Emily Dickinson: recluse, poet, cousin

By Thomas M. Parsons

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, MA. Although raised in a prominent New England family, Emily was a quiet and introverted person who seldom traveled very far from the family home in Amherst.

The Dickinson family had originally come to Massachusetts in the great Puritan migration from England. Emily’s father, Samuel Dickinson, was one of the founders of Amherst College. Her father, Edward, was treasurer of the college for many years. He also served in the state legislature and in the United States Congress.

Emily studied at the college for seven years, but her education was sometimes interrupted by illness. She was delicate and slight, and had an unusual fear of death from her youth on.

Although Emily was of Puritan descent, and was enthusiastic about a revival that took place in Amherst when she was 15 years old, she declined to make a profession of faith in Christ. She attended Mary Lyon’s Holyoke Female Seminary for a time, but left, objecting to the evangelical theology of the institution.

When Emily was about 25, her mother became chronically ill and spent the rest of her life mostly bed-ridden until her death in 1882 when Emily was 52. She and her younger sister, Lavina, took care of their mother, but increasingly Emily took this duty upon herself, not because of affection for her mother whom she wrote was often cold and distant, but because it gave her a reason to stay at home. She could read and write, activities which suited her quiet disposition.

In her thirties, Emily began to write poems which pushed the envelope of 19th century style. A family friend, Samuel Bowles, published a few of her poems in his journal. But it was Thomas Wentworth Higgins who was to give Emily’s poems to the world.

Higgins wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly in April, 1862 appealing to young writers to put life into their writing and offering suggestions on how to get published. Emily submitted some of her poems to Higgins who rejected them because of their, from his viewpoint, strange style and cryptic thought. However, he did see possibilities in her work, and continued to correspond with her, even visiting the family home at one point. But he published none of her poems during her lifetime.

When she was 38, Emily began displaying a more reclusive character. She dressed only in white, and communicated with people from behind closed doors and windows. Much of her communication was in the form of cryptic notes she left for people.

On June 16, 1874, Emily’s father suffered a stroke and died. The funeral was held at the family home, but Emily only listened to the service through a door opened just a crack. Her father’s death seemed to open a door to death. Her mother suffered a stroke the following year and never recovered. She lived for eight more years and was in need of constant care. Emily’s nephew, Gilbert, the son of her brother Austin and his wife Sue, died of typhoid fever in 1883 when Emily was 53. She wrote about being surrounded by death.

In the summer of 1885 Emily fainted while tending the garden at home, and fell into unconsciousness and feebleness. In November, her illness was bad enough to confine her to bed. She continued to write through the winter and into the spring, and wrote what is believed to be her last note to her cousins and said, “Little Cousins. Called Back. Emily.”

On May 15, 1886, Emily died. She was 55 years old. Her poems heavily edited by Higgins were published posthumously. It was not until 1955 that her unedited poems were published, 68 years after her death.

I share common ancestors with Emily on both my father and my mother’s side. My father’s line can be traced back through the Gilberts and Adams lines to Henry Dickinson, whose mother was Ellen Stacy who was the daughter of Robert Stacy. Robert’s daughter, Sarah, Ellen’s sister, married Nathaniel Dickinson who was Emily’s 5th great grandfather. The link through my mother’s line can be traced back through the Beckett, Messecar, Culver, Winthrop and Elizabeth Reade lines to Elizabeth Cooke. Elizabeth Reade was Elizabeth Cooke’s daughter. Elizabeth Cooke was my 10th great grandmother. Elizabeth had another daughter, Margaret Reade. She was Emily’s 6th great grandmother through her mother Emily Norcross. Thus through both of my parents I am related to both of Emily’s parents.

Perhaps that helps to explain my passion for writing.