Dr. Charles Anderson is a Professor of Astronomy and president of a college. He is the divorced father of the title character in Eleanor Porter’s 1920 novel Mary Marie. An adolescent, MM lives with him in Andersonville half the year as “Mary” and for the other six months she lives with her mother, Madge, in Boston as “Marie.”
Professor Anderson is immersed in his work. He discovers a star on the night Mary Marie is born. EHP employs a child narrator in Mary Marie.:
He was much more interested in his new star than he was in his new daughter. We were both born the same night, you see, and that star was lots more consequence than I was. But, then, that's Father all over…
… Father didn't know until after breakfast that he had a little daughter…
And, when the adolescent girl arrives to stay with him the first year of the divorce, the astronomer is not even home:
And, just as I suspected, 't was a star that was to blame, only this time the star was the moon—an eclipse; and he'd gone somewhere out West so he could see it better.
The novel is about how each parent coped with being single and how they came to reunite. Along the way, Professor Anderson becomes famous. The rapprochement begins when he is invited to present a program on Astronomy in Boston and he is lauded in the newspaper “ with Father's picture right on the first page—and the biggest picture there…”
It told all about the stars and comets he'd discovered, and the books he'd written on astronomy, and how he was president of the college at Andersonville, and that he was going to give an address the next day.
Of course his estranged wife, Madge, attends the lecture. Eventually, they enjoy a warm reunion and remarry. On their honeymoon they witness an eclipse:
Father was going next week to a place 'way on the other side of the world to view an eclipse of the moon, but he said right off he'd give it up. But Mother said, "No, indeed," she guessed he wouldn't give it up; that he was going, and that she was going, too—a wedding trip; and that she was sure she didn't know a better place to go for a wedding trip than the moon!
The reunited couple lives happily ever after.
Father is still President of the college. He got out a wonderful book on the "Eclipses of the Moon" two years ago, and he's publishing another one about the "Eclipses of the Sun" this year. Mother's correcting proof for him. Bless her heart.
The Total Solar Eclipse of May 29, 1919
When Mary Marie appeared 1920, astronomy was in the news. The year before, an eclipse viewed in Brazil and West Africa provided scientists an opportunity to test the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein’s unproven hypothesis. Einstein proposed that starlight was deflected when it passed by the sun, but to observe both the sun and starlight at the same time, the scientists needed the sun to be darkened — as in an eclipse.
Previous attempts to witness the bending of light during an eclipse had been foiled by the weather and by the Great War. The May 1919 eclipse provided perfect conditions for two British astronomers, Frank Dyson and Arthur Eddington to measure the deflection. (Eddington’s military service was delayed for the experiment.) The results of their work would change the world forever. Historian Paul Johnson wrote:
“No exercise in scientific verification, before or since, has ever attracted so many headlines or become topic of universal conversation.” — Modern Times, The World from the Twenties to the Eighties (1983)
Johnson begins Modern Times with an account of this ballyhooed eclipse and contends that it fostered widespread misunderstanding of Relativity. The eclipse was popularly misinterpreted as proving the validity of Relativism, a philosophy that Johnson deplores. Nonetheless, the eclipse was a topical subject of which Eleanor was aware, and her interest was no doubt heightened by her personal experience with the Hartnesses.
The Hartness Family
When Eleanor and John Porter lived in Springfield Vermont in 1890s, they were good friends to Lena and James Hartness. EHP would dedicate a novel (Just David 1916) to Mrs. Hartness and, in Mary Marie (1920), she inserts a schoolmaster named Hartshorn (a joke —Hartness was misspelled in Lena’s dedication) and created a Professor of Astronomy, Charles Anderson.
The Vermont Historical Society notes that “Hartness was an avid astronomer and established Stellafane, an observatory in Springfield, Vermont.” He was a brilliant inventor and superintendent of Jones and Lamson Machine Company in Springfield. In 1919, he hired Russell W. Porter, an experienced telescope-builder and astronomer. (Also a Springfield native, but not closely related to John Porter who was from Corinth.) In 1928, Porter (1871-1949) was recruited to work on the Palomar Observatory in California. Craters on the moon and Mars are named for him.
Russell and Hartness founded the Stellafane Observatory and the Springfield Telescope Makers, a telescope-making club. Today, both are in their second century, and the membership is ready for the April 8, 2024 eclipse. According to the Stellafane website, members will not gather at Stellfane, though. Springfield is not in the path of totality but, the partial eclipse will give the town 97% “obscurage”.
[Illustrations were found in Wikipedia, Library of Congress and the Stellfane web site.]
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