Since 1991 a huge cache of material related to Emily Dickinson, her family, and her friends has been arriving in installments at the John Hay Library. Most of the material documents the history of Dickinson scholarship and the poet's popular reputation and her family background, rather than her writings themselves. The path the treasure took to reach Brown was in large part determined, and is intertwined with, the involved history of her family.
From the day in 1856 that Austin Dickinson and his bride Susan moved into the Evergreens, the new house next door to his parents and spinster sisters, their marriage seems to have gone downhill. By the early 1880s he had begun an affair with Mabel Loomis Todd, which lasted until his death in 1895. It poisoned relations not only within his home, but also with the adjacent Homestead, where his sisters Emily (whose signature, with the middle initial "E," as a witness to an 1852 deed, can be seen below) and Lavinia, living together since their parents died, permitted the lovers to meet.
Susan sought consolation in her children, but tragedy and scandal continued to follow the family. Seven-year- old Gilbert died of typhoid after playing in a mud puddle in 1883. Fifteen years later, his epileptic brother Edward, engaged to be married, died of a heart condition. Their sister Martha married a shady Russian military officer, Alexander Bianchi, in 1903. She later separated from him in the wake of a scandal, although she did not divorce him until after her mother's death in 1913.
Martha was the last of the Dickinsons, living alone in the Evergreens until the 1920s, when Alfred Hampson, to whom she bequeathed the house in 1943, moved in as her secretary. He married in 1947, and upon his death in 1952 the Evergreens passed to his widow, Mary.
Although she aspired to be a poet and short story writer, Martha eventually resigned herself to a role as her aunt Emily's biographer and, in rivalry with Mabel Loomis Todd, editor. When Martha died, first Alfred Hampson, then his wife Mary, succeeded her as keeper of Emily's flame and the Dickinson family secrets. All three were very selective in admitting visitors to the house or permitting access to its archive. They are, in fact, suspected of having destroyed documents inconsistent with the image they wished to propagate of Dickinson respectability and family harmony.
In 1951 Alfred Hampson sold many Dickinson books and manuscripts, as well as some furniture associated with Emily, to a Harvard alumnus who donated them to the Houghton Library. However, much remained, and Mary, who lived until 1988, created the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Trust to administer the house and its furnishings in Martha's memory. She also bequeathed all the remaining books and manuscripts, the latter to be known as the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Papers, to Brown University. To these Professor Barton St. Armand has begun adding the Dickinson manuscripts and memorabilia which Mary had given him.
Scattered throughout the house were books, about one thousand of which predate Emily's death, periodicals, pamphlets, broadsides, sheet music, prints, photographs, and manuscripts, an intermingling of those belonging to Hampsons, Dickinsons and others. Transferred to the John Hay Library between 1991 and 1995, they amounted to 366 cubic feet of material.
As an accommodation to the researchers unable to gain access through the private owners of the house, the entire collection is being made available for scholarly use while it is being processed. Lists prepared by the estate attorney and an agent of the trust serve as interim guides, so under careful supervision, uncataloged books and manuscripts can be identified and examined.
The ongoing sorting, identifying, arranging, and describing of this mountain of material is a very time- consuming but fascinating task, that will undoubtedly continue to bring to light many scraps and clues to the life of the enigmatic poet and her family.