The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Volume 1 of 2)

My dear Miss Thomson,—Believe of me that it can only give me pleasure when you are affectionate enough to treat me as a friend; and for the rest, nobody need apologise for taking another into the vineyards—least Miss Bayley and yourself to me. At the first thought I felt sure that there must be a great deal about vines in these Greeks of ours, and am surprised, I confess, in turning from one to another, to find how few passages of length are quotable, and how the images drop down into a line or two. Do you know the passage in the seventh 'Odyssey' where there is a vineyard in different stages of ripeness?—of which Pope has made the most, so I tore up what I began to write, and leave you to him. It is in Alcinous' gardens, and between the first and second hundred lines of the book. The one from the 'Iliad,' open to Miss Bayley's objection, is yet too beautiful and appropriate, I fancy, for you to throw over. Curious it is that my first recollection went from that shield of Achilles to Hesiod's 'Shield of Hercules,' from which I send you a version—leaving out of it what dear Miss Bayley would object to on a like ground with the other:

In the 'Works and Days' Hesiod says again, what is not worth your listening to, perhaps:

Anacreon talks to the point so well that you must forgive him, I think, for being Anacreontic, and take from his hands what is not defiled. The translation you send me does not 'smell of Anacreon,' nor please me. Where did you get it? Would this be at all fresher?

You are aware of the dresser of the vine in Homer's 'Hymn to Mercury' translated so exquisitely by Shelley, and of a very beautiful single figure in Theocritus besides. Neither probably would suit your purpose. In the 'Pax' of Aristophanes there is an idle 'Chorus' who talks of looking at the vines and watching the grapes ripen, and eating them at last, but there is nothing of vineyard work in it, so I dismiss the whole.

For 'Hector and Andromache,' would you like me to try to do it for you? It would amuse me, and you should not be bound to do more with what I send you than to throw it into the fire if it did not meet your wishes precisely. The same observation applies, remember, to this little sheet, which I have kept—delayed sending—just because I wanted to let you have a trial of my strength on 'Andromache' in the same envelope; but the truth is that it is not begun yet, partly through other occupation, and partly through the lassitude which the cold wind of the last few days always brings down on me. Yesterday I made an effort, and felt like a broken stick—not even a bent one! So wait for a warm day (and what a season we have had! I have been walking up and down stairs and pretending to be quite well), and I will promise to do my best, and certainly an inferior hand may get nearer to touch the great Greek lion's mane than Pope's did.

Will you give my love to dear Miss Bayley? She shall hear from me—and you shall, in a day or two. And do not mind Mr. Kenyon. He 'roars as softly as a sucking dove;' nevertheless he is an intolerant monster, as I half told him the other day.

Believe me, dear Miss Thomson,
Affectionately yours,
E.B.B.

Did you persevere with 'Sordello'? I hope so. Be sure that we may all learn (as poets) much and deeply from it, for the writer speaks true oracles. When you have read it through, then read for relaxation and recompense the last 'Bell and Pomegranate' by the same poet, his 'Colombo's Birthday,' which is exquisite. Only 'Pippa Passes' I lean to, or kneel to, with the deepest reverence. Wordsworth has been in town, and is gone. Tennyson is still here. He likes London, I hear, and hates Cheltenham, where he resides with his family, and he smokes pipe after pipe, and does not mean to write any more poems. Are we to sing a requiem?

Believe me, faithfully yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.

My very dear Friend,—You are kind to exceeding kindness, and I am as grateful as any of your long-ago kind invitations ever found me. It is something pleasant, indeed, and like a return to life, to be asked by you to spend two or three days in your house, and I thank you for this pleasantness, and for the goodness, on your own part, which induced it. You may be perfectly sure that no Claypon, though he should live in Arcadia, would be preferred by me to you as a host, and I wonder how you could entertain the imagination of such a thing. Mr. Kenyon, indeed, has asked me repeatedly to spend a few hours on a sofa in his house, and, the Regent's Park being so much nearer than you are, I had promised to think of it. But I have not yet found it possible to accomplish even that quarter of a mile's preferment, and my ambition is forced to be patient when I begin to think of St. John's Wood. I am considerably stronger, and increasing in strength, and in time, with a further advance of the summer, I may do 'such things—what they are yet, I know not.' Yes, I know that they relate to you, and that I have a hope, as well as an earnest, affectionate desire, to sit face to face with you once more before this summer closes. Do, in the meantime, believe that I am very grateful to you for your kind, considerate proposal, and that it is not made in vain for my wishes, and that I am not likely willingly 'to spend two or three days' with anybody in the world before I do so with yourself.

