Laura Bridgman, Helen Keller, and Charles Dickens

By David, guest blogger

In 1842, Charles Dickens and his wife, Kate, visited America. The inevitable travel book that ensued, American Notes, is infrequently read today but contains an inspiring passage that profoundly affected the life of a little deaf and blind girl named Helen Keller.

For when Dickens was in Boston, he and Kate visited the Perkins School for the Blind and met twelve-year-old Laura Bridgman, another deaf-blind girl. Laura had been admitted to Perkins four years earlier by the school's first director, Samuel Howe. Howe was a man of great vision and almost inexhaustible patience. Instead of expanding on the simple sign language that Laura already used, Howe decided to teach her English.

First Laura learned to associate objects with labels printed in raised block letters. Howe then cut up the labels into individual letters and had Laura reassemble the letters to form the words she had learned. According to Howe, it was at this point that Laura finally grasped the idea of language and communication. Laura then quickly learned the manual alphabet and was able to discard the clumsy blocks. After that she attended classes with the other students, accompanied by a teacher to fingerspell for her.

Dickens's account of Laura in American Notes is a combination of excerpts from Dr. Howe's journal along with his own charmed bemusement at meeting such a remarkable girl. Howe's own enthusiasm for his star pupil is manifest: “her countenance lighted up with a human expression: it was no longer a dog, or parrot: it was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits!”

This is the account that Helen Keller's parents read in 1886 and that first gave them hope that Helen could be educated. They contacted the Perkins School, which dispatched Anne Sullivan to become Helen's instructor. The rest, as they say, is history. Helen went on to graduate from Radcliffe and become one of the towering figures of the twentieth century.  She succeeded on her own merits, but was helped along, no doubt, by the path that was previously blazed by Laura Bridgman and made known to the world by Charles Dickens.

Comments

[David]

I would also like to state for the record that Samuel Howe was married to Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. There was no way to include this fact in the narrative without getting badly off-topic, but researching their accomplishments certainly left me with the conviction that they were a remarkably talented couple.

[Rob V.]

This was a great guest entry - I thoroughly enjoyed it!

[Christy]

I love "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"! I had no idea she was married to Samuel Howe.
Laura Bridgman was quite a remarkable person herself (and Helen Keller did get to meet her once), though it's very possible that few people now would have ever heard of her without her having made an impact on Helen Keller. Interesting, that.

[Daniel]

I read about Dickens trip to America before, but never any details. Just what they say in biographies of Dickens.

[Deborah Schoenherr]

Wonderful. I never heard of Laura Bridger until today. I'm 56 yrs old and have studied Helen Keller so my life. I have worked with a special needs child for 9 yrs now. Non verbal autistic\ downs can see and hear. This is very interesting to me.