Seeking Emily

It was the front entrance that gave me pause. A gate built into an ancient, wrought iron fence; a noble gate, yet refreshingly unapologetic in admitting its age. I hesitated with my hand upon the latch. It seemed strange that no one was there to forbid or question my entrance into such a place. It was up to me to enter or not. It felt…anti-climactic. I had a sudden, almost hopeful feeling I had come to the wrong house. For surely this could not be the proper conclusion to a long journeyed quest. Expectations are demanding tyrants, I find. They WILL have their jot and tittle. Mine felt suddenly bereft of both.

Students walked to and fro behind me on the old and buckling sidewalks, oblivious of my puzzled sensibilities as they sipped pragmatically from plastic lidded coffee cups and braved the spring snows of Massachusetts. This was a house they passed every day, like all the other houses on the block. They were quite accustomed to the sleepy little quirks of this New England town that ensconced their ivy walled Amherst. They dwelt here on a daily basis; the kind of daily basis which had slowly eroded the sharp, beautiful edges of startling newness into the softer lines of the habitual. All the houses had become the same to them. There was no longer anything new under this sun. They did not even think to wonder at a starry eyed stranger - even one on a quest. They trudged on.

I turned the handle and the gate squeaked pleasantly open, as if kindly asking me to leave my expectations outside - I’d be much happier if I did so, it promised. I obliged. Whatever happened now would simply be a pleasant surprise or a wildly different perspective I had not entertained in my imagination up until now. It seemed a thrilling prospect - abandoning expectations. I walked quietly up the graveled driveway to an inviting yellow house and entered the doorway which boasted a very small, neat and tidy plaque that read: Home of Emily Dickinson. I had found my grail.

Emily Dickinson has passed through my life in little hops and skips. Our friendship was in no way linear, and yet she came whenever I needed her most, as friends will do. I first met her on the bottom shelf of my Father’s study in a large, heavy volume boasting the best of American poetry. I was all of perhaps eight when I opened that book. There on page 236 were the magical words smiling up at me and singing silently, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…” A perfect, little, pithy piece of metaphor. I knew nothing of metaphors at the age of eight, but was enchanted nonetheless. I remember just saying the words over and over and feeling a kind of pleasure I had not felt before. Emily singing to me through that little bird, was the day I fell in love with poetry. She flitted away then as fast as she had come. Emily has a way of doing that.

I studied her poetry in school with all the other poets that high school students are served up, and are asked to carve and analyze. The poor poems ended up dissected and dead, all in pieces on the final exam and were utterly forgotten in the midst of teenaged angst. Emily never showed her face to me in high school. She was probably too appalled at finding her beautiful, singing little missives all scattered and destroyed by cold analysis. Perhaps she hoped I’d forget seeing her in such a state. She waited. She waited years.

I found her perched on the bookcases in the basement of my empty house when I was sixty years old. We called the basement bookshelves the boneyard. The books down here were half read and forgotten for many reasons. Some because we discovered long about chapter six that we did not have the mental energy right then to give them the full attention they deserved. Others, we were not ready for just yet and they did not catch us by the collar in any sort of insistence. They all patiently bided their time, these half read books, knowing we would get to them one day. Books are patient things.

It was among these stacks that Emily called to me. I was doing laundry. I was an empty nester and I was very blue. I was on the other side of seven children and their dawn to dusk care. It was like being caught up in a constant, happy tornado spinning me from task to task for years, and then abruptly setting me down with a thud in a silent house - a house that seemed suddenly void, now, of inspiration. It was disconcerting. Who was I without children to define me? What would be my story now? My life was so ordinary, quiet, and filled with a myriad of daily things. I was a writer. But what could I possibly write about?

I found a dust covered biography of Emily’s biography with a dog eared page marking the place where I had given up years ago. I had no recollection of this book. I blew off the dust, opened it up and read. Emily rooted in my soul this time, and did not ever flit away again. She had found a home. She flew out of every page and chirped “nota bene” here and there to me.

I soon knew her as a child, bright and sweet. I knew her as a teen - full of tricks and humor with a keen intellect that had a voracious appetite for all things botanical. One who reveled in the glories served up by natural history, mathematics, and science. A gifted herbalist with a fascinating herbarium of specimens quite famous in Amherst. An imagination that weaved fantastical tales for her friends who could not get enough of them. A favorite at boarding school, surrounded by admiring companions. Singled out by astute teachers as one whose writing skills were gifted far beyond her years. A master of the essay. One who loved school, but suffered agonizing home sickness for her nest back in Amherst. I became intimate with her family. Her dignified father Edward Dickinson, a stalwart patriarch of Amherst Society who hosted the graduation every year on the lovely grounds of the Homestead, Emily’s childhood home. Her sickly, somewhat fussy mother whose sole reason for being was to houseclean so as to gladly host parties for her husband’s famous friends. I met tall and brooding Austin - the beloved brother and soulmate, and little sister Vinnie, practical and loyal and kind.

