Part 2
His extensive journeyings and his coach work had made the blind man familiar, in a very special way, with the roads and the land between them, and in 1765, at the age of forty-eight, he came into his true vocation--that of road construction. It is unnecessary to follow his career in this development; it is enough to say that during the next twenty-seven years he constructed some one hundred and eighty miles of road. Much of it was over very difficult country, some of it, indeed, over country which up to that time had been deemed impossible, but all of it was well made. His plans did not always commend themselves in advance to the authorities. For such a contingency Metcalf had a very reasonable proposal, “Let me make the road my way, and if it is not perfectly satisfactory when finished I will pull it all to pieces and, without extra charge, make it your way.” He had been over the ground in his very special way; of this a Dr Bew, who knew him, wrote: “With the assistance only of a long staff, I have several times met this man traversing roads, ascending steep and rugged heights, exploring valleys and investigating their extent, form and situation so as to answer his designs in the best manner.... He was alone as usual.”
Remarkable to the end, John Metcalf reached his ninety-fourth year and left behind him ninety great-grandchildren.
* * * * *
It would be easy to multiply appropriate instances from Wilson’s book, but bulk is not the object. Nor can his _Anecdotes of the Blind_ be materially drawn upon, although it is impossible to resist alluding to two delightful cases where blind men detected blindness in horses after the animals had been examined and passed by ordinary experts. In one instance suspicion arose from the sound of the horse’s step in walking, “which implied a peculiar and unusual caution in the manner of putting down his feet.” In the other case the blind man, relying solely on his touch, “felt the one eye to be colder than the other.” These two anecdotes are credited to Dr Abercrombie; Scott, in a note to _Peveril of the Peak_ (“Mute Vassals”), recounts a similar case, where the blind man discovered the imperfection by touching the horse’s eyes sharply with one hand, while he placed the other over its heart and observed that there was no increase of pulsation.
One point in the capacity of the blind is frequently in dispute--the power to distinguish color. Even so ingenious a man as the Nicholas Saunderson already mentioned not only could gain no perception of color himself, but used to say that “it was pretending to impossibilities.” Mr J. A. Macy, who edited Miss Helen Keller’s book, _The Story of my Life_--an experience that ought surely to have effaced the word “impossible” from his mind in connection with the blind--makes the bold statement: “No blind person can tell colour.”
Three instances of those for whom this power has been claimed are all that can be included here. The reader must attach so much credibility to them as he thinks fit:
1. From Wilson’s _Biography_, as _ante_:
“The late family tailor (MACGUIRE) of Mr M‘Donald, of Clanronald, in Inverness-shire, lost his sight fifteen years before his death, yet he still continued to work for the family as before, not indeed with the same expedition, but with equal correctness. It is well known how difficult it is to make a tartan dress, because every stripe and colour (of which there are many) must fit each other with mathematical exactness; hence even very few tailors who enjoy their sight are capable of executing that task.... It is said that Macguire could, by the sense of touch, distinguish all the colours of the tartan.”
2. From the _Dictionary of National Biography_:
“M‘AVOY, MARGARET (1800-1820), blind lady, was born at Liverpool of respectable parentage on 28 June 1800. She was of a sickly constitution, and became totally blind in June 1816. Her case attracted considerable attention from the readiness with which she could distinguish by her touch the colours of cloth, silk, and stained glass; she could accurately describe, too, the height, dress, bearing, and other characteristics of her visitors; and she could even decipher the forms of letters in a printed book or clearly written manuscript with her fingers’ ends, so as to be able to read with tolerable facility. Her needlework was remarkable for its extreme neatness. Within a few days of her death she wrote a letter to her executor. She died at Liverpool on 18 August 1820.”
3. From _The Daily Telegraph_, 29th April 1922:
“American scientists are deeply interested in the discovery of a young girl of seventeen, WILLETTA HUGGINS, who, although totally blind and deaf, can ‘see and hear’ perfectly through a supernormal sense of smell and touch. Miss Huggins, who has been quite deaf since she was ten years old, and totally blind since she was fifteen, demonstrated to the satisfaction of physicians and scientists that she can hear perfectly over the telephone by placing her finger-tips upon the receiver and listening to conversation with friends by placing her fingers on the speakers’ cheeks. She attends lectures and concerts, and hears by holding a thin sheet of paper between her fingers directed broadside towards the volume of sound, and reads newspaper headlines by running her finger-tips over large type. She discerns colours by odours, and before the Chicago Medical Society recently she separated several skeins of wool correctly and declared their colours by smelling them, and also recognised the various colours in a neck-tie.”
