by Amy Brill
By the time she got downstairs, it was nearly six. She found Millicent at the table with a pile of correspondence at her elbow and a cup of tea in her hand. Her cheeks were as pink as they’d been when she was working at the bakery, if slightly less plump. Or maybe she just appeared taller, Hannah thought, watching her from the foot of the stairs, now that she had an occupation of her own choosing and stood up straight. Millicent had turned out to be less a fawning puppy than a tenacious shepherd. Their friendship had been a buoy through the long winter, and Hannah was grateful each day for her continued presence.
“Good morning!” she chirped when she saw Hannah. “I’ve already read half of yesterday’s mail, and I’ve only three questions for you!”
“Only three?” Hannah smiled at how quickly Millicent had dropped her plain speech once she’d left her mother’s employ. Yet she still attended Meeting, though she never mentioned it; Hannah wondered if she’d been subjected to a visit by a committee concerned about her spiritual health when she took the job.
“What are they?”
“One: Do you want to address a convention of lady advocates for women’s suffrage?”
Hannah paused.
“Do I? Where is it? And what do they want me to speak about?”
“It’s in Seneca Falls, New York, and the invitation doesn’t specify what you’re to speak on. It just says you’re one of a number of influential women whose presence would be welcome and whose voice should be heard. And, ah, what else . . .” She shuffled the pages in her hands. “They will be drafting a Declaration of Sentiments on the matter of women’s suffrage.”
Maybe she should attend; women ought to have the vote, of course. But the idea of speaking in public still made her feel like her bones had turned to soup.
“I’m not sure. What do you think?”
“I think they’d benefit enormously from the support of the first female fellow of the American Association of Astronomers.”
“Honorary Member. They crossed out Fellow on the certificate, remember?”
“Perhaps they were concerned you’d get the horrifying idea of actually voting at the next annual meeting,” Millicent said, raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms.
“Point taken. What if I sent along a statement of support? I do want to help the cause, but I don’t feel prepared to make a speech on the matter.”
“I think it’s a good first step. I’ll add that you’ll attend if your schedule permits. It’s more than a year from now.”
Before Hannah could object, Millicent plowed ahead.
“Two: Might you consider making a donation to the Society for Betterment of Widows and Orphans?”
“I shall do so the moment I’m in a position to. Regrets.”
“I assumed as much. Three: There are two more young ladies who wish to join our lessons.”
“That’s truly excellent,” Hannah said, making a swift calculation of the extra income. Mrs. Hatter had already joined Millicent’s astronomy sessions. As it turned out, teaching women was fun. They were diligent, and meticulous, and practically worshipped the material as Hannah herself had, though of course each lesson reminded her of Isaac. Thanks to him, her methodology had changed as well: rather than focus exclusively on mathematics, she now allowed time in each session for the students to study the skies without a specific task before them, simply to appreciate the majesty of the Heavens with their own eyes. To experience wonder. To imagine what they might behold someday.
“How did they learn of them, though? I’ve not advertised.”
Millicent cleared her throat and shuffled the papers as if she’d lost a page.
“The more the merrier!” Mrs. Hatter had come into the kitchen without Hannah or Millicent noticing, and she dropped onto the bench opposite Millicent. “Is there hot water?” Her husband had retreated to Boston weeks earlier, but she’d decided to stay on and “get a feel for the place off- season,” as she put it.
Secretly, Hannah thought she wanted to be free of his dour face and mood. But it didn’t matter: Mrs. Hatter helped keep the house and, Hannah had to admit, lightened the atmosphere on Millicent’s days off. When Hannah was alone on Little India Street, no matter how late she worked or how quickly she took her meals, it was impossible to escape her memories. So she was glad for the company, which eased the burden of her loneliness. Often the three women ate together. As Hannah breathed in the delicious warmth of the lamplit kitchen and the smell of the fresh bread Millicent had baked, she wondered if this was what it would have been like to have sisters, and an unfamiliar longing for the mysteries of girlhood rose in her chest. Had she grown up with the warmth of a mother or sisters, would she have learned to feel sooner, before it was too late?
She still had not heard a word from Isaac, and she wondered again and again what the reason was for his silence. Had he not received her letters? Or had he decided that corresponding with her was not worth his time— meaning that she’d failed to communicate her feelings yet again?
There was no use in regretting what could not be, though. These women were here now; all she could do was cleave to what they offered and focus on her work.
“Here’s a letter you’ll want to read,” Millicent said, handing off a folded page to Hannah.
Hannah scanned the brief lines quickly:
1 September, 1846. Washington.
Dear Miss Price, On behalf of the entire Coast Survey, I wish to express my pride in our association with the lady astronomer (and in myself for recognizing her talent). I offer my sincere congratulations to the tireless comet-seeker, and look forward to our ongoing connection. We are in hopes that she shall discover more Celestial objects, and again be the first of her Sex to do so.
