White Star Lines–Titanic Connections at the ABL–The Fano Club

Posted on May 1, 2018 by melindacreech

By Melinda Creech
Graduate Assistant, Armstrong Browning Library

The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, more commonly known as the White Star Line, was a prominent British shipping company. Founded in 1845, The White Star Line, operated a fleet of clipper ships that sailed between Britain, Australia, and America. The ill-fated Titanic was perhaps their most famous ship. The Armstrong Browning Library has a few connections to the Titanic. One connection relates to a set of postcards that disappeared with the Titanic and another relates to the author of the hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” the song that was purportedly playing as the Titanic sank. The Armstrong Browning Library’s collection includes a letter with the White Star logo in its heading and several letters written on board ships or while individuals were preparing to board ships. The letters, written between 1841 and 1912, are lines from people who were passengers on SS (Steamer Ships), RMS (Royal Mail Steamers), or HMS (Her Majesty’s Ship). It is interesting to note that one of the first purposes of steamers crossing the Atlantic was to deliver the mail. These lines, written from steamer ships, may shed some light on the adventure and danger presented by steamer travel in the late nineteenth century.

This first post is directly connected to the Titanic and tells the story of a unique link between Robert and Elizabeth Browning and the sunken Titanic.

In the spring of 1912, one hundred years after the birth of Robert Browning, William Lyon Phelps, Yale professor and Browning scholar, and his wife made a trip to the little Italian town of Fano. Dr. Phelps and his wife had boarded the S. S. Cleveland on 1 July 1911 for their second sabbatical trip from Yale University, visiting England, Sweden, Russia, Germany, France, and were now ending up their travels in Italy. Dr. Phelps and his wife knew that the poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning had visited Fano in the summer of 1848. The Phelpses travelled there with the expressed purpose of walking in the poets’ footsteps.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, aged 47. Oil painting by Thomas Buchanan Read, Florence, November 1853. Robert Browning, aged 41. Oil painting by Thomas Buchanan Read, Rome, November 1853.

In the summer of 1848 the Brownings had travelled to Fano, Italy, hoping the cool sea breeze of the east coast of Italy would provide a respite from the stifling heat they had been experiencing in their home in Florence. They found Fano even hotter than Florence. Looking for some shade they entered the Church of San Agostino and discovered a large painting, The Guardian Angel, by a seventeenth-century artist known as Guercino. In a letter to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 August [1848], Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

excerpt of letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Mary Russell Mitford. 24 August [1848].

we found it uninhabitable from the heat.. vegetation scorched into paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words, that no drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer . . . —yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture of Guercino’s is worth going all that way to see.

When the Brownings returned to their hotel in Ancona, Robert composed a poem inspired by the painting, which he titled “The Guardian Angel: A Picture at Fano.”

The Guardian Angel by Guercino

I.
Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.
II.
Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
—And suddenly my head is covered o’er
With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb—and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding
Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door.
III.
I would not look up thither past thy head
Because the door opes, like that child, I know,
For I should have thy gracious face instead,
Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low
Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,
And lift them up to pray, and gently tether
Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment’s spread?
IV.
If this was ever granted, I would rest
My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands
Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast,
Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands,
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,
And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed.
V.
How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?
VI.
Guercino drew this angel I saw teach
(Alfred, dear friend!)—that little child to pray,
Holding the little hands up, each to each
Pressed gently,—with his own head turned away
Over the earth where so much lay before him
Of work to do, though heaven was opening o’er him,
And he was left at Fano by the beach.
VII.
We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our soul’s content
—My angel with me too: and since I care
For dear Guercino’s fame (to which in power
And glory comes this picture for a dower,
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent)—
VIII.
And since he did not work thus earnestly
At all times, and has else endured some wrong—
I took one thought his picture struck from me,
And spread it out, translating it to song.
My love is here. Where are you, dear old friend?
How rolls the Wairoa at your world’s far end?
This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.

