# The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
"A HEDGE AWAY" 1856—62
Emily's only brother, Austin, was married on July 1, 1856, and from that time she was part of every incident in his household. Her first little note to his wife, with which "The Single Hound" is prefaced, expressed her feeling perfectly:
One sister have I in our house And one a hedge away— There's only one recorded But both belong to me.
In the years following that crucial visit to Washington and Philadelphia, her life moved on without external change, except that she imperceptibly but increasingly withdrew from outside festivities and public appearances and became less accessible to all save her chosen few. But her brother's marriage brought a thrilling new element into her life, and she continued to flit across the intervening lawns behind the bulwark of high hemlock hedges long after all other visits had definitely ceased. The narrow path "just wide enough for two who love" ran luringly between, whether her light flashed across the snow to them under a polar moon, while she sat up to watch over her flowers and keep them from freezing, or past the rosebushes of a midsummer, where the moths were at their amorous trafficking.
"A LITTLE PATH JUST WIDE ENOUGH FOR TWO WHO LOVE"—E. D.
When her brother's first son was born, named for his grandfather, her flying little greeting to him—delivered at her sister's pillow—was:
Is it true, dear Sue? Are there Two? I shouldn't like to come For fear of joggling Him! If you could shut him up In a coffee cup, Or tie Him to a pin Till I got in, Or make Him fast To Pussy's fist, Hist! Whist! I'd come!
Emily
Later, with her little niece, and the golden-haired arch-darling of both houses—the transitory child, Gilbert, who only came and flashed a mere eight years and went on—Emily was just another child like them, only endowed with subtle powers of the high gods to produce unexpected rewards and avert disastrous consequences. No treat could be offered any one of the ​three like that of being left in her care while the grown-up family wandered. As they grew older, she made companions of them, talked to them as equals, trusted them with her choicest interests. To them her increasing solitude never seemed strange; love gave them understanding. Had she worn wings instead of her simple white frocks, they would have taken it quite for granted.
Until she was obliged to go to Boston for treatment of her eyes in 1864 and again in 1865 the events in Emily's life were counted as with Shakespeare's clock—"by heart-throbs, not by hours."
As her brother's family grew up, she accepted them one by one, an individual relation existing between each of the three and her fairy self. When her little niece began her first attempts to write her own fancies in verse, Emily's response came quickly back, "I was surprised, but why? Is she not of the lineage of the spirit?" She always alluded to the youngest son, Gilbert, as "Thy Son, our Nephew." As she put the world further from her their triple alliance increased in intimacy. She hailed them as treading where she dared not venture, bade them come back and tell her their adventures, was curious about their thoughts and tiny events which gave her escape from her own limited environment, which she loved, yet endured.
Though she dwelt only "a hedge away" from their home, she had the habit of sending her constant thought to them in her tiny notes as other people would have spoken them. The gambol of her mind on paper was her pastime. Sometimes her mood was one of sheer extravaganza—like this:
Friday Noon
Dear Friend
I regret to inform you that at three o'clock yesterday my mind came to a stand, and has since then been stationary Ere this intelligence reaches you I shall probably be a snail. By this untoward Providence a mental and moral being has been swept ruthlessly from her sphere. But we should not repine—"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform," and if it be his will that I become a bear and bite my fellow men, it will be for the highest good of this fallen and famishing world. If the gentleman in the air will please stop throwing snowballs, I may meet you again. Otherwise it is uncertain. My parents are pretty well. General Wolf is here. We are looking for Major Pitcairn in the afternoon stage. We were much afflicted yesterday by the supposed removal of our cat from time to eternity. She returned however last evening, having been detained by the storm beyond her expectations.
We need some paths up our way, shan't you be out with the team?
Yours till death Isaiah
The stately old barn was an equine palatial structure, sheltering horses, cows, pigs, hens, and pigeons, with wings for musty carriage houses, and leaning ramparts of loft where swallows darted and doves eternally gurgled. The animal traffic out there had a charm for Emily, and her wit often pranked with its daily round. Wanting her nephew once to the rescue she sends this:
Ned
Dennis was happy tonight and it made him graceful. I saw him waltzing with the cow and suspected his status. You told me he had not tasted liquor since his wife's decease—then she must have been alive at six this evening. I fear for the rectitude of the barn. Love for the Police.
Emily
Sister
Please excuse Santa Claus for calling so early, but gentlemen 1882 years old are a little fearful of the evening air.
And in the early days of the very last spring of her life, to Gib the characteristic lines:
Not at home to callers Says the naked tree— Jacket due in April. Wishing you good day.
There are still endless little notes sent in every possible phase of her mood. Comments on books she read, cries of the heart, dashes of wit; and when her habit of writing became confirmed, poems for suggestion, or criticism. From the time Emily had taken the dare of thirty, that "frightful age" spoken of with bated breath in their teens by her sister Lavinia, the notes were often those same poems afterward published, sent either as an expression of an emotion she wished to share, or with a request for criticism.
