Colour Associations 109
- “A, pure white, and like china in texture.
- E, red, not transparent; vermilion, with china-white would represent it. - I, light bright yellow; gamboge.
- O, black, but transparent; the colour of deep water seen through thick clear’ ice.
- U, purple.
- Y a dingier colour than I.
“The shorter sounds of the vowels are less vivid and pure in colour. Consonants are almost or quite colourless to me, though there is some blackness about M.
“Some association with U in the words blue and purple may account for that colour, and possibly the E in red may have to do with that also; but I feel as if they were independent of suggestions of the kind.
“My first impulse is to say that the association lies solely in the sound of the vowels, in which connection I certainly feel it the most strongly; but then the thought of the distinct redness of such a [printed or written] word as ‘great,’ shows me that the relation must be visual as well as aural. The meaning of words is so unavoidably associated with the sight of them, that I think this association rather overrides the primitive impression of the colour of the vowels, and the word ‘violet’ reminds me of its proper colour until I look at the word as a mere collection of letters.
“Of my two daughters, one sees the colours quite differently from this (A, blue; E, white; I, black; 0, whity-brownish; U, opaque brown). The other is only heterodox on the A and 0; A being with her black, and 0 white. My sister and I never agreed about these colours, and I doubt whether my two brothers feel the chromatic force of the vowels at all.”
I give this instance partly on account of the hereditary interest. I could add cases from at least three different families in. which the heredity is quite as strongly marked.
Fig. 69 fills the whole of the middle column of Plate IV., and contains specimens from a large series of coloured illustrations, accompanied by many pages of explanation from a correspondent, Dr. James Key of Montagu, Cape Colony. The pictures will tell their own tale sufficiently well. I need only string together a few brief extracts from his letters, as follows
“I confess my inability to understand visualised numerals it is
otherwise, however, with regard to colour associations with
