After Emily

by Julie Dobrow

  In the fall of 1950, Jackson asked the Binghams if he could finally come to D.C. to make Photostat copies for Thomas Johnson. Millicent still felt that allowing Jackson to do this, as she had promised months before, was the honorable thing, and it would promote scholarship, her ultimate goal.

  Jackson spent a full day at the Folger Library doing the copying. Late that evening, he returned to the Binghams’ apartment. Millicent was already asleep. When Jackson handed Millicent’s copies back to Walter he told him “that he was sorry [but] that he could not possibly keep his part of the agreement”—that in exchange for allowing Jackson to copy the original Dickinson manuscripts in Millicent’s possession she could continue with her own work to publish them. Millicent later recalled, “Walter told me that he ‘hit the ceiling.’ ‘You mean to tell me that you come and get these Photostats without which your editor cannot do his work and then tell me you can’t keep your promise in return?’” Worse, Jackson then presented Walter with a letter. “It said in effect that unless I promised to give everything I had to Harvard—all my Dickinson manuscripts—they would not let me publish my books. I was to sign on the dotted line.”21

  Millicent and Walter were stunned. Walter felt that the box of Photostats sitting at the Folger Library waiting to be shipped to Harvard should not be sent. But while Millicent believed she should “not knuckle under to Harvard,” neither did she want to stand in the way of scholarly work. The Binghams allowed the box to be posted, but Harvard returned it, unopened. Millicent never received an explanation of Harvard’s seeming turnabout—perhaps William Jackson had become convinced Harvard’s actions would force Millicent’s hand. Soon they would no longer have need of copies of the Dickinson manuscripts, for they would possess the originals.

  In October 1950, Harper told Millicent they had “stopped the presses” on Emily Dickinson’s Home—Harvard had informed them that Millicent must receive the permission of the Harvard College Library Trustees prior to publication for the right to publish any Dickinson material. They said Harvard held all copyrights, past, present and future. “So this is the way to treat an honorable person!” Millicent wrote in her diary. She knew that Harvard was intent on getting all her manuscripts but commented, “it is certainly a curious way to go about getting them.”22

  Millicent was advised by attorneys not to speak with Harvard directly about their demands. Lawyers at Harper told her they were trying to pursue a “friendly settlement” with Harvard, and that the university was “so gentlemanly and so anxious not to get into an argument.” But, as Millicent reflected several years later, “It seemed that several of the executives at Harpers were Harvard men, including Mr. Canfield, and they did not wish to risk a lawsuit.”23 And she believed that Harvard was not using “gentlemanly” techniques.

  Millicent felt paralyzed. With her books’ publication in limbo, she couldn’t bring herself to continue working and spent significant time making notes of arguments she wished to pose to Harper to make on her behalf. Among them, she noted, “lawyers know that they can count on my finding a lawsuit distasteful, which gives them license to put on the screws. But does the fact that these manuscripts have been in my mother’s and my own possession since before the turn of the century mean nothing? That Austin entrusted their care to my mother?” She consulted with attorneys and librarians who suggested to her that Harvard’s claims of complete copyright control were questionable and might not hold up in court.

  Millicent also agonized about the situation in her private writings. On November 10, Mabel’s birthday, she wrote, “This morning I am on the point of nausea. . . . I think perhaps it is because Harvard (Mr. Montague) should overlook everything except the mere legal precedents, as if there were any, and insist on their rights . . . it has been my dearest wish that Emily’s manuscripts should all be together, as they were in the first place . . . what will this mean? A renewal of the feud . . . even if I should win and be vindicated, a stench would have been added by me to the situation that has filled my life and from which I had hoped to retire with a generous gesture.” She also noted, “Walter grows whiter and whiter every day. Only a sense of accomplishment he says, will help him. . . . But evil qualities seem to provide strength, witness Gilbert Montague.”24

