My Wars Are Laid Away in Books

by Alfred Habegger

As one might have guessed: [TWH], “Gymnastics,” Atlantic Monthly 7 (March 1861), 283–302; Let 403. Talbot 106–107 has a discerning analysis of ED’s first four submissions.

  posted in nearby Palmer: Johnson substituted Amherst for Palmer on the postmarks of L261, L265, and L274 (Let 405, 409, 417). L268, loosely dated July 1862 in Let 411 and Var 259, was postmarked Palmer July 2[2?] (interpreted as 22 by BPL’s accession catalogue). Ms. Am. 1093 (4), (8), (9), (16).

  Hadley and Middletown postmarks: L314, L316, L319, L323; Ms. Am. 1093 (21), (23), (25), (30), BPL. Ackmann (229) suggests the 1867 Middletown letter was posted by the Norcross cousins.

  Although Higginson’s letters: Let 404, 408.

  Convinced by Higginson’s: Let 404–405, 408–409.

  “When I state myself”: Let 412. For helpful discussions of this passage, see Lindberg-Seyersted 24–31 and Benfey 127.

  Inevitably, the letters: Let 404, 415.

  “as to the ‘innocent’ ”: Brocades 166–67.

  Of course, Dickinson threw: Let 404; SR 6-16-1860.

  Regarding another daring: Let 404; “Circumstance,” Atlantic Monthly 5 (May 1860) 558–65; S.H.D. [Sue], “Harriet Prescott’s Early Work,” SR 2-1-1903. Prescott aroused great interest in the early 1860s: “The style of this writer is remarkable. We are told that she seems to herself to be the medium of some occult power, suggesting thoughts and images over which she has but an imperfect control” (SR 9-8-1860).

  The critical surgery: Carlyle’s 256; Let 415.

  “that curious tilt”: Talbot 109.

  But it goes deeper: Fr284; Let 737, 404, 414. The poems submitted with L271 were Fr336A, Fr381A, and probably Fr359A and Fr401, all dating from summer 1862.

  In late 1862: Cullum 2:240; Edelstein, Strange Enthusiasm 255–57; Let 423–24, 436; [TWH], “The Procession of the Flowers,” Atlantic Monthly 10 (Dec. 1862) 649–57.

  The Friendships of Women: William R. Alger, The Friendships of Women (Boston: Roberts, 1868). Modern discussions of ED’s female friendships include Riddle; Imagery; Lillian Faderman’s groundbreaking “Emily Dickinson’s Letters to Sue Gilbert,” Massachusetts Review 18 (1977) 197–225; Rowing; Passion (proposing a “two loves” theory, SB and Sue); Open Me.

  On July 10: Leyda 2:62, 64; Let 414. Flynt was nine years older than ED; Mary Bowles, three. Sylvia Henneberg, “Neither Lesbian nor Straight: Multiple Eroticisms in Emily Dickinson’s Love Poetry,” EDJ 4.2 (1995) 6–11, considers Fr380.

  footnote 3: Var 406; Za Dickinson, Y-BRBL.

  Dickinson showed a more: Anna Newman to Sue, Saturday [3-14-1863], enclosed with WAD to Sue, same date, H; Clara Newman Pearl, introduction to Clara Newman Turner, “My Personal Acquaintance with Emily Dickinson,” MTB Papers 101:565.

  Clara’s interest in: Maggie [Conroy?] to Jacky/Ned, 5-11-1862, H; SB Let #16.1 [1-9-1863], #17, 3-9-[1863]; Turner 12, 15–16.

  The poet’s friendship: SR 4-12-1862; Let 451–52. Assigned to 1866 by Johnson, L317 was correctly dated in Imagery 25, 27.

  About the time: MW to WDW, [5-7-1862], 3-13-[1863], MW to EBW, 1-12-[1864], MW to WDW, [9-28-1862], WDW Papers, boxes 8, 9.

  When Whitney reported: SB Let #20, 9-15-[1862]; “Annals” 4. L230, possibly naming MW and misassigned to 1861 (Let 372), was written after the Norcross cousins moved to Concord in the 1870s; see pp. 673–74.

  Fr430A: The hypothesis that the poem was meant for SB or Sue (“Putnam” 48) is highly unlikely: there is no solid evidence; the paper, thick and very white (MS Am 1118.10 [2], H), is unlike that used in ED’s messages to either correspondent; and none of ED’s mss. in MW’s possession is known to have been sent first to others.

