ABBREVIATIONS
For frequently cited names, the following abbreviations are used:
DICKINSONS
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ED |
Emily Dickinson |
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EdD |
Edward Dickinson (father) |
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END |
Emily Norcross Dickinson (mother) |
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LD |
Lavinia Dickinson (sister) |
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MDB |
Martha Dickinson Bianchi (niece) |
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SGD |
Susan Gilbert Dickinson (sister-in-law) |
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WAD |
(William) Austin Dickinson (brother) |
HIGGINSONS
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AH |
Anna Higginson (sister) |
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LH |
Louisa Higginson (sister) |
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LSH |
Louisa Storrow Higginson (mother) |
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MCH |
Mary Channing Higginson |
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MTH |
Mary (Minnie) Thacher Higginson |
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TWH |
Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
OTHERS
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HHJ |
Helen Hunt Jackson |
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MLT |
Mabel Loomis Todd |
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MTB |
Millicent Todd Bingham |
For frequently cited books, the following abbreviations are used:
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AB |
MTB, Ancestors’ Brocades |
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Austin and Mabel |
Longsworth, Austin and Mabel |
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Dear Preceptor |
Wells, Dear Preceptor |
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Fr |
ED, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, variorum ed. or Reading Edition (see note below) |
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Home |
MTB, Emily Dickinson’s Home |
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Letters |
ED, The Letters of Emily Dickinson |
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LL |
Sewall, The Lyman Letters |
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Poems, First Series |
ED, Poems, ed. MLT and TWH, 1890 |
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Poems, Second Series |
ED, Poems, ed. TWH and MLT, 1891 |
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Revelation |
MTB, Emily Dickinson: A Revelation |
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Sewall |
Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson |
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Strange Enthusiasm |
Edelstein, Strange Enthusiasm |
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TWH |
MTH, Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
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Werner |
Werner, Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios |
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YH |
Leyda, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson |
For frequently cited writings by TWH, the following abbreviations are used:
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Afternoon Landscape |
The Afternoon Landscape |
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Army Life |
Army Life in a Black Regiment |
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Book and Heart |
Book and Heart: Essays on Literature and Life |
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Civil War Journal |
The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters |
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Contemp. |
Contemporaries |
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CY |
Cheerful Yesterdays |
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L&J |
Letters and Journals |
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Magnificent Activist |
The Magnificent Activist |
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Malbone |
Malbone: An Oldport Romance |
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Monarch |
The Monarch of Dreams |
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New World |
The New World and the New Book |
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Part |
Part of a Man’s Life |
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Thalatta |
Longfellow and TWH, Thalatta: A Book for the Seaside |
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Wishes |
Woman and Her Wishes |
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W&M |
Women and Men |
For frequently cited libraries and manuscript depositories, the following abbreviations are used. (Note that in quoting primary materials, including poems, I have retained the writer’s original spelling and punctuation so that the reader may better hear the author’s voice.)
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AAS |
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. |
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Amherst |
Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College Library, Amherst, Mass. |
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BPL |
Rare Books and and Manuscript Department and Special Collections, Boston Public Library |
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Butler |
Special Collections, Nicholas Murray Butler Library, Columbia University Libraries, New York |
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Colorado |
Special Collections, Tutt Library, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colo. |
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Houghton |
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. |
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Huntington |
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, Calif. |
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Kansas |
Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kans. |
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LC |
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. |
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MHS |
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston |
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NYPL |
Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library |
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Smith |
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. |
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Stowe Center |
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, Conn. |
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UVA |
Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville |
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Yale |
Manuscripts and Archives Department, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn. |
THE FRANKLIN NUMBERS
Because most of Emily Dickinson’s poems were unpublished in her lifetime, we do not know which version of them, if any, she considered “final,” and prior to 1955, the variants were not available to the public. Rather, most of her editors, like Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Todd, chose—have to choose—which version of the poem they would print and/or how they would print it. But in 1955, Thomas H. Johnson, with the assistance of Theodora Ward, published a three-volume edition of Dickinson’s poems “including variant readings critically compared with all known manuscripts.” This groundbreaking edition of poems also established the numbering system (instead of titles, which Dickinson herself rarely used) commonly employed in Dickinson studies.
Subsequently, the most recent compilation of Dickinson’s work and its variants is the R. W. Franklin three-volume variorum edition, published in 1998. Franklin, who published the Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson in 1981, includes more and recently discovered Dickinson poems and renumbers them. Though not complete—and inevitably contested—the Franklin version is, to date, the best we have. I have used its numbering system, which supersedes Johnson’s, but since few readers have access to the three-volume edition, in quoting from Dickinson’s poetry I drew on the single version of the poem that Franklin chose to include in his one-volume, readily available Reading Edition.
Still, there are exceptions. If a poem Dickinson sent to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, for instance, is not the version included in the Reading Edition, I quoted from the version of the poem printed in the variorum edition. It is identified by number and with the alphabetical designation (A, B, C, or D) employed by Franklin. And, in several cases, I quoted from the variorum edition and used its alphabetical designation when referring to a particular version of a poem sent to a particular recipient.
CHAPTER ONE: THE LETTER
“This is my letter to the World”: Fr 519.
“Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?”: ED to TWH, April 15, 1862, Letters, 2:403.
after reading from a statement: See Lucy Stone, “Protest against the Laws of Marriage,” Protest Read at Wedding Ceremony, May 1, 1855, reprinted in Dorothy Emerson, Standing Before Us, p. 57.
“I enjoy danger”: TWH, Kansas notebook, Houghton.
“Could I make you and Austin—proud—”: ED to SGD, [summer 1861. Many of Johnson’s dates are speculative, and so unless I can be sure of the date or an approximation of it, I have put it in brackets.], Letters, 2:380.
“Should you think it breathed—”: ED to TWH, April 15, 1862, Letters, 2:403.
“the most curious thing about the letter was the total absence of a signature”: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” p. 444.
“I’ll tell you how the Sun rose—”: Fr 204.
“The nearest Dream recedes—unrealized—”: Fr 304.
“the impression of a wholly new and original poetic genius”: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” p. 445.
“I read your Chapters”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:405.
“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—”: Fr 124.
“There may be years”…“Charge your style with life”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” pp. 403, 404.
“I foresee that ‘Young Contributors’ will send me worse things”: TWH to James T. Fields, Houghton, quoted in YH, 2:55.
“Two such specimens”: TWH to James T. Fields, April 17, 1862, Huntington.
“Since that Letter to a Young Contributor”: TWH to LSH, April 18, 1862, Houghton.
“I tried a little”: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” p. 448.
“surgery” “It was not so painful as I supposed”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
“with a naive skill”: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” p. 445.
“but in your manner of the phrase” “they are better than Beings”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404–405.
“In a Life that stopped guessing”: ED to SGD, [1878], Letters, 2:632.
“does not care for thought” “begs me not to read them” “except me—” “I sing”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
“When far afterward—”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
who “came to my Father’s House”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:405.
“I cannot think of a bliss as great”: TWH, Field Book, September 20, 1861, Houghton.
he unsuccessfully tried to organize a military expedition: See TWH to Sydney Howard Gay, May 5, 1861, Butler.
“I have thoroughly made up my mind” “This war, for which I long”: TWH, journal, August 25, 1861, Houghton.
“a column of newspaper or a column of attack”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” p. 409.
“The General Rose—decay—”: Fr 772.
“South Winds jostle them—”: Fr 98E.
“Your letter gave no Drunkenness”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“You think my gait ‘spasmodic’—” “The ‘hand you stretch me in the Dark’”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:409.
“‘To publish’—” “if fame belonged to me”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“We play at Paste—”: Fr 282A. She was also slyly alluding, it seems, to his “Gymnastics” essay: “Practise…thoroughly and patiently, and you will in time attain evolutions more complicated, and, if you wish, more perilous.” See TWH, “Gymnastics,” p. 292.
“Would you have time to be the ‘friend’”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:409.
“As if I asked a common Alms”: Fr 14.
“But, will you be my Preceptor”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:409.
“the Dreamer & worker—”: TWH, “Dreamer and Worker” notebook, Houghton.
“I fancy that in some other realm”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” pp. 410–411.
“cross her Father’s ground”: ED to TWH, June 1869, Letters, 2:460.
“The Soul selects her own Society—”: Fr 409.
“The Truth must dazzle gradually—”: Fr 1263.
“Of our greatest acts”: ED to TWH, [June 1869], Letters, 2:460.
“Thank Heaven!”: MLT, diary, March 3, 1891, Yale. Mabel Loomis Todd kept both diaries and journals; the former contain topical remarks written on or close to the date of entry. The journals consist of longer, more reflective passages that, in some cases, are written at some time distant from the dates or events described.
“Never gave them to me”: See AB, p. 152n.
CHAPTER TWO: THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON: WITHOUT A LITTLE CRACK SOMEWHERE
“Don’t you think it rather a pity”: TWH, “The Sunny Side of the Transcendental Era,” p. 6.
“It would seem as strange to another generation”: TWH to LSH, July 10, 1859, Houghton.
Not surprisingly, in later years: See “Epistle to the Reader,” in John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702), quoted in Burr, Narratives of New England Witchcraft Cases, p. 402.
“the star that gilds”: LSH, quoted in TWH, p. 56.
“half dead”: LSH to TWH, December 27, 1861, Houghton.
“I think sometimes he will offer his wife and children”: LSH, diary, n.d., Houghton.
“his hospitality was inconveniently unbounded”: TWH, “The Woman Who Most Influenced Me,” p. 8.
The deficit mounted: Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, pp. 220–221; see also Strange Enthusiasm, p. 13.
“In works of Love”: TWH, p. 2.
“Born in the college, bred to it”: CY, p. 39.
“I rarely write”: TWH, “How I Was Educated,” Forum, April 1886, p. 178.
“splendid talents but no application”: TWH, journal, April 30, 1841, Houghton.
“I feel overflowing with mental energies”: TWH, p. 52.
“If I have any genius”: TWH to LSH, January 31, 1843, Houghton.
“all the argument”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles,” in Essays and Poems, p. 409.
“What I would not give to know”: TWH, p. 64.
“They have truth and earnestness”: Emerson, quoted in Dear Preceptor, p. 45.
“I did not know exactly what I wished to study”: CY, p. 91.
“I cannot live alone”: See TWH, p. 63.
“Whatever be her faults of manner”: TWH, quoted in Dear Preceptor, p. 41.
“Mrs. Higginson is very queer”: Quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 152.
his sister Anna: See W&M, p. 88.
“I don’t care about outside show”: TWH to Mary Channing, July 28, [1844], Houghton.
“God’s fanatic”: TWH, quoted in Renehan, The Secret Six, p. 4.
“I heard that he was ‘poison’”: ED to Mary Bowles, [late 1859], Letters, 2:358.
as one of his biographers observes: Dear Preceptor, p. 59.
“not infallible but invaluable”: TWH, “The Sympathy of Religions” (originally written 1854–1855), Radical, February 1871, p. 1.
“just and even fellowship, or none”: Emerson, “The Transcendentalist,” in Essays and Poems, p. 200.
“The career of man has grown large”: TWH, “The Character of Buddha,” Index, March 16, 1872, p. 83.
“Any man with some Yes in him”: TWH to LSH, [November 1844], Houghton.
“In Cambridge we are in peace”: TWH, “Other Days and Ways in Cambridge and Boston,” typed ms., February 3, 1911, AAS.
“I crave action”: TWH, p. 69.
“Free breath is good”: TWH, “The Woman Who Most Influenced Me,” p. 8.
“I have repented of many things”: TWH, p. 65.
“Times change / and duties with them”: TWH, “Tyrtaeus,” Harbinger, November 1, 1845, p. 332.
“a higher element”: TWH to MCH, September 4, 1846, Houghton.
“The land our fathers left to us”: TWH, “National Anti-Slavery Hymn,” Liberator, July 17, 1846, p. 116.
“The idea of poetic genius is now utterly foreign to me,” TWH, pp. 64–65.
“He has abandoned much”: TWH, application for readmission to Harvard Divinity School, September 19, 1846, Houghton.
“Setting out, as I do”: TWH, pp. 67–68.
“There are times and places”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 89.
“Mr. Higginson was like a great archangel”: Harriet Prescott Spofford, quoted in TWH, pp. 95–96.
“It will hurt my popularity in Newburyport”: TWH, p. 88.
“They are so much more dependent on me”: TWH to LSH, September 19, 1848, Houghton.
“My position as an Abolitionist”: TWH to LSH, September 6, 1849, Houghton.
“I think I would have come to the same thing”: TWH to Mrs. Southwell, July 21, 1898, AAS.
“There are always men”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 104.
“marched like an army without banners”: TWH, “Two Antislavery Leaders,” p. 143.
“on behalf of everything, almost”: Henry James, “American Letter,” p. 678.
“Remember that to us”: TWH, p. 142.
“Assent—and you are sane—”: Fr 620.
“Without a little crack somewhere”: “The Eccentricities of Reformers,” in Contemp., p. 328.
“I hope, however, that there is less real danger”: “might damage the cause”: TWH, letter to the Liberator, October 10, 1851, p. 163.
“If Maria Mitchell can discover comets”: Wishes, p. 9.
A woman “must be a slave or an equal”: Wishes, p. 25.
“I, too, wish to save the dinner”: Wishes, p. 23.
“A woman such as you would make”: “Rights and Wrongs of Women,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1854, p. 76.
“What sort of philosophy is that”: TWH, “Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet?” p. 145.
“Nothing makes me more indignant”: TWH to Isabelle B. Hooker, February 19, 1859, Stowe Center.
CHAPTER THREE: EMILY DICKINSON: IF I LIVE, I WILL GO TO AMHERST
“Biography first convinces us”: ED to TWH, February 1885, Letters, 2:864.
“It passes and we stay—”: Fr 962.
the “only Kangaroo among the Beauty” “when I state myself”: ED to TWH, July 1862, Letters, 2:412.
a leading citizen of “unflagging zeal”: WAD, “Samuel Fowler Dickinson,” 1889, quoted in Sewall, p. 41.
a new “priest factory”: Le Duc, Piety and Intellect at Amherst College, p. 5.
“they have compleated the College”: Lucretia Dickinson to EdD, December 5, 1820, Houghton.
“My life,” he sternly warned: EdD to END, June 4, 1826, Houghton.
“unobtrusive faculties”: ED to WAD, February 18, 1852, Letters, 1:180.
“There is a vast field”: EdD to END, May 15, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, pp. 15–16.
“A man’s success”: EdD to END, October 22, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 49.
“Your proposals are what I would wish”: END to EdD, August 8, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 37.
“That rule was not made for me”: EdD, quoted in YH, 1:256.
“Fathers real life and mine”: ED to WAD, December 15, 1851, Letters, 1:161.
An oft-repeated anecdote: See Home, p. 112.
“Father was very severe to me”: ED to WAD, April 2, 1853, Letters, 1:237.
“There must have lurked in her expressive face” Jenkins pronounced her “sound”: Jenkins, Emily Dickinson, p. 82.
“They do not need a severe course”: EdD, draft of article published in the New-England Inquirer, January 5, 1827, Houghton.
“How does it affect us”: EdD, draft of article published in the New- England Inquirer, February 23, 1827, Houghton.
“We are warranted in presuming”: EdD to END, August 3, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 35.
“Let them bend all their energies”: EdD, draft of article published in the New-England Inquirer, April 20, 1827, Houghton.
