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ELIZABETH GILBERT
[Illustration: Logo]
[Illustration: (signed) Elizabeth Gilbert]
ELIZABETH GILBERT AND HER WORK FOR THE BLIND
BY FRANCES MARTIN
AUTHOR OF 'ANGELIQUE ARNAULD,' ETC. ETC.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1887
_All rights reserved_
INTRODUCTION
There is a sacred privacy in the life of a blind person. It is led apart
from much of the ordinary work of the world, and is unaffected by many
external incidents which help to make up the important events of other
lives. It is passed in the shade and not in the open sunlight of eager
activity. At first we should be disposed to say that such a life, with
its inevitable restrictions and compulsory isolation, could offer little
of public interest, and might well remain unchronicled. But in the rare
cases where blindness, feeble health, and suffering form scarcely any
bar to activity; where they are not only borne with patience, but by
heroic effort are compelled to minister to great aims, we are eager to
learn the secret of such a life. No details connected with it are devoid
of interest; and we are stimulated, encouraged, and strengthened by
seeing obstacles overcome which appeared insurmountable, and watching
triumph where we dreaded defeat.
Elizabeth Gilbert was born at a time when kindly and intelligent men
and women could gravely implore "the Almighty" to "take away" a child
merely because it was blind; when they could argue that to teach the
blind to read, or to attempt to teach them to work, was to fly in the
face of Providence. And her whole life was given to the endeavour to
overcome prejudice and superstition; to show that blindness, though a
great privation, is not a disqualification. Blind men and women can
learn, labour, and fulfil all the duties of life if their fellow-men are
merciful and helpful, and God is on the side of all those who work
honestly for themselves and others.
The life of Elizabeth Gilbert and her work for the blind are so
inextricably interwoven, that it is impossible to tell one without
constant reference to the other.
A small cellar in Holborn at a rent of eighteen-pence a week was enough
for a beginning. But before her death she could point to large and
well-appointed workshops in almost every city of England, where blind
men and women are employed, where tools have been invented by or
modified for them, where agencies have been established for the sale of
their work.
Her example has encouraged, her influence has promoted the work which
she never relinquished throughout life.
Nothing was too great for her to attempt on behalf of the blind, nothing
seemed impossible of achievement. One success suggested a new endeavour,
one achievement opened a door for fresh effort.
Free from any taint of selfishness or self-seeking, all her thought was
for others, for the helpless, the poor, the friendless. Her pity was
boundless. There was nothing she could not forgive the blind, no error,
no ignorance, no crime. She knew the desolation of their lives, their
friendless condition, and understood how they might sink down and down
in the darkness because no friendly hand was held out to them.
And yet she was unsparing to herself, and a rigid censor of her own
motive and conduct. This she could not fail to be, because she believed
in her vocation as from God. She never doubted that her work had been
appointed for her; she never wavered in her belief that strength given
by God, supported her. She knew that she was the servant of God, sent by
Him to minister to others. This knowledge was joy; but it made her
inexorable and inflexible towards herself.
There are but few incidents in her peaceful life. It was torn by no
doubt, distracted by no apprehensions, it reached none of the heights
of human happiness, and sounded none of the depths of despair. If there
were unfulfilled hopes, aspirations, affections, they left no
bitterness, no sense of disappointment. A beautiful life and helpful;
for who need despair where she overcame and gained so great a victory?
The materials for recording the history of Elizabeth Gilbert are scanty,
but all that were possessed by her sisters and friends have been placed
at my disposal. My love for her, and our long friendship, have enabled
me, I hope, to interpret them aright.
FRANCES MARTIN.
