It Happened One Day

It happened one day. As a matter f fact, it happened yesterday. Something truly unbelievable happened to me and my girl Lavinia Dickinson yesterday.   It was totally unexpected, utterly incredible, and completely remarkable. 

​And did I say, it was truly unbelievable?

I was on the grounds of the University of Virginia.  I had stopped by the Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library to discuss a future appointment, and afterwards, I strolled over to the Edgar Shannon Library (formerly Alderman Library) to check the stacks with call number PS 1541 – the alpha-numeric designation the Library of Congress Classification system has assigned specifically for Emily Dickinson.

The collection of Dickinson books on the shelves was quite extensive – about 10 of the shelves in the three pics below.  I had about twenty or so minutes to spend, so I scanned the titles and pulled out a random few books from the shelves to snap a few pics. 

Below:  The Shannon Library's Ps 1541 section -- from the red arrow on the far left to the red arrow on the far right. 

I started top right, then the shelves in the middle from top to bottom, and then those down there on the far left.  For those bottom dwellers, I looked for small stool nearby if one were available  – I wasn’t sure if my knees could make the required flexation required to get down there (and yes, I made up the word “flexation” – a combination of “flex” and “contraction”).  No such luck with any sort of stool, ottoman, or pouf – so I crumpled to the floor as best I could to scan the last few titles. 

Then, just as I was about to hoist myself from the floor, I decided to grab that one last unidentified book on the bottom shelf.  There was no title on the spine.  What was that book?

I brought forth the diminutive volume, and just as I caught sight of the cover – which matched that of Mabel Loomis Todd’s first series of Poems published in the 1890s – I thought to myself, “What have we here?”

Below left:  The book from the shelf.  Below right:  The 1890, 1891, and 1896 publications of Dickinson's Poems. 

I opened the front cover – and I almost fell on the floor.  Well, I was already on the floor – so perhaps I should say I got the vapors, fell into a fit of insensibility, and momentarily lost my cognizational awareness (“cognizational” is a term I coined in a recent post, HERE).   

There I was – crumpled on the floor in the stacks of the Shannon Library holding an 1894 edition of Letters of Emily Dickinson, published by Roberts Brothers and edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, and once I regained a modicum of sense and sensibility, I beheld once more the book’s initial page – AND IT WAS SIGNED BY EMILY’S SISTER, LAVINIA DICKINSON!

Evidently, the book had been purchased as a Christmas gift in 1894 for someone named Ethel C. Ague (though I’m not sure about the spelling of that last name – it looks like “Ague”), and the inscription reads, “Ethel may add the friendship of Emily’s sister” – and it is signed, “Lavinia.”  I suspect Ethel’s husband bought for her?

What would you do were you in a comparable circumstance? What do you think I did? 
​
This, dear reader, is what is known in the business as a Dickinson Cliffhanger! ; )

Below:  The book was a gift to the library from Col. L. J. Owen in October of 1951 (or 57?).