WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.379 When you hear the name Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 00:00:02.419 --> 00:00:05.879 there's a very specific image that probably comes 00:00:05.879 --> 00:00:08.939 to mind. If you know her at all, you know, outside 00:00:08.939 --> 00:00:11.400 of maybe a high school literature class, you 00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:13.919 probably know the greeting card version. The 00:00:13.919 --> 00:00:17.140 frail Victorian invalid lying on a chaise lounge. 00:00:17.199 --> 00:00:19.079 Exactly. She's the lady with the spaniel on her 00:00:19.079 --> 00:00:21.440 lap, you know, lying on a sofa on Wimpole Street. 00:00:21.839 --> 00:00:24.379 smelling salts probably nearby, just waiting 00:00:24.379 --> 00:00:26.739 for Robert Browning to burst in and rescue her 00:00:26.739 --> 00:00:29.280 from her tyrannical father. It's the ultimate 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:31.820 damsel in distress story. It's got all the elements. 00:00:32.039 --> 00:00:34.640 It does. It's romantic. It's a little bit gothic. 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.079 And it fits perfectly into how we kind of like 00:00:38.079 --> 00:00:41.979 to view Victorian women, frail, passive, waiting 00:00:41.979 --> 00:00:45.780 for a man. It is a very sticky image, a really 00:00:45.780 --> 00:00:48.000 powerful one. And it's a narrative that was, 00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:51.049 well. It was basically cemented by pop culture. 00:00:51.149 --> 00:00:53.270 Yeah. Specifically a play in the 1930s called 00:00:53.270 --> 00:00:55.289 The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Right. But the 00:00:55.289 --> 00:00:57.130 reality, the reality you find when you, you know, 00:00:57.149 --> 00:00:59.369 you dig into her letters, her biographies and 00:00:59.369 --> 00:01:02.250 the critical reception of her time is wildly, 00:01:02.429 --> 00:01:05.150 almost, almost aggressively different. Yeah. 00:01:05.170 --> 00:01:07.090 That is exactly what we were going to unpack 00:01:07.090 --> 00:01:10.370 today, because that whole damsel narrative conveniently 00:01:10.370 --> 00:01:13.109 forgets some pretty major details. Just a few. 00:01:13.209 --> 00:01:15.829 Like the fact that before Robert Browning ever 00:01:15.829 --> 00:01:19.579 showed up, Elizabeth. was a celebrity in her 00:01:19.579 --> 00:01:22.260 own right. She was a political radical. She was 00:01:22.260 --> 00:01:26.060 a long -term opium user. She was a fierce abolitionist 00:01:26.060 --> 00:01:28.519 who was, and this is a complicated part, living 00:01:28.519 --> 00:01:31.980 on money derived directly from slavery. And arguably... 00:01:32.299 --> 00:01:34.500 During her lifetime, she was considered a better, 00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:36.579 more important poet than her husband. Not even 00:01:36.579 --> 00:01:38.700 arguably. I mean, she was a serious contender 00:01:38.700 --> 00:01:41.260 for poet laureate when Wordsworth died. She was 00:01:41.260 --> 00:01:44.180 rivaling Tennyson for the top job in English 00:01:44.180 --> 00:01:46.140 poetry. Which is just incredible to think about. 00:01:46.319 --> 00:01:48.680 So our mission for this deep dive is to take 00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:51.420 that greeting card version of Elizabeth Barrett 00:01:51.420 --> 00:01:53.900 Browning and, well, tear it up. We are going 00:01:53.900 --> 00:01:55.500 to look at the medical mystery of her illness, 00:01:55.780 --> 00:01:59.040 the very dark origins of her family's fortune, 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:01.120 and how she managed to write some of the most 00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:03.569 scathing... political poetry of the 19th century 00:02:03.569 --> 00:02:06.310 from a darkened room in London. We're basically 00:02:06.310 --> 00:02:10.009 moving beyond the poet laureate of romance to 00:02:10.009 --> 00:02:13.509 uncover the poet laureate of revolution. I love 00:02:13.509 --> 00:02:16.050 that. Let's get into it. To really understand 00:02:16.050 --> 00:02:17.550 Elizabeth, I think you have to start with the 00:02:17.550 --> 00:02:19.840 money. You just have to. Oh, absolutely. It's 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:21.719 the foundation of everything. Because you don't 00:02:21.719 --> 00:02:25.039 get to be a Victorian poet sitting around reading 00:02:25.039 --> 00:02:28.719 Greek and writing epic poems at age 11 without 00:02:28.719 --> 00:02:31.620 a very, very serious financial safety net. It's 00:02:31.620 --> 00:02:34.599 not a cheap hobby. No, poetry is a leisure activity, 00:02:34.879 --> 00:02:37.539 historically speaking. You need time. You need 00:02:37.539 --> 00:02:39.800 education. You need access to books. And the 00:02:39.800 --> 00:02:41.780 Barretts were not just comfortable. They were 00:02:41.780 --> 00:02:45.479 fabulously, almost unimaginably wealthy. But 00:02:45.479 --> 00:02:48.560 the source of that wealth is... It's the central 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:50.379 conflict of her life, isn't it? It's something 00:02:50.379 --> 00:02:52.460 she struggled with for her entire adult life. 00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:54.740 It really was. Because this wasn't old money 00:02:54.740 --> 00:02:57.159 in the sense of, you know, English aristocracy 00:02:57.159 --> 00:02:58.979 with land going back to the Norman conquest. 00:02:59.080 --> 00:03:01.060 This was colonial money. This is the Jamaica 00:03:01.060 --> 00:03:03.840 connection. Correct. The Barrett family had been 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:07.759 in Jamaica since the 1650s, since 1655. So this 00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:09.879 wasn't just a portfolio of investments they had 00:03:09.879 --> 00:03:12.159 somewhere overseas. This was a dynasty built 00:03:12.159 --> 00:03:15.060 in the colonies. And her father, Edward Barrett 00:03:15.060 --> 00:03:17.319 Moulton Barrett. He wasn't just a guy with some 00:03:17.319 --> 00:03:19.560 shares in a sugar company. No, no. He owned, 00:03:19.580 --> 00:03:22.479 and this number is staggering, 10 ,000 acres 00:03:22.479 --> 00:03:25.580 of land in Jamaica. 10 ,000 acres. I was trying 00:03:25.580 --> 00:03:27.939 to visualize that. That is roughly the size of 00:03:27.939 --> 00:03:30.360 Manhattan south of Central Park. Wow. Owned by 00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:32.539 one man. That's not an estate. That's a kingdom. 00:03:32.659 --> 00:03:35.099 It is. A private kingdom. And it wasn't empty 00:03:35.099 --> 00:03:37.780 land. These were highly profitable sugar plantations. 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:42.099 Estates with these very... grand English sounding 00:03:42.099 --> 00:03:45.819 names like Cinnamon Hill, Cornwall, Oxford. But 00:03:45.819 --> 00:03:48.759 they were massive industrial agricultural complexes. 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:50.939 And they ran on one thing. They ran on one thing, 00:03:51.060 --> 00:03:53.479 the forced labor of enslaved people. We have 00:03:53.479 --> 00:03:55.819 to be really explicit about this, I think. The 00:03:55.819 --> 00:03:58.560 library where Elizabeth learned to read Greek, 00:03:58.699 --> 00:04:01.259 the tutors who taught her, the paper she wrote 00:04:01.259 --> 00:04:03.960 sonnets from the Portuguese on. Yeah. Every single 00:04:03.960 --> 00:04:06.400 bit of it was paid for by the labor and the suffering 00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:09.120 of enslaved people in the West Indies. Explicitly. 00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:11.840 There's no separating it. And it wasn't just 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:14.280 on her father's side. Her maternal grandfather 00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:17.139 also owned sugar plantations and merchant ships 00:04:17.139 --> 00:04:20.459 that traded between Jamaica and Newcastle. So 00:04:20.459 --> 00:04:23.339 on both sides of her family tree, the roots are 00:04:23.339 --> 00:04:25.399 just soaked in the sugar trade. And it's not 00:04:25.399 --> 00:04:27.540 just background noise for her story. You mentioned 00:04:27.540 --> 00:04:30.379 it's woven into her actual name. It is, literally. 