The Portuguese in Florence
Elopement and exile with ‘that man’.
Read Part 1 and/or listen to this summary
Saturday morning, September 12 1846
Leaving Flush munching his macaroons, theElizabeth quietly slips out of the house with her ever-loyal servant, Wilson. On the short walk to St Marylebone Parish Church, she is near paralysed with nerves, relying on the physical assistance of her maid and smelling salts she buys en route.
At the church she meets Robert and his cousin James (roped in as a witness) and the vicar who will carry out the ceremony.
Less than three hours later, she returns to 50 Wimpole Street a married woman. She does not mention the most famous wedding in literary history to any of her family. At 1.00 pm a letter arrives from Robert.
You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another. I am all gratitude — and all pride…
With uncharacteristic diplomacy, Robert doesn’t mention that Elizabeth ‘looked like death’ on her big day. He saves that for the honeymoon.
The tension continues for another week as they prepare for the final escape. Robert, in charge of paperwork and travel plans, does not prove a natural escapologist. He proposes an immediate announcement in The Times. Incredulous, Elizabeth points out that this might not be wise: “{I} shall be killed — it will be so infinitely worse than you can have any idea.”
Then Robert gets confused by shipping timetables. He copies down the times of the steamers from Le Havre rather than Southampton. Luckily, his beloved points out that the plan is to travel into exile.
A week later, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning again sneaks out of the house. This time Flush is in her arms but the rest of her luggage was sent secretly sent ahead the previous day .
They walk around the corner to Hodgson’s bookshop, Great Marylebone Street. Robert and a cab are waiting to take them to Vauxhall Station, they reunite with their luggage and board the 5 pm train to Southampton.
Meanwhile, nobody is the wiser in Wimpole Street for several hours. Eventually her brother discovers a heart-rending letter addressed to him.
“Oh, love me George … find pardon in your heart for me after it is read.”
George would forgive her eventually. Not her father, though. His ‘salt’ would never ‘sweeten’ as she prayed. Papa will go to his grave permanently estranged from his eldest daughter, his favourite. She is dead to him.
The journey to Italy is gruelling. After a rough night ferry crossing they arrive at Le Havre. From there it’s another overnight journey: a coach to Paris to stay with a friend for a few days. Then they resume their journey southwards, stopping in Milan, Pisa and finally Florence.
Few people have been able to say, at forty, that their life became “new”…to pinpoint the exact moment it became so. Margaret Foster
There was a bitter-sweet happy ever-after. Elizabeth recovered her health and lived another fifteen years. After three miscarriages she gave birth to a son, Pen, at the age of forty-three. A fourth miscarriage followed.
In 1850 EBB (as she now signed herself) published Sonnets from the Portuguese. The 44 poems tell the story of her courtship with Browning, with the title a reference to his pet name for her: “My little Portuguese’.
The collection was an immediate international best seller. When Wordsworth’s died in 1850. EBB was the hot tip to replace him as poet laureate. Sonnet 43 (How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways) would become a staple of wedding speeches and Valentine’s Day card greetings.
Edward Moulton pressed the disinheritance switch. That was expected, but her brothers following suit was a blow. But with her sizeable royalties the couple could live comfortably. Casa Guidi, their luxurious apartment became the Florentine 50 Wimpole Street, with an even more eminent procession of cultural and political big-shots drawn calling by.
Sophia Peabody Hawthorne was rapturous about her visit to ‘the illustrious Casa Guidi:
….Mr Browning appeared, and welcomed us cordially. In a church opposite the house, a melodious choir was chanting . . . . The music, the stars, the flowers, Mr. Browning and his child... Then Mrs. Browning came out to us — very small, delicate, dark and expressive. She looked like a spirit…her sweet, sad eyes, musing and farseeing and weird.
‘Weird’ is not meant unkindly and other contemporaries said similar (‘an Egyptian cat Goddess’). Five stars for the decor, though:
… a lofty, spacious apartment, hung with gobelin tapestry and pictures …filled with carved furniture …. Everything harmonized — poet, poetess, child, house, the rich air and the starry night . . .Tea was brought and served on a long narrow table, placed before a sofa, and Mrs. Browning presided .
All was not chianti and ice cream in Florence. In 1848 the outbreak of revolutions across Europe upended established political order. Both Barrett-Brownings were public supporters of the revolutionaries and EBB was a particularly passionate fellow traveller. When the tide turned, and the initial victories dissolved, the setbacks took a physiological toll.
The pain of family separation also remained raw, despite reconciliation with three of the Barrett brothers. Edward Moulton Barrett’s door remained bolted though and her letters to him unopened.
Despite everything, Elizabeth never stopped loving ‘dearest Papa’ and prayed for reconciliation. She also remained haunted by earlier tragedies. The drowning of her brother, Edward in 1840 had inspired Grief (1843) and she returns to the theme in Died (1860). A profound sense of loss drew her towards the new fashion for spiritualism. Robert was not on board, as Sophia Peabody Hawthorne succinctly notes:
Mr. Browning introduced the subject of spiritualism, and there was an animated talk. Mr. Browning cannot believe, and Mrs. Browning cannot help believing.
The death of her father in April 1857 was followed by that of other key figures, including her sister Henrietta three years later. EBB’s always fragile health deteriorated, leaving her ‘prostrated her emotionally and physically’. Yet she kept writing and polemicising for the cause of Italian nationalism, publishing Poems before Congress in 1860.
In June 1861 she died the in the arms of her husband. Browning said that she died “smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl’s…. Her last word was… ‘Beautiful’ "
