"I would like to be what you deem me," she humbly answered, inviting him to be her guest at the local inn.

"It is hard [for me] to understand how you can live so alone," he said again, "with thoughts of such a quality coming up in you."

These were honest letters; they spoke of heartache and pain, nature and art, and the consolations one may or may not find there. "To undertake is to achieve," d.i.c.kinson reminded him in one of the poems she sent him. They spoke of what troubled them: loss, friendship; and more discreetly, far less directly, they spoke of their feelings. He must have opened himself to her. "You mention Immortality," she noted. "That is the Flood subject. I was told that the Bank was the safest place for a Finless mind."

Was Higginson's mind finless? Did he dare tell her of the doubts or ambitions he generally kept to himself? of his desire for immortality? "The 'infinite Beauty'-of which you speak comes too near to seek," she replied.

"To escape enchantment," she added, "one must always flee. Paradise is of the option."

Though infinite Beauty was said to be Paradise, or so she had been taught, she was not so certain. Even if death is seductive-that promise of an eternal Paradise-one must nevertheless live. "Time is a test of trouble," she wrote, including verse in the body of a letter to Higginson in the spring of 1866, But not a remedy-If such it prove, it prove tooThere was no malady.

She sent him more poems: as well as "To undertake is to achieve," there was "Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple" (published in Drum Beat Drum Beat), "Ample make this Bed-," and the tender lyric "As imperceptibly as Grief."

As imperceptibly as GriefThe Summer lapsed away-Too imperceptible at lastTo feel like Perfidy-A Quietness distilledAs Twilight long begunOr Nature spending with herselfSequestered Afternoon.The Dusk drew earlier inThe Morning foreign shoneA Courteous yet harrowing graceAs Guest that would be goneAnd thus without a WingOr service of a keelOur Summer made her light escapeInto the Beautiful.

Her description of the summer may be her description of him: the guest that would disappear, if he ever came, and her idea of him never quite fulfilled by his presence. And he could a.s.sume that the diaphanous summer, making its light escape, is like d.i.c.kinson herself, a guest come for a moment to stay but a moment, her grace courteous yet unaccountably exacting, her life sequestered and yet not soundless-never that-but provocative and beautiful. Higginson could recognize her in the summer, and if he came to Amherst in the summer, he certainly would.

"Is it more far to Amherst?"

IN THE SUMMER OF 1867, she dashed off a few lines: "Bringing still my 'plea for culture,' would it teach me now?" she asked, referring this time to his recent she dashed off a few lines: "Bringing still my 'plea for culture,' would it teach me now?" she asked, referring this time to his recent Atlantic Atlantic article, "A Plea for Culture." Again she included another poem sure to flatter him: article, "A Plea for Culture." Again she included another poem sure to flatter him: The Luxury to apprehendThe Luxury 'twould beTo look at thee a single timeAn Epicure of meIn whatsoever presence makesTill for a further foodI scarcely recollect to starveSo first am I supplied.The Luxury to meditateThe Luxury it was...o...b..nquet on thy CountenanceA sumptuousness suppliesTo plainer Days whose Table, farAs Certainty can seeIs laden with a single Crumb-The Consciousness of thee- He didn't answer right away; wanting his reply to be perfect, he procrastinated. Then he begged, apologetic, for her to "write & tell me something in prose or verse, & I will be less fastidious in future & willing to write clumsy things, rather than none."

She held firm. She wanted him to visit. "I would like to thank you for your great kindness," she wrote stiffly, "but never try to lift the words which I cannot hold. Should you come to Amherst, I might then succeed, though Grat.i.tude is the timid wealth of those who have nothing." At the letter's close, she returned, more emotionally, to her appeal. He had saved her life, she reminded him. "To thank you in person has been since then one of my few requests. The child that asks my flower 'Will you,' he says-'Will you' and so to ask for what I want I know no other way."

Her request was direct and unequivocal. And she possessed a fine sense of drama.

THOUGH INTRIGUED, perhaps half in love (or so he may have fancied), and doubtless moved by this strange woman, he would not stand at the threshold of the Homestead for yet another year. He would never antagonize Mary with a special trip to see the poetess his wife regarded as crazy. perhaps half in love (or so he may have fancied), and doubtless moved by this strange woman, he would not stand at the threshold of the Homestead for yet another year. He would never antagonize Mary with a special trip to see the poetess his wife regarded as crazy.

"Why do the insane cling to you so?" Mary had crossly asked. To Higginson that was a compliment. "The great reason why the real apostles of truth don't make any more impression is this-," he had explained to her many years before, "the moment any person among us begins to broach any 'new views' and intimate that all things aren't exactly right, the conservatives lose no time in holding up their fingers and branding him as an unsafe person-fanatic, visionary, insane."

He had not changed. "If every man who is accused of having a crack in his brain is to be silenced, which of us is safe?" he asked. Half-crack'd visionaries: they remained, always, his ideal.

And when he told d.i.c.kinson that he had to put off his trip to Amherst because of work, he had spoken the truth. To make ends meet, he clambered aboard trains to lecture in out-of-the-way places, for his writing could not pay all the bills even though Fields in 1866 had offered him one thousand dollars for ten Atlantic Atlantic articles. But when Fields renewed the offer the following year, Higginson turned it down. He hated choosing subjects near at hand, he said, referring to his accounts of army life, which he reluctantly began publishing in 1864 and detested writing. articles. But when Fields renewed the offer the following year, Higginson turned it down. He hated choosing subjects near at hand, he said, referring to his accounts of army life, which he reluctantly began publishing in 1864 and detested writing.

