Blind Tom Concert

His performances have been “remarkable and interesting . . . As a musical phenomenon of the most singular character he is worth hearing.”

“Every evening this week excepting Thursday, November 2. . . . Farewell Matinee Saturday.”

“Blind Tom, the Musical Phenomenon. Blind Tom’s woolly covered cranium was yesterday the subject of a phreneological [sic] examination. Very little light was thus thrown on the exceptional development so manifest in Tom’s musical abilities and strange antics. The phrenologist merely found that Tom’s head was a very good average in all the qualities that the disciples of Gail and Spurzheim have ventured to catalogue. There was declared to be a good development of all the faculties that make man a domestic animal and keep up that remarkable institution known as the family; the perceptive and reasoning faculties were also found to be good; there was good time, good tune, good language and good color, and that sense of the right relation of things which is called ‘order’ was larger than in the majority of heads. This fact throws some light on Tom’s peculiarities, as it is doubtless owing to this development that the blind musician is able to carry in his mind the relation of the parts in all the very complicated pieces of music that he so wonderfully remembers.
    The irrelevancy of Tom’s bumps may be accounted for by the fact that his brain is a comparatively undeveloped one—that is, the several qualities have not felt the influence of cultivation in his own life. They are as they were inherited. His brain is, in most respects, the brain of his father or mother reproduced. It is impossible to explain in any other way the development of the so-called organ of color. Tom was born blind, has been blind all his life, and, practically, is blind now. He at present perceives light, and can see any large body near him; but his power has only been acquired recently. How, then, should a man without eyes have the organ of color? The fishes in the great cave in Kentucky, where there is no light, have no eyes, and by the same arrangement of nature we must suppose that those without the use of their eyes would be without what could only come through the sense of sight. But it is easy enough to suppose that Tom inherited this organ, and that it has not been obliterated, merely because that with the other parts of the brain, it has remained stationary.
    But it is sufficiently evident that there is a quite exceptional distribution of faculties in Tom, whatever phrenology may see or fail to see. He carries to nearly their opposite extremes the sensuous and intellectual natures. His senses are defective. His eyes are nearly useless, and he has an incomplete control of the organs of speech. His deficiencies are thus in the very group of organs with which the negro race is usually so well supplied. And with these deficiencies he has an unusual development of certain intellectual faculties, such, for instance, as memory. His memory—his power to retain impressions, especially of some musical sounds—is not less than wonderful; and his exhibition of this power in the facility with which he repeats performances on the piano when once heard is what gives its greatest interest to his nuances. But his strange sensitiveness to music—his nervous irritability, that renders it impossible for him to keep himself still while any one plays and the remarkable muscular antics that are the result of this, will always make him a great curiosity to the public.
    The physiological explanation of this musical wonder probably is, that there was in early life some accident inside the cranium—some event not sufficient to destroy life, but to arrest the development at the base of the brain; and this arrested development was compensated by some vagaries of development in the cerebral hemisphere.”

“The concerts of this remarkable genius are drawing to a close, but the anxiety to see him increases. He should continue his concerts for a month longer, for the crowded audiences are sufficient proof of his increasing attention. He is constantly put to severe tests of memory and executive ability, but he triumphs over all. At his last concert, Mr. Stephen Massett being present, he was requested to sing and play something for Master Tom. He very kindly consented, and sang his very beautiful ballad called ‘Sunset.’ After listening attentively Tom sat down at the piano and played it from beginning to end without missing a note. He is certainly the most surprising genius of the day.”