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JULY 3. 1908-
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The Commoner
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A TRIBUTE TO "BLIND TOM"
'iBlind Tom," the pianist died recently.
The following from the pen of Henry Watter
Bon appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal:
"BLIND TOM"
Tidings of the death of "Blind Tom" at
Hoboken, "where he had been living in retire
ment' the wires tell us, "and subsisting on
charity," reach at least one heart that loved and
pitied him, and summon from the land of shades
and dreams many a ghost of days and dear ones
long sinco departed. I must be his oldest liv
ing friend. It is not true, as I have sometimes
seen it stated, that I taught him what little ho
know of music; but I was in at the outset of
his strange career and am familiar with all its
beginnings.
I first heard of him through Robert Heller
William Henry Palmer best known in his
day as a popular magician, but a most accom- '
plished pianist. It was at Washington and in
the autumn of 18G0. Palmer had just come up
with "Blind Tom" in Louisville, I think, and
had been of course and at once perplexed and
amazed by his extraordinary characteristics.
His crude, often grotesque, attempts to imitate
whatever fell upon his ear, either vocally, or
on the key-board, were startling. He had heard
Judge Douglas speak and graphically repro
duced a few sentences. He had heard a reign
ing prima donna sing and repeated her so
prano in, a few bars. The Bethune girls, daugh
ters of General Bethune, of Columbus, Ga., his
old master, had taught him a fqw jingles, which
he rattled off upon the piano. He knew nothing
very complicated, or very well. But he was
blind and clearly an Idiot; in short, he was a
prodigy.
Palmer gave him several "lessons" that
is, he played over and over for him such pieces
as Thalberg's "Homo, Sweet Home," Mendels
sohn's "Spring Song," and the salient passages
out of some of Liszt's transcriptions. Excepting .
Ta few additional "lessons" of this kind he had
later along from Eugene Baylor, who taught
him his famous "Margrave Danse," Tom made
little further progress and learned nothing new.
He would spin ,about the piano, like a
baboon, mumbling to himself whilst Palmer, or
Baylor played, and, if they stopped, he would
rush headlong to the instrument and try to fol
low them precisely as they had phrased. Two,
three, of such "lessons" sufficed, and though he
learned nothing accurately, nor played with any
other expression than they had rendered, what
ho did was Jsurprising even to those who knew
the process jnd the limitation.
There waB in the Tennessee line a certain
Major Macconico, who had a great barytone
voice. He taught Tom to sing "Rocked in the
Cradle of the Deep," very much as he sang it.
There was- a tailor in Griffin, Georgia, by the
name of Hanlon, whose tenor voice was fetch
ing, and he taught Tom two or three love ditties,
which Tom repeated in rich though rather gut
tural tones, yet in undoubted tenor. It was
something more than a phenomenon of memory.
Though blind, he could handle the key-board
readily, whilst his vocal Imitations from bass to
treble, from deep barytone to mezzo soprano,
were sufficiently accurate and individualized to
be recognized.
Tom seemed a woman-hater. Whether it
was pure misogyny, or a kind of shyness mani
festing itself booriBhly. I know not. I well
remember in Atlanta, where a party of us had
him with us off and on for two or three months,
a young lady one day sat down at the piano and
began to play. Tom was at the dark end of
the chamber, spinning upon hands and heels,
and mumbling to himself. He caught the sound
of the instrument. He stood for a moment still
and upright. Then, like a wild animal, he made
a dash and swooped down upon her. Terrified,
the poor girl shrieked and ran, whilst the rest
of us held him, writhing and trembling with
what seemed to be rage. "She stole my har
monies," he cried over and over, "she stole my
harmonies," and never again did he allow her
to come near him. If she were eyen in the
room he knew it somehow and became restive
and angry,
In the-autumn of 1865, Tom reappeared at.
i"':'-" z ri : ;
As the Working Man Sees It
the north under the management of his old
master's family, quite impoverished by the war,
and an attempt was made to "liberate" him
from what some mistaken and over-zealous hu
manitarians called his "enslavement." Happily,
this failed. The case showed for itself, and Tom
was left with those who had cared for him from
his babyhood, had been most kind to him, and
knew, as none others could, his real wants and
needs.
