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Browning
September
throws a new term scorcher
this is the annual
Browning Day
to commemorate the
marriage of
Robert Browning with Elizabeth Barrett
at St
it’s bright morning in the
Lady Chapel
where they married,
afterwards
hurried to her tutor (of
course
nothing had happened),then
eloped
that night the flurried
exit, a loyal maid
a bag of frocks. Robert
and the ferry waits,
while her father, always
unforgiving,
prays over his mangled
family at supper
surely this elopement is
cause for celebration
actors declaim (some from
the NT some
from the One Show), this
is inclusive
we’re lunching on the
portico above
Bakewell tart with English
wine
and the Browning Soc in
tow
an ageing wife, gabby
and fun, eulogises
on Roberts love letters
to
‘so many, such
beauty, such love’
her husband briefly looks
to heaven above
he, a rare great (5
times?) nephew of Browning,
now 98 with joyful mind
and sprightly gait,
says ‘but I wrote you love
letters my dear’
his wife replies ‘I don’t
remember them at all’
(it’s getting
slightly music hall)
‘I always thought they were rather good’
‘but compared with
Robert..’ says his wife
a sudden urgency, he
asks ‘but where are they?’
‘lost to history my
dear’ his wife replies
his face a mystery, a
stifled sigh,
it must have been the
glint from
the Daimler traffic jam on the road below
that caused him to raise his finger to
his eye
Liz
Callingham