It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my
life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting
the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The
task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try
to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy
look alike across the years that link the past with the present.
The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A
few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my
life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest."
Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost
their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my
early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great
discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try
to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to
me to be the most interesting and important.
I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of
northern Alabama.
The family on my father's side is descended from Caspar Keller, a
native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss
ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a
book on the subject of their education--rather a singular
coincidence; though it is true that there is no king who has not
had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a
king among his.
My grandfather, Caspar Keller's son, "entered" large tracts of
land in Alabama and finally settled there. I have been told that
once a year he went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback
to purchase supplies for the plantation, and my aunt has in her
possession many of the letters to his family, which give charming
and vivid accounts of these trips.
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."
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