Pen-Portraits of Literary Women: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
BY
HELEN GRAY CONE AND JEANNETTE L. GILDER
An excerpt from
PEN-PORTRAITS OF LITERARY WOMEN
1887
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, the daughter of a wealthy West India merchant, was born at Hope End, near Ledbury, in 1809. The delicate, precocious child began rhyming at eight years old, and was encouraged by her proud and indulgent father. In 1826, at seventeen, she published her Essay on Mind, an imitation of Pope. She was an omnivorous reader, and early became a hard student of Greek. When she was twenty-four or five her family removed from Hope End to Sidmouth; thence to London. In 1835 she published a translation from Æschylos, Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems. The Prometheus was subsequently re-written.
In 1837, Miss Barrett’s health broke down. She was taken, by the advice of her physician, to Torquay. During her sojourn there her favorite brother was drowned; she had the horror of seeing his boat go down. She was utterly prostrated by this tragedy, and it was not until the following year that she could be removed to London.
A long period of invalidism ensued, during which, however, she continued her studies and literary work. The courage and noble cheerfulness displayed in her letters to Mr. Horne, written at this time, are most remarkable. In 1838 she published The Seraphim, and Other Poems; in 1839, The Romaunt of the Page, a volume of ballads. In 1842 she contributed to the London Athenæum some essays on the Greek-Christian writers and the English poets. About 1841 she modernized portions of Chaucer’s poetry; Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Monckton Milnes, Horne and others engaging in the same work. Miss Barrett also wrote for Horne’s ‘New Spirit of the Age,’ part of the critique on Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt, and nearly all of the paper on Walter Savage Landor. In 1844, her health having in the meantime gradually improved somewhat, she collected her poems, placing at the head a new composition called A Drama of Exile, the fruit of her diligent study of the Hebrew Bible.
In 1846, despite the opposition of her father—to whom “a marriage which was to lift his fragile daughter from the couch to which she had been bound as a picture to its frame, must have seemed a rash experiment,”—Elizabeth Barrett was married to Robert Browning. They went at once to Italy, where, the milder climate proving favorable to Mrs. Browning’s health, they continued to reside for fifteen years. They were in the habit of spending their summers in Florence, where their son, Robert Barrett Browning, was born, and their winters in Rome; and occasionally they visited England. Under favorable conditions, Mrs. Browning now produced her greatest works. Casa Guidi Windows was published in 1851, the Sonnets from the Portuguese being included in the same volume. In 1856 Aurora Leigh appeared.
Poems before Congress were put forth in 1860. Her last poems, written in 1860 and ’61, were collected after her death, which took place at Florence on the 29th of June, 1861.
A strange and beautiful life—with its cloistered maidenhood, its pathetic wavering between Death and Love, to fall at last into Love’s most gracious hands, its sequel of perfect wifehood. “She was like the insect that weaves itself a shroud, yet by some inward force, after a season, is impelled to break through its covering, and come out a winged tiger-moth, emblem of spirituality in its birth, and of passion in the splendor of its tawny dyes.” 1
Browning’s ‘By the Fireside’ undoubtedly contains a sketch of her own fireside; we recognize at once the tiny figure of the woman
“Reading by firelight—that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it.”
No line other than loving has ever been written of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But from all that friends and appreciative critics can say we must ever turn for the last touch to the “One Word More” of him who knew the “silent silver lights and darks undreamed-of” of his own “moon of poets.”
As to stories, my story amounts to the Knife-grinder’s, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage would have as good a story. Most of my events, and nearly all my intense pleasures, have passed in my thoughts. I wrote verses—as I dare say many have done who never wrote any poems—very early; at eight years old and earlier. But, what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me, and from that day to this, poetry has been a distinct object with me—an object to read, think, and live for. And I could make you laugh, although you could not make the public laugh, by the narrative of nascent odes, epics, and didactics crying aloud on obsolete Muses from childish lips. The Greeks were my demi-gods, and haunted me out of Pope’s Homer until I dreamt more of Agamemnon than of Moses the black pony. And thus my great “epic” of eleven or twelve years old, in four books, and called The Battle of Marathon, and of which fifty copies were printed because papa was bent upon spoiling me—is Pope’s Homer done over again, or rather undone; for, although a curious production for a child, it gives evidence only of an imitative faculty and an ear, and a good deal of reading in a peculiar direction. The love of Pope’s Homer threw me into Pope on one side and into Greek on the other, and into Latin as a help to Greek—and the influence of all these tendencies is manifest so long afterwards, as in my ‘Essay on Mind,’ a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented as worthy of all repentance. The poem is imitative in its form, yet is not without traces of an individual thinking and feeling—the bird pecks through the shell in it. With this, it has a pertness and pedantry, which did not even then belong to the character of the author, and which I regret now more than I do the literary defectiveness.
