Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals - Maria Mitchell
"I was born, for instance, incapable of appreciating music. I mourn it.
Should I go to a music-school, therefore? No, avoid the music-school; it
is a very expensive branch of study. When the public school has taught
reading, writing, and arithmetic, the boy or girl has his or her tools;
let them use these tools, and get a few hours for study every day.
"... Do not give educational aid to sickly young people. The old idea
that the feeble young man must be fitted for the ministry, because the
more sickly the more saintly, has gone out. Health of body is not only
an accompaniment of health of mind, but is the cause; the converse may
be true,--that health of mind causes health of body; but we all know
that intellectual cheer and vivacity act upon the mind. If the gymnastic
exercise helps the mind, the concert or the theatre improves the health
of the body.
"Let the unfortunate young woman whose health is delicate take to the
culture of the woods and fields, or raise strawberries, and avoid
teaching.
"Better give a young girl who is poor a common-school education, a
little lift, and tell her to work out her own career. If she have a
distaste to the homely routine of life, leave her the opportunity to try
any other career, but let her understand that she stands or falls by
herself.
"... Not every girl should go to college. The over-burdened mother of a
large family has a right to be aided by her daughter's hands. I would
aid the mother and not the daughter.
"I would not put the exceptionally smart girl from a _very_ poor family
into college, unless she is a genius; and a genius should wait some
years to _prove_ her genius.
"Endow the already established institution with money. Endow the woman
who shows genius with _time_.
"A case at Johns Hopkins University is an excellent one. A young woman
goes into the institution who is already a scholar; she shows what she
can do, and she takes a scholarship; she is not placed in a happy valley
of do nothing,--she is put into a workshop, where she can work.
"... We are all apt to say, 'Could we have had the opportunity in life
that our neighbor had,'--and we leave the unfinished sentence to imply
that we should have been geniuses.
"No one ever says, 'If I had not had such golden opportunities thrust
upon me, I might have developed by a struggle'! But why look back at
all? Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see
your rainbow in the same direction?
"But our want of opportunity was our opportunity--our privations were
our privileges--our needs were stimulants; we are what we are because we
had little and wanted much; and it is hard to tell which was the more
powerful factor....
* * * * *
"Small aids to individuals, large aid to masses.
* * * * *
"The Russian Czar determined to found an observatory, and the first
thing he did was to take a million dollars from the government treasury.
He sends to America to order a thirty-five inch telescope from Alvan
Clark,--not to promote science, but to surpass other nations in the size
of his glass. 'To him that hath shall be given.' Read it, 'To him that
hath _should_ be given.'
* * * * *
"To give wisely is hard. I do not wonder that the millionaire founds a
new college--why should he not? Millionaires are few, and he is a man by
himself--he must have views, or he could not have earned a million. But
let the man or woman of ordinary wealth seek out the best institution
already started,--the best girl already in college,--and give the
endowment.
"I knew a rich woman who wished to give aid to some girls' school, and
she travelled in order to find that institution which gave the most
solid learning with the least show. She found it where few would expect
it,--in Tennessee. It was worth while to travel.
"The aid that comes need not be money; let it be a careful consideration
of the object, and an evident interest in the cause.
"When you aid a teacher, you improve the education of your children. It
is a wonder that teachers work as well as they do. I never look at a
group of them without using, mentally, the expression, 'The noble army
of martyrs'!
"The chemist should have had a laboratory, and the observatory should
have had an astronomer; but we are too apt to bestow money where there
is no man, and to find a man where there is no money.
* * * * *
"If every girl who is aided were a very high order of scholar,
scholarship would undoubtedly conquer poverty; but a large part of the
aided students are ordinary. They lack, at least, executive power, as
their ancestors probably did. Poverty is a misfortune; misfortunes are
often the result of blamable indiscretion, extravagance, etc.
"It is one of the many blessings of poverty that one is not obliged to
'give wisely.'"
1866. _To her students:_ "I cannot expect to make astronomers, but I do
expect that you will invigorate your minds by the effort at healthy
modes of thinking.... When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a
look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests.
