White Heat Part 13

Lavinia d.i.c.kinson, 1880s.

And it has proved invaluable. Because she had been systematically collecting and copying d.i.c.kinson's letters since 1892, we owe the discovery and preservation of many of them largely to her Herculean effort. But the d.i.c.kinson family was hard as ever to navigate, and Higginson, at first part of the letter project, sniffed trouble when Vinnie wrote to ask how it was going. He bowed out. "I had expected to leave the letters entirely to you & at any rate the work work of them & the profit," he told Mrs. Todd. "I do not now wish to do any of the editing or to read the proofs, but if you should think that my name would help the book or that Miss L. should be indulged, I would do whatever you think about it." of them & the profit," he told Mrs. Todd. "I do not now wish to do any of the editing or to read the proofs, but if you should think that my name would help the book or that Miss L. should be indulged, I would do whatever you think about it."

Mabel later explained that Lavinia, upset, had gone to Higginson behind her back because she, Mabel, was also working on a book about eclipses for Roberts Brothers-Mabel knew how to take advantage of an opportunity-and Lavinia thought this other project interfered with Mabel's commitment to Emily. That may have been true. But Lavinia also begrudged Mabel's limelight-grabbing-and lucrative-appropriation of her sister. Sternly she explained to Higginson in an eight-page letter (now lost) that Mrs. Todd should not share in royalties and, moreover, that nothing would ever induce her to "give the copyright of Emily's mind to anyone."

Higginson wisely stepped aside, and half-sorry to hear Mabel had almost finished her collection of d.i.c.kinson's letters, he ruefully noted in the summer of 1893 that it "will be the last, I suppose, & will not only yield the final news of E. D. but take from me a living companions.h.i.+p I shall miss."

His affection for d.i.c.kinson had splashed onto Mrs. Todd. Over the years he and she remained in touch, the Colonel careful always not to offend Sue when he occasionally went to Amherst, where he stayed at a hotel so as not to show preference. And after Austin's death, Higginson tried to console Mabel. "I wish as I always do, that Ma.s.sachusetts were not so unreasonably long a state, that you might not live so far from me," he said. It sounds as if he were writing to Emily, with whom Mabel was so closely linked. But it was the ethereal, wonderful poet whom he loved, that "mystic and bizarre Emily," he called her, "born at once between two pages, as Th.o.r.eau says summer pa.s.ses to autumn in an instant."

THE PANIC OF 1893 delayed publication of the letters, and the book would not appear anyway until Vinnie and Mabel, then squabbling, settled their argument over royalties. Vinnie, who kept the copyright, wanted to dole out royalties to Mrs. Todd rather than have the publisher divide the proceeds. "I think she can trust my honor," huffed Vinnie. Austin had by then intervened on Mabel's side, arguing for a legal contract, and Vinnie finally consented to splitting earnings, although, as it turned out, there were none. Wounded, Mabel avenged herself in the preface by not acknowledging Vinnie's role in collecting the letters and, for that matter, by not even mentioning Vinnie's name. 1893 delayed publication of the letters, and the book would not appear anyway until Vinnie and Mabel, then squabbling, settled their argument over royalties. Vinnie, who kept the copyright, wanted to dole out royalties to Mrs. Todd rather than have the publisher divide the proceeds. "I think she can trust my honor," huffed Vinnie. Austin had by then intervened on Mabel's side, arguing for a legal contract, and Vinnie finally consented to splitting earnings, although, as it turned out, there were none. Wounded, Mabel avenged herself in the preface by not acknowledging Vinnie's role in collecting the letters and, for that matter, by not even mentioning Vinnie's name.

MABEL WAS ALSO EDITING a third series of d.i.c.kinson poems, this time without Colonel Higginson, and on her own at last she did not have to follow Higginson's injunction to alter as little as possible. Consequently, of the three volumes, a third series of d.i.c.kinson poems, this time without Colonel Higginson, and on her own at last she did not have to follow Higginson's injunction to alter as little as possible. Consequently, of the three volumes, Poems, Poems, Third Series (1896), is the most expurgated. Higginson flinched, albeit with diplomacy. "It is noticeable, also, that in a few of the poems," he noted, "there is an unexampled regularity of form, beyond anything to be found in the earlier volumes." Third Series (1896), is the most expurgated. Higginson flinched, albeit with diplomacy. "It is noticeable, also, that in a few of the poems," he noted, "there is an unexampled regularity of form, beyond anything to be found in the earlier volumes."

Reviewers were less tactful. "Her vogue has pa.s.sed," declared one critic. "Now such reputation as she has among minor lyricists is imperiled by the indiscretion of her executors." The poems did not sell.

But a seventy-two-year-old Higginson rode to the rescue. For the next ten years most of his poetry columns in The Nation The Nation included a mention of Emily d.i.c.kinson, whether he was praising the verse of Celia Thaxter or Stephen Crane (whom he called an amplified d.i.c.kinson) or Edwin Arlington Robinson's included a mention of Emily d.i.c.kinson, whether he was praising the verse of Celia Thaxter or Stephen Crane (whom he called an amplified d.i.c.kinson) or Edwin Arlington Robinson's Captain Craig Poems, Captain Craig Poems, suggesting that Robinson's poetry was "often like that of Emily d.i.c.kinson when she piques your curiosity through half a dozen readings and suddenly makes all clear." He compared Hamlin Garland's verse unfavorably to d.i.c.kinson's, he heard the poetry of d.i.c.kinson in the English lyricist Winifred Lucas, and it was he who prodded Stedman to represent d.i.c.kinson amply in his suggesting that Robinson's poetry was "often like that of Emily d.i.c.kinson when she piques your curiosity through half a dozen readings and suddenly makes all clear." He compared Hamlin Garland's verse unfavorably to d.i.c.kinson's, he heard the poetry of d.i.c.kinson in the English lyricist Winifred Lucas, and it was he who prodded Stedman to represent d.i.c.kinson amply in his American Anthology. American Anthology. When Brander Matthews composed a list of significant American authors, Higginson chided him for excluding someone as unique and talented as she. When Brander Matthews composed a list of significant American authors, Higginson chided him for excluding someone as unique and talented as she.

AUSTIN d.i.c.kINSON HAD DIED in the summer of 1895 from what his doctor diagnosed as a tired heart. Plagued by Mabel's persistent unhappiness, Vinnie's moods, and the cold misery of his own disconsolate family, Austin had been complaining of shortness of breath, exhaustion, and poor appet.i.te for almost a year. The families warred on, and he wore out. in the summer of 1895 from what his doctor diagnosed as a tired heart. Plagued by Mabel's persistent unhappiness, Vinnie's moods, and the cold misery of his own disconsolate family, Austin had been complaining of shortness of breath, exhaustion, and poor appet.i.te for almost a year. The families warred on, and he wore out.

