Emily was indeed singing—as she often called writing poetry—at times composing nearly a verse a day. As feverish as her productivity was, the poems were marked not by haste or carelessness but control. They were taut, intentional verses made more so by constant revision. Like townspeople at the depot, Emily confronted fear with hymns, even if writing at times felt brutal.
It is easy to work when the soul is at play –
But when the soul is in pain –
The hearing him put his playthings up
Makes work difficult – then –
It is simple, to ache in the Bone, or the Rind –
But Gimblets – among the nerve –
Mangle daintier – terribler –
Like a Panther in the Glove – 18
In many poems, a more forceful first-person voice emerged, as if she were squaring her shoulders and announcing who she was and what she believed. Often she presented herself as an outsider, especially when writing about religion, and in many poems she wore nonconformity as a badge of honor and insignificance a point of praise. She delighted in standing apart, and sneered at puffed-up somebodies who forever croaked about themselves. “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” she wrote in one verse. “Are you - Nobody - too?”19
Yet it was unclear—as it always would be—if Emily were speaking for herself in her poems or inventing a persona with vastly different opinions. Amherst residents would have been surprised if they had discovered the shy, reclusive daughter of Edward Dickinson was capable of writing such bold lines as
I’m “wife” – I’ve finished that –
That other state –
I’m Czar – I’m “Woman” now – .20
She rarely showed such audacity in person. Perhaps the voice on-the-page was so different because Emily was writing for someone else—a yet-unknown reader—beyond her circle of correspondents and beyond her own time as well. “My business is to sing,” she stated unequivocally.21 Writing poetry had become to her the work of a lifetime and as fundamental as breathing.
Emily was aware that her circle of preferred readers was not as available to her as they once had been. Sue was busy with the new baby, Fanny and Loo Norcross were still grieving their parents, and Samuel Bowles struggled with precarious health. Given life’s inevitable changes, she had fewer people to turn to. Vinnie was her strong supporter in everything, but her sister was not a serious judge of poetry, nor was Emily’s mother. Edward, too, was not one who could talk about her work. “Father,” she said, is “too busy with his Briefs – to notice what we do.”22 Helen Hunt might have provided an ear, but she and Emily were destined to be at cross-purposes. After the death of their firstborn, Helen and her husband had a second son, and all were living in Newport, Rhode Island. Helen and Edward had been in town recently and paid a call on the Dickinsons. Emily enjoyed meeting Edward Hunt; he was intelligent and quick with humorous observations. During their time together, a scrap of food had dropped from the table and Carlo gobbled it up. Your dog seems to understand gravity, Major Hunt had noted wryly.23 Helen was a wit, too, and—although she had a joked about becoming a poet—she was an insightful reader. Around the tea table that afternoon, Emily might have excused herself and retrieved her fascicles to show Helen, but she did not.
Rev. Charles Wadsworth was another person who had moved beyond Emily’s reach. After Emily visited Philadelphia and became acquainted with the charismatic minister, the two had exchanged letters. No one knew how many. As far as anyone could tell, the mysterious relationship was not open to questions. Emily mentioned Reverend Wadsworth on a few occasions, but did not say much about a surprise call he had made when visiting friends nearby. His mother had recently died and he was dressed in mourning. “My Life is full of dark Secrets,” he had told Emily.24 Whether her connection with Wadsworth revolved around pain, faith, or poetry no one knew. But those who were aware of their relationship recognized that the somber clergyman meant a great deal to her. He had written her once addressing an obscure crisis Emily said she was confronting. “My Dear Miss Dickenson,” he had written. “I am distressed beyond measure at your note, received this moment, – I can only imagine the affliction which has befallen, or is now befalling you. Believe me, be what it may, you have all my sympathy, and my constant, earnest prayers. I am very, very anxious to learn more definitely of your trial – and though I have no right to intrude upon your sorrow yet I beg you to write me, though it be but a word. In great haste Sincerely and most Affectionately Yours—.”25 Wadsworth had left the letter unsigned and embossed it with his personal crest, “C. W.”‡ But now the minister—like so many others—was further away. He had resigned from his church and had accepted another assignment in San Francisco. With his wife and two children, Wadsworth was moving to minister at Calvary Church. The early months of 1862 had brought many losses and Emily looked at spring as a cruel affront. “I dreaded that first Robin, so,” she wrote in one poem, and called herself “The Queen of Calvary.”26
