Amherst was a hotbed of artistic and intellectual intensity in the 1880s, much of it centered around Emily Dickinson’s family at their homes on Main Street, the present Homestead and the Evergreens.
One of the most important of these figures was Mabel Loomis Todd, an artist, writer, editor, painter, traveler and conservationist. As an artist, Todd is best known for her flower paintings, which will be the subject of an exhibition jointly hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Amherst History Center (see details below).
Mabel Loomis Todd was born in Cambridge in 1856. A pretty, energetic and talented young woman, she attended the Georgetown Female Seminary in Washington, D.C., and then studied piano and voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She devoted much of her spare time to flower painting and story writing.
In 1879, she married astronomer David Peck Todd, and in 1881 the couple moved to Amherst, where Todd had taken the new professorship of Astronomy at Amherst College. Soon after arriving in Amherst, Mabel Todd learned of Emily Dickinson, a secluded writer of poetry who was known by some townspeople as “the myth.”
Todd soon became friends with Susan Dickinson, wife of Emily’s brother, Austin. Austin and Emily’s sister, Lavinia, invited Todd to the Homestead to play piano and sing for their reclusive sister and invalid mother. She continued to play music at the Homestead while Dickinson listened down the darkened hallway.
Todd and Dickinson began sending notes back and forth. They never met face to face. In 1882, Todd spent several months in Washington, D.C., where she met the landscape painter Martin Johnson Heade. She studied with him intensively for two months, an experience that profoundly changed her life. Heade gave her encouragement that rekindled her self-confidence as an artist.
At that time, although cultivation of flowers was a popular avocation, few serious American artists painted flowers. Heade was an exception; he imbued his naturalistic flower still lifes with a depth of feeling bordering on melancholy. Todd instinctively understood his subjective approach and adopted it in her own painting style.
When she returned to Amherst, she continued her painting, often choosing local wildflowers such as trailing arbutus, loosestrife and lady’s slippers as her subjects. Each of her paintings is distinctive, often just a single stem of blossoms against a black or white background.
Her witch hazel artfully captures the fine, crinkly yellow petals against a sky-blue background. Her narcissus bears multiple flowers, white with small yellow cups fringed with red and a green eye. (This well might be the “poet’s narcissus,” or “pheasant’s eye,” a popular scented narcissus that officially dates back to 1831.) She is careful to include the brown papery sheaths (called spathes, for those who care to know!) at the base of each blossom.
Flowers and other plants were central to Dickinson’s inspiration for writing poetry. For her, they were animate objects that served as metaphors for her own feelings and for the world more broadly. She cultivated an extensive garden at the Homestead, and in 1855, her father built a conservatory on the side of the house so that she could tend plants through the winter.
Todd’s scrupulous attention to flowers created a strong bond between her and Dickinson. After working with Heade, Todd gave Dickinson an eerie depiction of Indian pipes — also known as ghost pipes. On receiving the gift, Dickinson responded, “that without suspecting it you should send me the preferred flower of life, seems almost supernatural.”
Two years after Dickinson’s death, her sister, Lavinia, brought some of her newly found poems to Todd and urged her to have them published. At the time, Todd was having a not-so-clandestine romance with Austin Dickinson that soured relations between Todd and her erstwhile good friend Susan, Austin’s wife.
Lavinia had first approached Susan with the poems, but impatient with Susan’s procrastination, she secretly presented them to Todd. At first, Todd was reluctant to get involved in acrimonious Dickinson family matters, but she took on the project and, over the next nine years, put hundreds of poems in order, transcribed and edited them and had them published in three volumes.
After Austin Dickinson died in 1895, simmering tensions between the Todds and Dickinsons erupted in a lawsuit over a piece of land. After the Todds lost the suit, Mabel was so angry that she locked away many of the unpublished poems and other Dickinson family documents.
Despite her break with the Dickinsons, Todd continued to be active in local Amherst life. She helped to found the Amherst Historical Society, the Amherst Woman’s Club and the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She traveled with her husband on eclipse expeditions all over the world and lectured throughout New England on a variety of topics.
She died in 1932.
The Emily Dickinson Museum and the Amherst History Center are jointly hosting an exhibition of 18 of Todd’s flower paintings titled “The Preferred Flower,” on Nov. 10 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at both locations.
Opening remarks will be made at 6 p.m. at the Amherst History Center at 45 Boltwood Walk. Guests can view several of Todd’s paintings and artifacts there and then make their way to the Homestead at 280 Main St. (a 5-minute walk) to see the rest of the paintings.
A shuttle bus will run between the two sites from 6:15 to 7 p.m. Complimentary refreshments will be served at both locations. This event is free and open to all.
The collection of 18 paintings on exhibition was the gift of Ruth Owen Jones, Amherst historian and longtime guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum and Amherst Historical Society.
Mickey Rathbun is an Amherst-based writer. Her latest book, “The Real Gatsby: George Gordon Moore, A Granddaughter’s Memoir,” was published in 2024 by White River Press.