“She dont appear at all as she does at home”: Lavinia Norcross, quoted in YH, 1:21–22.
“They shut me up in Prose—”: Fr 445.
“Bliss is the sceptre of the child”: Fr 1583.
“I so love to be a child”: ED to Abiah Root, [1850], Letters, 1:104.
“I wish we were children now”: ED to WAD, April 12, 1853, Letters, 1:241.
“Two things I have lost with Childhood—”: ED, n.d., misc. fragments, Letters, 3:928.
“The Things that never can come back, are several—”: Fr 1564.
As an adult, she played games: See Jenkins, Emily Dickinson, p. 40.
“The realization of our vivid fancy”: See MDB, preface to The Single Hound, by ED, pp. x–xi.
“How enviable their fame!” “What man has done”: EdD to END, July 12, 1826, quoted in Pollak, A Poet’s Parents, p. 29; see also p. 54 of that work. Pollak rightly points out that Edward Dickinson is quoting Edward Young’s “Night Thoughts” Emily will later do so as well.
“half a house, & a rod square”: EdD, quoted in YH, 1:30.
“It does seem to me”: EdD to END, March 18 [1838], Houghton.
Had Mrs. Dickinson been willing to relocate: AB, p. 233.
“His failing was he did not understand himself”: Quoted in YH, 2:224.
“I think it will do him the very most good”: ED to WAD, June 20, 1852, Letters, 1:213.
proof positive that he was the man: See HHJ to Henry Root, [winter 1855], Colorado.
When it passed at the end of May: See Merriam, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, 1:117.
“Our house is crowded daily”: ED to WAD, June 19, 1853, Letters, 1:257.
“of every bird & flower”: LD to MLT, April 30, 1883, Yale.
“I look around me”: WAD to Martha Gilbert, [May 11, 1852], quoted in Home, p. 241.
“I ask myself, Is it possible”: WAD to Martha Gilbert, [May 11, 1852], quoted in Home, p. 242.
“early, earnest, indissoluble”: ED to Charles Clark, [June 16, 1883], Letters, 3:779.
“I, you must know”: Green, “A Reminiscence of Emily Dickinson,” p. 291.
“Vinnie is full of Wrath”: ED to Jonathan L. Jenkins, September 1877, Letters, 2:592.
“The tie is quite vital”: LL, p. 70.
“A dire person!”: quoted in AB, p. 146n.
Although Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s father: For an account of TWH’s religious upbringing, see CY, pp. 35–36.
“Were I a christian, my dear”: EdD to END, March 18, 1838, Houghton.
“with a militant Accent”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [January 1875], Letters, 2:537.
“the working of God’s spirit among us”: EdD, quoted in Wolff, Emily Dickinson, p. 126.
“Christ is calling everyone here”: ED to Jane Humphrey, [April 3, 1850], Letters, 1:94.
“I feel that I am sailing”: ED to Abiah Root, March 28, 1846, Letters, 1:31.
“I was almost persuaded to be a christian”: ED to Abiah Root, January 31, 1846, Letters, 1:27.
one of the “lingering bad ones”: ED to Abiah Root, May 7, 17, 1850, Letters, 1:98.
“The shore is safer, Abiah”: ED to Abiah Root, [1850], Letters, 1:104.
“I was taken to a Funeral”: ED to TWH, [June 1877], Letters, 2:583.
“Sermons on unbelief ever did attract me”: ED to SGD, November 27–December 3, 1854, Letters, 1:311.
“‘We thank thee Oh Father’”: ED to MCH, [late summer 1876], Letters, 2:561.
“Doubts of all things earthly”: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Billy Budd and Other Writings (New York: Library of America, 2000), p. 423.
“Her compositions were strikingly original”: Daniel Taggart Fiske to MLT, Yale.
“firmly established in the faith”: See Catalogue of Amherst Female Seminary, (Amherst, Mass.: Adams, 1835).
“We have a very fine school” “I am growing handsome very fast indeed!”: ED to Abiah Root, May 7, 1845, Letters, 1:13.
“small, like the Wren”: ED to TWH, July 1862, Letters, 2:411.
Emily once “put four superfluous kittens”: MDB, preface to The Single Hound, by ED, p. xiii.
“That her thesis is partially true”: Bishop, “Unseemly Deductions,” p. 20.
she was said to confide to a visitor: See Green, “A Reminiscence of Emily Dickinson,” p. 291.
“Home was always dear to me”: ED to WAD, February 17, 1848, Letters, 1:62.
“There is a great deal of religious interest here”: ED to Abiah Root, January 17, 1848, Letters, 1:60.
“There were real ogres at South Hadley then”: Home, p. 75.
“They thought it queer”: ED, quoted in Clara Newman Turner, “My Personal Acquaintance with Emily Dickinson,” in Sewall, 1:269.
“I have neglected the one thing needful”: ED to Abiah Root, May 16, 1848, Letters, 1:67.
“Home,” she would write: ED to Perez Cowan, [1870], Letters, 2:483.
“Sewing Society has commenced again”: ED to Jane Humphrey, January 23, 1850, Letters, 1:84.
“vain imaginations,” as she jested: ED to Abiah Root, January 29, 1850, Letters, 1:88.
“Pain—has an Element of Blank—”: Fr 760.
“She was full of courage”: Quoted in Sewall, 1:222.
“far surpassing” “and that sublimer lesson”: ED to Edward Everett Hale, January 13, 1854, Letters, 1:282–283.
the “friend who taught me Immortality”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
what was “most grand or beautiful in nature”: ED to Edward Everett Hale, January 13, 1854, Letters, 1:282.
“My dying Tutor”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“My earliest friend”: ED to TWH, [spring] 1876, Letters, 2:551.
“We are the only poets”: ED to SGD, October 9, 1851, Letters, 1:144.
“Oh Susie, I would nestle close to your warm heart”: ED to SGD, [February 1852], Letters, 1:177.
“Is there anything debasing in human love—”: WAD to SGD, [spring 1853], Houghton.
“It seems strange to me, too”: WAD to Martha Gilbert, March 27, 1853, YH, 1:266.
each an absolute monarch: See Home, p. 413.
“We’re all unlike most everyone”: ED to WAD, April 8, 1853, Letters, 1:239.
“I guess we both love Sue”: ED to WAD, March 27, 1853, Letters, 1:236.
“a dear child to us all”: ED to WAD, May 16, 1853, Letters, 1:250.
“I feel as if love sat upon my heart”: YH, 1:187. The author of the novel was Jane Porter.
“I knew, I knew it could not last—”: YH, 1:161.
“Those unions, my dear Susie”: ED to SGD, Letters, 1:209–210.
“Captivity is Consciousness—/ So’s Liberty—”: In “No Rack can torture me—,” Fr 649.
CHAPTER FOUR: EMILY DICKINSON: WRITE! COMRADE, WRITE!
confirmed his sister’s “opinion”: YH, 1:213.
“As the great world goes on”: ED to WAD, [October 25, 1851], Letters, 1:151.
“And I, and Silence, some strange Race”: In “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” Fr 340.
“I’m afraid I’m growing selfish”: ED to Jane Humphrey, [April 1852], Letters, 1:197.
“I don’t go from home”: ED to Abiah Root, [July 25, 1854], Letters, 1:298–299.
Instead, she stayed at home: See YH, 1:301–302.
“everybody knows everybody”: HHJ to Henry Root, [winter 1855], Colorado.
“Oh Sir, may one eat of hell fire”: MDB preface to The Single Hound, by ED, p. xiv.
“I fear I grow incongruous”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, March 18, 1855, Letters, 2:319.
“I am out with lanterns”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [January 26, 1856], Letters, 2:324.
“To put this World down, like a Bundle—”: Fr 404.
“In such a porcelain life”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [August 1858], Letters, 2:338.
“I would like more sisters”: ED to Mary Haven, February 13, 1859, Letters, 2:346.
“and finding the life with her books and nature”: LD, quoted in Sewall, 1:153.
“strange things—bold things”: ED to Jane Humphrey, April 3, 1850, Letters, 1:95.
“The Heart has many Doors—”: Fr 1623; “Doom is the House without the Door—”: Fr 710.
“So we must meet apart—”: Fr 706.
“We used to think, Joseph”: LL, p. 78.
“what they call a metaphor in our country” “But the world is sleeping”: ED, Indicator, February 7, 1850, quoted in Letters, 1:92, and YH, 1:168.
“‘I should expire with mortification’”: ED to WAD, October 21, 1847, Letters, 1:49.
“Write! Comrade, write!”: ED to SGD, [March 1853], Letters, 1:226.
“I’ve been in the habit myself of writing”: ED to WAD, March 27, 1853, Letters, 1:235.
“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—”: Fr 236.
“I’m ceded—”: Fr 353.
“When we stand on the tops of Things—”: Fr 343.
“If your Nerve, deny you—”: Fr 329.
“I reckon—When I count at all—”: Fr 533.
“He fumbles at your Soul”: Fr 477A.
“Literature is attar of roses”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” p. 410. See also “Essential Oils—are wrung—/ The Attar from the Rose,” Fr 772.
“This was a Poet—”: Fr 446.
“Your praise is good—”: ED to SGD, [Summer 1861], Letters, 2:380.
a “man of God of the old school”: Whicher, This Was a Poet, p. 110; blank atheism: Wadsworth, “The Gospel Call,” p. 77. The fullest treatment of Wadsworth may be found in Paul M. Miller, “The Relevance of the Rev. Charles Wadsworth to the Poet Emily Dickinson,” pp. 3–69.
“And the Church below”: YH, 1:353.
“But every now and then”: Mark Twain, quoted in YH, 2:112.
“the affliction which has befallen”: Charles Wadsworth to ED, [before spring 1862], Letters, 2:392. The date is persuasively argued by Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, pp. 415–420. But that’s as far as anyone can responsibly go. In 1924, Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, published an uncorroborated story that, if true, would fulfill all requirements of romance: A few days after they met, Wadsworth appeared on the doorstep in Amherst, Vinnie crying, “‘Sue, come! That man is here!—Father and Mother are away, and I am afraid Emily will go away with him!’” Bianchi continues: “But the one word he implored, Emily would not say. Unable to endure his life under the old conditions, after a short time he left his profession and home and silently withdrew with his wife and only child to a remote city, a continent’s width remote, where echo at least could not mock him with its vain outcry: dying prematurely, the spell unbroken.” MDB, The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, p. 47.
“Black with his Hat”: ED to James Clark, October 1882, Letters, 3:742.
“My Life is full of dark Secrets”: ED to James Clark, [November] 1882, Letters, 3:744.
“several times in love, in her own way”: Home, pp. 374, 413.
“my Aunt had lovers”: MDB, preface to The Single Hound, by ED, p. xvi.
“I’ve got a cough” “Open your life wide”: ED to unknown recipient, [early 1861], ED, The Master Letters, pp. 26, 28.
“Master. / If you saw a bullet”: ED to unknown recipient, [early 1861], ED, The Master Letters, pp. 32–43.
“Perhaps you think me stooping!”: Fr 273A.
she continued to alter them: Both Thomas Johnson’s three volumes, ED, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, and Ralph Franklin’s marvelous Poems of Emily Dickinson (Fr) show the variation in manuscript copies and insofar as possible provide the complete editorial and textual history of each poem.
“‘It is finished’”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [June 1878], Letters, 2:613.
“foreign to my thought”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
letter to the World: Fr 519.
“It’s a great thing to be ‘great’”: ED to Louise Norcross, [December 1859], Letters, 2:345. Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, p. 712, corrects the original misdating of the letter.
poetry of the portfolio: See TWH, preface to Poems, and chapter 14 of this book.
“My Splendors, are Menagerie—”: Fr 319.
“Because I could not stop for Death—”: Fr 479.
“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”: Fr 591.
“We like March—his Shoes are Purple—”: Fr 1194.
“An altered look about the hills—”: Fr 90.
“Power is only Pain—”: In Fr 312.
“First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—”: In Fr 372.
“Narcotics cannot still the Tooth”: Fr 373.
“I had some things that I called mine—”: Fr 101.
“On subjects of which we know nothing”: ED to Otis Lord, n.d., Letters, 2:728.
“Some things that fly there be—”: Fr 68.
“When Jesus tells us about his Father”: ED to Mrs. Hills, n.d., Letters, 3:837.
“This World is not conclusion”: Fr 373.
“I sing…as the Boy does”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
“She dealt her pretty words like Blades—”: Fr 458.
“he appalls, entices”: ED to TWH, [December 1879], Letters, 2:649.
“Title divine—is mine!”: Fr 194A.
“His growth was by absorption”: See Merriam, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, 1:101.
he supported the antislavery Republican John C. Frémont: See Koscher, “The Evolution, Tone, and Milieu of New England’s Greatest Newspaper,” p. 3.
“Mr. Bowles is quite handsome”: See Annie Adams Fields, diary, January 30, 1868, MHS.
“His nature was Future”: ED to SGD, January 1878, Letters, 2:600.
with his “vivid Face and the besetting Accents”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [1875], Letters, 2:540.
“the Queen Recluse”: Samuel Bowles to WAD, Friday, [January 9, 1863], Houghton.
“I have been in a savage, turbulent state”: Samuel Bowles to WAD, Saturday, [May 1863], Houghton.
“I am much ashamed Mr. Bowles”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [August 1860], Letters, 2:366.
“When the Best is gone—”: ED to Mary Bowles, [spring 1862], Letters, 2:405.
her sister was “always watching for the rewarding person”: Home, p. 413.
“I am so far from Land”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [January 11, 1862], Letters, 2:390.
“Nobody knows this little Rose”: Fr 11A (titled “To Mrs.———, with a Rose”); “I taste a liquor never brewed”: Fr 207A (titled “The May-Wine”); “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”: Fr 124A (titled “The Sleeping”). Also appearing in The Republican: “‘Sic transit gloria mundi’” (Fr 2B) in 1852, “Blazing in gold and quenching in purple” (Fr 321B) on March 30, 1864 (titled “Sunset”), and “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” (Fr 1096A) on February 14, 1866 (titled “The Snake”). See chapter 8.
CHAPTER FIVE: THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON: LIBERTY IS AGGRESSIVE
“Come strong”: Samuel May Jr. to TWH, May 25, 1854, BPL.
“It is of no use”: Anthony Burns, quoted in Dana, The Journal, 2:625.
“Give all the notice you can”: Samuel May Jr. to TWH, May 25, 1854, BPL.
“point the finger of scorn” “As if Southern slave-catchers were to be combated”: CY, p. 148.
“I am a clergyman and a man of peace”: Theodore Parker, quoted in Massachusetts Spy, May 31, 1854.
the “froth and scum of the meeting”: CY, p. 152.
“You cowards, will you desert us now?”: CY, p. 71.
“That meeting at Faneuil Hall was tremendous”: TWH to Mary Curzon, [1854], Houghton.
“The law must be executed”: “Slave Case in Boston,” National Era, June 1, 1854, p. 87.
