Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 4

"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 gla.s.s, find also that it was not a comet, but the nebula of Andromeda, a cl.u.s.ter 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 flas.h.i.+ngs of the Northern Lights--'Across the lift they start and s.h.i.+ft;' 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 bra.s.s 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 coa.r.s.er, and they were already too coa.r.s.e; 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 bra.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 coc.o.o.ns 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 inst.i.tution in publis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances?

"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 mult.i.tude 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 a.s.similated herself to the whole. It is founded on the play of Euripides, and even to Rachel the pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion of which I have no conception, and I felt as if I saw a new order of being; not a woman, but a personified pa.s.sion. 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 att.i.tude.

"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 astonis.h.i.+ng beauty of the d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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.

".... 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 surpa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sage 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 steams.h.i.+p 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 ash.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 quant.i.ties. 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.