Dared and Done

by Julia Markus

  Jeannette Augustus Marks (1875–1964) taught at Mount Holyoke College, where she was named Kennedy Professor of English Literature in 1921. She was a prolific author of fiction, poetry, and drama as well as scholarly articles and books. The Family of the Barretts (1938) won the Silver Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica. Among her other studies were Thirteen Days, which chronicled the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, and Genius and Disaster: Studies in Drugs and Genius. She was influential in the Little Theatre movement. Should anyone become interested in her life and work, the Special Collections of the Margaret Clapp Library at Wellesley College has “150 boxes, 62–63 linear feet,” of her papers in the process of being catalogued.

  14 “from the date hereof”: Marks, Family of the Barretts, p. 255.

  15 Elizabeth Barrett Waite Williams: Her four sons by her cousin Samuel Barrett (Edward of Cinnamon Hill’s son) carried on the family tradition of using the same Christian names. These illegitimate sons were Samuel, Richard, Edward, and George Goodin Barrett.

  16 “a free negro woman”: Marks, Family of the Barretts, p. 211.

  17 were quadroon: From 1785 to 1794, George Goodin Barrett had six quadroon children with Elissa Peters, and he had already manumitted them from his father, Edward of Cinnamon Hill. They were Thomas, William, Ann, Maria, Samuel, and Richard. Marks, Family of the Barretts, p. 221.

  18 Samuel (her uncle) and Sarah: He did have one other legitimate grandchild, his granddaughter by his son Henry, another Elizabeth Barrett, who died in 1830.

  19 “during widowhood”: Copy of the will, Berg, NYPL.

  20 “own immature perceptions”: Margaret Forster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, pp. 5–6.

  21 executor of his will: Marks, Family of the Barretts, pp. 222–23, 250.

  22 “their own bodies”: Copy of the will, Berg, NYPL.

  23 had black blood: Marks concludes: “The transitions pivoting on the name Moulton are inescapably suggestive. E.B.B.’s statement might explain the following statement from What the Negro Thinks: ‘It is carefully recorded that highly creditable (sic) records associate the names of Pushkin, Dumas, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and even our own Alexander Hamilton with the Negro race.’ Dumas and Robert Browning, yes! Elizabeth Barrett, no! On the Barrett side she inherited, so far as the documents show, no blood of the negro. Indeed Charles Moulton’s own connections may have helped to build up this idea about his granddaughter Elizabeth Moulton Barrett” (p. 313).

  But in the love letters, EBB herself documented her grandfather’s blood. Even if she were in error, the poet herself believed in the lineage of the slave, evident in her features and dark skin.

  In typescript Marks wrote, “It is a fact that in the will of Charles Moulton all Moulton relatives seem to have disappeared. To no brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, or even cousins does he refer. As the head of the family of the Moultons, said to have been among England’s greatest, the scantiness of the one reference to him in the Jamaican newspapers is as strange as his seemingly solitary position. There was not even the obituary usual for anyone of any position in the Island life” (p. 72). Wellesley, Marks archives, typescript, record group 4.

  24 “from generation to generation”: EBB, I, Dec. 20, 1845.

  25 her African blood: Her dark complexion, which she noted in her description of herself to Haydon (“I am ‘little and black’ like Sappho”), is mentioned in a description by the young Anne Thackeray that is quite similar: “She is very small, she is brown, with dark eyes and dead-brown hair, she has white teeth and a low, curious voice.” Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning, p. 240. On June 15, 1854, Thomas Chase described “her dark complexioned face,” whereas Robert Browning had “a rather dark complexion.” A picture might be worth a thousand words, but it is interesting to realize the liberties taken in every oil and watercolor image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in terms of skin color. Surely she was not the only sitter so treated. Portraits, it would appear, could once be as selective as memoirs. For the quotations above and for an interesting discussion of related issues, see Michael Meredith’s introduction to Meeting the Brownings, pp. 9–14.

