Yesterday my good friend and another lover of beautiful things, Ant, sent Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s Sonnet 43 with the commentary “How fabulous is this poem??…If you know the back story of the poem, your bones will tingle!” Yes, she really said tingle. She didn’t stop there, “It reeks of love!” were her final words on the topic. Go on Ant, tell us how you REALLY feel. Lol.

Everyone knows it or knows about Sonnet 43, especially its infamous beginning lines “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” They have been referenced in many movies. So because I know Ant is a wise woman and I value her opinion, off I went to read up on the history of Sonnet 43. A beautiful love story as rich as the poem.

Sonnet 43
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 candle-light.
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 thee 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 but love thee better after death.

-Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

I think I might begin to find and include the back-stories of the poems I love and put up on this blog.

Elizabeth Barrett was born in Durham England in 1806, the first daughter of affluent parents who owned sugar plantations in Jamaica. She was home-schooled and read voraciously in history, philosophy and literature. Young Elizabeth learned Hebrew in order to read original Bible texts and Greek in order to read original Greek drama and philosophy. She began writing poems when she was 12 years old, though she did not publish her first collection for another twenty years.

Elizabeth Barrett developed a serious respiratory ailment by age 15 and a horse riding accident shortly thereafter left her with a serious spinal injury. These two health problems remained with her all of her life.

In 1828 her mother died and four years later the family business faltered and her father sold the Durham estate and moved the family to a coastal town. He was stern, protective, and even tyrannical and forbid any of his children to marry. In 1833 Elizabeth published her first work, a translation of Prometheus Bound by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus.
A few years later the family moved to London. Her father began sending Elizabeth’s younger brothers and sisters to Jamaica to help with the family business. Elizabeth was distressed because she openly opposed slavery in Jamaica and on the family plantations and because she did not want her siblings sent away.

In 1838 Elizabeth Barrett wrote and published The Seraphim and Other Poems. The collection took the form of a classical Greek tragedy and expressed her deep Christian sentiments.
Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth’s poor health prompted her to move to Italy, accompanied by her dear brother Edward, whom she referred to as “Bro.” Unfortunately he drowned a year later in a sailing accident and Elizabeth retuned to London, seriously ill, emotionally broken, and hopelessly grief-stricken. She became reclusive for the next five years, confining herself to her bedroom.

She continued to write poetry, however, and published a collection in 1844 simply titled, Poems. It was also published in the United States with an introduction by Edgar Allan Poe. In one of the poems she praised one of the works of Robert Browning, which gained his attention. He wrote back to her, expressing his admiration for Poems.
When she returned to Wimpole Street, she became an invalid and a recluse, spending most of the next five years in her bedroom, seeing only one or two people other than her immediate family.

One of those people was John Kenyon, a wealthy and convivial friend of the arts. Her 1844 Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the land, and inspired Robert Browning to write her, telling her how much he loved her poems. Kenyon arranged for Browning to come see her in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Browning really loved her as much as he professed to, and her doubts are expressed in the Sonnets from the Portuguese which she wrote over the next two years.

Love Story

Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning appear as one of most romantic literary couple from the Victorian period. After reading her poems for the first time, Robert wrote to her: “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett–I do, as I say, love these verses with all my heart.”

With that first meeting of hearts and minds, a love affair would blossom between the two. Elizabeth told Mrs. Martin that she was “getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning, poet and mystic; and we are growing to be the truest of friends.” During the 20 months of their courtship, the couple exchanged nearly 600 letters. But what is love without obstacles and hardships? As Frederic Kenyon writes, “Mr. Browning knew that he was asking to be allowed to take charge of an invalid’s life—believed indeed that she was even worse than was really the case, and that she was hopelessly incapacitated from ever standing on her feet—-but was sure enough of his love to regard that as no obstacle.”

Their subsequent marriage was a secret matter, taking place on September 12, 1846, at Marylebone Church. Since they were proper Victorians, however, they got married a week before they eloped to Italy. Mr. Barrett disinherited her (as he did each one of his children who got married without his permission, and he never gave his permission). Most of her family members eventually accepted the match, but her father disowned her, would not open her letters, and refused to see her. Elizabeth stood by her husband, and she credited him for saving her life. She wrote to Mrs. Martin: “I admire such qualities as he has—-fortitude, integrity. I loved him for his courage in adverse circumstances which were yet felt by him more literally than I could feel them. Always he has had the greatest power over my heart, because I am of those weak women who reverence strong men.”

Out of their courtship and those early days of marriage came an outpouring of poetic expression. Elizabeth finally gave her little packet of sonnets to her husband, who could not keep them to himself. “I dared not,” he said, “reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare’s.” The collection finally appeared in 1850 as “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” Kenyon writes, “With the single exception of Rossetti, no modern English poet has written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such sincerity, as the two who gave the most beautiful example of it in their own lives.”

The Brownings lived in Italy for the next 15 years of their lives, until Elizabeth died in Robert’s arms on June 29, 1861. It was while they were living there in Italy that they both wrote some of their most memorable poems.
The romance between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett is legendary. Here’s the first letter that Robert Browning sent to Elizabeth, who would eventually become his wife. Read on.

Love Letter

January 10th, 1845
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey

I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,–and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,–whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing: since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me–for in the first flush of delight I thought I would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration–perhaps even, as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some little good to be proud of herafter!–but nothing comes of it all–so into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew… oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat and prized highly and put in a book with a proper account at bottom, and shut up and put away… and the book called a ‘Flora’, besides!

After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time; because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give reason for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought–but in this addressing myself to you, your own self, and for the first time, my feeling rises altogher. I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart– and I love you too: do you know I was once seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to me one morning “would you like to see Miss Barrett?”–then he went to announce me,–then he returned… you were too unwell — and now it is years ago–and I feel as at some untorward passage in my travels–as if I had been close, so close, to some world’s-wonder in chapel on crypt,… only a screen to push and I might have entered — but there was some slight… so it now seems… slight and just-sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be!

Well, these Poems were to be–and this true thankful joy and pride with which I feel myself.

Yours ever faithfully,

Robert Browning

(Errr how disturbingly cute is this?!? Why doesn’t anyone send love letters anymore? I love how there just seems to be a continuous stream of consciousness to the letter, no full stops as though he is literally pouring out his heart on paper; free-flow, non-stop. Such a cute thing…*ahem* if you’re a soppy romantic not a real ice-queen-cum-e-thug like me! *ahem*)

All details gotten from: The beautiful Anthonia; http://classiclit.about.com/od/loveliterature/a/aa_browning.htm; and
http://ezinearticles.com/?Elizabeth-Barrett-Browning:-A-Discussion-of-How-Do-I-Love-Thee?&id=13270;