I FIRST DISCOVERED Emily Dickinson when I was a sixteen-year-old student in high school. I remember sitting in my fifth-period English class at McCluer High School in St. Louis and opening our textbook to Dickinson’s monumental poem “After great pain, a formal feeling comes – .” I couldn’t untangle a single line. I was lucky: at sixteen, I had not known great pain. But after reading that verse (second row, fourth seat back) something changed in me. It’s taken me years of study and the rest of my life to understand what that was. Looking back I can now say that after reading the poem, I woke up. A clarity flashed in me that made ideas and writing suddenly visible. It was as though I caught a glimpse of what poet Richard Wilbur calls “a wild shining of the pure unknown.”9 If I were writing the “ten moments” of my own life, that day in high school would certainly be among them. But what happened in my high school classroom said more about Dickinson than it did about me. Even though I did not have the life experience to explain her great poem, I still—on some level—understood it. Part of Dickinson’s genius, it seems to me, is her ability to trigger a reader’s understanding. We do not need to explicate every line to sense the import of her words. The weight of Dickinson’s language—what she would call its “heft”—is felt in a place beyond our intellect and sparks a visceral response. Emily Dickinson tells us as much. In that famous 1870 visit with Thomas Wentworth Higginson detailed in Chapter Eight, the poet declared: “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way.”10
Emily Dickinson has been called everything from “the outlaw of Amherst,” “the best friend of reclusive English majors,” and “an intellectual terrorist.” She even called herself “the only Kangaroo among the Beauty.”11 I hope These Fevered Days offers a rich and vivid sense of her unparalleled life. There is no doubt she is a towering poetic voice. But there’s something else about her too. Emily Dickinson reminds us what it’s like to be alive. And when she does—she takes our breath away.
March 19, 2019
Leverett, Massachusetts
THESE FEVERED DAYS
One
ALL THINGS ARE READY
Sunday, August 3, 1845
Ebenezer Snell woke early. Looking east to the Pelham Hills, he saw dawn saturate the Connecticut River Valley. He dressed, careful not to disturb his wife and five daughters, and walked outside to check his scientific apparatus. Snell was forty-four years old, the first graduate of Amherst College, and now a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at his beloved college on the hill. Not a large or robust man—he had such a modest manner, some of his first students called him “Miss Snell.”* They loved him for his kindness, and delighted—like everyone else in town—in his obsession with weather. For the last ten years, Professor Snell had risen every morning to record measurements and scientific observations in a large leather-bound journal. Now he opened the book, skimming past the title page: The Meteorological Journal Kept at Amherst College. Long. W 72 degrees 34' 30." Lat. N 42 degrees 22' 21." Station 267 feet above the Ocean Commencing 1835. Turning to the new day, he wrote, “Sabbath, August 3, 1845.” Every year Snell added new columns and categories to his tabulations—wet bulb measurements, dry bulb measurements, mean temperature. “Pure Air” was a frequent exclamation. For today, though, he concentrated on his six original calculations—barometer, attached temperature, external temperature, clouds, winds and fall of water. “Sunrise,” he wrote, and then recorded: barometer 30.000; attached thermometer 69 degrees; external thermometer 57 degrees; cloudiness 8 SW cir; winds SW ½; fall of water 0.† In the margin, he jotted down additional remarks: “vegetation suffers from long drought,” “plants withering,” “smoky in morning.” Later that day, Professor Snell would return to his journal and record three additional sets of numbers for 8 a.m., 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. He also included one more observation. When he was outdoors at noon and looked up, Snell saw a parhelion, a bright circle ringing the sun.1 He picked up his pen and added the note.
