Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals - Maria Mitchell
"One thing that he said, I noted: that his fancy was for farm-work, but
he was not strong enough; he had as a young man some literary ambition,
but never thought of attaining the reputation which had come to him.
"July 31, 1883. I have had two or three rich days! On Friday last I went
to Holderness, N.H., to the Asquam House; I had been asked by Mrs. T. to
join her party. There were at this house Mr. Whittier, Mr. and Mrs.
Cartland, Professor and Mrs. Johnson, of Yale, Mr. Williams, the Chinese
scholar, his brother, an Episcopal clergyman, and several others. The
house seemed full of fine, cultivated people. We stayed two days and a
half.
"And first of the scenery. The road up to the house is a steep hill, and
at the foot of the hill it winds and turns around two lakes. The
panorama is complete one hundred and eighty degrees. Beyond the lakes
lie the mountains. We do not see Mt. Washington. The house has a piazza
nearly all around it. We had a room on the first floor--large, and with
two windows opening to the floor.
"The programme of the day's work was delightfully monotonous. For an
hour or so after breakfast we sat in the ladies' parlor, we sewed, and
we told anecdotes. Whittier talked beautifully, almost always on the
future state and his confidence in it. Occasionally he touched upon
persons. He seems to have loved Lydia Maria Child greatly.
"When the cool of the morning was over, we went out upon the piazza, and
later on we went under the trees, where, it is said, Whittier spends
most of the time.
"There was little of the old-time theology in his views; his faith has
been always very firm. Mr. Cartland asked me one day if I really felt
there was any doubt of the immortality of the soul. I told him that on
the whole I believed it more than I doubted it, but I could not say that
I felt no doubt. Whittier asked me if there were no immortality if I
should be distressed by it, and I told him that I should be exceedingly
distressed; that it was the only thing that I craved. He said that
'annihilation was better for the wicked than everlasting punishment,'
and to that I assented. He said that he thought there might be persons
so depraved as not to be worth saving. I asked him if God made such.
Nobody seemed ready to reply. Besides myself there was another of the
party to whom a dying friend had promised to return, if possible, but
had not come.
"Whittier believed that they did sometimes come. He said that of all
whom he had lost, no one would be so welcome to him as Lydia Maria
Child.
"We held a little service in the parlor of the hotel, and Mrs. C. read
the fourteenth chapter of John. Rev. Mr. W. read a sermon from 'The pure
in heart shall see God," written by Parkhurst, of New York. He thought
the child should be told that in heaven he should have his hobby-horse.
After the service, when we talked it over, I objected to telling the
child this. Whittier did not object; he said that Luther told his little
boy that he should have a little dog with a golden tail in heaven.
"Aug. 26, 1886. I have been to see an exhibition of a cooking school. I
found sixteen girls in the basement of a school-house. They had long
tables, across which stretched a line of gas-stoves and jets of gas.
Some of the girls were using saucepans; they set them upon the stove,
and then sat down where they could see a clock while the boiling process
went on.
"At one table a girl was cutting out doughnuts; at another a girl was
making a pudding--a layer of bits of bread followed by a layer of fruit.
Each girl had her rolling-pin, and moulding-board or saucepan.
"The chief peculiarity of these processes was the cleanliness. The
rolling-pins were clean, the knives were clean, the aprons were clean,
the hands were clean. Not a drop was spilled, not a crumb was dropped.
"If into the kitchen of the crowded mother there could come the
utensils, the commodities, the clean towels, the ample _time_, there
would come, without the lessons, a touch of the millennium.
"I am always afraid of manual-labor schools. I am not afraid that these
girls could not read, for every American girl reads, and to read is much
more important than to cook; but I _am_ afraid that not all can
_write_--some of them were not more than twelve years old.
"And what of the boys? Must a common cook always be a girl? and must a
boy not cook unless on the top of the ladder, with the pay of the
president of Harvard College?
"I am jealous for the schools; I have heard a gentleman who stands high
in science declare that the cooking schools would eventually kill out
every literary college in the land--for women. But why not for men? If
the food for the body is more important than the food for the mind, let
us destroy the latter and accept the former, but let us not continue to
do what has been tried for fifteen hundred years,--to keep one half of
the world to the starvation of the mind, in order to feed better the
physical condition of the other half.