00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:33.120 Right. I looked into this Moulton Barrett. double 00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:35.699 barrel name. It sounds incredibly posh, like 00:04:35.699 --> 00:04:38.759 standard British aristocracy. But it was actually 00:04:38.759 --> 00:04:40.759 a legal hoop she had to jump through, wasn't 00:04:40.759 --> 00:04:42.740 it? It was basically a brand deal from beyond 00:04:42.740 --> 00:04:45.079 the grave. Her father's original surname was 00:04:45.079 --> 00:04:48.199 just Moulton. But the Barrett side of the family, 00:04:48.279 --> 00:04:51.019 the side with the massive Jamaican estates, had 00:04:51.019 --> 00:04:53.300 a very strict stipulation in the will. Which 00:04:53.300 --> 00:04:55.240 was? If you want to inherit the wealth, you had 00:04:55.240 --> 00:04:57.540 to take the name Barrett. It was non -negotiable. 00:04:57.639 --> 00:04:59.160 So if you want the cash, you have to wear the 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:01.639 logo. Exactly. So the family became the Moulton 00:05:01.639 --> 00:05:04.360 Barretts, which meant that every time Elizabeth 00:05:04.360 --> 00:05:06.480 signed a document, every time she introduced 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:09.379 herself or wrote her full name, she was reaffirming 00:05:09.379 --> 00:05:11.620 her connection to that plantation economy. It 00:05:11.620 --> 00:05:13.899 was an inescapable brand. Wow. So she's born 00:05:13.899 --> 00:05:17.160 in 1806 into this incredibly complex blood money 00:05:17.160 --> 00:05:19.959 wealth. She's born up in County Durham, but they 00:05:19.959 --> 00:05:22.399 don't stay there for long. They move to an estate 00:05:22.399 --> 00:05:25.660 that her father builds called Hope End in Herefordshire 00:05:25.660 --> 00:05:29.699 and her father, Edward. We really need to talk 00:05:29.699 --> 00:05:31.660 about him early because later in the story, he 00:05:31.660 --> 00:05:34.779 becomes the villain, right? The tyrant of Wimpole 00:05:34.779 --> 00:05:36.779 Street. The monster. But in the beginning, the 00:05:36.779 --> 00:05:39.199 sources, her own letters, they paint a very different 00:05:39.199 --> 00:05:42.339 picture. He's a fascinating, deeply contradictory 00:05:42.339 --> 00:05:46.100 figure. In those early years at Hope End, he 00:05:46.100 --> 00:05:47.939 wasn't suppressing her talent. He was her biggest 00:05:47.939 --> 00:05:50.300 fan, her number one champion. And the house itself, 00:05:50.519 --> 00:05:53.120 Hope End, it really reflects his personality. 00:05:53.339 --> 00:05:55.240 Hope End sounds like a metaphor from a gothic 00:05:55.240 --> 00:05:57.759 novel, but it was a real place. And the description 00:05:57.759 --> 00:06:00.060 of it? Honestly, it sounds like he was trying 00:06:00.060 --> 00:06:02.100 to build a personal theme park. It really does. 00:06:02.399 --> 00:06:04.639 It was his vision of the Arabian Nights dropped 00:06:04.639 --> 00:06:06.600 into the middle of the English countryside. He 00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:09.040 took a standard, you know, Georgian style house 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:12.560 and just went wild with it. He added minarets. 00:06:13.139 --> 00:06:15.480 Minarets. In Herefordshire? I'm just trying to 00:06:15.480 --> 00:06:17.720 picture that. I know. Minarets with these green 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:21.720 copper domes. He had brass balustrades, mahogany 00:06:21.720 --> 00:06:25.120 doors inlaid with mother of pearl. He even built 00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:27.639 a subterranean passage from the house to the 00:06:27.639 --> 00:06:30.399 gardens. Okay, that's just showing off. It is. 00:06:30.620 --> 00:06:32.939 But imagine you're a child with this incredibly 00:06:32.939 --> 00:06:35.000 active imagination. It would have been paradise. 00:06:35.160 --> 00:06:37.939 It was a physical manifestation of fantasy and 00:06:37.939 --> 00:06:40.579 wealth. And Elizabeth was the queen of this paradise. 00:06:40.639 --> 00:06:43.620 She was the eldest of 12 children. 12, which 00:06:43.620 --> 00:06:46.379 is just a staggering number. Eight boys, four 00:06:46.379 --> 00:06:49.500 girls. You have to imagine this chaotic, noisy, 00:06:49.759 --> 00:06:52.540 wealthy household. And right in the middle of 00:06:52.540 --> 00:06:54.949 it is Bach. That was her family nickname holding 00:06:54.949 --> 00:06:57.329 court. But she wasn't playing with dolls, was 00:06:57.329 --> 00:06:59.689 she? The account of her childhood reading list 00:06:59.689 --> 00:07:02.829 is, frankly, it's intimidating. Intimidating 00:07:02.829 --> 00:07:05.350 is the perfect word. She claimed she was reading 00:07:05.350 --> 00:07:08.870 novels at age six. By eight, she was completely 00:07:08.870 --> 00:07:11.509 entranced by Alexander Polk's translations of 00:07:11.509 --> 00:07:13.569 Homer. Which is not light reading for an eight 00:07:13.569 --> 00:07:16.389 -year -old. Not at all. And then by 10, she decides 00:07:16.389 --> 00:07:18.569 that's not good enough. And she starts studying 00:07:18.569 --> 00:07:20.410 Greek so she can read the originals for herself. 00:07:20.779 --> 00:07:22.420 This is the part that gets me. I was reading 00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:24.220 in the biography notes where it mentions she 00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:27.639 wrote her own Homeric epic at age 11, The Battle 00:07:27.639 --> 00:07:31.600 of Marathon. Yes, a full on epic poem. I mean, 00:07:31.620 --> 00:07:34.100 most 11 year olds are writing bad diary entries 00:07:34.100 --> 00:07:37.180 or, you know, stories about their pets. She's 00:07:37.180 --> 00:07:39.199 writing about ancient Greek warfare in complex 00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:41.740 verse. And this is where the father really surprises 00:07:41.740 --> 00:07:44.480 you. He didn't tell her to stop. He didn't say 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:46.680 that's not for girls. Go do your needlepoint. 00:07:47.279 --> 00:07:49.600 Quite the opposite. He privately published it 00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.259 for her. He had 50 copies printed to give to 00:07:52.259 --> 00:07:55.339 family and friends. He called her the poet laureate 00:07:55.339 --> 00:07:57.620 of Hope Bend. You have to understand how rare 00:07:57.620 --> 00:08:01.230 that was, right? In the early 19th century, the 00:08:01.230 --> 00:08:04.370 blue stocking, the intellectual woman, was often 00:08:04.370 --> 00:08:07.129 a fetter of mockery. Fathers were usually trying 00:08:07.129 --> 00:08:08.850 to marry their daughters off to good families, 00:08:08.889 --> 00:08:11.069 not turn them into classical scholars. He was 00:08:11.069 --> 00:08:13.670 actively nurturing this massive intellect. She 00:08:13.670 --> 00:08:15.629 was tutored right alongside her oldest brother, 00:08:15.769 --> 00:08:18.930 Bro. She had the complete run of this enormous 00:08:18.930 --> 00:08:21.629 library. She's reading Mary Wollstonecraft's 00:08:21.629 --> 00:08:24.470 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1821. 00:08:24.790 --> 00:08:28.040 At 15. She's 15 years old, reading radical feminist 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:30.620 texts, and she's being encouraged by her father, 00:08:30.680 --> 00:08:33.399 who is living off the profits of slavery. The 00:08:33.399 --> 00:08:35.480 contradictions in this family start so early. 00:08:35.639 --> 00:08:38.080 They do, and that intellectual freedom was the 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:40.000 foundation for everything that came later. She 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.559 had the space, the resources, the support. But 00:08:42.559 --> 00:08:44.840 just as her mind is expanding at this incredible 00:08:44.840 --> 00:08:48.399 rate, her physical world, it starts to shrink. 00:08:49.429 --> 00:08:51.909 This brings us to what you called the cage, the 00:08:51.909 --> 00:08:54.070 onset of her illness. It starts when she's around 00:08:54.070 --> 00:08:56.649 15. And reading the descriptions of the symptoms, 00:08:56.730 --> 00:08:58.389 it really does feel like a medical thriller. 00:08:58.570 --> 00:09:01.889 It wasn't just she felt a bit faint. No, it was 00:09:01.889 --> 00:09:05.009 violent. It was terrifying. Intense head pain, 00:09:05.309 --> 00:09:08.830 spinal agony, spasms that would rack her whole 00:09:08.830 --> 00:09:11.789 body. She lost mobility to the point where she 00:09:11.789 --> 00:09:13.990 often had to be carried from room to room. And 00:09:13.990 --> 00:09:17.559 the doctors of the 1820s. They were completely 00:09:17.559 --> 00:09:19.940 baffled. Totally in the dark. They attributed 00:09:19.940 --> 00:09:22.100 it to a spinal injury for a long time, right? 