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The Houghton Library Dickinson Manuscript 157
R. W. Franklin
(Continued)
Conclusion of the Argument
In 1967 R.W. Franklin had been sure that the first stanza/fragment on H 157 belonged to "A Pit - but Heaven over it." At that time he also concluded that "The other lines on H 157 ... must then be either alternate lines or a conclusion to the whole poem. The former was most likely the poet's intention" (Franklin E46).
The argument for the second stanza as an alternate "was based on three assumptions now unconvincing: (1) that H 157 carried lines for a single poem, (2) that the leaf was bound following "A Pit - but Heaven over it," and (3) that if -- following Mrs. Bingham and Mr. Johnson -- H 157 had been a completion for "I tie my Hat - I crease my Shawl," the leaf would have had to have been bound inside the fold of H 19" (HLB 253).
Assumption #1
Franklin essentially reiterates his own argument in Editing:
- All Miss Graves copied was the twenty-four lines on sheet 19 that constitute "I tie my Hat." She made a separate transcript for each of the stanzas on H 157;
- Mrs. Todd wasn't even sure that lines 13-24 were part of "I tie my Hat." At the end of line 12 of the transcript she had also written, "Is this another?";
- At the end of the Graves transcript ... Mrs. Todd copied the extra two stanzas [from H 157], but next to the second stanza she added the query, "Is this part of it?";
- In the 1891 notebook she [Mrs. Todd] ranked the Graves transcript of 'I tie my Hat' as a B poem while each of the other [H 157] stanzas was separately classed as a C" (E 42-43).
He follows this with a discussion of why the second stanza on H 157 does belong to "I tie my Hat" as Mrs. Todd, Mrs. Bingham and Mr. Johnson thought. He also explains how with the manuscript in disarray, "the sheet immediately ahead of H 157 would be H 156, whose last poem in "A still - volcano - Life" -- the poem to which Mrs. Bianchi mistakenly attached the second set of lines on H 157" (HLB 253). [See Bianchi version of "Volcano"]
Assumption #2
Assumption #3
Faint ruling on the paper indicates that "H 19 was inside out when inventoried for the Houghton Library in 1950" (HLB 253). [See Franklin's ordering for Packet 29] In order for H 157 to directly follow "I tie my Hat" it would have had to be inserted into the middle of the folded sheet. The binding holes don't match; they do if the sheet is folded right side out.
Conclusion
"What Emily Dickinson did to prompt such confusion was simply to follow her usual procedure in 1862 for overflow -- the use of a single leaf for the additional lines, terminated by a drawn line, the rest of the leaf blank -- except that on H 157 there were two sets of lines, terminated by two drawn lines, and both sets were separated from their parent poems. It has taken ninety editorial years for the confusion to clear" (HLB 257).
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