All this time, and indeed the greater part of my life, we lived at Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement scarcely broken to me, except by books and my own thoughts; and it is a beautiful country, and was a retirement happy in many ways, although the very peace of it troubles the heart as it looks back. There I had my fits of Pope, and Byron, and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under the trees as some of your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from Plato and the dramatists, and ate and drank Greek, and made my head ache with it. Do you know the Malvern Hills? The hills of Piers Plowman’s Vision? They seem to me my native hills; for, although I was born in the county of Durham, I was an infant when I went first into their neighborhood, and lived there until I had passed twenty by several years. Beautiful, beautiful hills, they are! And yet, not for the whole world’s beauty, would I stand in the sunshine and the shadow of them any more. It would be a mockery, like the taking back of a broken flower to its stalk.
From thence we went to Sidmouth for two years; and there I published my translation of Æschylus, which was written in twelve days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards—the only means of giving it a little warmth. The next removal was to London.... And then came the failure in my health, which never had been strong (at fifteen I nearly died), and the publication of The Seraphim, the only work I care to acknowledge, and then the enforced exile to Torquay, with prophecy in the fear, and grief, and reluctance of it—a dreadful dream of an exile, which gave a nightmare to my life forever, and robbed it of more than I can speak of here; do not speak of that anywhere. Do not speak of that, dear Mr. Horne; and for the rest, you see that there is nothing to say. It is “a blank, my lord.”
Elizabeth Barrett: Letter to R. H. Horne, 1843. ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to Richard Hengist Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877.
Among her friends at this time [1826] and for years afterward—in fact, until his death in 1848—was Hugh Stuart Boyd, favorably known by his translations from the Greek.... They read their favorite authors together, or, rather, the young student read to her old master, for he was blind. A reminiscence of the happy hours they passed together, communing with the mighty minds of old, may be found in Mrs. Browning’s beautiful poem, ‘Wine of Cyprus,’ dedicated to Mr. Boyd, to whom she was indebted for her knowledge of that dainty vintage.
“I think of those long mornings
Which my thought goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio’s turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane the mountain spreading
Swept the sheep-bell’s tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading,
Somewhat low for ai’s and oi’s.”
R. H. Stoddard: Prefatory Memoir to ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning addressed to Richard H. Horne.’
I have her ‘Essay on Mind,’ ... which, and the notes to it, contain allusions to books, as if known by everybody, which Henry Cary declared to me no young man of his day at Oxford had ever looked into.
Mary Russell Mitford: Letter to Rev. Mr. Harness.
She is a delightful young creature; shy and timid and modest.... She is so sweet and gentle, and so pretty, that one looks at her as if she were some bright flower.
Mary Russell Mitford: Letter to her Father, May, 1836. L’Estrange’s ‘Life of M. R. Mitford.’ London: R. Bentley & Sons, 1870.
My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. 2 She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eye-lashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the Prometheus of Æschylus, the authoress of the ‘Essay on Mind,’ was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language was out. Through the kindness of another invaluable friend, ... I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly that in spite of the difference of age, intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country, we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to be—her own talk put upon paper.
The next year was a painful one to herself and to all who loved her. She broke a blood-vessel in the lungs, which did not heal.... After attending her for above a twelve-month at her father’s house in Wimpole Street, Dr. Chambers, on the approach of winter, ordered her to a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a brother in heart and in talent worthy of such a sister, together with other devoted relatives, accompanied her to Torquay, and there occurred the fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetry.... Nearly a twelve-month had passed and the invalid, still attended by her affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea-breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning her favorite brother, together with two other fine young men, his friends, embarked on board a small sailing-vessel, for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen and undertook themselves the management of the little craft. Danger was not dreamt of by any one; after the catastrophe, no one could divine the cause, but in a few minutes after their embarkation, and in sight of their very windows, just as they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who were in her perished. Even the bodies were never found.
This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling, that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London home.
The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs, almost close to the sea; and she told me herself that during that whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying.
Still she clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she would have died without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of her friendly physician she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know ... that to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight.
Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many years, confined to one large and commodious, but darkened, chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I, myself, have often joyfully travelled five-and-forty miles to see her, and returned the same evening, without entering another house); reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.
Mary Russell Mitford: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1852.
I read without principle. I have a sort of unity indeed, but it amalgamates instead of selecting—do you understand? When I had read the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Malachi, right through, and was never stopped by the Chaldee—and the Greek poets, and Plato, right through from end to end—I passed as thoroughly through the flood of all possible and impossible British and foreign novels and romances, with slices of metaphysics laid thick between the sorrows of the multitudinous Celestinas. It is only useful knowledge and the multiplication table I never tried hard at. And now—what now? Is this matter of exultation? Alas, no! Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from the romances? Certainly, no!—never, except in joke. It’s against my theories and ratiocinations, which take upon themselves to assert that we all generally err by reading too much, and out of proportion to what we think. I should be wiser, I am persuaded, if I had not read half as much—should have had stronger and better exercised faculties, and should stand higher in my own appreciation. The fact is, that the ne plus ultra of intellectual indolence is this reading of books. It comes next to what the Americans call “whittling.”
