My Wars Are Laid Away in Books

by Alfred Habegger

  However, it was prose: “Root” 7.

  Amherst Academy stimulated: O. J. Jonas[?] to Lucy Root, 12-1-1838 (ts), MTB Papers 106:166; Let (1894) 128–29, 35. The last issue of Forest Leaves EFF recalled seeing was at the Maplewood Institute, where “they started a similar paper.” The detail rings true, Maplewood being the later name of the Pittsfield Institute to which Fanny Montague transferred, evidently carrying the idea for the student paper. An account of her appears in Margie H. Luckett, ed., Maryland Women (Baltimore, 1931) 450–56.

  footnote 9: Let (1894) 129.

  described at age fourteen: “Root” 16.

  Chapter 9

  In 1846 Emily confided: Let 27, 30.

  Little is known about: Let 31. Jacob Holt professed faith 1-2-1842, after the 1841 revival. If that was the period of ED’s conversion, we would have a basis for her obscure friendship with Holt, and also her copying a poem of his into her Bible after he died in 1848. Another possible date for her conversion is summer 1842, when religion was “the only topic of conversation” at college (Timothy Lyman to JL, 6-18-1842, Lyman Papers, box 1) and some of ED’s older acquaintances, including EFF, were saved. First #3; Let 52, 53, 57, 64; HFE 5-18-, 6-8-1848; Leyda 1:liv; Smith 346, 389; Records #2, 1826–1891, 11-6-1842, Amh Coll Ch.

  This brief taste: First #3; Let 27–28. Among many discussions of ED’s Calvinist experience, see Capsule 20; Regina Siegfried, “Conspicuous by Her Absence: Amherst’s Religious Tradition and Emily Dickinson’s Own Growth in Faith” (dissertation, St. Louis University, 1982); Jane Donahue Eberwein, “‘Graphicer for Grace’: Emily Dickinson’s Calvinist Language,” Studies in Puritan American Spirituality 1 (1990) 170–201.

  footnote 1: Heman Humphrey, Revival Conversations (Boston: Samuel N. Dickinson, 1844) 9, 12, 13.

  “no Verse in the Bible”: Let 751.

  “I have just seen”: “Root” 17; Let 26.

  But of course some deaths: Let (1931) 441.

  At the time, careful attention: Harriet W. Fowler to Eliza M. Judkins, 10-1-1842, FF Papers, box 3. Judkins had taught at Amherst Academy the previous year.

  “People always are dying”: Mary Shepard to Hannah Terry, 9-15-1843, Bolt 5:3. Cf. Let 16, 38.

  Deborah Fiske, the gifted: EH Jr, Notebook “B+,” 13, Doc Hitch 7:26; DWVF to Harriet W. Fowler, n.d., FF Papers, box 8; DWVF to Nathan Fiske, “Wed. aft,” [8-2-1843], Friday afternoon [8-4-1843], HHJ Papers 1:6; Martha V. Hooker to DWVF, 11-2-1843, HHJ Papers 2:2; diary of Nathan Fiske, 5-29-1844, pp. 101, 110–12, HHJ Papers 8:3; DWVF to END, [12-25-1843], H.

  Emily probably attended: Heman Humphrey, The Woman That Feareth the Lord. A Discourse Delivered at the Funeral of Mrs. D. W. V. Fiske, February 21, 1844 (Amherst: Adams, 1844) 11, 38–39, 22, 34. END’s copy is at *AC8 H8855 844w, H.

  Next came: [Henry Jones, ed.], Memorials of Mrs. Harriet W. Fowler . . . Deceased March 30, 1844 (printed 1845) 14, 40, 10, 11, Gordon L. Ford’s copy, FF Papers, box 8; Harriet W. Fowler to Eliza W. Jones, 2-[8]-1839, FF Papers, box 8; [Edward Hitchcock], obituary, New-York Observer 22 (4-13-1844) 59 (authorship acknowledged Remin 382); Jeremiah Taylor to LMB, 4-2-1844, Bolt 5:4.

  Ann and Helen Fiske: “N.P.W.” to EFF, 11-16-[1844], EFF Papers 3:3; “Root” 15.

  In April came the: EDE (Tice) 146; Sylvester Judd, History of Hadley (Northampton: Metcalf, 1863), 488; Let 32; Amherst Vital Records, J. Sophia was born 6-14-1828 (Smith 388).

