Although some Amherst residents would quibble that a house abutting the town cemetery—charming residence though it was—was not an ideal location, the Dickinsons felt they had space and privacy at last. But hours alone were not easy to come by for young Emily. The Dickinsons always seemed to have people around. In the early years of their marriage, Emily’s parents had taken in boarders to earn additional money and provide protection—as Edward argued—for his wife when he was in Boston on business. Edward’s forthright sister-in-law, Lavinia Norcross, did not see the situation that way. All those boarders made for more women’s work, she said, and her sister did not need to be kept so incessantly busy with cooking, cleaning, and maintaining a household. With more money in the bank now, the boarders were long gone, but the house still was full. Either Aunt Elizabeth was staying for a few weeks—demanding that young Emily look under the bed for who-knows-what every time she went to sleep—or family friends sent their children to live with the Dickinsons while the youngsters attended the academy. Vinnie or Emily had to double up on those occasions and share their beds when guests were with them for extended stays. As long as Emily was allowed a retreat from time to time, she did not mind the company.#
Strain for Emily, however, came from the demands associated with her father’s many obligations. Now that he served as Amherst College treasurer, students trooped in and out of the house with tuition payments, professors stopped by with advice on how he might eke out more money from the State House, and trustees sat in the parlor urging Edward to use his growing political clout to the college’s advantage. Edward’s responsibilities were not limited to his law practice and college duties either. He was president of the Henry Clay Club, the local lyceum, and the Franklin and Hampden Agricultural Society. As an elected official, he served in the state senate, and became a representative to the General Court and Governor’s Council. Edward liked the tumble of politics and was good at it, but being away from Amherst and his family for long stretches grew wearisome. He vowed to stay put and never run for political office again, but then he waffled and won another election that took him back to Boston for months at a time. Nothing curbed his continued civic involvement, not even a furious constituent writing in the local newspaper. “Was there ever standing on two legs,” the critic wrote, “such a lump of hypocrisy, deceit, trickery, craftiness, corruption, fraud and cheating, as is filled up in this six foot [sprig] of whigism?”23 A few years earlier, when enterprising young New Englanders looked west and began purchasing land, Edward had uncharacteristically jumped in. He’d bought acreage in Michigan on the Lake Huron side. For a moment, it looked like the allure of someplace else might take the Dickinsons away from their deep roots in Massachusetts. But recently he’d made up his mind and this time he did not waver; he sold off the Michigan property. Father’s life is a boisterous one, Emily observed, and—like her mother—she accepted family duties and the commotion at home.24 Sometimes, though, she wished she could be as lighthearted as her sister, Lavinia. Vinnie genuinely enjoyed company and could carry on conversations and laugh with ease. Emily would make appearances when she had to, but wearing a public face at her father’s events drained her of energy she preferred to expend elsewhere.
To say Emily and her eleven-year-old younger sister shared little in common would be a mistake. Although Vinnie usually dove into female chores with an enthusiasm Emily could not understand—“I dont see much of Vinnie,” she once remarked, “she’s mostly dusting stairs!”—the sisters shared much, including a similar sense of humor.25 Young as they were, they both had a cultivated sense of the absurd, and loved scanning the newspaper—Vinnie sewing and Emily reading aloud—searching for articles they found comical. Their favorites were stories of improbable calamities and shocking deaths, articles that Emily described as “funny accidents, where railroads meet each other unexpectedly, and gentlemen in factories get their heads cut off quite informally.”26 What made the stories so funny, she said, was that reporters told them in a sprightly way. Take the article two days ago in Friday’s newspaper: “A fine cow, belonging to Mr. William Feeter of Manheim, died a few days since from some intestinal ailing, having taken her food and drink with difficulty for several months past. Resolved, if possible to ascertain the nature of the disease, Mr. Fetter had a post mortem examination of the animal where a live milk snake nearly three feet long was found in her stomach.”27 The italics alone would have amused Vinnie, never mind the snake. Like all Dickinsons, Vinnie also was protective, fierce, and loyal to a fault. Although she may not have known why Emily needed privacy and so much time alone, she gave her sister both. Not being overly concerned about reasons and consequences may have been exactly the attributes Emily found indispensable in her sister. After they had grown, Emily looked back on their girlhood and called her attachment to Vinnie “early, earnest, indissoluble.”28