Elizabeth Barrett: Letter to R. H. Horne, 1843. ‘Letters of E. B. Browning to R. H. Horne.’
Her letters ought to be published. In power, versatility, liveliness, and finesse; in perfect originality of glance, and vigor of grasp at every topic of the hour; in their enthusiastic preferences, prejudices, and inconsistencies, I have never met with any, written by men or by women, more brilliant, spontaneous, and characteristic. This was her form of conversation.
Henry F. Chorley: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’ London: Bentley, 1873.
Her letters make Cowper’s poor. In a hurried note, whose hurry is evident in the handwriting, she drops ... incidental, but brilliant words—just as if the jewels in her rings, jarred by her rapid fingers, had been suddenly unset and fallen out on the paper.
No other handwriting is like hers; it is strong, legible, singularly un-English (that is, not a slanted or running hand), and more like a man’s than a woman’s.
Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’ New York: James Miller, 1862.
More of us, you will admit, do harm by groping along the pavement with blind hands for the beggar’s brass coin, than do folly by clutching at the stars from “the misty mountain-top.” And if the would-be star-catchers catch nothing, they keep at least clean fingers.
As to poetry, they are all sitting (in mistake), just now, upon Caucasus for Parnassus—and wondering why they don’t see the Muses!
It comes to this. If poetry, under any form, be exhaustible, Nature is; and if Nature be—we are near a blasphemy—I, for one, could not believe in the immortality of the soul.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to R. H. Horne.’
I have never seen one more nobly simple, more entirely guiltless of the feminine propensity of talking for effect, more earnest in assertion, more gentle, yet pertinacious in difference, than she was. Like all whose early nurture has chiefly been books, she had a child’s curiosity regarding the life beyond her books, co-existing with opinions accepted as certainties concerning things of which (even with the intuition of genius), she could know little. She was at once forbearing and dogmatic, willing to accept differences, resolute to admit no argument; without any more practical knowledge of social life than a nun might have, when, after long years, she emerged from her cloister and her shroud.
Henry F. Chorley: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’
I receive more dogmas, perhaps, than you do. I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ in the intensest sense—that He was God absolutely. But for the rest, I am very unorthodox about the spirit, the flesh, and the devil, and if you would not let me sit by you, a great many churchmen wouldn’t; in fact, churches, all of them, as at present constituted, seem too narrow and low to hold true Christianity in its proximate developments.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letter to Leigh Hunt. ‘Correspondence of Leigh Hunt,’ edited by his son. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1862.
May I say of myself that I hope there is nobody in the world with a stronger will and aspiration to escape from sectarianism in any sort or sense, when I have eyes to discern it—and that the sectarianism of the National Churches, to which I do not belong, and of the dissenting bodies, to which I do, stand together before me on a pretty just level of detestation? Truth (as far as each thinker can apprehend), apprehended—and love, comprehending—make my idea—my hope of a church. But the Christianity of the world is apt to wander from Christ and the hope of Him.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
You are my friend, I hope, but you do not on that account lose the faculty of judging me, or the right of judging me frankly. I do loathe the whole system of personal compliment, as a consequence of a personal interest, and I beseech you not to suffer yourself ever by any sort of kind impulse from within, or extraneous influence otherwise, to say or modify a word relating to me.... I set more price on your sincerity than on your praise, and consider it more closely connected with the quality called kindness.... Now, mind! your best compliment to me is the truth at all times, without reference to sex or friendship. I excuse the unbonneting.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
What you say of a “poet’s duty” no one in the world can feel more deeply, in the verity of it, than myself. If I fail ultimately before the public—that is, before the people—for an ephemeral popularity does not appear to me worth trying for—it will not be because I have shrunk from the amount of labor—where labor could do anything. I have worked at poetry; it has not been with me revery, but art. As the physician and lawyer work at their several professions, so have I, and so do I, apply to mine. And this I say, only to put by any charge of carelessness which may rise up to the verge of your lips or thoughts.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
With reference to the double rhyming, it has appeared to me to be employed with far less variety in our serious poetry than our language would admit of genially, and that the various employment of it would add another string to the lyre of our Terpander. It has appeared to me that the single rhymes, as usually employed, are scarcely as various as they might be, but that of the double rhymes the observation is still truer. A great deal of attention—far more than it would take to rhyme with conventional accuracy—have I given to the subject of rhymes, and have determined in cold blood to hazard some experiments. At the same time I should tell you, that scarcely one of the Pan rhymes [occurring in the poem of ‘The Dead Pan’] might not separately be justified by the analogy of received rhymes, although they have not themselves been received. Perhaps there is not so irregular a rhyme throughout the poem of Pan as the “fellow” and “prunella” of Pope the infallible. I maintain that my “islands” and “silence” is a regular rhyme in comparison.... A reader of Spanish poetry must be aware how soon the ear may be satisfied even by a recurring vowel. I mean to try it. At any rate, there are so few regular double rhymes in the English language that we must either admit some such trial or eschew the double rhymes generally; and I, for one, am very fond of them, and believe them to have a power not yet drawn out to its length, and capable of development, in our lyrical poetry especially.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
I take the courage and vanity to send to you a note which a poet [Note by R. H. Horne: Robert Browning, then personally unknown to Miss Barrett, although an intimate friend of my own], whom we both admire, wrote to a friend of mine, who lent him the MS. [of ‘The Dead Pan’]. Mark! No opinion was asked about the rhymes,—the satisfaction was altogether impulsive, from within. Send me the note back, and never tell anybody that I showed it to you—it would appear too vain. Also, I have no right to show it. It was sent to me as likely to please me, and pleased me so much and naturally on various accounts, ... that I begged to be allowed to keep it.
Elizabeth Barrett: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
Suddenly, one day, as the product of one day’s work, she astonished her friends with the rhapsody of ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.’... This poem had all the faultiness which one might expect of a hundred and three stanzas forced by green-house heat into full bloom in twelve hours; this too by a weak invalid lying on a sofa; but must we spoil the pretty story that the sweet ballad had all the merit of winning for its writer the hand of Robert Browning! Yet the story is only a fiction of the gossip-writers. Nor is it true that the poet with whom she was to mate was then known to her only by his little book of ‘Bells and Pomegranates.’ She had more than a stranger’s reasons for making the wooer of Lady Geraldine speak in this wise:
“At times a modern volume—Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt’s ballad-verse, or Tennyson’s enchanted reverie,
Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which if cut deep down the middle,
Showed a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.”
Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’
When I was ill at Tynemouth, a correspondence grew up between the then bed-ridden Elizabeth Barrett and myself; and a very intimate correspondence it became. In one of the later letters, in telling me how much better she was, and how grievously disappointed at being prevented going to Italy, she wrote of going out, of basking in the open sunshine, of doing this and that; “in short,” said she, finally, “there is no saying what foolish thing I may do.” The “foolish thing,” evidently in view in this passage, was marrying Robert Browning, and a truly wise act did the “foolish thing” turn out to be.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877.
It was more like a fairy tale than anything in real life I have ever known, to read, one morning, in the papers, of her marriage with the author of ‘Paracelsus,’ and to learn, in the course of the day, that not only was she married, but that she was absolutely on her way to Italy. The energy and resolution implied were amazing on the part of one who had long, as her own poems tell us, resigned herself to lie down and die.
Henry F. Chorley: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’
She is a small, delicate woman, with ringlets of dark hair, a pleasant, intelligent, and sensitive face, and a low, agreeable voice. She looks youthful and comely, and is very gentle and lady-like.... She is of that quickly appreciative and responsive order of women, with whom I can talk more freely than with any man; and she has, besides, her own originality, wherewith to help on conversation, though, I should say, not of a loquacious tendency. We ... talked of Miss Bacon; and I developed something of that lady’s theory respecting Shakespeare, greatly to the horror of Mrs. Browning.... On the whole, I like her the better for loving the man Shakespeare with a personal love. We talked, too, of Margaret Fuller, who spent her last night in Italy with the Brownings.... I like her very much.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873.
Mrs. Browning is, in many respects, the correlative of her husband. As he is full of manly power, so she is a type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. She has been a great sufferer from ill health, and the marks of pain are stamped upon her person and manner. Her figure is slight, her countenance expressive of genius and sensibility, shaded by a veil of long, brown locks; and her tremulous voice often flutters over her words, like the flame of a dying candle over the wick.
I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire, enclosed in a shell of pearl. Her rare and fine genius needs no setting forth at my hands. She is, also, what is not so generally known, a woman of uncommon, nay, profound learning.... Nor is she more remarkable for genius and learning, than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit. It is a privilege to know such beings, singly and separately, but to see their powers quickened, and their happiness rounded, by the sacred tie of marriage, is a cause for peculiar and lasting gratitude. A union so complete as theirs, in which the mind has nothing to crave nor the heart to sigh for, is cordial to behold and soothing to remember.
George Stillman Hillard: ‘Six Months in Italy.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1871.
She is little, hard-featured, with long, dark ringlets, a pale face, and plaintive voice—something very impressive in her dark eyes and her brow. Her general aspect puts me in mind of Mignon—what Mignon might be in maturity and maternity.
Sara Coleridge: Letter in ‘Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge,’ edited by her daughter. New York: Harper & Bros., 1874.
It is a pleasant story, told of the street-beggars who walk through Via Maggio, under the windows of Casa Guidi, that they always spoke of the English woman who lived in that house, not by her well-known English name, nor by any softer Italian word, but simply and touchingly as “The mother of the beautiful child.” This was pleasanter to that woman’s ears than to “hear the nations praising her far off.”
Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’
Bayard Taylor’s description.
