Category: #EmilyDickinson

The Last Scene

Scene 10

(The 1930’s. HOMESTEAD to the left, EVERGREENS still to the right but the DELL in between has vanished. Both houses look the worse for wear; HOMESTEAD sports a “For Sale” sign. Arms crossed, two young women in thirties clothing study one another. They are the actresses who played SUE and MABEL restored to youth…as their daughters, MATTIE and MILLICENT. MATTIE stands proudly on the EVERGREENS porch, surveying MILLICENT who tows a wheeled trunk plastered with travel and Ivy League stickers. EMILY tries to stick collapsed shingles back on the HOMESTEAD; they fall off of course)

EMILY
Sue! Sue! I meant to find her when I came
Death had the same design.
The success was his it seems
The surrender, mine.
I knew I lost her when remoteness traveled to her face and tongue.

(Grabs a broom)

The thrill came slowly – centuries delayed
Life is shorter than summer
Seventy years is spent. Sorrow is polite and stays.
We must be sweeping up the heart and putting love away. We shall not want to use it until eternity. Pain’s element of blank can’t recollect when it were not. It has no future but itself; infinity contain.

MATTIE
(Mockingly)

Leaving so soon, Mrs. Bingham?

MILLICENT
Goodbye, Mrs. Bianchi.

(Stresses the title.)

EMILY
(Sighs dispiritedly)

It is the Children’s Hour. Love that was meets love too best to be. Their junction is … eternity. Even a prison gets to be a friend.

MATTIE
I’m sorry you’ll miss the grand gala celebrating the publication of my book – Mama’s and mine. The Single Hound – Poems of a Lifetime.

(Sighs ecstatically)

EMILY
Did you ever read poems backwards, because the plunge at the front overturned you?

MILLICENT
You are obnoxious to the last degree, like all your family. Deliver me from “push”.

EMILY
Love is a loaded gun that grants the power to kill without the power to die. Girls, girls! Shall we laugh at this catastrophe?

MATTIE
Your history – insofar as you have one – is scandal, convictions and homelessness. You wouldn’t understand.

EMILY
Mattie, were revenge accessible, I would surely wreak it. Trust me. Revenge is an apparition. More prudent to assault the dawn.

MILLICENT
I understand that when one conveys the impression that the work one did is one’s own work when it is actually appropriated, one commits an act of piracy. When there is misrepresentation of facts it is falsehood, deception, perjury, fraud, deceit, sham, pretence, perfidy, distortion, invention, dishonesty, treachery, counterfeit, fiction, myth, humbug, hyperbole and swindle!

MATTIE
Your mother was no better than a common whore!

EMILY
Mattie, Mattie, you are royal! As there are apartments in our minds we never enter so we should respect the seals of others. Spirits rising too high inflate and feed on awe. You will never merit the ethereal scorn she evanesced.

MILLICENT
And what was your mother? I know all about her affair with Mr. Bowles, all the while she behaved so high and mighty! She was a vindictive –

(MATTIE Slams the door to avoid another recitation. A shingle falls off The EVERGREENS and its lights fade. MILLICENT drags her trunk a short distance, then opens it and sets up camp – a cabana-tent, folding table, campstool, etc. Ties a pennant reading “Purity & Wisdom” to the top of the cabana.)

MILLICENT
(Shouting in the direction of the EVERGREENS)

Vassar’s song was written by Edna St. Vincent Millay!

(Shouts the words)

Offended God of love and kindness
We have denied, forgotten thee,
Twisted, unlovely and obscure
Gifts we – er- hum-tum.

(Realizes the song is depressing and badly written plus she doesn’t remember it. Mutters sheepishly to herself)

Unfortunately Edna was expelled.

EMILY
(Stroking her hair)

Love’s transmigration becomes idolatry of family. This silence is infinity – it has no face. Absence disembodies just like death. Poor child.

MILLICENT
(Collapses on campstool, shoulders bowed, head down. Opens a notebook:)

Principles of Human Geography by Millicent Todd Bingham!

(Begins scribbling feverishly.)

EMILY
Oh, Child! We have at least a pair of lives. With tomorrow in the cupboard, who can hunger? We do not play on graves because there isn’t room! People come – they hang their faces so we’re fearing that their hearts will drop and crush our pretty play. And so we move as far as enemies away.

(Spotlight on MATTIE at her much more elaborate desk)

MATTIE
Dear Houghton Mifflin, As the sole heir of the Dickinson family in Amherst and holder of the Dickinson copyrights, I am preparing a volume of recently discovered poems by my aunt Emily Dickinson that were withheld from publication by her sister Lavinia …

EMILY
(Peering in the window)

Each age is a lens. Poets light a lamp; themselves go out. Light, Mattie. Light!

