CHAPTER VI

HAPPINESS

The Clear-sighted Man—A Scot’s Accent—Mountain Climbing—Skating—Riding, etc.

His friends all testify to his spirit, his normal view of life frequently making them forget the fact of his blindness. A distinguished writer and diplomat, who had known Fawcett, on being asked what impression had been produced on him, replied quickly and quite simply, ‘I think that he was an extraordinarily clear-sighted man.’ Stephen in his biography uses this sentence: ‘Fawcett had come to _see_ more distinctly the real tendency of the proposal and to feel the full force of the objections to which he had never been blind.’ Such remarks illustrate Fawcett’s power of making people utterly forget his blindness.

[Sidenote: How to be happy.]

He was always grateful when his companions paid no attention to his affliction, and would talk to him about the scenery which they passed and the people whom they met as if he too could see them. He kept his resolve to be as happy as was possible, and often said: ‘There is only one thing that I ever regret, and that is to have missed a chance for enjoyment.’ He told his friends that he intended to live to be ninety, and to relish every day of his life. He deliberately set about cultivating those tastes which would redound to his happiness: he taught himself to smoke, he patiently learned to listen to music, which had never unfolded its full joys to him before he had lost his sight. He so far succeeded as to be able to enjoy concerts and the opera.

Doubtless, he systematically trained himself to remember. It was often remarked of him that if he had heard a voice once he would remember it again years after. One day in the Cambridge streets he was accosted by a Scottish professor. Fawcett could not remember him, but encouraged him to talk, and kept up his end of a long conversation. After a good twenty minutes, a trick in the Scot’s accent betrayed him, and Fawcett enthusiastically grasped his hand, and said, ‘How do you do, Clerk Maxwell?’

He never attempted to modify his vocabulary to fit his infirmity, and though the effect was at times strange he would greet people in the most natural way in the world with: ‘How do you do? how well you’re looking’; or ‘What’s the matter, you’re looking pale to-day? Too much work, eh?’ He commented on a friend’s looking old, and added: ‘But when men with that colour hair turn grey, they do look prematurely old.’

It was not unusual for him to mimic people, whom he had only known since his blindness, reproducing their gestures as well as their speech.

[Sidenote: Games.]

Later he learned to play cribbage and écarté with cards pricked by his secretary with raised dots, in the fashion used by the blind to produce tactile prints. It took him but three days to conquer all difficulties in this new system, and he played with quickness and enjoyment. It is of no small interest to those who have studied the psychology of those blinded by accident in maturity to note this successful development of card playing. Shortly after his accident he had made an attempt which proved a total failure and yet afterwards he took it up without effort. This point should be dwelt on, and may well give courage to many an adult who is blinded. It shows that it is worth while to repeat often, and to hope for success in experiments which have been abandoned as futile.

His hearing developed great acuteness, so that he could tell in towns by the pressure of the atmosphere if he was passing an opening caused by a cross street. When he walked in the country he loved the sound of the leaves, the feel of grass, the springing of the sod beneath his feet, the note of a bird or the leap of a fish. He seems to have tried to gather from his friends’ descriptions an even deeper insight into the charm and subtleties of Nature than before it was shut out from his bodily vision. When, later, he enjoyed driving, he would stop the carriage in order to see the view at some favourite point. He was so fond of the view at Brighton that he often telegraphed a friend there to take him a walk to Rottingdean. He always enjoyed this intensely, and spoke of the exquisite prospect as of one of the most wonderful in England. A breath of the sea stimulated him greatly. After a storm he loved to listen to the booming and breaking of the waves on the shore, and to feel the burn of the brine which was cast in his face as he breasted the receding gale. The little shells and the seaweed interested him, and he liked to pass the latter between his fingers to get the slippery gluey feeling, and to play with their little pods and queer tentacles.

[Sidenote: Enjoying the View from the Mountain Tops.]

Fawcett loved great heights and mountains, a fellow climber says: ‘I went up Helvellyn with Fawcett. It was his first mountain since he was blind—by no means his last. He held one end of a stick and I the other, to direct his turns; and that was all the aid he needed. But it warmed one’s heart to see his hearty enjoyment. He would have all the views described to him, what hills and lakes he saw, what colours they were, where the mist floated, and he anxiously asked of his secretary who was with us whether he enjoyed it as much as he expected.’

Later he climbed the Cima di Jazzi, in order to see the glorious array of snow-covered peaks. It does not seem too much to believe that the highly developed blind have a feeling of the beauty which we say they cannot see, and a realisation of its presence which we lack and which it is impossible for them to explain. Though science has not yet been able to classify this faculty it may before long, and in the meantime there is sufficient evidence that this unclassified vision of the sightless to a great extent illumines their darkness.

Excepting cricket and rackets, he gave up none of the sports of which he was already fond.

[Sidenote: The Giant’s Stride.]

All his friends are agreed that it was almost impossible to keep up with him in his walks. They tried to modify his break-neck pace by various devices, such as engaging him in absorbing discussions, or stopping to talk to some one on the road. But in vain. His long legs would shoot out like relentless walking beams, and if his friend happened to be small and holding on to Fawcett’s arm before long he would be swept off his feet, hanging on like a mere appendage to the rushing blind man.

