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JOHN BERNARD
MANNIX
HEROES OF . . THE DARKNESS
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Heroes of the Darkness
BY
JOHN BERNARD MANNIX
WITH FORTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS INCLUDING TWO IN COLOUR
London
S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO* LTD, 8 & 9 Paternoster Row
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD, 9
HELEN KELLER: A GENIUS, 15
SIR FRANCIS JOSEPH CAMPBELL, LL.D., .... 60
HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D., M.P., 102
DR. ARMITAGE : PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST, . . . 148
LAURA BLUDGMAN AND HER TEACHERS, . . . .168
FRANQOIS HUBER, 208
DR. THOMAS BLACKLOCK, 230
JOHN METCALF : " BLIND JACK " OF KNARESBOROUGH, . 246
JOHN STANLEY, MUS.BAC., 274
NICHOLAS SAUNDERSON, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., .... 288
JOHN MILTON I AS A BLIND MAN, 302
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HELEN KELLER AS AN ART CRITIC, . . . Frontispiece
HELEN KELLER'S NEW HOME, 19
A LESSON IN LIP-READING, 35
FAC-SIMILE OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY HELEN KELLER TO
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 39
SPECIMEN OF THE BRAILLE SYSTEM OF PRINTING FOR THE
BLIND, 52
SIR F. J. CAMPBELL WRITING BRAILLE, .... 60 ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE, UPPER NORWOOD, . . .71
BLIND GIRLS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE AT
NEEDLEWORK, 88
BLIND BOYS AT GYMNASTIC EXERCISES, .... 91
BLIND GIRLS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE TYPING, . 97
BLIND BOYS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE LEARNING
BOTANY, 98
HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D., M.P., 102
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THK 111VEH AVON, . .113
HENRY FAWCETT AND HIS WIFE, 131
HENRY FAWCETT AS ONE OF THE " TEA-ROOM PARTY," . 139
TABLET ERECTED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY TO HENRY
FAWCETT, 146
DR. ARMITAGE, 148
A BOOKBINDER AT WORK AT THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN
BLIND SOCIETY, 150
A VIEW OF THE DARDANELLES, THE SCENE OF DR.
ARMITAGE'S EXPLOIT, 153
STEREOTYPING PAGES OF MUSIC AT THE BRITISH AND
FOREIGN BLIND SOCIETY, 161
7
List of Illustrations
PAGE
LAURA BBIDGMAN, 168
LAURA BRIDGMAN AND UNCLE ASA, 173
FAC-8IMILE OF LAURA BRIDGMAN'S WRITING, . . .178
CHARLES DICKENS AND LAURA BRIDGMAN, . . . .185
FAC-8IMILE AUTOGRAPH PAGES OF A POEM WRITTEN BY
LAURA BRIDGMAN, 196, 197
DR. HOWE, 203
FRANQOIS HUBER, 208
DR. T. BLACKLOCK, 230
KIRKCUDBRIGHT, 237
JOHN METCALF, 246
KNARESBOROUGH, SHOWING THE HOUSE WHERE METCALF
WAS BORN, AND THE OLD CASTLE .... 249
MODERN KNARESBOROUGH, AND THE OLD CASTLE, . . 259
METCALF'S HOUSE AT SPOFFORTH, 271
JOHN STANLEY, 274
THE ORGAN OF ST. ANDREW'S, HOLBORN, .... 277
THE HISTORIC ORGAN OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH, LONDON, . 279
FAC-8IMILE PAGE OF MUSIC LEAFLET WRITTEN BY JOHN
STANLEY, 283
THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANDREW'S, HOLBORN, . . . 285
DR. NICHOLAS SAUNDERSON, LL.D., 288
CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 293
SAUNDERSON'S "PALPABLE ARITHMETIC," .... 299
JOHN MILTON, 302
MILTON COMPOSING " SAMSON AGONISTES," .... 305 THE MEETING OF MILTON AND ANDREW MARVELL. [By
G. H. Boughton, R.A.], 313
IN MEMORY OF MILTON, 319
FOREWORD
BALING with a subject, the romantic and dramatic possibilities of which have attracted such eminent writers as M. Maurice Maeterlinck, Mr. H. G. Wells, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, this volume of studies from real life claims to be nothing more than a simple examination of one phase of the foundation of reality which should underlie all that is best in the world of imagination.
Most of my readers live in a world of light and colour, the beauty and value of which they seldom pause to realise. But there is in this world of ours a kingdom of which they have probably never even heard. As old as human history, this kingdom has no frontiers, its subjects know no distinctions of race or colour, caste or lineage. It is an empire of darkness, though upon its citizens the sun is ever shining. Yet to these sons and daughters of men there is neither light nor colour in life. They live in lifelong gloom, for theirs is the kingdom of the blind.
True, blindness is primarily a physical deprivation, and as such may be regarded simply as an obstacle to be overcome, as a stimulus to effort. But the loss pf sight more than any other affliction is a test of the temper and mettle of a man, of his will to live and do, of his faith and hope in the future. It is in the
Foreword
kingdom of the blind that the triumph of man's higher nature and powers over adversity and despair is most strikingly and heroically manifested. Out of the dark- ness of their world have emerged many heroes. Those of us who live in a radiant and multi-coloured universe would faint and falter under the burden of such a misfortune as that of blindness, and yet, as Milton proudly said, " It is not so wretched to be blind, as it is not to be capable of enduring blindness."
Right down through the ages, and in most of the countries of the world, the blind have been considered, with the exception of a few outstanding and heroic figures, as objects of charity, of pity, and even of contempt. In our time the world is beginning to learn that the blind, as such, are not disqualified from sharing the duties and responsibilities, the innocent pleasures, and the highest rewards of our common humanity.
Harking back to classical times, we find, besides the titanic figure of blind Homer, half- veiled in the mists of antiquity, other notable blind men in Didymus of Alexandria (mentioned by St. Jerome), and Democritus, whom Tully said put out his eyes in order to be able to think the more intensely. Later, in the Far East, there was the Japanese Prince Hitoyasu, whose ninth century bounty was the means of helping his afflicted brethren until Western ideas intervened. Mediaeval Europe saw at least two picturesque figures who, though sightless, played heroic parts on the field of battle. The first was John, the blind King of Bohemia, who fell fighting valiantly at Cr^cy, and whose coat of arms was popularly supposed to have been adopted by the Prince of Wales. The other was John de Trocznow or Zisca,
10
Foreword
who, despite the loss of first one eye and then the other, led the Bohemian reformers to victory. Minstrelsy, too, has been a recognised calling for the blind in all periods. The name of Blind Harry, the fourteenth century poet and minstrel, is famous in Scottish annals, as are those of Carolan and Raftery in the later history of Ireland.
That there have also been noble and heroic figures in the ranks of the blind in more modern times, it is one of the purposes of this volume to prove. Here are presented in brief the life-stories of a representative and carefully selected group of men and women whose lives have been overshadowed by blindness, but who, nevertheless, by innate genius or sheer force of character, have heroically fought for and attained fame or success in various walks of life. Rising superior to the limita- tions of their common affliction, they form a living chain of heroes and heroines of the darkness from Helen Keller back to Milton !
Considered as archtypes, each one belongs to a distinct department of activity or school of thought, and personifies some abstract quality or dominant character- istic. Thus Milton, the English Dante, might be said to personify the divine afflatus; Saunderson, the sightless mathematician, would stand for lucidity and concentration ; Huber, the naturalist, though blind, represented observation ; Henry Fawcett, the statesman, resolution ; Laura Bridgman, receptivity ; and John Metcalf and Sir Francis Campbell, different phases of the more purely physical attributes of daring and enterprise. But such classification may be considered more arbitrary than scientific.
On the other hand, the subjects treated may be taken
11
Foreword
as illustrations of varying aspects of the psychology of blindness and its effects. Where these effects are negative or repressive, as, for instance, in the natural timidity of movement so noticeable in the blind, they can be over- come by training or the exercise of the will. Striking evidence of this will be found in the lives of Metcalf, the blind road-maker; James Holman,R.N. (1787-1857), the blind traveller ; and Sir F. J. Campbell, the famous blind teacher, happily still with us. Then there are examples of what might be called the compensations for loss of sight. Increased powers of concentration are certainly a concomitant, and as a secondary result there is an improved retentiveness of memory. The apparent improvement in the acuteness of the other senses so often remarked in blind people is usually only the result of greater attention being concentrated on those senses. They are, for instance, more dependent on the sense of hearing than sighted people. Though a trained ear does not make a musician, the blind more than hold their own in the art of music, as the career of such men as John Stanley will prove. As to whether blindness limits the powers of imagination, or proves or disproves the existence of innate ideas, a great controversy raged round the descriptive poetry of Dr. Blacklock, the blind friend and patron of Burns and Scott, and the scholarly lectures of Professor Saunderson. Loss of sight did not prevent Leonhard Euler, the astronomer, or Fra^ois Huber, the famous Swiss authority on bees, from pursuing their splendid work for science. In short, given the man of strength of character and of will, even if he be blind, he has in him the seeds of success, the making of a hero — a sightless superman.
12
Foreword
That the position of the blind has been greatly improved in modern times is undoubted. Sympathy in its truest and best form, that of helping the sightless to help themselves, is largely a product of modern philanthropy and humanitarianisrn, allied to improved educational methods. An awakening civic conscious- ness is causing the State to realise its responsibilities for its disabled citizens. In 1784 Valentin Hatty had the first books printed in raised characters for the blind, and founded the parent Institution Nationale des Jeune Aveugles. The example of this great apostle of the sightless was quickly followed by philanthropists in England and America. Of the later developments of the education of the blind, space does not here permit more than passing mention. Some ideas on the subject may be gleaned from the lives of Laura Bridgman, Helen Keller, and that pioneer of the strenuous life among the blind, Sir Francis Campbell.
In conclusion, it is hoped that this modest collection of stories of darkened lives will commend itself to those who sympathise with, and find a message of hope in the triumph of human nature over adversity and affliction. I trust, too, that my blind friends will find in these biographies of their gifted brethren a source of encouragement and inspiration.
With regard to the authorities consulted, it is not possible even to summarise them here. For the most part they are mentioned in the text, and to the authors and publishers I beg cordially to acknowledge my indebtedness.
J. B. M.
13
HELEN KELLER: A GENIUS
THERE was sufficient truth in the characteristic remark of the late Mark Twain, that the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century were Napoleon and Helen Keller, to appeal to the imagination and to live in the memory. The apparently random shafts of genius often strike nearer the truth than our own most laboured approximations, and the buttoned rapier of a shrewd wit than judicial and more or less invidious comparison. Napoleon Bonaparte set at nought the frontiers of Europe and set out to conquer the world. Helen Keller triumphantly overcame the barriers of her imprisoned senses, and brought a sympathetic world to her feet. That she, being blind, should be alive to the light, and colour, and beauty of life ; being deaf, should still hear the music of the spheres — these were not the greatest marvels, for Laura Bridgman had trodden the path before her, though haply not so far. But that she, being dumb, should speak — having lost the three senses of sight, hearing, and speech, should still surpass in intellectual attain- ments many of her brothers and sisters blessed with all their senses ! It is such marvels as these that have so impressed the popular imagination as to make the name of this young American girl of world-wide renown.
15
Heroes of the Darkness
The story of Helen Keller's dawning conscious- ness, of her gradual awakening from the living tomb of silence and darkness in which she was immured, makes a psychological study of intense human interest, and the narrative of the faltering steps by which she ascended the heights of knowledge of self, of the Creator, and of the universe is unusually fascinating.
Helen Keller was born near Tuscumbia, a little country town in Northern Alabama, on the 27th June, 1880. As an infant she was taken to live in the tiny summer-house covered with vines, climbing roses, and honeysuckle, which, as is not unusual in the Southern States, was built near the family homestead. Here in the little arbour, whose porch was almost hidden by a screen of yellow roses and southern smilax, and was fragrant with the scent of mimosa, the infant Helen spent the first nineteen months of her life; until the ill- ness came which deprived her of sight and hearing. She was fast learning to toddle and to lisp the childish prattle so dear to a mother's heart. Then she was stricken down with an acute attack of congestion of the stomach and brain.
Her recovery was rapid enough, but was only partial. Never again was she to see the light of heaven or to hear the voices of her loved ones. Her childish body became an earthly prison for the faculties of her soul. Helen's earliest memories and first impressions are of necessity vague and elusive. The sensation of light was only dimly present, and pained her infant eyes until it gradually merged into lifelong darkness and gloom.
Little Helen ceased to speak because she could not hear. The poor little mite, silent and at first helpless,
16
Helen Keller
sat in her mother's lap, or clung to her dress as she moved about on her household duties. By and by she began to feel the necessity of communicating her wishes and requirements to others. A series of signs and gestures grew to be the natural expression of her desires between herself and the members of her family. She shook her head for "no" and nodded for "yes." A pull meant " come," a push " go," and so on. Some of the signs were based on imitativeness. Thus, if she wanted bread and butter, she would imitate the process of cutting and buttering the slices, or if she wanted ice- cream, she would pretend to be working the freezer, and shiver to indicate cold.
Helen soon understood a good deal of what was going on around her. She could tell by her dress when her mother was going out, and always begged to be taken with her. At the age of five she learned to fold and put away the clothes when they were returned from the laundry, and she could easily tell her own garments from those of the others. Her ability to perform such tasks, however, she afterwards ascribed simply to imitation.
There came a time when Helen began vaguely to realise that she was not like other people. This was before her teacher came to her. She noticed that her relatives and friends did not make signs as she had to do. When they wanted to tell one another anything she found that they talked with their mouths. Some- times she stood between two friends or relatives who were talking, and touched their lips. She could not understand what they were doing, and was vexed. Occasionally she would move her lips, too, in mute and ineffectual imitation. She would also gesticulate frantically, but, of course, unavailingly. At times this 2 17
Heroes of the Darkness
made her so angry that she kicked and screamed passionately until she was almost exhausted.
Her ungoverned impulses made Helen a wayward and wilful little girl. She sometimes kicked her nurse in her fits of temper, confessing afterwards to a vague feeling akin to regret, which did not however prevent her from doing the same again. Of active and adventurous disposition, she used to roam about the garden and stables just like any sighted child would do.
One day she found out the use of a key, and locked her mother up in the pantry. There Mrs. Keller was obliged to remain for three hours, until the servants, who were in another part of the house, came to her assistance. She kept thumping and kicking at the door, while Helen sat on the steps and laughed in her strange, voiceless way, as she felt the concussion of the knocking. It was such naughty pranks as this that made the deciding factor in resolving Helen's parents to secure a teacher for her.
About the year 1885, the Keller family, consisting of Helen, her father and mother, two elder half-brothers, and an infant sister Mildred, moved from the little vine- covered house to a large new one. Miss Keller has written that her earliest distinct recollection of her father was wading through heaps of newspapers towards him, and then finding him with a sheet of paper held before his face. She was greatly puzzled to know what he was doing, even putting his spectacles on to try if they would help to solve the mystery. She did not find out for quite a long time that her father was the editor of a newspaper, and had to do a lot of reading.
Helen always speaks with fond affection of her father, whom she describes as loving and indulgent. He was a noted raconteur, and after she had learned the
18
Heroes of the Darkness
manual alphabet, he used to spell out some of his best anecdotes to her, and he was quite delighted when she repeated them to visitors. She loved her mother, too, very dearly, but for a time after the birth of her little sister Mildred, was inclined to look upon the new baby as somewhat of an intruder. Helen had a doll which she kept in a cradle. One day she found Mildred in the cradle asleep. In a fit of anger she rushed upon the cradle and overturned it. The baby would probably have been injured had not Mrs. Keller caught it as it fell. Helen was not consciously callous or vindictive, but those who live in a world of silence and darkness can know little of the tenderest affections, until these are cultivated and developed by endearing thoughts and words and intercourse.
" Meanwhile," as Miss Keller has since written, " the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were invariably followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to free myself."
Her parents were much troubled about her. They lived a long way from any school for the blind or deaf, and some of their friends doubted if she could be taught at all. It seemed unlikely, too, that a teacher could be secured who would be willing to come to such an out- of- the- world place as Tuscumbia, to teach a little girl who was both deaf, dumb, and blind. Mrs. Keller had read Dickens' account in his " American Notes " of the training of Laura Bridgman, who was also deaf and blind, and she was cheered and encouraged thereby. But her heart fell when she remembered that Dr. Howe, who had discovered the best methods of teaching the deaf-blind, had been dead many years.
20
Helen Keller
When Helen was about six years old, her father took her to an eminent oculist in Baltimore, but nothing could be done for her eyes, and he could give her anxious parents no hope. Mr. Keller then went on to Washington, to consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell as to a school for his daughter. The journey was to Helen, then a restless, excitable little creature, one long series of novel and delightful impressions, and to this day she recalls with pleasure the kindliness of Dr. Bell, who took her on his knee while he allowed her to examine his watch.
Acting on Dr. Bell's advice, Mr. Keller wrote to Mr. Anagnos, Dr. Howe's son-in-law and successor as director of the Perkins Institution in Boston — the scene of Laura Bridgman's triumphs — asking if he knew of a teacher competent to begin his daughter's education. Within a few weeks Mr. Anagnos was able to reply in the affirmative. This was in the summer of 1886, but it was not until the following March that the teacher, Miss Sullivan, arrived at Helen's home to undertake her duties.
Anne Mansfield Sullivan was born at Springfield, Massachusetts in 1866. Very early in life she became almost totally blind, and she entered the Perkins Institution in Boston when she was about fourteen years of age. Some time afterwards she partly regained her sight. She graduated from the Boston Institution in 1886. In the same year, as we know, Mr. Keller applied for a teacher for his daughter, and Mr. Anagnos recommended Miss Sullivan. This young lady was specially qualified for the position by her personal experience of blindness, by her special studies, and by the fact that during the six years of her school life she had come into close contact with Laura Bridgman.
21
Heroes of the Darkness
When she was selected to undertake the education of Helen Keller — a task which was to bring her, together with her pupil, so prominently into public notice — she at once began specialised studies, including the assimilation of Dr. Howe's reports on Laura Bridgman, to fit herself for the position. Unquestionably Dr. Howe, by his brilliant investiga- tions in the education of blind and deaf, made Miss Sullivan's work possible, but just as certainly it was Miss Sullivan who first succeeded in teaching language to blind deaf-mutes, and in placing their education on a level with that of the unafflicted. She began where Dr. Howe left off. Her method was not to teach each word separately by definition, but by constant repetition to associate the word with the idea or object it represented, to teach in sentences by imitation, as with an infant.
Before her teacher came to her Helen lived in a sort of perpetual dream. Her intellect was dormant, and she was impelled to action by innate impulse, or by imitation, anger, or desire, rather than by will. By what she calls " tactual memory," and comparison of later with earlier sensations, she has since realised that in those years of childhood her inner life was a blank without past or future. She never consciously thought or exercised choice, or loved or cared for anyone or anything. Helen had, however, an instinctive power of association and imitation. She felt and understood jars like the stamp of a foot or the closing of a door or window, and after smelling the rain and feeling the sensation of wetness she would take shelter instinctively.
