14. The Bowery
14
THE BOWERY
The plight of the thousands living in New York’s tenements long had been a concern for many Christians. For years, dedicated individuals had toiled to help the miserable inhabitants in the morass of Manhattan’s slums, but with little obvious effect.
In the early 1880s, Fanny was living in a dismal flat on Frankfort Street on the Lower East Side, near one of Manhattan’s worst slums. Just a few blocks away stretched the notorious Bowery, one of America’s most depressing places, a haunt for hopeless alcoholics and the main artery of a thriving commercial area, red light district, and pornographic center. Here were taverns, dance halls, and sordid shops selling filthy pictures and literature. “Concert halls” specialized in cheap, degrading, burlesque shows. “Dime museums” lured the curious to view gross indecencies. In one place, admission was charged to see a man named Jack the Rat bite the heads off living rats. Organ grinders, harpers, and dancing bears swarmed the streets. Bedraggled prostitutes, “so worn, raddled, and hideous that their appeal to men was inconceivable,” strutted to and fro. Along the way were human wrecks of the Civil War—men without arms, legs, eyes, or noses whose only livelihood was begging.
FANNY WAS LIVING IN A DISMAL FLAT NEAR ONE OF MANHATTAN’S WORST SLUMS.
The neighborhood was so terrible that people from better areas of the city would hire carriages and, taking a detective for a guide, ride through the area for sordid sightseeing.
Christian workers long had toiled in this district, with few results. The John Street Methodist Church nearby encouraged its laymen to work among the wretched, but they often met with frustration.
In the typical home mission of the 1870s, a full-time team of Christian workers ministered to the down and out. One of the first and most important was the Water Street Mission, located near the East River almost under the shadow of the still-incomplete Brooklyn Bridge. It was founded by a remarkable Irishman, Jeremiah McAuley. Coming from a broken home, he was never educated and remained practically illiterate until he died. At fourteen, he was sent to live with relatives in New York City, where he soon became a member of a street gang. At nineteen, he was convicted mistakenly of highway robbery and served five years at Sing Sing Penitentiary before he could establish his innocence and obtain freedom. During his term, he was converted from nominal Roman Catholicism to fervent Methodism through the efforts of Orville “Awful” Gardner, a prize fighter converted at the beginning of the revivals, who had devoted his life to working with prisoners.
After his discharge, with no friends to give him moral support, Jerry McAuley once again slipped back into the life of a drifter and bum. After several attempts, he finally reformed while in his late twenties.
McAuley became a devoted member of the John Street Methodist Church. He was very concerned about men caught in a plight like his own, and he founded the mission in 1872. Ten years later he opened the Cremorne-McAuley Mission on West Thirty-second Street. In this three-story building with a chapel, kitchen, and living quarters, the homeless and unemployed were fed and clothed. The men shared meals with Jerry and his wife, Maria, upstairs.
Apart from the religious services, where McAuley or an outside speaker would urge the men to enter into a personal relationship with Christ, the guests were not prodded or coerced into religion. Some mission workers tried to make the men promise to become Christians before giving them food or clothes, but not the McAuleys.
Prison authorities came to respect McAuley’s work. When a man had served his term at Sing Sing, he usually was advised, “You had better go down and see McAuley at the Water Street Mission.”
Fanny heard about McAuley and frequently visited the mission. She was much impressed by its founder. “As a speaker, he used simple language, but his manner was so impressive that all men were drawn to him.”
She also became acquainted with other rescue missions. In 1879, Rev. Albert Rulifson founded the Bowery Mission on Bowery Street, and in the early 1880s, the hymn writer became a regular visitor there. She also appeared frequently at Mrs. E. M. Whittemore’s Door of Hope, an establishment for “fallen women.”
Fanny was not a passive spectator. Sometimes she would be asked to give the address. She would tell of the joy it gave to walk in the light and urge the men to come forward and give their lives to Christ. More often, she would go sit in the audience, mingling with the men and women. Her conversational counseling was immensely successful.
FANNY WOULD SIT IN THE AUDIENCE, MINGLING WITH THE MEN AND WOMEN.
On one occasion at the Bowery Mission, she delivered the address, closing with, “If there is a man present who has gone as far as he can go, he is the person with whom I want to shake hands.”
Sure enough, a man appeared. When the meeting was over, Fanny asked him if he wanted “to come out and live a Christian life.”
“Aw, what’s the difference?” he asked. “I ain’t got no friends. Nobody cares for me.”
“You’re mistaken,” Fanny replied, “for the Lord Jesus cares for you—and others care, too! Unless I had a deep interest in your soul’s welfare, I certainly would not be here talking with you on this subject.”
She gave him several scripture passages. The man seemed to be interested and said he would come the next evening and sign the pledge not to use alcohol. Would she come with him?
