My Wars Are Laid Away in Books

by Alfred Habegger

  But Mrs. Dickinson’s times: EdD to END, 1-16-1839, END to EdD, Tuesday [2-20-1838], EdD to END, 3-18-, 1-9-1838, H.

  Since the First Church: Hist 81; EdD to END, 4-1-, 2-22-1838, H.

  racing to the post office: END to EdD, Friday [1-12-1838], H.

  But in 1838 it looks: EdD to END, 1-5-, 4-1-1838, EDC to WAD, 4-21-1842, H.

  The same picture: END to EdD, 2-16-, Tuesday [3-20-], Sunday [1-7-], Sunday [1-21-1838], H.

  In her maturity: Let 928; Sewall 322–23; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (New York: Francis, 1859) 104, A (book 3, ll. 854–55).

  Before Emily’s adolescence: Let 622, 920 (PF51, corrected against ED880 A).

  “I always ran Home”: Let 517–18.

  “haunted me when”: Let 663. See 2 Samuel 18. McIntosh 97–110 has a good discussion of ED’s Moses poems.

  Yet, along with the sympathy: First #1, 187; Let 756.

  “There’s none can know”: Watts and Select 2:298; Leyda 1:51. On ED and Watts, see especially England.

  following the regular Sunday morning meeting: Hist 76.

  On January 7, 1838: END to EdD, Sun [1-7-1838], H; ED to MW, n.d., MS Am 1118.10 (8), H (passage omitted from L591); Let 835. Leyda 1:39–40 was the first to link END’s letter to ED’s memory. See also Let 524–25.

  Chapter 7

  West Street: James Avery Smith, “A Record of the Streets . . . of Amherst” (1991), J. In 1851 ED thought of it as West Street (Let 125). The name was Pleasant Street by the time the 1869 Amherst directory was published.

  It was in January: Leyda 1:58; Let 411; Capsule 93; Barbara N. Parker, “The Dickinson Portraits by Otis A. Bullard, Harvard Library Bulletin 6 (winter 1952) 133–37. The flowers in ED’s hand and book may be moss roses (Capsule 4).

  Orthodox in doctrine: Aaron Merrick Colton, The Old Meeting House (New York: Worthington, 1890) 287–88, 80. For a detailed obituary endorsed by Colton’s family (Mary C. Bassett to C. C. Carpenter, 5-12-1895, Andover Alumni), see SR 5-1-1895.

  In early 1840: Andover 167, 179, 185; Colton, “Boldness in the Preacher,” American Biblical Repository, Ser. 2, vol. 1 (April 1839) 342.

  Then, the Reverend Josiah: Hist 71–72.

  Edward probably made: First #4, 4.

  The section from “Tuesday, June” to “ran away the first night” relies on Hist 72–73.

  This was the man: Let 58, 120; First #1, 8-19-1852.

  “Oh thou who sittest”: Let 763.

  Along with style: Colton, “Boldness,” 343–44; [Colton], In Memoriam. Dea. Walter Colton, Georgia, Vermont (n.p.: for the family, by A. M. and G. Q. Colton [ca. 1863]) 24 (copy at CL); Jane Donahue Eberwein, “Ministerial Interviews and Fathers in Faith,” EDJ 9.2 (2000) 10–11; Let 460, 631. ED first approached the idea in 1864, with Sue: “That is why I prefer the Power – for Power is Glory, when it likes, and Dominion, too” (Let 432). On “the Glory,” see Gary Lee Stonum, The Dickinson Sublime (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990) 59ff.

  In spring 1839: Hampshire Co. RD 85:167; Home 63; E.D.–House 31 Pleasant St., J. See also E.D.–Leyda, Jay, J; Bigelow, Orvis F.–Deeds, J.

  In making this purchase: Hampshire Co. RD 85:168, 87:232–33, 166:584, 560; EdD to JN, 3-14-1839, J; Hampden Co. Probate Court, Estate of JN, Case 8347, will; Conveyance, EdD to WAD, 4-5-1864, B (mention of sale to Newman estate). As evidence of EdD’s reputation for probity, when Nathan settled in MI in 1841 he left a sweeping power of attorney in EdD’s hands, in spite of conflicts of interest (Hampshire Co. RD 95:116).

