by Julie Dobrow
Just a few months after they were married, Mabel began to record in her diary that she was “not feeling at all well—something the matter with my stomach.” She did not have her usual level of energy. She noted that when it came time for her to be “ill” she was not, but that because there were other things going on in her life at the time, she assumed that there was no problem. Then she started to get headaches, feel anxious and moody. She had a little “brown flow” that quickly stopped, and she went to a doctor to give her something to bring the flow on again—claiming she never suspected that “it could be anything other than a temporary suspension.” The doctor told her to take long walks, hot sitz baths and to insert belladonna and morphine vaginally to “induce distension and local looseness.”28 Mabel did this, and yet still did not get her period.
In the weeks that followed, Mabel traveled to upstate New York to spend time with David’s family while he was away on an astronomical project in Texas. There, she felt worse, unable to eat, nauseated, highly emotional. “Could this be the thing I never believed would happen just yet?” she pondered. She went to another doctor, who prescribed a preparation of quinine, believing that she was suffering from malaria. Or at least this is what she chose to record; quinine was also a commonly prescribed mode of inducing abortion in the late nineteenth century.
Finally, in August, at the beginning of her second trimester, Mabel wrote in her journal that she felt for the first time “a little protuberance below my stomach . . . quite noticeable . . . it flashed upon me the startling conviction that I had a little child within me. It came like an unchangeable surety.”29 It’s a little hard to believe that this conviction could have been “startling” to Mabel, since she had clearly suspected a pregnancy weeks earlier. But Mabel always maintained an ability to convince herself of whatever was the most expedient belief of the moment.
Mabel wrote to tell David of her suspicion, and, much to her great relief, he was delighted. David knew just what to say to console his young wife. He responded, “Oh! How I love the spotless purity and wonderful perfection of your womanhood,” and went on to say how he knew that with her broad hips and “all those parts for never having been distorted by tight-lacing,” her body was built for having a baby—and more importantly, that he continued to desire her and would, always.30
David’s letters to Mabel from this period reveal that he understood and sought to assuage her fears. His effusive declarations of love and passion allayed her worries that he would no longer find her attractive. His proclamations that he would provide adequate funding for child care so that Mabel could continue with all of the activities in which she was so deeply involved, or that their baby when born would be cared for by her grandmother and her great-grandmother, addressed Mabel’s concerns about having her activities curtailed by motherhood. David promised Mabel that she would “not be bound down by the low drudgery of a purely mother’s cares” and that her life would have “all of those pretty, simple, fascinating charms that it has always known before.”31 In other words, David stated, Mabel’s life would essentially not change. And she chose to believe this.
After the first trimester, Mabel had an easy and uneventful pregnancy. Mabel was mostly relieved that her pregnancy did not prevent her from doing the things she wanted to do, that she and David could still have sex and that pregnancy did not diminish the things she felt. “My life has been so healthful and natural that this beautiful and natural function can be exercised without any general disturbance of the system or strangeness,” she wrote.32 Mabel was convinced that her child would be a girl, based on her (probably incorrect) idea of when conception had occurred. David was also convinced that they would have a daughter, though his reasoning had to do with listening to fetal heartbeats, which he counted at 146 per minute (“far above the average for a boy,” Mabel noted in her journal).33
In one diary entry, Mabel wrote, “Odd that for nearly four months I should have kept this little life within me without being conscious of it, or hardly even suspecting it. And my perfectly exuberant health and spirits! Well, it shall be loved and welcomed. . . . I do not show this new development yet, except in a generally stouter appearance, which is very becoming. . . . I was made for a wife—for a mother, truly, no. . . . My life is in my husband—a child or children will be merely incidentals yet know I shall love this little one, yet not with the strength in that sort of love which I put in my wife love.”34
Several months after Millicent was born on February 5, 1880, Mabel began a new journal she entitled “Millicent’s Life,” ostensibly focusing on her new daughter. In this journal she wrote about her theories of when conception could occur and what could be done to prevent it. She also chronicled her efforts throughout pregnancy to remain attractive and unchanged: “I have taken considerable pleasure in being . . . winsome & a bit coquettish, and in cultivating those attitudes of mind & heart which my dear husband best loves.”35 Mabel reported that although Millicent weighed ten pounds at birth, she’d had an easy labor and delivery. Mabel wrote that immediately after her birth, “Millicent received her first loving touch from her youthful grandma.”36
MABEL WITH MILLICENT, 1880.
Very shortly after Millicent’s birth, Mabel was back to her usual variety of artistic and social endeavors. In fact, so that there would be no real cessation in the recording of her daily life, Mabel actually had David write a few rudimentary things in her diary for a period of a couple of weeks right after Millicent’s birth until she felt ready to resume. When she did, at the end of February, Mabel wrote triumphantly, “Here I come—back again! . . . Thank God for my perfect restoration.”37
In the second part of “Millicent’s Life,” written when the baby was a few months old, Mabel joyfully recorded some of Millicent’s milestones: her measurements, beginning smiles and laughs and babbling, her first tooth. Mabel wrote a poem to Millicent in which she celebrated the pleasure that this baby brought to her, and in one verse noted, as so many parents have done from time immemorial, how quickly time seems to pass through childhood:
Sweet babyhood is far too fleeting,
For even now I see you meeting
A little girl with happy greeting,
Millicent.38
She wrote of the time in October of 1880 when for a month she “left my little sweet child at home with her three ancestors” because she thought that it would be less painful to wean her this way. She observed gleefully that Millicent’s first word was “mamma” and her second word was “book.” Mabel expressed a hope that Millicent would become involved in the world of literature. “Simply turning the leaves of a book without pictures gives her untold delight. I hope the prophecy this expresses of her early taste, may find a notable and magnificent fulfillment in her after life.” Mabel also recorded in detail Millicent’s early love of music, how she attended to it from the start, how she began to sing back tunes and even compose them at an early age, commenting on her certainty that Millicent had “a most remarkable gift in music. I predict an exceptional career in that.”39
Mabel also recorded some of her ambivalence and anxiety about her daughter. She was quick to note the beauty of Millicent’s eyes but her concern that the baby did not have a “handsome nose.” Mabel wrote often of how fat or how chunky Millicent was. When Millicent was still a toddler, Mabel worried that her daughter was not going to be as outgoing as herself: “It worries me so, that she is so solemn before strangers. I shall be indeed distressed if she is going to be a shy child.”40 On another occasion she wrote, “Although I passionately love Millicent, I do not in general care for children, & I do not want another.”41
A year of motherhood did little to reconcile Mabel’s complicated feelings. At the end of 1880, Mabel penned, “With the snowy departure of 1880—the kind of year which gave me my precious little treasure—I can only hope fervently that all my radiant wishes and beliefs for her very future may be more than realized. May she always be my joy and delight.”42
As Milli
cent’s first birthday approached, Mabel wrote, “It is most astonishing to me to remember that my sweet Millicent is nearly a year old. A year means so much to her, and it is a mere drop in the bucket to me. A year has changed her from a red, soft, helpless baby into a brilliant little girl, strong, self-reliant, beautiful and fascinating. A year has not changed me, except in additional experiences and more things accomplished.”43 Perhaps without realizing it at the time, Mabel encapsulated what would become some of the dominant themes in her relationship with her daughter: implicit contrasts of personality that each of them would make explicit, a tension between two different outlooks on the world that would widen the gulf between them, and a bond that endured, in spite of it all. Mabel’s ambivalence about motherhood marked her relationship with Millicent from the start; its legacy colored it throughout her life and lived beyond her own death. And the complex push/pull in Mabel and Millicent’s relationship in many ways set the stage for arguably the most significant professional work in each of their lives, the editing of Emily Dickinson’s letters and poetry.
“Amherst! Washington is in the past!”44 twenty-four-year-old Mabel announced in her journal in September of 1881, trying to convince herself that her charmed life would continue. She wasn’t at all sure that this was true. And little did she realize that here would begin the story that would forever change her identity and her life’s path.
When David received an offer to teach astronomy and become director of the observatory at Amherst College, his alma mater, he was thrilled. Mabel was not. They moved to the small New England college town from the nation’s capital, where they’d lived since they married, leaving behind David’s career at the U.S. Naval Observatory and the U.S. Nautical Almanac offices, and Mabel’s richly active social and cultural life. They also left Millicent in the care of her grandparents.
Though she wished to be supportive of her ambitious husband, Mabel had her own aspirations, and the opportunities for her in Amherst were none too clear. “I can hardly breathe, and I am so sad!” she wrote. She mused that the offer from Amherst “and one other thing have almost broken my heart . . . [can] this crooked matter ever . . . be straightened out? All but this untellable thing is perfect in my life, and I am otherwise so joyful that I must think it a bad dream.”45
Mabel’s fears about Amherst, her concerns about the unnamed “other thing” (which had nothing to do with the move but with David’s state of mind and his honesty about sexual indiscretions Mabel thought had ended when she married him), and disquiet about leaving their baby girl, gave her pause. But determined to plow ahead, Mabel believed—as she always would—that somehow her life would work out for the best. It always had.
Though retaining more than a few doubts, Mabel came to Amherst with her characteristic “zest,” (the word she used more than any other to characterize herself). An accomplished musician and a skillful painter, Mabel was used to a thriving arts environment and she feared that Amherst would be too small and provincial to offer these opportunities. In Washington, Mabel’s social calendar was always filled. Petite, with dark liquid eyes, soft light brown hair that elegantly framed her fine features, the combination of Mabel’s beauty, her talents and her vivacious personality had made heads turn her entire life—especially male heads—and she was used to commanding significant attention wherever she went. She wasn’t so sure that the same would be true in Amherst.
And at first, Mabel was also second-guessing her decision to leave Millicent behind. “What have I done?” she berated herself in her journal. But just one month later Mabel wrote in her diary: “Do you know, I think Amherst in many respects quite ideal. I always did like a college town, with its air of quiet cultivation, and by living in such a one it is possible to continue two things which are otherwise generally not found together—I mean the possibility of living in the country, amid the luxuriance of nature, and yet of having refined and educated society at the same time.”46
In this stunningly short time, Mabel seems to have stabilized and actively engaged in Amherst’s artistic and social possibilities. Where she had expressed both sadness and disbelief at the prospect of leaving Millicent behind, within a month there were only occasional mentions in her journal or diary of missing her child, of things her mother reported that Millicent had learned to say or do, or of the sheets and pillowcases that Mabel was embroidering for Millicent (all the while complaining how much she hated to sew). The “crooked matter” of David’s sexual indiscretion she alluded to in a journal entry shortly before coming to Amherst “straightened itself out very very nicely,” as David’s attentions now focused on her, alone.
And although the reception by some of the Amherst faculty and their wives had initially been a bit cool, within weeks Mabel was involved in a whirlwind of social activities. Her diary records her attending lectures and concerts and resuming her painting. She began practicing piano and singing and quickly gained a reputation as the finest pianist in Amherst and was a much called-upon vocal soloist. Busy and happy, Mabel once again felt the world was her domain.
The key to Mabel’s quick entry into Amherst society was making the acquaintance of Susan and Austin Dickinson, whom she met in late September 1881. In her diary is the brief notation that she was called upon by “Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson. They are charming. He is Treasurer of the College.”47
Austin was scion of the venerable Dickinson family, a leading and important member of the Amherst community. He had a thriving legal practice and was involved with myriad civic endeavors. His wife, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, widely known as a prominent member of the Amherst arts and literary community, routinely entertained and tried to establish a salon in her home of the most interesting guests. The Dickinsons lived with their three children—Edward (“Ned”), Martha (“Mattie”) and Gilbert (“Gib”) in a fine, Italianate home on the main street of town that had been built for them by Austin’s father, Edward. “The Evergreens” was right next door to Austin’s family home, “The Homestead,” in which his widowed mother still lived with his two sisters, Emily and Lavinia.
