My Wars Are Laid Away in Books
Page 86
More material reasons: “Medicine” 309–316.
After Bowles died: Let 611 (cf. 920 [PF52]), 823, 843.
This was her way: WAD’s 1884 diary, 6-14; Let 826–28.
The one poem she is known: Let 826–27, 802, 840.
On October 12: WAD’s 1884 diary, 10-12; Sue to MDB, 10-13-1884, H; Sue to MDB, “Wed. 2 PM,” postmarked 10-22–[1884], H; Vin to Clara Newman Turner and Anna Newman Carleton, 1-23-[1885], H; Harriet Jameson to JFJ, 5-16-[1886], Container 7, Jameson Papers.
footnote 8: Leyda 1:xxix; E.D.–Leyda, Jay, J; Kate Boyle in conversation. Bigelow resided in the Dickinsons’ former home on Pleasant Street.
This sense of lurking danger: Let 889, 888.
On November 30: MLT’s 1885 diary, 11-30, MLT Papers 39:7; WAD’s 1886 diary, 1-19, 2-10,24, 3-18, 4–4,6,9, MLT Papers 102:247.
In spring, feeling better: Let 897, 900, 901.
In the end: Let 906, 856; John Frederick Fargus [“Hugh Conway”], Called Back (New York: Holt, 1884).
On the morning of May 13: WAD’s 1886 diary, 5-13; SR 5-17-1886.
The next day: WAD’s 1886 diary, 5-14,15; MLT’s 1886 diary, 5-14, MLT Papers 39:8; Leyda 2:472.
obituary, laying out, funeral, and interment: [Sue], “Miss Emily Dickinson of Amherst,” SR 5-18-1886; FF 61; E. F. Strickland to MDB, postmarked 9-2-[1920s?], 3:119, bMS Am 1118.97, H; World 112; Harriet Jameson to JFJ, 5-23-1886, Container 7, Jameson Papers; TWH’s 1886 diary, 5-19, bMS Am 1162, H; MLT’s 1886 diary, 5-19. I know of no basis for the claim that Sue “prepared the body for burial” (Hart 257), let alone that she “swaddled” it (Open Me 265).
Going through: Brocades 86–87; Open Me xvi–xvii; William Dean Howells to MLT, 10-28-1890, ED Todd454 A; Howells, “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 82 (Jan. 1891) 318–20; Buckingham.
When Austin: Brocades; Horan; Open Me xiv–xv; Josephine Pollitt Pohl, unpublished chapter or essay beginning “The lovers of Emily Dickinson,” Josephine Pollitt Pohl Papers Relating to Emily Dickinson, Brown University Library.
Notes for Photo Section
2, top left Below the silhouette: “Emily E. Dickinson.” Above: “Executed by Charles Temple, a native of Smyrna. 1845.”
2, top right Daguerreotype by William C. North. See Mary Elizabeth Kromer Bernhard, “Lost and Found: Emily Dickinson’s Unknown Daguerreotypist,” New England Quarterly 72 (Dec. 1999) 594-601.
3, top left Ibid.
3, top right Assigned by some to 1853, EdD’s photo was taken in 1874, when he “sat for his picture . . . for the first time in many, many years” (Turner). The name of the studio is printed on the back of the BPL’s carte de visite: Marshall, Tremont Street, Boston—Augustus Marshall’s business address 1867-1882.
3, bottom left Let 237–38.
3, bottom right Let 127.
4, middle left Obituary, Worcester Evening Gazette 9-7-1887.
4, bottom right Let 561.
5, bottom Clara Carleton Pearl to MTB, 7-31-1946, MTB Papers 84:258a; Let 463.
7, bottom Emerson 4-6-1883. The studio address stamped on the back of the photo—Allen & Horton, 13 Winter Street, Boston—dates it 1861-1863.
8, top EH Jr, Notebook “B+” 43-44, Doc Hitch 7:26.
9, top right HVE, “Poetry the Voice of Sorrow,” Amherst Collegiate Magazine 1 (Oct. 1853) 22.
9, bottom right Let 205.
10, top right Elizabeth L. Smith, ed., Henry Boynton Smith. His Life and Work (New York: Armstrong, 1881) 95.
10, bottom [George Burrowes], Impressions of Dr. Wadsworth as a Preacher (San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, 1863) 14.
11, top Let 688.
11, bottom left SR 10-13-1860
11, bottom right SB Let #6 [5-15-1861].
14, top right Let 751.
14, bottom left Part of a large group photo from July 1882: “The Shutesbury School of Philosophy.”
16, top 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 16, CL.
Acknowledgments
The libraries with the most abundant and useful materials for the biographer of Emily Dickinson are the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections Library, the Rare Books Department at the Boston Public Library, Brown University’s John Hay Library, the Congregational Library in Boston, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Jones Library in Amherst, the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections Library, the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, and the Yale University Library, including Manuscripts and Archives and the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. To the directors and staff of these institutions, I am profoundly in debt for access to their collections.
