Correspondence

4018.  EBB to Elizabeth Clementine Kinney

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 99.

[Florence]

[28 July 1857] [1]

Mr & Mrs Robert Browning [2]

I came directly & find you out– So grieved we are for poor Mr Powers. [3] God bless you.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Yale University.

1. Dated by EBB’s allusion to the grave state of the Powerses’ daughter (see note 3 below) and by reference to letter 4019, in which EBB writes that the Brownings had been “on the way to visit” the Kinneys the night before.

2. EBB has altered one of RB’s calling cards to include herself and has written the message below the names.

3. Frances Austin Powers (1849–57), seventh child and fourth daughter of Hiram Powers and his wife, Elizabeth, died the next day, 29 July. Her death was preceded by a three-day illness; see letter 4085.

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