Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals - Maria Mitchell
".... 1855. Deacon Greeley, of Boston, urged my going to Boston and
giving some lectures to get money. I told him I could not think of it
just now, as I wanted to go to Europe. 'On what money?' said he. 'What I
have earned,' I replied. 'Bless me!' said he; 'am I talking to a
capitalist? What a mistake I have made.'"
During the time of the prosperity of the town, the winters were very
sociable and lively; but when the inhabitants began to leave for more
favorable opportunities for getting a livelihood, the change was felt
very seriously, especially in the case of an exceptionally stormy
winter. Here is an extract showing how Miss Mitchell and her family
lived during one of these winters:
"Jan. 22, 1857. Hard winters are becoming the order of things. Winter
before last was hard, last winter was harder, and this surpasses all
winters known before.
"We have been frozen into our island now since the 6th. No one cared
much about it for the first two or three days; the sleighing was good,
and all the world was out trying their horses on Main street--the
racecourse of the world. Day after day passed, and the thermometer sank
to a lower point, and the winds rose to a higher, and sleighing became
uncomfortable; and even the dullest man longs for the cheer of a
newspaper. The 'Nantucket Inquirer' came out for awhile, but at length
it had nothing to tell and nothing to inquire about, and so kept its
peace.
"After about a week a vessel was seen off Siasconset, and boarded by a
pilot. Her captain said he would go anywhere and take anybody, as all he
wanted was a harbor. Two men whose business would suffer if they
remained at home took passage in her, and with the pilot, Patterson, she
left in good weather and was seen off Chatham at night. It was hoped
that Patterson would return and bring at least a few newspapers, but no
more is known of them. Our postmaster thought he was not allowed to send
the mails by such a conveyance.
"Yesterday we got up quite an excitement because a large steamship was
seen near the Haul-over. She set a flag for a pilot, and was boarded. It
was found that she was out of course, twenty days from Glasgow, bound to
New York. What the European news is we do not yet know, but it is plain
that we are nearer to Europe than to Hyannis. Christians as we are, I am
afraid we were all sorry that she did not come ashore. We women revelled
in the idea of the rich silks she would probably throw upon the beach,
and the men thought a good job would be made by steamboat companies and
wreck agents.
"Last night the weather was so mild that a plan was made for cutting out
the steamboat; all the Irishmen in town were ordered to be on the harbor
with axes, shovels, and saws at seven this morning. The poor fellows
were exulting in the prospect of a job, but they are sadly balked, for
this morning at seven a hard storm was raging--snow and a good
north-west wind. What has become of the English steamer no one knows,
but the wind blows off shore, so she will not come any nearer to us.
"Inside of the house we amuse ourselves in various ways. F.'s family and
ours form a club meeting three times a week, and writing 'machine
poetry' in great quantities. Occasionally something very droll puts us
in a roar of laughter. F., E., and K. are, I think, rather the smartest,
though Mr. M. has written rather the best of all. At the next meeting,
each of us is to produce a sonnet on a subject which we draw by lot. I
have written mine and tried to be droll. K. has written hers and is
serious.
"I am sadly tried by this state of things. I cannot hear from Cambridge
(the Nautical Almanac office), and am out of work; it is cloudy most of
the time, and I cannot observe; and I had fixed upon just this time for
taking a journey. My trunk has been half packed for a month.
"January 23. Foreseeing that the thermometer would show a very low point
last night, we sat up until near midnight, when it stood one and
one-half below zero. The stars shone brightly, and the wind blew freshly
from west north-west.
"This morning the wind is the same, and the mercury stood at six and
one-half below zero at seven o'clock, and now at ten A.M. is not above
zero. The Coffin School dismissed its scholars. Miss F. suffered much
from the exposure on her way to school.
"The 'Inquirer' came out this morning, giving the news from Europe
brought by the steamer which lies off 'Sconset. No coal has yet been
carried to the steamer, the carts which started for 'Sconset being
obliged to return.
"There are about seven hundred barrels of flour in town; it is admitted
that fresh meat is getting scarce; the streets are almost impassable
from the snow-drifts.
