Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals - Maria Mitchell
"I watched it from 8.30 to 11.30 almost without cessation, and was quite
sure at 11.30 that its position had changed with regard to the
neighboring stars. I counted its distance from the known nebula several
times, but the whole affair was difficult, for there were flying clouds,
and sometimes the nebula and comet were too indistinct to be definitely
seen.
"The 19th was cloudy and the 20th the same, with the variety of
occasional breaks, through which I saw the nebula, but not the comet.
"On the 21st came a circular, and behold Mr. Van Arsdale had seen it on
the 13th, but had not been sure of it until the 15th, on account of the
clouds.
"I was too well pleased with having really made the discovery to care
because I was not first.
"Let the Dutchman have the reward of his sturdier frame and steadier
nerves!
"Especially could I be a Christian because the 13th was cloudy, and more
especially because I dreaded the responsibility of making the
computations, _nolens volens_, which I must have done to be able to call
it mine....
"I made observations for three hours last night, and am almost ill
to-day from fatigue; still I have worked all day, trying to reduce the
places, and mean to work hard again to-night.
"Sept. 25, 1854. I began to recompute for the comet, with observations
of Cambridge and Washington, to-day. I have had a fit of despondency in
consequence of being obliged to renounce my own observations as too
rough for use. The best that can be said of my life so far is that it
has been industrious, and the best that can be said of me is that I have
not pretended to what I was not.
"October 10. As soon as I had run through the computations roughly for
the comet, so as to make up my mind that by my own observations (which
were very wrong) the Perihelion was passed, and nothing more to be hoped
for from observations, I seized upon a pleasant day and went to the Cape
for an excursion. We went to Yarmouth, Sandwich, and Plymouth, enjoying
the novelty of the new car-route. It really seemed like railway
travelling on our own island, so much sand and so flat a country.
"The little towns, too, seemed quaint and odd, and the old gray cottages
looked as if they belonged to the last century, and were waked from a
long nap by the railway whistle.
"I thought Sandwich a beautiful, and Plymouth an interesting, town. I
would fain have gone off into some poetical quotation, such as 'The
breaking waves dashed high' or 'The Pilgrim fathers, where are they?'
but K., who had been there before, desired me not to be absurd, but to
step quietly on to the half-buried rock and quietly off. Younger sisters
know a deal, so I did as I was bidden to do, and it was just as well not
to make myself hoarse without an appreciative audience.
"I liked the picture by Sargent in Pilgrim Hall, but seeing Plymouth on
a mild, sunny day, with everything looking bright and pleasant, it was
difficult to conceive of the landing of the Pilgrims as an event, or
that the settling of such a charming spot required any heroism.
"The picture, of course, represents the dreariness of winter, and my
feelings were moved by the chilled appearance of the little children,
and the pathetic countenance of little Peregrine White, who, considering
that he was born in the harbor, is wonderfully grown up before they are
welcomed by Samoset. According to history little Peregrine was born
about December 6 and Samoset met them about March 16; so he was three
months old, but he is plainly a forward child, for he looks up very
knowingly. Such a child had immortality thrust upon him from his birth.
It must have had a deadening influence upon him to know that he was a
marked man whether he did anything worthy of mark or not. He does not
seem to have made any figure after his entrance into the world, though
he must have created a great sensation when he came.
"October 17. I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it
is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven
years ago when I first did this kind of work. To be sure, I have only
once in the time computed a parabolic orbit; but it seems to me that I
know no more in general. I think I am a little better thinker, that I
take things less upon trust, but at the same time I trust myself much
less. The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so
limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize
only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.
"Will it really unroll to us at some future time? Aside from the
gratification of the affections in another world, that of the intellect
must be great if it is enlarged and its desires are the same.
"Nov. 24, 1854. Yesterday James Freeman Clarke, the biographer of
Margaret Fuller, came into the Atheneum. It was plain that he came to
see me and not the institution.... He rushed into talk at once, mostly
on people, and asked me about my astronomical labors. As it was a kind
of flattery, I repaid it in kind by asking him about Margaret Fuller. He
said she did not strike any one as a person of intellect or as a
student, for all her faculties were kept so much abreast that none had
prominence. I wanted to ask if she was a lovable person, but I did not
think he would be an unbiassed judge, she was so much attached to him.
