About Helen Keller, who dined with Mr. Clemens yesterday evening—Her wonderful intellect, etc.—Some lines written about her by Susan Coolidge.
Helen Keller dined with us yesterday evening. She was accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Macy. Mrs. Macy became her first teacherⒺexplanatory note in the neighborhood of twenty years ago, and has been at her side ever since. Helen Keller is the eighth wonder of the world; Mrs. Macy is the ninth. Mrs. Macy’s achievement seems to me to easily throw all previous miracles into the shade and take the importance out of them. Helen was a lump of clay, another Adam—deaf, dumb, blind, inert, dull, groping, almost unsentient: Miss Sullivan blew the breath of intelligence into her and woke the clay to life. But there the parallel ends. From that point onward there is no twinship between Adam and Helen; in fact the twinship does not reach quite that far, for neither lightⒶtextual note nor intelligence was blown into Adam’s clay, but only the breath of physical life. Adam began his career without an intellect, and there is no evidence that he ever acquired one. Helen is quite a different kind of Adam. She was born with a fine mind and a bright wit, and by help of Miss Sullivan’s amazing gifts as a teacher this mental endowmentⒶtextual note has been developed until the result [begin page 375] is what we see to-day: a stone deafⒶtextual note, dumb, and blind girl who is equipped with a wide and various and complete university educationⒺexplanatory note—a wonderful creature who sees without eyes, hears without ears, and speaks with dumb lips. SheⒶtextual note stands alone in history. It has taken all the ages to produce a Helen Keller—and a Miss Sullivan. The names belong together; without Miss Sullivan there had been no Helen Keller.
At dinner the stream of conversation flowed gaily along without let or hindrance, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl taking her full share in it, and contributing her full share of jest and repartee and laughter. Every remark made was reported to Helen by Mrs. Macy with the fingers of one hand, and so rapidly that by the time the utterer of it had reached his last word, Mrs. Macy had delivered that word into Helen’s hand, so there was no waiting, there wereⒶtextual note no intervals. This is a wonderful thing, for the reason that Mrs. Macy does not use shorthand forms, but spells each word out. Her fingers have to move as swiftly as do the fingers of a pianist. The eye of the witness is not quick enough to follow their movements.
Helen’sⒶtextual note talk sparkles. She is unusually quick and bright. The person who fires off smart felicities seldom has the luck to hit her in a dumb place; she is almost certain to send back as good as she gets, and almost as certainlyⒶtextual note with an improvement added.
I had not met her for a long time. In the meantime, she has become a woman. By this I mean that whereas formerly she lived in a world which was unreal—a sort of half world, a moon with only its bright and beautiful side presented to her, and its dark and repulsive side concealed from her—I think she now lives in the world that the rest of us know. I think that this is not wholly a guess. I seemed to notice evidences all along that it is a fact. I think she is not now the Helen Keller whom Susan CoolidgeⒺexplanatory note knew, and about whom she wrote, with such subtle pathos and charm:
She sits, the whitest soul on earth to-day.
No shadowing stain, no whispered hint of sin,
Into that sanctuary finds the way.
That was all true in those earlier days. When I first knew Helen she was fourteen years old, and up to that time all soiling and sorrowful and unpleasant things had been carefully kept from her. The word death was not in her vocabulary, nor the word grave. She was indeed “the whitest soul on earth”—the poet’s words had said the truth. “To her mind—
It is a happy and benignant spot
Where kindness reigns, and jealousy is not.”
I am sure she has lost that gracious world, and now inhabits the one we all know—and deplore. The poet’s description of Helen’s face is vivid, and as exactly true as it is vivid:
[begin page 376]Rayless and sightless, set in patience dumb,
Until like quick electric currents come
The signals of life into her lonely place;
Then, like a lamp just lit, an inward gleam
Flashes within the mask’s opacity,
The features glow and dimple suddenly,
And fun and tenderness and sparkle seem
To irradiate the lines once dull and blind,
While the white slender fingers reach and cling
With quick imploring gestures, questioning
The mysteries and the meanings.
