Category: Millicent Todd Bingham

Deviltry

2/7/2026

Yesterday’s post included a June 1891 journal entry of Mabel Loomis Todd’s about friction between Lavinia Dickinson, Emily ‘s sister, and Susan Dickinson, Emily’s sister-in-law.

In her book Ancestors’ Brocades, The Debut of Emiliy Dickinson, Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham gave additional reports about the rift. In one example, Bingham shared a July 1891 diary page written by Eudocia Converse Flynt, wife of William Norcross Flynt, after a visit with Lavinia:

Ther. 60 Fri. July 31, 1891 Wea.

A perfect June day so cool & bright. Wm. & I left at 12.20 for Amherst — he rode over the hills for Peacocks!! & I visited with Lavinia Dickinson very enjoyable afternoon — heard the history of Emily’s poems — & (Sue’s deviltry)! — Austin came to the station, & visited me — strange family — original. . . .

Dear Diary

2/6/2026

Many days I share with my wife the subject of my daily Dickinson posts. She has little interest, but she tolerates my obsession. It keeps me off the streets, and – LOL – the “other woman” in my life is deceased, so the “affair” has been completely one-sided.

Anyway, one day recently, she asked if Mable Loomis Todd had made any money from her work as the first editor of Dickinson’s poems, and yes, she did – but Dickinson’s sister Lavinia actually received all the royalty payments. Todd received whatever Lavinia Dickinson chose to pay her for her work.

Here’s the story surrounding the early, posthumous publications of Dickinson’s poetry:

Emily died in 1886. Lavinia discovered the trove of poems in her room. She initially turned to her sister-in-law Susan to manage the editing and to arrange for publication. However, Lavinia thought Susan was moving much too slowly, so she turned to Mabel Loomis Todd for help. Todd was the wife of an Amherst College astronomy professor David Peck Todd and the mistress of Austin Dickinson, Susan’s husband. Needless to say, the already sour relationship between Susan and Mabel turned further south, plus Susan grew angry with Lavinia for approaching Mabel for help. Todd got the job done, though, and the first collection of poems was published in November 1890.

Todd worked with Dickinson's mentor and friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson to prepare the first volume of poems, and together they worked to ready a second volume in the series in 1891.

Check out this entry from Todd’s journal dated June 16, 1891:

It is ninety in the shade this morning. ... I have looked over some more of Emily’s poems, although all the selection has been made for the second volume. The success of the first volume is, I suppose, really phenomenal for poetry. The seventh edition is either preparing or already out this week — I have not heard from Mr. Niles for two or three weeks. And separate poems I have sent to St. Nicholas, the Independent, Life, The Christian Register, and the Youth's Companion, where they have been accepted with avidity and paid for. Vinnie has reaped a harvest, and she will have another large check July first from the publisher. Mr. Niles is very gentlemanly and generous. The second volume will appear October first.

With all her delight and satisfaction in the success and appreciation of the book, poor Vinnie has had a great deal of pain through Susan. Neither she nor Mattie (Susan’s daughter Martha, Emily’s niece) has spoken to her since last September when they first learned of the coming volume. And Susan sent two poems which she had of Emily’s to the Independent, and kept the money for them. . . . The "great big, black Mogul” has also crowned her atrocities by telling various people (so that it is current gossip everywhere) that Emily bequeathed all her writings to her; that Vinnie borrowed the poems, had them surreptitiously copied and published — and she is trying to gain sympathy for this supposed wrongl

It is a miserable business. . . .”

Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham reported in her book “Ancestors’ Brocades, “Lavinia’s suffering at the hands of her sister-in-law was a permanent if intermittent state.”

Shock and Awe

2/3/2026

Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson published the first volume of Dickinson’s poems in November of 1890.1890.

Just over one month later a review appeared in The Christian Review. In her book “Ancestors’ Brocades, the Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson,” Todd’s daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, discussed the review:

“In The Christian Register of December 18, 1890, appeared a notice some sentences of which so delighted Lavinia (Emily Dickinson’s sister) that I tried to discover the author. The sentences referred to were, “Seldom have ‘precious things discovered late’ a greater preciousness than these. They seem an argument for immortality .... There are words ‘so full of subtile flame,’ (sic) phrases so packed with strange- ness, force, suggestion, poems so tremulous with tenderness or so bent under the burden of their mystery, that they shock us with almost intolerable delight or awe.”