_October 1887._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
CHILDHOOD 1
CHAPTER II
IN THE DARK 14
CHAPTER III
LITTLE BLOSSOM 27
CHAPTER IV
WHAT THE PROPHETESS FORESAW 39
CHAPTER V
THE PALACE GARDEN 51
CHAPTER VI
A SENSE OF LOSS 70
CHAPTER VII
THE BLIND MANAGER 82
CHAPTER VIII
ROYAL BOUNTY 94
CHAPTER IX
REMOVING STUMBLING-BLOCKS 110
CHAPTER X
TRIALS AND TEMPTATIONS 129
CHAPTER XI
REFLECTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 142
CHAPTER XII
HER DIARY 150
CHAPTER XIII
THE FEAR OF GOD AND NO OTHER 158
CHAPTER XIV
EVERYDAY LIFE 175
CHAPTER XV
TIME OF TROUBLE 192
CHAPTER XVI
THE FIRST LOSS 212
CHAPTER XVII
HOW THE WORK WENT ON 221
CHAPTER XVIII
BLIND CHILDREN OF THE POOR 238
CHAPTER XIX
IN TIME OF NEED 249
CHAPTER XX
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 259
CHAPTER XXI
LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM 279
CHAPTER XXII
TWILIGHT 293
CHAPTER XXIII
THE END 304
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD
"Moving about in worlds not realised."--WORDSWORTH.
Elizabeth Margaretta Maria, born on the 7th of August 1826, was the
second daughter and third of the eleven children of Ashhurst Turner
Gilbert, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, afterwards Bishop of
Chichester, and of Mary Ann his wife, only surviving child of the Rev.
Robert Wintle, Vicar of Culham, near Abingdon.
The little girl, Bessie, as she was always called, was christened at St.
Mary's Church, which is close to the old-fashioned house in High Street
known as the Principal's Lodgings, in which Dr. Gilbert lived.
"A fine handsome child, with flashing black eyes," she is said to have
been; and then for three years we hear nothing more. There was a nest of
little children in the nursery, and in the spring of 1829 a fifth baby
was to be added to them. In the diary of the grandfather, Mr. Wintle,
we find the following entries:--
1829.--April 6. Little Elizabeth alarmingly ill with scarlet fever.
" 7. Child very ill.
" 8. Child somewhat better.
" 18. Letter from Mary Ann [Mrs. Gilbert],
stating that little Elizabeth had lost one eye.
" 21. Went to Oxford. Little girl blind.
July 9. Dr. Farre and Mr. Alexander say
there is no chance of little Bessie seeing.
And so the "flashing black eyes," scarcely opened upon the world, were
closed for ever, and all memory of sight was very speedily obliterated.
Mrs. Gilbert had not been allowed to nurse or even to see her little
girl, who had been removed from the nursery to a north wing, stretching
back and away from the house. It was the father who watched over and
scarcely left her. Mrs. Gilbert believed that the child's recovery was
owing to his unremitting care. Dr. Gilbert's common sense seems to have
been in advance of the medical treatment of that period; and he insisted
on open windows, change of bedding and clothing to suit the exigencies
of the case. When the child was thought to be sinking, he took upon
himself the responsibility of administering port wine; this may or may
not have saved her life, it is certain she struggled through and
survived a dangerous, almost fatal attack.
But the handsome, healthy baby was sightless; one eye was entirely and
the other partly destroyed, the throat ragged and certain to be always
delicate, ears and nose also affected. A childhood of much suffering was
inevitable--and then?
It was the father who bore the first brunt of this sorrow. It was he who
listened to the pathetic appeal of the little one, "Oh, nursie, light a
candle," to her entreaty to be taken "out of the dark room," to the
softly-whispered question, "If I am a _very_ good 'ittle girl may I see
my dolly to-morrow?" He had been full of courage, hope, and resource at
the most critical times, but he was broken-hearted now, and would rush
weeping from the child's bedside.
It was not until July, by that time a fifth baby was in the nursery,
that the parents took their little Bessie to London, and there, as Mr.
Wintle's diary tells, the case was pronounced to be hopeless. The
renowned oculist of that day, Mr. Alexander, told them that there was no
possibility of sight; the eyes were destroyed, the child was blind. Dr.
