My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson IV

I'm up to the year 1860, when Emily turned thirty, and will finish the book within a couple of weeks. During the 1850's, her life took more shape, and her writing skills continued to improve. Most of her childhood friends drifted away, and she became close to Susan Gilbert, who came from a wealthy family but was orphaned at a young age and had grown up with relatives in Geneva, New York. Subsequently, she moved to Amherst and lived with a sister and her brother-in-law. Apparently, Susan and Emily didn't meet until late in 1850. They were the same age and seemed to hit it off immediately. Susan had a sharp mind, and they had productive discussions and correspondences. However, Susan occasionally gave Emily the brush-off, so she must have had other priorities. The most obvious one was her involvement with Emily's brother, Austin, with whom she became engaged in 1853. 

In 1855, the former Dickinson Homestead came on the market, and Edward decided to buy it back. Initially, Emily wasn't excited about moving there, because she liked her home on West Street, and the Homestead was becoming decrepit. But Edward devised a plan, not only to refurbish the Homestead, but to build another home, later called "The Evergreens," an "Italianate villa," next door for Austin and Susan. By then, Austin had graduated from Amherst and Harvard Law School. Austin and Susan had planned to move west, and apparently this was an incentive for them to remain in Amherst, with Austin working at his father's firm. "The Evergreens" thereafter became the site of much of Emily's social life.

Habegger, I think, effectively captures the emotional dynamics and the poetic results created by this living arrangement:

What made Sue's distant nearness so powerful a stimulant was that it fit a basic rule of life for Dickinson: always seeking intimacy and finding it withheld. The pattern shows up not only in her friendships but in her orientation to nature and religion. The naive fixation on heaven that was so central in Protestant America, and which she had recklessly taken to heart without experiencing a conversion, had generated a pressing quest for the absolute within the mundane. This perennially expected rush is one of the things that gives her poems on bees, sunsets, and the seasons their Dickinsonian cachet:

A something in a summer's Day

As slow her flambeaux burn away

Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon—

A depth—an Azure—a perfume—

Transcending extasy.

The last line was not hyperbole. Ecstasy comes with fulfillment, but what moved Dickinson was expectation: not rowing in Eden, but the thought of rowing in Eden. A later stanza of this poem describes the action of nature's fingers on the responsive heart:

The wizard fingers never rest—

The purple brook within the breast

Still chafes its narrow bed—

Sexual, yes, but so much more than sexual, this constant chafing that results in a poetry of increasing power, daring, mastery. The poetry of arousal, it is the product of the single heart lying in its narrow bed and dreaming of a final escape from itself.

I'm not sure whether Emily Dickinson herself would agree with this analysis, but it's the best one I've seen on the dynamics within her poems.

Besides this important artistic tension, social events at "The Evergreens" provided Emily with interesting discussions occasionally. She got to know Samuel Bowles (1826-1878), the editor and owner of the Springfield Republican, quite well. He was far more progressive than her family members and an advocate of women's rights. Although Sue and Austin did not operate what would be called a literary salon, Sue may have intentionally invited guests who would suit Emily. One such guest was Ralph Waldo Emerson, though Emily apparently never met him. It isn't clear whether this was Emily's choice or an accident. In any case, Emily seemed to find ample intellectual stimulation from English authors, particularly the female poets and novelists of the time.

It would seem that, by the age of thirty, Emily had settled into a life that would intentionally not entail marriage, employment or fame.

Diary

For a break from Emily Dickinson, I decided to make a "Diary" post. I really don't like following the news, but thought that I should say something about Charlie Kirk. I had barely heard of him, so I did minimal research on him to find out what he represented. I came across a video of one of his rallies, in which he had a discussion with an atheist. This was quite interesting, because Kirk was well prepared and listed several arguments for the existence of God. He didn't actually interact much with the atheist, but he wasn't dogmatic. Finally, the atheist, who was an overweight, slightly unkempt young MAGA supporter, said that he wasn't convinced by any of those arguments. Kirk then tried to explain his personal reasoning for his belief in God. This had to do with probabilities – how it seemed impossible that we could be here at all without a God. The atheist tried to explain to him that the universe is extremely large, and that there may be many other civilizations of which we are unaware. That's about as far as the discussion went, but I was surprised how open to discussion Kirk seemed. The audience, however, disliked the atheist and was glad to see him go.