Later that night Batchelder died: See William F. Channing to TWH, February 8, 1898, Houghton. When Higginson inquired many years later, Channing replied that his friend Charles T. Jackson, who examined the wound, initially said it was that of a pistol ball, but was linear, of a certain length, and made by a cutting instrument sharp at both edges. It was also deep. Yet the astounding fact remains, as will appear later, that the wound was produced by a pistol shot…. He said that after the door had been battered down, the marshal’s posse inside had charged the attacking party with clubs and cutlasses. He saw their leader, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, penned in a corner of the recessed doorway, wounded by a cutlass in the face, and being hammered by the officers with clubs. “Then,” said he, “I fired and one of the officers fell.” He said they would have killed Higginson, if he had not fired. I asked him how Batchelder could have been shot when the wound was long like the thrust of a sword, instead of round like a pistol ball. He explained that he had loaded his pistol with a slug which had doubtless struck lengthwise.
“We went to bed one night old fashioned”: Amos Adams Lawrence, quoted in McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 120.
“Massachusetts antislavery differs much”: George Hillard to Francis Lieber, October 2, 1860, Huntington.
“That attack was a great thing for freedom”: TWH to LSH, May 29, 1854, BPL.
“supposing it to be so arranged”: TWH, p. 145.
“A revolution is begun!”: TWH, “Massachusetts in Mourning!” p. 14.
“the crime of a gentleman”: TWH to Maria Weston Chapman, November 30–December 7, 1854, BPL.
“It is the only way”: George J. Higginson to TWH, June 10, 1854, BPL.
“My penalty cannot be very severe”: TWH to LSH, May 29, 1854, BPL; “it would be best for the ‘cause’”: Lucy Stone to TWH, July 15, 1854, BPL.
shops closed their doors: See Schama, Dead Certainties, p. 312, and Samuel May Jr. to TWH, June 2, [1854], BPL.
not to “conceal Fugitives and help them on” “I am glad to be deceived no longer”: TWH, “Massachusetts in Mourning!” p. 14.
“Liberty is aggressive”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 14:385, quoted in Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns, p. 229.
transcendentalist in arms: The term is used by Frederickson regarding Higginson in The Inner Civil War, p. 37.
“I knew his ardor & courage”: Dana, The Journal, 2:629.
“the only Harvard Phi Beta Kappa”: Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Renehan, The Secret Six, pp. 64–65.
After all, it had been a local Baptist clergyman: After he was returned to Virginia, Burns was confined, treated poorly, and then sold on the auction block. Removed to North Carolina, he was purchased—and freed—with money Leonard Grimes had raised.
“Ever since the rendition of Anthony Burns”: “A Ride through Kanzas,” in Magnificent Activist, p. 88.
“to kill every God-damned abolitionist”: David Rice Atchison, quoted in Drake, “The Law That Ripped America in Two,” p. 63.
“These are times”: Henry Ward Beecher, quoted in Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 2:431.
“Never before in my life”: CY, p. 202.
“I almost hoped to hear”: TWH, p. 167.
“Colored men are thrust illegally out of cars in New York”: TWH to George Curtis, January 23, 1857, Houghton.
“We the Undersigned”: Worcester Disunion Circular, Pamphlets, Houghton.
“It is written in the laws of nature”: TWH to LSH, January 21, 1857, Houghton.
It had the salubrious effect: See CY, pp. 207–208.
“swallows a Missourian whole”: TWH, “Anti-slavery Festival,” Liberator, January 16, 1857, p. 1.
“best Disunion champion you can find”: Franklin Sanborn to TWH, September 11 or 28, 1857, Kansas.
“that religious elevation”: CY, p. 219.
“I long to see you with adequate funds”: TWH to John Brown, May 1, 1859, BPL.
“The world has always more respect”: TWH to Harriet Beecher Stowe, October 11, 1868, Stowe Center.
As it began in blood: TWH, Liberator, May 28, 1858, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 211. See also Von Frank, “John Brown, James Redpath, and the Idea of Revolution” for a discussion of how Higginson’s Atlantic essays on slave uprisings may have fueled Brown’s fire.
“Sanborn,…is there no such thing as honor”: TWH to Franklin Sanborn, November 17, 1859, BPL.
“Gerrit Smith’s insanity—& your letter”: TWH to Samuel Gridley Howe, November 15, 1859, BPL.
“I believe John Brown to be the representative man of this century”: George Luther Stearns, quoted in Renehan, The Secret Six, p. 244.
Brown’s death…“will make the gallows as glorious as the cross”: See Robert D. Richardson, Emerson, p. 545.
“Nobody was ever more justly hanged”: Hawthorne, “Chiefly about War-Matters,” p. 54.
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly”: Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, in Walden, and Civil Disobedience, p. 245.
“John Brown is now beyond our reach”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 231.
“What satirists upon religion are those parents”: TWH, “Saints and Their Bodies,” p. 584.
“These men and women, who have tested their courage”: TWH, “Physical Courage,” p. 732.
“Would you like an article on the Maroons”: TWH to James Russell Lowell, October 23, 1859, Houghton.
“If it be the normal tendency of bondage”: TWH, “The Maroons of Surinam,” p. 553.
“I began this book on returning”: TWH, Field Book, opposite flyleaf, 1885, Houghton.
“In these unsettled days it is perilous”: TWH, journal, June 8, 1849, Houghton.
“On other days”: TWH to LSH, June 5, 1850, Houghton.
“Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond”: TWH, “My Out-Door Study,” collected in Out-Door Papers, p. 305.
“The birds are as real and absorbing”: TWH, journal, October 30, 1860; “I will trust this butterfly”: TWH, journal, October 1861, both Houghton.
“I need ask for nothing else”: TWH, Field Book, May 20, 1860, Houghton.
“He was the only critic”: TWH to LSH, January 29, 1862, Houghton.
“I had more [mail] about ‘April Days’”: TWH, pp. 157–158.
“I do not find that my facility grows so fast as my fastidiousness”: TWH, p. 158.
“The more bent any man is upon action”: TWH, “My Out-Door Study,” p. 303.
“We talk”: TWH, “My Out-Door Study,” p. 304.
“My size felt small—”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:405.
CHAPTER SIX: NATURE IS A HAUNTED HOUSE
“I enclose my name—,” ED to TWH, April 15, 1862, Letters, 2:403.
“Is it Intellect that the Patriot means”: ED to TWH, [late May 1874], Letters, 2:525.
even if “you smile at me”: ED to TWH, [July 1862], Letters, 2:412.
“I saw no Way—”: Fr 633.
“To learn the Transport by the Pain—”: Fr 178.
“Perhaps you laugh at me!”: ED to Elizabeth and Josiah Holland, [summer 1862], Letters, 2:413.
“I dwell in Possibility—”: Fr 466.
“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—”: Fr 314; “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”: Fr 260; “I like to see it lap the Miles—”: Fr 383.
“Each Life converges to some Centre—”: Fr 724.
“He put the Belt around my life—”: Fr 330; “The Soul has Bandaged moments—”: Fr 360; “The Zeros taught Us—Phosphorus—”: Fr 284; “Nature—sometimes sears a Sapling—”: Fr 457; “Remorse—is Memory—awake—”: Fr 781; “Doom is the House without the Door—”: Fr 710; “I had been hungry, all the Years—”: Fr 439; “One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—”: Fr 407; “Crisis is a Hair”: Fr 1067.
“I reason, Earth is short—”: Fr 403.
“Inebriate of air—”: In Fr 207.
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”: Fr 372; “There’s a certain Slant of light”: Fr 320; “It was not Death, for I stood up”: Fr 355.
“God is a distant—stately Lover—”: Fr 615.
“I’ve known her—from an ample nation—”: Fr 409.
“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—”: Fr 867.
“Breaking in bright Orthography”: In Fr 333.
“The Martyr Poets—did not tell—”: Fr 665.
“‘We take no note of Time’”: ED to Abiah Root, September 8, 1846, Letters, 1:37.
“I often part with things I fancy I have loved”: ED to Susan Gilbert, [1854], Letters, 1:305–306.
“Of nearness to her sundered Things” “Bright Knots of Apparitions”: Fr 337.
“A loss of something ever felt I—”: Fr 1072.
“A Light exists in Spring”: Fr 962.
“Dear March—Come in—”: Fr 1320.
“The nearest Dream recedes—unrealized—”: Fr 304.
“Sorrow seems more general”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [December 1862; misdated in Johnson], Letters, 2:436.
“They dropped like Flakes—”: Fr 545.
He had murmured, “My God”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [March 1862], Letters, 2:397–398.
“Nobody here could look on Frazar—”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [late March 1862], Letters, 2:398.
“says—his Brain keeps saying”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [March 1862], Letters, 2:399.
“This is the Hour of Lead—”: In Fr 372. This famous poem (“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”) was written around this time (spring–fall 1862).
“there is no remoteness of life and thought”: Hawthorne, “Chiefly about War-Matters,” p. 43.
“General Wolfe, on the eve of battle”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” p. 409.
“I’m sorry for the Dead—Today—”: Fr 582.
“If the anguish of others helped with one’s own”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [December 1862; misdated in Johnson], Letters, 2:436.
“I noticed that Robert Browning”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [December 1862; misdated in Johnson], Letters, 2:436.
“It dont sound so terrible—quite—as it did—”: Fr 384
“We—tell a Hurt—to cool it—”: In Fr 548.
“An actual suffering strengthens”: In Fr 861. ED sent the second stanza of this poem to TWH in 1866: “Time is a test of trouble / But not a remedy—/ If such it prove—it prove too / There was no malady” (Fr 861B).
“Of all the Sounds despatched abroad”: Fr 334B.
“The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy”: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” p. 445.
“A Bird, came down the Walk—”: Fr 359.
“I could well wish she were a native of Massachusetts”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in Hall, The Story of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” p. 103.
His first volume…, went through three printings: See Rochelle Gurstein, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” pp. 40–45.
“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”: Fr 340.
Spofford’s short story “Circumstance”: See [SGD], “Harriet Prescott’s Early Work,” p. 19, and St. Armand, Emily Dickinson and Her Culture, p. 173.
“Now all the swamps are flushed with dower”: Harriet Spofford, “Pomegranate-Flowers,” p. 575. Spofford’s fiction impressed Dickinson, who asked Sue to send her more.
“It is no discredit to Walt Whitman”: TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 753.
“to my gymnasium-trained eye”: CY, pp. 230–231.
“We all looked to him”: TWH, quoted in Nelson and Price, “Debating Manliness,” p. 497.
Higginson thus resented Drum-Taps: See TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 753.
“Could you tell me how to grow—”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:404.
“I had rather wince, than die”: ED to TWH, July 1862, Letters, 2:412.
“I thanked you for your justice”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“Your Riches, taught me, poverty—”: Fr 418B. Higginson recalls receiving this poem in her second letter (postmarked April 25, 1862) although Franklin alleges the poem, along with “Success—is counted sweetest,” was enclosed with the letter she sent to him in July 1862.
she may have composed in memory of Benjamin Newton: See Whicher, This Was a Poet, p. 92.
“Success—is counted sweetest”: Fr 112D.
“You say ‘Beyond your knowledge’” “I think you called me ‘Wayward’”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:414–415.
“Of Tribulation—these are They”: see Fr 328, sent with a letter [of July 1862], Letters, 2:411–412.
“A Bird, came down the Walk—”: Fr 359; “Before I got my eye put out—”: Fr 336B; “I cannot dance opon my Toes—”: Fr 381A; “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?”: Fr 401C.
“Are these more orderly?”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:414.
“When I try to organize—my little Force explodes”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:414.
“You told me in one letter”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:415.
“A Letter always feels to me like immortality”: ED to TWH, [June 1869], Letters, 2:460.
“Of our greatest acts we are ignorant—”: ED to TWH, [June 1869], Letters, 2:460.
“There’s a certain Slant of light”: Fr 320.
“Sweet hours have perished here”: Fr 1785.
“an article upon wildflowers”: Springfield Republican, November 1862.
“If, in the simple process of writing”: TWH, “Procession of the Flowers,” p. 657.
“Nature is a Haunted House—”: ED to TWH, n.d., Letters, 2:554.
“I trust the ‘Procession of Flowers’ was not a premonition”: ED to TWH, February 1863, Letters, 2:424.
CHAPTER SEVEN: INTENSELY HUMAN
“must put the slavery question in a wholly new aspect” “I have never written any political article there before”: TWH to LSH, May 30, 1861, Houghton.
“Slavery is the root of the rebellion”: TWH, “The Ordeal by Battle,” p. 94.
“the far greater horrors of its suppression”: TWH, “Nat Turner’s Insurrection,” p. 179.
“she was a woman, she was a slave”: TWH, “Nat Turner’s Insurrection,” p. 181.
“My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—”: Fr 764; see Howe, My Emily Dickinson, p. 129.
“but for this reverse we never should have the law of Congress”: L&J, p. 156.
“No prominent anti-slavery man”: TWH to LSH, November 1, 1861, Houghton.
“Each Life converges to some Centre—”: Fr 724.
“What I could write I have written”: CY, pp. 248–249. TWH, Field Book, August 31, 1862, Houghton.
“as if one had learned to swim in air”: CY, pp. 248–249.
“In each set…there are mingled”: TWH to LSH, October 13, 1862, Houghton.
a “man of somewhat fluid gender identifications”: Nelson and Price, “Debating Manliness,” p. 504.
“slender & graceful, dark with raven eyes & hair”: TWH to LSH, September 20, 1845, Houghton.
“All that my natural fastidiousness and cautious reserve”: TWH, p. 126.
“There was a young curate of Worcester”: See CY, p. 251.
“The government sent agents down here”: Charles Francis Adams Jr., April 6, 1862, quoted in Ford, A Cycle of Adams Letters, p. 128.
“overlook means in his zeal for ends”: November 27, 1862, Civil War Journal, p. 52. All quotations, unless noted, have been checked against Higginson’s Civil War journal at Houghton Library and published in TWH, The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The journal often contains the same phrasing as Higginson’s letters to his wife and mother.
Though Saxton was to report to Hunter: For a fuller discussion of the history of the black soldier in the Union army, see Cornish, The Sable Arm, chapters 2 and 5; see also TWH, “The First Black Regiment,” p. 521.
“from the dull and tedious drudgery”: Cabell and Hanna, The St. Johns, p. 208.
“a mere plantation-guard or a day-school in uniform”: TWH, “Scattered Notes re Colored Troops,” Houghton.
“Intensely human”: TWH to LSH, May 6, 1863, Houghton.
“I had been an abolitionist too long”: Army Life, p. 3.
“like vexed ghosts of departed slave-lords”: December 10, 1862, Civil War Journal, p. 251.
“The first man who organizes & commands”: TWH, journal, November 23, 1862, Houghton.
a small book of Shakespeare’s sonnets: I am indebted to Kent Bicknell for showing me TWH’s copy of Shakespeare, with its notes by TWH.
No black soldier in Higginson’s regiment: See Grimké, November 27, 1862, The Journals, p. 405.
“It needs but a few days”: November 27, 1862, Civil War Journal, pp. 47–48.
Emerson, he recalled had squirmed: See TWH to Charles Eliot Norton, March 30, 1892, Houghton.
“He will be a marked man”: John Greenleaf Whittier to Mary Curzon, December 24, 1862, Houghton.
“How absurd is the impression about these Southern blacks”: December 1, 1862, Civil War Journal, p. 53.
“At first glance, in a black regiment”: Part, p. 131.
“His comprehension of the whole problem of slavery”: Army Life, p. 48.
“It is the fashion with philanthropists”: November 21, 1863, Civil War Journal, p. 175.
“to impress on them”: January 7, 1863, Civil War Journal, p. 79.