Mr. Hunter has not paid us his usual Saturday's visit, and therefore I have no means of answering the questions you put in relation to him. We will ask him about 'times and seasons' when next we see him, and you shall hear.

Did you ever hear much of Robert Montgomery, commonly called Satan Montgomery because the author of 'Satan,' of the 'Omnipresence of the Deity,' and of various poems which pass through edition after edition, nobody knows how or why? I understand that his pew (he is a clergyman) is sown over with red rosebuds from ladies of the congregation, and that the same fair hands have made and presented to him, in the course of a single season, one hundred pairs of slippers. Whereupon somebody said to this Reverend Satan, 'I never knew before, Mr. Montgomery, that you were a centipede'

Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate and grateful
ELIBET.

Through the summer of 1845, Miss Barrett, as usual, recovered strength, but so slightly that her doctor urged that she should not face the winter in England. Plans were accordingly made for her going abroad, to which the following letters refer, but the scheme ultimately broke down before the prohibition of Mr. Barrett—a prohibition for which no valid reason was put forward, and which, to say the least, bore the colour of unaccountable indifference to his daughter's health and wishes. The matter is of some importance on account of its bearing on the action taken by Miss Barrett in the autumn of the following year.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I am ashamed not to have written before, and yet have courage enough to ask you to write to me as soon as you can. Day by day I have had good intentions enough (the fact is) about writing, to seem to deserve some good deeds from you, which is contrary to all wisdom and reason, I know, but is rather natural, after all. What my deeds have been, you will be apt to ask. Why, all manner of idleness, which is the most interrupting, you know, of all things. The Hedleys have been flitting backwards and forwards, staying, some of them, for a month at a time in London, and then going, and then coming again; and I have had other visitors, few but engrossing 'after their kind.' And I have been getting well—which is a process—going out into the carriage two or three times a week, abdicating my sofa for my armchair, moving from one room to another now and then, and walking about mine quite as well as, and with considerably more complacency than, a child of two years old. Altogether, I do think that if you were kind enough to be glad to see me looking better when you were in London, you would be kind enough to be still gladder if you saw me now. Everybody praises me, and I look in the looking-glass with a better conscience. Also, it is an improving improvement, and will be, until, you know, the last hem of the garment of summer is lost sight of, and then—and then—I must either follow to another climate, or be ill again—that I know, and am prepared for. It is but dreary work, this undoing of my Penelope web in the winter, after the doing of it through the summer, and the more progress one makes in one's web, the more dreary the prospect of the undoing of all these fine silken stitches. But we shall see....

Ever your affectionate
BA.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Do believe that I have not been, as I have seemed, perhaps, forgetful of you through this silence. This last proof of your interest and affection for me—in your letter to Henrietta—quite rouses me to speak out my remembrance of you, and I have been remembering you all the time that I did not speak, only I was so perplexed and tossed up and down by doubts and sadnesses as to require some shock from without to force the speech from me. Your verses, in their grace of kindness, and the ivy from Wordsworth's cottage, just made me think to myself that I would write to you before I left England, but when you talk really of coming to see me, why, I must speak! You overcome me with the sense of your goodness to me.

