The Life and Times of Helen Keller
“I AM trying to prove that the sum of the areas
of two similar polygons, constructed on the
two legs of a right triangle, is equal to the
area of a similar polygon constructed on the
hypotenuse. It is a very difficult demonstration,” she
added, and her expressive face, on which every passing
emotion is plainly written, looked serious for a moment,
as she laid her hand upon the work about which I had
asked.
Helen Keller, the deaf and blind girl, whose intellectual
attainments have excited the wonder and admiration
of our most prominent educators, is well known to
all readers, but Helen Keller, the blithesome, rosy-cheeked,
light-hearted maiden of nineteen, whose smile
is a benediction, and whose ringing laugh is fresh and
joyous as that of a child, is not, perhaps, so familiar.
HELEN KELLER AT HOME.
By kind permission of her teacher, Miss Sullivan, I
was granted the privilege of an interview with Miss
Keller at her residence on Newbury street, Boston,
where she was busily at work preparing for the entrance
examinations to Radcliffe College.
After a cordial greeting, Miss Sullivan, whose gracious,
kindly manner makes the visitor feel perfectly at
home, introduced me to her pupil. Seated on a low
rocking-chair, in a large, sunny bay-window, the young
girl, fresh as the morning, in her dainty pink shirt-waist
over a dress of plain, dark material, with the sunshine
glinting through her waving brown hair, and kissing
her broad white forehead and pink cheeks, made a picture
which one will not willingly forget. On her lap
was a small red cushion, to which wires, representing
the geometrical figures included in the problem on
which she was engaged, were fastened. Laying this
aside at a touch from Miss Sullivan, she arose, and,
stretching out her hand, pronounced my name softly,
with a peculiar intonation, which at first makes it a little
difficult to understand her words, but to which the
listener soon becomes accustomed. Of course, her
teacher acted as an interpreter during our conversation,
though much of what Helen says is perfectly intelligible
even to the untrained ear.
“Yes,” she said, “it is a very difficult problem, but I
have a little light on it now.”
HER AMBITION.
“What will your ambition be when your college
course is completed?” I asked.
“I think I should like to write,—for children. I tell
stories to my little friends a great deal of the time now,
but they are not original,—not yet. Most of them are
translations from the Greek, and I think no one can
write anything prettier for the young. Charles Kingsley
has written some equally good things, like ‘Water
Babies,’ for instance. ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is a fine
story, too, but none of them can surpass the Greek
tales.”
Many of our advanced thinkers are fond of advancing
the theory that the medium of communication in
the future will not be spoken words, but the more subtle
and genuine, if mute, language of the face, the eyes, the
whole body. Sarah Bernhardt forcibly illustrates the
effectiveness of this method, for even those who do not
understand a word of French derive nearly as much
pleasure from the great actress’s performances as those
who are thoroughly familiar with the language. Helen
Keller’s dramatic power of expression is equally telling.
She is enthusiastic in her admiration of everything
Greek. The language, the literature, the arts, the history
of the classic land fascinate and enthrall her
imagination.
“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, eagerly, in answer to my
query if she expected to go to Greece sometime, “it is
one of my air castles. Ever since I was as tall as that,”
(she held her hand a short distance from the floor) “I
have dreamed about it.”
“Do you believe the dream will some day become a
reality?”
“I hope so, but I dare not be too sure,”—and the
sober words of wisdom that followed sounded oddly
enough on the girlish lips,—“the world is full of disappointments
and vicissitudes, and I have to be a little
conservative.”
“Which of your studies interest you most?”
“Latin and Greek. I am reading now Virgil’s
‘Eclogues,’ Cicero’s ‘Orations,’ Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and
‘Odyssey,’” she said, and ran rapidly over a list of
classic books which she likes.
Her readiness to perceive a joke and her quickness to
detect the least carelessness in language are distinguishing
traits, which she illustrated even during our brief
conversation. Commenting on her love of everything
pertaining to Greece, I remarked that a believer in the
doctrine of metempsychosis might imagine that she possessed
the soul of an old Greek. Instantly she noticed
the little slip, and, laughing gayly, cried: “Oh, no, not
the soul of an
old Greek, the soul of a
young Greek.”
