Afternoons with Emily

by Rose MacMurray

Now I knew I lost her —

  Not that she was gone —

  But Remoteness travelled

  On her Face and Tongue.

  Emily could not be jealous of an infant, I thought. But a child did put Sue, who had recently delivered a baby, at one further remove from their girlhood tie. With Sue’s passion reserved for — and torn between — family and social ambitions, where was the room for that former fragile intimacy with Emily? “Now I knew I lost her” was a valedictory cry of the heart to a friend who had ceased to be who she once was — from someone who wanted to stay frozen in what once had been. I again acknowledged privately how separate I felt from Emily. Though there was much I admired and enjoyed about her, I found little I would choose to emulate.

  Mrs. Austin went to the window and gazed at The Homestead, looming ocher against the snow. Again I observed how close the two houses were to each other. A voice would carry easily. It took some contriving for the two Dickinson sisters-in-law to avoid meeting for months at a time.

  “Miranda, what do you really think of Emily’s poetry?”

  “May I paraphrase Davy? He said a third is inspired, a third inscrutable, and a third counterfeit.”

  This delighted her quick intelligence.

  “Austin will love that — he can’t understand a single word she writes!”

  So perhaps the brother and sister were not as close as Emily imagined. Mrs. Austin returned the slip of paper to the secretary, sliding it into a cubby. “I save them all, you know,” she admitted with a smile. “You never can tell!”

  I walked carefully back to Amity Street, avoiding the ice patches barely visible now in the lengthening shadows. I noticed how the snow, so beautiful and billowy when it fell, had hardened and cracked to white-lava rock. My thoughts turned back to Emily and the tenacity with which she held to small slights and to feelings of disloyalty and discontent, first against her father and then against poor Sue.

  Despite Emily’s belief that Sue abandoned her, I had seen no evidence of it. Sue had been nothing but a faithful friend and devoted sister, even though she had claimed an independent life for herself among the silks and satins of a modish set. To the contrary, might it not be Emily, judging harshly with an inflexible heart, who had deserted Sue?

  In early March, I was kneeling in the atrium in cloak and mittens, encouraging my pot garden. The snowdrops were my pioneers every year, but I expected the crocuses soon. Father saw me from the front hall and came to chat.

  “What news from Vicksburg, Miranda?” he asked.

  “Battery B is still dug in, still firing,” I reported. “The energetic Chicago ladies have organized trains that bring fresh fruits and vegetables straight to the Illinois troops.”

  “I doubt if Davy and his men need them as much as the rebels do. God knows what those misguided souls are eating — or wearing or shooting, for that matter.” Then he got to his true purpose; he must have already known the events of Vicksburg. “But I wanted to ask you something. Didn’t you say your friend Miss Dickinson has been corresponding with that minister Thomas Higginson?”

  “Yes. She consults him about her poetry.” It was a nice change to discuss something so everyday about Emily.

  “Does Miss Dickinson know he is one of that reckless Secret Six who planned and financed John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I told him. “I hadn’t connected it. So I doubt if she does. Politics do not engage her.”

  Father chuckled at this. He was tolerant of Emily’s quirks by now.

  “Tell her she’d better get political, if she wants to be Higginson’s friend. He’s no parlor abolitionist, you know; he’s a true believer, a fanatic about Negro rights. Today I read in the Republican that he’s recently taken a commission in an all-Negro regiment, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers. His troops are runaway slaves from the plantations along the coast. Your friend should know that Higginson doesn’t just talk about freeing the slaves. He fights for his beliefs.”

  I was moved by the news of this brave gesture and concerned about Colonel Higginson’s safety, with such inexperienced soldiers. When I spoke of this to Emily on my next visit, she was typically untroubled by the events in the outside world.

  “I read that too; didn’t I tell you about it? Of course I have written him — about his Union Army appointment. I told him to be careful and STAY SAFE, for we need him here. Here’s the draft of what I said.” She handed me the paper.

  Dear friend

  I did not deem that Planetary forces annulled — but suffered an Exchange of Territory, or World —

  I should have liked to see you, before you became improbable. War feels to me an oblique place — Should there be other Summers, would you perhaps come?

  I found you were gone, by accident, as I find Systems are, or Seasons of the year, and obtain no cause. . . .

  Perhaps Death — gave me awe for friends — striking sharp and early, for I held them since — in a brittle love — of more alarm, than peace. I trust you may pass the limit of War, and though not reared to prayer — when service is had in Church, for Our Arms, I include yourself. . . .

  Should you, before this reaches you, experience immortality, who will inform me of the Exchange? Could you, with honor, avoid Death, I entreat you — Sir — It would bereave

  Your Gnome —

  I was appalled at this insensitive self-obsession, especially at such a time. “Emily, really! This is your friend, who has been kind and helpful and generous to you — and he is going into great danger for the sake of his deepest beliefs. Surely you owe him more than an account of how his decision made you feel!”

  “I don’t see that I do.” She pouted. “After all, he has PUT ME OUT by making himself so busy and hard to reach. I was counting on him, and he has LET ME DOWN.”

  There were times when I wanted to pick Emily up and simply shake her out of her selfishness and her affectations. Given the difference in our size, it would have been so easy for me! This image gave me some amusement as I went home, feeling again how distant she and I had become.

  The snow melted; mud appeared all over our village. The spring of 1863 began with hope: Vicksburg must fall soon. The desperate besieged citizens were going deaf and mad; they were living in caves in the battered cliffs and surviving on weeds and rats. A shell burst over their heads every two minutes. There could be only one merciful end, and then the Mississippi would essentially belong to the Union.

  Once again it was time to visit the Howlands. Kate was interested in hearing about my trip to New York and Mr. Harnett. I told her and Ethan all about the primer project, and Ethan asked to read the stories.

  “Your tales are fine, Miranda,” he said after he had looked over the material. “But they just lie there on the page. Why not have pictures to bring them to life?”

  “Actually, I was thinking about that. Perhaps starting with the alphabet. Where’s Josey’s alphabet, Kate?”

  She brought over a lugubrious brown book that belonged in a monastery. The illustrations were dark engravings, suggesting joyless duty. The “Apple for A” looked sour; the “Zebra for Z” was old and sick. Ethan was offended.

  “How could anyone learn from these?” he scoffed. “A child doesn’t need distracting details; he senses mood and tone. Look at this —” And with a crayon, in two lines and a swoop, Ethan drew a cheerful apple any child would recognize.

  “Of course!” I exclaimed. “Oh, Ethan, make us some more!”

  “Well, if you think these could enhance your stories, then certainly. Here’s Leo the lion.” And there he stood, very solemn, with a mane of ringlets and feet like clawed pillows.

  “Now show us the sea, Ethan!” I demanded, laughing.

  He dashed off two scalloped waves and three smiling fish. Every lively drawing suggested rather than instructed. It let the child inside a joke.

  I could hardly believe Ethan’s talent and our good fortune; this would be a book I would have wanted as a child. I mai
led the sketches to Mr. Harnett and received his gleeful reply.

  These skip and dance — they’re perfect! Tell your cousin-in-law we want him to do drawings for the whole alphabet, and six for each of the tales. He has just the lighthearted touch we have been needing.

  Thus Ethan was conscripted into our enterprise to reform early education. And my life grew ever more engaging and interesting to me.

  Then came the unthinkable: the South invaded the North. After his May victory at Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee — considered the finest gentleman and the ablest general in either army — crossed the Potomac and led his seventy thousand men across Maryland and up into Pennsylvania. He moved too quickly for sieges, but his troops shelled and captured towns as freely as Grant’s ever did. The rebels seized animals and stores and promised to repay the frightened citizens in Confederate money just as soon as they won the war. I wondered what Davy was thinking as our northern civilians became victims too — and as Georgia senator Toombs’s prophecy that he’d one day call the roll of his slaves from the foot of Bunker Hill Monument became a terrifying possibility.

