• Crack in the Marriage
Crack in the Marriage In August 1872, the Pearsall Smiths were once again vacationing at The Cedars. The golden light of evening filtered in through the windows while a slight breeze rustled the muslin curtains of Frank Smith's bedroom and gently caressed the feverish face of the desperately ill 18-year-old boy The breeze was heartening to Hannah, for all day long she had sweltered in the sticky, muggy misery of a typical
New Jersey summer heat wave. Frank's bedroom was austere in contrast to the heavily ornamented, carved Victorian furniture of the time. There was a starkness to the plain pine bed, the unrelieved bareness of the unfinished pine walls and the polished hardwood floor.
How like Frank this room is, Hannah thought fondly as she sat on a cushioned wicker chair that she'd brought in from her own bedroom. Her oldest child was such a calm, sedate, good boy, with no unnecessary ornamentation about him either. Ever since his conversion several years before, mother and son had been deeply in tune with each other. Frank took the Christian faith very seriously, and in his first year at Princeton had tried to live in such a way that his life would draw others to Jesus Christ. Hannah
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secretly rejoiced that he and Anna Shipley, the daughter of her dearest childhood friend, seemed to be falling in love with each other.
Now her dreams for Frank were being threatened by typhoid fever. Once again Hannah was keeping her vigil at the bedside of a sick child.
If only it weren't so hot, Hannah thought as she looked helplessly at the fever-soaked body of her suffering son. It generally took twenty-one days for the fever to run its course and only thirteen had gone by. Could the almostemaciated body of her eldest child endure the punishment of another week? Frank was so nauseous that it was almost impossible to get any nourishment into him. Hannah moved to Frank's bedside and picked up a cup of beef broth that was ever present on a crude wooden stand.
"Frank dear, could thee swallow even a spoonful?" she asked anxiously. Then she put her arm around his thin shoulders and boosted him up to reach the sustaining liquid. He managed two spoonfuls, then fell back helplessly.
As twilight darkened into night, Hannah lit an oil lamp and sponged his feverish body with a pan of lukewarm water. Toward midnight Frank became delirious. He tossed and turned on the narrow bed, muttering snatches of nonsense. Hannah sat on, watching helplessly from her chair, her lips moving in soundless, fervent prayer. Thy will be done, oh, Lord, thy will be done, oh, Lord. Thou knowest what is best for my boy. I relinquish him wholly into thy hands.
All during the night Hannah remained in her chair, praying as the delirium went on and on. Frank thrashed about in his bed, completely out of his head. Toward morning her father entered the sickroom, took one look at the taut, exhausted face of his daughter and laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Hannah, go take some nourishment and get some rest.
I will keep thy vigil now." Gently, he pushed his daughter toward the door.
At five o'clock that afternoon the struggles ceased; the
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fever-wracked body of Frank lay still. Hannah's oldest child, the boy of whom she was so proud, had gone to be with his heavenly Father.
At first Hannah spiritualized her grief. In her letters she reiterated over and over how unspeakably the Lord had blessed her in taking her darling boy home to be with Him.
She insisted that she had always cared more for Frank's happiness than for her own, and if all they believed about the other life was true, then how could she do anything but rejoice when one of her loved ones was taken to its blessedness—to a safe place where his happiness could not be broken?
Two weeks after his death, however, Hannah allowed her true feelings out to Anna Shipley, the daughter of her dear friend. When mother and girlfriend wept together, some of the hurt melted away. Hannah was able to say to the older
Anna, "I dare not go into the depths of this sorrow. After a while, when the keen edge is gone, I shall be able, perhaps, to look it more fully in the face and to speak of it." 2
In 1869, the Pearsall Smith family had left Millville, New Jersey, and moved back to Philadelphia to a house right next to Hannah's father and mother, on Filbert Street.
It was there, during the fall of 1872, that Robert began to suffer a serious and complete nervous breakdown.
