18. Old, Poor, But Popular
18
OLD, POOR, BUT POPULAR
In the 1890s, the worn little woman who was the queen of the gospel song was a familiar figure along Manhattan’s streets. She was frequently recognized, perpetually smiling—as much as her ill-fitting dentures would permit her—and clinging to the hand of a companion. By now, she was quite bent and stooped and wore a curly brown wig over her thin gray hair. The style of her gowns and bonnets was of the 1840s. But her energy, verve, mental acuity, enjoyment of life, and sense of humor did not seem to be that of a woman of seventy-five. Despite her ravaged form, Fanny seriously contended she felt no different than she had at sixteen.
She kept up a round of activity that would have exhausted many a person forty years younger. She still provided Biglow and Main with two or three hymns a week and wrote for Sweney and Kirkpatrick. She still worked tirelessly at reforming the drunkards, dope fiends, and derelicts at the Bowery, Water Street, and Cremorne missions and at the Door of Hope. Her time was constantly booked for speeches and lectures for the Railroad Branch of the YMCA and at churches and grange halls in various towns and cities. During spare moments, she did not rock by the fire but engaged in intellectually stimulating conversation or music with Sankey, Phoebe, and other friends. When she talked, she usually was knitting or sewing, too, for she was nervous if her hands were not constantly occupied.
SHE WAS NERVOUS IF HER HANDS WERE NOT CONSTANTLY OCCUPIED.
In 1896, Fanny moved to Brooklyn, taking a room alone in a poor section of town on Lafayette Avenue. She was not far from the Sankeys and Stebbinses, who regularly looked in on her. Van was now boarding with his friends, the Underhills, in a fashionable apartment on South Third Street in Brooklyn. Fanny frequently called on this “good friend.”
D. L. Moody arrived in Manhattan to win more of the unbelieving to Christ. Christian workers were beginning to realize there were just as many heathen on the streets of New York and Washington as there were on those of Timbuktu or Calcutta, and Moody promised his biggest campaign since 1876. But the almost rabid religious fervor that had characterized the late 1850s and the next two decades had subsided in the ’80s. As the twentieth century approached, the masses were lukewarm toward religion. It was the “Gilded Age” when many devoted their lives to building fortunes. At the same time, increasing numbers of discontented poor were finding their solace not in religion, as their ancestors had, but in socialism, communism, and anarchism.
Moody was welcomed with only a shadow of the enthusiasm that had greeted him in 1876. One well-known minister maintained there was no evidence that Moody’s past campaigns had made any substantial or permanent increase in church attendance and expressed doubts whether the projected November campaign would be helpful or desirable for the local churches. Others believed a revival in the New York area was desperately needed, but they questioned whether a Moody revival would fill the bill.
On November 8, the grizzled evangelist opened his campaign in the Carnegie Music Hall. He had intended to “speak to the unconverted,” but as he addressed the typical middle-aged, churchy audience he had deplored in his 1890 “Bible readings,” he changed his mind. After making it perfectly clear that his hearers were more diligent in their worldly business than in their Christian faith, he lambasted his hearers for their lack of social action on a personal level. “Send your carriage out and give poor people a drive in the park once in a while, and they’ll call you an angel, I’ll warrant.” Moody was not so much concerned with working to solve the evils of society as with individuals. Society could not be changed until individuals were.
In the next few days, Moody moved out into the local churches. He wanted these congregations to act as “fire-centers from which to spread the flames” of revival. He had come to realize that at least in big cities he could win few to Christ through mass meetings. The giant auditoriums rented by his supporters were filled largely with people who were already Christian, not the indifferent or the “infidels” he wanted to reach. But he was convinced every man and woman in New York City could be reached if he could get the cooperation of local pastors and congregations. He wanted the pastors to witness house to house. He wanted pastors and people to hold small, intimate, neighborhood “cottage meetings” for prayer, discussion, and devotion.
The parishioners would not go out to encourage their unchurched friends to come, but they flocked to hear Moody at his first “fire-center” meeting at the Marble Collegiate Church.
Sankey was with his old friend this time, but his charm had faded considerably. He was described by one observer as “an immense, bilious man with eyes surrounded by flaccid, pendent, baggy wrinkles.” His gestures were “unctuous,” and he rolled his eyes “in an affected manner” as he sang in a ravaged voice.
