To Emily Dickinson, With Regrets

Writing biography, including the pen-and-trowel variety I prefer, requires transference.  This is a literary schizophrenia in which the author inhabits the mind of the subject, walks in her shoes, digs in her garden.  The difficulty arises when the subject changes.

For 12 years it has been Emily Dickinson, not exclusively, but steadily.  Articles, interviews, lectures, a book, an exhibit -- all on Amherst's talented and quirky Belle.  But step aside, Miss Dickinson, Beatrix Potter has arrived.

Changing subjects is exhilarating but painful, like leaving a relationship for a new lover.  In my world, the change is first manifested physically. Dickinson books relocated to the guest room, making room for Potter in the office.  Great files of Dickinsoniana migrated to the attic, now nestled between Christmas decoration and other jetsam.  Emily Dickinson was even demoted on the computer, now a subfolder in "Writing."

This is not without guilt.  So here is an apology to Emily.

I am not abandoning you entirely, Miss Dickinson, but Miss Potter has such charms.  She shares your eccentricity and love of language.  You inhabit the same world of talented children-who-have-never-grown-up.  In one of those games of "if you could have dinner with any two people in history" I would choose you both.  Your fathers both practiced law; you had similar upbringing and education; you both loved Shakespeare and dogs, were opinionated and in later life displayed a certain eccentricity in your manner of dress.  You would enjoy one another's company if we could find that wrinkle in time.

Meanwhile, Miss Dickinson, I must sit at my New Jersey desk and return to the South Kensington of 1860s and '70s, Potter's London home.  Perhaps my penance is that compared to Amherst, Massachusetts, it is a tougher commute to Beatrix Potter's gardens.