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:24.000 Yeah. There was a story about her falling off 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:26.320 a horse or a pony. Yeah, that was the prevailing 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:28.580 theory, that she had fallen while trying to saddle 00:09:28.580 --> 00:09:31.799 a pony. But modern medical historians have gone 00:09:31.799 --> 00:09:34.019 back and looked at the journals, at the descriptions 00:09:34.019 --> 00:09:37.000 of the symptoms, the intermittent nature of it, 00:09:37.059 --> 00:09:39.799 the specific kinds of weakness and pain, and 00:09:39.799 --> 00:09:41.659 they don't think it was an injury at all. So 00:09:41.659 --> 00:09:43.730 what's the modern thinking? The leading theory 00:09:43.730 --> 00:09:46.009 now is something called hypokalemic periodic 00:09:46.009 --> 00:09:48.629 paralysis. Okay, break that down for me. It's 00:09:48.629 --> 00:09:50.669 a rare genetic disorder that affects the ion 00:09:50.669 --> 00:09:53.309 channels in your muscles. Essentially, your body's 00:09:53.309 --> 00:09:55.710 potassium levels can suddenly drop, which leads 00:09:55.710 --> 00:09:57.970 to these episodes of extreme muscle weakness 00:09:57.970 --> 00:10:00.389 and pain. And it can be triggered by all sorts 00:10:00.389 --> 00:10:03.690 of things. Stress, illness, even certain foods. 00:10:03.889 --> 00:10:06.669 And of course, in 1821, they don't have genetic 00:10:06.669 --> 00:10:08.409 testing. They don't know about ion channels. 00:10:08.509 --> 00:10:11.549 They have... leeches and blistering. Exactly. 00:10:11.830 --> 00:10:14.049 The treatments were often medieval. They were 00:10:14.049 --> 00:10:16.129 often worse than the disease itself. They would 00:10:16.129 --> 00:10:19.370 cup her, which is essentially using suction to 00:10:19.370 --> 00:10:22.389 draw blood to the surface of the skin. They kept 00:10:22.389 --> 00:10:25.509 her in darkened rooms. They enforced strict bed 00:10:25.509 --> 00:10:28.070 rest, which we now know causes muscle atrophy 00:10:28.070 --> 00:10:29.970 and actually makes the weakness worse. So it 00:10:29.970 --> 00:10:32.509 became a self -fulfilling prophecy of invalidism. 00:10:33.009 --> 00:10:36.179 The treatment Reinforce the sickness. Precisely. 00:10:36.379 --> 00:10:39.340 And for the pain, which was very real and very 00:10:39.340 --> 00:10:41.700 intense, they gave her the one thing they had. 00:10:42.120 --> 00:10:44.799 Laudanum. We hear this word all the time in Victorian 00:10:44.799 --> 00:10:46.600 literature, but what are we actually talking 00:10:46.600 --> 00:10:49.139 about here? It's opium dissolved in alcohol. 00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:53.600 It is a potent and highly addictive narcotic. 00:10:53.799 --> 00:10:56.000 And Elizabeth wasn't just taking a drop here 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.159 and there for a bad back. She was prescribed 00:10:58.159 --> 00:11:01.379 it at 15, and she took it in some form essentially 00:11:01.379 --> 00:11:03.769 every single day for the rest of her life. So 00:11:03.769 --> 00:11:06.029 from adolescence onward, her entire consciousness 00:11:06.029 --> 00:11:09.169 is being altered by opiates. There's a fantastic 00:11:09.169 --> 00:11:12.149 biographer, Alethea Hader, who wrote a book called 00:11:12.149 --> 00:11:15.509 Mrs. Browning, and she argues very convincingly 00:11:15.509 --> 00:11:17.769 that you cannot separate the poetry from the 00:11:17.769 --> 00:11:20.600 opium. The wild vividness, as she calls it, the 00:11:20.600 --> 00:11:23.279 dream -like, sometimes feverish imagery you find 00:11:23.279 --> 00:11:25.600 in her work. That's not just an artistic style. 00:11:25.820 --> 00:11:28.200 That is, at least in part, a chemical influence. 00:11:28.559 --> 00:11:30.559 It really reminds me of the analysis people do 00:11:30.559 --> 00:11:32.980 of, you know, the Beatles in the late 60s or 00:11:32.980 --> 00:11:36.080 Samuel Taylor Coleridge with Kublai Khan. This 00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:38.539 idea that the visionary aspect of her work is 00:11:38.539 --> 00:11:41.179 coming from a brain that is fundamentally operating 00:11:41.179 --> 00:11:43.159 on a different chemical level. It's a really 00:11:43.159 --> 00:11:46.049 valid lens to look through. But it also created 00:11:46.049 --> 00:11:48.909 a lifelong dependency. She called it her elixir. 00:11:49.070 --> 00:11:51.389 Later in life, she was using morphine to sleep, 00:11:51.529 --> 00:11:53.950 to think, to function. She was managing a severe 00:11:53.950 --> 00:11:57.190 chronic illness with heavy daily narcotic regimen. 00:11:57.250 --> 00:11:59.830 So she's sick. She's medicated. She's increasingly 00:11:59.830 --> 00:12:03.289 confined. And at the exact same time, the Arabian 00:12:03.289 --> 00:12:05.389 Nights fantasy of her childhood is collapsing 00:12:05.389 --> 00:12:07.549 around her. The money is running out. The whole 00:12:07.549 --> 00:12:10.309 sugar economy was in a state of crisis. The abolition 00:12:10.309 --> 00:12:12.350 movements were gaining ground, thank goodness. 00:12:12.649 --> 00:12:15.049 But for plantation owners like the Barretts, 00:12:15.049 --> 00:12:17.990 it meant financial ruin. Plus, her father was 00:12:17.990 --> 00:12:21.669 famously, almost comically, bad at managing money. 00:12:21.809 --> 00:12:24.850 The irony is just, it's palpable. The very movement 00:12:24.850 --> 00:12:27.110 that she would later champion in her poetry abolition 00:12:27.110 --> 00:12:30.250 was the thing that was destroying her father's 00:12:30.250 --> 00:12:33.389 fortune and her childhood home. Absolutely. And 00:12:33.389 --> 00:12:36.389 in 1832, it all came crashing down. Hoban was 00:12:36.389 --> 00:12:39.370 seized by creditors. It was sold off. The minarets, 00:12:39.389 --> 00:12:41.950 the library, the subterranean passage, all of 00:12:41.950 --> 00:12:44.730 it, gone. And the family becomes nomadic for 00:12:44.730 --> 00:12:46.850 a while. They move to a seaside town, Sidmouth, 00:12:46.950 --> 00:12:48.769 and then eventually they land in London. But 00:12:48.769 --> 00:12:51.429 before London, there is this period, this tragedy, 00:12:51.490 --> 00:12:53.629 that I think really defines the rest of her life, 00:12:53.850 --> 00:12:56.190 the Torquay period. This is the absolute darkest 00:12:56.190 --> 00:12:58.110 moment. You can't understand the rest of her 00:12:58.110 --> 00:12:59.850 story without understanding what happened in 00:12:59.850 --> 00:13:02.370 Torquay. So set the scene for us. It's 1838. 00:13:02.799 --> 00:13:05.059 She's in her early 30s now. Her health has crashed 00:13:05.059 --> 00:13:07.559 again, badly. And the doctors say she needs sea 00:13:07.559 --> 00:13:10.220 air. So she goes to Torquay on the Devon Coast. 00:13:10.460 --> 00:13:13.600 And her father didn't want her to go alone. No, 00:13:13.620 --> 00:13:15.460 but he also didn't want the family separated. 00:13:15.740 --> 00:13:18.460 He was becoming increasingly possessive and controlling. 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:22.240 But Elizabeth, she adored her brother Edward. 00:13:22.460 --> 00:13:24.899 He was her favorite, the one she'd been educated 00:13:24.899 --> 00:13:28.409 with. And she called him bro. Bro. Yes, Bro. 00:13:28.649 --> 00:13:32.169 He was her rock, her closest confidant. She convinced 00:13:32.169 --> 00:13:34.429 her father to let Bro come with her to Torquay 00:13:34.429 --> 00:13:36.470 to keep her company while she was essentially 00:13:36.470 --> 00:13:39.250 bedbound in a rented house. So he's there for 00:13:39.250 --> 00:13:42.149 her. He's there for her. But in July of 1840, 00:13:42.309 --> 00:13:44.289 Bro and two of his friends went out sailing on 00:13:44.289 --> 00:13:46.190 a small boat in the bay. And he didn't come back. 00:13:46.649 --> 00:13:50.259 The boat capsized in a sudden squall. All three 00:13:50.259 --> 00:13:52.799 of them drowned in Babacombe. And the worst part 00:13:52.799 --> 00:13:54.240 was that the body wasn't recovered immediately. 00:13:54.519 --> 00:13:57.240 It was days and days of waiting and hoping. The 00:13:57.240 --> 00:13:59.600 trauma of losing him is bad enough, but the guilt. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:02.019 When you read her letters from this time, the 00:14:02.019 --> 00:14:04.440 guilt seems almost psychotic. It's all -consuming. 