In an article upon her unpublished letters to her brother's family, which appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," it has been told of her that these notes
contained numberless phrases of universal truth, written though they were by this shy recluse in her retired New England home, intrenched by lilacs and guarded by bumble bees.... She had her finger on the pulse of events and noted phenomena unerringly, with her own comment. Whenever stirred, by whatever cause, she trapped her mood, then waited for her messenger, as vigilant as any spider.... Emily Dickinson differed from all the women letter-writers of France and England in her scorn of detail, scarcely hitting the paper long enough to make her communication intelligible.
Opinion is a flitting thing But truth outlasts the sun, If then we cannot own them both, Possess the oldest one.
And this one:
When we have ceased to crave The gift is given For which we gave the earth And mortgaged heaven, But so declined in worth— 'Tis ignominy now to look upon.
Life had for her an infinite and increasing fascination. "Are you sure we are making the most of it?" she wrote on a slip of paper and sent over by hand just because she was quick with the thrill of another day. Again she sent the following:
Dear Sue—
A fresh morning of life and its impregnable chances and the dew for you!
Emily
Other quotations from the same articles show her response to every appeal.
To the faithful absence is condensed presence. To the others,—but there are no others.
So busy missing you I have not tasted Spring. Should there be other Aprils we will perhaps dine.
I must wait a few days before seeing you. You are too momentous,—but remember dear, it is idolatry, not indifference.
Her notes to the three children were their keen delight, and preserved by them beyond all their other treasures. No one but their Aunt Emily could have written, "Emily knows a man who drives a coach like a thimble and turns the wheel all day with his heel. ​His name is Bumble Bee!" At the close of a letter to her older nephew away on a visit as a child, she writes:
Dear Ned-Bird—
It will be good to hear you again. Not a voice in the woods is so sweet as yours. The robbins have gone, all but a few infirm ones,—and the Cricket and I keep house for the frost. Goodnight little brother. I would love to stay longer. Vinnie and Grandma and Maggie all give their love. Pussy her striped respects.
Ned's most little Aunt Emily
When sending him a tiny pie:
Dear Ned:
You know that pie you stole? Well, this is that pie's brother. Mother told me when I was a boy, that I must turn over a new leaf. I call that the foliage admonition. Shall I commend it to you?
Emily
On the birthday of her little niece she sends a knot of her choicest flowers and this word of greeting—
Dear Mattie—
I am glad it is your birthday. It is this little bouquet's birthday too. Its Father is a very old man by the name of Nature, whom you never saw. Be sure to live in vain, dear. I wish I had.
Emily
The following chronicle came to Gilbert's mother after the rescue of a favorite cat by his Aunt Lavinia:
Memoirs of little boys that Live
"Weren't you chasing Pussy?" said Vinnie to Gilbert. "No, she was chasing herself." "But wasn't she running pretty fast?" "Well, some fast and some slow," said the beguiling villain. Pussy's Nemesis quailed. Talk of hoary reprobates! Your urchin is more antique in wiles than the Egyptian sphinx. Have you noticed Granville's letter to Lowell? "Her Majesty has contemplated you, and reserved her decision."
The following she sent to Ned after some reputed indiscretion reported of him by harder hearts:
The cat that in the corner sits Her martial time forgot— The rat but a tradition now Of her desireless lot, Another class reminds me of— Who neither please nor play, But—"not to make a bit of noise" Adjure each little boy!
P.S. Grandma characteristically hopes Neddy will be a good boy. Obtuse ambition of Grandma's!
Emily
On returning a photograph of a child in Greenaway costume:
That is the little girl I meant to be and wasn't; the very hat I meant to wear and didn't.
That butterfly in honoured dust Assuredly will lie, But none will pass his catacomb So chastened as the fly.
One sent at Christmas with a beautifully iced cake was:
The Saviour must have been a docile Gentleman To come so far, so cold a night For little fellow men. The road to Bethlehem— Since He and I were boys— Has levelled—but for that 'twould be A rugged billion miles.
To Ned after being severely stung by a hornet:
Dear Ned—
You know I never did like you in those "yellow-jackets"!
Emily
To Gilbert, a child in kindergarten then, she sent this, accompanied with a dead bee:
The Bumble Bee's Religion
For Gib to carry to his teacher from Emily
His little hearse-like figure Unto itself a dirge, To a delusive lilac The vanity divulge Of industry and morals And every righteous thing, For the divine perdition Of Idleness and Spring.
"All liars shall have their part." Jonathan Edwards.
"And let him that is athirst come." Jesus.
She furthered their childish love of mystery and innocent intrigue on every occasion, purloining for them any treat from the family supplies she could lay her fond hands upon.
​Once with sweets smuggled over to them came these laconic instructions:
Omit to return box. Omit to know you received box.
Brooks of Sheffield
At another like occasion:
The joys of theft are two; first theft; second superiority to detection. How inspiring to the clandestine mind. "We thank thee, Lord, that Thou hast hid these things!"
She did a deal of brilliant trifling apropos of local events. On the death of the wife of a doctor she disliked she writes:
Dear Sue—
I should think she would rather be the Bride of the Lamb than that old pill box!