It was on the 3rd March, 1887, that Miss Sullivan arrived at the Keller homestead at Tuscumbia, to
22
Helen Keller
take charge of the education of little Helen. Her pupil was then nearly seven years of age. Helen, in her writings, compares herself before her educa- tion began to a ship in a fog without compass or sounding-line. On the day of her teacher's arrival Helen had vaguely understood, from her mother's signs, and the general commotion, that someone was expected, and she stood in the porch waiting. She felt the vibration of approaching footsteps and ran to meet them. Then she was caught up in the arms of one, to use Helen's own words, " who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all things else, to love me."
Miss Sullivan, on her part, admits having expected to find a pale, delicate child, such as Laura Bridgman was, according to Dr. Howe. But Helen Keller was a strong and active girl, of a good healthy colour, unrestrained in her movements, and of tireless activity. Her teacher described her as having at that time an intelligent face but one slightly lacking in mobility. From Helen's impatience of restraint she concluded that it would be difficult to teach her discipline and self-control. The child was inevitably a good deal spoiled, and her teacher found it ex- tremely difficult to teach her obedience.
On the morning after her arrival Miss Sullivan gave her pupil a doll, which had been sent by the little blind children at the Perkins Institution and dressed by Laura Bridgman herself, a fact which Helen Keller did not know until later. Taking advantage of Dr. Howe's experience with his deaf-blind pupils, Miss Sullivan commenced at once to try to teach Helen the manual alphabet. She began by spelling into her pupil's hand the letters " d-o-1-1." Helen was interested, but this
23
Heroes of the Darkness
finger-play meant nothing to her then. She merely imitated the signs for that and other words in an un- comprehending sort of way, and it was not for several weeks afterwards that she understood that everything has a name. Her teacher tried to make it clear that one word meant one thing and no other, but that still the word " doll " applied to other dolls as well. Helen would persist in confusing the words "mug" and " water," and her teacher was equally insistent in correcting her. In a fit of anger and impatience the naughty little girl smashed the new doll on the floor ; nor did she show any sign of regret for what she had done. But Miss Sullivan was not daunted in her difficult task. To the child's delight she was taken out in the bright sunshine to the well-house. Someone was drawing water from the pump and the teacher placed Helen's hand under the spout. While the cool stream gushed over one hand, Miss Sullivan spelled into the other the word " water," at first slowly, then quickly. Suddenly it flashed across the girl's dawning intelligence that the sign letters " w-a-t-e-r " meant the cool liquid that came from the pump. Helen went into the house after her visit to the well a changed girl. She remembered her poor broken doll, felt her way to the hearth, and tried to put the pieces together again, but in vain. Then she realised what she had done, and for the first time felt repentance and sorrow. It was as if consciousness and conscience were awakened together. She began to understand her teacher's motives in insisting on obedience, and she rapidly became quite docile and eager to learn.
In this wise did the little afflicted girl begin to learn to associate ideas. She realised that every object has a name, and that the manual alphabet was the key to
24
Helen Keller
everything she wished to have, to tell, and to know. When Helen grew up she wrote in one of her essays : " I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me."
Then everything she touched suggested new questions, new thoughts. Life was suddenly invested with fresh interest and meaning and mystery.
From the beginning, Miss Sullivan made it a practice to converse with her pupil (by means of the finger language) just as she would with a very young child endowed with all its faculties. She did not at first give Helen regular lessons, but treated her like a two- year-old child just learning to speak, until she had acquired a working vocabulary.
The normal child learns by imitation. It sees people do things and tries to do them. It hears others speak and tries to speak too. But intelligence develops long before speech. Then when the child is able to speak and acquires a little vocabulary, the desire for knowledge grows with what it feeds on. The normal healthy child's curiosity and fondness for asking questions is usually well developed, and little Helen Keller was certainly no exception to the rule.
Helen's mental faculties had been cribbed, cabined, and confined like a sensitive plant in a darkened room. Her teacher gradually opened the shutters, admitted the blessed light of heaven, and lo ! this lonely, human soul blossomed forth like a lovely flower.
One spring morning little Helen found a few early violets in the garden, and brought them to her teacher. Some train of thought impelled her to ask what was the
25
Heroes of the Darkness
meaning of the word " love." Miss Sullivan tried to illustrate the meaning by kissing her. But Helen did not then allow anyone to kiss her except her mother. So her teacher put her arm round her little puzzled charge and spelled into her hand, " I love Helen."
" What is love ? " again asked Helen.
" It is here," replied Miss Sullivan, putting her finger over the girl's heart. The latter felt her heart beating for the first time, but still her teacher's words puzzled her.
Helen inhaled the fragrance of the violets, and asked in a dreamy sort of way, "Is love the sweetness of flowers ? "
" No," replied her teacher.
The little girl thought again. The sun was shining, and its heat gave her an idea. " Is that not love ? " she asked with upturned face.
But Miss Sullivan had to give her a gentle negative, and Helen was quite disappointed at her teacher's inability to explain the meaning of love.
Helen was to gain insight for the first time into the realm of abstract ideas very soon afterwards. A day or two later she was stringing beads of different sizes in symmetrical groups. She made repeated mistakes, which Miss Sullivan patiently pointed out. At length the girl discovered for herself a very obvious error in the arrangement of the beads, and she concentrated all her faculties on the point, and tried to think how she should have arranged them. Her teacher touched her forehead and spelled out an emphatic " think ! "
Instantly Helen realised that this word " think " meant the process that was going on in her brain. Thus did her developing intellect first become conscious of the perception of an abstract idea. As she wrote in
26
Helen Keller
later years : " When I learned the meaning of I and me, and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me." Then she began to think of other things in the light of this newly awakened consciousness. Her teacher endeavoured to explain that love is a faculty of the spirit, the mysterious force that attracts one person to another, and Helen came dimly to realise that there were invisible bonds between her spirit and those of her loved ones. So in later years when she was asked to define love she replied in her bright way : " Why, bless you ! that is easy ; it is what everybody feels for everybody else."
The next important step in Helen Keller's education and mental development was learning to read. Soon after she was able to spell a number of words, her teacher — following the example but reversing the sequence of Dr. Howe's original method in the case of Laura Bridgman — gave Helen many slips of cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. She quickly gathered that each printed word stood for an object, an act, or a quality. Arranging the words in a little frame helped her to form sentences. Then she would place words on the object they represented, and construct sentences in that way ; thus, " doll is on bed " — an idea which she could, so to speak, visualise. In fact, nothing could be better calculated to make the young blind girl grasp in the most convincing fashion the meaning of words.
From the printed slip it was, to an intelligent child like Helen, quite an easy stage to the printed book. She took a " Reader for Beginners," printed in raised characters, and looked for words that she knew. It was, she tells us, like a game of hide-and-seek to her, and one in which she took the keenest pleasure. This was
27
Heroes of the Darkness
part of her teacher's scheme of education — a system which concealed system. For a long time she gave Helen no regular lessons, and there was such perfect sympathy between teacher and pupil that Helen has placed on record that her lessons were to her more like play than work.
Little Helen Keller grew to be an ardent lover of nature. The scents and odours of the woods and wild- flowers, and the touch and feel of the roses and lilies in the garden, and the fruits in the orchard, appealed to her remaining senses with a peculiar and unique poignance. She would hold a little fluffy chicken, or even a frog, in her hand until, forgetting its fright, it would chirp or croak as the case might be, and she would feel the vibration of its throat. Once she had a pet rooster that would perch on her knee and crow, and she humorously said that " a bird in my hand is worth two in the barnyard." Even the smell of her pony's breath is a vivid memory to her now of those happy days when she used to play on the banks of the Tennessee river, and learned to know something of the world about her.
The great outer world, with its seas and continents and mountains and valleys, still seemed strange and un- real to her, but was brought home more clearly to her mind by the alto-relievo maps which her teacher modelled for her in clay. The conventional division of the earth into zones and so forth, she found puzzling and tiresome. Nor was her mind at all attracted by arithmetic or any branch of mathematics, although she made considerable headway in them at a later stage of her education.
Helen was fortunate in having a teacher who put into practice the Shakespearean maxim, " Study what you most affect." Miss Sullivan talked to her pupil
28
Helen Keller
naturally without catechising her. The only questions she asked were in trying to find out what the girl wanted to know. She gave Helen practical object- lessons from life, arousing her interest in botany, by encouraging her to feel at a plant at different stages of its growth ; and in biology and natural history, by allowing her to plunge her hands into a bowl of water full of tadpoles and feel them dart about.
" Thus I learned from life itself," writes Helen Keller. " At the beginning I was only a little mass of possi- bilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed them. When she came everything about me breathed of love and joy and was full of meaning. She has never since let pass an opportunity to point out the beauty that is in everything, nor has she ceased trying in thought and action and example to make my life sweet and useful."
In the year 1888 Helen, then eight years of age, left the peaceful seclusion of her beautiful home for the great busy world outside and beyond. This journey naturally made a different and more vivid and lasting impression on her mind than the one she had taken to Baltimore a couple of years before. She was no longer excited and restless with vague and inchoate longings. She sat quietly beside Miss Sullivan in the train, taking in with eager interest all that the latter spelled into her hand, descriptive of the other passengers and of the hundred and one objects and views seen from the windows. They went to Boston. Helen visited the Perkins Institution for the Blind, and at once began to make friends with the other blind children. She was delighted to find that they knew the manual alphabet, and that they could communicate with her in her own silent language, in which, however,
29
Heroes of the Darkness
they were not so proficient as herself. Pathetically enough she confesses to a feeling of surprise and pain when she realised that they too were blind, and that they read books with their fingers like she herself did. She realised her own deprivations, but had a vague sort of idea that those who were not deaf had a sort of " second sight." Still she found these young afflicted ones happy and contented, and, childlike, she forgot the sense of pain in the pleasure of their companion- ship.
After having her sense of the reality of history quickened by visits to Bunker's Hill and the landing- place of the Pilgrim Fathers, Helen and Miss Sullivan spent the rest of their vacation at Brewster, near Cape Cod, with some friends. Miss Keller still has the most vivid recollections of that holiday by the sea. The roar of the surf, and the tang of the keen bracing air were quite new to her, for she had been born and bred far inland. She was very eager to go bathing. The sensation she found at first delightful, but presently she struck her foot against a rock and fell, to be buffeted to and fro by the waves. She was frightened, but was soon picked up and reassured by the devoted Miss Sullivan. Helen's first words, as soon as she had recovered her breath, were : " Who put salt in the water ? "
In the autumn pupil and teacher returned to their southern home. Helen's mind was full of pleasant memories. Life seemed a better, brighter, and more joyous thing than she had ever before imagined. Under the loving guidance of her more than friend, Miss Sullivan, the young girl's intelligence grew and developed and threw out tendrils which linked her to her friends with bonds of sympathy and love.
30
Helen Keller
Helen was extremely sensitive to outside influences, and was in close sympathy with the feelings and emotions of the friends in whose company she happened to be. This was particularly marked in her relations with Miss Sullivan. She followed the movements of her teacher so closely and minutely that she responded to her moods, and when they were in the company of others, like Laura Bridgman she seemed to know what was going on, even if the conversation had not been conveyed to her for some time. Not only was she able to recognise her friends and acquaintances the instant she touched their hands or clothing, but she had the faculty of perceiving the state of mind of those around her. Miss Sullivan writes of her : " One day, while she was walking out with her mother and Mr. Anagnos, a boy threw a torpedo, which startled Mrs. Keller. Helen felt the change in her mother's movements instantly, and asked, ' What are we afraid of?"'
Perhaps the most striking illustration of this strange power which some people call telepathy, and others attribute to the possession of a mysterious " sixth sense," was the series of experiments conducted while her ears were being examined by aurists in Cincinnati. They were tried with a view of ascertaining positively whether or not she had any perception of sound. To everyone's amazement she appeared to hear not only a whistle but also an ordinary tone of voice. Miss Sullivan was standing beside her, holding her hand. It suddenly struck the teacher that her pupil was receiving impressions from or through her, and she quietly put Helen's hands upon the table and withdrew to the other side of the room. The aurists repeated their experiments with surprisingly different results.
31
Heroes of the Darkness
Helen remained statuesque and motionless through them all, and gave no sign of having received any impression. At Miss Sullivan's suggestion, one of the gentlemen present took her hand, and the experiments were repeated. Then, again, her face changed whenever she was spoken to, but there was not such a lighting up of the countenance, or such an expression of radiant intelligence, as when her teacher held her hand.
The spring of 1890 was a red-letter period in Helen Keller's life. She who had hardly ever made an intelligible or articulate sound, who had never since earliest infancy heard the voices of those nearest and dearest to her, learned to speak ! She always had a strong desire to speak, and persisted in trying to make vocal sounds, although her teacher discouraged this instinctive tendency, as she feared it might become unpleasant. Helen used to make noises — the natural outcome of the desire to exercise her vocal organs — keeping one hand on her throat, while with the other she felt the movements of her lips. Her teacher at first made no effort to teach her to speak because, as she herself admitted, she regarded her pupil's inability to watch the lips of others as an insuperable obstacle to the acquisition of speech.
Helen laughed and cried quite naturally, but she had forgotten what articulate speech was. From an early age she was conscious that her means of commun- ication was different from that used by the people around her. Her desire for information found expres- sion in the questions she asked her teacher. She wanted to know, for instance, " How do the blind girls know what to say with their mouths ? Why do you not teach me to talk like them ? Do deaf children ever learn to speak ? " and so on. Miss Sullivan
32
Helen Keller
explained that some deaf children were taught to speak, but that they could watch the movements of their teacher's lips, which was a great assistance to them. Helen replied with a pathetic persistence that she was sure she could feel her teacher's mouth very well.
Not long afterwards, Mrs. Lamson, who had been one of Laura Bridgman's teachers, called and told Helen about the little Norwegian child, Ragnhild Kaata, who also was deaf and blind, and yet had been taught to speak and understand speech by touching her teacher's lips with her fingers. Helen at once resolved to learn to speak, and never once wavered in her resolution. She was taken for advice to Miss Sarah Fuller, Principal of the Horace Mann School for the deaf and dumb. This lady volunteered to teach Helen herself, and gave her her first lesson in March, 1890.
Helen Keller describes Miss Fuller's methods thus : — " She passed my hand lightly over her face, and let me feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a sound. I was eager to imitate every motion, and in an hour had learned six elements of speech, N, P, A, S, T, I. Miss Fuller gave me eleven lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight when I uttered my first connected sentence : ' It is warm ' True, they were broken and stammering syllables, but they were human speech."
Of course she had only just begun to learn the rudiments of speech. At first most people could not have understood one word out of a hundred that she used. Only Miss Fuller and Miss Sullivan could follow her then, but by her own untiring perseverance, aided and guided by her devoted teacher, Helen finally learned to speak naturally and intelligibly. It amazed 3 33
Heroes of the Darkness
her to find how much easier it was to talk than to spell on her fingers, and after a time she, on her part, practically ceased to use the manual alphabet, but Miss Sullivan and a few friends still continued to use it in communicating with her, as being more rapid and con- venient.
Miss Keller's voice has been described as low and pleasant. Her speech is said to lack variety and modulation ; it runs in a monotone when she is reading aloud, and when she speaks moderately loud, it hovers round the two or three middle tones. Her voice gives the impression that there is too much breath for the amount of tone. Some of her notes are musical and charming. Latterly the principal thing that is lacking is sentence, accent, and variety in the inflection of phrases. Miss Keller pronounces each word as a foreigner does when he is still labouring with the elements of a sentence, or as a child does when reading aloud and has to pick out each word. Nevertheless, when it is kept in mind that she never remembers having heard a single word of human speech, the progress she has made in articulate language is nothing short of marvellous.
Miss Sullivan was often asked how she taught Helen the names of abstract ideas, like goodness and happiness. With characteristic modesty she has written : " It seems strange that people should marvel at what is really so simple. Why, it is as easy to teach the name of an idea, if it is clearly formulated in the child's mind, as to teach the name of an object." She goes on to explain that if a child is given, say something sweet to eat, and he hears or has the word " sweet " spelled into his hand, he will always associate the arbitrary sign with the definite sensation. But it
34
A LESSON IN LIP-READING
Heroes of the Darkness
was in the unique combination of sympathy with perspicacity that Miss Sullivan excelled as a teacher. Being, as she was, in complete sympathy with her pupil, she was able to seize the psychological moment to convey an impression, and to give her its equivalent meaning in articulate language.
Deeper problems soon began to trouble Helen's young mind. When she was about ten years old she wrote, among others, the following questions on her tablet: — " I wish to write about things I do not under- stand. Who made the earth and the seas and every- thing ? What makes the sun hot ? Where was I before I came to mother ? I know that plants grow from seeds which are in the ground, but I am sure people do not grow that way. I never saw a child plant. . . . Why does not the earth fall, it is so large and heavy ? "
After a good deal of thought Miss Sullivan came to the conclusion that the child who was capable of framing and asking these questions was also capable of comprehending at least the elementary answers to them. Once Helen had succeeded in formulating the ideas which underlay her questions, they seemed to absorb all her thoughts. Coming across a large globe she suddenly asked her teacher, " Who made the real world?" Miss Sullivan endeavoured to explain how the origin of the visible universe is accounted for, how " men came to believe that all forces were manifesta- tions of one power, and to that power they gave the name God."
Helen evidently thought the matter over earnestly, and then, like her predecessor, Laura Bridgman, she began to ask the age-old enigmas : " Who made God ? " " What did God make the new worlds out of ? "
36
Helen Keller
and so on. Her teacher had to admit that there are many things the wisest people in the world cannot explain, and for which faith supplies the only solution. At that time Helen was taught no creed or dogma, nor was any effort made to press religious beliefs upon her attention.
At a later period Miss Sullivan gave an interesting account of Helen's progress in the acquisition of language. She helped her pupil to acquire knowledge and the means of expression simultaneously and naturally. Grammar was discarded. Helen acquired language by practice and habit and memory, rather than by any study of rules and definitions.
In the autumn of 1890, when Helen Keller was just over ten years of age, she wrote her first little story. She took great pleasure in its composition, and named it " The Frost King." She copied the story out and sent it to Mr. Anagnos, who was very pleased with it, and had it printed in one of the reports of the Perkins Institution. Soon after Helen went to Boston, how- ever, it was discovered that her story, "The Frost King," bore such a close resemblance to another story, "The Frost Fairies," by Miss Margaret T. Can by, published some years previously, as to throw doubt on Helen's originality. After considerable con- troversy and some inquiry, during which time Helen suffered acute agony of mind, it was established that if there had been plagiarism it was unintentional, and due more to an unusually retentive subconscious memory, than to any disingenuousness on her part.
For some time after her first unfortunate experience of authorship, Helen was extremely diffident and dis- trustful of herself in committing anything to paper. It was partly to overcome this timidity, and to restore
37
Heroes of the Darkness
her self-confidence, that Miss Sullivan encouraged her to write her first brief account of her life for a periodical. The young author was then twelve years old. She may be said to have then reached a stage of her mental development which marked the full awakening of her consciousness and intelligence. Hitherto, she had lived the unself-conscious life of a happy, normal, young child.