  On the night of: Lucius Boltwood to LMB, 4-28-1844 (misdated 4-24 in Leyda 1:85), Bolt 5:4; Let 32.

  Letting herself be led away: Let 32.

  But there was one more: Hampshire Gazette 7-2-1844; Amherst Vital Records, J; Smith 712–13.

  In a letter: Let 583, 737; Amherst–Second Church–Records–1809–1845, pp. 29, 105, J. The other possibility is Dr. William F. Sellon’s death from “erysipelas in the head.” Because he gave no “evidence of being prepared,” his death was “a melancholy one” (DWVF to Elizabeth G. Terry, 1-12-1843, HHJ Papers 2:3).

  So Independent She Don’t: Unless otherwise identified, all quotations in this section are from END and/or EdD to ED, Sunday [5-19-1844], 5-24-1844, Monday [5-27-1844], 6-4-1844, H. Though END is known to have written ED in later years—e.g., fall 1847 (Let 51)—these are her last letters to have survived.

  “your Bond to your Brother”: MLT/ED 746. Printer’s copy is quoted for this, the one missing letter (L827) to the Clark brothers.

  Another of Father’s recommendations: EdD to END, 9-7-1835, H; EdD, “The importance of providing an Asylum,” student essays, H.

  She returned home: Let 39; “Root” 32-33; Let (1894) 131.

  footnote 3: Let 198.

  The girl was Abiah: Let 39; James Pierce Root, Root Genealogical Records (New York: Root, 1870) 423; “Root” 9, 11. Abiah’s letters to ED are gone, but some Root family letters are preserved at *93M-224, H. On MLT’s finding Abiah as an old woman, see Let (1931) xv–xvi. On the editing of ED’s letters to Abiah, see MLT’s diary, Nov. 1892, MLT Papers 40:15; Brocades 206–209; “Root” 1–6.

  “How happy we all”: “Root” 11; Let (1894) 131; Home 413.

  footnote 4: EdD to ED, 6-4-1844, H; Hampshire Gazette 5-14-, 8-20-1844; “Root” 22.

  “sat together in school”: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh, A Tale (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1849) 39, Dickinson family copy at Za L860 849b, copy 3, Y-BRBL. The novel interpreted the friendship in the usual way, as practice for marriage.

  “the ‘five’”: Let 32.

  “making fun,” “as consistent,” “alias Virgil”: “Root” 7.

  footnote 5: Mary Shepard to Hannah Terry, 9-15-1843, Hannah Terry to Mary Shepard, 9-12-[1835], Bolt 5:3, 4:7.

  The letters in which: Let 17 (corrected against fMS Am 1118.4 [L55], H), 46. Cody, believing the “five” lasted for years, concluded that ED’s affection was “symptomatic of an abnormally prolonged period of sexual latency” (105, 109).

  footnote 6: Smith 284; Leyda 1:195, 208; Home 221; Amherst Academy catalogs for fall 1848 and year ending August 1849, J.

  Also painful was the impact: “Root” 18; Let 28.

  Since Abiah was not yet: Let 28.

  By the time Emily wrote: Let 30–31. Sarah S. Tracy, daughter of a minister, was praised at her death as “foremost in all the good works” of the Washington Street Congregational Church (Beverly Times 7-18-1916).

  There are indications: Let 37–38, 98.

  “Did we not find”: Let 923.

  “Why did you not come back”: Let 71.

  “rough & uncultivated manners”: Let 55.

  “most of the girls,” “Ladys Sewing”: “Root” 18.

  The society that perhaps meant: Let 55, 50, 475.

  We find a faint trace: John Pendleton Kennedy, Swallow Barn (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832) 2:153, EDR 2.4.19; Leyda 1:90. I am unable to attribute the book’s other penciled marginalia.

  Our best insights: Ebenezer W. Bullard to Joseph Bullard, 1-15-1829, Beecher Family Papers 17:671, Y-MSSA; Let 56; HFE 8-6-1846, 8-5-1847. On the Governor’s Council, see 1820 MA Constitution, Part II, Chap. II, Sect. III; Nathaniel P. Banks, “Address to the Council . . . upon the organization of the executive council,” Acts and Resolves (Boston: State Printer, 1859) 575; William L. Reed, “The Governor’s Council,” Pam 353.9M3 G72g 194-B, MA State Lib.

  footnote 7: Matt 4:6; Luke 4:10; Let 774, 865, 877, 887; Lyman Let 52.

