njc JOHQ)^ JOHN BERNARD MANNIX HEROES OF . THE DARKNESS 5 '- Heroes of the Darkness BY JOHN BERNARD MANNIX WITH FORTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS INCLUDING TWO IN COLOUR London S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO* LTD, 8 & 9 Paternoster Row CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD, 9 HELEN KELLER: A GENIUS, 15 SIR FRANCIS JOSEPH CAMPBELL, LL.D., .... 60 HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D., M.P., 102 DR. ARMITAGE : PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPIST, . 148 LAURA BLUDGMAN AND HER TEACHERS, . .168 FRANQOIS HUBER, 208 DR. THOMAS BLACKLOCK, 230 " " JOHN METCALF : BLIND JACK OF KNARESBOROUGH, . 246 JOHN STANLEY, MUS.BAC., 274 NICHOLAS SAUNDERSON, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., .... 288 JOHN MILTON I AS A BLIND MAN, 302 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS HELEN KELLER AS AN ART CRITIC, . Frontispiece HELEN KELLER'S NEW HOME, 19 A LESSON IN LIP-READING, 35 FAC-SIMILE OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY HELEN KELLER TO DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 39 SPECIMEN OF THE BRAILLE SYSTEM OF PRINTING FOR THE BLIND, 52 SIR F. J. CAMPBELL WRITING BRAILLE, .... 60 ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE, UPPER NORWOOD, . .71 BLIND GIRLS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE AT NEEDLEWORK, 88 BLIND BOYS AT GYMNASTIC EXERCISES, .... 91 BLIND GIRLS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE TYPING, . 97 BLIND BOYS OF THE ROYAL NORMAL COLLEGE LEARNING BOTANY, 98 HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D., M.P., 102 SALISBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THK 111VEH AVON, . .113 HENRY FAWCETT AND HIS WIFE, 131 " HENRY FAWCETT AS ONE OF THE TEA-ROOM PARTY," . 139 TABLET ERECTED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY TO HENRY FAWCETT, 146 DR. ARMITAGE, 148 A BOOKBINDER AT WORK AT THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BLIND SOCIETY, 150 A VIEW OF THE DARDANELLES, THE SCENE OF DR. ARMITAGE'S EXPLOIT, 153 STEREOTYPING PAGES OF MUSIC AT THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BLIND SOCIETY, 161 7 List of Illustrations PAGE LAURA BBIDGMAN, 168 LAURA BRIDGMAN AND UNCLE ASA, 173 FAC-8IMILE OF LAURA BRIDGMAN'S WRITING, . .178 CHARLES DICKENS AND LAURA BRIDGMAN, . .185 FAC-8IMILE AUTOGRAPH PAGES OF A POEM WRITTEN BY LAURA BRIDGMAN, 196, 197 DR. HOWE, 203 FRANQOIS HUBER, 208 DR. T. BLACKLOCK, 230 KIRKCUDBRIGHT, 237 JOHN METCALF, 246 KNARESBOROUGH, SHOWING THE HOUSE WHERE METCALF WAS BORN, AND THE OLD CASTLE .... 249 MODERN KNARESBOROUGH, AND THE OLD CASTLE, . 259 METCALF'S HOUSE AT SPOFFORTH, 271 JOHN STANLEY, 274 THE ORGAN OF ST. ANDREW'S, HOLBORN, .... 277 THE HISTORIC ORGAN OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH, LONDON, . 279 FAC-8IMILE PAGE OF MUSIC LEAFLET WRITTEN BY JOHN STANLEY, 283 THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANDREW'S, HOLBORN, . 285 DR. NICHOLAS SAUNDERSON, LL.D., 288 CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 293 SAUNDERSON'S "PALPABLE ARITHMETIC," .... 299 JOHN MILTON, 302 " MILTON COMPOSING SAMSON AGONISTES," .... 305 THE MEETING OF MILTON AND ANDREW MARVELL. [By G. H. Boughton, R.A.], 313 IN MEMORY OF MILTON, 319 FOREWORD BALING with a subject, the romantic and dramatic possibilities of which have attracted such eminent writers as M. Maurice Maeterlinck, Mr. H. G. Wells, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, this volume of studies from real life claims to be nothing more than a simple examination of one phase of the foundation of reality which should underlie all that is best in the world of imagination. Most of my readers live in a world of light and colour, the beauty and value of which they seldom pause to realise. But there is in this world of ours a kingdom of which they have probably never even heard. As old as human history, this kingdom has no frontiers, its subjects know no distinctions of race or colour, caste or lineage. It is an empire of darkness, though upon its citizens the sun is ever shining. Yet to these sons and daughters of men there is neither light nor colour in life. They live in lifelong gloom, for theirs is the kingdom of the blind. True, blindness is primarily a physical deprivation, and as such may be regarded simply as an obstacle to be overcome, as a stimulus to effort. But the loss pf sight more than any other affliction is a test of the temper and mettle of a man, of his will to live and do, of his faith and hope in the future. It is in the Foreword kingdom of the blind that the triumph of man's higher nature and powers over adversity and despair is most strikingly and heroically manifested. Out of the dark- ness of their world have emerged many heroes. Those of us who live in a radiant and multi-coloured universe would faint and falter under the burden of such a misfortune as that of blindness, and yet, as Milton " proudly said, It is not so wretched to be