Bits and Pieces – and a Puzzlement

In yesterday’s post (HERE), I shared pics and info on some of the Dickinson artifacts on display at the Frost Library at Amherst College.  Today?  A bit more of the same.  Just different.  Kapiche?

The two papers above constitute the poem “How happy is the little stone.”  

Concerning the number of versions of this poem, the online archive states this:

“Five (one lost), perhaps a sixth (lost), variant, about 1882. All extant holographs are in pencil. A draft was recorded on two fragments of stationery, pinned together (a222, 222a), one of them a note from George Montague, who addressed letters for ED.”

George William Montague (1836) was an Amherst neighbor and relative whom Emily Dickinson affectionately called "Cousin.” He and his wife, Sarah, occasionally exchanged baked goods and notes with Dickinson.  Here’s one letter they received, from about 1881:

Dear Cousin,

Thank you for the delightful cake, and the heart adjacent.

Emily.

And then in 1950, this happened (info HERE): 

“The world's largest collection of Emily Dickinson poems-including autograph drafts of 958 of her works-has been presented to Houghton Library. The donor is Gilbert Holland Montague '01, New York lawyer and bibliophile.”

Was Gilbert Holland Montague, he with the collection, related to George William Montague, he with the delightful cakes?  More on this later.
​

These lines are from Dickinson’s poems “Her losses make our gains ashamed” (published as “His losses” in the Franklin edition):

In vain to punish Honey
It only sweeter grows 

The pic of the reverse (above) is from the archive, and it says, “Last two lines” and provides the title as “His losses make our gains ashamed” – though it looks like someone else’s handwriting to me.
​
The archive notes, “The entire poem was incorporated into a letter to Thomas Niles, referring to George Eliot, whose biography by Mathilde Blind his firm had recently published (a833).”  (An online copy of the book is HERE.)

At the right:  George Eliot

Of course, George Eliot was the pen name for Mary Ann Evans, alternatively “Marian” – and you can see that Dickinson wrote “Marian Evans” at the top of the poem – which is on the back of the letter to Thomas Niles.

Interestingly, as I was exploring this poem, I found a version of it translated into Russian (below left).

I wondered what the poem might say, so I plugged it into Google-translate to convert it back into English, and this is what I got (below right). 

I love that ending:

But honey cannot be forbidden –
Fly to it quickly.
​

This manuscript reads “The happiness atone,” the last line of “I thought the Train would never come.”  You can see, too, that Dickinson signed her name several time, and the archive states this about the manuscript: “About 1878 (Bingham 107-37). It is a penciled worksheet draft jotted down on a sheet of paper on which ED had practiced signing her name: E Dickinson.”

Like a quote from yesterday's post which began, “It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy,” this fragment is not a part of any poem by Dickinson.  Instead, it’s included in Miller & Mitchell’s book, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, in the back section of Writing Notes, WN 40 (p. 837):

Not to send
errands by John
Alden is
one of the
instructions
of
History –

Now, before I conclude and move on, I have two additional anecdotes to pass on along about my time at the Frost Library.
 
First, I asked a librarian at the front desk if, by chance, they had a copy of Eben Jenks Loomis’ collection of poems entitled A Sunset Idyl and Other Poems.  Loomis was Mabel Loomis Todd’s father, and I wrote about his book in a series of posts HERE, HERE, and HERE.
 
At first, I was told that yes, that a copy was down in the dungeon of the library. LOL – I think one person actually used the word “dungeon” as we descended to the stacks three floors below ground. However, when we got to the appropriate shelf, the book wasn’t there.  We climbed back upstairs to double-check the book's call number – and that’s when the librarian realized that the work was actually housed at an off-site location. 
 
Oh well. To paraphrase Tennyson, 'tis better to have tried and lost than never to have tried at all.
 
Second, while visiting the Archives and Special Collections, I conversed for a time with a librarian named Mimi.  I believe I asked if she knew much about Dickinson, and she said, "Oh, I know a little."  I found out later from someone at the front desk that she was being humble.  "No one knows more about Dickinson than Mimi," confirmed the librarian up front. 

Anyway, I had mentioned to Mimi a puzzlement I'd been pondering over the course of my trip concerning the poem "Because I could not stop for Death," It all had to do with Dickinson's original version, Mabel Loomis Todd's altered version, a third version which I had only recently discovered, and the 1924 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson -- which, by the way, was the very book I perused at the start of my trip when I visited the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room for Rare Books and Manuscripts in the North Hall of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library. 

Left: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1924), Rare Books and Manuscripts, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library, at the start of my trip.  

This puzzlement will be the topic of my post tomorrow -- and it includes yet another bewildering twist  to the story, one I encountered when, on the last night of my trip, I visited the Charlotte and William Bloomberg Public Library in Medford, Massachusetts. 

Below left: The Charlotte and William Bloomberg Public Library in Medford, Massachusetts.  Below center:  The Dickinson books on the shelf in Medford.   Below right:  The book that added to my befuddlement. 

Stay tuned!

More info and pics are on my travelogue, "Dial 'Em' for Emily," HERE. 

More posts from my trip are here:

08.05.2026:  THE ARTIFACTS OF LIFE, CLICK HERE. 
08.04.2026:  ONE GOOD TOUR DESERVES ANOTHER, CLICK HERE.
08.03.2026:  ENETER THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, CLICK HERE.
08.02.2026:  FUN WITH JIM AND EMILY, CLICK HERE. 
08.01.2026:  THE BIG SLEEP, CLICK HERE. 
07.31.2026:  A WICKED ADVENTURE IN THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE, CLICK HERE. 
07.30.2026:  PAINT BY BLUNDERS, CLICK HERE. 
07.29.2026:  YABBA DABBA DO BE DO BE DO WOP BOP A LOO BOP A LOP BAM BOOM DEE AY, CLICK HERE. 
07.28.2026: NOT YOUR GARDEN VARIETY, CLICK HERE. 
07.27.2026: THE TROUBLES WITH EMILY, CLICK HERE. 
07.26.2026: THE MAN WHO BLOGGED TOO MUCH, CLICK HERE. 
07.25.2026:  STRANGE TURNS ON A TRAIN, CLICK HERE. 
07.24.2026:  HOW SWEETEST IT IS, CLICK HERE. 
07.23.2026:  A DATE WITH DESTINY, CLICK HERE.
07.22.2026:  THIS – IS THE BLOG POST – ​THE SUNSET WASHES, CLICK HERE.
07.21.2026:  DOUBLE ETERNITY, CLICK HERE. 
07.20.2026:  THE ORACLE WORE A WHITE DRESS -- PART DEUX, CLICK HERE.
07.19.2026:  ALL THINGS MATTER, CLICK HERE. 
07.18.2026:  INTRODUCTORY PLOG POST ABOUT "DIAL 'EM' FOR EMILY," CLICK HERE.