21. Memories Of Eighty Years
21
MEMORIES OF EIGHTY YEARS
Fanny was on the road again in the autumn of 1905, lecturing in Massachusetts and New Jersey. During the time she found herself at home, she was busily engaged putting the finishing touches on her autobiography, Memories of Eighty Years. This seemingly innocuous project had a stormy career beginning several years before.
Because she was an internationally known figure who had lived a long and interesting life, it is understandable that many people had pressed her to write an autobiography. Partial accounts of her life and career had appeared over the years in various magazines and journals. Lowry had written a brief sketch of her life as an introduction to Bells at Evening, and two or three years later, Will Carleton’s articles had appeared in his Every Where magazine. Fanny was so modest, she could not understand why anyone would be interested in her life, but Adelbert White convinced her of a genuine public interest. He offered to help compile the volume, and Carrie also volunteered to help. So in April 1903, Fanny dispatched White to the New York Institution for the Blind for information concerning the years she was there.
Complications rapidly developed. Carleton, knowing the interest of the public in a Fanny Crosby autobiography, told Fanny of his intention to organize his articles about her into book form. He offered her the same royalty he received from Harper’s for his own books of poetry, but Fanny told him she was not at all concerned about the royalties and gave him permission to organize the autobiography. She would have preferred to write her own autobiography, but she was reluctant to deny Carleton permission to do with his articles as he wished.
This did not please White and the personnel of Biglow and Main. Not only did her friends feel Fanny should write her own autobiography, they remembered the hard feelings associated with the Carleton articles when they were published and how they had interfered with the sales of Bells at Evening. They suspected Fanny Crosby’s Life-Story, by Herself was simply a moneymaking scheme Carleton was undertaking for his own profit.
Not unexpectedly, Phoebe Knapp became involved. She was not satisfied with anything anyone connected with Biglow and Main had done for Fanny. She enlisted the services of Methodist Bishop Charles Caldwell McCabe (1836–1906), a friend of Phoebe’s and Fanny’s. Phoebe apparently told him Fanny was destitute. McCabe began to assert publicly that Fanny was in severe financial straits and was “willing to accept financial assistance.” McCabe did not consult Fanny except to ask her if she would be willing to accept “a testimonial of [the] love and admiration” of the American people. She could not very well refuse that. She was never told this “testimonial” would be drawn from her admirers’ purses based on a “plea of poverty.”
McCabe and Phoebe convinced Carleton to circulate a “publisher’s advertisement” to accompany Fanny Crosby’s Life-Story. It gave the impression that poor Aunt Fanny had no place to live and that proceeds from the book would help buy her a home.
Carleton’s Fanny Crosby’s Life-Story, by Herself went over like a lead balloon with Fanny’s publishers. The text said nothing unfavorable about them, but neither did it say anything positive about the firm and its members, except that Fanny had cordial, “even affectionate” relations with them. The book dealt primarily with Fanny’s early life, before she had become associated with Biglow and Main. Main, Doane, and others indignantly complained they did not receive the recognition they deserved for their part in Fanny’s career.
Fanny’s friends had more serious reasons for disapproving of Carleton’s book. Initially, Carleton had promised Fanny 25 percent of the profits, but for various reasons, he cut the percentage to 10. Most of Fanny’s friends felt that if anyone were taking advantage of Fanny, it was not Biglow and Main—who arranged for the poet to reap all the profits of Bells at Evening—but Carleton. They were incensed that nearly a year after publication, Life-Story had brought Fanny exactly $285 in royalties.
NEARLY A YEAR AFTER PUBLICATION, LIFE-STORY HAD BROUGHT FANNY EXACTLY $285 IN ROYALTIES.
White and Carrie, in particular, were concerned about the future of Fanny’s own autobiography, which the poet still planned to compile. If she ever got around to writing it, they were going to work out an arrangement similar to that with Bells at Evening, in which all the proceeds from the book’s sale would go to her. Publication of Carleton’s autobiography doubtless would hurt the market for Fanny’s own account.
Fanny tried to stay out of the imbroglio, which certainly embarrassed her. She was not concerned whether she received 10 percent, 25 percent, or nothing at all. According to Carleton’s biographer, “with that perfect candor and generosity characteristic of her,” she told Carleton “that the articles were his property, as he had written them.” Nevertheless, she was concerned because the “autobiography” told little of her life after she became a hymn writer. She felt she owed the public a more accurate and complete picture.
Fanny also disliked the implication that she was kept in poverty by the stinginess of Biglow and Main. If she had ever been in poverty, it was by choice. Now, in Bridgeport, she felt she was living in almost embarrassing luxury because of Sankey’s kindness.
