entitled “Renunciation”; and also that beginning “Of all the sounds
dispatched abroad,” thus fixing approximately the date of those two. I
must soon have written to ask her for her picture, that I might form some
impression of my enigmatical correspondent. To this came the following
reply, in July, 1862:—
Could you believe me without? I had no portrait, now, but am
small, like the wren; and my hair is bold like the chestnut
bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest
leaves. Would this do just as well?
It often alarms father. He says death might occur and he has
moulds of all the rest, but has no mould of me; but I noticed
the quick wore off those things, in a few days, and forestall
the dishonor. You will think no caprice of me.
You said “Dark.” I know the butterfly, and the lizard, and the
orchis. Are not those _your_ countrymen?
I am happy to be your scholar, and will deserve the kindness I
cannot repay.
If you truly consent, I recite now. Will you tell me my fault,
frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince than die. Men do
not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, sir,
and fracture within is more critical. And for this, preceptor,
I shall bring you obedience, the blossom from my garden, and
every gratitude I know.
Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that. My business
is circumference. An ignorance, not of customs, but if caught
with the dawn, or the sunset see me, myself the only kangaroo
among the beauty, sir, if you please, it afflicts me, and I
thought that instruction would take it away.
Because you have much business, beside the growth of me, you
will appoint, yourself, how often I shall come, without your
inconvenience.
And if at any time you regret you received me, or I prove a
different fabric to that you supposed, you must banish me.
When I state myself, as the representative of the verse, it
does not mean me, but a supposed person.
You are true about the “perfection.” To-day makes Yesterday
mean.
You spoke of “Pippa Passes.” I never heard anybody speak of
“Pippa Passes” before. You see my posture is benighted.
To thank you baffles me. Are you perfectly powerful? Had I a
pleasure you had not, I could delight to bring it.
YOUR SCHOLAR.
This was accompanied by this strong poem, with its breathless conclusion.
The title is of my own giving:—
THE SAINTS’ REST
Of tribulation, these are they,
Denoted by the white;
The spangled gowns, a lesser rank
Of victors designate.
All these did conquer; but the ones
Who overcame most times,
Wear nothing commoner than snow,
No ornaments but palms.
“Surrender” is a sort unknown
On this superior soil;
“Defeat” an outgrown anguish,
Remembered as the mile
Our panting ancle barely passed
When night devoured the road;
But we stood whispering in the house,
And all we said, was “Saved!”
[Note by the writer of the verses.] I spelled ankle wrong.
It would seem that at first I tried a little—a very little—to lead
her in the direction of rules and traditions; but I fear it was
only perfunctory, and that she interested me more in her—so to
speak—unregenerate condition. Still, she recognizes the endeavor. In this
case, as will be seen, I called her attention to the fact that while she
took pains to correct the spelling of a word, she was utterly careless of
greater irregularities. It will be seen by her answer that with her usual
naïve adroitness she turns my point:—
DEAR FRIEND,—Are these more orderly? I thank you for the truth.
I had no monarch in my life, and cannot rule myself; and when
I try to organize, my little force explodes and leaves me bare
and charred.
I think you called me “wayward.” Will you help me improve?
I suppose the pride that stops the breath, in the core of
woods, is not of ourself.
You say I confess the little mistake, and omit the large.
Because I can see orthography; but the ignorance out of sight
is my preceptor’s charge.
Of “shunning men and women,” they talk of hallowed things,
aloud, and embarrass my dog. He and I don’t object to them, if
they’ll exist their side. I think Carlo would please you. He is
dumb, and brave. I think you would like the chestnut tree I met
in my walk. It hit my notice suddenly, and I thought the skies
were in blossom.
Then there’s a noiseless noise in the orchard that I let
persons hear.
You told me in one letter you could not come to see me “now,”
and I made no answer; not because I had none, but did not think
myself the price that you should come so far.
I do not ask so large a pleasure, lest you might deny me.
You say, “Beyond your knowledge.” You would not jest with me,
because I believe you; but, preceptor, you cannot mean it?
All men say “What” to me, but I thought it a fashion.
