Mr. Clough made a visit at “Green Peace” which I shall never forget,
since it produced one of the small tragedies of my childhood.
Our house was one of those rambling structures, built at different
periods of time, wherein the space is not disposed of to the best
advantage. Hence, as we were a large family and each of us had a
separate room, some one had to be, turned out in order to accommodate
Mr. Clough. He was accordingly established in the housekeeper’s room,
and we children were duly warned not to go there, as was our custom. But
I forgot this caution, and next morning turned with some difficulty the
old-fashioned brass handle of the housekeeper’s door and peeped into the
room.
Little Red Riding-Hood was not more surprised at the transformation of
her grandmother into the wolf than I was at the sudden change which had
come over our young and handsome housekeeper. As some one sat up in bed
(after the fashion of the wolf in the story) to ask what I wanted, I
said to myself, “Why, Mrs. S—— has grown bald and gray in one night!”
Then the true state of the case flashed upon my infant consciousness and
I went away suddenly and much abashed. It is to be feared that I left
the door open.
When I came down to breakfast Mr. Clough looked up and said, as it
seemed to me rather cruelly, “_I think that I have seen this young lady
before, this morning._”
Mr. Clough’s poem, “The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich,” was republished in
this country, and was widely read both here and in England. He was
present at one time where some thoughtless young men were amusing
themselves with laughing at the new aspirant for poetical honors.
“Who is this old Clough?” says one.
“I should like to see him,” says another.
After listening to their remarks for some time, the grave, quiet man
rose to leave the room, and as he passed the group who were making so
merry at his expense he simply said, “The name is _Clough_” [Cluff].
Frederika Bremer, the Swedish authoress, visited us when I was a very
little child. She traveled extensively in America and related her
experiences in _Homes of the New World_. In this she described “the
dark, energetic father and two charming little girls, all lilies and
roses.” After it had been translated into English, people told us that
we had been put into a printed book. Our young friends wished that they,
too, could have the great happiness of being put into a book, like Julia
and Flossy Howe.
Miss Bremer gave an account of Mr. George Sumner and his visit to the
Czar of Russia, representing him as an awkward, ungainly youth and
making fun of him. He did carry to the Czar of Russia, be it said in
passing, an acorn from the grave of Washington. The Czar was much
pleased and paid the young man a good deal of attention. When Charles
Sumner learned what our young friends had said, he mischievously
remarked to his brother, “Some people would prefer not to have been put
in a book.”
A number of Frederika Bremer’s books have been translated into English;
we read her stories with much pleasure in our school-girl days. _The H——
Family_, _The Neighbors_, _The Home_, are the titles of some of them.
Her description of Swedish family life is delightful.
George Sumner, like the Senator, was a man of intellectual tastes and
possessed a wide knowledge of books. In mid-Victorian days there was no
complete catalogue of the library in the Vatican. Some one in Rome who
was anxious to find a certain volume was referred to “a young American
who knows more about the books there than any one else.” This was George
Sumner. He was one of the habitués of our house. I remember a visit he
paid us at Lawton’s Valley when a lame knee gave him anxiety. We heard
him walk heavily and perseveringly up and down his room, in the vain
hope of curing it by exercise. One day there was a crash! In the effort
to save himself from falling he had pulled over the light iron
washstand. When he again visited us my father had him placed, chair and
all, in an open wagon that he might enjoy a drive. I last saw him at the
Massachusetts General Hospital when he could move little save his head.
Thus was a brilliant man in the prime of life turned gradually into a
marble statue!
George L. Stearns was a striking figure, with his beautiful brown beard,
long, soft, and silky as a woman’s hair. He was greatly interested in
the anti-slavery cause, and when the Civil War came entered the army as
a major. He wished to serve without pay, which my father thought a
mistake, because an unpaid volunteer might feel unwilling to submit to
the regular discipline of the army. It is true that my father had served
in the army of Greece without pay, but the conditions there were very
different from those prevailing in the United States during the Civil
War.
