After Emily

by Julie Dobrow

  Reflecting on the early work done by Mabel and Higginson, literary analyst Virginia Jackson concludes:

  Most readers would agree that Dickinson’s early editors imposed conventional poetic form—including titles, regular rhyme, and standard punctuation—on the published verse that in manuscript evaded or swerved away from such conventions, and most would also agree that editors since Higginson have brought Dickinson’s published work ever closer to its original scriptive forms, so that in moving forward from the nineteenth to the twentieth to the twenty-first century we have gradually moved back to discover the “original poetic genius” early editors failed adequately to represent in print.65

  Mabel most surely would dispute this assessment. More than anything, she insisted that she “felt the genius” of the poems. She drew a sharp distinction between her own copying and editing of the poems and what she felt had been the “rough handling” they experienced at the hand of Harriet Graves, who missed “their dainty and veiled meanings”; the poems, she thought, required that they “be gently and understandingly wooed.”66 Mabel firmly believed she, unlike Miss Graves, had carefully, honestly and successfully rendered Emily’s poems.

  Partway through their process of “creative editing,” as Millicent later termed it, Mabel and Thomas Wentworth Higginson decided that they should move forward on attempting to find a publisher for Emily’s poetry. Mabel was certainly feeling increasing pressure from Lavinia to find “a printer,” and she was no doubt wondering whether all of her hard labor on copying, typing and editing the poems would bear fruit.

  In a footnote in Ancestors’ Brocades, Millicent suggested her father told her that Colonel Higginson, who had been a “reader” for Houghton Mifflin in Boston, wanted to bring the poems there first. According to David, Houghton Mifflin rejected the manuscripts: “the poems, they said, were much too queer—the rhymes were all wrong. They thought that Higginson must be losing his mind to recommend such stuff.”67

  Mabel and Higginson decided to take the poems to Thomas Niles Jr., the head of Roberts Brothers publishing in Boston because, as Mabel later wrote, “Emily had had a sympathetic correspondence with him, and we thought it best to have someone pass judgment upon the poems who had known something of the shy writer,” even though in the past Niles thought that to publish Emily’s “lubractions” was a risk.68 At the end of May 1890, Mabel brought the poems to Niles’s office.

  According to Millicent, David followed up the next week by going to Boston and speaking with Niles, himself. Millicent consistently believed that her father’s role in getting Emily’s poetry edited and published was an underreported and overlooked part of the story; in both her “Reminiscences” and in other writings, Millicent pointed out the hours David spent editing and copying poems, as well as his role in insisting that the poems deserved a full print run. In mid-June, Mabel received a letter from Higginson enclosing a note from the publisher and one from the poet Arlo Bates, to whom the poems had been sent for review. While Bates felt that “there is hardly one of these poems which does not bear marks of unusual and remarkable talent; there is hardly one of them which is not marked by an extraordinary crudity of workmanship.” Bates believed that the poems needed more editing and more judicious selection. Niles commented to Higginson that given Bates’s assessment, he felt it “unwise to perpetuate Miss Dickinson’s poems. They are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties.” However, he continued, if Lavinia were willing to pay for the plates necessary to reproduce the poems, he would be willing to publish a small run. Higginson concluded in his note to Mabel that he thought the critiques excellent, that they should do the work and that he had told Niles that “you [Mabel] would probably approve his offer.”69

  When Mabel presented this proposal to Vinnie, Vinnie was furious. According to Mabel, Vinnie’s blind loyalty to Emily and impatience to get the poems published made her “inarticulate with rage.” But, Mabel suggested in her journal, she was persuasive. She presented to Vinnie a sense of what was realistic with regard to getting such unconventional verse of an unknown poet published, and ultimately cajoled Vinnie into agreeing to the deal: “I conferred with Vinnie (who has about as much knowledge about business as a Maltese cat) and I accepted the offer.”70

