A recent post (HERE) – and yesterday’s post too (HERE) – included a quote from a letter from Emily Dickinson to Perez Dickinson Cowan:
“It grieves me that you speak of Death with so much expectation. I know there is no pang like that for those we love, nor any leisure like the one they leave so closed behind them, but Dying is a wild Night and a new Road.”
I wondered what was going on in her cousin’s life for Dickinson to say such a thing, so I looked into it. First, I explored the Dickinson family tree to learn about Perez Dickinson, and I found out that there were three of them. An updated version of what I posted yesterday is below, and the Perez Dickinson in question was her third cousin, Perez Dickinson Cowan (1843 – 1923).
“It grieves me that you speak of Death with so much expectation. I know there is no pang like that for those we love, nor any leisure like the one they leave so closed behind them, but Dying is a wild Night and a new Road.”
I wondered what was going on in her cousin’s life for Dickinson to say such a thing, so I looked into it. First, I explored the Dickinson family tree to learn about Perez Dickinson, and I found out that there were three of them. An updated version of what I posted yesterday is below, and the Perez Dickinson in question was her third cousin, Perez Dickinson Cowan (1843 – 1923).
In October 1869 she wrote to him to express condolences regarding a loss in the family, his sister Nannie Cowan Meem, who died in May of that year at the age of 27. This is the letter where Dickinson said, “Dying is a wild Night and a new Road.” The complete letter is HERE.
Ten years later, in November 1879, Dickinson wrote to her cousin again in response to another tragedy, the death of his two-year-old daughter, Margaret. “Will it comfort my grieved cousin to know that Emily and Vinnie are among the ones this moment thinking of him with peculiar tenderness,” she said. The complete letter is HERE.
She followed with a second letter in October 1880 to thank him “for a memorial” he had sent her entitled “The Lamb Folded.”
“The little Creature must have been priceless - Your's, and not your's, how hallowed –” wrote Dickinson. “It may have been she came to show you Immortality - Her startling little flight would imply she did –”
Ten years later, in November 1879, Dickinson wrote to her cousin again in response to another tragedy, the death of his two-year-old daughter, Margaret. “Will it comfort my grieved cousin to know that Emily and Vinnie are among the ones this moment thinking of him with peculiar tenderness,” she said. The complete letter is HERE.
She followed with a second letter in October 1880 to thank him “for a memorial” he had sent her entitled “The Lamb Folded.”
“The little Creature must have been priceless - Your's, and not your's, how hallowed –” wrote Dickinson. “It may have been she came to show you Immortality - Her startling little flight would imply she did –”
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One other letter from February 1873, HERE, addressed loss. Cristanne Miller, in her book The Letters of Emily Dickinson, says this about the correspondence: “Cowan’s sister Lucinda married her second husband, Confederate Brigadier-General Joseph Finnegan, November 1872; his sister Isabella had married in 1870. Lucinda’s ‘early pain’ refers to the death of two children: Margaret in 1862 and Charles in 1864 – at four and six months old.”
However, one extant letter to Cowan is full of cheer! Dated October 1870, this message congratulated her cousin on his marriage to Margaret Rhea of Blountville, Tennessee.
“‘Maggie" is a warm name,” she wrote her cousin. “I shall like to take it. Home is the definition of God.”
That letter is HERE.
However, one extant letter to Cowan is full of cheer! Dated October 1870, this message congratulated her cousin on his marriage to Margaret Rhea of Blountville, Tennessee.
“‘Maggie" is a warm name,” she wrote her cousin. “I shall like to take it. Home is the definition of God.”
That letter is HERE.
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