First Books for Blind Readers
The few wealthy potential patrons who remained were often taken on tours through the school and workshop, with the students' reading of the few embossed books a highlight of the trip. Haüy's original method of embossing books was to apply soaked paper to raised letter forms, so that the tactile shape of the specially crafted large round cursive letters remained after the paper dried. Pages were then glued back-to-front to produce a two-sided sheet. These books were, of course, extraordinarily slow and difficult to make--and almost as slow and difficult to read, since the shape of each letter had to be traced individually. The finished books were often too heavy for the smaller students to lift. At the time of Louis Braille's admission, the school, now over thirty years old, had one hundred pupils and a total of fourteen embossed books.
The school was now under the control of a committee selected by the Ministry of the Interior and dominated by a clique of nobles, to whom Dr. Guillié reported. In 1821, it became apparent that Guillié was indeed right to fear the power of sex, although not because of anything the students did. He himself was abruptly fired by the Ministry for having a love affair with the female headmistress, who may have become pregnant.
The school's new director, André Pignier, was horrified by the decrepit building and immediately resolved to improve conditions, first instituting two outings a week so students could breathe fresh air and get some exercise away from their desks and workbenches. Students began to travel through the city, all gripping one long rope as a guide, to attend mass on Sunday at St. Nicholas du Chardonnet church and to go on a Thursday afternoon excursion to a local botanical park.
Another Pignier reform was to stage a public celebration of the school's history, at which the guest of honor would be founder Valentin Haüy. Haüy, now an old man, had not been inside the school in years. Losing control of the school in the aftermath of the revolution, he struggled to maintain some teaching activity with private students and to survive on a small government pension. Finally, dismissed by Napoleon in 1802, he left France, accompanied by one of his most promising students, Alexandre Fournier. Together they spent over a decade in exile working with blind students in other European countries, including a long, frustrating stay in Russia trying to start a school there. Schools for the blind were an idea who time had definitely come, with Liverpool (1791), Vienna (1804), Berlin (1806), Amsterdam (1808), Dresden (1809), Zurich (1810), and Copenhagen (1811) appearing in rapid succession using many of Haüy's ideas and methods. Upon his return to France, Haüy, exhausted, destitute, and himself nearly blind, had been banned from the school by the unsympathetic Guillié.
On the day of the ceremony to honor Haüy, Louis Braille, now 12, along with several other students, gave a musical program of songs from the school's early days and a reading demonstration using the original embossed books. Sometime that day, Haüy, now 76, and young Louis Braille may have met face to face. The following year, Louis Braille was one of a small group from the school to attend Haüy's meager funeral.
Next：A Short History of Braille