I noticed that in these remarks, two phrases fell within quotation marks, “precious things discovered late” and “so full of subtile flame,” so I wondered if the author had quoted lines from any of the poems within the newly published volume of Dickinson. I did a bit of exploration to find out, and no – the quoted remarks are not from Dickinson.

“Precious things discovered late” – the opening line in this effusive review – was written by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and these words open his poem “The Arrival.” Click HERE.

The other phrase, “so full of subtile flame,” was written by Francis Beaumont in a poetical epistle to the Mermaid Tavern, an inn in London where a literary club, established by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, was frequented by chief writers of the day:

What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that any one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And has resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.

Info on Beaumont is HERE.

Mable Loomis Todd did a bit of digging herself and discovered the writer of the review was Reverend John. W. Chadwick. She wrote to confirm that it was he who had penned the notice, and Chadwick wrote back.

I’ll get to Chadwick’s response tomorrow. [THE POST CONTINUES HERE.]

Stoned

2/1/2026

My two most recent posts focused on Dickinson’s poem “The Flower must not blame the bee.” In letters to each other, Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson discussed whether or not to include the poem in their second collection of Dickinson’s poems after the first edition had been so successful. They did not – and they did not include it in their third collection either. The poem was not presented to the public until Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, put it in a collection of Dickinson’s poems that she published in 1935.

Another poem debated by Todd and Higginson was “She laid her docile crescent down.”

In a letter to Higginson dated July 22, 1891, Todd said, “I send ‘She laid her docile crescent down.’ I do not understand it, and although it is beautiful, I omitted it because there were already so many more for Vol. II than had appeared in Vol. I. If you care to include it, I shall approve.”

Evidently, Higginson did not care to rescue the poem. Well, I don’t really know how Higginson responded to Todd’s letter; however, the poem was not included in the second series. However – drumroll, please – it was presented in the third.

By the way, in her book Ancestors’ Brocades, Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham noted that, “‘She laid her docile crescent down’ was called ‘Epitaph’ by Emily (and titled ‘The Monument” by Todd in the Third Series, page 157). For the second line, 'And this mechanic stone,' there were two alternative readings, ‘And this subjunctive stone,’ or ‘And this confiding stone.’”

One point of clarification: Dickinson did not title the poem “Epitaph.” Instead, in an August 1877 letter to Higginson, Dickinson enclosed four poems: “It sounded as if the streets were running,” “She laid her docile crescent down,” “I have no life but this,” and “After all the birds have been investigated and laid aside.” In that letter, Dickinson presented the four poems with this statement: “I send you a Gale, and an Epitaph – and a Word to a Friend, and a Blue Bird, for Mrs. Higginson. Excuse them if they are untrue –”

More on this poem tomorrow.

No Filter?

9/15/2025

To recap: Yesterday I shared a Reels from a young man who posts videos celebrating cinematic history and Hollywood. He declaimed his views on AI filters used on old Hollywood images – “modified to modern taste” – because these new filtered images overtake search results.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to do research and see the past,” he said, “because we are replacing the past with this AI filtered junk.” He further warned “we are down a really dangerous path where it’s going to become impossible to find anything that is original without looking in books, and it’s going to be harder and harder to find those books.”

His comments called to mind the history of the publication of Dickinson’s poetry. Back in the 1890s, editors Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson “filtered” and modified her poems from the start to satisfy public taste, and it took years to sift through and publish them as she wrote them.

In her book “Ancestors’ Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson,” Millicent Todd Bingham shared what her mother had told her surrounding the editing recommendations and rulings she and Higginson had to make:

“When Emily Dickinson was unknown, her acceptance by the literary world problematical, such decisions were weighty. The poems chosen to introduce her must not be too queer. The editors never ceased to feel handicapped by this limitation.”

Due to the “problematical” nature of Dickinson’s work – including form, punctuation, capitalization, syntax, grammar, and more – established publishers in 1890 weren’t keen on printing her work.

Bingham’s father, David Peck Todd, told her that Colonel Higginson first recommended the poems to Houghton Mifflin Company for publication, as he was one of their readers at the time. They declined. The poems, they said, “were much too queer – the rhymes were all wrong.”

Whenever I come across a tome of Dickinson’s poetry, the first poem I check – to determine if the book contains original versions (i.e., as written by Dickinson) or the filtered versions – is “Because I could not stop for Death.”

If the third stanza reads, “We passed the school where children played / Their lessons scarcely done / We passed the fields of gazing grain / We passed the setting sun,” then I know the book contains edited versions of Dickinson’s poetry.

How do I know? Because Dickinson began the stanza with “We passed the School, where Children strove / At Recess – in the Ring.” Yes, in the original version of the poem, Dickinson rhymed “ring” with “sun” – and that was deemed “too queer” to publish in 1890. By the way, Todd and Higginson also completely deleted the fourth stanza from the poem. I have no idea why.

This editing – sanitizing? – of Dickinson’s poems went on for years. A first series of poems was published in 1890, a second series in 1891, and a third in 1896. The chart below shows dates of other editions, and it wasn’t until 1955 that a “complete” collection of her poems was edited and published by Thomas Johnson – and by this point, Johnson and other editors strived to present the poems as written.

Of his compilation, Johnson said, “The order of the poems is that of the Harvard (variorum) edition. There, where all copies of poems are reproduced, fair copies to recipients are chosen for principal representation.”

R. W. Franklin updated the “complete” edition in 1998, and he reported, “About three fourths of the poems exist in a signal source. For the rest, with from two to seven sources, the policy has been to choose the latest version of the entire poem, thereby giving to the poet, rather than the editor, the ownership of change.”

A recent update, published in 2016 by editor Cristanne Miller, is called Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them.
The poems as originally written. No filter.

Well…

Things do get a bit foggy with some of the poems because Dickinson recorded numerous alternative word choices and phrases. The Miller edition includes the alternate possibilities on the right side of the page (see below).

Great Minds

9/7/2025

About a week ago, I explored the topic “Emily Dickinson and cheese” (HERE); she never used the word in any of her poems, but I did find some interesting connections. Later I checked for her use of “curds" (HERE). Though she never used that word, one poem did come close with the use of “curdled,” and that poem – “There is an arid Pleasure” – took me off into different directions altogether.

I found Dickinson’s choice of “arid” as a modifier for “pleasure” to be intriguing – and brilliant, of course – so I investigated her use of “arid” in other poems – there was just one, “Rather arid Delight” – as well as the phrase “arid pleasure” in general. Was that a common (or at least a somewhat familiar) expression of the Victorian era?

From what I could ascertain, “arid pleasure" was not a common phrase at all. As a matter of fact, I could only find its use by two writers, Emily Dickinson, in her 1862 poem, and James Joyce, in his 1916 novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In Joyce’s work, the main character, Stephen Dedalus, finds an "arid pleasure" in intellectualizing his own spiritual condemnation.

Was this purely coincidence? In 1862, Dickinson combined “arid” with “pleasure,” and fifty-four years later, James Joyce did so too – without any inspiration from Dickinson’s work? Or did Joyce read Dickinson, catch sight of the phrase, and regard it with awe as I do?

Well, it is true that Dickinson wrote the poem in 1862; however, it wasn’t made available to the public until 1945 when Millicent Todd Bingham published Bolts of Memory, with 650 previously unpublished poems by Dickinson. Therefore, if Joyce did read and study Dickinson in his time, he would not have come across “There is an arid pleasure.” As a matter of fact, Joyce died in 1941, so he would have never seen the poem at all.

I suppose I have to chalk this one up to that old adage, “Great minds think alike.”

By the way, I also learned that in some translations of his book The Truth in Painting (1987), French philosopher Jacques Derrida referred to a “somewhat arid pleasure” when discussing Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790). I don’t know if Derrida actually said “arid pleasure,” or if that was just how what he said in French was translated into English.

Say "la vee" (translated from the French, "C'est la vie").

Reading Between The Lines

8/19/2025

Today’s post is a bit different.

On Substack, from one Dr. Jennifer Weber, I came across a post that said this:

“Most people read to confirm their existing beliefs. A few read to challenge it. Almost nobody reads to replace it.

Thinking without reading is guessing. Reading without thinking is memorizing.”

By the way, Dr. Weber’s profile states this: “Using behavior science to decode how we teach, think, build systems and address what schools and cultures are reinforcing.”

I replied to the post with this: “Interesting. And reading poetry…? (say like Dickinson?)

Someone replied to my statement: “How are ‘reading’ and ‘reading poetry’ different?”

I replied with the following:

“I don’t know Dr. Weber or the focus of her ‘existing beliefs’ on ‘how we teach, think, build systems,’ etc.
Her post showed up on my screen late last night – it was literally the last post I was going to read. LOL – I was so tired, I had said to myself, ‘okay, I’ll look at 10 more posts and then put the damn phone down and go to bed’ – and hers was the 10th.

