Montgomery, Strong, Hunter, Gillmore: these were the tough, uncompromising men that war demanded, that soldiering demanded, that Shaw respected. And Higginson? He was kind. War is not kind.

Doubtless Higginson knew he was different from the rest and, like Saxton, considered too sensitive for an important command. He immovably believed that despite huge obstacles, the service of black soldiers was a stepping-stone to liberty, dignity, and full enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. While this was no doubt true, this was not soldiering.

REa.s.sIGNED TO GENERAL STRONG'S BRIGADE, on July 16 Shaw and his men stubbornly repelled a Confederate attack on James Island, where they were encamped, and saved a white regiment's skin, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that a black man was a good soldier. After the battle the Fifty-fourth was sent to Cole Island, marching all night through mud and sticky swamp, and then slowly transported in groups of thirty in a small leaky boat to Folly Island. on July 16 Shaw and his men stubbornly repelled a Confederate attack on James Island, where they were encamped, and saved a white regiment's skin, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that a black man was a good soldier. After the battle the Fifty-fourth was sent to Cole Island, marching all night through mud and sticky swamp, and then slowly transported in groups of thirty in a small leaky boat to Folly Island.

"Folly Island gives a fair chance at Morris Island; to have Morris Island is to have Fort Sumter, & that is to have Charleston," Higginson remarked, repeating Gillmore's plan. On Morris Island stood the formidable Fort Wagner, a heavily armed earthwork situated near the island's north end and just across the water from Sumter itself. (A previous attempt on Fort Wagner had ended in a rout.) Drenched from thunderstorms, thirsty, and hungry-unlike the officers, they had not eaten in two days-on the morning of July 18, Shaw's exhausted men finally set foot on Morris Island and then marched two more bone-tiring hours.

"Well I guess we will let Strong put those d--d negroes from Ma.s.sachusetts in the advance, we may as well get rid of them, one time as another," Brigadier General Truman Seymour, who commanded Strong's division, allegedly told Gillmore. According to Higginson, Seymour, a misanthropic man with a careless tongue, had opposed the enlistment of black troops, and Strong was a Democrat indifferent to emanc.i.p.ation.

On the evening of July 18 on Morris Island, Shaw reported to General Strong. Presumably Strong told Shaw that though the men of the Fifty-fourth were worn out, they could lead the column against Fort Wagner, should Shaw choose. He did.

Robert Gould Shaw, leader of the famed Fifty-fourth Ma.s.sachusetts, a regiment mistakenly considered the first company of African American troops, 1863. Higginson's First South Carolina Volunteers was formed the year before.

Shaw and his men talked about the decision, and the men held hands, trying to comfort one another. They exchanged letters and pictures. Shaw gave some of his papers to his friend Edward Pierce, a journalist, and rallied the troops, telling them if the color-bearer fell, he would take the flag. Noisily the men shouted approval. Shaw's face twitched, and he tossed aside his cigar. Thirty minutes later he cried, "Forward."

Prepared for hand-to-hand combat, the men stole on foot across a narrow bar of sand until they were within range of the daunting earthwork fort, about one hundred yards. The hour was late, about seven forty-five, and the skies were streaked with purple rays from a fading sun. Just as the Fifty-fourth was about to rush across the ditch surrounding the fort, a sheet of fire from small arms lit the darkening night. Men lurched across the ditch, staggered, and fell. Wilky James, serving as Shaw's adjutant, was. .h.i.t in the side. Reeling, he was. .h.i.t again. The column ran past him. Shaw scaled the ramparts, urging his men forward, and was shot through the heart. Undeterred, his men followed. Hand grenades flung from the parapet burst over them as they scaled the face of the fort, and for a fleeting moment one of them, Sergeant R. J. Simmons, planted their flag at its top.

Other officers tumbled to the ground, dead or mortally wounded. Higginson's young nephew Frank guided the retreat of the battered regiment, but the path was so packed with the dead, so crammed with wounded men screaming in pain, that the soldiers could hardly move. A second regiment rushed futilely forward. There were more than fifteen hundred Union casualties.

Shaw's body, which had fallen inside the fort, was subsequently stripped naked and placed on display before being thrown into the bottom of a large pit, the corpses of his vanquished troops tossed on top of his. "Buried with his n.i.g.g.e.rs," a victorious General Hagood presumably said, but another Confederate officer, Lieutenant Iredell Jones, said the Negroes had fought valiantly and were led by as brave an officer as ever lived. Shaw's father instructed General Gillmore not to remove his son's body; it should remain with his men.

Shaw and the entire Fifty-fourth Ma.s.sachusetts became una.s.sailable martyrs and heroes.

Yet it had been a slaughter. And for what? For a plan, according to Higginson, that was futile, poorly executed, ill conceived, perhaps even racist and cruel?

Thin, weak, and downcast, Higginson decided to return to Worcester on furlough. That might hasten his recuperation, for he wasn't entirely sure what ailed him.

HIGGINSON WENT BACK to Beaufort at the end of August, when the temperature bubbled to ninety-seven degrees. But the tropical heat wasn't the only reason his step had lost its spring. Nothing much had changed. He presided over interminable court-martials. Evenings he still liked to hear the songs of those he again, and unfortunately, called "the dear blundering dusky darlings." But he had no taste for food, he could not sit or stand for long periods, he could not read, and at night he soaked his bedclothes in perspiration. Was this a delayed reaction to the deaths, gory, inexplicably heartless, on every side? Or was it a gnawing suspicion that those waging war in Washington were "vacillating and half proslavery"? Did he wonder whether emanc.i.p.ation meant the kind of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt he envisioned? Or had Montgomery's audacity and Shaw's martyrdom eclipsed the painstaking, committed, and compa.s.sionate abolitionism that he strenuously practiced? to Beaufort at the end of August, when the temperature bubbled to ninety-seven degrees. But the tropical heat wasn't the only reason his step had lost its spring. Nothing much had changed. He presided over interminable court-martials. Evenings he still liked to hear the songs of those he again, and unfortunately, called "the dear blundering dusky darlings." But he had no taste for food, he could not sit or stand for long periods, he could not read, and at night he soaked his bedclothes in perspiration. Was this a delayed reaction to the deaths, gory, inexplicably heartless, on every side? Or was it a gnawing suspicion that those waging war in Washington were "vacillating and half proslavery"? Did he wonder whether emanc.i.p.ation meant the kind of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt he envisioned? Or had Montgomery's audacity and Shaw's martyrdom eclipsed the painstaking, committed, and compa.s.sionate abolitionism that he strenuously practiced?