Around the time of Wadsworth’s departure, an article appeared in the Springfield Republican that caught Emily’s eye. No doubt Dr. Holland wrote it, she thought; he usually reported on literary developments. Under the headline “Books, Authors and Art,” was a suggestion for reading. “Atlantic Monthly for April is one of the best numbers ever issued,” the column began. “Its leading article, T. W. Higginson’s Letter to a Young Contributor, ought to be read by all the would-be authors of the land. . . . It is a test of latent power. Whoever rises from its thorough perusal strengthened and encouraged, may be reasonably certain of unlimited success.”27 Emily had heard of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He was a literary man whose essays on nature and the importance of exercise had often appeared in the Atlantic. Sue was familiar with him, too, and had once asked Sam Bowles to locate a photograph of him. After being dismissed from his pastorate in Newburyport for preaching too forcefully on abolition, Higginson had been living in Worcester, some fifty miles away. Emily’s uncle William Dickinson knew him. Within weeks of the Republican notice, the family copy of the Atlantic Monthly arrived and Emily flipped through the pages to Higginson’s essay. “My dear young gentleman or young lady,” the article began—a remarkable introduction considering he included women in advice to would-be writers. “No editor can ever afford the rejection of a good thing . . . as Ruskin says of painting that it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to immortality is made . . . there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence . . . Charge your style with life.” In the article, Higginson offered practical tips for novice writers: use good pens, black ink, white paper, don’t be hasty or slipshod, be neat, and avoid dashes. “Be neither too lax nor too precise in your use of language: the one fault ends in stiffness, the other in slang.” Don’t be pedantic, too mannered or stylish. Revise as much as you can and don’t be in a hurry. “‘Genius,’” he wrote, quoting the French writer Rivarol, “ ‘is only great patience.’” He spoke of the need for solitude and warned against fame and other distractions. “If a person once does a good thing, society forms a league to prevent his doing another. His seclusion is gone, and therefore his unconsciousness and his leisure . . . a wise man must have strength to call in his resources before middle-life, prune off divergent activities, and concentrate himself on the main work. . . . Literature is the attar of roses, one distilled drop from a million blossoms.” He urged writers to avoid looking to England for inspiration. We need new words, he said, look instead to Emerson. “The American writer finds himself among his phrases like an American sea-captain amid his crew: a medley of all nations, waiting for the strong organizing New England mind to mould them into a unit of force.” The article concluded with an appeal to patriotism: This “American literature of ours will be just as classic a thing, if we do our part . . . If, therefore, duty and opportunity call, count it a privilege to obtain your share.”28
A few weeks later, on the morning of April 14, 1862, the Dickinson
household bustled. Emily kept track of the family’s schedule and needed no reminder of the day’s importance. Once again, Edward was preparing to present official remarks—this time at the college. That afternoon at one thirty a dedication ceremony would take place for a cannon captured in the battle of Newbern. Brig. Gen. Ambrose Burnside himself gave it to Amherst College in memory of Frazar Stearns and other men who fell that day. So many people were expected for the ceremony that the railroad added extra cars to transport passengers from as far away as Boston. By noon Emily could hear the last carriages pulling into Amherst for the event. Someone estimated as many as one thousand people jostling for space on the terraces outside Johnson Chapel.29 Everyone was straining for a glimpse of the cannon, draped in the Stars and Stripes and looking smaller than expected, less brutal somehow—a single barrel, burnished and smooth as glass. Precisely at 1:30 the ceremony began, and Edward spoke first. This moment is pregnant with suggestion, he declared. We are sorrowful, yet grateful. This dedication occurs on the anniversary of the Fort Sumter, he said, an attack that “startled the nation like a clap of thunder in a clear sky.”§30 That alignment between then and now represents the way individual lives are tied to history, he said. We are all connected to the sweep of larger events, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not. What ties us, he said, are “sacred associations”—the bond between the individual and the everlasting.
To many in the audience, the magnitude of the moment, the rush to see the cannon, and Edward’s remarks about “sacred associations” were indelible. They were a rallying cry to act. One person affected was a young chemistry professor hired to replace William Clark after he left to lead the Massachusetts 21st. The young professor wrote Clark afterward, telling him the ceremony stirred in him a feeling of greatness. I could almost imagine, he wrote, how it felt to jump atop the cannon and lead the charge. Later the young professor sat down with his wife and discussed their future. “You can better afford to have a country without a husband,” he told her, “than a husband without a country.” In a matter of weeks, he left the college and enlisted.¶ 31
The next day, on April 15, 1862, Emily’s thoughts returned to Mr. Higginson’s article. His essay had all but invited writers to send samples of their work. She wondered if this literary man—a man she had never met—would be open to reading her verse. In many ways, the thought was preposterous. A professional writer and abolitionist whom many said was willing to use violence for political means—why would he be interested in a middle-aged woman writing alone in her father’s house? But Emily was at a juncture. The distance she felt from Sue, Austin, and Samuel Bowles grieved and stirred her. Frazar Stearns’s death gave life an even more fragile edge. Her father’s words about “sacred associations” incited in her a boldness to act. “To take the lead in bringing forward a new genius,” Mr. Higginson had written, “is . . . a privilege.”32 Emily never would describe herself as a “genius,” but she was confident in her work, and she made up her mind. She took out her poems—over thirty fascicles and dozens of unfinished drafts, hundreds of verses in all—and read opening lines, deciding which to send.