  Judging from a remark: Loring to EdD, 3-20-1840, H; Cooke 2:14; Let 919.

  As befitted a rising: EdD to ED, 6-4-1844, H; Leyda 1:lv; Let 16; Smith 742; EDC to WAD, 4-21-1842, H; Let 3, 7.

  footnote 1: Isaac G. Cutler, “List of Women Delivered,” J; Let 561; MDB to Ned Dickinson, n.d., Bianchi Coll.

  “Jumping” was how: Gillett 9, 41, 49.

  “How I wish you were”: Let 320. It isn’t likely ED was thinking of her year at Mount Holyoke, when she and Jane, a Senior, roomed in the same large building.

  But it never quite became: Hampshire Co. RD 98:421, 304.

  In fall 1841: Journal of the MA Senate (1842), MA State Lib.

  The other senator: Mark Hopkins, An Address, Delivered at the Dedication of Williston Seminary . . . December 1, 1841 (Northampton: Butler, 1841); Williston catalog for 1841–42, Williston Northampton School Lib; “Amherst Academy,” Hampshire Gazette 11-9-1841; EdD to WAD, 4-14-1842, H. Williston’s spring term ran from 2-24-1842 to 5-11-1842. Ordinarily, pupils were not to enroll for less than a term. Still, Johnson notwithstanding (Let 8), it isn’t known whether WAD returned for summer term (5-26-1842 to 8-10-1842). All we can infer from his inclusion in the first catalog is that he attended for at least part of the year. His name also appears in the fall 1844 and 1844–45 catalogs.

  Unlike Amherst Academy: Constitution of Williston Seminary (Northampton: Metcalf, 1856) 6–8, 15; JL to Timothy Lyman, 2-13-1844, Lyman Papers, box 1; Carp 1:149; EH Jr. to Orra White Hitchcock, 5-8-1844, Edward and Orra White Hitchcock Papers 25:8, A; Albert Montague to Phila Montague, 9-5-1842, Williston Northampton School Lib.

  Austin roomed in the: Conant 56; EdD to WAD (care of Luther Clapp), 4-14-1842, H.

  The letter concluded with: EdD to WAD, 4-14-1842, H; Smith 395-96; EdD to ED, 5-24-1844, H.

  All of the other letters: EDC to WAD, 5-10-1842, END to WAD, Tuesday [5-3?-1842], H.

  footnote 2: School report on WAD, H.

  footnote 3: EDC to WAD, 4-21-, 5-10-1842, H; EdD to JN, 9-22-1841, J; DWVF to HHJ (tr), Monday [9-5-1842], HHJ Papers 2:1.

  Making a Hurrah with Pen and Ink: All quotations in this section are from Let 3–7, except as noted.

  footnote 4: EDC to WAD, 4-21-1842, H.

  signed as a legal witness: Lapeer Co., MI, RD E:509.

  Austin and Lavinia also: Hampshire Co. RD 98:313; Ottawa Co., MI, RD E:537.

  vocabulary of law and business: William Howard, “Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Vocabulary,” PMLA 72 (March 1957) 233.

  Chapter 8

  By today’s standards: Amh Acad 100; Leyda’s notes of minutes of trustees of Amherst Academy, 9-6-1838, MTB Papers, box 104 [the minutes, at one time in the Hitchcock Memorial Room, Amherst College, have eluded me]; Catalogue of the Trustees, Instructors, and Students of Amherst Academy. For the Year Ending July 1841 (Amherst: Adams, 1841) 11, J. This and catalogs for years ending July 1842, August 1843, and August 1847, all at J, are cited without further notice.

  Emily was fortunate: Amh Acad 74–75, 96; Catalogue of Amherst Female Seminary (Amherst: Adams, 1835), J; Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (New York: Haskell House, 1969), 84–85. Since the report dates from 1835, the girls could not have come from Amherst Academy, as assumed by Sewall 347.

  Latin was taught: EH Jr, Notebook “B+,” 43–46, Doc Hitch 7:26; Let 7.

