My eyes firmly fixated on the buildings around me, I am usually walking through London ready to discover this fascinating city’s quirks along the way. On one of those days, I ended up in Primrose Hill, in a 1920s villa housing a cultural temple for English Folk Dance.
The Cecil Sharp House surprises with a big concert hall painted with a mighty mural and there are event spaces, a cafe and a library. Not many people around. Upon my question if I could use the reading room without a pass, a delighted librarian nodded his head enthusiastically “But of course you can!” “How fab, thank you” I replied.
I am not particularly into reading about music theory which makes up a big part of the library. I was just about to leave the reading room again when my eye caught a book title about Britain’s Victorian age. And it was there that I learnt about a touching love story. It’s a tale of infatuation, stimulation, passion, liberation and devotion.
~~~
Our love story starts in London. It is the year 1844.
A poet called Elizabeth Barrett has just published her latest writings, her book “Poems”. The two-volume oeuvre becomes a literary hit and establishes Elizabeth as rock star amongst British writers of the Victorian era.
What sounds glamorous, is in reality a rather isolated and introverted life. Confined to her bedroom due to a mysterious illness, 38-year-old Elizabeth concentrates solely on her pursuit of intellectual interests and the improvement of her writing style.
Elizabeth lives in what I’d call a “gilded creation cage”. As the eldest daughter of wealthy parents, she grows up in a comfortable social position and is encouraged from young age to write and indulge in her interest for poetry. For her 14th birthday, Elizabeth’s father privately publishes one of her poems while her mother made sure that all of her gifted child’s poetry was neatly compiled into collections.
~~~
Elizabeth’s life might have turned out differently if it wouldn’t have been for the teenage Elizabeth to suddenly come down with an illness doctors of her Victorian time couldn’t diagnose. Some historians think it might have been psychological rather than a physical malady. Yet, some of her sisters suffered from the same symptoms of terrible spinal pain accompanied by loss of mobility. So it might rather point to an infection her sisters could shake off while Elizabeth’s immune system wouldn’t fully recover any more.
To cope with her chronic pain, young Elizabeth was given “Laudanum”, an opium-infused strong alcoholic beverage. Laudanum is a make-me-happy-oh-no-euphoric-please drug. It is of course highly addictive. Laudanum was the go-to cure-all of the Victorian era. And Elizabeth was in good company. Opium-induced writing sessions were known amongst Victorian authors. English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge documented such a haze during one of his works. Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady of the United States and wife of Abraham Lincoln, was another famous Laudanum addict.
Elizabeth was a drug addict for most of her adult life. It might have helped her being stimulated to write imaginative poetry, yet she paid a high price for this stimulation. It is fair to assume that her unintended drug use from an early age may well have contributed to her lifelong fragile health condition.
Now, where’s the love story, please? Patience, dear reader, we are getting close.
~~~
Elizabeth’s life wasn’t plain sailing, yet she belonged to a privileged class and was fortunate compared to so many of her fellow Victorians’ rough destinies. True though that she wasn’t considered fit for the standard vision of Victorian ideals. She proved to have social and intellectual currency but she was no marriage material. She considered herself an invalid. Too fragile to attract suitors, let alone to bear motherhood. So essentially an intellectual butterfly but a romantic love no-go.
Yet, her fragility had one solid advantage. She was excluded from any domestic duties which her sisters had to perform. There was no husband, there were no children, there was no commercial obligation to fulfil. But there was independent income from her mother’s side and her father’s support. And Elizabeth went wild: Every day reading, writing, corresponding, correcting, reviewing, trying. Every day. Day in, day out.
~~~
I read many accounts of her father being tyrannical. Probably. I guess her dad just became overprotective fuelled by her ill health and the early death of his wife. Elizabeth was guarded rather jealously by her father. I don’t know if her dad was really that despotic as usually displayed but he definitely didn’t see his daughter as a grown woman. He encouraged and enjoyed her success. I think he was a super-proud dad, but he never saw his daughter as an adult living her life to full potential.
~~~
Well, and so there is one of those misty London mornings of November 1844 when suddenly a letter arrives at 50 Wimpole Street where Elizabeth and her father’s household reside. Addressed to Elizabeth Barrett. And for her eyes only. Elizabeth’s confidante and maid picks up this letter and brings it to her bedroom.
It is a letter from a fellow poet, Robert Browning, who writes to Elizabeth: “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” praising their “fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought.” 6 years her junior, Robert is a fresh face on the writing circuit, and he isn’t shy expressing his admiration for Elizabeth, this rising yet unreachable star.
Elizabeth is flattered and excited. Is this young man just an ambitious writer trying to advance himself by contacting her? Or is there more than just the admiration of a fan? Could it be that this young man had a crush on her?
