My Wars Are Laid Away in Books

by Alfred Habegger

  “If it had no pencil”: It isn’t clear why Dickinson scholars assume this poem, once owned by the Bowles family, was sent to SB. The ms. does not identify him as the recipient, there are no known poems or letters from ED calling him “sweet,” and once, when she sent him a stanza that originally had this endearment, she changed it to “sir” (Fr635B). For David Higgins, convinced SB was Master, Fr184 was the clinching evidence (Higgins 118).

  Since a few poems sent to Sue were turned over to the Bowleses, she is another possible recipient. Once, she sent WAD a “pencil to ‘keep until I see you,’” an act he interpreted as a hint he had not kept up his end of the correspondence. WAD to Sue (draft), 12-11-1850, H.

  In spite of this persistence: SB Let #5.1 [2-4-1859]; FF 149. #5.1 is dated by Edward Hitchcock’s recovery from a nearly fatal illness (HFE 1-28-, 2-4-1859), a Harvest Club meeting concerning fruit (SR 2-12-1859), and a February 3 performance by Mrs. Sinclair (SR 2-1,4-1859).

  Friendship entered a new: MVR-Deaths 129:240; SB Let #1.1, 6-1-[1859]; Let 351–52, 416. L205, misdated April 1859 by Johnson and Leyda, alludes to Mary’s stillbirth in May and summer trip to Amherst (Him 2). The gems, heavy hearts, and apology for writing often place it soon after L189 and L193. The probable date: September–October 1859.

  The stillbirth had been: Mer 1:171; Let 334. The visit has been dated June or July 1859 (Him 2; Var 40). Another possibility is late August. Mary Bowles to Mary Clemmer Ames [week of August 21, 1859], Ames Papers, speaks of a packed trunk and a reluctance to leave home. The letter can be dated by the expected publication “in Saturday’s paper” of Ames’s “Mamie and the Morning Glories” (SR 8-27-1859). If the trip this letter anticipated was the one that brought Mary to Amherst, the resulting series of letters from ED, starting with L189, began about the end of August.

  Comparing a yellow and purple: Let 334, 601.

  footnote 8: Let (1894) 212.

  Fr60A: Franklin’s date, “about early 1859,” isn’t consistent with his view that ED had not yet met Mary. The paper (187 × 122 mm, no watermark or boss, rules not quite 8 mm apart) is identical to that of L205 [Sept.–Oct. 1859]. The two sheets’ irregularly spaced rules perfectly match. Given the ease with which, in the pen-lining process, the long and delicate pen points could be bent (whether separate or in a “comb”), this congruence suggests the sheets were inked at the same time and belonged to the same batch of purchased stationery.

  The first communication: Him 8; Let 338 (corrected against ED646 A). The pamphlet’s publication was announced in SR 8-13-1859. ED’s mention of the second haying and first frost (“Summer stopped”) suggests a date soon after 8-17, when it froze in Northampton (SR 8-18,22-1859). Ordinarily, Springfield had its first frost a month later (SR 10-23-1861). SB must have called during Commencement (SR 8-11,12-1859).

  “We want to see you”: Let 339.

  After 1860, we have only one: Let 386, 737.

  A complicating element: Mer 1:317, 2:149, 390–93. In 1863 SB recommended a Miss Nellie Loomis for a Treasury Department clerkship (SB to Charles Sumner, 4-25-1863, Sumner Papers). He was an early proponent of coeducation at Amherst College (Mer 2:80). His biographer thought his “relation to his daughters partook of the motherly quality” (Mer 2:329). MW agreed (letter to EBW, 12-12-1867, WDW Papers, box 13).

  footnote 9: Mer 2:153; Lucia Runkle to SB, 4-5-[1874?], SB Papers 2:27. On Runkle, see SR 1-19-1902, p. 5.

  On women’s issues: Hampden Co. RD 157:391; “Women in Literature,” SR 8-7-1858; “The Woman Question,” 65, JGH Papers, box 1. Sewall, disregarding Holland’s part ownership and the paper’s division of labor (laid out in SR 1-22-1859), called it a “one-man daily” run by someone who was “poor at delegating responsibility” (466, 469). Blaming SB for “When Should We Write” (489–90, 742) and the newspaper’s taste in poetry, he devised a tragic sequence in which the editor had a harmful effect on an aspiring poet who was “deeply in love with him” (473) and needed his help to fulfill “a consuming passion: the publication of her poems” (475).

