1873
SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR--RUSSIA--FRANCES POWER COBBE--"THE GLASGOW COLLEGE
FOR GIRLS"
In 1873, Miss Mitchell spent the summer in Europe, and availed herself
of this opportunity to visit the government observatory at Pulkova, in
Russia.
"Eydkuhnen, Wednesday, July 30, 1873. Certainly, I never in my life
expected to spend twenty-four hours in this small town, the frontier
town of Prussia. Here I remembered that our little bags would be
examined, and I asked the guard about it, but he said we need not
trouble ourselves; we should not be examined until we reached the first
Russian town of Wiersbelow. So, after a mile more of travel, we came to
Wiersbelow. Knowing that we should keep our little compartment until we
got to St. Petersburg, we had scattered our luggage about; gloves were
in one place, veil in another, shawl in another, parasol in another, and
books all around.
"The train stopped. Imagine our consternation! Two officials entered the
carriage, tall Russians in full uniform, and seized everything--shawls,
books, gloves, bags; and then, looking around very carefully, espied W's
poor little ragged handkerchief, and seized that, too, as a contraband
article! We looked at one another, and said nothing. The tall Russian
said something to us; we looked at each other and sat still. The tall
Russians looked at one another, and there was almost an official smile
between them.
"Then one turned to me, and said, very distinctly, 'Passy-port.' 'Oh,' I
said, 'the passports are all right; where are they?' and we produced
from our pockets the passports prepared at Washington, with the official
seal, and we delivered them with a sort of air as if we had said,
'You'll find that they do things all right at Washington.'
"The tall Russians got out, and I was about to breathe freely, when they
returned, and said something else--not a word did I understand; they
exchanged a look of amusement, and W. and I, one of amazement; then one
of them made signs to us to get out. The sign was unmistakable, and we
got out, and followed them into an immense room, where were tables all
around covered with luggage, and about a hundred travellers standing by;
and our books, shawls, gloves, etc., were thrown in a heap upon one of
these tables, and we awoke to the disagreeable consciousness that we
were in a custom-house, and only two out of a hundred travellers, and
that we did not understand one word of Russian.
"But, of course, it could be only a few minutes of delay, and if German
and French failed, there is always left the language of signs, and all
would be right.
"After, perhaps, half an hour, two or three officials approached us,
and, holding the passports, began to talk to us. How did they know that
those two passports belonged to us? Out of two hundred persons, how
could they at once see that the woman whose age was given at more than
half a century, and the lad whose age was given at less than a score of
years, were the two fatigued and weary travellers who stood guarding a
small heap of gloves, books, handkerchiefs, and shawls? Two of the
officials held up the passports to us, pointed to the blank page, shook
their heads ominously; the third took the passports, put them into his
vest pocket, buttoned up his coat, and motioned to us to follow him.
"We followed; he opened the door of an ordinary carriage, waved his hand
for us to get in, jumped in himself, and we found we were started back.
We could not cross the line between Germany and Russia.
"We meekly asked where we were to go, and were relieved when we found
that we went back only to the nearest town, but that the passports must
be sent to Konigsberg, sixty miles away, to be endorsed by the Russian
ambassador--it might take some days. W. was very much inclined to refuse
to go back and to attempt a war of words, but it did not seem wise to me
to undertake a war against the Russian government; I know our country
does not lightly go into an 'unpleasantness' of that kind....
"So we went back to Eydkuhnen,--a little miserable German village. We
took rooms at the only hotel, and there we stayed twenty-four hours.
Before the end of that time, we had visited every shop in the village,
and aired our German to most of our fellow-travellers whom we met at the
hotel.
"The landlord took our part, and declared it was hard enough on simple
travellers like ourselves to be stopped in such a way, and that Russia
was the only country in Europe which was rigid in that respect. Happily,
our passports were back in twenty-four hours, and we started again; our
trunks had been registered for St. Petersburg, and to St. Petersburg
they had gone, ahead of us; and of the small heap of things thrown down
promiscuously at the custom-house, the whole had not come back to us--it
was not very important. I learned how to wear one glove instead of two,
or to go without.
