The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson/Chapter 4

by Martha Dickinson Bianchi

CHAPTER IV

SOCIAL LIFE AT AMHERST SEVENTY YEARS AGO
1848 — 1853-54

There could have been little in the social life of Amherst seventy years ago to thrill a being like Emily Dickinson. Yet from eighteen to twenty-three she was a social creature in the highest sense, though she complains of often wearying of their house crowded daily with rich and poor, high and low, who came—and so rarely went—as a matter of course, without any warning or invitation, after the manner of that hospitable period, when gig or chariot might turn in at the great gate at any hour, depositing guests for a meal or the night or a long visit as it might happen. One of her contemporaries has left, in what Colonel Higginson once called "the portfolio literature of New England," a sketch of it all which gives, even with the most glowing intention, a rather scanty and very restricted story, lit by a solitary lantern here and there.

There were for Emily the elementals of all girlhood, of course. She evinces interest in her clothes, speaks of new ones in which she presumes she shall appear like an embarrassed peacock; complains of her brother Austin who returns from a trip to Baltimore to see her beloved Susie, as follows:

Asked what you wore and how your hair was fixed and what you said of me—his answers were quite limited. "You looked as you always did" . . . Vinnie enquired with promptness if you wore a basque—"No, you had on a black thing." Dear, you must train him, 'twill take many moons in the fashion plates before he will respect and speak with proper deference of this majestic garment.

There were the inevitable, inescapable family visits, too, already mentioned, when any hour of any day might behold a chaise at the door and helplessness within the house before the impending calamity. On one occasion when a family of four descended upon them without warning, Emily expressed her feelings as to the sweetness of the young daughters, and the tediousness of their father, concluding:

Cousin P. says he might stay round a month visiting old acquaintances if it wasn't for his business. Fortunate indeed for us that his business feels the need of him or I think he would never go. He is a kind of mixture of Deacon Haskell, Calvin Merill, and Morton Dickinson; you can easily guess how much we enjoy his society.

It was one autumn evening, when the Hollands had driven over unexpectedly to pass the night, that her mother, anxious for their every comfort, offered one solicitous suggestion after another, until Emily, always exasperated by repetition, cried —"O Mrs. Holland, don't you want to hear me say the Lord's prayer? Shouldn't you like me to repeat the Declaration of Independence? Shan't I recite the Ten Commandments?"

She had a cousin who came over from Sunderland to spend a day—"Father and Mother being on a little journey"—when just such deviations from regularity were apt to occur. Her friend Vaughn Evans, the Southerner who brought a warmer note into her life, stayed on after Commencement, and they had many long talks; and the brilliant young Henry Root—an uncle of the present President of Johns Hopkins University—whose charm and handsome grace was a fable that followed him down the century, came to see her often. She says it was to hear Susie's letters, and insists, she admires him, but lets him come only to give him this pleasure. It was at this point in her life that she began to be called down to entertain callers, and she confesses she went with sorry grace. In the July of 1851 she heard Jenny Lind sing at Northampton and cared more for her than her voice or manner of singing.

Before Emily ceased to mingle with the other young people, she shared the lectures upon which the village throve. The professors all gave of their best; John Lord, who was considered a wizard of style and manner, persuaded to any conclusion by his perennial charm; and Richard Dana, father of the poet Dana, and even wise men from Europe occasionally appeared. It was one of the pleasant pastimes of the young ladies of that day to attend, escorted by some attractive Senior, before whose class they were always given, the walk and escort often blurring in the young brains the cloudy values of information.

The sketch of "Society in Amherst Sixty Years Ago," to which allusion has been made, was written for the family remembrance by her sister-in-law, just before her own death in 1913. In this, there are many quaint illuminations of the life Emily Dickinson shared with the rest. From it we learn:

The social life at Amherst in those early days was no less unique in grace and simplicity than that of Northampton, though differing always in certain social habits held contraband by piety and conscience in Amherst. The harmless cards and dancing common there were not even so much as mentioned at Amherst as suitable or even possible occupations for immortal beings, until a quite recent date. Yet sixty years ago, dear moderns, one could have discovered in the small circle of Amherst as beautiful girls, or "young ladies," as they were then called, as ever graced any drawing room. There were as accomplished and well poised matrons, as chivalric young men,—nay, men both old and young, as full of high purpose and generous achievement as could be found in any town, university or commercial.

Under President Humphrey and also under President Hitchcock, Amherst College and Amherst were one. The village, being smaller then, was fully represented at all the college levees, as the receptions were then called, and entered warmly into all college affairs, lectures, and literary occasions. Emily must have played "blind-man's buff" with the rest, in the first President's house, where the high mantel in the kitchen was the rather perilous retreat of the taller boys, since they were safe there from the nervous clutches of the girls, when, aware of great shrinkage in numbers, they pulled up their blinders to bring the culprits down to justice. The Senior Levee given by the President to the graduating class was the event of the year; occurring in August at the close of the term. To this Emily went with all friends of the Senior Class, and all the village beside, and was one of those strolling couples, no doubt, that, wishing to escape ostensibly the modest glare of the astral lamp within, wandered up and down the rural sidewalks in front of the house.

