Some Early History of the Emily Dickinson Museum

                                  Some Early History of the Emily Dickinson Museum
                                                  Presented by Wendy Kohler

Wendy. I started as a guide and I’ve done many other things. I’ll tell a little of what I’ve been doing all these years. There’s so much that has changed. My husband and I moved here in 1972. I was 24 years old, my daughter was almost two and my son was nine months old. We rented a place and 3 doors down was another young mother, recently divorced from a professor at Amherst College, and she said,
            “I’m guiding at the Dickinson Museum. Maybe you would like to do that.
and so indeed, I started guiding either late Fall of ’72 or early ’73. In 1976 I was one of the co-authors of this [ shows pamphlet ]. I also worked on the documentary that Jean Mudge did with Julie Harris. I’ll tell you something about that because it included Florentine Films and Buddy Squires and it was one of the first Ken Burns films. He had just graduated from Hampshire. Once I started working full time in the public schools it was harder and harder for me to stay guiding but I wanted to stay involved. Before I was an administrator I taught a little English and then social studies. In 1993 I was the local historian/consultant for the first Evergreens feasibility study. In 1994 I was a co-author and lead a four-week National Endowment for the Humanities institute for teachers called Emily Dickinson and the Nineteenth Century New England village and they lived in the Sweetser house, which was thrilling for them. There were four week residences here – different from any program that we do now. I was media consultant for the Meade Contemporary Art Exhibit, and wrote the school programs for that, which was great, and I was consultant on the film Loaded Gun. Now, as a member of the Board of Governors, I head the Interpretation, Education, and Programming Committee, so I’m directly involved in the stuff that you do.

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Amherst College, really pushed by Archibald MacLeish, does save the Homestead from turning into a grocery store, and that was in 1965. But, let’s start with the 70’s Lou Mudge was a wonderful man. If you click on “Our House, Emily’s House” you get an article that includes a picture of the family. Jean is 30 years old and she had her degree in the equivalent of Museum Science from the University of Delaware which was one of the best places to get such, but she was the wife of the chaplain – of the Religion department. So, they did indeed move in there and lived there from 1965 to 1976. They bought a house in Amherst and stayed on here a bit longer than that. I gave Jean a call. We came into the house and she said,
            “Love to have you guide. The house is open on Tuesday afternoons from 3 to 5. We do have a brochure, and it had a picture of the museum, and she suggested that I read This was a Poet which I think is a fabulous book in so many ways. George Frisbee Whicher was a professor at Amherst. It’ a fabulous book. It’s out of print but you can get it. The first chapter is “The Village,” and I used to use it in all of my classes in social studies, because I taught local history. I taught a historiography course, which was required of all ninth grade students and they had to use primary source documents and they had to use this library [The Jones Library, Amherst], and it’s a wonderful chapter for describing what the town was like for Dickinson.
            So, of course, the guests just came in at the front door; you just wondered who was coming. We sat in the front parlor – not on the couch [laugher] – behind the couch on that wall was a book case, and it wasn’t full but it had different biographies and different things on Dickinson, and on the coffee table there were  

…

Enter Becky.

Wendy. So on the coffee table on the couch was a loose-leaf binder with plastic sheets in it, maybe eight, with photographs, so we could use that for whatever we wanted to talk about. Then we went upstairs to the bedroom. Jean had worked very hard to befriend Mary Hampson., as did I a bit later, let me say. She was successful at first; they had a friendship – had them for tea, even the children, so on and so forth. Mary did loan the college and the house the sleigh bed. So, when we got in we did have the sleigh bed draped with the paisley shawl. We had the Franklin stove of course, and writing desk, and a divan – a kind of settee. What she wanted me to do was tell her what I thought of Mable Loomis Todd. She in fact called me on Thanksgiving day ..[?] “Now tell me, this Mable Loomis Todd, there’s nothing redeemable about this woman whatsoever. I felt so – I couldn’t do it. Not that I think I would have liked her, but I would certainly be able to appreciate what she did. So, I gave up my chance to get in the house.

Elaine. I think you could have acted.