Yet, after all, I will not have you come! The farewells are bad enough which come to us, without our going to seek them, and I would rather wait and meet you on the Continent, or in England again, than see you now, just to part from you. And you cannot guess how shaken I am, and how I cling to every plank of a little calm. Perhaps I am going on the 17th or 20th. Certainly I have made up my mind to do it, and shall do it as a bare matter of duty; and it is one of the most painful acts of duty which my whole life has set before me. The road is as rough as possible, as far as I can see it. At the same time, being absolutely convinced from my own experience and perceptions, and the unhesitating advice of two able medical men (Dr. Chambers, one of them), that to escape the English winter will be everything for me, and that it involves the comfort and usefulness of the rest of my life, I have resolved to do it, let the circumstances of the doing be as painful as they may. If you were to see me you would be astonished to see the work of the past summer; but all these improvements will ebb away with the sun—while I am assured of permanent good if I leave England. The struggle with me has been a very painful one; I cannot enter on the how and wherefore at this moment. I had expected more help than I have found, and am left to myself, and thrown so on my own sense of duty as to feel it right, for the sake of future years, to make an effort to stand by myself as I best can. At the same time, I will not tell you that at the last hour something may not happen to keep me at home. That is neither impossible nor improbable. If, for instance, I find that I cannot have one of my brothers with me, why, the going in that case would be out of the question. Under ordinary circumstances I shall go, and if the experiment of going fails, why, then I shall have had the satisfaction of having tried it, and of knowing that it is God's will which keeps me a prisoner, and makes me a burden. As it is, I have been told that if I had gone years ago I should be well now; that one lung is very slightly affected, but the nervous system absolutely shattered, as the state of the pulse proves. I am in the habit of taking forty drops of laudanum a day, and cannot do with less, that is, the medical man told me that I could not do with less, saying so with his hand on the pulse. The cold weather, they say, acts on the lungs, and produces the weakness indirectly, whereas the necessary shutting up acts on the nerves and prevents them from having a chance of recovering their tone. And thus, without any mortal disease, or any disease of equivalent seriousness, I am thrown out of life, out of the ordinary sphere of its enjoyment and activity, and made a burden to myself and to others. Whereas there is a means of escape from these evils, and God has opened the door of escape, as wide as I see it!

In all ways, for my own happiness's sake I do need a proof that the evil is irremediable. And this proof (or the counter-proof) I am about to seek in Italy.

Dr. Chambers has advised Pisa, and I go in the direct steamer from the Thames to Leghorn. I have good courage, and as far as my own strength goes, sufficient means.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, more than I thought at first of telling you, I have told you. Much beside there is, painful to talk of, but I hope I have determined to do what is right, and that the determination has not been formed ungently, unscrupulously, nor unaffectionately in respect to the feelings of others. I would die for some of those, but there, has been affection opposed to affection.

This in confidence, of course. May God bless both of you! Pray for me, dearest Mrs. Martin. Make up your mind to go somewhere soon—shall you not?—before the winter shuts the last window from which you see the sun.

Dr. Chambers said that he would 'answer for it' that the voyage would rather do me good than harm. Let me suffer sea sickness or not, he said, he would answer for its doing me no harm.

I hope to take Arabel with me, and either Storm or Henry. This is my hope.

Gratefully and affectionately I think of all your kindness and interest. May dear Mr. Martin lose nothing in this coming winter! I shall think of you, and not cease to love you. Moreover, you shall hear again from

Your ever affectionate
BA.

My very dear Friend,—It is so long since I wrote that I must write, I must ruffle your thoughts with a little breath from my side. Listen to me, my dear friend. That I have not written has scarcely been my fault, but my misfortune rather, for I have been quite unstrung and overcome by agitation and anxiety, and thought that I should be able to tell you at last of being calmer and happier, but it was all in vain. I do not leave England, my dear friend. It is decided that I remain on in my prison. It was my full intention to go. I considered it to be a clear duty, and I made up my mind to perform it, let the circumstances be ever so painfully like obstacles; but when the moment came it appeared impossible for me to set out alone, and also impossible to take my brother and sister with me without involving them in difficulties and displeasure. Now what I could risk for myself I could not risk for others, and the very kindness with which they desired me not to think of them only made me think of them more, as was natural and just. So Italy is given up, and I fall back into the hands of God, who is merciful, trusting Him with the time that shall be.