Mrs. Stearns was also full of public spirit, although sometimes rather
sentimental. She once brought to “Green Peace” a bunch of nasturtiums of
various colors, which were then something of a rarity. Apropos of these,
she said to my father, who knew nothing of music:
“Doctor Howe, do not the palest of these nasturtiums remind you of the
high notes of the soprano in the opera of ‘Semiramide’?”
The persons of note who came to “Green Peace” could all speak some
language—Greek, French, Polish, German, or Italian—if not English.
There was one silent figure, however, who spoke only with her
swift-flying fingers. Yet her fame had spread over the civilized world.
The name of Laura Bridgman was a household word in the nineteenth
century. That a girl, deaf, dumb, and blind from infancy, should be able
to communicate her thoughts to others, write, cipher, and study like
other children, was thought a miracle. People found it so hard to
believe that they came in crowds to see the marvel with their own eyes.
So many visitors—eleven hundred, on one occasion—appeared at the weekly
exhibitions of the school that it was thought necessary to seat Laura in
a little enclosure, lest her young head be turned by too much attention.
Charles Dickens thus saw her. His account of his visit to the school,
with a beautiful tribute to my father, is to be found in his _American
Notes_. If Byron’s helmet was the symbol of the latter’s earlier labors,
Laura Bridgman was the living witness of the success of his later work.
She was often summoned to “Green Peace” to see foreigners of
distinction, as well as to make familiar visits to the household. When I
can first remember her she was a young woman in the early twenties. Her
education had then been completed, but she was allowed to remain at the
school, the true home of her spirit. Here every one could talk her
finger language.
In appearance Laura was exquisitely neat. Her brown hair was brushed
perfectly smooth and braided in a coil at the nape of the neck, thus
showing to advantage her shapely head. She had good features and was
comely, save for the heavy white scars at her throat made by the
disease—scarlet fever—which had deprived her of her senses. Green shades
covered the sightless eyes.
When sister Julia and I were very young we were naughty enough to tease
Laura. One of us would lead her to a chair in which the other was
already seated. When she attempted to sit in it she found the place
occupied. Another silly joke was to pound with our feet and make such a
racket that Laura, feeling the vibrations through the floor, would ask
us to stop. Knowing that she was totally deaf, this seemed to us very
amusing. My father’s step she knew at once. I have seen him tiptoe
softly into the room where she was seated. She, not to be deceived,
sprang up and followed him about the room, he walking always with the
same light step and laughingly eluding her. Musical vibrations gave her
real pleasure. In later years she was delighted with the present of a
music-box to which she “listened” by placing her feet upon it!
We early learned to talk with Laura. She used the single-handed
alphabet, making each letter very carefully for those who had not
learned to understand her rapidly. As soon as you recognized the letter
you tapped her hand gently as a sign for her to give the next one. When
answering, you formed the letters in the hollow of her hand, which
partly closed over your fingers while she quickly grasped your meaning.
Conversation was carried on rapidly with those accustomed to talk with
her. She was in the habit of speaking certain words and making some
abbreviations, thus saving time. By feeling of the lips and throat of
her interlocutor she had learned to articulate certain sounds. If you
asked her to rehearse her little vocabulary, she would first spell the
word on her fingers and then pronounce it. “Doc—Doc” was the
abbreviation for her beloved “Doctor,” as my father was universally
called at the institutions under his charge. She had nearly sixty sounds
for persons.[6] My father regretted later that he had not taught Laura
to speak. He was one of the earliest advocates in America of teaching
articulation to deaf-mutes. One of his battles royal was with the
authorities at Hartford, who were much opposed to this system, now the
universally accepted one. I remember the visit of a German deaf-mute to
my father when I was a child. He arranged that our cook, who was of the
same nationality, should have a little talk with the man. When informed
afterward that he was deaf she refused to believe it!
Footnote 6:
See Dr. Francis Lieber’s account of Laura Bridgman’s vocal sounds
printed by the Smithsonian Institution in Vol. II of the _Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------