INTRODUCTION
On the 11th of July, 1836, Henry Parkes and Clarinda Varney were married at the Church of England church at Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham, the only witness present being either the clerk or the verger. Clarinda Varney was the only daughter of Robert Varney, a man well to do in his little world. My mother used to say she had the blood of Varney, the villain of Kenilworth, in her veins; and we children would assure her that was nothing to be proud of. She left her home in consequence of cruel persecution from her step-mother, and her father never spoke to her again. Often have I sat on my little stool close to her side and listened to the never-tiring story of her sufferings and trials, brightened only by the devoted love between her and my father. I believe she was engaged to him for two years before she left her home, and she married him some months afterwards, she being twenty-three and he twenty-one. They married without any provision for their wedded life, except the work they could obtain from day to day, and went back from Edgbaston to live in the little room in Birmingham where she had lodged while alone. My father's relatives were very good to her, and she used often to tell me about the daily visits she and her little brown dog paid to the old father of the husband she so fondly loved. They had a bitter struggle for existence, and lost two children. Then they decided to go to London, with an idea of emigrating to Australia,—which, to their untutored minds, must indeed have appeared a veritable land of convicts and blackfellows, but still the 'land of promise' where the}' might prosper as they could not do at home.
My father had three sisters—Sarah, Maria, and Eliza, These letters are chiefly addressed to the eldest, Sarah, to whom he was greatly attached, and of whom he thus writes to my mother in 1861:—
'All is now over. Poor Sarah died this morning at two o'clock, Next to you and our dear children I have now lost the dearest creature that remained to me upon earth. She was a mother to me in my childhood, and all through life she was doubly dear for her meekly-borne sufferings. She, whose earthly lot was one of uninterrupted trial and labour, has now gone to eternal rest. God be praised for his mercy in bringing me here by such an accident to lighten the burden of her last moments.' My father was then in England on a lecturing tour with the late William Bede Dalley.
The letters were given to me at Faulconbridge early in the eighties by my Aunt Maria, and it was her wish, and my father's also, that I should publish them after his death. He was the youngest of his family, and the last to die. And now I will leave the letters to speak for themselves.