Civil War Women Blog

Ernestine Rose

2012-01-19T18:46:00.000-05:00

Abolitionist and Women's Rights Activist in the Civil War Era

Ernestine Rose (1810–1892) was an advocate for the abolition of slavery and the rights of women and an orator whose activism was recognized by contemporaries as one of the major intellectual forces behind the women's rights movement in nineteenth-century America. Although she met with discouragements, lack of acknowledgement of her achievements and hostility from women, she was described as "one of the best lecturers of her time."

Childhood
She was born Ernestine Louise Potowski in Peterhof Trybunalski, Poland, on January 13, 1810. Her father was a wealthy rabbi and her mother the daughter of a wealthy businessman. She was reared in strict accordance with the tenets and rituals of the Jewish religion. At the age of five, Rose began to "question the justice of a God who would exact such hardships" as frequent and severe fasts.

As she grew older, she began to question her father more and more on religious matters. Her intellectual development brought her to find many things in the Bible which she could neither understand nor approve. By the age of fourteen, she had completely rejected the idea of female inferiority and the religious texts that supported that idea.

When Rose was sixteen her mother died and her father betrothed her to his young Jewish friend. By the terms of the betrothal, she would forfeit a good share of the property which reverted to her at her mother's death if she broke the marriage contract.

Unwilling to accept the betrothal, she sued her father for her inheritance in the Polish courts. This meant a long and lonely journey in the dead of winter. The courts ruled in her favor, ruling that she could retain the full inheritance from her mother. She decided to let her father keep her fortune, but she was happily freed from the arranged marriage.

Rose returned home only to discover that in her absence her father had remarried, to a sixteen year old girl. The tension that developed forced her to leave home. By the time she was seventeen, she had established herself in Berlin, one of the foremost cultural centers of the day. There she lived alone, obeying the German restrictions placed on Jews as to their movements, the kinds of work they could do and how long they could stay.

To support herself, she invented and sold perfumed paper, remaining in Berlin for nearly two years. Then she traveled to Belgium, the Netherlands and France. In June 1829, she decided to go to England, but the ship in which she sailed was wrecked. She arrived in England safely, but all her possessions had been destroyed. She found work as a teacher in the languages of German and Hebrew and continued to sell her room fresheners.

In London she was introduced to Utopian socialist Robert Owen after hearing him speak. Then about sixty years of age, he was impressed by her intellect, and invited her to speak in the huge hall he had furnished for radical speakers. In spite of her limited knowledge of English, the audience was so impressed that from then on she appeared regularly.

Owen referred to her as "his daughter," and their friendship lasted for years. She helped him to found the Association of All Classes of All Nations, a group that espoused human rights for all people of all nations, sexes, races and classes. The group accepted no formal religion; it was at this time that she made her full break with religion.

During her time there she also met William Ella Rose, a English jeweler and silversmith three years her junior and a fervent disciple of Robert Owen. They were soon married by a civil magistrate, and both made it plain that they considered marriage a civil contract rather than a religious one.

Women's Rights Activist
In May 1836, the Roses emigrated to the United States and later became naturalized citizens. They settled in New York City, where they opened a small shop in their home the following year. William repaired jewelry, watches and ornaments; Ernestine made and sold perfumed toilet water.

Rose learned that a bill proposed to the New York legislature would grant married women the right to control their own property and earnings. Rose drew up a petition, gained supporters, and submitted the first petition on this topic to the legislature in 1838. She persevered during succeeding years and New York's Married Women's Property Act was passed in 1848.

Others who participated in the work for that bill included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Frances Wright and Susan B. Anthony. These same women were responsible for inaugurating the women's rights movement in the United States, which led to the famous Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

Rose declared herself an Atheist and joined a group of freethinkers who had organized a Society for Moral Philanthropists. This group sponsored public lectures and debates, which sometimes drew as many as 2,000 people, and Rose became one of the most popular lecturers. Her topics included the advocacy of abolition of slavery, women's rights, equal opportunities for education and civil rights.

Rose was much in demand and began to travel for lectures, first in New York state, then in the Northeast and as far south as Kentucky and South Carolina. She worked also in association with William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Together they traveled endless miles, wrote and delivered speeches, debated, argued, pleaded and organized on behalf of their causes.

All of these lectures and debates were regularly reported in the Boston Investigator, to which Rose was a constant contributor. The Investigator was an avowed infidel and Atheistic publication, and Rose fearlessly attacked the clergy in it. She was independent, thoughtful, critical and inquiring.

