English			TOPICAL JOURNEY
36		Friendship Literature
February 2013

SHAKESPEARE QUOTATIONS ON FRIENDSHIP

Keep thy friend

Under thy own life’s key.

(All’s Well That Ends Well 1.1.65-6),

Countess to Bertram

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.

(Hamlet 1.3.62-3), Polonius to Laertes

A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities.

(Julius Caesar 4.3.85), Cassius to Brutus

Friendship is constant in all things

Save in the office and affairs of love.

(Much Ado About Nothing 2.1.166-7), Claudio

I count myself in nothing else so happy

As in a soul remembering my good friends.

(Richard II) 2.3.46-7, Bolingbroke to Percy

The band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity.

(Antony and Cleopatra 2.6.150), Enobarbus

To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, Recanting goodness, sorry ere ‘tis shown;

But where there is true friendship, there needs none.

(Timon of Athens 1.2.20), Timon

I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends.

(The Merry Wives of Windsor 3.1.133), Antonio

To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.

(The Winter’s Tale 1.2.135), Leontes

Thy friendship makes us fresh.

(1 Henry VI 3.3.87), Charles to the Bastard of Orleans

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice

And could of men distinguish her election, Sh’ath sealed thee for herself.

(Hamlet 3.2.75-7), Hamlet to Horatio

I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you.

(The Tempest 3.1.60-1), Miranda to Ferdinand

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not

As to thy friends; for when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend?

(The Merchant of Venice 1.3.133),

Antonio to Shylock

There is flattery in friendship.

(Henry V 3.7.102), Constable to Orleans

That which I would discover

The law of friendship bids me to conceal.

(The Two Gentlemen of Verona 3.1.5-6), Proteus to the Duke

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time.

(Troilus and Cressida 3.3.180-1),

Ulysses to Achilles

In ancient Greece friendship was much discussed by Plato, Aristotle, and Stoics as a subject of moral philosophy. A man (women were not taken into account) needs a friend as alter ego. According to Aristotle, “The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another self”. In Ancient Greek ‘friend’ and ‘lover’ meant the same.

In the Middle Ages there existed so-called ‘friendship literature’ that told tales of manly companionship, sometimes disrupted by romance but generally restored. A friend could renounce a lady he loves if his friend is also in love with her. Such conventional demonstration of magnanimity can be seen in Shakespeare’s early comedy ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’. Valentine offers to yield Silvia to Proteus, his friend: “All that was mine in Sylvia I give thee.” Fortunately, Proteus falls in love again with Julia.

Shakespeare’s sonnets reflect Renaissance attitude to friendship. Following Plato’s tradition, the word ‘lover’, or ‘love’, was synonymous with the word ‘friend’. In sonnet 66, the poet considers suicide as an escape from this cruel and unjust world, but finally rejects the idea when he remembers his friend:

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Horatio, Hamlet’s friend an confidant, represents a Renaissance ideal – a calm and stoical figure whom Hamlet admires as ‘A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards/ Has taken with equal thanks’, a man/ that is not passion’s slave’.

John Milton wrote a beautiful elegy (1637) on the death of his friend who had been his fellow-student at Cambridge. By calling his friend “Lycidas,” Milton follows the tradition of memorializing a loved one through Pastoral poetry, a practice that may be traced from ancient Greek Sicily through Roman culture and into the Christian Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson expressed his grief for his dead friend writing the poem ‘In Memoriam’. Completed in 1849, it is a requiem for the poet’s Cambridge friend. It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.

The most frequently quoted lines in the poem are perhaps

I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most;

‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

To befall – to happen to, especially as if by fate

Romantic poets had their own exalted worship of friendship. Byron addressed his dearest friend Thomas Moore with affection in more than one poem.

My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea;

But, before I go, Thomas Moore,

Here’s a double health to thee!

TO THOMAS MOORE

What are you doing now,

Oh Thomas Moore?

