Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Work for the Blind

by Frances Martin

Her feeble health, her limited opportunities of ascertaining the condition of the poor, her imperfect knowledge of their requirements and their powers, made it imperative that she should find an ally with health and energy, with experience that might supplement her own, and with equal devotion to the cause she had at heart.

W. Hanks Levy, who called at her request to tell her about the blind poor, was one of whom she had often heard, and with whom she had already corresponded. He was an assistant teacher at the school in Avenue Road, married to the matron of the girls' department.

Levy was of humble origin and blind from early youth. His education, such as it was, had been received at the Avenue Road School, but he was essentially self-taught. Outside of the narrow routine of the school he had worked and striven to obtain knowledge, to find help for himself and others. He was a man of small stature and of slender build, with plentiful dark hair on head and face. He wore darkened spectacles, which covered the sightless eyes. His nose was large and well formed, and the mouth fairly good. All the features were marked by extreme mobility, a sensitive tremulousness often seen in the blind. It is as if they did their thinking outside. Bessie had this same tremulous mobility of feature; her soul fluttered as it were about a thought, and you saw hope, apprehension, joy, fear, or dismay when it was first presented to her.

Levy was a man of eager intelligence and generous heart. He earnestly desired the amelioration of the condition of the blind. Their disabilities had pressed upon him from his youth upwards, and upon all around him.

Living in an institution, and able to measure himself by no higher standard than that which it offered, he had not, however, realised the actual limitations of blindness. It is doubtful whether he ever did realise them. He would, therefore, have been an unsafe guide, but he was an excellent follower. He would have resented interference from those whom he called "the sighted," but he submitted to the blind lady; her nurture, training, and delicate sense of the fitness of things gave her a strong hold over him. He accepted her judgment when it was opposed to his own will, and faithfully carried out her views and wishes.

During this first interview in Queen Anne Street he told her of the various institutions in Great Britain and their work, and especially of the work done in London. At her request he investigated carefully, and obtained dates, facts, and figures that were reliable. Bessie found that the institutions for the blind provided instruction for the young, and for them only. Statistics showed, however, that by far the greater number of blind persons lose their sight as adults, from such causes as fever, smallpox, and accidental injury. They lose sight when others are dependent upon them, and when blindness means either the life of a beggar or life in the workhouse. And again she learnt that the existing institutions dismiss young men and women who have been fairly educated and taught a trade, on the assumption that, as adults, they can practise their trade and earn a living. This conjecture tells cruelly upon the blind. They leave many of the institutions with an adequate stock of clothes, and either with tools or with money to purchase tools; and then begins a hopeless struggle. Private friends diminish in numbers, and are gradually lost. The blind men and women cannot go about from place to place in search of work, cannot work without special contrivances, which are not to be found in ordinary workshops, and have no market for their goods if they work at home.

But do blind people wish to work, or would they not rather beg? asked many to whom Bessie spoke on this subject. To this she replied that she did not know; must try to find this out. For some months, at her request, Levy went into the streets and accosted every blind beggar whom he met, asking him or her to tell the story of life to a blind man. "Which would you rather do, work or beg?" he would ask when the speaker had finished. And in almost every case the answer was "Work." "Why, I'd rather work, but how can I get work; or, if I get it, how can I do it? And where can I sell it, if I work at home without orders?"

These were the difficulties that experience brought to light, and after many months of close and patient investigation, Bessie at length saw a way open before her. "Don't work yourself to death," a friend said to her at this time. "Work to death," she said, with a happy laugh; "I am working to life."

She saw that some one must come forward to befriend the blind poor, some one who could supply material, give employment, or dispose of the articles manufactured.