Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fiona Sampson
It took me a little while to get into this biography, but in the end I enjoyed it very much. The author is a poet so the prose is beautiful and her poet’s perspective adds a lot to the discussion of both Elizabeth’s own poetry and the context in which she was writing. It’s a pity there are not longer extracts of the poems included; the snippets made me want more but I didn’t look them up on the internet as advised by Sampson. The structure of the book follows the structure of Elizabeth’s long poem Aurora Leigh with which I am not familiar but which Sampson says is about the journey an artist takes in order to become and artist. So the biography is divided into nine separate books; before each of which Sampson speaks directly to the reader in what she describes as a Frame, quoting Italo Calvino the frame is fundamental … it … marks the boundary between the picture and what is outside. This reinforces a theme that percolates through the whole book, that a biographer can not really know the actual truth of a person’s life; only take a viewpoint from the sources that are available. An attractive approach to telling the story of a life.
Sampson is overt about her mission. Her express aim is to retrieve Elizabeth’s reputation as a significant poet from what she calls her current image as part of a Victorian melodrama where she is depicted as a swooning poetess rescued from a tyrannical father by an ardent poet-lover. She blames this on Rudolf Besier who, in 1930, wrote a best-selling play The Barretts of Wimpole Street. It took the world by storm in the thirties and has continued to do so – with three hugely popular feature films and seven remakes for television. I actually saw a musical, based on this play, called Robert and Elizabeth. I loved everything about it and can see them still – June Bronhill as Elizabeth, Denis Quilley as Robert and Frank Thring suitably malevolent as her father. Wikipedia tells me it was in 1966 – my first year at secondary school. Taken by my Aunt and Uncle, it was my first live theatre event. It ran for six months in Melbourne . Such a romantic story it certainly coloured my view of Elizabeth Barrett Browning!
The outlines of the story are true. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was being treated as an invalid in her father’s house and was persuaded to elope by the handsome, younger poet in secret and did flee to the continent. It’s the detail of the characterisations that is poetic licence rather than a truthful depiction. It seems the melodrama influenced literary critics Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom who dismissed Elizabeth’s poetry thus: Miss Barrett became an invalid (for still mysterious reasons) from 1838 to 1846 when … she eloped with the best poet of the age. Her long poem Aurora Leigh (1856) was much admired, even by Ruskin, but is very bad. Quite bad too are the famous Sonnets from the Portuguese … Though the Brownings married life was reasonably happy, Mrs Brownings enthusiasms … gave her husband much grief. What prigs! And as Sampson demonstrates all untrue.
Her poetry was critically acclaimed during her lifetime and for a period thereafter. She was better known and celebrated as a poet more than Robert Browning when she married him and shortly after was in contention for the position of Poet Laureate which ultimately went to Alfred Lord Tennyson. This was in 1850 and she’d have been the first woman laureate which ultimately didn’t happen until 2009 with Carol Ann Duffy. In her adopted country, Italy, she was lauded as a revolutionary political heroine.
She started writing very early and was encouraged by her father to do so. She learned Greek and Latin and knew the classics, including translating some. Hers was a large and loving family. Upper middle class, the money came from plantations in the Caribbean to which her brothers were sent for various periods. Elizabeth became a fervent abolitionist as an adult. She was politically very progressive on a whole range of fronts.
Various theories have been advanced about the illnesses that beset her from adolescence. She was bedridden at home, but in Italy managed a reasonably active life. It’s suggested the cures to which she was subjected – laudanum in particular – probably contributed to her early death. She and Robert had a happy marriage, with one child eventually born. Robert was extremely supportive of Elizabeth’s work as she was with his.
The only poem of Elizabeth’s I was familiar with is her famous sonnet How Do I Love Thee from the Portuguese sonnets: Let me count the ways. / I love thee to the depth and breadth of height / My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight / For the ends of being and ideal grace. / I love thee to the level of every day’s / Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light…….She was worried these poems might be too personal but Robert encouraged publication. They are more accessible than her longer, political ones. We – or at least I – have lost the taste for those.