“And he evidently feels towards them all”: Grimké, “Life on the Sea Islands,” p. 669.
“it always seemed to me” “What was the use of insurrection”: Army Life, pp. 192–193.
And when he wrote publicly of them: See, for instance, TWH, “Leaves from an Officer’s Journal,” p. 521; the journal was printed in Army Life with some changes.
“This spontaneous outburst of love and loyalty”: Rogers, “Letters of Dr. Seth Rogers,” p. 340.
“My Country ’Tis of Thee”: See letter from Harriet Ware, January 1, 1863, in Pearson, Letters from Port Royal, p. 130; see also “Higginson’s Black Brigade,” Springfield Republican, January 1, 1863, p. 1.
Higginson stood silent: see Grimké, January 1, 1863, The Journals, p. 430.
“It made all other words cheap”: January 1, 1863, Civil War Journal, p. 77.
Not as good as at home: See Taylor, “Memoir of Susie King Taylor” in Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, p. 18, and Grimké, January 1, 1863, The Journals, p. 430.
“A man fell at my elbow”: Army Life, p. 56.
“Nobody knows anything about these men”: TWH, “The War in Florida,” New York Times, February 10, 1863, p. 2.
“Ah…. We called him Bob”: Army Life, p. 66.
“You may make a soldier out of a slave”: TWH, “Safety Matches,” p. 4.
“good illustrations”: Report of Col. T. W. Higginson, First South Carolina Infantry (Union), February 1, 1863, in U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1885): 14:197.
“our abstract surmises”: Report of Col. T. W. Higginson, in The War of the Rebellion, 14:198.
“who are bent on making him incapable”: “Col. Higginson’s Estimation of Black Soldiers,” Springfield Republican, February 6, 1863, p. 2.
“and in rather exalted language”: “The Blacks in Battle,” New York Times, February 10, 1863, p. 4.
With Jacksonville secure: See Rufus Saxton to Edwin M. Stanton, March 14, 1863, in Moore, The Rebellion Record, document 132.
“Higginson, the romantic, had raised money”: Cornish, The Sable Arm, p. 150.
“It was the first time in the war”: Army Life, p. 89.
“A more fatal order for the place”: See Moore, The Rebellion Record, document 148, p. 638.
“Jacksonville is in ruins”: New York Tribune, March 28, 1863.
“In a struggle for freedom”: Garth Wilkinson James, “Memoir,” p. 11.
“lean as / a compass-needle”: Robert Lowell, “For the Union Dead,” in Life Studies and For the Union Dead, p. 71.
“Our negro troops are splendid”: Quoted in Generals’ Reports of Service, in The War of the Rebellion, 14:133.
“Any disaster or failure on our part”: TWH to LSH, May 18, 1863, Houghton.
Asked to make a speech: See Grimké, July 4, 1863, The Journals, p. 492.
“that this was a real war”: quoted in Letter from Robert Gould Shaw, June 9, 1863, in Soldiers’ Letters, from Camp, Battlefield and Prison, ed. Lydia Minturn Post (New York: Bunce & Huntington, 1865), p. 249.
“the colored troops as such are not responsible”: TWH to Charles Sumner, June 20, 1863, Houghton.
After Shaw formally protested Montgomery’s tactics: See the Hunter-Lincoln correspondence in U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion, series 1, 14:469–470.
“Then you die at half past nine”: George Crockett Strong to Benjamin Franklin Butler, June 29, 1863, in Benjamin F. Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, during the Period of the Civil War (Norwood, Mass.: Plimpton Press, 1917), 3:94.
“Montgomery had two soldiers shot”: TWH to Richard Watson Gilder, April 16, 1897, NYPL.
“Do not think this rapid organization”: TWH to Charles Eliot Norton, June 28, 1863, Houghton.
“as fanatics sometimes did”: TWH to Richard Hinton, Higginson Papers, Kansas.
“without mercy”: TWH to Charles Eliot Norton, June 28, 1863, Houghton.
“The worst acts of tyranny”: TWH to Edna Dow Cheney, September 13, 1865, Smith.
Merriam wasn’t finished: See Halpine Report, June 2, 1863, Military Order of the Loyal Legion Collection, box 14, Houghton. See also Poole, “Memory and the Abolitionist Heritage,” pp. 210–213.
“he is not a man of the sentiments”: TWH to Colonel W. W. H. Davis, February 19, 1865, UVA.
Dr. Rogers and Higginson were left: Rogers, “Letters of Dr. Seth Rogers,” p. 346. See also, for instance, TWH, “The First Black Regiment,” p. 521.
“We presume too much on the supposed ignorance of those men”: TWH, letter to the New York Times, February 21, 1864, p. 5; see also Army Life, appendix D, p. 222.
“free colored regiments”: see TWH to Charles Sumner, June 20, 1864, Houghton.
The Fifty-fourth received much more publicity: See, for example, TWH, Massachusetts in the Army and Navy, p. 83, and TWH, “The Shaw Memorial,” p. 194.
“Higginson, the senior colonel of the brigade”: John Andrew to Edwin Stanton, June 29, 1863, in U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series 3 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1899), 3:424; see also Keith Wilson, “In the Shadow of John Brown: The Military Service of Colonels Thomas Higginson, James Montgomery, and Robert Shaw in the Department of the South,” in Smith, Black Soldiers in Blue, p. 324.
“It would always be possible”: CY, p. 257.
“bucked, gagged and, if need be, shot”: Hallowell, The Negro as a Soldier in the War of the Rebellion, p. 9.
“I never saw any one”: Shaw, Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune, p. 339.
“Folly Island gives a fair chance”: Civil War Journal, pp. 157–158.
“Well I guess we will let Strong”: Truman Seymour, quoted in Shaw, Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune, p. 51.
Seymour, a misanthropic man: see TWH to Sydney Howard Gay, May 23, 1864, Butler.
Shaw and his men talked: See testimony of Nathaniel Paige, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, The Black Military Experience, p. 534.
“the dear blundering dusky darlings”: September 12, 1863, Civil War Journal, p. 167.
“vacillating and half proslavery”: Army Life, p. 95. See also Civil War Journal, p. 81.
“This makes me hate all arbitrary power”: January 29, 1864, Civil War Journal, p. 187.
“At a time when it required large bounties”: TWH to Charles Sumner, November 24, 1863, Houghton.
“They are growing more like white men”: February 11, 1864, Civil War Journal, p. 183.
“I feel that I hv. done my duty entirely”: TWH to MCH, January 28, 1864, Houghton.
CHAPTER EIGHT: AGONY IS FRUGAL
“I found you were gone, by accident” “I too, have an ‘Island’—”: ED to TWH, [February 1863?], Letters, 2:423.
“The fascination of summer”: TWH, “Procession of the Flowers,” p. 656.
“to doubt my High Behavior”: ED to TWH, [1863], Letters, 2:425.
“Color—Caste—Denomination—”: Fr 836.
“’Tis so appalling—it exhilirates—”: Fr 341.
“Agony is frugal—”: In Fr 1196.
“I shall have no winter this year—”: ED to Mary Bowles, [c. August 1861], Letters, 2:377.
“What Soft—Cherubic Creatures—”: Fr 675.
“With narrow, probing, eyes—”: In Fr 550.
“A Soldier called, a Morning ago”: ED to Samuel Bowles, [August 1862], Letters, 2:416.
“Perhaps Death, gave me Awe”: ED to TWH, [February 1863?], Letters, 2:423.
“It feels a shame to be Alive—”: Fr 524.
he denounced “as subversive”: See the Springfield Daily Republican, October 17, 1861.
“He is against slavery as the cause of the war”: See YH, 2:92.
“I like Truth—it is a free Democracy”: LL, p. 71.
Austin’s paying a substitute: The going rate was three hundred dollars, about six thousand dollars in today’s money.
That Dickinson seldom mentioned the war: In recent times there have been a number of scholars attending to Dickinson and the Civil War, beginning with Wolosky’s Dickinson; see also Berkove, “‘A Slash of Blue!’” Lee, “Writing through the War” Marcellin, “‘Singing off the Charnel Steps’” and Wardrop, “The Poetics of Political Involvement and Non-Involvement.” I am indebted to this work.
“Though not reared to prayer—”: ED to TWH, [February 1863?], Letters, 2:423.
After the poem “Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple”: See Dandurand’s pioneering “New Dickinson Civil War Publications” “Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple”: Fr 321; “Flowers—well, if anybody”: Fr 95A.
“These are the days when Birds come back—”: Fr 122B. See also TWH, “The Life of Birds,” p. 376:
In autumn, they come timidly from the North, and, pausing on their anxious retreat, lurk within the fading copses and twitter snatches of song as fading. Others fly as openly as ever, but gather in flocks, as the Robins, most piteous of all birds at this season,—thin, faded, ragged, their bold note sunk to a feeble quaver, and their manner a mere caricature of that inexpressible military smartness with which they held up their heads in May.
Yet I cannot really find anything sad even in November. When I think of the thrilling beauty of the season past, the birds that came and went, the insects that took up the choral song as the birds grew silent, the procession of the flowers, the glory of autumn,—and when I think, that, this also ended, a new gallery of wonder is opening, almost more beautiful, in the magnificence of frost and snow, there comes an impression of affluence and liberality in the universe, which seasons of changeless and uneventful verdure would never give. The catkins already formed on the alder, quite prepared to droop into April’s beauty,—the white edges of the May-flower’s petals, already visible through the bud, show in advance that winter is but a slight and temporary retardation of the life of Nature, and that the barrier which separates November from March is not really more solid than that which parts the sunset from the sunrise.
“if she did not, the longest day would pass me”: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“Fame is a fickle food”: Fr 1702; “Fame is a bee”: Fr 1788; “Fame’s Boys and Girls, who never die”: Fr 892.
“Some—Work for Immortality—”: Fr 536.
“When I was small, a Woman died—”: Fr 518.
“Bereavement in their death to feel”: Fr 756.
“The Battle fought between the Soul”: Fr 629.
“It sets the Fright at liberty—”: In Fr 341.
“No Rack can torture me—”: Fr 649.
“Can the Lark resume the Shell—”: In Fr 754.
“you may make a soldier out of a slave”: TWH, “Safety Matches,” p. 4. There is, of course, no telling which came first, the poem or the essay, although it’s likely that the poem preceded Higginson’s essay; perhaps it is one she sent him that has escaped our notice and he borrowed from. Or Higginson may have used the phrase earlier. (He used it later, in “Some War Scenes Revisited,” p. 9.) And, finally, if the phrase was in the public domain, as it may also have been, that both authors linked the bird’s resuming its egg to issues of freedom and bondage is mighty suggestive.
“A Slash of Blue! A sweep of Gray!”: Fr 233.
“Publication—is the Auction”: Fr 788.
“I do not let go it”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:415.
“He fought like those Who’ve nought to lose—”: Fr 480.
“My Portion is Defeat—today—”: Fr 704.
“Could you, with honor, avoid Death”: ED to TWH, February 1863, Letters, 2:424.
“Best Gains—must have the Losses’ test—”: Fr 499.
“The Soul unto itself”: Fr 579A.
In June 1863: The collection Out-Door Papers includes such nature pieces as “April Days,” “My Out-Door Study,” “Water-Lilies,” “The Life of Birds,” “Procession of the Flowers,” and “Snow,” as well as essays on physical culture, such as “Saints, and Their Bodies,” “A Letter to a Dyspeptic,” and “The Health of Our Girls.”
The Springfield Republican went so far: Springfield Republican, June 6, 1863; June 20, 1863; quoted in YH, 2:79.
“It is still as distinct as Paradise—”: ED to TWH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:552.
“Precisely at half past three”: TWH, “Water-Lilies,” p. 466.
“The Birds begun at Four o’clock—”: Fr 504B.
“At Half past Three”: Fr 1099.
“that which is remembered”: TWH, “Water-Lilies,” p. 473.
“Absence is the very air of passion”: TWH, “Water-Lilies,” p. 473.
“No man can measure what a single hour with Nature” “The influence is self-renewing”: TWH, “Procession of the Flowers,” pp. 656, 657.
“I was thinking, today—”: ED to TWH, [February 1863], Letters, 2:424.
“Perception of an Object costs”: Fr 1103.
“The Myrrhs, and Mochas, of the Mind”: In Fr 1608.
“Heaven over it—”: In Fr 508.
“The Zeros taught Us—Phosphorus”: Fr 284.
“So instead of getting to Heaven, at last—”: In Fr 236.
“The snow-light offends them”: ED to Louise Norcross, [1865], Letters, 2:439.
“What I see not, I better see—”: Fr 869.
“yet I work in my Prison”: ED to TWH, June 1864, Letters, 2:431.
“I wish to see you more than before I failed—”: ED to TWH, [June 1864], Letters, 2:431; “I heard a Fly buzz”: Fr 591.
word of it would “excel” her own: ED to TWH, June 1864, Letters, 2:431.
“The only News I know”: Fr 820B.
“a Calamity” “I had a woe”: LL, p. 76.
“Further in Summer than the Birds”: Fr 895D.
But in them we can hear “August burning low”: Alfred Habegger interprets the poem similarly. See My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, pp. 492–493; see also Charles Anderson’s fine reading in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry, pp. 169–175.
“Would you instruct me now?”: ED to TWH, [January 1866], Letters, 2:449.
CHAPTER NINE: NO OTHER WAY
It struck him: TWH, journal, August 16, 1870, Houghton.
that “inward darkness”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 99.
“a man among men”: See Henry James, “The Works of Epictetus” (originally published as “Higginson’s Works of Epictetus” in the North American Review, April 1866, pp. 599–606), review of The Works of Epictetus, trans. TWH, in Henry James, Literary Criticism, 1:12.
“When you do anything from a clear judgment”: TWH, trans., The Works of Epictetus, p. 392.
“I seem to find her now”: TWH, “Sunshine and Petrarch,” p. 308.
“nobody comprehends Petrarch”: Malbone, p. 150.
His home had become a hospital: See TWH, journal, December 23, 1866, Houghton, and TWH, pp. 276–277.
“On the whole”: HHJ to Kate Field, March 7, 1866, BPL.
“All ladies do”: TWH to ED, [late winter 1869], Houghton.
“I had promised to visit my Physician”: ED to TWH, [1866], Letters, 2:450.
“I must omit Boston”: ED to TWH, June 9, 1866, Letters, 2:453.
“I do not cross my Father’s ground”: ED to TWH, [June 1869], Letters, 2:460. Given the date of Higginson’s letter, which I can ascertain by reference to his papers and meetings, the Dickinson letters dated by Johnson (in brackets) may be in error: they may have been written two years later. Of course, Johnson may be correct if ED was responding to a series of requests from TWH.
“Thin dry & speechless”: TWH to MCH, August 16, 1870, Houghton.
“there is always one thing to be grateful for”: quoted in TWH to AH, December 9, 1873, Houghton.
“Sometimes I take out your letters & verses”: TWH to ED, Letters 2:461.
“I am always the same toward you”: TWH to ED, [late winter 1869], Letters, 2:461–462.
“Of ‘shunning Men and Women’—”: ED to TWH, [August 1862], Letters, 2:415.
“It isolates one anywhere”: TWH to ED, May 11, 1869, Houghton.
“I will be at Home”: ED to TWH, August 16, 1870, Letters, 2:472.
“These are my introduction”: ED, quoted in TWH to MCH, August 16, 1870, BPL.