"I feel this strangely in turning over my army papers, they seem to belong to some one twinborn with me, but who led a wholly different life from me," he had written his family. "It is hard to link ourselves to this something which was ourselves but is no longer & never will be again." Although he missed the camaraderie of the men and the daily sense that he was doing good and that he was respected, even loved, for it, Higginson did not idealize the days of grisly war. To write of them-of himself during them-was difficult. "That I was in it [the war] myself seems the dreamiest thing of all," he said.

I cannot put my hand upon it in the least, and if some one convinced me, in five minutes, some morning, that I never was there at all, it seems as if it wd. all drop quietly out of my life, & I shld read my own letters & think they were some one else's. This is one thing that makes it hard for me to work on them, or write anything about those days.

But he forced himself because he had a mission: to educate the public about the heroism of the black troops. "Until it is done," he knew, "the way will not seem clear for other things."

Still, he was unhappy. He looked haggard. He had been slow to adjust to his new home in Newport, Rhode Island, the temperate seaside perch where Mary and her several cats had moved while her husband skirmished in South Carolina. Though she hoped the salty sea breeze would reinvigorate her, she had come for more than climate: paternal seat of the Channings, with its picturesque coastline, gambrel-roofed houses, and puffed sense of its history, Newport was, as Henry James would say, the "one right residence in all our great country." For centuries it was also a hospitable spot for Quakers, antinomians, Jews, Unitarians, and other freethinking heretics, although the Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley, shortly after stepping ash.o.r.e, took up the local custom and purchased himself two slaves. More recently artists and eccentrics and plutocrats included the James family, the architect Richard Morris Hunt, his brother the painter William Morris Hunt, the matchless John La Farge (one of Higginson's favorites), and Longfellow's witty brother-in-law, Tom Appleton, the man who reputedly said "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." (Oscar Wilde later borrowed the remark-and credit for it; Higginson borrowed it too.) Writers also flocked to Newport: Julia Ward Howe, who with Higginson formed a Town and Country Club, the poet Kate Field, Mary Mapes Dodge (author of Hans Brinker Hans Brinker), and the perky widow Helen Hunt, who, mourning her husband and son, had rented two dainty rooms in the place where the Higginsons boarded.

Higginson preferred the physical beauty of the place to the people and so stretched his long legs along the crooked streets near the s.h.a.ggy warehouses or poked about the old hulks and fancy yachts in the cluttered mast yards. Ambling over the st.u.r.dy unpainted wharves, among rusty anchors and old barrels, he called this part of town Oldport to distinguish it from the more affluent section of the city, with its grand liveries and well-dressed hotels. Year-round residents like the Higginsons paid scant attention to the rich summer people, he wrote in The Atlantic, The Atlantic, with their gowns and gossip. Instead he lived for the pale, hazy light that in winter played on the water when the sun narrowed and the sky turned the color of charcoal. He sat on the cliffs near the beach and watched red and green sailboats flash before him; he collected driftwood from sandy coves and repeated the names of the rock formations for the sound of them: Hanging Rock, Spouting Rock, Paradise Rocks. It wasn't Ma.s.sachusetts but would have to serve. with their gowns and gossip. Instead he lived for the pale, hazy light that in winter played on the water when the sun narrowed and the sky turned the color of charcoal. He sat on the cliffs near the beach and watched red and green sailboats flash before him; he collected driftwood from sandy coves and repeated the names of the rock formations for the sound of them: Hanging Rock, Spouting Rock, Paradise Rocks. It wasn't Ma.s.sachusetts but would have to serve.

The Higginsons were staying at Mrs. Hannah Dame's boardinghouse on Broad Street, a wide, leafy thoroughfare fronted by great elms and commodious eighteenth-century houses. Seated in a wide chair with its arms rigged as pear-shaped tables, Mary amused her guests with her crusty maxims and her innumerable barbs about people and books. Good-hearted Helen Hunt tried to entertain her, decorating Mrs. Dame's back parlor with baskets of flowers for a musical evening of Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Beethoven, arranged both for Mary's benefit and for Wentworth's, so he could repay the courtesies of his neighbors without excluding his wife. Otherwise, he occasionally stepped out to this or that soiree with the vivacious Mrs. Hunt on his chaste arm.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson at 46, in Rhode Island, 1870.

But he had no political traction. His appointment to the Newport School Committee was vetoed because one of its members a.s.sumed that, as a soldier in the First South Carolina Regiment of Volunteers of African Descent, he had to be black. Elected regardless (the mistake was discovered), in sweet retaliation Higginson abolished segregated schools in Newport. For his efforts, he lost the next election.

Proudly calling himself a Black Republican, Higginson viewed Reconstruction as the opportunity to eliminate discriminatory practices and laws; Reconstruction, to him, first meant the redistribution of the land of the former plantations to the freed slaves, for he was not eager to appease former Confederates and, less so, former slaveholders. He also launched a verbal campaign to end segregation in the North as well as the South, on the streetcars of Philadelphia, in the schools of New York, or in the special galleries reserved for black people in Boston theaters. "When the freedmen are lost in the ma.s.s of freemen, then the work will be absolutely complete," he wrote. And he advocated full and immediate enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, which he termed simply fair play. The best preparation for freedom is freedom: "Fail in this result, and the future holds endless disorders," he warned his readers, "with civil war reappearing at the end."

