How Do I Love Thee?

by Nancy Moser

  Chapter 4

  Her name: Virtually no one called her Elizabeth. She signed her letters to nonfamily members E.B.B., and family and friends called her Ba.

  Chapter 5

  Lord Bulwer-Lytton was a popular writer of his day. Some famous phrases of his are “the great unwashed,” “pursuit of the almighty dollar,” “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and “It was a dark and stormy night.” Despite his popularity then, today his name is a byword for bad writing. San Jose State University’s annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing is named after him.

  Actually, Flush was stolen (this, the first of two times) near their home while Crow was walking him alone on Mortimer Street.

  The guinea did not exist as an actual coin, but prices were still quoted in guineas (got that?). The guinea was a nonexistent denomination worth twenty-one shillings (or one shilling more than a pound). A servant had all living expenses taken care of but earned as little as ten pounds a year. You were considered to be middle class if you had at least one servant. Some vicars earned as little as forty or fifty pounds a year. So five guineas equaled approximately five pounds, which was 10 percent of a vicar’s yearly wage! All to ransom a dog.

  Chapter 6

  Sette’s nearly mortal wound from fencing actually happened in November 1842, but for the story’s sake, I placed it in 1844.

  Although Anna Jameson did not have her portrait in Horne’s A New Spirit of the Age, I fudged to further the story of her meeting with Ba.

  Henry Horne’s book A New Spirit of the Age bombed. He’d chosen the wrong literary figures and was offensive in his criticism. He got in trouble for not including statesmen, artists, and scientists too. He’d planned to write other volumes encompassing those areas of expertise, but when this book failed, he wisely decided not to. He ran off to Germany instead.

  Chapter 7

  Ba’s book dedication was very flowery. Papa ate it up. It proved to him that she was dependent, was contrite for her flaws, and loved him to the point where he knew he had no rival. With Bro dead, he was her everything. For a while . . .

  Chapter 8

  Mary Mitford rides a train to London. Ba can’t imagine riding in one. With good cause. In 1845 there were no toilets on trains (not until 1892), no dining cars (1879), no lighting. Yet being able to travel 20 miles per hour was worth the limitations. Originally there were only two classes, first and second, second meaning you traveled in open cars! Ba would not have fared well under such conditions.

  Chapter 9

  Le Rouge et le Noir—The Red and the Black—the novel by Stendhal that Ba read . . . Stendhal was considered the father of the psychological novel. Up until this time novelists used dialogue and omniscient narrative.They didn’t linger in the heads and hearts of the characters. Ba read this book in its original French.

  Regarding the letters that are quoted in this book: Robert and Ba agreed not to edit their letters, so they were sent to each other as is. I, however, did edit them, as they often were a little stream-ofconsciousness in tone, as one thought led to another, and another. I also changed the punctuation to be more easily readable. But the letters in this book are based on real letters. I did not change their essence.

  Robert noted the times and dates of his visits with Ba on the back of the envelopes from their letters.

  Surtees Cook and Henrietta were cousins. They shared the same great-grandfather, Roger Altham, whose daughter married John Graham-Clarke, Henrietta’s mother’s father. My advice? Don’t even try to get this straight.

  Chapter 10

  Ba’s response to Robert’s too-forward letter is real. It was written on Friday evening, May 23, 1845. It actually took her a bit of time to get the courage to write back. In fact, her letter starts: “I intended to write to you last night and this morning, and could not.” No one knows what Robert’s letter said, as it was destroyed at Ba’s request—their only letter destroyed. But her “recoiled by instinct” response and a few other phrases are directly from Ba’s real reaction. It must have been some letter.

  I don’t know if Ba went out to post the letter, but it’s a nice thought, yes?

  Chapter 11

  Robert hated Ba’s opium use, but she saw nothing wrong with it—and never stopped using it. It was not considered a bad drug as it is now. Another word for opium is laudanum. It was taken by drops mixed with alcohol. Ba took forty doses a day, but as biographer Margaret Forster said, “Without knowing the strength of the alcohol with which the grains of opium were mixed it is still impossible to estimate the dosage correctly.” Ba did not suffer many of the negative symptoms often associated with opium misuse: a permanent headache, loss of memory, hallucinations. But she was addicted to it.

  The conversation about Bro’s death is taken from an August 25, 1845, letter that Ba sent to Robert. It was the first time she ever spoke of it—to anyone.

  Chapter 12

  According to Ba’s letter of January 19, 1846, the London post did not run on Sundays (to her dismay) but often came more than once a day. The postman knocked on her door—at 8 pm—with a letter! A letter could be sent for a penny for a half ounce, hence the term penny post.