He lay in the officers' hospital early in October. Dr. Rogers guessed malaria. Mary had planned to come south, but he put her off. He suspected that he might leave the army and return north-he wanted to leave-but ambivalence kept him where he was, drilling his regiment, inhaling perfumed air, supervising pickets in the tangled cypress swamps. Charlotte Forten thought he looked thin and drawn. His eyes were hooded.

He remained in limbo, neither sick nor well. It was not that his duties had become perfunctory but rather that his faith in the military as a great equalizer was waning. "This makes me hate all arbitrary power more than ever, this military life, because I see at what a price of possible injustice its efficiency is bought." General Gillmore devalued Saxton. Montgomery and others continued to jockey for promotions not slated for him. Dr. Rogers, himself ill, returned home, and Higginson's regiment, plagued by smallpox, was not sent back to Jacksonville, where the Union suffered another disastrous defeat at the Battle of Ol.u.s.tee, again under General Seymour's dubious command. Nor had his troops been adequately compensated, despite facile a.s.surances from the War Department. "At a time when it required large bounties to fill the Northern regiments with their nine months men," Higginson complained to Charles Sumner, "these men enlisted for three years without bounty, without even State aid to families relying solely on the monthly pay. For five months they received it...and then Government suddenly repudiated it and cut them down to $10." Now they were paid seven dollars, not even the ten dollars promised. Two-thirds of the men refused to accept the pittance.

And his men seemed to need him less. "They are growing more like white men; less naive & less grotesque," he observed, meaning that as proven soldiers they were more independent, disciplined, sure of themselves. Perhaps his time, too, had come. He had turned forty years old.

"I feel that I hv. done my duty entirely," he wrote Mary, but "as to these people, I feel much more clinging yet, & it will be hard to leave them & the work I feel I am doing for them-hard to leave South Carolina & [not] feel that I desert them."

Eighteen months after taking command of the first authorized regiment of black troops in the United States, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson resigned from the army and on the fourteenth of May headed north to he knew not what.

EIGHT

Agony Is Frugal

I found you were gone, by accident," d.i.c.kinson wrote to Wentworth Higginson in the winter of 1863, "as I find Systems are, or Seasons of the year, and obtain no cause-but suppose it is a treason of Progress-that dissolves as it goes." Even though they had been corresponding just over a year, she missed him and had hoped to meet him in person. "I should have liked to see you, before you became improbable," she lamented. "War feels to me an oblique place-Should there be other Summers, would you perhaps come?" found you were gone, by accident," d.i.c.kinson wrote to Wentworth Higginson in the winter of 1863, "as I find Systems are, or Seasons of the year, and obtain no cause-but suppose it is a treason of Progress-that dissolves as it goes." Even though they had been corresponding just over a year, she missed him and had hoped to meet him in person. "I should have liked to see you, before you became improbable," she lamented. "War feels to me an oblique place-Should there be other Summers, would you perhaps come?"

If there were other summers, yes; for now she must content herself with his description of the South Carolina Sea Islands-cold comfort. "I too, have an 'Island'-," she retorted, "whose 'Rose and Magnolia' are in the Egg, and it's 'Black Berry' but a spicy prospective, yet as you say, 'fascination' is absolute of Clime."

She was referring to his essay "Procession of the Flowers," which she had condensed in her own inimitable way. "The fascination of summer lies not in any details," he had written, "however perfect, but in the sense of total wealth which summer gives." Fascination is absolute of clime.

She then signed her letter "Your Gnome."

The signature may refer to a comment of his, now lost, about the gnomic quality of her verse. For she liked to quote him back to himself, lobbing phrases at him in her slightly coquettish way. The technique had become part of their conversation, much as their talk of flowers was, for a tender bond had sprung up between them, these two seemingly different individuals, divided by place, temperament, and talent and linked by her first unabashed letter to him, a stranger. But he may have taken her remark about war amiss: war could not be an oblique place for a soldier, never mind the man who considered this war a first step toward the restoration, for all, of human and civil rights. She apologized straightaway. He had been so generous to her, she said, that she wanted only his forgiveness. Besides, "to doubt my High Behavior, is a new pain," she unhappily remarked.

Though death was too close, too real, too coldly indiscriminate for her to mock, at times she did or seemed to scorn the war: "Color-Caste-Denomination-/ These-are Time's Affair-/ Death's diviner Cla.s.sifying / Does not know they are-." And she told truths about death few of us admit: "'Tis so appalling-it exhilirates-." She could transform death, too, into a gentleman caller, a supple suitor, an insect, a fly. Imagination runs free; language is taut. "Agony is frugal-," as she would write, in poems direct, spare, pitiless. Yet this might sound callous to the unpracticed ear. "I shall have no winter this year-on account of the soldiers-," she remarked to Mary Bowles. "Since I cannot weave Blankets, or Boots-I thought it best to omit the season."

Directing her irony against socialites concerned only with the "season" during, of all times, war and also against the sanctimonious organizers of charity fairs, church drives, and sewing circles, she spurned both. ("What Soft-Cherubic Creatures-/ These Gentlewomen are-/...Such Dimity Convictions-.") Instead she measured every grief she met "With narrow, probing, eyes-/ I wonder if It weighs like Mine-/ Or has an Easier size-." Grief is private; there are no easy sizes. Sometimes soldiers bore her wrath too. "A Soldier called, a Morning ago, and asked for a Nosegay, to take to Battle," she tartly noted. "I suppose he thought we kept an Aquarium." Nosegays for battle? How could one prettify battle?

"Perhaps Death, gave me Awe for friends, striking sharp and early," as she explained to Higginson, "for I held them since, in a brittle love, of more alarm, than peace."

