11. Safe In The Arms Of Jesus
11
SAFE IN THE ARMS OF JESUS
After Bradbury’s death, the publishing company was reorganized by his colleague Sylvester Main and a local merchant named Lucius Horatio Biglow (1833–c.1910). Although Vet Main occasionally wrote music, he and Biglow were primarily businessmen, and they generally left the work of producing hymns to the poets and musicians associated with the firm. Of these, Fanny rapidly became the most prominent and in many ways was responsible more than anyone else for setting the style of the hymns the new company produced for the next half-century. She seldom wrote music, but she pronounced on the suitability of the numerous tunes submitted to her for lyrics.
Soon after Bradbury was buried, Howard Doane returned to New York and looked up Fanny. He was horrified at the dilapidated condition of the old Varick Street tenement and unnerved by the stares of the tenants of all colors, who gawked at the impeccably dressed gentleman with the fashionable Vandyke beard. Doane forced Fanny to accept reluctantly what she understood to be two dollars, the standard fee for the poem she had written. When he left, she discovered he had given her twenty dollars.
Thus began a collaboration that would last forty-seven years. Howard Doane and Fanny Crosby came to be close personal friends, and Fanny often spent her summers with him and his wife, who also was named Fanny, and their daughters, Ida and Marguerite.
Doane, who was to set more than a thousand of Fanny’s hymns to music, was not a great musician. He was best at writing simple, straightforward, marchlike tunes. His melodies, distinguished for their catchiness, relied heavily on the tradition of such songs as “Hail to the Chief ” and “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.”
But Fanny liked to collaborate with Doane. She believed simple, catchy tunes were best understood and remembered by most people. One must remember that in those days there was little opportunity for people to hear a repeated melody, for there were no recordings, and most people were too poor to own a piano—or even a hymnal. So when one first heard the tune of a hymn, it often was a matter of memorizing it then or not at all.
FANNY BELIEVED SIMPLE, CATCHY TUNES WERE BEST UNDERSTOOD AND REMEMBERED.
Doane was a rare breed: a Christian business tycoon. He apparently came by his fabulous wealth honestly and never was accused of greed, injustice, or corruption. He gave a large percent of his income to charitable institutions in a time before tax laws made it expedient for the rich to do so. He was an active lay worker in the Mount Auburn Baptist Church in the Cincinnati suburb where he had a mansion.
As a businessman, he patented seventy inventions and so perfected the productivity of woodworking machines that, in 1889, France named him a Chevalier in the famed Legion of Honor. As a musician, he composed twenty-three hundred hymns over a period of fifty-three years.
A few days after their first meeting, he returned one evening and asked if Fanny could write him a poem using the phrase, “Pass me not, O gentle Saviour.” She said she would, but uninspired, she wrote nothing for several weeks. Then, in the early spring of 1868, she was speaking at religious services in a prison near Manhattan. During the course of the services, she heard an inmate cry out piteously, “Good Lord! Do not pass me by!”
When she retired that evening, she wrote these words:
Pass me not, O gentle Saviour,
Hear my humble cry,
While on others Thou art smiling,
Do not pass me by.
Saviour, Saviour,
Hear my humble cry,
While on others Thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.
She sent the words to Doane, who soon wrote a melody. The hymn was sung a few days later at the prison where Fanny had been inspired and where she was still holding services. It made a profound impression on the prisoners, some of whom were converted on the spot. Fanny was so moved by the prisoners’ reaction that she fell in a swoon and had to be carried out.
On April 30, Doane again appeared at Fanny’s flat. “I have exactly forty minutes,” he said, “before I must meet a train for Cincinnati. I have a tune for you. See if it says anything to you. Perhaps you can commit it to memory and then compose a poem to match it.” He hummed a simple, plaintive melody.
After hearing it but once, Fanny clapped her hands, as she did whenever something pleased her. “Why, that says, ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus!’ ” She wrote her best hymns when the tunes “said” something to her.
Scurrying to the other room of her tiny apartment, she knelt on the floor, as was her custom before composing a hymn, and asked God for inspiration. Seeing that His servant was in a hurry, God saw fit to grant it quickly. Within a half-hour, Fanny had a complete poem. During that time, she claimed she was “wholly unconscious” of her surroundings and of everything except the hymn, which formed itself in her mind with no exertion on her part. She always claimed that hymn was not her own doing but was entirely the work of the “Blessed Holy Spirit.”
FANNY WROTE HER BEST HYMNS WHEN THE TUNES “SAID” SOMETHING TO HER.
Returning to Doane, she quickly dictated:
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast,
There, by His love o’ershaded,
Sweetly my soul shall rest.
Hark! ’tis the voice of angels,
Borne in a song to me,
Over the fields of glory,
Over the jasper sea.
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast,
There, by His love o’ershaded,
Sweetly my soul shall rest….
It became an instant success. After Biglow and Main included it in a hymnal three years later, it was widely sung all over the country.
Fanny always had a special attachment to “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.” She claimed she had written it “for dead relatives” and for mothers who had lost their children. Could it have been inspired by the memory of her dead child?