Though he often spoke in public on behalf of the Freedmen's Aid Society (his sister Anna was secretary of the Brattleboro, Vermont, bureau), he declined to join the New England branch as one of its officers. "I do not want to give any more years of my life exclusively to those people now, as much as I am attached to them," he told his sisters. Also, he was dubious about the project: though intending to make good on General Sherman's promise to give every family of former slaves forty acres and a mule, General Saxton, now a.s.sistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, was blocked at every turn by white farmers who wanted to keep the black population from owning land. Precipitously mustered out of service in 1866, Saxton was replaced by the unscrupulous (Higginson's word) Brigadier General John M. Brannan, a former military head of the Department of the South. "If it had been left to him," Higginson complained, "the freedmen would not have had a house, nor a school, nor a musket, nor a friend; the colored women would have had no liberty, except to be the concubines of the United States officers; nor the men, but to be their servants."

Confiscated land was soon handed back to its former white owners, ex-Confederates were reseated in Congress, and men like Nathan Bedford Forrest, after presiding over the capture-or the ma.s.sacre-of black troops at Fort Pillow, went on to lead the newly founded Ku Klux Klan. Affairs in the president's office weren't much better. Andrew Johnson failed to carry out the mandate of the Radical Republicans, and Higginson wrote scornfully that "what most men mean to-day by the 'president's plan of reconstruction' is the pardon of every rebel for the crime of rebellion, and the utter refusal to pardon a single black loyalist for the crime of being black." In the North the situation was almost as bad. The expectations heaped on the freed slave were so unrealistic-a racism in reverse-that Higginson cried, "Do you suppose that black men are born into the world such natural saints that none of the vices of the white men are found among them?"

His outcries lost to the ephemera of journalism, Higginson's lasting contributions to Reconstruction were his Atlantic Atlantic essays on the war, collected in 1869 as essays on the war, collected in 1869 as Army Life in a Black Regiment. Army Life in a Black Regiment. Including material copied directly from his journals as well as a narrative of his three expeditions, his ruminations on the valor of the black soldier-and his outrage that black soldiers had been underpaid when paid at all Including material copied directly from his journals as well as a narrative of his three expeditions, his ruminations on the valor of the black soldier-and his outrage that black soldiers had been underpaid when paid at all-Army Life is a minor masterpiece. Today considered gently racist, if not condescending, it nonetheless remains a striking, unusual, and empathetic social doc.u.ment; its account of daily activity in the army during wartime is riveting in its detail, compa.s.sion, and humor. Higginson's very real affection for his regiment is evident on every page, as is his pride in what he and his soldiers were able to do, and his transcriptions of the spirituals sung by his men is itself a remarkable-and groundbreaking-contribution to African American folk culture. is a minor masterpiece. Today considered gently racist, if not condescending, it nonetheless remains a striking, unusual, and empathetic social doc.u.ment; its account of daily activity in the army during wartime is riveting in its detail, compa.s.sion, and humor. Higginson's very real affection for his regiment is evident on every page, as is his pride in what he and his soldiers were able to do, and his transcriptions of the spirituals sung by his men is itself a remarkable-and groundbreaking-contribution to African American folk culture.

At the heart of the book is the voluptuous Sea Islands, a tropical forest of Arden in a world of violence: "Galloping through green lanes, miles of triumphal arches of wild roses,-roses pale and large and fragrant, mingled with great boughs of the white cornel, fantastic ma.s.ses, snowy surprises,-such were our rides, ranging from eight to fifteen and even twenty miles," he wrote. "Back to a later dinner with our various experiences, and perhaps specimens to match,-a thunder-snake, eight feet long; an armful of great white, scentless pond-lilies. After dinner, to the tangled garden for rosebuds or early magnolias, whose cloying fragrance will always bring back to me the full zest of those summer days."

Edmund Wilson, calling Army Life Army Life limpid and unaffected, likened it to the memoirs of General Grant, and praising Higginson's lush description, Howard Mumford Jones, a twentieth-century literary critic, called limpid and unaffected, likened it to the memoirs of General Grant, and praising Higginson's lush description, Howard Mumford Jones, a twentieth-century literary critic, called Army Life Army Life a study in enchantment. But it is also an expression of disenchantment: frustration with stereotypes and pat a.s.sumptions, with empty promises and vainglorious men, and surprise at the revelation that you might not be the person you thought you were. It is therefore a book of lights gleaming in the dark, of Southern marshes and Northern confusion, of tangled vegetation and of fearsomeness and fragile hope. a study in enchantment. But it is also an expression of disenchantment: frustration with stereotypes and pat a.s.sumptions, with empty promises and vainglorious men, and surprise at the revelation that you might not be the person you thought you were. It is therefore a book of lights gleaming in the dark, of Southern marshes and Northern confusion, of tangled vegetation and of fearsomeness and fragile hope.

Nowhere is this clearer than in "A Night in the Water," a stunning, almost existential essay composed in Higginson's most straightforward, pellucid style. Again his metaphor is of swimming into unknown territory, and this time he recounts a nighttime excursion when, swimming naked, he is suddenly clutched by fear: Doubts trembled in my mind like the weltering water, and that awful sensation of having one's feet unsupported, which benumbs the spent swimmer's heart, seemed to clutch at mine, though not yet to enter it. I was more absorbed in that singular sensation of nightmare, such as one may feel equally when lost by land or by water, as if one's own position were all right, but the place looked for had somehow been preternaturally abolished out of the universe. At best, might not a man in the water lose all his power of direction, and so move in an endless circle until he sank exhausted? It required a deliberate and conscious effort to keep my brain quite cool. I have not the reputation of being of an excitable temperament, but the contrary; yet I could at that moment see my way to a condition in which one might become insane in an instant. It was as if a fissure opened somewhere, and I saw my way into a mad-house; then it closed, and everything went on as before.

Like d.i.c.kinson, he too could find poetry in these deep, dark states of mind. They must have known this about each other. But for Higginson the vision of blankness pa.s.ses. Everything goes on as before. He is a daylight man.

