MISS ANNIE CANNON AND ASSISTANT MISS ANDREA DARREL VISIT NANTUCKET
Miss Cannon arrives on Nantucket from Harvard Astronomical Observatory. Joining her is Nantucket local Miss Darrel, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Darrel. Miss Cannon and Miss Darrel will be giving astronomy lectures for the Maria Mitchell Association, inviting local Nantucketeers to learn more about the heavens.
Since I hadn’t come across an Andrea Darrel before, I plugged her into Google. Her biography was short and to the point.Andrea Darrel was born in 1873, in Nantucket, Mass., and died in 1964 in Cambridge, Mass. She attended Vassar College from 1892 to 1896. From 1896 to 1924, Darrel worked as a computer at the Harvard Observatory, under Edward Pickering and later Annie Jump Cannon.
A minor astronomer, then, not as lauded as Annie Cannon or Cecilia Payne or the others I’d been reading about. But my curiosity was piqued. Dad loved researching little-known figures and bringing their stories to light; if I wanted toreallyimpress him, there’d be no better way than by showing him I could do the same. And Andrea Darrel could be interesting if I was trying to stress a Nantucket connection. She would have been ten years younger than Annie Cannon, and fifty-five years younger than Maria Mitchell. What if they’d all overlapped? While Maria Mitchell would have been teaching at Vassar in upstate New York by the time Darrel was born, I imagined the famous local had loomed large over the imagination of an island girl. Especially one who decided to go to Vassar and become an astronomer herself.
“Have you heard of Andrea Darrel?” I asked Cora during her next coffee break. “She was a Harvard Computer originally from Nantucket.”
“Nope.” Cora listened as I described the little I’d found. “Interesting. Sounds worth checking out.”
I smiled at her, a big burst of excitement in my chest. “I’ll see what I can do.”
***
After dinner with Dad, I biked back to Golden Doors. My quads burned as I pushed uphill, though the cool breeze off the sea whisked away my sweat. After changing into my pajamas, I headed to the cousins’ room. I was getting used to the soundtrack of Golden Doors: piano played properly, violin played poorly, laughter, squabbling. The triplets whispering fiercely, the littles shrieking with laughter, the adults pouring wine and talking into the early hours of the morning. The birdsong floating through the open windows.
The cousins’ room was always cozy, a place where you could be surrounded by others but not have to pay much attention. Tonight, a group played video games, a few more did a puzzle, and a handful read books. If Ethan had been there, it wouldn’t have been restful, but he wasn’t. So I fully relaxed, a blanket draped over my lap as I nestled into a couch, Miriam at the other end. I’d spent my work hours pulling reports and crunching numbers for Cora, along with the research she’d requested on the Harvard Computers, but now I wanted to see what I could find on Andrea Darrel.
Andrea Darrel diariesled to a page at Harvard Library’s Archival Discovery, but to my dismay it gave the location as a physical box in a storeroom instead of, say, a downloadable PDF. Vassar was more helpful: a page on the school’s website showed scanned diaries from some of the first women to attend. One of the diaries, with cramped, rounded script (plus a digital transcript, thank god) belonged to Andrea Darrel.
The diaries started in 1892, when Andrea would have been eighteen. She’d be heading off to college, like me in a few months. I didn’t usually think of nineteenth-century women going to university, but I supposed some had. Had Andrea felt the way I did—uncertain, excited, thirsty for knowledge and friendship? Probably. Time and clothing and societal expectations might change, but people probably didn’t.
I started at the beginning.
September 24, 1892
I arrived in New York a few hours ago. I feel a bit like I’m in a dream; I’ve never been further from Nantucket than Boston, and never so far from the ocean.
Uncle Henry met me at the depot. He isvery againstthese “newfangled women’s schools” and thought it important I know this on the eve of attending one. I told him Vassar was founded thirty years ago, and its first students were women of his age. He turned ruddy and said, “What man wants an overly-educated wife?”
I said, “What woman wants a husband who doesn’t respect her education?” This did not start our visit on an amiable note.
But I can think of worse things than spending my life unmarried. Miss Mitchell never wed, after all, and she was the first faculty named to Vassar, and the reason I chose to come here—the reason Vassar has higher enrollments for astronomy than Harvard or Radcliffe.
“Studying the stars is a ladylike pursuit,” Aunt Lisa said,trying to calm her husband down. Unfortunately (poor Aunt Lisa) this only upset her husband outwardly and me inwardly. Uncle Henry says women should only study the hierarchies of nature and should leave debates to men, and Miss Mitchell should never have been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (alarmingly, no other womanhasbeen admitted in the 44 years since).
ThenIsaid I am not interested in being ladylike, I’m interested in understanding the world. Aunt Lisa closed her eyes very tightly then, looking so much like Mama I apologized and excused myself to bed. At home, I would have burned off my rage by going outside to sweep the skies, but New York has too much light, so I’m writing here instead.
September 25
I’m feeling very overwhelmed about tomorrow—am I expecting too much of college? I don’t knowwhatI expect, but it seems to beeverything. I remember Miss Mitchell visiting Nantucket and letting me look through her telescope and saying, “You will make a very good astronomer; you must come study with me at Vassar.”
I wish she were still alive and could see I am going to be an astronomer.
Hattie says Miss Mitchell would have said as much to any child from home who showed an interest in astronomy, especially the child of people she taught when she was a young schoolteacher.Isay Hattie is jealous because I left Nantucket and she’s stuckthere and Mama will have no one to badger except her for the next four years.
Hattie also says I shouldn’t dream too much; Miss Mitchell might have become famous around the whole world, but the chance of another island girl doing so is too much to ask.
AmI reaching too far beyond my grasp? Papa is a fisherman and Mama runs the house. It’s more likely I’ll wind up a fisherman’s wife than a lauded academic.
Merely writing that makes my whole body shiver. I want to be inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences. I want my college degree. I want to change the world. I want to study the stars. I wanteverything.
September 26
Took the train from the city to Poughkeepsie. I’ve never traveled by myself before—hardly left the island—and now here I am, completely independent! I am not sure whether to laugh or cry.
I met a girl on the train also bound for Vassar, a Miss Slate. At the depot, we paid a man to take our trunks to the college and caught a streetcar right to the college gates. I have never been on a streetcar before and thought it perfectly charming. Miss Slate told me it was old and rickety and in the worst condition of any streetcar she had ever been on. Clearly Miss Slate and I lead very different lives.
