39. "My deafness! My deafness!"

Alice had to bear another loss, slow but inexorable, as growing deafness gradually afflicted her and increasingly cut her off from the helpful distractions of the outside world.

It is first mentioned by Alice in July 1866 in a letter from the summer holiday in North Wales.  She was 41 years old, was expecting her twelfth baby and was unwell, and, she said

my increasing deafness gives me a nervous feeling [1]

By 1870 it was worse.  She was consoling herself then with the thought 

I thank God I can see.  It is better to be deaf than blind … I must seek for more complete submission in this trial; it is only a small light cross after all [2]

By 1878, when she was approaching her mid-fifties, it was a real trial.  She wrote on 3 March 1878

My deafness! My deafness! How it interferes with pleasant communion and makes one dull and uninteresting [3]

She had some consolation – she was not cut off from her religion.  They lived very close to the Union Chapel, which Ellen and Mary had joined in 1873, and where the minister was the celebrated Dr Alexander Maclaren.  He was two years younger than Alice and John, and famous as an expository preacher – that is, he explained in detail the meaning of Scriptural texts.  A commanding figure in the pulpit, he had a clear, carrying voice which Alice could hear long after deafness cut her off from so much.  Listening to his sermons would be like listening to an excellent lecture.

Silver-plated ear trumpet c1801-1900
Science Museum Group

It seems likely that she consulted more than one doctor, but in 1881 she took advice from 46 year old Dr George Constantine Phipps who lived with his wife and four young children not far from the Hopkinsons.  Dr Phipps' advice was rather consoling, as Alice wrote on 22 April 1881

Dr Phipps called this morning and had a long chat with Mary – a good deal about my deafness.  He does not care for ear doctors and advised me to do the best I could with such mechanical aids as are available.  We liked his sensible talk.  It was rather comforting because he feels pretty certain I shall never be quite deaf.  Doctors disagree … He told Mary I should probably outlive many strong people for I was very wiry, something like his own Mother, who had never been robust, but now at 75, could walk five miles [4]

She didn't follow Dr Phipps' opinion of ear doctors when deafness began to be a real problem for her daughter Gertrude a few years later, and Gertrude visited more than one specialist.  The fact that the deafness was proving hereditary was particularly distressing – Alice wrote at about this time

It would seem to me that, if my children might be exempted from the trial, I would willingly bear an aggravation of my own affliction [5]

The isolation of deafness was a hard burden to bear.  She wrote to John in October 1881 from the house of young John and Evelyn and their family in London

I went to Chapel this morning with Evelyn, Eva and Alice.  I could not hear a word and, in my mood of mind, the isolation was too much for me; I had to come out.  [6]

Alice's own account on 9 May 1886 of how her deafness afflicted her spirits describes her sad position best

I was not very bright last night.  These waves of distress will come at times.  Shut in my own thoughts, if sad ones come to me, the clouds seem to darken and shut out the bright light.  I believe it is a temptation which, if not resisted, gets a firm hold of my spirit and destroys my peace of mind.  This special trial of deafness doubtless has a teaching; it touches me at many points.  I do want to learn my lessons; but am very slow.  [7]

The physical and emotional burden of pregnancies – the hormonal turmoil – the likely anaemia – the exhaustion of grief – the weariness that would come from managing servants and running a household – the feelings of failure when she had been irritable with the children – the strain from feeling responsible for so much – Alice bore all these.  And they were combined with a religion which was more of a challenge and a spur than a consolation, especially after the Revd James Griffin left Manchester in 1854 because of his health.

Who can say how these played into the times when Alice slipped into excessive housework?  Was she too tired to stop herself?  Had she fallen early in her married life into a habit that she simply couldn't kick?  This is such a sad and dispiriting picture.

On the other hand and to put it into perspective, we have to remember that all Alice's confidences to John, and all the times she let off steam about how she felt and how she was coping, took place in the privacy of their letters.  It is as though we are overhearing them as they carry on telling each other their secret thoughts while they are apart.  The letters are like a mutual secret diary – and we have no idea what the lost letters would have told us.  Nor do we have any idea what outsiders thought.  Alice's brother-in-law Benjamin Harrison, the widower of her sister Jane, gives us quite a different picture of Alice in a letter of 1861

Were I placed as you are just now with six children in the whooping cough, I should either end or mend I think and yet I can fancy you with your never ceasing smile, even happy as a queen in the midst of it all. [8]

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 48

[2] ibid., p. 75

[3] ibid., p. 75

[4] ibid., p. 75

[5] ibid., p. 76

[6] ibid., p. 78

[7] ibid., p. 92

[8] ibid., p. 32