My Wars Are Laid Away in Books

by Alfred Habegger

  “I lend you”: ED to MW [early 1878], MS Am 1118.10 (7), H. Only the last five words appear in Let 603. Hart’s surmise (“Putnam” 58) that ED “lent” a rose doesn’t do justice to the occasion and is otherwise unconvincing.

  “dreamed Saturday”: ED to MW [fall 1884], MS Am 1118.10 (12), H (passage omitted in Let 848). Contrary to Passion 244, nothing in the WDW Papers suggests MW “was still mourning” SB in 1885.

  footnote 3: “Putnam”; Let (1894) 349–50; “Newspaper Employees Buy Church Window,” SR 5-28-1961; Selections from the American Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum (Springfield, Mass.: Springfield Library and Museums Association, 1999) 250–52.

  Dickinson had many: ED to MW, MS Am 1118.10 (13), (8), H (Let 862, 634).

  Whitney came to Amherst: WAD’s 1880 diary, 3-27,28,29,30, 7-31, 8-1, MLT Papers 101:243; MW to James D. Whitney, 3-31-[1880] (29:834), 5-21-[1880] (29:840), MW to EBW, 4-4-[1880] (46:1407), 4-10-[1880] (46:1409), WDW to EBW, 7-31-1880 (29:848) [speaks of chintz: hence ED’s “sewing”?], MW to EBW, Wed P.M. [8-4-1880] (46:1407), WDW Papers; Let 661–62. L643 is assigned to June in Let 661 and Var 1333.

  footnote 4: Let 758.

  A letter reacting: MW to EBW, 1-28-[1883], 5-21-[1883], WDW Papers 46:1408, 1407. The story is told in family correspondence from 5-19-1882 to 6-13-1883, boxes 32–33, 46. See especially MW to WDW or EBW, 6-28-[1882] (32:919), 7-29-[1882] (32:922), 10-23-[1882] (46:1408), 11-4-[1882] (32:932), and EBW to WDW, 3-12-[1883] (33:943). MW to WDW, 10-16-[1882] (32:930), implies MW was too busy to visit Amherst after returning from Europe.

  This ordeal: Let 776–77. Johnson explained this letter by MW’s interest in the Children’s Aid Society. His context for L815 seems equally speculative: WAD saw MW in Cambridge 2-5-1883 (WAD’s diary, MTB Papers 101:245), but I find no evidence she visited Amherst that spring or that ED wouldn’t see her (Let 771).

  footnote 5: MLT/ED 706.

  “went into camp”: Let 848.

  “I feel Barefoot”: Var 1250.

  “I am glad”: Let 793–94.

  Born in 1812: Proceedings of the Bar of the Commonwealth, and of the Supreme Judicial Court, at Boston. On the Death of Otis Phillips Lord, LL.D. March, 1884 4, 6; Proceedings of the Essex Bar Association, and of the Supreme Judicial Court, at Salem . . . April, 1884 43. Bound together at CL.

  An old-line Whig: Bench 1:420; Proceedings of the Whig State Convention Held at Worcester, Oct. 2d, 1855 (Boston: Office of the Boston Courier, 1855) 14–15; SR 7-10-1862; Edgar J. Sherman et al. to Essex Co. Commissioners, 1-1-1875 (copy), MTB Papers 99:522; SR 9-24-1874.

  In private life: Proceedings of the Essex Bar 35, 38; “Annals”; Watts & Select 375.

  footnote 6: “Annals”; Watts and Select 465.

  The judge had a memory: MVR-Deaths 365:90; Let 883.

  Like Dickinson: Lord, “Memoir of Asahel Huntington,” Historical Collections of the Essex Institute 11 (July, Oct. 1871) 92–93; James Guthrie, “Law, Property, and Provincialism in Dickinson’s Poems and Letters to Judge Otis Phillips Lord,” EDJ 5.1 (1996) 27–44. Conceivably, Fr728 could concern Judge Reuben A. Chapman.