Moody moved the meetings to Cooper Union, an educational institution in downtown Manhattan in whose Great Hall he undertook another series of mass meetings. Here he thundered against the “higher criticism” of the Bible, through which many pages of scripture were being dismissed as spurious or explained away as myth or legend.
For Moody, things went from bad to worse. After several mass meetings at Cooper Union, he carried the campaign to an old brownstone church on Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue. The church was virtually empty as he lumbered onto the platform for the first address.
“Where are the people?” he asked, bewildered.
The pastor of the church shrugged his shoulders and said drily, “On the streets.”
Moody was angered, feeling the pastor had not done his part in trying to recruit an audience. “Well,” he roared, “why don’t you go out and get them?”
He held up the service until the minister and several other local clergymen could go out and round up more people. They frantically searched high and low, but nobody seemed interested. Finally, two of them entered a bar. To the men who stood about, they asked sheepishly, “Don’t you want to come to the church on the corner of Second Avenue and hear Dwight L. Moody preach?”
“Who is Moody?” growled one of the men, who went on drinking with his companions.
Moody had to admit “complete defeat” in his 1896 campaign to bring the Gospel to New York City. Like many of his friends who ran the rescue missions, he must have felt that somehow he was losing his grip on the masses.
Fanny’s hymn “Saved by Grace” became a consolation to the old man. He had it sung at nearly every service, sometimes three times a night. As it was sung, the preacher would sit with a far-off look in his eyes while tears ran down his red cheeks.
It was during this time that Dr. Lowry, white-bearded and deaf, decided to do something to secure an income for Fanny’s closing years. The demand for hymns and hymnals was diminishing. He and Doane were working on what would prove to be their last effort, The Royal Hymnal. The good doctor anticipated that in the coming years, Fanny would have considerably less work and less income. As it was, she never earned more than four hundred dollars a year— a small sum even for that time.
SHE NEVER EARNED MORE THAN FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS A YEAR—A SMALL SUM EVEN FOR THAT TIME.
So Lowry decided to have Fanny publish another collection of poems, Bells at Evening. In addition to an excellent biographical sketch written by Lowry, it included poems from Fanny’s three earlier volumes, now long since out of print. There were also secular poems and what Fanny considered to be the best of her hymns. Bells at Evening, with 224 pages, sold at fifty cents a copy, and Biglow and Main saw to it that all the profit went to Fanny. The volume sold nicely, and there were several editions.
Some felt Fanny still was not sufficiently remunerated for her great work. Many thought she should be well-to-do, as were many of her peers. Moody owned a fine house in Northfield, Sankey a fine house in Brooklyn and a summer home in Northfield. Why shouldn’t Fanny be as well off as her friends?
Phoebe Knapp, probably her richest friend, was especially determined to do something. Unable to persuade Fanny to accept monetary gifts, she approached the poet Will Carleton (1845–1912), author of many volumes of popular sentimental verse and editor of the magazine Every Where. He had known Fanny for several years and loved and admired her. Phoebe suggested he take down from Fanny’s dictation the story of her early life and publish it in serial form in Every Where, which Carleton consented to do. Part of the profit from the articles would go to Fanny, and her financial situation could improve without her feeling she was receiving charity.
Carleton was appalled by the conditions in which the world-beloved hymn writer was living. While she was “not in actual want,” her one-room dwelling in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood was not, he believed, worthy of someone with her reputation.
Carleton drew from her “detached narratives” an account of her life story. He wrote the articles, secured her approval, and published them in Every Where over a period of months, paying her ten dollars for each article.
Hugh Main, Howard Doane, and others in the firm of Biglow and Main were offended because Carleton implied and Phoebe Knapp insisted they were not paying Fanny enough. Indignantly, they pointed out that Fanny was receiving far more from Bells at Evening than from Carleton’s articles. Justifiably, they pointed out that far from helping Fanny financially, Carleton was hurting her by providing competition and cutting down the sales of a book whose profits would benefit her far more than would the articles.
This was the beginning of a quarrel between Doane and Main and Carleton and Phoebe that would reach a climax within a few years. No one seemed to realize Fanny was poor by choice. Although she appreciated the efforts of these friends in her behalf, Fanny did not want to be wealthy. She could have insisted Biglow and Main pay a higher fee; many hymn writers less celebrated than she charged up to ten dollars for their efforts. But she settled for the minimum and never set a price for her services as a speaker, often refusing honoraria. When forced to accept money, she always protested she was being given too much. She gave away practically all she received and prayed for food, rent, or whatever she needed from day to day.