When much in the woods, as a little girl, I was told that the
snake would bite me, that I might pick a poisonous flower, or
goblins kidnap me; but I went along and met no one but angels,
who were far shyer of me than I could be of them, so I haven’t
that confidence in fraud which many exercise.
I shall observe your precept, though I don’t understand it,
always.
I marked a line in one verse, because I met it after I made it,
and never consciously touch a paint mixed by another person.
I do not let go it, because it is mine. Have you the portrait
of Mrs. Browning?
Persons sent me three. If you had none, will you have mine?
YOUR SCHOLAR.
A month or two after this I entered the volunteer army of the Civil War,
and must have written to her during the winter of 1862-63 from South
Carolina or Florida, for the following reached me in camp:—
AMHERST.
DEAR FRIEND,—I did not deem that planetary forces annulled, but
suffered an exchange of territory, or world.
I should have liked to see you before you became improbable.
War feels to me an oblique place. Should there be other
summers, would you perhaps come?
I found you were gone, by accident, as I find systems are,
or seasons of the year, and obtain no cause, but suppose it
a treason of progress that dissolves as it goes. Carlo still
remained, and I told him.
Best gains must have the losses’ test,
To constitute them gains.
My shaggy ally assented.
Perhaps death gave me awe for friends, striking sharp and
early, for I held them since in a brittle love, of more alarm
than peace. I trust you may pass the limit of war; and though
not reared to prayer, when service is had in church for our
arms, I include yourself.... I was thinking to-day, as I
noticed, that the “Supernatural” was only the Natural disclosed.
Not “Revelation” ’tis that waits,
But our unfurnished eyes.
But I fear I detain you. Should you, before this reaches you,
experience immortality, who will inform me of the exchange?
Could you, with honor, avoid death, I entreat you, sir. It
would bereave
YOUR GNOME.
I trust the “Procession of Flowers” was not a premonition.
I cannot explain this extraordinary signature, substituted for the now
customary “Your Scholar,” unless she imagined her friend to be in some
incredible and remote condition, imparting its strangeness to her.
Swedenborg somewhere has an image akin to her “oblique place,” where he
symbolizes evil as simply an oblique angle. With this letter came verses,
most refreshing in that clime of jasmines and mockingbirds, on the
familiar robin:—
THE ROBIN
The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.
The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.
The robin is the one
That, speechless from her nest,
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.
In the summer of 1863 I was wounded, and in hospital for a time, during
which came this letter in pencil, written from what was practically a
hospital for her, though only for weak eyes:—
DEAR FRIEND,—Are you in danger? I did not know that you were
hurt. Will you tell me more? Mr. Hawthorne died.
I was ill since September, and since April in Boston for a
physician’s care. He does not let me go, yet I work in my
prison, and make guests for myself.
Carlo did not come, because that he would die in jail; and the
mountains I could not hold now, so I brought but the Gods.
I wish to see you more than before I failed. Will you tell me
your health? I am surprised and anxious since receiving your
note.
The only news I know
Is bulletins all day
From Immortality.
Can you render my pencil? The physician has taken away my pen.
I inclose the address from a letter, lest my figures fail.
Knowledge of your recovery would excel my own.
E. DICKINSON.
Later this arrived:—
DEAR FRIEND,—I think of you so wholly that I cannot resist to
write again, to ask if you are safe? Danger is not at first,
for then we are unconscious, but in the after, slower days.
Do not try to be saved, but let redemption find you, as
it certainly will. Love is its own rescue; for we, at our
supremest, are but its trembling emblems.
YOUR SCHOLAR.
These were my earliest letters from Emily Dickinson, in their order. From
this time and up to her death (May 15, 1886) we corresponded at varying
intervals, she always persistently keeping up this attitude of “Scholar,”
and assuming on my part a preceptorship which it is almost needless
to say did not exist. Always glad to hear her “recite,” as she called
it, I soon abandoned all attempt to guide in the slightest degree this
extraordinary nature, and simply accepted her confidences, giving as much
as I could of what might interest her in return.
Sometimes there would be a long pause, on my part, after which would come
a plaintive letter, always terse, like this:—
“Did I displease you? But won’t you tell me how?”
Or perhaps the announcement of some event, vast in her small sphere, as
this:—
Amherst.
Carlo died.
E. Dickinson.
Would you instruct me now?
Or sometimes there would arrive an exquisite little detached strain,
every word a picture, like this:—
THE HUMMING-BIRD
A route of evanescence
With a revolving wheel;
A resonance of emerald;
A rush of cochineal.
And every blossom on the bush
Adjusts its tumbled head;—
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy morning’s ride.
Nothing in literature, I am sure, so condenses into a few words
that gorgeous atom of life and fire of which she here attempts the
description. It is, however, needless to conceal that many of her
brilliant fragments were less satisfying. She almost always grasped
whatever she sought, but with some fracture of grammar and dictionary
on the way. Often, too, she was obscure, and sometimes inscrutable; and
though obscurity is sometimes, in Coleridge’s phrase, a compliment to the
reader, yet it is never safe to press this compliment too hard.
Sometimes, on the other hand, her verses found too much favor for her
comfort, and she was urged to publish. In such cases I was sometimes put
forward as a defense; and the following letter was the fruit of some such
occasion:
DEAR FRIEND,—Thank you for the advice. I shall implicitly
follow it.
The one who asked me for the lines I had never seen.
He spoke of “a charity.” I refused, but did not inquire. He
again earnestly urged, on the ground that in that way I might
“aid unfortunate children.” The name of “child” was a snare to
me, and I hesitated, choosing my most rudimentary, and without
criterion.
I inquired of you. You can scarcely estimate the opinion to one
utterly guideless. Again thank you.
YOUR SCHOLAR.
Again came this, on a similar theme:—
DEAR FRIEND,—Are you willing to tell me what is right? Mrs.
Jackson, of Colorado [“H. H.,” her early schoolmate], was with
me a few moments this week, and wished me to write for this.
[A circular of the “No Name Series” was inclosed.] I told her
I was unwilling, and she asked me why? I said I was incapable,
and she seemed not to believe me and asked me not to decide
for a few days. Meantime, she would write me. She was so
sweetly noble, I would regret to estrange her, and if you would
be willing to give me a note saying you disapproved it, and
thought me unfit, she would believe you. I am sorry to flee so
often to my safest friend, but hope he permits me.
In all this time—nearly eight years—we had never met, but she had sent
invitations like the following:—
AMHERST.
DEAR FRIEND,—Whom my dog understood could not elude others.
I should be so glad to see you, but think it an apparitional
pleasure, not to be fulfilled. I am uncertain of Boston.
I had promised to visit my physician for a few days in May, but
father objects because he is in the habit of me.
Is it more far to Amherst?
You will find a minute host, but a spacious welcome....
If I still entreat you to teach me, are you much displeased? I
will be patient, constant, never reject your knife, and should
my slowness goad you, you knew before myself that
Except the smaller size
No lives are round.
These hurry to a sphere
And show and end.
The larger slower grow
And later hang;
The summers of Hesperides
Are long.
Afterwards, came this:—
AMHERST.
DEAR FRIEND,—A letter always feels to me like immortality
because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend. Indebted
in our talk to attitude and accent, there seems a spectral
power in thought that walks alone. I would like to thank you
for your great kindness, but never try to lift the words which
I cannot hold.
Should you come to Amherst, I might then succeed, though
gratitude is the timid wealth of those who have nothing. I am
sure that you speak the truth, because the noble do, but your
letters always surprise me.
My life has been too simple and stern to embarrass any. “Seen
of Angels,” scarcely my responsibility.
It is difficult not to be fictitious in so fair a place, but
tests’ severe repairs are permitted all.
When a little girl I remember hearing that remarkable passage
and preferring the “Power,” not knowing at the time that
“Kingdom” and “Glory” were included.
You noticed my dwelling alone. To an emigrant, country is idle
except it be his own. You speak kindly of seeing me; could it
please your convenience to come so far as Amherst, I should be
very glad, but I do not cross my father’s ground to any house
or town.
Of our greatest acts we are ignorant. You were not aware that
you saved my life. To thank you in person has been since then
one of my few requests.... You will excuse each that I say,
because no one taught me.