  The first solid: Lord’s envelope to ED, postmarked Salem November 10 and variously assigned to 1872 (Var 1090), 1873 (Leyda 2:210), and 1873 or later (Rev 71); Let 509 (cf. FF 235; “Country Girl” 40–41), 730 (ED424 A, on reverse of Fr1337), 548; Leyda 2:236–37; ED’s will, fms Am 1118.4 [L32]; Lord to Vin, [early Feb.? 1877] (dated by Jenkins’s imminent departure), H; MVR-Deaths 292:275 (cancer). Although MLT’s working list of correspondents for the last three chapters of Let (1894) includes “Mrs Lord, 1874,” the published work has no letters identified as written to her; see MLT Papers 69:25.

  fair copies that can be dated: Let 727–28, 730–31, 753. Werner 288 astutely questioned whether the second half of L750 (from “Door either,” Let 728) belongs with the first half. It was in fact written on 11-11-1882 (see footnote 13).

  assigned the earliest manuscripts: Let 614–15, 618; Leyda 2:305–306; Werner A757. The paper of the first part of L560 (ED736–736a A) has exactly the same dimensions, 127.5 × 204.5, as Fr1488C (ED322 A) and Fr1489B (ED816 A), both about 1879. The paper of the last part of L560 (ED736b A) is identical (127 × 204) to that of Fr1525 A (ED427 A), about 1880. That of the first and last parts of L561 (ED737–737a A) is identical (125.5 × 203.5) to Fr1494 (ED340 A) (about 1879) and Fr1462C (ED41 A) (securely dated Dec. 1880). The reason Lord cannot be Master is that Master resided out of New England (Master Let 42). I see no real basis for the supposition (Wolff 401) that ED’s passion for Lord antedated Elizabeth’s death.

  “It sometimes seems”: Let 744.

  “the Lords”: WAD’s 1880 diary, MLT Papers 101:243; Amh Rec 8-25-1880. Amh Rec and SR do not mention any Lord visits to Amherst in August 1878 and 1879.

  “I designed”: Let 567. Variously misdated 1884 (Let [1894] 411) and 1876 (Leyda 2:258), L478 was written Sept. 4, 5, or 6, 1880. The relatives mentioned in the first sentence were Thankful and Oliver Smith of Hadley (MLT/ED 862).

  The next day the pastor: SR 9-1-1880; Presbyterian Reunion: A Memorial Volume. 1837–1871 (New York: De Witt C. Lent, 1870) 513–14; Andover 110. The Sweetsers’ church membership is established in “Disappearance of Mr. Sweetzer,” clipping in EDC’s scrapbook, MTB Papers 101:567.

  On September 23: WAD’s 1880 diary, MLT Papers 101:243 (cf FF 36). WAD’s diaries for other years (101:244, 245) show Lord visited April 14–17, 1882, and September 8–12, 1883. No diaries survive for the 1870s, 1881, or 1885.

  Shakespeare concordance: Mrs. Cowden Clarke, The Complete Concordance to Shakspere (Boston: Little, Brown, 1877), EDR 2.6.5. Inscription in Sue’s hand: “Emily Dickinson from Judge Otis P. Lord. 1880.” Leyda 2:336 guessed it was a Christmas gift. The 860-page book shows no signs of use.

  The letter to Lord: Werner A734, A734a, A735a; Rev [75]; Werner 14, 35, 301. Werner’s signal contribution is to call attention to the visual qualities of ED’s manuscripts and probe the constructions of earlier editions. Unlike them, however, Open Folios does no new archival work of the kind that ascertains dates, explains allusions, clarifies meaning. At times, the book bends the historical record, as when claiming that, “according to Bingham [Todd], the drafts and fragments of the Lord letters had been entrusted, possibly by Dickinson herself, to her brother” (Werner 43). If Bingham made the major but unfounded surmise I italicize, I don’t know where. And a few transcriptions seem faulty: “severely” for “serenely,” A440; “now” for “won,” A479; “makes” for “make,” A758a.

  “the prank of the Heart”: Master Let 37.

  “almost feared Language”: Werner A754.

  In spite of: Werner A739, A740 (Let 617). Werner 287 makes a strong argument that “Dont you know” doesn’t belong with the rest of L562.

  footnote 9: Werner A739; FF 48.

  footnote 10: Werner A744e (Let 727); Rev 59; Leyda 2:375–76; Dinah Craik, The Head of the Family. A Novel (New York: Harper, n.d.) 106.

  As for what: Werner A740a-b; [Coventry Patmore], The Angel in the House: The Betrothal (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1857) 108, EDR 4.4.20.