"Dec. 5, 1854. The love of one's own sex is precious, for it is neither
provoked by vanity nor retained by flattery; it is genuine and sincere.
I am grateful that I have had much of this in my life.
"The comet looked in upon us on the 29th. It made a twilight call,
looking sunny and bright, as if it had just warmed itself in the
equinoctial rays. A boy on the street called my attention to it, but I
found on hurrying home that father had already seen it, and had ranged
it behind buildings so as to get a rough position.
"It was piping cold, but we went to work in good earnest that night, and
the next night on which we could see it, which was not until April.
"I was dreadfully busy, and a host of little annoyances crowded upon me.
I had a good star near it in the field of my comet-seeker, but _what_
star?
"On that rested everything, and I could not be sure even from the
catalogue, for the comet and the star were so much in the twilight that
I could get no good neighboring stars. We called it Arietes, or 707.
"Then came a waxing moon, and we waxed weary in trying to trace the
fainter and fainter comet in the mists of twilight and the glare of
moonlight.
"Next I broke a screw of my instrument, and found that no screw of that
description could be bought in the town.
"I started off to find a man who could make one, and engaged him to do
so the next day. The next day was Fast Day; all the world fasted, at
least from labor.
"However, the screw was made, and it fitted nicely. The clouds cleared,
and we were likely to have a good night. I put up my instrument, but
scarcely had the screw-driver touched the new screw than out it flew
from its socket, rolled along the floor of the 'walk,' dropped quietly
through a crack into the gutter of the house-roof. I heard it click, and
felt very much like using language unbecoming to a woman's mouth.
"I put my eye down to the crack, but could not see it. There was but one
thing to be done,--the floor-boards must come up. I got a hatchet, but
could do nothing. I called father; he brought a crowbar and pried up the
board, then crawled under it and found the screw. I took good care not
to lose it a second time.
"The instrument was fairly mounted when the clouds mounted to keep it
company, and the comet and I again parted.
"In all observations, the blowing out of a light by a gust of wind is a
very common and very annoying accident; but I once met with a much worse
one, for I dropped a chronometer, and it rolled out of its box on to the
ground. We picked it up in a great panic, but it had not even altered
its rate, as we found by later observations.
"The glaring eyes of the cat, who nightly visited me, were at one time
very annoying, and a man who climbed up a fence and spoke to me, in the
stillness of the small hours, fairly shook not only my equanimity, but
the pencil which I held in my hand. He was quite innocent of any
intention to do me harm, but he gave me a great fright.
"The spiders and bugs which swarm in my observing-houses I have rather
an attachment for, but they must not crawl over my recording-paper. Rats
are my abhorrence, and I learned with pleasure that some poison had been
placed under the transit-house.
"One gets attached (if the term may be used) to certain midnight
apparitions. The Aurora Borealis is always a pleasant companion; a
meteor seems to come like a messenger from departed spirits; and the
blossoming of trees in the moonlight becomes a sight looked for with
pleasure.
"Aside from the study of astronomy, there is the same enjoyment in a
night upon the housetop, with the stars, as in the midst of other grand
scenery; there is the same subdued quiet and grateful seriousness; a
calm to the troubled spirit, and a hope to the desponding.
"Even astronomers who are as well cared for as are those of Cambridge
have their annoyances, and even men as skilled as they are make
blunders.
"I have known one of the Bonds,[Footnote: Of the Harvard College
Observatory.] with great effort, turn that huge telescope down to the
horizon to make an observation upon a blazing comet seen there, and when
he had found it in his glass, find also that it was not a comet, but the
nebula of Andromeda, a cluster of stars on which he had spent much time,
and which he had made a special object of study.
