Dr. Rieko Suzuki in the Belew Scholars’ Room, Armstrong Browning Library
It has been a privilege for me to be able to return to the Armstrong Browning Library for the third time—my first occasion being as a participant of the Golden Jubilee Conference, second as a Visiting Scholar in 2007. As I reflect back on the first trip to the ABL, I was heavily jetlagged, worn out by the heat, and overwhelmed by the scale of Texas. Not much had changed regarding the first, but as for the weather, I was surprised to find Texas positively cold in March (only in the first week); as for the last factor, I was well acclimatized to say that it even felt like a homecoming.
My encounter with Texas has been brought about by no other than Robert Browning whose works I have been examining since my doctoral years at the University of Manchester, England, under the supervision of Professor John Woolford. I did not begin my academic career as a Browning scholar, however, but rather as a Shelleyan: I was readily able to see what Browning saw in Shelley and had much to sympathize with; but as years went by, I became captivated by Browning’s works, by his most memorable poems. So it has been a delight for me to spend a full month examining Browning’s works in relation to Shelley.
My goal of this research trip was twofold: to examine Browning’s argument on art and to look at Fifine at the Fair in relation to Shelley. Not only was I able to consult all secondary materials pertaining to the above topics, I was also able to consult the Brownings’ correspondence database that covers their unpublished letters. To be able to do a search for any reference to “Shelley,” for example, and come up with the results in a matter of seconds was truly remarkable. Sure enough, it came up with many, which I need to process in the coming months back home. I am unable, therefore, to disclose any “discoveries” that may shed light on a new influence of Shelley on Browning at this point in time, but hope to do so in due course.
What did I accomplish then during my month at the ABL? I was able to get a good grasp of the art criticism scene in England at the time of Browning’s composition of the painter poems, and I was able to read deeper into Fifine due to secondary materials available at the ABL. It is often the case back in Japan that I need to go look for articles or books not only in my own library but also in other libraries through inter-library loan, which can take weeks to come through. By the time I get all the materials in hand, I may have lost the thread of my argument. Such inconvenience was not once felt here at the ABL, and I am truly grateful for the environment that enabled me to explore further into the topics without being held back.
The holdings of art and artifacts of the ABL were of immense interest and inspiration too: the paintings and sculpture by Pen Browning revealed a taste that he had cultivated; of course, this does not necessarily mean that it was that of Robert Browning, but it did shed light on the kind of artistic environment where Pen developed his taste.
Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to all the staff at the ABL for the hospitality and professional assistance I received during my stay there: not only in researching on subjects and gaining assistance to go forward, but also in doing my weekly grocery shopping, in enabling me to satiate my taste buds through Texan cuisine, and in getting cultural insight into the south by being invited to see a play. All this amounted to a memorable stay in Waco. Thank you!
To learn more about the Armstrong Browning Library’s Visiting Scholars Program, visit our website.
By Derham Groves, Ph.D., University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr. Derham Groves at the ABL
While browsing through a copy of the Times Literary Supplement in the staff club at Melbourne University, where I teach architecture, I came across a call for applications for visiting scholars to the Armstrong Browning Library (ABL) at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
The ABL houses the world’s largest collection of materials relating to the lives and work of the married Victorian-era poets, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This collection was assembled over many years by Dr. Andrew Joseph Armstrong, the much-admired and respected Head of the English Department at Baylor between 1912 and 1952. It includes a number of intriguing so-called ‘relics,’ such as a plaster of Paris rosette from the ceiling of the church where Robert Browning was christened, a window latch from Browning’s study, and a dried rose from Browning’s mother’s garden that he sent to Elizabeth Barrett during their courtship. A number of these relics have a tenuous—if not even a dubious—connection to the Brownings, nevertheless, they have a mysterious fascination that is difficult to explain.
Fig. 1: A window latch from Robert Browning’s study, on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room at the ABL.
Dr. Armstrong’s Browning collection was first housed in an alcove in the Carroll Library at Baylor. When it outgrew that, it was housed in a room in the same building. When it outgrew that, it was housed in the Armstrong Browning Library. Dr. Armstrong was also the driving force behind the design and construction of this very handsome building. His lofty ambition was to create one of the most beautiful buildings in America—if not the world—especially for his Browning collection.