She was slight and fragile in appearance, with a pale, wasted face, shaded by masses of soft, chestnut curls, which fell on her cheeks, and serious eyes of bluish-gray. Her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul. This, at least, was the first impression: her personality, frail as it appeared, soon exercised its power, and it seemed a natural thing that she should have written ‘The Cry of the Children’ or ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.’ I also understood how these two poets, so different, both intellectually and physically, should have found their complements in each other. The fortunate balance of their reciprocal qualities makes them an exception to the rule that the inter-marriage of authors is unadvisable.
Bayard Taylor: ‘At Home and Abroad.’ (Second Series.) New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862.
Casa Guidi, which has been immortalized by Mrs. Browning’s genius, will be as dear to the Anglo-Saxon traveller as Milton’s Florentine residence has been heretofore.
Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, can never forget the square ante-room, with its great picture, and pianoforte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour; the little dining-room, covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning; the long room, filled with plaster casts and studies; and dearest of all, the large drawing-room, where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls and the old pictures of saints, that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large book-cases, constructed of specimens of Florentine carving, selected by Mr. Browning, were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gaily-bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante’s grave profile, a cast of Keats’s face and brow, taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon (Mrs. Browning’s good friend and relative), little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chair, and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair, near the door. A small table, strewn with writing-materials, books and newspapers, was always by her side.
—— ——: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning.’ Atlantic Monthly, September, 1861.
We went last evening, at eight o’clock, to see the Brownings; and after some search and enquiry, we found the Casa Guidi, which is a palace in a street not very far from our own. It being dusk, I could not see the exterior.... The street is a narrow one; but on entering the palace we found a spacious staircase and ample accommodations of vestibule and hall, the latter opening on a balcony, where we could hear the chanting of priests in a church close by. Browning told us that this was the first church where an oratorio had ever been performed. He came into the ante-room to greet us, as did his little boy Robert, whom they call Pennini for fondness. The latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which was bestowed upon him at his first advent into the world because he was so very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called Apennino. I never saw such a boy as this before; so slender, fragile and spirit-like,—not as if he were actually in ill health, but as if he had little or nothing to do with human flesh and blood. His face is very pretty and most intelligent, and exceedingly like his mother’s.... Mrs. Browning met us at the door of the drawing-room, and greeted us most kindly,—a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all; at any rate only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill, yet sweet tenuity of voice.
She is a good and kind fairy, however, and sweetly disposed towards the human race, although only remotely akin to it. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her face look the whiter by their sable confusion. I could not form any judgment about her age; it may range anywhere within the limits of human life or elfin life. When I met her in London, at Lord Houghton’s breakfast-table, she did not impress me so singularly; for the morning light is more prosaic than the dim illumination of their great tapestried drawing-room; and besides, sitting next to her, she did not have occasion to raise her voice in speaking, and I was not sensible what a slender voice she has. It is marvellous to me how so extraordinary, so acute, so sensitive a creature can impress us, as she does, with the certainty of her benevolence. It seems to me there were a million chances to one that she would have been a miracle of acidity and bitterness.
We had some tea and some strawberries, and passed a pleasant evening. There was no very noteworthy conversation; the most interesting topic being that disagreeable and now wearisome one of spiritual communications, as regards which Mrs. Browning is a believer, and her husband an infidel.... Browning and his wife had both been present at a spiritual session held by Mr. Hume, and had seen and felt the unearthly hands, one of which had placed a laurel wreath on Mrs. Browning’s head. Browning, however, avowed his belief that these hands were affixed to the feet of Mr. Hume, who lay extended in his chair, with his legs stretched far under the table. The marvellousness of the fact, as I have read of it, and heard it from other eye-witnesses, melted strangely away in his hearty gripe, and at the sharp touch of his logic, while his wife, ever and anon, put in a little gentle word of expostulation.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: ‘Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1872.
It curiously happens that I first met Mrs. Browning at Rome in 1859, where and when Hawthorne also first made her acquaintance, I believe. I remember going through the Vatican with him, and the then ex-President Pierce, during my sojourn in Rome, in the spring of that year.
Though we both saw Mrs. Browning last in that year, my impressions are very distinct that her hair was of a dark-chestnut. It did not curl naturally; but, by one of those artifices of the toilet which all of her sex and some of mine understand, it was worn, as it has usually been painted, in side ringlets. Hawthorne’s constitutional propensity to take sombre views of things may account for the liberty he seems to have taken with Mrs. Browning’s hair.
John Bigelow: The Critic, September 23, 1882.
