Sorry, didn't mean to take your thread off on a tangent--if I did,
though I thought one of the topics you introduced was how places
become exotic (peaches) and then sometimes lose their bloom. Mainly,
I was answering your question about glamour, but maybe I should have
mentioned working at the decidedly unglamorous job of nurse's aide
in a (non-academic, working-class) Amherst clinic during those years,
just to establish my creds. for speaking of the town.

Wasn't aware of anything being debated here, but I'm happy to drop
out and leave the discussion to those more well-traveled than I am.

Candice


>This may be a town-gown matter, and such things do rage in the area. The
>non-academic, working-class Amherst I know, beyond the university and
>college and the very small area that serve them, is unrecognizable here.
>Most of Amherst was when you were there, and still is, farms, forests and
>swamps. But it's almost certain that there are two different equally
>accurate views of the place, depending upon where one stands. Not something
>I care to debate, and not central to the issues I raised.
>
>Or maybe it is central. We may be talking about two differemt knowable worlds.
>
>I'd hoped, following from Gabe's posting of the call for papers, to start a
>thread about travel, the exotic, attitudes towards place, the assumption of
>difference, etc., and how they function as filters to our reading, even
>when the visited culture is as close as Britain's and the US or the west
>and the rest, etc., issues important to me, and that I thought could get us
>beyond the acrimony, and parochialism (US variety) that I've been as guilty
>of as the next gal or guy. But I'm content that no one else seems to be
>interested.
>
>At 06:31 PM 1/6/2001 -0500, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>Yes, the glamour definitely extended to the town when I lived
>>there. If you wanted black flies, you had to go to (working-class)
>>Northampton.
>>
>>The "Belle of Amherst"/"Bride of Armrest" constructions capture
>>how much the relationship between the Dickinsons and the town was
>>at issue, especially for the Amherst Collegians (ED's father and
>>brother having been two of their own) relative to the (outlandish,
>>literally redbricky) UMies. A UMASS faculty member who'd lived there
>>long enough (and was eminent enough) to be invited to College parties
>>told me that at one such function the guests had hotly debated the
>>(19th c.) Dickinson/Todd land dispute as if it had happened the week
>>before.
>>
>>For those unfamiliar with what became a bitter, town-dividing court
>>case, ED's brother, Austin, had left in his Will a very valuable
>>parcel of land to Mabel Loomis Todd, and his widow, Sue, contested
>>the legacy, aided and abetted by Amherst College, the trustees of
>>which thought the land belonged to the College by right (for reasons
>>to do with Old Man Dickinson, I think). As if it wasn't scandalous
>>enough that Austin had Willed away family property to his mistress,
>>his widow then turned around and took his mistress to court over it,
>>which women of the Dickinson class just didn't do. But what really
>>polarized Amherst was that both of Austin's sisters sided with Mabel,
>>and Lavinia either testified on her behalf or was terrorized by Sue
>>and her daughter, Martha Dickinson Bianchi (who also struggled with
>>Mabel for editorial control over ED's poems, as you'll recall), into
>>testifying against Mabel. (I can't remember now, having heard about
>>all this over 25 years ago.) The word on the street then, though, when
>>Mrs. Hampson was still alive, was that she and her late husband, who'd
>>been a young couple "in service" at the Evergreens in those days, had
>>done the Lavinia-terrorizing on the orders of Sue or Martha (or both).
>>
>>The point, though, is that everything relating to the Dickinson family,
>>including Amherst College, was intrinsic to the town's identity in the
>>eyes of the locals and very much part of its glamour for those "dewy-
>>eyed academics" at UMASS who yearned for a piece of the ED action that
>>their colleagues up the hill at the College monopolized. The Amherst
>>faculty may not have been born and bred locally (as most trustees still
>>were), but they'd nevertheless been recruited from the same Harvard/
>>Yale old-boy network on whom no black flies had ever rested.
>>
>>Candice
>>
>>
>>>The bloom is now, a couple of decades later, definitely off that particular
>>>peach, perhaps because the house, off-limits for so long, is now available
>>>for inspection. Mostly for tourists and dewy-eyed academics, who I guess I
>>>don't count as locals (in those towns you're not local unless several
>>>generations of your family's been there). Did the glamor ever extend, for
>>>those who know it best, to the town itself? Which was more my point. A 19th
>>>century place imagined by outsiders, I suspect, without horseshit.
>>>
>>>Another example: I spent the Summer that "The Sound of Music" opened in of
>>>all places Salzburg. The film bombed in Austria generally, and uniquely,
>>>but was sustained on tourist attendance locally. So here's a case of
>>>travellers to an exotic place retreating from the actual to a dark theater
>>>for a prescription renewal for their rose-colored glasses.
>>>
>>>I didn't see the film, by the way--for all I know it's better than
>>>Salzburger gnockerl (I'm sure that's misspelled). But I did see High Noon
>>>dubbed into Danish in Copenhagen once.
>>>
>>>Probably America's best writer to write history was Francis Parkman. It was
>>>a long time ago, and some of his  multivolume _History of the French in
>>>North America_ is of course outdated, both as to fact and attitude, but
>>>much of it holds up. One of its great charms is that Parkman made a point
>>>of trekking the backwoods routes he describes--the doings of the long dead
>>>contextualized within the actul. What Longfellow called "the forest
>>>primeval" loses a bit of its mythic luster when, as Parkman does, one puts
>>>the black flies, mosquitoes, ticks, bogs and windfalls back in.
>>>
>>>Digression: "windfall." What, lumber that doesn't need to be felled? In the
>>>deep forest it means the misfortune, sometimes deadly, of unexpected
>>>obstacles.
>>>
>>>"Black flies." If you don't know what they are count your blessings.
>>>
>>>Mark
>>
>>
>
>