Six months later, on February 7, 1896, Mabel and a lawyer, Timothy Spaulding of Northampton, marched over to the Homestead to put a deed of sale under Vinnie's nose that would transfer to the Todds an additional strip of d.i.c.kinson land, fifty-three feet wide, running east of the property that Austin had already given them. Mabel claimed that Austin had promised her this land-worth two thousand dollars-as remuneration for her work on Emily's poems. But Austin's promises were mostly hollow. He had failed to include Mabel in his will-it was "best for now," he lamely consoled her-and instead, to circ.u.mvent Sue, bequeathed to Vinnie his share of his father's estate with the verbal proviso that Vinnie pa.s.s it on to Mabel. He must have known Vinnie would never convey d.i.c.kinson property to anyone, least of all Mabel.

Mabel said she a.s.sumed that Vinnie would immediately comply with Austin's wish, a mighty naive a.s.sumption for a woman not particularly naive.

Yet Vinnie did sign the deed that cold February night. At Mabel's request it was not filed right away; Mabel wanted to conceal the arrangement from Sue and so planned to be out of the country, in j.a.pan, accompanying her husband on another astronomical junket, when the deed became public knowledge.

The Todds came home to Amherst in the fall of 1896, just after Poems, Poems, Third Series, appeared, to find Vinnie suing them for fraud. Alleging that Mrs. Todd had duped her into signing the deed, Vinnie said she thought she was merely putting her name to a friendly agreement forbidding construction on the contested site. Aghast, Mabel immediately countersued for slander. That suit was scheduled to be heard first, and when Mabel did not turn up in court (no one knows why)-her attorney may have suspected what her biographer calls "moral quicksand"-the judge, denying a continuance, proceeded with Vinnie's suit. Third Series, appeared, to find Vinnie suing them for fraud. Alleging that Mrs. Todd had duped her into signing the deed, Vinnie said she thought she was merely putting her name to a friendly agreement forbidding construction on the contested site. Aghast, Mabel immediately countersued for slander. That suit was scheduled to be heard first, and when Mabel did not turn up in court (no one knows why)-her attorney may have suspected what her biographer calls "moral quicksand"-the judge, denying a continuance, proceeded with Vinnie's suit.

That trial commenced in March 1898.

It was a tawdry business, since what was really on trial was Mabel Todd's affair with the poet's brother. Naturally this was not directly stated, and fortunately for Mabel the deposition of Vinnie's servant, Maggie Maher, never became public; nor was Maggie called to the stand, where she would have testified that she knew of Mabel and Austin's adultery. But in a significant tactical error, Mabel put the poems at the center of her defense. The land in question, she argued, was her reward for poems that took her the better part of ten years to copy, edit, and arrange for publication. Evidently Mrs. Todd had forgotten that she was considered an opportunistic interloper: how dare she profit financially, legally, or personally from Emily d.i.c.kinson's poems?

Amherst buzzed with the scandal, but Sue d.i.c.kinson stayed aloof, ensconced at the Evergreens, her absence from the courtroom noticeable and in its silent way eloquent. Yet day after day, Ned and Mattie listened to their aunt and their father's lover trade ugly accusations, each adversary playing her part to the hilt. Head held high, Mabel strode into the courtroom in a modish black and white hat. And in blue flannel dress, long crepe veil, and yellow shoes, Vinnie costumed herself as the self-reliant Yankee spinster, eccentric and familiar, shrewd and helpless, Hepzibah Pyncheon with vinegar.

There was no real contest. Though commentators then and later a.s.sumed Vinnie had perjured herself by lying about the deed, on April 15, 1898, Judge John Hopkins decided the case in favor of Lavinia and the New England propriety, primogeniture, and real estate she represented. The deed was rendered void, the Todds ordered to pay Vinnie's legal fees, and when Mabel appealed the decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then presiding over the Ma.s.sachusetts higher court, upheld the verdict.

"I shall die standing up," Mabel fumed. "There will be no weak admission that persecution has keeled me. But I am so tired in my soul!"

Mabel Loomis Todd locked the trunk in which she kept her collection of d.i.c.kinson poems and letters, and for the next fifty years their owners.h.i.+p remained a source of legal contention, d.i.c.kinson heirs calling Mrs. Todd a wh.o.r.e and a thief. As an adult her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, worked hard to rehabilitate Mabel's reputation while ruing the "blight of self-interest and self-glorification [that] had fallen upon her." Maybe it had. But what we do know for sure is that the feud erased the contribution of Thomas Higginson to Emily d.i.c.kinson's spectacular debut.

Me-Come! My dazzled faceIn such a s.h.i.+ning place!Me-hear! My foreign EarThe sounds of Welcome-there!

NINETEEN

Because I Could Not Stop

In the pinkish twilight of a September evening in 1904, after nearly twenty-one years abroad, Henry James was back in America, strolling along the brick streets of Cambridge. The university was no longer a small, leafy affair, he noticed. Knots of motley immigrants jostled long-skirted Radcliffe women on the crowded sidewalks, and further on, walking by Craigie House, he mused how the companionable Longfellow's home was now a watering hole for sightseers. Democracy levels it all: distinction, nuance, individuality.

This was just the sort of hauteur that exasperated the local Cambridge belletrist, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who considered James a formidable talent deracinated by his refusals-chief among them, his repudiation of America. "American literature is not," Higginson emphatically declared, "and never can be, merely an outlying portion of the literature of England." Though he himself admired Jane Austen, whom he reread every year along with his beloved Th.o.r.eau, Higginson also believed American literature sprang-should spring-from that rich, self-renewing idiom in which "the mixture of nationalities is constantly coining and exchanging new felicities of dialect": from the African spirituals he had so scrupulously copied; the tw.a.n.g of Western writers such as Bret Harte and Mark Twain, with whom he'd become friends; the argot of the Italian newcomer and of those who sailed in steerage from beyond the Pale. This was true cosmopolitanism, not the sinuous, self-regarding sentences of Henry James.

And unlike James, Higginson still hoped to heal the rift between art and public life, or what so long ago he had called, more generally, the dreamer and the worker. This had been the aim, as he saw it, of Th.o.r.eau, a writer snubbed by James, to whom Higginson constantly returned, again quoting Th.o.r.eau's definition of style-"the art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle." Th.o.r.eau, John Brown, Lincoln, Grant: these men-not James or Higginson himself, as he knew too well-closed the gap between private and public with the plain, clear speech of eloquent meaning.

Doubtless some of Higginson's irritation with James, not unlike the grudge he bore Whitman, had its origins in the war, which James curiously had managed to avoid. Or had he? Higginson cannily wondered. "Mr. James has no doubt placed himself as far as possible beyond the reach of the Civil War by keeping the Atlantic Ocean between him and the scene where it occurred," Higginson dryly commented. "But when I recall that I myself saw his youngest brother, still almost a boy, lying near to death, as it then seemed, in a hospital at Beaufort, S.C., after the charge on Fort Wagner, I can easily imagine that the Civil War may really have done something for Mr. James's development, after all."

Yet Higginson agreed with James that art was to be evaluated in aesthetic, not moral terms. "Let the picture only be well drawn; and the moral will take care of itself; never fear," Higginson insisted. His preferred modern poets were Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Heinrich Heine, and he said that "in case I were going to prison and could have but one book, I should think it a calamity to have Tennyson offered me instead of Browning." These days he gravitated toward Lanier and Poe and Swinburne, whom he praised for their metrical experimentation, as well as the young William Butler Yeats, whom he had met in England.

Not as square a critic as a subsequent generation of modernists would characterize him-neither as moralistic nor as mediocre-in 1890 Higginson co-edited a collection of American Sonnets, American Sonnets, noting that "in attempting to enforce...[fixed] laws, it is easy to become as pedantic and wearisome as the later Greek grammarians." Regardless, his taste was often inhibited by a finicky reticence, as it was in the case of Whitman, who still rankled him, although a mellower Higginson in old age acknowledged the poet's gifts and said he'd like Whitman's "Joy, s.h.i.+pmate, Joy!" carved on his tombstone. But in 1870, just a few months before he went to Amherst for the first time, he declared that the "American poet of pa.s.sion is yet to come." Had he failed to see the genius under his nose? For a while, perhaps. But he eventually understood enough to let others-us-have her. noting that "in attempting to enforce...[fixed] laws, it is easy to become as pedantic and wearisome as the later Greek grammarians." Regardless, his taste was often inhibited by a finicky reticence, as it was in the case of Whitman, who still rankled him, although a mellower Higginson in old age acknowledged the poet's gifts and said he'd like Whitman's "Joy, s.h.i.+pmate, Joy!" carved on his tombstone. But in 1870, just a few months before he went to Amherst for the first time, he declared that the "American poet of pa.s.sion is yet to come." Had he failed to see the genius under his nose? For a while, perhaps. But he eventually understood enough to let others-us-have her.

And though he initially hesitated about publis.h.i.+ng d.i.c.kinson's verse, once Poems Poems appeared and he looked at it, as if for the first time, he never changed his mind about her brilliance. In 1895 he said she possessed an ability to touch depths other poets may only dream of. The next year, when Mabel Todd brought out the third and last volume of d.i.c.kinson poems, he recurred again to Th.o.r.eau's aggressive metaphor: "She is to be tested," Higginson declared, "not by her att.i.tude, by her shot. Does she hit the mark? As a rule she does." In 1903, when Higginson turned eighty and it seemed d.i.c.kinson's star had set, he was unfazed. "We take for granted the somewhat exaggerated estimates of Margaret Fuller, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Emily d.i.c.kinson," griped one critic riled by Higginson's feminism. Higginson shrugged. Poems such as "Vanished" (his t.i.tle) would never be forgotten, he claimed, and while this isn't one of her best poems, it does reveal his awe in her presence-and his nagging sense of what he had lost and still missed: appeared and he looked at it, as if for the first time, he never changed his mind about her brilliance. In 1895 he said she possessed an ability to touch depths other poets may only dream of. The next year, when Mabel Todd brought out the third and last volume of d.i.c.kinson poems, he recurred again to Th.o.r.eau's aggressive metaphor: "She is to be tested," Higginson declared, "not by her att.i.tude, by her shot. Does she hit the mark? As a rule she does." In 1903, when Higginson turned eighty and it seemed d.i.c.kinson's star had set, he was unfazed. "We take for granted the somewhat exaggerated estimates of Margaret Fuller, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Emily d.i.c.kinson," griped one critic riled by Higginson's feminism. Higginson shrugged. Poems such as "Vanished" (his t.i.tle) would never be forgotten, he claimed, and while this isn't one of her best poems, it does reveal his awe in her presence-and his nagging sense of what he had lost and still missed: She died,-this was the way she died; was the way she died;And when her breath was done,Took up her simple wardrobeAnd started for the sun.Her little figure at the gateThe angels must have spied,Since I could never find herUpon the mortal side.

Unable to find her on the mortal side, Higginson invented her: "a strange, solitary, morbidly sensitive, and pitifully childlike poetic genius who could afford, in all simplicity, to fall back upon her own companions.h.i.+p, and the companions.h.i.+p of animals, without caring to grow in wisdom," he wrote with cloying sentimentality. A concoction of his and Mabel Todd's, this image of d.i.c.kinson as reclusive-savant served both of them well: Mabel desperately wanted to enlarge her role in d.i.c.kinson affairs as the cicerone of a retiring genius, and Wentworth, who likely distrusted his own fondness toward Emily, wanted to keep her at bay. For though he may have been smitten with the crack'd and solitary singer who drained his nerve power, he would never have admitted to or acted on his feelings.

In the end, though, it was Emily who had closed the door, a door never opened to Mabel but unbolted, in part, for him. Their relations.h.i.+p was long-standing, deep, affectionate, real, and her poetry, whether he fully grasped all of it or not-he did grasp a great deal-said what he wished to say but more keenly, directly, daringly, and with more brio. He knew it. Eccentric and unmistakable and naming those uncharted places, her poetry "stands at the opposite remove from the verse of Longfellow," Higginson noted in 1903-and Longfellow's popularity, he hastened to add, was "the last fate" d.i.c.kinson would have "wished for." There was nothing really strange about her vaunted seclusion; she merely shunned what she called "an admiring Bog."

In fact, he envied the strength it took to withstand the world, since he, an obliging son of Puritans, could never brook isolation for long; his conscience hurled him, over and over, into the field of action. But the writers he most admired-Hawthorne, Th.o.r.eau, even the abolitionist Whittier-were recluses of a sort, as Higginson observed in an essay on the th.o.r.n.y subject of solitude. Even Shakespeare, a writer on the public stage, so skillfully concealed his private life that many doubted he wrote his own plays. "It would be easy to make up a long list of authors of eminence who have deprecated instead of encouraging all personal information," Higginson declared, "and who would have been eminently unfitted to live in an age or land of interviewers."

Desiring the solitude he could not sustain, Higginson thrived in that age of interviewers; d.i.c.kinson, not at all. They respected each other the more for it.

"Perhaps the more we are destined to have in common," Higginson concluded, "the more we shall take refuge in what we can preserve of 'retiracy.'" The modern age erased individuals: Higginson agreed with Henry James more than he let on.

"FEW OF US NOW REMAIN who were baptized into the light & hope of the 'Transcendental' movement," Higginson had remarked just days after his seventieth birthday. "To that & to the Anti Slavery movement I always feel that I owe most of what makes life worth living." who were baptized into the light & hope of the 'Transcendental' movement," Higginson had remarked just days after his seventieth birthday. "To that & to the Anti Slavery movement I always feel that I owe most of what makes life worth living."

Bearing the scar on his chin that he had earned while storming the Boston courthouse, Higginson still framed the war as a contest between freedom and enslavement, with freedom victorious; the simplification, though considered radical in 1893, papered over the inequities and indignities that black Americans, legally free, now endured. In retrospect, then, Higginson sometimes seems a man of denial: the war was over, slavery abolished. Garrison had closed The Liberator The Liberator in 1865, and all was presumably well. in 1865, and all was presumably well.

Higginson himself is partly to blame for this perception. The ongoing series of reminiscences he published in his later years had a sedative effect on his readers, distancing them from the derring-do of his more militant and feminist past. In 1896, for instance, his gastric ailment bedeviling him, he sat up in bed, propped with pillows, to write a memoir called "The Recollections of a Radical"-that is, before he jettisoned the t.i.tle as too combative and unliterary. Borrowing instead from Wordsworth's Excursion Excursion ("A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays / And confident tomorrows") he renamed his book ("A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays / And confident tomorrows") he renamed his book Cheerful Yesterdays. Cheerful Yesterdays.

Though the t.i.tle sounds a bit smug, Cheerful Yesterdays Cheerful Yesterdays is nonetheless the recollection of a public-spirited, self-proclaimed reformer who refuses to recant the radicalism that, by 1898, seemed quaint-or, worse yet, was dismissed as the very fanaticism that caused the war and after it divided the nation. Higginson took umbrage. A commitment to basic human rights is not fanaticism, and as for Reconstruction, if it ended poorly, as he wrote in is nonetheless the recollection of a public-spirited, self-proclaimed reformer who refuses to recant the radicalism that, by 1898, seemed quaint-or, worse yet, was dismissed as the very fanaticism that caused the war and after it divided the nation. Higginson took umbrage. A commitment to basic human rights is not fanaticism, and as for Reconstruction, if it ended poorly, as he wrote in The Nation The Nation in 1899, it was because southerners kept blacks in a condition "just as near slavery as possible; to limit their right of contract, their right of locomotion, and their range of labor." Former slaveholders had driven out northerners come to invest energy, time, and cash; "the typical carpet-bagger," he said, "was simply the man who was left behind to do mischief." in 1899, it was because southerners kept blacks in a condition "just as near slavery as possible; to limit their right of contract, their right of locomotion, and their range of labor." Former slaveholders had driven out northerners come to invest energy, time, and cash; "the typical carpet-bagger," he said, "was simply the man who was left behind to do mischief."

But overall Cheerful Yesterdays Cheerful Yesterdays said little about racial inequality, Jim Crow, or the recent disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt of black voters in the South. Instead, Higginson devised a narrative of his life in terms of progressive reform conceived in the ravis.h.i.+ng innocence of radicalism and matured into hope for the coming century: "To those who were living when the American nation lifted and threw off from its shoulders the vast incubus of human slavery," he asked, "what other task can seem too great to be accomplished?" said little about racial inequality, Jim Crow, or the recent disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt of black voters in the South. Instead, Higginson devised a narrative of his life in terms of progressive reform conceived in the ravis.h.i.+ng innocence of radicalism and matured into hope for the coming century: "To those who were living when the American nation lifted and threw off from its shoulders the vast incubus of human slavery," he asked, "what other task can seem too great to be accomplished?"

YET THE SUBJECT OF PREJUDICE was on his mind. Higginson joined the Anti-Imperialist League, formed in 1898 to protest American foreign policy and especially the brutal effort to annex the Philippines. With William James, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Andrew Carnegie, and Samuel Gompers, Higginson thoroughly rejected the so-called White Man's Burden (Kipling would coin the phrase in '99) and condemned jingoistic American politicians, his disgust the inevitable result of a lifelong commitment to justice and liberty. "Freedom is freedom," he cried, "and it is not for a nation born and reared on this theory to ignore it in judging the affairs of others." was on his mind. Higginson joined the Anti-Imperialist League, formed in 1898 to protest American foreign policy and especially the brutal effort to annex the Philippines. With William James, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Andrew Carnegie, and Samuel Gompers, Higginson thoroughly rejected the so-called White Man's Burden (Kipling would coin the phrase in '99) and condemned jingoistic American politicians, his disgust the inevitable result of a lifelong commitment to justice and liberty. "Freedom is freedom," he cried, "and it is not for a nation born and reared on this theory to ignore it in judging the affairs of others."

That meant he had to reconsider the present condition of American blacks. "These people have a right to the freedom of civilization, the freedom of political rights, the freedom not merely to escape being held as slaves, but to have a position as free men that is worth having," he wrote in the Boston Evening Transcript, Boston Evening Transcript, his oratorical style again strong. In the presidential election of 1900, Higginson threw his support to the anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan and, aware the black voter would be leery of a Democratic candidate, joined with Garrison's son and George Boutwell, head of the Anti-Imperialist League, to write the "Address to the Colored People of the United States." The black population, Higginson said, "must cut adrift from every organization which wars on darker races, as such, and begins to talk again of 'the natural supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon.' We fought through a four years' war to get rid of that doctrine, and enlisted nearly 200,000 black soldiers for the purpose." his oratorical style again strong. In the presidential election of 1900, Higginson threw his support to the anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan and, aware the black voter would be leery of a Democratic candidate, joined with Garrison's son and George Boutwell, head of the Anti-Imperialist League, to write the "Address to the Colored People of the United States." The black population, Higginson said, "must cut adrift from every organization which wars on darker races, as such, and begins to talk again of 'the natural supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon.' We fought through a four years' war to get rid of that doctrine, and enlisted nearly 200,000 black soldiers for the purpose."

