Six months later, Elizabeth had decided she was an Italian at heart and was writing poems on Italian politics. On 9 March 1849, Robert Wiedmann Browning was born, a very healthy child, which surprised Elizabeth a great deal, since she was still taking laudanum and had already had two miscarriages. Robert's mother, whose maiden name had become Pen's middle name, died without knowing about her grandson, and in order to cheer Robert up, Elizabeth presented him with the "Sonnets from the Portuguese" that she had written during their courtship.
Her health was continually fluctuating during these years, but she still managed to write Aurora Leigh, the epic poem that made her reputation then and has just recently been discovered to be on women's rights. Elizabeth started dabbling in spiritualism about now, possibly because she sensed her health failing, or maybe just because Italy sometimes got a little boring during the off-season. This dabbling increased somewhat after Mr. Barrett died in 1857, never having forgiven his daughter. Elizabeth became convinced that she'd actually seen spirits, in spite of Robert's efforts to talk her out of the whole thing.
It was becoming more and more difficult to pretend that the warm weather of Italy was helping Elizabeth's health anymore. Writing was the only thing that really made her feel any better, though the publication of Poems Before Congress in 1860 got her into a little trouble back home with what the reviewers called her anti-British sentiment16. In November of that year, Henrietta, who had actually run off and married her beloved Surtees back in 1850, died of cancer. Elizabeth herself now felt so ill that she was taking far too much morphine and eating almost nothing. She fretted constantly that she was holding Robert and Pen back, though neither one seemed to mind.
In June of 1861 Robert finally called in a doctor, somewhat against Elizabeth's wishes. The doctor diagnosed an abscess on the lung as the cause of her respiratory distress and increased her dose of morphine. On 29 June 1861, Elizabeth died in Robert's arms, probably from paralysis of the breathing caused by the excessive morphine. Robert took it very well at first, handling most of the necessary details calmly and more capably than usual, but he broke down a week or so later. Like his wife, he got through the sadness by working. Elizabeth's Last Poems, edited by Robert, were published in 1862.