February 15, 2012 • 26 mins
Robert Browning's early work wasn't as well-received as Elizabeth Barrett's poetry. Yet Barrett mentioned his work in one of her poems, and they started a correspondence that blossomed into love. However, Elizabeth's father remained an obstacle.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chuck reboarding, and I'm fair a dowdy.
And even though technically this episode will come out the
day after Valentine's Day, we wanted to celebrate the season
(00:23):
of love somehow, especially since last year's Valentine's Day Massacre
podcast had a couple of listeners thinking we were anti love.
We got some critical emails about that one. Yeah, we did.
People judged us, but that's okay. And I mean, recently
we've done serial Killers and Boxers and wild West, and
so we thought, maybe let's go in a different direction
(00:45):
and get people ready for a marathon Valentine weekend. Maybe. Sure.
So initially I went through some listener requests to try
to see if I could find some lovey dovey ideas,
and I had zero luck. I mean, I think our
listeners are starting to think about along the same line
as us. There were a lot of massacres. I mean,
love is just as nice as massacres. People sometimes nicer,
(01:08):
sometimes nicer. So we picked a topic on our own,
and we settled on talking about one of the most
famous romances of the nineteenth century, if not of all time.
It's the romance of Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning,
and at first, blush poets and love might not seem
like that much of a stretch. I mean, after all,
the stereotype is that these guys are sitting around pouring
(01:30):
out their feelings all day long on paper anyway, right,
and love is their job, right sure? But Robert and
Elizabeth had truly a unique relationship, complete with forbidden love,
a tyrannical father, a mysterious and curable illness, clandestine meetings,
and lots and lots of love letters. So not to
(01:50):
give too much of the story way already, but hopefully
that'll be a good teaser for you guys well in
the story of their courtship truly seems like something worthy
of a poem or work of fition, and their relationship
did actually influence their work in various ways that we
can still appreciate today. And of course, like many of
the stories that we tell, there are a few twists
(02:10):
here that modern research has given us, one of which,
conveniently enough, since is February. In addition to being Valentine's
day ties into Black History Month. How about that. But
before we can dive into the story of the romance
between these two people, we've got to tell you a
little bit about what their lives were like before they met,
because for both Robert and Elizabeth, you can look at
(02:33):
their biographies in distinct phases pre courtship and then post
Elizabeth was born Elizabeth Barrett on March sixth, eighteen oh six,
in County Durham, England. She was the eldest of eleven
children of Edward Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clark. Her
family was fairly well to do, and Elizabeth grew up
mainly at her parents five acre estate in Herefordshire, known
(02:56):
somewhat poetically as Hope End. She was an active and
precocious kid, and maybe even something of a tomboy, which
I found kind of surprising considering what we'll find out
about her in her later life. But according to an
article by Michael Tempo in World and I, she was
quote given to fisticuffs and quote throwing things about the house.
(03:18):
She sounds like a bit of a terror, doesn't she.
But she was also really into her study. She was
a very good student. She learned Greek and Latin at
an early age. But because she was a girl, she
didn't get to go off and continue her studies at
a private school like her brothers did, and the fact
that she couldn't do that really disappointed her. Unlike other
(03:38):
privileged girls of this time, Elizabeth did get to go
further in her education in other ways that even though
she didn't get to go to school, her parents encouraged
her to read. Her father gave her full access to
his library. She took full advantage of that, reading both
the classics and contemporary literature of the day. She especially
liked romantic fiction and became him a big fan of
(04:01):
George sand Eventually. Even though Elizabeth's father encouraged her education
at home this way, though he was still very controlling
ran a very strict household. We'll talk about his deal
a lot more lately, so knowing that it's almost surprising
how much he encouraged his eldest daughter's writing. He arranged
(04:21):
to have one of her epic poems on the Battle
of Marathon privately published when she was only fourteen years old.
He was a supportive parent in that respect. He definitely
wasn't by all accounts Elizabeth really loved him as well
and wanted to please him. This eagerness to please may
actually explain the formality and the seriousness of her early work.
(04:43):
And when she was fifteen, though, things took a turn
for the worse and she fell mysteriously ill for the
first time. She started having chess pain, so something seemed
to be affecting her lungs, and she also complained of
a quote swollen spine, and some thought this was a
nervous breakdown or some sort of psychosomatic condition triggered by
(05:04):
her favorite brother Edward leaving home. Modern researchers, of course,
has have offered other theories, which will discuss a little
bit later. But regardless of what the exact problem was,
it would affect Elizabeth for the rest of her life.
She was always really physically weak and would occasionally have
these sort of attacks where her health would worsen for
(05:24):
a little while. Her doctor prescribed opium in the form
of Blondon for her, and she became addicted to that too,
so that's sort of added to the back track to
be on, and her health really got worth in the
eighteen thirties. She went to Turkey to recover and she
even talked her father into having Edward, that favorite brother,
come and stay with her for a little while, but
(05:46):
tragedy struck again. Her brother drowned while he was visiting her.
She ended up blaming herself, since you know, she had
pressured her father into sending him in the first place.
And after that her health just really con tinue to decline.
She had more abouts of feeling extremely ill, and by
the eighteen forties she was pretty much an invalid. She
(06:07):
spent most of her time in a dark room taking
laudanum and really didn't see people very much at all.
She still wrote, though, She published several books of poetry,
including Seraphim and Other Poems in eighteen thirty eight and
Just Poems in eighteen forty four, which were both quite successful.