In those days, the treatment of emotional illness was still quite primitive. If the sufferer had the money, he went to a sanitorium-type place, usually in a resort setting. Thus we find the whole Pearsall Smith family at Clifton Springs,
New York, in October of 1872 living in a large rest home run by a man referred to only as Dr. Foster. There were at least five stories in this "curing place," quite likely an oldfashioned hotel with Victorian turrets and cupolas, and surrounded by woods and meadows.
Hannah was miserable at Clifton Springs. She felt cut off from her support group, her parents, sisters, and dear
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old friends. Her grief over Frank's death was still fresh and painful. This was not the time to be stuck in a large resort home for invalids, among a group of strangers, away from her familiar people and places. To assuage her grief Hannah had started to write a book, her first, about Frank. She titled it The Record ofa Happy Life, and wanted it to record the story of her "noble and glorious boy," hoping that it might help others who were going through bereavement.
To obtain privacy for writing and also to work through her own pain, she hung a sign outside the door of her rooms on the fifth floor of the sanitorium that said, "Busy writing."
In early November the manuscript was finished and sent to the Fleming H. Revell Publishing Company.
On December 13, H.W.S. (as she frequently referred to herself) had finished her dinner in the elaborate Clifton
Springs dining room. Because Robert was unpredictable in his emotions, she had dined alone, and now she was standing in the large, drafty hall, shivering in spite of her warm woolen dress and heavy shawl. She was waiting for that "new-fangled" invention, the elevator, to take her to their fifth-floor rooms—wondering what she would find.
With a clatter, the contraption settled itself at the first floor.
Hannah entered the "cage" and pulled back the lever to start the thing on its perilous ascent. The little box vibrated and the cables squealed and finally stopped with a sudden jolt at the top floor. Stepping from it, she reluctantly approached their rooms.
She had left Robert in quite a state of upset. Five-yearold Alice,was also in the rooms, though bedridden with a persistent fever, a sore mouth, and no appetite. Since the oversized building could not be heated properly, Hannah herself was exhausted and chilled. Eight-year-old Mary and four-vear-old Ray were in another part of the hotel, attending a sewing class. Seven-year-old Logan had run off after dinner to be with a friend.
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With her false teeth* chattering slightly, she opened the door to their apartment. Robert was slumped over in a chair. All the color had drained from his face and he was wild-eyed. When he saw his wife enter, he sprang from his chair and began to pace up and down. "Pray for me, Hannah, pray for me," he begged. His usually well-modulated voice came out in a hoarse croak. "Pray for me to be delivered from this unbearable torment." He struck his fist against the frame of the door again and again with resounding thuds. "Oh, God, oh, God. Let me die."
Hannah's own nerves were as raw as flayed flesh, but she lowered herself calmly into a chair and spoke softly.
"Will thee try to compose thyself by repeating over and over the Lord's Prayer?"
With the capricious turn of mind of the mentally ill, he turned on her. "Thee doesn't understand me! Thee doesn't understand a nature like mine. Thee is like a slow-moving stream with placid ripples.
I am like a roaring mountain brook rushing over rocks, churning into wild cataracts."
Hannah tried to keep her voice calm. "I know I cannot always understand thy ups and downs."
"Thee is so unfeeling!" Robert shouted.
"I need love from a wife!
I need warmth and touching and tenderness.
Thee is like a dry old stick. I'm sure I could get well if only thee could get thy dead emotions kindled."
Struggling to withstand this barrage of accusations, she answered quietly, but with a tremor in her voice: "Thee must take me as I am, Robert, and not try to change me. I accept that thee is a tempestuous, emotional man and I love thee for thyself." Her voice became pleading. "Please,
Robert—won't thee try to love me as I am? I love thee dearly, and if it were not for the fact that thee has become so constantly dissatisfied with me, I should feel that I had a husband just suited to me."
* Author's note:
It is not known how Hannah lost her teeth, simply that they were gone by 1872. She had had four babies in the 1860s. In those days, women who had several children in rapid succession often lost their teeth, probably due to a calcium deficiency during pregnancy.
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Robert stood threateningly over the smaller, calmer figure of his wife. "Thee doesn't know how thee hurts me. Thy indifference and the things thee says without thinking. Is thy skin as thick as a rhinoceros?"