  The timing of when Ba wrote the sonnets that were to become her legacy is unknown. She wrote them for her eyes only. Yet the specific emotions expressed in the sonnets seem to fit with some of the incidents mentioned in their letters. Make sure you read the Sonnets From the Portuguese offered in the back of this book. They are lovely.

  It is interesting that both Ba and Henrietta loved men who possessed personalities opposite that of their father. Neither Robert nor Surtees were controlling. Both were nurturing. Even Arabel eventually found a nurturing man to have in her life—a pastor friend. But they never married.

  In chapter 12, the verses Elizabeth quotes—1 Corinthians 13:4–7 in the King James Version—oddly use the word charity instead of love. I assume that eventually proved to be an inaccurate translation, since all versions since have used love. I inserted love for charity.

  I could not find any reference to an actual proposal like this, because Robert was effusive from the beginning about his feelings for Ba, and often talked of their future together. But I thought there needed to be an actual proposal moment, and so . . . here it is.

  Chapter 13

  Robert was not experienced with women but tended to like those older than he. His “loves” before Ba had been sisters who were nine and seven years older (Eliza and Sarah Flower) and Euprasia Fanny Haworth, who was eleven years his elder. They were more patrons than girlfriends. In many ways, Robert didn’t need the love of a woman. He had his mother and sister to adore him. Biographer Frances Winwar said, “Love itself, however, the great gift of heart, soul, emotion, imagination, of self complete yet yearning for completion, Browning had given to no woman. . . . With Browning love and worship were one.”

  The scenes with Ba and Henrietta and then Ba and her father are fictitious. Her brothers never knew about her relationship with Robert (although they probably guessed but were too chicken to ask), but she did tell her sisters, as per an October 11, 1845, letter. I like to imagine her trying to confront her father. . . .

  Constance Hedley, Ba’s cousin who was getting married, was actually named Arabella. But since Ba had a sister of the same name, I changed her name to be less confusing. The same applies for her uncle Robert, whom I named Bernard. The nerve-wracking conversations with Aunt Jane in chapters 13 and 14 really happened and helped spur Ba toward a quicker marriage.

  Ba lived in a world without music, but when she was exposed, it affected her greatly. The incident of going to church and being frightened by the grand organ is real. Another time her cousin sang a sad song from Bellini’s opera I Puritani that caused her to leave the room, sobbing. Today it’s hard to imagine not having music in our lives.

  Ba’s prayer, May God direct us toward the best way, is real, and is taken from her letter dated July 16, 1846, to Robert.

  Chapter 14r />
  The storm that kept Robert at the Barrett house, the one she finally sent him into, was the worst storm to hit London since 1809.

  The conversation with Cousin John, where Ba thinks he’s suspicious about her relationship with Robert, and he’s actually talking about Henrietta and Surtees Cook, is real. Things were definitely getting dicey!

  Hearing the St. Marylebone Church bells and the verbal exchange really happened!

  Chapter 15

  I find it interesting (and very fortunate) that the Barrett household was packing for a move just when Ba needed to pack for her escape with Robert. God was watching out for her.

  Although Robert and Ba had to travel light when they left England, both of them took their letters with them—and aren’t we glad they did! During their courtship they exchanged 573 letters and had 91 meetings. The first time they met outside her room was for their marriage. You can see these letters in a collection at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They have the mail slot from Wimpole Street too. Another good museum is at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. They have various Barrett-Browning furniture, jewelry, household goods, a lock of Ba’s hair . . .

  Papa boxed up Ba’s books, and she had to pay five pounds a year for storage until she sent for them two years later.

  Casa Guidi in Florence still exists and is open to the public. It was a suite of eight rooms. The history of the building dates back to the fifteenth century. Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning leased one of the apartments in 1847, and it was their home for the remaining fourteen years of their married life. Pen Browning acquired the palazzo in 1893 and initiated efforts to establish Casa Guidi as a memorial to his parents. He died in 1912, with his wish uncompleted. In 1970, Casa Guidi was nearly converted into commercial offices. Through a fund-raising campaign initiated by the New York Browning Society, seven rooms of the original eight were retained. Funding issues led to Eton College taking it over in 1993, when it was restored.

  Chapter 16

  Ba did give up morphine/opium while she was pregnant with Pen, and Robert said that by doing so she exhibited an extraordinary strength equal to that of a thousand men.

  The angel portrait that so inspired Robert also inspired the Fano Club, started by William Lyon Phelps, a professor emeritus of English literature at Yale University who was fascinated with the inspiration for Robert’s poem. On Easter in 1912, Phelps led a small group to Fano, Italy, where they saw the painting “The Guardian Angel” in San Agostino. Between them, they gathered 75 postcards to mail to America; unfortunately, all of the postcards went down on the Titanic. The Fano Club still exists. In order to become a member, you must make a pilgrimage to the church, see the painting, and mail a postcard from Fano to the library at Baylor University stating that you have seen the painting.

