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Glory!
Hallelujah!: The Innovative Evangelism of Early Canadian
Salvationists
New book by Gordon
Moyles
Book excerpt - Evangeline Booth's Imaginative
Aproach to Evangelism
It is the evening of November 21, 1897. Tonight Commissioner
Evangeline Booth will deliver her ‘Miss Booth in Rags’
performance at Toronto’s Massey Hall. Blanche Read, one of
her officers, arrives at 6:30 for the 7:30 event, sees
hundreds of people waiting to get in, but finds that the doors
are locked against them. “What a pity,” she murmurs, as she
approaches the doorkeeper. “Lucky for you,” he assures her, as
he looks at her reserved-seat ticket. “We have had to close
the doors, because the Hall is quite filled. All these people
here just cannot be accommodated. Miss Booth, it seems, is the
greatest attraction we have seen since Massey Hall has been
opened. Who is she, anyway?”
She is, of course, the well-known daughter of William Booth
and, at this moment, is commander of The Salvation Army forces
in Canada. She was born Evelyne Cory
Booth —has since legally changed her name to Evangeline— on
Christmas Day, 1865, a few months after her father had begun
his mission to the people of east London. And so she grew up
along with The Christian Mission and, while still a teen, saw
it transformed into The Salvation Army. She was, therefore, a
Salvationist to the core —had professed conversion, worn the
uniform and begun her career as an officer by selling War
Crys.
“She claims,” wrote her biographer, “that she became the
champion seller of War Crys in the Army, and her
position was on the pavement outside Liverpool Street Station
close to a big public house. She reduced her business to a
system. First, she read the current issue of the paper with
careful intent. Then, she made a list of all the countries and
towns mentioned in its columns. This list she committed to
memory, and she would then pursue passers-by, telling them
that there was an interesting piece in the War Cry
about this or that place. Over and over again it meant a sale”
(P.W. Wilson, Evangeline Booth, p. 59).
From that auspicious beginning she graduated to preaching and,
then, with native ingenuity and imaginative daring, she
disguised herself as a London
flower-seller, just to reach and share her testimony with the
ragged girls who plied their trade at the base of the
Piccadilly Circus
fountain. Though probably not as rash as Railton or Dowdle,
nor as flamboyant as Lawley, Evangeline Booth nevertheless
embraced the Army’s spirit of aggressiveness —of
innovativeness, daring and individual initiative. And she
continued to do so when, in 1896, she became the Field
Commissioner of the Salvation Army in
Canada. A brilliant speaker,
a gifted actress and an accomplished musician, she had also a
flair for creative evangelism.
One of the most talked-about events of her Canadian tenure
(1896- 1904) was her ‘Miss Booth in Rags’ performances. They
were among the memorable events of many
Ontario
cities and towns. At Massey Hall in
Toronto, in the City Hall in
Montreal, at barracks and town halls across
Canada, she brought her audiences to
tears as she re-created her early experiences among London’s poor. As she
would do so many times later throughout the United States when (as ‘The
Commander in Rags’ or ‘The Tale of a Broken Heart’) she
re-assumed the character of a Cockney flower-seller and,
dressed appropriately, regaled her audience with tales of
broken and mended hearts.
The
Toronto Globe
stated that Miss Booth’s performance drew to Massey Hall
“the most enormous crowd that has ever surged around its
doors... the manager of the hall estimates that not less than
ten thousand people tried to secure admission. The
Governor-General and Lady Aberdeen, Lady Marjory Gordon and
party from Government House were among those present,
occupying a box near the platform.”
She [Miss Booth] was dressed in a grey and
rather frayed woolen dress, the sleeves of which came just
below the elbow, and had a white apron and a plain shawl above
it, the shawl being worn in the East London fashion, that is,
pinned around the neck and falling down below the waist. He
hair was ‘dressed’ in Whitechapel style, and her shoes,
decidedly worn, were tied with strings...
