1855-1857

EXTRACTS FROM DIARYRACHELEMERSONA HARD WINTER

“Ja, 1855. I put some wires into my little transit this morning. I dreaded it so much, when I found yesterday that it must be done, that it disturbed my sleep. It was much easier than I expected. I took out the little collimating screws first, then I drew out the tube, and in that I found a brass plate screwed on the diaphragm which contained the lines. I was at first a little puzzled to know which screws held this diaphragm in its place, and, as I was very anxious not to unscrew the wrong ones, I took time to consider and found I need turn only two. Then out slipped the little plate with its three wires where five should have been, two having been broken. As I did not know how to manage a spider’s web, I took the hairs from my own head, taking care to pick out white ones because I have no black ones to spare. I put in the two, after first stretching them over pasteboard, by sticking them with sealing-wax dissolved in alcohol into the little grooved lines which I found. When I had, with great labor, adjusted these, as I thought, firmly, I perceived that some of the wax was on the hairs and would make them yet coarser, and they were already too coarse; so I washed my little camel’s-hair brush which I had been using, and began to wash them with clear alcohol. Almost at once I washed out another wire and soon another and another. I went to work patiently and put in the five perpendicular ones besides the horizontal one, which, like the others, had frizzled up and appeared to melt away. With another hour’s labor I got in the five, when a rude motion raised them all again and I began over. Just at one o’clock I had got them all in again. I attempted then to put the diaphragm back into its place. The sealing-wax was not dry, and with a little jar I sent the wires all agog. This time they did not come out of the little grooved lines into which they were put, and I hastened to take out the brass plate and set them in parallel lines. I gave up then for the day, but, as they looked well and were certainly in firmly, I did not consider that I had made an entire failure. I thought it nice ladylike work to manage such slight threads and turn such delicate screws; but fine as are the hairs of one’s head, I shall seek something finer, for I can see how clumsy they will appear when I get on the eyepiece and magnify their imperfections. They look parallel now to the eye, but with a magnifying power a very little crook will seem a billowy wave, and a faint star will hide itself in one of the yawning abysses.

“January 15. Finding the hairs which I had put into my instrument not only too coarse, but variable and disposed to curl themselves up at a change of weather, I wrote to George Bond to ask him how I should procure spider lines. He replied that the web from cocoons should be used, and that I should find it difficult at this time of year to get at them. I remembered at once that I had seen two in the library room of the Atheneum, which I had carefully refrained from disturbing. I found them perfect, and unrolled them.... Fearing that I might not succeed in managing them, I procured some hairs from C.’s head. C. being not quite a year old, his hair is remarkably fine and sufficiently long.... I made the perpendicular wires of the spider’s webs, breaking them and doing the work over again a great many times.... I at length got all in, crossing the five perpendicular ones with a horizontal one from C.’s spinning-wheel.... After twenty-four hours’ exposure to the weather, I looked at them. The spider-webs had not changed, they were plainly used to a chill and made to endure changes of temperature; but C.’s hair, which had never felt a cold greater than that of the nursery, nor a change more decided than from his mother’s arms to his father’s, had knotted up into a decided curl!N.B. C. may expect ringlets.

“January 22. Horace Greeley, in an article in a recent number of the ‘Tribune,’ says that the fund left by Smithson is spent by the regents of that institution in publishing books which no publisher would undertake and which do no good to anybody. Now in our little town of Nantucket, with our little Atheneum, these volumes are in constant demand....

“I do not suppose that such works as those issued by the Smithsonian regents are appreciated by all who turn them over, but the ignorant learn that such things exist; they perceive that a higher cultivation than theirs is in the world, and they are stimulated to strive after greater excellence. So I steadily advocate, in purchasing books for the Atheneum, the lifting of the people. ’Let us buy, not such books as the people want, but books just above their wants, and they will reach up to take what is put out for them.’

“Sep, 1855. To know what one ought to do is certainly the hardest thing in life. ‘Doing’ is comparatively easy; but there are no laws for your individual caseyours is one of a myriad.