There was only one way to find out: Elizabeth wrote back.
~~~
A lively and intense correspondence develops between the two of them. A heap of letters arrives and get sent. And Robert persists. He dares to ask her for permission to pay her a visit. To meet her. To talk to her in person.
While I was reading this turn of events in the Cecil Sharp Library, I held my breath and sighed deeply. The librarian asked a friendly “Everything okay?” “Certainly” I assured him, slightly embarrassed.
What if they didn’t like each other? What if she was disappointed by his looks, his smell, his speaking? What if the overprotective father would ruin everything last minute? What if she would fall so ill again not being able to have any visitors? Aargh, this was nerve-wracking business to read!
~~~
The agreed day approaches and in May 1845, Elizabeth and Robert meet. In her bedroom. Him sitting by her bedside. Curiously, Elizabeth’s father doesn’t really think that a visiting fellow poet sitting at his “disabled” daughter’s bedside really determines a threat to his daughter’s moral wellbeing. Oh, little did he know!
Turns out that this Robert Browning was a dashing and handsome young man. And an unusual one, too. Brought up in a well-to-do household in South London, young Robert and his sister were encouraged to expand their interest in literature and the arts. Robert couldn’t stand the rigid and authoritarian structure of schools, so he was home-schooled using the extensive library of his father. Fascinated by the rebellious Romantic Poetry movement of the time, Robert became an atheist and vegetarian. Intellect and reason were important, but emotion and passion were king for this free-spirited man.
Robert became a regular visitor at 50 Wimpole Street. They spent hours in that bedroom, talking, debating, enjoying each other’s company, inspiring each other. Robert called Elizabeth his “little Portuguese” because of her olive skin complexion. And she was inspired and turned her affection into love poems, the famous and mysteriously titled “Sonnets from the Portuguese”, a form of literary diary about Elizabeth’s evolving affection for Robert.
And I guess Elizabeth couldn’t believe what had hit her. Suddenly there was this unconventional attractive man besotted with her. Falling for her words, her personality and her looks. Her, the disabled spinster, a famous one yes, but this guy saw her as the intelligent, eloquent and gorgeous young woman that she was.
Elizabeth was on fire. So was Robert Browning. They were truly and utterly in love with each other!
~~~
What happened next, you ask?
Fifteen months after their first meeting in that bedroom, Robert proposes something Elizabeth would have never dreamt of. Marriage. The only way to be together. But that wasn’t enough. They knew, her father would never agree and throw a spanner in the works. They needed to escape, leave without the father’s permission. Oh, Elizabeth, what will you do? What a romantic and excitingly different idea to start a new life! Will you go for it?
~~~
Stop. Let’s face the facts: 200 years ago, even with Robert being such a free spirit and all, we are still talking about the restrictive environment women lived in. Women couldn’t just live by themselves, they were either dependent on the father or the husband, and threatened to be ostracised by society as a spinster, nun or whore. Elizabeth was lucky, she wasn’t solely dependent on her father, she was famous, she was a writer, she had independent income. Robert didn’t. Robert was in reality the prototype of the male groupie. Robert didn’t have a formal career, his father had funded the publication of Robert’s poems. Robert still lived at home with his parents when he met Elizabeth and was still financially dependent on them.
“Who cares?” Elizabeth decided. She was in love and inspired by this prospect of such a grand adventure. With Robert, she had introduced a wild card into her otherwise predictably quiet life. And what after all is a love affair worth if it isn’t exciting and if it doesn’t open our eyes to new and unexplored possibilities of living our lives? Elizabeth, I guess, was fascinated by the stimulating randomness this encounter provided.
After spending almost two decades of her life in the darkened solitude of her bedroom, Elizabeth took the plunge. One morning of September 1846, Elizabeth sneaked very early out of the house and went to St Marylebone Parish Church. You know this church, it’s just opposite Regent’s Park on your way to Paddington! And there she got secretly married to Robert Browning becoming Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
~~~
After the clandestine wedding, Elizabeth returned to the house of her father in Wimpole Street as if nothing had happened. Then a week later, she sneaked out the front door again at an opportune moment when no one was watching. But this time with a suitcase and she joined her husband in the waiting carriage.
The love birds made their way to Italy setting themselves up in a villa in Florence. They became a famous literary power couple, upheld an engaged social and intellectual life and continued to inspire each other. They even had a child and stayed devoted to each other until Elizabeth died 15 years into their marriage in Florence, in the arms of her beloved husband.
I closed the book and sighed. The librarian asked again friendly “Everything okay?” “Certainly” I assured him, smiling.