In the following year (1893) Helen took a trip to Washington during the inauguration ceremonies of President Cleveland, and in the same year she paid her first visit to Niagara. She wrote afterwards : " It is difficult to describe my emotions when I stood on the point which overhangs the American Falls, and felt the air vibrate and the earth tremble." Miss Keller comments on the fact that people should be surprised because she was impressed by the grandeur of Niagara. But even to her fettered faculties things retain some- thing like their true proportions, and Niagara will always be titanic. Besides, her sense of touch is so sensitive and highly developed — for has she not written : " Necessity . . . gives a precious power of feeling to the whole body. Sometimes it seems as if the very substance of my flesh were so many eyes looking out at will upon a world new created every day ? " — that the vibrations of the thunderous roar of Niagara would mean more to her than to the average person with more senses and fewer wits.
The year 1893 was a busy one for Helen. Accom- panied by Miss Sullivan and Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, she visited the Chicago World's Fair. She received permission from Mr. Higinbotham, the President of the World's Fair, to feel any exhibit in which she was interested, and she gladly took advantage of the
38
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FAC-SIMILE OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY HELEN KELLER TO DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Heroes of the Darkness
privilege. Her eager fingers felt at all sorts of things ; amongst many others the life-like French bronzes claimed her enthusiastic admiration. Dr. Bell showed her and explained the working of the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, and many other marvels of modern science. In fact, the three weeks she spent at the Fair seemed to the young afflicted girl like hours in fairyland ; but a fairyland made real, a sort of dreamland come true. In reality she was revelling in her first actual living contact with some of the most interesting aspects of the busy, work-a-day world.
It is difficult for anyone who has never known what it was to suffer the loss of a sense, to realise the value, importance, and high stage of development of the sense of touch in the blind, and particularly in the deaf-blind. In the case of Helen Keller, her hand takes the place of sight and hearing. To her the world, devoid of light and colour and sound, is based on touch-sensations. But, she writes : " The world I see with my fingers is alive and ruddy and satisfying." " There is nothing," she goes on, " misty or uncertain about what we can touch." Certainly the range of possibilities she opens out to the sense of touch is a wonderfully wide and varied one. She can recognise her friends, first by the vibration of their footsteps, or, if they are still, by touching their hands or faces. She is able to trace and appreciate the beautiful contours of a statue, or the delicate symmetry of a flower.
Up to the year 1893 Helen Keller had, as we have seen, studied and read a good deal, but in a somewhat desultory fashion. She had already gained some acquaintance with the histories of Greece and Rome, and that of her own country. Her knowledge of French was sufficient to enable her to read La
40
Helen Keller
Fontaine's Fables, Le Medecin Malgre Lui, and passages from Athalie in the original. She also paid constant attention to the improvement of her speech.
When she had recovered from the strain and excite- ment of her visit to Chicago, it was felt that the time had arrived for her to take up more serious studies in a systematic manner. In October, 1893, Helen and Miss Sullivan were staying with friends at Hulton, Pennsylvania. There and then she commenced the study of Latin grammar under the tuition of a Mr. Irons. She was just beginning to be able to read Caesar's " Gallic War," when she had to return to her home in Alabama. It was, too, about this time that, in reading such works as Tennyson's " In Memoriam," she began to appreciate the beauty and importance of literary style, and the necessity of the training of the judgment and the critical faculty.
The summer of 1894 saw Miss Sullivan and her charge at the Chautauqua meeting of the American Association for the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. It was then arranged that Helen should go to the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City, for the purpose of having the best training in vocal culture and lip-reading. In addition to this special tuition she studied, during the two years she attended the school, arithmetic, geography, French, and German. Her progress in speech and lip-reading was not such as she and her teachers had hoped or expected. Arithmetic, too, gave her a good deal of trouble. It was a subject which did not attract her, consequently she took little interest in it, and did not at that time make much headway. But these disappointments apart, the two busy years she spent in New York,
41
Heroes of the Darkness
diversified as they were by daily walks in Central Park, and occasional trips up the Hudson river to such places as " Sleepy Hollow" (immortalised by Washington Irving), were happy years indeed. In a diary she kept while a student at the Wright-Humason School, she wrote : " I find that I have four things to learn in my school life here, and indeed in life — to think clearly without hurry or confusion, to love everybody sincerely, to act in everything with the highest motives, and to trust in dear God unhesitatingly."
From being quite a little girl Helen had cherished the idea of going to college, and characteristically enough had preferred Harvard, because at places like Wellesley there were only girls. As she grew older the idea took firmer root and became an earnest desire. Accordingly, in October, 1896, Miss Keller now a young miss of sixteen, entered a school for young ladies at Cambridge, Mass., to be prepared for the matriculation examination for Radcliffe College. She did not hesitate to enter into competition with other girls, endowed with all their faculties, determined as she was to secure a degree.
The devoted Miss Sullivan attended the classes at the Cambridge school with her former pupil, and acted as interpreter of the lessons and instructions given. Miss Keller's studies for the first year included English history and literature, German, Latin, and arithmetic. She already possessed a good knowledge of English, German, Latin, and French. Even with these initial advantages the young girl was heavily handicapped. It was not to be expected that Miss Sullivan could spell into .her hands all the information that her studies required, and it was impossible to have text- books specially embossed in time to be of use. For a
42
Helen Keller
while she had to copy out her Latin exercises in Braille, so that she could recite them with the other girls. Her teachers soon came to understand her imperfect speech sufficiently to answer her questions and correct her mistakes. She could not, of course, make notes in class, or write exercises ; but she typed all her compositions and translations herself at home.
Miss Sullivan's duties at this time were very tedious and very laborious, but she carried them out with infinite patience. In addition to spelling into Helen's hand all the lessons that her various teachers gave her, she read and re-read books which could not be had in raised print. Some of her tutors learned the manual alphabet in order to communicate with Helen direct. But, as our heroine has placed on record " there was only one hand that could turn drudgery into pleasure." During this year Miss Keller notes that she finished arithmetic, and read part of Caesar's " Gallic War," also a good deal in German, including Schiller, Lessing, and Goethe. In English she read Shakespeare, Burke, and Macaulay.
Miss Keller resided in one of the school-houses where Mr. Howells had formerly lived. There she had the companionship of several girls of her own age. She took part in many of their games and frolics, and some of her friends and playmates learned the manual alphabet so as to be able to chat with her. After Christmas her little sister Mildred came to study at Cambridge. Six months later, from the 29th June to 3rd July, 1897, she sat for the preliminary examin- ation for Radcliffe College. She presented herself for examination in German, Latin, French, and English, and Greek and Roman history. Having to use a type- writer she occupied a separate room, so that the noise
43
Heroes of the Darkness
would not disturb the other candidates. She was successful in securing a pass in every subject, and was awarded Honours in German and English.
During her second year at the preparatory school at Cambridge, Miss Keller had still many difficulties to contend with. Few of the books she required were em- bossed, and she lacked much of the requisite apparatus. She persevered with her mathematical studies, although she still found them little to her taste. In geometry she was of course unable to follow the figures drawn on the blackboard, and her only means of gaining a clear idea of them was to form them on a cushion by means of bent wires with pointed ends. She was, however, steadily overcoming the many difficulties with which she was faced, when Mr. Gilman, the principal of the school she attended, decided that she was being over- worked, and that her studies must be rearranged. This would have meant spending a much longer time in preparing for college, and Helen wished to go up with her classmates. The upshot was that Mrs. Keller removed her two daughters from Mr. Oilman's school.
From February, 1898, Helen continued her studies under the direction of Mr. Merton S. Keith at Wrent- ham, Mass. — the indispensable Miss Sullivan always acting as the sympathetic and unwearying interpreter. In the following October they returned once more to Boston, but Helen's preparations to enter college were uninterrupted. She found individual tuition both more efficient and more adapted to her tastes and require- ments than studying in class. Her native perseverance and intelligence, with sympathetic guidance, enabled her to conquer all difficulties. She sat for her final examination for Radcliffe College on the 29th and 30th June, 1899, and despite her heavy handicap, came
44
Helen Keller
through with flying colours. She had overcome all obstacles and proved herself the peer of her sisters who could see and hear.
Miss Keller did not immediately take advantage of her success by proceeding to college, but spent another year under the tuition of Mr. Keith. So that her dream of entering college did not assume actuality until the autumn of the year 1900.
When at last she entered Radcliffe College the first days were full of absorbing interest. She began her studies with eagerness. To her the university seemed the entrance hall to the wisdom of all the ages. When, however, she came to compare reality with the high ideals she had formed, it is not surprising that she experienced some measure of disillusionment. She felt particularly the lack of leisure and peaceful solitude for meditation. " One goes to College to learn, it seems, not to think,' ' she wrote, with a foretouch of her later playful irony.
In the lecture-room she was to all intents and purposes alone ; even the professor was to her very remote. The lectures were spelled into her hands as rapidly as possible. She was, as has been said, unable to take notes there and then, but she did not think this to be much of a disadvantage. Usually she typed what she remembered of the lectures when she reached home. She still had to have many of the books that she required, and which were not procurable in blind type, read into her hand, a slow process which some- times made her a little impatient, especially when she knew that other girls were at play. Literature was her favourite study, less a task than a pleasure and a delight ; and, as with most students, examinations were her pet aversion.
45
Heroes of the Darkness
Miss Keller owns to an enduring love of books in general, and reading in particular. Beginning with the "Little Lord Fauntleroy" of her childhood, she takes her friends with her in her explorations and adventures among the classics, commenting with reverence on the Bible, and with enthusiasm on Shakespeare, although she notes that the latter's tragedies impressed her more deeply, if not more pleasantly, than his comedies. She calls literature " my Utopia."
Though fond of books and the company of the immortals, reading is not Helen's only pleasure. When quite a little girl she learned to row and swim. One of her favourite pastimes is yachting, which she first indulged in on her visit to her beloved "Evangeline" country, Nova Scotia, in 1901. She dearly loves a walk in the country which brings her into close touch with Nature. Next to a walk, she says she enjoys a spin on her tandem bicycle. When- ever she can, she takes one or other of her dog friends with her on her excursions afoot or awheel. Her indoor amusements and pastimes are just like those of other girls. She is fond of knitting and crocheting, and enjoys a game of checkers (draughts) or chess with a friend on her specially made board with sunk squares and marked men. But if, as Helen has written, "there are children around, nothing pleases me so much as to frolic with them."
So that we see that Helen Keller finds life by no means a dull or tedious affair. She is, as we know, keenly alive to outside impressions. Her description of the busy life of the city streets is vivid and accurate. She writes : " The rumble and roar of the city smite the nerves of my face, and I feel the ceaseless tramp
46
Helen Keller
of an unseen multitude," and she goes on to describe (' the grinding of heavy waggons on hard pavements and the monotonous clangor of machinery," and to contrast all this with the peace and charm and beauty of God's own countryside.
The fruits of her own observation provide her with plenty of material for conversation, but in addition her quick wit and ready sympathy enable her really to enter into the spirit of a conversation. If, in the course of a discussion, the friend next her should cease for a time to spell into her hand, the question invariably comes, " What are you talking about ? " Thus she enters into the conversation, and at the same time keeps herself in touch with the affairs and ideas of everyday life.
It is a tribute to the unique charm and sweetness of Helen Keller's nature that wherever she has gone she has made hosts of friends. She has met many celebrities, and one and all have been, not merely interested or sympathetic, but captivated by her delightfully open, frank, ingenuous, and natural manner. With Miss Sullivan she visited Oliver Wendell Eolmes — to whom she had written yearly from her childhood — and feeling a volume which she was told was a copy of Tennyson's poems, she began to recite : —
" Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, 0 sea ! "
But she stopped suddenly, she had made the old man shed tears. Whittier, too, was much moved when Helen recited some of his poems. Many other literary people were introduced to her, and became her friends, notable among them being Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Mrs. Riggs.
47
Heroes of the Darkness
-i
Like most of us, Helen has her dark hours. " Some- times," she writes in a hauntingly beautiful passage, " a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life's shut gate. Beyond there is light and music and sweet companionship, but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way. Fain would I question his imperious decree, for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate, but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, * There is joy in self- forgetfulness.' " •
Helen found the best of all consolations for these fits of despondency, which, to her bright and joyful nature, however, were not of frequent occurrence. Among her friends she was proud to number Bishop Brooks, and he taught her that " there is one universal religion — the religion of love." He taught her no special creed or dogma, but he impressed upon her mind the two great truths — the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man.
" I am too happy in this world to think much about the future," writes Helen Keller, " except to remember that I have cherished friends awaiting me there in God's beautiful Somewhere."
Her radiant intelligence was ever absorbing and assimilating knowledge of the wonders of the universe. Not only from books does this talented young woman gain her knowledge of men and things, but through her quick and nimble fingers and her quicker brain. In one of her later essays * she has written of her child- hood : " I thought and desired in my fingers. If I had * " Before the Soul Dawn " (" The World I Live In "). 48
Helen Keller
made a man I should certainly have put the brain and soul in the finger-tips." She traces the development of consciousness, the ability to think, and the gradual transition from objective impressions to subjective thought. When she was a child she used to think in spelling; even in these latter years she sometimes spells to herself with her fingers.
Having passed through her College career with dis- tinction, Helen Keller came out into that larger school of experience which the world has to offer. She had attained the full stature of womanhood, and with it had come a sweet and added dignity.
Her friends tell us that she is tall, and strong, and healthy. She has what at first seems a nervous habit of gesture, but this may be said to be the habit of expression with the hands — a necessity to all deaf people. Her face is animated and expressive. She cannot see other people's expressions, but when she is talking to an intimate friend, she puts her hand to her friend's face to " see," as she says, " the twist of the mouth."
One of Miss Keller's most characteristic traits is her sense of humour. There is nothing she enjoys so keenly as a contest of wits or a play on words. Mr. Joseph Jefferson was once explaining to Miss Keller the points of phrenology. He was touching her head.
" That," he said, " is your prize-fighting bump."
"I never fight," she replied, "except against difficulties."
This half-joking, wholly earnest. remark discloses one of the secrets of her success.
Not unnaturally Miss Keller has no great relish for being interrogated or experimented upon. /A 4 49
Heroes of the Darkness
psychologist once asked her if she spelled on her fingers in her sleep. Miss Sullivan answered for her that she did not think it worth while to sit up and watch ; such matters as these were of so little con- sequence. )
The humour of Helen Keller is of that fine temper which bespeaks the courageous optimist. We have had her courage and perseverance exemplified in her deter- mination, first to learn to speak, and second, to go to College. She was successful in achieving both ambi- tions despite almost overwhelming obstacles. It has been very truly said that her life has been a series of attempts to do whatever other people do, and to do it just as well. She does not like to be beaten, and has a boy's admiration for physical bravery. The same spirit of high hopefulness is to be found in her later writings, of which more anon. In referring to her temporary loss of the sense of smell she writes : " I know that if there were no odours for me I should still possess a considerable part of the world. Novelties and surprises would abound, adventures would thicken in the dark." Nothing could more amply prove her dauntlessness and intrepidity.
Again, listen to the inspiring expression of her buoyant optimism, which can find compensating advantages even in her deprivations.
"The calamity of the blind is immense, irreparable. But it does not take away our share of the things that count — service, friendship, humour, imagination, wisdom. It is the secret inner will that controls one's fate. We are capable of willing to be good, of loving and being loved, of thinking to the end that we may be wiser. We possess these spirit-born forces equally with all God's children."
50
Helen Keller
In another place she has written : —
" The silence and darkness which are said to shut me in, open my door most hospitably to countless sensations that distract, inform, admonish, and amuse. With my three trusty guides — touch, smell, and taste — I make many excursions into the borderland of experience which is in sight of the City of Light. Nature accommodates itself to every man's necessity. If the eye is maimed, so that it does not see the beauteous face of day, the touch becomes more poignant and discriminating. Nature proceeds through practice to strengthen and augment the remaining senses. For this reason the blind often hear with greater ease and distinctness than other people. The sense of smell becomes almost a new faculty to penetrate the tangle and vagueness of things. Thus, according to an immutable law, the senses assist and reinforce one another."
Surely this is the strongest possible proof of the existence of a law of compensation. In vain does anyone, not similarly afflicted, preach hope or resignation to the deaf or blind. But when one who is subject to the double deprivation finds so much to make amends for her loss, that is surely an object-lesson in practical optimism to all the world.
This spirit of hope and resolution has animated all her writings from the very beginning. It is to be found in her beautifully written " Story of My Life." When it is remembered under what difficulties this autobiography was compiled, it is a marvellous piece of writing, although it is rather a series of brilliant impressions than a single unified narrative.
This arises partly from the conditions of her work. Only occasionally does she have copies made of her
51
Heroes of the Darkness
typing in Braille. Usually when she has typed out her matter, she cannot and does not revise it. In any case " The Story of My Life " laid the foundations of her literary reputation. She woke up to find herself famous. Her simple, beautiful life-story made a world-wide appeal. But she was not spoiled by success. She still remained her frank and unaffected self, taking a vivid interest in life, full of its joys, yet lending a sympathetic attention to the troubles of others.
SPECIMEN OF THE BRAILLE SYSTEM OK PRINTING FOR THE BLIND (The black points indicate raised dots in the paper)
She has grown to realise her own deprivations, and faces life, not with merely passive resignation, but, as has been said, with a characteristically fine spirit of buoyant courage and fearlessness. She is inclined to resent, with something like indignation, any attempt to emphasise or exaggerate her limitations or those of others similarly afflicted.
" Critics," she writes, " delight to tell us what we cannot do. They assume that blindness and deafness
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Helen Keller
sever us completely from the things which the seeing and the hearing enjoy, and hence they assert we have no moral right to talk about beauty, the skies, moun- tains, the song of birds, and colours. They declare," she goes on with a fine scorn, " that the very sensations we have from the sense of touch are ' vicarious,' as though our friends felt the sun for us." Considering how little has really been discovered about the mind, she expresses amazement that anyone should presume to define what one can know or not know. She frankly admits that there are many things in the visible universe unknown to her, but she concludes with a touch of pride : " Likewise, O confident critic, there are a myriad sensations perceived by me, of which you do not dream.'!A
Loss even of sight and hearing she holds is not everything. And certainly Miss Keller herself is a living proof of her contention. She practises what she preaches — the Gospel of hope and endeavour. " The blind man of spirit faces the unknown and grapples with it, and what else does the world of seeing men do ? " She advances, too, the claim of the blind to our common language and vocabulary. She herself, she says, naturally and instinctively thinks and reasons as if she had five senses instead of only three. She cannot bring herself to say, " I feel " instead of " I see," or " I hear," for, after all, the word "feel," when applied to mental impressions, is as arbitrary and conventional as the word " see." Again she goes on to argue, with a good deal of ingenuity, that just as the brain of a man who has lost a limb still feels it to be there, so may the brain of a blind or deaf person still be capable of the same activity, even if the organ of sense be lost. The five senses can, too, work together, even if they are not
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all possessed by one individual. The person who is deaf or blind, or, like Helen Keller, both deaf and blind, can find relief and assistance in the faculties and senses of another. Consequently, she reasons, " if the five senses will not remain disassociated, the life of the deaf- blind cannot be severed from the life of the seeing, hearing race ; " and she concludes on a note of exulta- tion, "his mind is not crippled, not limited to the infirmity of his senses."
Having thus vindicated the rights and privileges, and disproved the alleged disabilities of the blind, she carries the war into the camp of the critics by extolling the superiorities of the sense of touch and the con- sequent advantages of the blind and deaf. Touch to them and to her means substance, certainty, and reality. " At least," she has written with that now familiar light touch of irony, "every object appears to my fingers standing solidly right side up, and is not an inverted image on the retina which, I understand, your brain is at infinite though unconscious labour to set back on its feet. A tangible object passes complete into my brain with all the warmth of life upon it, and occupies the same place that it does in space, for without egotism the mind is as large as the universe."