MILLICENT
(Writing a letter of her own)

Dear Houghton Mifflin, my mother Mabel Loomis Todd, editor of the four original volumes of poetry and letters of Emily Dickinson, is interested in publishing a further volume based on papers left her by Lavinia Dickinson in a will which has mysteriously disappeared… Fortunately mother is in possession of an original contract granting her half ownership of the published volumes –

(Gouges the paper so angrily it rips. Says in frustration)

MILLICENT
I feel I exist to do this. I am involved without question and I am glad to be.

EMILY
(Wandering sadly between the two of them)

Finding is the first act; the second is – loss. Absence of the witch does not invalidate the spell.

(Feigning an argument)

There is a megatherium among the strawberries! Your nettle stung my rose!

MATTIE
To the Trustees of Harvard College: I would be willing to meet with your literary curators who are interested in discussing the ultimate disposition of papers pertaining to my late, much revered aunt, the poet Emily Dickinson –

MILLICENT
To the Trustees of Amherst College: I would be very interested in discussing with you the acquisition and protection of my mother Mabel Loomis Todd’s papers. As you know she was a friend of the American poet Emily Dickinson as well as her first editor –

MATTIE
Mrs. Todd’s so-called “contract” is a draft copy prepared by herself. My aunt Lavinia’s papers makes no mention of Mrs. Todd’s contribution whatever and her contract states unequivocally that copyright resides solely in the Dickinson family…Patrimony! Patrimony, patrimony, patrimony!

EMILY
What about matrimony, bridalled and shrouded in a day? Longing is a seed that wrestles with the ground.

MILLICENT
(Addressing the audience)

Real hate is focused, waiting for vengeance. The emotion of hatred keeps the hater alive and vigorous. Hatred cannot continue unless the souls are kindred and the closer the likeness the more virulent the hatred.

EMILY
(Sighs)

I hope heaven is warm. There are so many barefoot ones. If a flower keeps its appointments, why should the heart be so tardy?

MATTIE
(Still writing – recites in a throbbingly romantic, thrilling voice)

In the witchery of an undreamed Southern spring Emily was overtaken – doomed forever by her own heart. It was instantaneous, overwhelming and impossible. Two predestined souls were only kept apart by her sense of the duty to preserve love untarnished by the destruction of another woman’s life…

(Throat catches on a sob)

EMILY
(Embattled)

Biography first convinces us of the fleeing of the biographed. She mistook a winged spark for lightning! Consummation is the hurry of fools; expectation the elixir of the Gods. Go slow my soul to feed itself! Love deferred will fade like … ice cream. Redemption – for a kiss!

MILLICENT
(Shouting in MATTIE’s direction)

The enclosed volume, Bolts of Melody, contains more than six hundred previously unknown poems by Emily Dickinson from my mother’s extensive private collection…

EMILY
Poor fatherless serpent!

MATTIE
Dear Houghton Mifflin, if you publish any volume of poems to which I hold the copyright I will sue!

EMILY
Here’s a pretty lawsuit! It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each should think the other crazy. Thus does spirit dialog with dust.

(MILLICENT and MATTIE speak at once)

MILLICENT
Dear Amherst College, In securing my treasure trove of Dickinson papers I seek an institution that will –

MATTIE
Dear Harvard College, In preventing further interference with the Dickinson copyrights I seek to leave them to an institution that will –

(They stop and glare at each other. EMILY throws up her hands)

EMILY
Heaven or hell? Think, Mattie! Character determines whether eternity be velocity or pause! Fundamental signals come from fundamental laws. The way is closed from where they came. The seconds pursue the centuries, the centuries pursue – eternity. A plank of balm is swallowed by the escapeless sea. My little force explodes and leaves me bare and charred.

(The two girls speak at the same time)

MILLICENT
Dear Harvard College – It is my intention to sue –

MATTIE
Dear Amherst College – It is my intention to sue –

EMILY
Only love can wound and only love can heal the wound. To have lost an enemy is almost more memorable than to find a friend.

MILLICENT
Ignoramus!

MATTIE
Upstart!

(They both clutch their chests and, miming heart attacks, sink floorward like marionettes. Emily tries to rouse them)

EMILY
Inter the docile ones – we will dare to live!

(It doesn’t work. Lights out on the girls. Alone, EMILY comes to sit at the edge of the stage)

EMILY
Can human nature survive without a listener? Life is but Life! And Death but Death! And Bliss is Bliss! And breath is breath! Death’s waylaying’s not the sharpest tool of time. There marauds a sorer robber – Silence is his name. The éclat of death is unknown renown. I don’t like paradise. I am not used to hope – I’d perish of delight. I never felt at home below, in the handsome skies I shall not feel at home, I know. I stand witness to the certainty of immortality – but – departing grace afflicts me with a double loss.
Is heaven a place – or sky or tree?
The dead have no geography
Abdication of belief makes behavior small.
Hope’s a subtle glutton!
Love is resurrection
Scooping up the dust and chanting, Live!
Take all away from me but leave me ecstasy!

