How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life

by Mameve Medwed

  “Yes indeed,” agrees the expert. “Indeed,” he repeats. “And that makes all the difference.”

  “It does?” I sense my mouth hanging open, unhinged like a Howdy Doody jaw. Still, I wouldn’t mind looking as astonished as Howdy Doody’s owner if only to see $1,000–$1,200 flash beneath my big O lips.

  “Well, let me tell you about this pot,” Mort confides. He’s taking his time. Not giving anything away. He leans back. His chair creaks. “But first let me ask you something else. Did your mother, in all her travels, spend time in Italy?”

  The guy must be psychic. “Why, yes. It was her favorite country. She and Henri—her friend, friends—spent months at a time there. In Florence particularly.”

  “Aha. Just as I thought.”

  “Does the chamber pot come from Florence?” I ask. “By way of Portugal?” I add. I try to remember European history. A freshman-year survey course. Did the Italians colonize the Portuguese? Did the Portuguese colonize Italy? Did I get that far in the syllabus?

  “We-ell-ell-ell…” He stretches the word, then follows with an excruciating pause. The camera moves closer. I’m boiling. I tug at my turtleneck. Sweat beads my upper lip. Rivulets pour down my forehead. If we don’t get this Roadshow on the road, I’ll disappear into a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  Which is starting to look pretty appealing. Why did I come here in the first place?

  He leans toward me. “Tell me,” he asks. “Did you ever hear of Elizabeth Barrett Browning?”

  I flinch. My chair legs skip back. What a question to ask an educated person from an academic family in Cambridge. Even one who gets her Portugal and her Italy mixed up. “Of course,” I say, indignant. “Nineteenth-century poet. Married Robert Browning. Against her father’s wishes. Invalid. Lived on Wimpole Street,” I recite. “Fled to Italy. Regained health. Had a child. Nicknamed Pen. Died in her husband’s arms.” How’s that? I want to ask, show-off that I am. “And of course wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese,” I continue. I freeze. I gasp. Fled to Italy. Wrote Sonnets from the Portuguese.

  “Eureka!” exclaims Mort. He actually claps. “Attagirl,” he cheers.

  I forget about the cameras. I forget that my makeup is sliding off my face. I forget the lugging and the climbing and the waiting-in-line. I forget my exhaustion. I forget my shame. I forget that I, a miz from way back, have been called a girl on national public television. My full attention is riveted on this man across from me. Despite the cast of thousands hustling about, we are the only two in this room. His eyes behind their trifocals hold mine. They are watery with—what? Emotion? Allergies? I lean forward so far into the table that the edge bruises my ribs. It’s all I can do not to grab his wrists and pin him into a wrestler’s hold. “Yes?” I demand.

  “We-ell-ell-ell…” he multisyllables again.

  “So?” I prompt.

  “Your chamber pot belonged to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There’s actually a photo of it glimpsed in her bedroom—half hidden by a coverlet but unmistakable nevertheless—at Casa Guidi, where the Brownings made their Florence home.”

  “Wow!” I shout. “Yikes!” I yell.

  “And there’s more.”

  “More?” I am beside myself. Then puzzle over the meaning of to be beside oneself. How do you parse it? How do you define it in a literal sense? What a strange phrase. One I’ll have to look up in my dictionary of American slang. Unless it’s British. My mind spins out. What is the matter with me? I force my attention back to Mort. My eyes lock with his. I study the lines on his trifocals.

  Mort Grinspan either has the patience of Job or a great sense of dramatic timing. He clears his throat. “This chamber pot is valuable for many reasons.” He holds up his hand. The coat of arms on his pinkie ring gleams. When I look closer, I am disappointed to see it’s not a coat of arms at all, no royal escutcheon, no clenched sheaves of wheat, no family name arched at the top. It’s a Boston College shield, embossed with Class of 1956. No matter. Who knows better than I that a love of antiques, an appreciation for English poetry, can hardly be kept locked inside Ivy League gates. “Though it is not valuable in and of itself. Nineteenth-century ironstone. Italian. A dime a dozen. A lira a dozen, that is, or should I say euro.” He chuckles. “Its value lies in the fact that”—he ticks his fingers—“one, it belonged to the Brownings—and we have the documentation, ergo a photo, to prove it. But that’s not all.”

  I nod. It sounds enough to me. But then I’m not greedy. Or didn’t think I was.

