The Green caldron - University Library

October, 1958 23
the wavering souls of his flock. "Out of Emily's thwarted longing for com-
panionship with the adored clergyman came a lyric outpouring which included
the most intensely moving love poems ever written by an American poet,"
George Whicher has written.-- Whereas Newton as a muse had awakened
her to a sense of her talents, Wadsworth as a muse made her a poet.
By 1862, Emily's creative impulse was at a floodtide, and by 1865, the
greater part of her poetic inspirations was spent. However, she continued
to write poetry until her death. But one concludes that nearly two-thirds of
her poems were created in the brief span of eight years, in her early thirties,
from the years 1858 to 1865.
The extent to which Reverend Wadsworth realized the intensity of her
adoration is not known. His son says that he would not even have cared
for her poetry. The poetry he liked was of a different order-^-*^ However, the
ultimate crisis in her life seems to have been precipitated when Wadsworth
accepted a call to a church in San Francisco in 1861. To Emily, his removal
was terrifying. She would be without his guidance. It is at this time that
she began to dress entirely in white, adopting, as she called it, her "white
election." The name Calvary now appears in her poems. In 1862, she used
it nine times, always in verses charged with intense emotion. She speaks of
herself as the "queen" of Calvary, and grieving for her lost lover, she recalls
"old times in Calvary." ^4 In 1870, Wadsworth was back in Philadelphia in
another church, where he remained until his death on April 1, 1882. Though
nothing would again wring from her the anguish and poetic fulfillment of
the years 1861 through 1865, she continued to write verses throughout her
life.^^ At his death she applied to him a line from Tennyson : "Of love that
never found its earthly close, what sequel?" Thus, more than any other
man, Wadsworth has been identified with the lover of her poems. -^
Among other men who have often been disputed as the inspirers of Emily
Dickinson is Edward Hunt, husband of author Helen Hunt Jackson, one of
Emily's close friends. One author discovered a secret lover in George Gould,
also of Amherst College. Still another went so far as to accuse her of a
Freudian father-complex.-''' Most of the stories of these incongruous lovers
have been disposed of, however, and in their place has emerged the more
preferred story of the Reverend Wadsworth as the true inspirer.
Other deep attachments after Wadsworth were only two, if the evidence
is reliable. Samuel Bowles of Springfield, whom she loved "beyond sentimen-
tality," and Judge Otis P. Lord, one of her father's closest friends, were each
^ Whicher, p. 14.
"^ Ibid., p. 15.
-* Johnson, The Poems of E. D., Introduction, XXIII.
-"'
Ibid., XXIV.
^o Whicher, p. 14.
*" Untermeyer, pp. 90 and 91.