Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [226]
125 grammar undergoing transformation: an illuminating analysis in Miller, ED: A Poet’s Grammar.
125 to ‘do’: ‘A still—Volcano—Life’. J601/Fr517.
125 ‘a purer food’; ‘transport . . .’: ‘I fit for them’, op. cit.
126 ‘While we were fearing . . .’: (c. 1874). J1277/Fr1317.
126 consultation with Dr Williams: Information in ED’s letters, Leyda, Hirschhorn and A&M.
126 eye-wash: Adams Drugstore, Amherst, Prescription records 1882-5. AC. The prescription is for ‘Dickinson’; a likelihood but no guarantee this is ED.
126 ‘Bereaved of all . . .’; ‘Cups . . .’; ‘I waked . . .’: (c. early 1864). J784/Fr886.
127 address of Dr Williams’s consulting room: Habegger, 484. The house no longer exists. The site is between Commonwealth Avenue and Newbury Street, across the road from the public gardens. Later the site of Ritz-Carlton Hotel, now part of TAJ hotel chain.
127 scotoma: noted by Jackson, Letters to a Young Physician.
127 ‘like so many sphinxes’: Charcot, Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveux faites à la Salpêtrière. Cited by Porter, 546-7.
127 ophthalmoscope newly in use for searching out diseases of the brain: Porter, 506.
127 ‘hyperaesthesia of the retina’: In his textbooks Dr Williams steers clear of epilepsy. Too mysterious for his factual manner.
127 photo-sensitivity: Dr Williams’ textbook, The Diagnosis and Treatment of the Diseases of the Eye, notes that hyperaesthesia of the eye occurs in delicate subjects, marked by photophobia, neuralgia and seeing luminous spots of different colours. Vision is unimpaired. Avoidance of the glare of light from snow, together with little use of the eyes, can be effectual. In women, he says, there are cases of intense photophobia. One treatment is to be away from home. In ‘hysterical hyperaesthesia’ women are said to complain of persistent images on the retina and discomfort from light. The tone is misogynist, as though this were women’s nonsense. He does not consider if there could be a physical cause.
128 ‘forget the color of the Day’: ‘Severer Service of myself’ (c. early 1864). J786/Fr887.
128 ‘glittering Retinue . . .’; ‘put a Head away’; ‘No Drug for Consciousness’; ‘Affliction’; ‘Being’s Malady’: Ibid. Habegger, 485, picks up the aural nuance of ‘glittering Retinue’. 1
28 ‘Before I got my eye put out’: (c. summer 1862). J327/Fr336. I quote the first version sent to TWH because the capitals are more revealing.
129 doctor wipes her cheeks: To SHD. L292.
129 ‘Perception . . .’: (c. 1865). J1071/Fr 1103.
129 Coleridge: Biographia Literaria (1815-16), ch. 13: ‘On the Imagination’.
130 ‘Emily wants to be well’: L293.
130 ‘Down thoughts’: To Loo. L290.
130 ‘Siberia’: L290. In Fr994 (c. 1865) it feels to the speaker as if ‘the mind were going blind—’.
130 Alice James on doctors: The Diary of Alice James (27 Sept 1890). Penguin classics, 142. Showalter, The Female Malady, 144.
131 ‘hystero-epilepsy’: This supposed condition was thought to be connected with menstruation (D. F. Scott, The History of Epileptic Theory). There is a suggestive article on the subject in a standard medical dictionary owned by Dr Bigelow of Amherst who treated the Dickinsons in the 1880s, now in Jones Library. See also Temkin, 370, and Showalter, The Female Malady, 150.
131 ‘It struck me’: (c. 1863). J362/Fr636. 1
32 intermarriage: Letter from Gilbert Montague to ALH about MDB seeking information about their families. He refers also to intermarriage with the Gilberts. Houghton: bMS Am 1923 (14).
132 Zebina’s paralysis: No corroborating evidence. According to Sieveking, 29, the left side can be paralysed during a fit, and in rare cases this can be permanent.
133 ‘Poor Harriet and Zebina’: L279.
133 caller’s report of Ned’s fit: Elizabeth T. Seeyle to her husband Julius Seeyle (11 Feb 1877), who was College President. Seelye Papers, AC: box 5, folder 13.
133 rheumatic fever: Home, 466.