  “Two, the bottom of this chamber pot bears the handwriting of Elizabeth herself, From the Portuguese. So what can we conclude from this?”

  “You’ve got me.” I shrug.

  “That after a hard day of composing sonnets, she woke up in the middle of the night, had the idea for the title, and scratched it on the nearest item in hand.”

  “Which would have been the chamber pot,” I fill in. I pause. “She didn’t have any paper available?” I can’t help myself.

  “Irrelevant.” He waves his hand the way you dismiss the dumbest student in your class.

  Nevertheless, I don’t go to the dunce’s stool in the corner without a fight. “But how do you know it’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s actual handwriting?”

  He gives me an incredulous, are-you-challenging-an-expert? look. Then sighs. “We have our ways of documenting such things.” He waits for this to register.

  It does. I nod.

  “And what is even more exciting,” he goes on—and his voice sinks into the kind of churchy whisper you might use in the presence of the Dalai Lama or a just-beatified saint—“is Flush.”

  “Flush?” I ask. Maybe I should quit the antiques business and hire myself out as a straight man at a comedy club.

  “Flush was EBB’s beloved dog. A cocker spaniel.” He frowns at me. “You must have come across her enchanting poem, ‘To Flush, My Dog’?”

  I shake my head. Guess that’s what we would have covered if I hadn’t dropped out of college last semester of my senior year.

  He pulls a sheaf of paper from his breast pocket. Adjusts his glasses. He takes a sip of water from a beaker resting on a stool at his right. “‘But of thee it shall be said,/ This dog watched beside a bed,/ Day and night unweary,/ Watched within a curtained room,/ Where no sunbeam brake the gloom,/ Round the sick and dreary./ Roses, gathered for a vase,/ In that chamber died apace,/ Beam and breeze resigning;/ This dog only, waited on,/ Knowing that when light is gone,/ Love remains for shining.” His eyes tear up. From the same poem pocket, he digs out a handkerchief the size of a banquet napkin and blows into it.

  What can I say? It’s more treacly than Omar Khayyam. I who in the interest of full disclosure must confess my favorite poets are E. E. Cummings, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash, not to mention a decided fondness for Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. But I’ve got my eye on the prize. And on the TV cameras. “How beautiful,” I lie.

  “And, by the way, none other than Virginia Woolf herself wrote the biography of Flush.”

  Now he’s got me. I’ve devoured To the Light house, Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own. I’ve read the diaries, the letters. I went through my Bloomsbury phase. I’ve visited Charleston Farm house, walked the graveyard in West Firle. I’ve skipped stones across the river Ouse. How could I not know this? “What’s it called? The book?” I ask.

  “Flush: A Biography.”

  I hang my head in shame.

  Mort Grinspan tips the chamber pot in my direction. All the better for me to see the scribbled dog inside.

  “Take a closer peek at the drawing of the spaniel. That iconic dog, in the poetess’s very hand. As you can see, at the bottom of his collar, she has written Flush.”

  And what a better name to grace the inside of a chamber pot, I want to point out—but the awed silence surrounding us clamps my lips shut.

  “Now that we’ve described and verified this item, Miss Randolph, do you have any idea what it might be worth?” Mort Grinspan asks.r />
  “Not the slightest clue.”

  “Care to hazard a guess?”

  I think of Howdy Doody. I clench my jaw. I put my hands in my lap. I cross my fingers. Given the snugness of my boots, there’s no room to cross my toes. I try anyway. I take a deep breath. “Fifteen hundred?” I manage to get out.

  Mort Grinspan laughs. “With this provenance? With this From the Portuguese? With this drawing of Flush? My dear young lady, you are wildly off the mark. I’d stake my reputation on seventy-five.”

  “You’re kidding! Seventy-five hundred?” I yell.

  “Hardly, Miss Randolph. Seventy-five thousand at the very least.”

  Three

  The buzzer wakes me. I glance at the bedside clock. It’s eleven in the morning. Even though it’s Saturday, I can’t help blushing with shame. Since I hired a Rindge and Latin High School sophomore to help out on the weekends, you couldn’t say I’ve been rushing to get to my booth. Which has, I’m proud to admit, recently been receiving a glut of visitors. I’ve sold the dragon armchair. I’ve sold the glass-fronted bookcase. I’ve unloaded a cachepot and two silver-tipped walking sticks. A newlywed has put the coal shuttle on twenty-four-hour hold. She needs to check with her groom. “See what a little advertising can do,” Gus crowed.

