The "Song of Elizabeth" from the Saint's Tragedy was published during the year 1859, and Bessie writes to Addison and Hollier to say that instead of an engraving she will have the price-list of the Association on the title-page. This remarkable decision they seem to have induced her to abandon, for the title-page is of the ordinary kind. There were at this time about a hundred and fifty blind persons deriving benefit from the Association: sixty-three were supplied with work at their own homes; forty-seven were employed at the Euston Road; the remainder were pupils, agents, travellers, shopman, and superintendent, whilst three received pensions. So many more were applying for work and instruction that at the May meeting the Bishop of Oxford offered a donation of £20 on condition that nineteen similar donations were announced in a given time. He thus raised £400 for the relief of some of the more pressing cases amongst the applicants. The increase of workmen made an increase in the sales necessary, and the trade of the Association was assuming formidable dimensions. The buying and selling, the control of workrooms and management of stock, the care of ledgers, accounts, bills and receipts, might now with great advantage have been made over to a competent and adequately paid sighted manager. Such an arrangement would have left Bessie free to devote herself to the charitable part of her enterprise; to elevate and educate the blind, to investigate cases, and make experiment with trades. With Levy as her faithful coadjutor how much might she not have done!
She was pledged, however, to a more ambitious attempt, and felt herself bound in honour to show what the blind can do alone and unaided. A proposal was made in January 1859 to employ a "sighted" accountant, but as this was opposed by Bessie it was not carried. And yet at this very time the incessant and anxious work of past years was beginning to tell upon her, and she had urgent need of rest.
She was mainly responsible for the funds necessary to carry on the business. Being familiar with every detail of the business, she was called upon to explain its intricacies to her Committee. She had often to justify and secure the carrying out of arrangements which did not meet with general approval. Every scheme, proposal, experiment, rested ultimately upon her; upon this one blind lady, whose health had never been good, but whose strenuous energy and strong sense of duty forbade her to say no to any appeal on behalf of fellow-sufferers.
Museum, boarding-house, sick fund, musicians' association, with its classes for vocal and instrumental music, endowment fund, fund for establishing a West-end shop, fund in aid of tradesmen who had lost their sight; all these are the outcome of a single year's work. There are also letters innumerable to be written and answered, appeals to be made, applications to be replied to. She threw herself with fervid zeal into all her work, and a day was accounted lost if she had not accomplished in it something for the Association.
Two sisters were married in 1858, but the diary contains no other record of such important events than "unavoidably nothing done." Her heart beat warm and true as ever, home and friends were dear as ever, but for a time her horizon was bounded by the narrow walls of one small dark house in the Euston Road.
Herr Hirzel, director of the blind institution at Lausanne, who had visited the Association during the summer, was so well pleased with all he saw that he decided on his return to Switzerland to open workshops for the blind. At different times some six institutions had also applied for teachers or blind superintendents, but no workmen had been trained or were qualified to fill such posts. Bessie saw that this was an omission in her scheme, and at once resolved that special facilities for the training of intelligent blind men ought to be provided.
In the autumn, however, the long threatened reaction from overwork set in, and she was prostrated by weakness and depression. In November she was induced to try the effect of complete rest, and paid a long promised visit to Miss Isabella Law, at Northrepps Rectory, near Cromer.
She took with her a Foucault frame and taught Miss Law to use it, and what further employment she found during her short holiday is best told in Miss Law's letters.
Writing at Christmas 1859 she says:
It is just six weeks to-day since you left us. I can never forget that miserable morning; it is always haunting me like a dreadful dream that I try in vain to get rid of.... I hardly know what to tell you about myself; it is a very difficult subject to write about. I have been trying to do more in the school lately than I ever did before. I think of you when I am there, and try to do my best. Still I am afraid, as Madame Goldschmidt said of the clergyman, my best is very little. My sisters are going next week to spend a few days with some friends in the neighbourhood: how I should like to have you with me then. I remember so well your once speaking to me about accustoming myself to be alone whenever it was necessary, and not to depend too much on others for companionship, so now you see I am going to have a little trial in that way. You will think of me then, won't you? and I shall be thinking of you more than ever.... I took a bit of my writing this morning to show the school children, and they seemed delighted with it.... I must say good-bye now, ... and how much love I send I never could tell you.