"It feels a shame to be Alive-," as she elaborated in a poem dating from this period: It feels a shame to be Alive-When Men so brave-are dead-One envies the Distinguished Dust-Permitted-such a Head-The Stone-that tells defending WhomThis Spartan put awayWhat little of Him we-possessedIn p.a.w.n for Liberty-The price is great-Sublimely paid-Do we deserve-a Thing-That lives-like Dollars-must be piledBefore we may obtain?Are we that wait-sufficient worth-That such Enormous PearlAs life-dissolved be-for Us-In Battle's-horrid Bowl?It may be-a Renown to live-I think the Men who die-Those unsustained-Saviors-Present Divinity- Juxtaposing life and death-"dead," "lives," "life," "live," "die"-d.i.c.kinson here salutes the soldier ("Those unsustained-Saviors-/ Present Divinity-"), who is but a "p.a.w.n," his life exchanged for abstractions like "Liberty," his existence pulverized "In Battle's-horrid Bowl": dust to dust, for a botched civilization.

Though to Higginson the soldiers fought for the very concrete goal of ending slavery, in Amherst, even among antislavery enthusiasts, the war was also a political drama. Edward d.i.c.kinson, for one, had been a congressman opposing the extension of slavery, not its elimination, and when he declined the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 1861, he denounced "as subversive of all const.i.tutional guarantees, if we expect to reconstruct or restore the Union, the heretical dogma that immediate and universal emanc.i.p.ation of slaves should be proclaimed by the government, as the means of putting an end to the war"-though he did say he hoped "that, in the good providence of G.o.d, emanc.i.p.ation may be one of the blessed results of the war." (The Springfield Republican, Springfield Republican, printing d.i.c.kinson's statement, subsequently ran a rejoinder that declared him a bigot, a partisan, and a mouse.) As the war dragged on, he updated his position on slavery, or so he said. "He is against slavery as the cause of the war & to be destroyed," an acquaintance waggishly commented in 1864, "yet, he has always been in action a conservative or a pro slavery man as I think, but he has now forgotten it." printing d.i.c.kinson's statement, subsequently ran a rejoinder that declared him a bigot, a partisan, and a mouse.) As the war dragged on, he updated his position on slavery, or so he said. "He is against slavery as the cause of the war & to be destroyed," an acquaintance waggishly commented in 1864, "yet, he has always been in action a conservative or a pro slavery man as I think, but he has now forgotten it."

The war affected every family, and Emily d.i.c.kinson's was no exception: quite the reverse, given Edward d.i.c.kinson's penchant for public office. But d.i.c.kinson's feelings are unclear. "I like Truth-it is a free Democracy," she said. Likely she approved Austin's paying a subst.i.tute to fight in his place-he had been drafted-for five hundred dollars; life, his life, any life, particularly Austin's life, should be spared. Yet she had chosen to befriend Higginson-an activist, a women's rights champion, an ultra-abolitionist-who, even if he could have afforded it, would never have dreamed of buying a subst.i.tute to fight for him. But Edward and Austin d.i.c.kinson, wealthy men, guiltily insisted that the town of Amherst pay an additional award of one hundred dollars to local enlistees in addition to what was paid by the state and federal government: they weighed life in economic terms. "Do we deserve-a Thing-/ That lives-like Dollars-must be piled / Before we may obtain?"

That d.i.c.kinson seldom mentioned the war directly inspired literary critics for many years to a.s.sume she inhabited only a supernal realm of poetry, far removed from the miserable squabbles of petty men. That can hardly be the case. And she knew that while Higginson claimed that he preferred to live in nature, unscathed by the alarms of war, the man who composed lyrical essays about April days and snowflakes had also depicted slave insurrections with equanimity, if not outright advocacy. And though skeptical about the intentions, hesitations, and prevarications of his government, once Higginson signed on, he unwaveringly committed himself. d.i.c.kinson tacitly approved. "Though not reared to prayer-," she wrote him tenderly, "when service is had in Church, for Our Arms, I include yourself."

Of course, then, the war touched her. And she may have tried in her own way to a.s.sist the cause. For despite her avowed refusal to publish her poems, several of them appeared during the war: three in Drum Beat, Drum Beat, for instance, the official paper of the Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair, which had been organized to raise money for medical supplies for Union soldiers. Edited by Richard Salter Storrs, an Amherst College graduate and friend of Austin and Sue's, the short-lived for instance, the official paper of the Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair, which had been organized to raise money for medical supplies for Union soldiers. Edited by Richard Salter Storrs, an Amherst College graduate and friend of Austin and Sue's, the short-lived Drum Beat Drum Beat enjoyed a wide circulation, and its roster of contributors included literary luminaries like Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Cullen Bryant. It also spread d.i.c.kinson's work, albeit without her name attached. (Poets frequently published anonymously.) After the poem "Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple" (later mailed to Higginson) ran in its February 29, 1864, issue, under the t.i.tle "Sunset," it was reprinted in the enjoyed a wide circulation, and its roster of contributors included literary luminaries like Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Cullen Bryant. It also spread d.i.c.kinson's work, albeit without her name attached. (Poets frequently published anonymously.) After the poem "Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple" (later mailed to Higginson) ran in its February 29, 1864, issue, under the t.i.tle "Sunset," it was reprinted in the Springfield Daily Republican Springfield Daily Republican and the and the Springfield Weekly Republican; Springfield Weekly Republican; after the March 2 issue carried "Flowers-well, if anybody" (t.i.tled "Flowers"), that poem cropped up in the after the March 2 issue carried "Flowers-well, if anybody" (t.i.tled "Flowers"), that poem cropped up in the Springfield Republican Springfield Republican and and The Boston Post. The Boston Post.

Another poem, "These are the days when Birds come back-" (t.i.tled "October"), appeared in Drum Beat Drum Beat's pages and recollects the final paragraphs in Higginson's essay "The Life of Birds." But whereas Higginson ends his essay with his typical cheer about seasonal rebirth, d.i.c.kinson's autumnal poem about birds' taking a backward look in fall ends with a plea that, in this context, we may read as addressing him: "Oh sacrament of summer days, / Oh Last Communion in the Haze-/ Permit a child to join-/ Thy sacred emblems to partake-/ Thy consecrated bread to take / And thine immortal wine!"

