Not ‘a boy-crazed trollop’

For someone who barely left the house, Emily Dickinson didn’t half cause a lot of trouble.

For someone who barely left the house, Emily Dickinson didn’t half cause a lot of trouble. Lives Like Loaded Guns — which combines biographical material, critical readings, and an assessment of the history of her reputation — tells a completely hair-raising story.

The Dickinsons were one of the first families of respectable Amherst. Emily and her sister Lavinia — ‘Vinnie’ — lived in one house, Homestead, right next door to her brother Austin, the head of the family, and his wife Sue. Susan Dickinson was a highly intelligent and sensitive woman, bosom friend to Emily. The poet called her ‘Sister’.

The cataclysm came when Austin fell in love with an ambitious and sexually captivating married woman, Mabel Loomis Todd. Their affair split the family open. Austin and Mabel — with the connivance of Vinnie — started using Homestead to hold their assignations. Susan and her children were distraught, but their feelings were ignored.

Dour, ramrod-backed Austin started to record in his diary that he and Mabel had enjoyed ‘the most perfect = = = =’, or ‘at the other house 3 to 5 and + = = = = = X X X’. The latter entry is footnoted by Gordon’s admission that ‘not all the code signs can be interpreted’. But we can make a guess. The vulgar word for his condition is ‘c***-struck’.

The set-up was scandalous by any standards. The affair was carried on with the active encouragement of Mabel’s philandering husband David, and ‘group sex’, Gordon writes, might even have been part of the picture.

Mabel meanwhile made war on Susan. She schemed, ultimately unsuccessfully, to wrest Austin permanently from his wife.