“A narrow Fellow in the Grass”: Fr 1096.
It first surfaced: It was subsequently reprinted in The Weekly Republican.
“lest you meet my Snake”: ED to TWH, [1866], Letters, 2:450.
“defeated too of the third line by the punctuation”: ED to TWH, [March 1866], Letters, 2:450.
“If I still entreat you to teach me”: ED to TWH, [March 1866], Letters, 2:450.
“A Death blow is a Life blow to Some”: Fr 966.
“Still, you see, I try”: TWH to ED, May 11, 1869, Houghton.
“I would like to be what you deem me”: ED to TWH, [June 9, 1866], Letters, 2:453.
“It is hard [for me] to understand”: TWH to ED, May 11, 1869, Houghton.
“To undertake is to achieve”: Fr 991.
“You mention Immortality” “The ‘infinite Beauty’—” “To escape enchantment”: ED to TWH, June 8, 1866, Letters, 2:454.
“Time is a test of trouble”: ED to TWH, June 8, 1866, Letters, 2:454.
“Ample make this Bed—,”: Fr 804C; “As imperceptibly as Grief”: Fr 935D.
“Is it more far to Amherst?”: ED to TWH, [early 1866], Letters, 2:450.
“Bringing still my ‘plea for culture’”: ED to TWH, [July 1867], Letters 2:457.
“The Luxury to apprehend”: Fr 819.
“write & tell me something”: TWH to ED, May 11, 1869, Houghton.
“I would like to thank you for your great kindness”: ED to TWH, [June 1869], Letters, 2:460.
“Why do the insane cling to you so?”: MCH, quoted in TWH to AH, December 9, 1873, Houghton.
“The great reason why the real apostles of truth”: TWH, p. 68.
“If every man who is accused”: TWH, “Divergent Reformers,” Independent, March 26, 1868, p. 4.
“I feel this strangely”: TWH to AH and LH, December 30, 1864, Houghton. However, Higginson published these accounts at regular intervals from September 1864 until August 1867, and they became the basis for Army Life in a Black Regiment.
“That I was in it [the war] myself”: TWH to AH and LH, April 9, 1865, Houghton.
“Until it is done”: TWH, p. 252.
the “one right residence”: Henry James, Notes of a Son and Brother, p. 67.
Higginson borrowed it too: See Malbone, p. 93: “‘Good Americans when they die go to Paris,’ said Philip.”
he called this part of town Oldport: See “Oldport in Winter,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1867, pp. 612–618, and “Oldport Wharves,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1868, pp. 61–68.
“When the freedmen are lost in the mass of freemen” “Fail in this result”: TWH, “Fair Play the Best Policy,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1865, pp. 623, 625.
“I do not want to give any more years of my life”: TWH to AH and LH, October 8, 1865, Houghton.
“If it had been left to him”: TWH, “The South Victorious in Georgia,” Independent, May 24, 1866, p. 4.
“what most men mean to-day”: TWH, “Too Many Compliments,” Independent, October 26, 1865, p. 4.
“Do you suppose that black men are born”: TWH, “Political Notes,” Springfield Republican, May 9, 1867, p. 1.
“Galloping through green lanes”: Army Life, p. 106.
Howard Mumford Jones: See Howard Mumford Jones, introduction to Army Life in a Black Regiment, by TWH (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1960), pp. vii–xvii.
“Doubts trembled in my mind”: Army Life, pp. 123–124. Contemporary academic critics read Higginson’s book and, in particular, this chapter as deflected homoeroticism and cross-racial identity. See Christopher Looby, “‘As Thoroughly Black as the Most Faithful Philanthropist Could Desire’: Erotics of Race in Higginson’s Army Life in a Black Regiment,” in Stecopoulos and Uebel, Race and the Subject of Masculinities, pp. 71–115, and Looby, “Flowers of Manhood.”
“All Southern white men”: TWH, “The Logic of Must,” Independent, September 7, 1865, p. 4.
“It is we who are permitting black loyalists to be disarmed”: TWH, “Too Many Compliments,” Independent, October 26, 1865, p. 4.
“It is not that politics are so unworthy”: TWH, “A Plea for Culture,” pp. 34, 36.
“A precious—mouldering pleasure—’tis—”: Fr 569.
“In these later years, the arduous reforms”: TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 754.
“I don’t believe there is a man here”: TWH, journal, May 16, 1876, Houghton.
“Nobody has any weight in America”: Malbone, p. 99.
“except to secure the ballot for woman”: TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 745.
“My nature seems to be rather that of an artist”: TWH to Ralph Waldo Emerson, July 4, 1864, Houghton.
“Is it…a great consecration”: TWH, “An Artist’s Dream,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1867, p. 103.
“the artist had attained his dream”: TWH, “An Artist’s Dream,” p. 108.
he had modeled Malbone: The name Malbone also refers to the late-eighteenth-century miniaturist Edward Malbone, born in Newport.
“a certain wild, entangled look”: Malbone, p. 8.
“Every one must have something”: Malbone, p. 150.
“Forgive me if I am frightened” “Manner between Angie Tilton & Mr. Alcott” and subsequent quotations: TWH to MCH, [August 16, 17, 1870], BPL.
anyone “who drained my nerve power” “I am glad not to live”: TWH to MCH, notes, [August 1870], BPL.
“Say in a long time”: TWH to MCH, notes, [August 1870], BPL.
CHAPTER TEN: HER DEATHLESS SYLLABLE
“the Vein cannot thank the Artery”: ED to TWH, [c. October 1870], Letters, 2:479.
“the most eminent poetess in the world”: TWH, “Sappho,” p. 83.
“unapproached among women”: TWH, “Sappho,” p. 86.
“Could you not come without the Lecture”: ED to TWH, [October 1870], Letters, 2:482. This letter exists in pencil draft only at Amherst; there is no copy among TWH’s papers at BPL. We therefore do not know if it was sent to Higginson, though I suspect it was.
“When I hoped I feared—”: Fr 594; the poem had evidently been composed five years earlier.
“Remembrance has a Rear and Front”: Fr 1234.
“I remember your coming”: ED to TWH, September 26, 1870, Letters, 2:479–80.
“Trust adjusts her ‘Peradventure’—”: Fr 1177.
“You told me Mrs Lowell was Mr Lowell’s ‘inspiration’”: ED to TWH, [October 1870], Letters 2:481.
no wonder her brother: MLT, journal, October 18, 1891, Yale.
“The Riddle that we guess”: Fr 1180A, in ED to TWH, [October 1870], Letters, 2:480.
“You ask great questions accidentally”: ED to TWH, September 26, 1870, Letters, 2:479.
“Too happy Time dissolves itself”: Fr 1182.
“I was refreshed by your strong Letter”: ED to TWH, [October 1870], Letters, 2:481.
“Thank you for Greatness”: ED to TWH, [October 1870], Letters, 2:481.
“You place the truth in opposite—”: ED to TWH, [October 1870], Letters, 2:481.
“Step lightly on this narrow Spot—”: Fr 1227.
if it belonged to her: ED to TWH, June 7, 1862, Letters, 2:408.
“I thank these Kinsmen of the Shelf—”: Fr 512.
“Stronger than any written”: ED to TWH, November 1871, Letters, 2:491.
“I thought I spoke to you of the shadow”: ED to TWH, [October 1870], Letters, 2:481.
“Amherst must be a nest of poetesses” “letters from Emily Dickinson”: TWH, quoted in Lydia B. Torrey to Emily Fowler Ford, November 16, 1872, NYPL.
“I do think Amherst girls turn out (excuse me—) horridly!”: HHJ to Henry Root, March 1854, Colorado.
“if I say a shorter time it will be longer”: TWH, notes, [August 16, 17, 1870], BPL.
“Her friendships with men had the frankness”: TWH, “Mrs. Helen Jackson (H. H.),” p. 256.
“the one great duty”: HHJ, Mercy Philbrick’s Choice, p. 71.
“knocks like a baby at the door”: HHJ to Kate Field, March 7, 1866, BPL.
“I shall never write a sentence”: Contemp., p. 156.
He praised her novels: See Contemp., p. 163.
“perfection in every sentence”: TWH, “Charlotte Prince Hawes,” Radical, January 1867, p. 283.
“In almost any town in New England”: TWH, “The Higher Education of Woman: A Paper Read before the Social Science Convention, May 1, 1873,” in Journal of Social Science (1873): 38.
Everyone walks through the door: See Gornick, The Solitude of Self, for a particularly illuminating analysis of the radical and liberal feminism created at this juncture.
“Without deprecating the value”: Circular letter signed by Lucy Stone, Caroline M. Severance, Julia Ward Howe, TWH, and George H. Vibbert, August 6, 1869, Stowe Center.
“No! my dear friend”: Elizabeth Cady Stanton to TWH, June 13, 1868, BPL.
“The world has always more respect”: TWH to Harriet Beecher Stowe, October 11, 1868, Stowe Center.
“before the war he never missed a good fight”: Dear Preceptor, p. 248.
“If the conservatives think”: TWH, quoted in Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 2:803.
an “Intellectual History of Women”—“my magnum opus”: TWH, p. 284.
“If there is only one woman in the nation”: TWH, Common Sense about Women, pp. 397–398. This volume collects most of Higginson’s writings from The Woman’s Journal. 189 “The yearning for a literary career” “reveal such intellectual ardor”: TWH, Common Sense about Women, pp. 259–260.
“I am happy you have the Travel” “Could you come again”: ED to TWH, [1872], Letters, 2:500.
“To disappear enhances—The Man that runs away”: Fr 1239C.
“He preached opon ‘Breadth’ till it argued him narrow—”: Fr 1266.
“The Sea said ‘Come’ to the Brook—”: Fr 1275.
“Thank you for the ‘Lesson’”: ED to TWH, [late 1872], Letters, 2:501.
“Could you teach me now?” or “Will you instruct me then no more?”: ED to TWH, [1873], Letters, 2:511. These are from two different letters.
“Longing is like the Seed”: Fr 1298A.
“Dominion lasts until obtained—”: Fr 1299.
“The Wind begun to knead the Grass—/ As Women do a Dough—”: 796A; “The Wind begun to rock the Grass / With threatening tunes and low—”: Fr 796D.
“Your poem about the storm is fine”: TWH to ED, December 31, 1873, Houghton.
“I don’t dare die”: MCH, quoted in Elliott, This Was My Newport, p. 84.
“particularly absurd in E. D.’s case”: MCH quoted in TWH to AH, December 9, 1873, Houghton.
“I saw my eccentric poetess” “How long are you going to stay”: TWH to AH, December 9, 1873, Houghton.
“& especially the time spent with you”: TWH to ED, December 31, 1873, Houghton.
“Thank you, dear friend, for my ‘New Year’”: ED to TWH, [January 1874], Letters, 2:518.
“When the paths that we have personally traversed”: TWH, Oldport Days (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1873), p. 266.
“I have fineness”: TWH, journal, February 20, 1869, Houghton.
“My gentility is chronic”: TWH to unknown recipient, December 26, 1873, Houghton.
“I wish you could see some field lilies”: TWH to ED, December 31, 1873, Houghton.
She replied to Higginson: For an account of the revisions, see Fr, 3:1135–1139.
“Because that you are going”: Fr 1314.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE REALM OF YOU
“‘well enough’”: Walter Dean Howells, quoted in TWH to William Dean Howells, September 30, 1871, Houghton.
“I hate to write in anything but the Atlantic”: TWH to LH and AH, [1871], Houghton. The piece in question is “A Day of Scottish Games,” published in the January 1872 issue of Scribner’s Monthly (pp. 329–336).
Henry Adams: See [Adams], “Frothingham’s Transcendentalism,” p. 470.
“they rely for success”: TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 747.
“everything which does not tend to money”: Malbone, p. 98.
“For all young Fancy’s”: See Afternoon Landscape, p. 88.
“In spite of my fine physique”: TWH, journal, April 18, 1873, Houghton.
“The walls seem only to draw closer”: TWH, journal, September 25, 1875, Houghton.
“My life indeed has disappointed me”: TWH, journal, December 22, 1876, Houghton.
“The truth is…that the child does not trouble himself”: TWH, “Childhood’s Fancies,” Scribner’s Monthly, January 1876, p. 362.
Never a Republican: See EdD to WAD, February 18, 1874, quoted in Home, p. 451.
His head felt light: For the account of Dickinson’s death, see MLT to TWH, July 9, 1891, Yale, p. 224.
“We were all lost, though I didn’t know how”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [summer 1874], Letters, 2:526.
“There, father, I never dared do that while you were living”: WAD, quoted in Mary Lee Hall to MTB, August 5, 1933, Yale.
“he seemed peculiarly pleased”: ED to TWH, [July 1874], Letters, 2:528.
“Mr. Bowles was with us”: ED to TWH, [July 1874], Letters, 2:528.
The shops of Amherst had closed: Information about the funeral is from the Springfield Republican, June 20, 1874, and MDB, Emily Dickinson Face to Face, p. 13.
“Miss Vinnie told me”: Mary Lee Hall to MTB, December 29, 1939, Yale.
“His Heart was pure and terrible”: ED to TWH, [July 1874], Letters, 2:528.
“Though it is many nights”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [summer 1874], Letters, 2:526.
“without any body”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [August 1876], Letters, 2:559.
“Home is so far from Home”: ED to TWH, July 1875, Letters, 2:542.
“I have wished for you” “Your beautiful Hymn”: ED to TWH, [July 1874], Letters, 2:528.
the protofeminist speaker: As Mary Loeffelholz points out in her fine article “Dickinson’s ‘Decoration,’” the poem was reprinted in The Woman’s Journal just after it appeared in Scribner’s Monthly. She also conjectures the identity of the woman as Margaret Elliott Hazard.
“I thought that being a Poem one’s self”: ED to TWH, [May 1874], Letters, 2:525.
And when “Decoration” appeared in Scribner’s Monthly: See TWH, “Decoration,” p. 234.
“It has assisted that Pause of Space”: ED to TWH, July 1874, Letters, 2:528.
“The broadest words”: ED to TWH, [late May 1874], Letters, 2:525.
“had twice seen you”: ED to TWH, January 1876, Letters, 2:547.
“Mother was paralyzed Tuesday”: ED to TWH, [mid-June 1875], Letters, 2:542.
“I am glad”: ED to TWH, [July 1875], Letters, 2:542.
“Knowing that his fraternal love towards me”: ED, quoted in YH, 2:237.
Emily named Vinnie: See YH, 2:261.
“weird & strange power”: TWH to AH, November 30, 1875, Houghton.
“I have a little manuscript volume”: HHJ to ED, March 20, 1876, Houghton.
“asked me for my Mind”: ED to TWH, April 25, 1862, Letters, 2:405.
“My Brother and Sisters would love to see you”: ED to TWH, [May 1874], Letters, 2:525.
“The last of Summer is Delight—”: Fr 1380; “The Heart is the Capital of the Mind”: Fr 1381C; “The Mind lives on the Heart”: Fr 1384; “The Rat is the concisest Tenant”: Fr 1369; “‘Faithful to the end’ amended”: Fr 1386.
or, in an earlier version, “be lean”: “The Mind lives on the Heart”: Fr 1384A.
“the writer, when he adopts a high aim”: TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 753.
“I often go Home in thought to you”: ED to TWH, [February 1876], Letters, 2:548.
“It makes me happy to send you the Book”: ED to TWH, [February 1876], Letters, 2:548.