"K. and I have hit upon a plan for killing time. We are learning
poetry--she takes twenty lines of Goldsmith's 'Traveller,' and I twenty
lines of the 'Deserted Village.' It will take us twenty days to learn
the whole, and we hope to be stopped in our course by the opening of the
harbor. Considering that K. has a fiance from whom she cannot hear a
word, she carries herself very amicably towards mankind. She is making
herself a pair of shoes, which look very well; I have made myself a
morning-dress since we were closed in.
"Last night I took my first lesson in whist-playing. I learned in one
evening to know the king, queen, and jack apart, and to understand what
my partner meant when she winked at me.
"The worst of this condition of things is that we shall bear the marks
of it all our lives. We are now sixteen daily papers behind the rest of
the world, and in those sixteen papers are items known to all the people
in all the cities, which will never be known to us. How prices have
fluctuated in that time we shall not know--what houses have burned down,
what robberies have been committed. When the papers do come, each of us
will rush for the latest dates; the news of two weeks ago is now
history, and no one reads history, especially the history of one's own
country.
"I bought a copy of 'Aurora Leigh' just before the freezing up, and I
have been careful, as it is the only copy on the island, to circulate it
freely. It must have been a pleasant visitor in the four or five
households which it has entered. We have had Dr. Kane's book and now
have the 'Japan Expedition.'
"The intellectual suffering will, I think, be all. I have no fear of
scarcity of provisions or fuel. There are old houses enough to burn.
Fresh meat is rather scarce because the English steamer required so much
victualling. We have a barrel of pork and a barrel of flour in the
house, and father has chickens enough to keep us a good while.
"There are said to be some families who are in a good deal of suffering,
for whom the Howard Society is on the lookout. Mother gives very freely
to Bridget, who has four children to support with only the labor of her
hands.
"The Coffin School has been suspended one day on account of the heaviest
storm, and the Unitarian church has had but one service. No great damage
has been done by the gales. My observing-seat came thundering down the
roof one evening, about ten o'clock, but all the world understood its
cry of 'Stand from under,' and no one was hurt. Several windows were
blown in at midnight, and houses shook so that vases fell from the
mantelpieces.
"The last snow drifted so that the sleighing was difficult, and at
present the storm is so smothering that few are out. A. has been out to
school every day, and I have not failed to go out into the air once a
day to take a short walk.
"January 24. We left the mercury one below zero when we went to bed last
night, and it was at zero when we rose this morning. But it rises
rapidly, and now, at eleven A.M., it is as high as fifteen. The weather
is still and beautiful; the English steamer is still safe at her
moorings.
"Our little club met last night, each with a sonnet. I did the best I
could with a very bad subject. K. and E. rather carried the honors away,
but Mr. J. M.'s was very taking. Our 'crambo' playing was rather dull,
all of us having exhausted ourselves on the sonnets. We seem to have
settled ourselves quietly into a tone of resignation in regard to the
weather; we know that we cannot 'get out,' any more than Sterne's
Starling, and we know that it is best not to fret.
"The subject which I have drawn for the next poem is 'Sunrise,' about
which I know very little. K. and I continue to learn twenty lines of
poetry a day, and I do not find it unpleasant, though the 'Deserted
Village' is rather monotonous.
"We hear of no suffering in town for fuel or provisions, and I think we
could stand a three months' siege without much inconvenience as far as
the physicals are concerned.
"January 26. The ice continues, and the cold. The weather is beautiful,
and with the thermometer at fourteen I swept with the telescope an hour
and a half last night, comfortably. The English steamer will get off
to-morrow. It is said that they burned their cabin doors last night to
keep their water hot. Many people go out to see her; she lies off
'Sconset, about half a mile from shore. We have sent letters by her
which, I hope, may relieve anxiety.
"K. bought a backgammon board to-day. Clifford [the little nephew] came
in and spent the morning.
"January 29. We have had now two days of warm weather, but there is yet
no hope of getting our steamboat off. Day before yesterday we went to
'Sconset to see the English steamer. She lay so near the shore that we
could hear the orders given, and see the people on board. When we went
down the bank the boats were just pushing from the shore, with bags of
coal. They could not go directly to the ship, but rowed some distance
along shore to the north, and then falling into the ice drifted with it
back to the ship. When they reached her a rope was thrown to them, and
they made fast and the coal was raised. We watched them through a glass,
and saw a woman leaning over the side of the ship. The steamer left at
five o'clock that day.
