Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-1861

Although this poetess was born in Coxhoe, Durham, she thought of her life as beginning where she grew up in Herefordshire when at the age of 3 her father bought for £24,000 the 475-acre estate that was Hope End near Ledbury. This was so rich in greenery with its orchards and woodland that it reminded some friends of Jamaica where Elizabeth's family ran sugar plantations.

Her father, later the High Sheriff of Herefordshire, had the house flamboyantly rebuilt in a Turkish style complete with minarets. No wonder sightseers came from Malvern to gape in wonder.

Here in this secluded place Elizabeth, the eldest of 11 surviving children grew up largely insulated from the surrounding community together with her adored pets including a tame squirrel, rabbits, a goldfinch, a hen and Moses the Shetland pony.

Happy and carefree as a child, this ended at puberty when bed-ridden, laudanum-taking hypochondria set in.

This malaise gave her the space and time to read and write poetry which she regarded as universal truth. She had composed birthday odes since the age of nine when her father had jokingly rewarded her with 10 shillings as the 'Poet Laureate of Hope End'.

Gloomy and morbid, Elizabeth found in composing poetry a channel for her passions that frightened her and her imagination that was often ' too powerful for me to control'. Even before her 14th birthday her father had printed 50 copies her long, epic 'Battle of Marathon', convincing her that literature was to be her life. She related to such poets as Shelley, Keats and Byron whom she strove to emulate. Indeed Elizabeth's 'Lines on the Death of Lord Byron' appearing in The Globe and Traveller was one of many teenage works printed in magazines before copies of her personal publication An Essay on Mind was sold nationally as well as in Ledbury.

Before leaving Hope End in 1832 Elizabeth and her family's life with its joys and sorrows was to contribute much to local history especially as she kept a diary for a year. Her mother and sister are both buried in Ledbury where her brother attended campaigns for the Reform Act. Her father would ride to Hereford for bible meetings, and Elizabeth was invited to Eastnor Castle and to Foxley by the classical scholar Sir Uvedale Price, although Elizabeth shared her father's general dislike for socializing, visiting and being visited. Sir John Conroy, secretary to Queen Victoria's mother could not access Mr Barrett when he called at Hope End. An exception that Elizabeth made was her friendship with the blind scholar of Greek poetry, Hugh Stuart Boyd who lived in Malvern. Even then she corresponded with him for quite some time before they first met, the occasion of which was calamitious.

Elizabeth holding Samuel, with Edward, Henrietta and Mary Moulton-Barrett.

This is Elizabeth when she was just fifteen.

This is Elizabeth when she was seventeen.

This is a portrait of Elizabeth when she was nineteen.

Between Hope End and Boyd's house there is a very steep hill, The Wyche (originally a track for pack animals carrying salt from Droitwich) where care is needed going down. Unfortunately there was no drag chain on the carriage that Elizabeth and her siblings were in. As the pony trotted down the hill the carriage pushed against its legs and in panic it galloped. Her brother warned that no one should touch the reins, but Elizabeth was no frightened that she seized them. The carriage overturned as it whirled round a corner, flinging all the passengers out onto the bank. They were shaken an dusty and Elizabeth's hat was torn, though no one was seriously hurt. Boyd and Elizabeth were to become firm friends and was to spend many happy hours reading him poetry at Malvern. He was the only man outside her tight circle of family and neighbours that she met there.

With the abolition of slavery within the British Empire in 1831 the family's Jamaican estates made less money so Mr Barrett auctioned Hope End which Elizabeth was distressed to leave. At Hope End the immense greenery had made her feel safe and secure. All around her in her Herefordshire home were the happy memories of childhood on which she survived. She was the sort of girl whom places haunted throughout her life.

Hope End was bought by a Mancunian banker,a Mr Heywood, whose daughter Mary would later found the Mothers' Union.

Her father conducted his business interests from London whilst the rest of the family moved to Sidmouth on the south coast.

Here is an interactive map of the most of the places familiar to Elizabeth during her years at Hope End. Simply put the mouse on a place and information about her connection to it will appear on it. Please note that this is far from completion.

Wimpole Street

A few years later Elizabeth and her siblings joined their father in London, first at 74 Gloucester Place, then at 50 Wimpole Street, by which time she was deemed to be an invalid. The original building at Wimpole Street was demolished, but its replacement is quite similar, thus giving some indication of her surroundings. Her room was on the second floor, and its door interconnected with that of her father. At night he would come into her room, hold her hand, and they would pray together. She would sometimes be carried out of the house in her wheelchair, but spent most of her time up in her bedroom, which became her world. It contained her sofa, her bed, washstand, a crimson bookcase that overflowed with books, and was lined with the busts of poets. Being a Herefordshire girl who had grown up surrounded by luxuriant nature, she loved having flowers and greenery up there with her, but found it hard to keep them alive because the room was dark and there was an open fire.
In London John Kenyon, a distant cousin introduced Elizabeth to many writers had seemed so distant before writers at his home in Devonshire Place, for example William Wordsworth and Mary Mitford, authoress of 'Our Village' who gave Elizabeth her famous spaniel, Flush, to comfort her when a brother drowned at Babbacombe Bay.