Hannah defended herself wearily. "I can assure thee that I mean nothing but love and kindness. My whole heart grieves over thy sufferings, and I am longing to do anything
I can to alleviate them. I cannot help being the sort of person I am. And if thee could make up thy mind to try to bear with me patiently and to overlook what is displeasing to thee, perhaps thee might be at least comfortable, if not happy." 3
At this moment sick little Alice, who had been fitfully sleeping in the adjoining room, woke up and began to cry.
With a glare at his wife, Robert stormed across the room and exited, slamming the door. Heavy with the weight of all this emotional upheaval, Hannah slowly dragged herself to the bedside of the sick child. Fortunately for Hannah's own sanity, Alice would get well. Her overstrained nerves could hardly have endured another death so soon after Frank's.
It was probably true that Hannah Smith was not a sexually responsive woman. Like most Victorian wives, she was reared to be passive and not to enjoy sex. Most Victorian husbands, in fact, took it for granted that sex was a "duty" to their wives and did not try to make intercourse pleasurable. Too, the main problem in male/female relations a hundred years ago was the overly dominant role every male was trained to assume. Victorian wives often saw sex as another assault, another assertion of male supremacy/and resisted it.
Something else happened at this rest home that upset Hannah. Dr. Foster secretly passed on to select patients a "spiritual" discovery that he had made. He said that in his prayer time alone he had experienced physical thrills that he thought belonged to earthly passions. At first he was embarrassed that such sexual feelings accompanied his
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spiritual searchings, but he seemed to have one of those incidents of spiritual guidance, apart from the Scriptures, as if God's voice were telling him that the physical feelings were a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
Hannah was immediately skeptical about Dr. Foster's "revelations," although Robert listened with some interest.
For Robert's own sake, he should have ignored the whole thing.
Around Christmastime the whole family journeyed by train back to Philadelphia. Robert had calmed down and seemed somewhat better. When his ailment returned in the new year, however, the family and his doctor decided that he should go back to Clifton Springs by himself while Hannah and the children remained behind in Philadelphia. As the relapses continued through February, doctors suggested a trip abroad. A change of scenery was thought to be beneficial for mental trouble.
Thus it was that in March 1873, Robert took the steamer to England with the intention of continuing across Europe to Switzerland to a place called Mannedorf. There thousands of cures for mental illness had been reported.
Robert was also instructed that if he did not find help in Mannedorf, he was to take a soothing journey up the Nile
River in Egypt, since such a journey was regarded as a panacea for mental ailments in the 1870s.
All the doctors thought that Robert's breakdown was brought on by overwork, and rest was prescribed as a cure—total rest for a period of months. Imagine Hannah's surprise when she heard that soon after Robert had arrived in England, he had thrown himself into the thick of evangelical work there. In the summer of 1873, she reported to her sister that Robert was involved in the Mildmay Conference, holding crowded meetings of two, three, and four hours' length, teaching and exhorting in his peculiarly effective way. 4
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Hannah knew that Robert was in one of his high periods and not taking care of himself. To add to this worry, she was pregnant again at the age of 41—her seventh pregnancy.
There was an irrepressible quality in Hannah Whitall Smith that the death of beloved children, the upsetting behavior of her husband, and a pregnancy in her forties could not quench. It came out during the summer of 1873 while the family was in Atlantic City.
One rainy June morning the children were restless.
They had been promised a sail, and the weather had not cooperated. Hannah shooed them into their bathing costumes—nine-year-old Mary, seven-year-old Logan, sixyear-old Alice, and four-year-old Ray, plus assorted cousins.
Clothing her enlarged body with a huge "waterproof" and grabbing an old-fashioned, oversized umbrella, Hannah marched the complaining children outside to the beach.
The rain pelted down as Hannah directed traffic, her feet planted in the wet sand. Looking like a tent with an umbrella over it, she supervised the children, who soon forgot that rain was a bore and began to frolic in the water.