To sum up, this book covers all the details of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s life and in doing so retrieves her reputation from its fictional palimpsest. It’s tragic that she was so ill for much of it and died so young. Even if you’re not into poetry, this is an interesting story about an interesting woman who is worth remembering.
The Overstory, Richard Powers
I was given this to read by a person who enjoyed it very much. As did most reviewers and indeed the Booker Prize jury members who put it on their short list. I enjoyed the first part but not the second half. It’s divided into the different elements of trees – Roots, Trunk, Crown and finally Seeds.
In the first section which goes for nearly half the book, Roots, we’re introduced to the different characters. This is very well done and all of them are interesting and well drawn, quite distinctive. I enjoyed meeting them all and was interested in what was going to happen to them. This section ends with a young woman seemingly accidentally electrocuted. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that in the following section, Trunk, she is miraculously brought back to life and finds a purpose that has hitherto been lacking.
I was a bit disappointed to think that we were moving away from the original characters, but eventually they turn up and the book turns into a sort of thriller about eco-warriors. This was fine for a while but by book’s end there were too many characters, with too many tenuous links and I was less interested in what happened to them.
As its structure suggests, the whole novel is a paean to trees. We get a lot of information about them – attributes of different species, their role in the history of America and ultimately the environmental challenges that threaten their survival. All very worthy, and for a while interesting, but it was overdone.
In parts quite beautiful, I found Overstory too unwieldy as a whole. Too many characters, too much information, too many words. Overloaded in fact. A pity.
Taste: My Life Through Food, Stanley Tucci
I turned to Stanley for light relief. Which is what I got. Stephen Fry is accurate when he calls it captivating, Jay Raynor less so when he calls it gloriously written. Tucci comes across as very engaging and the style of writing makes you feel that you are sitting listening to him talk across a table fo fine food, but great literature this is not. And nor would I think Stanley would claim it to be.
It’s a fairly traditional tale – large, rambunctious, loving Italian family, lots of food focussed traditions, bottling tomatoes, family feasts, arguments about the correct way to make various dishes, gifts of food being pressed on people and so on.
It’s enlivened by his experiences encountering different foods in the course of his work as an actor and lately as the anchor of the cooking show Searching for Italy. I’ve only seen Stanley in a couple of movies and I haven’t seen the show but he seems very familiar. He intersperses bits about his acting career throughout – but avoids overdoing it. You get the sense that he is a bit over his chosen profession. His anecdotes are well chosen. A restaurant experience in Rome in the company of local boy Marcello Mastroianni can’t be repeated without him. His experience in France with Meryl Streep filming Julia and Julia ordering the famous French andouillette in a restaurant and finding it inedible (as Joe and I found when I tried cooking it in Paris!) He can’t pass up the opportunity to taste minke whale and puffin (!) while on location in Iceland filming Fortitude. We saw that over-wrought series and he was the best thing in it! And yes, he’s a bit guilty about trying those two things. Whale – delicious, puffin – so-so.
He’s nicely self-deprecating and clearly loves everything about food. Especially very simple traditional Italian dishes. He includes recipes for his favourites and you can see where I’ve put stickers on those I want to try. Like Stanley I like the traditional ones – Pasta con Aglio e Olio, Ragù Tucci, Pino Posteraro’s Fettuccine with Ragù Bolognese, Spaghetti con Zucchine alla Nerano.
I’m not tempted to try to make his famous Timpano. I’m on the side of both of his wives – neither of whom could warm to this traditional Tucci Christmas fare. But you can read about what it is and how it’s made and see a picture of it in this article here.
Stanley became quite famous during the Covid lockdown for his cocktails. Videos of him making his version of the Negroni swept the internet. Recipes for that and a very traditional Martini are in the book.
Throughout he blends in personal details about his life in a very personable way. The death of his first wife, meeting and courting his second. There are lots of kids to be cared for – both very young and older. He’s a hands-on Dad.
