Afternoons with Emily

by Rose MacMurray

  The village trees had their dusty late summer look. One of these mornings there would be a scarlet limb on a maple, and then another. Father and I had been making plans: I for my life and he for his. We had talked a great deal about what I would do in New York. I would design more children’s books with Mr. Harnett, and I would try teaching at Friends Seminary while our material was being tested in the classroom. But I also wanted to learn a great deal more about other teaching systems and methods. I approached Dean Griswold at the college. Since I had graduated from the academy three years ago, he had been my sponsor and my kind friend. He knew Davy as “Amherst’s best.”

  He welcomed me graciously into his library. “Miss Chase, I salute your courage in returning to the ‘groves of academe.’ When one encounters tragedy, the only weapon against it is hard work.”

  “Yes, I am learning that.”

  “I know and respect your interest in primary education. What are your plans now, to further your career?”

  I told him about teaching in New York at Friends Seminary and then explained, “I want to find out how and what little children learn in other parts of the world. There must be a thousand philosophies and systems of teaching. How can I learn about them?”

  “You should study ethnography. My old friend Seth Whitman is head of the Society of Ethnography in New York. I’ll write him and see if he’ll arrange it so that you can work there — as an Amherst student.”

  A few days later a note came to me on Amity Street. “You will find what you need at the American Ethnological Society on Fifth Avenue,” the dean wrote. “They will be expecting you there. Please remember me to Dr. Whitman, my old classmate — and come to see me when you return.”

  Once this was decided, Father announced his own plans. With the tide of war turning in the Union’s favor, Father was taking a sabbatical. Now that the notorious commerce raider Alabama — which had seized and sunk scores of Union vessels — had been sunk off Cherbourg, the sea lanes were finally clear. Father would visit many spots he first discovered when he was the age I was now — Rome, Athens, Venice — and would stop at Sicily too, a new vista.

  “I will go,” he exulted to me and Aunt Helen over dinner one evening, “while I can still clamber about the ruins. Every classicist should know Sicily, where Athenian hubris met its nemesis. With Miranda in New York, I shall mark time among the ruins.”

  I marveled at this casual reference to me as if his plans were dependent on mine rather than simply on his own wishes. Things were changing indeed!

  Father would leave in early October, before the first Atlantic storms rendered the seas too rough to cross. Although we did not say it, this was assuredly a valedictory tour. At his age he was not likely to undertake such a long sea voyage again.

  I made my good-byes to the ladies at the factory, promising Lolly Wheeler and Mary Warner Crowell that I would write. I then went to Emily with more of a sense of obligation than pleasure. She must have felt this; she was responsive and entertaining.

  “I was not at my best when you called last, Miranda. I must have been recovering from my drunken spree. Yes, I have been INTOXICATED for several weeks!”

  “That news never reached the town gossips.” I smiled.

  She gave me an impish grin back. “Wouldn’t they have loved it, though! I’ve read about the signs of intoxication, and they certainly do match my ORGY when I came home from Cambridge and was reunited with my books. You should have seen me! I opened my books all at once — on my bed, all over the floor — to let the precious words out to breathe. We had been STIFLED!”

  “Aren’t your cousins good company for you?”

  Emily laughed tolerantly. I had forgotten that, according to “Emily’s truth,” the Norcrosses never got any older or any wiser.

  “Those pitiful little lambs? All they need is a Bo Peep!”

  “Tell me some more about coming back to your books, Emily.”

  “I remembered the music of ‘Welcome Home’! I heard ANTHEMS. I flew to the shelves and DEVOURED the luscious passages. I thought I would tear out the leaves as I turned them. I ate, I drank, I FEASTED. Then I settled to a willingness to let ALL go but Shakespeare. Why do we need ANYTHING ELSE to feed on?” Now she became thoughtful and silent.

  “Miranda, you must excuse me. That conceit of books as food — I must try it out NOW.”

  It was a good way to part. I had heard her true voice, speaking about her books. Behind the disguises, among the variations, there was always the essential, authentic Emily.

