HOG ISLAND & EMILY DICKINSON

THERE IS NO FRIGATE LIKE A BOOK

I am out with Lanterns, looking for myself . . .

This week I should finally write about Maine. I have lived in Maine since 1973 and I like to think I know a great deal about my adopted state, the place I call home and to which I will always return. You are going to say that if I think I know so much, why is this post quoting Emily Dickinson from Amherst, Massachusetts, with no obvious connection to Maine? My happy memories of Emily Dickinson are encapsulated in the two lines above, one from one of her poems and one from one of her letters. Out with Lanterns (scroll down in post to Emily section) No Frigate Emily Dickinson - Poems | Academy of American Poets

I am not a poet myself and my taste in poetry is often quite pedestrian. As Emily Dickinson did not follow the conventional rules of poetry nor did she write about other than the most common of themes, I am not sure how she is viewed nowadays in the canon of American poetry. But still I have always enjoyed her poetry more than most other American poets and when I very recently found a somewhat tenuous connection to Maine, I wanted to learn more. If you are interested in Dickinson’s poetic style, this article can give you a start. Major Characteristics of Dickinson poetry can be found in this article from the Emily Dickinson museum’s website. And there, my friends, is the connection to travel, you can take a road trip to Amherst, Massachusetts and visit her museum. I think it would be a lot easier to get there from Maine or almost anywhere else along the I-95 corridor than to get to either of the Hog Islands found off the coast of Maine.

The answer to the question of what Emily Dickinson has to do with Maine involves a mystery for which I have no explanation. I never knew of the Emily Dickinson/Hog Island connection until January 2025 when I received an audible book entitled A Woman of the World by Rebecca Gilman. The arrival of the audiobook on my phone is one of life’s great mysteries. I don’t remember ordering it nor is it something I have ever heard discussed or seen in anything I can remember that I have ever read. This is the synopsis on the audiobook as found on Goodreads:

“Meet Mabel Loomis Todd, an inspired conversationalist who routinely invites scandal and ignores the rules of 19th-century society. Now in her 70s and living on Hog Island in Maine, the outspoken writer and editor is holding court, entertaining us with musings on her colorful life, spilling secrets and revealing the truth about how she uncovered a trove of Emily Dickinson’s work. In an intriguing performance, Obie Award® winner Kathleen Chalfant embodies the spirit of a fascinating woman whose legacy is forever linked to one of America’s most celebrated poets.”

If I saw that synopsis I might have ordered the audiobook, although it is a performance that is only slightly over one hour in length and not the sort of thing I routinely order. Perhaps someone gifted it to me? I have been listening to audible audiobooks for over 12 years and I have a huge audible library. Maybe they just sent it to me as a loyal customer? If so, I am happy to have received it, but there was no note to explain where it had originated. The introduction explained that the performance had been orchestrated by the Artist-in-Residence program at the Hog Island Audubon Camp. I have been a member of Maine Audubon for years, but I don’t think I ever even knew about a summer camp on Hog Island or an artist in residence program. My fascination with puffins and other seabirds has pretty much been centered on Machias Seal Island and other islands in the Bay of Fundy, north and east of Hog Island. However the short performance came to arrive on my phone, I listened to it while riding my bike on the Greenway in South Carolina and became fascinated with the story of Mabel Loomis Todd. Wikipedia has a pretty lengthy and informative entry about her that tracks a lot of the information that I gleaned from my brief listen to the audiobook. mabel loomis

For purpose of my memories here, the striking thing about this woman was her obvious love of Hog Island where she and her husband had a summer home. He was a professor of astronomy at Amherst College and came from more money than Loomis herself. She had grown up in somewhat constrained financial circumstances and lived an unconventional life. You can read the details in the link. Her husband was a philanderer and so was she, but I don’t think that is the noun that would be used to describe her. She is “politely” referred to as an “adulteress” in the articles I have read. She apparently had a decades long affair with Austin Dickinson, Emily’s married older brother. Mabel herself never met the reclusive Emily although the two did exchange a few letters. Mabel came into possession of some or perhaps all of Dickinson’s poetry and collaborated with a fellow named Higginson to edit and publish them. I gather that their publication provokes a lot of outrage among the scholarly set because they did a lot of editing of the poems that was considered improper. There were also legal battles between Emily’s surviving sister and Mabel over publication rights and other issues.

