EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM HOUSE TOUR | The Homestead + The Evergreens | Amherst, MA

Welcome to the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. Today we're touring two homes that helped inspire a literary icon. First, the homestead, the house where Emily Dickinson was born, died, and where she did most of her writing. Then, we'll head next door to tour another remarkable Dickinson family home, the Evergreens, a preserved 1856 Victorian house filled with original Dickinson family furnishings, artwork, personal possessions, and original 19th century finishes, making this one a true time capsule. Together, these two historic homes preserve an intimate piece of Emily Dickinson's world, including a controversial chapter in the family's story that would help shape how the world first came to know her work. Here, Emily Dickinson became a defining voice of 19th century poetry, at a time when it was difficult for women to even have a voice. Both homes help tell a more complete story of the author, her family, and the world that shaped her unique writing style. Hi, I'm Allie, and welcome back to Fab Little Dish, where we celebrate vintage interiors, historic preservation, and the stories that keep these places alive. If you love historic house tours, hit that thumbs up. It really helps support the channel, and make sure to also subscribe so you don't miss out on the amazing homes that I have coming your way. Now let's head to Amherst together, uncover the mystery of one of America's greatest poets, and step inside the private world that helped shape one of literature's fascinating and mysterious voices. Emily Dickinson was born here at the Homestead on December 10, 1830, the middle child of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson. She had an older brother, Austin, and a younger sister, Lavinia, or Vinnie, as the family called her. The Dickinsons were one of Amherst's most prominent families. Emily's grandfather helped establish Amherst Academy and Amherst College, while her father, Edward, became a successful lawyer, politician, and congressman. So Emily grew up with a strong sense of education, civic leadership, and intellectual curiosity all around her. And from an early age, there were signs that Emily saw the world a little differently. She attended Amherst Academy for about seven years, where teachers remembered her writing as strikingly unique. At 16, she continued her education at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, one of the most academically demanding schools available to young women at the time. And academically, Emily excelled. But spiritually, she never quite fit in. Religion played a major role at Mount Holyoke, and students were actually divided according to spiritual standing. Emily was placed in the group considered without hope, students who had not yet publicly professed their faith. And unlike many of her classmates, she never did. That feeling of standing slightly outside the world around her would follow Emily throughout her life. Faith, doubt, death, nature, immortality, and what might exist beyond this life would eventually become some of the most powerful themes in her poetry. After only one year at Mount Holyoke, Emily returned to Amherst, and over time, home became increasingly central to her world. She was an avid reader, despite once joking that her father bought her plenty of books, but begged her not to read them because he feared they would joggle the mind. Clearly, that didn't stop her. But Emily's life here wasn't spent entirely behind a desk. She gardened, played piano, took long walks through Amherst with her dog, and she was actually an accomplished baker. Apparently, her father only preferred bread when she baked it. Fragments of her writing survived on scraps of paper, envelopes, household papers, and even chocolate bar wrappers. It's as if any thought could arrive at any moment, and Emily simply had to capture it and wrote it down anywhere. As she grew older, she became more of a homebody. Emily gradually withdrew from public life and became so elusive that some people in Amherst reportedly knew her as the myth. But the familiar image of Emily Dickinson as a woman who completely shut herself away from the world isn't quite accurate. Her physical world may have grown smaller, but she mentioned incredibly rich relationships that she had in her life through her letters. She exchanged books and ideas, sent flowers and baked goods to friends and neighbors, and remained deeply connected to the people she loved. And as her physical world became smaller, her creative world seemed to become almost limitless. Beginning in her late 20s, Emily started organizing her poetry into small, hand-sewn booklets. By the time she died, she had written nearly 1,800 poems. And they looked unlike anything else that had been written at the time. Her poetry was compressed and incredibly precise, filled with unusual capitalization, unexpected line breaks, slant rhymes, and lots of these now-famous dashes. She often borrowed the familiar rhythm of hymns she had grown up hearing her whole life, then used it to explore much more complicated ideas about love, nature, faith, death, doubt, and immortality. Even the appearance of the words on the page mattered. And yet, while Emily was quietly creating this enormous body of work here at the homestead, almost nobody knew that it existed. Only 10 of her poems have known to actually have been printed during her lifetime. They were published anonymously, and there's no clear evidence that Emily even authorized their publication. When editors did print her work, they often changed her punctuation and formatting to make the poems look more conventional. Which is fascinating because for generations, people would continue trying to decide what Emily Dickinson's poetry was supposed to look like. People