She had fans all over the place, even across the
(06:27):
pond in America. A fan, just as an example of
how famous she was, once sent her a letter addressed
simply Elizabeth Barrett Poetus, London, and it made it to
her she received it. I mean, I just wonder what
would happen if someone sent you know, Sarah in Dublina.
Podcasters Atlanta address that, but Robert Browning started in a
(06:51):
very different place from Elizabeth, but in some ways they
weren't really all that different. He was born May seventh,
eighteen twelve in a suburb of London into a middle
coast family. His father was a clerk at the Bank
of England, and Robert, like Elizabeth, also didn't receive a
lot of formal education, though according to Encyclopedia Britannic, his
father did teach him Greek and Latin, and also like Elizabeth,
(07:13):
he was largely self taught and spent a lot of
time reading works from his father's library and visiting art museums.
He did get a little bit of formal education in
in eighty eight he went to the University of London,
but left after only half a semester. Like Elizabeth too,
he had the strong affinity for Romantic literature in particular,
which really makes sense if you've read either of their writing. Particularly,
(07:37):
he liked the works of Percy Bits Shelley, who we've
talked about on the podcast before, so you guys know
all about him. Browning did have a few trips, not
exactly a grand tour, but a few jaunts to St.
Petersburg and Italy as a younger man. But besides that,
he basically lived with his parents until eighteen forty six,
and this is when he wrote his early long poems
(07:59):
then most of his plays. There was one major difference, though,
between Robert and Elizabeth. Unlike Elizabeth, Robert's early work wasn't
very well received. One of his poems Are Delo was
considered to be incomprehensible, and his plays were pretty unpopular too,
so they seemed to be on a different career trajectory.
(08:20):
In the eighteen forties, Elizabeth was actually way more famous
than he was, and he really admired her work. So
you can imagine his surprise and pleasure when in her
poem called Lady Geraldine's Courtship, which came out in that
eighteen forty four collection we mentioned, she referred favorably to
his poetry, and he was so flattered he wrote his
(08:41):
first letter to her on January tenth, eighteen forty five,
and he started it by saying, quote, I love your
verses with all my heart, dear miss Barrett, and in
the same letter later wrote, I do as I say,
love these books with all my heart, and I love
you too. We took it up a notch there. He said.
Elizabeth wrote back to him the very next day, saying,
(09:02):
I thank you, dear Mr Browning, from the bottom of
my heart end quote. I've learned to know your voice,
not merely from the poetry, but from the kindness in it.
So it kind of sounds like she's reciprocating there a
little bit. Oh yeah, And thus began their correspondence, and
they wrote to each other pretty regularly after that. At first, though,
Elizabeth didn't think anything romantic would really come with this.
(09:25):
She felt this way for a lot of reasons. I mean,
for one thing, she didn't really think that she'd ever
fall in love. She was about thirty eight thirty nine
years old at this point and considered a spinster at
this time, you know, being that age and unmarried. And
she was also, as we mentioned, an invalid who barely
saw the light of day, much less people outside of
her family, so she just really didn't see herself as
(09:47):
a catch. Then there was her dad, and we mentioned
he was rather controlling, but probably the most famous of
his edicts was forbidding any of his children, including both
daughters and sons, from ever marrying. So of course you've
kind of wonder why would anybody want to make such
(10:08):
a rule. I mean, after all, if your kids don't
get married, you're not going to have any legitimate grandchildren,
no legal airs. Pretty unusual way of thinking, especially around
this time. So nobody knows for sure what motivated Elizabeth's
father to make this rule. There are several theories, though,
and we're going to run through a couple of those.
(10:28):
Some people think it was just this whole Victorian patriarchal thing.
He wanted to keep his kids at home and under
his control for the entirety of their lives. Others think
it was because he was uncomfortable with the idea of
his children's sexuality. But I mean, although this makes sense
even for us today with father daughter relationships. I mean,
(10:48):
you can see a father not really being comfortable with
that idea about his little girl, but it's a little
stranger to think that he'd feel that way about his
son's too. There's a thorough beary, though, one that's a
little outside the norm that's emerged in recent years, and
that's that Elizabeth's father wanted to put an end to
their family line, not because they had some horrible thing
(11:10):
that had happened in their past, but because he believed
they had quote mixed blood, so, in other words, he
thought that they were part black. You have to wonder, okay,
how would this have been possible. How would he suspect
that there were Africans in his family. Well, they were
the descendants of wealthy Jamaican plantation owners, so it was
(11:30):
not uncommon for white plantation owners to have black mistresses.
And Julia Marcus wrote a book called Dared and Done,
The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and she
really explored this theory in depth, that that Barrett's father
was just trying to to end the line. Despite his
eleven children, he had already sired to to eliminate their
(11:53):
mixed ancestry. And interestingly enough, we should also say that
Robert Browning was also a descend of Jamaican plantation owners
and is also thought to be of mixed race heritage.
I've seen him described as having some quote Creole blood
in him from his paternal grandmother's side, and that he
had some African blood in him is actually a little
(12:15):
bit more widely accepted, I think than the related theories
about Elizabeth and her father. I think he might have
even discussed similar issues or those issues directly during his lifetime,
so whatever Barrett's father's reason though for standing in the
way of all of his children's marriages, Elizabeth knew this
was going to be an issue before the courtship even started.