(Coming close, peering into audience)

O, Master, master, is it you? Have you come to keep your promise to the sparrows who know how to starve or to shatter me with Dawn?

(Attempts to dismiss us)

Art thou the thing I wanted? Begone – my tooth has grown
Supply a minor palate that has not starved so long.
I tell thee while I waited the mystery of food
Increased till I abjured it and dine without – like God.

(Looks uneasily into the utter darkness behind her. There is nowhere to go. She is alone.)

What is earth but a nest from whose rim we are falling? I had a terror I could tell to none. Who knows how deep the heart is or how much it holds? Perhaps the balm seemed better because you bled me first. When did the dark happen? I thought I could play where sundown couldn’t find me. It would be comfort forever to look into your face and have you look in mine. Did you bring the little chest to keep the “alive” in? Heaven is so cold! It will never look kind to me if God, who causes all, denies such little wishes. Fabulous is the revelation that we shall hunger no more!

(Holds out her arms)

Life is the finest secret. So long as that remains, we must whisper.

(Whispers)

The only thing worth larceny is immortality.

(Closes her eyes to feel the darkness)

A love so big it scares me rushes in my breast. Master, open wide your life, and take me in forever! Sinew and snow in one, an avalanche of sun!

(Closer and closer to audience)

“It is finished” can never be said of us! Creator! May I bloom?

END

scene 9

(Curtain rises on a Massachusetts courtroom in the 1890’s. Judge seated at center; witness box directly beneath his high lectern, bleachers to left and right. Buzzing noises of excited crowd)

JUDGE
(Banging gavel)

We will have order in this court! Mr. Hammond, call your witness!

EMILY
(Pretends to bang the gavel too)

The Unknown is the largest need of the Intellect!

(Ruffling the JUDGE’s hair)

He fought like those who’ve naught to lose
But death was coy of him. He was left alive because
Of greediness to die!

(Purses his chubby cheeks as if he’s an infant. Of course he ignores her)

A little madness in the spring is wholesome even for the king!

HAMMOND
I call Miss Lavinia Dickinson to the stand.

(EMILY bangs the gavel)

EMILY
Grief is a mouse! Grief is a thief!

(VINNIE makes her way slowly to stage center. She is wearing a ridiculous hat trimmed with ridiculous homemade, home picked flowers.)

HAMMOND
State your name for the record.

(EMILY bangs the gavel)

EMILY
Grief is a juggler! Grief is a gourmand!

(Loud whispered aside to judge)

Anger soon as fed is dead. T’is starving makes it fat.

VINNIE
I am Miss Lavinia Dickinson of Amherst. I have always been Miss Lavinia Dickinson and I have always lived at the Dickinson Homestead in Amherst.

HAMMOND
Except when you lived at the Dickinson Mansion.

(EMILY bangs the gavel)

EMILY
There will be mourning, mourning, mourning at the judgment seat. The dangerous moment is when the meaning goes out of things.

VINNIE
Eh?

HAMMOND
Where you were born.

VINNIE
Well of course I was born!

EMILY
Tell the truth but tell it slant, little sister. The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.

HAMMOND
Raise your right hand, Miss Dickinson. Clerk, Bible!

EMILY
Can dumb define divine?

VINNIE
Well naturally I keep my own Bible.

(Feels in her apparently endless bag)

It was Emily’s Bible, too.

(Excited sighs of crowd. VINNIE opens the Bible, and then bats at her face.)

EMILY
Laid away, I’d hoped, where moth cannot corrupt. It was a subtle moth, in its mothy way.

HAMMOND
Do you solemnly swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

VINNIE
(Triumphantly shaking the Bible)

I do indeed!

(Holds it to her chest)

EMILY
Truth is old as God; his twin identity. Excess of Monkey, Vinnie! As Father used to say!

HAMMOND
Now Miss Dickinson, are you accustomed to business and taking care of your own property?

VINNIE
Not in the slightest. Mr. Hills always acts for me.

HAMMOND
Miss Dickinson; is this your signature on this document?

VINNIE
No.

(Sensation.)

VINNIE
That is to say, it’s my autograph.

EMILY
Vinnie, Vinnie! Up from the pit you spoke!

HAMMOND
Do you recall the occasion of giving this autograph?

VINNIE
I have been very painfully reminded.

EMILY
Whether she has forgotten or is forgetting now or never remembered it is safer not to know. Miseries of conjecture are a softer woe than is a fact of iron!

HAMMOND
You invited Mrs. Todd to the house?

VINNIE
(sniffs)

I never invited her. She was in the habit of coming to copy my sister’s poems. They needed to be copied. My sister’s is a very difficult hand.

HAMMOND
But on this occasion of which we speak did she bring with her a gentleman?

VINNIE
Between seven and eight in the evening. She brought a friend to hear about my late sister. He so cherished her memory.

