February 20, 1852—The Springfield (Mass.) Republican published “sic transit gloria mundi,” a mock valentine by Emily Dickinson—the first ever printed in that paper by the twenty-one year-old poet, and one of only 11 published out of an estimated 1,700 written by the mysterious “Belle of Amherst” during her lifetime.
Like these surviving gems, “sic transit gloria mundi” was sent by an admirer without the poet’s permission—“love turned to larceny,” in the words of sister-in-law and neighbor Susan Dickinson.
Emily mailed the poem to William Howland, a young clerk in her father’s law office, who was so taken with it that he submitted it to the Republican. Almost a week later, she was embarrassed to find her work printed, and took steps to make sure her father did not discover it. This proved easy to do, as the poem had been printed anonymously.
The Shrine of the “Belle of Amherst”
Several years ago, I visited the Dickinson Homestead, now a beloved shrine in Amherst, an academic community amid Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley.
Like these surviving gems, “sic transit gloria mundi” was sent by an admirer without the poet’s permission—“love turned to larceny,” in the words of sister-in-law and neighbor Susan Dickinson.
Emily mailed the poem to William Howland, a young clerk in her father’s law office, who was so taken with it that he submitted it to the Republican. Almost a week later, she was embarrassed to find her work printed, and took steps to make sure her father did not discover it. This proved easy to do, as the poem had been printed anonymously.
The Shrine of the “Belle of Amherst”
Several years ago, I visited the Dickinson Homestead, now a beloved shrine in Amherst, an academic community amid Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley.
In a rectangular, Federal-style home at 280 Main Street, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) lived for all but 14 of her 55 years—cooking, gardening, caring for her parents, and seeing precious few visitors. Most of all, she molded verses of bewitching power.
Samuel Dickinson, the poet’s paternal grandfather, built what is believed to be Amherst’s first brick residence here in 1813. His bankruptcy led to loss of the home during the poet’s youth. When it was finally repurchased by her father, Edward Dickinson, in 1855, he transformed it into a fashionable Italian-style villa. Inevitably, the homestead’s cupola, symmetrical windows, slight elevation, and stand of trees in front suggested reason and rectitude, Edward’s bulwarks against disorder.
Today the Dickinson Homestead belongs to Amherst College, which operates the National Historic Landmark as a museum. A constant stream of Dickinson aficionados like myself make pilgrimages to the home.
“The heart has many doors,” Dickinson wrote. I came here hoping to find the one that would dissolve her enigma. At best, like so many other visitors, I was only partially successful.
The Materials of Domestic Life
A short tour of the property reveals how Dickinson managed to construct a universe from the simplest domestic materials. Her poems are filled with locked doors, chimneys, candles, church bells, meadows, mountains, bees, lamps, and flowers—all items she could see in her house, in her backyard, or through her window.
Amherst’s major institutions press close to the Homestead, providing anchors for the rest of her family but which Dickinson rejected. The house stands only a few hundred yards from Amherst College, which Samuel Dickinson helped found with an endowment so generous that it burdened his descendants with debt.
Across the street tower the steeples of the First Congregational Church. Dozens of Dickinson’s friends and family members joined the denomination as part of the Protestant revival sweeping mid-19th century New England. Yet Emily, in quiet but unmistakable defiance, refused to join the converts. She saw the church her brother had helped build only after midnight, when nobody else was around.
Her poems’ multiple ironies trace back to Dickinson’s ambivalent relationship to the Homestead. Rather than this house, the poet preferred a white clapboard dwelling, where she lived from ages 10 to 24, next to the local burial ground. (A Mobil station stands today on the site of the old North Pleasant Street home, which fell victim to the wrecking ball in the 1920s.) This was the home where she wrote “sic transit gloria mundi.”
The North Pleasant Street dwelling represented her brief window of social activity: going to dances, calling on friends, and attending book club readings and concerts. Perhaps not coincidentally, her mother fell into a prolonged illness after the move back to Main Street—and Dickinson embarked in earnest on her poetry.
