Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

  “Yes,” she said softly. She was quiet a minute. Then she said, “Eternity is behind us and there’s immortality to come. But for now we have the bliss of memory.”

  I stopped my dusting and looked at her. She was sitting up, hugging her knees in that gold afternoon light. Her smile was dazzling. There was nothing to be said to that. I was overcome by love.

  I take the rosary out of my pocket and hold it in my hand. The horn beads wink and shine at me—like amber pearls.

  * * *

  I finish the last of my tea, though it’s gone cold while I’ve been musing. Soon Nell will be here. She’ll be telling me about her day and asking about mine. I’ll talk a bit about my errands in town and how the boarders are all worked up over Fenians and a rising in Ireland. Maybe I’ll tell her about seeing my friend Molly’s son. I’m thinking I won’t say anything about going inside the Homestead. Some things are best cradled in the heart.

  I pour myself another cup of tea. Maybe I’ll take it out to the porch and sit there till Nell comes. The sun will be slanting across my rocking chair, making a pool of warm light.

  I open the door and step outside.

  Author’s Note

  Every novel has a history. Emily’s House began more than seven years ago with a curiosity about Emily Dickinson. Like so many, I was drawn to her poetry and fascinated by her eccentric and reclusive habits. I knew focusing a novel on such an intriguing and unusual character would be challenging. But one of the pleasures of writing I enjoy most is discovering story lines and working out the puzzles of a character’s experience. So I eagerly dug into researching her life and the lives of her friends and family. I read everything about the poet and her world I could get my hands on. It began to look like Emily was the still center in a swirling family drama, especially after Mabel Loomis Todd’s arrival in Amherst.

  But then I read Aífe Murray’s Maid as Muse and encountered Margaret Maher. I knew right away I’d found my protagonist. Margaret’s pivotal role in sharing Dickinson’s poetry with the world inspired me to give her a voice and a story. From that point on, I was committed. I found her tone early and she quickly emerged as the energetic, ambitious woman Emily described as “wild and warm and mighty.”

  The real-life Margaret Maher was born in 1841 in County Tipperary, Ireland. As a child, she lived through the Irish potato famine, and as an adult, she was companion and confidante to the woman whom many consider America’s greatest poet. Her story is an immigrant’s story of overcoming obstacles through determination, perseverance, and strength of character. One can only be awed by the scope of her impact, and the impact of others like her, on the American story.

  While there’s a wealth of information on Emily’s life, as well as numerous theories about her motivations and intentions, Margaret’s experience during the Dickinson years is not well documented. I’ve taken the liberty of giving her a vibrant life apart from her service to the Dickinson family, including an interest in Irish Home Rule, a passion common to many Irish Americans in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

  As in my previous novels, most of the major characters are based on real people. An exception here is Patrick Quinn. The cryptic comment in one of Emily’s letters that “courageous Maggie is not yet caught in the snares of Patrick” prompted me to create a man in Margaret’s life. His story and his relationship with Margaret are entirely my invention. However, I have based his life on the Irish immigrant experience of that time, including the long struggle for Home Rule, the Fenian raids on Canada, and the establishment of the Brooklyn Dynamite School.

  Until recently, the primary source for most biographies of Dickinson has been the papers of Mabel Loomis Todd. This has resulted in what I believe is a distorted portrayal of Emily’s sister-in-law, Sue Dickinson, and the near complete erasure of Margaret’s presence and role. Mabel never met Emily face-to-face and, because of her long affair with Austin Dickinson, had reason to disparage Sue’s reputation and importance in Emily’s life. She also resented Margaret’s role in exposing the affair through a legal deposition, and verbally belittled her later in life. To balance this bias, I relied on the reminiscences of Emily’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi. It was Martha who wrote the eyewitness account of Margaret’s agitation over Emily’s order to burn the poems following her death.

  In her 1897 deposition, Margaret testified under oath that the booklets (labeled fascicles by Mabel) were hidden in her trunk. The fact that Vinnie is the one so often credited with “finding” the poems inspired the idea that Margaret moved them to a place where Vinnie could find them. Before this “discovery” no one in the family, with the possible exception of Sue, knew the extent of Emily’s writing.

  After Emily’s death, Vinnie became fixated on getting the poems published. She first turned them over to Sue for editing, but grew impatient with her sister-in-law’s slow progress. She then gave them to Mabel, who transcribed and edited them with Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Three volumes were published between 1890 and 1896, and their popularity led to Mabel’s lectures on Emily and her work.

  In the novel, Margaret briefly refers to working at the Dell while Mabel transcribed Emily’s poems. Margaret did this work (at Vinnie’s instruction) in addition to her work at the Homestead. She received no compensation beyond her regular wages. I can only assume that she agreed to do it out of a personal desire to shepherd the poems into print. During this time she was eyewitness to the ongoing affair between Mabel and Austin, details of which she testified to in her deposition.

  Margaret worked for the Dickinsons for thirteen years after Emily died, but it appears that she left Amherst for a year during that period. There’s no documented evidence of her reasons for leaving or of where she went but I’ve imagined that she spent time visiting her brother on the West Coast.

  In 1896 the relationship between Vinnie and Mabel soured to the point of litigation. At issue was a parcel of land Mabel claimed Austin had promised her. After his death in 1895, Vinnie had signed papers agreeing to the transaction, but later she asserted Mabel had tricked her into it. Vinnie brought a lawsuit and Mabel countersued. Margaret was deposed in May 1897 and her testimony revealed Austin and Mabel’s affair, which resulted in the collapse of Mabel’s case.

  The events in the 1916 chapters are largely fictional. Beyond the fact that Margaret referred to the Homestead as “the dear old place,” I have no documentation of the emotional impact the house’s sale might have had on her, let alone any evidence that she actively opposed it. The house remained in the Parke family until 1965, when it was sold to the Trustees of Amherst College and used as faculty housing for several years. It is now a museum and is being painstakingly restored to appear as it did during Emily’s lifetime.

  Following Vinnie’s death, Margaret ran her own boardinghouse in Kelley Square for many years. She died in Amherst in 1924 and is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Northampton, Massachusetts, with her parents and brother.

  Every novel is ultimately the author’s story. In taking on Margaret’s voice and perspective, I’ve expanded my understanding of the United States in a tumultuous time and deepened my awareness of those among us who are often overlooked. And, like my protagonist, I’ve completely fallen under Emily’s spell, dazzled by her brilliant mind, astonishing talent, and transcendent spirit.

  Acknowledgments

  My wholehearted thanks to:

  Susan Ramer, agent extraordinaire. Thank you for your tenacious interest in my work and long-term support of my writing career. Thanks for your diligence and business expertise, for never settling for mediocrity over excellence, for promptly answering my many questions, for helping me grow as a writer, and for so often nudging me in the right direction. Thanks especially for your directness and honesty, and the assurance that I can always rely on you to tell me the truth.

  Margarite Landry, longtime friend, fellow fiction writer, and first reader. Thank you for your many wri
ting insights, unflagging encouragement, and countless conversations over the years, and for so often gladdening my heart with your wonderful sense of humor.

  Ina Anderson, poet, friend, and first reader. Thank you for your generous and warmhearted camaraderie and for your endless curiosity about this novel, which regularly revitalized my passion for the work.

  Emma Wunsch, Andi Diehn, Tamar Schreibman, Susan Kaplan Carlton, Kimberly Kol, Becca Yuan, Sarah Dickenson Snyder, and Patricia Baird Greene, fellow writers in the Upper Valley Fiction Collective. Thanks for your straightforward feedback, invigorating discussions, and supportive friendship.

  Amanda Bergeron, editor and fellow native New Englander. Thank you for your contagious enthusiasm, warm encouragement, and gentle guidance throughout the process of bringing the dream of this novel to fruition.

