BROWNINGS IN ITALY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 160, 22 June 1935, Page 14

BROWNINGS IN ITALY

Addendum to “The Barretts” FAMILY REBELLION The events immediately preceding Elizabeth Barrett’s secret departure from Wiuipole street in 1846 to marry Robert Browning are known to many through two excellent mediums, Rudolph Besier’s stage play, “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,’’ and the film version of the same name. It is likely, however, that few, apart from students of literature and literary people, will be aware of the future history of the members of the family. In Mr Besier’s play the curtain goes down on the awful discovery of Elizabeth’s departure, and the first fact of interest is that her brothers were almost as angry with her as her* terrifying father himself, writes Mr Burdett. The reason was that they had come to regard her as a permanent invalid for whom the notion of marriage was madness. They were slow in coming round, especially George, though they may have heard that, when Mrs Jameson met the runaways at Pisa, she found Elizabeth “not so much improved as transformed.’’ But, if she had collapsed the world would have sided with the angry brothers and Browning would have gone down to history as a selfish and purblind man. MR BARRETT UNRELENTING. Mr Barrett never relented. He answered no letters. He never inquired where or how she was. He would not have her name mentioned in his hearing; and, when a few years later, the Brownings visited London with their little boy, Mr Barrett sent back to his daughter all her letters unopened, and returned a savage reply to the plea for a reconciliation that Browning had written at his wife’s entreaty. Nevertheless, the covert rebellion of the Barrett children was not ended, and four years later —that is, in 1850— Henrietta Barrett defied her father by marrying Captain Surtees Cook. The result was the same. Henrietta was banished from the house, and Mr Barrett was exasperated by the effort to conciliate him. When the bridegroom asked for his permission, Mr Barrett replied: “If Henrietta marries you, she turns her back on this house for ever.’’ To Henrietta ho wrote that it was un “insult’’ to ask his permission for an act on which she was determined. The pair had been engaged for five years. Henrietta had three children, but died 10 years later, in 1860, the year before Elizabeth’s death. ALFRED FOLLOWS SUIT. lu 1855 Alfred Barrett followed suit and became, in Mrs Browning’s words, the “third exile.’’ He, she goes on, “had written to my father nine or 10 days before the ceremony, received no answer, and followed up the silence rather briskly by another letter to announce his marriage.’’ The phrase “rather briskly’ 7 is good! Alfred married a namesake, perhaps a cousin, Miss Lizzie Barrett, at the British Embassy in Paris. Mrs Browning remarked that the course of true love runs “remarkably roughly in our house. For the rest there have been no scenes, I thank God. for dearest Arabel’s sake ’’ Arabel, her favourite sister, died unmarried in 1868, and after Browning, on the death of his wife, had returned to London in 1861, she became his near neighbour, and from his house in Warwick crescent, by the Regent canal, he visited her in Delamere terrace every day. She was given to good works. Five years before her death Browning recorded in his diary a dream that she bad told him at the time. In this drcam she had asked her sister, knowing that Elizabeth was dead, “When shall I be with you?” and the poetess had answered, “Dearest, in five years.” When Browning; after Arabel’s death, reported this dream to his old friend Miss Blagdon, he had added: “Only a coincidence, but noticeable.’’ A MEASURE OF FORGIVENESS. Before old Mr Barrett himself died in 1857, he told Mrs Martin that his married daughters had ‘ ‘ disgraced the family.” He added that he had forgiven them for the shameful wrong that they had done him, but ho refused to see them until the end. Ho

also told Mr Kenyon that lie had no objection to Browning himself, but that his daughter ought to have been “thinking of another world.” His forgiveness was not worth much, for he made no mention of Mrs Browning in his will, and he refused to give the address of Henrietta to the executor of Mr Kenyon, though it was asked in order that a small legacy might be paid to her.

Wilson, who accompanied Miss Barrett to St. Marylebono Church on (he marriage morning and to Italy with her husband a week later, never left the Brownings as long as she lived. In Florence, where the poets made their

home, Wilson married an Italian, Fordinande Romagnoli, and both of them survived the Brownings, and remained

in the service of their son until his death. Flush likewise accompanied the party to Italy, and it was in Florence, that be died.