Strange Music (33 page)

Elizabeth's brother, Sam, died at Cinnamon Hill in Jamaica on 17 February 1840. In July of that year, Bro, the brother to whom Elizabeth was closest, and two of his friends, with an able seaman, William White, were inexplicably drowned and the boat lost near to Torquay on a calm and windless day. Bro's body was washed up on a beach in August.

Elizabeth completed ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' while on honeymoon with Robert Browning. Early manuscripts show that at one time she was considering writing from the perspective of a black man; she then changed the main protagonist to a female slave. Elizabeth says in a letter to Miss Mitford that the work is based on stories told to her by her cousin Richard, an illegitimate cousin of her father who lived in Jamaica. The poem is set in America and was first published in the Boston anti-slavery publication,
The Liberty Bell
, in 1848.