p. 54
Mary MB to EBB 5 July 1824, #195.
Cf. ‘The Tempest’, ‘A Sea-Side Meditation’, ‘Life and Death’, ‘To a Poet’s Child’.
Charles Knight is the newly fashionable publisher of Knight’s Quarterly, ‘If Knight delays giving you an answer soon I would beg Sam to remove your Poem into some other hand.’ Edward B MB to EBB 16 August 1825, #220.
The Jewish Expositor, produced by the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews, publishes one of Elizabeth’s poems in January.
p. 55
In Greek mythology, the Pierian spring is the Macedonian fount of knowledge and playground of infant muses. EBB, An Essay on Mind Bk II, Ll. 908–11, 914–15 and Notes to Bk II (i). For more on Irving, see http://ebbarchive.org/poems/who_art_thou_of_the_veiled_countenance.php [retrieved 9 January 2019].
‘Along the banks of the Danube…’ EBB, ‘Untitled Essay’.
p. 56
EBB to Edward B MB c.March 1821, #119.
p. 57
Coventry Patmore, ‘The Dean’s Consent’ in The Angel in the House, 1854, Ll. 65–66.
McSwiney matriculated at St Patrick’s Maynooth, and the likelihood is that his MA in Classics is from the college.
‘Miss Sauce-box…’ Edward MB and Daniel McSwiney to EBB 18 March 1821, #125. McSwiney teases EBB that ‘instead of eulogizing my recent Heroism you […] assimilate it to the most ordinary rencontre among ordinary men’. EBB to Samuel MB 16 June 1814, #16; EBB to Samuel MB November 1818, #77; McSwiney ‘does not quite detest a glass of wine’ in EBB’s unpublished poem ‘Visions’ dated 17 January 1819, Reconstruction, D1097.
p. 58
John Kenyon to EBB 12 July 1826, #237.
p. 59
William Gilpin, An Essay on the Picturesque (London: J. Robson, 1794).
Gilpin first articulated the idea in 1768 in his at the time anonymous Essay on Prints. His identity was revealed in the third edition: William Gilpin, An Essay on Prints (London: R. Blamire, 1781). In the French tradition, ‘The ground is like the canvas of the picture’ according to C. H. Watelet in 1774 in Essay on Gardens: A Chapter in the French Picturesque (republished Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvannia Press, 2003). See also Réné Girardin, An Essay on Landscape (London, 1783).
Another friend of Price is fellow Herefordian exponent Richard Payne Knight of Downton Castle, in the north of the county.
William Wordsworth, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798’, Ll. 15–19. AL, Bk 1, Ll. 594–600.
p. 60
Sir Uvedale Price to EBB 1 July 1826, #236.
EBB Diary, 7 June 1831.
p. 61
Papa’s verdict: ‘Untitled Essay’ 4 February 1827: ‘ “I advise you to burn the wretched thing.” […] I have hardly ever been mortified as I was mortified last night—but perhaps this also will do me good.’
‘I regret…’ EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd 2 March 1827, #253. Boyd was born 23 March 1781.
‘The Conversation was down five degrees below freezing. Every body thinking what to say next—except Mrs Waddington who does not seem to think at all.’ EBB to Henrietta MB c.November 1826, #240.
p. 62
‘Mama was on the lawn…’ Henrietta MB to EBB 24 February 1827, #250.
‘As I have taken the liberty of calling you Ba, I shall not be more ceremonious in writing than in speaking’, Price to EBB 17 November 1826, #241; ‘ “Ba” is much better pleased to hear from you than “Miss Barrett” could be’, EBB to Price c.December 1826, #242.
‘As a female…’ EBB to Boyd 3 November 1827, #275. EBB explains her mother was unwell: EBB to Boyd 15 March 1828, #288. ‘I was the cause…’ EBB to Elizabeth Moulton and Mary Trepsack 17 March 1828, #290.
p. 63
Boyd has published a number of translations of classical Greek and the Church Fathers since his debut, Luceria, A Tragedy, in the year of EBB’s birth. Elizabeth sometimes tests him on long passages of classical Greek verse he has memorised.
‘Awhile they sailed…’: Boyd writes two poems on this theme, ‘A Day of Pleasure at Malvern’ and ‘A Malvern Tale’.
The Gentleman’s Magazine reviewed Boyd’s Thoughts on an Illustrious Exile, Occasioned by the Persecution of the Protestants in 1815, with other Poems: ‘Mr Boyd is a Greek scholar; and energetic poet (as most blank-verse men are); and we are truly glad to see once more the unimprovable classical style, recently neglected for the rhymed prose which was brought into vogue by Lord Byron.’ Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle vol. 96 (London: John Nichols & Son, February 1826), p. 156. EBB lends Boyd Price’s Essay on the Modern Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, hot off the press, and passes back his praise to the author.
p. 64
Boyd married the eldest child of influential, polymathic and self-made engraver Wilson Lowry in 1805. Raised by a stepmother from the age of eight, she may not have had the happiest of lives.
‘Rather young looking than otherwise…’ EBB to Elizabeth Moulton and Mary Trepsack 17 March 1828, #290. ‘Really all the young ladies…’ EBB Diary, 22 June 1831. ‘Miss Steers…’ EBB Diary, 18 June 1831. Reading Tom Jones: EBB Diary, 24 June 1831. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (London: A. Millar, 1749).
p. 65
‘Alfieri’ of B—T—to EBB c.February 1829, #332. ‘I suspect…’ EBB Diary, 4 June 1831. ‘Kissing the rod…’ EBB Diary, 1 July 1831.
p. 66
Misses Bordman and Mushet: EBB Diary, 15 November 1831 and 29 December 1831. ‘Put his hat…’ EBB Diary, 19 July 1831. ‘Attacked me… Ought to love him…’ EBB Diary, 21 June 1831. ‘Adam made fig leaves… Thoughts of my heart…’ EBB Diary, 4 June 1831. ‘On opening my drawer…’ EBB Diary, 25 June 1831.
p. 67
The Athenaeum vol. 456 (23 July 1836). ‘Nothing else… I feel bitterly…’ EBB Diary, 29 June 1831.
A full account of the inheritance dispute appears in Robert A. Barrett, ‘Note on Barrett v Barrett’ in Michael Meredith, ed, Browning Society Notes vol. 22 (December 1994), pp. 61–68.
‘Empty minded…’ EBB Diary, 7 July 1831. On 23 April 1832, ‘Mrs Boyd is certainly an extraordinary woman, to be Mrs Boyd’. ‘I am quite aware that in your late removal I had no right or shadow of right, to be considered; & I sincerely hope that both you & Annie may gain from it as much happiness as you expect, – & as I have lost.’ EBB to Boyd and Ann Lowry Boyd 17 May 1832, #451.
p. 68
‘How very very very unkindly…’ EBB Diary, 4 June 1831. ‘Some talking…’ EBB Diary, 14 June 1831.
Boyd had published The Fathers not Papists, with Select Passages and Tributes to the Dead just two years earlier. Elizabeth’s report that, ‘The bride looked very lovely, & behaved very well—I mean, without demonstrating in any unbecoming manner, the agitation which was within her evidently’, implies a continued and shared low opinion of Annie. EBB to Boyd 2 August 1837, #578. Annie’s unhappy, childless marriage may be a mere match of financial convenience for Henry William Hayes, who turns out a bankrupt (twice) and an adulterer. In 1855 Annie divorces him for adultery. He has a number of illegitimate children before dying intestate. Annie’s revenge is to live till ninety. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hayes-2303 [retrieved 3 March 2019].
‘Driving to church…’ EBB Diary, 5 June 1831.
Nonconformist adherents number some 56,000 in 1791, 360,000 in 1836, and 1,463,000 in 1851. Numbers of Congregationalists and Baptists also swelled. John Cannon and Robert Crowcroft, eds, The Oxford Companion to British History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 1040.
‘To make me glow…’ EBB Diary, 5 June 1831.
p. 69
‘Seven chapters…’ EBB Diary, 16 June 1831. Elizabeth dislikes Anglicanism’s ‘ “holy mysteries” &c. What mystery is there, can there be, in this simple rite?’ EBB Diary, 25 September 1831. But she records, ‘Bummy expressed a general dislike towards the Methodists
’ EBB Diary, 8 June 1831. Bummy requests confidentiality: EBB Diary, 4 July 1831.
EBB tells Julia Martin of her mother’s ‘first agony of grief’ and of her subsequent ‘frequent bursts of tears’. EBB to Julia Martin 15 November 1827, #276.
p. 70
‘Not quite so gay…’ Mary MB to EBB 1 October 1828, #321. E B MB’s raw grief: E B MB to his children 3 January 1831, #393. ‘I dare say God…’ EBB to Henrietta MB c.10 October 1828, #324. ‘She read…’ Edward MB to Julia Martin c.9 October 1828, SD674.
p. 71
EBB, ‘Glimpses’.
BOOK FOUR
Epigraph
AL Bk 7, L. 411.
p. 74
EBB to Julia Martin 28 August 1832, #462.
p. 75
Papa ‘shrinks’ and even afterwards, ‘never up to this moment, has he even alluded to the subject […] he had not power to say one word’. #462.
‘The drawing room’s four windows…’ #462.
Cricket in Jamaica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cricket_in_the_West_Indies_to_1918 Henrietta’s sketch is collected in The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3, facing p. 256.
Sunset was at 19.18 in Hereford on 23 August 1832. The moon in its last quarter: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1832&country=9 [retrieved 3 Feb 2019].
p. 76
‘A broken down man…’ Mary Russell Mitford to Lady Dacre 3 July 1836, SD804.
‘I cannot dwell…’ #462. Julia Martin’s father was Revd John Vignoles of Portarlington, County Laois. James was third son of the Martins banking family of Overbury Court, a little over twenty miles away. They married on 20 Sept 1819. https://www.stirnet.com/genie/data/british/mm4ae/martin07.php [retrieved 3 Feb 2019].
p. 77
EBB guessed on the previous Monday, 14 May 1832, that the Boyds would move ‘the next day or the one after’. So they left on Tuesday 15 May. EBB to Boyd, 17 May 1832 #451. The diary breaks off before this farewell; wilder entries after 1 January 1832 were posthumously excised by her brother George, who had possession of the second volume.
‘I never could apprehend…’ EBB to Boyd 26 May 1832, #452.
‘Looking back…’ is quoted in EBB to Boyd 17 May 1832, #451.
Correspondence with the Revd Commeline lapses: ‘The conjunction of so much talent & so much indolence always appears to me a minor miracle.’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks 15 November 1833, #483. EBB to Boyd 27 January 1832, #439.
p. 78
EBB to Julia Martin 14 December 1832, #470. ‘They are incredulous here in my really thinking that you will not come to Sidmouth. But I do think so.’ EBB to Boyd 2 November 1832, #468; EBB to Boyd 22 November 1832, #469. EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks 15 May 1833, #478.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1856) vol. 3, Part 4.
‘A footstep…’ AL Bk. 6, Ll. 391–92.
‘I have been riding a donkey two or three times, & enjoy very much going to the edge of the sea’, EBB to Julia Martin 28 August 1832, #462. EBB to Julia Martin 27 May 1833, #479.
‘We are all squeezed…’ Arabella MB to Ann Henrietta Boyd, 22 November 1832, #SD756. ‘We have had one chimney pulled down to prevent it from tumbling down; and have received especial injunctions from the bricklayers, not to lean too much out of the windows, for fear the walls should follow the destiny of the chimney.’ EBB to Julia Martin 7 September 1833, #481.
p. 79
‘No ties…’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks 14 September 1834, #488.
‘A pretty villa…’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks 15 November 1833, #483. Since extended, the house, now ‘Cedar Shade’, became first a hotel and then an old people’s home.
‘On dit…’ EBB to Julia Martin, 28 August 1832, #462. In fairness, Papa also sends Henrietta, escorted by Bro, to Torquay, where she is ‘far gayer than I should like to be, tho’ not I believe gayer than she liked to be’, #478.
‘Very full…’ #488.
Sixteen-year-old Henry has joined his father and, ‘Henrietta & Arabella & I are the only guardians just now of the three youngest boys the only ones at home’, EBB to Julia Martin 19 December 1834 #493. The brothers in Glasgow studied under an ‘Independent minister’, Dr Wardlaw, of whom Edward Barrett approved. ‘Georgie […] was examined in Logic, Moral philosophy, Greek & Latin […] his answers were more pertinent than those of any other of the examined, & elicited much applause.
[…] Stormie shrank from the public examination, on account of the hesitation in his speech. He would not go up,—altho’, according to report, as well qualified as Georgie. Mr Groube says that the ladies of Glasgow are preparing to break their hearts for Georgie’s departure.’
EBB to Boyd 21 April 1835, #504. https://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH8409&type=P and https://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/browse-graduates/?start=280&max=20&o=&l=b [retrieved 9 Oct 2019]
p. 80
‘Papa took him…’ #483.
