Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 1

Maria Mitch.e.l.l: Life, Letters, and Journals.

by Maria Mitch.e.l.l.

CHAPTER I

1818-1846

BIRTH--PARENTS--HOME SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE

Maria Mitch.e.l.l was born on the island of Nantucket, Ma.s.s., Aug. 1, 1818.

She was the third child of William and Lydia [Coleman] Mitch.e.l.l.

Her ancestors, on both sides, were Quakers for many generations; and it was in consequence of the intolerance of the early Puritans that these ancestors had been obliged to flee from the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, and to settle upon this island, which, at that time, belonged to the State of New York.

For many years the Quakers, or Friends, as they called themselves, formed much the larger part of the inhabitants of Nantucket, and thus were enabled to crystallize, as it were, their own ideas of what family and social life should be; and although in course of time many "world's people" swooped down and helped to swell the number of islanders, they still continued to hold their own methods, and to bring up their children in accordance with their own conceptions of "Divine light."

Mr. and Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l were married during the war of 1812; the former lacking one week of being twenty-one years old, and the latter being a few months over twenty.

The people of Nantucket by their situation endured many hardships during this period; their ships were upon the sea a prey to privateers, and communication with the mainland was exposed to the same danger, so that it was difficult to obtain such necessaries of life as the island could not furnish. There were still to be seen, a few years ago, the marks left on the moors, where fields of corn and potatoes had been planted in that trying time.

So the young couple began their housekeeping in a very simple way. Mr.

Mitch.e.l.l used to describe it as being very delightful; it was noticed that Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l never expressed herself on the subject,--it was she, probably, who had the planning to do, to make a little money go a great way, and to have everything smooth and serene when her husband came home.

Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l was a woman of strong character, very dignified, honest almost to an extreme, and perfectly self-controlled where control was necessary. She possessed very strong affections, but her self-control was such that she was undemonstrative.

She kept a close watch over her children, was clearheaded, knew their every fault and every merit, and was an indefatigable worker. It was she who looked out for the education of the children and saw what their capacities were.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l was a man of great suavity and gentleness; if left to himself he would never have denied a single request made to him by one of his children. His first impulse was to gratify every desire of their hearts, and if it had not been for the clear head of the mother, who took care that the household should be managed wisely and economically, the results might have been disastrous. The father had wisdom enough to perceive this, and when a child came to him, and in a very pathetic and winning way proffered some request for an unusual indulgence, he generally replied, "Yes, if mother thinks best."

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l was very fond of bright colors; as they were excluded from the dress of Friends, he indulged himself wherever it was possible. If he were buying books, and there was a variety of binding, he always chose the copies with red covers. Even the wooden framework of the reflecting telescope which he used was painted a brilliant red. He liked a gay carpet on the floor, and the walls of the family sitting-room in the house on Vestal street were covered with paper resplendent with bunches of pink roses. Suspended by a cord from the ceiling in the centre of this room was a gla.s.s ball, filled with water, used by Mr.

Mitch.e.l.l in his experiments on polarization of light, flashing its dancing rainbows about the room.

At the back of this house was a little garden, full of gay flowers: so that if the garb of the young Mitch.e.l.ls was rather sombre, the setting was bright and cheerful, and the life in the home was healthy and wide-awake. When the hilarity became excessive the mother would put in her little check, from time to time, and the father would try to look as he ought to, but he evidently enjoyed the whole.

As Mr. Mitch.e.l.l was kind and indulgent to his children, so he was the sympathetic friend and counsellor of many in trouble who came to him for help or advice. As he took his daily walk to the little farm about a mile out of town, where, for an hour or two he enjoyed being a farmer, the people would come to their doors to speak to him as he pa.s.sed, and the little children would run up to him to be patted on the head.

He treated animals in the same way. He generally kept a horse. His children complained that although the horse was good when it was bought, yet as Mr. Mitch.e.l.l never allowed it to be struck with a whip, nor urged to go at other than a very gentle trot, the horse became thoroughly demoralized, and was no more fit to drive than an old cow!

There was everything in the home which could amuse and instruct children. The eldest daughter was very handy at all sorts of entertaining occupations; she had a delicate sense of the artistic, and was quite skilful with her pencil.

The present kindergarten system in its practice is almost identical with the home as it appeared in the first half of this century, among enlightened people. There is hardly any kind of handiwork done in the kindergarten that was not done in the Mitch.e.l.l family, and in other families of their acquaintance. The girls learned to sew and cook, just as they learned to read,--as a matter of habit rather than of instruction. They learned how to make their own clothes, by making their dolls' clothes,--and the dolls themselves were frequently home-made, the eldest sister painting the faces much more prettily than those obtained at the shops; and there was a great delight in gratifying the fancy, by dressing the dolls, not in Quaker garb, but in all of the most brilliant colors and stylish shapes worn by the ultra-fashionable.

There were always plenty of books, and besides those in the house there was the Atheneum Library, which, although not a free library, was very inexpensive to the shareholders.

There was another very striking difference between that epoch and the present. The children of that day were taught to value a book and to take excellent care of it; as an instance it may be mentioned that one copy of Colburn's "Algebra" was used by eight children in the Mitch.e.l.l family, one after the other. The eldest daughter's name was written on the inside of the cover; seven more names followed in the order of their ages, as the book descended.

With regard to their reading, the mother examined every book that came into the house. Of course there were not so many books published then as now, and the same books were read over and over. Miss Edgeworth's stories became part of their very lives, and Young's "Night Thoughts,"

and the poems of Cowper and Bloomfield were conspicuous objects on the bookshelves of most houses in those days. Mr. Mitch.e.l.l was very apt, while observing the heavens in the evening, to quote from one or the other of these poets, or from the Bible. "An undevout astronomer is mad"

was one of his favorite quotations.