Mrs. Browning’s conversation was most interesting. It was not characterized by sallies of wit or brilliant repartee, nor was it of that nature which is most welcome in society. It was frequently intermingled, with trenchant, quaint remarks, leavened with a quaint, graceful humor of her own; but it was eminently calculated for a tête-à-tête. Mrs. Browning never made an insignificant remark. All that she said was always worth hearing; a greater compliment could not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener, giving you her mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Though the latter spoke an eager language of their own, she conversed slowly, with a conciseness and point which, added to a matchless earnestness that was the predominant trait of her conversation as it was of her character, made her a most delightful companion. Persons were never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends who were to be praised, which kind office she frequently took upon herself. One never dreamed of frivolities in Mrs. Browning’s presence, and gossip felt itself out of place. Yourself, not herself, was always a pleasant subject to her, calling out all her best sympathies in joy and yet more in sorrow. Books and humanity, great deeds, and, above all, politics, which include all the grand questions of the day, were foremost in her thoughts, and, therefore, oftenest on her lips. I speak not of religion, for with her everything was religion.
—— ——: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning,’ Atlantic Monthly.
[Miss Mitford’s] description of twenty-five years ago 3 is true, every word, of a photograph now lying on our table, copied from Macaire’s original, made at Havre in 1856, and which Robert Browning esteems a faithful likeness of his wife. The three-quarter length shows the comparative stature of the figure, which is here so delicate and diminutive that we can easily imagine how the story come to be told (although not true) that her husband drew this same portrait in ‘The Flight of the Duchess’ when he sketched
——“The smallest lady alive.”
But the one striking feature of the picture is the intellectual and spiritual expression of the face and head; for here, borne up by pillars of curls on either side, is just such an arch as she saw in ‘The Vision of Poets’:
“A forehead royal with the truth.”
A photograph, taken in Rome only a month before she died, wears a not greatly changed expression, except in an added pallor to cheeks always pale; foretokening the near coming of the shadow of death.
Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’
Hers was not the beauty of feature; it was the loftier beauty of expression. Her slight figure seemed hardly large enough to contain the great heart that beat so fervently within, and the soul that expanded more and more as one year gave place to another. It was difficult to believe that such a fairy hand could pen thoughts of such ponderous weight, or that such a still, small voice could utter them with equal force. But it was Mrs. Browning’s face upon which one loved to gaze—that face and head which almost lost themselves in the thick curls of her dark brown hair. That jealous hair could not hide the broad, fair forehead.... Her large brown eyes were beautiful, and were in truth the windows of her soul.
—— ——: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning.’ Atlantic Monthly.
The resemblance between the Brownings, although many exist, are often more fancied than real. They did not revise each other’s writings. Neither knew what the other had been doing until it was done. ‘Aurora Leigh’ was two-thirds written before her husband saw a word of it. Nor did he know of the existence of the ‘Portuguese Sonnets’ till a considerable time after the marriage, when she showed them to him for the first time, and he, in his delight, persuaded her to put them in print. Otherwise they might never have been published; for with her characteristic modesty she at first thought them unworthy even of his reading, to say nothing of the whole world’s. She felt so doubtful of the merit of ‘Aurora Leigh’ that at one time she laid even that aside with the idea never to publish it.
Her method of writing was to seize the moment when the mood was upon her, and to fix her thought hurriedly on the nearest slip of paper. She was sensitive to interruption while composing, but was too shy to permit even her friends to see her engaged at her work. When the servant announced a visitor, the busy poet suddenly hid her paper and pen, and received her guest as if in perfect leisure for the visit. Giving her mornings to the instruction of her little son, and holding herself ready after twelve o’clock to give welcome to any comer, it was a wonder to many how she could find the needed time to study or write.
She made many and marked changes in her poems in successive editions. These show her fastidious taste. She was never satisfied to let a stanza remain as it was. Most of these amendments are for the better, but some for the worse, as orators who correct their printed speeches sometimes spoil the best parts. In many cases she substituted not only new rhymes but new thoughts, turning the verses far out of their old channels; in others she struck out whole lines and passages as superfluous; in others she made fitter choice of single words, so adding vividness to the expression.
Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning’.
I am still too near ‘Aurora Leigh’ to be quite able to see it all; my wife used to write it, and lay it down to hear our child spell, or when a visitor came,—it was thrust under a cushion then. At Paris, a year ago last March, she gave me the first six books to read, I never having seen a line before. She then wrote the rest, and transcribed them in London, where I read them also. I wish, in one sense, that I had written and she had read it.
Robert Browning: Letter to Leigh Hunt. ‘Correspondence of Leigh Hunt,’ edited by his son.
I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy—Mrs. Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh.’ In many pages there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare. I had no idea that any one in this age was capable of so much poetry. I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good hearty draught of poetry again: the distemper had got into the vineyard that produced it. Here are indeed, even here, some flies upon the surface, as there always will be upon what is sweet and strong.
Walter Savage Landor: Letter to J. Foster, 1857. ‘Walter Savage Landor: A Biography,’ by John Forster. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869.
George Eliot’s enjoyment.We are reading ‘Aurora Leigh,’ for the third time, with more enjoyment than ever. I know no book that gives me a deeper sense of communion with a large as well as beautiful mind.