  The rule at home: EdD to Alfred Norcross, 12-9-1846, J; JL to Timothy Lyman, 3-12-, 4-7-1846, Lyman Papers, box 1; Governor’s Council, 1846, Minutes, MA Arch. Amherst’s sixteen-week term, commencing 12-10-1845 (HFE 11-21-1845), would have ended 3-31-1846. In Lyman Let 6–7, Sewall assigns a passage from JL’s key 4-7-1846 letter to 2-13-1844, producing serious distortions in chronology and his relations with the Dickinson children.

  The young man who now: Moseley 261; JL to Timothy Lyman, 3-12-1846, Lyman Papers, box 1; JL to Laura Baker, 3-15-1858, Lyman Papers 2:37. The 1845–1846 Williston catalog has JL attending
that year, which in his case means summer term, beginning 5-27-1846.

  There was none of this: JL to Laura Baker, 7-30-[1856] (2:23), JL to mother, 10-11-1849 (box 1), JL to Timothy Lyman, 12-20-1848 (box 1), Lyman Papers.

  Unlike Abiah: JL to Timothy Lyman, [Feb. or early March 1849], Lyman Papers 1:11. Though Sewall makes this an “early letter” from Yale (Lyman Let 58), it dates from JL’s junior year. The reply, admitting “some exceptions” to female shallowness (Timothy Lyman to JL, 3-13-1849, 1:12) gives the approximate date.

  Proud of his conquests: “Bon” [Daniel Bonbright?] to JL, 1-23-1851, Lyman Papers, box 1.

  After the Civil War: JL/ED. Trying to date the passage, Sewall reasoned in Lyman Let 78–79 that, while the “trivial” subject points to girlhood, the “firm” and accurate language is “far from girlish.” I would guess that “calix” is a trace of ED’s girlhood interest in botany. Certainly, no later letter is as exact as one from 1848 listing spring flowers—“trailing arbutus, adder’s tongue, yellow violets, liver leaf, blood root” (“Root” 25).

  early daguerreotype: Mary Elizabeth Kromer Bernhard, “Lost and Found: Emily Dickinson’s Unknown Daguerreotypist,” New England Quarterly 72 (Dec. 1999) 594–601; EdD to Alfred Norcross, 2-10-, 2-19-1847, J; Let 411; World. The story of the daguerreotype’s accidental preservation is told by Bernhard in a review of World in New England Quarterly 64 (June 1991) 332–34.

  footnote 8: Let 415.

  Chapter 10

  “after this independent”: MW to WDW, 1-29-[1875], WDW Papers 22:582.

  This statement helps explain: Eleventh Annual Catalogue of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (Amherst: Adams, 1848); Let 54.

  Mount Holyoke toughened: Let 59, 54, 49; MHJL 3-3-1848.

  footnote 1: Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (Amherst: Adams, 1844) 2:813.

  letters Dickinson sent from school: ED’s letters to others—Mary Warner, Abby Wood, Jacob Holt, EDC, great-uncle Zebina Montague (Let 51-52, 70)—have not survived.

  “enjoyed the solitude finely”: Let 48.

  “found them about”: Let 54.

  “My good angel only waits”: Let 63.

  Her roommate was: One Hundred Year Biographical Directory of Mount Holyoke College 1837–1937 (South Hadley, Mass.: Alumnae Assoc., 1937); Mary Lyon to Susanna Fitch, 9-17-1848, ML Coll. Having inherited a substantial fraction of JN’s large estate, ELN also received financial help from Stearns (Hampden Co. Probate Court, Estate of JN [Case 8347], Guardianship of ELN [Case 8345]). Her Ohio teaching stint, perhaps at Granville Female Academy (Ackmann 78), was quite brief, starting after February 1849 (Sarah Jane Anderson to HP, 2-15-1849, Alumnae) and ending before 10-27-1850 (Leyda’s notes of Eudocia Flynt’s diaries, MTB Papers, box 104).

  footnote 2: LNN to END, 4-12-1835, H.

  In character, Cousin Emily: ELN to HP, 12-25-1846, Alumnae; Circular headed “Candidates for Mount Holyoke Female Seminary” on which Mary Lyon wrote a letter in 1847, ML Coll; Let 54, 61.

