'All that I have dreamed and more' : Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Florence

Abstract

Following their famous and audacious elopement, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett headed for the mild climate of Pisa in October 1846. There, EBB rested from the physical rigours of her journey and the psychological trauma of abandoning her siblings to their tyrannical father. The Brownings soon, however, found Pisa and its society intolerably dull. More to the point, they discovered that their landlord had cheated and slandered them (he alleged EBB to be 'unladylike'). EBB comments in a letter to her sister Henrietta: 'Cheating is systemized in Italy to a most frightful extent; and nobody sees any harm in what everybody does. Foreigners are considered the lawful prey of the nation.' Florence was cheaper and livelier and so, in April 1847, they engaged a coupe for the journey, which EBB spent mostly lying, shaken and exhausted, over Robert's knees. She still managed to see tantalising glimpses of the countryside and a fleeting glance at Florence as the carriage sped through: the country with vine-festooned plains and breaks of valley and hill - ridges of mountain and sweeps of river - was far more beautiful than I expected between Pisa and Florence. As to Florence I could see it only in our rapid passage to the hotel, across one of the bridges of our old dear yellow Arno; and when Robert had carried me into the Hotel du Nord and laid me down on the sofa, I could only wait for coffee and dream of being in the city of the Medici.