It was a privilege to know her, and the highest praise one could have
would be that Maria Mitchell called her--friend.
The outline facts of Maria Mitchell's life, written by her sister,
Mrs. Kendall, together with selections from journals and letters
appeared in 1896, and leave nothing to be desired further in that
direction. But everybody who knew her at Vassar finds in that record
much left out of the dear, delightful, original, human side, and it is
impossible to live over the portion of time spent here with her
without putting into these random recollections some hitherto
unpublished fragments about her. I trust she will forgive me.
Some old lines always expressed her to me,--"A soul that scorns the
vain, holding the world but at its due;" and, "Who saw life steadily
and saw it whole." How one wanted to peep in that note-book of
hers--usually carried in her pocket. An abstruse calculation jotted
hastily down on one page, side by side with the latest anecdote or
joke, a fact in regard to woman's education, an intimate personal
reflection,--what a mine of riches it contained!
"If thee has any secrets, thee musn't tell them to Maria. She never
could keep one," said dear old Mr. Mitchell, playfully. We understood
what he meant. While she would not reveal special confidence reposed
in her, or give out in advance any college matter of importance, she
simply was unable to bind herself to the petty and the trivial, and as
a friend stated, "thought and word with her came pretty close
together."
However interested you might have been in woman suffrage and all the
other subjects concerning the "cause," you felt that in comparison
with this grand woman you hardly knew the alphabet. She judged
everything from the standpoint, "How is this going to affect women?" I
remember her indignation at being overlooked with the other two women
of the Faculty by President Raymond in his demand for a list of what
the members had published. "We may not have done so much as some of
the men, but we all have done something." It took a good deal of
apology on his part to soothe her wounded feeling and restore her
natural good humor.
[Illustration: MARIA MITCHELL
1865]
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. "But _I_ am not at all sure in _my_
mind," 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 church _ile_," she exclaimed quickly, "Oh, that's Episcopal!
The orthodox people think it is no matter what you _do_ if you only
_think_ right; the Unitarians think it is no matter what you _believe_
if you only _do_ right; 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,
_is_ the 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't _any_ of 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.