Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993 TAG: 9307160388
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JOCELYN McCLURG THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That never wrote to Me
The simple News that Nature told - With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see -
For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen -
Judge tenderly - of Me.
AMHERST, Mass. - In 1890, just four years after her death, a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry - cryptic, compact bursts of imagery that were distinctly modern for a 19th century poet - was published, and her countrymen judged tenderly indeed. Eleven editions were in print by the end of 1892. (Initially, the poetry was "corrected" by editors; a complete and accurate edition of Dickinson poems was not published until 1955.)
The highlight of the Dickinson house tour is Emily's bedroom, where the poet wrote her verse about nature, death and God - and where the "belle of Amherst" slowly retreated from society as the years passed.
Among the objects in the room that are believed to have belonged to Dickinson are the sleigh bed and a hat box; nearly every other piece is from the Dickinson family. Of particular fascination is one of the white dresses the poet wore after the death of her father in 1874, and its size indicates that physically, at least, Dickinson was of tiny stature.
Why did Dickinson eventually cut herself off from society? Theories abound, from unrequited love to grief over her father's death. A more recent feminist line holds that Dickinson threw the world over for her poetry. As poet Adrienne Rich has written: "Dickinson chose her seclusion, knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed."
It was a selective seclusion. Dickinson continued a wide and lively correspondence with a number of friends, and she saw family members. (After their father's death, Emily and Lavinia had to care for their invalid mother in the homestead.) Emily's best-known correspondents (whose photographs hang on the wall outside her bedroom) were Samuel Bowles, the editor of the Springfield Daily Republican, who published several of her poems; Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a minister and essayist who discouraged her from publishing; and Judge Otis Phillips Lord, who evidently wanted to marry the poet late in her life (she never married).
The Dickinsons were a prominent Amherst family, and in her youth Emily was educated at Amherst Academy. She spent a year at Mount Holyoke College at a time when religious revivals took Amherst by storm. (Dickinson, the nonconformist, never "converted"; she wrestled not with her faith in God but with established church doctrine.)
The Dickinson men were inextricably linked with Amherst College; her grandfather, the financially troubled Samuel Fowler Dickinson, was a founder, and both Emily's father and her brother Austin were treasurers. The college purchased the Dickinson house in 1965; half of the homestead is not included in the tour because it houses an Amherst College faculty family. (The dining room is visible but roped off.)
The informative guided tour begins in the parlor. The grounds are lovely; Emily Dickinson was a gardener, and in spring and summer a colorful flower garden provides a place to sit, perhaps, with a volume of Dickinson's poetry.
Still standing next door to the homestead is the Evergreens, the home of Emily's brother Austin and his wife, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, two pivotal figures in Emily's life. (That house is not open to the public.)
Beyond the homestead, there are other sites in Amherst of interest to those who love Dickinson's poetry.
At Amherst College, a changing exhibit of Dickinson's original drafts of poems (usually chosen to display her three distinct styles of handwriting) can be found in the archives department of the Robert Frost Library. (Occasionally the exhibit is temporarily pulled for another display.)
Dickinson is buried at nearby West Cemetery on Triangle Street. Her parents, her grandparents and her sister Lavinia are also buried in the simple family plot, which is bordered by a small wrought-iron fence.
Amherst itself, like nearby Northampton, is a pleasant college town with a bucolic-bohemian atmosphere. Amherst still has a small-town feel, and Dickinson's presence looms large. The town that the poet slowly withdrew from - for whatever reason - has not turned its back on its most famous citizen.
by CNB