Flush: A Biography

Flush is very empathetic. With Elizabeth, he comes to prefer the quiet of the dark room to the loudness of the outside world. He becomes reflective and attuned to her moods. She loves Flush, and Flush loves her. By January 1845, he is no longer a puppy but a dog of four or five years old. One evening, a letter arrives, and Flush notices a change in Elizabeth when she reads this letter; however, he cannot determine what the letter means. Similar letters begin to arrive more regularly, and Flush notices that Elizabeth anticipates the mailman’s regular delivery. Flush tries to imagine the author of these letters. He pictures a “cowled and hooded figure” (35).

Elizabeth begins to speak about meeting this hooded man in the near future. In spring, the man arrives. Elizabeth and this man immediately fall into a close and meaningful conversation. Flush feels excluded and lonely. After the man leaves, Elizabeth seems to suddenly remember Flush’s presence. The hooded man is Robert Browning, a writer who has been communicating romantically with Elizabeth for some time. Robert visits often, and Flush develops an intense jealousy of his closeness with Elizabeth, especially when he begins to speak with “a new urgency, a new pressure and energy” in his