Robert Browning

It was Kenyon who arranged the first meeting between Elizabeth and poet Robert Browning since there was mutual admiration for each other's works after they had corresponded for some time.

Robert was born in Camberwell on May 7th 1812, then a village outside London. His birthplace, 'Rainbow Cottage', which stood in what is now Southampton way, SE5, gives its name to another local street, Rainbow Street. He was baptized in the Congregational Chapel in what is now Browning Street, Walworth. Also Browning Mews which stands behind Wimpole Street is named after him. Camberwell Green used to have a busy annual fair which dates back to mediaeval times, which rivalled Greenwich's, but it was closed down in 1855, probably because it was getting too rowdy. It was at Camberwell Green in 1842 that Felix Mendelssohn composed his Spring Song, originally called Camberwell Green. The butterfly Camberwell Beauty was first identified there in 1748.
Robert's father worked at the Bank of England as a well paid clerk, and with the money he saved, he amassed a library of some six thousand books, many of which were in foreign languages. Robert was to develop fluency in Latin, Greek, French and Italian.
Robert's mother was the daughter of a German shipowner, Herr Wiedemann, who had settled in Dundee. There was quite a sizeable German community in South East London at that time.

This is Camberwell Green's fair during the mid-19th century.

On January 10th 1845, Robert sent her a letter which began with the words 'I love your verses with all my heart, Dear Miss Barrett'. The following day Elizabeth sent her reply; 'I thank you, dear Mr Browning, from the bottom of my heart'. They corresponded for five months before they met.
They fell in love, her spirits perked up and her health improved too. Soon she was walking unaided in Regents Park, and travelling as far as Hampstead to pick dog roses in the lanes. Just less than one year since they had first met, when Elizabeth was out walking in Regents Park with her sister and her dog, flush, she picked a flower for Robert and put it inside a letter to him, writing 'I gathered it for you today when we were out walking in Regents Park'.
Robert would jot down on the back of Elizabeth's letters, the number of the letter, and the date, time and duration of his last visit to her. The couple exchanged lockets of hair and over a twenty-month period wrote each other 574 letters.

Elopement

Throughout her life, Elizabeth's actions and behaviour had convinced her father that she only felt a poetic, platonic love for others. He had put her on the pedestal she had climbed onto. Elizabeth was afraid to tell him that there was now a man in her life whom she felt passionate love for and wished to marry especially when Mr Barrett became angry after the couple had spent a whole day together.

Her poem Sonnets from the Portuguese later testified her reluctance to wed, but her love of Robert was strong and on September 12th 1846 Elizabeth stole out of the house in Wimpole Street without saying goodbye to her sisters, taking all of Robert's letters with her. She headed for St Marylebone Parish Church several hundreds yards away where she and Robert were married in secret. This was the same place where sixty-eight years before, another poet, Lord Byron had been christened. Inside the church, you can buy a copy of their marriage certificate, and there is a Browning Chapel with a stained glass window that commemorates their wedding.

Italy & Birth

Six days later they later departed for Italy, which Robert had first visited in 1834, and settled in Casa Guidi,Firenze where their only child, Robert Weidemann Browning was born on March 9th 1849. They usually referred to him as 'Pen'. Elizabeth had previously miscarriaged thrice. Her eventual success at giving birth has been put down to the fact that she gave up taking laudanum as a medicine. Pen grew up to be an artist and a sculpure, living as Asolo in Italy. One of the few points of contention between Elizabeth and Robert was the way that they dressed Pen. Elizabeth liked to dress him up in an androgynous fashion, and although it was very common in Victorian times for young boys to wear lace and velvet with their hair in curls, this rarely extended beyond the age of five. Elizabeth still had in such attire even after he was ten years old. When Elizabeth died when Pen was twelve, one of the first things that Robert did was have his hair cut and dress him in proper boys' clothing.

   
   When we first met and loved, I did not build
   Upon the event with marble. Could it mean
   To last, a love set pendulous between
   Sorrow and sorrow? Nay I rather thrilled,
   Distrusting every light that seemed to gild
   The onward path and feared to overlean
   
   

Here her Casa Guidi Windows was the sympathized with the Florentines in their struggle against the Austrians' oppression.

  ...Twixt church and palace of a Florence street!
        A little child, too, who not long had been
        By mother's finger steadied on his feet,
        And still  O bella libertà  he sang.
  

Elizabeth's most ambitious work, the six-volume Aurora Leigh (1857) which was both personal and political dealt with such themes as: can women be happy with only their art to fulfil them or do they need men?. This was a huge popular success.

