Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Library and Revision Strategies: Aurora Leigh and the Medical Reform Act of 1858

By Crystal Veronie, Ph.D.

Crystal Veronie

Crystal Veronie, Ph.D., Armstrong Browning Library Visiting Scholar 2024-2025

In our contemporary world, literary arts such as poetry are often imagined as wildly separate from the modes of discourse in fields of science and medicine–-what C. P. Snow famously ridiculed as “two cultures” in his Rede lecture in 1959; yet, in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, this division of literary and medical discourse was only beginning to show with the advent of separate scientific and medical publications, such as The Lancet, a general medical journal which surgeon, coroner, and politician Thomas Wakley (1795-1862) began in 1823. Rather than a separation of thought leaders in science and medicine from those dedicated to arts and letters, nineteenth-century Britain was a confluence of intellectual engagement between famous poets such as the Romantic poet and metaphysician Samuel Taylor Coleridge and chemist Sir Humphry Davy, who collaborated together with Thomas Beddoes’s Pneumatic Institution to explore the physiological effects and health benefits of nitrous oxide.

My own research concerns the historical absence of women writer’s contributions to medical discourse in nineteenth-century Britain–even as their own bodies became increasingly the subjects of medical study. In Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science, renowned professor of history and women’s studies Londa Schiebinger asserts that questions regarding women’s perspectives on “body politics” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries cannot be answered due to the dearth of women’s contributions to anatomical studies and other scientific and medical publications.[1] The reasons for women’s withdrawal from public scientific discourse in the eighteenth-century are multitudinous, but what is clear is that by the time of the passage of the  Medical Reform Act of 1858 in Britain, a piece of legislation that established an all-male board to regulate medical practice, women’s own authority in women’s health care rapidly declined.[2] New regulation for midwifery effectively prevented the continuance of women’s practice as independent professionals in the medical field.

In spite of prevailing social attitudes about women’s involvement in public discourse and professions in the nineteenth century, women writers were not silent on topics of interest to men of science and medicine; they wrote extensively about popular scientific and medical topics in their fiction, poetry, correspondence, and personal writing. It is to learn more about the perspectives of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning on issues of women’s health, social concerns, and the rise of medical regulation that I entered the Belew Scholars’ Room as a Visiting Scholar to research the remarkable archival collections held at the Armstrong Browning Library and Museum at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In addition to a considerable collection of correspondence, manuscripts, and fair copies, the Armstrong Browning Library has assembled an astounding collection, the Browning Library, from the personal libraries of Barrett Browning and her equally-famous poet-husband Robert Browning. A celebrated poet at a young age, Barrett Browning enjoyed great success during her lifetime. Her most popular work in the Victorian period, a book-length poem titled Aurora Leigh, continues to delight readers. Although her collection Sonnets from the Portuguese holds higher esteem with modern readers, Aurora Leigh debuted to nearly instant acclaim. William Edmonstoune Aytoune’s review in Blackwood’s Magazine praised Barrett Browning’s bravery: “Mrs Browning takes the field like Britomart or Joan of Arc” for her insistence on authentic literary criticism without “forbearance” in regard to her “sex,” before the reviewer sets about to provide a multi-page review that compares her poetic descriptions to the magnificent strokes of painter J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851).[3] (see fig. 1)

Author’s photograph of Aytoun’s review of Aurora Leigh in Blackwood’s in 1857

Fig. 1. Author’s photograph of Aytoun’s review of Aurora Leigh in Blackwood’s in 1857, Meynell Collection, Armstrong Browning Library

The goals of my research project “Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Revisions of Aurora Leigh and the Medical Reform Act of 1858” are two-fold: 1) to enrich my current research on Aurora Leigh with broader context by researching the Browning Library Collection and 2) to examine revisions that Barrett Browning made to her poem Aurora Leigh during the period between its initial publication in 1856 and Barrett Browning’s death on June 29, 1861. While I have yet to locate any specific reference to the Medical Reform Act of 1858 in Barrett Browning’s writing, the time I spent with the Brownings’ Library collection greatly enhanced and contextualized the fourth chapter of my monograph project, “Resistive Embodiment and Bodily Autonomy in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh,” as well as the broader monograph project which examines works by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Sara Coleridge, and Olive Schreiner. The Brownings avidly read the works of Mary Shelley and her poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Barrett Browning had connections to the Wordsworth-Coleridge circle.

Since my research considers women’s writing against the arc of the rise of empirical medicine in the nineteenth-century, I was eager to examine texts that inform medical perspectives in the Brownings’ library. During my month with the Browning Library, I reviewed several texts in the collection that signal Barrett Browning’s interest in medical texts. Robert Browning’s contributions to their library included several works from his father, including a first edition copy of Charles Bell’s 1806 Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting., Abbe Pernetti’s Philosophical Letters Upon Physiognomies. To which are added Dissertations on the Inequality of Souls, Philanthropy, and Misfortunes. (1751), and other interesting texts related to the development of scientific thought. Additionally, a French medical text in the collection, Antonin Bossu’s Anatomie Descriptive Du Corps Humain D’anatomie Des Formes: Suivie d’un Précis includes an inscription on the cover: “Robert Browning / Paris, June 16, ‘56.” The Brownings had wintered over in Paris in 1855, and they returned to Florence in June 1856, just months before the publication of Aurora Leigh. The inscription suggests that Robert Browning acquired the anatomy text prior to their return to their beloved Casa Guidi in Florence (see fig. 2 and fig. 3).

Fig. 2. Author’s photograph of Anatomie descriptive du corps humain D’anatomie Des Forms: Suivie d’un Précis

Fig. 2. Author’s photograph of Anatomie descriptive du corps humain D’anatomie Des Forms: Suivie d’un Précis, Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library

Fig. 3. Author’s photograph of illustrations of the lungs and heart in Robert Browning’s copy of Anatomie descriptive du corps humain D’anatomie Des Forms: Suivie d’un Précis

Fig. 3. Author’s photograph of illustrations of the lungs and heart in Robert Browning’s copy of Anatomie descriptive du corps humain D’anatomie Des Forms: Suivie d’un Précis,
Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library

Barrett Browning’s own interest in medicine arises in her correspondence related to her own health and that of family members, but it also appears in correspondence related to the controversy surrounding mesmerism. Barrett Browning corresponded with author Harriet Martineau and received letters privately endorsing mesmerism. Along with the pseudoscience of phrenology, mesmerism or animal magnetism gained enough popularity in England to support the creation of a society of men of science dedicated to its study. A rising physician, John Elliotson (1791-1868) started the society and edited a journal, The Zoist, which circulated stories about its healing effects.  Separated from Barrett Browning socially by only a few degrees, Elliotson’s name appears repeatedly in correspondence between Barrett Browning and her friends and acquaintances.

One letter from Barrett Browning to author Mary Russell Mitford (November 20, [1844]) reveals Barrett Browning’s own concern about the broad application of mesmeric experiments. Barrett Browning writes to Mitford, “You see, enough is not known of the agency & the manner of its acting, to use it with judgement. Every application is a new leap in the dark.” A little further in the same letter, Barrett Browning explains that “I think it too early to make use of this power as an accredited means of restoration from disease—& that the right philosophy wd be to accumulate more facts ..in opposition to the shams ..more undeniable facts, as facts, .. &, so, to begin to classify principles, & bring about the induction of Science, instead of Mystery.” Even though Barrett Browning takes this position on mesmerism’s benefit for the general public, she also expresses belief in the author Harriet Martineau’s testimony of cure and dismay at the way that Martineau’s medical practitioners have turned on her because of her public acknowledgement of her results (see letter from EBB to Mary Russell Mitford, Thursday, Dec. 5, 1844). Thus, Barrett Browning’s correspondence evidences a hesitancy to anticipate positive results for the practice of mesmerism broadly applied to public health. Instead, she argues for more rigor in the practice of medicine, caution in disregard for the differences between individual physiologies, and ethical treatment for patients who counter medical authority.

In addition to specific medical manuals, my research in the Browning Library uncovered unexpected connections between Barrett Browning’s writing and that of other respected poets. For example, Barrett Browning’s copy of James Russell Lowell’s Poems (1844), a presentation copy of the second edition sent to her by Lowell himself, includes numerous annotations in Barrett Browning’s hand that provide greater nuance to my readings of Aurora Leigh. In Lowell’s “A Legend of Brittany,” Barrett Browning has annotated in the margins near the lines:

Not far from Margaret’s cottage dwelt a knight

Of the proud Templars, a sworn celebate,

Whose heart in secret fed upon the light

And dew of her ripe beauty, through the grate. (Part I, Stanza XVI).

The hidden quality of the knight’s love shares similarities with Barrett Browning’s poem “Lord Walter’s Wife,” a poem that also explores a man’s secret desires as a kind of corruption that tempts him to break with his own sense of moral duty.

A little later in Part II, stanza II of Lowell’s “A Legend of Brittany,” Barrett Browning marks a vertical line next to a passage that contrasts high and low elements:

Yet let us think, that, as there’s naught above

The all-embracing atmosphere of Art,

So also there is naught that falls below

Her generous reach, though grimed with guilt and woe.

Similar to Lowell’s use of high and low, Barrett Browning employs the contrast of high and low in the exchange of gazes between the young Romney Leigh and Aurora in Book I of Aurora Leigh:

We came so close, we saw our differences

Too intimately. Always Romney Leigh

Was looking for the worms, I for the gods.

A godlike nature his; the gods look down,

Incurious of themselves; and certainly

’Tis well I should remember, how, those days,

I was a worm too, and he looked at me. (lines 500-556)

The passage in Lowell’s poem places “Art” at the highest reaches of the “atmosphere” but also insists that even that which is “grimed with guilt and woe” remains within its purview. Barrett Browning’s passage, by contrast, correlates Romney’s masculine objectivity with god-like heights, while it correlates Aurora’s femininity with the earthly and material—for how much more gross and corporeal a motif could she choose than the worm’s body and its frequent associations with the grave and mortal decay.

According to the edition of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language in the Browning Library, the primary meaning of the word “worm” in English is to refer to “a small harmless serpent that lives in the earth.” Other meanings of the term, however, include “poisonous serpent” and parasitic organisms, as well as references to silkworms and those worms associated with graves (see fig. 4 and 5).

