“cross her Father’s ground”: ED to TWH, June 1869, Letters, 2:460.
“The Soul selects her own Society—”: Fr 409.
“The Truth must dazzle gradually—”: Fr 1263.
“Of our greatest acts”: ED to TWH, [June 1869], Letters, 2:460.
“Thank Heaven!”: MLT, diary, March 3, 1891, Yale. Mabel Loomis Todd kept both diaries and journals; the former contain topical remarks written on or close to the date of entry. The journals consist of longer, more reflective passages that, in some cases, are written at some time distant from the dates or events described.
“Never gave them to me”: See AB, p. 152n.
CHAPTER TWO: THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON: WITHOUT A LITTLE CRACK SOMEWHERE
“Don’t you think it rather a pity”: TWH, “The Sunny Side of the Transcendental Era,” p. 6.
“It would seem as strange to another generation”: TWH to LSH, July 10, 1859, Houghton.
Not surprisingly, in later years: See “Epistle to the Reader,” in John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702), quoted in Burr, Narratives of New England Witchcraft Cases, p. 402.
“the star that gilds”: LSH, quoted in TWH, p. 56.
“half dead”: LSH to TWH, December 27, 1861, Houghton.
“I think sometimes he will offer his wife and children”: LSH, diary, n.d., Houghton.
“his hospitality was inconveniently unbounded”: TWH, “The Woman Who Most Influenced Me,” p. 8.
The deficit mounted: Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, pp. 220–221; see also Strange Enthusiasm, p. 13.
“In works of Love”: TWH, p. 2.
“Born in the college, bred to it”: CY, p. 39.
“I rarely write”: TWH, “How I Was Educated,” Forum, April 1886, p. 178.
“splendid talents but no application”: TWH, journal, April 30, 1841, Houghton.
“I feel overflowing with mental energies”: TWH, p. 52.
“If I have any genius”: TWH to LSH, January 31, 1843, Houghton.
“all the argument”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles,” in Essays and Poems, p. 409.
“What I would not give to know”: TWH, p. 64.
“They have truth and earnestness”: Emerson, quoted in Dear Preceptor, p. 45.
“I did not know exactly what I wished to study”: CY, p. 91.
“I cannot live alone”: See TWH, p. 63.
“Whatever be her faults of manner”: TWH, quoted in Dear Preceptor, p. 41.
“Mrs. Higginson is very queer”: Quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 152.
his sister Anna: See W&M, p. 88.
“I don’t care about outside show”: TWH to Mary Channing, July 28, [1844], Houghton.
“God’s fanatic”: TWH, quoted in Renehan, The Secret Six, p. 4.
“I heard that he was ‘poison’”: ED to Mary Bowles, [late 1859], Letters, 2:358.
as one of his biographers observes: Dear Preceptor, p. 59.
“not infallible but invaluable”: TWH, “The Sympathy of Religions” (originally written 1854–1855), Radical, February 1871, p. 1.
“just and even fellowship, or none”: Emerson, “The Transcendentalist,” in Essays and Poems, p. 200.
“The career of man has grown large”: TWH, “The Character of Buddha,” Index, March 16, 1872, p. 83.
“Any man with some Yes in him”: TWH to LSH, [November 1844], Houghton.
“In Cambridge we are in peace”: TWH, “Other Days and Ways in Cambridge and Boston,” typed ms., February 3, 1911, AAS.
“I crave action”: TWH, p. 69.
“Free breath is good”: TWH, “The Woman Who Most Influenced Me,” p. 8.
“I have repented of many things”: TWH, p. 65.
“Times change / and duties with them”: TWH, “Tyrtaeus,” Harbinger, November 1, 1845, p. 332.
“a higher element”: TWH to MCH, September 4, 1846, Houghton.
“The land our fathers left to us”: TWH, “National Anti-Slavery Hymn,” Liberator, July 17, 1846, p. 116.
“The idea of poetic genius is now utterly foreign to me,” TWH, pp. 64–65.
“He has abandoned much”: TWH, application for readmission to Harvard Divinity School, September 19, 1846, Houghton.
“Setting out, as I do”: TWH, pp. 67–68.
“There are times and places”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 89.
“Mr. Higginson was like a great archangel”: Harriet Prescott Spofford, quoted in TWH, pp. 95–96.
“It will hurt my popularity in Newburyport”: TWH, p. 88.
“They are so much more dependent on me”: TWH to LSH, September 19, 1848, Houghton.
“My position as an Abolitionist”: TWH to LSH, September 6, 1849, Houghton.