Barton Court in Colwall may have been the model for 'Leigh Hall' in Aurora Leigh. It has been ventured that the character Romney Leigh was based in one of the Peyton family. She was describing Herefordshire in the lines:

         Hills, vales, woods nestled in a silver mist;
         Farms, granges, doubled up amongst the hills,
         And cattle grazing in the watered vales
         And cottage chimneys smoking from the woods,
         And cottage gardens, smelling everywhere,
         Confused with smell of orchards
         

Also in Herefordshire is alluded to in "The Lost Bower", such as-

                   Green the land is where my daily
                   Steps in jocund childhood played;
                   Dimpled close with hill and valley,
                   Dappled very close with shade;
                   Summer snow of apple blossom
                   Running up from glade to glade."

Elizabeth also denounced American slavery in her Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point (1848) and A Curse for a Nation (1860).

   
    For love of freedom which abates
         Beyond the Straits:
    For patriot virtue  starved to vice on
    Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion:
    
    

The fact that her father had died without forgiving her for her marriage to Robert weakened her health and in June 1861 she suffered a chill and died in his arms.

Elizabeth Remembered

Elizabeth is honoured in Ledbury by the Barrett-Browning Institute which has come to be one of the town's landmarks. William Russell from Woodlands, Parkway thought up building a memorial to the poetess, and enthusiasm and support for this idea was expressed by many donations from the locals. They invited architects to come up with a suitable design and the one which was deemed best was that from Brightwell Binyon from Ispwich. A local builder, George Hill put in the lowest tender, and the work commenced in August 1894 at the corner of Bye Street and Hope End, the site of a former tannery and stables. The task was completed nearly a year later. The total cost was £2,330. The date of the official opening was January 16th 1896, but unfortunately Mr Russell had passed away before he could enjoy this moment.

This edifice has a definite arts-and-crafts feel to it, and indeed, Brightwell Binyon worked alongside Edward-Burne Jones, William Morris and W R Lethaby, the architect of Brockhampton Church, on the interior of Stanmore Hall in Middlesex.

Since 1938 the Barrett-Browning Institute has housed the library, when the Poet Laureate, John Masefield performed the inaugural ceremony.







This is from Elizabeth's poem 'Sonnets From the Portuguese'.

       How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
       I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
       My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
       For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
       I love thee to the level of every day's
       Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
       I love thee freely as men strive for right;
       I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
       I love thee with the passion  put to use
       In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
       I love theee with a love I seemed to lose
       With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath,
       Smiles, tears, of all my life! and if God choose,
       I shall love thee better after death.  
     

Stage & Screen

	Rudolf Besier, born in Java to a Dutch family wrote the romantic comedy play in two parts and twnety three scenes, 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street', which was on at the Empire Theatre, New York between Februrary and December 1931, with 370 performances. In 1933, the play was taken on a seven-month tour of America. Elizabeth was played by Katherine Cornell, Robert by Basil Rathbone, with Orson Welles taking the part of Elizabeth's brother, Octavius Moulton-Barrett. Its London performance was at the Queen's Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, from September 23rd 1930 Cedric Hardwicke (Robert), Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (Elizabeth), Scott Sunderland, Marjorie Mars, Eileen Beldon, Barry K.Barnes, and Joan Barry
	In 1934 a film was made, 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street', written by Ernest Vajda, Claudine West and Donald Ogden Stewart, from the play by Rudolph Besier. The film was directed by Sidney Franklin.
	From October 20th 1964, at the Lyric Theatre in Shaftsbury Avenue, London there were 948 performances of the musical 'Robert and Elizabeth'. The music was by Ron Grainer: the book and lyrics were by Ronald Millar,and it was based on 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street' by Rudolph Besier. It is a musical in two acts and fifteen scences, with some ballet.

Barrett Café

Now at the bottom of Wimpole Street there is a café in Elizabeth's honour. Inside there is a framed copy of a drawing of the front door of the Barretts' home at 50 Wimpole Street. Also there are some old photographs of Oxford Street at around the turn of the 20th century.
Wimpole Street was built about 1724 by John Prince and named after Wimpole, the estate in Cambridgeshire of the groundlandlord of the street, Edward Harley, the Earl of Oxford. Another poet with connections with Wimpole Street, was Alfred Lord Tennyson. He was engaged to the daughter of the historian, Henry Hallam who lived at number 67 between 1819 and 1840. Hallam's son, who was the friend of Tennyson died during this time. Alfred wrote for him 'In Memoriam', mentioning 'The dark house by once more I stand, Her in the dark unlovely street'.

---

Phoebe Traquair's Illustrations

In 1896 the Dublin-born, Scotland-based artist, Phoebe Traqair illustrated Elizabeth's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' on vellum between 1894 and 1896. Here are numbers 2 and 38.

Stained Glass Tribute

At the Armstrong-Browning Library in Waco, Texas, there is the largest collection of secular stained glass in existance, the windows being a tribute to Elizabeth, Robert and their works.

This illustrates the poem Fra Lippo Lippi with the Florence Duomo in the background


This is for the poem 'My Star'


From the Sonnets from the Portuguese, the text says 'I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach'

Return to Hereford homepage

hits since Feb 10th 2006