  26 Richard Barrett: For a sympathetic reading of Richard Barrett (1789–1839), see the introduction to Richard Barrett’s Journal, edited by Thomas Brott and Philip Kelley. He was a captain of the Royal Horse Guards as well as being a member of the Jamaican House of Assembly, where he rose to Speaker of the House. His journal of his trip to the United States and Canada shows him as the strong advocate of slavery that he was. That he was murdered, poisoned, in Jamaica on May 5, 1839, is called a family supposition in the introduction, but it was widely suspected at the time. On May 12, 1839, the Falmouth Post in “Death of the Hon. Richard Barrett, Speaker of the House of Assembly” stated he “had been transacting business when he was taken seriously ill, and removed upstairs to the lodgings of Miss Catherine Shaw, where he shortly afterwards expired.” The paper understood “that two inquests were warned by the Coroner (Mr. Evans) but for reasons unknown to us, the Jurors were not sworn to view the body nor did they in any way whatever investigate the cause of death.” The body was illegally removed from the lodgings after Miss Shaw was informed that an inquest would be held. “It is bad law … Mr. Barrett, we understand, had been walking about the town of Montego Bay within a few hours of his death in apparent health.… If this be not a case for a Coroner’s Inquest,” what would be. “But the mystery yet remains unsolved.”

  27 “the coloured people”: F. J. Furnivall, “Robert Browning’s Ancestors,” Browning Society Papers III, p. 31.

  28 Creole side: Furnivall’s discussion of “Creole” in a footnote might be worth a footnote here: “(A Creole is, in the primary sense, a native, a person born in the West Indies or Louisiana, so that there are both Creole whites and Creole negroes. That the white and black blood got occasionally mixed, goes without saying; and the word Creole is often incorrectly used for Mulatto or Quadroon, of a person having a strain of negro blood, a dash of the tar-brush. That Miss Tittle had this dash was understood by some of Robert Ill’s [RB’s grandfather’s] second family; and the eyes and colour of Robert IV [RB’s father] confirmed it.) On the meaning of the word Creole, Mr. H. G. Bowen, Chief Accountant of the Bank of England, who is himself a Creole, as being born in the West Indies—but all whose family are of the pure Saxon type—says: ‘The word in its original and limited sense was used in Spanish Colonies to describe Spaniards born in the Colonies, of parents born in Spain. The word spread to the West India Islands of all sorts, to the Southern States of America, and (I believe) to Canada, and there it first meant persons born in the colony, of parents born out of the colony: Hence, French Creole, English Creole, Creole Negro, &c. Thus Creole, which originally meant absence of “colour”—white blood as distinct from black,—now covers all shades.’ ” “Robert Browning’s Ancestors,” n. 2, p. 31.

  29 “Dr. Furnivall wrote”: Marks, Family of the Barretts, pp. 236–37.

  30 “distinctive enough”: RB to EBB, II, [Thursday, Sept. 17, 1846].

  31 “Hannah Kennion”: Marks, Family of the Barretts, p. 235.

  32 Browning said of Furnivall: To understand the relationship between the two men, and indeed the way the late nineteenth century looked to Robert Browning as an oracle, see two fine studies by William S. Peterson: Interrogating the Oracle: A History of the London Browning Society, and Browning’s Trumpeter, an edition of the letters between RB and Furnivall, with an enlightening introduction.

  33 “or nearly so”: Twenty-Two Letters, Mar. 26, 1847. The following description of the miscarriage is from this letter. EBB’s physician was Dr. John Cook.

  34 “played with his life”: Twenty-Two Letters, [Jan. 23–29, 1847].

  35 “making it bitter”: EBB to MRM, III, Feb. 8, 1847.

  PISA POSTSCRIPT

  1 “crushed with gifts”: Berg, Dec. 14 [1846].

  2 “who could escape”: Browning Institute Studies 5 (1977), p. 141.

 
; 3 “to do it”: EBB to Henrietta, Dec. 19, 1846, in Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letters to Her Sisters, edited by Leonard Huxley.

  THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS: HERS

  1 “kept well for us”: EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, Letters to Her Sisters, Sept. 13, 1847. The entire letter is reproduced without cuts in Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Casa Guidi Windows, edited by Julia Markus, Appendix, pp. 65–69. This letter is quoted throughout in describing the demonstration. Quotations from the poem come from this edition.

  2 “to render it exigent”: See my introduction to Casa Guidi Windows, p. xx.

  3 “clear as a flower”: GEM-B. Letters from EBB to Arabel still in family hands are referred to as GEM-B. See note 1 on this page.

  4 “venuto da quel corpo”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy, edited by Peter N. Heydon and Philip Kelley, p. xxvii.

  5 “& exclaimed aloud”: GEM-B, Apr. 8–12, 1849.

  6 “her poetic pitch”: Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends, vol. II, p. 55.

  7 “Italian Risorgimento”: The Golden Ring: The Anglo-Florentines 1847–1862, pp. 76, 207.

  8 “sentiments of Casa Guidi”: William Irvine and Park Honan, The Book, the Ring, and the Poet, pp. 253–54.

