Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“How do I love thee?”

Is one of the most famous love poems in the English language. And the courtship of Elizabeth and Robert Browning is one of the most celebrated in Literary history. Here’s the love story behind the poem.

Her early poetry was anything but romantic. 

In 1843 Elizabeth Barrett published 

‘The Cry of the Children’ about child factory labour. 

“All day, we drive the wheels of iron

      In the factories, round and round.

For all day, the wheels are droning, turning. 

      Their wind comes in our faces, 

Till our hearts turn, 

 our heads, with pulses burning.

      And the walls turn in their places

Turns the sky in the high window - blank and reeling.”

The following year, a volume of her poems catapulted her to fame.  This book inspired the poet Robert Browning to write to her:  "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett." Soon after, they were introduced in person, and both felt that their souls were meant to be entwined.  

But, Elizabeth had a stern and moralising father, who was opposed to any of his 12 children getting married. The family’s wealth came from slave plantations in Jamaica.  Elizabeth supported the abolition of slavery - a view that did not ease her tense relationship with her father.  He threatened to disinherit her if she married without his approval. 

So the Courtship of Elizabeth and Robert continued in secret,  largely via letters. Each day, she waited on tenterhooks for the eight o'clock evening post:  “ I have heard the footsteps of a letter of yours ten doors off," she wrote.   On his part, Robert Browning told her, "I have loved you all my life unawares, that is the idea of you."

It was during this time that Elizabeth composed her famous love sonnets.

"When our two souls stand up erect and strong,

Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Until the lengthening wings break into fire

At either curvéd point,  what bitter wrong

Can the earth do to us?”

They married in secret without the knowledge of Elizabeth’s tyrannical father. In 1846, they were wed at St Marylebone Church in London, before eloping  to Paris for their  honeymoon. Then they moved to Italy.

Mr Barrett disinherited Elizabeth as he did each of his children who married. Perhaps it was for the best.

She wrote to the art critic, John Ruskin, "I belong to a family of West Indian slaveholders, and if I believed in curses, I should be afraid."

She herself championed the abolition of slavery, and in 1847 she published an extraordinary poem in the American annual,  ‘The Liberty Bell’.

This poem, ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point’, gave voice to a female slave. It tells how she was raped and whipped and made pregnant, and included the words, “I am Black, I am black.”

Despite being disinherited, the couple were reasonably well off in Italy. The popularity of their poetry, especially that of Elizabeth, led to steady sales. They had one son, who became a painter.

At her husband's insistence, Elizabeth's second edition of Poems included her love sonnets. As a result, she became even more famous and celebrated. 

Her most ambitious work was a verse-novel, ‘Aurora Leigh’. It is the story of a female writer making her way in life, balancing work and love, and based on her own experiences.

“I clenched my brows across

My blue eyes greatening in the looking-glass,

And said, ‘We will live, Aurora! We will be strong.

The dogs are on us–but we will not die.”

Soon her literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband. When visitors came to their home in Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction.  

So here is her famous love sonnet number 43:   Some say its 14 lines start by rationally quantifying love, then move through the everyday, the passionate, and finally the spiritual and eternal.

The 43rd sonnet in a collection titled "Sonnets from the Portuguese",  is considered one of the most passionate and enduring love poems in the English language. It expresses her profound and boundless love for Robert.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.