  Mabel and Higginson, though disappointed Bates suggested eliminating a number of key poems (wrote Higginson, “My opinion of Mr. Bates has gone down greatly, for he certainly wished to leave out several of the best”), elected to move forward. Throughout the summer of 1890 they had a lively correspondence in which they debated further edits, the issue of titling poems and the reinstatement of fifteen of the poems Bates suggested eliminating. Mabel later told Millicent:

  During all this time we were discussing at intervals the question of naming the poems, and of the changes either of us might wish to make, independent of her [Emily’s] own multitudinous corrections and suggestions. But upon this subject we never wholly agreed, Colonel Higginson looking at it more in the light of the reading public as well as of the publishers, while I, with fewer books and articles to my credit than my much older co-worker . . . was exceedingly loath to assign titles to any of them, which might not be unmistakably indicated in the poem, itself.71

  As the editing progressed, Mabel and Higginson made additional plans for publication of the poetry, many of which were driven by Mabel, who understood marketing long before the term became commonplace. She knew that in order to build excitement about the poems, there needed to be some prepublication chatter, that the aesthetic appeal of the volume to women (whom she believed would be the most likely purchasers and thus the target market) needed to be built, and that the poems’ publication needed to be followed by well-placed endorsements.

  They decided that Higginson would write an article to be published in conjunction with the collection. Part of this article would also be used for a preface to the volume that Higginson would write based on his own personal history of two decades’ worth of correspondence with Emily about her work. Higginson opted to place his article in the Christian Union in September 1890. In addition, Mabel wrote to her friend William Dean Howells, the so-called Dean of American Letters and editor of the Atlantic Monthly, to let him know about the forthcoming volume. Howells was enthusiastic and offered to write an article about it.

  Mabel decided to use her panel of Indian pipe wildflowers for the cover. This was the painting that she had given Emily and about which Emily had written her such a stunningly well-crafted thank-you that Mabel copied it into her journal. “Mr. Higginson thought they might be almost being too appropriate and spectral at first, but they were done, and are very effective.”72 But for Mabel, the choice was both sentimental and practical—she suspected it would sell.

  WITH AN INSTINCTIVE SENSE OF WHAT WOULD SELL, MABEL DESIGNED THE COVER FOR THE FIRST VOLUME OF EMILY DICKINSON’S POETRY.

  Mabel also selected the cover color (white) with a gilt top, and the title and author’s name in gold. Mabel reportedly told Millicent, “The gray, white and silver of the first edition thus, by happy intuition, expressed somewhat of Emily’s ‘cool and nun-like personality’. . . the dainty binding, devised partly with this symbolism in mind, partly in the hope of beguiling Christmas shoppers into buying the book for the beauty of its cover, was protected not only by a plain jacket but also by a shiny white pasteboard box made to fit.”73

  All seemed to be going along smoothly until the middle of July 1890, when Mabel received a puzzling query from Colonel Higginson. He sent her a letter he had received from Lavinia, annotating it in pencil, “Can you interpret the words underscored?” The letter to Higginson expressed Vinnie’s gratitude for his work on the volume, as well as her disappointment that not all of the poems were to be included. She then noted, “the poem so long watched for in the ‘Scribner’ will appear in August number” and concluded, “I dare say you are aware our ‘co-worker’ is to be ‘sub rosa,’ for reasons you may understand.”

  Mabel was stunned but she also instantly a
nd clearly saw what was going on. Without Vinnie’s knowledge or approval, Sue had sent one of Emily’s poems to Scribner’s Magazine. Vinnie, who considered herself the sole proprietor of Emily’s poetry, was furious at this transgression. Adding insult to perceived injury, Sue kept the money she received from the poem’s publication. She had also apparently misread one of the words in the poem and sent it transcribed improperly. There was also Vinnie’s knowledge that she had first asked Sue to edit the poems but that she delayed so long that Vinnie moved on to the next possible editor. Mabel also knew the other piece of pertinent information—that despite her fury, Vinnie was fearful of Sue. “Vinnie did not want my name on the book because she didn’t want Sue to know that I had anything to do with it,” she told Millicent. “Sue would have annihilated her if she could. . . . She was scared to death of Sue.”74

  Mabel wrote back to Higginson and deciphered Vinnie’s almost unreadable handwriting for him. Mabel clearly interpreted Higginson’s request as one to help him read what Vinnie had written, not to understand why she had written this. Mabel asked him, “what we should do about this, a species of treachery beyond my imagining.” Higginson, she reported, knew that “I was her representative, and acting for her,” and responded, “my name must appear on the volume somewhere, and before his, since I had done the hardest part of the work.”75 Mabel asked Higginson to place her name where he thought appropriate, and in the end, the volume was listed as “edited by her friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.”

