Tag Archives: Armstrong Browning Library

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face – Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855)

Posted on by
Reply

The slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling, as the sun and rain foster your favourite flowers. Cherish kind wishes, my children; for a time may come when you may be enabled to put them in practice.

Mary Russell Mitford
Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery
London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1870
“The Residuary Legatee,” vol. 5, p. 145

Mary Russell Mitford was the only daughter of a father with excessive spending habits. At age ten Mitford won a substantial sum of money in a lottery, which her father quickly spent. Mitford had to work hard to earn enough to support both herself and her father. Luckily, Mitford’s writing was well liked and she and her father were able to survive primarily on the proceeds of her literature. As a poet, novelist, dramatist, and playwright, Mitford was a diverse writer but her prose was the most popular.

Mitford was a close friend and frequent correspondent of Elizabeth Barrett’s, particularly before Barrett’s marriage to Robert Browning. Their letters to each other are full of literary commentary as well as discussions of their daily lives. As a token of their friendship, Miss Mitford gave Elizabeth Barrett an important gift—Flush, EBB’s beloved spaniel. The Armstrong Browning Library has 24 volumes written by Miss Mitford and nine letters.

One of Miss Mitford’s acquaintances was John Kenyon, who was a distant cousin of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This letter from Miss Mitford to Mr. Kenyon talks about geranium seeds given to her by Miss Catharine Sedgwick, then progresses to a review of Miss Sedgwick’s book, presents an offer to share geranium cuttings with Mr. Kenyon, and ends with a discussion of American authors. The letter provides a glimpse into this popular and appealing author, known for her unaffected spontaneous humor, quick wit, and literary skill.

Melinda Creech


Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face – Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849)

Posted on by
Reply

The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done – the right should make the law.

Maria Edgeworth
“The Grateful Negro”
Popular Tales (1804)

Maria Edgeworth was born in England but moved to Ireland at the age of five following her mother’s death. Primarily educated in London, she returned to Ireland to care for her siblings after her father fell ill. Many of her early works documented life in Ireland and celebrated Irish culture.

Edgeworth also wrote children’s novels with moral lessons. Her popular Parent’s Assistant, or Stories for Children is a collection of short stories reflecting her view that boys and girls ought to receive equal education. Sir Walter Scott, Maria’s friend, was inspired by her novel, The Absentee, to publish his own novels, attempting “to emulate the admirable Irish portraits drawn by Miss Edgeworth.”

Maria lived during the Irish famine and worked tirelessly for the relief of the Irish peasants. Although after her father’s death she assumed the management of the family estate, she continued to write. She sold her last novel, Orlandino, at the end of the great Irish famine “to raise a little money for our parish poor.”

Kathryn J. Kirkpatrick, Professor of English at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, who has prepared edition of both Belinda and Castle Rackrent, notes that Edgeworth, thankfully, is these days often read within the British canon along with writers like Jane Austen. Kirkpatrick, however, enjoyed working with Edgeworth’s deep engagement with her Irish context.

 Melinda Creech

The Armstrong Browning Library owns five volumes authored by Maria Edgeworth and one letter written by her. In this letter Maria Edgeworth, always concerned with the fair treatment of her tenants, is advocating on behalf of her tenant’s son, Archy Wilson, for his position with the Earl of Desmond.

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face – Hannah More (1745-1833)

Posted on by
Reply

It is humbling to reflect, that in those countries in which fondness for the mere persons of women is carried to the highest excess, they are slaves; and that their moral and intellectual degradation increases in direct proportion to the adoration which is paid to their mere external charms.

Hannah More
Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (1799)

Dr. David Lyle Jeffrey, Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities in the Honors College at Baylor University, in his anthology, A Burning and a Shining Light: English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley, devotes a chapter to Hannah More, describing her as a woman who would have been “remarkable in any century” and “an outstanding woman of her time.” She was both a shrewd culture critic and a Christian feminist, who being more interested in truth than applause, challenged and continues to challenge the political correctness of society.

She was one of the most prolific female writers prior to the Victorian era, with her collected works filling eleven volumes. Her poetry, plays, letters, essays, and tracts focus on women’s education, evangelicalism, abolition, and the poor. She was occupied with promoting philanthropy, establishing charity schools, and providing affordable reading materials for the lower classes in the form of Cheap Repository Tracts.