  Fr566A: Two plausible dates are late June and early September 1863. On 6-24-1863 MW and the Bowleses visited the Evergreens at the start of a ten-day jaunt (Josiah Whitney, Sr., to WDW, 6-27-1863, WDW Papers 9:174; SB Let #27 [7-4-1863]); visit misdated 7-2?-1863 in Leyda 2:80. On 9-3-1863, writing Harriet Cutler, MGS had reason to think “Maria is with Sue” (“Thursday P.M.,” H); letter dated by Susan Gilbert Smith’s birth on 9-8-1863 and A. H. Barber’s death on 9-5-1863 (Geneva Gazette 9-11-1863).

  The third poem: Poems 634; Var 768; Josiah Whitney, Sr., to WDW, 7-14-1863, MW to EBW, 7-17-[1863], WDW Papers 9:175; WAD to Sue, “It is 20 minutes,” Thursday [2-11-1864], H. WAD’s letter, wrongly assigned to 3-15?-1863 by Leyda 2:76, is dated by the Academy of Music’s Faust (The New York Times 2-12-1864) and MW’s going to New Haven with SB (MW to WDW, Wednesday [2-10-1864], WDW Papers, box 9).

  Fr813A: MS Am 1118.10 (4), H. The poem, dated “about 1864” in Var, is on the same paper (gilt-edged but cheap-looking, 97–99 × 152–155 mm, embossed “PARIS” in stippled oval) as Fr724A (“about 1863,” MS Am 1118.3 [368], H) and four poems from early 1864—Fr794A (Lehigh University), Fr803A, Fr804A, and Fr805 (ED698, ED699, ED469, A). All but Fr794A are in pencil. 2-11-1864, the day WAD said good-bye to MW, would be a plausible date for Fr813A.

  “To lose what we,” “the parting of those”: Let 532, 716.

  The three Whitney: “The Flatbush Shooting Affair,” Brooklyn Eagle 3-22-1864; SB Let #112 [3-22-1864], #82 [last half of June 1864]; Let 434. “Sorry to miss Flatbush friends,” SB wrote in #82, dated by his approaching move on 7-9 and the 7-1 rain ending a drouth.

  Gertrude Phebe (Lefferts) Vanderbilt was active in charities and the author of books on Flatbush history and a first-person novel about a tough Irish newsboy saved by his Sunday School teacher, Jack’s Story As Told by Himself (New York: Board of Publication R. C. A., 1872). On her connections, see her Social History of Flatbush (New York: Appleton, 1881) 204–206, 232; A. V. Phillips, The Lott Family in America (Trenton: Travers Book Store, 1942), 73; the articles on her husband in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 5-17-1877; Riddle 171–74.

  On March 18: HFE 3-24-1865; MVR-Deaths 184:1; SB Let #56 [May 1 or 8, 1865], #104 [5-14-1865]. #56, anticipating the Colfax expedition, was written five days after #75 [4-26- or 5-3-1865].

  That spring Emily: Let 441, 442.

  Another tragic Gilbert: Let 444. The child’s dates (9-8-1863, 11-3-1865) are on the Smith family monument, Glenwood Cemetery, Geneva, NY.

  “Stroke the cool forehead”: In 1859, decrying the fear of “immediate contact” with a corpse, Higginson urged: “Face it as it is, touch that quiet hand, it will not hurt you. Smooth that soft hair: God did not mean us to shrink from it.”

  In 1924: LL 46–47; FF 51–53. Two “corroborating” letters quoted by MDB are Virginia Fendley Dickinson to Virginia Dickinson Reynolds, postmarked 11-?-1930, and Reynolds to MDB, 10-7-1930, bMS Am 1118.97, 3:100, 3:99, H. For the noxious effects of MDB’s account of the Wadsworth romance on ED’s early textbook presentation, see Tom Cross, Reed Smith, and Elmer C. Stauffer, American Writers: Good Reading for High Schools (Boston: Ginn, 1931) 578.

  footnote 5: Craik, Olive 3:54, 62–63, 69.

  Fr905: See the helpful reading in Comic Power 44–47.

  Fr554: My understanding of the poem is indebted to the clarifying exegesis in Walker 112–15.

  Fr802: I use ED’s alternative for the original “And is the Soul at Home.”

  “spasmodic,” “I am in danger”: Let 409.

