Worlds scoop their Arcs –
And Firmaments – row –
Diadems – drop – and Doges – surrender –
Soundless as dots – on a Disc of snow –
Union general Ambrose Burnside’s troops were closing in on North Carolina. Weeks earlier, Amherst College boys saw their first battle in a cypress swamp near Roanoke, Virginia.52 Bullets fell in a murderous volley, one soldier had said, and there was no time to count the dead.53 Amherst residents had to wait for days before Samuel Bowles’s pressmen finally tacked bulletins outside the Springfield Republican listing the casualties. They scanned the names of the killed and wounded: “Adjutant Stearns in the head and neck, not badly.”54 Ten days later, a letter from Frazar arrived and news of the Amherst College president’s son swept through town like a squall. One wound to the neck and one to the forehead, Frazar wrote. He was fine, and marching with Captain Clark toward Newbern.## 55 Even as she worked, Emily wondered if she could sustain the concentration her poems required. She thought about writers who kept working in the face of sorrow. Robert Browning wrote poetry after the death of his wife, she remembered. The thought consoled her. “I, myself, in my smaller way, sang off charnel steps,” Emily wrote her cousins Fanny and Loo. “Every day life feels mightier, and what we have the power to be, more stupendous.”56 The days before her would be monumental. Within a month, she would share her majestic alabaster poem with someone else. Little did she know, that step would change her life.
* The Burnside Expedition, led by Union brigadier general Ambrose Burnside, took place from February to June 1862. The expedition involved troops from New England, including Amherst, and sought to blockade ports along the North Carolina coast.
† The Sanitary Commission was a private relief organization founded in 1861 to support Union soldiers. The commission’s president was clergyman Henry Whitney Bellows; landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted served as general secretary. The work of the commission focused on providing food, clothing, blankets, and medical care to soldiers. In many cities—including Springfield, Massachusetts—the commission ran Sanitary Fairs featuring art exhibitions, parades, and literary publications that raised money for the cause.
‡ Dickinson’s composition of “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,” F124, is the only extant example that demonstrates the back-and-forth editing process between Emily and Susan Gilbert Dickinson. A close examination of its composition reveals much about the women’s relationship and Dickinson’s artistic principles.
§ Edward “Ned” Dickinson was born June 19, 1861. His birth was emotionally difficult for Sue. Her sister Mattie had lost her first child five days earlier, and Ned was born on the exact date that eleven years earlier Sue’s other sister Mary had died in childbirth. Ned’s crying, teething, and the family’s difficulty in hiring help added to Sue’s strain. Like their inability to settle on a wedding date, Sue and Austin vacillated and waited half a year to name their son. For months he was called “Jackey” for Union Jack, but eventually the couple named their firstborn after Austin’s father. Sue sent a note, in the infant’s voice, asking his grandfather for permission to share the name. Edward gave his answer in a tender response. “I have rec’d your letter, asking me if I am willing that you should have a name like mine—And I say, in this reply, which you can read, as well as you could write the other, that if you will be a good boy, ride in your carriage & not cry, and always mind your father and mother, I will consent to your being called Edward Dickinson; and promise you a Silver Cup to drink from, as soon as you are big enough to hold it in your hands. Your affectionate Grandfather.” [Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Emily Dickinson Face to Face: Unpublished Letters with Notes and Reminiscences (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932), 39; Jay Leyda, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 39.]
¶ I am indebted to the teaching and writing of David Porter, who cites Archibald MacLeish in describing what makes Dickinson’s imagery unique: “‘[Dickinson’s images do not] exist upon the retina. . . . [They can not] be brought into focus by the muscles of the eye.’” [David Porter, Dickinson: The Modern Idiom, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981, 26.]