"Dec. 26, 1854. They were wonderful men, the early astronomers. That was
a great conception, which now seems to us so simple, that the earth
turns upon its axis, and a still greater one that it revolves about the
sun (to show this last was worth a man's lifetime, and it really almost
cost the life of Galileo). Somehow we are ready to think that they had a
wider field than we for speculation, that truth being all unknown it was
easier to take the first step in its paths. But is the region of truth
limited? Is it not infinite?... We know a few things which were once
hidden, and being known they seem easy; but there are the flashings of
the Northern Lights--'Across the lift they start and shift;' there is
the conical zodiacal beam seen so beautifully in the early evenings of
spring and the early mornings of autumn; there are the startling comets,
whose use is all unknown; there are the brightening and flickering
variable stars, whose cause is all unknown; and the meteoric
showers--and for all of these the reasons are as clear as for the
succession of day and night; they lie just beyond the daily mist of our
minds, but our eyes have not yet pierced through it."
CHAPTER III
1855-1857
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY--RACHEL--EMERSON--A HARD WINTER
"Jan. 1, 1855. I put some wires into my little transit this morning. I
dreaded it so much, when I found yesterday that it must be done, that it
disturbed my sleep. It was much easier than I expected. I took out the
little collimating screws first, then I drew out the tube, and in that I
found a brass plate screwed on the diaphragm which contained the lines.
I was at first a little puzzled to know which screws held this diaphragm
in its place, and, as I was very anxious not to unscrew the wrong ones,
I took time to consider and found I need turn only two. Then out slipped
the little plate with its three wires where five should have been, two
having been broken. As I did not know how to manage a spider's web, I
took the hairs from my own head, taking care to pick out white ones
because I have no black ones to spare. I put in the two, after first
stretching them over pasteboard, by sticking them with sealing-wax
dissolved in alcohol into the little grooved lines which I found. When I
had, with great labor, adjusted these, as I thought, firmly, I perceived
that some of the wax was on the hairs and would make them yet coarser,
and they were already too coarse; so I washed my little camel's-hair
brush which I had been using, and began to wash them with clear alcohol.
Almost at once I washed out another wire and soon another and another. I
went to work patiently and put in the five perpendicular ones besides
the horizontal one, which, like the others, had frizzled up and appeared
to melt away. With another hour's labor I got in the five, when a rude
motion raised them all again and I began over. Just at one o'clock I had
got them all in again. I attempted then to put the diaphragm back into
its place. The sealing-wax was not dry, and with a little jar I sent the
wires all agog. This time they did not come out of the little grooved
lines into which they were put, and I hastened to take out the brass
plate and set them in parallel lines. I gave up then for the day, but,
as they looked well and were certainly in firmly, I did not consider
that I had made an entire failure. I thought it nice ladylike work to
manage such slight threads and turn such delicate screws; but fine as
are the hairs of one's head, I shall seek something finer, for I can see
how clumsy they will appear when I get on the eyepiece and magnify their
imperfections. They look parallel now to the eye, but with a magnifying
power a very little crook will seem a billowy wave, and a faint star
will hide itself in one of the yawning abysses.
"January 15. Finding the hairs which I had put into my instrument not
only too coarse, but variable and disposed to curl themselves up at a
change of weather, I wrote to George Bond to ask him how I should
procure spider lines. He replied that the web from cocoons should be
used, and that I should find it difficult at this time of year to get at
them. I remembered at once that I had seen two in the library room of
the Atheneum, which I had carefully refrained from disturbing. I found
them perfect, and unrolled them.... Fearing that I might not succeed in
managing them, I procured some hairs from C.'s head. C. being not quite
a year old, his hair is remarkably fine and sufficiently long.... I made
the perpendicular wires of the spider's webs, breaking them and doing
the work over again a great many times.... I at length got all in,
crossing the five perpendicular ones with a horizontal one from C.'s
spinning-wheel.... After twenty-four hours' exposure to the weather, I
looked at them. The spider-webs had not changed, they were plainly used
to a chill and made to endure changes of temperature; but C.'s hair,
which had never felt a cold greater than that of the nursery, nor a
change more decided than from his mother's arms to his father's, had
knotted up into a decided curl!--N.B. C. may expect ringlets.
"January 22. Horace Greeley, in an article in a recent number of the
'Tribune,' says that the fund left by Smithson is spent by the regents
of that institution in publishing books which no publisher would
undertake and which do no good to anybody. Now in our little town of
Nantucket, with our little Atheneum, these volumes are in constant
demand....