“I think I would have come to the same thing”: TWH to Mrs. Southwell, July 21, 1898, AAS.
“There are always men”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 104.
“marched like an army without banners”: TWH, “Two Antislavery Leaders,” p. 143.
“on behalf of everything, almost”: Henry James, “American Letter,” p. 678.
“Remember that to us”: TWH, p. 142.
“Assent—and you are sane—”: Fr 620.
“Without a little crack somewhere”: “The Eccentricities of Reformers,” in Contemp., p. 328.
“I hope, however, that there is less real danger”: “might damage the cause”: TWH, letter to the Liberator, October 10, 1851, p. 163.
“If Maria Mitchell can discover comets”: Wishes, p. 9.
A woman “must be a slave or an equal”: Wishes, p. 25.
“I, too, wish to save the dinner”: Wishes, p. 23.
“A woman such as you would make”: “Rights and Wrongs of Women,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1854, p. 76.
“What sort of philosophy is that”: TWH, “Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet?” p. 145.
“Nothing makes me more indignant”: TWH to Isabelle B. Hooker, February 19, 1859, Stowe Center.
CHAPTER THREE: EMILY DICKINSON: IF I LIVE, I WILL GO TO AMHERST
“Biography first convinces us”: ED to TWH, February 1885, Letters, 2:864.
“It passes and we stay—”: Fr 962.
the “only Kangaroo among the Beauty” “when I state myself”: ED to TWH, July 1862, Letters, 2:412.
a leading citizen of “unflagging zeal”: WAD, “Samuel Fowler Dickinson,” 1889, quoted in Sewall, p. 41.
a new “priest factory”: Le Duc, Piety and Intellect at Amherst College, p. 5.
“they have compleated the College”: Lucretia Dickinson to EdD, December 5, 1820, Houghton.
“My life,” he sternly warned: EdD to END, June 4, 1826, Houghton.
“unobtrusive faculties”: ED to WAD, February 18, 1852, Letters, 1:180.
“There is a vast field”: EdD to END, May 15, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, pp. 15–16.
“A man’s success”: EdD to END, October 22, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 49.
“Your proposals are what I would wish”: END to EdD, August 8, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 37.
“That rule was not made for me”: EdD, quoted in YH, 1:256.
“Fathers real life and mine”: ED to WAD, December 15, 1851, Letters, 1:161.
An oft-repeated anecdote: See Home, p. 112.
“Father was very severe to me”: ED to WAD, April 2, 1853, Letters, 1:237.
“There must have lurked in her expressive face” Jenkins pronounced her “sound”: Jenkins, Emily Dickinson, p. 82.
“They do not need a severe course”: EdD, draft of article published in the New-England Inquirer, January 5, 1827, Houghton.
“How does it affect us”: EdD, draft of article published in the New- England Inquirer, February 23, 1827, Houghton.
“We are warranted in presuming”: EdD to END, August 3, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 35.
“Let them bend all their energies”: EdD, draft of article published i
n the New-England Inquirer, April 20, 1827, Houghton.
“She dont appear at all as she does at home”: Lavinia Norcross, quoted in YH, 1:21–22.
“They shut me up in Prose—”: Fr 445.
“Bliss is the sceptre of the child”: Fr 1583.
“I so love to be a child”: ED to Abiah Root, [1850], Letters, 1:104.
“I wish we were children now”: ED to WAD, April 12, 1853, Letters, 1:241.
“Two things I have lost with Childhood—”: ED, n.d., misc. fragments, Letters, 3:928.
“The Things that never can come back, are several—”: Fr 1564.
As an adult, she played games: See Jenkins, Emily Dickinson, p. 40.
“The realization of our vivid fancy”: See MDB, preface to The Single Hound, by ED, pp. x–xi.
“How enviable their fame!” “What man has done”: EdD to END, July 12, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 29; see also p. 54 of that work. Pollak rightly points out that Edward Dickinson is quoting Edward Young’s “Night Thoughts” Emily will later do so as well.
“half a house, & a rod square”: EdD, quoted in YH, 1:30.
“It does seem to me”: EdD to END, March 18 [1838], Houghton.
Had Mrs. Dickinson been willing to relocate: AB, p. 233.
“His failing was he did not understand himself”: Quoted in YH, 2:224.
“I think it will do him the very most good”: ED to WAD, June 20, 1852, Letters, 1:213.
proof positive that he was the man: See HHJ to Henry Root, [winter 1855], Colorado.
When it passed at the end of May: See Merriam, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, 1:117.
