Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [158]
‘After Ned’s death there were tragic battles between the two houses,’ said a gossip, Mary Lee Hall, who lived in Amherst with her mother. ‘I was called to Miss Vinnie’s many times to quiet her nerves, and help her recover from Sue’s verbal blows.’
Keen to be in on the kill and darting a beady eye about for blame, Miss Hall lighted on Sue Dickinson. This animus went back to an invitation to The Evergreens when Mary Lee Hall was not amused by the Dickinsons’ mimicry of the worthies of the town, including President Seelye. How very disrespectful. With a mind too small to accommodate more than one point of view, and that the most proper, Miss Hall decided Sue and Mattie must be drunk. Escorted by her brother, she took her leave determined never to enter that house again.
In years to come Miss Hall frisked about Mabel Todd with offerings of partisan poison. Sue had been a ‘blind alley’ who gave Emily ‘very little nourishment’, and Lavinia nothing but a ‘loyal drudge’. Miss Hall guessed at the deep, unhealed stab Mabel had sustained when Lavinia, her long-time ally, unaccountably crossed to the Dickinson camp. The balm Miss Hall offered was a witchlike concoction: it was Sue alone who was responsible for the trial, even though she had kept out of the case and never appeared in court. Mabel’s defeat should be traced to Sue’s wicked machinations. So Miss Hall said. Her vehemence made up for lack of evidence and fuelled Mabel’s resentment, going back to 1883 when the young Mabel, with superior love to offer, could not see why she could not take over Susan’s husband and remain still Susan’s best pet and the happy, trilling songbird of The Evergreens.
Immediately after the trial, Lavinia had been elated. She had looked ten years younger, townsfolk noticed when they called to congratulate her. Then two pillars of her existence collapsed. First the disaster of Ned’s death. Then, following the failure of the Todds’ appeal, the foreseeable sequel: Mabel Todd’s refusal to go on editing Emily Dickinson.
Ned’s gentle and considerate nature had made him the most lovable of the Dickinsons; he’d been his mother’s mainstay. He had stood by Aunt Lavinia throughout the trial. This had allowed her to feel she had done right in crossing the chasm between the houses. Had Ned lived, he would have continued, if not her champion, at least her kin. Ned’s death did not open Susan’s arms to her sister-in-law. Their grief could not be shared. Both had stressed Ned severely in different ways, and Sue in her wretchedness did not find it in her to forgive.
After Mabel Todd put an end to editing, Vinnie was left with a cache of poems remaining at the Homestead. This is how it happened that at the end of 1898 Vinnie approached Mary Lee Hall with the idea of replacing Mabel Todd. Since Vinnie had looked on Mabel as little more than a copyist, she deluded herself that all she needed was another. Fixed in her courtroom assertion that Emily’s poems had made their way on their own legs, Lavinia failed to appreciate Mabel Todd’s editorial feat and the public impact of her readings. Miss Hall had none of her predecessor’s gifts. It’s not surprising that nothing came of this. After the adverse review of Poems: Third Series in August 1896, and the subsequent protest from Ned, Lavinia worried whether it might ‘hurt Emily’ to publish her again. There was no one now to support the venture, and no healing the breach with Mabel Todd. After the lawsuit Lavinia tore out the title page and introduction of her copy of Poems: Third Series, bearing Todd’s name.
‘Did Miss Vinnie ever talk to you about the suit against my mother?’ the Todds’ daughter Millicent asked Mary Lee Hall thirty-six years after the court upheld Vinnie’s complaint of fraud. ‘Why did she sue Mamma for that piece of land - after all that Mamma had done for her?’ Millicent still could not fathom this action. ‘Do you know why she did it? What was the real motive? I have wondered and wondered about it. Though it has warped my life, I have never fully understood it.’
Why .