vi

TO the Misses——

AMONG THE most natural, and spontaneous of Emily Dickinson’s letters are these to her cousins. They are, perhaps, more than usually full of her real self, or one unmistakable phase of that elusive individuality. Many, indeed, are so completely personal that they are of necessity omitted, and the final letter has been reserved for the closing chapter.

 

 

January, 1859

Since it snows this morning, dear L——, too fast for interruption, put your brown curls in a basket, and come and sit with me.

I am sewing for Vinnie, and Vinnie is flying through the flakes to buy herself a little hood. It’s quite a fairy morning, and I often lay down my needle, and “build a castle in the air” which seriously impedes the sewing project. What if I pause a little longer, and write a note to you! Who will be the wiser? I have known little of you, since the October morning when our families went out driving, and you and I in the dining-room decided to be distinguished. It’s a great thing to be “great,” L——, and you and I might tug for a life, and never accomplish it, but no one can stop our looking on, and you know some cannot sing, but the orchard is full of birds, and we all can listen. What if we learn, ourselves, some day! Who indeed knows?——said you had many little cares; I hope they do not fatigue you. I would not like to think of L——as weary, now and then. Sometimes I get tired, and I would rather none I love would understand the word. . . .

Do you still attend Fanny Kemble? “Aaron Burr” and father think her an “animal,” but I fear zoology has few such instances. I have heard many notedly bad readers, and a fine one would be almost a fairy surprise. When will you come again, L——? For you remember, dear, you are one of the ones from whom I do not run away! I keep an ottoman in my heart exclusively for you. My love for your father and F——.

EMILY

 

March, 1859

The little “apple of my eye,” is not dearer than L——; she knows I remember her,—why waste an instant in defence of an absurdity? My birds fly far off, nobody knows where they go to, but you see I know they are coming back, and other people don’t, that makes the difference.

I’ve had a curious winter, very swift, sometimes sober, for I haven’t felt well, much, and March amazes me! I didn’t think of it, that’s all! Your “hay” don’t look so dim as it did at one time. I hayed a little for the horse two Sundays ago, and mother thought it was summer, and set one plant outdoors which she brought from the deluge, but it snowed since, and we have fine sleighing, now, on one side of the road, and wheeling on the other, a kind of variegated turnpike quite picturesque to see!

You are to have Vinnie, it seems, and I to tear my hair, or engage in any other vocation that seems fitted to me. Well, the earth is round, so if Vinnie rolls your side sometimes, ’tisn’t strange; I wish I were there too, but the geraniums felt so I couldn’t think of leaving them, and one minute carnation pink cried, till I shut her up—see box!

Now, my love, robins, for both of you, and when you and Vinnie sing at sunrise on the apple boughs, just cast your eye to my twig.

POOR PLOVER

 

Early Summer, 1859

DEAR L——,—You did not acknowledge my vegetable; perhaps you are not familiar with it. I was reared in the garden, you know. It was to be eaten with mustard! Bush eighty feet high, just under chamber window—much used at this season when other vegetables are gone. You should snuff the hay if you were here to-day, infantile as yet, homely, as cubs are prone to be, but giving brawny promise of hay-cocks by and by. “Methinks I see you,” as school-girls say, perched upon a cock with the “latest work,” and confused visions of bumblebees tugging at your hat. Not so far off, cousin, as it used to be, that vision and the hat. It makes me feel so hurried, I run and brush my hair so to be all ready.

I enjoy much with a precious fly, during sister’s absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature, that hops from pane to pane of her white house, so very cheerfully, and hums and thrums, a sort of speck piano. Tell Vinnie I’ll kill him the day she comes, for I sha’n’t need him any more, and she don’t mind flies!

Tell F——and papa to come with the sweetwilliams.

Tell Vinnie I counted three peony noses, red as Sammie Matthews’s, just out of the ground, and get her to make the accompanying face. “By-Bye.”

EMILY

 

 

Miss Lavinia Dickinson, was visiting her cousins when their mother died, and Emily’s letter to her sister at that time seems more appropriate here than in any other connection: —

 

April, 1860

VINNIE,—I can’t believe it, when your letters come, saying what Aunt L——said “just before she died.” Blessed Aunt L——now; all the world goes out, and I see nothing but her room, and angels bearing her into those great countries in the blue sky of which we don’t know anything.

Then I sob and cry till I can hardly see my way ’round the house again; and then sit still and wonder if she sees us now, if she sees me, who said that she “loved Emily.” Oh! Vinnie, it is dark and strange to think of summer afterward! How she loved the summer! The birds keep singing just the same. Oh! The thoughtless birds!

Poor little L——! Poor F——! You must comfort them!

If you were with me, Vinnie, we could talk about her together.

And I thought she would live! I wanted her to live so, I thought she could not die! To think how still she lay while I was making the little loaf, and fastening her flowers! Did you get my letter in time to tell her how happy I would be to do what she requested? Mr. Brady is coming to-morrow to bring arbutus for her. Dear little aunt! Will she look down?

You must tell me all you can think about her. Did she carry my little bouquet? So many broken-hearted people have got to hear the birds sing, and see all the little flowers grow, just the same as if the sun hadn’t stopped shining forever! . . . How I wish I could comfort you! How I wish you could comfort me, who weep at what I did not see and never can believe. I will try and share you a little longer, but it is so long, Vinnie.

We didn’t think, that morning when I wept that you left me, and you, for other things, that we should weep more bitterly before we saw each other.

Well, she is safer now than “we know or even think.” Tired little aunt, sleeping ne’er so peaceful! Tuneful little aunt, singing, as we trust, hymns than which the robins have no sweeter ones.

Good-night, broken hearts, L——, and F——, and Uncle L——. Vinnie, remember

SISTER

 

Autumn, 1860

Bravo, L——, the cape is a beauty, and what shall I render unto F——, for all her benefits? I will take my books and go into a corner and give thanks! Do you think I am going “upon the boards” that I wish so smart attire? Such are my designs, though. I beg you not to disclose them! May I not secure L——for drama, and F——for comedy? You are a brace of darlings, and it would give me joy to see you both, in any capacity. . . . Will treasure all till I see you. Never fear that I shall forget! In event of my decease, I will still exclaim “Dr. Thompson,” and he will reply “Miss Montague.” My little L——pined for the hay in her last communication. Not to be saucy, dear, we sha’n’t have any more before the first of March, Dick having hid it all in a barn in a most malicious manner; but he has not brought the sunset in, so there is still an inducement to my little girls. We have a sky or two, well worth consideration, and trees so fashionable they make us all passée.

I often remember you both, last week. I thought that flown mamma could not, as was her wont, shield from crowd, and strangers, and was glad Eliza was there. I knew she would guard my children, as she has often guarded me, from publicity, and help to fill the deep place never to be full. Dear cousins, I know you both better than I did, and love you both better, and always I have a chair for you in the smallest parlor in the world, to wit, my heart.

This world is just a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, so let us keep fast hold of hands, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing.

“Burnham” must think F——a scholastic female. I wouldn’t be in her place! If she feels delicate about it, she can tell him the books are for a friend in the East Indies.

Won’t F——give my respect to the “Bell and Everett party” if she passes that organization on her way to school? I hear they wish to make me Lieutenant-Governor’s daughter. Were they cats I would pull their tails, but as they are only patriots, I must forego the bliss. . . .

Love to papa.

EMILY

Winter, 1860–61,

DEAR FRIENDS,—L——’s note to Miss W——only stopped to dine. It went out with a beautiful name on its face in the evening mail. “Is there nothing else,” as the clerk says? So pleased to enact a trifle for my little sister. It is little sisters you are, as dear F——says in the hallowed note. Could mamma read it, it would blur her light even in Paradise.

It was pretty to lend us the letters from the new friends. It gets us acquainted. We will preserve them carefully. . . . I regret I am not a scholar in the Friday class. I believe the love of God may be taught not to seem like bears. Happy the reprobates under that loving influence.

I have one new bird and several trees of old ones. A snow slide from the roof, dispelled mother’s “sweetbrier.” You will of course feel for her, as you were named for him! There are as yet no streets, though the sun is riper, and these small bells have rung so long I think it “teatime” always.

 

Spring, 1861

. . . Send a sundown for L——, please, and a crocus for F———. Shadow had no stem, so they could not pick him.

. . .——fed greedily upon Harper’s Magazines while here. Suppose he is restricted to Martin Luther’s works at home. It is a criminal thing to be a boy in a godly village, but maybe he will be forgiven.

. . . The seeing pain one can’t relieve makes a demon of one. If angels have the heart beneath their silver jackets, I think such things could make them weep, but Heaven is so cold! It will never look kind to me that God, who causes all, denies such little wishes. It could not hurt His glory, unless it were a lonesome kind. I ’most conclude it is.

. . . Thank you for the daisy. With nature in my ruche I shall not miss the spring. What would become of us, dear, but for love to reprieve our blunders?

. . . I’m afraid that home is ’most done, but do not say I fear so. Perhaps God will be better. They’re happy, you know. That makes it doubtful. Heaven hunts round for those that find itself below, and then it snatches.

. . . Think Emily lost her wits—but she found ’em, likely. Don’t part with wits long in this neighborhood.