"We had the ordeal of the custom-house to pass again; but once passed,
and told that we were free to go on, it was like going into a clear
atmosphere from a fog. We crossed the custom-house threshold into
another room, and we found ourselves in Russia, and in an excellent,
well-furnished, and cheery restaurant. We lost the German smoke and the
German beer; we found hot coffee and clean table-cloths.
"We did not return to our dusty, red-velvet palace, but we entered a
clean, comfortable compartment, with easy sofas, for the night. We
started again for St. Petersburg; we were now four days from London. I
will omit the details of a break-down that night, and another change of
cars. We had some sleep, and awoke in the morning to enjoy Russia.
"And, first, of Russian railroads. When the railroads of Russia were
planned, the Emperor Nicholas allowed a large sum of money for the
building. The engineer showed him his plan. The road wound by slight
curves from one town to another. This did not suit the emperor at all.
He took his ruler, put it down upon the table, and said: 'I choose to
have my roads run so.' Of course the engineer assented--he had his large
fund granted; a straight road was much cheaper to build than a curved
one. As a consequence, he built and furnished an excellent road.
"At every 'verst,' which is not quite a mile, a small house is placed at
the roadside, on which, in very large figures, the number of versts from
St. Petersburg is told. The train runs very smoothly and very slowly;
twenty miles an hour is about the rate. Of course the journey seemed
long. For a large part of the way it was an uninhabited, level plain; so
green, however, that it seemed like travelling on prairies. Occasionally
we passed a dreary little village of small huts, and as we neared St.
Petersburg we passed larger and better built towns, which the dome of
some cathedral lighted up for miles.
"The road was enlivened, too, by another peculiarity. The restaurants
were all adorned by flags of all colors, and festooned by vines. At one
place the green arches ran across the road, and we passed under a bower
of evergreens. I accepted this, at first, as a Russian peculiarity, and
was surprised that so much attention was paid to travellers; but I
learned that it was not for us at all. The Duke of Edinboro' had passed
over the road a few days before, on his way to St. Petersburg, for his
betrothal to the only daughter of the czar, and the decorations were for
him; and so we felt that we were of the party, although we had not been
asked.
"We approached St. Petersburg just at night, and caught the play of the
sunlight on the domes. It is a city of domes--blue domes, green domes,
white domes, and, above all, the golden dome of the Cathedral of St.
Isaac's.
"It is almost never a single dome. St. Isaac's central, gilded dome
looms up above its fellow domes, but four smaller ones surround it.
"It was summer; the temperature was delightful, about like our October.
The showers were frequent, there was no dust and no sultry air.
"There must be a great deal of nice mechanical work required in St.
Petersburg, for on the Nevsky Perspective, the principal street, there
were a great many shops in which graduating and measuring instruments of
very nice workmanship were for sale. Especially I noticed the excellence
of the thermometers, and I naturally stopped to read them. Figures are a
common language, but it was clear that I was in another planet; I could
not read the thermometers! I judged that the weather was warm enough for
the thermometer to be at 68. I read, say, 16. And then I remembered that
the Russians do not put their freezing point at 32, as we do, and I was
obliged to go through a troublesome calculation before I could tell how
warm it was.
"But I came to a still stranger experience. I dated my letters August 3,
and went to my banker's, before I sealed them, to see if there were
letters for me. The banker's little calendar was hanging by his desk,
and the day of the month was on exhibition, in large figures. I read,
July 22! This was distressing! Was I like Alice in Wonderland? Did time
go backward? Surely, I had dated August 3. Could I be in error twelve
days? And then I perceived that twelve days was just the difference of
old and new calendars.
"How many times I had taught students that the Russians still counted
their time by the 'old style,' but had never learned it myself! And so I
was obliged to teach myself new lessons in science. The earth turns on
its axis just the same in Russia as in Boston, but you don't get out of
the sunlight at the Boston sunset hour.
"When the thermometer stands at 32 in St. Petersburg, it does not freeze
as it does in Boston. On the contrary, it is very warm in St.
Petersburg, for it means what 104 does in Boston. And if you leave
London on the 22d of July, and are five days on the way to St.
Petersburg, a week after you get there it is still the 22d of July! And
we complain that the day is too short!