The one they called “Immortality” “I believed it would”: ED to TWH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:551. Thomas Johnson conjectures that the poem is “‘Faithful to the end’ amended.” I have my doubts.
“You once told me”: ED to TWH, [February 1876], Letters, 2:548.
“I was lonely”: ED to TWH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:551.
“I sued the News—yet feared—the News”: Fr 1391.
“The things we thought that we should do”: Fr 1279.
“I wish your friend had my strength”: ED to TWH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:551.
“May I cherish it twice”: ED to MCH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:554.
“I am glad to have been”: ED to TWH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:553.
“a little Granite Book you can lean upon”: ED to MCH, [December 1876], Letters, 2:569.
“I am glad if I did not”: ED to MCH, [August 1876], Letters, 2:558.
“Your letters always surprise me”: ED to TWH, [June 1869], Letters, 2:186.
“I hoped you might show me something of your’s”: ED to TWH, [August 1877], Letters, 2:588.
“Thank you for having written the ‘Atlantic Essays’”: ED to TWH, [November 1871], Letters, 2:491.
“I was re-reading ‘Oldport’”: ED to TWH, [January 1874], Letters, 2:518.
“A Wind that woke a lone Delight”: Fr 1216D.
“Though inaudible”: ED to TWH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:553.
“Your thought is so serious”: ED to TWH, [spring 1876], Letters, 2:552.
“That it is true”: ED to TWH, [January 1876], Letters, 2:546.
“Candor—my Preceptor—is the only wile”: ED to TWH, [February 1876], Letters, 2:548. She alludes to his paragraph in the prelude to Malbone: “One learns, in growing older, that no fiction can be so strange nor appear so improbable as would the simple truth; and that doubtless even Shakespeare did but timidly transcribe a few of the deeds and passions he had personally known. For no man of middle age can dare trust himself to portray life in its full intensity, as he has studied or shared it; he must resolutely set aside as indescribable the things most worth describing, and must expect to be charged with exaggeration, even when he tells the rest.”
“I almost inferred from your accent”: ED to TWH, [August 1876], Letters, 2:559.
“Surely, in the shelter of such double anonymousness”: HHJ to ED, [summer 1876], Letters, 2:563.
“I felt [li]ke a [gr]eat ox” “Let somebody somewhere”: HHJ to ED, [fall 1876], Letters, 2:565.
“I told her I was unwilling”: ED to TWH, [October 1876], Letters, 2:563.
“Often, when troubled by entreaty”: ED to TWH, [early 1877], Letters, 2:573.
Misunderstanding her request: Critics once read Mercy Philbrick’s Choice as based on Helen Hunt’s and Higginson’s unplighted friendship; other critics find Emily Dickinson in the figure of Mercy Philbrick, a woman devoted to her art. But this latter reading is strained. However, the male protagonist, Stephen White, bears some resemblance to Higginson in that he is preternaturally devoted to an ill, cranky mother who resembles Mary. And doubtless the novel contains Helen Hunt’s evaluation of the Higginson marriage: “This tyrannical woman held him chained. His submission to her would have seemed abject, if it had not been based on a sentiment and grounded in a loyalty which compelled respect” (p. 71).
“My dear friend”: TWH to ED, [fall 1876], Letters, 2:564.
“I thought your approbation”: ED to TWH, [January 1877], Letters, 2:572.
Friends of Vinnie’s: See YH, 2:253.
It occupies a “special place”: HHJ to ED, October 25, 1878, Letters, 2:626.
“Though we know”: ED to TWH, [June 1877], Letters, 2:583.
“Lay this Laurel on the One”: Fr 1428C.
“I have no other Playmate”: ED to TWH, [August 1877], Letters, 2:588; “It sounded as if the streets were running”: Fr 1454C; “She laid her docile Crescent down”: Fr 1453C; “I have no Life but this—”: Fr 1432C; “After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside”: Fr 1383.
“the loving you” and “the love of you”: See Fr, 3:1251–1253.
“The Wilderness is new—”: ED to TWH, [September 1877], Letters, 2:590.
CHAPTER TWELVE: MOMENTS OF PREFACE
“Your Face is more joyful”: ED to TWH, [October 1876], Letters, 2:566.
“How little there seems left to be done”: TWH, journal, September 2, 1877, Houghton.
“With sorrow”: ED to TWH, [September 1877], BPL.
“Perhaps she does not go so far”: Fr 1455C; “If I could help you?”: ED to TWH, [September 1877], Letters, 2:590.
“Danger is not at first”: ED to TWH, [autumn 1877], Letters, 2:594.
“To be human”: ED to TWH, [September 1877], Letters, 2:592.
At least one Dickinson biographer: See Taggard, The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson, p. 318.
“I remember nothing so strong”: ED to TWH, [September 1877], Letters, 2:592.
“Dear Mr Bowles found out too late”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [early 1878], Letters, 2:604.
“I felt it shelter to speak with you”: ED to TWH, January 19, 1878, Letters, 2:599.
“When you have lost a friend”: ED to TWH, [early June 1878], Letters, 2:611.
A military Rip Van Winkle: See TWH to AH, February 28, 1878, Houghton.
“inalienable muttonchop whiskers”: Wilson, Patriotic Gore, p. 488.
“I began to feel fearfully bewildered”: TWH to AH, February 22, 1878, Houghton.
“An individual seems so insignificant”: TWH, journal, February 21–25, 1878, Houghton.
“The same sky was above her” “I hold it utterly ungenerous”: See TWH, “Some War Scenes Revisited.”
Incensed, Higginson had denounced the…massacre: TWH, “Border Ruffianism in South Carolina,” p. 1.
“The Hope of seeing you was so sweet and serious—”: ED to TWH, [March 1878], Letters, 2:607.
“Is this the Hope that opens and shuts”: ED to TWH, [June 1878], Letters, 2:611.
“How brittle are the Piers”: Fr 1459.
“I have felt like a troubled Top”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [December 1877], Letters, 2:596.
Darwin looked older: See TWH, “Carlyle’s Laugh,” p. 465; for his travels, see also TWH, “The Road to England” and “Literary Paris Twenty Years Ago.” 219 “There is no one so happy”: ED to TWH, [December 1878], Letters, 2:627.
“known little of Literature”: ED to TWH, [February 1879], Letters, 2:635.
she responded with typical humor: ED to TWH, [December 1879], Letters, 2:649.
“Must I lose the Friend”: ED to TWH, [1879], Letters, 2:649.
Such coincident occasions: Though we don’t know when Dickinson began her romance with Judge Lord, I suspect that, had she been in love with him at the time of Higginson’s marriage, she would have mailed him a poem slightly less reserved than the one she did send, reiterating themes haunting her work since her father’s death (I have copied the poem with the breaks that appeared in the letter to Higginson, BPL (1093):
We knew not that
We were to live
Nor when—we are
to die—
Our ignorance our
Cuirass is—
We wear Mortality
As lightly as an
Option Gown
till asked to take it
off.
By his intrusion, God
is known—
It is the same
with Life—
“Judge Lord never seemed to coalesce”: SGD, “Annals of the Evergreens,” typed ms., n.d., Houghton.
“strong in his intellect”: “Otis Phillips Lord,” in Hurd, History of Essex County, Massachusetts, p. xliv.
“Calvary and May”: ED to Benjamin Kimball, [1885], Letters, 3:861.
And he and she exchanged vows: Lord’s letters to Dickinson were burned by the vigilant Vinnie, so we cannot be sure when the romance began. Biographers like Richard Sewall and Cynthia Wolff, following MTB, who first published evidence of the relationship, posit 1878 as the date of the earliest of these passionate fragments, but more recently—and more persuasively—Alfred Habegger has suggested that the romance began at a later time, particularly since Elizabeth Lord died only the year before. Similarly, I tend to think that the romance did not begin to flower until early 1880, though this, too, is a guess.
“the trespass of my rustic Love”: ED to Otis Lord, [April 1882], Werner A 742e. I have followed the corrective numbering-chronology offered in Marta Werner’s diligent Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios. Those interested in Dickinson’s letters to Lord should begin with this volume despite its occasional mistakes in transcription; it does offer a more convincing array of letters and suggests a better chronology than that offered by Johnson.
“Yet Tenderness has not a Date”: ED to Otis Lord, [April 30, 1882?], Werner A 742f.
“Judge Lord was with us”: ED to TWH, [October 1876], Letters, 2:566.
“Sweetest Name”: ED to Otis Lord, n.d., Werner A 748b.
“You said with loved timidity”: ED to Otis Lord, [December 3, 1882], Werner 749d.
“That was a big—sweet Story—”: ED to Otis Lord, [April 30, 1882?], Werner A 742.
“My lovely Salem smiles at me” “I confess that I love him—”: ED to Otis Lord, n.d., Werner A 734, 735.
In another draft of a letter: ED to Otis Lord, n.d., Werner A 736.
“To lie so near your longing—”: ED to Otis Lord, [1878–1879], Werner A 740.
“Dont you know you are happiest”: ED to Otis Lord, n.d., Werner A 739.
“Tuesday is a deeply depressed Day”: ED to Otis Lord, n.d., Werner A 757, 757a.
“Were Departure Separation”: [ED to Otis Lord?]; see Revelation, p. 94, and Werner, p. 275n: the original manuscript is missing.
In the summer of 1878: See “‘Saxe Holm’ Evolved,” the Springfield Republican, July 25, 1878, pp. 3–4.
“We can only say that we happen to know”: Springfield Republican, August 3, 1878, p. 3.
“an old-fashioned girl” “exquisitely refined & dainty in all her ways”: TWH to Ellen Conway, November 4, 1878, Butler.
his “only safety” “I’m adrift in the universe without it”: TWH to Ellen Conway, December 6, 1878, Butler.
“clear good-sense and…modest faithfulness”: TWH, “Seaside and Prairie,” p. 3.
“I shall pick ‘May flowers’ more furtively”: ED to TWH, [spring 1880], Letters, 3:661. Interestingly, he waited over a year before he shared the compliments with Dickinson, or she waited to answer him.
“I shall no doubt”: TWH to Ellen Conway, October 20, 1879, Butler.
“The Face in Evanescence lain”: Fr 1521.
“Most of our Moments”: ED to TWH, [spring 1880], Letters, 3:660.
“dazzling Baby”: ED to TWH, [August 1880], Letters, 3:668.
“I know but little of Little Ones”: ED to TWH, [summer 1881], Letters, 3:711.
“‘Go traveling with us’!”: Fr 1561.
“It is such inexpressible happiness”: TWH to AH, December 22, 1880, Houghton.
“The responsibility of Pathos”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [fall 1880], Letters, 3:675.
“very improper”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, July 1889, Letters, 3:667.
“I have promised three Hymns”: ED to TWH, [November 1880], Letters, 3:680.
“The thoughtfulness I may not accept”: ED to TWH, [November 1880], Letters, 3:681.
“A Route of Evanescence”: Fr 1489E.
“My Country’s Wardrobe”: “My country need not change her gown,” Fr 1540; “The Savior must have been”: Fr 1538.
“Mine Enemy is growing old—”: Fr 1539B.
Cotton Mather would have burned her as a witch: Allen Tate, “Emily Dickinson,” in Sewall, Emily Dickinson, p. 27.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THINGS THAT NEVER CAN COME BACK
Hearing him scream: See MLT, journal, October 18, 1891, Yale.
“‘Aunt Emily, speaking of someone’”: Edward (Ned) Dickinson, quoted in MDB, Emily Dickinson Face to Face, p. 169.
“had gone back and become a young brother again”: MDB, Emily Dickinson Face to Face, p. 171.
It was a privilege: See MDB, Emily Dickinson Face to Face, p. 45.
Adored by his family and fussed over: See “Death of a Promising Boy,” Amherst Record, October 17, 1883.
“He gathered Hearts”: ED to SGD, [October 1884], Letters, 3:842.
“Your Urchin”: ED to SGD, [1880], Letters, 3:673.
A yellow wide-brimmed planter’s hat: See Claude M. Fuess, Amherst: The Story of a New England College (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), p. 135, and Vryling Buffum to MTB, Yale.
Foraging through picture galleries: See YH, 2:41.
like “meeting God face to face”: SGD, “Annals of the Evergreens,” typed ms., n.d., Houghton.
“socially ambitious”—“perhaps a little too aggressive”: Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar, p. 60.
“Sue saw no one as a child”: MLT, “Short Character Sketches,” [1882], Yale.
“rare hours, full of merriment”: Catherine Anthon to MDB, October 8, 1914, Houghton.
“a really brilliant and highly cultivated woman”: Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar, p. 60.
“The tie between us”: ED to SGD, [late 1885], Letters, 3:893.
“Dear Sue—”: ED to SGD, [c. 1882], Letters, 3:733.
“One Sister have I in our house—”: Fr 5A.
“But Susan is a stranger yet—”: Fr 1433C (variant of “What mystery pervades a well!”).
“I feel the red in my mind”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, Letters, 2:452.
“The Things that never can come back, are several—”: Fr 1564; also in ED to Elizabeth Holland, [fall 1881], Letters, 3:714, and chapter 3.
“I think everyone will exclaim over it”: MLT, journal, [summer 1879], quoted in Austin and Mabel, p. 52.
“My little one will, I feel, be always secondary”: MLT, journal, October 6, 1879, MLT Papers, Yale.
Having been “taken in”: See MLT reminiscence, MTB Papers, Yale.
who “stimulates me intellectually more than any other woman”: MLT to WAD, [February 17, 1883], Yale.
“She thinks it is such a fine thing” “I could twist him around my little finger”: MLT, journal, March 2, 1882, Yale.
“their little affair”: MLT, journal, September 15, 1882, Yale.
“dear” Mr. Austin Dickinson “is so very fond of me” “to think that out of all the splendid & noble women”: MLT, journal, September 15, 1882, Yale.
“It nearly broke my heart”: WAD to MLT, [fall 1882], Yale; “I love you,
I admire you”: WAD to MLT, [1882], Yale; “The sun cannot shine without”: WAD to MLT, [1882], Yale. All quoted in Austin and Mabel, pp. 135, 138, 145.
“The way in which you love me”: MLT to WAD, [November 29, 1883], Yale.
“The greatest proof I have ever had”: MLT, journal, August 3, 1883, Yale.
“Ned has been very devoted”: MLT, journal, December 6, 1882, Yale.
“Where is the wrong in preferring sunshine to shadow!”: WAD to MLT, [November 1882?], Yale.
It would take another year: The best analysis of the affair can be found in Gay, The Bourgeois Experience, pp. 71–108; for a full account of the affair, see Austin and Mabel. 240 “Emily always respected real emotion”: MTB, diary, March 27, 1851, Yale.
“If anything happens to me”: WAD, quoted in Austin and Mabel, p. 139.
“She has not been outside”: MLT to Mary and Eben Loomis, November 6, 1881, Yale.
some of Emily’s strange, powerful poems: See MLT, diary, February 8, 1882, Yale.
“All the literary men are after her”: MLT, diary, March 26, 1882, Yale.
“‘You will not allow your husband to go there’”: Revelation, p. 59.
Before Austin would cross another Rubicon: WAD, diary, September 11, 1882, box 101, Yale.
“It was odd to think”: MLT, journal, September 16, 1882, Yale.
“A Route of Evanescence”: Fr 1489F.