Although her literary merits were disparaged later in the twentieth century, recent criticism has begun to re-evaluate her influence in religious writing, education, the role of women, abolition, and practical philanthropy. The Armstrong Browning Library owns eleven items authored by Hannah More, including several of the original Cheap Repository Tracts. Hannah More’s Poems can be viewed at the Baylor University 19th Century Women Poets Collection.

Melinda Creech

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face

Posted on by
Reply

1864 Photograph by Cameron adorns the poster for the latest Armstrong Browning Library exhibit
This poster introducing a new exhibit at the Armstrong Browning Library, Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face, contains words from a poem written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning between 1842-44, discovered in a small pocket notebook, and only recently published in 2006. This excerpt from a fragment of the poem, “My sisters! Daughters of this fatherland” expresses the challenges Barrett Browning faced as she sought to assert her voice in a predominately male tradition of public poetry in the 1840s.

The photograph was taken in 1864 by Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the first women photographers. She was a remarkable woman, growing up in Ceylon, moving to England after her marriage, and living on the Isle of Wight, next door to Tennyson. She began taking photos at the age of forty-eight. Her photographs have a soft, ethereal feeling to them and an amazingly contemporary appeal. Cameron, who also wrote an autobiography, translated German, and published poems and fiction, is one of the women featured in the exhibit.

The exhibit in the Hankamer Treasure Room at the Armstrong Browning Library features texts and images of twenty-three nineteenth century women. These women were mothers, daughters, wives, lovers, friends, poets, novelists, tract writers, storytellers, hymn writers, advocates for social reform, philanthropists, and more. So many fascinating things were discovered about these amazing women during my research that we wanted to share their voices and faces with a wider audience through this blog.

Many of the items in the exhibit are taken from the Armstrong Browning Library’s large Nineteenth Century Women Poets Collection. This collection can be viewed at digitalcollections.baylor.edu.

It is our sincere hope that, through the texts and images exhibited in this display and shared through this blog, we at the Armstrong Browning Library might be able to honor Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s wish by giving nineteenth century women writers a voice and a face.

Enjoy the slideshow below for a preview of the women featured in this exhibit.


 

Browning at Downton Abbey: Fathers and Children

Posted on by
Reply

by Melinda Creech

A photo of Matthew Crawley holding his newborn baby in Downton Abbey

Matthew Crawley of Downton Abbey (portrayed by Dan Stevens) holds his son. Photo courtesy of iTV.

Viewers were upset and angered when Matthew Crawley died at the end of the season just after holding his new-born son in his arms. Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, explained his decision in an interview with the New York Times blog. Dan Stevens, the actor playing Matthew Crawley, decided to leave the show and having him die in a tragic accident seemed the best way to remove a major character from the story line.

Although the father and son story in Downton Abbey had a sad ending, the real story of fathers and children at Highclere Castle is a little more heartening. Robert Browning and Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, seemed to have a mutual admiration for each other. Many of the letters from Lord Carnarvon to Robert Browning in the Armstrong Browning Library collection are simply personal invitations for Browning to come to Highclere. Robert Browning’s sister, Sarianna, confided in a letter to Joseph Milsand, November 1869, that “Robert writes me he feels tired of the life he is leading—and has declined another invitation somewhere. Still, he has accepted Ld Carnarvon’s for the beginning of Decr.” In another letter to Sarianna on November 20, 1873, Browning says “Ld. Carnarvon was so exceedingly warm in his manner last evening,–kind he can’t help being.” So what connected Lord Carnarvon and Robert Browning?

Although they died within a few months of each other, Robert Browning was born nineteen years before Lord Carnarvon. They both married for the first time in their thirties and lost their wives after fourteen or fifteen years of marriage. Lord Carnarvon married again, and his second wife outlived him by forty years. Browning never remarried, but outlived his wife by almost thirty years.

Browning’s correspondence with the Carnarvons began in 1868 and continued until at least 1885. When this acquaintance began Lord Carnarvon was thirty-seven and had a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. Robert Browning was fifty-six and had a nineteen-year-old son.