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl – 33
Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury! 34
I can wade Grief –
Whole Pools of it – 35
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul – 36
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons – 37
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – 38
The Soul selects her own Society –
Then – shuts the Door –
To her divine Majority –
Present no more – 39
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me – 40
Some – keep the Sabbath – going to church –
I – keep it – staying at Home – 41
These poems would not do, she thought. She selected three others and set them aside: “We play at Paste – ”; “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose – ”; and “The nearest Dream recedes – unrealized – .”#42 She wanted to include one more and studied the poem she had been working on so intently—“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers.” Emily knew Sue liked the version published a few weeks before in the Republican. But Emily preferred another, the one with the apocalyptic second stanza and the image of dots on a disc of snow. The sweep was larger, she thought, more impressive, and the image one of her best. Emily copied the four poems and lifted out a sheet of paper for the accompanying letter. She debated about what to say, how much to tell, and what tone to assume. Don’t be too forward, Higginson had warned in the article. Draw near your editor with “soft approaches.”43 Emily wondered if she should mention the hundreds of poems she had already written, the decade she had spent drafting and redrafting, the many verses she had shared with Fanny and Loo, Sue, the Hollands, and Samuel Bowles. She decided not to mention the poems that had already been published or the careful reading Susan had given to her alabaster verse. But she wanted to be clear with Mr. Higginson about what she thought poetry should do. Words had to live and breathe and spark a physical response. She remembered Sue’s reaction to the alabaster verse. “I always go to the fire and get warm after thinking of it, but I never can again.”44 Poetry had to affect the body, Emily believed, and trigger a visceral response. She would never be content to reach only a reader’s mind and heart, she wanted to touch bone and muscle and nerve.
Mr. Higginson,
Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?
The Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly – and I have none to ask –
Should you think it breathed – and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude –
If I make the mistake – that you dared to tell me – would give me sincere honor – toward you –
I enclose me name – asking you, if you please – Sir – to tell me what is true?
That you will not betray me – it is needless to ask – since Honor is it’s own pawn – 45
Emily did not sign the letter. She placed the four poems and the letter in an envelope, affixed two three-cent stamps to the top left, and wrote the address: “T. W. Higginson Worcester, Mass.” She had never sent poems to a stranger before: her action was unexpected and startling. The next day when Mr. Higginson opened the envelope, he was surprised by what he saw: an almost indecipherable scrawl, sentences strewn with dashes, and—strangest of all—no signature. Something else tumbled out: a smaller envelope inside the larger one. Higginson slipped his finger into the tiny packet and pulled out a card. There he found her name, written in pencil in the same hurried scribble as the letter. The card-in-an-envelope-in-another-envelope seemed a kind of game to him. Cat and mouse. A bold introduction and a hasty retreat. A correspondent who introduced herself and then promptly disappeared.46 His wife had warned him about lending a hand to too many would-be writers, especially those he deemed “half-cracked poetesses.”47 They took too much of his time, she cautioned, were an unnecessary burden, and downright odd. But Thomas Wentworth Higginson was intrigued. He took the letter home.
Emily Dickinson had no idea if Mr. Higginson would respond. In her room that day, she listened to the world around her: the creak of steps on the kitchen stairs, the muffled clop of horses’ hooves pulling carriages to the center of town, the sound of a distant train whistle. The ground that spring had softened and crocuses were starting to bloom. By late afternoon, a chorus of spring peepers would be chirping in nearby swamps. Occasionally, Emily’s reverie was punctured by the sound of blanks fired on the town common. College students and local men were mustering and practicing military drills. Last month there had been two musters. By August there would be many more
.48 Emily looked out her window and watched as Sue—busy with Ned—wheeled the little boy in his baby carriage. Big scruffy Carlo and two cats trotted behind as if in a grand parade.49 Emily liked to observe the perambulations of people along Main Street. They always seemed busy and full of purpose. It was easy for her to feel distant from them—a “Nobody”—sitting as she so often did alone at the window, quiet and removed. But Emily knew something had changed. There was a letter with her poems sitting on Mr. Higginson’s desk in Worcester, Massachusetts. Now as she raised her eyes above the hemlock hedge, Emily watched—but this time she also waited.
* Charles Thompson lived with the Stearns family from the time he was fifteen until his marriage. He worked as a “choreboy” for the family and later as custodian at Amherst College, becoming inextricably connected to both the institution and the lives of students. When Thompson was courting his future wife, Frazar Stearns helped write his love letters. [Abigail Eloise Stearns Lee, “Prof. Charlie”: A Sketch of Charles Thompson, Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1898.]
† Dickinson consistently misspelled Frazar Stearns’s first name.
‡ Scholars have confirmed the handwriting in the letter (L248a) is Charles Wadsworth’s. While the letter is undated, Thomas Johnson theorizes it was sent in spring 1862. Other scholars concur that Wadsworth’s concern may address Dickinson’s “terror since September” and therefore could have been written in the 1861–1862 time frame. [Margaret Dakin, email to the author, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, April 3, 2017.]
§ Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12, 1861. The Amherst College cannon ceremony occurred on April 14, 1862.
¶ Newton Spaulding Manross enlisted July 22, 1862, and was killed two months later at Antietam on September 17, 1862.
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