My Wars Are Laid Away in Books

by Alfred Habegger

  Subsequent letters show: Let 223, 266, 241, 233, 229; Home 268; WAD to Sue (draft, “It seems sometimes”), Monday [late April 1853], H.

  footnote 8: WAD to MGS (draft), 3-27-[1853], H.

  Sue’s response to all this: Let 223, 228; Home 268. Even though MDB misdated L103, she realized it implied ED’s knowledge of the engagement (FF 188–89).

  A letter of Sue’s: Sue to MLB, Saturday [3-26-1853], SCB Papers 2:53; WAD to Sue (draft), [4-2-1853], H.

  In spite of: Let 229, 239, 245; WAD to Sue (draft, no. 25, “Dinner is over”), Friday [4-22-1853], H.

  And so she overdid: Let 248, 256, 252, 254; Let (1894) 129. See also Cody 231–32.

  After Austin scolded: Home 298; Let 255-56. The quarrel shows up in WAD to Sue (draft, no. 27), [5-6?-1853 (Leyda 1:272)], H.

  Chapter 14

  On June 9, 1853: Let 254, 262; Home 294, 308.

  When Abiah Root invited: Let 299, 307–308, 310; Springfield directory for 1853–1854.

  Unlike Dickinson: Obituary, New York Evening Post, cited in H. M. Plunkett, Josiah Gilbert Holland (New York: Scribners, 1894) 193–94; Let 324, 713, 537, 111; Frank Barrows Makepeace, The North Congregational Church Springfield . . . Fiftieth Anniversary (Springfield, Mass.: the Church, [1896]) 33.

  “If it wasn’t”: Let 264.

  In her letters: Let 264, 309; Plunkett, Holland 117.

  Much shorter than: Plunkett, Holland 25; H. M. P[lunkett], “Elizabeth Holland,” Berkshire Sun 4-30-1896; Let 715, 688.

  The fundamental text: Horace Bushnell, God in Christ (Hartford, Ct.: Brown and Parsons, 1849) 44, 46, 55, 73, 84–85, 295; Donald A. Crosby, Horace Bushnell’s Theory of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1975).

  The year after: “Root” 29; Let 346; George H. Gould, In What Life Consists and Other Sermons (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1903) 3.

  But the most important: Edwards A. Park, Memorial Collection of Sermons (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1902) 95, 111; Park, “Introductory Essay,” in Henry C. Fish, Pulpit Eloquence of the Nineteenth Century (Cleveland: Barton, 1907); Crosby 87–93. On Park’s relation to Edwardsian thought, see Conforti, chap. 5.

  Putting such ideas: Richard Salter Storrs, “Tribute,” in Memorial Collection 12; Elizabeth L. Smith, ed., Henry Boynton Smith. His Life and Work (New York: Armstrong, 1881) 95.

  On November 20, 1853: Let 272, 502–503; Leyda 1:287; Home 318.

  Given this enthusiasm: HFE 11-25-, 12-2-1853 (a “condensed report”).

  “BFN – is married”: Let 116 (corrected against ED561 A). A Unitarian clergyman married the couple on 6-4-1851. The official record says the bride, Sarah W. Rugg, was thirty-one (MVR-Marriages 56:199), a year older than Newton. In fact, she was forty-one.

  “Love from us all”: Let 236. “Pace” (ED597 A), which I find indecipherable, was apparently legible for Johnson and Leyda.

  After reflecting on: Let 282–84. Sue left for Manchester, N.H., between January 10 and January 15: see Let 283–84; Sue to MLB, 1-10-1854, Sue to SCB, Tuesday (postmarked 1-24-[1854]), SJL to MLB, 1-10-1854, SCB Papers 2:53, 2:50.

  What Dickinson didn’t: Octavo no. 9, Records of the First Unitarian Church, Worcester, AAS: Brocades 256; MVR-Deaths 494:356. If Sarah was “more nurse than wife” (This Was a Poet, 86), the life insurance may have been her promised remuneration.

