Slike strani
PDF
ePub

Mr. Campbell's Pupils.

ONE morning a certain number of people had come straggling into the empty music-room at the Crystal Palace, deserted as yet and only lined with a silent audience of straw-chairs; an hour or two later every corner would be filled, every place be packed with a mass of listening people following the quivering bow of the leader, and absorbed in eager attention. As yet only the chairs were set out in the area below, while up above the musicians were installed. The members of the chorus were in orderly array, the violins in their eddying lines and rows, the drums prepared to boom at their appointed seasons, and tinkling things in their places, and flutes ready to strike up, and wind instruments to join their breath to the wavings, and streamings, and stirrings of the great concerto about to be, incarnated for the time in the performers and the listening men and women.

.

Joachim had been absent in his own country and now, after long silence, he had come back to his faithful English auditors. It had been announced that he was to lead the orchestra on this occasion and one or two old friends and acquaintances had come from town to be present at the rehearsal, and to bid him welcome. The old friend, who sits quietly waiting in the front row with folded hands, and soft grey hair and peaceful spiritual looks, is a musician herself-a true artistic soul, ever ready to answer to the call of those who surround her gentle life, and to be herself carried away from its anxious cares by the strains she knows so well how to love. People who are listening often seem to me as touching as the music itself; one may watch their faces, transfigured as the echoing radiance reaches them in turn. Music, like sunshine, belongs to all; neither age, nor illness, nor sorrows, hinder all its present blessing. It is not only for the happy; it is for the old, for the lonely, the forlorn, the disgraced in fortune and men's eyes. To all of these the faithful strains may speak of comfort, sympathy, forgiveness, with a strange personal impersonality.

Behind Miss H— three young women with sweet intent faces were following the score. And then just behind them a mother and her son were sitting together; and I remember no one else except the friend who had brought me. We were still expecting our musician when a side door opened, and a little file of people came in, quietly making their way from chair to chair, and settling down in a group. There may have been about twenty young men and women. One of the attendants passing at that

moment told me that these were students from the Normal College for the Blind, close by, who are allowed the privilege of coming weekly to these rehearsals at the Crystal Palace. Then somebody else says "Hushsh." We hear a stir, a clapping welcome in the orchestra-there stands the leader in his place. It is strangely homelike to meet the glance of those thoughtful eyes, to recognise the brown Straduarius once more; the violin of the wonderful sobs and tender laughter that has so often swept us all into its charmed circle. For a few minutes all the orchestra is in a ferment and turmoil of greeting, and the conductor is acknowledging its good will, and then suddenly, at the tap of the bow upon the music stand, they all settle down to work, for no time is to be lost.

This particular concerto of Mendelssohn's begins with one single note, flashing, exquisite, breaking the silence of months for us; as it sung and thrilled on that day it seemed to awaken something in us all; it was like the first ray of light after the darkness of the night darting from behind the horizon in the early dawn, to be followed by all the lovely flames of sunrise. I wondered how the note struck the blind scholars, listening absorbed. Did it seem indeed a flashing of light in their darkened world?

I have paid more than one visit to the pupils at the College, since the morning when we listened together to that wonderful performance at the Crystal Palace. The master and mistress, Mr. Campbell and his wife, have always received us with great kindness, and have certainly made us feel more and more in sympathy with their object, their pupils, and their teaching. It is a teaching which some people may think not confined to the blind alone, for it suggests something beyond object lessons and music itself. "If people are no use, and are no longer trying to help one another," said some one in the College, "I think they had better come to an end at once. They are not wanted any more, neither here nor anywhere else." But the spirit of good-will predominates in the place, and every one there seems to be wanted.

An eager courage; hopeful trusting in others, a sympathy undaunted by difficulty: these are the qualities by which men are upheld in their work and enterprise, by which other people, more dull perhaps to see possibilities of good, less trustful by instinct, are nevertheless swept along almost unconsciously until they find themselves one day fellow-workers in some cause which has become their own. The first time I was at the College the foundation of the new house had scarcely risen above the slope of the lawn upon which it stands; the last time I went there good stout walls were upreared, the beams of the roof were being covered in, and a comfortable solid mansion, nearly completed, seemed to promise the permanent establishment of an important institution conducted upon the American system among us. Mr. Campbell told me that from all the people to whom he had applied, at one time or another for advice or assistance, he had scarcely ever met with a refusal, and only once with an instance of positive unkindness; and this was

from a person who came forward afterwards, unasked, and most materially and generously benefited the College. Mr. Campbell first called upon us with a letter from a friend, about a year ago, and in reply to our questions told us very simply how it happened that he, a stranger in our land, alone, without means or influence (except indeed that inestimable influence of personal character), should have determined to found an institution conducted according to the methods so successfully carried out in his own country. He had been for thirteen years or more musical director, and for some time resident superintendent of the Boston School for the Blind, and had come over, with his wife, to Europe for a holiday, to recruit his health after very long-continued hard work. Their return passage was taken, and it was only two days before the ship was to start that he happened to attend a certain meeting of blind poor in London, and that his attention was from circumstances forcibly drawn to the sufferings of some among them. Mr. Campbell spent some hours there, and talked to one person and another. He walked home, utterly crushed and dispirited, he told me; for the first time recognising the lives to which some of these uneducated, untrained, and suffering human beings were necessarily condemned. "In America," said the American, "things were differently arranged." By the time he got back to his wife, he had made up his mind. He said to her, "I think there is work for us to do over here. We will not go back; we will wait and see if we cannot do something for some of the English blind;" and so, with music in his gift, and relief from bonds of unspeakable weight, in a helping spirit of generous interest, this American, with the assistance of some true friends, has spent the last few years following out his plans, administering the funds which have been placed at his disposal, encouraging, educating, and inspiring his followers. By the advice and with the material assistance of a committee, he has founded this college, to which pupils now come from all parts of England, and from all gradations of society. Some of them (and, strangely enough, these are among the very brightest and best-looking of the little pupils) are from the workhouse, some have struggling, some have sensible well-to-do parents, who feel their children's advantage in dwelling in this community, where music is so admirably understood, and where a higher degree of cultivation is attained by the scholars than many a child with sight to help it on can hope for.

