XIIELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Sydney Smith, writing in 1810 upon the extraordinary folly of closing to women all the ordinary means of literary education, remarked that one consequence of their exclusion was that no woman had contributed anything of lasting value to English, French, or Italian literature, and that scarcely a single woman had crept into the ranks even of the minor poets. While he was writing this, a little baby girl was beginning to prattle, who within a very short time was destined to win a place among the great poets of this century. The very great gifts of Elizabeth Barrett were discernible from her earliest childhood. Her father was Mr. Edward Moulton, of Burn Hall, Durham. The date and place of her birth are disputed. Mrs. Richmond Ritchie states in theNational Dictionary of Biographythat the future poetess was born at Burn Hall, Durham, in 1809; Mr. J. H. Ingram says in hisLife of Mrs. Browningin the Eminent Women Series that she was born in London in 1809; while Mr. Browning has written to the papers to say that she was born at Carlton Hall, Durham, in 1806. Three birthplaces and two birthdays are thus assigned to her. It is not, however, disputed that she was christened by the names of Elizabeth Barrett, and that her father afterwards exchanged the name of Moulton for that of Barrett on inheriting some property from a relative. At eight years old little Elizabeth could read Homer in the original Greek, and was often to be seen with theIliadin one hand and a doll in the other; this picture of her gives a beautiful type of her future character, its depth of loving womanliness, combined with the height of poetic inspiration and learning. She was certainly one of the women of whom her brother poet, Tennyson, sings, who “gain in mental breadth nor fail in childward care.” She says herself of her childhood that “she dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses her black pony.” At about eleven years old she wrote an epic poem in four books onThe Battle of Marathon, which her father caused to be printed. Her home, during most of her childhood, was at Hope End, near Ledbury, in Herefordshire. Many pictures of her happy childhood among the beautiful hills and orchards of the West country are to be found in the poems, especially in “Hector in the Garden” and in her “Lost Bower.” Much of her young life, too, is described in the earlier part of her greatest work,Aurora Leigh. We do not hear much about the mother of the poetess, but her grandmother, it is said, looked with much disfavour on the little lady’s learning, and said she would “rather hear that Elizabeth’s hemming were more carefully finished than of all this Greek.” Her father, however, was a worthy guardian of the wonderful child that had been entrusted to him; he fostered and encouraged her genius by all means in his power. He must have had a singular power of self-devotion and self-sacrifice; and it is probable that much of his daughter’s beautiful moral nature was inherited from him. When Elizabeth was about twenty, her mother lay in her last illness, and simultaneously money troubles, brought on by no fault of his own, fell upon Mr. Barrett. He would allow no knowledge of this to disturb his wife during her illness; and in order effectually to hide the truth from her, he made an arrangement with his creditors which very materially reduced his income for life, so that no reduction of his establishment should take place as long as his wife lived.
Two other misfortunes had an important influence on Elizabeth Barrett’s youth. When she was about fifteen, she was trying to saddle her pony by herself in the paddock, when she was thrown to the ground, and her spine was injured in a manner that kept her lying on her back for four years. Scarcely had she recovered from this injury, when another terrible calamity nearly overwhelmed her. She had been sent to Torquay for the benefit of her health, and had been there nearly a year, when her eldest brother came to visit her, in order to consult her about some trouble of his own. With two other young men, all good sailors, he took a little boat, intending to have a sail along the coast. Within a few minutes of starting, and almost under his sister’s window, the boat went down, and young Barrett and his companions were drowned. The grief and horror caused by this terrible event nearly killed her. It was almost a year before she could be moved by slow stages of twenty miles a day to London. Those who knew her best at that time believe that she would have died if she had not been sustained by her love of literary pursuits, which afforded some relief to her mind from the constant dwelling on the tragedy of which she accused herself of being the cause. Miss Mitford says in herLiterary Recollections: “The house 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 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 remonstrance of her friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know, skilful and kind though he were, that to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight.” She, however, appeared to be condemned to a life of perpetual invalidism. She now lived in London with her father, and was confined to one large darkened room, and saw no one but her own family, and a few intimate friends, the chief of whom were Miss Mitford, Mrs. Jameson, and Mr. John Kenyon. The impression she produced on all who came into contact with her was that she was the most charming and delightful person they had ever met. Her sweetness, her purity, and the tender womanliness of her character, made her friends forget her learning and her genius. Miss Mitford says she often travelled five-and-forty miles expressly to see her, and returned the same evening without entering another house. The seclusion in which she lived was perhaps not unfavourable to literary work. She lay on her couch, not only, as Miss Mitford says, reading every book worth reading in almost every language, but “giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.” In 1835 she publishedPrometheus and other Poems, which, in the opinion of the most competent judges, raised her at once to a high rank among English poets. In 1843 she wroteThe Cry of the Children, to which Lord Shaftesbury owed so much in his efforts to protect factory children from being ground to death by overwork; and later she wrote the noble “Song for the Ragged Schools of London,” whose words go straight to every mother’s heart.
