She called on Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers. Niles was no more encouraging than the directors of Houghton Mifflin.
“In my personal opinion,” he told her, “Miss Dickinson’s verses are devoid of true poetical qualities.”
But by now Mabel was battle-hardened.
“And yet you take time to see me, Mr. Niles.”
“I say, in my opinion. I have also asked one of our readers, Mr. Arlo Bates, for his appraisal.” He read aloud to Mabel from the report written by his reader. “ ‘These poems have the real stuff, in no unstinted quantities.’ So there you are. One contra, and one pro.”
“The real stuff, Mr. Niles.”
“I can’t see it myself. But Arlo Bates is a poet in his own right. Perhaps he sees something I fail to see.”
Mabel understood that victory was within her grasp.
“You could test the water, perhaps?”
“That is what I’ve been considering. A small edition. A small number of the poems. No more than fifty or so.”
“Two hundred and fifty, Mr. Niles.”
“No, no. A hundred at the most. And I would have to ask the family of the author to contribute to the making of the plates.”
“Agreed.”
Vinnie paid for the plates. Higginson consented to write a preface. Mabel offered the flower painting she had given Emily, to be used as a cover design. Higginson’s preface was designed to prepare readers for the clumsiness of the poems, and to hint that the coeditor was far from convinced himself.
This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than anything to be elsewhere found—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame . . . The main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable.
The little volume of one hundred and fifteen poems finally appeared on November 12, 1890: Poems by Emily Dickinson, Edited by two of her friends, Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson. The first reviews were puzzled and guarded. What had gone wrong with her rhythms? Why could she not rhyme? Austin remained skeptical, secretly regarding the publication as a vanity project of Vinnie’s.
Mabel alone never wavered. She was Emily’s first and greatest champion. She fought back against all attempts to soften the poems’ bite, convinced of the truth and the power of Emily’s perceptions. She wrote to Austin about his sister:
It all seemed to her so cheap and thin and hollow as she saw it, with the solemn realities of life staring her in the face, but she wanted none of it. Never made any difference what sort of day it was—every day was a red-letter day. The greatness, mystery, and depth of life was so great and overwhelming to her that she could not see how people could go into all this littleness.
This of a woman she had never known, who had become her other self. She and Emily were now arm in arm against the world, battling the uncomprehending littleness.
Then something unexpected happened. The poems began to sell. By the end of November that timid first edition of five hundred was gone. In mid-December Roberts Brothers reprinted, and again at the end of December. Into 1891, edition followed edition, reaching an unprecedented sale by the year’s end of almost eleven thousand.
Emily Dickinson had become famous.
18
Alice has thought of Mabel’s story from the beginning as a love story. Now she begins to ask herself if this has been a mistake. What if there’s no such thing as a love story, only life stories? In a love story you watch with a kind of anticipatory hunger as the lovers meet, you see how they’re filled with longing and fear, you tremble with them until the day dawns when they discover, as you’ve always known they will, that their love is returned. Then comes tragedy, or perhaps marriage, and the story is over. Such things can happen in the real world—it’s not entirely wish fulfillment—but what a little space of time it covers! What of the long years that follow, the knocking about the world together, the struggle to make a career, the raising of children, the growing old? Falling in love becomes a memory, a snapshot, slips into the past. But the hunger never dies. The greedy self clamors just as loudly for a narrative of recognition and fulfillment. Are we to be forever falling in love? Are there no other stories to be told?
There are so many journeys in a life. Each new road leads to a destination that becomes, in turn, a new beginning. No final arrival, no resting place. We are born wanderers.
So what’s the big deal about love?
Alice sits at her laptop, failing to draft a treatment for her screenplay, interrogating her own shameful dreams.
Why do I feel there’s only one true achievement in life? Why am I waiting for a man who loves me as I am, and promises to stay with me for the rest of my life? Everywhere I go I look for him. Until I find him I believe my life will not have begun.
Am I so seduced by cheap music? Can’t I see the stage sets, the makeup, the shoddy artifice, the false promises of a culture that wants only my unending dissatisfaction? The fairy story is with us still, but in new guises: images in a commercial break, pictures on a Facebook wall, characters on a phone screen. We all know how the trick is done, but still it gets us every time. They feed us lies, and we suck them up, and ask for more.
Did love bring Mabel Todd happiness? For a time, yes. And then for a longer time, no.
Am I in love with Nick Crocker?
The very question makes her laugh. How could that be possible? This is a game, a passing fancy; in a few days she’ll be gone. For now she indulges him, and indulges in him, and why not? He’s adorable and funny and wise and a little lost in a way that touches her more than she cares to admit. His body pleases hers so easily; he knows what he wants, which turns out to be what she wants. This is a gift to be gratefully received, is it not?
So a passionate interlude, not a love story.
“How would you describe it?” she asks him. “Whatever it is we’re doing together.”
“Playing,” he says.
