Jewel Thief

In 1891, the editor of New York’s The Independent published a favorable review of the newly published Poems by Emily Dickinson, and then he wrote to Mabel Loomis Todd requesting additional poems to publish in his paper.  She sent him four, from which he printed three.  One of the three was “I held a jewel in my fingers.”

How do you interpret this poem?  Metaphorically, is the “Jewel” a child? A beloved other?  Or could it be something completely different, like an idea for a poem which the poet cannot recall? 

Does the speaker blame herself for the loss?  She does rebuke herself – with a bygone form of “chide” – though her fingers seem to be faultless (i.e., they were “honest fingers”).

"Chid," by the way, was the standard past tense and past participle of “chide” until the early 20th century – and “chidden” was another variant for the past participle.

Is the memory of the lost “Jewel” of lesser value than the actual gem itself?  Take a look at this interpretation, HERE, from “Literary Gitane, Meanderings of a Literary Vagabond.”  I stumbled upon this blog when exploring “I held a Jewel in my fingers,” and to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, this blogger’s interpretation “looks at gems from both sides now.”

“This is one of my favorite Dickinson poems as I love the image of ‘an Amethyst remembrance.’ An amethyst is a semi-precious stone compared to the precious jewel. So one could argue that what remains is definitely less precious than what one has experienced. But it could be the opposite too. Isn’t it interesting that we don’t have a precise picture of the jewel but the description of the memory is more concrete? Our memories are often idealized versions of a past that was far from perfect. The colorful, lustrous and sparkling picture of the amethyst evoked at the end of the day and perhaps at the sunset of her life suffuses the poem in a violet glow. What a gem of a poem!”

Now, some current (relatively speaking) research has explored the ambiguous relationship between Emily Dickinson and her sister-in-law Susan.  Was it more than platonic? Could Susan have been the “Jewel”?

Since the poem refers to the missing gem as an “Amethyst remembrance,” I thought I’d look at Dickinson’s use of the word the “Amethyst” to see if that would offer up any clues.

The word “Amethyst” appears in six of Dickinson’s poems, and all of them are about the sunrise or sunset. In one of them, “The Daisy follows soft the Sun,” a flower follows the sun to explore "Night's possibility at the parting west. Dickinson’s nickname, by the way, was “Daisy.” 

If one interprets the Daisy following the Sun to be Dickinson, then the “Night’s possibility” – bathed in Amethyst – could give rise to an “Amethyst remembrance”; however, Dickinson refers to the Sun as a “Sir” in the poem – so at least in this case, in attempting to connect an “Amethyst remembrance” to Susan, I came up empty handed.
​

But here’s a little more food for thought: 

​Austin Dickinson married Susan Huntington Gilbert in 1856.  Dickinson wrote “I held a Jewel in my fingers” in 1861. However, she wrote “The Daisy follows soft the Sun” in 1859 (Johnson) or 1860 (Franklin). Furthermore, Dickinson traveled to Philadelphia in 1860 and met Charles Wadsworth, another possible love interest of Dickinson’s (some info is HERE). Sooo…I suppose Wadsworth could be in the Sun in the one poem, and Susan the “Amethyst remembrance” in the other. Or, of course, I could be off base altogether.

By the way, Dickinson’s 1859 “Daisy” poem ends wondering about “the Amethyst / Night’s possibility” – and shortly after writing her 1860 “Jewel” poem, she penned “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”

That poem ends, “Might I but moor – tonight / In thee!” 
​
Now who do you suspect she was thinking about with that poem?