Among the many persons I must thank, I wish to single out those librarians whose patience and resourcefulness in dealing with my endless queries have placed them in a very special category: Patricia J. Albright; Mark N. Brown; Daria D’Arienzo and John Lancaster; Sylvia De Santis; Ellen H. Fladger and Betty Allen; Susan Halpert, Jennie Rathbun, Emily Walhout, and Roger Stoddard; Thomas Knoles; Dan Lombardo, Jessica Teters, Peter Nelson, and Kate Boyle; Grace Makepeace (much lamented); Ralph Melnick and Rick Teller; Mariam Touba; and Harold F. Worthley.
The libraries, historical societies, and legal depositories that have proved particularly helpful include the following: Amherst Town Clerk; Andover Historical Society, Mass.; Franklin Trask Library Special Collections, Andover Newton Theological School (Diana Yount); Archives and Records Preservation, Supreme Judicial Court, New Court House, Boston (Elizabeth Bouvier); Baker Library’s Historical Collections Department, Harvard Business School; Historical Society of Berks Co., Pa. (Barbara Gill); Berkshire Athenaeum, Mass. (Ruth T. Degenhardt); Boston Public Library; Bowdoin College Special Collections (Susan Ravdin); Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library (John W. Gibson); California State Library (Sibylle Zemitis); Calvary Presbyterian Church, San Francisco (Joe Beyer); Cambridge City Library; Colorado College Special Collections (Virginia R. Kiefer); Concord Free Public Library (Leslie Perrin Wilson); Connecticut State Library; Dartmouth College Library (Philip N. Cronenwett); Duke University Special Collections; Emma Willard School Library, Troy, N.Y. (Barbara Wiley); Enoch Pratt Free Library; Essex County Registry of Deeds, Newark, N.J.; Essex Registry of Deeds, So. Dist., Salem, Mass.; Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass.; Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine; Geneva Historical Society, Geneva, N.Y. (Jennifer L. Walton); Georgia Historical Society (Jessica Burke); Greenfield City Library, Mass.; Hampden County Registry of Deeds (Donald E. Ashe) and Probate Court, Springfield, Mass.; Hampshire County Registry of Deeds (Patricia A. Plaza) and Registry of Probate, Northampton, Mass.; Harvard Law School Special Collections (David R. Warrington); Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Archives (Charlotte Hegyi); Historic Deerfield (Shirley Majewski); Historic Northampton; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Hubbard Free Library, Hallowell, Me.; Huntington Library; Ipswich Public Library, Mass. (Genevieve Picard); Lafayette College Special Collections (Diane Windham Shaw); Lapeer County Registry of Deeds, Mich. (Ann Stier); Lehigh University Special Collections (Philip A. Metzger); Library of Congress, Manuscripts (Michael J. Klein); Lilly Library, University of Indiana (Lisa Browar); Litchfield Historical Society, Conn. (Tess Riesmeyer); Lynn Historical Society, Mass. (Diane Shephard); Macomb County Historical Society, Mich. (Betty Lou Morris); Marblehead Historical Society (Karen Mac Innis); Maryland Historical Society (Francis P. O’Neill); Massachusetts Archives; Massachusetts State Library; Massachusetts Historical Society; Middlesex County Registry of Probate, Cambridge, Mass.; Milwaukee County Historical Society; Mississippi Department of Archives & History; Monson Free Library and Reading Room Association; Monson Historical Society; Monson Town Clerk; National Archives (Wayne DeCesar, Mary Frances Morrow, Fred J. Romanski, Joseph Schwarz); New England Historic Genealogical Society; New York Botanical Garden; New-York Historical Society; New York State Historical Association,
Cooperstown, N.Y.; New York University, Archives (Kate Senft); North-Prospect United Church of Christ, Cambridge, Mass.; Oneida County Historical Society, Utica, N.Y.; Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, N.Y. (Judy E. Haven); Ottawa County Registry of Deeds, Mich.; Free Library of Philadelphia; Polytechnic University Archives, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Heather Walters); Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia (Kenneth J. Ross, Susan J. Flack); Princeton Theological Seminary Library (William O. Harris); Probate Court, District of Litchfield, Conn.; Pusey Library, Harvard University; Radcliffe College Archives; Romeo District Library, Mich. (Beth Martin); Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center; Sacramento Public Library, Calif. (Ruth Ellis); Smith College Archives (Aimee E. Brown) and Rare Book Room; Southwick Historical Society, Mass. (Patricia Odiorne); Springfield Library and Museums (Margaret Humberston, Liz S. Ziegler); Stone House Museum, Belchertown, Mass. (Doris Dickinson); Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, Boston, Mass.; University of Massachusetts—Amherst, Special Collections and Archives (Linda Seidman); University of South Carolina, Special Collections; University of Virginia, Special Collections; Utica Public Library, N.Y.; Wendell Town Clerk, Mass.; Westfield Athenaeum, Westfield, Mass. (Ann Tumavicus); Williams College Archives (Sylvia Kennick Brown).
