My Wars Are Laid Away in Books

by Alfred Habegger

Which rapture – she preferred

  And she will point you sighing –

  To her rescinded Bud.

  Fr1365

  The last line achieves a signature effect by attaching a Latin-based legalism to the simple “Bud.”

  No Dancing Lessons

  Emily probably studied more subjects than those her surviving letters happen to mention: Latin, botany, geology, history, ecclesiastical history, “mental philosophy,” arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. Every other week she and others were required to write a composition and read it to the assembled student body on Wednesday afternoon. On the off week, as an exercise in oral delivery, they were to read aloud “from some interesting book.” Her recollection several years later of “the rhetoric of the gentlemen and the milder form of the girls” shows that the oratorical flourishes boys were expected to master were deprecated for her sex. Yet in spite of cultural prohibitions on women’s public speaking, academy girls were encouraged to express themselves.

  One of the school’s selling points was that students could attend gratis certain scientific lectures at the college. When Emily studied geology in spring 1845, she seems to have followed the lectures of Professor Edward Hitchcock, Amherst’s eminent scientist. Hitchcock was to conduct the state’s first geological survey after making a special study of the fossil dinosaur footprints so abundant in Connecticut Valley shales. Brilliant, homely, dour, he was remembered for the way he handled a doubting voice on a legislative committee: “Reaching his hand down into the pocket of his old fur-collared camlet overcoat, he brought up from its depths two or three small fragments of rock. . . . ‘Why, here they are; see for yourself.’” As Hiroko Uno has shown, the treatment of fossils and volcanoes in Hitchcock’s Elementary Geology left a deep impression on Dickinson’s imaginative life. The unexplained pushing-up of mountains became a powerful symbol in her poetry, as in “The mountains grow unnoticed” (Fr768).

  Hitchcock’s great point was that, so far from conflicting with religion, science actually proves it. Sewall believed his Religious Lectures on Peculiar Phenomena in the Four Seasons had a major influence on Dickinson’s often symbolic treatment of the seasons, always a leading topic for her, and on her basic orientation to nature and immortality. In these lectures, seasonal phenomena richly prefigure life after death.

  Virtually all academy textbooks incorporated the evangelical perspective. The Improvement of the Mind by Isaac Watts instructed young people how to use their mind so as “to subordinate all to the service of God.” Thomas Cogswell Upham’s Elements of Mental Philosophy, which Emily studied at age fourteen, set forth the traditional “faculties” of the mind at a time when psychology was not yet a science, linking such topics as perception, reason, memory, desire, and the imagination to the orthodox scheme of things. For Mary H. Jones, a cultivated Episcopalian who wanted her daughter to acquire “polish of manner” through French and dancing lessons, Mental Philosophy was a flagrant symptom of “the peculiar tendency of our society at Amherst.” As far as this woman was concerned, the town was a tasteless “land of factories equality and independence.”

  Although Mrs. Jones may have exaggerated the community’s egalitarianism, she was not far off in her assessment of Amherst Academy. The opposite of a genteel finishing school, it was the latest embodiment of New England’s strenuous Puritan culture.

  Disorganization

  Although there is more to be said about what Dickinson got from her textbooks, the fundamental problem, given her startling self-emancipation from contemporary literary taste, seems to be what she carried away from school as such. How could someone who all but worshipped her teachers at Amherst Academy prove so independent of prescriptive authority?

  Part of the answer lies in the school’s troubled condition during Emily’s period of attendance: the teaching staff was in constant flux, the program underwent frequent and sometimes drastic changes, and improvisation and personalized instruction became the norm. For a strong student, institutional drift can bring freedom and promote self-sufficiency—two things Emily would miss at strict Mount Holyoke. In addition, Edward’s presence on the board of trustees and the prudential committee (the executive committee responsible for appointments) helped give his daughter an inside view of institutional difficulties.