Dickinson only ventured out of the Homestead once in her last two decades, to attend the funeral of her beloved nephew Gilbert or “Gib.” The house was not hers, she said, but “my father’s.”
Beyond “my father’s grounds” stood the homes of relatives and friends who received her many gifts—not just picked flowers and gingerbread cakes (lowered by basket from her bedroom window to delighted neighborhood children below), but her short verse.
To preserve many of her poems, Dickinson took writing paper, wrote on both sides, and tied it all together with string. Forty of these booklets, called “fascicles,” each containing 25 or so poems, were discovered after her death. Guides hold up copies of these fascicles during tours, noting that the poems are untitled.
The Riddles of a Poet’s Life
Despite contemporaries’ near-unanimous agreement about Dickinson’s wit, intelligence, warmth, and generosity, she increasingly cloistered herself as the years went on. That stance contrasted strongly with three generations of Dickinson males—the poet’s grandfather, father, and older brother Austin—who became lawyers.
This seclusion has fueled one of the great debates about the poet. Some psychologists have ascribed to her all kinds of neuroses and shocks, from agoraphobia to rape. Other feminist scholars see in Dickinson’s withdrawal a conscious strategy to circumvent a patriarchal society that undervalued feminine intellectual and creative endeavors.
Whatever the case, by her 20s, she could only conquer her fear of the outdoors by walking her enormous dog Carlo through her father’s 11-acre hay field across the street.
On the other hand, in the backyard, protected from onlookers, Dickinson could work undisturbed in her garden. Her mother nurtured this interest, and Dickinson deepened it by taking botany at Amherst Academy. A conservatory allowed her to care even in winter for such plants as daphne, jasmine and wildflower. (It was torn down in 1916 for safety reasons.)
The Dickinsons kept several servants, mostly Irish, during their second stay here. One, Tom Kelly, served as one of Emily's pallbearers.
Guides take small groups through the house at regular intervals, answering a barrage of questions:
* How accurate a likeness is the daguerreotype of Dickinson in the parlor? (The photo--he only one taken in her lifetime--was made when she was recovering from an illness, so she appears more fragile than she probably was, and her naturally curly hair was straightened for the camera.)
* Did Dickinson withdraw from people because of a broken heart? (Most likely not: her seclusion may have grown out of her need to care for her mother, a chronic invalid who probably suffered from postpartum depression, and in her late 40s Dickinson seriously considered a marriage proposal from a judge whom she loved.)
* How did Dickinson die? (The death certificate cited Bright’s Disease, but recent medical speculation has pointed to congestive heart failure.)
“The Soul selects her own Society,” Dickinson wrote. Perhaps she sensed that her poems’ unconventional grammar and capitalization and her relentless questioning of God would not play well in her lifetime. Now, however, the reclusive poet speaks to and for thousands of readers, from generation to generation.
Samuel Dickinson, the poet’s paternal grandfather, built what is believed to be Amherst’s first brick residence here in 1813. His bankruptcy led to loss of the home during the poet’s youth. When it was finally repurchased by her father, Edward Dickinson, in 1855, he transformed it into a fashionable Italian-style villa. Inevitably, the homestead’s cupola, symmetrical windows, slight elevation, and stand of trees in front suggested reason and rectitude, Edward’s bulwarks against disorder.
Today the Dickinson Homestead belongs to Amherst College, which operates the National Historic Landmark as a museum. A constant stream of Dickinson aficionados like myself make pilgrimages to the home.
“The heart has many doors,” Dickinson wrote. I came here hoping to find the one that would dissolve her enigma. At best, like so many other visitors, I was only partially successful.
The Materials of Domestic Life
A short tour of the property reveals how Dickinson managed to construct a universe from the simplest domestic materials. Her poems are filled with locked doors, chimneys, candles, church bells, meadows, mountains, bees, lamps, and flowers—all items she could see in her house, in her backyard, or through her window.
