Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [112]
Austin was considerate towards David Todd, as David to him - no sign of friction where it might be expected. The Todds moved into the Lincoln house near the bottom of Lessey Street, the neighbouring house to the west of The Evergreens that Austin calls in his diary the third house or ‘3dh’ (as distinct from the ‘other house’ to the east of The Evergreens). Convenient, of course, for Austin’s assignations, yet the proximity to his family would have provided further scenes for observation.
While Mabel was abroad she’d turned over the idea of building a house of her own.
‘Dear heart, sweet-heart,’ she appealed to Austin. ‘Oh! I do so hope things will be arranged for me . . . I am really thinking a good deal about a house - one or two requirements being so necessary.’ It’s a hint about their need for a permanent place to meet.
Austin agreed to deed a plot of Dickinson land to the Todds, but to do so he required signatures from his sisters. Since his father had died intestate in a country where there is no law of primogeniture, these were co-heirs. Austin wished his sisters to oblige his mistress and could count on compliance from Vinnie. Emily alone held out, as she’d promised her nephew in a staunch letter of August 1885 while he was away at Lake Placid, in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.
‘Dear Boy,’ she started, ‘I dared not trust my own Voice among your speechless Mountains, and so I took your Mother’s, which mars no Majesty - So you find no treason in Earth or Heaven.’ Emily is at one with Ned’s mother in wanting to protect his future inheritance. ‘No treason’ must be allowed to mar his fragile peace of mind, for Ned had suffered another seizure on 9 June. Emily repeats the assurance that he will not encounter treason from her: ‘You never will, My Ned’. And then, a third time, she promises to hold the fort, positioned as she is to defend his interests:
And ever be sure of me, Lad -
Fondly,
Aunt Emily.
Emily’s refusal to sign the deed was not known outside the family and this act remained unnoticed by biographers. But it’s vital to see her great moral courage, like her acts of moral courage at college, as she took a stand against her brother. The necessity for this stand means that her brother had urged her to give the land to his mistress. We can’t know the degree of pressure she felt, but she did not yield even when her health declined. Her sympathy with Sue, known to her nephew at least, is evident in a request he made before he went away.
‘You will look after Mother?’ he asked.
Emily shared this with Sue. Nothing so sweet, she said, ‘as the last words of your Boy’.
At the same time she maintained her loyalty to Austin in her Shakespearean riddles. They cast him as a man of power whose passionate nature makes him susceptible to manipulation. Antony came to mind, then her favourite, Othello, ‘who loved not wisely but too well’. The next month, September 1885, Emily pencilled one line to Mabel: ‘Why should we censure Othello [for strangling his wife], when the . . . Lover says, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me”?’
It’s hard to believe that Emily sent this solely for her own satisfaction. Her riddles go beyond verbal ingenuity. Their emotional energy goes beyond a game. She meant Mabel to feel the hit, assuming an adversary with the intelligence to do so. To enter into a duel implies a compliment of sorts to an opponent who is in on the code, and up to it. Mabel, alert to attention from the recluse, kept every letter.
As Emily sank over the next ten months, Austin’s visits were rather infrequent. According to his diary, he sat with Emily every ten days or two weeks during the last months of her life. This is oddly sparse for a brother living next door, and we may wonder if Austin was displeased by Emily’s refusal to sign