3. Writing Verse
3
WRITING VERSE
From the time it was apparent Fanny was blind, Mercy did not give up hope for a cure. After five years, aided by generous contributions from neighbors for miles around, she felt she had scraped up enough money to go to New York City to procure an appointment for Fanny to be examined by Dr. Valentine Mott—one of America’s finest surgeons—of Columbia University School of Medicine.
For Fanny, the rather tedious trip by market wagon to Sing Sing and by sloop to New York was a wonderful, exciting adventure. She delighted in the sea yarns the captain told her, and she, in turn, regaled the crew and passengers with little songs she had learned. The skipper enjoyed them immensely and would send for her, tell her he was “blue,” and ask her to sing for him.
But in New York, the cheerfulness waned. Mercy and Fanny were taken to Mott’s offices, where an eye specialist had been called in. They confirmed the suspicion of Mercy and her parents that the “doctor” who had treated Fanny Jane’s eyes had utterly ruined them. The poultice had burned her corneas, causing scar tissue to form. This made for a kind of vision, or lack of vision, which might be compared to looking through a glazed or iced window. The child could experience some light and color but little else. There was absolutely nothing they could do; the damage was irreversible.
THE CHILD COULD EXPERIENCE SOME LIGHT AND COLOR BUT LITTLE ELSE.
The words sank into Mercy’s heart like daggers. Normally stern and staid, she burst into tears. Five years of saving and scraping, five years of hope and anticipation, had come to naught.
Fanny was not totally blind. Even in her eighties, she could distinguish day from night. At that point in life, a friend remarked that she wished Fanny could see the sunlight on a particularly beautiful day. Fanny responded, “I know it. I feel it. And I see it, too!”
Little Fanny Jane had what amounted almost to a religious experience aboard the sloop returning from New York that spring afternoon in 1825.
As I sat there on the deck, amid the glories of the departing day, the low murmur of the waves soothed my soul into a delightful peace. Their music was translated into tones that were like a human voice, and for many years their melody suggested to my imagination the call of Genius as she was struggling to be heard from her prison house in some tiny shell lying perchance on the bottom of the river.*
Back home, Grandma Crosby was there to comfort them and tell Mercy, as she was wont to do, that if the Lord did not
grant a request, then it was best not to have it. She assured her distraught daughter that God would provide for little Fanny Jane and that He had a useful future for her.
About this time, Mercy was forced to move to North Salem, six miles south of Gayville, where she was employed as a housekeeper. There was room in her employer’s house for Fanny, so she decided to take her daughter with her.
North Salem was inhabited largely by Quakers, and Fanny Jane quickly learned what was called the “plain language.”
Unlike gentle Grandma, Mercy was very strict. Whenever Fanny Jane was mischievous, Grandma talked to her very gently until she convinced the child of her fault and brought her to tears of penitence. Mercy was much freer with the rod than her mother, and this took some adjustment on the part of the child. Of her mother, she later said, “She was of the generation you had to mind!”
From her pictures, Mercy seems to have been the stern-visaged pioneer woman: spare and erect, with a long, bony face and hawklike nose, hard, intense eyes, and pursed lips. She was not all discipline, however; she was a witty woman who liked a good time. She was frantically devoted to her handicapped daughter’s welfare. To the extent her meager means would permit, Mercy would buy toys for the little girl’s amusement.
Fanny played “early and late” with the other village children. The peasants of North Salem soon learned, to their amazement, that the little blind girl was certain to be a party to any childish mischief. Something of a tomboy, Fanny learned to climb a tree “with the agility of a squirrel” and ride a horse bareback, clinging to the mane for dear life as the steed galloped. She could climb stone walls and, when she tore her dress, she “managed to keep [the torn section] out of Mother’s sight until I fancied she would not notice it, which was a rare occurrence indeed.”
FANNY LEARNED TO CLIMB A TREE “WITH THE AGILITY OF A SQUIRREL.”
Grandma made it a point to visit Fanny several times a week in North Salem. While Mercy was busy with the domestic chores of the household where she lived and worked, Eunice continued to educate her grandchild, giving her portions of the Bible to memorize when she was about eight.
