SD2829. Sarianna Browning to Anthony G. Snellgrove
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 347.
151, rue de Grenelle St Germain.
Paris.
June 22d [1866] [1]
My dear Mr Snellgrove,
I know that you truly sympathize with me in my present bereavement,—in the great loss I have sustained in losing my dear Father, your old friend, whom you have known from your childhood, and I feel sure that for his sake you will give me your advice and assistance, now that I am left alone.
Of course I wish duly to apprize the Bank Authorities of his decease, but I am quite ignorant of the formalities to be observed, and to whom to address myself. I presume the current portion of his pension will be kindly granted. But there is another point on which I beg your assistance– My father was a subscriber to the Widows’ Fund ever since he first entered the Bank; that is, even before he was married. I do not know the precise year, nor the amount of subscription, but it might easily be ascertained from the books of the Society. This he continued to pay regularly till the death of my mother, a period of about forty years, when, with his usual simplicity and utter ignorance of worldly matters, he withdrew his subscription because he had been told that he could not transfer the benefit of the payments to myself, his only daughter, as he would most gladly have done. I thought at the time that it was very strange and unjust that simply because he had subscribed to the Fund for so long a time as to survive the original object of his solicitude, that therefore the whole of the payments should be lost, but he seemed quite sure that I could derive no benefit from it, and regretted it very much. I have since heard that this was a mistake on his part, and that he could easily have substituted my name. As it is, all the money he paid, at a sacrifice, at a time when Bank clerks were not so well remunerated as, I am happy to learn, they now are, and which I should now be extremely thankful for, is, through a misunderstanding on his part, completely lost. I have heard, even in Paris, of the great praise due to the increased liberality and considerate kindness of the Bank Authorities; so as my father’s and grandfather’s long lives were spent in their service, I appeal to their generosity, whether some portion at least of the money thus paid might not be accorded me. I cannot help thinking that if the circumstances of the case were laid before them, they would be too liberal to refuse me.
Could you kindly assist me to make my statement?
Believe me ever
Very sincerely yours
Sarianna Browning.
Docket, in unidentified hand: Clerks W’s fund / abt. £11 [two illegible word] 14/11/1803 / 7/1849.
Publication: William Whitla, “Letters of Robert Browning and His Sister to the Snellgroves,” Browning Society Notes, 4 (July 1974), 21.
Manuscript: Mrs. Glynne Parry.
1. Year provided by reference to RB, Sr’s death, 14 June 1866.
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