Arabel would have gone to tell you all this a fortnight since, but one of my brothers has been ill with fever which was not exactly typhus, but of the typhoid character, and we knew that you would rather not see her under the circumstances. He is very much better (it is Octavius), and has been out of bed to-day and yesterday.

Do not reproach me either for not writing or for not going, my very dear friend. I have been too heavy-hearted for words; and as to the deeds, you would not have wished me to lead others into difficulties, the extent and result of which no one could calculate. It would not have been just of me.

And you, how are you, and what are you doing?

May God bless you, my dear dear friend!

Ever yours I am, affectionately and gratefully,
E.B.B.

I must trouble you with another letter of thanks, dear Mr. Chorley, now that I have to thank you for the value of the work as well as the kindness of the gift, for I have read your three volumes of 'Pomfret'^[137] with interest and moral assent, and with great pleasure in various ways: it is a pure, true book without effort, which, in these days of gesture and rolling of the eyes, is an uncommon thing. Also you make your 'private judgment' work itself out quietly as a simple part of the love of truth, instead of being the loud heroic virtue it is so apt in real life to profess itself, seldom moving without drums and trumpets and the flying of party colours. All these you have put down rightly, wisely, and boldly, and it was, in my mind, no less wise than bold of you to let in that odour of Tyrrwhitism into the folds of the purple, and so prevent the very possibility of any 'prestige.' If I complained it might be that your 'private judgment' confines its reference to 'public opinion,' and shuns, too proudly perhaps, the higher and deeper relations of human responsibility. But there are difficulties, I see, and you choose your path advisedly, of course. The best character in the book I take to be Rose; I cannot hesitate in selecting him. He is so lifelike with the world's conventional life that you hear his footsteps when he walks, and, indeed, I think his boots were apt to creak just the soupçon of a creak, just as a gentleman's boots might, and he is excellently consistent, even down to the choice of a wife whom he could patronise. I hope you like your own Mr. Rose, and that you will forgive me for jilting Grace for Helena, which I could not help any more than Walter could. But now, may I venture to ask a question? Would it not have been wise of you if, on the point of reserve, you had thrown a deeper shade of opposition into the characters or rather manners of these women? Helena sits like a statue (and could Grace have done more?) when she wins Walter's heart in Italy. Afterwards, and by fits at the time, indeed, the artist fire bursts from her, but there was a great deal of smouldering when there should have been a clear heat to justify Walter's change of feeling. And then, in respect to that, do you really think that your Grace was generous, heroic (with the evidence she had of the change) in giving up her engagement? For her own sake, could she have done otherwise? I fancy not; the position seems surrounded by its own necessities, and no room for a doubt. I write on my own doubts, you see, and you will smile at them, or understand all through them that if the book had not interested me like a piece of real life, I should not find myself backbiting as if all these were 'my neighbours.' The pure tender feeling of the closing scenes touched me to better purpose, believe me, and I applaud from my heart and conscience your rejection of that low creed of 'poetical justice' which is neither justice nor poetry which is as degrading to virtue as false to experience, and which, thrown from your book, raises it into a pure atmosphere at once.

I could go on talking, but remind myself (I do hope in time) that I might show my gratitude better. With sincere wishes for the success of the work (for just see how practically we come to trust to poetical justices after all our theories—I, I mean, and mine!), and with respect and esteem for the writer,

I remain very truly yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT.

My dear Mrs. Jameson,—I receive your letter, as I must do every sign of your being near and inclined to think of me in kindness, gladly, and assure you at once that whenever you can spend a half-hour on me you will find me enough myself to have a true pleasure in welcoming you, say any day except next Saturday or the Monday immediately following.

