Otis Phillips Lord (July 11, 1812 – March 13, 1884) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a justice of theMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1875 to 1882 and as the speaker of theMassachusetts House of Representatives in 1854. In addition to his public roles, he is suspected of having been a lover ofEmily Dickinson in her later life.
Born inIpswich, Massachusetts,[1][2] he attendedDummer Academy and graduated fromAmherst College in 1832, and fromHarvard Law School in 1836.[2]
Lord was a member of theMassachusetts House of Representatives for several stretches in the 1840s and 1850s. He served in theMassachusetts Senate in 1849, and was member of the constitutional convention in 1853. He was speaker of the Massachusetts House in 1854. In 1859 be was appointed by GovernorNathaniel P. Banks justice of the Superior court.[2] An anecdote arising from his time there was published in newspapers around the country:
The late Judge Otis Phillips Lord, of Massachusetts, is said to have made but one direct mistake on a question of law while on the bench, and that was of a statute which had just been amended. On discovering his mistake, and that it was due to the action just taken by the Legislature, he said: "Well, the good Lord only knows what the Massachusetts Legislature hasn't done in the last six months."[3]
In 1868, Lord was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Essex County, Massachusetts. He "did not make a single speech and withdrew from the campaign a week before the election." He lost to incumbent RepublicanBenjamin Butler, but he received more votes than independent candidateRichard Henry Dana Jr.[4]
In 1875 GovernorWilliam A. Gaston appointed Lord to the Supreme bench.[2] Lord resigned in 1882 due to poor health,[5] and was succeeded on the court byOliver Wendell Holmes Jr.[6]
Lord married Elizabeth W. Farley on October 9, 1843. The couple had no children. Lord was friends withEdward Dickinson through their mutual association with Amherst College, and was a frequent houseguest at the Dickinson residence. Following Edward's death in 1874, Lord continued to visitEmily Dickinson, then in her 40s, to offer support.[7]
Elizabeth died in 1877. Lord's friendship with Dickinson probably thereafter became a late-life romance, though as their letters were destroyed, this is surmised.[8] Dickinson found a kindred soul in Lord, especially in terms of shared literary interests; the few letters which survived contain multiple quotations ofShakespeare's work, including the playsOthello,Antony and Cleopatra,Hamlet andKing Lear. In 1880 he gave her Cowden Clarke'sComplete Concordance to Shakespeare (1877).[9] Dickinson wrote that "While others go to Church, I go to mine, for are you not my Church, and have we not a Hymn that no one knows but us?"[10] She referred to him as "My lovely Salem"[11] and they wrote to each other religiously every Sunday. Dickinson looked forward to this day greatly; a surviving fragment of a letter written by her states that "Tuesday is a deeply depressed Day".[12] In 1882, following the death of Dickinson's mother, Lord suggested that they marry, but she declined, apparently so as not to burden him with the possibility of her repeating an epileptic seizure.[7]
After being critically ill for several years, Lord died at his residence inSalem, Massachusetts.[2][13] Dickinson referred to him as "our latest Lost".[14]
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| Preceded by | Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court 1875–1882 | Succeeded by |
