The Story of Lucilla: told by Herself

IN my description of what Lucilla said and did, on the occasion when the surgeon was teaching her to use her sight, it will be remembered that she is represented as having been particularly anxious to be allowed to try how she could write.

The motive¹ at the bottom of this was the motive which is always at the bottom of a woman’s conduct when she loves. Her one ambition is to present herself to advantage, even in the most trifling² matters, before the man on whom her heart is fixed³. Lucilla’s one ambition with Oscar, was this and no more.

Conscious that her handwriting — thus far, painfully and incompletely guided by her sense of touch — must present itself in sadly unfavorable contrast to the handwriting of other women who could see, she persisted in petitioning Grosse to permit her to learn to “write with her eyes instead of her finger,” until she fairly wearied out the worthy⁴ German’s power of resistance. The rapid improvement in her sight, after her removal to the sea-side, justified⁵ him (as I was afterwards informed) in letting her have her way. Little by little, using her eyes for a longer and longer time on each succeeding day, she mastered the serious difficulty of teaching herself to write by sight instead of by touch. Beginning with lines in copybooks, she got on to writing easy words to dictation. From that again, she advanced to writing notes; and from writing notes to keeping a journal — this last, at the suggestion of her aunt, who had lived in the days before penny postage, when people kept journals, and wrote long letters — in short, when people had time to think of themselves, and, more wonderful still, to write about it too.

Lucilla’s Journal at Ramsgate lies before me as I trace these lines.

I had planned at first to make use of it, so as to continue the course of my narrative⁶ without a check; still writing in my own person — as I have written thus far; and as I propose to write again, at the time when I reappear on the scene.

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