  The catalog for 1840–41: J. S. Everett’s tuition receipt for term ending 11-3-1841, H (the term began 8-18 [Hampshire Gazette 7-20-1841]); Let 7; “Root” 11. ED’s long illness and many absences from September 1845 to December 1846 may have ended Latin for her. When Vin resumed the language in 1848–1849 (catalog for that year, J), she got as far as Virgil (JL to Laura Baker, 3-30-1857, Lyman Papers 2:26).

  A surviving school edition: J. G. Cooper, ed., Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera, or the Works of Virgil (New York: White, 1838) 615, flyleaf, A; Grace E. Perkinson, Latin Scholars at the Academy: A Monograph on an Emily Dickinson Textbook (Deer Isle, Me.: Skyefield Press, 1986); Sweetser 113; Bliss 61; “Root” 15, 11; Let 17; William Cowper, The Task, 2:1. The catalogs that put ED in Classical (1841–1842, 1842–1843) have Abby in English, while that for 1846–1847 reverses their curricular placements. There are no catalogs for 1845, the year ED and Abby studied closely together.

  Lois A. Cuddy: “The Latin Imprint on Emily Dickinson’s Poetry: Theory and Practice,” American Literature 50 (March 1978) 75, 82.

  Fr1365: Text from The Poems of Emil
y Dickinson: Reading Edition, R. W. Franklin, ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

  Emily probably studied: Let 7, 45; “Root” 11–12, 32. The oratory text was Ebenezer Porter’s The Rhetorical Reader, Consisting of Instructions for Regulating the Voice, which employed certain notations to guide speakers. An acute accent placed over an emphasized word stood for a “rising inflection”; a grave accent, for a “falling” one. Edith Perry Stamm Wylder argued in The Last Face: Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971) that ED’s dashes and dashlike marks derived from these accents. One reason the argument is unconvincing is that accents placed above words cannot be equated with dashes placed after them. At the time, educated Americans often used dashes instead of standard punctuation. ED carried this widespread custom to an idiosyncratic extreme.

  One of the school’s: George Howland, Practical Hints for the Teachers of Public Schools (New York: Appleton, 1898) 84; Hiroko Uno, “Geology in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry,” Memoirs of Faculty of Education, Shiga University 48:2 (1998) 83–92.

  Hitchcock’s great point: Even though Hitchcock was not on the Amherst Academy faculty, he forms the centerpiece of Sewall’s discussion of ED’s schooling (342–57); see also Jones 311–13. On science texts, see Lowenberg; on the impact of science, Hiroko Uno’s “Geology” and “Optical Instruments and ‘Compound Vision’ in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry,” Studies in English Literature (Japan) 64:2 (January 1988) 227–43.

  Virtually all academy textbooks: Jones 304, 308; Mary H. Jones to Emma Willard, 9-18-1843, 6-16-1848, Willard Papers.

  Edward on prudential committee: Amh Acad 98.

  During Emily’s first three years: EH Jr, Notebook “B+,” 37, Doc Hitch 7:26; Harriet W. Fowler to Eliza W. Jones, 12-27-[1841], FF Papers, box 8. Here and below, teachers are identified primarily from annual catalogs and notices in Hampshire Gazette 8-26-, 11-18-1840; 2-17-, 7-20-, 11-9-1841; 4-5-, 7-26-, 11-8-1842.

  “distinguished reputation”: Hampshire Gazette 2-17-1841.

  Jennette P. Dickinson: Desc 469.

  Clearly, the dominant: Smith 409; Andover 76. Hunt’s husband, pastor of Amherst’s small North Church, died in 1837.

  Hunt’s career during Emily’s: Hampshire Gazette 7-27-1841 (cf. Amh Acad 104); EH Jr, Notebook “B+,” 37, Doc Hitch 7:26; Cooke 36-37; DWVF to HHJ, 10-23-1842, 5-[8]-1843 (tr), HHJ Papers 2:1; Let 17.

  With Hunt’s departure: Amh Acad 105.

