Dickinson gathered specimens and created her herbarium around the age of fourteen (circa 1844). The herbarium contains 424 pressed specimens, 250 being native to Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson attended Amherst Academy where she studied botany under Dr. Edward Hitchcock. In addition to formal studies, Dickinson owned Amos Eaton’s Manuel of Botany, for North America as well as William Jackson Hooker’s Flora boreali-americana. All of these resources combined allowed Dickinson to accurately identify the specimens which she collected by their scientific names and numbers. It is interesting to note that the names of the specimens are written in an even, formal style of handwriting which greatly contrasts the style she employed when writing her poems.
I’m most drawn to the colors on this page from the herbarium, especially the red of the Ipomoea quamoclit (commonly called cypress-vine). This specimen is often found in tropical environments, but was introduced to the New England area. Thinking about Dickinson’s daguerreotype, it is interesting to compare the two. A daguerreotype holds a black and white image of a person, long dead. Pressed flowers, though dead, often keep their vibrant colors, fading only somewhat with age. As morbid as it may sound, I cannot help noting that one could never press a human body in the pages of a book in such a way. On that same note, while it is impossible to really experience everything that Dickinson herself experienced during this time, these species of flowers and plants are still around and still give off the same aromas they did in the 19thcentury. I often press flowers and leaves in books, and mine do not look much different from Dickinson’s own despite nearly two hundred years’ difference. Picturing a young Dickinson carefully pressing her specimens and then identifying and writing their names so neatly, I wonder what she thought about. The herbarium clearly took much time — looking for specimens, identifying them from descriptions and illustrations in books, waiting for them to press into the pages. It’s a beautiful work of art that was created long before Dickinson had even begun writing the thousands of poems for which she is now known and suggests that she had always felt a great sense of awe and wonder at the world around her.
As previously mentioned, Dickinson’s handwriting stands out in many of her poems, suggesting strongly that there was intent behind it. The labels in her herbarium are written neatly in dark ink. In this specific poem, “The Sun– just touched the / Morning — ” Dickinson’s handwriting has a strong slant to it. The style has a sense of urgency to it, with letters close together and words underlined. It is obvious that she was beginning to experiment with her poetry at this point, with the dashes at the ends and in the middle of the lines, as well as the many exclamation points. In this poem, written around 1860, Dickinson also began to break stanzas thus breaking ideals for poetry-writing at the time. This poem is a part of fascicle 10, and it’s interesting to think that Dickinson’s herbarium could also be considered a fascicle. Another note is that Dickinson never wrote her name on the herbarium or this poem, as if she really just meant for her art to speak for itself.