Perhaps she idly wondered if Higginson would come across her poem. Nor were these the only poems he might recognize as hers. "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church" appeared in Round Table, Round Table, another newly established paper in New York edited by another Amherst graduate, the d.i.c.kinson cousin Charles Sweetser, and "Success-is counted sweetest" turned up in April in another newly established paper in New York edited by another Amherst graduate, the d.i.c.kinson cousin Charles Sweetser, and "Success-is counted sweetest" turned up in April in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. These two poems had also been given to Higginson; likely he praised them, and clearly she thought they represented her well. These two poems had also been given to Higginson; likely he praised them, and clearly she thought they represented her well.

The timing of their appearance is suggestive particularly since d.i.c.kinson rarely published before the war or after it. "If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her-," we recall her telling Higginson; "if she did not, the longest day would pa.s.s me on the chase-and the approbation of my Dog, would forsake me-then-My Barefoot-Rank is better-." Fame, ersatz celebrity, immortality, and the hollow heart of laurels-the renunciation of worldly prizes-and their allure-ricochet through her poems: "Fame is a fickle food / Upon a shifting plate," she impishly wrote, or in another fragment, "Fame is a bee. / It has a song-/ It has a sting-/ Ah, too, it has a wing," or yet again, "Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die / And are too seldom born-." Or, during the war, "Some-Work for Immortality-/ ," she noted, "The Chiefer part, for Time-/ He-Compensates-immediately-/ The former-Checks-on Fame-/ Slow Gold-but Everlasting-." She chose the slow gold, but it was a choice, and choices imply attractive alternatives, or we would not have to bother choosing.

Perhaps, then, war relaxed her ambivalence toward publication; a public cause is easier to rationalize than a private one, and publication, in this instance, is philanthropy as much as self-aggrandizement. She would not seek fame or shirk it, she had said, concealing her motives not from Higginson as much as from herself. It was what he did too, refusing to jockey for a promotion, pretending it did not matter.

But her published war poetry was not like Whitman's or Whittier's or Herman Melville's. Not intensely personal, specifically topical, or formidably obscure, it revealed her talent without unveiling her soul. In the privacy of her room, however, she spoke more openly of the war. "When I was small, a Woman died-/ ," she wrote around 1863, "Today-her Only Boy / Went up from the Potomac-/ His face all Victory." The apparition of these faces, of woman and of boy, pa.s.ses "back and forth, before my Brain." Who is not hara.s.sed by war? Similarly, in "Bereavement in their death to feel / ," she writes of "Whom We have never seen-/ A Vital Kinsmanship import / Our Soul and their's between-." And war stands for battle within: "The Battle fought between the Soul / And No Man-is the One / Of all the Battles prevalent-/ By far the Greater One-." Yet war remains itself, grim with a death and dying so appalling that it exhilarates: "It sets the Fright at liberty-/ And Terror's free-/ Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!" Fascination is absolute of clime.

What of slavery? of abolition? She does not really say. Or if she confronts the subject head-on, the result is far more conventional than her usual verse: "No Rack can torture me-/ My Soul-at Liberty-." Possibly she refers to emanc.i.p.ated slaves when she wonders, Can the Lark resume the Sh.e.l.l-Easier-for the Sky-Would'nt Bonds hurt moreThan Yesterday?Would'nt Dungeons sorer grateOn the Man-free-Just long enough to taste-Then-doomed new-G.o.d of the ManacleAs of the Free-Take not my LibertyAway from Me- (This poem reflects Higginson's remark that "you may make a soldier out of a slave, very readily; but you can no more make a slave out of a soldier than you can replace a bird in the egg.") And when she envisions soldiers marching in the distance, she may well be picturing Higginson's regiment in the bright red trousers he loathed: A Slash of Blue! A sweep of Gray!Some scarlet patches-on the way-Compose an evening sky-A little Purple-slipped between-Some Ruby Trowsers-hurried on-A Wave of Gold-a Bank of Day-This just makes out the morning sky!

Working best when pushing metaphor into new places, she insists again that "Publication-is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man-," though in this case she may be a.s.sociating the merchandising of consciousness with the horrific trade in human beings: "In the Parcel-Be the Merchant / Of the Heavenly Grace-/ But reduce no Human Spirit / To Disgrace of Price-." One's self was not for sale. "I do not let go it," she told Higginson, "because it is mine." Likely she referred to her poetry.

And of the young soldier, eager to die, and enamored of fame in the form of victory, she thus compa.s.sionately if somberly notes: He fought like those Who've nought to lose-........But Death was Coy of HimAs Other Men, were Coy of Death.To Him-to live-was Doom-His Comrades, shifted like the FlakesWhen Gusts reverse the Snow-But He-was left alive BecauseOf Greediness to die- So many men, so much death. Romanticized by the green and the young, vainglorious death is yet the subject of another poem: My Portion is Defeat-today-A paler luck than Victory-Less Paeans-fewer Bells-The Drums dont follow Me-with tunes-Defeat-a somewhat slower-means-More Arduous than b.a.l.l.s-'Tis populous with Bone and stain-And Men too straight to stoop again-And Piles of solid Moan-And Chips of Blank-in Boyish Eyes-And sc.r.a.ps of Prayer-And Death's surprise,Stamped visible-in stone-There's somewhat prouder, Over there-The Trumpets tell it to the Air-How different VictoryTo Him who has it-and the OneWho to have had it, would have beenContenteder-to die- The poet, whose "Portion is Defeat," pretends to envy those who march off to war, trumpets blaring, drums banging, bells ringing with praise. And yet the poem is funereal, particularly in the second stanza, where the repeating "And" creates an implacable rhythm of acc.u.mulating brutal images: "Chips of Blank-in Boyish Eyes-," "Piles of solid Moan-," "Stamped visible-in stone-" (on a headstone). These images drive the poem toward its paradoxical conclusion: the trumpets broadcast victory that no one hears, for only to the victor does victory have meaning, one that lies, ironically, in death. As for the rest of us, we live among unheralded defeats, which are, of course, their own kind of victory: life.

