Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 27

Cartland, Professor and Mrs. Johnson, of Yale, Mr. Williams, the Chinese scholar, his brother, an Episcopal clergyman, and several others. The house seemed full of fine, cultivated people. We stayed two days and a half.

"And first of the scenery. The road up to the house is a steep hill, and at the foot of the hill it winds and turns around two lakes. The panorama is complete one hundred and eighty degrees. Beyond the lakes lie the mountains. We do not see Mt. Washington. The house has a piazza nearly all around it. We had a room on the first floor--large, and with two windows opening to the floor.

"The programme of the day's work was delightfully monotonous. For an hour or so after breakfast we sat in the ladies' parlor, we sewed, and we told anecdotes. Whittier talked beautifully, almost always on the future state and his confidence in it. Occasionally he touched upon persons. He seems to have loved Lydia Maria Child greatly.

"When the cool of the morning was over, we went out upon the piazza, and later on we went under the trees, where, it is said, Whittier spends most of the time.

"There was little of the old-time theology in his views; his faith has been always very firm. Mr. Cartland asked me one day if I really felt there was any doubt of the immortality of the soul. I told him that on the whole I believed it more than I doubted it, but I could not say that I felt no doubt. Whittier asked me if there were no immortality if I should be distressed by it, and I told him that I should be exceedingly distressed; that it was the only thing that I craved. He said that 'annihilation was better for the wicked than everlasting punishment,'

and to that I a.s.sented. He said that he thought there might be persons so depraved as not to be worth saving. I asked him if G.o.d made such.

n.o.body seemed ready to reply. Besides myself there was another of the party to whom a dying friend had promised to return, if possible, but had not come.

"Whittier believed that they did sometimes come. He said that of all whom he had lost, no one would be so welcome to him as Lydia Maria Child.

"We held a little service in the parlor of the hotel, and Mrs. C. read the fourteenth chapter of John. Rev. Mr. W. read a sermon from 'The pure in heart shall see G.o.d," written by Parkhurst, of New York. He thought the child should be told that in heaven he should have his hobby-horse.

After the service, when we talked it over, I objected to telling the child this. Whittier did not object; he said that Luther told his little boy that he should have a little dog with a golden tail in heaven.

"Aug. 26, 1886. I have been to see an exhibition of a cooking school. I found sixteen girls in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a school-house. They had long tables, across which stretched a line of gas-stoves and jets of gas.

Some of the girls were using saucepans; they set them upon the stove, and then sat down where they could see a clock while the boiling process went on.

"At one table a girl was cutting out doughnuts; at another a girl was making a pudding--a layer of bits of bread followed by a layer of fruit.

Each girl had her rolling-pin, and moulding-board or saucepan.

"The chief peculiarity of these processes was the cleanliness. The rolling-pins were clean, the knives were clean, the ap.r.o.ns were clean, the hands were clean. Not a drop was spilled, not a crumb was dropped.

"If into the kitchen of the crowded mother there could come the utensils, the commodities, the clean towels, the ample _time_, there would come, without the lessons, a touch of the millennium.

"I am always afraid of manual-labor schools. I am not afraid that these girls could not read, for every American girl reads, and to read is much more important than to cook; but I _am_ afraid that not all can _write_--some of them were not more than twelve years old.

"And what of the boys? Must a common cook always be a girl? and must a boy not cook unless on the top of the ladder, with the pay of the president of Harvard College?

"I am jealous for the schools; I have heard a gentleman who stands high in science declare that the cooking schools would eventually kill out every literary college in the land--for women. But why not for men? If the food for the body is more important than the food for the mind, let us destroy the latter and accept the former, but let us not continue to do what has been tried for fifteen hundred years,--to keep one half of the world to the starvation of the mind, in order to feed better the physical condition of the other half.

"Let us have cooks; but let us leave it a matter of choice, as we leave the dressmaking and the shoe-making, the millinery and the carpentry,--free to be chosen!

"There are cultivated and educated women who enjoy cooking; so there are cultivated men who enjoy Kensington embroidery. Who objects? But take care that some rousing of the intellect comes first,--that it may be an enlightened choice,--and do not so fill the day with bread and b.u.t.ter and st.i.tches that no time is left for the appreciation of Whittier, letting at least the simple songs of daily life and the influence of rhythm beautify the dreary round of the three meals a day."

Miss Mitch.e.l.l had a stock of conundrums on hand, and was a good guesser.

