Mabel Bell; Alexander's Silent Partner

Vreck Cove, Cap[e Breton, NS, Canada: Breton Books, 1996. Large Print Edition. Presumed first printing. Trade paperback. Very good. xv, [1], 269, [3] pages. Illustrations. Introduction by Hugh MacLennan. Notes. Small scuff on rear cover. Married to an Englishman in the late 1930s, Lilias Toward spent most of the war years in England, often in danger. She raised a son who is now an able and successful man in Canada. After her marriage dissolved, she returned to Nova Scotia, studied law, practiced it, and became a Q.C. She also planned and built a most unusual motel in the village of Baddeck and called it "The Silver Dart." The author met Marian Fairchild, Mabel Bell's daughter, who asked her to help arrange her mother's letters to her covering the period 1892-1922. These letters form the basis of this book. She complemented this treasure trove of letters with other correspondence preserved in various institutions. The classic biography of Mabel Bell, Alexander Graham Bell's wife. Her illustrious husband aside, Mabel is well known as the founder of the first Montessori School in Canada, the organizer of the first Home & School Association in Canada. It was as a teacher of speech and the deaf that Alexander Graham Bell met Mabel Hubbard. One year out from Scotland, he had left Canada for Boston in 1871 to give a series of talks and he quickly became admired for his teaching techniques. He opened a school, lectured at Boston University's School of Oratory, and worked on inventions. It was on Cape Breton Island, N.S., where much of Bell's work after the telephone was accomplished, that the slender, gentle New Englander left her own legacy. She financed a group as the Aerial Experiment Association with $35,000 of her own money, thus becoming the North American aviation industry's first backer.