Amherst’s major institutions press close to the Homestead, providing anchors for the rest of her family but which Dickinson rejected. The house stands only a few hundred yards from Amherst College, which Samuel Dickinson helped found with an endowment so generous that it burdened his descendants with debt.
Across the street tower the steeples of the First Congregational Church. Dozens of Dickinson’s friends and family members joined the denomination as part of the Protestant revival sweeping mid-19th century New England. Yet Emily, in quiet but unmistakable defiance, refused to join the converts. She saw the church her brother had helped build only after midnight, when nobody else was around.
Her poems’ multiple ironies trace back to Dickinson’s ambivalent relationship to the Homestead. Rather than this house, the poet preferred a white clapboard dwelling, where she lived from ages 10 to 24, next to the local burial ground. (A Mobil station stands today on the site of the old North Pleasant Street home, which fell victim to the wrecking ball in the 1920s.) This was the home where she wrote “sic transit gloria mundi.”
The North Pleasant Street dwelling represented her brief window of social activity: going to dances, calling on friends, and attending book club readings and concerts. Perhaps not coincidentally, her mother fell into a prolonged illness after the move back to Main Street—and Dickinson embarked in earnest on her poetry.
Dickinson only ventured out of the Homestead once in her last two decades, to attend the funeral of her beloved nephew Gilbert or “Gib.” The house was not hers, she said, but “my father’s.”
Beyond “my father’s grounds” stood the homes of relatives and friends who received her many gifts—not just picked flowers and gingerbread cakes (lowered by basket from her bedroom window to delighted neighborhood children below), but her short verse.
To preserve many of her poems, Dickinson took writing paper, wrote on both sides, and tied it all together with string. Forty of these booklets, called “fascicles,” each containing 25 or so poems, were discovered after her death. Guides hold up copies of these fascicles during tours, noting that the poems are untitled.
The Riddles of a Poet’s Life
Despite contemporaries’ near-unanimous agreement about Dickinson’s wit, intelligence, warmth, and generosity, she increasingly cloistered herself as the years went on. That stance contrasted strongly with three generations of Dickinson males—the poet’s grandfather, father, and older brother Austin—who became lawyers.
This seclusion has fueled one of the great debates about the poet. Some psychologists have ascribed to her all kinds of neuroses and shocks, from agoraphobia to rape. Other feminist scholars see in Dickinson’s withdrawal a conscious strategy to circumvent a patriarchal society that undervalued feminine intellectual and creative endeavors.
Whatever the case, by her 20s, she could only conquer her fear of the outdoors by walking her enormous dog Carlo through her father’s 11-acre hay field across the street.
On the other hand, in the backyard, protected from onlookers, Dickinson could work undisturbed in her garden. Her mother nurtured this interest, and Dickinson deepened it by taking botany at Amherst Academy. A conservatory allowed her to care even in winter for such plants as daphne, jasmine and wildflower. (It was torn down in 1916 for safety reasons.)
The Dickinsons kept several servants, mostly Irish, during their second stay here. One, Tom Kelly, served as one of Emily's pallbearers.
Guides take small groups through the house at regular intervals, answering a barrage of questions:
* How accurate a likeness is the daguerreotype of Dickinson in the parlor? (The photo--he only one taken in her lifetime--was made when she was recovering from an illness, so she appears more fragile than she probably was, and her naturally curly hair was straightened for the camera.)
* Did Dickinson withdraw from people because of a broken heart? (Most likely not: her seclusion may have grown out of her need to care for her mother, a chronic invalid who probably suffered from postpartum depression, and in her late 40s Dickinson seriously considered a marriage proposal from a judge whom she loved.)
* How did Dickinson die? (The death certificate cited Bright’s Disease, but recent medical speculation has pointed to congestive heart failure.)
“The Soul selects her own Society,” Dickinson wrote. Perhaps she sensed that her poems’ unconventional grammar and capitalization and her relentless questioning of God would not play well in her lifetime. Now, however, the reclusive poet speaks to and for thousands of readers, from generation to generation.
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