  Alternatively: Werner A749d–e.

  The basic understanding: Werner A757, A737; Abby Farley to Ned Dickinson, 4-8-1883, H. “Little hussy” is supposed to have been spoken to Miriam Manning Kimball Stockton, who repeated it to MTB in 1936, all according to Rev 23.

  Among her ruses: Let 703; Werner A745b, A748a–b, A753.

  This dream reaction: Werner A753a; TWH’s diary, 5-19-1886, bMS Am 1162, H; Ruth Kimball Smith to MTB, 12-19-1954, MTB Papers 85:265. The mother, Mary Merrill Kimball, came from Danvers; one of her great-grandfathers, John Kimball (1780–1871) was Lord’s maternal uncle (Ruth Kimball Smith’s alumna folder, Radcliffe College Archives; MVR-Births 532:521, 232:186; Leonard Allison Morrison and Stephen Paschall Sharples, History of the Kimball Family in America [Boston: Damrell & Upham, 1897]).

  Whether or not: Let 486; Werner
A742b; Let 861, 824.

  footnote 12: ED to [E. E. Hale?], 2-14-[1854], quoted above p. 315; Indicator 2 (Feb. 1850) 223 (“such an one”); Craik, Olive 2:158, 288; 3:29, 232.

  Emily proved: Bench 1:420; Proceedings of the Essex Bar Association 35. Lord’s retirement was spurred by declining health and Democrat Benjamin F. Butler’s election as Governor (Amh Rec 12-6-1882).

  Dickinson’s decision: Wolff 404; Let 559. Capsule 100–103 has a sensitive assessment of the relationship with Lord.

  One of the things: Obituary of CW, Philadelphia Inquirer 4-3-1882; San Francisco Daily Morning Call 6-27-1869; Funeral 23–24. See also Vivian R. Pollak, “After Calvary: The Last Years of ED’s ‘Dearest Earthly Friend,’” Dickinson Studies no. 34 (1978) 13–18.

  The next summer: Let 738, 901.

  But he gave: Let 738; Funeral 24–25; Philadelphia Inquirer 4-3-1882.

  The last words: “Charles Wadsworth,” The Presbyterian 4-8-1882, 10; Let 901.

  It is a curious: Let 737; Werner A734, A744d–e.

  The one acquaintance: Obituary Record of Donors and Alumni of Williams College 1882–3 320–21; Brooklyn directories from 1872–1873; CW, Sermons (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publishing Co., 1882) 170, 218.

  “The Friend”: MLT/ED 747. The words follow “voice is able?” and precede “Are you certain” in L827.

  The Clark correspondence: Let 745, 778.

  “The sea had been passed”: J. T. Headley, The Sacred Mountains (New York: Scribner, 1854) 68; Amherst College Library Accession Book, vol. 4, #11595, A.

  Two years after: Let 815, 817, 820, 818.

  What had happened: Werner A742e–f, A740.

  footnote 13: Let 728; Werner A742d; Boston Daily Globe, SR, and Amh Rec for 11-8-1882; Howard P. Nash, Jr., Stormy Petrel: The Life and Times of General Benjamin F. Butler (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969) 279; “Mr. William Dickinson,” Worcester Evening Gazette 9-7-1887; Psalm 118:22; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; I Peter 2:7.

  Fr1265: Harold Bloom’s promising exegesis falters when it propounds an exact referent for each “this” (The Western Canon [New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994] 299–300). Like some other poems never sent out by ED, Fr1265 probably wasn’t meant to be understood by readers.

  “Till the first friend dies”: Let 817.

  only one or two more treatments of love: Fr1631, Fr1642.

  Chapter 22

  take the royalties: See Elizabeth Horan’s indispensable “To Market: The Dickinson Copyright Wars,” EDJ 5.1 (1996) 88–120.

  And yet Bianchi: FF 46, 66, 54; Let 875.

  would burn her papers: FF 59–60; Let (1931) 246; Brocades 16–17; Murray 726–27.

  One way to try: Let 700; Thomas Niles to ED, 4-24-1882, H.

  From Blind’s: Mathilde Blind, George Eliot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1910), 19, 56; Let 769. “Niger Fig” does not seem to be a varietal name. In Henderson’s Handbook of Plants and General Horticulture (New York: Peter Henderson, 1890) 276, “niger” is a descriptive term meaning “black, or black a little tinged with gray.”

