White Heat Part 11

Higginson spoke out against privileges accruing to a single cla.s.s, caste, race, or gender, and as for the new "aristocracy of the dollar," who converted dreams of justice into dreams of gold, he believed that "the aristocracy of the millionaires is only a prelude to the aristocracy of the millions." (Andrew Carnegie loved Higginson's lecture on the subject.) An evolutionary gradualist, he would loosely ally himself with Edward Bellamy's utopian Nationalist clubs but called himself a progressive cooperationist, not a nationalist. The nationalization of industry seemed to him undemocratic; this position was in keeping with his faith in a free market democracy, although he admitted government owners.h.i.+p of energy and railroads not a bad idea. Nor were workingmen's compensation, compulsory education, and profit sharing. "Sow a victim, and you reap a socialist," he observed with sympathy for the worker. Yet he apparently said nothing when seven hundred strikes occurred in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1887 and, unlike Howells, did not protest the execution of the Haymarket anarchists. These were battles for a new generation. He had fought his.

FIFTEEN

Pugilist and Poet

Death claimed her far too early, he later recalled, but she would persist.

Though himself frequently ill, Higginson kept up their correspondence as best he could. Still, there were long lapses between his letters to Emily. And hers to him, though when she could, she wrapped small gifts for his daughter-a Valentine, a poem, a book, a turquoise brooch in a square wooden box with roses painted on the lid-that have disappeared from public view. But since her nephew Gib's death, in 1883, an unexplained illness had stalked her, and in the summer of 1884 she took a turn for the worse. She blacked out, fell, and when she woke, a physician was glooming over her. "The doctor calls it 'revenge of the nerves,'" she quipped, "but who but Death had wronged them?" For several days she seemed delirious, or at least not quite rational. More herself by the following February, she sent John Cross's George Eliot's Life George Eliot's Life to Higginson, now piquantly observing that "Biography first convinces us of the fleeing of the Biographied-." to Higginson, now piquantly observing that "Biography first convinces us of the fleeing of the Biographied-."

She had begun to flee.

And she added to her letter the four lines of poetry originally written for Sue after the death of Gilbert: Pa.s.s to thy Rendezvous of Light,Pangless except for us-Who slowly ford the MysteryWhich thou hast leaped across!

Not yet would she say good-bye, but this was a prelude.

"I WORK TO DRIVE the awe away, yet awe impels the work," d.i.c.kinson had written her cousins the previous spring. Otis Lord had died in March; it was a severe blow, and it may be that she never quite recovered. "How the awe away, yet awe impels the work," d.i.c.kinson had written her cousins the previous spring. Otis Lord had died in March; it was a severe blow, and it may be that she never quite recovered. "How can can the sun s.h.i.+ne, Vinnie?" Emily reportedly asked on hearing the news. "I have not been strong for the last year," she then told a friend. "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come." the sun s.h.i.+ne, Vinnie?" Emily reportedly asked on hearing the news. "I have not been strong for the last year," she then told a friend. "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come."

"The Crisis of the sorrow of so many years is all that tires me," she explained to Elizabeth Holland, referring to the pa.s.sing of her father, her mother, Charles Wadsworth, her darling nephew. "All this and more, though is is there more? More than Love and Death? Then tell me it's name!" there more? More than Love and Death? Then tell me it's name!"

Working to drive the awe away, awe impelling the work: the remark echoes the one she had made to Higginson back in 1862, that "I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground-because I am afraid." Writing calmed anxiety and answered questions by posing them, particularly about love and death and what she had told Higginson was "the Flood subject," or immortality. And immortality implied not just everlasting life in religious terms but poetry, "Exterior-to Time-."