Yet there was more to him than sunshine and reform, and perceptive readers, like d.i.c.kinson, could sense it.

In 1869, William Dean Howells, preferring the book's soldiering to its poetry, favorably reviewed it in The Atlantic, The Atlantic, which he, not Higginson, would soon take over, and observed, rather ruefully, that the nation had grown tired of racial issues. which he, not Higginson, would soon take over, and observed, rather ruefully, that the nation had grown tired of racial issues.

IN NEWPORT, HIGGINSON CHOPPED WOOD early in the morning for exercise. It staved off depression. In the afternoon he swung from parallel bars and taught calisthenics at the gymnasium he had helped found. At dusk he sauntered about town. He also sat at his desk for four hours each day, pen in hand. In addition to the promised articles for Fields, he reviewed books like Th.o.r.eau's early in the morning for exercise. It staved off depression. In the afternoon he swung from parallel bars and taught calisthenics at the gymnasium he had helped found. At dusk he sauntered about town. He also sat at his desk for four hours each day, pen in hand. In addition to the promised articles for Fields, he reviewed books like Th.o.r.eau's Cape Cod- Cape Cod-he had hoped to edit Th.o.r.eau's journals-and he continued to contribute a steady stream of articles to The Independent, The Radical, The Nation, The Independent, The Radical, The Nation, and the and the New York Tribune, New York Tribune, in which he called for the education and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the freed slaves. in which he called for the education and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the freed slaves.

And at the same time aching to do something completely different, he inched his way toward a novel.

But aside from the astonishing "Night in the Water," Higginson's finest work remained his political writing. Packing his outrage into sentences of force, grace, and civility that made his anger all the more pointed, he said exactly what he meant. He did not gussy up his prose with scholarly comment or learned allusions. "All Southern white men cannot be instantaneously convinced that their late slave is a man and a brother," he declared in 1865, "nor is it necessary that they should be. It will be enough, for the present, to convince them that he must be treated like one." He declaimed in strong, ringing terms fueled by ethical self-certainty, as when he excoriated northerners and liberals in Congress.

It is we who are permitting black loyalists to be disarmed, and white rebels to be armed again, under the name of "militia." It is we who are permitting open proclamation of the re-establishment of slavery under the name of "apprenticeship." It is we who consent to the exclusion from the courts and the ballot-box of those who have fought to reopen the ballet-box and re-establish the power of the courts. It is we who are reviving the old a.s.sumption that "the people" of the South means the white population, rebel or otherwise; and that the black loyalists are something less than "the people."

Yet he devalued his political writing as unliterary. "It is not that politics are so unworthy, but that no one man can do everything," he wrote in The Atlantic The Atlantic essay "A Plea for Culture," which had prompted a note of approval from d.i.c.kinson. "There are a thousand roughhewn brains which can well perform the plain work which American statesmanship now demands, without calling on the artist to cut blocks with his razor. His shrinking is not cowardice," he continued; "this relief from glaring publicity is the natural condition under which works of art mature.... A book is the only immortality." essay "A Plea for Culture," which had prompted a note of approval from d.i.c.kinson. "There are a thousand roughhewn brains which can well perform the plain work which American statesmanship now demands, without calling on the artist to cut blocks with his razor. His shrinking is not cowardice," he continued; "this relief from glaring publicity is the natural condition under which works of art mature.... A book is the only immortality."

A book-not journalism, not politics, not the transient affairs of the everyday. This is what Emily d.i.c.kinson dreamed of. Perhaps he was thinking of her. ("A precious-mouldering pleasure-'tis-/ To meet an Antique Book-.") "In these later years, the arduous reforms into which the lifeblood of Puritanism has pa.s.sed have all helped to train us for art," Higginson observed, "because they have trained us in earnestness, even while they seemed to run counter to that spirit of joy in which art has its being." Higginson caught the drift of what had happened to his-and d.i.c.kinson's-Puritan heritage: that cleft between action and art, or what he called earnestness and joy. But he was also rationalizing his steady removal from the cause that had shaped his life, that had brought him to the church and thrust him out of it. Nurtured on the New, steeped in the exuberance of a just reform, Higginson had entered the war half-skeptical, half-hopeful: he saw his country sundered, its ideals politicized, its racism pervasive, and he understood, as if for the first time, how intractable inst.i.tutions are, how difficult it is to change them. In Newport his political efficacy was nil. "I don't believe there is a man here whom it cost more to come here than it did me," he would reflect in his journal. "I don't believe there has been a blacker Republican than I. I know for one that I have tried to find a sufficient sphere of duty inside the Republican party, and it has been nothing more or less than hard knocks and blows that drove me out of it." His specific references are unclear, but the corruption and meretricious razzle-dazzle of postwar America-the era soon known as the Gilded Age-and the material excess so palpable in Newport disgusted him. "n.o.body has any weight in America who is not in Congress," he bleakly observed, "and n.o.body gets into Congress without the necessity of bribing or b.u.t.ton-holing men whom he despises."

Disillusioned by the military, by the government, by the intransigence of the South, he justified his withdrawal into art, claiming-incredibly-that "except to secure the ballot for woman, a contest which is thus far advancing very peaceably, there seems nothing left which need be absolutely fought for; no great influence to keep us from a commonplace and perhaps debasing success." More and more he preferred a different, more creative writing. "My nature seems to be rather that of an artist than that of a thinker," he had confided in Emerson, wishing it were so.

