Ministers – Isabella Alden

Before Isabella’s novel What They Couldn’t was published in 1895, it appeared as a serial story in a Christian magazine.

Book cover showing four young women near a table; two stand with their arms around each other; two are seated while one plays the guitar. An older woman stands at the table stirring the contents of a silver chafing dish.

The story centers around the Cameron family and the difficult adjustments they face when their wealth disappears. Not only do they have to learn to pinch pennies, they also have a difficult time figuring out who they can trust, and that includes the Reverend Mr. Edson.

One subscriber to the magazine who read the story was upset by the way Isabella portrayed Mr. Edson as a social-climber himself. The reader was so upset, he wrote a letter to the magazine’s editor to complain:

A subscriber calls attention to the portrayal of the young minister in Mrs. Alden's story, and asks: What percent of Presbyterian pastors would make use of such language as is there put into his mouth? Has any member of your force ever known a minister to speak such words about a member of his congregation? If Mrs. Alden knows such a pastor, it would be better to give his true name, and not attempt to make the impression that he is representative.

He was certainly upset enough to close his letter by issuing a direct challenge to Isabella!

If Mrs. Alden knows such a pastor, it would be better to give his true name, and not attempt to make the impression that he is representative.

Luckily, Isabella didn’t have to respond because others responded for her. The magazine published this response:

Mrs. Alden does not put the character forward as a representative of the ministry in general. No writer of the day has a higher appreciation of the ministers, or does more to help them in their work, than she.

And here’s what one of her defenders wrote in a letter that the magazine published the following month:

One Case. Here in the State of Washington was just such a minister as the one Pansy speaks of in her story. In fact, he told me that his congregation did not suit him; that he could not preach a good sermon to it because the people in it were not refined and intelligent enough. I will add that he is supposed to have left the ministry. [signed] M.H.M.

Of course, What They Couldn’t was fiction and—as authors often state— “any resemblance by any character to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” But in her years as a teacher and as a minister’s wife, Isabella probably met a church pastor or two who, like Mr. Edson, was more concerned with ministering to the wealthy members of his flock than the less privileged congregants who could have benefited from his guidance.

Have you read What They Couldn’t? If not, you can read it for only 99¢ from your favorite online retailer: