Theirs was a love story for the ages with all the passion and intrigue of a Victorian-era romance — a courtship that included 573 love letters and a secret marriage at St. Marylebone Church on Sept. 12, 1846, in London over her tyrannical father’s objections. He later disinherited her, and she never saw him again after she and her husband started a new life in Italy, where their son was born three years later. His given name was Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, but they called him Pen. Though inseparable during their lifetimes, the lovers are buried nearly a thousand miles apart: Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the Protestant Cemetery in Florence and Robert Browning in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, London. Six years his senior, Elizabeth was just 55 when she died in her husband’s arms at their home in Florence of chronic lung disease. Father and son moved back to London where Robert established himself as a leading literary figure. He never married again, nor did he visit Florence after his wife’s death. Then in 1889 while visiting Pen at his home in Venice, Browning died of natural causes. He was 77 years old.
So, how did Baylor come into possession of such an impressive collection of Browning material in the first place? “Dr. A.J. Armstrong was chair of the English department from 1912 to 1952, and he greatly admired the poetry of Robert Browning,” said Jennifer Borderud, director of the Armstrong Browning Library. “He gave his modest personal collection of Browning materials to the University in 1918, and that’s how it started.”
On his first visit to Italy in 1909, Armstrong met Browning’s son Pen, who invited him to be his guest for the next several days. That encounter strengthened Armstrong’s resolve to acquire everything he could associated with Browning, and he spent the rest of his life raising funds to expand the collection.
One of the rarest items is a handwritten working draft of “Sonnet V” from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, which her husband called “the finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare.” By reading a draft of the sonnet, researchers get a glimpse into her thought process as she writes about her new love for Robert while struggling with her grief over her brother’s recent death. “It is the only known draft of any of the Sonnets from the Portuguese,” said Borderud. “You can see that she’s changing things, scratching things out.”
As for what are arguably the most famous love letters of all time, all 573 of them are owned by Wellesley College in Massachusetts. If he’d had the money, Dr. Armstrong would have bought them himself when they came up for sale. The good news is that in 2012, Baylor Libraries, which had the infrastructure in place to create and maintain digital collections, partnered with Wellesley’s Margaret Chapp Library to digitize the entire collection. Darryl Stuhr, Baylor’s director of digitization and digital collection preservation services, calls the digitized letters “as authentic online as if you pulled them out of a sleeve.”
The Brownings were nothing if not prolific letter writers, and the library has about 3,000 of the approximately 11,000 letters that were written to or received from other people – family members, literary figures, artists, friends, acquaintances inviting them to meals. “We can learn a lot about their daily lives from these letters, from social issues of the day to what they thought about other artists and writers,” said Borderud. “A Browning scholar could follow their movements, see who they knew and interacted with, or learn about the publication history of some of their works.”
The library’s collection of stained-glass windows is notable. While many of them illustrate Robert and Elizabeth’s poetry, there are three large stained-glass windows in the Foyer of Meditation that are tinted to look like a sunrise or sunset when you enter the room. You’ll also find a few pieces of art from the 19th century and some that date back to the Italian Renaissance, as well as a bronze casting of Robert and Elizabeth’s interlocked hands. “That piece was done by American artist and sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who was a friend of theirs,” said Borderud.
Aside from the Browning materials, the library also has works by Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and others that support research on 19th century literature and culture. Among the Dickens memorabilia are a few of his letters, a couple of photos of the author, and a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s masterpiece, “Aurora Lee,” with Dickens’ bookplate inside. “We have some of his books in their original serialized form,” said Borderud, who admits that she screamed the first time she saw them, though she allows that almost everyone has the same reaction.
Graduate students from all over the United States and as far away as the United Kingdom and China visit the library to conduct research, but anyone can visit during regular hours: Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except on major holidays or when the University is closed. A self-guided tour packet is available at the front desk, but it’s best to make an appointment if you want a guided tour. “We encourage anyone who wants to do research to call ahead so we can have the materials pulled and ready for them when they arrive,” said Borderud. The only caveats when working with rare books and manuscripts, she says, is that your hands are clean and dry and that you take notes in pencil or on your laptop.
Over the years, the library has undergone a few major renovations and improvements, which were made possible by endowment funds. Still, gifts in any amount are always welcome to support internship programs for Baylor undergraduates or graduate students, stipends for visiting scholars, and public lectures. “We usually bring in a faculty member or someone outside of the university who has done research on the Brownings or another literary figure represented in our collection,” said Borderud, who is justifiably proud of the Armstrong Browning Library, one of Baylor’s six special collections. “Everyone who walks through the door is surprised by what they find here because it’s nothing like they imagined.”