The following year, Doane invited Fanny to his home for the first of many visits. She addressed a group of working men in Cincinnati. Toward the end of her talk, she had an overwhelming sensation that “some mother’s boy” in the audience “must be rescued that night or not at all.” She pleaded urgently, “If there is a dear boy here tonight who has perchance wandered away from his mother’s home and his mother’s teaching, would you please come to me at the close of the service?”
Sure enough, a young man of about eighteen came to her and asked, “Did you mean me?” He told Fanny he had promised his mother he would meet her in heaven, “but the way I have been living, I don’t think that will be possible now.”
Fanny prayed earnestly over the youth, and “he finally arose with a new light in his eyes and exclaimed, ‘Now I can meet my mother in heaven, for now I have found her God!’ ”
Doane recently had asked Fanny to write a hymn on the home missions theme “Rescue the Perishing.” That night before she went to bed, she had composed a complete hymn, beginning as follows:
Rescue the perishing,
Care for the dying,
Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;
Weep o’er the erring one,
Lift up the fallen,
Tell them of Jesus the mighty to save.
The next day she recited it to Doane, who immediately gave it a stirring tune. Published the next year in his Songs of Devotion (along with “Pass Me Not”), it became a virtual battle cry of home mission workers all over the country.
Biglow and Main of New York and the John Church Company of Cincinnati were among the nation’s largest publishers of hymns. From the late 1860s, Fanny dominated the hymnals published by the New York firm, contributing between a third and a half of the selections. So prolific was her writing, the editors had to induce her to use pen names to disguise the fact that they depended so heavily on one lyricist. Besides signing her name as “Fannie,” “F.A.N.,” “F.J.C.,” “Fanny Van Alstyne,” “Mrs. Alexander Van Alstyne,” and “Mrs. Van A.,” she was using frankly weird appellations: “L.L.A.,” “J.W.W.,” “###,” “*” and “The Children’s Friend.” In the 1880s and ’90s, she expanded her list of pseudonyms to include “Carrie Hawthorne,” “Louise W. Tilden,” “Maud Marion,” “Ryan A. Dykes,” “H. N. Lincoln,” and others.
The use of pseudonyms was common among her friends, too. Ira Sankey also used the name “Rian A. (or “Ryan A.”) Dykes.” George Coles Stebbins often wrote simply as “George Coles.” Charles H. Gabriel, who was to set many of Fanny’s poems to music in the early 1900s, had seventeen noms de plume. But none could match her fanciful collection of 204 pen names!
FANNY WAS IN GREAT DEMAND BY COMPOSERS OF HYMNS, AND SHE HAD NO TROUBLE MEETING THE DEMANDS.
Fanny was in great demand by composers of hymns, and she had no trouble meeting the demands. In forty-seven years, she would furnish Biglow and Main alone with 5,959 hymns (although only about 2,000 were published). When a subject was suggested, she often wrote several poems, allowing the composer to choose one.
Naturally, by writing so much, the quality of her verse suffered. But at the same time, she was producing some of her most popular songs.
Fanny continued to write for composers not officially working for Biglow and Main. Besides contributing heavily to Philip Phillips’s Musical Leaves (1868), in 1869 she contributed more than twenty hymns to Phoebe Knapp, who compiled Notes of Joy. John Robson Sweney, a Philadelphia songwriter whom Fanny was yet to meet, published some of her hymns in his hymnals. By the early 1870s, she was well on her way to becoming the queen of hymn writers.
Fanny often matched her poems to familiar tunes. An example is “We Thank Thee, Our Father,” written to the melody of the famous “Adeste Fidelis.” She set poems to Scottish and Welsh airs and used tunes by Stephen Foster.
A first-rate classical musician, Fanny was eminently capable of writing her own music. Privately, she improvised on the piano; many of her compositions were said to be beautiful, but she refused to have them written down. She also wrote hymn tunes, few of which were published. She felt the tunes she liked to compose were too difficult for the common worshipper. She and Van compiled a hymnal of their own about this time. Biglow and Main rejected it because it was felt by the directors that the public did not care for hymnals with all the selections written by only two people. It’s possible their hymns also were considered too difficult and sophisticated for the popular taste.
The only hymns ever published for which she supplied both music and words are “Jesus, Dear, I Come to Thee,” “The Blood-Washed Throng” (included in her 1906 autobiography), and a spring carol.
The lyrical staff of Biglow and Main included William J. Stevenson, Josephine Pollard, and Kate Cameron. Perhaps the best known, besides Fanny, was Anna Bartlett Warner, who wrote the world’s most popular hymn, “Jesus Loves Me.” Fanny also worked with Mrs. Mary Ann Kidder, Annie Sherwood Hawks, Mrs. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, and the aging invalid, Lydia Baxter.
One of the most prominent writers of music for her words was Robert Lowry. By far their most successful collaboration was “All the Way My Saviour Leads Me,” published in 1875. Six years younger than Fanny, Lowry was a distinguished Baptist minister who could thrill audiences with his extraordinary descriptive talent, but music was his first love. Lowry always said he could reach more people through hymns than through sermons.
