By Maribel Steel and Helen Selsdon
Helen Keller had an acute sense of smell. She loved being in nature and the fragrance of flowers. One scent she was particularly fond of was the fresh scent of eucalyptus leaves. "When I was in California, where the eucalyptus grows in magnificent groves, I used to stand among them with my fingers reveling, in the music of their leaves, inhaling their perfume with intense delight."
Keller wrote this in 1934 to Tilly Aston, an Australian poet, writer and teacher who was blind, and who like Keller, had a great love of nature. Over the years Keller corresponded with Aston, acknowledging "the bond between us in our love of the eucalyptus."
Aston shared with Keller an extraordinary ability to describe the sensory pleasures of the natural world.
Tilly Aston was born in 1873 and by the age of seven she had lost all her vision. In 1894, Aston founded the Victorian Association of Braille Writers, and a year later established the Association for the Advancement of the Blind. She was a prolific writer. She wrote vivid descriptions of the Australian bush surrounding her beloved gold-town of Carisbrook. Aston recalled delicious fragrances and tactile sensations of her mother's garden in her poetry and later, described her joy-filled impressions of nature, when she travelled further afield through the Australian landscape.
It is hardly surprising that Aston and Keller enjoyed a warm correspondence. Tilly sent Helen a copy of her book of poems entitled "Singable Songs." Helen was delighted and replied with cordial appreciation, "I trust you will accept my grateful thanks for the joy you have given me. It is a joy like the exquisite fragrance of the petal shower falling upon the child's hair in your poem. I cannot realise that darkness encompasses you about as a nest when your songs sparkle through my fingers in dots of light!"
Both women understood the power of the olfactory sense to instantly recall seemingly buried memories. Helen wrote, "Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived." These two women, divided by an ocean, were joined by a love of nature and uncanny ability to express their joy in words.
Today, June 27th, is Helen Keller's birthday. Let us honor the extraordinary power of all of our senses to enjoy and fully comprehend the beauty all around us. As Tilly Aston remarked, "Although we have not seen a million things, we understand quite well, we have seen something else with which we can compare new impressions; something which makes it possible for us to SEE, perhaps more vividly than many unseeing sighted people, the gifts of beauty or grandeur strewn around us."
Related Links
- Tilly Aston—Australia's First Blind Teacher, Poet & Visionary
- Helen Keller: An Introduction
- Send an e-card in honor of Helen Keller's birthday!
Both photographs used with permission, © Harry Williamson
