Thread by @jessnevins

So...Mabil Loomis, later Mabel Loomis Todd. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Loo…).

It's great that her Wikipedia page is all about her accomplishments and doesn't mention her diaries. But her diaries aren't online! So you'll have to take my word for the following. 1/

Mabel kept *thorough* diaries of her married life, She's really a gift to historians. And she often throws in asides like a post-breakfast "had a very happy few minutes of love" (May 15, 1879)--yes, that's *exactly* what she meant. It's really good clean fun reading. 2/

Mabel at 15 felt overwhelmed by poetry--by a "power," a "terrible sacred flame [which] throbs so through my whole being." A few years later she wrote about how that feeling was really her more general "passions," not recognized by herself at 15 but seen clearly post-marriage. 3/

[Sidenote: if you read enough diaries and letters from this era, both Victorian British & American, you begin to see commonalities among experiences. Mabel was more -articulate- about her needs & experiences than most--but not an extreme example when it came to having them]. 4/

At 15/16 she writes about disapproving of "promiscuous hugging and kissing"--"something I could never stand even to hear of"--while also writing "I have always kept my circle of personal magnetism entire and to myself." Meaning her sensual nature. This would quickly change.
5/

At 16 she realizes she's attracting the attention of men, and realizes she rather enjoys the company of "gentlemen." Her diaries begin to strike a plaintive note: "If only people will *love* me [original in italics] I will do anything for them." 6/

At 18 she has a close call with a 30 year old man--"close call" as in rushing to marriage, because marriage to a weak man (and everything that came w/marriage), for her, at that time, felt better than being single--but her parents called it off, to her secret relief. 7/

At 19 she is accused of being a flirt. This was *serious* *business* for a woman back then. "Flirt" meant leading men on, teasing them emotionally and physically. "Flirt" could ruin your reputation among respectable families. "Flirt" could get you beaten. 8/

(Lucy's a flirt in DRACULA, and look where it gets her.)
Mabel considers the charge in her diary, examines her own behavior, and then decides fuck that mess: "I myself am very fond of gentlemen, but not quite in the coarse way." HOWEVAH. Along came Mr. Todd. 9/

Mr Todd is "very good looking, a blonde, with magnificent teeth, pleasant manners, & immense, though innocent enough, powers of flirting." Followed by "Well, so also have I."
Things progressed quickly with Todd--she leading the way as often as he. She knew what she wanted. 10/

She took his arm while walking. *She* took *his* arm. A little thing, but in context it was a significant move by her. In JANE EYRE we get "Reader, I married him," which should be understood as "*I* married *him.*" So too with Mabel. 11/

For a woman to take a man's arm--or vice-versa--in public was an implicit claim to being engaged. And we all know what that meant. Time for sexual experimentation!
(Remember, as another diary writer of the era said, sex with love is chaste; sex without love is not). 12/

Let's switch, to a moment, to Mr. Todd's diary: "Drive in buggy with 'accomodating horse.' Home about 9. Mabel will remember with pleasure the new sensation I caused her this evening. We may call this our engagement night." A month later he notes, "First long love--5-6." 13/

Back to Mabel: "We walked, and walked & walked, & had a most congenial time." He visits her in her room. "We walked up and down the room, and,--and he--well, I couldn't help it." The next morning's entry: "I woke up...very happy though & feeling not at all condemned." 14/

Later, there was "a slight passage of arms in which I made a mistake--which worried me much, but the effect of that mistake has entirely disappeared, I'm happy to say." (The meaning of this passage eluded a later male historian. Men!) 15/

In early January 1879, she goes on a long walk w/"David, blessed boy." She "sewed buttons on for him." After super "another dear sweet few minutes with him & then he--blacked my shoes! At last." (Same male historian says this must have been an "anticlimactic encounter." hmph) 16/

(This, by the way, is why I think allegations that 19th century women didn't have orgasms and didn't know what they were are just foolishness. THEY WROTE ABOUT THEM! Mabel, again, is a better diary-keeper than most, but she's otherwise not unusual). 17/

She also writes, "Of course you would expect it after you were engaged, but I think the line should be very distinct between the friendships which a girl may have with many men, and the one particular kind of affection which she gives the man she is to marry." 18/

It was taken as given by educated folk that, as one writer put it, "the urgency of man & the timidity of woman are tempered by the period of courtship." You weren't supposed to cross the line of penetration, but everything else was go, & women were *encouraged* to experiment. 19/

(But also: 1877 survey in the Journal of Social History: 1/4 of engaged women were no longer virgins after the engagement).

