MARIA MITCHELLMARIA MITCHELL1865
MARIA MITCHELL1865
Every woman speaker of note in that day,—Julia Ward Howe, Anna Dickinson, Mary Livermore, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ednah D. Cheney, were personal friends of Miss Mitchell, and at various times her guests at the observatory. Sometimes one would be invited to speak before the whole college, as when Mrs. Howe recited there her Battle Hymn of the Republic and Mrs. Livermore told the story of her war experiences in a hospital. But the observatory was chiefly the place of meeting, with spirited talk and free discussion. What delightful evenings were there when a favored few were asked to meet distinguished guests! What personal anecdote and reminiscence! And what good coffee at the end!
She avoided irritating discussion and heated argument. Two friends of hers had cause of dispute, and as it happened one day in her presence the pros and cons of the case were being gone over pretty vigorously. Suddenly she interfered,—"This subject is never to be alluded to again—pause—twinkle—unless I bring it up myself."
The earliest reports of departments were read in detail at Board meetings, and Miss Mitchell had a satisfaction that her labor in making out statistics had not been wasted—seeming, then, to count in significance and importance. In later years, this proceeding was no longer practicable. Entering the President's office one morning she inquired a little aggressively,—"Into the oblivion of whose hands do I consign this paper?" "Mine," came the meek reply, disarming her completely.
I came upon her one day comparing with vexed expression her watch with the lodge clock:—"Better no clock there at all than one always a little wrong." "But why do you mind? You are not to blame—have nothing to do with it." She turned quickly, her eyes flashing,—"How would you like to hear bad English used persistently in your class all the time in spite of yourself? This clock affects me the same way!"
Once as her associate teacher left the room where we were sitting in the observatory, Miss Mitchell looked after her lovingly,—"Mary Whitney is perfection, but she has one fault. She doesn't always shut the door behind her."
She appreciated gifts of flowers, and trifles that she could share, but once refused a lovely vase to stand on her study table,—"I should have to dust it." Hearing her speak of wishing to see a volume of essays by John Weiss, the book was purchased and carried over to her. Later she returned it with thanks,—"I have read this with much enjoyment. Now take it home and keep it. I do not want to accumulate things—too much trouble when I come to break up."
It was the day of illuminated texts and mottoes. Miss Mitchell had no fancy for these, yet in her neat hand-printing is this on a card to slip under a paper-weight—still a prized possession,—"Disce ut semper victurus; Vive ut cras moriturus." In her free translation it read,—"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die to-morrow." She was much amused to be told of a serious minded student who had decorated her room profusely with Scripture texts, and without the slightest sense of humor had placed on her wardrobe door a conspicuous "Seek and ye shall find." "Most likely not find," commented Miss Mitchell drily.
Concerning charitable work among so-called "fallen women," her attitude seemed rather cold and unforgiving in contrast to her well known views. "I can pity, forgive and help, but I want to let them alone. I don't like things that have been dragged through the mud."
Her standards were merciless. "Middlemarch" was, in her opinion, an immoral book;—"Dorothea had no business to have had even a feeling of interest in Ladislaw. What if it did go no further, you say? She was a married woman." That settled it. And yet, Miss Mitchell admired George Eliot and condoned her marriage with Lewes, as a woman too grand intellectually to be subject to the petty verdict of the world's opinion. She would not relish the "problem" novel of to-day, and the aggressive methods of the modern suffragette would receive scant toleration.
There is a characteristic story of her appearing at the open window of an inside bedroom, and making a friend for life of the startled occupant by exclaiming of a little sketch in color just finished and hung on the wardrobe door to dry,—"Why, this is —— a man in science. I know him well. Excellent. Who did this? You?" Another time when the sunset was more brilliant than common, she would knock on all the doors of the corridor she was passing through, to call out any one who otherwise would miss the spectacle. Homesick "new girls" on the well known first north transverse rejoiced in her, and blessed her for want of ceremony in rapping on their doors nearly every day the first week or two with the cheery inquiry, "How are you getting on?" and "Can I help you in any way?"
