The accident which subsequently undermined her life could only have befallen a very active and healthy girl.Her condition justified hope and,to a great extent,fulfilled it.She rallied surprisingly and almost suddenly in the sunshine of her new life,and remained for several years at the higher physical level:her natural and now revived spirits sometimes,I imagine,lifting her beyond it.But her ailments were too radical for permanent cure,as the weak voice and shrunken form never ceased to attest.
They renewed themselves,though in slightly different conditions;and she gradually relapsed,during the winters at least,into something like the home-bound condition of her earlier days.
It became impossible that she should share the more active side of her husband's existence.It had to be alternately suppressed and carried on without her.The deep heart-love,the many-sided intellectual sympathy,preserved their union in rare beauty to the end.
But to say that it thus maintained itself as if by magic,without effort of self-sacrifice on his part or of resignation on hers,would be as unjust to the noble qualities of both,as it would be false to assert that its compensating happiness had ever failed them.
Mr.Browning's troubles did not,even for the present,exhaust themselves in that week of apprehension.They assumed a deeper reality when his delicate wife first gave herself into his keeping,and the long hours on steamboat and in diligence were before them.
What she suffered in body,and he in mind,during the first days of that wedding-journey is better imagined than told.
In Paris they either met,or were joined by,a friend,Mrs.Anna Jameson (then also en route for Italy),and Mrs.Browning was doubly cared for till she and her husband could once more put themselves on their way.
At Genoa came the long-needed rest in southern land.From thence,in a few days,they went on to Pisa,and settled there for the winter.
Even so great a friend as John Forster was not in the secret of Mr.Browning's marriage;we learn this through an amusing paragraph in a letter from Mr.Fox,written soon after it had taken place:
'Forster never heard of the Browning marriage till the proof of the newspaper ('Examiner')notice was sent;when he went into one of his great passions at the supposed hoax,ordered up the compositor to have a swear at him,and demanded to see the MS.from which it was taken:
so it was brought,and he instantly recognised the hand of Browning's sister.
Next day came a letter from R.B.,saying he had often meant to tell him or write of it,but hesitated between the two,and neglected both.
'She was better,and a winter in Italy had been recommended some months ago.
'It seems as if made up by their poetry rather than themselves.'
Many interesting external details of Mr.Browning's married life must have been lost to us through the wholesale destruction of his letters to his family,of which mention has been already made,and which he carried out before leaving Warwick Crescent about four years ago;and Mrs.Browning's part in the correspondence,though still preserved,cannot fill the gap,since for a long time it chiefly consisted of little personal outpourings,inclosed in her husband's letters and supplementary to them.But she also wrote constantly to Miss Mitford;and,from the letters addressed to her,now fortunately in Mr.Barrett Browning's hands,it has been possible to extract many passages of a sufficiently great,and not too private,interest for our purpose.
These extracts --in some cases almost entire letters --indeed constitute a fairly complete record of Mr.and Mrs.Browning's joint life till the summer of 1854,when Miss Mitford's death was drawing near,and the correspondence ceased.Their chronological order is not always certain,because Mrs.Browning never gave the year in which her letters were written,and in some cases the postmark is obliterated;but the missing date can almost always be gathered from their contents.
The first letter is probably written from Paris.
Oct.2('46).
'...and he,as you say,had done everything for me --he loved me for reasons which had helped to weary me of myself --loved me heart to heart persistently --in spite of my own will....
drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both.
My life seemed to belong to him and to none other,at last,and I had no power to speak a word.Have faith in me,my dearest friend,till you know him.The intellect is so little in comparison to all the rest --to the womanly tenderness,the inexhaustible goodness,the high and noble aspiration of every hour.Temper,spirits,manners --there is not a flaw anywhere.I shut my eyes sometimes and fancy it all a dream of my guardian angel.Only,if it had been a dream,the pain of some parts of it would have wakened me before now --it is not a dream....'
The three next speak for themselves.
Pisa:('46).
'...For Pisa,we both like it extremely.The city is full of beauty and repose,--and the purple mountains gloriously seem to beckon us on deeper into the vine land.We have rooms close to the Duomo,and leaning down on the great Collegio built by Facini.
Three excellent bed-rooms and a sitting-room matted and carpeted,looking comfortable even for England.For the last fortnight,except the last few sunny days,we have had rain;but the climate is as mild as possible,no cold with all the damp.Delightful weather we had for the travelling.Mrs.Jameson says she won't call me improved but transformed rather....I mean to know something about pictures some day.Robert does,and I shall get him to open my eyes for me with a little instruction --in this place are to be seen the first steps of Art....'
Pisa:Dec.19('46).
'...Within these three or four days we have had frost --yes,and a little snow --for the first time,say the Pisans,within five years.
Robert says the mountains are powdered towards Lucca....'
Feb.3('47).