Standing before the painting on Easter day, 7 April 1912, in the church of San Agostino, Phelps wondered why few Browning enthusiasts visited Fano. To encourage such visits, Phelps instituted the Fano Club. Anyone could become a life member by visiting Fano, seeing the painting, and sending him a picture postcard postmarked from Fano. He and his wife bought seventy-five postcards and addressed them to various friends in America. Unfortunately, the postcards never reached their destinations as they were among the cargo on board the Titanic.

But in spite of the first failed attempt, the idea caught on. In his Autobiography with Letters, published in 1939, Phelps reported that over 500 scholars, students, and lovers of Browning had been inspired to make the pilgrimage.

The administration of the Fano Club was passed on to Dr. A. J. Armstrong (1873-1954), founder of the ABL, after the death of William Lyon Phelps in 1943, and has been carried on by each succeeding library director. Today there are over 200 members of the Fano Club from around the world. Each year members are invited to the ABL around May 7, which is Robert Browning’s birthday, for a dinner and a meeting. Members share stories about seeing the painting (now in the Civic Museum in Fano) and the youngest member present reads “The Guardian Angel: A Picture at Fano” to the group.

Perhaps one day those postcards will be found among the remains of the shipwrecked Titanic.

…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents–Hiram (1805–1873) and Elizabeth (1809–1892) Powers

Posted on April 24, 2014 by melindacreech

Hiram Powers was an American neoclassical sculptor. In 1837 he moved to Italy, settling on the Via Fornace in Florence, where he had access to good supplies of marble and to traditions of stone-cutting and bronze casting. He remained in Florence until his death. Hiram and his wife became friends with the Brownings in Florence. His most famous sculpture was The Greek Slave. It toured America and was exhibited at the Crystal Palace in London. Viewing the exhibit in London, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was inspired to write her famous sonnet, “Hiram Power’s Greek Slave.”

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Elizabeth Powers. [?30 November] [1854].

In this letter Elizabeth Barrett Browning returns books that Elizabeth Powers lent to her for Pen to read. Pen’s favorite was The Pretty Village.

….He has read them himself, & had them read to him again & again, –his particular favorite being ‘The Pretty Village’.

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Hiram Powers. [?20 February 1855].

In this letter Elizabeth asks for more books for Pen.

. . . My Penini has been delighted with several of the books & has read them all, & will be very glad to have others.

The Armstrong Browning Library’s holdings related to the Powers include six Browning letters.

…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents–Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (1830–1908)

Posted on April 21, 2014 by melindacreech

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer was an American sculptor. While she was living and studying in Rome, she became associated with a group of women sculptors known as “The White Marmorean Flock.” She was also a frequent visitor at the Brownings’ home in Florence, Casa Guidi. Hosmer is remembered for her casting in bronze of the Brownings’ “Clasped Hands.”

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning to Harriet Goodhue Hosmer. 13 January 1856.

Writing to Hosmer from Paris on 13 January 1856, Robert Browning says how much he misses “Hatty” and gives news about their common friends, Mrs. Sartoris, Leighton, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Carlyle. Elizabeth concludes by saying: “Be magnanimous & send us a long letter of absolution. You ought, being at Rome.”

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer. “Quaint twins well-mated, will you pardon one.” Autograph Manuscript. No date.

In this poem of forty-four lines Hosmer asserts The ‘one thing needful’ to you both is Truth. It is inscribed by Hosmer on an integral page: Inscribed with the sincerest regard to Robert & Elizabeth Browning—by H.G. H. The poem was extracted from an unpublished volume of poems.

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer. Harriet Hosmer Letters and Memories, edited by Cornelia Carr. New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1912.

This collection of letters, edited by Cornelia Carr, long-time friend of Harriet Hosmer and published four years after her death, contains much of the Brownings’ correspondence.

The Armstrong Browning Library’s holdings related to Hosmer include one book, three letters, and one manuscript.