She likes that. Like children absorbed in a world of their own creation, pretending to be doctors and nurses, or mummies and daddies. Children aren’t stupid. They know playtime comes to an end, and then there’s supper, and bath, and being put to bed.
“What game are we playing?” she says.
He smiles at her, with that expression on his face that makes her feel he’s really looking at her.
“I don’t know, Alice. Let’s not think about it too much.”
“I can’t help myself,” she says. “I can’t switch the thinking off.”
They’re in a national forest, walking down a trail on one side of Chesterfield Gorge. All round them the blaze of foliage in the fall. Slender trunks of ash and hemlock, bars against the sky. Underfoot a carpet of bronze leaves. To their right, beyond a chain-link fence, rock walls drop down to a tumbling river.
A sign declares it to be a National Wild and Scenic River.
“Nature tamed for our pleasure,” says Nick. “Safe in its cage.”
“I don’t care,” says Alice. “I think it’s beautiful. Don’t you love the sound of the river?”
She takes his hand and he swings her arm with his as they walk between the trees. The trail rounds a bend. They come to a stop and kiss.
“Have you ever made love in a national park?” he says.
“No,” says Alice. “Isn’t it against the law?”
“As it happens,” says Nick, “this is something I’ve looked up. According to National Parks Regulations, the section on Disorderly Conduct prohibits fighting, addressing offensive remarks, and making unreasonably loud noise. Nothing at all about making love.”
“You
seriously have looked it up.”
“Yes.”
“Have you done it?”
“Yes.”
“Weren’t you scared someone would come along and see you at it?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Want to find out?”
“No way!” She backs away from him, as if he’s going to ravish her there and then. “There is no way I’m doing it in public, in the middle of the day, in a forest, in October! Are you crazy? I’d get scratches all over my bum!”
“Okay,” he says, smiling at her consternation.
“You didn’t really mean it?”
“Yes,” he says. “But that’s okay.”
They walk on. She finds she’s shivering, with shock or excitement or both.
“There are limits,” she says.
“If you say so.”
“Don’t tell me if I’d said yes you’d have just dropped your jeans and got down to it.”
“I don’t need to drop my jeans,” he says. “Just undo a few buttons.”
“Well, I do. If I was going to. Which I’m not.”
“Yes,” he says. “You’d have to pull your jeans down to below your knees. And your knickers.”
“That’s enough. I get the picture.”
The trail winds on before them, following the bends of the river gorge. After a while they meet a pair of middle-aged women hikers, in serious boots, walking with Leki sticks. They nod and exchange greetings as they pass.
“There,” says Alice. “They’d have seen us.”
“What if they had?” says Nick.
“I’d have died!”
He seems to be genuinely puzzled by this.
“But why? You don’t know them. You don’t care what they think about you. And anyway, how’d you know they wouldn’t have liked it? A lot of people rather like sex.”
“If you don’t understand,” says Alice, “I can’t explain. It’s just . . . it’s just private.”
Despite her protestations she finds the idea lodges in her mind. She imagines it, in detail: his jacket thrown onto the carpet of leaves, her tight jeans tugged down her thighs, his buttons undone one by one. The trees, half undressed like herself, rising tall on either side. The rush and roar of the river.
Maybe one day, she thinks. When I’m braver.
As they drive back she says, “I’ve no objection to doing it the normal way, in a bed.”
What she means is: I’m excited now. I want you to fuck me.
“The normal way?”
“Okay. The comfortable way.”
“You know what I think we should do?” he says. “I think we should have a party. A celebration.”
“For who?”
“For you and me. Can you dance?”
“Of course I can dance.”
“No, I mean real dancing. Not just making it up as you go along.”
“What, like ballroom dancing?”
“Yes. Like waltzing.”
“No one can do that anymore.”
“I can.”
This is so much not her picture of Nick that she bursts out laughing.
“Are you serious? You can waltz?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s romantic. Because it’s beautiful.”
“Oh, Nick. You never stop surprising me. Sex in the woods. Ballroom dancing.”
“I could teach you.”
“Really?”
“Then I could dance with you.”
“What, now?”
“Yes. Now.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll give it a go.”
But what about the fuck?
So the day that began in a forest changes scene to a ballroom. Nick’s house, or Nick’s soon-to-be ex-wife’s house, has a pair of linked rooms easily big enough for a ball. Nick pushes back the furniture and rolls up the rugs. He puts a CD of Best-Loved Waltzes on the music system, and he takes Alice in his arms, and he teaches her to dance. They’re still in their jeans, the jeans they didn’t drop in the forest, but now her body is pressed tight against his. Nick teaches her almost entirely without words, using slight pressure on her body to indicate to her how and where to move, and making the lead steps with short clear movements himself. After some initial stumbling she finds she’s picking up the basic pattern, letting him nudge her a step back, a step to the side, round, all in time to the beat of the music.
“There,” he says. “That’s the turn. Not hard, is it?”