Touch, too, conveys to her in a wonderful way a perception of the beauty of man's work and of the work of the Creator of the universe. She sometimes wonders if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture, for example, than the eye, and thinks the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves can be more subtly felt than seen.
Miss Keller's supreme sensitiveness to outward impressions has brought her into close touch with Nature, her love for which has grown with her own
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Helen Keller
growth — a love which gives and is given by perfect sympathy and understanding. The voices of Nature have found their way to her eager, listening soul, the swish of grass, the rustle of leaves, the buzz of insects, the fluttering of birds' wings, the musical rippling of streams, all are " an undying part of happy memories." In her striking essay on " The Finer Vibrations," * she writes : —
" Between my experiences and the experiences of others, there is no gulf of mute space which I may not bridge. For I have endlessly varied, instructive contacts with all the world, with life, with the atmos- phere whose radiant activity enfolds us all. The thrilling energy of the all-encasing air is warm and rapturous. Heat-waves and sound-waves play upon my face in infinite variety and combination, until I am able to surmise what must be the myriad sounds that my senseless ears have not heard."
Again, in writing of " Smell, the Fallen Angel," she says : " I doubt if there is any sensation arising from sight more delightful than the odours which filter through sun- warmed, wind-tossed branches. . . .
" Out of doors I am aware by smell and touch of the ground we tread and the places we pass. Sometimes, when there is no wind, the odours are so grouped that I know the character of the country, and can place a hayfield, a country store, a garden, a barn, a grove of pines, a farmhouse with the windows open." "^
It is in the delightful volume of essays, sketches, and impressions,* from which we have just quoted, that we see Helen Keller at her best. She has perfect command of an ample vocabulary, a flexible and lucid style, but above all, she has originality and imagination.
* "The World I Live In." 55
Heroes of the Darkness
Early in the book we realise that her very deprivations enable her to have a unique point of view, and she makes the most of it. She opines : " It is pleasant to have something to talk about that no one else has monopolised ; it is like making a new path in the trackless woods, blazing the trail where no foot has pressed before. I am glad to take you by the hand and lead you along an untrodden way into a world where the hand is supreme. But at the very outset we encounter a difficulty. You are so accustomed to light, I fear you will stumble when I try to guide you through the land of darkness and silence. The blind are not supposed to be the best of guides. Still, though I cannot warrant not to lose you, I promise that you shall not be led into fire or water, or fall into a deep pit. If you will follow me patiently, you will find that ' there's a sound so fine, nothing lives 'twixt it and silence,' and that there is more meant in things than meets the eye."
Sometimes her originality sparkles and glows in a very pretty wit. In the Preface to " The World I Live In," she refers somewhat deprecatingly to the insistent demands of her editorial friends who will not advise or encourage her to write about any subject save herself.
" First, they ask me to tell the life of the child who is mother to the woman. Then they make me my own daughter, and ask for an account of grown-up sensations. Finally, I am requested to write about my dreams, and thus I become an anachronical grandmother; for it is the special privilege of old age to relate dreams."
At another time her sprightly wit will become just a little mordant, her writing will have a sub-acid flavour, as when, after a little metaphysical discussion,
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Helen Keller
she writes : " Self-knowledge is the condition and the limit of our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know so little of what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within them- selves and find — nothing ! Therefore, they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either."
It is in the power of imagination that we find the most marked difference and contrast between Helen Keller and her predecessor, Laura Bridgman. Dr. Howe's famous pupil was almost entirely lacking in the imaginative faculty, while in Helen Keller the quality of imagination, as will readily be admitted, is very highly developed. Imagination she calls the silent worker which decrees reality out of chaos. It is the foundation of the world's knowledge, the advance agent of the supreme creative moments of artist and inventor alike. She applies her deductions to herself.
" Without imagination, what a poor thing my world would be ! My garden would be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of shapes and smells. But when the eye of my mind is opened to its beauty, the bare ground brightens beneath my feet, and the hedgerow bursts into leaf, and the rose-tree shakes its fragrance everywhere. I know how budding trees look, and I enter into the amorous joy of the mating birds, and this is the miracle of imagination.
" So imagination crowns the experience of my hands. And they learned their cunning from the wise hand of another, which, itself guided by imagination, led me safely in paths that I knew not, made darkness light before me, and made crooked ways straight." ^
Her imagination invests a world which would other- wise seem dark, and cold, and grey, with light and warmth and colour qualities, which pervade the
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Heroes of the Darkness
symbolism of her beautiful prose. She has read so much and talked so much about colours, that involun- tarily she attaches meanings to them. Probably, by a process of analogy, or through the association of ideas whiteness conveys to her all that is exalted and pure, green means exuberance, red suggests love, or shame, or strength. " Without the colour or its equivalent," she says, " life to me would be dark, barren, a vast blackness."
When her College days were drawing to a close, Miss Keller had looked forward with eager anticipation to what the future held in store for her. In her essays on " The Practice of Optimism," she embraced with enthusiasm the Carlylean gospel of work. She values work for its own sake. " My share in the work of the world may be limited," she writes, " but the fact that it is work makes it precious. . . . The gladdest labourer in the vineyard may be a cripple."
Despite her deprivations she is happy. Her happi- ness has its foundations laid deep on the bed-rock of faith ; it is so reasoned, and logical, and buttressed by her widening experience, that it has become a philo- sophy of life. In short, she is a convinced and intelligent optimist — not one who simply ignores the unpleasant and inconvenient, but one who finds the world good, and with characteristic energy does her share to make it better.
So we leave this remarkable woman who, having not eyes, yet sees things revealed only to those who have the inner vision ; having not ears, yet hears the harmony of the spheres ; and having no clarion voice, nor tongue of silver, yet with golden pen sends her words of faith and courage winging round the world, to be to others who faint or falter an example or a reproach. Who
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Helen Keller
but a seeress, to whom had been given more than had been taken away, could write of hope and consolation to her afflicted fellows in such words as these ? —
" All sight is of the soul. Behold it in the upward flight Of the unfettered ^spirit ! Hast thou seen Thought bloom in the blind child's face 1 Hast thou seen his mind grow Like the running dawn, to grasp The vision of the Master ? " *
* " A Chant of Darkness," by Helen Keller.
59
SIR F. J. CAMPBELL WRITING BRAILLE
SIR FRANCIS JOSEPH CAMPBELL,
LL.D.
THERE are some men with so distinctive an individuality, a character so marked and con- sistent, whose every act and decision is, consciously or unconsciously, actuated by a dominating purpose, that they stand apart from their fellows. Such men are never by any chance waverers. They do not allow anyone or anything to make up their minds for them. From the dawn of self-consciousness every important act is determined by some characteristic motive. The life of such a man is a consistent whole, and this holds true whatever his avocation. Most of us teach either by example or by precept. That is an uncommon man who does both. Still rarer is he who, afflicted himself, sets out to teach others similarly afflicted.
Yet one man has done more than this. Francis Joseph Campbell, blind from his youth, has devoted the whole of his long life to the physical arid mental education and the social betterment of his fellow-blind. He had no special genius, but an indomitable will ; nor did he fight any battles, except with himself and the forces of ignorance, apathy, and indifference. Hardships and misfortunes, blindness and poverty, have fallen to his lot, to be cheerfully borne and courageously over- come. Hope and courage have been the keynotes of
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his career, just as energy, self-reliance, and perseverance are the dominant traits of his character. A native of tr^e Southern States, he is best known for his splendid work for the blind in England. As Mr. W. T. Stead has written : " Francis Joseph Campbell is an American by birth, presumably Scotch by origin, English by residence ; but his real fatherland is the Kingdom of the Blind."
He was born in Franklin County, Tennessee, on 9th October, 1834. When between three and four years of age, while at play, an acacia thorn ran into his eye. It pierced the eyeball, and inflammation supervened. Through incapacity or neglect on the doctor's part, the inflammation was permitted to affect the other eye, and to continue until the sight of both was utterly and irretrievably lost. Little Joseph was too young to realise his loss, but his affliction was a terrible blow to his parents. With a too loving forbearance they allowed him to do exactly as he pleased. Even at this early age he must have been no ordinary child, else he would have been spoiled by this well-meant but mis- taken indulgence. The family circle was a very happy one. The blind boy loved his father and mother and brothers, and was idolised by them. Selfishness found no place in his nature, nor was he, like some blind chil- dren, apathetic or indolent. On the contrary, he was always bright and energetic, eager to be up and doing.
About the time when Joseph was six years old his father had heavy financial losses. Nothing remained to the Campbells but a small farm in the mountains, where every one of the family had to work early and late to keep the home together. Joseph was an exception. Nobody expected him to do anything; indeed, he was not allowed to use tools or implements
Sir Francis J. Campbell
for fear of hurting himself. Once, however, his father being from home, his mother let him have an axe and some wood to cut. When his father returned he was surprised to find six cords of wood all cut and carefully packed away. He commended the industry of Joseph's two brothers, but when he learned that it was the blind boy himself who had cut the wood, he was so pleased that he bought him a light new axe for his own use. Ever afterwards he took the greatest pains to teach Joseph all sorts of farm work.
Still, occasionally, time hung very heavy on the blind boy's hands. Inevitably he began to feel that craving for knowledge, activity, the companionship of those of his own age, and all that a lonely child (and especially a blind child) lacks. He has since written : —
"But there were times when I was very dull — especially during the season when all the other children went to school. Oh, the anguish of those dreary, idle, lonely days ! Long before evening I would wander off on the road to the school, and sit listening for the far off voices of those happy boys and girls coming back from their lessons."
So deep was the impression, so acute the misery — amounting as it did almost to anguish — made on the mind of young Campbell by that enforced lack of occupation, that he has ever since had quite a horror of idleness, particularly in the case of blind people. Since then he has consistently maintained that blind children should have their education commenced as soon as possible, and that they should be taught something to occupy their minds and hands, so that they may learn independence and self-reliance both in work and play.
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Joseph Campbell's recollections of things seen before all became dark, are infinitely touching. After the lapse of over half a century the- memories of the red and white of the clover, and the spring splendours of the orchard are bright and unfaded. The radiance of the southern summer, with its gorgeous bloom and beauty, lives with him still as some of the last sights that met his eyes before the veil of darkness fell over his vision. He has given some vivid impressions of his last seeing hours : —
" Then the stars. I wonder if other children love the stars as I did ? As my sight faded, my mother took me out every night before putting me to bed, and made me look up at them from the piazza. Little by little the curtain was drawn ; one night I could see nothing. ' Why is it so dark — why does not God light up the stars for your little boy ? ' I remember to this day the tears which fell on my face as she carried me up to bed."
" One vivid recollection, just before I became quite blind, influenced my whole life," writes Mr. Campbell. " Wheat-threshing was going on ; I sat playing in the straw ; our old coloured nurse, Aunt Maria, somehow got into disgrace. I heard the stern order, ' Bring the cow-hide,' and saw, and shall never forget, the instru- ment of torture, and poor Aunt Maria kneeling before it, begging for mercy. I have been an Abolitionist ever since, thank God ! "
It was not until Joseph was nearly ten years of age that the opportunity came of sending him to school. In 1844 a school for the blind was opened at Nashville, and the Campbells heard that on the 1st April ten blind children would be received there. Campbell has since written : —
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Sir Francis J. Campbell
" Day after day my father went to the village five miles off to make arrangements for me, and came back saying, ' Melinda, I cannot do it.' My mother, a brave, noble-hearted woman, would answer, ' James, we mu*t do it; it is the one thing we have been praying for, we shall lose our chance ; the school may be soon full, and then '"
So she and the neighbours persuaded Mr. Campbell, and he purchased the necessary outfit. A " sewing-bee " was held to make Joseph's clothes, and in twenty-four hours the blind boy was ready to start. A kind old gentleman volunteered to take him in his buggy to Nashville. Joseph's father went with them part of the way. When he said in a choked voice, "Good-bye, Joseph, my son ! " for the first time the blind boy's courage failed.
Joseph had hope$ that the school might be full, but only one other pupil had up to that time arrived. Our hero was taken to the schoolroom, and the New Testament in embossed letters was put into his hands. He was so eager to begin to learn, that there and then the teacher sat down beside him, and in three-quarters of an hour the boy had learned the whole alphabet.
For a young lad who was homesick and naturally reluctant to go to school, Joseph's avidity for learning, his promptness in beginning, and his rapid progress in its acquirement, were remarkable. Nor was this a passing phase. Throughout his life his craving for knowledge, and his perseverance and persistence in learning have been amongst his most marked characteristics.
The Nashville school was at first more like a family circle than the usual institution for the blind. There was Mr. Churchman, the Principal, who was himself 5 65
Heroes of the Darkness
blind, his kindly and considerate wife, and the two pupils. The latter took all their lessons in the Churchmans' private room. But soon more pupils began to arrive, and regular school work had to begin. Young Campbell recalls the music lessons in particular most vividly. Here is a passage culled from his recollections of those youthful days : —
"I shall never forget my first singing lesson. I h^d succeeded so well in my other studies, that the teacher called upon me first. He sounded A. I opened my mouth, but the result must have been very funny, to judge by the effect produced on my listeners. I was asked to * sing a tune' in vain; then the teacher hummed one for me to imitate, also in vain. It was discovered that I could not tell one tune from another."
He was considered hopeless as a, musician, was told that he could never learn music, but must take to basket and brush making. Piano lessons were in his case considered to be a waste of time, and were forbidden ; the other boys laughed at him ; he felt as if he were left out in the cold. All this was the more remarkable when we know that he came to have, not only a working knowledge of music, but to become a versatile and well- equipped teacher of the art. He took the first steps towards proficiency there and then. Young as he was he was made of stern stuff, and was determined not to be beaten. He had resolved to master music, and master it he would. He hired one of the boys secretly to give him lessons in music, and he practised when- ever opportunity offered. Three months later the music-master, who was also blind, accidentally entering the room, asked : —
"'Who is that playing the new lesson so well?'
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Sir Francis J. Campbell
'I, sir.' 'You, Josie, you cannot play! Come here, what have you learnt ? ' ' All that you have taught the other boys, sir.' The teacher laughed. ' Well, then, sit down and play the instruction-book through from the beginning.' "
Joseph did as he was bid, and fifteen months after- wards he gained the school prize for pianoforte playing. This result, unaided as it was by any marked talent except an infinite capacity for taking pains, was not attained without strenuous effort and dogged determination. He had to face and overcome all sorts of difficulties. The school was poorly equipped and could only boast of one piano, on which there were so many to play, that young Campbell had to rise early and practise from four to seven a.m. That winter of 1845-46 was intensely cold at Nashville, the river being frozen over. Coal was not to be had, and for a whole month there was only a single fire in the school. Very few lessons were done, but Joseph, with unusual tenacity, practised for five or six hours daily, working for half an hour, then rushing out into the playground, running round it ten times (which made a mile), and went back to the piano again.
Such a rigorous training as this was calculated to make Joseph into a hardy fellow. He was just as daring and venturesome as most boys of his age. As he grew older and stronger he used to accompany his brothers on their hunting and fishing expeditions. Having good nerves and not knowing the meaning of fear, the blind boy became quite an expert climber, and would ascend the most inaccessible mountain sides. He could climb any tree he could clasp with his arms. He was also fond of horses.
Campbell narrates an episode of his College days 67
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which tends to show that he was, even as a youth, a leader among his fellows, and something of a reformer, not to say a revolutionary. The question at issue was to the boys the serious one of the food supply. As will be seen, it had its humorous side. He writes : —
" We were informed that the low funds of the school made rigid economy necessary. But while we lived poorly, we knew that our teachers lived exceedingly well. Not that we could see the roast turkeys, geese, etc., but we could smell them. Our remonstrances were in vain. We called an ' indignation ' meeting. After much time wasted in talking, I urged that a small committee should be appointed — three of us. Though I was the youngest they made me one. That night, when all were asleep, I managed to get into the larder, and finding there a quantity of dainty food, pies, jellies, etc., took away specimens of it, and also of our food, the miserable bread, butter, and sausages given us daily. With this tell-tale basket in my possession, I dared not go to sleep, but waited till half-past five, when the bell summoned us to rise and go for our walk. During the walk I left my basket with Aunt Sarah, a coloured woman I knew who kept a shop. In the afternoon I reclaimed it, and carried it to the President of the Board, a kind old gentleman, to whom I told my story. He disbelieved me. ' Boy, this will never do/ ' Would you see the food, sir ? ' ' Yes, then I will believe, and not till then.' I produced the basket, and he did believe. He asked me in a tremulous voice how I got at the things, and I told him the whole truth. 4 Boy,' said he, ' that was a very daring thing to do, but plucky nevertheless. Leave those things with me, and I will see to the matter.' He did, for we heard that next afternoon a special meeting of Directors was called,
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Sir Francis J. Campbell
and within a few days it became known that the Principal had resigned. Whether he ever knew the part I had had in the affair I cannot tell, but certainly I myself have never regretted it."
Pecuniary difficulties still dogged the family fortunes. The Campbell farm was heavily mortgaged ; Joseph's father could not afford to give him a university educa- tion, the son's most cherished ambition. So the blind lad resolved to earn the money and educate himself. The only way he could think of to raise money was by giving music lessons. So he contrived to secure two young lady pupils — sisters. But difficulties hitherto unrealised presented themselves. To use his own words : —
" One of these young ladies seated herself at the piano — I sat beside her. * What shall I do ? ' she said. Now I could play brilliant pieces. As a blind boy- pianist I had been petted and praised — I thought myself a wonderful musician. But my knowledge was super- ficial ; I had not been trained in the art of teaching. What did I really know ? How was the music written ? How, above all, was I to teach a sighted person ? And I must teach. It was my only way of getting education."
He asked the young ladies just to play to him that day, and told them that they would make a proper beginning the following week. He pondered over the question carefully. Even to live he must earn money, and to educate himself he must make a good deal of money. His musical abilities, which he had depended on, had so far failed him. His teacher at the blind school evidently had not known his business. Having wrestled with the problem he at length came to a decision, and with characteristic impetuosity put it into action ; as he himself has told us : —
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" That night I went to find a Mr. Taylor, an English- man,pupil of Moschelesand Mendelssohn — oneof the best pianists in America. But he had had an unhappy life, and was considered a sort of bear. Not asking me to sit down, he inquired what I wanted. I stammered out, ' Mr. Taylor, I am a fool.' ' Well, Joseph, my boy, I knew that. I have always known it ; but it is less your fault than that of your teachers ! ' Then I told him my story, and implored him to let me begin music again under his guidance from the very beginning."
There was some difficulty in arranging with Joseph's old teacher, who was a violinist rather than a teacher of the piano. But thanks to the blind boy's persistence, matters were quickly arranged. Within a few days he had his first lesson from Mr. Taylor. It lasted four hours. Next day his own two pupils had their first lesson from him. So rapidly did he attain proficiency as a teacher that only a year later, when he was but sixteen years of age, he. was appointed teacher of music in the very institution where he had first been told he could never learn music !
