Without wanting to sound like I'm generalizing about the Irish
(again), I found Katie Donovan's recent _Irish Times_ piece on
Amherst and ED's house rather gooey-eyed--but no more so than
the attitude of many a local particpant in the Bride of Armrest
cult, or so it seemed to me when I lived there as a UMASS grad
student (mid-'70s through early '80s). During those years, Julie
Harris came to town to premier her new Broadway-aimed vehicle,
_Belle of Amherst_, directed by Charles Nelson Reilly, whose
drunken efforts to charm the Amherst College trustees and their
wives at the reception following the premier didn't keep the play
from bombing there, although that probably had more to do with
Julie Harris's playing ED like a Carson McCullers character.
During the first few years I lived in Amherst, Mrs. Hampson,
the irascible old housekeeper at the Evergreens (Austin and Sue
Dickinson's house next door to the Manse), was still alive,
which tended to keep a lid on the cult, I suspect, since rumor
had it that even the College trustees went in fear of her caustic
tongue. A fearless grad student once called up Mrs. Hampson in
search of inside dope for a seminar paper and made the mistake
of opening the conversation with an inquiry about the old woman's
health, to which Mrs. Hampson snapped (before slamming the phone
down), "Not so good that I'll stand here talking to you about it!"
After she died, both houses--which were already shrines for literati
and townspeople alike--together formed a mini-theme park run by the
College, and it became a badge of honor even among some of the most
rigorous ED scholars at UMASS to be accepted as docents and lead the
tours there. The Manse also became the coolest place to hold one's
wedding in some circles, although the rooms are so tiny that anyone
holding a big wedding there had to do it outdoors. (And too bad if
it rained because tents were forbidden by the trustees.)
"Glamour" is, to me, exactly the word for it--for our enchantment
with literary sites especially--and it does after all derive from
_glaymor_, meaning exactly that.
Candice
>Poetry has always been the bearer of a lot of mythic freight, the
>accidental, which is what I'm talking about (what accrues to difference) as
>well as the intentional. I lived a few miles outside Amherst for several
>years during two parts of my life. I would imagine that British and Irish
>readers set Emily Dickinson in an imagined world. I don't think I do,
>except to the extent that the past is always an imagined world. Charles
>Marshall, on the other hand, is swimming in myth.
>
>Just some thoughts.
>
>Mark
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