29 June: Boreham on Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Lady with the Laurels
The world will surely pause for a moment today to reflect on the fact that this is the anniversary of the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. To appreciate Mrs. Browning one must invest oneself with the powers and prerogatives of a divorce court. However fiercely they may resent it, Robert and Elizabeth Browning must be ruthlessly torn asunder. For Elizabeth is far more than the clever wife of her illustrious husband.

Her brilliance is no mere reflection of his; she shines with a lustre that is all her own. Two facts prove it. The first is that many of her best-known poems were published before she had even seen Robert's face; the second is that, when Wordsworth died in 1850, nobody seriously suggested that Robert should be appointed Poet Laureate, but some of the best judges then living pleaded that the bays should be woven about Elizabeth's brows.

She was a poet born. As a little girl she wrote an epic on the Battle of Marathon which was privately published at her proud father's expense. In his famous play, "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," Rudolph Besier does something less than justice to Edward Moulton Barrett, Mrs. Browning's eccentric parent. He was the fountainhead of his daughter's inspiration. Everything that she wrote in the secrecy of her own room was submitted to his eyes, and to his alone. From him she received nothing but the most doting and ardent encouragement. In the first edition of her poems she acknowledges her obligation to him.

Later in life he conceived some fantastic notion that led him to forbid any of his children to marry. But, apart from this inexplicable abberation, he was known as a thoroughly good man, honoured by all his neighbours and acquaintances and deeply devoted to all the members of his family, especially Elizabeth. A monument to perpetuate his memory stands in the parish church of Ledbury near Durham, a little place in which the villagers were wont to speak admiringly and gratefully of the kindly man who, ever willing to extend a helping hand to the needy and distressed, moved among them with a little girl, her eyes filled with wonder, tripping affectionately by his side.

Poetry Born Of The Fireside Atmosphere
As a child, Elizabeth was pitifully fragile. At the age of 14, when saddling her pony, she overbalanced, fell, and seriously injured her spine. At 30 she broke a blood vessel and was so desperately ill that all hope of her recovery was abandoned. And, two years afterwards, she suffered the devastating shock of being compelled to look helplessly on while Edward, her favourite brother, was drowned at Torquay.

Following this nerve-shattering experience, she took to her couch and seldom or never left it until the dynamic personality of Robert Browning electrified her with some mysterious and contagious magic of its own. By that time she was nearly 40. At 20 she had published "An Essay on Mind"; at 30 she had given "Prometheus Unbound" to the world; and, a few years later, she had followed these with "The Romaunt of Margaret," "The Poet's Vow," "The Seraphim," "The Drama of Exile," "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," and many of the lyrics on which her great renown securely rests.

She had a faculty for friendship. Everybody who came into contact with her capitulated to her quiet charm. Her outstanding attraction was her perfect naturalness. Her guests—Thackeray, Ruskin, and George Eliot among the number—loved, after their visits to conjure up "the image of her peaceful home; of its fireside where huge logs were burning; of the mistress established on the sofa with her little boy curled up beside her; and the opening and closing of the door as, with quick step, the vigorous master of the house moved to and fro."

To his dying day Nathaniel Hawthorne cherished the memory of his visit to the home of the Brownings. "It is wonderful to see how small she is," he wrote, "how pale her cheek and how bright her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world. Her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, making her face seem even whiter." In harmony with the general impression which she instantly conveyed to all who met her, her step was soft and unhurried, her voice was delicate and agreeable, while everything in her bearing seemed comely, gentle and refined.

Appeal To The Heart And The Conscience
Her minstrelsy takes two forms. It is sometimes lyrical and sometimes dramatic. Some critics, including George Barnett Smith, hold that her lyrical work attains a higher level than even that of Tennyson. Tennyson, Mr. Smith thinks, is inclined to be a trifle cold; Mrs. Browning gives her heart free play; "her song is a living voice, eloquent with passion." In the main purpose of her poesy, she is partly social and partly spiritual. Few poems have ever stirred the emotions of the people, and moved them to action, as her "cry of the children" did. It set to music Lord Shaftesbury's passionate appeals—

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in
the nest:
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers
are blowing towards the west;
But the young, young children, O my
brothers.
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of
the others,
In the country of the free.

After ten years of married life, Mrs. Browning published "Aurora Leigh," in which she reached high watermark. Five years later, in Italy, she died as peacefully and gently as she had lived. And, on a delicious Summer evening, she was buried in the picturesque little cemetery just outside the walls of Florence—a cemetery that has extended the hospitality of sepulture to Walter Savage Landor, to Theodore Parker, to Arthur Hugh Clough, and to other distinguished thinkers and singers who have completed their pilgrimage beneath Italian skies.

F W Boreham

Image: Elizabeth Barrett Browning