  Fr754: It is unlikely the poem addresses Sue (Passion 143–45): there is no evidence it was sent to her, and the lover appears from outside school.

  From late April . . . October in 1865: Let 429, 431, 435–36, 440, 444. In early 1864 Mary Bowles was afflicted with painfully “inflamed eyes” (SB Let #44, 2-26-[1864], #46 [3-10-1864], #103 [3-11-1864]).

  There is no record: Let 430, 433, 439 (punctuated as in FN/ED 442); Let (1931) xiv; JL/ED.

  Dr. Williams’s office: Let 432; [Henry W. Williams], “Female Physicians,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 54 (4-3-1856) 3 [his italics].

  exotropia: Martin Wand and Richard B. Sewall, “‘Eyes Be Blind, Heart Be Still’: A New Perspective on Emily Dickinson’s Eye Problem,” New England Quarterly 52 (Sept. 1979) 400–406. See also James R. Guthrie, Emily Dickinson’s
Vision: Illness and Identity in Her Poetry (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998). Mary Elizabeth Kromer Bernhard has presented sound objections to the exotropia theory in “A Response to ‘Eyes Be Blind, Heart Be Still,’” New England Quarterly 55 (March 1982) 112–14.

  anterior uveitis: “Medicine” 300–309; Henry Willard Williams, A Practical Guide to the Study of the Diseases of the Eye (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1862) 122–25; Let 433 (punctuated as in ED629 A).

  It so happens: Anon., “Notes on Dr Williams lecture on Rheumatic iritis, Apr 27. 1865,” B MS misc. W, Boston Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine; Robert Christison, A Dispensatory, or Commentary on the Pharmacopoeias of Great Britain and the United States (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1848) 281; Williams, Practical 125–27; Let 439.

  Dickinson’s living arrangements: Let 431; Uno 58–79; 1865 MA census, Middlesex Co., Cambridge, Ward 2, dwellings 532–537, 3; G. M. Hopkins, Atlas of the City of Cambridge (Philadelphia: Griffin Morgan Hopkins, 1873); Cambridge directories for 1863–1864 (MA State Lib) and 1865–1866 to 1872 (Cambridge City Lib). The change in street number was discovered by Uno 58–61.

  A presentation inscription: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (New York: Harper, 1864), EDR 2.2.11; Charlotte Sewall Eastman to ED and Vin, 10-21-1872, H; Let 443, 435, 442.

  As for Bowles: SB Let #50 [7-7-1864], #75 [4-26- or 5-3-1865], #59.3, 8-2-[1865].

  Dickinson’s statement: Let 433; 1865 MA census, Middlesex Co., Cambridge, Ward 2, dwelling 534; Cambridge Tax Rolls, 1865, Ward 2, p. 5; Rosalba Peale Smith Proell, “3. Sparks Street,” Publications, Cambridge Historical Soc., 22 (1932) 51; Cambridge directories for 1882 and 1883; Louise Bangs’s death notice, Cambridge Chronicle 4-26-1884.

  Most of what: Let 430, 443 (punctuated as in ED 632 A), 435 (punctuated as in ED 631 A).

  The letters to Sue: Let 430 (Hawthorne connection made in Open Me 131), 432, 121. ED wrote “Whem my Hands,” then made a small penciled line canceling the last stroke of “m” (MS Am 1118.5 [B56], H). Except for Open Me 131, which gets it right, the word has been misread as “Where.”

  footnote 7: Let 419.

  If Vinnie and Sue: Let 434, 430.

  No matter whom: Let 433, 434 (question mark as in MS Am 1118.5 [B179], H, and Open Me 133).

  In her one letter: Let 431, 404.

  As for those guests: Var 1541. Fr576B, Fr871, Fr940, Fr942, Fr1027, Fr1028, and Fr1029 seem to touch on her eye trouble.

  Another answer: Let 345; Emerson 4-6-, 1-18-1883. ED also listened to Louisa’s piano playing: “How I miss ten robins that never flew from the rosewood nest!” (Let 439).

  Certain at age twenty: Let (1894) 129; JL/ED; Let 440, 474, 471. There is no basis for John Evangelist Walsh’s claim that Lord read Shakespeare to ED in Cambridge (The Hidden Life of Emily Dickinson [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971], 190–93).

  footnote 8: SB Let #6 [5-15-1861].