“That without suspecting it”: ED to MLT, [September 1882], Letters, 3:740. Dickinson had also sent this poem, which she clearly liked, to Helen Hunt Jackson, her Norcross cousins, and Sarah Tuckerman before sending it to Higginson for his approval in 1880 and then consenting to offer it for auction at a charity benefit.
“I have just had a most lovely note”: MLT, journal, October 6, 1882, Yale.
“The great mission of pain”: ED to Frances and Louise Norcross, [late November 1882], Letters, 3:750.
“We were never intimate”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [December 1882], Letters, 3:754.
A cousin recalled: Clara Newman Turner, “My Personal Acquaintance with Emily Dickinson,” quoted in YH, 2:383.
“My Brother is with us so often”: ED to James D. Clark, [mid-March 1883], Letters, 3:765.
“Blow has followed blow”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [mid-December 1882], Letters, 3:754.
the “coals of fire”: TWH to Moncure Conway, June 9, 1882, Butler.
“a intimacy of many years”: ED to James D. Clark, [August 1882], Letters, 3:737.
“He rang one summer evening”: ED to James C. Clark, [August 1882], Letters, 3:738.
“Your Sorrow was in Winter—”: ED to Otis Lord, [December 3, 1882], Werner A 749c.
“Further in Summer than the Birds”: Fr 895D.
“‘Open the Door’”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [1883], Letters, 3:803.
“Emily was devoted”: LD to unknown recipients, November 16, [1883], UVA.
“I see him in the Star”: ED to SGD, [October 1883], Letters, 3:799.
“Gilbert was his idol”: MLT, journal, November 11, 1883, Yale.
“I kept him alive”: MLT, journal, March 30, 1884, Yale.
“He, the youthful serious young scientist”: MTB, drafts, February 27–August 30, 1927, Yale.
“I do not think David is”: MLT, journal, February 6, 1890, Yale.
“beyond anything I have known”: WAD to MLT, July 6, 1885, Yale.
Adultery, he told his daughter: See MTB, notes on an interview with her father, David Peck Todd, September 29–October 3, 1933, Yale.
“every one knows that he”: MLT, journal, January 6, 1885, Yale.
“the law of God”: MLT journal, March 4, 1885, Yale.
“Our life together is as white and unspotted”: WAD to MLT, [October 1884], Yale.
“The whole town weeps for him”: MLT, diary, August 19, 1895, Yale.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MONARCH OF DREAMS
“from a race of day-dreamers”: TWH, “The Monarch of Dreams,” holograph, Houghton.
“‘Does all dreaming without action’”: TWH, “The Monarch of Dreams,” holograph, Houghton.
“felt himself a changed being”: Monarch, p. 48.
“the lost opportunity”: Monarch, p. 52.
“It is a warning”: TWH to AH, December 7, 1886, Houghton.
“To live and die only to transfuse external nature”: TWH, “Literature as an Art,” p. 747.
this “has made me willing to vary my life”: TWH, journal, frontispiece, 1873, Houghton.
“The trouble with me”: TWH, journal, March 14, 1875, Houghton.
“I died for Beauty—but was scarce”: Fr 448; Beauty and truth are “Kinsmen”: This perplexing poem, narrated by one of Dickinson’s posthumous speakers, is also a response to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Vision: “These were poets true, / Who died for Beauty as martyrs do / For Truth—the ends being scarcely two” (lines 289–291); see Pollak, “Dickinson, Poe, and Barrett Browning,” p. 124.
“as a swimmer yields his body to a strong current”: TWH, “The Monarch of Dreams,” holograph, Houghton.
“I began to doubt everything”: “A Night in the Water,” in Army Life, pp. 123–124.
Few of his accomplishments: See TWH to LSH, January 29, 1862, Houghton.
“I’m adrift in the universe without it”: TWH to Ellen Conway, December 6, 1878, Butler.
“My favorite child”: TWH to Edmund Clarence Stedman, October 24, 1887, Butler.
“The Pilgrims landed”: “More Mingled Races” [1897], in Book and Heart, p. 151.
“inexpedient…to advocate women’s suffrage”: Harper, The House of Harper, p. 250.
“The Mendelssohn family had not the slightest objection”: TWH, “The Shadow of the Harem,” in W&M, p. 251.
“in a literary way”: TWH to Moncure Conway, [1884], Butler.
“no thin idealist, no coarse realist”: quoted in TWH, “Margaret Fuller Ossoli,” in Parton, et al., Eminent Women of the Age, p. 186.
“I affirm that democratic society”: TWH, “Americanism in Literature,” p. 62.
“actual life—the life of every day”: TWH, “Literature in a Republic” (1892), in Reed et al., Modern Eloquence, 5:574.
“the aristocracy of the millionaires is only a prelude”: Part, p. 110.
“Sow a victim, and you reap a socialist”: Book and Heart, p. 173.
Yet he apparently said nothing: Tilden Edelstein points out that Higginson’s social views were in flux: he had supported labor during the Amesbury-Salisbury strike of 1852, but during the labor strikes of 1887 he said nothing either; see Strange Enthusiasm, pp. 378–379.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: PUGILIST AND POET
she wrapped small gifts: The turquoise brooch is described in Barney, “Fragments from Emily Dickinson,” p. 801.
“The doctor calls it ‘revenge of the nerves’”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [August 1884], Letters, 3:827.
For several days she seemed delirious: See SGD to Martha Dickinson, October 22, 1884, Houghton.
“Biography first convinces us of the fleeing of the Biographied”: ED to TWH, [February 1885], Letters, 3:864.
“Pass to thy Rendezvous of Light”: Fr 1624.
“I work to drive the awe away”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [March 1884], Letters, 3:817.
“How can the sun shine”: Mary Lee Hall to Genevieve Taggard, November 4, 1929, NYPL.
“I have not been strong for the last year”: ED to Mrs. Samuel E. Mack, [autumn 1884], Letters, 3:843.
“The Crisis of the sorrow”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [late 1883], Letters, 3:802.
“the Flood subject”: ED to TWH, June 8, 1866, Letters, 2:454.
“Exterior—to Time—”: In Fr 446.
“Circumference, thou bride”: ED to Daniel Chester French, [April 1884], Letters, 3:822, see also Fr 1636B; “Success is dust”: ED to Daniel Chester French, [April 1884], Letters, 2:821.
“My Business is Circumference”: ED to TWH, [July 1862], Letters, 2:412.
“How happy is the little Stone”: Fr 1570; “Come show thy Durham Breast to her who loves thee best”: Fr 1572B; “Obtaining but our own extent”: Fr 1573; “The Moon upon her fluent route”: Fr 1574B.
“No Brigadier throughout the Year”: Fr 1596.
“it is a cruel wrong to your ‘day & generation’”: HHJ to ED, September 5, 1884, Houghton.
“The kind but incredible opinion”: ED to Thomas Niles, [April 1882], Letters, 3:725.
“Further in Summer than the Birds”: Fr 895D; “It sifts from Leaden Sieves—”: Fr 291E; see also Fr 291D.
“I would not for the world rob you of this very rare book”: Thomas Niles to ED, March 31, 1883, Letters, 3:769.
“the Bird seemed true”: Thomas Niles to ED, [April 1883], Letters, 3:769.
“The Wind begun to rock the Grass”: Fr 796; “A Route of Evanescence”: Fr 1489; “Ample make this Bed—”: Fr 804.
“Pupil” “Emblem is immeasurable—”: ED to TWH, [April 1883], Letters, 3:773.
“‘And yet I live!’”: TWH, “Sunshine and Petrarch,” p. 310; “Antony’s remark to a friend”: ED to Otis Lord, Werner A 741a. Higginson revised himself—making the passage worse—when he republished “Sunshine and Petrarch” in Oldport Days: “‘And yet I live!’ What a pause is implied before these words! the drawing of a long breath, immeasurably long; like that vast interval of heart-beats that precedes Shakespeare’s ‘Since Cleopatra died.’ I can think of no other passage in literature that has in it the same wide spaces of emotion.” He returned to the subject in his 1888 sonnet “Since Cleopatra Died”: MWH, The Century, June 2, 1888, p. 256.
“Since Cleopatra died
I have lived in such dishonor, that the world Doth wonder at my baseness.” [Antony and Cleopatra]
“Since Cleopatra died!” Long years are past,
In Antony’s fancy, since the deed was done.
Love counts its epochs, not from sun to sun,
But by the heart-throb. Mercilessly fast
Time has swept onward since she looked her last
On life, a queen. For him the sands have run
Whole ages through their glass, and kings have won
And lost their empires o’er earth’s surface vast
Since Cleopatra died. Ah! Love and Pain
Make their own measure of all things that be.
No clock’s slow ticking marks their deathless strain;
The life they own is not the life we see;
Love’s single moment is eternity;
Eternity, a thought in Shakespere’s brain.
“I hardly dare to know”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [March 1884], Letters, 3:817.
“‘Supernatural,’ was only the Natural”: ED to TWH, [late November 1862], Letters, 2:182.
“Not ‘Revelation’—’tis—that waits”: Fr 500.
“Those—dying then”: Fr 1581.
“Faith is Doubt”: ED to SGD, [1884], Letters, 3:830.
“What channel needs our faith”: “Calm,” in Thalatta, p. 183.
“next to the yearnings of human affections”: New World, p. 177.
“I hear robins a great way off”: ED to Louise and Frances Norcross, [April 1873], Letters, 2:504.
“The most triumphant bird”: Fr 1285B.
“Please say it is not so”: ED to TWH, August 6, 1885, Letters, 3:884.
“Not knowing when Herself may come”: Fr 1647C.
“Of Glory not a Beam is left”: Fr 1685.
She was breathing with difficulty: see MDB, Emily Dickinson Face to Face, p. 67.
“Emily seemed to go off”: WAD, diary, May 13, 1886, Yale.
Bigelow diagnosed Bright’s disease: I draw on the fine work of Norbert Hirschhorn and Polly Longsworth, “‘Medicine Posthumous.’”
“It was settled”: WAD, diary, May 15, 1886, Yale.
“Audacity of Bliss”: ED to TWH, [spring 1886], Letters, 3:903. See also this early poem (Fr 145):
A little East of Jordan,
Evangelists record,
A Gymnast and an Angel
Did wrestle long and hard—
Till morning touching mountain—
And Jacob, waxing strong,
The Angel begged permission
To Breakfast—to return!
Not so, said cunning Jacob!
“I will not let thee go
Except thou bless me”—Stranger!
The which acceded to—
Light swung the silver fleeces
“Peniel” Hills beyond,
And the bewildered Gymnast
Found he had worsted God!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: RENDEZVOUS OF LIGHT
“How large a portion”: TWH, journal, May 19, 1886, Houghton.
“but not…that she would die”: ED to TWH, August 6, 1885, Letters, 3:884.
“bereft of Book and Thought”: ED to TWH, [spring 1886], Letters, 3:903.
“to take to Judge Lord”: TWH, journal, May 19, 1886, Houghton.
“a favorite with our friend”: TWH, quoted in Dear Preceptor, p. 270.
The honorary pallbearers: For details about the funeral, I have drawn upon TWH, journal, May 19, 1886, Houghton, and MLT to Mary and Eben Loomis, May 23, 1886, Yale.
“It was a never to be forgotten burial”: Harriet T. Jameson to John Franklin Jameson, May 23, 1886, LC.
“into a little deeper mystery”: MLT, journal, September 1, 1886, Yale.
“Not disappointed with the world”: Springfield Republican, [May 18, 1886], clipping, Houghton.
“What a Hazard a Letter is!”: ED to TWH, August 6, 1885, Letters, 3:884.
“It is true of all of us”: Part, p. 139.
“Through the solitary prowess”: In Fr 790.
“Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?”: ED to TWH, April 15, 1862, Letters, 2:403.
“Deity—does He live now?”: ED to TWH, [May 1886], Letters, 3:905.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: POETRY OF THE PORTFOLIO
“I have no doubt”: Harriet T. Jameson to John Franklin Jameson, May 30, 1886, LC.
she took her “first lessons by studying the famous fossil bird-tracks”: TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” p. 444.
“her true Flaubert was Penelope”: See the groundbreaking essay “A Consideration of the Poems of Emily Dickinson, 1973,” in Howard, Paper Trail, p. 11; see also Cameron, Choosing Not Choosing. 272 “I was to have compiled the poems—”: SGD, quoted in AB, p. 115.
“The Wind begun to rock the Grass”: Fr 796D; “Col. Higginson, Dr. Holland, ‘H.H.’”: SGD to Richard Watson Gilder, December 31, 1886, NYPL.
“I know I have the gift of expression”: MLT, journal, November 10, 1887, Yale.
“a notice of me in Woman’s Journal”: MLT, diary, November 2, 1889, Yale.
Years later Vinnie would insist: See AB, p. 357.
the “wilderness” of them all: MLT to Mary and Eben Loomis, February 23, 1889, Yale.
By her own admission: See also Franklin, The Editing of Emily Dickinson, pp. 16–17, 23–25.
“I felt their genius”: MLT, journal, November 30, 1890, Yale.
“They seemed to open the door”: MLT, journal, November 30, 1890, Yale.
Together they sifted through the huge stash: MLT to WAD, November 17, 1889, Yale.
“He staid an hour or more”: MLT, diary, November 6, 1889, Yale.
“But I read him nearly a dozen”: MLT, journal, November 30, 1890, Yale.
Steadfast and unflappable: That Higginson was reluctant about publication seems Mabel’s self-serving interpretation after the fact; Sewall’s apotheosis of Mrs. Todd is based largely on his prejudice in favor of her version of events and his animus against Higginson. Mrs. Todd’s diary—the account she made the day she met Higginson—is at variance with the journal entry that she made just after the publication of the poems and on which Sewall and others have based their summary of events. It seems that in that journal entry, she was already fashioning a story that made her the primary mover of Dickinson’s publication. See Sewall, pp. 220ff., and MLT, journal, November 30, 1890, Yale.
Though his hair grew thinner still: TWH to AH, November 7, 1888, Houghton; TWH, journal, November 7, 1888, Houghton.
“not only to that political organization”: Frederick Douglass, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 378.
“internal difference—”: In Fr 320.
“No Man can be a Poet & a Book-Keeper”: Nathaniel Hawthorne to Elizabeth Hawthorne, October 31, 1820, in Hawthorne, The Centenary Edition, 16:132.
“There are many new to me”: TWH to MLT, November 25, 1889, Yale.
“Softer than silence, stiller than still air”: “The Snowing of the Pines,” in Afternoon Landscape, p. 26.
“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—”: Fr 124.
“O lake of boyish dreams! I linger round”: “Sea-Gulls at Fresh Pond,” in Afternoon Landscape, p. 26.
“I cannot reach you”: TWH to ED, May 11, 1869, Houghton.
“beyond all worlds, all space, all thought”: “Astra Castra,” in Afternoon Landscape, p. 58. The full text of “Astra Castra” reads:
Somewhere betwixt me and the farthest star,
Or else beyond all worlds, all space, all thought,
Dwells that freed spirit, now transformed and taught
To move in orbits where the immortals are.
Does she rejoice or mourn? Perchance from far
Some earthly errand she but now has sought,
By instantaneous ways among us brought,
Ways to which night and distance yield no bar.
Could we but reach and touch that wayward will
On earth so hard to touch, would she be found
Controlled or yet impetuous, free or bound,
Tameless as ocean, or serene and still?
