AMONG THE BLIND
A Leader of the Blind—Honours—His Last Speech.
[Sidenote: What he meant to the Blind.]
What his happy, successful life meant to the blind, and how he heartened
them by his hearty personality, cannot be overestimated.
‘I went with him,’ says Mr. Dryhurst, ‘to a tea-meeting at Bethnal
Green. It was night, and the Assembly Hall, which was low, was crowded
with over one thousand blind people and their guides. Fawcett, who spoke
briefly, was greeted with fervent enthusiasm when he entered, and when,
in the course of the speech he exclaimed in his thundering voice, ‘Do
not wall us up in institutions, but let us live as other men live,’ the
excitement of the audience and the animation of the blind faces, was
something which I shall never forget.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A Leader out of Darkness.]
While at Cambridge preparing this book, the writer was sent for by a
blind lady whom she did not know. She was old and ill in bed, but in
happier times she had known Fawcett, who had often dined at her house.
Recently she also had lost her sight, and she evidently felt that she
had a debt to the great blind man who had been her friend when she could
see. She wished the relief of expressing her indebtedness, as in her
weak voice she struggled to say: ‘I wanted to tell you that in my life
no one has helped me as much as Mr. Fawcett; his help is constant even
now.’
Fawcett had always lived so that he might be strong and attain. He was
careful of his diet, exercise and clothing; of this last to such a
degree that his friends, as we know, loved to poke fun at him for his
precautions against chills. Tradition tells of two suits of
underclothing being superimposed while in an express train London-bound
on his way to the Houses of Parliament.
We are given a glimpse of him at this time by a friend: ‘Coming towards
me I saw a man leaning on the arm of his companion, and walking with a
smiling upturned face, as though he were watching the clouds of smoke
from a small but exceedingly fragrant cigar.’
[Sidenote: The Wear of Work.]
He seemed now quite his old self again in mind and body, though he would
often return home exhausted from his work, and when Mrs. Fawcett read to
him he would frequently fall fast asleep. On one occasion she was
reading to him the biography of some distinguished man, and had come to
a passage where the author was describing a moonlight scene, when
Fawcett, waking from a nap, interrupted the peaceful picture with the
exclamation, ‘I always said he was a sagacious old fool.’
[Sidenote: Honours.]
It was natural that when his achievements had won him such wide
popularity and distinction he should receive many of those tokens which
most men cherish. Oxford gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil
Law; Würzburg, on its tricentenary celebration, made him Doctor of
Political Economy; he was elected a corresponding member of the section
of political economy of the Institute of France; the Royal Society
elected him to a Fellowship, and in 1883, a year after his illness, the
University of Glasgow gave him an LL.D. and elected him their Lord
Rector, the other candidates being Lord Bute and Mr. Ruskin.
He did not live to give his Rectorial address, but Mrs. Fawcett sent a
copy of his Hackney speech to each of the students, saying as preface,
‘This last speech appears to me so characteristic of him on whom the
choice of the students fell, so free from party passion and prejudice,
so scrupulously just to opponents, so fearless in saying what he knew
would not be popular, so instinct with devotion to principle and love of
justice, that I cannot believe it will be useless or unacceptable to
young men just beginning the battle of life.’
His friends had been over sanguine in their belief in Fawcett’s restored
strength. He did not take a proper vacation in the summer of 1884, but
devoted himself to settling questions which he found anxious and onerous
about telephone rights. The work told on his weakened constitution. In
September he went to Wales, ‘made a vigorous little speech,’ and visited
two friends. He returned for his lectures at Cambridge, but he was
forced to be much in London. Even so he snatched every occasion for
fresh air and exercise that he could. He gloried in the great
out-of-doors.
[Sidenote: Bells.]
One Sunday he went rowing with a friend on the Thames. It was a glorious
day, and Fawcett was delighted with the church bells. They paused to
listen, and he exclaimed, ‘How lovely the bells are!’ and then added
wickedly, ‘and how glad I am that I am not in church.’ About him there
always hovered a glint of the impish schoolboy playing ‘hookey,’
especially when he was in the open air, revelling in the warmth of the
sunshine, listening to the lap and swish of the water, the rustle of the
leaves, the wind in the grass, or the songs of the birds. He loved all
these glad noises, and at such times his whole being gave out joy, his
gay spirit had the freshness and the unhesitating truthfulness of early
youth. He was so full of the light of that inner eye which nothing could
darken, that he forgot his blindness in the fulness of his own bright
soul. Heartily would he have assented to the sentiment: ‘It is a comely
fashion to be glad—Joy is the grace we say to God.’ It surprised and
startled those about him, whom he made so oblivious of his misfortune,
when he would ask, ‘Is the sun shining?’
[Sidenote: Golden Leaves of Autumn.]
Hearing that the foliage at Clarendon was singularly lovely that autumn,
the tired, busy, blind man snatched a moment to run down to see the
woods. The glory of that autumn light on the trees at Salisbury, when he
was last permitted to see them, was never to be forgotten. He refused to
remember the catastrophe which had blinded him, and still delighted to
recall the beauty thus lost, and to love all similar autumn glories.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: His Last Speech.]
His final speech was made at Hackney on 13th October; he lectured with
weakened voice on the 30th, went to London, and returned to Cambridge,
where, though he found the weather damp and raw, he enjoyed a ride with
some relatives. In the evening he compared his cold with that of a
friend who was dining with them, and was forced to admit that the
friend’s cold was superior to his own.
The next day, though he did Post Office work with his secretary, he kept
his bed; his lecture for Monday had to be put off. On Tuesday and
Wednesday he grew worse, though he greatly enjoyed Mrs. Fawcett’s
reading of Dickens, laughing heartily over it. It was now necessary to
ask Lord Eversley, so often his able substitute, to act again as his
deputy.