"It was worth the trouble of a ride to 'Sconset to see the masses of
snow on the road. The road had been cleared for the coal-carts, and we
drove through a narrow path, cut in deep snow-banks far above our heads,
sometimes for the length of three or four sleighs. We could not, of
course, turn out for other sleighs, and there was much waiting on this
account. Then, too, the road was much gullied, and we rocked in the
sleigh as we would on shipboard, with the bounding over hillocks of snow
and ice.
"Now, all is changed: the roads are slushy, and the water stands in deep
pools all over the streets. There is a dense fog, very little wind, and
that from the east. The thermometer above thirty-six.
"[Mails arrived February 3, and our steamboat left February 5.]"
CHAPTER IV
1857
SOUTHERN TOUR
In 1857 Miss Mitchell made a tour in the South, having under her charge
the young daughter of a Western banker.
"March 2, 1857. I left Meadville this morning at six o'clock, in a
stage-coach for Erie. I had, early in life, a love for staging, but it
is fast dying out. Nine hours over a rough road are enough to root out
the most passionate love of that kind.
"Our stage was well filled, but in spite of the solid base we
occasionally found ourselves bumping up against the roof or falling
forward upon our opposite neighbors.
"Stage-coaches are, I believe, always the arena for political debate.
To-day we were all on one side, all Buchanan men, and yet all
anti-slavery. It seemed reasonable, as they said, that the South should
cease to push the slave question in regard to Kansas, now that it has
elected its President.
"When I took the stage out to Meadville on the 'mud-road,' it was filled
with Fremont men, and they seemed to me more able men, though they were
no younger and no more cultivated.
"March 5. I believe any one might travel from Maine to Georgia and be
perfectly ignorant of the route, and yet be well taken care of, mainly
from the good-nature in every one.
"I found from Nantucket to Chicago more attention than I desired. I had
a short seat in one of the cars, through the night. I did not think it
large enough for two, and so coiled myself up and went to sleep. There
were men standing all around. Once one of them came along and said
something about there being room for him on my seat. Another man said,
'She's asleep, don't disturb her.' I was too selfish to offer the half
of a short seat, and too tired to reason about the man's being,
possibly, more tired than I.
"I was invariably offered the seat near the window that I might lean
against the side of the car, and one gentleman threw his shawl across my
knees to keep me warm (I was suffering with heat at the time!). Another,
seeing me going to Chicago alone, warned me to beware of the impositions
of hack-drivers; telling me that I must pay two dollars if I did not
make a bargain beforehand. I found it true, for I paid one dollar for
going a few steps only.
"One peculiarity in travelling from East to West is, that you lose the
old men. In the cars in New England you see white-headed men, and I kept
one in the train up to New York, and one of grayish-tinted hair as far
as Erie; but after Cleveland, no man was over forty years old.
"For hundreds of miles the prairie land stretches on the Illinois
Central Railroad between Chicago and St. Louis. It may be pleasant in
summer, but it is a dreary waste in winter. The space is too broad and
too uniform to have beauty. The girdle of trees would be pretty,
doubtless, if seen near, but in the distance and in winter it is only a
black border to a brown plain.
"The State of Illinois must be capitally adapted to railroads on account
of this level, and but little danger can threaten a train from running
off of the track, as it might run on the soil nearly as well as on the
rails.
"Our engine was uncoupled, and had gone on for nearly half a mile
without the cars before the conductor perceived it.
"The time from Chicago to St. Louis is called fifteen hours and a
quarter; we made it twenty-three.
"If the prairie land is good farming-land, Illinois is destined to be a
great State. If its people will think less of the dollar and more of the
refinements of social life and the culture of the mind, it may become
the great State of the Union yet.
"March 12. Planter's Hotel, St. Louis. We visited Mercantile Hall and
the Library. The lecture-room is very spacious and very pretty. No
gallery hides the frescoed walls, and no painful economy has been made
of the space on the floor.
"13th. I begin to perceive the commerce of St. Louis. We went upon the
levee this morning, and for miles the edge was bordered with the pipes
of steamboats, standing like a picket-fence. Then we came to the
wholesale streets, and saw the immense stores for dry-goods and
crockery.
"To-day I have heard of a scientific association called the 'Scientific
Academy of St. Louis,' which is about a year old, and which is about to
publish a volume of transactions, containing an account of an artesian
well, and of some inscriptions just sent home from Nineveh, which Mr.
