Dared and Done

by Julia Markus

  In a practical matter, the fact that Alfred had left London turned out to be a big help. Two of the Brownings’ boxes were lost at Marseilles. Elizabeth ascribed it to traveling on the thirteenth and to Wilson and Ferdinando being rather distracted at this juncture. All of Elizabeth’s concern centered on Pen’s wardrobe. Served her vanity right that his Browning grandfather and his aunt Sarianna would see the child in the bedraggled clothes on his back—hardly the little prince, as she told Arabel. Only in postscript to Daisy was there any mention of the “ms notes to a book,” tucked in among the finery. But it was Elizabeth’s “way to hope against stone walls,” even “in the face of Robert’s despair.” She thanked her brother for finding and sending both boxes on to Paris “very, very much.… It has taught us some wisdom, & we are not likely ever to lose our boxes again, whatever we may do with our wits.”

  But not only missing property kept the Brownings in the City of Light. “We are not married yet,” and there were difficulties. A mixed marriage between a Roman Catholic Florentine and a British Protestant was a difficult political affair. The Anglican service had been performed in Florence. But to get married in the Roman Catholic Church, one had to vow the children “should be baptised & educated as Catholics.” Wilson couldn’t lie. She could promise that if “the children chose to be Roman Catholics, the mother won’t hinder them.” They had to resolve this issue in Paris, for they were only “half married.”

  It was not because of religious scruples that a church wedding had to be performed. In Tuscany “(in Piedmont they order it better) there is no legal marriage, except by the act ecclesiastical.” So the couple could not return to Florence as husband and wife unless they were married by a priest. Only Wilson was bound. Wilson “has shed tears enough,” and Ferdinando was willing to convert, “to profess protestantism, renounce his country and act up a fiacre (of all vocations adopted through melancholy!) in Lyons.” The couple were desperate for a resolution, and the Brownings were using all their influence to find one.

  At the same time, Elizabeth had her own worries about the union, “because I am human … & thinking rather of myself than of her.” Robert says, “ ‘Of course you cant separate a man & his wife’—Well—I suppose we cant—And yet my Penini who wants somebody to take care of him & be with him always—what’s to be done with him. As to his sleeping in a room by himself, it’s out of the question. I suppose he must have a crib in my room. I cant fancy what to do. If he wakes in the dark, he cries instantly.”

  Finally, Robert got to the Archbishop of Paris. The formula they decided on was that Wilson “has agreed to submit to her husband’s wishes on the point of the children—and if they don’t exact an oath from her all will be safe.… I have just had a note from Mdme. Mohl who has been kindly active in our behalf, to the effect that the emperor himself could not wring from the church better terms.” So the couple would not have to live in Lyons and the Brownings and the Ferdinando Romagnolis could finally travel to England. “We” were all married at last.

  To lie would have been inconceivable, even if it meant that not to lie would make a return to Italy problematic. But there was more behind the couple’s high emotions in Paris than the Brownings could guess at the time. Wilson was pregnant.

  The Brownings did not find out until they were in England, and Elizabeth was shocked. The woman with whom she entrusted her child, the woman for whom the exact wording of her wedding contract was important.… If one expected a more open reaction from the writer who was now creating Marian Earle, one would be wrong. Marian Earle gave birth to an illegitimate child, but she was still “pure,” the victim of poverty, British society, and rape. The woman poet who kissed George Sand’s hand was very upset by Elizabeth Wilson Romagnoli’s pregnancy and the lies involved. She had to focus on all that Wilson had been to her in the past in order not to judge.

  One is reminded of the brothers Elizabeth herself left on Wimpole Street nine years earlier with a letter to explain her own secret marriage. Being kept out of a secret in any situation in which one has had a part is being played the fool. The deeper issue was trust. The trust was violated and so was her respect for this woman who traveled with her. Flush had died in Florence the previous winter, so old and mangy that even his devoted mistress was able to let him go. And the woman who had attended her courtship and marriage and her son was no longer the person Elizabeth once thought she was. Back in England, before the advent of the cruel east wind, helping her husband with his proofs of Men and Women and her son with his new adjustments, another wind was blowing, and it wasn’t balmy. There had been clues all year. In 1855 the Brownings were subject to the winds of change.