Gradually, Fanny came to realize she was unlike other children. The strange, unknown phenomenon of eyesight seemed necessary for her to obtain most, if not all, of her ambitions. To be a sailor, preacher, or musician, she had to go to school. Yet the path of knowledge appeared hopelessly barred to her. It irked her to hear people say, “Oh, you cannot do this because you are blind, you know,” and “You can never go there, because it would not be worthwhile; you could not see anything if you did.”
Fanny in later years always insisted blind people can accomplish almost everything sighted persons can. But for the little blind girl in the Puritan hinterlands of New York State, there seemed little hope of ever realizing her ambitions. She became pensive and at times grew “very blue and depressed.” It was then she would creep off alone, kneel as Grandma had taught her, and ask God whether her blindness was to exclude her from being one of His children. She would ask Him “whether, in all His great world, He had not some little place for me.” Always of a mystical inclination, she felt she heard His voice saying, “Do not be discouraged, little girl. You shall some day be happy and useful, even in your blindness.”
As a result of these prayers, her period of despondency passed for a season, and at age eight, she was able to compose her first attempt at verse:
Oh, what a happy child I am,
Although I cannot see!
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be!
How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don’t!
So weep or sigh because I’m blind,
I cannot—nor I won’t.
Although she had not had the “conversion experience” so essential in the Calvinism of her mother and grandmother, God was from the first a part of Fanny’s life, and church in North Salem came to mean much to her. The only church was the Society of Friends. But the Quaker meeting, in which the speaker delivered his sermons in a singsong manner, gasping for breath between phrases, was quite different from the deadly Puritan services at Southeast, so they struck her fancy. The singing, especially, caught her imagination. Throughout her life she would remember the “doleful” hymns. These grave, somber hymns were common in New England at that time. They frequently were macabre poems set to eerie, fuguing tunes.
THE QUAKER MEETING SINGING, ESPECIALLY, CAUGHT HER IMAGINATION.
In North Salem, as in Southeast, a great emphasis was placed on an emotional conversion experience, without which one should dread to die. There was a great emphasis on mortality and the certainty of hell for the unrepentant. Numerous hymns told of careless sinners, who were overtaken by sudden death and were lost. Even as a little girl, Fanny was revolted by scare tactics, which often hardened sinners in their unbelief rather than accomplishing the intended effect. This would impact her lifelong attitude toward religious work.
When Fanny was eight or nine, Mercy moved again, this time over the state line to nearby Ridgefield, Connecticut, where she found domestic work. She was unable to live in the same house where she worked, and Fanny was left during the day in the care of the landlady, a Mrs. Hawley. Fanny Jane carried permanent memories with her of the Quakers in North Salem. Although she soon lost the habit of calling people “thee” and “thou,” at times throughout her life she loved to don Quaker dress.
Mercy and Fanny lived on the village green. Here they were once more in Presbyterian country. Mrs. Hawley was an arch Calvinist, “an old Puritan Presbyterian who took everything in the Sacred Writ as literally as the most orthodox Scotchman could do.” She was not gloomy or severe, as many Puritans were, but “kind.” She “loved beautiful things.” Fanny was too far away from Southeast for Grandma to come regularly, but Mrs. Hawley resolved to take up Eunice’s work. She set Fanny to the task of memorizing the entire Bible, giving the child a number of chapters to learn each week—often as many as five. These were repeated line by line, drilled into the little girl’s head “precept upon precept.”
MRS. HAWLEY SET FANNY TO THE TASK OF MEMORIZING THE ENTIRE BIBLE.
Being young and gifted with a phenomenal memory, Fanny had no trouble mastering Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, as well as the four Gospels, by the end of the year. At the end of two years, Fanny could repeat by rote not only the entire Pentateuch and all four Gospels but also many Psalms, all of Proverbs, all of Ruth, and “that greatest of all prose poems, the Song of Solomon.”