‘A party led by Mr. Barrett would have prohibited the use of the cattle whip in the field, and the flogging of women under any circumstances, but they were overruled. Even a modified amendment, to substitute the military cat for the atrocious cattle whip, and to prevent unnecessary exposure when women were whipped, was rejected by twenty-four against seventeen.’ William James Gardner, A History of Jamaica (London: Elliot Stock, 1873), p. 263. Responding to Uncle Sam, Howick agreed that the hardliner plantocracy were, ‘Only putting arms into the hands of the extreme Anti-Slavery party, & making it more difficult to prevent the adoption of some violent course.’ Lord Howick to Samuel Barrett Moulton-Barrett 7 October 1831, SD745. Uncle Sam was MP for Richmond, Yorkshire 1820–28.
The Assembly’s estimate: March 1832 report quoted in Mary Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787–1834 (Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1982), p. 121.
p. 81
‘All her negroes…’ Joseph Shore in John Stewart, ed, In Old St James (Jamaica) (Kingston, Jamaica: Aston W. Gardner & Co., 1911), p. 98.
Uncle Sam would remarry within two years, to Anne Elizabeth Gordon, daughter of plantation owners.
Papa agreed arrangements that Knibb proposed. Marks, The Family of the Barrett, p. 411.
In January 1831 the Colonial Church Union was founded, allegedly to support the established church, and in practice to try to force the closure of Nonconformist chapels by any means, including false imprisonment and arson.
Sharpe was hanged on 23 May 1832. He was buried in the sands of Montego Bay Harbour and later reinterred beneath the pulpit of Burchell Baptist Church.
Uncle Sam decreed Saturdays should be taken off: ‘Even during crop time.’ Marks, The Family of the Barrett, p. 410.
‘Highly disapprove…’ Mr McDonald, Custos of Trelawny, to the Governor of Jamaica, quoted in R. A. Barrett, The Barretts of Jamaica, p. 85.
p. 82
Sending in troops: R. A. Barrett, The Barretts of Jamaica, p. 86. Marks, The Family of the Barrett, pp. 406–407. The timing of Bro’s arrival in Jamaica: by 1833 the Atlantic crossing takes twenty-two days; Bro left Gravesend on 13 November 1833. ‘An exile…’ #488. ‘The West Indians…’ #479.
The scandal of the Baptist War is uncovered by two governmental inquiries within two years. Henry Belby, Death Struggles of Slavery: Being a Narrative of Facts and Incidents, Which Occurred in a British Colony, During the Two Years Immediately preceding Negro Emancipation (London: Hamilton & Adams and Co., 1853), Chapter IV ‘Blood’, pp. 25–36.
The Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, founded by William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson et al., was succeeded in 1839 by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which campaigned for worldwide abolition. The book triggered competing defamation suits. Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. With a Supplement by the Editor (London and Edinburgh: F. Westley and A. H. Davis, and Waugh & Innes, 1831), pp. 22–23.
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p. 83
The Office of Commissioners of Compensation announced compensation conditions with a set of General Rules governing ownership of slaves on 31 March 1834, and the compensation pot in the London Gazette on 18 April 1834. Marks, The Family of the Barrett, p. 444.
‘Of course you know…’ #481.
p. 84
‘Veneering…’ EBB to Mitford 5 April 1845, #1880.
For a full account of ‘Handsome Sam’’s case, see Robert A. Barrett, ‘Note on Barrett v Barrett’ in Browning Society Notes, vol. 22 (December 1994), pp. 61–68.
‘A cousin came…’ Mitford to Lady Dacre 3 July 1836, SD804. ‘Papa has been away from us in London, six weeks this summer. I was glad of it, as it seemed to bring him a pleasant variety to what I fear he sometimes feels as monotony.’ #488.
p. 85
‘Without him…’ EBB to Julia Martin 19 December 1834, #493.
Treppy uses the term ‘black’: for example, a letter from her and Elizabeth’s brother Sam to Henrietta MB 20 July 1828, SD667.
‘She has nursed…’ EBB to RB 2 June 1846 (2), #2395. UCL Legacies of British Slave-ownership https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/23359 [retrieved 27 September 2019].
p. 86
For nuanced discussion of EBB’s Congregationalism see Karen Dieleman, Religious Imaginaries: The Liturgical and Poetic Practices of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2012), pp. 25–29.
‘Madness!…’ EBB to Miss Mitford 12 November 1842, #1047. Soliciting letters: EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks 14 September 1834, #488; EBB to Julia Martin 19 December 1834, #493.
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