  Just after the poems’ publication Mabel reported that Vinnie “plucked up a great deal of spirit. The more indignant Susan is now the higher Vinnie holds her head.”76

  Poems, by Emily Dickinson, was published on November 12, 1890. Roberts Brothers did an initial press run of 480 copies. Mabel was sent six copies, and she later told Millicent, “The sense of actually holding it in our hands was one of exultation.” But, as Millicent noted, with the publication of this volume, “A great calm seems to have enveloped them all—an oppressive quiet, like the eye of the storm.”77

  Much to the delight of the “two of her friends” who edited the first volume of Emily’s poetry—and to the great surprise of her publisher—the first edition of Poems sold out in weeks. By the end of December, the third printing “was exhausted,” said Mabel. The book’s “commercial success kept Roberts Brothers more occupied than either Niles or the editors had anticipated. . . . The Christmas demand made another [printing] necessary in less than two weeks, and yet another in January.”78 Reflecting back on this time, Mabel wrote, “And so the book had more than justified my years of toil with little encouragement except a sustaining belief in the greatness of Emily’s poetry. She, perhaps, would have been the most surprised of her readers, could she have seen from some upper realm the astonishing reception accorded her ‘mind.’”79

  Higginson wrote to Mabel of his joy in their collective triumph: “Pardon me if I bore you, but . . . you are the only person who can feel as I do about this extraordinary thing we have done in recording this rare genius. I feel as if we had climbed to a cloud, pulled it away, and revealed a new star behind it.”80

  Despite decidedly mixed initial reviews, sales suggested that the public did, indeed, have an appetite for these unusual poems. Arlo Bates echoed his earlier praise of the poems’ genius but had reservations about their odd form, while William Dean Howells declared, “If nothing else had come out of our life but this strange poetry we should feel that in the work of Emily Dickinson, America, or New England rather, had made a distinctive addition to the literature of the world.”81 Wrote Mabel: “The notices are beginning to pour in. Of course there is some notice taken of the lack of form, but all agree that it is a marvelous volume, full of genius, and a legacy to the world. And there are hundreds [of poems] yet unpublished which I have here, equally as fine as those in the volume.”82 Mabel and Higginson immediately got to work on selecting and editing another set of poems for a second volume.

  Concurrent with the editorial work, Mabel launched into another phase of her marketing campaign. She initiated a series of talks about the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. These talks were specifically designed to build interest and intrigue among the audience, but also “gave her greater clout with publishers.”83 Mabel suggested in her diary that her initial paper, to be read for a Women’s Club in Springfield, Massachusetts, in April 1891, would be “interesting and in a not-deep way rather a comprehensive sketch of her life and personality and work and literary characteristics.”84 From her lecture notes and drafts of her talks, it’s clear that Mabel began each one of her lectures by reciting one of Emily’s poems (usually either “Success” or “How many times these low feet staggered”), and then launched into a discussion of when she believed Emily had started writing poetry, an analysis of her handwriting and discussion of the structure, punctuation and use of capitalization in the poems. “Emily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness,” she wrote in her notes for these talks, “even the somber facts of death and burial, the unknown life beyond. She touches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost humorously, more often with weird and peculiar power, but she is never by any chance frivolous or trivial.”85

  Mabel also spoke about Emily’s life, in an effort to both build and clarify the image of the poet, which she believed would add to sales: “She had tried society and the world, and found them lacking. She was not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from no love disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist in pretense.”86