It was she explained, the beginning of
self-denial week in the Canadian department of the Army, and
she desired to speak of the beacon lights set for those who
would follow Jesus. She built upon the platform during her
address a cross, the various parts of which had upon them the
words Obedience, Sympathy, Sacrifice, Love and Crowning. As
Miss Booth paused in her remarks, and each block was added to
the model, a choir stationed out of sight in one of the
corridors sang a verse of a hymn appropriate to the word on
the block.
In a voice that “sweetly resonated” through
the Hall, Evangeline Booth told stories of how, as a young
girl, she had disguised herself as a London cockney, and
visited the courts. “When cases were tried and the prisoner
convicted and she heard the wail of the wife, or the cry of
the daughter, or the old man’s sob of ‘My son, my son,’ she
went to the sorrowing ones and offered to visit their friends
in jail and take messages for them. After delivering the
message she spent the time going from cell to cell and
corridor to corridor praying and talking. At last the
officials learned who the ragged little girl was, and when
they let her out they would whisper, ‘Get another case and
come again.’ They told her later how when she was praying the
prisoners in the upper corridors would put their ears to the
grating to catch the words” [Nov. 22, 1897].
At other times, quite often in fact, Evangeline Booth would
re-create her experiences as a
London
‘flower-seller’ —the occasions in her youth when she had
assumed that role in order to reach the lower classes. She
was, writes her biographer, “conscious of the line drawn
between herself and the people at the base of society that she
wished to win. She must cross that line and feel within
herself what it is to earn a living on the pavement. Bernard
Shaw’s Pygmalion was a flower girl who was turned into
a lady. Evangeline Booth decided to be a lady turned into a
flower girl. She clothed herself in a ragged costume and took
her place on the steps of the fountain at
Piccadilly Circus”
The other flower girls in their shawls did not know what to
make of her. Her hands were smooth. Her voice was gentle. But
her boots were worn, her stockings were darned, her dress was
tattered and her demeanour was wistful. They pitied the
‘dearie’ who came down in the world so low as this. Not that
she was slow at the game. She sold as many flowers as the best
of them” [Wilson, p. 64]. And soon she had won her own
small congregation of ‘street people’ to whom she ministered
in her own inimitable way.
It was this period of her life that she presented to her
Canadian and (later) American audiences. Always careful to
advertise her performances as ‘representations’ and not mere
‘acting’ (because Canadians were wary of mixing drama and
religion), she drew thousands of people to the Army who might
otherwise have ignored it. As one War Cry report
stated: ‘The audience applauded and wept, laughed and cried as
they beheld that child of God in tatters before them, as
delicate almost as the flowers she carried in the basket on
her arm; and this was not a performance, it was a
representation of real life —of a life lived by one who was
portraying it.” With a superb sense of the dramatic,
Evangeline Booth would choreograph her performance so that
while she spoke, the soft sweet sound of a children’s choir
(all dressed in white) literally floated above her. On other
occasions she was preceded onto the platform by a group of
officers dressed in various costumes whom she would use in her
performance, and then she appeared (to thunderous applause), a
seemingly “lonely figure clad in a ragged skirt and torn
apron, a gaudily-colored shawl around her shoulders.” At an
appropriate moment, she might draw a small child to her bosom,
explaining that she was one of the orphans who were now under
the Army’s care” and who would lead the expected procession of
people who would place gifts on the altar. Other times, when
she described how music alone had the power to break down the
barriers in the slums, she would pick up her accordian and
play ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ And sometimes, to enhance the moment,
she would often use her own adopted children, Pearl and
‘Little’ Willie (who sang beautiful duets), along with live
animals, to lend reality to her message. Here is how the
War Cry described one such event:
Miss Booth in vivid language, pictured to us first her little
home in the slums, with its bare floor and few pieces of
simple furniture. In her lecture she took us down into the
miserable cellars in which such a large percentage of
London’s poor are housed, and led us
through the brilliant confusion of London street-life at
midnight, to the darker alleys where she rescued two children
from the cruel treatment of their father.