  The climax came on July 1 at Gettysburg, a small market town set at a crossroads among stone-walled fields and orchards. Two nearly equal armies — a hundred and fifty thousand men — fought through the yellow wheat fields for three days of slaughter. This was named the turning point, the most crucial battle of the war: the South at its taut trained peak, pitting its total strength against the awakening giant of the North.

  In Amherst, we hung on the news from the battlefield. The churches stayed open, and women slipped out to pray at night. Father joined the crowds of anxious men waiting silently at the telegraph.

  “If we lose this one, it will add years to the war,” he stated, returning for yet another bulletin.

  July 4 brought a Union victory — at least in the sense that Lee retreated back over the Potomac. But there were fifty thousand casualties — one out of every three soldiers who fought at Gettysburg. Soldiers from both armies lay moaning everywhere — ten times the population of the little broken town. Twenty thousand wounded men covered every foot of a village the size of Amherst. The frantic citizens tried to tend soldiers propped on garden fences, soldiers supine on porches and lawns — or soldiers waiting on blood-soaked parlor rugs, with a book for a pillow — never mind the thousands of dead, whose bodies lay in the putrefying summer sun for days. With human suffering on such a scale, who could call Gettysburg a victory?

  Strangely, like a voice from another world, came the news of the surrender of Vicksburg — the very same Fourth of July. Later we learned that the Confederate commander, a Pennsylvanian by birth, set the date with an eye to Union vanity, suspecting he could get better terms on that day than on any other. General Grant’s men were compassionate to the pitiful townspeople and their skeleton defenders. There was neither cheering nor jeering.

  The southern journals stated, “Vicksburg surrendered to famine — not to Grant.”

  Lincoln said, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”

  Davy wrote, “Now we’ll surely get leave.”

  Despite this pair of important victories, there was a spirit of discord abroad in this summer of 1863. Conscription had arrived, and the Union was far from united about it. All single men between the ages of twenty and forty-five and married men up to thirty-five had been called up for service in the army, but those wealthy enough could buy a substitute for five hundred dollars or so — as Mr. Austin had done. “Born equal” no longer implied an equal chance to stay alive. Our poorer citizens surely smoldered at this mortal inequality.

  The first draft was called the week after Gettysburg, and riots and arson raged for days in New York and Boston. In the cities, the Irish immigrants were the most bitter and violent. They came to the United States with high hopes, little education, and no interest whatsoever in freeing anybody’s slaves.

  In the Republican, we read with uneasy distaste about the New York rabble looting Fifth Avenue stores — and about pitched battles between armed Irish mobs and Negro citizens. Uniformed soldiers, still bloody from Gettysburg, camped in the streets and fought the rioters side by side with the city police. What was happening to the world?

  Our village of Amherst was so committed, so devoted to the Union, that we were distressed by these deep divisions — and also by the malingerers and the corrupt doctors who sold deferments. None of this affected me as it should, for I had a note mailed from Kate, that shook me badly.

  I am telling you this way because I could not face your asking me

  “Why?” when you hear this news. There is going to be another baby in our house in early spring. As to “Why?” even I couldn’t answer that right now.

  In March 1864, when the new baby was to come, Elena would be two and a half; Josey, four; and Kate, twenty-four. My worries for Kate were severe, but for Kate and Aunt Helen’s sake, I had to keep them to myself and only assure Kate of my help when that time came.