(12:36):
For Robert's part, he was six years younger than Elizabeth
and considered a handsome man, quite dashing, but he didn't
really seem inclined to fall head over heels in love
either until he started corresponding to Elizabeth, his literary crush
after all, and after they had written to each other
for a while, Robert started to ask when they could meet,
and Elizabeth avoided this for some time, but he was
(13:00):
really persistent, and finally they set a date for him
to call on her on May at three in the afternoon,
and Elizabeth's family at that time was living at fifty
Wimple Street in London, and Robert came over and stayed
for an hour and a half. But it must have
been a really good ninety minutes, because a few days later,
Robert sent her a letter declaring his love for her,
(13:23):
and we don't know exactly what that letter said because
she apparently returned it to him and asked him to
burn it. Which he did. Perhaps she was scared of
her father finding it. It's a possibility, but she wrote
to him after that and said, quote, you do not
know what pain you give me, and speaking so wildly,
forget it once or forever having said it at all.
(13:44):
And it probably wasn't just her fear of her father
that made her react this way. Yeah, after all, Robert
had come on pretty strong, pretty quickly, and Elizabeth probably
didn't think that his feelings were sin fear. After all,
this relationship had started with um, you know, him responding
to her kind words and poetry. He apologized, though, writing quote,
(14:05):
I wrote to you in an unwise moment, and they
continued corresponding. He probably figured he'd rather have her as
a friend as a correspondent than not get to talk
to her at all. So the letters continued, the visit
continued without her father really picking up on what was
going on, understanding the full extent of their friendship and
the frequency of their contact. Yeah. I think he might
(14:28):
have known that these two poets were coming together, probably
thinking they were just making shop talk, but he didn't
realize that Robert was coming over so frequently and that
they were getting so close, and that shop talk for
two romantic poets and kind of veer off into actual romance.
Very true, and as they sure enough, that's what happened.
(14:49):
As they continued to talk and to get to know
each other, their friendship blossomed into love and Elizabeth began
to reciprocate Robert's feeling. She became more comfortable and began
and to trust his feelings and emotions. And as they
grew closer, he wanted to go to Elizabeth's father and
ask for her hand in marriage. She knew what the
(15:10):
answer would be to that, though. Yeah, she knew her
father very well and she knew he would never consent.
So she, unlike Robert, was willing to kind of keep
going the way they were, just writing letters and seeing
each other now and again in her out and never
really sealing the deal, never really getting married. But finally
things came to a head in eighteen forty six when
Elizabeth's doctor recommended she go to Italy for her health.
(15:33):
He was basically like, you need to get to a
warmer climate, otherwise you won't survive another winter here. But
Elizabeth's father wouldn't let her go. It seemed like he
was so determined to keep her at home and under
his thumb, even if that meant she would die. So
when the winter of eighteen forty six rolled around, Elizabeth
and Robert finally took action. They decided to get married secretly,
(15:57):
and it was really one of the hardest decisions Elizabeth
ever made, because she knew that she'd probably lose her
father if she ran off and got married. And even
though he doesn't seem that lovable, even though he might
seem quite strange for imposing a rule like this on
all of his children, Elizabeth did love her father and
she didn't think he was at fault for his views either.
(16:18):
She blamed the patriarchal system for how he was, but
still decision made to get married. She snuck out and
set off for marle Bone Church one Saturday that September,
where Robert was waiting for her. Her maid Wilson went
along kind of as an attendant, and she got faint.
Elizabeth got faint on the way and they had to
(16:39):
stop briefly at a chemist for some smelling salts, but
eventually she did make it and she and Robert were
finally married after the ceremony, though they didn't get to
walk hand in hand off to a new home together.
They had to part ways for a little while and
she had to take off her wedding ring and go
home to her father, and then finally a week later,
they left Italy as they had planned to do. Elizabeth
(17:02):
only took a few items of clothing, a couple of books,
her dog, and her maid along with her, probably because
her maid would have gotten in trouble if her father
had found out that um and she also took all
of the letters that Robert had written to her during
their courtship. Fortunately for us um so as expected, Elizabeth's
father never forgave her for disobeying him. She wrote several
(17:25):
letters to him, just begging for forgiveness, trying to explain herself,
asking if they could meet, and at some point he
sent her a package returning all of the letters she'd
sent him, all of which were unopened, and she later
wrote to her sister Arabella, quote, I could never tell
you what I felt when those letters came back to me,
nine or ten of them, all with their unbroken fields,
(17:47):
testifying to the sealed at part which refused to be
opened by me. So that aspect of her marriage and
her move were really sad. For Elizabeth, but Robert and
Elizabeth Barrett Brownie and ended up in Florence, where they
lived for their higher marriage, though they did occasionally take
holidays in France and in England, and despite Elizabeth's sadness
over losing her father, their marriage has been described as
(18:08):
pretty happy. They ended up getting an income and eventually
an inheritance from Elizabeth's cousin, which they lived off of,
and they both continued to write. Elizabeth in particular published
a collection of her poetry in eighteen fifty called Sonnets
from the Portuguese, which included poems written secretly to her
husband during her courtship, and these poems are some of
her most well known. How Do I Love thee Let
(18:31):
Me Count the Ways as among those, though according to
the Dictionary World Biography, that's the fact that they're well
known is less for any intrinsic artistic excellence than for
their abiding, romantic and psychological portrait of developing love, the
kind of thing you'd write on Valentine's Cards, right exactly.