* * * * *
The case of Miss HELEN KELLER has already been referred to. In America that case has become classic; indeed in its way the life of Miss Keller is almost as remarkable as that of John Metcalf, but, needless to say the way is a very different one. Her book, _The Story of My Life_, is a very full and engrossing account of her education (in this instance “life” and “education” are interchangeable) from “the earliest time” until shortly after her entry into Radcliffe College in 1900, she then being in her twenty-first year. The book consists of three parts: (1) her autobiography; (2) her letters; (3) her biography from external sources, chiefly by the account of Miss Sullivan, who trained her.
The difficulty here was not merely blindness. When less than two years old not only sight, but hearing, and with hearing speech, were all lost. Her people were well-to-do, and skilled advice was frequently obtained, but no improvement came. As the months and the years went on, intelligent communication between the child and the world grew less, while a naturally impulsive nature deepened into sullenness and passion in the face of a dimly realised “difference,” and of her inability to understand and to be understood. When Miss Sullivan came to live with the Kellers in 1887, on a rather forlorn hope of being able to do something with Helen, the child was six, and relapsing into primitive savagery. The first--and in the event the one and only--problem was that of opening up communication with the stunted mind, of raising or piercing the black veil that had settled around it four years before.
A month after her arrival Miss Sullivan wrote as follows:--“I must write you a line this morning because something very important has happened. Helen has taken the second great step in her education. She has learned that _everything has a name, and that the manual alphabet is the key to everything she wants to know_.
“In a previous letter I think I wrote you that ‘mug’ and ‘milk’ had given Helen more trouble than all the rest. She confused the nouns with the verb ‘drink.’ She didn’t know the word for ‘drink,’ but went through the pantomime of drinking whenever she spelled ‘mug’ or ‘milk.’ This morning, while she was washing, she wanted to know the name for ‘water.’ When she wants to know the name of anything, she points to it and pats my hand. I spelled ‘w-a-t-e-r’ and thought no more about it until after breakfast. Then it occurred to me that with the help of this new word I might succeed in straightening out the ‘mug-milk’ difficulty. We went out to the pump-house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled ‘w-a-t-e-r’ in Helen’s free hand. The word coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came into her face. She spelled ‘water’ several times. Then she dropped on the ground and asked for its name and pointed to the pump and the trellis, and suddenly turning round she asked for my name. I spelled ‘teacher.’ Just then the nurse brought Helen’s little sister into the pump-house, and Helen spelled ‘baby’ and pointed to the nurse. All the way back to the house she was highly excited, and learned the name of every object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty new words to her vocabulary. Here are some of them: door, open, shut, give, go, come, and a great many more.
“_P.S._--I didn’t finish my letter in time to get it posted last night, so I shall add a line. Helen got up this morning like a radiant fairy. She has flitted from object to object, asking the name of everything and kissing me for very gladness. Last night when I got in bed, she stole into my arms of her own accord and kissed me for the first time, and I thought my heart would burst, so full was it of joy.”
Seven months later we have this characteristic sketch. It may not be very much to the point here, but it would be difficult to excel its peculiar quality: “We took Helen to the circus, and had ‘the time of our lives!’ The circus people were much interested in Helen, and did everything they could to make her first circus a memorable event. They let her feel the animals whenever it was safe. She fed the elephants, and was allowed to climb up on the back of the largest, and sit in the lap of the ‘Oriental Princess’ while the elephant marched majestically around the ring. She felt some young lions. They were as gentle as kittens; but I told her they would get wild and fierce as they grew older. She said to the keeper: ‘I will take the baby lions home and teach them to be mild.’ The keeper of the bears made one big black fellow stand on his hind legs and hold out his great paw to us, which Helen shook politely. She was greatly delighted with the monkeys and kept her hand on the star performer while he went through his tricks, and laughed heartily when he took off his hat to the audience. One cute little fellow stole her hair-ribbon, and another tried to snatch the flowers out of her hat. I don’t know who had the best time, the monkeys, Helen, or the spectators. One of the leopards licked her hands, and the man in charge of the giraffes lifted her up in his arms so that she could feel their ears and see how tall they were. She also felt a Greek chariot, and the charioteer would have liked to take her round the ring; but she was afraid of ‘many swift horses.’ The riders and clowns and rope-walkers were all glad to let the little blind girl feel their costumes and follow their motions whenever it was possible, and she kissed them all, to show her gratitude. Some of them cried, and the Wild Man of Borneo shrank from her sweet little face in terror. She has talked about nothing but the circus ever since.”
So far there is nothing in this case very material to the purpose of this Introduction. The story of Helen Keller is really the story of the triumph of Miss Sullivan, showing how, with infinite patience and resource, she presently brought a naturally keen and versatile mind out of bondage and finally led it, despite all obstacles, to the full attainment of its originally endowed powers. But the last resort of the blind--some of them--is the undeterminate quality to which the expression “sixth sense” has often been applied. On this subject, Helen being about seven years old at this time, Miss Sullivan writes: “On another occasion while walking with me she seemed conscious of the presence of her brother, although we were distant from him. She spelled his name repeatedly and started in the direction in which he was coming.
