5. Exhibit Number One
5
EXHIBIT NUMBER ONE
While Fanny was becoming the Institution’s most promising student, her mother was beginning a new life. In 1836, Mercy left North Salem to live with her brother Joseph and his family on the outskirts of Bridgeport. There she met and married Thomas Morris, a widower with three children, in February 1838. The next year, at age forty, she bore him a daughter they named Wilhelmina. The child died in infancy, to the terrible grief of all, including Fanny. The following year, Mercy bore Thomas another daughter. They named her Julia and called her Jule.
An ardent Democrat, Fanny spent much of her time in the autumn of 1840 writing verse directed against the Whig rival, the much-beloved General William Henry Harrison. Despite her efforts, Harrison was elected, and when he died after only a month in office, Fanny was content to bury the hatchet with verse. Her conventional Early American romantic elegy—perhaps because it was composed by a blind woman—received considerable attention through its publication in the New York Herald. A proud Grandfather Sylvanus, still living in Gayville, walked four miles each way to a town to buy a newspaper.
After this, Fanny’s reputation as “the Blind Poetess” grew. Students at the Institution frequently were invited to give demonstrations at schools, churches, and elsewhere to show what the blind were capable of accomplishing. They gave exhibitions of Braille readings in geography, history, arithmetic, and other subjects, as well as songs and recitations. Fanny sang and played the piano, organ, and harp. The exhibition always was closed by one of her “original poetical addresses.” These pieces, filled with stock poetic diction, were written not at some unbidden impulse to reflect the outpouring of her soul, but at the request of the Institution managers to obtain monetary support. There was no extraordinary merit in most of these poems, although the form and style were impeccable.
Her listeners were interested not so much in her poetic gifts but in her educability. She was the poet-in-residence, so to speak, of the Institution, and as she gradually attained a reputation, it was as much for what she symbolized as for what she wrote.
SHE WAS THE POETIN-RESIDENCE OF THE INSTITUTION.
Nevertheless, listeners were moved by certain attributes of her poetry, notably her descriptive powers. Fanny was much more impressive when she recited at soirées than on more official occasions; for in the less formal atmosphere, she could recite poems she actually had been inspired to write. In some of her blank verse, her fantastic descriptive powers were evident.
Fanny was called to recite before many of the distinguished visitors who came to the Institution in the early days, curious about this new phenomenon of educating the blind. President John Tyler, along with the mayor of New York City and the entire city council, suddenly appeared one June day. The new superintendent, Peter Vroom, rushed into Fanny’s room and told her about the visitors waiting in the reception room. With fifteen minutes’ notice, Fanny prepared a poetic greeting for the president of the United States. At the appointed time, the poem was ready. Fanny recited it before the eminent visitors and then sang a song.
New York governor William Henry Seward, later Lincoln’s secretary of state, also visited the Institution, as did prominent visitors from overseas. From France in 1843 came Henri Gratien, Count Bertrand (1773–1844), Napoleon’s old field marshal who had shared his master’s exile on St. Helena before being pardoned. Fanny recited a poem written in honor of the elderly soldier. Bertrand was deeply moved.
The Institution was graced by a visit from William Cullen Bryant, then forty-nine years old and America’s leading poet. The author of “Thanatopsis” and “To a Waterfowl” appeared at a soirée. Fanny had no idea Bryant was acquainted with her poetry, but to her astonishment, he recognized her as “the Blind Poetess” and commended her efforts. He said she had real talent and potential and encouraged her to continue writing. “He never knew,” Fanny wrote later, “how much good he did by those few words.”
Fanny became acquainted with many public people, and she formed several warm friendships with her colleagues. Among these was Imogene Hart, who became a musician. There was also her roommate, Alice Holmes, a year younger than Fanny, who had contracted smallpox, which left her blind at age nine; Miss Holmes, as “the Blind Poet of Jersey City,” published several volumes of verse. Perhaps Fanny’s fondest attachment during her Institution years was to Anna Smith, who had tried to teach her mathematics.
