Academic

Emily Dickinson and Judge Otis Lord

By propertyprof

I'm absurdly busy of late--worse than usual.  Which means that my speculation on what the financial mess we've found ourselves in will mean for jurisprudence will have to wait.  One hint of what I've been thinking about in my spare moments on the bus to work: will we see a turn towards New Deal style regulation or a formalism similar to our post-Civil War retreat to something that we hoped would protect us from the fanaticism of people on the left and right (abolitionists and proslavery advocates)?  Something in between?  I'm guessing a New Deal style jurisprudence, but it sure remains to be seen.  And what will this do to American culture?  A new focus on family and values other than the market, I suspect.  We'll see and I hope to speculate more on this later.

But one thing surely cannot wait:  Mount Holyoke English Professor Christopher Benfey's recent Slate piece, "Emily Dickinson's Secret Lover! Why the big news is being ignored."  Now we talk a lot about celebrity gossip.  It builds on an artilce by Carol Damon Andrews in the New England Quarterly, which uncovered evidence that Dickinson had been engaged to a young Amherst man, George Gould.  But what I'm interested in right now is Dickinson's later love interest (or person who was interested in her, may be more accurate): Judge Otis P. Lord.  I have a professional interest in several Lords from antebellum New England (Daniel Lord, who delivered an important even if frequently overlooked Phi Beta Kappa address at Yale in 1851 and John Lord, a minister who supported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850)--though there's no close relationship with this Lord, apparently.  Why am I interested in Judge Lord?  Well, he was on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial while pursuing Dickinson.  So that, obviously, open us some possibility of investingating his influence on Dickinson's writing--and her on his.   (Shades of Morton Horwitz' perceptive and innovative reading of Holmes' romantic interest in Lady Castleton and its effect on his jurisprudence, huh?)  So a quick search for information about Judge Lord turned up a webpage with commemorations of his service.  One of his colleagues recalled that the judge wrote of his desire to recover his health:  "It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope."  Somewhat pessimistic, I suppose--but also a keen insight into human nature.

In the nineteenth century such commemorations were common, but often unrevealing because they were so focused on praising the deceased judge.  So I was most surprised to see this, well, honest description of his character:

There was something grand, almost heroic, in the quality and proportions of his character. His fidelity to his convictions, his indifference to consequences, and his scorn of all timeserving and all timeservers, were as wholesome and bracing as the ocean breezes on the shores of his own Essex. Never a dissembler, he was what Dr. Johnson declared he delighted to honor, -- "a good hater." At the same time, his strong, vehement, but most frank and open nature never failed to command from those who knew him truly a warm and enduring regard.

There's some stuff to talk about here, when I emerge from edits on Integrating Spaces.  Maybe I should start with Dean v. Skiff, 128 Mass. 174 (1880)--a Lord opinion on an alleged breach of a promise to marry.

Alfred Brophy

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on October 12, 2008 (boomark / email).