A photo of Robert and Pen Browning

Photo of Robert and Pen Browning (1869) from Armstrong Browning Library

Near the end of their acquaintance in 1885, Robert Browning was seventy-three and Pen was thirty-six. Lord Carnarvon was fifty-four and had five children: Winifred, (21), George (19), Margaret (15), Victoria (11), and Aubrey (5).

A photo of Lord Carnarvon and his son, Aubrey Herbert Carnarvon

Photograph of Lord Carnarvon and Aubrey (1885) from The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1831-1890, Vol. 3, by Arthur Henry Hardinge, 1925.

These two photographs present visual bookends for the beginning and the end of the relationship between Robert Browning and The Fourth Earl of Carnarvon. Both men faced death with a similar peaceful composure. According to The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1857-1890, edited by Peter Gordon, Lord Carnarvon’s last words were “I am so happy.” A Browning Chronology by Martin Garrett reports that Robert Browning’s last words were “my son, my dear son.”

Resources are available for searching through the Browning correspondence online or through catalogues and documents in person here at the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Anyone with a modicum of curiosity can discover how the relationship between Robert Browning and Lord Carnarvon included shooting parties, trout-fishing excursions, late night literary discussions, comparisons of Greek translations, walks in the park, personal and political favors, delightful lunches, and extravagant dinners. Doubtless, some of the conversations at Highclere focused on the disappointments and joys of fathers and children.

Browning at Downton Abbey: Stalking in Scotland

Posted on by
Reply

by Melinda Creech

Inveraray Castle in Scotland

Inveraray Castle in Scotland – photo by Jim Brodie [http://www.flickr.com/photos/rojabro/4159089973/]


Most of the season three finale did not occur at Downton Abbey at all. The Crawley family traveled to the Scottish estate of Duneagle, belonging to their cousin “Shrimpie,” to enjoy stalking hinds, fishing, and dancing the Highland reel, and, of course, the season ended with a tragic accident.

The castle in the movie was actually Inveraray, the residence of the Duke of Argyll, in Browning’s day. Although I could not establish that Browning, who actually came from Scottish stock, visited Inveraray, he did visit all around the area. The Brownings travelled to St. Andrews (September 1868), Lock Luichart (August 1869), Loch Tummell (August-October 1872), Brahan Castle (October 1872), and Lamlesh (August 1876) all within 100 miles of the Inverary Castle that was featured in the season three finale.

In the letters here at the Armstrong Browning Library, I was surprised to find a very unusual coincidence, and a much happier ending. Robert Browning and his son, Robert Barrett Browning, affectionately known as “Pen,” went to Scotland on hunts and reading-parties several times. Pen’s Aunt Sarianna, Robert Browning’s sister, lamented the fact that “it is strange how little parents can prevent youths from following the current of his age. Here, in England, the tide set in for athletics—for rowing, shooting, and such like rubbish—in one sense, though useful in another” [Sarianna Browning to Joseph Milsand, November, 1869]. Three years later Robert Browning wrote to Isa Blagden that “Pen has been quite well and enjoying himself in Scotland: shooting, riding, & dancing the Highland Reel. He had a miraculous escape about a fortnight ago: driving a friend in a pony-chaise drawn by a big horse—he came to grief—by no sort of fault of his own—to grief in a place I know exactly, at the foot of a bridge over a ravine close by my last years abode: the carriage came to pieces, the horse rushed at the bridge, with the wreck on his heels, guiding him was out of the question, and Pen was sent flying over the bridge through a tree which broke the fall,–his companion, a man, going along with the cushions &c, over Pen’s head at the same time, with no hurt to either but a few bruises and general stiffness” [Robert Browning to Isa Blagden, October 3, 1872]. Have the writers at Downton Abbey been reading Robert Browning’s mail? Truth, it seems, is stranger than fiction.

A Letter from Robert Browning to Isa Blagden (1872)

A Letter from Robert Browning to Isa Blagden (1872) [Photo courtesy of Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University]

Browning at Downton Abbey: Conversations at Highclere

Posted on by
Reply

by Melinda Creech

The conversations at Downton Abbey propel the plot and leave us curious to know how the relationships will unravel or be knit together. Of course, many of the most interesting conversations occur in the hallways and behind doors in the servants’ quarters. However, some take place when the men gather by themselves after the meal in the smoking room. Others unfold as the visitors and residents stroll across the lovely grounds of Highclere Castle.