"... But star-gazing is not science. The entrance to astronomy is
through mathematics. You must make up your mind to steady and earnest
work. You must be content to get on slowly if you only get on
thoroughly....
"The phrase 'popular science' has in itself a touch of absurdity. That
knowledge which is popular is not scientific.
"The laws which govern the motions of the sun, the earth, planets, and
other bodies in the universe, cannot be understood and demonstrated
without a solid basis of mathematical learning.
* * * * *
"Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to
God.
* * * * *
"You cannot study anything persistently for years without becoming
learned, and although I would not hold reputation up to you as a very
high object of ambition, it is a wayside flower which you are sure to
have catch at your skirts.
"Whatever apology other women may have for loose, ill-finished work, or
work not finished at all, you will have none.
"When you leave Vassar College, you leave it the _best educated women in
the world_. Living a little outside of the college, beyond the reach of
the little currents that go up and down the corridors, I think I am a
fairer judge of your advantages than you can be yourselves; and when I
say you will be the best educated women in the world, I do not mean the
education of text-books, and class-rooms, and apparatus, only, but that
broader education which you receive unconsciously, that higher teaching
which comes to you, all unknown to the givers, from daily association
with the noble-souled women who are around you."
"1871. When astronomers compare observations made by different persons,
they cannot neglect the constitutional peculiarities of the individuals,
and there enters into these computations a quantity called 'personal
equation.' In common terms, it is that difference between two
individuals from which results a difference in the _time_ which they
require to receive and note an occurrence. If one sees a star at one
instant, and records it, the record of another, of the same thing, is
not the same.
"It is true, also, that the same individual is not the same at all
times; so that between two individuals there is a mean or middle
individual, and each individual has a mean or middle self, which is not
the man of to-day, nor the man of yesterday, nor the man of to-morrow;
but a middle man among these different selves....
* * * * *
"We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics,
nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
"There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one
another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world
and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people; it is to be of
them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We
cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without
loving all, and helping all; and if we cannot learn through Nature's
laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to promote
spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a
greater growth in the future.
"... The great gain would be freedom of thought. Women, more than men,
are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the
doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until
women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop. When
they do this, when they come to truth through their investigations, when
doubt leads them to discovery, the truth which they get will be theirs,
and their minds will work on and on unfettered.
[1874.] "I am but a woman!
"For women there are, undoubtedly, great difficulties in the path, but
so much the more to overcome. First, no woman should say, 'I am but a
woman!' But a woman! What more can you ask to be?
"Born a woman--born with the average brain of humanity--born with more
than the average heart--if you are mortal, what higher destiny could you
have? No matter where you are nor what you are, you are a power--your
influence is incalculable; personal influence is always underrated by
the person. We are all centres of spheres--we see the portions of the
sphere above us, and we see how little we affect it. We forget the part
of the sphere around and before us--it extends just as far every way.
"Another common saying, 'It isn't the way,' etc. Who settles the way? Is
there any one so forgetful of the sovereignty bestowed on her by God
that she accepts a leader--one who shall capture her mind?
"There is this great danger in student life. Now, we rest all upon what
Socrates said, or what Copernicus taught; how can we dispute authority
which has come down to us, all established, for ages?
"We must at least question it; we cannot accept anything as granted,
beyond the first mathematical formulae. Question everything else.
"'The world is round, and like a ball
Seems swinging in the air.'[1]
[Footnote 1: From Peter Parley's Primary Geography.]
"No such thing! the world is not round, it does not swing, and it
doesn't _seem_ to swing!
"I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes
and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that
women will never be profound students in any other department except
music while they give four hours a day to the _practice_ of music. I
should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts
to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an
accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say,
'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some
years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon _possible_
occasions.
"If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of
language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do
you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a
few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of
study of something for which you were born?
"When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through
with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I
wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for
which God designed them, would do for them.
"I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be
something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there
would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then
thinking she was an astronomer!