. . . Your letters are all real, just the tangled road children walked before you, some of them to the end, and others but a little way, even as far as the fork in the road. That Mrs. Browning fainted, we need not read Aurora Leigh to know, when she lived with her English aunt; and George Sand “must make no noise in her grandmother’s bedroom.” Poor children! Women, now, queens, now! And one in the Eden of God. I guess they both forget that now, so who knows but we, little stars from the same night, stop twinkling at last? Take heart, little sister, twilight is but the short bridge, and the moon stands at the end. If we can only get to her! Yet, if she sees us fainting, she will put out her yellow hands. . . .

 

December, 1861

DEAR PEACOCK,—I received your feather with profound emotion. It has already surmounted a work, and crossed the Delaware. Doubtless you are moulting à la canary bird —hope you will not suffer from the reduction of plumage these December days. The latitude is quite stiff for a few nights, and gentlemen and ladies who go barefoot in our large cities must find the climate uncomfortable. A land of frosts and zeros is not precisely the land for me; hope you find it congenial. I believe it is several hundred years since I met you and F——, yet I am pleased to say, you do not become dim; I think you rather brighten as the hours fly. I should love to see you dearly, girls; perhaps I may, before south winds, but I feel rather confused to-day, and the future looks “higglety-pigglety.”

You seem to take a smiling view of my finery. If you knew how solemn it was to me, you might be induced to curtail your jests. My sphere is doubtless calicoes, nevertheless I thought it meet to sport a little wool. The mirth it has occasioned will deter me from further exhibitions! Won’t you tell “the public” that at present I wear a brown dress with a cape if possible browner, and carry a parasol of the same! We have at present one cat, and twenty-four hens, who do nothing so vulgar as lay an egg, which checks the ice-cream tendency.

I miss the grasshoppers much, but suppose it is all for the best. I should become too much attached to a trotting world.

My garden is all covered up by snow; picked gilliflower Tuesday, now gilliflowers are asleep. The hills take off their purple frocks, and dress in long white nightgowns.

There is something fine and something sad in the year’s toilet. . . .

We often talk of you and your father these new winter days. Write, dear, when you feel like it.

Lovingly,

EMILY

December 29, 1861

. . . Your letter didn’t surprise me, L——; I brushed away the sleet from eyes familiar with it—looked again to be sure I read it right—and then took up my work hemming strings for mother’s gown. I think I hemmed them faster for knowing you weren’t coming, my fingers had nothing else to do. . . . Odd, that I, who say “no” so much, cannot bear it from others. Odd, that I, who run from so many, cannot brook that one turn from me. Come when you will, L——, the hearts are never shut here. I don’t remember “May.” Is that the one that stands next April? And is that the month for the river-pink?

Mrs. Adams had news of the death of her boy to-day, from a wound at Annapolis. Telegram signed by Frazer Stearns. You remember him. Another one died in October —from fever caught in the camp. Mrs. Adams herself has not risen from bed since then. “Happy new year” step softly over such doors as these! “Dead! Both her boys! One of them shot by the sea in the East, and one of them shot in the West by the sea.”. . . Christ be merciful! Frazer Stearns is just leaving Annapolis. His father has gone to see him to-day. I hope that ruddy face won’t be brought home frozen. Poor little widow’s boy, riding to-night in the mad wind, back to the village burying-ground where he never dreamed of sleeping! Ah! the dreamless sleep!

Did you get the letter I sent a week from Monday? You did not say, and it makes me anxious, and I sent a scrap for Saturday last, that too? L——, I wanted you very much, and I put you by with sharper tears than I give to many. Won’t you tell me about the chills—what the doctor says? I must not lose you, sweet. Tell me if I could send a tuft to keep the cousin warm, a blanket of a thistle, say, or something!

Much love and Christmas, and sweet year, for you and F——and papa.

EMILIE

 

Dear little F——’s note received, and shall write her soon.

Meanwhile, we wrap her in our heart to keep her tight and warm.

. . . Uncle told us you were too busy. Fold your little hands—the heart is the only workman we cannot excuse.

. . . Gratitude is not the mention of a tenderness, but its mute appreciation, deeper than we reach—all our Lord demands, who sizes better knows than we. Willing unto death, if only we perceive He die.

 

February, 1862

DEAR F——,—I fear you are getting as driven as Vinnie. We consider her standard for superhuman effort erroneously applied. Dear L——remembers the basket Vinnie “never got to.” But we must blame with lenience. Poor Vinnie has been very sick, and so have we all, and I feared one day our little brothers would see us no more, but God was not so hard. Now health looks so beautiful, the tritest “How do you do” is living with meaning. No doubt you “heard a bird,” but which route did he take? Hasn’t reached here yet. Are you sure it wasn’t a “down brakes”? Best of ears will blunder! Unless he come by the first of April, I sha’n’t countenance him. We have had fatal weather—thermometer two below zero all day, without a word of apology. Summer was always dear, but such a kiss as she’ll get from me if I ever see her again, will make her cry, I know. . . .

April, 1862

DEAR CHILDREN,—You have done more for me—’tis least that I can do, to tell you of brave Frazer—“killed at Newbern,” darlings. His big heart shot away by a “Minie ball.”

I had read of those—I didn’t think that Frazer would carry one to Eden with him. Just as he fell, in his soldier’s cap, with his sword at his side, Frazer rode through Amherst. Classmates to the right of him, and classmates to the left of him, to guard his narrow face! He fell by the side of Professor dark, his superior officer—lived ten minutes in a soldier’s arms, asked twice for water—murmured just, “My God!” and passed! Sanderson, his classmate, made a box of boards in the night, put the brave boy in, covered with a blanket, rowed six miles to reach the boat,—so poor Frazer came. They tell that Colonel Clark cried like a little child when he missed his pet, and could hardly resume his post. They loved each other very much. Nobody here could look on Frazer—not even his father. The doctors would not allow it.

The bed on which he came was enclosed in a large casket shut entirely, and covered from head to foot with the sweetest flowers. He went to sleep from the village church. Crowds came to tell him good-night, choirs sang to him, pastors told how brave he was—early-soldier heart. And the family bowed their heads, as the reeds the wind shakes.

So our part in Frazer is done, but you must come next summer, and we will mind ourselves of this young crusader —too brave that he could fear to die. We will play his tunes—maybe he can hear them; we will try to comfort his broken-hearted Ella, who, as the clergyman said, “gave him peculiar confidence.”. . . Austin is stunned completely. Let us love better, children, it’s most that’s left to do.

Love from

EMILY

 

. . . Sorrow seems more general than it did, and not the estate of a few persons, since the war began; and if the anguish of others helped one with one’s own, now would be many medicines.

’Tis dangerous to value, for only the precious can alarm. I noticed that Robert Browning had made another poem, and was astonished—till I remembered that I, myself, in my smaller way, sang off charnel steps. Every day life feels mightier, and what we have the power to be, more stupendous.

 

 

May, 1862

When you can leave your little children, L——, you must tell us all you know about dear Myra’s going, so sudden, and shocking to us all, we are only bewildered and cannot believe the telegrams: I want so much to see you, and ask you what it means, and why this young life’s sacrifice should come so soon, and not far off. I wake in the morning saying “Myra, no more Myra in this world,” and the thought of that young face in the dark, makes the whole so sorrowful, I cover my face with the blanket, so the robins’ singing cannot get through—I had rather not hear it. Was Myra willing to leave us all? I want so much to know if it was very hard, husband and babies and big life and sweet home by the sea. I should think she would rather have stayed. . . . She came to see us first in May. I remember her frock, and how prettily she fixed her hair, and she and Vinnie took long walks, and got home to tea at sundown; and now remembering is all there is, and no more Myra. I wish ’twas plainer, L——, the anguish in this world. I wish one could be sure the suffering had a loving side. The thought to look down some day, and see the crooked steps we came, from a safer place, must be a precious thing. . . .

L——, you are a dear child to go to Uncle J——, and all will thank you, who love him. We will remember you every day, and the little children, and make a picture to ourself, of the small mamma. . . . Father and Vinnie would have gone immediately to Lynn, but got the telegram too late. Tell Uncle they wanted to. But what can Emily say? Their Father in Heaven remember them and her.

 

My little girls have alarmed me so that notwithstanding the comfort of Austin’s assurance that “they will come,” I am still hopeless and scared, and regard Commencement as some vast anthropic bear, ordained to eat me up. What made ‘em scare ’em so? Didn’t they know Cousin Aspen couldn’t stand alone? I remember a tree in McLean Street, when you and we were a little girl, whose leaves went topsy-turvy as often as a wind, and showed an ashen side —that’s fright, that’s Emily. L——and F——were that wind, and the poor leaf, who? Won’t they stop a’ blowing? . . . Commencement would be a dreary spot without my double flower, that sows itself, and just comes up, when Emily seeks it most. Austin gives excellent account, I trust not overdrawn. “Health and aspect admirable, and lodgings very fine.” Says the rooms were marble, even to the flies. Do they dwell in Carrara? Did they find the garden in the gown? Should have sent a farm, but feared for our button-hole. Hope to hear favorable news on receipt of this. Please give date of coming, so we might prepare our heart.

EMILY

 

July, 1862?