"Let us have cooks; but let us leave it a matter of choice, as we leave
the dressmaking and the shoe-making, the millinery and the
carpentry,--free to be chosen!
"There are cultivated and educated women who enjoy cooking; so there are
cultivated men who enjoy Kensington embroidery. Who objects? But take
care that some rousing of the intellect comes first,--that it may be an
enlightened choice,--and do not so fill the day with bread and butter
and stitches that no time is left for the appreciation of Whittier,
letting at least the simple songs of daily life and the influence of
rhythm beautify the dreary round of the three meals a day."
Miss Mitchell had a stock of conundrums on hand, and was a good guesser.
She told her stories at all times when they happened to come into her
mind. She would arrive at her sister's house, just from Poughkeepsie on
a vacation, and after the threshold was crossed and she had said "Good
morning," in a clear voice to be heard by all within her sight, she
would, perhaps, say, "Well, I have a capital story which I must tell
before I take my bonnet off, or I shall forget it!" And there went with
her telling an action, voice, and manner which added greater point to
the story, but which cannot be described. One of her associates at
Vassar, in recalling some of her anecdotes, writes: "Professor Mitchell
was quite likely to stand and deliver herself of a bright little speech
before taking her seat at breakfast. It was as though the short walk
from the observatory had been an inspiration to thought."
She was quick at repartee. On one occasion Charlotte Cushman and her
friend Miss Stebbins were visiting Miss Mitchell at Vassar. Miss
Mitchell took them out for a drive, and pointed out the different
objects of interest as they drove along the banks of the Hudson. "What
is that fine building on the hill?" asked Miss Cushman.--"That," said
Miss Mitchell, "was a boys' school, originally, but it is now used as a
hotel, where they charge five dollars a day!"--"Five dollars a day?"
exclaimed Miss Cushman; "Jupiter Ammon!"--"No," said Miss Stebbins,
"Jupiter Mammon!"--"Not at all," said Miss Mitchell, "Jupiter _gammon!_"
"Farewell, Maria," said an old Friend, "I hope the Lord will be with
thee."
"Good-by," she replied, "I _know_ he will be with you."
A characteristic trait in Miss Mitchell was her aversion to receiving
unsolicited advice in regard to her private affairs. "A suggestion is an
impertinence," she would often say. The following anecdote shows how she
received such counsel:
A literary man of more than national reputation said to one of her
admirers, "I, for one, cannot endure your Maria Mitchell." At her
solicitation he explained why; and his reason was, as she had
anticipated, founded on personal pique. It seems he had gone up from New
York to Poughkeepsie especially to call upon Professor Mitchell. During
the course of conversation, with that patronizing condescension which
some self-important men extend to all women indiscriminately, he
proceeded to inform her that her manner of living was not in accordance
with his ideas of expediency. "Now," he said, "instead of going for each
one of your meals all the way from your living-rooms in the observatory
over to the dining-hall in the college building, I should think it would
be far more convenient and sensible for you to get your breakfast, at
least, right in your own apartments. In the morning you could make a cup
of coffee and boil an egg with almost no trouble." At which Professor
Mitchell drew herself up with the air of a tragic queen, saying, "And is
my time worth no more than to boil eggs?"
CHAPTER XIII
MISS MITCHELL'S LETTERS--WOMAN SUFFRAGE--MEMBERSHIP IN VARIOUS
SOCIETIES--PUBLISHED ARTICLES--DEATH--CONCLUSION
Miss Mitchell was a voluminous letter writer and an excellent
correspondent, but her letters are not essays, and not at all in the
approved style of the "Complete Letter Writer." If she had any
particular thing to communicate, she rushed into the subject in the
first line. In writing to her own family and intimate friends, she
rarely signed her full name; sometimes she left it out altogether, but
ordinarily "M.M." was appended abruptly when she had expressed all that
she had to say. She wrote as she talked, with directness and promptness.
No one, in watching her while she was writing a letter, ever saw her
pause to think what she should say next or how she should express the
thought. When she came to that point, the "M.M." was instantly added.
She had no secretiveness, and in looking over her letters it has been
almost impossible to find one which did not contain too much that was
personal, either about herself or others, to make it proper; especially
as she herself would be very unwilling to make the affairs of others
public.