EMILY
What a prank of the heart! We met as sparks – diverging flints subsisting on the light we bore before we felt the dark!

HAMMOND
Did you give him an autograph?

VINNIE
She asked me to sign a paper. I do not recall Mr. Spaulding speaking to me on the subject. He did not point to the seal where I should sign; Mrs. Todd pointed to it, and I signed. That is all that I remember about it.

HAMMOND
(Triumphantly)

Witness is dismissed!

HAMLIN
(Defense Attorney steps forward)

One moment. Miss Dickinson. A few more questions if you please.

(VINNIE subsides back into her seat.)

Mrs. Todd frequented your house, did she not, to assist you with your late sister’s papers?

VINNIE
She asked for the privilege of doing it.

EMILY
(Shivering at his silky voice)

Zero at the bone! It must be cold because the trees shiver. The leaves are gay, but elderly. Nature gives us all her love – but science will not trust us with another world.

HAMLIN
Wasn’t the transfer of this tiny – this disputed strip of land – a strip directly fronting Mrs. Todd’s residence – understood to be her recompense for the arduous labors of preparing your sister’s books for the press?

VINNIE
No.

HAMLIN
No?

VINNIE
Isn’t that business? Mr. Hills takes care of all my business. That’s settled and gone.

(Washes her hands)

EMILY
A word is dead when said some say. I say it just began to live that day. An unsifted girl, I thought that words were cheap and weak. Now I can’t conceive of anything so mighty. They glow like sapphires.

JUDGE
Excuse me, Mr. Hamlin, but the Defendant responded in her Defendant’s answer that Mr. Austin Dickinson wished her to be compensated, not Miss Dickinson. Therefore the issue of compensation is quite irrelevant to this case.

He that is robbed and smiles, steals from the thief.

HAMLIN
Call Mrs. Todd as a witness!

(VINNIE bustles away, clutching her Bible. MABEL is elegantly, fashionably, glamorously dressed, a ship under full sail. Mr. HAMLIN proffers her a Bible)

HAMLIN
Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?

MABEL
Naturally.

(Settles into her seat like a burrowing dove with gloves, veil, the whole bit)

JUDGE
Speak up, Mrs. Todd!

EMILY
It’s a rare ear that’s not too dull to hear. Your judgeship, this woman’s constitution requires stolen fruit. Perfidy were more genuine.

HAMLIN
You considered yourself a friend to the Dickinson sisters?

MABEL
I did. They were sadly housebound – Miss Emily entirely so. I offered myself up unto their service.

HAMMOND
(Rising up and chiming dangerously in)

You knew Miss Emily?

EMILY
Not precisely knowing and not precisely knowing not. We talked about each other though neither of us spoke.

MABEL
(An uneasy laugh – sounds like she’s lying)

I saw her flitting. I heard her. She was a recluse, as you know.

(Gathering confidence, trying to work the crowd)

She was never seen in church.

EMILY
Divulging why I shunned them would rest my heart but ravage theirs. Doesn’t anybody notice how wide and broad these church aisles are? It took hours afterwards to catch my breath. A lonesome glee will sanctify the mind. The cricket is earth’s utmost elegy to me.

HAMMOND
You spoke to her?

MABEL
We corresponded. She spoke to me.

HAMMOND
You spoke to her?

MABEL
Words! I never spoke to her.

(HAMMOND turns away satisfied)

EMILY
The only commandment I ever obeyed is “consider the lilies.” I could not bear to live aloud! It may puzzle the public exceedingly but my hard-heartedness gets me many prayers.

HAMLIN
(Resuming control, Ostentatiously reverent)

And Emily is gone.

EMILY
“Forever” is deciduous except to those who die. Sir, I have been introducing myself to planets.

HAMLIN
And following Emily’s death you received property from the Dickinsons? Property on which to build your house?

MABEL
Right next door to the Homestead! Within hail of the Evergreens! Naturally.

EMILY
(Mockingly)

Ah, the hollow awfulness of the world! Nothing’s so stale as yesterday’s surprise!

HAMMOND
(Interrupting – attacking)

And what did you pay for this property?

MABEL
(Produces a lace handkerchief – works it)

Oh, I don’t recall.

EMILY
We’d flee from memory – if we had wings.

MABEL
It was all arranged between my husband and Mr. Dickinson.

HAMMOND
Isn’t the deed in your name?

EMILY
Ah! Revelation is the seed of romance! How luscious is the dripping of February! It makes our thinking pink. I’m amazed that the fascination of our predicament does not entice us more.

MABEL
Everything is as Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Todd wished.

EMILY
Modesty befits the soul that wears another’s name.

HAMMOND
So it is fair to say no cash money exchanged hands?

MABEL
Of course no money changed hands! I was helpful – merely.

HAMLIN
(Attempting to resume control)

As would a generous lady act.

