26
" In the course of this year the failure in Miss Barrett’s health had become so great that her doctor advised removal to a warmer climate for the winter. Torquay was the place selected, and thither she went in the autumn, accompanied by her brother Edward, her favourite companion from childhood. Other members of the family, including Mr. Barrett, joined them from time to time. At Torquay she was able to live, but no more, and it was found necessary for her to stay during the summers as well as the winters of the next three years. Letters from this period are scarce, though it is clear from Miss Mitford’s correspondence that a continuous interchange of letters was kept up between the two friends, and her acquaintanceship with Horne was now ripening into a close literary intimacy. "
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
27
" Also, up to the very last act we stood in the light of day for the whole world, if it pleased, to judge us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole Street house; he came twice a week to see me — or rather, three times in the fortnight, openly in the sight of all, and this for nearly two years, and neither more nor less. Some jests used to be passed upon us by my brothers, and I allowed them without a word, but it would have been infamous in me to have taken any into my confidence who would have suffered, as a direct consequence, a blighting of his own prospects. My secrecy towards them all was my simple duty towards them all, and what they call want of affection was an affectionate consideration for them. My sisters did indeed know the truth to a certain point. "
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
29
" Let me hear from you soon, if you are not angry. I have been reading the Bridgewater treatise, and am now trying to understand Prout upon Chemistry. I shall be worth something at last, shall I not? Who knows but what I may die a glorious death under the pons asinorum after all? Prout (if I succeed in understanding him) does not hold that matter is infinitely divisible; and so I suppose the seeds of matter — the ultimate molecules — are a kind of tertium quid between matter and spirit. Certainly I can’t believe that any kind of matter, primal or ultimate, can be indivisible, which it must according to his view. Chalmers’s treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful; as to matter, I could not walk with him all the way, although I longed to do it, for he walked on flowers, and under shade— ‘no tree on which a fine bird did not sit. "
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
32
" Not many of these, however, can have been born at Coxhoe; for while Elizabeth was still an infant — apparently about the beginning of the year 1809 — Mr. Barrett removed to his newly purchased estate of Hope End, in Herefordshire, among the Malvern hills, and only a few miles from Malvern itself. It is to Hope End that the admirers of Mrs. Browning must look as the real home of her childhood and youth. Here she spent her first twenty years of conscious life. Here is the scene of the childish reminiscences which are to be found among her earlier poems, of ‘Hector in the Garden,’ ‘The Lost Bower,’ and ‘The Deserted Garden.’ And here too her earliest verses were written, and the foundations laid of that omnivorous reading of literature of all sorts and kinds, which was so strong a characteristic of her tastes and leanings. "
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
37
" The journey to Paris was effected at the end of September, and for about nine months they pitched their tent at No. 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées. It was a fortunate time to be in Paris for those who had no personal nervousness, and liked to be near the scene of great events — a most anxious time for any who were alarmed at disturbances, or took keenly to heart the horrors of street fighting. Fortunately for the Brownings, they, whether by temperament or through their Italian experiences, were not unduly disturbed at revolutions, while the horrors of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état were, no doubt, only partly known to Mrs. Browning at the time, and were palliated to her by the view she took of Napoleon’s character. "
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
39
" At the same time his treatment in England affects him naturally — and for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public — no other word. He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which, I acknowledge, I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady of rank, an acquaintance of ours (observe that!), asked, the other day, the American Minister whether ‘Robert was not an American.’ The Minister answered ‘Is it possible that you ask me this? Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were very sorry he was not an American.’ Very pretty of the American Minister — was it not? — and literally true besides. "
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning