BOOK REVIEW

_A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting
Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, & Martin
Johnson Heade_. By Christopher Benfey. Penguin Press, 2008. Pp. xv +
288. Hardcover. $25.95. ISBN 978-1-59420-160-8.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Barbara Schmidt

Copyright (c) 2008 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published
or redistributed in any medium without permission.


Christopher Benfey's _A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal
in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, & Martin Johnson Heade_ is best described as an
adventure in interpretation. At the heart of this study is poet Emily
Dickinson and a network of connections with other nineteenth century
artists and writers. Vignettes of their lives make up the bulk of the
book.

The title characters of Benfey's book stack up thus: Martin Johnson
Heade was an American artist noted for his portraits of landscapes,
flora and hummingbirds. Benfey believes Heade's paintings inspired
poems by Dickinson and sermons by Henry Ward Beecher. The Dickinsons
had family ties to Henry Ward Beecher who was Harriet Beecher Stowe's
brother. Mark Twain, friends with both Beecher and Stowe, once wrote
about a painting (now lost) by Heade. This is the fragile web of
connections upon which Benfey's title is based.

Benfey writes that the thread that binds his characters together is a
"quest for psychic wholeness played out in kindred ways" in the
aftermath of the Civil War (p. 2). "Adrift in a new world of often
devastating change, they found meaning in the shifting light on a river
at dawn, or the evanescent flash of a hummingbird's flight" (p. 4).
Benfey describes what he calls an "informal cult" built around
hummingbirds: "almost all the actors I had begun to assemble on my
little stage ... were fanatical about hummingbirds. They wrote poems
and stories about hummingbirds; they painted pictures of hummingbirds;
they tamed wild hummingbirds and collected stuffed hummingbirds; they
set music to the humming of hummingbirds; they waited impatiently
through the winter months for the hummingbirds' return" (5). Add
Benfey's statement to the text that appears on his dust jacket: "As
infidelity and lust run rampant, the incendiary ghost of Lord Byron is
evoked, and the characters of _A Summer of Hummingbirds_ find
themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of
decorum, restraint, and judgment and a romantic, unconventional
environment in which nature prevails and freedom is all." The result is
a hint of sensationalism that never quite materializes.

Benfey spins a number of "Dramatis Personae" into his web of
connections ranging from British poet Lord Byron who died in 1824, to
American artist Joseph Cornell who died in 1972. His narrative drifts
from one "Dramatis Persona" to another. This style will likely remind
Mark Twain scholars of the story of "grandfather's old ram" told by Jim
Blaine in chapter 53 of _Roughing It_. However, while the "old ram"
story continually meanders in a long line away from its subject,
Benfey's meditations always circle back to Emily Dickinson.

Benfey speculates about Mark Twain's trip in late December 1866, when
he spent a couple of days crossing Nicaragua while traveling from
California to New York. Martin Johnson Heade had spent most of the
summer of 1866 in Nicaragua in search of flora and birds for his
paintings. Benfey writes, "And so it was that two restless, rootless
wanderers--one in flight from New York [Heade], the other in flight to
it [Twain]--happened to cross paths in the forests of Nicaragua in
1866. … For both Twain and Heade, the passage through the tropics
marked a critical moment of self-recognition. Each recognized in the
other's work a kindred quest" (p. 139). There is no evidence that the
two men ever met in Nicaragua, or at any other time. Just what this
"critical moment" in Nicaragua was for Mark Twain is left to the
reader's imagination.

In late May 1867, Mark Twain visited an art exhibition at the Academy
of Design in New York and wrote a report for the _Alta California_
describing a painting he particularly enjoyed:

"There was a dreamy tropical scene--a wooded island in the centre of a
glassy lake bordered by an impenetrable jungle of trees all woven
together with vines and hung with drooping garlands of flowers--the
still lake pictured all over with the reflected beauty of the
shores--two lonely birds winging their way to the further side, where
grassy lawns, and mossy rocks, and a wilderness of tinted foliage, were
sleeping in a purple mist. I thought it was beautiful, but I suppose it
wasn't. I suppose if I were not so ignorant I would have observed that
one of the birds' hind legs was out of line, and that the coloring was
shaky in places, and that some of the 'effects' were criminal
transgressions of the laws of art" (_Mark Twain's Travels with Mr.
Brown_, p. 239).

Mark Twain did not identify the painting or the artist. However, the
editors of _Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Vol. 1_ (1975) and
Theodore Stebbins, author of _The Life and Work of Martin Johnson
Heade_ (2000), identify the work as a lost painting by Heade titled
"Lagoon in Nicaragua." Benfey relies on Stebbins's identification in
regard to another painting attributed to Heade, also lost, that was
once displayed in Twain's Hartford home. Without providing additional
supporting evidence that Twain ever purchased a Heade painting, Benfey
describes Twain as Heade's "friend and patron in later life" (p. 84).
He credits Heade's art with inspiring a passage in _Huckleberry Finn_:
"The nearly mystical account of the shimmering sunrise over the
Mississippi that opens the nineteenth chapter seems to borrow some of
its tonal shifts and evanescence from Heade" (p 146).

Mark Twain lectured in Emily Dickinson's hometown of Amherst on
February 27, 1872. The local newspaper reported 800 people were present
and proclaimed his appearance a "first-class failure." Although
Dickinson may have attended the lecture, Benfey provides no record of
her being in the audience or of her ever meeting Mark Twain. Benfey's
continual endeavors to draw Twain into the network of his hummingbird
cult always fall short.

Early into this book a reader may begin to suspect that the inclusion
of Mark Twain's name on the cover and title page is exploitative and
that Benfey is overreaching with an implied promise he cannot fulfill.
Mark Twain never collected hummingbirds and his married life was free
of extramarital affairs and scandal. While he might have found his
"psychic wholeness" in the "shifting light on a river at dawn" (instead
of hummingbirds), it may have been the changing shape of the river
itself that fascinated him.

In spite of the book's shortcomings where Mark Twain is concerned, the
discussions of people he knew may be of interest to Twain scholars.
These include vignettes of abolitionist and Union officer Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, who was Dickinson's literary mentor. Also profiled
is one of Dickinson's possible romantic interests, Reverend Charles
Wadsworth, whom Twain met in San Francisco. Wadsworth later warned
Jervis Langdon that Mark Twain was not a good prospect for a
son-in-law. Benfey discusses Henry Ward Beecher's alleged sexual
escapades (a topic that interested Twain). He suggests Beecher's sister
Harriet Beecher Stowe had "her own incestuous fantasies about her
brother Henry" (p. 269). Benfey also discusses Stowe's landmark 1869
article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ titled "The True Story of Lady
Byron's Life," but fails to note Twain's interest in Stowe's article.

Benfey is an English professor and art critic. His book is based on a
number of secondary sources and includes reference notes. However, he
assumes a freedom to speculate and assign motive without a concern for
facts that would normally rein in a historian--his book is entertaining
but often reckless.