On May 15, 1886, after several days of worsening symptoms, Emily Dickinson died at the age of 55. Austin wrote in his diary that “the day was awful … she ceased to breathe that terrible breathing just before the [afternoon] whistle sounded for six.”
The popular version of the phrase was first used in 1740 by the author and bookseller Robert Dodsley, in his Chronicle of the Kings of England, where he described Henry II’s words as follows: “O wretched Man that I am, who shall deliver me from this turbulent Priest?”