…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents–Elizabeth Clementine Kinney (1810–1889)

Posted on April 11, 2014 by melindacreech

Elizabeth Clementine Kinney was an American writer, contributing frequently to periodicals such as Blackwood’s, The Daily Telegraph, and Knickerbockers. During a fourteen year stay in Europe she developed a close friendship with Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Armstrong Browning Library’s holdings related to Kinney include two books, five letters, and two manuscripts.

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Elizabeth Clementine Kinney. [ca. September 1854].

In this very interesting letter, Elizabeth Barrett Browning discusses the plans of Harriet Hosmer, Elizabeth Kinney, and herself related to dressing up as men in order to gain access to a monastery not far from the Porta Roma of Florence in order to view some Donnatello paintings. Their elaborate plan, however, was never realized.

Ellizabeth Clementine Kinney.
“Stay!—come not here with unannointed eyes.”
Autograph Manuscript. Undated.

This sonnet is addressed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and signed with Elizabeth Clementine Kinney’s iinitials. The poem is written on the end-pages of Casa Guidi Windows, London: Chapman and Hall, 1851.

…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents–Susan Howard

Posted on April 3, 2014 by melindacreech

The Armstrong Browning Library owns a small album of manuscripts, letters, and printed items that contains memorials to Annie Howard, daughter of Susan and John Tasker Howard. Annie died unexpectedly in Milan on 6 June 6 1860. The Howards, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the Brownings had shared acquaintances in Italy during that period. The tributes in the album were written by three well-known nineteenth-century figures—the anti-slavery preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, his novelist sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and poet Elizabeth Barret Browning. The album contains two letters from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Annie’s mother Susan and a copy of Barrett Browning’s “De Profundis,” written twenty years earlier following the drowning death of her dear brother, Edward. Stowe contributed a poem commemorating Annie to the album and a copy of Henry Ward Beecher’s funeral sermon was also included in the memorial album.

Harriet Beecher Stowe. “To the Memory of Annie, who died at Milan June 6. 1860.” In the Annie Howard Memorial Album. Autograph Manuscript. [1860].

The two letters from Elizabeth Barrett Browning are beautiful expressions of condolences on the death of Annie.

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Susan Howard. 14 August [1860].

Excerpts from the letter:

Villa Alberti, Siena— August 14—

My dear Mrs Howard

I receive your letter, read it, hold it in my hands, with a sympathy deeply moved. . . . Hearing of such things makes us silent before God. What must it be to experience them?—I have suffered myself very heavy afflictions, but the affliction of the mother I have not suffered, & I shut my eyes to the image of it—.

Only, where Christ brings His cross He brings his presence—& where He is, none are desolate—& there is no room for despair. At the darkest you have felt a Hand through the Dark—closer perhaps, & tenderer, than any touch dreamt of at noon. As He knows His own, so He knows how to comfort them—using sometimes the very grief itself, & straining it to the sweetness of a peace unattainable to those ignorant of any grief—

. . . we write in most affectionate sympathy with you .. & your husband, .. may I add, while I sign this letter as your true friend

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Susan Howard. 12 March [1861].

Elizabeth, who had just lost her sister, Henrietta, expresses her sympathy for Susan Howard in these excerpts from the letter:

Rome. 126. Via Felice

March 12.

My dear Mrs Howard, your letter came to me when I was in bitter need of comfort myself—What are we to say to others while our own heart faints? I had been in great anxiety for months, —& then at last came news from England, —& there was no more to fear. . . .

Before then, the pain you expressed & a sermon of Mr Beecher’s had reminded me of an old forgotten m-s. of mine (De Profundis) “written in my earlier manner” (say the critics) & referring to a great grief, —and I sent it for printing in the Independent- That was for you, & not for me—yet by the time it was printed & came out here, some of it sailed me also thro’ a new trial. How the threads cross! —

. . . Dear Mrs Howard—when the young go away with hands full of unblown roses, who should lament that they did not stay to sit under leafless trees? —Why yearn for them to live to lose daughters?-Let us consider, of all our holy Dead, that the lessons they learn now are not learnt with pangs but easily, while they sit under the eyes of Him who loves them more than we ever could. . . .