  “WHO’S THERE?”

  THE EALING SÉANCE

  DANIEL DUNGLAS HOME was an agent of change. The Brownings arrived in London on July 12, 1855, and Ba was immediately informed that Anna Jameson’s earlier account of the medium’s travels to Italy was in error. In fact, the young American of Scottish descent was still in town, staying at the Ealing home of two of Anna Jameson’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Rymer. The wealthy couple was treating the medium like a son. They hugged and kissed him, and he often nestled against them in a childlike manner. The behavior was remarkable, yet to the Rymers, Home’s type of lisping affection might also mediate a communication from beyond the grave. In his séances at their house he had been able to bring them in contact with the rapping spirit of their own dead son, Wat. British reserve collapsed between the couple and the medium, and so did emotional separation. No rush to Paris, where the emperor called, or to Florence, where the Anglo-American community waited. No rush? Why, Home, barely twenty, had been in England only since early April, and his fame had already spread among the wealthy, the powerful, and the literati. The séance Jarves reported to the Brownings in Florence occurred in mid-May. Mrs. Trollope and her son Thomas read about it and took a quick trip from Villa Trollope to England for a look-see. Not that they believed. (It would be some months before Home would get to Florence and levitate in their living room.) Still, on June 19, along with the Rymer family and Charles Dickens, their disbelief was shaken.

  In Paris in late June, Thackeray’s daughters had reported to the Brownings that Thackeray had had an experience with Home that had made them terribly frightened about “ ‘the spirits’—‘hoping it may not be true!!’ Mr. Thackeray saw Hume a fortnight ago, had no visible manifestations,” but he felt a spiritual presence about him, pulling and pressing him. “In his astonishment . . what do you think he did? . . he began to swear—gave out a volley of oaths—and then, by a reaction, turned intensely sick.… His daughters say he doesn’t know what to think; it was altogether astonishing.” Such reports! And here were the Brownings at Ealing eleven days after their arrival in England, ready for the séance that Ba anticipated with as much gusto as she had meeting George Sand on her last long trip in 1851.

  DANIEL D. HOME (1833–86). A woodcut—attributed to the spirits—of the most famous medium of the nineteenth century and the toast of European aristocrats and artists. Home was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, but moved with his family to Norwich, Connecticut, when he was nine. RB considered him a fraud and after EBB’s death satirized him in “Mr. Sludge, ‘The Medium.’ ” RB had often argued with EBB about spiritualism, and in the long poem had the pleasure of catching Sludge cheating, something that never happened in life. Sludge defended himself the way EBB defended unsavory mediums:

  What’s a “medium”? He’s a means,

  Good, bad, indifferent, still the only means

  Spirits can speak by; he may misconceive,

  Stutter and stammer—he’s their Sludge and drudge,

  Take him or leave him.…

  “Ah, dearest Madonna,” Elizabeth would remember, writing to Anna Jameson, the compiler of the Madonna in art, “We arrived at Mr Rymer’s by daylight & Hume, showing us the pretty garden, said that he would prepare a garland of flowers, and that afterwards he would ask ‘the spirits’ to put it on my head—You k
now [or peradventure you dont know] the American knack of making beautiful wreaths of flowers . . with a skill & grace quite peculiar. A very pretty wreath was made then, & laid upon the table.”

  The séance itself occurred after dark at nine. Robert Browning had promised to send back a full account of it to a fellow nonbeliever, Elizabeth Kinney, who had promised to keep his words to herself. It was a long, detailed letter, which did not conflict with Jarves’s experience, except that details were recorded carefully, evidence strictly observed—as in a police report. The séance began with “some noises, a vibration of the table, then an up-tilting of it in various ways.” Then there were more noises and raps, “which were distinguished as the utterance of the family’s usual visitor, the spirit of their child ‘Wat’ who died three years ago, aged twelve.”