"COULD YOU, WITH HONOR, AVOID DEATH," d.i.c.kinson entreated Colonel Higginson, her new friend, capitalizing "Death" and not "honor." To her there was no honor in death, and yet she knew, as she also told him-enfolding a two-line poem within the context of her letter-that we measure gain by loss, just as we measure success by failure: Best Gains-must have the Losses' test-To const.i.tute them-Gains.

She would miss him, in other words, but she respected his decision to fight and included in another letter a poem-replete with martial images-about dedication, loyalty, individual autonomy, and courage: The Soul unto itselfIs an imperial friendOr the most agonizing SpyAn Enemy could sendSecure against it's ownNo treason it can fearItself it's Sovereign of itselfThe Soul should be in Awe We need courage because we are self-divided, and thus the single indomitable soul is its own worst enemy ("agonizing Spy"). But when "Secure against it's own," nothing can harm it. A farewell to Higginson of astonishing insight, it is as if she knew of his vacillations, his indecision, his conflicts. She folded the poem into her letter and bade him much more than well.

In camp, when the mail arrived, he sought out her handwriting.

IN JUNE 1863, the month before Higginson was wounded, James Fields published a book of the colonel's the month before Higginson was wounded, James Fields published a book of the colonel's Atlantic Atlantic essays-omitting those about slave rebellions, presumably slated for a different collection, which struck Fields as seditious. No matter: Higginson proudly showed off essays-omitting those about slave rebellions, presumably slated for a different collection, which struck Fields as seditious. No matter: Higginson proudly showed off Out-Door Papers Out-Door Papers to all his junior officers and crowed over the good reviews. The to all his junior officers and crowed over the good reviews. The Springfield Republican Springfield Republican went so far as to compare Higginson's euphonious style with Hawthorne's. went so far as to compare Higginson's euphonious style with Hawthorne's.

d.i.c.kinson herself never forgot the day she first opened Higginson's book. "It is still as distinct as Paradise-," she would tell him years hence. "It was Mansions-Nations-Kinsmen-too-to me-." Refined and sharpened, his images seeped into her imagination, and she used his writing, as she did that of the Bible and Shakespeare, in her own, ingesting its metaphors or rhythm and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his fat. Take his description of rowing on Lake Quinsigamond just before dawn so he can see the water lilies at first light: "Precisely at half past three, a song-sparrow above our heads gave one liquid trill, so inexpressibly sudden and delicious, that it seemed to set to music every atom of freshness and fragrance that Nature held; then the spell was broken, and the whole sh.o.r.e and lake were vocal with song." d.i.c.kinson rewrites it this way: The Birds begun at Four o'clock-Their period for Dawn-A Music numerous as s.p.a.ce-But neighboring as Noon-........The Witnesses were not-Except Occasional Man-In homely industry arrayed-To overtake the Morn- Or in another poem, composed later, she again borrows from Higginson: At Half past ThreeA Single BirdUnto a silent skyPropounded but a single termOf cautious Melody.At Half past FourExperiment had subjugated testAnd lo, her silver principleSupplanted all the rest.At Half past SevenElement nor implement be seenAnd Place was where the Presence wasCirc.u.mference between A dense poem, it traces the appearance and disappearance of the solitary bird, which after propounding its single note of melody, will disappear-as d.i.c.kinson, fugitive poet, does. But the bird and its song echo in the memory of the implied listener, which may be the definition, for her, of circ.u.mference: the liminal border between presence and absence. Or as Higginson explains in his essay "Water-Lilies," "that which is remembered is often more vivid than that which is seen. The eye paints better in the presence, the heart in the absence, of the object most dear." Our imagination, like memory, nourishes us long after his beloved water lily disappears: "only in losing her do we gain the power to describe her," he concludes, "and we are introduced to Art, as we are to Eternity, by the dropping away of our companions."

Written before the war, when printed in Out-Door Papers, Out-Door Papers, "Water-Lilies" takes on a special elegiac tone, as if forecasting Higginson's future. "Absence is the very air of pa.s.sion, and all the best description is "Water-Lilies" takes on a special elegiac tone, as if forecasting Higginson's future. "Absence is the very air of pa.s.sion, and all the best description is in memoriam, in memoriam," Higginson writes. "As with our human beloved, when the graceful presence is with us, we cannot a.n.a.lyze or describe, but merely possess, and only after its departure can it be portrayed by our yearning desires; so is it with Nature." Soon he would embark on the memorial series about Harvard men slain during the Civil War, and much of his writing would acquire a retrospective, subdued quality, an amethyst's remembrance, as d.i.c.kinson would say. But his notion of the lost being recovered through imagination was no nostalgic romanticism. Rather, for him imagination was intimately connected to an imperturbable nature, immanent and benign. "No man can measure what a single hour with Nature may have contributed to the moulding of his mind," Higginson wrote. "The influence is self-renewing, and if for a long time it baffles expression by reason of its fineness, so much the better in the end." This Emersonian notion was his form of worship-and in certain hours, d.i.c.kinson's too. "I was thinking, today-as I noticed, that the 'Supernatural,' was only the Natural, disclosed-," she told him.

Yet unlike Higginson, d.i.c.kinson teetered between belief and unbelief. For her, souls seldom touch their objects, as Emerson had written in "Experience," and defy our meager attempt to make sense of them. ("Perception of an Object costs / ," she writes, "Precise the Object's loss-.") But disappointment does not deter her. Rather, she seizes the ephemeral in nature-in human nature-through art, tracing what she called "The Myrrhs, and Mochas, of the Mind." That is, while Higginson staked his life on a meaning latent in the world, d.i.c.kinson created that meaning. To her, perception was a matter of probing, whatever the cost, into what Melville had called the very axis of reality, the Pit; as she said, "Heaven over it-/ And Heaven beside, and Heaven abroad; / And yet a Pit-." Poetry recorded what, if anything, she found there: "The Zeros taught Us-Phosphorus."