  Elizabeth C. Adams: Lis [Elizabeth B. Tyler] to EEF, Sunday, Nov. 1843, EFF Papers, box 1; Hampshire Gazette 2-13-, 8-20-1844. Adams is “Betsey” (b. 1810) in Vital Records of Conway (Boston: NEHGS, 1943) 9, and Manual of the Congregational Church Conway Mass (Springfield, Mass.: 1870) 12. She was forty in the 1850 federal census for Conway, MA, family 309. In Syracuse, she and her mother probably resided with brother Elisha Clark Adams (“Census of Onondaga County for 1840,” Newton E. King, comp., Onondaga County Historical Society, Syracuse, New York). Early Records of the First Presbyterian Church of Syracuse, A. J. Northrup, ed. (Syracuse: Genealogical Society of Central New York, 1902) 30, lists as a member “Elizabeth Adams, July 5 [1840], by letter from Congregational Church, Conway, Mass.” Adams’s teaching career before moving back to Massachusetts is documented by clippings from 1840 to 1842 in the Syracuse Academy file, Onondaga County Historical Society.

  Jeremiah Taylor: FHB to LMB, 11-13-1844, Jeremiah Taylor to LMB, 4-2-1844, Bolt 5:4.

  Lyman Coleman: Kellogg 6; Lyman Coleman, Farewell Sermon (Belchertown, Mass.: 1832), Stone House Museum, Belchertown; Lyman Coleman to Samuel Miller, Feb. 1844, Samuel Miller Papers, box 5, Princeton University Special Collections. See also DAB 2:293-94; Lyman Coleman, Genealogy of the Lyman Family (Albany: Munsell, 1872) 344–45; Amh Rec 3-29-1882.

  “to dispense with a female”: Amh Acad 107.

  “assisted by a young Lady”: HFE 3-24-1845.

  Still, Emily was not inclined: “Root” 11; Let 16.

  But Coleman was too distracted: Amherst College catalogs for 1844–1845, 1845–1846, A; Amh Acad 108; JL to Timothy Lyman, 3-12-1846, Lyman Papers, box 1. Rumored to be joining David Pratt’s Edgehill School in Princeton, Coleman instead became professor of German at the College of New Jersey 1847–1849. See Leyda 1:106; John Frelinghuysen Hageman, History of Princeton (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1879) 2:221–23, 285.

  Amherst’s academy had never: Bill Book, Class Graduating 1846, Schaffer Library, Union College; HFE 4-17-1846; “Root” 21.

  footnote 2: Z59 Papers of Jefferson College, 20:155, Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History.

  Three striking facts: First six annual catalogs of Pittsfield Young Ladies’ Institute, pub. 1842–1847, Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield; Jeremiah Taylor to LMB, 11-9-1844, Bolt 5:4 (Sarah Ferry’s transfer); “Root” 17; Let 30; Springfield directory for 1846, 89, MA State Lib. Bliss (62) has Abby Wood attending school in Pittsfield, but her name doesn’t appear in the first six Institute catalogs. Johnson says Harriet and Sarah attended “a school for girls in Pittsfield” (Let 26), but the institute’s early catalogs don’t record Harriet, and the Sarah A. Tracy in the first two catalogs was someone else. See EDE (Tice) 291.

  The Dickinsons’ real and imaginary: “Root” 16, 17.

  longest forced absence: “Root” 14, 17, 22; Let 36; HFE 4-17-, 11-12-1846.

  Adams was still preceptress: Charles S. Pease, History of Conway (Springfield, Mass.: Springfield Printing and Binding Co., 1917) 278; HFE 2-11-1847 (term began March 3); Let 45; Smith 795.

  When Jesse Andrews left: “Root” 22. Humphrey was appointed principal between the 4-17-1846 HFE notice and Olivia Coleman’s letter calling him “the great man of the Academy” (to EFF, 6-[23-1846], EFF Papers, box 3, gen. corr. n.d.).

  Although she had said this: “Root” 20; Let 45; EdD to Alfred Norcross, 2-19-1847, J; Let 60.

  Dickinson and Humphrey shared: Heman Humphrey, certificate of withdrawal for Leonard Humphrey, 8-16-1843, ED Collection–Vertical File–Humphrey, Leonard, J; “Root” 26. Humphrey’s fraternity, to which WAD belonged, wore mourning for thirty days (Memorial of Leonard Humphrey, 1-14-1851, Ibid, J). Henry Boynton Smith lamented him as “so full of life and thought and promise . . . the foremost man among the late graduates” (Elizabeth L. Smith, ed., Henry Boynton Smith. His Life and Work [New York: Armstrong, 1881] 162).