Their mother acted as a games coach, calling out instructions and ideas for water tag from her citadel on the beach.
Finally, hungry and tired, the drenched but happy group scampered back to their boardinghouse for dry clothes and a big dinner of roast beef.
That afternoon, with the rain still pelting against the windows-, Hannah decided to pay a call on her sick motherin-law, who resided a few blocks away in a rooming house called The Chalfonte. She had armed herself in her rain gear again and was prepared to set out when her mother appeared.
"Where is thee going, daughter?" asked Mary Whitall anxiously.
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"To The Chalfonte to see Mother Smith," replied Hannah matter-of-factly.
Mary Whitall stared at her in stricken silence. "Thee has only two more months to go in thy condition. Surely it isn't proper for thee to show thyself in public?"
"Oh, Mother," laughed Hannah, "thee must not take on so.
It is, after all, a purely natural event. It cannot be so bad for me to stick my nose out the door."
Mrs. Whitall shook her head skeptically. "It was never done in my day. Women in an interesting condition never went outside or mingled socially after the fifth month. It doesn't show proper modesty."
Hannah bent and kissed her mother's cheek. "Thee will see. I will not meet anyone in this rain, and I will pay only a very short visit." With that she was gone, leaving her proper mother staring after her in appalled wonder. Pregnant women—out in the streets? What was the world coming to?
That evening, when things were quiet and the children were in bed, Hannah sat in a quiet, enclosed parlor with her portable writing desk. The new gas lights were lit, casting a bright light that illuminated the whole room. What an improvement they were over the old oil lamps! She looked at them admiringly. It used to be so hard to see at night unless one sat practically on top of an oil lamp.
In the softened glow of the gas lights, Hannah began a letter to Robert. Her handwriting was characteristically neat and legible: Thy last private letter gave me heartache and some sleepless hours. But I have laid the whole burden off on the Lord, for I am helpless. Thee says it is only friendship that I feel for thee. But I do not understand it. I cannot comprehend any love different from that which I feel, and I do not think I want to .
. and I believe I will not strain myself in seeking after something that I cannot even conceive of. If it is only friendship I feel for thee, darling, it is at least pure and true and .
. finds its happiness in thy happiness.
I am very sorry for thee that thy wife is the sort ofperson
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she is, but please, please, do take me as I am, and not insist upon my being unnatural. I do not feel as if I could endure any more of the strain of the last two years! I suppose I am a pragmatic sort ofperson, incapable of the heights and depths of love. Well, darling, I did not make myself; and if thee tries very hard, I think thee might perhaps put up with me, as I am for the few remaining years of our life. 6
Hannah found that her hands were trembling as she finished the letter. Will it never end? she thought. Over and over again, the same old arguments, wearing a groove in my mind, like a merry-go-round with its music off-key, going round and round, over and over. She heaved her bulk off the chair, gathered up her writing materials, and headed for her bedroom.
Morning dawned, gray and gloomy. Water dripped from the eaves above Hannah's bedroom window. The beach looked lonely and desolate. She woke with a start, for her dreams had been disturbing. She made a move to climb out of bed, then fell back with a sigh against the pillows. She had dreamed that Robert came home from England just as sick as ever—with the same old sleepless nights, wild, tormented thoughts and scenes of accusation that she had lived through at Clifton Springs the previous autumn. A wave of despair washed over her; her spirits were as damp and bedraggled as the incessant rain outside.
"Oh, Lord," she prayed half aloud, "if it be thy will, spare us this sorrow. But—dear loving Father—I commit
Robert to thee and leave him in thy hands. And I know that somehow, no matter how things seem, that thou dost do all things well." 7
In August, Hannah and family were back at The Cedars in inland New Jersey, again suffering from a prolonged heat wave. Hannah was for the most part confined to her room, waiting daily for the baby to come. She had become quite depressed from the weight of so many family troubles, also with the oppressive heat and her advanced state of pregnancy. On August 8, she wrote to her cousin Carrie, always
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a close friend and confidante:
Life with its failures has pressed upon me of late with the most unspeakable sadness; and I have felt such an intense sympathy with the Lord Jesus in His sympathy with the sufferings ofthis poor fallen world}
In late August a little girl was born—a perfectly formed infant, but stillborn. It was the final setback to a year of defeats and disappointments.