Libraries and museums specially designed for particular collections have interested me ever since 1981, when—for my final-year undergraduate architectural design project at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia—I designed a building to house the world’s largest Sherlock Holmes collection at the University of Minnesota. This project first alerted me to the fascinating process of matching a ‘container’ to its ‘contents,’ as it were, not only in a pragmatic sense, but also in a symbolic sense.
Fig. 2: The Sherlock Holmes Centre (1981) designed by Derham Groves.
I am also very interested in cabinets of curiosities. Traditionally, they consisted of an eclectic assemblage of things, which often included sham objects that were presented as genuine. They were collected for their entertainment value by one person, who would proudly display them in an elaborate cabinet. Larger collections were housed in entire rooms or whole buildings, but the name, “cabinet of curiosities,” stuck. Significantly, the origins of today’s museums date back to the cabinets of curiosities of the 1600s.
In recent years there has been a lot of interest in the narrative possibilities of cabinets of curiosities, especially from architects, artists, curators, and writers. The reconstruction of Strecker’s Cabinet of Curiosities in the Mayborn Museum, which is also at Baylor University, the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California, and the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, Turkey, are examples of the current interest in cabinets of curiosities.
Fig. 3: The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California.
Fig. 4: Stecker’s Cabinet of Curiosities in the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University.
Clearly, buildings specially designed for particular collections and cabinets of curiosities have plenty in common. Indeed, in my view, the Armstrong Browning Library has enough similarities to a cabinet of curiosities to be regarded as almost one. Like a number of cabinets of curiosities, the ABL:
1) Began as one person’s hobby/plaything/obsession.
2) Contains a number of real curiosities.
3) Developed into a major library-museum.
4) Occupies an elaborate, purpose-designed building/container.
In my visiting scholar application, I proposed researching the design of the Armstrong Browning Library from the point of view of a contemporary cabinet of curiosities. I also wanted to reflect on the best strategy for designing a contemporary cabinet of curiosities: the German modernist architect, Mies van der Rohe’s “less is more” or the American postmodernist architect, Robert Venturi’s “less is a bore”?
While boning up on the poets, I was intrigued to learn that Robert Browning had penned the phrase, “less is more,” decades before van der Rohe had used it to encapsulate his architectural design philosophy.
Fig. 5: A Browning cabinet of curiosities by Derham Groves.
Fortune smiled on me and I spent December 2014 and the first part of January 2015 at the ABL. In preparation for my visit, I asked the architecture students who took my Popular Architecture and Design course in 2014 at the University of Melbourne to each design a reliquary for one of the Browning relics on the Armstrong Browning Library website. Traditionally, a reliquary was an ornate, purpose-designed container/display cabinet for a bone or other sacred relic that had belonged to a saint. In other words, it was a cabinet for only one curiosity.
Following is a small sample of the reliquaries designed by the architecture students. In my opinion, the best ones managed to put the relics they were designed for into context. For example, Sophie Barodel designed a reliquary shaped like a train carriage to contain Jean Sherwood’s travelling tea set, which Robert Browning used once while travelling by train from Venice to Florence; Brendan Chen designed a reliquary in the form of a model of the Palazzo Dorio, the house of the Brownings’ son, Pen, to contain its front door knocker; and Eric Nakajima designed a reliquary made from fountain pens to contain Robert Browning’s inkwell. Interestingly, most of the students’ reliquaries followed the postmodernist idiom, “less is a bore.”
Fig. 6: A reliquary for a rose sent by Robert to Elizabeth, designed by Adrian Bonaventura.
Fig. 7: A reliquary for Jean Sherwood’s travelling tea set, designed by Sophie Barodel.
Fig. 8: A reliquary for some Laurel leaves from Robert Browning’s coffin, designed by Samuel Brak.
Fig. 9: A reliquary for the front door knocker of Palazzo Dorio, designed by Brendan Chen.
Fig. 10: A reliquary for Robert Browning’s snuffbox, designed by Diana Yong.
Fig. 11: A reliquary for Robert Browning’s inkwell, designed by Eric Nakajima.
Most of my time at the Armstrong Browning Library was spent reading the fascinating correspondence between Dr. Armstrong and the two architects who together, but working independently, designed the building: Hedrick C. Wyatt of Fort Worth, Texas, and Otto R. Eggers of New York, who had previously designed the Pantheon-inspired, Thomas Jefferson Memorial (1939) in Washington, DC.