"Oct. 22, 1860. I have spent $100 on dress this year. I have a very
pretty new felt bonnet of the fashionable shape, trimmed with velvet; it
cost only $7, which, of course, was pitifully cheap for Broadway. If
thou thinks after $100 it wouldn't be extravagant for me to have a
waterproof cloak and a linsey-woolsey morning dress, please to send me
patterns of the latter material and a description of waterproofs of
various prices. They are so ugly, and I am so ditto, that I feel if a
few dollars, more or less, would make me look better, even in a storm, I
must not mind it."
"My orthodoxy is settled beyond dispute, I trust, by the following
circumstance: The editor of a New York magazine has written to me to
furnish an article for the Christmas number on 'The Star in the East.' I
have ventured, in my note of declination, to mention that if I
investigated that subject I might decide that there was no star in the
case, and then what would become of me, and _where should I go_? Since
that he has not written, so I may have hung myself!
"1879. April 25. I have 'done' New York very much as we did it thirty
years ago. On Saturday I went to Miss Booth's reception, and it was like
Miss Lynch's, only larger than Miss Lynch's was when I was there....
Miss Booth and a friend live on Fifty-ninth street, and have lived
together for years. Miss Booth is a nice-looking woman. She says she has
often been told that she looked like me; she has gray hair and black
eyes, but is fair and well-cut in feature. I had a very nice time.
"On Sunday I went to hear Frothingham, and he was at his very best. The
subject was 'Aspirations of Man,' and the sermon was rich in thought and
in word.
... Frothingham's discourse was more cheery than usual; he talked about
the wonderful idea of personal immortality, and he said if it be a dream
of the imagination let us worship the imagination. He spoke of Mrs.
Child's book on 'Aspirations,' and I shall order it at once. The only
satire was such a sentence as this: on speaking of a piece of Egyptian
sculpture he said, 'The gates of heaven opened to the good, not to the
orthodox.'
"To-day, Monday, I have been to a public school (a primary) and to
Stewart's mansion. I asked the majordomo to take us through the rooms on
the lower floor, which he did. I know of no palace which comes up to it.
The palaces always have a look as if at some point they needed
refurbishing up. I suppose that Mrs. Stewart uses that dining-room, but
it did not look as if it was made to eat in. I still like Gerome's
'Chariot Race' better than anything else of his. The 'Horse Fair' was
too high up for me to enjoy it, and a little too mixed up.
"1873. St. Petersburg is another planet, and, strange to say, is an
agreeable planet. Some of these Europeans are far ahead of us in many
things. I think we are in advance only in one universal democracy of
freedom. But then, that is everything.
"Nov. 17, 1875. I think you are right to decide to make your home
pleasant at any sacrifice which involves _only_ silence. And you are so
all over a radical, that it won't hurt you to be toned down a little,
and in a few years, as the world moves, your family will have moved one
way and you the other a little, and you will suddenly find yourself on
the same plane. It is much the way that has been between Miss ---- and
myself. To-day she is more of a women's rights woman than I was when I
first knew her, while I begin to think that the girls would better dress
at tea-time, though I think on that subject we thought alike at first,
so I'll take another example.
"I have learned to think that a _young_ girl would better not walk to
town alone, even in the daytime. When I came to Vassar I should have
allowed a child to do it. But I never knew _much_ of the world--never
shall--nor will you. And as we were both born a little deficient in
worldly caution and worldly policy, let us receive from others those,
lessons,--_do as well as we can_, and keep our _heart_ unworldly if our
manners take on something of those ways.
"Oct. 25, 1875.... I have scarcely got over the _tire_ of the congress
[Footnote: The annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of
Women, of which Miss Mitchell was president. It was held at Syracuse,
N.Y., in 1875.] yet, although it is a week since I returned. I feel as
if a great burden was lifted from my soul. You will see my 'speech' in
the 'Woman's Journal,' but in the last sentence it should be 'eastward'
and not '_earth_ward.' It was a grand affair, and babies came in arms.
