Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [143]
Vinnie waved the offer away: ‘I guess we won’t have any trade of that kind.’ She was not to be wheedled into accepting help in lieu of land.
All that autumn, Mabel came back to Lavinia with bonding ideas for their future folded in her endearing gaze. The only way to avoid Mabel would be to put up a pre-emptive barrier, as Susan and her children had done, not speaking, not seeing, and this Vinnie in her loneliness was not yet prepared to do. She needed Mabel Todd to edit a third volume of poems, a prospective delight after the recognition the first volumes had excited. How congenial it was to share once more in the selection. By now Higginson had bowed out, which meant that in the autumn of 1895 Vinnie depended on Todd alone.
With this volume nearing completion, Mabel Todd pressed her to do ‘a lovely thing’: to give the Todds the strip of the meadow, two hundred and ninety by fifty-four feet, that Austin and David had measured. It was to be a secret (in the same way as the editing of Dickinson had been a secret, to avoid opposition). One night, after dark so as to avoid detection, Vinnie took her turn at inspecting the site. Then, on about 29 December, Vinnie agreed to yield. Two days later Mabel Todd, hard-working and punctual as ever, delivered her typescript of Poems: Third Series to Dickinson’s publishers.
The Todds were about to depart for Japan for six to seven months. In February 1896 Mabel was busy with the immense preparation needed for David’s expeditions. As the March date for departure drew near, it was time for Lavinia to actually sign over the land. Mabel was taking no chance that, left to herself, Lavinia might back off once more.
There was another obstacle. Lavinia had a business adviser in place of Austin, another rather volatile gentleman, Dwight Hills, for twenty-four years President of the First National Bank of Amherst. Aware of the pressure on Lavinia to hand over land, he had warned her not to sign any paper without his knowledge. Hills spoke as a protector and Lavinia, rumour said, warmed to this attention from a mature bachelor who lived with his mother. In her youth Lavinia had been a demonstrative young woman with long black hair tinged with red. It was still long and luxurious, and sometimes she shook it out and aired it, combing it with her fingers to the tips. She would rather not annoy Mr Hills with the ‘lovely thing’ she would do for Mabel Todd.
Mabel could not afford to wait. She had to forestall the possibility that, at any moment, Lavinia might consult her protector who was certain to intervene. Another danger was Susan Dickinson, who would be angry, very angry, should she hear of a second transfer of land. Lavinia would be subject to family pressure. For these reasons Mabel Todd could not risk leaving for Japan with the deed unsigned.
Anger threatened Lavinia on three sides but at this point her first consideration still had to be the safety of the new volume of unpublished poems. In January and early February 1896, with Mabel’s preface due, it was vital to satisfy her.
Mabel readied the deed of transfer. She had often handled these as Austin’s unofficial assistant. (Trustees of the college would have been surprised to learn how much she knew of their business.) She had kept a spare blank and filled it in. Who might witness Lavinia’s signature? Since the transaction was to remain secret this had to be done privately, not in a lawyer’s office, and with a witness of unquestionable credentials, preferably from out of town. Mabel consulted a prominent lawyer, Everett C. Bumpus of Tremont Street, Boston.30 Bumpus, in his early fifties, already had an eye to the animated and elegantly costumed Mrs Todd. They had met during the winter she spent in Boston in 1889-90, and when they’d met again for a meal in September 1895, a month after Austin’s death, Mabel perceived