Category: Susan Dickinson

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unlocked that chest of poetry, and they worked on a volume entitled “Bolts of Melody” which included 600 previously unpublished poems.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.

0 Comments

A Ghostly Shimmer

5/29/2024

0 Comments

I’ve been posting ten of my favorites of Dickinson’s poems about death and grief, and my eighth offering is “Safe in their Alabaster chambers,” an eerie poem about where “the meek members of the Resurrection” sleep – aye, the very sleep contemplated by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, HERE.

This poem has an interesting history as there are two well-known versions – both of which are published in Johnson’s 1955 edition of Dickinson’s “complete poems” – and other extant versions as well. The Franklin edition includes only the “version of 1861” from the Johnson compilation. Miller’s 2016 edition of “complete poems” includes both of the recognized versions with the “version of 1859” in Fascicle Six and the “version of 1861” in Fascicle Ten.

At some point, Dickinson sent the 1859 version to her sister-in-law, Sue. Sue must have indicated some dissatisfaction with the poem, and Dickinson sent the 1861 version to her with the note, “Perhaps this verse would please you better – Sue –”

Sue returned a lengthier letter that began, “I am not suited dear Emily with the second verse – It is remarkable as the chain lightening (sic) that blinds us hot nights in the Southern Sky but it does not go with the ghostly shimmer of the first verse as well as the other one. It just occurs to me that the first verse is complete in itself it needs no other, and can’t be coupled…”

Dickinson responded with an alternate ending – the one above which concludes “Staples of Ages – have buckled there” – and asked, “is this frostier?”

Information related to all of this is HERE.

Dickinson also included one of the versions of the poem in her first letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson when she responded to his article “Letter to a Young Contributor” in the April 1862 Atlantic Monthly – the well known letter where she began,, “Mr. Higginson, Are you too deeply occupied, to say if my Verse is alive?”

That complete letter is HERE.

0 Comments

Wedding Belles?

3/12/2024

0 Comments

Yesterday I posted “A Lady red – amid the hill,” and then posted five other poems by Dickinson that this poem suggested to me. For example, in the second stanza, Dickinson mentions the breezes with their brooms and then asks, “Prithee, My pretty Housewives! Who may expected be?”

I then drew a contrast to another poem in which Dickinson mentions a housewife, “How long have these low feet staggered.” In this poem, the housewife is anything but “pretty,” and she neglects her daily duties and responsibilities due to her indolence – because she’s dead.

So what was Dickinson’s view of housewives? The traditional and expected role for women does not come across all that favorably in Dickinson’s works – I’m sure not for her disdain of a woman’s desire to marry and keep a house – but for the “social conventions created by a patriarchal society, which continued the division of both genders into different spheres of society.” BTW, that quote is from this site, HERE.

The poem below, “Ourselves were wed one summer – dear,” is another poem about a housewife – though it never uses the word “housewife.”

This poem is thought to be more than somewhat autobiographical and that it was about Emily Dickinson (who never married) and Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson (who married Emily’s brother Austin) – and how (as viewed by Emily) Susan’s marriage relegated her to the position of “wife” and brought her loss of self-identity. And how Susan’s marriage would now interfere with their own (intimate?) relationship (after all, the first line states, “Ourselves were married one summer – dear”).

To be honest, I misinterpreted this poem when I first read it because at the start, I made the assumption that the poem was about a couple who married (“Ourselves were wed one summer”) – and when one of the spouses died (“when Your little Lifetime failed”), the surviving spouse was broken-hearted (“I wearied – too – of mine”).

I continued with this interpretation through the second stanza, but then the third stanza made me realize I was on the wrong track: Instead of a couple who married each other, the speaker is talking to a friend – and both were married to others? Their “Futures different lay,” and one lived in a cheerful, sunny cottage; the other lived in a cold, remote location.

“But You – were crowned in June” – so did only one of them get married?

A lengthier discussion of the poem is HERE.

0 Comments

The F-Word, Part 2

12/24/2018

0 Comments

From Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request):

I attended the 188th Birthday Tribute for Emily Dickinson at the Folger Shakespeare Library on December 10, 2018.

This is Part 2 of my recap of the event. Part 1 is HERE.

After Jen Bervin’s presentation on Jay Layde’s work, Martha Nell Smith, the president of the Emily Dickinson International Society, spoke about “an unintentional” lie she helped promulgate in her work in presenting her dissertation years ago. Before she confessed the lie, though, she asked those in attendance to keep a quote in mind – one in a letter to Susan Dickinson from Emily Dickinson:

"Dear Sue ~ With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living -- To say that sincerely is strange praise.”

‘Twas then Ms. Smith divulged her lie – that Susan Dickinson was not all that important to Emily Dickinson.

To be honest, though, this view – that Susan’s role in Emily’s life was slight – was more a “false fact,” a belief accepted as truth in its day rather than a deliberate lie.

Ms. Smith then reminded the audience of her opening quote and took time to set the record straight. Interestingly enough, it was Jay Leyda who – when he learned that Ms. Smith researched the letters of Emily Dickinson – advised her to spend her career in righting this misconception, “for Susan Dickinson had been greatly wronged.”

In truth, Emily Dickinson wrote more letters to Susan than any other person with whom she corresponded (and we’re talking hundreds of more letters) – and the main culprit in creating and perpetuating this myth (an "alternative fact" in today's lingo) was none other than Mabel Loomis Todd, Austin Dickinson’s mistress.

Much of Smith’s work to undo the decades of tangled tales and perceptions is presented in her book Open Me Carefully, an insightful collection of some of Emily Dickinson's thirty-six year correspondences with her childhood friend, neighbor, and sister-in-law.

Slowly but surely, the record is being straight on Susan Hutchinson Gilbert Dickinson, who – in a letter to Curtis Hidden Page – noted that “Poetry is Sermon – Hope – Solace – Life.”

After Smith’s presentation there was a short panel discussion with Bervin, Smith, and Madeleine Olnek, the director of the new film “Wild Nights with Emily.”

Later in the evening was when Smith blurted out the “F-Word” (as I noted in Part 1) – but no no, no – NOT that “F-Word.” But more on that later. I promise to get to that in Part 3 of this review. Coming soon.

0 Comments

Family Feud

A Ghostly Shimmer

Wedding Belles?

The F-Word, Part 2

Archives

PLOG

Categories