If in her heart one eager impulse stirs,
Could heaven itself calm that wild mood of hers?
Edelstein, in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 345, rightly points out the connection between this poem and ED.
that “certain Slant of light”: Fr 320.
“A contained those of most original thought”: Unsigned, undated reminiscence in the MLT Papers, folder 12, box 68, Yale.
“My brain fairly reels”: MLT to WAD, November 17, 1889, Yale.
“Emily Dickinson’s poems”: TWH, journal, November 20, 1889, Houghton.
“My confidence in their availability”: TWH, quoted in AB, p. 35.
“Perhaps you can suggest more subdivisions”: TWH to MLT, November 25, 1889, Yale.
“I am at work with many interruptions on the poems”: TWH to MLT, December 19, 1889, Yale.
“You are acting for me & not yourself”: LD to MLT, March 4, 1890, Yale.
he had “selected and arranged”: TWH to LD, April 8, 1890, quoted in AB, p. 51. Mabel Todd’s daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, copied and arranged the letters, now at Yale, for her publication of them; I have not located the originals.
Houghton Mifflin thought he had lost his mind: see AB, p. 51.
“unwise to perpetuate”: Thomas Niles, quoted in MLT, journal, November 30, 1890, Yale.
“which shall be exempt from copyright”: Thomas Niles to TWH, June 10, 1889, quoted in AB, p. 53.
“came very near to that indefinable quality”: Arlo Bates, quoted in AB, p. 52.
“I changed words here and there”: MLT, journal, November 30, 1890, Yale.
“I find with dismay”: TWH to MLT, July 6, 1890, Yale; “‘I shall know why, when time is over’”: Fr 215.
“I died for Beauty—”: Fr 448. See AB, p. 41, though Bingham did not evidently know which poem the editors discussed.
“These are the days when Birds come back—”: Fr 122.
“The Grass so little has to do”: Fr 379.
“It cannot go in so”: TWH, quoted in AB, p. 58. Since I cannot find the original letter and Higginson seldom used exclamation marks, I do wonder if Mabel Todd performed some of what her daughter called “creative editing” on Higginson.
“Further in Summer than the Birds”: Fr 895D; “It sifts from Leaden Sieves—”: Fr 291E; “My Cricket and the Snow”: ED to Thomas Niles, [March 1883], Letters, 3:768.
“not believe, myself, in naming them”: MLT, journal, November 30, 1890, Yale.
“was exceedingly loath to assign titles to any of them”: MLT, quoted in AB, p. 57.
“Almost!”: “Within my reach!” Fr 69; “The Secret”: “Some things that fly there be—,” Fr 68; “Dawn”: “When Night is almost done—,” Fr 679; “Real”: “I like a look of Agony,” Fr 339; “Setting Sail”: “Exultation is the going,” Fr 143; “Too Late”: “Delayed till she had ceased to know—,” Fr 67; “Why?”: “The Bumble of a Bee—,” Fr 217.
“Presentiment is”: “Presentiment—is that long shadow—on the Lawn—,” Fr 487; “A wounded deer”: “A wounded Deer—leaps highest—,” Fr 181; “The brain”: “The Brain, within it’s Groove,” Fr 563; “I’ve seen”: “I’ve seen a Dying Eye,”: Fr 648; “I reason”: “I reason, Earth is short—,” Fr 403.
“Because I could not stop for Death”: Fr 479.
“Two swimmers wrestled on the spar—”: Fr 227.
“Death and Life”: See “Apparently with no surprise,” Fr 1668.
“I dare say you are aware”: LD, quoted in AB, p. 60.
“I have her letter to Mr. Higginson”: MLT, diary, July 20, 1890, Yale.
“There came a day”: “There came a Day—at Summer’s full—,” Fr 325.
“Your name should appear somewhere”: TWH to MLT, September 12, 1890, Yale.
“It is proper”: TWH to MLT, September 17, 1890, Yale.
“Emerson said, many years since”: TWH, “An Open Portfolio,” Christian Union, September 25, 1890, p. 392. Subsequent quotations and poems are from this article.
“delineate, by a few touches”: TWH, preface to Poems, First Series.
“Glee—”: “Glee—The great storm is over—,” Fr 685; “I never saw”: “I never saw a Moor,” Fr 800; “Soul, wilt thou”: See also “Soul, Wilt thou toss again?” Fr 89.
“I died”: “I died for Beauty—but was scarce,” Fr 448.
“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—”: Fr 124.
“I am astounded”: TWH to MLT, November 12, 1890, Yale.
“No Brigadier throughout the Year”: Fr 1596; “A Route of Evanescence”: Fr 1489; “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?”: Fr 401; “The nearest Dream recedes—unrealized—”: Fr 304; “When I hoped I feared—”: Fr 594; “Before I got my eye put out—”: Fr 336B; “It sifts from Leaden Sieves”: Fr 291D; “A Bird, came down the Walk—”: Fr 359.
“Your riches taught me poverty”: In Fr 418B.
“This shows we must have another volume”: TWH to MLT, November 12, 1890, Yale.
“the only person who can feel as I do” “I feel…as if we had climbed”: TWH to MLT, December 15, 1890, Yale.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: ME—COME! MY DAZZLED FACE
Fed for years: See Stedman, Poets of America, pp. 457–461; see also Stedman, An American Anthology, pp. xv–xxiv.
“A poet, most of all, should not believe in limitations”: Stedman, Poets of America, p. 461.
“bitch-goddess success”: See Richardson, William James, p. 306.
“at the head of all American fiction”: TWH to Edith Wharton, December 5, 1905, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
“Nobody reads Thoreau”: TWH, journal, December 23, 1866, Houghton; see also Malbone, pp. 99–100.
“irresistible needle-touch”: [TWH], Recent Poetry, Nation, November 27, 1890, p. 423.
if “nothing else had come out of our life”: [Howells], Editor’s Study, p. 320.
“I have hoped and hoped”: MLT, diary, December 31, 1890, Yale.
Apprised of some internecine warfare: See TWH to MLT, December 23, 1890, Yale.
And to her great satisfaction: It is not clear whether she kept the money or gave it to Lavinia, but it seems she kept it; she also kept one hundred dollars from book royalties, the same amount paid Higginson.
“I think there is in literary history”: TWH to Brander Matthews, March 24, 1891, Butler.
“the art of composition”: New World, p. 16; see Thoreau, “The Last Days of John Brown,” in A Yankee in Canada, p. 284.
“Let us alter as little as possible”: TWH to MLT, April 21, 1891, Yale.
“put so in order to have the rhyme perfect”: MLT to TWH, July 18, 1891, BPL.
“Whose are the little beds—I asked”: Fr 85.
when Todd wanted to replace: See MLT to TWH, July 13, 1891, BPL; “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?”: Fr 401.
“One poem only I dread a little to print”: TWH to MLT, April 21, 1891, Yale; “‘Wild Nights’”: “Wild nights—Wild nights!” Fr 269.
“Further in Summer than the Birds—”: Fr 895; “They dropped like Flakes—”: Fr 545.
“It was not Death, for I stood up”: Poems, Second Series; the poem is Fr 355.
“it might do well for you to suggest”: TWH to MLT, August 4, 1891, Yale.
“all interference not absolutely inevitable”: This and the subsequent quotation is from MLT, preface to Poems, Second Series.
“It would seem that at first I tried a little”: This and subsequent quotations are from TWH, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters.”
“Essential oils”: “Essential Oils—are wrung,” Fr 772; “Wild nights!”: “Wild nights—Wild nights!” Fr 269; “Going to him!”: “Going to Him! Happy letter!” Fr 277; “Their height”: “Their Hight in Heaven comforts not—,” Fr 725.
the more they balked: Quotations in AB, pp. 174–175.
“I honestly think his mind unbalanced”: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, quoted in Lubbers, Emily Dickinson, p. 202.
“I fail to detect in her work”: [Aldrich], “The Contributors’ Club,” p. 144.
“It is reassuring to hear the English”: Alice James, The Diary of Alice James, p. 227.
“I had expected to leave the letters entirely to you”: TWH to MLT, May 13, 1893, BPL.
“give the copyright of Emily’s mind to anyone”: LD, quoted in TWH to MLT, May 30, 1893, BPL.
it “will be the last, I suppose”: TWH to MLT, August 27, 1893, Yale.
“I wish as I always do”: TWH to MLT, September 27, 1895, Yale.
“mystic and bizarre Emily”: TWH to MLT, November 29, 1894, Yale.
“I think she can trust my honor”: LD, quoted in AB, p. 297.
“It is noticeable, also, that in a few of the poems”: [TWH], Recent Poetry, Nation, October 8, 1896, p. 275.
“Her vogue has passed”: Literary Notes, New York Tribune, [August 23, 1896], quoted in AB, p. 345.
“often like that of Emily Dickinson”: [TWH], Recent Poetry, Nation, December 11, 1902, p. 465.
“best for now”: WAD, quoted in Austin and Mabel, p. 297.
“moral quicksand”: Austin and Mabel, p. 412.
Evidently Mrs. Todd had forgotten: Later commentators see Sue maliciously guiding the suit from a discreet distance in order to take revenge on the woman who wrecked her home.
“I shall die standing up”: MLT, diary, December 31, 1898, Yale.
“blight of self-interest and self-glorification”: MTB, notes, February 27–August 30, 1927, Yale.
“Me—Come! My dazzled face”: Fr 389.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP
“American literature is not”: New World, p. 34.
“the mixture of nationalities is constantly coining”: TWH, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” p. 406.
“the art of composition is as simple”: Henry David Thoreau, quoted in New World, p. 16.
“Mr. James has no doubt placed himself”: New World, pp. 65–66.
“Let the picture only be well drawn”: Book and Heart, p. 43.
“in case I were going to prison”: “The Biography of Browning’s Fame,” Boston Browning Society Papers, 1886–1897, quoted in Hintz, “Thomas Wentworth Higginson,” p. 483.
“in attempting to enforce…[fixed] laws”: TWH, preface to TWH and Bigelow, American Sonnets, p. iii. He included sonnets by Poe, Edwin Markham, Henry Timrod, Jones Very, Whittier, and Ellery Channing as well as a large number of women sonneteers, including his wife, Minnie, Emma Lazarus, Maria Lowell, Harriet Monroe, Louise Brooks, and Edith Wharton.
the “American poet of passion is yet to come”: TWH, “Americanism in Literature,” p. 59.
“She is to be tested”: [TWH], Recent Poetry, Nation, October 8, 1896, p. 275.
“We take for granted”: “Leading Figures in American Literature,” Dial, November 1, 1903, p. 314.
“She died,—this was the way she died”: Fr 154.
“a strange, solitary, morbidly sensitive”: TWH and Boynton, A Reader’s History of American Literature, p. 131.
“stands at the opposite remove”: TWH and Boynton, A Reader’s History of American Literature, p. 131.
“an admiring Bog”: In “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” Fr 260.
“It would be easy to make up a long list of authors”: Book and Heart, p. 208.
“Perhaps the more we are destined”: Book and Heart, p. 210.
“Few of us now remain who were baptized”: TWH to Edna Dow Cheney, December 27, 1893, Smith.
“just as near slavery as possible”: TWH, “The Case of the Carpet Baggers,” Nation, March 2, 1899, pp. 162–163.
“To those who were living”: CY, p. 363.
“Freedom is freedom”: TWH, “Where Liberty Is Not, There Is My Country,” Harper’s Bazaar, August 12, 1899, p. 671.
“These people have a right to the freedom of civilization”: TWH, quoted in Strange Enthusiasm, p. 389.
“must cut adrift from every organization”: TWH, “Address to the Colored People of the United States,” September 26, 1900, Houghton. Ironically, racism fueled the anti-imperialism of the Democratic candidates, who wished to steer clear of “brown” Filipinos.
“I have yours of Nov. 23rd”: TWH to William Jennings Bryan, copy marked “private,” November 27, 1901, Houghton.
“a freedom tempered by chain-gangs, lynching, and the lash”: TWH’s essay “Intensely Human,” originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1904, was collected in Part, p. 114.
“Was any white man ever lynched”: “Intensely Human,” in Part, p. 121.
“As the memories of the slave period fade away”: “Intensely Human,” in Part, p. 136.
“I am a man old enough to recall”: TWH, introduction to William Sinclair, The Aftermath of Slavery, p. xi.
“the fact of colorphobia”: TWH to Brander Matthews, September 14, 1906, Butler.
“it is important for this race to produce”: “Intensely Human,” in Part, p. 130.
“They saved you”: TWH, from “Now and Then,” Harvard Graduates Magazine, September 1904, p. 47.
“No white community will ever consent”: TWH, Boston Evening Transcript, June 1, 1909.
“Cheerful Yesterdays is indeed, in spite of its cheer”: Henry James, “American Letter,” p. 677.
“He is too much of a moralist”: Theodore Tilton, The Golden Age (1871), pasted into TWH’s Atlantic Essays scrapbook, Houghton.
“There are so many younger writers to be recognized & encouraged”: TWH to Edmund Clarence Stedman, August 6, 1905, Butler.
“The old trees must fall in order to give the younger growth a chance”: Book and Heart, p. 189.
“but for some inches of space”: TWH, p. 388.
“All teaches us”: TWH, “The Favorites of a Day,” Independent, November 19, 1896, p. 2.
“was prized as having gained a second place”: CY, p. 183.
“occupied intensely in practical affairs”: Santayana, The Genteel Tradition, pp. 39–40.
“sicklied o’er with T. W. Higginson”: Alice James, The Diary of Alice James, p. 227.
“There is not, to my mind”: Amy Lowell, quoted in Damon, Amy Lowell, p. 611.
“uncertain certainty”: In Fr 1421.
“unconscious and uncatalogued”: Quoted in Monroe, “The Single Hound,” p. 138.
“dug out of her native granite”: Quoted in Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, “An Early Imagist,” New Republic, [August 14, 1915]; quoted in Blake and Wells, The Recognition of Emily Dickinson, p. 89.
“Once adjust oneself to the spinsterly angularity”: Conrad Aiken, introduction to Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, quoted in Blake and Wells, The Recognition of Emily Dickinson, p. 117.
the “hero of a hundred Atlantic paragraphs”: Taggard, The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson, p. 172.
the dull “Cambridge” group: See Macy, American Writers on American Literature, p. 178.
“‘Half-cracked’ to Higginson”: Adrienne Rich, “I Am in Danger—Sir—,” in Rich, Necessities of Life, p. 33.
“one should not demand more acumen”: Lubbers, Emily Dickinson, pp. 201–202.
“we must choose between the past forms”: TWH, Things New and Old, p. 5.
“It is remarkable”: Hawthorne, The Centenary Edition, 1:164.
“‘George Washington was the Father of his Country’,”: ED to Elizabeth Holland, [late autumn 1884], Letters, 3:849.
“very good for elder years”: TWH, p. 393.
“I wish we had automobiles when I was a boy”: TWH, quoted in “Colonel Higginson,” Hartford Courant, [May 11, 1911], p. 8.
“Best of all, is to lead”: TWH, “The Unforlorn Hope,” Independent, [April 14, 1892], p. 6.
“Joy! shipmate—joy!”: Whitman, Leaves of Grass, in Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, p. 608.
“that I am glad we live in a universe large enough”: TWH, “Immortality,” Radical, (May 1869), p. 385
“Because I could not stop for Death—”: Fr 479.