Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [130]
Austin was impatient to repeat the ‘experiment’ and thought publication a whim of Vinnie’s, to inflate herself. In fact Vinnie participated discerningly in the editors’ selections. By May a volume of about two hundred poems was ready for submission and Higginson chose the prestigious publishing firm of Houghton Mifflin, where he acted as a reader. They said no. Next Todd tried Roberts Brothers, who had published Dickinson’s ‘Success’ and then could not ‘consume’ her other poems.
Mr Niles reaffirmed his adverse opinion. He had always thought it ‘unwise to perpetuate Miss Dickinson’s poems. They are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties & are generally devoid of the true poetical qualities.’ The reader’s report by Arlo Bates, a poet favoured by the firm, noted Dickinson’s ‘crudity of workmanship’. He foresaw no possibility of making a stir but did concede that this was the real thing, a power near to genius. Had she published - had she learnt the conventions of punctuation and rhyme - ‘she would have stood at the head of American singers’. In a grudging tone, Mr Niles offered to bring out a small edition on condition that the sister paid for the typographical electroplates and agreed to forgo royalties on the first five hundred copies. Bates halved the number of poems to be included in a collection, rejecting some of the best including ‘I died for Beauty’. Mabel, exasperated, restored a few with the help of Vinnie, bringing the final number to 116. Mabel handled the negotiation for Vinnie, who had ‘about as much knowledge of business as a Maltese pussycat’.
That summer Mabel remained in Amherst, toiling over five proof stages which, she insisted, were necessary, since the typesetters kept correcting the poet’s inventions. Even though the editors themselves had deviated from the manuscripts to bring Dickinson more into line with their own tastes and those of the day, Mabel Todd was rigorous when it came to printing.
Sue, still in the dark about the volume nearing publication, sent ‘There came a Day at Summer’s full’ to Scribner’s. It was published in August, and Sue was paid $15, which she kept, even though this sum should have gone to Vinnie as legal owner of the papers, and Vinnie’s rights acknowledged. As this poem happened to be in the forthcoming volume, Mabel Todd had to seek permission from Scribner’s for its inclusion.
When the final proofs came in September the editors were jubilant. Higginson now wrote a diplomatic preface asking readers to excuse the grammatical oddities for the sake of daring thoughts. Candour compels him to point out the ‘rugged’ frame of the poems and to regret that lyric flights are not smoother. Yet he assents generously to the poet’s persistent refusal to hear his advice: here is a recluse who is true to herself.
The first volume of Dickinson poems, bound in white leather and published on 12 November 1890, was handled in just the way that had put the poet off publication during her lifetime: the editors had tampered with the inventive punctuation and off-rhymes of the volcano speaking through ‘buckled lips’. Words were changed ‘to make them smoother’ (as Mabel Todd put it) and dashes eliminated. There were trivialising titles like ‘With a Flower’, ‘Playmates’ and ‘Troubled about many things’.
For all this, Dickinson spoke to readers. Her sudden revelation, as one reader put it, was like ‘a shaft of light sunk instantaneously into the dark abysm’. ‘Much madness is divinest sense’, people read, ‘A wounded deer leaps highest’ and one of the exultant poems sparked by the Master letters: ‘I’m wife . . . I’m Czar, I’m woman now’. Other ‘Exultation is the going / Of an inland soul to sea’, or there’s the fight to the death of ‘Two Swimmers on a Spar’. ‘Men