Marian Evans Lewes: Letter to Sara Hennell, 1857. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
I am disposed to consider the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ as, if not the finest, a portion of the finest subjective poetry in our literature. Their form reminds us of an English prototype, and it is no sacrilege to say that their music is showered from a higher and purer atmosphere than that of the Swan of Avon. We need not enter upon cold comparison of their respective excellences; but Shakespeare’s personal poems were the overflow of his impetuous youth: his broader vision, that took a world within its ken, was absolutely objective; while Mrs. Browning’s ‘Love Sonnets’ are the outpourings of a woman’s tenderest emotions, at an epoch when her art was most mature, and her whole nature exalted by a passion that to such a being comes but once and for all. Here, indeed, the singer rose to her height. Here she is absorbed in rapturous utterance, radiant and triumphant with her own joy. The mists have risen and her sight is clear. Her mouthing and affectation are forgotten, her lips cease to stammer, the lyrical spirit has full control. The sonnet, artificial in weaker hands, becomes swift with feeling, red with a “veined humanity,” the chosen vehicle of a royal woman’s vows. Graces, felicities, vigor, glory of speech, here are so crowded as to tread each upon the other’s sceptred pall. The first sonnet, equal to any in our tongue, is an overture containing the motive of the canticle; “not Death, but Love” had seized her unaware. The growth of this happiness, her worship of its bringer, her doubts of her own worthiness, are the theme of these poems. She is in a sweet and, to us, pathetic surprise at the delight which had at last fallen to her:
“The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers.”
Never was man or minstrel so honored as her “most gracious singer of high poems.” In the tremor of her love she undervalued herself,—with all her feebleness of body, it was enough for any man to live within the atmosphere of such a soul! In fine, the ‘Portuguese Sonnets,’ whose title was a screen behind which the singer poured out her full heart, are the most exquisite poetry hitherto written by a woman, and of themselves justify us in pronouncing their author the greatest of her sex.... An analogy with ‘In Memoriam’ may be derived from their arrangement and their presentation of a single analytic theme; but Tennyson’s poem, though exhibiting equal art, more subtile reasoning and comprehensive thought, is devoted to the analysis of philosophic grief, while the ‘Sonnets’ reveal to us that love which is the most ecstatic of human emotions and worth all other gifts in life.
E. C. Stedman: ‘Victorian Poets.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1881.
It was my privilege to live for years near by, and in intimate intercourse with, the divinity of Casa Guidi, her whose genius has immortalized the walls as well as the windows of that antique palace; for a tablet has been inserted by the grateful Italians, whose cause she so eloquently espoused, in the grand entrance hall, recording her name, deeds, and long residence there, with the tribute of their thanks and love. Yet I had not known the Brownings personally, in the more intimate sense of acquaintanceship, till that blessed day, when in the balm of a June morning, we started together in an open carriage for Pratolino, taking with us a manservant, who carried the basket containing our picnic dinner, of which only four were to partake. A larger party would have spoiled the whole. A more timid nature was never joined to a bolder spirit than in Elizabeth Browning. She fairly shrunk from observation, and could not endure mixed company, though in her heart kind and sympathetic with all. Her timidity was both instinctive and acquired; having been an invalid and student from her youth up, she had lived almost the life of a recluse; thus it shocked her to be brought face to face with inquisitive strangers, or the world in general. On this very account, and because her health so rarely permitted her to make excursions of any kind, she enjoyed, as the accustomed do not, and the unappreciative cannot, any unwonted liberty in nature’s realm, and doubly with a chosen few sympathetic companions, to whom she could freely express her thoughts and emotions. Like most finely strung beings, she spoke through a changeful countenance every change of feeling.
Never shall I forget how her face—the plain, mortal, beautiful in its immortal expression—lighted up to greet us as our carriage drove into the porte-cochere of Casa Guidi on that memorable morning. Simple as a child, the honest enjoyment which she anticipated in our excursion beamed through her countenance. Those large, dark, dreamy eyes—usually like deep wells of thought—sparkled with delight; while her adored Robert’s generous capacity for pleasure showed even a happier front than ordinary; reflecting her joy, as we turned into the street and out of the city gate towards Patrolino. The woman of usually many thoughts and few words grew a talker under the stimulus of open country air; while her husband, usually talkative, became the silent enjoyer of her vocal gladness, a pleasure too rarely afforded him to be interrupted. We, of choice, only talked enough to keep our improvisatrice in the humor of utterance.
Withdrawing a short distance, so that our mellowed voices might not reach her, while lunch was being prepared under the trees, Robert Browning put on his talking-cap again and discoursed, to two delighted listeners, of her who slept. After expressing his joy at her enjoyment of the morning, the poet’s soul took fire by its own friction, and glowed with the brilliance of its theme. Knowing well that he was before fervent admirers of his wife, he did not fear to speak of her genius, which he did almost with awe, losing himself so entirely in her glory that one could see that he did not feel worthy to unloose her shoe-latchet, much less to call her his own. This led back to the birth of his first love for her, and then, without reserve, he told us the real story of that romance, “the course of” which “true love never did run smooth.” There have been several printed stories of the loves of Elizabeth and Robert Browning, and we had read some of these; but as the poet’s own tale differed essentially from the others, and as the divine genius of the heroine has returned to its native heaven, whilst her life on earth now belongs to posterity, it cannot be a breach of confidence to let the truth be known.