We observe [in the audience] now a ripple
of laughter, now a flutter of handkerchiefs to wipe off a tear
of compassion as we listen to Miss Booth’s first lesson in
scrubology; now again sobs and tears as she tells us of the
matchless heroism of the poor crippled boy who did everything
to win an insurance for his starving mother and his smaller
brothers and sisters [June 10, 1899].
Soon every city in
Ontario
—and even further afield— was eager to receive the celebrated
‘Miss Booth in Rags.’ Nor were they, as this report from the London Advertiser attests, disappointed
with her performance:
The announcement that Commissioner Evangeline Booth would
speak at the
Dundas
Street
Methodist
Church last evening drew
an audience that completely filled the large church, many
persons standing throughout the evening.
The lecture was Commissioner Booth’s first appearance in
London in the costume worn by her among the poor of
London,
England. She
wore a ragged plaid shawl over her shoulders, and crossed in
front, and her fingers toyed with the frayed ends as she
spoke. A torn white apron half concealed a tattered grey
calico dress, from beneath which peeped coarse broken shoes
laced with twine. Aside from its immaculate cleanness, the
make-up was perfect, and would pass unchallenged in the most
squalid court in Old London.
On the platform with the Commissioner were Major and Mrs.
Southall, Ensign Welch and Willie and Pearl, two pretty little mites, charges of
Miss Booth’s. Rev. Dr. Saunders, the pastor, opened with
prayer.
Miss Booth came forward and sang sweetly an
old favorite Salvation Army hymn, accompanying herself on an
accordion. Then in a low, pleasant voice she began to speak.
Her work was so well known that she needed no apology for
appearing in that peculiar garb. Many people wanted to know
how she was able to get into the blackest, foulest haunts of
vice and crime and poverty in the world and win the confidence
of the unhappy people who lived there. Those people hated with
a hot, biter hatred all whose condition was happier than their
own, and it was only by means of such a disguise that they
could be approached. As a foreign singing girl, or a
water-cress girl, Commissioner Booth was able to go among
them.
The vital part of Miss Booth’s lecture was in the narration of
the incidents of her work in the London slums. It would be impossible to
reproduce Miss Booth’s stories. She lived them over again as
she told them. And the audience saw them as if portrayed by
some great tragedienne. The sickening brutality, the woeful
want, the bitter, burning shame and black despair on those
lives came home to the listeners with tearful reality. And
then the magic transformation wrought by love and sympathy of
one devoted woman was shown.
At times Miss Booth’s words came in a
torrent of passion and they seemed to choke and burn her;
again her speech was filled with poetic fire, as she turned
for a moment from the black foulness of sin to contemplate the
beauties of nature with a poet’s passionate love. There were
flashes of playful humor, too, as sunny and careless as a
child’s laughter. But through it all shone a beautiful,
intense, devoted love and sympathy for the poor and suffering.
Love, sympathy, sacrifice and action —those were the keys, she
said, which had opened to her the hearts of the criminal, the
poor and the sorrowful.
The entire lecture was intensely
interesting, powerful and dramatic, and the audience listened
with almost breathless attention for two hours [July 14,
1899].
Without any doubt, Evangeline Booth was a remarkable and
talented lady. She played the accordian and the harp; she was
a brilliant elocutionist; and she was, as her biographers
makes clear, a consummate performer. She believed , and made
explicit her belief, that such talents should be used to win
people for Christ. She was therefore not only indefatigable as
Canadian Commander —criss-crossing the country from
St. John’s to Victoria in her attempt to promote The
Salvation Army— but was imaginatively inventive in her
attempts to reach those who remained “just slightly out of
reach.”
She was, as well, passionate about exercise and the benefits
of outdoor activity, even to the point of having a tent set up
in her Toronto garden in which she could sleep. She
rode her horse as often as possible, and when they became
fashionable for ladies, she advocating the healthful benefit
of riding a bicycle. Not merely in the city itself, but on
long excursions to nearby towns to conduct weekend specials.