  The rappings stopped; the “circle was too large.” The spirits picked out those who were to go, leaving Home, the Rymers, their living son and eldest daughter, two family friends, and the Brownings. The poets were the only outsiders. Once this circle was established, the spirit of the dead twelve-year-old Wat grew less shy, and Wat touched as he had previously rapped. His parents felt the spiritual hand of their boy, and Elizabeth’s dress was uplifted near the waist by that same inquisitive spirit. It happened twice. “The spirit then announced (by raps in answer to questions) that it would play the accordion” and that it would show Robert Browning its hands. The lights were all extinguished. “A hand appeared from the edge of the table, opposite to my wife & myself” and it “rose & sank—it was clothed in white loose folds, like muslin, down to the table’s edge—from which it was never separated.” His wife wrote to her sister Henrietta that she put up her “glass to look at” it, “proving it was not a mere mental impression.” The only difference in the couple’s account was tone.

  Then Home asked Elizabeth to leave her husband’s side and take the chair by him. She got up in the dim room and did what the medium desired. A larger hand appeared. Robert reported it pushed the wreath the American had fashioned off the table, “then picked it up from the ground” and brought it to her. The hand then seemed to crawl up Home’s shoulder in order to place the wreath on the poet’s head. In the hushed circle of nine, in the dark room, the spirits crowned Elizabeth Barrett Browning in laurels.

  “The particular hand which did this was of the largest human size, as white as snow, and very beautiful,” Elizabeth told Henrietta. “It was as near to me as this hand I write with, and I saw it as distinctly. I was perfectly calm! not troubled in any way, and felt convinced in my own mind that no spirit belonging to me was present on the occasion.” No dead Bro.

  The detachment she gained from this realization allowed her to speak directly to the stranger spirit, requesting the hand to take the wreath from her head and to give it to her husband. The crown was brought to Browning from under the table. Browning reported to Mrs. Kinney, “I was touched several times under the table on one knee & the other—and on my hands alternately—(a kind of soft & fleshy pat)—but not so that I could myself touch the object. I desired leave to hold the spirit-hand in mine, and was promised that favor—a promise not kept, however.” Browning was only allowed to hold the accordion that the spirits played under the table. He observed the spirits were freer under the table than above, though he could not see the trick by which the wreath was placed on his wife’s head.

  The medium then “observed that he supposed the hand with the wreath was that of a particular relation of my wife’s—raps to confirm this opinion: the alphabet was put in requestion to discover the name—(someone calling ‘A. B. C.’ &c., & the raps indicating the letter)—it was given successively as William, Frank, Charles, Henry—misses all. Hereupon Mr Home went into a trance & began to address Mr Rymer, in the character of his dead child—in a sort of whisper, at first, to represent a child’s voice, but with Mr Home’s own inflexions, peculiarities, and characteristic expressions—beginning ‘Dear Papa,—is not God good,—isn’t he lovely?’ ”

  “The talk affected the parents, as you may suppose,—there was nothing pleasant to describe.” After that the medium rose and “saluted the company with upraised arms,—(we had light enough to see this) and began to speak, apparently in the character of ‘the spirits’ collectively,—instructing us on the legitimate objects of this work of investigation—and hardly can you conceive a poorer business.” Whereas Jarves could hear the invocation of the spirits through Home as worthy as Channing’s preaching, Robert Browning heard the charlatan. What other people had reported as eloquent, beautiful, and poetic, Robert Browning observed as being a poor business.

  Elizabeth agreed. “I think that what chiefly went against the exhibition, in Robert’s mind, was the trance at the conclusion during which the medium talked a great deal of much such twaddle as may be heard in any fifth rate conventicle. But according to my theory (well thought-out and digested) this does not militate at all against the general facts. It’s undeniable, and has been from first to last, that if these are spirits, many among them talk prodigious nonsense, or rather most ordinary commonplace.”