But Higginson had faith, at bottom, in inalienable human rights, and it spurred him to fight for equality, justice, a heaven on earth; whether he would be successful was another matter. And of the two of them, Higginson and d.i.c.kinson, he would suffer more disillusionment, although paradoxically it made him a meliorist, his faith firmly placed in the future. But with an imagination at once more alienated and more free, d.i.c.kinson stayed angry, witty, agnostic, pantheistic, madcap-although committed, as he was, to the salutary power of art. In an early letter to Higginson, sent in July 1863, when she enclosed the poem "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church-," she suggested we seek what is with us always: So instead of getting to Heaven, at last-I'm going, all along.

d.i.c.kINSON HAD NOT KNOWN that Colonel Higginson had been wounded in the summer, as she explained, because she had taken ill that September and then went to Boston the following spring to consult with the eminent ophthalmologist Henry Willard Williams of Arlington Street. Something was wrong with her eyes. She could not bear light. "The snow-light offends them," she told her cousin, "and the house is bright." Reading was difficult, if not impossible. "What I see not, I better see-/ Through Faith-," she rea.s.sured herself, "My Hazel Eye / Has periods of shutting-/ But, No lid has Memory-." that Colonel Higginson had been wounded in the summer, as she explained, because she had taken ill that September and then went to Boston the following spring to consult with the eminent ophthalmologist Henry Willard Williams of Arlington Street. Something was wrong with her eyes. She could not bear light. "The snow-light offends them," she told her cousin, "and the house is bright." Reading was difficult, if not impossible. "What I see not, I better see-/ Through Faith-," she rea.s.sured herself, "My Hazel Eye / Has periods of shutting-/ But, No lid has Memory-."

The diagnosis for her condition seems to have been rheumatic iritis (anterior uveitis), a disease that comes and goes and whose prognosis is good. An irritation in the iris, possibly congenital, that causes pain, soreness, light sensitivity, and blurred vision, the condition is often a.s.sociated with diabetes; in d.i.c.kinson's case, its onset and causes are unknown.

During the course of her treatment, she stayed with Norcross cousins Louise and Frances in a boardinghouse at 86 Austin Street in Cambridgeport. She answered Higginson's note, forwarded to her there, saying her doctor would not let her go back to Amherst, "yet I work in my Prison, and make Guests for myself-." But the restless bustle of urban life-and her anxiety, her inactivity, her ailment-depressed her. Perhaps she could manage to write her poetry, though the physician had advised against sewing and reading. "I wish to see you more than before I failed-," she lamented to Higginson, her language drastic and similar to that of the poem "I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-," possibly composed around this time: And then the Windows failed-and thenI could not see to see- Unaware that he had been injured, she also did not know much about his recovery, she said, but word of it would "excel" her own. That was overstatement. Her eye trouble, Higginson's wound, even Hawthorne's sudden death (which she mentioned to Higginson) spelled the end of an era. She was cut off. "The only News I know / ," she told him with bleak humor, "Is Bulletins all day / From Immortality."

Not until the end of November could she go home, long after the apples had ripened and wild geese, heading south, had darkened the sky. And yet with her eyes not fully healed, she had to return to Boston in the spring and summer of 1865, just at the time the savage war finally ended. Years later she remembered her own private ordeal as "a Calamity," which no doubt it was. Writing to Joseph Lyman, she recalled that "I had a woe, the only one that ever made me tremble. It was a shutting out of all the dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul-BOOKS. The medical man said avaunt ye books tormentors, he also said 'down, thoughts, & plunge into her soul.' He might as well have said, 'Eyes be blind', 'heart be still'. So I had eight weary months of Siberia."

And yet with all this-the treatments, the fear of blindness, the war, the displacement-d.i.c.kinson continued to sing from those charnel steps. For in spite of everything, she, like Higginson, discovered self-renewal in natural recurrence, which was not revelation, resurrection, or religious cant. It was a pensive faith, calm and courageous, and a gift to Higginson in a lovely poem about the crickets of late summer: Further in Summer than the BirdsPathetic from the Gra.s.sA minor Nation celebratesIt's un.o.btrusive Ma.s.s.No Ordinance be seenSo gradual the GraceA pensive Custom it becomesEnlarging Loneliness.Antiquest felt at NoonWhen August burning lowArise this spectral CanticleRepose to typifyRemit as yet no GraceNo Furrow on the GlowYet a Druidic DifferenceEnhances Nature now The crickets' chirping-an "un.o.btrusive Ma.s.s," both in the literal sense of being small and in the more figurative religious sense-initially strikes us as pathetic: the crickets are such an inconsequential nation, unlike, say, mighty America. But in them we can hear "August burning low," and though we realize we face death alone and unprotected, the almost primitive sound of these small creatures-a "spectral Canticle"-offers us the solace of "a Druidic Difference": rituals of birth and death, beginnings and ends, in song.

Likely written just after the war, the poem was mailed to Higginson along with a brief message; Carlo, her dog, had died, she told him, and then she asked needlessly, "Would you instruct me now?"

NINE

No Other Way

A man of any feeling must feed his imagination; there must be a woman of whom he can dream.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Malbone Malbone Tuesday, August 16. The heat wave over, fresh rural breezes rustled the treetops when shortly after two o'clock Colonel Higginson sauntered over to Main Street from the Amherst Inn. He had never been to Amherst before. It struck him as a small, sweet, typical New England town framed by those lovely, lilting Pelham Hills-and deadly dull on a summer's afternoon.

Slender, long legged, and in the bloom of middle age at forty-six, his hair black and without a glint of silver, Higginson, with his ramrod posture and positive step, kept his lapses of confidence to himself-that "inward darkness," as he once called it. His public persona demanded the mask, and besides it wasn't entirely false: he was a preternaturally hopeful man, tediously good-natured, polite, fastidious, gallant, and benign.