“When walking or riding she often gives the names of the people we meet almost as soon as we recognise them.”
And a year later:
“I mentioned several instances where she seemed to have called into use an inexplicable mental faculty; but it now seems to me, after carefully considering the matter, that this power may be explained by her perfect familiarity with the muscular variations of those with whom she comes into contact, caused by their emotions.... One day, while she was walking out with her mother and Mr Anagnos, a boy threw a torpedo, which startled Mrs Keller. Helen felt the change in her mother’s movements instantly, and asked, ‘What are we afraid of?’ On one occasion, while walking on the Common with her, I saw a police officer taking a man to the station-house. The agitation which I felt evidently produced a perceptible physical change; for Helen asked excitedly, ‘What do you see?’
“A striking illustration of this strange power was recently shown while her ears were being examined by the aurists in Cincinnati. Several experiments were tried, to determine positively whether or not she had any perception of sound. All present were astonished when she appeared not only to hear a whistle, but also an ordinary tone of voice. She would turn her head, smile, and act as though she had heard what was said. I was then standing beside her, holding her hand. Thinking that she was receiving impressions from me, I put her hands upon the table, and withdrew to the opposite side of the room. The aurists then tried their experiments with quite different results. Helen remained motionless through them all, not once showing the least sign that she realised what was going on. At my suggestion, one of the gentlemen took her hand, and the tests were repeated. This time her countenance changed whenever she was spoken to, but there was not such a decided lighting up of the features as when I held her hand.
“In the account of Helen last year it was stated that she knew nothing about death, or the burial of the body; yet on entering a cemetery for the first time in her life she showed signs of emotion--her eyes actually filling with tears....
“While making a visit at Brewster, Massachusetts, she one day accompanied my friend and me through the graveyard. She examined one stone after another, and seemed pleased when she could decipher a name. She smelt of the flowers, but showed no desire to pluck them; and, when I gathered a few for her, she refused to have them pinned on her dress. When her attention was drawn to a marble slab inscribed with the name FLORENCE in relief, she dropped upon the ground as though looking for something, then turned to me with a face full of trouble, and asked, ‘Where is poor little Florence?’ I evaded the question, but she persisted. Turning to my friend, she asked, ‘Did you cry loud for poor little Florence?’ Then she added: ‘I think she is very dead. Who put her in big hole?’ As she continued to ask these distressing questions, we left the cemetery. Florence was the daughter of my friend, and was a young lady at the time of her death; but Helen had been told nothing about her, nor did she even know that my friend had had a daughter. Helen had been given a bed and carriage for her dolls, which she had received and used like any other gift. On her return to the house after her visit to the cemetery, she ran to the closet where these toys were kept, and carried them to my friend, saying, ‘They are poor little Florence’s.’ This was true, although we were at a loss to understand how she guessed it.”
“Muscular variation” would rather seem to be capable of explaining away most of the occult phenomena if this is it. But at all events the latest intelligence of Miss Keller is quite tangible and undeniably “in the picture.” According to _Who’s Who in America_, she “Appears in moving picture-play, _Deliverance_, based on her autobiography.” This, doubtless, is another record in the achievements of the blind: Miss Keller has become a “movie.”
THE EYES OF MAX CARRADOS
I
The Virginiola Fraud
If there was one thing more than another about Max Carrados that came as a continual surprise, even a mild shock, to his acquaintances, it was the wide and unrestricted scope of his amusements. Had the blind man displayed a pensive interest in chamber music, starred by an occasional visit to the opera, taken a daily walk in the park on his attendant’s arm, and found his normal recreation in chess or in being read to, the routine would have seemed an eminently fit and proper one. But to call at The Turrets and learn that Carrados was out on the river punting, or to find him in his gymnasium, probably with the gloves on, outraged one’s sense of values. The only extraordinary thing in fact about his recreations was their ordinariness. He frequently spent an afternoon at Lord’s when there was the prospect of a good game being put up; he played golf, bowls, croquet and cards; fished in all waters, and admitted that he had never missed the University Boat Race since the great finish of ’91. When he walked about the streets anywhere within two miles of his house he was quite independent of any guidance, and on one occasion he had saved a mesmerized girl’s life on Richmond Bridge by dragging her into one of the recesses just in time to escape an uncontrollable dray that had jumped the kerb.