Mabel and David, the astronomer husband professor at Amherst, traveled a lot themselves, apparently sans Austin Dickinson. Their last international trip was to Russia in 1914 and involved quite an adventure getting away from the European continent what with world wars and other events. Coincidentally among all her travels with David was a trip to Japan to film a solar eclipse in 1887 and during that trip she became the first Western woman to walk up Mt. Fuji. Who knew? Who cares? In the course of the grand and exciting life of Mabel and David one of their activities involved sailing the coast of Maine and it was while doing so that she spotted Hog Island in Muscongus Bay. Put off by the overgrazing and deforestation, Mabel bought a large portion of the island around 1908 and became part of a summer colony that developed on the island.

David’s health and mental acuity diminished through the years (the 1914 escape from Kyiv to Sweden in order to exit Europe in August of that year had to be stressful). Read the Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman if you are looking to get a feel for that experience because as Emily says “there is no frigate like a book To take us lands away.” In any event by 1922 David was institutionalized and remained so for the rest of his life. Mabel continued to travel and lecture and be fully involved in civic activities. Upon her death in October,1932, her daughter inherited the property on Hog Island and she is the one who ultimately arranged for its transfer to National Audubon and eventually to Maine Audubon which currently administers the summer camp on the island. Legacy of Hog Island (this link contains a lot of interesting history, including information about Roger Peterson Tory, the inventor of the modern field guide.) Mabel was also instrumental in the founding and development of Everglades National Park. She and David had moved to Coconut Grove, Florida upon his early retirement from Amherst College in 1917. Actually if you can get over the fact that so many of the internet articles identify her first and foremost as an “adulteress” (I admit I found that a little jarring), this woman was an important intellectual thinker and early environmentalist of the 19th century, and a contemporary of Emily Dickinson. She also may have been an unsatisfactory editor of her collection of Dickinson’s poems.

Since this is a travel post about my beloved state of Maine and since I am an east of the Penobscot River sort of Mainer, I must clarify one point. Emily Dickinson may have no direct connection to Maine and Hog Island in Muscongus Bay, but a famous writer with a connection to Maine and to a different Hog Island, this one in Penobscot Bay, must be mentioned in passing. Hog Island, Brooklin After all, Wilbur was no ordinary pig and E.B. and Katherine White were no ordinary Mainers. I have been chastised all week on certain social media sites for posting about the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ helicopter flights over the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia in search of feral hogs. Maine friends have wondered about my unnatural interest in these feral hogs. Now, at least you know the reason, hogs have been on my mind all week. You see, Ankose, tout est relie, everything is connected.

And I will close with a note about Maine, a place to call home, a lovely place to visit, and my own North Star. I chronicle all that it means to me in the blog entry below from my old travel blog. As I watch the country I love kowtowing, not to cow farmers, but to dictators and oligarchs, I am proud of the governor of my State and of its Senator King, and of its members of the House of Representatives who all seem to possess the courage I lack to face adversity with grace and determination. I hope for all of them to stand up like Margaret Chase Smith once did. I will leave you with a page from the Senate’s own website. Senate website U.S. Senate: A Declaration of Conscience. Dirigo, now more than ever, by the ladies from the State of Maine.

ADDENDA

state motto Maine State Motto: Dirigo

Maine– Memories – A Second Chance at Happiness

The picture is mine, taken at Marshall Point where we used to rent a summer home not on either of the Hog Islands, but the Maine coast on the eastern end of Muscongus Bay, slightly south and west of Penobscot Bay — Lost Fishermen Port Clyde

If one counts them up there are actually about 14 Hog Islands off the coast of Maine stretching all the way from Cumberland County to Washington County, including a small island adjacent to Matinicus Island. I guess it was more than sheep that were routinely left loose to spend the summer on remote islands and forage for their dinners. I had no idea there were so many Hog Islands.

Hog Islands List of islands of Maine - Wikipedia