108 galton.org
108
Inquiries into Human Faculty
“The vowels of the English language always appear to me, when I think of them, as
possessing certain colours, of which I enclose a diagram. Consonants, when thought of by
themselves, are of a purplish black; but when I think of a whole word, the colour of the
consonants tends towards the colour of the vowels. For example, in the word ‘Tuesday,’
when I think of each letter separately, the consonants are purplish-black, u is a light dove
colour, 0 is a pale emerald green, and a is yellow; but when I think of the whole word
together, the first part is a light gray-green, and the latter part yellow. Each word is a
distinct whole. I have always associated the same colours with the same letters, and no
effort will change the colour of one letter, transferring it to another. Thus the word ‘red’
assumes a light-green tint, while the word ‘yellow’ is light-green at the beginning and red
at the end. Occasionally, when uncertain how a word should be spelt, I have considered
what colour it ought to be, and have decided in that way. I believe this has often been a
great help to me in spelling, both in English and foreign languages. The colour of the
letters is never smeared or blurred in any way. I cannot recall to mind anything that should
have first caused me to associate colours with letters, nor can my mother remember any
alphabet or reading-book coloured in the way I have described, which I might have used as
a child. I do not associate any idea of colour with musical notes at all, nor with any of the
other senses.”
She adds
“Perhaps you may be interested in the following account from my sister of her visual
peculiarities: ‘When I think of Wednesday I see a kind of oval flat wash of yellow emerald
green; for Tuesday, a gray sky colour; for Thursday, a brown-red irregular polygon; and a
dull yellow smudge for Friday.”’
The latter quotation is a sample of many that I have; I give it merely as
another instance of hereditary tendency. I will insert just one description
of other coloured letters than those represented in the Plate. It is from Mrs.
H., the married sister of a well-known man of science, who writes
“I do not know how it is with others, but to me the colours of vowels are so strongly
marked that I hardly understand their appearing of a different colour, or, what is nearly as
bad; colourless to any one. To me they are and always have been, as long as I have known
them, of the following tints