She told her stories at all times when they happened to come into her mind. She would arrive at her sister's house, just from Poughkeepsie on a vacation, and after the threshold was crossed and she had said "Good morning," in a clear voice to be heard by all within her sight, she would, perhaps, say, "Well, I have a capital story which I must tell before I take my bonnet off, or I shall forget it!" And there went with her telling an action, voice, and manner which added greater point to the story, but which cannot be described. One of her a.s.sociates at Va.s.sar, in recalling some of her anecdotes, writes: "Professor Mitch.e.l.l was quite likely to stand and deliver herself of a bright little speech before taking her seat at breakfast. It was as though the short walk from the observatory had been an inspiration to thought."

She was quick at repartee. On one occasion Charlotte Cushman and her friend Miss Stebbins were visiting Miss Mitch.e.l.l at Va.s.sar. Miss Mitch.e.l.l took them out for a drive, and pointed out the different objects of interest as they drove along the banks of the Hudson. "What is that fine building on the hill?" asked Miss Cushman.--"That," said Miss Mitch.e.l.l, "was a boys' school, originally, but it is now used as a hotel, where they charge five dollars a day!"--"Five dollars a day?"

exclaimed Miss Cushman; "Jupiter Ammon!"--"No," said Miss Stebbins, "Jupiter Mammon!"--"Not at all," said Miss Mitch.e.l.l, "Jupiter _gammon!_"

"Farewell, Maria," said an old Friend, "I hope the Lord will be with thee."

"Good-by," she replied, "I _know_ he will be with you."

A characteristic trait in Miss Mitch.e.l.l was her aversion to receiving unsolicited advice in regard to her private affairs. "A suggestion is an impertinence," she would often say. The following anecdote shows how she received such counsel:

A literary man of more than national reputation said to one of her admirers, "I, for one, cannot endure your Maria Mitch.e.l.l." At her solicitation he explained why; and his reason was, as she had antic.i.p.ated, founded on personal pique. It seems he had gone up from New York to Poughkeepsie especially to call upon Professor Mitch.e.l.l. During the course of conversation, with that patronizing condescension which some self-important men extend to all women indiscriminately, he proceeded to inform her that her manner of living was not in accordance with his ideas of expediency. "Now," he said, "instead of going for each one of your meals all the way from your living-rooms in the observatory over to the dining-hall in the college building, I should think it would be far more convenient and sensible for you to get your breakfast, at least, right in your own apartments. In the morning you could make a cup of coffee and boil an egg with almost no trouble." At which Professor Mitch.e.l.l drew herself up with the air of a tragic queen, saying, "And is my time worth no more than to boil eggs?"

CHAPTER XIII

MISS MITCh.e.l.l'S LETTERS--WOMAN SUFFRAGE--MEMBERSHIP IN VARIOUS SOCIETIES--PUBLISHED ARTICLES--DEATH--CONCLUSION

Miss Mitch.e.l.l was a voluminous letter writer and an excellent correspondent, but her letters are not essays, and not at all in the approved style of the "Complete Letter Writer." If she had any particular thing to communicate, she rushed into the subject in the first line. In writing to her own family and intimate friends, she rarely signed her full name; sometimes she left it out altogether, but ordinarily "M.M." was appended abruptly when she had expressed all that she had to say. She wrote as she talked, with directness and promptness.

No one, in watching her while she was writing a letter, ever saw her pause to think what she should say next or how she should express the thought. When she came to that point, the "M.M." was instantly added.

She had no secretiveness, and in looking over her letters it has been almost impossible to find one which did not contain too much that was personal, either about herself or others, to make it proper; especially as she herself would be very unwilling to make the affairs of others public.

"Oct. 22, 1860. I have spent $100 on dress this year. I have a very pretty new felt bonnet of the fashionable shape, trimmed with velvet; it cost only $7, which, of course, was pitifully cheap for Broadway. If thou thinks after $100 it wouldn't be extravagant for me to have a waterproof cloak and a linsey-woolsey morning dress, please to send me patterns of the latter material and a description of waterproofs of various prices. They are so ugly, and I am so ditto, that I feel if a few dollars, more or less, would make me look better, even in a storm, I must not mind it."

"My orthodoxy is settled beyond dispute, I trust, by the following circ.u.mstance: The editor of a New York magazine has written to me to furnish an article for the Christmas number on 'The Star in the East.' I have ventured, in my note of declination, to mention that if I investigated that subject I might decide that there was no star in the case, and then what would become of me, and _where should I go_? Since that he has not written, so I may have hung myself!

"1879. April 25. I have 'done' New York very much as we did it thirty years ago. On Sat.u.r.day I went to Miss Booth's reception, and it was like Miss Lynch's, only larger than Miss Lynch's was when I was there....

