HAPPINESS
The Clear-sighted Man—A Scot’s Accent—Mountain
Climbing—Skating—Riding, etc.
His friends all testify to his spirit, his normal view of life
frequently making them forget the fact of his blindness. A distinguished
writer and diplomat, who had known Fawcett, on being asked what
impression had been produced on him, replied quickly and quite simply,
‘I think that he was an extraordinarily clear-sighted man.’ Stephen in
his biography uses this sentence: ‘Fawcett had come to _see_ more
distinctly the real tendency of the proposal and to feel the full force
of the objections to which he had never been blind.’ Such remarks
illustrate Fawcett’s power of making people utterly forget his
blindness.
[Sidenote: How to be happy.]
He was always grateful when his companions paid no attention to his
affliction, and would talk to him about the scenery which they passed
and the people whom they met as if he too could see them. He kept his
resolve to be as happy as was possible, and often said: ‘There is only
one thing that I ever regret, and that is to have missed a chance for
enjoyment.’ He told his friends that he intended to live to be ninety,
and to relish every day of his life. He deliberately set about
cultivating those tastes which would redound to his happiness: he taught
himself to smoke, he patiently learned to listen to music, which had
never unfolded its full joys to him before he had lost his sight. He so
far succeeded as to be able to enjoy concerts and the opera.
Doubtless, he systematically trained himself to remember. It was often
remarked of him that if he had heard a voice once he would remember it
again years after. One day in the Cambridge streets he was accosted by a
Scottish professor. Fawcett could not remember him, but encouraged him
to talk, and kept up his end of a long conversation. After a good twenty
minutes, a trick in the Scot’s accent betrayed him, and Fawcett
enthusiastically grasped his hand, and said, ‘How do you do, Clerk
Maxwell?’
He never attempted to modify his vocabulary to fit his infirmity, and
though the effect was at times strange he would greet people in the most
natural way in the world with: ‘How do you do? how well you’re looking’;
or ‘What’s the matter, you’re looking pale to-day? Too much work, eh?’
He commented on a friend’s looking old, and added: ‘But when men with
that colour hair turn grey, they do look prematurely old.’
It was not unusual for him to mimic people, whom he had only known since
his blindness, reproducing their gestures as well as their speech.
[Sidenote: Games.]
Later he learned to play cribbage and écarté with cards pricked by his
secretary with raised dots, in the fashion used by the blind to produce
tactile prints. It took him but three days to conquer all difficulties
in this new system, and he played with quickness and enjoyment. It is of
no small interest to those who have studied the psychology of those
blinded by accident in maturity to note this successful development of
card playing. Shortly after his accident he had made an attempt which
proved a total failure and yet afterwards he took it up without effort.
This point should be dwelt on, and may well give courage to many an
adult who is blinded. It shows that it is worth while to repeat often,
and to hope for success in experiments which have been abandoned as
futile.
His hearing developed great acuteness, so that he could tell in towns by
the pressure of the atmosphere if he was passing an opening caused by a
cross street. When he walked in the country he loved the sound of the
leaves, the feel of grass, the springing of the sod beneath his feet,
the note of a bird or the leap of a fish. He seems to have tried to
gather from his friends’ descriptions an even deeper insight into the
charm and subtleties of Nature than before it was shut out from his
bodily vision. When, later, he enjoyed driving, he would stop the
carriage in order to see the view at some favourite point. He was so
fond of the view at Brighton that he often telegraphed a friend there to
take him a walk to Rottingdean. He always enjoyed this intensely, and
spoke of the exquisite prospect as of one of the most wonderful in
England. A breath of the sea stimulated him greatly. After a storm he
loved to listen to the booming and breaking of the waves on the shore,
and to feel the burn of the brine which was cast in his face as he
breasted the receding gale. The little shells and the seaweed interested
him, and he liked to pass the latter between his fingers to get the
slippery gluey feeling, and to play with their little pods and queer
tentacles.
[Sidenote: Enjoying the View from the Mountain Tops.]
Fawcett loved great heights and mountains, a fellow climber says: ‘I
went up Helvellyn with Fawcett. It was his first mountain since he was
blind—by no means his last. He held one end of a stick and I the other,
to direct his turns; and that was all the aid he needed. But it warmed
one’s heart to see his hearty enjoyment. He would have all the views
described to him, what hills and lakes he saw, what colours they were,
where the mist floated, and he anxiously asked of his secretary who was
with us whether he enjoyed it as much as he expected.’
Later he climbed the Cima di Jazzi, in order to see the glorious array
of snow-covered peaks. It does not seem too much to believe that the
highly developed blind have a feeling of the beauty which we say they
cannot see, and a realisation of its presence which we lack and which it
is impossible for them to explain. Though science has not yet been able
to classify this faculty it may before long, and in the meantime there
is sufficient evidence that this unclassified vision of the sightless to
a great extent illumines their darkness.
Excepting cricket and rackets, he gave up none of the sports of which he
was already fond.
[Sidenote: The Giant’s Stride.]
All his friends are agreed that it was almost impossible to keep up with
him in his walks. They tried to modify his break-neck pace by various
devices, such as engaging him in absorbing discussions, or stopping to
talk to some one on the road. But in vain. His long legs would shoot out
like relentless walking beams, and if his friend happened to be small
and holding on to Fawcett’s arm before long he would be swept off his
feet, hanging on like a mere appendage to the rushing blind man.
