Yesterday (HERE), I shared an entry from the diary of Eudocia Flynt after she’d visited Lavinia Dickinson at the end of July in 1891 and the two discussed the “history of Emily’s poems.” Lavinia also spilled the tea on Susan Dickinson’s “deviltry,” a topic which I touched on the day before (HERE).
While exploring Eudocia’s comments, I searched online for a digitized copy of her diary but to no avail. However, I did find a 270-page paper entitled “Emily Dickinson: The Unorthodox Epistolary Writer” written by Efrosyni Manda for the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Department of English Language and Literature where Ms. Manda mentioned Eudocia. (Can you tell I like saying the name “Eudocia”?)
I ran a word search in the document for “Eudocia” in hopes that it might lead me to her diary, but no – although her name did pop up once about a diary entry she’d made about a letter received, “Had a letter from Emily Dickinson!!!!!”
At this point in her paper, Manda was discussing how friends and acquaintances of Dickinson cherished the receipt of letters from her even before she’d gained fame as a poet. The arrival of a letter from Miss Emily was viewed as a “remarkable occasion.” Here are some of the examples Manda provided:
Once after receiving a note from Dickinson, Mabel Loomis Todd wrote in her diary, “I shall always keep this odd note – so strong, so full of meaning and so poetical…. This letter made me happier than almost any other I have ever received. It fairly thrilled me!”
Samuel Bowles wrote to a friend that ”he always indulged in her lovely and characteristic notes,” and once requested to Susan, “When next you write tell Emily to give me one of her little gems!”
After receiving a note which accompanied a bouquet of flowers, a cousin of Dickinson’s wrote in his diary, “They were…sent with one of the nicest notes worded.”
The reception of one of Emily‘s letters by her friends the Hollands was “an occasion of excitement.” They would all gather to have it read by one of the girls who would ask their mother, Elizabeth Holland, for help in deciphering Dickinson‘s handwriting.
Dickinson seemed to realize her own repute. She confessed in a letter to friend Edward Dwight that others “think me larger than I am.” I’ll discuss that letter tomorrow.
While exploring Eudocia’s comments, I searched online for a digitized copy of her diary but to no avail. However, I did find a 270-page paper entitled “Emily Dickinson: The Unorthodox Epistolary Writer” written by Efrosyni Manda for the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Department of English Language and Literature where Ms. Manda mentioned Eudocia. (Can you tell I like saying the name “Eudocia”?)
I ran a word search in the document for “Eudocia” in hopes that it might lead me to her diary, but no – although her name did pop up once about a diary entry she’d made about a letter received, “Had a letter from Emily Dickinson!!!!!”
At this point in her paper, Manda was discussing how friends and acquaintances of Dickinson cherished the receipt of letters from her even before she’d gained fame as a poet. The arrival of a letter from Miss Emily was viewed as a “remarkable occasion.” Here are some of the examples Manda provided:
Once after receiving a note from Dickinson, Mabel Loomis Todd wrote in her diary, “I shall always keep this odd note – so strong, so full of meaning and so poetical…. This letter made me happier than almost any other I have ever received. It fairly thrilled me!”
Samuel Bowles wrote to a friend that ”he always indulged in her lovely and characteristic notes,” and once requested to Susan, “When next you write tell Emily to give me one of her little gems!”
After receiving a note which accompanied a bouquet of flowers, a cousin of Dickinson’s wrote in his diary, “They were…sent with one of the nicest notes worded.”
The reception of one of Emily‘s letters by her friends the Hollands was “an occasion of excitement.” They would all gather to have it read by one of the girls who would ask their mother, Elizabeth Holland, for help in deciphering Dickinson‘s handwriting.
Dickinson seemed to realize her own repute. She confessed in a letter to friend Edward Dwight that others “think me larger than I am.” I’ll discuss that letter tomorrow.
NOTE: As noted above, I searched online for a digitized copy of Todd's diary but to no avail. Hmm...seems her diaries and journals are at Yale, and one has to be there in person to use microform to view them; the actual diaries are stored off site.
Also, with one of my searches, I simply typed in Todd's quote, "This letter made me happier than almost any other I have ever received. It fairly thrilled me," and I got an interesting assortment of links -- most completely unrelated to Todd.
| One steered me to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice due to its likeness to this quote: I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Another took me to an August 2024 article in the New York Times entitled Are We Happy Yet?: "There is a great deal of disagreement on how even to measure happiness and fairly weak evidence that doing so makes us significantly happier." |  |
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