. . . just a word for my children, before the mails shut. L——left a tumbler of sweet-peas on the green room bureau. I am going to leave them there till they make pods and sow themselves in the upper drawer, and then I guess they’ll, blossom about Thanksgiving time. There was a thundershower here Saturday at car-time, and Emily was glad her little ones had gone before the hail and rain, lest it frighten, them. . . . We wish the visit had just begun instead of ending now; next time we’ll leave “the mountains” out, and tell good Dr. Gregg to recommend the orchards. I defrauded L——of i spool of thread; we will “settle,” however—and F——’s ruff is set high in my book of remembrance. They must be good children and recollect, as they agreed, and grow so strong in health that Emily won’t know them when they show again. . . . Such a purple morning—even to the morning-glory that climbs the cherry-tree. The cats desire love to F——.

EMILY

 

About May 30, 1863

I said I should come “in a day.” Emily never fails except for a cause; that you know, dear L——.

The nights turned hot, when Vinnie had gone, and I must keep no window raised for fear of prowling “booger,” and I must shut my door for fear front door slide open on me at the “dead of night,” and I must keep “gas” burning to light the danger up, so I could distinguish it—these gave me a snarl in the brain which don’t unravel yet, and that old nail in my breast pricked me; these, dear, were my cause. Truth is so best of all I wanted you to know. Vinnie will tell of her visit. . . .

About Commencement, children, I can have no doubt, if you should fail me then, my little life would fail of itself. Could you only lie in your little bed and smile at me, that would be support. Tell the doctor I am inexorable, besides I shall heal you quicker than he. You need the balsam. And who is to cut the cake, ask F——, and chirp to those trustees? Tell me, dears, by the coming mail, that you will not fail me. . . .

Jennie Hitchcock’s mother was buried yesterday, so there is one orphan more, and her father is very sick besides. My father and mother went to the service, and mother said while the minister prayed, a hen with her chickens came up, and tried to fly into the window. I suppose the dead lady used to feed them, and they wanted to bid her good-by.

Life is death we’re lengthy at,
Death the hinge to life.

Love from all,

EMILY

 

Autumn, 1863

Wednesday

DEAR CHILDREN,—Nothing has happened but loneliness, perhaps too daily to relate. Carlo is consistent, has asked for nothing to eat or drink, since you went away. Mother thinks him a model dog, and conjectures what he might have been, had not Vinnie “demoralized” him. Margaret objects to furnace heat on account of bone decrepitudes, so I dwell in my bonnet and suffer comfortably. . . .

Miss Kingman called last evening to inspect your garden; I gave her a lanthorn, and she went out, and thanks you very much. No one has called so far, but one old lady to look at a house. I directed her to the cemetery to spare expense of moving.

I got down before father this morning, and spent a few moments profitably with the South Sea rosy. Father detecting me, advised wiser employment, and read at devotions the chapter of the gentleman with one talent. I think he thought my conscience would adjust the gender.

Margaret washed to-day, and accused Vinnie of calicoes. I put her shoe and bonnet in to have them nice when she got home. I found a milliner’s case in Miss N——’s wardrobe, and have opened business. I have removed a geranium leaf, and supplied a lily in Vinnie’s parlor vase. The sweet-peas are unchanged. Cattle-show is to-morrow. The coops and committees are passing now. . . . They are picking the Baldwin apples. Be good children, and mind the vicar. Tell me precisely how Wakefield looks, since I go not myself.

EMILY

 

Autumn, 1863

. . . I should be wild with joy to see my little lovers. The writing them is not so sweet as their two faces that seem so small way off, and yet have been two weeks from me—two wishful, wandering weeks. Now, I begin to doubt if they ever came.

I bid the stiff “good-night” and the square “good-morning” to the lingering guest, I finish mamma’s sack, all but the overcasting—that, fatal sack, you recollect. I pick up tufts of mignonette, and sweet alyssum for winter, dim as winter seems these red, and gold, and ribbon days.

I am sure I feel as Noah did, docile, but somewhat sceptic, under the satinet.

No frost at our house yet. Thermometer frost, I mean. Mother had a new tooth Saturday. You know Dr. S——had promised her one for a long time. “Teething” didn’t agree with her, and she kept her bed, Sunday, with a face that would take a premium at any cattle-show in the land. Came to town next morning with slightly reduced features, but no eye on the left side. Doubtless we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and occasionally grotesquely.

L——goes to Sunderland, Wednesday, for a minute or two; leaves here at half-past six—what a fitting hour—and will breakfast the night before; such a smart atmosphere! The trees stand right up straight when they hear her boots, and will bear crockery wares instead of fruit, I fear. She hasn’t starched the geraniums yet, but will have ample time, unless she leaves before April. Emily is very mean, and her children in dark mustn’t remember what she says about damsel.

Grateful for little notes, and shall ask for longer when my birds locate. Would it were here. Three sisters are prettier than one. . . . Tabby is a continual shrine, and her jaunty ribbons put me in mind of fingers far out at sea. F——’s admonition made me laugh and cry too. In the hugest haste, and the engine waiting.

EMILY

 

After the death of the Misses—–’s father, Jan. 1864

 

What shall I tell these darlings except that my father and mother are half their father and mother, and my home half theirs, whenever, and for as long as, they will. And sometimes a dearer thought than that creeps into my mind, but it is not for to-night. Wasn’t dear papa so tired always after mamma went, and wasn’t it almost sweet to think of the two together these new winter nights? The grief is our side, darlings, and the glad is theirs. Vinnie and I sit down to-night, while mother tells what makes us cry, though we know it is well and easy with uncle and papa, and only our part hurts. Mother tells how gently he looked on all who looked at him—how he held his bouquet sweet, as he were a guest in a friend’s parlor and must still do honor. The meek, mild gentleman who thought no harm, but peace toward all.

Vinnie intended to go, but the day was cold, and she wanted to keep Uncle L——as she talked with him, always, instead of this new way. She thought too, for the crowd, she could not see you, children, and she would be another one to give others care. Mother said Mr. V——, yes, dears, even Mr. V——, at whom we sometimes smile, talked about “Lorin” and “Laviny” and his friendship towards them, to your father’s guests. We won’t smile at him any more now, will we? Perhaps he’ll live to tell some gentleness of us, who made merry of him.

But never mind that now. When you have strength, tell us how it is, and what we may do for you, of comfort, or of service. Be sure you crowd all others out, precious little cousins. Good-night. Let Emily sing for you because she cannot pray:—

It is not dying hurts us so,—
’Tis living hurts us more;
But dying is a different way,
A kind, behind the door,—
The southern custom of the bird
That soon as frosts are due
Adopts a better latitude.
We are the birds that stay,
The shiverers round farmers’ doors,
For whose reluctant crumb
We stipulate, till pitying snows
Persuade our feathers home.

EMILY

 

1864

So many ask for the children that I must make a separate letter to tell them what they say, and leave my kisses till next time.

Eliza wrote last week, faint note in pencil—dressed in blankets, and propped up, having been so sick—and yet too weak to talk much, even with her slate. She said this of you, I give it in her own word, “Make them know I love them,” and added, should have written immediately herself, except for weakness.

Mr. Dwight asks for you in the phrase “Of your sweet cousins.” He does not yet know papa is asleep—only very weary.

The milliner at the head of the street wipes her eye for F——and L——, and a tear rumples her ribbons. Mr. and Mrs. Sweetser care—Mrs. Sweetser most tenderly.

. . . Even Dick’s wife, simple dame, with a kitchen full, and the grave besides, of little ragged ones, wants to know “more about” you, and follows mother to the door, who has called with bundle.

Dick says, in his wise way, he “shall always be interested in them young ladies.” One little young lady of his own, you know, is in Paradise. That makes him tenderer-minded.

Be sure you don’t doubt about the sparrow.

Poor——and——, in their genteel, antique way, express their sympathy, mixing admiring anecdotes of your father and mother’s youth, when they, God help them, were not so sere. Besides these others, children, shall we tell them who else cherishes, every day the same, the bright one and the black one too? Could it be Emily?

Would it interest the children to know that crocuses come up, in the garden off the dining-room, and a fuchsia, that pussy partook, mistaking it for strawberries? And that we have primroses, like the little pattern sent in last winter’s note, and heliotrope by the aprons full—the mountain colored one—and a jasmine bud, you know the little odor like Lubin—and gilliflowers, magenta, and few mignonette, and sweet alyssum bountiful, and carnation bud?

Will it please them to know that the ice-house is filled, to make their tumblers cool next summer, and once in a while a cream?

And that father has built a new road round the pile of trees between our house and Mr. S——’s, where they can take the soldier’s shirt to make, or a sweet poem, and no man find them but the fly, and he such a little man?

Love, dears, from us all, and won’t you tell us how you are?

We seem to hear so little.

EMILY

 

January, 1865

. . . I am glad my little girl is at peace. Peace is a deep place. Some, too faint to push, are assisted by angels.

I have more to say to you all than March has to the maples, but then I cannot write in bed. I read a few words since I came home—John Talbot’s parting with his son, and Margaret’s with Suffolk. I read them in the garret, and the rafters wept.

Remember me to your company, their Bedouin guest.

Every day in the desert, Ishmael counts his tents. New heart makes new health, dear.

Happiness is haleness. I dreamed last night I heard bees fight for pond-lily stamens, and waked with a fly in my room.

Shall you be strong enough to lift me by the first of April? I won’t be half as heavy as I was before. I will be good and chase my spools.

