Category: Millicent Todd Bingham

Text Message

11/13/2024

Many of my recent posts have involved "Bolts of Melody," Millicent Todd Bingham's 1945 publication of previously unpublished poems by Emily Dickinson – if you missed any of the posts, you can find them HERE.

I found an online copy of the book, and yes, the entire book is there – see the pic at the right, it shows where you flip through the pages – BUT – whoever posted this misspelled Dickinson’s last name, and they list the publication date as 1931 (the book was published in 1945). Aside from these (and any other issues), the book is there to enjoy!

To access the book, click HERE.

Past and Prologue

11/4/2024

I’ve been writing about the various early publications of Emily Dickinson’s work with a focus on Millicent Todd Bingham’s 1945 edition, “Bolts of Melody.”

The publication of “Bolts of Melody” brought Dickinson’s published works to about 90% of the poet’s complete oeuvre. However, no single edition contained all of the poems; that came later in 1955 when Thomas Johnson edited “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.”

In 1945, Bingham made a deliberate decision to include all the fragmentary works in her possession in “Bolts of Melody,” and she wrote this:

“Not all the poems belong in the body of the book. (This volume) contains those which are incomplete, fragmentary, or trivial. It is as true to them as of all her poems that though Emily attached importance to form, she had her own rules. Some of her finished poems are rough, rugged, awkward. But that she intended. In some of these unfinished poems, however, not only is the idea obscured by the form; the idea itself is obscure – not sharp enough to pierce through the words. It may be questioned whether such groping should be published at all. Many of them will undoubtedly not appear in a final edition. But the fact remains that through some of the most confused passages shines a thought so searching that it should be preserved whatever the setting.”

In “Bolts of Melody,” there is a section titled “Poems Incomplete or Unfinished” with 23 poems. There is also a section called “Fragments” with 14 entries. The final section of the book is “Poems Personal and Occasional” with 30 poems, and then on page 333, there is one last poem, “If I should cease to bring a rose.” The poem is accompanied by this note: “This poem was chosen by Mrs. Todd (Bingham’s mother and first editor of Dickinson’s poetry) in the early nineties (i.e., the 1890s) and laid aside for eventual use as the prologue of a final series of Emily’s poems.”

Editor in Chiefest

10/29/2024

In 1890, 1891, and 1896, Mabel Loomis Todd published three volumes of poems by Dickinson – the three books represented about 25% of Dickinson’s work.

Then, in 1898 – due to a lawsuit between Todd and Lavinia Dickinson – she locked all of the remaining poems in her possession in a wooden chest (about 600-plus poems), and she did not open it until 1929. These poems were then published in 1945 in “Bolts of Melody.”

In 1929, when she and her daughter Millicent Todd Bingham opened the chest, Bingham described what was before her like this:

“The manuscripts of the poems were of two sorts: those Emily herself had worked over, and those which she had not touched since they were first captured in words – the ‘esoteric sips of sacramental wine.’ She had begun to copy her poems and to destroy the rough drafts. She wrote them in ink on sheets of letter paper measuring five by eight inches. When she had filled five or six double sheets, she would make two pin-holes in the left margin and insert a piece of string, tying the sheets together in neat little fascicle which Lavinia called ‘volumes.’”

She continued later with this information:

“Although Emily seems to have considered many of these poems finished, as I have said, they were far from ready for the printer. The arrangement, verse form, and in particular the punctuation were not clearly indicated. In some poems dashes are sprinkled about so lavishly that they give to the page the appearance of a thread on which the phrases are strung. At times the dashes seem so integral a part of the text that an editor is tempted to perpetuate them, lest without them the words should fall apart.”

And here’s where the work really got complicated:

“In a good many poems she supplied alternative words, phrases, or lines, little crosses indicating where the final choice should be inserted. The editor is obliged to retrace Emily’s steps, to follow the method she herself used, trying one word after another before deciding which best fits the particular setting.”

Editor Bingham mentioned that even Dickinson found the task of editing difficult as evidenced by these lines the poet wrote:

“I hesitate which word to take, as I can take but few, and each must be the chiefest; but recall that Earth’s most graphic transaction is placed within a syllable, nay, even a gaze.”

I’ll take a look at one particular poem tomorrow.

Decisions, Decisions

10/28/2024

Shortly after Emily Dickinson died in 1886, her sister Lavinia Dickinson turned to their sister-in-law Susan Dickinson to explore the possibilities of publishing some of Emily’s poetry.

She grew frustrated with Susan’s slow progress, so she asked her brother’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd to help. Mabel agreed and enlisted the help of Dickinson’s friend and mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

As a result, a series of books were published in 1890, 1891, and 1896. These three volumes accounted for about 25% of Dickinson’s work – but then all work came to a halt.

In her 1945 publication “Bolts of Melody,” Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham wrote of Dickinson’s poetry, “Given to my mother by Lavinia Dickinson to publish, (but the work) halted on their way to the press by an imbroglio unrelated to literature….”

Right: Mabel Loomis Todd

Far right: Lavinia Dickinson

The lawsuit involved a dispute over a piece of land that Austin Dickinson had promised to give to Mabel Todd, but Lavinia contested the transfer after Austin's death. This led to the court case that Lavinia ultimately won – which caused a major rift between the Dickinson family and Mabel Todd. Todd then withheld her collection of the unpublished poems she had in her possession. She locked them in a camphor wood chest.

So why did Todd decide to open that chest in 1929?

I can’t find any info at this point to explain exactly why she made that choice.

* In one article, I found this statement, that “(Lavinia) won the lawsuit but Todd refused to continue the project during Lavinia's lifetime.” However, Lavinia Dickinson died in 1899, and Todd opened the chest some 30 years later – so I don’t think Lavinia’s death had anything to do with the decision.

* Did Todd suffer from some malady where she knew she might be approaching the end of her life? Well, in 1929 she was 73 years old, so maybe age did play a part in her decision, but it was not due to any terminal illness. She died three years later of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 14, 1932.

* In another article I found this: “Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the poet's niece, inherited the poet's manuscripts from her mother Susan, except for those in Todd's possession. Between 1913 and 1937, she produced six books of Emily's poetry and two biographies, occasionally with assistance from Alfred Leete Hampton. Todd, upset at the rival publications and assuming only she had legal rights to Emily's works, released an updated edition of her compilation in 1931.”

Of course, any book published AFTER 1929 could not have been a factor in Todd’s decision to open that chest. 15 years earlier, in 1914, Bianchi published “The Single Hound,” a volume of poems by Dickinson so I doubt that was on Todd’s mind; however, in 1928 Bianchi published “Further Poems by Emily Dickinson Withheld from Publication by Her Sister Lavinia” – so it is very likely that this publication prompted Todd to act.

Whatever the reason, we know that Todd and her daughter unlocked that chest in 1929, and sixteen years later, all of those previously unpublished poems were finally in print.

Treasure Chest

10/26/2024

What IF Emily Dickinson’s family had burned all of her letters and poetry following her death – as was the practice in the late 1800s? We would never have even heard of her name.

But in 1890, Dickinson’s brother’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, with help from Dickinson’s friend and mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, published a first edition of Dickinson’s work. It included 116 poems.

Dickinson wrote 1,789 poems (according to Franklin’s count in his 1998 edition of her poetry), so that first volume included 6.5% of her writings.

By 1896, Todd had published two more volumes of Dickinson’s poetry, so that brought the total publication of her work up to 25%.

Then in 1898, due to a bitter lawsuit between Dickinson’s sister Lavinia and Mabel Loomis over a tract of land, Todd locked up all of the remaining poems and letters she had in her possession in a camphor-wood chest – and there they remained until she and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham unlocked the chest in 1929.

“What I might find within,” wrote Bingham in the introduction to her 1945 book “Bolts of Melody,” “I did not know.”

“I looked and caught my breath. For there, before my eyes, were quantities of Emily’s poems. How could they have kept quiet so long? With such inherent vitality it seemed as if they must have shouted, lying there in the dark all these years.”

At that point, Todd and Bingham began deciphering the works, and they published over 600 “new poems of Emily Dickinson” in 1945:

“Like the dormant life-germ of a plant these verses, buried for sixty years, are at last reaching light and air in full vitality.”

More on “Bolts of Melody” tomorrow.

Look Foreword

10/25/2024

Who was Mark Van Doren?

