3128. EBB to Maria Lowell
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 234–235.
15 Bentinck street
Monday [4 October 1852] [1]
My dear Mrs Lowell, [2]
I am very sorry– What can I do? I have not the least knowledge of the address you ask for, and my husband, who has, will not return from Wimbledon till late in the day–
Leigh Hunt’s publisher could tell you .. but who is the publisher? [3] I have not even a volume of the poems to refer to & see– Very sorry I am to be of no more use,—while
most truly yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Haverford College.
1. Month and year provided by reference to the return address; the only time the Brownings resided at 15 Bentinck Street occurred in October 1852. We date this letter on the earlier of the two Mondays the Brownings stayed there, as it seems unlikely that RB would have been in Wimbledon the day before they left England on the 12th.
2. Maria Lowell (1821–53), daughter of Abijah Jones White (1779–1845) and his wife Anna Maria (née Howard, 1791–1849), was born in Watertown, Mass. She married James Russell Lowell on 26 December 1844, after an engagement of four years.
3. Leigh Hunt’s most recent publications were Table-Talk. To which Are Added Imaginary Conversations of Pope and Swift (1851), issued by Smith, Elder and Co., and A Book for a Corner; Selections in Prose and Verse (1851), a reissue by Chapman and Hall of their 1849 title. At this time Hunt was living at 2 Phillimore Terrace, Kensington.
___________________