  9 called Anglo-Florentine: This is the opinion of the Italian critic Giuliana Artom Treves, whose The Golden Ring: The Anglo-Florentines 1847–1862 is an excellent study of this community.

  10 “Promethean soul”: The poem appeared in the Tuscan Athenaeum, Nov. 20, 1847. The only complete file of the paper, minus a “Specimen Number” issued earlier, is at the New York Public Library.

  11 “highest of them all”: Tuscan Athenaeum, Jan. 8, 1848.

  12 “leave for the battlefield”: Tuscan Athenaeum, Mar. 26, 1849.

  13 “perfectly clear this time”: Berg, Oct. 7–11, 1848.

  14 “too much”: Kenyon, II.

  THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS: HIS

  1 wrote to her sisters: Twenty-Two Letters, Mar. 9, 1849.

  2 “when he was about half born”: Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, edited by Thurman L. Hood. Subsequently referred to as Hood, Letters of RB.

  3 “ ‘as they were tied’ ”: Twenty-Two Letters, Mar. 9, 1849.

  4 “even so”: The preceding quotes are from EBB to Arabel, GEM-B, Apr. 8–12, 1849.

  5 “lavished on me”: GEM-B, Mar. 7 to Apr. 1, 1848.

  6 “not to say decency”: EBB to MRM, III, Aug. 24 [1848].

  7 “supreme being”: Robert Browning: A Portrait, p. 145.

  8 “Sir Charles Forbes”: Beinecke Library, Yale University.

  9 “1842 RB”: Beinecke Library, Yale University.

  10 “when half is wasted”: Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, edited by Frederic G. Kenyon, May 22, 1842. (Hereafter referred to as RB and AD.)

  11 “attainable or no”: RB and AD, July 13, 1846.

  12 “last thirty years”: RB and AD, Mar. 1, 1872.

  13 “of our terraces”: Berg, May 10–11, 1848. By March 24, 1850, “We have taken a new room … a new drawing room with three windows, a most beautiful room to which our rooms open through a once condemned door; we pay two additional pounds a year for this.” GEM-B.

  14 “is black & white”: EBB to MRM, III, Oct. 10 [1848].

  15 “great fault—conviviality”: Blanchard Jerrold, “Introduction,” in The Final Reliques of Father Prout, collected and arranged by Oliver York, p. 36.

  16 “over the rail”: Jerrold introduction, Final Reliques, p. 62, in a letter dated June 5, 1868.

  17 “my black veil”: EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, EBB: Letters to Her Sisters, May 16, 1847.

  18 “unveiled prophetess”: EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, EBB: Letters to Her Sisters, Nov. 23 and 24, 1847.

  19 “bought yet”: Berg, May 10–11, 1848.

  20 “woke better”: Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood, edited by Richard Curle, Oct. 17, 1864.

  21 “for spitting”: The following description of an evening with Prout is from EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, EBB: Letters to Her Sisters, Nov. 19, 1848.

  22 “to dazzle”: The Hierarchy 38 (Dec. 1850), pp. 527–28.

  23 “nature of the man”: EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, EBB: Letters to Her Sisters, Nov. 19, 1848.

  24 “happiness of Florence”: EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, EBB: Letters to Her Sisters, Jan. 4, 5, and 6, 1848.

  25 “injured him so far”: EBB to MRM, III, Apr. 30 [1849].

  26 “woman’s estate”: EBB to MRM, III [July 18?, 1849].

  27 “nourished he has been”: RB to Henrietta and Arabel, Twenty-Two Letters [Mar. 9, 1849].

  28 “change of plans”: EBB to MRM, III, Apr. 30 [1849].

  29 “pay for plate”: EBB to MRM, III [July 18?, 1849]. The description that follows is from this letter.

  30 “from anybody else”: RB to Sarianna, Hood, Letters of RB, July 2, 1849. The description of his condition that follows is from this letter.

  31 “in the forests”: EBB to MRM, III [July 18?, 1849].

  32 “to the right”: RB to Julia Wedgwood, Curle, RB and Julia Wedgwood, pp. 95–101, letters Nov. 1, 1864, and Friday morning.

  33 “as they pleased”: Berg, Jan. 12, 1851.

  34 “slovenly appearance”: Jerrold introduction, Final Reliques, p. 51.

  35 “inevitable hypocrisy”: Jerrold introduction, Final Reliques, pp. 200–201.

  36 document of its times: For a full treatment of the relationship between the images of the poem itself and Mahony and Wiseman, see Julia Markus, “Bishop Blougram and the Literary Man,” Victorian Studies (Winter 1978): 171–95.