That the African American had no real advocate in government soon became abundantly clear to Higginson, who read with mounting fury Bryan's newspaper, The Commoner, The Commoner, in which Bryan stated over and over that he believed black Americans inferior to Anglo-Saxons. Higginson angrily wrote Bryan; the letter is worth quoting at length: in which Bryan stated over and over that he believed black Americans inferior to Anglo-Saxons. Higginson angrily wrote Bryan; the letter is worth quoting at length: I have yours of Nov. 23rd, and it perhaps justifies me in writing to you with a frankness which I might not otherwise have regarded as proper. You ask me to a.s.sist in finding efficient agents for "The Commoner." Excuse me if I reply that, although I headed your electoral ticket in this state during the last presidential election, I never could have done it had you taken the position a.s.sumed in "The Commoner" of Nov. 1st, in regard to what you call the "social equality" question. In this number of the paper you take a position which appears to me utterly retrograde and mediaeval; & wholly inconsistent with your general att.i.tude.You also show in your way of arguing either ignorance or indifference in respect to American history when you say that no man or party has advocated social equality between the white man and the black man. The simple fact is that no man concerned in the great anti-slavery movement in its early days ever advocated anything else. In my own case from the first time I had a house of my own in 1847, a fugitive slave always had a refuge there, and was treated as a social equal; and when, in the year 1857, I raised emigrant parties and accompanied them into your state and Kansas, it was always under the same fiat. It is humiliating to me to think that a newspaper, calling itself Democratic in a region thus made free, should take such an att.i.tude as you now a.s.sume.It is in my opinion an essential part of Democracy that social distinctions should be merely individual, not racial. Character is character; and education is education. What social gradations exist should be based on these, and these alone; and even these should be effaced as rapidly as possible. What are you or what am I that we should undertake to advocate any social law that shall place us above men like Frederick Dougla.s.s or Booker Was.h.i.+ngton? No point which "The Commoner" advocates seems to me so important as this, and whatever its other merits, it here seems to me so utterly in the wrong, that I have no wish to subscribe for it myself or to have it sent me and can only wish, if it holds to this att.i.tude, that it may be discontinued.

Similarly, in 1904 Higginson wanted to know what so-called freedoms African Americans actually enjoyed: "a freedom tempered by chain-gangs, lynching, and the lash" he angrily wondered. Loathing the deep vein of racism that underlay violence perpetrated on black Americans, he snapped with antebellum fury, "Was any white man ever lynched, either before or since for insulting the modesty of a colored girl?" As for the fear, northern and southern, of miscegenation, he would have none of it. "As the memories of the slave period fade way, the mere fetich [sic] of colorphobia will cease to control our society," he imagined, "and marriage may come to be founded, not on the color of skin, but upon the common courtesies of life, and upon genuine sympathies of heart and mind."

In 1905 he wrote an introduction to The Aftermath of Slavery The Aftermath of Slavery by Dr. William Sinclair, an ex-slave, in which Sinclair cogently argued that southern whites, wis.h.i.+ng to reenslave black Americans, murdered thousands of them while denying them the vote. Though Higginson took the long view-"I am a man old enough to recall a time when there existed all around us at the North instances of the same kinds of injustice of which we now properly complain when we see it in the South"-he rebuked individuals like the white supremacist Thomas Nelson Page, whose novels Higginson had already censured. The next year he reproached Brander Matthews for not paying much attention to "the fact of colorphobia, still so dangerous & inhuman a feature of our civilization." by Dr. William Sinclair, an ex-slave, in which Sinclair cogently argued that southern whites, wis.h.i.+ng to reenslave black Americans, murdered thousands of them while denying them the vote. Though Higginson took the long view-"I am a man old enough to recall a time when there existed all around us at the North instances of the same kinds of injustice of which we now properly complain when we see it in the South"-he rebuked individuals like the white supremacist Thomas Nelson Page, whose novels Higginson had already censured. The next year he reproached Brander Matthews for not paying much attention to "the fact of colorphobia, still so dangerous & inhuman a feature of our civilization."

While he largely agreed with the Great Accommodator, Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, that education-for Was.h.i.+ngton, vocational education-was for African Americans the royal road to economic independence, he reminded his readers that "it is important for this race to produce its own physicians, lawyers, preachers, and above all, teachers." And he chided Harvard graduates in a poem published the same year that Henry James rambled the streets of Cambridge: They saved you; charged Fort Wagner; they held out,Held the road wide that Sherman might pa.s.s through.You built Shaw's statue; can you calmly doubtThat those who marched with him should vote, like you?

IN 1908, AFTER TWO DAYS of gruesome race riots in Springfield, Illinois, not far from the place where Lincoln lay entombed, Higginson joined with John Dewey, William Dean Howells, and W. E. B. Du Bois to demand suffrage for black Americans, as Du Bois put it, on the same terms as whites. From this challenge came the National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People. of gruesome race riots in Springfield, Illinois, not far from the place where Lincoln lay entombed, Higginson joined with John Dewey, William Dean Howells, and W. E. B. Du Bois to demand suffrage for black Americans, as Du Bois put it, on the same terms as whites. From this challenge came the National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People.

Higginson then retreated; revolutions do go backward, as he once said. He talked of conciliation between black and white instead of the demand for equal rights. It's difficult to know exactly why except in the terms he himself offered: political expediency and prudence, the same combination that lay behind his telling d.i.c.kinson not to publish her poems right away; the public was not ready for her, nor she for it. A curious mix of caution and courage, Higginson yet showed himself to be, in the end, mordantly skeptical about the capacity for people to change. "No white community will ever consent to the political supremacy of either the black man or the colored man or the yellow man," he wrote to the National Negro Conference. "I make this declaration philosophically and as a result of observation and reflection and absolutely without feeling of prejudice, for I have none."

Thomas Wentworth Higginson at 80, in 1903.

"CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS IS INDEED, IS INDEED, in spite of its cheer, a book of ghosts, a roll of names, some still vivid but many faded," observed Henry James, "redolent of a New England in general and a Boston in particular that will always be interesting to the moralist." To James, Higginson was a man of compunction and good deeds, not an artist. He was echoing the minority view of Higginson-today the majority view-first put forward in 1871 by Theodore Tilton, then editor of in spite of its cheer, a book of ghosts, a roll of names, some still vivid but many faded," observed Henry James, "redolent of a New England in general and a Boston in particular that will always be interesting to the moralist." To James, Higginson was a man of compunction and good deeds, not an artist. He was echoing the minority view of Higginson-today the majority view-first put forward in 1871 by Theodore Tilton, then editor of The Independent. The Independent.

He is too much of a moralist to lose himself in literature, and so fails of realizing the highest success in that department; and too much of a litterateur to throw himself into reform to sink or swim with some great movement or cause; and so fails to awaken the enthusiasm or quite command the sympathies of the reforming cla.s.s. In fact, he never quite loses himself in anything, and so never quite finds himself in anything, never touches the high mark of his power, never realizes the ideal set for him by warm-hearted friends.

Higginson pasted Tilton's criticism into his sc.r.a.pbook.