Oh, Carrie, I did long for my baby so inexpressibly, she wrote to her cousin. No one knows the need I have ofjust the comfort a baby always brings to me; and I had looked forward to this baby more longingly than ever before. But I know God's will is best; I have literally made the will ofGod my pillow for the last few weeks .
. and have hushed all questionings and anxieties by repeating over and over and over: "Though thee slay me, yet will I trust thee."9
A Time of International Fame Though Hannah's private life was eroding, her public life was about to flourish. When they had been at the Holiness camp meetings before Robert's breakdown, she and Robert had been introduced to a new doctrine that some theologians call "perfectionism." This was a belief that there were two parts to the life of salvation in Christ. The first part was, of course, to accept the free gift of Jesus' death on the cross for forgiveness of sins and be restored to harmony with God. The second was a further step in faith and involved trusting Jesus to give the believer an increasingly sinless life.
This second step was usually associated with the baptism of the Holy Spirit and meant that Christ "in" the Christian was transforming his or her life, making one more perfect and more able to conquer besetting sins, one after another.
This doctrine was preached as the "higher life," and Robert was expounding it eloquently in England while Hannah was explaining it to smaller groups in Philadelphia and even in Atlantic City. Hannah was beginning to make a name for herself as a Bible teacher and preacher. As more and more people came to hear her, she was obliged to try
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to find a larger room than any house could furnish. Since churches of her day generally frowned on any sort of spiritual leadership by women, finding that "larger room" was difficult. Finally, Hannah and her supporters did locate a church liberal enough to let her use one of their Sunday school auditoriums.
By the 1870s, Hannah had no church affiliation and was pointedly nonsectarian. She had begun to attend Friend's
Meeting again and apparently was welcomed back to the fold with no hard feelings.
Her book about Frank, The Record of a Happy Life, had become a bestseller and was translated into several languages. She had frequent disagreements with Robert by mail about the English edition. Apparently the publishers had omitted the "thees" and "thous" that the Quakers always used in everyday speech, and had substituted "you."
Hannah was very upset about this and strongly urged that the "thees" and "thous" be restored.
Robert's preaching ministry in England continued to grow. When he urged Hannah to join him in Great Britain, she and the children sailed for England early in 1874.
To her unspeakable joy, she discovered that Robert's nervousness was entirely gone. United in a mutual dedication to the Lord's work, there was less friction. Robert had rented a furnished house at Stoke Newingham in London. Hannah had barely settled her little family there when she was invited to a luncheon party that was set up to introduce her to the British evangelical world.
Now, Hannah was well aware that some of her teachings were of concern to some of the clergymen of her time. She had raised questions about the many sinners who failed to come to the saving knowledge of Christ because of ignorance or because of horrible, degrading life circumstances.
Her conviction was that God's love for His children is so overwhelming He would find a way to restore lost sinners to His presence. This was the doctrine of "restitution," which she had adopted some time before. Though a number
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of religious groups today espouse this viewpoint, in Hannah's time such a belief was much in the minority. Practically all the clergy preached hellfire and damnation.
Hannah's message was basically this: God is the Creator of every human being; therefore, He is the Father of each one and they are all His children. Furthermore, Christ died for everyone, and is declared to be the "propitiation" not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world
(1 John 2:2). However great the ignorance or grievous the sin, the promise of salvation is without limitation, whether it happens in this world or the next.
Hannah believed that people needed a vision of the God of love, mercy, and tenderness, and she pointed to numerous New Testament passages showing that mercy was central to its nature.
And so she went to this London luncheon knowing that an inspection committee of British evangelicals was coming to see if the wild woman from America was presentable.
She was determined to be on her best behavior.