This training sufficed Fanny for a lifetime. From then on she needed no one to read the Bible to her. Whenever she wanted to “read” a portion of scripture, she turned a little button in her mind, and the appropriate passage would flow through her brain like a tape recording.
When she visited Grandma in Southeast, which was fairly frequently, Eunice noted with great pleasure her progress in learning the Holy Writ. Fanny was always a champion in Bible recitation contests between the children and teenagers of Ridgefield. Whoever could repeat the most verses would win a Bible, and the Bible came to be a part of her.
Mrs. Hawley was not so strict a Calvinist as to believe there was nothing worth reading outside of Holy Writ. She had Fanny memorize portions of edifying secular works, as well as popular poems, and she taught her many “practical lessons.” When she had the time, Mercy also read to Fanny, and Fanny had vivid memories of her mother reciting “with great feeling” Milton’s famous sonnet “On His Blindness.”
The “singing school” was very popular in New England in those days. In winter, the young people of the village were visited by a singing teacher who taught Fanny and her companions at Ridgefield from the famous Handel and Haydn Collection of Lowell Mason (1792–1872). This consisted mostly of songs and anthems in the style of classical European music. The Handel and Haydn Collection was used by the church choir, of which Fanny Jane was a member. Years later she wrote, “I can still hear some of the sweet voices of my friends reverberating through the old Presbyterian meetinghouse; the tuning-fork of the choirmaster as he ‘set’ the pitch; and the deep, mellow tenor of the minister as he answered the choir from the pulpit.”
The Ridgefield Presbyterian Church was too poor to afford hymnals, and the deacons often lined out selections from Mason’s collection in the same way those at Southeast lined out psalms. But often they invented hymns of their own, to be sung to the tunes in the Handel and Haydn Collection. This usually turned out horrendously, and sometimes two or three deacons were required to finish a hymn of a few stanzas.
Fanny at this time became acquainted with a tailor who was a Methodist and occasionally went to his church with him. She came to love the stately and beautiful hymns of Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts that were sung there.
FANNY CAME TO LOVE THE STATELY HYMNS OF CHARLES WESLEY AND ISAAC WATTS.
Although Fanny was happy at times, she had recurring spells of moodiness and depression as she approached adolescence. She spent many evenings thinking and “reading” the Scriptures. Her handicap came to depress her more than it had when she was younger. She put herself more and more in competition with her comrades, just “to show the world what a little blind girl can do.”
She was never to entirely outgrow this. Even as an old woman, she was always terribly anxious to demonstrate to everyone that she could do anything a sighted person could. In her nineties, she insisted that the niece with whom she stayed allow her to do the dishes.
In her eleventh and twelfth years, Fanny felt increasingly shut out of the world. She was beginning to realize a great store of knowledge lay waiting out there, but since she was blind and had no chance for an education, there seemed no way for her to tap it. She attended the district schools occasionally, but the local schoolmaster did not know how to instruct the blind, and she would quit in complete frustration after a few days.
In the depth of her depression, she made one of her frequent trips to Gayville to visit Grandma and Grandpa, who still lived in the house where she had been born. Eunice realized the child was deeply troubled, and toward twilight one day they had a long talk together. Grandma sat in her rocking chair and Fanny poured out her heart. Then the two of them knelt down by the side of the doughty old chair and “repeated a petition to the Kind Father.” After that, Eunice went quietly downstairs, leaving Fanny alone with her thoughts.
The night was beautiful. I crept towards the window, and through the branches of a giant oak, that stood just outside, the soft moonlight fell upon my head like the benediction of an angel, while I knelt there and repeated over and over these simple words: “Dear Lord, please show me how I can learn like other children.”
At once, she felt “the weight of anxiety” that had burdened her heart in recent months “changed to the sweet consciousness that my prayer would be answered in due time.” From then on, although Fanny often fell into depression because of the limited opportunities available to her, she treasured in her heart the confidence that ultimately the barrier that stood between her and “knowledge” would be demolished.
This was perhaps Eunice Crosby’s last great gift to her granddaughter—this prayer for knowledge that moonlit night. Soon thereafter, she fell ill.