Warmest regards,
Alexander Dallas Bache
Superintendent, United States Coast Survey
“That’s kind of him,” Hannah stammered, her hands shaking as if he were declaiming his pride to a roomful of peers instead of in a humble note meant for her eyes only. Dr. Bache was the architect of a national project of immense scale and importance; she was amazed that he’d taken the time to write to her. She could barely contain her pride as she folded the note and put it in her pocket: tonight she’d post it on the wall beside her medal, as a reminder of how far she had come.
“There’s one other thing,” Millicent said, twirling a bit of string in her fingers. “There’s a note from Dr. Hall here.”
She handed a brown folded note with a wax seal to Hannah.
“I didn’t read it . . . but I recall his handwriting from school.” She shivered, and Hannah nodded in sympathy. She remembered those eviscerating notes that he had sent to students he’d deemed unprepared or lazy, though she’d never received one herself.
Hannah stared down at her name in his tight script. She never discussed—and tried not to think about—how much Dr. Hall had wounded her. She hadn’t spoken to him since the day she’d gone to him for help and discovered his betrayal. Her official disownment from Meeting had been certified with his signature, like an angry black scar. What could he have to say to her now?
When Hannah looked up, Millicent had busied herself with the correspondence again, as if she knew that Hannah would need a moment to compose her thoughts and her face. She had excellent instincts to go along with her mathematical skills. Hannah tucked the note into her pocket.
“Shall we go over the revisions for the article?”
Millicent nodded, and they bent their heads together over the document.
It was several hours before Hannah felt ready to read the note from Dr. Hall. During a pause in their work, she slipped through the kitchen door to the garden and sat on the cold stone bench under the mulberry tree. The chill of the stone under her thighs reminded her of his duplicity, which was as she wanted it; she didn’t want to be confused by her memories of the Dr. Hall who’d lectured and tutored and challenged her. The Dr. Hall who’d introduced her to the ideas of Le Verrier and Mary Somerville, who’d shown
her how maths unlocked the mysteries of the Heavens in ways that observing could not. Without that Dr. Hall, Hannah would have remained an assistant to her father; with his help, she had become . . . well, what was she, exactly?
She sat with the folded square in her hands as if it carried the weight of the Universe entire. I’m an astronomer, she thought. I’m a computer for the Nautical Almanac. I’m a teacher.
But she still felt herself a student, a striver. Dr. Hall had proven to be selfish and weak, but a whisper of doubt crept in as she sat outside in the chilly late September afternoon. Hannah blew on her hands and then broke the seal and unfolded the note, the sticky weight of uncertainty making her clumsy.
Dear Hannah,
I hope that this note finds thee well, and not too preoccupied by thy
successes to maintain thy studies. Even the greatest thinkers did make
time for the expansion of knowledge, to add to their arsenal of wisdom! I write now in my official capacity as Trustee of the Board of
Directors of our beloved Atheneum. In recognition of thy many years of
devoted service, I’m very happy to report that we have of late voted a unanimous resolution to offer thee the position of Head Curator. The unfortunate failure to offer thee a place in the rebuilding was an oversight that is much regretted now; I’m certain that thee is familiar enough with the workings of Organizations to understand how such an omission might have come to pass. In any case, I remain thy devoted admirer, and hope that the position is one that will suit. The salary of course will be
commensurate with thy vast experience.
If thee is amenable, I would like to come and explain more about the
position at thy earliest convenience.
Respectfully &c.,
D. Hall
Hannah read the note through two times, then carefully folded it and put it back in her pocket. She wrapped her arms around herself; the chill had become unpleasant. But she stayed where she was, under the tree that had stood in her garden as long as she could remember. It was the tree Isaac had climbed when he came to see her his last night on Nantucket; it was the tree she’d wept under when she woke the next morning, with Isaac gone and the Town in ruins around her. The small branches quivered with a gust of wind, but no leaves dropped like portents to tell her what to do.
With an Atheneum salary on top of what she’d earn from the Almanac, she could afford a new telescope; maybe she could even take up a subscription on Nantucket for a proper observatory. But the offer rankled. The idea that she was now acceptable, even desirable, as a member of that institution where she’d been outcast just a year earlier was awful. And it meant the worst of Dr. Hall: that he had been swayed purely by Hannah’s newfound fame.
Anger swept through her, and she marched back into the house, casting the page into the kitchen fire as she went. But for the rest of the day, even as she compiled a new natural science curriculum for a girls’ school in Ohio and read three journal articles that George had sent, she could not strike it from her thoughts:
I’m certain that thee is familiar enough with the workings of Organizations to understand how such an omission might have come to pass. She wanted not to understand Dr. Hall’s meaning. Not to accord him a morsel of sympathy or understanding. But in truth she knew exactly how organizations worked, and that he was sending her a message. The ways that the minute and complicated forces of planets and nebulas, distant stars and dying suns, worked upon each other even at vast, invisible distances, creating an interlocking system in which one star, or planet, or sun, was inseparable from the system itself: this had been the subject of their most intense dialogues.
“The Solar System is exactly like an Organization, Hannah,” Dr. Hall had explained. “One unit may not operate outside the whole, for the forces that bear upon it are too powerful. It cannot avoid being acted upon by them any more than it can change its own Nature.”