I shall think of my little Eve going away from Eden. Bring me a jacinth for every finger, and an onyx shoe.

EMILY

 

1865

DEAR SISTER,—Brother has visited, and the night is falling, so I must close with a little hymn.

I had hoped to express more. Love more I never can, sweet D——or yourself.

This was in the white of the year,
That was in the green.
Drifts were as difficult then to think,
As daisies now to be seen.
Looking back is best that is left,
Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect’s half,
Sometimes almost more.

EMILY

February, 1865

All that my eyes will let me shall be said for L——, dear little solid gold girl. I am glad to the foot of my heart that you will go to M——. It will make you warm. Touches “from home,” tell Gungl, are better than “sounds.”7

You persuade me to speak of my eyes, which I shunned doing, because I wanted you to rest. I could not bear a single sigh should tarnish your vacation, but, lest through me one bird delay a change of latitude, I will tell you, dear.

The eyes are as with you, sometimes easy, sometimes sad. I think they are not worse, nor do I think them better than when I came home.

The snow-light offends them, and the house is bright; notwithstanding, they hope some. For the first few weeks I did nothing but comfort my plants, till now their small green cheeks are covered with smiles. I chop the chicken centres when we have roast fowl, frequent now, for the hens contend and the Cain is slain. . . . Then I make the yellow to the pies, and bang the spice for cake, and knit the soles to the stockings I knit the bodies to last June. They say I am a “help.” Partly because it is true, I suppose, arid the rest applause. Mother and Margaret are so kind, father as gentle as he knows how, and Vinnie good to me, but “cannot see why I don’t get well.” This makes me think I am long sick, and this takes the ache to my eyes. I shall try to stay with them a few weeks more before going to Boston, though what it would be to see you and have the doctor’s care—that cannot be told. You will not wait for me. Go to M——now. I wish I were there, myself, to start your little feet “lest they seem to come short of it.” I have so much to tell I can tell nothing, except a sand of love. When I dare I shall ask if I may go, but that will not be now.

Give my love to my lamp and spoon, and the small lantana. Kindest remembrance for all the house, and write next from M——. Go, little girl, to M——. Life is so fast it will run away, notwithstanding our sweetest whoa.

Already they love you. Be but the maid you are to me, and they will love you more.

Carry your heart and your curls, and nothing more but your fingers. Mr. D——will ask for these every candlelight. How I miss ten robins that never flew from the rosewood nest!

 

DEAR L——,—This is my letter—an ill and peevish thing, but when my eyes get well I’ll send you thoughts like daisies, and sentences could hold the bees. . . .

 

1866

. . . Oh, L——, why were the children sent too faint to stand alone? . . . Every hour is anxious now, and heaven protect the lamb who shared her fleece with a timider, even Emily.

 

1868

DEAR CHILDREN,—The little notes shall go as fast as steam can take them.

Our hearts already went. Would we could mail our faces for your dear encouragement.

Remember

The longest day that God appoints
Will finish with the sun.
Anguish can travel to its stake,
And then it must return.

I am in bed to-day—a curious place for me, and cannot write as well as if I was firmer, but love as well, and long more. Tell us all the load. Amherst’s little basket is never so full but it holds more. That’s a basket’s cause. Not a flake assaults my birds but it freezes me. Comfort, little creatures—whatever befall us, this world is but this world. Think of that great courageous place we have never seen!

Write at once, please, I am so full of grief and surprise and physical weakness. I cannot speak until I know.

Lovingly,

EMILY

 

 

Of this letter her cousin writes, “All this trouble has become only a myth now; it must have been some illness, or other forgotten calamity.”

 

Autumn, 1869

Vinnie was “gone” indeed and is due to-day, and before the tumult that even the best bring we will take hold of hands. It was sweet and antique as birds to hear L——’s voice, worth the lying awake from five o’clock summer mornings to hear. I rejoice that my wren can rise and touch the sky again. We all have moments with the dust, but the dew is given. Do you wish you heard “A——talk”? Then I would you did, for then you would be here always, a sweet premium. Would you like to “step in the kitchen”? Then you shall by faith, which is the first sight. Mr. C——is not in the tree, because the rooks won’t let him, but I ate a pear as pink as a plum that he made last spring, when he was ogling you. Mother has on the petticoat you so gallantly gathered while he sighed and grafted.

Tabby is eating a stone dinner from a stone plate, . . . Tim is washing Dick’s feet, and talking to him now and then in an intimate way. Poor fellow, how he warmed when I gave him your message! The red reached clear to his beard, he was so gratified; and Maggie stood as still for hers as a puss for patting. The hearts of these poor people lie so unconcealed you bare them with a smile.

Thank you for recollecting my weakness. I am not so well as to forget I was ever ill, but better and working. I suppose we must all “ail till evening.”

Read Mr. Lowell’s Winter. One does not often meet anything so perfect.

In many little corners how much of L——I have.

Maggie “dragged” the garden for this bud for you. You have heard of the “last rose of summer.” This is that rose’s son.

Into the little port you cannot sail unwelcome at any hour of day or night. Love for F——, and stay close to

EMILY

 

Spring, 1870

DEAR CHILDREN,—I think the bluebirds do their work exactly like me. They dart around just so, with little dodging feet, and look so agitated. I really feel for them, they seem to be so tired.

The mud is very deep—up to the wagons’ stomachs—arbutus making pink clothes, and everything alive.

Even the hens are touched with the things of Bourbon, and make republicans like me feel strangely out of scene.

Mother went rambling, and came in with a burdock on her shawl, so we know that the snow has perished from the earth. Noah would have liked mother.

I am glad you are with Eliza. It is next to shade to know that those we love are cool on a parched day.

Bring my love to——and Mr.——. You will not need a hod. C——writes often, full of joy and liberty. I guess it is a case of peace. . . .

Pussy has a daughter in the shavings barrel.

Father steps like Cromwell when he gets the kindlings.

Mrs.——gets bigger, and rolls down the lane to church like a reverend marble. Did you know little Mrs. Holland was in Berlin for her eyes? . . .

Did you know about Mrs. J——? She fledged her antique wings. ’Tis said that “nothing in her life became her like the leaving it.”

“Great streets of silence led away,” etc.

EMILY

 

May

This little sheet of paper has lain for several years in my Shakespeare, and though it is blotted and antiquated is endeared by its resting-place.

I always think of you peculiarly in May, as it is the peculiar anniversary of your loving kindness to me, though you have always been dear cousins, and blessed me all you could.

I cooked the peaches as. you told me, and they swelled to beautiful fleshy halves and tasted quite magic. The beans we fricasseed and they made a savory cream in cooking that “Aunt Emily” liked to sip. She was always fonder of julep food than of more substantial. Your remembrance of her is very sweetly touching.

Maggie is ironing, and a cotton and linen and ruffle heat makes the pussy’s cheeks red. It is lonely without the birds to-day, for it rains badly, and the little poets have no umbrellas. . . .

. . . Fly from Emily’s window for L——. Botanical name unknown.

Enclosing a pressed insect

September, 1870

LITTLE SISTERS,—I wish you were with me, not precisely here, but in those sweet mansions the mind likes to suppose. Do they exist or nay? We believe they may, but do they, how know we? “The light that never was on sea or land” might just as soon be had for the knocking.

F——’s rustic note was as sweet as fern; L——’s token also tenderly estimated. Maggie and I are fighting which shall give L——the “plant,” though it is quite a pleasant war. . . . A——went this morning, after a happy egg and toast provided by Maggie, whom he promised to leave his sole heir.

The “pussum” is found. “Two dollars reward” would return John Franklin. . . .

Love for Aunt O——. Tell her I think to instruct flowers will be her labor in heaven. . . .

Nearly October, sisters! No one can keep a sumach and keep a secret too. That was my “pipe” F——found in the woods.

Affectionately,

MODOC

 

1870

UNTTRING LITTLE SISTERS,—What will I ever do for you, yet have done the most, for love is that one perfect labor nought can supersede. I suppose the pain is still there, for pain that is worthy does not go so soon. The small can crush the great, however, only temporarily. In a few days we examine, muster our forces, and cast it away. Put it out of your hearts, children. Faith is too fair to taint it so. There are those in the morgue that bewitch us with sweetness, but that which is dead must go with the ground. There is a verse in the Bible that says there are those who shall not see death. I suppose them to be the faithful. Love will not expire. There was never the instant when it was lifeless in the world, though the quicker deceit dies, the better. for the truth, who is indeed our dear friend.

I am sure you will gain, even from this wormwood. The martyrs may not choose their food.

God made no act without a cause,
Nor heart without an aim,
Our inference is premature,
Our premises to blame.

. . . Sweetest of Christmas to you both, and a better year.

EMILY

 

DEAR CHILDREN,—When I think of your little faces I feel as the band does before it makes its first shout. . . .

EMILY

 

1870

. . . Mother drives with Tim to carry pears to settlers. Sugar pears with hips like hams, and the flesh of bonbons. Vinnie fastens flowers from the frosts. . . .

Lifetime is for two, never for committee.

I saw your Mrs. H——. She looks a little tart, but Vinnie says makes excellent pies after one gets acquainted.

 

Spring, 1871

The will is always near, dear, though the feet vary. The terror of the winter has made a little creature of me, who thought myself so bold. .

