Category: Emily Dickinson Archive

A Visit to the Houghton Library -- Part 2

5/18/2021

I'm late getting this post up for a variety of reasons. One of them has to do with some issues I was having with my laptop back in April and early May -- but that problem has been solved for now. Anyway, in April the Houghton Library sponsored a virtual tour of their Emily Dickinson room/collection for National Poetry Month, and I attended the event sans laptop. I was able to participate by using an iPad, and I took pics of the iPad screen with my cell phone -- soooo, the pics are below with a few comments.

And just FYI: Part 1 of this plog (poetry blog) post is HERE -- and it tells the story of my first (and actual) visit to the Houghton -- back in 2013 -- when I was able to see the Dickinson room in person!

Below are the pics and comments from 2021's virtual tour:

The host, live from the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, opened with this poem by Emily:

A precious – mouldering pleasure – 'tis –
To meet an Antique Book –
In just the Dress his Century wore –
A privilege – I think –

His venerable Hand to take –
And warming in our own –
A passage back – or two – to make –
To Times when he – was young –

His quaint opinions – to inspect –
His thought to ascertain
On Themes concern our mutual mind –
The Literature of Man –

What interested Scholars – most –
What Competitions ran –
When Plato – was a Certainty –
And Sophocles – a Man –

When Sappho – was a living Girl –
And Beatrice wore
The Gown that Dante – deified –
Facts Centuries before

He traverses – familiar –
As One should come to Town –
And tell you all your Dreams – were true –
He lived – where Dreams were born –

His presence is Enchantment –
You beg him not to go –
Old Volume shake their Vellum Heads
And tantalize – just so –

Following the poem, Leslie Morris, the Gore Vidal Curator at the Houghton Library, explained how much of Dickinson's belongings and work ended up at Harvard.

SPOILER ALERT: The gift came from 1901 Harvard graduate Gilbert Holland Montague, a New York lawyer and bibliophile. Read about it in an article from 1950 in the Harvard Crimson HERE.

Montague donated everything to the Houghton Library at Harvard during his 50th reunion, and the library agreed to establish a Dickinson memorial room -- shown in the pics at the left.

Ms. Morris pointed out that in the painting of the Dickinson children (at the right), the painter depicted with a book and a flower -- two of the things she loved.

Left: The Dickinson memorial room includes the chest of drawers where Lavinia discovered many of Emily's poems.

Ms. Morris noted that the original copies of Dickinson's poems is "now much more securely stored."

Below left and right: The Dickinson family's piano, and some of Emily's music.

At the right: Emily Dickinson's writing desk. "I was struck by how small it is," said Morris.

Below left and right: Some of Emily's personal belongings. Emily wore the cape on the night she met Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Below left and right: Pages from one of Dickinson's fascicles. Harvard has 40 of the poet's surviving fascicles (I believe she said that Amherst College has two of fascicles as well). Ms. Morris noted that the blue grease pencil mark was made by none other than Mabel Loomis Todd.

Below left and right: A fascicle page with a poem written by Emily -- with possible alternate word choices included at the bottom of the page.

At the right: A poem Emily sent to Elizabeth Holland with a flower. It is thought that the tape was added to the page later by Alfred Hampson, Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s friend and literary assistant.

At the left: Besides including flowers with her poems, Dickinson also cut pictures out of her father's books. This example shows pics she extracted from Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop.

Below left: The Houghton is currently digitizing all 600-plus books from the Dickinson family library. Ms. Morris noted that "we're half-way there." Below right: A page of Emily's pressed flowers.

Ms. Morris reported that Dickinson had cut the name "Timothy" out of a page from the Bible her father gave to her as a gift. "We're not sure why -- or when and how she used it," said Morris.

ALSO: The Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst has a the complete tour available on their site, HERE.

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