And the Rest Is History (6 page)

Given his situation, Albert could have taken the path of indolence and idleness, but in her choice of husband, as in most else, Victoria proved astute. Instead of partaking in ale and fox hunting, Albert became a hands-on father to his nine children. Although he possessed the silver spoon since birth, he had empathy and campaigned for those who did not share his good fortune. Because he earned the respect of his adopted countrymen, he was able to introduce the German tradition of the Christmas tree, its decorations, and the placing of wrapped presents under it. In a sense, he eventually became the power behind his wife's throne as well as her steadfast companion. In the eyes of their court he walked a step behind her, but as husband and wife they were equals. They referred to themselves as “we two,” in the sense of two souls as one.

Those with blue blood are not inured to horror, and this held true with the queen and her consort. During Victoria's first pregnancy, seventeen-year-old Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate the queen as she was riding in London in her carriage. Before he had time to fire a second shot, Prince Albert pushed her down so that the bullet again missed its mark. Undaunted, days later the queen attended an opera; the audience's cheering for their monarch delayed the performance for several minutes. The newspapers praised the prince for his courage and coolness during the attack; he did not lose his head even when faced with losing his heart. There were eventually seven unsuccessful attempts on Victoria's life.

On December 12, 1861, Albert fell ill with typhoid fever. When he came out of his delirium, his last words to his Victoria were
“Gutes Frauchen”
(“Good woman”). In turn she replied,
“Es ist das kleine Frauchen”
(“It is the little woman”). Her trademark expression was never truer; she was not to be truly amused again. Albert died in the private apartments at Kensington, where Victoria had first gazed upon the man whose countenance she cherished above all else. He left this world in the presence of the queen of his heart and five of his children.

The room was kept as a shrine to her beloved; in addition, hot water was brought there each morning and its linen and towels were changed daily, as if Albert were due back momentarily. For three years after Albert's death, Victoria refused to go out in public, and for the next forty years she never wore any color but black. When she traveled she did so with a huge portrait of Albert, which she had positioned on an easel at the foot of her bed, with a smaller one by her pillow. In this way, when she awoke, it was to him. She said of the hole he left, “Can I—can I be alive when half my body and soul are gone?” She became convinced that she would shortly follow where her prince had gone, but fate had other plans.

Throughout the years without her essential half, Victoria spent Christmas at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where she died in 1901, at age eighty-two, after being on the throne for sixty-three years, a longer reign than any other British monarch. In contrast to her lengthy title of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India, her final farewell was brief. Her last word was to her first love: “Bertie.” For the world it was the passing of an epoch; for the queen it was reunion with her beloved.

7

1845

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O
ne never knows where Venus's capricious son is going to leave his calling card. Elizabeth Barrett Moulton was a reclusive, middle-aged morphine addict under the dominion of a tyrannical father when she met a fellow poet. Their romance gave rise to some of literature's most immortal poetry.

Elizabeth was born on a five-hundred-acre estate in Hertfordshire. The source of her family's fortune was a Jamaican sugar plantation that relied on slave labor. As a child Elizabeth enjoyed riding her pony on the extensive grounds, tending her garden of white roses, and arranging theatrical productions with her eleven younger siblings. Her father, recognizing her brilliance, allowed her an education and encouraged her writing; when she was fourteen, he published fifty copies of her narrative poem.

Elizabeth's happiness was sharply curtailed in the mid-1820s, when she contracted a mysterious illness. She described her symptoms as if a cord were tied around her stomach “which seems to break.” Her doctors were unable to diagnose the cause of her distress, which eventually rendered her bedridden; however, they prescribed morphine for the pain, which ultimately exacerbated her problems when she became addicted. Because of her physical frail-ness and overprotective father, she became agoraphobic.

When she was twenty-two, she was devastated by the death of her mother; her passing for a time left Elizabeth without the power to concentrate. A few years later, because of ill health, Elizabeth traveled to Torquay, in the hope that the seaside would restore her health. She was accompanied by her favorite brother, who drowned in a boating accident. She stayed there for another year and recalled that the sound of the sea always was like the “moan of a dying man.” Added to her emotional bereavement was financial hardship; the abolition of slavery marked the end of her family's lucrative Jamaican plantation, and they were forced to relocate to London, where they bought a house at 50 Wimpole Street.

