“Black with his Hat”: ED to James Clark, October 1882, Letters, 3:742.
“My Life is full of dark Secrets”: ED to James Clark, [November] 1882, Letters, 3:744.
“several times in love, in her own way”: Home, pp. 374, 413.
“my Aunt had lovers”: MDB, preface to The Single Hound, by ED, p. xvi.
“I’ve got a cough” “Open your life wide”: ED to unknown recipient, [early 1861], ED, The Master Letters, pp. 26, 28.
“Master. / If you saw a bullet”: ED to unknown recipient, [early 1861], ED, The Master Letters, pp. 32–43.
“Perhaps you think me stooping!”: Fr 273A.
she continued to alter them: Both Thomas Johnson’s three volumes, ED, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, and Ralph Franklin’s marvelous Poems of Emily Dickinson (Fr) show the variation in manuscript copies and insofar as possible provide the complete editorial and textual history of each poem.
“‘It is finished’”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [June 1878], Letters, 2:613.
“foreign to my thought”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
letter to the World: Fr 519.
“It’s a great thing to be ‘great’”: ED to Louise Norcross, [December 1859], Letters, 2:345. Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, p. 712, corrects the original misdating of the letter.
poetry of the portfolio: See TWH, preface to Poems, and chapter 14 of this book.
“My Splendors, are Menagerie—”: Fr 319.
“Because I could not stop for Death—”: Fr 479.
“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”: Fr 591.
“We like March—his Shoes are Purple—”: Fr 1194.
“An altered look about the hills—”: Fr 90.
“Power is only Pain—”: In Fr 312.
“First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—”: In Fr 372.
“Narcotics cannot still the Tooth”: Fr 373.
“I had some things that I called mine—”: Fr 101.
“On subjects of which we know nothing”: ED to Otis Lord, n.d., Letters, 2:728.
“Some things that fly there be—”: Fr 68.
“When Jesus tells us about his Father”: ED to Mrs. Hills, n.d., Letters, 3:837.
“This World is not conclusion”: Fr 373.
“I sing…as the Boy does”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
“She dealt her pretty words like Blades—”: Fr 458.
“he appalls, entices”: ED to TWH, [December 1879], Letters, 2:649.
“Title divine—is mine!”: Fr 194A.
“His growth was by absorption”: See Merriam, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, 1:101.
he supported the antislavery Republican John C. Frémont: See Koscher, “The Evolution, Tone, and Milieu of New England’s Greatest Newspaper,” p. 3.
“Mr. Bowles is quite handsome”: See Annie Adams Fields, diary, January 30, 1868, MHS.
“His nature was Future”: ED to SGD, January 1878, Letters, 2:600.
with his “vivid Face and the besetting Accents”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [1875], Letters, 2:540.
“the Queen Recluse”: Samuel Bowles to WAD, Friday, [January 9, 1863], Houghton.
“I have been in a savage, turbulent state”: Samuel Bowles to WAD, Saturday, [May 1863], Houghton.
“I am much ashamed Mr. Bowles”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [August 1860], Letters, 2:366.
“When the Best is gone—”: ED to Mary Bowles, [spring 1862], Letters, 2:405.
her sister was “always watching for the rewarding person”: Home, p. 413.
“I am so far from Land”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [January 11, 1862], Letters, 2:390.
“Nobody knows this little Rose”: Fr 11A (titled “To Mrs.———, with a Rose”); “I taste a liquor never brewed”: Fr 207A (titled “The May-Wine”); “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”: Fr 124A (titled “The Sleeping”). Also appearing in The Republican: “‘Sic transit gloria mundi’” (Fr 2B) in 1852, “Blazing in gold and quenching in purple” (Fr 321B) on March 30, 1864 (titled “Sunset”), and “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” (Fr 1096A) on February 14, 1866 (titled “The Snake”). See chapter 8.
CHAPTER FIVE: THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON: LIBERTY IS AGGRESSIVE
“Come strong”: Samuel May Jr. to TWH, May 25, 1854, BPL.
“It is of no use”: Anthony Burns, quoted in Dana, The Journal, 2:625.
“Give all the notice you can”: Samuel May Jr. to TWH, May 25, 1854, BPL.