‘Hmm,’ I thought, ‘this is interesting. I’ll think about it more tomorrow’ – and since prose and poetry are written in such different ways – and open to such different interpretations (even over time as one re-reads them) – I remember thinking last night, ‘I wonder what Dr. Weber’s thoughts might be on the reading of poetry?’ Does that differ from reading prose?

I stumbled upon a poem last week that I’m still trying to figure out – did it ‘confirm my existing beliefs’ – or rattle them?”

I’ll get to that poem tomorrow – or soon, depending upon where this rambling post takes me; however, to recap: prose is different from poetry; writing prose is different from writing poetry (and even writing lyrics – a form of poetry – is different from writing poetry). I’m no reading expert nor am I an expert on the brain – but I daresay the act of listening to prose is different from that of listening to poetry – so I surmise that something in the brain differs when reading prose v. poetry?

Hmm…I don’t know Dr. Weber’s expertise (reading? The brain? other?), but I’ll follow up to see if she has any thoughts on this.

In the meantime – so I don’t ramble off in untold directions – let me close with two passages from Millicent Todd Bingham’s “Ancestors’ Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson”:

The first is from Bingham’s discussion of critics’ reactions to the first posthumous publication of Dickinson’s poetry, which ranged from stinging criticism to rousing praise:

“If a test of great poetry is its capacity for evoking emotion, then Emily Dickinson can meet the test. For it is as true today as it was in 1891 that no one can read it with indifference. Even those who disparage it most (sic) do so with fervor.”

The second is a letter to Bingham’s mother and the editor of the first publications of Dickinson, Mabel Loomis Todd, from a resident who had attended one of her presentations on Dickinson in the summer of 1892:

“Mr. Stedman has lately been trying to define poetry. It is a hard task. Emily Dickinson wrote poetry which embalmed and interpreted the most insignificant things in nature. J. Whitcomb Riley writes

Without, beneath the rose bush stands
A dripping rooster on one leg.

I suppose this is also poetry (it rhymes [i.e. his verses do] better than your friend’s) but it merely helps us see the things without doing much to help us see into them.”

This last excerpt called to mind another poem by an entirely different poet which I’ll share later too (in addition to the one I mentioned earlier); plus (once again) I’ll get to Emily Dickinson’s definition of poetry, and I’ll continue my exploration into reading (prose v. poetry).

Stay tuned.

Vagaries & Idiosyncrasies

7/12/2025

In her book Ancestors Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, Millicent Todd Bingham spoke of Dickinson’s “grammatical vagaries” and “Emily’s idiosyncrasies” – “such as using ‘of’ for ‘by’; for example: ‘A clover’s simple fame / Remembered of the cow.’”

She also noted that “For the first editors, the perennial uncertainty was: which (of Dickinson’s grammatical errors) are mistakes and which are intentional irregularities with a definite function to perform.”

In his 1938 book This Was A Poet, Amherst College professor George F. Whicher argued that Dickinson’s grammatical errors were traceable to the fact that she followed the current spoken usage of her time.

In addition to the “of”/”by” peculiarity, what were some of Dickinson’s other quirks?

“Her chaos of singulars and plurals” – in Bingham’s words:

Examples: “We cannot put ourself away,” in the poem “I tie my hat” (changed to “ourselves” by editors Todd and Higginson); “And I for truth, themself are one” from the poem “I died for beauty” (changed to “And I for truth, the two are one”).

Also, Dickinson often used a plural verb with a singular subject, as in the poem “Air has no residence, no neighbor,” which ends as follows:

Ethereal guest at e’en an outcast’s pillow,
Essential host in life’s faint, wailing inn,
Later than light thy consciousness accost me,
Till it depart, conveying mine.

Bingham wrote, “To change the verbs to ‘accosts’ and ‘departs’ would defeat not only the meaning but the Miltonic surge of sound. This ‘mistake,’ my mother thought, was deliberate, as Emily’s use of ‘be’ for ‘is’ was deliberate:

Menagerie to me
My neighbor be.”

TBH: I tend to think that 99% of Dickinson’s “grammatical vagaries” were, indeed deliberate; there were lapses with “its” and “it’s” and other contractions too that I think were accidental – but most other “slips” were intentional.