“There are laws of right and wrong in general, but they do not seem to bear upon any particular case.

“In chess-playing you can refer to rules of movement, for the chess-men are few, and the positions in which they may be placed, numerous as they are, have a limit.

“But is there any limit to the different positions of human beings around you? Is there any limit to the peculiarities of circumstances?

“Here a man, however much of a copyist he may be by nature, comes down to simple originality, unless he blindly follows the advice of some friend; for there is no precedent in anything exactly like his case; he must decide for himself, and must take the step alone; and fearfully, cautiously, and distrustingly must we all take many of our steps, for we see but a little way at best, and we can foresee nothing at all.

“September 13. I read this morning an article in ‘Putnam’s Magazine,’ on Rachel. I have been much interested in this woman as a genius, though I am pained by the accounts of her career in point of morals, and I am wearied with the glitter of her jewelry. Night puts on a jewelled robe which few admire, compared with the admiration for marketable jewelry. The New York ‘Tribune’ descends to the rating of the value of those worn by her, and it is the prominent point, or rather it makes the multitude of prominent points, when she is spoken of.

“The writer in ‘Putnam’ does not go into these small matters, but he attempts a criticism on acting, to which I am not entirely a convert. He maintains that if an actor should really show a character in such light that we could not tell the impersonation from the reality, the stage would lose its interest. I do not think so. We should draw back, of course, from physical suffering; but yet we should be charmed to suppose anything real, which we had desired to see. If we felt that we really met Cardinal Wolsey or Henry VIII. in his days of glory, would it not be a lifelong memory to us, very different from the effect of the stage, and if for a few moments we really felt that we had met them, would it not lift us into a new kind of being?

“What would we not give to see Julius Cæsar and the soothsayer, just as they stood in Rome as Shakspere represents them? Why, we travel hundreds of miles to see the places noted for the doings of these old Romans; and if we could be made to believe that we met one of the smaller men, even, of that day, our ecstasy would be unbounded. ’A tin pan so painted as to deceive is atrocious,’ says this writer. Of course, for we are not interested in a tin pan; but give us a portrait of Shakspere or Milton so that we shall feel that we have met them, and I see no atrocity in the matter. We honor the homes of these men, and we joy in the hope of seeing them. What would be beyond seeing them in life?

“October 31. I saw Rachel in ‘Phedre’ and in ‘Adrienne.’ I had previously asked a friend if I, in my ignorance of acting, and in my inability to tell good from poor, should really perceive a marked difference between Rachel and her aids. She thought I should. I did indeed! In ‘Phedre,’ which I first saw, she was not aided at all by her troupe; they were evidently ill at ease in the Greek dress and in Greek manners; while she had assimilated herself to the whole. It is founded on the play of Euripides, and even to Rachel the passion which she represents as Phedre must have been too strange to be natural. Hippolytus refuses the love which Phedre offers after a long struggle with herself, and this gives cause for the violent bursts in which Rachel shows her power. It was an outburst of passion of which I have no conception, and I felt as if I saw a new order of being; not a woman, but a personified passion. The vehemence and strength were wonderful. It was in parts very touching. There was as fine an opportunity for Aricia to show some power as for Phedre, but the automaton who represented Aricia had no power to show. Oenon, whom I took to be the sister Sarah, was something of an actress, but her part was so hateful that no one could applaud her. I felt in reading ‘Phedre,’ and in hearing it, that it was a play of high order, and that I learned some little philosophy from some of its sentiments; but for ‘Adrienne’ I have a contempt. The play was written by Scribe specially for Rachel, and the French acting was better done by the other performers than the Greek. I have always disliked to see death represented on the stage. Rachel’s representation was awful! I could not take my eyes from the scene, and I held my breath in horror; the death was so much to the life. It is said that she changes color. I do not know that she does, but it looked like a ghastly hue that came over her pale face.

“I was displeased at the constant standing. Neither as Greeks nor as Frenchmen did they sit at all; only when dying did Rachel need a chair. They made love standing, they told long stories standing, they took snuff in that position, hat in hand, and Rachel fainted upon the breast of some friend from the same fatiguing attitude.