  Chapter 17

  Sarianna sent three letters to Robert to tell him of their mother’s death. The first conveyed congratulations on the birth of Robert’s son, the next said their mother was very ill, and then the third told Robert of her death. The second letter was actually written when she was already dead, but Sarianna was trying to lessen the shock. Although Robert’s family received word of Pen’s birth before Mrs. Browning’s death, they did not tell her (on doctor’s orders), thinking it would “overexcite the woman who was now dying from a sudden ossification of the heart.” As a grandmother myself, I think they should have told her. He turned out to be the only grandchild. Sarianna never married and spent her life committed to her father, her brother, and her nephew.

  Discussion Questions for

  How Do I Love Thee?

  In chapter 2, Papa delays bringing Ba back to London from Torquay for a year after Bro’s death. What do you think his motives were?

  In chapter 3, Ba says: “Knowing the foibles and weaknesses of myself and my siblings, I could not consider the gift of more freedom as being a good thing, or wise. Together, we Barretts became strong, each providing some needed aspect of a whole.” How could freedom be a bad thing? In your own life, how do members of your family provide “some needed aspect of a whole”?

  Ba gets frustrated that, as a woman, she can’t have a job, and Bro—who can and should work—doesn’t want to. Though nowadays we would not want to go back to the way things were, what are the positive and negative aspects of women succeeding outside the home?

  At first Ba wrote anonymously (as did Jane Austen forty years earlier). Put yourself in their place. How would it make you feel to not be able to put your name on your work? How might not taking credit for something be a character builder?

  Ba is petrified of meeting people, of going out into the world. Does this trait elicit your compassion or your disgust? Why?

  When Flush is kidnapped in chapter 5, Papa refuses to pay the five-guinea ransom and the thief leaves. Ba wants to confront her father, but Crow says, “You can’t do that. You know you can’t. Your father . . .” Ba’s internal response is, She was right. If I were to burst into the dining room and demand my father make the ridiculous payment . . . All that I was, all that I tried so hard to be, would be lost. What do you think she was talking about?

  In chapter 8, when Ba gets her first letter from Robert, it is very flowery and gushing: I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett . . . She had no way to know this was his normal tone—extravagant and full of flattery. Yet what might have happened if his letter had been more formal, like the ones she was used to getting from colleagues?

  In chapter 9, Ba is at a turning point between her old life and the life Robert inspires. What do you think would have happened to Ba if Robert hadn’t come along, if he hadn’t sent that first letter?

  After their first meeting, Robert goes overboard and moves the relationship along too fast, too soon. How would you have reacted to his actions?

  Chapter 11 brings about a huge revelation in Ba’s life. She wants to go to Pisa, but Papa is against it. She decides to sacrifice her wants for his. But then, he does not appreciate her sacrifice and she is faced with the limitations of his love for her. Name a time you have sacrificed for a loved one, only to find your act unappreciated. What did you feel? What did you learn?

  In chapter 12, Ba’s world is widening because of loving and being loved. She begins to write her sonnets for her own satisfaction and release. Do you keep a journal or diary? Or poems? What do you gain through this?

  Do you think Bro’s death prepared Ba for the love that was to come—left a hole to be filled? How might things have been different if Bro had lived?

  As Robert and Ba plan their marriage, how does she begin to exhibit courage?

  In chapter 14, Ba shares the story about the tree hit by lightning in Hope End. . . . I see a symbolism in regard to Christ, the branches, the bird singing, and even the name of their home. Read the passage aloud. What symbolism can you see?

  In chapter 14, what do you think about their plans to marry and then return to their homes for a week? Should they have eloped to France or Italy and married there? Why or why not?

  Traveling in Europe, Ba finally receives letters from Papa and George. Horrible letters. Putting yourself in the men’s shoes . . . what fueled their anger? Did they have a right to be angry?

  Living in Italy was at times idyllic, yet Robert wasn’t writing very much and was proving to not be a good provider. Should Ba have reacted differently than she did? Were there signs regarding this element of Robert’s character that Ba missed?

  The Brownings’ romance and parenthood was especially poignant because it came later in life. How might their relationship have been different if they had met twenty years earlier?

  It’s ironic that Elizabeth is known for the sonnets she wrote for herself. Her other works have fallen into a measure of literary obscurity. What would you like to be known for? What legacy will you leave?

  By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  INDEX OF FIRST LINES

  I I thought once how Theocritus had sung