"I do not suppose that such works as those issued by the Smithsonian
regents are appreciated by all who turn them over, but the ignorant
learn that such things exist; they perceive that a higher cultivation
than theirs is in the world, and they are stimulated to strive after
greater excellence. So I steadily advocate, in purchasing books for the
Atheneum, the lifting of the people. 'Let us buy, not such books as the
people want, but books just above their wants, and they will reach up to
take what is put out for them.'
"Sept. 10, 1855. To know what one ought to do is certainly the hardest
thing in life. 'Doing' is comparatively easy; but there are no laws for
your individual case--yours is one of a myriad.
"There are laws of right and wrong in general, but they do not seem to
bear upon any particular case.
"In chess-playing you can refer to rules of movement, for the chess-men
are few, and the positions in which they may be placed, numerous as they
are, have a limit.
"But is there any limit to the different positions of human beings
around you? Is there any limit to the peculiarities of circumstances?
"Here a man, however much of a copyist he may be by nature, comes down
to simple originality, unless he blindly follows the advice of some
friend; for there is no precedent in anything exactly like his case; he
must decide for himself, and must take the step alone; and fearfully,
cautiously, and distrustingly must we all take many of our steps, for we
see but a little way at best, and we can foresee nothing at all.
"September 13. I read this morning an article in 'Putnam's Magazine,' on
Rachel. I have been much interested in this woman as a genius, though I
am pained by the accounts of her career in point of morals, and I am
wearied with the glitter of her jewelry. Night puts on a jewelled robe
which few admire, compared with the admiration for marketable jewelry.
The New York 'Tribune' descends to the rating of the value of those worn
by her, and it is the prominent point, or rather it makes the multitude
of prominent points, when she is spoken of.
"The writer in 'Putnam' does not go into these small matters, but he
attempts a criticism on acting, to which I am not entirely a convert. He
maintains that if an actor should really show a character in such light
that we could not tell the impersonation from the reality, the stage
would lose its interest. I do not think so. We should draw back, of
course, from physical suffering; but yet we should be charmed to suppose
anything real, which we had desired to see. If we felt that we really
met Cardinal Wolsey or Henry VIII. in his days of glory, would it not be
a lifelong memory to us, very different from the effect of the stage,
and if for a few moments we really _felt_ that we had met them, would it
not lift us into a new kind of being?
"What would we not give to see Julius Caesar and the soothsayer, just as
they stood in Rome as Shakspere represents them? Why, we travel hundreds
of miles to see the places noted for the doings of these old Romans; and
if we could be made to believe that we met one of the smaller men, even,
of that day, our ecstasy would be unbounded. 'A tin pan so painted as to
deceive is atrocious,' says this writer. Of course, for we are not
interested in a tin pan; but give us a portrait of Shakspere or Milton
so that we shall feel that we have met them, and I see no atrocity in
the matter. We honor the homes of these men, and we joy in the hope of
seeing them. What would be beyond seeing them in life?
"October 31. I saw Rachel in 'Phedre' and in 'Adrienne.' I had
previously asked a friend if I, in my ignorance of acting, and in my
inability to tell good from poor, should really perceive a marked
difference between Rachel and her aids. She thought I should. I did
indeed! In 'Phedre,' which I first saw, she was not aided at all by her
troupe; they were evidently ill at ease in the Greek dress and in Greek
manners; while she had assimilated herself to the whole. It is founded
on the play of Euripides, and even to Rachel the passion which she
represents as Phedre must have been too strange to be natural.
Hippolytus refuses the love which Phedre offers after a long struggle
with herself, and this gives cause for the violent bursts in which
Rachel shows her power. It was an outburst of passion of which I have no
conception, and I felt as if I saw a new order of being; not a woman,
but a personified passion. The vehemence and strength were wonderful. It
was in parts very touching. There was as fine an opportunity for Aricia
to show some power as for Phedre, but the automaton who represented
Aricia had no power to show. Oenon, whom I took to be the sister Sarah,
was something of an actress, but her part was so hateful that no one
could applaud her. I felt in reading 'Phedre,' and in hearing it, that
it was a play of high order, and that I learned some little philosophy
from some of its sentiments; but for 'Adrienne' I have a contempt. The
play was written by Scribe specially for Rachel, and the French acting
was better done by the other performers than the Greek. I have always
disliked to see death represented on the stage. Rachel's representation
was awful! I could not take my eyes from the scene, and I held my breath
in horror; the death was so much to the life. It is said that she
changes color. I do not know that she does, but it looked like a ghastly
hue that came over her pale face.