Lowry’s skill as a composer was almost as limited as Doane’s and other contemporaries’. He was best with hymns that called for a martial, brass-band style, like “Shall We Gather at the River?” A pleasant, jolly, bearded man known as the “Good Doctor,” he was an intellectual. Fanny loved to have him read poetry to her. He was sensitive to musical quality, and it rankled him that he could succeed only in the genre of what he termed “brass-band music.”
Fanny wrote almost no hymns for Sylvester Main, a kind, gentle man whom she knew as a “faithful counselor and guide.” He was more involved in the business of the firm than in composing. But Vet’s son Hugh, then an assistant to his father, set many of Fanny’s hymns to music. Beginning in 1869 with The Victory, Hugh ultimately would compile and edit nearly thirty books of hymns and secular songs and write the music to more than a thousand poems. He was a much better musician than Lowry or Doane, and like Fanny he could write sophisticated tunes. But like her, he chose to write hymn melodies more in the popular style, for he believed in “music for the masses.”
As we have seen, Van composed the melodies for some of his wife’s hymns. Another composer who set several of her poems to music was William F. Sherwin.
One of Fanny’s treasured friends was Frances Ridley Havergal, almost seventeen years her junior. The Englishwoman was a widely recognized hymn writer before Fanny began writing for Bradbury. Fanny considered Frances’s hymns superior to her own; they included “Who Is on the Lord’s Side?” and “Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” The two lyricists corresponded regularly, and though they were never able to meet on earth, they were mutual admirers.
ONE OF FANNY’S TREASURED FRIENDS WAS FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL.
The year 1873 marked an end and a beginning. Sylvester Main died at age fifty-six. The beginning was for the work of Dwight L. Moody, who later would figure greatly in Fanny’s life. Along with his baritone soloist, Ira D. Sankey, Moody began a series of evangelical meetings in the British Isles, during which thousands professed faith in Christ. Even Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, admitted to being “greatly helped” by Moody’s preaching.
Through Sankey’s heartrending singing, the British public fell in love with the Sunday school hymn. Sankey used many of Fanny’s hymns. “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour” gained sensational popularity. Fanny’s name was becoming a household word in Great Britain.
The next year, Fanny was introduced to a tall man with golden hair and beard and a Herculean physique. Philip P. Bliss, the other leading light of American hymnody, had been setting the religious world on fire with his splendid work. Unlike Fanny, he wrote his own tunes and edited his own hymnbooks, which were published by the John Church Company. Only occasionally did he compose tunes for others’ poems.
Born in 1838, Bliss had little formal musical training, but he became famous as a music teacher and hymn singer. The title of his hymnal Gospel Songs (1874) partly caused the Sunday school hymn to become known as the gospel song or gospel hymn. Bliss wrote the immensely popular march hymn “Hold the Fort” which, along with “Pass Me Not,” spread through the British Isles like wildfire.
Bliss’s musical talent was far superior to that of any of his contemporaries in the gospel hymn business, with the possible exception of Sankey. His bass voice was rich and powerful. Moody realized he could be of great value in evangelical work, and he urged Bliss to become a full-time evangelist. He wanted to couple Bliss with Daniel Webster Whittle, a layman like Moody and an excellent preacher.
It was a hard decision for Bliss, for he was just getting to the point where he could live comfortably from his royalties. Fulltime evangelical work would mean less time for the work he loved best—writing hymns—and less income. But he accepted Moody’s direction as God’s will and cheerfully undertook his new labors.
The same year, Sankey and Bliss merged some of their hymns to create Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, published jointly by John Church Company and by Biglow and Main. It was at the beginning of his association with Biglow and Main that Fanny became acquainted with Bliss. She admired his musicianship and perhaps hoped for the opportunity to collaborate with him. However, Bliss then was not looking for any new poems to set to music.
Meanwhile, Fanny was engaged in a speaking tour that took her as far as Cincinnati, where she was a guest at the Doanes’ mansion. One evening, she and Doane were talking about the nearness of God. The sun was setting and the evening shadows were gathering. Fanny could see enough to appreciate the beauty and wonder of the scene, which she felt illustrated the glorious hand of God. She was almost ecstatic when she retired, and before she lay down, she wrote the words to “I Am Thine, O Lord.” Published the next year in Brightest and Best, the hymn immediately became a great favorite.
Indeed, that hymnal produced a bumper crop of hits for Fanny. Also published for the first time were “All the Way My Saviour Leads Me,” “Saviour, More Than Life to Me,” “To God Be the Glory,” and “Yes, There Is Pardon for You.” The straightforward “To God Be the Glory,” with its simple statement of the Christian faith, was scarcely noticed when published, but it was rediscovered and popularized by Billy Graham in the 1950s.
THAT HYMNAL PRODUCED A BUMPER CROP OF HITS FOR FANNY.
In 1875, Fanny was fifty-five years old. She and Van now were living on the East Side near the offices of Biglow and Main. An important event was to occur in the religious world of New York that year: Moody and Sankey came to Brooklyn to conduct an evangelical campaign.