#mabel bell

Year 1529 Part 1:

TW/CW: Death

In the very start of the new year, Jamila went into labor. She and Simon had been happily expecting the arrival of their new baby but as the hours drew long, she began to suspect something wasn’t right.

Still, the family was blessed with triplets, all girls, that were named Mary, Mabel and Maud. Mary and Mabel were born very weak though with triplets it was expected that their infancy would be difficult at first.

“Don't worry darling. You are my good angel dear - if you only knew it - You are doing me so much good in every way. I really think that I have turned ever a new leaf this year through your influence - and I trust my good resolutions will continue.”

“8 Footsteps” marks the first time that we get to meet Mabel Bell, the wife of Alexander Graham Bell, played by Catherine Joell MacKinnon. Like Bell’s mother, she was also deaf, which contributed much to Bell’s work with people with deafness. 

Born Mabel Gardiner Hubbard on November 25, 1857 in Massachusetts to Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a lawyer, and Gertrude Mercer McCurdy. When Mabel was about five years old, she suffered a very severe bout of scarlet fever which left her completely deaf. Due to this, it led her father to found the first oral school for the deaf in the United States, the Clark School for the Deaf. At an early age, Mabel was quickly taught how to talk as well as lip read in several different languages. 

She would meet Alexander Graham Bell (see our post on him here) when she was studying at his new school for the deaf, eventually courting him later on. They married in 1877 when she was nineteen, more than ten years younger than Bell. They had four children together: Elsie, Marian (nicknamed Daisy), Edward, and Robert, the latter two dying not long after birth. They had two major homes throughout their lives: the Brodhead-Bell-Morton Mansion in Washington from 1882-1889, and the Beinn Bhreagh estate in Nova Scotia, which they would reside in until their deaths. 

While Mabel was highly intelligent, she preferred to work in the background in comparison to her husband, but was a big supporter of aeronautical research, donating a lot of money to the Aerial Experimental Association (AEA).

Sadly, following Bell’s death in 1922, Mabel’s eyesight began to wane, and she passed away of pancreatic cancer one year after Bell. 

Interesting facts: 

- For some odd reason, Bell nearly named their daughter Marian “Photophone” after her birth. Thankfully, I imagine she talked him out of it. 

hydrofoil - HD-4 (Hydrodome number 4

Aviation pioneer John Alexander Douglas McCurdy at the controls of the AEA Silver Dart.

The AEA came into being when John Alexander Douglas McCurdy and his friend Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin, two recent engineering graduates of the University of Toronto, decided to spend the summer in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. McCurdy had grown up there, and his father was the personal secretary of Dr. Bell. He had grown up close to the Bell family and was well received in their home. One day, as the three sat with Dr. Bell discussing the problems of aviation, Mabel Bell, Alexander's wife, suggested they create a formal research group to exploit their collective ideas. Being independently wealthy, she provided a total of US$35,000 (equivalent to $930,000 in 2016) to finance the Association, with $20,000 made available immediately by the sale of property.

Curtiss, the American motorcycle designer and manufacturer and a recognized expert on gasoline engines, was recruited as a member of the association, and his associate Augustus Post assisted as representative from the Aero Club of America. Curtiss had visited the Wright brothers to discuss aeronautical engineering and offered them use of a 50 hp engine. Wilbur cordially declined, saying that a motor of their own development met their power needs, unaware that the AEA was about to become a serious competitor in powered flight. Bell wrote to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to have an interested young officer who had volunteered his help, US Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, officially detailed to Baddeck. Selfridge was assigned to the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps on 3 August 1907, two days after its formation, and was sent to Nova Scotia. A year later, on 17 September 1908, while riding as a passenger with Orville Wright on a demonstration flight for the U.S. Army, he became the first person killed in an aircraft accident.

In 1898, Bell experimented with tetrahedral kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in maroon silk.[N 1] The tetrahedral wings were named Cygnet I, II and III, and were flown both unmanned and manned (Cygnet I crashed during a flight carrying Selfridge) in the period from 1907–1912.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/BellBoatyard?src=hash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_Experiment_Association

http://mashable.com/2016/02/10/alexander-graham-bell-kites/#aZQ9PHF2i8qG

“My dear little May

I am tired out tonight and can only send you a few lines to let you know that we have arrived safely. The train reached Boston at 6:15 in the morning, but our sleeping car was shunted off into a siding, and none of us stirred till nearly seven o'clock. Berta and Grace occupied section No. 11, and I had No. 4, just on the opposite side of the car, so as to be near them. We had a very comfortable journey, and I can answer for myself that I slept well.

