Books: Leading the Blind

ANNE SULLIVAN MACY: The Story Behind Helen Keller—Nella Braddy—Doubleday,Doran ($3). Helen Keller, the blind deaf-mute who has become a highly educated and intelligent woman, is one of the most famed figures in the world today, but few have ever heard of the miracle-worker who raised Helen Keller from the worse-than-dead. Her name is Anne Sullivan Macy; in this book Authoress Braddy tells her little-known story. Mrs. Macy has lived continuously with Helen Keller for 45 years except for two occasions. Fourteen years older than her lifelong pupil, she was well fitted to be a sympathetic teacher of the blind. She was practically blinded herself in childhood by trachoma. A series of operations restored her sight, but her eyes have always troubled her. Born Annie Sullivan, the daughter of poor Irish immigrants in Massachusetts, she and her rip-roaring father never got along, and after her mother died she was put in the state poorhouse. Ambitious for schooling, she got herself placed in Boston’s Perkins Institution for the Blind. Shortly after her graduation she was offered the job of being nurse and governess to a little blind deaf-mute girl in Tuscumbia, Ala. She took the job and has held it ever since.

Annie Sullivan was then 21, Helen Keller, 7. She found Helen a spoiled, sturdy little animal, apparently hopelessly limited and given to wild tantrums when crossed. Annie isolated herself with her hardly human charge, first disciplined her into docility, then won her affection. After the first weeks it was apparently plain sailing, but full watches all the way. Says Teacher Macy: “A less vigorous child could never have done what she has done, and a less robust woman than I was would have gone to pieces under the strain.” Her first job was to establish communication, which she did by teaching Helen the manual (finger) alphabet. In three years Helen had made such strides that the U. S. press had picked her up as a prodigy. Annie and Helen went north, lived for some years on “the capricious bounty of the wealthy.” Then a fund was established; they settled down to get Helen through Radcliffe College. After the Radclifie degree was triumphantly won (cum la tide). Helen and Annie made a cinema(a commercial failure), wrote books and maga zine articles, went on the vaudeville stage, the lecture circuit. Wherever Helen went Annie went too. to guide, protect and interpret her. Even Annie’s marriage in 1905 (to the late John Macy. Harvard instructor and critic) seemed to make no difference; nor its break-up later.

Annie finally taught Helen to speak, but her voice is still a disappointment to both of them: strangers find it hard to understand. To show Helen how sounds are formed Annie would let Helen put her fingers on her lips, inside her mouth, “sometimes far down in her throat.” That Annie is no mean voice-trainer may be judged by the fact (vouched for by Authoress Braddy) that she taught her dog Sieglinde to say “Mama” and “Wah-ter.”

An old woman now (she is 67), Anne Sullivan Macy realizes that she has given her whole life to another person; she does not regret it. Says she: “We do not, I think, choose our destiny. It chooses us.”