Father was very sick. I presumed he would die, and the sight of his lonesome face all day was harder than personal trouble. He is growing better, though physically reluctantly. I hope I am mistaken, but I think his physical life don’t want to live any longer. You know he never played, and the straightest engine has its leaning hour. Vinnie was not here. Now we will turn the comer. All this while I was with you all, much of every hour, wishing we were near enough to assist each other. Would you have felt more at home, to know we were both in extremity? That would be my only regret that I had not told you.

As regards the “pine” and the “jay,” it is a long tryst, but I think they are able. I have spoken with them.

Of the “thorn,” dear, give it to me, for I am strongest. Never carry what I can carry, for though I think I bend, something straightens me. Go to the “wine-press,” dear, and come back and say has the number altered. I descry but one. What I would, I cannot say in so small a place.

Interview is acres, while the broadest letter feels a bandaged place. . . .

Tell F——we hold her tight. Tell L——love is oldest and takes care of us, though just now in a piercing place.

EMILY

 

Written to Milwaukee, just after the Chicago fire, 1871

 

We have the little note and are in part relieved, but have been too alarmed and grieved to hush immediately. The heart keeps sobbing in its sleep. It is the speck that makes the cloud that wrecks the vessel, children, yet no one fears a speck. I hope what is not lost is saved. Were any angel present, I feel it could not be allowed. So grateful that our little girls are not on fire too. Amherst would have quenched them. Thank you for comforting innocent blamed creatures. We are trying, too. The mayor of Milwaukee cuts and you and L——sew, don’t you? The New York Times said so. Sorrow is the “funds” never quite spent, always a little left to be loaned kindly. We have a new cow. I wish I could give Wisconsin a little pail of milk. Dick’s Maggie is wilting. Awkward little slower, but transplanting makes it fair. How are the long days that made the fresh afraid?

BROTHER EMILY

 

March, 1872

Thank you, own little girls, for the sweet remembrance —sweet specifically. Be sure it was pondered with loving thoughts not unmixed with palates.

But love, like literature, is “its exceeding great reward.” . . . I am glad you heard “Little Em’ly.” I would go far to hear her, except I have lost the run of the roads. . . . Infinite March is here, and I “hered” a bluebird. Of course I am standing on my head!

Go slow, my soul, to feed thyself
Upon his rare approach.
Go rapid, lest competing death
Prevail upon the coach.
Go timid, should his testing eye
Determine thee amiss,
Go boldly, for thou paidst the price,
Redemption for a kiss.

Tabby is singing Old Hundred, which, by the way, is her maiden name. Would they address and mail the note to their friend J——W——?

 

Tidings of a book.

EMILY

1872

I like to thank you, dear, for the annual candy. Though you make no answer, I have no letter from the dead, yet daily love them more. No part of mind is permanent. This startles the happy, but it assists the sad.

This is a mighty morning. I trust that L——is with it, on hill or pond or wheel. Too few the mornings be, too scant the nights. No lodging can be had for the delights that come to earth to stay, but no apartment find and ride away. F——was brave and dear, and helped as much by counsel as by actual team. Whether we missed L——we will let her guess; riddles are healthful food.

Eliza was not with us, but it was owing to the trains. We know she meant to come.

Oh! Cruel Paradise! We have a chime of bells given for brave Frazer. You’ll stop and hear them, won’t you?

“We conquered, but Bozzaris fell.” That sentence always chokes me.

EMILY

 

 

The new College church was given in 1870 by Mr. William French Stearns, brother of the Frazer so mourned; and its chime of bells was a memorial⁸ to the Amherst students who were killed in the war. A cannon, now in Williston Hall, Amherst College, was given by General Burnside at the request of Colonel Clark, in loving memory of Frazer Stearns, the first of all the Amherst students who enlisted, nearly two hundred and fifty in number.

An ill heart, like a body, has its more comfortable days, and then its days of pain, its long relapse, when rallying requires more effort than to dissolve life, and death looks choiceless.

Of Miss P——I know but this, dear. She wrote me in October, requesting me to aid the world by my chirrup more. Perhaps she stated it as my duty, I don’t distinctly remember, and always burn such letters, so I cannot obtain it now. I replied declining. She did not write to me again—she might have been offended, or perhaps is extricating humanity from some hopeless ditch. . . .

 

Emily was often besieged by different persons, literary and otherwise, to benefit the world by her “chirrup,” but she steadily refused to publish during her lifetime. In all these years she was constantly writing verses; and while, as already apparent, she frequently enclosed poems in letters to friends, the fact that scores in addition were being written every year was her own secret. Her literary methods were also her own,—she must frequently have tossed off, many times daily, the stray thoughts which came to her. The box of “scraps” found by her sister after her death proves this conclusively, as some of Emily’s rarest flashes were caught upon the margins of newspapers, backs of envelopes, or whatever bit of paper was nearest at hand, in the midst of other occupations. In the more carefully copied poems are many alterations, but it is a curious fact that not one change has reference to improvement in rhyme or rhythm. Every suggestion for a different word or phrase was in the evident hope that by some one of them the thought might be made clearer, and not in a single instance merely to smooth the form.

Whether Emily Dickinson had any idea that her work would ever be published cannot be known. Except when a friend occasionally “turned love to larceny” as some one has aptly said, nothing was printed before her death. One of the poems, indeed, begins,—

Publication is the auction
Of the mind of man.

But the Prelude to the Poems, First Series, almost seems to indicate the thought of a possible future public, when she herself should be beyond the reach of the praise or criticism which her writing might call forth.

 

 

Early Summer, 1872

DEAR CHILDREN,—We received the news of your loving kindness through Uncle J——last evening, and Vinnie is negotiating with neighbor Gray, who goes to a wedding in Boston next week, for the procuring of the nest. Vinnie’s views of expressage do not abate with time. The crocuses are with us and several other colored friends. Cousin H——broke her hip, and is in a polite bed, surrounded by mint juleps. I think she will hate to leave it as badly as Marian Erle did. Vinnie says there is a tree in Mr. Sweetser’s woods that shivers. I am afraid it is cold. I am going to make it a little coat. I must make several, because it is tall as the barn, and put them on as the circus men stand on each other’s shoulders. . . . There is to be a “show” next week, and little Maggie’s bed is to be moved to the door so she can see the tents. Folding her own like the Arabs gives her no apprehension. While I write, dear children, the colors Eliza loved quiver on the pastures, and day goes gay to the northwest, innocent as she.

EMILY

. . . Thank you for the passage. How long to live the truth is! A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

July 27, 1872

Little Irish Maggie went to sleep this morning at six o’clock, just the time grandpa rises, and will rest in the grass at Northampton to-morrow. She has had a hard sickness, but her awkward little life is saved and gallant now. Our Maggie is helping her mother put her in the cradle. . . .

Month after this—after that is October, isn’t it? That isn’t much long. Joy to enfold our little girls in so close a future. That was a lovely letter of F——’s. It put the cat to playing and the kettle to purring, and two or three birds in plush teams reined nearer to the window. . . . You will miss the nasturtiums, but you will meet the chestnuts. You also will miss the south wind, but I will save the west. . . .

Of course we shall have a telegram that you have left for Nebraska. . . .

EMILY

 

. . . J——is coming to put away her black hair on the children’s pillow. I hoped she’d come while you were here, to help me with the starch, but Satan’s ways are not as our ways. I’m straightening all the property, and making things erect and smart, and to-morrow, at twilight, her little heel boots will thump into Amherst. It being summer season she will omit the sleigh-bell gown, and that’s a palliative. Vinnie is all disgust, and I shall have to smirk for two to make the manners even.

1872, or 1873

Thank you, dear, for the love. I am progressing timidly.

Experiment has a stimulus which withers its fear.

This is the place they hoped before,
Where I am hoping now.
The seed of disappointment grew
Within a capsule gay,
Too distant to arrest the feet
That walk this plank of balm—
Before them lies escapeless sea—
The way is closed they came.

Since you so gently ask, I have had but one serious adventure—getting a nail in my foot, but Maggie pulled it out. It only kept me awake one night, and the birds insisted on sitting up, so it became an occasion instead of a misfortune. There was a circus, too, and I watched it away at half-past three that morning. They said “hoy, hoy” to their horses.

Glad you heard Rubinstein. Grieved L——could not hear him. He makes me think of polar nights Captain Hall could tell! Going from ice to ice! What an exchange of awe!

I am troubled for L——’s eye. Poor little girl! Can I help her? She has so many times saved me. Do take her to Arlington Street.⁹ Xerxes must go now and see to her worlds. You shall “taste,” dear.

Lovingly.

 

Winter, 1873

. . . I know I love my friends—I feel it far in here where neither blue nor black eye goes, and fingers cannot reach. I know ’tis love for them that sets the blister in my throat, many a time a day, when winds go sweeter than their wont, or a different cloud puts my brain from home.

I cannot see my soul, but know ’tis there,
Nor ever saw his house nor furniture,
Who has invited me with him to dwell;
But a confiding guest consult as well,
What raiment honor him the most,
That I be adequately dressed,
For he insures to none
Lest men specifical adorn
Procuring him perpetual drest
By dating it a sudden feast.

Love for the glad if you know them, for the sad if they know you.