As soon as I heard of your return to England I ventured to hope that some good might come of it to me in my room here, besides the general good, which I look for with the rest of the public, when the censer swings back into the midst of us again. And how good of you, dear Mrs. Jameson, to think of me there where the perfumes were set burning; it makes me glad and grand that you should have been able to do so. Also the kind wishes which came with the thoughts (you say) were not in vain, for I have been very idle and very well; the angel of the summer has done more for me even than usual, and till the last wave of his wing I took myself to be quite well and at liberty, and even now I am as well as anyone can be who has heard the prison door shut for a whole winter at least, and knows it to be the only English alternative of a grave. Which is a gloomy way of saying that I am well but forced to shut myself up with disagreeable precautions all round, and I ought to be gratified instead of gloomy. Believe me that I shall be so when you come to see me, remaining in the meanwhile

Most truly yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT.

I am the guilty person, dearest Mrs. Martin! You would have heard from Henrietta at least yesterday, only I persisted in promising to write instead of her; and so, if there are reproaches, let them fall. Not that I am audacious and without shame! But I have grown familiar with an evil conscience as to these matters of not writing when I ought; and long ago I grew familiar with your mercy and power of pardoning; and then—and then—if silence and sulkiness are proved crimes of mine to ever such an extreme, why it would not be unnatural. Do you think I was born to live the life of an oyster, such as I do live here? And so, the moaning and gnashing of teeth are best done alone and without taking anyone into confidence. And so, this is all I have to say for myself, which perhaps you will be glad of; for you will be ready to agree with me that next to such faults of idleness, negligence, silence (call them by what names you please!) as I have been guilty of, is the repentance of them, if indeed the latter be not the most unpardonable of the two.

And what are you doing so late in Herefordshire? Is dear Mr. Martin too well, and tempting the demons? I do hope that the next news of you will be of your being about to approach the sun and visit us on the road. You do not give your wisdom away to your friends, all of it, I hope and trust—not even to Reynolds.

Tell Mr. Martin that a new great daily newspaper, professing 'ultraism' at the right end (meaning his and mine), is making 'mighty preparation,' to be called the 'Daily News,'^[138] to be edited by Dickens and to combine with the most liberal politics such literature as gives character to the French journals—the objects being both to help the people and to give a status to men of letters, socially and politically—great objects which will not be attained, I fear, by any such means. In the first place, I have misgivings as to Dickens. He has not, I think, breadth of mind enough for such work, with all his gifts; but we shall see. An immense capital has been offered and actually advanced. Be good patriots and order the paper. And talking of papers, I hope you read in the 'Morning Chronicle' Landor's verses to my friend and England's poet, Mr. Browning.^[139] They have much beauty.

You know that Occy has been ill, and that he is well? I hope you are not so behindhand in our news as not to know. For me, I am not yet undone by the winter. I still sit in my chair and walk about the room. But the prison doors are shut close, and I could dash myself against them sometimes with a passionate impatience of the need-less captivity. I feel so intimately and from evidence, how, with air and warmth together in any fair proportion, I should be as well and happy as the rest of the world, that it is intolerable—well, it is better to sympathise quietly with Lady—and other energetic runaways, than amuse you with being riotous to no end; and it is best to write one's own epitaph still more quietly, is it not?...

And oh how lightly I write, and then sigh to think of what different colours my spirits and my paper are. Do you know what it is to laugh, that you may not cry? Yet I hold a comfort fast.... Your very affectionate

BA.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Indeed it has been tantalising and provoking to have you close by without being able to gather a better advantage from it than the knowledge that you were suffering. So passes the world and the glory of it. I have been vexed into a high state of morality, I assure you. Now that you are gone away I hear from you again; and it does seem to me that almost always it happens so, and that you come to London to be ill and leave it before you can be well again. It is a comfort in every case to know of your being better, and Hastings is warm and quiet, and the pretty country all round (mind you go and see the 'Rocks' par excellence)! will entice you into very gentle exercise. At the same time, don't wish me into the house you speak of. I can lose nothing here, shut up in my prison, and the nightingales come to my windows and sing through the sooty panes. If I were at Hastings I should risk the chance of recovering liberty, and the consolations of slavery would not reach me as they do here. Also, if I were to set my heart upon Hastings, I might break it at leisure; there would be exactly as much difficulty in turning my face that way as towards Italy—ah, you do not understand! And I do, at last, I am sorry to say; and it has been very long, tedious and reluctant work, the learning of the lesson....