Helen’s merriment was infectious, and we all joined
heartily in the laugh, Miss Sullivan saying, “She caught
you there,” as I was endeavoring to explain that, of
course, I meant the soul of an ancient Greek.
While taking so deep an interest in matters intellectual,
and living in a world of her own, penetrated by no
outward sight or sound, Miss Keller’s tastes are as normal
as those of any girl of nineteen. She is full of animal spirit, dearly loves a practical joke, is fond of
dancing, enjoys outside exercise and sport, and has the
natural desire of every healthy young maiden to wear
pretty things and look her best.
In answer to a question on this latter subject, she
said:—
“I used to be very fond of dress, but now I am not
particularly so; it is such a bother. We ought to like
dress, though, and wear pretty things, just as the
flowers put on beautiful colors. It would be fine,” she
continued, laughing gleefully, “if we were made with
feathers and wings, like the birds. Then we would
have no trouble about dress, and we could fly where we
pleased.”
“You would fly to Greece, first, I suppose?”
“No,” she replied, and her laughing face took on a
tender, wistful look, “I should go home first, to see my
loved ones.”
HEREDITY AND CHILDHOOD.
Miss Keller’s home is at Tuscumbia, Alabama, where
she was born on June 27, 1880. Some of the best blood
of both the north and the south flows in her veins, and
it is probable that her uncommon mental powers are in
no small degree due to heredity. Her father, Arthur H.
Keller, a polished southern gentleman, with a large,
chivalrous nature, fine intelligence and attractive manners,
was the descendant of a family of Swiss origin,
which had settled in Virginia and mixed with some of
the oldest families in that state. He served as a captain
in the Confederate army during the Civil War, and,
at the time of Helen’s birth, was the owner and editor
of a paper published at Tuscumbia. On the maternal
side she is descended from one of the Adams families
of Massachusetts, and the same stock of Everetts from
which Edward Everett and Reverend Edward Everett
Hale sprang.
Helen Keller was not born deaf and blind, although,
at the age of eighteen months, when a violent fit of
convulsions deprived her of the faculties of seeing and
hearing, she had not attempted to speak. When a child,
she was as notable for her stubbornness and resistance
to authority as she is to-day for her gentleness and
amiability. Indeed, it was owing to an exhibition of
what seemed a very mischievous spirit that her parents
sought a special instructor for her. Having discovered
the use of a key, she locked her mother into a pantry in
a distant part of the house, where, her hammering on
the door not being heard by the servants, she remained
imprisoned for several hours. Helen, seated on the
floor outside, felt the knocking on the door, and seemed
to be enjoying the situation intensely when at length
jailer and prisoner were found. She was then about
six years old, and, after this escapade, Mr. and Mrs.
Keller felt that the child’s moral nature must be reached
and her mental powers cultivated, if possible.
HELEN’S FIRST TEACHER.
On the recommendation of Dr. Alexander Graham
Bell, inventor of the telephone, Michael Anagnos, director
of the Perkins Institute for the Blind at South Boston,
sent Miss Annie Mansfield Sullivan to Tuscumbia
to undertake the difficult task of piercing the veil behind
which the intelligence of the little girl lay sleeping.
How well this noble and devoted teacher has succeeded
in her work is amply evidenced by the brilliancy and
thoroughness of her pupil’s attainments.
Miss Sullivan’s method of instruction was similar to
that adopted by Dr. Samuel G. Howe in teaching Laura
Bridgman. She used the manual alphabet, and cards
bearing, in raised letters, the names of objects. At first,
the pupil violently resisted the teacher’s efforts to instruct
her, and so determined was her opposition, Miss
Sullivan declares, that, if she had not exercised physical
force and a determination even more strenuous than
that of her refractory pupil, she would never have succeeded
in teaching her anything. Night and day she
was at her side, watching for the first gleam of conscious
mind; and at length, after seven weeks of what
she says was the hardest work she had ever done, the
faithful teacher received her reward in the sudden
dawning of the child’s intelligence. All at once, the
light seemed to burst in upon her wondering soul; she
understood then that the raised letters which she felt
on the cards and the groups of manual signs on her
hands, represented words, or the names of familiar
objects. The delight of the pupil and teacher was unbounded,
and from that moment Helen’s education,
[398]
though still demanding the greatest patience and loving
care on the part of her teacher, was a comparatively
easy matter.