# Unfortunately, no historical record exists that indicates if Emily joined Emerson in conversation that evening at the Evergreens. It is likely she stayed home. In her essay depicting the cultural life of her home, “Annals of the Evergreens,” Susan Gilbert Dickinson does not say either way. To compound matters, Emerson’s visit occurred in 1857—a year for which not a single Dickinson letter has been recovered. All we have concerning the visit are Sue’s details in Annals, and her memory of Dickinson’s remark about Emerson. Scholar David Porter offered a memorable way of thinking about the significance of that evening. He points out that before Emerson’s Amherst visit, Walt Whitman had sent him a copy of Leaves of Grass. Emerson read the poems, was deeply impressed, and responded to Whitman, declaring, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” [RWE to WW July 21, 1855, Library of Congress.] Porter argues that the evening Emerson spent next door to Emily Dickinson after writing Whitman marks the genesis of modern American poetry, with all its ambiguity, angles, and disjuncture. At that moment, Porter said, all three—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson—“were like sides of a triangle that do not meet.” [David Porter, conversation with the author.]
** Bowles had been coming to Amherst for several years to cover the college commencement season. He had inherited the Springfield Republican from his father, and worked his way up from office boy to printing room and from reporter to editor. He hired Josiah Holland in 1849, first as an assistant editor then promoted him to serve alongside him as co editor.
†† The dating of Dickinson poems is difficult because she did not assign dates to her verse. Dating also is complicated because while scholars can postulate the date Dickinson included a poem in a fascicle, they cannot know when Dickinson initially composed it. Given these caveats, Ralph Franklin believes that before 1862, Dickinson sent Bowles eight poems: Two swimmers wrestled on the spar (F227); “Faith” is a fine invention (F202); Would you like Summer? Taste our’s (F272); Jesus! thy Crucifix (F197); Should you but fail – at Sea (F275); Title divine – is mine! (F194); Through the strait pass of suffering (F187); and Speech – is a prank of Parliament (F193).
‡‡ It was not uncommon for newspapers to reprint poems from other papers or journals like the Atlantic. A poem that appeared in a newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts, easily could have been picked up by another newspaper in Denver or Brooklyn without editors, readers, or the poem’s author knowing it.
§§ The Republican version of the poem changed some of Dickinson’s capital letters to lowercase, converted dashes to commas, and indented several lines.
¶¶ One of many Irish immigrants to settle in Amherst in midcentury, Margaret O’Brien came to work for the Dickinsons in 1856. She stayed for nine years, until Margaret Maher began employment with the family. In her astute study, Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life and Language, Aife Murray argues that Dickinson’s great literary productivity in the 1860s was due in part to having more time to work on her poems. With domestic help from O’Brien and Maher, the poet’s housekeeping responsibilities lessened.
## Newspapers in Dickinson’s time referred to Newbern as one word. Today the city is identified as New Bern, North Carolina.
Six
ARE YOU TOO DEEPLY OCCUPIED TO SAY IF MY VERSE IS ALIVE?
Tuesday, April 15, 1862 2 pm Thermometer 60.0. No Rain. Stat clouds SW2. Winds SE 2. Therm attached to barometer 55.0. Barometer 30. 279. Dry Bulb 59.64. Wet Bulb 51.14. Humidity 51.1. Remarks No frost in ground. Many clouds.
—Ebenezer Snell, The Meteorological Journal Kept at Amherst College
After Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederate States, a group of high-spirited Amherst College boys decided he should be laid to rest in a mock burial. Through means not entirely clear, they obtained an old hearse, dumped an e
ffigy inside, wrangled a white horse from the livery stable, secured oxen and cart for a dirge-playing band, and rounded up classmates to join them in mournful procession. Somehow, they even persuaded one young man to dress as Mrs. Davis, robed in widow’s weeds with an infant in her arms—or so it seemed. The whole assemblage paraded in feigned solemnity with stand-ins for Confederate generals Beauregard, Johnston, and Lee leading the way. They marched past the Dickinson law office, past gawking visitors at the Amherst Hotel, past diners at the local oyster house, and around the scraggly town common. Then they headed toward a grove on the south end of the college near Professor Snell’s house. When oxen, carriages, band, and mourners finally arrived in a thicket of trees, one student jumped on top of the hearse and delivered a full-throated oration for the late departed. A choir sang, the band played, a military salute rang out, and Mrs. Davis—“the bereaved partner of his buzzum,” the boys noted—wailed at just the right time.1
Emily was used to displays of youthful exuberance in her college town, but things were different now. In the last month, the war had taken a terrible turn and no mature person in Amherst was pretending about anything, including the demise of the Confederate president. The Civil War was a crucible through which every American would pass, including Emily. She realized, of course, that life was short and offered no promises. But the present moment with its maelstrom of battles and soldiers’ deaths galvanized her as never before. She already knew she wanted to be distinguished and make her family proud. She also understood that if she wanted something she’d never had before, she would have to do something she’d never done. The time to share her poems with the world was now. The unprecedented step she would take that day triggered a chain of events that would bear fruit later on. The events would impact her own work, and the course of American literature as well. The developments began on a battlefield with a cannon and smoke and a clash of armies. It would not be long before their reverberations reached Emily’s desk.