Yet no one would dispute his magnanimity or fair-mindedness. His seventieth and seventy-fifth and eightieth birthdays prompted testimonial dinners in Boston and Cambridge, with speeches and newspaper articles ritually praising his physique, his energy, and, more keenly, his kind but sad mouth. A portrait painted when he was eighty depicts him seated, his hair white as bone, whiskers white as sugar. He wears a double-breasted wool jacket and large necktie with stripes. He looks forward, almost defiantly, but at the same time seems uncomfortable sitting still. There is a hint of a watch fob and the glitter of a ring, but his hands are thin, and the outlines of his skinny knees poke through folds of cloth. His eye, though heavy lidded, is fixed on the future. "There are so many younger writers to be recognized & encouraged," he said. He liked to summarize Goethe: "The old trees must fall in order to give the younger growth a chance.... It is not the 19th century but the twentieth, which now becomes interesting."

More and more he meditated on the meaning of fame, that bugbear of a subject: spurred by ambition since youth, he frequently stood on the Boston Common in front of Augustus Saint-Gaudens's bronze memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Ma.s.sachusetts Fifty-fourth, thinking about what might have been, "but for some inches of s.p.a.ce, one trivial turn of Fate's arrow, I had been riding there, foredoomed to Shaw's glory immortal." Did he secretly covet that glory? Of course. But the price was martyrdom, and his paternalism, if that's what it was, had inspired him to save, not sacrifice, the troops in his command.

If d.i.c.kinson had dreamed of posthumous fame, Higginson sensed that for him the pendulum would likely swing in the other direction. "All teaches us that fame is, in numberless cases, the most fleeting of all harvests; that it is, indeed, like parched corn, which must be eaten while it is smoking hot or not at all," he wrote. The t.i.tles of his essays tell their own story: "Favorites of a Day," "A Contemporaneous Posterity," "Concerning High-Water Marks," "The Literary Pendulum." As for himself, he said he was like a horse that never won a race but "was prized as having gained a second place in more races than any other horse in America."

LESS THAN FIVE MONTHS after Higginson's death, in 1911, George Santayana, the Harvard professor of philosophy who had been a student of William James's and, in his turn, was a teacher of T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Walter Lippmann, delivered a lecture in California that, when published, influenced an entire generation of moderns. "The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy," as it was called, described America as a country with two mentalities. Predictably excoriating the busy Americans "occupied intensely in practical affairs," Santayana also criticized their obverse: those soggy writers who floated in the "backwater" of an abstract, fatuous transcendentalism. Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, and Holmes (the so-called fireside poets) toppled from the canonical mantel on which they had been enshrined-and Higginson sank with them into the sea of obscurity. after Higginson's death, in 1911, George Santayana, the Harvard professor of philosophy who had been a student of William James's and, in his turn, was a teacher of T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Walter Lippmann, delivered a lecture in California that, when published, influenced an entire generation of moderns. "The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy," as it was called, described America as a country with two mentalities. Predictably excoriating the busy Americans "occupied intensely in practical affairs," Santayana also criticized their obverse: those soggy writers who floated in the "backwater" of an abstract, fatuous transcendentalism. Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, and Holmes (the so-called fireside poets) toppled from the canonical mantel on which they had been enshrined-and Higginson sank with them into the sea of obscurity.

Alice James had in fact thought the d.i.c.kinson poems were "sicklied o'er with T. W. Higginson," and the poet Amy Lowell would dismiss Higginson as a bungler too dim for the dauntless poet. "There is not, to my mind, a sadder page in history than the picture of good, well-meaning Mr. Higginson trying to guide Emily's marvelous genius," Lowell wrote to Mrs. Todd. "You will find that all the modern poets and critics rate her as I do, and it is owing to you, who have collected her poems and letters with such care, that we know what she was, and a debt of grat.i.tude do we all owe you." Mabel Todd was content not to share the limelight with Higginson, now deceased, and willing to pa.s.s on to him the blame for editorial folderol.

But d.i.c.kinson survived her early editors as a modernist first cla.s.s, her work transcendent yet concrete, knotty and well wrought. Her conscience agonized, her inward look was availing: she had a knack for seeing the unseen-and for the "uncertain certainty" (her phrase) of consciousness. In 1913, after Sue's death, Mattie, now Martha d.i.c.kinson Bianchi and herself an aspiring poet, inherited the poems in her mother's possession and, Lavinia having died in 1899, secured the rights to them. In 1914, she renewed the copyright on the collections edited by Higginson and Todd and published 147 poems in a volume called The Single Hound The Single Hound to commemorate-and rehabilitate-the relations.h.i.+p between Sue and Emily that Mabel had suppressed. The timing was perfect. d.i.c.kinson was hailed as an "unconscious and uncatalogued to commemorate-and rehabilitate-the relations.h.i.+p between Sue and Emily that Mabel had suppressed. The timing was perfect. d.i.c.kinson was hailed as an "unconscious and uncatalogued Imagiste, Imagiste," a Puritan with a pagan imagination writing short, concentrated, subtle poems "dug out of her native granite."

d.i.c.kinson, it was soon said, had discarded the Calvinism of her forebears while preserving their sense of tragedy and with a hard-won faith had resisted the incursions of religious evangelism and its secular counterpart, pie-eyed transcendentalism. This is the theme of Conrad Aiken's 1924 influential reevaluation of d.i.c.kinson (Aiken was a student of Santayana's). As epigrammatic symbolist, Puritan, and freethinker, she fended off the call of the genteel with its requirement that upper-cla.s.s ladies sew for soldiers, join a Browning club, and recite Hiawatha. Hiawatha. Instead, the vigorous and self-sufficient Emily d.i.c.kinson stood for the life of the impa.s.sioned mind, the embodied soul. Instead, the vigorous and self-sufficient Emily d.i.c.kinson stood for the life of the impa.s.sioned mind, the embodied soul.

Yet for all her gifts, to the literary establishment d.i.c.kinson remained a wacky Old Maid. "Once adjust oneself to the spinsterly angularity of the mode," Aiken concluded, sounding far more conservative than Higginson, "its lack of eloquence or rhetorical speed, its naive and often prosaic directness, one discovers felicities of thought and phrase on every page."