What are you doing now,

Oh Thomas Moore?

Sighing or suing now,

Rhyming or wooing now,

Billing or cooing now,

Which, Thomas Moore?

But the Carnival’s coming, Oh Thomas Moore!

The Carnival’s coming, Oh Thomas Moore! Masking and humming, Fifing and drumming, Guitarring and strumming, Oh Thomas Moore!

1816

Sources: http://www.shakespeare-online.com

FRIENDSHIP

IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND HISTORY

In spite of “all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world,” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) wrote, “the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether”. He praised friendship for its power to “make a young world for me again”. The famously self-reliant sage of Concord may have experienced trouble not only in composing “Friendship” but also in composing his friendships, for, as he confessed in his essay, “Friendship ... is too good to be believed”. Friendship gave Emerson the most pleasure, and the most difficulty.

Friendship has always been a difficulty in a culture so devoted to solitude, selfsufficiency and self-reliance. There are, of course, exceptions depicted in American literary culture, solitary men who nevertheless build enduring and heartfelt friendships with other men.

Herman Melville’s introspective sailor, Ishmael, who names himself after the biblical outcast, quickly finds himself sharing the bed and the affections of the savage harpooner Queequeg in Moby-Dick (1851). Melville’s Ishmael, however, is not troubled by the thought that friendship depends largely on projection. Faced with an invitation to worship with his new friend, the pagan Queequeg, Ishmael considers that the “will of God” would have him “do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man do to me,” in short, to “unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator”. Ishmael and Queequeg become “Bosom Friends,” a “cosy, loving pair”.

By letting go of his own sense of identity and the values and prejudices that go with it, Ishmael enters into the feelings of his new friend.

James Fenimore Cooper describes another such man, the frontiersman Hawkeye, who has left European settlements to live in the forest on his own terms. When, at the end of The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Hawkeye’s companion Chingachgook loses his only son in battle, Hawkeye promises eternal friendship:

“The gifts of our colours may be different, but God has so placed us as to journey in the same path. I have no kin, and I may also say, like you, no people. He was your son, and a red-skin by nature; … The boy has left us for a time, but, Sagamore, you are not alone!”

Still, friendship did not always come easily for “American Adam,” the individual who regarded his society with deep suspicion and who favoured solitude. Although Emerson’s Concord neighbour, Henry David Thoreau, considered himself as sociable as most people, he often preferred the “sweet and beneficent society in Nature” to the “fancied advantages of human neighbourhood”.

The poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) might be expected to have had an easier time with friendship, for in “Song of Myself” he had announced himself “mad” for “contact.” Whitman explored what he called “manly attachment,” a friendship between men that came too close to erotic love. At times Whitman uses the words ‘lover’ and ‘friend’ interchangeably and claims that the elemental ‘dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend lies beneath all philosophy’.

But even the bold and affectively free Whitman experienced some of the trouble with friendship also observed in Emerson. Like Emerson, Whitman seems to have understood that such powerful emotions as dear friends shared might be projected rather than discerned, that human relations might, finally, be thoroughly unreal. As he writes,

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may all be an illusion?

Women’s friendships grew out of variety of organizations arranged around domestic activities like quilting, embroidery, sewing, and reading. Often several activities were combined, as when young women took novels to read aloud at quilting with their friends. During and following the Civil War, these organizations often took on a more political or civic role, as sewing circles, for example, became venues for raising money for soldiers, widows, and orphans, and as women began to discuss social arrangements at theirmeetings. Henry James’s 1885 novel The Bostonians, set during the years following the war, dramatizes the interconnectedness of reading, political activism, and intimate female friendships. The suffragists Olive and Verena spend the winter preparing for Verena’s career as a lecturer for the women’s movement, and while their winter is filled with study and discussion, it is also a time of deep personal intimacy.

James had based his story, in part, on the friendship between his sister, Alice James, and Katharine Peabody Loring, which began in social reform but deepened beyond their work as teachers of history. The friendship lasted until the end of Alice’s life, as Katharine followed her to England and nursed her through her many illnesses, including breast cancer.

Compiled by Olga Sventsitskaya

TOPICAL JOURNEY		English
		37
		February 2013

HUCK FINN, the best creation of Mark Twain, has not ever studied moral philosophy, but is well-taught that hiding a run-away slave is a mortal sin. That was why he is in agony facing the dilemma either to give away Jim to his owner or to go to hell.

“Eager to do ‘the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was’, Huck got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below. Pikesville, and Mr.

Phelps has got him and he will give him up for thereward if you send.

HUCK FINN.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and

I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking – thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking.

And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow

I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his instead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I wasa-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and Iknowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says tomyself:

‘All right, then, I’ll GO to hell’ – and tore it up.”

Why did Huck choose the harshest punishment he could get according to his beliefs?

Another literary character, a favourite with all of us, had a wise and friendly heart that always taught him how to help others. You could easily guess his name as well as the person in trouble. That person was always gloomy, wasn’t he?

____________ felt that he ought to say something helpful about it, but didn’t quite know what.

So he decided to do something helpful instead.

“___________,” he said solemnly, “I,

________, will find your tail for you.”

“Thank you, _________,” answered

________. “You’re a real friend”, said he. “Not like Some”, he said.

Answers: Winnie-the Pooh or Pooh. Eeyore.

English

TOPICAL JOURNEY

38

February 2013

IDIOMS ABOUT FRIENDSHIP

friends with someone a friend of someone. (Typically: be ~; become ~.)

Sally is friends with Bill. Mary and Bill are friends with one another.

(Even) the best of friends must part. Prov.

Even very good friends cannot stay together forever.

Child: I don’t want Debby to move away. She’s my best friend.

Mother: Sometimes the best of friends must part, honey, even if they don’t want to.

Any friend of someone(’s) (is a friend of mine).

I am always pleased to meet a friend of someone I know. (A pleasant response when meeting or being introduced to a friend of a friend.)

Fred: Well, nice to meet you, Tom. Any friend of my brother is a friend of mine.

Tom: Thanks, Fred. Nice to meet you too.

John: Thank you so much for helping me find Sue’s address.

Sally: You’re welcome. Any friend of Sue’s.

fair-weather friend Fig. someone who is your friend only when things are pleasant or going well for you.

Bill stayed for lunch but he wouldn’t help me with the yard work. He’s just a fair-weather friend. A fair-weather friend isn’t much help in an emergency.

fast friends good, loyal friends

The two of them had been fast friends since college.

friend or foe a friend or an enemy

I can’t tell whether Jim is friend or foe. “Who goes there? Friend or foe?” asked the sentry.

He that hath a full purse never wanted a friend. Prov. A rich person always has plenty of friends.

Jill: Ever since Joe won the lottery, he’s been getting congratulations from friends and relatives he hasn’t heard from in years.

Jane: You know how it is. He that hath a full purse never wanted a friend.

I was up all night with a sick friend. An unlikely, but popular excuse for not being where one was supposed to be the night before.

Bill: Where in the world were you last night?

Mary: Well, I was up all night with a sick friend.

Mr. Franklin said rather sheepishly, “Would you believe I was up with a sick friend?”

Lend your money and lose your friend. Prov.

You should not lend money to your friends; if you do, either you will have to bother your friend to repay the loan, which will make your friend resent you, or your friend will not repay the loan, which will make you resent your friend.

Bill: Joe needs a hundred dollars to pay his landlord. I’m thinking about lending it to him.

Letter Writing

PERSONALIZED NOTES

CAN HELP NURTURE A FRIENDSHIP

When I tell people how much I love handwritten letters, sometimes they look at me like I’m an old relic who doesn’t understand the beauty of technology. I do understand technology, of course. I enjoy email and social networking as much as the next person, but I don’t think it replaces the specialness of a letter penned by hand. Besides that, writing handwritten cards and letters can nurture a friendship in lasting ways.