“Yes,” she said. “I will be here again tomorrow. But although I don’t want to discourage you for signing the pledge, it seems to me that the best pledge you can give is to yield yourself to God.”
The man appeared the next evening and, “before the close of the meeting, we saw the new light in his eyes and felt the change in his voice.”
After she was sixty, Fanny considered her chief occupation that of a home mission worker. Hymn writing was but an extension of her mission work. Many of her hymns were written expressly for use in the missions, urging one to make a decision, describing the joys of a relationship with Jesus, or offering hope to the downcast.
Love was the hallmark of her work. She never served in any official or employed capacity but gave her time freely.
“Don’t tell me a man is a sinner,” she always insisted. “You can’t save a man by telling him of his sins. He knows them already. Tell him there is pardon and love waiting for him. Win his confidence and make him understand that you believe in him, and never give him up!”
Those were her guidelines for mission.
Kindness, she said, helps others not only to come to faith, “but to grow in grace, day by day. There are many timid souls whom we jostle morning and evening, as we pass them by. But if only a kind word were spoken, they might become fully persuaded.”
Fanny was diligent not to hurt anyone’s feelings in her mission work. All the men with whom she worked were “my boys.” Of the trainmen with whom she worked closely through the YMCA for many years, she said, “They are all my boys, and I love them all!” Of the men at the Bowery and Water Street missions, most of whom reeked of alcohol and tobacco and swarmed with vermin after weeks without a bath, she said, “Not one of them was ever ugly to me.”
FANNY WAS DILIGENT NOT TO HURT ANYONE’S FEELINGS IN HER MISSION WORK.
The Bowery Mission, sponsored by The Christian Herald periodical, was her pet mission, and she spent more time there than in any other. She spoke at sixteen annual anniversary services, when those converted and rehabilitated by its ministry appeared as guests of honor.
In 1880, Fanny was invited to the home of her friend William Rock, president of the New York Surface Car Line. A pious man, Rock was concerned about his employees. These men had a hard lot, working seven days a week. They received few kind words and little fellowship but much abuse from testy riders. Because of the work and the wages, Surface Line employees tended to be a gruff, surly lot. Rock, however, felt some provision should be made for their spiritual welfare, and he consulted Fanny.
A waiting room was prepared for an hour-long service each Sunday morning for conductors and drivers. Rock asked Fanny to conduct the services. In a “dingy little room made cheerful with a bit of red carpet and a few flowers and plants,” she began the mission with her “railroad boys.” As elsewhere, her sermons were of love and consolation.
Her work with the streetcar conductors and bus drivers made a great impression in New York. The following year, a delegation called on her from the newly formed Railroad Branch of the YMCA, centered across the Hudson in Hoboken, New Jersey. They asked her to become a regular lecturer for their organization. For the rest of her active life, she undertook speaking tours at YMCAs along the East Coast.
Fanny also was active in temperance work. She felt half the battle for the soul of the down-and-out was won if a way could be found to stop the drinking. She had seen what a curse beer, wine, and whiskey were in the Lower Manhattan tenements. She had observed alcohol’s effects while working with the railroad men and streetcar conductors. She knew how it led to disastrous marital problems and broken homes.
Fanny was totally against the use of alcohol. Perhaps certain people could use it in moderation, but she felt so many others could not that it was far better to encourage total abstinence.
Her solution was the temperance pledge. If one never used liquor, there was no danger of becoming a slave to it. She never identified abstinence with Christian faith or equated signing the pledge with a religious commitment. She believed, however, that total abstinence from alcoholic beverages was a goal any intelligent Christian should aim for.
Moody felt the same way, as did most religious leaders of the day. Total abstinence long had been popular in the Roman Catholic Church. Among those who worked in the missions, those who had seen the full effects of alcoholism, this feeling was especially strong. Jerry McAuley and his associate Sam Hadley were both recovered alcoholics and were “dead against” all liquid intoxicants.
Biglow and Main published many temperance hymns in those years, including an entire temperance hymnal, The Tidal Wave, with songs by Fanny, Annie Hawks, Josephine Pollard, Robert Lowry, and others.
Temperance and all her other activities were linked inextricably to the hymn writing by which Fanny sang her faith and her ideas into the hearts of thousands.
Fanny wrote most of her hymns after midnight; only then did she have the absolute silence required for perfect concentration. The constant shuffle of feet on rickety wooden floors, the strident babble of several languages piercing the thin walls, and the shouts and curses of drunken, quarreling tenants precluded any mental work. Since Fanny was never much of a sleeper, the lateness of the hour did not bother her. Her entire days and evenings were occupied at Biglow and Main, in social work or, increasingly, in public appearances.
FANNY WROTE MOST OF HER HYMNS AFTER MIDNIGHT.