In March 1854 she went with Susan B. Anthony on a speaking tour to Washington, DC. Later, in October, Rose was elected president of the National Women's Rights Convention at Philadelphia, overcoming the objections that she was an Atheist. Anthony was her champion for this fight, declaring that every religion - or none - should have an equal right on the platform.

On May 5, 1856, Ernestine Rose and her husband set sail for England and Europe. She tried to visit her native Poland and was denied admission. After a six-month sojourn, they returned to the United States. She attempted, thereafter, because of her health, to stay away from the platform and from controversy.

But within six months she attended the National Women's Rights Convention, where she made the closing address:

The wisest of all ages have acknowledged that the most important period in human education is in childhood. This most important part of education is left entirely in the hands of the mother... With an imperfect education... can she impart a spirit of independence in her sons?... The mother must possess these high and noble qualities, or she never can impart them to her offspring.

In 1860 New York State passed a law that granted women nearly everything for which they had petitioned. It recognized the right of a married woman to be sole owner of any property she had inherited prior to or during marriage; it gave women power to make investments, sign contracts, sue or be sued, and to have equal control over her children. In New York she could do almost anything - except vote.

Rose appeared in Albany, New York at the State Women's Rights Convention in early February 1861, the last convention to be held until after of the Civil War. On May 14, 1863, she shared the podium with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Antoinette Blackwell when the first Women's National Loyal League met to call for equal rights for women, and to support the government in the Civil War, "in so far as it makes a war for freedom."

Rose became an American citizen in 1869, and was in attendance at the Equal Rights Association meeting in which there was a schism and on May 15, 1869, she joined with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone to form a new organization, the National Woman Suffrage Association, taking a position on the executive committee.

Ernestine Rose had remained in poor health for a number of years. On June 8, 1869, suffering from severe neuralgia and rheumatic pain, she retired to England. Her farewell party in America was arranged by Susan B. Anthony. Rose and her husband both received gifts, including a substantial sum of money collected from colleagues and admirers, since the couple was then in reduced circumstances.

By 1873 Rose's health did improve and she began again to take part in the causes of freethought and Women's Suffrage in England, attending a Conference of the Woman's Suffrage movement in London, reported in the National Reformer. She was a speaker in Edinburgh, Scotland, on January 27, 1873, at a large public meeting in favor of Woman's Suffrage and later spoke at the Universal Peace Society.

Ernestine Rose was described by her compatriots as beautiful, even in old age. She was of medium height, matronly form, thoroughly feminine, soft curls - iron gray in color - fair, pale cheeks, beautiful eyes, a slight lisp, and a foreign accent.

William Rose died in 1882, after which Ernestine seldom left her London flat.

Ernestine Rose died at Brighton, England, on August 4, 1892, at age eighty-two and was buried beside her husand.

SOURCES
Ernestine Rose
Wikipedia: Ernestine Rose
Ernestine Rose: A Troublesome Female

Lydian Emerson

2012-01-10T10:57:00.000-05:00

Wife of Poet and Writer Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lydia Jackson was born in 1802 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She met Ralph Waldo Emerson - an essayist, lecturer and poet - when he gave a lecture in her hometown in 1834. On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote a letter to Lydia proposing marriage, and she accepted. He wanted Lydia to have a less common name and asked her to become Lydian Emerson. He often called her Queenie, and she called him Mr. Emerson.

Lydian Emerson
With son Edward, circa 1847

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston and attended Boston Latin School from 1812 to 1817, and Harvard from then to 1821. His first career, as a teacher, lasted four years, after which he was licensed to preach as a Unitarian. In 1829 he was ordained minister of Second Church in Boston and married his first wife, Ellen Tucker.

Eighteen months later in 1831, Ellen died of tuberculosis. Emerson was heavily affected by her death and visited her grave in Roxbury daily. After becoming dissatisfied with his profession, Emerson resigned from his position and traveled throughout Europe.

Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833. Seeing the budding Lyceum movement, which provided lectures on all sorts of topics, Emerson saw a possible career as a lecturer. On November 5, 1833, he gave his first speech, discussing "The Uses of Natural History" in Boston.

In 1834, Emerson's travels on the lecture circuit took him to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he met Lydia Jackson and fell in love for the second time. On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote a letter to Lydia proposing marriage. Her acceptance reached him by mail on the 28th.

In July 1835, he bought a house in Concord, Massachusetts which he named Bush. Emerson quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He gave a lecture to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the founding of Concord on September 12, 1835.