For help with access to materials, I owe a huge debt to Jim Elmborg and Kent Miller, and the Interlibrary Loan services of the University of Kansas and Washington State University.
Others who have helped me in the quest include Melvin E. Bleich (Romeo Observer), Claire Dempsey, Cindy Dickinson (Dickinson Homestead), Sam Ellenport (Harcourt Bindery), Gregory Farmer (Martha Dickinson Bianchi Trust), Eliza Habegger, Robert Lord Keyes, Russell M. Lane, Deane Lee, Sue Lorraine, Dorothy Russell, James Seaver, James Avery Smith, Sumner Webber, and C. Conrad Wright.
Several holders of primary materials have graciously made available their texts and images: John and Priscilla Chatfield, Roger L. Gregg, Philip F. Gura, Mary C. Pearl, Jane S. Scott, Cynthia Smith, and Alice V. Yarick.
Dickinson scholars who have fielded queries and opened intellectual doors include R. W. Franklin, Benjamin Lease, Carolyn S. Moran, Marianne Noble, Hiroko Uno, Jane Donahue Eberwein, and Rowena Revis Jones. To Elizabeth Bernhard and Domhnall Mitchell I am lastingly indebted for a series of unforgettably stimulating conversations and written exchanges, for the warmest hospitality, and for reading and candidly criticizing certain chapters.
Early versions of chapter segments appeared in the New England Quarterly (“Evangel”) and ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance (“Lost Homes”), and also in a paper presented at the 1999 conference of the Emily Dickinson International Society. Fellowship support came from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Finally, for help too varied, informed, and indispensable to be spelled out here (or anywhere), I want to thank my agent, Nat Sobel; my incomparable editor, Bob Loomis; and my expert and painstaking copy editors, Jolanta Benal and Vincent La Scala.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALFRED HABEGGER has been a backpacker, butterfly collector, and scholar of nineteenth-century American literature. Formerly a professor of English at the University of Kansas, he has won numerous research fellowships; in 1972–1973 he was Fulbright Lecturer in Bucharest. He lives with his wife, Nellie, in a log house they built together in northeastern Oregon. His previous books include an award-winning biography, The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr. He has two grown children.
ALSO BY ALFRED HABEGGER
Henry James and the “Woman Business”
Gender, Fantasy, and Realism in American Literature
The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr.
Copyright © 2001 by Alfred Habegger
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.
Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to use both unpublished and published materials.
Amherst College Library and Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library: ED to Edward Everett Hale, 14 Feb [1854], and ED’s notes on a program for an Exhibition of the Eclectic Society at Amherst College (ED 60), Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College Library. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Harvard University Press: Dickinson poems are reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from the following volumes: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; Dickinson letters are reprinted by permission of the publisher from The Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas L. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958, 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library: Permission is granted to use the following: letters, previously published in Johnson, but published here with variants: Houghton MS Am 1118.5 (B56) and (B176) and for letters and notes, not previously published in Johnson, in whole or in part: Houghton bMS Am 1118.7, ED to Joel W. Norcross [early May 1862], and Houghton MS Am 1118.10 (6), (7), (8), (12), (13), ED to Maria Whitney. Reprinted by permission of The Houghton Library. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Lilly Library and Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library: ED to Edward Everett Hale. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Thomas Cooper Library and Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library: Emily Dickinson to Emily Fowler Ford, undated, Thomas Cooper Library, Department of Special Collections, University of South Carolina. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Yale University Library and Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library: Brief passages from transcripts of ED to Frances and Louisa Norcross in Mable Loomis Todd Papers, box 69, folder 19, omitted from Johnson L279, L285, L340; from transcripts of ED to Maria Whitney, Todd Papers, box 69, folder 21, omitted from Johnson L524, L824; and from transcript of ED to Charles H. Clark, Todd Papers, box 69, folder 21, omitted from Johnson L827: Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College. And also from Joseph Lyman’s handwritten transcripts of ED’s letters to him, Lyman Family Papers, box 4, folder 64: Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
More permissions, as well as photo credits, can be found inside the book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Habegger, Alfred.
My wars are laid away in books: the life of Emily Dickinson / Alfred Habegger.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Dickinson, Emily, 1830–1886. 2. Poets, American—19th century—Biography. 3. Women and literature—United States—History—19th century.
PS1541.Z5 H32 2001 811'.4—dc21 [B] 2001019429
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-130-1
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