Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [127]
On the very day of Austin’s disgruntled return from his Western journey, Mabel picked up the poems and from then on her commitment grew, as her diary indicates.
30 November 1887: Copied two or three more of Emily’s poems, & took them over to Vinnie’s.
22 January 1888: Vinnie gave me more poems.
15 February 1888: Wrote a number of Emily’s poems on the typewriter. At two went to Vinnie’s, & had a lovely visit until 3.30.
11 March 1888: Typed a lot of Emily’s poems.
‘No publisher will attempt to read poems in Emily’s own peculiar handwriting, much less judge them,’ Mabel advised Vinnie. ‘I should have to copy them all.’
Her know-how, her commercial approach to publication, was more to Vinnie’s mind than Susan’s leaning towards private publication. The latter option would cost a lot, and Austin was unlikely to contribute.
Susan continued to read the poems to guests at The Evergreens. Since Vinnie had never participated in her sister-in-law’s salon, Susan did not invite her now. Alone in the Homestead, Vinnie felt excluded. Why should Susan have the privilege of selecting what poems to read, without consulting the legal heir to the manuscripts?
This adversarial thought, dropping into Vinnie’s mind, did its bit to change her plan.
In 1888 she retrieved the manuscripts she had placed in The Evergreens and turned them over to Mabel Todd, who proceeded to transcribe hundreds of poems. Mabel worked at first on the borrowed Hammond typewriter, then on a more primitive ‘World’ machine that cost her $15. She had to turn a pointer manually to each letter, and then stamp the letter (capitals only) on to paper through an inked rubber sheet. It was laborious, exhausting. In the spring of 1888 Vinnie sent trusty Maggie Maher to stand in for the untrained and sometimes absent servant at The Dell. For Maggie it was thankless work. Where the Dickinson sisters had been accustomed to work alongside Maggie - Emily baking, Vinnie housekeeping - Mrs Todd did not value domestic work and offered Maggie nothing for her efforts. And again it did not occur to Mabel that signs of adultery - the closed door to the bedroom upstairs - would jar on a servant, in the same way as it never occurred to her how that door, with Austin Dickinson behind it, jarred on Millicent, aged eight, when she came home from school.
During October 1888 Grandma Wilder came to stay, making assignations at The Dell impossible. On 16th Mabel’s diary, careful as ever to avoid Austin’s name in any intimate context, mentions two assignations on the same Tuesday at the Homestead: a ‘call’ at twelve, at Vinnie’s, and ‘and one at five, up stairs’.
What never ceased to worry Mabel was Susan’s power to damage her reputation. During 1888 Mabel, it will be recalled, looked rather wasted, none too fertile for a woman trying to conceive. Yet however much snubs preyed on her spirits, however unfair it was that Austin’s gender and social pre-eminence should exempt him from blame, and however frustrating that Austin did nothing further to squash his wife, Mabel was never tempted to end the affair. It meant more than sexual loyalty, much as she wanted that; its hold on her had to do with a dream derived from her father who cared for poetry and the life of the mind. The word ‘presentiment’, and the aspirational resonance it carried for her, had lacked a focus until she encountered the Dickinsons. At the heart of that family beat a destiny she had to grasp - she’d heard it instantly in the voice of Susan Dickinson reading the poetry aloud, as though she were its legitimate channel. Todd ventured to become the legitimate channel when she decided to copy hundreds of poems.
She had the staying power and energy to carry through a challenge of this magnitude. It required exceptional patience to pore over a difficult hand and unfamiliar usage where nouns, say, might appear as verbs. Mabel refused to be damped by Higginson