Among the poems which Maria learned in her childhood, and which was repeatedly upon her lips all through her life, was, "The s.p.a.cious firmament on high." In her latter years if she had a sudden fright which threatened to take away her senses she would test her mental condition by repeating that poem; it is needless to say that she always remembered it, and her nerves instantly relapsed into their natural condition.

The lives of Maria Mitch.e.l.l and her numerous brothers and sisters were pa.s.sed in simplicity and with an entire absence of anything exciting or abnormal.

The education of their children is enjoined upon the parents by the "Discipline," and in those days at least the parents did not give up all the responsibility in that line to the teachers. In Maria Mitch.e.l.l's childhood the children of a family sat around the table in the evenings and studied their lessons for the next day,--the parents or the older children a.s.sisting the younger if the lessons were too difficult. The children attended school five days in the week,--six hours in the day,--and their only vacation was four weeks in the summer, generally in August.

The idea that children over-studied and injured their health was never promulgated in that family, nor indeed in that community; it seems to be a notion of the present half-century.

Maria's first teacher was a lady for whom she always felt the warmest affection, and in her diary, written in her later years, occurs this allusion to her:

"I count in my life, outside of family relatives, three aids given me on my journey; they are prominent to me: the woman who first made the study-book charming; the man who sent me the first hundred dollars I ever saw, to buy books with; and another n.o.ble woman, through whose efforts I became the owner of a telescope; and of these, the first was the greatest."

As a little girl, Maria was not a brilliant scholar; she was shy and slow; but later, under her father's tuition, she developed very rapidly.

After the close of the war of 1812, when business was resumed and the town restored to its normal prosperity, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l taught school,--at first as master of a public school, and afterwards in a private school of his own. Maria attended both of these schools.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l's pupils speak of him as a most inspiring teacher, and he always spoke of his experiences in that capacity as very happy.

When her father gave up teaching, Maria was put under the instruction of Mr. Cyrus Peirce, afterwards princ.i.p.al of the first normal school started in the United States.

Mr. Peirce took a great interest in Maria, especially in developing her taste for mathematical study, for which she early showed a remarkable talent.

The books which she studied at the age of seventeen, as we know by the date of the notes, were Bridge's "Conic Sections," Hutton's "Mathematics," and Bowditch's "Navigator." At that time Prof. Benjamin Peirce had not published his "Explanations of the Navigator and Almanac," so that Maria was obliged to consult many scientific books and reports before she could herself construct the astronomical tables.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, on relinquishing school-teaching, was appointed cashier of the Pacific Bank; but although he gave up teaching, he by no means gave up studying his favorite science, astronomy, and Maria was his willing helper at all times.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l from his early youth was an enthusiastic student of astronomy, at a time, too, when very little attention was given to that study in this country. His evenings, when pleasant, were spent in observing the heavens, and to the children, accustomed to seeing such observations going on, the important study in the world seemed to be astronomy. One by one, as they became old enough, they were drafted into the service of counting seconds by the chronometer, during the observations.

Some of them took an interest in the thing itself, and others considered it rather stupid work, but they all drank in so much of this atmosphere, that if any one had asked a little child in this family, "Who was the greatest man that ever lived?" the answer would have come promptly, "Herschel."

Maria very early learned the use of the s.e.xtant. The chronometers of all the whale ships were brought to Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, on their return from a voyage, to be "rated," as it was called. For this purpose he used the s.e.xtant, and the observations were made in the little back yard of the Vestal-street home.

There was also a clumsy reflecting telescope made on the Herschelian plan, but of very great simplicity, which was put up on fine nights in the same back yard, when the neighbors used to flock in to look at the moon. Afterwards Mr. Mitch.e.l.l bought a small Dolland telescope, which thereafter, as long as she lived, his daughter used for "sweeping"

purposes.

After their removal to the bank building there were added to these an "alt.i.tude and azimuth circle," loaned to Mr. Mitch.e.l.l by West Point Academy, and two transit instruments. A little observatory for the use of the first was placed on the roof of the bank building, and two small buildings were erected in the yard for the transits. There was also a much larger and finer telescope loaned by the Coast Survey, for which service Mr. Mitch.e.l.l made observations.

At the time when Maria Mitch.e.l.l showed a decided taste for the study of astronomy there was no school in the world where she could be taught higher mathematics and astronomy. Harvard College, at that time, had no telescope better than the one which her father was using, and no observatory except the little octagonal projection to the old mansion in Cambridge occupied by the late Dr. A.P. Peabody.

However, every one will admit that no school nor inst.i.tution is better for a child than the home, with an enthusiastic parent for a teacher.

At the time of the annular eclipse of the sun in 1831 the totality was central at Nantucket. The window was taken out of the parlor on Vestal street, the telescope, the little Dolland, mounted in front of it, and with Maria by his side counting the seconds the father observed the eclipse. Maria was then twelve years old.

At sixteen Miss Mitch.e.l.l left Mr. Peirce's school as a pupil, but was retained as a.s.sistant teacher; she soon relinquished that position and opened a private school on Traders' Lane. This school too she gave up for the position of librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, which office she held for nearly twenty years.

This library was open only in the afternoon, and on Sat.u.r.day evening.

The visitors were comparatively few in the afternoon, so that Miss Mitch.e.l.l had ample leisure for study,--an opportunity of which she made the most. Her visitors in the afternoon were elderly men of leisure, who enjoyed talking with so bright a girl on their favorite hobbies. When they talked Miss Mitch.e.l.l closed her book and took up her knitting, for she was never idle. With some of these visitors the friendship was kept up for years.