Of course, I haven't changed my position at all on free speech and don't think that Charlie Kirk deserved to be shot. For a right-wing supporter, he was actually quite civil. Even so, he was just a careerist evangelical, and I have no respect for so-called Christians who cozy up to Donald Trump. I've been wincing ever since the 1960's from exposure to people like Billy Graham. At heart, this is just a sophisticated form of hucksterism. Saint Donald has even less credibility than Saint Richard Nixon. These days, any religious movement in the U.S. is likely to be a form of financial opportunism. Once you realize how gullible people are, there is no mystery to this phenomenon.

Another phenomenon that I'm tired of is the rise of blonde-bimboism. There has been an explosion of blonde bimbos, from press secretaries to cabinet members to news reporters. Everywhere now resembles Fox News. I had been closely watching Laura Barrón-López at PBS NewsHour, who covered the White House and obviously disliked the passivity of her co-workers, who have become increasingly corporate in recent years. I can hardly stand Amna Nawaz or Nick Schifrin, who labor to remove any hint of personal judgment from their reporting. This has been a major trend for several years in most news media, including the New York Times and Washington Post. Because of the risks associated with upsetting politicians or corporations, news outlets have now generally adopted the Fox News model, which is infotainment. Under these circumstances, Laura Barrón-López has left PBS NewsHour for MSNBC. And Laura has been replaced by....a blonde bimbo! I'll reserve judgment on the blonde bimbo, but the management strategy at PBS NewsHour had clearly shifted to avoiding upsetting the Trump administration and corporate funders. It is quite unsettling to see law firms, corporations, universities and news media cave in to the Trump administration, but I still think that Trump's success depends on job creation, an area where I don't think he is making any progress. Unfortunately, the economy itself is almost on autopilot and may still do well even if Trump unwittingly damages it.

Back here at the home front, fall is rapidly approaching. The leaves are turning, particularly in the mountains, but may not be as colorful as usual due to the drought. I have too many tomatoes again, and some of them are getting overripe. Fortunately, the yard is surrounded by a gigantic compost pile, so I just chuck them into the woods. The cherry tomatoes that I grew are quite tasty, and I usually just eat them when I'm out in the yard. The telescope is working correctly now, and I've done a little stargazing. This morning at 5:30 there was a deer in the yard and Orion was overhead.

Normally at this time of year there would be mice crawling all over the outside of the house at night and storing food. I haven't seen any at all. As part of my mouse-blocking, last year I removed the one-way mouse door in the eaves that had been placed there by exterminators; I had seen that some mice were getting in through there. I also sealed the remaining hole with caulk. There was an unexpected benefit to that, because flies and other insects had been getting into the walls from there. As the weather cooled, flies started to appear in the house in 2023 and 2024, but there haven't been any this year.

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson III

When Emily returned home from college in 1848, she was given household assignments, such as cooking and dishwashing. She baked bread for the first time. She had some interactions with men, but not many. She hit it off well with Elbridge Gridley Bowdoin, who was her father's junior law partner from 1847 to 1855. He was "a confirmed bachelor" ten years older than her. He lent her his copy of Jane Eyre. A more significant influence was Benjamin Franklin Newton, who was nine years older than her and also worked with her father briefly. He may have introduced her to Wordsworth and is known to have given her a book of Emerson's poems; at the time, these were advanced works of poetry by New England standards. He may have been the first person to recognize her talent. Unfortunately, he moved away to Worcester and died of tuberculosis in 1853. Theirs was not a romantic relationship, and he had married in Worcester, but Newton seems to have formed her prototype for "Master," who later became Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who seems to have had a lesser impact on her. She continued a friendship, though it declined, with Emily Fowler. Fowler's outgoing and confident demeanor seems to have been off-putting to Dickinson. 

