Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/138

122 neither unique nor singular, when his temperament is considered.

Writing to Horne just after her marriage, our poetess states her experience that all her maladies came from without, and "the hope that if unprovoked by English winters, they would cease to come at all. The mildness of the last exceptional winter," she remarks, "had left me a different creature, and the physicians helped me to hope everything from Italy." Winter, with all its accumulative terrors, was rapidly nearing; on one hand was "the sofa and silence" of home, shared with an estranged father and a probable relapse into illness, and on the other, Hope, Italy and Love! The contest between Love and Duty, if severe, could not last long or be doubtful. "Our plans," said the lady to Horne, "were made up at the last in the utmost haste and agitation—precipitated beyond all intention."

On the 12th September, 1846, Elizabeth Barrett was married, at the Marylebone parish church, to Robert Browning, and immediately after the newly-wedded pair started for Italy, by way of Paris.

The marriage was an intense surprise for all those who only knew Elizabeth Barrett as a chronic invalid, hovering between life and death. Henry Chorley, who was selected as one of the trustees of Mrs. Browning's marriage settlement, says, "I cannot recollect when I have been more moved and excited by any surprise, beyond the circle of my immediate hopes and fears," than when "she married, after an intimacy suspected by none save a very few, under circumstances of no ordinary romance, and in marrying whom she secured for the residue of her life an emancipation from prison and an amount of happiness delightful to