00:14:04.519 --> 00:14:06.960 It completely consumed her because she felt that 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:09.419 Bro was only in Torquay because of her. Because 00:14:09.419 --> 00:14:12.220 she was sick and had begged him to come. She 00:14:12.220 --> 00:14:14.279 felt that she had, in a very real sense, killed 00:14:14.279 --> 00:14:16.700 him. She wrote that it was a near escape from 00:14:16.700 --> 00:14:19.710 madness. And you have to remember, she had already 00:14:19.710 --> 00:14:22.789 lost another brother, Samuel, to a fever in Jamaica 00:14:22.789 --> 00:14:25.809 earlier that same year. But Bro's death just 00:14:25.809 --> 00:14:27.950 broke her. And this explains so much about her 00:14:27.950 --> 00:14:30.029 relationship with her father later on, doesn't 00:14:30.029 --> 00:14:31.950 it? Because her father had been so reluctant 00:14:31.950 --> 00:14:34.529 to let Bro go in the first place. Exactly. In 00:14:34.529 --> 00:14:37.289 her mind, she defied her father. And God had 00:14:37.289 --> 00:14:39.409 punished her by taking her favorite brother away. 00:14:40.009 --> 00:14:43.269 It terrified her into submission. She came to 00:14:43.269 --> 00:14:45.289 believe her father's protectiveness, however 00:14:45.289 --> 00:14:48.320 tyrannical it might seem, was justified because 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:50.759 the outside world was deadly. So when the family 00:14:50.759 --> 00:14:53.500 finally settles at 50 Wimpole Street in London, 00:14:53.679 --> 00:14:57.419 she doesn't just move in, she retreats. She goes 00:14:57.419 --> 00:14:59.440 upstairs to the back bedroom on the second floor, 00:14:59.519 --> 00:15:01.799 and she closes the door. And she barely comes 00:15:01.799 --> 00:15:03.799 out for the next five years. This is the setup 00:15:03.799 --> 00:15:05.779 for The Reckless of Wimpole Street, the myth. 00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:08.259 But here is where our deep dive really needs 00:15:08.259 --> 00:15:10.480 to correct the record. Because when you and I 00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:13.779 hear the word recluse, we think hermit. We think 00:15:13.779 --> 00:15:17.110 disconnected. Right. You picture Miss Havisham 00:15:17.110 --> 00:15:19.590 from great expectations, just sitting in the 00:15:19.590 --> 00:15:22.169 dust, wearing an old wedding dress, letting the 00:15:22.169 --> 00:15:24.990 world crumble. That wasn't Elizabeth. Not even 00:15:24.990 --> 00:15:27.360 close. She was in the room, yes. She was on the 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:30.539 sofa for much of the day, yes, but her mind was 00:15:30.539 --> 00:15:32.899 everywhere. She was more connected to the world 00:15:32.899 --> 00:15:34.740 than most people walking around on the street 00:15:34.740 --> 00:15:37.159 below. She was incredibly connected. She had 00:15:37.159 --> 00:15:40.279 a constant stream of books, journals, newspapers 00:15:40.279 --> 00:15:42.620 coming into that room. She was corresponding 00:15:42.620 --> 00:15:45.220 with all the major writers, critics, and artists 00:15:45.220 --> 00:15:48.460 of the day, and she had flush. Flush. We have 00:15:48.460 --> 00:15:50.759 to mention the Spaniel. The Golden Cocker Spaniel. 00:15:51.100 --> 00:15:53.659 He was a gift from her friend, the writer Mary 00:15:53.659 --> 00:15:57.070 Russell Midford. And Flush is so important because 00:15:57.070 --> 00:15:59.769 he was her proxy for the outside world. He was 00:15:59.769 --> 00:16:02.269 the living, breathing thing she could lavish 00:16:02.269 --> 00:16:04.929 affection on. Virginia Woolf actually wrote a 00:16:04.929 --> 00:16:07.210 biography of the dog, didn't she, called Flush, 00:16:07.230 --> 00:16:09.330 as a way of writing about Elizabeth without being 00:16:09.330 --> 00:16:11.549 direct. She did. It's a brilliant, wonderful 00:16:11.549 --> 00:16:13.929 little book. It tells Elizabeth's story from 00:16:13.929 --> 00:16:16.340 the dog's perspective. But while she's petting 00:16:16.340 --> 00:16:18.659 the dog and, you know, taking her laudanum, she 00:16:18.659 --> 00:16:20.820 is also writing. And she's not writing nice little 00:16:20.820 --> 00:16:23.259 sonnets about flowers. She is looking at the 00:16:23.259 --> 00:16:26.720 industrial horrors of Victorian London, and she 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:29.220 is attacking them head on. This is what she called 00:16:29.220 --> 00:16:32.240 the new spirit of the age. She was reading government 00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:36.990 reports. Blue Books. In 1843, she reads a parliamentary 00:16:36.990 --> 00:16:39.389 commission report about the conditions of children 00:16:39.389 --> 00:16:41.789 working in mines and factories. And these reports 00:16:41.789 --> 00:16:43.490 were just horrific. I mean, you read them today 00:16:43.490 --> 00:16:45.570 and it's hard to believe. Five -year -olds dragging 00:16:45.570 --> 00:16:48.269 coal carts underground in total darkness for 00:16:48.269 --> 00:16:51.070 12 hours a day. It's the stuff of nightmares. 00:16:51.370 --> 00:16:53.470 And Elizabeth reads this from her comfortable 00:16:53.470 --> 00:16:56.269 room and she writes. The Cry of the Children. 00:16:56.429 --> 00:16:58.429 I want to look at this poem for a second because 00:16:58.429 --> 00:17:01.269 it is just brutal. She writes from the perspective 00:17:01.269 --> 00:17:04.349 of the children. For oh, say the children, we 00:17:04.349 --> 00:17:06.950 are weary and we cannot run or leap. If we cared 00:17:06.950 --> 00:17:09.190 for any meadows, it were merely to drop down 00:17:09.190 --> 00:17:12.269 in them and sleep. It's so haunting. She took 00:17:12.269 --> 00:17:14.589 the dry statistics of a government report and 00:17:14.589 --> 00:17:17.069 she gave the children a voice. She used this 00:17:17.069 --> 00:17:20.009 relentless grinding rhythm in the poem that mimics 00:17:20.009 --> 00:17:22.130 the sound of factory wheels turning. And this 00:17:22.130 --> 00:17:24.230 wasn't just art for art's sake, was it? This 00:17:24.230 --> 00:17:27.069 had a real impact. A huge impact. The poem was 00:17:27.069 --> 00:17:29.470 published in Blackwoods Magazine, a major publication, 00:17:29.809 --> 00:17:33.049 and it caused a sensation. It helped build public 00:17:33.049 --> 00:17:35.990 support for Lord Shaftesbury's 10 Hours Bill 00:17:35.990 --> 00:17:40.029 of 1844, which restricted child labor in factories. 00:17:40.309 --> 00:17:41.910 Just think about the power dynamic there for 00:17:41.910 --> 00:17:44.920 a moment. She is an invalid woman. Legally considered 00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:46.900 the property of her father. I'm able to even 00:17:46.900 --> 00:17:49.700 leave her room. And yet from that sofa, she is 00:17:49.700 --> 00:17:52.259 influencing acts of parliament. She was using 00:17:52.259 --> 00:17:54.980 her poetry as a political weapon. She did the 00:17:54.980 --> 00:17:57.460 exact same thing with slavery. Which, as we've 00:17:57.460 --> 00:17:59.779 established, is incredibly complicated given 00:17:59.779 --> 00:18:02.059 her family's income. Incredibly complicated. 00:18:02.599 --> 00:18:04.420 But she didn't shy away from it. Not at all. 00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:06.859 She wrote a poem called The Runaway Slave at 00:18:06.859 --> 00:18:09.960 Pilgrim's Point. And in that poem, she adopts 00:18:09.960 --> 00:18:12.339 the persona of an enslaved woman who has been 00:18:12.339 --> 00:18:15.099 raped by her master, has a child as a result, 00:18:15.240 --> 00:18:17.420 and then kills the child because it looks too 00:18:17.420 --> 00:18:19.700 much like the white men who enslaved her. That 00:18:19.700 --> 00:18:22.839 is unbelievably dark and confrontational for 00:18:22.839 --> 00:18:26.150 a Victorian. lady poet. It was shocking. She 00:18:26.150 --> 00:18:29.049 was forcing her white British middle class audience 00:18:29.049 --> 00:18:32.250 to confront the real physical and sexual violence 00:18:32.250 --> 00:18:34.509 of the slavery system that was making them rich. 00:18:34.650 --> 00:18:37.130 And she knew the hypocrisy of her own position. 00:18:37.410 --> 00:18:39.609 There's that letter she wrote to the critic John 00:18:39.609 --> 00:18:42.630 Ruskin, right? Yes. Much later in life she wrote 00:18:42.630 --> 00:18:44.970 to him and she said, I belong to a family of 00:18:44.970 --> 00:18:47.269 West Indian slaveholders and if I believed in 00:18:47.269 --> 00:18:49.789 curses, I should be afraid. If I believed in 00:18:49.789 --> 00:18:52.910 curses, I should be afraid. That is such a heavy 00:18:52.910 --> 00:18:56.009 self -aware line. She knew. She knew the minarets 00:18:56.009 --> 00:18:58.250 at Hope End, her education, her comfort. It was 00:18:58.250 --> 00:19:00.609 all built on a cursed foundation. And you could 00:19:00.609 --> 00:19:02.609 argue she spent the rest of her literary life 00:19:02.609 --> 00:19:05.250 trying to expiate that thin through her work. 00:19:05.430 --> 00:19:08.730 And it worked. In terms of her career, her 1844 00:19:08.730 --> 00:19:12.089 collection, which was just titled Poems, it lands 00:19:12.089 --> 00:19:15.170 and it just explodes. It establishes her as a 00:19:15.170 --> 00:19:19.079 true literary titan. So much so. that when William 00:19:19.079 --> 00:19:22.240 Wordsworth died in 1850, her name was officially 00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:24.759 put forward for the position of Poet Laureate. 