These Fevered Days

by Martha Ackmann

  42The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, 1.

  43Ibid., F124, 161.

  44Ibid.

  45Ibid.

  46Ibid., F124, 162.

  47Hampshire Franklin Express, March 7, 1862.

  48Hampshire Franklin Express. February 21, 1862.

  49Ibid.

  50Leyda, vol. 2, 48.

  51The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, F124, 161.

  52The Amherst regiment named itself “The Amherst Boys.” Hampshire Franklin Express, September 9, 1861; William A. Stearns, Adjutant Stearns (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1862), not paginated.

  53Stearns. Adjutant Stearns.

  54Ibid.

  55Ibid.

  56L298. Habegger notes that Thomas Johnson misdated this letter as “1864?” Jay Leyda correctly moved it to December 1862. Habegger, 400.

  SIX: ARE YOU TOO DEEPLY OCCUPIED TO SAY IF MY VERSE IS ALIVE?

  1Edward W. Chapin, “On College Hill,” Amherst Graduates Quarterly; Student Life at Amherst College, 102–3; Hampshire and Franklin Express, July 11, 1862.

  2William A. Stearns, Adjutant Stearns (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1862), not paginated; Charles Folsom Walcott, History of the Twenty-First Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co, 1882), 64–68.

  3Polly Longsworth, “Brave Among the Bravest: Amherst in the Civil War,” Amherst (Summer 1999), 25–31; Walcott, History of the Twenty-First, 64–68; William Eleazar Barton, The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the Red Cross, vol. 1. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1922), 190.

  4Stearns, Adjutant Stearns.

  5L246.

  6F384.

  7Edward Crowell, Record of the Services of Graduates and Non-Graduates of Amherst College in the Union Army or Navy During the War of the Rebellion (Amherst College 1905); Margaret Dakin, “‘Your Classmate and Friend,’” The Consecrated Eminence, March 4, 2013, https://consecratedeminence.wordpress.comAASC; Longsworth, “Brave Among the Bravest,” 25–31.

  8L252.

  9L256.

  10George S. Merriam, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, vol. 1 (New York: The Century Co., 1885), 404.

  11Bowles was known for occasionally working forty-two continuous hours. Stephen G. Weisner, “Embattled Editor: The Life of Samuel Bowles,” PhD Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1986, 54.

  12Merriam, vol. 1, 315.

  13Ibid., 305, 303.

  14Jay Leyda, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 49, 71.

  15Merriam, vol. 1, 308.

  16Andrew Elmer Ford, The Story of the Fifteenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, 1861–1864 (Clinton Press of W. J. Coulter Courant Office, 1898), 382; Hampshire Franklin Express, September 27, 1861.

  17L261.

  18F242.

  19F260.

  20F225.

  21L269.

  22L261.

  23L342b.

  24Leyda, vol. 2, 7–8. While Jay Leyda places the date of Wadsworth’s visit in early 1860, other scholars suggest it may have occurred later in the poet’s life.

  25L248a.

  26F347.

  27Leyda, vol. 2, 50.

  28Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1862.

  29Newton Manross to William Clark, April 20, 1862, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections.

  30Hampshire Franklin Express, April 18, 1862.

  31Newton Manross to William S. Clark April 20, 1862, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections; Patrick Browne, “Two Friends at Antietam,” June 8, 2011, historicaldigressions.com; Springfield Republican, April 15, 1862; Hampshire Franklin Express, April 18, 1862.

  32Higginson, “Letter to a Young Contributor.”

  33F207.

  34F269.

  35F312.

  36F314.

  37F320.

  38F372.

  39F409.

  40F479.

  41F236.

  42F282, F204, F304.

  43Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” Atlantic Monthly, October 1891; Higginson, “Letter to a Young Contributor.”

  44L238.

  45L260.

  46Higginson, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters.”

  47Wendy Martin, An American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, and Adrienne Rich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 108.

  48The History of the Town of Amherst, Massachusetts, Compiled and Published by Carpenter and Morehouse (Amherst: Press of Carpenter & Morehouse, 1896) 492; Dan Lombardo, email to the author, November 22, 2016.