"Jan. 8, 1876. At the meeting of graduates at the Deacon House, the
speeches that were made were mainly those of Dr. R. and Professor B. I
am sorry now that I did not at least say that the college is what it is
mainly because the early students pushed up the course to a collegiate
standard.
"Jan. 25, 1876. It has become a serious question with me whether it is
not my duty to beg money for the observatory, while what I really long
for is a quiet life of scientific speculation. I want to sit down and
study on the observations made by myself and others."
During her later years at Vassar, Miss Mitchell interested herself
personally in raising a fund to endow the chair of astronomy. In March,
1886, she wrote: "I have been in New York quite lately, and am quite
hopeful that Miss ---- will do something for Vassar. Mrs. C., of
Newburyport, is to ask Whittier, who is said to be rich, and ---- told
me to get anything I could out of her father. But after all I am a poor
beggar; my ideas are small!"
Since Miss Mitchell's death, the fund has been completed by the alumnae,
and is known as the Maria Mitchell Endowment Fund. With $10,000
appropriated by the trustees it amounts to $50,000.
"June 18, 1876. I had imagined the Emperor of Brazil to be a dark,
swarthy, tall man, of forty-five years; that he would not really have a
crown upon his head, but that I should feel it was somewhere around,
handy-like, and that I should know I was in royal presence. But he turns
out to be a large, old man,--say, sixty-five,--broad-headed and
broad-shouldered, with a big white beard, and a very pleasant, even
chatty, manner.
"Once inside of the dome, he seemed to feel at home; to my astonishment
he asked if Alvan Clark made the glass of the equatorial. As he stepped
into the meridian-room, and saw the instruments, he said, 'Collimators?'
I said, 'You have been in observatories before.' 'Oh, yes, Cambridge and
Washington,' he replied. He seemed much more interested in the
observatory than I could possibly expect. I asked him to go on top of
the roof, and he said he had not time; yet he stayed long enough to go
up several times. I am told that he follows out, remarkably, his own
ideas as to his movements."
In 1878, Miss Mitchell went to Denver, Colorado, to observe the total
eclipse of the sun. She was accompanied by several of her former pupils.
She prepared an account of this eclipse, which will be found in Chapter
XI.
"Aug. 20, 1878. Dr. Raymond [President of Vassar College] is dead. I
cannot quite take it in. I have never known the college without him, and
it will make all things different.
"Personally, I have always been fond of him; he was very enjoyable
socially and intellectually. Officially he was, in his relations to the
students, perfect. He was cautious to a fault, and has probably been
very wise in his administration of college affairs. He was broad in his
religious views. He was not broad in his ideas of women, and was made to
broaden the education of women by the women around him.
"June 18, 1881. The dome party to-day was sixty-two in number. It was
breakfast, and we opened the dome; we seated forty in the dome and
twenty in the meridian-room."
This "dome party" requires a few words of explanation, because it was
unique among all the Vassar festivities. The week before commencement,
Miss Mitchell's pupils would be informed of the approaching gathering by
a notice like the following:
CIRCULAR.
The annual dome party will be held at the observatory on
Saturday, the 19th, at 6 P.M. You are cordially invited to be
present.
M. M.
[As this gathering is highly intellectual, you are invited to
bring poems.]
It was, at first, held in the evening, but during the last years was a
breakfast party, its character in other respects remaining the same.
Little tables were spread under the dome, around the big telescope; the
flowers were roses from Miss Mitchell's own garden. The "poems" were
nonsense rhymes, in the writing of which Miss Mitchell was an adept.
Each student would have a few verses of a more or less personal
character, written by Miss Mitchell, and there were others written by
the girls themselves; some were impromptu; others were set to music, and
sung by a selected glee-club.
"June 5, 1881. We have written what we call our dome poetry. Some nice
poems have come in to us. I think the Vassar girls, in the main, are
magnificent, they are so all-alive....
"May 20, 1882. Vassar is getting pretty. I gathered lilies of the valley
this morning. The young robins are out in a tree close by us, and the
phoebe has built, as usual, under the front steps.