“The audience to hear ‘Adrienne’ was very fine. The Unitarian clergymen and the divinity students seemed to have turned out.

“Most of the two thousand listeners followed with the book, and when the last word was uttered on the French page, over turned the two thousand leaves, sounding like a shower of rain. The applause was never very great; it is said that Rachel feels this as a Boston peculiarity, but she ought also to feel the compliment of so large an audience in a city where foreigners are so few and the population so small compared to that of New York.

“No, 1855. Last night I heard Emerson give a lecture. I pity the reporter who attempts to give it to the world. I began to listen with a determination to remember it in order, but it was without method, or order, or system. It was like a beam of light moving in the undulatory waves, meeting with occasional meteors in its path; it was exceedingly captivating. It surprised me that there was not only no commonplace thought, but there was no commonplace expression. If he quoted, he quoted from what we had not read; if he told an anecdote, it was one that had not reached us. At the outset he was very severe upon the science of the age. He said that inventors and discoverers helped themselves very much, but they did not help the rest of the world; that a great man was felt to the centre of the Copernican system; that a botanist dried his plants, but the plants had their revenge and dried the botanist; that a naturalist bottled up reptiles, but in return the man was bottled up.

“There was a pitiful truth in all this, but there are glorious exceptions. Professor Peirce is anything but a formula, though he deals in formulae.

“The lecture turned at length upon beauty, and it was evident that personal beauty had made Emerson its slave many a time, and I suppose every heart in the house admitted the truth of his words....

“It was evident that Mr. Emerson was not at ease, for he declared that good manners were more than beauty of face, and good expression better than good features. He mentioned that Sir Philip Sydney was not handsome, though the boast of English society; and he spoke of the astonishing beauty of the Duchess of Hamilton, to see whom hundreds collected when she took a ride. I think in these cases there is something besides beauty; there was rank in that of the Duchess, in the case of Sydney there was no need of beauty at all.

“De, 1855. All along this year I have felt that it was a hard yearthe hardest of my life. And I have kept enumerating to myself my many trials; to-day it suddenly occurred to me that my blessings were much more numerous. If mother’s illness was a sore affliction, her recovery is a great blessing; and even the illness itself has its bright side, for we have joyed in showing her how much we prize her continued life. If I have lost some friends by death, I have not lost all. If I have worked harder than I felt that I could bear, how much better is that than not to have as much work as I wanted to do. I have earned more money than in any preceding year; I have studied less, but have observed more, than I did last year. I have saved more money than ever before, hoping for Europe in 1856.” ...

Miss Mitchell from her earliest childhood had had a great desire to travel in Europe. She received a very small salary for her services in the Atheneum, but small as it was she laid by a little every year.

She dressed very simply and spent as little as possible on herselfwhich was also true of her later years. She took a little journey every year, and could always have little presents ready for the birthdays and Christmas days, and for the necessary books which could not be found in the Atheneum library, and which she felt that she ought to own herself,all this on a salary which an ordinary school-girl in these days would think too meagre to supply her with dress alone.

In this family the children were not ashamed to say, “I can’t afford it,” and were taught that nothing was cheap that they could not pay fora lesson that has been valuable to them all their lives.

“.... 1855. Deacon Greeley, of Boston, urged my going to Boston and giving some lectures to get money. I told him I could not think of it just now, as I wanted to go to Europe. ‘On what money?’ said he. ’What I have earned,’ I replied. ‘Bless me!’ said he; ’am I talking to a capitalist? What a mistake I have made.’”

During the time of the prosperity of the town, the winters were very sociable and lively; but when the inhabitants began to leave for more favorable opportunities for getting a livelihood, the change was felt very seriously, especially in the case of an exceptionally stormy winter. Here is an extract showing how Miss Mitchell and her family lived during one of these winters:

“Ja, 1857. Hard winters are becoming the order of things. Winter before last was hard, last winter was harder, and this surpasses all winters known before.