In 1853, Edward was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served for one term. Apparently he was too dogmatic and inflexible to fit into that environment, and he subsequently gave up entirely on politics. Politically, he was not an abolitionist. While he was away in Washington, his wife and Vinnie visited him. During that visit, arrangements were made for Emily's friend, Susan Gilbert, and cousin John Long Graves, an Amherst student, to stay with her.  Apparently, Emily played improvised tunes on the piano alone late at night – annoying the others.

Habegger mostly sticks to old letters in this book, but he occasionally inserts psychological interpretations. He thinks that the Dickinson home environment alternated between warmth and frigidity. The family members weren't always happy, but that didn't stop them from thinking of this as their home, making it, at least in an abstract sense, the secure place where they belonged. Habegger also thinks that Austin was not emotionally sensitive, and compares his relationship with Emily to Tom Tulliver's relationship to Maggie in The Mill on the Floss. 

Of course, these meager statements don't satisfy my interests. I've been thinking about how legal culture is expressed by people who take it upon themselves to become civic leaders. The Dickinsons of Amherst remind me a lot of the Seymours of Middlebury. Horatio Seymour (1778-1833) attended Yale and became a lawyer. While in Middlebury, he practiced law and built an enormous house downtown, which still stands. He served as Middlebury postmaster and state's attorney for Addison County. He also became involved in the management of Middlebury College and served as a U.S. Senator for two terms. Seymour's grandson, Joseph Battell (1839-1915), whom I discussed long ago, also became a civic leader, though he was a little eccentric. Besides supporting the Morgan horse, he was active at Middlebury College, engaged in the construction of the Main Street bridge over Otter Creek, and built the Battell Building nearby. The hotel that he built in Ripton later became the site of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

I also noticed, much later, the flurry of activity that my lawyer father-in-law engaged in in Indiana following World War II. While his contributions to the town were probably not as significant as those of the Dickinsons or the Seymours, I got a very close look at that family's structure. His family was also completely patriarchal. He had a brief political career in Indiana but apparently disliked politics. When they became rich and built a large house, the three daughters were crammed into two small bedrooms on one side of the house, and their lone brother had a gigantic bedroom to himself on the other side of the house. The brother was always praised and attended to by his parents but he had nonexistent relationships with his sisters. None of them were particularly good students, but he eventually got a Ph.D. and became a zoology professor. He married and had children. Later he became a university dean. The three daughters also went to college, married and had children, but only one of them had a good career. There was always discord in that family, and I think that some of it was related to the patriarchal structure – and what might now be called sexism.

I have long noticed that law doesn't necessarily attract the best people. It has been a highly attractive career choice for social climbers. When I think of lawyers, I don't necessarily think of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. More likely, I think of Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy or Richard Nixon. And today we have the selfless Rudy Giuliani, Mike Johnson, J.D. Vance and Ron DeSantis.

In Emily Dickinson's case, the sisters also appear to have been treated like second-class citizens. Not much information is provided, and it is unclear to me how Emily felt about her appearance. In the one confirmed image of her, her face is expressionless, and she does not seem to have attempted to make herself attractive. But it is thought that she had been ill for a long time and was only sixteen. Habegger thinks that there is another image of her. In that one, she is older and plumper but still has a vacant expression on her face. Generally, my sense is that her parents' relationship wasn't appealing to her mother, the marriage involved a lot of unpleasant toil, and these factors may have made marriage unappealing to Emily. In this vein, she seems to have made no effort to attract marriageable males. If she had wanted to marry, she could at least have attended church, which was a traditional place to meet potential spouses. She was obviously extremely introverted and private, and these two characteristics may have driven her behavior. But because Lavinia, who seemed to be more outgoing, also never married, the parental example may have been significant.

I'm plodding away through the book but am only halfway to the end.

Theme Song of the Day

Chinatown.

