Nov. 24, 1854. Yesterday James Freeman Clarke the biographer of Margaret Fuller came into the Atheneum. It was plain that he came to see me and not the Institution. I was a good deal embarrassed and made such as effort to appear as if I wasn’t, that I was almost ready to burst into a laugh at my own ridiculousness.
Maria Mitchell would find that hundreds of people would seek her out during her worktime at the Atheneum just to lay eyes on her and to be able to tell people back home that they had indeed seen “the lady astronomer” while on Nantucket. She did find it a bit tiring but her nervousness at meeting Freeman Clarke and her attempt to seem more important I find humorous. Maria never quite got over people fawning over here nor her fame. Very Maria. But she and Freeman Clarke would run in the same circle – from Julia Ward Howe to the American Philosophical Society – in which both were members.
JNLF
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