“Give my love to Biah,” Vinnie said when she knew Emily was writing a letter to their friend.29 Emily was happy to relay the good wishes, since she knew her sister—like their mother—did not correspond much. In delivering the greetings, she tried to capture Vinnie’s voice, even noting the way her sister dropped the initial “A” of Abiah’s name. Emily’s ear was keen and she understood that accurately replicating sound was part of good writing. Episcopalians always say Aamen, she heard people remark. Abiah calls the piano a “piny,” and “Is n’t [Ellena] a beautiful name?” she once gushed.30 While both Emily and Vinnie missed Abiah, they were hardly lacking in friends at the academy. There was Emily Fowler and Mary Warner, their cousin Sophia Holland, who lived around the corner, Mary Louisa Snell, and Jane Hitchcock, Vinnie’s best friend.** In particular, Emily held dear the group she called her Circle of Five: smart and lively girls who dove into their studies of mental philosophy, geology, Latin, and botany. “How large they sound, don’t they?” Emily boasted.31 Jane, Sophia, and Emily also took French lessons from Charles Temple, an Amherst College senior, who regularly walked over to the academy to instruct a select group. Occasionally Emily was able to work in German classes too. In addition, the girls were fortunate to hear lectures offered at the college. Amherst College president Edward Hitchcock, Jane’s father, took an interest in welcoming academy boys and girls to college talks. He loved dissecting a mannequin for science lectures, holding up each anatomical part and explaining the wonders of its function. “I don’t think a practicing doctor could have done it as well,” one student remembered.32 Hitchcock, a man with a capacious mind and generous spirit, was an expert in many fields, especially the geologic history of the region. He expounded on dinosaurs and glaciers, and his lectures on volcanoes struck Emily with a force she would long remember. For girls, whose intellect was often ignored by the world around them, the education offered at the academy was substantial. Not every Amherst parent saw it that way, of course. Mary Jones said she wished her daughter would concentrate more on dancing lessons, flower drawing, and attainments that would give her a “polish of manner.” Amherst is such a peculiar town, she complained, a “land of factories equality and independence.” 33 When British scholar Harriet Martineau came through Amherst on her American tour of female education, she noted forty to fifty academy girls listening attentively to President Hitchcock’s lectures. “No evil had been found to result from it,” she reported.34
Charles Temple had other talents besides teaching French at the Academy. The young man from faraway Smyrna was accomplished at cutting silhouettes and had asked Emily if she would like one.†† She said yes. While Charles snipped the contours of her face, she sat patiently, stealing a glance from time to time as slivers of black paper cascaded to the floor. In only a few minutes, he was finished and handed Emily the silhouette. She studied the image in her hands and saw a girl with a slight frame, bobbed hair, small nose, and chin tucked in. Alert, some might say, or cautious. Emily knew a silhouette was merely an outline—more suggestion than assertion—but the likeness stared back at her with the insistence of a clue. It was odd that she did not m
ention the silhouette to Abiah. Lately Emily had been interested in her own looks and the ways her friends were maturing. Over the last few months when former classmates who had been away stopped by to visit, she had looked at them for signs of change and did not see any. But when she looked at herself in the mirror, something was different. Emily joked with Abiah. “I am growing handsome very fast indeed,” she crowed, and “expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year.”35 Abiah may have laughed when calculating that fourteen-year-old Emily had given herself a few more years before turning heads. But Emily had altered—that was certain—growing taller, wearing long dresses, and sometimes covering her hair in a net cap. Her hair, she said, studying the color closely, was golden.36