Awe impels the work. "Circ.u.mference, thou bride / of awe,-possessing, thou / Shalt be possessed by / Every hallowed Knight / That dares to covet thee": these perplexing, evocative lines she sent Daniel Chester French, the architect and Amherst native, on the unveiling of his statute of John Harvard in Cambridge. "Success is dust, but an aim forever touched with dew," she added, as if to remind him that the moment shall pa.s.s, fresh as it seems. And frequently she returned to those twinned subjects, poetry and immortality, in these last years. "My Business is Circ.u.mference," she had informed Higginson so many years before, and that was still true. Circ.u.mference, the reaching of limits and beyond them, was its own form of immortality, which relieved both the joy and pain of living. For when undergoing some sort of crisis just before and during the war, as we recall, she had written an astonis.h.i.+ng number of poems, many of her greatest, but afterward the quant.i.ty declined to as few as ten in a year. And before her last illness she had been writing again at a steady rate, twenty poems annually and, by the editor Ralph Franklin's count, as many as forty-two in 1884, the year Lord died.

She had not been sending Higginson as many poems as previously: the year of Mary's death she sent eight but only two in 1878, the year after, and one in 1879, when Higginson remarried. But she mailed six in 1880, two in 1881, and four in 1882. (These last include "How happy is the little Stone," "Come show thy Durham Breast to her who loves thee best," "Obtaining but our own extent," and possibly "The Moon upon her fluent route.") The next year, 1883, she sent "No Brigadier throughout the Year."

No Brigadier throughout the YearSo civic as the Jay-A Neighbor and a Warrior tooWith shrill felicityPursuing Winds that censure usA February Day,The Brother of the UniverseWas never blown away-The Snow and he are intimate-I've often seen them playWhen Heaven looked upon us allWith such severityI felt apology were dueTo an insulted skyWhose pompous frown was NutrimentTo their temerity-The Pillow of this daring HeadIs pungent Evergreens-His Larder-terse and Militant-Unknown-refres.h.i.+ng things-His Character-a Tonic-His Future-a Dispute-Unfair an ImmortalityThat leaves this Neighbor out- Though the subject of this poem is the blue jay-she had attached a clipping about birds to her ma.n.u.script-it is tempting to read it, once offered to Higginson, as a lighthearted homage to him, a brigadier in his own right as civic as the jay; a neighbor, a warrior, a "Brother of the Universe" intimate with "Snow" (Higginson's essay) and with nature ("pungent Evergreens"), his character a tonic deserving, without doubt, of a certain immortality. He admired the poem enormously, but when he included it in Poems, Poems, Second Series, he placed it under the rubric of "Nature," not "Life." He was a shy, self-effacing man. Second Series, he placed it under the rubric of "Nature," not "Life." He was a shy, self-effacing man.

Had she changed her mind about publis.h.i.+ng in these later years? Chiding d.i.c.kinson for her intractability, Helen Hunt Jackson flatly stated that "it is a cruel wrong to your 'day & generation'" not to publish and asked to serve as d.i.c.kinson's literary executor should Jackson outlive her. "Surely, after you are what is called 'dead,'" Jackson pushed, "you will be willing that the poor ghosts you have left behind, should be cheered and pleased by your verses, will you not?"

Jackson had recommended d.i.c.kinson's work to Thomas Niles, the editor at Roberts Brothers who had published the No Name Series. "The kind but incredible opinion of 'H. H.' and yourself, I would like to deserve-," d.i.c.kinson wrote Niles in response to his inquiry, mailing him "How happy is the little Stone," which she'd recently given Higginson: "How happy is the little Stone / ," it begins in mock innocence, "That rambles in the Road alone, / And does'nt care about Careers / And Exigencies never fears-."

A year pa.s.sed. In the spring of 1883, as if to reopen the discussion, she mailed Niles "Further in Summer than the Birds" and "It sifts from leaden sieves," poems Higginson had received in 1866 and 1871; perhaps his enthusiasm had encouraged her to try them out on Niles. She also sent him one of her favorite books, a volume of poems by the Bronte sisters: she was as serious as they.

Niles was nonplussed. "I would not for the world rob you of this very rare book," he burbled. "If I may presume to say so, I will instead take a M.S. collection of your poems, that is," he diffidently added, "if you want to give them to the world through the medium of a publisher." Apparently she did not, although it's not quite clear what she did want, for she kept mailing poems, sending "No Brigadier throughout the Year," and when he said that "the Bird seemed true," dispatching three more: "a Thunderstorm-a Humming Bird, and a Country Burial," she called them, as if poems with t.i.tles-she did not ordinarily use them-might be more suitable for a benighted public.

