EMILY DICKINSON IN LOVE: The Case for Otis Lord

Appendix B: The Master Letters

j Appendix B j THE MASTER LETTERS he three letters that Emily wrote to “Master”—now proved, in this author’s estimate, to have been sent to Otis Lord—are preserved at the library of Amherst College. It was a circuitous route by which they reached that safe haven. Discovered in the Dickinson mansion some five years after Emily’s death—apparently stored with other old papers in her bedroom closet—they ended up in possession of the Todds—Mabel and her daughter, Millicent Bingham. The two women managed to hold on to them so long, no one else knowing about them, that they were virtually forgotten. Their publication in 1955 in Emily Dickinson’s Home, by Mrs. Bingham, took Dickinson circles very much by surprise . Who “Master” might be became a regular guessing game, with eight or ten names jostling for attention. For inclusion in the 1894 volume of Emily’s Letters a few innocuous sentences were selected from one of the letters and deliberately given a late date, 1885. That date was later corrected by Mrs. Bingham, who pointed out that mention of the dog Carlo “without further evidence would fix the date as the early eighteensixties .” In a footnote to that statement she adds a comment that puts on record quite a strong hint of her own unstated belief that Otis Lord was indeed the mystery man. Why, she asks, was that date selected: 125 j Appendix B 126 . . . Emily’s brother and sister were always trying to shield her from curiosity seekers bent on prying into her private affairs. One suspects that by placing these sentences far enough away from the date when they were written, as well as subsequent to the death of Judge Lord, Austin and Vinnie thought to conceal the identity of the one to whom they were addressed. . . . But note that, as in the case of those written to Judge Lord, these letters have survived: they were not destroyed, determined though both Austin and Lavinia were to protect their sister.1 The two separate mentions of Judge Lord in this passage certainly entertain at least the probability that he was the lover in question. The second mention in particular seems to link the Master letters with those Emily actually wrote to Lord. Mrs. Bingham, however, never made the claim explicit. When I began researching my own Dickinson biography in the late 1960s, I was invited by Mrs. Bingham, then in her eighties, to discuss the subject at her home in Washington, D.C. One of the questions I intended to ask was precisely her opinion about Lord being the Master—an opinion, I knew, that would reflect the belief of her mother, Mabel Todd, longtime confidante of both Austin and Vinnie . Just as I was preparing for the trip, I received the news of her death on December 1, 1968, aged eighty-eight. PUNCTUATION As in Emily’s letters generally, it is seldom possible to be sure whether she intends a period, comma, hyphen, or tiny dash. In her hurry she simply didn’t take enough care as to punctuation, and perhaps wasn ’t always sure which mark was best. Here the editing is aimed at clarity and ease of reading. See also 155–56. 1 Bingham, Home, 421. Strangely, in the hunt for the Master this outspoken passage has been overlooked. MASTER LETTER ONE Written in ink on standard letter-paper, a single cream-colored sheet folded once. The writing occupies three pages and the top of a fourth. The date has been fixed by the handwriting as spring 1858 (the letter mentions spring), but the next year is also possible. The corrections Emily made at the foot of page three, after she’d finished the letter, are noted in brackets. In this letter she made no further changes. The illnesses she mentions, of both herself and Lord, were transient. Dear Master I am ill, but grieving more that you are ill, I make my stronger hand work long eno’ to tell you. I thought perhaps you were in Heaven, and when you spoke again it seemed quite sweet and wonderful, and surprised me so. I wish that you were well. I would that all I love should be weak no more. The Violets are by my side, the Robins very near, and “Spring”—they say, Who is she—going by the door. Indeed it is God’s house...