A Woman to Know: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson
I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away. — Emily Dickinson
I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away. — Emily Dickinson
(image via Wikimedia Commons)
More than 500 letters, a family reputation, a salacious affair and 36 years of friendship (or something more) — there’s lots to examine in the relationship between renowned poet Emily Dickinson and her “biggest heart” (her sister-in-law Sue).
When the two first met, in 1850, they became fast friends. As smart girls living in Amherst, Massachusetts, they bonded over their shared love of books and philosophy. But when Emily’s brother Austin proposed to Sue and the newlyweds moved into a brand-new mansion next door, everything about the relationship between these two women changed.
As her poetry absorbed more and more of her time, Emily’s legendary reclusion pushed her away from family and friends — but not from Sue. The poet considered Sue her only confidante, and she began writing her sister-in-law long, passionate letters, often including drafts of future poems and asking Sue for edits and thoughts. The two traded these letters for decades, and even as family drama threatened to tear the Dickinsons apart (Austin embarked upon a very public affair with Emily’s future editor; Sue mourned the loss of a young son and the demise of her marriage), Emily and Sue kept up their passionate correspondence.
Rereading these letters, historians have wondered if there was something more to the relationship (“I add a kiss, shyly, lest there is somebody there! Dont let them see, will you Susie?” Emily wrote in one). Watching from her now-famous windowed bedroom, Emily wrote of seeing her sister-in-law come and go from the house next door:
If you were here — and Oh that you were, my Susie, we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us, and your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language — I try to bring you nearer, I chase the weeks away till they are quite departed, and fancy you have come, and I am on my way through the green lane to meet you, and my heart goes scampering so, that I have much ado to bring it back again, and learn it to be patient, till that dear Susie comes.
But beyond these letters, no evidence exists of an off-paper romance. When Emily died in 1886, her sister Lavinia found the large collection of poems hidden in Emily’s desk drawers and begged Sue for help in putting together a collection. To her, Sue seemed the natural choice.
But Emily’s “biggest heart” put too much of herself into the editing and took much too long in returning edits and compilations. Eventually, Lavinia gave the poems over to Mabel Loomis Todd (Austin’s mistress, but an interestingly independent woman in her own right), who went on to make Emily one of the most well-known poets in the world.
Add to your library list:
Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson)
Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson (Martha Nell Smith)
Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (edited by Martha Nell Smith and Ellen Louise Hart)
Read more:
Two Belles of Amherst (The New York Times)
Behind the queer romance history forgot (New York Magazine)
Emily Dickinson’s Real Letters to Sue Gilbert (Refinery29)
15 Ladies Who Were Writing Sexy Lesbian Love Letters (Autostraddle)
I Miss My Biggest Heart (Letters of Note)
Send your own recommendations for women to know! Reply to this newsletter with your lady and she could be featured in an upcoming edition.