MABEL
A generous, generous lady. Quite.

HAMMOND
Offering what services in specific, if I may inquire?

MABEL
I was the only one to comprehend dear Emily’s uniquely gnomic poesies.

HAMMOND
Gnomic?

EMILY
(Crossing her arms)

Resurrection had to wait until they moved a stone

MABEL
Mystic. It was left up to me to explain her to the world from which she shut herself off.

EMILY
Believing what we don’t believe does not exhilarate. I dwell in possibility –a fairer house than prose. Gathering paradise in my narrow hands.

(Attempts to dance with Mr. Hammond)

Mortality is fatal; gentility is fine, rascality heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!

MABEL
(Modestly)

It was I who saw every one of Emily’s books through the press!

HAMMOND
Wasn’t that after Mr. Austin Dickinson died? But while Mr. Dickinson lived –

EMILY
Wild nights! Wild nights! Republic of delight!

(MABEL breaks out in noisy sobbing)

EMILY
I like a look of agony because I know its true.

HAMMOND
(Pressing)

Did Miss Dickinson tell you she has a man of business?

MABEL
Well of course I know Mr. Hills! I dine with Mr. Hills regularly! And his mother! A true lady! The sweetest –

EMILY
The sincere spite of the woman, rocking truth to sleep!

HAMMOND
Why did you bring your own man of business to a business meeting when Mr. Hills was absent?

MABEL
Mr. Spaulding is not my man of business!

HAMMOND
Then who is he?

MABEL
(Feeling in her purse for a document)

Mr. Spaulding is a Northampton attorney who was recommended to me as a witness for a very minor transfer of land.

(Produces document with great relief.)

I have his deposition here.

HAMMOND
And I have the disputed document here. It’s in your handwriting I see.

MABEL
It’s just a tiny strip of land! Six hundred feet by –

HAMMOND
Did Miss Dickinson inspect the property?

MABEL
(Nonplussed)
Inspect it! Emily’s meadow? On a freezing night!

HAMMOND
How was Mr. Spaulding compensated?

MABEL
Mr. Spaulding? Er – it was a gentleman’s favor.

HAMMOND
A gentleman’s favor?

MABEL
(Confused. Looks to HAMLIN for assistance.)

A lady’s favor.

EMILY
Now, that’s a bundle of nonsense!

HAMMOND
Had you ever met Mr. Spaulding before?

MABEL
He wished to see the poet’s house!

EMILY
Ah, the enchantless Pod! The suburbs of a secret a strategist should keep. Better on a dream intrude than scrutinize the sleep.

HAMMOND
And that favor was within your gift?

MABEL
Within my gift? No. But I was so often in attendance on dear Miss Vinnie.

HAMMOND
On Miss Lavinia Dickinson?

MABEL
Exactly. We were such great friends.

EMILY
My only friend was my lexicon.

HAMMOND
Wasn’t it Mr. Dickinson on whom you danced attendance?

EMILY
Sir! You are shallow intentionally and profound by accident!

HAMMOND
(MABEL’s mouth drops open.) Call Maggie Maher to the stand.

EMILY
Ah, Maggie! Maggie is a warm name, as home is the definition of God.

(MABEL rushes away sobbing, seats herself unobtrusively in the audience. Garbed in a simple shawl MAGGIE steps up holding her out Bible.)

HAMMOND
Do you swear –?

MAGGIE
I swear no oaths. I’ve never lied in my life. I’ve got my own Bible here – a present from the Dickinson sisters.

HAMMOND
You are maid of all work for Miss Lavinia Dickinson at the Homestead?

MAGGIE
So I am.

HAMMOND
You know Mrs. Todd?

MAGGIE
(A world of disapproval)

I do.

HAMMOND
You admitted her to the house?

MAGGIE
Mr. Dickinson admitted her. Mr. Austin Dickinson. After that she let her own self in. Sometimes they would take a whole day out in the carriage and ask me to put up a lunch. I always put one up. He sent her messages at any hour of the day or night, and I had to carry them.

(Sensation)

EMILY
Oh, Maggie! Remorse is memory awake! Departed acts are a cureless disease!

HAMMOND
Did Mrs. Todd give you a reply?

MAGGIE
Only to say, “Tell the Master I am always ready.”

(Wild buzzing of crowd. JUDGE stirs uneasily.)

HAMMOND
Did Mrs. Todd discuss any business arrangements of compensation for editorial work in your hearing?

MAGGIE
She talked about it all the time. She called it a “labor of love”.

HAMMOND
You knew Mrs. Todd had received a piece of land to build her house?

MAGGIE
(Crossing her arms disapprovingly)

I did. Mr. Dickinson arranged that in spite of everyone. Mrs. Dickinson was ever so grieved.

EMILY
Oh, Maggie, Maggie! You had better starch the geraniums!

