Thursday, February 6, 2014

Writing process

Well, the book is coming along, but as I just posted on Facebook, even here in writing sequester at lovely, solitary Lake Cumberland, one can be distracted by squirrels in the sunflower feeder and bald eagles flying by the window.  Let alone sitting for some zen time contemplating the extensive rock face just across the water from my perch in the Kentucky hills.  

The first week here I couldn’t get the television to work like at all.  I listened to music instead, and had a little more quiet couch time, I think.  After Shannon came by and showed me the right buttons to push it’s been NASA TV at lunchtime and Rachel at 9 with the occasional search for something good to watch.  Last night I turned it off and went back to music.  

I was going to make this pretty quick today, but let me address the issue of writing a book as I know it.  I think about this stuff a lot, but don’t write about it much.  Bear with me.  

Writing a book is hard on many levels IMHO:  

1.  One must be sure to have enough of the right material to tell an historical ballad true.  My protagonist was a prolific writer, accomplished artist, and popular lecturer, besides having a very interesting love life.  First, it’s tough to get one’s head around the whole story all at once, and second, there’s so much stuff to read — most of it unpublished and archived in an ivy league university library far away — you hope you got all the good stuff.  One can have doubts about these things, but I think I’m okay.  Still lots to read, anyway you cut it.  

2.  Sitting for hours concentrating on plan/outline, specific subject matter, word choice & sentence construction, noting sources, revising as you go, and hoping like heck you haven’t left anything out takes a toll on one’s brain.  This, I think, is what most folks think about when they say writing is hard.  

3.  And then there’s the issue of life’s free-will choices.  I believe I could have done work other than teaching junior high and high school kids for thirty years and feel more beat up than I do.  Shoot, I got to teach thirty years and walk.  Thirty years.  Retired at 52.  When I have friends all around who say they’ll never be able to retire due to their job and personal savings limitations, it’s hard not to feel guilty.  Humbled, for sure.  

So I rather enjoy doing lots of stuff in my life.  I find cutting out most of the fun stuff to write a book that is really hard to do, presents a book production problem.  You might be able to guess such is the reason I’ve been at this project for over ten years.  

4.  Still, when I get going with the words on paper part of the writing process — aiming for 500 words/day minimum [per the advice of a wise university friend] — the ease of syntax feels pretty good.  I most often fear the muse will leave me at any time, though.  So a couple weeks ago when I got started late morning and didn’t quit until failing light after 5 for two days in a row, I felt a warm satisfaction.  

I now doubt what I wrote then is really so good.  Taking chapter two apart and rebuilding it is next on my docket and I’d rather not go there, for some reason.  It just feels like hard work.  I understand, indeed, the necessity of revising and editing.  See #6 below.  

5.  Work on The Dressy Adventuress project continues in one way or another, however.  Besides re-crafting the ‘Transcendental activist’ chapter, I have begun detailed planning for the next ‘movement’ which brings in the Emily Dickinson connection.  I am eager to get there, where I feel much love and energy.  I hope to be there by Monday, but don’t hold me to it.  I also have the need to cull out specific details of summer life on Hog Island from the already collected diaries of Mabel Loomis Todd.  This newer generation synopsis will be on my desk as I construct paragraphs.  And then there is the composite list of all of David Todd’s global solar expeditions.  I should have this stuff at my fingertips when I write content.  

6.  The sage university professor told me, too, to expect ten rewrites of my book.  I don’t doubt that’s true, and that feels okay.  But rewrites can only follow ‘writes’ — or drafts.  

Having lots of time all by myself to find a way into that writing is a real blessing that I thought might help production.  It is working, but at a weathervane pace that points and takes me to places I don’t always know are connected.  

Have I ever told you how lousy my self discipline is?  I’ll save you the details…  

Today’s elder idea:  

for Bruce 

Yesterday on the phone
when you told the story of helping 
your unknowing mother 
relearn how to wipe herself

the feeling in my heart was warmth
for you and her sharing such a personal 
moment that breeched the parent / 
child continuum.  You came of age. 