After their first skirmish on Roanoke Island, where Frazar Stearns, son of the Amherst College president, had sustained a minor wound, the company had advanced to Newbern, North Carolina. They arrived on a miserable day of drizzle and fog, marching twelve miles from the coast in wet uniforms. Awaiting them were Confederate soldiers staked out in a makeshift fort at the brickyard. As thick smoke engulfed them, Major Clark and the Massachusetts 21st led the assault. Aware his men could not adequately see him, Clark jumped atop a cannon and yelled to draw bayonets. He flagged for reinforcements and as he did, he heard the distinctive wail of an approaching Minié ball. He pivoted just as the bullet hit Adjutant Stearns. Frazar slumped. “My God,” he murmured, and fell. Charles Thompson, a former custodian at the college, ran with bandages, lint, and wine, and helped carry the young man to a shed. But neither the black custodian, who had known Frazar since birth, nor the surgeon could save him. I wanted you to know, Thompson later wrote President Stearns, I closed his eyes.*2
After Union forces seized the brickyard, Frederick Sanderson, Frazar’s classmate, searched the battlefield for discarded boards. He gathered up scraps of wood sunk in muddy pools. Then he measured and cut the wood, hammering the boards into a makeshift coffin. Sanderson rowed six miles down the Neuse River to Union gunboats sitting offshore, and for the next eight days, stayed with Frazar’s body for the journey back to New England. When Sanderson arrived in Amherst on March 19, he found President Stearns keening with grief. For the Massachusetts 21st, the battles were only beginning. In the months ahead, they would fight in the second battle at Bull Run, then Antietam, and finally Fredericksburg. One soldier wrote that the company of Amherst Boys—once so eager to join the battle—were now “broken, bruised and sheared.”3
Frazar’s death hit everyone hard. The twenty-one-year-old was considered the crown prince of Amherst, beloved, amiable, and as passionate about music as he was science. People in town especially remembered his enthusiasm for his future. “Sometimes I almost feel as though I could pray to God to let me become a chemist,” he had said.4 With his death, many residents of Amherst felt that everything the town stood for—intelligence, learning, dreams of the young—had been snuffed out. Few were more devastated than Austin Dickinson. Edward had first heard the awful news about Frazar and broke it to his son. That’s when Austin spun into anguish beyond the reach of his father, his wife, and his sister. He kept repeating his father’s words as if in saying them, fate would be altered. His mental state alarmed Emily and she recognized that—for perhaps the first time in her life—she was powerless to reach him. “The World is not the shape it was,” she wrote.5 Like Austin, Emily felt untethered and with little she could do, she sat down and wrote a poem, echoing her father’s words to Austin.
It dont sound so terrible – quite – as it did –
I run it over – “Dead”, Brain – “Dead”.
Put it in Latin – left of my school –
Seems it dont shriek so – under rule.
Turn it, a little – full in the face
A Trouble looks bitterest –
Shift it – just –
Say “When Tomorrow comes this way –
I shall have waded down one Day”.
