The Best of Connie Willis

THE SOUL SELECTS HER OWN SOCIETY: INVASION AND REPULSION: A CHRONOLOGICAL REINTERPRETATION OF TWO OF EMILY DICKINSON’S POEMS: A WELLSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Until recently it was thought that Emily Dickinson’s poetic output ended in 1886, the year she died. Poems 186B and 272?, however, suggest that not only did she write poems at a later date, but she was involved in the “great and terrible events”¹ of 1897.

The poems in question originally came to light in 1991², while Nathan Fleece was working on his doctorate. Fleece, who found the poems³ under a hedge in the Dickinsons’ backyard, classified the poems as belonging to Dickinson’s Early or Only Slightly Eccentric Period, but a recent examination of the works⁴ has yielded up an entirely different interpretation of the circumstances under which the poems were written.

The sheets of paper on which the poems were written are charred around the edges, and that of Number 272? has a large round hole burnt in it. Martha Hodge-Banks claims that said charring and hole were caused by “a pathetic attempt to age the paper and forgetting to watch the oven,”⁵ but the large number of dashes makes it clear they were written by Dickinson, as well as the fact that the poems are almost totally indecipherable. Dickinson’s unreadable handwriting has been authenticated by any number of scholars, including Elmo Spencer in Emily Dickinson: Handwriting or Hieroglyphics? and M. P. Cursive, who wrote, “Her a’s look like c’s, her e’s look like 2’s, and the whole thing looks like chicken scratches.”⁶

The charring seemed to indicate that the poems had been written either while smoking⁷ or in the midst of some catastrophe, and I began examining the text for clues. Fleece had deciphered Number 272? as beginning, “I never saw a friend— / I never saw a moom—,” which made no sense at all,⁸ and on closer examination I saw that the stanza actually read:

a much more authentic translation, particularly in regard to the rhyme scheme. “Moom” and “tomb” actually rhyme, which is something Dickinson hardly ever did, preferring near-rhymes such as “mat/gate,” “tune/sun,” and “balm/hermaphrodite.”

The second stanza was more difficult, as it occupied the area of the round hole, and the only readable portion was a group of four letters farther down that read “ulla.”⁹ This was assumed by Fleece to be part of a longer word such as “bullary” (a convocation of popes),¹⁰ or possibly “dullard” or “hullabaloo.”¹¹

I, however, immediately recognized “ulla” as the word H. G. Wells had reported hearing the dying Martians utter, a sound he described as “a sobbing alternation of two notes¹²… a desolating cry.”

“Ulla” was a clear reference to the 1897 invasion by the Martians, previously thought to have been confined to England, Missouri, and the University of Paris.¹³ The poem fragment, along with 186B, clearly indicated that the Martians had landed in Amherst and that they had met Emily Dickinson.

At first glance, this seems an improbable scenario due to both the Martians’ and Emily Dickinson’s dispositions. Dickinson was a recluse who didn’t meet anybody, preferring to hide upstairs when neighbors came to call and to float notes down on them.¹⁴ Various theories have been advanced for her self-imposed hermitude, including Bright’s Disease, an unhappy love affair, eye trouble, and bad skin. T. L. Mensa suggests the simpler theory that all the rest of the Amherstonians were morons.¹⁵

None of these explanations would have made it likely that she would like Martians any better than Amherstates, and there is the added difficulty that, having died in 1886, she would also have been badly decomposed.

The Martians present additional difficulties. The opposite of recluses, they were in the habit of arriving noisily, attracting reporters, and blasting at everybody in the vicinity. There is no record of their having landed in Amherst, though several inhabitants mention unusually loud thunderstorms in their diaries,¹⁶ and Louisa May Alcott, in nearby Concord, wrote in her journal, “Wakened suddenly last night by a loud noise to the west. Couldn’t get back to sleep for worrying. Should have had Jo marry Laurie. To Do: Write sequel in which Amy dies. Serve her right for burning manuscript.”