The sketch referred to goes on in more sprightly fashion:

There was never dancing, never vaudeville. I confess there were flirtations, whatever that was—in odd corners, especially under the stairs in the front hall, where a Puritan-backed sofa covered in horsehair, guiltless of cushions, was converted into a rather stiff Arcadia. There was music always, with the piano—Miss Jane Gridley, daughter of the notable Dr. Gridley, the medical genius of the region, sang in a strikingly clear voice with a really artistic rendering "Oh, Summer Night!" And in effective contrast to her metropolitan culture and ease the sweet winsome "Oh, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast," would follow, sung by Emily Fowler, granddaughter of Noah Webster, afterward Mrs. Gordon L. Ford, of Brooklyn, a wizard in person and power. There was the diversion of refreshments, with a refreshment-table, as it was called then, and President Hitchcock being strongly and frankly in favour of early hours, only intruders lingered after ten o'clock at his parties; though with unaffected hospitality the gentle host appeared to ignore the late mad hour as it approached. Weeks before this climax of the year the young ladies were in a modest agitation over it; arranging becoming gowns with charming refinement and economy. As the Summer was so nearly over, to these same young ladies at least, there was a sort of collapse after the party and a little feeling of gloom in the earlier drawing in of evening with the sad-voiced crickets, and a rather pensive waiting for the return of the students. But never was the slightest utterance given to that effect, lest maiden modesty blush for such dependence upon these fascinating comrades. For many years the dress that satisfied feminine vanity was of the simplest. Soft merino dresses of gentle shades were worn entirely for all ordinary visiting, black silk for stately occasions of the elders. In Summer the young ladies wore sprigged muslins, not too prudish as to cut at the throat. As the season grew chilly, sashes of scarlet ribbon were added, with knots of red berries festooned on the shoulders and drooping gracefully from the hair. Often quite heavy wreaths of myrtle leaves were bound about the head, giving a classic touch, as of filleted martyrs or Parnassian victims! No one smiled over the simplicity of these toilets or coveted richer or more elaborate effects. The girls were so pretty and winsome they dominated externals. During the visit of some world-famous savants from Europe, the stony-hearted scientists became enthusiastic over the unusual number of beautiful and attractive girls they met there.

President Stearns's family were all intimately friendly with the Dickinson family and their entertaining was less general, a little more stately, than their predecessors'. With their administration came a touch of the worldly in the general appearance of the president's house, always so plain and simple before. Rich odd cabinets, carved chairs and treasures sent home from a son in India, as well as inherited silver of aristocratic pattern, lent an air of elegance agreeable and suitable. Quoting again:

There was little social variety sixty years ago; never dinners, a rare evening party perhaps, and sometimes the small friendly suppers, or tea parties. The parlors of Deacon Luke Sweetser set the standard of elegance and struck the grand note in these affairs. There was more light, more inherited silver, a certain pomposity on the part of the hostess, who always received in purple gloves, and with a long dipping backward curtsy, a relic of her gay education at boarding school. She waved aloft a feather fan sent her from a thousand miles up the Nile by a missionary friend, and after supper Syrian relics were handed about, musky curios of Arab and Greek,—lentils, from the Holy Land, husks,—"such-as-the-swine-did-eat,"—inlaid coffee cups, attar of rose bottles, sent home by their niece the wife of the Rev. Daniel Bliss, founder of the Protestant College at Beyrut, Syria. Later came music, Lavinia Dickinson singing "Are we almost there? said the dying girl," "Coming Through the Rye,"—and a local Basso of a profundity beyond all known musical necessity after prolonged urging giving "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," with such sustained power that the glasses tinkled in the cupboard from the jar. Later everybody sang "America" and "Auld Lang Syne," and all in a glow the party broke up with the host standing at the top of the stone steps holding an oil lantern in the air for his guests' safety,—at that time the only beacon in Amherst.

The diversions of these days were pallid and calm, leading almost inevitably back to the religious activities of the church. There was an occasional lecture, there were the Wednesday evening prayer meetings, and the Sewing Society once a fortnight, clergyman and husbands coming in for tea. In mid-winter there were usually six weeks of protracted meetings. The picture deepens while one reads on:

As the snow lay two or three feet deep on the level those wintry days, Amherst with no street lights, no trolleys, no railroads, telephone and movie undreamed of, seemed to my perverse young mind, animal spirits and vigorous happiness, a staring, lonely, hopeless place,—enough to make angels homesick. The lugubrious sound of the church bell still rings in my winter dreams.

Emily always declared she was sure the Baptist bell would ring in the Day of Judgment, and more and more she turned to the warmth of her home within, and the little conservatory where her ferns and yellow jasmine and purple heliotrope made an atmosphere more tropical for the dwelling of her imagination. The scent of her cape jasmines and daphne odora is forever immortalized to those who breathed it, transporting them back to the loveliness of her immortal atmosphere.