Higginson had also read these-"The Wind begun to rock the Gra.s.s," "A Route of Evanescence," and "Ample make this Bed,"-and it seems he had praised them. No doubt she hoped Niles would too. "Ample make this Bed-/ Make this Bed with Awe-/ In it wait till Judgment break / Excellent and Fair," she wrote. When mailed to Niles, the poem can be read as a covert bid for his good opinion. Yet it's impossible to know if she would have consented, after all, to a book had Niles been keener. When he subsequently thanked her for the "specimens," he noncommittally asked if he might hang on to them; possibly his polite apathy confirmed d.i.c.kinson's dim view of publishers: insensitive and meretricious.

Higginson was different. For though she masqueraded as his student, both of them had acceded to the ruse, he admitting after her death that he knew he could teach her nothing. At the same time it does not seem as though she mentioned Niles to him. She kept her secrets well.

Writing Wentworth during that same spring of 1883-and calling herself his "Pupil" out of well-worn, rea.s.suring habit-Emily revived their dwindling correspondence. "Emblem is immeasurable-," she told him, "that is why it is better than Fulfillment, which can be drained." Her prose more nimble than his, her poetry more audacious and trenchant, she continued to flatter and upstage him, dipping into his work and rewriting it for her own use, for as she noted, he said great things inadvertently. Listen to his long-winded comment on the line "And yet I live!" in Petrarch's Sonnet 251, which he compares with Shakespeare: "What immeasurable distances of time and thought are implied in the self-recovery of those words. Shakespeare might have taken from them his 'Since Cleopatra died,'-the only pa.s.sage in literature which has in it the same wide s.p.a.ces of emotion." As was her habit, Emily briskly rephrased Higginson. "Antony's remark to a friend, 'since Cleopatra died' is said to be the saddest ever lain in Language-," she wrote to Otis Lord. "That engulfing 'Since'-."

In the spring of 1884, after Otis Lord had suffered his lethal stroke, she wrote to her cousins, "I hardly dare to know that I have lost another friend. Till the first friend dies, we think ecstasy impersonal, but then discover that he was the cup from which we drank it, itself as yet unknown." Yet in spite of her own illness and the wearing horror of so many deaths, there was something indomitable about Emily d.i.c.kinson, who could still with scrupulous care watch the bobolinks in the meadow and reiterate that blossoms and books were the solace of sorrow. They were. "'Supernatural,' was only the Natural, disclosed-," she had said to Higginson in one of her first, tantalizing letters: Not "Revelation"-'tis-that waits,But our unfurnished eyes- Her robust pa.s.sion for nature unimpaired almost twenty years later, she committed herself to joy in the very act of living, even if that commitment required necessary delusions that, as she and Higginson would both suggest, keep human behavior ethical. They had not abdicated belief; they redefined it. As d.i.c.kinson wrote in a late poem, Those-dying then,Knew where they went-They went to G.o.d's Right Hand-That Hand is amputated nowAnd G.o.d cannot be found-The abdication of BeliefMakes the Behavior small-Better an ignis fatuusThan no illume at all- "FAITH IS DOUBT DOUBT," Emily told Sue. Perhaps in a bleak moment or when he wrote to her in the letters that do not survive, Wentworth had agreed with her. Mostly he did not. "What channel needs our faith except the eyes?" he had asked in an early poem, and in 1891 he said that "next to the yearnings of human affections, the most irresistible suggestion of immortality comes from looking up at the unattainable mystery of the stars." Emily was more specific, more poignant. "I hear robins a great way off," she lyrically wrote to her cousins, "and wagons a great way off, and rivers a great way off, and all appear to be hurrying somewhere undisclosed to me. Remoteness is the founder of sweetness; could we see all we hope, or hear the whole we fear told tranquil, like another tale, there would be madness near. Each of us gives or takes heaven in corporeal person, for each of us has the skill of life."

