In this Friday, Feb. 10, 2012 photo, a hand-written original manuscript by Elizabeth Barrett Browning of the epic poem "Aurora Leigh," is held by Mariana Oller, Wellesley College associate curator of special collections at the Margaret Clapp Library, on the campus of Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Mass. Beginning Valentine's Day Feb. 14, 2012 the famous love letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning will be available on line as part of a digitization collaboration between Wellesley and Baylor University in Texas.
It's a timely reality check that expressing love doesn't always come smoothly, even for great poets immersed in a great passion.
The pre-marriage love letters of 19th-century poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett have long been admired for their literary quality and how they reveal the slow build of the relationship. But while their contents have been published repeatedly, the actual letters have been largely inaccessible.
Until now. In time for Valentine's Day, a pair of universities in the U.S. moved to make available online digitized versions of the originals – complete with creases, envelopes (bearing a one-penny stamp) and crossed out sections where the poets reconsidered their thoughts.
In one letter, written shortly before they eloped and fled to Italy, Mr. Browning changes tack on the third page, scratching out up to 10 words and then continuing. What was lost there cannot be known, but the letter in its entirety reveals the aftermath of a small dispute. The author, who begins with a half-apology, ends with an effusive display of affection.
The nature of the dispute is not revealed but the author acknowledges – in a construct that would be familiar to many couples – that he was wrong "for the manner of what I said rather than the matter."
Several pages later he has moved beyond the issue and taken rhetorical flight, using the pet name of his future bride.
"I will wish you here where I write, with the trees to see and the birds to hear thro' the open window," he wrote on July 26, 1846. "I see you on this old chair against the purple back ... or shall you lie on the sofa? Ba, how I love you, my own perfect, unapproachable mistress."
The letters, which have been in the collection of Wellesley College in Massachusetts since 1930, are being made available through collaboration with Baylor University in Texas.
Oliver Moore