Fig. 4. Author’s photograph of title page of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1786)

Fig. 4. Author’s photograph of title page of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1786), Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library.

Fig. 5. Author’s photograph of entry, “worm” in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language

Fig. 5. Author’s photograph of entry, “worm” in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library.

In turning from the Browning Library collection to the revisions made to Aurora Leigh, I am drawn to descriptions of the “unseen” and invisible. In my transcription of the Armstrong Browning Library’s fair copy fragment of the first edition of Aurora Leigh, a draft of Book I, lines 9-28 and 204-207 (D0051), I notice the phrase, “hid with God” (line 204) repeated in the published first edition of the poem.

Moreover, my interest was piqued by the striking alteration to lines 204-207. In this fair copy, these lines emphasize the child’s confrontation with death:

For nine full years our lives were hid with God

Among his mountains. I was twelve years old

And suddenly these vague, unfeatured days

Grew clear with death. Suddenly woke up… (Barrett Browning,

fair copy manuscript of first edition of Aurora Leigh)

Fig. 6 Author’s photograph of an excerpt of the fair copy manuscript of Aurora Leigh (D0051)

Fig. 6 Author’s photograph of an excerpt of the fair copy manuscript of Aurora Leigh (D0051)

In contrast, the same line numbers in the first published edition of Aurora Leigh differ significantly:

So, nine full years, our days were hid with God

Among his mountains.      I was just thirteen,

Still growing like the plants from unseen roots

In tongue-tied Springs, — and suddenly awoke … (Barrett Browning,

Aurora Leigh, Chapman and Hall, 1857)

The shift between the lines in the fair copy and the lines in the first published edition is one from an emphasis upon the clarity of death that brings a sudden awareness of one’s mortality to a sense of childhood innocence lost–and an awakening into an adult consciousness more reflective of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.

The subtle revisions from the fair copy to the first edition emphasize the quality of her father’s touch. In the fair copy, lines 19-20, “My father’s slow hand when she had left us both, / Stroke out my childish curls across his knee” and then, lines 24-27, “… O father’s hand, / Stroke the poor hair down, stroke it heavily, / And draw the child’s head closer to thy knees,” recall the child’s memory of the deceased father–the force of his heavy hand and knee–whose insistent and repetitious touch leaves its mark on the child’s memory. So too, in the 1859 fourth edition of Aurora Leigh does the paternal aunt’s gaze, which Aurora describes her eyes as “two gray-steel naked-bladed” instruments of violence (Book I, line 327). Under her aunt’s surveillance, Aurora likens herself to one who has been shipwrecked, her body “…thrown / Like seaweed on the rocks…” (Book I, lines 379-380). In a parallel to her father’s forceful stroking of her hair in the previous scene, Aurora describes her aunt’s visual scrutiny as a “prick” that seeks to:

To prick me to a pattern with her pin

Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf,

And dry out from my drowned anatomy

The last sea salt left in me. (Book I, lines 381-384).

The richness of these passages, and the doubling of paternal surveillance from the father to the aunt, also echo similar parallels in Barrett Browning’s own life between an autocratic father and family and friends intent on shaping her—not to mention the connection between the shipwreck metaphor and her own loss of her favorite brother “Bro” at sea in Torquay. It leaves me with much to contemplate in the coming weeks and months as I revise my monograph chapter.

In her exploration of conceptions of inner lives—private thoughts and feelings, of her characters, Barrett Browning conducts her own kind of anatomical discoveries. The influence of changes in medicine play out in subtle degrees in Aurora Leigh’s preoccupation with bodily autonomy, the soul, and the relationship of the mind to the body.

Since spending time with the Browning Library Collection, Barrett Browning’s correspondence, personal writing, and the various revisions that she made to Aurora Leigh and her other works, I feel my research project becoming more rooted, growing in Barrett Browning’s words, “from unseen roots” (Aurora Leigh, first edition, Book I, line 206). I am incredibly grateful for the 2024-2025 fellowship I received, which made possible the month I spent in residence as a Visiting Scholar at the Armstrong Browning Library, and for the incredible support I received from librarians Jennifer Borderud and Laura French, as well as the gracious staff, including Christi Klempnauer, Vanessa Long, and Rachael Bates. I am also deeply moved by the collegiality extended from the Margarett Root Brown Chair in Robert Browning and Victorian Studies Dr. Kristen Pond. I am also ever indebted to the generosity of donors who have made and continue to sustain the archival collections at the Armstrong Browning Library.

[1] Britomart is a reference to the female knight in Book III of Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Fairie Queene, a text also in the Browning Library Collection.

[2] Schiebinger, Nature’s Body (Boston: Beacon Press): p. 201.

[3] Wakley announces the passage of the Medical Reform Act (here called “The Medical Practitioner Act” in The Lancet on Saturday, August 7, 1858; Schiebinger asserts that “…this was a period when women’s agency in health matters was being challenged more generally. For hundreds of years, midwives had held a monopoly on the entire field of women’s health care. Beginning in the seventeenth century and increasing in the eighteenth century, Schiebinger explains, “university-trained [male] obstetricians had taken over the more scientific (and lucrative) parts of birthing” (Nature’s Body, 141).

Works Cited

Aytoun, William Edmonstoune. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning—Aurora Leigh.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 81, no. 495 (January 1857), pp. 23-41. Meynell Collection, Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University.

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. Aurora Leigh. First edition. Chapman and Hall. 1857. Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University.

———. Aurora Leigh. Manuscript Draft of I, 9–28 and 204–207, on a page numbered 7. Browning Collections, Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, D0051.

———. Aurora Leigh. 1859. Fourth, revised edition. Edited by Kerry McSweeney. Oxford UP, 1998, 2008.

———. Letter from EBB to Mary Russell Mitford. Letter 1764, November 20, [1844]. The Brownings’ Correspondence. Vol. 9. Edited by Philip Kelley, Edward Hagan, and Linda M. Lewis. June 1844 – December 1844. Letters 1618 – 1798. Wedgestone Press, 1991, pp. 234-238.

———. Letter from EBB to Mary Russell Mitford. Letter 1779, Thursday, Dec. 5 1844, Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 9. Edited by Philip Kelley, Edward Hagan, and Linda M. Lewis. June 1844 – December 1844. Letters 1618 – 1798. Wedgestone Press, 1991, pp. 234-235.

Bossu, Antonin. Anatomie Descriptive Du Corps Humain D’anatomie Des Formes: Suivie d’un Précis

Paris: Au Comptoir des Imprimeurs-Unis, Lacroix-Comon, Éditeur, Quai Malaquais, 15. Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University.

Johnson, Samuel. “Worms.” A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from Their Originals, Illustrated in Their Different Signification by Examples from the Best Writers. To Which are Prefixed, a History of the Language, and an English Grammar. Vol. II. London: John Jarvis, 1786, n.p. Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University.

Lowell, James Russell. Poems. 2nd edition. Cambridge: John Owen, 1844. Browning Library Collection, Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University.

“The Medical Practitioner Act.” The Lancet, Saturday, 7 Aug. 1858. The Lancet, vol. 2, London: J. Onwyn, pp. 149-150. HathiTrust. Princeton University. Accessed 15 July 2024, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101074830579&seq=153&q1=%22medical+reform%22.

Reflections from a Summer Intern

By Jill Phillips, Armstrong Browning Library and Digitization and Digital Collection Preservation Services Summer Intern

Jill Phillips at the Armstrong Browning Library

My name is Jill Phillips, and I am senior at Baylor University studying Classics and Museum Studies. Over the past several weeks of this summer I have had the pleasure to serve as the Armstrong Browning Library’s summer intern. It has been such a fun and unique experience, and I would recommend to anyone looking for an internship to apply for a Baylor Libraries summer internship. Over the course of the internship, I am expected to help out the ABL’s staff with the creation of metadata, digitization, and creation of a temporary exhibit of my own design and curation, from several of their more recent acquisitions. Overall, my experience has been a wildly positive one, from being able to expand my experience with metadata creation, to working on a unique piece of technology, to being able to curate my own exhibit while still a student.

Working at both the Armstrong Browning Library and the Riley Digitization Center has been such a unique and fun experience that has undoubtedly added to my wonderful education that I have been receiving here at Baylor. This internship has provided me with many opportunities to grow and experience working in an active field that will help me as I near graduation in December. Part of my internship parameters was to set goals within my intern experience, and work with faculty members to grow and meet these goals. Some of the goals that I personally set for myself were to grow in my skills working with metadata and online collections, as well as learn more about the process of curating an exhibit. All of which I have been given the chance to do.

Walking into the ABL is such an amazing moment—the building itself from the outside is just phenomenal to look at—the metallic doors glinting in the early Texas sun is a sight to behold—and one that is nearly impossible to explain to its fullest extent. The library and museum are gorgeous, both outside and in, and you can tell that Dr. Armstrong had taken great pride in the building and its collection. The library and museum itself is such a unique place to be able to work. It holds a standing as a library, museum, and archive due to all of the miscellaneous collections housed within. The third floor Belew Scholars’ Room is an amazing resource for both local and visiting scholars to be able to do research into whichever topic piques their fancy. The room that I have been working in, like all of the other rooms in the library, has these two gorgeous stained-glass windows that allow the sun to be refracted into all the colors of the rainbow, while also allowing for some much-needed vitamin c without having to brave the Texas sun. The staff here at the ABL is also fabulous. Jennifer Borderud has been great to work under and has made the internship like a walk in the park. I started out my summer having a meeting with her and getting to know the ABL, taking a tour of the museum, and Jennifer showing me where the stacks were and a few other secrets of the museum. After that, I got to work! There were 2 bankers boxes worth of recently acquired letters, manuscripts, and books that I was to create metadata for and put into a pre-existing spreadsheet that was shared with the Riley Digitization Center. I got to be hands-on with each document, finding the information while also keeping an eye out for any through lines that might be appearing to use to create my exhibit in the last half of the summer. While doing that, I read several of the ABL’s manuals about exhibit creation and archive storage, to get a grasp of the industry standards that the library adheres to.