The Tyler home was another one distinguished for unstinted hospitality. The stranger, the foreigner, rich and poor were welcomed there; missionaries, statesmen, scholars, and when Charles Sumner was in Amherst he found with them the only welcome afforded an abolitionist—for the aristocratic salvation of the Nation, as it was then held, lay in the choice of the old Whig Party. How slowly they yielded, those handsome stubborn gentlemen in velvet collars and beaver hats, to the emancipating chariots of the God of battle and Abraham Lincoln!

But even in these repressed lives stolen pleasures were sweet, and it is a relief to be told that

Emily Fowler had what she called P.O.M. meetings at her house, impromptu dances,—if our floundering attempts to get through a Virginia Reel, or Lancers could be called that—to the sharp voice of an attenuated piano! It was great fun and seemed real,—beside it was contraband. Just across the Connecticut river good people played cards and loved God, while this side such recreation was wicked as Juggernaut or idols! For secrecy's sake, the name "Poetry of Motion meetings," to be sure. Once only were they surreptitiously invited to gather at the home of the dignified pair who were to be away for the night, and would therefore remain in blest ignorance of this departure on the part of their young people, Emily and Austin, from the moral code of those days. All went merry as a marriage bell. The revellers danced late and with quite an abandon. But trifles light as air are time proven betrayers,—the slight scarlet thread of Jezebel, Newton's apple, Fulton's tea-kettle, "Great oaks from little acorns grow!" It was the lion's tail on the hearth rug in the parlor of this strict home that convulsed domesticity for twenty-four hours and led to discovery at last. Taken up to relieve the dancing toes from clumsy entanglement in the fringe, it was put back in the flurry of righting up in the morning before the parents' return, regardless of the lion's anatomy and jungle grace. He was a big brown fellow set off by a vague green background of some appropriate sort. The silly half-frightened young folk had replaced him, but completely reversed, so that his majestic tail was turned up where it should have turned down, and all his members were topsy-turvy accordingly! Only too soon after the return the maternal shriek,—"Why, girls, girls! What has happened? The lion's tail is upside down!" proved the forerunner of a little private judgment day. But eventually the mother was "managed" and recommended "not to trouble Father with it"!

One can hardly realize at the present time the importance of the two great events of the year in Amherst mid-century. These were, of course, Commencement Day and the annual Cattle Show in October. Both took place all over the Village Green.

Cattle Show was an affair of bucolic sweetness and simplicity, which Emily loved afar; especially the strains of military music on the air, at intervals. It was begun with an address by some distinguished person, and this was followed by a prayer of thanks for the ingathering of the crops. The procession then formed at the Amherst House, an inspiring band leading the way, while mounted escorts, with a military hint in dress and style, cavorted hither and thither. The ploughing match was of intense interest, held just west of the church on the Hadley road. Draft matches were held on the west side of the green or common. The exhibition of horses included the entire space of the common and down the Main Street. Deacon Luke Sweetser, Seth Nims, and Emily's father, Squire Dickinson, were invariably owners of fine horses, and they drove about on these occasions sitting very straight in the backless open buggies, reins taut, and the high showy heads of their steeds refusing the senseless check. People turned to look after them—and in these latter days one might not irreverently exclaim, "Where are the horsemen and the chariots thereof?"

From early morning on Commencement Day, the common was the camping-ground for fakirs' tents, peddlers' carts, every imaginable sort of vendor, and most delightful of all girls and boys in the Sunday best from Shutesbury and Pelham and all the region about, hand in hand, with arms entwined, enjoying the outdoors part of the show, and the wonderful if to them meaningless array in the old village church. Everybody was there—wonderful young men declaiming even more wonderful pieces on the big stage, where all the Trustees in stiff collars and stiffer dignity were sitting with other important men of the Valley, listening to the eloquence displayed and sizing up the orthodoxy. The most conspicuous places always were deferentially reserved for the returned missionaries, those idolized sons of the college, for whose sacred and brave ideals the institution was prayed into being.

Edward Dickinson, with his Trustee tea party, held on the Wednesday night of Commencement Week for forty years, was too pronounced a feature of those days to be forgotten or omitted. Friends were received all over the house and grounds from six to eight. A supper was handed about with most remarkable tea and coffee. Here one could always find Governors and Judges, interesting missionaries, famous professors from our best colleges, editors of high repute, fair women and brave men. This became such a time-honored affair that one was often heard to say in the hurried good comradeship of the week, "Oh, I will see you again at the Dickinson tea party."

The social functions of Commencement Week to-day seem rather lacking in high effect as one recalls how the Governor and his staff in uniform, with spurs clanking, blended and contrasted with the sombre black all about the piazzas and under the old pines of three generations' growth. Governor Banks was said to be the handsomest, most martial of them all. Governor Bullock was another memorable figure, with high fine bearing, rather stiffly elegant, and always complete suaviter in modo, as he quoted his classics on any small mellow justification. Later on in her life Emily Dickinson forsook her usual seclusion at these times, and radiant as a flying spirit, diaphanously dressed in white, always with a flower in her hand, measured her wit and poured her wine amid much excitement and applause from those fortunate enough to get near her.