way prepared. "My
whole scheme of life," he wrote to her,[30] "(with its wants, material
wants at least, closely cut down), was long ago calculated--and it
supposed _you_, the finding such an one as you, utterly impossible." But
his schemes for a profession and an income were summarily cut short.
Elizabeth Barrett peremptorily declined to countenance any such
sacrifice of the work he was called to for any other. The same deep
sense of what was due to him, and to his wife, sustained her through the
trial that remained,--from the apparent degradation of secrecy and
subterfuge which the domestic policy of Mr Barrett made inevitable, to
the mere physical and nervous strain of rising, that September morning
of 1846, from an invalid's couch to be married. That "peculiarity," as
she gently termed it, of her father's, malign and cruel as it was, twice
precipitated a happy crisis in their fortunes, which prudence might have
postponed. His refusal to allow her to seek health in Italy in Oct. 1845
had brought them definitely together; his second refusal in Aug. 1846
drove her to the one alternative of going there as Browning's wife. A
week after the marriage ceremony, during which they never met, Mrs
Browning left her home, with the faithful Wilson and the indispensable
Flush, _en route_ for Southampton. The following day they arrived in
Paris.

[Footnote 30: _R.B. to E.B.B._, Sept. 13, 1845.]

II.

There followed fifteen years during which the inexhaustible
correspondents of the last twenty months exchanged no further letter,
for they were never parted. That is the sufficient outward symbol of
their all but flawless union. After a leisurely journey through France,
and an experimental sojourn at the goal of Mrs Browning's two frustrated
journeys, Pisa, they settled towards the close of April 1847 in
furnished apartments in Florence, moving some four months later into the
more permanent home which their presence was to render famous, the
Palazzo (or "Casa") Guidi, just off the Piazza Pitti.

Their life--mirrored for us in Mrs Browning's vivid and delightful
letters--was, like many others, in which we recognise rare and precious
quality, singularly wanting in obviously expressive traits. It is
possible to describe everything that went on in the Browning household
in terms applicable to those of scores of other persons of wide
interests, cultivated tastes, and moderate but not painfully restricted
means. All that was passion