  Home seemed unable to allow the misnaming of those close to Elizabeth, the rapping out of “William, Frank, Charles, Henry,” to stand. Elizabeth understood that spirits could make mistakes and was obviously relieved that none close to her was present at the moment to rip through her detached delight. But Home had blundered in front of Robert Browning. With upraised arms, the self-conscious Home allowed the spirits to speak through him. Browning reported their apologetic garble: “that there had been four spirits over my wife’s head pouring rays of glory from a sort of crown, or something and that ‘we could have given their names but that you (my wife) were intently considering them, and would have called the answer thought-reading.’ ”

  After this, the Brownings and the two female friends of the family were asked to leave while Home conferred with the Rymers. After a quarter of an hour they were called back in. Home still seemed determined to win over Robert Browning. Four strong spirits lifted the table so that Browning could see the process in the light. “I looked under the table and can aver that it was lifted from the ground, say a foot high, and more than once—Mr Home’s hands being plainly above it. It was tilted,—and the lamp remained—I am not sure whether there was anything remarkable in that,—its base being heavy.” Mr. Rymer remarked on how the spirits were holding the lamp on the tilted table.

  But still Robert was not impressed.

  “I called attention to the fact that a silver-pen rolled readily—the cloth notwithstanding—and said ‘will the spirits now prevent the rolling of this?’ ”

  This skepticism went beyond the pale. His hostess’s daughter was seized by an impolite spirit and from her trance demanded: “Do not put that question! Have you not seen enough?”

  And so it ended. Browning did not seem to realize that his incredulity had been recognized. “I ought not to omit the sitting was conducted in exact conformity to Mr Rymer’s suggestions, which though polite were explicit enough,—that we should put no questions, nor desire to see anything but what the spirit might please to show us. I treated ‘the spirit’ with the forms & courtesies observed by the others, and in no respect impeded the ‘developments’ by expressing the least symptom of unbelief—and so kept my place from first to last.” His unconsciousness of how his behavior appeared to others led to an uncharacteristic conclusion—he blamed his wife: “I should like to go again and propose to try a simple experiment or two, but fear it is already out of my power,—my wife having told one of the party that I was ‘unconvinced.’ ”

  Home knew that already. He was nothing if not supersensitive to criticism—particularly that of older men. He very much wanted this philosopher-poet to accept what he saw with his own eyes. And Browning knew it would have been inexcusable for him at that family séance to grab at the hands the Rymers took to be those of their dead child. Yet he had missed the only opportunity he’d have to expose Home. In fact, the poet did try t
o arrange for another séance a few days later. When his request was refused, Browning became furious.

  Still, Home wanted to be a friend of the poets. He came to call on them, escorted by the Rymers. The visit provoked a heated quarrel between the Brownings. After nine years of marriage the couple came to an issue that could not be resolved through compromise. In this disagreement, Robert could not be led to higher truth by his wife. Between spirits and humans there might exist only a gauzy veil, but on the subject of Home, between Robert and Elizabeth, there existed a stone wall.

  Browning was not about to receive Home. The man repelled him. This twenty-year-old who “declares he has ‘no strength at all’—(why?—even if it were so!) and affects the manners, endearments and other peculiarities of a very little child indeed,” calling the Rymers papa and mama and kissing all the family, is in actuality “a well-grown young man, over the average height, and, I should say, of quite the ordinary bodily strength: his face is rather handsome & prepossessing, and indicative of intelligence,—and I observed nothing offensive or pretentious in his demeanour beyond the unmanlinesses I mention, which are in the worst taste.”

  Elizabeth grew nervous, agitated. Not see the waiting Home? It was rude; it was unnecessary. This was a social visit. Wait! No, he wouldn’t. He would greet the medium as he deserved. She tried to calm Robert. When Robert went to Home she was by her husband, telling Home she was sorry, so sorry.