February 2013 update

One of my New Year’s commitments to self and community was to gear up my work on The Dressy Adventuress, my book on the Nature side of Mabel Loomis Todd, the first editor of the Emily Dickinson poetry.  And I must report, so far, so good. 

And as a way to handle two things at once (I hesitate writing ‘killing two birds with one stone’ in this scenario), I thought I would publish monthly book progress in the same blog entry posted on both my blogs, The Back Porch and The Dressy Adventuress.  If you are reading this, then you’ve found at least one of them.  

Let me briefly recap my story with Mrs. Todd for those who might be unaware of how the woman has impacted my life.  Back in 1980, I was encouraged by an administrator in the junior high school where I taught to get working on a masters degree.  I had been teaching for nine years at the time and was, indeed, ready to continue my education.  

Within short order I was enrolled as a graduate student in a new academic offering at Wright State University, a master of humanities program.  By the third quarter of study I signed up for a workshop on Emily Dickinson facilitated by a favorite prof of mine, Jim Hughes.  The following summer I was awarded a grant by the Dayton Audubon Society to attend the Audubon Ecology Camp in Maine on Hog Island, a lovely 330 acre site in Muscongus Bay.  Three years later I finished my MHum with a monograph entitled ‘The Epic of Hog’: The Todd Bingham Family and the Establishment of the Audubon Ecology Camp in Maine.  As it turned out, the island was ‘saved’ from clearcutting in 1908 by the one and only Mabel Loomis Todd.  

My masters project was good in what it tried to accomplish:  placing Mabel Loomis Todd in the framework of American conservation history.  But it wasn’t really enough.  There was so much more of her story to tell. 

By the time I retired from teaching in 2002, I was active with Friends of Hog Island, a newly formed organization dedicated to help the Audubon camp flourish as an environmental education center into the future.  At the time, the summer program was hemorrhaging cash for Audubon and the camp’s future was uncertain.  

About that time I committed myself to enlarging my focus on island history and write a publishable piece that Hog Island lovers, Mainers, Emily Dickinson aficianados, and Auduboners everywhere might like to read.  And so, in due course, The Dressy Adventuress was born. 

For a few years I tried to figure out a writing schedule as I dusted off old files and collected new ones.  Books that I had read about during the masters project that were not available for purchase at the time, had in the interim become available with the dawn of ‘print on demand’ technology.  At this time I have a shelf full of old books newly printed and acquired.  

I also determined that the January through May timeframe would be the best for me to focus hard on the book.  Other months of the year draw me into perennial volunteer projects, travel, and summer grandchild care.  The winter months seemed perfect for getting lost in writing.  And that’s where I am now.  

In order to hold my feet to the writing fire, I figured I should report to you all in my blogs monthly (January-May).  I also solicited the help of an academic friend, David Dominic, Earth & Environmental Sciences department chair Wright State, to meet with me regularly for a writing update.  I am pleased to report progress in both of those areas.  

My hope for these monthly updates is to let you know a bit about what I’m learning and how the book is developing.  Here’s where I am today: 

When I first organized the book in prewriting, the working title was Nature’s people which intended to compare the Nature loving behavior of both Ms. Dickinson and Mrs. Todd, different as they were, yet similar.  As of January, the nine chapters initially conceived were condensed into six.  

I had been advised to consider each chapter as an extended essay, and I figure the fewer chapters, the fewer essays.  If I need to expand into other chapters I will, but for the meantime, I feel good about the compression of topics.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been focused on researching the year 1908, which was the summer Mabel Todd observed forest cutting on Hog, an island she had no connection to prior.  That same year President Theodore Roosevelt held the very first national governor’s conference in Washington with focus on the ‘new’ concept of conservation.  1908 also marked Henry Ford producing his company’s first Model T for the masses, as well as the Wright brothers mastering controlled flight for extended periods.  It was a very important year in American history.   

Currently I am looking into ship building in the Hog Island region to fill in details about the first structure on the island, a ships chandlery.  I am also intent on unraveling the mystery of Howard Hilder, an artist friend of Mrs. Todd, who graced the main camp building with two fine murals painted c. 1922.

