‘The Bird / Who Sings the Same, Unheard, / As Unto Crowd —’: Dickinson, Birdsong, and the Business of Improvisation

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Notes

¹ Participants in Brook Farm included John Sullivan Dwight, founder and publisher of the influential Dwight’s Journal of Music.

² The word “business” appears nineteen times in Dickinson’s letters, including twice each in the two letters discussed below. Many refer to the work of others, or to business dealings generally. During the period discussed here, she seems particularly concerned with women’s self-generated employment. In 1863, she jokes with her nieces Louise and Frances Norcross that she “found a milliner’s case in Miss N[orcross]’s wardrobe, and have opened business” (L285). Dickinson’s concern with “business” was timely. During the Civil War years, women entered the paid workforce in increasing numbers. Virginia Penny’s 1863 Employments for Women: A Cyclopedia cataloged 516 distinct employments for women in the U.S.

³ See Walker, The Nightingale’s Burden, Chapter 2, “Founding the Tradition,” on early nineteenth-century poetesses, and Chapter 4, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” on Dickinson. See also the chapter “These Flames and Generosities of the Heart,” in; Susan Howe’s The Birth-Mark, Martha Nell Smith’s Rowing in Eden,; Werner’s Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios.

⁴ The manuscript is missing, and may date from as early as 1859. Thomas Johnson’s dating was “by conjecture only,” based on his association of the phrase “a world where bells toll,” with the sounds of war (L269n). Given the letter’s references to “business,” another possibility is that the phrase refers to the world of work. Nineteenth-century factories often rang bells to mark the beginning and end of the workday. Dickinson’s extant correspondence with the Hollands begins in 1853, and ends with Dickinson’s death in 1886. Dickinson was closer with Elizabeth, but Josiah was a professional editor and a popular writer.

⁵ The cardinal appears only twice in poems by Dickinson, late in life, once as a representation of the color red in a flower (“White as an Indian Pipe” F1250), the other representing quick arrival and departure (“Fellow/Image of Light” F1586). The peacock also appears in only two poems, both early (“If this is ‘fading’” (F119), describing a showily sentimental welcoming of death, and “Some Rainbow – coming from the Fair” (F162), representing an extravagant purple among the colors in a sunset. These poems are dated by Franklin 1859 and 1860, respectively, and both are dated 1859 by Johnson. This may indicate that the earlier date for Letter 269 is more accurate.

⁶ Among the definitions are, “Employment; that which occupies the time, attention and labor of men, for the purpose of profit or improvement,” “Serious engagement; important occupation, in distinction from trivial affairs” and “Duty, or employment that duty enjoins.” For Webster, business cuts across social classes, encompassing “agriculture, trade, mechanic art, or profession.”

⁷ It is typical of Dickinson’s birds in several respects. It is small, visually plain or nondescript, lives close to home and near the ground, and sings a remarkable, meaningful song. See, for example, “The most triumphant/Bird” (F1285) and “I was a phebe – nothing more – ” (F574).

⁸ See, for example, Douglas Dowling’s The Business of Literary Circles in Nineteenth-Century America on these more familiar networks of literary affiliation.

⁹ For example, while on tour in England in 1849, Lind became romantically involved with “a young captain in the Indian army,” but refused to marry him in order to retain “the power to make her own engagements and control her earnings” (Ware and Lockard 65). Ware and Lockard also document the advantageous terms she negotiated with Barnum for her U.S. tour (72), and quote Lind on investing “at interest here in America … very safely and advantageously” (86).

¹⁰ The Higginson letter appears immediately before the one sent to the Hollands in The Letters of Emily Dickinson. The dating of the Holland letter is conjectural, however, and its proximity to the Higginson letter uncertain. Still, even if they were written across a period of three years, the concern with describing her work in terms of business, is striking.

¹¹ On the distinction between noise and music, see the concise definitions of the two terms in Novak and Sakakeeny, Keywords in Sound, “Music” (112–124), and “Noise” (125–138).

¹² Ornithologists remain puzzled about whether birds sing for pleasure. It is more common to attribute singing to mating or territorial defense. Yet, in Why Birds Sing, the philosopher and musician David Rothenberg notes that at least some birds do seem to sing for their own pleasure, and not only to seek a mate or demarcate territory. For example, the mockingbird, equivalent to the catbird in song variety and mimicry ability, sings into its territory. As Higginson noted, male song sparrows gather in groups to trade songs, even after mating and nest-building have taken place and no threats are present (118–119).

¹³ Two of Higginson’s “extemporaneous” lectures can be found in The Rationale of Spiritualism, and he wrote of speaking “naturally” and “without notes” in Hints on Speech Making.

¹⁴ Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers asked her for “a M.S. collection of your poems, that is, if you want to give them to the world through the medium of a publisher” in L813b, to which editor Thomas Johnson adds a note saying, “ED made no response to this request,” yet her opening line in L814, “Thank you for the kindness,” can be read as a response to Niles’ request.

¹⁵ I explore this theme more fully explored in a chapter, “‘Discretion in the interval’: Musical Improvisation and Emily Dickinson’s Manuscript Variations,” in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to Emily Dickinson.

¹⁶ See, for example, Slobin et al., Emily’s Songbook and Meyer-Frazier, Bound Music, Unbound Women.