  This cousin’s presence: Let 53, 55.

  Homesickness notwithstanding: Let 52, 54, 55.

  In December, having passed: Let 57, 59, 54; “Root” 26; MHJL 5-17-, 2-22-1848. Edward Hitchcock regularly lectured on physiology at Mount Holyoke with the aid of a “mannekin,” but he is not mentioned in MHJL for 1847–1848.

  “boarding school”: “Root” 24.

  As at Amherst: Let 60; Turner 7; MCW to Fidelia Fiske, 3-9-1848, MCW Papers.

  As the mid-year exams: Let 60, 51 (punctuated as in ED552 A).

  “You know Sarah”: “Root” 21.

  Her dream was conservative: Rufus Anderson, An Address, Delivered in South Hadley (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1839) 6.

  As practical and tireless: HP to Mary Lyon, 5-11-1837, AP Papers; “Evangel” 394–395. On Mount Holyoke’s Edwardsianism, see Conforti, chap. 4.

  On the surface: “Evangel” 397–398.

  It was never quite clear: Charles Hammond to SCB, 11-2-1846, SCB Papers 4:93; HP to Mary Lyon, 4-4-1837, AP Papers.

  For Porter as for Lyon: Heman Humphrey, The Shining Path. A Sermon . . . at the Funeral of Miss Mary Lyon (Northampton: Metcalf, 1849) 14; Elizabeth Alden Green, Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke: Opening the Gates (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1979) 246–47.

  Such rooms were Porter’s: HP to Mary Lyon, “Tuesday morn” [1842], AP Papers.

  This passage suggests: MHJL 12-23-1847, 1-4-1848.

  Mount Holyoke’s teachers kept: MHJL 10-2-1847.

  Frequent meetings were convened: MHJL 10-11-, 10-14-, 10-18-1847.

  The seminary had scores: MHJL 7-15-1848, 11-4-1847.

  Judging from the comprehensive: Let 54–55.

  A third of Emily’s: Let 58–60. The sentences quoted last were written sideways on the top of p. 1 (fMS Am 1118.4 [L59], H).

  The ordeal began: MHJL 12-20-1847. In February, informing WAD of the Reverend Belden’s rumored “call to settle” in South Hadley, ED wrote, “if he accepts, I hope it will, WILL not be until my year is out” (Let 64). Her animosity was spurred not only by his role in the revival and by her church’s longstanding disdain for Amherst’s East Parish, but (probably) by the memory of his sermon at Martha Dwight Strong’s funeral. In Mary Shepard’s eyes, Belden was “good—but uncultivated” (Leyda 1:89).

  In 1924 Martha Dickinson Bianchi: LL 26; Sydney R. McLean, “Emily Dickinson at Mount Holyoke,” New England Quarterly 7 (March 1934) 32–35; Leyda 1:136; Turner 7; “Root” 25.

  footnote 3: Journal of Harriette A. Wells, 12-25-1845, MH; MHJL 12-25-1847; “Root” 18; Let 46.

  As the twenty-fourth approached: MHJL 12-21-, 12-23-1847.

  On Christmas Eve: MHJL 12-24-1847.

  During Porter’s first four days: MHJL 12-27-1847; Sarah Jane Anderson to HP, 1-17-1848, Alumnae.

  The first to: MHJL, 1-11-1848; ELN to HP, 1-11-1848, Alumnae.

  “intended to write”: ibid.

  Six days later: Sarah Jane Anderson to HP, 1-17-1848, Alumnae; Let 473.

  The previous school year: ELN to HP, 12-25-1846, Alumnae; Sarah Jane Anderson to HP, 1-17-1848, Alumnae; MCW to HP, [Feb. 1848] (dated by Jason Whitman’s death in Lexington 1-25-1848 [MVR-Deaths 33:29]), MCW Papers.

  On the same day: MCW to HP, [1-17-1848], MCW Papers; “Root” 25. McLean’s 1934 article, “Emily Dickinson at Mount Holyoke,” accepted MCW’s rumor and concluded ED “caught at” (39) some kind of Christian faith. McLean did not cite and may not have been aware of the two passages (Let 60; “Root” 25) disclosing the poet’s unconverted state. The former was still unpublished; the latter had appeared as an undated fragment in Let (1931) 28 and was therefore useless.