Restless, he also befriended Hawthorne's eldest daughter, the lovely and star-crossed Una, who was briefly engaged to his favorite nephew, Storrow. Calling on Hawthorne's widow and daughters at the Wayside, itself a vestige of former times, Higginson sat in their plain, chilly parlor-perhaps in the very chair where Hawthorne had sat-and thumbed through the great man's notebooks. This was what he wanted: Hawthorne's rect.i.tude, his devotion to his art, his single-mindedness. If he had to ignore Hawthorne's despair or his odd friendship with Franklin Pierce, so be it; all that paled next to the man's achievement. The only immortality is a book.

If his commitment to social change prevented Higginson's devoting himself to art, it also protected him from the fear that, without it, he might lose his sense of direction, as he suggested in "A Night in the Water." But now his mother, recently deceased, was unable to censure him, and the war-and its disappointing aftermath-momentarily sc.r.a.ped his conscience clean, so he rolled up his sleeves and wrote three sketches of "Oldport," the setting for his novel Malbone, Malbone, and two short stories, "The Haunted Window" and "An Artist's Dream." These tales a.s.suaged his guilt about writing and two short stories, "The Haunted Window" and "An Artist's Dream." These tales a.s.suaged his guilt about writing Malbone Malbone because, in them, he punishes the protagonists for doing what he himself wished to do. because, in them, he punishes the protagonists for doing what he himself wished to do.

Flavored with atmospheric Gothic effects, "The Haunted Window" is interesting less for its contrived plot and moral pabulum than for the fact that the apparition's name is Emilia, a name that Higginson will use again in his novel. Emilia is art, the tempting seductress who drives men mad. And in the other story, pseudo-Hawthorne even to the t.i.tle ("An Artist's Dream"), Higginson's narrator visits a happily married artist and his beautiful wife, Laura-the Petrarchan reference meant to be self-evident-and realizes that while the couple are pa.s.sionate about each other, they mostly ignore their child. "Is it," asks Laura, referring to her marriage, "a great consecration, or a great crime." This answer is conventionally obvious, and when she dies, her bereaved husband discovers that it is their child and not his art that can relieve his awful suffering: "the artist had attained his dream," Higginson concludes his fable.

The apex of all this was Malbone, Malbone, the Hawthornean romance he announced to his sisters not long after his second trip to the Wayside, jubilantly reporting that Fields would be printing it serially in the Hawthornean romance he announced to his sisters not long after his second trip to the Wayside, jubilantly reporting that Fields would be printing it serially in The Atlantic The Atlantic during the first six months of 1869. This was the book, published later that year, that d.i.c.kinson had planted on the table at the Homestead when he came to call. during the first six months of 1869. This was the book, published later that year, that d.i.c.kinson had planted on the table at the Homestead when he came to call.

Malbone is the story of Higginson's doppelganger, the indolent and fickle Philip Malbone, whose good looks turn the heads of both s.e.xes. Higginson admitted that he had modeled Malbone in part on William Hurlburt, but he is also based on Higginson's nephew Storrow, whose unpardonable sin-a dalliance with another woman?-caused Una Hawthorne suddenly to break their engagement. But Malbone mostly sounds like Higginson himself, recast as the artist who falls in love with his fiancee's untamed half sister, Emilia, often referred to as Emily. is the story of Higginson's doppelganger, the indolent and fickle Philip Malbone, whose good looks turn the heads of both s.e.xes. Higginson admitted that he had modeled Malbone in part on William Hurlburt, but he is also based on Higginson's nephew Storrow, whose unpardonable sin-a dalliance with another woman?-caused Una Hawthorne suddenly to break their engagement. But Malbone mostly sounds like Higginson himself, recast as the artist who falls in love with his fiancee's untamed half sister, Emilia, often referred to as Emily.

When he wrote Malbone, Malbone, Higginson had not yet met Emily d.i.c.kinson in person, so he freely imagined her as lovely but intangible, with "a certain wild, entangled look..., as of some untamed outdoor thing, and [with] a kind of pathetic lost sweetness in her voice, which made her at once and forever a heroine of romance." And it is this Emily/Emilia that is his Laura, his ideal, his symbol of the unadulterated, untrammeled pursuit of art. For, as Malbone says, "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 him." Higginson had not yet met Emily d.i.c.kinson in person, so he freely imagined her as lovely but intangible, with "a certain wild, entangled look..., as of some untamed outdoor thing, and [with] a kind of pathetic lost sweetness in her voice, which made her at once and forever a heroine of romance." And it is this Emily/Emilia that is his Laura, his ideal, his symbol of the unadulterated, untrammeled pursuit of art. For, as Malbone says, "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 him."

But, also like Higginson, Malbone cannot attain his dream lover: he cannot lose himself in his pursuit of the ideal, and thus the affair between Malbone and Emilia ends tragically, when late one night, Emilia drowns in a stormy, featureless sea.

Emilia gone, Higginson thus restores the order of things, as convention prescribes. But convention had nothing to say about the nooks and crannies of an unusual friendship.

THE LONG-ANTIc.i.p.aTED MEETING: in the Homestead parlor after eight years of correspondence and tantalizing bafflement, Emily d.i.c.kinson and Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson stood together in the same room. "Forgive me if I am frightened," she apologized. "I never see strangers & hardly know what I say-." Nervous, she talked without stopping. Occasionally she paused to ask him to speak and then started all over again. "Manner between Angie Tilton & Mr. Alcott," he noted, referring to the two gabbiest people he knew, "but thoroughly ingenuous & simple which they are not & saying many things which you would have thought foolish & I wise." in the Homestead parlor after eight years of correspondence and tantalizing bafflement, Emily d.i.c.kinson and Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson stood together in the same room. "Forgive me if I am frightened," she apologized. "I never see strangers & hardly know what I say-." Nervous, she talked without stopping. Occasionally she paused to ask him to speak and then started all over again. "Manner between Angie Tilton & Mr. Alcott," he noted, referring to the two gabbiest people he knew, "but thoroughly ingenuous & simple which they are not & saying many things which you would have thought foolish & I wise."