  Alan Harnett had taken a small suite of rooms for me in a little house not far from Friends Seminary. The Harnetts’ tiny cottage was now too crowded with the birth of their most recent child, Henry. When I reached New York, I found Mr. Harnett jubilant. Our alphabet had sold out two printings by a well-known publisher of textbooks.

  “It’s a fine start for our reputation, Miranda,” he stated. “The drawings did it!” This might have been a good moment to tell him about Davy’s trust, but I decided to wait until the final papers arrived from the Chicago lawyers.

  The next morning I met with Dean Griswold’s friend Dr. Whitman at the American Ethnological Society, a Gothic tower on Fifth Avenue.

  “Dean Griswold speaks very highly of you, my dear,” the gentleman said. “I believe you will find what you need here.” He brought me to the library, full of thick volumes and silent readers — not what I had expected, considering the society’s daring expeditions! Here he introduced me to one of the librarians, Mr. Chris Butler, who was a graduate student, telling him that I was to have full access to the library.

  Mr. Butler and I discussed my interest in comparing educational systems. He steered me away from the African and South American tribal cultures, based entirely on hunting, and toward the Asian and Pacific peoples.

  The Chinese and Japanese educational systems appeared admirable, incorporating the arts and sciences — but irrelevant to our country, as the students must all be noble and male! Reading further, I found myself strongly attracted to two particular cultures: the Pacific, or Polynesian — and the Eskimo, or Inuit.

  Neither of these had formal schools, and their priests were the only teachers as such. They learned everything else that their society required from their parents, working beside them. Thus education came naturally, with living and maturing — and life itself was education.

  I discovered the Polynesian sexual customs were radically different from ours. The first day I sat in the society library reading of the relaxed nature of Polynesian sexual practices, I found myself blushing. I furtively glanced at Mr. Butler, the librarian, imagining he knew precisely the passages I was reading. I told myself that this was professional material and continued on.

  In this society, intercourse was cheerfully encouraged after puberty; incest was the only taboo. The ethnographer linked these attitudes to the economic structure. Children inherited from their mothers only, making paternity a less critical issue. Through these cross-cultural studies I was better able to understand that there was a larger context for our own morals and mores. These were simply ideas, not necessarily innate or immutable laws. I began to feel rather radical, as I walked back in the evenings to the Harnetts’, pondering such bold concepts. Some nights, as I lay contented in my little rooms off Stuyvesant Square, I wondered how the Polynesian social attitude would have affected Davy and me as lovers.

  Later that week, Mr. Harnett brought me round to the seminary. Rather than a single building, the seminary was a cluster of brick houses, Federal style, and I was pleased to discover that Mr. Jewett, the headmaster, was friendly and informal.

  “Harnett here has sold me on the Froebel system,” he assured me. “Follow your system, but keep detailed records every single day. We’ll need them to compare with the progress of our traditional first-year class.”

  A fortnight later, Mr. Harnett and I started our kindergarten with a big round table, small chairs, a thick carpet for teaching and story circles on the floor �
�� and a wreath of twelve delighted children. Alternating my time between the classroom and the Ethnological Society library, I realized I was happier than I’d been in a year. The unfamiliar street noises kept me from sleeping at first, but I didn’t mind — for the first time since Davy’s death, I felt my present and my future were connected. Somehow, the isolation I had endured as a small child had led me to this path, and that early unhappiness finally had a purpose.

  The autumn passed with study and work — along with the ebb and flow of my worries about Elena. I was not sure what I could do to rectify that situation, so I forced myself to put it aside, which I did by burying myself deeper into work. The war was many miles away yet always near, its horror never far from our minds. Since Atlanta, the crucial railroad center of the South, had fallen at last — and the reduced Confederate armies could no longer be shuttled about from one campaign to another by train — surely, surely the fighting must end soon.

  The lawyers in Chicago sent me the final papers for the Miranda Arethusa Chase Foundation, indicating that the trust was fully executed and that our funds were now available. At last I gave them to Mr. Harnett to read. After he had studied them, he looked at me, his face open, his eyes bright.