Jill Phillips at the Riley Digitization Center

Once I finished with the initial metadata, I spent several weeks working in the Riley Digitization Center in Moody Library on campus, working with the team down there to digitize and upload the documents to Baylor’s digital collections in Quartex. I had the pleasure to work with a Zeutschel Scanstudio A0, which I’m pretty sure is worth four years of tuition at Baylor, plus some. It was definitely a tad daunting, to be working on such an advanced piece of machinery; however, the Scanstudio creates some of the highest quality photographs and scans, making it perfect for the project I am working on. The Riley Center is a fabulous place on Baylor campus, with some of the kindest, most intelligent people on staff working there. They took their time to train and work with me while I was there to ensure that I knew what I was doing and the ABL was receiving the highest quality scans it could get. Working with Allyson Riley and the team was crazy fun and allowed me to see a separate part of the archival field—the digitization portion. In a world where technology is nearly impossible to separate from humans, having access to a growing and evolving digital archive is something that is incredibly important for the archival field. Plus, it allowed me to nerd out over the technology I was getting to use (I definitely took too many selfies and videos to send to my dad.) The Digitization Center showed me the different ways of collecting, storing, and uploading digital archives, while also allowing me some more hands-on work with the documents as well as some Women Poet books that also needed to be digitized and uploaded to the website. Working there taught me more of the industry standards in digitizing collections—leaving borders on letters to ensure the whole thing is captured, or cropping an image of a page in a book or manuscript where the page ends so that there isn’t anything to distract from the words on the page.

Upon returning to the ABL, I began work on my exhibit, and the whole process of creating and designing my ideas. I have been working on my context cards and labels, the lay out of the letters within their case, advertising, facsimiles and so much more to ensure I do everything by the book. I have decided to focus on classical education in the Victorian era, and how children were educated, and why language was something that was at the forefront of their education then but has seemingly slipped from American education until high school and secondary education. My exhibit will be finished by the end of the summer and on display during the fall semester in the ABL’s Hankamer Treasure Room. I look forward to being able to see this project through to the end and seeing my very own exhibit on display in a museum.

Greek, Latin, Italian, Oh My! is on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room through Fall 2023

Overall, I have really enjoyed the opportunities this internship has brought me. I’ve been able to meet some fabulous people, who all are smart and brilliant people who have been in my corner as I complete my internship requirements. The fact that I am allowed to be a student and a professional at the same time has allowed me such an opportunity for growth and professional development that I have no doubt that I have gained an experience that will benefit me well past college graduation. Please come give the ABL a visit, see my exhibit in the Hankamer Treasure Room, or simply browse Baylor’s Digital Collections. You may very well see a document that I helped scan and upload! I would like to thank the Baylor Museum Studies Department, as well as both the ABL and Riley Digitization Center for allowing me to come in and work as an intern. It has proved an extremely fruitful experience and I cannot thank everyone I have worked with enough!

The Armstrong Browning Library is grateful to the donors who made the Armstrong Browning Library Endowed Internship possible.

Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: Texan Heat and Archive Fever: Browning’s Interest in Islamic Literature

By Alexander Abichou, PhD

‘[Browning] borrowed his jewels from the East and from the West; from art, from nature[…] from legend and history; from fancy and imagination [as well as] poets, painters, dervishes, saints [ and] took them all as the colours of his scenery, the figures in his drama, the sphere in which his imagination worked’ (Browning Society Papers, Sixth session, 1886-7. Forty-Fourth Meeting, Friday, October 29, 1886. pp.165-6)

Alexander Abichou, PhD

Alexander Abichou, PhD, in the Belew Scholars’ Room, Armstrong Browning Library

Having traversed acres of prairie connecting the highways of Dallas-Fort Worth to Waco, I arrived at Baylor University to visit the unique Rare Books and Manuscript Collection at the Armstrong Browning Library which serves as a testimony to the life and writings of the Browning family and exemplifies a level of academic dedication (from inception to present) which would prove to be as endearing as it was informative. Although the quietude of the ABL stood in stark contrast to the grandiose lone star state that encompassed it, there was a warmth which resonated across the pomegranate engravings of the library doors, the minimalist walls of the Mark Rothko chapel, and the endless fields surrounding Gatesville’s Last Drive-In Picture Show. I had undertaken the fellowship as a means of broadening the scope of my current monograph, Mythographic thought and Islamic theosophy: From early Romanticism to Late Victorianism, focusing on Percy Shelley and Robert Browning as the respective exemplars of their age for determining a mythopoetic form of Orientalism where Eastern theological concepts were creatively integrated into a poetic oeuvre encompassing multiple traditions re-presented for contemporary audiences. I aimed to uncover details regarding the circles engaged in mythographic and Orientalist scholarship among Browning’s immediate acquaintances to determine how discussions pertaining to the evolution and role of myth vis-à-vis Christianity informed his depictions of Islamic personages and concepts. For the subsequent month, therefore, I was eager to immerse myself both in the archives as well as Texan culture which had previously been an unknown quantity due to never visiting this part of the United States. Neither aspect would disappoint.

When discerning the nature of Browning’s exposure to Islamic intellectual history, it was pivotal to examine his interactions with the Arabist, Charles James Lyall, prompting me towards a series of correspondences between both parties as well as the drafts of critical editions for Arabic and Persian literature that Lyall translated and sent to his treasured companion. On December 13th 1884, Lyall offered linguistic corrections for Ferishtah’s Fancies which extended beyond simply noting alterations to be made for names such as, ‘Tahmasp,’ or, ‘Rakhsh,’ but also providing etymological insight into the lineage of these Persian and Arabic words from Hakim, signifying ‘Ruler, giver of commands [derived ] from hikmat, wisdom’, as well as Firdusi, connoting ‘paradise.’ The letter highlights Browning’s relation with Lyall as characterised by a growing exposure to classical Oriental literature with the British Arabist casually gesturing, ‘you may remember certain translations of old Arabian poetry of which I ventured to send you copies from India a few years ago.’ The interlinguistic quality that Lyall afforded Browning’s Oriental poetics offsets a general tendency to completely translate the Other and instead, humbles the reader into a position where meaning can be deduced but not necessarily authenticated. This polysemic approach affords those foreign terms a space to where the historical significance must be consulted before presuming mastery without wholeheartedly removing artistic intent for those both uninformed and seeking to be exposed to fresh terminology. Acknowledging this polyvocal quality of Browning’s work, Lyall writes in his English rendition of the Mu’allakah of Zuhair (Ode to Zuhair) that the metre adopted in the seventh stanza of Abt Vogler resembles, ‘the noble cadence called the Tawil, most loved by the ancient poets’, with the page number for this passage being noted on Browning’s personal copy (see below).

The Mo'allaqah of Zuheyr rendered into English

Robert Browning’s copy of The Mo’allaqah of Zuheyr rendered into English: with an introduction and notes by C.J. Lyall. ABL Brownings’ Library X BL 892.71 Z94m 1878

Lyall’s Mo’allaqah proved a useful source of classical Arab history and literary style offering a tapestry of poetic conceits and formal idiosyncrasies relayed through annotated footnotes which Browning would condense into his own passages such as, the ‘Slit-eared, unblemished, fat, true offsprings of Muzennem’, echoing Lyall’s comment that, ‘[c]amels of good breed had a slit in the ear [making them] the offspring of a certain Muzannam’. Aside from repurposing Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma’s pre-Islamic vocabulary, Lyall and Browning also discussed the merits of Omar Khayyam’s Sufism in a letter dated 21st January 1885 as the former argues that the Persian polymath was, ‘more of a Sûfi than he seems in a superficial view’, since his discomfort towards the Sufistic longing for absorption within a Divine Beloved did not necessarily derive from unbelief but rather a scientific proclivity which sought to maintain selfhood. Intriguingly this comment is prefaced with an acknowledgment of Browning’s already established familiarity of the topic, ‘Sûfism, as you doubtless know, looks upon all phenomena as manifestations of the One, who is God, and considers the end of all to be absorption in Him.’ Lyall also reminds Browning of a previous poetry collection containing unpublished works from Lebid ibn Rabi’ah, ‘[t]he piece of which I showed you a translation when I called on Thursday last is taken from this Dîwân [of Lebîd’s poetry]’, highlighting a continued interest from both parties to share their thoughts on Arabian literature and prompting Lyall’s high praise of Lebid as standing, ‘between the Old time and the New, between the Ignorance and el-Islâm’. Akin to Lebid occupying the horizon line of these distinct eras, Browning’s correspondences reveal a willingness to bridge disparate cultures within an informed Oriental poetics that incorporates linguistic, topographical and conceptual material from the rural expressions found in pre-Islamic odes to the sufistic divans of figures such as Khayyam and Firdowsi informing Browning’s dervishes, Moleykeh and Ferishtah.

Outside personal relationships, I also wanted to broaden the scope of my research to include the voices responding to Browning’s work either contemporaneously or in the immediate aftermath of his death as a means of bolstering the veracity of my approach to Browning’s Islamic mythopoetics by finding likeminded interpretations espoused in the writings of his Victorian colleagues and critics. I perused volumes of the Browning Society Papers to glean choice quotes that foreground unconventional attitudes to reading his Eastern poetry which might highlight how my own interest in Browning’s engagement with Islamic literature is reflected in readings conducted during his lifetime.

