Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [146]
Hotel Claremont,
Southwest Harbor.
27 August 1896
My dear Aunt:
. . . For the sake of my Grand-Father’s good name, and for the peace of my Aunt, who shun[n]ed all vulgarity, it makes me shudder to think of having the family name dragged before an unwilling public, and by a woman, who has brought nothing but a sword into the family. You would be held responsible naturally for any such performance, and would do more to injure any just fame that may belong to Aunt Emily, simply from a literary point of view, than any thing that could be done. Excuse my warmth on the subject, but as I am the only man left to represent generations of strong, forceful men who have preceded me, I feel I have the right to make my protest . . .
Very faithfully,
Edward Dickinson
Mabel Todd returned to Amherst in October, bringing Vinnie a gift of Japanese pottery. Vinnie received her with the usual kiss. Not a word to Mabel revealed the bomb about to explode in her face. Soon after, in the same month, Poems: Third Series came out. Vinnie’s waiting was now over. A few weeks later, when there was nothing more for the editor to do, Lavinia left town on a rare visit to Boston while Hammond & Field filed the Bill of Complaint on 16 November 1896. The Todds, it said, had obtained their new slice of Dickinson land by ‘misrepresentation and fraud’.
Mr Bumpus of Boston helped Mabel to prepare a Defendants’ Answer, registered a month later, on 14 December. She denied having made a request that no house be built on the land in question, and denied too that Lavinia was uninformed about the purpose of Mr Spaulding’s visit. These denials ring true. Even more convincing was her story about the fate of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Mabel Todd knew how to put together a coherent story of daunting challenges and eventual triumph, a story to outdo the pathos of Lavinia’s defrauding. It told of ‘ten’ years toil over poems and letters, for which Todd had received a paltry $200.32
The years she’d given to Dickinson had prevented her writing many ‘lucrative’ pieces, Todd declared. Miss Dickinson would urge her on, saying that Emily’s friends were dying and soon there’d be none to care whether the poems were published. Her Defendant’s Answer insisted that the editing had required discrimination, and it stressed David Todd’s part in transcribing poems in type, to reinforce the claim that Austin Dickinson had wished to deed the Todds a second plot of land as compensation for their work. He ‘had knowledge of the work, and complained because his sister failed to give Mrs Todd proper compensation. He agreed with Mrs Todd to give the latter the property in dispute, but before the deed could be executed Mr Dickinson died. In the autumn of that year [1895] the plaintiff [Lavinia] expressed to Mrs Todd acquiescence in her brother’s purpose and agreed that the land should be conveyed to Mrs Todd.’ The secrecy had been Miss Dickinson’s wish.
The Todds had a strong case. Lavinia’s allegations were, in the main, untrue. Mr Hills, who was so furious with Lavinia that he wished Mrs Todd to ‘wallop’ her, revealed that Lavinia had debated the land transfer in the autumn of 1895, before she signed the deed. (Testimonies conflict as to what Mr Hills had advised: so long as he favoured Mrs Todd, he claimed to have left the decision to Lavinia. She claimed to the contrary, that he’d warned her never to give land away to the Todds who, he said, were ‘leeches, leeches, leeches’.) Miss Seelye, his housekeeper, and her sister supported Mr Hills by reporting an unguarded comment from Maggie Maher to the effect that Miss Lavinia ‘knew perfectly well what she was doing when she signed the deed’.
Better still, Mr Spaulding stood ready to testify that he had conducted himself with legal propriety. This was never in question, and his evidence, given with a lawyer’s acumen, would make him a