In 1858 he was the teacher of thirteen blind men and women who were learning a trade. Levy had visited Norwich and Bath during the year 1858. In the latter city a Blind Home was formed for the employment of women instructed in the Bath Blind School. This was done in consequence of a Report of Bessie's institution which had been sent to the Committee at Bath. The School for the Indigent Blind, St. George's Fields, Southwark, had also opened departments for instructing and employing the adult blind, but we have no sheaf of old letters to give the history of this further development.
The Committee of the Association might well look back with pleasure, and forward with hope. They well knew on whom the success of the work mainly depended; and in spite of Bessie's objection to the introduction of her name, the following paragraph closes the Annual Report issued in May 1858:
Your Committee feel that their report would be very imperfect if they did not allude to the great services which have been rendered to this society, during the last year, by Miss Gilbert, the foundress of the Association. Whenever pecuniary embarrassment has threatened the efficiency of the Institution, her active zeal has soon replenished the funds; and when the Association has been unable to relieve the most distressing cases that have been pressed on their notice, the sufferers have found her ever ready to afford them timely help; and that, too, in a way which has shown such sympathising interest in their privations, as well as so much consideration for their feelings, that the value of the aid thus afforded can be fully appreciated only by those who have received it.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FEAR OF GOD AND NO OTHER
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
Bessie's early education and happy home life counted for much in her work on behalf of the blind. She knew the advantage of being thrown on her own resources, of learning the ways of a house and the paths of a garden. She knew also that the happiness of the blind depends chiefly on companionship. "A deaf person," she used to say, "is very cheerful alone, much more cheerful than in society. It is social life that brings out his privation. But a blind man in a room alone is indeed solitary, and you see him at his best in society. It is social life which diminishes his disabilities."
Whilst she acquiesced, therefore, in Levy's wish that the work of the Institution should be exclusively carried on by blind persons, she was anxious that they should not be set apart and kept apart from other workmen.