  During Emily’s first three years of intermittent attendance—1840–1841, 1841–1842, and 1842–1843—a new principal and head teacher had to learn the ropes each fall from the man previously in charge. All of the young men who thus took charge of the school and its Latin classes—Joel Sumner Everett, William W. Whipple, and Daniel T. Fiske—had just graduated from Amherst College and evidently brought a certain energy and idealism to the work. Whipple, the girl’s first Latin instructor, was so kindly and encouraging that a student later described him as “lovable.” A local mother thought he was “excellent” but feared he “presses his scholars quite enough.” As for Fiske, he seems to have been an exceptionally perceptive guide, as we shall see. Charles Temple was the girl’s French instructor in 1842–1843, and probably in other years also, judging from the French words sprinkling her letters; it was Temple who cast her silhouette in 1845.

  The “Female Department” saw even more turmoil. For the first two terms of 1840–1841 the person in charge was Miss Mary Maynard. In spring she was replaced by Mrs. Caroline D. Hunt, whose “distinguished reputation and long experience in teaching” were made much of in an advertisement; she was preceptress in fall 1841, when Emily is known to have attended. Hunt was advertised as staying on for the sixteen-week winter session, but when the following term began she had already yielded to Helen Humphrey, Jane’s sister. That fall, the experienced Hunt returned for three terms, to be replaced by twenty-nine-year-old Jennette P. Dickinson in summer 1843.

  Clearly, the dominant woman instructor in 1840–1843 was Mrs. Hunt, present for six or seven sessions of varying length. Since Emily’s three known letters from this period were written when Helen Humphrey was in charge, we don’t know what impression the longer-lasting teacher made on the girl. This blank in the record is doubly regrettable in that Hunt had been her mother’s preceptress in Monson, under the name Caroline P. Dutch. One reason she returned to the classroom after marrying, unlike most women teachers, was that she had no choice: early widowed, she found herself impoverished with five young children to raise.

  Hunt’s career during Emily’s time had some dramatic ups and downs. Following a school examination in July 1841, she was commended for improving “the manners of her pupils” and credited for their “excellent compositions” and “recitations in Botany . . . and intellectual philosophy.” Ned Hitchcock remembered her as “a smart old woman,” and versatile as well, teaching “drawing & penmanship & some other things.” Her North Amherst pastor summed her up as a “lady of considerable culture” whose life was made wretched by poverty, inadequate housing, “delicate health,” and a constitutional nervousness. His remark that “people became rather weary of her moods” could be an allusion to her troubles in the 1842–1843 academic year, which saw a dramatic attrition in the number of girls in the classical course, from twenty-five to ten. That October Hunt complained in private about her difficulties with the “daughters of her best friends.” The following May, in “miserable” health, she was so discouraged about “the girls . . . talking against her,” that she resigned as preceptress. Was Emily one of the talkers? Perhaps not, given her gentle comment to a friend two years later: “I have some patience with these – School Marms. They have so many trials.”

  With Hunt’s departure, the trustees went on record in favor of a “permanent” teaching staff. Sensible as it was, the new policy seems to have led to greater instability than ever. Not only did turnover increase but supervision was so weak there were no annual catalogs for three years, beginning with 1843–1844. The institution’s prestige declined, students left for rival schools, and there were abrupt curricular changes. German was introduced in winter 1846, only to be canceled when
the teacher resigned in mid-term.

  Ironically, Emily’s relations with some of her instructors during this period of instability became all the more congenial and rewarding. In December 1843, the academy hired what was to be her favorite preceptress, Miss Elizabeth C. Adams, a thirty-three-year-old native of Conway. A practiced teacher and administrator, Adams had been principal of the female department of an academy in Syracuse, New York, from 1840 to 1842 before moving back to Massachusetts. Unfortunately, though she remained at Amherst Academy for four consecutive terms, Emily had to miss a good deal of school, this being the period of a major girlhood trauma (discussed in the next chapter). The principal for 1843–1844 was Jeremiah Taylor, fresh out of Amherst College and, according to one witness, a very “pleasant” teacher. Like his predecessors, he seems to have taken for granted that his temporary job did not require any large institutional vision. In spring 1844 he offered a bland assessment, “Amherst Academy ‘holds on its way,’” and made plans to leave.

