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.
Mr.Barrett was one of those men who will not part with their children;who will do anything for them except allow them to leave the parental home.
We have all known fathers of this type.He had nothing to urge against Robert Browning.When Mr.Kenyon,later,said to him that he could not understand his hostility to the marriage,since there was no man in the world to whom he would more gladly have given his daughter if he had been so fortunate as to possess one,he replied:'I have no objection to the young man,but my daughter should have been thinking of another world;'and,given his conviction that Miss Barrett's state was hopeless,some allowance must be made for the angered sense of fitness which her elopement was calculated to arouse in him.
But his attitude was the same,under the varying circumstances,with all his daughters and sons alike.There was no possible husband or wife whom he would cordially have accepted for one of them.
Mr.Browning had been willing,even at that somewhat late age,to study for the Bar,or accept,if he could obtain it,any other employment which might render him less ineligible from a pecuniary point of view.But Miss Barrett refused to hear of such a course;and the subsequent necessity for her leaving England would have rendered it useless.
For some days after their marriage Mr.and Mrs.Browning returned to their old life.He justly thought that the agitation of the ceremony had been,for the moment,as much as she could endure,and had therefore fixed for it a day prior by one week to that of their intended departure from England.The only difference in their habits was that he did not see her;he recoiled from the hypocrisy of asking for her under her maiden name;and during this passive interval,fortunately short,he carried a weight of anxiety and of depression which placed it among the most painful periods of his existence.
In the late afternoon or evening of September 19,Mrs.Browning,attended by her maid and her dog,stole away from her father's house.
The family were at dinner,at which meal she was not in the habit of joining them;her sisters Henrietta and Arabel had been throughout in the secret of her attachment and in full sympathy with it;in the case of the servants,she was also sure of friendly connivance.
There was no difficulty in her escape,but that created by the dog,which might be expected to bark its consciousness of the unusual situation.
She took him into her confidence.She said:'O Flush,if you make a sound,I am lost.'And Flush understood,as what good dog would not?--and crept after his mistress in silence.I do not remember where her husband joined her;we may be sure it was as near her home as possible.
That night they took the boat to Havre,on their way to Paris.
Only a short time elapsed before Mr.Barrett became aware of what had happened.It is not necessary to dwell on his indignation,which at that moment,I believe,was shared by all his sons.
Nor were they the only persons to be agitated by the occurrence.
If there was wrath in the Barrett family,there was consternation in that of Mr.Browning.He had committed a crime in the eyes of his wife's father;but he had been guilty,in the judgment of his own parents,of one of those errors which are worse.
A hundred times the possible advantages of marrying a Miss Barrett could never have balanced for them the risks and dangers he had incurred in wresting to himself the guardianship of that frail life which might perish in his hands,leaving him to be accused of having destroyed it;and they must have awaited the event with feelings never to be forgotten.
It was soon to be apparent that in breaking the chains which bound her to a sick room,Mr.Browning had not killed his wife,but was giving her a new lease of existence.His parents and sister soon loved her dearly,for her own sake as well as her husband's;and those who,if in a mistaken manner,had hitherto cherished her,gradually learned,with one exception,to value him for hers.It would,however,be useless to deny that the marriage was a hazardous experiment,involving risks of suffering quite other than those connected with Mrs.Browning's safety:the latent practical disparities of an essentially vigorous and an essentially fragile existence;and the time came when these were to make themselves felt.
Mrs.Browning had been a delicate infant.She had also outgrown this delicacy and developed into a merry,and,in the harmless sense,mischief-loving child.