“I have had no leisure for anything,” Emily wrote her friend.37 The new piano took a lot of her attention, but she did not mind. Emily had been waiting for a piano for many months. From the time she was toddler, she was taken with music, tapping out notes on her aunt Lavinia’s piano and calling them “moosic”—the first spoken word anyone could remember her saying.38 A year ago, Edward had asked his brother in Worcester to search the city for a good piano at a fair price that both Emily and Vinnie could use. “I prefer Rosewood,” he instructed. “3 pedals—& a stool.”39 Within a year, a piano matching Edward’s directives arrived in Amherst: a square Renaissance revival pianoforte with carved legs made of rich Brazilian rosewood. Emily jumped into lessons and made good progress, becoming competent in waltzes and syncopation. She was willing to devote hours to practice, while Vinnie was not. Emily’s sister became distracted easily and was unable to sit for long periods of time mastering fingerings and scales. Emily was eager to move ahead, leaping over the initial drills to try her hand at new creations until her teacher reined her in. “She shant let me have many tunes now,” Emily had explained, “for she wants I should get over in the book a good ways first.”40 As dedicated as she was to her lessons, Emily understood there was more to music than notes on a page. Music taught her what rhythm, style, and going against the rules could accomplish. A variation in phrasing, tempo, or touch could create a difference that hours of tedious drills never could convey. Her practice book’s description underscored the point: “Style is something that cannot be transferred, and for which no rules are given . . . Style is the spirit of the performance.”41 Emily stayed up late at night creating her own compositions and playing what others called odd tunes with weird and beautiful melodies. Once, half apologizing for keeping a guest up at night, Emily had admitted that she knew her music might bother others. The notes, she said, “madden me, with their grief and fun.”42
Schoolwork kept Emily occupied, too, especially her assignments for Wednesday afternoons. Each Wednesday, Amherst Academy teachers selected a handful of students to read their essays in front of the others. “Autobiography of a Goosequill” was one theme. “Genius seldom satisfied with its own production” was another.43 “I have written one composition this term, and I need not assure you it was exceedingly edifying to myself as well as everybody else,” Emily bragged to Abiah. “Don’t you want to see it? I really wish you could have a chance.”44 The school assembly always filled Emily with a tangle of emotions: pride when she was selected and dread when teachers asked her to stand and read to others. Although she was confident in her written work, she did not like to perform. Reading in public made her chest tighten and at times she sensed the envy of other students. Emily knew she was among the best writers at the academy and could be far from charitable when listening to what others wrote. One young man came under her withering scrutiny with his theme “Think twice before you speak.” He began with an ill-conceived example: if a young gentleman boarded in a tavern and offered a young lady his arm and had a dog with no tail—think twice before you speak. When the second example was more disastrous than the first, Emily had enough. Afterward, she walked up to the young man with a response she could not contain. Think twice before you speak, she had told him.45
Emily knew Abiah would appreciate news of Composition Day. The day was special to them because the two girls had met the previous spring on a Wednesday afternoon. Emily could recall the moment clearly and enjoyed recounting the story even as she grew older. Their first meeting unfolded in her mind like a scene in a play. She was shy, she remembered, and sought the corners of a room. Vinnie, Emily Fowler, Jane, and other students climbed stairs to the third floor as teachers searched for readers. Tall windows flooded the room with light: to the west, the Connecticut River; to the east, the Pelham Hills; to the south, the Holyoke Range; and to the north, Mount Toby’s oval plateau. The encircling mountains always pleased Emily, and offered a sense of reassurance and proportion. Perhaps they calmed her jitters too. She looked around the recitation room at the boys and girls: everyone appeared so expectant, high-minded, and serious. Such an august assembly, she had said to herself, with a tinge of amusement.46 That’s when she noticed a girl she did not recognize. The new girl in town, someone said, staying for the school term with cousins.