Elizabeth ended up publishing about three more works after that,
(18:53):
including Aurora Lee, an epic poem in nine books that's
considered by them to be her masterpiece, and after the
death of William Wordsworth, she was a serious contender to
replace him as England's Poet Laureate, but Alfred Lord Tennyson
was chosen instead beat her out for that position. So meanwhile,
with all of this professional success, the Brownings were starting
(19:17):
their life together. To their married life together. Elizabeth had
two miscarriages before the couple had a son, who they
named Robert in eighteen forty nine. They called him Penn, however,
to avoid any confusion in the family. Ultimately the couple
were married for fifteen years when Elizabeth finally succumbed to
illness and died June eighteen sixty one in Robert's arms.
(19:40):
He later wrote to his sister quote, she is with
God who takes from me the life of my life.
To this day, people still speculate what Elizabeth's illness actually was.
Some think it was severe asthma or tuberculosis, maybe protestis,
maybe even antolexy and ravosa or paralytic scoliosis. One of
the l this theories, though, from a researcher at Penn
(20:02):
State University named An Buchanan and her daughter, suggest that
it might be a condition called hypokalemic periodic paralysis or
h k p P, which is a muscle disorder. So
that's still kind of up in the air. The question
of what really happened to her one of my favorite
sub genres. I think of doing these history podcasts or
the medical mystery yea reevaluating old illnesses. I mean, they
(20:27):
come up with these theories a lot of times just
from reading, you know, let letters and seeing what her
sile doctor advice, that sort of thing. It's pretty amazing
what they can sometimes come up with. So after Elizabeth's death, though,
Robert Browning moved back to England with his son, and
the first thing he did was published a collection of
(20:48):
his wife's last work entitled Last Poems. I mean, if
that's not a love letter to your departed wife, I
don't know what is. Then he continued on with his
own work got back to his career. During his marriage,
he had published a few things, including the collection entitled
Men and Women in eighteen fifty five, but this wasn't
as popular as his later work. With his eighteen sixty
(21:11):
four book of poems called Dramatis Persona, he finally started
to gain popularity and eventually became a bigger name, arguably
than his wife. By most accounts, his love for Elizabeth
never died. He promised her on her deathbed that he
would never remarry, and he never did. He did, however,
socialize quite a bit, and he had friendships with many females.
(21:33):
I see that written a lot. I'm not sure to
what extent those friendships went, but there's even evidence that
he proposed to women on a couple of occasions. So
he might have remarried if he could have. But I mean,
it's easy to see kind of why he got shot
down if you look at some of the accounts of
these proposals. According to Timco's article, when proposing to one
(21:56):
lady Ashburton, Robert Browning said, quote, my heart is buried
in Florence, so not really a great way to win
a girl over. We're not that surprised that she said
no after that. No, that's really not a great tactic
to take. But some people think that some not so
sweet things happened towards the end of the Brownings relationship.
(22:18):
In a two thousand eight article in The Guardian, writer
Elizabeth Lowry, using Browning's poem My Last Duchess as evidence,
explore the idea that Robert actually gave Elizabeth an extra
dose of morphine at the end which led her to death.
I'm not sure if that was done in some sort
of sympathy or to finish her off. Yeah, I mean
(22:39):
it's unclear, but again, this is just a theory. We
like to throw those out there. Yeah, we're not sure
if that is even the case, but we like to
present our listeners with all the information we have at
our fingertips so that you can kind of mull over
those things. Most aside, what you think we should say
to most literature professors might not be two big fans
(22:59):
of about you think, my last duchess, this biographical evidence
very true, But I mean most people seem to believe
their love to have been your approachable And so that
we can end on a nicer note for this Valentine's
Day episode, we're going to read a little bit from
Robert's poem One Word More, which he dedicated to Elizabeth.
It goes, God be thanked the meanest of his creatures,
(23:23):
boast two soul sides, one to face the world with,
one to show a woman he loves her. This I
say of me, but think of you love This to
you yourself, my moon of poets. Ah, But that's the
world side, there's the wonder. Thus they see you, praise you,
think they know you. There. In turn, I stand with
(23:45):
them and praise you out of myself, I dare to
phrase it. But the best is when I glide from them,
cross a step or two of dubious twilight come out
on the other side, the novel silent silver Lights and
darks undreamed of, where I hush and bless myself with silence.
Well that's a nice way to wrap up our Valentine's
(24:06):
Day episode. But I've been wondering maybe you'll want to
continue this a little bit with some other nineteenth century writers,
you know, after all, Dickens two birthday was recently happened
to the Tree. I've been thinking about the Bronte's a
bit lately. It seems like everybody's thinking about the Bronte's.
I have a good Bronte biography. Biography Oh cool? Well,
(24:29):
you know I would be all for it if you
wanted to do that, and I think a lot of
our listeners would be too. We've received a lot of
emails recently. I think about the Brontes we have and
um Dickens too, of course, has been all over the news,
so maybe maybe either of those two, any of the
Brontes or Dickens or some other nineteenth century writer too.
If you want to suggest any of your favorites, you
(24:52):
can email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Miston History and we are
in faith Buck And if you want to learn a
little bit more about the topic of today's podcast, which
of course is love, we have an entire Science of
Love micro site right now. Writer Kristen Conger, who is
(25:13):
also from Stuff Mom Never Told You, of course, has
written just a great I mean you've read a lot
of these two, Sarah, just a great series of articles
really delving into, I guess the inner workings of what
makes us fall in and out of love and what's
happening inside our bodies but makes us react certain ways
to breakups and makeups and everything in between. They're really
interesting and Dablina has been editing them too, so you
(25:36):
get a peek at what our normal part of our
job is, which is of course editing articles exactly. So
you can look that up by visiting our home page
at www. Duff How Stuff Works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join House to Work staff as we explore the most
(25:57):
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works
iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chuck reboarding, and I'm fair a dowdy.