And Higginson? Symbolizing prudery, he stayed the emblem of weak-kneed gentility, lacking substance, his mind an old music box (to borrow from Santayana) of worn-out tunes. d.i.c.kinson's early biographer, the poet Genevieve Taggard, belittled him as a brave, humane meddler-the "hero of a hundred Atlantic Atlantic paragraphs"-who went to war "in high feather" and by the early 1930s, was lumped with the dull "Cambridge" group of academics. d.i.c.kinson was avant-garde, Higginson an heirloom. And since the modernists of the first part of the twentieth century disdained the grubby world of politics and held themselves aloof not just from old-fas.h.i.+oned narrative but from public events and national crimes, they turned their aesthetic back on racism (to say nothing of women's rights and suffrage). Higginson's brave political iconoclasm-which had attracted d.i.c.kinson-thus fell by the literary wayside. Few litterateurs read or cared about his pungent writing on Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, or the slave called Gabriel. As a consequence, and out of context, he became easy to ridicule, as in Adrienne Rich's fine poem "I Am in Danger-Sir-," where d.i.c.kinson appears as "'Half-cracked' to Higginson.'" paragraphs"-who went to war "in high feather" and by the early 1930s, was lumped with the dull "Cambridge" group of academics. d.i.c.kinson was avant-garde, Higginson an heirloom. And since the modernists of the first part of the twentieth century disdained the grubby world of politics and held themselves aloof not just from old-fas.h.i.+oned narrative but from public events and national crimes, they turned their aesthetic back on racism (to say nothing of women's rights and suffrage). Higginson's brave political iconoclasm-which had attracted d.i.c.kinson-thus fell by the literary wayside. Few litterateurs read or cared about his pungent writing on Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, or the slave called Gabriel. As a consequence, and out of context, he became easy to ridicule, as in Adrienne Rich's fine poem "I Am in Danger-Sir-," where d.i.c.kinson appears as "'Half-cracked' to Higginson.'"

Rarely was Higginson evaluated by literary people with the kind of evenhandedness of the d.i.c.kinson scholar who in 1968 observed that "one should not demand more ac.u.men of an individual than of the whole tribe of critics of the 1890s." Yet that's not the whole story either. Returning to Cambridge after the war had not been good for Higginson's future; in Newburyport and Worcester, he shone; in Beaufort, he shone; he rallied the troops through oratory and his moral courage. But after the war he slowly adopted the hypnotic equitability that helped brand him d.i.c.kinson's half-baked editor. Too bad: he was the women's rights activist who declared in 1852 that "we must choose between the past forms which once embodied the eternal spirit, and the other forms which are to renew and embody it now.... The old has the court, the senate, the market; the new has the poets, the people, and posterity."

Yet this radical and, in later years, this apostle of moderation was the man Emily d.i.c.kinson trusted, for there was something of the radical and conservative, activist and recluse, in her nature, too. Innovator, maverick, and marvel, anatomist of the heart and mind, she scribbled poems on the backside of recipes for cocoanut cake, and when her father insisted that the neighborhood pastor question her for heresy, she submitted. "It is remarkable," Hawthorne once noted, "that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society." Nor did she fuss over sanitary commissions or suffrage. "'George Was.h.i.+ngton was the Father of his Country,'" she joked. "'George Who?' That sums all Politics to me." The world that counted would catch up to her, not her to it.

LIKE d.i.c.kINSON, Higginson never stopped writing. Seated either in his cozy book-lined study, his desk near a window, or in the larger room on the second floor where he installed a typewriter, he flooded newspapers and magazines with essays and reviews. He opposed all proposals to restrict immigration, he advocated religious tolerance-including toleration for atheism-and woman suffrage. (He turned down members.h.i.+p in the National Inst.i.tute of Arts, Science and Letters until it admitted women.) He produced new books on Whittier and on Longfellow as well as a short biography of his grandfather. And aware that the end was near, he a.s.signed that portion of himself a.s.signable, donating to the Boston Public Library his huge collection on literature by and about women, over one thousand volumes gathered over the years while he was hoping to write their history. He called the ma.s.sive library his Galatea Collection and included in it his letters from the un-Galatea, Emily d.i.c.kinson. Higginson never stopped writing. Seated either in his cozy book-lined study, his desk near a window, or in the larger room on the second floor where he installed a typewriter, he flooded newspapers and magazines with essays and reviews. He opposed all proposals to restrict immigration, he advocated religious tolerance-including toleration for atheism-and woman suffrage. (He turned down members.h.i.+p in the National Inst.i.tute of Arts, Science and Letters until it admitted women.) He produced new books on Whittier and on Longfellow as well as a short biography of his grandfather. And aware that the end was near, he a.s.signed that portion of himself a.s.signable, donating to the Boston Public Library his huge collection on literature by and about women, over one thousand volumes gathered over the years while he was hoping to write their history. He called the ma.s.sive library his Galatea Collection and included in it his letters from the un-Galatea, Emily d.i.c.kinson.

He planned to translate Aristophanes' The Birds The Birds from the Greek ("very good for elder years," he chortled). And though he spoke at the funerals of almost all his friends, he did not visibly sadden or tire. Or withdraw from the present. He did not condemn technology or ma.s.s culture. "I wish we had automobiles when I was a boy," he joked. "The old times were good, but the new times are better." from the Greek ("very good for elder years," he chortled). And though he spoke at the funerals of almost all his friends, he did not visibly sadden or tire. Or withdraw from the present. He did not condemn technology or ma.s.s culture. "I wish we had automobiles when I was a boy," he joked. "The old times were good, but the new times are better."

And he offered what had become his credo: "Best of all, is to lead, even at the very last, a life so full and useful that the thought of death occurs but as a momentary interruption; an incident that may come to us as easily, perhaps, as when a steamer moves from the wharf-so noiselessly that we do not know ourselves to be riding on a new element until we look back on the receding and irrevocable sh.o.r.e."

He had not forgotten his Whitman after all.

Joy! s.h.i.+pmate-joy!(Pleas'd to my Soul at death I cry;)Our life is closed-our life begins;The long, long anchorage we leave,The s.h.i.+p is clear at last-she leaps!She swiftly courses from the sh.o.r.e;Joy! s.h.i.+pmate-joy!

NOR DID HE EVER FORGET EMILY. Within a week of his eighty-fifth birthday, on December 22, 1908, Higginson, along with Henry James and William Dean Howells, was commissioned by Within a week of his eighty-fifth birthday, on December 22, 1908, Higginson, along with Henry James and William Dean Howells, was commissioned by Harper's Bazaar Harper's Bazaar to write a short piece on the afterlife. Consenting, Higginson said he had little to add to his essay on immortality, written nearly forty years earlier: "that I am glad we live in a universe large enough, and that humanity is vast enough, to give an hundred souls an hundred different methods of reaching truth." And besides, for him, poetry supplied all the intimations of immortality he ever needed; dare you see a soul at the white heat. to write a short piece on the afterlife. Consenting, Higginson said he had little to add to his essay on immortality, written nearly forty years earlier: "that I am glad we live in a universe large enough, and that humanity is vast enough, to give an hundred souls an hundred different methods of reaching truth." And besides, for him, poetry supplied all the intimations of immortality he ever needed; dare you see a soul at the white heat.

And so when he sat down to write the piece, he bade farewell, albeit indirectly, to her one last time, again quoting from the Bronte poem "Last Lines" that she had asked him to read at her funeral.

