SD1300. Joseph Arnould to Alfred Domett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 368–369 (in part).
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Nov. 30th 1846
My dear old friend. The punctual sailing (as I am informed) of the present packet has taken me by surprise & must account I fear for a briefer letter than I should otherwise have sent. … I think the last piece of news I told you of was Browning’s marriage to Miss Barrett—which I had then just heard of:, she is, you know, or else I told you, or ought to have told you our present greatest living English “poetess”—she had been for some years an invalid leading a very secluded life in a sick room in the household of one of those tyrannical, arbitrary, puritanical ra[s]cals who go sleekly about the world, canting Calvinism abroad, & acting despotism at home: under the iron rigour of this man’s domestic rule she, feeble & invalided, had grown up to eight & thirty years of age in the most absolute & enforced seclusion from society: cultivating her mind to a wonderful amount of accomplishment, instructing herself in all languages, reading Chrysostom in the original Greek, & publishing the best metrical translation that has yet appeared of the Prometheus Bound—having also found time to write three volumes of poetry, the last of which, raised her name to a place second only to that of Browning and Tennyson, amongst all those who are not repelled by eccentricities of external form from penetrating into the soul & quintessential spirit of poetry that quickens the mould into which the poet has cast it. Well this lady so gifted, so secluded, so tyrannized over fell in love with Browning in the spirit, before ever she saw him in the flesh—in plain English loved the writer before she knew the man. Imagine, you who know him, the effect which his graceful bearing, high demeanour, & noble speech, must have had on such a mind when she first saw the man of her visions in the twilight of her darkened room. She was at once in love as a poet soul only can be: and Browning as by contagion or electricity, was no less from the first interview wholly in love with her; this was now some two years back; from that time his visits to her have been constant; he of course wished to ask her of the Father openly “if you do was her terrified answer he would immediately throw me out of window, or lock me up for life in a darkened room[”]; there was one thing only to be done & that Browning did: married her without the Father’s knowledge & immediately left England with her for Italy, where they are now living at Pisa in as supreme a state of happiness as you can fancy two such people in such a place[.] The old rascal Father of course tore his beard—foamed at the mouth & performed all other feats of impotent rage:—luckily his wrath is absolutely idle for she has a small independence of some £350 per ann. on which they will of course live prosperously. I heard from him a week back in which he mentions you most kindly & begged me to tell you all about him—he is a glorious fellow by God– Oh I forgot to say—that the soi-disante invalid of 7 years, once emancipated from the paternal despotism has had a wondrous revival, or rather, a complete metamorphosis, walks, rides, eats, & drinks like a young & healthy woman—in fact is a healthy woman of, I believe, some five & thirty—a little old—too old for Browning—but, then, one word covers all, they are in Love—who lends his own youth to every thing. …
Publication: RB-AD, pp. 132–138.
Manuscript: British Library.
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