And some, she might have added, possess the skill of poetry. She did include this ebullient poem about singing: The most triumphant birdI ever knew or met,Embarked opon a twig today,And till Dominion set,I perish to behold

Emily d.i.c.kinson, in photograph marked "Emily d.i.c.kinson, died Dec. 1886," from daguerreotype taken ca. 1853 and discovered by Professor Philip Gura.So competent a sight,And sang for nothing scrutable,But impudent delight-Retired, and resumed his transitive estate,To what delicious accidentdoes finest glory fit!

One sings for nothing scrutable. Remoteness is the founder of sweet song.

THE UNBELIEVABLE RUMOR of Helen Hunt Jackson's fatal illness prompted Emily to write Wentworth immediately. "Please say it is not so," she begged him in the summer of 1885, afraid of what he might answer. The news was bad. Jackson died on August 12. Higginson published a memorial sonnet in of Helen Hunt Jackson's fatal illness prompted Emily to write Wentworth immediately. "Please say it is not so," she begged him in the summer of 1885, afraid of what he might answer. The news was bad. Jackson died on August 12. Higginson published a memorial sonnet in The Century, The Century, which he sent in ma.n.u.script to d.i.c.kinson, who replied with her own farewell: which he sent in ma.n.u.script to d.i.c.kinson, who replied with her own farewell: Not knowing when Herself may comeI open every Door,Or has she Feathers, like a Bird,or Billows, like a Sh.o.r.e- Shortly afterward she contacted Wentworth again, enclosing an elegiac poem that quietly lauds him.

Of Glory not a Beam is leftBut her Eternal House-The Asterisk is for the Dead,The Living, for the Stars- For years he had been her living friend. And she thanked him.

EMILY RELAPSED IN THE FALL of 1885. Canceling a Boston trip, Austin sat at his sister's bedside. By December she seemed to improve for a time but soon sank lower. She was breathing with difficulty. There were convulsions. Otis Bigelow, her physician, prescribed olive oil and chloroform. On Thursday, May 13, he stayed by her side all day, but as Austin scribbled in his diary, "Emily seemed to go off into a stark unconscious state toward ten-and at this writing 6 PM has not come out of it." She never regained consciousness. of 1885. Canceling a Boston trip, Austin sat at his sister's bedside. By December she seemed to improve for a time but soon sank lower. She was breathing with difficulty. There were convulsions. Otis Bigelow, her physician, prescribed olive oil and chloroform. On Thursday, May 13, he stayed by her side all day, but as Austin scribbled in his diary, "Emily seemed to go off into a stark unconscious state toward ten-and at this writing 6 PM has not come out of it." She never regained consciousness.

Bigelow diagnosed Bright's disease, a kidney disorder, but it was not necessarily the cause of her death, for the symptoms that began shortly after Gib's death-those terrible headaches, the vomiting-and the ensuing stretches of good health may be consistent with severe primary hypertension, leading to cardiac failure or stroke. Or with cancer. In 1886 there were no medical interventions that might have saved her.

"IT WAS SETTLED BEFORE MORNING BROKE that Emily would not wake again this side," Austin noted on Sat.u.r.day, May 15. "The day was awful. She ceased to breathe that terrible breathing just before the whistles sounded for six.... I was near by." that Emily would not wake again this side," Austin noted on Sat.u.r.day, May 15. "The day was awful. She ceased to breathe that terrible breathing just before the whistles sounded for six.... I was near by."

"AUDACITY OF BLISS, said Jacob to the Angel 'I will not let thee go except I bless thee'-Pugilist and Poet, Jacob was correct-," d.i.c.kinson reconceived Genesis at the very end of her life, posting a final note to Wentworth Higginson, some of the last lines she was ever to write, tribute to a subtle friends.h.i.+p. said Jacob to the Angel 'I will not let thee go except I bless thee'-Pugilist and Poet, Jacob was correct-," d.i.c.kinson reconceived Genesis at the very end of her life, posting a final note to Wentworth Higginson, some of the last lines she was ever to write, tribute to a subtle friends.h.i.+p.

And though Higginson may have been the angel who saved her life, as she had often reminded him, when she retold the story of Jacob and the angel, it was she, both poet and pugilist-and a monarch of dreams-who would, could, will bless him, and who never let go these many, many years.