Fawcett’s recollection for the places that he had known before his blindness was astonishing. He could even remember in closest detail the country where he had been as a child at school.

[Sidenote: Skating.]

Having before his accident been a powerful skater he now took it up again, and after a few strokes showed no hesitancy. He was known even to accompany a skating race, leaving the course clear for the competitors and himself unaccompanied getting over the rough ice on the side. Of his first attempt we read:

‘After a few strokes the only difficulty was to keep his pace down to mine. We each held one end of a stick, and as we were on the crowded Serpentine, we came into a good many collisions. As, however, we were a couple, and one of us a heavy man, we had decidedly the best of these encounters, especially as the conscience of our antagonists was on our side when they saw that they had tripped up a blind man.’

In after years his recklessness became proverbial. He had been on a long expedition on the frozen Cam one cold winter, and was returning at sunset, chatting gaily with his friends to the accompanying click of their skates. They were flying along at a good fifteen miles an hour when they came upon a treacherous stretch of very rough ice. Fawcett, who accepted ice baths as part of the fun, urged them forward, zealously calling out: ‘Go on—I only got my legs through!’

[Sidenote: Riding.]

In the early stages of his blindness, Fawcett’s purse did not permit him to ride much. Moreover, some narrow escapes from accident—he was at one time nearly crushed at Salisbury by a cart—made him for a short time hesitate as to its expediency. But later he took it up with enthusiasm, at first accompanied by a riding master, and later by groups of friends. One of these tells how he would often ride over to Newmarket to spend Sunday. During the Sabbath he would nearly walk his friend off his legs, and on other days contented himself with walking his horse off its legs. With a box of sandwiches provided for luncheon, Fawcett would ride over from Cambridge at Christmas time to feast on the sunny side of the Devil’s Ditch. He loved the chalk downs, and often stopped at a cottage to ask for a draught of the sparkling, deep-well water. He enjoyed, too, gossiping with the shepherds about the flocks, for his early interest in agricultural matters was through life a marked characteristic. Once he came across the harriers, and joined in their gallops, trusting entirely to the prudence of his horse to select the most favourable gaps in the hedgerows.

A frequent companion on these rides tells how one day, going at a brisk pace, she was so interested in something he was telling her that she did not see until within a few feet of it that they were at the edge of a precipitous gravel pit. Fearing to alarm Fawcett she simply called out, ’stop at once, please.’ Fawcett, always quick to act, pulled up short, and but for his prompt response to her call would certainly have been killed. Fawcett was so reckless and enthusiastic an equestrian that it is still a well-remembered tradition in the livery-stables at Cambridge that Professor Fawcett took so much vitality out of his mounts that he was always charged extra. It must not be gathered that he was inhuman to his horses—they probably had just as good a time, relatively, as he had, but whatever he did, he did in a whole-souled and muscular fashion.

[Sidenote: Fishing.]

But for Fawcett, who had been trained from childhood as a fisherman, the crowning joy of all sports was a good fishing expedition. Very soon after the accident, he took up his fishing again. He remembered his native stream well, and to the end of his life he was always eager to run down to Salisbury to fish. His letters to his father abound in reference to angling parties, past and to come. He gave directions about his fishing-boots (they were so frequently in use that they must have had a simple number in his catalogue of clothes) and instructions to secure some expert angler to accompany him, or framed some subtle tactics for way-laying and ensnaring some particularly elusive aquatic prey, who had perhaps been known to his neighbours but had remained uncaught by them.

[Sidenote: Trout and Political Economy.]

Many friends urged him to try their waters for trout, pike, salmon, jack-fishing, and he enjoyed their hospitality greatly. His father who was devoted to the sport, in which he excelled even after his ninetieth year, was very fond of accompanying him. Fawcett’s early practice enabled him to throw a fly with great accuracy. He was fond of combining his amusements, and would wade in the stream while one of his great friends often went with him, though walking on the bank so as not to throw his shadow on the water, but so that he could talk to his heart’s content without disturbing the angler. Fawcett was wont to say that trout hear very badly, and are not distracted by political economy. So fond was Fawcett of the study of his favourite subject that his first secretary records how in moments snatched between fishing he would accompany Fawcett to a tea-house, where he would read to him Mill’s _Political Economy_.

Those who accompanied him fishing are agreed that he was a much better fisherman than sighted people generally are. This may have been due to his extraordinary patience, or to his zeal in learning from the experts with whom he associated.

A Salisbury friend who often fished with him says: ‘He would make his way through anything. He often walked along the river’s edge fishing, and he never fell in. One day he was fishing and caught his line in a tree overhead. He exclaimed to his secretary, who came up, “Can’t you see it?” then, with added impatience, “See it’s up there, I can see it!”’

With his characteristic pluck he did not hesitate to wade in the stream or to cross a narrow plank. He enjoyed all the roughing incidents in fishing, even bumping about in a donkey cart full of fish, and he was particularly glad to meet the country folk and have a chat with them.