Hannah had taken feverish notes as he spoke; she remembered drawing a star in the margin of her page and filling the space around it with planets and nebulas and other objects of her own imagining, all of them radiating toward the lone star in the center.
Was he suggesting that he was that lone star? That he’d tried to change the outcome of her disownment, and have her reinstated at the Atheneum, but been unable to sway the other Trustees? That he’d been on her side all along? But what about his veiled threat against her father? His failed proposal? His sinister note in her letterbox?
Sighing, Hannah rolled over and tried to find sleep, but when it came it was fitful and strange, filled with dark tides and empty rooms.
She awoke near dawn, and decided that she would listen to what Dr. Hall had to say. From there, she’d have to trust herself to judge him wisely, if she could.
Dear Dr. Hall, she wrote in the dim light. I will come and see you on 2nd day. Please meet me at the Atheneum at half-noon.—HGP.
She folded up the note and put it in the pocket of her dress, to deliver to his box later that morning; then, knowing that she would not sleep, she drifted downstairs to the kitchen to wait for first light.
. 28 . An offer
Hannah’s hands shook as she tied on the bonnet Millicent had lent her for outings. She was due to meet Dr. Hall at the Atheneum in fifteen minutes, but it was impossible to get anywhere on the Island in less than an hour unless she disguised herself. Putting it on was depressing. It felt like a betrayal of all that she had learned in the last year and a half: to walk with her head up, unhidden, for the first time in her life, guided by her own beliefs, her own principles.
And the bonnet didn’t always do the trick. Some people paused only to say hello, but others stopped her in her tracks, going on about brothers with broken telescopes or articles they’d read about Herschel, and did she really think there were moon-men, and if so, would they be hostile, and had she truly been invited to the observatory in Rome, and if so, would she be expected to pray with Catholics?
Hannah had little to offer her admirers. She didn’t see it as funny the way George Bond did. He claimed it was the price of fame, and didn’t seem to sympathize when she explained that she’d wanted to make a contribution, not be the contribution. She was happy to talk about astronomy. But people wanted to know about her, not her comet. What she ate, what she read, with whom she corresponded. There had even been another short article in the Inquirer about her work with Millicent and the other women, sickeningly titled “Lessons for Star-Gazing Ladies: Home-Grown Astronomer Price Trains Her Fair Students’ Eyes Toward the Heavens.”
She’d been asked to contribute to at least a half dozen women’s circulars, on topics that ranged from what could be gained from the study of the Heavens at an amateur level—which she’d promptly written and submitted—to proper etiquette for ladies at college. She’d declined to write that one, but penned the response herself. Dear Madam, she wrote.
I feel that I cannot do justice to the topic you have suggested to me, for not only have I never attended a college for women (nor any other kind), I see no reason there should be any difference in etiquette between male and female students at all.
Sincerely yours,
Hannah Gardner Price. “Where are you off to?” Millicent asked, materializing beside Hannah at the door, watching her fumble with the bonnet strings.
“I need a book,” Hannah muttered, trying to undo the knot she’d made. Lying to Millicent made her itch, but she didn’t want to reveal her errand to anyone before she knew what would come of it.
“Let me,” Millicent said, fingers flying before Hannah could wave her off. “What book?”
“Did we get a reply from Washington?” Hannah asked, trying to change the subject. “About the mural circle?”
“Not since you asked me twenty minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry. Have you got it?”
“Just. There.” Millicent retied the strings, a neat bow just under Hannah’s chin, and tilted her face sideways. Hannah looked down at her, then o
ver her head, trying to avoid making eye contact. “I won’t ask where you’re really going, then. I can see when you want to keep a secret. But I hope it’s a good one.”
Millicent ducked away and Hannah went out into the street. It was empty, the grey-shingled houses to either side quiet. The widow Miller across the street had passed on a month earlier, and her house was yet empty; several other houses had been let to renters Hannah didn’t know. All the little gardens had gone brown and withered. She remembered the orange and yellow winter squashes that had once brightened the way to Main like little suns, even on the gloomiest autumn days. Cambridge must be magnificent in this season, Hannah thought. Bursting with new students and falling leaves.
The winter ahead was exciting in its own right, if daunting. There were articles waiting to be written, and two of George’s for her to look over before he submitted them; he seemed to have acquired a new zeal for advancing his career, now that he was officially engaged to be married.
In addition, computing the tables for Venus required her daily attention, and there were her own students. Hannah smiled and focused her mind on the lessons she was planning for the women. Her bursting enthusiasm for their efforts still surprised her. It wasn’t just that their hunger to learn relieved, at least for the few hours that they were present, the persistent gloom of Isaac’s continued silence. It wasn’t that they were particularly swift or excelled at observing, except for Millicent, who had a natural aptitude. But there was an ease to the arrangement, the freedom of forming her own lessons and experimenting with her teaching style. There was no one to frown if she praised her students too heartily; no one to judge her for accepting one who was a Catholic, and one newly arrived from England with her husband, a wealthy landowner building an enormous hotel in Madaket.