  Theodora Ward, the Hollands’ granddaughter, doubted there was a “break” in ED’s friendship with them [Let (Holl) 68]. Four poems (Fr495A, Fr795A, Fr796A, Fr807B) went to them in 1862 and 1864. The important L269 has been variously dated 1859, 1861, and 1862 (Let (Holl) 55–56, Let (1894) 175, Let 413).

  Unlike Holland: JGH to SB, 4-2-1860, SB Papers 1:3; Mer 1:63–64; “When Should We Write,” SR 7-7-1860; Obituary, New Bedford Morning Mercury 2-20-1897. For a few of Cooke’s contributions, see SR 3-7-1851, 8-25-1855, 8-21-1858, 12-3-1859. She was an “Editor” in the 1860 federal census (Springfield, dwelling 2428, page dated 7-27-1860) and the 1865 state census (Springfield, ward 3, dwelling 237). “Fidelia” in all official records, she usually signed as F.H.C. or Mrs. F. H. Cooke. Two decades after her departure from Springfield, George S. Merriam remembered her as “Frances” (Mer 1:388)—an error perpetuated in Him 22 and Var 239.

  footnote 10: See Susan Howe, The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1993); Werner; EDE (Hart) 93–95. For vigorous questionings of the manuscript/print theory, see Shira Wolosky, “Emily Dickinson’s Manuscript Body: History/Textuality/Gender,” EDJ 8.2 (1999) 87–99; Mitchell, chap. 7.

  “Enclosed in this was”: F.H.C. to SB, verso of ED796 A.

  The most prolific: Ames, “Mamie and the Morning Glories,” SR, 8-27-1859; Let 357, 377. ED’s phrase for the butterfly, “a vest like a Turk,” points to the mourning cloak, Nymphalis antiopa, common in Amherst. Ames contributed thirty racy New York letters to SR from January to mid-July 1859, quitting when she broke into the top-paying New York Ledger (Westfield News Letter 6-22-1859). Her true metier was not poetry but essayistic journalism. On her debt to SB, see Edmund Hudson, An American Woman’s Life and Work: A Memorial of Mary Clemmer (Boston: Ticknor, 1886) 67, 97–99.

  footnote 11: SB Let #40 [12-13-1863], dated by the 12-16-1863 wedding of Hannah Schermerhorn, Mary Bowles’s sister.

  Dickinson’s copy of: Aurora Leigh (New York: Francis, 1859) A; Imagery 79; SR 11-3-1869. My source in quoting Aurora Leigh is the 1996 Norton Critical Edition.

  Once, in 1851: Let 147. CL has an anonymous twelve-page tract, “She Hath Done What She Could” (no pub., n.d.). Another, “‘She Hath Done What She Could,’ or the Duty and Responsibility of Woman (Raleigh: Galles, 1847), is at SNF.p-Box 3, Rare Books & Manuscripts, NYPL.

  The main reason: Aurora Leigh (1859) 10, 15, A (marks). ED’s later references to the poem focus on Marian Erle’s confinement: Jack L. Capps, Emily Dickinson’s Reading 1836–1886 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966) 167–68.

  Though the poem credits: SR 8-20-1859; Aurora Leigh (New York: Francis, 1857) 275–76, EDR 2.2.21. This, Sue’s copy, has many more marks than ED’s. Leyda’s handy list of ED’s marked passages, all in the poem’s first half, is in MTB Papers 82:190.

  For anyone growing up: Let 345, corrected against FN/ED 393. Flynt’s diary confirms the Norcrosses were in western Massachusetts 10-11-1859: “Loring Nor+ & Daughters called—all returned to Boston this p.m.” (Leyda’s notes, MTB Papers, box 104).

  After making this warily hedged: Let 345, corrected against FN/ED 393; M.C.A. [Ames], “Letters from New York,” SR 1-15-1859; theatre billings in Boston Daily Evening Traveller and Boston Daily Advertiser; Leota S. Driver, Fanny Kemble (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 173–74. L199 was dated January 1859 in Let (1894) 229. Johnson narrowed the date to ca. 1-4-1859 on the basis of ED’s mention of snow. But Kemble didn’t read in Boston that winter. The correct date may be 12-29-1859, a snowy day (SR 1-2-1860).