  The thank-you letter: ED to [E. E. Hale?], 2-14-[1854], A. Newly discovered, this letter, like the next one, is not in Johnson. See Diana Wagner and Marcy Tanter, “New Dickinson Letter Clarifies Hale Correspondence,” EDJ 7.1 (1998) 110–17.

  A few years later: EdD to E. E. Hale, [spring 1858?], courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.

  The poet’s most intriguing: Let 282; obituary of Williams Emmons, Hallowell Gazette 10-20-1855; Nason 151–53; Mary Vaughan Marvin, Benjamin Vaughan 1751–1835 (Hallowell, Me.: Printed for the family, 1979); John H. Sheppard, Reminiscences of the Vaughan Family (Boston: David Clapp, 1865). The Vaughans’ library was open “to any boy or girl desirous to learn” (HVE, Address and Poem at the Dedication of the Hallowell Library [Portland, Me.: Hoyt, Fogg & Donham, 1880] 23).

  footnote 2: Nason 140, 153.

  Henry seems to have: Hammond 241–42; Amherst College catalogs for 1851–1852, 1852–1853, 1853–1854, A; Let 174, 183, 214. A letter in HVE’s alumni file (A) implies he planned to take the entrance exams in 1850, and he appears in the 1850–1851 catalog. But Bio Rec 72 and his class obituary have him entering in 1851.

  The notes Emily sent: Let 246, 247, 280. In Var 9 Franklin sees these passages as evidence she was sewing into booklets the sheets on which she copied her poems. His transcription of the last hard-to-read phrase from MS Am 1118 (4), H, looks more accurate than Johnson’s or Leyda’s (1:292).

  As Emily knew: HVE et al., “Report on the Establishment of a College Magazine” (in HVE’s hand), 9-26-1853, General Files–Publications–Information about College Publications, A. His prize essays included “Sympathy in Action” (Let 246) and “Sources of Originality” (1854 Commencement program).

  Two of Emmons’s essays: N S. S. [HVE], “Poetry the Voice of Sorrow,” Amherst Collegiate Magazine 1 (Oct. 1853) 20–25; The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (New York: Francis, 1852) 2:202, EDR 2.2.24. In ED’s later treatment of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, “A little east of Jordan” (Fr145), the depiction of sunrise on hills and mountain (absent from Genesis 32:24–32) recalls the conclusion of Emmons’s “The Words of Rock Rimmon.” But there is no wrestling with sorrow in her strikingly lighthearted poem.

  As Dickinson moved: “Vision of Poets,” lines 728, 428–29, 557–58. Vivian R. Pollak, “Dickinson, Poe, and Barrett Browning: A Clarification,” New England Quarterly 54 (March 1981) 124, notes the parallel between Dickinson’s enigmatic “I died for beauty but was scarce” (Fr448) and a tercet in “Vision”: “These were poets true,/Who died for Beauty as martyrs do/For Truth—the ends being scarcely two” (lines 289–91). These, the poem’s most heavily marked lines in Sue’s copy, would be quoted in an essay read by ED, [Kate Field], “Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” Atlantic Monthly 8 (Sept. 1861) 368.

  The second essay: HFE 6-9-1854; SR 6-10-1854; Remin 245.

  Though Dickinson wouldn’t: [HVE], “The Words of Rock Rimmon,” Collegiate 1 (July 1854) 247–49; Pollak 123. The tercet isn’t marked in Sue’s copy. “There are some mountains,” wrote J. T. Headley in The Sacred Mountains (New York: Scribners, 1854) 13, “that seem almost conscious beings, and if they would but speak . . . the traveller . . . would tremble with awe.”

  He graduated in August: SR 7-11-1861; ED’s Bible, EDR 1.1.10; Let 302. When TWH asked ED in 1862 who her companions were, the answer began, “Hills – Sir” (Let 404). “What distinguishes her prophetic poetry,” writes Beth Maclay Doriani, “is her preservation of a female identity for her prophetic persona, even as that voice draws on and adjusts the style and devices usually preferred by male prophets” (Emily Dickinson: Daughter of Prophecy [Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996] 19).