blind, as it is not to be capable of enduring blindness." Right down through the ages, and in most of the countries of the world, the blind have been considered, with the exception of a few outstanding and heroic figures, as objects of charity, of pity, and even of contempt. In our time the world is beginning to learn that the blind, as such, are not disqualified from sharing the duties and responsibilities, the innocent pleasures, and the highest rewards of our common humanity. Harking back to classical times, we find, besides the titanic figure of blind Homer, half- veiled in the mists of antiquity, other notable blind men in Didymus of Alexandria (mentioned by St. Jerome), and Democritus, whom Tully said put out his eyes in order to be able to think the more intensely. Later, in the Far East, there was the Japanese Prince Hitoyasu, whose ninth century bounty was the means of helping his afflicted brethren until Western ideas intervened. Mediaeval Europe saw at least two picturesque figures who, though sightless, played heroic parts on the field of battle. The first was John, the blind King of Bohemia, who fell fighting valiantly at Cr^cy, and whose coat of arms was popularly supposed to have been adopted by the Prince of Wales. The other was John de Trocznow or Zisca, 10 Foreword who, despite the loss of first one eye and then the other, led the Bohemian reformers to victory. Minstrelsy, too, has been a recognised calling for the blind in all periods. The name of Blind Harry, the fourteenth century poet and minstrel, is famous in Scottish annals, as are those of Carolan and Raftery in the later history of Ireland. That there have also been noble and heroic figures in the ranks of the blind in more modern times, it is one of the purposes of this volume to prove. Here are presented in brief the life-stories of a representative and carefully selected group of men and women whose lives have been overshadowed by blindness, but who, nevertheless, by innate genius or sheer force of character, have heroically fought for and attained fame or success in various walks of life. Rising superior to the limita- tions of their common affliction, they form a living chain of heroes and heroines of the darkness from Helen Keller back to Milton ! Considered as archtypes, each one belongs to a distinct department of activity or school of thought, and personifies some abstract quality or dominant character- istic. Thus Milton, the English Dante, might be said to personify the divine afflatus; Saunderson, the sightless mathematician, would stand for lucidity and the concentration ; Huber, naturalist, though blind, observation the represented ; Henry Fawcett, statesman, resolution Laura and John ; Bridgman, receptivity ; Metcalf and Sir Francis Campbell, different phases of the more purely physical attributes of daring and enterprise. But such classification may be considered more arbitrary than scientific. On the other hand, the subjects treated may be taken 11 Foreword as illustrations of varying aspects of the psychology of blindness and its effects. Where these effects are negative or repressive, as, for instance, in the natural timidity of movement so noticeable in the blind, they can be over- come by training or the exercise of the will. Striking evidence of this will be found in the lives of Metcalf, the blind road-maker; James Holman,R.N. (1787-1857), the blind traveller and Sir F. J. the ; Campbell, famous blind teacher, happily still with us. Then there are examples of what might be called the compensations for loss of sight. Increased powers of concentration are certainly a concomitant, and as a secondary result there is an improved retentiveness of memory. The apparent improvement in the acuteness of the other senses so often remarked in blind people is usually only the result of greater attention being concentrated on those senses. They are, for instance, more dependent on the sense of hearing than sighted people. Though a trained ear does not make a musician, the blind more than hold their own in the art of music, as the career of such men as John Stanley will prove. As to whether blindness limits the powers of imagination, or proves or disproves the existence of innate ideas, a great controversy raged round the descriptive poetry of Dr. Blacklock, the blind friend and patron of Burns and Scott, and the scholarly lectures of Professor Saunderson. Loss of sight did not prevent Leonhard Euler, the astronomer, or Fra^ois Huber, the famous Swiss authority on bees, from pursuing their splendid work for science. In short, given the man of strength of character and of will, even if he be blind, he has in him the seeds of success, the making of a hero a sightless superman. 12 Foreword That the position of the blind has been greatly improved in modern times is undoubted. Sympathy in its truest and best form, that of helping the sightless to help themselves, is largely a product of modern philanthropy and humanitarianisrn, allied to improved educational methods.