A NOTE PENNED

BY HAND SHOWS CARE AND A SPECIAL TOUCH

When it comes to communicating today, we primarily email, text, or chat via social networking. The way we “talk” today is fast and often impersonal. We might send a tweet out to someone to say happy birthday rather than write them a card. We might tell them we’re thinking about them through an email that will get put in an electronic trash can and never looked at again.

But a handwritten card is something different. It’s rare these days, for one. People just don’t write cards by hand as they once did. But for friendship, this can be a good thing. If you really want to show your friend you’re thinking of them, take the time to write out a note by hand. This will get your friend’s attention from the minute they see the envelope interspersed among the pile of bills they receive in their mailbox until the time they open it and set it out on their desk. After all, it’s not easy to toss a handwritten letter. There is something about it that makes you want to hang on to it.

INDIVIDUAL DETAILS MAKE LETTERS SPECIAL

Even writing something as simple as “I’m thinking of you” can help make your friend’s day. But if you really want to show them they are special to you, choose your words carefully. Make the details of the letter or note personal. One way to do that is to mention things like:

•Private jokes you share.

•Qualities about your friend that are unique to them.

•Ways that they have helped you in the past.

•Special memories you have.

•Words of encouragement that they have shared with you.

•Days of importance in your friendship.

Incorporate a few of these thoughts in your note to make it specific just to them.

One way I have used handwritten notes in the past was to continually thank the friends that stood up in my wedding for being part of my day. Every year on my anniversary, I penned a note to my bridesmaids thanking them for sharing one of the best days of my life.

REASONS TO SEND A HANDWRITTEN NOTE

Do you need a specific reason to send a handwritten note? Of course not! But one reason these types of letters are so special is because they aren’t sent very often. So a good rule of thumb is so save your handwritten notes for a special occasion, like when your friend needs some extra TLC (tender, love and care) or has an exciting life change. Thank you notes are another great way to let a friend know you appreciate them.

Sometimes you’ll experience an event unrelated to your friendship which will prompt you to feel especially grateful to your friend. This is a great time to get out your pen and paper and jot down a note letting your friend know that their relationship means a lot to you. I have done this when other life events reminded me not to take the people I love for granted and in many cases my friends have held on to these cards.

No matter what the reason for sending the card, your friend will probably hold on to it and pull it out during times when they need to feel some extra care. Maybe one day you two will have a fight and a card you’ve sent in the past will remind them that your friendship deserves another chance. Maybe they’ll be feeling low one day and will go back to the card you sent in order to lift their spirits. You never know how some heartfelt words penned by hand will continue to nurture your friendship years down the line.

By Cherie Burbach

Alan: Lend your money and lose your friend.

Sources: http://friendship.about.com; About.com Guide

Email Etiquette

Emailing with friends requires a friendly level of etiquette.

Chatting with your friends through email can be just as fun as hanging out with them in person. Email conversations can contain as much juicy gossip as any dialogue. Yet, even though friendships don’t always require a structure of formality, levels of etiquette can apply to email.

EMAIL GREETINGS

It is in good form to begin emails to friends with appropriate greetings. Stating your friend’s name or saying things like “Good morning” or “Happy Wednesday” at the opening of your email shows respect to your friend. Not taking the time to create a greeting can be misinterpreted, causing you to come across as terse or rude.

EMAIL SIGN-OFFS

Similarly to greetings, having proper sign-offs in your emails to your friends is another way to maintain a courteous boundary. Rather than ending your email in mid-air, try closing the conversation with something like “Talk to you soon” or “Have a good night.” By following proper sign-off etiquette, your friends will feel valued and respected.