The notion that the Bethunes had a gold
mine In his performances was not true. They
made at the height of his popularity hardly
much more than a living, and I suppose that
eventually this failed them. They must be all
of them dead now. How Tom came to live In
want at Hoboken, just how he was separated
from his old friends, and how he dropped out
of public notice, I can not say. His mother was
alive as late as the early eighties; but I doubt
if she, or any of the Bethune family survive.
The last time I saw Blind Tom was In
London, away back in 1866. General Pinckney
Howard and one of the Bethune boys had
brought him over. It had been then nearly
three years since I had been with him in Atlanta.
Frpm the beginning of our intimacy Tom had
been greatly impressed that, with a maimed
hand, I could still strike a few chords and run
an octave on the keyboard. To his poor, half
hit mind it seemed a miracle. Upon a Sunday
afternoon I came into the little hall on or near
Leicester Square, where Tom was to appear, He
was back of the scenes spinning as usual hand
over heel, and mumbling to himself. As we
came upon the stage General Howard said, "Let
us see whether he knows you." I called him.
He slowly uncoiled . himself and listened. I
called him again. He stood irresolute, then ran
across the boards, seized my hand, assured him
self of the withered stump and joyously called
my name.
What was it? Memory? Yes, it was mem
ory, without doubt; but what else? Whence
the hand power that enabled him to manipulate
the keys, the vocal power that enabled him to
imitate the voice?
When he was a tot of four or five years
old he strayed from the negro cabin into the
parlor of the mansion and hid himself whilst
the children were having a concert. When they
had gone, leaving the room, as they supposed,
quite empty, they heard the .piano tinkle. They
ran back, and there, to their amazement, sat the
chubby littlo black monkey on tho stool, bang
ing away for detfr life, yet not without sequence
and rhythm, trying to repeat what they had
just been singing and playing. From that time
onward he was the pet of the family.
I can not trust myself to write of him as
I feel. It is as if some trusty, well-loved mas
tiff mute but affectionate closely associated
with the dead and gone had been suddenly re
called to be as suddenly taken away. Tho wires' '
that flash his death lighten a picture gallery'
for mo of the old-familiar faces. What was '
he? Whence came ho? Was ho tho prlnco of
tho fairy tale held hy Jthe wicked enchantress;
nor any beauty not even the Heaven-born Maid '
of Melody to release him? Blind, deformed,'
and black as black even as Erebus Idiocy, the '
idiocy of a mysterious, perpetual frenzy, tho solo
companion of his waking visions and his dreams '
whence came he, and was he, and -wherefore? '
That there was a soul there, be sure, imprisoned;
chained in that little black bosom, released at
last; gone to the angels, not to imitate the"
seraph-songs of heaven, but to Join the, 'choir'
invisible for ever and ever. H. W.' lf
Mansfield, Juno 15, 1908. .
CHICAGO MANILA
On the same beautiful June day that tho
Chicago convention was adopting a platform
which tells us how pleased the Filipinos are with
our unselfish efforts In their behalf, the ungrate
ful Filipinos, through their chosen representa-'
tlves, were demanding independence and sub
mitting the Teasons therefor. We say "ungrate
ful Filipinos," because they should have waited
a little longer and not thus embarrass the g. o.
p. just at a time when it Is experiencing more
and more- difficulty each day in convincing thp
people that the injunction, protection, revision,
and currency bricks It offers them are pure gold
instead of brass plated base metal.
Jv J pi fi
IT'S GOOD, GOOD!
This is an Associated Press dispatch: New
York, June 19. J. Plerpont Morgan, who ar
rived from Europe today, expressed his pleasure
at the choice of Secretary of War Taft as the
republican nominee for tho presidency. "It's
good, good," Mr. Morgan said. He declined to
talk further upon politics or any other subject