Yours in affectionate sympathy
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Photograph of a painting of Annie S. Howard,

daughter of Susan and John Tasker Howard.

…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents–James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

Posted on March 24, 2014 by melindacreech

James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor and diplomat associated with the Fireside Poets. The Fireside Poets, whose popularity rivaled English poets, used conventional meter, making the poems suitable for family reading by the fireside. Lowell and Elizabeth Barrett Browning corresponded, sharing volumes of poetry and an interest in anti-slavery issues. Later when Lowell visited in England and Europe, letters were exchanged with Robert Browning about their social engagements.

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning
to James Russell Lowell.
17 December 1846.

The manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” was originally enclosed with this letter. The manuscript and letter have become separated; and, although the letter is at the ABL, the manuscript of the poem is in the Camellia Collection in London. In the letter Elizabeth Barrett Browning asks Lowell to make allowances for me in remembering that I am only three month’s married, & in the sudden glare of light & happiness, here in Italy, after my long years of imprisonment in sickness & depression, without so much as the hope of this liberty.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “Italy—1859—by Lowell.”
Autograph Manuscript. Undated.

This is a fair copy in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s hand of six verses written by James Russell Lowell, published under the title “Villa Franca.”

Letter from James Russell Lowell to Robert Browning.
5 December 1883.

Lowell, living in London at this time, forwards a letter to Browning that has been mistakenly delivered to his address. He says, I am sorry to say that I opened it without looking at the address. I read no further than ‘My dear Mr. Browning’ & am dying to know the rest. He then asks Browning about the weather in Venice and expresses a desire for Browning to return soon.

James Russell Lowell. “I asked of Echo: ‘what’s a good advisor?’” Autograph Manuscript. No date.

This poem, written on the back of an envelope, has never been published.

The Armstrong Browning Library’s holdings related to James Russell Lowell include over seventy books, sixteen letters, one Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript of Lowell’s poems, and one previously unpublished poem by Lowell. The ABL also has three Robert Browning titles that belonged to Lowell.—Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper, with Other Poems, The Ring and the Book, and Sordello.

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Posted on November 13, 2013 by melindacreech

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Margaret Fuller. From Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Boston: John P. Jewett, 1845.

Dr. Charles Capper, Professor of History at Boston University, who has published a two volume biography of Margaret Fuller, suggested the above quotation.

Margaret Fuller, also known as Sarah Margaret Fuller, was a renowned journalist, pioneer feminist, and women’s rights activist. She is associated with the transcendentalist movement and taught at various girls’ schools during her younger years. Following her research at Harvard—where she was the first woman to study—she worked as a literary critic for Horace Greeley, publisher and editor of the New York Tribune, and her collected criticism is found in Papers on Literature and Art, 1846. Her chief work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845, is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. Her influence on the American feminist movement is unparalleled, and she continues to be remembered as a champion for human rights to this day.

Margaret was born on May 23, 1810, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Timothy Fuller, a prominent Massachusetts lawyer, educated her scrupulously, but it wasn’t until 1819 that Fuller began her formal education at the Port School in Cambridgeport. She later attended the Boston Lyceum for Young Ladies in Groton in 1824. Fuller returned home two years later at the age of 16, and while at home she trained herself in several foreign languages, studied the classics, and read world literature. Her intellectual precociousness gained her the acquaintance of various Cambridge intellectuals. In 1833, Margaret’s father moved the family to a farm in Groton, Massachusetts. It was after this transition that she found herself isolated and forced to educate her siblings while also carrying out household tasks for her ailing mother.

Margaret Fuller. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855.

In 1845 Margaret published her feminist classic, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. This book, her chief work, stressed that men deliberately kept women in subordinate positions, and thus women had to help themselves toward independence. It was originally published in the transcendentalist magazine, The Dial, as “The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women,” but it was expanded and published in book form in 1845 and reprinted in 1855. In addition to writing several critical reviews and essays, Fuller became active in various social reform movements. In 1846 she went to Europe as a foreign correspondent for the Tribune, and in England and France she was recognized as an outstanding intellectual.