  Robinson’s biography: Let 721, 775; A[gnes] Mary F. Robinson, Emily Brontë (Boston: Roberts, 1883) 141, 142, 218. On “strange power,” see Loeffelholz 130.

  At the Mansion: Harriet Jameson to JFJ, 11-19-[1882], Container 5, Jameson Papers; Let 676, 643 (corrected against FN/ED 506), 774.

  From all sides: Let 693, 676; WAD to Clara Newman Turner, 5-29-1885, MLT Papers 97:159; Turner to WAD, [March 1884?], MTB Papers 104:632.

  helped look after her bedridden mother: Amh Rec 9-8-1880; Let 675, 475.

  The old blockage: Let 750, 689.

  “We were never intimate”: Let 754–55.

  The troubles next door: EdD to WAD, 5-26-1874, ED926 A; Elizabeth Seelye to Julius H. Seelye, 2-11,14-1877, Seelye Papers 5:13; WAD’s 1880 diary, 1-19, 6-6, 7-9, 1883 diary, 3-12,13, MLT Papers 101:243, 245; Richard Quain, ed., A Dictionary of Medicine (New York: Appleton, 1883), 1354–63; FF 66–67. WAD’s diary places Ned’s one rheumatic episode for the year in March 1883, when the window would not have been open or a rosebush blooming—two of MDB’s details. Could her anecdote be based on an epileptic attack, disguised as rheumatism?

  little direct contact: WAD’s 1880 diary, 12–19; Let 756; LL 52; Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, First Earl of, Endymion (New York: Appleton, 1880), EDR 1.2.25. The book shows no signs of use. For ED’s “whom seeing not,” see Let 679, 724.

  footnote 1: EDE (Lombardo) 15–16; wedding announcement and clipping, Hills Papers 7:11; Horan 93.

  Perhaps one reason: Let 612, 828 (cf. Austin & Mabel 182), 893, 829.

  By this time: WAD’s 1880 diary, 2-28, 6-17; 1882 diary, 6-19, 10-17, MLT Papers 101:244; WAD to Henry F. Hills, 3-23-1880, Hills Papers 6:12; WAD [to Sue], 10-19-[1882], H; envelope to Sue in Grand Rapids, postmarked 10-19, H.

  By a happy chance: Werner A742c–d (Let 728). The draft was composed 11-11-1882. ED’s “The Air is soft as Italy” accords with WAD’s description of the “warm, soft” weather (1882 diary, 11-10). Frances Hersey cannily guessed the draft’s context and date (letter to MTB, 3-24-1957, MTB Papers 83:216).

  footnote 2: MLT’s 1882 diary, 11-10, MLT Papers 39:4.

  But sides were what: MLT’s 1882 diary, 3-25, 9-10; 1881 diary, 10-3, MLT Papers 39:3; Leyda 2:354, 357, 361. For a shrewd firsthand appraisal of MLT, see Frances Hersey to MTB, 11-18-[1952], MTB Papers 83:213.

  The family had such distinction: Leyda 2:354; MLT’s and WAD’s 1882 diaries, 9-11-1882. For detailed accounts of the affair, see Austin & Mabel; Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) 1:71–108.

  The affair had all: WAD to MLT, March? 1883 (copy), 7-12-1883, MLT Papers 94:77, 78; WAD’s 1883 diary, 6-21, 12-13; Austin & Mabel 149–54.

  footnote 3: Quoted from Austin & Mabel 233.

  Years passed: Sewall 298–99; Austin & Mabel 175; Sue to MDB, “Sunday eve” [folds show the letter goes with an envelope postmarked 12-8-1884, a Monday], H.

  Outside the family: Amherst Savings Bank Records–Customer–Loan, nos. 679, 722, J; Deed of 6-8-1886, Hampshire Co. RD 404:89; EH Jr to WAD, 3-16-1889, Doc Hitch 14:19. After WAD died, EH Jr spoke of the constant “coming together of him & myself” in running the college (to Charles M. Pratt, 9-1-1895, Doc Hitch 14:42). In the one comment Longsworth cites to prove the affair was known, Harriet Jameson is bent on dismissing the “mean things said by the lower classes” about the couple (Austin & Mabel 121).

