A SENSE OF LOSS
"When the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter
which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means
of this very material."--MARCUS AURELIUS.
Bessie Gilbert, when she was about twenty, differed but little from the
sisters around her. She could read Italian, French, and German, and her
mental culture had been an education of the true and best kind. She had
an open mind, an ardent desire for knowledge, and a warm interest in all
the ways and works of humanity. The one accomplishment possible to her
was music, and from her childhood her singing and playing had given
pleasure to herself and others. "She never could sing out of tune:" says
a musical friend.
She readily gained friends, for she was sympathetic and kind, and
inspired others with confidence. A lady, very young and shy at that
time, remembers calling in Queen Anne Street, and feeling alarmed at
every one except Bessie. Sitting by her side, and talking to her, the
shyest were at their ease.
No hardships in her lot had up to this time come home to her. Indeed,
it is very doubtful if the want of sight to those born blind or those
who have lost the memory of sight, is in youth a greater conscious
privation than the want of wings. By degrees a different condition is
conceivable, because it is known in a certain way from description; but
as no person born blind can exactly realise what sight is, or what it
does, there is no conscious sense of loss. No person born blind can
comprehend the nature of the impression that sight conveys. Red may be
as "the sound of a trumpet," blue as the outer air, and green a
something connected with the meadows and the delight of flowers and
shade; but except to those who remember, the sense of sight is only a
name for the incomprehensible.
Bessie did not remember, and therefore she did not know the special
hardship of blindness and that sense of irreparable loss, of "wisdom at
one entrance quite shut out," which is so heavy an affliction.
As the years wore on she was, however, to learn the privations that
resulted from her loss of sight, although the loss itself was not, and
could not be, intelligible to her.
Some day a gifted creature may tell us of the possession of an organ and
a sense revealing a dimension absolutely incomprehensible. We may come
to bewail our lower condition; but how without the organ or the sense
will it be possible to realise the nature of the loss or the advantage
of possession?
Bessie by means of fingers or ears could get at the meaning of a book.
There is a third and quicker way, she is told, but how except through
fingers and ears can she realise it? Up to a certain point she has gone
hand in hand with sisters and brothers; if not indeed in advance of
them. She reaches that point full of ardour and enthusiasm, eager to
learn, to live, to work, and suddenly the way is barred. Blindness
stands there as with a drawn sword, and she can go no farther.
The limitations of her condition touched her first on the side of
pleasure. She could join in a quadrille at Chichester, could dine at the
palace when there was a party, and "what she was to take" had been
arranged in the morning. But in London there were no balls for her, no
dining out except with a few very old friends, no possibility of
including her in the rapid whirl of London life. She had many
disappointments, and tried hard to conceal them. Only once, says a
sister, did she see a swift look of passing pain, when telling Bessie
about a ball from which in the early morning she had returned. It was
there for an instant, recognised by the loving and beloved sister, but
at once thrust away, and Bessie threw herself with more than ordinary
interest into the account of the pleasures of the evening. Another
sister tells how about this time Bessie began "to want to do impossible
things," to go out alone in London, to go alone in a cab, and if she
might not go alone, she wished to give her own orders to the cabman.
Reading and writing depended largely on the time that others could give
her. Writing was a slow and laborious process. She could write in the
ordinary way, but to do so she had to remember not the form of a letter
but the movements of her own hand. Such writing had to be looked over in
case a word should be unintelligible, and she could therefore have no
private correspondents. Girls in Oxford and at Chichester had plenty of
spare time, but when the family was divided, and those in London or at
Chichester had the duties of their position as well as its pleasures to
attend to, there grew up almost insensibly a different order of things.
In childhood and youth the blind daughter was the centre of all activity
and pleasure; but the blind woman inevitably recedes more and more. She
no longer leads; she can with difficulty follow; and at a distance which
increases as the years go on.
The five or ten years that elapse after she is twenty, form the turning
point in the life of a woman, whether married or unmarried. During that
period, when she begins to tire of mere pleasure, there will come either
the earnest and serious view of life which shows it all golden with
promise, as a gift to be used on behalf of others; or a settled drift
towards the current of levity, frivolity, and self-seeking, which may
carry her down to age, dishonoured and unloved.
That which caused Bessie the keenest grief at this time was the
impossibility of achieving what she wished to make her life, and not the
loss of its pleasures. But it was the loss of pleasure which preceded
all other privations. Her tendency was, as it always had been, towards
things that were noble, and high, and good. Without any fault of her
own, without any change in her own condition, she discovered that
blindness would be a permanent bar to activity. Sisters began to marry
and be sought in marriage. A home of her very own, a beautiful life,
independent of the family life, and yet united to it; fresh interests
and added joy to all; the hope of this, which was her ideal of marriage,
she had to renounce.
