“And yet we have found each other! What have I done to deserve such a reward?”
“Oh, nothing!” cried Mabel. “Nothing at all! Except live a life of exemplary goodness, and give unstintingly of your time and energy, and grow year by year in wisdom and kindness, and so become the most respected man of your age.”
“Is that why God has given you to me?”
“I believe,” said Mabel, “that God created us for each other. I believe that I know God’s love through your love. All I ask is that I may be worthy of it.”
They lived in these months in a state of mutual exultation. Their preference for each other was apparent to everyone in the town, but David Todd made it clear that he regarded the friendship as innocent, and welcomed Austin Dickinson as his own friend. This more than anything silenced the malice of gossips. Why shouldn’t Mr. Dickinson put on his stylish coat and his wide-brimmed hat and take Mrs. Todd out driving in his carriage? Before Mrs. Todd had ever come to Amherst, Mrs. Tuckerman had been a favorite and had been taken on similar drives. Gentlemen were allowed to admire pretty young ladies. In this way a secret of sorts was kept.
Now that the Todds had a house of their own, the lovers had no more need of the Homestead for their secret liaisons. Vinnie complained to Austin that he neglected his sisters.
“Emily is not at all well, Austin. Her back hurts her, and she hardly sleeps at all. She thinks you no longer care for us.”
This last was an invention of Vinnie’s, but it had the desired effect. Austin called on Emily. He found her tired, but eager for news.
“Tell me about Mrs. Todd. I hear she’s a published author. Does she still brighten your life?”
Austin needed no further prompting.
“Mabel is . . . Mabel is . . . what is she not? She’s everything to me! I want all the world to know! Instead we must hide and creep about and pretend. I can’t bear it, Em.”
“And Mrs. Todd, can she bear it?”
“She’s an angel. She spreads her beautiful wings and rises above the pettiness and spite.”
“Will you take her a poem from me?”
Austin carried the poem proudly to Mabel, and she received it with reverence. Here was further proof that her love for Austin was blessed by the Myth; and better still, that she was among the very few who were permitted to see her poems.
The poem began:
My River runs to thee—
Blue Sea! Wilt welcome me?
And ended:
Say—Sea—Take Me!
Austin called it charming, supposing it to be a nature poem. Mabel knew better.
“It’s about love,” she said. She trembled as she read it. “She must have loved to write like this.”
“If she has,” said Austin, “I’m not aware that she’s ever been loved in return. There was John Graves, when she was young, and later there was George Gould. But nothing came of it in either case.”
“You think nothing comes of love if it doesn’t lead to marriage.”
“Hardly,” said Austin. But then he became confused. He wanted to affirm the primacy of his unmarried love for Mabel, but at the same time he wished with all his heart that the world could know her as his wife.
In October 1884, when the Todds were established in the Lessey house, Mabel’s parents came from Washington on an extended visit. Mabel invited her Amherst friends to a housewarming. She served chicken salad and cake, and decorated the house in her own original way, with golden leaves and yellow daisies and vines. Over seventy people came. The party was judged a brilliant success.
Shortly after this, Mabel’s mother, Mrs. Loomis, heard the rumors about her daughter and Mr. Dickinson.
“Mabel,” she said, “I do hope you’re taking care to preserve your reputation. A reputation once lost can’t be regained.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mama.”
“I’m talking about Mr. Dickinson.”
“Mr. Dickinson is a good friend to me, and to David. Why should he not be?”
“No, Mabel, that won’t do. People are saying that you go driving with him in byroads, and that he comes into your house by back ways, and that he stays with you late, after your husband has retired.”
“That’s enough, Mama! What are you accusing me of?”
“My darling, I know there’s no impropriety here. But there is the appearance of impropriety. You must be more careful of what you are seen to do, or people will start to believe you do much more.”
“People! Who are these people? They’re small-minded fools with no better way to fill their time!”
“I’m only telling you what I hear, Mabel. Think of Millicent. Do you want to expose her to this kind of gossip?”
“I do think of Millicent! And David! I’m a good mother, and a good wife! Am I not to be allowed a friend?”
She burst into tears.
Alone with Austin, finding comfort in his arms, she told him of the accusations her mother had made. Austin proved to be a pillar of strength.
“Is there anything in our love of which you’re ashamed?”
“Nothing!”
“Then what have we to fear? Our life together is as white and unspotted as the fresh-driven snow.”
“Yes! Yes!”
“We love one another. There may be others who don’t understand our love—who hold to the letter which killeth and not to the Spirit which giveth life—but that is the cross we must bear in this world. We know that we would give up our life for our love if necessary. There is no life for me without you.”
“No life for me without you,” Mabel repeated.
Then they said their prayer together.
“For my beloved is mine and I am his. What can we want beside? Nothing!”
For all the brave front they put on for each other, both knew they must be more careful in the future. From now on they met less frequently, and took care when together in public to make no great show of seeking each other out. Their liaisons at the Homestead continued, known only to Vinnie and Emily.