Maybe it was Abiah’s confidence coming up the stairs that first caught Emily’s attention or her composure entering that venerable room or perhaps her singular absence of nerves that Emily found difficult to imagine. One thing was certain: Emily could not take her eyes off Abiah’s hair. Before coming to school, Abiah had stopped to pick dandelions and then wove them into her dark curls. Emily liked her instantly. Abiah appeared independent and unbridled by convention. But there was something else: something about the dandelions themselves. Emily understood, of course, what a literary image was. She had studied poems in school and read verses that appeared in the newspaper, often clipping them out to save and study later. She understood how a single object could represent something else and trigger emotions, even profound ones. The sight of Abiah’s dandelions, however, prompted more than a schoolgirl lesson on imagery. Emily was coming to understand how to make ideas visible. The dandelions utterly transformed the staid Composition Day for her, as if shaking all the stiffness out of the room and flinging it to the fields. In Emily’s mind, they were more vivid than the actual children around her. The dandelions made her forget the clambering students and the nonsensical essays and the pulse of anxiety in her throat—and focus instead on the sheer astonishment of yellow weeds. One image could change everything, she thought.47
One academy teacher kept a mental note of how exceptional Emily was. Emily Dickinson, he wrote, was an excellent scholar of exemplary deportment, faithful in all school duties. Her compositions were extraordinary, strikingly original in thought and style and far above what a child her age might have produced.48 He did not comment, however, on her industry or on the ways Emily and her friends sought out additional literary endeavors to satisfy their creativity. Papers flew back and forth among the girls for comment, and occasionally a former female teacher would share one with them as well.‡‡ Abiah was writing fiction, too, a romance. “Please send me a copy,” Emily implored, “I am in a fever to read it.”49 In their most ambitious project, a group of academy girls—Emily included—had produced a handwritten literary journal of original compositions, Forest Leaves, which they circulated among classmates. According to Emily Fowler, Emily Dickinson was known as one of the best writers in the academy and also one of its sharpest wits. Penning the humor column was her responsibility. Their friend Fanny Montague drew the words of the journal’s title page, crafting each letter in the shape of a leaf. When the girls distributed Forest Leaves, the other students quickly recognized articles by their classmates’ handwriting. Emily’s script was unmistakable: small, clear, and finished. As much as they were proud of their journal, no one, unfortunately, bothered to keep a copy. The girls gave them all away. We were reckless, Emily Fowler later lamented, adding with disparagement, “Helen Fiske did no special work on the paper for various reasons.”§§ 50
Helen Fiske had been Emily’s friend when they were children. Her father taught Latin and Greek at the college, and her mother was the v
ibrant Deborah Fiske, of the “spending evenings folks.” Despite her frequent bouts with fatigue and persistent cough, Deborah was perennially cheerful, townspeople said. She thought nothing of inviting thirteen rowdy children to her house for games of blindman’s bluff and checkers, spooning out kind words and treats of raisins and nuts. But after spending her early years in Amherst schools, young Helen left to attend class away from home and only now returned briefly to Amherst on vacations. While Emily and Helen fondly remembered playing together under lilac bushes when they were six years old, Helen had grown into a handful and the two girls did not see much of each other anymore. Her mother with a mixture of pride and exasperation called Helen an “everlasting talker” who begged for the same stories to be told over and over again.51 “Helen learns very well,” she said, but “she is quite inclined to question the authority of everything: the Bible she says she does not feel as if it was true.”52 Once when Helen tried to get out of Latin exercises, she wrote her father an elaborate poem, including this self-assessment:
I’m but a child,
and rather wild,
As all the world doth know.
And this is why,
It seems so dry,
For me to study so.53
Even though Helen’s father was a trustee of Amherst Academy and her mother an active supporter of all Amherst’s institutions, her parents determined their clever and imaginative daughter needed a steadier hand and absence from her mother’s illness at home. Helen went off to stay with friends in Hadley, then across the state in Charlestown, after that Pittsfield and Falmouth. She tested others’ patience as well, trying to be excused from Sunday school and bristling when she had to put down her books to do housework. On one sojourn away, Helen admitted she could be contrary. She could not promise to obey, she told her caretaker, but she would agree to try.54 If Helen Fiske were presented as a cautionary tale to Emily, Sophia, Vinnie, and the other girls at Amherst Academy, it was as a lesson in deportment and the price paid for not following rules. But thinking about Abiah at her new school, Emily did not reject Helen Fiske’s example of independence. “I expect you have a great many prim, starched up young ladies there, who, I doubt not, are perfect models of propriety and good behavior,” she wrote. “Don’t let your free spirit be chained.”55
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