  L199 goes against the older view that ED “accepts and works within the conditions of a patriarchal universe” (Adalaide Morris, “‘The Love of Thee – a Prism Be,’ Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson, Suzanne Juhasz, ed. [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983] 109). Baym, more discerning, also gave undue emphasis to ED’s childish side.

&nbs
p; footnote 12: “Annals”; ED’s obituary, SR 5-18-1886; SB to Mary Clemmer Ames, 12-14-1863, Ames Papers.

  It is not the case: Dandurand; Dobson 128–30.

  Miss Gilbert’s Career: JGH, Miss Gilbert’s Career: An American Story (New York: Scribners, 1860) 87, 388–89, 378, 466. Sue’s presentation copy is unmarked (EDR 1.4.17).

  On October 10: SR 9-8,29-, 10-10,13-1860; Mer 1:317. On 12-13-1860, Flynt (diary) “Completed ‘Miss Gilbert’s Career,’ liked it exceedingly” (MTB’s notes, MTB Papers 101:560). The sermonizing and weak characterization of hero and heroine were criticized in Atlantic Monthly 7 (Jan. 1861) 125–26.

  bequeathed two books: They were William Patten, Memoirs of Mrs. Ruth Patten, of Hartford (Hartford: Canfield, 1834), and Hannah More’s much reprinted Strictures on Education. SVN called Patten “a venerable old lady whom I dearly loved in my schooldays” and described More’s book as “a valuable work [ED] would no doubt appreciate” (Copy of SVN’s will, Norcross Estate folder, M). These bequests are missing from the will as probated.

  “Dear Mr Bowles”: Let 366, corrected against ms., Y-BRBL. SR 8-7-1860 puts SB in Amherst on Sunday, 8-5-1860. Flynt’s diary (Leyda 2:17) puts him there Wednesday, 10-3-1860. He was back the next Wednesday for the district’s Republican Convention (SR 10-11-1860). Soon after, there was a three-week public lecture series on Tuesday and Friday on “Great Representative Women” (SR and HFE, both 10-19-1860). If L223 was written in October, these lectures may have been a factor in the quarrel.

  Chapter 17

  Lavinia Norcross was known: Leyda 2:8; Let 361–62.

  footnote 1: FN/ED 393, 399, 414, 434, 455, 465, 483. “Louisa” appears in the following legal documents: 1862 and 1863 petitions (Suffolk Co. Probate, #43154 [LNN’s will], #44460 [Loring’s Papers of Administration]); 1863 deed (Norfolk Co. RD 316:114); 1888 will (copy at Concord Free Public Lib.); 1888 mortgage (Middlesex Co. RD 1879:563-65). The 1880 census has “Louisa” (Middlesex Co., Concord, dwelling 331), as do the records of the Concord Saturday Club and a list of participants in the 1879 Concord School of Philosophy (Concord Free Public Lib.). Ellen Emerson used “Louisa” in writing Edith Forbes, 1-18-1883, Emerson (checked against holograph in possession of Roger L. Gregg). She was sometimes called Louise but that was not the usual form.

  The effort to absorb: Let 368; Matt. 10:29.

  Two years later: MVR-Deaths 156:226; Leyda’s notes of Flynt’s diary, 5-5-1862, MTB Papers, box 104; ED to Joel W. Norcross, [early May 1862], bMS Am 1118.7, H; Polly Longsworth, “‘Upon Concluded Lives’”: New Letters of Emily Dickinson,” EDIS Bull 7.1 (May/June 1995) 2–4. Lamira Jones Norcross died 5–4–1862.

  The sinister word: Let 376, 407. “They’re so happy” may refer to Eliza Coleman Dudley, married 6-6-1861 and consumptive.

  When Loring died: Let 420–22; Fr528. Punctuation of L278 as in FN/ED 430.

  footnote 2: FN/ED 434.

  Lavinia had placed: Suffolk Co. Probate, #43154, #44460; Suffolk Co. RD, 1850 plan of Chester Square, book 615, 818:246, 829:114–15; Essex Co. RD 964:52, 985:47. A Medway property that LNN acquired in 1855 for $6,000 was sold by Louisa in June 1863 for $5,000 (Norfolk Co. RD 234:205, 316:113-15).