Emily
With a cape jasmine sent to a guest of her niece as yet unknown to her (Sara Colton Gillett) she writes:
M. will put this little flower in her friend's hand. Should she ask who sent it, tell her—as Desdemona did when they asked who slew her—Nobody—Myself.
After the death of a strictly dull acquaintance with no vital spark visible she writes:
Now I lay thee down to sleep, I pray the Lord thy dust to keep, If thou should live before thou wake, I pray the Lord thy soul to make!
This scrap is Emily at her most audacious:
My Maker, let me be Enamoured most of Thee— But nearer this I more should miss!
In a panic lest some cherished plan fall through she sent this: ​Boast not myself of to-morrow, for I "knoweth not" what a noon may bring forth.
This, too, is Emily to the core:
Cherish power dear; remember that it stands in the Bible between the kingdom and the glory because it is wilder than either.
The instances cited are characteristic of varying moods. Her passion for brevity always deducted relentlessly. She refuses an invitation thus:
Thanks, Sue, but not to-night. Further nights.
Emily
After some flashing pleasure given her she replies:
Don't do such things. Your Arabian Nights unfits the heart for its arithmetic.
Emily is sorry for Susan's day. To be singular under plural circumstances is a becoming heroism.
Susan knows she is a siren and at a word from her Emily would forfeit righteousness.
A spell cannot be tattered and mended like a coat.
No message is the utmost message, for what we tell is done.
To lose what we have never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim.
The things of which we want the proof are those we know the best.
Where we owe but little we pay. Where we owe so much it defies money we are blandly insolvent.
Has All a codicil?
In a life that stopped guessing, you and I should not feel at home.
Tasting the honey and the sting should have ceased with Eden. Pang is the past of peace.
"To multiply the harbors does not reduce the sea," defines her constancy.
​"Emblem is immeasurable, that is why it is better than fulfillment, which can be drained"—reveals her elusive quality.
And how much she crowded into one sparse sentence when she said:
Danger is not at first, for then we are unconscious, but in the slower days.
Her letters sent when her family were really at a distance are never like those of any one else, and usually reflect the day and season more than any personal happenings. Across one runs this postscript:
Father's sister is dead, and Mother wears a black ribbon on her bonnet.
But usually they were more like this, one chosen at random:
Nothing is gone, dear, or no one that you know. The forests are at home, the mountains intimate at night and arrogant at noon. A lonesome fluency abroad, like suspended music.
Further on in the same letter:
Come home and see your weather; the hills are full of shawls. We have a new man whose name is Tim. Father calls him "Timothy" and the barn sounds like the Bible.
Twilight touches Amherst with his yellow glove. Miss me sometimes, dear, not on most occasion, but in the Sometimes of the mind.
The small heart cannot break. The ecstasy of its penalty solaces the large.
Emerging from an abyss and reëntering it, that is Life, dear, is it not?
There were no so gay hours in Emily's life as those spent at her brother's home when there were guests of their own inner circle, who revelled in her companionship. For her own life never lacked its joy in comedy nor was ​her spirit quenched by its most subduing contact with the elemental tragedy that was constant to her thought. When Mrs. Anthon, of London, and Samuel Bowles, of the "Springfield Republican," were there they played wild games of battledore and shuttlecock in the long winter evenings; Emily convulsing their onlookers by her superfluous antics added to their game. She improvised brilliantly upon the piano all sorts of dramatic performances of her own, one she called the Devil being particularly applauded.
It was on one of these winter nights of revel that they forgot the hour and suddenly, unwarned by the approaching beams of his lantern across the snow, became aware of her father's presence in their midst, to enquire the meaning of such prolonged hours. Emily is said to have drooped and disappeared before him like the dew, without a sound, but with a wicked glance or gesture to assert her unreconcilement to the proceedings.
Her sister Sue recognized her genius from the first, and hoarded every scrap Emily sent her from the time they were both girls of sixteen. Their love never faltered or waned. Emily pictures their first meeting and its changelessness:
As much now as when love first began—on the step at the front door, under the evergreens.
One of her very last pencilled lines was this:
With the exception of Shakespeare you have told me more knowledge than any one living. To say that sincerely is strange praise.
Emily
Sometimes Emily addressed her as "You from whom I never run away"; and again she exclaims:
SUSAN GILBERT DICKINSON
Susan! I would have come out of Eden to open the door for you if I had known you were there. You must knock with a trumpet as Gabriel does, whose hands are small as yours. I knew he knocked and went away—I did not dream you did!
Emily
And again:
To see you unfits for stabler meetings. I dare not risk an intemperate moment before a banquet of bran.
The decision to publish "The Single Hound," the poem of their lifetime, was determined by a faded little note of her early twenties:
Dear Sue—I like your praise because I know it knows. If I could make you and Austin proud some day, a long way off, 'twould give me taller feet.
Emily
She never told her family of her writing, and this is the only mention of any secret ambition to have her work known even on a day "a long way off." The first poem dated, that she sent to Sister Sue, was in 1848, and probably the last word she ever wrote was her reply to a message from her—
My answer is an unmitigated Yes, Sue.
Emily