How she loved children! And they all loved her. Noticing the little son of one of the professors gathering daisies in the field near the observatory one afternoon, she called to him,—"You may go into my garden and pick some flowers there, but be sure not to take any of the roses." When the delighted child appeared to her later, she saw to her great surprise his arms filled with them. "Didn't I say you were not to pick my roses?" "Didn't know they were roses," said the boy innocently, amusing her greatly. "It takes a little five year old to crawl out of a tight place."
Miss Mitchell disliked form, the silent grace at table being even a little objectionable to her. "I wonder what they all say when they put their heads down? As for me"—and her eyes gleamed with fun—"I have just time to say one line of 'The spacious firmament on high.'"
We went out to dinner one Sunday together. She asked me beforehand what time I had ordered the carriage to bring us home. I named the hour. "Put it an hour earlier. I shall enjoy every moment up to that time, but I am afraid I cannot be polite any longer."
Certain phrases amused her and she could be very funny over two particularly,—"the first step in female education," and the "scheme of salvation,"—"so very schemey" she would repeat.
"What name are you going to give this precious club of radicals?" "Why, you have just given me the idea—have named it yourself—the radicals," a title which abbreviated to Rads was adopted at once.
There were only four or five of us outside of the students who had Unitarian preferences, and we were considered on account of this, by our orthodox sisters, to be indeed very black sheep religiously. The club was very informal, meeting every Sunday evening for supper at the observatory, or in the room of a member, entertaining in this way any guest visiting the college that Miss Mitchell considered in sympathy enough to invite. The aim was serious, excluding all gossip and light talk, and while there was no straining after "high thinking," it was certain we had frequent hint of this in Miss Mitchell's independent, stimulating opinions, and from the friends who came as guests, bringing their best thoughts with them.
"No matter what we resolve to talk about," she said laughingly, "we always seem to end up with the immortality of the soul." This subject had a fascination for her and she was fond of getting "views" as she called it from persons she valued. Once on a visit to Whittier, she asked him if he had any doubts of a future life. He seemed amusedly incredulous there could be any. "ButIam not at all sure inmymind," returned Miss Mitchell. He looked at her and answered slowly,—"The idea of Maria Mitchell's being snuffed out!" and would pursue the theme no further.
How often she used to say,—"If I only had your happy ideas about the hereafter!"
"A matter of good digestion merely."
"And did you never lie awake in terror of hell?"
"Never!" emphatically.
"Well, when I was a girl sixteen I often did, afraid of being 'a lost soul forever'—such was the doctrine I heard preached in my childhood." I tried rallying her a little, saying she was proud of her doubts as belonging to one who thought deeper—was of keener intellectual fibre—but I made no impression. What she felt was sincere. She never posed.
She had a deeply religious nature; had no sympathy with free thinking—so called—or scientific speculations, flippant and irreverent. And how quickly she responded to what was noble and uplifting in any service! I had the privilege of spending a week in New York with her one Easter vacation and going with her to hear O. B. Frothingham preach. We had never heard him, and anticipated a coldly brilliant, intellectual discourse such as he had the reputation of giving. I still hear his calm clear voice in his invocation,—"Let us come into Thy presence this morning, forgetting all bitter memories of the past; the cares, anxieties and trials of the present; the gloomy forebodings of the future; and ascend with Thee into that higher realm where the sun is always shining, where the truth holds on forever, and where love—never wanes." Miss Mitchell was much moved. She leaned forward to me,—"I am full fed now,—could go home this minute."
A conundrum was given out,—"What is the way to slip into Heaven easy?" Miss Mitchell protested, sure that the answer must be something denominational or Calvinistic. On hearing the answer,—"Make frequent use of the churchile," she exclaimed quickly, "Oh, that's Episcopal! The orthodox people think it is no matter what youdoif you onlythinkright; the Unitarians think it is no matter what youbelieveif you onlydoright; and the Episcopalians think it is no matter what you do or what you believe if you only go to church."
The Faculty table in the dining-room was also for students' guests, no separate table then. Miss Mitchell often came in late and tired, resenting, as she put it, "to be polite." One day she came in to dinner to find a warm student friend there with a young man as her guest. As he had been placed by Miss Mitchell, he endeavored to enter into conversation with her, introduced by the student, receiving for his pains very scant courtesy and notice. Suddenly some remark he made to his student friend arrested her attention. She turned to him, "Young man, I did not catch your name." "Chadwick." The student spoke then,—"Reverend Doctor Chadwick, Miss Mitchell. You remember you told me to bring him over to the observatory, when he should come?" But he had a royal welcome and visit later. She knew his writings, had a warm admiration for him and made ample amends for his first cold reception.