  I did not mention Kate’s condition to Emily on my next visit. I saw she had decided to try on patriotism again. She showed me her latest attempt to march with the times:

  When I was small, a Woman died —

  Today — her Only Boy

  Went up from the Potomac —

  His face all Victory

  To look at her — How slowly

  The Seasons must have turned

  Till Bullets clipt an Angle

  And He passed quickly round —

  The poem continued for a few more stanzas and then ended with:

  I’m confident that Bravoes —

  Perpetual break abroad

  For Braveries, remote as this

  In Scarlet Maryland —

  My response to Emily was noncommittal. I did not tell her that her poem was inappropriate in the wake of Shiloh, Antietam, Bull Run, and Gettysburg, with their gigantic losses — 24,000, 23,000, 27,000, 51,000 — in battles that lasted only a few days. In Emily’s willful ignorance, her poem read like a hearty team cheer for an athletic contest — a jolly “Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys.” I was pleased, however, that she was at least trying out her own emotions about the war and applying her creativity to them. I encouraged her to read the war news to better inform her art.

  After the fall of Vicksburg, Battery B, Chicago Light Artillery, rested and refitted in Memphis. Davy took a short leave in Lake Forest and wrote me from there.

  It is only a calendar year and a half since I left this house, with its dear familiar oaks and its lake setting — but I feel as if a thousand years of my life have come and gone. I have been forever changed by learning that death (which I always believed came in bed, after a long, productive life!) is actually all around us, just out of sight. I will never again take it for granted that I am alive and whole.

  I have had to call at two houses near ours, on the parents of close friends, and tell them how each son died. I always make the death quick and clean and painless, and in the company of friends. How could the truth help anyone?

  And yet. Perhaps it is because I have been here at home, thinking of all the beauty here that I want to show you. Perhaps it is the ability to be warm and dry and well fed for a spell (never, ever will I undervalue the importance of dry socks!). Perhaps it is simply that the birds are caroling outside, and I can hear them. But I woke this morning strangely confident: the Union will stand, and you and I will have our time. However much this war has altered me, my love for you remains a fixed North Star of my present and my future. No one will ever love you as I do, Miranda. One way or another, I intend to be a part of your life.

  I was so glad to see a strain of optimism; lately Davy’s letters had been melancholy, filled with a sort of fatalism that made me realize how far he had traveled from the merry, confident young man I loved. I had changed just as much. But this letter touched a place in my frozen heart. When all this was over, if we could see and touch and comfort each other as our new selves, we would be all right.


  This July and August 1863, I had to take on most of Aunt Helen’s duties in our house and at the dressing factory. Her daughter’s condition was becoming a grave worry to her. Kate was sick and exhausted week after week, and Aunt Helen stayed on in Springfield to do what she could.

  I hired a new Irish girl, Bridget. She and I took care of the housekeeping, Father’s meals, and Aunt Helen’s garden. Bridget was genial and hardworking, and very sympathetic about Kate’s condition. Her enormous family in Ireland was in chronic parturition, forever breeding and losing babies.

  “Indeed, Miss Miranda, it’s why I’m here. There’s not enough land in Ireland to raise the children we have already. From sixteen on, there’s naught for a poor woman but the new baby and the baby to come. It kills them off soon enough.”

  This last was not what I wanted to hear, so I changed the subject to other matters. Bridget must have sensed my discomfort and did not bring the subject up again.

  Every afternoon, as the Amherst women gathered in the factory, I was there as well. Making dressings was simple and undemanding, and left the time to chatter — and without Aunt Helen, I lacked the authority to prevent this. The War Department insisted that we work in silence. I imagined this was for hygiene, but it was appropriate too — when one considered where our dressings were going.

  Handsome Mrs. Crowell, whose husband taught Latin at the college, saw my problem and offered to distribute the material and enforce Aunt Helen’s rule of silence. Soon I realized my new friend was the Mary Warner of Emily’s childhood — one of the “Heavenly Triplets.” She informed me that Abiah Root Bliss, the third “Triplet,” was now a missionary in Syria.

  “I miss Emily, but I have never known her to change her mind once she makes it up,” Mrs. Crowell told me. “If she has decided to live secluded, then I know I will never see her again. She was fascinating as a girl — so original and lively!

  “Just tell her I think of her often, Miranda. We shared some splendid times. I long for her vitality and wit. I envy you for being welcomed into her special small circle.”