Less than a mile down the road, fourteen-year-old Emily Dickinson knew what she wanted to do that summer day. Emily loved Sundays. She enjoyed the visits of friends and family who stopped in the afternoon for lemonade or the family’s homemade currant wine. In the evening, she joined other Amherst residents in Mr. Woodman’s Singing School—everything about music enthralled her. She especially loved long Sunday conversations with her older brother, Austin, when he was home from boarding school. The two sat by the stove and said whatever entered their minds. That is, until their father opened the kitchen door and the siblings swallowed their words with barely concealed smiles. What Emily did not like about Sundays was going to church. The service was long and the hymns were accompanied by a bass viol, and—according to one parishioner—appalling. Emily was lucky. Her parents did not demand that she attend services, and she occasionally slipped out before communion and walked home. Other times she would endure morning worship in order to earn the “privilege”—as she put it—of avoiding another service later in the day.2 More often than not, though, she simply chose not to attend at all, and her parents did not protest. It was not going to church that Emily loved best about Sundays; with the house empty, she felt unleashed. Not that she did not love her family: living under the same roof with her mother and father, brother Austin, and younger sister Vinnie always felt right to her even as she grew older. But being alone set loose in her a potent force. With no one around, she would proclaim, “I am left alone in all my glory.”3 Today Emily wanted to stay home and write a letter to her friend Abiah Root. Recently Emily’s consciousness had shifted. Sitting down at her desk felt more solemn, more purposeful, and she wanted to make an announcement. Her words would be nothing so bold as a manifesto or even a declaration; they would be quieter, but no less convincing. Emily wanted to tell her friend that she could see her future and was ready for the days before her. She was putting Abiah on notice—perhaps the world, as well—that she was serious about writing. Nothing gave her a greater sense of pride or made her feel more alive. Years later, those who marveled at her dazzling words wondered what she could hear that others could not? She answered once. “All have gone to church – the wagons have done passing, and I have come out in the new grass to listen to the anthems.”4
But before she wrote Abiah, Emily had to settle in: her mind switching as it frequently did from her family to her friends, from school to home, and even Sunday meeting. As much as she tried to avoid church, Emily had to admit that sermons at the First Church of Amherst had been better since Rev. Aaron Colton had become the minister. Congregationalists in town were hard on their clergy: opinionated, demanding, and tight with money. When one of Colton’s predecessors was sent packing, the deposed minister’s wife spared few words about the good people of Amherst. “New Zelanders would have behaved better,” she snarled.‡5 Emily liked that Reverend Colton did not fall into the habit of spouting religious platitudes. If she had to sit in church, she preferred it would be Reverend Colton’s—at least his language had color and vitality. Emily always paid attention to words, more so than to the spiritual injunctions. When someone’s language was stale and predictable, she lost interest and her mind wandered. But when words made ideas come alive, she was transported. Her father could be caught up in language too—even the language of sermons—although most people would have been surprised that Edward Dickinson could be carried away by anything other than a legal brief. After hearing one sermon at Boston’s Park Street Church, Edward had written home, “If I could hear such preaching, every Sabbath, I would walk ten miles, in mud, knee deep . . . I do really wish Providence would so order it, that we could, now & then, have something worth the trouble of hearing. I could never sleep under such preaching—& never tire.”6 There were no reports of Edward sleeping in church that drowsy August morning, although it was growing warmer by the hour. Hot wea
ther bothered Emily and she knew First Church would be stifling with too many people sitting too closely together. In Friday’s newspaper, Professor Snell had reported that Amherst had shattered several records for heat. If Emily needed any additional excuse for missing church that morning, she had one in Reverend Colton’s absence. Colton was away from the pulpit and, in his place, two Amherst College professors assumed the preaching duties: Professor Fowler in the morning and Professor Warner in the afternoon. Spiritual guidance by way of professors of rhetoric on a steamy summer day, squeezed into rigid pews next to townsfolk mopping their faces did not sound inviting to Emily—certainly not as appealing as being alone at her desk.
