Hales—Mr and Mrs. George W, their daughters Mary and Harriet and their nieces, Isabel and Harriet McKindley, comprised the family who lived at 541, Dearborn Avenue in Chicago, all of them followers of Christian Science. On 8.9.1893 upon Swamiji’s arrival in Chicago two days before the Parliament of Religions was to begin, he was in dire straits, having lost the address of the offices of the Parliament and being in a strange city. Somehow passing the night in the railway yard, in the morning he scoured the streets and found himself in a wealthy section of the city with palatial mansions from which the servants turned him away. Hungry and exhausted, sat down on the footpath, unable to carry on, when Mrs. Hale spotted him from the house opposite to him. She came out and hearing everything welcomed him warmly to her house. After he had washed and eaten, she herself took him to the offices of the Parliament. The Hale family was the first to provide him with a home in America and became Swamiji’s lifelong friends with whom he corresponded regularly. Called Mr. Hale, Father Pope and Mrs. Hale, Mother Church. His correspondence with Mrs. Hale and Mary, in particular, in America and from India provides much information regarding his movements and thoughts. The Hale residence became his headquarters, their address his permanent address. The members of the family regarded him as an ever-welcome son or brother and to him they were his very own. “You have been the sweetest notes in my jarring and clashing life” he wrote (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 8, p. 494). He found the four sisters so good and pure. Wrote to Mary from India, “You are all so kind, the whole family, to me, I must have belonged to you in the past, as we Hindus say” (Ibid., p. 445) Again, “It is curious your family … have made more impression on me than any family I know of” (Ibid., p. 474). In 1896 Mr & Mrs. Hale leased the house and went abroad; on his way to India Swamiji met them in Florence. Mary Hale lived at 152, Walton Place with her cousins, Harriet lived with her husband at 10, Oster Street where Mrs. Hale also lived with her after the death of George Hale in February 1900. Before finally leaving America in 1900, Swamiji visited Chicago on 2.6.1900 and spent four days there, meeting the Hales for the last time. Mary married an old and rich Italian on 5.11.1902 and following his death in 1922, lived with her mother in Florence where she died on 1.1.1933 at the age of 68, her mother having died in 1930 at the age of 93. Mary left about 48,500 rupees to Belur Math in her will. Having divorced her husband, Harriet died in 1929 at the age of 57. Isabel died in 1904 and her sister, Harriet, in 1955 at the age of 94. Swamiji had met Sam Hale, the brother of Mary, but generally he was away prospecting for gold at Klondike.
Neither the Hales nor the McKindleys were ever to become disciples of Swamiji; even Mary, who became closest to him, found the tendency of others to idolize her adoptive brother puzzling. She once reproached Sister Nivedita for her ‘irritating hero worship’. The Hales preferred to remain simply hosts and helpers: “They made no claims upon him, but offered a harmonious environment into which he could find relaxation between lecture trips.
Yet their support was not always easy, for in his frustration and pain, Swamiji could lash out at those who loved him as well as those who attacked him. Once ‘Sister Mary’ made an attempt to smooth his rougher comers. After reading two unusually bitter letters from him, she wrote in sadness:
“I confess dear Brother, to a feeling of terrible disappointment a year ago such a letter from your pen would have been an impossibility…. Where is the great and glorious soul that came to the Parliament of Religions, so full of love of God, that his face shone with divine light, whose words were fire, whose very presence created an atmosphere of harmony and purity, thereby drawing all souls to himself?”
This rebuke brought Swamiji’s fire down on Mary herself. He answered, indignantly:
“I have a message to give, I have no time to be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes me a hypocrite. I will die a thousand deaths rather than live a jellyfish-like existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world…. I have a message, and I will give it after my own fashion.”
He later repented his abruptness, and sent a contrite little poem reaffirming his affection for her; Mary in turn sent a doggerel of her own begging his forgiveness for her scolding.
It was Mary who would finally witness the most poignant moment of Swamiji’s relationship to her family. Returning to the East Coast from the tour of California that had crowned his second American visit, Swamiji made a stop in Chicago for one last visit to the Hales. He was spending his final night with them a night, which he knew, would be his last one ever in their household. When Mary came to his room in the morning, she discovered that he had not slept at all. When she asked why, Swamiji could only say to her, in a low, sad voice, “Oh, it is so difficult to break human bonds.”
Bonds were breaking not only for Swamiji, but also for the Hales: their family was dissolving.