In the summer of 1897, for example, she formed her first
‘bicycle brigade’ for a long ride to towns along the road to Hamilton:
The Brigade [wrote Eva Booth in the War Cry], was timed
to leave at 1 p.m., and was formed in line on the ground
decided upon for mustering outside the large doors of the
Territorial Headquarters. Eager spectators crowded the windows
of Eaton’s store opposite, looking with no small admiration
upon the neat regulation ‘cycling uniform which by its brown
color appeared to declare the Brigade’s preparation for the
clouds of dust with which during their heated journeyings they
would have to contend, and indeed by its close similarity to
the earth, seemed to challenge any detection of dirt. Although
the customary Army blue was changed to brown, the Soldier-cut
jacket with braid ‘S.S’ and epaulettes which mark the military
appearance ever accompanying a Salvationist on duty were all
in good prominence, and the bugle note announcing the moment
of departure combined with the farewell salutes of ‘God bless
you,’ ‘Hallelujah,’ ‘Pray for us,’ thrown to the officers
remaining in the city, declared beyond dispute that ‘they went
out a band whose hearts God had touched’ not for pleasure but
for battle.
Staff-Captain Horn and Adjutant Morris
formed the Advance Guard, myself with the two children —Dot
and Jai [who Eva had brought with her from England]— on either
side, came next in the ranks: then followed the remainder of
the Brigade in form, each man having his allotted position and
specified comrade given by myself, as organizer of the
Brigade. The uniformity of the parade attracted the attention
of all and caused no little comment as it passed through the
thronged thoroughfares, for not wishing to run down any
traffic, or wound any quadruped, our speed allowed of our
catching the different expressions of wonderment and surprise
dropped by onlookers.
‘Who are these?’ said one.
‘Fancy! That looks well,’ said a gentleman.
‘Salvation Army!’ cried one or two others.
‘Well, what next? —what next?’ spoke yet
another.
And indeed ‘what next? was the question
upon many minds still waiting proof, and other ‘cyclists
passing on the way were brought face to face with the fact
that you could wheel to Heaven with ever so much happier heart
and easier propelling than you could wheeling your machine
with no greater object in view than your own satisfaction and
the whirling away of time [July 31, 1897].
Clearly, Evangeline Booth was enjoying both
the sheer physicality of the jaunt and the publicity it
generated. During that tour alone, she added, the Brigade
wheeled over one hundred and eighty-nine miles, a prodigious
feat indeed. The main problem was not the dust but the sun,
for the heat was almost unbearable and sun-burned skin a large
concern:
However, by rising early in the morning
before the elements were welldressed in fiery brightness, by
an arrangement which combined parasol and fan —a flying
handkerchief at the back of one’s neck, and the aid of an
occasional rest beneath a big tree, with a proportionately big
bucket of water to quench our thirst, we ran into our
specified battleposts, feeling decided overcomers, certainly
having ‘come through’ and ‘gone over’ in more senses than one,
no small tribulation.”
Then the runs were alike in the kindness
that was shown us all along the road. Not only were garden
gates, but cottage doors thrown widely open —we could go into
the kitchens, despite the dust of our shoes, we could have
chairs to sit on under the trees if we preferred, cold water
was drawn for us from the well, and in many instances pails of
milk were gratuitously bestowed. Tea was offered me by the
mother-hearts of a good number of the cottages, the trouble
for the preparation of the same being overlooked, and we were
even given cake —when I say given, I mean we had nothing to
pay for it, which is always a consideration for a
Salvationist, and I would like to tell my readers, but I must
not, how amused I was in watching how fast the boys could eat
it, only of course they had not the least idea how humorously
my mind was employed.
Humorously and thoughtfully —the first
watching the rapidity with which the substantial square pieces
were being disposed of and the latter thinking about the
kindness of those who had given it —thinking how it was, just
because it is such a beautiful thing to be kind and because
kindness, with its deeds and words, never seems able to die,
the Master promised exceptional blessing should attend even
the giving of a cup of cold water. . . .
