Emily Dickinson and Mr. Throttlebottom-Smith
The curtain rises.
Amherst, Massachusetts. Morning.
A plain kitchen. A wooden table stands beside a window overlooking the garden. The light is gray and New England. A teacup. A small vase of flowers. A neat stack of folded paper. An ink bottle. A goose quill.
At the table sits Emily Dickinson.
She has been contemplating a single adjective for nearly eighteen minutes.
She writes one word. She crosses it out.
She writes another. She gazes thoughtfully out the window.
She writes a dash. She wonders whether the dash should be slightly longer.
Then, from somewhere above the pantry—
THUMP.
A furry object lands squarely on the table.
It is Mr. Throttlebottom-Smith. He is carrying the sugar bowl. "Good morning," she says quietly. Mr. Throttlebottom-Smith answers by wearing the sugar bowl as a hat.
Emily returns to her poem.
Hope—is the thing with—
Before she can write "feathers," the monkey has seized the quill. Capuchins, zoologists tell us, possess extraordinary manual dexterity. Mr. Throttlebottom-Smith discovers that quills make delightful paintbrushes when dipped into ink and vigorously shaken.
The kitchen ceiling now contains several observations in creative punctuation. A large comma slowly descends the wallpaper.
She resumes.
Because I could not stop for—
Mr. Throttlebottom-Smith cannot stop for anything.
He has discovered the wastebasket. Wastebaskets, in the capuchin imagination, exist chiefly to determine whether their contents are happier distributed across a wider area.
Now Mr. Throttlebottom-Smith has become fascinated by the ticking clock. He studies it intently. His head tilts.
Emily, recognizing the direction of inquiry, quietly moves the clock into another room. This merely postpones the experiment.
A Lyric Interlude
I dwell in Possibility—
A fair and spacious Room—
Unless a Monkey enters there—
Then every Shelf is Doom.
The Ink—ascends the Ceiling—
The Teacups disappear—
The Dash survives—but only if
He has no Interest—there.
# # #
Late in the afternoon the monkey returns and discovers the stack of finished poem. He flips rapidly through the pages. He pauses. His little brow furrows. He seems, improbably, to be reading.
Emily waits. Then the monkey pulls off the final sheet and folds it into a paper hat.
# # #
Evening settles over Amherst. The monkey has finally exhausted himself.
Much Madness—is divinest Sense—
She pauses. Looks affectionately toward the sleeping capuchin. Then adds, almost as a private note to herself:
"Though some varieties are undeniably louder than others."