00:19:24.779 --> 00:19:27.259 She was the first woman ever to be seriously 00:19:27.259 --> 00:19:29.599 considered for the role. She was neck and neck 00:19:29.599 --> 00:19:32.039 with Alfred Lord Tennyson. That's the level she 00:19:32.039 --> 00:19:34.900 was operating at. So let's just picture the scene. 00:19:35.019 --> 00:19:39.299 It's 1844. She is 38 years old. She is one of 00:19:39.299 --> 00:19:42.039 the most famous writers in the English -speaking 00:19:42.039 --> 00:19:46.210 world. brilliant. And she's also completely convinced 00:19:46.210 --> 00:19:48.549 that her life is over, that she will die in that 00:19:48.549 --> 00:19:50.829 room on Wimpole Street. She called herself a 00:19:50.829 --> 00:19:52.750 broken machine. She really thought that was it. 00:19:52.910 --> 00:19:56.069 And then one day in January 1845, a letter arrives 00:19:56.069 --> 00:19:58.730 in the post from a guy named Robert. A guy who 00:19:58.730 --> 00:20:02.349 was at that time a largely unknown poet. Robert 00:20:02.349 --> 00:20:04.470 Browning was not a celebrity. He was a failed 00:20:04.470 --> 00:20:06.569 playwright. His poetry was considered chaotic 00:20:06.569 --> 00:20:08.890 and obscure. He was six years younger than her 00:20:08.890 --> 00:20:10.410 and still living at home with his parents in 00:20:10.410 --> 00:20:13.089 New Cross. Very different situation. Very different. 00:20:13.210 --> 00:20:17.009 He reads her 1844 poems collection, and there's 00:20:17.009 --> 00:20:18.869 a line in one of her poems where she praises 00:20:18.869 --> 00:20:22.829 his work. And he just, he decides to write to 00:20:22.829 --> 00:20:24.930 her. And he doesn't hold back. This isn't a tentative, 00:20:25.089 --> 00:20:27.269 you know, dear Miss Barrett, I enjoyed your book. 00:20:27.450 --> 00:20:30.450 No. His opening salvo is the stuff of literary 00:20:30.450 --> 00:20:33.289 legend. It starts, I love your verses with all 00:20:33.289 --> 00:20:35.470 my heart, dear Miss Barrett. And then later, 00:20:35.490 --> 00:20:38.630 that very same first letter, he says, I do, as 00:20:38.630 --> 00:20:41.660 I say, love these books with all my heart. and 00:20:41.660 --> 00:20:44.359 I love you too. That is an incredibly bold move, 00:20:44.519 --> 00:20:46.660 telling a woman you have never met that you love 00:20:46.660 --> 00:20:49.359 her. It was a total intellectual seduction. He 00:20:49.359 --> 00:20:51.660 fell in love with her mind first. He praised 00:20:51.660 --> 00:20:54.359 her fresh, strange music. And for Elizabeth, 00:20:54.579 --> 00:20:56.859 who was surrounded by doctors and family members 00:20:56.859 --> 00:20:58.940 who treated her like this fragile, broken object, 00:20:59.220 --> 00:21:02.440 here was a man who saw her as a genius, as an 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:04.900 equal. So the letters start flowing back and 00:21:04.900 --> 00:21:06.740 forth, and we're talking hundreds of letters. 00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:08.759 It's one of the great correspondences in all 00:21:08.759 --> 00:21:10.640 of literature. They debate Greek translations. 00:21:10.880 --> 00:21:12.779 They gossip about other writers. They analyze 00:21:12.779 --> 00:21:15.240 each other's poetry. It's a true meeting of minds. 00:21:15.480 --> 00:21:18.500 And finally, her cousin, John Kenyon, who was 00:21:18.500 --> 00:21:20.640 a friend to both of them, arranges an actual 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:25.400 meeting. May 20, 1845. He brings Robert to Wimpole 00:21:25.400 --> 00:21:28.240 Street. She's in the room. He comes in. And by 00:21:28.240 --> 00:21:30.319 all accounts, the connection moves from the purely 00:21:30.319 --> 00:21:32.759 intellectual to the physical and emotional almost 00:21:32.759 --> 00:21:36.480 immediately. But there was a massive, massive 00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:40.009 obstacle. The father. Edward Moulton Barrett? 00:21:40.190 --> 00:21:42.609 By this point, Edward had moved from being merely 00:21:42.609 --> 00:21:46.369 protective to being genuinely tyrannical. He 00:21:46.369 --> 00:21:48.569 had explicitly forbidden any of his children 00:21:48.569 --> 00:21:51.269 to marry. Wait, any of them? Not just Elizabeth 00:21:51.269 --> 00:21:53.470 because she was ill. Any of them. Any of his 00:21:53.470 --> 00:21:56.230 12 children. He disinherited every single one 00:21:56.230 --> 00:21:58.650 that dared to marry. Three of them did, and he 00:21:58.650 --> 00:22:01.170 cut them off completely. Why? What was his reasoning? 00:22:01.490 --> 00:22:04.509 It's hard to say for sure. Some biographers speculate 00:22:04.509 --> 00:22:06.829 he was a miser who wanted to keep the family 00:22:06.829 --> 00:22:09.539 wealth intact under his control. Others think 00:22:09.539 --> 00:22:11.740 it was a pathological need for control, maybe 00:22:11.740 --> 00:22:13.859 rooted in the trauma of losing his wife and then 00:22:13.859 --> 00:22:16.119 his sons. He couldn't bear the thought of his 00:22:16.119 --> 00:22:18.579 family unit breaking up. So if Elizabeth wants 00:22:18.579 --> 00:22:21.099 to be with Robert, she has to be prepared to 00:22:21.099 --> 00:22:24.339 lose everything. Her father, her home, her financial 00:22:24.339 --> 00:22:27.660 security, her siblings. Everything. And you have 00:22:27.660 --> 00:22:30.160 to remember, she still believes she is a profound 00:22:30.160 --> 00:22:32.829 invalid. She hasn't left the house in years. 00:22:33.309 --> 00:22:35.789 The idea of running away wasn't just socially 00:22:35.789 --> 00:22:39.049 scandalous for a woman of her class. It was physically 00:22:39.049 --> 00:22:42.230 terrifying. She genuinely thought the shock and 00:22:42.230 --> 00:22:44.430 the travel might kill her. So what do they do? 00:22:44.609 --> 00:22:46.930 They conduct the entire courtship in secret. 00:22:47.130 --> 00:22:50.130 Secret visits when her father was out at his 00:22:50.130 --> 00:22:52.230 office in the city. Secret letters that had to 00:22:52.230 --> 00:22:54.809 be hidden in boxes. It went on for over a year. 00:22:55.160 --> 00:22:57.579 20 months. Like a teenage romance, but they're 00:22:57.579 --> 00:22:59.440 middle -aged poets. It's kind of wonderful. She 00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:03.319 was 40. He was 34. And in September of 1846, 00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:05.599 they decide they can't live like this anymore. 00:23:05.839 --> 00:23:08.039 They have to do it. So they arrange a secret 00:23:08.039 --> 00:23:10.680 marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church, not 00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:13.119 far from her house. Her loyal maid, Elizabeth 00:23:13.119 --> 00:23:15.319 Wilson, was the only witness from her household. 00:23:15.789 --> 00:23:18.329 And then what? She just goes back home? She went 00:23:18.329 --> 00:23:20.529 back home for a week. Can you imagine the nerve? 00:23:20.730 --> 00:23:22.869 She lived in the house with her family, keeping 00:23:22.869 --> 00:23:25.329 this enormous secret, packing her things bit 00:23:25.329 --> 00:23:27.490 by bit, pretending everything was normal. That 00:23:27.490 --> 00:23:30.289 is an unbelievable act of courage. And then, 00:23:30.329 --> 00:23:32.910 on September 19th, a week after the wedding, 00:23:33.049 --> 00:23:35.450 she told her family she was going out, walked 00:23:35.450 --> 00:23:37.849 out of the house with Wilson, and flushed the 00:23:37.849 --> 00:23:40.990 dog, got in a cab, and they fled. They went to 00:23:40.990 --> 00:23:43.930 Paris. And then on to Italy. Great escape. It 00:23:43.930 --> 00:23:46.430 was a true escape. And the fallout was nuclear, 00:23:46.690 --> 00:23:50.089 just as she expected. Her father disinherited 00:23:50.089 --> 00:23:52.410 her on the spot. He never spoke to her again. 00:23:53.150 --> 00:23:55.829 For the rest of his life, he returned her letters 00:23:55.829 --> 00:23:58.589 unopened. Unopened, that is a special kind of 00:23:58.589 --> 00:24:00.829 cruelty, to not even read what your child has 00:24:00.829 --> 00:24:03.289 to say. And even her brothers, who she loved 00:24:03.289 --> 00:24:05.869 so dearly, they rejected her initially. They 00:24:05.869 --> 00:24:08.069 felt she had abandoned them to face their father's 00:24:08.069 --> 00:24:10.950 wrath alone. So she gave up everyone and everything 00:24:10.950 --> 00:24:13.970 for Robert. She traded the gilded cage of Wimpole 00:24:13.970 --> 00:24:17.150 Street for the complete unknown. And shockingly, 00:24:17.170 --> 00:24:19.250 instead of dying from the stress as she feared, 00:24:19.369 --> 00:24:21.779 she flourished. This is the rebirth in Italy 00:24:21.779 --> 00:24:24.500 phase of her life. They eventually settle in 00:24:24.500 --> 00:24:26.900 Florence, in an apartment they call Casa Guidi. 