He listed a few of her pungent observations: "I find ecstasy in living-the mere sense of living is joy enough."

"How do most people live without any thoughts."

"Is it oblivion or absorption when things pa.s.s from our minds?"

"Truth is such a rare rare thing it is delightful to tell it." thing it is delightful to tell it."

She told him more about her family. Her father read only on Sunday, "lonely & rigorous books," she added for emphasis. She made bread for her father because he liked only hers, Higginson noted, "& says, 'people must have puddings' this books," she added for emphasis. She made bread for her father because he liked only hers, Higginson noted, "& says, 'people must have puddings' this very very dreamily, as if they were comets-so she makes them." Doubtless she was ironic. And hyperbolic. She claimed she had not known how to read a clock until she was fifteen. "My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand & I was afraid to say I did not & afraid to ask any one else lest he should know." Her mother was weak. "I never had a mother," she said. "I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled." d.i.c.kinson endured alone. dreamily, as if they were comets-so she makes them." Doubtless she was ironic. And hyperbolic. She claimed she had not known how to read a clock until she was fifteen. "My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand & I was afraid to say I did not & afraid to ask any one else lest he should know." Her mother was weak. "I never had a mother," she said. "I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled." d.i.c.kinson endured alone.

They discussed literature. She said that she and her brother had hidden Longfellow's novel Kavanagh Kavanagh under the piano cover to outfox their strict father, who forbade it. A friend concealed other books in a bush by the door. To read was to defy with pleasure. under the piano cover to outfox their strict father, who forbade it. A friend concealed other books in a bush by the door. To read was to defy with pleasure.

They discussed poetry. Suggestively. Here was another form of transgression and transformation, erotic and inflammatory. "If I read a book," she declared, "[and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way." is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way."

Poetry, again, as explosive force: he must have felt the pull, the energy, her s.e.xuality. He left exhausted but in the evening walked back to the house. Afterward, hinting at the s.e.xual tension-and release-of the whole experience, he admitted he had never met anyone "who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me."

"I am glad not to live near her," he concluded.

The remarkable encounter, far exceeding his expectations, was too much for him.

He had flirted with the writer Helen Hunt, he had flirted with others, but he had always chosen the straight and narrow. Emily d.i.c.kinson demanded nothing short of a full commitment. Irreducibly herself, without compromise, she took everything, drained the cup, was irresistible. And to Higginson, far too dangerous.

WHEN HE TOOK HIS HAT for the last time that day, he promised the poet he would come again sometime. "Say in a long time," she mischievously answered, "that will be nearer. Some time is nothing." for the last time that day, he promised the poet he would come again sometime. "Say in a long time," she mischievously answered, "that will be nearer. Some time is nothing."

As usual she was right.

TEN

Her Deathless Syllable

Something indescribable had pa.s.sed between them, something encapsulated in his remark that she "drew" from him and in her similar observation, sent to him after the visit, that "the Vein cannot thank the Artery." But on the surface, Higginson's coming to Amherst had changed nothing. After he left, he saw his family in Brattleboro before riding back to Newport, which he liked less and less, and to Mary, who suffered more and more. He attended meetings of the Radical Club, delivered his speeches, wrote his journalism, chugged along the railroad to Boston and New York. And he composed an essay defending Sappho, "the most eminent poetess in the world," against prurient hecklers made anxious, he believed, precisely because she was a woman.

Did he recognize the similarities between d.i.c.kinson and the Mytilene poet? It seems not; yet while he ranked Sappho "unapproached among women, even to the present day," the timing of the essay suggests d.i.c.kinson tugged at the back of his mind, her lapidary lyric reminding him of what he admired in the ancient author. And so, though she had drained him, Higginson could not, would not close the door. He understood now she would never come to Boston to sit in the high-toned drawing rooms of the ladies. He would have to go to her.

Impossible. Instead, both of them savored the safe, satisfying distance of their subtle intimacy.

And she wanted more. When he mentioned the possibility of coming back to lecture at the college, she asked, almost wistfully, "Could you not come without the Lecture if the project failed?" She sent more verse. "When I hoped I feared-/ Since I hoped I dared," she wrote, obliquely confiding how much she had antic.i.p.ated his visit, and in "Remembrance has a Rear and Front" she alluded to her feelings when it was over: Remembrance has a Rear and Front.'Tis something like a House-It has a Garret alsoFor Refuse and the Mouse-Besides the deepest CellarThat ever Mason laid-Look to it by it's FathomsOurselves be not pursued- She remembered him; she would long remember him. (Does her image of "Rear and Front" refer to the military?) But in the poem's perplexing last lines, d.i.c.kinson suggested that in remembrance lay unspeakable, haunting loneliness.

"I remember your coming as serious sweetness placed now with the Unreal-," she commented in September, adding two lines of poetry to the body of her letter, as was her custom: Trust adjusts her "Peradventure"-Phantoms entered "and not you."

She then barraged him with questions: Where could she find the poems of Maria White Lowell he mentioned? "You told me Mrs Lowell was Mr Lowell's 'inspiration' What is inspiration?" she cagily asked. As for an article of Wentworth's in The Woman's Journal, The Woman's Journal, "perhaps the only one you wrote that I never knew," would he send it? She apologized for the request with dramatic flourish, "Shortness to live has made me bold" no wonder her brother, Austin, accused her of being theatrical and years later, after her death, said she had posed in her letters to Higginson. But doubtless she posed to Austin, too, concealing from him the turbulence of her feelings and frequently speaking in parables he likely did not comprehend. "perhaps the only one you wrote that I never knew," would he send it? She apologized for the request with dramatic flourish, "Shortness to live has made me bold" no wonder her brother, Austin, accused her of being theatrical and years later, after her death, said she had posed in her letters to Higginson. But doubtless she posed to Austin, too, concealing from him the turbulence of her feelings and frequently speaking in parables he likely did not comprehend.