At last, after many postponements, on August 16, 1870, I found myself
face to face with my hitherto unseen correspondent. It was at her
father’s house, one of those large, square, brick mansions so familiar in
our older New England towns, surrounded by trees and blossoming shrubs
without, and within exquisitely neat, cool, spacious, and fragrant with
flowers. After a little delay, I heard an extremely faint and pattering
footstep like that of a child, in the hall, and in glided, almost
noiselessly, a plain, shy little person, the face without a single good
feature, but with eyes, as she herself said, “like the sherry the guest
leaves in the glass,” and with smooth bands of reddish chestnut hair. She
had a quaint and nun-like look, as if she might be a German canoness of
some religious order, whose prescribed garb was white piqué, with a blue
net worsted shawl. She came toward me with two day-lilies, which she put
in a childlike way into my hand, saying softly, under her breath, “These
are my introduction,” and adding, also under her breath, in childlike
fashion, “Forgive me if I am frightened; I never see strangers, and
hardly know what I say.” But soon she began to talk, and thenceforward
continued almost constantly; pausing sometimes to beg that I would
talk instead, but readily recommencing when I evaded. There was not a
trace of affectation in all this; she seemed to speak absolutely for her
own relief, and wholly without watching its effect on her hearer. Led
on by me, she told much about her early life, in which her father was
always the chief figure,—evidently a man of the old type, _la vieille
roche_ of Puritanism,—a man who, as she said, read on Sunday “lonely and
rigorous books”; and who had from childhood inspired her with such awe,
that she never learned to tell time by the clock till she was fifteen,
simply because he had tried to explain it to her when she was a little
child, and she had been afraid to tell him that she did not understand,
and also afraid to ask any one else lest he should hear of it. Yet she
had never heard him speak a harsh word, and it needed only a glance at
his photograph to see how truly the Puritan tradition was preserved in
him. He did not wish his children, when little, to read anything but
the Bible; and when, one day, her brother brought her home Longfellow’s
“Kavanagh,” he put it secretly under the pianoforte cover, made signs
to her, and they both afterwards read it. It may have been before this,
however, that a student of her father’s was amazed to find that she and
her brother had never heard of Lydia Maria Child, then much read, and
he brought “Letters from New York,” and hid it in the great bush of
old-fashioned tree-box beside the front door. After the first book, she
thought in ecstasy, “This, then, is a book, and there are more of them.”
But she did not find so many as she expected, for she afterwards said to
me, “When I lost the use of my eyes, it was a comfort to think that there
were so few real books that I could easily find one to read me all of
them.” Afterwards, when she regained her eyes, she read Shakespeare, and
thought to herself, “Why is any other book needed?”
She went on talking constantly and saying, in the midst of narrative,
things quaint and aphoristic. “Is it oblivion or absorption when things
pass from our minds?” “Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to
tell it.” “I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy
enough.” When I asked her if she never felt any want of employment, not
going off the grounds and rarely seeing a visitor, she answered, “I never
thought of conceiving that I could ever have the slightest approach to
such a want in all future time”; and then added, after a pause, “I feel
that I have not expressed myself strongly enough,” although it seemed to
me that she had. She told me of her household occupations, that she made
all their bread, because her father liked only hers; then saying shyly,
“And people must have puddings,” this very timidly and suggestively, as
if they were meteors or comets. Interspersed with these confidences came
phrases so emphasized as to seem the very wantonness of over-statement,
as if she pleased herself with putting into words what the most
extravagant might possibly think without saying, as thus: “How do most
people live without any thoughts? There are many people in the world,—you
must have noticed them in the street,—how do they live? How do they
get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?” Or this crowning
extravaganza: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no
fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if
the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the
only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
I have tried to describe her just as she was, with the aid of notes taken
at the time; but this interview left our relation very much what it was
before;—on my side an interest that was strong and even affectionate, but
not based on any thorough comprehension; and on her side a hope, always
rather baffled, that I should afford some aid in solving her abstruse
problem of life.