always also wondered what Emily herself was supposed to even look like. This famous photograph of Emily Dickinson was taken when she was only about 16 years old, and remains the only authenticated photograph of Emily Dickinson. After her death, even that image was softened and altered for publication, changing details of her appearance to make her look more appealing to contemporary audiences. Long before AI and Photoshop, people were already trying to reshape Emily Dickinson and give her a new image. They gave her more curls, even fuller lips, different dress attire. But this wasn't Emily Dickinson, and we're all still trying to figure her out today. One of the most important relationships of Emily's life was with Susan Gilbert, who eventually married Emily's brother Austin and moved right next door into the Evergreens that their father built for them later after they got married. Susan became far more than just a sister-in-law. She was one of Emily's closest intellectual companions, and one of the few people she trusted enough to regularly share her poetry with. Emily sent Susan hundreds of poems and letters over the course of their relationship, many written in deeply passionate and intimate language, making people speculate about Emily's sexuality to this day. And Emily apparently had a much more playful side around the family as well. She adored Austin and Susan's children, played games and exchanged jokes with them, and even jokingly referred to herself as Uncle Emily, a glimpse of the funny, affectionate woman hidden behind the solemn image history has often given us. Emily died right here at the homestead on May 15th, 1886, at just 55 years old, of kidney failure. Before her death, she asked Vinny to destroy all of the letters and writings that she had. Vinny did, but just before she destroyed everything, she discovered something. Hundreds and hundreds of poems that Emily had left behind. Emily hadn't given any instructions for what should happen to them, but Vinny immediately understood that her sister's work needed to be preserved. It was something special. And that discovery would set off an extraordinary chain of events involving Susan, Austin, and another woman named Mabel Loomis Todd. A deeply complicated family scandal, and a battle over Emily Dickinson's literary legacy that would continue for decades. We'll get much deeper into that story when we head over next door to the Evergreens. But for generations, people weren't only trying to understand the mystery of Emily Dickinson. They were trying to determine what poems should even look like, what her image should look like, and ultimately, who this incredibly private woman actually was. And maybe that's part of what makes being inside her home so powerful. When so much of Emily Dickinson's life has been interpreted, edited, and reshaped by other people, these rooms bring us just a little closer to the world as Emily actually knew it. Walking up to the homestead feels incredibly powerful, knowing Emily Dickinson was born here, spent most of her life here, and ultimately created the work that would make her one of America's greatest poets of all time. Built in 1813, the brick home has stood at the heart of the Dickinson family story for more than two centuries. During my visit, preservation work was underway on the exterior, a very visible reminder of the ongoing care required to protect a house like this and preserve the place that shaped so much of Emily Dickinson's life and her writing. Now let's step inside. We were briefly standing in the hallway when the tour guide was introducing Emily Dickinson and her home to us, but she did mention that this floor is a reproduction of exactly what Emily and the rest of the Dickinson family would walk on when this home belonged to them. This is the homestead library, which also served as the home office of Emily's father, Edward Dickinson, a prominent lawyer and politician. The room functioned as a family library as well, surrounded by glass front bookcases filled with books and ideas that helped shape Emily's intellectual world. But one of my favorite features is just beyond this room. When the Dickinson family returned to the homestead in 1855, Edward added on a small glass conservatory for Emily, giving her a sun-filled sanctuary where she could grow flowers and more exotic plants all year round. She could step directly into it from the library, creating this beautiful connection between two of the things that inspired her most, books and the natural world. Emily Dickinson never married, and throughout her writing, she often questioned the traditional expectations placed on a woman as wives and homemakers. Growing up under a strong and sometimes imposing father may have helped sharpen that fiercely independent side of her. Edward Dickinson took his role as head of the household very seriously. His word carried enormous authority and weight within the family, while Emily increasingly found her own ways to resist convention and live life on her own terms. This is the homestead parlor, actually a double room that gave the Dickinson family space for both everyday family life and more formal entertaining. Much of what we see today here was carefully recreated during the museum's major restoration project to bring the house closer to how it looked during Emily Dickinson's most important writing years. Emily's niece remembered the room as cool, dark, and somewhat formal, with large patterned wallpaper and an incredibly colorful floral carpet. Using those descriptions, the museum recreated the dramatic Brussels carpet that we see here today, filled with overflowing flowers and deep, rich colors, a beautiful contrast to the otherwise restrained room. The room also retains an original Italianate marble fireplace mantle, along with a square piano dating to 1852, details that help bring the Dickinson family's social life