SIXTEEN

Rendezvous of Light

Those two sisters living alone, their bond insoluble, their rebuff of conventions rock hard: to Higginson, who stepped inside the Homestead once again-it had been nearly thirteen years-the place was a living House of Usher, updated and New Englandly. The day was l.u.s.trous, calm, and gemlike. The morning haze had burned off, leaving the sky blue and hopeful, and the village was dressed for spring in bright green, violet, and wild geranium. But at the Homestead the long shades were drawn, and in the library sat a small white casket.

Inhaling, Higginson peered down at Emily d.i.c.kinson's beautiful unfurrowed brow. He did not hesitate at calling her beautiful now. And as he sadly noticed, she was youthful too, without a gray hair or a wrinkle.

"How large a portion of the people who have interested me have pa.s.sed away," he mourned.

Higginson's unusual friend had died just days before. He had received the sad news, likely by telegram, on the seventeenth. So many deaths: Helen Hunt Jackson not a year earlier, when d.i.c.kinson herself, upset, had contacted him to say Jackson had written she could not walk "but not," d.i.c.kinson cried, "that she would die." Now Emily herself was gone. He knew she had been ill, for earlier that spring she had told him she had been sick since November, "bereft of Book and Thought," she had said, "by Doctor's reproof." But he had not thought, as Emily had said of Jackson, that she would die.

Of course he would go to the funeral. Emily herself had probably requested that her family invite him. She had stipulated everything: the simple service, the men who would carry her casket, perhaps even the soft white flannel robe in which Sue tenderly wrapped her. Vinnie scattered pansies and lilies of the valley on the piano and placed a sprig of violets at Emily's neck, as she had done with their mother, along with a pink flower called Cypripedium, Cypripedium, or lady's slipper. She also set two heliotropes by her hand "to take to Judge Lord," Higginson heard her say. or lady's slipper. She also set two heliotropes by her hand "to take to Judge Lord," Higginson heard her say.

The funeral took place on Wednesday the nineteenth. The Reverend Jonathan Jenkins, who came from Pittsfield to offer a short prayer, and the Reverend Mr. d.i.c.kerman, pastor of the First Congregational Church, read from 1 Corinthians 15: "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

Higginson then pulled himself to his feet, announcing he would recite a poem, the one Emily had often read to her sister: Emily Bronte's "Last Lines." It was "a favorite with our friend," he added, "who has now put on that Immortality which she never seemed to have laid off."

No coward soul is mine,No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:I see Heaven's glories s.h.i.+ne,And faith s.h.i.+nes equal, arming me from fear.

The poem seems a valediction to each of the mourners gathered there in the Homestead parlor: Though earth and man were gone,And suns and universes cease to be,And Thou were left alone,Every existence would exist in Thee.

THE HONORARY PALLBEARERS, including the president of Amherst College, bore the small coffin from the library into the hall and then out the back door, but per Emily's express instructions, the men who worked for the d.i.c.kinsons over the years-Stephen Sullivan, Pat Ward, Tom Kelley, Dennis Scannell, Dennis Cashman, Dan Moynihan-conveyed the casket, high on its wooden bier, through the d.i.c.kinson meadow to the cemetery. It was the path through the meadow, thick with daisies and b.u.t.tercups, that Miss Emily herself must often have taken to visit her parents' graves. including the president of Amherst College, bore the small coffin from the library into the hall and then out the back door, but per Emily's express instructions, the men who worked for the d.i.c.kinsons over the years-Stephen Sullivan, Pat Ward, Tom Kelley, Dennis Scannell, Dennis Cashman, Dan Moynihan-conveyed the casket, high on its wooden bier, through the d.i.c.kinson meadow to the cemetery. It was the path through the meadow, thick with daisies and b.u.t.tercups, that Miss Emily herself must often have taken to visit her parents' graves.

Convulsed in grief and draped in black, a hollow-eyed Mabel Todd accompanied the small group to the cemetery, walking behind the family cortege. The air was iridescent, the white sun streaming on the mourners, who gathered around the open grave, which Sue had lined with a spate of flowers and green branches. "It was a never to be forgotten burial," commented a family friend, "and seemed singularly fitting to the departed one."