  THE ROADS THAT LED TO ROME

  1 her brother George: “I was delighted, dearest George, to have your letter & shall be still more delighted if you will conquer your repugnance to writing, as to let me hear from you sometimes.” This quote and those about Napoleon that follow in the text are from The Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett, edited by Paul Landis [Dec. 4, 5, 1851]. Subsequently referred to as EBB to George or RB to George.

  2 “said George Sand—”: EBB to George [Feb. 28, 1852].

  3 “George Sandism”: EBB to MRM, III, Oct. 22 [1851].

  4 “without seeing George Sand”: EBB to MRM, III, Feb. 15 [–16, 1852].

  5 “burning soul”: EBB to MRM, III, Feb. 15 [–16, 1852].

  6 “care for me”: EBB to MRM, III, Apr. 7 [1852].

  7 “rare a smile”: EBB to George [Feb. 28, 1852].

  8 “sure of it”: GEM-B.

  9 old fool: See Irvine and Honan, The Book, the Ring, and the Poet, particularly pp. 282–83.

  10 “you have taken”: See “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Her Brother Alfred,” by Ronald Hudson, Browning Institute Studies 2 (1974), pp. 135–60.

  11 “twenty Parises besides”: Berg, May 16, 1851?

  12 “did not hurt him”: “Mrs. Ogilvy’s Recollections,” Heydon and Kelley, EBB’s Letters to Mrs. Ogilvy, p. xxxi.

  13 “neutral creature, so far”: Berg, Venice, June 5 [1851].

  14 “ ‘Bwavo, bwavo!’ (bravo)”: EBB to George [Dec. 4–5, 1851].

  15 “never trouble me”: GEM-B, Apr. 1, 1853.

  16 “Like two lovers”: The quotations for the preceding scene from EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, EBB: Letters to Her Sisters, May 14, 1853.

  17 Elizabeth Kinney: For information about the Kinneys and for the quotations from Elizabeth Kinney’s journals, I am indebted to the fine study by my former classmate Ronald A. Bosco, “The Brownings and Mrs. Kinney: A Record of Their Friendship,” Browning Institute Studies 4 (1976), pp. 57–124. Mrs. Kinney’s papers are in the Stedman Collection at Columbia University.

  18 “excepting Swedenborg”: Berg, Aug. 22, 1854.

  ECCO ROMA

  1 “way at all”: All quotations in this section are from EBB to MRM, III, Jan. 18 [1854].

  2 “wherever we like”: EBB to George, Jan. 10 [1854].

  AMERICAN MARBLE CUTTERS AND YANKEE TITIANS

  1 “
to us to-night”: EBB to Henrietta, Huxley, EBB: Letters to Her Sisters, Dec. 30, 1853.

  2 pointed to the ideal: Hiram Powers was a self-made man. In the first draft of her unpublished “personal impressions” of him, in the Stedman Collection, Columbia University, Elizabeth Kinney wrote, “I love to picture that rickety old farmhouse under the shadow of the Green Mountains, at Woodstock Vermont where Hiram Powers was born on July 29th, 1805. No special rejoicings at his birth indicated unusual signs of promise in the eighth child of a poor, hard-working family.” After the death of his father, Powers moved to Cincinnati, where he modeled in wax for the Western Museum. “Genius enobles everything it touches, and so his wax figures were not expressionless dolls but speaking men and women of whatever character,” Kinney wrote. It was in Cincinnati that “a humble German sculptor” taught him to model from life. That the young man got to Italy at all was a credit to the American dream.

  3 “of the angel”: Scribner’s Monthly 17 (Apr. 1879), p. 894.

  4 moved to Rome: Joshua Taylor, William Page: The American Titian, p. 115.

  5 “was impossible”: RB to WW Story, June 11, 1854, in Browning to His American Friends, edited by Gertrude Reese Hudson. Subsequently referred to as Hudson, American Friends.

  6 “American & Italian circles”: W.W. Story to RB, Hudson, American Friends, Jan. 9, 1855.

  7 “did the honours”: EBB to Sarianna, Kenyon, II.

  8 “& disappeared”: W.W. Story to J.R. Lowell, Hudson, American Friends, Jan. 9, 1855.

  9 “bless you dear Page”: This unpublished letter of Jan. 13, 1855, at the American Archives of Art can be found in Julia Markus, “Andrea del Sarto and William Page,” Browning Institute Studies 2 (1974), pp. 11–12.

  10 “will turn black”: Kenyon, II, Dec. 21, 1853.

  11 “than my own”: RB to W.W. Story, Hudson, American Friends, June 11, 1854.