Poems and Letters

Dear Susie -

I'm so amused at my own ubiquity that I hardly know what to say, or how to relate the story of the wonderful correspondent. First, I arrive from Amherst, then comes a ponderous tome from the learned halls of Cambridge, and again by strange metamorphosis I'm just from Michigan, and am Mattie and Minnie and Lizzie in one wondering breath - Why, dear Susie, it must'nt scare you if I loom up from Hindoostan, or drop from an Appenine, or peer at you suddenly from the hollow of a tree, calling myself King Charles, Sancho Panza, or Herod, King of the Jews - I suppose it is all the same . . . .

NOTES

This is an excerpt of a letter Emily Dickinson sent to Susan Gilbert in March 1853. Late in the month, Susan and Austin Dickinson, Emily's brother, decided to wed. In this letter, Emily had just arrived home from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where she was a student, and was pretending to be a world traveller, showing Susan exotic places and people.

Hindoostan: archaic variation of Hindustan, refers to the Indian subcontinent

Appenine: a range of mountains in Italy, near Rome

King Charles: the king of Spain who ruled until 1819.

Sancho Panza: the squire of Don Quixote

Herod, King of the Jews: ruler of ancient Palestine

In Johnson, Letters, it is #107. It is presented here as transcribed by Martha Nell Smith and Ellen Hart in Open Me Carefully. Images of this letter can be found by following this link to the Dickinson Electronic Archive (password protected).