Does the name sound familiar to you?

From Wikipedia: “Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers….”

The Wikipedia article is HERE.

The Poetry Foundation mentions that “At Columbia, he influenced a number of student writers, including John Berryman, Richard Howard, Allen Ginsberg, John Hollander, and Louis Simpson,” but their article does not mention Jack Kerouac – supposedly, Kerouac earned “an A in Van Doren's Shakespeare course, and decided in consequence to quit the Columbia football team and take up literature instead." The Poetry Foundation article is HERE.

So why all this info on Mark Van Doren?

Van Doren wrote the Foreword in Millicent Todd Bingham’s 1945 book “Bolts of Melody, New Poems of Emily Dickinson” – a volume which, 60 years after the poet’s death, included 600-plus poems which had never been published before.

Van Doren began his Foreword, “No reader of student of Emily Dickinson needs to be told that the appearance of this book is an event of large importance.” Later in the opening paragraph he states that the release of this book “is news on so impressive a scale that one may well hesitate to improvise a statement of its value.”

In his preface to Bingham’s introduction to the book, he also discusses the “task” of editing Dickinson, describing it as both “a tease and a torment”:

“The materials, the manuscripts, are either chaotic or elusive; sometimes they require so many decisions by the editor as to constitute him, provided his choices are wise, a poet himself; sometimes they seem to be clearer than they are, so that days of reflection will be necessary before a comma stays in or goes out.”

I’ll be discussing this in further detail in the coming days – especially with the poem “Two butterflies went out at noon.”

Back to Mark Van Doren. He has one other odd connection to popular culture: his son Charles was an American writer and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. In 1959 he testified before the United States Congress that he had been given the correct answers by the producers of the NBC quiz show “Twenty-One.” He was played by Ralph Fiennes in the 1994 movie “Quiz Show.”

Title Search

10/24/2024

Recently I acquired a copy of “Bolts of Melody,” a 1945 publication of 600-plus poems by Dickinson published for the first time – 59 years after the poet’s death (click HERE for info).

Before the book arrived, I figured the title of the book must have come from a line from a Dickinson poem, but I couldn’t find it.

On the online Dickinson archive, I ran a search for the word “bolt,” and there were 21 entries representing seven different poems. Within those entries, I searched for “melody,” and nothing popped up.

I then ran a search on “melody.” 43 entries popped up representing seventeen different poems (plus one additional poem that does not include the word “melody” but was later given the title “Melodies Unheard”). Within those entries I searched for the word “bolt,” and nothing popped up.

Click the images below and to the right to enlarge.

So for a time, I wasn’t sure where editor Millicent Todd Bingham got the title, “Bolts of Melody.”

Then, when the book showed up, on a page just after the book’s foreword and introduction, there was the poem “I would not paint a picture” with its final line “With Bolts – of Melody!”

I have no idea why the online archive failed to find that connection between “bolts” and “melody,” but – mystery solved!

LOL – having figured out that matter, I then moved on to the next mystery: the first section of poems in Bingham’s book is entitled, “The far theatricals of day.”

Using the online archive, I determined that that line comes from Dickinson’s poem “Like mighty footlights burned the red.” However, that particular poem is NOT included in Bingham’s book.

Hmm. Now why would she have done that?

Book Keeping

10/23/2024

My wife and I have returned from our trip to LA. Just prior to the trip, I found a first edition copy of “Bolts of Melody,” a 1945 publication of 600-plus poems by Dickinson published for the first time (YES, you read that correctly: in 1945, 600-plus poems by Dickinson were published for the very first time some 59 years after the poet’s death).

The book arrived just before we departed, so I was able to peruse it on the plane trip out west and back. Oddly enough, prior to our trip, I checked the online archive for any poem by Dickinson with both the words “bolts” and “melody,” and nothing popped up – so I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

Today, I thought I’d just show a few pics of the book, and make a few comments.

The book itself is very nondescript, and came with no book jacket. The spine is somewhat faded, but the title of the book is showing somewhat.

Inside the front cover is a small sticker, “The Personal Book Shop, Boston.” I found a list on Wikipedia of “booksellers in Boston,” HERE, but that shop is not listed.

