Afternoons with Emily (40 page)

One afternoon, between the February blizzards, Mrs. Austin invited me to The Evergreens for tea. I wondered if it was to be
“an Emily conference.” Although she and I met often at the dressing factory or at her elegant parties, it had been some time
since we talked privately.

We took tea in her increasingly gilded “drawing room.” Aunt Helen had heard from the sewing circle that Mrs. Austin had been
in New York, attending the opera and dining at Delmonico’s. She had stayed with Alice Vanderbilt, her new and stylish friend,
who had advised her to eschew the word “parlor” and put away her plain eighteenth century mahogany furniture, all Dickinson
family pieces. I could imagine Lavinia and Emily bristling at the perceived — and perhaps intended — slight.

“Miranda, I’m starting to worry again!” she told me. She wore bottle-green velvet, trimmed with fringe and braid.

“I think Emily is doing well these days, Mrs. Austin,” I reassured her. “She is writing steadily and calmly. Why are you concerned?”

“You know about my Springfield grapevine. My friends there tell me she is writing them about some wonderful new Mentor who
is going to run her life — again!”

I put down my teacup and smiled at her. “This time it’s true. Mr. Thomas Higginson is an editor and a minister; he has agreed
to advise her. He has written her several times.”

“Why, that must be Thomas Wentworth Higginson — he’s getting quite a name in the
Atlantic Monthly.
And does she take his counsel?”

“She fancies she does. At any rate, he’s a professional, and he seems interested in Emily.”

Still Mrs. Austin appeared troubled, as if there were more to her worry. “She shuts herself away so completely, writing poem
after poem. Is this
sane
behavior?”

“If Emily’s poetry goes well, so does she. You really needn’t be concerned right now, Mrs. Austin. She seems quite rational
to me.” Confident that I had allayed her fears, I took up my tea again.

My hostess rose with a rustle and went to a small secretary of inlaid pear wood. She removed a slip of paper from the drawer
and brought it to me. “Baby gift,” she said simply.

I recognized Emily’s hand and what appeared to be a few lines, perhaps a draft of a poem:

Now I knew I lost her —

Not that she was gone —

But Remoteness travelled

On her Face and Tongue.

Emily could not be jealous of an infant, I thought. But a child
did
put Sue, who had recently delivered a baby, at one further remove from their girlhood tie. With Sue’s passion reserved for
— and torn between — family and social ambitions, where was the room for that former fragile intimacy with Emily?
“Now I knew I lost her”
was a valedictory cry of the heart to a friend who had ceased to be who she once was — from someone who wanted to stay frozen
in what once had been. I again acknowledged privately how separate I felt from Emily. Though there was much I admired and
enjoyed about her, I found little I would choose to emulate.

Mrs. Austin went to the window and gazed at The Homestead, looming ocher against the snow. Again I observed how close the
two houses were to each other. A voice would carry easily. It took some contriving for the two Dickinson sisters-in-law to
avoid meeting for months at a time.

“Miranda, what do you
really
think of Emily’s poetry?”

“May I paraphrase Davy? He said a third is inspired, a third inscrutable, and a third counterfeit.”

This delighted her quick intelligence.

“Austin will love that — he can’t understand a single word she writes!”

So perhaps the brother and sister were not as close as Emily imagined. Mrs. Austin returned the slip of paper to the secretary,
sliding it into a cubby. “I save them all, you know,” she admitted with a smile. “You never can tell!”

I walked carefully back to Amity Street, avoiding the ice patches barely visible now in the lengthening shadows. I noticed
how the snow, so beautiful and billowy when it fell, had hardened and cracked to white-lava rock. My thoughts turned back
to Emily and the tenacity with which she held to small slights and to feelings of disloyalty and discontent, first against
her father and then against poor Sue.

Despite Emily’s belief that Sue abandoned her, I had seen no evidence of it. Sue had been nothing but a faithful friend and
devoted sister, even though she had claimed an independent life for herself among the silks and satins of a modish set. To
the contrary, might it not be Emily, judging harshly with an inflexible heart, who had deserted Sue?

