|
My
Grandmother Keller was a daughter of one of Lafayette's aides, Alexander
Moore, and granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early Colonial Governor
of Virginia. She was also second cousin to Robert E. Lee.
My
father, Arthur H. Keller, was a captain in the Confederate Army, and my
mother, Kate Adams, was his second wife and many years younger. Her
grandfather, Benjamin Adams, married Susanna E. Goodhue, and lived in
Newbury, Massachusetts, for many years. Their son, Charles Adams, was born
in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to Helena, Arkansas. When the Civil
War broke out, he fought on the side of the South and became a
brigadier-general. He married Lucy Helen Everett, who belonged to the same
family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale. After the
war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
I
lived, up to the time of the illness that deprived me of my sight and
hearing, in a tiny house consisting of a large square room and a small one,
in which the servant slept. It is a custom in the South to build a small
house near the homestead as an annex to be used on occasion. Such a house my
father built after the Civil War, and when he married my mother they went to
live in it. It was completely covered with vines, climbing roses and
honeysuckles. From the garden it looked like an arbour. The little porch was
hidden from view by a screen of yellow roses and Southern smilax. It was the
favourite haunt of humming-birds and bees.
The
Keller homestead, where the family lived, was a few steps from our little
rose-bower. It was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the
surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy. Its
old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood.
Even
in the days before my teacher came, I used to feel along the square stiff
boxwood hedges, and, guided by the sense of smell would find the first
violets and lilies. There, too, after a fit of temper, I went to find
comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass. What joy it
was to lose myself in that garden of flowers, to wander happily from spot to
spot, until, coming suddenly upon a beautiful vine, I recognized it by its
leaves and blossoms, and knew it was the vine which covered the tumble-down
summer-house at the farther end of the garden! Here, also, were trailing
clematis, drooping jessamine, and some rare sweet flowers called butterfly
lilies, because their fragile petals resemble butterflies' wings. But the
roses--they were loveliest of all. Never have I found in the greenhouses of
the North such heart-satisfying roses as the climbing roses of my southern
home. They used to hang in long festoons from our porch, filling the whole
air with their fragrance, untainted by any earthy smell; and in the early
morning, washed in the dew, they felt so soft, so pure, I could not help
wondering if they did not resemble the asphodels of God's garden.
The
beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little life. I
came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always does. There
was the usual amount of discussion as to a name for me. The first baby in
the family was not to be lightly named, every one was emphatic about that.
My father suggested the name of Mildred Campbell, an ancestor whom he highly
esteemed, and he declined to take any further part in the discussion. My
mother solved the problem by giving it as her wish that I should be called
after her mother, whose maiden name was Helen Everett. But in the excitement
of carrying me to church my father lost the name on the way, very naturally,
since it was one in which he had declined to have a part. When the minister
asked him for it, he just remembered that it had been decided to call me
after my grandmother, and he gave her name as Helen Adams.
I
am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of an
eager, self-asserting disposition. Everything that I saw other people do I
insisted upon imitating. At six months I could pipe out "How d'ye,"
and one day I attracted every one's attention by saying "Tea, tea,
tea" quite plainly. Even after my illness I remembered one of the words
I had learned in these early months. It was the word "water," and
I continued to make some sound for that word after all other speech was
lost. I ceased making the sound "wah-wah" only when I learned to
spell the word.
They
tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just taken me out
of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted
by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the
smooth floor. I slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran toward them. The
impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.
These
happy days did not last long. One brief spring, musical with the song of
robin and mocking-bird, one summer rich in fruit and roses, one autumn of
gold and crimson sped by and left their gifts at the feet of an eager,
delighted child. Then, in the dreary month of February, came the illness
which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a
new-born baby. They called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain. The
doctor thought I could not live. Early one morning, however, the fever left
me as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. There was great rejoicing in
the family that morning, but no one, not even the doctor, knew that I should
never see or hear again.
I
fancy I still have confused recollections of that illness. I especially
remember the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe me in my waling
hours of fret and pain, and the agony and bewilderment with which I awoke
after a tossing half sleep, and turned my eyes, so dry and hot, to the wall
away from the once-loved light, which came to me dim and yet more dim each
day. But, except for these fleeting memories, if, indeed, they be memories,
it all seems very unreal, like a nightmare. Gradually I got used to the
silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been
different, until she came--my teacher--who was to set my spirit free. But
during the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad,
green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that
followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, "the day is
ours, and what the day has shown."
|
Table of Contents
