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The last American slave

THE BALLAD OF BLIND TOM, SLAVE PIANIST:
America’s Lost Musical Genius
By Deidre O’Connell
272 pp. Overlook Duckworth $24.95

Reviewed by Ruth Douillette

Reading Blind Tom is a bit like looking at a specimen under a microscope.

Tom Wiggens—aka Blind Tom, Tom Bethune, and a host of other epithets—elicits the same mix of curiosity and grimace that a spider viewed at 10x magnification does.

Born blind in 1849 to slave parents on a Georgia plantation, Tom escaped the threats of master Wiley Jones, who vowed to “get rid of that runty child,” when his determined mother Charity threw herself on the mercy of neighboring plantation owner, the honorary General James Bethune.

Bethune, always the southern gentleman, bought the Wiggins family intact. He recognized Tom’s musical aptitude and talent for mimicking sound—verbatim conversation, thunderstorms, trains, birds—as a way to make money.

Tom’s reaction to the sound of the piano the Bethunes bought when he was four—rolling eyes, twitching fingers, swaying, and contortions—marked the beginning of his love affair with the instrument. Determined and persistent, he repeatedly escaped slave quarters and sneaked into the big house; his initial pounding on the keys with fingers, elbows and forehead progressed to rhapsodic renditions of the classics he learned by listening, and to his own compositions that the “birds and the rain told to Tom.”

At first Blind Tom was an odd and unwelcome nuisance, especially to the Bethune girls, who felt it “was not exactly proper ... for a half naked picaninny to come uninvited into the mansion.” Eventually he became “a pet,” often entertaining guests with his playing.

By the time he was six he traveled with a manager Bethune hired, performing to sold-out audiences throughout Georgia. Later as Tom’s fame increased, so did Bethune’s desire to increase concert revenue, and Tom performed across the country, and once in Europe, playing this beloved instrument nearly every day for forty years.

Author Deirdre O’Connell, who works for SBS News in Australia, learned of Tom from a friend when she lived in London. Through research, she examined his life, piecing him together like a puzzle from old documents, letters, and newspaper accounts. We hear from rich society folk, his family and the Bethunes, his managers, other musicians, southern blacks, the famed Mark Twain and other eminents. The result is an image of Tom, larger-than-life and a bit alien.

Some of what O’Connell discovers about Tom is based on hearsay or someone’s perception; each saw him through a lens focused differently. Tom impressed some, others not at all. His talent and his condition—now thought to be autism—defined him. Any internal philosophy, if he had one, remained locked behind his antics— leaping in circles on one foot and making noises.

People defined him differently: Tom was called an idiot, an imbecile, a savant, a genius, the eighth wonder of the plantation, a barbarous African, spirit child, freak, beast, a prodigy chattel, a celebrity, a baboon, a pet, the most wonderful living curiosity, a freak that would make Barnum proud, and more.

O’Connell describes the “paradox” of Blind Tom:

He was a blind child with the gift of “vision, “ a senseless “idiot” revered for his powers of communication, a physically afflicted child deified as a transcendental spirit, a useless encumbrance worth his weight in gold. ... He had escaped the deprivation of the slave cabinet for a life of comfort and luxury, knew no fear of white authority but embraced it with the same swaggering confidence as ... conjurers: invulnerable, invisible, “master to no man but himself.”

Tom’s business relationship with General Bethune, and later Bethune’s son, John, was a symbiotic one: Tom provided the talent that made the money; Bethune fed, clothed, and protected him. Though the Bethunes reaped a fortune, Tom and his family got shamefully little remuneration even after the Civil War, when he became a “free” man. As O’Connell points out, “There is a world of difference between ’feeling’ free and ’being’ free.”

O’Connell’s astute appraisal of the information she gathers supplies possible missing pieces to Tom’s puzzle. While I’m inclined to lean her way—Tom was used, perhaps abused (at least emotionally), by those who grew rich from him—she doesn’t force this view, merely suggests it. Hindsight isn’t always a fair judge of those who lived according to the social mores of earlier times.

Part of the mystery lies in the unreliability of the information available. And as O’Connell notes, “As slavery was outlawed, the stories about Tom began to change.” Family tales were filtered through loving—and protective—eyes. Charity’s tale would contradict General Bethune’s. And Tom’s personal view—if he had one—is buried with him. He died in 1908 at 59. The New York Times obituary read:

More than a simple biography of a musical icon from a bygone era, Blind Tom provides a cultural snapshot of the Civil War and Reconstruction period into the Jim Crow days, along with controversy, divorce, law suits, estrangements, and other earthy events that are part of life in any era.

Modern readers will perceive Blind Tom’s saga with ambiguity. A child born today with similar conditions might languish in an institution, live a comfortable life with family or paid caretakers, or at best be considered a savant and enjoy a brief appearance on 60 Minutes or The Tonight Show. Whether or not Blind Tom lived a happy life, we’ll never know, but whatever our discomfort about his treatment and about the people who used or misused him, his life is part of our colorful history, and, as often happens, his legacy continues to evolve after his death.

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Ruth Douillette retired after 35 years as a middle school teacher, and now freelances as a writer and photographer. Her essays have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, Cup of Comfort, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Under Our Skin, an anthology about breast cancer. Her photography has been featured in flashquake's gallery of art. Ruth is a member of the Internet Writing Workshop where she’s an administrator for the Practice group. For a sample of her writing and photography, visit Upstream and Down~.

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