Robert Browning - The Complete Works of Robert Browning - Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition

A single relic exists for us of this visit to the South — a shell picked up, according to its inscription, on one of the Syren Isles, October 4, 1844; but many of its reminiscences are embodied in that vivid and charming picture ‘The Englishman in Italy’, which appeared in the ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ number for the following year. Naples always remained a bright spot in the poet’s memory; and if it had been, like Asolo, his first experience of Italy, it must have drawn him in later years the more powerfully of the two. At one period, indeed, he dreamed of it as a home for his declining days.

Table of Contents

1844-1849

Introduction to Miss Barrett — Engagement — Motives for Secrecy — Marriage — Journey to Italy — Extract of Letter from Mr. Fox — Mrs. Browning’s Letters to Miss Mitford — Life at Pisa — Vallombrosa — Florence; Mr. Powers; Miss Boyle — Proposed British Mission to the Vatican — Father Prout — Palazzo Guidi — Fano; Ancona — ’A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon’ at Sadler’s Wells.

During his recent intercourse with the Browning family Mr. Kenyon had often spoken of his invalid cousin, Elizabeth Barrett, *and had given them copies of her works; and when the poet returned to England, late in 1844, he saw the volume containing ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’, which had appeared during his absence. On hearing him express his admiration of it, Mr. Kenyon begged him to write to Miss Barrett, and himself tell her how the poems had impressed him; ‘for,’ he added, ‘my cousin is a great invalid, and sees no one, but great souls jump at sympathy.’ Mr. Browning did write, and, a few months, probably, after the correspondence had been established, begged to be allowed to visit her. She at first refused this, on the score of her delicate health and habitual seclusion, emphasizing the refusal by words of such touching humility and resignation that I cannot refrain from quoting them. ‘There is nothing to see in me, nothing to hear in me. I am a weed fit for the ground and darkness.’ But her objections were overcome, and their first interview sealed Mr. Browning’s fate.

*Properly E. Barrett Moulton-Barrett. The first of these surnames was that originally borne by the family, but dropped on the annexation of the second. It has now for some years been resumed.

There is no cause for surprize in the passionate admiration with which Miss Barrett so instantly inspired him. To begin with, he was heart-whole. It would be too much to affirm that, in the course of his thirty-two years, he had never met with a woman whom he could entirely love; but if he had, it was not under circumstances which favoured the growth of such a feeling. She whom he now saw for the first time had long been to him one of the greatest of living poets; she was learned as women seldom were in those days. It must have been apparent, in the most fugitive contact, that her moral nature was as exquisite as her mind was exceptional. She looked much younger than her age, which he only recently knew to have been six years beyond his own; and her face was filled with beauty by the large, expressive eyes. The imprisoned love within her must unconsciously have leapt to meet his own. It would have been only natural that he should grow into the determination to devote his life to hers, or be swept into an offer of marriage by a sudden impulse which his after-judgment would condemn. Neither of these things occurred. The offer was indeed made under a sudden and overmastering impulse. But it was persistently repeated, till it had obtained a conditional assent. No sane man in Mr. Browning’s position could have been ignorant of the responsibilities he was incurring. He had, it is true, no experience of illness. Of its nature, its treatment, its symptoms direct and indirect, he remained pathetically ignorant to his dying day. He did not know what disqualifications for active existence might reside in the fragile, recumbent form, nor in the long years lived without change of air or scene beyond the passage, not always even allowed, from bedroom to sitting-room, from sofa to bed again. But he did know that Miss Barrett received him lying down, and that his very ignorance of her condition left him without security for her ever being able to stand. A strong sense of sympathy and pity could alone entirely justify or explain his act — a strong desire to bring sunshine into that darkened life. We might be sure that these motives had been present with him if we had no direct authority for believing it; and we have this authority in his own comparatively recent words: ‘She had so much need of care and protection. There was so much pity in what I felt for her!’ The pity was, it need hardly be said, at no time a substitute for love, though the love in its full force only developed itself later; but it supplied an additional incentive.

Miss Barrett had made her acceptance of Mr. Browning’s proposal contingent on her improving in health. The outlook was therefore vague. But under the influence of this great new happiness she did gain some degree of strength. They saw each other three times a week; they exchanged letters constantly, and a very deep and perfect understanding established itself between them. Mr. Browning never mentioned his visits except to his own family, because it was naturally feared that if Miss Barrett were known to receive one person, other friends, or even acquaintances, would claim admittance to her; and Mr. Kenyon, who was greatly pleased by the result of his introduction, kept silence for the same reason.

In this way the months slipped by till the summer of 1846 was drawing to its close, and Miss Barrett’s doctor then announced that her only chance of even comparative recovery lay in spending the coming winter in the South. There was no rational obstacle to her acting on this advice, since more than one of her brothers was willing to escort her; but Mr. Barrett, while surrounding his daughter with every possible comfort, had resigned himself to her invalid condition and expected her also to acquiesce in it. He probably did not believe that she would benefit by the proposed change. At any rate he refused his consent to it. There remained to her only one alternative — to break with the old home and travel southwards as Mr. Browning’s wife.

When she had finally assented to this course, she took a preparatory step which, in so far as it was known, must itself have been sufficiently startling to those about her: she drove to Regent’s Park, and when there, stepped out of the carriage and on to the grass. I do not know how long she stood — probably only for a moment; but I well remember hearing that when, after so long an interval, she felt earth under her feet and air about her, the sensation was almost bewilderingly strange.

They were married, with strict privacy, on September 12, 1846, at St. Pancras Church.

The engaged pair had not only not obtained Mr. Barrett’s sanction to their marriage; they had not even invoked it; and the doubly clandestine character thus forced upon the union could not be otherwise than repugnant to Mr. Browning’s pride; but it was dictated by the deepest filial affection on the part of his intended wife. There could be no question in so enlightened a mind of sacrificing her own happiness with that of the man she loved; she was determined to give herself to him. But she knew that her father would never consent to her doing so; and she preferred marrying without his knowledge to acting in defiance of a prohibition which, once issued, he would never have revoked, and which would have weighed like a portent of evil upon her. She even kept the secret of her engagement from her intimate friend Miss Mitford, and her second father, Mr. Kenyon, that they might not be involved in its responsibility. And Mr. Kenyon, who, probably of all her circle, best understood the case, was grateful to her for this consideration.