  Among the plays: Boston Daily Advertiser 12-16-1859; JL/ED; Judith Farr, “Emily Dickinson’s ‘Engulfing’ Play: Antony and Cleopatra,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 9 (fall 1990) 231–50; Shakespeare, Dramatic Works (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1856) 6:123, 160, EDR 4.6.2; Let 791.

  footnote 9: Var 832–33; Let 302. On WAD’s feelings for crickets, see Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 2:283–84.

  Fr895D: A discerning treatment of the poem is in John Robinson, Emily Dickinson: Looking to Canaan (London: Faber, 1986) 173–77.

  Chapter 19

  When the large: Let 449–51; Poems 753; Fr895D and E.

  Carlo’s death marked: Let 454, 450–51.

  dormancy or even exhaustion: Capsule 80; Johnson in Let 448; Murray.

  seven poems written in the first-person singular: Fr1122, Fr1129, Fr1132, Fr1145, Fr1147, Fr1151, Fr1154.

  a signal pride: Let 475; Home 414.

  the more famous “My life had stood”: For three notable wrestlings with this poem, see Rich, Weisbuch 25–39, and especially Miller 122–26.

  A few months: Leyda 2:99, 102; “Margaret (Colossus) had in 9 yrs,” MLT’s notes of Vin’s remarks, MLT Papers 82:402; WAD to Sue, 10-31-[1865], H (dated by Abby Fiske Adams’s 11-1-1865 marriage [MVR-Marriages 181:2]). WAD’s and others’ diarrhea—“a river right through my stomach”—may explain two-year-old Susan’s death on 11-3-1865.

  Chances are: Let 427, 444; “This self-same Margaret,” MLT’s notes of Vin’s remarks, MLT Papers 82:402. Immediately succeeding Margaret was a certain Hannah (Let 454; FF 24).

  footnote 1: FN/ED 423.

  It was not until: For a dressmaker’s account, see Leyda 2:109.

  “The art of making perfect bread”: House-Keeping 157; Turner 1; Let 474.

  The longest chapter: House-Keeping 233–300; Let 493, 783, 474; Allen 74.

  In February 1869: Margaret Maher to Clarinda Boltwood, 3-2-, 4-6-1869, Bolt 12:5. The story has been beautifully told in Jay Leyda, “Miss Emily’s Maggie,” New World Writing: Third Mentor Selection (New York: New American Library, 1953) 255–67, and in Murray.

  Another time never: Margaret Maher to Clarinda Boltwood, 4-6-, 6-22-1869, Bolt 12:5; “Statement of Finance” (1896) accompanying “Inventory of Lavinia N. Dickinson’s property after Settlement with the Estate of Wm A. Dickinson,” Bianchi Coll; Home 477.

  “Tim is washing”: Let 466.

  “Complacency! My Father!”: Let 350.

  As a man of property: EdD to Alfred Norcross, 12-27-1867, 3-27-1868, J; EdD to Austin Graves, 5-18-1866, MTB Papers 99:517; Amh Rec 12-3-1868; EdD, Inventories, Bianchi Coll; EdD to Pliny Earle, various dates, Earle Papers 2:1.

  Edward’s biggest achievement: SB Let #91 [1-25-1864]; Leyda 2:85; Henry F. French to Frederick Law Olmsted, 7-30-1866, EdD to Olmsted, 10-22-1866, Container 10, Olmsted Papers.

  Father’s distinctive voice: EdD to SB, 12-25-1868, uncat ZA MS 77, Hooker, Y-BRBL. Potosí also appears in Fr118 and Let 352.

  The second letter: Worcester Daily Spy 1-8-1869; EdD to Alexander H. Bullock, 2-6-1869, Bullock Papers. On Bullock’s refusal to commute Edward W. Green’s death sentence for shooting a bank officer in Malden, see the Governor’s speech to Executive Council, 2-27-1866, Bullock Papers 2:4; SR 4-21-1866.

  Although Edward and Austin: Mer 2:79–80; SR 2-21-1865; First #4, 1-2-1866, 4-9,15,18-1867; SR 9-24-1868; Allen 30; Leyda 2:133.

  Unlike his father: WAD to Sue, [2-10-1864, dated by MW’s trip to California], 10-31-[1865], H.

  In her long: SR 5-18-1886, 2-14-1866; Let 450; Green 292. On lineation, see Rowing 67–69; Mitchell, chapter. 7. Franklin calls ED’s stated fear that TWH might see the poem a “pretext” (Var 953) for writing him. But L316 shows she had recently heard from him and had ample reason to write.

