This is one of a number of late manuscripts in which the opposite sides of the
paper appear to constitute separate textual spaces. A 883a, inscribed "Little
Margaret," appears to be a fair-copy address or salutation, possibly excerpted
from a lost message. The identity of "Little Margaret" is uncertain. Abigail
Girdler Cooper's granddaughter Margaret was born in 1884; a letter composed by
Dickinson to Abigail Cooper in 1884 (THJ) carries a pinned slip (YUL) inscribed "Little Margaret," and it is likely
that this fragment also refers to her. There is, however, another possibility.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, too, had a daughter named Margaret, to whom Dickinson
also wrote in 1884 (THJ); her message (see Letters [1958], L 893)
remembers Higginson's infant daughter Louisa, who died before Margaret's birth.
The "Lethargies of Loneliness" may refer to Margaret's (or Higginson's) loss of
Louisa or to another, private grief, the source of which is unrecoverable. The
fragment inscribed on A 883 is too brief to be generically decidable: it may be a
single lyric throe destined for incorporation into a poem, a passage destined for
incorporation into a letter, or a cryptic but complete message. Though no link has
ever been established between the texts on A 883 and A 883a, it is worth noting
that Dickinson seems to have wished to preserve both fragments: the paper has been
carefully torn, and both texts appear centered on the scrap. Because of the
ambiguous nature of the text, A 883a appears in both the "Index of Trace
Fragments" and in the "Index of Other Texts Inscribed on Documents Carrying
Fragments."