Seen once, the moving and eloquent play of emotion in her face is forever unforgetable. I have not seen the like of it in any other face, and shall not, I know. One would suppose that delicate sound vibrations could not reach her save through some very favorable medium—like wood, for instance—but it is not so. Once yesterday evening, while she was sitting musing in a heavily tufted chair, my secretary began to play on the orchestrelle. Helen’s face flushed and brightened on the instant, and the waves of delighted emotion began to sweep across it. Her hands were resting upon the thick and cushion-like upholstery of her chair, but they sprang into action at once, like a conductor’s, and began to beat the time and follow the rhythmⒺexplanatory note.
Helen Keller dined with us . . . Mrs. Macy became her first teacher] On 16 January Isabel Lyon noted in her journal:
Helen Keller came tonight. At half past seven she arrived with Mrs Macy—& when the King who had been pacing up & down the room, went to the library door to meet her as she came in with short, hesitating steps, she threw her arms around him & buried her head in his neck, & felt of his hair; when Mrs Macy told her that he was still wearing his halo—the King wept. (Lyon 1907)
Keller was twenty-six at the time of this visit. For further details of Clemens’s friendship with her and her teacher and companion, Annie Sullivan Macy (wife of writer John Macy), see AutoMT1 , 465–66, 531 n. 209.42–210.1, 650 n. 465.9.
equipped with a . . . complete university education] Keller was a 1904 honors graduate of Radcliffe College.
Susan Coolidge] The pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905), best known as a popular author of stories for young people, but also a much-published poet, magazine writer, and editor. Her poem “Helen Keller,” which Clemens goes on to quote, was included in her posthumously published Last Verses, a copy of which Clemens owned (Woolsey 1906, 3–4; Gribben 1980, 2:786).
my secretary began to play on the orchestrelle . . . beat the time and follow the rhythm] In her journal on 17 January, Lyon described Keller’s demeanor, in particular her response to music:
I didn’t expect to find her as she is. I believed she would be blasée & spoiled a little—because of her great fame; but she isn’t spoiled a bit. The signs of her great afflictions are always present, because she is so dependent upon others— She waits with a sweet, almost breathless attention, while Mrs Macy spells with inconceivable rapidity, the sentence or remark that has just been uttered, & when it is finished her face ripples with delight & she gives a sweet little shiver of pleasure, & in her expression you can see that she has understood perfectly. Helen & Mrs Macy are the guests of Mrs Laurence Hutton, & while we were waiting for Mr Macy who is staying some other place, to appear, it was suggested that I play something on the orchestrelle to see if Helen could detect the musical vibrations— I took The Erlkönig, & at the first deep trembling of the bass, she turned instantly to Mrs Macy & said “Music.” She was fully conscious of its shadings—for she said that it reminded her of the rising & falling of winds or waves. She wore a white gown trimmed with a great deal of soft lace, & a string—a long double string of coral beads. Her face, particularly the left side of it, is very noble. . . . I had been struck with the nobility, & the womanliness, & the great play of intellect & affection & emotion & seriousness that make it what it is. The King says of her that “she is a mine.” (Lyon 1907)
Franz Schubert composed his “Der Erlkönig,” for solo voice and piano, in 1815, setting a poem of that title by Goethe. Clemens’s Aeolian Orchestrelle was an imposing and ornate foot-pumped roll-operated reed organ, standing approximately eight feet tall, which he had purchased for $2,600 in 1904, along with sixty rolls of music. Playing it was one of Lyon’s tasks (for a full, illustrated discussion of the orchestrelle, see Richards 1983, 42–46; for Mrs. Hutton see the ADs of 20 Nov 1906, note at 279.39–280.1, and 21 Dec 1906, note at 330.29–32).
Source document.
TS1 Typescript carbon (the ribbon copy is lost), leaves numbered 1650–54, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.With the ribbon copy of TS1 missing, TS1 (a carbon copy), which Clemens revised, is our only authoritative source for this dictation. TS1 is also the source of the poem “Helen Keller” (quoted at 375.25–28, 375.34–36, and 376.1–12), by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey). Clemens had recently acquired a copy of her posthumously published Last Verses, which contained the poem. When quoting it in TS1 he omitted some of the lines, and quoted others out of order, but otherwise the text matches the published source (Woolsey 1906, 3–4; Gribben 1980, 2:786).