Although she encouraged her guests to stand side by side with those of wax, she would take exception of the exhibit of President Clinton, whose impeccable suit always has its zipper down, compliments of overzealous fans. She would have been especially mortified of the seminude figure of Nicki Minaj, on whose wax body men have simulated sex.
The commonality between Marie Grosholz and her creations is they both achieved immortality; the difference is she was one never to melt under any flame. Madame Tussaud’s larger than life existence was, like the classic novel, a tale of two cities, and echoed its opening line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
If anyone were ever entitled to indulge in a pity party, it would have been the woman who fate had locked in a world of silence and darkness. Yet, instead of dwelling on her misery, she dedicated her life to the spreading of light. She remains a testament to what a possessor of courage can overcome.
Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, a woman would have remained as unknown as her hometown had she not contracted a mysterious illness at nineteen months. Although she survived, it left her blind and deaf; unable to hear, she was also denied the power of speech. The toddler, who had just been learning to talk, behaved like a feral child. Her devastated parents grieved the world was lost to her. Unable to communicate, she grew up giving vent to uncontrollable rages: she locked her mother in a closet, overturned her baby sister’s cradle. Relatives suggested the girl be sent to an institution. Although saddled with two younger children, this is something the Sullivans refused to countenance. In the nineteenth century, homes for the disabled were not geared for fostering; the unfortunate residents were viewed as useless feeders until death mercifully ended the nightmare.
Serendipity stepped in when Kate Keller read an article by Charles Dickens about Laura Bridgman, a deaf-blind girl he had met at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. At age two, scarlet fever had also rendered her blind and deaf; and she had also lost the sense of smell and touch. Through its teacher, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the husband of the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Laura had made significant strides. Kate was also in contact with Alexander Graham Bell. By then, the invention of the telephone was well behind him, and he was working to teach the deaf to speak in an intelligible fashion. He had been inspired in this endeavor as both his mother and wife were unable to hear. When he met the six-year-old Helen, he took her on his lap and calmed her by letting her feel the vibrations of his pocket watch as it struck the hour. Locked in her isolated world, she did not respond. He advised her father to contact his son-in-law, the director of the Perkins Institute, for a teacher to come to Tuscumbia.
The woman selected for the daunting task was twenty-year-old Anne Sullivan. She was visually impaired and hailed from a far different background than her young charge. Helen’s paternal grandmother was the second cousin of Robert E. Lee, and father Arthur had fought as a captain for the Confederacy, was a gentleman farmer, and a newspaper editor. The Kellers lived in a stately country home “Ivy Green” where they lavished love on their children. Anne had suffered bouts of blindness and had been raised in a poorhouse after the death of her mother and abandonment by her alcoholic, abusive father. Their meeting was to prove the defining moment of their lives, and was to bestow on Anne Sullivan the moniker “the miracle worker.”
The new teacher, hired for the sum of twenty-five dollars a month, arrived in a household which the disabled child had rendered chaotic. Helen used cutlery as projectiles, pinched, grabbed food off dinner plates, and sent chairs tumbling when she did not get her way. Upon their first meeting, the child rummaged in the stranger’s bag for candy, and when she found none, flew into a rage. Her parents, who walked on eggshells, were unable to impose any control. This was a situation Anne knew she had to change if she were to make headway, but Helen was not a willing participant. Her first act on meeting her teacher was to knock out one of her front teeth. Sullivan moved into a guest cottage with Helen in order to separate the child from a mother and father who could not bear to see their disabled daughter disciplined.
Anne tirelessly made Helen feel objects and then placed her fingers on the child’s palm in the hope she would make the connection that the gestures represented words. This endeavor bore no results until a revelatory moment in 1887. Helen stood at a pump while her teacher poured water and immediately afterwards signed. Helen’s epiphany was the remembered word “wa.” She suddenly realized that everything has a name; the pump had become her version of the Tree of Knowledge. Ms. Keller later recalled of the magical moment, “I knew that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool thing that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that in time could be swept away.” In the course of a single month, Helen was transformed from the family despot into a docile and affectionate child with an unquenchable thirst to learn the names of everything. The young girl then pointed to Anne, who spelled “teacher,” and teacher she was called till the end.
News of her remarkable achievement spread, and Helen became a child celebrity in both the United States and Europe. At age eight, she visited President Cleveland at the White House, and in Boston met many of the luminaries of the period, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes. Journalists and photographers gathered in droves when she took trips to Niagara Falls and to the World’s Fair in the company of Dr. Bell. People with five senses were in awe of the remarkable child who could accomplish so much with only three.
If Helen had been less far-reaching, she would have spent her life in Tuscumbia, eventually becoming the maiden aunt for the children of her brother Phillips and sister Mildred. However, as a teen, her quest for knowledge remained unabated, and she entered Radcliff (Harvard at the time did not admit women.) Her education was paid through the intervention of Mark Twain, who had introduced her to Standard Oil magnet Henry Huttleston Rogers. In college she distinguished herself as the only deaf-blind student in the school’s history, as well as its only published author. At age twenty-one, she wrote on her Braille Hammond typewriter The Story of My Life, which she hoped would prove a beacon for those struggling with their own demons; the autobiography was translated into fifty languages. She graduated cum laude with honors in German and English, an accomplishment made possible by steely determination and Anne’s selfless assistance. What set Miss Keller apart was that no similarly afflicted person had done more than acquire the simplest skills. Helen reminisced of her college years, “I slip back many times. I fall, I stand still. I run against the edge of hidden obstacles. I lose my temper and find it again, and keep it better. I trudge on, I gain a little. I feel encouraged. I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see widening horizons.”
Post-graduation, the two women toured the world, where Helen served as a distinguished lecturer, advocating the rights of the disabled. Although her high-pitched voice was not easily understood, everywhere she went there was an outpouring of praise. After her formal talks—interpreted sentence by sentence by Miss Sullivan—Miss Keller answered questions, even when they were inane: “Do you close your eyes when you go to sleep?” to which she answered, “I never stayed awake to see.” She took great pride in her appearance and was always impeccably dressed. Due to her protruding left eye, she was generally photographed in profile. Both her eyes were replaced in adulthood with glass replicas for both medical and cosmetic reasons. She went on to pen thirteen other books as well as countless articles; her passport listed her occupation as “author.” Winston Churchill called her “the greatest woman of our age.” Mark Twain compared her to Napoleon and Shakespeare. The Tom Sawyer author described her as “quick and bright” and “almost certain to send back as good as she gets, and almost as certainly with an improvement added.” She was no flash in the pan: Helen’s hold on the public imagination continued unabated throughout her life. Gallup polls consistently showed her to be one of the world’s most admired women, edging out such notables as Queen Elizabeth, Princess Grace, and Golda Meir. Despite her fame and acclaim, Miss Keller remained unaffected and believed to the end her optimism was justified: “I believe that all through these dark and silent years, God has been using