The First Meeting of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its 'Oh, list,'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss ...
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
On 20th May 1845, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning met for the first time at her London home at 50 Wimpole Street, thus swiftly escalating the trajectory of one of the most touching real-life literary love stories.
It is surely impossible to re-read their works chronologically, beginning with his first letter to her in January earlier that year, and fail to be moved as their autobiographical account of their cat-and-mouse courtship and ensuing romance unfolds; the tale is poetic in itself, but all the more so for it is told by two whose abundant talents are particularly suited to the Ars Amatoria.
Six years older than the cultured and worldly bachelor, Elizabeth was a 40-year-old, five-foot-one, crippled spinster when she received Robert Browning's first letter. John Kenyon had given him a copy of Elizabeth's Poems and, enraptured by them, he abandoned the austerity of the Victorian times with this audacious opening gambit: "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett ... I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart - and I love you too."
Over the next four months, EB and RB would exchange letters nearly daily - his dispatches becoming evermore confident and bold while hers, though full of life and learning, remain sweetly hesitant. As the day of their first meeting approached, Elizabeth concealed her nerves beneath wit and prose (her final letter to him before their appointment concluded: "Well! But we are friends till Tuesday - and after perhaps."). Her reticence was not simply a matter of disbelief that a man such as Browning could appreciate her for anything more than her poetry (she too had admired him before their correspondence began, and even displayed a small portrait of him on her wall which would have to be removed before the visit on the afternoon of 20th May); Elizabeth had been bred for spinsterdom. Born into a family who had acquired its great wealth through the slave trade, her dominant father bizarrely disapproved of marriage for all of his twelve children. Ill from the age of twenty, the morphine- and opium-addicted Elizabeth meekly complied and resigned herself to a life of channelling her passions into her work. Until Robert.
After their meeting, which we know from what happened next must have gone exceedingly well, their correspondence became even more prolific. Between 10th January 1845 and 12th September 1846 - the date of their secret marriage (defying her father, whom she would never see again) - they exchanged 600 (!!!) letters. They eloped to Italy, where she would come to be regarded as Byron is by the Greeks. There, the kinder climate and - more significantly - being loved, provided a miracle cure for her wretched health; Elizabeth would improve to such an extent that she was even able to become a mother.
The most famous account of their romance is EBB's own Sonnets from the Porteguese. She had composed the forty-eight verses in real time but kept them hidden because, in one of his early letters, RB had expressed disdain for 'women's' poetry. It was not until 1849 that Elizabeth shyly presented the chronicle of their courtship and marriage to her husband. Browning, forever his wife's greatest champion, recognised the genius at once and encouraged publication. From her initial hesitance ("We have met late - it is too late to meet, Oh friend, not more than friend!"), to fear (Sonnet XIV reveals her belief that he must only pity her) until, several sonnets later, capitulation and joyful acceptance ("How do I love thee ..."), the Sonnets are the autobiographical revelations of one of the greatest female poets who thought love had passed her by, but discovers she is loveable after all - because he loved her.
Until her death in 1861, they enjoyed the happiest of marriages which provided a rich foundation for their respective talents to flourish. And Robert would never take for granted the great love that, without his tenacity, so easily might not have been.
Escape me?
Never-
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear-
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed-
But what if I fail of my purpose here?

Article written by Dorian Cope