"I am rushing dome poetry, but so far show no alarming symptoms of
brilliancy."
A former student writes as follows about the dome poetry:
"At the time it was read, though it seemed mere merry nonsense, it
really served a more serious purpose in the work of one who did nothing
aimlessly. This apparent nonsense served as the vehicle to convey an
expression of approbation, affection, criticism, or disapproval in such
a merry mode that even the bitterest draught seemed sweet."
"1881, July 5. We left Vassar, June 24, on the steamer 'Galatea,' from
New York to Providence. I looked out of my state-room window, and saw a
strange-looking body in the northern sky. My heart sank; I knew
instantly that it was a comet, and that I must return to the
observatory. Calling the young people around me, and pointing it out to
them, I had their assurance that it was a comet, and nothing but a
comet.
"We went to bed at nine, and I arose at six in the morning. As soon as I
could get my nieces started for Providence, I started for
Stonington,--the most easy of the ways of getting to New York, as I
should avoid Point Judith.
"I went to the boat at the Stonington wharf about noon, and remained on
board until morning--there were few passengers, it was very quiet, and I
slept well.
"Arriving in New York, I took cars at 9 A.M. for Poughkeepsie, and
reached the college at dinner-time. I went to work the same evening.
"As I could not tell at what time the comet would pass the meridian, I
stationed myself at the telescope in the meridian-room by 10 P.M., and
watched for the comet to cross. As it approached the meridian, I saw
that it would go behind a scraggy apple-tree. I sent for the watchman,
Mr. Crumb, to come with a saw, and cut off the upper limbs. He came back
with an axe, and chopped away vigorously; but as one limb after another
fell, and I said, 'I need more, cut away,' he said, 'I think I must cut
down the whole tree.' I said, 'Cut it down.' I felt the barbarism of it,
but I felt more that a bird might have a nest in it.
"I found, when I went to breakfast the next morning, that the story had
preceded me, and I was called 'George Washington.'
"But for all this, I got almost no observation; the fog came up, and I
had scarcely anything better than an estimation. I saw the comet blaze
out, just on the edge of the field, and I could read its declination
only.
"On the 28th, 29th, and July 1st, I obtained good meridian passages, and
the R.A. must be very good.
"Jan. 12, 1882. There is a strange sentence in the last paragraph of Dr.
Jacobi's article on the study of medicine by women, to the effect that
it would be better for the husband always to be superior to the wife.
Why? And if so, does not it condemn the ablest women to a single life?
"March 13, 1882, 3 P.M. I start for faculty, and we probably shall elect
what are called the 'honor girls.' I dread the struggle that is pretty
certain to come. Each of us has some favorite whom she wishes to put
into the highest class, and whom she honestly believes to be of the
highest order of merit. I never have the whole ten to suit me, but I can
truly say that at this minute I do not care. I should be sorry not to
see S., and W., and P., and E., and G., and K. on the list of the ten,
but probably that is more than I ought to expect. The whole system is
demoralizing and foolish. Girls study for prizes, and not for learning,
when 'honors' are at the end. The unscholarly motive is wearing. If they
studied for sound learning, the cheer which would come with every day's
gain would be health-preserving.
"... I have seven advanced students, and to-day, when I looked around to
see who should be called to help look out for meteors, I could consider
only _one_ of them not already overworked, and she was the
post-graduate, who took no honors, and never hurried, and has always
been an excellent student.
"... We are sending home some girls already [November 14], and ---- is
among them. I am somewhat alarmed at the dropping down, but ---- does an
enormous amount of work, belongs to every club, and writes for every
club and for the 'Vassar Miscellany,' etc.; of course she has the
headache most of the time.
"Sometimes I am distressed for fear Dr. Clarke [Footnote: Author of "Sex
in Education."] is not so far wrong; but I do not think it is the
study--it is the morbid conscientiousness of the girls, who think they
must work every minute.
