#mabel loomis todd

[garadinervi]

Emily Dickinson, b. December 10, 1830 / 2024

(image: Emily Dickinson, Poems, Edited by two of her friends Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, Roberts Brothers, Boston, MA, 1890)

[aselectsociety]

Who Am I to Disagree?

In yesterday’s post, I discussed Helen Vendler’s take on Dickinson’s use of the dash. In brief: “Her dashes served a multitude of purposes,” noted Vendler in Dickinson, Selected Poems and Commentaries. She added, “The dash becomes especially significant when it concludes a poem.”

Also in the post, I discussed one poem, “If recollecting were forgetting,” of which Dickinson wrote two versions – one with dashes (published in Miller 2016) and one without (published in Franklin 1998). Furthermore, I shared “‘Lethe’ in my flower,” a poem with no dashes, but a work which survived only in the form of a transcription produced by Mabel Loomis Todd – the original manuscript either lost or destroyed. Did Todd alter the poem to “clean up” Dickinson’s punctuation and eliminate the dashes? After all, she was known for modifying the poet’s punctuation and grammar to make her poems more palatable for public taste.

Vendler provided an interesting twist on this theme:

Vendler concluded her proposed transcription with this:

“As we compare the two possibilities, which seems more Dickinsonian? And what inference does a final dash allow that Todd’s terminal period does not?”

As I prepared today’s post and revisited Vendler’s text, I observed that I’d written a note to myself on the page, “LOL see recent post on the…”?

“Bunny”? Does that say “bunny”? Or does it say “bumnyl”? What the hell did I write – and what was my past-self trying to remind my present-self? It took me a bit to figure it out, but it does say “see recent post on the bunny.” Thisnote to myself was a cue to revisit a post from the end of April which focused on one individual’s query, “How would famous writers rewrite this sentence in their style: A bunny was looking for a carrot.” I didn’t think their proposed response for Emily Dickinson sounded very Dickinson-esque, so I attempted to compose one myself that sounded more Dickinsonian (a la Vendler’s reflection above). My post is HERE.

Below: Variances in punctuation and spelling in Dickinson's "My life closed twice before its close":

NOTES RE: ABOVE CHART:

* From Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Variorum Edition. ** I have no idea why Johnson added a dash at the end of the opening line of the poem. # Franklin: At the time she transcribed the poem, Todd wrote “[disclose}” next to line 3, apparently as a potential editorial alteration. Emendation: 1 it’s] its even numbers 2-8] indented 6 befell] befel ## Miller: “Befel” may be MLT’s mistake (it was emended by RWF), but it may also be ED’s anachronistic spelling; it is used by Shakespeare and by Isaac atts, albeit rarely.

Below: "My life closed twice before its close" in the 1924 "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson; the title "Parting," given my Mable Loomis Todd, was not used in this edition.

Below: The poem as it appeared in the June 1896 issue of Scribner's Magazine. The Scribner's version of the poem is the only one to use the word "this" in line 6 of the poem instead of "these" (which reminds me of the Eurythmics' "Sweet dreams are made of this...vs these" line in their song).

Below: Annie Lennox’s eyes. To hear “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” (not These), click HERE.

[morphmaker]

"A beautifully crafted pack of lies." – Mabel Loomis Todd Reacts to the Final Season of Dickinson

Previously: Mabel Loomis Todd Reacts to Two Seasons of Dickinson

Sources: Lives Like Loaded Guns by Lyndall Gordon, Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd by Polly Longsworth, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple, emilydickinson.org, Open Me Carefully by Martha Nell Smith and Ellen Louise Hart, Wild Nights with Emily movie, my own imagination

[litafficionado]