We left these halting places a good deal
refreshed and rested, but speaking for myself personally, the
most beneficial effect was in my heart derived from the fact
that as well as those found in the ranks, we had so many who
loved us, believed in us, and were anxious to help us in the
quiet and by-ways of Canada and since back in the struggle and
strife with the regiments of conflicting matters ever trooping
through my office, these memories remain to help me.
Renewing her bicycle brigades in the summer of 1889 and 1900
—calling them now her ‘Red Crusaders’— Evangeline Booth toured
most of eastern Ontario, holding ‘camp-meeting’ revivals.
Because the halls were often too hot to be comfortable (and
because Eva Booth was a ‘fresh-air’ fanatic), she rented a
large tent, about 15,000 square feet, which was taken by train
to the various towns, while she and her ‘bicycle brigade’ rode
the many miles for a stay of about three or four days to
conduct religious meetings to which, having heard of her flair
for the dramatic, thousands of people flocked much as they
would have to the well-known Chautauqua events. The ‘brigade’
consisted of about fifteen people, divided into four sections:
the cyclists, the transport team with the tent, the advance
guard which bombarded the towns with posters, and Little
Willie and Pearl (her adopted children) who were accompanied
by a harp, and traveled by rail. They all dressed in khaki
because it did not “show the dust, and the material is such as
will stand the rough usage to which a tenting party will
naturally put it. The trimmings are in red braid, and the
black stockings and grey Klondike
hats made up a neat and novel uniform.”
The first stop, in the summer of 1899, was Deseronto, in the
Bay
of Quinte on the
shore
of Lake Ontario. There they erected their large tent,
a feat which, as The War Cry put it, offered “excellent
physical exercise” —of which Eva Booth thoroughly approved.
“There are scores and scores of stakes to be driven with a
sledge hammer, and the erection of three masts, and the
pulling up of 1,200 lbs. of canvas, gives ample opportunity
for the full use of muscular Christianity.”
And thus began one of Eva Booth’s most successful campaigns to
which, often, whole communities rallied. From town to town, in
such places as Newmarket, Odessa, Colborne, Port Huron,
Napanee, Cobourg, the ‘Red Crusaders’ became the summer’s main
attraction. On occasion, Eva Booth would ride her horse (of
which she was inordinately fond), while her cohorts rode their
bicycles. “Of tumbles there were one or two,” wrote a War
Cry reporter, “but nothing of an artistic or fatal
character.” But dust-covered they certainly were. “We hope our
appearance was imposing as we climbed the Main Street, Newmarket.
If we were not as trim as when we started, Yonge Street’s sandy hills and dales must
be blamed. The dust billows of the roadside had thrown their
spray over our uniforms from cap-peak to toe. . . . The
youthful agility and active wheelmanship of Adj. Welch, Ensign
Griffiths and others were somewhat belied by the grey locks
upon which their caps rested, dust having done what as yet old
age had not given and granted them heads quite remarkable in
appearance” [Aug. 5, 1899].
About these summer events, Evangeline wrote to her sister,
Emma, that her Crusaders had had “regular old Salvation times.
The chief object of the campaign was to visit some very small
and hard places where the getting of a crowd at all implies
that you have the best part of the population out to see you.
The people drove in for miles around to attend the meetings,
and what with the immense audiences, sometimes stretching
outside the canvas, and the almost suffocating heat, the
effort was terribly exhausting. [But] we had souls in nearly
every meeting, though it almost killed us to get them” [Wilson, p. 125].
In rural Ontario
the tent evangelism of Evangeline Booth’s ‘Red Crusaders’
became, for two summers at least, a much-anticipated event.
Thousands of Canadians, some Salvationists of course, but many
who did not know the Army, were drawn by the sound of the
music, by the wellplaced posters and the sight of a motley
crew of bicycle-riders advancing towards their town. It was an
ingenious and effective way of promoting the Army and
preaching the Gospel. As this War Cry report amply
illustrates:
Belleville,
our next place of call, is a pretty little town of
considerable commercial importance. The spot selected for the
Red Crusaders’ campaign here was a broad grassy corner, in an
excellent situation. The tent went up in fine style. Its
erection is a science by itself, and the Crusaders are getting
adept at it. Those who are accustomed to lift no heavier
burden than a pen, may be seen driving stakes, hoisting poles,
roping canvas, and performing other noble feats of strength
and skill. In referring to the ‘works department’ we cannot
pass over the ‘small boy’ who has played quite a prominent
part in it. ‘Everybody that wants a job, fall in,’ from the
Chief Secretary has brought the young hopefuls to stand at
‘attention,’ and they have reported for some real help, too.
