Zebina

A riveting passage from the opening section of Jay Leyda’s Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson (1960), made even more riveting if you are able to imagine that the names here refer not to specific people but to the names themselves:

Ostracized Harriet and paralyzed Zebina—daughter and son of Luke Montague and Irene Dickinson (sister of ED’s grandfather)—occupied a peculiar but important place in Amherst life and in the lives of their Dickinson cousins. Neither brother nor sister married, yet both were near marriage (2 Aug. 30; 20 Nov. 39), and the few documentary scraps that touch them deepen rather than clarify their mystery. For example, what were “the peculiar circumstances” of the Dickinson family referred to by Zebina (12 Oct. 31)? What was Harriet’s sin that deprived her of the communion of the church for six months (16 Jan. 45)? [...] ED’s earliest extant letter (18 April 42) mentions Zebina’s “fit,” and he reappears throughout her correspondence. His abundant contributions of comedy and history to the local press (30 Oct. 50; 10 Oct. 56; 2 Jan. 60) gave her at least one literary cousin. The verbose Personal History of Zebina C. Montague was prepared for a reunion of the Class of ’32. [...] In Around a Village Green, Mary Adele Allen describes a visit to the Montagues in 1872, after Harriet broke her hip: “As I entered the house, Mr. Zebina sat in a gay-flowered dressing-gown, his bright eyes aglow.”