3131. EBB to Bessie Rayner Parkes

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 239.

15 Bentinck street.

Friday– [8 October 1852] [1]

My dear Miss Parkes,

I thank you very much for the kind gift of your poems, [2] which, associated with your feeling for myself, becomes in many ways welcome to me .. welcome—may I say?—as the gift of a friend. [3] I hope that while the talent, the capabilities & susceptibilities, evident in these poems, shall strengthen & deepen with more years, you may be as happy in what you attain, whether in or out of literature, as you are pure in what you aspire to.

When we return to England next year, will you give me another chance of seeing you, to make amends for the two lost ones of the present season, when you came in vain to find me, and I went in vain to find you?– Goodbye, now–

Most faithfully yours

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Girton 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. 8 October was the Friday prior to their departure for Paris.

2. Poems (1852).

3. From Bessie Parkes’s poem to EBB; see letter 3096, note 5.

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