  The truly fearful: HFE 1-9-1852, SR 5-17-1858; Fr60; Let 412, 397; Let (1894) 229.

  Of all the Homestead’s guests: “Country Girl” 82–83.

  Yet the orphaned: Let 406–407, 424–25, 407 (corrected against FN/ED 416). L264 and L267 probably date from 1863, not 1862. Since Vin was home in early summer 1862 (Let 410), ED did not require her cousins for that year’s commencement. In 1863, however, Vin was gone by late May (424). Other details pointing to 1863 are the sweetpeas (411, 427) and the advice of a Boston doctor (411, 425). “My double flower, that . . . comes up when Emily seeks it most” (408) refers to both cousins; but in 1862 only Louisa came (410). On the annual Dickinson reception, see SR 7-10-1873.

  That all three: Let 368; Boston directory for 1860–1861; Var 1555; L.N. [Louisa Norcross], “Housework Defended,” Woman’s Journal 35 (3-26-1904) 98; Gary Scharnhorst, “A Glimpse of Dickinson at Work,” American Literature 57 (Oct. 1985) 483–85. For a thirdhand and thus less credible report, see Martha Ackmann, “‘I’m Glad I Finally Surfaced’: A Norcross Descendent [sic] Remembers Emily Dickinson,” EDJ 5.2 (1996) 123.

  What kind of oral: Mary J. Reid, “Julia C. R. Dorr and Some of Her Poet Contemporaries,” Midland Monthly 3 (June 1895) 506; Reid to MLT, 12–5–1894, Todd 465 A; Mary Loeffelholz, “Prospects for the Study of Emily Dickinson,” Resources for American Literary Study 25.1 (1999) 6.

  A common past: Let 421 (cf. 410), 376 (corrected against FN/ED 406); [Julia Ward Howe], “George Sand,” Atlantic Monthly 8 (Nov. 1861) 521–22; First Parish of Concord, Report for year ending April 1888, Concord Free Public Lib. Vaill’s old-fashioned style is evident in his A Sermon Delivered at Palmer (Springfield, Mass.: Bowles, 1861).

  As for religion: Examining Committee Records, vol. 3, Nov. 1859, Bowd St Ch; Manual of the First Evangelical Congregational Church in Cambridgeport (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1870) 49–62. With mergers and dwindling membership, the latter society is now the North-Prospect United Church of Christ (Congregational), 1803 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. Among its few records is a typed membership list mentioning Louisa’s belated transfer to Concord’s “Old Parish Church” on 7-26-1912.

  Those who believe: Let 397–98; ED to Joel W. Norcross [early May 1862]; Let 436.

  footnote 5: Let 436; Leyda 2:72; SR 12-20-1862. Shira Wolosky, Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), stands as the pioneering but thinly contextualized treatment of ED and the Civil War.

  As the North moved: Mer 1:264; Boston Courier Report of the Union Meeting . . . Dec. 8th, 1859 (Boston, 1859) 9, 28–29; SR 9-12,13,15,18,25-1860, 11-7-1860; Let 368.

  The next year: SR 9-14,28-1861, 10-2,4,19-1861; Northampton Free Press 10-4,11,18-1861; HFE 10-25-1861. EdD’s friend, Otis P. Lord, remained a strong Belleverett (HFE 9-13-1861).

  Yet, even as Edward: HFE 7-18-1862; EdD to Charles Sumner, 5-12-1862, 7-20-1868, Sumner Papers; George C. Shepard, diary, 7-24-1864, Bolt 36:11. Inaccurate transcriptions of the letters to Sumner are in Norbert Hirschhorn, “New Finds in Dickinson Family Correspondence,” EDIS Bull 7.1 (May/June 1995) 5.

  Emily’s position relative: Let 416, 377.

  In February and March: Karen Dandurand, “New Dickinson Civil War Publications,” American Literature 56 (March 1984) 17–27; Riddle 172. Storrs became a trustee 7-8-1863 but attended no meetings (Trustees Min) before ED’s poems appeared in Drum Beat.