During her long period of illness her chief link with the outside world was her cousin, Mr. John Kenyon, to whomAurora Leighis dedicated. He knew all who were best worth knowing in the great world of London, and he occasionally introduced to her one and another of those whom he believed to be most capable of appreciating her and pleasing her. In this way, in 1846, he brought Mr. Robert Browning to see Miss Barrett. In the autumn of that same year the poet and poetess were married. What his love was for her and hers for him may be gathered in the lovely poem, “Caterina to Camoens,” and in the forty-threeSonnets from the Portuguese, which Mrs. Browning wrote before her marriage. Almost directly after her marriage Mrs. Browning was ordered abroad for the benefit of her health, and the chief part of the remaining fifteen years of her life was spent in Italy. She identified herself completely with those who were struggling for the unity and independence of Italy, and much of her poetry from this time onwards is coloured by her political convictions. In Florence, in 1849, her only child, Robert Browning the younger, was born. The deep joy of motherhood suffuses much of the noblest part ofAurora Leigh. One is tempted to believe that the lovely description of Marian Erle bending over her sleeping child,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with lifeTo the bottom of his dimples,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with lifeTo the bottom of his dimples,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with lifeTo the bottom of his dimples,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples,
could have been written by no one who had not felt a mother’s love. In any case, it adds to one’s pleasure in reading it to know that the poetess was drawing her inspiration from her own excessive happiness in the bliss of motherhood.
Many have singled out Mrs. Browning’sSonnets from the Portugueseas her chief work. Mrs. Ritchie, in a very interesting article in theNational Dictionary of Biography, says of them, “There is a quality in them which is beyond words: an echo from afar, which belongs to the highest human expression of feeling.” Many other of the best judges have said they are among the greatest sonnets in the English language. But the work for which the world is most deeply in her debt isAurora Leigh. It probes to the bottom, but with a hand guided by purity and justice, those social problems which lie at the root of what are known as women’s questions. Her intense feeling that the honour of manhood can never be reached while the honour of womanhood is sullied; her no less profound conviction that people can never be raised to a higher level by mere material prosperity, make this book one of the most precious in our language. She herself speaks of it in the dedication as “The most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered.” If she had written nothing else, she would stand out as one of the epoch-making poets of the present century.
Mr. Browning has published some interesting information as to the manner in which he and his wife worked. They were very careful not to influence each other’s compositions unduly. Their styles in writing are entirely unlike. They abstained from reading each other’s poems while they were in process of composition. Mrs. Browning always kept a low writing-table, with inkstand and pen upon it, by her side. Mr. Browning wrote: “My wife used to write it (Aurora Leigh) and lay it down to hear our child spell, or when a visitor came in it was thrust under the cushions. 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.” No one but a poet could have expressed so perfectly the great pleasure the reading gave him. There is an anecdote that when the Brownings left Florence for London, in 1856, the box containing the MS. ofAurora Leighwas lost at Marseilles. It also contained the velvet suits and lace collars of the little boy; and it is said that Mrs. Browning was far more distressed at losing the latter than the former. However, both were fortunately recovered, for the box containing them was found by Mrs. Browning’s brother in one of the dark recesses of the Marseilles Custom House.
As evidence of her position in the literary world, it may be mentioned that when Wordsworth died in 1850 theAthenæumstrongly urged that Mrs. Browning ought to be made Poet Laureate.
Her sympathy with Italy was so strong that it is believed that the news of the death of Cavour, through whom in so large a measure the unity of Italy was achieved, hastened her own. She was very ill when the news reached her, and she died in Florence on 30th June 1861. The municipality of Florence placed a tablet upon her house expressing their gratitude and admiration for her, and saying that in her womanly heart she had reconciled the wisdom of the learned with the enthusiasm of the poet, and with her verses had made a golden ring uniting Italy with England.