Category: Friend And Neighbor

A Priceless Legacy

4/27/2024

Starting with a post on April 18 & then with about six other posts, I’ve discussed MacGregor Jenkins’ book “Emily Dickinson, Friend & Neighbor.”

Jenkins published the book in 1930 when he was in his early sixties, and in yis youth – as you can tell from the title of the book – he was a “friend and neighbor” to the Dickinson family. In particular, he was a friend and playmate of Dickinson’ niece, Martha “Maddie” Dickinson.

My first post about Jenkins’ book discussed why he wrote it (“It is indeed the object of this slender volume to dispel, if possible, some of this cloud of fable and to make Miss. Emily a more human and more understandable person”), and my most recent post about the book focused on Jenkins’ take on Dickinson’s reclusiveness(“She withdrew from the world because it was the only thing a person, constituted as she was, could have done”).

Today I thought I would share Jenkins’ concluding remarks in his book about “the mystery of her rare and complicated character,” and then move on to some other topic tomorrow.

The conclusion to “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor” is shown below.

I wholeheartedly agree with Jenkins’ in that “the world is fortunate that she has left it a priceless legacy in her poems.” Thank goodness the family did not burn her poems, her personal effects, and her letters as was the practice in the 19th century.

Where would I be without my Dickinson? LOL!

Fin.

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Private I

4/23/2024

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Last summer I posted info about a long out of print and uniquely intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson written by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, “Emily Dickinson Face to Face.” Originally published in 1932, McNally issued a reprint this past year.

In her memoir, Bianchi recalled what it was like when she became aware of her aunt’s reclusiveness. She said, “I cannot tell when I first became aware that she had elected her own way of life. To us she had always been as fixed in her orbit as any other star. We had been born into her life. It never seemed to us that it should have been any other than it was.”

Earlier this month I read MacGregor Jenkins’ biography of the poet, “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor.” Jenkins had been a friend of Martha “Maddie” Dickinson growing up, and in his youth, they and their friends enjoyed playing and being in the orbit of “Miss Emily.”

Check out the passage below from Jenkins’ book that begins, “She withdrew from the world because I was the only thing a person, constituted as she was, could have done.”

All of this called to mind Dickinson’s poem “There is a solitude of space” where she speaks of “That polar privacy” she favored.

Glory Be

4/22/2024

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In some of my recent posts, I have discussed MacGregor Jenkins’ book “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor.”

As you can tell from the title, Jenkins was a neighbor of the Dickinson family, and he was a childhood friend of Dickinson’s niece Martha “Maddie” Dickinson. The two of them and other friends spent much time in the orbit of “Miss Emily,” and in 1930, Jenkins wrote an biography of the poet “ to dispel, if possible, some of this cloud of fable and to make Miss Emily a more human and more understandable person.”

The book is filled with wonderful descriptions of Dickinson and her views on family, friends, children, nature, religion, life and general and more!

Take a look at the passage below on Dickinson’s perspective on day-to-day life. It includes the line, “She was fond of what Lowell called ‘the robin-haunted dusk’ and every hour had its message.”

That “robin-haunted dusk” comes from the poem “The Long Days” by William Dean Howells. The poem was published in an 1874 edition of “The Atlantic” (Dickinson would have been 44 at the time).

I love Jenkin’s description of Dickinson’s take on life – from “the glory of the morning to the pensive beauty of the evening” – so perhaps in the near future I’ll post some of my favorite poems which depict the glorious hours of the day!

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The Whole Difference

4/21/2024

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A couple of days ago I mentioned MacGregor Jenkin’s book “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor" (HERE).

This is just one of two books (that I’m aware of) written by someone who actually knew and spoke with Emily Dickinson. The other, “Emily Dickinson, Face to Face,” was written by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi.

Jenkins’ published his book in 1930 – when he was 61 – but it focuses on the days of his youth when he was a friend of Martha “Maddie” Dickinson and how they encountered “Miss Emily” on a daily basis.

Can you imagine having known Dickinson? Jenkins states from the start, “she was different,” and people recognized that “the whole cadence of her being” was special.

Take a look at this passage below.

I discussed another passage from the book HERE. The entire book can be accessed HERE.

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Dear Boys

4/19/2024

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Yesterday I presented info on MacGregor Jenkins’ book “Emily Dickinson Friend and Neighbor" (HERE), a book he published in 1930 when he was 61 years old.

Jenkins – as you can tell by the title of his book – was a neighbor of the Dickinsons, and he was a friend and playmate to Dickinson’s niece Martha Gilbert Dickinson.

Martha was born in 1866; Jenkins was born in 1869. When Dickinson died in 1886, Martha was 19 and MacGregor Jenkins was 16 – although at some point before his 16th year, his family moved away from Amherst.

Throughout much of his book, “Emily Dickinson Friend and Neighbor,” Jenkins shares most of his memories based on a stack of notes and letters he and his family received from Dickinson – from when they lived in Amherst and from when they lived at their new address.

About one brief communication, Jenkins reported, “I fancy this note came after some unusually noisy or meddlesome escapade. It may well have been sent as balm for our injured feelings after reprimand by Lavinia or Maggie (the Dickinson’s housekeeper) or some member of our own families.”

On occasions such of this, Jenkins stated that “Miss Emily…arrayed herself unflinchingly on our side, and, as was her wont, declared herself our friend and ally and cheered us with her fragrant approval, for she said,

‘Dear Boys,
Please never grow up, which is ‘much better – ‘ Please never improve – you are perfect now. ‘Emily’”

At this point, Jenkins discussed Dickinson’s irregular punctuation: “It is difficult to reproduce the peculiarities of her punctuation. She used dashes and very little else.”

See below for Jenkins’ wonderful account of how, then, these “peculiarities” guided and embodied her writing.

More on Jenkins’ book “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor” soon – but not tomorrow. LOL – tomorrow I’ll have something a bit more offbeat and kooky.

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Friend and Neighbor

4/18/2024

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Who was MacGregor Jenkins?

Well, as a child, he lived near Emily Dickinson, and in 1930 he published a biography of the poet called “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor.”

I don’t know much more than that, and I found very little about him on the Internet (not even a Wikipedia article, LOL).

As the result of a Google-search, I did find one site with a little bit of info on him, but now the link isn’t working. When I click on it, it says “Internal Server Error” – although you can see the start of the page in the pic below. (MACGREGOR JENKINS).

The link -- in case the site corrects the “Internal Error” -- is HERE.

Jenkins was a writer, and he authored about 8 books – titles can be found HERE.

He also published a number of stories “The Atlantic.” Info related to that is linked HERE.

On my recent trip out west, I downloaded Jenkin’s book about Dickinson on my phone, and I read it on my flight back from Denver. To access the book, click HERE.

As you know, the first volumes of Dickinson’s poetry were published posthumously in the 1890s, and the image of Dickinson that was emerging in the early 1900s was not completely accurate (there was a feud – and later a court case – going on between different factions of the family, one side headed by Austin Dickinson’s lover, Mabel Loomis Todd and her daughter, and the other side comprised of Emily’s sister Lavinia, her sister-in-law Susan, and Susan’s daughter Martha).

MacGregor Jenkins was a childhood friend of Martha “Maddie” Dickinson, and in his book he said, “It is indeed the object of this slender volume to dispel, if possible, some of this cloud of fable and to make Miss. Emily a more human and more understandable person.”

More on Jenkins’ book tomorrow! (UPDATE: FOR PART 2, CLICK HERE.)

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A Priceless Legacy

Private I

Glory Be

The Whole Difference

Dear Boys

Friend and Neighbor

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