  Contributing to the pensive: Let 301; “Van” [HVE], untitled paragraph, Collegiate 1 (May 1854) 171. HVE’s editorial pseudonym was Vandunke (Collegiate 1:62). One of his known pieces, “The Poetry of Martial Enthusiasm,” was signed “Van.”

  For Dickinson, a great many: Let 303. MS Am 1118 (7), H, has “resemblance.”

  footnote 3: Let 601; Imagery chap. 3; MHJL 10-18-1847; Aurelia G. Scott, “Emily Dickinson’s ‘Three Gems,’” New England Quarterly 16 (Dec. 1943) 627–28; Sewall 413–14.

  “We used to think”: JL/ED.

  Writing Sue in late: Let 304, corrected against fMS Am 1118.4 (L21), H. Johnson’s unauthorized paragraph break after “honey” obscures the link between Emmons and the imagery. This important letter is misdated 1851–1852 in Rowing 165 and silently excluded from Open Me.

  “made [her]self sick,” “for a year”: Sue to TDG, Sunday 8-13-[1854], H. Sue felt oppressed by her “sewing, that inexhaustible labor . . . that stretches away before
my tired needles” (Sue to EH Jr, 1-13-1853, Doc Hitch 8:10). A few months later, recycling the image, she changed “tired” to “crooked” (Sue to SCB [spring 1853, misdated ca. 1851], SCB Papers 2:53). “Susie is all worn out sewing,” ED wrote WAD Nov. 1853; “she seems very lonely without you, and . . . more depressed than is usual” (Let 272).

  from “man’s requirements” to “don’t get nervous”: Cody 207; Let 298; Sue to TDG, 8-13-, 9-4-[1854], H; Sue to EH Jr, Geneva, Tuesday [Sept. 1854], Doc Hitch 8:10. Cody gave the first cogent analysis of Sue’s situation.

  This illness brought out: Sue to TDG, 8-13-[1854], H; Sue to MLB, 12-5-[1854], SCB Papers 2:53; Eugenia Learned James, The Learned Family in America 1630–1967 (n.p.: Setco Printing Co., 1967) 58.

  dating the poet’s two letters mentioning the quarrel: L173 has been dated about 1854 (Johnson, Franklin), late September? 1854 (Leyda), and “mid-1850s” (Open Me 69). Its script resembles that of L172 (written soon after 1854 Commencement) but differs in retaining vestigial features of ED’s earlier hand. The initial stroke of “Y” in “Yet” (poem) and “You” has the wedgelike look that had been common in 1852; L172 has no instances of this. The descender of “g” or “y,” which by 1854 usually terminated with a graceful sweep to the left, had in 1851 always turned to the right. L173 shows the older form in the last letters of “Tuesday morning,” which curve right; L172 does not, except for a faint hint in “day.” A third diagnostic feature, terminal “s,” is tiny and unconnected in L173, but in L172 (with one exception) is larger, clearer, and differently formed. These three features make L173 slightly earlier than L172.

  The similarities in the paper of L173 and L169—the latter obviously dating from mid-August 1854—suggest the former also comes from that period. The two sheets are not the same size, but both have gilt edges and the same chain-line interval and boss (“SUPER FINE PAPER LONDON” around a diagonal “MOINIER”). Both show parts of the same large watermark, a crown above a post-horn and cursive “M” (cf. design #639, Thomas L. Gravell & George Miller, A Catalogue of American Watermarks 1690–1835 [New York: Garland, 1979] 137). ED’s only other letters with this boss and watermark are L168 and L170, from during and soon after Commencement week 1854. L168, L169, L170, L172, and L173 are all at H: MS Am 1118 (13), (14), (3), & fMS Am 1118.4 (L21), (L17).

  from “Sue – you can go” to “Return”: Let 305–307; “Root” 28.

  “private message”: Miller 15. In Farr’s terms, ED’s “art is founded on thrilling loss, thrilled sublimation” (Passion 182). Elizabeth Hewitt, “Dickinson’s Lyrical Letters and the Poetics of Correspondence,” Arizona Quarterly 52 (spring 1996) 30, proposes that ED’s “poetry compensates for a failed correspondence.”

  If Eliza Coleman had learned: Leyda 1:319; Let 302.