  Emily Osborne, art director. Thank you for the brilliantly imagined cover that so beautifully captures the soul of this novel.

  Jane Wald, executive director of the Emily Dickinson Museum. Thank you for generously making time in your busy schedule to answer my questions, and for giving me a peek into the servants’ quarters in the Dickinson Homestead.

  And especially and always, thanks to Duane, my husband and soul mate. Sharing married life with a writer for more than fifty years is not for the fainthearted. Thank you for your astute insights, untiring patience, calming reassurance, and—most of all—for your unconditional love.

  READERS GUIDE

  Emily’s House

  Amy Belding Brown

  Further Historical Notes from Amy Belding Brown

  My Take on Emily Dickinson

  There are dozens of interpretations of Emily Dickinson, as evidenced in the many biographies and papers about her life. In popular culture, she’s been portrayed as psychologically repressed and painfully shy, or—more recently—as boldly unconventional and even subversive. In her own day, she was labeled “the Myth of Amherst,” and in my view, her personality and motivations remain frustratingly elusive. I have come to believe this mystery was one she intentionally constructed, compounded by her family’s desire after her death to protect the family reputation through obfuscation and misdirection.

  The Dickinsons were one of the most prestigious families in Amherst. Emily’s father went to great lengths to shelter his family, particularly his eldest daughter. He regarded her as sickly and pulled her out of Mount Holyoke Seminary after she completed only one year. Yet, as a young woman, Emily was active in the town’s social scene, attending parties, concerts, and festivals. At that time, the Dickinsons were living in a large home on North Pleasant Street, next to the cemetery that would eventually become her final resting place.

  In 1855, the Dickinsons moved to the newly renovated Homestead on Main Street, a relocation that was an unwelcome change for both Emily and her mother. Emily’s letters suggest that sometime in the next five or six years she may have suffered some personal adversity. Emily’s biographies are filled with speculation about this crisis, proposing everything from rejection by a suitor to the onset of epilepsy. Whatever the reason, she became gradually more reclusive. There’s no way to know for sure why she secluded herself or what prompted her strange habit of wearing white most of the time.

  After her death, her family made vague references to an unnamed lover. Family members passed off her eccentric behavior as simply Emily being Emily. It’s possible she suffered from panic attacks and agoraphobia. Or she might simply have been protecting her privacy to concentrate on her poetry. Similarly, she might have adopted wearing white because it somehow helped with her eye problems or just because she liked the way she felt wearing it.

  Both her letters and actions suggest that Emily enjoyed posing as an eccentric. She seems to have meticulously curated the image she presented to friends and relatives, adjusting her words and behavior to her particular audience. Dickinson’s poems are frequently cited, with slim supporting evidence, as a record of her personal experience. But Elizabeth Phillips, in her book Persona and Performance, suggests that Dickinson combined her extensive reading, personal observations, and brilliant imagination as frames of reference for her poetry. I’m inclined to agree.

  The Dickinson-Todd Feud

  I first learned about the feud between the Dickinson and Todd families when I started reading in-depth accounts of Emily Dickinson’s life. I was surprised and a bit scandalized. Austin Dickinson’s affair with Mabel Todd seemed like it belonged in a steamy romance novel rather than in a biography of America’s greatest poet. Yet the more I researched, the more twists and turns the story took, creating a controversy between contentious camps that continues today. The crux of the dispute was control of the narrative of Emily Dickinson’s life and literary legacy.

  When the poems came into Vinnie’s possession, she was determined to get them published. Knowing her sister-in-law’s familiarity with Emily’s work, she gave them to Sue Dickinson, but soon grew impatient with her progress. She then handed them to Mabel Todd, who knew the publishing world and was eager to help. Mabel edited the poems to conform to nineteenth-century conventions, changing punctuation, spelling, and even some words. During this period, Margaret temporarily replaced Mabel’s maid, working part-time at the Dell, the large home Austin had bought and landscaped for Mabel. There Margaret witnessed not only Mabel’s work on the poems but also her frequent assignations with Austin.