She penciled yet another poem for Higginson. This one also may refer to their meeting: The Riddle that we guessWe speedily despise-Not anything is stale so longAs Yesterday's Surprise.

Had she been a disappointment? Did she fear she was a riddle gone stale? "You ask great questions accidentally," she remarked. "To answer them would be events."

She drafted more poems to him, evidently unsent. "Too happy Time dissolves itself / And leaves no remnant by-/ 'Tis Anguish not a Feather hath / Or too much weight to fly-." Perhaps she did not want him to know, though, how fleeting-how happy-their time together had been. "I was refreshed by your strong Letter," she thanked him in another note, also apparently unmailed. She jotted out her replies to him in rough drafts, making certain that she put herself forward with much the same vigilant care that she lavished on her verse, which, it seems, he now considered extraordinary. "Thank you for Greatness-I will have deserved it in a longer time!" she exclaimed, the future perfect tense wittily revealing her intentions.

She wrote to Higginson as if he grasped her meaning, though he was, as he admitted, often befuddled. But he understood enough to please her, that was clear. And she coached him, coaxed him, comprehended him. "You place the truth in opposite-," she reminded him after his visit, "because the fear is mine, dear friend, and the power your's-." He did not know his own strength; her backbone made of steel, she pretended fragility. Here, in a poem ostensibly describing a grave, she asks Higginson to "Step lightly on this narrow Spot-": Step lightly on this narrow Spot-The Broadest Land that growsIs not so ample as the BreastThese Emerald Seams enclose-Step lofty for this name be toldAs far as cannon dwell,Or Flag subsist, or Fame exportHer deathless Syllable Eight years earlier, she had told him that she could not escape fame if it belonged to her, but since it did not, and probably would not, "My Barefoot-Rank is better." Though real, diffidence was part of her performance. She rejected, fancied, courted, renounced, and intended to collar fame on her own terms, as the last four lines of the poem suggest. A book is the only immortality, Higginson had said. She stood ready, a loaded gun.

Perhaps that is why she sewed her poems together in packets with thread, making them open and close like a folio. Perhaps those packets were intended as books that might sit, with their kinsmen, on a shelf. ("I thank these Kinsmen of the Shelf-," she wrote in "Unto my Books-so good to turn-.") And perhaps she surmised her subtle poems, bestowed on only a few, would disappear in the common light of conventional day-but would persist, as indeed they did, if she chose her readers wisely.

As for other poets, she did not read Joaquin Miller, as she told Higginson, who'd inquired, and she complimented the poems of Helen Hunt, which he'd recently reviewed in The Atlantic: The Atlantic: "Stronger than any written by Women since Mrs-Browning, with the exception of Mrs. Lewes." Emily duplicated Wentworth's language before pausing and then adding, equivocally, "-but truth like Ancestor's Brocades can stand alone." "Stronger than any written by Women since Mrs-Browning, with the exception of Mrs. Lewes." Emily duplicated Wentworth's language before pausing and then adding, equivocally, "-but truth like Ancestor's Brocades can stand alone."

It was Higginson's writing she complimented most often, and he in turn wanted to know what she thought of it. When she failed to comment on his Atlantic Atlantic piece "A Shadow," he prodded her, or so we can gather from her somewhat noncommittal reply: "I thought I spoke to you of the shadow-It affects me." Yet his new collection, piece "A Shadow," he prodded her, or so we can gather from her somewhat noncommittal reply: "I thought I spoke to you of the shadow-It affects me." Yet his new collection, Atlantic Essays, Atlantic Essays, which included "A Letter to a Young Contributor," prompted Emily to ask him again to guide her. Even if he could offer her nothing but encouragement and, those few grammatical touch-ups certain only to tickle her, she desired his opinion, perhaps more than ever. which included "A Letter to a Young Contributor," prompted Emily to ask him again to guide her. Even if he could offer her nothing but encouragement and, those few grammatical touch-ups certain only to tickle her, she desired his opinion, perhaps more than ever.

That opinion was far higher than his critics have guessed. Frequently he praised her poems to friends in Newport, and when he happened on the volume published by another Amherst native, Emily Fowler Ford, he cried, "Amherst must be a nest nest of poetesses." As one friend reported, he boasted that he had "letters from Emily d.i.c.kinson containing the loveliest little delicate bits of poetry imaginable-he said they always reminded him of skeleton leaves so pretty," but when asked why they weren't widely available, he answered, "They were of poetesses." As one friend reported, he boasted that he had "letters from Emily d.i.c.kinson containing the loveliest little delicate bits of poetry imaginable-he said they always reminded him of skeleton leaves so pretty," but when asked why they weren't widely available, he answered, "They were too delicate- too delicate-not strong enough to publish." Perhaps he believed this, but perhaps he was protecting d.i.c.kinson, who was ambivalent about publishing-at least then. Perhaps both are true.

