Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 16

"At the time when I saw her, she was thinking of her statue of Zen.o.bia.

She was studying the history of Palmyra, reading up on the manners and customs of its people, and examining Eastern relics and costumes.

"If she heard that in the sacristy of a certain cathedral, hundreds of miles away, were lying robes of Eastern queens, she mounted her horse and rode to the spot, for the sake of learning the lesson they could teach.

"Day after day alone in her studio, she studied the subject. Think what knowledge of the country, of the history of the people, must be gathered, must be moulded, to bring into the face and bearing of its queen the expression of the race! Think what familiar acquaintance with the human form, to represent a lifelike figure at all!

"For years after I came home I read the newspapers to see if I could find any notice of the statue of Zen.o.bia; and I did at length see this announcement: 'The statue of Zen.o.bia, by Miss Hosmer, is on exhibition at Childs & Jenks'.'

"It was after five years. All through those five years, Miss Hosmer had kept her projects steadily turned in this direction.

"Whatever may be the criticism of art upon her work, no one can deny that she is above the average artist.

"But she is herself, as a woman, very much above herself in art. If there came to any struggling artist in Rome the need of a friend,--and of the thousand artists in Rome very few are successful,--Harriet Hosmer was that friend.

"I knew her to stretch out a helping hand to an unfortunate artist, a poor, uneducated, unattractive American, against whom the other Americans in Rome shut their houses and their hearts. When the other Americans turned from the unsuccessful artist, Harriet Hosmer reached forth the helping hand.

"When Harriet Hosmer knew herself to be a sculptor, she knew also that in all America was no school for her. She must leave home, she must live where art could live. She might model her busts in the clay of her own soil, but who should follow out in marble the delicate thought which the clay expressed? The workmen of Ma.s.sachusetts tended the looms, built the railroads, and read the newspapers. The hard-handed men of Italy worked in marble from the designs put before them; one copied the leaves which the sculptor threw into the wreaths around the brows of his heroes; another turned with his tool the folds of the drapery; another wrought up the delicate tissues of the flesh; none of them dreamed of ideas: they were copyists,--the very hand-work that her head needed.

"And to Italy she went. For her school she sought the studio of Gibson--the greatest sculptor of the time.

"She resolved 'To scorn delights and live laborious days;' and there she has lived and worked for years.

"She fashions the clay to her ideal--every little touch of her fingers in the clay is a thought; she thinks in clay.

"The model finished and cast in the dull, hard, inexpressive plaster, she stands by the workmen while they put it into the marble. She must watch them, for a touch of the tool in the wrong place might alter the whole expression of the face, as a wrong accent in the reader will spoil a line of poetry.

"COLLEGIO ROMANO; SECCHI. There was another observatory which had a reputation and was known in America. It was the observatory of the Collegio Romano, and was in the monastery behind the Church of St.

Ignasio. Its director was the Father Secchi who had visited the United States, and was well known to the scientists of this country.

"I said to myself, 'This is the land of Galileo, and this is the city in which he was tried. I knew of no sadder picture in the history of science than that of the old man, Galileo, worn by a long life of scientific research, weak and feeble, trembling before that tribunal whose frown was torture, and declaring that to be false which he knew to be true. And I know of no picture in the history of religion more weakly pitiable than that of the Holy Church trembling before Galileo, and denouncing him because he found in the Book of Nature truths not stated in their own Book of G.o.d--forgetting that the Book of Nature is also a Book of G.o.d.

"It seems to be difficult for any one to take in the idea that two truths cannot conflict.

"Galileo was the first to see the four moons of Jupiter; and when he announced the fact that four such moons existed, of course he was met by various objections from established authority. One writer declared that as astrologers had got along very well without these planets, there could be no reason for their starting into existence.

"But his greatest heresy was this: He was tried, condemned, and punished for declaring that the sun was the centre of the system, and that the earth moved around it; also, that the earth turned on its axis.

"For teaching this, Galileo was called before the a.s.sembled cardinals of Rome, and, clad in black cloth, was compelled to kneel, and to promise never again to teach that the earth moved. It is said that when he arose he whispered, 'It does move!'

"He was tried at the Hall of Sopre Minerva. In fewer than two hundred years from that time the Church of St. Ignasio was built, and the monastery on whose walls the instruments of the modern observatory stand.

"It is a very singular fact, but one which seems to show that even in science 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,' that the spot where Galileo was tried is very near the site of the present observatory, to which the pope was very liberal.

"From the Hall of Sopre Minerva you make but two turns through short streets to the Fontenelle de Borghese, in the rear of which stands the present observatory.

"Indeed, if a cardinal should, at the Hall of Sopre Minerva, call out to Secchi, 'Watchman, what of the night?' Secchi could hear the question; and no bolder views emanate from any observatory than those which Secchi sends out.

"I sent a card to Secchi, and awaited a call, well satisfied to have a little more time for listless strolling among ruins and into the studios. And so we spent many an hour: picking up land sh.e.l.ls from the top of the Coliseum, gathering violets in the upper chambers of the Palace of the Caesars,--for the overgrown walls made climbing very easy,--or, resting upon some broken statue on the Forum, we admired the arches of the Temple of Peace, thrown upon the rich blue of the sunny skies.

"Returning one day from a drive, I met two priests descending one of the upper flights of stairs in the house where I lived. As my rooms had been blessed once, and holy water sprinkled upon them, I thought perhaps another process of that kind had just been gone through, and was about to pa.s.s them, when one of them, accosting me, asked if I were the Signorine Mitch.e.l.l,--changing his Italian to good English as he saw that I was, and introducing himself as Father Secchi. He told me that the younger man was a young _religieux_, and the two turned and went back with me.