  “Miranda, right here in my hand, I am holding solid, tangible love. Davy’s for you, and the children’s love and gratitude for all you are going to accomplish.”

  His joy and wonder were heartwarming.

  “Miranda, let me understand.” He was suddenly hesitant. “Do you intend that I work with you?”

  “Yes, I do,” I assured him. “You showed me the way to learning, and I hope that now we may be partners.”

  “Davy, you, and me.” He smiled. “We three will work together. We will be part of one another’s lives.”

  “Both you and Davy said exactly that same thing to me.”

  “It is true for both of us,” he said. He stood, excitement forcing him to his feet. “It is the means to our success,” he continued. “We can support the best ideas, the best people, the best work. There’s no limit to our future!” Then he faced me squarely. “One last thing.” His eyes crinkled at the corners with good humor. “Will you never learn to call me Alan?”

  I colored a faint pink and said I would try.

  Now that the foundation existed, our next undertaking, as I had told Father in the shock of the news, was to add color to our bouncing alphabet. We climbed up to a huge loft full of fierce clanking presses to consult our Polish printer, Mr. Klawalski.

  “This will be the very first book a small child sees,” Mr. Harnett — Alan — explained.

  Mr. Klawalski turned to me. “You want I make happy book?”

  “We certainly do!” I replied. “Happy as a child the day he learns to read. We want lively colors for these cheerful letters.”

  Our printer studied the smug striped “C for Cat” in our alphabet. “I think you need color like child sees. This I do.”

  The next evening a scrawny blond boy of twelve appeared at our door. He wore a huge ink-stained apron and carried the galley proofs of our alphabet. Charmingly colored: a single irregular blob of red or blue or yellow lightened Ethan’s drawings, as if a child were using the brush. The pure primary colors glowed; each page pulsed with energy.

  “These are perfect!” I told the boy. “Who did them?”

  The boy smiled and bowed. Like Mr. Klawalski, he used the fewest words possible. “You want happy. I do.”

  Eventually we learned that he was Stefan Klawalski, his father’s apprentice; that he hoped to be a painter; that he took free art lessons at the Cooper Union School in the Bowery.

  “Stefan, you’re our official colorist,” I told him. “We’ll pay you by the piece. Now will you look at these children’s stories? They need your happy colors too!”

  I related all that was happening in New York to Aunt Helen, to Miss Adelaide, and, as promised, to Lolly and Mary Crowell, and to Emily as well. Our kindergarten was off to a splendid start. Each little beginner in our classroom was moving toward literacy unafraid, free, and joyful. They arrived smiling, asking, “What are we going to play today?” My earlier college courses and Chris Butler’s guidance in ethnographic studies had given me the comparative knowledge I needed to go forward with this work.

  In November, Abraham Lincoln was reelected. General McClellan, the opposing candidate, was a dangerous contender. There was a shocking amount of support for McClellan in New York City, but the army voted solidly for Lincoln. Davy’s old commander, General Grant, was relentless, expending troops without mercy, grinding away at the thinning Confederate armies on every front. The country — both countries, reunited — would need his wisdom in the confusion after the war.

  At Thanksgiving, Emily sent a note and a poem: “Here are a few thoughts — a draft, if you will — to stuff your turkey.” I read her letter aloud in the small foundation office that Alan and I had opened. I had finally managed to feel comfortable addressing him by his first name. Hearing the children call him “Mr. Harnett” on a daily basis helped me to make this transition.

  The poem was Emily at her incomparable best.

  He ate and drank the precious Words —

  His Spirit grew robust —

  He knew no more that he was poor,

  Nor that his frame was Dust —

  He danced along the dingy Days

  And this Bequest of Wings

  Was but a Book — What Liberty

  A loosened spirit brings —

  I finished my recitation and saw Alan’s awestruck expression.

  “Miranda, you never told me your friend is a genius.”

