History Bites continues its live lecture format! Our next live lecture is scheduled for noon on Friday, March 25, in the Woodbury Room of the Jones Library.
Elaine Goodale Eastman, her husband, Ohíye S’a, or Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman, and their six children, lived in three different houses in Amherst from 1903-1921. When they first arrived in Amherst, Elaine and Charles were already both well-known figures from their respective careers as authors, public speakers and reformers of Indian policy, as well as from their unusual interracial marriage which was frequently written about in the press of the day. But the early promise of their marriage dissolved during their time in Amherst, along with their union, itself, the victim of personal tragedies, professional failures and the ongoing tensions as 19th century America yielded to a 20th century where ideas about gender and race were rapidly changing.
Dr. Julie Dobrow returns to the Amherst Historical Society to talk about her upcoming book, Crossing Indian Country: From the Wounded Knee Massacre to the Unlikely marriage of Elaine Goodale and Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohíye S’a).
And in two weeks, on April 8, Bob Drinkwater will return to tell us more stories from the gravestones of the West Cemetery.
This week on History Bites, Dr Julie Dobrow will talk about the Todd family in Amherst. David Todd was the Amherst College astronomer and world traveler, his wife Mabel brought the first three editions of Emily Dickinson’s poems to publication, and their daughter Millicent chronicled the publication effort, as well as the relations between the Todds and the Dickinsons. Join us at noon on Friday, November 5.
Julie Dobrow is Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Tufts University in Medford, MA. She is the author of After Emily, a Tale of Two Women, which tells the story of the collaboration which led to the publication of Emily Dickinson’s poetry.
The Fall 2021 History Bites series is being given over Zoom, with technical support from our friends at Amherst Media. The Zoom link for the lecture is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84485731584
And next week, at noon on November 12, we will host Dickinson scholar Aife Murray, who will talk about her new show, The Slave is Gone. ‘The Slave Is Gone is the show that talks back to Apple TV’s DICKINSON. Acclaimed poets Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize 2020) and Brionne Janae (Cave Canem Book Prize 2020) join forces with “rogue scholar” Aífe Murray for a podcast that celebrates what works and breaks down what doesn’t in this award-winning and popular series. And in every episode, they bring it back to the poems that continue to intrigue, attract, and inspire.’
For the majority of those who know her name, she is primarily associated with Amherst as the editor of Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters and her long-term relationship with Emily’s brother Austin. While true to fact, these details miss the spirit of a woman intensely involved in this community from her arrival in 1881 until the Todds moved to Florida in 1917. Those who knew her remembered “her vividness, her love of beauty, her ceaseless activity and her joy in the things she did, what she was is undoubtedly more than anything she did,” recalled her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, in Mabel Loomis Todd: Her Contributions to the Town of Amherst, our guide for this exhibition.
“Love of beauty certainly was a dominant trait. But there was another that had in it perhaps more drive, one which everyone who knew her felt and realized, and that was her joy in living. It fused every experience, however spectacular, however obscure, into vitality…an abounding joie de vivre which no slings and arrows of outrageous fortune could quench or dim…She had as much fresh enthusiasm for chaperoning each promenade, each cotillion, as for a new expedition to an unknown country. She loved to use her powers and to see results, of course. But she had besides a tireless zest for just living, and enjoying.“
With this exhibit, we are taking the opportunity to present a wider view of Mabel Loomis Todd’s role in Amherst life, one that showcases her as an independent woman and extremely driven individual. We intend to tell her story on her own terms. She had a complex relationship with this town. Her role in Amherst is defined today predominantly by her interactions with the Dickinson family. Those events occurred during the first half of the time she lived here from 1881 to 1898 and served as the springboard for, but did not dominate, her Observatory House time from 1898-1917. From the 1890s on, she worked to construct her Amherst legacy, a legacy that includes her writings, lectures, and activity within social clubs.
Image taken February, 1885 by W.H. Baker, Saratoga Springs, NY. Todd-Bingham Picture Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University
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