Work in the world, even a place in the world, there seemed to be none
for her. Blindness, which had been a name, was becoming a stern reality.
She asked about the blind around her, those who had to earn their bread;
and the same answer came from all. She saw them led up to the verge of
manhood and womanhood, and then, as it were, abandoned. They were set
apart by their calamity, even as she was. Their sufferings were not
less, but greater than her own. Poverty was added to them, and the
enforced indignity of a beggar's life.
She bore her grief alone. She could not speak of it even to those she
loved most dearly, and entirely trusted. She could not consciously add
to the pain she knew they felt for her. But in those early years she
would often sit silent and apart in the drawing-room at Queen Anne
Street, tears streaming from her eyes. Sometimes she would spend hours
together upon her knees, always silent; but the flowing tears spoke for
her, and with an eloquence which she little realised. The sense of want
and suffering was to be for her as it is for many, the great instrument
of education. Whilst so many around her were craving for something to
set them above their neighbours, some gift of fortune, some distinction,
she was learning the need of that which should place the poor blind on
the same level as others, learning to renounce for herself and for them
any higher ambition than that of being like the rest of mankind.
The distress of her parents, who could only stand apart, watch and pray
for her, was very great. They did not see how help was to come, but they
continued in the old course. There was no aid for the blind, no
invention which they did not eagerly inquire into, since it might be the
appointed means of deliverance. Their sympathy was doubtless a great
comfort to Bessie in this time of trial. They may not have been able to
meet her in words, but she knew their hearts, knew that they never
despaired; that their past, present, and future, were alike irradiated
by hope for her, and, if for her, then for all those under like
affliction. There were many, doubtless, who at this time would have
justified the assertion of Mr. Maurice:[5] "The first impulse of most is
to say, in such circumstances, 'Hold your peace. We are very sorry for
you; but in the press and bustle of the world we have really not time to
think about you. We are very fortunate in possessing our senses; we
must use them. To be without them is no doubt a great calamity, but it
has been appointed for you; you must make the best of it.' That appears
to be a very natural and reasonable way of settling the question. If the
votes of the majorities ruled the world, that would be the only way."
Bessie cannot have failed to meet and speak with many of the "majority,"
whose quiet acquiescence in a misfortune that did not come near them,
would often "give her pause."
Social questions also attracted her attention at this time. A sister
remembers reading Lord Ingestre's _Meliora_ to her, and the intense
interest she took in the question of bridging over the chasm between the
rich and the poor. It was not a new question to her, this bridging over
a chasm. It was that which, under another aspect, was engrossing so much
of her attention. The discovery of a method, or even the suggestion of
the possibility of such a discovery, would be a sign of hope.
The first ray of light, however, came through a very small chink, and
not at all in heroic form.
During the Great Exhibition of 1851 her parents learnt that a Frenchman
was showing a writing frame of his invention, and that by means of it
the blind could write unaided. The inventor, M. Foucault, was invited to
Queen Anne Street. Bessie learnt to use the frame, and soon found that
it made her independent of supervision and assistance. She could write
and address a letter herself; and here at last she stood in one respect
on an equal footing with those around her.
She used in later years to date from the time she had the Foucault
frame. A medal was awarded to the inventor, but owing to some mistake it
was not sent to him. Bessie was instrumental in procuring and having it
forwarded to a man whom she looked upon as her benefactor.
Her friendship with Miss Isabella Law, which lasted throughout her life,
was inaugurated over the Foucault frame. A correspondence was carried on
between them with regard to it, and Miss Law, blind daughter of the
Vicar of Northrepps, who was preparing a volume of poetry for the press,
found it very helpful, and at the same time found a dear and valued
friend.
Another use which Bessie made of the frame was to write, in 1851, to a
young blind man named William Hanks Levy, of whom she had heard at the
St. John's Wood School for the Blind. He was an assistant teacher there,
and in 1852 married the matron of the girls' school, with whom Mrs.