Farre, whom they also consulted, showed much sympathy with the parents
in their affliction, and they looked upon him as a friend raised up to
advise and comfort them. Many years later they appealed to him on behalf
of their blind child, and reminded him of the encouragement and help he
had given them. It was doubtless he who suggested that blindness should
be made as little as possible of a disability to the child, what other
help could he give in such a case?--that she should be trained,
educated, and treated like the other children; that she should share
their pleasures and their experience, and should not be kept apart from
the mistaken notion of shielding her from injury.
It was with these views that the parents returned to Oxford, and it was
these that they consistently carried out henceforward. There was no
invention, no educational help for the blind which they did not inquire
into and procure; but these were only used in the same way that one
child might have one kind of pencil and another child another pencil.
The sisters who were nearest her own age speak of Bessie as gay and
happy, "so like the others that it is difficult to pick her out from
them." Surviving friends who remember the Gilbert children, the
_sisterhood_, as the eight little girls came ultimately to be called,
say that the group is ineffaceably stamped upon the memory, but that
there was nothing special to attract attention to the individual members
of it. And yet the figure of the blind child does emerge, distinct and
apart, and the reminiscences of youth and childhood are numerous enough
to manifest the interest with which every part of her career was
followed in her own family.
The parents had decided that she was to be treated exactly like her
sisters. When she came into a room they were not to give her a chair;
she was to find one for herself. Dr. Gilbert specially could not endure
to have it suggested that she could not do what the others did. "Let
her try," he would say. So Bessie tried, and, ordinarily, succeeded. He
was specially anxious that she should behave like the others at table,
should be as particular in eating and drinking as they were, and should
manage the food on her plate without offence to others. He encouraged
her in ready repartee and swift intellectual insight. When the father
joined his children in their walks it was always Bessie who took his
hand. She invariably sat by him at breakfast, and when the children went
in to dessert it was Bessie who sat by his side and poured out his glass
of wine. "How do you know when it is full?" some one asked. "By the
weight," she replied. The father, we may be sure, was training her in
the transfer of the work of one sense to another, and helping her to
supplement the lost eyesight by touch and sound, raising her up to the
level of other children; and his initiative was followed in the family.
A special tie between the father and his blind child was always
recognised. If any favour was to be asked it was Bessie who was sent to
the father, and also if any difficulty arose amongst the children they
would say, "We will tell Bessie," "We will ask Bessie."
There seems to have been no jealousy of her influence, no opposition to
it. The sisters thought it her right to be first, and looked upon it as
a great distinction, honour, and privilege to have a blind sister. It
was their part to make her feel as little as possible the difference
between herself and them, and to help her to be as independent as they
were. She was taught to dress herself unaided as early as the other
children. She was full of fun, and enjoyed a romping game; she would
much rather risk being knocked over than allow any one to lead her by
the hand when they were all at play. She was passionate as a child,
liable to sudden violent outbursts of anger; and as there were a good
many passionate children together, she was quite as often mixed up in a
quarrel as any of the others.
One incident remembered against her was that at seven or eight years old
she seized one of the high schoolroom chairs and hurled it, or intended
to do so, at a governess who had offended her. Another was that when she
was somewhat younger, at the close of their daily walk, she and a little
sister hurried on to enjoy the luxury of ringing the front door bell. It
was just out of reach, and the little girls on tiptoe were straining to
get at it. An undergraduate, passing by, thought to do them a kindness
and pulled the bell. Bessie stamped with anger, and turned upon him a
little blind passionate face: "Why did you do it? You knew I wanted to
ring."
"A most affectionate nature, unselfish, generous, but passionate and
obstinate; so obstinate no one could turn her from the thing she had
resolved on," says one of the sisters.
In after life we find a temper under perfect control, and a will
developed and trained to sweet firmness and unwavering endurance; but
these showed themselves in the fitful irregularity of a somewhat wilful
childhood.