“point the finger of scorn” “As if Southern slave-catchers were to be combated”: CY, p. 148.
“I am a clergyman and a man of peace”: Theodore Parker, quoted in Massachusetts Spy, May 31, 1854.
the “froth and scum of the meeting”: CY, p. 152.
“You cowards, will you desert us now?”: CY, p. 71.
“That meeting at Faneuil Hall was tremendous”: TWH to Mary Curzon, [1854], Houghton.
“The law must be executed”: “Slave Case in Boston,” National Era, June 1, 1854, p. 87.
Later that night Batchelder died: See William F. Channing to TWH, February 8, 1898, Houghton. When Higginson inquired many years later, Channing replied that his friend Charles T. Jackson, who examined the wound, initially said it was that of a pistol ball, but was linear, of a certain length, and made by a cutting instrument sharp at both edges. It was also deep. Yet the astounding fact remains, as will appear later, that the wound was produced by a pistol shot…. He said that after the door had been battered down, the marshal’s posse inside had charged the attacking party with clubs and cutlasses. He saw their leader, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, penned in a corner of the recessed doorway, wounded by a cutlass in the face, and being hammered by the officers with clubs. “Then,” said he, “I fired and one of the officers fell.” He said they would have killed Higginson, if he had not fired. I asked him how Batchelder could have been shot when the wound was long like the thrust of a sword, instead of round like a pistol ball. He explained that he had loaded his pistol with a slug which had doubtless struck lengthwise.
“We went to bed one night old fashioned”: Amos Adams Lawrence, quoted in McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 120.
“Massachusetts antislavery differs much”: George Hillard to Francis Lieber, October 2, 1860, Huntington.
“That attack was a great thing for freedom”: TWH to LSH, May 29, 1854, BPL.
“supposing it to be so arranged”: TWH, p. 145.
“A revolution is begun!”: TWH, “Massachusetts in Mourning!” p. 14.
“the crime of a gentleman”: TWH to Maria Weston Chapman, November 30–December 7, 1854, BPL.
“It is the only way”: George J. Higginson to TWH, June 10, 1854, BPL.
“My penalty cannot be very severe”: TWH to LSH, May 29, 1854, BPL; “it would be best for the ‘cause’”: Lucy Stone to TWH, July 15, 1854, BPL.
shops closed their doors: See Schama, Dead Certainties, p. 312, and Samuel May Jr. to TWH, June 2, [1854], BPL.
not to “conceal Fugitives and help them on” “I am glad to be deceived no longer”: TWH, “Massachusetts in Mourning!” p. 14.
“Liberty is aggressive”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 14:385, quoted in Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns, p. 229.
transcendentalist in arms: The term is used by Frederickson regarding Higginson in The Inner Civil War, p. 37.
“I knew his ardor & courage”: Dana, The Journal, 2:629.
“the only Harvard Phi Beta Kappa”: Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Renehan, The Secret Six, pp. 64–65.
After all, it had been a local Baptist clergyman: After he was returned to Virginia, Burns was confined, treated poorly, and then sold on the auction block. Removed to North Carolina, he was purchased—and freed—with money Leonard Grimes had raised.
“Ever since the rendition of Anthony Burns”: “A Ride through Kanzas,” in Magnificent Activist, p. 88.
“to kill every God-damned abolitionist”: David Rice Atchison, quoted in Drake, “The Law T
hat Ripped America in Two,” p. 63.
“These are times”: Henry Ward Beecher, quoted in Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 2:431.
“Never before in my life”: CY, p. 202.
“I almost hoped to hear”: TWH, p. 167.
“Colored men are thrust illegally out of cars in New York”: TWH to George Curtis, January 23, 1857, Houghton.
“We the Undersigned”: Worcester Disunion Circular, Pamphlets, Houghton.
“It is written in the laws of nature”: TWH to LSH, January 21, 1857, Houghton.
It had the salubrious effect: See CY, pp. 207–208.
“swallows a Missourian whole”: TWH, “Anti-slavery Festival,” Liberator, January 16, 1857, p. 1.
“best Disunion champion you can find”: Franklin Sanborn to TWH, September 11 or 28, 1857, Kansas.