"April 26, 1882. Miss Herschel came to the college on the 11th, and
stayed three days. She is one of the little girls whom I saw,
twenty-three years since, playing on the lawn at Sir John Herschel's
place, Collingwood.
"... Miss Herschel was just perfect as a guest; she fitted in
beautifully. The teachers gave a reception for her, ---- gave her his
poem, and Henry, the gardener, found out that the man in whose employ he
lost a finger was her brother-in-law, in Leeds!
"Jan. 9, 1884. Mr. [Matthew] Arnold has been to the college, and has
given his lecture on Emerson. The audience was made up of three hundred
students, and three hundred guests from town. Never was a man listened
to with so much attention. Whether he is right in his judgment or not,
he held his audience by his manly way, his kindly dissection, and his
graceful English. Socially, he charmed us all. He chatted with every
one, he smiled on all. He said he was sorry to leave the college, and
that he felt he must come to America again. We have not had such an
awakening for years. It was like a new volume of old English poetry.
"March 16, 1885. In February, 1831, I counted seconds for father, who
observed the annular eclipse at Nantucket. I was twelve and a half years
old. In 1885, fifty-four years later, I counted seconds for a class of
students at Vassar; it was the same eclipse, but the sun was only about
half-covered. Both days were perfectly clear and cold."
CHAPTER X
1873
SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR--RUSSIA--FRANCES POWER COBBE--"THE GLASGOW COLLEGE
FOR GIRLS"
In 1873, Miss Mitchell spent the summer in Europe, and availed herself
of this opportunity to visit the government observatory at Pulkova, in
Russia.
"Eydkuhnen, Wednesday, July 30, 1873. Certainly, I never in my life
expected to spend twenty-four hours in this small town, the frontier
town of Prussia. Here I remembered that our little bags would be
examined, and I asked the guard about it, but he said we need not
trouble ourselves; we should not be examined until we reached the first
Russian town of Wiersbelow. So, after a mile more of travel, we came to
Wiersbelow. Knowing that we should keep our little compartment until we
got to St. Petersburg, we had scattered our luggage about; gloves were
in one place, veil in another, shawl in another, parasol in another, and
books all around.
"The train stopped. Imagine our consternation! Two officials entered the
carriage, tall Russians in full uniform, and seized everything--shawls,
books, gloves, bags; and then, looking around very carefully, espied W's
poor little ragged handkerchief, and seized that, too, as a contraband
article! We looked at one another, and said nothing. The tall Russian
said something to us; we looked at each other and sat still. The tall
Russians looked at one another, and there was almost an official smile
between them.
"Then one turned to me, and said, very distinctly, 'Passy-port.' 'Oh,' I
said, 'the passports are all right; where are they?' and we produced
from our pockets the passports prepared at Washington, with the official
seal, and we delivered them with a sort of air as if we had said,
'You'll find that they do things all right at Washington.'
"The tall Russians got out, and I was about to breathe freely, when they
returned, and said something else--not a word did I understand; they
exchanged a look of amusement, and W. and I, one of amazement; then one
of them made signs to us to get out. The sign was unmistakable, and we
got out, and followed them into an immense room, where were tables all
around covered with luggage, and about a hundred travellers standing by;
and our books, shawls, gloves, etc., were thrown in a heap upon one of
these tables, and we awoke to the disagreeable consciousness that we
were in a custom-house, and only two out of a hundred travellers, and
that we did not understand one word of Russian.
"But, of course, it could be only a few minutes of delay, and if German
and French failed, there is always left the language of signs, and all
would be right.
"After, perhaps, half an hour, two or three officials approached us,
and, holding the passports, began to talk to us. How did they know that
those two passports belonged to us? Out of two hundred persons, how
could they at once see that the woman whose age was given at more than
half a century, and the lad whose age was given at less than a score of
years, were the two fatigued and weary travellers who stood guarding a
small heap of gloves, books, handkerchiefs, and shawls? Two of the
officials held up the passports to us, pointed to the blank page, shook
their heads ominously; the third took the passports, put them into his
vest pocket, buttoned up his coat, and motioned to us to follow him.