  The first volumes of poems were critically and financially successful. Vinnie held the copyrights and received the majority share of royalties. According to Mabel, Austin, in an attempt to “make things a little more even” on her behalf, wanted to give Mabel a strip of the Dickinson meadow adjacent to the Dell. However, he never actually deeded the property to her.

  When Austin died, Mabel responded by publicly acting the part of a grieving widow, behavior that not only offended Sue and her children but Vinnie as well. When Mabel pressed Vinnie to make good on Austin’s wish, she refused. Mabel continued to pressure her, using work on the third volume of poetry as leverage. When the book was near completion, she asked Vinnie to deed her the strip of land as a gesture of gratitude. Vinnie verbally agreed to the transaction. But when Vinnie’s business adviser learned of this, he warned her not to sign any papers without his knowledge. What happened next has been given conflicting interpretations, depending on which camp the writer is in.

  Shortly before Mabel left with her husband on a trip to Japan, she and a Northampton lawyer visited Vinnie one evening at the Homestead. In Julie Dobrow’s account in After Emily, Vinnie agreed to sign the papers but wanted to do so under cover of darkness to avoid inciting Sue’s anger. She asked that Mabel bring a lawyer as a witness. But according to Lyndall Gordon, author of Lives Like Loaded Guns, Vinnie was tricked into signing the deed. Mabel brought the lawyer along without warning Vinnie, telling her he was interested in Emily’s poetry. During a moment when Vinnie was showing off the family china, Mabel gave her the papers and secured her signature.

  It was Margaret who overheard gossip at the post office about the deed transfer and told her mistress. Vinnie soon discovered what she hadn’t read—the terms of the deed prohibited her niece and nephew from making claims on the land. Her adviser insisted she contest the deed.

  In November 1896, Vinnie filed suit against the Todds. The next spring Margaret was questioned, and in her deposition, she revealed the true nature of Mabel’s relationship with Austin. Though the deposition was never read in court, both parties were aware of how seriously it damaged the defense’s case.

  The trial opened on March 1, 1898. Vinnie was first on the witness stand, answering questions with composure and conviction. When it was Mabel’s turn, she claimed she knew Emily well and that the poet had asked her to edit the poems. Under cross-examination, she was forced to admit that she had never seen nor spoken to Emily. Bit by bit Vinnie’s lawyers shredded Mabel’s defense.

  The trial was clos
ely followed in the press, with readers taking sides in a bitter divide. The Hartford Courant reported that “society circles are agog” and the proceedings were “likely to furnish gossip for afternoon tea in the Connecticut Valley for a long time to come.” It was a prescient prediction, for the stories surrounding that trial are still sources of controversy.

  In April, the judge delivered his verdict—the deed was void. The Todds appealed to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s verdict. After she lost the case, Mabel refused to have anything more to do with the Dickinsons. She wrote in her diary that Margaret was a liar and had been coached by Vinnie. Instead of returning the Dickinson papers, she locked them away in a chest, where they remained untouched for decades.

  In 1950, Emily’s heirs donated the family’s large collection of manuscripts and furnishings to Harvard University. Six years later, Mabel Todd’s daughter, Millicent, gave Todd’s collection to Amherst College. In 1965, the college purchased the Homestead from the Parke family, and took ownership of the Evergreens in 2003. The two buildings now form the Emily Dickinson Museum.

  But Emily Dickinson’s estate remains divided to this day.

  Questions for Discussion

  Patrick Quinn plays a major role in Margaret’s self-discovery as she begins to embrace her heritage but he also drives her away from her roots with some with his more radical ideas for Ireland. How would her life (and identity) be different if Patrick Quinn never knocked on the kitchen door? Would she have continued to seek out her Irish culture?