Did Henrietta tell you that I heard at last from Miss Martineau, who thought me in Italy, she said, and therefore was silent? She has sent me her new work (have you read it?) and speaks of her strength and of being able to walk fifteen miles a day, which seems to me like a fairy tale, or the 'Three-leagued Boots' at least.

What am I doing, to tell you of? Nothing! The winter is kind, and this divine 'muggy' weather (is that the technical word and spelling thereof?), which gives all reasonable people colds in their heads, leaves me the hope of getting back to the summer without much injury. A friend of mine—one of the greatest poets in England too—brought me primroses and polyanthuses the other day, as they are grown in Surrey!^[140] Surely it must be nearer spring than we think.

Dearest Mrs. Martin, write and say how you are. And say, God bless you, both the yous, and mention Mr. Martin particularly, and what your plans are.

Ever your affectionate
BA.

So, my dearest Mrs. Martin, you are quite angry with all of us and with me chiefly. Oh, you need not say no! I see it, I understand it, and shall therefore take up my own cause precisely as if I were an injured person. In the first place, dearest Mrs. Martin, when you wrote to me (at last!) to say that we were both guilty correspondents, you should have spoken in the singular number; for I was not guilty at all, I beg to say, while you were on the Continent. You were uncertain, you said, on going, where you should go and how long you should stay, and you promised to write and give me some sort of address—a promise never kept—and where was I to write to you? I heard for the first time, from the Peytons, of your being at Pau, and then you were expected at home. So innocent I am, and because it is a pleasure rather rare to make a sincere profession of innocence, I meant to write to you at least ten days ago; and then (believe me you will, without difficulty) the dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon,^[141] the artist, quite upset me, and made me disinclined to write a word beyond necessary ones. I thank God that I never saw him—poor gifted Haydon—but, a year and a half ago, we had a correspondence which lasted through several months and was very pleasant while it lasted. Then it was dropped, and only a few days before the event he wrote three or four notes to me to ask me to take charge of some papers and pictures, which I acceded to as once I had done before. He was constantly in pecuniary difficulty, and in apprehension of the seizure of goods; and nothing of fear suggested itself to my mind—nothing. The shock was very great. Oh! I do not write to you to write of this. Only I would have you understand the real case, and that it is not an excuse, and that it was natural for me to be shaken a good deal. No artist is left behind with equal largeness of poetical conception! If the hand had always obeyed the soul, he would have been a genius of the first order. As it is, he lived on the slope of greatness and could not be steadfast and calm. His life was one long agony of self-assertion. Poor, poor Haydon! See how the world treats those who try too openly for its gratitude! 'Tom Thumb for ever' over the heads of the giants.

So you heard that I was quite well? Don't believe everything you hear. But I am really in a way to be well, if I could have such sunshine as we have been burning in lately, and a fair field of peace besides. Generally, I am able to go out every day, either walking or in the carriage—'walking' means as far as Queen Anne's Street. The wonderful winter did not cast me down, and the hot summer helps me up higher. Now, to keep in the sun is the problem to solve; and if I can do it, I shall be 'as well as anybody.' If I can't, as ill as ever. Which is the résumé of me, without a word more....

Your ever affectionate
BA.

Dearest Mr. Boyd,—Let me be clear of your reproaches for not going to you this week. The truth is that I have been so much shocked and shaken by the dreadful suicide of poor Mr. Haydon, the artist, I had not spirits for it. He was not personally my friend. I never saw him face to face. But we had corresponded, and one of his last acts was an act of trust towards me. Also I admired his genius. And all to end so! It has naturally affected me much.

So I could not come, but in a few days I will come; and in the meantime, I have had the sound of your voice to think of, more than I could think of the deep melodious bells, though they made the right and solemn impression. How I felt, to be under your roof again!