  Walter and Millicent’s frequent conversations about the situation, diligently recorded in her journals and diaries, reflected a sense of collective disbelief. “My first words to Walter were, ‘If it weren’t serious it would be comic, for the leading university to go to law with a leading publishing house about a matter of legal rights so attenuated that if brought into the open would seem to be nil, they would both be a laughing stock,’” she wrote at the end of 1950. And at the end of that decade she recalled how Walter had taken it “much harder than me. That a great university, one moreover from which he himself as well as I hold degrees, should use gangster methods to get what it wanted was to him incredible.”25

  But with unrelenting pressure from Gilbert Montague, Harvard continued to hold firm. William Jackson came to call on the Binghams, accompanied by a Harvard attorney. They informed Millicent and Walter that Montague’s purchase meant that Harvard owned the literary rights to all Dickinson materials. Furthermore, they stated that Millicent did not legally own the manuscripts “which had been in my mother’s possession since the 1880s. Many of the letters had been given to her by Austin Dickinson for the express purpose of preventing them from falling into the hands of his wife and daughter, whose wishes Harvard was now putting into effect.”26 But still Millicent did not yield.

  After Walter’s death in 1952, Millicent felt not only overwhelming sadness and grief but also a sense that the fight with Harvard had played a significant role in shortening his life. “Harvard’s policy of intimidation toward me had a lot to do with Walter’s collapse,” she concluded at the time. And in a 1959 interview, she stated that Walter’s demise came from the “agony of spirit that he could not shield me from the threats which he considered not only cruel but disgraceful, underhanded and dishonest. . . . Harvard’s mercilessness to me, what seemed like the determination to obliterate, or at least to disparage my quarter of a century of work for Emily Dickinson seemed too much. There was nothing Walter could do to protect me. It seemed to break the spring, and perhaps . . . the will to live.” (Interestingly, perhaps still trying to insinuate himself into Millicent’s good graces, several years after Walter’s death Gilbert Montague wrote her at Christmas: “you have been very much on my mind this December, for I shall always remember how lonely the first six or eight Christmases were after I lost Mrs. Montague in 1941.” Millicent responded crisply, “Your letter of sympathy in remembrance of my loss of all that I held most dear has come.”)27 Ultimately, Walter’s death also seemed to strengthen her resolve in the disputes with Harvard.

  Over the next few years, as the battle dragged on, Millicent considered her options. One was trying to get Harper to publicly announce that “because of threats from Harvard, they were withdrawing the publication of Emily Dickinson’s Home. That far from the documents being in the public domain they [Harvard] are reviving an ancient feud and threatening me if I am to publish.” Another tactic she thought about was getting some man of “impeccable credentials to speak out against Harvard.” Charles Cole, with whom Millicent was in very frequent contact, urged her not to try to embarrass Harvard. Cass Canfield from Harper reiterated to Millicent that Harvard wouldn’t budge, and he, too, urged Millicent against saying anything publicly. He was certain that Harvard would not be the party to suffer in the court of public opinion. “Besides, who would believe a lone female against the word of Harvard?” Millicent bitterly lamented.28

  Millicent briefly considered finding another press willing to publish her book but never followed through on this. She also took a page out of Mabel’s playbook and tried to get influential men of letters to rally to the cause of breaking Harvard’s blockage of her books’ publication. In January of 1952 she wrote, “Mr. [Mark] Van Doren is really invo
lved in my crusade to break the strangle hold on publication, having written the preface to Bolts. His reply was to the effect that both editions should be available.” In 1953 she wrote to Charles Cole, “A few nights ago I had a talk with Robert Frost who brought up the subject of Emily Dickinson . . . I gathered that he is disturbed . . . that Harvard is still threatening Harpers with an injunction if they publish my books. . . . Mr. Frost understands, I think, that something more is involved than my promise to my mother to publish all of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts in her possession.” In a later conversation Millicent recorded, “Mr. Frost said, ‘I would eat those manuscripts before I would let them go to Harvard. No, I would burn them first.’”29