In early March, I was kneeling in the atrium in cloak and mittens, encouraging my pot garden. The snowdrops were my pioneers
every year, but I expected the crocuses soon. Father saw me from the front hall and came to chat.

“What news from Vicksburg, Miranda?” he asked.

“Battery B is still dug in, still firing,” I reported. “The energetic Chicago ladies have organized trains that bring fresh
fruits and vegetables straight to the Illinois troops.”

“I doubt if Davy and his men need them as much as the rebels do. God knows what those misguided souls are eating — or wearing
or shooting, for that matter.” Then he got to his true purpose; he must have already known the events of Vicksburg. “But I
wanted to ask you something. Didn’t you say your friend Miss Dickinson has been corresponding with that minister Thomas Higginson?”

“Yes. She consults him about her poetry.” It was a nice change to discuss something so everyday about Emily.

“Does Miss Dickinson know he is one of that reckless Secret Six who planned and financed John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry?”

“I didn’t know that,” I told him. “I hadn’t connected it. So I doubt if
she
does. Politics do not engage her.”

Father chuckled at this. He was tolerant of Emily’s quirks by now.

“Tell her she’d better get political, if she wants to be Higginson’s friend. He’s no parlor abolitionist, you know; he’s a
true believer, a fanatic about Negro rights. Today I read in the
Republican
that he’s recently taken a commission in an all-Negro regiment, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers. His troops are runaway
slaves from the plantations along the coast. Your friend should know that Higginson doesn’t just talk about freeing the slaves.
He fights for his beliefs.”

I was moved by the news of this brave gesture and concerned about Colonel Higginson’s safety, with such inexperienced soldiers.
When I spoke of this to Emily on my next visit, she was typically untroubled by the events in the outside world.

“I read that too; didn’t I tell you about it? Of course I have written him — about his Union Army appointment. I told him
to be careful and STAY SAFE, for we need him here. Here’s the draft of what I said.” She handed me the paper.

Dear friend

I did not deem that Planetary forces annulled — but suffered an Exchange of Territory, or World —

I should have liked to see you, before you became improbable. War feels to me an oblique place — Should there be other Summers,
would you perhaps come?

I found you were gone, by accident, as I find Systems are, or Seasons of the year, and obtain no cause. . . .

Perhaps Death — gave me awe for friends — striking sharp and early, for I held them since — in a brittle love — of more alarm,
than peace. I trust you may pass the limit of War, and though not reared to prayer — when service is had in Church, for Our
Arms, I include yourself. . . .

Should you, before this reaches you, experience immortality, who will inform me of the Exchange? Could you, with honor, avoid
Death, I entreat you — Sir — It would bereave

Your Gnome —

I was appalled at this insensitive self-obsession, especially at such a time. “Emily,
really!
This is your friend, who has been kind and helpful and generous to you — and he is going into great danger for the sake of
his deepest beliefs. Surely you owe him more than an account of how his decision made
you
feel!”

“I don’t see that I do.” She pouted. “After all, he has PUT ME OUT by making himself so busy and hard to reach. I was counting
on him, and he has LET ME DOWN.”

There were times when I wanted to pick Emily up and simply shake her out of her selfishness and her affectations. Given the
difference in our size, it would have been so easy for me! This image gave me some amusement as I went home, feeling again
how distant she and I had become.

The snow melted; mud appeared all over our village. The spring of 1863 began with hope: Vicksburg must fall soon. The desperate
besieged citizens were going deaf and mad; they were living in caves in the battered cliffs and surviving on weeds and rats.
A shell burst over their heads every two minutes. There could be only one merciful end, and then the Mississippi would essentially
belong to the Union.

Once again it was time to visit the Howlands. Kate was interested in hearing about my trip to New York and Mr. Harnett. I
told her and Ethan all about the primer project, and Ethan asked to read the stories.

“Your tales are fine, Miranda,” he said after he had looked over the material. “But they just lie there on the page. Why not
have pictures to bring them to life?”

“Actually, I was thinking about that. Perhaps starting with the alphabet. Where’s Josey’s alphabet, Kate?”