“Our house is crowded daily”: ED to WAD, June 19, 1853, Letters, 1:257.
“of every bird & flower”: LD to MLT, April 30, 1883, Yale.
“I look around me”: WAD to Martha Gilbert, [May 11, 1852], quoted in Home, p. 241.
“I ask myself, Is it possible”: WAD to Martha Gilbert, [May 11, 1852], quoted in Home, p. 242.
“early, earnest, indissoluble”: ED to Charles Clark, [June 16, 1883], Letters, 3:779.
“I, you must know”: Green, “A Reminiscence of Emily Dickinson,” p. 291.
“Vinnie is full of Wrath”: ED to Jonathan L. Jenkins, September 1877, Letters, 2:592.
“The tie is quite vital”: LL, p. 70.
“A dire person!”: quoted in AB, p. 146n.
Although Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s father: For an account of TWH’s religious upbringing, see CY, pp. 35–36.
“Were I a christian, my dear”: EdD to END, March 18, 1838, Houghton.
“with a militant Accent”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [January 1875], Letters, 2:537.
“the working of God’s spirit among us”: EdD, quoted in Wolff, Emily Dickinson, p. 126.
“Christ is calling everyone here”: ED to Jane Humphrey, [April 3, 1850], Letters, 1:94.
“I feel that I am sailing”: ED to Abiah Root, March 28, 1846, Letters, 1:31.
“I was almost persuaded to be a christian”: ED to Abiah Root, January 31, 1846, Letters, 1:27.
one of the “lingering bad ones”: ED to Abiah Root, May 7, 17, 1850, Letters, 1:98.
“The shore is safer, Abiah”: ED to Abiah Root, [1850], Letters, 1:104.
“I was taken to a Funeral”: ED to TWH, [June 1877], Letters, 2:583.
“Sermons on unbelief ever did attract me”: ED to SGD, November 27–December 3, 1854, Letters, 1:311.
“‘We thank thee Oh Father’”: ED to MCH, [late summer 1876], Letters, 2:561.
“Doubts of all things earthly”: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Billy Budd and Other Writings (New York: Library of America, 2000), p. 423.
“Her compositions were strikingly original”: Daniel Taggart Fiske to MLT, Yale.
“firmly established in the faith”: See Catalogue of Amherst Female Seminary, (Amherst, Mass.: Adams, 1835).
“We have a very fine school” “I am growing handsome very fast indeed!”: ED to Abiah Root, May 7, 1845, Letters, 1:13.
“small, like the Wren”: ED to TWH, July 1862, Letters, 2:411.
Emily once “put four superfluous kittens”: MDB, preface to The Single Hound, by ED, p. xiii.
“That her thesis is partially true”: Bishop, “Unseemly Deductions,” p. 20.
she was said to confide to a visitor: See Green, “A Reminiscence of Emily Dickinson,” p. 291.
“Home was always dear to me”: ED to WAD, February 17, 1848, Letters, 1:62.
“There is a great deal of religious interest here”: ED to Abiah Root, January 17, 1848, Letters, 1:60.
“There were real ogres at South Hadley then”: Home, p. 75.
“They thought it queer”: ED, quoted in Clara Newman Turner, “My Personal Acquaintance with Emily Dickinson,” in Sewall, 1:269.
“I have neglected the one thing needful”: ED to Abiah Root, May 16, 1848, Letters, 1:67.
“Home,” she would write: ED to Perez Cowan, [1870], Letters, 2:483.
“Sewing Society has commenced again”: ED to Jane Humphrey, January 23, 1850, Letters, 1:84.
“vain imaginations,” as she jested: ED to Abiah Root, January 29, 1850, Letters, 1:88.
“Pain—has an Element of Blank—”: Fr 760.
“She was full of courage”: Quoted in Sewall, 1:222.
“far surpassing” “and that sublimer lesson”: ED to Edward Everett Hale, January 13, 1854, Letters, 1:282–283.
the “friend who taught me Immortality”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
what was “most grand or beautiful in nature”: ED to Edward Everett Hale, January 13, 1854, Letters, 1:282.
“My dying Tutor”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“My earliest friend”: ED to TWH, [spring] 1876, Letters, 2:551.
“We are the only poets”: ED to SGD, October 9, 1851, Letters, 1:144.
“Oh Susie, I would nestle close to your warm heart”: ED to SGD, [February 1852], Letters, 1:177.
“Is there anything debasing in human love—”: WAD to SGD, [spring 1853], Houghton.