Higginson did promote the poems of another Amherst native, Helen Hunt, who remembered the d.i.c.kinsons from childhood: the pompous father, the invalid wife, the fat and rusticated sister. But Hunt had hated Amherst. "I do think Amherst girls turn out (excuse me-) horridly!" she once declared. That was a lifetime ago. In 1852 she had married Edward Bissell Hunt, an army engineer whom Emily herself remembered as once saying, after a visit, that he'd come back in a year; "if I say a shorter time it will be longer," he'd added. (The memory inspired an early d.i.c.kinson sleuth to propose Major Hunt as d.i.c.kinson's Master, although the evidence is pretty thin.) But Emily doubtless shared the anecdote with Higginson to tease him about his own vague promise of return.

Inventor of a one-person submarine, Major Hunt was killed when his vessel accidentally exploded, and in 1866, after the Hunts' only surviving son had died of diphtheria, Helen Hunt resettled in Newport, where she and her husband had briefly lived. There the resilient widow met Colonel Higginson, with whom, or so several scholars have speculated, she fell in love.

Maybe so. Hunt did find support in this overburdened husband, and Higginson responded warmly to her, entranced by her zeal for poetry and people. "Her friendships with men had the frankness and openness that most women show only to one another," Higginson later noted, "and her friendships with women had the romance and ideal atmosphere that her s.e.x usually reserves for men." But loyal to Mary and propriety, he checked himself. And to judge by her novel Mercy Philbrick's Choice, Mercy Philbrick's Choice, he disappointed her, for there the Higginson-like character is pitifully harnessed to an invalid relative, "the one great duty of his life." To a friend, Hunt was more explicit: he steps too softly, Hunt said of Higginson, "knocks like a baby at the door, & then opens it a quarter of the way & comes in edgewise!" he disappointed her, for there the Higginson-like character is pitifully harnessed to an invalid relative, "the one great duty of his life." To a friend, Hunt was more explicit: he steps too softly, Hunt said of Higginson, "knocks like a baby at the door, & then opens it a quarter of the way & comes in edgewise!"

Yet he launched her career, advising her to establish herself by writing reviews and then urging her poems, which he considered intensely pa.s.sionate, on a reluctant Fields, who published them, as it happened, to wide success. Higginson read almost everything she wrote, editing much of her work with his blue pencil. "I shall never write a sentence, so long as I live," Hunt would thank him, "without studying it from the standpoint of whether you would think it could be bettered." He praised her novels, like Ramona, Ramona, which called attention to the plight of Mission Indians and which he otherwise would have considered didactic, but since she never wholly lost her sense of form, far more important to him than any moral mission, he placed Hunt's work above that of any American woman-except, as he later admitted, Emily d.i.c.kinson. which called attention to the plight of Mission Indians and which he otherwise would have considered didactic, but since she never wholly lost her sense of form, far more important to him than any moral mission, he placed Hunt's work above that of any American woman-except, as he later admitted, Emily d.i.c.kinson.

Attraction to his fellow boarder was not the only reason Higginson served as Hunt's literary cicerone. He consistently boosted women writers, offering editorial advice as well as entree into the literary world. In addition to Hunt and Harriet Prescott Spofford, there were Celia Thaxter, Rose Terry Cooke, Kate Field, Lucy Larcom, and Emma Lazarus, to name just a few of the authors whose craft he praised, whose work he edited, whose essays and verse he forwarded to editors like Fields, Theodore Tilton, and, later, Richard Watson Gilder. Quality knew no gender, he insisted, just hard work, commitment, sacrifice. His eulogy of Charlotte Hawes, a friend from his Worcester days, contained his mantra about achieving "perfection in every sentence"-rewriting, if need be, until each word glimmered.

After the war he redoubled his commitment to equal pay for women, equal education, and equal rights under the law, as well as his commitment to their receiving from an early age the kind of material, economic, and emotional support generally denied them. "In almost any town in New England the obstacle in the studious girl is not want of time," he declared, "but want of teaching and encouragement." He wrote hundreds of articles on the subject, the cause of women replacing abolition as his social pa.s.sion. But war had siphoned off most of the energy of the women's movement, and the movement itself suffered an internal rupture when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony campaigned against the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Everyone walks through the door or no one does, insisted Stanton and Anthony, who opposed any amendment giving the vote only to men. More moderate feminists and former abolitionists disagreed, arguing this was the "Negro's hour." The ladies' turn would come. Higginson sided with the moderates. The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of black men is what he had fought for, and much as he supported women's rights, he could not support any demand that threatened to protract his thirty-year battle against slavery.

In 1869, Stanton and Anthony founded the all-female National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation. (Frederick Dougla.s.s had called Stanton and Anthony racist for putting woman suffrage ahead of the gubernatorial candidacy of a black man.) That same year Higginson, along with Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe, formed the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation: "Without deprecating the value of a.s.sociations already existing, it is yet deemed...an organization at once more comprehensive and more widely representative." They were reformers, not revolutionaries.

The man who had run guns to Kansas, a bowie knife stuck in his boot, had not renounced radicalism as much as he had toned it down, subordinating it to a pragmatism born of experience and disappointment: John Brown had been hanged; and the war waged to free the slaves had lasted four miserable years, cost over six hundred thousand lives, and left in its wake a racist infrastructure in the South and "colorphobia" in the North. "There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power," Epictetus had written; change the things we can change.

He tried to explain his position to Stanton, who patiently shook her head. "No! my dear friend we are right in our present position," she replied. "We demand suffrage for all the citizens of the republic in Reconstruction. I might not talk of negroes or women, but citizens." Higginson reverted to the hopeful notion he had once rejected: through suasion, law, and justice, women would gain the vote and the rights they deserved. No longer could he believe, as he once had, in disunion. "The world has always more respect for those who are unwisely zealous than for those who are fastidiously inactive," he admitted to Harriet Beecher Stowe. These days, though, he occupied a middle ground, which he considered the better side of wisdom.