  49L262.

  SEVEN: BULLETINS ALL DAY FROM IMMORTALITY

  1All quotations from this paragraph are L261.

  2L265, L261.

  3L261.

  4Ibid.

  5Ibid.

  6L290.

  7L261.

  8Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” in the Atlantic Monthly, October 1891, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1891/10/emily-dickinsons-letters/306524/.

  9L352.

  10L788.

  11L268.

  12L265.

  13L271.

  14L268.

  15L265; L271.

  16L271.

  17L274.

  18Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The Complete Civil War Journals and Selected Letters, ed. Christopher Looby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 229.

  19L280.

  20Ibid.

  21Higginson, Complete Civil War Journals, 310.

  22L274.

  23James R. Guthrie’s study of Dickinson’s vision is indispensible for understanding the problems with her eyes and how reduced sight affected her poetry. James R. Guthrie, Emily Dickinson’s Vision: Illness and Identity in Her Poetry (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1998), 9, 10, 13, 18, 20, 21, 30, 178, 180; L439

  24L285.

  25Ibid.

  26Ibid.

  27L286.

  28Karen Dandurand, “Dickinson and the Public,” in Dickinson and Audience, Martin Orzeck and Robert Weisbuch, eds. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 269.

  29Mike Kelly, “Emily Dickinson and the New York Press,” Consecrated Eminence, July 15, 2013. Amherst College Archives and Special Collections. Consecratedeminence.wordpress.com.

  30Dandurand, “Dickinson and the Public,” 255–77; Karen Dandurand, “New Dickinson Civil War Publications,” American Literature 56, no. 1 (March 1984), 17–27; American Newspaper Directory, ed. George Presbury Rowell (New York: Printers’ Ink Pub. Co., 1870), 669; In addition, I am indebted to Karen Dandurand for countless conversations about Dickinson’s publication history.

  31James R. Guthrie and I share the belief that Dickinson was worried her poor eyesight would bring an end to her poems. Guthrie, Emily Dickinson’s Vision, 22, 24, 30.

  32L268.

  33Wayne E. Phaneuf and Joseph Carvalho III, A Not So Civil War: Western Massachusetts at Home and in Battle, vol. 1 (Springfield, MA: The Republican, 2015), 134–135; Patrick Browne, “Billy Yank and Johnny Reb and Christmas on the Rappahonnock, 1862, Historical Digression, December 22, 2015. historical digression.com; Higginson, Complete Civil War Journals, 216; Walter L. Powell, “’So Clear of Victory’: Emily Dickinson’s Gettysburg Address, Lecture at the Amherst History Museum, November 9, 2013, sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum; Walter L. Powell, email with the author, March 14, 2019.

  34Higginson, Complete Civil War Journals, 350.

  35Ibid., 305.

  36Leyda, vol. 2, 90.

  37L290.

  38F824.

  39L290.

  40Boston Public Library, https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:kh04mv993.

  41L290.

  42Ibid.

  43Guthrie, Emily Dickinson’s Vision, 9.

  44L292.

  45n.a., “Iritis” in Hosp
ital, a Weekly Journal of Science, Medicine, Nursing and Philanthropy (London: London Hospital, vol. 11, Dec. 12, 1891), 131–32.

  46n.a., “The Treatment of Iritis” in Hospital, a Weekly Journal of Science, Medicine, Nursing and Philanthropy (London: London Hospital, vol. 42, July 15, 1899), 260; L293.

  47Richard B. Sewall, The Lyman Letters: New Light on Emily Dickinson and Her Family (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1965), 76.

  48L289.

  49L289, L294.

  50L291.

  51F484.

  52Guthrie shares this view of one possible benefit of Dickinson’s illness. Guthrie, Emily Dickinson’s Vision, 13.

  53L583.

  54F681.

  55L293.

  56L289, L295.

  57L289.

  58L293, L294.

  59L295.

  60L294, L306.

  61L296.

  62Ibid.

  63L302.

  64L296.

  65Higginson, Complete Civil War Journals, 220.

  66Ibid., 7.