He had been hoping to make this visit for a while. Eight years had pa.s.sed since he first opened d.i.c.kinson's small envelope with its fantastic enclosures, but the war had intervened, and right afterward he had been busy rounding up contributors for the Harvard Memorial Biographies. Harvard Memorial Biographies. He had written thirteen of the entries himself. And there were the speaking engagements he did not turn down and those essays he wrote almost compulsively, as if addicted to the immediate gratification of seeing his name in print. He wrote swiftly, easily; he would have liked to dig deeper into his imagination, but there was never time. He had written thirteen of the entries himself. And there were the speaking engagements he did not turn down and those essays he wrote almost compulsively, as if addicted to the immediate gratification of seeing his name in print. He wrote swiftly, easily; he would have liked to dig deeper into his imagination, but there was never time.

He also translated Petrarch's sonnets and the discourses of Epictetus, the Stoic moralist born a slave, whose opening sentence in the Encheiridion Encheiridion reads, as Higginson put it, "There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power." We must let go the things beyond our power. But this seems to protect the status quo, Henry James pointed out in his review of the translation, though James also admitted that Epictetus was "a man among men, an untiring observer, and a good deal of a satirist"-rather like Higginson, as a matter of fact. "When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shrink from being seen to do it, even though the world should misunderstand it," Higginson had translated from book 35 of the reads, as Higginson put it, "There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power." We must let go the things beyond our power. But this seems to protect the status quo, Henry James pointed out in his review of the translation, though James also admitted that Epictetus was "a man among men, an untiring observer, and a good deal of a satirist"-rather like Higginson, as a matter of fact. "When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shrink from being seen to do it, even though the world should misunderstand it," Higginson had translated from book 35 of the Encheiridion. Encheiridion. "For if you are not acting rightly, shun the action itself; if you are, why fear those who wrongly censure you?" "For if you are not acting rightly, shun the action itself; if you are, why fear those who wrongly censure you?"

While Higginson's Epictetus defined integrity for him, his translation of Petrarch's sonnets revealed pa.s.sions of a different stripe. "I seem to find her now, and now perceive / How far away she is; now rise, now fall." To him, Laura was the incarnation of art and beauty, though these postwar days, he complained dolefully, "n.o.body comprehends Petrarch. Philosophers and sensualists all refuse to believe that his dream of Laura went on, even when he had a mistress and a child. Why not? Every one must have something to which his dreams can cling, amid the degradations of actual life, and this tie is more real than the degradation; and if he holds to the tie, it will one day save." He dwelled in possibility.

Emily d.i.c.kinson may or may not have been Higginson's Laura, but at home there was poor unhappy Mary, whose suffering he could hardly bear. Virtually paralyzed, her fingers so stiff she turned the pages of a book with a wand, she sat in her chair day after day, forgivably querulous and upset. His home had become a hospital, he confided to his diary, and Mary, crying for the pain he was powerless to relieve, begged him over and over not to leave her, and yet she chided him so mercilessly and so often his friends marveled he did not ship her off to a real hospital. "On the whole I think him an astonishing success under difficulties!-," observed one. "What would become of you, you, for instance, or me, to sleep where he sleeps-embrace what he embraces!" for instance, or me, to sleep where he sleeps-embrace what he embraces!"

But that he and d.i.c.kinson had not yet met face-to-face, despite Higginson's schedule and his obligations, was not entirely his fault. She had been difficult. Cajole as he might, she would not budge from Amherst. He had proposed that she come to Boston: "All ladies do," he said. Doubtless he said just the wrong thing. "I had promised to visit my Physician for a few days in May," she cordially replied to him in 1866, "but Father objects because he is in the habit of me." He tried to rea.s.sure her, inviting her to one of the Radical Club meetings, perfectly respectable, taking place every third Monday of the month at the Sargents' on Beacon Hill. Men-and women-presented papers on religion and science. Emerson was reading one. If that seemed too intimate or not to her liking, there was also the Woman's Club on Tremont Street, which would be celebrating Margaret Fuller's life and work. He himself would read a paper on the Greek G.o.ddesses, he added with some pride, although on that particular day, he reflected, he would not be able to pay as much attention to her as he'd like.

d.i.c.kinson politely rebuffed him. "I must omit Boston. Father prefers so," she explained. "He likes me to travel with him but objects that I visit." Her refusal didn't deter him from asking again; she had to be more blunt: "I do not cross my Father's ground," she flatly stated, "to any House or town." The incredulous Higginson would understand more, or think he did, when he met her father. "Thin dry & speechless," he remarked with a tad of aversion.

In the summer of 1870, the death of his elder brother Stephen, who had been staying near Amherst, gave Higginson an opportunity to meet at last the strange poet who'd dropped into his world so abruptly, who seemed alternately fragile and st.u.r.dy, who bewildered him with an intelligence and a wryness and a will unlike that of anyone he had ever encountered. As far as he could tell, she confounded everyone. In Worcester he had spoken to one of her uncles, who shed no light at all, and though he would soon chat with the current president of Amherst College, he learned little more than he had already divined in their eight-year correspondence-that "there is always one thing to be grateful for-," as she would tell Higginson, "that one is one's self & not somebody else." She was definitely her own self.

She cowed him. "Sometimes I take out your letters & verses, dear friend, and when I feel their strange power, it is not strange that I find it hard to write & that long months pa.s.s," he admitted to her in one of the letters of his that do survive. "I have the greatest desire to see you, always feeling that if I could once take you by the hand I might be something to you; but till then you only enshroud yourself in this fiery mist & I cannot reach you, but only rejoice in the rare sparkles of light."

What did he want to be to her? He hardly knew. "I am always the same toward you, & never relax my interest in what you send to me," he told her. "I should like to hear from you very often, but feel always timid lest what I write write should be badly aimed & miss that fine edge of thought which you bear. It would be so easy, I fear, to miss you." He knew his limits. should be badly aimed & miss that fine edge of thought which you bear. It would be so easy, I fear, to miss you." He knew his limits.

