Information Services Team Blog

Bell, the inventor, or one of the inventors, of the telephone, also taught the deaf. It was thought that they could be taught to talk and so kept from having to use sign language. Some thought they could be taught to talk only if kept from using it and "in several schools children were mistreated, for example by having their hands
tied behind their backs so they could not communicate by signing" (Wikipedia).

One of his students was Helen Keller. Keller couldn't see. So probably Bell didn't tie her hands behind her back.

Or otherwise mistreat her, for his letters to her tend to begin "My dear little Helen" (1888) and, when she stopped being little, "My dear Helen" (1917) and tend to end "Your loving friend" (1905).

More importantly (since a facility with endearments isn't incompatible with a readiness to tie people's hands behind their backs), her letters to him tend to end "Lovingly your friend" (1896) and, a little more coolly, "Affectionately your friend" (1905), and then warmly again, "Your loving friend" (1907).

A finger may be put on the wrists of both correspondents, to measure the strength of their pulses, in the digital collection of Bell papers at the Library of Congress. On the Bell papers home page, click on Series, then on General Correspondence. The Bell/Keller letters are only one series of a number of series.

Measure may also be taken of the great man. In the letter below, for example, he is conspiratorial and, one might say, is not only imagining the giggles of his correspondent but also giggly himself. In 1905 Bell was 58 and Keller was 25. Men and women aren't as giggly at these ages as when school children and the letter has a disingenuous sound to it.

"I wonder," Bell begins the letter, "whether you could keep a secret from teacher [Miss Sullivan], and from Mr. Macey [sic]?"

One wonders who besides Miss Sullivan, the person from whom the secret must be kept, would have "read" the letter to Keller. Miss Sullivan is indeed more or less directly addressed in it: "I hope sincerely
that teacher and Mr. Macey [sic] may have a happy future together."

One wonders about the use of the word "sincerely": an unncessary emphasis, surely, unless Bell felt that his hope for Mr. Macy's happiness wasn't quite as sincere as it might have been.

Then wonders about his misspelling of Mr. Macy's name. Then about the generosity of his gift to Miss Sullivan: $194 in 1905 was equivalent, in 2011, to about $5000.

One wonders, in the end, if Bell, ending the letter "Your loving friend," was addressing his "dear Helen" at all. Or wasn't, disingenuously, addressing dear Miss Sullivan.