Though earth and man were gone,And suns and universe ceased to be,And Thou were left alone,Every existence would exist in Thee.

THE NIGHT WAS GENTLE. Purple crocuses had poked through the damp earth, the forsythia were in yellow bloom, the city smelled of honeysuckle and spring. A slight breeze rippled over gauzy curtains, lamps burned low, and at half past eleven, Thomas Wentworth Higginson died. Purple crocuses had poked through the damp earth, the forsythia were in yellow bloom, the city smelled of honeysuckle and spring. A slight breeze rippled over gauzy curtains, lamps burned low, and at half past eleven, Thomas Wentworth Higginson died.

The funeral took place two days later, on May 13, 1911, and while unfussy in some respects, it was completely unlike d.i.c.kinson's obsequies some twenty-five years earlier. For this was a public event, full of pomp and circ.u.mstance, although Higginson had specifically requested there be no eulogy. There was, as ever, a simplicity to his character.

Wrapped in the regimental flag of the First South Carolina, Higginson's casket was borne from Buckingham Street to the First Parish Church, near the Cambridge Common, on the shoulders of African American men, members of Company L, Sixth Regiment, Ma.s.sachusetts Volunteer Militia (Colored), and accompanied by its color guard, J. Homer Pryor, Captain. The delegation included Sergeant W. E. Carter and Privates Henry Falson, Edward R. Chelmsford, Thomas Brown, Edward A. Brewer, Charles Ba.s.sett, Isaac La.s.siter, Toland J. Edwards, William H. Wilson Jr., Henry Grouse, and William F. Scott. They entered the vestibule of the old church to the low beating of a drum, and had they glanced around, they could have seen the place packed with luminaries, black and white, past and present, crowding the aisles as the light streamed through the tall windows: Higginsons, Channings, Cabots, Eliots, Putnams, and Storrows, the mayor of Cambridge, the presidents of Harvard, Emerson's children, Charles Francis Adams, Colonel N. P. Hallowell of the Ma.s.sachusetts Fifty-fifth, councilmen and aldermen, former governor John D. Long, George Mifflin of Houghton Mifflin, members of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society and representatives of the Cambridge and Boston public libraries, as well as the students, also black and white, he had helped through college, perhaps Virginia Alberta Scott, Radcliffe's first black student, and of course the sons and daughters, all black, of Civil War veterans. From Higginson's antislavery days, only Franklin Sanborn remained, and he was there too, sitting unstooped among the wreaths and banners.

There was a reading from Psalms; one of Higginson's early hymns, "To Thine Eternal Arms, O G.o.d" then a poem, a song, a benediction. The Loyal Legion played taps as the casket was removed from the church.

The body had been cremated, the ashes buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery to the roll of more drums, and the flag of the First South Carolina Regiment was presented to the Loyal Legion post. His headstone did not bear a quotation, just a few lines commemorating Higginson's military rank and his service to the country's first soldiers of African descent.

On a busy roadway, Route 21, in Beaufort, South Carolina, stands a plaque similarly commemorating the regiment and its commander. But the pendulum has indeed swung far from him, and he is hardly remembered.

EXCEPT, OF COURSE, by d.i.c.kinson herself: "I will not let thee go," she had told him, "except I bless thee." by d.i.c.kinson herself: "I will not let thee go," she had told him, "except I bless thee."

Because I could not stop for Death-He kindly stopped for me-The Carriage held but just Ourselves-And Immortality........Since then-'tis Centuries-and yetFeels shorter than the DayI first surmised the Horses' HeadsWere toward Eternity-

Acknowledgments

I could not have written this book without relying on the brilliance of the many Emily d.i.c.kinson scholars, editors, and enthusiasts who have, for more than a century, illuminated and recited and sung and set to music her work, or without the dedicated historians who have paid scrupulous tribute to Thomas Wentworth Higginson and his varied accomplishments. Their contribution to this book is threaded throughout the notes, but here I'd like to thank by name a few of those people who have graciously come to my aid, in one way or another, during the past six years.

I am greatly obliged to the following collections and individuals for access to archival material: Daria D'Arienzo, curator, and Margaret R. Dakin, a.s.sistant to the head of Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College Library; Albert s.h.i.+rley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library (Papers and forgeries of Emily d.i.c.kinson, MSS 7658, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library); Earle Havens, acting keeper of Rare Books and Ma.n.u.scripts, Department of Rare Books & Ma.n.u.scripts, and Special Collections, Boston Public Library, as well as Sean P. Casey and Barbara Davis; Leilani Dawson, the Brooklyn Historical Society; Michael Ryan and Jennifer B. Lee, Rare Book & Ma.n.u.script Library, Columbia University; Leslie A. Morris, curator of Modern Books and Ma.n.u.scripts, Houghton Library, Harvard University, as well as Mary Haegert, Susan Halpert, Jennie Rathbun, Emily Walhout, and Thomas Ford, photographic liaison for Houghton Library, and Carmella Napoleone at Imaging Services; Tevis Kimball, curator, and Kate Boyle, Special Collections, Jones Library, Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts; Patricia Michaelis, director, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State Historical Society; Mary M. Huth, a.s.sistant director, Rare Books & Special Collections, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester; Karen V. Kukil, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College; the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and Library; Christopher Dens-more, curator, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College Library; Nicolette A. Schneider, Syracuse University Special Collections Research Center; Peter J. Knapp, special collections librarian and college archivist, Watkinson Library, Trinity College; Diane E. Kaplan, head of Public Services, Ma.n.u.scripts and Archives, Yale University.

I would also like to thank the following collections for the right to reprint material from their collections and to thank the following individuals a.s.sociated with them: Thomas Knoles and Susan M. Anderson, American Antiquarian Society; Patricia M. Boulos, Boston Athenaeum; Earle Havens, acting keeper of Rare Books and Ma.n.u.scripts, Department of Rare Books & Ma.n.u.scripts, and Special Collections, Boston Public Library, as well as Sean P. Casey and Barbara Davis; Jessy Randall, curator and archivist, Colorado College Special Collections, Colorado College Special Collections; Patricia Michaelis, director, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State Historical Society; Lia Apodaca, Library of Congress; Natalie Russell, Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Peter Drummey, Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society (Annie Adams Fields, diary, 30 January 1868, Annie Field Papers, Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society); Itty Mathew, Rights and Reproductions, New-York Historical Society; Thomas Lannon, The New York Public Library (Emily Fowler Ford papers and Genevieve Taggard papers, Ma.n.u.scripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations); William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; and Edward Gaynor, Papers and forgeries of Emily d.i.c.kinson, MSS 7658, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. I apologize to anyone whose name I may have inadvertently forgotten or never knew, for so very many librarians and archivists made this project possible.