00:24:27.079 --> 00:24:28.880 The change in her health is the part of the story 00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:32.640 that always just, it fascinates me, was the illness 00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:36.220 psychosomatic. Because suddenly she's traveling 00:24:36.220 --> 00:24:38.559 across Europe, she's walking around Florence. 00:24:38.900 --> 00:24:41.519 I think it's a mix of things. The warmer, drier 00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:43.380 climate of Italy certainly helped her lungs. 00:24:43.539 --> 00:24:46.240 The escape from the coal smog of London definitely 00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:49.380 helped. But there was undeniably a huge psychological 00:24:49.380 --> 00:24:52.440 component. The cage of Wimpole Street was, in 00:24:52.440 --> 00:24:55.160 some ways, keeping her sick. Happiness, autonomy, 00:24:55.359 --> 00:24:58.200 sunshine, and Robert's constant loving encouragement 00:24:58.200 --> 00:25:00.880 gave her a vitality she hadn't had in decades. 00:25:01.220 --> 00:25:03.700 And she didn't just survive. She became a mother. 00:25:03.920 --> 00:25:05.640 Which was incredibly dangerous for a woman of 00:25:05.640 --> 00:25:07.859 her age and with her health history in that era. 00:25:07.960 --> 00:25:11.019 She suffered four devastating miscarriages. But 00:25:11.019 --> 00:25:13.339 then, at age 43, she gave birth to a healthy 00:25:13.339 --> 00:25:16.140 son. Robert Weidman Barrett Browning, who they 00:25:16.140 --> 00:25:19.519 nicknamed Penn. 43. In the 1840s, with her medical 00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:21.559 history, that is just pure grit and determination. 00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:25.420 It really is. And Casa Guidi, their home, it 00:25:25.420 --> 00:25:28.619 became this major cultural hub. Because you have 00:25:28.619 --> 00:25:31.539 to remember, at this point in their lives, she 00:25:31.539 --> 00:25:34.180 was the famous one. Robert Browning is a legend 00:25:34.180 --> 00:25:36.759 to us now, but at the time, he was largely known 00:25:36.759 --> 00:25:39.250 as Mrs. Browning's husband. That's a fantastic 00:25:39.250 --> 00:25:42.730 dynamic shift. He was Mr. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 00:25:42.750 --> 00:25:45.490 He really was. Visitors would flock to Casa Guidi 00:25:45.490 --> 00:25:48.250 to see her. William Makepeace Thackeray, the 00:25:48.250 --> 00:25:51.150 author of Vanity Fair. Harriet Beecher Scow, 00:25:51.289 --> 00:25:54.529 who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. George Sand, the 00:25:54.529 --> 00:25:57.230 French novelist. And Elizabeth admired George 00:25:57.230 --> 00:25:59.789 Sand immensely, right, even though she was considered 00:25:59.789 --> 00:26:02.910 so scandalous. She did. She called her an emancipated 00:26:02.910 --> 00:26:05.720 female. She respected Sand for living life on 00:26:05.720 --> 00:26:07.740 her own terms, which is exactly what Elizabeth 00:26:07.740 --> 00:26:10.339 herself is now doing. And during this incredibly 00:26:10.339 --> 00:26:13.000 productive and happy time, she finally publishes 00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:15.880 the work that she's most famous for today, Sonnets 00:26:15.880 --> 00:26:18.740 from the Portuguese. Published in 1850, these 00:26:18.740 --> 00:26:20.880 were the intensely personal poems she had written 00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:22.740 during their secret courtship. She hadn't even 00:26:22.740 --> 00:26:24.839 shown them to Robert until after they were married. 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:27.140 He was the one who insisted they had to be published. 00:26:27.579 --> 00:26:29.759 And the title, Sonnets from the Portuguese, I 00:26:29.759 --> 00:26:31.700 feel like I believed for years that these were 00:26:31.700 --> 00:26:33.940 actual translations from Portuguese. And that 00:26:33.940 --> 00:26:36.359 was exactly the point. She was incredibly shy 00:26:36.359 --> 00:26:38.319 about the personal nature of the poems. They 00:26:38.319 --> 00:26:41.259 were so intimate, so nakedly emotional. So she 00:26:41.259 --> 00:26:43.720 wanted to present them as translations to give 00:26:43.720 --> 00:26:46.180 herself a layer of artistic distance. But the 00:26:46.180 --> 00:26:49.039 title is also a double entendre, a private joke. 00:26:49.319 --> 00:26:52.599 It is. My Little Portuguese was a private pet 00:26:52.599 --> 00:26:56.059 name Robert had for her. Why Portuguese? It was 00:26:56.059 --> 00:26:58.839 a reference to her dark complexion and dark hair, 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:01.380 which was unusual for an English woman of her 00:27:01.380 --> 00:27:04.119 class. So the title is A Public Mask and A Private 00:27:04.119 --> 00:27:06.000 Wink All in One. And this collection is where 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:09.240 we get the big one, Sonnet 43. How do I love 00:27:09.240 --> 00:27:11.579 thee? Let me count the ways. It's iconic. It's 00:27:11.579 --> 00:27:14.960 on a million Valentine's cards. But when you 00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:18.299 read it, knowing her full story, it hits so differently. 00:27:18.619 --> 00:27:21.359 It's not just fluffy, sentimental romance. How 00:27:21.359 --> 00:27:23.880 so? What should we be looking for? Well, look 00:27:23.880 --> 00:27:26.480 at the language she uses. I love thee with a 00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:30.519 love I seem to lose, with my lost saints. She 00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:32.900 is talking about the loss of her family, the 00:27:32.900 --> 00:27:34.900 religious intensity she used to channel into 00:27:34.900 --> 00:27:36.940 her faith, or even her relationship with her 00:27:36.940 --> 00:27:39.599 father, now being redirected entirely to Robert. 00:27:39.980 --> 00:27:42.700 He has become her new religion. And that ending, 00:27:42.900 --> 00:27:46.079 and if God shoes, I shall but love thee better 00:27:46.079 --> 00:27:49.259 after death. Given her lifelong illness, death 00:27:49.259 --> 00:27:51.619 was always a very real presence in the room for 00:27:51.619 --> 00:27:54.519 her. It's not just a pretty romantic sentiment. 00:27:54.619 --> 00:27:57.460 It's a profound statement of defiance against 00:27:57.460 --> 00:28:00.339 mortality. She is saying, my broken body might 00:28:00.339 --> 00:28:02.900 fail, but this connection we have, this love, 00:28:03.039 --> 00:28:05.720 it transcends that completely. But while the 00:28:05.720 --> 00:28:07.740 sonnets are beautiful and obviously what she's 00:28:07.740 --> 00:28:10.180 most known for now, you mentioned earlier that 00:28:10.180 --> 00:28:13.240 there's a bigger work, a magnum opus, that defines 00:28:13.240 --> 00:28:15.700 her not just as a lover, but as a major feminist 00:28:15.700 --> 00:28:18.680 voice. Yes, Aurora Lee. Tell me about Aurora 00:28:18.680 --> 00:28:20.759 Lee, because this is the one the critics always 00:28:20.759 --> 00:28:22.440 say we should be reading, but most people haven't 00:28:22.440 --> 00:28:24.400 even heard of it. They should be. It was published 00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:28.220 in 1856 and it was her masterpiece. It's what 00:28:28.220 --> 00:28:31.039 she considered her most important work. It is 00:28:31.039 --> 00:28:34.259 a verse novel. So a novel in poem form. Exactly. 00:28:34.279 --> 00:28:37.559 A whole novel with a complex plot, characters, 00:28:37.700 --> 00:28:40.039 dialogue, social commentary, but it's all written 00:28:40.039 --> 00:28:42.519 in blank verse. It's nine books long, longer 00:28:42.519 --> 00:28:45.480 than Paradise Lost. That sounds incredibly dense. 00:28:45.859 --> 00:28:47.839 It is dense, but it's also incredibly readable 00:28:47.839 --> 00:28:50.819 and gripping. It's the story of a female writer, 00:28:51.019 --> 00:28:54.140 Aurora. who is struggling to balance her artistic 00:28:54.140 --> 00:28:57.400 ambition with the societal expectations of love 00:28:57.400 --> 00:29:00.039 and marriage. Okay, so what's the central conflict? 