Emily said the summer of her fourteenth year had been the best in her life and she wanted to share everything in the letter to her friend Abiah.7 The two girls had attended Amherst Academy together the year before, along with Emily Fowler and Mary Warner, the rhetoric professors’ daughters.§ Now that Abiah had moved and was living hours away, Emily was eager to pour her thoughts onto the page. She had much to tell. There was a new piano in the house—the family’s first—and she was learning lively marches and popular songs. The academy’s summer term was nearly over and public examinations were around the corner. The dreaded examination, she thought. All Emily could think of were “those tall, stern, trustees” staring when teachers called upon her to recite an aspect of biblical law. “I am already gasping,” she wrote.8 But her preoccupations in the letter were not solely about school. She told Abiah about cutting bookmarks, new births in town, gardening, and drying forget-me-nots. All the girls were making herbariums. “I have got an idea that you are knitting edging,” she said.9 Emily also loved sharing gossip, especially accounts of romantic couplings. Who, she wanted to know, was this Mr. Eastcott, the one who gave Abiah concert tickets. “I think for my part it looks rather suspicious.”10 She noted Abby was taking interest in William. Don’t you think he will make a devoted husband, she wrote. Sabra was going back to Baltimore in a few weeks after honoring us poor country folks with her presence, she added, and poor Hatty doesn’t seem to have time for anything now that she was teaching school. “I have some patience with these – School Marms,” Emily all but sighed. “They have so many trials.”11
As she wrote, Emily examined the pen stand on her desk. She knew the letter was going to be a long one, and could take a while to compose. So many words and ideas crowded her mind—they seemed to rush ahead of her hand. “I can hardly have patience to write,” she once told Abiah. “I have worlds of things to tell you, and my pen is not swift enough to answer my purpose at all.”12 Lately Emily had made a ritual of writing a letter: clearing space and time, and even her small desk in order to gather her thoughts. She studied the surface before her as if moving the inkwell would help her concentrate or anticipate the words ahead. She now took a slow, deliberate, formal, even ceremonial approach that prepared her for writing, and she expected Abiah to be ready as well: she imagined her friend leaving behind every chore and sitting down with her letter. Placing words on the page and envisioning Abiah savoring her sentences carried weight for her. Emily said a voice inside her head commanded her to write. She called it her “faithful monitor” and she could not keep it quiet for long.13 Nor did she want to. If anyone that Sunday suggested that there was an element of the sacred to her ritual, she likely would have disagreed. There was no open Bible. No sanctified cloth. No preacher or even professors substituting for a divinely inspired voice. Not even a candlestick before her. This ceremony was liturgy of a different order. If her desk were indeed an altar, it was a shrine not to God, but to words.
That summer the Dickinson family was enjoying hard-won stability. Gone were the days when Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson and their three children had to share half a house with Edward’s parents. As cramped as the living arrangement was, it was worse when Samuel and Lucretia Dickinson were forced to move to Ohio for financial reasons. Dickinson’s grandfather had been a pillar in the community: a lawyer, politician, and one of Amherst College’s first trustees. A diligent man with lofty dreams and good intentions, he often rose before dawn and walked seven miles to court in Northampton because he was too impatient to wait for the daily coach.14 Samuel’s impulsiveness extended to financial matters as well. He had been reckless with his own money—and other people’s too—and gave far more to get Amherst College up and running than his personal finances could afford. When he withdrew to Ohio for a job as head of manual labor at Lane Theological Seminary, his spirits were broken and few thought he could recover. He did not regain his health, and died of lung fever in 1838 at age sixty-two. “Ever since I can remember,” Edward’s sister observed, our father’s “life has been one of anxiety & care & disappointment.”15
Samuel’s death affected the young Dickinson family in a number of ways. For Edward, it meant a lifetime of working to reclaim the family’s prominence and reestablish his father’s good name. For Emily and the rest of the Dickinsons, it meant living with the specter of Samuel’s failure and sharing the house again—this time with a family unrelated to them. Gen. David Mack and his wife, Mary, took up residence in the western half of the old Homestead while the Dickinsons moved all their furnishings to the east. General Mack, the owner of the hat factory in town, was an imposing figure to Emily and her siblings. As a boy, Austin remembered the first time he saw the general. “I thought I had seen God,” he said. “tall, erect, of powerful build . . . a believer in law and penalty.” Austin called him “a Puritan of the Puritans.”16 Living alongside General Mack and his family in tight quarters lasted six years. Then the Dickinsons knew it was time to strike out on their own. By 1840, Edward had earned enough money in his law practice to buy a house on West Street around the corner from the Homestead. The two-story frame home had a grape arbor, lattices, and—with two acres—enough ground for flowers, a vegetable garden, a horse, and chickens.
