44/47 She then entered the cab again, drove home, and agreed to the elopement. This was possibly the best poem that she ever produced. Early one morning in September 1846 Miss Barrett walked quietly out of her father's house, became Mrs.Robert Browning in a church in Marylebone, and returned home again as if nothing had happened. In this arrangement Browning showed some of that real insight into the human spirit which ought to make a poet the most practical of all men. The incident was, in the nature of things, almost overpoweringly exciting to his wife, in spite of the truly miraculous courage with which she supported it; and he desired, therefore, to call in the aid of the mysteriously tranquillising effect of familiar scenes and faces. |