And even though technically this episode will come out the
day after Valentine's Day, we wanted to celebrate the season
(00:23):
of love somehow, especially since last year's Valentine's Day Massacre
podcast had a couple of listeners thinking we were anti love.
We got some critical emails about that one. Yeah, we did.
People judged us, but that's okay. And I mean, recently
we've done serial Killers and Boxers and wild West, and
so we thought, maybe let's go in a different direction
(00:45):
and get people ready for a marathon Valentine weekend. Maybe. Sure.
So initially I went through some listener requests to try
to see if I could find some lovey dovey ideas,
and I had zero luck. I mean, I think our
listeners are starting to think about along the same line
as us. There were a lot of massacres. I mean,
love is just as nice as massacres. People sometimes nicer,
(01:08):
sometimes nicer. So we picked a topic on our own,
and we settled on talking about one of the most
famous romances of the nineteenth century, if not of all time.
It's the romance of Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning,
and at first, blush poets and love might not seem
like that much of a stretch. I mean, after all,
the stereotype is that these guys are sitting around pouring
(01:30):
out their feelings all day long on paper anyway, right,
and love is their job, right sure? But Robert and
Elizabeth had truly a unique relationship, complete with forbidden love,
a tyrannical father, a mysterious and curable illness, clandestine meetings,
and lots and lots of love letters. So not to
(01:50):
give too much of the story way already, but hopefully
that'll be a good teaser for you guys well in
the story of their courtship truly seems like something worthy
of a poem or work of fition, and their relationship
did actually influence their work in various ways that we
can still appreciate today. And of course, like many of
the stories that we tell, there are a few twists
(02:10):
here that modern research has given us, one of which,
conveniently enough, since is February. In addition to being Valentine's
day ties into Black History Month. How about that. But
before we can dive into the story of the romance
between these two people, we've got to tell you a
little bit about what their lives were like before they met,
because for both Robert and Elizabeth, you can look at
(02:33):
their biographies in distinct phases pre courtship and then post
Elizabeth was born Elizabeth Barrett on March sixth, eighteen oh six,
in County Durham, England. She was the eldest of eleven
children of Edward Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clark. Her
family was fairly well to do, and Elizabeth grew up
mainly at her parents five acre estate in Herefordshire, known
(02:56):
somewhat poetically as Hope End. She was an active and
precocious kid, and maybe even something of a tomboy, which
I found kind of surprising considering what we'll find out
about her in her later life. But according to an
article by Michael Tempo in World and I, she was
quote given to fisticuffs and quote throwing things about the house.
(03:18):
She sounds like a bit of a terror, doesn't she.
But she was also really into her study. She was
a very good student. She learned Greek and Latin at
an early age. But because she was a girl, she
didn't get to go off and continue her studies at
a private school like her brothers did, and the fact
that she couldn't do that really disappointed her. Unlike other
(03:38):
privileged girls of this time, Elizabeth did get to go
further in her education in other ways that even though
she didn't get to go to school, her parents encouraged
her to read. Her father gave her full access to
his library. She took full advantage of that, reading both
the classics and contemporary literature of the day. She especially
liked romantic fiction and became him a big fan of
(04:01):
George sand Eventually. Even though Elizabeth's father encouraged her education
at home this way, though he was still very controlling
ran a very strict household. We'll talk about his deal
a lot more lately, so knowing that it's almost surprising
how much he encouraged his eldest daughter's writing. He arranged
(04:21):
to have one of her epic poems on the Battle
of Marathon privately published when she was only fourteen years old.
He was a supportive parent in that respect. He definitely
wasn't by all accounts Elizabeth really loved him as well
and wanted to please him. This eagerness to please may
actually explain the formality and the seriousness of her early work.
(04:43):
And when she was fifteen, though, things took a turn
for the worse and she fell mysteriously ill for the
first time. She started having chess pain, so something seemed
to be affecting her lungs, and she also complained of
a quote swollen spine, and some thought this was a
nervous breakdown or some sort of psychosomatic condition triggered by
(05:04):
her favorite brother Edward leaving home. Modern researchers, of course,
has have offered other theories, which will discuss a little
bit later. But regardless of what the exact problem was,
it would affect Elizabeth for the rest of her life.
She was always really physically weak and would occasionally have
these sort of attacks where her health would worsen for
(05:24):
a little while. Her doctor prescribed opium in the form
of Blondon for her, and she became addicted to that too,
so that's sort of added to the back track to
be on, and her health really got worth in the
eighteen thirties. She went to Turkey to recover and she
even talked her father into having Edward, that favorite brother,
come and stay with her for a little while, but
(05:46):
tragedy struck again. Her brother drowned while he was visiting her.
She ended up blaming herself, since you know, she had
pressured her father into sending him in the first place.
And after that her health just really con tinue to decline.
She had more abouts of feeling extremely ill, and by
the eighteen forties she was pretty much an invalid. She
(06:07):
spent most of her time in a dark room taking
laudanum and really didn't see people very much at all.
She still wrote, though, She published several books of poetry,
including Seraphim and Other Poems in eighteen thirty eight and
Just Poems in eighteen forty four, which were both quite successful.
She had fans all over the place, even across the
(06:27):
pond in America. A fan, just as an example of
how famous she was, once sent her a letter addressed
simply Elizabeth Barrett Poetus, London, and it made it to
her she received it. I mean, I just wonder what
would happen if someone sent you know, Sarah in Dublina.