A week after getting her shoes blackened, Mabel writes "If only he were here at this moment, how I would 'show' him!" 20/

David did write to Mabel, after the decision that the wedding would take place early in the day, "Then we could have our first night of love at once!" (Male historian: this isn't something a man would say to "an ignorant, blushing young thing.") 21/

Mabel's mom writes to Mabel after the wedding, exclaiming over Mabel's "rapt expression of purity." Mabel does not record her response in her diary. 22/

Five months after the marriage, "David is more passionately my lover than he ever was before our marriage, and I feel most deeply grateful to God for give me in my husband a man who...encompasses me with the sweetest life-fountains that a woman's life can ever know." (Phrasing!)

Long entry I can't excerpt on their nights: she undresses in front of the fire, he rubs her all over to warm her up, they go to bed and make love, he gets up to study for an hour or two, and then it's back to bed for more lovemaking. In the morning, he fed her fruit in bed. 24/

"Ice cream on the way home--and the most rapturous & sacred night of all our love." David has to go to DC for work, but when he returns: "Oh joy! Oh! Bliss unutterable!" Later, "the same beautiful climax of feeling I knew so well." 25/

Then she and David start trying to have kids, and she *explicitly* times her orgasms and his so that she receives "the precious fluid" "after my highest point of enjoyment had passed," which we know now is a good way to get pregnant.
26/

They make love throughout the pregnancy. On a steamer on Seneca Lake in New York. She addresses him "husband-lover." The daughter arrives. Then--oh dear! They move to Amherst, and Mabel becomes close with Emily Dickinson and much closer with Austin Dickinson, Emily's brother. 27/

First Mabel let Ned Dickinson, Austin's son, get too close to her--she was enjoying the attention of a handsome twenty-year-old boy, and, well, one thing led to another and suddenly Ned was declaring his love for her. (Such a bother!) 28/

That didn't end well. Then--well. It's like this. Mabel, as she admits to herself in her diary--she's very honest with herself, always--is hungry for male attention. And sometimes that leads to her being a flirt. Things with her husband were fine, but she wanted more. 29/

And so she took up with Ned's father, Austin. Their love affair lasted for about 13/14 years, roughly 1882 to his death. In a Sept. 1882 diary entry she writes, of him, one word: "Rubicon." As in, the crossing of, the point at which there's no going back.
30/

Every year they would celebrate the date of their first lovemaking with a tryst. (In case you were wondering what the inspiration for SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR was).

It's hard to say that the affair made them happy, exactly. She would write passionately to and about him, but-- 31/

There was a lot of bitterness to the respective spouses, if the sex was good ("You do not go away at all. I feel you here in me, enfolding me, this instant") having to plan assignations was not. He'd visit her at her house for sex while her husband & daughter were home. 32/

They'd go upstairs to a guest bedroom and lock the door behind them. If Mabel's husband knew, he never said anything, and acted surprised when she told him about the long affair in 1895, after Austin's death.
33/

Oh, whoops. My bad. Mabel's husband knew, and facilitated the affair. Husband would accompany the lovers on trips and (quoting historian) "when his wife was away, join her lover that both might praise the woman they adored." 34/

So they had the making of a poly triad, except for the part where Austin was lying to his wife about everything. Mabel's husband had temporary flings himself, which Mabel knew about and forgave, though daughter Millicent could not and would not forgive her father. 35/

Amherst society knew about Austin's affair--he was a powerful figure in town--& when Austin's wife Susan made people & institutions choose between Mabel & Susan, Mabel won out. This wasn't a case of people prizing civility above all else. (Mabel was vivacious; Susan was not). 36/

This was because adultery was not, for the women of Amherst, something worth kicking up a fuss over. The marriage manuals & preachers could say what they liked; in real life, seeking affection outside of marriage was something they could all relate to. 37/

Austin's death in 1895, when Mabel was still only 39, robbed her of her one great love. She still had her husband & occasionally took other lovers, but nothing was ever as good for her as it had been, at its best, with Austin. (i.e., her diary entries become less racy).

38/

Mabel was extraordinary in her luck when it came to her husband's attitude toward her taking on lovers--but her approach to sex, her attitudes toward it & her own sexuality, weren't extraordinary. (The Victorians Were Just Like Us, etc).

Thanks for reading! 39/39