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson II

I am ambling along in the book and will spend several more weeks before finishing. Habegger seems to be recording all of the pertinent information – and there is a lot of it. He inserts his interpretations from time to time, and they seem reasonable enough, but it is clear that he is an English professor who was educated in the U.S. Emily's father, Edward, seems to have been interested in restoring his family's reputation in Amherst, but was initially hindered by the Panic of 1837, which was part of a series of recessions and depressions that had originated in the cotton industry. Immediately after his marriage, he had been living in a rental house, but when it became apparent that he could be evicted, he made arrangements to move into one-half of the old Dickinson Homestead. This occurred before Emily was born. In 1839, they all moved to a house on West Street, where Emily spent much of her childhood. Once again, I am finding that money often plays a background role in enabling children to lead successful lives, in the arts or otherwise. Edward got help from his father-in-law, who advanced funds to the family by deducting them from his daughter's future inheritance. Charles Darwin's father did the same thing when Charles wanted to buy a house. Edward also made investments in land in Michigan. Besides his law practice, he was the treasurer of Amherst College. He also served in the Massachusetts government as a state representative and, later, as a state senator.

The Dickinson household followed a completely patriarchal model, but Emily didn't seem to mind. She had so many relatives and there were so many illnesses going around that there was always some activity. When Edward was away in Boston, he always left instructions and sometimes arranged for a substitute male to be present. He acted as if he were an amateur physician and advised his family members on what they should and shouldn't do for their health. Emily herself sometimes had serious coughs.

Some hints of Emily's later interests emerged quite early. Her poetic style may have been influenced by signing as a witness some of her father's legal documents. Her siblings also did this, but it appears that they were often out socializing, while Emily remained at home. I can see how Emily's poems roughly match rather terse legal documents. Her mother loved flowers, and Emily began collecting wildflowers and cultivated flowers at an early age. She dried and pressed them and kept them in a large book, called a herbarium, up to her death. It contains four or five hundred specimens, which are identified by their scientific names. Her poems are also economical in style and were produced slowly over much of her life. They were also carefully preserved up to the time of her death. It appears that Emily spent much of her time alone and gave considerable thought to these two hobbies.

With respect to her siblings, they seem to have had cooperative relationships. Clearly, Austin was destined to be a future patriarch, but Emily seems to have enjoyed communicating with him, both in conversation and letters. Her younger sister, Lavinia, known as "Vinnie," was more socially active than Emily and far less intellectual.

Emily's high school equivalent was Amherst Academy, which was somewhat unstable and in a state of flux while she attended it. As described by Renée Bergland in Natural Magic, it seems almost accidentally to have been rather advanced in the subjects offered to girls. Besides the sciences and mathematics, they were taught Latin, and Emily excelled at the latter. I never studied Latin at all, and I have always been interested in how it became a popular subject. When I was in college, I studied Greek mythology and Homeric Greek, which seem a lot more interesting to me. The answer seems to be that Oxford and Cambridge were originally theological seminaries, and church services were then conducted in Latin. The original graduates, who became the English clergy, had to know Latin for their livelihoods. By the time that the Catholic Church left England, Latin was so much associated with high social status that it took hundreds of years for its importance to diminish within the English universities. Charles Darwin, who was certainly no linguist, had to be tutored in Latin in order to be admitted to Cambridge. On the other hand, Emily Dickinson was supremely talented in language and did well in Latin.

Following Amherst Academy, Emily spent a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, as also described by Renée Bergland. While she did enjoy some of her classes, the environment was unpleasant in several respects. Emily preferred Amherst, which was only ten miles away, but was often unable to go home due to the strict rules. Furthermore, with all of the girls and faculty squeezed into tight quarters, people were often sick. The worst thing, I think, was that the women running it were intense evangelicals, and they harassed the "impenitents" mercilessly. As an independent thinker, Emily can't have found that pleasant. Although she regretted having to leave school early that year due to an illness, in many respects it must not have suited her at all.