Today’s post is a bit lengthy, but it has something for everyone: attempted murder, missing manuscripts, Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence,” crickets – and more!
In my exploration of Dickinson’s sensitivity to and use of tonal qualities and shifts provided through different types of rhyme, I posted two poems recently which play on the term “minor.” Yesterday, I posted one of them, “Further in Summer than the birds,” a poem which has some interesting bits of trivia associated with it.
In my exploration of Dickinson’s sensitivity to and use of tonal qualities and shifts provided through different types of rhyme, I posted two poems recently which play on the term “minor.” Yesterday, I posted one of them, “Further in Summer than the birds,” a poem which has some interesting bits of trivia associated with it.
| First, there are six variations of this poem, and the longest version (with seven stanzas) was sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt. And are you ready for this? R. W. Franklin’s research states that this long version of the poem “was sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt, who was seriously injured in 1864 when shot by a suitor her maid had rejected. During her recovery, ED sent several poems, including this one, signed ‘Emily,’ about late summer 1865.” Say what? |  |
My first exploration into “Gertrude Vanderbilt” led me to the Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney who founded the Whitney Museum in New York City, but this was not the correct Gertrude Vanderbilt (as she was not born until 1875).
Further research led me to Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt, and I discovered this information:
“The poem…(referred) to as the Vanderbilt variant of ‘Further in Summer than the Birds’ takes its name from its first reader, Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt (1824 – 1902) of Evans 8 Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, to whom Dickinson mailed the poem during the summer of 1865. Although Dickinson and Vanderbilt likely never met in person, they knew each other through Dickinson’s close friend and sister-in-law Susan Dickinson, with whom Vanderbilt went to school.
Vanderbilt suffered a near-fatal gunshot wound, a scandalous event that drew national attention. In what the Brooklyn Eagle and the Springfield Republican called ‘an attempt at revenge,’ a farm laborer named William Cutter, the spurned suitor of Vanderbilt’s servant Anne Walker, attacked and shot both Walker and Vanderbilt. Perhaps to aid Vanderbilt during her recovery, Dickinson sent four letter-poems to Vanderbilt during the year after her injury. The Vanderbilt variant of ‘Further in Summer than the Birds’ was one of them.”
And get this – another strange twist to the “Vanderbilt variant”:
“For more than eighty years, scholars believed that the earliest version of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Further in Summer than the Birds,’ a major mid-career poem often regarded as ‘one of Dickinson’s finest’ (McSweeney 155) and ‘best-known poems,’ had been lost (Franklin, ‘The Manuscripts’ 552). They only knew of the existence of this elusive variant because Dickinson’s first editor, Mabel Loomis Todd, made a transcript in the 1890s, marking the last recorded sighting of Dickinson’s original manuscript before its mysterious disappearance…Yet, against all odds, the manuscript survived, resurfacing miraculously at Ella Strong Denison Library, the special collections library at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 1986, exactly a century after Dickinson’s death.”
Below: The Vanderbilt Variant -- found 100 years after Dickinson's death.
Further research led me to Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt, and I discovered this information:
“The poem…(referred) to as the Vanderbilt variant of ‘Further in Summer than the Birds’ takes its name from its first reader, Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt (1824 – 1902) of Evans 8 Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, to whom Dickinson mailed the poem during the summer of 1865. Although Dickinson and Vanderbilt likely never met in person, they knew each other through Dickinson’s close friend and sister-in-law Susan Dickinson, with whom Vanderbilt went to school.
Vanderbilt suffered a near-fatal gunshot wound, a scandalous event that drew national attention. In what the Brooklyn Eagle and the Springfield Republican called ‘an attempt at revenge,’ a farm laborer named William Cutter, the spurned suitor of Vanderbilt’s servant Anne Walker, attacked and shot both Walker and Vanderbilt. Perhaps to aid Vanderbilt during her recovery, Dickinson sent four letter-poems to Vanderbilt during the year after her injury. The Vanderbilt variant of ‘Further in Summer than the Birds’ was one of them.”
And get this – another strange twist to the “Vanderbilt variant”:
“For more than eighty years, scholars believed that the earliest version of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Further in Summer than the Birds,’ a major mid-career poem often regarded as ‘one of Dickinson’s finest’ (McSweeney 155) and ‘best-known poems,’ had been lost (Franklin, ‘The Manuscripts’ 552). They only knew of the existence of this elusive variant because Dickinson’s first editor, Mabel Loomis Todd, made a transcript in the 1890s, marking the last recorded sighting of Dickinson’s original manuscript before its mysterious disappearance…Yet, against all odds, the manuscript survived, resurfacing miraculously at Ella Strong Denison Library, the special collections library at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 1986, exactly a century after Dickinson’s death.”
Below: The Vanderbilt Variant -- found 100 years after Dickinson's death.
 |  |
Dissatisfied with the final five stanzas, Dickinson substituted two new ones which created a four-stanza version that, with a few changes, prevailed after that.
Dickinson included this shortened version in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1866 in which she told him that her beloved dog “Carlo died”; she asked, “Would you instruct me now?”
Seventeen years later, in 1883, the poet returned to the poem and made two further copies. In March 1883 she enclosed a two stanza version of the poem in a letter to Thomas Niles, referring to this one as “My Cricket” (i.e., a member of the “minor Nation” in line 3 that celebrates its “unobtrusive Mass”).
Another version was prepared for Mabel Loomis Todd. It also included a cricket wrapped in a piece of paper.
ONE LAST THING TO WONDER ABOUT: When I Google-searched “Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt,” an entry popped up involving Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence. In a list of “Minor Characters” from the book (hmm…there’s that word “minor” again), I spotted a character by the name of “Lawrence Lefferts,” a wealthy young man and a member of Archer's social circle, and his wife – who suspects that he is having an affair – is Mrs. Gertrude Lefferts.
Do you think that the “Gertrude Lefferts” in the book, written in 1920, has any connection at all to “Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt”? The time period highlighted in the book is the 1870s; Gertrude Lefferts, 1824 - 1902, lived in Brooklyn, and Edith Wharton grew up in New York City.
Dickinson included this shortened version in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1866 in which she told him that her beloved dog “Carlo died”; she asked, “Would you instruct me now?”
Seventeen years later, in 1883, the poet returned to the poem and made two further copies. In March 1883 she enclosed a two stanza version of the poem in a letter to Thomas Niles, referring to this one as “My Cricket” (i.e., a member of the “minor Nation” in line 3 that celebrates its “unobtrusive Mass”).
Another version was prepared for Mabel Loomis Todd. It also included a cricket wrapped in a piece of paper.
ONE LAST THING TO WONDER ABOUT: When I Google-searched “Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt,” an entry popped up involving Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence. In a list of “Minor Characters” from the book (hmm…there’s that word “minor” again), I spotted a character by the name of “Lawrence Lefferts,” a wealthy young man and a member of Archer's social circle, and his wife – who suspects that he is having an affair – is Mrs. Gertrude Lefferts.
Do you think that the “Gertrude Lefferts” in the book, written in 1920, has any connection at all to “Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt”? The time period highlighted in the book is the 1870s; Gertrude Lefferts, 1824 - 1902, lived in Brooklyn, and Edith Wharton grew up in New York City.
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