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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Volume 46, Number 1 (Winter 1997)

Maria Mitchell's Journal of the Hard Winter

Penned by Miss Mitchell in her 38th year, Transcribed by Barbara Baxter Pillinger, Edited and annotated by Elizabeth Oldham, Excerpts from papers in the Maria Mitchell Collection, courtesy of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association

1857 JAN 22 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 in to our Island now since the 6th. No one cared much about it for the first two or three days, the sleeping was good and all the world was out trying their horses on Main Street, the race-course 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 longed for the cheer of a newspaper. The Inquirer came out for a while, but at length had nothing to tell and nothing to Inquire about and so kept its peace. .. .

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 20 days from Glasgow, bound to New York. What the European news is we don't yet know, but it is plain 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. . . . 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 the houses, we amuse ourselves in various ways. Frank's family and ours form a club, meeting three times a week and writing machine poetry in great quantities. ["Machine poetry" is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "a literary contrivance for the sake of effect." -Ed.] Occasionally something very droll puts us in a roar of laughter. Frank, Ellen and Kate I think are rather the smartest but Mr. Macy has written rather the best of all. [Frank and Ellen are Maria's brother Francis and his wife; Kate is her youngest sister; Alfred Macy is her sister Anne's fiance. -Ed.] At the next meeting each of us is to produce a sonnet on a subject which we drew as in a lottery — I have written mine & tried to be droll — Kate has written hers and is serious. I am sadly tried by this state of things — I cannot receive papers from Cambridge and am out of work; it is cloudy most of the time and I cannot observe, and I had fixed on just this time for visiting Phebe. [Phebe is a sister of Maria Mitchell. -Ed.] My trunk has been half packed for a month.

Jan 23 Foreseeing that the thermometer would show a very low point last night, we sat up until near midnight when it stood 1 1/2 below zero. The stars shone brightly and the wind blew fresh from WNW. This morning the wind is the same and the mercury stood at 6 1/2 below zero at 7 o'clock and now at 10 a.m. is not above zero. The Coffin School dismissed its scholars; Philinda suffered much from the exposure on her way to school. [Philinda Fisher was a teacher at the Coffin School.-Ed.]

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 700 barrels of flour in town; it is admitted that fresh meat is getting scarce — the streets are almost impassable from the snow drifts — There was no ice in our lodging room last night and the ther. in the sitting room was above 40; showing that the house is not easily chilled.

Kate and I have hit on a plan for killing time. We are learning poetry — she 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 Kate has a beau from whom she cannot hear a word, she carries herself very amiably towards mankind. She is making a pair of boots for herself which look very nice. 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 Kate (my partner) meant when she winked at me.

The worst of this state of things is, that we shall bear the nark of it all our lives. We are low sixteen daily papers behind :he rest of the world, and in these sixteen papers, are the items known to all people in all the cities, which will never be known to us. How prices have fluctuated in that time, we shall not know — what 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 his 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, and now have the Japan expedition.

The intellectual suffering I think will be all. I have no fear of scarcity of fuel or provisions. There are old houses enough to burn — Fresh meat is rather scarce, because this 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 a good deal in suffering, for whom the Howard Society is on the look-out. [The Ladies' Howard Society was founded in 1836 "to do good works" for indigent women and children of Nantucket. -Ed.] I gave an old quilted petticoat to the society last week, and 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 viewing seat came thundering down the roof one evening about 10 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. Anne has been out to school every day, and I have not failed to go into the air once a day and take at least a short walk.

We left the mercury 10 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 11 a.m. is as high as 15. The weather is still and beautiful — the English steamer is still safe at her anchorage.

Our little club met last night, each with a sonnet on a subject drawn by lot from a basket-full. I did the best I could with a very bad subject. Kate and Ellen rather carried the honors away.... We kept the hall warm all the evening with the mercury steadily at +3. Our crambo playing was rather dull, all of us having exhausted ourselves on the sonnets. [Crambo is a game in which one player gives a word or line of verse to be matched in rhyme by other players. -Ed.] 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 'tis best not to fret. [This reference is to a passage in Sentimental Journey, a narrative work by English author Laurence Sterne (1713-1768). -Ed.]

The subject which I have drawn for the next poem is "Sunrise" about which I know very little — Kate and I continue to learn twenty lines of poetry a day, and I do not find it unpleasant, 'tho the Deserted Village is rather monotonous. We hear of no suffering in town for fuel or provisions. I think we could stand a three month siege without much inconvenience as far as the physicals are concerned.

Jan 26 The ice continues and the cold. The weather is beautiful and, with the ther. at 14, I swept for an hour and a half last night comfortably. The English steamer will get away tomorrow — 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 we hope may relieve anxiety. Kate bo't [sic] a Backgammon board today....

Jan 29 We have had now two days of warm weather, but there is yet no hope of getting the boat off. Day before yesterday we went to Sconset to see the English steamer — She lay about half a mile from the shore, we could hear the orders given and see the people — When we went down bank, the boats were just pushing from the shore with the bags of coal for her — They could not go directly to her, 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 the ship, a rope was thrown to them and they made fast and the coal was raised — We looked through a glass and saw women leaning over the side of the ship. She left at 5 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 carts of coal, 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, & there was much wailing 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 ponds all over the streets — there is a dense fog — very little wind and that from the East — the ther. above 36. (Mails arrived Feb. 3 and steamboat left Feb. 5.)

 

 

Barbara Baxter Pillinger is a professor at the University of Minnesota. She received her doctorate at Harvard in 1972 and "discovered" Nantucket while a graduate student there.