Gust. Seyffarth has deciphered.
"Mr. Seyffarth must be a remarkable man; he has translated a great many
inscriptions, and is said to surpass Champollion. He has published a
work on Egyptian astronomy, but no copy is in this country.
"Dr. Pope, who called on me, and with whom I was much pleased, told me
of all these things. Western men are so proud of their cities that they
spare no pains to make a person from the Eastern States understand the
resources, and hopes, and plans of their part of the land.
"Rev. Dr. Eliot I have not seen. He is about to establish a university
here, for which he has already $100,000, and the academic part is
already in a state of activity.
"Rev. Mr. Staples tells me that Dr. Eliot puts his hands into the
pockets of his parishioners, who are rich, up to the elbows.
"Altogether, St. Louis is a growing place, and the West has a large hand
and a strong grasp.
"Doctor Seyffarth is a man of more than sixty years, gray-haired,
healthy-looking, and pleasant in manners. He has spent long years of
labor in deciphering the inscriptions found upon ancient pillars,
Egyptian and Arabic, dating five thousand years before Christ. I asked
him if he found the observations continuous, and he said that he did
not, but that they seem to be astrological pictures of the configuration
of the planets, and to have been made at the birth of princes.
"He has just been reading the slabs sent from Nineveh by Mr. Marsh;
their date is only about five hundred years B.C.
"Mr. Seyffarth's published works amount to seventy, and he was surprised
to find a whole set of them in the Astor Library in New York.
"March 19. We came on board of the steamer 'Magnolia,' this morning, in
great spirits. We were a little late, and Miss S. rushed on board as if
she had only New Orleans in view. I followed a little more slowly, and
the brigadier-general came after, in a sober and dignified manner.
"We were scarcely on board when the plank was pulled in, and a few
minutes passed and we were afloat on the Mississippi river. Miss S. and
myself were the only lady passengers; we had, therefore, the whole range
of staterooms from which to choose. Each could have a stateroom to
herself, and we talked in admiration of the pleasant times we should
have, watching the scenery from the stateroom windows, or from the
saloon, reading, etc.
"We started off finely. I, who had been used only to the rough waters of
the Atlantic coast, was surprised at the steady gliding of the boat. I
saw nothing of the mingling of the waters of the Missouri and the
Mississippi of which I had been told. Perhaps I needed somebody to point
out the difference.
"The two banks of the river were at first much alike, but after a few
hours the left bank became more hilly, and at intervals presented bluffs
and rocks, rude and irregular in shape, which we imagined to be ruins of
some old castle.
"At intervals, too, we passed steamers going up to St. Louis, all laden
with passengers. We exulted in our majestic march over the waters. I
thought it the very perfection of travelling, and wished that all my
family and all my friends were on board.
"I wondered at the stupidity of the rest of the world, and thought that
they ought all to leave the marts of business, to step from the desk,
the counting-room, and the workshop on board the 'Magnolia,' and go down
the length of the 'Father of Waters.'
"And so they would, I suppose, but for sand-bars. Here we are five hours
out, and fast aground! We were just at dinner, the captain making
himself agreeable, the dinner showing itself to be good, when a peculiar
motion of the boat made the captain heave a sigh--he had been heaving
the lead all the morning. 'Ah,' he said, 'just what I feared; we've got
to one of those bad places, and we are rubbing the bottom.'
"I asked very innocently if we must wait for the tide, and was informed
that there was no tide felt on this part of the river. Miss S. turned a
little pale, and showed a loss of appetite. I was a little bit moved,
but kept it to myself and ate on.
"As soon as dinner was over, we went out to look at the prospect of
affairs. We were close into the land, and could be put on shore any
minute; the captain had sent round a little boat to sound the waters,
and the report brought back was of shallow water just ahead of us, but
more on the right and left.
"While we stood on deck a small boat passed, and a sailor very gleefully
called out the soundings as he threw the lead, 'Eight and a half-nine.'
"But we are still high and dry now at two o'clock P.M. They are shaking
the steamer, and making efforts to move her. They say if she gets over
this, there is no worse place for her to meet.
"I asked the captain of what the bottom is composed, and he says, 'Of
mud, rocks, snags, and everything.'
"He is now moving very cautiously, and the boat has an unpleasant
tremulous motion.
