"Yes, and it was supposed to have started her writing a flood of poetry and it was also supposed to have made her begin to withdraw from the world and shy away from visitors. What about the theory that it was that Reverend Wadsworth in Philadelphia that she was supposed to be in love with? That's what most people say. And when he moved to California it was more than she could bear, it was almost like dying."
"But why? There she was in Amherst, and in those days Philadelphia would have seemed as far away as the moon already. What difference could it have made to her that Wadsworth left Philadelphia for California? Well, anyway—that's the way Howard reasoned. Emily's lover was not Wadsworth at all—it was Henry Thoreau. Of course, first of all he had to explain how they met. That was easy. Emily must have come to Concord to visit her cousins there, the Norcross girls, and she might very well have stayed in Henry's mother's boarding house, the way Ellen Sewall did, the girl he had loved before. And so, naturally, he took her out boating on the river, just the way he took Ellen, just the way he took Margaret Fuller."
"I love it. I can't help it, I love it. Oh, Homer, just think of the two of them (Henry Thoreau and Emily Dickinson!) out in the sunshine on Fairhaven Bay; just like us. I'll never look out from our front porch without seeing them there. And I've just thought of something else. Both of them were small. They were little people. Little homely people. Forgive me for saying it, but I think they must have made a charming pair."
"I know. It's pretty, it's all mighty pretty. There they were, the two of them, small in stature only, giants in every other way. And each of them beginning to recognize in the other an extraordinary and unique person, an opposite-sexed but true counterpart. After all, each of them was perhaps the one most worthy audience for the other then alive."
"So they fell in love. But do you think they could really have gone so far as to..."
"Well, read what Howard says. He makes it sound pretty plausible. He goes on and on about the powerful loving responses in Henry's journal, his appeals of affection to his friends, the depth of his reaction to the natural world around him. And all of this convinces him that Henry had a nature capable of passionate attachment. In spite of the coldness his friends accuse him of."
"Oh, that," said Mary scornfully. "That was just his New England mask for the strong feelings underneath."
"Listen. I wrote down some of it." Homer took a small notebook out of his pocket and opened it up. "All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love,—to sing; and if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love..." Homer put the notebook back in his pocket. "And as for Emily, do you remember how she scandalized her sister-in-law, even after years of retirement, by being discovered in the arms of a man? It was probably that old judge who loved her at the end of her life. Oh, it's reasonable, all right, the whole thing. And therefore, says Howard, the marriage of Henry Thoreau and Emily Dickinson in the flesh was a true marriage of the exalted spirit. Okay, let's say we accept that. Afterwards Emily went home again, gushing poetry, her true poetic self aroused and awakened, writing a masterpiece a day from then on. So half of the Dickinson mystery is solved—the reason for the spout of poetry. But what about the other half? Why did she begin to act like a female hermit, retiring to her room, refusing to see anybody?"
"Naturally," said Mary softly, "it was to bear Henry's child..."
"To do what? My dear, you scandalize me. Squire Dickinson's daughter? Bear an illegitimate child? Impossible! The affair must be hushed up. Emily must renounce her mysterious lover. The child must be carried in secret and delivered in secret and then turned over to the faithful stableman to be brought up as his own. And here's where the Matthews family comes into the picture. Richard Matthews and his wife had sixteen kids. The addition of one more would hardly cause a stir. And the fact that the child grew up with a mop of auburn hair like its mother's, and eyes, maybe, like 'the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves' wouldn't have bothered anyone. I caught on myself, finally, there at Amherst, to what Elizabeth's dark secret was. If you trace the Matthews name back far enough you come to the Richard Matthews who worked for Squire Dickinson and sired seventeen kids, one of whom, a son named (of all things) Henry, was born only four months after his elder brother Frederick. Four months? There's a precocious embryo for you. So I made a wild stab in the dark and guessed that Elizabeth Goss regarded herself as the great-granddaughter of Emily Dickinson, which explained why she was mooning around in McLean Hospital in a white gown and wouldn't come out to see anybody. What I didn't guess then was that she also had grandiose ideas about who her great-grandfather was."
"What I love most about Howard's idea," said Mary, "is the fun he had with internal evidence—the symbolism and the images in Emily's poetry and letters. The way she called herself 'wife,' and the obvious Freudian interpretation of her poems about bees and flowers. Some of it was pretty strong stuff for a spinster, don't you think? Remember 'Wild night, wild nights'? And what about 'the wrestlers in the holy chamber' and her 'unique burden' that she wrote about—do you think she was really talking about pregnancy and childbirth?"
"Well, you've got to admit that it's all very ingenious. Poor old Emily. If all this happened in 1860 it was only two years before Henry was dead. So she lost him twice, once by renunciation and a second time by death. And thus, Howard says, began her preoccupation with her 'flood subject'—love seen through the barrier of death, the lovers reunited only in immortality."
"I believe it. I believe it all," said Mary. "It only puts me even more in awe of them. I'd like to think it was all true, and that they had each other, even if it was only for a little while."
"Oh, hogwash."
"What did you say?"