Elizabeth’s first letter to Browning further cheered me. I had been concerned lest, with all the refreshment of pleasure and interest in life the man’s words might have brought her, she had perhaps become over-excited thereby, brought to an unhealthy access of sentiment. The dry terms of her answer, composed without any assistance but confided to me, were greatly reassuring. She spoke of her high respect for Browning’s own ventures into poetic composition, saluted him as a fellow-craftsmen, told him that he would remain in her everlasting debt if he would draw her attention to faults in her manner of composition — nothing of the dreamy palpitating stuff in which he had evidently indulged himself. The correspondence continued. I had pressing concerns of my own at that time, in the City, relative to my affairs in the West Indies, and to be candid I was not sorry that my dearest Ba seemed to have found someone who might unwittingly share the burden of emotional obligation to her that I had inescapably (if gladly) acquired.
So matters stood for a couple of months and I was more than content. Elizabeth had acquired a companion who might prove more durable than her poor much-loved brother, known to her as Bro, lost sailing off the Devon coast at the age of thirty-three, and one who was nearer at hand than the excellent Hugh Stuart Boyd and John Kenyon, the latter known to me since our days at Cambridge and Elizabeth’s benefactor and distant kinsman. Her letters to and from Browning, of which I was told nothing of substance, grew more frequent, but I saw no harm in that.
Then, in May of the same year, 1845, the two were to meet; he was to visit her at two o’clock in the afternoon of the 20th. I raised no objection; at that time I had none to raise; at two o’clock that day I was engaged in the City of London. I had left my Ba in her room as usual reclining on her sofa, surrounded by her simple furniture, most notably her beloved books on shelves built by her brothers, and with her spaniel, the well-behaved Flush, close beside her. As her father I could say to myself that, for all her large brown eyes and splendid thick dark hair, she was not what the world would have called beautiful. The black silk she wore at this season accentuated the pallor of her ivory complexion. She looked small and defenceless (she stood only an inch over five foot), eagerly desiring and yet deeply dreading the advent of the scoundrel [1] who had so artfully insinuated himself into the very springs of her being.
Before I departed, I counselled Elizabeth to remember that this young man, six years her junior, must be as apprehensive as she of the coming encounter, and that, whatever might betide, he ardently desired her welfare, and doubtless more. What else could I have said or done?
‘I see that Mr Browning’s visit was a success,’ I remarked some hours later as I took tea with Elizabeth in her room.
‘Oh yes, it was most pleasant and valuable,’ she replied from her seat on the sofa. (I occupied the armchair by prescriptive right.)
‘How did he impress you?’
‘He was most affable, and from the beginning there were no constraints. We had lively talk for something above an hour.’
‘Upon what topics?’ I asked.
‘Oh, a great many, from poetry to politics.’
‘Very likely. I was hoping you might particularize a little.’
‘Oh… ah… he renewed his affirmations of regard for some of the things I’ve written, especially… especially “A Dream of Exile” and “The Rime of the Duchess May” and others. Truly, he was most… I could not have wished for a more…’
‘No lady,’ said I with a smile, my hands on my knees, ‘is on oath when her father questions her on her conversations with an eligible young gentleman; indeed, she need say nothing at all. But, my dearest Ba, you and I have always been closely attached; pray do a little to indulge the curiosity of an old man and a loving parent. No doubt Mr Browning did converse with you of this and that; but what did you make of him, in what frame of mind do you look forward to his next visit, if there is to be one, did you like him?’ And Flush, at her side as always, raised his dark liquid eyes to hers as if to say that he, too, would have welcomed some information upon this head.
She looked at me for a few moments in silence, and it was not hard to imagine something of the battle of emotions that raged within her. Then she rose to her feet and held out her arms to me, and we embraced; I remember thinking how thin her small frame was, like a sheaf of ropes. Urging Flush to make room, she drew me down to sit close to her on the sofa and took my hand in hers.
‘Dearest papa,’ she burst out in her high voice, almost as thin in its way as her figure, ‘Mr Browning is such an impressive, inspiring man, he has quite bowled me over with his ardour and strength. I swear that within a minute of his arrival I was in continuous suspense to see what he should say next — I learnt what it meant to be hanging on someone’s lips. He carried within him so passionate a flame that I felt almost scorched by it,’ etc., etc.
‘I gather from this that you do wish to see him again,’ I interjected when I thought it timely.
‘I am quite set on it’, and she went on without pausing for breath, ‘and this, all this, from a great poet, many say the greatest of our age!’
Soon I had seen and heard enough for the time being. In a light tone I counselled the dear creature not to allow her thoughts to proceed too fast, to beware of placing an extravagant hope upon the sequel to a single brief meeting, and to consider that Mr Browning must have many other concerns in his life than an occasional visit to a fellow-rhymer, however highly regarded. When she seemed calmer I left her. I had some thinking of my own to do, and a hope hardly less extravagant than any of hers to consider.
For despite the very great depth and strength of my fatherly love, and the warm affection in which I had always held her, there was no gainsaying but that Ba’s feelings for me, however welcome and however takingly expressed, were inappropriate in their degree. To put the matter in less abstract terms, she was nearly forty; while delicate of constitution she had the inner power of endurance shown by many other members of her sex; [2] as just demonstrated she was by no means indifferent to male charm; the isolation in which she lived was fully explicable but unnatural. To put it coarsely and more shortly still, she needed a man.
Perhaps Robert Browning was destined to be that man. For the time being I tried to look no further into the future. Mr Browning’s letters continued to arrive at 50 Wimpole Street at an accelerating rate, and so did he in person for strictly delimited weekly visits. Dear Ba looked forward to each with what I may perhaps term a steady crescendo of expectation. She seemed happy. Her health was visibly better than it had been for years. All the same, I knew that there was more than a salubrious concern in her expressed desire, expressed indeed in previous years but never so pressingly as now, to winter out of England, in Malta, Pisa, Madeira. I would listen to any suggestion. Not having it in my nature to be either inquisitive or effusive, I was content meanwhile to allow matters to take their course. Nevertheless I knew my daughter was aware that, at least in principle, I was not unfavourably disposed to her association with the man who admired her so extravagantly, though I did wonder a little at not being invited to meet him.