"Another peculiarity. We strolled over the city all day; we came back to
our hotel tired; we took our tea; we talked over the day; we wrote to
our friends; we planned for the next day; we were ready to retire. We
walked to the window--the sun was striking on all the chimney tops. It
doesn't seem to be right even for the lark to go to sleep while the sun
shines. We looked at our watches; but the watches said nine o'clock, and
we went off to our beds in daytime; and we awoke after the first nap to
perceive that the sun still shone into the room.
"Like all careful aunts, I was unwilling that my nephew should be out
alone at night. He was desirous of doing the right thing, but urged that
at home, as a little boy, he was always allowed to be out until dark,
and he asked if he could stay out until dark! Alas for the poor lad!
There was no dark at all! I could not consent for him to be out all
night, and the twilight was not over. You may read and read that the
summer day at St. Petersburg is twenty hours long, but until you see
that the sun scarcely sets, you cannot take it in.
"I wondered whether the laboring man worked eight or ten hours under my
window; it seemed to me that he was sawing wood the whole twenty-four!
"W. came in one night after a stroll, and described a beautiful square
which he had come upon accidentally. I listened with great interest, and
said, 'I must go there in the morning; what is the name of it?'--'I
don't know,' he replied.--'Why didn't you read the sign?' I asked.--'I
can't read,' was the reply.--'Oh, no; but why didn't you ask some
one?'--'I can't speak,' he answered. Neither reading nor speaking, we
had to learn St. Petersburg by our observation, and it is the best way.
Most travellers read too much.
"There are learned institutions in St. Petersburg: universities,
libraries, picture-galleries, and museums; but the first institution
with which I became acquainted was the drosky. The drosky is a very,
very small phaeton. It has the driver's seat in front, and a very narrow
seat behind him. One person can have room enough on this second seat,
but it usually carries two. Invariably the drosky is lined with
dark-blue cloth, and the drosky-driver wears a dark-blue wrapper, coming
to the feet, girded around the waist by a crimson sash. He also wears a
bell-shaped hat, turned up at the side. You are a little in doubt, if
you see him at first separated from his drosky, whether he is a
market-woman or a serving-man, the dress being very much like a morning
wrapper. But he is rarely six feet away from his carriage, and usually
he is upon it, sound asleep!
"The trunks having gone to St. Petersburg in advance of ourselves, our
first duty was to get possession of them. They were at the custom-house,
across the city. My nephew and I jumped upon a drosky--we could not say
that we were really _in_ the drosky, for the seat was too short. The
drosky-driver started off his horse over the cobble-stones at a terrible
rate. I could not keep my seat, and I clung to W. He shouted, 'Don't
hold by me; I shall be out the next minute!' What could be done? I was
sure I shouldn't stay on half a minute. Blessings on the red sash of the
drosky-man--I caught at that! He drove faster and faster, and I clung
tighter and tighter, but alarmed at two immense dangers: first, that I
should stop his breath by dragging the girdle so tightly; and, next,
that when it became unendurable to him, he would loosen it in front.
"I could not perceive that he was aware of my existence at all! He had
only one object in life,--to carry us across the city to our place of
destination, and to get his copecks in return.
"In a few days I learned to like the jolly vehicles very much. They are
so numerous that you may pick one up on any street, whenever you are
tired of walking.
"My principal object in visiting St. Petersburg was the astronomical
observatory at Pulkova, some twelve miles distant.
"I had letters to the director, Otto von Struve, but our consul declared
that I must also have one from him, for Struve was a very great man. I,
of course, accepted it.
"We made the journey by rail and coach, but it would be better to drive
the whole way.
"Most observatories are temples of silence, and quiet reigns. As we
drove into the grounds at Pulkova, a small crowd of children of all
ages, and servants of all degrees, came out to meet us. They did not
come out to do us honor, but to gaze at us. I could not understand it
until I learned that the director of the observatory has a large number
of aids, and they, with all their families, live in large houses,
connected with the central building by covered ways.
"All about the grounds, too, were small observatories,--little
temples,--in which young men were practising for observations on the
transit of Venus. These little buildings, I afterwards learned, were to
be taken down and transported, instruments and all, to the coast of
Asia.