Mabel was instantly drawn to the Dickinsons. She wrote to her mother that Sue was “the most of a real society person here.” Sue’s dark hair was parted in the middle and worn up off her neck. Though not conventionally beautiful, her strong features certainly rendered her attractive. Mabel was equally impressed by “Squire” Dickinson, whom she found to be “fine (& very remarkable) looking—& very dignified & strong. . . .”48 With a full head of auburn-colored hair and intense blue eyes, Austin’s high cheekbones and cleft chin gave him a dignified patrician look.
Mabel’s letters home and her journals each record how she was instantly enraptured by both Sue and Austin Dickinson. “I told you I admired Mrs. Dickinson at first, but I am thoroughly captivated with her now,” she told her parents, adding that upon finding Mabel so good a musician and so congenial a companion, Sue had quickly invited her to many events she was holding at her home.49 Mabel was instantly—and irrevocably—drawn in.
CHAPTER 2
MEETING AND COURTING THE DICKINSONS (1881–1882)
“Rubicon”
By midfall of 1881, Mabel was well on her way to being accepted as part of Amherst’s elite society. Her diaries record an almost continuous procession of social engagements, lectures, dinners, musicales, carriage rides and games of whist. Many of these activities revolved around invitations from Susan Dickinson and her children. Mabel noted in her diary early in October 1881, “I just spent the evening in Mrs. Dickinson’s elegant home . . . I like her so much.” Just a week later she was writing, “I spent the morning with Mrs. Dickinson and played and sang three hours for her,” and then days later, “Mrs. Dickinson came for and brought me to the church for me to sing.”1 It was clear that Sue Dickinson had made a big impression on Mabel and that Mabel had made enough of an impression on Sue that she took the younger woman under her wing. Neither Sue nor Mabel could have predicted what consequences would grow from those early halcyon days, nor
how Sue and Austin’s imperfect marriage and Mabel’s complicated interactions with members of the Dickinson family would end up shaping both her personal and professional life.
AUSTIN AND SUSAN DICKINSON.
Mabel and Sue had much in common. Both were from modest circumstances, each was eager to ascend socially through the nineteenth-century women’s sphere of the arts. They had similar predilections for literature and, as it would turn out, similar preferences in male companionship. Each recognized Emily Dickinson’s genius, but it was strangely because of the feud that would erupt between the two of them that Dickinson’s poetry became Mabel’s to edit and interpret.
Sue did not seem inherently destined to become the leading lady of Amherst arts and society. Susan Huntington Gilbert, born in 1830 to a working-class family in Deerfield, Massachusetts, was the youngest of six children. Orphaned by the time she was only eleven years old, she spent the rest of her girlhood rotating among relatives in upstate New York, Michigan and on and off, in Amherst. It was there that she met both Austin Dickinson, whom she would marry in 1856 after a drawn-out six-year courtship, and his sisters, Emily and Lavinia. Sue and Emily formed a particularly close friendship (some scholars have attributed varying levels of intimacy to it)2 that lasted until the poet’s death in 1886. Like most intense friendships, Sue and Emily’s had moments of greater and lesser closeness: the Emily Dickinson Museum’s website suggests that their relationship was “interrupted by periods of seeming estrangement.” The two exchanged hundreds of letters over many years. It is clear that Emily respected Sue’s opinion on literature and the two traded books and their thoughts about them. Emily sent more of her poetry in more forms to Sue than to anyone else during her lifetime; indeed, some scholars suggest that knowing the layers of this friendship is critical to a “profound significance for understanding Dickinson’s poetic project.” Others acknowledge that Emily’s loyalties to her brother and her sister-in-law were “intricate and complex,” and that Emily’s resulting independence created problems between herself and the woman she had referred to as “Sister Sue.”3