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Early in March 1862, when Sam Bowles once more went away, to Washington, a little earlier than expected, Emily wrote another strange letter to Mrs Bowles. It was an excuse for having sent ‘a little note’ to Mrs Bowles’s husband, which the wife would have intercepted. Her husband - Emily was now aware - would have left before the note in question arrived. It was his habit to keep Emily’s notes and letters, but this one has disappeared. Presumably Mrs Bowles did not see fit to pass it on when her husband returned.

The purpose of the note, Emily attempts to explain, had been merely to ask a favour. What she wants from Mr Bowles’s wife is reassurance that she has not been troubled. It’s the poet’s attempt to cover up her intrusion into Mrs Bowles’s legitimate space. To glance at another of Emily’s notes to Bowles at this time (many of them including poems or slipping into poetry) is to see why Emily felt uneasy. It’s filled with emotion, tensely intimate underlinings about the limitations of words, for the deepest feelings don’t ‘move’ into overt expression:

Dear Mr Bowles.

I cant thank you any more - You are thoughtful so many times, you grieve me always - now. The old words are numb - and there a’nt any new ones . . .

When you come to Amherst, please God it were Today - I will tell you . . . - if I can, I will -

‘Speech’—is a prank of Parliament—

‘Tears’—a trick of the nerve—

But the Heart with the heaviest freight on—

Doesn’t—always—move—

Emily.

Her manner to Mrs Bowles, by contrast, is commanding and at no loss for words. The poet does not wish this wife to have cause for complaint, so insists that Mary Bowles favour her with an exculpatory statement, a token of cordiality, which, she knows, Mrs Bowles won’t want to write. The tone then changes from insistence to menace as she reminds this wife, grieved by stillbirths, how vulnerable her new baby could be. Playfully, the poet moves into fairy-tale mode, sending a rose for the baby boy’s hand. His mother is to place it there when little Charlie goes to sleep, ‘and then he will dream of Emily - and . . . we shall be “old friends”’. She’s aware that Mrs Bowles might not wish her to take over Charlie’s mind, any more than she can bear Emily’s bombardment of her husband with letters and poems. Emily makes it clear to Mary Bowles that these aren’t about to stop.

Dear Mary -

Could you leave ‘Charlie’ - long enough? Have you time for me? . . . Don’t love [Charlie] so well - you know - as to forget us [Dickinsons] - We shall wish he was’nt there - if you do - I’m afraid - shant we?

I’ll remember you - if you like me to - while Mr. Bowles is gone - and that will stop the lonely - some - but I cannot agree to stop - when he gets home from Washington.

Goodnight - Mary -

You wont forget my little note - tomorrow - in the mail - It will be the first one - you ever wrote me in your life - and yet - was I the little friend - a long time? Was I - Mary?

Emily.

Her punctuation should never be underestimated. The inverted commas around ‘Charlie’ were a reminder to the baby’s mother that Emily wished the little boy to have a different name. Emily’s choice was Robert, after Browning, the rescuer of the poet Elizabeth Barrett from her invalid seclusion in her father’s house. Emily was reminded of this drama at just this time when Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence, leaving behind a little boy, the son of the two poets, whose name was Robert. Emily’s insistence on her right to name the Bowleses’ child is further evidence of a poet’s fancy intruding on poor Mrs Bowles, alone and unprotected from this onslaught of words. In this period Dickinson sent Bowles ‘Title divine is mine! / The Wife—without the Sign!’

‘Here’s what I had to “tell you”—,’ she added beneath her transcript. ‘You will tell no other?’

It’s one answer to Master’s complaint, ‘You do not tell me all.’ Since ‘all’ was a tall order for a ‘reticent volcano’, telling remains a tease. She would always hold a deeper