“We have been frozen into our island now since the 6th. No one cared much about it for the first two or three days; the sleighing was good, and all the world was out trying their horses on Main streetthe racecourse of the world. Day after day passed, and the thermometer sank to a lower point, and the winds rose to a higher, and sleighing became uncomfortable; and even the dullest man longs for the cheer of a newspaper. The ‘Nantucket Inquirer’ came out for awhile, but at length it had nothing to tell and nothing to inquire about, and so kept its peace.

“After about a week a vessel was seen off Siasconset, and boarded by a pilot. Her captain said he would go anywhere and take anybody, as all he wanted was a harbor. Two men whose business would suffer if they remained at home took passage in her, and with the pilot, Patterson, she left in good weather and was seen off Chatham at night. It was hoped that Patterson would return and bring at least a few newspapers, but no more is known of them. Our postmaster thought he was not allowed to send the mails by such a conveyance.

“Yesterday we got up quite an excitement because a large steamship was seen near the Haul-over. She set a flag for a pilot, and was boarded. It was found that she was out of course, twenty days from Glasgow, bound to New York. What the European news is we do not yet know, but it is plain that we are nearer to Europe than to Hyannis. Christians as we are, I am afraid we were all sorry that she did not come ashore. We women revelled in the idea of the rich silks she would probably throw upon the beach, and the men thought a good job would be made by steamboat companies and wreck agents.

“Last night the weather was so mild that a plan was made for cutting out the steamboat; all the Irishmen in town were ordered to be on the harbor with axes, shovels, and saws at seven this morning. The poor fellows were exulting in the prospect of a job, but they are sadly balked, for this morning at seven a hard storm was ragingsnow and a good north-west wind. What has become of the English steamer no one knows, but the wind blows off shore, so she will not come any nearer to us.

“Inside of the house we amuse ourselves in various ways. F.’s family and ours form a club meeting three times a week, and writing ’machine poetry’ in great quantities. Occasionally something very droll puts us in a roar of laughter. F., E., and K. are, I think, rather the smartest, though Mr. M. has written rather the best of all. At the next meeting, each of us is to produce a sonnet on a subject which we draw by lot. I have written mine and tried to be droll. K. has written hers and is serious.

“I am sadly tried by this state of things. I cannot hear from Cambridge (the Nautical Almanac office), and am out of work; it is cloudy most of the time, and I cannot observe; and I had fixed upon just this time for taking a journey. My trunk has been half packed for a month.

“January 23. Foreseeing that the thermometer would show a very low point last night, we sat up until near midnight, when it stood one and one-half below zero. The stars shone brightly, and the wind blew freshly from west north-west.

“This morning the wind is the same, and the mercury stood at six and one-half below zero at seven o’clock, and now at ten A.M. is not above zero. The Coffin School dismissed its scholars. Miss F. suffered much from the exposure on her way to school.

“The ‘Inquirer’ came out this morning, giving the news from Europe brought by the steamer which lies off ’Sconset. No coal has yet been carried to the steamer, the carts which started for ’Sconset being obliged to return.

“There are about seven hundred barrels of flour in town; it is admitted that fresh meat is getting scarce; the streets are almost impassable from the snow-drifts.

“K. and I have hit upon a plan for killing time. We are learning poetryshe takes twenty lines of Goldsmith’s ‘Traveller,’ and I twenty lines of the ‘Deserted Village.’ It will take us twenty days to learn the whole, and we hope to be stopped in our course by the opening of the harbor. Considering that K. has a fiance from whom she cannot hear a word, she carries herself very amicably towards mankind. She is making herself a pair of shoes, which look very well; I have made myself a morning-dress since we were closed in.

“Last night I took my first lesson in whist-playing. I learned in one evening to know the king, queen, and jack apart, and to understand what my partner meant when she winked at me.

“The worst of this condition of things is that we shall bear the marks of it all our lives. We are now sixteen daily papers behind the rest of the world, and in those sixteen papers are items known to all the people in all the cities, which will never be known to us. How prices have fluctuated in that time we shall not knowwhat houses have burned down, what robberies have been committed. When the papers do come, each of us will rush for the latest dates; the news of two weeks ago is now history, and no one reads history, especially the history of one’s own country.