HAMMOND
Did you see Mr. Dickinson and Mrs. Todd together?

MAGGIE
She embraced him. She called him “my King” and “you dear old man.”

(Sniffs)

But they were together alone behind closed doors most of the time. While poor Mrs. Dickinson was closed up in mourning for her son.

EMILY
I watched her face to see which way
She took the awful news.
Whether she died before she heard
Or in a protracted bruise.

HAMMOND
(Bringing us back on track – speaks to the audience with satisfaction)

While Mrs. Todd and Mr. Dickinson were alone together behind closed doors at the Homestead?

(Crowd gasps. Lynch mob noises. MAGGIE nods.)

MAGGIE
Hours at a time. That’s what their consciences allowed them.

EMILY
Ah, the smitings of conscience! If there’s one thing to be grateful for, it’s that one is oneself and not somebody else. Faithful to mystery. The rest is perjury!

JUDGE
(Banging gavel)

I am ready to rule!

HAMLIN
But your honor –

EMILY
Bring out the stocks and the long-lashed whip! If your nerve denies you, go above your nerve! Can there more than love and death? Tell me its name!

JUDGE
I am ready to rule! Where testimonies are irreconcilable, one must look at habits of life. Miss Dickinson, a gentlewoman of sixty years, lives alone with her maid in the house her grandfather built, and was very quiet, and of a retiring disposition. She knows nothing of the world or of business and her testimony gives a sufficiently clear picture of the refinement of her life and the urgency, secrecy and misrepresentation of the defendant.

MABEL
(Rising)

Oh!

JUDGE
On the other hand the defendant is very much a woman of the world. She has not spent her life in seclusion in this little town of Amherst. She has the business experience of extensive travel as a public lecturer.

MABEL
Oh!

EMILY
Two swimmers wrestled on a spar
Until the morning sun
When one turned smiling to the land –
Oh God! The other one!

JUDGE
Clear case of fraud and so I rule! Deed is voided, land is returned, Defendant to pay costs. Court dismissed!

EMILY
Eyes in death still begging – raised
And hands beseeching, thrown!

(Watches participants file out.)

How happy was I, could I forget how sad I am.

(Lights out.)

Scene 7

(MABEL and VINNIE, both black-clothed, taking tea in the Homestead parlor. EMILY cavorts, playing hopscotch games they cannot see.)

EMILY
If recollecting were forgetting
Then I remember not.
If forgetting, recollecting
How near I had forgot.
Heart! We will forget him! You and I, tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave
I will forget the light.

(Mimes rolling dice)

We lose because we win – gamblers toss your dice again!

VINNIE
Mabel, I do wish – we all wish –

(Gasp of distaste)

That you not wear black. It’s so undignified, don’t you see? Don’t you see it opens the family up to talk and scandal?

EMILY
Oh Vinnie, never improve! You are so perfect now!

MABEL
I do only what He wished. Don’t you see my life must be devoted to that now? To him, of course, and to Emily. If he lived we were to marry and go West – you see I wear his ring – but now I can only tend his grave. His grave, and his memory. And Emily’s memory, of course.

VINNIE
(Tapping her foot helplessly)

But it’s undignified! What must people think!

EMILY
How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone
And doesn’t care about careers
And exigencies never fears!

(Shakes her head)

The mind lives on the heart like any parasite, dear Vinnie!. If full of meat the mind is fat!

MABEL
(Takes a paper from her purse)

And that’s not all he wished. Remember?

VINNIE
(Shuddering with distaste)

I don’t know what you want me to remember. I don’t wish to read my brother’s private correspondence. After a death, dear Mabel, such things are to be burned.

(Will not touch the paper)

EMILY
(Arms akimbo, head shaking)

Oh, Vinnie! Bats think foxes have no eyes.

MABEL
But they do burn! His words burn in me and so should they in you! Don’t you remember what he said?

EMILY
(All ears)

Momentousness ripens in a human soul impregnable as light! A single screw of flesh is all that pins the soul.

VINNIE
Things are so changed, Mabel! Everything is changed! We are authoresses now, public persons, don’t you see, in this new world! Did you get the fresh poems I sent you? I found them in the linen closet! Who knows how many more there might not be in this big house? And –

(Awkward change of subject)

How is the new volume coming?

MABEL
It’s difficult to concentrate on anything when I have so much sorrow!

(Gasps; threatens tears.)

When – my Master’s wishes go unfulfilled.

EMILY
To die before one fears to die may be a boon. Folks knock at the grass and the grass lets them in. With ghosts so attentive, what cause have we to complain? Still, we are children, and children fear the dark.

VINNIE
But Mr. Hills is my business manager and says I can do nothing without his oversight. Don’t you see, Mabel? When you have a position in the town you are not free.

EMILY
(Miming)

I never hear of prisons but I tug childish at my bars only to fail again!