Miss Booth and a friend live on Fifty-ninth street, and have lived together for years. Miss Booth is a nice-looking woman. She says she has often been told that she looked like me; she has gray hair and black eyes, but is fair and well-cut in feature. I had a very nice time.

"On Sunday I went to hear Frothingham, and he was at his very best. The subject was 'Aspirations of Man,' and the sermon was rich in thought and in word.

... Frothingham's discourse was more cheery than usual; he talked about the wonderful idea of personal immortality, and he said if it be a dream of the imagination let us worship the imagination. He spoke of Mrs.

Child's book on 'Aspirations,' and I shall order it at once. The only satire was such a sentence as this: on speaking of a piece of Egyptian sculpture he said, 'The gates of heaven opened to the good, not to the orthodox.'

"To-day, Monday, I have been to a public school (a primary) and to Stewart's mansion. I asked the majordomo to take us through the rooms on the lower floor, which he did. I know of no palace which comes up to it.

The palaces always have a look as if at some point they needed refurbishing up. I suppose that Mrs. Stewart uses that dining-room, but it did not look as if it was made to eat in. I still like Gerome's 'Chariot Race' better than anything else of his. The 'Horse Fair' was too high up for me to enjoy it, and a little too mixed up.

"1873. St. Petersburg is another planet, and, strange to say, is an agreeable planet. Some of these Europeans are far ahead of us in many things. I think we are in advance only in one universal democracy of freedom. But then, that is everything.

"Nov. 17, 1875. I think you are right to decide to make your home pleasant at any sacrifice which involves _only_ silence. And you are so all over a radical, that it won't hurt you to be toned down a little, and in a few years, as the world moves, your family will have moved one way and you the other a little, and you will suddenly find yourself on the same plane. It is much the way that has been between Miss ---- and myself. To-day she is more of a women's rights woman than I was when I first knew her, while I begin to think that the girls would better dress at tea-time, though I think on that subject we thought alike at first, so I'll take another example.

"I have learned to think that a _young_ girl would better not walk to town alone, even in the daytime. When I came to Va.s.sar I should have allowed a child to do it. But I never knew _much_ of the world--never shall--nor will you. And as we were both born a little deficient in worldly caution and worldly policy, let us receive from others those, lessons,--_do as well as we can_, and keep our _heart_ unworldly if our manners take on something of those ways.

"Oct. 25, 1875.... I have scarcely got over the _tire_ of the congress [Footnote: The annual meeting of the a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Women, of which Miss Mitch.e.l.l was president. It was held at Syracuse, N.Y., in 1875.] yet, although it is a week since I returned. I feel as if a great burden was lifted from my soul. You will see my 'speech' in the 'Woman's Journal,' but in the last sentence it should be 'eastward'

and not '_earth_ward.' It was a grand affair, and babies came in arms.

School-boys stood close to the platform, and school-girls came, books in hand. The hall was a beautiful opera-house, and could hold at least one thousand seven hundred. It was packed and jammed, and rough men stood in the aisles. When I had to speak to announce a paper I stood _very still_ until they became quiet. Once, as I stood in that way, a man at the extreme rear, before I had spoken a word, shouted out, 'Louder!' We all burst into a laugh. Then, of course, I had to make them quiet again. I lifted the little mallet, but I did not strike it, and they all became still. I was surprised at the good breeding of such a crowd. In the evening about half was made up of men. I could not have believed that such a crowd would keep still when I asked them to.

"They say I did well. Think of my developing as a president of a social science society in my old age!"

Miss Mitch.e.l.l took no prominent part in the woman suffrage movement, but she believed in it firmly, and its leaders were some of her most highly valued friends.

"Sept. 7, 1875. Went to a picnic for woman suffrage at a beautiful grove at Medfield, Ma.s.s. It was a gathering of about seventy-five persons (mostly from Needham), whose president seemed to be vigorous and good-spirited.

"The main purpose of the meeting was to try to affect public sentiment to such an extent as to lead to the defeat of a man who, when the subject of woman suffrage was before the Legislature, said that the women had all they wanted now--that they could get anything with 'their eyes as bright as the b.u.t.tons on an angel's coat.' Lucy Stone, Mr.

Blackwell, Rev. Mr. Bush, Miss Eastman, and William Lloyd Garrison spoke.

"Garrison did not look a day older than when I first saw him, forty years ago; he spoke well--they said with less fire than he used in his younger days. Garrison said what every one says--that the struggle for women was the old anti-slavery struggle over again; that as he looked around at the audience beneath the trees, it seemed to be the same scene that he had known before.

"... We had a very good bit of missionary work done at our table (at Va.s.sar) to-day. A man whom we all despise began to talk against voting by women. I felt almost inclined to pay him something for his remarks.