In accordance with the precept of her father, Bessie wanted to do
everything that other children did. She _would_ try, and nothing but her
own individual experience would convince her of the limitations of her
powers. The fire and the kettle were great temptations to her. One day
in the nursery at Oxford she tried to reach the kettle, slipped and fell
in front of the fire, tried to save herself by grasping the hot bars of
the grate, and the poor little hands were badly burnt. We may be sure
how the parents would suffer with their blind child in such an accident,
and yet they would not encourage a panic, or allow any unnecessary
restrictions to be put upon her actions.
A few years after scarlet fever the Gilbert children had measles. All
memory of the occurrence would have faded out had it not been for
Bessie. Her throat, as we have said, was ragged and impeded, and
throughout life the only way in which she could swallow any liquid was
in very small sips and with a curious little twist of nose and mouth. In
after life she used to compare herself to Pascal, saying how much better
her own case was, for Pascal was obliged to have his medicine warmed
before he could sip it, whilst she could take hers cold.
There are some who still remember how they pitied her when they saw
Bessie sitting up in bed sipping a black draught, and they can recall
the resolution with which she did it, and the conscientiousness with
which she took all, to the last drop.
Some twenty years later she was walking in the garden at Eversley with
Charles Kingsley, and he said to her, "When you take medicine you drink
it all up. I spill some on my frock, and then I have to take it over
again." It was one of those swift intuitive glances of his; he saw in
the delicate woman the same patient courage that had characterised the
child. She had much suffering from her throat throughout life, and as a
little girl was nearly choked by a lozenge. The noteworthy point of the
incident is that in the wildest tumult of alarm of those around her, the
child was quite calm.
There was so little sense of her inferiority to others in early youth
that it was only as the sisters grew up that they realised how much
Bessie knew, and how much she could do, in spite of her blindness. As a
child they all looked upon her as very clever. One of their Sunday
amusements was to play at Sunday school, and Bessie was invariably made
the mistress.
For a long time she and her sister Fanny, little more than a year
younger, were companions in their lessons, which were in every respect
alike. Bessie's were read aloud to her; she learnt easily, her memory
was good, and she made rapid progress. In French and German the grammar
was read to her, and she worked the exercises verbally. The governess,
Miss Lander, was devoted to her pupils, and specially interested in
Bessie, so that she turned to account every hint and suggestion as to
special methods for the blind. She drew threads across a piece of paper,
which was fixed to a frame, and taught the child to write in the
ordinary way. There was a box of raised letters which could be used for
spelling lessons, and there was leaden type with raised figures for
arithmetic lessons. The letters were arranged on an ordinary board; but
the figures were placed in a grooved board. Now arithmetic was the most
difficult and distasteful of all Bessie's lessons; the placing of the
figures correctly was a very perplexing task, and the working of sums an
intricate problem. But she did her duty and made her way steadily to
compound division, a stage beyond which no woman was expected to advance
fifty years ago. Miss Lander did her best to explain the various
processes, but the sums, alas, were only too often wrong, and a
passionate outburst would succeed the announcement of failure. That
little episode of the chair was probably not unconnected with
arithmetic. She was keenly interested in astronomical lessons, and the
home-made orrery, which explained the relative position of sun, moon,
and planets, was a source of unfailing interest. The little fingers
fluttered over the planets and followed their movements with great
delight.
An eager, intelligent child, with parents and teachers all anxious to
smoothe her way and remove difficulties, we need not wonder that youth
was a happy time for her: "the brightest and happiest of all the
children," she is said to have been.
"The Principal's Lodgings," as the old-fashioned, rambling house in
High Street, Oxford, was called, has no garden whatever. The front door
opens into a dark hall; spacious cupboards to the right; to the left the
dining-room; in front of you passages, doors, and two difficult
staircases. There was no one, we are told, who had not fallen up or down
these dark winding stairs except Bessie. On the first floor to the
front, with five windows looking into High Street, is the drawing-room.
This was divided, and one part of it was converted into a schoolroom.
The Principal's study was on the same floor at the back of the house.
What is known as the north wing stretches back, and has two or three
small rooms which can easily be isolated. It was in them that Bessie was
nursed through scarlet fever.