I also found someone who collects labels from “Booksellers of New England,” HERE, and “The Personal Book Shop, Boston” is there.

The book is listed as being published by Mabel Loomis Todd (who was married to Amherst College Astronomy professor David Peck Todd and who had an affair with Emily Dickinson’s brother Austin) and Mabel’s daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham. Interestingly, this book was published in 1945, and Mabel Loomis Todd died in 1932 – so daughter Millicent included her mother’s name because she had helped start the project and had deciphered some of these poems.

On the page opposite the title page, Bingham lists the titles in their overall project to bring Dickinson’s poems and letters to the public. In 1931, Bingham and her mother updated an 1894 volume of Dickinson’s letters. Then, in 1945 Bingham re-released poems previously published along with the story of “the literary debut of Emily Dickinson” – entitled “Ancestors’ Brocades” – AND in the very same year, she published these 600-plus previously unpublished poems.

A statement on the reverse side of the title page notes that the book was “manufactured in strict conformity with Government regulations for saving paper.” Hmm…I assume this has something to do with some regulation related to the war-time era?

Following the foreward and the book’s introduction, there appears a poem just prior to the book’s “Part One.” Take a look at the final line of that poem. More on that tomorrow.

Just FYI: I did a little more research into that book store in Boston, and I found this info...from a 1921 publication:

"How should a business celebrate an important anniversary such as its 40th? Ask Jack Campbell, who founded The Personal Book Shop, a tiny room on the basement level at 33 Newbury St.. Boston. Before long the personal service extended to Brookline, Cambridge, and Newton, and by 1956 when the firm went completely out of the retail business, Jack expanding to 21 branches had become a wholesaler with an inventory of more than a million books. He decided to celebrate not with balloons & champagne, not with pen and pencil sets to all customers, not with a gigantic anniversary sale. No, rather by a check for $40 to each employee with Jack paying the additional $10 to the government for taxes."

The link to that article is HERE.

To see what is currently occupying the address of that bookstore in Boston, click HERE.

Family Feud

10/13/2024

Emily Dickinson died in 1886, and it wasn’t until 1955 that the first “complete” edition of her poetry was published, edited by Thomas Johnson. That volume was later updated in 1998 by R. W. Franklin and again in 2016 by Cristanne Miller. But what came before all of this?

In a nutshell:

* Dickinson’s poems are discovered after her death, and sister Lavinia enlisted the help of her sister-in-law Susan to get them published.

* Unhappy with the slow pace, Lavinia turned to her brother’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd (LOL – just like the youth of today, she was proficient with the use of the day’s new technology – the typewriter).

* As a result, Dickisnon’s poetry was spread among three households: some with Lavinia Dickinson, some with Susan Dickinson, and the rest with Mabel Loomis Todd.

* With the help of Dickisnn’s friend Thomas Wentworth HIgginson, Todd published the first edition of Dickinson’s poetry in 1890.

* The second and third editions were published in 1891 and 1896. Todd also published an edition of Dickinson’s letters in 1894.

* However, all efforts to publish more of Dickinson’s poetry came to a halt in 1898 due to a “painful” lawsuit between Lavinia Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd. The suit was not over the poetry, though; it was all about a small parcel of land Austin Dickinson (who had died in 1895) had promised to Mabel Todd and her husband.

* Angered by the fact that Lavinia Dickinson won the lawsuit, Mabel Loomis Todd locked all of the remaining poetry she had in her possession in a chest – and it wasn’t opened for more than forty years.

* In the meantime, between 1914 and 1935, other volumes of Dickinson’s poetry were published by Emily’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson (and just as an FYI: I need to research more about Hampson because I’m not sure who he was exactly – although I know that upon Martha Dickinson Bianchi's death in 1943, the Hampsons inherited Susan and Austin Dickinson's house, the Evergreens).

* In the meantime, Mabel Loomis Todd and her daughter Millicent Todd Bingham unlocked that chest of poetry, and they worked on a volume entitled “Bolts of Melody” which included 600 previously unpublished poems. Mabel died in 1932, but daughter Millicent saw the project through, and the volume was published in 1945 – under both names: Mabel Loomis Todd and Millicent Todd Bingham.

More on this at a later date; for now, more info is found HERE and HERE.