Young Campbell's experience was contrary to the generally accepted theory that musicians are born, not made. Some musicians hold that it is worse than useless to try to teach music to anyone who has not the artistic temperament, or at least a taste or an ear for music. Others, on the contrary, maintain that every- one has a voice and an ear that are more or less capable of cultivation, musically speaking. Either of these con- tentions may be true, but it is largely a matter of degree and of individual gifts. Some amount of ability is essential, but perseverance and concentration will work wonders even in music, and it was precisely in these qualities that Campbell excelled. He was
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Sir Francis J. Campbell
neither a genius nor a musical prodigy, but he had undoubted talent and unwearying industry. He spared no effort to master the technique of his chosen art. To his energetic nature toil was nothing, the mastering of a subject everything.
He shared too with his fellow-blind the delicacy of touch and the acuteness of hearing which is their
ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE, UPPER NORWOOD
peculiar prerogative, and which befits them in a special manner for the profession of music. Here, at least, he felt that he could meet all comers on a basis of independence and equal opportunities. In after life he always taught and advised that the musical profession was one of the best suited and most fitting for the sightless. Certainly music is not the least important province of the kingdom of the blind.
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Nor was it merely his own personal experience that musical ability is not necessarily innate. He found it to be the case repeatedly among his pupils, the majority of whom manifested no marked musical talent, but responded to a training at once practical and compre- hensive, based as it was upon experience and adapted to the various and ascertained needs of each individual.
So Francis Joseph Campbell may be said to have begun to carve out his own career. He was ambitious and independent. While maintaining himself by giving music lessons, he contrived to find time to improve his own education in other respects. His College curriculum included mathematics, Latin, and Greek. Mathematical studies he found quite congenial, but he had little liking for the classics ; in fact, they were to him " posi-' tive drudgery." Still he did not neglect or abandon his classical studies on that account. His dogged determination to succeed carried him through, and even in the uncongenial classics he was so successful that he was complimented by his professor.
Though extremely intelligent and quick and eager to learn, young Campbell was not primarily a student. His mind was intensely and essentially practical, and what phrenologists would call his " bump of initiative " was well developed.
Even at this early stage in his career Campbell was leading a busy and strenuous life. He was animated by two important considerations. First, there was the absolute necessity of earning his own livelihood ; and secondly, and quite as imperative to him, there was his ambition and the keen desire for learning — the end and the means. Like many another young and ardent student he burned the midnight oil, or at least worked late and early. He writes : —
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Sir Francis J. Campbell
" At this time, on account of my teaching and daily attendance at the College, I was obliged to work day and night as well. I employed two readers : one read for me till ten p.m., then I went to bed with an alarum clock set at two a.m. When it sounded 1 sprang up, dragged my second reader out of bed, and as quickly as possible resumed my work."
No one could stand such a strain for long. The wonder is that even with his iron will and wiry frame, young Campbell was able to endure it as long as he did. At length, however, came the inevitable collapse. He was taken suddenly and seriously ill. The doctor told him that unless he took three months' holiday he had not long to live. At first the headstrong youth refused to give up his work, but common sense prevailed. He was taken to the station and then home, simply inquir- ing if his books were packed. " Yes," replied the doctor sagely, " packed where you will never find them." So he had perforce to go on his long holiday practically bookless. He decided to spend this enforced vacation at the mountain springs, where several families had built themselves summer cottages. Young Campbell has written some vivid impressions of his holiday.
His brother, a friend, and Joseph himself set out for their destination on foot. The first carried a rifle, the second a bag of books which the blind boy had contrived to smuggle through, while he himself .carried an axe. They reached the springs late at night and received a hearty welcome. The blind youth was not very strong, but a long sleep made him fit again. Next morning the three boys pushed on to a cabin five miles farther on, which belonged to the Campbells' uncle, and which was occasionally occupied by his men when tending cattle on the hills. It was a good deal out of repair.
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" But," writes Joseph Campbell, " I only wanted a place to sleep in at night and to shelter me when it rained." The uncle's house lay two miles away, and his kindly wife promised to supply the lads with food on condition that they called for it ; so that the commissariat was well provided for.
It was in primitive and healthful surroundings such as these that Joseph began to lead the simple life and to take the " rest-cure." But rest, in the sense of idle- ness, was foreign to his nature. He had to be up and doing, finding the truest recreation in a change of work. He has written with gusto of his exploits : —
" Our first few days we spent in reconnoitring our surroundings. The hut stood within a few feet of the brow of the mountain. If I threw a stone down, I could hear it bounding down for ever so long. By and by I learnt to clamber up and down this cliff, and found ten enormous trees growing there, one above the other, the upper one being only a few feet from the hut door, the lowest about two hundred feet beneath. So I planned and proposed what backwoodsmen call a ' cataract,' and sallied forth, axe in hand, to attack my first tree, about four feet in diameter. My strength was below par. I got on slowly. The other two laughed at me, and suggested I should ask for help. But my brother was always out hunting, and he and the other lad took turns at fetching our food, and in reading to me of evenings. The weather was glorious ; I soon drank in health at every pore, and was able to cut the whole ten trees, three parts through, in about a month.
" At last all was ready. The biggest tree, the one next to our hut, was hewn throMgh, except a very small bit, and prepared to fall. We were greatly excited, for the success of my plan depended upon the way the trees,
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beginning with the lowest, had been cut, so as to fall straight. I examined all, one by one, then climbed back to the topmost tree, and applied my axe vigorously. Ten minutes more and I heard my brother call out, ' Hurrah, it's going ! ' We all leaped aside lest we should be struck by the falling branches. What a turmoil ! Tree after tree began to go, each pressing upon each, till the whole of them went plunging down the mountain side. The topmost one finally found a resting-place far below. Triumphant with success, we three boys shouted and threw up our hats, and finally we brought our supper and laid it out in the stump of the huge tree which completed our ' cataract.' "
The blind lad who could plan and carry out, practically unaided, such a gigantic piece of work, almost heroic both in conception and execution, was a youth cast in no ordinary mould. So vigorous and wholesome a holiday, spent practically in the open air, soon recruited his health, and on the termination of the three months' vacation, which he had agreed to take, he returned to his duties full of renewed energy, vitality, and enthusiasm. He felt the immense benefit he had derived, both physically and mentally, from the change, and gradually became converted to the belief that physical training is of the most vital importance to the blind. Later in life, as we shall see, this early lesson had its effect. He was a pioneer in his con- sistent advocacy of the advantages and necessity of physical training for the blind — first, to overcome nervousness and timidity ; secondly, to improve and maintain the general health ; and thirdly, to inculcate independence or self-reliance.
But at that time Francis Joseph Campbell had still his own way to make. On his return to Nashville he
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concentrated all his energies on his dual task of educating himself and teaching others. The Tennessee School for the Blind was short of pupils. The parents of blind children in the State evidently did not realise the advantages of giving them a good education. Clearly some propaganda work was necessary, and young Campbell was obviously the very man for the work. He was requested to make a brief vacation tour through Tennessee, and having traced the blind children by means of the census returns, to try to induce their parents to send them to the school of which he himself was a pupil. This was a task very much to his taste, and he accepted it with alacrity. There was the open-air life — for most of the time was spent in travelling over the rough roads, there being then but few railways in Tennessee — and as it turned out, plenty of adventure. There was, too, scope for his enterprise and his eloquence in appealing to the parents to send their blind children to receive the education of which he spoke in such glowing terms.
Accompanied only by a young friend, Campbell started off on his mare, Nelly, from his own home in Franklin county. His adventures, narrated in his own inimitable fashion, make good reading. Knowing the census was anything but perfect, he visited all the schools, called upon all the doctors, clergymen, and even blacksmiths — for, as he shrewdly judged, country folks always gossip while their horses are being shod — and by the end of the first week had found three blind children to send to Nashville. To reach the home of one boy he had to cross the Hywassie, a mountain torrent. But let him tell the story in his own words : —
" There were no bridges over it, but there was a ferry and a ford, the former only used when the latter
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was impassable. Nobody told us of it, so we rode into the stream and soon found ourselves plunged over a a steep bank into deep water. It was my first experience of the kind ; I called to George to let his horse go as free as possible, soothed Nelly, and sat perfectly still on her back. She neither returned, nor tried to climb up the bank, but with true instinct swam diagonally, till we gained the opposite shore. There the ferryman called out to us, aiid explained how we had missed the ford, adding that he would not have crossed as we did for a thousand dollars. We were wet through, but soon dried in the July sun of Tennessee. I found my little blind boy, arranged with his parents, took him up behind me on Nelly, rode to meet the other two boys at a station, and placed them all in charge of the conductor of the Nashville train, while I went farther in search of other children."
It was a unique task for a blind man, this travelling in all directions across wild and lonely country, and by the most primitive and ill-defined tracks. Tennessee covers an area larger than that of Ireland, and was, in the early part of last century, but sparsely populated. Young Campbell was accompanied only by an inexperi- enced companion, who was nominally the guide. But the moving spirit was that of the blind man. The fearless manner in which he went through their many adventures is sufficient testimony to his courage and self-reliance; and the cool way in which he refers to drying in the sun after his immersion in the Hywassie speaks volumes for his hardihood and optimism. But the tale of his adventures is not yet complete. He found by the census that a little blind girl resided on a mountain side forty miles away. He and his companion started off. He writes : —
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" Our route was by Catawba river, then up a swift watercourse called Elk Creek, which, much swollen by recent rains, wound to and fro through a long gorge. We crossed it, I counted, nineteen times. Late in the afternoon we left this watercourse and followed the zigzag path to the top of the Flint Mountain, which we reached at sunset, but had still four miles farther to go. George was no mountaineer but a city boy. Completely worn out with fatigue, he asked ' if I meant to camp out all night?' At that minute we heard a deep roll of thunder, mountain thunder, and at once the storm was upon us. Our horses became unmanageable ; we had to dismount and hold them. The storm ended in total darkness. We decided to go back. George declared it was impossible to find the path. So I bade him hold the horses while I found it. Then I went ahead, leading Nelly. I should have felt no fear — but for rattlesnakes, of which I knew thirty had been killed during the summer. When the path grew smooth we mounted ; but my hand shook so I could scarcely hold the bridle. It rained still, and George declared he could see nothing. So I kept the lead — telling him I could find the way by the sound of the waterfall, which I heard. But my real trust was in Nelly. We came back to the creek, which we had to cross. At first I hesitated, but Nelly did not. My feet went under water, and I thought all was lost, but this proved to be the deepest part ; we were soon safely over."
So did this intrepid and resourceful young blind man turn guide when the need arose, and the sight of others failed in the darkness which held no terrors for him ; nor was he afraid to trust to an instinct even surer than his own — that of his horse — in a moment
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of emergency. His mission was almost uniformly successful. The parents of the blind children were induced to part with them, they were put upon Nelly's back and carried sometimes fifty miles. One little girl came at first willingly out of the keeping of a drunken father, but then took to screaming and kicking until her blind protector calmed her, wrapped her in a sheepskin, and strapped her to him in the saddle, when she went peacefully to sleep. Thus burdened he rode many miles on the road to Knoxville. Many more prote'ge'es did Campbell succeed in having given into his keeping. He found the mothers of the children much easier to convince of the advantages of special education than the fathers, but he generally succeeded in bringing even the latter to his own way of thinking. He concludes the story of his expedition in this wise : —
" I had spent about four times the money voted to me for this tour ; had it failed I should have been severely blamed. But it succeeded, and the extra sum was cheerfully paid."
We have here the true spirit of enterprise, not simply the humdrum execution of orders, but the exceeding of them. Campbell, running the risk of censure, was urged onward by the conviction of ulti- mate success, to its attainment and fitting reward. He remarks with justifiable pride, too, that his little protegees did well, and records that years after, when he was teaching in Boston/ two of them sent him tokens of remembrance.
Mr. Campbell resigned his connection with the Tennessee Institution for the Blind in 1856 and went north, bent on realising the dream of his life and studying at Harvard University. He had previously
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spent a few months at Bridge water, where he met a certain Miss Bond. Their acquaintance quickly ripened into the warmer feelings of affection and love, and in August of the same year they were married. Within a month of his wedding-day, the firm to which he had entrusted all his savings suddenly failed, and he lost all he had, except a hundred dollars which he happened to have in his own possession. He had reached a crisis in his affairs, but was equally rapid in decision and prompt in action. Two days later he was on his way south with his wife. He secured the position of musical director of a large and flourishing girls' school in his native state of Tennessee. Once more life's horizon seemed serene and unclouded, but he was fated not to be left long in peace.
It has been said that Campbell was an opponent of slavery from his youth up. During his stay at Harvard he came under the influence of Mr. Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, and when he returned to Tennessee, a copy of this Abolitionist organ was sent to his address. It was confiscated at the local post-office, and Campbell was posted as one suspected of Abolitionist sympathies. Feeling on the slavery question was running very high in the Southern States, and those passions were even then smouldering fiercely which afterwards flamed out into all the horrors of the Civil War. Vigilance Committees or Committees of Public Safety were formed to rid the various Southern States of Abolitionists. Campbell was placed under surveillance, and it was found that he was actually teaching a negro to read. A deputation from the local committee waited upon him and tried to induce him to change his Abolitionist opinions, but in vain. Finding argument unavailing, they had recourse to threats, and as he refused to pledge himself in any
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way, they left him, with the message : " We give you twenty-four hours in which to reconsider your decision. If at the end of that time you still refuse, we shall string you up to the limb of the most convenient tree."
The public opinion of the community was, however, against the committee. Campbell's blindaess saved him. It was felt that it was too cruel to hang a blind man, but although they shrank from taking away his life, they did not hesitate to deprive him of his liveli- hood. He was boycotted. No good Southerner would allow his child to be taught music by an Abolitionist, and his classes were deserted. The end was inevitable, and the blind teacher had to leave the place where he had hoped to make his home. So began his long exile from his native state ; in this wise did he become an exile for the sake of principle.
Going north again, Mr. Campbell found temporary work at the Wisconsin Institution for the Blind. Then his wife fell ill, and he had to take her to Boston for medical advice. " At this time," he says, " we were so poor that my own food never cost me more than sixpence per day." They were indeed hard pressed, living in a strange city — his wife a private patient in hospital, and he himself only occupied in an uncertain search for employment.
He decided to visit the Perkins Institution, of which the famous Dr. Howe was then principal. Having secured, the necessary permission, he spent a day inspecting the Institution, paying special attention to the musical side. The Principal asked him what he thought of the latter. Mr. Campbell's answer was expressive of complete dissatisfaction. He was not surprised to learn that music had been for some time a total failure in the school. 6 81
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Dr. Howe offered to put him in the sighted teacher's place at half his salary, but this the blind man spiritedly refused. " You employ me," he said, " because you think I should do better than a sighted man. I will not be underpaid, but if }rou like, I will teach one term for nothing." Having secured some private pupils he could afford to do this. His offer was accepted, and the experiment was tried. It proved a complete success.
Mr. Campbell was formally installed as head of the musical department of the Perkins Institution. He immediately instituted two reforms. One was the " scrapping " of all the old worn-out pianos, the other the option of choosing twenty blind boys and girls to bs educated physically and mentally, as well as musically, according to his own ideas. He chose these pupils for their general intelligence, rejecting those who were simply musical prodigies and nothing more.
His greatest difficulty then, as throughout all his experience, was the low physical condition of the blind. In educating them he advocated that no effort should be spared to make good this deficiency, so giving the blind student self-confidence and some spirit of emulation and ambition. " It is useless/' he said, " to say to the blind, ' Go ! ' — the word must be ' Come ! ' ' And he was then and always as good as his word. He used to take his blind boys daily to swim in the open sea, and also for long rowing expeditions. Once they chartered a schooner, and went far out to sea, fishing. He led one party of them up Mount Mansfield and another up Mount Washington. A Southerner him- self, he had never been on the ice. But skating struck him as an invigorating pastime, and he proceeded, with characteristic energy, to prove that it was possible for
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the blind to learn to skate, by doing so himself. Then he insisted on his boys learning too.
In the winter of 1861 Mr. Campbell's lungs became affected. Dr. Howe urged him to take a voyage to South America, warning him that otherwise he would not live a year. This advice, however, did not produce the usual effect, for Campbell was no ordinary man. He decided that if his life was to be short, he must do as much as possible in the time. He devoted increased attention to outdoor sports, and had an open fire, avoiding the hot air of the Boston stoves. Those were all the precautions he took, but they proved sufficient, and his life, fortunately for his fellow-blind, was mercifully spared for many years to come. He retained his position at the Perkins Institution for eleven years. This long connection was an entire success. It was a splendid period of training, and a field of experience which proved to be an invaluable part of his unique equipment for his future work on behalf of the blind.
Again, during the winter of 1868-69, Mr. Campbell's health broke down. In addition to his teaching, and other labours on behalf of the blind, he had to undergo painful domestic trials and anxieties. His wife had become a confirmed invalid. Frequently, after working all day, he had to come home and sit up all night, nursing his sick wife. Dr. Howe and the trustees of the Institution urged him to take a year's vacation and a trip to Europe. The Harvard Musical Associa- tion of Boston gave a grand concert and presented him with the proceeds. Eventually, in August, 1869, Mr. Campbell, with his wife and son, sailed from New York to Liverpool. His travels, begun for health reasons, were continuously utilised for the observation,
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examination, and study of everything that in any way concerned the blind — the latest ideas in methods of teaching, in books and appliances, and so on. We see him now completing his equipment of knowledge and research which enabled him to carry out his great life- work of improving the education and condition of the blind.
As has been said, Campbell had great faith in the possibilities of music as a profession for the sightless. He had conceived the idea of establishing a first-class Conservatorium of Music for the blind in connection with one of the American universities. In pursuance of this idea he was attracted to Leipsic by the fame of the Conservatoire of Music. He arrived there about the middle of October, 1869, and called upon Professor Moscheles.
" What is it that you want ? " he was asked.
"I want the freedom of the Conservatoire," he replied, " to go into all the classes, to study all the methods of all the different professors, with the view of founding a similar institution in the New World."
It was a bold demand, but nothing venture nothing win ! Professor Moscheles was attracted by the frank audacity of the request, and at once granted the required permission. For six months Campbell haunted the Conservatoire, studying the art of music in all its phases and the best methods of teaching, and being aided in his studies by Professor Moscheles. Then he went on to Berlin and became a private pupil of Professor Theodore Kullack, whose Conservatoire, as also that of Karl Tausig, he attended, and whose methods of instruction he studied, and acquired with his customary thoroughness. After visiting other cities of the Old World, he turned his steps homewards a wiser and a
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healthier man. He arrived in London on 20th January, 1871, and booked his passage from Liverpool for the 23rd of the same month.
On the very first evening after his arrival in London Mr. Campbell was invited by a fellow guest at his hotel to accompany him to a blind tea-meeting. Always interested in anything concerning the blind, Campbell at once accepted the invitation. He has described that evening as one of the saddest he ever spent. The tea-party ,was the usual charitable affair, where the indigent blind were regaled with tea and cakes, and in return expressed their gratitude to the donors of the same. They were indeed grateful in proportion to the value of the gifts, but to Campbell, who quickly got into conversation with many of them, they spoke, as to a fellow-sufferer, of their t fierce resentment against the hopelessness of their lot. They brought home to him with overpowering force the tragedy of the untrained and helpless. He realised as he had never done before that these hundreds of men, afflicted through no fault of their own, might by proper training be transformed from objects of charity into self-supporting and useful members of society. Return- ing to his hotel, he spent a sleepless night, and next morning he told his wife that they should not sail as planned. This casual visit to a blind tea-meeting was to have consequences quite unforeseen. It was destined to alter the whole future course of his life.