In the coming to that place you 
did not welcome — where stature and 
family position reversed from caregiver 
to tended — I felt for you

a welcoming hand into the realm of the elder
where I, too, see a diminished mother
fighting tooth and nail the coming darkness —
one who will not go gently into that good night.  

I watch her struggle.  You watched your mother do the same.
Neither woman selected this path. 
Both would rather be baking on a hot summer day or
sorting laundry, wondering how one family could create so many dirty clothes. 

Maybe they might even rather re-experience 
the discomfort of the eighth and ninth months
of carrying us, struggling with weight gain 
and wanting, then, the ordeal to be over. 

Maybe not so much now.  
Both Nancy and Gertrude have become passengers swept
onto a nonreturnable journey that has served them well —
that has gifted them with time on this Earth 

in the presence of parents and friends and family
and the kids, like you and me, who now live into
our years as elders, singing & telling stories of what 
they taught us and what we now know as true.  

Tom Schaefer
Lake Cumberland 
4 February 2014

image:  In Mrs. Todd’s front yard on Hog Island.  (summer 2013)

Note:  This blog entry was also posted @ 'The Back Porch'  /  http://tomschaefer.blogspot.com/2014/02/writing-process.html

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Winter writing retreat


Well, it’s been a energized couple of weeks at my winter writing retreat at Lake Cumberland. 

I was hoping getting extended solo time in a retreat atmosphere would get this project moving onto the next level.  I think it has.  Who knows when the thing will be completed and how I get the thing published, but right now I am on the cusp of putting the whole, lovely narrative in written record.  

The journey to get to this point has been a joyful burden.  I ingested the whole enchilada, hook and all, upon visiting Hog Island for the first time in 1981.  I had just been smitten by Emily Dickinson the academic quarter prior when I took a graduate workshop under Jim Hughes at Wright State.  All of this has changed my life and still has me under its spell.

Still, I am chagrined to see entries here at The Dressy Adventuress blog dated months and even years apart with seemingly little progress.  Such disappoints me, but I trudge on. 

As of now, I have reconsidered the lengthy book outline constructed a year or longer ago.  Back then I concluded along with mentor David Dominic that I could work on any of the six planned chapters at any time by just picking a topic that seemed timely (based on current reading) and go for it.  I would do that for a week or so — then all would fall silent for weeks or months while life reasserted itself back into my days — and I would just shake my head wondering if this book would ever be finished.  

But then now and again I would get an email or a clipping from someone who is a Hog Island or Mabel Loomis Todd fan, wishing me well on my writing journey, saying they were eager to see what I come up with.  To all of you who have reached out to me in this often frustrating endeavor, I say, thank you. 

So sometime mid- to late-2013, I figured the January/February 2014 timeframe would be important to The Dressy Adventuress progress.  And, I concluded, based on writing and/or life advice resurrected in my brain from some unknown source, if a body wants a different result, something has to change.  I figured the best thing I could do for this writing project was to sequester myself somewhere so I could dedicate days and weeks in a row to grappling with this large and complex puzzle I have been blessed with assembling. 

As it turns out, a former student and good buddy Shannon Wood had just the sterling opportunity I was wishing for.  Shannon and her partner had purchased a rustic, but updated, cabin along a ridge road on the south side Lake Cumberland not too far from the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.  Shannon was proud of the purchase, and since she knew Cindy Lou and me as authentic Nature fans (Shannon and I walked to Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon back in the day), she was eager for us to come down to see what she and Sabrina had discovered. 

Well, to make a long story short, the two girls who had both fallen in love with Lake Cumberland, had purchased a second property, this one an income-producing lakefront summer rental.  Gallons of paint later and with a touch of updating, the Lakeview House was ready for business summer 2013.  And a good summer for rentals, it was.  

Still, the house was, indeed, a summer property.  How would Shannon and Sabrina feel about my borrowing the place for winter 2014?  As it turned out, the gracious and generous pair offered me use of the house as the writing retreat I had hoped for.  I’ve been at Cumberland for just over a week now with about five weeks to go.  

