Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [194]
Jackson did not appear to disagree and continued to beckon Millicent to join forces, appealing to her as a scholar with the poet’s interests at heart. Walter Bingham’s notes after a meeting with Jackson indicate a verbal agreement: ‘Harvard did not intend to stand in Mrs Bingham’s way.’
Harvard, though, was in a position to set off a bomb if she would not yield - the bomb designed for her by the Hampsons. Montague was the mover behind the scenes, never permitting Harvard (and Jackson, representing Harvard) to forget what was owing to him: Mrs Bingham’s hoard. Unknown to the Binghams, Jackson was pressured to change his diplomatic approach for a more confrontational one, at the same time as Montague required Harvard to serve an injunction against Emily Dickinson’s Home, scheduled for publication in the autumn of 1950. Harper’s executives were Harvard men disinclined to take legal action against their college. They therefore suspended publication of Home until the way was clear.
Walter Bingham then asked Harvard for an assurance that they would not object to the book.
Backed by an attorney on 11 October, Jackson stipulated that the Todd collection must come to Harvard, and that while he awaited the handover of the original manuscripts, he wished to make photostats for the newly appointed editor of a complete edition of Dickinson poems. Nothing was said about Home, but the Binghams still understood that there was to be a ‘trade-off ’.
Early in 1951 Jackson arranged to finalise the photostats in Washington, where the Binghams now lived (near where Millicent had lived as a child with her Loomis grandparents47). In preparation for his arrival Millicent sat up until one in the morning to put her negative photostats of Dickinson’s poems in order. Next day Jackson collected a suitcase full of these negatives from the Binghams’ apartment, 1661 Crescent Place, and took them to the Folger Library to print the negatives. Jackson was there all day, and when he emerged finally at midnight he left behind the prints, parcelled and ready for mailing. He then returned the suitcase of negatives to the Binghams.
At that hour Millicent was asleep; her husband opened the door.
As the two stood face to face, Jackson chose this moment, man to man, to break the news: he can’t keep his side of the trade-off.
Silence as the two men confront each other, a verbal high noon at midnight.
Silence. And then, watching Walter Bingham ‘hit the ceiling’, Jackson aims a second shot: a prepared statement for Bingham’s wife to sign. Millicent is to give up her claim. She is to hand over all Dickinson manuscripts. He holds this in front of Bingham’s eyes.
Bingham, too kind to be a fighter, struggles to comprehend what is happening. ‘You mean to say that you come and get these photostats without which your editor cannot do his work, and then tell me that you can’t keep your promise?’
‘Oh, I did not think you would take it that way.’ Jackson ducks. He can’t explain his switch from temperate negotiator to the aggressor of Montague’s drama.
‘My wife will never sign.’ Pained but defiant, Bingham shuts the door on Jackson.
Next morning he staggered to the Folger, retrieved the parcel of positive photostats before it was mailed and put it, unopened, in Millicent’s closet. Shock is too tame a word for what he conveyed to his wife. She recounted this stand-off, including dialogue, in a typescript reminiscence of 1955.
Millicent was not to be bullied. Her adversaries had misread her character, mistaking civility for weakness. She thought, had they been straight they could have had the manuscripts. Montague’s course, forced on