right back into focus. And hanging in the parlor is a reproduction of a rare childhood portrait of the three Dickinson siblings, painted around 1840. Emily is on the left, only about nine years old, giving us one of the few surviving glimpses of the poet long before she became the mysterious figure we know today. This was a space where the Dickinson family would read, write, and talk with one another. It was the main space in the house where the family could catch up and enjoy one another's company throughout the day. Some pieces that we're seeing throughout the house, too, were donated by the Dickinson show that is on Apple TV and other movies and TV shows that have been filmed here. This is a very iconic filming location for anyone capturing Emily Dickinson in her history. This may be the most important room inside the homestead. For roughly three decades, Emily Dickinson's bedroom became her most private refuge and the creative center of a remarkable body of work that would eventually include nearly 1,800 poems and hundreds of different letters. And what surprises me the most is just how intimate this room actually feels when you're inside of it. Tucked between the south and west facing windows is a replica of Emily's remarkably small writing table, positioned right where she would work, surrounded by natural light and views of the family grounds. The original table survives today at Harvard, while the room itself has been carefully restored to reflect how Emily would have been seeing it during her later years here. The climbing pink rose wallpaper was recreated from an original fragment discovered during the room's restoration, and her original mahogany sleigh bed still stands right here today. The same room where Emily would eventually die in 1886. The same bed that she was probably in when she also died. Powerful, to say the least. The white dress on display here is a replica of perhaps the most iconic piece of clothing associated with Emily. The original was actually a fairly ordinary cotton wrapper dress, also known as a house dress. It was just simple, breezy, easy, practical clothing that women wore at home. Although Emily's preference for white would later become part of the mystery surrounding her public image. So just imagine Emily in this dress with her chocolate wrappers sticking out that she's been writing on. And I'm sure there were stains all over her dress from all of the baking that she was always doing. And these are all the wonderful little details that make the room feel so much more personal and make you feel that much closer to who Emily actually was. And this is the original cast iron Franklin stove that provided the essential warmth that enabled Emily to write and sustain her reclusive, creative life during harsh New England winters. Her niece, Martha Dickinson, recalled the cozy atmosphere of the poet's room, smelling of fresh florals and warmed by the crackling stove. And standing inside this tiny sun-filled room, it's incredible to think that some of the most influential poetry in American literature history was quietly taking shape right here in this room. This is the Northwest bedroom, the room used by Emily's mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson. After suffering a stroke in 1875 that left her paralyzed, Emily's mother spent the final years of her life largely confined here in this room, with Emily and her sister Vinnie taking on much of her daily care. And one of the most interesting details is this room's location. It sits directly beside Emily's bedroom with an interior passageway connecting the two spaces, allowing Emily to easily move through between her private writing world and the responsibilities of caring for her mother. That passage had been closed over time, but it was carefully restored during the museum's recent restorations. The blue patterned wallpaper in here was also recreated from original fragments discovered in the room, while the original mantle and fireplace surround remain in place, helping return this deeply personal space to the way the Dickinson family would have known it. Emily famously wrote that caring for her mother in her older years reminded her of roles being reversed when her mother would care for her when she was a child. That's an interesting way of looking at it, and it must have been heartbreaking for her to see her mom slowly declining right here in this space. And now we're heading just across the lawn to the Evergreens, the remarkably preserved 1856 Italianate home built for Emily's older brother Austin and his new wife Susan at the time of their marriage. Purchased and built as a wedding gift for Emily's older brother and Sue, Emily's very dear and close friend. Designed by architect William Fennell Pratt, the Evergreens became a striking contrast to the homestead next door. And what makes this house so incredible today is just how much of the Dickinson family's world remains intact here. The house changed very little after the end of the 19th century, remaining in the hands of the Dickinson family members and their heirs, who intentionally preserved it rather than modernizing it. So that means that the only people to ever live in this home were Dickinsons. Today, it remains filled with Dickinson family furniture, artwork, books, household objects, and personal possessions, making the Evergreens a true Victorian time capsule, original to the Dickinson family. The Evergreens became a center of Amherst's social and cultural life, welcoming writers, artists, politicians, and intellectuals, including guests like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Emily herself spent many happy and social moments here with her family. She was a very frequent visitor, and she was especially close to Austin and Susan's children. She would bake here, visit with Sue and her brother, and she loved playing with the children