"I recalled, as I saw Father Secchi, an anecdote I had heard, no way to his credit,--except for ingenious trickery. It was said that coming to America he brought with him the object-gla.s.s of a telescope, at a time when scientific apparatus paid a high duty. Being asked by some official what the article was, he replied, 'My looking-gla.s.s,' and in that way pa.s.sed it off as personal wardrobe, so escaped the duty. (It may have been De Vico.)

"Father Secchi had brought with him, to show me, negatives of the planet Saturn,--the rings showing beautifully, although the image was not more than half an inch in size.

"I was ignorant enough of the ways of papal inst.i.tutions, and, indeed, of all Italy, to ask if I might visit the Roman Observatory. I remembered that the days of Galileo were days of two centuries since. I did not know that my heretic feet must not enter the sanctuary,--that my woman's robe must not brush the seats of learning.

"The Father's refusal was seen in his face at once, and I felt that I had done something highly improper. The Father said that he would have been most happy to have me visit him, but he had not the power--it was a religious inst.i.tution--he had already applied to his superior, who was not willing to grant permission--the power lay with the Holy Father or one of his cardinals. I was told that Mrs. Somerville, the most learned woman in all Europe, had been denied admission; that the daughter of Sir John Herschel, in spite of English rank, and the higher stamp of Nature's n.o.bility, was at that time in Rome, and could not enter an observatory which was at the same time a monastery.

"If I had before been mildly desirous of visiting the observatory, I was now intensely anxious to do so. Father Secchi suggested that I should see Cardinal Antonelli in person, with a written application in my hand.

This was not to be thought of--to ask an interview with the wily cardinal!

FROM A LETTER TO HER FATHER.

... I am working to get admitted to see the observatory, but it cannot be done without special permission from the pope, and I don't like to be "presented." If I can get permission without the humbug of putting on a black veil and receiving a blessing from Pius, I shall; but I shrink from the formality of presentation. I know thou'd say "Be presented."

"Our minister at that time had the reputation of being very careless of the needs and wishes of his countrymen, and I was not surprised to find a long delay.

"In the course of my waiting, I had told my story to a young Italian gentleman, the nephew of a monseigneur; a monseigneur being next in rank to a cardinal. He a.s.sured me that permission would never be obtained by our minister.

"After a fortnight's waiting I received a permit, written on parchment, and signed by Cardinal Antonelli.

"When the young Italian next called, I held the parchment up in triumph, and boasted that Minister ---- had at length moved in the matter. The young man coolly replied, 'Yes, I spoke to my uncle last evening, and asked him to urge the matter with Cardinal Antonelli; but for that it would never have come!' There had been 'red tape,' and I had not seen it.

"At the same time that the formal missive was sent to me, a similar one was sent to Father Secchi, authorizing him to receive me. The Father called at once to make the arrangements for my visit. I made the most natural mistake! I supposed that the doors which opened to one woman, opened to all, and I asked to take with me my Italian servant, a quick-witted and bright-eyed woman, who had escorted me to and from social parties in the evening, and who had learned in these walks the names of the stars, receiving them from me in English, and giving back to me the sweet Italian words; and who had come to think herself quite an astronomer. Father Secchi refused at once. He said I was to meet him at the Church of St. Ignasio at one and a half hours before Ave Marie, and he would conduct me through the church into the observatory. My servant might come into the church with me. The Ave Marie bell rings half an hour after sunset.

"At the appointed time, the next fine day,--and all days seem to be fine,--we set out on our mission.

"When we entered the church we saw, far in the distance, Father Secchi, standing just behind a pillar. He slipped out a little way, as much as to say, 'I await you,' but did not come forward to meet us; so the woman and I pa.s.sed along through the rows of kneeling worshippers, by the strolling students, and past the lounging tourists--who, guide-book in hand, are seen in every foreign church--until we came to the standpoint from which the Father had been watching us.

"Then the Italian woman put up a pet.i.tion, not one word of which I could understand, but the gestures and the pointing showed that she begged to go on and enter the monastery and see the observatory. Father Secchi said, 'No, the Holy Father gave permission to one only,' and alone I entered the monastery walls.

"Through long halls, up winding staircases, occasionally stopped by some priest who touched his broad hat and asked 'Parlate Italiano?'

occasionally pa.s.sed by students, often stopped by pictures on the walls,--once to be introduced to a professor; then through the library of the monastery, full of ma.n.u.scripts on which monks had worked away their lives; then through the astronomical library, where young astronomers were working away theirs, we reached at length the dome and the telescope.

"One observatory is so much like another that it does not seem worth while to describe Father Secchi's. This observatory has a telescope about the size of that at Washington (about twelve inches). Secchi had no staff, and no prescribed duties. The base of the observatory was the solid foundation of the old Roman building. The church was built in 1650, and the monastery in part at that time, certainly the dome of the room in which was the meridian instrument.

"The staircase is cut out of the old Roman walls, which no roll of carriage, except that of the earthquake chariot, can shake.

"Having no prescribed duties, Secchi could follow his fancies--he could pick up comets as he picked up bits of Mosaic upon the Roman forum. He learns what himself and his instruments can do, and he keeps to that narrow path.

"He was at that time much interested in celestial photography.

"Italy must be the very paradise of astronomers; certainly I never saw objects so well before; the purity of the air must be very superior to ours. We looked at Venus with a power of 150, but it was not good.

Jupiter was beautiful, and in broad daylight the belts were plainly seen. With low powers the moon was charming, but the air would not bear high ones.

"Father Secchi said he had used a power of 2,000, but that 600 was more common. I have rarely used 400. Saturn was exquisite; the rings were separated all around; the dusky ring could be seen, and, of course, the shadow of the ball upon the ring.