Lydia Jackson married Emerson on September 14, 1835, at her family home. The next day, they drove to Concord where they would spend the rest of their married lives together in the large white house on the Cambridge Turnpike. Emerson's mother, as well as a live-in cook, moved in with them.

Lydia was Emerson's intellectual partner, and he was enamored of the "perfect sympathy that exists between like minds." He wanted her to have a less common name and asked her to become Lydian Emerson. He often called her Queenie, and she called him Mr. Emerson.

The Emersons had four children, Waldo, Ellen, Edith and Edward. When Waldo died in 1842 at five years of age, neighbor Henry David Thoreau wrote, "he died as the mist rises from the brook... He had not even taken root here." Ellen Emerson, who never married, became her father's travel companion, and was devoted to him in his later years.

In 1836, Emerson wrote Concord Hymn, a poem about the first battle of the Revolutionary War fought on April 19, 1775 between British and American soldiers in the towns of Concord and Lexington. In 1837, the poem was sung at the dedication of the Battle Monument near the site of the North Bridge.

Transcendentalism
In the 1830s and 1840s Ralph Waldo Emerson led the Transcendentalist movement as a protest to the general state of culture and society. Among his core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both man and nature. He believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual, and had faith that man is at his best when self-reliant and independent.

The publication of Emerson's 1836 essay Nature is usually considered the watershed moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Although the book is only a slim volume, it contains in brief the whole substance of his thought, and represents at least ten years of intense study in philosophy, religion and literature.

Excerpt from Nature:

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches.

On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of Nature, Emerson met with Henry Hedge, George Putnam and George Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals. This was the beginning of the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836, and in the ensuing years the group met often at his home.

On September 1, 1837, women attended a meeting of the Transcendental Club for the first time. Emerson invited Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Hoar and Sarah Ripley for dinner at his home before the meeting to ensure that they would be present for the evening get-together. Fuller would prove to be an important figure in Transcendentalism.

In his speech The American Scholar on August 31, 1837, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States just as the Patriots had declared independence from England decades earlier. In this speech Emerson urged Americans to create a writing style all their own and free from Europe.

The Transcendentalists became a generation of well educated people, who attempted to create a uniquely American body of literature in the decades before the Civil War. They began creating essays, novels and poetry that were clearly different from anything produced in England or Europe. The major figures in the movement were Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and Emerson's neighbor Bronson Alcott.

In 1840, Emerson helped launch The Dial, a journal of literature, philosophy and religion that focused on transcendentalist views, with co-members such as Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. After the first two years, he succeeded Fuller as its editor. The Dial was recognized as the official voice of transcendentalism. It ceased publication in April 1844.

Emerson had first met Henry David Thoreau when Thoreau was a young Harvard student. Thoreau was like a brother to Lydian Emerson because he took care of the family while her husband was away on his lecture tours. Thoreau lived in the Emerson home for two years in 1841, doing handywork in exchange for board, and he was a favorite of the Emerson children.

The Emerson home was a kind of experiment in communal living, based on Emerson's desire (one shared to a degree by his wife) to make their home in Concord an intellectual center. So the house was frequently filled with like-minded residents and young women such as Elizabeth Hoar, Lydian's sister Lucy Brown and Margaret Fuller.

Emerson wrote most of his important essays first as lectures, then revised them for print. His first two collections – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most prolific period.

Never intending to be regarded as a philosopher, Emerson emerged as one of the original thinkers of his age, and became known as the Sage of Concord. While his writing style can be seen as somewhat difficult to understand, Emerson's work greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets who followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."

Emerson's earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying 11 acres of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in a neighboring pine grove. He wrote that he was "landlord and waterlord of 14 acres, more or less".

When Thoreau decided to build a cabin in the woods, his good friend Ralph Waldo Emerson donated the land. In 1845, Thoreau went to live at Walden Pond in the small house he had started building. Thoreau's book, Walden, broke new ground for environmentalism and the Transcendentalists.

Toward the end of the 1840s, Emerson took his second trip to Europe with his friend Thomas Carlyle. While touring Europe, Emerson not only toured literary venues but also delivered around 64 speeches during 1847 and 1848, in a series of lectures named "Mind and Matters of the Nineteenth Century."

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed the Transcendentalist movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much of the rest of the country. He had begun lecturing in 1833, and by the 1850s he was giving as many as 80 per year. He charged between $10 and $50 for each appearance, bringing him as much as $2,000 in a typical winter series of talks. This was more than his earnings from other sources. He eventually gave some 1,500 lectures in his lifetime.

