Guests in Eden



Women's Club. She was a member of the original committee for the founding of the Keats-Shelley memorial in Rome. She was a trustee of the Amherst Academy Fund of which her great­ grandfather was the first founder, and from which Amherst College eventually developed.

Her death occurred in New York City on December 21, 1943, and her funeral was held there at the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, the service being conducted by the Rector, the Reverend Dr. Tabor, S.S.J.E. The interment was at Wildwood Cemetery, Amherst, the services being read by the Reverend Roy Pearson, Minister of the First Congregational Church of Amherst.

ALFRED LEETE HAMPSON


MEMORIAL ADDRESS

Madame Bianchi was the last of a distinguished line of Dickinsons, and this she never forgot. Nor should we. No other family has made so enduring a contribution to the life of this town. It is appropriate that on this May 15th, the fifty­ ninth anniversary of the death of Emily Dickinson, the most famous member of that family, we should gather here to voice our sense of indebtedness, and express the personal regard in which we held its representative in our own generation.

They were all positive personalities, those Dickinsons: always colorful, sometimes eccentric, ardent in their likes and dislikes, assertive in their convictions, indefatigable and independent in public service. Emily’s composing some fifteen hundred poems and showing them to no one, not even her nearest of kin, was in line with the family tradition. Their contributions to the life and fame of Amherst were varied and lasting. They were builders. This Wildwood Cemetery was largely Austin’s idea, largely his work. Let me read to you the epitaph Upon his tombstone:




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Transcription and commentary copyright 2000 by
Martha Nell Smith, all rights reserved.
Maintained by Lara Vetter <lvetter@uncc.edu>
Last updated on March 10, 2008

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