The Browning Society's Papers. ABL Periodicals Rare

The Browning Society’s Papers. ABL Periodicals Rare

In due course, I uncovered a transcript of the forty-seventh meeting conducted Friday April 25 (1890) in which the notion of a semitic affinity throughout Browning’s writing is examined by Joseph Jacobs’s paper on ‘Browning’s Theology’ where he highlights the characteristic elements of obscurity, moralism and symbolism imbuing Browning’s literature with traits found in sacred texts – overcoming canonical distinctions between poet and theologian. Jacobs lauds Browning’s dramatic rendition of theological concepts for its inclusive approach to non-Christian imagery whereby such Talmudic or mythohistorical allusions indicate, ‘[a] certain sympathy with Jewish ways of thought and fancy’, and yet, acknowledges that these references largely stemmed from the poets’ Broad Churchism and were not necessarily, ‘very profound.’ During the committee meeting, Reverend Johnson develops Jacobs’s examination of Semitic thought in Browning’s literature by contesting that the connection between Jewish, Islamic and Broad Church monotheism are not as divergent as the essay implies, ‘[the] Arabians were the great Unitarians, and the Jews, as he was endeavouring to convince Mr. Jacobs, stood in a secondary position to the Moslems.’ Dismissing the binary distinctions Jacobs’s upholds for Jewish and Broad Church Unitarianism, Johnson sought to reinforce how, the ‘great founders of the Unitarian faith in the world’, following the collapse of the Roman Empire,  ‘were the Arabians’, and as such, there was a need to recognise historic interconnectivity rather than dissimilarity when examining Browning’s Broad Church depiction of Oriental imagery. By recontextualising this discussion of Browning’s Unitarianism in light of, ‘Koran[ic references] to the sublimity of Allah’, Johnson widens the matrix of Eastern allusions available in his poetry beyond the Jewish mythohistoric figures noted by Jacobs (e.g. Abraham ibn Ezra and Jaehanan Hakkadosh) and insists, ‘the religious literature of the Arabians,’ was also relevant to a holistic discussion of Browning’s transhistorical poetics. Although Johnson acknowledges the importance of Jewish theology as a precursor to Christian thought, he also calls for a reappraisal of Muslim literature in spawning a genre of secular romances through the ‘unsurpassed’ Arabian Nights which delighted the Oriental imagination of key eighteenth and nineteenth century authors (e.g. Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’, Tennyson’s ‘Recollections of the Arabian Nights’) and in turn, placed the ‘Mohammedans [at] the fountain-head of religious imagination [amongst the Eastern empires]’.  By emphasising the dialogical rather than exclusionary nature of historical influence, Reverend Johnson acknowledges Islam was a central faith in shaping contemporary Western fancy with regards to the East and as a result, warrants inclusion within the dialogic web of Browning’s traditional influences, ‘[t]he Jews were intermediaries between the Moslems and the Catholic Church’. Echoing Johnson’s sentiment that Browning’s Unitarianism was amenable to a Qur’anic focus on God’s, ‘unweariedness, his sleeplessness, and his height above all created beings’, Frederick Furnivall (joint founder of the Browning Society) contrasts the standard Broad Church assignment of, ‘Christ in the place of God and […] the Holy Spirit on one side altogether’, against Browning’s monotheism which more distinctly echoed, ‘the one great God of the Jews and the Arabians.’ Although Dr. Furnival admits Browning’s work allows the godship of Christ, there remains an emphasis on, ‘God the Father [before] God the Son’, and an overarching  belief in, ‘one God irrespective of persons,’ that engendered an empathy with Jewish and Islamic Unitarianism. In particular, Dr. Furnival suggests that Jacobs overlooks Browning’s Eastern poetics as a medium for critiquing certain traditional theological tenets often associated with Trinitarianism from, ‘Church sacraments [and] regeneration in baptism [to] apostolic succession’, where figures such as Abd-el-Kadr in Through the Metidja and the titular Muleykeh provide didactic lessons on the nature of miracles or the atonement of sins in an unorthodox guise.

It was fascinating to uncover those members of the Browning Society who gestured towards descriptions of Allah, The Arabian Nights and Islamic imperial expansion within wider discussions concerning the poet’s reimagination of non-Christian traditions whether it be Reverend Johnson’s recognition of Islam’s world-historical impact on secular romance literature or Dr. Furnival’s supposition that Browning’s sympathies aligned with a more staunch Semitic monotheism. Although neither thinker presumes deep acquaintance nor desire for authenticity, these early efforts expanded the notion of Browning’s Jewish affinity beyond Joseph Jacobs’s or Moncure Conway readings by incorporating Islamic verbiage within literary analysis as a means of foregrounding Abrahamic Unitarianism as the broader connective tissue driving Browning’s creative interest in, each ‘great branch[… of this] one great system.’

Review of Ferishtah’s Fancies in Church of England Pulpit and Ecclesiastical Review. Vol. 19. London, 17 January 1885, pp. 35-36. ABL Periodical Articles Meynell (Browning Guide #A0653)

Review of Ferishtah’s Fancies in Church of England Pulpit and Ecclesiastical Review. Vol. 19. London, 17 January 1885, pp. 35-36. ABL Periodical Articles Meynell (Browning Guide #A0653)

In addition to the scholarly perception of Browning couched within committee manuscripts, I investigated newspaper reviews to deduce not only the reception of his Eastern-inspired output but also the content of articles surrounding these appraisals as his work can be noted appearing alongside other pieces espousing a pseudo-syncretic attitude towards the Orient. In particular, The Church of England Pulpit and Ecclesiastical Review provides an intriguing case study for discerning Browning’s position within this growing drive to solve contemporary problems with Eastern solutions. The nineteenth volume (January 17, 1885) contains a critique of Ferishtah’s Fancies as well as an adjoining discussion concerning ancient Jerusalem and its ties to modern Bedouin culture. The Review of Ferishtah’s Fancies exemplifies how susceptible the general audience was to Browning’s rendition of a Christian didactic narrative within an unfamiliar Dervish outfit for the critic offers a narrative breakdown of short stories comprising the work as well as a brief exegesis as to the core ethical lessons explored in each section. Although the piece is commended for blending poetic metre and philosophical concepts through the ‘supposed utterances of an Eastern sage,’ emphasis is placed on the moralistic insights that this Persian soothsayer can offer his Christian readership from the general theophanic outlook upon nature replete with divine signs for contemplation to extolling the potency of constant prayer. The reviewer exhibits a willingness to engage Browning’s Oriental anecdotes such as, ‘A Camel-Driver’ and ‘Shah Abbas’, where references to nomadic Bedouins or the Safavid King of Iran are not superficially questioned as irrelevant to struggles within Victorian society but rather embraced in a positive process of theological identity formation. Despite passages mimicking the Dervish rites of initiation or adopting the linguistic tone of Sufistic parables outlined in Lyall’s scholarly works, there is a an intense focus on the content and messaging of each ethical quandary that the arabesque design is appreciated as a vessel for relaying more universal truths.

Initially, I bypassed the paragraph prior to this review as simply a response to an article concerning the Eucharist where an anonymous reader offers an excerpt from William Thomson’s, The Land and the Book, (1860) but further investigation highlighted a curious thematic correlation as the East was similarly believed to possess a storehouse of forgotten traditions suitable for modern Christian interpretations. Urging his fellow believers to return towards the Holy Land for authenticity, the reader chastises the, ‘foolish asceticism of our civilisation,’ for placing a stigma on eating and drinking that, ‘did not exist in the Oriental mind’, arguing modern societies are unable to appreciate corporeal symbols whereas, ‘the Jews and other Eastern nations,’ (p.34) maintained a tradition of rejoicing in bodily senses and as such, were better equipped to understand the notion of Supper. It is intriguing that this reader would appeal to the ‘Oriental mind’ in order to conduct Biblical hermeneutics on the basis that the Middle East possessed a present geo-historical connection to the, ‘land where the World-made-flesh dwelt amongst men.’ In particular, a passage is cited where the Bedouin practice of welcoming guests through bread and dates (brotherhood; khuwy) is likened to the Eucharistic covenant. Although the book refers to Muslims as fanatic and ignorant, there remains a subtle acknowledgement of the transhistorical interconnectedness between the Abrahamic faiths via their current and past connection to Jerusalem as multiple denominations inhabit, worship or restore shared sites of cultural and religious significance, ‘many shrines of the Moslem, and other sects, owe their sanctity to events recorded in Biblical history.’(p.229) These cross-cultural intersections include: Joseph’s workshop being housed in the Muslim quarter and his tomb resembling ‘the common Moslem graves of the city’; contemporary Arab phraseology referring to casting the wife off as a slipper during divorce being associated with the narrative in Deuteronomy xxv. 7-10; and, the Bedouin law of hospitality practised through dabbihah (slaughtering a calf) thought to resemble an old custom practised by, ‘Abraham and Gideon, and Manoah.’ I believe it is not incidental that the Ecclesiastical Review situates this excerpt of William Thomson’s Middle Eastern travel narrative alongside their review of Ferishtah’s Fancies as this association highlights a willingness among Browning’s Christian readership to interpret his Jewish or Islamic allusions in a supplementary manner to inform their own theological identity. Likewise, Browning’s Eastern poetics can be contextualised within a greater movement towards refreshing contemporary Christian rhetoric by incorporating mythos previously dismissed on the basis of historical irrelevance.

By investigating archives unrelated to Browning’s personal correspondence, I realised how the humanistic tone of his religious poetics encouraged contemporary scholars and journalists to conduct a more hybrid literary analysis (incorporating disparate cultural codes) while also producing works that resonated with a Christian public seeking to reclaim traditional practices upheld in the East. I noted a mutually constitutive relationship form between Browning’s syncretistic approach to Eastern poetics shaping the way public figures approached Oriental tropes and the wider social shift towards integrating Arab or Persian lexis within cultural discourse which informed his own portrayal. The simultaneously innocuous and impactful nature of these references can be gleamed from an 1839 letter between Browning and Fanny Haworth where he wishes luck to two racing horses named, ‘Paracelsus’ and ‘Avicenna’, which are both references to Swiss and Persian physicians. Rooted within the mundanity of a horse race is the central character of Browning’s poem Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish the Arab Physician for the titular protagonist is an amalgamation of these two formative figures who sought to similarly bridge the gap between religion and science and, as Hédi Jouad speculates, may even have derived his name from Koushayr (Avicenna’s professor). Regardless as to whether this scenario was coincidental or informative, it bolsters the narrative thread throughout these records that Middle Eastern and Islamic history had begun rooting itself into Victorian collective consciousness to the extent that neither Browning nor his associates would have found it strange to insert Qur’anic descriptions, Arab etymology or Persian poetics during their discussions.

Beyond the academic story unearthed from these tomes, my personal narrative at Baylor shall serve as a cherished memory thanks to the outstanding staff members who supported this endeavour and helped me piece together this image of Browning’s literary engagement with Middle Eastern culture. Christi Klempnauer and Laura French proved to be stalwart figures not only offering council when navigating the library system but also providing genuine, insightful conversations at the beginning and end of each day.  Likewise, the experience would not have been possible without Jennifer Borderud’s acceptance of my application enabling this wonderful month spent as a researcher, guest and (now) ambassador for Waco. Although I acquired invaluable material towards my wider work on Browning, Shelley and Islam, it is these human moments that I will truly treasure, reminisce  … archive.

Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: The Irreverent Eye

By Laura McNeal

Laura McNeal

Laura McNeal in the Belew Scholars’ Room, Armstrong Browning Library

The hardest part about bringing Victorians to a modern reader is their reverence. They insist that whatever has been done wrong will be more easily endured or rectified if they never explicitly describe it. In our time, we have the opposite approach: talk talk talk about it, show show show it all, every terrible thing, every violation, every outrage, every shame. All our contemporary discourse–our movies, novels, poems, newspaper articles, and songs—aim to comprehend and heal by having no secrets and almost no taboos. Victorians, however, were very good at keeping secrets and very serious about taboos. They were bound by social and religious constraints that urged reverence for certain ideals, including monogamy, chastity, and dutifulness. We seem (collectively, in the aggregate) to want to tell the truth, whatever it is. They (collectively) wanted to protect a rigid, powerfully idealistic vision of human life.

I came to the Armstrong Browning Library determined, as I suppose most scholars are, to pierce silences, peer into cracks, make new comparisons, illuminate dark spaces, and tell a fresh and somehow edifying truth. I’m not a scholar, though. I write fiction. What I want to find when I read Victorian letters, diaries, reminiscences, articles, and footnotes—especially footnotes, which often lead me to obscure diaries–is an encounter that could be dramatized in a scene. To write that scene I must invent what we can never, ever know: what these actual, once-living people really said to each other at the time and what they thought but couldn’t say because they didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or be ostracized by others, or they simply, reflexively thought it best to suppress it. What I have been doing for six years now as I read and write about the Barretts and Brownings is at once a huge violation of their privacy and a rescue attempt. Look at them, I want to say to the world. Look at them, at these earnest, reverent, suffering, fallible, astonishing people who built the ladder and the scaffold and the foundation on which we all stand. What did they do, what did they wish, what did they accomplish, and how did they manage?

Thanks to the continuous efforts of readers and scholars all over the world, and especially, in this area of study, because of the lifelong dedication of Dr. A.J. Armstrong and Philip Kelley, the Armstrong Browning Library offers, in book form and in a vast, searchable database, not only what the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote and the millions (or billions) of pages that have been written about what they wrote, but also what their relatives and friends and important or unimportant acquaintances reported in their diaries and letters, the locks of hair they labeled and saved, the brooches they wore, the paintings they painted, and the inkwells they stared at while the ink dried on the tips of their upheld pens. The volume of material here is staggering and inspiring and accessible, and it’s housed in the most reverent building imaginable. I approached the library on foot every day like a person who knows she has only so long at the buffet. I had been given four generous weeks, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.: all you can eat. After those four weeks, at 5 p.m. exactly, the door to the buffet would be closed to me, and home I would have to go. It was heaven, and I ate everything in sight. I was insatiable. I asked for things and they were brought. I looked up “darling” in the database. I looked up “Domett” and “Bracken” and “Henriette Corkran” and “Mary Gladstone” and “Joseph Milsand” and “Mr. G.D. Giles.” Up floated the letters, the vanished hours, the twilights and fogs. I looked through the magnifying glass, squinted into dark cases. Always at my back was the swiftly approaching end: I would have to go home, and I would have to lay out for myself the million tiny pieces of the Mystery. And I would have to dare to make the dead speak.

Historical fiction is a paradox. I need dates, I need addresses, I need descriptions of drawing rooms and suppers. I have itineraries, I have descriptions of sunsets and rains and walks and feelings and opinions. But I will be using those fragments to conjure the rest. When and where did it happen? certain Norse folk tales end. When and where did it not happen? Those words became a koan in my head while I typed my notes at the Library Buffet. I wrote down every date, every name, every city, every source, and I put it in a file, in a notebook, in a photograph, in a timeline, knowing that while I claim to revere the past I am strip-mining it, running rapaciously through its ruins in search of my materials.

Is this wrong? I comfort myself by remembering that this is what Robert Browning did nearly every day of his life: Sordello is historical fiction. So is Paracelsus. So is The Ring and the Book. Robert Browning burned piles and piles of letters we wish we had, he dreaded the rapacity of biographers, and yet he craved an audience, adored reading his poems to people and longed, as we all do, for immortality, which is what he will have only if people keep writing intrusive stories and essays and dissertations about him. The best I can do is sift my sources carefully. I read and look and read and look and read and look again, taking each reported comment and observation and weighing it for bias. How truthful did other people in the Brownings’ circle think this person was? What motives did the writer have in recording what he or she said? Was there competition of any kind, or a sense of duty and reverence, between the writer and the subject? Were there any past hurts or sleights? If a claim about someone has a whiff of scandal, is there any corroboration? By whom?

Picture of Pen Browning, age 13

Picture of Pen Browning, age 13, in Browning Society Notes, vol. 22, December 1994. ABL Periodicals

Which brings me to Pen. My month at the buffet was proposed and accepted as a deep and wide consideration of Robert and Elizabeth’s only son, Pen-Penini-Wiedeman, also known as Robert Barrett Browning, who “died without issue” and without (and this determined what people were willing to say about him while he was alive and after he was dead) the glorious, sanctifying esteem enjoyed by his parents. He was not revered as they were for many reasons. One is that he outlived the Victorian age: until 1912. Another is that he didn’t have a glorious love affair and marriage; he had a tepid, dispassionate, unhappy one. He was the target of all the malice and scorn that people tend to feel in our time about the children of celebrities, who having been given money and access to the houses of the rich and powerful are expected to deserve it. Are they as good-looking, original, smart, humble, hard-working, and brilliant as we expect? Does Genius + Genius = Genius? No? Why not? Two poets with bizarrely high levels of self-motivation and linguistic facility who were also loving and faithful and true had a boy they dressed like a girl, or rather, in his mother’s mind, like a “child of poetry,” and for twelve years they raised him in Italy and then, right at the exact moment when he was changing from a boy to a man, his mother died, and while he was adjusting to being a boy who had a living mother to a boy whose mother was dead, he also had to change from being Italian to being English, and from not being in school at all to being in school the way upper-class English boys were in school. What was that like for him? For his father? And is there a way to tell that story without unfairly filling in the blanks where gracious Victorian propriety intersected with vicious Victorian gossip?

During my month at the buffet, I circled around and around these questions, around Pen and his father, his father and Pen, through their departure from Florence to Pen’s failure at Oxford to Pen’s artistic education to Pen’s engagement to a girl Robert told him not to marry to Pen’s marriage to a woman who seemed to love only Pen’s borrowed fame to Robert’s death in Venice to Pen’s death in a messy Florentine villa to the long, long aftermath, which has no terminal point. And every day, four times a day, I took the stairs.

In the stairwell of the Armstrong Browning Library, there are several paintings by Pen, one large and one enormous, and their placement seemed both fitting and sad. “The Abbé with his Books” and “Delivery to the Secular Arm” hang in the stairwell of a shrine built to the memory of his parents, not in the Louvre, not in the National Gallery, not in the Smithsonian, but at least they hang somewhere. They were not destroyed, as some of his paintings were. They are not in a secondhand store in Palm Springs or rolled up in the basement of a small state museum. As I clomped up the linoleum steps, I couldn’t take my eyes away from “The Abbé with his Books” or “Delivery to the Secular Arm.” I wondered, mostly, what makes a good painting great and a great painting famous. I imagined Pen standing in his atelier with a paintbrush, dabbing a little more paint on the edge of a fold of cloth, highlighting the perfect white edge on the collar of the farthest monk to the left, which struck me as supremely beautiful. It takes so long to paint anything. The years of learning how to sketch, how to apply paint, the thousand decisions about what to put in and what to leave out, of who should model for the face of the girl, the face of the inquisitor, the soldiers, the monks, and what expressions they should have on their faces, what their shoes looked like, what pattern to make on the rug. Whose hands modeled for those hands? Did they ever see it, and what did they say? Was there anything Pen might have done to lift the painting beyond its present place in the world, which is a good and noble place, but not the best place, if you’re the artist.

Delivery to the Secular Arm

Robert Barrett Browning’s Delivery to the Secular Arm. Armstrong Browning Library. Photo by Laura McNeal.

For me, though, the placement was ideal. It was instructive to see the Abbé and the heretic four times a day, twenty times a week, eighty times in all, each morning or afternoon having expanded my knowledge of their creation by reading different, sometimes contradictory gossip about Pen’s friends, his father’s friends, the patroness who first bought “Delivery to the Secular Arm,” the reviews his paintings received, the troubles Pen had with his eyes and his hands, the remedies his father recommended, and the way it petered out, his artistic ambition.

By my last trip down the stairs, looking at the white light on the monk’s collar–at that perfect illumination of a man’s un-famous, un-hallowed life as an artist–I felt both invigorated and afraid. The library had done its part, answering every question I asked it. Now it was, terrifyingly, my turn. How could I possibly fit all of it in–the disappointment, hope, bitterness, desire, and rage–while maintaining the veil that keeps Victorians Victorian?

Close up of Delivery to the Secular Arm

Close up of the monk’s collar in Robert Barrett Browning’s Delivery to the Secular Arm. Armstrong Browning Library. Photo by Laura McNeal.

One of the last things I copied out word for word into my phone, so I could read it anywhere I go, was this bit of a letter from Henry James to a novelist named Violet Paget (her pen name was Vernon Lee) on May 16, 1885, with his thoughts on her novel, Miss Brown.

…It will probably already have been repeated to you to satiety that you take the aesthetic business too seriously, too tragically, and above all with too great an implication of sexual motives. There is a certain want of perspective and proportion. You are really too savage with your painters and poets and dilletanti; life is less criminal, less obnoxious, less objectionable, less crude, more bon infant, more mixed and casual, and even in its most offensive manifestations, more pardonable, than the unholy circle with which you have surrounded your heroine. And then you have impregnated all those people too much with the sexual, the basely erotic preoccupation: your hand had been violent, the touch of life is lighter. 

…You have proposed to yourself too little to make a firm, compact work—and you have been too much in a moral passion! That has put certain exaggerations, overstatements, grossissements, insistences wanting in tact, into your head. Cool first—write afterwards. Morality is hot—but art is icy!