• • •
As Sue emerged from mourning, her hatred of Mabel came out into the open. When Mabel began singing in the quartet of the First Congregational Church choir, Sue stopped attending the weekly service. When Mabel was invited by the students of the college to be the matron of their annual dance, Sue forbade Mattie to go. She gave no reason for her actions but nor did she conceal her motives. When Mabel walked into a room, Sue walked out.
Mabel begged Austin to do something to control his wife, but he was powerless. All they could do, he said, was wait for Sue to come to terms with reality. In the meantime a deep bitterness began to form within Mabel. She could see no end to the snubs and the slights. Amherst, she felt, was turning against her. Everywhere she went she believed she saw spying eyes and heard whispering tongues. When Caro Andrews came up with a plan to go on a trip to Europe and proposed taking Mabel with her, Mabel talked it over with both David and Austin, and gratefully accepted. She needed a break from small-town life.
She sailed from Boston on the Pavonia, for Queenstown, Ireland. She was to be away for three months. Austin found her absence unbearably painful. He poured out his love and longing in letters that chased Mabel from Dublin to London and Paris.
Another of these most perfect of fine days—and you not here. What are days, for now! I don’t want any of them—they are a burden—there’s no life or meaning in them. They are as blank as this paper untouched by pen, ready to be filled—may hold everything or nothing. There’s nothing for them to hold but you, my darling, my beloved. I would rather they were all blotted out till you are back. I see David as it happens in the daytime, and go over every evening for a while, as regularly as before you walked off, that morning of the fourth. We talk some—each, I think, feels nearer to you through the other than in any other way.
Austin and David became close over this time of Mabel’s absence. They shared Mabel in memory just as they had shared her in person. David told
Austin how he had first met Mabel, before he even knew her name.
“She was standing with her father outside the Nautical Almanac Office in Washington, wearing an old blue waterproof. It was raining. I think I loved her from that moment.”
It was a precious memory to David, and in describing it he offered it to Austin, so it could become his memory too.
David spoke of Mabel’s father, and how she revered him.
“I loved her for that.”
That led them to talk of their own fathers.
“Ah, you should have met my father,” said Austin. “He was almost a god to us. I don’t believe I ever saw him smile. I certainly never dared to touch him. Not until he was dead, that is. I kissed his cheek as he lay in the coffin.”
“And now you and I are both fathers.”
“Am I a father?” said Austin, shaking his head sadly. “Now that Gib is gone, I feel as if I have no place in my own home. Ned and Mattie are Sue’s children, not mine.”
“Do you ever think,” said David, “how your life might have taken a different course, had you chosen one road and not another, had you opened one door and not another?”
“Every day,” said Austin. “The old dream of what might have been.”
“You’ll laugh at me,” said David, “but when I was a boy I had a great passion for church organs. We worshipped in the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and they had a Hook and Hastings organ there. I was allowed to pump the bellows.”
Austin looked wonderingly at his friend, touched by the eagerness in his eyes.
“Church organs!”
“I couldn’t tell you why. The grand sound, of course. But it was the mechanism that fascinated me. I have a natural bent towards engineering, I think. You’ve heard of Thomas Alva Edison? He invited me to join him in his workshop. I must’ve been just twenty years old. I was very tempted. But I had just discovered astronomy, and in the end I took that path.”
“My path was always laid out before me,” said Austin. “I had a notion before I was married that I might go west, and make a career in Chicago. But my father offered me a partnership in his law practice, and built Sue and me a house next to his, and so I stayed. My father was very taken with Sue. I think it was her he wanted to keep by him more than me.”
He shook his head as he remembered.
“I look back on my life and I wonder at myself. How can I have known so little?”
“But you were happy with Sue in the beginning, surely?”
“In the beginning, perhaps. But somewhere in my heart I knew we were wrong for each other. I was young, and she was pretty, and lively, and even Emily was in love with her then. All my family loved her. Who was I to disagree?”
He lowered his voice.
“Sue never accustomed herself to a wife’s duties, if you understand me. Never. I remember once she called it low practices. That side of our marriage—well, it’s hardly been a marriage.”
“My dear fellow!”
“You can imagine what Mabel means to me.”
“More than imagine. I know for myself.”
“Of course you do.” Then after a pause, “How extraordinary it is that we two can sit here and say such things.”
“Extraordinary, and yet the most natural thing in the world.”
“A lesser man might feel jealous.”
“Mabel loves me,” said David. “Nothing has changed. Her love for you takes nothing from me. We’ve always given each other absolute freedom.”
“And you’ve never regretted that freedom?”
“Never.”
“To be absolutely clear, you know that Mabel has given me what Sue was unable to give.”
“Of course. She asked my permission.”
“She asked your permission?”
“Mabel and I have no secrets from each other. We never lie to each other.”
“And what she asked—it doesn’t disturb you in any way?”