MABEL
But a deed need not be recorded. It would be a secret, Vinnie, don’t you see? Then no one would know.

VINNIE
(Stunned into giving her real objection)

It need not? Sue would be so angry if she found out–

EMILY
Night is my favorite day. That’s why I love silence so. The infinite’s a sudden guest.

MABEL
I know the rages of the Black Moghul! To think she still stalks the sod while my King molders beneath it, his wishes forgotten! How can one endure! No, no, Vinnie, the Black Moghul must never know.

(Leans closer confidingly)

It will be our little secret.

EMILY
(Dancing)

Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit – life!

VINNIE
Well, it’s the patrimony – she’d find out. They all would know.

MABEL
But what about that tiny strip of meadow just in front of my house? Merely a little strip, Vinnie! Fifty-three feet by six hundred! And landscaped already – planted already to my – and my Master’s – choice. Nothing would be different.

EMILY
We are orchard sprung! I raised robins in that garden! If I helped one fainting robin I shall not have lived in vain. My flowers were disobedient. To be a flower is a profound responsibility.

(Sighs)

One clover, one bee and revery!
Revery alone will do if bees are few.

VINNIE
Nothing would be different?

EMILY
Silver scruples! The grass does not appear afraid. Perhaps its well our senses aren’t at home. Vinnie, your riches taught me poverty. Earth is short and anguish absolute.

MABEL
(She’s a hard worker)

Nothing! No money changes hands! Who would ever know?

EMILY
Back your morals with a mastiff and manners may prevail! Suspense – the gnat that mangles men! Suspense is hostiler than death!

VINNIE
You know I’d like to sign. Emily needs you to work on her book.

MABEL
Oh, that’s a gift of love! An honor! A privilege to perform these little tasks for the sainted singer of Amherst! Would you care to walk the property before you sign?

VINNIE
Oh, no. I walked there just last night. I often go when the moon is full.

(Hesitatingly, full of embarrassment)

I have faith that Emily is there.

EMILY
Faith’s a fine invention when gentlemen can see. But microscopes are prudent – in an emergency.

MABEL
(Uncomprehending)

Emily’s buried in the churchyard, Vinnie.

EMILY
(Passes her hands frantically in front of their unseeing eyes)

There are no dead. The grave’s our moan for them! A soul escaped the house unseen! Hands the grave has grimed place in our own, denying they have died. It’s not that dying hurts us so but living hurts us more. Unable are the loved to die, for love is deity.

VINNIE
Her spirit, Mabel. Of course that is what I mean. Oh, how she loved that meadow! She used to say the sunshine was a sacrament and the breeze communion wine!

EMILY
(Crosses herself)

In the name of the Bee and the Butterfly and the Breeze – Amen!

(Clutches her chest)

What shall I do? It whimpers so, this hound within the heart! If sinew tore and soul seesaw, lift the flesh door and give the poltroon oxygen!

(Threatens)
Vinnie, an imperial thunderbolt will scalp your naked soul!

MABEL
Yes, certainly. We will treasure its honor intact – for her.

EMILY
(Asking the audience)
I lost a world the other day – has anybody found?
You’ll know it by the row of stars around its forehead bound.

VINNIE
(Postponing the fearsome moment)

I don’t have my spectacles.

EMILY
We grow accustomed to the dark when light is put away. Spiders sew at night without a light and conscience reads without its glasses on revelations’ wall.

MABEL
That’s fine, Vinnie. We will need a witness at any rate.

VINNIE
A witness? Shall I call Maggie?

MABEL
A lawyer of course, Miss Lavinia! What did you think?

EMILY
A lawyer! To extricate suffering humanity from its hopeless ditch?

VINNIE
But Mr. Hills –

MABEL
(Finger to her lips, shakes her head complicitly)

Mr. Spaulding! Mr. Spaulding!

(A proper Victorian gentleman enters the room and doffs his hat)

MR. SPAULDING
Oh, Miss Dickinson, it is such an honor to attend you!

MABEL
Mr. Spaulding is from Northampton.

MR. SPAULDING
Greetings to you, good ladies.

EMILY
And marrow of the day to you. The sun took down his yellow whip and drove the fog away.

MR. SPAULDING
(He looks around with relish)

To tread the selfsame boards of the Belle of Amherst is such a privilege, as God’s my witness!

EMILY
If belles are kangaroos, good Sir! Charm invests a face imperfectly beheld.

VINNIE
(Softening)

You’re an admirer, Sir?

MR. SPAULDING
Yes, indeed. How I should like, how I would do my utmost in your service if I could discreetly touch any item, anything – on which she laid her hand.

EMILY
Utmost is relative. None see God and live. Alas, my body’s as unnecessary to me now as boots to birds. My every scar’s a gem. Are you a gem collector, sir?

VINNIE
This is her tea set here. She won prizes for her Indian bread – Father would eat no other. I wish Maggie could duplicate it.