I haven’t read Miss Brown, not yet, but James seems to be answering my own question about the preoccupations of our time. Life is less criminal, less obnoxious, less crude, more mixed and casual, than we often depict it as being, both then and now. As soon as I can sort all these painters and poets and dilletanti I will set to work, being not too savage, I hope, and trying for a firm, compact work. Meanwhile, if you are in need of inspiration, go to Waco, Texas, on a weekday between 9 and 5. Go to the meditation room in the Armstrong Browning Library to see what immortality looks like. For a glimpse of mortality, though, which can be just as moving, take the stairs.

Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: The Best Laid Schemes

By Joshua Brorby, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Associate, English, Washington University in St. Louis; now Visiting Assistant Professor of English, University of Missouri

Joshua Brorby, PhD

Joshua Brorby, PhD

When I began planning my research visit to the Armstrong Browning Library, the COVID pandemic was in its early days. I thought that by summer 2020 things might be opening back up, and if not in summer, then perhaps by Thanksgiving. As waves came and went, I deferred my plans several times. Finally in June 2021 I arrived in Waco, TX ready to delve into the archive, though with one minor problem: the dissertation I had begun when I initially applied for the fellowship was nearly finished. My research priorities had changed.

Between the drafting of the dissertation prospectus, the arduous writing of the first chapter, and the final stages of revision before the defense or viva, one’s arguments, investments, and critical apparatus are bound to change—sometimes drastically. As much as a dissertation is a verifiable contribution to a field of knowledge, it is also an exercise in self-knowledge, in coming to know one’s capacities as a critic and one’s fixations as a scholar. My dissertation-writing experience was no different. When I first considered visiting the ABL, my dissertation was focused on exploring and elucidating the myriad (often hidden) theories of translation that contributed to the omnivorous body of English literature in the nineteenth century. Think Edward FitzGerald, for example. Think Richard Burton. As I dug into this body of work—all the time keeping in the back of my mind Terry Hale’s claim that Victorian translations were often anonymous or “concealed” as adaptation—I discovered that a great deal of energy concerning translation as a process, with no guarantee of success, could be located in religious writing.

I began reading about F. Max Müller, the philologist and “scien[tist] of religion” who directed the Sacred Books of the East, a massive project to translate forty-nine Middle, South, and East Asian religious texts into English. And I scoured the writings and letters of George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë for clues to their thoughts on their own work as translators. Familiar mid-Victorian crises of hermeneutics and biblical interpretation, like the publication of Essays and Reviews and the controversy around Bishop Colenso’s The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined, provided compelling contexts for my developing arguments. Thus, the ABL’s Theological Pamphlets Collection and its Tract Collection seemed the perfect archives in which to explore the religious milieux of the writers central to my dissertation, Faith in Translation: Rewriting Secularity in the British Empire.

By June 2021, as I made revisions to my fourth chapter and my introduction, my project had already started to change. I was looking ahead to the book manuscript, now in progress, which would begin to emerge from my dissertation. (I have changed the subtitle to Imagined Religious Pluralism in Victorian Literature.) In reading about the translation of non-Christian sacred texts into English, as well as the rediscovery of diverse Greek sources for the Christian Bible, I recognized a pattern in the work of both translators and novelists: they are often engaged in defining or imagining visions of pluralism that might come to actually exist in an unstable imperial context. They ask not only how Christian parties at odds might reconciliate—Protestants and Catholics, e.g., or Anglicans High, Low, and Broad—but whether the impetuses for religious belief and the yearning for something transcendent might be found across religious traditions and throughout religious history. How alike are Manu and Moses, as Eliot and others have asked? Does the literary, flexible reading of the Bible, suggested by Benjamin Jowett and Matthew Arnold, indeed disclose something universal about inspiration?

The Higher Criticism

Cyprian T. Rust’s The Higher Criticism. London: William Hunt and Company, 1878. ABL 19th Cent OVZ BS1225 .R875x 1878

My search through the Pamphlets and Tract Collections became a search into the ways believers in the nineteenth century wrote about pluralism (not as the holding of multiple benefices in the Church of England, but as the conditions in which multiple religions coexist). The ABL’s organization of each of these collections by denomination was incredibly helpful. Much of the extant work in my dissertation concerned mainline Anglicans. With the ABL’s flexible search functions, I was able to dig specifically into materials from Roman Catholics, as well as anti-Catholic tract writers, and Unitarians—the latter of which were especially keen on discussing the problems of interfaith apprehension and overlap. James Martineau’s assertions for the authority of Reason over that of Scripture proved compelling. And I was pleased to find a book by his atheist sister Harriet Martineau—herself a translator of Comte—addressing itself “to the disciples of Mohammed.” Martineau’s 1833 essay anticipates some of the almost pantheistic claims Müller would make half a century later; in a dialogue between a Christian and Muslim, she declares, “There is no God but God,” uniting these two Abrahamic faiths under a banner of similitude. But as the essay progresses, Martineau takes a turn toward familiar Victorian supersessionism, based in the view that Protestantism lies at the endpoint of a quasi-natural development of religious evolution. Other religions merely pave the way for the message of Christ. This isn’t far from Müller’s own position. They are each of them pulled by this tension: between assertions of similitude and superiority.

J.S. Banks's Christianity and the Science of Religion

J.S. Banks’s Christianity and the Science of Religion. London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1880. ABL 19th Cent OVZ BR 127 .B3

The ABL’s religious texts collections also proved useful for exploring the “science of religion” as it was developed or criticized by writers not party to Müller and his extensive research network. The Rev. Cyprian T. Rust and the Rev. J.S. Banks—two figures with whom I was unfamiliar until coming to the ABL—both produced responses to the nascent science of religion in 1878 and 1880, respectively, that I uncovered in the archives. These Anglican hermeneuts each provide a window onto a mode of religious inquiry growing out of the earlier German higher criticism. As I found myself lingering over texts by names I had never read, I also found that the ABL was providing different pathways: both to new research and to opportunities to enrich old research. For instance, the plenitude of anti-Catholic tracts held by the ABL greatly added to my existing chapter on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. A translated 1869 tract by M. Sauvestre gave my chapter a nice historicist twist, by which I might consider how anti-Catholic writing pitched celibate priests, nuns, etc. as having no family ties and, thus, disrupted the domestic organization of the state as based in the family. Considering Lucy Snowe’s total non-narration of her own family history in Villette, this correspondence to Catholic stereotype has continued to spur my thinking.

My time at the ABL was in part a personal sojourn from life in St. Louis during a pandemic. In June 2021 things had really lulled. And finally my partner and I were able to get out of St. Louis with our infant—his first big trip!—and explore a new city. Jennifer, Laura, and Christi at the ABL were incredibly helpful not only in my research but in planning family outings (a recurrent theme in some of these blog posts). Traveling to Waco brought us a sigh of relief. I think that in spending so much time scheming out my diss in its early days, I had closed off potentially fruitful avenues for further research. The wide-ranging collections at the ABL, along with its helpful finding aids and its fantastic staff, rekindled my interest in expanding on my project, something that may not have happened had I been able to visit when I first planned. What was needed, in a sense, was time away before revisiting my existing work. Such sojourns are a boon, especially when what waits on the other side is a rich and exciting archive brimming with possibility.

Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: Archival Expectations and Unexpected Surprises

By Kevin A. Morrison, PhD, Provincial Chair Professor, University Distinguished Professor, and Professor of British Literature in the School of Foreign Languages at Henan University

Professor Kevin A. Morrison in the Belew Scholars' Room at the Armstrong Browning Library

Professor Kevin A. Morrison in the Belew Scholars’ Room at the Armstrong Browning Library

Walking into an archive or a special collections reading room, the researcher carries more than a laptop (to record notes) or smart phone (to take pictures of the newspaper cuttings, correspondence, or rare books one is examining). The researcher also brings to bear on the examined material a range of expectations—from the epistemological and the ideological to the identificatory and the mundane. Indeed, perhaps the greatest allure of the archive is not the prospect of obtaining more complete knowledge of one’s subject, aided by a little luck (such as finding an uncatalogued letter, diary entry, or manuscript that solves whatever interpretative mystery has drawn one there in the first place), but of uninterrupted time in which to write and think.

When I arrived at Baylor at the end of April 2021, I (half) expected that life would stop. After all, I had spent the preceding fourteen months under mandated and self-imposed lockdowns. Like many scholars whose work is based in archives, I found such conditions stymying. I would often joke to colleagues that I didn’t know which I was looking forward to more at the conclusion of the pandemic: no longer wearing a mask or no longer having to use HathiTrust. As it happens, over my month-long stay in Waco, both were achieved: I could, once again, hold physical objects from the past in my hands as well as experience, however briefly before the Delta variant took hold, the pleasures of reading in a building without my glasses fogging up.

What I did not experience, however, was undisturbed time in which to work. Instead, family health crises, complicated childcare arrangements, and a flat tire competed with my research priorities and, on occasion, burst my expectational bubble. If the staff of the Armstrong Baylor Library could not solve medical problems, however, they were more than happy to help me get driving again or to offer suggestions of things to do in Waco with children (such as Wacotown Chalk + Walk and the wonderful Mayborn Museum). Nevertheless, I welcomed the opportunity to make progress on a project that, owing to the pandemic, I had deferred for more than a year.

A Peep into a Gin Shop

A peep into a gin shop! (19thCent Oversize HV5182 .P44 1825)

In 2019 I was commissioned by Routledge to produce a five-volume compendium of primary source materials titled Charity and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Britain. The nineteenth century in Britain was a markedly philanthropic and charitable age. Building on trends that began in the 1700s, philanthropic activity and charitable practices became widespread, often institutionally organized and directed, and targeted an astonishingly diverse array of fields: education and child welfare, the arts, family planning, animal welfare, medical reform, and the eradication of social ills. The sources in this five-volume edition will provide a foundational basis for studying the many reasons for giving during this period and the varied practices associated with giving. Each volume will cover a diverse array of fields and, to the extent possible, include national, regional, and local material.