“that religious elevation”: CY, p. 219.
“I long to see you with adequate funds”: TWH to John Brown, May 1, 1859, BPL.
“The world has always more respect”: TWH to Harriet Beecher Stowe, October 11, 1868, Stowe Center.
As it began in blood: TWH, Liberator, May 28, 1858, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 211. See also Von Frank, “John Brown, James Redpath, and the Idea of Revolution” for a discussion of how Higginson’s Atlantic essays on slave uprisings may have fueled Brown’s fire.
“Sanborn,…is there no such thing as honor”: TWH to Franklin Sanborn, November 17, 1859, BPL.
“Gerrit Smith’s insanity—& your letter”: TWH to Samuel Gridley Howe, November 15, 1859, BPL.
“I believe John Brown to be the representative man of this century”: George Luther Stearns, quoted in Renehan, The Secret Six, p. 244.
Brown’s death…“will make the gallows as glorious as the cross”: See Robert D. Richardson, Emerson, p. 545.
“Nobody was ever more justly hanged”: Hawthorne, “Chiefly about War-Matters,” p. 54.
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly”: Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, in Walden, and Civil Disobedience, p. 245.
“John Brown is now beyond our reach”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 231.
“What satirists upon religion are those parents”: TWH, “Saints and Their Bodies,” p. 584.
“These men and women, who have tested their courage”: TWH, “Physical Courage,” p. 732.
“Would you like an article on the Maroons”: TWH to James Russell Lowell, October 23, 1859, Houghton.
“If it be the normal tendency of bondage”: TWH, “The Maroons of Surinam,” p. 553.
“I began this book on returning”: TWH, Field Book, opposite flyleaf, 1885, Houghton.
“In these unsettled days it is perilous”: TWH, journal, June 8, 1849, Houghton.
“On other days”: TWH to LSH, June 5, 1850, Houghton.
“Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond”: TWH, “My Out-Door Study,” collected in Out-Door Papers, p. 305.
“The birds are as real and absorbing”: TWH, journal, October 30, 1860; “I will trust this butterfly”: TWH, journal, October 1861, both Houghton.
“I need ask for nothing else”: TWH, Field Book, May 20, 1860, Houghton.
“He was the only critic”: TWH to LSH, January 29, 1862, Houghton.
“I had more [mail] about ‘April Days’”: TWH, pp. 157–158.
“I do not find that my facility grows so fast as my fastidiousness”: TWH, p. 158.
“The more bent any man is upon action”: TWH, “My Out-Door Study,” p. 303.
“We talk”: TWH, “My Out-Door Study,” p. 304.
“My size felt small—”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:405.
CHAPTER SIX: NATURE IS A HAUNTED HOUSE
“I enclose my name—,” ED to TWH, April 15, 1862, Letters, 2:403.
“Is it Intellect that the Patriot means”: ED to TWH, [late May 1874], Letters, 2:525.
even if “you smile at me”: ED to TWH, [July 1862], Letters, 2:412.
“I saw no Way—”: Fr 633.
“To learn the Transport by the Pain—”: Fr 178.
“Perhaps you laugh at me!”: ED to Elizabeth and Josiah Holland, [summer 1862], Letters, 2:413.
“I dwell in Possibility—”: Fr 466.
“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—”: Fr 314; “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”: Fr 260; “I like to see it lap the Miles—”: Fr 383.
“Each Life converges to some Centre—”: Fr 724.
“He put the Belt around my life—”: Fr 330; “The Soul has Bandaged moments—”: Fr 360; “The Zeros taught Us—Phosphorus—”: Fr 284; “Nature—sometimes sears a Sapling—”: Fr 457; “Remorse—is Memory—awake—”: Fr 781; “Doom is the House without the Door—”: Fr 710; “I had been hungry, all the Years—”: Fr 439; “One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—”: Fr 407; “Crisis is a Hair”: Fr 1067.
“I reason, Earth is short—”: Fr 403.
“Inebriate of air—”: In Fr 207.
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”: Fr 372; “There’s a certain Slant of light”: Fr 320; “It was not Death, for I stood up”: Fr 355.
