Elizabeth Gilbert was born at a time when, as her
biographer reminds us, kindly and intelligent men and women could gravely
implore the Almighty to 'take away' a child merely because it was blind;
when they could argue that to teach the blind to read, or to attempt to
teach them to work, was to fly in the face of Providence; and her whole
life was given to the endeavour to overcome this prejudice and
superstition; to show that blindness, though a great privation, is not
necessarily a disqualification; and that blind men and women can learn,
labour, and fulfil all the duties of life. Before her day all that the
blind were taught was to commit texts from the Bible to memory. She saw
that they could learn handicrafts, and be made industrious and
self-supporting. She began with a small cellar in Holborn, at the rent
of eighteenpence a week, but before her death she could point to large
and well-appointed workshops in almost every city of England where blind
men and women are employed, where tools have been invented by or modified
for them, and where agencies have been established for the sale of their
work. The whole story of her life is full of pathos and of beauty. She
was not born blind, but lost her sight through an attack of scarlet fever
when she was three years old. For a long time she could not realise her
position, and we hear of the little child making earnest appeals to be
taken 'out of the dark room,' or to have a candle lighted; and once she
whispered to her father, 'If I am a very good little girl, may I see my
doll to-morrow?' However, all memory of vision seems to have faded from
her before she left the sick-room, though, 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; and when in 1835
the young Princess Victoria visited Oxford with her mother, Bessie, as
she was always called, came running home, exclaiming, 'Oh, mamma, I have
seen the Duchess of Kent, and she had on a brown silk dress.' Her
youthful admiration of Wordsworth was based chiefly upon his love of
flowers, but also on 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 Dr. Gilbert, then Principal of
Brasenose, 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
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.