'Village gossip' or revealing truth? New research points to early heartbreak for Emily Dickinson

By Bonnie Wells
Staff Writer

Published on October 03, 2008

A fascination with her family's ancestry led independent scholar Carol Damon Andrews to what may be the first new biographical information about the poet Emily Dickinson to come to light in half a century.

One of Andrews' ancestors was John Ritto Penniman, a 19th-century Boston artist. The family inherited a small self-portrait of the artist, created when he was a lad of 14, as well as portraits of the artist's sister, Sarah Penniman Ruggles.

"As a child I was fascinated by the tiny self-portrait - it was only about 3- by 2-inches - and begged my father to let me have it in my room," she said. "That was the start of it."

Andrews, a New Braintree resident, went on to an art history degree at Vassar College, and has since served as a guest curator and lecturer at the Worcester Art Museum as well as a contributor of biographies and biographical sketches on 19th-century American artists to The Magazine Antiques.

Fifteen years ago, while researching the artist whose self-portrait had so captivated her in childhood, two interesting references to Emily Dickinson popped out. In a notebook of 19th-century Amherst music teacher Ann Eliza Houghton Penniman, Andrews found an entry, a reminiscence, written by "In Amherst... I had a class in music: Jane Gridley, Dr. Fellow's [Sellon[']s] daughter Fanny, Emily Dickinson, daughter of lawyer Dickinson, to whom Dr. George Gould of Worcester was engaged when in college there. Lawyer Dickinson vetoed the whole affair, the Rev. George being a POOR student then, and poor Emily's heart was broken."

"This brings out two facets of [Dickinson[']s] life," Andrews said, "early music instruction [at age 8], which must have helped inform the quality of her poetry," and of course corroboration of earlier refuted accounts of a teenage love affair.

"I wasn't an Emily Dickinson scholar at that point," Andrews said. "But I wondered if anyone else knew about it. I filed it in the back of my mind."

Then four years ago, ready for a new project, she began to steep herself in Dickinson scholarship. With the help of Tevis Kimball, curator of Special Collections at Jones Library in Amherst, she found a mentor in Alfred Habegger of Oregon, author of the most recent major biography of Dickinson, "My Wars are Laid Away in Books," published by Random House in 2001. Andrews published the results of her research into the intersecting lives of Penniman, Gould and Dickinson in the June issue of the New England Quarterly and is currently expanding the story into a book.

"I think it's a very exciting discovery," said Dickinson biographer Polly Longsworth of Royalston. "It's really a double discovery because it's that Emily's instruction in music began much earlier than anyone ever knew - in letters she spoke of her poetry as a kind of music - and the other part was her engagement.

"There had long been a rumor that she had been in love," she added, "but that had long been rejected."

Village gossip'

In Andrew's article, titled "Thinking Musically, Writing Expectantly: New Biographical Information about Emily Dickinson," we learn that, as early as 1930, Genevieve Taggard had received testimonies from three sources confirming the affair, which she published in her book "The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson." But though she was born 16 years after the event in question, Dickinson's niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi vigorously denied the involvement. Bianchi's friend George F. Whicher made a point of branding Taggard's account as "village gossip" in his 1938 Dickinson biography "This Was a Poet," and his skepticism extended to subsequent Dickinson biographers.

But Andrews makes a solid case for the credibility of Penniman as a witness, including her lifelong friendship with George Gould, who worked on her family's farm on South East Street in Amherst on college vacations. Later, as a clergyman, Gould performed the marriage ceremonies of two of Penniman's children as well as presiding over the funeral of Penniman's brother, Edwin.

In the article, Andrews reveals much about the life of eloquent and charismatic Gould. While at Amherst College, class of 1850, he was a fraternity brother and best pals with Dickinson's brother, Austin. It was during this time, Andrews writes, "that Gould was invited into the Dickinson household as Austin's friend, became acquainted with Emily, and the two witty young intellectuals presumably became attracted to each other."

Andrews finds corroboration for the love affair in Dickinson's poems and letters. "For example," she writes, "Dickinson's first 'Master Letter,' which R.W. Franklin dated to the spring of 1858, urgently inquires about the recipient's ill health, a persistent concern of Gould's after he contracted a malignant form of malaria while building railroads out west in 1853-55."

Andrews details in Dickinson letters and various poems references to European travel, which coincide with dates during which Gould was traveling there.

She also relayed one tidbit that had to be cut from her 175-page manuscript to fit the quarterly's 20-page requirement. It's well known that after the poet's death in 1886 at 55, Austin's mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, collaborated with Dickinson friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson to publish Dickinson's poetry and letters. In the quest for letters in the hands of Dickinson correspondents, Todd must have written to Gould, asking if he had contact information for Dickinson friend Benjamin Newton, whom she suspected of having some letters.

In the 1945 book "Ancestors' Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson," Todd's daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, includes an 1894 letter of reply from Gould to Todd.

He begins by writing that he's sorry to say he doesn't know Newton's whereabouts, and continues, "I had quite a cherished batch of Emily's letters myself, kept sacredly in a small trunk with other valuable papers, which some 15 years ago mysteriously disappeared in the overturnings incident to various removals.

"I have searched far and near for that trunk - and its valuables - but thus far it remains unfound."

"He was married in 1862, and kept the letters through to 1880," Andrews said. "[The trunk] was missing for 15 years, and he's still looking for it in 1894."

Hmmm.