throughout the home. And this house also brings us back to that more controversial part of the Dickinson family story that I mentioned earlier. Austin and Susan's marriage eventually deteriorated, and in 1882, Austin began a longtime affair with Mabel Loomis Todd. Mabel would later become one of the most important people involved in bringing Emily Dickinson's poetry to the public, transcribing and editing hundreds of poems after Emily's death and helping to publish the first major collections of her work. So the relationship unfolding between these two neighboring houses didn't just shape Emily Dickinson's private life. They would eventually ultimately shape the way the world first came to know her poetry, initiating her legacy. Stepping into the Evergreens, the contrast with the homestead is immediate. The entry hall introduces us to the richer, more elaborate Victorian world that Austin and Susan created here, with deep red walls, dark carved woodwork, gilded artwork, and the dramatic staircase rising through the center of the house. Austin and Susan were also passionate art collectors, and that love of art is apparent almost immediately as soon as you walk in their house. Large paintings and heavy gilt frames line the walls, giving visitors a sense of the cultured, fashionable home they created here and the social world that the Evergreens became known for in Amherst. It's one of those rare historic interiors where you don't have to picture so much what it looked like when the families lived here, because so much of the original Dickinson family world is still right here, preserved just as they saw it. The library is another incredible example of just how intact the Evergreens remains to this day. Unlike the homestead next door, this room still holds an extraordinary amount of the Dickinson family's original world, including furniture, books, more artwork, decorative objects, and furnishings that remained in the house with the family as it passed down through generations. Even details such as the lace curtains and Turkish rugs were documented in Susan Dickinson's 1895 inventory of the house, giving the museum an unusually clear picture of how this room was actually furnished during the family's life here. Emily spent many social moments here with Austin, Susan, and their circle of friends, making this house an important extension of the world just across the lawn at Homestead. The parlor here at the Evergreens is celebrated as an exceptionally rare, unaltered 19th century time capsule completely furnished with original items belonging to the family. The house was intentionally preserved by family members. This room is filled with Dickinson family furniture, original artwork, and furnishings that they used themselves. It's this extraordinary level of preservation that makes the Evergreens feel like such an authentic 19th century time capsule. Austin and Susan were passionate art collectors, as we've been mentioning, so it's no surprise to see so much art here on the walls. And the parlor became a showpiece for their art collection specifically. Large paintings and heavy gilded frames line all the walls while the marble fireplace is topped by a copy of Antonio Canova's famous Cupid and Psyche sculpture. Emily also spent many happy evenings here with her friends and family. One visitor later remembered her sitting at the piano improvising her own unusual melodies amid evenings filled with laughter and conversation. And the tour guide was even telling me when they had to remove some paintings to make sure that the walls behind were still intact, you could still see the exact gray area where the painting had originally hung. Meaning that these paintings had not been moved for years, creating an almost permanent little shadowed area on the walls where they hung. True to Victorian style, the room is packed with books, a piano, and various decorative objects collected from travels that highlighted the couple's worldly interests and financial status. Three large French doors open out into the home's Italianate piazza on the west side, blending formal indoor seating with views of the grounds. And because this room has been untouched, it offers us a rare and direct window into the 1856 Victorian era. You truly can see the Dickinson family around being social and enjoying one another's company. And I can definitely see how those kind of social events and moments really shaped Emily Dickinson and her writing. The dining room is another example of just how incredibly preserved this home is. The blued brocade patterned wallpaper is actually original from the 1880s, designed to imitate the look of woven fabric. So even the walls give us an authentic glimpses to the Dickinson's family's interior taste. And I also love to see the paper being ripped in the corners and peeling off the walls because it just, again, makes you feel like you've been transported to another time, reminding you that this all is original surrounding us. The large Second Empire sideboard, furnishings, and dining pieces throughout the room continue to evoke that time capsule authentic feel. At the center of the room, the table is set with blue Canton china for a family dinner. And while it feels relatively intimate here, the table could actually expand to seat as many as 14 guests. Very fitting for Austin and Susan's social world, who regularly entertain members of Amherst's social and intellectual circle. The dishes and decorative pieces were also part of the way that the Dickinson's expressed their sophisticated taste with objects reflecting the family's connection to a much wider world beyond Little Amherst. There's even this little window right here that connects into the kitchen, ensuring that dishes would be able to quickly move in and out as soon as they were plated. This room really makes you feel like time has simply been frozen. And I love little time