As mentioned in previous blogs, this is my first book and I have been working hard trying to figure out how that process works.  I think I have things moving in the right direction and am energized to continue.  Tune in here again the first week of March and I’ll let you know how it’s going. 

Comments and encouragement always welcome!  ;-) 

Today’s elder idea:  We must handle the water, the wood, the grasses, so that we will hand them to our children and our children’s children in better and not worse shape than we got them. 

Theodore Roosevelt

current epigraph for chapter 1

images:  (above) Mabel Loomis Todd’s Camp Mavooshen main building following restoration by Friends of Hog Island.  (summer 2012)

(below)  Detail of Howard Hilder’s mural of nesting osprey.  (summer 2011)

Book progress

I’ve never attempted to write a book before.  

Well, maybe once when I was in graduate school.  That product was another Hog Island target:  The Epic of Hog:  The Todd-Bingham Family and the Establishment of the Audubon Camp in Maine.  It’s what I needed to do to finish my MHumanities from Wright State in 1985.* 

But that was really just a long paper:  4 chapters in about 125 pages, with a half dozen photographs and notes.  

A book would have 300+ pages with a variety of chapters, extensive explanatory and ‘foot’ notes, and photographs.  That’s where I’m heading, anyway. 

The Dressy Adventuress began in 1981 when I first visited Hog Island.  From within a couple hours of making footfall on the Queen Mary dock, Mrs. Todd’s island story has been brewing with me.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  I’ve visited the Sterling Library at Yale at least five times by now, sifting through the Todd Bingham family papers archive trying to find one delightful tidbit that perhaps I overlooked; that one detail that would sweeten the story even more.  

My title, The Epic of Hog, must not be confused with Mabel Todd’s The Epic of Hog.  Mrs. Todd’s Epic is a collection of short ‘sketches’ focusing on the island’s natural history and local folks and places.  

These 27 unpublished, unfinished essays (some handwritten revision is evident) cover topics like the island heronry, hermit crabs, mushrooms, jellyfish, Capt’n Elisha King, Waldoboro, and Iceland moss.  

The amazing thing to me is that nobody has seen these essays for years -- perhaps not since the mid-1960s when Millicent Bingham was still around -- unless they’ve trekked to Yale to peruse the family archive.  

I’ve shared a few of the essays with Friends of Hog Islanders.  My plan is to include the complete Todd Epic of Hog as an appendix in The Dressy Adventuress.  Everybody should get the chance to hear what this stylish New England naturalist had to say about Hog Island a century ago. 

In any case, know that the book is coming along.  I know it’s taken too long to get here, but here I am.  Over the years I’ve immersed myself in Mrs. Todd’s island story, whether or not I was putting pixels to paper.  When I taught this part of the writing process to my junior and senior high school kids, we called it prewriting.  It’s all the stuff you do to get ready to put words in sequence:  reading, thinking, organizing, re-thinking, note taking, filing, securing sources, lining up consultants, et cetera.  It’s all good -- and it has taken a long time.  

As of now, the preface is in good shape (draft complete) with chapter 1 up next.  Here’s the lineup of wanna’ be chapters -- just to whet your whistle: 

1. A capital girl 
2. Of astronomy & Dickinsons
3. Sex in Amherst
4. Sister Emily’s poems and letters
5. Travels & publications
6. Mabel Todd & her Camp Mavooshen
7. Millicent Bingham & Audubon
8. Finishing Mother’s work
9. For the ages

The outline looks pretty filled out at this point, yet will get deep reorganization as the project develops.  Next I want to read a few chapters re:  Mabel’s childhood in Washington DC that appear in Sewell, Gordon, and Millicent Bingham herself.  Then I will sketch out chapter content in web form on a fair-sized piece of drawing paper.  I’m pretty sure the visual will help me see how the thread should run.  At least that’s what I’m thinking right now.   

Then it’s about one chapter a month through the end of winter.  If all goes well, I’ll have a draft to distribute for revision comments and something I could take to an agent or publisher.  Again, never been here, done that, so we’ll see how it goes.  