There is also indirect evidence for the landing. Amherst, frequently confused with Lakehurst, was obviously the inspiration for Orson Welles’s setting the radio version of “War of the Worlds” in New Jersey.¹⁷ In addition, a number of the tombstones in West Cemetery are tilted at an angle, and, in some cases, have been knocked down, making it clear that the Martians landed not only in Amherst, but in West Cemetery, very near Dickinson’s grave.

Wells describes the impact of the shell¹⁸ as producing “a blinding glare of vivid green light” followed by “such a concussion as I have never heard before or since.” He reports that the surrounding dirt “splashed,” creating a deep pit and exposing drainpipes and house foundations. Such an impact in West Cemetery would have uprooted the surrounding coffins and broken them open, and the resultant light and noise clearly would have been enough to “wake the dead,” including the slumbering Dickinson.

That she was thus awakened, and that she considered the event an invasion of her privacy, is made clear in the longer poem, Number 186B, of which the first stanza reads:

Why the “unwelcome guests” did not hurt her,²⁰ in light of their usual behavior, and how she was able to vanquish them are less apparent, and we must turn to H. G. Wells’s account of the Martians for answers.

On landing, Wells tells us, the Martians were completely helpless due to Earth’s greater gravity, and remained so until they were able to build their fighting machines. During this period they would have posed no threat to Dickinson except that of company.²¹

Secondly, they were basically big heads. Wells describes them as having eyes, a beak, some tentacles, and “a single large tympanic drum” at the back of the head which functioned as an ear. Wells theorized that the Martians were “descended from beings not unlike ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands… at the expense of the body.” He concluded that, without the body’s vulnerability and senses, the brain would become “selfish and cruel” and take up mathematics,²² but Dickinson’s effect on them suggests that the overenhanced development of their neocortexes had turned them instead into poets.

The fact that they picked off people with their heat rays, sucked human blood, and spewed poisonous black smoke over entire counties would seem to contraindicate poetic sensibility, but look how poets act. Take Shelley, for instance, who went off and left his first wife to drown herself in the Serpentine so he could marry a woman who wrote monster movies. Or Byron. The only people who had a kind word to say about him were his dogs.²³ Take Robert Frost.²⁴

The Martians’ identity as poets is corroborated by the fact that they landed seven shells in Great Britain, three in the Lake District,²⁵ and none at all in Liverpool. It may have determined their decision to land in Amherst.

But they had reckoned without Dickinson’s determination and literary technique, as Number 186B makes clear.²⁶ Stanza Two reads:

“Writ plain and clear” is obviously an exaggeration, but it is manifest that Dickinson wrote a note and delivered it to the Martians, as the next line makes even more evident:

Dickinson may have read it aloud or floated the note down to them in their landing pit in her usual fashion, or she may have unscrewed the shell and tossed it in, like a hand grenade.

Whatever the method of delivery, however, the result was “awed dismay” and then retreat, as the next line indicates:

It has been argued that Dickinson would have had no access to writing implements in the graveyard, but this fails to take into consideration the Victorian lifestyle. Dickinson’s burial attire was a white dress, and all Victorian dresses had pockets.²⁸

During the funeral, Emily’s sister, Lavinia, placed two heliotropes in her sister’s hand, whispering that they were for her to take to the Lord. She may also have slipped a pencil and some Post-its into the coffin, or Dickinson, in the habit of writing and distributing notes, may simply have planned ahead.²⁹

In addition, grave poems³⁰ are a well-known part of literary tradition. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in the throes of grief after the death of his beloved Elizabeth Siddell, entwined poems in her auburn hair as she lay in her coffin.³¹

However the writing implements came to be there, Dickinson obviously made prompt and effective use of them. She scribbled down several stanzas and sent them to the Martians, who were so distressed at them that they decided to abort their mission and return to Mars.

The exact cause of this deadly effect has been much debated, with several theories being advanced. Wells was convinced that microbes killed the Martians landed in England, who had no defense against Earth’s bacteria, but such bacteria would have taken several weeks to infect the Martians, and it was obviously Dickinson’s poems which caused them to leave, not dysentery.