There is also a south wing with excellent kitchens and good servants'
rooms.
On the second floor the space above the drawing-room and schoolroom was
occupied by Mrs. Gilbert's room and the two nurseries; whilst a large
bedroom at the back, away from the street and over the study, the spare
room, was that in which all the children saw the light, and from which
eleven of them successively emerged. The second and ninth were boys, and
there were nine daughters. A little girl died in 1834, and is buried in
the adjacent churchyard of St. Mary's. Bessie, who was eight years old,
was taken into the room to bid farewell to her sister Gertrude, and laid
her little hand upon her. She never forgot it; and would say in after
years in a low tone of awe: "She was so cold." The impression produced
on a sensitive organisation was so painful that she was never again
taken into the chamber of death.
There is a large "flat" or leaden roof above this "spare" room over the
study, to which there is access from an adjacent passage; but this roof
is too dangerous a place for a playground, and the children had none in
or near the house. The south windows in the front look into High Street;
an east window high up in the nursery looks out upon St. Mary's; and all
the windows to the north at the back of the house look over walls, and
houses, and chimney pots, and brick and mortar. The children played at
home in ordinary times, but in the long vacation they played in the
quadrangle, a grassy, treeless enclosure, but a very garden of delight
to them. The favourite part of it was near the figures called "Cain and
Abel," long since removed, and long since known not to have represented
Cain and Abel, but to have been a copy of antique sculpture. There were
grand games of hide and seek around "Cain and Abel," in which Bessie
always joined.
Sometimes the children dined in the College Hall during vacation, and
were joined after dinner in the quadrangle by their friends amongst the
Fellows of Brasenose, who all had a kind word for the little blind girl.
She was also a special favourite with the College servants, and led, as
it were, a charmed life, watched over by every one, and unconscious of
their care.
All memory of vision seems to have faded from her before she left the
sick-room; but, taught by those around her, she soon began to take an
imaginary interest in colour, and a very real one in form and texture.
An old nurse is still alive who remembers making a pink frock for her
when she was a child, her delight at its being pink, and her pleasure in
stroking down the folds. In 1835 or 1836 the young Princess Victoria,
with her mother the Duchess of Kent, visited Oxford. Bessie was amongst
those who went to "see" them enter the city. Returning home she
exclaimed, "Oh, mamma, I have seen the Duchess of Kent, and she had on a
brown silk dress." The language is startling; but how else could the
blind child express the impression she had received except by saying "I
have seen." Throughout life she continued to say, "I have seen," and
throughout life the words continued to represent a reality as clear and
true to the blind as the facts of sight are to those who have eyes.
Very early Bessie knew the songs of birds and delighted in them. Very
early also she learned to love flowers. She liked to have them
described, and to hear the minutest particulars about them. Nothing made
her so happy as to gather them for herself. There were fields near
Hincksey which the Gilberts called "The Happy Valley." Thither they
resorted in the spring with baskets to gather forget-me-nots, the
flowering rush, and other blossoms, which they prized highly. In all
these expeditions Bessie was happy, and a source of happiness to others.
The tender and reverent way in which she examined a flower, the little
fluttering fingers touching every petal and bruising none, was a lesson
never to be forgotten.
Her youthful admiration of Wordsworth was chiefly based upon his love of
flowers, but also upon personal knowledge. When she was about ten years
old, Wordsworth went to Oxford to receive the honorary degree of D.C.L.
from the University. He stayed with the Principal, in that large spare
room we know of, and won Bessie's heart the first day by telling at the
dinner-table how he had almost leapt off the coach in Bagley Wood to
gather the little blue veronica. But she had a better reason for
remembering that visit. One day she was in the drawing-room alone, and
Wordsworth entered. For a moment he stood silent before the blind child.
The little sensitive face, with its wondering, inquiring look, turned
towards him. Then he gravely said, "Madam, I hope I do not disturb you."
She never forgot that "Madam," grave, solemn, almost reverential.