"The director of the observatory is Otto Struve--his father, Wilhelm
Struve, preceded him in this office. Properly, the director is Herr Von
Struve; but the old Russian custom is still in use, and the servants
call him Wilhelm-vitch; that is, 'the son of William.'
"When I bought a photograph of the present emperor, Alexander, I saw
that he was called Nicholas-vitch.
"Herr Struve received us courteously, and an assistant was called to
show us the instruments. All observatories are much alike; therefore I
will not describe this, except in its peculiarities. One of these was
the presence of small, light, portable rooms, i.e., baseless boxes,
which rolled over the instruments to protect them; two sides were of
wood, and two sides of green silk curtains, which could, of course, be
turned aside when the boxes, or little rooms, were rolled over the
apparatus. Being covered in this way, the heavy shutters can be left
open for weeks at a time.
"Everything was on a large scale--the rooms were immense.
"The director has three assistants who are called 'elder astronomers,'
and two who are called 'adjunct astronomers.' Each of these has a
servant devoted to him. I asked one of the elder astronomers if he had
rooms in the observatory, and he answered, 'Yes, my rooms are 94 ft. by
50.'
"They seem to be amused at the size of their lodgings, for Mr. Struve,
when he told me of his apartments, gave me at once the dimensions,--200
ft. by 100 ft.
"The room in which we dined with the family of Herr Struve was immense.
I spoke of it, and he said, 'We cannot open our windows in the
winter,--the winters are so severe,--and so we must have good air
without it.' Their drawing-room was also very large; the chairs
(innumerable, it seemed to me) stood stiffly around the walls of the
room. The floor was painted and highly varnished, and flower-pots were
at the numerous windows on little stands. It was scrupulously neat
everywhere.
"There was very little ceremony at dinner; we had the delicious wild
strawberries of the country in great profusion; and the talk, the best
part of the dinner, was in German, Russian, and English.
"Madame Struve spoke German, Russian, and French, and complained that
she could not speak English. She said that she had spent three weeks
with an English lady, and that she must be very stupid not to speak
English.
"I noticed that in one of the rooms, which was not so very immense,
there was a circular table, a small centre-carpet, and chairs around the
table; I have been told that 'in society' in Russia, the ladies sit in a
circle, and the gentlemen walk around and talk consecutively with the
ladies,--kindly giving to each a share of their attention.
"They assured me that the winters were charming, the sleighing constant,
and the social gatherings cheery; but think of four hours, only, of
daylight in the depth of the winter. Their dread was the spring and the
autumn, when the mud is deep.
"Everything in the observatory which could be was built of wood. They
have the fir, which is very indestructible; it is supposed to show no
mark of change in two hundred years.
"Wood is so susceptible of ornamentation that the pretty villages of
Russia--and there are some that look like New England villages--struck
us very pleasantly, after the stone and brick villages of England.
"I try, when I am abroad, to see in what they are superior to us,--not
in what they are inferior.
"Our great idea is, of course, freedom and self-government; probably in
that we are ahead of the rest of the world, although we are certainly
not so much in advance as we suppose; but we are sufficiently inflated
with our own greatness to let that subject take care of itself when we
travel. We travel to learn; and I have never been in any country where
they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts
better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our
own--as in the art of Italy, the learning of England, and the philosophy
of Germany.
"Let us take the scientific position of Russia. When, half a century
ago, John Quincy Adams proposed the establishment of an astronomical
observatory, at a cost of $100,000, it was ridiculed by the newspapers,
considered Utopian, and dismissed from the public mind. When our
government, a few years since, voted an appropriation of $50,000 for a
telescope for the National Observatory, it was considered magnificent.
Yet, a quarter of a century since (1838), Russia founded an astronomical
observatory. The government spent $200,000 on instruments, $1,500,000 on
buildings, and annually appropriated $38,000 for salaries of observers.
I naturally thought that a million and a half dollars, and Oriental
ideas, combined, would make the observatory a showy place; I expected
that the observatory would be surmounted by a gilded dome, and that
'pearly gates' would open as I approached. There is not even a dome!