  My Antiques Roadshow appearance aired two weeks ago. Though I’ve got it on videotape, one viewing is more than enough. There I am, raccoon-ringed eyes, Kabuki-mask skin, Kewpie-doll lips opened in an astonished, clichéd O while running underneath, like the subtitles of a foreign film, is this: Chamber Pot Belonging to Elizabeth Barrett Browning—$75,000. During my fifteen minutes of fame, I blink fast. I pull at my hair. Wow! Wow! I exclaim. You’re kidding, I add. Gosh. Gosh. Over and over like an old LP with a nick in its groove.

  Now I throw on a bathrobe. I open the door a crack. The intercom has been broken ever since I moved in. “Who is it?” I call down three flights of stairs.

  “Mailman. You’ve got a registered letter. You need to sign for it.”

  I slip on my boots, which, though it’s March, lie just inside the door. I hurry down the stairs. Thank goodness no one’s coming or leaving to witness my slovenliness.

  Except the mailman, of course. Who, given the nature of his job, has no doubt seen worse. People out of the shower. Lovers out of bed. Couples in the middle of a fight. Roommates kicking each other’s empty yogurt cartons into the corridor.

  The mailman’s wearing a cap with blue postal-issue flaps. His eyes stay on my boots. No wonder. My hair’s a mess. I slathered my face with cream last night, and haven’t wiped it off. He thrusts a letter at me. He props a clipboard under my nose with a stubby pen attached. I sign. “Have a good day,” he says. His heart’s not in it, I can tell.

  I don’t look at the envelope until I’m back inside my apartment. I flip the coffeepot on. I fall into my mother’s armchair, upholstered in a faded chintz of cabbage roses and peonies. When I was a little girl, we’d sit here together before dinner, me curled into her lap, as she read from Winnie the Pooh, A Child’s Garden of Verses, Charlotte’s Web.

  One arm of the chair shows the singed hole made when I was thirteen and sneaking cigarettes. The lumpy down cushions still give out the faint whiff of the lavender sachets she kept in her sweater drawer. I tuck my legs underneath me. My knees buttress the edge. Once, I fit here so easily.

  The envelope is of thick ecru stock. Snodgrass, Drinkwater & Crabbe, Ten Court Square, Boston, Massachusetts 02110, is engraved on the upper left. I tear it open.

  SNODGRASS, DRINKWATER & CRABBE LLP

  COUNSELORS-AT-LAW

  TEN COURT SQUARE

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02110-2811

  TELEPHONE 617-555-8805 FACSIMILE 617-555-8818

  James P. Snodgrass, Esquire

  617-555-8825

  Dear Ms. Randolph:

  I have seen evidence which conclusively shows (1) that you appeared on Antiques Roadshow (program number 2036) with a certain ceramic vessel (hereinafter referred to as the “Chamber Pot”) and (2) that you claimed to have inherited the Chamber Pot from your mother, Emily Granby Randolph, late of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  I represent Mrs. Lavinia Potter-Templeton of Concord, Massachusetts, and Mr. Edward Bickford Potter, of New York City, children of Henrietta E. Potter, late of Cambridge and longtime companion of Emily Randolph. Henrietta E. Potter died in possession of the Chamber Pot.

  Emily Granby Randolph and Henrietta E. Potter, having died simultaneously or under circumstances such that it cannot be determined which of them survived, the Chamber Pot passed to my clients under Article Second of Henrietta E. Potter’s Last Will and Testament, which was duly admitted to probate.

  My clients strenuously demand that you return the Chamber Pot forthwith. If you do not do so promptly, my clients intend to avail themselves of all appropriate civil and criminal remedies. By the time you receive this letter, a restraining order will have been issued enjoining you not to sell, assign, or transfer the Chamber Pot or to remove it from this Commonwealth.

  Failure to obey this order will put you in contempt of court and may subject you to further penalties.

  I look forward to your timely response in this matter.

