MANUSCRIPT: missing.

PUBLICATION: L (1931) 327. The present text derives from a transcript (AC) made by Mrs. Todd when she saw the letter.

The Jacksons had been in Amherst for a few days, leaving there on 24 October. It is significant that ED received not only Mrs Jackson but her husband, a total stranger. Such an act for ED this late in her life was unprecedented (see letters 573c and 574)The second paragraph makes clear ED's awareness that Maria Whitney's devotion to Samuel Bowles had not always been appreciated.

ED's letters to Helen Jackson written during 1878 are missing, but the contents of them can be inferred from those Mrs. Jackson wrote ED (HCL). The first, dated Colorado Springs, 29 April 1878, asks for a poem to be included in a volume of the No Name series. The full story of Mrs. Jackson's effort to get it is told in Poems xxx-xxxiii, and begins with the following letter (unpublished), which returns a photograph of Gilbert.