Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [189]
The Hampsons trusted him. They wanted ‘Emily’ safe for all time in a first-class institution, and required an Emily Room for the memorabilia to be transferred from the Emily Room at The Evergreens.
One weekend in mid-September 1949 McCarthy offered to stay at The Evergreens to care for Hampson when his wife was called away to nurse her father in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. McCarthy took this chance to explore the house and discovered nine letters from Helen Hunt Jackson to Emily Dickinson on a shelf in the cupboard in Mattie’s room. He was thrilled by the unprecedented fact the letters revealed: the poet’s agreement to publication in the case of ‘Success’. There were boxes of papers in the room, which he pushed towards the bed, out of the way of the flaking ceiling. In another room he spotted Mattie’s diaries. To a librarian the state of the house was a nightmare. It was also exciting, for what unknown treasure might be lurking on other shelves, or in the trunk in the Tower Room?
His fears of a leak or fire had persuaded the Hampsons to let him take ‘Emily’ under his protection: the manuscripts of her poems had been housed in the Rosenbach vault, while McCarthy himself stood guard over Dickinson’s letters in his New York apartment, number 2A at 310 Lexington Avenue.
All through the past year McCarthy had been brooding over the letters like Tulkinghorn43 in his turret, the master of secrets he alone knows. While the city slept he unlocked ‘Emily’ and let her out. He understood more after visits to The Evergreens in September and October 1949, as his letters to the Hampsons relate, encouraging Mary to comb the house herself: the more he and Mary could find, the more valuable the collection will be. After the first search McCarthy came armed with a borrowed flashlight. It dived into trunks and darted into dingy corners, lighting up the untouched leavings of the dead. Peering into Mattie’s closet on 31 October 1949 he came upon the missing letters of Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross from the 1820s. During another foray he discovered four letters from Emily’s beloved aunt Lavinia Norcross to her sister, Emily’s mother, in May 1833 after Lavinia Dickinson was born.
Back in New York City, McCarthy stayed up late, sifting and staring. ‘I have had wonderful but long night hours,’ he confided to the Hampsons. ‘I shall have the alarm clock tomorrow ring at a quarter before 5!’
Come morning, he set about ordering and boxing ‘Emily’ in preparation for a sale. He told the Hampsons that he was doing this for free. ‘This is something I wish to do for Emily and Martha. It is a debt I owe them for their contribution of great happiness to my life.’ Rosenbach thinks him ‘crazy’. In this mood of selfless generosity, McCarthy had obtained the company’s right to act as exclusive dealer for the Dickinson collection. This was in January 1949. The firm was to get 10 per cent of the sale price, and in the meantime they gave the Hampsons - in urgent need of funds - an advance of $5000. McCarthy recommended that the sellers offer control of future publication to whoever bought the papers.
‘We shall, of course, get as much for the collection as possible,’ McCarthy reassured the Hampsons (to whom he’d dispatched a gift of crystal tears44 for the house). ‘I believe there is no way you could get more.’
McCarthy’s next move was very odd. He offered the lifetime collection of what he knew to be a great American poet to a Washington library of Byzantine studies. Naturally, since Dickinson doesn’t fit a Byzantine collection, Dumbarton Oaks declined to have her. But