ABSTRACT
The general impression of nineteenth-century children’s hymnody is that of morbid death hymns, where “death is described vividly and dramatically,” often with “dark and pessimistic warnings” (Tamke 84, 87). I want to confront this impression directly in this chapter, acknowledging its veracity but also its incompleteness. Undeniably, children died in horribly high numbers throughout the nineteenth century, and at one end of the century, preachers morosely prepared all children for their potential fate while on the other end of the century, writers waxed sentimental over fictional children’s death-scenes. Children were caught up in what has been called the “cult of the death-bed” (Knight 50) and “the age of the beautiful death” (Ariès, The Hour of Our Death 409), as both mourner and as object of mourning. However, I will not end this book with eschatological debate only but with life-affirming energy. Indeed, children showed an intense zest for life through their hymn singing, as I have shown in previous chapters. Though fiction writers and hymn writers were inclined to paint sentimental portraits of children on their deathbeds-Franky, above, joins Little Nell in Old Curiosity Shop and Helen in Jane Eyre and many other “holy deaths” of children in nineteenth-century literature-these are yet in contrast to the living vitality of children of the era, shown in children’s approach to hymn singing. Some of that vitality resides in the hymns themselves, offering comfort and joy amidst harsh doctrine, denominational difference, even death itself.
