The Transcendental Murder

of whom, a son named (of all things) Henry, was born only four months after his elder brother Frederick. Four months? There's a precocious embryo for you. So I made a wild stab in the dark and guessed that Elizabeth Goss regarded herself as the great-granddaughter of Emily Dickinson, which explained why she was mooning around in McLean Hospital in a white gown and wouldn't come out to see anybody. What I didn't guess then was that she also had grandiose ideas about who her great-grandfather was.'

'What I love most about Howard's idea,' said Mary, 'is the fun he had with internal evidence—the symbolism and the images in Emily's poetry and letters. The way she called herself 'wife,' and the obvious Freudian interpretation of her poems about bees and flowers. Some of it was pretty strong stuff for a spinster, don't you think? Remember 'Wild night, wild nights'? And what about 'the wrestlers in the holy chamber' and her 'unique burden' that she wrote about—do you think she was really talking about pregnancy and childbirth?'

'Well, you've got to admit that it's all very ingenious. Poor old Emily. If all this happened in 1860 it was only two years before Henry was dead. So she lost him twice, once by renunciation and a second time by death. And thus, Howard says, began her preoccupation with her 'flood subject'—love seen through the barrier of death, the lovers reunited only in immortality.'

'I believe it. I believe it all,' said Mary. 'It only puts me even more in awe of them. I'd like to think it was all true, and that they had each other, even if it was only for a little while.'

'Oh, hogwash.'

'What did you say?'

'My dear, there isn't a scrap of truth in it. It's all the purest, most delectable bunk.'

'Oh, no, it isn't, it isn't. I refuse to give it up. Homer, please...'

'Look, my darling, in the first place those Norcross cousins of Emily's didn't even move out of Cambridge to Concord until after Henry was dead.'

'They didn't?' Mary's voice shook with disappointment. 'But what about Elizabeth's secret? Where would she have got the notion that she was descended from the two of them? I mean if there was no truth in it at all? And what about the stableboy, Richard Matthews? How did he get an extra child? That one that was born only four months after one of the others? And the red hair! Did you see that, in the black box in Elizabeth's room, in the envelope that was marked Great-grandmother's? How can you explain that away?'

'Oh, the hair. Do you honestly think Emily Dickinson was the only redheaded woman in her generation? And as for the stableboy's too many babies—damned if I know. Maybe his wife was wet-nursing it along with her own for some feckless relative, and then got stuck with it. And don't bother your head about Elizabeth's secret. May I remind you that she is now confined in an institution for the insane? Pure and simple old-fashioned delusions of grandeur. She was a nut. If you don't believe me, listen to this. I looked into what I could find out about her parents and grandparents, and I discovered that her father went to his grave claiming to be the Stuart pretender to the British throne. And her grandfather, the original Henry Matthews, you know what he did? Well, first he made a fortune in carriages and buggies, and then he died. But before he died he built himself a fancy Moorish mausoleum on which were inscribed these words:

HERE LIES ALLAH BEN BUDDHA,

THE TRUE MESSIAH,

KNOWN TO THIS WORLD AS

HENRY RICHARD MATTHEWS.

You can read it yourself in the cemetery there in Amherst.'

Mary shook her head, covered her face with her hands and laughed. 'Oh, no, no. All that lovely romantic story going up in smoke.'

'Look, all you have to do is examine Henry's journal for the last few years of his life, when this great passion was supposed to have possessed him. Does he moon in his secret heart about love and longing? Well, does he?'

'No, no, I know. He goes on and on about tree rings and skunk cabbage and the height of the rivers after a rain. Oh, I know.'

'Well, I call that pretty dry stuff for a man who was supposed to have met his Fate. And look—you talk about internal evidence—do you honestly think that any of Emily's poetry expresses the experience of giving birth to and then giving up a child? It expresses some other colossal experience, sure—one can't deny her some sort of excruciating personal knowledge of both love and death. But motherhood? No. And what about guilt? Don't you think a sensitive soul like Emily would have felt some sort of complicated kind of shame if she had been forced to drop the fruit of her love for Henry Thoreau into the lap of someone else? No, no, there's nothing like that in her poetry. And another thing—if Emily Dickinson was anything, she was honest, you agree? And don't you remember that she said somewhere, 'My life has been too simple and stern to embarrass any'? What does her white dress mean, anyway, if not purity, the bride of Christ, and all that? And anyhow, all things considered, I still can't see Henry Thoreau, that stiff and rustic gentleman, dallying with Edward Dickinson's daughter among the daisies. Those times were different, after all.'

But that sounded familiar. Mary looked at Homer, unbelieving. It was what she had said herself, hadn't she? She had been talking to Charley Goss, a long time ago. (How long ago!) Men and women didn't have to be lovers, she had said. In those days the restraints were so universally accepted, the two sexes could be friends with each other. And then Charley had scoffed at her. 'Listen, girly, men and women have only one relation to each other, and that's all they've ever had. Don't kid yourself.' But now even Homer was saying that Charley was wrong...

'Well, all right. I give up. But I'm terribly disillusioned. It would have been so beautiful. And you know you still haven't told me how a man like Howard Swan could be a murderer.'

'I'm getting to that. In my own mind it goes back to Henry Thoreau again, and to the fact that a sign of his greatness is the diversity of his influence. Look at Rousseau, for instance. You might call him the father of collectivism as well as the father of democracy. For every disciple Henry Thoreau has, you'll find a different image of the man. On the one hand we've got Teddy Staples, re-creating Thoreau the harmless naturalist and village eccentric. And on the other hand you've got Howard Swan. Remember what Howard was saying that night in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery when we thought for a minute he was Henry's ghost?'

'Yes, of course I do. It was something from Civil Disobedience, that part about any man more right than his neighbors being a majority of one already. I think I'm beginning to see what you mean.'

'Civil Disobedience! There's another Henry Thoreau for you! The Henry Thoreau who wrote that glorious essay, that incendiary document, that ringing call to the just citizen to refuse to obey unjust laws, setting the individual conscience above rules and decrees—that Henry Thoreau is a far cry from the one Teddy knows. If God is on your side, that's all the majority you need. Shades of Robespierre!'

'But he was writing against slavery, wasn't he? God was certainly on his side there.'

'Of course. I'm not denying it. But it's like all glorious ideas: it's dangerous when perverted. What it comes down to is, who says God in on your side? Howard liked to have things his way. 'Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.' That's what Howard was, all his life, a majority of one. He was influenced by the least attractive side of Thoreau's personality—the scornful side, what Walt Whitman found so disagreeable in him, his disdain for men. Henry disdained men by withdrawing from them. Howard disdained them by exerting power over them. God was on his side, naturally. If he couldn't get things his way by simply running them, as chairman, or president or moderator, he did it by bending the rules somewhat. You saw him make a sort of personal juggernaut out of that town meeting. And God was still on his side, even when the only tactic left was murder. And so he murdered Ernie to protect his child.'

'His what?'

'His child. His manuscript. His masterpiece. His thesis. His life's work, his heart's darling, his bid for immortality, his great discovery. Here it was, almost finished at last, nearly done. He could see his picture in The New York Times, he could imagine the excitement, the controversy, the praise of the scholar, the delight of the student, the enthusiasm of the popular press—all so near. And then what happened? Along came Ernie Goss, the great booby, with a screwy set of nutty letters that he swore he was going to hit the market with, right then and there.'