MR. SPAULDING
(Picks up a teacup -– studies it and is overcome)

Oh. Oh.

(He declaims)

Because I would not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me.
The carriage contained –

VINNIE
But just ourselves

MABEL
And immortality. Such delicate insights!

MR. SPAULDING
Who could plumb the secrets of that heart?

EMILY
Sir, thoughts we will not show are more intimate than persons that we know.

MABEL
(She thrusts the paper at Mr. Spaulding.)

Miss Dickinson would like this deed of transfer properly witnessed.

EMILY
Madness is divinest sense to the discerning eye. Much sense –
Seems starkest madness. Assent and you are sane. Demur –
You’re straightway dangerous and handled with a chain.

VINNIE
(Panicked)

For just the meadow, now! The little strip of meadow!

MR.SPAULDING
Six hundred by twenty-two hundred feet, is what it says here. A transfer of land you understand.

VINNIE
(Ruffled)

Of course I understand! My signature goes where?

MR. SPAULDING
(Produces a tablet and helps her with her signature.)

If you’ll just dot that there – there you go. Right as rain. Now if I may just peep into the Poet’s conservatory? Where she cherished her blooms in our cold hard winters!

EMILY
We are a vivacious climate, kind sir. Curiosity is a Garden in the brain. The goodwill of a flower is minted holiness.

MR. SPAULDING
(Looking thirstily about)

She loved too well, they say. And that was why she never left her home.

EMILY
This dirty little heart inside its freckled shrine – not with a club was it broken but with a whip. So small you couldn’t see it.

VINNIE
(Very excited)

We each bore up under terrible disappointment. We clung only each other. Such cold winters! So hard!

(She is getting worked up about MR SPAULDING)

The conservatory has fallen into sad disuse I’m sorry to admit. You see, neither Maggie nor I can spare the time –

MR. SPAULDING
And we’re none of us getting younger, are we?

EMILY
Vinnie runs all day with her tongue abroad, like a summer dog. She has always been the pert one, gifted with Poetry of Motion. Oh, Vinnie! I have a strong surmise that moments we have not known are tenderest to you!

(SPAULDING pockets tablet and paper and offers VINNIE an arm)

MR. SPAULDING
I’m so fond of literary ghosts!

EMILY
My art had patrons – once a queen and once a butterfly. My splendors will entertain the centuries when I am dishonored grass whom none but beetles know.

VINNIE
This way, Mr. Spaulding.

MR. SPAULDING
(His hand on hers along his arm)

Please call me Timothy. I’d like to think of us as friends.

MABEL
(Watching them wryly)

Well, I’ve got a great deal to do if I’m to get the latest volume to the printers before I go to Japan. Mustn’t tarry.

(Bustles out. They all leave EMILY alone)

EMILY
She speeds as petals of a rose offended by the wind. Frigid and sweet her parting face – frigid and fleet my feet. Penury and home – who was she to withhold from me?

(To the audience)

Endow the living with the tears you squander on the dead! Twice have I stood a beggar before the door of God! I stunned myself with bolts of melody. The rumor of delirium was a hope so juicy ripening I almost bathed my tongue, but… We outgrow love like other things and put it in the drawer. Eden’s not so lonesome as New England.

(Clutches her chest)

A pain so utter swallows memory up. They shut me in the cold and they themselves were warm. You forgot but I remembered – I recalled enough for two. We tell a hurt to cool it. It is good that we are dreaming – it would hurt awake. I dropped this world like a bundle.

(Declaims)

Softness suffuses the story
Silences the teller’s eye
The children have no further questions
Only the sea reply.
Dominion lasts until obtained – possession just as long.
But everlasting are the lips known only to the dew
These are the brides of permanence, supplanting me and you.

(Lights out)

Scene 6

(A day later. Coffin laid out in the Evergreen library, mourners filing past. MABEL, dressed in black, peeking in the window, dodging out of sight when she thinks she might be seen. Cries bitterly. EMILY rears up out of the audience)

EMILY

The things that never can come back are these

(Counts them out on fingers)

Hope, childhood,

(Gasps)

And the dead…
I heard a fly buzz when I died
The stillness in the room
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
With blue uncertain, stumbling buzz
Between the light and me
And then the windows failed and then
I could not see to see!

(Mimes blindness, falling backward)

MABEL

O! To touch again the dear body which I know and love so utterly! Austin I pray you are out once more in the sweet, summer sunshine, light-hearted and blithe as a boy! The whole town weeps for you! Yet I am the only mourner.

EMILY

It’s a solemn thing within the soul to feel itself get ripe.

(To the audience)

I can wade grief
Whole pools of it
I’m used to that
Power is only pain.
Futile the winds to a heart in port
Done with the compass
Done with the chart
Rowing in Eden
Ah, the Sea!
Might I moor tonight in thee!

(Lights out)