Her hymn writing was connected inextricably with her mysticism. When the tenement noises had died away and she sat alone, Fanny entered into prayer and arrived at a meditative state she often referred to as “the Valley of Silence.” She believed she entered into direct communion with the spiritual world, often feeling her soul sally forth from her body in ethereal reverie. In the rapture and ecstasy of “Deep Meditation,” as she called it, Fanny often felt she could hear the unearthly harmonies of “the Celestial Choirs.” She claimed she felt the presence not only of Christ and His saints and angels but of relatives and friends who had “passed beyond the silent vale.”
So meditating, she often received inspiration for her hymns. Toward the end of her life, she wrote in a poem:
In the hush of the Valley of Silence,
I dream all the songs that I sing,
And the music floats down the dim valley
’Til each finds a word for a wing,
That, to men, like the dove of the Deluge,
The message of peace they may bring.
Sometimes her soul was flooded with inspiration so powerful she could not “find words beautiful enough, or thoughts deep enough, for expression.”
While it was in the Valley of Silence that many of her hymns were inspired, others received initial inspiration from events in the material world. She frequently was given a hymn topic by one of her musician friends. She would keep a subject in mind as she went about her affairs, sometimes for days, weeks, or months, until something happened to interest her in writing about it. The death of a friend might lead to a hymn such as “The Morning Land.” Something that occurred at a mission might draw her to the subject of “The Blessed Feast.”
One day in 1874, Fanny was at a loss as to how she would pay her rent, so she decided to pray for it. Just then a man appeared whom she had never met. He left at once after pressing a ten-dollar bill into her hand—the exact amount of the rent. This inspired a hymn based on a topic Lowry had given her: “All the Way My Saviour Leads Me.” That night, the words flowed:
All the way my Saviour leads me;
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy
Who through life has been my guide?
She did not necessarily need a theme in advance. A chance remark or event could be her inspiration. A twilight talk while staying with the Doanes in Cincinnati led her to write “I Am Thine, O Lord.”
Sankey once told her about a miner who had come forward in one of the campaigns in England and begged to be prayed for. The leader of the postservice prayer meeting, perhaps because it was getting late, suggested the miner come again the next night. But the miner cried piteously, “No! It must be settled tonight! Tomorrow may be too late!” The leader gave in, and the miner left the meeting “saved.” The next day he perished in an explosion.
Fanny was so moved that she composed a hymn called “Shall I Be Saved To-Night?”
On another occasion, Fanny was a guest of William and Sara Kirkpatrick in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Along with other guests, they were discussing the transitory nature of earthly life.
“How soon we grow weary of earthly pleasures, however bright they may be,” Fanny mused.
“Well,” said the professor, “we are…never weary of the grand old song!”
“WE ARE NEVER WEARY OF THE GRAND OLD SONG!”
Fanny instantly seized upon the rhythm of the words as ideal for a hymn. She startled everybody by suddenly crying, “But what comes next?”
Her host paused, somewhat confused.
“Why, glory to God, hallelujah!” Fanny continued. She insisted that Kirkie seat himself at the piano to compose an appropriate tune to the words she dictated on the spot:
We are never, never weary of the grand old song,
Glory to God, hallelujah!
We can sing it in the Spirit as we march along,
Glory to God, hallelujah!
Later in life, shortly after her mother died, the poet had a vision in which Mercy spoke to her from “beyond the river.” That night, Fanny was moved to compose this verse:
Over the river they call me,
Friends that are dear to my heart,
Soon I shall meet them in glory,
Never, no never to part.
In 1874, in a spell of deep depression, she cried out, “Dear Lord, hold my hand!” She wrote, “Almost at once, the sweet peace that comes of perfect assurance returned to my heart, and my gratitude for the evidence of answered prayer sang itself into the lines of the hymn”:
Hold Thou my hand, so weak am I and helpless
I dare not take one step without Thy aid;
Hold Thou my hand, for then, oh, loving Saviour,
No dread of ill shall make my soul afraid.
Sometimes, as in the case of “Blessed Assurance,” “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” and others, a composer would play a tune and ask her to write words for it. Fanny would listen, and if the tune “said something,” she could write a hymn. But it was very important what the tune “said.” After she listened to it once or twice, she might tell the composer, “No, I cannot write any words for this. The tune does not say anything.”
Biglow and Main required her to write on many topics that did not inspire her at all. She was expected to supply a quota of hymns regardless of whether she felt like writing. She confessed that “there are some days, or at least hours, when I could not compose a hymn if all the world were laid at my feet as a promised recompense.”
“Give me a New Year’s hymn,” Doane might demand on December 30. “Fan, I’d like you to compose twenty selections for my Easter collection,” Hugh Main might say, “and I’d like them in two weeks.” “I’d like three invitational hymns for my services,” Jerry McAuley might request.