Podcasters Atlanta address that, but Robert Browning started in a
(06:51):
very different place from Elizabeth, but in some ways they
weren't really all that different. He was born May seventh,
eighteen twelve in a suburb of London into a middle
coast family. His father was a clerk at the Bank
of England, and Robert, like Elizabeth, also didn't receive a
lot of formal education, though according to Encyclopedia Britannic, his
father did teach him Greek and Latin, and also like Elizabeth,
(07:13):
he was largely self taught and spent a lot of
time reading works from his father's library and visiting art museums.
He did get a little bit of formal education in
in eighty eight he went to the University of London,
but left after only half a semester. Like Elizabeth too,
he had the strong affinity for Romantic literature in particular,
which really makes sense if you've read either of their writing. Particularly,
(07:37):
he liked the works of Percy Bits Shelley, who we've
talked about on the podcast before, so you guys know
all about him. Browning did have a few trips, not
exactly a grand tour, but a few jaunts to St.
Petersburg and Italy as a younger man. But besides that,
he basically lived with his parents until eighteen forty six,
and this is when he wrote his early long poems
(07:59):
then most of his plays. There was one major difference, though,
between Robert and Elizabeth. Unlike Elizabeth, Robert's early work wasn't
very well received. One of his poems Are Delo was
considered to be incomprehensible, and his plays were pretty unpopular too,
so they seemed to be on a different career trajectory.
(08:20):
In the eighteen forties, Elizabeth was actually way more famous
than he was, and he really admired her work. So
you can imagine his surprise and pleasure when in her
poem called Lady Geraldine's Courtship, which came out in that
eighteen forty four collection we mentioned, she referred favorably to
his poetry, and he was so flattered he wrote his
(08:41):
first letter to her on January tenth, eighteen forty five,
and he started it by saying, quote, I love your
verses with all my heart, dear miss Barrett, and in
the same letter later wrote, I do as I say,
love these books with all my heart, and I love
you too. We took it up a notch there. He said.
Elizabeth wrote back to him the very next day, saying,
(09:02):
I thank you, dear Mr Browning, from the bottom of
my heart end quote. I've learned to know your voice,
not merely from the poetry, but from the kindness in it.
So it kind of sounds like she's reciprocating there a
little bit. Oh yeah, And thus began their correspondence, and
they wrote to each other pretty regularly after that. At first, though,
Elizabeth didn't think anything romantic would really come with this.
(09:25):
She felt this way for a lot of reasons. I mean,
for one thing, she didn't really think that she'd ever
fall in love. She was about thirty eight thirty nine
years old at this point and considered a spinster at
this time, you know, being that age and unmarried. And
she was also, as we mentioned, an invalid who barely
saw the light of day, much less people outside of
her family, so she just really didn't see herself as
(09:47):
a catch. Then there was her dad, and we mentioned
he was rather controlling, but probably the most famous of
his edicts was forbidding any of his children, including both
daughters and sons, from ever marrying. So of course you've
kind of wonder why would anybody want to make such
(10:08):
a rule. I mean, after all, if your kids don't
get married, you're not going to have any legitimate grandchildren,
no legal airs. Pretty unusual way of thinking, especially around
this time. So nobody knows for sure what motivated Elizabeth's
father to make this rule. There are several theories, though,
and we're going to run through a couple of those.
(10:28):
Some people think it was just this whole Victorian patriarchal thing.
He wanted to keep his kids at home and under
his control for the entirety of their lives. Others think
it was because he was uncomfortable with the idea of
his children's sexuality. But I mean, although this makes sense
even for us today with father daughter relationships. I mean,
(10:48):
you can see a father not really being comfortable with
that idea about his little girl, but it's a little
stranger to think that he'd feel that way about his
son's too. There's a thorough beary, though, one that's a
little outside the norm that's emerged in recent years, and
that's that Elizabeth's father wanted to put an end to
their family line, not because they had some horrible thing
(11:10):
that had happened in their past, but because he believed
they had quote mixed blood, so, in other words, he
thought that they were part black. You have to wonder, okay,
how would this have been possible. How would he suspect
that there were Africans in his family. Well, they were
the descendants of wealthy Jamaican plantation owners, so it was
(11:30):
not uncommon for white plantation owners to have black mistresses.
And Julia Marcus wrote a book called Dared and Done,
The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and she
really explored this theory in depth, that that Barrett's father
was just trying to to end the line. Despite his
eleven children, he had already sired to to eliminate their
(11:53):
mixed ancestry. And interestingly enough, we should also say that
Robert Browning was also a descend of Jamaican plantation owners
and is also thought to be of mixed race heritage.
I've seen him described as having some quote Creole blood
in him from his paternal grandmother's side, and that he
had some African blood in him is actually a little
(12:15):
bit more widely accepted, I think than the related theories
about Elizabeth and her father. I think he might have
even discussed similar issues or those issues directly during his lifetime,
so whatever Barrett's father's reason though for standing in the
way of all of his children's marriages, Elizabeth knew this
was going to be an issue before the courtship even started.
