Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [1]
DAVID PECK TODD: Professor of astronomy at Amherst College and philandering husband of Mabel Todd.
EDWARD DICKINSON: Formidable father of Austin, Emily and Vinnie.
MRS DICKINSON: Emily Norcross Dickinson, wife of the above.
COUSIN ZEBINA MONTAGUE: An invalid of sorts living in seclusion with his sister Harriet, almost opposite the Dickinsons.
MARY LYON: Founder of Mount Holyoke College in 1836 and still presiding in 1847 when Emily Dickinson arrived.
JANE HUMPHREY: Schoolmistress. Emily Dickinson’s beloved friend.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN NEWTON: Young lawyer in Edward Dickinson’s office and first mentor to the poet after college.
MARTHA (MAT) GILBERT: Elder sister of Susan Gilbert. Confidential girlhood friend of Emily Dickinson.
KATE SCOTT TURNER: A young widow, one-time school-friend of Susan Dickinson.
SAMUEL (SAM) BOWLES: Editor of the Springfield Republican, who published some of the poet’s most daring works in the early 1860s.
MARY BOWLES: Unhappy, invalidish wife of the above, alternately teased and comforted by Emily Dickinson.
LOUISA (LOO) AND FRANCES (FANNY) NORCROSS: Cousins and intimates of Emily Dickinson.
JAMES JACKSON: Distinguished Boston physician, consulted in difficult cases. Emily Dickinson saw him when she was twenty years old.
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON: Boston man of letters, sympathetic to aspiring women. Co-edited the first volumes of Dickinson’s poems.
HELEN HUNT JACKSON: Amherst schoolfellow and supporter of Emily Dickinson. Well-known writer on the wrongs of Native Americans.
JUDGE OTIS PHILLIPS LORD: Friend of the poet’s father, who became a suitor of Emily Dickinson.
EDWARD (NED) DICKINSON: elder son of Austin and Susan Dickinson, nephew to Emily Dickinson.
MARTHA (MATTIE) DICKINSON (MADAME BIANCHI): only daughter of Austin and Susan Dickinson. Loyal to mother and ‘Aunt Emily’.
MAGGIE MAHER: Servant to the Dickinson sisters.
MILLICENT TODD BINGHAM: Studious only child of David and Mabel Todd. Inherited her mother’s chest of Dickinson Papers.
ALFRED LEETE HAMPSON: Companion to the poet’s niece Mattie Dickinson Bianchi. Heir of the Dickinson Papers. Married Mary Landis.
WILLIAM (BILL) MCCARTHY: Agent for the Dickinson Papers.
GILBERT MONTAGUE: Donor of the Dickinson Papers to Harvard.
WILLIAM JACKSON: Curator of the Houghton Library, who acquired the bulk of the Dickinson Papers.
NOTE ON TYPOGRAPHY AND PUNCTUATION
Since Dickinson’s poems were almost all unpublished in her lifetime, and since she did not authorise the forms in which the ten printed poems appeared, there can be no secure typography and punctuation. Only a facsimile edition or scanning could include the variety of Dickinson’s dashes. Since no typographical equivalent exists, I resort to a long dash for poetry, so as to register a signal more significant than an ordinary dash between the words.
Dickinson’s subjective capitalisation is preserved in all quotations but not her lineation where it is impossible to be certain whether a line ends or runs on at the edge of her manuscript page.
Dates of Dickinson’s writings are approximate, the cumulative but uncertain fruit of scholarship since the late 1880s.
I: A POET NEXT DOOR
In 1882 Austin Dickinson, in his fifties, fell in love with a young faculty wife. Twenty-six years before, Austin had married Susan Gilbert, the friend of his sister. The Evergreens was built to accommodate the married pair next door to the family home on Main Street in the country town of Amherst in western Massachusetts. By the 1880s Austin was the leading figure in the community; townsfolk called him ‘the Squire’, a standing he inherited from his father. No one was more respected than the tall Squire when he appeared in his black hat at a straight angle over his eyes. There was a spring to his stride, led by a cane, along Main Street. His mouth turned down and the expression on his lined face was austere. A devout member of the church,