*****
To Mr. Henry C. Robinson, Hartford, Conn.:
LONDON, Sept. 28, '96.
It is as you say, dear old friend, “the pathos of it” yes, it was a
piteous thing--as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish. When we
started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14,
1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric
light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother
throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears. One year, one
month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed
the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of
the night, in the same train and the same car--and again Susy had come a
journey and was near at hand to meet them. She was waiting in the house
she was born in, in her coffin.
All the circumstances of this death were pathetic--my brain is worn to
rags rehearsing them. The mere death would have been cruelty enough,
without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and
wanton details. The child was taken away when her mother was within
three days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her.
In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting
with her. But there is no use in that. Since it was to happen it would
have happened.
With love
S. L. C.
The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete
privacy. Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London
scarcely half a dozen knew his address. He worked steadily on his
book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters
beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers. In one of these he
said, “I am appalled! Here I am trying to load you up with work
again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground
for a year. It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it.”
But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort--one that
was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of
unique and world-wide distinction.
*****
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
For and in behalf of Helen Keller, stone blind and deaf, and formerly
dumb.
DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one wishes
to set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be
bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can't
convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try.
Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at
Lawrence Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July,
in Boston, when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for
admission to Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition.
She was allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other
applicants, and this was shortened in her case by the fact that the
question papers had to be read to her. Yet she scored an average of 90
as against an average of 78 on the part of the other applicants.
It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her
studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a
fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special lines
she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College
degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the
teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will remember
her.) Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her
case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it.
I see nobody. Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding
can enable me to write my long book in time.
So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and
get him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller
and the other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe
an annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--and
agree to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed
her college course. I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no,
they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as
they please, they have my consent.
Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which
shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of
want. I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult
and disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that
miraculous girl?
No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to
plead with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him
clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have
spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think
that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through
their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer “Here!” when
its name is called in this one. 638
There--I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that
I am making; I know you too well for that.