Did Browning murder his beloved wife?

Today is the 150th anniversary of the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In the early hours of June 29, 1861, she died in the arms of her husband, Robert, at Casa Guidi, their home in Florence. Although she had been in frail health for a long time, neither she nor her family had any idea the end was so near, but eventually her weak lungs failed and so, quietly and painlessly, her life, and with it a famous love story, came to an end.

Robert Browning was inconsolable in his grief. At Elizabeth's funeral in Florence's English cemetery two days later, he stood, tears streaming down his face, holding the hand of their young son, Pen, hardly aware of the small crowd of fellow mourners.

He then insisted on returning to Casa Guidi, where, for the next fortnight, he lived alone among the possessions they had assembled in the previous 15 years - possessions which told the story of their marriage: the secret wedding in St Marylebone parish church, their elopement and hazardous journey to Italy, Elizabeth's partial return to health and the poetry they had written in each other's company.

Their marriage, in spite of minor disagreements, had been perfect for them both. Elizabeth with her dying breath exclaimed: "My Robert, my heaven, my beloved."

She had much to thank him for. He had taken her from her overheated prison of a sickroom in Wimpole Street and given her new hope and a new life. In return she had given him a much-needed self-belief, and encouraged him to persevere with his poetry, which she greatly admired; she also helped him control his impetuous, excitable nature, which on several occasions before their marriage had got the better of him.

In some ways Robert never recovered from Elizabeth's death, even though he lived for another 28 years. He dedicated his most famous poem, The Ring and the Book, to her memory, and subsequently there was always something missing in his life. He suffered from an emotional loneliness even when living an outwardly busy social life, and memories of Elizabeth forced themselves into his later poetry.

He never remarried, and, once back in London, would always show visitors to his home examples of his wife's delicate handwriting. In his desk he kept a stack of carte-de-visite photographs of Elizabeth, which he would distribute to friends and acquaintances.

With this knowledge, a few years ago I was at Casa Guidi talking to a group of Italian undergraduates about the Brownings when one asked me whether it was true, as she had been told by her English professor, that Robert had murdered Elizabeth.

Robert Browning a murderer? The question was as unexpected as it was extraordinary.

I set to work and soon came across a website which attempted to substantiate this claim. It seems a small group of English academics believe that the poet who had written My Last Duchess, in which a Renaissance Duke of Ferrara exacts revenge on a wife he believes to be unfaithful, was himself a killer.

Noting that Robert was in the habit of administering Elizabeth's medicines himself, his accusers claim that towards the end of her life he increased the daily dosage of laudanum to a fatal level.

"How important it would be to see the pharmacy prescriptions concerning EBB's laudanum's dosage," wrote one of the academics, suggesting that Robert went well beyond the dosage recommended by her doctor. And it is true that towards the end of her life, her English doctor did prescribe stronger medication to alleviate Elizabeth's symptoms of suffocation, irregular heart action and severe coughing fits.

But why would Robert want to kill the woman he loved? His motive, we are told, was a mixture of frustration and jealously - frustration because his wife's illness was impeding his own creativity, and jealousy because her work was more successful than his. According to his modern accusers, Robert went beyond murder. After her death, he falsified Elizabeth's age in the burial register, gave her a cheap funeral and failed to put her name and dates on her tomb.

If true, it is a damning indictment and one wonders why it has taken so long to surface, and how Robert disguised his murderous intent so successfully from his family and friends. Even so, let us examine the claims made by these amateur sleuths, and start with Elizabeth's drug addiction.

Elizabeth was already addicted to opium or morphine when she met Robert Browning. "My opium comes in to keep the pulse from fluttering and fainting - to give the right composure and point of balance to the nervous system," she reassured him during their courtship. But Robert disliked the practice.

After their marriage he persuaded her to reduce the dose - so successfully that during her pregnancy she was able to do without opium altogether. Once Pen was born, she resumed the habit, much to Robert's displeasure.

The reason he kept watch over her dosage was to try to limit, rather than increase, her intake. Only too aware that some of her restlessness and insomnia were the result of withdrawal symptoms, he did his best, with the help of the doctor, to prevent her overdosing.

The idea that he would deliberately harm her by grossly increasing the intake of the drug goes completely against his previous practice, as well as his known concern for her welfare.

But is it possible that, frustrated by his wife's long illness, he contrived a mercy killing that would enable him to restart his literary career and free himself from life as a carer?

Here the facts speak for themselves. He published two books during their marriage, one of which, Men and Women, contained some of his best work. At Elizabeth's death, he already had plans for his masterpiece, The Ring and the Book, and was in the middle of writing a long poem, thought to be Mr Sludge the Medium. Far from inhibiting his work, Elizabeth stimulated his creativity. It was her death, rather than her illness, which caused him to cease writing for several years.

Elizabeth was the better-known poet in 1861, but, rather than brooding on his disappointing reviews, Robert celebrated his wife's success. "I only make men and women speak," he told her, "and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me."

Unlike him, his wife speaks out from her "white heights". He considered her Aurora Leigh the most wonderful of poems, and was always recommending her work to friends. She had been a chronic invalid when they met, so he happily accepted the responsibilities of looking after her health once they were married.

Elizabeth, for her part, was sensible about her illness. When her long decline began in 1856, she encouraged Robert to have a social life without her and he frequently went to parties and literary gatherings leaving her at home looking after Pen, and being looked after herself by their live-in servants. To suggest that Robert was ever shackled to his sick wife is nonsense. Elizabeth enjoyed listening to his vigorous descriptions of his varied social activities the next day over breakfast.

Elizabeth's funeral was organised by a friend because of Robert's emotional distress, which explains why a Church of England clergyman conducted the service rather than a non-conformist minister. It does not, however, explain why Elizabeth's age was entered as 45 rather than 55 in the burial register. This was because Robert had to guess her age, as she always refused to tell him when she was born.

She was in fact six years older than Robert, but as late as 1885 he was still uncertain: "Her birthday I discover was on the 6th of March - in what year I am ignorant still."

His ignorance is why only Elizabeth's death date is recorded on the beautiful tomb Frederic Leighton designed for her in the English cemetery. The tomb, intended to celebrate her achievements rather than herself, includes on one side of the classical sarcophagus the simple initials E.B.B. beneath a roundel of a female head depicting Poetry. No monument could adequately express Robert's deep feelings towards his dead wife, and he wanted her remembered publicly for her poetry.

So today, as we commemorate her, it is above all for her love of freedom, expressed in her poems on the Risorgimento and her opposition to slavery, and for her ringing declarations of the rights of women.

Her love sonnets, including the popular No 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese, How do I love thee?, belong to her private life which has slowly been revealed over the past 150 years with the publication of her letters and numerous biographies. In it Robert plays the leading part, as ardent suitor, caring husband and grieving widower.

He and Elizabeth were emotionally and intellectually compatible, a remarkable couple who together wrote some of the great poetry of the 19th century. The revisionist slur that Robert Browning could have harmed Elizabeth, let alone contemplated murder, is as false as it is mischievous.