capsule moments like these. They are why I love touring historic houses. The kitchen is another incredibly authentic space in the house because so much of its age is still visible. The worn floorboards and crumbling plaster are actually original to an older cottage that was incorporated into the Evergreens when the house was built in the 1850s. At the center is a large cast iron cook stove surrounded by the practical tools that kept this busy household running. The kitchen also included an ice box, work tables, call bells, utility rooms for washing and storage, and even a pass-through window that we saw earlier in the dining room. It connects directly to the dining room so each course could be presented for serving immediately. There was even running water in a washroom just off the kitchen while a central coal furnace helped heat the house. Modern conveniences that would have been considered luxuries in Amherst at the time. This preserved kitchen also shows us the other side, the domestic labor that was all happening behind the scenes to make a home like this possible. This is the maid's room at the Evergreens which directly highlights the lives of the working class individuals who maintained the Dickinson estate. And its simplicity is striking compared with the richly furnished bedrooms and parlors used by the Dickinson family. Austin and Susan depended on paid household labor to maintain a home of this size and support their busy social life. Many of the Dickinson's domestic workers came from immigrant and working class backgrounds and their labor was essential to everything happening in the more glamorous rooms downstairs. This room's location is also intentional. It's close to the nursery and right above the kitchen, making sure that the maid was within easy reach of the family and all of her household duties. And this was the nursery shared by Austin and Susan's three children, Ned, Martha, and their youngest son, Gilbert, or Gibb, as the family called him. Much of what you see here actually belonged to the Dickinson children, including the rocking horse and all of the games and toys we see throughout. There's also an early tricycle right here that Gibb reportedly rode all around Amherst. But the nursery eventually became closely associated with a very heartbreaking chapter in the Dickinson family history. In 1883, Gibb contracted typhoid fever and died at just eight years old. Emily adored her young nephew. It was reported that he was her absolute favorite of all her nieces and nephews. He had a very out there personality, so Emily connected to him in many different ways. And the night that he was dying, she came over across the way from the homestead to sit beside him throughout the night before he died. His loss devastated the entire family and Emily's own health declined noticeably afterwards. In a letter to Susan after his death, Emily wrote that she could still see him in the stairs and in everything that flies, capturing the energy and the spirit that the family remembered so vividly within this little boy. The story of Emily Dickinson didn't end with her death at the homestead in 1886. After Vinnie discovered the poems that Emily left behind, she first turned to Sue to help prepare them for publication. But when that process was moving too slowly, I mean, think about it, Sue lost her best friend, her marriage had collapsed, and her son died. So there was a lot going on. So Vinnie gave some of the work to Mabel Loomis Todd, the woman who had been having a long affair with Susan's husband, Emily's brother Austin. And suddenly, Emily's literary legacy became tangled in this very complicated relationship unfolding between the two houses. Mabel, along with writer helped bring Emily's poetry to the public beginning in 1890. But they also altered the punctuation, changed some rhymes, and added titles in an effort to make her unconventional work more acceptable to readers at the time. The bitterness between Susan's side of the family and Mabel eventually extended into the handling of Emily's manuscripts, leaving her work divided for generations. And also, when Austin died, he left a piece of the Evergreens for Mabel. In Lavinia, Emily and Austin's sister brought Mabel to court, which was very scandalous at the time, and brought all of the family rumors to a head right in public's eye. So that also made things complicated in terms of Emily's legacy. It wasn't until 1955 that a major scholarly edition finally brought her known poems together. And I think that makes preserving these two homes just even that much more meaningful. The homestead gives us the private world where Emily lived, thought, and created, while the Evergreens preserves the family relationships and complicated history that became inseparable from what happened to her work after she was gone. More than a century later, Emily Dickinson's voice has reached far beyond this quiet little corner of Amherst. But it's here, inside these two homes, where we can still remarkably get close to the woman behind the words and understand her that much more. I hope you enjoyed exploring the Emily Dickinson Museum with me today and that you now feel a little closer to understanding more about the elusive lady behind some of America's most iconic poetry. Let me know in the comments what inspired you the most from today's tour, whether it was Emily's bedroom and writing space, the preserved Victorian interiors of the Evergreens, the family history, or simply seeing the homes that shaped so much of Emily Dickinson's life and legacy. Thank you so much for being part of this journey with me. Remember to hit thumbs up to support historic preservation and also subscribe so you can join me on all of these amazing future house tours that I have in store for you. Until our next historic house tour next week, keep enjoying the beauty of vintage home, everyone. Au revoir.