"The central observation-room is a cylinder, and its doors swing back on
hinges. Wherever it is possible, wood is used, instead of stone or
brick. I could not detect, in the whole structure, anything like
carving, gilding, or painting, for mere show. It was all for science;
and its ornamentations were adapted to its uses, and came at their
demand.
"In our country, the man of science leads an isolated life. If he has
capabilities of administration, our government does not yet believe in
them.
"The director of the observatory at Pulkova has the military rank of
general, and he is privy councillor to the czar. Every subordinate has
also his military position--he is a soldier.
"What would you think of it, if the director of any observatory were one
of the President's cabinet at Washington, in virtue of his position?
Struve's position is that of a member of the President's cabinet.
"Here is another difference: Ours is a democratic country. We recognize
no caste; we are born 'free and equal.' We honor labor; work is
ennobling. These expressions we are all accustomed to use. Do we live up
to them? Many a rich man, many a man in fine social position, has
married a school-teacher; but I never heard it spoken of as a source of
pride in the alliance until I went to despotic Russia. Struve told me,
as he would have told of any other honor which had been his, that his
wife, as a girl, had taught school in St. Petersburg. And then Madame
Struve joined in the conversation, and told me how much the subject of
woman's education still held her interest.
"St. Petersburg is about the size of Philadelphia. Struve said, 'There
are thousands of women studying science in St. Petersburg.' How many
thousand women do you suppose are studying science in the whole State of
New York? I doubt if there are five hundred.
"Then again, as to language. It is rare, even among the common people,
to meet one who speaks one language only. If you can speak no Russian,
try your poor French, your poor German, or your good English. You may be
sure that the shopkeeper will answer in one or another, and even the
drosky-driver picks up a little of some one of them.
"Of late, the Russian government has founded a medical school for women,
giving them advantages which are given to men, and the same rank when
they graduate; the czar himself contributed largely to the fund.
"One wonders, in a country so rich as ours, that so few men and women
gratify their tastes by founding scholarships and aids for the tuition
of girls--it must be such a pleasant way of spending money.
"Then as regards religion. I am never in a country where the Catholic or
Greek church is dominant, but I see with admiration the zeal of its
followers. I may pity their delusions, but I must admire their devotion.
If you look around in one of our churches upon the congregation,
five-sixths are women, and in some towns nineteen-twentieths; and if you
form a judgment from that fact, you would suppose that religion was
entirely a 'woman's right.' In a Catholic church or Greek church, the
men are not only as numerous as the women, but they are as intense in
their worship. Well-dressed men, with good heads, will prostrate
themselves before the image of the Holy Virgin as many times, and as
devoutly, as the beggar-woman.
"I think I saw a Russian gentleman at St. Isaac's touch his forehead to
the floor, rise and stand erect, touch the floor again, and rise again,
ten times in as many minutes; and we were one day forbidden entrance to
a church because the czar was about to say his prayers; we found he was
making the pilgrimage of some seventy churches, and praying in each one.
"Christians who believe in public prayer, and who claim that we should
be instant in prayer, would consider it a severe tax upon their energies
to pray seventy times a day--they don't care to do it!
"Then there is the _democracy_ of the church. There are no pews to be
sold to the highest bidder--no 'reserved seats;' the oneness and
equality before God are always recognized. A Russian gentleman, as he
prays, does not look around, and move away from the poor beggar next to
him. At St. Peter's the crowd stands or kneels--at St. Isaac's they
stand; and they stand literally on the same plane.
"I noticed in the crowd at St. Isaac's, one festival day, young girls
who were having a friendly chat; but their religion was ever in their
thoughts, and they crossed themselves certainly once a minute. Their
religion is not an affair of Sunday, but of every day in the week.
"The drosky-driver, certainly the most stupid class of my acquaintance
in Russia, never forgets his prayers; if his passenger is never so much
in a hurry, and the bribe never so high, the drosky-driver will check
his horse, and make the sign of the cross as he passes the little image
of the Virgin,--so small, perhaps, that you have not noticed it until
you wonder why he slackens his pace.