“God is a distant—stately Lover—”: Fr 615.
“I’ve known her—from an ample nation—”: Fr 409.
“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—”: Fr 867.
“Breaking in bright Orthography”: In Fr 333.
“The Martyr Poets—did not tell—”: Fr 665.
“‘We take no note of Time’”: ED to Abiah Root, September 8, 1846, Letters, 1:37.
“I often part with things I fancy I have loved”: ED to Susan Gilbert, [1854], Letters, 1:305–306.
“Of nearness to her sundered Things” “Bright Knots of Apparitions”: Fr 337.
“A loss of something ever felt I—”: Fr 1072.
“A Light exists in Spring”: Fr 962.
“Dear March—Come in—”: Fr 1320.
“The nearest Dream recedes—unrealized—”: Fr 304.
“Sorrow seems more general”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [December 1862; misdated in Johnson], Letters, 2:436.
“They dropped like Flakes—”: Fr 545.
He had murmured, “My God”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [March 1862], Letters, 2:397–398.
“Nobody here could look on Frazar—”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [late March 1862], Letters, 2:398.
“says—his Brain keeps saying”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [March 1862], Letters, 2:399.
“This is the Hour of Lead—”: In Fr 372. This famous poem (“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”) was written around this time (spring–fall 1862).
“there is no remoteness of life and thought”: Hawthorne, “Chiefly about War-Matters,” p. 43.
“General Wolfe, on the eve of battle”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” p. 409.
“I’m sorry for the Dead—Today—”: Fr 582.
“If the anguish of others helped with one’s own”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [December 1862; misdated in Johnson], Letters, 2:436.
“I noticed that Robert Browning”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [December 1862; misdated in Johnson], Letters, 2:436.
“It dont sound so terrible—quite—as it did—”: Fr 384
“We—tell a Hurt—to cool it—”: In Fr 548.
“An actual suffering strengthens”: In Fr 861. ED sent the second stanza of this poem to TWH in 1866: “Time is a test of trouble / But not a remedy—/ If such it prove—it prove too / There was no malady” (Fr 861B).
“Of all the Sounds despatched abroad”: Fr 334B.
“The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy”: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” p. 445.
“A Bird, came down the Walk—”: Fr 359.
“I could well wish she were a native of Massachusetts”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in Hall, The Story of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” p. 103.
His first volume…, went through three printings: See Rochelle Gurstein, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” pp. 40–45.
“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”: Fr 340.
Spofford’s short story “Circumstance”: See [SGD], “Harriet Prescott’s Early Work,” p. 19, and St. Armand, Emily Dickinson and Her Culture, p. 173.
“Now all the swamps are flushed with dower”: Harriet Spofford, “Pomegranate-Flowers,” p. 575. Spofford’s fiction impressed Dickinson, who asked Sue to send her more.
“It is no discredit to Walt Whitman”: TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 753.
“to my gymnasium-trained eye”: CY, pp. 230–231.
“We all looked to him”: TWH, quoted in Nelson and Price, “Debating Manliness,” p. 497.
Higginson thus resented Drum-Taps: See TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 753.
“Could you tell me how to grow—”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
“I had rather wince, than die”: ED to TWH, July 1862, Letters, 2:412.
“I thanked you for your justice”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“Your Riches, taught me, poverty—”: Fr 418B. Higginson recalls receiving this poem in her second letter (postmarked April 25, 1862) although Franklin alleges the poem, along with “Success—is counted sweetest,” was enclosed with the letter she sent to him in July 1862.
she may have composed in memory of Benjamin Newton: See Whicher, This Was a Poet, p. 92.
“Success—is counted sweetest”: Fr 112D.
“You say ‘Beyond your knowledge’” “I think you called me ‘Wayward’”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:414–415.
“Of Tribulation—these are They”: see Fr 328, sent with a letter [of July 1862], Letters, 2:411–412.
“A Bird, came down the Walk—”: Fr 359; “Before I got my eye put out—”: Fr 336B; “I cannot dance opon my Toes—”: Fr 381A; “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?”: Fr 401C.
“Are these more orderly?”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:414.
“When I try to organize—my little Force explodes”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:414.
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