  In late August: Let 304–305. WAD’s drafts (H) about someone’s interrupted “‘Spiritual converse’ with my sister,” one of which is dated 9-23, do not concern this quarrel. Mistakenly assigned by Leyda to 1854 (1:316), they date from 1851. Proof lies in WAD’s statement that “your card will find me at 19 Hancock St”—Mrs. Lucy Reed’s boardinghouse and his address for most of his schoolteaching year (Let 153; Boston directories for 1851, 1852). WAD was writing an unidentified male friend of ED or Vin.

  Sue did write: Let 310–11.

  By late January: Let 315.

  Chapter 15

  Representative Dickinson and his: “Arrivals at Principal Hotels,” Washington Evening Star, 2-10-1855, p. 1; Let 316. The Star’s mistake—“E Dickinson & daughters, N H”—shows how hard it was to decipher EdD’s scribble in the hotel register. Date of Sue and Martha’s return: SJL to MLB, 2-5-1855, SCB Papers.

  This note of discomfiture: Let 317, 319; LL 46.

  Dickinson’s only known: Independent 7 (5-24-1855) 166; Let 319, 299.

  Her one account: Let 317; Cullum 2:240.

  What little we know: Washington Evening Star 2-5-, 1-24-1855; H. Trusta [Elizabeth Stuart Phelps], The Last Leaf from Sunny Side (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1854), J; Note by Jeanie Ashley Bates Greenough, ED Collection 31:2, A (her father and EdD sat on the Governor’s Council in 1845); Henrietta R. Mack Eliot to Julian [Mack], 5-14-1932, MTB Papers 104:629. TDG came to Washington at the end of February, dined with EdD, and perhaps saw ED (Sue to TDG, 3-6-1855, H). ED may also have met Ben C. Eastman, a Wisconsin congressman originally from Maine (Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774–1989 [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989]). At some point, Ben’s wife, Charlotte Sewall Eastman, became friends with ED and Vin. She was from Hallowell, Maine, where her husband had been mentored by HVE’s father, Williams Emmons. Nason 135; Vital Records of Hallowell Maine (Maine Historical Soc. 1924) 260; 1850 federal census, WI, Grant Co., Platteville, 98; Leyda 1:xliii.

  After three weeks: Philadelphia directories for 1854, 1855; “Minutes of the First Presbytery of Philadelphia 1850–56,” 3, 39, 58–59, 62, 70, P; notices for Presbyterian Institute, The Presbyterian, 9-7-1850, 9-9-1854, 9-8-1855; Kellogg 11. Sunday, 3-18-1855, Johnson’s conjectured date for L179, written “just five weeks” after ED left Amherst, seems unlikely, partly because EdD avoided traveling on Sunday. If he and his daughters left home on Friday, February 9, they could have reached Washington by February 10. EdD’s last recorded activity in the House, three days before adjournment, was on March 1 (Home 567). If he, ED, and Vin left for Philadelphia the next day, Friday, March 2, that would be consistent all around and yield a date of Friday, March 16, for L179.

  Although the sequence: Funeral 23; Let 727, 753, 764, 737; A. Mary F. Robinson, Emily Brontë (London: Allen, 1883) 104. CW performed a wedding February 28 and gave a benefit sermon at the Broad Street Presbyterian Church the evening of March 18 (Philadelphia Public Ledger 3-1,17-1855). I haven’t been given access to the records of the Arch Street Church (then located above Tenth Street) to verify the longstanding assumption that the Colemans were members. Their next church, South Congregational, Middletown, Connecticut, has no letters of transfer for them (Jonathan B. Dean-Lee to author, 2-7-2000).

  Judging from contemporary: Leyda 2:112; Funeral 15, 16; [George Burrowes], Impressions of Dr. Wadsworth as a Preacher (San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, 1863) 5; Let 744–45, 762. CW’s few extant letters are at A, P, Historical Society of PA, and alumni files at Hamilton College and PTS. I haven’t located those quoted by Sewall 730–38.