At Mount Holyoke college Emily found true friendship through her studies and spoke often of the deep conversations she and her companions had and how much she enjoyed being among them. There was an intense feeling between the teachers and the students that suited her to a tee, for Emily was nothing if not intense. The atmosphere of any great school is rarified, almost of another Universe, hemming within its walls a band of young, enthusiastic minds drunk with new thoughts and the power of expressing them, with an intensity and interest that later gets dulled and dissipated by a wider world and its myriad of distracting affairs. And yet, there are always a rare few, it seems, who don’t forget and are not dulled. They are transplanted back into the world with all that enthusiasm in tact. Emily was such a creature. This was a world in which she thrived and she sought to hold it tenaciously close to her heart so it would not be devoured by the voracious mediocrity of her outside society.

When school ended for her, she returned home to Amherst and tried in vain to keep the spirit of those halcyon days alive in her letters to friends. But her friends disappeared into tea parties, social niceties, contracted marriages; they climbed social ladders and adopted religious platitudes that contained more of social conformity than spiritual fire. Emily tasted this, her first disillusionment. She rebelled against it. She could not live without intensity. It was her world and she knew she could not exchange it for social niceties and surface relationships.…and live.

Here is a turning point, a fork in the road, a time of decision for her. Would she forge out into the world seeking her own path as Louisa May Alcott and others near her time did, trying to change society by determined efforts in the wider world? Would Emily seek to teach, to break into a world dominated by men and hold her own with her bright and shining intellect as a scientist, a botanist? Would she face this shallow society she despised head on and seek to deepen it, to insist that women were more than just a pretty face hosting endless tea parties? Would she shout to be heard? Would she openly question the insipid spirituality of her time? No. She did none of these things.She simply went home and closed the door of her lovely yellow house and slowly disappeared from view into the heart of her family.

There are many conjectures about her. That she was jilted by a lover. That perhaps she had epilepsy, which was very much misunderstood in her time as something spiritually evil, and needed to be hushed behind closed doors. Some say agoraphobia, social anxiety. The list goes on and on. But from Emily - silence. We will never know what Emily did not want us to know. I love her most for that. My own conjecture is simply that, a conjecture. I think Emily was unmoored after leaving school, just like many a twenty something graduate in our times, and she went home to mull it over. What would be her own ‘letter to the world’? She waited, and wondered while she waited, what her next step would be.

She committed herself to housecleaning, a job for which she was utterly unsuited, she admitted freely. She baked bread and was good at it. She took care of her invalid mother. She listened to her father’s conversations and loved him. She was saucy in her opinions. She laughed with Vinnie and shared the housework with her. She sat and played her piano in the evenings. She roamed the garden with her trusty dog, Carlo. She wrote newsy letters to her brother Austin, who was off at school, and tried to keep his spirits up. She worried about his melancholia and his sensitive nature. She sought to protect it and to cheer him. In short, she was a dutiful daughter and a loving sister, who considered it right and just to be so. And she waited.

Slowly, slowly, as she went about her days she discovered that this yellow house, this burgeoning garden, this herbarium so carefully tended by her - held secrets that she had not previously been privy to. Each rose, each bird that lighted on the wood pile outside the kitchen door, every bee drunk with pollen among her flowers. Sunrise, sunset. The dark snows of Massachusetts, the feel of spring at last blowing through her bedroom window. A stolen kiss from a visiting young man at a party. These were all portals through which she would find a surprising and vast world beyond.

She began to write. Something she had always done before. At night, in the quiet darkness of a sleeping house, her mind traveled a solitary, secret journey into a mystery that beckoned her through and beyond the finite of her surroundings. In that mysterious world she traveled miles and saw splendid things, terrifying things, questions, comforts and lonely stretches of uncertainty. She would write and write in great gulping haste so as not to miss a thing. In the morning she would waken again to her familiar round of duties and be alert to the opened portals. No one suspected a thing. Emily was truly to become the Belle of an Amherst no one had ever cared to know. Within the microcosm of her smallish yellow house she was to indeed write her “letter to the world” and answer its questions and woes by pointing to the mystery beneath - the mystery it had missed or discarded. She would not cry out, teach, preach, nor travel far in this world. She would whisper. She would whisper mystery. Poetry was to be the tongue of this hidden world she saw through the portals of ordinary things. As the days and weeks and years went on, Emily remained in that house. It was home to her unsuspected muse who would be bountiful in her offerings. She could not leave it. She would become more and more a recluse in order to hear that muse’s every inspiration. For in the borders of that smallish, yellow house, almost 1800 poems would be written.

I determined to travel there to find this muse of Emily’s. To see what she saw. To feel what she felt. I packed my book of her poetry and traveled the many miles to her Amherst door. I felt as though she was calling me to come and see in that chirping little way she has. And so I did. It was not what I expected to see. That is Emily’s way.

The house behind that ancient gate is quiet when you first enter. You see some potted plants and an old, white watering can waiting for a hand to give it purpose. Everything seems quite ordinary. Where did she find the mystery? Where? Did she see it out her bedroom window? Did she hear it as she played the piano for her father and mother? While she baked bread and clumsily did the housework for which she was so ill suited. When did she first begin to hear her poetry rapping at the door of her brain asking admittance? Did the bees in her garden bring the news? Did the soft loving head of her faithful dog Carlo laid in her lap? I questioned the house but the house was still. I sat in awe on the hall stairs where she so often sat and there she seemed beside me giving me her view down into the hall. I felt her lonely vigil in the late nights scribbling out her inked and infinite bounty on a little, finite desk. I laid my hand on that desk seeking inspiration. But the small steel pen lay quietly still there. It was Emily’s, not mine.

