There is also a south wing with excellent kitchens and good servants' rooms.
On the second floor the space above the drawing-room and schoolroom was occupied by Mrs. Gilbert's room and the two nurseries; whilst a large bedroom at the back, away from the street and over the study, the spare room, was that in which all the children saw the light, and from which eleven of them successively emerged. The second and ninth were boys, and there were nine daughters. A little girl died in 1834, and is buried in the adjacent churchyard of St. Mary's. Bessie, who was eight years old, was taken into the room to bid farewell to her sister Gertrude, and laid her little hand upon her. She never forgot it; and would say in after years in a low tone of awe: "She was so cold." The impression produced on a sensitive organisation was so painful that she was never again taken into the chamber of death.
There is a large "flat" or leaden roof above this "spare" room over the study, to which there is access from an adjacent passage; but this roof is too dangerous a place for a playground, and the children had none in or near the house. The south windows in the front look into High Street; an east window high up in the nursery looks out upon St. Mary's; and all the windows to the north at the back of the house look over walls, and houses, and chimney pots, and brick and mortar. The children played at home in ordinary times, but in the long vacation they played in the quadrangle, a grassy, treeless enclosure, but a very garden of delight to them. The favourite part of it was near the figures called "Cain and Abel," long since removed, and long since known not to have represented Cain and Abel, but to have been a copy of antique sculpture. There were grand games of hide and seek around "Cain and Abel," in which Bessie always joined.
Sometimes the children dined in the College Hall during vacation, and were joined after dinner in the quadrangle by their friends amongst the Fellows of Brasenose, who all had a kind word for the little blind girl. She was also a special favourite with the College servants, and led, as it were, a charmed life, watched over by every one, and unconscious of their care.
All memory of vision seems to have faded from her before she left the sick-room; but, taught by those around her, she soon began to take an imaginary interest in colour, and a very real one in form and texture. An old nurse is still alive who remembers making a pink frock for her when she was a child, her delight at its being pink, and her pleasure in stroking down the folds. In 1835 or 1836 the young Princess Victoria, with her mother the Duchess of Kent, visited Oxford. Bessie was amongst those who went to "see" them enter the city. Returning home she exclaimed, "Oh, mamma, I have seen the Duchess of Kent, and she had on a brown silk dress." The language is startling; but how else could the blind child express the impression she had received except by saying "I have seen." Throughout life she continued to say, "I have seen," and throughout life the words continued to represent a reality as clear and true to the blind as the facts of sight are to those who have eyes.
Very early Bessie knew the songs of birds and delighted in them. Very early also she learned to love flowers. She liked to have them described, and to hear the minutest particulars about them. Nothing made her so happy as to gather them for herself. There were fields near Hincksey which the Gilberts called "The Happy Valley." Thither they resorted in the spring with baskets to gather forget-me-nots, the flowering rush, and other blossoms, which they prized highly. In all these expeditions Bessie was happy, and a source of happiness to others. The tender and reverent way in which she examined a flower, the little fluttering fingers touching every petal and bruising none, was a lesson never to be forgotten.
Her youthful admiration of Wordsworth was chiefly based upon his love of flowers, but also upon personal knowledge. When she was about ten years old, Wordsworth went to Oxford to receive the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the University. He stayed with the Principal, in that large spare room we know of, and won Bessie's heart the first day by telling at the dinner-table how he had almost leapt off the coach in Bagley Wood to gather the little blue veronica. But she had a better reason for remembering that visit. One day she was in the drawing-room alone, and Wordsworth entered. For a moment he stood silent before the blind child. The little sensitive face, with its wondering, inquiring look, turned towards him. Then he gravely said, "Madam, I hope I do not disturb you." She never forgot that "Madam," grave, solemn, almost reverential.