With the awakening of her intellectual faculties, she
seemed literally to have been “born again.” The stubborn,
headstrong, self-willed, almost unmanageable
child became patient, gentle and obedient; and, instead
of resisting instruction, her eagerness to learn was so
great that it had to be restrained. So rapid was her
progress that, in a few weeks, anyone who knew the
manual alphabet could easily communicate with her,
and in July, 1887, less than a year from the time Miss
Sullivan first saw her, she could write an intelligent
letter.
PREPARING FOR COLLEGE.
In September, 1896, accompanied by her teacher,
Miss Keller entered the Cambridge School for Girls, to
prepare for Radcliffe College, and in June, 1897, passed
the examinations of the first preparatory year successfully
in every subject, taking “honors” in English and
German. The director of the school, Arthur Gilman,
in an article in “American Annals of the Deaf,” says:
“I think that I may say that no candidate in Harvard
or Radcliffe College was graduated higher than Helen
in English. The result is remarkable, especially when
we consider that she had been studying on strictly college
preparatory lines for one year only. She had, it is
true, long and careful instruction, and she has had always the loving ministration of Miss Sullivan, in
addition to the inestimable advantage of a concentration
that the rest of us never know. No other, man or
woman,” he adds, “has ever, in my experience, got
ready for those examinations in so brief a time.”
Mr. Gilman, in the same article, pays the following
well-deserved tribute to Miss Sullivan, whose work is
as worthy of admiration as that of her pupil:—
“Miss Sullivan sat at Helen’s side in the classes (in
the Cambridge School), interpreting to her, with infinite
patience, the instruction of every teacher. In study
hours, Miss Sullivan’s labors were even more arduous,
for she was obliged to read everything that Helen had
to learn, excepting what was prepared in Braille; she
searched the lexicons and encyclopedias, and gave
Helen the benefit of it all. When Helen went home,
Miss Sullivan went with her, and it was hers to satisfy
the busy,
unintermitting demands of the intensely active
brain; for, although others gladly helped, there were
many matters which could be treated only by the one
teacher who had awakened the activity and had followed
its development from the first. Now, it was a
German grammar which had to be read, now a French
story, and then some passage from ‘Cæsar’s Commentaries.’
It looked like drudgery, and drudgery it would
certainly have been had not love shed its benign influence
over all, lightening each step and turning hardship
into pleasure.”
Miss Keller is very patriotic, but large and liberal in
her ideas, which soar far beyond all narrow, partisan or
political prejudices. Her sympathies are with the
masses, the burden-bearers, and, like all friends of the
people and of universal progress, she was intensely
interested in the Peace Congress.
Speaking on the subject, she said: “I hope the
nations will carry out the project of disarmament. I
wonder which nation will be brave enough to lay down
its arms first!”
“Don’t you hope it will be America?”
“Yes, I hope so, but I do not think it will. We are
only just beginning to fight now,” she went on, sagely,
“and I am afraid we like it. I think it will be one of
the old, experienced nations, that has had enough of
war.”
HER IDEAL OF A SUCCESSFUL CAREER.
I asked Miss Keller what she considers most essential
to a successful career.
She thought a moment, and then replied, slowly,
“Patience, perseverance and fidelity.”
“And what do you look upon as the most desirable
thing in life?”
“Friends,” was the prompt reply to this broad general
question; and, as she uttered the word, she nestled
closely to the friend who has so long been all in all
to her.
“What about material possessions?” I asked; “for
instance, which would you place first,—wealth or education?”
“Education. A good education is a stepping-stone
to wealth. But that does not imply that I want wealth.
It is such a care. It would be worse than dressing.
‘Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me contentment,’”
she quoted, with a smile.
The future of this most interesting girl will be followed
with closest attention by educators, psychologists,
and the public generally. There is little doubt that the
time and care spent on her education will be amply
justified; and that she will personally illustrate her own
ideal of a successful career,—“To live nobly; to be true
to one’s best aspirations,”—is the belief of all who
know her.
Compiled From Sources In The Public Domain.
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Smiles & Good Fortune,
Teresa
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It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915