But take heart, Pilgrim!  The Dressy Adventuress is on the way.  And I must say, there are so many great stories to tell!  I’m really charged to keep it moving.  

I don’t know exactly why and how, but the time is now.  

*  A text version of my Epic of Hog graduate paper will be available at fohi.org before too long.  I’ll announce when it is posted.  (No sooner than January 2012.) 


image:  Mabel Todd in Japan (1896).  Photo from the Yale University Archive. 

Defending Mrs. Todd

Researching Mabel Loomis Todd’s Hog Island story has been a long process and a labor of love.  I remember hearing in graduate school that if one knew the energy and time required to complete the work, most of us would have bailed on the idea of higher education.  I’m not sure I buy that, but the thought does come to mind that this project has taken such a chunk of my life that I am, indeed, amazed. 

At this point in the process I am poring through Lyndall Gordon’s Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family Feuds.  If you are a Dickinson fan, you absolutely need this book in your library.  Gordon has researched deeply and puts forth a detailed time line of events that gives life and breath to Emily’s later years in Amherst.  

The book also puts a magnifying glass on the relationship between Austin Dickinson and his mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd.  Gordon tells the story of how Austin’s marriage to Susan was largely loveless by the time the new Amherst College astronomer, David Peck Todd, brought his young wife to Amherst in 1881.  Over the course of the next couple of years, Austin found love and comfort in the arms of Mabel, as husband David looked on, approvingly, as he engaged in his own set of marital indiscretions.  If it sounds like a version of Peyton Place or The Scarlet Letter, you wouldn’t be too far off.  It’s a pretty juicy story.  

I must admit that since I first made the connection between Emily Dickinson, Amherst, Mabel Loomis Todd, and Hog Island back in the early 1980s, I’ve been a fan of Mrs. Todd.  If it weren’t for her purchasing the island at the turn of the last century, Audubon never would have established an ecology camp there and I never would have had the chance to experience it’s abundant life and history.  My life, it would be fair to say, would be diminished.  

But when you get into the Emily Dickinson story as assembled by Lyndall Gordon, Mabel Todd takes on a much darker hue.  She participated in a long-term adulterous affair that ripped the Dickinson family apart so much that by the time Emily neared the end of her life, she recognized that the family would never heal.  She was right, too.   

After Emily died, if you know the story, it was Mabel Loomis Todd who began the arduous task of sifting through the poetry, translating a difficult handwriting, putting Dickinson verse into publishing form.  Emily’s sister, Lavinia, heir to the poems, worked with Mabel to see this work accomplished.  When the family broke into discord once again over copyright and royalty payments, it was Austin who admitted that the Dickinsons were ‘a queer lot.’  

Gordon does not skimp on placing blame on a deceitful Mabel Todd who, in her view, worked for years to disrupt the Dickinson family.  She seems to give Austin a pass on responsibility much more readily than Mrs. Todd.  She recognized the arduous task of working poems and letters into publishable form, but underneath it all, Mabel Todd is held largely responsible for Dickinson family discord. 

I have a hard time disagreeing with the details of the story Lyndall Gordon tells.  

Still, it was Mabel Todd who brought the Dickinson poetry before the general public.  Nobody else did.  Susan had a poem or two of Emily’s published in magazines, but no more than that.  Would someone else have promoted Emily if Mabel Todd did not?  Maybe, but the historical fact is it was Mrs. Todd who accomplished the feat.  

And for that, it seems to me, we Dickinson lovers should be eternally grateful.  

Photo:  Mrs. Todd working on the Dickinson letters on Hog Island (c. 1932).  Source:  Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

Mabel Loomis Todd: The Dressy Adventuress

Heaven only knows I’ve been in love with Hog Island, Maine since I first got there in 1981 for a two week session on ‘nature study.’  National Audubon called it an ecology camp back then, but the older expression nature study still worked just fine.  