March, 1873

. . . I open my window, and it fills the chamber with white dirt. I think God must be dusting; and the wind blows so I expect to read in The Republican “Cautionary signals for Amherst,” or “No ships ventured out from Phoenix Row.” . . . Life is so rotatory that the wilderness falls to each, sometime. It is safe to remember that. . . .

 

Autumn, 1873

. . . I think of your little parlor as the poets once thought of Windermere,—peace, sunshine, and books.

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take,
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears the human soul!

What words could more vividly express the uplift, the expansion, the wider horizon which books bring! To Emily Dickinson, they were always solace and delight,—“frigates” and “coursers” indeed, to her quiet life, taking her over the world and into the infinite spaces, bringing Cathay and Brazil, Cashmere and Teneriffe, into an intimacy as near and familiar as the summer bees and butterflies of her own home noon. Without the help of books even, her nimble fancy leaped intervening leagues as if it commanded the magic carpet of Prince Houssain; but her love for books and indebtedness to them are many times expressed in the poems, both published and unpublished.

 

Autumn, 1873

DEAR BERKELEYS,—I should feel it my duty to lay my “net” on the national altar, would it appease finance, but as Jay Gooke can’t wear it, I suppose it won’t. I believe he opened the scare. M——says D——pulled her hair, and D——says M——pulled her hair, but the issue at court will be, which pulled the preliminary hair. I am not yet “thrown out of employment,” nor ever receiving “wages” find them materially “reduced,” though when bread may be a “tradition” Mr. C——alone knows. I am deeply indebted to F——, also to her sweet sister Mrs. Ladislaw; add the funds to the funds, please. Keep the cap till I send—I could not insult my country by incurring expressage now. . . . Buff sings like a nankeen bumble-bee, and a bird’s nest on the syringa is just in line with the conservatory fence, so I have fitted a geranium to it and the effect is deceitful.

I see by the paper that father spends the winter with you. Will you be glad to see him? . . . Tell L——when I was a baby father used to take me to mill for my health. I was then in consumption! While he obtained the “grist,” the horse looked round at me, as if to say “ ‘eye hath not seen nor ear heard the things that’ I would do to you if I weren’t tied!” That is the way I feel toward her. . . .

Maggie will write soon, says it was Mount Holyoke, and not sweet-brier she gave you! Thanks for the little “news.” Did get F——’s note and thank it. Have thousands of things to say as also ten thousands, but must abate now.

Lovingly,

EMILY

 

 

1874

DEAR CHILDREN,—Father is ill at home. I think it is the “Legislature” reacting on an otherwise obliging constitution. Maggie is ill at Tom‘s—a combination of cold and superstition of fever—of which her enemy is ill—and longing for the promised land, of which there is no surplus. “Apollyon” and the “Devil” fade in martial lustre beside Lavinia and myself. “As thy day is so shall thy” stem “be.” We can all of us sympathize with the man who wanted the roan horse to ride to execution, because he said ’twas a nimble hue, and ’twould be over sooner. . . .

Dear L——, shall I enclose the slips, or delay till father? Vinnie advises the latter. I usually prefer formers, latters seeming to me like Dickens’s hero’s dead mamma, “too some weeks off” to risk. Do you remember the “sometimes” of childhood, which invariably never occurred? . . .

Be pleased you have no cat to detain from justice. Ours have taken meats, and the wife of the “general court” is trying to lay them out, but as she has but two wheels and they have four, I would accept their chances. Kitties eat kindlings now. Vinnie thinks they are “cribbers.” I wish I could make you as long a call as De Quincey made North, but that morning cannot be advanced.

EMILY

 

1874

. . . I was sick, little sister, and write you the first that I am able.

The loveliest sermon I ever heard was the disappointment of Jesus in Judas. It was told like a mortal story of intimate young men. I suppose no surprise we can ever have will be so sick as that. The last “I never knew you” may resemble it. I would your hearts could have rested from the first severity before you received this other one, but “not as I will.” I suppose the wild flowers encourage themselves in the dim woods, and the bird that is bruised limps to his house in silence, but we have human natures, and these are different. It is lovely that Mrs. W——did not disappoint you; not that I thought it possible, but you were so much grieved. . . . A finite life, little sister, is that peculiar garment that were it optional with us we might decline to wear. Tender words to L——, not most, I trust, in need of them.

Lovingly,

EMILY

 

. . . How short it takes to go, dear, but afterward to come so many weary years—and yet ’tis done as cool as a general trifle. Affection is like bread, unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it, when every urchin in the street has more than he can eat. We turn not older with years, but newer every day.

Of all these things we tried to talk, but the time refused us. Longing, it may be, is the gift no other gift supplies. Do you remember what you said the night you came to me? I secure that sentence. If I should see your face no more it will be your portrait, and if I should, more vivid than your mortal face. We must be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg.

A word left careless on a page
May consecrate an eye,
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled author lie.

EMILY

 

. . . A tone from the old bells, perhaps, might wake the children.

We send the wave to find the wave,
An errand so divine
The messenger enamored too,
Forgetting to return,
We make the sage decision still
Soever made in vain,
The only time to dam the sea
Is when the sea is gone.

EMILY, with love

 

Spring, 1874

SISTERS—I hear robins a great way off, and wagons a great way off, and rivers a great way off, and all appear to be hurrying somewhere undisclosed to me. Remoteness is the founder of sweetness; could we see all we hope, or hear the whole we fear told tranquil, like another tale, there would be madness near. Each of us gives or takes heaven in corporeal person, for each of us has the skill of life. I am pleased by your sweet acquaintance. It is not recorded of any rose that it failed of its bee, though obtained in specific instances through scarlet experience. The career of flowers differs from ours only in inaudibleness. I feel more reverence as I grow for these mute creatures whose suspense or transport may surpass my own. Pussy remembered the judgment, and remained with Vinnie. Maggie preferred her home to “Miggles” and “Oakhurst,” so with a few spring touches, nature remains unchanged.

The most triumphant bird
I ever knew or met,
Embarked upon a twig to-day,—
And till dominion set
I perish to behold
So competent a sight—
And sang for nothing scrutable
But impudent delight.
Retired and resumed
His transitive estate;
To what delicious accident
Does finest glory fit!

EMILY

 

. . . There is that which is called an “awakening” in the church, and I know of no choicer ecstasy than to see Mrs.——roll out in crape every morning, I suppose to intimidate antichrist; at least it would have that effect on me. It reminds me of Don Quixote demanding the surrender of the wind-mill, and of Sir Stephen Toplift, and of Sir Alexander Cockburn.

Spring is a happiness so beautiful, so unique, so unexpected, that I don’t know what to do with my heart. I dare not take it, I dare not leave it—what do you advise?

Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break, it.

“What do I think of Middlemarch?” What do I think of glory—except that in a few instances this “mortal has already put on immortality.”

George Eliot is one. The mysteries of human nature surpass the “mysteries of redemption,” for the infinite we only suppose, while we see the finite. . . . I launch Vinnie on Wednesday; it will require the combined efforts of Maggie, Providence and myself, for whatever advances Vinnie makes in nature and art, she has not reduced departure to a science. . . .

 

Your loving

EMILY

 

 

When, in June of 1874, Emily’s father died suddenly in Boston,—taken ill, indeed, while making a speech in the Legislature, and dying within a few hours,—the effect upon her was as if the foundations of her world had given way. She gathered herself together in a measure, and after a few days wrote to her cousins:—

 

You might not remember me, dears. I cannot recall myself. I thought I was strongly built, but this stronger has undermined me.

We were eating our supper the fifteenth of June, and Austin came in. He had a despatch in his hand, and I saw by his face we were all lost, though I didn’t know how. He said that father was very sick, and he and Vinnie must go. The train had already gone. While horses were dressing, news came he was dead.

Father does not live with us now—he lives in a new house. Though it was built in an hour it is better than this. He hasn’t any garden because he moved after gardens were made, so we take him the best flowers, and if we only knew he knew, perhaps we could stop crying. . . . The grass begins after Pat has stopped it.

I cannot write any more, dears. Though it is many nights, my mind never comes home. Thank you each for the love, though I could not notice it. Almost the last tune that he heard was, “Rest from thy loved employ.”

EMILY

 

April, 1875

I have only a buttercup to offer for the centennial, as an “embattled farmer” has but little time.

Begging you not to smile at my limited meadows, I am modestly

Yours

 

Summer, 1875

DEAR CHILDREN,—I decide to give you one more package of lemon drops, as they only come once a year. It is fair that the bonbons should change hands, you have so often fed me. This is the very weather that I lived with you those amazing years that I had a father. W. D.——’s wife came in last week for a day and a night, saying her heart drove her. I am glad that you loved Miss W——on knowing her nearer. Charlotte Brontë said “Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, match the expectation.”

The birds that father rescued are trifling in his trees. How flippant are the saved! They were even frolicking at his grave, when Vinnie went there yesterday. Nature must be too young to feel, or many years too old.

Now children, when you are cutting the loaf, a crumb, peradventure, a crust; of love for the sparrows’ table. . . .

 

August, 1876

DEAR COUSINS,—Mr. S——had spoken with pleasure of you, before you spoke of him. Good times are always mutual; that is what makes good times. I am glad it cheered you.

We have had no rain for six weeks except one thunder shower, and that so terrible that we locked the doors, and the clock stopped—which made it like Judgment day. The heat is very great, and the grass so still that the flies speck it. I fear L——will despair. The notices of the “fall trade” in the hurrying dailies, have a whiff of coolness.

