Miss
Barrett's poems and an allusion to himself in her _Lady Geraldine's
Courtship_ gave him an excuse for addressing her. Their correspondence
flourished, and they rapidly passed from regarding each other as mere
acquaintances, to looking upon each other as friends. In fact, there
seems to have been from the very first an almost mystical attraction
between them. Miss Barrett might have contented herself all her life
with this delightfully personal and literary correspondence, but
Browning soon grew impatient and expressed his desire to see her. The
admission of a new friend to Miss Barrett's room was at no time a thing
to be undertaken lightly, so hedged about was she by the care of her
family; and in this case she herself seems to have hesitated long before
allowing Browning to call, for the very feminine reason that "there is
nothing to see in me nor to hear in me." Had she known Browning better,
she would have realized that his determination would carry him past all
obstacles; and so, indeed, it did.

On May 20, 1845, they met for the first time, and within a short time
his friendship for her had ripened into love, and he asked her to marry
him. She herself told, in a letter to a friend after her marriage, the
story of her courtship.

"He came, and with our personal acquaintance began his attachment for
me, a sort of _infatuation_ call it, which resisted the various denials
which were my plain duty at the beginning, and has persisted past them
all. I began with the grave assurance that I was in an exceptional
position and saw him just in consequence of it, and that if he ever
recurred to that subject again, I never could see him again while I
lived; and he believed me and was silent. To my mind, indeed, it was a
bare impulse--a generous man of quick sympathies taking up a sudden
interest with both hands."

Browning was, as she said, silent, but he was not discouraged, and his
letters, his visits, his flowers, at length convinced Miss Barrett that
his feeling was something more than a "bare impulse."

"So then," she continued, "I showed him how he was throwing into the
ashes his best affections--how the common gifts of youth and
cheerfulness were behind me--how I had not strength, even of _heart_,
for the ordinary duties of life--everything I told him and showed him.
'Look at this--and this--and this,' throwing down all my disadvantages.
To which he did not answer by a single compliment, but simply that he
had