In the summer of 1842, the board of managers decided that twenty of the Institution’s best students should tour central New York State to demonstrate the educability of the blind and induce parents of blind children to send them to the New York school. Of course, “the Blind Poetess” was a member of the company. They traveled west by what Fanny called “the highway of waves,” the Erie Canal. Mule-drawn packet boats plied their way, laden with freight and passengers. In one of these, Fanny and her colleagues traveled to Schenectady, Rome, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. At each city and in some of the towns along the way, a reception was held. The mayor and prominent citizens would speak, and hundreds of townsfolk would gather, attracted by the strange tales of blind people being taught useful trades. The pupils sang, danced, gave speeches, and described their school. Fanny played the piano and harp, sang, and recited poems.
FANNY PLAYED THE PIANO AND HARP, SANG, AND RECITED POEMS.
The following summer, Fanny was chosen for another group tour of New York State. She found it tedious being “exhibit number one,” traveling from town to town, hearing pompous mayors give speeches and condescending officials make flowery pledges of support that were never meant to be. People would ask that infuriating question: “How long have you been—er, ah—that way?” Frequently, they would ask how blind people managed to get food to their mouths when they ate; Fanny liked to respond that they would take a string and tie one end to the table leg and the other to their tongues and work the food up to their mouths along the string.
Several weeks of answering such questions and composing “original poetical addresses” to be read at each stop left her completely exhausted.
The tour brought Fanny one benefit that would not be fulfilled for fifteen years. At Oswego, a woman was so impressed, she decided the Institution was the place to send her blind son. She introduced the boy to Fanny and asked her to take him under her personal charge when he arrived. “Take good care of my boy,” Mary Van Alstine said—not realizing that Fanny would take such good care of little Alexander that he would marry her!
That fall, Fanny was a regular instructor at the Institution. She taught rhetoric, grammar, and Roman and American history. It took much work to prepare for her courses. Although exhausted at the end of the day, she frequently stayed up until 2 a.m. composing poetry.
The strain of her course work, coming at the end of the summer tour, was devastating. The Institution doctor, J. W. G. Clements, realized she needed rest and recommended she forgo meeting her classes for a while and skip an upcoming visit to Washington, D.C., during which she was to recite poetry before members of Congress. Fanny yearned to go to Washington, and Clements finally decided she would worry herself into a fever if left behind.
Her joy at being allowed to make the trip turned to apprehension when she learned the great importance being pinned on her presentation. The managers wanted Congress to pass legislation to create institutions for the blind and provide free education to blind children in every state of the Union. They hoped Fanny’s poetry would pull on the congressional heartstrings.
On the evening of January 24, 1844, seventeen pupils from the Institution gave their “concert and exhibition.” Climaxing a program of musical performances and grammar and math examinations, Fanny recited her thirteen-stanza poem. The congressmen burst into applause so loud it sounded like thunder to Fanny and frightened her.
FANNY RECITED HER THIRTEEN-STANZA POEM. THE CONGRESSMEN BURST INTO APPLAUSE.
They insisted she give an encore. She decided on an elegy written the previous summer upon the sudden death of Hugh Legare, Tyler’s “lamented secretary of state,” who had suffered a heart attack while laying the cornerstone for the new Bunker Hill monument. By the time she finished, the congressmen were weeping audibly. Legare’s sister met Fanny at the chamber door and gave her a beautiful ring. John Quincy Adams, the crusty ex-president, wrung her hand.
But for all its weeping, Congress did not pass the Institution’s proposal.
Almost in a state of collapse on their return to New York, Fanny did not meet any of her classes that spring but spent the time working on the first volume of poetry she would publish. By April, The Blind Girl and Other Poems was ready. The 160-page book contained a preface written by her friend and mentor, Hamilton Murray. Since the book was being published in part to raise money for the Institution, Murray used the preface to make a pitch for the reader’s purse. He exaggerated ominously of the poet’s “declining health.”
The publishers wanted a daguerreotype of the author for the frontispiece. Sitting for a picture was something of an ordeal for Fanny. The exposure required several minutes, during which she was required to sit stock-still.
Interestingly, this first photograph is the only known picture that shows Fanny smiling! She does not appear to be in ill health. She stood only four feet nine inches tall and claimed never to have weighed as much as a hundred pounds, but of all the photos taken during her life, this one shows her at her heaviest.
A beauty she was not. The photo indicates a rather long horse face and a small, blunt nose. The lips, parted in the smile, reveal somewhat prominent front teeth with a gap between them. Dark, rectangular spectacles entirely obscure the sightless eyes. The ears are “jug-handled.” The hair is thick, dark, and wavy, parted in the middle, and pulled backward in curls that hang to the shoulders.