“Perhaps there’s something missing in me,” said David. “I’m well aware that as the husband I should huff and puff over my wife’s honor, or my honor, or some such imagined slight. But the truth is my wife is beautiful, and I see no reason why another man shouldn’t enjoy her beauty. I’m proud that you love her.”
“Well,” said Austin, “you’re a finer man than I.”
What David did not tell Austin was that he found the idea of Mabel’s love affair arousing. Sometimes when alone in his bedroom he conjured up the familiar image of his wife’s naked body and introduced Austin by her side. Then while he stroked himself, he imagined Austin making love with Mabel. In this fantasy the picture of Austin was hazy; he could hardly say if he was dressed or not. The entire focus of his attention was on Mabel, gladly receiving another man’s love. He could see her face, her cheeks flushed and her lips parted. He could hear her rapid breaths, and her panting voice saying, “Love me! Love me!” At the height of her passion he heard her habitual cry, a high wordless note, and as he did so he too would reach his climax.
• • •
Mabel’s long trip drew to an end at last. Austin’s eager impatience rose to a fever pitch.
I have been reading lately of some of the famous loves of history—but find no parallel to yours and mine. Antony and Cleopatra. Abelard and Heloise. Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier. And others. Heloise loved as well as you. What other!—and what man, as I love you! What a fool Abelard was! And Antony. Madly in love with Cleopatra—but with the opportunity before him, marrying Octavia instead, for political policy. I love you, darling—all I am I am yours—for time—and for Eternity. Soon my arms shall be tightly around you. We shall not speak, we shall be too full—we shall be each other’s and we shall know that we are beyond all possible power to separate. Forever and forever . . .
Mabel arranged her two reunions with husband and lover by letters from Paris, taking both into her confidence. She asked Austin not to come to the Cunard wharf when the ship docked but to meet her in her Boston hotel, the Parker House, the next day. This was for the sake of appearances. It would also give her one night with David, to whom she wrote:
David dear—dear, DEAR, how I will kiss you and caress you when I once more get you within reach! How you shall feel all that I think now about you from afar.
All went according to plan. Mabel’s ship docked early on the Sunday morning of September 13, 1885. David met her, and spent that night with her at the Parker House. Then as David took a train back to Amherst, Austin passed in the opposite direction, arriving in Boston at 9:40 a.m. on Monday. The lovers were blissfully reunited.
At home once more in Amherst, the Todds began to look about them for a permanent house of their own. They had moved from the Lessey house to the Lincoln house, but this too was on a short lease. Austin suggested that he make available a strip of land on the far side of the Dickinson Meadow, across Main Street from the Homestead. There Mabel and David could build a home.
One evening when Mabel and David were alone together, drawing up plans for the house they would build, David said, “Of course, this will be Austin’s house as well.”
“You mean because we are to build on his land.”
“No, my darling. I do not mean that.”
“He can’t leave his family, dearest.”
“He has left his family. His spirit lives with us. And when we have our new house, his body will follow.”
Mabel kissed him in her gratitude.
“Best of husbands! How can I ever repay you?”
“I think we three could be happy together,” said David. “While you were away, Austin was very kind to me.”
“I know you’ve become good friends. That makes me so happy.”
“I would like us to be closer still.”
Then Mabel saw the look in his eyes and she understood him.
“You would like to share our love.”
“You know I adore you,” said David. “You know I love to look on you. Why should I not see more?”
“Would yo
u like that, my darling? Would you like to see me in another man’s arms?”
“Does that shock you?”
“No,” said Mabel, tilting her pretty head on one side. “I think I like the idea, though I’m sure it’s wrong of me.”
“Why wrong? To be loved by one man and admired by another.”
“And that would give you pleasure?”
“More than I can say.”
“Well, then. I shall speak to Austin. I can’t answer for him. But we’ve come so close, we three. Why not closer?”
Mabel found she was enchanted by the proposal. She understood and rejoiced in the desire both men felt for her. To have both desiring her in the same place at the same time . . .
She twined herself round David, nuzzling her face against his.
“Am I a creature without morals, darling?” she murmured. “Sometimes I’m terribly afraid that I must be. A decent woman would be shocked. But somehow I’m not shocked at all.”
“These decent people,” said David, “who knows what they get up to behind closed doors?”
“I’m afraid all they do behind their closed doors is gossip about their neighbors. Really we should throw open our doors and let all the town watch! Then they’d have something to talk about!”
Over the weeks that followed, Austin visited Mabel in the Lincoln house most Sunday evenings. There, as he recorded in his diary using a special symbol, he and Mabel made love. On ten of these Sunday evenings, as the diary also recorded, the lovemaking took place “with a witness.”
• • •
In the winter of 1886 Emily Dickinson’s illness became acute, and in mid-May she died. She had been ailing for over two years, but her death nevertheless came as a shock. She was fifty-five years old.
Her funeral service took place in the library at the Homestead. Colonel Higginson, a leading man of letters, and one of the few to whom Emily had sent samples of her poems, read out a verse over the coffin: not by Emily herself, but by her namesake Emily Brontë.
No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven’s glories shine,
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