So Hannah, now 42, sat in the parlor of her hostess' house, dressed in respectable black, her still-blond hair discreetly covered by a small lace cap. The maid had set platters of sandwiches on tables scattered throughout the room. The ladies perched stiffly on the uncomfortable chairs that were fashionable in Victorian times, their cumbersome taffeta and silk skirts gathered around them. Gentlemen in frock coats and mutton-chop whiskers removed their tall hats and settled themselves on horsehair sofas and chairs.
To Hannah the atmosphere seemed strained and unnatural. The British made polite conversation in a very stilted manner as they stole frequent looks at their guest from America. Hannah smiled to herself—perhaps these very formal English people expected her to gulp her tea from her saucer or commit some other unpardonable breach of social etiquette. A sudden thought came: These people are all sitting here with long faces. They need something to cheer them up.
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So she said in a lively manner, "I've just seen a funeral.
I do like funerals."
The august assembly politely tried not to gape at Hannah. They lowered their eyes, nervously studying their teacups.
Hannah went on brightly. "And I always give thanks when I see the casket. I'm thankful that the brother or sister has been delivered from the trials and pains of this mortal state." 2
One of the evangelical ladies was staring fixedly at Hannah now. She was Georgina Cowper-Temple—later, Lady
Mount Temple—an influential and wealthy member of the British aristocracy whose husband owned a stately home named Broadlands, in Hampshire. She was so fascinated by what the strange American was saying that she forgot to be circumspect. She blurted out, "Is it possible? Do you give thanks for everybody's deliverance?" There was an inaudible gasp among the ladies and gentlemen present.
I've done it, thought Hannah. The men have been in such a fuss over my restitution views. And here I've gone and put my foot in my mouth first thing. But now that it's out in the open, I have to tell the truth. She swallowed carefully and answered, "Yes, I do. For I believe in the goodness of God."
The company of British evangelicals sat as if rooted in their chairs. There was a moment of horrified silence. The very air of the room seemed to crackle and vibrate with tension. It was Mrs. Cowper-Temple who broke the ice. She rose to her feet, adjusted her gown, swished across the room, and planted a kiss on Hannah's cheek. Then she faced the whole room. "I'm going to have a conference at Broadlands, and you, Mrs. Smith, must come to talk of this." 3
And so, in July 1874, Hannah and Robert went to the beautiful estate of Broadlands at the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Cowper-Temple to hold the first of three conferences that were to have a lasting effect in the British religious world. About two hundred people attended. Some fifty guests stayed in the mansion itself; undergraduates camped out in the park-like grounds of the estate, while
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the rest rented rooms in nearby villages. During the sixday conference, Hannah's preaching was as much admired as Robert's.
The meeting at Broadlands was such a success that Robert decided to organize another one, "The Higher Life," at Oxford. This conference was held from August 29 to September 7, 1874. It was attended by some eight hundred to one thousand people and was a resounding success. There was also great interest in the special series of ladies meetings conducted by Hannah. When the six Pearsall Smiths boarded the steamship Ohio in late September to return to the United
States, they did so with a feeling of deep fulfillment.
Most people would have collapsed on board ship after such an exhausting expenditure of spiritual energy. Not Hannah. Although she was usually seasick during voyages, such was not the case this time. She invited other passengers to a meeting in the steerage section. She was somewhat hampered by the fact that she had lost her false teeth during the course of the Oxford Conference.
If her usual precise diction was slurred a bit, though, she compensated with extra enthusiasm.
Not all of her listeners were sympathetic. Some of the crew, fortified by shots of rum, had come out of curiosity.
When challenged to give up their sinful lives, the members of the crew responded with jeers and catcalls. Hannah stared at the men firmly and went right on with her message. Suddenly there was a swishing noise through the air and a greasy wet dishcloth landed right on her face. Hannah paused, took a clean handkerchief from her reticule, carefully wiped her face, and continued as if nothing had happened.4
During the following winter the Smiths settled down to a normal routine until Robert sailed for Europe on a preaching tour in early March of 1875. Hannah, meanwhile, divided her time between her children and her newly
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launched career as a writer and speaker.