Wendy. Exactly. Exactly. So, I will move on to the next resident in the house, which is Elizabeth Debuvoise. Elizabeth Debuvoise is the widow of a trustee of Amherst College. A couple of years ago the Debuvoise field house was torn down at the college to rebuild the new field house, so he’s obviously very distinguished. He was the youngest person ever named a lifetime trustee, and he was in his fifties I believe. He died of a heart attack in Grand Central Station. The reason I know that is that his Daughter Susan was a friend of mine in College. When Betty came into the house it was the legacy of this very important man, her husband. She was not museum trained; she was not particularly scholarly about any of this, it was not her educational background. My friend Susan was working at Dartmouth College and fell in love with a professor there named James Wright, and Susan and Jim were married in the parlor of The Homestead. I don’t know of anyone else in our time who’s been married there. This was around 1984. He became the president of Dartmouth. What she had a love of was cats. There were lots of cats there, and actually, so did Jean. … So, 1977 the whole area becomes part of the Dickinson Historic District. 1988, Betty moved out. She’s buried in Wildwood Cemetery. Carol, and this is where Joan enters in. [inaudible] Carol didn’t have a lot of training, but she was so interested and wanted to have this as an opportunity for her to contribute by organizing the tours more, and I should say she also – I have somewhere a letter that she thought maybe was written to Dickinson, but we couldn’t’ prove it, and I was going to do this project with her and I set it aside – and that’s just to say she had that real thirst for all of it. Do you have anything to add , Joan?

Joan. Because I didn’t’ have formal training, I don’t remember much. I was given the Whicher and told to read it. I think we were open on Wednesdays and Saturdays when I was there., but I’m not 100% sure of that, and for just maybe an afternoon. We had one of these cash boxes, and we did have a few postcards

Wendy. Because, when we started with Jean nobody paid anything, and then maybe it was three dollars eventually.

Joan. It was pretty small, yes. And, we could see and go into the parlors, but the library was their living room, I think. And, of course, the tour center was their kitchen, and that’s what it was when Cindy moved in. And then we could go to the bedroom. I believe the dress was by then in the protective glass. I never saw it in the closet. …………………

Burleigh. So, even though the relationship between Jean Mudge and Mary Hampson deteriorated, once the bed and everything came over, it stayed?

Wendy. Yes, she didn’t take it back, although it was always a fear, I remember, that Jean had. …..  She [Mary Hampson] owned it until 1988. We were worried about what was going to happen to the Evergreens. We knew that the will said that after the last Hampson it was to be raised to the cellars,. Toby Dakin was still alive in town, and people were working on that. ….  I don’t know what Jean said or did, but if you acknowledged la broader source of information about Emily Dickinson and her poetry, broader than Sue, Martha, or Alfred, you were off the radar. And she was a recluse. She did not see a lot of people. And she was eccentric at best, and looney, so how were we going to penetrate this? And of course there was all the fighting and challenging with Harvard over the papers, and it was just amazing to go in there at first. I went in there in the early nineties. I went up into the cupola in the Evergreens, and there were stacks of the Atlantic Monthly, 1881, and newspapers, and just everything. The electric stove that she used was in front of the stove. In Gilbert’s room there was a new Monopoly game stacked up on top of games in his closet. There was a guy named Greg Farmer who I worked with when I was doing the feasibility work, and he would sit in the library freezing – Jane would too – but he was the first person hired to curate it and figure out what was there. But, all through that time, we’re worried. What’s going to happen? And, it’s not open. So, it was never part of the tour

Elaine. Where did Betty Bernhardt fit in with Mary Hampson?

Wendy. Betty wasn’t around when I first started. They came back to Amherst. I was a kid compared to this group of people,. …..
Mary was angry with Amherst because she hated Mable, and she wasn’t all that happy with Harvard, and Barton St Armand is so charming so she gives all this stuff to Brown, so all of that’s going on while we’re siting around trying to figure out, “Well, let’s see how can we – let’s see – this place cannot be torn down .” So, when that finally happened it was just jubilation. Martha’s will – part of the statement of the will was that he house must be used to honor the memory of Susan Dickinson. Then Alfred’s will, I believe, or somehow Martha’s too. The fudge factor was that of course, we do celebrate Austin’s family in the house, clearly. So, that was one intent that supersedes.
            So, Carol was until 1996, Cindy comes. For Cindy, this was the first time that Amherst College posted and advertised for a full-time professional. So, here’s this single woman living in this big house, and of course you all know what tremendous work she did in really professionalizing the staff and then meanwhile at some point Jane has taken over from Greg, and now there’s the creation of the museum eleven years ago.
[Tours included the Evergreens somewhat later]