  Her care not to encroach: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” Atlantic Monthly 68 (Oct. 1891) 453; CW to William E. Schenck, Nov. 1878, CW’s alumni file, PTS; Let 737.

  No doubt Wadsworth had: Barbour’s Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records 32–34, 226; Alain C. White, The History of the Town of Litchfield (Litchfield, Conn.: Enquirer, 1920) 128–29, 190; Elijah Wadsworth & Co., ledger 1798–1802, Litchfield Historical Soc.; Paul Meibert Miller, “Charles Wadsworth, Spiritual Preceptor to Emily Dickinson” (thesis, San Francisco State, 1987) 27; CW to Edith and Charlie, Sewall 736; Charles Thomas Payne, Litchfield and Morris Inscriptions (Litchfield, Ct.: Dwight C. Kilbourn, 1905) 142; Henry Wadsworth probate, 14:491–92; 15:37, 100, 128; 16:219; 22:589–90, Probate Court, District of Litchfield; Laurens P. Hickock, “List of Deaths and Marriages,” 2, 24, First Ecclesiastical Soc. of Litchfield, Litchfield Historical Soc.; Litchfield Enquirer 12-18-1834; Let 742.

  Leaving Litchfield: Necrological Report . . . of Princeton Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, 1882) 39–40; William Pilcher to William E. Schenck, 11-27-1878, CW’s alumni file, PTS; Milton C. Sernett, Abolition’s Axe: Beriah Green, Oneida Institute, and the Black Freedom Struggle (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986) 31–38; Moseley 99; Miller, “Charles Wadsworth,” 29.

  The identity of “Sedley” is established by a small scrapbook of sermons and newspaper poems (ZIZ n.c.19, NYPL). Most of CW’s poetic output appeared in the Litchfield Enquirer: 2-16-, 4-12,19-, 5-17-, 9-20-1832; 5-8,22-1834; 1-22-1835; 4-21-, 8-18-, 9-15-1836; 7-6-, 9-21-1837; 11-22-, 12-20-1838 (cf. 12-6-1838). Three poems appeared in the
Utica Record of Genius 1 (12-22-1832; 2-2-, 4-27-1833) 138, 162, 110 [210]. The scrapbook poem “Death,” dated Litchfield 1831 and thus his earliest known work, appeared in the Religious Intelligencer. Another scrapbook poem, “The Spirit of Night” (Sewall 740–41), had an as yet unidentified outlet.

  One year after CW died, ED told MW that one of her “lost” used to visit the Adirondacks (Let 793). In “Scraps,” Litchfield Enquirer, 9-15-1836, CW wrote, “I stood upon Lake George’s shore,” making him ED’s only other friend with an Adirondacks connection.

  “To ” was published in Litchfield Enquirer 4-19-1832 and Record of Genius 1 (12-22-1832) 138. A copy of the latter in Utica Imprints Collection, Utica Public Lib., has two old and interesting inscriptions: “Mr [C?] O P” penciled in the title’s blanks and “S.P.” inked beside the masthead. These may designate Chester Parks and daughter Sally. She died 5-21-1832 at age nineteen (in the cholera epidemic?) and was buried in Grand View Cemetery, Whitesboro. D.A.R., “Cemetery, Church & Town Records of New York,” vol. 4; Sue Lorraine to author, 3-16-2000.

  Having gained a name: CW, A Sermon Preached in the Arch Street Presbyterian Church . . . Thanksgiving . . . 1852 (Philadelphia: Moran & Sickels, 1852) 19; Religious Glorying. A Sermon . . . Thanksgiving . . . 1857 (Philadelphia: Bradley, 1857) 5–6; “The Feast of Harvest,” first preached 1858 and collected in CW, Sermons (San Francisco: A. Roman, 1869) 297; Address Delivered in Calvary Church . . . Services of Gen. George Wright (San Francisco: Bancroft, 1865) 9. In 1850, surprised at CW’s loss of interest in poetry, the Yale professor James Hadley recalled that he once seemed, intellectually, “so immeasurably superior” (Mosely 95, 97). CW’s eulogist described his faith as “the termination of an awful struggle of his spirit, upward out of unbelief” (Funeral 25).