We breakfasted at the Hotel , and then went down to the Boston and Maine depot in time for the 9:15 train. Oh, reaching my room a most appalling sight met my eye - a pile of letters some four or five inches high! What can I do? I cannot possibly answer them all. I have not yet had time even to read them all - and the idea of answering them is too horrible to be thought of. There were one or two letters that I pounced upon at once and devoured with great relish. One was a letter from home and the other was your epistle in three volumes containing cuttings from the Quincy Herald and from the big California tree! You must not think that you can tire me, I always find time to read and enjoy your letters, and it is no labour to me to write to you.

The school in Marquette, Mich. is going to be a success I think. The parents of several deaf children have come together and are now ready for a teacher.

The Chicago school is already commenced - and Miss Mark had gone to take charge of it.

I wish your father would alter some of the Postal arrangements for my special benefit! My letter to Miss Mark reached her through the dead letter office, two or three weeks after date, because I had put on a two cent stamp instead of a three cent one. It is certainly ridiculous that a letter from Boston to Belmont should have to go to Washington on the way! I get so tired sometimes that I make mistakes in stamping the letters. I have been hard at work all day long and have had no time to go out to Cambridge yet. I shall deposit your mother's cheque in the bank tomorrow. The machine for ‘plaiting’ - or ‘ruffling’ or ‘crimping’ or whatever you call it - will be rather a difficult thing to make after all. The motion required is simple enough - but I am afraid that we should need a steam engine to work it!! It will be difficult also to make it so that the material ‘crumpled up’ - can be taken out again after it has once been put in.

I saw your uncle Eustis this morning, and delivered Gertrude's message. He is to write today. I am interested in a little girl from the Orphan Asylum - a new pupil of mine - who came for her first lesson today. The poor little thing's mouth is cleft in two. She was born so, and of course cannot speak. I told the Katrom of the Asylum that I thought I could teach her to speak - if she had an artificial palate made to fit the cleft and prevent the air from passing into the nostrils. This has been done and the little girl came for her first lesson today, and I am very hopeful of good results.

The lady ‘superintendent’ or ‘directress’ of the Asylum came with her, and introduced herself to me as ‘Mrs. Tracy’. I remember meeting her at Mrs. Eustis Hubbard's. She inquired kindly after you all.

Miss Locke called upon me today with Dr. Lewis’ little girl. The little deaf child I told you about. She is a sweet little thing - the child I mean - not Miss Locke.

I am ashamed of this letter and don't know whether I shall send it or not. I cannot write another tonight though, and shall go right off to bed. I hope you and Gertrude will come here on Monday. Poor Gertrude. She seems so pale and delicate, I feel quite troubled about her. I wish I could do something to make her strong and well.

Please excuse this letter, 

With ever so much love, 

Yours Alec.”

“How good and patient you have been to me since and how often I have tried you and made you unhappy without cause. I bless you my darling for all the comfort and happiness you have brought into my life. Eight years have passed since then and I love you more and more. I have learned what a true and noble woman you have become. I am proud of you my dear and honor you in my heart as much as I love you. In whatever position you have been placed - you have come out true as steel. In business matters you succeed where I fail and now you are taking hold of my affairs to help me out. In the midst of danger you have been calm and courageous. In Rome when a great dread was on us both - how brave you were through it all. And when death came and robbed us of the little ones we wanted so much you forgot your own suffering to try and comfort me.”

“I love you now my dear ten thousand times more than I did then - and with more cause. You have been my good angel from the very first. All that I am to-day I owe to you and yours. I love you darling more than you can ever know - or I can ever tell you though I were to set it down on paper and write it and re-write it to all eternity.”

“you don't know how lovely you looked - and how gentle - with that plaster baby in your arms. If the artist could have looked into your heart - he would have been touched to the quick - and would have taken you as his model for that holy mother with the babe in her arms. He might have seen a halo round your head - as I did my dear.

I love you very much my darling little wife - and wish indeed you could be blessed as you desire - with safety to yourself.

Your loving husband, 

Alec. 

I love you too much to wish to risk your life.”