From her journals and letters, it was obvious that she was often a fun mother. One stormy morning, for example,
Hannah was just coming down the stairs after nursing her eight-year-old Alice through a fever, headache, and diarrhea. Logan, now nine, was standing at the bottom of the stairs brandishing a long coil of rope. He was going through a stage of fascination with ropes and pulleys and learning to tie different kinds of knots.
"Look, Mother, what I found in my wardrobe," he announced happily, swinging the rope. "Remember when
I used to tie you up before we went to England? Will you sit down in that big chair and let me see if I can still do it?"
Hannah very seldom turned down a request that would add to the enjoyment of her four darlings. Smiling wryly at the thought of household chores that would have to wait, she sat down in the big chair. Logan was ecstatic. He uncoiled his rope and skillfully trussed his mother up in the chair.
The bell pull rang and Logan ran off to answer the door.
Mother Whitall came in. Possibly she was startled to find her daughter roped tightly to a large chair, more likely not.
Little that Hannah did surprised her anymore. 5 Reluctantly, Logan untied his mother and ran off to play.
Hannah had an unusual capacity to switch quickly from one passionate concern—like restitutionism—to another, like temperance. During this period, Mother Whitall and Hannah were together often in what they considered the great movement of the age—the crusade against alcohol.
Victorian women saw drunkenness as the chief cause of poverty, child abuse, and crime. Their current project was to persuade all the Whitall clan to sign the pledge, a card passed out by the Women's Christian Temperance Union in which the signer swore to be a teetotaler.
"I'm a pretty good mush spoon," Hannah often said of herself. By this she meant she could stir things up. Soon she was stirring up her brother and his family with an eloquent temperance speech, after which she smilingly pre-
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sented them with pen and pledge card.
James and his wife, Mary, were visiting his parents when Hannah arrived with speech and pledge book. They signed and their daughter Saidee did the same. By now
Hannah was convinced she needed to get all her friends and acquaintances signed up and could hardly wait until she joined Robert in England to shove the pledge book under his nose. 6
Meanwhile, Hannah remained a controversial person overseas. Robert had written that Mr. Blackwood, who was his primary religious backer in England, had expressed some doubts about whether Hannah should be part of the Brighton Conference in the summer of 1875. In the first place, she was a woman preacher and this was unheard of.
If that wasn't enough, there were her views on "restitution." A committee was meeting to decide Hannah's fate.
With tongue in cheek, Hannah picked up her pen and began a letter to Robert: / quite enjoy the thought of thy powwow over me and of Blackwood's condolences with thee on the possession of such a dangerous article as a heretical preaching wife.
. Give my love to Blackwood and tell him what an irrepressible case I am.
. J Tell him also that I do not care to be "endorsed" by anybody. And as I have not the least desire to preach unless the Lord wants me to, He shall be my only backer} By now Robert was an international figure, mesmerizing large audiences with his preaching. He had been invited to Berlin, where Kaiser Wilhelm I had placed at his disposal the old Garrison Church. Robert made a deep impression on thousands of souls in German cities which was attributed to the power of the Holy Spirit, especially since he could speak no German and had to have an interpreter.
He took as his battle cry a single sentence from a German hymn: "Jesus erretet mich jetzt (Jesus saves me now!)."
The response to his preaching was almost hysterical.
When engraved portraits of him were put on sale, eight thousand were sold in a week. The news of Robert's vastly
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successful work in Germany reached Philadelphia by telegraph. The newspapers reported it like this:
Berlin, April 16. The success of the revival mission of Mr. Robert Pearsall Smith in this city and other towns in Germany is increasing.
Immense crowds attend the meetings and members of the nobility occupy seats on the platforms. The Empress Augusta has given a private audience to Mr.
Smith. 9
According to Logan, Robert was reported to have said exultingly, "All Europe is at my feet."
