The lawful Heir - for Thee -
-Fr850, J730, Fascicle 38, 1864
When I visited Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst this summer, I was browsing in the bookstore of the gift-shop and spied a book that I had never heard of before. It was Face to Face, by Martha Dickinson. The book is an account of growing up with Emily Dickinson, written by her niece, Mattie (Martha) Dickinson. Mattie was the daughter of Emily's brother Austin and her best friend, Sue, and lived next door to Emily in the house known as The Evergreens. Reading this memoir gave me an unexpectedly rare and intimate view of Emily, straight from the eyes of a child whom she adored, and that adored her. One reason I hadn't heard of this book before is because it was long out of print. It's only because a new edition was printed recently by McNally Editions, and was displayed on the shelf at the Dickinson Homestead, that I was made aware of it.
One of the things I loved about the book was the introduction by Anthony Madrid. It wasn't the usual stuffy academic introduction. It was idiosyncratic and fun, like the book itself.
I reached out to Anthony and asked if he would be interested in being a guest blogger on Prowling Bee. He said yes, to my pleasant surprise. I told him to pick any poem after Fr850 and he surprised me further by picking four. He wrote them and sent them in short order, each one concisely incisive. I present the first one to you here.
-Fr850, J730, Fascicle 38, 1864
When I visited Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst this summer, I was browsing in the bookstore of the gift-shop and spied a book that I had never heard of before. It was Face to Face, by Martha Dickinson. The book is an account of growing up with Emily Dickinson, written by her niece, Mattie (Martha) Dickinson. Mattie was the daughter of Emily's brother Austin and her best friend, Sue, and lived next door to Emily in the house known as The Evergreens. Reading this memoir gave me an unexpectedly rare and intimate view of Emily, straight from the eyes of a child whom she adored, and that adored her. One reason I hadn't heard of this book before is because it was long out of print. It's only because a new edition was printed recently by McNally Editions, and was displayed on the shelf at the Dickinson Homestead, that I was made aware of it.
One of the things I loved about the book was the introduction by Anthony Madrid. It wasn't the usual stuffy academic introduction. It was idiosyncratic and fun, like the book itself.
I reached out to Anthony and asked if he would be interested in being a guest blogger on Prowling Bee. He said yes, to my pleasant surprise. I told him to pick any poem after Fr850 and he surprised me further by picking four. He wrote them and sent them in short order, each one concisely incisive. I present the first one to you here.
It's fitting to have Anthony comment on this particular poem because, for me, it hearkens back to Mattie's book and her delight in her Aunt's mischievous quality. That whole book's a riot of childhood conspiracy. You can see that in this poem too. After all, it's pretty cheeky to practice fraud on butterflies. But if anyone would do it, for the sake of love of course, it would be Emily. The legalese, the language of her lawyer father and brother, lends the heresy herein a sly wink.
Here's his gloss on the poem:
The above was probably a note, accompanying a flower, for Sue or somebody close-by enough to send flowers to. The humor turns on using lawyer language in this context.
Another example of humorous use of legalese: Franklin 1174 (“Alone and in a Circumstance / Reluctant to be told”).
The seesaw rhyme within the first line [Defrauded I / a Butterfly] makes me wish for a concordance of all such internal rhymes in Dickinson. It would be pleasant to be in a position to venture a general statement regarding the thematic content that makes this “move” attractive to Emily Elizabeth.
-Anthony Madrid
Shot taken just outside of Fantastic Caverns,
Springfield Missouri, Fall of 2025. AWD.
When I read this poem my head goes back and forth 7 times, once for each iamb, starting to the right, but a little heavier each time I go to the left.
ReplyDeleteWhat does the butterfly represent in Dickinson's poetry? Someone should publish a book, if they haven't already, of symbol-meanings in Dickinson. What might a butterfly mean, as defined from poem to poem?
One wonders if the butterfly here stands for someone specific. If this was a secret code, the butterfly might be a social butterfly? But why would Emily "defraud" this social creature? By being the one at home where the action is? By being the bee? And what is this about a "lawful" heir? I think of a legal tie here, like a wife. Mattie is a lawful heir of Sue and Austin's, but I can't imagine Dickinson defrauding her? Sue is a social butterfly, and she is also a legal heir of Austin's, but I can't imagine Emily defrauding Sue? Hmm, maybe Austin is the social butterfly/ lawful heir, and it is he who is being defrauded when Emily goes to see Sue, the flower, while he is away? Well, that's some scandalous gossip we're dishing up here. The poem calls for it though, with that word defraud and lawful so close to each other like that. And we know that Emily love to write in code.
When you read the poem out loud the word "Heir" sounds like "err." "The Lawful err, for Thee." That gives the poem a new vector of meaning. The seduction of the flower is now causing the lawful to veer right off the righteous path. I erred, goes this reading, by defrauding the butterfly for thee.