  67Critic Helen Vendler in describing Dickinson’s “supposed person” wrote, “Although she sometimes did write the sort of first-order poem that reads like a transcription of a life-event, such as a vigil around a deathbed, more often she found a second order ‘algebraic’ equivalent for emotional occasions, whether rapturous or troubling.” Vendler cites “Before I got my eye put out – ” (F336) as an example of a “symbolic equivalent” that arose from “emotional torture.” Helen Vendler, Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 9.

  68F336. Guthrie contends Dickinson’s “description of scenes she would look upon, were she to regain full use of her eyes, is so rapturous that we may infer her transgression had been to admire the visible world excessively.” Guthrie, Emily Dickinson’s Vision, 15.

  69Cambridge Chronicle, November 12, 1864.

  70L297.

  71L290.

  72Sewall, The Lyman Letters, 69.

  73Dickinson’s poems that reference illness, darkness, and blindness are many. A few notable ones from this period are: “The Soul has Bandaged moments – ,” F360; “Renunciation – is a piercing Virtue – ,” F782; “They say that ‘Time assuages’ – ,” F861; “Some say good night – at night – ,” F586; “My first well Day – since many ill – ,” F288; and “What I see not, I better see – ,” F869.

  74L280.

  EIGHT: YOU WERE NOT AWARE THAT YOU SAVED MY LIFE

  1Richard B. Sewall, The Lyman Letters: New Light on Emily Dickinson and Her Family (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1965) 76.

  2L304; Paraic Finnerty, Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 43.

  3L308.

  4Frank Prentice Rand, The Village of Amherst: A Landmark of Light (Amherst: The Historical Society, 1958), 123.

  5Cambridge Chronicle, April 8, 22, and 29, 1865.

  6L306.

  7L311.

  8L316.

  9Jay Leyda, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 120.

  10L319.

  11Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 162.

  12Ibid., 197.

  13Ibid., 97.

  14L316.

  15L316; Leyda, vol. 2, 110, 112.

  16Leyda, vol. 2, 110, 111.

  17Ibid., 132.

  18L330a.

  19L330.

  20Wineapple, 163.

  21Leyda, vol. 2, 110.

  22Kate Phillips, Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 93.

  23Ibid., 139.

  24Ibid., 95.

  25Leyda, vol. 2, 130.

  26Phillips, 125.

  27Ibid., 101.

  28Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), 566.

  29Leyda, vol. 2, 102.

  30Aife Murray makes a compelling case for Margaret Maher providing more time for Dickinson to write. Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life and Language (Lebanon: University of New Hampshire Press, 2010).

  31Millicent Todd Bingham, Emily Dickinson’s Home: The Early Years as Revealed in Family Correspondence and Reminiscences (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967), 414.

  32Alfred Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (New York: Random House, 2001), 321.

  33L318.

  34Wineapple, 21.

  35L330a.

  36Ibid.

  37L342.

  38Wineapple, 170.

  39Ibid., 176.

  40Rand, 172.

  41Amherst Record, August 24, 1870.

  42Amherst Record, August 10, 1870.

  43Amherst Record, August 17, 1870.

  44L342a.

  45Leyda, vol. 2, 112.

  46L342a.

  47L477.

  48L342a. All subsequent quotations of Higginson’s visit with Dickinson are found in L342a and L342b.

  49Leyda, vol. 2, 154.

  50L342a.

  51Leyda, Volume. 2, p. 151.

  52Amherst Record, August 8, 1870.

  53F1175.

  54L352.

  55Finnerty, 130.

  56L622.

  57L352.

  58L553.

  59L342b.

  60Ibid.

  61F721.

  62Growing seasons with wet springs and dry summers produce especially sweet apples. Conversation with Tom Clark, Clarkdale Orchards, September 4, 2017.

  63L343.

  64Wineapple, 21.

  65Amherst Record, August 24, 1870.

  66Rand, 114.

  NINE: SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST

  1Helen Hunt to Mrs. E. C. Banfield, August 16, 1873, Helen Hunt Jackson Collection, Tutt Library Special Collections and Archives, Colorado College; Jay Leyda, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 204.

  2Helen Hunt to Mrs. E. C. Banfield, August 16, 1873.