(12:36):
For Robert's part, he was six years younger than Elizabeth
and considered a handsome man, quite dashing, but he didn't
really seem inclined to fall head over heels in love
either until he started corresponding to Elizabeth, his literary crush
after all, and after they had written to each other
for a while, Robert started to ask when they could meet,
and Elizabeth avoided this for some time, but he was
(13:00):
really persistent, and finally they set a date for him
to call on her on May at three in the afternoon,
and Elizabeth's family at that time was living at fifty
Wimple Street in London, and Robert came over and stayed
for an hour and a half. But it must have
been a really good ninety minutes, because a few days later,
Robert sent her a letter declaring his love for her,
(13:23):
and we don't know exactly what that letter said because
she apparently returned it to him and asked him to
burn it. Which he did. Perhaps she was scared of
her father finding it. It's a possibility, but she wrote
to him after that and said, quote, you do not
know what pain you give me, and speaking so wildly,
forget it once or forever having said it at all.
(13:44):
And it probably wasn't just her fear of her father
that made her react this way. Yeah, after all, Robert
had come on pretty strong, pretty quickly, and Elizabeth probably
didn't think that his feelings were sin fear. After all,
this relationship had started with um, you know, him responding
to her kind words and poetry. He apologized, though, writing quote,
(14:05):
I wrote to you in an unwise moment, and they
continued corresponding. He probably figured he'd rather have her as
a friend as a correspondent than not get to talk
to her at all. So the letters continued, the visit
continued without her father really picking up on what was
going on, understanding the full extent of their friendship and
the frequency of their contact. Yeah. I think he might
(14:28):
have known that these two poets were coming together, probably
thinking they were just making shop talk, but he didn't
realize that Robert was coming over so frequently and that
they were getting so close, and that shop talk for
two romantic poets and kind of veer off into actual romance.
Very true, and as they sure enough, that's what happened.
(14:49):
As they continued to talk and to get to know
each other, their friendship blossomed into love and Elizabeth began
to reciprocate Robert's feeling. She became more comfortable and began
and to trust his feelings and emotions. And as they
grew closer, he wanted to go to Elizabeth's father and
ask for her hand in marriage. She knew what the
(15:10):
answer would be to that, though. Yeah, she knew her
father very well and she knew he would never consent.
So she, unlike Robert, was willing to kind of keep
going the way they were, just writing letters and seeing
each other now and again in her out and never
really sealing the deal, never really getting married. But finally
things came to a head in eighteen forty six when
Elizabeth's doctor recommended she go to Italy for her health.
(15:33):
He was basically like, you need to get to a
warmer climate, otherwise you won't survive another winter here. But
Elizabeth's father wouldn't let her go. It seemed like he
was so determined to keep her at home and under
his thumb, even if that meant she would die. So
when the winter of eighteen forty six rolled around, Elizabeth
and Robert finally took action. They decided to get married secretly,
(15:57):
and it was really one of the hardest decisions Elizabeth
ever made, because she knew that she'd probably lose her
father if she ran off and got married. And even
though he doesn't seem that lovable, even though he might
seem quite strange for imposing a rule like this on
all of his children, Elizabeth did love her father and
she didn't think he was at fault for his views either.
(16:18):
She blamed the patriarchal system for how he was, but
still decision made to get married. She snuck out and
set off for marle Bone Church one Saturday that September,
where Robert was waiting for her. Her maid Wilson went
along kind of as an attendant, and she got faint.
Elizabeth got faint on the way and they had to
(16:39):
stop briefly at a chemist for some smelling salts, but
eventually she did make it and she and Robert were
finally married after the ceremony, though they didn't get to
walk hand in hand off to a new home together.
They had to part ways for a little while and
she had to take off her wedding ring and go
home to her father, and then finally a week later,
they left Italy as they had planned to do. Elizabeth
(17:02):
only took a few items of clothing, a couple of books,
her dog, and her maid along with her, probably because
her maid would have gotten in trouble if her father
had found out that um and she also took all
of the letters that Robert had written to her during
their courtship. Fortunately for us um so as expected, Elizabeth's
father never forgave her for disobeying him. She wrote several
(17:25):
letters to him, just begging for forgiveness, trying to explain herself,
asking if they could meet, and at some point he
sent her a package returning all of the letters she'd
sent him, all of which were unopened, and she later
wrote to her sister Arabella, quote, I could never tell
you what I felt when those letters came back to me,
nine or ten of them, all with their unbroken fields,
(17:47):
testifying to the sealed at part which refused to be
opened by me. So that aspect of her marriage and
her move were really sad. For Elizabeth, but Robert and
Elizabeth Barrett Brownie and ended up in Florence, where they
lived for their higher marriage, though they did occasionally take
holidays in France and in England, and despite Elizabeth's sadness
over losing her father, their marriage has been described as
(18:08):
pretty happy. They ended up getting an income and eventually
an inheritance from Elizabeth's cousin, which they lived off of,
and they both continued to write. Elizabeth in particular published
a collection of her poetry in eighteen fifty called Sonnets
from the Portuguese, which included poems written secretly to her
husband during her courtship, and these poems are some of
her most well known. How Do I Love thee Let
(18:31):
Me Count the Ways as among those, though according to
the Dictionary World Biography, that's the fact that they're well
known is less for any intrinsic artistic excellence than for
their abiding, romantic and psychological portrait of developing love, the
kind of thing you'd write on Valentine's Cards, right exactly.
Elizabeth ended up publishing about three more works after that,
(18:53):
including Aurora Lee, an epic poem in nine books that's
considered by them to be her masterpiece, and after the
death of William Wordsworth, she was a serious contender to
replace him as England's Poet Laureate, but Alfred Lord Tennyson
was chosen instead beat her out for that position. So meanwhile,
with all of this professional success, the Brownings were starting
(19:17):
their life together. To their married life together. Elizabeth had
two miscarriages before the couple had a son, who they
named Robert in eighteen forty nine. They called him Penn, however,
to avoid any confusion in the family. Ultimately the couple
were married for fifteen years when Elizabeth finally succumbed to
illness and died June eighteen sixty one in Robert's arms.
