The earlier years of Elizabeth Barrett's life were spent at Hope End, near
Ledbury, Herefordshire. I visited the place and thereby added not only one
day, but several to my life, for Ali counts not the days spent in the
chase. There is a description of Hope End written by an eminent clergyman,
to whom I was at once attracted by his literary style. This gentleman's
diction contains so much clearness, force and elegance that I can not
resist quoting him verbatim: "The residentiary buildings lie on the ascent
of the contiguous eminences, whose projecting parts and bending
declivities, modeled by Nature, display astonishing harmoniousness. It
contains an elegant profusion of wood, disposed in the most careless yet
pleasing order; much of the park and its scenery is in view of the
residence, from which vantage-point it presents a most agreeable
appearance to the enraptured beholder." So there you have it!

Here Elizabeth Barrett lived until she was twenty. She never had a
childhood--'t was dropped out of her life in some way, and a Greek grammar
inlaid instead. Of her mother we know little. She is never quoted; never
referred to; her wishes were so whisperingly expressed that they have not
reached us. She glides, a pale shadow, across the diary pages. Her
husband's will was to her supreme; his whim her conscience. We know that
she was sad, often ill, that she bore eight children. She passed out
seemingly unwept, unhonored and unsung, after a married existence of
sixteen years.

Elizabeth Barrett had the same number of brothers and sisters that
Shakespeare had; and we know no more of the seven Barretts who were
swallowed by oblivion than we do of the seven Shakespeares that went not
astray.