  Yet still they were at an impasse. Millicent refused to give Harvard her papers and Harvard refused to allow her books to be published. In 1953, Millicent wrote in her diary, “I wish I could look ahead a hundred years and see where those manuscripts really ought to be—in Amherst with everything else? In the Library of Congress where the papers of a national figure belong?”30

  While the stalemate between Millicent and Harvard continued, Thomas Johnson was moving forward with his work to publish the variorum edition of Emily’s poetry. In 1952, Johnson visited Millicent and begged her to give him the Photostats of all her Dickinson manuscripts, trying to distance himself from William Jackson’s earlier efforts and the unopened box of Photostats Harvard had returned. Johnson knew just how to play to Millicent’s sensibilities: he was appealing to her on behalf of himself as a scholar, he said, not as an agent of Harvard University. Millicent’s attorney insisted that Harvard was still paying Johnson’s salary, and under no circumstances should she release any papers to him. But Millicent was stubborn; as ever, her personal convictions took precedence. She stood firmly by her belief that scholarship mattered above all else, and, despite her growing distaste for Harvard and her doubts about Johnson, she decided to give him her Photostats. When Johnson told her that looking through these papers had entirely changed his ideas about the conditions of the poems’ composition, Millicent wrote in her diary, “just wait until you have the letters!” She pondered whether Johnson had any clue of the “torment” that his employer had subjected her to for the past couple of years. “Remember that it is not my fault that everything you now want is not at your disposal,” she said to him in yet another imaginary diary discourse. Ultimately, she stuck to her justification for letting Johnson see her materials. She concluded in 1959, “At least it could never be said that I had stood in the way of scholarship.”31

  After Johnson had examined the Photostat copies, he asked Millicent if he could see the original manuscripts. Next, he wanted to see Mabel’s original transcriptions of the poems, and after that, the letters. Though Johnson spent weeks examining the poems and their various transcriptions, he spent very little time with the letters, since Harvard University Press had commissioned another scholar, Theodora Ward, to work on a new volume of Emily’s letters, which came out in 1951. (Ward and Johnson subsequently coedited another volume of Emily’s letters published in 1958.)

  After Ward’s book was published, Millicent was incensed. “In this book partisanship is shown in several ways,” she wrote: “by using copyrighted material without permission or acknowledgment; by using unpublished manuscript letters given to Mrs. Ward by me without acknowledgment of their source; by using 29 letters, the original of which were lost, published by Mrs. Todd in 1894, without mentioning the fact that because of their preservation by Mrs. Todd’s publication, Mrs. Ward was enabled to include them in her book.” Millicent concluded her diatribe by suggesting that Ward was “presenting Sue in the best possible light thereby making almost credible her daughter’s picture of her in Life and Letters.”32 This book only hardened Millicent’s feelings about the behavior of Harvard University—while she was still willing to allow Tom Johnson to see copies of the materials in her possession, she was not willing to relinquish the originals.

  After going through all these materials at the Folger Library, Johnson told Millicent the work had been such a strain on him that he could not sleep, that he thought about it all the time and found himself dripping with cold perspiration. Millicent said she shared his suffering. And then “he told me about his interview with Montague, whom he called a ‘curmudgeon’; I said I thought that a conservative estimate.” She reported that Johnson told her he was “absolutely convinced” that Montague intended to go through with his threat to sue Harvard; that “Harvard is frightened out of its wits and that Harpers also appeared to feel that there is a possibility that Montague will win a suit.”

  Thomas Johnson then turned to her, Millicent wrote, and told her that there was one way out of this mess: she must promise to give all her manuscripts to Harvard. “He presented a picture of the preeminent place my mother would occupy in American literary history; and the acclaim that would redound to me because of my generosity. That might not interest me so much, he ventured, but that my mother should be given full credit for what she did . . . he thought should appeal to me. . . . ‘Don’t you want to place your mother where she deserves to be? It would be a very noble thing for you to do.’”

  At the time, Millicent recalled she simply reiterated that her goal was to “free this field of literature.”