School-boys stood close to the platform, and school-girls came, books in
hand. The hall was a beautiful opera-house, and could hold at least one
thousand seven hundred. It was packed and jammed, and rough men stood in
the aisles. When I had to speak to announce a paper I stood _very still_
until they became quiet. Once, as I stood in that way, a man at the
extreme rear, before I had spoken a word, shouted out, 'Louder!' We all
burst into a laugh. Then, of course, I had to make them quiet again. I
lifted the little mallet, but I did not strike it, and they all became
still. I was surprised at the good breeding of such a crowd. In the
evening about half was made up of men. I could not have believed that
such a crowd would keep still when I asked them to.
"They say I did well. Think of my developing as a president of a social
science society in my old age!"
Miss Mitchell took no prominent part in the woman suffrage movement, but
she believed in it firmly, and its leaders were some of her most highly
valued friends.
"Sept. 7, 1875. Went to a picnic for woman suffrage at a beautiful grove
at Medfield, Mass. It was a gathering of about seventy-five persons
(mostly from Needham), whose president seemed to be vigorous and
good-spirited.
"The main purpose of the meeting was to try to affect public sentiment
to such an extent as to lead to the defeat of a man who, when the
subject of woman suffrage was before the Legislature, said that the
women had all they wanted now--that they could get anything with 'their
eyes as bright as the buttons on an angel's coat.' Lucy Stone, Mr.
Blackwell, Rev. Mr. Bush, Miss Eastman, and William Lloyd Garrison
spoke.
"Garrison did not look a day older than when I first saw him, forty
years ago; he spoke well--they said with less fire than he used in his
younger days. Garrison said what every one says--that the struggle for
women was the old anti-slavery struggle over again; that as he looked
around at the audience beneath the trees, it seemed to be the same scene
that he had known before.
"... We had a very good bit of missionary work done at our table (at
Vassar) to-day. A man whom we all despise began to talk against voting
by women. I felt almost inclined to pay him something for his remarks.
"A group from the Washington Women Suffrage Association stopped here
to-day.... I liked Susan B. Anthony very much. She seemed much worn, but
was all alive. She is eighteen months younger than I, but seems much
more alert. I suppose brickbats are livelier than logarithms!"
Miss Mitchell was a member of several learned societies.
She was the first woman elected to membership of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, whose headquarters are at Boston.
In 1869 she was chosen a member of the American Philosophical Society, a
society founded by Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science made her a
member in the early part of its existence. Miss Mitchell was one of the
earliest members of the American Association for the Advancement of
Women. At one period she was president of the association, and for many
years served as chairman of the committee on science. In this latter
capacity she reached, through circulars and letters, women studying
science in all parts of the country; and the reports, as shown from year
to year, show a wonderful increase in the number of such women. She was
a member, also, of the New England Women's Club, of Boston, and after
her annual visit at Christmas she entertained her students at Vassar
with descriptions of the receptions and meeting of that body. She was
also a member of the New York Sorosis. She received the degree of Ph.D.
from Rutgers Female College in 1870, her first degree of LL.D. from
Hanover College in 1832, and her last LL.D. from Columbia College in
1887.
Miss Mitchell had no ambition to appear in print, and most of her
published articles were in response to applications from publishers.
A paper entitled "Mary Somerville" appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly"
for May, 1860. There were several articles in "Silliman's
Journal,"--mostly results of observations on Jupiter and Saturn,--a few
popular science papers in "Hours at Home," and one on the "Herschels,"
printed in "The Century" just after her death.
Miss Mitchell also read a few lectures to small societies, and to one or
two girls' schools; but she never allowed such outside work to interfere
with her duties at Vassar College, to which she devoted herself heart
and soul.
When the failure of her health became apparent to the members of her
family, it was with the utmost difficulty that Miss Mitchell could be
prevailed upon to resign her position. She had fondly hoped to remain at
Vassar until she should be seventy years old, of which she lacked about
six months. It was hoped that complete rest might lead to several years
more of happy life for her; but it was not to be so--she died in Lynn,
June 28, 1889.
It was one of Miss Mitchell's boasts that she had earned a salary for
over fifty years, without any intermission. She also boasted that in
July, 1883, when she slipped and fell, spraining herself so that she was
obliged to remain in the house a day or two, it was the first time in
her memory when she had remained in the house a day. In fact, she made a
point of walking out every day, no matter what the weather might be. A
serious fall, during her illness in Lynn, stopped forever her daily
walks.
