By Reagan Hunter | Reporter
After 75 years, the Armstrong Browning Library remains a monument to the past, but on Friday night, it will sound very much alive.
The library will mark its 75th anniversary 6-9 p.m. Sept. 18 with an academic symposium, followed by an evening of music, poetry, art, rare manuscripts and food.
But behind the festivities is a larger story about a building created to preserve the past and the people who have spent 75 years keeping it alive.
Dr. Kristen Pond, Margarett Root Brown Chair in Robert Browning and Victorian Studies and associate professor of English, said working with the library’s collection can make writers from more than a century ago feel unexpectedly human.
“The letters that they really wrote, to see a poem that Elizabeth Barrett Browning was writing, and you see her making corrections or leaving little notes in the margins to herself,” Pond said. “We kind of come to these things as what seems like very finished products.”
Those imperfections reveal something the finished poem cannot. Manuscripts show writers revising their work, while letters preserve the friendships, relationships and emotions surrounding the literature.
“It just made the literature almost more interesting to read too,” Pond said. “You’re thinking, ‘Oh, wow, this poem was written out of this specific context in this person’s life.’”
Jennifer Borderud, assistant dean for special libraries and director of the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum, said staff will bring out some of what they consider the collection’s “greatest hits,” including handwritten manuscripts of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love poems to Robert Browning.
The library will also display several Elizabeth Barrett Browning letters currently on loan from a bookseller. Borderud said the library hopes contributions will help purchase the letters and make them a permanent part of the collection.
Following opening remarks at 6:30 p.m., the Baylor Chamber Singers will perform in the Foyer of Meditation before guests are invited to explore the building.
“We plan to have all three floors open, and in each room, we’re gonna have different things that people can see or hear,” Borderud said.
Baylor’s Early Music Ensemble will perform in the Treasure Room, while English students will read Browning poetry in the Elizabeth Barrett Browning Salon. Two undergraduate singers will perform Browning poetry set to music, accompanied by a Baylor piano professor on the salon’s 19th-century piano.
“I’m really excited to hear that piano, because I’ve never heard it played before,” Borderud said.
Just as it will receive its honor at the celebration, the building itself was designed to honor its namesakes.
“This building was built to commemorate the Brownings,” Pond said. “It wasn’t for utility purpose. It was to actually [to] memorialize these people.”
That purpose is visible throughout the architecture. In the Foyer of Meditation, stained-glass windows interact with changing sunlight while a domed ceiling appears almost like gold velvet. Pond said the ceiling was created using gold paint, with the painter’s thumbprints producing its textured appearance.
The building, she said, has a way of changing the pace of those who enter.
“You walk through and immediately sort of slow down and just become more aware of your surroundings,” Pond said.
Before Friday night’s celebration, the library will recognize another part of its continuing legacy: scholarship.
“Legacies and Futures in Browning and Nineteenth-Century Scholarship at the Armstrong Browning Library,” a two-day symposium concluding Friday morning, will bring together scholars from around the world whose research has been enhanced by the library’s resources.
Borderud said visiting scholars often spend about a month working with the collections. The anniversary offered an opportunity to invite some of them back to discuss their research and their experiences at Baylor.
“In that one month, they just feel like they’re part of our family,” Borderud said. “It’s so fun to kind of reconnect with them and have them come back.”
The library’s own history, however, extends beyond scholarship. Students have studied beneath its stained-glass windows, musicians have performed in its rooms and community members have attended lectures and tours.
Some Baylor couples have even gotten married there.
Borderud said the library permits approximately one wedding each month. Over time, that tradition created a Baylor rumor that students hoping to marry there had to put their names on a waiting list as freshmen.
“Is it true that you have to have your name on a list?” Borderud said. “No, it is not true.”
The celebration will conclude in the Garden of Contentment, where Baylor students will perform jazz as guests gather for desserts.
For Pond, the anniversary reflects what the library continues to do every day.
“It really does embody what the library kind of does in its daily life,” Pond said, “that sort of interactive, inspiring, creative engagement with people.”