"March 20. Latitude about thirty-eight degrees. We are just where we
stopped at noon yesterday--there is no change, and of course no event.
One of our crew killed a 'possum yesterday, and another boat stopped
near us this morning, and seems likely to lie as long as we do on the
sand-bar.
"We read Shakspere this morning after breakfast, and then betook
ourselves to the wheel-house to look at the scenery again. While there a
little colored boy came to us bearing a waiter of oranges, and telling
us that the captain sent them with his compliments. We ate them
greedily, because we had nothing else to do.
"21st. Still the sand-bar. No hope of getting off. We heard the pilot
hail a steamboat which was going up to St. Louis, and tell them to send
on a lighter, and I suppose we must wait for that.... It is my private
opinion that this great boat will not get off at all, but will lie here
until she petrifies....
"March 24. We left the 'Magnolia' after four days and four hours upon
the sand-bar near Turkey island, upon seeing the 'Woodruff' approach. We
left in a little rowboat, and it seemed at first as if we could not
overtake the steamer; but the captain saw us and slackened his speed.
"Miss S. and I clutched hands in a little terror as our small boat
seemed likely to run under the great steamer, but our oarsmen knew their
duty and we were safely put on board of the 'Woodruff.'
"March 25. We stopped at Cairo at eight o'clock this morning. Mr. S.
went on shore and brought newspapers on board. The Cairo paper I do not
think of high order. I saw no mention in it of the detention of the
'Magnolia'!
"March 26. Yesterday we count as a day of events. It began to look sunny
on the banks, especially on the Kentucky side, and Miss S. and I saw
cherry-blossoms. We remembered the eclipse, and Mr. S. having brought
with him a piece of broken glass from one of the windows of the
'Magnolia,' I smoked it over a piece of candle which I had brought from
Room No. 22 of the Planter's House at St. Louis, and we prepared to see
the eclipse.
"I expected to see the moon on at five o'clock and twenty minutes, but
as I had no time I could not tell when to look for it.
"It was not on at that time by my watch, but in ten minutes after was so
far on that I think my time cannot be much wrong.
"It was a little cloudy, so that we saw the sun only 'all flecked with
bars,' and caught sight of the phenomenon at intervals.
"We were at a coal-landing at the time, and not far from Madrid. The
boat stopped so long to take in an immense pile of corn-bags that our
passengers went on shore--such of them as could climb the slippery bank.
"When we saw them coming back laden with peach-blossoms, and saw the
little children dressing their hats with them, we were seized with a
longing for them, and Mr. S. offered to go and get us some; we begged to
go too, but he objected.
"We were really envious of his good luck when we saw him jump into a
country wagon, drawn by oxen which trotted off like horses, and, waving
his handkerchief to us, ride off in great glee. He came back with an
armful of peach-tree branches. Whose orchard he robbed at our
instigation I cannot say. A little girl, the daughter of the captain,
pulled some blossoms open, and showed us that the fruit germs were not
dead, but would have become peaches if we had not coveted them.
"The 25th was also our first night steam-boating. After passing Cairo
the river is considered safe for night travel, and the boat started on
her way at 8.30 P.M. We had been out about half an hour when a lady who
was playing cards threw down her cards and rushed with a shriek to her
stateroom. I perceived then that there had been a peculiar motion to the
boat and that it suddenly stopped. We found that one of the
paddle-wheels was caught in a snag, but there was no harm done. It made
us a little nervous, but we slept well enough after it.
"When I look out upon the river, I wonder that boats are not continually
snagged. Little trees are sticking up on all sides, and sometimes we
seem to be going over a meadow and pushing among rushes.
"A yawl, which was sent out yesterday to sound, was snagged by a stump
which was high out of water; probably they were carried on to it by a
current. The little boat whirled round and round, and the men were
plainly frightened, for they dropped their oars and clutched the sides
of the boat. They got control, however, in a few minutes, and had the
jeers of the men left on the steamer for their pains.
"March 30. We stopped at Natchez before breakfast this morning, and,
having half an hour, we took a carriage and drove through the city. It
was like driving through a succession of gardens: roses were hanging
over the fences in the richest profusion, and the arbor-vitae was
ornamenting every little nook, and adorning every cottage.
"Natchez stands on a high bluff, very romantic in appearance; jagged and
rugged, as if volcanoes had been at work in a time long past, for tall
trees grew in the ravines.