Lydian Emerson was an abolitionist and expressed her feelings by draping a black cloth over the gate and fence posts in front of the Emerson home on July 4, 1855, in protest of the continued presence of slavery in the United States.

Civil War Years
Ralph Waldo Emerson was also staunchly anti-slavery, but he was hesitant about lecturing on the subject. He did, however, give a number of lectures during the pre-Civil War years, and from 1844 on took a more active role in opposing slavery. He also welcomed John Brown to his home during Brown's visits to Concord.

Emerson voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but was disappointed that Lincoln was more concerned about preserving the Union than eliminating slavery outright. Once the Civil War broke out, Emerson made it clear that he believed in immediate emancipation of the slaves.

In 1860 Emerson published The Conduct of Life, his final original collection of essays. In this book, Emerson "grappled with some of the thorniest issues of the moment," and "his experience in the abolition ranks" is a telling influence on his conclusions.

Emerson visited Washington, DC, at the end of January 1862, and gave a public lecture at the Smithsonian on January 31, 1862, in which he declared: "The South calls slavery an institution... I call it destitution... Emancipation is the demand of civilization."

His friend Charles Sumner took him to meet Lincoln at the White House. Lincoln was familiar with Emerson's work, having previously seen him lecture. Emerson's misgivings about Lincoln began to soften after this meeting. In 1865, he spoke at a memorial service held for the assassinated president in Concord: "...I doubt if any death has caused so much pain as this has caused..."

Emerson also met a number of high-ranking government officials, including Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Attorney General Edward Bates, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of State William Seward.

On May 6, 1862, Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis at the age of 44 and Emerson delivered his eulogy. Emerson would continuously refer to Thoreau as his best friend, despite a falling out that began in 1849 after Thoreau published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Emerson served as one of the pallbearers at the funeral of author Nathaniel Hawthorne two years later.

Final Years
Starting in 1867, Emerson's health began to decline; he wrote much less in his journals. Beginning as early as the summer of 1871, Emerson started having memory problems. By the end of the decade, he forgot his own name at times and, when anyone asked how he felt, he responded, "Quite well; I have lost my mental faculties, but am perfectly well."

The Emerson home caught fire on July 24, 1872; Emerson called for help from neighbors and, giving up on putting out the flames, all attempted to save as many objects as possible. The Emersons moved in with family at the Old Manse. The fire marked an end to Emerson's serious lecturing career; from then on, he would lecture only on special occasions.

While the house was being rebuilt, Emerson took a trip to England, Europe and Egypt. He left on October 23, 1872, along with his daughter Ellen while Lydian remained at the Old Manse and with friends. Emerson and Ellen returned to the United States on April 15, 1873, and his return to Concord was celebrated by the town.

The problems with his memory had become embarrassing to Emerson and he ceased his public appearances by 1879. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. wrote:

Emerson is afraid to trust himself in society much, on account of the failure of his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he wants. It is painful to witness his embarrassment at times.

Ralph Waldo Emerson died of pneumonia on April 27, 1882 at the age of 78. Close to one thousand people came to Concord to honor Emerson. Louisa May Alcott, among others, spoke at his service in the Unitarian church. Emerson was laid to rest on Authors' Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.

Lydian Emerson died in 1892 at the age of 90, and was buried next to her husband.

SOURCES
Wikipedia: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Review: Mr. Emerson's Wife: A Novel
The Living Legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Literature Network: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emily Dickinson

2011-12-30T16:35:00.000-05:00

American Poet in the Civil War Era

Emily Dickinson is considered the most original 19th Century American poet. She is noted for her unconventional broken rhyming meter and use of dashes and random capitalization as well as her creative use of metaphor and overall innovative style. She was a deeply sensitive woman who explored her own spirituality, in poignant, deeply personal poetry, revealing her keen insight into the human condition.

Emily the Daughter
Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was the second child born to Emily Norcross and Edward Dickinson, a Yale graduate, successful lawyer and United States Congressman. While Emily described her father in a warm manner, her correspondence suggests that her mother was cold and aloof. Emily and her family lived with her grandfather Samuel Dickinson and his family in Amherst. In 1840 the Dickinsons moved to North Pleasant Street.

Emily was troubled from a young age by a fear of death, especially the deaths of those who were close to her. When her second cousin and close friend Sophia Holland died in April 1844, Emily was traumatized. She became so melancholic that her parents sent her to stay with family in Boston to recover.