  At the time, Mabel was giving many other lectures, including talks about her trip to Japan, astronomy and other topics. Her talks were given to women’s clubs, literary organizations and university clubs and to increasingly large general audiences. Mabel was a natural and dynamic public speaker, and she knew it. After the first public talk she ever gave, in May 1890, she recorded, “My talk in Boston . . . was very enthusiastically received. It was really the first elaborate one I ever gave, but I knew I could do it more than well. . . . I had thought out quietly what I wished to say, but I found that dozens of bright things came to me spontaneously which I had not intended and the flow of words and pictures was smooth and inspired. My mother, who is a most severe critic, said it was the best thing she ever listened to, and she was thoroughly enthused by it.”87

  As her public speaking experience grew, Mabel wrote that she could easily “talk to an audience and make them desperately enthusiastic, rippling with laughter one minute and their eyes filled with tears the next.” On her talk at the Sixth Biennial of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in Los Angeles in May 1902, she reported, “I captured them at about the third sentence. How much I wish I know what I possess that does this! But the quality which takes, and keeps, an audience in the hollow of one’s hand is . . . what comes to be when I stand before a waiting audience.”88 Her talks on Emily’s life and poetry began to attract large audiences and launched Mabel’s career as a public speaker and a rare female public intellectual. She relished both of these roles.

  As they set out to prepare the next batch of poems for publication, Mabel, with David’s assistance, undertook the task of compiling a complete alphabetical index of all the poems copied to date. This comprehensive list numbered almost one thousand, and certainly made the task of identifying and locating any particular poem far easier. She and Higginson were in very close touch during this time. Their letters and notes, held in the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and reproduced in detail in Millicent’s Ancestors’ Brocades, show that they were immersed in a large number of small details in trying to understand Emily’s life. Their collaboration was engaged and mutually respectful. (Millicent wryly commented that though the two editors differed in opinion, “It sometimes seems as if the more their opinions differed, the politer they became.”)89

  Although they continued to make a significant number of
changes to the poems, there were some they left relatively untouched. In April of 1891, Higginson wrote to Mabel, “Let us alter as little as possible, now that the public ear is opened”—although he continued to suggest a number of changes that he thought would make the poems more acceptable to the general public. Mabel, for her part, preferred that much of Emily’s wording be left intact, and maintained her stance that titling the poems seemed wrong, though she continued to defer to Higginson on this point.90

  Mabel selected over a hundred poems for the second volume, including some at Vinnie’s request, which she sent to Higginson for his consideration. When Higginson returned the poems to her, he also included some Emily had sent to him that he felt should be added. By the end of July 1891, Mabel sent him back the copy arranged, punctuated and edited as they had agreed.

  Concurrently, she was already thinking ahead to collecting, editing and publishing Emily Dickinson’s letters. She had thought of this idea while working on the first volume of poems—“I mean, also, to collect her letters gradually and arrange them for a prose volume. They are also startlingly fine.”91

  To continue their momentum, the editors knew that they needed to have a preface to the second volume of poems that would build the interest in Emily and her poetry. They also needed a well-placed article in a major periodical close to the publication date. They agreed that Higginson would write an article for the Atlantic Monthly, to be published approximately to coincide with the publication of the poetry (his article came out in October 1891, a month ahead of the poems). Mabel would write a preface to the book and Higginson would edit it. She completed a draft toward the end of July 1891, and sent it to Higginson along with a letter in which she explained that she knew the preface was a bit long, “but I have tried to answer, point by point, the things said of her by the critics.” This included correcting the notions being bandied about in reviews that the poetry was irreverent, and also correcting statements that Emily had been a recluse since childhood, that she never left Amherst and that she had been “cruelly disappointed in love.” Mabel told Higginson that Austin liked her introduction and did not think it too long, and that Vinnie had also signed off on it. Higginson, however, did feel it too long, and took her at her word that he should edit it. He made a number of suggestions and concluded by telling her, “In publishing this, I would suggest that your name be signed to it, as was mine to the other preface & that we equalize matters as we did then, but now by putting my name first on title-page.”92