Fawcett’s recollection for the places that he had known before his
blindness was astonishing. He could even remember in closest detail the
country where he had been as a child at school.
[Sidenote: Skating.]
Having before his accident been a powerful skater he now took it up
again, and after a few strokes showed no hesitancy. He was known even to
accompany a skating race, leaving the course clear for the competitors
and himself unaccompanied getting over the rough ice on the side. Of his
first attempt we read:
‘After a few strokes the only difficulty was to keep his pace down to
mine. We each held one end of a stick, and as we were on the crowded
Serpentine, we came into a good many collisions. As, however, we were a
couple, and one of us a heavy man, we had decidedly the best of these
encounters, especially as the conscience of our antagonists was on our
side when they saw that they had tripped up a blind man.’
In after years his recklessness became proverbial. He had been on a long
expedition on the frozen Cam one cold winter, and was returning at
sunset, chatting gaily with his friends to the accompanying click of
their skates. They were flying along at a good fifteen miles an hour
when they came upon a treacherous stretch of very rough ice. Fawcett,
who accepted ice baths as part of the fun, urged them forward, zealously
calling out: ‘Go on—I only got my legs through!’
[Sidenote: Riding.]
In the early stages of his blindness, Fawcett’s purse did not permit him
to ride much. Moreover, some narrow escapes from accident—he was at one
time nearly crushed at Salisbury by a cart—made him for a short time
hesitate as to its expediency. But later he took it up with enthusiasm,
at first accompanied by a riding master, and later by groups of friends.
One of these tells how he would often ride over to Newmarket to spend
Sunday. During the Sabbath he would nearly walk his friend off his legs,
and on other days contented himself with walking his horse off its legs.
With a box of sandwiches provided for luncheon, Fawcett would ride over
from Cambridge at Christmas time to feast on the sunny side of the
Devil’s Ditch. He loved the chalk downs, and often stopped at a cottage
to ask for a draught of the sparkling, deep-well water. He enjoyed, too,
gossiping with the shepherds about the flocks, for his early interest in
agricultural matters was through life a marked characteristic. Once he
came across the harriers, and joined in their gallops, trusting entirely
to the prudence of his horse to select the most favourable gaps in the
hedgerows.
A frequent companion on these rides tells how one day, going at a brisk
pace, she was so interested in something he was telling her that she did
not see until within a few feet of it that they were at the edge of a
precipitous gravel pit. Fearing to alarm Fawcett she simply called out,
’stop at once, please.’ Fawcett, always quick to act, pulled up short,
and but for his prompt response to her call would certainly have been
killed. Fawcett was so reckless and enthusiastic an equestrian that it
is still a well-remembered tradition in the livery-stables at Cambridge
that Professor Fawcett took so much vitality out of his mounts that he
was always charged extra. It must not be gathered that he was inhuman to
his horses—they probably had just as good a time, relatively, as he had,
but whatever he did, he did in a whole-souled and muscular fashion.
[Sidenote: Fishing.]
But for Fawcett, who had been trained from childhood as a fisherman, the
crowning joy of all sports was a good fishing expedition. Very soon
after the accident, he took up his fishing again. He remembered his
native stream well, and to the end of his life he was always eager to
run down to Salisbury to fish. His letters to his father abound in
reference to angling parties, past and to come. He gave directions about
his fishing-boots (they were so frequently in use that they must have
had a simple number in his catalogue of clothes) and instructions to
secure some expert angler to accompany him, or framed some subtle
tactics for way-laying and ensnaring some particularly elusive aquatic
prey, who had perhaps been known to his neighbours but had remained
uncaught by them.
[Sidenote: Trout and Political Economy.]
Many friends urged him to try their waters for trout, pike, salmon,
jack-fishing, and he enjoyed their hospitality greatly. His father who
was devoted to the sport, in which he excelled even after his ninetieth
year, was very fond of accompanying him. Fawcett’s early practice
enabled him to throw a fly with great accuracy. He was fond of combining
his amusements, and would wade in the stream while one of his great
friends often went with him, though walking on the bank so as not to
throw his shadow on the water, but so that he could talk to his heart’s
content without disturbing the angler. Fawcett was wont to say that
trout hear very badly, and are not distracted by political economy. So
fond was Fawcett of the study of his favourite subject that his first
secretary records how in moments snatched between fishing he would
accompany Fawcett to a tea-house, where he would read to him Mill’s
_Political Economy_.
Those who accompanied him fishing are agreed that he was a much better
fisherman than sighted people generally are. This may have been due to
his extraordinary patience, or to his zeal in learning from the experts
with whom he associated.
A Salisbury friend who often fished with him says: ‘He would make his
way through anything. He often walked along the river’s edge fishing,
and he never fell in. One day he was fishing and caught his line in a
tree overhead. He exclaimed to his secretary, who came up, “Can’t you
see it?” then, with added impatience, “See it’s up there, I can see
it!”’
With his characteristic pluck he did not hesitate to wade in the stream
or to cross a narrow plank. He enjoyed all the roughing incidents in
fishing, even bumping about in a donkey cart full of fish, and he was
particularly glad to meet the country folk and have a chat with them.