Next day Mr. Campbell, who held a letter of introduction to Dr. Armitage, presented it to that well-known philanthropist. Himself nearly blind, he had in 1868 founded the British and Foreign Blind Association, and was considered to be the leading authority in England on all questions relating to the
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sightless. Dr. Armitage soon recognised in Campbell a fellow expert, and the two at once proceeded to compare notes. They visited most of the London schools and workshops. In complete agreement that many reforms and improvements in the education and train- ing of the blind were absolutely essential and imperative, they immediately set about trying to secure their introduction into existing institutions. But all in vain ! Even those who had lost their sight were reluctant to accept what they considered to be new- fangled theories and ideas.
Weeks passed, and Mr. Campbell — absorbed in these inquiries and investigations into the condition of the blind in England, undertaken in collaboration with Dr. Armitage — had to keep postponing his departure for America. In the following May, as these two friends and co-workers were walking across Hyde Park, Dr. Armitage asked : —
" What will it cost to start a small school and try the experiment for two years ? "
" £3000," laconically replied his American friend.
"Then," said Dr. Armitage, "I will give £1000 if the other £2000 can be raised."
For a time it seemed as if the balance of the money necessary could not be raised. Campbell had indeed given up the idea, and one Monday morning began to pack, preparatory to sailing for America. Just in the nick of time, however, came a welcome letter from Mr. (now Sir) Wm. Mather, then M.P. for Gorton, enclosing a cheque and promising more. Provided with the sinews of war, the campaign then began in earnest. Dr. Armitage and Professor Fawcett wrote letters to the Times, while the indefatigable Campbell visited Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh,
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so that by November the £3000 was raised, and a beginning became possible.
In February, 1872, three small houses were taken in Paxton Terrace, near the Crystal Palace, for use as a school. A beginning was made with two pupils, but by the middle of May there were so many that it became possible to organise regular school work. Two lady teachers, Miss Green and Miss Faulkner, an American lady, were engaged ; and Mr. Campbell, the Principal, in addition to his other duties, gave the musical instruc- tion himself. The number of pupils steadily increased, and the progress of the school generally, under the blind Principal's wise and enterprising direction, was so satisfactory that it was felt that new and more suitable premises might justifiably be secured. Mr. Campbell heard of a much larger house on the top of the hill. " I was resolved," he said, " that before the two years' experiment was ended, broad foundations should be laid for permanent usefulness." His efforts were crowned with success in the following year. By the generous assistance of the Duke, then Marquis, of West- minster, the late Henry Gardner, and others, the house and grounds which formed the nucleus of the present Royal Normal College for the Blind in Upper Norwood were purchased. In October, 1873, the removal to the new premises was effected.
Mr. Campbell's private life had just been over- shadowed by a great grief, his beloved wife having passed away in the previous August, leaving her blind husband with an only son. But private bereavement could not be allowed to hinder the great public work to which our hero had put his hand.
He now found himself in a position to realise some of the ambitions of his life. Dr. Armitage took a leading
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part in securing the new site and in furnishing the new institution. He contributed liberally to the library building, made himself responsible for the equipment of the gymnasium and the swimming bath — an important feature, and presented the organ for the music hall. The energetic and untiring Principal took a keen and personal interest in every detail of the organisation of
BLIND GIRLS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE AT NEEDLEWORK
the College. Every inch of the grounds was laid out in accordance with his ideas, and there was not a detail of either the curriculum or the* housekeeping that escaped his attention.
In the summer of 1874 Mr. Campbell took a well- earned holiday, and revisited his native land. There he again met Miss Faulkner, who had been one of the first teachers at the Paxton Terrace School, but had
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later returned to America. They were both very much interested in the blind, and compared notes and experiences, visiting several institutions together. Campbell afterwards revisited his old home in Tennessee, from which he had been so long absent, and also many other familiar places. Finally, after a pleasant holiday, he returned to England and again devoted himself to his work. But before long he found, as he simply and touchingly put it, that he " could not work alone." Once again he went to America, where he married Miss Faulkner and brought her back as his second wife.
" Since then," wrote Mrs. Craik in her biographical sketch, " Light In Darkness," " all has prospered with him and his work, in which he and his helpmate go hand in hand. Self-reliant as he is, her bright, active, intelligent aid, as well as that of his eldest son by his first marriage, is not unwelcome to this happy and independent blind man, who goes about among his sighted family as capable as any of them all."
The same authoress has written of Dr. Campbell's personality. " A little man of unimpressive appearance, whose chief characteristic seemed to be a quiet decision of speech, and an energetic way of moving about as if not blind at all; a person eminently 'all there '- neither self-occupied nor preoccupied — but alive to everything around him, putting out feelers as it were on very side, so as to take in all that was passing and make use of it."
Lord Playfair also noticed this latter phase of Mr. Campbell's mentality, which he called the " intro- receptive faculty," and which, in the case of such intelligent blind people, becomes almost a substitute for sight. They are able, from their friends' descriptions
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of things around them, to form such a perfect mental picture of the things described, as almost to make them believe that they can actually see the objects. As Dr. Campbell has said, no two persons ever see a thing in the same way ; each sees it differently ; in conversation they each give a separate and distinct idea, and the blind person benefits from the ideas of all. So they really would seem to have a power of seeing with several other people's eyes, which compensates them, in a measure, for the loss of their own.
This bright and fearless little blind man has imbued the personnel and pupils of the College, of which he is Principal, with his own spirit of enthusiasm, optimism, and courage. The inmates of the Royal Normal College have often been described as a happy family, and the history of the institution is one of progress and hopefulness.
Mr. Campbell has said : " The one aim of my life has been to raise the status of the blind and enable them to compete on equal terms with the sighted." At the Normal College the standard of education for the blind is in every respect similar to that for the seeing else- where. But the sagacious Principal, remembering his own experience, does not permit his pupils to develop their intellect at the expense of their physical well- being. First of all, his system is intended to overcome the timidity natural to the sightless, then when the pupils gain confidence and come to know the College and the grounds, which are specially laid out to prevent stumbling on the part of the blind, they are required to spend a certain time every day in gymnastic exercises. These are carefully arranged to suit each pupil, to develop the muscles and chest without imposing any undue strain, and so raise the physical tone and vitality,
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which in the blind are frequently below the normal. The College gymnasium is one of the best equipped in London, being replete with all the latest English, German, Swedish, and American apparatus. Nor do the blind pupils look upon this physical training as a task ; they have caught something of the enthusiasm of the Principal and his staff; chief of which is Mr. Guy
BLIND BOYS AT GYMNASTIC EXERCISES
Campbell, the eldest son of Sir Francis. They are encouraged to take every form of outdoor exercise in the spacious and beautiful grounds. There is a swimming bath, a lake for boating in summer and skating in winter, an asphalt cycle-track where the boarders can have a spin on a multicycle before going out on the road, a bowling alley, and an open-air gymnasium, including a giant stride, swings, see-saws,
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etc., for the younger pupils. Clearly, every possible precaution is taken to safeguard the physical health of the pupils, which Mr. Campbell believes to be an indispensable preliminary to the training of the mental faculties. Quite recently he has written : —
"The education and training of the blind, whether literary, musical, or mechanical, will not be crowned with practical success unless it is based upon a thorough system of physical development. It is the only thing that will lift the class from a state of semi- helplessness into useful activity, and equip them for their full share of the work of the world."
Nor did he ever ask his pupils to do anything which he was not prepared to do himself. Always his motto has been in training them, not " go" but " come." He has taken part in all their exercises and sports, accompany- ing them on long cycling expeditions. With his sons he has cycled from Land's End to John o' Groats, through Norway and in Normandy. He has also rowed down the Thames several times from Oxford to London.
But the sport he most enjoyed was mountaineering. In the following letter to the Times he describes in his own inimitable fashion the manner in which he made the ascent of Mont Blanc on 5th September, 1880. (He had previously, by the way, had a portable model of the district moulded in relief) : —
" My ascent of Mont Blanc was not a sudden, reckless undertaking. It was the result of a fixed purpose, and only undertaken after a long and careful preparation. I thoroughly understood and fully appreciated all the difficulties. In order to carry on my work on behalf of the blind, it is necessary to keep up my pluck, energy, and determination. Skating, swimming, rowing, riding
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have all contributed their share to this end, but last year I went to Switzerland to try mountain climbing. The experiment was highly successful. This year I went again, accompanied by my wife, son, and His Highness Prince Alexander George of Hesse. After four weeks' continuous work on the glaciers, and in various mountain huts, I went to Chamounix, and without difficulty achieved the object of my summer's excursion. In company with my son, with Benoit as my leading guide, I attacked Mont Blanc. At first the guides expected to drag me up, but I gave them the choice to leave me to climb in my own way or to give up the undertaking. I was resolved to make an honest climb or give up the ascent. I took my place on the rope in the ordinary way, except that the distance between my son and myself was only a few feet. This enabled me to follow his footsteps closely, and in such places as the very dangerous crevasse near the Grand Plateau we moved in immediate succession. For 'instance, before he would take the fingers of his right hand out of the hole which had been cut in the ice wall for the purpose, my left hand would touch his right hand and be ready to occupy the hole as soon as he had relinquished it. With the exception of cutting very extraordinary steps for me, the guides during the ascent did not assist me in any way. I was glad to find that the ascent of such steep places as the Bosse was much easier than I had anticipated. The cutting of steps required considerable time, and allowed me at my leisure to prepare for each difficult and dangerous step. Besides carrying an ice-bar, I .always take with me in difficult climbs a short walking-stick, which I often use in my right hand as an indicator, and to show the skill which it is possible to attain in this way I
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may mention that I did not miss a single step in the entire ascent.
"When I reached the summit Benoit exclaimed, * Welcome to the summit 'of Mont Blanc. You are the first and last blind gentleman who will ever stand upon this, the highest peak in Europe.' But my mind was busy. Passing from peak to peak, I went round the entire circle, dwelling on many favourite summits. They had all been carefully studied, and each in its turn brought some new winged hope for the future. It was very cold, and the guides soon reminded us that we must begin the descent. Before doing so however I consecrated my life anew to the blind, and have now returned to England to pursue this one purpose of my life. In difficult climbs I rely entirely on my own careful steps and the strength of my own arm, but in making descents it is otherwise, especially over snow slopes. Here I take the guide's arm, my alpen- stock in my other hand, and bound down with great rapidity. We made the descent from the summit to the Grand Mulets in three hours arid thirty minutes.
" Afterwards," he continues, " I climbed the Wetter- horn, Eiger, Jungfrau, Eggischorn, and made a deter- mined attack on the Matterhorn. For forty-two hours we were weather-bound in the upper hut on the mountain, but being unable to proceed any farther, we finally descended in one of the most violent thunderstorms that ever raged in that wild region. To add to the ordinary difficulties, the storm broke upon us during the descent of one of the most difficult cliffs upon the entire length of the road."
Dr. Campbell's feats in scaling some of the most difficult of the Alpine summits excited considerable comment, which was of the most diverse kind. Professor
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Sir Francis J. Campbell
Tyndall, meeting the indomitable little man in the Alps, inquired, as he took his arm, "Are you really blind, or are you only humbug ? " But his ascent of Mont Blanc procured for him what, he naively admits, he had long laboured in vain to secure, an Editorial in the Times, which began : —
" What is wanting is that the world should unlearn its long tradition of the disqualification of the blind for a share in the common inheritance of human burdens and rewards. To teach the world that unaccustomed lesson is the object and excuse of efforts like this of Mr. Campbell's. It is not to be imagined that the generality of blind men should parade the Alpine peaks any more than the generality of Englishmen who have long sight. The use of the exploit is the proof it furnishes, that, as with the right training, men who possess five senses can surmount the ascent, so the absence of one of them can be supplied by greater energy in employing the remainder. Mr. Campbell preaches from the loftiest pulpits to his fellow sufferers, not that they commence on a natural level with the community at large, but that they may raise themselves to the same level. . . . The theory of the proper training of the blind, of which Mr. Campbell's conquest of Mont Blanc is an exemplifica- tion and fruit, rests upon a principle of yet wider application."
The ideal aimed at by Mr. Campbell and his coadjutors was to make the Royal Normal College not merely a school for the blind, where everything must be judged with pitying reservations, but one where the standard of education in every department would compare favourably with any school in the country. Especially is this the case with the musical curriculum.
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In consonance with the principle that the education provided must be equal to that given to the sighted who follow the same occupations, only the best teachers and professors are engaged. One department of the College particularly dear to the Principal is the technical school for instruction in piano-tuning and music. Here with its equipment of four pipe-organs, sixty pianos for teaching, and twenty-six for tuning, hundreds of blind pupils have been taught the art of music, and the technique of tuning, by means of which in after years they have been able to support themselves.
Very early in the history of the College it was realised that it would be to its advantage if the public were given some idea of the musical abilities of the pupils. Five years after the College was opened, the pupils gave their first concert in St. James' Hall, London. The Crystal Palace Orchestra was engaged, and Sir August Manns conducted. The pupils were assisted by Professors Joachim, Fritz Hartvigson, and Petrie. The very fact that these noted artistes were willing to appear at a concert given by the blind scholars of the College attracted public attention. That the musical abilities of the pupils were not unworthy of appearing on the same platform as Professor Joachim and the rest, is proved by the high encomiums called forth at the time from the musical critics of the London press.
Mrs. Craik testifies to the thoroughness of Mr. Campbell's training and the efficiency of his methods. She once listened to a lesson he gave his choir, a five-part chorus from " The Woman of Samaria," which they were trying for the first time. "He read it to them bar by bar, they wrote it down by the Braille
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system of notation, and sang it ' at sight ' as we say, each separate part and then the whole, with scarcely an error. Afterwards, just for my pleasure and their own, he made them sing another chorus out of the same work, newly learnt, which they gave with a purity of intonation and accuracy of musical reading quite remarkable."
BLIND GIRLS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE TYPING
Of another cantata, the rendering of which she praised, Mr. Campbell spoke deprecatingly : " Yes, but we had little time to practice ; I began reading the score in the railway between the Crystal Palace and London only a fortnight before we sang it." A sufficient testimony this to the musical development of the boy who, years before, had been told emphati- cally that he could never learn music. 7 97
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In the year 1882 the already high standing ot Mr. Campbell in the educational world was emphasised and confirmed by his having conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. at Glasgow University.
Through the generosity of Colonel and Mrs. Richardson Gardner, who defrayed all expenses, a concert party from the Royal Normal College was
BLIND BOYS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE LEARNING BOTANY
enabled to visit Brussels and Berlin in 1884. In both capitals their musical ability was highly spoken of. The Principal of the Brussels Conservatory, M. Gevaert, was present at the concert given before the King and Queen of the Belgians, and his words of commendation were unqualified by any concession on account of the performers' affliction. Again, in 1885, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Berlin was
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engaged. Professor Karl Klindworth conducted, and a concert was given with two blind soloists.
Still another concert party was organised and sent to America, where they made a tour of the chief cities, including New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia. Everywhere they went they attracted large audiences, and the criticisms were invariably favourable without being partial or unduly indulgent. After a very successful trip, Dr. Campbell, having received a requisition to that effect signed by the Governor, and many prominent citizens of Boston, gave a second concert in that city, the farewell concert of his American tour.
Judging from the fragments of his autobiography which Mrs. Craik incorporated in her essay, " Light in Darkness," Dr. Campbell is gifted with a picturesque and vividly descriptive literary style. The wonder is that he has not found time to write a full and connected account of his interesting career. But then, like a good many men of mark, he has been too busy living his life and doing his life-work to sit down and write about them. From time to time in his later years, becoming recognised as an authority on the education of the blind, he has been asked to read papers before public bodies — notably on "The Education of the Blind," before the International Congress for the Welfare and Protection of Children held in London, 1902, and the Incorporated Society of Musicians ; on the " Welfare and Protection of Children," before the Congress on Physiology and Hygiene, and other papers at the International Congresses on the Blind at Paris and Chicago.
In 1901 Dr. Campbell received the distinction from the French Government of being appointed Officier
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d'Academie. But the honour he values most highly was that which, in the year 1909, his late Majesty King Edward VII. conferred upon him, the rank of knighthood. Sir Francis Campbell, as he then became, values the honour not only for itself, but as a re- cognition of the fact that the education of the blind is now a part of the national system. He considers it, too, as an honour to the blind as a whole, which is a view taken by many of his friends and well- wishers.
Turning now to the later years of Dr. Campbell's long, strenuous, and eventful life, one can only marvel at his perennial youth. He has been true to his ideals, ever practising what he preached. One of the secrets of his unchanging youthfulness is undoubtedly his lifelong devotion to physical exercise and outdoor pursuits. But more even than these, his buoyant nature and unquenchable optimism keep his heart young. He did not, as some men do in later life, crystallise or cease to expand and develop. He still takes a vivid interest in affairs, and most of all in anything that affects his fellow-blind. Mrs. Craik found the keynote of his life in the words of his wife, " He makes use of all his opportunities." But like most other men who have made their mark, he has on occasion made his opportunity and moulded circum- stance to his will. He is the veritable embodiment of the modern spirit of efficiency and thoroughness, the pioneer in the introduction of this spirit of strenuous- ness and endeavour, combined with rational and scientific methods and training, into the kingdom of the blind. He has made the crowning achievement of his life — the Royal Normal College, a City of Light to those who live in darkness.
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Energetic, self-reliant, persevering, he has remained faithful to the twin gospels of his life, work and hope. Ever placing duty before self, he has lived for his life-work, and it is and will remain his best and most enduring monument.
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HENRY FANVCETT, LL.D., M.P.
HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D., M.P.
¥T is given to few of us to realise the ambitions of our * younger days. Youthful ambition, unchastened by experience, and unweakened by any lack of self- confidence, is apt to soar high. Among the boyhood of a nation it is by no means an uncommon or unnatural aspiration to wish to enter their country's Parliament, or to rise to the highest post in the Executive, Premier or President as the case may be. But ambition by no means implies ability or even determination, and comparatively few attain the right to a seat in the legislature of their country. Obviously, it requires considerable tenacity of purpose, and the expenditure of a good deal of time and energy, to attain the desired goal, even under ordinary circumstances and with every advantage of physical fitness, education, leisure, and social position. How immeasurably are the difficulties increased when, as in the case of Henry Fawcett, a calamity of irremediable gravity, with tragic suddenness, and at a critical moment, takes away the sight — the most precious and indispensable of the senses — for ever. The story of Fawcett's life, his ambitions, his mis- fortunes, his dogged determination, and his success in overcoming all obstacles, and rising to a high position in his country's service, is a most absorbing one.
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Henry Fawcett first saw the light on 26th August, 1833, at Salisbury. His father, William Fawcett, was a son of the north country, having left Kirkby Lonsdale twenty years before to seek his fortune in London. Eventually he migrated to Salisbury and entered the drapery trade. Things prospered with him, and he started business for himself in 1825. Two years later he married Miss Mary Cooper. Mr. and Mrs. Fawcett had four children — three sons and a daughter. Henry was the second son. Before he was born, Mr. Fawcett had become a man of position, having in 1832, the year of the passing of the Reform Bill, been elected Mayor of Salisbury.