As the casket was lowered down and farther down, Mabel Todd took one last look. Emily d.i.c.kinson, she said, had gone back "into a little deeper mystery than that she has always lived in."

SUE d.i.c.kINSON COMPOSED AN OBITUARY for the for the Springfield Republican. Springfield Republican. Printed on May 18, the day before the funeral, it addressed all the rumors flying around her sister-in-law; the rumors had flown around her sister-in-law for years. There was a great deal public about this private person, and Sue wanted to set the record straight. "Not disappointed with the world," she wrote, "not an invalid until within the past two years, not from any lack of sympathy, not because she was insufficient for any mental work or social career-her endowments being so exceptional-, but the 'mesh of her soul,' as Browning calls the body, was too rare, and the sacred quiet of her own home proved the fit atmosphere for her worth and work." Printed on May 18, the day before the funeral, it addressed all the rumors flying around her sister-in-law; the rumors had flown around her sister-in-law for years. There was a great deal public about this private person, and Sue wanted to set the record straight. "Not disappointed with the world," she wrote, "not an invalid until within the past two years, not from any lack of sympathy, not because she was insufficient for any mental work or social career-her endowments being so exceptional-, but the 'mesh of her soul,' as Browning calls the body, was too rare, and the sacred quiet of her own home proved the fit atmosphere for her worth and work."

Emily's writing and conversation were incomparable, she went on to say. "Like a magician she caught the shadowy apparitions of her brain and tossed them in startlingly picturesqueness to her friends, who, charmed with their simplicity and homeliness as well as profundity, fretted that she had so easily made palpable the tantalizing fancies forever eluding their bungling, fettered grasp."

And in the end Emily eluded everyone. "Now and then some enthusiastic literary friend would turn love into larceny, and cause a few verses surrept.i.tiously obtained to be printed," Sue admitted. "Thus, and through other natural ways, many saw and admired her verses, and in consequence frequently notable persons paid her visits, hoping to overcome the protest of her own nature and gain a promise of occasional contributions, at least, to various magazines."

One such was Wentworth Higginson.

THEIR FRIENDs.h.i.+P HAD BEEN BASED on absence, geographic distance, and the written word. They had exchanged letters in which they invented themselves and each other, performing for each other in the words that filled, maintained, and created the s.p.a.ce between them. "What a Hazard a Letter is!" Emily had exclaimed to him. "When I think of the Hearts it has scuttled and sunk, I almost fear to lift my Hand to so much as a Superscription." Yet she hazarded them for a lifetime and to Wentworth for almost twenty-five years. on absence, geographic distance, and the written word. They had exchanged letters in which they invented themselves and each other, performing for each other in the words that filled, maintained, and created the s.p.a.ce between them. "What a Hazard a Letter is!" Emily had exclaimed to him. "When I think of the Hearts it has scuttled and sunk, I almost fear to lift my Hand to so much as a Superscription." Yet she hazarded them for a lifetime and to Wentworth for almost twenty-five years.

He knew what she meant, albeit in his own way. "It is true of all of us that the letter represents the man, odd or even," he observed. "It is, indeed, more absolutely the man, in one sense, than he himself is, for the man himself is inevitably changing, beyond his own control, from moment to moment, from birth to death." What a hazard a letter is: quicksilver and irrevocable and frequently misunderstood. Yet somehow these two people, who lived in the intimacies and distances and secrets of words-somehow these two people created out of words a nearness we today do not entirely grasp.

d.i.c.kinson's letters, all of them, blaze with a pa.s.sion for sight and smell and sound and the enduring pleasure, whatever its cost, of friends.h.i.+p. The soul has bandaged moments, true, difficult to express, but there are points of contact, vehement, aflame, effulgent beyond words, that compel our entire being. That was her gamble. These are my letters to the World, she so famously said.

"Through the solitary prowess / Of a Silent Life-."

And Higginson? For her he represented the dappled world. And he gave it what he had, glad to give and still shy of what he might have found had he dwelled, as she did, uncompromisingly inward. But there was much he had understood.

"Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?" she had once asked this kindhearted man. "Should you think it breathed-and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick grat.i.tude-."