  “What I did not say,” she wrote, “was that all Montague is interested in now is . . . to show how clever he is, to gain prestige and power. He does not care about Emily Dickinson at all. He would like to have what I have of course. It would make his collection complete and back up his ridiculous claim in June 1950, that Harvard now has 75% of Emily’s manuscripts. His bombast has caught up with him.”33

  Indeed, Harvard was putting the full-court press on Millicent. Gilbert Montague, himself, tried to see her on three separate occasions in 1953, but each time she politely turned him down. “I think if the man had been honest and merely said that he wanted to have a talk with me, without subterfuge, the whole miserable business might have ended then and there,” she said. Cass Canfield from Harper told Millicent the publisher concluded Harvard’s position was intractable and that she should reconsider her own. Millicent’s public stance was unyielding; privately, though, her rationale was becoming a bit unhinged. “Of course, if they choose to bring out the relationship between mamma and Mr. Dickinson they would think they could extort anything from me to avoid that. But in that they are mistaken. I have reached a point where the truth is all that matters. I fear no revelation that they could bring out.”34 There is no indication in written communications from Harvard representatives or from Harper that Harvard was threatening to expose the Mabel/Austin relationship as a way of getting Millicent to turn over her papers. It seems she simply drew this conclusion herself.

  During this time, Millicent wrote more and more frequently to Charles Cole at Amherst. Sometimes she wrote him daily. In April of 1953, after he had met with Robert Frost, Cole communicated to Millicent that he would try to “point out to Harvard people the error of their ways.” Cole wrote that he and Frost would like to see all the Emily Dickinson papers in her possession ultimately come to Amherst “since we believe that anybody working on Emily should spend some time in the town of Amherst as we feel that she was more closely identified with the town than any poet normally is with a single place.” Cole told Millicent he would speak about the whole situation with his presidential counterpart at Harvard, Nathan Pusey. While it is true that Cole was doing what he could to bring Millicent’s Dickinson collection to Amherst College, he was sincere in his belief that Harvard, in preventing Millicent’s books from being published, was doing something antithetical to the mission of an educational institution. Millicent was thrilled at his offer. “Your talk with Mr. Pusey may result in freeing Emily Dickinson from the exclusive ownership of any one person, which has been my objective for more than twenty years ever since my mother asked me to set things straight,” she responded to Cole.35

  President Cole kept his word. In October 1953 he wrote to Mill
icent, “Mr. Pusey assures me that Harvard truly did not want to prevent the publication of your two works but that they were more than somewhat entangled in the toils cast about them by the donor of the material they have. He also indicated to me, at the close of the conversation, that he thought you would receive an official communication before too long offering to withdraw Harvard’s objection to the publication of the books, provided that the books would bear, in an appropriate place, ‘published by permission of Harvard University’ or some similar statement.” Cole concluded, “This, I think, marks a very major retreat from the position that Jackson originally took with you. . . . My general feeling would be that it would be a very good idea to accept the Harvard offer, if made, so as to get the thing settled and the books out even if it did jeopardize somewhat your legal position in these matters. The last would seem to me to have things drag on endlessly, fruitlessly and with increasing bitterness, at the same time that the public and scholars would be denied access to the very important material in your books.”36

  Believing Charles Cole to be an honorable man who placed scholarship first, who understood and respected the place of Emily Dickinson and who admired her work and Mabel’s on behalf of the poet, Millicent acquiesced. Several years later, she said Cole had “talked with the new President of Harvard, pointing out the absurdity—not to mention the injustice—of Harvard holding up the publication of scholarly work in which they themselves were interested in order to gain their end. A good deal of correspondence was involved . . . among the lawyers. They finally agreed that if I would, in both prefaces, publish Harvard’s claim to the manuscripts in my possession as well as to all copyrights on my books, they would withdraw their threat to Harpers of an injunction.” After many months of wrangling, in June 1954, Millicent signed an agreement with Harvard.37