The Dickinsons were strong advocates for education and Emily received an early education in classic literature, mathematics, history and botany. At age ten Emily entered Amherst Academy and studied there for seven years. At age seventeen, she enrolled at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley about ten miles from Amherst, but was so homesick she returned home after one year.

In 1818, back in the family home in Amherst, Emily wrote her first poems. She was also in the midst of the college town's society and bustle although she started to spend more time alone, reading and maintaining lively correspondences with friends and relatives.

When she was eighteen, Dickinson's family befriended a young attorney by the name of Benjamin Franklin Newton. Although their relationship was probably not romantic, Newton's gift to her of Ralph Waldo Emerson's first book of collected poems had a liberating effect. Newton believed in Emily and recognized her as a poet.

Dickinson was also familiar with contemporary popular literature, and was influenced by Lydia Maria Child's Letters from New York, another gift from Newton. When he was dying of tuberculosis, Newton wrote in a letter that he would like to live until Emily achieved the greatness he foresaw.

During the 1850s, Emily's strongest and most affectionate relationship was with Susan Gilbert, an old schoolmate from Amherst Academy. Emily sent her over 300 letters over the course of their friendship. Susan was supportive of the poet, playing the role of "most beloved friend, influence, muse and adviser" whose editorial suggestions Dickinson sometimes followed.

Until 1855, Dickinson had not strayed far from Amherst. That spring, accompanied by her mother and sister, she took one of her longest and farthest trips away from home. First, they spent three weeks in Washington, DC, where her father was representing Massachusetts in Congress. Then they went to Philadelphia for two weeks to visit family.

The same year her father bought The Homestead, the Main Street house where Emily was born. He built an addition to the mansion with extensive gardens and a conservatory.

In 1856 Susan married Emily's brother Austin, now a successful Amherst lawyer, after a four-year courtship. Emily's father built a house for him and Susan called The Evergreens, which stood on the west side of The Homestead, but their marriage was not a happy one.

From the mid-1850s, Emily's mother became effectively bedridden with various chronic illnesses. Writing to a friend in summer 1858, Emily said that she would visit if she could leave "home, or mother. I do not go out at all, lest father will come and miss me, or miss some little act, which I might forget, should I run away – Mother is much as usual. I Know not what to hope of her".

As her mother continued to decline, Dickinson's domestic responsibilities weighed more heavily upon her. Forty years later, Lavinia stated that because their mother was chronically ill, one of the daughters had to remain always with her. Emily took this role as her own, and "finding the life with her books and nature so congenial, continued to live it."

Emily the Poet
In the late 1850s, the Dickinsons befriended Samuel Bowles, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican, and his wife Mary. They visited the Dickinsons regularly for years to come. During this time Emily sent him over three dozen letters and nearly fifty poems. Their friendship brought out some of her most intense writing and Bowles published a few of her poems in his journal.

Withdrawing more and more from the outside world, Emily began in the summer of 1858 what would be her lasting legacy. Reviewing poems she had written previously, between 1858 and 1865 she made clean copies of her work in carefully pieced-together manuscript books. The first half of the 1860s proved to be Dickinson's most productive writing period.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a captain in the 51st Massachusetts Infantry during the early part of the Civil War. From November 1862 to October 1864, when he was retired because of a wound received in the preceding August, he was colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers - a Union Army regiment of escaped slaves from South Carolina and Florida.

In April 1862, Higginson, a literary critic and radical abolitionist published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, titled "Letter to a Young Contributor," which contained practical advice for those wishing to break into print. Dickinson's decision to contact Higginson suggests that she was contemplating publication and that it may have become increasingly difficult to write poetry without an audience.

Emily Dickinson sent a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, enclosing four poems and asking:
Mr Higginson,
Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?
The Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly – and I have none to ask –
Should you think it breathed – and had you the leisure to tell me,
I should feel quick gratitude –
I enclose my name – asking you, if you please – Sir – to tell me what is true?

His reply included gentle criticism of Dickinson's odd verse, questions about her personal and literary background and a request for more poems. Higginson's next reply contained high praise, but warned her against publishing her poetry because of its unconventional style. Gradually, Higginson became Dickinson's mentor, though he almost felt out of her league. Emily may have also had romantic feelings for him.

Dickinson delighted in dramatic self-characterization and mystery in her letters to Higginson. She said of herself, "I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves." She stressed her solitary nature, stating that her only real companions were the hills, the sundown and her dog, Carlo.