  “This term is the longest”: Let 59. See also 62.

  In May, after the revival: “Root” 25.

  When the long first term: Let 62–63.

  a sparkling mime: Home 90.

  In February she received: Let 62 (punctuated as in ED555 A); “Root” 11; Let 64.

  All we have: Frederick J. Bliss to Claribel Smith, 3-17-1913, MTB Papers 85:265; Let 63.

  Her caution is evident: Let 57 (cf. 63); Amherst College Exhibition program, 4-1-1848, H; Let 68; MHJL 5-30-1848.

  footnote 4: Let 64; MCW to HP, [2-19-1848?], MCW Papers.

  Austin’s one surviving: Home 82–83. WAD separated the sentences with a passage of his own but indicated they had been contiguous.

  footnote 5: Var 1153-54.

  If the teacher: MHJL 12-14-1847, 4-24-, 5-24-, 5-25-1848.

  The letter Emily sent: Let 68 (punctuated as in ED556 A); MHJL 4-26-1848. ED’s recuperative period at home began 3-25 and ended 5-12, when students returned for Mount Holyoke’s third term (“Root” 23-24; MHJL 3-17-, 5-12-1848).

  footnote 6: Eleventh Annual Catalogue 15; Let 69.

  Another onerous rule: EH Jr, Notebook “A,” Doc Hitch 7:22; Let 69–70.

  social activism: See Miller 166–67. Erkkila’s important essay interpreting ED as a product of her class, “E
mily Dickinson and Class,” American Literary History 4 (spring 1992) 1–27, pays no attention, strangely enough, to what its key word meant to her.

  Emilie Led Off in Triumph: All ED quotes are from “Root” 23–26.

  The Princess: Reviewed in HFE 3-30-1848. For Sue’s response to Tennyson’s poem, see Chap. 12.

  footnote 7: Let 162–63; Home 54.

  Chapter 11

  She got a taste: Catalogue of the Officers and Members of Ipswich Female Seminary, for the Year Ending Nov. 12, 1850 (Boston: Damrell & Moore, 1850) 4, 9, 10, Ipswich Public Lib.; HFE 3-8-, 3-15-1850 (facsimile in Leyda 1:170); Let 97–99.

  her friend Jane Humphrey: HFE 8-11-1848, 2-9-, 5-18-, 8-10-1849; Amherst Academy catalogs for fall 1848 and for year ending August 1849, J; Let 196.

  When Abiah came back: For ED’s relations with Abiah Root, see Let 85; “Root” 25.

  footnote 1: Catalogue of the Alpha Delta Phi (Utica: Curtiss & Childs, 1870) 38–42; Hammond 304.

  ascent of Mount Holyoke: Summit 10-9-[1849].

  “Candy Pulling!!”: Fr1389; facsimile of invitation in Leyda 1:167.

  Between Emily and the more: Let 75, 85, 96; Bio Rec 56, 59; ED886 A. The sincere-spite note has been mistakenly grouped with ED’s aphoristic scraps (Let 929).

  “We are anticipating”: Dated 12-20 in Lyman Let 12, the letter can only have been written in 1848: in 1846 WAD didn’t room with Thompson; in 1847 ED wasn’t home; in 1849 Vin wasn’t in “Boston, spending a few weeks,” but at Ipswich Seminary.

  Elbridge Gridley Bowdoin: Leyda 1:xxxi; Let (1894) 137. Bowdoin joined the First Parish between 1840 and 1858 (First #4, 9) but his name is absent from the church roll (First #3).

  Benjamin Franklin Newton: Worcester Vital Statistics 1719–1890, microfiche #11, 118, AAS; Ermina Newton Leonard, Newton Genealogy (De Pere, Wisc.: Bernard Ammidon Leonard, 1915) 133; This Was a Poet 85–86; First Unitarian Church, Worcester, Octavo #9, 3-24-1853, AAS; Church of the Unity, Worcester, Octavo #2 and Folio #2, AAS. Whicher’s This Was a Poet and “Emily Dickinson’s Earliest Friend,” American Literature 6 (March 1934) 3–17, remain the primary discussions of Newton. Whicher’s one misstep, traceable to MDB’s faulty dating in FF 177–81, was identifying Newton as ED’s “beautiful, new, friend” in 1852 (Let 183).