"Then as to government. We boast of our national freedom, and we talk
about universal suffrage, the 'Home of the Free,' etc. Yet the serfs in
Russia were freed in March, 1861, just before our Civil war began. They
freed their serfs without any war, and each serf received some acres of
land. They freed twenty-three millions, and we freed four or five
millions of blacks; and all of us, who are old enough, remember that one
of the fears in freeing the slaves was the number of lawless and
ignorant blacks who, it was supposed, would come to the North.
"We talk about _universal_ suffrage; a larger part of the antiquated
Russians vote than of Americans. Just as I came away from St. Petersburg
I met a Moscow family, travelling. We occupied the same compartment car.
It was a family consisting of a lady and her three daughters. When they
found where I had been, they asked me, in excellent English, what had
carried me to St. Petersburg, and then, why I was interested in Pulkova;
and so I must tell them about American girls, and so, of course, of
Vassar College.
"They plied me with questions: 'Do you have women in your faculty? Do
men and women hold the same rank?' I returned the questions: 'Is there a
girl's college in Moscow?' 'No,' said the youngest sister, with a sigh,
'we are always _going_ to have one.' The eldest sister asked: 'Do women
vote in America?' 'No,' I said. 'Do women vote in Russia?' She said
'No;' but her mother interrupted her, and there was a spicy conversation
between them, in Russian, and then the mother, who had rarely spoken,
turned to me, and said: 'I vote, but I do not go to the polls myself. I
send somebody to represent me; my vote rests upon my property.'
"Have you not read a story, of late, in the newspapers, about some
excellent women in a little town in Connecticut whose pet heifers were
taken by force and sold because they refused to pay the large taxes
levied upon them by their townsmen, they being the largest holders of
property in the town? That circumstance could not have happened in
barbarous Russia; there, the owner of property has a right to say how it
shall be used.
"'Why do you ask me about our government?' I said to the Russian girls.
'Are you interested in questions of government?' They replied, 'All
Russian women are interested in questions of that sort.' How many
American women are interested in questions concerning government?
"These young girls knew exactly what questions to ask about Vassar
College,--the course of study, the diploma, the number of graduates,
etc. The eldest said: 'We are at once excited when we hear of women
studying; we have longed for opportunities to study all our lives. Our
father was the engineer of the first Russian railroad, and he spent two
years in America."
"I confess to a feeling of mortification when one of these girls asked
me, 'Did you ever read the translation of a Russian book?' and I was
obliged to answer 'No.' This girl had read American books in the
original. They were talking Russian, French, German, and English, and
yet mourning over their need of education; and in general education,
especially in that of women, I think we must be in advance of them.
"One of these sisters, forgetting my ignorance, said something to me in
Russian. The other laughed. 'What did she say?' I asked. The eldest
replied, 'She asked you to take her back with you, and educate her.'
'But,' I said, 'you read and speak your languages--the learning of the
world is open to you--found your own college!' And the young girl leaned
back on the cushions, drew her mantle around her, and said, 'We have not
the energy of the American girl!'
"The energy of the American girl! The rich inheritance which has come
down to her from men and women who sought, in the New World, a better
and higher life.
"When the American girl carries her energy into the great questions of
humanity, into the practical problems of life; when she takes home to
her heart the interests of education, of government, and of religion,
what may we not hope for our country!
London, 1873. "It was the 26th of August, and I had no hope that Miss
Cobbe could be at her town residence, but I felt bound to deliver Mrs.
Howe's letter, and I wished to give her a Vassar pamphlet; so I took a
cab and drove; it was at an enormous distance from my lodging--she told
me it was six miles. I was as much surprised as delighted when the girl
said she was at home, for the house had painters in it, the carpets were
up, and everything looked uninhabitable. The girl came back, after
taking my card, and asked me if I would go into the studio, and so took
me through a pretty garden into a small building of two rooms, the outer
one filled with pictures and books. I had never heard that Miss Cobbe
was an artist, and so I looked around, and was afraid that I had got the
wrong Miss Cobbe. But as I glanced at the table I saw the 'Contemporary
Review,' and I took up the first article and read it--by Herbert
Spencer. I had become somewhat interested in a pretty severe criticism
of the modes of reasoning of mathematical men, and had perceived that he
said the problems of concrete sciences were harder than any of the
physical sciences (which I admitted was all true), when a very white dog
came bounding in upon me, and I dropped the book, knowing that the dog's
mistress must be coming,--and Miss Cobbe entered. She looked just as I
expected, but even larger; but then her head is magnificent because so
large. She was very cordial at once, and told me that Miss Davies had
told her I was in London. She said the studio was that of her friend. I
could not refrain from thanking her for her books, and telling her how
much we valued them in America, and how much good I believed they had
done. She colored a very little, and said, 'Nothing could be more
gratifying to me.'