  His successor, the Reverend Lyman Coleman, tall, handsome, ruddy, married to Maria Flynt of Monson and thus almost family (she was Mrs. Dickinson’s cousin), was of a different stripe. His résumé was already long and mixed: tutor at Yale when Edward was a student; minister at Belchertown (resigning under fire); instructor in boys’ schools. He had pursued advanced study in Germany, but his scholarship was not of the first rank and he would be an old man before finding a niche at Lafayette College, as professor of ancient languages. Bent on making big changes but out of touch with student needs, the fifty-year-old Coleman sought and received authorization “to dispense with a female teacher.” This proving impractical, his advertisement the following term stated that he would be “assisted by a young Lady from Troy, of superior qualifications and success as a Teacher.” The language suggests the new woman was not hired at the rank of preceptress. Since Coleman never named female staff in his public notices, her identity isn’t known.

  Still, Emily was not inclined to find fault. On May 7, 1845, two weeks into the term, she happily announced “we have a very fine school.” Three months later, with the term about to end, she declared she had never enjoyed herself “more than I have this summer. For we have had such a delightful school and such pleasant tea[c]hers.” There can be no doubt of her glowing response, yet, as her plural “we” tells us, she was also speaking for the community her father identified with and sought to direct. Precocious, “responsible,” sharing the town’s anxiety for its exposed academy, she was not yet ready to draw the sharp line between the collective mind and her own that would help define her as an adult.

  But Coleman was too distracted to maintain control. In addition to teaching Greek and German at the college, he was worried about his consumptive daughter, the beautiful and accomplished Olivia, Emily’s second cousin. In March 1846, the anxious father abandoned Amherst for a position in milder Princeton, leaving the school “quite broken up for this term,” as young Joseph Lyman lamented. This boy had been studying German—with Emily—and now wished he was back in Williston Seminary for its “superior instructions.”

  Amherst’s academy had never been weaker. The new acting principal, Jesse Andrews, was a senior at Union College in Schenectady. Student bills there convey a rough idea of how the young man juggled his commitments. *32 From January to April he sustained no charges, apparently because he was in Amherst keeping its school alive, but during Union’s summer term he paid tuition and room rent—clear evidence he had turned the academy over to someone else. The advertisement he ran before heading back to Schenectady—“Particular attention will be paid to young men fitting for college. Competent instruction will be provided in the Female Department”—shows a continuing disregard for the girls’ side. Yet once again it all fell out perfectly as far as Emily was concerned, the competent female proving none other than “dear Miss Adams,” who now returned for a second stint.

  Three striking facts about Emily’s schooling in this difficult time are that the Prudential Committee was able to hire talented and congenial instructors, the girl is not known to have left a single complaint, and she was probably the only one in her circle who did not transfer elsewhere. When the Pittsfield Young Ladies’ Institute opened in 1841, it was recognized as the best female academy in western Massachusetts and quickly attracted Amherst’s brightest girls—Olivia and Eliza Coleman, Sarah Porter Ferry, Helen Fiske, Mary E. Humphrey, Martha Gilbert. With the possible exception of Abby Wood, every one of Emily’s best friends of 1844 left Amherst Academy, Abiah Root switching to Mary B. Campbell’s school in Springfield and Sarah Tracy and Harriet Merrill entering institutions as yet unknown. Even Emily’s brother and sister attended school elsewhere, Austin returning to Williston Seminary in fall 1844 and Lavinia spending a year at Ipswich Female Seminary in 1849–1850.

  The Dickinsons’ real and imaginary fears for Emily’s health probably explain why she alone never went to another academy. She evidently accepted the situation, determined to make the best of school and teachers, yet if the choice had been hers, she would have preferred a change. In fall 1845, assuming her friend Abiah was about to return to school in Springfield, Emily wrote, “I really wish I was going too.” Four months later the wish had grown in intensity: “I suppose . . . you are enjoying yourself finely this winter at Miss C[ampbell]s school. I would give a great deal if I was there with you.”