  3Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Emily Dickinson: Face to Face (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932), 17.

  4MacGregor Jenkins, “A Child’s Recollections of Emily Dickinson,” Christian Union, October 24, 1891, B215–217; Leyda, vol. 2, 240.

  5Mary Alden Allen, Around a Village Green: Sketches of Life in Amherst (Northampton: Kraushar Press, 1939), 31.

  6Bianchi, 63.

  7F409.

  8L405a.

  9L381.

  10L380.

  11L368.

  12Leyda, vol. 2, 193.

  13Ibid.

  14Kate Phillips, Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 168.

  15Ibid., 169.

  16Leyda, vol. 2, 218.

  17Phillips, 172.

  18L360.

  19Millicent Todd Bingham, Emily Dickinson’s Home: The Early Years as Revealed in Family Correspondence and Reminiscences (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), 444.

  20Ibid., 460–64.

  21L360.

  22Leyda, vol. 2, 71.

  23Ibid., 223.

  24Daily Bulletin of Weather Reports, Signal Service, US Army, June 16, 1874, 4:34 p.m. (War Department. Washington, DC, 1877), 92–94.

  25Leyda, vol. 2, 224.

  26Ibid.; L414; Mary Todd Kaercher, email to the author, October 13, 2017.

  27Leyda, vol. 2, 224.

  28Leyda, vol. 2, 225.

  29L414.

  30Leyda, vol. 2, 225–226; Amherst Record, June 24, 1874; Bingham, 473; Alfred Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (New York: Random House, 2001), 562; L432, note 538.

  31Bingham, 411.

  32L432.

  33Richard B. Sewall, The Lyman Letters: New Light on Emily Dickinson and Her Family (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1965), 70–71.

&n
bsp; 34Ibid.

  35L418.

  36L413.

  37L418; L470.

  38L450.

  39Leyda, vol. 2, 244–45.

  40Ibid., 237.

  41L432.

  42L449.

  43L460.

  44Bianchi, 14.

  45L513.

  46Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Recollections of a Country Girl, unpublished manuscript (1935), Brown University Library Special Collections Department, Manuscript Division, 120.

  47Habegger, 559–60; Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 124.

  48Leyda, vol. 2, 229.

  49Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 129–30.

  50Sewall, Lyman Letters, 34.

  51Leyda, vol. 2, 231.

  52Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 104.

  53Ibid., 39.

  54Martha Dickinson Bianchi, The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924), 13.

  55Sewall, Lyman Letters, 70.

  56Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 15; Betsy Johnson, email to the author, October 25, 2017.

  57L441.

  58Letters, 549.

  59Leyda, vol. 2, 184; L475; L491.

  60Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 14.

  61Leyda, vol. 2, 177.

  62Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 125.

  63Bryant E. Tolles Jr., Summer by the Seaside: The Architecture of New England Coastal Resort Hotels, 1820–1950 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2008), 91; Bianchi. Recollections of a Country Girl, 48.

  64L428.

  65Bianchi, Life and Letters, 13.

  66L444.

  67L444 notes.

  68L444a.

  69Ibid.

  70Ibid.

  71L477.

  72L474.

  73Amherst Record, September 20, 1876.

  74Catherine E. Kelly, In the New England Fashion: Reshaping Women’s Lives in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 130.

  75Ebenezer Snell and Sabra Snell, The Meteorological Journal kept at Amherst College, Amherst College and Special Collections; Marta Werner, email to the author, October 23, 2017.

  76Phillips, 155.

  77Prospect House file, Jones Library Special Collections, Amherst, Massachusetts; Daily Hampshire Gazette, November 19, 1975; Burt’s Illustrated Guide of the Connecticut Valley, 1866.

  78Quincy (Illinois) Daily Whig, September 11, 1876.

  79Madeleine B. Stern and Daniel Shealy, “No Name Series,” Studies in the American Renaissance (1991), 376.

  80Ibid., 385, 386.

  81L476a.

  82Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 35.

  83Amherst Record, October 11, 1876; Bianchi, Emily Dickinson, 36.

  84L476c.

  85Ibid.

  86L476.

  87Phillips, 140–41.