In late summer of 1850, Austin Dickinson graduated from
Amherst College along with his good friend George Gould, whose
company Emily enjoyed. Gould was a tall, lanky man who was studying
theology and hoped to be a minister. He made frequent visits to
the Dickinson home. Because Gould's prospects were so poor, however, Edward
Dickinson supposedly did not think him a suitable match for Dickinson
or Lavinia. One rumor holds that George Gould proposed marriage
to Dickinson, and she declined.
Young men began visiting Dickinson and her sister more
and more often, but Dickinson took none of them seriously. In late 1850,
Leonard Humphrey, Dickinson's friend and tutor, died of what was
then called brain congestion. He likely died of an aneurysm. To
Dickinson it was a crushing blow. She spent the next few months
in a depression.
The next year, Dickinson's brother Austin began teaching
at a boy's school in Boston. Dickinson was writing poems in her
room, but told no one of how seriously she was taking her craft
nor of the experiments she was conducting with structure and style,
such as assonant rhyming patterns and dashes dividing lines into
rhythmic sections. Dickinson spent almost as much time reading
as she did writing. She devoured the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning and read "The Atlantic Monthly," "Harper's," and "Scribners."
She also read novels like Vanity Fair by Thackeray.
She especially loved the novelists George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle.
In May 1851, the General Court of Massachusetts passed
an act making Mr. Dickinson and four other men heads of the Amherst and
Belchertown Railroad Company. They were charged with locating,
constructing, administering, and maintaining a railroad through
Amherst. The venture would require a great deal of capital up front,
and Mr. Dickinson threw a huge amount of his own money into the
deal. The railroad was completed in the spring of 1853. It was nineteen
and a half miles long and connected with the main Massachusetts
rail line into Boston. It was the first railroad to run through
Amherst and was a resounding success. Austin came home from Harvard
Law School, where he was studying, to watch the opening day festivities
with Lavinia and Mrs. Dickinson. Dickinson elected to stay at home
and watch the celebration from a hidden vantage point in the family's
woods.
In the autumn of 1851, Dickinson met Henry Emmons, an Amherst
College friend of her cousin John Graves. Emmons was a charismatic,
well-read young man and Dickinson greatly enjoyed his company.
The two embarked on a tentative and ambiguous romance, taking regular
carriage rides and spending a great deal of time together. Like
Dickinson, Emmons enjoyed writing poetry, and the two swapped poems
regularly. Lavinia had just said goodbye to her boyfriend Joseph
Lyman, who had gone South to complete his schooling. There was
an understanding between Lavinia and Joseph that she would await
his return and then they would marry. Both of the sisters' relationships
ended in sadness. In the late summer of 1854, Dickinson discovered
that Emmons had become engaged to someone else. In 1856, after
five years of waiting–and after turning down at least one marriage
proposal–Lavinia found out that Joseph Lyman had become engaged
to a Southern girl.
Dickinson still enjoyed sending her short poems to friends
to mark holidays and other special occasions. On Valentine's Day 1852,
Dickinson wrote a poem and sent it as a Valentine to William Howland,
one of the young men in her father's law office. Little is known
about William Howland, but it is unlikely that he and Dickinson
ever had a relationship. Howland was so impressed by Dickinson's
poem that he sent it, without telling her, to the Springfield
Republican newspaper. A few days later, while she was
leafing through the newspaper, Dickinson caught sight of the poem
printed on one of the pages of the Springfield Republican. She
was mortified and successfully hid the newspaper from her father.
In 1853, Austin began courting one of Emily's friends,
Susan Gilbert. Susan and Dickinson had met at the Sewing Society
and they deeply admired each other. Dickinson thought Susan pretty
and graceful and intelligent, and Susan found Dickinson exceptionally witty
and articulate. The whole Dickinson family, in fact, took to Susan
immediately. At Thanksgiving, Austin and Susan got engaged. The
couple married in 1856. Dickinson and Sue's friendship, which had
continued uninterrupted since they were children, strengthened
after Sue's marriage into the family, and Sue became Dickinson's
greatest confidante.
In March of 1853, Dickinson was flipping through the Springfield
Republican and came across a tiny obituary. She read that
her friend Benjamin Newton had died of tuberculosis. Dickinson
fell ill almost at once, deeply shaken by her friend's sudden death.
Since leaving Amherst, Newton become sick, but his death came as
a shock. His counsel and thoughtful advice about Dickinson's poems had
buoyed Dickinson's spirits and helped her verse, which had just started
to take flight. Newton's death affected Dickinson for months.
