The winter of 1892 was darkened by the one cloud in my childhood's
bright sky. Joy deserted my heart, and for a long, long time I lived in
doubt, anxiety and fear. Books lost their charm for me, and even now the
thought of those dreadful days chills my heart. A little story called
"The Frost King," which I wrote and sent to Mr. Anagnos, of the Perkins
Institution for the Blind, was at the root of the trouble. In order to
make the matter clear, I must set forth the facts connected with this
episode, which justice to my teacher and to myself compels me to relate.
I wrote the story when I was at home, the autumn after I had learned to
speak. We had stayed up at Fern Quarry later than usual. While we
were there, Miss Sullivan had described to me the beauties of the late
foliage, and it seems that her descriptions revived the memory of
a story, which must have been read to me, and which I must have
unconsciously retained. I thought then that I was "making up a story,"
as children say, and I eagerly sat down to write it before the ideas
should slip from me. My thoughts flowed easily; I felt a sense of joy in
the composition. Words and images came tripping to my finger ends, and
as I thought out sentence after sentence, I wrote them on my braille
slate. Now, if words and images come to me without effort, it is a
pretty sure sign that they are not the offspring of my own mind, but
stray waifs that I regretfully dismiss. At that time I eagerly absorbed
everything I read without a thought of authorship, and even now I cannot
be quite sure of the boundary line between my ideas and those I find in
books. I suppose that is because so many of my impressions come to me
through the medium of others' eyes and ears.
When the story was finished, I read it to my teacher, and I recall
now vividly the pleasure I felt in the more beautiful passages, and
my annoyance at being interrupted to have the pronunciation of a word
corrected. At dinner it was read to the assembled family, who were
surprised that I could write so well. Some one asked me if I had read it
in a book.
This question surprised me very much; for I had not the faintest
recollection of having had it read to me. I spoke up and said, "Oh, no,
it is my story, and I have written it for Mr. Anagnos."
Accordingly I copied the story and sent it to him for his birthday. It
was suggested that I should change the title from "Autumn Leaves"
to "The Frost King," which I did. I carried the little story to the
post-office myself, feeling as if I were walking on air. I little
dreamed how cruelly I should pay for that birthday gift.
Mr. Anagnos was delighted with "The Frost King," and published it in
one of the Perkins Institution reports. This was the pinnacle of my
happiness, from which I was in a little while dashed to earth. I had
been in Boston only a short time when it was discovered that a story
similar to "The Frost King," called "The Frost Fairies" by Miss Margaret
T. Canby, had appeared before I was born in a book called "Birdie and
His Friends." The two stories were so much alike in thought and language
that it was evident Miss Canby's story had been read to me, and that
mine was--a plagiarism. It was difficult to make me understand this; but
when I did understand I was astonished and grieved. No child ever drank
deeper of the cup of bitterness than I did. I had disgraced myself;
I had brought suspicion upon those I loved best. And yet how could it
possibly have happened? I racked my brain until I was weary to recall
anything about the frost that I had read before I wrote "The Frost
King"; but I could remember nothing, except the common reference to Jack
Frost, and a poem for children, "The Freaks of the Frost," and I knew I
had not used that in my composition.
At first Mr. Anagnos, though deeply troubled, seemed to believe me. He
was unusually tender and kind to me, and for a brief space the shadow
lifted. To please him I tried not to be unhappy, and to make myself as
pretty as possible for the celebration of Washington's birthday, which
took place very soon after I received the sad news.
I was to be Ceres in a kind of masque given by the blind girls. How well
I remember the graceful draperies that enfolded me, the bright autumn
leaves that wreathed my head, and the fruit and grain at my feet and in
my hands, and beneath all the piety of the masque the oppressive sense
of coming ill that made my heart heavy.
The night before the celebration, one of the teachers of the Institution
had asked me a question connected with "The Frost King," and I was
telling her that Miss Sullivan had talked to me about Jack Frost and
his wonderful works. Something I said made her think she detected in my
words a confession that I did remember Miss Canby's story of "The Frost
Fairies," and she laid her conclusions before Mr. Anagnos, although I
had told her most emphatically that she was mistaken.