Fanny always remembered their last meeting. On that “rosy summer evening” in 1831, Grandma sat in her favorite rocking chair, her voice a painful whisper. “Grandma’s going home,” she said and told the frightened child she soon would be in heaven. Fanny sobbed disconsolately before the dark silence once more was broken by the dying woman’s faltering voice. She had one question to ask her beloved grandchild—her only grandchild. “Tell me, my darling, will you meet Grandma in our Father’s house on high?”
“TELL ME, MY DARLING, WILL YOU MEET GRANDMA IN OUR FATHER’S HOUSE ON HIGH?”
Fanny could feel Eunice “looking down upon me.” There was another moment of silence. Then the child overcame the lump in her throat and answered, “By the grace of God, I will.” Eunice, joyful, clasped Fanny to her bosom. They bowed their heads for one last prayer. Not long afterward, Eunice Crosby—only fifty-three— died.
This last meeting was to haunt Fanny for many years. Eunice was a devout Calvinist who believed one could have assurance of salvation only through a definite, dated, emotional “conversion.” She hoped Fanny would have this experience, and her deathbed words ultimately were to induce it. In truth, however, Fanny did not feel any different about salvation after leaving Grandma that last time. The fact that she had not had a datable conversion experience was to weigh upon her mind at times.
As Fanny entered her teens, she began to show obvious musical talent. With a high, sweet soprano voice, she acquired a reputation locally as a singer. She mastered the guitar to the extent that she was constantly in demand at gatherings. She became an excellent horsewoman. She also attained fame as a storyteller. She liked to invent stories of charitable bandits—the type of robbers, she commented in later years, “I have not been fortunate enough to meet…in real life.”
It was as a poet that Fanny attained her greatest fame in Ridgefield. She wrote lyrics about events in the community. For example, a miller nearby apparently had the habit of dishonestly mixing corn meal with his flour. Fanny wrote a poem beginning:
There is a miller in our town,
How dreadful is his case;
I fear unless he does repent
He’ll meet with sad disgrace.
Neighbors thought the poem so good—or the situation in need of immediate attention—that it was submitted to the editor of the nearest newspaper, the weekly Herald of Freedom at Danbury, whose editor was Phineas Taylor Barnum, then in his early twenties and on the threshold of his lucrative career as a showman. Barnum liked the poem and wanted to print it in full. He took an interest in Fanny and probably would have blown her up in his paper as a “blind prodigy” had not Mercy intervened. She astutely recognized the youthful Barnum’s inclination for exhibiting things and people. Fanny, who did not like Barnum, wrote years later that had Barnum had his way, she might “have held an uncomfortable position in his hall of fame.”
Following the practice of the day, in which the chief theme of literary endeavors was death, Fanny tried her hand at writing obituary verse. For a while, whenever anybody in the neighborhood died, Fanny would “cause my muse to shed a few sympathetic tears.” Later, she felt ashamed of these youthful elegies. “How glad I am that none of these is preserved!”
When Fanny wrote a poem called “The Moaning of the Wind for the Flowers,” Mrs. Hawley liked it so well she sent a copy to Sylvanus in Gayville. Grandpa Crosby was enthusiastic about the poem and wrote Mrs. Hawley for copies of more of his granddaughter’s works. He praised her work and hailed her to his friends and neighbors as a “comer.” But he did not want to “spoil her and make her proud,” so he instructed Mercy to communicate to Fanny none of his enthusiasm. It was not until years later that Fanny learned how proud her grandfather had been.
In 1834, Mercy decided to move back to North Salem. In Ridgefield, Fanny had come to know the Bible by heart, received her first rudimentary musical training, and met someone who would be most influential to her future. One of the children with whom she played on the green was Sylvester Main, three years her senior. “Vet” Main and his son Hugh’s publishing house would publish nearly six thousand of Fanny’s hymns and be one of the principal means by which her works would gain access to America’s hearts and homes.
*Frances J. Crosby, Memories of Eighty Years (Boston: James H. Earle, 1906), p. 9.