During several reclusive years, Elizabeth's diversions were family and a golden-haired cocker spaniel named Flush. Her other emotional life jacket was what had sustained her since childhood: poetry. As an adult she had achieved acclaim when she published her works in both a book and in magazines. Her only contact with the outside world was when John Kenyon, a distant cousin, introduced her to the luminaries of the literary world such as William Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Walter Savage Landor; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Thomas Carlyle. Though she'd never experienced romantic love, she wrote of it often, such as in “A Woman's Shortcomings”: “Unless you can die when the dream is past—/ Oh, never call it loving!”

Elizabeth's destiny, Robert Browning, was born in London into a liberal environment; his father was an abolitionist and intellectual whose vast library contained six thousand volumes. He was an ardent admirer of the Romantic writers, especially his idol Percy Bysshe Shelley. When he read the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett, he was extremely impressed and wrote to her, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett ... I do, as I say, love these verses with all my heart.” He asked John Kenyon to secure an invitation to 50 Wimpole Street.

The first time Elizabeth met Robert was in May 1845. He immediately became as enamored of the woman as he was of her poetry. For her part, Elizabeth found it difficult to believe that a worldly man six years her junior would have an interest in a thirty-nine-year-old reclusive, bedridden, morphine-addicted spinster; however, he was able to convince her that his interest was genuine. Thus, passion entered Elizabeth's life.

Over a twenty-month courtship, Elizabeth found a way to make “death less deader” whereby the couple exchanged 574 letters in which they poured out their emotions to each other. Unfortunately, their meetings were clandestine because Elizabeth's father would not permit any of his twelve children to marry. (One theory behind this odd edict is that he believed that his forebears, who had lived in Jamaica, had cohabited with slaves, which he feared might come out in the birth of a dark child.)

At first, Elizabeth, feeling guilty that Robert should have an ailing partner, decided against a relationship “with all her will, but much against her heart.” However, love, as is sometimes the case, conquers all, and on September 12, 1846, the couple had a private marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church. After the ceremony, the bride was forced to return to Wimpole Street. Her romantic bliss is summed up in her poem “First Time He Kissed Me”: “A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight / Than that first kiss ...”

A week later, Elizabeth left Wimpole Street for the last time. Like his hero Shelley, Browning whisked his bride off to Italy; he hoped the sunny region would do more for his wife's health than England's wet climate. Whether it was indeed the weather, his love, or the fact that her life had a new purpose, the new Mrs. Browning, though still frail, was no longer confined to bed. The couple spent time in various locales, which was especially welcome for Elizabeth, who had spent so many years confined to one room.

In Pisa, Elizabeth first showed her husband
Sonnets from the Portuguese
, her collection of poems inspired by their courtship and marriage. The title came from Robert's nickname for her; he called her “Portuguese” as a term of endearment because of her dark hair. She explained that because of their personal nature, she did not intend to publish them. He, on the other hand, thought otherwise. As he said, “I dared not reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare's.” The first two lines of the soon-published Sonnet 43 became her most famous: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” The sonnets are the autobiographical revelation of one of the greatest poets, who once believed love had overlooked her.

The couple eventually settled in Florence in a home, Casa Guidi, where they lived for twenty years. Robert was enthralled with his adopted country and once remarked, “Italy was my university.” Their home became the spiritual and physical mecca for the expatriate English and American communities. Their drawing room was fitted with large bookcases, constructed of Florentine carving and selected by Robert. Tapestries, pictures of the saints, and portraits of Dante, Keats, and Robert Browning hung on the walls. Eventually there was another portrait of a beloved family member. At age forty-three, despite ill health, two miscarriages, and a morphine addiction, Elizabeth gave birth to a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed Penini or Pen. His middle name came from Robert's mother's maiden name.

During these happy years in Florence, the only blight was that Elizabeth's father refused to acknowledge her; his silence made it clear that she had forever forfeited her old family.

Later in life, Elizabeth, always socially conscious, wrote about other issues than affairs of the heart. She turned her pen to women's tribulations and championed Italy's unstable political troubles.

However, the Brownings' pens truly flowed when they turned to romance. Kenyon wrote, “With the single exception of Rossetti, no modern English poet has written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such sincerity as the two who gave the most beautiful example of it in their own lives.” And Robert summed up their happiness in his poem “Pippa Passes”:

In 1861, Elizabeth again suffered from ill health, eating little and turning more and more to morphine for relief. As she lay dying, she uttered her last word to her first love: “Beautiful.”