Bingham concludes her (1945) discussion of Dickinson’s hallmarks and habits with this:

“Though these peculiarities were mere elision, they gave rise to much discussion half a century ago. Emily’s grammatical irresponsibility is well summed up in a line of an unpublished poem, 'This chasm sweet, upon my life,” which reads ‘Ourself am lying straight wherein.’”

Stay In Your Lain

7/11/2025

Recent posts have focused on Emily Dickinson’s use of the word “lain” in her poem “I died for Beauty” when the correct word in that instance was “laid."

“For the first editors (of Dickinson’s poetry),” wrote Millicent Todd Bingham in Ancestors Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, “the perennial uncertainty was: which (of Dickinson’s grammatical errors) are mistakes and which are intentional irregularities with a definite function to perform.”

I’ll cover some of Dickinson’s errors and irregularities tomorrow; however, in the case of “I died for Beauty,” Bingham’s mother Mabel Loomis Todd seemed to prefer that a correction be made. In 1890, she wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “And do you think it best to leave the ungrammatical use of ‘lain’ instead of ‘laid’ in ‘When one who died for truth was lain’?”

Higginson wrote back, “I have forwarded yr corrections approved except the ‘lain’ which I think had better stay as it is.”

BTW, as an aside, I tried to find statistical information related to the usage of “lain” over time; however, every frequency chart I came across focused on the verb “lie” instead of its past participle “lain.” I did find this, though: “The past participle ‘lain’ of the verb ‘lie’ (meaning to recline) is not as commonly used as other past participles in modern English. While grammatically correct, many speakers and writers opt for alternative phrasing or the past tense form ‘lay’ instead, particularly in casual speech.”

Back to Dickinson:

In his 1938 book This Was A Poet, Amherst College professor George F. Whicher argued that Dickinson’s grammatical errors – including “lain” for “laid” discussed yesterday – were traceable to the fact that she followed the current spoken usage of her time.

I have not read Whicher’s book; however, I did find this information from a 1938 review of his book in the New York Times:

“Against the accusation that Emily Dickinson wrote slovenly and ungrammatically Professor Whicher rises in wrath. Her poems, he states, have never been carefully edited; often there will be more than one reading, and what would be the better reading has not always been the one printed. Moreover, Emily was brought up in the New England vernacular, which went back to grammatical usage not always that of today.”

In her book Ancestors Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, Millicent Todd Bingham also spoke of Dickinson’s “grammatical vagaries” and “Emily’s idiosyncrasies” (“such as using ‘of’ for ‘by’: ‘A clover’s simple fame / Remembered of the cow’”).

The review continues:

“Thomas Bailey Aldrich tried to improve certain of her poems, shown him, probably, by Colonel Higginson, but only made them worse. Emily was a law unto herself and a law unto her poetry. Even in her rhymes, which often are no rhymes at all, she must be accepted for what she is, a unique literary being. She has her own special province in the world of poetry; in Professor Whicher's carefully thought-out phrasing, ‘the region of dramatic tension between the mind and experience.’”

Lie/Lay Person

7/9/2025

How are your grammar skills? Specifically, how well do you understand “lie” (to recline) vs. “lay” (to place)?

In past posts, I’ve written about challenges Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson faced in preparing Emily Dickinson’s poetry for publication. Issues ranged from having to decipher Dickinson’s handwriting to determining word choice (when faced with multiple alternate word choices on the page) to correcting (or not correcting?) errors in spelling, capitalization and grammar.

“When it came to bad grammar,” wrote Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham in her book Ancestor’s Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, “there was room for difference of opinion.”

According to Bingham – in discussing the poem “I died for Beauty but was scarce” – “Colonel Higginson usually stood for correct usage. And yet,” she reported, “he it was who preferred ‘lain’ when ‘laid’ was correct” (Bingham added, “Emily always misused that past participle”).

Concerning that poem, Bingham wrote, “My mother particularly disliked this mistake. In her letter of December 29, 1890, to Colonel Higginson she asks, ‘And do you think it best to leave the ungrammatical use of ‘lain’ instead of ‘laid,’ in ‘When one who died for truth was lain’?’ As Colonel Higginson preferred ‘lain,’ it so appeared. But his preference was often challenged, not only in the poem, ‘I died for beauty,” but in others as well. Each time the word appeared it gave rise to argument and each time he prevailed.”

Higginson’s “lain” prevailed when the poem was first published in 1890, and it survives to this day in the Johnson, Franklin, and Miller editions.

More on the “lie vs. lay” tomorrow.