“Emily kept her little reserves, and bared her soul but seldom, even in intimate correspondence. Petty trivialities had no part in her constitution, and she came to despise them more and more,—so much, indeed, that with her increasing shyness, she gradually gave up all journeys, and finally retired completely from even the simple life of a New England college town.” -Mabel Loomis Todd on Emily Dickinson, in her introduction to Letters of Emily Dickinson, published 1894 // “She came to me with two day lilies which she put in a sort of childlike way into my hand & said "These are my introduction" in a soft frightened breathless childlike voice — & added under her breath Forgive me if I am frightened; I never see strangers & hardly know what I say —” -Thomas Wentworth Higginson recalling his meeting with Emily Dickinson, in a letter to his wife Mary Elizabeth Channing dated 16th August, 1870 // “She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in an hour's interview, and an instinct told me that the slightest attempt at direct cross-examination would make her withdraw into her shell; I could only sit still and watch, as one does in the woods; I must name my bird without a gun, as recommended by Emerson.” -Thomas Wentworth Higginson, recounting the meeting with Emily Dickinson twenty years later, in the Atlantic Monthly LXVIII(October 1891)

[explore-blog]

A vast, palpable presence seems overwhelming the world. The blue sky changes to gray or dull purple, speedily becoming more dusky, and a death-like trance seizes upon everything earthly.

Mabel Loomis Todd’s poetic and scientifically illuminating 19th-century guide to viewing a total solar eclipse.

[books0977]

Poems. Emily Dickinson. First Series. Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd & T. W. Higginson. Boston: Robert Brothers, 1890. First edition.

“A PRECIOUS, mouldering pleasure 't is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or two, to make To times when he was young...”

[dk-thrive]

But a sense of uneasiness seems gradually to steal over all life. Cows and horses feed intermittently, bird songs diminish, grasshoppers fall quiet, and a suggestion of chill crosses the air

As the entire duration of an eclipse, partial phases and all, embraces two or three hours, often for an hour after “first contact” insects still chirp in the grass, birds sing, and animals quietly continue their grazing. But a sense of uneasiness seems gradually to steal over all life. Cows and horses feed intermittently, bird songs diminish, grasshoppers fall quiet, and a suggestion of chill crosses the air. Darker and darker grows the landscape. […]

Then, with frightful velocity, the actual shadow of the Moon is often seen approaching, a tangible darkness advancing almost like a wall, swift as imagination, silent as doom. The immensity of nature never comes quite so near as then, and strong must be the nerves not to quiver as this blue-black shadow rushes upon the spectator with incredible speed. A vast, palpable presence seems overwhelming the world. The blue sky changes to gray or dull purple, speedily becoming more dusky, and a death-like trance seizes upon everything earthly. Birds, with terrified cries, fly bewildered for a moment, and then silently seek their night quarters. Bats emerge stealthily. Sensitive flowers, the scarlet pimpernel, the African mimosa, close their delicate petals, and a sense of hushed expectancy deepens with the darkness. An assembled crowd is awed into absolute silence almost invariably… Often the very air seems to hold its breath for sympathy; at other times a lull suddenly awakens into a strange wind, blowing with unnatural effect.

Then out upon the darkness, grewsome but sublime, flashes the glory of the incomparable corona, a silvery, soft, unearthly light, with radiant streamers, stretching at times millions of uncomprehended miles into space, while the rosy, flaming protuberances skirt the black rim of the Moon in ethereal splendor. It becomes curiously cold, dew frequently forms, and the chill is perhaps mental as well as physical.

Suddenly, instantaneous as a lightning flash, an arrow of actual sunlight strikes the landscape, and Earth comes to life again, while corona and protuberances melt into the returning brilliance, and occasionally the receding lunar shadow is glimpsed as it flies away with the tremendous speed of its approach.

~ Mabel Loomis Todd, Total Eclipses of the Sun, Vol. 1 (Originally released in 1894, Published by Forgotten Books, May 10, 2017)

[garadinervi]

Emily Dickinson, It's all I have to bring to-day [ca. 1858], in Poems, Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, Roberts Brothers, Boston, MA, 1896, Third Series

It's all I have to bring today, This, and my heart beside, This, and my heart, and all the fields, And all the meadows wide – Be sure you count – should I forget Some one the sum could tell – This, and my heart, and all the Bees Which in the Clover dwell.