All four color-coded groups that made up the ‘camper’ contingent birded, dredged up some critters from the bottom of Muscongus Bay, studied mushrooms and butterflies, excavated clams and then had a clam bake, answered the daily science puzzler in the Queen Mary lab, and listened to various folks, including camp visitor Carl Buchheister -- The Audubon Nature Camp’s first director in 1936 -- tell stories about the history and wonders of the place.  

My favorite personal memories that summer were those of sitting alone, with my journal, on shore boulders just after sunrise watching lobster folk hard at work locating their multi-colored buoys on the bay, winching up the pots, and sorting the day’s catch.  It was big stuff for a born and bred Ohioan who never got to see the sea in his youth. 

Over the last thirty years, Audubon and Hog Island history have occupied much of my time.  I ended up writing a master’s project paper on the place by 1985 and created an Emily Dickinson-based slide show camp director Steve Kress invited me to show campers that summer.  

Ever since that first visit, I wanted to return to Hog Island to teach, though my humanities/history/literature background didn’t quite meet the needs of the ecology/science-based curriculum designed by the naturalists on staff.  By 2002, though, when curriculum morphed into more varied offerings, I was invited back to facilitate a Nature literature and journaling session for a couple of summers.  Good experience, indeed. 

The point I’d like to make here is that I still love Hog Island intently.  Lots of former campers and staff do.  And as I write this, some heavy hitters in the birding/naturalist community are working hard to recreate a Friends of Hog Island organization that can help financially strengthen the place so summer programs there can continue for years to come.  We’d all like to see Audubon’s Camp in Maine on Hog Island flourish while continuing to offer programming for anybody and everybody who wants to come.  (For FOHI updates, see http://fohi.org/)

Still, after all these years, a composite history of Hog Island has not been set down in one place.  Lots of magazine articles over time have been published, some in Down East, some in Audubon, some in various national publications‘ Sunday travel sections.  But nothing focused and complete records the dynamic story that is Hog Island.

I’ve been working on changing that for a long time now.  Things are getting closer and more concrete, but much still needs to be done.  

For starters, I am currently working on a book that specifically celebrates the contributions of Mabel Loomis Todd and Millicent Todd Bingham, the ‘founders’ of Hog Island’s current ecological/birding iteration.  It was Mabel Todd who, with the help of Etta Glidden, first bought sections of the island c. 1908.  By 1915, Mrs. Todd owned three-quarters of the 300+ acre island, and with her husband David, created a simple summer encampment on the west side of the island that the family used up until the 1960s.  It was Mrs. Todd’s daughter, Millicent Bingham, who found Audubon’s John Baker in 1935 that subsequently widened the focus of the island to include a Nature Camp for Adult Leaders.   

Mabel Todd’s main claim to cultural fame, as you might know, was her initial work as editor of the Emily Dickinson poetry.  She made alterations to Ms. Dickinson’s work that some scholars since have condemned.   

Much scholarly writing has dissected Mrs. Todd and her efforts to publish Emily Dickinson.  Much has been written, too, about Mrs. Todd’s affair with Emily’s brother, Austin, and the subsequent trouble the Dickinson family endured after first publication and, just a few years following, Austin’s death.  

One of the newest books on the Dickinson-Todd furor is Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family Feuds, written by Lyndall Gordon, published spring 2010.  Like so many other treatments of Dickinson’s work, Mabel Loomis Todd is not regarded warmly therein.  She is described as a family interloper who claimed more credit than she should.  I encourage you to read this and other books to learn more about the family dynamics of Amherst, Massachusetts c. 1890.  I’ll mention more titles in upcoming blogs. 

Regardless of family and community ugliness, Mabel Todd contributed much to the American literary canon through her tireless work on Emily Dickinson.  That fact is hard to deny. 

Over the years I have collected much on Mabel Loomis Todd and her life.  My hope is to shed light on her love of nature and Nature’s people, which links her, again, closely to her contemporary, Emily Dickinson.

As I press on with my writing, I aim to keep interested readers updated on progress in this irregularly published blog.  I might mention, too, that it is Lyndall Gordon’s description of Mrs. Todd as The Dressy Adventuress, that has given title to both my book and this blog.

I’d appreciate your encouragement, too.  Feel free to share your thoughts about this project.