  “Oh! I do love”: Let 38, 404.

  “it is my nature”: “Root” 20.

  Although we will always: “Root” 11, 21; Let 17, 46.

  The other teacher who recognized: Daniel T. Fiske to MLT, 2-6-1894, ED Todd 346, A (published in Brocades 253); “Root” 32; Let 928 (PF115, punctuated as in ED877 A).

  footnote 3: Congregational Year-Book (1904) 24.

  One reason her frailty: “A Lecture on Physical Education,” ca. 1841, Daniel T. Fiske Papers, Franklin Trask Lib., Andover Newton Theological School.

  “already gasping”: Let 16 [corrected against fMS Am 1118.4 (L55), H].

  Herbarium: In dealing with this collection (H), I have had to rely on Edward L. Davis’s species list as corrected by Ray Angelo (H), photos of the pages (H), and a brief inspection of the cover and p. 1 (which seems to have erasures). The herbarium has not been thoroughly studied.

  Although it isn’t known: EdD to END, 6-7-1829, H; Let 7; “Root” 10–11.

  The textbook in use: Academy catalogs for years ending July 1841, July 1842, August 1843; Emanuel D. Rudolph, “Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793–1884) and the Spread of Botany in Nineteenth Century America,” American Journal of Botany 71(8) (1984) 1162; Ruth Galpin, “Mrs. Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps” (1914), Emma Willard School Lib; HFE 3-24-1845.

  The author of several: Almira H. Lincoln Phelps, Familiar Lectures on Botany (New York: Huntington & Savage, 1845) 14, 13; Amos Eaton, Manual of Botany, for North America (Albany: Steele, 1836) 8.

  Emily followed Eaton’s advice: ED’s herbarium, 20, 26, 23, 33, 40, 46, 30, H.

  An early poem makes fun: �
�Mrs. Phelps continued for pedagogical reasons to use the formula of introducing plant classification using the Linnaean system, long after others had abandoned it” (Rudolph, “Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps,” 1164).

  One aspect of: Let 567, 928–29, 552–53; ED’s herbarium, 17, 19, H; Lawrence Newcomb, Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977). A second and unnamed fimbriata (?) is on 27.

  In later years: Let 588 (ED had earlier given TWH “a Daphne odora,” 519), 829, 568 (also 510), 740; TWH, “The Procession of the Flowers,” Atlantic Monthly 10 (Dec. 1862) 655; Allen 70. See also Paula Bennett, Emily Dickinson: Woman Poet (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990).

  footnote 4: Robert L. Gonsor, “Nature, Science and Emily Dickinson” (M.A. thesis, University of Massachusetts–Amherst, 1961) 36.

  “When Flowers annually died”: Let 573.

  footnote 5: Let 574.

  Chances are: Let 36; Reid 506; Let (1894) 126–27. In spring 1848, ED gathered flowers on restorative walks in Amherst and South Hadley (“Root” 25). Some specimens may date from then.

  Since many wild plants: Let (1894) 126–27; Allen 71; Edward Hitchcock, Catalogue of Plants . . . in the Vicinity of Amherst College (Amherst: Adams, 1829); ED’s herbarium, 16, 25, 10, 20, 61, H. For one of the few treatments of ED’s poetic use of a given species (fringed gentian), see Mary Loeffelholz, “Corollas of Autumn: Reading Franklin’s Dickinson,” EDJ 8.2 (1999) 59–69.

  “the love of native”: Phelps, Familiar Lectures, 31.

  As for the fear: Let 415; FF 27.

  footnote 7: Let 281.

  Having a taste: “Root” 9; Let 17; “Root” 21.

  What Emily had to say: “Root” 11.

  But there were times: “Root” 8; Let 28.

  In poetry, Emily’s early: Let 37, 39; “Root” 21, 15.

  footnote 8: Let 35; Florence Vane, “Are We Almost There? a Touching Ballad” (Boston: Ditson, 1845), BPL.

  The girl’s trip-wire: Let (1894) 127–28; Amherst College catalogs for 1842–1843, 1843–1844, 1844–1845; obituaries of Spofford ’40, Alumni/ae Biographical Files, A.