I suppose it will interrupt me some
Till I get accustomed – but then the Tomb
Like other new Things – shows largest – then –
And smaller, by Habit –
It’s shrewder then
Put the Thought in advance – a Year –
How like “a fit” – then –
Murder – wear!6
Emily knew her heartache stemmed from more than the Battle of Newbern. She was painfully aware—as was her brother—of the price Amherst College men were paying in the war. Austin was thirty-two years old and married with a child, but Amherst graduates in similar circumstances and even decades older had already enlisted for the Union. William Nelson, Class of ’29, was well over fifty and serving as a hospital chaplain. Robert Wilson, Class of ’32, was hunting rebel guerrillas with a regiment in West Virginia. His former classmates were also on the front lines. All Austin had to do was look out his window to realize the price others were paying. From his law office he could see the college flag flying at half staff. By the end of the war, thirty-one Amherst men would have died for the Union. No one knew exactly how many students from the South had perished.7 With no military draft yet in place, Austin was not required to enlist, but the inescapable knowledge of what other men had stepped up to do and he had not—carried weight. Emily knew that. “The Heart with the heaviest freight on – ,” she wrote Samuel Bowles, “Does’nt – always – move – .”8
Emily hoped Bowles might be able to help. Although she knew Sam was often uncomfortable in emotional moments, there was no one who could speak more candidly to her brother. Shortly after hearing the news about Frazar, Austin asked to see Sam, but Bowles could not get away. Seeing his disappointment, Emily intervened. She rarely asked an outsider for help with Dickinson family matters, but she was deeply concerned. “Austin is chilled – by Frazer’s murder,” she had written Bowles. “He says – his Brain keeps saying over ‘Frazer is killed’ – ‘Frazer is killed,’ just as Father told it – to Him. Two or three words of lead – that dropped so deep, they keep weighing – Tell Austin – how to get over them!”† 9 But Sam Bowles could not help. Frazar’s death had shaken him as well. Since the war began, he frequently stayed in his newspaper office unable to move. Consumed with dispatches, he stared at the telegraph, and once he was home, sat alone in front of the fire, eating grapes and drinking brandy.10 The long hours brought Bowles to the breaking point.11 Dr. Holland, who had been on the lecture circuit, returned to the Republican to temporarily relieve him.12 But even with respite from work, Bowles did not improve. Some feared his energy and vitality had been lost forever. “I am unhorsed, literally and figuratively,” he admitted.13 The day he read the words “Stearns, Frazar. Killed,” Bowles took the newspaper and threw it away. “The news from
Newbern took away all the remaining life,” he told Austin and Sue. “I did not care for victories—for anything.” Later Bowles apologized to Austin for not being able to rally when needed. “Some of the reasons for my incapacity, & consequent disappointment to you, you know because I have told you.—I have many cares & small power.”14 Samuel Bowles was in emotional tumult and he knew it. “I am going through a ‘crisis,’” he said. “I don’t know whether it is religious, mental, or physical, but I shall be better or worse when I get through. Whatever it is, it is awful night-mareish.”15
Emily never used the word “nightmare,” but she was in crisis too. She had been seized with anxiety since the previous autumn. Few people in Amherst would forget September 20, 1861, the day the Amherst Boys—students, graduates, and townsmen—shipped off to camp. One hundred men marched past Emily’s window followed by a long line of neighbors cheering and waving flags—the largest crowd ever assembled in town, one person said—a “sea of human beings.” As the official ceremony commenced at the train depot down the hill from the Dickinsons’ home, Emily watched. A locomotive sat heaving and sputtering, poised to take the company on the first leg of its journey. Edward Dickinson, as always, presented remarks on behalf of the town. He urged the young men to seek valor, and warned them of camp vices. A local clergyman was less scolding, offering prayers and comfort. Then the train whistle blew and loved ones embraced. A ladies’ chorus sang “The Star Spangled Banner,” with townspeople joining in the final verse. The last words the Amherst Boys heard as they pulled out of the station were “land of the free and the home of the brave.” For nearly everyone, patriotic fervor was an attempt to keep dread at bay. They hardly wanted to admit fear to themselves let alone one another. Yet they knew what was coming. First came the death of a town blacksmith, next one of Mrs. Adams’s boys, then another Adams son, and now Frazar at Newbern.16 “I had a terror – since September – ,” Emily wrote. “I could tell to none – and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground – because I am afraid.”17
These Fevered Days Page 13