If only he could see her, touch her hand, a.s.sure himself that she was real. Otherwise, she would remain a fantasy, even an obsession. How was it that she had such an unaccountable way of saying things? Perhaps because she lived with and for herself and her poetry? But to live so alone, so cut off from the rest of the world? "Of 'shunning Men and Women'-," she answered in an early letter, "they talk of Hallowed things, aloud-and embarra.s.s my Dog-He and I dont object to them, if they'll exist their side." Higginson came to see she was not really isolated-it was as if he was thinking out loud: "It isolates one anywhere to think beyond a certain point or have such luminous flashes as come to you-so perhaps the place does not make much difference."

It did not. Remarkable.

He now stood at the door of the frowning Homestead, brown brick, with its gracious side garden and its tall, unwelcoming trees-a country lawyer's place, he noticed with uncharacteristic condescension. d.i.c.kinson said she would be waiting. "I will be at Home," she had written him, "and glad."

He pulled the bell. A servant opened the heavy door. Offering his card, he was shown to a dark, stiff parlor cluttered with books and decorated with the predictably dim engravings. The piano lid was raised, but what caught his attention was the table where someone had conspicuously placed his Out-Door Papers Out-Door Papers and his recently published novel, and his recently published novel, Malbone. Malbone. He had been welcomed. He had been welcomed.

In a few minutes he heard what sounded to him, as he later said, like a child's step rushing in the hall. Then an airy, slim form appeared: Emily d.i.c.kinson, her dress white, her shawl blue, her hair t.i.tian red, parted in the middle and pulled back. She carried two daylilies in her hand, which she placed in his. "These are my introduction," she whispered. "How long will you stay?"

FIVE YEARS HAD Pa.s.sED since the end of the war. She had continued to write poetry, but at a far slower rate. In his fine variorum edition of her work, Ralph Franklin, her most recent editor, estimates 229 poems in 1865 but not many more than 12 per year until 1870, when he counts 28. Of course, no one really knows: many poems may be lost or unrecovered or contained in letters themselves lost or unrecovered. One thing seems sure: after the flurry of poems published in 1864, "The Snake" ("A narrow Fellow in the Gra.s.s") was the only other one ever to appear in print in her lifetime. since the end of the war. She had continued to write poetry, but at a far slower rate. In his fine variorum edition of her work, Ralph Franklin, her most recent editor, estimates 229 poems in 1865 but not many more than 12 per year until 1870, when he counts 28. Of course, no one really knows: many poems may be lost or unrecovered or contained in letters themselves lost or unrecovered. One thing seems sure: after the flurry of poems published in 1864, "The Snake" ("A narrow Fellow in the Gra.s.s") was the only other one ever to appear in print in her lifetime.

It first surfaced on February 14, 1866, on the front page of the Springfield Daily Republican. Daily Republican. An implied rejoinder to Whittier's more sentimental "Barefoot Boy," the poem is a carefree account of a boy's "transport / Of Cordiality" with "Nature's People." But nature also eludes him (this is a theme in d.i.c.kinson's work), for when the boy stoops to pick up a snake that Whittier's boy never even sees, "It wrinkled And was gone-." And, as the speaker concludes, he An implied rejoinder to Whittier's more sentimental "Barefoot Boy," the poem is a carefree account of a boy's "transport / Of Cordiality" with "Nature's People." But nature also eludes him (this is a theme in d.i.c.kinson's work), for when the boy stoops to pick up a snake that Whittier's boy never even sees, "It wrinkled And was gone-." And, as the speaker concludes, he ...never met this FellowAttended or aloneWithout a tighter BreathingAnd Zero at the Bone.

In that ravishing final image, "Zero at the Bone," d.i.c.kinson manages in an instant to link the boy, chilled to the marrow, to the creature of backbone: our fears, ourselves. It's a quick, condensed performance of d.i.c.kinson at her bristling best.

Again insisting to Higginson that she "did not print," as she phrased it, she nonetheless enclosed a newspaper clipping of the poem when she wrote him, "lest you meet my Snake," she explained, "and suppose I deceive it was robbed of me." (She may have already given him a holograph copy of the poem and now worried lest he stumble across it in the paper.) But her scruple was a cover, for she seemed just as intent on demonstrating that the poem was worth publishing in the first place.

And like any professional writer, she objected to editorial glad-handing: "defeated too of the third line by the punctuation," she complained to Higginson. "The third and fourth were one-." In the Republican Republican's version of the poem, the first four lines read: A narrow fellow in the gra.s.sOccasionally rides;You may have met him-did you not?His notice instant is, The question mark ending line 3 does in fact defeat the enjambment of lines 3 and 4 that exists in one of her ma.n.u.scripts, as follows: You may have met Him-did you notHis notice instant is- But whether Samuel Bowles or his literary editor, Dr. Holland, another d.i.c.kinson family friend, mangled the poem, neither man robbed her of it. Josiah Holland, though more conservative than Bowles, was himself a writer of popular poems and essays, under the pseudonym Timothy t.i.tcomb, and he, like Bowles, appreciated d.i.c.kinson's privacy too much to betray it.

Yet to Higginson she pretended otherwise. The poem had been stolen, she had insisted, and of course she had no other mentor than he, certainly not Bowles or Holland, whose friendship with her she did not mention. "If I still entreat you to teach me, are you much displeased?" she asked, seemingly without guile. And if he was satisfied with her explanation, they could continue on the same footing as before, she said; she would be patient, constant, a good little girl welcoming his criticism ("your knife").

As if to reiterate her willingness to undergo his scalpel, she enclosed another poem: A Death blow is a Life blow to SomeWho till they died, did not alive become-Who had they lived-had died but whenThey died, Vitality begun- Written by no little girl, the poem is about people who don't know how to live, and she does, she suggests-through poetry, which released her, energized her, refreshed her, and relieved, as she had said, that awful palsy.

What did he answer? What could he? Unfortunately, Higginson did not want us to know, for though he saved and catalogued a huge inventory of correspondence, diaries, journals, and jottings, he evidently destroyed those personal papers he deemed too intimate for public consumption. But in a fragment of a letter to d.i.c.kinson that luckily survives, he sounds less like a colonel, a literary critic, or a b.u.t.toned-up editor than a beseeching lover, diffident before the individual he prized above all others. "Still, you see, I try," he told her. He wanted to know her. "I think if I could once see you & know that you are real, I might fare better."