00:29:00.579 --> 00:29:04.000 Early on, her wealthy, socially conscious cousin 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:06.519 Romney, which is a terrible name for a romantic 00:29:06.519 --> 00:29:08.839 lead, by the way. Oh, a great one, no. He proposes 00:29:08.839 --> 00:29:11.279 to her, but he doesn't want an equal partner. 00:29:11.539 --> 00:29:14.160 He wants a helper. He basically tells her she 00:29:14.160 --> 00:29:16.539 should give up her silly poetry to help him with 00:29:16.539 --> 00:29:18.819 his socialist charity work. But classic. Put 00:29:18.819 --> 00:29:20.779 down the pen, honey, and help me with my very 00:29:20.779 --> 00:29:22.980 important mission to save the world. That is 00:29:22.980 --> 00:29:26.160 exactly the vibe. And she refuses him. Point 00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:28.700 blank. She chooses her art. She gives this incredible 00:29:28.700 --> 00:29:31.299 speech where she says, I, too, have my vocation 00:29:31.299 --> 00:29:33.380 work to do. That must have been absolutely radical 00:29:33.380 --> 00:29:36.660 in 1856. A woman in a novel saying her work, 00:29:36.700 --> 00:29:39.319 her art is as important as a man's social project. 00:29:39.500 --> 00:29:42.220 It was explosive. It was a sensation. The North 00:29:42.220 --> 00:29:45.859 American Review praised it for uniting woman's 00:29:45.859 --> 00:29:49.460 nature with the strength. which is peculiar to 00:29:49.460 --> 00:29:52.119 a man, which is a very 19th century way of saying 00:29:52.119 --> 00:29:54.859 it was powerful. It challenged the core Victorian 00:29:54.859 --> 00:29:58.359 ideal that a woman's only true role was domestic. 00:29:58.599 --> 00:30:00.799 And this wasn't just abstract fiction for her. 00:30:00.819 --> 00:30:03.019 This was her life story, fictionalized. It was 00:30:03.019 --> 00:30:05.559 heavily autobiographical. It was her manifesto. 00:30:05.619 --> 00:30:08.259 And it had a real world impact. Susan B. Anthony, 00:30:08.460 --> 00:30:10.599 the American suffragist, carried a copy of Aurora 00:30:10.599 --> 00:30:12.539 Lee with her everywhere she went in her trunk. 00:30:12.829 --> 00:30:14.789 She wrote in her copy about how the book had 00:30:14.789 --> 00:30:17.710 influenced her thinking on women's need for economic 00:30:17.710 --> 00:30:20.130 and personal independence. So Elizabeth Barrett 00:30:20.130 --> 00:30:22.869 Browning isn't just a romantic poet. She's writing 00:30:22.869 --> 00:30:25.670 a foundational text for the first wave of the 00:30:25.670 --> 00:30:28.750 women's rights movement. Precisely. Aurora Lee 00:30:28.750 --> 00:30:31.230 argues that a woman doesn't have to choose between 00:30:31.230 --> 00:30:34.849 her work and love, or rather that she shouldn't 00:30:34.849 --> 00:30:37.490 have to, even if society tries to force that 00:30:37.490 --> 00:30:40.170 choice upon her. It's an incredibly modern idea. 00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:42.980 But she didn't stop at feminism. After she moved 00:30:42.980 --> 00:30:45.059 to Italy, she got deeply involved in international 00:30:45.059 --> 00:30:48.180 politics too, right? She became completely obsessed 00:30:48.180 --> 00:30:51.559 with the cause of Italian unification, the Risorgimento. 00:30:52.039 --> 00:30:54.619 She was living in Florence, she loved the Italian 00:30:54.619 --> 00:30:56.880 people, and she desperately wanted to see them 00:30:56.880 --> 00:30:59.779 free from Austrian rule and united as a single 00:30:59.779 --> 00:31:02.440 country. And she wrote about it. Oh, she wrote 00:31:02.440 --> 00:31:05.660 about it. Passionately. Her 1860 collection was 00:31:05.660 --> 00:31:08.400 called Poems Before Congress. How did that go 00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:11.230 over back in Britain? Badly. Very, very badly. 00:31:11.390 --> 00:31:14.289 It caused a furor, as they said. The conservative 00:31:14.289 --> 00:31:17.410 magazines in Britain labeled her a fanatic. They 00:31:17.410 --> 00:31:19.789 were outraged. They thought it was unseemly and 00:31:19.789 --> 00:31:21.930 inappropriate for an English lady to be so heated 00:31:21.930 --> 00:31:24.170 and opinionated about foreign politics. They 00:31:24.170 --> 00:31:26.109 essentially told her to go back to writing love 00:31:26.109 --> 00:31:28.170 sonnets and stay in her lane. That's exactly 00:31:28.170 --> 00:31:30.450 what they did. But she never cared about staying 00:31:30.450 --> 00:31:33.289 in her lane, did she? Never. Whether it was slavery, 00:31:33.630 --> 00:31:36.690 child labor, women's rights, or Italian politics, 00:31:36.910 --> 00:31:39.480 if she felt strongly about something? She wrote 00:31:39.480 --> 00:31:42.460 about it. She saw the role of the poet as a kind 00:31:42.460 --> 00:31:45.299 of prophet, someone with a moral duty to speak 00:31:45.299 --> 00:31:48.119 truth to power. And this moral intensity was 00:31:48.119 --> 00:31:50.599 also tied to her spiritual side. The outline 00:31:50.599 --> 00:31:52.960 mentions she was a congregationalist and really 00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:56.259 interested in theological debate. She was deeply, 00:31:56.400 --> 00:31:59.200 deeply religious, but in a very nonconformist, 00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:02.240 individualistic way. She rejected the hierarchy 00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:04.680 and ritual of the Church of England. And in a 00:32:04.680 --> 00:32:07.099 move that is just so quintessentially her, she 00:32:07.099 --> 00:32:09.819 actually learned Hebrew. Why Hebrew? So she could 00:32:09.819 --> 00:32:11.660 read the Old Testament in the original language. 00:32:11.920 --> 00:32:13.559 Of course she did. That fits her personality 00:32:13.559 --> 00:32:15.660 perfectly. I'm not going to take the priest word 00:32:15.660 --> 00:32:17.140 for it. I'll translate it myself. Thank you very 00:32:17.140 --> 00:32:19.880 much. Exactly. Her work is saturated with biblical 00:32:19.880 --> 00:32:23.220 imagery. Aurora Lee is full of allusions to Miriam, 00:32:23.240 --> 00:32:25.680 the sister of Moses, who was a prophetess. For 00:32:25.680 --> 00:32:28.759 her, poetry was a deeply spiritual act. But all 00:32:28.759 --> 00:32:31.460 this intensity, the writing, the politics, the 00:32:31.460 --> 00:32:34.660 mothering, the constant opiate use, it had to 00:32:34.660 --> 00:32:37.539 take a toll on her already fragile body. It did. 00:32:38.119 --> 00:32:40.380 Her health, which had been relatively stable 00:32:40.380 --> 00:32:42.779 for her first decade in Italy, began to decline 00:32:42.779 --> 00:32:45.599 sharply in the late 1850s. She suffered a series 00:32:45.599 --> 00:32:48.019 of emotional blows as well. The death of her 00:32:48.019 --> 00:32:50.759 father in 1857, who, remember, never reconciled 00:32:50.759 --> 00:32:52.559 with her, and then the death of her beloved sister 00:32:52.559 --> 00:32:55.339 Henrietta hit her incredibly hard. And the end 00:32:55.339 --> 00:33:00.160 comes in 1861. June 29, 1861. She was only 55. 00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:03.160 She was in their apartment at Casa Guidi in Florence. 00:33:03.559 --> 00:33:06.059 Her lungs, which had always been her weak point, 00:33:06.140 --> 00:33:08.869 were failing. The official cause was likely a 00:33:08.869 --> 00:33:11.509 lung abscess, complicated by a lifetime of illness. 00:33:12.109 --> 00:33:14.789 And the story of her death is, well, it's very 00:33:14.789 --> 00:33:17.029 much in character with their love story. It is. 00:33:17.410 --> 00:33:19.829 She died in Robert's arms. He wrote letters about 00:33:19.829 --> 00:33:22.289 it later, and he reported that she died smilingly, 00:33:22.289 --> 00:33:24.970 happily, and with a face like a girl's. And when 00:33:24.970 --> 00:33:26.569 he asked her how she felt in her final moments, 00:33:26.670 --> 00:33:30.150 her last word was simply, beautiful. Beautiful. 00:33:30.210 --> 00:33:32.589 That is a poet's exit, if ever there was one. 00:33:32.730 --> 00:33:34.670 It really is. She was buried in the Protestant 00:33:34.670 --> 00:33:37.890 English cemetery in Florence. And the local Florentine 00:33:37.890 --> 00:33:39.970 shops in their neighborhood, the Casa Guidi area, 00:33:40.289 --> 00:33:42.069 closed their shutters on the day of her funeral 00:33:42.069 --> 00:33:44.349 to mourn her. So they saw her as one of their 00:33:44.349 --> 00:33:46.549 own. She wasn't just some foreign writer to them. 00:33:46.589 --> 00:33:49.809 She was a local hero who had championed their 00:33:49.809 --> 00:33:53.210 cause for freedom. So she dies a legend, a literary 00:33:53.210 --> 00:33:55.910 titan, a political activist, a beloved figure 00:33:55.910 --> 00:33:59.930 in her adopted city. But then something happens 00:33:59.930 --> 00:34:03.140 to her reputation. We go from that image to the 00:34:03.140 --> 00:34:06.559 lady with the spaniel. What happened? How did 00:34:06.559 --> 00:34:08.940 she get reduced? It's what you call the critical 00:34:08.940 --> 00:34:11.400 roller coaster. Yeah. Immediately after her death, 00:34:11.579 --> 00:34:14.239 she was still revered. But as the 19th century 00:34:14.239 --> 00:34:17.719 gave way to the 20th, modernism took over. literary 00:34:17.719 --> 00:34:21.619 scene. And the modernists hated Victorian sentimentality. 