The book enjoyed moderately good sales, and the name of Fanny Crosby grew in familiarity. But was she a hack writer, or did she have true genius?
“The Blind Poetess” may have been noted more for being blind than for being a poet. She was seen by most people as a symbol of what the blind could do, and her poetry was viewed simply as a manifestation of that larger accomplishment. However, even had her poems been written by a sighted person, they would have claimed attention.
“THE BLIND POETESS” MAY HAVE BEEN NOTED MORE FOR BEING BLIND THAN FOR BEING A POET.
It is not known how many secular poems she wrote, but they probably number in the thousands. She wrote verse for every occasion in her life and that of her friends: weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, funerals, church events, national events, tea parties. Whenever she left the house of a friend after a visit, she bestowed upon her host a few lines of verse. In normal daily conversation, she was likely to use poetic or quasipoetic expressions, like: “In the Institution I touched the poetic garment of Mrs. Sigourney, sat long at the feet of Bayard Taylor, slaked my thirsty soul at the living streams of Frances Ridley Havergal, and drank deeply from the chalices of Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell.” She also was likely to burst into outright verse, such as her after-dinner remark: “Now just as sure as I’m a sinner, I know I’ve had a very good dinner.”
She was a regular contributor to the poetry columns of various New York newspapers. Ultimately, she would publish four books of poetry: The Blind Girl (1844), Monterey and Other Poems (1851), A Wreath of Columbia’s Flowers (1858), and Bells at Evening (1897).
The quality of her verse varies wildly. Many of her published poems are weak and undistinguished—even blatantly bad. Yet the same brain that produced some appallingly banal lines was also capable of writing this excerpt from “Samson with the Philistines”:
His hair had grown. He knew it. But his eyes—
Would they return? Would he again behold
Or sun or moon or stars or human face?
O, heaven! In all our catalogue of woes
Can there be one that so afflicts the mind
And rends the very fibres of the heart
Like that which comes, when in our riper years,
We lose, and by a single stroke of Thine,
That sense, which of all others, most we prize,
That glorious avenue through which we range
The fields of science, poesy, and art,
And trace Thee in Thy excellence divine
Where Thou hast left Thy Name in living light
On Truth’s immortal page, Thy Holy Book?
O, to be left at midday in the dark!
To wander on and on in moonless night!
To know the windows of the soul are closed,
And closed till opened in eternity!
They who have felt can tell how deep the gloom,
And only they who in their souls have learned
To walk by faith and lean on God for help,
To such a lot can e’er be reconciled.
Her great friend, Henry Adelbert White (1880–1951), himself a poet and for many years a university English professor, admired Fanny’s poetry and considered her a first-class writer. George Henry Sandison (1850–1900), a literary critic and editor, admitted in 1897 that in many of the gospel hymns, the literary critic could not “discover at once the full-orbed genius of a poet,” but he maintained Fanny was “naturally a classical poet” who wrote excellent secular verse.
FANNY WAS “NATURALLY A CLASSICAL POET” WHO WROTE EXCELLENT SECULAR VERSE.
She wrote in the mode of the popular poets of her day. Much of their poetry seems unexceptional. But the average reader did not expect poets to say much that was profound; poets were to stimulate the emotions by treating the familiar themes of home, motherhood, unrequited love, patriotism, grief, and death. The test of a poet’s success was how readily and how much the reader was made to cry.
In the nineteenth century, the Chatauqua assemblies, which in many ways filled the role of modern-day television, frequently opened and closed with poetic addresses. When a distinguished person visited a town or institution, a local poet usually was enlisted to greet them in verse. When a famous person died, numerous eulogies appeared in local papers or were read at the funeral or wake.
It was in such a literary era that Fanny Crosby wrote most of her secular poems, and like other poets of the day, she intended to put common sentimental themes to rhyme. She could arouse the emotions. She dealt in everyday actions, wringing the heartstrings not so much by high-flown language as by homey examples and allusions.
She never achieved fame as a major poet. She had precious few opportunities to compose serious verse. She was expected to be “the Blind Poetess,” drawing attention to the Institution and to the plight of the blind. Her role was that of an entertainer through whom the Institution could raise money.
She was content with the role. Grateful to the Institution for providing an excellent education without cost, she was willing to do anything she could to help its cause, even if it meant sacrificing genuine poetic potential.