One room revealed a basket of hand written poems on scraps of paper. Emily was famous for writing her poems on old envelope flaps, little ripped scraps, and even receipts, as though the muse looked over her shoulder and asked admittance all the day long.

Emily’s writing desk - from the New York Times

Another basket contained the most wonderful thing she ever did. It was filled with little booklets called fascicles - all her handwritten, finished poems sewn together with thread from her sewing box. On these pages she has a poem written out and several words underlined which she called variants. Around the edge of the page she had several other words that could be substituted for the variant words. So, in effect, she had several poems blooming with subtle changes in meaning. She shared about 500 of these poems with more than forty different friends in personal letters. She might have sent many different versions (with different variants) of one poem to each of these friends depending on what they might be going through at that time, or simply to just suit their personality. Her poems morphed in subtle meanings, so to speak, without changing in essence. I found myself staring, incredulous, at the genius contained in that little wicker basket.

I discovered that she didn’t want her poems published officially because of this morphing ability. When her friend, Mabel Loomis Todd finally had them published she had to choose one word for each variant and set it in stone. I am supremely happy she did, but what a treat of genius it must have been to find the fascicles and SEE all the words Emily chose. These mysterious changling verses that suited themselves to whoever read them. Her mind and heart trying to take in the minds and hearts of each individual friend and yet keeping a universal theme that all humans could share together. This was a poet’s kindness to the world.

Her flower papered bedroom held the famous white dress she was rumored to wear. Here is where I was let into the secret of her saucy temperament.

Emily’s mysterious white dress was actually no mystery - although she found it quite humorous that the public made such wild conjectures about it. White conjured up ghosts, papist nuns, otherworldly goings on in the imaginations of the Amherst tea party set. The gossip got stranger and stranger - as gossip always does.

In reality the dress was for comfort. It was made to be worn without a corset. Corsets deformed a woman’s figure over time especially the rib cage. So, Emily chose to move about freely. It was also white so it could dry in and be bleached by the sun. It had practical pockets! It is a plain and pretty dress. Emily would also wear other dresses. She would quip to her sister Vinnie some days - “tell the town I am wearing the brown dress today - as they will want to know” I do think she had great fun with the town’s opinions and wild imaginings. She always wondered what they would think up next.

I also discovered that even a physical recluse can have a wide variety of friends. Letters were their intimate conversations. In these letters she could be her unhampered self. I suspect she could express herself so much more freely in writing than talking. I fully understand this, being that way myself. She chose her friends wisely and they knew her well. I took this thought with me as I slowly went from room to room. To choose my friends wisely from now on.

There were births, deaths, and sickness within these walls. Arguments, disagreements, intimate conversations between sisters over a fire. Perhaps dark secrets well hidden. Even a recluse must deal with the darkness and sadness that comes with loving a family. Emily’s room was just steps away from her mother’s sickbed. She faithfully nursed her and mourned when she died. She lost a beloved nephew. A father. Many friends. She grieved the troubled marriage of her brother Austin and his enigmatic wife Sue. These, too, were her portals to understanding the mystery of her life. She did not shrink away from them but entered fully, seeking the wisdom they would offer. Her pen recorded the journeys.

I wandered in the parlor where the piano stood. I saw the kitchen with the bread pans empty now. The geranium on the sill. The dripping of melted snow from the eaves outside. The worn carpet. All was silent. It slowly dawned on me that these were just things now. Things that had once cast a spell upon one young, talented woman who turned her heart to listen carefully. A woman who had flown like a bird long ago and her muse with her. I simply stood among these ordinary objects - their portals shut and locked, now. Their magic had flown into a book of poetry and was now shut within it. Emily’s letter to the world. I would find her there now, and not here.

I closed the door to the yellow house and walked quietly away. Emily taught me one thing that day. That we each have our own portals. That every poet, writer, painter’s muse may be found in unsuspected surroundings where we must wait in silence for her. Nothing is too small. No life too dull or ordinary not to cast a spell on one who listens. We cannot travel each other’s portals, but we can bring messages back from our own to one another in love. Things we found on our journey within the mystery that may help someone who waits to hear. That is the purpose of the written word. To tell of inner journeys we have each taken through the portals of our particular lives. A quiet, little recluse taught me this. I marveled.

I inevitably found my way home from Amherst with all my expectations flown. In the end, I turned the key to my own door. As it swung open, I wondered with a growing excitement, “where will my portals be?” Where in my own house and surroundings, where among my Church, my parks, my potted plants, my ordinary things? Where would I hear the murmuring muse call my name? What would she tell me to write? Where would my journey lead within these finite walls of home? All the portals were wide open. They were mine to enter. Emily seemed to smile, as though she knew a secret, but was not allowed to tell. Emily has a way of doing that.