She disliked extremely to have attention called to anything out of order in her dress, and the person who innocently ventured to tell her was sure to get pungent reproof. Once as she stood in the college office by the counter waiting for the mail, a teacher passing, unaware of this peculiarity, picked off with a good deal of manner and great unnecessary deliberation a long white thread from Miss Mitchell's grey shawl. "Please put that back just where you took it from! I consider it an impertinence!"
She had to accept, though, and laugh in spite of herself, at her predicament in Main Street one afternoon. Forty years ago a leghorn bonnet was not a thing to be treated lightly and thrown aside at the end of a season, but reappeared, year after year, to be bleached, pressed and rejuvenated generally. Miss Mitchell was taking one of this sort to her milliner, swinging carelessly the huge paper bag in which the denuded bonnet reposed. Suddenly her name was called several times, and turning she was aware of a fastidious little old gentleman of her acquaintance, his own hat in one hand and her unsightly headgear in the other, bowing before her, breathless in his pursuit,—"Miss Mitchell, when you alighted from the street car back there, I happened to be passing just as this dropped out of your bag," presenting, as he spoke, the unfortunate bonnet of whose loss she had been entirely unaware. The courtly grace of his action amused her immensely, and she delighted to tell this story often.
She had many other stories against herself that she liked to tell. One was of being on an ocean steamer and hearing a man among a group of passengers near say,—"Maria Mitchell, daughter of General O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer, is on board." Attention being called to her proximity, and that it was thought she belonged to another branch of the name, he crossed over to Miss Mitchell's chair, and put the question to her direct. She answered quietly,—"No, my father is William Mitchell of Nantucket. He is also an astronomer." "All the same," she heard him say in a low tone as he regained his party, "I can't help what she says, but Maria Mitchell, the astronomer,isthe daughter of General Mitchell of Ohio."
Again she was on a steamer bound for Nantucket, and as the passage was rough, was lying half asleep on a couch in the ladies' cabin. Two women belonging to Nantucket were chatting together in the farthest corner of the room, and she suddenly became faintly conscious that she was the subject of their conversation. "I suppose Maria Mitchell has done some pretty big things—people say so—but she is awful homely!" "Well, yes," hesitated the other, "I s'pose she is, but you must admit she has fine eyes."
She shared a cottage one summer with Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, whom she much admired and liked, though no greater contrast can be imagined than existed between the two women in temperament and tastes. Some of Miss Mitchell's college girls paid her a visit there one day, and she got Mrs. Burnett's permission to introduce the students to her. They had a delightful call in her room, made beautiful with antique furniture, pictures, rugs, cushions—everything that could appeal to cultivated eyes and aesthetic sense. Returning with them to her own quarters across the hall from the author's suite, Miss Mitchell waved her hand to the room just left:—"Girls, that is Paris, and this," ushering them into her rather bare parlor, "this is—Cape Cod."
How fond she was of a good story! She always rejoiced in a fresh anecdote, and made you feel her debtor by contributing one. One Monday the Rev. Dr. Charles Robinson dined with a few of us at Miss Mitchell's private table, having been at the college over Sunday. He was a famous story-teller, and she challenged him to tell more in three minutes than she could. He began instantly in all seriousness a breathless string of nonsense rhymes and couplets after this style,—"The—bell—rings—when—it—is—tolled—but—the—organ—says —I'll—be—blowed—first—Mary—had—a—little—lamb—its—fleas— were—white—as—snow—how—can—that—be—since—fleas—you—know— are—black—as—any—crow—" and so on till his time was up. He won, for Miss Mitchell was laughing—as we all were—and unable to go on with the contest.
Her humor and quickness at repartee—"capping"—she called it, showed in her last illness, even when articulation was difficult and her words hardly understandable. Her sister, Mrs. Kendall, came in one morning and stood by the bedside with cheerful greeting, "Thee looks well this morning, Maria." In a flash, the invalid responded brokenly and weakly,—"My—face—is—my—fortune," "sir—she said," finished Mrs. Kendall for her.