She had resigned her position in January, 1888. The resignation was laid
on the table until the following June, at which time the trustees made
her Professor Emeritus, and offered her a home for life at the
observatory. This offer she did not accept, preferring to live with her
family in Lynn. The following extracts from letters which she received
at this time show with what reverence and love she was regarded by
faculty and students.
"Jan. 9, 1888.... You may be sure that we shall be glad to do all we can
to honor one whose faithful service and honesty of heart and life have
been among the chief inspirations of Vassar College throughout its
history. Of public reputation you have doubtless had enough, but I am
sure you cannot have too much of the affection and esteem which we feel
toward you, who have had the privilege of working, with you."
"Jan. 10, 1888. You will consent, you _must_ consent, to having your
home here, and letting the work go. It is not astronomy that is wanted
and needed, it is Maria Mitchell.... The richest part of my life here is
connected with you.... I cannot picture Vassar without you. There's
nothing to point to!"
"May 5, 1889. In all the great wonder of life, you have given me more of
what I have wanted than any other creature ever gave me. I hoped I
should amount to something for your sake."
Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, at one time resident physician at the college, said
of her: "She was quick to withdraw objections when she was convinced of
error in her judgment. I well remember her opposition to the ground I
took in my 'maiden speech' in faculty meeting, and how, at supper, she
stood, before sitting down, to say, 'You were right this afternoon. I
have thought the matter over, and, while I do not like to believe it, I
think it is true.'"
Of her rooms at the observatory, Miss Grace Anna Lewis, who had been a
guest, wrote thus: "Her furniture was plain and simple, and there was a
frank simplicity corresponding therewith which made me believe she chose
to have it so. It looked natural for her. I think I should have been
disappointed had I found her rooms fitted up with undue elegance."
"Professor Mitchell's position at Vassar gave astronomy a prominence
there that it has never had in any other college for women, and in but
few for men. I suppose it would have made no difference what she had
taught. Doubtless she never suspected how many students endured the
mathematical work of junior Astronomy in order to be within range of her
magnetic personality." (From "Wide Awake," September, 1889.)
A graduate writes: "Her personality was so strong that it was felt all
over the college, even by those who were not in her department, and who
only admired her from a distance."
Extract from a letter written after her death by a former pupil: "I
count Maria Mitchell's services to Vassar and her pupils infinitely
valuable, and her character and attainments great beyond anything that
has yet been told.... I was one of the pupils upon whom her freedom from
all the shams and self-deceptions made an impression that elevated my
whole standard, mental and moral.... The influence of her own personal
character sustains its supreme test in the evidence constantly
accumulating, that it strengthens rather than weakens with the lapse of
time. Her influence upon her pupils who were her daily companions has
been permanent, character-moulding, and unceasingly progressive."
President Taylor, in his address at her funeral, said: "If I were to
select for comment the one most striking trait of her character, I
should name her _genuineness_. There was no false note in Maria
Mitchell's thinking or utterance....
"One who has known her kindness to little children, who has watched her
little evidences of thoughtful care for her associates and friends, who
has seen her put aside her own long-cherished rights that she might make
the way of a new and untried officer easier, cannot forget the tenderer
side of her character....
"But if would be vain for me to try to tell just what it was in Miss
Mitchell that attracted us who loved her. It was this combination of
great strength and independence, of deep affection and tenderness,
breathed through and through with the sentiment of a perfectly genuine
life, which has made for us one of the pilgrim-shrines of life the study
in the observatory of Vassar College where we have known her _at home_,
surrounded by the evidences of her honorable professional career. She
has been an impressive figure in our time, and one whose influence
lives."
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
On the 17th of December, 1831, a gold medal of the value of twenty
ducats was founded, at the suggestion of Professor Schumacher, of
Altona, by his Majesty Frederic VI., at that time king of Denmark, to be
awarded to any person who should first discover a telescopic comet. This
foundation and the conditions on which the medal would be awarded were
announced to the public in the "Astronomische Nachrichten" for the 20th
of March, 1832. The regulations underwent a revision after a few years,
and in April, 1840 ("Astronomische Nachrichten," No. 400), were
republished as follows:
"1. The medal will be given to the first discoverer of any comet, which,
at the time of its discovery, is invisible to the naked eye, and whose
periodic time is unknown.