  Perhaps, but letters from: SR 12-20-1864; SB Let #23.1 [12-8-1864], #53, 12-14-[1864], #54 [12-15-1864], #51 [12-3-1864]; Springfield Musket 12-20,21,22,23-1864. #51 (“give us some gems”) is dated in part by a postponed trip to Boston (cf. #23.1); “Musket” was first deciphered by Karen Dandurand.

  And yet, like them: Let 386 (punctuation as in FN/ED 410 verso), 420 (capitalization as in uncat ZA MS 77 Hooker, Y-BRBL).

  Whether deliberately: MB 511–13.

  Dickinson’s productivity: Poems 1209; Var 1533. Franklin’s count is based on earliest known manuscripts.

  “tug for a life”: Let 345.

  “The Malay took the pearl”: J. W. Watson, “Pearls and Gems,” Harper’s Monthly 21 (Nov. 1860) 764, 771; Fr5; Let 350; Passion 147–50. See also “Diamonds and Pearls,” Atlantic Monthly 7 (March 1861) 361–71.

  “Don’t you think . . . these brief”: Let 130.

  “cut to the heart”: Dall.

  instances of the word “hurt”: S. P. Rosenbaum, A Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964) 367; dates from Var.

  “Character is the creature”: CW, Religious Glorying (Philadelphia: Bradley, 1857) 9.

  “Wife”: Shurr gives the fullest and most attentive treatment of this cycle but tends to override historical reality and take ED’s imaginative transformations literally. The main “wife” poems are Fr18
5, Fr194, Fr225, Fr267.

  proposed . . . that the lover was a woman: Rowing 113–18. Smith makes a fixed rule out of ED’s gender play: in “the Dickinson lexicon . . . a powerful she is he” (116). In fact, this is Smith’s lexicon, not the poet’s, who did not insist on uniform semantic equivalences.

  Another possibility: Let 182 (also 208, 229); Cody 256. See also Anna Mary Wells, “Was Emily Dickinson Psychotic?” American Imago 19 (1962) 309–321.

  Edward Dickinson, always so quick: EdD, “The importance of providing an Asylum for the insane,” H; HFE 8-27-1858; SR 5-26-1859; EdD to Pliny Earle, 2-28-1870, Earle Papers 2:1; Earle to EdD, 10-5-1864, Bianchi Coll; [Joseph Delafield], The Parish Will Case before the Surrogate of the City of New York. Medical Opinions upon the Mental Competency of Mr. Parish (New York: Trow, 1857). Institutionalized members of locally prominent families included George Montague’s son Charles Clinton; a son of Judge Reuben A. Chapman; a sister of William A. Stearns; and Thomas K. Boltwood (George Montague to Earle, 12-25-1876, Chapman to Earle, 1-5-, 5-4-1866, EH Jr to Earle, 3-11-1874, Boltwood to Earle, 7-30-1870, Earle Papers 5:2, 4:1).

  James W. Boyden, editor of The Evidence of the Validity of the Will of Oliver Smith (Amherst: Nims, 1847), is one of the more intriguing shadows in Dickinson family history. Judging from EdD’s 1861 inventory, he apparently accepted notes in 1860 from this Amherst attorney with a face value of $14,400. There is no 1862 inventory—the first break in the series. By the following year, the notes had been downgraded from assets to “unproductive, doubtful” (EdD, Inventories for 1861, 1863, Bianchi Coll). The money was never recovered, and there seems to have been no lawsuit. This, EdD’s biggest loss, remains a complete mystery.

  Boyden’s wife, Eliza, daughter of Judge John Dickinson, died in 1857. Two years later the widower moved to Chicago. By September 1860 he was secretly engaged to Frances S. Kingsbury, of Beverly. He returned to Amherst in spring 1861 with the intention of staying, got married in Framingham on 6-19 (the day Sue gave birth), and was back in Chicago by August. A Boyden family history presents him as a brilliant, unexplained failure. LMB to Clara B. Williams Boltwood 9-10-1860, Bolt 9:1; SR 11-7-1859; HFE 4-12-, 8-2-1861; Hampshire Co. RP, Estate of John Dickinson, 192:33; Wallace C. Boyden, Thomas Boyden and His Descendants (Boston, 1901) 215–16; Albert Boyden, Here and There in the Family Tree (Salem, Mass.: Newcomb & Gauss, 1949) 26–30.