BEING FRIENDLY

It is proper etiquette to ask friends in your emails how they are doing. Inquiring about their lives shows your level of interest in their well-being. When they email you back with updates on their personal lives, it is common courtesy to respond with comments about the things they share with you. According to the November 2006 issue of Psychology Today, friendly comments and questions exhibit participation in the conversation and can add value to the friendship.

COMMUNICATION STYLE AND TONE

According the International Association of Business Communicators, people should communicate with others in the same way they would like to be treated. When sending emails to your friends, be sure that your emails have the appropriate tone that you are meaning to convey and that you do not come across as sounding gossipy, short-tempered, frustrated or irritated, because this can be a turnoff. A tone can also be established by the style of font you use. For instance, using all caps in an email, or in part of a sentence, can be interpreted as shouting. Taking measures to reread the body of your email before sending it off will eliminate unwanted communication styles and tones.

RESPONDING TO EMAILS

If you are unable to respond in length to a friend’s email, it is proper etiquette to send off a quick email response informing them that you will get back to them later. This lets them know that their email was received and wasn’t lost in cyberspace. Friends will appreciate this courteous gesture, since they won’t be left hanging.

TOPICAL JOURNEY		English
		39
		February 2013

make a friend and make friends to establish a link of friendship with someone

I have never found it difficult to make friends.

Mary had to make new friends when she changed schools.

make friends with someone to work to become a friend of someone

I want to make friends with all the people I am going to be working with. Let’s try to make friends with each other.

have friends in high places to know important people who can help you get what you want

He has plenty of friends in high places willing to support his political career.

man’s best friend a dog

A study of man’s best friend shows that the relationship between humans and dogs started 100,000 years ago.

Who’s your friend? Sl. Who is that following along behind you?

John: Hi, Tom. Who’s your friend? Tom: Oh, this is my little brother, Willie.

John: Hi, Willie. Looking at the little dog almost glued to Bob’s pants cuff, Sally asked, “Who’s your friend?”

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

(hum.) something that you say when someone you thought was your friend treats you in an unpleasant way

He told my girlfriend I was boring. With friends like that, who needs enemies!

a shoulder to cry on someone who listens to your problems

It’s always good to talk to Hilary, she’s so sympathetic. She’s a real shoulder to cry on.

See eye to eye to agree with someone (usually used in the negative)

They don’t always see eye to eye on politics but they’re still great friends

No love lost disagree with someone

They used to be best friends but they had a huge

fight about money. Now there’s no love lost between them.

A friend in need is a friend indeed. A true friend is a person who will help you when you really need help.

When Bill helped me with geometry, I really learned the meaning of “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”

Short reckonings make long friends. Prov. If you borrow something from a friend, pay it back as soon as possible so that the two of you remain friendly.

Now that you’ve finished using Bert’s saw, take it right back to him. Short reckonings make long friends.

Compiled by Lidia Galochkina,

www.ehow.com

School No. 1171, Moscow

English		FOCUS ON LITERATURE
40		“My Verse is Alive.”
February 2013

One of the most enigmatic and blessed with original poetic gifts among women, Emily Dickinson was definitely not so much alone as we could imagine her nowadays, but she was love her family and friends very much and with whom she had though limited but wonderful correspondence. Letters – last things indeed nowadays to get on well with each other now but not least those days. Look also at how the poet greets us from her herbarium with beautiful flowers, though withered now, but we do smell from them the special aroma floating to the meadows of our life as well.

To venerate the simple days Which lead the seasons by, Needs but to remember That from you or me

They may take the trifle Termed mortality!

To invest existence with a stately air,

Needs but to remember

That the acorn there

Is the egg of forests

For the upper air!

So there are twelve of them – of her beloved family and friends

– twelve acorns on our table – confabulate of each of them lovingly and respectably with your class.