Two weeks before she died, still trusting that he, with his gift of sympathy, would understand, she in effect returned to the same question.

"Deity-does He live now?" she asked him. "My friend-does he breathe?"

Part Three

Beyond the Dip of Bell

SEVENTEEN

Poetry of the Portfolio

The wheels of Austin d.i.c.kinson's gleaming carriage screeched to a halt in front of the main gate of the Evergreens, and hearing the racket, Harriet Jameson bounded from her desk to the window. "I have no doubt he had a delightful drive with charming company," she caustically remarked, settling herself back down and continuing her letter. "The gossips say the intimacy existing between him and Mrs. Todd is as great as ever." To think that Mrs. Todd, utterly unrelated to the poet, had stood at poor Emily's grave shedding copious tears. "Many people are leaving Mrs. T 'alone'-," Mrs. Jameson delivered the town's verdict with smug satisfaction. For this was unimpeachable New England, where emotional displays were insupportable and, if ventured by an outsider, outrageous.

Ignorant of the village scuttleb.u.t.t, Wentworth Higginson returned to Amherst a few months after d.i.c.kinson's funeral as the guest of Sue and Austin. Austin ushered the Colonel about town: two men of the world, or so Austin liked to believe, riding through the bucolic scenery in which Austin took almost boyish pride. Wicker baskets on back porches were filled with ripe apples, and the nearby hills decked in crimson and gold. Chatting away, Austin likely did not speak of Mabel except in a most general way, and one a.s.sumes that instead of town tattle the men talked of Emily's poetry, which Lavinia was determined to see published.

Lavinia: alone in the now cavernous Homestead, surrounded by her cats, she was fretful and thin, the flesh having dropped from her bones in those last agonizing months before Emily died. And why had she been robbed of her one companion on earth, she indignantly wondered, until, that is, she discovered her sister's poetry. She had known, of course, that her sister wrote poetry, but she was unprepared for the hundreds and hundreds of poems in Emily's room, in the small bureau, some sewn together in booklets, others scribbled on the backs of envelopes, and she decided there and then that these poems would be published, preserved, respected. She would have her sister back.

It would not be an easy job. Vinnie knew that. Not only had Emily often written in a crabbed hand-as Higginson reminisced, it seemed she took her "first lessons by studying the famous fossil bird-tracks in the museum of that college town"-but the poems themselves looked to be in a state of confusion. Though Emily had collected some of them in small packets (Mrs. Todd called them fascicles, and the technical term has stuck) and grouped others in sets, many poems seemed incomplete. But literature was improvisation, much like Emily's concoctions at the piano, remembered by all who heard them, and her poems were always in progress, meant to be revised, reevaluated, and reconceived, especially when dispatched to different readers, as her editors would soon discover. (As the poet Richard Howard has pointed out, finis.h.i.+ng poems may not have interested her: "her true Flaubert was Penelope, to invert a famous allusion, forever unraveling what she had figured on the loom the day before.") She kept variants and appears not to have chosen among them, sometimes toying with as many as eight possibilities for words, line arrangement, rhyme, enjambment; nor did she choose among alternative endings. And frequently she composed on sc.r.a.ps of paper-newspaper clippings, brown paper sacks-or around the edges of thin sheets, the writing almost illegible. Or she incorporated parts of poems into the letters, which themselves were acts of poetry.

Nor had she left instructions about how she might want her poems to appear in print, or whether they should appear in print at all. Nor did she tell us if the physical and visual properties of her ma.n.u.scripts were as semantically important to her as contemporary critics contend.

From an editorial point of view, the situation was a mess.