Gilbert had corresponded in Bessie's childhood, and who had sent
embossed books to Oxford. Levy did all the printing for the St. John's
Wood School, and Bessie wanted an explanation of the Lucas system in use
there. She could read every kind of embossed printing, and when she
heard of any new system, always inquired into it. She knew at this time
the triangular Edinburgh in which the first books she possessed were
printed, Moon, Braille, the American, and several shorthand types. She
could read Roman capitals and the mixed large and small hands. She
always considered the Edinburgh type the simplest; but when she found
how many adults lose their sight, and how slowly their sense of touch is
developed, whilst in some it is not developed at all, she thought that,
on the whole, it might be best to use Roman capitals for the blind, that
this would offer greater facility than any other system for those who
had previously learnt to read, and would present no greater difficulty
to those born blind. She made no effort for the advancement of her view
on this subject, and in later years always advocated the use of Moon's
type for those who lose sight as adults.
Her own keenness of touch was marvellous, but then it had been carefully
trained from the time that the little child sat beside her father at
dessert, and poured out his glass of wine. She always knew the hands of
her sisters, could tell them apart by touch, and though they would
sometimes try, they were never able to deceive her. She also remembered
by touch people whom she had not met for years. But she recognised that
her power and that of some of the born blind was exceptional, and the
development of it due to careful training.
And so her letter written to inquire into a system which she did not
understand, turned her thought for a time to a question which always
interested, though it never engrossed her, that of deciding upon a
uniform type for embossed printing.
All paths are right that lead to the mountain top, provided we remember
that we are going up the hill and keep ascending.
Bessie had taken this very humble path of typewriting, and it led her
upwards and onwards, showing her the possibility of giving aid to others
through experiments and trials of her own.
It has already been mentioned that General Sir James Bathurst was an old
friend of the family; and in London his children and the Gilberts saw
much of each other. Sir James's eldest daughter, Caroline Bathurst, was
one of the little band of so-called "advanced" women who, about this
time, 1850, were interested in every movement having for its object the
development and intellectual culture of women, and the throwing open to
them of some career other than that of matrimony; since matrimony was
seen to be not possible or even desirable for some women, such, for
example, as Bessie Gilbert.
Miss Bathurst had taken part in the opening in 1848 of Queen's College
for Women, Harley Street, by the Rev. F. D. Maurice and the Professors
of King's College, London. She also gave hearty assistance and
furtherance to the opening of a similar institution in Bedford Square by
the Professors of the University College, Gower Street. She was one of
those who gave earnest and deep thought to the difficult problems of
life, who was willing to work to the uttermost of her power, to give
all that she had,--time, money, health, even life itself, if only she
might aid in raising the condition of women and establishing them as
"joint heirs of the grace of life."
No one has ever worked more ardently, more enthusiastically than she
did. Over women younger than herself she exercised an irresistible
fascination. Her courage, her hopefulness, her high and lofty aims,
carried others as by a mighty wave over obstacles that had seemed
insurmountable. She was a few years older than Bessie, had full
experience of all the best that life can give, and also of the deepest
sorrows. Those who have seen her will recall the slight graceful figure,
broad low brow, and eyes youthful and beautiful like a child's; eyes,
with love and trust and happiness looking out from them. And at this
very time she was suffering from an incurable malady, and enduring
martyrdom with heroic fortitude and without one murmur.
Such a friend for Bessie and at such a time marks an epoch in her life.
The dear sister Mary was now married, and Mary had also seen with
heart-felt sorrow that the condition of her blind sister was inevitably
and painfully changed. On a subsequent visit to her old home it was she
who first suggested that Bessie should give her time and money for the
benefit of the blind. She urged that instead of being laid aside as
useless it might be that God was preparing her for a great work on
behalf of others.
Miss Bathurst was at the same time laying before Bessie the duty and
the privilege of a career of some kind, telling of her own labours
amongst the poor, and doing all that was possible to loving sympathy in
order to stimulate and encourage her.
By degrees the dark cloud of depression passed away. It was to gather
again and again during the course of her life, to blot out sun and sky
and present happiness, but never to settle down into despairing
incurable gloom.
Bessie heard from Miss Bathurst much of the poor in London, of their
troubles, and of their poverty. Her own sympathies naturally led her to
consider the condition of the blind poor. She began to make inquiry as
to their number, the places they lived in, the work they did, their
homes and social condition. Note-books full of facts and dates and
numbers testify to the activity of this time. And then once again her
attention was directed to the blind teacher in the Avenue Road School.
In the autumn of 1853, she was then twenty-seven years old, she wrote to
ask Mr. W. Hanks Levy to call upon her in Queen Anne Street. She said
she had been told that he could give her the information she wanted as
to the condition and requirements of the blind.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] MS. Sermon on the Blind, Rev. F. D. Maurice.