1.Emily’s grandfather Samuel Fowler Dickinson a deeply religious man, Squire Dickinson became deacon of the church in 1798 at the unusually young age of 23. He expressed his fervent belief in the virtue of education for both sexes, evident in the admission policy of the Academy, in a public address in 1831:

“A good husbandman will also educate well his daughters… daughters should be well instructed in the useful sciences; comprising a good English education: including a thorough knowledge of our own language, geography, history, mathematics and natural philosophy. The female mind, so sensitive, so susceptible of improvement, should not be neglected….God hath designed nothing in vain.” (address given to the Hampshire, Hampden and Franklin Agricultural Society on October 27, 1831, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Cited in The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, ed. Jay Leyda.

2.Edward Dickinson (1803–1874), father

“His Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists.”

Emily Dickinson to T.W. Higginson, July 1874

Edward Dickinson embraced the conservative Whig political party and embodied its ethics of responsibility, fairness, and personal restraint to a point that contemporaries found his demeanor severe and unyielding. He took his role as head of his family seriously, and within his home his decisions and his word were law. An incident Emily Dickinson described speaks volumes about life within her home: “I never knew how to tell time by the clock till I was 15. My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand & I was afraid to say I did not & afraid to ask anyone else lest he should know” Ever respectful of her father’s nature (“the straightest engine” that “never played”), Dickinson obeyed him as a child, but found ways to rebel or circumvent him as a young woman, and finally, with wit and occasional exasperation, learned to accommodate with his autocratic ways.

Her early resistance slowly shifted to a mutual respect, and fi- nally subsided after his death in pathos, love, and awe. Despite his public involvements, the poet viewed her father as an isolated, solitary figure, “the oldest and the oddest sort of foreigner,” she told a friend (Sewall, The Lyman Letters), a man who read “lonely & rigorous books”, yet who made sure the birds were fed in winter.

Edward Dickinson’s lonely death in a Boston boardinghouse following his collapse while giving a speech in the state legislature the hot morning of June 6, 1874, was unbearable to the whole family. The entire town closed down on the afternoon of his funeral, and his eldest daughter later paid this tribute: “Lay this Laurel on the one\Too intrinsic for Renown –\Laurel – vail your deathless Tree –\Him you chasten - that is he –”

3.Emily Norcross Dickinson (1804–1882), mother “To have had a Mother – how mighty!”

Emily Dickinson to Mrs. James C. Greenough,

late October 1885

Emily Norcross Dickinson was born in Monson, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1804, to Betsy Fay and Joel Norcross. The eldest daughter of nine children, Emily Norcross had an extraordinary education for a young woman in the early nineteenth century. From age seven to nineteen, she attended co-educational Monson Academy, which her father had helped to found. She then went to a New Haven, Connecticut, boarding school for one term.

4. Lavinia Norcross Dickinson (1833–1899), sister

“[Emily] had to think – she was the only one of us who had that to do. Father believed; and mother loved; and Austin had Amherst; and I had the family to take care of.”

Lavinia Dickinson

One of the most significant people in Emily Dickinson’s life was her sister Lavinia. Born two years after Emily, on February 28, 1833, the two were raised as if of an age. They began attending Amherst Academy together in the spring of 1841 at ages ten and eight, and shared a room and a bed into their twenties. Each, however, had her own circle of friends and very different personality. As Emily once told a friend, “if we had come up for the first time from two wells where we had hitherto been bred her astonishment would not be greater at some things I say” (Sewall,

Lyman Letters).

5. Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson (1830–1913), sister-in- law

“With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living. To say that sincerely is strange praise”

Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, about 1882

Susan Huntington Gilbert was born on December 19, 1830, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the youngest of seven children of Thomas and Harriet Arms Gilbert. After the death of her mother in 1835, she was raised with her sisters in Geneva, New York, by her aunt Sophia van Vranken. As a girl of sixteen she visited Amherst, where her eldest sister resided, and attended Amherst Academy during the summer of 1847. Thereafter she attended Utica Female Academy in New York through 1848, then returned to Amherst for the rest of her life. Susan was a vivacious, intelligent, and cultivated woman, a