  Very truly yours,

  James P. Snodgrass

  James P. Snodgrass

  JS/chs

  Four

  Two backpacked students hold the door of the Harvard Bookstore open for me. I haven’t been here for an age. The only B.A. I claim comes from my self-invented membership in Bookstores Anonymous. I avoid bookstores one day at a time. I don’t read the Globe book section. On Sunday mornings I drop the New York Times Book Review in the recycle bin the minute I pick it up from my welcome mat. This must surprise you, considering where and how I grew up. Considering I’ve been a reader all my life. Now I reserve my books by phone from the Cambridge Public Library. That way I can put myself on the waiting list. When my name hits the top, they call me. In minutes I’m standing at the circulation desk and handing over my library card. For the few seconds such a transaction takes, I can leave one or another of my Rent-A-Wrecks running in the Do Not Park zone of the parking lot. There are a zillion choices, even if I’m no longer test-ready on current best sellers, pink-covered chic lits, embossed and foiled thrillers, and Pulitzer-winning literary lights.

  Once I was. Before that slim volume that catapulted me to Bookstores Anonymous and into emotional decline. Bear with me. I know I’m getting to the point where I’ll have to explain. For now, let’s just say the Irish have the Troubles. I have the trouble. Lowercase but not lower in intensity.

  Still, misery is misery, what ever the typescript.

  I’ve checked in advance. The Harvard Bookstore has one copy of the paperback edition of Flush: A Biography. Given what is now going on in my life, I need full ownership rather than the library’s temporary custody.

  I’m not surprised to find my impatience punished. Just inside the front door, on the nearest wall, hangs the poster for the Book. I turn my back. It’s two years old already. The paperback came out last June. Nevertheless, loyal to its Cambridge writers, the Harvard Bookstore still keeps a few on the center table, their Autographed by the Author stickers curling slightly at the edge. More paperbacks are ranged along the Local Authors shelf. Who says avoidance can’t be the healthy choice? Who claims denial shouldn’t be a way of life?

  I go to the information desk. “Abby! Have you been away?” Kate calls out. Just my luck. I’d hoped for a new clerk, one of the many with piercings in their nostrils and a notebook of poems they work on when there’s a lull.

  “Just busy,” I excuse.

  “For a whole year?”

  “It hasn’t been that long.” But it has. Longer. Ever since that book on that poster over there hit the stores and blindsided me.

  “You’ve left a void,” she says.

  I can see how she’d think that. I used to drop in three or four times a week. After the movies. Before dinner. Killing an ho
ur between appointments. Meeting a date. Trawling for a man. In fact, I met lover number two in the aisle between Psychology and Computer Sciences. I was a regular regular. More than once a customer would stop by the information desk to ask about a certain book. A woman intern, he might begin. I’d point to Fiction. The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, I’d supply before the clerk could turn on the computer to look it up.

  “Anytime you want a job…” Sanj or Kate or Mary would joke.

  “Don’t be surprised if I take you up on that,” I’d reply. “I spend so much time here I might as well get paid.” After all, the Harvard Bookstore was my Café de Flore, my Harry’s Bar, my Deux Magots, my City Lights. Until…

  “Here’s the book.” Kate hands me Flush already in a bag, the sales slip already made out. “Unlike Woolf ’s others, there’s not a big demand for this.” She sorts my exact change into the cash register’s pinging, slotted drawer. “But, funny enough, we sold one just yesterday.”

  I stop. I clutch the bag to my chest. I want to ask to whom. I think I can guess. “Is it…?” I begin. I slam my mouth shut. How can I? I, who was one of the first customers to sign the Harvard Bookstore’s petition against the Patriot Act.

  “Don’t be such a stranger,” she says.

  “Ciao.” I wave. When she’s once more pounding her computer keys, when the other browsers are hidden from view in Travel and in Mystery, I lean against the wall. I snake my arm behind my back. I spider my fingers up an inch. I grab an edge of paper. I rip the bottom half of the poster—A Novel by Edward Bickford Potter—clear off and straight across. I macerate it into spitball size. I lob it at the trash.

  But before I get to Ned, I’ll tell you about Lavinia. Not that she’s easy. Only that she’s easier.

  It’s a long story, however. You’ll need your own chintz-covered comfy chair and a mug of tea, though straight gin might be the preferred antidote. Instead, for the moment, why don’t I keep you up to date on the chamber pot.

  The minute I got that letter, I called my part-time help. At Auction out of Town, I had her post on my booth and lock it up. Then I jumped back in bed and stayed there for almost a week. Though I didn’t starve—there are plenty of Inman Square restaurants with takeout menus and Lycra-clad bicycle messengers—I did shed enough tears on my pillow to clump the goose-feather filling and stain the (antique) Belgium linen hemstitched pillowcase.