In December, White and Doane convinced Fanny to make a public statement in the Watchman, a widely circulated religious magazine. She said the Carleton compilation was “not an adequate biography, especially of the last forty years of my life.” She decried the published implication “that the book is being sold to raise money to buy me a house.”
She sent a letter to the editor of another religious magazine, dealing with the fact that Bishop McCabe had been raising funds for her. While she permitted him to allow for her friends to make her “a testimonial of their love,” she never understood that this appeal would be made on “the plea of [her] poverty.”
Even Ira Sankey was unable to remain silent. When he learned of “Mrs. Crosby’s matter,” as Doane had called it, he was so enraged that he made his last public statement in a brief article published in The Christian magazine. He implied that the Carleton business had been of satanic origin.
“Mrs. Crosby’s matter” came to an end shortly before Fanny Crosby Day in 1905, when Carleton, who had assumed the commotion raised against him was simply the work of “interested friends,” realized Fanny herself was offended and stopped lecturing and advertising for the book. In the midst of the controversy, his wife died suddenly, and now it was just as well with him that the matter be dropped. Neither Carleton nor the bishop nor Phoebe had any fraudulent intent but were sincerely motivated to help Fanny—who realized this and remained on good terms with all three until their deaths.
It was during the winter of 1904–1905 that Fanny did most of the work on her autobiography, Memories of Eighty Years. She was assisted by Carrie and Eva Cleaveland, the stenographer, who took down what she dictated, and by Adelbert White, who organized her rambling recollections into a coherent narrative. In the autobiography, she emphasized her hymns and the stories behind them. She recounted cases in which the hymns had helped someone.
DURING THE WINTER OF 1904–1905 FANNY DID MOST OF THE WORK ON HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMORIES OF EIGHTY YEARS.
Memories of Eighty Years, like so much Fanny did, was written in haste and suffers accordingly. When it went to press in 1906, it was still in many ways rough and disconnected. It praises those whom she had worked with closely during the years. It describes some of her hymn writing and home mission activities, but it is less interesting, less readable, and less finished than Carleton’s production. The articles from which Carleton compiled his book had been prepared by Fanny in more relaxed circumstances, under less pressure. So the earlier account in many ways is livelier, wittier, and slightly more coherent.
As with Bells at Evening, all the proceeds went to Fanny. Grover Cleveland contributed a written endorsement in the publisher’s announcement. The aging Doane, blue-lipped, watery-eyed, and trembling, gave a series of promotional lectures on Fanny, just as Carleton had done to promote Life-Story. Even though the overall sales were disappointing to White, they netted Fanny about a thousand dollars.
What with the autobiographies, the donations resulting from lectures by Carleton and Doane, and the love offerings of Fanny Crosby Day, Aunt Fanny was catapulted, albeit reluctantly, from poverty into something resembling affluence. She never changed her lifestyle; the increased income simply meant she had more to give away. She did save some money, but only so she might provide something for relatives when she died.
AUNT FANNY WAS CATAPULTED, ALBEIT RELUCTANTLY, FROM POVERTY INTO SOMETHING RESEMBLING AFFLUENCE.
Aunt Fanny, as she was now called almost universally, was writing fewer hymns. She had cut back writing from about two hundred hymns a year to about fifty, a quota she was to maintain the rest of her life. Biglow and Main were turning out fewer new hymnals. Most of their hymnals now reproduced hymns from earlier popular collections. In 1903, Fanny had written more than seventy hymns for Funk and Wagnall’s Gloria Deo collection, but that was the only additional book to which she was asked to contribute.
After the publication of Memories of Eighty Years, Fanny’s days were filled with concern for “Sister Carrie.” In the summer of 1906, Carrie developed intestinal cancer. She failed gradually to the point where she could no longer care for herself nor Fanny for her. Both women were forced to leave the Becker house and stay with their niece, Florence Morris Booth. Florence and Henry Booth and their two nearly grown children lived in a fine house on Wells Street. Carrie died the following June at sixty-three.
Many of her friends feared for Fanny’s well-being, knowing how close she had been to her younger sister. Indeed, Fanny was all but crushed by Carrie’s death. No sooner had she buried Carrie than she was dealt another blow: Jule’s daughter Ida fell ill with intestinal problems and died in September at forty-eight.
Although Fanny felt profoundly the loss of her sister and niece who had provided her with so much companionship in late years, she resigned herself, saying, “Well, it is God’s will, and they are much happier.”