Milli mála - 2019, Blaðsíða 91

Milli mála 11/2019 91
GREGORY ALAN PHIPPS
the reason Dickinson’s severe father allowed his daughters to attend
the show was that Lind had a widespread reputation for charity and
impeachable conduct.8
Neither Mitchell nor Pascoe mention Lind’s hair colour specifi-
cally, and Dickinson does not bring it up in a letter to her brother
Austin on July 6, 1851 in which she discusses the Lind concert
(though she does comment on Lind’s “mild blue eyes” [L46]). There
is no concrete proof that Lind was blonde, with surviving daguerreo-
types suggesting that her hair was probably light brown (and almost
certainly not yellow). Yet interestingly, contemporary depictions of
and dialogues about Lind identify her as a strikingly blonde-haired
performer, suggesting, I would argue, a series of attempts to bolster
her reputation for impeachable “whiteness.” In 1866, the American
singer Lillie de Hegermann-Lindencrone described her as having
“plain features, a pert nose, sallow skin, and very yellow hair.”
Similarly, John Addington Symonds’s rather physiognomic catalogue
of her appearance in 1862 included the detail “Her hair is profuse and
yellow.” Frederick Locker-Lampson, an English poet and famous book
collector, described her as a “fair-haired and blue-eyed Puritan” (qtd.
in Wagenknecht 24). Either these individuals took creative liberties
in their descriptions or Lind dyed her hair at different points in her
career. Either way, Locker-Lampson’s phrase “fair-haired and blue-
eyed Puritan” is significant, indicating that the public was invested
in galvanizing a link between blondness and innocence to reinforce
Lind’s persona. The image-production of Lind as a blonde was also a
commercialized (and haphazard) process. Many products carried her
likeness, from cigars to teakettles to paper dolls, with some items and
advertisements depicting her as a brunette, others showing her with
8 Dickinson’s droll descriptions of her father’s reactions to the show afford a glimpse of how a con-
servative New Englander might view the intrinsic imprudence of a popular woman entertainer.
Dickinson describes her father “looking mad, and silly, and yet so much amused” throughout the
performance. When it ended, Edward Dickinson thanked the performers with jarring abruptness
and formality, commenting, “Good evening Sir” and “very well—that will do” before they even
had a chance to receive applause: “it was’nt sarcasm exactly, nor it was’nt disdain, it was infinitely
funnier than either of those virtues, as if old Abraham had come to see the show, and thought it
was all very well, but a little excess of Monkey!” (L46). In this instance, the disreputable element
to the show is more benign than eroticism, centring on playfulness and silliness. Then again,
Edward Dickinson’s obvious desire to leave quickly suggests that he was worried the “monkey
business” might slide into something worse and more corrupting if he did not whisk his daughters
away immediately.