MOST OF THE HYMNS SHE WROTE WERE UNINSPIRED; SHE HAD TO FORCE HERSELF TO WRITE THEM.
Since Fanny seldom refused, she would have to “build a mood—or try to draw one around me.”
Hymn writing was difficult if she had no inspiration. She would “pray to God to give me the thoughts and feelings wherewith to write my hymn.” Then, “after a time—perhaps not unmingled with struggle—the ideas…come.” Indeed, most of the hymns she wrote were uninspired; she had to force herself to write them.
While writing hymns, Fanny had a peculiar habit of holding a little book upside down in front of her face. This was a ritual, apparently like that of a baseball pitcher who will not shave the day he pitches or the prima donna who will not go onstage unless she kisses her mother’s picture. For Fanny, it was a superstitious habit, like her practice of always carrying a miniature silk American flag. She claimed, “Words seem to come more promptly when the little volume is in my grasp.”
The contents of the book seemed less important to her than the size and shape. Often she used a Bible, prayer book, or psaltery—or even a secular book. She liked a book small enough that her long, slender fingers could fit around it.
When trying to compose a hymn for which she was not inspired, she prayed, and when she was “sure that I am in condition to reach the minds and hearts of my constituency and sing them something worthy for them to hear,” she began working with the measure and melody. She often used a popular tune like “Sweet Hour of Prayer” or “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” as the model on which to construct her verses.
The hymn had to be constructed for maximum singability. How she constructed the meter and placed the accents was very important. “For if there is a false accent or a mistake in metre, the hymn cannot stand much chance of proving a success; or, at least, its possibilities are very much lessened. Among the millions of hymns that have been sung and forgotten, many, no doubt, contain deep and pious thought and feeling, but have been crippled or killed by the roughness of some line, or the irregularity of one or more measures.”
If no tune was provided already, or if she did not think of one already existing on which to hang the words, she carefully tried to construct her verses “in such a manner that the composer of the music may readily grasp the spirit of the poem and compose notes that will perfect the expression of the poet’s meaning.” This was a problem, for, as we have seen, many of the men who set her words to music were amateurs. There was no problem of this sort when a tune was provided, as Fanny was a master versifier and had no trouble composing verses for specific tunes.
She preferred to have a tune rather than a topic. If the tune were good, she could write a good poem; if it were bad, she could reject it. If she wrote a good poem to a given topic, she could not be sure it would be given a good tune.
When a poem came from divine inspiration, it came to Fanny as a whole and quite rapidly. Otherwise, it came slower. Her hymns often came by stanzas and, in many instances, verse by verse. When she was not inspired, she often had to labor for hours to get a satisfactory poem. With “The Bright Forever,” she struggled two days without coming up with a single line. Suddenly, “almost in a twinkling, the words came, stanza by stanza, as fast as I could memorize them.”
WHEN A POEM CAME FROM DIVINE INSPIRATION, IT CAME TO FANNY AS A WHOLE AND QUITE RAPIDLY.
Usually, she completed the first draft in a single night, often after two or three hours. If there were time, she “let it lie for a few days in the writing-desk of my mind, so to speak, until I have the leisure to prune it, to read through it with the eyes of my memory, and, in other ways, mould it into as presentable shape as possible.”
But she did not always have time to prune and revise because of pressure from publishers to provide multiple poems in a short time. Her habit of composing two or three poems for every topic or tune heightened the pressure. Thus the large majority of Fanny’s nine thousand hymns were written in great haste and, as hymnologist John Julian characterized, were “weak and poor.” But on those rare occasions when Fanny was inspired and could take her time, the hymns were often of excellent quality.
During these years of mass writing, Fanny dictated lines to a secretary. Hugh Main described Fanny’s very unusual work methods: “She has her hymns written down for her and will dictate to two persons at once, or two lines of one poem to one person, and two lines of another hymn to another person and never forgets herself.”
People marveled at her wonderful memory. They were dumbfounded at her ability to commit a seemingly endless number of hymns to memory and dictate them without apparent difficulty, one after another. But whenever they made a great deal of this “talent,” Fanny would give them a lecture, maintaining she simply was using a gift—memory—which God gives to everyone, but which most people with sight lose through laziness. She criticized “memorandum tablets and carefully kept journals and ledgers” as destructive to “the books of the mind.”
For each hymn, Fanny was paid a dollar or two by Biglow and Main and most other publishing houses. No matter how successful the hymn might turn out to be, she would get nothing more. The words became the exclusive property of the composer, and no one else could set them to music.
In most instances, even the composer made comparatively little money from the hymn. The publishing company received most of the profits. Through the years, many people felt Fanny was being exploited, and she was urged to insist on a higher wage for her services. But she felt that in writing hymns, she was doing a favor for her friends. More importantly, she was doing God’s work. Her recompense was the number of souls being led to God through the hymns.