Amherst Part II (Emily Dickinson)

Obviously a poet-type person can't go to Amherst without stopping by Emily Dickinson's house. Only my mom and I were there for the 1:30 tour, which was lead by a nice old man who went to Stanford a long time ago. He told us a lot of stuff about ED that I knew from reading her biography for the ED class I took with Toast 1st year. He made me read aloud a menu at the house next door (The Evergreens) which belonged to her brother (and his wife, who may have been her lesbian lover, according to one book, but the guide said nothing about that shameful controversy), and he made me read "I dwell in Possibility" aloud too. My mom wouldn't do it. The tour guide liked us until the very end when my mom's phone rang. He ring tone is the theme from Rocky (Flying High Now, you know).

It was weird to be in her house. Not so much at first, because there's not a lot of furniture, and the wallpaper is from the family that lived there after it went out of the Dickinson family, but upstairs, where her bedroom is, I started to get excited, and I had shivers when we went into her little room. Her bed is there, a simple sleigh bed, with her actual shawl, a beautiful autumnal paisley. There's a dresser with a facsimile of a fascicle and the actual basket she used to lower gingerbread to the children who played beneath her window. And her writing table, tiny, square. The light was lovely. There are a lot of windows facing south and west. I was surprised at how moved I was.

They don't let you take pictures inside but here's a picture of the house from outside.

Her bedroom windows are the two on the right of the second story.

The Evergreens (the first house in Amherst to have a name) next door has a lot more Dickinson family stuff, and it's a lot fancier. High Victorian with paintings, beautiful floors, intricately carved moldings and also mold. They're restoring it, but there's a lot of work to be done. Here's The Evergreens:


If you're ever in Massachusetts, I seriously recommend this place to all poet-types. It's fabulous. Here's the other side of ED's house. The tree in the foreground is a 150-year-old oak that was there when she was.