“It seems strange to me, too”: WAD to Martha Gilbert, March 27, 1853, YH, 1:266.
each an absolute monarch: See Home, p. 413.
“We’re all unlike most everyone”: ED to WAD, April 8, 1853, Letters, 1:239.
“I guess we both love Sue”: ED to WAD, March 27, 1853, Letters, 1:236.
“a dear child to us all”: ED to WAD, May 16, 1853, Letters, 1:250.
“I feel as if love sat upon my heart”: YH, 1:187. The author of the novel was Jane Porter.
“I knew, I knew it could not last—”: YH, 1:161.
“Those unions, my dear Susie”: ED to SGD, Letters, 1:209–210.
“Captivity is Consciousness—/ So’s Liberty—”: In “No Rack can torture me—,” Fr 649.
CHAPTER FOUR: EMILY DICKINSON: WRITE! COMRADE, WRITE!
confirmed his sister’s “opinion”: YH, 1:213.
“As the great world goes on”: ED to WAD, [October 25, 1851], Letters, 1:151.
“And I, and Silence, some strange Race”: In “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” Fr 340.
“I’m afraid I’m growing selfish”: ED to Jane Humphrey, [April 1852], Letters, 1:197.
“I don’t go from home”: ED to Abiah Root, [July 25, 1854], Letters, 1:298–299.
Instead, she stayed at home: See YH, 1:301–302.
“everybody knows everybody”: HHJ to Henry Root, [winter 1855], Colorado.
“Oh Sir, may one eat of hell fire”: MDB preface to The Single Hound, by ED, p. xiv.
“I fear I grow incongruous”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, March 18, 1855, Letters, 2:319.
“I am out with lanterns”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [January 26, 1856], Letters, 2:324.
“To put this World down, like a Bundle—”: Fr 404.
“In such a porcelain life”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [August 1858], Letters, 2:338.
“I would like more sisters”: ED to Mary Haven, Februa
ry 13, 1859, Letters, 2:346.
“and finding the life with her books and nature”: LD, quoted in Sewall, 1:153.
“strange things—bold things”: ED to Jane Humphrey, April 3, 1850, Letters, 1:95.
“The Heart has many Doors—”: Fr 1623; “Doom is the House without the Door—”: Fr 710.
“So we must meet apart—”: Fr 706.
“We used to think, Joseph”: LL, p. 78.
“what they call a metaphor in our country” “But the world is sleeping”: ED, Indicator, February 7, 1850, quoted in Letters, 1:92, and YH, 1:168.
“‘I should expire with mortification’”: ED to WAD, October 21, 1847, Letters, 1:49.
“Write! Comrade, write!”: ED to SGD, [March 1853], Letters, 1:226.
“I’ve been in the habit myself of writing”: ED to WAD, March 27, 1853, Letters, 1:235.
“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—”: Fr 236.
“I’m ceded—”: Fr 353.
“When we stand on the tops of Things—”: Fr 343.
“If your Nerve, deny you—”: Fr 329.
“I reckon—When I count at all—”: Fr 533.
“He fumbles at your Soul”: Fr 477A.
“Literature is attar of roses”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” p. 410. See also “Essential Oils—are wrung—/ The Attar from the Rose,” Fr 772.
“This was a Poet—”: Fr 446.
“Your praise is good—”: ED to SGD, [Summer 1861], Letters, 2:380.
a “man of God of the old school”: Whicher, This Was a Poet, p. 110; blank atheism: Wadsworth, “The Gospel Call,” p. 77. The fullest treatment of Wadsworth may be found in Paul M. Miller, “The Relevance of the Rev. Charles Wadsworth to the Poet Emily Dickinson,” pp. 3–69.
“And the Church below”: YH, 1:353.
“But every now and then”: Mark Twain, quoted in YH, 2:112.
“the affliction which has befallen”: Charles Wadsworth to ED, [before spring 1862], Letters, 2:392. The date is persuasively argued by Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, pp. 415–420. But that’s as far as anyone can responsibly go. In 1924, Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, published an uncorroborated story that, if true, would fulfill all requirements of romance: A few days after they met, Wadsworth appeared on the doorstep in Amherst, Vinnie crying, “‘Sue, come! That man is here!—Father and Mother are away, and I am afraid Emily will go away with him!’” Bianchi continues: “But the one word he implored, Emily would not say. Unable to endure his life under the old conditions, after a short time he left his profession and home and silently withdrew with his wife and only child to a remote city, a continent’s width remote, where echo at least could not mock him with its vain outcry: dying prematurely, the spell unbroken.” MDB, The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, p. 47.
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