The chickens were Austin’s pride. He once boasted in a letter to the local newspaper asking if anyone’s hens laid larger eggs than his. The flock had a habit of wandering off the property and good-natured neighbors frequently could be seen carrying the Dickinsons’ feisty prize rooster back to the coop. When sixteen-year-old Austin was twenty-five miles away studying at Williston Academy, Emily kept him up to date with chatty letters of neighbors’ foibles and barnyard drama. “The other day,” she began, “Francis brought your Rooster home and the other 2 went to fighting him while I was gone to School – mother happened to look out of the window and she saw him laying on the ground – he was most dead – but she and Aunt Elisabeth went right out and took him up and put him in a Coop and he is nearly well now – while he is shut up the other Roosters – will come around and insult him in Every possible way by Crowing right in his Ears – and then they will jump up on the Coop and Crow there as if they – wanted to show that he was Completely in their power and they could treat him as they chose – Aunt Elisabeth said she wished their throats would split.”¶ 17 Letters to Austin were not the same, of course, as having him sit with her by the stove, but they did provide a way for Emily to stay close to her brother. “There was always such a Hurrah wherever you was,” she wrote.18
The new house suited Emily’s mother. Home meant everything to Emily Norcross Dickinson, and she delighted in finally having a place of her own to raise a family. The house was still near enough the town center that she could stroll to First Church to help with the summer Ladies’ Fair or drop into Cutler’s General Store for oranges, imported French chocolate, or all those coconuts the family loved. Proximity also made it easy to be involved with town events. When the local Temperance Society met at the Amherst Hotel, for example, Mrs. Dickinson joined the crowd in congratulating the proprietors on banishing rum. Yet no one around Amherst would ever call Mrs. Dickinson genial or a natural when it came to socializing. She had a reserved quality that kept others at a distance and her innermost thoughts to herself. Since Amherst was a lively and learned town, it was difficult for
her to duck away from conversation after lectures at the college or during political events when officials frequently tapped her husband for a public role. One professor’s wife, Deborah Fiske, put her finger on two qualities that made Amherst unique. Amherst, Massachusetts, she said, was filled with “a very spending evening sort of folks” and its best women were “free from the silly birdish airs.”19 Emily Norcross Dickinson, while a serious woman, did not easily fit the expectation when it came to spending evenings. Some residents mistook her diffidence for gloom and went so far as to call her doleful. One acquaintance complained that a call on Mrs. Dickinson was full of her usual “plaintive talk.”20 There were other criticisms, too, even from family. Everyone grumbled that she did not write enough letters. Her mother-in-law became so exasperated she once declared sarcastically to Edward, “Tell Emily, I wish she would write her name in your next letter so as not [to] forget to write. I would write her sometimes, if she would answer my letters.”21 Harsh as such appraisals were, the rebuke did not cause Mrs. Dickinson to change her ways. Even though Sunday was a day when many people caught up on letter writing, she did what she enjoyed most: baked cakes, tended to her exotic figs, darned socks that Austin had sent home for mending, and—according to her elder daughter—surveyed her domain. Writing to her brother, Emily once joked, “Mother taking a tour of the second story as she is wont Sabbath evening.”22
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