An English doctor's first tour of the Old
Country
by Jack Neely
I'd driven by and around the Tennessee School for the Deaf for years, admired
the old white brick building on the top of the hill in the old Island Home
neighborhoodbut had never been past the guardhouse on the actual grounds.
Last week, an invitation to see the school and the old house on the hill
was part of why I skipped a staff meeting and took a deadline-day morning
off.
The company, which sounded fascinating, was at least as big a temptation
as the house. One member of the party was TSD's superintendent, Alan Mealka,
the one who lives in that old house on the hill. One was E. Conley Akins,
the aged historian of TSD, the one who knows more about that house on the
hill than anyone alivehe knows about the place because he was a deaf
student here, himself, when the school moved to this place in 1924. And the
one member of the party who was new to town was Dr. Dickinson Cowan, a
gynecologist, well known as a specialist in in-vitro fertilization.
Dr. Cowan is an Englishman. He grew up in Surrey and lives in Cambridge.
He speaks like an Englishman, carries himself like an Englishman, spells
the name Perez with the letter zed. He was here Friday because
his ancestors were Knoxvillians, and one of them built this house in 1846.
Dr. Cowan has become fascinated with Tennessee history without ever having
seen Tennessee and has learned Knoxville history more thoroughly than most
Knoxvillians know it.
The Dickinson in his name is the same Dickinson in Dickinson's
Island, where Island Home Airport is; the same Dickinson in the name
Perez Dickinson, the Knoxville business tycoon and philanthropist who named
Island Home because he built the house on the hill above the island; and
the same Dickinson in the name of Emily Dickinson, the poet.
Inside the house, hanging on a wall in the foyer, is a large framed portrait
of Emily's first cousin, once removed, Pereza man of gravity, a grey-haired
Victorian in a high collar. On the cardboard back, is some historical background
about the house and its builder. And, about two-thirds of the way down, the
statement, Emily Dickinson wrote some of her poetry in this house.
Here on TSD's campus, the story that Emily Dickinson visited here is a matter
of faith, hand-signed from generation to generation. That inscription has
been there for years. No one seems to recall who wrote it. But the handwriting,
in what looks like magic marker on corrugated cardboard, is in a modern,
rounded stylesome of the i's are even dotted with small circles. It's
clearly not written by someone who knew from memory.
Literary historians doubt that Emily ever strayed this far from home. There's
no mention of it in contemporary letters. Still, the legend is an old one.
Mr. Akin, TSD's historian, recalls first hearing the Emily Dickinson legend
in 1924 as the school was moving to its present campus.
Here's what we do know. Amherst-born Perez Dickinson came to Knoxville at
17 with a couple of sisters, one year before their cousin Emily was born.
One sister married James Hervey Cowan, a successful merchant who ran a store
on Gay Street. They named one of their sons Perez Dickinson Cowan.
Early in the Civil War, Uncle Perez was arrested as a Union sympathizer;
it was a matter of some indignation back in Massachusetts "that he should
endure such treatment when he has always been so ready to uphold their 'peculiar
tradition,'" presumably slavery. (His old neighbors apparently assumed Perez
owned 200 slaves just so he'd fit in here.) In spite of his status as a
slaveholder. The Dickinsons and Cowans eventually fled to ride out the war
in Perez's childhood home, Amherst, Massachusetts, where Emily lived.
Among them was Perez Dickinson Cowan, a rare 20-year-old who hadn't enlisted
on either side. Emily grew especially fond of her Knoxville-raised cousin,
whom she called "Peter." He surprised Massachusetts folks; most southern
boys were "wild asses who were always ready to strike out in some unexpected
direction," an acquaintance there recalledbut Cowan was "more like
a girl than a boy, a paragon of refinement, demeanor, morality, and religious
devotion."
This Knoxvillian bound for the ministry was sometimes left in charge of the
Dickinson household when Emily's father was out of town. Cowan graduated
from Amherst himself in 1866, then came back to Tennessee, a frocked Presbyterian
minister based in Jonesborough, editing a religious magazine published in
Knoxville. He and his cousin Emily maintained a poetic correspondence. The
death of his 3-year-old daughter, Margie McClung Cowan, compelled Emily to
write, "It may have been she came to show you Immortality. Her startling
little flight would imply she did." Cowan remained here until 1879, when
a church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, drafted him.
Emily died in 1886, having rarely left the house where she was born. Some
insist flatly that it's impossible for her ever to have been here.
But it's tough to prove a negative. The train trip would have taken about
a day each way. The Dickinsons and Cowans were wealthy; who's to say they
couldn't have slipped cousin Emily down for a weekend at cousin Perez's guest
house?
Again, there's no evidence. But the fact that the story's so old offers at
least a moment's pause. See, in 1924, when Mr. Akin recalls hearing it, few
would have recognized Emily Dickinson's name. Teachers didn't assign her
work; more than half of her poems remained unpublished. Her reputation as
one of America's greatest poets wasn't solid until years later. Why would
people make up a story about her? Few knew enough to care.
After Emily died, her sister burned many of her papers. However, Dr. Cowan
says his ancestor Perez Dickinson Cowan's diary, intact but still unavailable
to scholars, may hold more secrets about Emily.
Perez Cowan's strain of the family settled up north. But Dr. Dickinson Cowan
is English. He is, at least, until Americans in New York or elsewhere make
a remark like, "That's a cute accent you have. Where are you from?"
In those cases, Dr. Cowan's favorite response is "New Jersey." That's where
he was born, in the 1940s, before his family moved to England.
Dr. Cowan proved his genealogy well enough to get his First Families of Tennessee
certificate. It hangs in his bathroom at home in Cambridge. But he never
saw Tennessee until last Thursday. Only recently has this gynecologist discovered
genealogy. He intends to write a book about his Knoxville ancestors. Walking
around the old Presbyterian churchyard downtown, he recognizes several ancestors.
They might even recognize him. Balding, with heavy eyebrows, Dr. Cowan is
a sturdy man, but he bears a passing resemblance to his great-grandfather,
the slight, studious boy who left Knoxville during the Civil War.
"That's the dilemma of us international people," he says. "We don't have
roots, but we're always looking for them." He's found some of them here.
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