Life and Letters of Robert Browning [53]
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.
Chapter 9
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 bed-room to sitting-room,
from sofa to bed again. But he did know that Miss Barrett
received him lying down, and that his