Mabel Loomis Todd

Mabel Loomis Todd
Mabel Loomis Todd, circa 1897
Born	November 10, 1856 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Died	October 14, 1932(1932-10-14) (aged 75) Hog Island, Maine
Occupation	Writer and editor
Nationality	American
Subject	Emily Dickinson

Mabel Loomis Todd or Mabel Loomis (November 10, 1856 – October 14, 1932) was an American editor and writer. Her husband was the astronomer David Peck Todd. She is remembered as the editor of posthumously published editions of Emily Dickinson.

Todd's relationship to the Dickinson family was complicated. She had a lengthy affair with Emily's married older brother William Austin Dickinson. In preparing Emily's poetry for publication, which was also marred by family controversies, she freely edited and adapted the writing to suit her own style.

She was born Mabel Loomis on November 10, 1856, the daughter of Mary Alden Wilder and Eben Jenks Loomis. Though her family traced its lineage to such New England luminaries as Priscilla Alden, they led financially difficult lives and Mabel spent much of her childhood in boardinghouses in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Concord, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. She graduated from Georgetown Seminary in Washington, then studied music at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

She met the attractive and flirtatious astronomer David Peck Todd in 1877, and evidently knew he was a philanderer even before their wedding on March 5, 1879. The couple had one daughter, Millicent. Mabel Loomis Todd had a passionate sexual nature and wrote freely about it. She wrote soon after her marriage: "Sweet communions. Oh joy! Oh! Bliss unutterable" and "A little Heaven just after dinner." In May 1879, the day she got pregnant, she noted: "A very happy few minutes of love in our room." They moved to Amherst, Massachusetts in 1881, where her husband became an astronomy professor at his alma mater Amherst College.

It was in this town that she had an affair with Austin Dickinson, the (married) brother of Emily Dickinson. Austin, a local luminary who served as treasurer of Amherst College, frequently met Todd behind a locked door in a second floor room. They took private trips to the country together, spent time together in Boston, and wrote love letters to one another. Though they tried to conceal the affair, many people were aware of it. They used code names and code words in their correspondence and Austin would often include self-addressed envelopes with his letters to Todd to prevent her handwriting being seen on her responses. They both hoped to outlive their respective spouses. Todd, who was 27 years younger than Austin, occasionally called him "My King". Her husband David, who was also unfaithful, maintained a strong friendship with Austin. Austin's wife Susan demanded the couple keep up appearances, though Todd began wearing his wedding ring by 1887. Todd reportedly kissed Austin Dickinson after he had died, kissed "the dear body, every inch of which I know and love so utterly". The affair—romanticized by Todd descendants—devastated Susan Dickinson, the wife of Austin, and impacted the writing of Emily, who is said to have had to witness audibly the ongoing affair, and to have been routinely displaced from her place of creative work to provide it an ongoing venue.