Mr. Anagnos, who loved me tenderly, thinking that he had been deceived,
turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of love and innocence. He believed,
or at least suspected, that Miss Sullivan and I had deliberately stolen
the bright thoughts of another and imposed them on him to win his
admiration. I was brought before a court of investigation composed of
the teachers and officers of the Institution, and Miss Sullivan was
asked to leave me. Then I was questioned and cross-questioned with what
seemed to me a determination on the part of my judges to force me to
acknowledge that I remembered having had "The Frost Fairies" read to
me. I felt in every question the doubt and suspicion that was in
their minds, and I felt, too, that a loved friend was looking at me
reproachfully, although I could not have put all this into words. The
blood pressed about my thumping heart, and I could scarcely speak,
except in monosyllables. Even the consciousness that it was only a
dreadful mistake did not lessen my suffering, and when at last I was
allowed to leave the room, I was dazed and did not notice my teacher's
caresses, or the tender words of my friends, who said I was a brave
little girl and they were proud of me.
As I lay in my bed that night, I wept as I hope few children have wept.
I felt so cold, I imagined I should die before morning, and the thought
comforted me. I think if this sorrow had come to me when I was older,
it would have broken my spirit beyond repairing. But the angel of
forgetfulness has gathered up and carried away much of the misery and
all the bitterness of those sad days.
Miss Sullivan had never heard of "The Frost Fairies" or of the book
in which it was published. With the assistance of Dr. Alexander Graham
Bell, she investigated the matter carefully, and at last it came out
that Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins had a copy of Miss Canby's "Birdie and
His Friends" in 1888, the year that we spent the summer with her at
Brewster. Mrs. Hopkins was unable to find her copy; but she has told me
that at that time, while Miss Sullivan was away on a vacation, she tried
to amuse me by reading from various books, and although she could not
remember reading "The Frost Fairies" any more than I, yet she felt
sure that "Birdie and His Friends" was one of them. She explained the
disappearance of the book by the fact that she had a short time
before sold her house and disposed of many juvenile books, such as
old schoolbooks and fairy tales, and that "Birdie and His Friends" was
probably among them.
The stories had little or no meaning for me then; but the mere spelling
of the strange words was sufficient to amuse a little child who could do
almost nothing to amuse herself; and although I do not recall a single
circumstance connected with the reading of the stories, yet I cannot
help thinking that I made a great effort to remember the words, with the
intention of having my teacher explain them when she returned. One thing
is certain, the language was ineffaceably stamped upon my brain, though
for a long time no one knew it, least of all myself.
When Miss Sullivan came back, I did not speak to her about "The Frost
Fairies," probably because she began at once to read "Little Lord
Fauntleroy," which filled my mind to the exclusion of everything else.
But the fact remains that Miss Canby's story was read to me once, and
that long after I had forgotten it, it came back to me so naturally that
I never suspected that it was the child of another mind.
In my trouble I received many messages of love and sympathy. All the
friends I loved best, except one, have remained my own to the present
time.
Miss Canby herself wrote kindly, "Some day you will write a great story
out of your own head, that will be a comfort and help to many." But this
kind prophecy has never been fulfilled. I have never played with words
again for the mere pleasure of the game. Indeed, I have ever since been
tortured by the fear that what I write is not my own. For a long time,
when I wrote a letter, even to my mother, I was seized with a sudden
feeling of terror, and I would spell the sentences over and over, to
make sure that I had not read them in a book. Had it not been for the
persistent encouragement of Miss Sullivan, I think I should have given
up trying to write altogether.
I have read "The Frost Fairies" since, also the letters I wrote in which
I used other ideas of Miss Canby's. I find in one of them, a letter to
Mr. Anagnos, dated September 29, 1891, words and sentiments exactly like
those of the book. At the time I was writing "The Frost King," and this
letter, like many others, contains phrases which show that my mind was
saturated with the story. I represent my teacher as saying to me of the
golden autumn leaves, "Yes, they are beautiful enough to comfort us for
the flight of summer"--an idea direct from Miss Canby's story.
