Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [233]
224 ‘Dear heart . . .’: MLT to WAD from Lucerne (3 Aug 1885). A&M, 232.
224 ‘Dear Boy’: L1000.
225 ED’s refusal to sign the deed: Evident when DPT was cross-questioned in a trial over MLT’s claim on Dickinson land twelve years later. Under pressure he admitted that the Todds had not bought their plot (as Mabel gave out), but had it deeded to them as a gift ‘after Miss Emily died’. See ch. 13, below.
225 ‘You will look after Mother?’: L999.
225 ‘Why should we censure Othello . . .’: L1016. Dated by MLT, and included in her first selection of ED letters, 1894.
226 ‘client’ note: Yale: 496C, box 94.
226 ‘I will come . . .’: Yale. Not in A&M.
226 ‘Thistles’: L1033. Matthew 7.16.
227 ‘The tie between us . . .’: (c. late 1885). L1024.
227 ‘Emerging . . .’: Ibid.
227 ‘solace’: (c. early 1886). L1029 and L1030.
227 ‘Because I would not stop for Death’: (c. late 1862). J712/Fr479.
227 ‘the great intrusion of Death’: (autumn 1884). L940.
227 ‘I do not think . . .’: L668.
227 drugstore record of prescriptions: Several other Dickinsons lived in the vicinity, and I’ve inferred that the patient who appears most frequently and is called simply ‘Dickinson’ or ‘Miss Dickinson’ is ED, since all other Dickinsons are indicated by full name, ‘Mrs’, or initials.
227 Dr Bigelow’s copy of Dictionary of Medicine: Jones Library, Amherst.
228 MLT in black in the church choir: Diary (16 May 1886). Yale: microfilm, reel 1.
228 ‘utterly’; ‘cried frantically’: MLT, diary (18 May 1886). Yale: microfilm, reel 1.
228 MLT perceptive and prescient: Comment by Lennie Goodings at Virago.
228 Poe’s tale: ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.
228 MLT in black and haggard: A neighbour, Mrs Jameson, noticed this.
228 ‘Don’t say a word’: (n.d.). A&M.
228 meadow: Described by MTB in her notes for an autobiography. Sewall, i, appendix II, 296.
228 Painted red: It was red with green trimmings. AB, 4. The house still stands, though it’s been moved in toto from the southern to the northern side of the street, the side nearer to the Homestead. The house is no longer visible from Main Street, surrounded now by mature trees, and the Dickinson meadow is filled with houses.
229 ‘a little house . . .’: Yale - one of the three TS mss in the Yale archive, synthesised by Sewall, i, ‘Scurrilous but True’, appendix II, 285.
229 ménage à trois: A&M, 242. Thanks to Keith Carradine for the alert.
229 ‘with the witness’: WAD’s diary (1886). Yale: box 102, f.247. Siamon Gordon noted his use of the legal word.
229 Mabel’s diary for 1886: Yale: microfilm, reel 1.
229 ‘more than any other man’: Interview with MTB (1927). Sewall, i, appendix II.
229 ‘a sort of unspoken sympathy’: MLT Papers (6 July 1885). Yale: 496C. Not in A&M.
229 ‘clear the track’: WAD to MLT (12 July 1886). A&M, 250.
229 DPT humming an aria: Peter Gay, 94.
229 outside stair: A&M, 242.
230 ‘awful omni-presence’; ‘the somewhat terrible center . . .’: A few fragments of autobiography (from massive collection). Yale. Transcribed by Sewall, i, appendix II, 297-8.
230 ‘the quaint little girl . . .’: (c. late Sept 1882). L769. MTB was then aged two. The date suggests that the child accompanied Mabel’s first visit to the Homestead, and that though ED did not appear to Mabel, she was face to face with the child. 2
30 tassels: ‘25 August 1927’, autobiographical TSS. Yale: box 56, f.6. After typing, MTB adds in pencil that someone must have told her this detail, i.e. she questions her memory, but the dangling, the bending to a small child who’s often about the house, rings true. Who could have told her? Mamma never saw ED.
10: LADY MACBETH OF AMHERST
231 ‘Mabel Loomis Dickinson’: Yale: 496E, series I, box 4, f.57. The envelope is undated.
231 ‘presentiment’: (2 Nov 1885). A&M, 244.
232 farewell letter: (5 June). Yale. Not in A&M.
232 An angel: (c. spring 1885). A&M, 204.
232 ‘pure white’: (14 June 1886). A&M, 247.
234 MLT’s report of what WAD told her of his marriage: Journals, V