To spot the Emily Dickinson Museum, just look ahead for a large, sunny yellow brick house with green shutters and a porch stretching across the front-this stately building will be hard to miss on your right!
Now, take a deep breath-imagine the scent of old paper, blooming flowers, and maybe the faintest whiff of mystery. You’re standing in front of the birthplace and lifelong home of America’s famously reclusive poet, Emily Dickinson. “Hope” is the thing with feathers-and here’s the place where hope perched among stacks of poems, tucked away in a quiet upstairs room. But first, picture the 1800s: horse-drawn carriages rattling along Main Street, voices from the garden, and the sharp sound of a pen scratching out lines of verse.
The Homestead, as this house is called, was built in 1813 by Samuel Fowler Dickinson, Emily’s grandfather-a bigwig lawyer with big dreams. Back then, this brick house was the talk of the town: the first of its kind, with walls painted red to cover up brick’s imperfections. But, no family is ever just a happy portrait; the Dickinsons had their share of drama. Money problems threatened their dream home more than once, and by the time Emily was born here in 1830, the house had passed through ownership like a literary plot twist.
Edward Dickinson, Emily’s father-a man both proud and prudent-bought the house again and, with his wife and children, moved in for good in 1855. Just to keep things lively, in 1856 he built the elegant house next door, the Evergreens, as a wedding gift for Emily’s brother Austin and his wife Susan. Now, imagine a path winding through the lawn, “just wide enough for two who love,” where siblings traded secrets and poems were passed like treasure.
Edward Dickinson liked sprucing things up. He turned this house into a mix of old Federal style and elegant Greek Revival trimmings. He added a veranda on the west, painted it ochre and off-white, and even topped it with an Italianate cupola-which is basically the 19th-century version of saying, “Check out my fancy new roof!” Meanwhile, Emily was busy tending the garden with her mother and sister Lavinia, sending flowers and poetic notes to friends. You can almost hear the rustle of skirts among the blooms, and imagine the family’s cow mooing in the barn behind the house.
As Emily grew older, life became stranger-and a bit spookier. She grew more and more private, limiting visits to her brother’s house next door and often communicating through closed doors. Amherst locals’ eyebrows must have nearly disappeared into their hairlines at the stories: Emily, the almost invisible poet, tending her garden by moonlight! But inside, her room was filling up, drawer by drawer, with hundreds of poems written in secret. When she died in 1886, her funeral was held right here in the library, and her sister Lavinia, following Emily’s wishes, burned her letters. But then-plot twist!-Lavinia unlocked a chest to discover Emily’s poems. The poetry that had never seen sunlight became a literary sensation, thanks to a sister’s curiosity and a stubborn old lock.
After Emily and Lavinia were gone, the family home passed through various hands, from relatives to renters, even hosting college professors. Generations later, Amherst College and the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Trust teamed up to finally restore the Homestead and the Evergreens as a united museum. Today, the two houses stand together, preserving the peculiar magic of the Dickinson family’s lives-secrets, heartaches, laughter, and the wild, beautiful verses born right here.
And here you are, standing on ground once mapped by pioneers, softened by generations of footsteps, and haunted-in the best way-by the quiet voice of Emily Dickinson. If these yellow bricks could talk, I’m sure they would have some pretty poetic things to say.