During her travels, Fuller made her way to Italy in 1847. It was here that she met her husband Giovanni Ossoli. They became lovers, had a son in 1848, and were wed the following year. Fuller had supported the attempt to unify Italy as a Roman republic, but after the Pope was restored to power and the short-lived political experiment had failed, Fuller, her husband and their child fled to Florence in 1849. The next year they boarded a ship set for the United States, but due to a storm off Fire Island, New York, the ship never made it to port and they were lost at sea. Sadly, their bodies were never recovered.

Margaret Fuller Ossoli, The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852. Two volumes.

The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852) was published posthumously by her one-time friend and colleague Ralph Waldo Emerson, with James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing. Because Fuller’s friendship with Emerson had deteriorated, the book was heavily edited. Therefore her myriad accomplishments took a backseat to Emerson’s portrayal of her as a cold and snobbish old maid, rather than as the warm, loving personality her friends and acquaintances knew her to be.

The Armstrong Browning Library owns eight books by Margaret Fuller published in the nineteenth century, including several first editions and rare copies. Of particular importance is Conversations with Goethe in the last years of his life, translated from the German of Eckermann. By S.M. Fuller (1839), which was the first book in which Margaret Fuller’s name appeared.

Erica Heath
Kristyan Pak
Christina Fajardo
Melinda Creech

Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers a Voice and a Face — Theodosia Trollope [née Garrow] (1816–1865)

Posted on September 12, 2013 by melindacreech

Theodosia Garrow
“She Is Not Dead, But Sleepeth”
The Keepsake (1846)

Theodosia Trollope published her first book of poetry in 1839, and, for a time, her reputation rivaled that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Walter Savage Landor, nineteenth century English writer and poet, praised her poetry in a letter to Robert Browning: “This very year there is in the Book of Beauty a poem by my friend Theodosia Garrow, on Italy, far surpassing those of M. Angelo and Filicaia. Sappho is far less intense. Pindar is far less animated.”

Letter from Walter Savage Landor to Robert Browning
[10 November 1845]
Courtesy of the Armstrong Browning Library

Theodosia Garrow moved to Florence with her family in 1844, and in 1848 married Thomas Adolphus Trollope, brother of Anthony Trollope, one of the most successful novelists of the Victorian era. Their home, The Villino Trollope, in the Piazza dell’ Indipendenza, became the focal point of Anglo-Florentine society.

Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Theodosia found herself exposed first hand to the Italian struggle for freedom against Austria. She is probably best remembered for a series of letters praising the efforts of the Risorgimento in Tuscany and denouncing its opponents, including the papacy. These letters, published as Social Aspects of the Italian Revolution (1861), were instrumental in turning British public opinion in favor of the liberation and unification of Italy.

The ABL has two letters written by EBB to Theodosia. One of the letters [?6 June 1859], beginning “Your indignation cannot exceed mine — The reputation for truth of English gentlemen seems about to perish,” precipitates a politically charged letter written on the same day by Theodosia to William Johnson Fox concerning her sympathy with the Italian cause after the outbreak of fighting in 1859.

Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Theodosia Garrow
[?6 June 1859]]
Courtesy of the Armstrong Browning Library

Melinda Creech

Notes: Theodosia Garrow published a poem called “Bees” in the Book of Beauty in 1844, no poems in 1845, “Paolina. Song” in 1846, and “The Cry of Romangna” (which is about Italy) in 1847. She also published “Sonnet – Petrarch to Laura” in The Keepsake for 1944, “Mabel’s Dove” in The Keepsake for 1845, “She is not Dead, but Sleepeth” (also about Italy) in The Keepsake for 1846, and “The Lethe-Draught” in The Keepsake for 1847.

Armstrong Browning Library & Museum

A blog that explores the work of Robert & Elizabeth Browning and 19th-century Victorian literature and culture

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