When Mr. Blackwood had finally cleared Hannah for the Brighton Conference, the first thing she did was go to the dentist and have a spare set of false teeth made. She had no intention of being caught without teeth in case she lost them as she had the year before. In spite of Robert's phenomenal success, however, Hannah was not looking forward to the hectic schedule of religious conferences and meetings that had been set up. When she and the children finally boarded the steamship Pennsylvania in late May, she wrote to her sister: / cannot tell thee how dreary the showlife I have to live this summer looks to me in prospect. I feel just as if I were a sort of traveling Barnums Hippodrome
(circus) with a "woman preacher" on show instead ofa tightrope dancer. 10
Hannah was miserably seasick most of the trip. She lay on her bunk in the stateroom as the steamer Pennsylvania pitched and tossed in the rough seas of the North Atlantic.
Her head throbbed, and every time she tried to get off the bunk her stomach turned flip-flops. Finally she made a heroic effort to rouse herself. There was work to be done. Her stomach heaved as she struggled gingerly to her feet and lurched across the stateroom to her desk. There before her was a partly finished manuscript. She lowered herself onto the desk chair and tried to focus her eyes on chapter 20. It was titled
"The Life on Wings" and was the last chapter of a book that
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had been nothing but drudgery from start to finish.
The story behind The Christian's Secret ofa Happy Life— the book she was trying to complete—is intriguing. In 1873,
Robert had started a little paper called The Christian's Pathway to Power. When he became involved with his preaching ministry, he had trouble producing material for the paper and so prevailed upon Hannah to write an article for it. She reluctantly agreed to write one article if Robert would stop his daily drink of wine that his doctor had prescribed. As she put it, "The article was dragged from me at the point of the bayonet."
Robert was somewhat nettled to discover that his wife's first article excited more interest than anything else in the paper. There was nothing for him to do but put pressure on her to write another and another and another. She claimed she did not feel any sense of being called to write them, beyond the fact that she wanted to oblige Robert. In fact, she described herself as feeling most uninspired. A publisher asked Hannah to put the articles in book form, and she had promised to finish the last chapter before she arrived in England.
The Christian's Secret ofa Happy Life, published in 1875, has sold millions of copies and is hailed as a religious classic. The phenomenal success of this particular book, out of all her writings, led Hannah to say that "to do things from a sense of duty is as likely a road to success as to have a feeling of inspiration." She often used her seasickness as the text for a plain and pointed moral lesson: Feelings were unreliable; faithfulness was the important thing. Whether she felt inspired or uninspired was beside the point. It was
God who did the work. 12
When the Pennsylvania docked in England, Hannah had to get the children settled at Monkhams, the Essex estate belonging to her wealthy Quaker friend, Mrs. Henry Ford
Barclay. Then she was rushed off to Brighton to a confer-
HANNAH WHITALL SMITH
ence of some eight thousand people gathered from all parts of the civilized world. Hannah gave two duplicate Bible readings, one at three in the afternoon and another in an adjacent room at four. Between two and three thousand people attended each of these Bible readings, and she had to shout to make herself heard in the immense room. Since all this was before the era of loudspeakers, Hannah became, as she said, "as hoarse as a crow."
The poor German pastors present found themselves in a dreadful predicament. They were firmly convinced that it was wrong for a woman to preach, yet they were eager to hear the controversial American. They announced they were attending the conference under protest, swore they wanted no part in such scandalous goings-on, and yet would sneak in each day to hear Hannah, hoping that no one would notice. 13
Robert had reached his finest hour, preaching to thousands, stirring many hearts with his emotional messages. While his outpourings moved many to tears, Hannah handled her teaching in a plain, vigorous manner. There were even people who complained that she made her listeners laugh during her meetings.
These meetings had a lasting impact in the British evangelical world. The Keswick movement, which continues on to the present day, had its beginnings in the Brighton Conference of 1875.
Only one small episode marred this triumphal time for the Pearsall Smiths. After one of the meetings an adoring fan of Robert's rushed up to him, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
Hannah later asked her husband who the woman was.
"A Miss Hattie Hamilton," he replied.
"I thought she overstepped the bounds of good taste,"
Hannah commented.
Robert shrugged it off. "I am like a father to her. Don't take it seriously."
Far better for Robert if he had.