00:34:21.739 --> 00:34:24.380 And her work is nothing if not emotional. It 00:34:24.380 --> 00:34:26.280 is high emotion. It is incredibly earnest. It 00:34:26.280 --> 00:34:28.280 wears its heart on its sleeve. And the new generation 00:34:28.280 --> 00:34:31.039 of critics started to dismiss it as hysterical 00:34:31.039 --> 00:34:34.599 or overly feminine or just bad poetry. But the 00:34:34.599 --> 00:34:37.000 real nail in the coffin of her literary reputation 00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:38.880 was that play we mentioned right at the start. 00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:41.840 The Barretts of Wimpole Street. The 1931 play 00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:44.480 by Rudolf Bessier. It was a massive, massive 00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:47.619 hit on stage in London and on Broadway. It was 00:34:47.619 --> 00:34:50.260 made into several movies. But it turned her life 00:34:50.260 --> 00:34:53.099 into a simple melodrama. It focused entirely 00:34:53.099 --> 00:34:55.679 on the tyrannical father and the whirlwind romance. 00:34:55.940 --> 00:34:57.820 So she became a character in a love story, not 00:34:57.820 --> 00:35:00.420 a writer. Exactly. This is what you could call 00:35:00.420 --> 00:35:02.840 the Bessier effect. People stopped reading the 00:35:02.840 --> 00:35:05.000 nine books of Aurora Lee and started watching 00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:07.679 the movie where she swoons on a sofa. She became 00:35:07.679 --> 00:35:10.000 the damsel in distress. Which is the ultimate 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:12.179 irony, because she was the one who engineered 00:35:12.179 --> 00:35:14.559 her own rescue. But there's been a rediscovery 00:35:14.559 --> 00:35:17.019 in recent decades, hasn't there? Yes, thankfully. 00:35:17.460 --> 00:35:20.179 Starting in the 1970s and 80s, feminist scholars 00:35:20.179 --> 00:35:23.219 went back to the text. Critics like Angela Layton 00:35:23.219 --> 00:35:25.179 and others argue that we had been distracted 00:35:25.179 --> 00:35:27.400 by the myth and needed to look at the work again. 00:35:27.679 --> 00:35:30.039 They reclaimed her as a serious political and 00:35:30.039 --> 00:35:32.400 intellectual figure. But it took a very long 00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:35.230 time. A complete scholarly edition of all her 00:35:35.230 --> 00:35:38.130 works wasn't even published until 2010. 2010? 00:35:38.269 --> 00:35:40.690 That's wild. That's nearly 150 years after she 00:35:40.690 --> 00:35:43.110 died. It just shows you how long and how thoroughly 00:35:43.110 --> 00:35:45.170 she was neglected by the literary establishment. 00:35:45.590 --> 00:35:47.510 Before we wrap up, I want to touch on one more 00:35:47.510 --> 00:35:49.909 part of her legacy, a connection that just blew 00:35:49.909 --> 00:35:51.829 my mind when I read it in the source material. 00:35:52.110 --> 00:35:56.030 Her connection to Edgar Allan Poe. Oh, yes. The 00:35:56.030 --> 00:35:59.110 Master of the Macabre was a massive EBB fanboy. 00:35:59.389 --> 00:36:02.329 A huge fan. It's an unexpected pairing. He dedicated 00:36:02.329 --> 00:36:05.510 his 1845 collection, The Raven, and other poems 00:36:05.510 --> 00:36:08.230 to her. He called her the noblest of her sex. 00:36:08.489 --> 00:36:10.909 He was deeply impressed by her intellect and 00:36:10.909 --> 00:36:13.269 her poetic skill. And he didn't just admire her 00:36:13.269 --> 00:36:16.869 from afar, he borrowed from her heavily. Borrowed 00:36:16.869 --> 00:36:19.510 is a very polite word for it. The specific rhythm 00:36:19.510 --> 00:36:22.650 and meter of The Raven. That hypnotic, driving, 00:36:22.929 --> 00:36:25.989 trochaic octameter beat. Once upon a midnight 00:36:25.989 --> 00:36:29.170 dreary, while I pondered, Weak and weary. He 00:36:29.170 --> 00:36:31.190 took that meter directly from her poem, Lady 00:36:31.190 --> 00:36:32.889 Geraldine's Courtship. It's almost identical. 00:36:33.429 --> 00:36:36.389 So in a very real way, without Elizabeth Barrett 00:36:36.389 --> 00:36:38.170 Browning, we might not have quothed The Raven 00:36:38.170 --> 00:36:40.130 Nevermore. Not in the form we know it anyway. 00:36:40.349 --> 00:36:43.010 And her influence didn't stop there. Emily Dickinson. 00:36:43.130 --> 00:36:46.250 Dickinson revered her. She kept a portrait of 00:36:46.250 --> 00:36:49.050 Elizabeth in her room. For Dickinson, Elizabeth 00:36:49.050 --> 00:36:51.969 was the model. She was the proof that a woman 00:36:51.969 --> 00:36:54.150 could achieve the highest levels of greatness 00:36:54.150 --> 00:36:56.889 in poetry. So let's bring it all together. When 00:36:56.889 --> 00:36:59.309 we step back from the chaise lounge and the spaniel, 00:36:59.429 --> 00:37:02.630 what's the real story? What's the takeaway? It 00:37:02.630 --> 00:37:04.989 means we need to completely rewrite our mental 00:37:04.989 --> 00:37:07.429 image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She wasn't 00:37:07.429 --> 00:37:10.329 just a wife. She wasn't just a patient. She wasn't 00:37:10.329 --> 00:37:13.210 just the subject of a romance. She was a powerhouse. 00:37:13.429 --> 00:37:16.329 Yeah. She was an agent in her own life. She took 00:37:16.329 --> 00:37:18.929 the immense privilege of her background, a background, 00:37:19.010 --> 00:37:21.010 as we've said, stained by the sin of slavery, 00:37:21.150 --> 00:37:23.829 and she tried to use her platform to fight for 00:37:23.829 --> 00:37:27.190 justice. She took the profound pain of her illness 00:37:27.190 --> 00:37:29.610 and her personal tragedies and she turned it 00:37:29.610 --> 00:37:31.969 into revolutionary art. She was a celebrity poet 00:37:31.969 --> 00:37:34.530 who used her fame to advocate for child labor 00:37:34.530 --> 00:37:37.130 reform and abolition. And she was a woman who, 00:37:37.230 --> 00:37:39.869 at age 40, an age when most Victorian women were 00:37:39.869 --> 00:37:42.030 considered old, putting on their lace caps and 00:37:42.030 --> 00:37:44.630 fading into the domestic background, she completely 00:37:44.630 --> 00:37:47.510 reinvented her life. It really makes you wonder. 00:37:47.630 --> 00:37:49.650 And I think this is the final provocative thought 00:37:49.650 --> 00:37:52.710 to leave with you, our listener. It's about the 00:37:52.710 --> 00:37:56.329 road not taken. If she hadn't eloped. If she 00:37:56.329 --> 00:37:58.610 hadn't found the courage to walk out of that 00:37:58.610 --> 00:38:00.829 door on Wimpole Street that day. Would we even 00:38:00.829 --> 00:38:03.730 know her name today? Maybe as a minor poet. A 00:38:03.730 --> 00:38:06.789 historical curiosity. But she certainly wouldn't 00:38:06.789 --> 00:38:08.730 have written Aurora Lee. She wouldn't have had 00:38:08.730 --> 00:38:10.789 her son. She wouldn't have become this global 00:38:10.789 --> 00:38:13.510 icon of independence. She would have almost certainly 00:38:13.510 --> 00:38:15.889 just faded away in that room. So the romantic 00:38:15.889 --> 00:38:18.750 story, the elopement, it wasn't just about love. 00:38:18.829 --> 00:38:21.269 It was about artistic and personal survival. 00:38:21.530 --> 00:38:25.030 It was an act of profound rebellion. And that 00:38:25.030 --> 00:38:26.750 rebellion gave us one of the most important, 00:38:26.809 --> 00:38:29.989 complex and powerful voices of the 19th century. 00:38:30.150 --> 00:38:32.929 So to everyone listening, next time you see a 00:38:32.929 --> 00:38:35.670 greeting card with How Do I Love Thee? On it, 00:38:35.730 --> 00:38:38.329 remember the woman who wrote it. Remember the 00:38:38.329 --> 00:38:41.150 opium, the politics, the Jamaican plantations, 00:38:41.150 --> 00:38:43.730 the minarets at Hope End, and the revolution 00:38:43.730 --> 00:38:46.349 she started in her own life. And maybe go read 00:38:46.349 --> 00:38:48.289 a few pages of Aurora Lee. That's where the real 00:38:48.289 --> 00:38:50.449 Elizabeth is waiting. Couldn't have said it better 00:38:50.449 --> 00:38:52.809 myself. Thanks for diving deep with us on this 00:38:52.809 --> 00:38:54.269 one. A pleasure, as always.