She brought over a lugubrious brown book that belonged in a monastery. The illustrations were dark engravings, suggesting
joyless duty. The “Apple for A” looked sour; the “Zebra for Z” was old and sick. Ethan was offended.

“How could anyone learn from these?” he scoffed. “A child doesn’t need distracting details; he senses mood and
tone.
Look at this —” And with a crayon, in two lines and a swoop, Ethan drew a cheerful apple any child would recognize.

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “Oh, Ethan, make us some more!”

“Well, if you think these could enhance your stories, then certainly. Here’s Leo the lion.” And there he stood, very solemn,
with a mane of ringlets and feet like clawed pillows.

“Now show us the sea, Ethan!” I demanded, laughing.

He dashed off two scalloped waves and three smiling fish. Every lively drawing suggested rather than instructed. It let the
child inside a joke.

I could hardly believe Ethan’s talent and our good fortune; this would be a book I would have wanted as a child. I mailed
the sketches to Mr. Harnett and received his gleeful reply.

These skip and dance — they’re perfect! Tell your cousin-in-law we want him to do drawings for the whole alphabet, and six
for each of the tales. He has just the lighthearted touch we have been needing.

Thus Ethan was conscripted into our enterprise to reform early education. And my life grew ever more engaging and interesting
to me.

Then came the unthinkable: the South invaded the North. After his May victory at Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee — considered
the finest gentleman and the ablest general in either army — crossed the Potomac and led his seventy thousand men across Maryland
and up into Pennsylvania. He moved too quickly for sieges, but his troops shelled and captured towns as freely as Grant’s
ever did. The rebels seized animals and stores and promised to repay the frightened citizens in Confederate money just as
soon as they won the war. I wondered what Davy was thinking as our northern civilians became victims too — and as Georgia
senator Toombs’s prophecy that he’d one day call the roll of his slaves from the foot of Bunker Hill Monument became a terrifying
possibility.

The climax came on July 1 at Gettysburg, a small market town set at a crossroads among stone-walled fields and orchards. Two
nearly equal armies — a hundred and fifty thousand men — fought through the yellow wheat fields for three days of slaughter.
This was named the turning point, the most crucial battle of the war: the South at its taut trained peak, pitting its total
strength against the awakening giant of the North.

In Amherst, we hung on the news from the battlefield. The churches stayed open, and women slipped out to pray at night. Father
joined the crowds of anxious men waiting silently at the telegraph.

“If we lose this one, it will add years to the war,” he stated, returning for yet another bulletin.

July 4 brought a Union victory — at least in the sense that Lee retreated back over the Potomac. But there were fifty thousand
casualties — one out of every three soldiers who fought at Gettysburg. Soldiers from both armies lay moaning everywhere —
ten times the population of the little broken town. Twenty thousand wounded men covered every foot of a village the size of
Amherst. The frantic citizens tried to tend soldiers propped on garden fences, soldiers supine on porches and lawns — or soldiers
waiting on blood-soaked parlor rugs, with a book for a pillow — never mind the thousands of dead, whose bodies lay in the
putrefying summer sun for days. With human suffering on such a scale, who could call Gettysburg a victory?

Strangely, like a voice from another world, came the news of the surrender of Vicksburg — the very same Fourth of July. Later
we learned that the Confederate commander, a Pennsylvanian by birth, set the date with an eye to Union vanity, suspecting
he could get better terms on that day than on any other. General Grant’s men were compassionate to the pitiful townspeople
and their skeleton defenders. There was neither cheering nor jeering.

The southern journals stated, “Vicksburg surrendered to famine — not to Grant.”

Lincoln said, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”

Davy wrote, “Now we’ll surely get leave.”

Despite this pair of important victories, there was a spirit of discord abroad in this summer of 1863. Conscription had arrived,
and the Union was far from united about it. All single men between the ages of twenty and forty-five and married men up to
thirty-five had been called up for service in the army, but those wealthy enough could buy a substitute for five hundred dollars
or so — as Mr. Austin had done. “Born equal” no longer implied an equal chance to stay alive. Our poorer citizens surely smoldered
at this mortal inequality.