Wofford Presents “The Love Story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning” to CRSP members

Wofford Presents “The Love Story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning” to CRSP members

Marsha Lee

Contributing writer

Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series about Elizabeth Barrett Browning

M. J. Wofford grew up in Graham, Texas, earned her BA at Baylor University and her MA at the University of Texas, specializing in secondary education with majors in English and history. The English Department at Baylor was formerly located in the basement of the beautiful Armstrong Browning Library, which houses the largest collection of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscripts and memorabilia in the world. Majoring in English, along with taking “The Browning Course” under Dr. Jack Herring, no doubt placed M. J. Wofford in that building many times, leaving a profound influence and attraction to the love story of these two Victorian poets. She recently shared their story with members of Coryell Retired School Personnel.

Part I: Elizabeth Barrett – Tomboy, Scholar, Poet, Invalid

Elizabeth Barrett was born on March 6, 1806, in County Durham, England, to Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke Moulton-Barrett. They were financially comfortable by inheritance, with Edward owning sugar plantations in Jamaica and Mary owning land in the British West Indies, both supported with slave labor. Elizabeth was the eldest of twelve children (4 girls and 8 boys). Elizabeth was educated at home and tutored by Daniel McSwiney along with her oldest brother. However, Elizabeth was a precocious child and had a burning passion for learning. At age 4, she began to write poems; at age 6, she was reading novels; by age 8, she was studying translations of Homer; at age 10, she was learning Greek; and by age 11, she had read several Shakespearian plays, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dante’s Inferno, and plunged into histories of England, Greece, and Rome. At age 11, she wrote her own Homeric epic, “The Battle of Marathon: A Poem.” Her mother had carefully compiled all the child’s poetry into collections of Poems by Elizabeth Barrett, one of the largest collections of juvenilia of any English writer. Her father had her Homeric epic privately printed and encouraged her writing. He referred to her as “the Poet Laureate of Hope End.” (Hope End, north of London, was where the Barretts moved in 1809). She also enjoyed reading about social issues in the works of Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft.

Elizabeth enjoyed a privileged childhood and, although frail, was somewhat of a tomboy. She loved riding her pony around the grounds, visiting neighborhood families, and arranging theatrical productions with her 10 siblings (one had died at age three). But at about age fifteen, she suffered a strain while saddling her horse, rode a short distance in severe pain, and suffered a bad fall when she tried to dismount. Afterwards, she experienced intense headaches and spinal pain with some loss of mobility. Sometime later, she and her sisters all suffered short illnesses followed by measles; however, all but Elizabeth recovered completely. Doctors did not whether either of these events caused Elizabeth to become an invalid for the rest of her life. They could not determine an exact cause for her breakdown in health, nor did they know how to treat it, other than by prescribing laudanum (a form of opium) for pain. She became an invalid and was addicted to laudanum and later morphine for life. (Doctors now think perhaps she suffered from hypokalemic periodic paralysis, a genetic muscle disorder, which is worsened by many of the “triggers” Elizabeth wrote about in her diary. One of her uncles was found who had a similar disorder. There is no cure for the disorder, but today, it can be treated).

Elizabeth’s mother died in 1828. By 1835, the Barrett family moved to London, and finally to their best-known residence, 50 Wimpole Street, London, in 1837. That year, Elizabeth burst a blood vessel which affected her lungs. Although her health had continued to deteriorate, this was the first serious illness in a long period of invalidism. Doctors told her father that he desperately needed to either move his family or send Elizabeth away from London to an environment that was drier and warmer; otherwise, her health would continue to decline rapidly. Mr. Barrett refused to consider either possibility, and he told his daughter that she would probably just die right there in London in her room.

In 1838, she published The Seraphim and Other Poems, which was very favorably received, sold well, and marked the start of her successful literary career. Though limited by her illness, she corresponded with a number of other prominent writers, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Carlyle, and Edgar Allan Poe. In 1838, she moved to Torquay, on the seaside, to join her favorite brother, Edward, who became her primary helper. (Edward’s nickname was “Bro.” All the Barrett children had nicknames. Elizabeth’s was “Ba.”) About this time, an uncle also died and left her a legacy to secure her financially. Her father hated both the move and the legacy.

Her health started improving in Torquay, but two years later, disaster struck. First, her brother, Samuel, died of a fever in Jamaica, and then, “Bro” drowned in a sailing accident in the summer of 1840. She felt enormous grief for the loss of both brothers, but when she had to return to the house on Wimpole Street, she was even more grieved to find that her father blamed her for Edward’s death! For the next six years, she spent most of her time in her room upstairs, seeing few people other than family, one of whom was a cousin, John Kenyon. She received comfort from a spaniel named Flush, given to her by a friend, Mary Mitford. Elizabeth wrote a poem entitled “To Flush: My Dog” for the occasion. (Almost a century later, Virginia Woolf fictionalized the life of the dog, making him the protagonist of her 1933 novel Flush: A Biography.)

Kenyon introduced his cousin to literary friends with whom she corresponded. In the period 1841-1844, Elizabeth was a prolific writer of poetry, prose, and translations. She also wrote materials in favor of abolition of slavery and in favor of child labor laws. She wrote critical prose pieces, such as a laudatory essay on Thomas Carlyle, with whom she corresponded. In 1844, she published two volumes of Poems. Her success brought her acclaim in Britain as well as America, and she, in fact, became a rival to Tennyson for Poet Laureate after Wordsworth died in 1850. She was the first woman to be nominated as poet laureate. It was these two volumes of Poems published in 1844 that secured a place for her as a major writer and poet. It was also these books of poems that caught the attention of another poet: Robert Browning . . .