(19:40):
He later wrote to his sister quote, she is with
God who takes from me the life of my life.
To this day, people still speculate what Elizabeth's illness actually was.
Some think it was severe asthma or tuberculosis, maybe protestis,
maybe even antolexy and ravosa or paralytic scoliosis. One of
the l this theories, though, from a researcher at Penn
(20:02):
State University named An Buchanan and her daughter, suggest that
it might be a condition called hypokalemic periodic paralysis or
h k p P, which is a muscle disorder. So
that's still kind of up in the air. The question
of what really happened to her one of my favorite
sub genres. I think of doing these history podcasts or
the medical mystery yea reevaluating old illnesses. I mean, they
(20:27):
come up with these theories a lot of times just
from reading, you know, let letters and seeing what her
sile doctor advice, that sort of thing. It's pretty amazing
what they can sometimes come up with. So after Elizabeth's death, though,
Robert Browning moved back to England with his son, and
the first thing he did was published a collection of
(20:48):
his wife's last work entitled Last Poems. I mean, if
that's not a love letter to your departed wife, I
don't know what is. Then he continued on with his
own work got back to his career. During his marriage,
he had published a few things, including the collection entitled
Men and Women in eighteen fifty five, but this wasn't
as popular as his later work. With his eighteen sixty
(21:11):
four book of poems called Dramatis Persona, he finally started
to gain popularity and eventually became a bigger name, arguably
than his wife. By most accounts, his love for Elizabeth
never died. He promised her on her deathbed that he
would never remarry, and he never did. He did, however,
socialize quite a bit, and he had friendships with many females.
(21:33):
I see that written a lot. I'm not sure to
what extent those friendships went, but there's even evidence that
he proposed to women on a couple of occasions. So
he might have remarried if he could have. But I mean,
it's easy to see kind of why he got shot
down if you look at some of the accounts of
these proposals. According to Timco's article, when proposing to one
(21:56):
lady Ashburton, Robert Browning said, quote, my heart is buried
in Florence, so not really a great way to win
a girl over. We're not that surprised that she said
no after that. No, that's really not a great tactic
to take. But some people think that some not so
sweet things happened towards the end of the Brownings relationship.
(22:18):
In a two thousand eight article in The Guardian, writer
Elizabeth Lowry, using Browning's poem My Last Duchess as evidence,
explore the idea that Robert actually gave Elizabeth an extra
dose of morphine at the end which led her to death.
I'm not sure if that was done in some sort
of sympathy or to finish her off. Yeah, I mean
(22:39):
it's unclear, but again, this is just a theory. We
like to throw those out there. Yeah, we're not sure
if that is even the case, but we like to
present our listeners with all the information we have at
our fingertips so that you can kind of mull over
those things. Most aside, what you think we should say
to most literature professors might not be two big fans
(22:59):
of about you think, my last duchess, this biographical evidence
very true, But I mean most people seem to believe
their love to have been your approachable And so that
we can end on a nicer note for this Valentine's
Day episode, we're going to read a little bit from
Robert's poem One Word More, which he dedicated to Elizabeth.
It goes, God be thanked the meanest of his creatures,
(23:23):
boast two soul sides, one to face the world with,
one to show a woman he loves her. This I
say of me, but think of you love This to
you yourself, my moon of poets. Ah, But that's the
world side, there's the wonder. Thus they see you, praise you,
think they know you. There. In turn, I stand with
(23:45):
them and praise you out of myself, I dare to
phrase it. But the best is when I glide from them,
cross a step or two of dubious twilight come out
on the other side, the novel silent silver Lights and
darks undreamed of, where I hush and bless myself with silence.
Well that's a nice way to wrap up our Valentine's
(24:06):
Day episode. But I've been wondering maybe you'll want to
continue this a little bit with some other nineteenth century writers,
you know, after all, Dickens two birthday was recently happened
to the Tree. I've been thinking about the Bronte's a
bit lately. It seems like everybody's thinking about the Bronte's.
I have a good Bronte biography. Biography Oh cool? Well,
(24:29):
you know I would be all for it if you
wanted to do that, and I think a lot of
our listeners would be too. We've received a lot of
emails recently. I think about the Brontes we have and
um Dickens too, of course, has been all over the news,
so maybe maybe either of those two, any of the
Brontes or Dickens or some other nineteenth century writer too.
If you want to suggest any of your favorites, you
(24:52):
can email us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Miston History and we are
in faith Buck And if you want to learn a
little bit more about the topic of today's podcast, which
of course is love, we have an entire Science of
Love micro site right now. Writer Kristen Conger, who is
(25:13):
also from Stuff Mom Never Told You, of course, has
written just a great I mean you've read a lot
of these two, Sarah, just a great series of articles
really delving into, I guess the inner workings of what
makes us fall in and out of love and what's
happening inside our bodies but makes us react certain ways
to breakups and makeups and everything in between. They're really
interesting and Dablina has been editing them too, so you
(25:36):
get a peek at what our normal part of our
job is, which is of course editing articles exactly. So
you can look that up by visiting our home page
at www. Duff How Stuff Works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join House to Work staff as we explore the most
(25:57):
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works
iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes
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