Sue would have been the person most capable of sorting through Emily's ma.n.u.scripts, readying them for publication, but Vinnie mistrusted her. ("I was to have compiled the poems-," Sue stretched the truth a bit, writing to the editor of The Independent The Independent in 1891, "but as I moved slowly, dreading publicity for us all, she [Vinnie] was angry and a year ago took them from me.") Months pa.s.sed, and though Sue had a boxful, she did nothing with them, or so Vinnie decided even though Sue had mailed a few poems, much as she had in the past, to men well situated in the literary world. To in 1891, "but as I moved slowly, dreading publicity for us all, she [Vinnie] was angry and a year ago took them from me.") Months pa.s.sed, and though Sue had a boxful, she did nothing with them, or so Vinnie decided even though Sue had mailed a few poems, much as she had in the past, to men well situated in the literary world. To The Century The Century's editor, Richard Watson Gilder, she mailed, perhaps at Higginson's request, a poem she t.i.tled "Wind" ("The Wind begun to rock the Gra.s.s"), noting that "Col. Higginson, Dr. Holland, 'H.H.' and many other of her literary friends have long urged her [Emily] to allow her poems to be printed, but she was never willing to face the world." Gilder turned her down flat. The result from other magazines was equally discouraging.

Mabel Todd knew all of this. Austin told her everything: of Sue's failures-a source of pleasure for Mabel-and of Vinnie's manic determination. And Mabel had already decided that she alone was Emily's special companion-though one the poet had refused to see-for even if no one else did, Mabel believed in the sincerity of her own feelings. And gripped by Emily's spectral reputation, she identified with this wisp of a woman, who, though an Amherst insider by birthright, had quietly rejected its mores and earned admiration from the well-known likes, as Sue put it, of Josiah Holland, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Colonel Higginson. There was a lesson here.

If Mabel's neighbors these days deemed her an adulteress less sympathetic than Hester Prynne, she resolved to be just as famous. "I know I have the gift of expression," she reasoned. "But if I were to become sufficiently well-known, to be asked for articles and stories, that sort of stimulus would be very sweet to me. I do long for a little real, tangible success.... It is so beautiful to be appreciated!...after six years of being pressed down, & sat upon, & throttled!" She published reviews in The Nation, The Nation, just as Higginson had once advised Helen Hunt Jackson to do-since 1877 he himself had been writing its "Recent Poetry" column-and Austin presented her with a hand-carved oak writing desk. He also sent one of her stories to George William Curtis at just as Higginson had once advised Helen Hunt Jackson to do-since 1877 he himself had been writing its "Recent Poetry" column-and Austin presented her with a hand-carved oak writing desk. He also sent one of her stories to George William Curtis at Harper's, Harper's, who rejected it. But the ever-buoyant Mabel did not quit or wait; with energy to burn, she wrote up her recent trip to j.a.pan, where her husband, David, had been appointed the chief of the United States Eclipse Expedition. "Ten Weeks in j.a.pan" soon appeared in who rejected it. But the ever-buoyant Mabel did not quit or wait; with energy to burn, she wrote up her recent trip to j.a.pan, where her husband, David, had been appointed the chief of the United States Eclipse Expedition. "Ten Weeks in j.a.pan" soon appeared in St. Nicholas St. Nicholas magazine, and over the next five years, as Mabel noted in her diary, her reviews and articles flooded the magazine, and over the next five years, as Mabel noted in her diary, her reviews and articles flooded the Ill.u.s.trated Christian Weekly, Ill.u.s.trated Christian Weekly, the New York the New York Evening Post, St. Nicholas, Evening Post, St. Nicholas, and and The Nation. The Nation. Eventually there was, as she crowed, "a notice of me in Eventually there was, as she crowed, "a notice of me in Woman's Journal Woman's Journal" and, far better, an invitation from the Boston literary doyenne Annie Fields, asking Mabel to tea at her famous Charles Street home on the bank of the river. Writing was the best revenge.

Mabel Loomis Todd in 1885, at 29, Austin d.i.c.kinson's lover and soon to be Emily d.i.c.kinson's champion and co-editor, with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of the first three volumes of d.i.c.kinson's poetry.

Emboldened by success, she wanted to publish her and Austin's love letters, anonymously of course, their names discreetly omitted. Doubtless Austin scuttled the project. Yet he remained her secular religion, their love sacred, its grandeur her moral s.h.i.+eld against guilt or infamy-or Sue, whom she transformed into a monster of cruelty and sloth. Mabel would rise above them all, she knew, as the advocate of the sublime, and if she could not articulate the sublime in a book of her lover's letters, then why not in a book of poetry? By a.s.sociating herself with the mythic Emily, Mabel could infuriate Sue and trump the entire town.