EMILY DICKINSON IN LOVE: The Case for Otis Lord

Appendix C: The Last White Dress

149 j Appendix C j THE LAST WHITE DRESS woman in the nineteenth century who wore white exclusively would have had a closet full of such dresses, in different styles, fabrics, and weights. At least a dozen of them would be needed, if not double that number. Of course with Emily there was an added factor, her reclusive existence. A woman who never went out in public, who never left her own house or grounds except to visit her brother’s house, barely a step away next door, presumably would have required fewer dresses, of fewer styles and kinds. Yet since Emily was seen every day by any number of people (father, mother, sister, the servants, and frequently by her brother, sister-in-law, a niece, two nephews, and a variety of groundskeepers and workmen), the difference wouldn’t have been drastic. Within her own restricted circle she certainly would have wanted to present herself properly attired. After her death, just what was done with her closetful of white dresses is not on record. Her sister Vinnie was the same size so would probably have kept a few for herself (an old Amherst seamstress later recalled making white dresses for Emily, using Vinnie for the fittings: see my Hidden Life, 206–8, 270). The rest of the dresses probably went to the sister-in-law Susan, and Susan’s daughter, the twenty-yearold Martha, perhaps also to the longtime servant Maggie Maher, no doubt being altered where needed. j Whatever was actually done with Emily’s old clothes, all of them have long since disappeared, except one. That one is today the property of the Amherst Historical Society and is kept on permanent exhibit behind glass at the society’s quarters. Made of thin cotton, it has mother-of-pearl buttons on the front and a single large pocket on the right side. Machine stitched, it has some added hand stitching. According to the Historical Society, this kind of dress was “worn by women as everyday clothes for doing chores and other activities inside the house. It was not a particularly unusual or expensive dress for its time.” Its provenance is brief and simple, leaving no doubt as to its authenticity. Sometime in the 1890s, several years after Emily’s death, it was given by Vinnie to a well-liked Dickinson cousin, Eugenia Hall of Amherst, then in her mid-twenties (five of Emily’s notes to her have survived: see Johnson, Letters, 550, 880–81). Probably Hall did not wear the dress but treated it as a keepsake, Emily’s reputation by then having grown considerably. Eventually, from “Genie” Hall (Emily’s name for her) the dress went to her married sister, Margaret Bradlee, also of Amherst. In 1946 Mrs. Bradlee presented it to the Amherst Historical Society. The documents detailing all this are available in the society’s files. At first, quite sensibly and appropriately, the dress was returned to the very place in which it was found at its owner’s death, the large empty closet in Emily’s room at the mansion. There in solitary splendor it hung for quite a long time, affording a special treat to the many literary pilgrims who visited the house. It was also in that closet in 1967 that, while researching my biography of Emily (published 1971), I first saw and handled the dress. That interesting and pleasant experience I used as part of the prologue to the biography, a brief passage that I expect will not be out of place here. Visiting the house for the first time I looked forward to seeing the dress, not for anything tangible it might yield about Emily but simply as a matter of legitimate curiosity, a way of getting a little closer in spirit to my elusive subject. Entering Emily’s room on the Appendix C 150 second floor, I expected to find the dress on open display but was disappointed . Nowhere was it to be seen. Then after a few moments of inspection, I discovered it hanging rather forlornly in the otherwise empty closet. Struck by a sudden thought that had never occurred to me before in all my studies of this strange woman, I found myself smiling. What must this closet, so bare now, have looked like when it held hangar after hangar of white dresses, a long rack weighed down with that glittering apparel? . . . This particular dress...