  In September: SB Let #89 [9-29-1866]; HFE 12-6-1866; Let 464. #89 is dated by the postmark, an accident with a runaway horse, and SB Let #62, #60.

  Dickinson’s messages to Sue: Let 457, 458, 455, 464.

  The friendship went back: Let 300–301, 349–50, 364–65, 445–46; Leyda 1:345, 349, 2:10–12; Charles Phelps [Susan’s older brother], “Journal of Farm Works,” 12-1-, 12-5-1865 (transcribed by Jane S. Scott); SR 12-5-1865; Hampshire Gazette 12-5-1865; HFE 12-7-1865, 8-2-1866. Leyda’s “Dr [Fish]” (2:103) is incorrect. The other poem headed “December 5th” was Fr1216C. All three poems I link to Phelps were entrusted to friends.

  After 1865: Mer 2:60–61; SB Let #31, 9-1-[1867?], #66 [9]-24-[1868], #85 [3-21-1867], #98 [10-16-1869, the day after the Bowleses returned home from the West (Mer 2:147)]. In dating #31, 1863 is ruled out by the reference to MGS, who gave birth in Geneva 9-8-1863 and didn’t visit Amherst that August or September (MGS to Harriet Cutler, “Thursday P.M.,” [9-3-1863 (for date, see p. 722)], H.) The years 1862, 1865, 1868, 1869, and 1870 are ruled out by SB’s travels, and 1864 and 1866 are unlikely. The opening suggests Sue took offense at a risqué passage in SB Let #61.3 (no. 2) [7-24-1867, dated by envelope postmarked 7-25-1867 and by Mer 2:55].

/>   Judging from the remnants: Ackmann 212, 229; Hartford Courant 7-4-1867; Leyda 2:124; Let 456 (punctuated as in FN’s transcription, Tr50 A), 368.

  A Norcross family letter: Joel W. Norcross to Alfred Norcross, “Friday aft” [3-13-1868], J; Let 459.

  In spring 1869: Let 465–66.

  The spirited letters: Let 444, 449, 452.

  Once, after Elizabeth: Let 455.

  Nothing made: Alumni file for Perez Dickinson Cowan, PTS; Burgess 45; [Cowan], James H. Cowan (Boston: Frank Wood, 1883) 43; Let 463. Nannie died 6-21-1869 (Cowan, comp., “The Cowan Family,” 10, Knox County Public Lib.).

  From the dying: Diane Price Herndl, Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); JL to Laura Baker, 5-9-1858 (2:39), JL/ED (4:64), Laura B. Lyman to Alfred B. Crandell, 6-5-1886 (5:80), Lyman Papers.

  But the white attire: Let 370; Lyman Let 68; Sewall 448.

  Dickinson’s one surviving: “New Dress Replica on Display,” Dickinson Homestead (newsletter) 4.1 (spring 2000); Mary E. Safranski Derrick, “In Just the Dress [Her] Century Wore: Emily Dickinson’s White Dress,” unpublished paper (Dickinson Homestead); Let 427. The Amherst Historical Society owns the dress. The Homestead has an exact replica on display.

  footnote 2: Nason 135; Charlotte Sewall Eastman to ED and Vin, Venice, 10-21-1872, H.

  A fastidious: “Was She a Recluse?” Portland Sunday Oregonian 3-19-1899, p. 22; Leyda 2:120; E. F. Strickland to MDB, 9-2-[1920s?], 3:119, bMS Am 1118.97, H. JL’s letters from 1865 (Lyman Papers, box 4) make it unlikely that he visited ED in Cambridgeport that summer.

  Although Dr. Williams: Var 1541; Let 450.

  Was Dickinson’s health: EdD to Alfred Norcross, 3-16-, 3-27-1868, J; Let 457, 459, 466, 471 (corrected against and supplemented by FN/ED 453).

  Fr1129: After writing line 4, “With the austerer sweet,” ED at once composed a substitute, “With this sufficient Sweet,” before going on to the second stanza. MS Am 1118.3 (271), H.

  “I gave my part”: Let 419.

  Yet most of the poems: Let 464, 455; Ellen E. Dickinson, “Emily Dickinson,” Boston Evening Transcript 9-28-1894, p. 4; Leyda 2:141.