The impression undoubtedly made on me was that of an excess of tension,
and of something abnormal. Perhaps in time I could have got beyond that
somewhat overstrained relation which not my will, but her needs, had
forced upon us. Certainly I should have been most glad to bring it down
to the level of simple truth and every-day comradeship; but it was not
altogether easy. She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in
an hour’s interview, and an instinct told me that the slightest attempt
at direct cross-examination would make her withdraw into her shell; I
could only sit still and watch, as one does in the woods; I must name my
bird without a gun, as recommended by Emerson.
After my visit came this letter:—
Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only
pathetic counterfeits.
Fabulous to me as the men of the Revelations who “shall not
hunger any more.” Even the possible has its insoluble particle.
After you went, I took “Macbeth” and turned to “Birnam Wood.”
Came twice “To Dunsinane.” I thought and went about my work....
The vein cannot thank the artery, but her solemn indebtedness
to him, even the stolidest admit, and so of me who try, whose
effort leaves no sound.
You ask great questions accidentally. To answer them would be
events. I trust that you are safe.
I ask you to forgive me for all the ignorance I had. I find no
nomination sweet as your low opinion.
Speak, if but to blame your obedient child.
You told me of Mrs. Lowell’s poems. Would you tell me where
I could find them, or are they not for sight? An article of
yours, too, perhaps the only one you wrote that I never knew.
It was about a “Latch.” Are you willing to tell me? [Perhaps “A
Sketch.”]
If I ask too much, you could please refuse. Shortness to live
has made me bold.
Abroad is close to-night and I have but to lift my hands to
touch the “Heights of Abraham.”
DICKINSON.
When I said, at parting, that I would come again some time, she replied,
“Say, in a long time; that will be nearer. Some time is no time.” We
met only once again, and I have no express record of the visit. We
corresponded for years, at long intervals, her side of the intercourse
being, I fear, better sustained; and she sometimes wrote also to my wife,
inclosing flowers or fragrant leaves with a verse or two. Once she sent
her one of George Eliot’s books, I think “Middlemarch,” and wrote, “I am
bringing you a little granite book for you to lean upon.” At other times
she would send single poems, such as these:—
THE BLUE JAY
No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity
Pursuing winds that censure us
A February Day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.
The snow and he are intimate;
I’ve often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity
I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.
The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder—terse and militant—
Unknown, refreshing things;
His character—a tonic;
His future—a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.
THE WHITE HEAT
Dare you see a soul at the white heat?
Then crouch within the door;
Red is the fire’s common tint,
But when the vivid ore
Has sated flame’s conditions,
Its quivering substance plays
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed blaze.
Least village boasts its blacksmith,
Whose anvil’s even din
Stands symbol for the finer forge
That soundless tugs within,
Refining these impatient ores
With hammer and with blaze,
Until the designated light
Repudiate the forge.
Then came the death of her father, that strong Puritan father who had
communicated to her so much of the vigor of his own nature, and who
bought her many books, but begged her not to read them. Mr. Edward
Dickinson, after service in the national House of Representatives and
other public positions, had become a member of the lower house of the
Massachusetts legislature. The session was unusually prolonged, and he
was making a speech upon some railway question at noon, one very hot day
(July 16, 1874), when he became suddenly faint and sat down. The house
adjourned, and a friend walked with him to his lodgings at the Tremont
House, where he began to pack his bag for home, after sending for a
physician, but died within three hours. Soon afterwards, I received the
following letter:—
The last afternoon that my father lived, though with no
premonition, I preferred to be with him, and invented an
absence for mother, Vinnie [her sister] being asleep. He seemed
peculiarly pleased, as I oftenest stayed with myself; and
remarked, as the afternoon withdrew, he “would like it to not
end.”
His pleasure almost embarrassed me, and my brother coming, I
suggested they walk. Next morning I woke him for the train, and
saw him no more.
His heart was pure and terrible, and I think no other like it
exists.
I am glad there is immortality, but would have tested it
myself, before entrusting him. Mr. Bowles was with us. With
that exception, I saw none. I have wished for you, since my
father died, and had you an hour unengrossed, it would be
almost priceless. Thank you for each kindness....
Later she wrote:—
When I think of my father’s lonely life and lonelier death,
there is this redress—