From your ever affectionate
ELIBET

CHAPTER V

How this friendship ripened into love, and love into courtship, it is not for us to inquire too closely. Something has been told already in Mrs. Orr's 'Life of Robert Browning;' something more is told in the long and most interesting letter which stands first in the present chapter. More precious than either is the record of her fluctuating feelings which Mrs. Browning has enshrined for ever in her 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' and in the handful of other poems—'Life and Love,' 'A Denial,' 'Proof and Disproof,' 'Inclusions,' 'Insufficiency,'^[142] which likewise belong to this period and describe its hesitations, its sorrows and its overwhelming joys. In the difficult circumstances under which they were placed, the conduct of both was without reproach. Mr. Browning knew that he was asking to be allowed to take charge of an invalid's life—believed indeed that she was even worse than was really the case, and that she was hopelessly incapacitated from ever standing on her feet—but was sure enough of his love to regard that as no obstacle. Miss Barrett, for her part, shrank from burdening the life of the man she loved with a responsibility so trying and perhaps so painful, and refused his unchanging devotion for his sake, not for her own.

The situation was complicated by the character of Mr. Barrett, and by the certainty—for such it was to his daughter—that he would refuse to entertain the idea of her marriage, or, indeed, that of any of his children. The truth of this view was absolutely vindicated not only in the case of Elizabeth, but also in those of two others of the family in later years. The reasons for his feeling it is probable he could not have explained to himself. He was fond of his family after his own fashion—proud, too, of his daughter's genius; but he could not, it would seem, regard them in any other light than as belonging to himself. The wish to leave his roof and to enter into new relations was looked upon as unfilial treachery; and no argument or persuasion could shake him from his fixed idea. So long as this disposition could be regarded as the result of a devoted love of his children, it could be accepted with respect, if not with full acquiescence; but circumstances brought the proof that this was not the case, and thereby ultimately paved the way to Elizabeth's marriage.

These circumstances are stated in several of her letters, and alluded to in several others, but it may help to the understanding of them if a brief summary be given here. In the autumn of 1845, as described above, Miss Barrett's doctors advised her to winter abroad. The advice was strongly pressed, as offering a good prospect of a real improvement of health, and as the only way of avoiding the annual relapse brought on by the English winter. One or more of her brothers could have gone with her, and she was willing and able to try the experiment; but in face of this express medical testimony, Mr. Barrett interposed a refusal. This indifference to her health naturally wounded Miss Barrett very deeply; but it also gave her the right of taking her fate into her own hands. Convinced at last that no refusal on her part could alter Mr. Browning's devotion to her, and that marriage with him, so far from being an increase of risk to her health, offered the only means by which she might hope for an improvement in it, she gave him the conditional promise that if she came safely through the then impending winter, she would consent to a definite engagement.

The winter of 1845-6 was an exceptionally mild one, and she suffered less than usual; and in the spring of 1846 her lover claimed her promise. Throughout the summer she continued to gain strength, being able, not only to drive out, but even to walk short distances, and to visit a few of her special friends such as Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Boyd. Accordingly it was agreed that at the end of the summer they should be married, and leave England for Italy before the cold weather should return. The uselessness of asking her father's consent was so evident, and the certainty that it would only result in the exclusion of Mr. Browning from the house so clear, that no attempt was made to obtain it. Only her two sisters were aware of what was going on; but even they were not informed of the final arrangements for the marriage, in order that they might not be involved in their father's anger when it should become known. For the same reason the secret was kept from so close a friend of both parties as Mr. Kenyon; though both he and Mr. Boyd, and possibly also Mrs. Jameson, had suspicions amounting to different degrees of certainty as to the real state of affairs. It had been intended that they should wait until the end of September, but a project for a temporary removal of the family into the country precipitated matters; and on September 12, accompanied only by her maid, Wilson, Miss Barrett slipped from the house and was married to Robert Browning in Marylebone Church.^[143] The associations which that ponderous edifice has gained from this act for all lovers of English poetry tempt one to forgive its unromantic appearance, and to remember rather the pilgrimages which Robert Browning on his subsequent visits to England never failed to pay to its threshold.