This habit of assimilating what pleased me and giving it out again as my
own appears in much of my early correspondence and my first attempts at
writing. In a composition which I wrote about the old cities of Greece
and Italy, I borrowed my glowing descriptions, with variations, from
sources I have forgotten. I knew Mr. Anagnos's great love of antiquity
and his enthusiastic appreciation of all beautiful sentiments about
Italy and Greece. I therefore gathered from all the books I read every
bit of poetry or of history that I thought would give him pleasure. Mr.
Anagnos, in speaking of my composition on the cities, has said, "These
ideas are poetic in their essence." But I do not understand how he ever
thought a blind and deaf child of eleven could have invented them. Yet
I cannot think that because I did not originate the ideas, my little
composition is therefore quite devoid of interest. It shows me that I
could express my appreciation of beautiful and poetic ideas in clear and
animated language.
Those early compositions were mental gymnastics. I was learning, as all
young and inexperienced persons learn, by assimilation and imitation,
to put ideas into words. Everything I found in books that pleased me I
retained in my memory, consciously or unconsciously, and adapted it.
The young writer, as Stevenson has said, instinctively tries to copy
whatever seems most admirable, and he shifts his admiration with
astonishing versatility. It is only after years of this sort of practice
that even great men have learned to marshal the legion of words which
come thronging through every byway of the mind.
I am afraid I have not yet completed this process. It is certain that
I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read,
because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind.
Consequently, in nearly all that I write, I produce something which very
much resembles the crazy patchwork I used to make when I first learned
to sew. This patchwork was made of all sorts of odds and ends--pretty
bits of silk and velvet; but the coarse pieces that were not pleasant to
touch always predominated. Likewise my compositions are made up of crude
notions of my own, inlaid with the brighter thoughts and riper opinions
of the authors I have read. It seems to me that the great difficulty
of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our
confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more
than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is very much
like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in
mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the
spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep
on trying because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not
willing to acknowledge defeat.
"There is no way to become original, except to be born so," says
Stevenson, and although I may not be original, I hope sometime to
outgrow my artificial, periwigged compositions. Then, perhaps, my own
thoughts and experiences will come to the surface. Meanwhile I trust and
hope and persevere, and try not to let the bitter memory of "The Frost
King" trammel my efforts.
So this sad experience may have done me good and set me thinking on some
of the problems of composition. My only regret is that it resulted in
the loss of one of my dearest friends, Mr. Anagnos.
Since the publication of "The Story of My Life" in the Ladies' Home
Journal, Mr. Anagnos has made a statement, in a letter to Mr. Macy, that
at the time of the "Frost King" matter, he believed I was innocent. He
says, the court of investigation before which I was brought consisted
of eight people: four blind, four seeing persons. Four of them, he says,
thought I knew that Miss Canby's story had been read to me, and the
others did not hold this view. Mr. Anagnos states that he cast his vote
with those who were favourable to me.
But, however the case may have been, with whichever side he may have
cast his vote, when I went into the room where Mr. Anagnos had so often
held me on his knee and, forgetting his many cares, had shared in my
frolics, and found there persons who seemed to doubt me, I felt that
there was something hostile and menacing in the very atmosphere, and
subsequent events have borne out this impression. For two years he seems
to have held the belief that Miss Sullivan and I were innocent. Then he
evidently retracted his favourable judgment, why I do not know. Nor did
I know the details of the investigation. I never knew even the names of
the members of the "court" who did not speak to me. I was too excited
to notice anything, too frightened to ask questions. Indeed, I could
scarcely think what I was saying, or what was being said to me.
I have given this account of the "Frost King" affair because it was
important in my life and education; and, in order that there might be no
misunderstanding, I have set forth all the facts as they appear to me,
without a thought of defending myself or of laying blame on any one.