So I got my wish.  Now it is time to produce. 

Just after New Years, I drove my small SUV fully freighted with books collected, binders of reading notes, and outlines constructed over time to Cumberland for a rebirth of this project.  After a few days of getting into the rhythm of regular writing, I was frustrated with little progress.  

It was after a morning of ‘storming’ that I sat at my Mac with the intent of making The Dressy Adventuress sound more like a narrative and less like a history treatment.  By the end of that day late last week, I had a fifteen page sequence of narrative that I felt pretty pleased about. The time had come to put the story on paper. 

I had begun telling this story a handful of times already, as the gentle reader of this blog already knows.  Now it was my goal to produce at least 500 words a day of narrative as was recommended by Martha Vicinus, a retired distinguished faculty member in women’s studies from University of Michigan and a Friend of Hog Island volunteer who shared pot scrubbing responsibilities with me a couple summers ago in the Audubon camp kitchen.  

And that’s pretty much where I am as I write this.  My goal is to get the minimum 500 words on paper every day, a recommendation Dr. Vicinus gave graduate students who were struggling with writing dissertations.  Yesterday  I got to just over 1600 words of story exposition, trying to find a way to hook my reader into wanting to know more about Mabel Loomis Todd and her contributions to the world of Emily Dickinson, but more importantly her efforts to enhance a deeper appreciation of Nature based on years of summers spent at her Camp Mavooshen on Hog Island.  

This is hard, you know?  ;-) 

And, as Dr. Vicinus advised, expect to write at least ten updated drafts of the story.  

In the words of Uncle George, Oh, myyy…

image:  The Plan:  The new narrative outline sees the light of day.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Journals and diaries


When I began my trek years ago into the works of Mabel Loomis Todd in order to tell her Hog Island story, I found myself at the Sterling Library at Yale where the Todd Bingham family archive is housed.  As a ten-year public school teacher at the time and a newly-initiated graduate student, it was the first time I had ever delved into anybody’s archive, let alone one cataloged at prestigious, ivy league Yale.  It was a memorable experience for this Midwest kid to sit in the reading room, poring over boxes of files that allowed me to personally handle Mrs. Todd’s papers.  

Back then, I was interested in finding materials related only to Hog Island in an archive collection that spanned “51 linear feet (124 boxes).”  I read recently that the Todd-Bingham collection is a treasure trove for historical researchers since both Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Bingham seemed to save every scrap of paper they ever created.  While I don’t know if that’s exactly true, the women surely had an eye on posterity as they worked on Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters, as well as recording the myriad other things they experienced in their lives.  

Lucky for me, there was a Hog Island section in the Yale collection that provided all I needed for my graduate project.  Still, that left many, many boxes and files undiscovered at the time.

As mentioned before, my intention for The Dressy Adventuress is not to re-hash the Dickinson-Todd story told so well by Polly Longsworth, Richard B. Sewall, Lyndall Gordon, and other biographers.  I am relying heavily on what those scholars have already reported to retell the Dickinson-Todd part of the story for my readers.  I am attempting to look more deeply into Mrs. Todd’s affinity for Nature to flesh out a part of her story that has not been well told to date.  Nature and Hog Island get mentions in most texts referred to above, but only briefly. 

Recently I realized that I need to look more carefully into another part of Mrs. Todd’s archived works where I have not yet been: her journals and diaries.  The Hog Island files worked well enough for grad work, but if I want to know more about what she was thinking summer 1908 when the Hog Island epic began, I really should look at her diaries and journals for insights.  

While I was figuring I would need at least another week at Yale to see what I could find, I discovered that Mrs. Todd’s diaries and journals are available on microfilm via interlibrary loan.  It would be much more cost effective if I could peruse those works here at home.  Unfortunately, I have discovered that my home university will not let alumni -- even one expanding on work done as a graduate student -- to borrow works via ILL.  But all is not lost.  I am currently working with a Wright State faculty member to secure those journals and diaries for me.  I am hopeful all will work out.   