While I will be drawing on material in other archives, for the first volume, tentatively titled “The Spur of Religion,” I was particularly eager to consult the ABL’s collections of tracts and theological pamphlets. Although the concept of charity is arguably rooted in the Old and New Testaments, and the notion of philanthropy emerges in the seventeenth century, it was only in the nineteenth century that both assumed their modern form. The materials in the first volume will provide essential context for understanding the role of religion in nineteenth-century charity and philanthropy. The tracts touch on a range of charitable themes, while the pamphlets provide insight into the religious dimensions of charity and philanthropy. Director Jennifer Borderud helped me navigate these large, and therefore daunting, collections by organizing the material around a number of key terms central to the volumes, including temperance, vivisection, and abolitionism.

Sermon Preached at Saint Peter's, Cornhill

A sermon preached at Saint Peter’s, Cornhill. (19thCent Oversize BX5133.C38 S47 1839)

After two weeks of working with the tracts and pamphlets, I had one of those epiphanic archival moments that significantly changed how I spent the duration of my visit. Just before the coronavirus pandemic was declared, I was finishing a book manuscript, tentatively titled Studies of Provincial Life: Mitford, Gaskell, Eliot. Although Mary Russell Mitford, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot were near contemporaries, spanning two generations, and were celebrated for their representations of rural life, the three authors have never been extensively studied together. Readers often considered that the authors’ glimpses of rural life were based on their individual experiences, and their works were marketed accordingly. Yet when Elizabeth Gaskell undertook in 1851 to write the literary sketches for Household Words: A Weekly Journal Conducted by Charles Dickens that would later appear as Cranford (1853), she looked to Mitford. In Our Village (1824–32) Mitford established the prototype of a new genre to which many writers throughout the century attributed aspects of their craft. In turn, when Marian Evans—who had been a journalist, translator, and editor—tried her hand at fiction, the future George Eliot drew inspiration from Cranford and from the thematic and formal techniques of both Gaskell and Mitford. Tracing this chain of influence, my book demonstrates that Mitford, Gaskell, and Eliot, all of whom have often been employed in service to projects of restorative nostalgia that seek to reconstruct the present in the image of the past, worked within a reflective strain that accepted the pastness of the past and embraced change, however reluctantly and wistfully.

By March 2020, I had a working draft of the manuscript. What I did not possess were the many images I had hoped to incorporate. Over the course of writing, I had also come up with a number of very specific questions about the primary sources with which I was working that could be answered only by undertaking significant fact checking. Because I had to scrap my planned summer 2020 trip to London, where I intended to finish the manuscript at the British Library, the project had been on the back burner for more than a year. On a lark, midway through my time in Waco, I decided to see whether the ABL held any of the titles I needed to consult, such as the original eight parts of Eliot’s Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life or various biographies of Eliot, Gaskell, and Mitford. My heart rate quickened as each title I looked up in the catalog was found in the collection. With Jennifer’s gracious willingness to allow me to switch my focus, I spent my remaining days at the ABL bringing the project to completion.

Playing with bubbles

Playing with bubbles in Christi Klempnauer’s Office

Life may not stop at the doors of the archive. But this does not lessen the pleasures of immersing oneself in a subject (or two!). Nor does it diminish the thrill of discovering something new. In my case, the many intrusions of life also enabled me to learn more about the librarians and staff members who are primarily there to assist researchers with their work. Having brought my kids to the ABL one afternoon, I discovered that Christi Klempnauer, the library’s administrative coordinator, carries a bottle of bubbles with a wand in her purse! If my expectational bubble about undisturbed time was burst on days when I had to contend with a flat tire or a sick family member, the shrieks of delight my children emitted as they ran around the administrative office—and thus, the unexpected and joyful integration of my personal and professional lives—offered more than recompense.

Reflections from a Visiting Scholar: About Time

By Lindsey N. Chappell, PhD, Assistant Professor of English, Georgia Southern University

Dr. Lindsey N. Chappell in the Belew Scholars' Room at the Armstrong Browning Library.

Dr. Lindsey N. Chappell in the Belew Scholars’ Room at the Armstrong Browning Library.

It’s always a good idea to have a plan before going to an archive. This is the advice I give my students because, as I tell them, funny things happen to time in these places. You compress your research, sprinting through (or frantically photographing) primary sources, and new ideas and objects will lead you into rabbit holes. You will be perpetually perplexed about what month it is. You will lose an entire Wednesday. In an archive, then, you want to be flexible enough to accommodate exciting discoveries but prepared enough that you don’t waste time wondering where to start.

I believe this is, in general, good advice. I’m sure someone else gave it to me (probably Helena Michie, whose graduate seminar first required me to work with archival material). And being a responsible scholar—is it possible to fail grad school retroactively?—I did have a plan when I applied for a visiting fellowship at the ABL. I swear.

However, finally arriving (fully vaccinated!) at Baylor in May 2021, a year after my originally scheduled visit, my research projects had changed. I’d moved on from some projects and changed priorities with others. I had an initial research question, but I wasn’t sure what I would do with the things I found, especially since my book project (currently titled Temporal Forms: British Heritage Discourse and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean) was a year—ok, a pandemic year—further along than when I had originally planned my visit.

My book is about three Mediterranean regions that were central to the making of Western cultural heritage—Italy, Greece, and the so-called “Holy Land”—in British literature. The Mediterranean, I argue, enables us to ask how historical narratives intervened in geopolitics, how antiquarianism sparked scientific innovation, and how classical and biblical heritage shaped British imperialism. I trace the contours of what I call “heritage discourse”—narrative that constructs or challenges imperial identities by reshaping antiquity—across nineteenth-century British texts about the Mediterranean. Heritage discourse, I argue, functions via time, and often in counterintuitive and paradoxical ways. If assertions of political, cultural, and eventually racial supremacy were the end of this Mediterranean heritage discourse, then time was the means through which it could be (and perhaps still is) deployed and resisted. Temporal Forms reveals how recalculations of time on a geological scale, subsequent new histories of human civilization, radical reinventions of time, trajectories of cultural development, and growing skepticism toward long-held Enlightenment and biblical accounts all converged in British representations of the Mediterranean.

When I applied to be a visiting fellow at the ABL, I planned to start working on the Italy section of Temporal Forms and especially to write a chapter about Florence. My initial research questions were: What are the temporal forms that organize Florence and its inhabitants/visitors? How did people imagine/conceive of Florence around the Risorgimento, and how did that shape the ways they experienced time and constructed it narratively? By 2021, though, I had already decided to focus the Florence chapter on syncretism as a temporal form, and I had a working draft completed. Still, I wanted to see what I could find about the Anglo-American community in Italy and especially the abstract idea of “liberty” in the late 1850s and early 1860s, which I discuss at the end my Italy section. I don’t write much about the Brownings themselves, whose Italy connections have been so well trod in scholarship already (though EBB’s Poems before Congress and RB’s Old Pictures in Florence inform my Italy section, and I looked at editions of both in the ABL). Because the Brownings lived in Florence, though, their archives contain a wealth of material on the broader nineteenth-century Anglo-American community in Italy.

During my fellowship, I read material by and about: John Ruskin, Arthur Hugh Clough, Vernon Lee, and the American sculptor Hiram Powers. I hunted for the Horner family, who feature in my Florence chapter, and Sarah Parker Remond, a Black anti-slavery activist who moved to Florence in 1867 and became a physician. In the case of the former, I found materials in the 19th-Century Collection, the Browning Letters, and especially in the newspaper archive databases available through Baylor (for example, the obituary Susan Horner wrote for her father, reviews of her many publications on Italian art and politics, information on societies and people she mentions in her journals). In the case of the latter, I found no trace (did Remond cease speaking publicly after the US Civil War? After she moved to Italy? Or did the Italian newspapers not report on her the way the British and American ones had? I couldn’t find her in Florence, though I did find a letter she published in the American National Anti-Slavery Standard written from Florence in 1866).

In my hunt for Remond, the Horners, and the wider Anglo-American community in Florence, I consulted the ABL’s holdings of the Florentine newspaper La Nazione. But “consulted” is reductive of the physical experience of accessing and reading La Nazione. The bound volumes are huge. And heavy. And crumbling. I admired Jennifer Borderud, Director of the ABL, even before I witnessed her fearlessness and enthusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge. She didn’t weep when I requested these volumes—didn’t even flinch—but, as she explained, fetching them was a multiple-person operation. I accompanied Jennifer (and a sturdy cart) into storage where we proceeded to wrestle several volumes out for my perusal.

I have gotten used to (all right, spoiled by) digital newspaper archives. Yes, of course I will romanticize the material artifact, the smell and feel of decaying paper, as much as any self-respecting Victorianist. I love old books. But part of me—the part aware of my month-long fellowship steadily ticking away—longed for a search box. La Nazione was founded in Florence by Bettino Ricasoli in 1859 as a daily political newspaper. For me, that meant skimming 365 numbers per year of small print in Italian, hoping I would notice when my eyes passed over a name or event of interest to me.

A volume of La Nazione containing part of 1859—a research endeavor.

A volume of La Nazione containing part of 1859—a research endeavor.

Nineteenth-century issues of La Nazione organize news geographically into “Notizie Italiane” (“Italian News,” subsectioned by regions within Italy, in its earliest numbers still an aspirational national designation) and “Notizie Estere” (“Foreign News,” subsectioned by country and/or city or region—the scale of the geographical designations is sometimes irregular). An “America” section might contain US Civil War news and news from Peru; sometimes there is a very specific location heading (such as “New York” or “Hong Kong”) and sometimes a more sweeping designation (“Asia”). And sometimes broad headings like “France” contain only news of Paris. I am endlessly interested in what might be contained in these kinds of geographic labels (and what might be left out).

La Nazione 11 October 1862, reporting the Emancipation Proclamation in the U.S. alongside news from Paris and London about Risorgimento efforts.

La Nazione 11 October 1862, reporting the Emancipation Proclamation in the U.S. alongside news from Paris and London about Risorgimento efforts.

Of special interest to me were the London news segments; in the early numbers especially, these were often Italian translations of what British periodicals were saying about Italy, including reprints of calls for English readers to support the Italian independence efforts. Similarly, much of the “America” news reprinted selections from the Italian-American paper Eco d’Italia (published in Italian in New York City), making La Nazione’s reprints an echo of an echo as they captured nineteenth-century immigration networks and shared concerns for “liberty” as Italy pursued independence from foreign rule and the U.S. fought a civil war over slavery.