NO ONE SEEMED TO REALIZE FANNY WAS POOR BY CHOICE.
Moody proposed to Main that instead of paying Fanny two dollars for each hymn, he pay her a regular weekly salary of eight dollars. Main consented. This brought in $416 a year, roughly the equivalent of what she had been receiving by being paid for each hymn. But Moody and Main knew in coming years there would be fewer hymns published, and this new arrangement would ensure that Fanny received a steady income, even though she would be asked to write fewer hymns.
Fanny’s friends had good reason for their anxiety. She was close to eighty, and she looked terrible. The fact that she persisted in living alone worried both friends and family. The sisters in Bridgeport urged her to come north and make her home with them, but Fanny refused.
Once during this period, in Northfield, she fell down the steps of Moody’s house and was seriously cut. Shortly after recovering, she suffered a heart attack in Brooklyn, and for a while her life hung in the balance. For days she was in a partial coma. She made a complete recovery but refused the urgings of her friends and doctors to rest.
Fanny resumed her former work in the New York night missions as soon as she could. She also continued to travel and lecture in New England, insisting she needed no companion. In the summer of 1897, she revisited the scenes of her childhood—perhaps for the first time since she had left to attend the Institution for the Blind. Invited to address the graduating women of Drew Seminary in Carmel, near Gayville, she delighted the audience with reminiscences about the locality in the days of her youth.
In August, she journeyed once more to central New York. Named poet laureate of the Chautauqua Circle at Tully Lake, she had consented to attend their summer Round Table and deliver at least one major poetic address. At Assembly Park at Tully Lake near Syracuse, one of about a hundred Chautauqua centers thriving at the time, audiences were instructed and entertained by speakers and performers from diverse fields. There might be a reading from Hamlet, a lecture by a Syracuse doctor on the eye, a lecture by a local woman on her recent trip to Japan, and a solo by a local tenor. Fanny, a nationally known poet, was the star attraction.
Amazingly, in addition to her daily recitations, she fulfilled speaking engagements at nearby places such as a rescue mission, state fair, Indian reservation, the Elmwood Grange, a home for the elderly, and a church.
Somehow she found time for relaxation at Tully Lake. Eliza Hewitt annually attended the Round Table and was her companion there. Here Fanny enjoyed the friendship of a woman who was almost like a sister to her.
Fanny was never too busy to receive “pilgrims” who came to call. Her hosts, the John Roberts family in Tully, realized she needed time to prepare her poems and addresses, so they tried to shoo away the callers who constantly sought her out during the evenings. But Fanny would not hear of it! She would interrupt whatever she was doing to spend time with her callers.
FANNY WAS NEVER TOO BUSY TO RECEIVE “PILGRIMS” WHO CAME TO CALL.
In January 1898, Moody returned to New York for a two month campaign. His meetings at Carnegie Hall were not so much for converting unbelievers as for enlightening and empowering those who were already faithful. He had concluded that it was the individual Christian who had to be the evangelist in the modern city, witnessing to unbelievers who were neighbors or coworkers.
Moody was sixty-one and looked older than seventy, unwieldy and dropsical, moving with difficulty, often gasping for breath. He spoke much about death.
At first, the meetings were attended heavily, chiefly by elderly women who “sobbed convulsively” during the service. Sankey did not appear. The music leadership was divided between Victor Benke, the young organist of the Bowery Mission; J. H. Burke, a Chicago soloist; and stout, gray, ailing John Sweney.
The campaign closed March 20, and Moody looked terribly weary. After a good beginning, his crowds had dwindled to a nearly empty hall. In May and August, he returned to speak in the New York area, raising funds for evangelical work among soldiers preparing to leave for the Spanish-American War. His efforts met with little success.
While the popularity of other celebrities in the religious world of her generation declined, Fanny’s grew. This perhaps owed to the fact that she spoke to small groups and came across better as a personality than preachers like Moody and Whittle, who appeared amid a sea of humanity in cavernous auditoriums. It also may have owed to her positive approach. The typical nineteenth-century preacher chided, scolded, and threatened; Fanny, assuming her audience already knew they were sinners, offered messages of comfort and encouragement.
Then, too, she possessed something special that could draw the unchurched to meetings: her blindness. And, of course, much of Fanny’s appeal stemmed from her charisma and indefinable mystique that overwhelmed all who met her. Even those who bitterly criticized the quality of her hymns had to admit that as a person she had an irresistible charm and indisputable holiness.