Still, there will have to be at least one more trip to the Sterling Library before I finish my book.  In addition to assorted pieces of correspondence and lecture texts I’d like to get my hands on, Yale also holds “50.0 linear feet (94 boxes)” in the Todd-Bingham Picture Collection.  I suspect there are a few gems therein that will enhance the appeal of my book.  Now to find those images and make arrangements with Yale to publish them.   After all, a picture is worth a thousand words --  and looks mighty good in publication. 

In the meantime, I’m eager to get my hands on those journals and diaries.  More on that adventure as it develops.

Image:  Untitled (c. 1915) from The Todd-Bingham Picture Collection.  I call it “High Tide at Mavooshen.”  Foreground:  the family launch, Takusan, flying Japanese colors.  Background:  A woman stands at the door of ‘the lobster house.’  Farther back in the woods:  a torii gate.  Japan-rich, indeed.  

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The Mavooshen 'puzzle'




Some months ago when I committed myself to another serious round with The Dressy Adventuress, I realized I needed to have an outside consultant who could offer some insights about any number of issues I’d be confronting.  In addition, I figured if I had someone else to report to, perhaps he/she could help hold my feet to the fire to a higher degree and I would see more progress.  

As mentioned in my last blog entry, that academic friend is David Dominic, Earth & Environmental Sciences department chair at Wright State University.  I might mention that David presented at the AWP conference in Boston a couple weeks ago on a panel discussing ‘Knowledge and Manifestation: Science in Contemporary Poetry.’  We are scheduled to meet next week and I’m eager to hear how things went.

I focus on Dr. David today because of an observation he made in an email over the winter that got me to thinking about my writing process.   Here’s what he wrote in response to a comment I made on my difficulty making progress:  

I do know that writing is hard work and is best approached as such. To students, I stress the ability to write non-linearly, by which I mean the opposite of the directive given to the White Rabbit: 'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'  If you can see the whole, you should be able to write parts of any piece. I think this is critical for getting around ‘blocks.’

That got me to thinking.  Indeed, I have organized The Dressy Adventuress in outline form a number of times now.  Each new iteration seems a bit tighter and I find that a good thing.  And as new/remembered ideas come up in my thinking, I can add them by hand onto the hard copy outline that is my master blueprint.  

Up to now, though, I figured I’d be starting with chapter one and progressing until finished, as the White Rabbit was advised.  With David’s suggestion that writing does not have to work like that, I reset my thinking and came to the conclusion that writing a book can be very much like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.  Assemble the border first [outline], then sort pieces by color and content, working the myriad variables until they find their long lost partners.  

Since David’s suggestion, I have continued my research by reading and note taking, then writing ‘concept pieces’  about that research in three to five page documents.  I liken the process to sorting and organizing the jigsaw pieces.  I figure sometime down the road these segments will come together in some logical order awaiting segues and transitions that will render the book organized, and thus readable.  

Life still consorts to keep me from my book writing tasks.  For the last week I have been in Hilton Head with the lovely Cindy Lou, giving her an opportunity to shed some winter blues and get her feet in some warm sand.  I figured I’d be note taking while she sunbathes, but such hasn’t been the case.  Being this close to the beach is too tempting!  

So upon our return home this weekend I’ll reinstall myself in my basement writing post next week and get back into the process of assembling my Camp Mavooshen puzzle.  Such seems workable.  Stay tuned.    

Today’s elder idea:  Science fiction is more than just our collective dreams for a human race that reaches to the stars.  In many ways, the dreams of yesterday are becoming the realities of today and the path for tomorrow.  

George Takei, from his internet book, Oh Myyy!
Reading Mr. Sulu was more fun that working on my writing this week.

image:  Millicent Todd Bingham cutting birthday cake with long time camp director Carl Buchheister standing by.  (1960)
From the Hog Island Audubon Camp picture archive.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

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)

Friday, September 30, 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. 

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

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.