Her unexpectedness was delightful, if often a little embarrassing. One never could predict what she would do next. She would beckon a teacher in passing out of the dining-room to stop at the Faculty table, and before those assembled there, ask her some question such as,—"Have you a silk dress? And how many?" "There!" dejectedly. "I was afraid you had! It was said at this table just now that not a teacher in the college but had a silk dress. I said I didn't believe it, that there must be somebody here that couldn't afford one," adding in friendly dismissal, "Well, I'm glad you have one." Another time she called out, "I hear you are engaged to be married. I denied the report, as you had not told me first." The teacher, used to Miss Mitchell's way, showed no confusion, carried out the joke by saying, "I have hardly had a chance to tell you yet," and laughingly made her escape. A student who had just entered college met her shortly after arrival. Miss Mitchell stopped her. "You have a dimple in your chin. Well, so has George William Curtis, but still it is a deformity."
Another time to an officer whose parents had visited her at the college came this:—"Such a handsome father and mother as you've got! Aren'tanyof you children good looking?" One rarely felt aggrieved at Miss Mitchell's bluntness. It was her "way." She was a privileged person, and most of us were ready to share the laugh she raised at our expense.
Her "Dome" parties for her students at the end of the year were famous, and she was busy weeks beforehand composing her "poetry" for the occasion. She had a natural gift in impromptu rhyming, and what was bestowed on her girls was treasured years after. Two of these precious relics of the past have been loaned to me to copy here. It is most fitting that the last words of this sketch should be her own, and lingeringly with them I leave her.
A "Dome" rhyme to her girls:—
"Who lifting their hearts to the heavenly blueWill do woman's work for the good and true;And as sisters or daughters or mothers or wivesWill take the starlight into their lives."
"Who lifting their hearts to the heavenly blueWill do woman's work for the good and true;And as sisters or daughters or mothers or wivesWill take the starlight into their lives."
"Who lifting their hearts to the heavenly blueWill do woman's work for the good and true;And as sisters or daughters or mothers or wivesWill take the starlight into their lives."
"Who lifting their hearts to the heavenly blue
Will do woman's work for the good and true;
And as sisters or daughters or mothers or wives
Will take the starlight into their lives."
In the train with three of her seniors after Commencement, June 30th, 1868:—
"Sarah, Mary, Louise and IHave come to the cross roads to say good-bye;Bathed in tears and covered with dust,We say good-bye, because we must;A circle of lovers, a knot of peers,They in their youth and I in my years,Willing to bear the parting and pain,Believing we all shall meet again;That if God is God and truth is truth,We shall meet again and all in youth."
"Sarah, Mary, Louise and IHave come to the cross roads to say good-bye;Bathed in tears and covered with dust,We say good-bye, because we must;A circle of lovers, a knot of peers,They in their youth and I in my years,Willing to bear the parting and pain,Believing we all shall meet again;That if God is God and truth is truth,We shall meet again and all in youth."
"Sarah, Mary, Louise and IHave come to the cross roads to say good-bye;Bathed in tears and covered with dust,We say good-bye, because we must;A circle of lovers, a knot of peers,They in their youth and I in my years,Willing to bear the parting and pain,Believing we all shall meet again;That if God is God and truth is truth,We shall meet again and all in youth."
"Sarah, Mary, Louise and I
Have come to the cross roads to say good-bye;
Bathed in tears and covered with dust,
We say good-bye, because we must;
A circle of lovers, a knot of peers,
They in their youth and I in my years,
Willing to bear the parting and pain,
Believing we all shall meet again;
That if God is God and truth is truth,
We shall meet again and all in youth."
To live in a great period is rarely to be conscious of its magnitude and importance. It is not till you stand from afar that the wonder grows on you, with thankfulness to have been a looker-on and to have served somewhat, if ever in so humble a capacity.
The days that are no more! But this is not said regretfully, for if Vassar stood for glorious promise from the beginning, it has been splendidly fulfilled in the march of years. They have slipped along, bringing "golden opportunity" in greater measure, continually broadening attainment, ever clearer and higher vision.
18651865
1865
Transcriber's Note:Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.
Transcriber's Note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.