Spencer suggests that her illegible handwriting led the Martians to misread her message and take it as some sort of ultimatum. A. Huyfen argues that the advanced Martians, being good at punctuation, were appalled by her profligate use of dashes and random capitalizing of letters. S. W. Lubbock proposes the theory that they were unnerved by the fact that all of her poems can be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”³²

It seems obvious, however, that the most logical theory is that the Martians were wounded to the heart by Dickinson’s use of near-rhymes, which all advanced civilizations rightly abhor. Number 186B contains two particularly egregious examples: “gone/alone” and “guests/dust,” and the burnt hole in 272? may indicate something even worse.

The near-rhyme theory is corroborated by H. G. Wells’s account of the damage done to London, a city in which Tennyson ruled supreme, and by an account of a near-landing in Ong, Nebraska, recorded by Muriel Addleson:

It is significant that the poem in question is Number 214, which rhymes³⁵ “pearl” and “alcohol.”³⁶

Dickinson saved Amherst from Martian invasion and then, as she says in the final two lines of 186B, “rearranged” her “grassy bed— / And Turned—and went To sleep.” She does not explain how the poems got from the cemetery to the hedge, and we may never know for sure,³⁷ as we may never know whether she was being indomitably brave or merely crabby.

What we do know is that these poems, along with a number of her other poems,³⁸ document a heretofore unguessed-at Martian invasion. Poems 186B and 272?, therefore, should be reassigned to the Very Late or Deconstructionist Period, not only to give them their proper place as Dickinson’s last and most significant poems, but also so that the full symbolism intended by Dickinson can be seen in their titles. The properly placed poems will be Numbers 1775 and 1776, respectively, a clear Dickinsonian reference to the Fourth of July³⁹, and to the second Independence Day she brought about by banishing⁴⁰ the Martians from Amherst.

NOTE: It is unfortunate that Wells didn’t know about the deadly effect of near-rhymes. He could have grabbed a copy of the Poems, taken it to the landing pit, read a few choice lines of “The Bustle in a House,” and saved everybody a lot of trouble.

¹ For a full account, see H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, Oxford University Press, 1898.

² The details of the discovery are recounted in Desperation and Discovery: The Unusual Number of Lost Manuscripts Located by Doctoral Candidates, by J. Marple, Reading Railway Press, 1993.

³ Actually a poem and a poem fragment consisting of a four-line stanza and a single word fragment* from the middle of the second stanza.

*Or word. See later on in this paper.

⁴ While I was working on my dissertation.

⁵ Dr. Banks’s assertion that “the paper was manufactured in 1990 and the ink was from a Flair tip pen” is merely airy speculation.*

*See “Carbon Dating Doesn’t Prove Anything,” by Jeremiah Habakkuk, in Creation Science for Fun and Profit, Golden Slippers Press, 1974.

⁶ The pathetic nature of her handwriting is also addressed in Impetus to Reform: Emily Dickinson’s Effect on the Palmer Method, and in “Depth, Dolts, and Teeth: An Alternate Translation of Emily Dickinson’s Death Poems,” in which it is argued that Number 712 actually begins, “Because I could not stoop for darts,” and recounts an arthritic evening at the local pub.

⁷ Dickinson is not known to have smoked, except during her Late or Downright Peculiar Period.

⁸ Of course, neither does “How pomp surpassing ermine.” Or “A dew sufficed itself.”

⁹ Or possibly “ciee.” Or “vole.”

¹⁰ Unlikely, considering her Calvinist upbringing.

¹¹ Or the Australian city Ulladulla. Dickinson’s poems are full of references to Australia. W. G. Mathilda has theorized from this that “the great love of Dickinson’s life was neither Higginson nor Judge Lord, but Mel Gibson.” See Emily Dickinson: The Billabong Connection, by C. Dundee, Outback Press, 1985.

¹² See Rod McKuen.

¹³ Where Jules Verne was working on his doctorate.

¹⁴ The notes contained charming, often enigmatic sentiments such as, “Which shall it be—Geraniums or Tulips?” and “Go away—and Shut the door When—you Leave.”

¹⁵ See Halfwits and Imbeciles: Poetic Evidence of Emily Dickinson’s Opinion of Her Neighbors, by I. Smart, Intelligentsia Press, 1991.