Vinnie has a new pussy the color of Branwell Brontë’s hair. She thinks it a little “lower than the angels,” and I concur with her. You remember my ideal cat has always a huge rat in its mouth, just going out of sight—though going out of sight in itself has a peculiar charm. It is true that the unknown is the largest need of the intellect, though for it, no one thinks to thank God. . . . Mother is worn with the heat, but otherwise not altering. I dream about father every night, always a different dream, and forget what I am doing daytimes, wondering where he is. Without anybody, I keep thinking. What kind can that be?

Dr. Steams died homelike, asked Eliza for a saucer of strawberries, which she brought him, but he had no hands. “In such an hour as ye think not” means something when you try it.

Lovingly,

EMILY

November

. . . Oh that beloved witch-hazel which would not reach me till part of the stems were a gentle brown, though one loved stalk as hearty as if just placed in the mail by the woods. It looked like tinsel fringe combined with staider fringes, witch and witching too, to my joyful mind.

I never had seen it but once before, and it haunted me like childhood’s Indian pipe, or ecstatic puff-balls, or that mysterious apple that sometimes comes on river-pinks; and is there not a dim suggestion of a dandelion, if her hair were ravelled and she grew on a twig instead of a tube,—though this is timidly submitted. For taking Nature’s hand to lead her to me, I am softly grateful—was she willing to come? Though her reluctances are sweeter than other ones’ avowals.

Trusty as the stars
Who quit their shining working
. Prompt as when I lit them
In Genesis’ new house,
Durable as dawn
Whose antiquated blossom
Makes a world’s suspense
Perish and rejoice.

Love for the cousin sisters, and the lovely alien. . . .

Lovingly,

EMILY

 

About July 4, 1879

DEAR COUSINS,—Did you know there had been a fire here, and that but for a whim of the wind Austin and Vinnie and Emily would have all been homeless? But perhaps you saw The Republican.

We were waked by the ticking of the bells,—the bells tick in Amherst for a fire, to tell the firemen.

I sprang to the window, and each side of the curtain saw that awful sun. The moon was shining high at the time, and the birds singing like trumpets.

Vinnie came soft as a moccasin, “Don’t be afraid, Emily, it is only the fourth of July.”

I did not tell that I saw it, for I thought if she felt it best to deceive, it must be that it was.

She took hold of my hand and led me into mother’s room. Mother had not waked, and Maggie was sitting by her. Vinnie left us a moment, and I whispered to Maggie, and asked her what it was.

“Only Stebbins’s barn, Emily”; but I knew that the right and left of the village was on the arm of Stebbins’s barn. I could hear buildings falling, and oil exploding, and people walking and talking gayly, and cannon soft as velvet from parishes that did not know that we were burning up.

And so much lighter than day was it, that I saw a caterpillar measure a leaf far down in the orchard; and Vinnie kept saying bravely, “It’s only the fourth of July.”

It seemed like a theatre, or a night in London, or perhaps like chaos. The innocent dew falling “as if it thought no evil,” . . . and sweet frogs prattling in the pools as if there were no earth.

At seven people came to tell us that the fire was stopped, stopped by throwing sound houses in as one fills a well.

Mother never waked, and we were all grateful; we knew she would never buy needle and thread at Mr. Cutler’s store, and if it were Pompeii nobody could tell her.

The post-office is in the old meeting-house where L—— and I went early to avoid the crowd, and——fell asleep with the bumble-bees and the Lord God of Elijah.

Vinnie’s “only the fourth of July” I shall always remember. I think she will tell us so when we die, to keep us from being afraid.

Footlights cannot improve the grave, only immortality.

Forgive me the personality; but I knew, I thought, our peril was yours.

Love for you each.

EMILY

 

1880

. . . Did the “stars differ” from each other in anything but “glory,” there would be often envy. The competitions of the sky corrodeless ply.

. . . We asked Vinnie to say in the rear of one of her mental products that we had neuralgia, but evidently her theme or her time did not admit of trifles. . . . I forget no part of that sweet, smarting visit, not even the nettle that stung my rose.

When Macbeth asked the physician what could be done for his wife, he made the mighty answer, “That sort must heal itself”; but, sister, that was guilt, and love, you know, is God, who certainly “gave the love to reward the love,” even were there no Browning.

 

. . . The slips of the last rose of summer repose in kindred soil with waning bees for mates. How softly summer shuts, without the creaking of a door, abroad for evermore.

 

. . . Vinnie has also added a pilgrim kitten to her flock, which besides being jet black, is, I think, a lineal descendant of the “beautiful hearse horse” recommended to Austin.

 

December, 1880

. . . The look of the words [stating the death of George Eliot] as they lay in the print I shall never forget. Not their face in the casket could have had the eternity to me. Now, my George Eliot. The gift of belief which her greatness denied her, I trust she receives in the childhood of the kingdom of heaven. As childhood is earth’s confiding time, perhaps having no childhood, she lost her way to the early trust, and no later came. Amazing human heart, a syllable can make to quake like jostled tree, what infinite for thee? . . .

 

February, 1881

. . . God is rather stern with his “little ones.” “A cup of cold water in my name” is a shivering legacy February mornings.

. . . Maggie’s brother is killed in the mine, and Maggie wants to die, but Death goes far around to those that want to see him. If the little cousins would give her a note—she does not know I ask it—I think it would help her begin, that bleeding beginning that every mourner knows.

 

Spring, 1881

The divine deposit came safely in the little bank. We have heard of the “deeds of the spirit,” but are his acts gamboge and pink? A morning call from Gabriel is always a surprise. Were we more fresh from Eden we were expecting him—but Genesis is a “far journey.” Thank you for the loveliness.

We have had two hurricanes within as many hours, one of which came near enough to untie my apron—but this moment the sun shines, Maggie’s hens are warbling, and a man of anonymous wits is making a garden in the lane to set out slips of bluebird. The moon grows from the seed. . . . Vinnie’s pusssy slept in grass Wednesday—a Sicilian symptom—the sails are set for summer, East India wharf. Sage and saucy ones talk of an equinoctial, and are trying the chimneys, but I am “short of hearing,” as the deaf say. Blessed are they that play, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Love like a rose from each one, and Maggie’s a Burgundy one she ardently asks.

EMILY

 

1881

MY DEAR LITTLE COUSINS,—I bring you a robin who is eating a remnant oat on the sill of the barn. The horse was not as hungry as usual, leaving an ample meal for his dulcet friend. . . .

Maggie was charmed with her donkeys, and has long been talking of writing, but has not quite culminated. They stand on the dining-room side-board, by the side of an orange, and a Springfield Republican. It will please you to know that the clover in the bill of the brown one is fresh as at first, notwithstanding the time, though the only “pastures” I know gifted with that duration, are far off as the psalms.

Mr. C——called with a twilight of you. It reminded me of a supper I took, with the pictures on Dresden china. Vinnie asked him “what he had for supper,” and he said he “could easier describe the nectar of the gods.” . . . We read in a tremendous Book about “an enemy,” and armed a confidential fort to scatter him away. The time has passed, and years have come, and yet not any “Satan.” I think he must be making war upon some other nation.

EMILY

1881

The dear ones will excuse—they knew there was a cause. Emily was sick, and Vinnie’s middle name restrained her loving pen.

These are my first words since I left my pillow—that will make them faithful, although so long withheld. We had another fire—it was in Phoenix Row, Monday a week ago, at two in the night. The horses were harnessed to move. the office—Austin’s office, I mean. After a night of terror, we went to sleep for a few moments, and I could not rise. The others bore it better. The brook from Pelham saved the town. The wind was blowing so, it carried the burning shingles as far as Tom’s piazza. We are weak and grateful. The fire-bells are oftener now, almost, than the church-bells. Thoreau would wonder which did the most harm.

The little gifts came sweetly. The bulbs are in the sod—the seeds in homes of paper till the sun calls them. It is snowing now. . . . “Fine sleighing we have this summer,” says Austin with a scoff. The box of dainty ones—I don’t know what they were, buttons of spice for coats of honey —pleased the weary mother. Thank you each for all.

The beautiful words for which L——asked were that genius is the ignition of affection—not intellect, as is supposed, —the exaltation of devotion, and in proportion to our capacity for that, is our experience of genius. Precisely as they were uttered I cannot give them, they were in a letter that I do not find, but the suggestion was this.

It is startling to think that the lips, which are keepers of thoughts so magical, yet at any moment are subject to the seclusion of death.

. . . I must leave you, dear, to come perhaps again,—

We never know we go—when we are going
We jest and shut the door—
Fate following behind us bolts it
And we accost no more.

 

I give you my parting love.

EMILY

 

Autumn, 1881

Saturday

DEAR ONES,—If I linger, this will not reach you before Sunday; if I do not, I must write you much less than I would love. “Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.” I would rather they would do unto me so.

