Wednesday noon
I am stopping for dinner at White River Junction, dearest, & in a few hours shall be at Littleton thence to go to Bethlehem. This morning at 9 I left Amherst & sent you a letter last night. I shall mail this at L. putting with it another sheet about E.D. that is in my valise.
She said to me at parting "Gratitude is the only secret that cannot reveal itself."
I talked with Prest Stearns of Amherst about her - & found him a very pleasant companion in the cars. Before leaving today, I got in to the Museums & enjoyed them much; saw a meteoric stone almost as long as my arm & weighing 436 lbs! a big slice of some other planet. It fell in Colorado. The collection of bird tracks of extinct birds in stone is very wonderful & unique & other good things. I saw Mr. Dickinson this morning a little - thin dry & speechless - I saw what her life has been. Dr. S. says her sister is proud of her.
I wd. have stolen a totty meteor, dear but they were under gla**.
Mrs. Bullard I have just met in this train with spouse & son - I shall ride up with her.
Some pretty glimpses of mts. but all is dry and burnt I never saw the river at Brattleboro so low.
Did I say I staid at Sargents in Boston & she still hopes for Newport.
This picture of Mrs Browning's tomb is from E.D. "Timothy Titcomb" [Dr. Holland] gave it to her.
I think I will mail this here as I hv. found time to write so much. I miss you little woman & wish you were here but you'd hate travelling.
Ever
E D again
"Could you tell me what home is"
"I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled."
"I never knew how to tell time by the clock till I was 15. My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand & I was afraid to say I did not & afraid to ask any one else lest he should know."
Her father was not severe I should think but remote. He did not wish them to read anything but the Bible. One day her brother brought home Kavanagh hid it under the piano cover & made signs to her & they read it: her father at least found it & was displeased. Perhaps it was before this that a student of his was amazed that they had never heard of Mrs. [Lydia Maria] Child & used to bring them books & hide in a bush by the door. They were then little things in short dresses with their feet on the rungs of the chair. After the first book she thought in ecstasy "This then is a book! And there are more of them!"
"Is it oblivion or absorption when things pa** from our minds?"
Major Hunt interested her more than any man she ever saw. She remembered two things he said - that her great dog "understood gravitation" & when he said he should come again "in a year. If I say a shorter time it will be longer."
When I said I would come again some time she said "Say in a long time, that will be nearer. Some time is nothing."
After long disuse of her eyes she read Shakespeare & thought why is any other book needed.
I never was with any one who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her. She often thought me tired & seemed very thoughtful of others.
[The postscript of a letter Higginson wrote his sisters on Sunday, 21 August, adds:]
Of course I hv. enjoyed my trip very very much. In Amherst I had a nice aftn & evng with my singular poetic correspondent & the remarkable cabinets of the College.
[Recalling the interview twenty years later, Higginson wrote in the "Atlantic Monthly" LXVIII (October 1891) 453:]
The impression undoubtedly made on me was that of an excess of tension, and of an abnormal life. Perhaps in time I could have got beyond that somewhat overstrained relation which not my will, but her needs, had forced upon us. Certainly I should have been most glad to bring it down to the level of simple truth and every-day comradeship; but it was not altogether easy. She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in an hour's interview, and an instinct told me that the slightest attempt at direct cross-examination would make her withdraw into her shell; I could only sit still and watch, as one does in the woods; I must name my bird without a gun, as recommended by Emerson.