¹⁶ Virtually everyone in Amherst kept a diary, containing entries such as “Always knew she’d turn out to be a great poet,” and “Full moon last night. Caught a glimpse of her out in her garden planting peas. Completely deranged.”

¹⁷ The inability of people to tell Orson Welles and H. G. Wells apart lends credence to Dickinson’s opinion of humanity. (See Footnote 15.)

¹⁸ Not the one at the beginning of the story, which everybody knows about, the one that practically landed on him in the middle of the book which everybody missed because they’d already turned off the radio and were out running up and down the streets screaming, “The end is here! The Martians are coming!”*

* Thus proving again that Emily was right in her assessment of the populace.

¹⁹ See Sound, Fury, and Frogs: Emily Dickinson’s Seminal Influence on William Faulkner, by W. Snopes, Yoknapatawpha Press, 1955.

²⁰ She was, of course, already dead, which meant the damage they could inflict was probably minimal.

²¹ Which she considered a considerable threat. “If the butcher boy should come now, I would jump into the flour barrel,”^* she wrote in 1873.

* If she was in the habit of doing this, it may account for her always appearing in white.

²² Particularly nonlinear differential equations.

²³ See Lord Byron’s Don Juan: The Mastiff as Muse by C. Harold.

²⁴ He didn’t like people, either. See “Mending Wall,” The Complete Works, Random House. Frost preferred barbed wire fences with spikes on top to walls.

²⁵ See “Semiotic Subterfuge in Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’: A Dialectic Approach,” by N. Compos Mentis, Postmodern Press, 1984.

²⁶ Sort of.

²⁷ The word is either “read” or “heard” or possibly “pacemaker.”

²⁸ Also pleats, tucks, ruching, flounces, frills, ruffles, and passementerie.^*

* See Pockets as Political Statement: The Role of Clothing in Early Victorian Feminism, by E. and C. Pankhurst, Angry Women’s Press, 1978.

²⁹ A good writer is never without pencil and paper.*

* Or laptop.

³⁰ See “Posthumous Poems” in Literary Theories That Don’t Hold Water by H. Houdini.

³¹ Two years later, no longer quite so grief-stricken and thinking of all that lovely money, he dug her up and got them back.*

*I told you poets behaved badly.

³² Try it. No, really. “Be-e-e-cause I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me-e-e.” See?*

*Not all of Dickinson’s poems can be sung to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”** Numbers 2, 18, and 1411 can be sung to “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.”

^**Could her choice of tunes be a coded reference to the unfortunate Martian landing in Texas? See “The Night of the Cooters” by Howard Waldrop.

³³ Normal to Ong, Nebraska.

³⁴ See Freud.

³⁵ Sort of.

³⁶ The near-rhyme theory also explains why Dickinson responded with such fierceness when Thomas Wentworth Higginson changed “pearl” to “jewel.” She knew, as he could not, that the fate of the world might someday rest on her inability to rhyme.

³⁷ For an intriguing possibility, see “The Literary Litterbug: Emily Dickinson’s Note-Dropping as a Response to Thoreau’s Environmentalism,” by P. Walden, Transcendentalist Review, 1990.

³⁸ Number 187’s “awful rivet” is clearly a reference to the Martian cylinder. Number 258’s “There’s a certain slant of light” echoes Wells’s “blinding glare of vivid green light,” and its “affliction / Sent us of the air” obviously refers to the landing. Such allusions indicate that as many as fifty-five* of the poems were written at a later date than originally supposed, and that the entire chronology and numbering system of the poems needs to be reconsidered.

*Significantly enough, the age Emily Dickinson was when she died.

³⁹ A holiday Dickinson did not celebrate because of its social nature, although she was spotted in 1881 lighting a cherry bomb on Mabel Dodd’s porch and running away.*

*Which may be why the Martian landing attracted so little attention. The Amherstodes may have assumed it was Em up to her old tricks again.

⁴⁰ There is compelling evidence that the Martians, thwarted in New England, went to Long Island. This theory will be the subject of my next paper,* “The Green Light at the End of Daisy’s Dock: Evidence of Martian Invasion in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.”

*I’m up for tenure.