He talks at the end – quite dispassionately – about his experience of treatment for cancer of the tongue which sounds horrific. He is recovered; although I read elsewhere that he needs to put ice in his wine – like my Aunt who also had a cancer near her mouth – something to do with saliva production. As he notes, how ironic, given how important food is in his life.
An enjoyable read and you get a few recipes to boot. Frustratingly there is neither a contents page nor an index so you have to trawl through to find them.
There’s a lovely interview with Stanley about the book in the New Yorker (may be behind a paywall) here.
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
This was recommended and loaned to me by my neighbour. Who is interested in science and thought I might be interested in the blend of science and poetry in this book. The author is a scientist – a botanist – and also a poet. Early in her career she is told the two are distinct disciplines and she needs to choose one or the other.
This book is a testament to her belief that the two can be complementary. Especially her profound belief that her Indigenous knowledge based as it is on myths and beliefs – i.e. poetry – is just as valid in explaining the natural world as is Western scientific practice.
Different chapters tell the stories of different aspects of the natural world in which she blends her personal history, Native American myth and scientific knowledge. She remembers picking wild strawberries as a child, years spent reclaiming a pond from algae, nights protecting salamanders from being run over, being taught how to make fires, camping etiquette and lots of other things.
What struck me forcibly was the similarity in treatment of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines; denial of language, of customs and, of course, of land. This book underscores how traditional ways of doing things are indeed based on scientific knowledge – be that of seasons, of vegetation, of water qualities and conservation, of agricultural practices and wildfire management. It’s good to see greater acceptance of this knowledge gradually in Australia- but oh so slowly and still contested. The Victorian Government is starting to utilise traditional methods of water conservation and bushfire prevention. And Bruce Pascoe has been at the forefront of recognition of traditional cultivation – that is to say, farming!
This book is indeed, as claimed on the cover, a beautiful blend of botany, Native American mythology, natural history and philosophy.
Recipes for a Kinder Life, Annie Smithers
Another blending of personal history and philosophy along with some very useful recipes. We’ve been to Annie Smithers restaurant Du Fermier in Trentham and everything about it is wonderful – food, service, ambience. This book describes just what it takes to achieve such a standard. A lot of very hard work along with a lot of serious thinking about what one is doing.
This comes through very clearly in Annie’s writing about how she ended up at Babbington Farm – her experiences in the food industry, travels, interest in environmental sustainability, move to central Victoria and what seems to have been a gradual realisation that a balanced life means looking after yourself as well.
Like Stanley’s book, this one reads as though the author is speaking to you across the dinner table. In Annie’s case over a very fine meal. She is very open about her learning experiences establishing her small farm, including lots of initial failures with various plantings and other things. Which really makes you understand what it takes to be a successful gardener. Which is very interesting to me. Although the home gardener is not trying to produce as much as Annie, her advice is very helpful. It would be extremely useful to anyone gardening in the same area.
As she says: Gosh it gets cold here! Then there is the wind to deal with, and the need to manage water efficiently – even though compared to lots of places in Victoria Lyon and the whole Trentham area gets a lot of rain. Although too much needs to be managed effectively as well as too little.
There’s lots of details about all of the things that need doing on a working farm – buildings to be pulled down, repaired or repurposed, watering systems to be laid and then understand so they can be repaired, decisions about which spaces to be used for what purpose. In Annie’s case a poly tunnel green house for seedlings and delicate plants.
And then there are the animals. There’s lots of information about the keeping of ducks, geese, sheep, goats, cows. Much of it humorous – at least in the telling, probably not in the doing.
She also talks about a place where they have stored lots of belongings, having blended two households and emptied out her mother’s home. She was selling a lot of beautiful objects via Instagram a while ago – I assume from this storage. I was always too late to click which was a shame. There was some lovely stuff.
The place sounds wonderful and Annie is now taking people on guided tours, so maybe one day we will visit. When/if we do we will certainly know the work that has gone in to making it all work so well. Annie’s lifestyle is not for the faint-hearted.
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