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On 10 December they discussed this prospect until the early hours of the morning. Neither saw it as infidelity. There were two considerations for David Todd. He had been disappointed with the donkey work assigned to him by Amherst College. Restless with ambition, he meant to use his technological inventiveness, particularly in the developing field of photography, to lead research on the sun. The first act Austin had performed for Mabel had been to exercise his power to David Todd’s advantage. A letter to Todd in Washington bombards him with patronage, including support for Todd’s wish to absent himself from teaching in term-time for the purpose of research. At the same time the patron allows himself a sly dig.

Amherst Oct 13 [18]82

My dear Todd,

Why don’t you speak, and say something! Where are you! What are you about!

Are you going to California! And when! If not, why not! And what then!

Trustee meeting yesterday - and you go on to the new catalogue Ass[is]t[ant] Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Observatory.

Is that better!

My October greetings to Mrs Todd, and with them assure her from me that the Comet is only a vain show got up by imps . . . The Astronomy is all very well as gymnastics for the imagination but we come home to Moses and the prophets.

Pleasant remembrance to Mrs Wilder [Mabel’s grandmother] also and a straight look for Millicent.

Cordially

Wm A Dickinson

Austin had not only secured Todd’s promotion but also a raise to $1000 a year, no great sum - less than the $1500 some part-time teachers received at nearby Smith College - but a distinct improvement on what Todd was earning. So Todd was not displeased to find a benefactor in love with his wife. He believed that his own benefit was his wife’s prime motive in taking the romance further. It did not escape him that Austin had more power at Amherst College ‘than all the Trustees put together’. There was no end to possibilities and promotions in the treasurer’s gift.

As Todd always came back to Mabel, so Mabel, he trusted, would always come back to him. He saw in her plans a mirror of his own exploits. What Todd did not see was the intensity of attachment in Austin Dickinson. David Todd never saw the passionate letters, only those written for his benefit in Austin’s hearty voice. In reality, Austin and Mabel were about to consummate an alternative marriage. With Austin, Mabel could repudiate ephemeral love, returning in her own way to her parents’ ethos. The depth of emotion she evoked in Austin compensated for her husband’s lightweight attachments, an inexpressible humiliation visited on the early years of her marriage. Since she couldn’t trust a ‘sweetly unmoral’ spouse, she felt justified in taking a lover who was a moral being. Part of Austin Dickinson’s appeal was his high-toned fidelity. To switch his marital attachment from Susan to herself was an unprecedented act on his part.

Austin might not have contemplated adultery had it not been for Gib’s death. Shattered, his spirit close to death, he came to see physical love as a comfort when home was comfortless. His wife had withdrawn into grief. This blanked-out figure in black did not appear to him a woman he had once loved; she had become something bound up with death, against whom he had to pit himself if he were to live.

So, on the evening of 13 December 1883 Austin, aged fifty-four (the same age as Mabel’s father), and Mabel, aged twenty-seven, met in the dining room at the other house; they shut the door; and in front of the fire they fell on a black horsehair sofa. Emily, Vinnie and the servant Maggie kept out of the way until the lovers opened the door and left. On his way home Austin noticed the grass between the houses appeared as green as in spring. In the deepest winter of his being life sprang up in all its promise, while back at The Evergreens his wife appeared a ‘great Black Moghul’.21 The label served to obliterate Sue’s local identity, and denied her bereft state, for though ‘Black’ was