The Smoking Room in Highclere Castle

The Smoking Room in Highclere Castle [http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/about-us/the-state-rooms.html]

Robert Browning found himself engaged in these conversations. The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, edited by Peter Gordon (2009), contends that “Carnarvon’s greatest pleasure . . . was discussing literary matters with distinguished authors.” The conversations in the smoking room, according to Thomas Hay Sweet Escott in Anthony Trollope: His Public Services, Private Friends, and Literary Originals (1967) sometimes involved Browning and often focused on the literature of the Classics. The smoking room clientele included Lord Carnarvon, Browning, Anthony Trollope, J. R. Green, J. R. Seeley, Charles Kingsley, and H. P. Liddon and resembled “Cicero’s country-house parties at his Tusculum.”

Browning, however, also enjoyed those strolling conversations on the grounds. Lady Knightley in The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley, edited by Julia Mary Cartwright (1915), has this recollection of a conversation with Browning at Highclere.

Talking to remarkable people is certainly very hard work! Here I have been divided between Count Beust and Mr. Browning nearly all day. The occupation, amusement, or whatever you like to call it, has been a walk and luncheon at a little house by a lovely lake. Mr. Browning is as different from his poems as anything one can imagine — a loud-voiced, sturdy little man, who says nothing in the least obscure or difficult to understand!

Perhaps it was just such conversations that caused Robert’s weariness as described by his sister, Sarianna Browning, in a letter dated December 1, 1869, to her dear friend in Paris, Joseph Milsand. She says: “Robert is with the earl of Carnarvon at Highclere castle since Saty [Saturday]. He will stay a few days longer but soon gets wearied.”

How delightful to imagine Robert Browning sitting in the smoking room at Highclere discussing Homer, strolling the grounds unveiling his poetry to Lady Knightley, or participating in a shooting party.

Be sure to check back later this week for the next installment in the Browning at Downton Abbey series!

Sarrianna's Letter to Joseph Milsand

Sarianna’s Letter to Joseph Milsand dated December 1, 1869 [Photo courtesy of Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University]

Browning at Downton Abbey: The Shooting Party

Posted on by
Reply

A Shooting Party scene from the set of Downton Abbey

A scene from the Christmas shooting party from Downton Abbey [http://rikravado.hubpages.com/hub/downton-abbey-isis-view-future-plot]


by Melinda Creech

The season two finale for Downton Abbey, entitled “Christmas, 1919,” showcased a shooting party at Downton Abbey. As Alastair Bruce, historical advisor for Masterpiece, explains in a supplemental video, the shooting party had several purposes. Of utmost interest to the participants was the social import of the event. It was an opportunity to see and be seen by the elite of the society, and often required the tailoring of a new wardrobe. The harvesting of game during the shoot supported the community’s needs, providing Christmas gifts of food for the participants, residents of Highclere, and the staff. The shoot also contributed to the ecological balance of the one thousand acre estate.

Browning’s involvement in the shooting party is a little unclear. The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1857-1890, Colonial Secretary and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, edited by Peter Gordon (2009), indicates: “as a member of a shooting party there in 1873 Browning was able to claim in a single day 218 pheasants, 40 hares, 20 rabbits, and 1 partridge.” Gordon obtained this information from a letter from Robert Browning to Sarianna Browning, dated November 20, 1873. However, Browning writes to his sister, Sarianna, that “the main party of men are gone out to shoot” while he has “been walking in the park and after luncheon, shall begin again.” As almost a postscript in the last line of the letter he adds: “5 o’clock/ Day’s sport, (5 guns)—218 pheasants, 40 hares, 20 rabbits, 1 partridge.”

Whether as an attendee or a participant, Browning, no doubt, enjoyed the shooting party at Highclere, November 15-22,1873.

Shooting Party at Highclere Castle

Shooting Party at Highclere Castle [December 1895] with Lady Almina (center) and the Prince of Wales in attendance. Do you recognize any other famous faces?