At Belleville,
Colonel [Read] rewarded his small service corps by some
toothsome candies. This early roping-into-assistance of the
boyish element has prevented it from becoming a disturbing
element during the real business of the campaign. ‘Now, my
beauties, I’ll tell you when to talk,’ from the Colonel has
had a most peaceful effect, and the behaviour of those who are
now generally known as ‘the Colonel’s beauties,’ has been
remarkably good for their restless and mischiefloving age.
The Belleville campaign was fully on a line with
the triumphant events which it succeeded, and the three days
spent there will not soon be forgotten. They will certainly
wake pleasant echoes in the memories of both visitors and
townsfolk. The opening meeting, or, as Brigadier Pugmire terms
it, ‘the preliminary canter,’ was well attended and enjoyed.
Sunday’s battle was opened by a knee-drill at which Capt.
Susie French officiated. The holiness meeting was a time of
spiritual refreshing. Brigadier Friedrich, Ensign Hyde, and
Captain Easton delivered expressive sermonettes, and the
Colonel gave one of his characteristic Bible readings, which,
by their originality and helpfulness, are now so looked for.
A splendid crowd greeted the Commissioner
in the afternoon. The event of the evening was her address. It
was full of fire and unction, and listened to with rapt
attention. Her remarks on cross-bearing were particularly
forceful. ‘I fancy I see some come up to the pearly gates,’
she cried, ‘and ask, “Where is my crown?” and the Master,
looking back through your life and work, will ask, “Where is
your cross?” We have seldom heard the Commissioner more
manifestly inspired, and that the Lord owned and blessed her
words was seen in the definite cases of salvation which were
dealt with afterwards at the penitent form [July 21, 1900].
Inspired by Evangeline Booth’s efforts at ‘aggressive
evangelism,’ many of her officers followed her example. During
her stay in Canada, ‘traveling specials’ became
a common feature of Salvation Army outreach. As an example,
“The Salvation Marine Band” was started in 1897 by Major
Southall, in charge of the Western Ontario Division. Dressed
in sailors’ uniforms, with “Salvation Army” emblazoned on
their hats, they travelled throughout western Ontario in a
horse-drawn van —a kind of covered wagon— having been
instructed not to travel more than ten miles a day, “as horses
could not be expected to drag the heavy load of bandsmen and
instruments farther than that.” George Smith, one of the
bandsmen, tells how, as an advance guard, he would go into the
various towns (Kincardine, Mitchell, etc.) and put on a
“gramophone recital” (that musical machine being then a great
novelty), by which he acquired enough money to rent a hall.
That was 1897. The next year, still governed by John
Southall’s ingenuity, the band was re-formed to become an
acting troupe, performing a religious play called “The Modern
Prodigal.” This they performed in thirty-six Ontario towns, again
demonstrating how, with a little imagination, the Gospel could
be “taken to the people.”
That Evangeline Booth was extraordinarily
gifted is beyond dispute; she believed, however, that others,
less gifted than she, should use whatever gifts they possessed
just as she did. That was how the ‘aggressive evangelism’ of
which her mother had written was to be put into action. And
‘action’ was her chief delight. Displaying what one writer has
called an “irrepressible initiative,” she had, while still in
London, started one of the Army’s first female bands; she was
the first Salvationist to ride a bicycle (defying what was
then a convention that women did not do that sort of thing);
in Toronto she rode her horse to headquarters and slept during
the summer, as already mentioned, in a tent in her backyard.
She was both innovative and daring; and, by her example, many
Canadian Salvationists also engaged in an innovative and
daring brand of Christianity.
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