Untitled Prose Poem Found In 1891 Magazine Article
Her utterly reclusive character and swift rise of posthumous fame—six editions within six months was
a suddenness of success almost without parallel—all resulting in the earnest demand by readers for further information on this person. April 1862 she had sent a letter to H. with request “to say if my verse is alive, the mind so near itself cannot see distinctly, and I have none to ask.” In handwriting peculiar, as if the writer had taken studies on fossilized bird tracks found in museums—cultivated, quaint, and wholly unique—using little punctuation, chiefly dashes. In four poems sent, the impression of poetic genius was distinct, along with the problem of what place it ought to be assigned, so remarkable, and so elusive of critique. What strange creature were they dealing with, when questions put which evaded with naive skill, such that the most worldly flirt might envy—“You asked how old I am? I’ve made no poems but one or two this winter, sir.” For poets she had Keats and the Brownings, for prose, J. Ruskin and Revelations, and asking of her companions—“Hills sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself—one of those who are better than us because they know but do not tell; the noise in the pool at noon excels my piano. I have brother and sister, mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs, buys me many books which he begs me not to read. They are all religious but not me, for in the woods as a girl I was told the snake would bite, that I might pick a poisonous flower, or goblins kidnap; but I went along and met no one but angels who were far shyer, so I haven’t confidence in that fraud which so many exercise.” In asking for her picture, for some impression of such an enigmatical correspondent—“Could you believe me without? I have no portrait, but am small, like the wren; hair like the chestnut bur, and eyes like the sherry in the glass the guest leaves.”
And then in 1870, after abandoning all attempts to guide to the slightest degree this extraordinary piece of nature, nearly eight years in postponements, they found themselves face to face at her father’s home, a mansion large, square and brick, surrounded by trees, blossoming shrubs without; within, exquisitely neat, spacious and cool, fragrant with flowers, and upon being received, after a delay, there was a faint pattering footstep like that of a child in the hall, and into the room glided almost noiselessly, a shy little person,
beneath smooth bands of reddish hair—face without a single good feature, and eyes as she herself had described—a quaint nun-like look as if canoness of a religious order. Dressed in white pique and dark blue net worsted shawl, she approached with two day-lilies, to place in childlike way the visitor’s hand, saying softly under breath—“These are my introduction, forgive me if I am frightened and hardly know what to say’”—but soon began to talk, pausing to beg the other should talk instead, but readily recommencing if evaded; all without a trace of affectation, at times speak for her own relief, naturally, and at times wholly without watching its effect on her hearer. “Truth is such a rare thing, it’s delightful to tell it. How do people live without? There are many in the world—you must have noticed them in the street—how do they live? How do they get strength to put on clothes in the morning? I ask the Orient for a morn, that it should lift its purple dikes and shatter me with dawn.”
