Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Work for the Blind

by Frances Martin

In after life we find a temper under perfect control, and a will developed and trained to sweet firmness and unwavering endurance; but these showed themselves in the fitful irregularity of a somewhat wilful childhood.

In accordance with the precept of her father, Bessie wanted to do everything that other children did. She would try, and nothing but her own individual experience would convince her of the limitations of her powers. The fire and the kettle were great temptations to her. One day in the nursery at Oxford she tried to reach the kettle, slipped and fell in front of the fire, tried to save herself by grasping the hot bars of the grate, and the poor little hands were badly burnt. We may be sure how the parents would suffer with their blind child in such an accident, and yet they would not encourage a panic, or allow any unnecessary restrictions to be put upon her actions.

A few years after scarlet fever the Gilbert children had measles. All memory of the occurrence would have faded out had it not been for Bessie. Her throat, as we have said, was ragged and impeded, and throughout life the only way in which she could swallow any liquid was in very small sips and with a curious little twist of nose and mouth. In after life she used to compare herself to Pascal, saying how much better her own case was, for Pascal was obliged to have his medicine warmed before he could sip it, whilst she could take hers cold.

There are some who still remember how they pitied her when they saw Bessie sitting up in bed sipping a black draught, and they can recall the resolution with which she did it, and the conscientiousness with which she took all, to the last drop.

Some twenty years later she was walking in the garden at Eversley with Charles Kingsley, and he said to her, "When you take medicine you drink it all up. I spill some on my frock, and then I have to take it over again." It was one of those swift intuitive glances of his; he saw in the delicate woman the same patient courage that had characterised the child. She had much suffering from her throat throughout life, and as a little girl was nearly choked by a lozenge. The noteworthy point of the incident is that in the wildest tumult of alarm of those around her, the child was quite calm.

There was so little sense of her inferiority to others in early youth that it was only as the sisters grew up that they realised how much Bessie knew, and how much she could do, in spite of her blindness. As a child they all looked upon her as very clever. One of their Sunday amusements was to play at Sunday school, and Bessie was invariably made the mistress.

For a long time she and her sister Fanny, little more than a year younger, were companions in their lessons, which were in every respect alike. Bessie's were read aloud to her; she learnt easily, her memory was good, and she made rapid progress. In French and German the grammar was read to her, and she worked the exercises verbally. The governess, Miss Lander, was devoted to her pupils, and specially interested in Bessie, so that she turned to account every hint and suggestion as to special methods for the blind. She drew threads across a piece of paper, which was fixed to a frame, and taught the child to write in the ordinary way. There was a box of raised letters which could be used for spelling lessons, and there was leaden type with raised figures for arithmetic lessons. The letters were arranged on an ordinary board; but the figures were placed in a grooved board. Now arithmetic was the most difficult and distasteful of all Bessie's lessons; the placing of the figures correctly was a very perplexing task, and the working of sums an intricate problem. But she did her duty and made her way steadily to compound division, a stage beyond which no woman was expected to advance fifty years ago. Miss Lander did her best to explain the various processes, but the sums, alas, were only too often wrong, and a passionate outburst would succeed the announcement of failure. That little episode of the chair was probably not unconnected with arithmetic. She was keenly interested in astronomical lessons, and the home-made orrery, which explained the relative position of sun, moon, and planets, was a source of unfailing interest. The little fingers fluttered over the planets and followed their movements with great delight.

An eager, intelligent child, with parents and teachers all anxious to smoothe her way and remove difficulties, we need not wonder that youth was a happy time for her: "the brightest and happiest of all the children," she is said to have been.

"The Principal's Lodgings," as the old-fashioned, rambling house in High Street, Oxford, was called, has no garden whatever. The front door opens into a dark hall; spacious cupboards to the right; to the left the dining-room; in front of you passages, doors, and two difficult staircases. There was no one, we are told, who had not fallen up or down these dark winding stairs except Bessie. On the first floor to the front, with five windows looking into High Street, is the drawing-room. This was divided, and one part of it was converted into a schoolroom. The Principal's study was on the same floor at the back of the house. What is known as the north wing stretches back, and has two or three small rooms which can easily be isolated. It was in them that Bessie was nursed through scarlet fever.