Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [223]
101 ‘Mrs Bowles . . .’: SB to WAD (16 Jan [1859]).
102 ‘I would not, if I could . . .’: SB to WAD ([Feb 1859]).
102 limp along; ‘Utica schoolgirls’: To WAD (Oct 1861).
102 ‘wanton & fickle’: To SHD (26 Feb [1864]).
102 SB did not want to be drawn too far: This is a guess on the basis that had SB a just estimate of ED’s poems, he’d have expressed it in letters to her brother and Sue, and that ED herself would have reflected this in her letters to him. Then, too, she might not have taken up with Higginson had she had better hopes of SB.
102 ‘the Queen Recluse . . .’: To WAD (9 Jan 1863).
102 ‘spiritual manifestations’: SB to the Dickinsons (2 Jan [1859]).
102 ‘for the sister . . .’: To WAD (4 Feb 1859). Houghton.
102 ‘a savage, turbulent state . . .’: to WAD (2 May 1863).
102 ‘If it had no pencil’: (c. early 1861). J921/Fr184. Letter amongst those sent to the Bowles family. Habegger, who favours Wadsworth as ‘Master’, suggests it was sent to Mary. Unlikely because of the erotic charge. ED was not attracted to Mary.
103 ‘Two swimmers’: (c. spring 1861). J201/Fr227.
103 intruder on a marriage: ‘Wife—without the Sign!’ op. cit.
103 ‘I’m “wife” . . .’: ‘I’m “wife”—I’ve finished that’ (c. spring 1861). J199/Fr225.
104 ‘A wife—at Daybreak . . .’: (c. 1861). J461/Fr185.
104 general conception etc: Draws on Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights’.
104 ‘the endless . . . hereafter’: Nelly Dean seeing Catherine dead in Wuthering Heights, ch. 16.
105 ‘Vesuvius at Home’: ‘Volcanoes be in Sicily’, op. cit.
106 ‘I cant thank you any more . . .’: (c. early 1862). L252.
107 ‘Could you leave “Charlie”. . .’: (c. early Mar 1862). L253.
107 ‘Title divine’: J1072/Fr194. L250, where the date is c. early 1862.
107 ‘Here’s what . . .’: L250.
107 SB’s confidence to WAD: When Bowles had visited The Evergreens with his wife in 1861.
108 ‘have as much as ever . . .’: SB to WAD. Habegger’s transcript of these letters on the internet.
108 ‘I’ve nothing Else . . .’: (c. spring 1861). J224/Fr253.
108 SB and ‘Lady-writers’: Farr, 205, takes this from Merriam.
108 SB’s ‘bullet’ and the third Master letter: Neat link by Farr.
108 ‘Arabian’: L662.
108 ‘manikins’: Farr, 185.
108 ‘little gems’: (13 July 1862). SB refers again to her poems as ‘gems’ in a letter (3 Dec 1864): ‘gems for the “Springfield Musket”’.
109 ‘puzzled’: J224/Fr253.
109 ‘little tippler’: op. cit.
109 ‘Safe in their alabaster chambers’: (c. 1859, 1861). J216/Fr124/EDC. (Fr and EDC include SHD’s critique.)
109 Fidelia Cooke: Habegger, 383-4.
109 The Household Book of Poetry: ed. Charles Anderson Dana (1819-97), sixth edition (NY, 1860). EDR.
109 ‘to New England’: (c. summer 1861). L233. The third ‘Master’ letter.
109 Shakespeare’s sonnets in the mid-space: Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World (Pimlico, 2005), 249.
109 Ann Wroe: Being Shelley (London: Cape, 2007), 83.
110 ‘letter to the World’: ‘This is my letter to the world’ (c. spring 1863). J441/Fr519.
111 the need to speak: Poet Liam Rector describes dashes as ‘the connective tissue which begins to function like words themselves’. We hear ‘the need to speak’. ‘Bidart’s The Sacrifice’, On Frank Bidart: Fastening the Voice to the Page, ed. Liam Rector and Tree Swenson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 130-1.
111 ‘a terror . . .’: (25 Apr 1862). L261. Farr, who makes a strong case for SB as Master, suggests that ED’s upheaval was occasioned by his decision to go to Europe.
111 ‘palsy’: To TWH (7 June 1861). L265.
112 ‘half angel, half demon’: MDB heard this from Ned. Cited by Farr, 215.
112 ‘Hearts in Amherst - ache . . .’: L259.
113 ‘I cannot see you’: L276.
113 ‘Keep the Yorkshire Girls . . .’ and ‘Please to need me . . .’: L299 and L300.
113 ‘Ethiop within’: ‘More Life—went out—’ (c. 1862). J422/Fr415.
113 ‘Ourself behind ourself, concealed—’: ‘One need not be’ (c. 1862; c. early 1864 copy sent to Sue). J670/Fr407.
5: ‘SNARL IN THE BRAIN