After being diagnosed with a severe respiratory illness, the poet was forced to live in isolation. Her response offers great insights into how to cope, writes her biographer
The expression of frustration could have been sent from any tier in travel-restricted Britain: “Where do you go in July? For me, I cant answer. I am longing to go to London, & hoping to the last. That is all. For the present, ... certainly the window has been opened twice – an inch – but my physician shakes his head or changes the conversation (which is worse) whenever London is mentioned. But if it becomes possible, I shall go – will go! Putting it off to another summer is like a never.”
In fact, it was mailed from Torquay in June 1840, by someone who had already spent two years in virtual lockdown there. Its recipient was Richard Hengist Horne, a literary man about town. Horne has since fallen into obscurity, but the letter writer would go on to become world famous as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, author of many pioneering works, including one of the best-known poems ever written, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”.
Elizabeth shared a ‘bubble’ with an aunt, a sister and brother, ‘quenching the energies of their lives’ in a limited existence
Lockdown taught her actively to embrace the freedom to travel when it came: something I recognise in the travel plans friends are sharing now
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