It is pleasant to read the hearty commendations of those sent to report upon the working of the College:

I am confirmed in my impression that in this College, if nowhere else, the difficulties which are generally supposed to attend all attempts to cultivate the minds of blind persons are entirely overcome, and that this may fairly be recommended as a model for all institutions in this country which have for their object not merely to teach the Blind to read the Bible and to make mats and baskets, but to generally educate them as well as to specially instruct them in the one subject in which the might be expected to equal if not surpass sighted persons-that of music.

[blocks in formation]

And again:

The vocal practice I found to be systematic, and carefully attended to. The piano playing was excellent, and the players, even to the youngest, were able to describe, as if the book were open before them, the whole notation of the music played. It is impossible to overrate the importance of this method, because by it alone the blind become teachers of those who see.

The models of the various component parts of a pianoforte, in the department set aside for the training of tuners, pleased me very much, and I am not surprised to hear that some of the students of the College are already earning their living as thoroughly competent tuners.

[blocks in formation]

"It is a mere question of expense," says Mr. Campbell, who is blind himself, and who speaks from experience, "of patience in the teachers, of liberality in those who provide the means. A blind man's Bible costs, perhaps, fifty times as much as a common edition; his maps, his writing materials, every article in the school, is complicated and expensive in proportion." How cheap it is to have eyes! How much it costs to be blind! About 5,000l. more is wanted to complete the College, to furnish, to pay for the current expenses, to stock the shelves and the minds of the young scholars. It would be nice to send them the money all in sovereigns; the children would soon count it out into heaps, calculate the interest, the compound interest, how much for each person taught, how much immediate returns.

Some pupils only enter for a few weeks, learn the technical appliances, and go off; others come and remain for some time. One young man, after a year or two's tuition, was lately engaged by a great piano firm, in Manchester, and is already receiving 25s. a week as a tuner. Another, strange to say, is making a living out of the musical capabilities of the Bideford fishermen. He is organist in the church there, he has classes and lectures, and is supporting himself comfortably in that sunny cleft.

The appliances are singularly ingenious, and every day new adaptations are devised, by which form supplies a meaning to absent colour, and strange dots and ridges speak to the wise and sensitive fingers. The blind themselves are the most successful engineers in this apparently impracticable country. Here are maps that take to pieces and which the children know by heart; they can spread out Europe, Asia, America, without a moment's hesitation-a small fair-headed creature of nine years old starts off for a tour of the world and runs her little finger from shore to shore and from ridge to ridge, flying along in some magical mirage of her own and calling out nations, countries, oceans, and cities as she goes. One thing strikes one specially as one watches the working of the school, which is that all that the blind accomplish is thoroughly impressed upon their minds; cram, flare, sham knowledge can scarcely exist for them. The children having explained their maps produce their slates and do their sums with great quickness and clearness. One little

boy is given the two sides of a room and told to calculate the diameter; half-a-dozen more on a bench multiply, divide, add so much, shout out a square root as fast as the mistress can give the problem. Once they find her out and say that she is wrong and the mistress laughs and says that her pupils are right. Their slates are frames and soft boards, with paper upon which they prick the dots that represent either notes or numerals: when they reverse the paper they can follow the dotted lines and read what they have written down. A sum is a formidable thing under these circumstances, but they seem able to work out most things in their minds; they write a few memoranda and come to a solution far more quickly than by the old agonizing process of scratching pencil and slate and tearsmudged figures which many of us remember. It is the whole difference between doing work mechanically by the eye and with a mind intent upon the work. Mr. Campbell spoke with great feeling of the desire he felt for a real education for all the blind people; an education not of brushes and door-mats, which can scarcely be deemed sufficient interest for a life, an education not of leading-strings, but one of enterprise and real vital interest. Music is the most important element in his work, but music alone would not be enough; even more than others, must blind people learn to see, and learn with courage and patience all that comes naturally to those who are more fortunately circumstanced.

[ocr errors]

The object lessons are very curious; every variety of question is asked and answered, animals named in a way that Adam himself most assuredly could not have accomplished; races, divisions, subdivisions enumerated. "Those are those that musticate their food," cries one little naturalist from one side of the room. The little girls from their benches at the other end all put up their little hands at every question and can answer anything. They describe every variety of animal, vegetable: "Lions look bold and king-like," they say. "They are 'markably strong," cries a little boy in an awe-stricken voice. The children are asked what are the vegetable products of Iceland. 'Nothing at all," says a sweet little pipe. Then suddenly the little girl who is called Jessie brightens up,“Oh, yes, there is a sort of fine moss which is used for cooking," she cries. I asked the teacher what books they chiefly used, and she told me Wood's Natural History and some simple scientific books of Dr. Hooker's. These are read out to the children and explained to them viva voce. I suppose it was as a treat on this occasion that the stuffed model of a cat with a mouse in its mouth was brought out and gravely handed down the class from child to child. Nothing was said; each in turn felt it carefully over, stroked the skin and the tail and passed it on in silence.

A music lesson I once heard given interested me most of all, the children's faces brightened up so delightfully, the master's skill was so spontaneous and suggestive. He played a few simple chords and modulations, then came a little fairylike creature who repeated them diffidently by ear, then more certainly, having seized the idea; her kind master made her show her skill in different ways. She played by ear, she played by memory with

« PrejšnjaNaprej »