I am currently writing all of this up. I plan to finish my essay, entitled “Designing Dr. Armstrong’s cabinet of curiosities,” by the end of the year. (I have another ABL-related student project in mind for semester two, which I’d like to include as part of this.) I will discuss how Dr. Armstrong briefed Wyatt and Eggers about the design of the Armstrong Browning Library, and how they in turn responded to his instructions. Suffice it to say for now that, from an architect’s point of view, Dr. Armstrong was the client from Hell!
My sincere thanks go to the staff of the Armstrong Browning Library who looked after me so well while I was there, especially Rita Patteson, Cyndie Burgess, Christi Klempnauer, and Melvin Schuetz.
To learn more about the Armstrong Browning Library’s Visiting Scholars Program, visit our website.
By Ana Gonzalez-Rivas Fernandez, Ph.D., Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain
My research fellowship at the Armstrong Browning Library during the month of August 2014 was not only a thoroughly enriching academic experience that gave me the opportunity to discover the legacy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning first-hand, but also a personal one which was both inspiring and unforgettable, and which revealed to me the immense charm of Texas and its people.
Ana Gonzalez-Rivas Fernandez, Ph.D.
The aim of my research was to analyze different aspects of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s take on the classical literature of Greece and Rome, making use of her personal reading as well as her formal and non-formal education. With this in mind, the Armstrong Browning Library was an excellent source of books, textbooks, letters and diaries, material that provided me with much invaluable input for my study. There can be little doubt that writers’ personal collections provide the best possible snapshot of their personal tastes as readers, revealing both their choices and their reading habits. At times, too, the dedicatory or the marginalia also give us some clues about the way they are or the way they think. These texts, free from academic restrictions, show the real-life reader hiding behind the public image of the author, and provide us with an exceptional point of view for the analysis of their literary work. In the case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her love-hate relationship with the classics soon becomes evident, reflecting both the enthusiasm she felt in her youth (when the classics helped her form an important bond with “Bro,” her favourite brother) and the total indifference she showed in her later years. This voluble relationship with the classics was of course reflected in her literary output, from her first poem “The Battle of Marathon” up to “The Dead Pan,” which represents the death of the classical gods and, most probably, also the end of their influence on Elizabeth’s life.
During my research at the ABL, I was able to make use of a number of databases that were to prove indispensable, such as The Brownings: A Research Guide, The Brownings’ Correspondence: An Online Edition, and the in-house database ABL Research Tools. It was both an honour and a privilege to have access to the very same works used by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the 19th century, and to make my own record of the different editions she read. The vast collections of the Armstrong Browning Library and of Baylor University also allowed me to consult a large number of secondary sources, which helped me to ground and finally complete my research.
Workshop: “Bibliophilia and Classical Studies: The Humanists and Their Bibliographical Legacy”
Some of the results of my study were presented at the academic workshop “Bibliofilia y estudios clásicos: los humanistas y sus legados bibliográficos” (“Bibliophilia and Classical Studies: The Humanists and Their Bibliographical Legacy”) held at the “Marqués de Valdecilla” History Library at the Complutense University in Madrid on the 3rd and 4th of December 2014, and organized by the “Historiografía de la Literatura Grecolatina en España” (“Historiography of Greco-Roman Literature in Spain”) research group, of which I am a member. Examination of the Latin volumes and grammar books of Barrett Browning afforded me a clear view of what a bibliophile the poet was, the owner of not only many of the key works of the 19th century canon, but also of other rarer editions.
Humanities Library, Autonomous University of Madrid
I am currently leading a teaching project at the Autonomous University of Madrid, acting as coordinator for a group of students researching the life and work of Barrett Browning and translating articles and studies relating to her. This project provides a number of students (both graduate and postgraduate) with the opportunity to take a closer look at the author and to explore aspects of her work that do not form part of the degree syllabus. As the coordinator of the project, my own research at the Armstrong Browning Library has served as a very important starting point, making available a wealth of resources that the students can now also make use of.
If my work at the Armstrong Browning Library was so productive, though, it was above all thanks to the kindness and helpfulness of all members of the Library’s staff, who provided invaluable assistance with my research, supplying me with all the material I needed. Their support made my work a great deal easier and more fruitful.
Given that Elizabeth Barrett Browning was such an inveterate reader, the analysis of her reading is proving to be an extensive task in which I am still immersed. I expect to be in a position to present new findings soon, and will use this blog to keep you informed of them. I hope that my work will encourage more researchers to continue to study the fascinating figure of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
To learn more about the Armstrong Browning Library’s Visiting Scholars Program, visit our website.
