The second half of the Lives Like Loaded Guns deals with the decades-long consequences of an adulterous affair between Emily's brother Austin and a woman named Mabel Loomis Todd. Where the first half is a look at the effects of “genius” and vision on an artist, the second examines genius' sometimes bitter legacy. Dickinson's family was torn apart by the affair, and Mabel Loomis Todd appears to have been something of an adventuress.
But the story becomes more and more complex. Though Austin's wife, Sue, was actually close to Emily (she was Emily's first close reader and admirer), Mabel Loomis Todd was the first to painstakingly transcribe and edit Dickinson's work, a task for which she received little money and, at least initially, only fleeting credit. Both parties used Dickinson's posthumous reputation for self-aggrandizement. Both parties, Austin's wife and his lover, tried to write the other out of Dickinson's story. Not only that but, once Sue and Mabel were dead, their daughters took up the feud and continued to publish or suggest scurrilous things about Sue Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.
This is the part of the book where Gordon's relative impartiality is invaluable. Though her sympathy is clearly with Sue Dickinson, who has been much maligned on feeble evidence, she refuses to bash the “Toddites.” She points out the obfuscations and lies of both sides, from Mabel Todd's defacement of Dickinson's manuscript – in order to erase a mention of Sue – to the Dickinsons' efforts to have Todd's herculean editing written out of the history of Dickinson's work. It's a fascinating – sometimes appalling – story. The arguments and counter-arguments are like skirmishes in a long, relatively pointless war. But Gordon is a great guide to the proceedings. She examines the hurt feelings, the family drama at the heart of the war and, so, makes the stakes, personal and historical, absolutely clear.
I mentioned above that Lyndall Gordon's style is, at times, a little “heated.” And I was going to give an example, but on reflection, I think the feeling of melodrama comes as much from how the book is organized. We begin with Austin's adultery, an infidelity that hangs over the proceedings until, having gone back in time, we come to it at last in its proper place. And then we watch the playing out of a surprisingly tawdry familial drama. The book is a conscious intermingling of scholarly research, The Scarlet Letter, Bleak House and the feeling suggested by Bernini's sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. I expected a more restrained book. But Lives Like Loaded Guns is the intellectually engaging biography of a New England poet that doubles as a great summer read.
André Alexis's new book, Beauty and Sadness, will be published this fall.
