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 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 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 therein a sly wink.
Here's Anthony's 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 swings back and forth to the beat, 7 times, once for each iamb, starting to the right, but a little heavier each time I go to the left.
ReplyDeleteGiven Dickinson's penchant for writing in code, one wonders if the butterfly in this poem stands for someone specific. Is butterfly secret code for 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. Sue is a social butterfly, and she is also the legal heir of Austin's, but I can't imagine Emily defrauding Sue? Mattie is a lawful heir of Sue and Austin's too, but I really can't imagine Dickinson defrauding her. 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? That might account for the legalese here too. 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 often wrote to Sue in a code. She disguised her missives as...poems!
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.
ED’s Shortest Poem?
ReplyDeleteI just read ED's poem F850, ‘Defrauded I a butterfly’. (Early 1864):
“Defrauded I a Butterfly ─
The lawful Heir ─ for Thee ─”
2 lines, 9 words
The question mark (?) means there could be an ED poem with fewer lines and/or words that I haven’t read yet.
....................................................................
Just for fun, I asked AI, “What is the shortest poem in Emily Dickinbson’s 1789-poem canon?”
Here’s the answer I got (verbatim):
"AI Overview:
“The shortest poem in the 1,789-poem Emily Dickinson canon is widely considered to be Poem F1292:
“In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much - how little - is within our power”
This profound couplet holds the title for the fewest words and fewest lines.”
2 lines, 17 words
AI earns a grade of F- ( F Minus, Failed Miserably ).
Cheers, LarryB
(Go Figur')
here's a slightly shorter one
ReplyDeleteAll things swept sole away
This—is immensity—
Adam, Let's compose a poem of one line, one word, albeit multisyllabic. D'accord? You go first,
ReplyDelete^‿^ ,
LarryB
Here's Franklin's skinny on F1548 (Franklin, 1998, Variorum, V3, p 1536):
"1548 All things swept sole away
Manuscript: About 1881, in pencil, concluding a letter to T. W. Higginson (BPL 106).
It is solemn to remember that Vastness ─ is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it ─
Variant A
'All things swept sole away
This ─ is immensity ─
Division 1 swept I
PUBLICATION : Letters (1931), 312. Poems (1955), 1044, CP (1960), 635. Letters (1958), 716. (J1512)"
PS. Without mentioning any names, modern grammar nazis might proscribe ED's letter-closing "which" sentence to Higginson because our "mode du jour" calls for "that", not "which":
"It is solemn to remember that Vastness ─ is but the Shadow of the Brain that (!) casts it ─"
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°),
LarryB
PS. Speaking of fashion reversions, back in the day I preferred short miniskirts. How bout you?
Did I wear them "in the closet"?
(:X),
LarryB
seems like an echo of Blake, "One thought, fills immensity."
ReplyDeleteA single word poem? I like D'accord. How about "Circumscribe" ?
As far as fashion goes, I'm a Levi's jeans guy.
850.1864.Defrauded I a Butterfly -
ReplyDeleteDefrauded I a Butterfly -
The lawful Heir - for Thee -
ED is still fuming about Wadsworth walking with her at dusk in the Dickinson apple orchard (at her suggestion), and then plying her with honeyed words of love until, after dark in a remote corner of the orchard, she gave in. After their walk, he took his departure, and as they said goodbye, in ED’s words, they looked deep into each other’s eyes:
“Most—I love the Cause that slew Me.
Often as I die
Its beloved Recognition
Holds a Sun on Me—
“Best—at Setting—as is Nature's—
Neither witnessed Rise
Till the infinite Aurora
In the other's eyes.”
I interpret these last two stanzas of ‘Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning—’ [Stanzas 5-6, Fr841] as:
5. And the strangest thing is that I still love Wadsworth, even though he seduced me. I die of shame each day that passes, but at the same time his recognition of me is the Sun of my life.
6. Just as a sunset is most inspiring as the Sun sinks behind the horizon, the best part of our summer day was as he was leaving. Neither spoke, but we peered deep into each other’s eyes and saw an infinite sunrise.
.........................................................................
The Amherst train station was one block east of “Homestead” on Main Street, which made Wadsworth’s escape easy. No doubt, he hopped on the night train to Northampton, MA, 12 miles SW of Amherst, where he was visiting his old seminary roommate, James Clark, and I suspect the next morning he caught the Philadelphia train for the 250-mile trip south to home. Judging from the many poems ED wrote after her summer 1860 seduction in which she wonders if Wadsworth is alive or dead, I suspect he never again responded to her letters. By many, I mean 931 poems, 52% of her lifetime productivity, were composed during 1861-1865.Here’s one example:
F349, ‘He touched me, so I live to know’, “about summer 1862” (Franklin 1998)
He touched me, so I live to know
That such a day, permitted so,
I groped upon his breast –
It was a boundless place to me
And silenced, as the awful Sea
Puts minor streams to rest.
And now, I'm different from before,
As if I breathed superior air—
Or brushed a Royal Gown—
My feet, too, that had wandered so—
My Gypsy face—transfigured now—
To tenderer Renown—
Into this Port, if I might come,
Rebecca, to Jerusalem,
Would not so ravished turn—
Nor Persian, baffled at her shrine
Lift such a Crucifixial sign
To her imperial Sun.
Well, almost “never”:
That 1860 evening at Homestead was not the last time ED saw Wadsworth. He visited her again during summer 1880 after receiving her four-line invitation (F1485, late 1878):
“Spurn the temerity —
Rashness of Calvary —
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of Thee —”
This time he did not RSVP but simply showed up at her front door after giving an invited sermon at James Clark’s church in Northampton, MA. This visit took courage, both for ED when she invited him and for Wadsworth when he knocked on her door without sending an RSVP:
“The last time he came in Life, I was with my Lilies and Heliotropes, said my Sister to me, “the Gentleman with the deep voice wants to see you, Emily,” hearing him ask of the Servant.
“Where did you come from,” I said, for he spoke like an Apparition. “I stepped from my Pulpit from to the Train” was [his] simple reply, and when I asked “how long”, “Twenty Years” said he with inscrutable roguery – but the loved Voice has ceased.”
Letter JL1040 to Charles Clark, April 15, 1886, one month before ED died. Wadsworth died on April 1, 1882.
...............................................
PS. “Calvary” was ED’s codeword for Wadsworth and “Gethsemane” was her codename for herself.