As a child Henry was not precocious — at his lessons at all events — but his curiosity was insatiable. He was taken in due course to a dame school, but he seems to have preferred the life and movement of the streets to the routine and lessons of the schoolroom. When he was about eight years of age he was sent to a school at Alderbury. At first a little pettish and spoiled perhaps, Henry, in the way of youth, soon grew reconciled to his new environment, as evidenced by a youthful diary still extant. He laid there the foundations of his knowledge of Latin and Greek.
In the year 1847, a Mr. Edmondson took over the building formerly known as " Harmony Hall," the scene of Robert Owen's last socialistic experiment, and opened it as a school under the name of Queenwood College. Henry Fawcett, then a lad of fourteen, was the first pupil to arrive. He very soon gave evidence of his intellectual powers, and was elected joint-editor of the Queenwood Chronicle, the school periodical. He took lessons in elocution, and delivered lectures to his more or less appreciative schoolfellows. He had a con-
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siderable command of language even then, but it must be admitted that some of it was mere declamation and boyish rhetoric. Fawcett's appearance about this time (1848) has been recalled by some of his classmates. He was tall for his age, loosely built, and rather un- gainly in his movements. As a general rule he was more studious than athletic. Instead of joining his comrades in sport or pastime, he would take his books into the fields and read aloud, or, having memorised long passages, would declaim them with what he con- sidered appropriate gestures, to the mystification of the rustics. He afterwards, as will be seen, outgrew this phase of bookishness. It was at Queenwood that his vague aspirations assumed definite shape, and he decided that he would like to become a member of Parliament, an avowal which, he ruefully confesses, was received by his schoolfellows with " roars of laughter."
After spending about a year and a half at Queenwood, young Fawcett was sent to King's College School, where he at first stayed with Dr. Major, early in 1849. His health was not then very robust, as he was growing very rapidly. A Mr. C. B. Clarke, who also attended the school at that time, describes Fawcett as " a very tall boy, with pale whitey-brown hair, who always stood at the bottom of the lower sixth class." It should be explained that a boy's standing in this school was decided by his classical abilities, and the classics were certainly not Fawcett's forte. He left the King's College School at Easter, 1851, but continued to attend the mathematical and classical lectures until the summer of 1852,
At this stage of his son Henry's career, Mr. Fawcett sought the advice of Dr. Hamilton, then Dean of Salisbury. That gentleman, on seeing some of Henry's mathematical
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papers, strongly advised his father to send him to Cambridge. This weighty counsel practically shaped Henry's future. His father, after careful consideration . — for the expense of a University training was no light matter to a man in his position — decided that Henry must go to Cambridge. Then came the question of fixing upon a college. Peterhouse was eventually chosen, principally because its Fellowships were open to laymen, and young Fawcett saw in a Fellowship a stepping-stone towards the realisation of his ambition — a public career.
Sir Leslie Stephen, in his masterly biography of his lifelong friend, thus vividly summarises his early impressions of Henry Fawcett : —
" I could point to the precise spot on the banks of the Cam where I noticed a very tall, gaunt figure, swinging along with huge strides upon the towing- path. He was over six feet three inches in height. His chest, I should say, was not very broad in propor- tion to his height, but he was remarkably large of bone and massive of limb. The face was impressive, though not handsome. The skull was very large ; my own head vanished as into a cavern if I accidentally put on his hat. The forehead was lofty though rather retreating, and the brow finely arched. . . . The eyes were full and capable of vivid expression, though not, I think, brilliant in colour. The features were strong, and though not delicately carved, were far from heavy, and gave a general impression of remarkable energy. The mouth long, thin-lipped, and very flexible, had a characteristic, nervous tremor, as of one eager to speak and voluble of discourse. In after years, the expression rather suggested that his inability to see stimulated the desire to gain information through his
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other senses. A certain wistfulness was a frequent shade of expression. But a singularly hearty and cordial laugh constantly lighted up the whole face with an expression of most genial and infectious good- humour."
Fawcett soon earned a reputation for shrewdness, as one of the earliest anecdotes of his 'Varsity days will show. One of the undergraduates at Peterhouse was a youth who, being something of a sportsman, was dubbed the " Captain." This young man challenged Fawcett, whom he evidently considered the usual freshman from the country, to a game of quoits. Now quoits was quite a popular game in Salisbury, and our hero could beat most of the lads of his native town at the game, so he easily vanquished his opponent. The other, a little taken aback, then proposed a game of billiards, at which he rather fancied his skill would enable him to score. The game was for 100 up. The "Captain" contrived to hold the lead until his score stood at 96 to Fawcett's 75. The latter was to play, and the undergraduates, who were looking on, chaffingly making bets on his antagonist. Fawcett accepted all bets, and then coolly resumed the game. To the general surprise he made 25 in a single break, thus winning the game. " The bets," he remarked to his friend Clarke, " were forced on me ; but the odds were really more than ten to one against my making 25 in any position of the balls, though I saw a stroke which I knew that I could make, and which would leave me with a fine game." This incident and his success in winning the game, gave Fawcett a reputation for astuteness, which earned him for a time the nickname of " Old Serpent." This is the only instance in which he gambled, and he frequently spoke very strongly and with contempt on the folly of
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those of his acquaintances who indulged in it. He had a fund of common sense, and a power of self-control which, without making him either an ascetic or a puritan, prevented him from falling into many of the errors and indiscretions common amongst his fellows.
Fawcett had in an unusual degree the faculty of making new friends, a power which he retained all his life. His own particular circle at Peterhouse were like himself mathematical rather than reading men, and studied under the tutorship of Mr. W. Hopkins. But our hero was still backward in his knowledge of the classics, a weakness over which he was more or less gently rallied. He took the raillery in good part, how- ever, and was never ashamed to admit his deficiencies as a scholar. Nor was he easily overawed by differences in position. He was an enthusiastic admirer of intellectual eminence, but his naturally frank and unaffected disposition prevented any self-consciousness in his manner. He was equally at home whether con- versing with an agricultural labourer or an archbishop. Sir Leslie Stephen has placed on record his surprise at finding Fawcett on one occasion chatting on terms of perfect bonhomie and equality with Tait (afterwards Professor at Edinburgh) who was fresh from his victories at the Tripos. Most undergraduates in those days stood in considerable awe of Senior Wranglers.
While Fawcett's tastes lay rather in the direction of mathematical than of literary studies, he had no wish to confine himself to, or specialise in, mathematics. He looked on the latter as a useful form of intellectual gymnastics. With him the means never overshadowed the end. He wished to obtain a Fellowship by exam- ination, but his ambition would never let him rest there. It would merely mark a stage of his upward climb. He
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used to say that he would rather be Senior Wrangler in the worst year than second to Sir Isaac Newton.
In 1853 he became a member of Trinity Hall. From his third year (1854) onwards he was a regular debater at the Union. After some early disappointing efforts he became one of the most prominent and promising of the speakers, who included Mr. (now Sir) John Gorst, Mr. H. M. Butler, later Headmaster of Harrow and Dean of Gloucester, and Mr. W. T. Marriott, afterwards Judge Advocate-General.
The last term of Fawcett's undergraduate course came in 1856. It was whispered that he had a chance of winning even the Senior Wranglership. In the Tripos he was however unusually nervous. He was unable to sleep at night, although he used to run round and round the College quadrangle until he was tired. Eventually he came out seventh. He was ahead of all competitors in his own College, and was duly elected to a Fellowship at Christmas, 1856.
With characteristic foresight and decision Fawcett had already made plans for his future. He had, as we know, early resolved to embark upon the troubled sea of politics, and his efforts to become a practised public speaker were obviously dictated with the same end in view. A political career, however, implied means, and he was a comparatively poor man. His sole income was that derived from his Fellowship — about £250 a year. He made up his mind, therefore, to prepare for entering Parliament, as many other young men have done before and since, by a successful career at the bar. With his strenuous energy, his practical ability, and his business capacity, he had every quality requisite for success as a barrister. He had already entered Lincoln's Inn, and influential friends were prepared to give
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him every assistance to gain a footing in the legal profession.
After taking his degree Fawcett had thought of having a brief holiday, but his vacation became an enforced one, and of much longer duration than he had anticipated. It would almost seem as if a great misfortune had cast its shadow before. In the winter of 1856-57 Fawcett wrote to his friend Clarke that some- thing had gone wrong with his sight. He consulted Mr. Critchett, a noted oculist of that period, in the early part of 1857. Mr. Critchett found that his patient's eyes were suffering from " a sprained condition of the ciliary or adjusting muscles, consequent upon over-use." The retina had also become very sensitive to light, but otherwise there was nothing very alarming. The oculist prescribed perfect rest, forbidding Fawcett to try his eyes by reading for twelve months. This warning caused some anxiety amongst his friends. The young man himself was apparently not much affected, but there can be little doubt that the enforced inactivity must have been a great trial at the outset of his career, when he was all eagerness to be up and doing. But with distinctive fortitude he concealed his mis- givings from his relatives and friends.
During the same year (1857) he arranged to coach a pupil, one Charles Cooke, for a military examination. With his sister and Cooke he went to Paris towards the end of the year, so that the pupil might learn French while reading mathematics with his tutor. Fawcett, still troubled with his eyes, consulted some of the most eminent French oculists. He was, for a time, under the care of Sichel, who said that it was one of the most extraordinary cases he had ever had. He was baffled, and Fawcett returned from Paris with the state
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of his eyes unimproved He had been somewhat out of his element in the French capital, for, debarred from reading, he could not fall back upon his favourite resource of conversation. There were few to whom he could speak in English, and his sturdy British tongue refused to master the niceties of French.
Our hero returned to England, still condemned to enforced idleness. He spent the next few months at his father's house, occasionally writing letters to the newspapers on the topics of the day. Owing partly, no doubt, to his own temperament, and partly to his Cambridge training, he was something of a Stoic. In reality a man of warm and generous disposition, and of strong domestic affections, he repressed his emotions, often with needless severity. It was only on rare occasions and with very intimate friends that he put aside this youthful affectation of hardness, which, as the years rolled on, failed to conceal his really generous and ardent nature. Writing to a friend about this time he said : " I started life as a boy with the ambition some day to enter the House of Commons. Every effort, every endeavour, which I have ever put forth, has had this object in view. I have continually tried and shall, I trust, still try not only honourably to gratify my desire, but to fit myself for such an important trust. And now the realisation of these hopes has become something even more than the gratification of ambition. I feel that I ought to make any sacrifice, to endure any amount of labour, to obtain this position, because every day I become more deeply impressed with the powerful conviction that this is the position in which I could be of the greatest use to my fellowmen, and that I could, in the House of Commons, exert an influence in removing the social evils of our country, and especi-
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ally the paramount one — the mental degradation of millions."
Such were the outpourings from a youthful heart, imbued with high ideals and a burning desire to set the world to rights. Their manifest sincerity removes any suspicion of priggishness.
But this ambitious and practical-minded young man did not content himself with aspirations. He could not bear to be idle, and being forbidden to read, he mani- fested his keen interest in politics and public affairs by visiting Manchester and other industrial centres, and by frequenting the House of Commons. On 22nd February, 1857, he spent twelve hours in the House. " No one," he said then confidently, " need fear obtain- ing a position in the House of Commons now ; for I should say, never was good speaking more required." Thus spoke the confidence and high courage of youth just before the blow fell which would have over- shadowed the lives of most men, and have shattered for ever all dreams of a public career.
* * * # *
Overlooking the valley of the Avon, where it runs between the chalk downs, with their rounded contours, and the quiet environs of Salisbury and its beautiful old cathedral, stands Harnham Hill. From its summit, Henry Fawcett used to say, was to be had one of the loveliest views in the south of England. One fine autumn afternoon — the 17th of September, 1858, to be precise, Henry had gone out shooting on Harnham Hill with his father and some friends. The party was crossing a turnip field, when a covey of partridges rose and flew away over some land where the Fawcetts had not shooting rights. In order to prevent the same thing from occurring again, Henry walked on in front
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of the party for a distance of about thirty yards. Soon more birds were put up and flew towards him. Mr. Fawcett raised his gun and fired at them while they were in a line with his son. The older man's sight was not of the best, and he had forgotten their relative change of position. Some of the birds were hit, but part of the charge diverged and struck Henry in the face and chest. Most of the pellets, passing through a thick coat, only inflicted slight wounds in the chest. Two of them, however, struck higher and with dire effect. Henry was wearing tinted spectacles to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. A pellet passed through each of the lenses * of the spectacles, making a tiny round hole in each. The shot, already partly spent, were rendered more so by the impact with the spectacles; otherwise they might have penetrated to the brain and caused instant death. Still, as it was, they passed right through the eyeballs and remained embedded behind them. Henry Fawcett, in the pride of his young manhood, was in a flash irrevocably blinded and condemned to lifelong darkness.
His first thought, as he told his friends afterwards, was one of regret that never again would he see the view from Harnham Hill, never more be able to admire the beauty of the scene bathed in the mellow radiance of an autumn afternoon. He was assisted into a cart and taken to the nearest farmhouse, while doctors were sent for from Salisbury. Henry's sister helped him from the cart when they reached home, and his first words were : " Maria, will you read the newspaper to me ? " Such was his consideration for others that he wished to cheer the members of his family by showing his own calmness and courage. He was persuaded to
* The spectacles thus drilled are still in possession of the family. 114
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j
go to bed and keep as quiet as possible. There was little hope of his sight from the first, but the doctors hesitated to pronounce a final verdict. The patient's general condition was as favourable as could possibly be hoped for. He was in perfect health and suffered little or no pain.
Some six weeks after the accident Fawcett regained for a time the power of perceiving light, but this last glimmering of sight vanished all too soon, to give place to the Cimmerian gloom which was to last as long as life itself. In June, 1859, his left eye began to waste away, and that was the only time Fawcett suffered severe pain with his eyes. About the end of October Critchett, the oculist, performed an operation, with a view to making an artificial pupil in the remaining eye. He hoped to retain for his patient at least the power of distinguishing between light and darkness, but the retina was too badly injured. His eyes were bandaged for several days. A friend, who was with him constantly, recalls the " terrible anxiety " with which he first tried whether he could see or not, and asked if the sun was shining. The final discovery that there was no longer any grounds for hope, he bore calmly and cheer- fully, arid without complaint or apparent emotion.
The calamity was overwhelming in its completeness, and desolating in its apparent hopelessness. It affected the father almost as deeply as the son ; Henry was the apple of his father's eye. Sir Leslie Stephen, in his biography of Henry Fawcett, writes of the relations between father and son in this wise : " A year or two before (the accident) I had been to Longford, where I had been struck by the eager delight with which the father had spoken of the son's University honours. . . . The relations between the two men were suggestive
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rather of affectionate comradeship than of the more ordinary relation, where affection is coloured by deference and partial reserve. The father shared the son's honourable ambition, or rather made it his own. . . . The close union was the more remarkable because neither father nor son could be accused of sentimentalism."
Of a later visit Stephen wrote : " When I visited Longford a few weeks after the accident, I found Fawcett calm and even cheerful, though still an invalid. But the father told me that his own heart was broken, and his appearance confirmed his words. He could not foresee that the son's indomitable spirit would extract advantages even from this cruel catastrophe."
Henry's father is reported to have said : " I could bear it if my son would only complain." But his son's fortitude must, in the long run, have been a great consolation to his father, the unwitting cause of his affliction. One of Henry's favourite quotations probably owes its selection to his feelings at this time. It is taken from the words which Shakespeare put into the mouth of Henry V. in the dark hours before Agincourt : —
" There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out."
Although Fawcett had, throughout this terrible ordeal, the tenderest care and sympathy of his family, and the well-meant but often ill-expressed condolences of his friends, he had to " dree his own weird," and to fight that hardest of all battles — that with himself. In a speech made years later (in 1866) he said that he had made up his mind " in ten minutes " to pursue, as far as possible, the plan of life he had already laid down for himself. But there lay the problem ! How was it
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possible tor a blind man, without fortune or influence to think of entering Parliament ? The legal career which he had hoped to adopt and make a stepping- stone to public life was, too, apparently out of the question.
During his convalescence Fawcett lay in a darkened room puzzling out the enigma of his future. Letters of condolence, which, as he told a friend, gave him " more pain than comfort," came in shoals. Many of his friends adopted the conventional tone of counselling resignation, assuming that his life was ruined. But while he recognised the prudence of resignation to the inevitable, he refused to admit, even to himself, that his affliction meant the ruin of all his hopes. Like Nelson he put the telescope to his blind eye and declined to see the signal for retreat. He would have considered it cowardly to turn his back on what he considered his life-work. Consequently he was, like most blind people, more than a little impatient with, and depressed by the pitying tone of many of the letters he received after his accident. At last came one from his old tutor, Mr. Hopkins, which was full of practical counsel, and helped materially to give the young man's mind a more cheer- ful and hopeful tone. His old tutor recommended him to face the worst, and to modify his studies and plans accordingly. He went on to point out the growing importance of political economy and social science generally. This, and much other sagacious advice, seemed to rouse Fawcett from his first natural despondency, and helped to fire his determination to go on with his life-work in spite of all hindrances.
There was nothing very remarkable in the fact that our hero should, after a time, proceed to make the best of an apparently spoiled and darkened life.
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Every blind person must, sooner or later, do that. But that he should at once, deliberately, and of set purpose, decide to carry out the plans by which he hoped to realise his ambition, as if nothing had happened — that was indeed unique. Equipped with all his senses, all his faculties, his task would have been difficult enough, but handicapped by such a serious deprivation, it was one at which all but the stoutest heart would have quailed. He had for a time after becoming blind, even contemplated pursuing his legal career, but in 1860 he gave up any idea of being called to the bar. He never faltered, however, in his determination to enter the House of Commons, poor, unknown, and now blind as he was.
Almost from the very moment when he lost his sight Fawcett, as we have seen, made up his mind to do, as far as in him lay, everything that he had done before. He succeeded in carrying out his resolution so consistently and well that even his friends sometimes forgot that he was blind. He was an optimist, and made no secret of the fact that he wanted to be as happy as possible. He was no ascetic, and never missed an opportunity of innocent recreation or of enjoying the good things of life — quite as much as the more intellectual pastimes. " One of the first things I remember about him," said the lady who afterwards became his wife, " was his saying how keenly he enjoyed life." He was impatient with people who were, or pretended to be, weary of life. " There is only one thing that I ever regret," he would say, "and that is to have missed a chance of enjoyment." His was not, however, any selfish idea of enjoyment. He never fully enjoyed any pleasure unless it was shared by others.
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Habitually he cultivated the cheerful side of his nature. For a time after the loss of his sight it required a decided effort of will, but the fits of depres- sion gradually disappeared as he mixed with society. There was, as he told his sister, only one thing that he feared, namely — loss of energy. To his busy mind and active nature, life would become a burden if it no longer meant action.
He began to provide himself with additional means of enjoyment, setting himself, for example, to improve his taste for music, the art most readily available to the blind, and that in which they need be least depend- ent on others. He did not himself learn to play on any musical instrument, but his musical taste undoubt- edly improved, until he was able really to enjoy a concert or a night at the opera. There was one thing he had to give up. He tried to continue writing with his own hand after losing his sight, but he found it awkward and tedious, and soon resorted to dictation.
