For two people to be honest with each other about what is most difficult, even when truthfulness comes with a razing edge of sorrow, is a hard-earned privilege measured by the magnitude of their love for one another. In thinking through this recently — or, rather, living through it — I was reminded of Adrienne Rich’s beautiful sentiment about how relationships refine our truths: “An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word ‘love’ — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.”
That delicate and violent process is what unfolded between the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806–June 29, 1861) and Robert Browning (May 7, 1812–December 12, 1889) — two of the most celebrated and influential writers of the nineteenth century — during their electrifying courtship, carried out in secret. During it, Barrett penned the sonnet whose memorable opening line has permeated culture so profoundly in the century and a half since as to now border on triteness: “How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.”Having first fallen in love with each other’s poetry, the two had many reasons for reservation about transmuting mutual admiration into romantic involvement, beyond the usual insecurities, self-doubts, and fears of deficiency that take root in the hearts of prospective lovers. Barrett, bedeviled by acute spinal pain and ill health since childhood, had spent seven years writing in a darkened room, nearly immobile. When the two poets finally met in person, she was approaching forty — well into spinsterhood by the era’s standards. Browning, six years her junior and less famous, considered himself “no longer in the first freshness of life” and had for a number of years prior “made up [his] mind to the impossibility of loving any woman.”
And yet.
In one of…
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