letters from dickinson to elizabeth carmichael


Thomas Johnson's Note on Letter 875

MANUSCRIPT: missing.

PUBLICATION: L (1894) 420-421; L (1931) 409.

Mrs. Carmichael, the mother of the first wife of Professor Richard H. Mather, was an especially close friend of Lavinia's. After her daughter's death she left the Mather house, close to the Dickinson's, to live with her sister Mrs. Skeel. The letter perhaps was written after the death of Gilbert. The first quotation attempts to recall lines from Fitz-Greene Halleck's "On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake": "None knew thee but to love thee,/ Nor named thee but to praise." The scripture quotation recalls Isaiah 53.4.


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Commentary copyright 1998 by Martha Nell Smith, all rights reserved
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Last updated on February 25, 2008