  In early 1838, mid-1844, and spring 1848, Emily had to miss a great deal of school for reasons of health, but her longest forced absence was in 1845–1846, when, during a fifteen-month period starting in September, she was fully enrolled for only eleven weeks. “Mother thinks me not able to confine myself,” she wrote that fall; “she had rather I would exercise.” In winter there was a partial reprieve when she was allowed to attend Coleman’s class in German: “father thought I might never have another opportunity to study it,” she explained—several weeks before the teacher quit. In April, when Adams was rehired, Emily was determined to resume her schooling in spite of a “severe cough . . . attended with a difficulty in my throat & general debility” not to mention “bad feelings” (being “quite down spirited,” as she later confessed). But four weeks before term’s end and after “many a severe struggle,” she had to withdraw, spending the rest of summer “in the fields” and making an extended autumn trip to Boston. Fall term had begun by the time she came home, so she sat that one out too, it being her decision this time. She finally resumed recitations in early December.

  Adams was still preceptress, but at term’s end she resigned to get married. Her successor, Rebecca M. Woodbridge, the twenty-year-old daughter of the minister in nearby Hadley, was a little more than half her age and possibly Emily’s youngest woman teacher yet. Some ten days after the spring session began, the sixteen-year-old girl sent a friend an admiring description of the new preceptress. The sketch evokes both the collective buzz the attractive young woman set off among the schoolgirls and the writer’s own responsiveness to the charms of face and figure:

  We all love her very much. Perhaps a slight description of her might be interesting to my dear A[biah]. – She is tall & rather slender, but finely proportioned, has a most witching pair of blue eyes – rich brown hair – delicate complexion – cheeks which vie with the opening rose bud – teeth like pearls – dimples which come & go like the ripples in yonder little merry brook – & then she is so affectionate & lovely. Forgive my glowing description, for you know I am always in love with my teachers. Yet, much as we love her, it seems lonely & strange without “Our dear Miss Adams.”

  One is struck by the way the writer fuses her strong personal reaction to Woodbridge with the group’s collective feelings. Which conjugation is the real one here, “we love” or “I love”? Did the other girls also feel “lonely & strange” without Adams?

  When Jesse Andrews left for Union College in 1846, another young man, Leonard Humphrey, stepped in as principal. Even though he, too, was in his last year of college (at Amherst), he was somehow able t
o take charge that summer. Humphrey brought in preceptresses instead of female assistants and proved unusually effective at restoring confidence. That fall, boasting that he had been chosen valedictorian of his class, Emily proudly declared, “we now have a fine school.”

  Although she had said this before, this time the academy’s fortunes were on the rebound—as were her own. She had not only recovered from her most threatening illness to date but had also secured her parents’ permission to leave home for a better school. Since the new plan was to enter Mount Holyoke Seminary in fall 1847, all her energies were now devoted to preparing for entrance examinations. Except when a severe cold kept her home in early 1847, she worked closely with her teachers from December 1846 through the following summer, becoming good enough friends with Humphrey that he later visited her at Mount Holyoke.

  Dickinson and Humphrey shared a history of withdrawals from school owing to illness, but when the young man died in 1850 she felt she had lost a preceptor rather than a friend or equal:

  . . . the hour of evening is sad – it was once my study hour – my Master has gone to rest, and the open leaf of the book, and the scholar at school alone, make the tears come, and I cannot brush them away; I would not if I could, for they are the only tribute I can pay the departed Humphrey.

  That Dickinson could picture herself as his abandoned student two years after her schooling ceased says something about the subtle pleasure of exaggerating her reliance on this, her first, “Master” (she had recently devoured Jane Eyre and was reading a lot of sentimental literature). Certainly, Humphrey could be seen as having saved the academy in its—and her—dark hour. But the chief thing to be noticed is the sense of close, personal dependency on teachers as such.

  “Oh! I do love Mr. Taylor,” she burst out when the former principal visited Amherst following a two-year absence. The responsive warmth, a product of both her ardent temperament and her teachers’ attractive qualities, got an immense boost from the precarious institutional situation: the academy’s fluctuating fortunes, the teachers’ unpredictable comings and goings, the dramatic instructional zigzags. It was because Emily did not experience a program so much as a series of improvised student-teacher relationships that she later told Thomas Wentworth Higginson she “went to school – but in your manner of the phrase – had no education.” Another consequence was that her dependency on preceptors became a model for what she expected from adult friendship, such as that with Higginson.