A Visit to the Emily Dickinson Museum
Emily Dickinson is taught in practically every high school English class at some point but the residents of Massachusetts have the privilege of The Emily Dickinson Museum right at their fingertips. I’ve lived in Western Massachusetts my entire life and somehow. I had never been to this museum and found this to be a great opportunity to visit some of Amherst’s historical sites and learn about Emily Dickinson.
*Note: taking pictures of the interior of the two properties that make up the museum was prohibited; however, the grounds and exterior of the properties were allowed to be photographed. All photos were taken by me unless otherwise noted.*
First arriving, the entrance to the museum is up a driveway and in the back. Entering onto a screened porch leads to the museum lobby and gift shop. In this gift shop are t-shirts, books (one of which was authored and illustrated by two of the tour guides), magnets, cookbooks (Emily was also quite the baker!), and keychains. The first part of the tour began in a room off the gift shop. A male tour guide handed out a copy of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” to me and the others waiting to start the tour. He read aloud the poem and then handed out two more versions of the poem with an altered version and one with an omitted verse. He explained to us why the poem had been altered and how one stanza didn’t follow the standard hymn meter (6, 8, 8, 6 instead of 8, 6, 8, 6) that the rest of the poem followed. With a simple shift, it could have kept the same meter. By shifting the words “the dew” to the previous line in stanza 4, it would have kept the hymn meter. I digress.
The tour guide, Burleigh, took us into the parlor on the first floor of the main house. We were in the Homestead of the Dickinsons. There were pictures of many of the Dickinson family and among some of the family’s original possessions was the piano that her father, Edward, bought her. Emily’s talent and love for music came through in her poems, many of which have musical sounds and rhythm. Aside from reading, writing, and making and playing music, Emily had a passion for gardening. She kept many species of flora in her yard and had a conservatory to house many different plant species. In a letter to a friend Mrs. Holland, she said: “My flowers are near and foreign, and I have but to cross the floor to stand in the Spice Isles.” Also on the first floor, there is a library consisting of the beginnings of a replica collection of books which are believed to have been loved and owned by Emily. While none are the actual originals she owned, they are ones that the staff believe were her favorites, including many botany reference books and first editions of books by some of her favorite authors of the time, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Bronte sisters, and while not of her time, William Shakespeare. The museum is looking to expand this library as much as possible in the future to have a more complete collection.
We made our way up to the second floor to the hallway outside of her bedroom. In the hallway was a mannequin with a replica of a white wrap dress that Emily would have worn. The replica was made as authentically as possible which included having to special order the fabric from England since the weaving style isn’t seen here in the US anymore. In her adult years, Emily wore similar dresses nearly every day. They were generally considered house dresses and not worn outside the home. Emily wore these dresses exclusively in white. These plain dresses were a way for Emily to reinforce her distaste for the affluent and highly social lives that the rest of her family led. Since her father was a prominent lawyer, congressman, and trustee of Amherst College, there was a lot of socializing for the family. It was never Emily’s intent to be famous for her writing and out of the thousands of poems she wrote for herself and others in letters, only 12 of her poems were published while she was alive. A cache of 1800 of them was discovered by her younger sister Lavinia and she got them published four years after she died. It’s apparent in her poem “I’m Nobody, Who are You?” that she didn’t want the spotlight and having a crowd fawn over her: “How dreary to be somebody!/ How public, like a frog/ To tell your name the livelong day/ To an admiring bog!” (Dickinson). Emily’s room possesses several original pieces, including a woodstove, mirror, and her bed. The writing desk is a replica of the original and looks like it would be far too small for any modern writer to write on. For a hefty price (one hour starts at $200!), the museum offers “studio sessions” where someone (or two people) can spend an hour (or two) writing in the same place Emily penned her poetry.
In the room across the hall, there is a room dedicated to some samples of Emily’s writing on the walls. Here, Burleigh told us about how Emily frequently had alternate words for some of her poems written in the margins and marked with symbols to indicate where those words would go. On the wall, there was a large board with sliding pieces that changed words in a few lines of a poem. Burleigh showed us how each word changes the rhythm and meaning of the lines and the entire stanza. There were also copies of the original writing on paper scraps to show how these markings and changes were made. I like to think that by doing these alternate words and meanings, not only was she leaving some of the poems open-ended in terms of meaning but she was throwing out the rules of poetry that she knew. She wasn’t afraid to proofread, edit, or tweak her own writing. Unfortunately, when many of her poems were published, they were a bit ahead of her time and were heavily edited by the places that published them. Many of her poems were too high level for some readers and had to be adjusted to be better understood by readers. To this day, it’s difficult to find printed poems that were the original words, as many of the poems are taken from the edited publishings.
We left the Homestead to visit the Evergreens and had to walk around the sidewalk instead of the path between the two houses which Emily described in a letter as “just wide enough for two who love.” The recent spring rains had made the grass and walkway nearly unwalkable with mud. Emily’s father, Edward, had the house built for her brother, Austin, in order to keep Austin and his wife Susan in town rather than moving out of state once they married. The Evergreens is filled with the authentic and original possessions of Austin and Susan. Their sitting room has old furniture, a piano, and art pieces. It was where Austin and Susan held many social events and at these events, their daughter Martha would read aloud some of the poems that Emily had sent her in letters (even just being next door!). The dining room is set with original furniture and place settings. A typical dinner menu was printed for guests to see so they can see what was typical of the time for socialites. Two things that caught my eye were “cream celery in cheese shell” and “noodle puffs.” The kitchen was something I had never seen before. Very little counter space, cramped, and a very old cast iron stove. Burleigh told us a bit about the history of the ownership of the house. The most fascinating point was that there was someone living in it until 1988. The last resident of the Evergreens was Mary Landis Hampson, a confidante of Emily’s niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi. She kept the Dickinson possessions in careful storage for years. I asked Burleigh how anyone could have lived in the Evergreen in its current relatively unrenovated state. She said that Hampson had been elderly and stayed mostly in the kitchen where the stove fire could keep her warm. She had no use for the rest of the mansion-esque property and even slept in the kitchen. The properties were bought separately by Amherst College; the Homestead was bought first and after many years, the Evergreens were bought and the two properties merged into one.
Once the tour was over, we were able to take a self-guided tour of the entire property grounds called “The Grounds of Memory”. “Wands” are available for visitors to use to listen to the narration of each section of the grounds. There is a link provided that can enable someone to listen through their phone via a phone call or through an app. The tour brings you past some garden areas that Emily took care of and are currently tended to by the museum staff. Unfortunately, I visited too early in the spring to be able to see the flowers that bloom and were so important to Emily in her lifetime. There is a plaque attached to a stone piece that has a part of a poem and a dedication of an adjacent bench to a friend of the family on it. Being able to walk the grounds and knowing Emily and her family and friends walked the same paths and lived in the same rooms was really something else. Having been invested in learning about my ancestry lately made it much more interesting and I felt connected to the history of her and the properties for that.
The Emily Dickinson Museum is a great place to visit if you’re a literary enthusiast, expert, or want to learn more about Emily in general. The tour guide was informative and encouraged the group to ask questions and really appreciated the inquisitiveness of our group. The houses are beautiful, even if the Evergreens never had a great chance at the maintenance and restoration that the Homestead had. It’s a rare look into how the affluent families of the day lived and even into how much we can learn about the taste and culture of the past.
