Lives Like Loaded Guns_ Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds - Lyndall Gordon [92]
Susan had come into all of this. Since Susan had no money of her own and her father had been bankrupt, Mabel fancied a simplified scenario: Susan, she assumed, had lifted herself from low origins to the top of Amherst society. Every time Susan’s rise crossed her mind her origins sank lower in Mabel’s fancy until she came to believe that Mr Gilbert had been a despicable stable-keeper. Mabel both admired and envied Susan’s rise. Her welcome into the Dickinson family had been secured by her friendship with Austin’s extraordinary sister, and this was still alive. Mabel could sense it in the way Sue spoke, the exhilaration of her bond with the unknown poet. When Susan exhibited some of the gems amongst her collection of poems Mabel was quick to value what Susan had been privileged to see in all its rarity, and this privilege put Susan on a different plane from the society women Mabel had imitated and courted. Her wish for social acceptance found in the Dickinson family a surprisingly unobstructed and fertile place.
Here Mabel’s ‘presentiment’ put down its roots. A fancy became a possibility, then intention, to seed herself in Susan’s place. It was not long before an alien plant reared against the pale New England sky. One of the tendrils it put out curled around the heart of Sue’s grown-up son. Physically, it was a weak heart, having to withstand the stress of seizures. One took place on 24 May 1882 just before Ned turned twenty-one. His mother cheered him with a party, much to his father’s annoyance. Austin frowned on the disruption. He loathed jollities. Ned, turning away from his father’s down-turned mouth, took Mabel riding.
Sue then invited the Todds to join the Dickinsons in the country during their summer vacation in Shutesbury. On 26 July, at five in the morning, Austin drove Mabel and Millicent in his carriage, leaning over to converse above the child who sat speechless between them. At Shutesbury Susan organised a picnic for young ‘philosophers’. The scene recomposed in a studio photograph shows Mabel as a figurine shepherdess in white with bunched panniers, a tucked bodice buttoned to a round collar and sleeves to her elbows. An enormous white hat shadows her face. Susan sits at the centre of her party, her dark hair drawn back, rounded, maternal. Her arms are folded around Gib with his angel face and fair locks. Her face, in profile, is turned towards her children. On her left is Mattie, fresh-faced in a round hat with a fan on her lap, while Ned lies on the ground at her feet. Both have racquets. David Todd is natty in a straw boater pulled over his eyes.
At another of Sue’s picnics, Mabel and Austin, watching the sun set, drew close until, for a second, she brushed against him. In late August, the obliging Mabel sang in The Evergreens’ drawing room. The family sat rapt, even ‘the Cynic Austin’ (as Emily called him). On the evening of 8 September he sat with Mabel on the loggia until late. It was a small but significant step to acknowledge their feelings on 11 September as they lingered in the rain, on the glistening sidewalk outside the gate.
In November, while David Todd was away at the Lick Observatory in California - he was recording the Transit of Venus and sporting with the wife of a colleague - Mabel was in and out of The Evergreens, almost one of the family. Susan kept a bed made up for her and Mattie, turning sixteen, had piano lessons with Mabel, who exulted in a letter to David that the Dickinsons had ‘thrown open to me their home, their horses, & their hearts with a truly touching and magnificent generosity’.
As quietly as she had lived, Mrs Dickinson died next door and Mabel attended the funeral at the invitation of Austin and Lavinia (Emily did not appear). Her participation in their loss brought her closer to Austin. Touching hands and looking deep into the other’s eyes, they would mark that November as their private anniversary.
Intensity was sharpened by a degree of danger. So far, her husband’s partiality for Mabel had pleased Susan. After the funeral, when