Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [150]
To sue is a form of therapy in the initial stage because the rhetoric of advocacy offers the balm of self-justification. This kind of rhetoric makes it impossible to imagine another or nuanced point of view, as opposed positions get set in stone. Seven witnesses were lined up on Mabel’s side, two of them leading citizens of Amherst. They said that Lavinia had voiced her ‘slander’ to Mr Hills, in the hearing of his housekeeper Miss Seelye, and also to the respected headmistress Mary Stearns, who employed Mabel to teach art at her school. Mrs Stearns backed Mabel staunchly.
In the Amherst Slander Case, plaintiff and defendant were now reversed. Over the winter of 1897-8 the court decided to hear Mrs Todd’s action against Miss Dickinson before it heard the Dickinson action against Mrs Todd. The slander case came up on 28 February 1898, in the Superior Court of Hampshire County in Northampton. Presiding was Justice John Hopkins of Millbury. Partisan heat, fuelled by gossip, ran high and the Connecticut Valley was divided into opposed camps: Toddites versus Dickinsonites. The court was packed: no case had ever excited such interest, given the standing of the adversaries and the seriousness of the charges. Lavinia was present; Mabel not - for reasons unknown. Her husband represented her so far as the court allowed.
Mabel’s non-appearance calls up her vulnerability to reputation. The two related cases were going to be about her reputation. Austin’s part in their affair was not to be discussed and nor was his reputation ever disparaged even though he was the guiltier party in so far as he had damaged and split his family. And though overtly David Todd supported Mabel, he too was safe, his reputation preserved with his wife’s help. Mabel, then, had to stand alone to face judgement.
Mr Hills should have been a powerful witness in her favour but, pleading sick, he sent instead his housekeeper. Miss Seelye sported an opulent sealskin coat on the witness stand. Where did she get it? Her employer gave it to her, she said. There were hoots of laughter. A report of her employer’s private opinion echoed through the crowd: the Todds are ‘leeches, leeches, leeches’.
Once Lavinia’s adviser, and then Mabel’s man, Mr Hills saw fit to retreat. ‘He liked me’, Mabel believed, but when the time came he hesitated to appear on her side. Maggie’s deposition had done its work. A prominent banker could not be seen to side with an adulteress.
The same applied to a prominent lawyer. Though the records list Mr Bumpus of Boston as one of Mrs Todd’s counsel, he saw fit to fade from her scene: urgent business called him to Washington, which prevented his appearing for Mrs Todd at the trial.
A local lawyer, Wolcott Hamlin, replaced Mr Bumpus. He argued the importance of the absent Hills and made a plea for a continuance at a later date. Lavinia’s lawyers objected that Mr Hills was only one of seven witnesses and that he had not acted on their offer two days earlier to take a deposition in the presence of a doctor.
Judge Hopkins overruled the plaintiff ’s motion. Mrs Todd was called, but as she failed to appear her case was dropped.
The land trial opened on the next day, 1 March, in the same Northampton court with the same judge.
Lavinia, aged sixty-five, was seated between Maggie Maher and her friend Miss Buffum. Mrs Stearns was seated beside Mabel. Each opponent had co-opted a schoolmistress as her support. Called to the witness stand, Lavinia gave her age as ‘about sixty’. She wore yellow shoes and an ancient dark blue flannel dress with a belt, which she kept for best. The dress was pleated in the plain style of Emily’s white dress.
‘How is your health?’
‘My health is perfect.’ Putting back a long mourning veil,