THE BLIND SONGWRITER
A Review of Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby

Marlin Jeschke

Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby, by Edith Blumhofer. Eerdmans, 2005.

I can’t imagine anybody of my generation not knowing the name of Fanny Crosby, blind songwriter of the last half of the 1800s, even though new religious music—of the Gaithers, for example—is replacing the gospel songs of her day. Crosby’s story is told in a new biography, Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby, by Edith Blumhofer, professor of history at Wheaton College.

Frances Jane Crosby lived from 1820 to 1915. This was an era in American history marked by the development of a railroad network but punctuated also by the Civil War of 1861 to 1865, an era that witnessed an explosion in the writing and publication of gospel songs.

Blinded in childhood as a result of an incompetent doctor’s bad treatment of an eye infection, Fanny was privileged at age 15 to enter the school for the blind that had just been started in New York City. Here she blossomed as a bright student and then as a teacher until she got married and left that institution in 1858.

Although she never learned to write (witnesses attested her X on legal signatures), she early on developed a gift for rhyme and often recited verses before public officials and philanthropists to demonstrate the effectiveness of the school for the blind. She began, in fact, to provide lyrics for the growing interest in music in American public schools and singing schools fostered by pioneers in this endeavor such as Lowell Mason.

Many of these were secular songs in support of civic or patriotic life. A proud American, Crosby carried with her a small silk American flag all of her adult life.

As a descendent of Puritans, Crosby had always been a churchgoer, but in 1864 a religious experience prompted her to turn her gifts primarily to composing hymn and gospel song texts. This lead to her collaboration with notable music writers and publishers of the time, such as William Bradbury, William Howard Doane, Robert Lowry, Philip P. Bliss (until Bliss’s tragic death in 1868), and above all, Ira D. Sankey, singer for the famous D. L. Moody from 1871 until Moody’s death in 1899.

These music writers and hymn publishers took advantage of the growing appetite for gospel songs in America. Some historians claim Sankey’s "Gospel Songs" eventually sold as many as 50 million copies. Crosby lyrics made up almost one tenth of Sankey’s last gospel song book. I counted 31 in Walter Rauschenbusch’s German translation of Sankey’s gospel song book, published in 1896 and used in the congregation in which I grew up. Incidentally, the Mennonite Church Hymnal (1927) carries 11 Crosby songs, The Mennonite Hymnal (1969) has 12, and the current Hymnal: A Worship Book only eight.

At the height of her career Crosby associated with many wealthy folk, some of them wealthy from publication of gospel songs or other businesses—for example, Phoebe Palmer Knapp, whose husband was in the insurance business. Knapp, daughter of Methodist holiness teacher Phoebe Palmer, had a mansion furnished with a big organ. She sponsored many recitals in her massive parlor and wrote music for several of Crosby’s texts. Crosby was always welcome at the Knapp mansion, even for extended stays.

Crosby was also a guest at the Cincinnati home of William Howard Doane, millionaire manufacturer of woodworking machinery who was more interested in the composition of hymn tunes than in his other business. Well-known even nationally, Crosby three times dined at the White House.

Still, Crosby never got royalties from the hymn texts she wrote that were published by the thousands and made publishers their millions. She was content with that arrangement, because she always had enough to live on and even to retain a caregiver or housekeeper. She had an estate of only $2,000 at her death.

Enjoying relatively good health, Fanny Crosby also took an active interest in New York’s missions to the poor, alcoholics, homeless, and unemployed. She visited many such missions and spoke at some of their services. At one time in the 1880s, Manhattan had no less than 121 city missions.

Having been blind from earliest childhood, Crosby learned how to negotiate New York’s streets, sometimes with a guide, sometimes apparently getting help from other pedestrians along the way. She personally counseled penitents at missions she visited.

Turning to the content of Crosby’s hymns, Blumhofer’s examination of the faith reflected in them shows her to have been located comfortably within America’s broad, warm 1800s evangelicalism, the kind prevailing before the modernist-fundamentalist debates of the early 1900s developed its doctrinal preoccupation. Holding membership in the Methodist church during most of her adult life, Crosby parted with the Calvinism of her Puritan ancestors, stressing the themes of the love of God and nearness to Christ and the cross.

"While she did not record a profession of a second blessing," says Blumhofer, "Crosby took delight in the company of those who did." As a sample of her own tastes, Crosby once identified "Saved by Grace" as her personal favorite. This suggests her confidence in the love of God and highlights her hope of heaven, which she so often connected with light and the recovery of sight.

As already mentioned, Crosby was married at 38 to another blind student she met at the New York City Institution for the Blind, Alexander van Alstine, 10 years her junior. Van Alstine later became an organist at a Brooklyn church. For some reason Crosby and van Alstine quit living together a few years after their marriage, though they never divorced. Crosby never spoke about it and did not seem to grieve when she received news of van Alstine’s death, though she once hinted poetically at having missed a love she had hoped for. Fanny Crosby herself died of a massive stroke in February 1915, just short of 95 years of age.

Blumhofer’s 345-page book is really more than a biography. Crosby dictated her own life story, Memoirs of Eighty Years, in 1904 and 1905, and the book was published in 1906. Being blind, she left no papers. Rather than rehash Crosby’s autobiography, Blumhofer offers context for Crosby’s life, devoting considerable space to the growth of the music publishing industry in the America of the 1800s. Blumhofer even reviews briefly the history of copyright legislation as it affected gospel song publishing, something that didn’t interest Crosby (and may not interest many readers of this book).

Blumhofer also devotes a chapter to the growth and popularity of the Sunday school movement. Congregations with sanctuaries seating 1,000 might have that same number of children in their Sunday afternoon Sunday school, and these Sunday schools were hungry for new, easy gospel songs, which publishers then supplied in the tens and hundreds of thousands of copies.

This story of the life and hymns of Fanny J. Crosby is a welcome survey of the gospel song aspect of a crucial era in American Christianity.

—A widely published author, Marlin Jeschke, Goshen, Indiana, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Goshen College, where he taught for 33 years.