"I was displeased at the constant standing. Neither as Greeks nor as
Frenchmen did they sit at all; only when dying did Rachel need a chair.
They made love standing, they told long stories standing, they took
snuff in that position, hat in hand, and Rachel fainted upon the breast
of some friend from the same fatiguing attitude.
"The audience to hear 'Adrienne' was very fine. The Unitarian clergymen
and the divinity students seemed to have turned out.
"Most of the two thousand listeners followed with the book, and when the
last word was uttered on the French page, over turned the two thousand
leaves, sounding like a shower of rain. The applause was never very
great; it is said that Rachel feels this as a Boston peculiarity, but
she ought also to feel the compliment of so large an audience in a city
where foreigners are so few and the population so small compared to that
of New York.
"Nov. 14, 1855. Last night I heard Emerson give a lecture. I pity the
reporter who attempts to give it to the world. I began to listen with a
determination to remember it in order, but it was without method, or
order, or system. It was like a beam of light moving in the undulatory
waves, meeting with occasional meteors in its path; it was exceedingly
captivating. It surprised me that there was not only no commonplace
thought, but there was no commonplace expression. If he quoted, he
quoted from what we had not read; if he told an anecdote, it was one
that had not reached us. At the outset he was very severe upon the
science of the age. He said that inventors and discoverers helped
themselves very much, but they did not help the rest of the world; that
a great man was felt to the centre of the Copernican system; that a
botanist dried his plants, but the plants had their revenge and dried
the botanist; that a naturalist bottled up reptiles, but in return the
man was bottled up.
"There was a pitiful truth in all this, but there are glorious
exceptions. Professor Peirce is anything but a formula, though he deals
in formulae.
"The lecture turned at length upon beauty, and it was evident that
personal beauty had made Emerson its slave many a time, and I suppose
every heart in the house admitted the truth of his words....
"It was evident that Mr. Emerson was not at ease, for he declared that
good manners were more than beauty of face, and good expression better
than good features. He mentioned that Sir Philip Sydney was not
handsome, though the boast of English society; and he spoke of the
astonishing beauty of the Duchess of Hamilton, to see whom hundreds
collected when she took a ride. I think in these cases there is
something besides beauty; there was rank in that of the Duchess, in the
case of Sydney there was no need of beauty at all.
"Dec. 16, 1855. All along this year I have felt that it was a hard
year--the hardest of my life. And I have kept enumerating to myself my
many trials; to-day it suddenly occurred to me that my blessings were
much more numerous. If mother's illness was a sore affliction, her
recovery is a great blessing; and even the illness itself has its bright
side, for we have joyed in showing her how much we prize her continued
life. If I have lost some friends by death, I have not lost all. If I
have worked harder than I felt that I could bear, how much better is
that than not to have as much work as I wanted to do. I have earned more
money than in any preceding year; I have studied less, but have observed
more, than I did last year. I have saved more money than ever before,
hoping for Europe in 1856." ...
Miss Mitchell from her earliest childhood had had a great desire to
travel in Europe. She received a very small salary for her services in
the Atheneum, but small as it was she laid by a little every year.
She dressed very simply and spent as little as possible on
herself--which was also true of her later years. She took a little
journey every year, and could always have little presents ready for the
birthdays and Christmas days, and for the necessary books which could
not be found in the Atheneum library, and which she felt that she ought
to own herself,--all this on a salary which an ordinary school-girl in
these days would think too meagre to supply her with dress alone.
In this family the children were not ashamed to say, "I can't afford
it," and were taught that nothing was cheap that they could not pay
for--a lesson that has been valuable to them all their lives.