"I had heard that she was not a women's rights woman, and she said, 'Who
could have told you that? I am remarkably so. I write suffrage articles
continually--I sign petitions.'
"I was delighted to find that she had been an intimate friend of Mrs.
Somerville; had corresponded with her for years, and had a letter from
her after she was ninety-two years of age, when she was reading
Quaternions for amusement. She said that Mrs. Somerville would probably
have called herself a Unitarian, but that really she was a Theist, and
that it came out more in her later life. She said she was correcting
proof of the Life by the daughters; that the Life was intensely
interesting; that Mrs. Somerville mourned all her life that she had not
had the advantages of education.
"I asked her how I could get a photograph of Mrs. Somerville, and she
said they could not be bought. She told me, without any hint from me,
that she would give Vassar College a plaster cast of the bust of Mrs.
Somerville. [Footnote: This bust always stood in Miss Mitchell's parlor
at the observatory.] She said, as women grew older, if they lived
independent lives, they were pretty sure to be 'women's rights women.'
She said the clergy--the broadest, who were in harmony with her--were
very courteous, and that since she had grown old (she's about
forty-five) all men were more tolerant of her and forgot the difference
of sex.
"I felt drawn to her when she was most serious. I told her I had
suffered much from doubt, and asked her if she had; and she said yes,
when she was young; but that she had had, in her life, rare intervals
when she believed she held communion with God, and on those rare periods
she had rested in the long intermissions. She laughed, and the tears
came to her eyes, all together; she was _quick_, and all-alive, and so
courteous. When she gave me a book she said, 'May I write your whole
name? and may I say "from your friend"?'
"Then she hurried on her bonnet, and walked to the station with me; and
her round face, with the blond hair and the light-blue eyes, seemed to
me to become beautiful as she talked.
"In Edinburgh I asked for a photograph of Mary Somerville, and the young
man behind the counter replied, 'I don't know who it is.'
"In London I asked at a bookstore, which the Murrays recommended, for a
photograph of Mrs. Somerville and of Sir George Airy, and the man said
if they could be had in London he would get them; and then he asked,
'Are they English?' and I informed him that Sir George Airy was the
astronomer royal!
* * * * *
"'The Glasgow College for Girls.' Seeing a sign of this sort, I rang the
door-bell of the house to which it was attached, entered, and was told
the lady was at home. As I waited for her, I took up the 'Prospectus,'
and it was enough,--'music, dancing, drawing, needlework, and English'
were the prominent features, and the pupils were children. All well
enough,--but why call it a college?
"When the lady superintendent came in, I told her that I had supposed it
was for more advanced students, and she said, 'Oh, it is for girls up to
twenty; one supposes a girl is finished by twenty.'
"I asked, as modestly as I could, 'Have you any pupils in Latin and
mathematics?' and she said, 'No, it's for girls, you know. Dr. M. hopes
we shall have some mathematics next year.' 'And,' I asked, 'some Latin?'
'Yes, Dr. M. hopes we shall have some Latin; but I confess I believe
Latin and mathematics all bosh; give them modern languages and
accomplishments. I suppose your school is for professional women.'
"I told her no; that the daughters of our wealthiest people demand
learning; that it would scarcely be considered 'good society' when the
women had neither Latin nor mathematics.
"'Oh, well,' she said, 'they get married here so soon.'
"When I asked her if they had lady teachers, she said 'Oh, no [as if
that would ruin the institution]; nothing but first-class masters.'
"It was clear that the women taught the needlework."