21: Carlo
Emily Dickinson’s Beloved Dog
Born: 1849, Possibly near Hadley, Massachusetts, United States of America
Died: January 1866, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America
Carlo was gifted to the young author by her father in the Autumn of 1849 or 1850. While the exact reason cannot be known for certain, it is thought that Emily’s dad gifted Emily the Newfoundland as someone to accompany her on her walks through the woods near Amherst.
Carlo may have been born to Newfoundland breeders and family friends of the Dickinsons. Emily chose his name after a dog named Carlo in Jane Eyre the famous novel by Charlotte Brontë, which she read around the same time she received her companion.
Emily was extremely fond of her dog, and wrote of him often in letters to friends and some poems as well. In one letter to a friend, Emily wrote:
“Gracie, do you know that I believe that the first to come and greet me when I go to heaven will be this dear, faithful old friend Carlo?"
After Carlo died, the already introverted Emily became even more of a recluse, spending the rest of her life in mourning for her beloved pet. She was only thirty-two herself when he died and lived to be fifty-five, spending the last twenty-three years of her life without her beloved companion. Carlo was around seventeen years old when he died, and a few months after he passed, Emily paid tribute to her Newfie with the following poem:
Time is a test of trouble
But not a remedy –
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady.
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The Who, The What, and The When by Matt Lamothe
Sources:
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/carlo-1849-1866-dog
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/roomitem/carlo
https://www.thenewfoundland.org/dickenson.html
https://www.lindaborromeo.com/post/2015/09/18/the-mirror-world-of-emily-dickinson-and-carlo