His interest in her work certainly provided great moral support; many years later, Dickinson told Higginson that he had saved her life in 1862. They corresponded until her death, but her difficulty in expressing her literary needs left Higginson puzzled; he did not press her to publish in subsequent letters.

Emily in Seclusion
In 1864 and 1865 Emily went to stay with her Norcross cousins in Boston, where she underwent treatments for a painful eye condition. It was the last time she left Amherst. Soon after, her behavior began to change. She did not leave The Homestead unless it was absolutely necessary and as early as 1867, she began to talk to visitors from the other side of a door rather than speaking to them face to face.

She was rarely seen, and when she was, she was usually clothed in white. Austin and his family began to protect Emily's privacy, deciding that she was not to be a subject of discussion among outsiders. Her younger sister Lavinia, who also lived at home her entire life, and her brother Austin were not only family, but Emily's intellectual companions. She also had a good rapport with the children in her life.

Dickinson's poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want, but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of happiness.

Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, and also admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman (because it was rumored to be disgraceful), the two poets are now considered the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice.

When Thomas Wentworth Higginson urged Emily to come to Boston in 1868 so that they could formally meet for the first time, she declined, writing: "Could it please your convenience to come so far as Amherst I should be very glad, but I do not cross my Father's ground to any House or town."

He came to Amherst in 1870 and they finally met. Later he referred to her, in the most detailed and vivid physical account of her on record, as "a little plain woman with two smooth bands of reddish hair... in a very plain and exquisitely clean white pique and a blue net worsted shawl." He also felt that he never was "with any one who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her."

Family and Loss
By the early 1870s Emily's ailing mother was confined to her bed and Emily and her sister cared for her. Lamenting her mother's increasing physical as well as mental demands, Emily wrote that "Home is so far from Home." Her father Edward died suddenly in 1874, and Emily stopped going out in public.

Although she continued to write in her last years, Emily stopped editing and organizing her poems. She also exacted a promise from her sister Lavinia to burn her papers. She regularly tended the Homestead gardens and loved to bake, and the neighborhood children sometimes visited her.

The 1880s were a difficult time for the remaining Dickinsons. Irreconcilably alienated from his wife, Austin fell in love in 1882 with Mabel Loomis Todd, an Amherst College faculty wife who had recently moved to the area. Austin distanced himself from his family as his affair continued and his wife became sick with grief.

Emily's esteemed friend Charles Wadsworth died in 1882, the same year her mother succumbed to her long illness. Five weeks later, Emily wrote "We were never intimate Mother and children, while she was our Mother – but Mines in the same Ground meet by tunneling, and when she became our Child, the Affection came." The next year Emily's favorite nephew - Austin and Susan's youngest child, Gilbert - died of typhoid fever.

As death succeeded death, Dickinson found her world upended. In the fall of 1884, she wrote that "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come."

Emily herself became ill with Bright's Disease, a kidney ailment that causes chronic pain. She fainted one day while baking in the kitchen, and remained unconscious late into the night and weeks of ill health followed. She was confined to her bed for a few months, but managed to send a final burst of letters in the spring. What is thought to be her last letter was sent to her cousins, Louise and Frances Norcross.

Emily Dickinson died on May 15, 1886 at the age of 55. A gathering was held at The Homestead, and the funeral service was simple and short; Higginson read one of Emily's favorite poems, "No Coward Soul Is Mine" by Emily Bronte.

At Emily's request, her "coffin [was] not driven but carried through fields of buttercups" for burial in the family plot in the West Cemetery in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was buried in one of the white dresses she had worn in her later years, with violets pinned to her collar by Lavinia.

After Emily's death her sister Lavinia found 40 handbound volumes of poetry, nearly 1800 poems in all. These booklets were made by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems that show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions. Some were written in pencil, only a few titled, many unfinished.

While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. Although many friends including Helen Hunt Jackson had encouraged Dickinson to publish her poetry, only a handful of them appeared publicly before her death.

Lavinia enlisted the aid of Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd to edit the poems and roughly arrange them chronologically into collections: Poems, Series 1 in 1890, Poems, Series 2 in 1891, and Poems, Series 3 in 1896. The edits were aggressive in order to standardize punctuation and capitalization and some poems re-worded, but by and large it was a labor of love.

My Favorite Emily Dickinson Poem

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

SOURCES
Poets.org: Emily Dickinson
Wikipedia: Emily Dickinson
Biography of Emily Dickinson
Wikipedia: Thomas Wentworth Higginson