  In her later years: Let 622, 790, 641; LL 55.

  The question stands: Let 765, 781, 882; Austin & Mabel 216, 226, 208. Longsworth’s claim that ED was “fully aware” (64) has yet to be substantiated.

  How we answer: Let 733; FF facing 176; Open Me 293. In FF 176, MDB put on record Sue’s selective destruction of ED’s mss.

  many enemies: Those highly critical of Sue included AOT, James I. Cooper, Mary Lee Hall, Mary A. Jordan, Clara Newman Turner, and Anna Newman Carleton (Leyda 2:257, 299, 408; Sewall 252–64; Turner). “Much to my disgust, I am invited . . . to tea at our detestable neighbor’s,” says the diary of JFJ, who considered Sue “the biggest liar in town” (6-23-1883, Container 2, Jameson Papers). John W. Burgess admired her as a brilliant “social leader,” but was dubious about her “exceedingly vivid” imagination (Burgess 60).

  More devastating: MGS to Sue, “Wed. P.M.” [10-17-1883], H; F. W. Mather to Sue, 10-15-1883, Bianchi Coll.

  In fall 1883: Ned Gilbert to Gilbert Dickinson, 10-5-1883, Bianchi Coll; “Country Girl” 116–17; MLT’s 1883 diary, 10-6; MGS to Sue, “Sat. morning” [10-6-1883], “Friday A.M.” [10-12-1883], H.

  For the one: WAD’s 1883 diary, 12-13; MGS to Sue, “Sunday P.M.” [11-25-1883], H; “Country Girl” 120.

  But the suffering: Harriet Jameson to JFJ, 10-14-[1883], Container 6, Jameson Papers; Vin to [Rev. and Mrs. Forrest F. Emerson], 11-16-[1883], 1-24-[1884], Emily Dickinson Collection (#7658), Clifton Waller Barrett Library, The Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, Un
iversity of Virginia Library; Let 721.

  The poet’s response: Let 572–73; God’s Culture 5, 8; CW, Sermons (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publishing Co., 1882), 233; Let 799, 620, 866. For commentary on L868, see Talbot 120–23.

  Later messages: Let 800–801; FF 172.

  footnote 6: “Country Girl” 118.

  Dickinson wrote Elizabeth: Let 803. Later, more realistically, she interpreted Gib’s raving as involving his agemates (Let 891).

  The severe illnesses: Sue to MDB, “Your Tuesday’s letter,” “Wed Eve” [8-6-1884? (Leyda 2:427)], H; FF 249; Sue to MDB, “Your Sat. letter,” Tuesday [Aug.? 1884], H; Sue to MDB, “Of course my dear,” Thursday P.M. [12-4-1884], H; “Country Girl” 141; Ned to MDB, 5-14-[1885], Bianchi Coll; Sue to MDB, “Why you got” and “I am up dear” [March 1885], H; WAD’s 1884 diary, 12-19, MLT Papers 102:246; Let 848, 879.

  One of the most difficult: “Dwight,” SR 5-15-1913; Let 830, 463, 780; Fr1658; Open Me 256-57. Hart (251–52, 262–68) maintains that the entire communication is a poem, that we must retain ED’s lineation, and that the message is erotic, one of many “coded declarations of desire.” To my ear, the third sentence (“To believe”) fails to scan (on ED’s meters, see Lindberg-Seyersted 118–55). Nor do I see anything in the message about a heavenly union with Sue (on this point Pollak 137 was right). The problem is that Hart grounds her reading on a hidden “code” known to her but not to others such as Johnson, whose different take can be explained by his being “unfamiliar” with the “language” and maybe “uncomfortable with it” (Hart 267). For another (but frightfully intricate) reading of L912, see Sullivan 48–57.

  “off charnel steps”: Let 436.

  “Not to outgrow”: Let 899.

  When Sarah Tuckerman’s: Let 898, 903; The Interpreter’s Bible, George Arthur Buttrick, et al., eds. (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1951) 722–23; Wolff 144–47. Barrett Browning had compared the poet-hero to Jacob in “A Vision of Poets” (ll. 793–95).

  The physician who chiefly: MVR-Deaths 374:1; Leyda 2:474; Quain, Dictionary of Medicine, 174–82, J.

  There are other reasons: MVR-Deaths, vol. 374.