This prelude is by way of explaining the attitude of a certain Mr Marrable whom Carrados knew, as he knew a hundred strange and useful people. Marrable had chambers in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly which he furnished and decorated on a lavish and expensive scale. His bric-à-brac, pictures, books and appointments, indeed, constituted the man’s means of living, for he was one of the best all-round judges of art and the antique in London, and with a nonchalant air of indifference he very pleasantly and profitably lounged his way through life on the honey extracted from one facile transaction after another. Living on his wits in a strictly legitimate sense, he enjoyed all the advantages of being a dealer without the necessity of maintaining a place of business. It was not even necessary for him to find “bargains” in the general sense, for buying in the ordinary market and selling in a very special and restricted one disclosed a substantial margin. This commercial system, less rare than one might imagine, involved no misrepresentation: his wealthy and exclusive clients were quite willing to pay the difference for the _cachet_ of Mr Marrable’s connoisseurship and also, perhaps, for the amiable reluctance with which he carried on his operations.
The business that took Carrados to the amateur dealer’s rooms one day in April has nothing to do with this particular incident. It was quite friendly and satisfactory on both sides, but it was not until Carrados rose to leave that the tangent of the visit touched the circle of the _Virginiola_.
“I am due at Gurnard’s at about three-thirty,” remarked Marrable, glancing at a Louis XVI. ormolu clock for which he had marked off a certain musical comedy countess at two hundred and fifty guineas. “Your way at all?”
“Gurnard & Lane’s--the auctioneers?”
“Yes. They have a book sale on this afternoon.”
“I hope I haven’t been keeping you,” apologised Carrados.
“Oh, not at all. There is nothing I want among the earlier lots.” He picked up a catalogue from a satinwood desk in which Mademoiselle Mars had once kept her play-bills and glanced down the pages. “No. 191 is the first I have marked: _An Account of the Newly Discovered Islands of Sir George Sommers, called ‘Virginiola.’_ You aren’t a competitor, by the way?”
“No,” replied Carrados; “but if you don’t mind I should like to go with you.”
Marrable looked at him with slightly suspicious curiosity.
“You’d find it uncommonly dull, surely, seeing nothing,” he remarked.
“I generally contrive to extract some interest from what is going on,” said Carrados modestly. “And as I have never yet been at a book sale----”
“Oh, come, by all means,” interposed the other. “I shall be very glad of your company. Only I was surprised for the moment at the idea. I should warn you, however, that it isn’t anything great in the way of a dispersal--no Caxtons or first-folio Shakespeares. Consequently there will be an absence of ducal bibliophiles and literary Cabinet ministers, and we shall have a crowd of more or less frowsy dealers.”
They had walked down into the street as they conversed. Marrable held up a finger to the nearest taxi-cab on an adjacent rank, opened the door for Carrados, and gave the driver the address of the auction rooms of which he had spoken.
“I don’t expect to get very much,” he speculated, turning over the later pages of the catalogue, which he still carried in his hand. “I’ve marked a dozen lots, but I’m not particularly keen on half of them. But I should certainly like to land the _Virginiola_.”
“It is rare, I suppose?” inquired Carrados. Indifferent to books from the bibliophile’s standpoint, he was able to feel the interest that one collector is generally willing to extend to the tastes of another.
“Yes,” assented Marrable with weighty consideration. “Yes. In a way it is extremely rare. But this copy is faulty--the Dedication and Address pages are missing. That will bring down the bidding enormously, and yet it is just the defect that makes it attractive to me.”
For a moment he was torn between the secretiveness bred of his position and a human desire to expound his shrewdness. The weakness triumphed.
“A few months ago,” he continued, “I came cross another copy of the _Virginiola_ among the lumber of a Bristol second-hand book-dealer’s stock. It was altogether a rotten specimen--both covers gone, scores of pages ripped away, and most of those that remained appallingly torn and dirty. It was a fragment in fact, and I was not tempted even at the nominal guinea that was put upon it. But now----”
“Quite so,” agreed Carrados.
“The first few pages were just the scrap that was presentable. I have a wonderful memory for details like that. The pages I want were discoloured, but they were sound. Sunshine or a chloride of lime bath will restore them to condition. If I get _this_ _Virginiola_ I shall run down to Bristol to-morrow.”
“I congratulate you,” said Carrados. “Unless, of course, your Bristol friend runs up to London to-day!”
Mr Marrable started rather violently. Then he shook his head with a knowing look.
“No; he won’t do that. He is only a little back-street huckster. True, if he found out that a _Virginiola_ short of the pages he possesses was being sold he might have written to a London dealer, but he won’t find out. For some reason they have overlooked the defect in cataloguing. Of course every expert will spot the omission at once, as I did this morning, and the book will be sold as faulty, but if my Bristol friend, as you call him, did happen to see a catalogue there would be nothing to suggest any profitable opening to him.”
“Splendid,” admitted the blind man. “What would a perfect _Virginiola_ be worth?”
“Auction price? Oh, about five hundred guineas.”
“And to-day’s copy?”
“Ah, that’s more difficult ground. You see, every perfect copy is alike, but every imperfect copy is different. Well, say anything from a hundred and fifty to three hundred, according to who wants it. I shall be very content to take it half-way.”