And there was also news that, to me, bore no immediate relevance to Italian politics: a lecture given at the Museum of Natural Science in February 1867 showcased dicksonia antarctica, the Australian tree fern (I do love a nice tree fern). The issue for 17 June 1873 noted that Great Britain had a population of 22,712,000 in 1871 and 135,004 convictions for drunkenness (I have no idea why this might have mattered in Florence, but I look forward to your emails explaining it). I did say there were rabbit holes.

Nor were diversions limited to the contents of La Nazione. What is the use, one might ask, of having a research plan when there is a book in the archives called Strange Visitors written in 1869 “by the Spirits of Irving, Willis, Thackeray, Bronte, Richter, Byron, Humboldt, Hawthorne, Wesley, Browning, and others now dwelling in the spirit world. Dictated through a clairvoyant, while in an abnormal or trance state”? Did I know Charlotte Brontë posthumously dictated a short story called “Agnes Reef” to a clairvoyant? As the editor Henry J. Horn describes, “For weeks and months the unseen visitors were punctual to their appointments, and this novel-mode of book making proceeded steadily in interest and variety until the volume was completed” (viii).

You may be thinking, to borrow a phrase from Bleak House, “What connexion can there be?” But I did plan to research temporality, and here was an assertion that spirits observed human-time—at least while Horn was making his book (which went through at least three editions).

From Italy (and Strange Visitors), I moved on to Austen Henry Layard, Harriet Martineau, and biblical archaeology and history, gathering material for the “Holy Land” section of Temporal Forms. In addition to books, I consulted the ABL’s theological tracts collection. Here were many texts engaged in British efforts to find and to date biblical sites like Nineveh. I looked at a lavishly illustrated American book, Antiquities of the Orient Unveiled, by M. Wolcott Redding. Despite the creepy pun on “Unveiled,” this book engages the scientific rhetoric of nineteenth-century archaeology. As in Layard’s publications on Nineveh, there is here an insistence on describing historical sites as they are “now,” while most of the illustrations are strangely timeless. The first chapter, “Jerusalem,” includes two facing images. The first (and largest, consisting of a fold-out page) shows “Jerusalem as it was in the time of Solomon—Population 150,000.” The second, “Jerusalem as it is—Population 20,000.” It’s an invitation to compare then and now, but the comparison is thwarted by the difference in the pictures’ sizes (does the larger picture reflect the larger population of “old” Jerusalem? Its greater importance for readers of Antiquities who are gazing on this “Orient” “Unveil[ed]—with or without consent?) and in their different orientations (old Jerusalem is formatted horizontally; new is formatted vertically, so a reader would have to rotate the book to look at each, meaning either then or now is always the wrong way up.

Two pictures of Jerusalem, Antiquities of the Orient Unveiled, by M. Wolcott Redding.

Two pictures of Jerusalem, Antiquities of the Orient Unveiled, by M. Wolcott Redding

Many materials I accessed in the archive were digital but not available through my own institution. To me, being a visiting fellow at the ABL meant not only working with old material things like La Nazione (The Archive, à la A.S. Byatt) but also accessing resources available to me as a temporary member of this research community. This part of the visiting fellowship was invaluable to me as a scholar without regular access to an R1 library or time dedicated to using it.

Even though the pandemic is not “over” (whatever that might come to mean), in my memory I am already registering it as an event with concrete edges. My pandemic memory is bookended by two scholarly occasions: the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies conference in March 2020 and my fellowship at the ABL more than fourteen months later, where I first traveled and took off my mask in public. I am so grateful to the ABL staff for supporting my work, for assisting (and cleaning up after) my research, and for inviting me to write this reflection, where I could revel briefly in all the things that caught my interest but that may never have otherwise “counted” as research.

Mayor of Fano, Italy Surprises Armstrong Browning Library Fano Club

Massimo Seri, mayor of Fano, Italy, was a surprise guest at this year’s annual meeting of the Armstrong Browning Library’s Fano Club on Saturday, May 15. Seri joined the virtual meeting from the Museo Archeologico e Pinacoteca del Palazzo Malatestiano in Fano which houses Guercino’s painting, The Guardian Angel, that inspired Robert Browning’s poem, “The Guardian Angel — A Picture at Fano.”

Situated in front of Guercino’s masterpiece, the mayor celebrated the long-standing relationship between the city of Fano, the Fano Club, and the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University. “I would like to be able to strengthen the bond between our city and your club, maintaining a constant and continuous relationship and, if possible, also trying to organize joint initiatives aimed at enhancing our artistic heritage with the hope of seeing one another again soon.” He also offered the possibility of hosting a meeting of the Fano Club in Italy in 2022 and visiting Waco and the Armstrong Browning Library in the near future.

Mayor Massimo Seri

Screenshot of Massimo Seri, Mayor of Fano, Italy, addressing the Fano Club on Zoom on May 15, 2021

Armstrong Browning Library Director Jennifer Borderud appreciated the mayor making himself available to speak to Fano Club members. “The Fano Club was thrilled to hear from Mayor Seri at this year’s meeting. I am grateful to him for his kindness and for taking the time to talk with us about the history of Fano, its artistic and cultural heritage, and the unique connection our two cities share. I look forward to finding new ways to collaborate with the city of Fano and to encouraging Baylor students and Browning enthusiasts to visit.”

The Fano Club was established in 1912 by William Lyon Phelps, a Browning scholar at Yale, and later passed to Baylor professor A.J. Armstrong in 1943. Its membership shares Robert Browning’s experience of traveling to Fano, Italy, on the Adriatic coast and seeing Guercino’s Guardian Angel. Postcards mailed from Fano to the Armstrong Browning Library establish membership in the club, which gathers annually in Waco, Texas, for a dinner to share their experiences of Fano and to hear Browning’s poem read aloud. The Armstrong Browning Library houses a copy of Guercino’s Guardian Angel as well as a stained-glass rendering of this work of art created in 1924.

“Not Death But Love”: A Poetry Video Homage to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

By Gerard Wozek

In anticipation of the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum’s Browning Day Celebration on April 16, we are excited to present a recently completed video poem titled, “Not Death But Love,” produced by myself, Gerard Wozek as writer, and directed by artist Mary Russell in collaboration with Rob Kurland. In this brief film collage, it is our intention to honor the buried personal history of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. By reimagining her meditative garden strolls, our poetry video seeks to reveal her abiding love with her husband Robert Browning, her deep affinity for nature, her later experiments with the occult, and her ability to transcend the boundaries of time.

My creative partner Mary Russell and I have had the idea for years to develop a tribute video that honors Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her life as a writer and what informed her creative process.  Our keen interest in the life of the poet really hit a peak when we were teaching in a study abroad program offered through our university that took us to Florence, Italy. There we discovered Barrett Browning’s attraction for long strolls in the Florentine Boboli Gardens and her life at Casa Guidi. We were so enchanted with what we discovered about the life of the poet in Italy, that we at once began to put together the idea of “restaging” and reimagining her walks alongside a narrative that would serve as an homage to the poet’s craft and genius.

Still frame from “Not Death But Love”

I developed a tribute poem that would take the reader and listener on a journey through various elements and time periods inhabited by Barrett Browning. I wanted the viewer to feel as though they were walking alongside the poet, in order to not only see what she might be encountering in the Boboli Gardens of Florence, but also to feel and connect with her internal creative vision:

We listen for Pan’s pipes. A leopard’s growl as it grazes the bark of an overgrown cypress. Your hushed voice moving through the lines of a sonnet.

Elizabeth! Your handwriting is the black-ink edge of a storm cloud curling into infinity.

Puffs of red dust that once clung to your petticoat, now stain our sandal straps as we make our way to the Egyptian obelisk.

Poetry video is a unique way of expressing this particular kind of tribute to a poet. Also known as videopoems, cine-poetry, or poetry films, poetry video unites spoken text (or sometimes text that is written on the screen or text that is simply interpreted by the visual artist) with imagery and music. Situated somewhere between installation art and music video, poetry video is an evolving genre. When a resonant image couples with the poet’s text, alchemy can occur between the two disciplines of poetry and film. The visual images often deepen the author’s meaning, provide startling contrast, or locate new alliances within the inherent metaphors of the poet’s text. Stills, animation, computer graphics, and filmed imagery, complimented often by a soundtrack and/or the poet’s voice, can broaden and enhance the experience of the listener/viewer.

Jamie Stoik as Elizabeth Barrett Browning in “Not Death But Love”

“Not Death But Love,” which was completed earlier last year, will screen this summer at the 2021 International Poetry Video Festival in Athens, Greece. We were so thrilled that Jennifer Borderud, Director of the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, offered us an opportunity to share our newly completed work with the community at Baylor, and most especially with those individuals who will celebrate the University’s annual Browning Day held virtually on April 16, 2021.

The video is available below. You can also contact me at Gerard.Wozek@gmail.com for more information about the video.

The Armstrong Browning Library & Museum’s annual Browning Day Celebration will be held virtually this year on April 16. For more information, visit baylor.edu/library/browningday.

Armstrong Browning Library Looks Forward to Welcoming Visiting Scholars

Pandemic-permitting, the Armstrong Browning Library (ABL) looks forward to welcoming the following visiting scholars to the Library during the 2020-2021 academic year:

  • Joshua Brorby, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
  • Lindsey Chappell, Georgia Southern University
  • Michael Meredith, Eton College, United Kingdom
  • Fabienne Moine, University of Paris Nanterre, France
  • Kevin Morrison, University of Connecticut and Henan University, China
  • Jordan Welsh, University of Essex, United Kingdom

These scholars will spend one month at the ABL conducting research in the Library’s collections to advance their current book or dissertation projects and will provide a summary of their findings on the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum blog. Visiting scholars also often have opportunities to attend on-campus events and interact with Baylor faculty and graduate students who share their research interests.

To learn more about the Visiting Scholars Program, visit our website. You can also read blog posts by recent visiting scholars on the Library’s blog.

For questions, please contact Jennifer Borderud, Director of the Armstrong Browning Library, via email at Jennifer_Borderud@baylor.edu.