DUEL WITH BLINDNESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20596, 21 June 1930, Page 27 (Supplement)

DUEL WITH BLINDNESS.

VIOLIN PROVIDES VICTORY.

WORLD RENOWN IN FOUR YEARS.

How a young man, doomed to become blind in four years, fought a desperate fight against time, subsequently becoming a world-renowned musician, was revealed in-London recently. The true facts. concerning this extraordinary man read stranger than fiction, sav3 the Sunday Chronicle. Twenty years ago Mr. Ernest- Whjtfield, of Maida Tale, London, after leaving the London University College, became manager of a well-known firm of exporters in Vienna, but as fortune seemed to be smiling on him a famous oculist predicted that he would in four years become stone blind. ".. .

" At first I thought- I should go 'mad," Mr. Whitfield said. " The sheer cruel tragedy of the thing nearly overwhelmed me. But I realised that I should have to prepare myself for the day .when I should no longer be able to gaze upon the beauties of this world, and I promised myself that, come what might, I would not give in; I would fight with my back to the wall."

There began the frantic fight against, time. Always a lover of music—Mr. Whitfield learned the violin "at. the age .of seven, and conducted an orchestral band at college—and an enthusiastic, amateur, he spent the whole of his time, averaging eight hoars a day, in mastering the technique and memorising hundreds' of pieces of music, i •

As perfection came, so his sight went, but Mr. Whitfield, with renewed ambition, resigned himself to his "fato and determined to make the. best of things.

" On the day that I was plunged into eternal night," ho said, " I sobbed like a child. But the next day I awakened in a new world; I discovered a new happiness in music. I toured the Contineut, and everywhere I went I was -given' a rousing reception. Although I played beforo thousands of people every week few of them guessed that I. was blind."