801.1864.As Sleigh Bells seem in summer

801.1864. As Sleigh Bells seem in summer
“About early 1864, in pencil on the inside of an envelope addressed by ed to Eliza Coleman in Philadelphia (a 140)” (Franklin 1998)

I prefer all four of ED’s alternate words (parentheses in Lines 1, 3, 6, 8):

As Sleigh Bells seem (sound) in summer
Or Bees, at Christmas show —
So fairy (foreign) — so fictitious
The individuals do

Repealed from observation —
A Party that (whom) we knew —
More distant in an instant
Than Dawn in (on) Timbuctoo.

My interpretation of Fr 801 in two prose sentences:

Lines 1-4: As sleigh bells sound in summer or bees at Christmas show, a person I knew seems so foreign, so false, reversed from his former self.

Lines 5-8: My Master has become a person “More distant in an instant, than Dawn on Timbuctoo.”

……………………………………….

There are at least seven reasons we can assume that Eliza Coleman, ED’s close friend and second cousin, understood the camouflaged meaning of this poem and that Wadsworth was ED’s “Master”:

Franklin (1998) tells us this poem’s manuscript was written in pencil on the inside of an envelope addressed by ED to Eliza Coleman in Philadelphia”.
–
When ED was 16, she and Eliza studied German together at Amherst Academy. The instructor was Eliza’s father, who resigned midsemester from Amherst Academy and moved to Philadelphia to headmaster a new women’s academy.
–
In March 1855, Eliza Coleman invited ED and Lavinia to visit her in Philadelphia, where the Colemans were members of Arch Street Presbyterian Church and Reverend Charles Wadsworth was their minister. Wadsworth was a superstar Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia and considered one of the finest Presbyterian ministers in America.
–
Habegger (2001), ever the careful historian, tells us “[I]t is thought Dickinson was taken to the Arch Street Presbyterian Church to hear the Reverend Charles Wadsworth preach and that he made such an impression on her she later solicited his counsel and thus initiated one of her most vital friendships”.
–
On April 12, 1861, Confederate cannons bombarded Fort Sumpter, and in December 1861 Wadsworth resigned his prestigious Philadelphia pulpit. The reason was that he believed the Bible condoned slavery (“Curse of Ham”, Genesis 9:22-26, KJV), but his congregation did not and asked him to leave. ED didnt know his reason for resigning and probably assumed it was her fault; perhaps his close friendship with ED had been discovered by his Arch Street congregation.
–
On May 1, 1862, Wadsworth and his family sailed to San Francisco, where he rescued a floundering Calvary Presbyterian Church before returning to Philadelphia in 1869.”
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Given the close friendship of ED and Eliza for 17 years, 1847-1864, and Eliza’s invitation in March 1855 to introduce ED to Wadsworth’s powerful preaching, I think Eliza was fully aware by “early 1864” that Wadsworth was ED’s “Master”. I think it likely she understood the cryptic meaning of ED’s ‘As Sleigh Bells seem in summer’ (Habegger 2001).
–

For these reasons, I think Wadsworth was the “Party whom we knew — / More distant in an instant”.

Franklin, R. W. 1998. THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON: VARIORUM EDITION. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 3 vols. Cambridge, MA: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1998. vi + 1654 pp.

Habegger, Alfred. 2001. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (p. 376). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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After commenting on Poems 1-763 (Franklin) on The Prowling Bee’, I am convinced that (virtually) all of Emily Dickinson’s (ED’s) poems have a factual historical level in addition to their various poetic levels of meaning. The reason for her instant and continuing public adulation (1890 - present) was and is, by far, poetic. She is one of the "Greats" that she always dreamed to be, despite her lifelong refusal to publish. That refusal freed her from criticism and allowed her to explore the outer boundaries of poetic power.

More than a century of scholarly research has resulted in somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 books and published academic papers about ED. A large majority of these publications focus only on the “poetic levels” of one or more of ED’s poems. Publications that consider both the “historic level” and “poetic levels” comprise a small minority. Publications that focus only on the factual history of her life probably number less than 100. (All numbers in this paragraph are my estimates.)

Unfortunately for ED’s universe of readers, these two basic levels (historical and poetic) cannot be separated into two ivory towers. Every history-level publication that I know of includes at least some discussion of the poetic level(s).

The reverse is not true. In fact, authors of the “poetry-level” school seem to avoid commenting on the historical level, sometimes admonishing that a poem must stand on its own, without concern for its historical roots. To my knowledge, there are (virtually) no published “history-level” books or articles that totally ignore ED’s poems and their poetic levels.

Of course, ED’s refusal to publish her poems was only possible because of lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support by her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. In addition, throughout her life, the Dickinsons hired servants, first Negro and later Irish, some of whom became much more than housekeepers for ED.

My point is that our appreciation of ED's poems can be enhanced by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.