After infinite wanderings the little note has reached us. It was mailed the twelfth—we received it the twenty-third. The address “Misses Dickinson” misled the rustic eyes—the postmaster knows Vinnie, also by faith who Emily is, because his little girl was hurt, and Emily sent her juleps —but he failed of the intellectual grasp to combine the names. So after sending it to all the Mrs. Dickinsons he could discover, he consigned it to us, with the request that we would speedily return it if not ours, that he might renew his research. Almost any one under the circumstances would have doubted if it were theirs, or indeed if they were themself—but to us it was clear. Next time, dears, direct Vinnie, or Emily, and perhaps Mr.——’s astuteness may be adequate. I enclose the battered remains for your Sabbath perusal, and tell you we think of you tenderly, which I trust you often believe.

Maggie is making a flying visit to cattle-show, on her very robust wings—for Maggie is getting corpulent. Vinnie is picking a few seeds—for if a pod “die, shall he not live again”; and with the shutting mail I go to read to mother about the President. When we think of the lone effort to live, and its bleak reward, the mind turns to the myth “for His mercy endureth forever,” with confiding revulsion. Still, when Professor Fisk died on Mount Zion, Dr. Humphrey prayed “to whom shall we turn but thee?” “I have finished,” said Paul, “the faith.” We rejoice that he did not say discarded it.

The little postman has come—Thomas’s “second oldest,” and I close with reluctant and hurrying love.

EMILY

 

1881

What is it that instructs a hand lightly created, to impel shapes to eyes at a distance, which for them have the whole area of life or of death? Yet not a pencil in the street but has this awful power, though nobody arrests it. An earnest letter is or should be life-warrant or death-warrant, for what is each instant but a gun, harmless because “unloaded,” but that touched “goes off”?

Men are picking up the apples to-day, and the pretty boarders are leaving the trees, birds and ants and bees. I have heard a chipper say “dee” six times in disapprobation. How should we like to have our privileges wheeled away in a barrel? . . .

The Essex visit was lovely. Mr. L——remained a week. Mrs.——re-decided to come with her son Elizabeth. Aunt L——shouldered arms. I think they lie in my memory, a muffin and a bomb. Now they are all gone, and the crickets are pleased. Their bombazine reproof still falls upon the twilight, and checks the softer uproars of the departing day.

Earnest love to F——. This is but a fragment, but wholes are not below. EMILY

EMILY

DEAR L——,—Thank you, with love, for the kindness; it would be very sweet to claim if we needed it, but we are quite strong, and mother well as usual, and Vinnie spectacular as Disraeli and sincere as Gladstone,—was only sighing in fun. When she sighs in earnest, Emily’s throne will tremble, and she will need both L——and F——; but Vinnie “still prevails.” When one or all of us are lain on “Marian Erle’s dim pallet,” so cool that she deplored to live because that she must leave it, L——and the ferns, and F——and her fan shall supplement the angels, if they have not already joined them.

Lovingly,

EMILY

 

 

October, 1881

Did the little sisters know that Dr. Holland had died—the dark man with the doll-wife, whom they used to see at “Uncle Edward’s” before “Uncle Edward” went too?

Do they know any of the circumstances?

Did they know that the weary life in the second story had mourned to hear from them, and whether they were “comfortable”? “Comfortable” seems to comprise the whole to those whose days are weak. “Happiness” is for birds and other foreign nations, in their faint esteem.

Mother heard F——telling Vinnie about her graham bread. She would like to taste it. Will F——please write Emily how, and not too inconvenient? Every particular, for Emily is dull, and she will pay in gratitude, which, though not canned like quinces, is fragrantest of all we know.

Tell us just how and where they are, and if October sunshine is thoughtful of their heads.

EMILY

. . . Thank you, dear, for the quickness which is the blossom of request, and for the definiteness—for a new rule is a chance. The bread resulted charmingly, and such pretty little proportions, quaint as a druggist’s formula—“I do remember an apothecary.” Mother and Vinnie think it the nicest they have ever known, and Maggie so extols it.

Mr. Lathrop’s poem was piteously sweet.¹⁰

To know of your homes is comforting. I trust they are both peace. Home is the riddle of the wise—the booty of the dove. God bless the sunshine in L——’s room, and could he find a sweeter task than to “temper the wind” to her curls? . . .

Tell us when you are happy, but be sure and tell us when you are sad, for Emily’s heart is the edifice where the “wicked cease from troubling.”

 

 

January, 1882

I have only a moment, exiles, but you shall have the largest half. Mother’s dear little wants so engross the time, —to read to her, to fan her, to tell her health will come to-morrow, to explain to her why the grasshopper is a burden, because he is not so new a grasshopper as he was, —this is so ensuing, I hardly have said “Good-morning, mother,” when I hear myself saying “Mother, good-night.”

 

 

November, 1882

DEAR COUSINS,—I hoped to write you before, but mother’s dying almost stunned my spirit.

I have answered a few inquiries of love, but written little intuitively. She was scarcely the aunt you knew. The great mission of pain had been ratified—cultivated to tenderness by persistent sorrow, so that a larger mother died than had she died before. There was no earthly parting. She slipped from our fingers like a flake gathered by the wind, and is now part of the drift called “the infinite.”

We don’t know where she is, though so many tell us.

I believe we shall in some manner be cherished by our Maker—that the One who gave us this remarkable earth has the power still farther to surprise that which He has caused. Beyond that all is silence. . . .

Mother was very beautiful when she had died. Seraphs are solemn artists. The illumination that comes but once paused upon her features, and it seemed like hiding a picture to lay her in the grave; but the grass that received my father will suffice his guest, the one he asked at the altar to visit him all his life.

I cannot tell how Eternity seems. It sweeps around me like a sea. . . . Thank you for remembering me. Remembrance—mighty word.

“Thou gavest it to me from the foundation of the world.”

Lovingly,

EMILY

 

Spring, 1883

Thank you, dears, for the sympathy. I hardly dare to know that I have lost another friend, but anguish finds it out.

Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.

. . . I work to drive the awe away, yet awe impels the work.

I almost picked the crocuses, you told them so sincerely. Spring’s first conviction is a wealth beyond its whole experience.

The sweetest way I think of you is when the day is done, and L——sets the “sunset tree” for the little sisters. Dear F——has had many stormy mornings; . . . I hope they have not chilled her feet, nor dampened her heart. I am glad the little visit rested you. Rest and water are most we want.

I know each moment of Miss W——is a gleam of boundlessness. “Miles and miles away,” said Browning, “there’s a girl”; but “the colored end of evening smiles” on but few so rare.

Thank you once more for being sorry. Till the first friend dies, we think ecstasy impersonal, but then discover that he was the cup from which we drank it, itself as yet unknown. Sweetest love for each, and a kiss besides for Miss W——’s cheek, should you again meet her.

EMILY

 

July, 1884

DEAR COUSINS,—I hope you heard Mr. Sanborn’s lecture. My Republican was borrowed before I waked, to read till my own dawn, which is rather tardy, for I have been quite sick, and could claim the immortal reprimand, “Mr. Lamb, you come down very late in the morning.” Eight Saturday noons ago, I was making a loaf of cake with Maggie, when I saw a great darkness coming and knew no more until late at night. I woke to find Austin and Vinnie and a strange physician bending over me, and supposed I was dying, or had died, all was so kind and hallowed. I had fainted and lain unconscious for the first time in my life. Then I grew very sick and gave the others much alarm, but am now staying. The doctor calls it “revenge of the nerves”; but who but Death had wronged them? F——’s dear note has lain unanswered for this long season, though its “Good-night, my dear,” warmed me to the core. I have all to say, but little strength to say it; so we must talk by degrees. I do want to know about L——, what pleases her most, book or tune or friend.

I am glad the housekeeping is kinder; it is a prickly art. Maggie is with us still, warm and wild and mighty, and we have a gracious boy at the barn. We remember you always, and one or the other often comes down with a “we dreamed of F——and L——last night”; then that day we think we shall hear from you, for dreams are couriers.

The little boy we laid away never fluctuates, and his dim society is companion still. But it is growing damp and I must go in. Memory’s fog is rising.

The going from a world we know
To one a wonder still
Is like the child’s adversity
Whose vista is a hill,
Behind the hill is sorcery
And everything unknown,
But will the secret compensate
For climbing it alone?

Vinnie’s love and Maggie’s, and mine is presupposed.

EMILY

 

January 14, 1885

Had we less to say to those we love, perhaps we should say it oftener, but the attempt comes, then the inundation, then it is all over, as is said of the dead.

Vinnie dreamed about F——last night, and designing for days to write dear L——,—dear, both of you,—indeed, with the astounding nearness which a dream brings, I must speak this morning. I do hope you are well, and that the last enchanting days have refreshed your spirits, and I hope the poor little girl is better, and the sorrow at least adjourned.

L——asked “what books” we were wooing now—watching like a vulture for Walter Cross’s life of his wife. A friend sent me Called Back. It is a haunting story, and as loved Mr. Bowles used to say, “greatly impressive to me.” Do you remember the little picture with his deep face in the centre, and Governor Bross on one side, and Colfax on the other? The third of the group died yesterday, so somewhere they are again together.

Moving to Cambridge seems to me like moving to Westminster Abbey, as hallowed and as unbelieved, or moving to Ephesus with Paul for a next-door neighbor.

Holmes’s Life of Emerson is sweetly commended, but you, I know, have tasted that. . . . But the whistle calls me—I have not begun—so with a moan, and a kiss, and a promise of more, and love from Vinnie and Maggie, and the half-blown carnation, and the western sky, I stop.

That we are permanent temporarily, it is warm to know, though we know no more.

EMILY