They dance on. He holds her strongly in his arms, virtually carrying her through the unexpected rotations. The more they do it, the more her body responds.
“Don’t think about the steps,” he says. “Your body knows better than your brain.”
Somewhere a phone rings. They ignore it. The dance absorbs them entirely.
“What’s the music?” Alice says, realizing she knows the tune.
“Right now? This is the waltz from The Godfather.”
One track ends, another begins. One dance ends, another begins.
“You know this?” He’s sailing her round the room.
“Of course,” she says. “It’s ‘Edelweiss.’ From The Sound of Music.”
“I thought you might be too young for it.”
“Everyone knows The Sound of Music. All girls do, anyway. Oh, Nick. You do keep on surprising me.”
“Tonight we’ll dance to the real thing. Lehár. Strauss.”
“Why? What’s happening tonight?”
“We’re going to have a real ball.”
He’s her leader. She rests in his arms and moves as he wants her to move. Her body knows better than her brain.
“Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” she says.
On his instructions she goes up to her room and showers and changes into the only smart frock she has brought with her, a tight-fitting black jersey dress. She takes trouble over her hair and face. This is a big date. She’s invited to a ball.
Still children at play, but why not?
When she comes downstairs, she finds he has transformed the big rooms into a wonderland. The drapes are closed, and candles glow in candelabras on side tables and windowsills, on the covered piano, on the two mantelpieces. Nick himself has changed. He wears a dinner jacket, with a dress shirt and a black bow tie. He stands there in the candlelight looking impossibly handsome, watching her descend the wide stairs, smiling with admiration.
“How beautiful you are,” he says, holding out his hand.
He draws her into his arms and kisses her.
“I like this game,” she says.
“This isn’t a game,” he says. “This is our very own ball.”
He turns to a side table, and there she sees a bottle of champagne and two glasses. He fills the glasses and hands one to her.
“Honestly, Nick,” she says, “don’t you think your routine needs updating?”
She sees a shadow cross his face, and realizes she’s hurt him. This is not what she expected.
“Sorry,” she says. “It’s only because I’m having a little trouble with my self-image here. I have to keep telling myself it’s a game in case I find out I like it too much.”
“I want you to like it,” he says. “I want this to be one of the most wonderful evenings of your life.”
“But why, Nick?”
“No reason.”
He raises his glass to hers.
“To a magical night of love,” he says.
“What an old romantic you are!”
“Stop it, Alice. Just let me lead.”
“Yes, Nick.” He’s holding her eyes so intently. Why not surrender? God knows, she wants to. “To a magical night of love.”
They clink glasses and drink.
“Do we get to eat, in our magical night?”
“No,” he says. “Just champagne, and music.”
He starts the music. He’s turned the volume up since the afternoon, and the sound of the orc
hestra fills the room. He puts away her glass, and his own. He takes her in his arms. The slow majestic chords of the “Emperor Waltz” sweep them away down the candlelit spaces, and all at once Alice feels as if she’s flying. There’s no effort involved, all she has to do is surrender to his controlling arms. When the change comes, and the orchestra bursts into a more urgent rhythm, she finds herself spinning as she dances, half falling, losing the beat, finding it again, laughing, holding tight, feeling his arms forever hurtling her onwards. Now back comes the slower tune, and they float together gracefully, smiling into each other’s eyes, sharing the joke that they’ve never done this before, and yet here they are, moving together as if they were born to dance.
When the waltz finishes, Nick pours them each a second glass of champagne.
“You really mean it,” she says. “Just champagne and music.”
“How d’you like it so far?”
“I love it.”
Her eyes shining like a girl of sixteen at her first ball. Which this is, when she thinks about it.
“I should be wearing a long, floaty white dress.”
“I should be wearing tails.”
“This really is fun, Nick. Thank you.”
More music, more dancing, this time to Lehár’s “Gold and Silver Waltz.” Alice feels herself glowing, with the champagne and the spinning dance and the sensation of Nick’s gaze on her.
Even if I’m not really beautiful, he makes me feel beautiful.
All at once she’s flooded with gratitude. The feeling is so overwhelming you could almost call it love.
Round and round they go, up and down the long rooms in the soft glow of the candles, and the real world recedes into the far distance.
It’s only a kind of dream. It means nothing. Enjoy it while it lasts.
“Are you seducing me, Nick?”
“Yes,” he says.
“You don’t have to. I’ll do anything you ask.”
“I ask you to be happy.”
“I’m happy.”
More champagne. More music. “The Merry Widow.” “Tales from the Vienna Woods.” Then at last the “Blue Danube,” and Nick sets a wild pace, turning, spinning, reversing, skipping, leaving her gasping for breath as she follows wherever he goes. By now she trusts him completely, so that it feels to her as if he alone is causing her to fly about the room. And so with the last great chords of the waltz, as they spin to a standstill, she falls helplessly into his arms, flushed and panting, and waits to be kissed.