Return To The Fold

“You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em”
~Kenny Rogers, “The Gambler”


When last we met (yesterday), I shared “A Bird came down the Walk,” and noted that Dickinson scholar and editor R. W. Franklin reported the following:  “Three (one lost), variant, about summer 1862.  The lost manuscript was sent to T. W. Higginson, probably in the fifth letter to him, written about August 1862.  Higginson listed it for Mabel Todd on 13 May 1891 as one of the poems he had received (Bingham, AB, 129) and he published it in the October 1891 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.”

Sooo…I checked page 129 of Millicent Todd Bingham’s book “Ancestors’ Brocades” – and actually on page 128 she wrote, “The selection of poems for the second volume (of Dickinson’s work) was nearing completion.  Meanwhile, Mr. Higginson was again going over those that Emily had sent to him.  He mailed a list of them to my mother.”

Higginson’s letter, transcribed at the bottom of page 128 and top of 129 said the following:

Dear Friend,

I send the list.  Let me know which you want copied for you and I’ll send them.  All marked (with a check mark) should go in.  One verse I copy for the pleasure of copying it, though you may have it.”  

Ever cordially,
T. W. H. 

The letter was sent May 13, 1891, and the poem he copied was the following:

Lay this Laurel on the One
Too intrinsic for Renown –
Laurel – vail your deathless Tree –
Him you chasten, that is He!

Higginson also included the list of poems he had received from Dickinson over the years, and it did include “A Bird came down the Walk.” 

Back to Franklin’s comments.  He said, “The lost manuscript was sent to T. W. Higginson, probably in the fifth letter to him, written about August 1862.”

However, when one checks Thomas Johnson’s notes on that letter, he stated the following:

“With this letter ED enclosed two poems: "Before I got my Eye put out,' and 'I cannot dance upon my Toes.'"
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He does not mention “A Bird came down the Walk” at all – even as a possibility as a lost manuscript.​

​Furthermore, Cristanne Miller does not include “A Bird came down the Walk” in her “Index of Poems” sent with letters (or poems sent as letters) in her volume “The Letters of Emily Dickinson.”   However, that poem does indeed show up on Higginson’s “List of Poems” that he had received from Dickinson. 
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Back to Franklin:  He said that Higginson had published the poem in the October 1891 edition of The Atlantic – so I went to take a look.

Sure enough, the poem is there, and it is part of an article by Higginson – written five years after the poet's death – entitled “The Letters of Emily Dickinson.”  In the article, he indicates that the poem was included with the SECOND letter he’d received from Dickinson, not the FIFTH (as Franklin stated).

However, when you look up that letter – the second one – and Johnson has this to say:

“Higginson says in his Atlantic Monthly article introducing the letter…that the enclosed poems were two: 'Your riches taught me poverty,' and 'A bird came down the walk.' But the evidence after study of the folds in the letters and poems suggest that he was in error. The enclosures seem to have been: 'There came a Day at Summer's full,' 'Of all the Sounds despatched abroad,' and 'South Winds jostle them.'"

Hence my inclusion of the lines from Kenny Roger’s “The Gambler.”  Maybe the poem was included with that fifth letter after all. 

We may never know; but I do wonder why Miller didn’t include it in her book of Dickinson’s letters – even with a footnote explaining the confusion over which letter it was included with. 

Perhaps one day soon I’ll email her to ask.