“I bought a copy of ‘Aurora Leigh’ just before the freezing up, and I have been careful, as it is the only copy on the island, to circulate it freely. It must have been a pleasant visitor in the four or five households which it has entered. We have had Dr. Kane’s book and now have the ‘Japan Expedition.’

“The intellectual suffering will, I think, be all. I have no fear of scarcity of provisions or fuel. There are old houses enough to burn. Fresh meat is rather scarce because the English steamer required so much victualling. We have a barrel of pork and a barrel of flour in the house, and father has chickens enough to keep us a good while.

“There are said to be some families who are in a good deal of suffering, for whom the Howard Society is on the lookout. Mother gives very freely to Bridget, who has four children to support with only the labor of her hands.

“The Coffin School has been suspended one day on account of the heaviest storm, and the Unitarian church has had but one service. No great damage has been done by the gales. My observing-seat came thundering down the roof one evening, about ten o’clock, but all the world understood its cry of ‘Stand from under,’ and no one was hurt. Several windows were blown in at midnight, and houses shook so that vases fell from the mantelpieces.

“The last snow drifted so that the sleighing was difficult, and at present the storm is so smothering that few are out. A. has been out to school every day, and I have not failed to go out into the air once a day to take a short walk.

“January 24. We left the mercury one below zero when we went to bed last night, and it was at zero when we rose this morning. But it rises rapidly, and now, at eleven A.M., it is as high as fifteen. The weather is still and beautiful; the English steamer is still safe at her moorings.

“Our little club met last night, each with a sonnet. I did the best I could with a very bad subject. K. and E. rather carried the honors away, but Mr. J. M.’s was very taking. Our ‘crambo’ playing was rather dull, all of us having exhausted ourselves on the sonnets. We seem to have settled ourselves quietly into a tone of resignation in regard to the weather; we know that we cannot ‘get out,’ any more than Sterne’s Starling, and we know that it is best not to fret.

“The subject which I have drawn for the next poem is ‘Sunrise,’ about which I know very little. K. and I continue to learn twenty lines of poetry a day, and I do not find it unpleasant, though the ’Deserted Village’ is rather monotonous.

“We hear of no suffering in town for fuel or provisions, and I think we could stand a three months’ siege without much inconvenience as far as the physicals are concerned.

“January 26. The ice continues, and the cold. The weather is beautiful, and with the thermometer at fourteen I swept with the telescope an hour and a half last night, comfortably. The English steamer will get off to-morrow. It is said that they burned their cabin doors last night to keep their water hot. Many people go out to see her; she lies off ’Sconset, about half a mile from shore. We have sent letters by her which, I hope, may relieve anxiety.

“K. bought a backgammon board to-day. Clifford [the little nephew] came in and spent the morning.

“January 29. We have had now two days of warm weather, but there is yet no hope of getting our steamboat off. Day before yesterday we went to ’Sconset to see the English steamer. She lay so near the shore that we could hear the orders given, and see the people on board. When we went down the bank the boats were just pushing from the shore, with bags of coal. They could not go directly to the ship, but rowed some distance along shore to the north, and then falling into the ice drifted with it back to the ship. When they reached her a rope was thrown to them, and they made fast and the coal was raised. We watched them through a glass, and saw a woman leaning over the side of the ship. The steamer left at five o’clock that day.

“It was worth the trouble of a ride to ’Sconset to see the masses of snow on the road. The road had been cleared for the coal-carts, and we drove through a narrow path, cut in deep snow-banks far above our heads, sometimes for the length of three or four sleighs. We could not, of course, turn out for other sleighs, and there was much waiting on this account. Then, too, the road was much gullied, and we rocked in the sleigh as we would on shipboard, with the bounding over hillocks of snow and ice.

“Now, all is changed: the roads are slushy, and the water stands in deep pools all over the streets. There is a dense fog, very little wind, and that from the east. The thermometer above thirty-six.

“[Mails arrived February 3, and our steamboat left February 5.]”