worth a fortune.²⁵³ Mary Folwell Bainbridge Seaman sold the house, lived with the Cowells for a while, then moved to 91 Arlington Street.²⁵⁴

Over the ten years of his pastorate, William had been able to save a fair amount, and Lucy’s inheritance added considerably. His salary had started at $2,500 per year and rose to $3,000 in 1874. During 1878, the Central Church had paid him $3,050, and the day after Christmas it gave him three sums: a $900 bonus, the $300 principal of a note it had owed him, and $58.50 interest.²⁵⁵ With no mortgage on their cottage at Warwick neck, still young and with their children past infancy, they were ready for change and risk.

In childhood, Lucy had read and re-read the picture book about China that her parents kept in the bookcase behind the silk curtain, and she had always longed to see those scenes herself. William had been captivated by science as well as missions, studding his speeches about religion and morality with scientific metaphors, and now the ambition to create a science of missions seized him. With great excitement, they collected books about Asia, such as The Mikado’s Empire and The Land of the Veda .²⁵⁶ Their imaginations ran rampant through China and the Chinese, by William’s cousin, John Nevius, and they resolved to experience first-hand his mission at Chefoo.²⁵⁷

In May, 1878, the lay leaders of Centeral Baptist became angry when they heard a rumor that William was planning to desert them.²⁵⁸ Somewhat defensively, William admitted the rumor was true, but he emphasized he would give “the usual three months notification.”²⁵⁹ As promised, at the beginning of October William wrote, “Eleven years ago I returned with my companion from a hasty visit to Europe, Egypt and Palestine, more anxious than before to see those lands thoroughly, as also to travel far beyond and become personally acquainted with the leading Christian missions throughout the heathen world.” But the calling of God to the Gospel ministry demanded ten years of service, and William postponed his tour. A year earlier he had been ready to undertake the voyage, but “the presence of God among us in extraordinary revival blessing made very plain my duty of deferring for still an other year our prospective two to three years tour of the world.”²⁶⁰

The Watchman of Boston commented, “A pastorate which takes a church of 341 members, and successfully holds it together for a decade, leaving it 558 strong, receiving by baptism 233, and in all 460, and not only leading them in such effective work as this, but also in benevolent contributions to the amount of $40,000, in addition to $60,000 raised for home expenses, must certainly be reckoned a successful pastorate.”²⁶¹ Other publications repeated these same proud statistics, undoubtedly provided by William himself.

Lucy made arrangements to leave six-year-old Helen with her grandmother in Cleveland while she, William and eight-year-old Willie toured the world. She agreed to write a series of short travel articles for the Providence Journal, in the form of letters mailed from each major stop.²⁶² William planned to collect material for a book to establish Christian missions on a scientific basis. Word came before Christmas that William’s younger brother George had died, and their brother Samuel would die a few months later while William was traveling. It seemed that their family was vanishing behind them, as they departed Providence, January 1, 1879, to go westward around the globe.

Analysis
The religious environment in which Lucy and William operated was a complex system of denominations and movements, with varying relationships to each other and to secular institutions of the community. The sociology of religion in America has found that religious denominations can be conceptualized along a dimension from the most otherworldy and sectarian to the most worldy and mainstream. Much of the theoretical effort has gone into explaining the most intense religious sects, which Benton Johnson noted were in high tension with the surrounding socio-cultural environment.²⁶³ In the 1870s, the Baptist Church was a well-established denomination, rather than a sect, but it was sectlike in many of its features and served a clientel that was only moderately more prosperous than the poor people attracted to the sects themselves. The sectarian dimension correlates negatively with social status. Those at the high-tension end are poorer and less influential than those at the low-tension end.

Lucy's Sunday school classes consisted largely of female mill workers, who needed to learn habits of good character and homemaking. Their prospective husbands needed to adopt norms of temperance and hard work, so they could support their families. As in the South Carolina mill town studied by Liston Pope sixty years later, the Baptist Church served a stabilizing function for ordinary working families, encouraging them to accept the demands of their difficult lives, anticipating their full rewards in heaven.²⁶⁴ In time, with luck and generally advancing economic conditions, their families might eventually enter the middle class. In contrast, the Union Congregational Church served people who were already affluent.

All religion provides general compensators, because all human beings face the same objective deprivation of death. Howewver, many people are also deprived in comparison with others who possess more money, status, and power than they. These relatively deprived people are therefore open to appeals from religious organizations that offer specific compensators that substitute for the worldly rewards which they lack. For example, high-tension groups typically teach that God rewards their members for faith, abstinence, and religious commitment. This provides not only hope but the sense that the member already is an honorable person, even if he or she does not meet the standards for honor in secular society. William's church gave greater emphasis to the rite of baptism thatn did Behrends' church, because its members were more interested in achieving magical self-transformations that would allow them to feel increased self-esteem in a society that did not value them very much, and greater security in an economy over which they had no control.

Religious denominations and movements compete with each other, and they employ theological arguments in their effort to gain adherents and material resources. The episode in which people ran back and forth to hear William and Behrends dispute, each from his own church, is a clear example of this general principle. Sociologists and economists in the Rational Choice school — notably Rodney Stark, Roger Finke and Laurence Iannaccone — conceptualize churches as business firms competing in a religious market.²⁶⁵ However, realtions among churches are marked by cooperation as well as competition.

One way that churches cooperate is by forming denominations. William's church gladly gave up members to help establish the Cranston Street Baptist Church, concaptualizing their benefit on the level of denomination rather than congregation. In a large community, two Baptist churches can be stronger than one, helping each other on joint projects and remaining individuall small enough to serve the emotional needs of their members. Congregations in the same denomination do compete with each other, just as people in the same family compete. But on balance the benefits of cooperation can be great enough to sustain a denomination.

Churches also cooperate in inter-denominational activities, such as the temperance crusade in which Lucy and William played such significant roles. To be sure, the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics declined to participate, but otherwise this movement was broadly-based. The theological school which both William and Behrends attended trained clergy for a range of denominations.

Beyond these explict forms of cooperation it is important to see there there also were various ways in which churches tecitly agreed to support particular beliefs or policies, and implicitly cooperated to support their common welfare. To be sure, the churches competed for adherents, but movement of people between denominations served to support the entire religious system. Behrends received his early experience as a minister among the Baptists, then switched over to the Congregationalists, which at that point were lower in sectarian tension. Both denominations gained. The Baptists were relieved of a potential troublemaker who would want to reduce the tension of that denomination below the level needed by its laity. The Congregationalists gained a fully-trained and tested clergyman, who had carefully determined he was in harmony with their beliefs.

Protestant denominations implicitly cooperated by promulgating shared beliefs and practices. To the extent that high-tension groups differed from one-tension ones, each was able to serve its constituency better. Given that individuals were relatively free to switch denominations, this meant that a larger proportion of the population could be involved in satisfying religious fellowship, thereby establishing Christianity more firmly as the religion of the society. Just as individuals may exchange rewards, building a relationship between them, organizations may exchange individuals and through them create the network of ties that stabilize an otherwise dynamic system.²⁶⁶