  My brow crinkled, and I gazed down at the paper in my hands. “I’m not sure she is. All I know is that she’s willful and selfish — and that some of her poems are as bad as this one is good.”

  “Whoever said genius is consistent?” Alan replied. “Or easy to live with? Mark my words, Miranda — your willful, selfish friend will be known and read for generations. You’d better start saving her stuff.”

  Alan’s words shamed me. Perhaps I was too close to Emily. Her letters described her garden or her work. She never asked questions about what I was doing. She had barely congratulated me or wished me success with my new enterprise. Perhaps I let her maddening airs and moods obscure her poems and their true worth. I thought of the homily “Truth is the daughter of Time.” A hundred years from now, our descendants, far removed from Emily Dickinson’s daily demanding self, would be able to decide whether or not she was a genius.

  As I saw the kindergarten children’s preparations for Christmas and began to read the Christmas stories, I was haunted by thoughts of Elena. We were approaching a season of merriment, a time when happy memories are created for tomorrow and the sweet melodies of Christmases past joyously ring. Yet I feared that Elena would have none of these and that her early childhood would be frozen in deep midwinter. Ethan had written that Mrs. Newell was managing “as best she can,” and yet Elena was so sensitive, so delicately balanced. Deep in the night when I awoke, I could not help but wonder how she was, what she was doing. My leaving her must have been another blow, another death, just when she had begun to love and trust again.

  So finally, when the Christmas holiday came, Alan and Fanny agreed that I should return to Amherst, and from there pay a visit to Springfield.

  The beauty of my village in December was an amazement: I had forgotten the brilliant snow, the Pelham Hills in their winter mauve. Everything in New York was gray — the buildings, the streets, even the air. I always felt a dozen people had breathed it before it reached me! The biting valley air was a lovely shock to city lungs; I felt a deep sense of homecoming.

  Aunt Helen wanted to hear every detail of the Friends School, the foundation office, our newly created Leo Press — but agreed that this could wait until I had gone to Springfield. And so the very next day, I took the cars to Elena.

  When I reached the Howland house, I was appalled by the little girl’s ch
anged demeanor. She did not know me at first — but when I said her name her face began to brighten, and she cried out, “Manda, Manda!” Then she hugged my knees and held me fiercely.

  I was relieved that there was no awkwardness between Ethan and me, and that any tension that had existed before had evaporated with time. Josey was happy to see me but was far more interested in companions of his own age. Baby Ethan didn’t know me at all. But Elena . . .

  She clung to me like a burr for the entire day, using both frantic little hands. When I put her to bed, she cried and hung on to me with true desperation. In the middle of the night, she climbed into my bed in a strange unnatural trance, not seeing or hearing but reaching out to hold me again — while I lay awake, grieving and worrying.

  I studied Ethan’s arrangements and decided he was managing as best he could. Mrs. Newell cooked and washed — but she was sixty and not educated. She had neither the energy nor the resources for three young children. Jack Ross, Ethan’s amiable young apprentice at the Springfield Armory, boarded in the house and acted as tutor to the boys. They played outdoors and enjoyed balls and games. Nobody was mistreated, nobody was dirty or hungry, but Elena, in her rough boys’ shirts and knickers, her curls tangled, her green eyes vacant — Elena’s spirit was being starved to death.

  I planned to lead into this very delicately when I talked to Ethan the next day, but he was there already with his own deep concern — and his news. He was to be married.

  “Her name is Ann Mackay,” Ethan told me tentatively. “She is a widow from New Bedford, with two boys of her own and a husband lost at Bull Run. Annie is a good woman, Miranda. We were children together before —” At this his voice broke. He turned away and said no more. He didn’t need to. His awkwardness told me that love, true love, had had little role in guiding his choice.

  Now was my time to speak, very carefully. “I have been thinking about Elena . . .”

  I saw anguish on his face. “I have failed with Elena,” he confessed. “She barely speaks at all. She misses Kate more every day, without knowing who or what she is lacking. In the spring, when Ann and I are wed, I believe, I hope, she’ll do better.”