As regards outdoor sports and pastimes, he attached almost as much importance to physical exercise after he became blind as he did in his undergraduate days. Having rowed occasionally in the second boat at Trinity Hall during his later residences at Cambridge, he got a crew together three times a week. He had also played cricket and racquets. To a blind man these games were impracticable, but he kept up other forms of exercise most assiduously. He had always been a strong and enthusiastic pedestrian. Not very long after his accident he went out for a walk with his elder brother and a friend. He walked between them and chose a path through the water meadows which necessitated some guidance. Yet we are told
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that, on this his first country walk as a blind man, he was the guide rather than the guided.
In later years Henry Fawcett was quite a familiar figure on the roads round about Cambridge. On one of his favourite walks he would pause on the summit of a slight eminence and point out to his friends the distant view of Ely and its Cathedral away beyond King's College Chapel. He often walked down the towing-path to " see " (as he said himself) a boat race, or the crews practising.
When out walking, if in town, Fawcett would take a friend's arm, but once on the straight, country road, he would stride away at a swinging pace which made it difficult for anyone of average physique to keep up with him. His biographer has slyly suggested that it equalised matters somewhat if his companion kept him busy talking, when he would not have sufficient breath left to walk quite so fast. Within the College precincts he, of course, rambled about alone, aided only by the tapping of a stick. In London he could tell at once by the varying sounds and currents of air when he was opposite the opening of a cross street. He liked to have his surroundings described to him as he walked along. He loved most of all, perhaps, the sounds of the countryside : the rustle of the trees, the song of birds, even the leaping of fish on a calm, still evening — familiar sounds recalling cherished memories of child- hood's days.
In after years he delighted to drive through the country with his sisters and friends, and would stop the carriage at favourite view-points. It seemed as if he appreciated the mental picture he was able to re- construct from his friends' descriptions, even more than they valued the original view which they could take in
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so easily with a casual glance. The walk which he liked best was that along the cliffs from Brighton to Rottingdean. The bracing air, the smooth turf of the chalk downs, and the sound of the sea below, made it to him the most charming walk in England.
Fear was to our hero an unknown sensation. He was a man of iron nerve. From even the earliest days of his blindness he walked boldly and with unfaltering steps. It was characteristic of his splendid fearlessness that he kept up his skating after his accident. In his youth he was a powerful if not a graceful exponent of the art. Leslie Stephen accompanied him to the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, on his first attempt to skate after he became blind. " After a few strokes," wrote his biographer, "the only difficulty was to keep his pace down to mine." They each held one end of a stick, and as the Serpentine was crowded, there were numerous collisions, in which, however, Fawcett's weight enabled the twain to hold their own, more especially as the other parties invariably sympathised with the blind man they had bumped into.
"Some severe winters followed," proceeds Stephen in reminiscent mood, "and I shall not forget the delights of an occasional run beyond Ely on the frozen Cam. I remember how we flew back one evening at some fifteen miles an hour, leaning on a steady north- easter, with the glow of a characteristic Fen sunset crimsoning the west and reflected on the snowy banks ; whilst between us and the light a row of Fenmen, following each other like a flight of wild-fowl, sent back the ringing music of their skates. As we got under shelter of the willows above Clayhithe, the ice became treacherous, and we began to remonstrate after a
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threatened immersion. ' Go on,' said Fawcett, ' I only got my legs through.' " The others, however, insisted on tramping along the towing-path homewards to their Christmas dinner.
But of all outdoor sports fishing was, without doubt, Fawcett's most absorbing pastime. It was with him a lifelong affection. His father was a keen fisherman, and Henry commenced angling as a boy. His College friend, Clarke, has told how he used to combine his two favourite amusements — angling and conversation. Fawcett would wade into the river, fishing slowly upstream, whilst Clarke would walk along the bank away from the river so as not to throw his shadow upon the water, and then talk away. Trout, the former said, hear very badly, but see remarkably well. Edward Brown, his first secretary after his blindness, also narrates how he used to go with his chief to the river, where, in the intervals of sport, they could retire to an outhouse, drink tea, and read Mill's " Political Economy." Fawcett had resumed the sport very soon after the accident which cost him his sight. He remembered his native Avon with wonderful accuracy, and took a run down to Salisbury whenever he could spare a few hours.
A practised angler named Wright, who accompanied our blind hero on many of his angling excursions, said that he was a remarkably good fisherman. He was more successful, in fact, than many seeing people, perhaps because he was more patient in waiting to strike until he had got a bite. He was especially skilful in catching salmon and trout in the season, and in trolling for pike in winter. He would wade boldly into the water when necessary, and did not hesitate to cross a stream on a narrow plank, though he once got
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a " ducking " in this way. He was, too, a remarkably good judge of the weight and condition of a fish.
While he held that his fondness for fishing required no apology, he sometimes took occasion to remind his friends that it was one of the comparatively few forms of real relaxation open to a blind man.
Soon after he lost his sight, Fawcett returned to Cam- bridge, and took rooms in Trinity Hall. The 'Varsity town was his headquarters for a long time afterwards, and he continued to live there for at least part of each year. Some of his undergraduate friends had left Cambridge, but amongst his intimates there were still Leslie Stephen and C. B. Clarke. He rapidly made a large circle of new friends. In fact, within a comparatively short time Fawcett was one of the most familiar figures in Cambridge society. In this great company of bright young men, our hero, one of the most genial of good fellows, soon gained a wide popularity, and was always sure of a hearty welcome. At convivial gather- ings his hearty laughter would ring out with infectious hilarity. He vastly preferred Cambridge society to the fitful social intercourse which has long been the only substitute for society in London. In Cambridge, we are told, conversation in the Johnsonian sense was still possible, while in London the formalities and banalities of the social chaos repelled him,
He was one of the best of good comrades. He never forgot his friends, and practised that now un- fashionable virtue of visiting them when they were ill. He welcomed and encouraged the friendship of younger men, and he always seemed to keep young himself.
While it was both active and powerful, Fawcett's intellect was essentially practical rather than philoso-
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phical. He cannot be said to have had pronounced literary tastes, but he enjoyed the reading of good literature, particularly relishing a sonorous passage from Milton or Burke. The poems of Shelley and Wordsworth attracted him, as did Lamb's and De Quincey's essays. Among novels he had read all George Eliot's and many others. With his more serious reading he was, as with all he took in hand, thorough. He had already paid some attention to the study of political economy, and it now became his chief and absorbing interest. His favourite book was Mill's "Political Economy," which he knew from cover to cover. He was a great admirer of John Stuart Mill, who afterwards became his friend. He gave " the dismal science " a practical bent by paying close attention to contemporary politics, and was an avid reader of newspapers.
But the subject of this sketch was not content merely "to follow current politics — to be only a looker- on at the game — to lose sight of practice while engaged in the study of theory. He neglected no opportunity of joining in the public discussion of national and economic questions. One of his first appearances in public was at the meeting of the British Association held at Aberdeen in September, 1859, where he attracted great attention by his paper on the " Social and Economic Influence of the New Gold." He also attended the sittings of the Social Science Association at Bradford, and was afterwards prominently connected with both organisations.
It was evident from the practical trend of his activities that Fawcett had by no means given up his ambition to enter political life. His subsequent success makes it difficult to realise how illusory his hopes of
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entering Parliament must at first have seemed, even to bis friends. Apart from his lack of means and influence, his blindness appeared to be an insuperable obstacle. Mill was one of the few who encouraged him to persevere, pointing out that his loss of sight could only be a disqualification if it had lessened his energy or depressed his zeal.
Fawcett accordingly began to search assiduously for an opening to enter the political arena. He inter- viewed Lord Stanley (afterwards Earl of Derby), who seemed to think him rather young; and Mr. Bright, who advised him to wait until he was better known. Being young, he was impatient of delay. The death of Admiral Sir Charles Napier in November, 1860, caused a vacancy in Southwark, and our hero decided to become a candidate. He held public meetings, and his vigorous speeches, the interest aroused by his blindness, and the frank good-humour with which he replied to " hecklers/' soon attracted large crowds.
The question as to whether or not his blindness would prove a disqualification came under discussion. Fawcett defended himself with gallantry and good temper. Popular sympathy was with him, but time and his lack of influence made the fight a forlorn hope, and he eventually withdrew from the contest. Undaunted by his first failure, however, he held that it would pave the way to future success.
Meantime, during his years of residence at Cambridge, Henry Fawcett was becoming well known both within and beyond University circles. His speeches at the British and Social Science Associations, and his candidature for Southwark, attracted general attention. Towards the end of 1862 a vacancy occurred in the representation of Cambridge. Fawcett was induced by
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his friends to enter the lists as a candidate. There was, however, a good deal of local feeling during the election, and part of his own party abstained from voting, thus giving the victory to his opponent,
A story is told of Mr. Fawcett being heckled thus : " How will you know, if elected, which is the right lobby to vote in ? " Mr. Fawcett replied : " I must rely on the kind help of my friends. But if elected I shall not vote persistently in the wrong lobby, as your late Member did ! "
Our hero found some compensation in another direction. He was, as has been said, already becoming known as an authority on economic principles. Amongst his friends of those days was Mr. Alexander Macmillan, the publisher, then of Cambridge. Mr. Macmillan was one of the first to suggest that Fawcett should write a popular manual of political economy. The latter at once fell in with the idea; the book was begun in 1861, and was published in 1863 with results satisfactory to both author and publisher. - The volume greatly en- hanced Fawcett's reputation, and served materially to strengthen his candidature for the Professorship of Political Economy, which fell vacant about this time.
His candidature was supported by references from many experts in political economy, and the fact of his being a resident at Cambridge was undoubtedly in his favour. But once more his affliction told against him. It was doubted in some quarters if a blind man could preserve order in his classes. His political views, too, found numerous critics. Notwithstanding this double handicap, however, Fawcett's personal reputation was such that at the election, which took place on 27th November, 1863, he was duly elected to the vacant chair of Political Economy.
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Soon after this, an opening occurred in the representa- tion of Brighton. Fawcett came forward as a candidate, but there were no fewer than three other Liberal aspirants in the field. A selection committee, anticipat- ing the verdict of the constituency, expressed the fear that Fawcett's blindness " would be some drawback to his usefulness." The meeting at which the report was read was a most uproarious one, but the blind candidate not only secured a hearing, but won one of the most dramatic oratorical triumphs of his career. He began amidst great interruption, but the huge audience soon listened with breathless attention.
" You do not know me now," said Fawcett, " but you shall know me in the course of a few minutes." And then he told them the story of his accident, which was listened to with sympathetic attention. He told them how he had been blinded by two shots " from a companion's gun " ; how the lovely landscape had been instantly blotted out, and the world was henceforward to him " shrouded in impenetrable gloom." " It was a blow to a man," he said simply, but in ten minutes he had resolved to face the future bravely. He wanted, not sympathy, but to be treated as an equal. It was the first time that he had spoken of his accident in public, except to his fellow-blind. His frankness secured the sympathy and support of the majority of the audience, and he followed up his initial success with characteristic energy and determination. He was ably seconded by his friends, who even launched a newspaper devoted to his interests. It was called the Brighton Election Reporter, and Sir (then Mr.) Leslie Stephen acted as editor. Amidst much excitement the election took place on 15th February, 1864. But the Liberal split made victory impossible. Our hero
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came in second, but he had made such a gallant stand, that it was inevitable that he should be the accepted candidate of his party at the next election. His perseverance before long met with its fitting reward. He was elected member for Brighton at the General Election of 1865, thus achieving one of the objects of his ambition and entering the British House of Commons at the age of thirty-two.
Shortly before this event Fawcett had been engaged in some mining speculations which turned out well. He was urged to give up his idea of entering Parliament, or at least to devote some of his time and energy to business. "No," was his reply, "I am convinced that the duties of a member of the House of Commons are so multifarious, the questions brought before him so complicated and difficult, that if he fully discharges his duty, he requires almost a lifetime of study." He may have considered politics as a profession, but such was his conscientiousness and high sense of duty that he invariably placed the public weal before his own private interest. After entering Parliament he was asked to become a director of a company, but he refused. He felt that however con- sonant with integrity, the holding of such positions must tend to throw doubt on the purity of the holder's motives, especially if he be a poor man.
From this time forward Fawcett not infrequently came into contact with his fellow-sufferers, the blind. In addressing any gathering of sightless people, he never tired of laying down for the guidance of his afflicted brethren the rule which was his own guiding principle — namely, to let blindness interfere as little as possible with the course of life, either in work or pleasure. Yet, strange to say, he was, from the first
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time he addressed such an audience, nervous in speak- ing to an assembly of blind people. He hesitated to quote his own case, for fear of being thought to be appealing for sympathy, or on the other hand, boasting of his own courage. He was reluctant to accept any concession made on account of his affliction, and always gallantly made the best of it. The tenour of his advice to his fellow-blind was : " Do what you can to act as though you were not blind ; be of good courage and help yourselves ; " and his advice to the seeing was : " Do not patronise ; treat us without reference to our misfortune; and, above all, help us to be independent." Nothing, he said, was so hard to bear as to hear people assume a pitying tone or a patronising air towards the blind.
In the autumn of 1866, Henry Fawcett became engaged to Miss Millicent Garrett, daughter of Mr. Newson Garrett of Aldeburgh, Suffolk. At Christmas in the same year he resigned his Fellowship, which, under the old regulations, he would have had to do on his marriage. He subsequently offered himself for re-election under the new regulations, which enabled him to retain the Fellowship so long as he remained a Professor, and he was duly re-elected.
His engagement to Miss Garrett was not a long one, and the following April saw the young couple happily married. Anyone who has followed Mrs. Fawcett's career during her husband's lifetime and since his death, will know that she was fully qualified to take an active interest in her husband's life-work. They were joint authors of a volume of lectures and essays, which, as Sir Leslie Stephen wrote, " implied the agreement of independent minds, not the relation of teacher and disciple." Further, he said, " Those who 9 129
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have the best means of judging are convinced that his marriage was a main source of the happiness and success of his later career." The husband himself said with manifest sincerity, that he had "a helpmate whose political judgment was much less frequently at fault than my own."
When he entered Parliament, Fawcett did not fall into the mistakes made by some young members who become audacious or dogmatic. He fully realised the danger of speaking too much, and of dealing with subjects on which he could not speak with full. know- ledge and authority. Accordingly, during his first Parliament (1865-68), he played a thinking rather than a speaking part.
Politically speaking, the period was one of change and unrest. During the year 1865 the two great antagonists, Cobden and Palmerston, both joined the great majority. In the same year John Stuart Mill was elected member for Westminster. Fawcett made his maiden speech in March, 1866, in connection with the modest Reform Bill, introduced by Lord John Russell, which . was defeated owing to the famous defection of the " Cave." Fawcett's effort was a distinct success. Confidence in the working-classes was its keynote.
While he was an ardent admirer of the sincerity and zeal shown by Mr. Gladstone, whom he called " the great leader of the people of England," Fawcett found himself more than once compelled to act independently. In the following session (1867) Disraeli brought in his Reform Bill, introducing household suffrage. Gladstone and Bright expressed themselves in favour of some limitation of the franchise. Our hero was one of the forty-eight Radicals who had the courage of their
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convictions, and held a meeting of protest in the tea- room of the House of Commons, achieving a fleeting fame as the " Tea-room Party." Of the deputation of five who waited upon Mr. Gladstone, Fawcett was one. The remonstrance of the Tea-room Party had the desired effect. The Reform Bill was not opposed by the Liberal Party.
The standing and reputation of Fawcett in the House was by this time rapidly improving. It was beginning to be realised that here was a man whose utterances carried weight and conviction. He had already given proof of his versatility, and the power of his advocacy. He had dealt with, among other subjects, electoral reform, popular education, Univer- sity endowments, various financial questions, and also with India.
Education in particular was rapidly becoming a question of urgent public importance. The first phase of the problem to which he devoted his attention was one on which he was entitled to speak as an expert, and that was the question of religious tests at Univer- sities. He was, it appears, in favour of the abolition of any religious test which would exclude any member of any sect from the Universities, which he looked upon as the keystones of the arch of a national system of education. This matter occupied a good deal of his attention during the three following sessions, and his views met with increasing accept- ance.
In the General Election of 1868, our hero, after a sharp contest, was re-elected member for Brighton. He was always an advocate of any system of promotion by merit, and in this matter, like most reformers, he was just a little in advance of his time. In 1869 he
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moved that appointments on the civil and diplomatic services should be thrown open to competition and awarded by merit. His resolution was officially opposed as being too drastic, although the Government had under consideration a measure identical in principle. He was opposed to jobbery in any shape or form, and condemned some of the pensions awarded to past holders of great political offices as often unearned and unnecessary.
The year 1870 was memorable for the great controv- ersy on compulsory elementary education which pre- ceded and culminated in the passing of the Bill for Elementary Education. Fawcett was profoundly inter- ested in the whole question. He had, from the time when he first began to take an interest in public questions, strongly advocated some such movement in the direction of founding a national system of education. His ideal was a complete and graduated national system of education, leading from the elementary school to the University. He was an educationalist first and last. Opposed to free education, which would, he contended, tend to dimmish parental responsibility, and would oper- ate unfairly against voluntary schools, he was strongly in favour of compulsory education, and denounced the principle of "permissive compulsion" embodied in Mr. Forster's Act of 1870. Eventually the Bill became law, and Fawcett admitted that it marked a distinct advance. He laboured for several years to have its provisions extended to children employed in agriculture, for whom he had already secured better working conditions under the Factory Acts. It was not until the passing of Mr. Mundella's Bill in 1880, that the School Board system was made universal and compul- sory. Happily our hero lived to see the success of a
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system of which he was one of the earliest and most ardent protagonists.
Unusually tenacious of purpose, Fawcett still doggedly adhered to his resolution not to allow his blindness to interfere either with his work or with his recreation. In the summer of 1872 he spent a holiday in Switzerland, and climbed to the Cima di Jazzi, a well- known view-point commanding a magnificent panorama of snow-clad mountains.
Nor did he permit the many and varied interests of his political career or of his private life to absorb all his time and attention. He still had more than a passing thought to spare for those afflicted like himself. From its inception he took an active interest in the Normal College for the Blind at Norwood, founded by Dr. F. J. Campbell. In an appeal made on behalf of that institution in 1875, Fawcett remarked that the greatest of all services to the blind was to enable them to earn their own living, and that the Normal College was established with that especial object. While realising the necessity of such institutions for training the young, he protested against the " walling up " of the aged blind in such places. " Home associations," he said, " are to us as precious as to you. I know from my own experience that the happiest moments in my life are when I am in companionship with some friend who will forget that I have lost my eyesight, who will talk to me as if I could see, who will describe to me the persons I meet, a beautiful sunset, or scenes of great beauty through which we may be passing. . . . Depend upon it, you have the power of rendering invaluable services to the blind. Read to them, talk to them, walk with them, and. treat them in your conversation just in the same way as if you were in the companionship of one who was seeing."
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At the General Election of 1874, Fawcett shared the fate of a good many sitting Liberal members in losing his seat. His defeat was regretted by his many friends at Brighton and elsewhere. Before long the represen- tation of Hackney fell vacant, and he was selected as Liberal candidate and triumphantly elected. In the same year he removed to Lambeth, within easy walking distance of the Houses of Parliament.
From the opening of the