Millicent Todd Bingham

Millicent Bingham's early interest in geography was encouraged by her father, an astronomy professor at Amherst College known as an "eclipse chaser," a passion that took him around the world. As a young woman, she accompanied him on international astronomical expeditions, traveling to the Dutch East Indies (1901), Tripoli (1905), Chile and Peru (1907), and Kiev, Ukraine (1914).[1][3] Later, her doctoral dissertation was based on her research about of Peru's rugged and varied geography. Millicent worked with French geographer Raoul Blanchard on his theories of regional geography, and helped to translate his seminar The Geography of France. In the late 1940s, she was nominated for membership in the Association of American Geographers.[2]

Daguerrotype of Emily Dickinson, c. early 1847. It is presently located in Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.

In 1931, after Millicent returned from an international geographical congress in Paris, her mother revealed that she was in possession of a Chinese camphorwood chest containing more than 600 unpublished poems and letters written by the recluse, Emily Dickinson.[1][2] By that time her mother, Mabel Loomis Todd had collaborated with Thomas Wentworth Higginson to edit and publish many Dickinson works after the poet's death in 1886. (During Dickinson's lifetime, only a dozen poems and letters were published.[4]) However, for more than 30 years, because of her complex relationships with members of the Dickinson family, Mabel declined to publish any of the poems or letters in her possession.[2]

In 1931, Mabel asked Millicent to help her publish the remaining poems and letters, but Mabel died soon thereafter, in 1932. According to archives at Yale, after her mother's death, Bingham very reluctantly[2] "abandoned her career in geography to begin what became a personal crusade to publish Emily Dickinson's manuscripts and to bolster Mabel Loomis Todd's reputation as the person most responsible for bringing Emily Dickinson's poetry to public attention."[3]

As a result of Bingham's research, editorial work and publishing efforts, she authored three books about the life and work of Emily Dickinson, and one further book of her poetry.[2] A voluminous collection of Bingham's papers is housed at Yale University.[3]

From her mother, Bingham inherited two properties, which she donated for public use. She bequeathed an 87-acre wooded area, located on Mount Orient in Pelham, Massachusetts, to Amherst College in 1960 as the Mabel Loomis Todd Forest. Her mother had purchased the tract in 1909 hoping to "preserve it from commercial exploitation."[3]

The larger gift surrounded the Todd family retreat on Hog Island in Muscongus Bay, Maine. Bingham presented the property to the National Audubon Society, to be called the Todd Wildlife Sanctuary, as a perpetual preserve in 1960.[3] According to Morgan, Bingham's donations have cemented her role as a lifelong conservationist.[1]

Bingham received honorary degrees from Dickinson College in 1952, and from Amherst College in 1957.[3]

In 1959, reflecting on the diverse directions her career had taken, Bingham wrote the following in the Radcliffe Quarterly.

During the work of a quarter of a century and more I have discovered one supreme fact, namely that in renouncing my study of the wonder and mystery of creation, the mystery has not departed. Emily Dickinson remains. The wonder as revealed in earth and sea and sky is not as remote from the life of one woman in a New England village as it might seem.[2]  

Bingham died in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 1968, at age 88 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her husband, a World War I veteran.[3]