The story of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett is so fascinating that it’s hard to believe it’s not fiction. The dashing,
forceful young poet falls in love first with the verse and then with the person of the invalid poetess,
years after she has given up hope of any man loving her. After a secret courtship, he carries her off in spite of her tyrannical father. They escape to Italy where they live for fifteen years as perfect companions, in perfect harmony, until Elizabeth’s
death in 1861.
Their marriage was a fusion of poetic genius, and Robert Browning was sure that he would write even more prolifically and powerfully than before with Elizabeth as his muse. And yet, as Ms. Neville-Sington points out, Browning’s production of poetry practically dried up during their years together. His reverence for her genius and his desire for her approval kept his rougher, darker style in check. Reluctant to write on subjects and in a fashion of which she could not approve, he wrote very little of anything. Her death, the greatest tragedy of his personal life, was ironically the salvation of his poetic life. And that is why this book is titled A Life After Death .
The narrative begins shortly after Elizabeth’s death, with Browning arriving in London as a haunted man. It departs from a straightforward chronological approach, choosing instead to use this event as the watershed moment in Browning’s life. Flashbacks fill in the background. It gives an adequate portrait of Browning as a man and a poet, even though his early life is somewhat sketchy.
Incidentally, this book answers a question that has intrigued me for years: what happens when two immensely gifted writers have a child together? The answer in this case is “Nothing special.” Robert Junior, or Pen, as he was called, is an integral part of this story. Browning’s relationship with him was really an extension of his devotion to the boy’s mother, yet Pen himself was a long series of disappointments. Showing only moderate talent as a writer, he stumbled through a university career, flirted with dangerous romantic entanglements, and caused his father endless worry before settling down to moderate success as a painter.
You don’t have to be familiar with Browning’s poetry to appreciate Ms. Neville-Sington’s work, as she generously quotes from his work when referring to it. She also quotes extensively from his correspondence, letting him speak for himself whenever possible and giving us a look into his very heart. For those who have read Browning before, however, this book will particularly delight when it gives the history behind the writing of his best-known and best-loved works.
It is fascinating to see this man in the context of his age. Browning in a summary of a college syllabus is one thing, but Browning escorting Thomas Carlyle to an exhibition of Pen Browning’s art, sharing a fireside reading with Tennyson, or buying a first edition of Shelley’s poetry is quite another. It is also rewarding to follow Browning from his early days of being ridiculed and neglected through to the end of his life when his dense, powerful language finally won him respect. The man who was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, thousands of miles away from Elizabeth’s quiet Italian grave, was very different from the man who fled to London in despair all those years earlier. This book is the story of that transformation and Browning’s triumph as a master artist of his age.