Mr. Barrett, the father of Elizabeth, though himself a superior man, and capable of appreciating his gifted child, was, in some sense, an eccentric. He had an unaccountable aversion to the idea of “marrying off” any of his children. Having wealth, a sumptuous house, and being a widower, he had somehow made up his mind to keep them all about him. Elizabeth, the eldest, had been an invalid from her early youth, owing partly to the great shock which her exquisite nervous organization received when she saw an idolized brother drown before her eyes, without having the power to save him. Grief at this event naturally threw her much within herself, while shattered health kept her confined for years to her room. There she thought, studied, wrote; and from her sick-chamber went forth the winged inspiration of her genius. These came into the heart of Robert Browning, nesting there, awakened love for “The Great Unknown,” and he sought her out. Finding that the invalid did not receive strangers, he wrote her a letter, intense with his desire to see her. She reluctantly consented to an interview. He flew to her apartment, was admitted by the nurse, in whose presence only could he see the deity at whose shrine he had long worshipped. But the golden opportunity was not to be lost; love became oblivious to any save the presence of the real of its ideal. Then and there Robert Browning poured out his impassioned soul into hers; though his tale of love seemed only an enthusiast’s dream. Infirmity had hitherto so hedged her about, that she deemed herself forever protected from all assaults of love. Indeed, she felt only injured that a fellow-poet should take advantage, as it were, of her indulgence in granting him an interview, and requested him to withdraw from her presence, not attempting any response to his proposal, which she could not believe in earnest. Of course he withdrew from her sight, but not to withdraw the offer of his heart and hand; au contraire, to repeat it by letter, and in such wise as to convince her how “dead in earnest” he was. Her own heart, touched already when she knew it not, was this time fain to listen, be convinced, and overcome. But here began the “tug of war.” As a filial daughter, Elizabeth told her father of the poet’s love, of the poet’s love in return, and asked a parent’s blessing to crown their happiness. At first, incredulous of the strange story, he mocked her; but when the truth flashed on him, from the new fire in her eyes, he kindled with rage, and forbade her ever seeing or communicating with her lover again, on the penalty of disinheritance and banishment forever from a father’s love. This decision was founded on no dislike for Mr. Browning personally, or anything in him, or his family; it was simply arbitrary. But the new love was stronger than the old in her—it conquered. On wings it flew to her beloved, who had perched on her window, and thence bore her away from the fogs of England to a nest under Italian skies. The nightingale who had long sung in the dark, with “her breast against a thorne,” now changed into a lark—morning had come—singing for very joy, and at heaven’s gate, which has since opened to let her in.
The unnatural father kept his vow, and would never be reconciled to his daughter, of whom he was not worthy; though she ceased not her endearing efforts to find her way to his heart again; ever fearing that he, or she, might die without the bond of forgiveness having reunited them. Always cherishing an undiminished love for her only parent, this banishment from him wore on her, notwithstanding the rich compensation of such a husband’s devotion, and the new maternal love which their golden-haired boy awakened. What she feared came upon her. Her father died without leaving her even his pardon, and her feeble physique never quite recovered from the shock. Few witnessed the strong grief of that morally strong woman. I saw her after her first wrestling with the angel of sorrow, and perceived that with the calm token of his blessing, still she dragged a maimed life.
Elizabeth C. Kinney: ‘A Day with the Brownings at Patrolino,’ in Scribner’s Magazine, now The Century, December, 1870.
A life of suffering ended in peace. A frail body, bearing the burden of too great a brain, broke at last under the weight. After six days’ illness, the shadows of the night fell upon her eyes for the last time, and half an hour after daybreak she beheld the Eternal Vision. Like the pilgrim in the dream, she saw the heavenly glory before passing through the gate. “It is beautiful!” she exclaimed, and died; sealing these last words upon her lips as the fittest inscription that could ever be written upon her life, her genius, and her memory. In the English burial-ground at Florence lie her ashes.
Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’
The memory and career of Elizabeth Barrett Browning appear to us like some beautiful ideal. Nothing is earthly, though all is human; a spirit is passing before our eyes, yet of like passions with ourselves, and encased in a frame so delicate that every fibre is alive with feeling and tremulous with radiant thought. Her genius certainly may be compared to those sensitive, palpitating flames, which harmonically rise and fall in response to every sound-vibration near them. Her whole being was rhythmic, and, in a time when art is largely valued for itself alone, her utterances were the expression of her inmost soul.
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1 ‘Victorian Poets,’ by E. C. Stedman.
2 Miss Mitford writes in 1851.
3 Mr. Tilton writes in 1862.