For a week after the marriage Mrs. Browning—by which more familiar name we now have the right to call her—remained in her father's house; her husband refraining from seeing her, since he could not now ask for her by her proper name without betraying their secret. Then, on September 19, accompanied once more by her maid and the ever-beloved Flushie, she left her home, to which she was never to return, crossed the Channel with her husband to Havre, and so travelled on to Paris. Her father's anger, if not loud, was deep and unforgiving. From that moment he cast her off and disowned her. He would not read or open her letters; he would not see her when she returned to England. Even the birth of her child brought no relenting; he expressed no sympathy or anxiety, he would not look upon its face. He died as he lived, unrelenting, cut off by his own unbending anger from a daughter who could with difficulty bring herself to speak a harsh word of him, even to her most intimate friends.

It was a more unexpected and consequently an even more bitter blow to find that her brothers at first disapproved of her action; the more so, since they had sympathised with her in the struggle of the previous autumn. This disapprobation was, however, less deep-seated, resting partly upon doubts as to the practical prudence of the match, partly, no doubt, upon a natural annoyance at having been kept in the dark. Such an estrangement could only be temporary, and as time went on was replaced by a full renewal of the old affection towards herself and a friendly acceptance of her husband. With her sisters, on the other hand, there was never a shadow of difference or estrangement. That love remained unaffected; and almost the only circumstance that caused Mrs. Browning to regret her enforced absence from England was the separation which it entailed from her two sisters.

In Paris the fugitives found a friend who proved a friend indeed. A few weeks earlier Mrs. Jameson, knowing of the needs of Miss Barrett's health, had offered to take her to Italy; but her offer had been refused. Her astonishment may be imagined when, after this short interval of time, she found her invalid friend in Paris as the wife of Robert Browning. The prospect filled her with almost as much dismay as pleasure. 'I have here,' she wrote to a friend from Paris, 'a poet and a poetess—two celebrities who have run away and married under circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such as to render imprudence the height of prudence. Both excellent; but God help them! for I know not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this prosaic world.'^[144] Mrs. Jameson, who was travelling with her young niece, Miss Geraldine Bate,^[145] lent her aid to smooth the path of her poet friends, and it was in her company that, after a week's rest in Paris, the Brownings proceeded on their journey to Italy. It is easy to imagine what a comfort her presence must have been to the invalid wife and her naturally anxious husband; and this journey sealed a friendship of no ordinary depth and warmth. Mrs. Browning bore the journey wonderfully, though suffering much from fatigue. During a rest of two days at Avignon, a pilgrimage was made to Vaucluse, in honour of Petrarch and his Laura; and there, as Mrs. Macpherson has recorded in an often quoted passage of her biography of her aunt, 'there, at the very source of the "chiare, fresche e dolci acque," Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and carrying her across the shallow, curling water, seated her on a rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus love and poetry took a new possession of the spot immortalised by Petrarch's loving fancy.'^[146]

So at the beginning of October the party reached Pisa; and there the newly wedded pair settled for the winter. Here first since the departure from London was there leisure to renew the intercourse with friends at home, to answer congratulations and good wishes, to explain what might seem strange and unaccountable. From this point Mrs. Browning's correspondence contains nearly a full record of her life, and can be left to tell its own story in better language than the biographer's. The first letter to Mrs. Martin is an 'apologia pro connubio suo' in fullest detail; the others carry on the story from the point at which that leaves it.

With regard to this first letter, full as it is of the most intimate personal and family revelations, it has seemed right to give it entire. The marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Browning has passed into literary history, and it is only fair that it should be set, once for all, in its true light. Those who might be pained by any expressions in it have passed away; and those in whose character and reputation the lovers of English literature are interested have nothing to fear from the fullest revelation. If anything were kept back, false and injurious surmises might be formed; the truth leaves little room for controversy, and none for slander.